Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to hear a little about you. Inspire us with your backstory! What are some lessons you would share with your younger self if you had the opportunity?
I think one of the biggest lessons I would impart to my younger self would be to let go of the standards of perfection that I unconsciously was holding or that were placed on me. I’ve realized as I’ve dug deep into emotional healing that a lot of the pressure that I feel comes from internalized beliefs of what “perfection” should look like. It hasn’t been until more recently that I’ve been able to break down some of these unhealthy standards that have driven me all my life and been able to realize that not only are they unattainable, but they’re not what I want for my life; or my kids. Once I was able to recognize that a lot of the criteria I was holding myself to were not actually aligned with my values or desires I was able to let them go and live in true freedom. I wish I could have walked my younger self through this realization earlier so that I could have been living to my fullest potential sooner rather than being weighed down by external pressures of “achievement.”
None of us are able to experience success without support along the way. Is there a particular person for whom you are grateful because of the support he/ she gave you to get where you are today? Can you share that story and why you are grateful for that person?
Two people specifically come to mind; my sister and my husband.
My younger sister Kaitlyn is the one who is always there for me and the giddy participant on the other end of my late-night phone calls to dish on my exciting news. She always there to encourage me and has supported me through some very tough seasons in my life; she was the voice whispering (and okay, sometimes yelling) in my ear; “Keep going! Don’t give up! You can do this!” Her friendship and love has meant the world to me.
And my husband, well, where would I be without him? He was the first boy I fell in love with at 12 years old. We got married when I was 18 and have been building our life together ever since. He has absolutely been unwaveringly supportive of me and has seen the potential in me even when I couldn’t. He’s willing to let me dream and pursue those dreams and also the more rational voice of reason that helps keep me centered and grounded. He has been crucial in helping me to become who I am today and I know I would not the woman or mother that I am without him; much less a successful entrepreneur. He has truly been my rock and the love of my life and am I grateful to him.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think it might help people?
Yes! As part of my larger goal to be able to support parents through their journey of parenthood, I’ve begun creating small digital courses as part of the Inspired Parenting community. This platform will offer a support network for parents, scientifically proven parenting methods, emotional transformation, and more. I am deeply passionate about getting parents the help they need to thrive in their daily life and be the best version of a parent -and individual- they can be, so I see this as an exciting step towards that goal.
I’ve just recently released my first 30 course, the Emotional Transformation Experience which helps walk parents through their feelings of guilt, resentment, overwhelm, and anger. We are diving deep into each emotion to find the root cause in their individual life and work to understand it and release it. It has been such an amazing experience for me and the parents I’m coaching and I look forward to many more opportunities to serve parents.
Ok, thank you. Let’s talk about raising emotionally and mentally healthy children. In the Western world, humans typically have their physical needs met. But what has led to the tremendous downgrade in emotional and mental health that we are seeing today, especially for children? What is lacking in the mental health arena? Why are so many of our children struggling today?
I could not agree with this more; yes, you’re right we’re having our physical needs met, but are our deeper, subconscious needs being met? We a materialistic society. Which is leading to less and less true connection with each other on a human level; so our basic phycological needs are not being fulfilled or nurtured which leads to disconnect and angst. As adults we’re a little bit more able to cope with this, but children? They’re brains are not developed to the point yet of being able to understand that they feel isolated, lonely, angry, etc; so how can they cope?
Which brings me to answering your next question; I feel one of the best things we can do for our children as parents is to meet their 3 basic phycological needs and teach them emotional regulation. Children should be taught from a young age how to recognize, understand, and work through their emotions. Rather than being left with big feelings to try and sort out all on their own or told “you’re fine, it’s no big deal”, we as parents should be coaching them through their emotions. When we stifle or downplay what they’re going through (yes, even toddler meltdowns over not getting ice cream for breakfast), rather than empathizing and helping guide them through the process their emotions continue to build inside of them until they come out in “challenging” behaviors. I think we have done our children a disservice by not being more open with emotions and not teaching them emotional regulation.
How does technology play into the equation of mental and emotional well-being? What about social media?
Technology and social media are fake “uppers”. The dopamine hit we receive after getting a like on a post or winning a new video game level is addictive, but it is short lived. It’s also a terrible substitute for real human connection. I think there methods of communicating or enjoyment are deceptive because they feel like they’re filling our needs in some way when truly they are depleting us and robbing us of life giving interactions with those around us. This is true for both adults and children. Social media and technology keeps us distracted and disconnected from those we love while filling us with a false sense of connection. And with children being given access to phones, social media apps, or gaming devices and TV at younger and younger ages it no surprise we’re creating a culture that is dependent on these shallow replacements.
Obviously, this is a huge issue, and it seems to be growing. What are some small, practical tips, or tweaks, that parents and educators can easily implement to help their children who are struggling?
My first suggestion would be to always meet a child with empathy; especially when they are struggling with big emotions. Letting them know that you understand what they are going through and want to support them through it can be crucial in helping them to feel safe to discuss little things, which can lead to discussions about larger things in the future. What is most important is letting our kids know that we are a support system for them and won’t judge them, no matter what feelings or problem they present us with.
One of the main tweaks that I have brought into my own home is simply working on my language. When one of my children comes to me with a problem, no matter how “small” it is, I try to remember that this is big, painful, and real to them. So I always work to get down on their level and meet them where they’re at by empathizing and asking questions. If, let’s say, they are crying because they just scraped their knee after falling off their bike, I will hug them while they cry, and as they begin to calm down I start with empathy;
“I can tell that you’re really upset and it looks like you scraped your knee, that hurt didn’t it?” From there we move through some questions to help them process their emotions and understand and recognize what they’re feeling in your body. I may ask something like; “Where you scared when you fell of your bike? Do you feel sad right now? Sometimes when we cry it means that we are sad or in pain.”
The more that I have been able to meet my child with empathy and understanding and help support them right where they’re at, the deeper connection we’ve been able to develop and the more willing they are to come to me with bigger, and harder emotions. I’ve realized that that customary “oh you’re fine, stop crying it’s okay,” that is often employed by well-meaning parents teaches children from a very young age to stifle and be ashamed of their feelings.
We can begin to fix this by shifting our language to welcome expression of feelings and allow room to process and work through them. Even this simple beginning could drastically change our relationship with our children as they grow in understanding and can recognize that we are a safe place for them; no matter what they’re feeling.
In your professional opinion, what are certain triggers or signs that the state of a child’s mental and emotional health is not at its best? What is the best way to be proactive and address these signs from the get-go?
Oh wow! Well this is a loaded question and before I dive in too much, I would like to say that because each child is different there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Children will exhibit a wide variety of behaviors depending on their personality, their parent’s parenting styles, the atmosphere of the home, etc. So the most important thing we can do as a parent is try to always have on-going open and healthy dialogue with our children around emptions and mental health. The more that we normalize these topics, the more our children will feel safe talking to us about them.
I believe almost any “negative” behavior could be classified as a sign that our child is struggling with something. The negative behaviors that we see most often are a sign that something on the inside isn’t right and it’s our child’s cry for help or attention. Because their brain is not fully developed yet, they don’t think in terms of “I feel disconnected from my parents right now and would really like to hug them.” Instead, their disconnection may come in forms of aggressive behaviors, stone walling, refusing to cooperate etc. Why? Because all of these “negative” behaviors often get them the attention they’re seeking.
One of the best ways that we can be proactive is by working on our own mental and emotional health and demonstrating healthy emotional regulation. We can do this simply by investing in ourselves, taking time to feel and process emotions. Opening up conversations with our children about our emotional state and helping them to understand that there are no “bad” feelings; it’s what we choose to do with our feelings or emotions that can make them mad (i.e. hitting when we’re angry).
A very simple but profoundly effective technique we use at Inspired Parenting is called “Making Your Thoughts Visible”. So much of our internal process happens without our children ever being able to understand why we’re making the decisions we are. You can help them understand healthy emotional regulation simply by modeling the steps for them and speaking out loud to explain your choices and actions. “Mommy is feeling angry right now, I don’t want to yell, so I’m going to take some time to breathe deeply and calm down before I address what just happened.”
Do you think we can do a better job of educating our children about their emotional and mental health? What would that look like?
Absolutely! I think emotions are still a very “taboo” topic even though we love to throw around phrases like being “triggered” or “mental health”. It’s easy to turn these into buzz words and make ourselves feel like we’re learning, when really what we should be doing is practicing mental health and emotional regulation.
I already shared a little bit about this in the paragraphs above, but really it comes down to being willing to allow space for feelings, having open dialogue in your home, heling your child to understand that there are no “bad” feelings, teaching them techniques like “box breathing” to help regulate, enriching their emotional vocabulary through feelings charts or wheels, and above all doing the work yourself to be emotionally and mentally healthy.
We like to throw out the old “do as I say, not as I do” adage instead of doing the work to be a healthy role model for our children. But truly, does anyone follow someone’s advice if their actions don’t line up? No. Because actions speak louder than words and we are 100 times more likely to follow our parent’s behaviors that we saw demonstrated than all the things they preached at us but didn’t model. So truly change in our homes will start with us as the parent, choosing to be brave and facing our own emotions and mental health first.
Can you share with our readers your “5 things parents can do to raise children who are emotionally and mentally healthy”?
- Be their Role Model; first work on yourself, heal yourself, learn emotional regulation, demonstrate it. This is the most important thing you can do.
- Make Your Thinking “Visible”; Talk through your emotional process with your kids. Help them to see that emotions are okay, it’s okay to feel, it’s okay to process and talk about it. Create an atmosphere that is feelings friendly.
- Support Them During Big Emotions; especially when our children are young it is important to help them regulate since they can’t do it themselves and support them when they’re having big feelings. This can come in the form of asking how they feel certain emotions in their body so they can recognize what’s going on and discussing what happened to cause them to feel that way.
- Enrich their Emotional Vocabulary; help put names to what they’re feeling. Once they’re calmed down a bit, try to help them find language to describe what happened in their body and label the feeling. Go beyond just “happy, sad, angry” etc and help them deepen their understanding of the wide variety of emotions and their complexities. (Examples, frustrated, anxious, scared, left out, ignored, etc)
- Limit Screen Time and Access to Social Media; this is especially important when our children are young and developing emotionally and mentally. They are not mature enough to understand the complexities of social media apps, comments, binging, etc. So the more that we allow them to veg out and numb their feelings through these unhealthy coping mechanisms the more they will become reliant on them.
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources you recommend to our audience reading this interview?
My number one favorite resource is the Inspired Parenting community; it’s a place that you can learn all about parenting; the ins-and-outs from how a child’s brain works, to emotional regulation, to parenting techniques etc. You get to work with trained parenting professionals, do live coaching sessions, and learn through our curriculum at your own pace. I truly owe the amazing changes in our household to Inspired Parenting and their proven methods; I cannot more highly recommend them to any parent who wants to raise healthy, competent children, and not lose their mind while doing it lol
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
It would absolutely and unequivocally be getting parents the help and training they need to be the best parent they can be and raise healthy children. I think there is a bit of a stigma around getting “help” as a parent; like no one needs “training” to raise children right? Wrong. How many of us intuitively know how to handle a toddler melting down? Or help a 5-year-old through and emotional outburst? Or the best technique to raise children with healthy self-esteem? We don’t, because it’s not a natural or instinctual thing. Actually a lot of parenting is completely opposite of our reactions and when we understand and get training in this area parenting can be so much easier and we can raise healthier kids.
I mean if you think about it we get more training and certification to drive a car than to parent a human being; that’s kind of sobering right? My goal right now on social media is to remove the stigma around parents getting training to be the best parent they can be.
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
You can find me on just about any social media platform as HonestlyMommy; Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, you name it, I’m there! My goal on social media is to support parents wherever they are at in their parenting journey though humor, empathy, and proven parenting strategies.
You also can find me at InspiredParenting.com where I continue the important work of helping to coach and mentor parents to finding real, lasting solutions for their home. I often put on live workshops and am currently running a month long intensive to help parents find freedom from their deeper emotions and struggles.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.