Parenting Styles Explained: What Actually Matters (and What Doesn’t) with Elaine from Impact Parents | Ep. 123

0:00You cannot problem solve from a triggered state. your brain is not available for problem solving. It has been hijacked by the amygdala. The tiger is at the door. And until you downregulate and realize there's no tiger there, you actually can't problem solve. Hi, friend. It's Layla, your official mom friend, welcoming you to another episode of the Learning to Mom podcast. Here we discuss all things motherhood so you can be empowered and educated without feeling overwhelmed. Each expert guest comes with their own perspective and background, so please note that the content presented in this podcast is designed for general educational purposes only and is not a substitute for personalized professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

0:39You're going to get a lot out of this week's episode, so let's get right into it. Hi, Elaine. Welcome to the Learning to Mom podcast. Thank you. I'm super excited to be here. I'm very grateful that you said yes and that you're here today. And as always, we have a lot to cover today, all about parenting styles, which is your bread and butter. So before we get into all that, do you mind just telling us a little bit about yourself and also what all you do, which I know is so much. I would love to just have some insight there. I appreciate it. What do I do? I help parents stay sane when they're raising complex kids.

1:21When I say complex kids, I typically work with parents of all kinds of kids, but a lot of times parents find me when their kids are struggling with life or learning or behavior or social skills or emotional issues or school issues or that kind of thing. And when I was a mom of young kids, I was really struggling with kids who were having a hard time and I couldn't get the support I needed. And there was a lot of support for them and not a lot for me. And so the long story short is I became a coach, somebody encouraged me to do it. And I was going to, I did it kind of as a stopgap measure and I fell in love.

1:55It was like, I found my calling. And so the secret to what I do is I teach coaching skills to parents and help parents shift perspectives and find a different way of being in relationship with their kids, find a different way of communicating with their kids in a way that's really empowering for their kids and really strength-based. And it transformed my life and my family. And now we bring it to hundreds of thousands of parents around the world. Awesome. Well, when we talk about parenting styles today, Elaine, why don't we just start with a very broad, like, what are the parenting styles and why does this conversation matter?

2:34Why is this important? So if you look at the textbooks, the parenting styles, right, are authoritative and authoritarian and collaborative, like there's psychology language for it. If you look at real lived experience, parenting styles may be more like frustration, shame, overwhelm, guilt, anxious, fear, and confused. We have some parenting avatars that we started with about 15 years ago, and there's Lost Lois, Maxed Out Maxine, Supermom Sue. I mean, what's really happening is how we show up as a parent. And it doesn't really matter what style we think we're using or want to use. Nowadays, there's attachment parenting and there's gentle parenting.

3:19Like, they're all these words. But the real truth is that the parenting style is about what's my default? How do I show up? And then how do I shift it to actually be the parent my kid needs me to be? And typically how we show up naturally is probably not exactly what our kids need. And we need to do some work on ourselves to show up in the way our kids need. Does that make sense? Absolutely. How do you go about figuring that out if you really have not taken the time to do that yet? Like for me, it's about seeing what's possible instead of what's not possible. And I think a lot of times we come into this transformation of our life.

4:00And parenting is arguably the biggest transformation of our life, way more than getting married or career or anything else. and there's a way in which it defines us whether we want it to or not and so it takes a little time to get our head around it and the more conscious we can be about it whether like i used to have a play group in the early days when i had little babies like so whether it's a group of other moms who are going through it or or tuning in and tapping into a community and listening to the podcast like this and it's taking the pauses those little moments because we don't have big pauses as young moms.

4:38We have little pauses, right? So it's taking the pauses to be intentional and thoughtful about what we're doing, but to begin to ask ourselves, what's important to me about it? I know what's important to my mom about it, or to my sister-in-law, or to my neighbor, but what's important to me? So I had a complicated first child who had a lot of medical issues. And so at some point, I had to stop living everybody else's expectations so I could meet the needs of this kid, right? Because they weren't in my house 24-7 and they didn't know what I was dealing with. So I had to tap into my values and what was important to me and then bring that to the kid instead of everybody else's expectations.

5:24But that takes pausing, that takes consciousness, it takes support, right? Depends on what your dynamic is, but I think it's a natural part of maturing as a parent. And we do seriously mature into parenting. And I think that a lot of us would really do it better when we have some support group, whether it's a community of women friends and other moms or the other moms at preschool when your kids get there, which can be really amazing. Whatever it is, it's tapping in to what connects to each other as moms. Because the rest of the world is all about community or work or church or synagogue or like, I mean, all the other communities are really important and really valuable and we're all involved with all of them.

6:14But there's this community of motherhood that nobody really talks about a lot. That's why I was so delighted to be on this podcast, Because you're talking about something that is very often marginalized, very often undervalued, less respected in society than I think it needs to be. And it's the community of moms, particularly those who have the ability to stay at home for some period, who keep our culture going. They're the ones that show up, that bring the food when someone's sick and show up at the funerals. And like, it's the community of moms that is the fabric of society and community. And yet, as a stay at home mom, or as a mom of little kids, we begin to feel like we're losing our minds.

7:02We feel like I used to be an intelligent, capable person. And now I'm changing diapers. Like, it's really, it does a mind trick on us as moms, I think, a lot of us. And so we need each other to remind each other how important this is because it's really important. No, I think you're onto something, I think, too, that society tells us, like, your work as a mom isn't as important. You changing a diaper is not as important. Or you bringing a meal over to your neighbor across the street whose mom is sick and hasn't been home all week because she's been at the hospital and hospice visiting her. you bring them on with me on society tells us like well really what's more important is you running that meeting at 12 o 'clock but yeah which is just the lie like it really is it's just i think that we are telling women that like your work as a mom is less important but to your point like really we're who keeps society going we do yeah and it's more important than anything.

8:07And that's not, I don't by any means suggest that women shouldn't work outside the home. And I always say that the greatest gift I gave my kids was going back to work because making them my job was also not healthy, right? Like there's this dance that we're always in between giving without giving ourselves away, being present to them and attending to their needs, but not hovering or micromanaging. Like good parenting is a really conscious process and it takes a lot of self-management and a lot of self-regulation and you got to forgive yourself for the mistakes you're going to make because you're going to make them, right?

8:46I do a lot of work these days actually with parents of older teens and young adults. And one of the things we talk about a lot that I think if parents could learn it earlier, the sooner we could learn it, the better, right? Is we've got to get ourselves out of the way so that we can be present to them and their needs. And that doesn't mean we discard ourselves. That doesn't mean we disregard ourselves. We don't push ourselves down or out. But we have to manage our stuff and we have to find the supports we need to manage our stuff because stuff comes up when you're parenting, right? We have to have other women and moms or help therapists or coaches or whatever we talk to to process it when we're scared or angry or resentful or avoidant or fearful or whatever the feeling is.

9:37We have to deal with those feelings and let them do their work with us so that when we're showing up for our kids, it's about them, not about us. And we're not getting angry at them so that they can calm us down. Or we're not demanding of them so that we can live vicariously through them. Like, we've got to get ourselves out of the way because, like, from as young as the kids of the parents who are listening to this, right? Like, right now we're talking to one-year-old, parents of one-year-olds. Like, it's this separate autonomous human being who's got this amazing journey in front of them. And our job is to help them watch and support that journey as it unfolds.

10:18And so it's got to be their journey, not ours. And that takes some work as a parent to allow ourselves to really let it be their journey. Yeah. Let's quickly get real for a second, friend. Parenting can feel isolating. You're making big decisions every day. And sometimes it's hard to know if you're on the right track. That's why I love the Mom Club. It's not only where you get access to more content, but it's where moms come together to talk about what's really going on, to ask honest questions and to feel seen in every version of motherhood. One mom club bestie said it perfectly when she said, I'm in a few different Patreon memberships.

11:01The mom club is hands down the best, which I agree. You get a community and so much extra incredible content. So if you've been craving a community that really gets it, or if you can't get enough content from the Learning to Mom podcast, then the mom club on Patreon is where you need to be. Come join us at learningtomompodcast.com slash join. That links below in the episode show notes in case you forget or can't write it down fast enough. I can't wait to welcome you inside, mom friend. These parenting styles that you talked about, are these defaults kind of like our own personality or like, oh, it's just the way that we are or are they goals for how we should parent?

11:45No, no, no. They're defaults for our reactivity. So conscious Connie, conscious Carl, that's the goal for how we should parent, right? The rest of them are all reactivity. We parent a lot from reactivity. All of us do. And so the more we can maybe be really helpful to talk about joyful joy and like to identify some of the other ways to look at it. I might have to play with that. But at the end of the day, defensive Drew and angry Ann and lost Lois, all of these are what happened to us when we aren't centered and grounded and present. And it's because we're human and we bring our own experience.

12:25My middle kid's in med school and is 28 and is probably going to do something pediatric. She's amazing. She loves kids. But she's a little worried about the parents. And I've heard some of her friends say, you know, I really want to do that pediatric, but I don't really want to deal with parents. And it's because what I said to my kid was, oh, I got you there. Don't worry about that. I can help you with that. Because what you got to understand is that when a parent is worried about their kid, it's not actually an adult that's worried. It's the kid showing up worried about the kid. It's their inner child who is afraid or reactive or defensive or whatever.

13:04And so if we can bring compassion to the child who is parenting right now, then we can help reconnect them to their maturity because we are always an inner child and an adult at the same time. Yes. Right? We are. So good. So we just have to know who we're talking to. And we have to know who's showing up. Part of the reason I think these reactive styles are so important to understand is to recognize, oh, I'm defensive Drew's showing up right now. That's me being reactive. Let me chill out. Let me down regulate. Let me pay attention to what are they saying because this is about them. This is actually not about me.

13:42Even if they're saying, I hate you, mom, it's probably not about me. Might be, but probably not, right? So our job is to figure out who's talking in the moment and bring ourselves back to our mature self. That's that conscious self who wants to pause and be conscious and intentional and present to what's going on and not come from a place of knee-jerk reaction, which is human. Fair. Yeah. So, so good. When we talk about parenting styles, and you said earlier that you had these like avatars, do you still work with those avatars? Because I would love to hear you talk about each of those. That sounded very intriguing.

14:23Okay. So we started with these six core avatars. And then as I wrote the Essential Guide that came out in 2020, I realized that there were more. And so I've captured like 15, but I don't have all the rest of them by heart. Okay. Okay. The first avatar is conscious, right? So the first thing I want to say is we all have a little conscious Connie or conscious Carl in us. Every parent has that capacity to be a conscious and present and aware parent, right? And we've all had those moments with the little ones where we pick them up and they chill down and they quiet down or they settle in. Those moments where we know we're being just fully present and available to what our kid needs.

15:08And without a stress or without anxious or without any, just present. The thing I want to start with is we all have that inner conscious Connie or conscious Carl in us. And she, he is who we're striving to connect with inside ourselves. And none of us are going to access them all the time. Right? We're just not. We have conflicting values. We are humans with emotions and feelings and reactivity and all of that. So we're going to be human throughout the day. The game is to reconnect to that conscious part of ourselves whenever we can so that we show up in the most present way to our kids. So it's not that we're not going to get hijacked by any of the other avatars.

15:53It's that we want to notice when we do and then bring ourselves back. And the sooner we learn to recognize, the quicker we learned techniques and strategies and ways to do that, the healthier we'll be able to be present with our kids. So we all have conscious Connie Carl, right? But then the core ways I think we show up a lot, there's angry Anne and Andy, right? So a lot of us get frustrated in various ways. So we get angry. There's lost Lois. I think a lot of moms in particular deal with feeling a sense of, I've lost a sense of who I am, especially if you leave a workplace and you come home and you're staying at home.

16:33And I used to have this sense of myself as a contributing member of society. Now I'm changing diapers and I don't know how to be with that. So there's a lostness, I think, that a lot of women experience. I know that I was there for a long time. There's maxed out Maxine. That's the mom who's trying to do it all. And it's just like you can see the balls dropping. You're trying to keep all the balls in the air, but you just can't keep all the expectations going at the same time. And you're trying and you don't realize that you're trying to live everybody else's expectations. And it's just overwhelming and maxing you out.

17:07There's fix it Fran. Fran is one who's trying to get it all done. And we're going to do it. We're going to take care of it. There's a problem. We're going to fix it. There's no allowance for learning from mistakes. There's no space for anything to be out of place. I remember walking into the home of a friend when my kids were young, and I looked around, everything was in its place. They had four small children. And I looked around, I'm like, where do they play? Like, it was too put together. So Fix It Friends got a clipboard and is getting it done. And particularly, I think, in my community, when you have complex kids, there's this feeling like, I've got to take care of this.

17:42I got to fix this. And we're not fixing our kids. Whatever they're dealing with, that's what they're dealing with. And our job is to help them understand it well enough to learn to manage it. It's not to fix it. They're not broken, right? No matter what they're dealing with, they're not broken. But fix it friend doesn't know that yet. Their super mom, Sue, right? She's the one that's getting it all done and making it all happen and volunteering and class mom. And she's got it all done. So what's the difference between her and maxed out? Maxine. Maxine. Supermom Sue actually has enough executive function to do it all.

18:15Okay. So she may get burnt out, but she's not going to get burnt out yet. Or she might not ever because she's got it together and she can do it. She may not show up in that picture, but she's going to get it all done. And she's another one we aspire to, kind of like Conscious Connie. If we could have a good blend of Supermom Sue and Conscious Connie, we'd be doing great. The challenge with supermom is, again, there's not as much room for failure or for learning from mistakes. And that's how humans learn. That's how babies learn and kids learn. Like kids, you can't talk if you don't babble. You can't walk if you don't crawl and stumble.

18:54And so when we have it two together, sometimes we make ourselves feel inaccessible. And other people give up trying. They give up, you know, attempting to do things. I remember a kid who said to me once, well, why should I bother? She's just going to redo it anyway. Right. So if we can't become comfortable with them folding a shirt improperly before they learn to fold a shirt, they may never learn to fold that shirt. Right. So Supermom Sue is powerful, but there's some liabilities in there. Does that make sense? So those are the core six. And now it's time for this week's segment of MomMail. If you're new here, this is the part of the show where I answer a listener-submitted situation or scenario.

19:39Basically, you write in your tricky situation, and I give you advice only a real mom friend would give. Here's the email we're answering this week. Hi, Layla. Thanks for creating this podcast. I love you so much. To give you some backstory to my question, I've been Christian all my life. I've had a really beautiful, awesome relationship with Jesus. us. Sure, we've gone through ups and downs, but for the most part, I've had a really strong faith. Since becoming a mom, I've realized that my faith life is struggling. I don't even know when the last time I opened my Bible was. I want to be on fire again, but I don't know how.

20:11Please help if you have any advice. I was just talking to a friend, actually, like on Patreon, not too long ago about this. So I'm going to give you the same advice that I gave her. And this is just obviously like my perspective and a little bit like of my heart. So, you know, take it with a grain salt, but like, at least for me, I kind of grew up in a church and in an upbringing that was constantly telling us like, if you're not spending 30 minutes in the word every single day, then you're not having a deep relationship with Jesus. You're not growing in your faith. And that was something that was just like so vital.

20:54And I was constantly hurt. Like we would have accountability partners. And basically it was like, did you spend time with, you know, 30 minutes with Jesus a day? And I do think that that's beautiful. And I'm not saying anything bad about that. I'm just saying that that's kind of has become my standard because of the way that it was just like ingrained in me from a young child, that that's what you do to have a deep personal relationship with Jesus. you have to spend 30 minutes in your Bible every day. And I think that is awesome. And I think that is so beautiful. And I am so hungry and my soul is so thirsty to be able to go to a cute coffee shop and open up my Bible and prayer journal for 30 minutes every day, at least.

21:37Like, I would love to give Jesus that. But in this season, I don't have that. and I think I had to kind of let go of that expectation that I thought Jesus was putting on me. I had to let that go and allow him instead of almost not necessarily limiting him, but like instead of giving him 30 minutes of undivided attention every day, because that's not what I have to give him in this season of life. And he knows that and he gives me so much grace and he's just grateful for any time that he has with me because he loves me so much and he feels the same way about you. So instead of like kind of giving him like 30 minutes of time, which I don't have anymore unless both kids, by a miracle, go to bed at the same time or take a nap at the same time.

22:28And then I have 30 minutes that I can open up my Bible and pray. But for the most part, my faith looks like inviting Jesus in to the very small moments of every day, praying while I do the dishes, praying while I do laundry, putting on Christian music in the car and turning that into a worship jam session for me. Like, I think it's been kind of beautiful because him and I are navigating this new phase of our relationship. And I know that this phase or this season won't last, but I do think that there's a lot of beauty to be had with me, like, inviting him in to the smallest list of moments. So that's just kind of my story and what I would encourage you to do because it said that your faith life is struggling.

23:14You didn't know when the last time you opened your Bible was. So I guess I just want to like encourage you to maybe take that pressure off of you because I agree like your faith is so important and I'm not telling you not to grow in your faith. I just think that there is another way that you can grow in your faith that might not be so you have to do this for 30 minutes a day and if not you're failing. I would also really encourage you to get plugged into a Bible study, even if it's one that you can bring your kids. Like I know lots of churches have Bible studies that you can bring your kids to and there's childcare.

23:44I'm in one. Like that has served me so extremely well or join a Bible study on a night that you know your husband will be home and can watch the kids. Having that accountability and having other people in your life to speak kind words of encouragement over you and help you on your walk and help you in your motherhood journey has really been a game changer for me. So I love you, friend. Thanks so much for writing in. Now, if you're looking for advice, email me at learningtomompodcast.mommail at gmail.com with the subject line, Mom Mail. And then keep your ears open because we might just answer it in an upcoming episode.

24:21As I started playing with these and working with these, I discovered some others. So there's nagging man. That's that tendency to, I'm going to get them to do it. I'm not going to do it for them. I'm going to get them to do it. But it's not enrolling them in doing it. It's if we become the constant reminder, they're not owning it. They're just doing what we say until they stop doing what we say and begin to get irritated by the sound of our voice. So that's the nagging tendency. Anxious Ava is really dealing with her own anxiety and her own stress or frustration or worry or fear around parenting.

24:57And that shows up in parenting, right? When we are worried, our kids feel it. And we don't realize the ways in which they really are a sponge. And they get the energy of what we're dealing with. And so if we're worried, our kids feel it. And so anxious Ava, back to what I was saying earlier, kind of has her work to do to get herself. I was totally anxious in the early years. I was so worried about my kid and so worried about doing it right that I don't think I was showing up for them in the way that was really healthy. and I think they absorbed a lot of that early anxiety that I was bringing to the dynamic.

25:36And it wasn't until I started getting coaching and started calming myself down and trusting the process that I was able to show up for them in a way that was less anxious and more grounded. So there's Pushover Pat. Pushover Pat is a pleaser, wants the kids to be happy. This is the mom who's making three meals for three different people in the house because everybody's got to be happy and not only denying herself and her own needs, but is over helping in a way that is not setting appropriate boundaries. So from an attachment style perspective, it's overly engaged and overly attaching so that it doesn't have a chance to learn boundaries and boundaries are important.

26:17People need them and they're healthy. Or success or important traits like learning how to deal with frustration and boredom. Yes. And resourcefulness. Right. When we rescue our kids from the experience of growing up, we're actually not doing them a service. And the parents listening to this have younger kids as they get older. That doesn't mean that they don't sometimes need more support or accommodation. There's always a dance of meeting them where they are, not where anybody else tells us they should be. Right. So we have to look at where our kids are developmentally. For me, I work with a lot of complex parents of complex kids.

26:54So if your kid's got a learning disability or your kid's got ADHD or anxiety, which these days we are living in an anxiety-driven world, right, then developmentally, we may need to make some accommodations. We may need to support in some areas a little bit longer. They may not be ready to spend the night out as early as their peers. That's not enabling them. That's not what I mean by pushover, right? It's enabling them if we just say, oh, she's afraid to, and so we're not going to do anything about that. It's supporting them if we say, what's the next incremental step towards your maturation, right?