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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Stable Parenting Podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today.
You know, lately I've had quite a lot of coaching conversations about, with parents who are upset at their kids acting out in all different kinds of ways. Everything from getting sent to the principal's office, to detention, to getting arrested. Parents are just devastated and sick about what their kids are doing.
And here's some of the things that I'm hearing about in my coaching calls. Things like, “Hey, the school called and I had to go pick him up and I was so embarrassed that I hid my face when I walked in. I just listened to what they said and then took him home. I was so upset I couldn't even talk to him. I didn't know what to do.”
Somebody else said, “I caught her smoking in the garage. I can't believe it. I thought I was better than that. I didn't want to tell my husband.”
Another one, “My son called me a blank, and I just froze. You know, I'm still in shock. I thought I'd done a better job as a parent.”
Someone else said, “A friend of mine found out that my daughter was one of the ones who got arrested, and she hasn't talked to me since. I can't believe this is happening.”
So, you know, maybe you can relate to one of these, maybe not. One thing for sure is your kids are going to act out in some way at one time or another. Maybe they do all the time, but they will to some degree at one point or another. Maybe in a big way, maybe in a small way.
The question is, is what are you, what are we as parents going to do about it? And how are you going to handle it?
And here's how most of us handle it, because this is what I hear in the world. And that is, is that if we are not intentional in some sort of way or some fashion, what we do is we go about, we feel bad about our parenting. Basically we make what happens, what our kids do, we make it mean, we make a meaning about that, that we suck as parents. That's what we do. Okay.
Like we're failing or like we are failures. Like we've screwed up and it can't be fixed. Like we are total parent failures when our kids act out in ways and everybody knows it, the entire world knows. And if they don't, they'll know soon what a total selfish, unreliable, disengaged excuse for a parent that we are. Okay?
And what this is called is it's called shame. And shame means that we think that we're deficient or defected somehow because of what we've done or in this case because of what our kids have done. Okay?
We care so much about the well-being of our kids. We do everything we know to make sure that they turn out to be amazing. Okay. And when they do something that we don't want them to do, when they act out, understandably, we think that something is wrong with us and what we've done. Okay.
And a lot of times it can seem pretty noble. It can seem like the higher route, you know, the higher, the higher road to, to take this responsibility and be ashamed and all of that. To take the blame, right?
For some time, it might seem better to sacrifice ourselves than to have them be responsible because, you know, we're the adults here and maybe it just kind of sounds right that we're disgusted with somebody for what they've done and so it's a little easier. It seems like sometimes it might be to be disgusted with ourselves.
But here's the deal. Shame in any of its forms is not a good idea for any reason. Okay, whatsoever. And here's here's why. I'll give you some examples.
It erodes our self-confidence. Okay. And it makes us question and it diminishes what we believe about our own self-worth.
You know, if when we worry about what others think, this leads to higher stress levels, it leads to anxiety, it can even lead to depression.
When we're embarrassed or ashamed, what we do—just think about when you feel that way, just for a moment—think about you're so embarrassed, you're so ashamed. Those are two different things. Let's go with ashamed. You're so ashamed of what your kids have done. What do you do when you feel ashamed?
One of the things that people do when we feel ashamed is we do nothing. We disconnect. You know, we don't parent in any way or react with the world. We just kind of hide and isolate. And to some degree, we basically, physically and sometimes both emotionally withdraw.
You know what this results in, of course, is more—it results in disconnection and misunderstanding a lot of times with our kids.
A lot of times what we can do is we can project our shame and our embarrassment to our kids. And what that does is that leads them to have lower self-esteem and a fear of failure.
And here are some ways that we project our shame onto our kids. We say stuff in public like, you know, harsh words in front of, you know, their peers or in front of their teachers, which makes our kids feel ashamed, right?
We use statements like, “Why can't you act normal?” Or, “You always do stuff like this.” And it just, it's like disappointment and frustration. And it's like belittling remarks.
We compare them to others sometimes. It's like, “Why can't you—you know, what's his name, didn't.” Or what's her name or their sibling or whoever—their cousin—and you compare them to other people, you know. “Why can't you be more like so and so.”
And so boy, wow, what a hurt, what a—what an unintentional damage to their own inadequacy and their self-esteem.
That's not it. You know, we can project our own shame in nonverbal ways, just like rolling our eyes, you know, making gestures, sighing or just expressing frustration in all the ways that we do.
Because what they take frustration as is disapproval—not just a disapproval of what they have done, but disapproval of their value, of them as a human being.
More of the body language, it's just like, hey, turning away and like I've said, isolating. These moments make the kid feel rejected.
You know, we—a lot of times if we ignore our kids right after, if we don't know what to do. If we take very long without interacting with them, then they believe that they're unacceptable. Not what they necessarily, just what they've done is unacceptable.
Another thing that we do when we project our shame is we over-apologize. Somebody—we're constantly apologizing to everybody else in the outside world, the public and our friends and the teachers and everybody else in the whole planet. We're over-apologizing, which basically signals to our kids that what they've done is just humiliating to us. And so therefore, they think that they're humiliating.
Basically just overcorrection, right? Public overcorrection, which is disciplining or, you know, making this public. You know, scolding them in front of people or saying stuff loudly in front of other people. It just humiliates our kids.
And then if we use things like—we can say things like, “You're so embarrassing.” Or, “You always do this.” Which basically what that does is —they take on this negative identity, because we're giving it to them. I mean, that's what happens.
So the impact of our own shame on our own kids, the way that we project this, most of the time unintentionally, right? We didn't set out to do this, but this is the result of choosing to feel shame. And so when kids perceive that their actions have caused us embarrassment and shame, they internalize this stuff most of the time to feel that they are flawed or defective. And that, of course, then they have lower self-esteem. They are afraid to fail. So they won't want to try anything in case they screw up again a lot of the time. Or they think they have to be perfect and not make any mistakes all the time. So then they're, you know, they’re just like trying to fall in line and be perfect all the time.
And they have these unrealistic standards that they can't meet and then that's discouraging and that's another cycle where they can't meet their own expectations so then they feel worse. They also have a reluctance to communicate, right? And so they're hesitant or they just refuse to connect or be open and honest with us as parents because they feel they might be judged.
Some kids just act out more, right? They do this as a response to the negative attention a lot of times that they think that they're getting. Or they isolate. We talked about parents might isolate. Comparison with other families—the embarrassment might lead parents to compare their family to other people. We've talked about that, which basically— it just goes to the bottom line. It deepens and solidifies and they internalize these feelings of inadequacy.
So what really—another side effect is that parents and kids miss the opportunity to have understanding and to connect. And that's what we need as human beings. Our kids need it so much; we need it. But our kids really need to feel connected.
So most of the time, we think, okay, when these things happen as parents most of the time, we think that what's happening is being caused by what they did. We think, “Well, they did this and so that's what happened. That's why I feel this way. If they wouldn't have done that, I wouldn't have feel this way.” What do you think? But it's not what they did that causes the turmoil, okay?
The thoughts that we're having about it—it's causing the shame—or choices that we're making. And now they might be unintentional, but we have a choice in this matter. So if we can recognize, okay, the choice and how we're feeling, if we want to change that, we can.
And here's how I recommend going about it. It's basically a one, two, three, four–step process that I've got. And it's simple, but worth it. Okay.
So part of this I learned from one of the—I don't know, you'd call him the godfathers of the all-time greats of horse training—is Les Vogt. Les is a, I think he's a national reining fraternity winner. He's a cow-horse world champ. He's so multiple world champions across many disciplines. He's just one of the oldies, but the goodies. You know, one of the kind of founding fathers of modern-day horse training, if you will.
And he talked to me about a school of thought that exists in horse training that, that I've known about for a long, I've experienced, I've done myself. And that is: the school of thought in horse training is that if you're in the middle of a conflict, don't quit, don't give up now. You can't quit now because if you quit now, you'll have taught that horse the wrong thing and he'll remember it forever. And you'll just—that'll be the way it'll be. So if you're in a fight, you can't quit. That's basically the bottom line of this idea.
Okay. And when I talked to Les Vogt, I had the chance to interview him for the Horsemanship Journey a couple of years ago. And he said, “Shane, that's precisely the time that you should quit. Okay. Because your emotions are so wrapped up in this conflict and this fight, it's exactly the time to get out.”
And so the reason I bring this up now is because, step one, when your kid acts out—when something you believe that they've done is something terribly wrong—the first step is not to get in the middle of it right off the bat. The first thing is just to stop and pause.
I can tell you one time, before I had really thought about this much, and this very common or has been in horse training—that you don't quit when you're in a fight. And so I can remember one time I was assisting some people. There was a handful—four of us— four of us were attempting to load this horse in the trailer. Okay. This is early on in my career, mind you. And so the horse was refusing to load, and we were doing everything we could think of and everything we'd heard of and everything we tried before—and nothing was working.
And the conflict escalated. It got rougher. The horse refused harder and harder and harder. And our only idea was to force and persist in this fight. Until eventually we did. We didn't want to quit because we thought it was the right thing to do. And so in the end, the horse got in the trailer. But by the time the horse got in the trailer, the only place that we needed to go was straight to the vet because the horse had hurt herself. You know, multiple—had injuries in—created injuries in this fight and just got herself into her, just fighting to, you know, stay away and just in the skirmish of trying to get her into the horse trailer.
And so, it didn't work. You know, it didn't work. It worked in the short term because we got her in the trailer, but then we had to go get—she cut herself on her leg and she had to go get a couple of stitches. And then the long-term didn't work either. Okay. In this example that I'm describing to you.
So back to our kids and their conflict. Okay. Step one is just to stop. Okay. When you recognize—when you recognize what you're feeling, or as soon as you hear about the thing, the thing that they've done—they've acted out and you know that you're feeling super embarrassed or you're feeling ashamed of what they've done—and you don't want to, the first thing to do: stop. Okay. That's step one.
Step One is to stop and breathe, maybe some deep breathing, and think about—you think about your state, which means think about how your state of mind, your state of emotion; think about your thoughts, what's going through your head. And I suggest some self-talk, like some deep breathing, some self-talk like, “I'm gonna handle this. I'm going to present myself, and I'm gonna handle this like the extraordinary parent that I am.”
That's the self—kind of self-talk that I would suggest in these moments. And take, as much—you don't wanna have an excessive time so your kid thinks you're avoiding them or something like that. But the first step here is to become aware of how you're feeling, and to breathe and become aware of your thoughts and put some intentional thoughts into your head like I suggested. That's my suggestion: “I'm extraordinary. I'm going to handle this like the extraordinary parent that I am.”
Okay? Just saying that. I can just feel it in me. But this isn't—I don't always handle it right anyway. This week I've had—there was one specific thing that happened to me this week—and it, not with my daughter and my son, not in parenting, but just in the world, in conducting business with a client. I came out in a way that I didn't stop and take the time and breathe and see how I wanted to come out. So then I had to—I'm going to tell you how to repair that in my system. It's part of my system.
My point was: we're not going to always get it done the way that we want it to, but that's built into this system too.
So let me get to it. Step One—we've got that.
Step two is to go to our kids for understanding. Understanding is the goal—not fixing, not necessarily solving, not "I'm going to fix you," not "I'm going to straighten your"—not any of that. The goal should be to go for understanding. That's step two. Honor their perspective, go for understanding.
Honor their perspective again means that you don't agree with necessarily, you don't need to agree with, you don't have to—just to give the fact that they think something, give it value because it's their thoughts. It doesn't mean that you have to go with it or agree with it or cave in or do it or any of that. It just means that you give them, as a human being, the time to hear—honor their perspective. The time to hear what they're thinking, what's going on with them, what—they're probably way ahead of you in what they need to do to change this in the future anyway, a lot of the time. Okay.
After you've gone for understanding, you've had this conversation, the next step is just to purposefully parent, okay? Parent on purpose. You can decide whatever that is. You know what the deal is. It's your kid, it's your event, and it's you. You know, if you are on purpose, you know what to do best. Nobody needs to tell you that, including me. But just parent on purpose. That is helpful to know that that's step three. Okay.
And this is a big one. This is the big one. Okay. And we miss this. We miss this. And this is going to help us in the future to have less shame if we get to number four and get it done.
Step four is to recognize your awesomeness. Okay. You hear me? Recognize your awesomeness. Say it out loud. Just compliment yourself. Have those complimentary thoughts, think them, say it out loud and feel what that feels like—to be proud of yourself. Give yourself some credit for doing this thing and do it every single time. You can't take too much. Okay?
Because here's the thing. What you're doing is you are changing over time how you think about yourself. And you're using what you've done as evidence for your brain to believe those thoughts. So when they happen, when you go through this process and you get it done, okay—you've stopped, hold on a minute. You've decided how you want to come out. You went for understanding. You've listened. You've taken it all in. And you've parented on purpose. Then come back and say, “You know what? Hey, good job, Shane. You got it done. You did a good job, and you deserve a damn pat on the back because you're worth it.”
Now here's the thing. Like I mentioned, I didn't get it done in that order earlier this week. So here's what happens. You're not going to get it done every time either, in order, right? Because what's going to happen is a lot of times you're going to go, “Poof.” And you're going to react, right? With not even be any thought, not any time to have any intentional thought—it's just going to be a reaction.
For a lot of us, sometimes we do that. Hopefully less and less, but that's what can happen. We get triggered, we get flooded with all this emotion, and then we lash out or we do whatever.
As soon as you recognize it—okay, this is built in—it's called step 3-A. As soon as you recognize it, okay, stop. As soon as you recognize it, go back. Okay?
The first thing that you do here is ask for forgiveness if you need to. Make amends for whatever you can for what you've done. Okay? And then go back and repeat the process. Go back into one: stop. Now you've done that. You've apologized for your outburst or whatever you did. Okay? Make it as well as you can. Some things can't be fixed, and you can't take your words back. Make them as well as you can. Make the best amends that you can. That's what you can do once it's done.
Get that done. Go through one, two, three, four—and don't forget four. Don't forget four because now you really ought to double pat yourself on the back. Because you didn't just go through the four—you did a harder one. Okay?
You made a mistake, and so you had to make it harder. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a double-double plus. A double plus. It's not a negative and a plus—it's a double plus. Because you gave yourself the opportunity—maybe unintentionally—but to get two pluses out of this deal.
Treat yourself that way. Because as soon as you get your brain back, okay, with step one again, go through one and three. When you get to three, don't forget to add 3-A, which is apologize and make amends where necessary.
Because here's the thing—you don't suck. Okay? And thinking that you suck feeds the cycle of negativity, bad behavior, and kids acting—continuing to act out more—and you not feeling good. None of it's good.
So when you recognize your awesomeness, it lessens. It lessens the acting out. Here's just a—I'm going to do an entire podcast on this subject—but here's what Brene Brown said. She said, “Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our kids will do than what we know about parenting.”
I have to say that again. “Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our kids will do than what we know about parenting.”
Okay. It's coming from inside of us. This tremendous influence—and everything matters that's going on inside of us—everything matters. And this tremendous influence that's coming out of us, that we're not even aware of a lot of the time, is the biggest influence of anything. Okay?
When kids acting out means something's wrong with you—that thought is the problem. Okay? Thinking that is not helping. Thinking that when our kids do something, that something is wrong with us and just taking all this personal—and it's hard not to. I mean, you know, they're our kids, and we're their leader, and they're not doing what we want them to.
So this is not a simple easy—it’s a simple process, but it's not an easy process. And so understandably we have these things. But if we don't become intentional, the default basically setting is shame and embarrassment. Embarrassment and shame. That's what feeds the bad cycle. Okay?
And here's the thing: you're probably doing a lot better job than what you think. And if you're here listening to this, you're doing pretty good just as it is. Okay? So remember that. The fact that you're here—it proves that you're an amazing parent just as it is.
Hey, remember, you cannot fail as long as you Don't Ever Stop Chasin’ It.
Thanks for being with me. Talk to you soon.
