040 - Self Care adapted to your needs - Recording from the Joy Reclaimed Summit
Parenting the Intensity ·
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Transcript
SPEAKER_00
00:00:00
Welcome to the podcast. Today I'm switching seats. I was a guest on Linda Standerville's summit last fall, the Joy Reclaimed Summit. Linda was also my first guest over on the podcast and I will share with you today the recording of my interview with her over on her summit where I talked about self -care for parents of emotionally intense kids because I'm guessing if you're here you might know that is a big part of what we need to do to be able to parent our kids and yeah so it's all about how to do self -care how to make it realistic and fitted for our needs so let's I let you enjoy the interview with the amazing
SPEAKER_00
00:00:54
that Ed, the amazing Linda did with me. Welcome to Parenting the Intensity, where we'll talk all about how we can drop the general parenting advice that doesn't work with our emotionally intense kids anyway, and let go of the unrealistic expectations society puts on us as parents. Together, we'll find solutions and ideas that work for you and your kids. Chances are, deep down, you know what you need. But you need a little encouragement to keep going on harder days, and permission to do things differently, and help you fully trust that you already are a wonderful parent to your exceptional but challenging kids. Do you read all the things, listen to all the things, take all the courses, and you know a lot of things about parenting but you struggle to actually apply them in your real life? Then you're in luck.
SPEAKER_00
00:02:09
I just started the Parenting the Intensity community, which is a monthly group support for parents of emotionally intense kids. And the goal is exactly that, to take all the information you learn from the podcast and from all the other sources and adapt them so that it work for your child and your family, your reality, because things can work, but not always the same way for everybody. So the same thing might need to be adapted to work for you. And sometimes it's hard to sort through everything to choose the right things that so that you can really enjoy your life and your kids not always being afraid of the next outbursts. You can join by clicking on the link in the show notes or on the website.
SPEAKER_01
00:03:04
Hello and welcome to the Joy Reclaimed Summit. I'm Linda Sanderville your host And I'm here with Anouk Garbou, who is a mentor for parents with kids who have special needs or emotional intensity. And she's here to share with you about how to reclaim your joy as you parent your beloved kiddos. Welcome, Anouk.
SPEAKER_00
00:03:26
Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01
00:03:28
Absolutely. So glad to have you here.
SPEAKER_01
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So could you share a little bit about the work that you do with parents and especially what got you into doing this specialized kind of work?
SPEAKER_00
00:03:40
Yeah. So I right now support parents of emotionally intense kids, mostly, which is a broad term that not specialized term, but like, it's include all kind of kids that can have different needs, neural divergent kids, so kids with ADHD, or autism, or learning disability or things like that can also be the kids with mental health like anxiety or kids with trauma. So there's really different possibilities for kids to be emotionally intense. And so the reason why I went to that public is because I have three of those kids And my, I didn't got diagnosis for my kids before their teen, like the older ones were teens. So I had to basically parent without knowing what was happening. So I didn't want it to go to one specific thing. And also they have diagnosis of different things. And so I find that often we have, we have like support for ADHD or support for anxiety or and there's not more englobing support, if you want, like
SPEAKER_00
00:05:03
something that's more taking everything into account. And also, because I've worked a lot with family with kids with special needs, really different special needs. Back when I was in the in this public system, I worked at an hospital and and center for children. And I find that no matter the needs, the needs of the family, like no matter the special needs of the kids, the needs of the family are generally similar. Like the journey is similar, the they go through grieving for what the expected parenting would be is kind of similar. And so, yeah, I love in general, working with family of kids with special needs, but that narrowing with emotionally intense kids is coming from a merge of my professional
SPEAKER_00
00:06:00
and personal experience.
SPEAKER_01
00:06:02
Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm curious about how you as a mother balance self -care and finding ways to connect to your own personal joy with the realities of the needs of your family, right? and I'm also curious about how you then help others to find ways to do that too. I think there's such a challenge with that. I think it's difficult to parent in our modern society without even having an emotionally intense child. So I'm just curious, what does that look like, and how would you describe
SPEAKER_00
00:06:39
that? I would say for me it was a journey, Like, when my older... I have two teens and a preschooler, so I have, like, two extremes. And when my two older ones were little, I was not doing self -care at all. Like, I was trying to focus on them all the time, and I was trying to do all the things, you know, like be in the parents' association and be volunteering left and right. At some point, I was on five boards of different non -profits, kids related, and I was doing a master's degree and I was working part -time. I was trying to be the perfect mom, which society puts us to be. We should be able to do all things. But it was not working. It was not doing anything
SPEAKER_00
00:07:31
really well, especially being a mom. And I think that's also part of the process when you have kids that are a bit different and I didn't know back then because it was my only experience as a mother. I babysat a lot of kids but my kids were not different enough for me to realize I was parenting kids that were not normal. The only thing I can say is that my two older ones are total opposites like things that I found what helped with one were making things worse with other one. So I learned quite fast, because they're like two years and three months apart, that I needed to parent them differently. So most of what I've done is coming from there, basically, that I learned that we cannot parent different kids the same way, because they need different things. And so, in that process, I also learned, because I had no choice at some point I was I have like a chronic illness and I was sick all the time and I had to take care of my health so I started mostly with yoga at first doing yoga and I try to do a few minutes a day at least I'm not perfect at all and I've jumped and sometimes I haven't done for months but I'm trying because I really see the difference and I would say like what
SPEAKER_00
00:08:58
help me like I do that and I've I I also I for me one of the big thing was photography like I started doing photography as a hobby but for me was I use it like a mindfulness tool it really helps me focus on in the moment because I don't take photography like snapshot or things like that or like selfies or I really take like I follow my kids it's like the documentary re -approach. So I follow my kids and I look at what they're doing and it's making me more present with them by doing that but it's also something I do because I love it. So that was like a way because my kids were depending time and energy so I didn't add the time to do things out of my parenting and I was feeling really guilty to have them like because for example when I was doing my masters, at some point, I had courses three evening a week. And so I had to have them like my husband or my parents were having the kids. So I was not seeing them as much as I would have wanted to. So I didn't want to take time away from them. And like, we all have our level of tolerance in that. And it's just personal for me, but I was not feeling comfortable doing self care away from them. So I kind of learned to do self care with my kids around, basically. Like right now, my daughter waits for me to finish my yoga routine and she does Shavasana with me, like she comes and she lays on me, my youngest.
SPEAKER_00
00:10:31
And so like, it's, it's things like that, that made it possible that I was doing self care while they were around with them, basically, because otherwise, it wasn't as not possible for me to do self -care in the setting we were in. We owned school for two years, for example, and so during those years, if I was not doing something for work or for school, I was with my kids, so there was no time nowhere in my schedule for going to the spa. I think we, as a society, see self -care as something so complicated. Like going to a spa for a weekend. I've never done that in 15 years of parenting, honestly. It's just not happening, you know? So if that's self -care, I'm not doing it. But I don't think that's self -care. Self -care is so much more than those things like doing masks or having your nails done. like yes those can be self -care but there's other things that all like and when I work with parents that struggle often I will say like can you like take one sip of your coffee tea or hot chocolate or no matter warm just one before you put it down and to take care of your kids so at least one sip was not re -eaten in their microwave ten times if you can just do that and take a deep and appreciate that sip, you're doing self -care. And if you can do something like that and just appreciate what you're doing right now and take a deep breath 10 times a day, then you've done 10 seconds of self -care in your day and it's better than not at all.
SPEAKER_00
00:12:22
So it's starting with small, small, small, small, small things and then slowly building up. Next time maybe you can take two or three sip of your coffee or tea before. And some days it's not going to happen. Some days you're going to not do self -care at all. But some days you'll be able to do a 20 -minute yoga routine. And some days you might be able to do 45. And it's going to be a party. I and some days you are just going to like fall down once, go up, and it's going to be that for the day. I mean, it's really like, it needs to be realistic in our, in our day to day life. Yeah. And be integrated with our life. That's something we do out of our life. I think that's that's the thing. And like, for example, dance party in the kitchen, like I did some of my favorite things to do with the kids, like it's easy, and everybody has fun, and they're doing self -care at the same time without even realizing it. And so I think those are things that we can do. Like, for example, my daughter, my youngest, like, takes deep breath for, like, to calm down when she's, like, super excited. Daycare told her that once, or all daycare, like, super great. And then she does it. So when she does it, I do it too. It's like, I do it with her. And when she doesn't do it, I help her and I do it at the same time. So I do it too, you know, so it's also doing breath work at the same time. It's those little things that at the end of the day, if you do a few like it, they it builds up on on like, at some point, you know, and like, having one earbuds while you're walking with a stroller is also a very easy one, you put music or a podcast you want to listen to or anything where you call a friend. And, you know, it's like just doing those little things that can be helpful in your life, not out of your life. I think that's like the nuance I was, I would say, that makes it doable.
SPEAKER_01
00:14:27
Right? Yeah. I love that you gave these examples. And thank you for giving so many different things for people to think
SPEAKER_01
00:14:34
about, like, okay, oh, yeah, there are those moments. Oh, yeah, there's that moment too, right? Like, it's something that you can incorporate. And to me, it just sounds like it's a way of validating those small moments of, you know, centering or mindfulness, as opposed to seeing them as less than or not as good as the weekend away at the spa with a group of girlfriends, right. And some people can do that. And if you can, and that fills
SPEAKER_00
00:15:03
you up, yeah, that's wonderful, right? Yeah, but I would say like for me doing that even if it was once a month would not be enough Uh -huh. If you have kids that are really like demanding for any reasons, it's daily self -care It's not once a month self -care or once a week self -care It's like ongoing because we need to stay regulated much more like I often say if you have an emotionally intense kids your fight or flight response is often triggered in your relationship with your child. So, and that will happen for any parents, but the more challenging the kids, the more that will happen often. And so like the thing I hate the most and I like it was driving me crazy when my kids were younger is you see everywhere, like don't yell at your kids. But I hate that thing. It's just don't yell that that's not helpful. Because if you're yelling there's yeah, what how do I not do it? that's why I and I at some point there was a trend on Pinterest that you put an elastic on your wrist and you You you use it each time you that's just bad advice. I mean you should try it if it works for you I'm glad for you, but it never worked for me Like for me that's just like making me work feeling worse is not gonna help me feel better for my kids Like I don't, I wrap my head around that.
SPEAKER_00
00:16:24
So it's like by doing those self care, those things that can be regulating our nervous system, that then we can stop yelling because I'm, I'm totally a recovering yeller. Like, and I will still do it sometimes, but when my older ones were little, I was doing much more because I was out of control, I was tired, I was overwhelmed. And so it was way more difficult for me to just not do it. I was not in a state myself not to do it. So once you take care of yourself, now you can stop yelling. Now you can stay calm. But just saying to someone, just stay calm, like yeah, it's pointless.
SPEAKER_01
00:17:10
It's so unhelpful.
SPEAKER_00
00:17:12
Yeah. Yeah, totally. No, and you're and you're so right.
SPEAKER_01
00:17:15
You need those regular times. That's what I love about that the examples that you gave because you need multiple moments of self -care a day. It's not,
SPEAKER_00
00:17:24
oh,
SPEAKER_01
00:17:24
let's just get by on one time a week. You need
SPEAKER_00
00:17:27
it
SPEAKER_01
00:17:28
daily. You it multiple times a day, but it doesn't have to be this extravagant thing where you have to carve out some special situation.
SPEAKER_00
00:17:36
Céline get up at four in the morning to do two hours of something. I did that at some point in my life. I wake up at five because I had to be at work super early. And but right now, I can't. I just liable, like my alarm rings at five, and I'm six, and I'm just sleeping in. So like, it's not happening. At some point in my life, I was able to and some people can do that. But I now I can't. So it's just adapting to where we are in life, you know, and making it realistic to, to take care of ourselves in those settings, because it's not, yeah, it's not something that we can just do once in a week. It's not like it for some, in some reality, I might work. But when you have more, and if if it's not like, I've worked with kids with special needs and really varied. In some moments, the kids is not that demanding, necessarily. But the situation the parents are in can be very demanding, if you're waiting for a diagnosis with like bad news or things like that, or the kids has like physical health and their life is threatened, like you need to do that so so much to be able to face those situations, you know. So yeah, it's like doing it just a little bit throughout the day will help regulate herself more than doing it once a month, which is not like mutually exclusive. Of course, Sure.
SPEAKER_01
00:19:06
Right, right. But definitely not giving up the little moments, little consistent moments. And
SPEAKER_00
00:19:14
at the same time, someday we give up and it's okay too. We can always go back. Like it's nothing is the same every day. Like sometimes we just fall off the horse and we just have to go back at some point.
SPEAKER_00
00:19:27
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01
00:19:27
like with anything, right? Like that's
SPEAKER_00
00:19:29
just
SPEAKER_01
00:19:29
kind of embracing good enough and in any area of life. And certainly when it comes to parenting or the way that you're doing your self -care or practicing your self -love, it have to be like this rigid perfection or some rigid idea, like according to what someone else does for their wellbeing,
SPEAKER_01
00:19:46
because our situations are unique.
SPEAKER_00
00:19:48
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I'm giving like a self -care guide to... I have in there a list of ideas. Oh, for your freebie for the attendees? Yeah. And like it's a guide to help make it realistic and apply what I'm talking to today. But I also put in a list of ideas if people just don't know what to do. But I purposefully say like it's a way too long list. Like you're not supposed to do them all. You're supposed to choose what works for you. And I did like it's a two page with like 50 ideas just to make sure Nobody would think ever that they have to do that all because it's not the goal of that list The goal is just to give ideas if you don't know where to start because I sometimes we just don't know so I True that like I asked lots of people and I chewed out everything that we could think of but I I ask in Facebook groups I've parent like what do you do as self -care and like I put everything in there just so there's so many ideas that that people don't think they have to do that. Because sometimes we like go on Pinterest
SPEAKER_00
00:20:55
and ask for self -care, you're gonna get a list of things you're supposed to do. Like, it's most likely what you're gonna end up with, which is not helpful. Because it doesn't necessarily fill you, like, don't ask me to take a bath. I'm just gonna get out of the bath mad, like I hate taking bath. A relaxing bath is not my vocabulary. like it's not happening. I, the last time I took a bath was to, was I was giving birth to have contraction like past
SPEAKER_00
00:21:26
and it was for my 13 year old. So I haven't taken a bath in 13 Don't ask me to take a bath, I hate baths. So like, if you put that on the list of things I'm supposed to be doing for self -care, it's not self -care for me. Yeah. But it can be self -care for someone else, taking a bath with a book and music and that's perfect.
SPEAKER_00
00:21:46
The thing is, we need to find what's self -care for us. And sometimes as parents, we've forgotten. We don't know anymore. Because we've lost ourselves, especially with kids that can be more challenging and that requires lots of energy. We can lost what we love doing. What brings you joy? So it's finding that back. And that's why sometimes like, what did I used to love? What did I, what, and sometimes things we will use to love, we won't love anymore. And that's okay too. We have evolved, but it's finding those things back that are really important. So, yeah, I think that's, that's the thing too. It's like, what, what brings me joy now in my a reality, that's what's important.
SPEAKER_01
00:22:41
Yeah, yeah, thank you for that.
SPEAKER_01
00:22:43
I the way that there's this parallel between, you know, finding ways to parent your specific child, right, and parenting your children differently because they may both have special needs but just be very different in terms of what they need from you. So
SPEAKER_00
00:23:03
you're
SPEAKER_01
00:23:03
parenting them differently according to like their unique makeup. And then also the way that we take care of ourselves, we're taking care of ourselves according to our unique makeup. So yeah,
SPEAKER_00
00:23:14
it's the same,
SPEAKER_01
00:23:15
right? It's the same kind
SPEAKER_00
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of
SPEAKER_01
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parallel process. So
SPEAKER_00
00:23:18
I know lots
SPEAKER_01
00:23:19
of parents are gonna feel very seen by you and what you're saying, because I just it feels like such a breath of fresh air,
SPEAKER_01
00:23:25
the way that you're talking about this and sharing about how to do this practically. So can you please share with them where they can find you online? How you work with parents? Like what do you offer that they might be interested in?
SPEAKER_00
00:23:40
Yeah, my website is familymoments .ca. I have one -on -one support. I have also like self -paced courses that workshop that parents can do on their own. I normally all my self -paced have video, audio and written versions. So they're accessible to most people. And I also have a membership coming up in November, also, the group membership, because I really believe in group support, and, like, getting out of isolation as parents, especially when you have, like, parents, emotionally -dense kids, often it's like, you don't talk about it, because you feel you're the parent, you're the one who's not doing the right thing. And it's your fault, so you don't talk about it. And so it's really isolating. So I'm, I want to have a group setting where people can realize they're not alone at all. Some of us are struggling through that. And so yeah, and I also have a podcast called Parenting the Intensity, where I talk about all things, the reality of having intense kids.
SPEAKER_01
00:24:53
Yes, yes. Okay, so make sure you check out those links below. And of course, the freebie that Anouk was talking about earlier about self -care, like practical self -care practices that you can access, that link will also be below. So be sure to go follow her and find the podcast and give it a listen and check out that group program. Anouk, thank you so much. Are there any
SPEAKER_01
00:25:16
Any final words of encouragement or inspiration that you have for our listeners today?
SPEAKER_00
00:25:23
I would say like, one thing I generally love is the fact that just to think of the expectation that we put on ourselves as parents, and most of those expectations come from society. Often when we parent, we parent, we want to parent and reach those expectations, but they're not realistic. And so we're not failing at our parenting, we're just failing at the unrealistic expectation we have at parenting. And so it's just reframing that, and that sometimes, some days we will reach some of those maybe, but most of the days we won't. And it's okay. Like we we do what we can with the way we are that day and what we have the energy we have the resources we have, and the support we have. And any day we do our best any day in the situation we're in. And sometimes our best is crap. And that's okay, too. Right. That's, that's, that's reality, you know, right. Yeah, I would say that it's just checking our expectation of what parenting should be makes it more enjoyable to be a parent when we reframe those expectations. We more enjoy the moment with our family when we don't expect, this is parenting, you know.
SPEAKER_01
00:26:58
Yeah,
SPEAKER_01
00:26:59
absolutely. Expectations are often what get us, no matter what the relationship or situation we're talking about. So if we can release that, like you're saying, there is so much more joy that we can access,
SPEAKER_00
00:27:11
so much more presence. And not easy. Yeah, it's not easy to change that. It's super like ingrained in us by our upbringing, by our society. So it's not like it's simple to say, it's not simple to do. Sure. But it's, it's very helpful when we are able to.
SPEAKER_01
00:27:28
Yeah, yeah. Anouk, thank you so much for coming on here. I know that there's gonna be a
SPEAKER_00
00:27:34
lot of people who are here
SPEAKER_01
00:27:35
who, who really relate to what you're saying. So I'm so grateful for you sharing your experience and your knowledge.
SPEAKER_00
00:27:42
Thank you for having me was a pleasure chatting with you. And I hope it was helpful.
SPEAKER_01
00:27:46
Yes. Well, thank you all for joining us for this special conversation. I hope that you feel encouraged. I feel a bit more realistic with your expectations. But above all, please go forth and reclaim your joy.
SPEAKER_00
00:28:24
Also, check out all the free resources on my website at familymoments .ca so you can take action on what's the most important for you right now. And take a deep breath, keep going, we're all in this together. you