CS04 - Reframing Discipline and Boundaries - Special Connection Series

Welcome! Before we start today, I wanted to share with you that this episode is a special episode part of a series about connection. It's five episodes that will be released every day this week. The focus is all about lowering conflict with our emotionally intense kids by connecting instead of correcting. The topic of those five episodes will be why the relationship is so important, why our emotionally intense kids feel disconnected and why we as parents feel disconnected, stopping conflict in its track, discipline and boundaries without power struggle, and how to make it realistic in our every day to connect more with our kids. So go listen to the previous episode, subscribe to get the next ones and for all the information and subscribe on the website to get the magazine this very special first edition first issue of the family moments magazine that complement the those five episodes with short takeaways version of the episode so that you can refer back to them more easily and insight from guests of the podcast and an opportunity to join the connected family experiment that is going on next week. If you're listening to that later on, don't worry you can still get that magazine and you'll have more information about the

experiment. So I hope you enjoy that special series! Welcome to the podcast! Today we will be talking about how to deal with discipline, boundaries, and keeping the connection, not creating conflict, because that's a bit of a hard one. So let's get started. 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 they 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. Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed and uncertain when it comes to parenting your emotionally intense child? Do you often find yourself playing with guilt, fearing that you're not doing enough to help them navigate their intense emotions? You are not alone. Many parents face these challenges and struggle to find the right path forward. But take a deep breath, there's hope. That's why I created the Parenting the Intensity community. Imagine having a clear roadmap tailored specifically to your child's unique needs and your family's reality. Picture feeling empowered and confident in your parenting, knowing that you are providing the support and understanding your child needs. It may seem like an unattainable dream right now but I'm here to tell you that it is within reach. Come join us for our monthly group support to connect with other parents and get supported with your challenge right now. You also get one -on -one chat and audio office hours for the things that you're really not ready to share in the group and workshop tools, courses to help you in the process of finding

that balance of parenting in a way that works for you, your child, and your family. So I talk a lot about the fact that we should not be correcting, we should be connecting instead, changing like all the things around needs and things like that. And that doesn't mean that we should not have some sort of boundaries with our kids. And I want to make it first and clear, I'm not really talking about discipline. Discipline is not the goal here. discipline means doing what someone else wants us to do because they want us to do, basically. It has other meaning, of course, but in the parenting sphere, that's how it's used. And so, that's not what we're talking about. We are talking about boundaries. We are more talking about a safe container. That's how I see a boundary. A boundary is a way to help a child do what needs to be done basically and so this is this is really more of a safe container for a child than a way to make them do what you want them to do because it can be something they want to do and they cannot unless there's some boundary it can be safety matters so yeah there is many reason why we might want to set some boundaries for our kids because it does make things feel more safe for them because boundaries are something that they can expect and makes create some limits and that is necessary in some situation. So the first thing that we want to do when we talk about boundaries, first is to question our expectations. It's really the first, the because we have a lot of expectations, a lot of things that we think our kids should be doing, a lot of boundaries that we have in place. So Well, I suggest you just start by, you just wake up in the morning between that moment and when school starts, no matter if you're homeschooling or if your child is going to school.

Just from those hours of the day, think about how many boundaries, how many times you say no, how many times you ask your child to do something in a certain way. how many like there is so many i can think of like we get up and i will ask my youngest to not like the older teens are not up yet but i will ask my youngest to not get down before yoga is done so i will ask her to do something in her bedroom i will suggest that she get dressed she never does Um, but it's one of the, like, she already has a big boundary here and I expect her not to get downstairs without me. Sometimes my husband will wake up earlier and get down with her, but often he goes to bed late for other family, like, reason related to older kids. So it's, it's one big boundary.

Then we will go downstairs and I ask that she change out of her PJs and put clothes on because she eats messy. She will get full of food on her PJs and I don't want to have to wash a PJ plus early clothes. So I want to ask her to put on clothes. So that's another boundary. And then we get downstairs and we need to eat. And in theory, she should have a boundary to stay at the table while she eats, which we removed. I will get to that, because it's too hard for her right now. But she needs to eat. And oh yeah, she will have to go to the bathroom in the morning. She hates going to the bathroom because she hates washing her hands. So that is a boundary. It's not something that comes naturally. I will have to make sure she does, because otherwise there is some infection that can come later. And so those are all things that when we don't take the time, we might have a ton of them that we don't even realize that we have all of those expectations for our kids in our daily routine. Like I might have just said four five different ones in the first half an hour of the day. And this is like, in some morning, there might be others. So it's just thinking about all of those expectations that we have, and choosing which ones are really essential. So I said that, for example,

sitting at the table is not something that is doable right now for my youngest. It's like, it would be a constant battle if I was requesting that. But being sitting at a table to eat is a very common boundary that a lot of us have, and I used to have too. I let go while, like, when my older ones were little, I let go of the idea of them sitting at a table until everybody was done, which was never really an expectation for me as a child eater. So it was easy to let that one go. But letting go of the fact that she was supposed to be sitting to eat, that one was really harder for me. But it was not realistic to expect that from her. So we let go of that boundary. And another example that I gave a few times was that my second child adds, like, it takes time to get ready in the morning. And when she was little, she was late for school a lot. So we let go of the boundary of getting dressed in the morning. She was getting dressed in the evening for the next day.

So this is another way that we can make it so that we don't, like we can let go of those boundaries that seem normal. like it's just, it's something that we, everybody does. It's normal to do that, but we can question that. We can revisit that. We can wonder if this is the right one. Is it something that is really essential for me? And this is the next thing, like questioning if that boundaries is really something that you, that is important for you, or is it something that is coming from the society or from the way you were raised, but maybe it doesn't need to be that, like, maybe that boundary doesn't need to be there. Maybe you can let go of singing at the table, or maybe you can let go of getting in day clothes and picking up the PJ in the morning. This is something that I choose, but it doesn't mean everybody has to do it, you know? So it's something that we need to make clear on why we want that boundary in place and to choose them because it is really important for us or for our kids, not because we should have that boundary in place. And sometimes it's very, very hard to separate the two because it's so ingrained in us what is expected as a boundary for our kids. So this is a very key point. So I would encourage you to make a list and really question them all. And there, even if we have that list of boundaries that are really important for us, sometimes we need to lower the demands to meet the kids where they are right now. Because right now our kids are not able to do this thing yet, or they're not able to do this thing today. So back to school is a very classic example. Your kids might be normally able to do some stuff and suddenly it's back to school and they're not able to do a lot of this stuff. And it does show in crisis, in meltdowns, in whining and crying. It will show in passive resistance. It will show in very different ways, but it all means right now they cannot meet

that expectation. So that boundary that you used to have, for example, that they dress themselves in the morning, they're not able to right now. They just aren't. Because even if they were last week, now they are not because there is outside factor in this situation, the back to school routine, the back -to -school stress and anxiety that makes them so that they don't, they cannot reach that expectation right now. So even though that boundary might be important for you normally, and it doesn't mean you need to let it go completely, it just means right now you might need to let it go of that boundary and dress your child instead of having them dress themselves, even if they were doing it for months. Right now they're not able to. And this is very hard, it's my next point, not freaking out just yet. It's not because they're not able to do something right now, it's not because they were able to and now they're not, that they will never be. Lowering the demands and not like sticking to a boundary in some moments doesn't mean that you will completely let it go. It just means that right now you're letting it go, maybe temporarily, temporarily might be a few days, a few weeks, a few months, even a year, even more than one year, depending on what it is. But it doesn't mean that your child will never be able to reach that boundary. This is the very, very important things to remember. It's not because your child right now cannot do something that they won't never be able. and it's not because you need to let go of some boundaries right now that they won't will never be able to reach the expectation and you won't never be able to hold that boundary in place and just mean that they're not able yet to do something. So this is very important to keep in mind because if you don't keep that in mind you will freak out and when we freak out we put in plays boundaries that we know we shouldn't

because we are afraid. And it's normal, it's normal to be afraid. It's normal to look very far away in the future and think, oh God, my kids is never going to be able to do this. And how are they going to be a functioning adult? But they will, they will, I promise. It's just that it doesn't revolve on that specific thing right now. It's not because they're not able to do this thing now that they will never be able to do this thing in the future and that they will never be able to be a functioning adult. Like that is, that has nothing to do with it. That's the thing we need to remember. And I'm not the only one who says that,

but it's really to remember that now we cannot put that boundary in place yet. It doesn't mean it won't be able to be put in place later on. And it's not because my child was able to do something yesterday or in the last month, that now they are still able to do it. It might be that now they are not able to do it. Or even this morning they were able and tonight they are not, especially in the back to school season. And so this is all very important to remember, that it is a moment in time. It is not permanent. It is not forever. It is a moment in time. So, when you put boundaries in place with emotionally -dense child, really try to focus on, one, taking a step back and revisiting the expectation. Choosing if that boundary is really something important to you, and is it something that is from you, or for your child, or is it coming from society, your parents, the neighbor, or the school even. Lowering demands when necessary, now, or tomorrow, or in a week, might be necessary for many reasons and not freaking out just yet. So I hope this was helpful. If you want to dig deeper on that topic, I do have an entire course that is generally pretty low -priced because I wanted to be accessible as it's one of the big

thing people get stuck on. So there's the Boundary for Emotionally Intense Kids course and yeah I encourage you to go look at this one if you want like a bit more structure to go through all of those steps and get more information. So I hope you're able to work a little bit on choosing the right boundaries and letting go of the things that are not essential and that are just creating conflict with your child. Have a nice day! I'm so glad you joined me today and took that time out of your intense life to focus on finding a new way to parent that works for you and your kids. To get the episodes as soon as they drop, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and please leave everything in review so other parents can find it too. 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