Parenting Rules I Live By As A Mom Coach And Mom Of 3

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy mom, dog mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my beautiful friends. How we doing today? I am very excited to talk with you about parenting rules I live by as a mom, coach and mom of three. I could have swore that I already created this podcast, but I have not it appears to be just that I have written blog posts on a similar title and done some social media content, but never a podcast. And I thought, that is wild. I love talking about this because my coaching tools combined with like motherhood and parenting is just, I think the secret to making parenting and motherhood so much easier.

My Connected Parenting framework is probably one of the top three most popular and in highest demand frameworks. It’s one that I get the most feedback on, that it’s the most helpful, that it’s the most, reviewed and taken over and over because it really takes complicated parenting and makes it simple and doable in a way that feels very connected. And I think we all want that for ourselves and our relationships with our kids. My approach, unsurprisingly, based on the name Connected Parenting, is grounded in connection first, and there’s a reason for that. It is because later lasts longer. So the relationship you build now with your kids is what you are living in later. And so the goal is not like this short term obedience, which you can get through, you know, controlling your kids and using punishment and reward systems and kinda fear-based parenting.

And then there’s a huge cost, right? Some of us were parented that way and we’re not that close with our parents anymore, and it’s because of that, right? The foundation of the relationship had so many cracks in it, there wasn’t that connection to stand on. So a long-term relationship is built on trust and safety and connection. And when you have that, then cooperation and having rules and leading gets so much easier. And so we always start with connection. So that’s kind of like a little bit of background into my parenting take. I use the tools from my professional coach training and it just works really well because, it, it makes parenting so much easier in like a concrete way, not in like a philosophical way. So with that in mind, I want to talk with you about just some random rules that I live by and by random I just mean non exhaustive.

There are certainly other rules that I live by, but I was thinking about like how I approach parenting and just the rules that I think guide me as a mom and as a parent and how that might be helpful for you to hear my approach. Given I have three kids and given, I’ve been coaching on this for years and it’s been really life changing for many, many, many of my clients, thousands of moms. And so I hope that this is helpful for you to get some insights into how you can make parenting easier and just have more confidence in yourself as a parent. So I want to start off with number one, which is mom and dad. So I’m co-parenting obviously with my husband Steve. We are in charge. That is a parenting rule I live by now. This is about leadership, not control.

So if I would have heard this many years ago, let’s say a couple decades ago maybe when I was in my early twenties or so, I would have thought, oh yeah, mom and dad are in charge meant control meant like what I say goes right. And that’s sort of like this fear-based parenting where there’s no space to even hear what your kids have to say. That’s not what I’m talking about. That’s not leadership. I love thinking of the examples of having a really awesome, excellent boss. A boss is still a leader, she’s still leading the team. However, she’s not just letting whatever any employee wants to have happen be what happens, but she is probably listening. And that’s the difference between leadership versus control. Control is like what I say goes, you must obey me. Versus leadership is like, I value your opinion, I care, I want to hear what you have to say.

And ultimately, as the leader of this family or of this company, this is what I’m deciding, and it may change down the road, okay? Leadership creates safety. This is why it’s really important. And I typically see the extremes, right? There’s like no leadership and it’s permissive and the kids are in control, which creates a lack of safety. Or the parents are parenting from, this like authoritarian place where it’s like whatever they say goes, and there’s no space for the kids to express themselves. They don’t feel safe. I just, I don’t actually mean like unsafe physically what I’m talking about is emotionally. So they feel like they’ll be shamed or or they’ll be told they’re bad or they’ll be sent away to like a timeout or to their rooms or something like that. That creates a lack of safety in terms of emotions.

Leadership is not like that. If you have ever worked for a boss who was micromanaging, who was very controlling, you probably didn’t have a great relationship with that boss versus a boss who is supportive and listens and respectful and also still very decisive. And so I start with this because it takes care of so much. My friends, we get so consumed by our kids’ challenges because we have unhelpful thoughts, unhelpful thoughts. Like, my kids shouldn’t be having this challenge. Shouldn’t my kid be over this challenge by now? I wish my kid didn’t have this challenge. This challenge shouldn’t take so long. This is something they got from me and now I feel guilty about it. Whatever, like your version of something’s going wrong, they shouldn’t have this challenge that is all cleaned up by leadership. Meaning you are leading your thoughts and your feelings because they do have that challenge and apparently they’re supposed to have that challenge and you can show up as a leader to help them and support them and guide them, but not because you need them to not have the challenge in order for you to feel better.

Okay? So you don’t want to be on a high, high and low, low rollercoaster of your kids’ challenges. That’s just a lack of leadership skills, which is not your fault, okay? This isn’t about blaming your kids’ challenges for how you’re feeling, it’s also not about blaming you. It is though about taking responsibility for the leadership skills that you can definitely most definitely easily acquire, right? It’s just leadership. So I love number one, Steve and I definitely take on the leadership roles of our family. We parent differently, but parent well together. I don’t have a problem with him parenting different from me. I don’t like teach him these tools or anything like that. And that isn’t a problem because my thoughts are really clean about it. Like, my kids are supposed to have two different parents and I allow space for that. And you know, I always want to hear what my kids have to say.

I value their opinion, I want them to want what they want and also I make space for them to have their feelings when they don’t get what they want. So, okay, I think enough with number one, that could literally be an entire course, probably should be, but I’ll just leave it at that. I take the position that my husband, Steve, and I are in charge. We’re making the decisions. We are an open book in terms of giving our reasoning and answering our kids’ questions. We listen and want to hear what they have to say. And obviously my kids are little, right? But it applies when they’re little, right? You know, infants were telling them to shh and be quiet and I really try not to do that so my kids feel heard. Now, of course, real life, we’re trying to teach them manners and behavior in public, but the language that I use to do that really matters.

And so, you know, it’s kind and courteous to use an inside voice to be quieter in public places versus, shh, be quiet. You’re too loud, you shouldn’t be talking like that, right? It’s a subtle shift in the language, but it really, really matters because it impacts the relationship that I have with my kids as well as like their, relationship with me and how safe they feel to have like a connected relationship. Alright, number two, I prioritize connection over one-to-one time. So obviously one-to-one time is great. And this is sort of what’s popularized in terms of a very prescriptive type of action you can take with your kids. Oftentimes it’s prescribed to get “better behavior”, right? Like if your kid is acting out, it’s not uncommon for someone to say, “oh, have you thought about increasing your one-to-one time? Or what’s that like, right?”

It’s not that that’s wrong or bad, I just think that it takes out the reasoning of why one-to-one time is important. And when you add that back in, sometimes you don’t need one-to-one time. And why that is really helpful for me is because I had three boys and three years. My kids are all under five years old right now, and I’m running my coaching practice, which is very successful and growing. I also am primary childcare and my husband works and most of the time, you know, four days a week, it’s out of the home, like he’s going into the office. And so for me, I don’t prioritize one to one time with each of my kids, but I do prioritize connection and really at the heart of why one-to-one time is prescribed in the first place. It’s so that you are connecting with that child.

Like that’s why one-to-one time is valuable. It’s because it gives you space and the other child’s space to connect. And so for me, I prioritize connection as like the heart of what one-to-one time is really about. And so my other kids might be around and I will intentionally take a moment and even more than a moment, it could be like five minutes of time where I’m just prioritizing like the emotional needs of one kid. This actually just happened earlier today where, one of my boys like threw something and I said, “I won’t let you throw that”. And picked him up and kinda took him away from like the water stuff we were playing with and I needed to check on the other boys. And then he was kinda sad about it and I thought like, I just want to spend some time with him and connect with him and like make sure that it’s clear.

This is just something we want to put some space between him and the thing that he threw, like the spatula thingy and not like a punishment or anything like that. Like I really wanted to connect with him. And so, I just spent time with him and he’s my like, physical touch kid. And so I’m just like holding him and hugging him and kind of being silly with him. He’s very silly. And so I’m like covering my eyes and playing with him a little bit and I, could you call that one-to-one time? I don’t think so because my other kids were there, but they were doing a little bit of independent play and I was just carving out that connection time. And so one-to-one time, fine, it’s great. It’s just not my,it’s not my tool that I prioritize because I do think that underlying one-to-one time, the importance of that is really rooted in connection.

So I’m prioritizing connecting with each of my kids every single day. And obviously I’m with them all day, every day anyways. And so of course, but a lot of times it’s either logistics, it’s cooking, it’s moving things along, it’s bath time, it’s routines, it’s cars, it’s going places, it’s doing things together, creating experiences. Maybe we’re out. You know, we go to some kids’ places and I’ll be there with all three and I am having fun, but mostly my energy is like watching them, right? Three kids and one mom. So I gotta keep my eye on them. And so my focus is, is,very dialed, right? Like I’m paying attention. So for me, even though yes, I’m spending a lot of time with my kids, there’s at least, you know, five to 10 minutes every single day with each child where I’m focusing on connection and that feels really good to me and I can like see a difference in them.

I love that. And so connection over one to one time. Number three is no punishment or shame-based parenting. So you might not know what this is, but there’s a high likelihood that you were parented this way potentially. It was very, very popular when I was a child and for a really long time, even before that. And this is not like a knock on our parents, I think parenting just changes and evolves and we learn more about emotions and attachment and a secure attachment. And as we do that, I think parenting changes. And so this isn’t like blaming how we were parented and trying to like get away from that. Instead, it’s just seeing that the result of using punishments and shame-based parenting model create disconnection in the relationship, teaches fear as part of a healthy relationship, teaches, I want to say like compliance over trust, obedience over trust.

When a child feels ashamed for doing something, they will internalize that and think of themselves as bad. Even if you never call them bad, you might call them bad. That is a more overt way of, of participating in like a shame-based parenting model. But it might not even be that you do that. It might be that you say like, I can’t believe you did that, that was so bad. Or, any sort of language that sounds like harsh and critical and punitive. And that does not mean that there aren’t boundaries and we’re not teaching respect. I think that when people hear this, they’re thinking like, oh, so you know, when my crazy kid is like trying to attack their brother with his shoe, I’m supposed to just be like, no, we’re nice to our our brothers. We don’t do that. That is not at all the case.

It’s it’s very firm. so for me it’s, I won’t let you use the shoe like that. I won’t let you hit your brother with a shoe in our house we are respectful. We don’t touch other people’s bodies like that. I’m going to remove the shoe. I love you, I love your brother and it’s my job to keep you all safe, right? So it’s, it’s firm. It’s a boundary that they want you to hold. And also it’s not from this place of punishment, right? Punishment is just, you know, if you don’t obey me, bad things happen to you. And you can parent very, very successfully with boundaries, with rules without ever using like punishment. And I think that punishment just comes up, which is so interesting, right? Like I think we’re going to get to a time where that’s not even like a thing, but I think it’s talked about so much because we were parented that way.

And so we just repeat how we were parented because it seems like okay, like that’s just what you do. I turned out fine. And so this is how you parent, right? You put kids in time out. Well, what we know now about attachment is that that’s actually going to have some, you know, consequences that we might not want to create as soon as we learn that that’s what’s happening, right? So if you do something that is like against a rule in our home, and then the consequence of that is I take things away as punishment or I put you in timeout as punishment. What I’m teaching you there is that when you do something bad that I don’t like against the rules, bad things happen to you. And so my love as a parent is conditional based on you performing good behavior instead of it’s my job to keep you safe.

There are rules that we live by in our home and if it’s too difficult for you to live by those rules, then I’m going to make sure that I create a safe space and either remove you, remove the object. You know, you can do that in a way that’s not punitive, okay? And so I’m not just going to let my kid continue to throw spatulas, I’m going to remove him with me and I’m going to go with him. It’s not like a punishment. Now you have to go over there ’cause you’re bad. It’s instead, okay, this is too difficult for you to navigate right now and your emotions are getting too big and I can see like the impulse control isn’t there okay? Which is totally fine. And so instead it’s okay, it’s my job as a leader to keep everyone safe, to remove the object and to, make sure that that attachment remains intact when we threaten and use punishment and take things away to get to compliance.

I think it’s just a skill gap. Honestly, I don’t think it’s, intended to teach a child that my love is conditional. I’ve never heard a parent say, I do that on purpose so that my kid knows I’m only going to love them when they have good behavior. No, of course. Or, just not taught the consequences. I don’t think you really have to deep dive into the attachment field, I think to really understand that unless you know you’re hearing it here on a podcast for sure that’s available as well. I think it’s more widespread now. But, you know, I say that because I don’t want you to add a layer of shame or if you have a spouse that parents in that way to all of a sudden be super concerned or worried about it in that way. Like these tools are for you to use to your benefit and to see, how you want to parent.

I find them to be extraordinarily helpful. I’m able to hold boundaries. I’m able to maintain the connection in the relationships that I have with my kids all without like punishment or shame-based parenting. Okay? Number four, I don’t try to convince my kids to want what they have to do. Okay? This is like kind of tricky wording, but let me break it down for you. It’s actually very, very helpful. So I don’t spend time trying to talk my kids into wanting to do things that they don’t want to do. This is life changing. My friends, when your kids don’t want to go to the park, when they don’t want to go outside, when they don’t want to go to grandma’s house, when they don’t want to go to school, that’s okay. Let them not want to go. Let them want whatever they want and still tell them, this is still what we’re doing.

That’s what I do. It’s life changing so you don’t have to want to go to grandma’s house and that’s what we’re doing. I get it. I don’t want to go places all the time, right? That’s just, it’s okay. It’s okay that you don’t want to go. I hear you and we’re going like, that creates such a stronger relationship because there’s so much validation. You’re saying like, I see you, I hear you. Versus when you say, oh, come on, grandma’s house is fun. You always enjoy it when you get there. It’s like they don’t feel seen when you’re doing that, right? You’re trying to talk them out of their experience. And so whenever my kids want something or don’t want something, I am just like all on board now I’m all on board with the want, but wanting is not the same as getting okay? And so that’s just like really helpful I find because my kids are always wanting things.

I’m like, it’s totally fine. Number five, repair, repair is part of the process. I am not a yeller anymore, but I definitely have yelled and I’ve had moments where I’ve snapped or felt tense. And what matters most, I think is an open, intentional, and honest repair. It might be immediately after, or it might be a little bit later in the day, but repair is about me taking responsibility for my actions, really. One mistake I see a lot with parents repairing is apologizing for the feeling. So I’m so sorry, I felt so angry and frustrated. You don’t want to do that, okay? Because then that sends the message that it’s bad or wrong to feel angry and frustrated and it’s not bad or wrong to feel angry and frustrated. In fact, your kids and you will continue to feel angry and frustrated for the rest of your life.

Of course, now it might not be a top emotion for you as you learn more of these tools, but it definitely will come up as part of the human experience. There’s no point in time where you’re just like, I’m done. I’m never going to feel angry or frustrated. So instead of apologizing for that, you want to just apologize for the actions. I’m sorry, mommy snapped and was really tense. I didn’t process my emotions well, and I’m really working on that and I just want you to know how sorry I am and I love you and it’s mommy’s job to do better next time. That’s it. You’re just taking ownership for how you showed up it. That really matters because it, it contributes to the story that your kids will tell internally, like the narrative that they have about just how emotionally safe they feel in their home, right?

And again, I’m not talking about like safety in terms of feeling unsafe for any sort of like abuse or anything. I’m talking about like nervous system safety. So public podcasts, I like to just make that clear, like nervous system safety is about, kids feeling comfortable to express themselves fully emotionally and not have to be performative. And, that is hard, right? Because we’re adults and we have feelings too, and that’s why we’re doing this work. And so we can do the job that we want to do as moms to manage our minds and our emotions so that we can hold boundaries, but also create this space where it’s safe for our kids to express themselves emotionally without us “losing it” right? Okay, next.

Number six. I love this one. Okay? I normalize mistakes and drop little failure narratives, let’s call it. So I will drop beliefs about mistakes and failures. So my kids internalize those like ideas. So I will do it for myself, I will do it for them. I really want to normalize like, oh yeah, failure is part of the process. Like even little things we’ll be playing outside and they’ll be, batting for t-ball or playing basketball or throwing the ball. And I will make a point to celebrate when they miss to celebrate the failure, right? It’s such an easy one, right? They see the hoop, they want to make the shot, they miss the shot. And I’m like, oh, awesome. Try again. It takes a lot of effort before you’re going to make the shot. That’s what trying’s all about. You’re going to have lots of failures, right? Talking about, what’s one mistake you made or one failure you made and like, just normalizing that because like for me, I’m such a high achiever and I love that about me and I’ve done a ton of work to unwind my happiness to from my achievement.

And so what I want to teach my kids, what they take from it is up to them. But what I want to teach my kids is like, yes, go after what you want, be high achieving in the thing that you want to do, and also don’t make mistakes or failures mean something negative about you. Now I, you know, want them to feel bummed about, I don’t know, whatever. Let’s say they try out for a team and they don’t make the team. I’m not saying don’t feel bummed about that. I’m saying it’s okay to feel bummed, but let’s not make it mean something about you. That’s awesome. You went out, you tried hard and you missed the mark. That’s okay, we’re going to try again. That’s part of it. Like, it’s okay to feel embarrassed versus oh, let’s keep trying again so you don’t feel embarrassed. Do you see the difference there?

It’s so subtle, but it’s so important. It’s like teaching your kids to feel comfortable taking up space, feeling embarrassed, making mistakes. That alone is going to remove so much of the shame that so many of us tend to have, especially as women, like just around other people, I think, right? Because we were all brought up with that good girl syndrome of being praised for being pleasing to others. And so I really try hard, that’s why I don’t use like the reward space systems. You can go back, I did a podcast about that. It continues to be like one of my most popular podcasts, I think again, because the default would be like, oh yeah, praise them and give them rewards for doing a good job. But the problem with that is like the inverse then becomes true that when they’re failing, when they’re making mistakes, when they’re not doing a “good job” then what?

Then they don’t get that praise. And so what their brain picks up on is, mom likes me and loves me more when I do a good job, and then they’re not going to feel safe to have that authentic relationship where they open up and they share with you when they’re having hardships, when they’re feeling down, when they miss the mark, when they made a mistake. And it is so hard to do because what do we want to do the first time our kid does an excellent job at something or makes the team or gets into the school or whatever. It’s like we want to brag about them and talk about it and make a big deal and we just gotta be careful with that, right? Because the inverse then becomes true. Like, are we ashamed? And, like withdrawing a little bit when the opposite happens, when they don’t get in, when they miss the mark, when because they’re going to, even if you have like straight A student, excellent, great friends, all the things like they’re going to have challenges.

It might not be right now in this season, but they will. And like how they can navigate challenges is a huge part of our job, I think as parents, right? It’s like not trying to avoid those challenges for them, but helping them to have the skills to navigate those challenges the best that we can. Okay, this one I sort of alluded to in number one, but it’s so important because I coach on it inside Mom On Purpose Membership all of the time. I don’t expect my husband to parent like me. This is huge, my friends, I just don’t think that thought is helpful. When I think that my husband is supposed to parent like me, then I have this whole rule book of how he should be. And when he’s not like that, then I get frustrated. And so I really just have the belief that my kids are supposed to have two parents because how do we know they do?

And those two parents are supposed to parent different from time to time. How do we know? Because they do. And it’s to my kids’ benefit to experience two different styles of parenting. How do we know they’re supposed to have that experience? Because they do. It just saves me a lot of marital frustration because otherwise I try to control and get Steve to parent exactly how I parent. He doesn’t want to parent how I parent. He wants to parent how he parents. So letting things go and just having the expectation that he’s supposed to be Steve and parent like Steve wants to parent is so, so helpful in my marriage. All right, number eight. I sort of already gave this one away, but it is its own one. I don’t tie rewards to outcome. You should go back and listen to that podcast. It’s a, it’s a really, really good one.

I hope it’s not one. It might be, you know what it is talking out loud here. It is one that I think that I taught inside the membership when the, some of the podcasts were only inside the membership. And so great segue into joining the membership. If you want that podcast, you really, really, should join and you’ll get it right away on the private podcast momonpurpose.com/coaching. I think that it’s one of the easiest tweaks you can make in your parenting that has such a long lasting impact on your relationship. I mean, think about having adult children and wanting to have a relationship with them and talk with them on the phone and communicate with them about your challenges and what they’re going through and just have a relationship that is built right now. And if you’re constantly using rewards for outcomes, I mean it starts from like, you know, potty training.

Give them gold stars, like all of that. You are reinforcing them only feeling comfortable telling you all of the good stuff because, you know, attachment is always going to trump authenticity. And so they’re going to feel most attach and more, most secure when they get positive feedback from you, which is when they’re getting good outcomes if you’re rewarding them for that. And so then the inverse becomes true that they feel like attachment is in jeopardy or, a little bit fractured or they’re at least going to have this sense of nervous system heightened awareness. Like, I don’t know what my mom would think about this. And so they’re going to either hide it or not want to share it. And that has nothing to do with not being honest. It has everything to do with attachment. And so just, noticing how much praise you’re giving and how you’re using rewards.

I like give a little bit of a praise, but, but not in a way that I naturally would without understanding attachment in these tools. I really try to, I try to do the inverse of it and reconnect and give affection and you know, I don’t know if I’d call it praise, but just really reinforce that attachment bond when it’s least deserved. It’s not hard to do, it’s just not intuitive, right? The, intuitive approach would be like, oh my gosh, you did a great job. Let’s give you praise. Okay? When a kid misses the mark doesn’t do a great job, makes a mistake, throws something, that is when we are just kind of least likely to reconnect and show warmth. And again, it’s a very simple flip and switch, but I think it pays off big time in terms of the quality of the relationship.

Then it’s not just about when I do a good job, I get all this love from my mom. It’s like my mom loves me and there’s nothing I need to do to get that love. That’s really what, what, I’m focused on there with that one. Okay, the last one is that I support my kids without fixing their feelings. And as much as I’ve been doing this work, this one is one that I really have to remind myself of in the moment, but it is so helpful. So when my kids are struggling, I support them. I love them, I’m with them in their feelings, but I don’t try to fix or solve the challenge or the feeling with them. If my son is feeling insecure about friends, I let him feel insecure and I normalize that it’s okay to feel insecure without jumping in to try to make it better or tell him what to do or send the message that he shouldn’t feel insecure and to just try this or that next time.

I think that trying to fix it sends the message that the feeling is wrong and that they should be different. And I get it because we don’t want to see our kids have challenges with school or with friends or with anything. And when we try to fix it constantly, we are sending the message that something is wrong and that’s what creates shame versus, oh no, this is just a normal part of the human experience. Of course you’re having this challenge and again, this isn’t even something I would say, it’s just in my energy. It’s like, yeah, this is part of it, right? It’s okay to feel this way. Mommy feels this way too. It’s totally fine and normal. Okay? And just like increasing that comfortability in their experience with whatever they’re going through versus trying to fix a feeling. So I’ll be with my kids in their feelings and giving them emotional space to, to feel them so they don’t feel so alone in their feelings.

Okay? That is it for the rules that I try to live by, that I believe so deeply in hills, I will die on, as they like to say on social media. They are really about being intentional with how you show up in your relationship with your kids. Because I do think that so much of parenting is about leadership and connection. And when you understand that, I think it’s been my experience that parenting just feels, I don’t know, calmer, lighter, more fun, more grounded, right? Because you don’t need your kids to perform in a certain way in order to feel like you’re doing a good enough job. Like when my kid is having a challenge, I don’t feel like I’m failing as a mom, like dead serious. And, and this is something I coach on so much and that is to my kids’ benefit. Like it is beneficial for them for me to feel confident and connected to them and to hold boundaries of course.

But when I feel like I’m failing because of a struggle they’re having, I turned their struggle into something about me. We don’t even realize we’re doing that right because it’s such a natural,reaction. But it’s really just a cognitive distortion. Your primitive brain just making it about you. And when you realize that you almost just instantly never do it again, again, that’s for your benefit. It’s so much easier to parent and it’s for their benefit too because you are able to better help them navigate the challenge and support them through it lovingly with confidence when you have cleaned up your mindset, your thoughts and your feelings. Alright, my beautiful friends, I love this one so much. I hope you did it too. If anything resonates with you, you know where to find me over at mom.onpurpose, on Instagram. If you would love to leave me a review, it would mean so much to me. I read them, I care about them and it helps get these messages out to more moms. And with that, I will talk with you next week. Take care.