Handling Behavior Struggles with Dignity

Wendy Snyder [00:00:03]: At least if you can bring in that belonging in the home to say, I get you. You're not an alien. You make sense to me. I've struggled with the same things before. It will relax their nervous system, and then they are able to actually get into that part of the brain that is open to the creative solutions, open to being counseled or mentored. Right? Like, that's the dream I think we all want is for our children to feel safe with us actually mentoring them.

Penny Williams [00:00:32]: Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast, where I share insights and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches. I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author, and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey of raising your atypical kid. Let's get started. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Beautifully Complex. I am really excited today to have a conversation with Wendy Snyder about behavior struggles, how we handle those behavior struggles, and even about approaching discipline consciously, and just, I think, moving with intention so that we can be the parent that we want to be, and also the parent that our kids need us to be. Wendy, I'm so happy to have you here.

Penny Williams [00:01:27]: Will you start by just introducing yourself and let everybody know who you are and what you do?

Wendy Snyder [00:01:32]: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Penny. It's an honor to be here and get to record again. We just recorded. We had you on the Fresh Sharp Family Show podcast a few weeks ago, so it's been such a joy to get to know you and and the work you're doing in your community. So yeah. Hello, everybody. I'm Wendy Snyder.

Wendy Snyder [00:01:47]: I'm a positive parenting educator and family life coach and founder of FreshStart Family, which is a worldwide education and coaching platform where we help families really build up their parenting toolkit. So it can be kinda chock full of firm and kind connection based parenting strategies, and we find that when parents do that, they bring more peace into their home, which brings more peace into the world. And I really have a heart. I have a tendency to attract a lot of families, and I love teaching families who have at least one strong willed child because, you know, in our work, those are the kids that usually lovingly call us into growth and, provide the opportunity for us to really look at, how we want to influence these little humans because they are a higher degree of difficulty, And in my own life, my own beautiful strong male little girl has completely changed, you know, my entire life by the season when I found this work. She was a toddler. She's now 16, but she is the reason why I do this work, and she lovingly invited me in to heal and grow. And before I had her, I just I didn't have any idea that I was I would struggle with, like, highly reactive behavior and perfectionist tendencies and overpowering issues, like, all the things that came out once I was in put in charge of raising a small human soul that happened to have a beautiful strong will.

Penny Williams [00:03:19]: Yeah. I love that. And I'm sure you've worked on this perspective. Right? I'm sure you you didn't start there. It's been a journey, but, yeah, our kids really change us and change our perspective on the world and teach us things that we really needed to know, but sometimes just don't come naturally. I I started out as a very empathetic person, but I'm far far more empathetic from having the kid that I had Yeah. Than I would have been otherwise, and just really try to walk into understanding wherever we go, you know, whoever we meet, being open to the fact that I don't know their story. Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:04:00]: And, you know, we all have differences. Right? So we learn from our kids big time. We

Wendy Snyder [00:04:07]: do. We do. They often can be our biggest catalyst for change if we allow them to be, right, if we don't reject that invitation.

Penny Williams [00:04:14]: Yes. Yeah. So let's talk about leaning into the kids that we have. I think that's part of the conversation here that we're gonna have because we can resist. We can try to maintain our control and our power, and often that's not really possible, so it's just a lot of friction, and it's not where we wanna be in our parenting journey. So how do we sort of step into it in a different mindset?

Wendy Snyder [00:04:43]: It's a great question. Right? So I think for me, it's been a journey of realizing that there's nothing wrong, air quotes, wrong with my kid or wrong with me through all of the seasons, all of the behaviors. Right? So I first found this work when Stella was a toddler, and I just had my second, and I just thought I was gonna lose my mind. I was like, all of a sudden, I was yelling. I was grabbing wrists too tight. I was slamming doors. I was punishing this little human, you know, you name it. Time outs.

Wendy Snyder [00:05:18]: A bunch of twisted books told me I needed to spank her. I tried everything, and it just was not working, and thank God I got the invitation to actually do a program, at her preschool and taught me just all these new ways of seeing misbehavior or behavior, right, seeing the challenging behavior in a different way that I had been taught to see it. And so once I started to see her behavior as just communication and realized that she was a human soul that had been perfectly designed to seek power, and that probably was gonna set her up to be a really great leader one day. And I had been given this opportunity to mentor one of the next leaders next generation of leaders, that started to help me shift my perspective. I also started to learn that when I had those highly reactive patterns or when I didn't know what to do with her in the moments where I when I would tell her to stop pulling the dog's tail, and she would pull it harder. Or I would say go right, and she'd go left. Right? Like, that was pretty much from the beginning, the tone that Stella carried. She was just always, like, this incredibly determined, persistent, like, confident child really had a strong vision of what she wanted, no matter if that was eating what she wanted to eat for dinner or how she wanted to dress or whether she wanted to pick up her toys or not.

Wendy Snyder [00:06:41]: She would just have this very confident air about her. But, like, when I started to realize that when I didn't know what to do, that that was actually just part of the process of being a human parent, not that something was wrong with me, then kind of the light sort of returned to my day, and I realized that I just needed to learn how to influence her in a way that was actually gonna work because strong willed kids, in in my opinion, in my experience, are notorious for rejecting that classic overpowering model.

Wendy Snyder [00:07:09]: They just will revolt against it. They will rebel against it, and it takes an incredibly frustrating amount of fear and force, which most of us realize we don't wanna live a life where we're constantly trying to scare our kid into submission or Yeah. Make them listen, and so it it just turned into a journey that now I just see when she has behavior that's really challenging. We just worked through something really intense last night, and we'll continue to work through it over the weekend. She's 16 now. I just see it as an opportunity to teach and mentor, and with this work, when you're incredibly connected to your kids, it honestly turns out to feel like an honor, and every single moment of discipline turns into, like, a uniting thing with your child. And it's it's just wild that we're 14 years in now, and, I'm just in awe, like, the connection piece that helps us handle the imperfect moments of parenting, that it doesn't matter if you're a PhD, if you're a life coach like me, if you're spreading light in the world in any way possible, Penny, it's like there's no perfection in homes.

Wendy Snyder [00:08:18]: When you're able to see behaviors as just opportunities to teach and, yes, challenges to work through, but they're just part of normal life.

Penny Williams [00:08:25]: Yeah.

Wendy Snyder [00:08:26]: Nothing wrong with us. Nothing wrong with our kids. They're just another day.

Penny Williams [00:08:30]: Mhmm. Yeah. What you resist will persist. That's one of my parenting mantras. Right? It's so true. The more we push, the more many kids will push back, and it makes it really difficult. But what I love in what you were talking about is that you were reframing. You were changing strong willed, stubborn, obstinate, words like that that we often use to describe behavior, and you said determined, confident, and persistent.

Penny Williams [00:09:02]: And those are much more positive ways to look at that type of behavior. Right? Because then we are in that mindset that there is something here worth fighting for.

Wendy Snyder [00:09:17]: Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:09:18]: There are points to this child's character, and sometimes behavior isn't actually reflective of the child's character, but, you know, we're seeing that there are things here to work with. Right? We're not just seeing it as negative. We're also seeing that positive flip side. Doctor Hallowell calls it mirror traits. He takes traits of ADHD, and he finds the mirror traits within them. And that's exactly what I was hearing and what you were saying. It reminded me of that. Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:09:49]: And it's so so important for our kids, for their self confidence, right, but also for our mindset as parents as we step into those challenging situations.

Wendy Snyder [00:10:02]: Yep. And and in my experience, it's usually, not always, but usually a life skill that we could use some strengthening on.

Wendy Snyder [00:10:12]: And it may show up differently, but there's a life skill that we can share with our children. Oftentimes, if you really approach it with, like, a humility and a curiosity, it's amazing to me how I'm like, oh, that's so interesting. Like, the one with my daughter, I'm like, for sure. Like, I struggle with some of the things that, like, lead to more anxiety in my life that she's struggling with, like, when it comes to screens. But then my my little guy, he got, like, a note sent home just this morning about talking in class. He's 13. He's not so little. So for that one, it's like I kinda have to look a little bit, and I'm like, oh, well, you know what? I kinda maybe I do interrupt sometimes, but I just find it at it's actually become joyful and a part of the journey to look within and say, I wonder where I could use some strengthening with that life skill, whether it's self control or emotional literacy, right, like flying off the handle when you're upset about something, not getting what you want, frustration tolerance.

Wendy Snyder [00:11:07]: I've found it incredibly empowering over the years to start seeing them as actual mirrors and just start asking without shame or blame. I wonder if there's anything we could share here as I'm supporting this child to have behavior tomorrow that's gonna feel better for them, better for the community, better for their school, whatever it may be. But, like, I wonder where I can share with them and make them understand they're not alone because a lot of times they aren't.

Penny Williams [00:11:33]: Yeah. Yeah. But they feel it. They feel alone, you know, especially when they're struggling. I remember my son coming home from school in high school, maybe 9th grade, and he said, there is no one else like me in my entire school. And I said, bud, there are a lot of differences, and you have kind of this constellation of things that make school really hard. Yeah. But there are, like, almost 3,000 kids in your school, and I know that other kids are struggling in similar ways at least.

Penny Williams [00:12:06]: You just haven't met them yet. You just haven't had the opportunity to connect with them yet. But that's you know, it feels so isolating when it feels like everybody else is doing okay. What it feels like for everybody else, things are easy. And, yeah, sharing stories is really, really powerful, and I'm a firm believer in being very imperfect in front of our kids, showing them that we are absolutely human as well. We make mistakes, and showing them how to deal with those mistakes or how to deal with big emotions. And so when we share stories from our own past as you're talking about, then, you know, we're just again showing them that we are human too, and everybody makes mistakes. Everybody walks through some struggles sometimes, and it's how we deal with it.

Penny Williams [00:13:00]: And I think, you know, we we are gonna talk about handling behavior challenges with dignity, but I think just, you know, sharing that humanity in ourselves is giving them dignity in what their struggle is.

Wendy Snyder [00:13:15]: Yeah. And then when you approach it like that and help them feel like they're not alone, which is that basic need of belonging. Mhmm. Right? Like, when they feel like they're safe and they do belong, even if it's just with you. Right? Like, and it's just within the home, like, and when they step into the school, like Stella right now, it's like, you know, she steps into high school and 99% of her friends are vaping every second. I mean, most of her friends are getting hammered every second, like, full sturderers. I mean, it's just like, it is wild in Southern California, the normative, like, you know, all that kind of stuff. But you may feel alone in other places, but at least if you can bring in that belonging in the home to say, I get you.

Wendy Snyder [00:13:57]: You're not an alien. You make sense to me. I've struggled with the same things before. It will relax their nervous system, and then they are able to actually get into that part of the brain that is open to the creative solutions, open to being counseled or mentored. Right? Like, that's the dream I think we all want is for our children to feel safe with us actually mentoring them, and if we're being honest, most kids don't. By the time they are there in their 2nd decade, they really tune parents out because they just feel like they're gonna get lectured or punished or shamed or even rescued. Right? Like, a lot of you hear a lot of kids, like, they don't actually tell their parents what's happening because their parents will run into, like, rush into rescue mode.

Penny Williams [00:14:42]: Yep.

Wendy Snyder [00:14:43]: It's interesting, like, getting to that point where it's just that deep sense of belonging and saying, you're not alone, and we're gonna figure this out. And then all of a sudden, they're like, alright. I'll listen to what you have to say.

Penny Williams [00:14:54]: Yeah. That relationship is so important, and it really does make a huge difference in how much our kids let us guide them, how much they let us be a part of what is happening for them, which we want to be. Yeah. Because there are a lot of things going on that we need to help them to navigate. Let's talk a little bit about how we handle challenging behavior with dignity, because I think, you know, as human beings, we all get triggered, and we talk here on Beautifully Complex so much about our kids getting triggered, what that looks like, why it's happening, what we should do with it. We don't talk as much about ourselves getting triggered, but we're human beings. And, like, when our kid is blowing up and screaming hateful things at us, you know, we're naturally biologically, we're gonna get triggered. So how do we approach that situation feeling like we still have dignity, because I think a lot of people would think, well, if I'm just really passe about this horrible thing happening, then that makes me look like I'm a bad parent, or I don't have control.

Penny Williams [00:16:13]: Right? But I don't think that's true. So how do we really push through that and feel like we're still maintaining our own dignity?

Wendy Snyder [00:16:23]: Yeah. I love the word dignity. I just was

Wendy Snyder [00:16:25]: looking at the definition. The state or quality of being worthy of honor or respect, self respect, a sense of pride in oneself. So when it comes to dignity, I really think of just seeing our kids of worthy of being treated. Really, like, usually, we'd treat a neighbor, a friend, or grandparent. Right? Like, we we teach about compassionate discipline, and there's specifically, like, 4 r's that we would design logical consequences around. And one of them is it has to be respectful, and it has to be related. There's a few other things, like, in order for it to be logical consequence versus a punishment, and I always teach in the way of, like, hey. If you're wondering if it's respectful, ask yourself, would you do it to your grandma? Would you do it to your rabbi? Would you say it to your your neighbor or your pastor? If you wouldn't, then it's probably not respectful.

Wendy Snyder [00:17:27]: Right? Right? Like, they're supposed to just listen and do what they're told. And the other piece of this that comes to my mind is just the you know, it's just understanding our nervous system. Our nervous system is beautifully, perfectly designed to keep us safe, and it gets conditioned over time to see what we know as safe. And many of us were just raised in autocratic homes where, you know, if you challenged the rules, if you made mistakes, if you showed any type of imperfection when it comes to disrespect of your authority figure in your home, there was a price to pay, and it often includes danger, and whether that's, like, physical harm justified as good discipline through many circles, or whether it was emotional harm of, like, shame. Right? Lecturing, what's wrong with you? Like, I know in my house, the the classic was, like, shame on you. What's wrong with you?

Penny Williams [00:18:19]: Yeah.

Wendy Snyder [00:18:19]: And, man, did I did not realize. I mean, I'm 47 now. The last 3 years, I've been working on letting that go fully. It is so sticky in my brain. Yeah. It is so sticky. So my nervous system, like, knows that well, and, again, it's just designed to keep me safe. It'll always choose, like, a a comfortable hell over an uncomfortable heaven.

Wendy Snyder [00:18:40]: So even though rationally, we don't wanna come down on our kids and and shame and lecture them and say things to them that we're probably later gonna feel guilty about, but it snaps back into that place because that's what we watched happen for 18 years. That's kind of what we know. Right? Like, if if you were to let a child slide and you were to show empathy and compassion, then there's just a lot of fear that'll come in of, like, judgment. What if I'm doing this wrong? I'm letting this kid get away with it. I'm being permissive. And so first just to understand that's just our nervous system trying to keep us safe, and it's just a signal that we're dysregulated. And if we can slow down signal safety, that we're actually safe. Most behaviors, as challenging as they are, most of them, Penny, right, are not 4 alarm fires.

Wendy Snyder [00:19:25]: Yep. Sometimes they are.

Wendy Snyder [00:19:27]: And a lot of the times they're not, but it doesn't matter if it's spilled milk or rolled eyes or a kid saying I hate you. It feels to our nervous system like a bear is chasing us, and we're gonna die.

Penny Williams [00:19:37]: Yeah.

Wendy Snyder [00:19:37]: Because when we were a kid, we remember, like, that's one of my biggest memories of my childhood is being chased around the fireplace with a paddle.

Penny Williams [00:19:46]: I don't know.

Wendy Snyder [00:19:47]: Like, a very firm memory. So if I made a mistake that now when I make a mistake, I was just in traffic court last week. I the same feeling in my body revved up of, like, uh-oh. I'm gonna get in trouble. I'm not gonna get off for this ticket. Thank god the cop didn't show up, and I got off. Woo hoo. But the feeling, my nervous system still reacted the same way.

Wendy Snyder [00:20:06]: Yeah.

Wendy Snyder [00:20:06]: So the point is it's just understanding that and realizing that the more we learn to signal safety, to slow down, even if it means going to the bathroom for 2 minutes, getting a glass of water. We teach what's called a pause button, but, like, just working with your body, that's kind of what we what I'm finding now and I'm teaching about a lot lately. That's actually the ticket to changing your thought patterns. Like, you can't just change your thought patterns until you work with your body.

Penny Williams [00:20:32]: Yep.

Wendy Snyder [00:20:33]: And repave the neural pathways is what I'm finding.

Penny Williams [00:20:37]: Yeah. I, too, also talk a lot about the nervous system and how we are instinctually getting triggered. We are getting the signal from our body that we are not safe, that things are not okay. You know? And emotions are very, very powerful. So when I start to feel bad because somebody's yelling at me or saying something hurtful or whatever it is, that comes from a real place. It's not me choosing. Right? Like, we have to be kind to ourselves. We have to give ourselves grace.

Penny Williams [00:21:10]: We are wired to respond in a way that things are coming at us, and we have to work to overpower that. But as you were talking about, like, all of our lives, our nervous system, our brains have been wired to respond to certain things in certain ways. So if we were parented through fear, when we have other fear, we get that same sort of trigger in our bodies. You know, I've talked about this on the before on the podcast. My son had a lot of really intense school avoidance and refusal, and the first one, he literally got out of my car. He was walking toward the building, and he turned around and he ran in between my car and the car behind me as we were moving. So he ran in front of a moving car.

Wendy Snyder [00:21:56]: Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:21:57]: Screaming like he'd been hit by said car, even though he had not, and that was 4th grade, and we had different ways that that showed up at different times throughout his schooling, and even now when I think about it, my body reacts very strongly.

Wendy Snyder [00:22:14]: Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:22:14]: When I think about dropping him off somewhere at age 21, still, my nervous system gets triggered, and it says, uh-oh. What if this happens again? You know, and it hasn't happened in a long time, but it just illustrates the depth of what you're talking about. Our bodies hold onto these things.

Wendy Snyder [00:22:35]: Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:22:35]: And they try to tell us to act in a certain way when we feel a certain way, and we have to learn just as much as we're trying to teach our kids how to interpret those signals, how to know when we are truly safe or not, and what to do with that. And I think that's part of how we show up in a way that allows us to be calm, in a way that allows us to be more rational when our kids aren't. Yeah. We can meet them with that, as you were saying, respect. Right? I mean, that's really what it is. That understanding, it helps us to meet them with that respect.

Wendy Snyder [00:23:11]: It's so true. Fear and the feeling of being scared is such a fascinating, beautiful emotion that a lot of people think is, like, you know, will be labeled as a negative or bad, but it's actually where bravery and courage is born, right, and to, like, do things differently as a parent, even to raise a human soul, to put that much love into a person that you then release into the wild, and, like, we I was just talking to someone about the other day of, like, it's really scary. Like, what if something happens to them? Like, every day, you actually are feeling quite often if you're a parent scared that something's gonna happen to your child, but put bravery to, like, be, like, and I'm still gonna have a human soul. I'm gonna raise it. I'm gonna put all my love into it, and I can't control its life. Right? Like, it's bravery. It's courage, but

Wendy Snyder [00:24:03]: Like, we don't get to be brave, courageous human beings without feeling scared. And, yeah, you said it so well. It's like the journey to know what to do with that and just to be able to work with our body to decipher what is, like, a fear that we really wanna stop, stop, drop, and actually create safety.

Penny Williams [00:24:22]: Yeah.

Wendy Snyder [00:24:23]: Right? And then what's other times when it's just more like the alarms going off, but we get with our rational developed brain to tell ourselves we're gonna use our own ability to, like, signal the safety versus the body, like, going into panic mode. Mhmm. Such interesting work. You know?

Penny Williams [00:24:39]: Yeah. And, gosh, you know, I've been on this journey for I don't know. My son was diagnosed, lots of math 16 almost 16 years ago. K. It took me many, many, many years before I even started learning about the nervous system. Yeah. Like, probably 10. Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:24:55]: It's more recent. You know? We just weren't talking about it, and I'm so glad that we're talking about it now.

Wendy Snyder [00:25:01]: I'm just, like, 6 months.

Penny Williams [00:25:02]: Yeah.

Wendy Snyder [00:25:02]: I've been doing this for 14 years, and just 6 months for me. And it's all of a sudden, just everything's clicking.

Penny Williams [00:25:08]: It's just crazy how much sort of the light bulb goes off. Right? Like, we just walk through life believing what other people tell us, believing the experiences that we had as a kid. Right? Believing what society says we need to do as a parent, as an adult, whatever that is, and we don't recognize that so much of what we do, how we feel, is coming from our body. And if we can just connect to that, and if we can teach our kids to connect to that, how different everything can be. Right? How different that experience is gonna be Yeah. For all of us. Truth. For sure.

Penny Williams [00:25:48]: So I know that you have a free gift for everyone listening, and I'm gonna link that up in the show notes, and I'm gonna give everybody the exact address for that in just a moment, but do you wanna tell us a little bit about what they can get that was gonna help them to, one, learn more about you and your work, but also to help them on this parenting journey.

Wendy Snyder [00:26:09]: Thank you, Penny. I would love to gift your community what we call our quick start learning bundle, which will help them just get started with what we teach on how to work with strong willed kids in a way where you are really actually enjoying their time with them and getting out of the thought pattern that we need to change them or make them comply, but instead work with their natural design, help them become the leader that they're probably destined to be, and so that comes with a printable learning guide, a PDF, and a workshop with me. That's a 60 minute really powerful workshop, and they can learn more and find out information, over at fresh shirtfamilyonline.comforward/power, or just DM me the word freedom on Instagram. I'm at fresh start Wendy. Come find me over there too. I love to do teachings over there. And that word freedom, if you DM me, I'll get you into that quick start bundle that way too.

Penny Williams [00:27:05]: Awesome. And I will have it linked up in the show notes, and those are gonna be found at parentingADHDandAutism.com/264 for episode 264. I just wanna thank you, Wendy, for sharing some of your time with us, your experience. You know, sharing your story can be very vulnerable, and you're showing up and doing this work in the world that is making a difference for all of us, and I appreciate that so much.

Wendy Snyder [00:27:32]: Thank you, Penny, for having me. I appreciate and love the work that you're doing in the world so much too. So this has been really fun chatting today.

Penny Williams [00:27:40]: Thank you. And I will see everyone on the next episode. Take good care. Thanks for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share, and don't forget to check out my online courses and parent coaching at parentingadhdandautsism.com and at thebehaviorrevolution.com.