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February 1, 2021 by Kim Leave a Comment

Parenting: The Best “How to Grow Yourself Up” experience ever!

Carrie* walks into her daughter’s bedroom to wake her up for school because once again she’s slept through her alarm. Trying to sound cheerful, she gently rubs her sixteen-year-old’s arm and says, “Bridget,* it’s time to get moving honey.” Immediately Bridget begins to bark her usual response, “God Mom, why do you have to wake me up like that I HATE it when you touch me! Leave me alone!” Carrie’s body goes stiff, the back of her neck begins to tingle…this is what she expected, but not what she wanted to start her day with again. Triggered, she retorts in a condescending tone, “Well Bridget, if you were a little more responsible you’d be able to get yourself up and moving without my having to come in here every damn day!”

You may initially want to slap me for saying this but…Nobody tells you how much motherhood will be the best way to grow yourself up. No one talks about what you can really learn in the years between your child’s arrival and their launch.

And, nobody (before me, before today) shares the true secret to motherhood: raising human beings is our greatest opportunity to identify and work through the limiting beliefs we unconsciously took on as children.

And these beliefs will be triggered at any given moment by our kid’s behavior.

Say what?!?!?!?!

What the hell is a limiting belief?

When you were a child you picked up subtle cues from your parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers (all of the important people in your world) about how to act and what you should say in order to feel their love. Even if they said they loved you unconditionally. Most of us spent a lot of our childhood performing to get our parent’s love and acceptance.

At our core, we do not want to be abandoned by the people we love the most. And every human born comes into the world with six basic emotional needs. We work hard to get those met through our words and behavior. What are our basic emotional needs? They are acceptance, affection, appreciation, attention, autonomy, and what Dr. Brené Brown says we’re all wired for…connection.

Every one of us has limiting beliefs. Even if you had the most woke, present, emotionally intelligent parents! The question is whether or not you are aware of them and then, taking it another step, if you decide to do anything about shifting the ones that are triggering you.

What’s a trigger?

An emotional trigger is anything — including memories, experiences, or events — that spark an intense emotional reaction, regardless of your current mood.

Many moms know they are being triggered by the people they love the most, but they don’t ever take the time or invest the energy to question and then to create new, more accurate beliefs to better serve themselves and their kids. 

The women I work with have found the courage to look at the beliefs they hold about themselves because they know those beliefs are blocking their full potential and they’re tired of it; they want more from their lives.

As Carrie and I worked together she was able to understand her value as a person and become less reactive to Bridget. When that happened (by becoming the calm in Bridget’s storm) her daughter learned how to regulate her emotions as well.

*These are not their real names.

What do limiting beliefs look and feel like in parenting?

Some typical triggers: feeling disrespected when your son doesn’t obey curfew (tripping the deeper need in you to feel seen/heard/accepted). Becoming deeply hurt when your daughter rolls her eyes at you for the first time (on the surface you may feel or say you’re annoyed but below the surface is your desire for appreciation and connection).

Think about the frustration coursing through your body every time the door to their room slams because you’ve doled out another rule in an effort to protect your teenager…if not from others, then certainly from themselves. That anxiety is a surface reaction to a deeper trigger of [as a parent] you are not enough or the job you’re doing as a parent is not good enough.

Evading curfew, the eye rolls, wearing a revealing tube top, door slamming, and dying one’s hair blue are examples of our teenager’s attempts to individuate and build autonomy (it could also very well be a way to seek attention or affection). As the parent, this behavior is an assault on our desire to feel seen and heard. We equate the way our kids show up in the world as a direct reflection of how good a parent we are, in other words, how valuable we are as a human being.

Our deep need to be seen and heard comes from not having had enough of that experience as a child. Let’s face it, even if our parents doted on us they didn’t get it right 100% of the time. I know my parents didn’t. They did the best they could with what they knew and based on their own growing up experience. This is why we react now by feeling angry, disappointed, and/or disrespected when our kids trigger us.

But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

So, how can you stop getting triggered by your kid’s behavior?

Personally join me for my 8-week online course Becoming Me While Raising You, A Mother’s Journey to Self. Together, in a small group of women (think handful) we will uncover your limiting beliefs and shift them into healthier ones! We’ll also look at consistent boundary setting, building trust with your teen, creating open communication at home, how to know when to lean in and fix something in your teen’s life and when to let the natural consequences of their choices teach them.

We meet on Zoom either Tuesday mornings (10 a.m. CST) or Thursday evenings (7:30 p.m. CST). Eight weeks to new beliefs, confident parenting skills, sharper intuition, and a more peaceful home life. I’ll be right there to guide you every step of the way. Text me at 972-689-0250 or sign up through the link above to grab your spot. This is an ongoing enrollment so any week you want to begin you can, you just have to commit for 8 straight weeks.

 

 

Filed Under: Kim's Journey, Parenting Teens, Parenting Today, Personal Development, Personal Growth Tagged With: conscious parenting, how to, limiting beliefs, parenting, parenting teens, personal development, personal growith, self reflection, teenagers

March 13, 2020 by Kim Leave a Comment

COVID-19 and family life: How to make the best of this situation

A week ago, I was literally snickering…I’m a very level-headed, laid-back individual and what I was experiencing through social media and in conversations with others appeared to be a gross overreaction (to say the least), I mean hand sanitizer, toilet paper and Airbourne flying off the shelves, activities canceling, emails from the local public school district talking about new policies regarding their cleaning practices seemed way out of whack.  COVID-19 is something happening mainly elsewhere, why do we have our undies in a bundle?

And as of this writing, I am still hoping it is out of whack.

Whether we actually get hit with epidemic numbers of COVID-19 cases or not, this situation is getting many of us to think about several things, like how much we outsource products used daily and how often we don’t recognize what we have until it’s no longer an option, how we take for granted our school schedule including the care/food provided for so many who will now have to figure out how to work and take care of their kids during the day, and maybe most of all…how quickly life can change.

We can choose to look at this evolving global situation as something that is happening to us, or as something that is happening FOR us.

At the moment, the extreme travel restrictions, the closings, the being told to stay home have had some immediate consequences for our family and likely for yours as well.  We had a cruise planned for the end of March that won’t be taken, our two older boys who were going to be home for a week from college on Spring Break will likely now be home much longer, my husband (who owns a travel business) will have some significant setbacks to overcome, the children’s hospital I work at has implemented some strict changes (just waiting to see if any of those involve more than my rescheduling a few major events), and though I haven’t heard if our high school kids will get an extended break from school yet, I am expecting that will be the case.

It would be really easy to get stuck in a negative thought pattern about how this will affect our family financially and in ways I can’t even imagine at the moment, but I want to pause and remind all of us who have lived through major tragedy or serious life-altering events before (think 9/11, SARS, Hurricane Katrina, the housing crash of 2008, H1N1, the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting, the mass shooting in Las Vegas…) that it is, in these times, when we move through the fear, we come together and remember we are all one.  This is when humanity really shines!

The coming weeks are an opportunity to reconnect with our families, to take a breath from the sometimes-insane pace of life we expect ourselves to rise to, to wave to our neighbors, to pay it forward by allowing someone else to go first or by sharing a roll of toilet paper.

You watch, while we don’t yet know exactly how bad things might get…there will (and have been already) multiple situations each of us will come to learn and be a part of that will highlight our human side, the side where we work together for the greater good, this…THIS is what gives us perspective and neutralizes our fear and calls us into our higher selves.

COVID-19 is giving us the opportunity to choose staying present over future-tripping. Becoming gounded or feeding our anxiety.  Adopting gratitude over greed. 

Take this moment in time to be still and stay here, look for the good and let it remind you of what is truly important in this human experience.

Filed Under: Parenting Blog, Uncategorized Tagged With: conscious parenting, COVID-19, health, parenting, safety, self reflection, slowing down family schedule

November 27, 2018 by Kim Muench Leave a Comment

What does it mean to be the best parent for your kids?

 Photo Credit: Suzy Hazelwood
Photo Credit: Suzy Hazelwood

I have been talking about conscious parenting both publicly and within my family conversations for the past several years. I believe I have always practiced being a conscious parent, but I first understood the term itself and felt it aligned with the way I was parenting our five kids after reading The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali Tsabary in 2014.

I have been curious about what my parenting has meant to the adult children in my life, so while the oldest three boys were home for Thanksgiving weekend I decided I wanted to ask each of them some questions about their perception and experience around the way they were parented. There is value in understanding my adult children’s point of view of my parenting practice as I continue through the teen years with Mia (13) and Maddux (15). I know I will continue to talk with them and other young adults as I begin writing a book on the practice of parenting with intention.

The videos of each interview range from 5-10 minutes in length. Truth be told, I could have talked with Nick, Allen-Michael, and Brigham much longer because I had more questions, but they’d all been so kind as to immediately agree to be videotaped with me that I didn’t want to push it.

Under each video are additional comments and reflection about the content.

A little background about my relationship with Nick (for those who may not be aware)…he came into my life just shy of my 19th birthday, shortly after I finished my freshman year in college. I had a very upper-middle-class upbringing and getting pregnant forced me to grow up really quickly. When I made the decision to raise Nick, I was asked to leave my family home. I lived on welfare until I could afford to make ends meet with full-time secretarial work, my mom taking care of Nick so I could do that, and support from Nick’s dad.

His dad and I stayed together for the first few years of Nick’s life, but our relationship was very unhealthy and it eventually ended. This forced Nick to go between two very different households for the remainder of his childhood. While I believe Nick’s dad loved him very much, he was fighting a personal battle that often led to abuse of our son. Nick hid this well, and though I cannot go back and change anything about his experience, I value Nick’s honesty in telling me that I could have tried harder to get him to share more about his weekly visits with his dad. In hindsight I recognize it always took 2-3 days for Nick to readjust to being home with us, and to this day I don’t know the extent of what he experienced physically or mentally while in his dad’s care. His dad passed away in 2010 at the age of forty-two and Nick has done a lot of self-work to move forward past his childhood experience and use of alcohol to self-medicate. Though I didn’t know how difficult his teen years were, I do know I often bragged to my friends about how close I felt our relationship was. We have always been close. In many ways we grew up together. Today Nick is sober, married, and happy in the life he and his wife have built together. Nick and I have a very open, easy-going relationship that I treasure.

Allen-Michael and I have enjoyed many deep conversations in his adulthood. At twenty-five his faith (which has actively developed over the past decade) has led him to travel both the country and the world sharing his love of God and Catholicism with hundreds of young people. He is now in his first year of seminary. It’s interesting because at a time when his faith-life was growing in one direction (in the tradition we…admittedly inconsistently…imparted on him during his childhood), mine has taken a complete shift into a deeper belief and development in a spiritual relationship with God that has nothing to do with religion or church practices. The beautiful thing about this is that we both choose to focus on what we agree on (God exists/there is something larger than ourselves going on/we are an extension of God called upon to serve others) rather than the beliefs we don’t share. While (to be brutally honest) I may not have chosen this path for him, it is not about me. The calling he is following is a good example of releasing our need to have control over our children and their outcomes. The kids who came through me will live out their greatest purpose to the best of their ability and my primary role is to appreciate and support them in that endeavor. I know that if Allen-Michael continues through seminary he will one day make a faithful father to many people. It’s a gift to watch him continue to unfold into a gentle yet strong young man.

Brigham (20, a junior in college) has blessed me and our family so often with his free-spirit…he was the most hesitant to answer my questions without knowing what they were first. Brigham has always wanted to know as much as possible before things happen. This phase of parenting, during the college years, can be be most challenging (based on my perspective having parented for three decades through all phases). It’s really a time when what you’ve worked to model and instill comes through in your child’s actions. Brigham works diligently at everything he does, but at the same time, he’s also very go-with-the flow. There are a lot of moments when anxiety about a choice he might make could hamper our relationship if I chose to defer to fear (breeding disconnection between he and I) instead of holding space for any choice he makes because I understand I am not in control of, responsible for, nor do I want to get in the way of his learning for himself the lessons life is willing to teach him.

It is in our greatest challenges that we grow as human beings.

I believe, and have been outspoken about in many ways over the past few years, raising children is our greatest calling and it needs to evolve from one where the emphasis is on teaching and controlling kids to a place where our role is to guide them by learning who it is they are as we parent WITH them. Putting structure and boundaries in place while giving them lots of choices to discover who they are. I believe a mutually respectful friendship is the end goal when they are independent adults. When and if my kids decide to have children of their own, I’d like them to want me to be a part of their kids lives, not out of obligation but because they love and respect the person I have been throughout their lives.

Parenting is about growing you while raising them (hmmm…sounds like the title of a book…), for me this includes choosing to start and stay involved in conversations that may be difficult in order to develop better connections with my kids, it means making my own physical/emotional/spiritual life a priority so I can be emotionally present for others, and it means speaking out and getting involved in the world wherever I can to bring awareness to the importance of parenting with intention.

If I can be of service to you in navigating the parent/child relationship(s) in your life, please email me through this site or text me at 972-689-0250.

Filed Under: Parenting Blog, Parenting Today, Personal Development Tagged With: conscious parenting, Dr. Shefali, parenting adults, personal development, The Conscious Parent

October 7, 2016 by Kim Muench Leave a Comment

Shedding light on the top parenting myths

 Photo:  Jeremy Bishop
Photo:  Jeremy Bishop

There are no shortage of parenting books on the market (I know this because I read them…), and tons of parenting advice to be found online (like this blog, LOL), even though there are resources readily available to parents of kids all ages, we continue to struggle with some very basic myths about parenting which, if we allow them to, can be debilitating to our most important relationships.

Here are a few I came up with:

  • The hardest stage of parenting is…new parents will likely tell you it’s those first few months of sleepless nights as well as around the clock diaper changes and feedings, not to mention the gravity of reality setting in that you are in charge of this very dependent, tiny human being and your life is no longer your own.  Parents of toddlers would definitely say it’s trying to survive the terrible twos. Preschool parents might say they have it the hardest because they deal with the daily frustrations and assertions of their child’s emerging independence (wanting to do it all themselves when they can’t). Elementary school parents would complain about adding sports, arts, homework, and teaching personal responsibility to the mix of home life, while middle school parents will talk about changing hormones, emotional ups and downs, not to mention social drama. Parents of teenagers will say they have it the worst because even though they’ve managed to get through the first several parenting stages, everyone knows how much anxiety goes into making sure your kid succeeds in school, adjusts socially, begins navigating the dating world, and learns important life skills before they leave the home for college.  So you’d think college parents would say the worst is behind them…but no, parents of college students wonder how they’ll pay for the education and whether or not their child will thrive in the campus environment, if their child will be wise enough to make healthy decisions for themselves when they aren’t supervised, and whether or not their young adult will find a “good” job after college.

The hardest stage of parenting is…whatever stage of parenting you are in at the moment.  Because, as you can see, every age and developmental stage has it’s challenges.  BUT, every stage also has it’s rewards! Some of us are in multiple stages at any given moment, but each one of us is given a choice daily as to how to approach the parent/child relationship.  The more relaxed you can be about what you are experiencing at the time, the better the connection you’ll be able to have with your child.

  • We should know how to do this!  For whatever reason parents feel the job should come as second nature.  Why is this?  While there are many classes and resources to participate in before your baby arrives, they usually only prepare you for labor/delivery/newborn care and sometimes how to incorporate a new sibling into the family (no matter how much you read or how many classes you attend is anyone ever really prepared for parenthood?), there isn’t much in the way of classes offered after that, and many parents don’t have the luxury of time to read extensively…even if it is about the most important role they can play in their adult life.  Unless you’ve got a great mom, mother-in-law, or girlfriend who is in the trenches with you, a lot of time and energy is spent guessing what will work with your kids.  Many people have really challenging childhoods and don’t have any reference as to how to parent.  Then there are some who will choose to do the opposite of what their parents did, and others lead with exactly what they experienced without questioning or looking for alternatives that may be a better fit for family life today.

We should not “know” how to do this.  How many ways has the world changed just in the last two decades?   Our parent’s approach to raising kids was likely loosely based on the way they were raised (with a mix in of the baggage they took away from their upbringing). The way our parents, their parents, and prior generations raised their children just does not work well in the culture we are raising our kids in today.  These statements provide two conclusions:  tapping into our own voice and intuition about parenting our children is essential [instead of listening to the constant “noise” and messages that come at us each day].  And, there is no shame in searching for suitable answers when we are stumped about a situation or relationship challenge we are experiencing with our kids.

  • No one else is experiencing this problem with their kid.  We feel alone, though all of us struggle from time to time with our kids.  Especially true is the cover up in this age of socially sharing the “highlight” reel…rarely are parenting problems talked about (or if they are it’s usually with sarcasm), so we feel like we can’t really openly share our parenting struggles either. 

You wouldn’t believe how many people struggle with the same parenting issues!  In fact, there are several I would say are pretty universal right now; dealing with kids who have extreme anxiety, parents really concerned about their kids behavior/achievement or lack thereof, kids friendship drama and social acceptance, kids not listening, and one I hear A LOT…should I continue to push my child in __________ or just let them move on if they have told me that’s what they want to do.  The other night I had the pleasure of meeting with a group of parents who all agreed they were comforted by being in a room with people honest and open enough to share their parenting struggles. Kids need support…BUT SO DO PARENTS!  That was the goal of our meeting, and I am excited to continue to build a group of moms and dads who want support and who are willing to give it as well.

  • It’s too late…I’ve already messed my kid up, or I don’t have the kind of connection I always thought I’d have with my son/daughter and I don’t know how to change that.  They don’t like me because of the way I have been parenting them.

I am a firm believer that IT’S NEVER TOO LATE.  Taking a page out of my own life, I will tell you I had a call from my dad earlier this week who wanted to talk about a homily he’d recently heard at church about the Right to Life.  He was honest about how it had touched him and caused him remember all too clearly how he’d handled my pregnancy when I was eighteen.  He acknowledged just how strong I was at that time, and really how difficult my decision to have my son and raise him must have been for me without his full support.  My son is almost thirty years old…this is something that I truly never thought I would hear my dad ever say to me.

It’s never too late.

 

To be a parent who has a healthy, happy, functional, mutually respectful connection with their children you really only need a few things: you need to be honest with yourself and with them, you need to set and consistently hold realistic boundaries based on your child’s developmental stage, and you need to be vulnerable…don’t be afraid to say you are sorry when you are wrong, or to let them see you are human.  And, don’t get so disconnected from your own childhood you aren’t able to show them your playful side.

I’m curious…what parenting myths have I missed?  Comment below or send me an email at realifeparentguide@gmail.com.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Parenting Today Tagged With: conscious parenting, mindfulness, myths, parenting

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Kim Muench



(972) 689-0250
realifeparentguide@gmail.com

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