“I think she’s trying to kill me…” I muttered under my breath. “She” was my 9-month-old daughter, Penelope, who refused to sleep. “Ugh! Why won’t you just SLEEP??” I knew I was reaching my breaking point – I picked her up, carried her into our room and handed her to my husband, Adrian. “I can’t deal with her anymore; she’s driving me crazy!!!”

Fast forward, past the sleep-training nightmare we endured (my hard-learned lesson in why researching your support/community is so key!), we reached toddlerhood. She was sleeping, she was walking, she was funny and quirky – in short, she was a toddler. She was learning how to be her own independent person and with that, came the push-back. Only then, I didn’t realize that it was a normal part of development:

Me: “Please come get your shoes on.”

Her: “No!”

Me: “If we don’t get your shoes on, we can’t go to the playground.”

Her: “I don’t want to go to the playground!”

Me: “You don’t want to go to the playground now?”

Her: “I want to go to the playgrounnnnnnd!”

I’ll spare you the rest of the mind-numbing conversation. But it ended with a tantrum (I don’t know whose was worse): I felt frustrated and angry, she undoubtedly felt unheard and completely dysregulated emotionally. And I left the conversation wondering “why me?” and “why does she try and tick me off?” with a healthy dose of mom-guilt and knowing that there must be a better way, a different way to approach this thing called parenting.

Do They Press Our Buttons?

Our children, not unlike our spouses, have an uncanny ability to really get under our skin; “push our buttons”. But why is that? Do they have a special power that enables them to hone in on our deepest insecurities, our incomplete emotions, our most open of wounds? Yes and no.

Throughout the course of our studies and in working with families all over the globe, we have found that there are a few constants in that complex family dynamic – one in particular that drives all of the others: the beliefs of the parents.

Children are primitive beings, both cognitively and emotionally. Everything is a potential threat to their very survival and the brain will protect them from those threats through a number of mechanisms. All humans have this innate instinct but as adults, our brains are mature and developed enough to rationalize, integrate information, make deductions and empathize with others. Children are reactive by nature (literally – it’s neurology!) and it is part of that nature to push boundaries, go off the rails, say no, etc. These are crucial learning opportunities for children- if we, as parents, lead in that way.

The World Revolves Around Them

To children, everything around them in their external environment, relates back to them: if mommy or daddy is upset, they are upset with me. If daddy says that it’s bad when I get muddy, it means I’m bad. If mommy says that it’s not good that I didn’t eat my broccoli, it means that I’m not good. This is due to that primitive brain I mentioned before, the survival brain. As children get older, they eventually learn the distinction between what is about me and what is about my behaviour.

But not always. We all know someone (we may even be that “someone”) who is “over-sensitive”. Takes things personally:

“She didn’t eat the lasagne I made?? Gosh, I can never do anything right.”

“He didn’t call me on the anniversary of the third time we had a picnic in that park. How disrespectful.”

Even if we’re not hypersensitive, we can all probably identify a time in our lives where we have taken the comment, action or behaviour of another person and made it mean something about ourselves. What happens is, when other people merely breathe (they don’t even have to say anything), we create meaning. In our reality, words are not just words – they carry weight and implications.

When we are children, our internal narrative is developing rapidly- that “inner voice” that nags the crap out of us for the rest of our lives, chiming in with the most irritating of informational tidbits:

“Don’t stand like that, you look like Quasimodo.”

Child covering ears while mom talks to her.png

“He’s not looking you in the eye; he doesn’t think you’re capable of tackling this project!”

And like it or not, parents play the primary role in the development of that dialogue: our worthiness, our capabilities, our importance, our being good enough – all beliefs formed in childhood. Conversely, these beliefs can easily become limited, impacting future self-confidence which umbrellas all of the beliefs I mentioned. When that happens, and any of the above beliefs are challenged, we use all of our acquired survival strategies and mechanisms to fight that threat.

Your Inner Child Meets Theirs

So why bring all of this up? In short, to make you feel guilty. NO! I am only joking. The reason that this is an important thing to learn and remember, is that when your child throws a tantrum and completely angers you, the underdeveloped emotional and cognitive brain of your child is triggering YOUR limiting beliefs formed in childhood which trip-wires your adult survival brain, making your emotional upset completely about them (your child or spouse). This flood of adrenaline and cortisol blocks your ability to access the prefrontal cortex, the front part of your brain behind your forehead that is responsible for making sense of information, introspection of events and rational thought. You know, the part of the brain that is completely underdeveloped in a child. The child that should have known better. The child that purposely made you mad. The child who knew you had a crappy sleep last night. Had a deadline at work, had a fight with your spouse, or just had one of those days.

Your reactions are on you. The “what” is rarely within our control: the rush hour traffic (ahhh remember traffic??), the amount of emails we get in a day, our mother-in-laws…

But the meaning we created around the “what” IS within our control. What am I making this traffic mean?

“See? This happens to me every day. Why can’t I catch a break? Why does this ALWAYS happen to me? I have the worst luck.”

“I should have left earlier. God, I’m so stupid.”

“If my husband had only gotten up with the kids when I asked him to. He never thinks about me and what I need. No one ever does.”

The examples I gave you above are not only about meaning, but they’re about our core limiting beliefs. When we are children, we make decisions about the world around us, based on how our parents speak to us and treat us. And there doesn’t need to be a big trauma in order for these beliefs to form – they are insidious. Again, I say this not to scare you but to acknowledge that you are coming to this parenting table with your own stuff from childhood. Even in the most picturesque of childhoods, limiting beliefs are formed:

I’m not good enough unless I make a lot of money.

I’m not worthy unless I made dinner every night.

I’m not important unless I am helping others.

As you can see, these beliefs wouldn’t necessarily be the results of a trauma or big childhood event – and they’re not even that “bad”: Helping others? Good! Cooking dinner every night? Great! Making lots of money? Fantastic!

But the problem arises (and it always “arises”) when we make our inherent goodness, worthiness or importance dependent on those external factors (helping others, cooking dinner, making money).

My Anger Was About Me

You see, my anger towards my daughter was never about her. It was about ME and my own limiting beliefs about myself. When I got upset, it was because her behaviour had hit a nerve around unhealed, unresolved and deep-seated beliefs that I had about myself.

Baby won’t sleep: “I can’t even get my baby to sleep – I suck at this. I’m a horrible mom. I’m not good at anything.”

Child won’t do what I’m asking: “My kid is an asshole, so unappreciative, no one ever considers my feelings, I’m unimportant.”

Take Home Tips

Your limiting beliefs will get triggered non-stop as a parent – until you eliminate them. But bringing awareness to them in the meantime is incredibly helpful. So next time your child infuriates you, try the following:

Take a breath.
As cliché as this sounds, it is an extremely important first step in bringing awareness to your thoughts. As we discussed, your brain is quick to react to being threatened and does not distinguish between an actual physical threat and an emotional or psychological one. So it’s incredibly crucial to STOP and take THREE deep breaths before you react or speak.
What is this triggering in me emotionally?
What are you making this mean about you, your role as a parent? or what does this mean about your child and THEN you as a parent (my child is a brat, therefore I am a terrible mother).
What is my child possibly trying to tell me?
Ex: I am hungry, I am tired, I am over stimulated
What skill is my child lacking or needing to build?
Ex: I don’t know how to share, I don’t know how to settle down, I don’t know how to go from one activity to the next, I don’t know that we are on a timeline, I don’t know how to recognize when you’re stressed out or that you just made dinner for me
Is this the right time to teach a lesson?
Is this the right time to teach a lesson? If your child is in the limbic/downstairs/reactive brain aka emotional, then you won’t be effective in teaching them or guiding them in this moment.

Like most things in life, this process won’t magically solve things overnight. And as I’ve alluded to above, without the proper elimination strategy in regards to your own limiting beliefs, you will continue to be triggered. The above strategy will not address the behavioural patterns and challenges of your children (that’s for another series of blog posts) but getting your mind right is imperative before taking that next leap – because everything else will be band-aid solutions to an unresolved wound.

You are your child’s prefrontal cortex - your leadership and example is paramount to their future.

Bio

Kat & Adrian Kremblewski are the powerhouse duo behind The Parent Map- a ground-breaking (and fun!) family coaching resource that empowers parents to powerfully lead their children to incredibly happy & successful futures, while mastering the day-to-day challenges that can often make you want to pull out your hair. Along with being parents to two kids under four, Kat is a Naturopathic Doctor and Adrian is a Belief & Mindset Specialist, together providing the most holistic family support on the planet!

To learn more about Kat & Adrian check them out at theparentmap.com or on Instragram.

Next group coaching program starts: June 17, 2020

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