[E244] Redefining the Parent Report Card with Nicole Barlow

[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to the Empowered to Connect podcast where we come together to discuss a healing centered approach to engagement and well being for ourselves, our families and our communities. Hey everyone, this is Jesse Farris and I am here with a special guest. Nicole Barlow is one of our Cultivate Connection facilitators. So that is a code word for she's an ETC friend. And I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today, Nicole. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm excited to be here, Jesse. [00:00:38] Speaker A: Um, well, I want. I want you to tell us a little bit about yourself and your family and kind of how you got in, how you got connected with etc. Yep. How you got connected with adoptive and foster parents. [00:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So my husband And I in 2013 decided to become foster parents. Um, and 24 hours after we were approved, we got placed with two kids and we had those kids for two and a half years. And there were some. We had some exposure during that time for trauma, informed type parenting. Our agency ran a book club that read the Connected Child together. But other than that, I didn't. I thought I was fine. Like our kids, we had an infant, we had a four year old. And looking back, I think we didn't recognize the trauma that was there. So we thought we were rock star parents. We thought we were rock star foster parents. We had a biological son as well. And y', all, I mean, I just thought this was my jam. And I actually started training parents in 2003, 15, 2016 to become foster parents, like their pre approval training. And then we got a couple of more placements, but ended up taking an adoptive placement of a sibling group of five. And I walked into that placement and I thought I got this, this is no big deal. And I was wrong. And we were way in, way over our heads. And I had a parent coach and had some people investing in me, but really wanted to dig in deeper. So I was training parents and wanted to go through the Cultivate connection or at the time it was empowered to connect, training for. To be able to help other people. But really we wanted to dig in deeper for ourselves because we were kind of drowning. And so, you know, it was a way for us to get more tools, more resources on how we handled things within our home. I like to explain my home. When our kids first came, it was like preschool fight club. Like, I mean, it was just madness all the time. And I just. Cause I didn't know what I was doing. I was just so lost. And so I needed some real tools and how to implement structure and routine and all of those things. To kind of help me coordinate our household a little better. [00:03:20] Speaker A: I want to circle back to that in a minute. But first, for anyone listening to this right off the bat, that's like, oh, that's really interesting to think about how I, you know, I might feel like I'm drowning right now, but in resourcing myself, what if I have the capacity to resource other families and help them the way that I am helped? So what kind of brought you from that person in the trenches to the person helping other people in the trenches? [00:03:52] Speaker B: You know, it's funny, I had people all along the way tell me, hey, this is for others. You're experiencing this so that you can help others. I had a therapist tell me that one time. Our case manager told me that our case manager told me that like our experience was helping her help others. And you know, I said, thanks for that. I'm glad all my mess ups, right, can. Can help you teach other people what not to do. But at the same time, we realize that as we are learning, we have the to go out and equip other people with the knowledge that we received. And I did have so many good people that were investing in us in that season. Like I said, I had a parent coach that would meet with me every week and was like, this is what you do this week. This is the tools that you put in place this week. And that was so, so important for our family. And I just wanted other people to have those resources as well, even if they weren't able to have that one on one access. [00:04:57] Speaker A: I really love the way that you have highlighted our peer to peer model, honestly, because that is what Cultivate Connection is. Some of us are professionals working in the space of trauma, informed support. But if you are a facilitator for Cultivate Connection, which is our parenting course, our most in depth, it's quite lengthy, 18 modules long. If you're facilitating that, then you're required to be a parent who's having to put those things into practice. And I think what you said really hits it on the head, Nicole, because it is. We are, we are all in the trenches together. That's what makes Cultivate Connection so special. It's not just a model that we're passing on to other people in this kind of sterile classroom. It's something that we are all using to keep ourselves afloat in our family. We're all using it to define what success looks like for kids and for ourselves, you know, so I'm even thinking, remind me, when did you go through Cultivate Connection Facilitator training. What year was it? [00:06:08] Speaker B: So 2019. So it wasn't Cultivate Connection, it was the last year of empowerment course. [00:06:16] Speaker A: Yes. Train the trainer. [00:06:18] Speaker B: Yeah, the Train the trainer. It was the first Memphis. [00:06:23] Speaker A: That's right. [00:06:23] Speaker B: Training. And, and it was so great. I mean, it was just so helpful for us. And I think what you said is important. I love that peer to peer model because I think professionals can come in and tell us what policy says, they can tell us what the textbooks say, but they can't tell us how it feels and they can't tell us how to navigate our internal structure because they don't know. It's very different handling things. I do stuff professionally now and it's very different handling things from a professional aspect than it is when you're in the trenches, when this is your daily life 247 and there's no out. [00:07:07] Speaker A: Yes, I agree. Something we talk about a lot on staff at etc is just this importance to all of us individually as people to have what we are implementing in our families integrated through our whole lives. We treat each other like that as employees, in our teams. We are treating, you know, we're relating that way in our, in our partnerships, you know, marriages and, and in our friendships. It's, it's integrated all the way through our lives. It's not just something we're doing at or for our kids. Right. Which I can imagine that's probably been true for you too, Nicole. [00:07:47] Speaker B: Well, I think it has to be. I think, I think if you're not putting it into practice all the time with everybody, you're not going to put it in practice when it counts with your kids. [00:07:58] Speaker A: It's true. You're just not. [00:07:59] Speaker B: You're going to be out of practice. [00:08:01] Speaker A: Well, I. Man, 2019 on the cusp of, you know, everyone's world changing. I remember that train the trainer that we did in Memphis, the last round of facilitator training for the Connect course before we kind of revamped it into Cultivate Connection. And then you went through that recertification process too. 2019. I'm just, I asked the year because I just remember going through it in my own parenthood journey. And so when we are, when we're facilitating this with other families, when we're walking through this material to know that we don't have it all together. So I mean, it's just, it's something we're doing alongside each other and it's, it doesn't really ever stop. You don't ever really master it. [00:08:59] Speaker B: Correct. [00:09:01] Speaker A: I Get to practice it over and over, and maybe you get better at the feeling of learning. [00:09:07] Speaker B: Yes. I mean, it was. It was really, really funny because our first course that we ever facilitated, our first class that we facilitated, we had child care, and our kids were there, and we kept getting pulled out because our kids were melting down. And I'm like, let's win into practice, you guys. Let's see what this really looks like. [00:09:30] Speaker A: There was nothing more awkward slash hilarious than when we would offer this course live in Memphis, and we would offer childcare. And when. When everyone went to pick up their kids that 30 minutes after we had finished that week's class and everyone was kind of watching how everyone else was handling their own kids. It's like you were in a learning lab together, you know, and it felt awkward because you were trying something brand new that maybe you had just learned, and it doesn't work as smoothly as you imagine it on the page. [00:10:03] Speaker B: That's right. [00:10:05] Speaker A: Yes, for sure. Okay, I want to circle back. Thank you for sharing. Just kind of what's brought you to all of this and your trajectory of learning. I want to circle back to something you said in the very beginning, which was kind of two different ways of perceiving yourself. One of them was, I've got this. I'm a pro. I like, no problem. We'll fold it in. Just fold it in. And as you were approaching foster care and new placements, and there was a certain point it sounds like when you felt like you were in over your head and that feeling of competency and mastery flipped maybe into the opposite kind of feeling. Tell me a little bit more about that and what exactly was happening that kind of caused those feelings from professional to, I need help. [00:11:01] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think I didn't have as much training as I thought I had. And casually reading through everything with our first couple of placements, just casually reading through things, but not. I wasn't really putting them into practice necessarily, or I wasn't very intentional about them. I just wasn't as informed as I needed to be for our kids when they came to us. So our kids had multiple placements and lots of trauma and attachment wounds and that sort of thing. And it was different than what we had experienced before. And so what I actually was really good at doing within the foster care world prior to our kids was not actually trauma parenting. It wasn't the parenting that I was great at. I was good at navigating the system. Like, I was really good at that part. And so I felt very competent in my Parenting in that part, but when I actually had to have tools to parent and there was a lot of chaos all the time. I am somebody that likes order, and so the chaos part made me feel incompetent, like I need to have this structured differently so that things are in order and everybody looks like they're in order. The other thing is, I think sometimes, especially I think in Christian circles, we step into spaces and how our kids look and behave is how we kind of perceive ourselves. And my kids weren't just compliant in all the ways all the time. Sometimes they were, but not always. And so I felt like, why can't I get it together? Why can't I help them assimilate better into our culture, right into our church environment, into our friend environment that we were surrounded by. We didn't have a lot of other foster and adoptive parent friends at the time. We were kind of the first, one of the first in our community to step out. And. And so our family didn't look like everybody else's family looked. And so I think I started to feel bad about the way that I was parenting in those early days, especially based off of that, based off of everybody else's perception. I think over time that has changed. I think when I don't feel good about my parenting now, it's generally because I get dysregulated and I'm not in control of myself. And I'm expecting my kids to be in control of themselves and I'm not in control. I know that when I go to bed at night, if I have trouble sleeping, it's not because my kids had a hard day. It's because I didn't, I didn't handle myself the way I could be proud of. And so I think navigating all of those different dynamics throughout the time, even, I mean, even now, even last night, I didn't sleep because I didn't handle something right yesterday. And, and I think sometimes that's it, that's a good thing because I can tell my kids, hey, look, I have problems, I get dysregulated, I feel shame afterwards. And I have to navigate that. And we can navigate that together. But. But it's important for me to recognize what it is that's causing that shame in me. Is it other people's perception of me or is it the fact that I'm not having self control? [00:14:59] Speaker A: I have a feeling a lot of us are identifying with what you're saying. And there are probably some parents that are even still in that place where they know they're being perceived differently or in a certain way. Tell me a little bit more about what you think people. How people were perceiving you and how that felt to you, how that was loading, how that was defining your. Your image of success as a parent. [00:15:28] Speaker B: Well, you know, it's funny. I didn't really think that I was a parent that put a lot of stock into my child. Like, I wasn't somebody that I felt like was standing on my child's success. But then when my kids weren't, didn't look like everybody expected them to look. So, for example, I mean, I had a neighbor one time was coming over to our house, and he was like, oh, I just saw your mom leave. And I was like, oh, was she running, like, from the house? You know, just kind of joking or whatever? And he was like, no, but I do hear a lot of yelling from your house. And I was like. I was like, well, if ever you don't hear yelling, that's probably when you need to check on us. You know, just trying to, like, be playful. But at the same time, I still felt, like, very judged. Or one of my kids one time was very little and was melting down because they couldn't have an extra dessert. And they were screaming over and over again, I'm hungry. [00:16:36] Speaker A: And [00:16:40] Speaker B: I can't imagine as a neighbor, right. Like, when you hear a child. And so I think that's the kind of things that, like, I'm perceiving. They never even said anything to me. Nobody said anything like, hey, you're being neglectful to your kids, or whatever. And y'. All. I wasn't. Like, he had already had. Yes, but. But I think the fear that people are going to perceive that I'm not a good parent, that I'm not treating people well, and. And I think it really has exposed for me a lot how much stake I put in what other people think about me in general. I mean, just across the board, I think it has exposed that part of things. But it's stuff like that that I just worried how. How people were perceiving me. And I will tell you, like, with school and stuff like that, when my kids were in foster care or when we had foster placements, I didn't necessarily take on any disruptions in their day or behaviors or anything. I didn't take that personally because I didn't feel like it was totally up to me to fix it. But when my kids were adopted and people didn't know that they were adopted, and so all they looked at was me, and then how the kids were behaving. I think then it really changed how I viewed everybody else's perception of it. [00:18:25] Speaker A: I think especially, you know, you spoke about Christian circles, and I think there are a lot of expectations, particularly on obedience and behavior and compliance. And when those things aren't happening or they're not being perceived the way that those expectations are being set, that can be really hard in, in circles of faith where, especially because it has to do with the matters of, of faith, that it's, it's not just your parenting, it's like part of your nature or your kids nature. And, and I think the messages that can be sent about failure go even beyond, you know, some. A person's perception, but to a deity's perception of you and your kids. Let's talk a little bit about that for a second. [00:19:23] Speaker B: Well, you know, and actually, I mean, the more I dig into scripture, scripture tells the exact opposite, right? Like when it talks about us, you know, our kids being obedient. Ephesians 6 says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. You know, it says, honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with the promise, all those things. But it also says, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but raise them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Well, our job, our responsibility is not to provoke our kids to anger. And we know that our kids that have a, a faster trigger to their fight, flight or freeze are going to be provoked more easily to what looks like anger. But, but that's our responsibility not to poke the bear. It's our responsibility to help navigate that for them, right? So that we're supporting them through that and teaching them in a way that doesn't turn them away from us and turn them away from the Lord. And you know, the same thing about people, other people in the church, kind of perceiving our kids and how we parents, you know, I think there's a lot of, kind of what we would call prosperity gospel in parenting in that if you do this, your kids should do this. And that's not true. That's not true. It's. We are not the healer. We're not right? Like, we are not our kids savior. Our job is to step into those spaces and to shepherd their hearts, hearts towards the Lord. And maybe what turns them towards the Lord and towards obedience is not compliance in their childhood. Maybe it's actually them going astray and, and then needing help and reaching out to parents, reaching out to God for that help and, and then learning that that help is always there, I think, [00:21:33] Speaker A: to relate with you in this. Even in my own journey, having to redefine what astray meant was so important to me and my husband that non compliance didn't always mean, quote unquote, sin. It didn't always mean going astray. Sometimes non compliance was dysregulation. It was a kid trying to express needs in the best way they knew how, but they just didn't know how in more mature ways yet or appropriate ways yet. And learning that that wasn't making excuses for sin. That was. That was meeting my kids needs so that I could set them up for success. Man, it gets so complicated when you put all those layers in there with your different social circles and the expectations that they hold. [00:22:29] Speaker B: Yes. I mean, we have young adults now, and I'll tell you, one of our young adults has some pretty significant mental health needs. And so going astray for her looks very different than going astray from one of my other young adults. It's not going astray. I mean, she is killing it. She is doing amazing considering all the struggles and all that she is having to overcome in the process. And, and she got baptized, you know, but an outsider might look, look at, and look at it and go, hey, this isn't. This doesn't look like I expect it to look like. This doesn't look like what I view as the Christian life or the, you know, good Christian person or whatever. [00:23:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:22] Speaker B: Behavior. And I mean, it's. It just looks different because of her challenges, which is the same for everybody. I mean, if at all of our challenges, we don't know where people are coming from. We don't know what they're overcoming. We don't know where their starting place is. We can't say what their journey is supposed to look like. [00:23:47] Speaker A: We can't. Well, and if you zoom way out, we definitely have a bias towards thinking that we do a lot of things by mistake or on accident, but other people do them on purpose and willfully. [00:24:00] Speaker B: Right, right, right. [00:24:02] Speaker A: And I think even biological families that are wanting to implement connected parenting and they're not adopting or fostering. I'm thinking about how this connects with a lot of struggles just in parenting in general, whether you're layering those extra layers in there or not. You were talking about the perception of things. And my mom just told me the other day about a story of when I was a kid. And I'm quite a competitive person. Apparently. I've been competitive since childhood and I was racing my dad back to a meeting spot with my mom and my dad is also competitive. That's probably one of the ways I learned that that become part of our family culture. But when I got to my mom, all she remembers is me running across wherever we were yelling, daddy beat me. [00:24:59] Speaker B: Daddy beat me. [00:25:00] Speaker A: And I was like, you know, sobbing. And she was like, this is not being perceived the way that she's meaning it. And she was feeling really self conscious in the moment of like, oh, my goodness, this is, this is not what it looks like, everyone. [00:25:15] Speaker B: Well, there are things like that. I mean, we see them now with social media. Like some parents will post to some of the things that their little kids or, you know, kids or even teenagers say from time to time. That's perceived very, very differently. And it's funny and we laugh when we're viewing it from somebody else. But when you're that person that's having people judge you off of whatever that comment is, it's very hard. [00:25:42] Speaker A: It really is. It really is. And you know, I'm speaking of kind of the funny things or the things that are happening that we feel like we've, you know, we've got a handle on it. You know, I'm going to assume your kid yelling, I'm hungry. Like you, you were, you were navigating that moment. It was just, what does it sound like to your neighbor? Or, you know, my mom was not worried about what was happening in the moment. She knew there was a little family competition going down. But what are we doing, you know, when we're at the playground and our kid slaps us in the face and all the other moms are like, what's this lady gonna do now? You know, or your kids melting down at the grocery store, or all of those things where we may not feel as sure about what the next right thing to do is. I want to go back to, at some point along the way, you learned to let those things go. Kind of that old definition of what. Maybe I want you to be a little more explicit. What did I'm a successful mom. Fill in the blank. What did that used to. What sentence was that for you? And what has it become now? [00:26:58] Speaker B: I think it used to be like, I am a successful mom when other people think that I'm a successful mom. When other. When my kids do what they're supposed to, when my kids win awards and they are, you know, making good grades and all the things. And I, I don't, I don't think that that was sustainable. It definite. Let me change that. It definitely wasn't sustainable. I mean, we we had, we had some very, very rough years where we lived in a middle class neighborhood with very strict HOA and the police were showing up at our house on a regular basis. You know, like we couldn't hold on to that image that we had it all together because we clearly didn't. And it was being exposed to everybody that we did not. And so it wasn't something to where we could pretend that we had it all together. We just had to say, hey, this is what it is and we are doing a good job within what we have and we are getting our kids the help that they need and how they need it and all of those things. And we just have to be okay with that. I think now, I think I look at at least currently and this may change. I don't know if this continues to evolve over time, but I think right now I try to remember that I have relationship with all of my kids. My adult kids that don't live at home call me almost daily. And I have good relationship with my kids that are still at home. And so I think for me that's what's important. If one of my adult kids goes to jail, do they call me from jail? Because to me that that is success in that that child, prior to their relationship with me, would have experienced probably much harder things than they're experiencing and they would have experienced it alone. And can you imagine a young adult or a child, a teenager navigating the world completely alone with nobody? That's not okay. That shouldn't happen, right? And my kids, that doesn't happen with them. If they're in trouble, they know, they call me. And to me, you know, that relationship that we've built over time is successful, at least for now. That's what I'm kind of standing on in this season. [00:29:51] Speaker A: I remember early in my parenthood journey, this was probably 2012, hearing a story from a seasoned mom who was saying what you were saying. And I remember she had an example that she was sharing. I was in a crowd, I was probably at a retreat or something. And she was telling about a time her child called her from jail and how that was. That looked like success to her. And to be honest, in my like brand new shiny parent self, I was just aghast. I was like, are you telling me I have to be okay with this? Yeah, I think dismantling all of that, unraveling it, really getting to the bottom of all of it has been such a journey over all of these years. And I'm still going, right? Like I have a 16 and 12 year old at the time of this recording. So we have a lot of life and change to experience together still. And I just have compassion for listeners if they're feeling that like, wait a minute, are you telling me I have to walk this all the way through? [00:31:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:06] Speaker A: And so just for a second, let's you and I maybe name some things that we intentionally let go and how we were able to do those and what we were able to pick up instead and how we did that. [00:31:19] Speaker B: Yeah. So first of all, I would say that I was that parent before. Like I was that parent that would have sat there. [00:31:27] Speaker A: Yes. [00:31:27] Speaker B: I would have sat there and gone. No, that's, that's my never. My kids will never. Right. [00:31:34] Speaker A: I'm sure. And I have big eyes anyways, but I'm sure my eyes were like saucers in that audience. I just processing what that actually meant and what it meant for my future if I agreed with her. [00:31:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, back to your question. I think along the way I didn't have a choice. I mean it wasn't something necessarily that I chose to overcome. I didn't have a choice. I had to come to the realization that I wasn't capable of healing this child on my own. I wasn't there is healing all along the way, but it's not instantaneous. It's not that. If I do this one thing right, If I spend one on one time with them for 30 minutes every day for five years, then they're never going to do anything wrong. They're never going to get dysregulated, they're never going to have behaviors or mental health struggles. Like that's, that's not the case always. Now, I mean, I, I will tell you if, if I do have a kid or two that if they went to jail, I probably would be a little shocked. Right. Like I probably would be a little offended. But also, I know for certain kids especially like, that is a, that is a win to see where they came from to, to see how much they have healed and to make those. Kind of celebrate those moments along the way, however little they are, I think is a beautiful thing. And also as I have realized what trauma looks like, I think early on I have one child that is very, very compliant. Very compliant, straight A student, never gotten in trouble at school a day in their life, never got in trouble at home. She yelled at me one time and I hugged her and jumped up and down. Right. Like, like shh. Like that. But, but me, for me to change my way of thinking and go, that's not better, that's trauma. That's unhealed trauma in her. And that's, that's something that I haven't worked on. Right. And so even though her compliance looks better to the world, it actually is a place that I didn't work on hard enough early on. And so to really be able to see things, to have a lens to see things for what they are and not what society sees them as. [00:34:26] Speaker A: And I think because listeners, this is a conversation among two friends that you're getting to listen in on, I would push back and say, maybe it wasn't even that, it wasn't something that you didn't work on hard enough. When she was young, we just have this journey as people with our wirings and our personality. And what I hear is that you're committed to her growth and that it wasn't that she had arrived already at a young age because she was compliant. It was as these things are unfolding in her life, you're realizing new facets of opportunities for growth for her. [00:35:04] Speaker B: Absolutely. But I do, I mean, it is one of those things that I wish I had noticed earlier where my eyes would have been opened because I just kind of passed it off like, she's fine. [00:35:21] Speaker A: I think on the flip side, I have some regrets about the way that I branded, quote, unquote, dysregulation in my house. I think today with my teenagers, I'm dismantling this, I'm undoing this kind of branding that I did, that dysregulation equals disobedience, or that something wrong happened because psychologists would tell us dysregulation is a fact of life and it happens to every human individual every day, day, all day long. Right. We just go from states of dysregulation to regulation. That's just normal. And so even for kids who, you know, have had big struggles in, in their early childhood, to be. For me to be talking about dysregulation as a behavior to be corrected versus, you know, something to be just supported the way that we do all day long for ourselves, that's something I've kind of had to. That's what's opened my eyes later in my kids lives of being like, oh, I need to go back and kind of rebrand what dysregulation means. [00:36:38] Speaker B: Yes, that has been really, really important. And I think with some of my kids, based off of how they respond and what their dysregulation looks like. [00:36:50] Speaker A: Right. [00:36:51] Speaker B: It touches on different spots in me Right. And so some of my kids, in the way that they normally, you know, are dysregulated, I may look at it and go, oh, that's dysregulation. But another kid that comes at it a different way, I'm like, no, that kids, you know, like, my mind automatically goes into my own dysregulation and fight, flight, or freeze where I'm going. No, they're coming again against me kind of thing. And so to be able to see those nuances between kids, individuals, and how they respond I think is really, really important too. I also think some of the times we look at dysregulation and the fight, flight, freeze, specifically those three, we look at the fight or flight as disobedience because it is usually directly coming against us, us, or, you know, going away from us. And it feels. Sometimes it can feel disrespectful or whatever the case may be. But if you look at those cycles internally, right? And. And the chemistry, the body chemistry of what is happening in those cycles, fight or flight, those responses are actually better for the body than a freeze response, because the freeze response, they're storing that emotion within them a lot of times, and it's not coming out. Whereas the fight or flight response, they can go through a complete cycle and get back to homeostasis, and their body chemistry can get back to its baseline. That doesn't always happen with the freeze response. [00:38:35] Speaker A: And to your point earlier about your compliant kiddo, which I very much identify with, I'm a pretty compliant person through the trajectory of my life. Sometimes that's a fond stress response. And this whole time, you know, there are moments of my day when I look back and I'm like, oh, I think I was just fawning the entire time that was happening, but I didn't realize it. [00:39:01] Speaker B: Yes. [00:39:03] Speaker A: And that can be happening with our kids, too. So you're right. It just looks different for everyone. I want to pull something forward that you said earlier in our conversation, which was at the end of the day, when you're laying your head down on the pillow, it's less about what kind of day your kids had, and it's more you're thinking more about your own regulation, your own relating with your kids, and kind of thinking about the day based on that. And I think that unintentionally, maybe, or maybe intentionally was kind of shaping a little bit of what we talk about now when we're considering success. So let's kind of put some more words around that if you're a successful mom today. Nicole, what does that look like for you? [00:39:54] Speaker B: It means that I didn't hurt my kids unrepaired because I think we're gonna hurt each other all day. And I try to help my kids have a realistic understanding of relationship isn't an absence of hurting one another, we are going to unintentionally hurt one another. But I think there are times when I do not have self control because I am dysregulated and I don't take a moment to step away and I actually feel like I cause more harm now. My kids are very kind and gracious and they're always very forgiving. Right. And that repair moment can be so, so important. And I can't tell you how many times a therapist asked my, my kids. One time in a family therapy session, you know, does your mom apologize? You know, kind of. She knows that I do, but she was like kind of saying, what does it look like for your mom to repair? And they were like, she wakes us up at like midnight and she's sorry because I do, I can't sleep. And, and part of the reason, you know, we come from a very strong faith background and part of what I tell my kids is like the Holy Spirit, that's his grace to me and saying, no, the way that you handled this wasn't ok, you need to fix it now. [00:41:20] Speaker A: I, I'm thinking a lot about just how so much of success today for me, and I hear this in your language too, is it's relationship, it's staked on the relationship. And I want to put kind of a nuance on it that I think unintentionally, a lot of times we can base our idea of success based on our kids response and we can even carry that into this new idea of basing success on relationship. That I'm connected to my kid, that I'm in relationship with my kid. There are some people in our lives that we offer things to and they won't accept that offer. And this idea that you can't control another person, which is the worst, I just hate that idea. I wish I could. [00:42:14] Speaker B: Me too. [00:42:15] Speaker A: All the people around me, right. It's probably for the best that I can't actually. But I, I want, I want to put a nuance on connected parenting, that it's something that we get to offer. And so if I'm thinking about, you know, laying my head on my pillow at the end of the day, I'm thinking, did I, did I, did I attempt to see my child as they are, not as I wished they were not as they used to be. Did I attempt to see my child as they are? And did they experience that, you know, not just my internal intention, but did my child experience me seeing her as she is? I think, you know, I can't control whether her experience, the experience of our daughters, I can't. I can't control that. But did I offer it? Did I attempt it? Am I moving toward that kind of idea? I think has. Has with a lot of nuance, kind of stuck with me as I think about success for myself as a mom now. It probably disappoints some of the people that I spent life with in my early parenting years, I think. You know, when you look at the, at the range of Instagram pictures, especially, you know, at certain times around the holidays or beginning of school or end of school, or when it's time to launch kids off to college or when all of that's happening, I think I can tend to feel like, oh, my kid doesn't fit that mold, or my kid doesn't fit that picture. And then I think of my friends who are parenting in the space of disability, maybe cognitive or physical disability, my friends who are parenting adult children who may live with them forever. And. And to base success on something that is nuanced and does not require the external performance of your child, I think can be quite a freeing thing. [00:44:41] Speaker B: Yeah, but it is hard. And it's absolutely. It's something that especially, I mean, you know, you mentioned social media. I think it becomes so, so difficult to stay in the head space where we don't do get sucked into that. I know for me, even TV shows or movies, when I see families going, it's a sitcom. Like, it's not even real life, but it's like this family is going and doing all of these things and laughing together and. And we may not have had a week that looked like that. Right. And. And so I can get into a space where I kind of COVID the lives of others for sure. [00:45:25] Speaker A: And it's a little insidious because it's happening subconsciously a lot for us. Yes, I know. Especially around the holidays. I actually, I don't look, I don't want to watch. I don't want to see the Mother's Day pictures and the Father's Day pictures and the Christmas events pictures. Not that I'm not enjoying those holidays with my own family in our own ways, but I don't want to set myself subconsciously up for. For failure. And like, I'm looking, I'm Just scrolling, giving myself an F minus without even realizing it, you know? [00:46:03] Speaker B: Yep, yep. Yeah, I. I can do the same thing, too. Or it can be an area of pride as well. Like this. This Christmas season was like, we went two weeks, our whole Christmas break, not one meltdown, and I'm like, oh, look at us. Like, we've made it. Right. But. But. But the night before school starts, everything falls apart. Right. Like, and it's not. I mean, and it's just something to where I think we can't go on either side of it. We can't put the success of our kids on our shoulders, and we can't put any struggles that our kids have on our shoulders. I think we just have to be obedient to what we're supposed to do, to doing our best at any given time. And there are some seasons, I mean, struggled with a lot of, you know, seasons of compassion, fatigue, and struggle. And so, you know, success for me in those times was showing up in much smaller doses or making sure that my kids were getting input from other places, that it wasn't just coming from me so that they had what they needed. But. But also understand with the understanding that I was operating not at full capacity for a season as well. [00:47:30] Speaker A: Yes. And giving yourself permission for that. You know, I'm thinking about, you've got your values and you've got your ideals, but on any given Tuesday, how you define success might need to change that day based on your capacity, your kid's capacity, you just. What? Just life. What is happening? [00:47:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Are we doing the best with what we have at any given moment? Right. And I think that's all we can do. [00:48:01] Speaker A: And. [00:48:01] Speaker B: And then we just have to. We have to let our kids become who they're supposed to become. And we have to become. Because we're growing in that too. Right. Like, I'm growing in my understanding of relationships and how to be a good friend and how to be a good spouse and how to be a good mom and how to be all of those things. How do I keep growing in those ways and developing my relationships with other people and then, you know, hopefully teaching my kids to do the same. [00:48:36] Speaker A: I love that. Let's kind of wrap this up. And I want to ask you, for a parent who's listening right now, who's just kind of white knuckling their old parent report card, what's one thing that you want them to hear? [00:48:53] Speaker B: It's not yours to carry. It's not yours to carry. I mean, we can't carry that. It's too heavy. It's too heavy. And that's not just speaking for foster and adoptive parents. That's all parents, right? Like we can't carry that. We don't have any control over it. You know, there's all those T shirts and posters that says things I have control over. Well, that's not a thing that you have control over. And so for us to come to a place where we realize that we have to let go in order to be successful, I think the anxiety of trying to make something happens actually makes us not great parents because it, it makes us lean on, on frantic techniques that are going to get an immediate outcome and it actually damages the long term result that we're seeking. And so I think the more that we look to the future, we look at how we want our child to feel, feel, what do we want them to know about themselves? Not that they're definitely gonna be confident and know all of those things, but have we done our job in, in giving them that kind of self worth and self talk? Are we pouring those things into them for them to hold on to when they get older? Because if we're not right, if we're doing compliance because we're trying to make an output happen, then we're probably going to go about it the wrong way. And I did that for a lot of, I mean, I did that for a long time, right? Like trying to make something happen. Even after I had some knowledge and exposure to more trauma informed practices, I still, like you said, I kind of white knuckled it. No, I can make this happen. I can make us show up in these spaces and look this way. [00:51:08] Speaker A: I mean, to use the report card analogy, there are parents who pay their kids for good grades or take them out for ice cream when they get the A's. And I think I would just encourage you as you're listening that. But you get to make mistakes. Yep, you get to. There are some days that you're going to make a C on, you know, your ideals and your expectations. There's some days you're going to make an F. But I think this beauty of redefining what success looks like means that we can always go back. We get to retake a test of life, right? We can go back and try and redo some things. [00:51:58] Speaker B: I tell my kids all the time [00:52:00] Speaker A: to do that, right? [00:52:01] Speaker B: Well, I tell my kids all the time the reason that you're in school, right, is because you need to learn like you're learning. And so as you're learning, you can't be expected to do it perfectly. If you did it perfectly, you wouldn't need to learn. Right. And I think the same is true for us in life, in relationships, in parenting and all that we do. We're learning all along the way at every, I mean, at different stages with different kids. Right. It's a constant learning process. And as we're learning, we can't be expected to do it perfectly. Then we wouldn't be learning. [00:52:39] Speaker A: Yes. I've probably said this on the podcast before, but there are conversations I have with my kids where we in the moment will give each other grace as we're reflecting on something that happened in the past. Like, well, you had never been five before, so you were learning how to be five. And also mom had never parented you at the age of five yet. So mom was learning how to parent you at the age of five and we were just doing the best we could and look what we learned. And that's still true today. I mean, I'm gonna say it to myself as a parent, I have never parented a junior in high school yet. I'm about to get to do that. [00:53:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm really well and I have. And guess what? It's different for every child I know and every day and every circumstance. Right. Because this child may. May face circumstances and situations that this other child, maybe they're bullied, maybe they have a not nice kid in their class and they have to navigate that where this other child didn't have to navigate that. Right. And so it doesn't matter what it is. Like we are const learning how to navigate every. [00:53:51] Speaker A: Every circumstance and kid and situation is new and we get to do the best we can and we get to process that together. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Nicole. This is such a freeing conversation for me, especially at the beginning of the school year as I'm thinking about even how I'm going to grade myself this year. I'm really grateful for you. [00:54:14] Speaker B: You. [00:54:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:15] Speaker B: Thank you, Jesse. [00:54:22] Speaker A: We hope you enjoyed the episode. If you're interested in learning more, head to empoweredtoconnect.org for our library of resources. Thank you to Kyle Wright, who edits and engineers all of our audio, and Tad Jewett, the creator of our music. On behalf of everyone at etc, thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on the end Empowered to Connect podcast. In the meantime, let's hold on to hope together.