Harmony in the Home

Latest Episodes:

160: Baby Brains Jul 06, 2022

Show notes

Do you ever think or exclaim “What were you thinking?" when you’re kids make wonky decisions? I’ve done it a million times as I’m also a listener to our podcast too. So today will be for both of us to bring more insight on what they are thinking and how we can see their behavior as separate from us and not a reflection of us and our worthiness . Their side of the street does not dictate how we are doing and is not our report card for our value as a parent. Hopefully today will be just what you needed to hear to make parenting feel a little lighter so you can have more harmony in your home. Subscribe on Apple! Subscribe on Android! Join my FREE parenting bootcamp! Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me: Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com. Find me on Instagram! Find me on Facebook!

159: When Parenting Feels Hard Jun 29, 2022

Show notes

Does it ever seem like parenting feels hard all of the time? If so, then today’s episode will be just for you if you don’t know how to show up when it’s so hard. Or you may feel an immense amount of guilt for not enjoying every second of parenting. Or you may feel like parenting is just too dang hard and you’re doing it all wrong. Or if you may feel that you’re messing it all up which will lead to plopping your kids in therapy when their older or homeless living under a bridge If you are like me and have ever felt any or all of these sentiments, then today’s episode will be just what you needed to hear to make parenting feel a little lighter so you can have more harmony in your home. Subscribe on Apple! Subscribe on Android! Join my FREE parenting bootcamp! Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me: Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com. Find me on Instagram! Find me on Facebook!

158: Maintenance Mode Jun 22, 2022

Show notes

Do you have trouble finding a good balance between your personal life, professional life, and parenting life? You may feel terribly overwhelmed, as I sometimes do, by the pile of work in front of you. Maybe you ask yourself, “how am I supposed to get anything DONE?!” In this episode, I hope to demystify that process by explaining what I call “Maintenance Mode” work. Chances are high that the way to find good balance in your life is not by completing all tasks, but by doing a little bit of each at a time until they are as done as they can be. You see, the dishes and the laundry literally never end, unless you decide to return to your prehistoric roots, walking the earth in the buff and eating with your hands! The grass never stops growing. But once you take even a tiny step toward washing the dishes or taming the jungle in the backyard, you have entered Maintenance Mode, the ideal place to be. Now, my personal favorite method of organizing tasks is Dave Braun and Troy Amdahl’s Oola method (see Episode 73). Oola partitions life’s many tasks into 7 groups: Fitness, Finance, Family, Field, Faith, Friends, and Fun. BUT you should adopt the organization that works for you, and tweak it to your specific circumstances. As you take small AND consistent steps toward finishing a finishable task, or toward controlling an unfinishable task, I promise on a stack of Bibles, you will see the results of working in Maintenance Mode. Remember: you’ve got this! Subscribe on Apple! Subscribe on Android! Join my FREE parenting bootcamp! Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me: Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com. Find me on Instagram! Find me on Facebook!

157: Shadow Parenting Jun 15, 2022

Show notes

Can we walk the tightrope of doing exactly enough for our kids so they succeed? My son Grady (who, at the time of recording this episode, is 11) was curious about one of his cousins who has taken a job at a cinema. He asked questions like “how does he know which button to push for a customer ordering popcorn?” and “how does he know where to GET the popcorn?” I explained the concept of “job shadow” training to Grady. His cousin will start work as a trainee and watch a seasoned cinema worker. Grady’s cousin will start doing the work, imitating the trainer’s example. Soon enough, Grady’s cousin will be doing his job without much assistance. Eventually, Grady’s cousin will know the work well and be able to take on his own trainees. Parenting follows a similar pattern. Children aren’t little employees (that probably violates FLSA labor laws!), but they learn how to be humans the same way employees at a business learn new skills. Children can take on new tasks — whether putting dishes in the sink, tidying their own rooms, hanging up their own clothes, or making their own food — pertinent to their age and stage of development, under your supervision. And eventually, they will (for they must, if they are to grow up as they should) be able to do most tasks without your hands-on assistance. The point I hope to drive home in this episode is this. Not only can you teach your kids anything, you can do it on your own terms. Suppose you’re studying Kerry Flatley’s Self-Sufficient Kids program or reading Merrilee Boyack’s The Parenting Breakthrough, and you feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks you’re “supposed” to be teaching your kids by the age they are that you haven’t done. Well, HALT that train of thought before it leaves the station, and here’s why: Your parenting decisions, if you choose them consciously and love your reason for choosing them, are yours to own and stand by. You might still be making lunches for a child who knows how to prepare food. Or you might be teaching your six-year-old to make PB&J sandwiches. If you love your reason for continuing to provide, or for teaching a skill and retreating for the child to claim the independence their developing brains crave, that’s all that matters. Only you have a stake in your parenting process. Remember: you’ve got this! Subscribe on Apple! Subscribe on Android! Join my FREE parenting bootcamp! Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me: Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com. Find me on Instagram! Find me on Facebook!

156: Raising Invincible Kids Jun 08, 2022

Show notes

Do your kids ever make you want to pull your hair out with their wacky antics? Do you stress out when your children do unsafe things due to their self-perception of invincibility? Maybe most importantly, do you worry that you have no idea how to parent your “invincible” kids? Well, this episode is for you, because the things I’m gonna lay down are going to allow you to take so much pressure off your shoulders about doing the right thing when it comes to parenting. We put so much pressure on ourselves to parent “the right way” — whatever that means! HA! I have to constantly remind myself that I'm not as big and powerful as my ego wants me to think that I am, especially when raising kids. Continuing what we talked about last week in episode 155, I’m going to talk about that theme. We aren’t powerful enough to mess up whatever destiny holds in store for our kids. We can lay groundwork for their success, and we can do everything “right” according to our limited vision, and they will still do some things (or maybe many things) very differently from what we imagined for them. Kids do wonky stuff! I know I did, and we’re going to share our crazy wonky “I was the invincible kid” stories I asked you for on Facebook. But remember, when your kids are doing wonky stuff, that you did equally crazy things. This is a growth experience. That is part of their soul contract, agreed upon between them and God, or the Universe, however you look at it, before they were born. On the other side of the coin, we’re not powerful enough that we can make what our children do mean something about us, try as we might to externalize our value and worthiness to them. All that does is make YOU upset. A child’s wrongdoing or right-doing does not affect your worthiness or enough-ness for good or ill, so stop making “how your children behave” a criterion for feeling worthy or fulfilled. Dr. Vanessa Lapointe has some valuable tips about this, and the link to that video (https://fb.watch/dgRDqUolZS/) will be on my blog and in my newsletter. As you practice having grace and compassion for your kids through their “invincibility” learning experiences, giving them an abundance of love and affection, and allowing them to be what their destiny intends for them to be, I promise you will see good things in your life! Remember: you’ve got this! Subscribe on Apple! Subscribe on Android! Join my FREE parenting bootcamp! Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me: Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com. Find me on Instagram! Find me on Facebook!

155: Emotional Regulation Jun 01, 2022

Show notes

How do you teach your kids to feel tricky emotions? This is an important topic — so important that we’ve addressed it a few times during the run of our podcast. This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last! Emotional regulation is a skill for life! Whether you’re new or seasoned, I hope this episode will be a great help, or a helpful review. In this episode, I’ll help you understand WHAT emotional regulation is (and it’s not creating emotionless robots!), WHY emotional regulation is an important tool for kids to learn, and WHO it’s for — because it’s not just for kids! I’ll also help you see WHERE, WHEN, and HOW to appropriately practice it with exercises such as modeling and role-playing. I can’t stress enough how helpful it is for kids to have healthy role models. As you work on this alone and with your kids, I promise you will all see benefits! Remember: you’ve got this! Subscribe on Apple! Subscribe on Android! Join my FREE parenting bootcamp! Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me: Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com. Find me on Instagram! Find me on Facebook!

154: Distract, Don’t Act May 25, 2022

Show notes

Do you ever procrastinate? How about … get distracted?! I procrastinate and I get distracted sometimes. No shame in that! This episode is about our habits of hiding from work that needs doing. I don’t mean like house work or schoolwork, but inner work. We all have something in our lives that we don’t enjoy. We’ve focused a lot of negative energy toward it. It could be the dishes, our unfulfilled vision board, our unrealized fitness plans, any or all of our bad habits, or maybe the cleanliness of our house — which is often coupled with negative energy toward the culprits! At any rate, we find ourselves using that thing, or those things, and the mind drama we’ve created, to obscure a more pressing underlying matter. We may be bothered by problems at work, deeply wounded from past traumas, or (this one’s a doozy and is probably the most common) we don’t feel good enough. And, instead of working on this or the outward problem, we spiral in inaction — we self-distract, and don’t act! In my own process of doing this work, I noticed that I spent countless hours and vast emotional bandwidth on being concerned about the micro details of my children’s lives — things that were totally out of my control to begin with — in order to feel some semblance of control over my life. I’ve talked about this before in Episode #150. Wouldn’t you know, though … when I stopped trying to control other people and focused my energy on my own “side of the street,” I felt like I had control again! In this episode I hope to give you some illumination and hope to help you manage your own distractions and their resultant mind drama, all of which is preventing you from taking action for your outer AND inner problem. As you sort through your emotions and consistently practice focusing on what IS rather than what you want or don’t want, I promise you will be able to attend to your inner and outer issues. Remember: you’ve got this! Subscribe on Apple! Subscribe on Android! Join my FREE parenting bootcamp! Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me: Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com. Find me on Instagram! Find me on Facebook!

153: Equal Airtime May 18, 2022

Show notes

Is it okay to be hard on yourself? Well, yes … with provisions! Let me explain: While Grady was at a golf lesson, I watched a man get a bucket of 100 balls and drive them one by one down the range. I’m a golf beginner, but it looked like he really knew what he was doing. The shots had beautiful, straight arcs. And yet after each one, he dropped his shoulders, cursed at himself under his breath, kicked the grass, and would get the next ball. I kept watching him, and all 100, he was mad at himself. He wasn’t having any fun, no sir! He was mad at himself the WHOLE TIME. I thought to myself, “that’s how most people live their lives!” We often succumb to that negative energy, and we carry it with us day in and day out. The vast majority of our “getting mad at ourselves” or getting mad at other people is an umbrella for our internal voice saying “you’re not good enough.” Our line drives might look perfect to other people, but we’re still cursing ourselves out. And as parents we often take out our rage on our kids. If your parents did that to you, it was a projection of how they felt about themselves. If you’re doing it to your kids, it’s because of how you feel about yourself. It’s not pretty, but the good news is that you can clean up how you talk to yourself! Brooke Castillo introduced me to the “equal airtime” concept, and in this episode I’m going to introduce you to it as well. Imagine a radio DJ with scheduled programming. In any given hour on a radio program, there are set time frames in which music is played, and set time frames for non-program things like station identifiers, DJ commentary, advertisements, or PSAs to be broadcast. So, back to the start: you can be hard on yourself, if you so choose. But in order to do it in a healthy way, you MUST consciously choose to devote equal “airtime” to building yourself up, acknowledging when you do something well, noticing and documenting improvements, and generally exercising grace and compassion for yourself. As you consistently practice these things, I promise on a stack of Bibles, you will begin to see harmony in your home! Remember: you’ve got this! Subscribe on Apple! Subscribe on Android! Join my FREE parenting bootcamp! Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me: Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com. Find me on Instagram! Find me on Facebook!

152: Ghost Parenting May 11, 2022

Show notes

“Okay Kelly, what’s with the spooky title?” Well, let’s talk about this. If you had a rough time in your childhood, you may have bad memories of a parent or guardian, a family member, a teacher, or perhaps bad memories from a combination of these people. One of the “default settings’ you experience as a parent is that, the instant one of your children manifests a behavior you dislike — it could be not sharing toys, crying in Target, taking candy from a store as a 3-year-old child — your brain will go straight toward “oh no, they’re going to be just like [triggering person].” Here’s the thing, though … Your child is their own throbbing spirit. They have their own “soul contract,” their own deal with the Universe outlining how their life will be. They don’t need to be treated like the ghost of a bad situation you lived in, and they certainly don’t want it! As you take steps to honor your child’s individuality, you will see a decline in your own ghost parenting habits. I promise on a stack of Bibles: the work is worth it. Remember: you’ve got this! Subscribe on Apple! Subscribe on Android! Join my FREE parenting bootcamp! Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me: Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com. Find me on Instagram! Find me on Facebook!

151: Reparenting Yourself May 04, 2022

Show notes

If you’ve followed my recent episodes, we’ve been talking about your blueprint for love which you absorbed as a child, as well as why you might want to alter your blueprint and how to do that. Sometimes, when you become a parent yourself, you feel lost because you don’t have that framework. So, in this episode, I’d like to offer some tips for reparenting yourself — giving yourself that missing framework of a healthy parent-child dynamic as a reference for parenting your children. In this context I’m focusing specifically on healing your old wounds in the present by modeling good parenting for yourself and talking to your inner child in your capacity as a parent. Reparenting is not about becoming someone different; it’s about going back to how you were before unhealthy programming got superimposed onto your mind. I found a guide at https://hopefulpanda.com/how-to-reparent-yourself/ complete with a lovely infographic about some steps to take, which I loved. There are a lot of ways to reparent yourself, and you may need to try a lot of things consistently over time and record the results (write down what you tried and what happened) to get a feel for your needs, but you will feel better as you do. Most importantly: when in doubt, look to your child’s throbbing spirit — because your child will remind you of your inner child. If you’re worried about messing up your kids, don’t worry. You aren’t as powerful as you think. You aren’t powerful enough to mess this parenting gig up. That is so liberating! It allows you to start parenting from love instead of pressure, and when you parent from love, you can reparent yourself as well. Remember: you’ve got this! Subscribe on Apple! Subscribe on Android! Join my FREE parenting bootcamp! Let’s Connect! Here’s where you can find me: Learn more at https://www.coachingkelly.com. Find me on Instagram! Find me on Facebook!

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