Welcome to Pivot Parenting, where we help parents of teens overcome regret and disappointment to find peace and connection in every situation. I'm Heather Frazier, your parenting expert Journey with me to discover effective parenting tips, improve family relationships, and build a brighter future for your kids.
Scarlett 2i2 USB: Hey, how's it going? I am so excited to talk to you today. The weather is so beautiful. I love change, and so spring and fall are just like the best. You're so sick of the endless winter or the heat that you can escape, and just a change is nice. And today I'm gonna talk about a fantastic change. Which is not be in charge of your kids' happiness and in reverse, not having them be in charge of your happiness.
It's a common thing and oftentimes our kids buy into this relationship dynamic, which is your teen expects you to make them happy and we buy into it and agree with it, or maybe we don't, but they still want us to, or maybe we want to make them happy. We're trying to meddle with them and they don't want to be meddled with, they want to be left alone and feel their feelings and do their thing without us trying to fix everything so that they're happy and I'm using happy.
They know how to cook a few meals. This is a process, and of course this is for neurotypical healthy adolescents, right? There's always exceptions to every generalization. So I say this with a grain of salt. This can sound very sneaky. It can sound like I just don't know how to help them, or I just want them to be happy, or I'm so scared for them, or I email their teachers because they're not doing the things they should, or I talk to their friend's parents.
So let's break this down and talk about it, because I think that sometimes we can jump in and help them. I rarely buy into an all or nothing mentality. So I'm talking again, generalizations, but let's talk about why your teen's hard emotions are so difficult for us to deal with. We just wanna jump in and rescue and save and make them happy, help them because we think it's a sign that their future is doomed and that we have failed in a nutshell that if our kids aren't happy, that it is some moral flaw in us.
The chick has to break out of the shell all on its own. The mommy chick does not help the baby chick. The baby chick just has to gain the grit and tenacity and strength to break out of its shell, to be healthy and happy. And this is the same thing with our children. It is not. The mom, the hen does not look at the baby chick and say, oh, they're struggling.
So the first thing that we need to do is really be honest with ourself as to how we're interpreting our child's struggle. It can be really uncomfortable for people around us to be having a hard time, and we have to just witness that I. We jump in and try to fix things for people all the time. Like let's say your girlfriend is complaining about not liking her hair.
Have you ever been there because I sure have. I remember when my husband and I were first married and he is a wonderful husband. And I would come home from work really frustrated, and I would complain about all the things that aren't working at work, and he would come up with fantastic solutions and it would just make me more upset because I didn't actually wanna change my job.
You can only say two or three things, right? You can say That really stinks. I'm so sorry. Let's go slash their tires or egg their house or whatever. Like those are the three things that you can say. And that's it. You can nod, you can have a sad face. That's it. Like you literally can't do anything. And I'm not gonna do anything about it.
The second thing is that we have to stop rescuing our child and start mentoring them through the process of gaining emotional resilience. And the best way to do this is to be emotionally resilient yourself. And this is one of the main things that I work on with my clients. I would love to work on this with you if this is something that you see yourself struggling in.
And sometimes friends say really rude things, and if we're honest, sometimes we say really rude things about our friends too, that they find out about on occasion, because we're all human and it's messy being human.
Remember, Frazier is spelled with a ZI in the middle. And don't worry, the link is also in the show notes. I look forward to meeting and helping you.
Our child or our spouse, whomever's emotions and happiness. We think we're in charge of this habit for whatever reason, wreaks havoc on us, our sense of self, our sense of wellbeing, and our ability to find peace because our brain, for whatever reason, again, has bought into the fact that. Peace and a sense of safety.
And that's crazy making because that's impossible for us to provide. And so this habit. It enables a sense of help helplessness within both parties. We feel helpless. The person that wants us to calibrate their happiness and create it for them feels helpless, like they can't do it for themselves or that they shouldn't do it for themselves.
Not anyone else that is a gift. That is like perhaps one of the most important gifts that we can give our kids. But when we see it as a sense of failure within ourself, if they're unhappy, we are denying them that gift. When we try to fix and jump in and manage this habit or relationship dynamic, it models a false and harmful relationship dynamic that typically.
And so our kids might say, and we might say, we don't wanna be anything like our parents, but with a well-trained eye, you can see how we we do. And so we want to offer them something better. To mimic in healthy ways in other relationships and other partnerships. We don't want to create future problems for them
It feels very scarce, very uncertain, very anxious to have a relationship built on this kind of codependency. How do we prevent this? How do we stop this? You listening to me? You are the only person that you can control. The only person. And you and I both know that that's still even hard, right? I have a hard time controlling myself all the time, and I bet you do too.
Normal. I promise it's normal. Same with you. It is normal to have a very wide spectrum of emotions. That's called being human. We don't have to make anything better. And the trick to shifting this pattern now from thinking we're in charge of their happiness to allowing them to be in charge of their happiness, which is actually the truth.
And so I really have to be self-aware to not do this. And when I'm doing it, I have to be self-aware enough to think I am doing this. I need to stop it and not do it. And it's totally possible because for the most part, I live in that land now. And that's the goal. Just so that you know you're not a robot and you can't not do this a hundred percent of the time.
That's the ultimate goal tip. The scale is the first goal. The second long-term goal is a B minus. If you can do it like 80% of the time, that's a hundred percent in my book. That's amazing because we're human and our brains sometimes just snatch us before we even know what's happening. My friend, I help parents work through their stuff.
And if anybody. Ever tells you that they know the secret recipe to get your kid to behave, please run, please run. They aren't helpful. They aren't good. They just want your money. There's no secret recipe to control another human, especially a teenager. It is false. I help my clients by helping you love and heal all of you and loving all of your child regardless of what they're doing.
And again, I know that sounds really basic, but if you don't trust me, just so you know, clients who work one-on-one with me, I offer a free consult call and on that call. I outline ways to work with me, and my favorite way to work with somebody to give them the best results that they want is one-on-one.
And if you decide to do those steps with me as your guide and your mentor, I guarantee that if you don't have those results in 16 sessions, you get another 16 for free. And guess what? I have never had to give anybody 16 sessions for free, which is kind of awesome, , it's a guarantee. I totally would, and I would love it because your goals are my goals, and I am here.
But to be able to fully heal and love yourself so that you can fully love all the people in your life. Is a massive shift and gift that only you can give, and it's the most powerful one and the most loving one that you can give your kids. I'm excited to potentially meet you on an upcoming call. I'll talk to you next week.
Is the one expert in the knows stuff, including how confusing it can and crying.