Episode 105= Clean Parenting
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You are listening to episode 105 of the peaceful mind podcast.
Welcome to the peaceful mind podcast, a place for creating the peace of mind. You need to be the best mom you are created by God to be. If you wanna bring more balance, more joy and more peace to your motherhood, this is the place for you. I'm your host certified life coach at Catholic mom, Danielle Thienel. In the name of the father of the son and of the holy spirit.
Let's get started.
Hi everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today, I'm gonna be diving into the subject of what we call clean parenting. And before I explain what this means, I just wanna let you know that right now, when this episode airs, I am a few days of taking not one, but two of my daughters to drop them off at college.
So it is probably no surprise that I am very emotional. That's. And when I'm talking about parenting today, it really the last few weeks, well, probably months now that I know that this day has been coming, I have just been thinking about my parenting a lot because right when you're kind of sending your children off in the world is when you start asking yourself, have I taught them everything they need to know?
And the answer that I keep coming back to is. Even if my brain tells me that there's always more, or you could have done a better job here. I know that I can't stop time and that I just parented him. I parented them the way I was supposed to up until up until right now in this moment. And so when I don't argue.
Where I am in space and time and how old my kids are and how I can't turn back the clock and that I just did as best I could with what I knew at the moment. I get a lot of peace, but I did just wanna give you the heads up as I talk about parenting and then maybe even, um, You know, the next week's podcast, what I have in store for you will also have me just kind of being a little bit nostalgic because I'm a mom who is having two of her babies, uh, go off to college right now.
So it's just a little hint into where I am in life right now. And let's now talk about your parenting on parenting in general. Cuz I wanna just start out by saying. being a parent is hard, but the tools that I give you on this podcast and that I have been taught through life coaching and that I teach as many mamas as will listen to me the tools that I have, it makes it a little bit more easy for us.
And I hope when you hear what I have to say on today's episode, that this will make your parenting a little bit easier too. Okay. What I wanna talk about is clean parenting. Before we talk about clean parenting. Let me just tell you that this term clean came from. I believe I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I believe it was a Martha Beck term.
She is, uh, also a life coach and it's this concept of clean and dirty pain is how she talks about it. And really it's just that in this life, we will feel emotions. We. Feel suffering and pain, but there are two different kinds that she names clean and dirty. And the clean type of pain is the pain that we have as human beings, living this earthly human life.
And that when we feel it, it is actually a healing pain. Right. So if someone has passed away and we are grieving, then this is a clean pain because it eventually, as you move and process through grief, you will heal yourself. It's also when the emotion is helpful to you and it's a necessary pain for us.
Again, in human life, we will run into challenges and issues and we will have to deal with some pain that's necessary to go through. And again, the example of like losing a family member or something it's just necessary, cuz we all are going to have to deal with that type of pain at one time or another.
Then there's the term dirty pain. And this is used to describe the emotions that we feel that actually keep us stuck and they're not healing at all. They're not cleansing to us. And it keeps us in that story that we just. Think things over and over again, and it keeps us stuck in that story. We don't let go of it.
And the pain we have just keeps returning. It keeps coming. When we have clean pain, it will have us processing and moving through the pain and eventually come out of the other side. And you are a better person because of it. When you find yourself in dirty pain, where you are just kind of stuck and in circles and just kind of intensifying this pain and not letting it go, then that will have you.
Feeling bitter. And so we wanna take this concept of clean pain and dirty pain, and we wanna apply it to our parenting because we are all after clean parenting for our kids. We, and what that means is we are showing up as the parent that we want to in the way that we want to getting the results that we want to, not from the kids.
But again, it's about us. And our parenting. So if you're coming from a clean place and the definition as we're gonna go through it today, it means that you are being the actions that you are taking the parenting actions, how you show up for your children is coming from a positive place. And it means that the thoughts and feelings that you have are driving your parenting action.
Giving you the results of you showing up as the parent, you want to be the opposite is therefore true. If you are not showing up as the parent that you want to, if you are not following through acting the way you wanna act for your kids, then all that means is that. You have thoughts and feelings that are driving this type of action that you don't want.
And so that's where you want to focus and tweak and change and redirect your brain is to where, how could I think about this? Differently. How do I wanna feel about this certain situation? So let's take this, all this concept of a clean and dirty parenting so that we can focus on how to show up with clean parenting with an example.
So let's take the example that your child has trouble making friends, imagine this scenario and imagine how you will show up in this situation. . If you were coming from a clean parenting mindset, you would see this as not a problem you would, of course, maybe be sad because your child is sad and maybe your be disappointed as well, but it would be coming from thoughts like, oh, I know how it felt to not have friends.
So I'm sad for him because I remember how sad that made me feel. Or you could be disappointed because maybe you have this ideal of having lots of, you know, friends over or. Kids attend your birthday party, the birthday parties. And so maybe you're disappointed if your child doesn't have any friends that would come to the party, but you are still just kind of open and willing to talk with your child about it and, and realize that it's not a problem, but that maybe together you talk through and see how that you can support, support them the best way.
Right. So it's okay to be sad and disappointed. Yourself, but you still can be the parent that you want to be and take the actions for your child to help them to get a result that you want. Okay. And then the exam, this using the same example, and if we're not coming from a clean place, we're coming from a dirty place, then you have thoughts and feelings that are driving the actions that are, for instance, like this isn't fair.
This isn't right. Something's gone wrong here. What will other people think of my child? Or you'll worry. You'll worry about what hi, the future means for your child without having any friends. This, my friends is not clean parenting. You can see that if you are believing, it's not fair and that it isn't right then how the actions you take to parent your child will be from a whole different place from.
Worry, you will be looking at how it's gone wrong and it's a problem. And you will probably feel a little bit, um, controlling and manipulative. Right. And you will just say like, we've gotta change this and that this isn't going to turn out well for my child. And so then you just take this kind of hurried desperate.
As opposed to that clean place where that you can be open and willing and curious to take kind of charge of how you want to parent on purpose. So what's the answer to this, right. Okay. We've realized that it really is important that how you feel and what you're thinking will drive how you show up as a parent.
And we wanna show up in a clean way. What do we do? To learn how to do that more often than not, of course, you know, we're not gonna be perfect at coming from a clean place all the time. But if you have these three steps, then you will be able more often than not to show up from a clean place. So the first one.
Is to coach yourself. The second one is to know what to do when your child feels bad. And the third one has to do with you as a leader in the family. So let's dive into the first one, coaching yourself. Let's say your child has lied, or you found out that they skipped school and you want to come from a clean parenting place when you get this news.
Coaching yourself would entail something like this. Take all of your thoughts about what's going on with your child and get them out of your head and put them on paper, realize what you're thinking and connect what you're feeling about what your child is going through or what they've done. And I want you to be able to see.
Is really the facts of what was going on with your child and what is the story and the drama and the added pain that your brain is offering you about what's gonna happen. Right. So if you find out that your child skips school, Then you're gonna think, okay, they're gonna get expelled and then, well, they'll fail out, then they'll never graduate.
And then they'll never get into college. And then, you know, just see your brain goes on and on. Right. And you may have lots of thoughts about it. You might say something about how that, that is so, um, disrespectful and they lied to me about it. And that this is something that really constitutes huge consequences and all of that may be true for you.
Right. We all get to parent our own ways for our own families. But in that situation, what I want you to see is that it can go two ways. Once you have realized that you have these certain thoughts and feelings about it, then you want to decide. Is that how I want to show up for my child in this situation?
Do I want to be angry? Do I want to be harsh? Do I want to lay down a big consequence? You know, it's like you just take a moment now to kind of see how it would play out. If you were feeling. These feelings that you have right now, is it coming from a place where you are angry? Is it coming for a place where you are just kind of closed off?
Is it coming from a place of resentment or are you coming from a place of. Authority over your thoughts and feelings that you can then decide that you wanna come from a place of commitment, maybe determination, maybe openness, willingness, loving there's a whole list of really emotions. That would be really helpful.
And healing for you and your child. And then there is some that could really be detrimental or at least just something that would not give you the results you want. And have you end up not being that parent that you want to be. So you always first just want to coach yourself. Sometimes we need to separate ourself from what's going on and think a.
Yeah, we need, and I love to recommend to get it out on paper, but if at all, you can pause before you go into your anger or frustration. Or however it is that you for yourself decide is not the way that you want a parent. And I mentioned, mentioned controlling and manipulating earlier, and that is, I always know that you're not in a clean place if you're coming from that type of emotion.
But if you can pause and say, how do I want to parent. In this situation, that in itself is key because if you can gain authority over yourself and then choose consciously how you wanna show up for your child, this is clean parenting. So the second way to look at clean parenting is when you see yourself talking to your child through any kind of problem or.
Right. When they themselves are in a negative emotional state, we want to not talk them out of it. Of course we know when someone, when our child is crying, that we don't wanna say stop crying. Baby's crying. You're not a baby anymore. Or don't worry about it. Those kids don't know any better. You, you're an awesome person and it's their loss.
They shouldn't be acting that way, but the truth is at the moment your child does feel and think those things and that's okay. So. If we are coming from a clean parenting place, we want to realize that we want to get curious with our child and really find out what they are thinking and feeling and agree.
Say like, yeah, I know. I would feel sad too. If someone said they didn't wanna be my friend. And so then it shows them that there's nothing wrong with them for feeling bad. And then if you are in a place where you yourself know how to process your emotions, and even as an adult and a certified coach, I'm still always working on this.
And I've talked about it on previous episodes about how to actually feel and allow your feelings. But this is where we want to help our child. If we know this process, which is just to have them name it, name what they're feeling. And just find out what they are thinking. That's creating this feeling and just talking it out, relaxing into it and saying, I get it.
I know it just welcoming it to them in itself will help them feel better. And so. You're clean parenting this step two, to know that when your child feels bad, we want to help them just sit with that feeling and own it for a while. And this in itself will have it pass. And the last thing I wanna mention about clean parenting has to do with you as being the leader.
And what I want to give as an analogy is think of someone in a leadership position, say a manager, In the corporate world, right? What they do for their employees is they set expectations and they manage their own expectations and they set boundaries and they have clear communication to their employees.
When we are clean parenting, we follow this same sort of leadership role in our own families. So if we have boundaries as a parent, we then uphold those boundaries. When we run into kind of problems or issues with our children or that we find that we really have to step in and it's time to, you know, really parent them and.
We want to clearly communicate, right? Those, the setting of expectations. And, and we have to manage our own and the boundaries. We want to be known by our child and just know that when we are clean parenting, our child, our children are going to test us. They're going to overstep these boundaries, but. If you've set them and you know them and you've clearly communicate them.
Then this is when you get to take action, upholding them. And if you are taking the action that you said you would, when you set these expectations and set these boundaries, then you are coming from a very clean place. Now, as I mentioned at the top of the episode, I've been doing a lot of reflecting of the last 18 years I've had with my daughters before they go off to school.
And when I think about the information that I gave you today about these three steps in order to show up as a clean parent, where you coach yourself, meaning you. You get your own thoughts and feelings into a, in a place that you want to so that you can take action from those feelings and show up as the parent you want to.
And when you recognize that your child feels bad, you don't talk them out of it, you help process it. And then last, where you show up where you clearly commuted. Clearly communicated expectations and set and upheld boundaries. I'll say that I missed the mark. A lot of times I did, I didn't come to this information and know even how to coach myself or that I needed to help my child process their emotions until I found coaching.
And I found these tools and concepts. I wasn't a hundred percent, but as soon as I did learn them in these last few years, I have seen a dramatic difference in the relationship with my children and just like how accomplished and proud I am as a parent. And knowing that up until I learned this it's okay.
I didn't know any differently, but now that you've been exposed to this podcast, I want you to know that there is a way to help you navigate through this most difficult vocation that we've been given an important one. And I welcome you to evaluate your parenting and just notice if you think that you've been coming from a clean place or not.
And if you can apply one of these three steps, Then start to like make little tweaks and see the results and see if you like. I'd love to hear how this concept of clean parenting landed with you. So I wanna invite you to email me at [email protected] and send me your comments and questions, especially if you need some more clarification.
And as always, you can always sign up for a free Peace strategy call with me, bring what you are struggling with showing up as a clean parenting. If, if you're struggling with something and we will tackle it right there on the call, I wanna thank you for showing up and listening. And please, , as I am a mom about to send two of my sweet babies off to school, I would love your prayers for it is an emotional time.
But thank goodness. I have these tools that will help me through it. And I am so excited for their futures and all that is, ahead for them. And I also can't wait for what's ahead of you next week on the peaceful mind podcast. But until then, I wish you so much peace and love, and I will talk to you again soon.
Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of the peaceful mind podcast. Are you ready to take everything? I teach you here and put it to work for your own life. To really learn how to have peace of mind, no matter what is happening around you. If so, I'd love to have you as a client, as your coach. This is where you'll get personal and focus time on your own mind using life coaching tools, concepts, and proven life, transforming wisdom all through a faith-filled lens to learn more about how we can work together.
Come on over to DanielleThienel.com. There you'll see how to sign up for a free coaching consult and learn how to get started until next time please be with
you always.
