Tools for Positive Parenting and Conflict Resolution

Hey, I'm Kwame Christian, and you are about to step into the world of Negotiate Anything, the number one negotiation podcast in the world, where we teach you how to make difficult conversations easier while getting more of what you want in the process. Each episode is packed with practical tips and strategies from the experts. We delve into negotiation, conflict resolution, and leadership skills that are crucial in both business and in life. Whether you're closing a deal, managing a team, or navigating personal relationships, Negotiate Anything provides you with the tools you need to succeed. Our conversations are real, relatable, and most importantly, rooted in practicality. So if you're ready to transform your conversations and elevate your negotiation skills, join me on Negotiate Anything. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you love to listen. Let's make every conversation a winning negotiation. Kath and Ruth, thank you so much for joining us today.

We are thrilled to be here. Thank you.

It's our pleasure.

Yeah. So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do, and I will pass this first to Kath and then to Ruth, and then we'll flow from there.

Sounds great. Again, thanks for having us. I My name is Kathleen Weisenberger and I am CEO of Peace at Home Parenting. And I am also the mother of two adult boys. They'll always be my boys, and I am loving being involved with Peace at Home parenting as the CEO for the last three years. And what Peace at home is really is a toolbox of interactive live training workshops, proven solutions and compassionate support delivered by just our amazing team of experts to help parents navigate kind of the predictable childhood experiences from birth to young adulthood. But most importantly, also those unexpected things, everything from gender and sexuality and special needs to the hot topics that are facing our country these days. From school shootings, we have classes called helping your child feel safe in an unpredictable world to the kind of political discord such as handling hot topics with kids and colleagues. And so we know that parents have limited time and energy and they need proven solutions that are going to produce quick results. And so we are really focused on that and we are really pleased that our content parents report using it to take action in their family and feeling more confident. So whether you're over parenting under parenting, not sure where to start. Parents come to us for that clarity and confidence and we work with parents directly. But we also work with parents through corporations such as the Hartford and OMG to educational systems from MIT and Emory down to local school districts, nonprofits and government entities like Big brothers and big sisters of New York and Husky Health. And so what all of them have in common is that they understand that helping parents thrive at home is critical to their success. And as that is our mission, we are grateful for their partnership, and we love bringing people peace at home.

That is incredible. And as a CEO, I realize I need to work on my little elevator pitch, because that was. That was perfect. That was really good. That was great. Well, thank you for the important work that you do. And, Ruth, tell us a bit more about you, too.

My name is Ruth Freeman. I'm a licensed clinical social worker here in Storrs, Connecticut. I've been teaching parenting education for over 30 years, and I'm a bio mom, stepmom, foster mom, and nana to seven extraordinary children who bring me great delight. I was teaching parenting education at a corporation at Aetna, and this very young woman for two years was saying, parenting is the most popular wellness class we have. You've got to go online. And she tortured me for two years. And I kept saying, no, I have to see people's faces. No, they have to work in small groups. No, no, no. And she finally made me do it. My first class was pretty flat, but she and an IT person inspired me. And then we ended up with 2 and 300 people on waiting lists because they had employees across the country, and there's many, many empty pockets in the United States where there's no parent support. So we took off.

This is incredible. You know, most of the parents I know are imperfect, so I feel like a lot of parents could use this.

Our motto is progress, not perfection. Kwame, it's hopeless. Just. Just interview my daughter. She'll tell you all the imperfections of my parenting.

You're not allowed to talk to our kids. So.

I love it. No, this is. This is great. And, listeners, for. For this episode, what we're going to focus on is I want to focus on authenticity and vulnerability, but also bringing that compassion, that positivity to our relationships and to our difficult conversations. Because I could imagine in your field of work, there are some tough conversations that happen. And so I'd be interested to hear from both of you about the types of tough conversations that you find yourselves in. And then we'll talk about how you kind of work through those. What are your approaches for that? So where is a good place to start with the types of conversations that you all have day to day?

Well, we actually both have tough conversations, but I would say that the toughest conversations we're having now actually came from an insurance company that called us up that said they're identifying 500 kids a month of being at risk of self harm and they wanted us to help with some resources for parents. And they're referring parents to practices, mental health practices that focus on suicide reduction. And you know, right now some of the experts are saying the knee jerk response to kids talking about self harm and having suicidal thoughts and suicidal behaviors, which has been soaring even before the pandemic and then it increased dramatically after the pandemic and during it, the knee jerk response is put the kid in the hospital, which is sometimes absolutely required, but sometimes it can make things worse. And knowing how to respond is the key. And we were called on to just help parents with their initial response. We refer to experts in that field. But just when a parent discovers that their child might be cutting themselves, for example, that first conversation has to do so many things. You have to first of all take the blame off the parent and the shame, because that's the first reaction, I've done something wrong, I've caused it. And it's so much more complex than that. So joining with the parent, entering into their worries, listening to to their fears, and then moving towards problem solving together. And quite honestly, our biggest message to parents right now is the importance of being your child's calm center. So many of us measure our parenting based on do our kids do what we want when we want them to do they get good grades in school. Really, mental health is much more important than any of those things right now, and it always has been. So talking to parents about what's important without them feeling bad that they didn't know that before they were talking to us, that's one of the biggest challenges. None of us gets a blueprint. So it's just that research is so developed we can translate it and give it to them in manageable messages, but you have to deliver it in a way that you're joining with the parent. And problem solving versus I'm going to fix you because you haven't been a good enough parent, which is a complete illusion.

And then so much of what we do is relationship focused, right? So it's based on the parent child relationship. It's based on the parent relationship with whoever they're co parenting. And it starts with, you know, our relationship with the parent and helping them develop and navigate the tools that are going to have those positive conversations that are going to make people feel that they can be vulnerable and honest and not project their concerns on, you know, the other person and really listen and Try to help work together to solve the issues.

My hand is hurting from all of these notes.

Sorry.

This is so good. Well, one of the things that I like so much about this approach of the way that you interact with the parents is that the listeners of the podcast would identify that it's really similar to the Compassionate Curiosity framework. So with the Compassionate Curiosity framework, we acknowledge and validate emotions, we get curious with compassion, and then we use joint problem solving, working with the other side collaboratively to solve the problem, using future focused problem solving. And so what you said, Ruth, is you take the blame and shame of the parent. You try to take that out of it, and then you work through those emotions with them and then you work to move toward problem solving. And I think in a lot of these situations of distress, what we try to do is we say, there is a problem, I'm solving it now first, and that's it. And it shows that we don't have a full understanding of what the real problem is, because if we run to like, solve the problem. Listeners, I am aggressively using air quotes as I say solve the problem here. We inadvertently create other problems that are more problematic than the original problem. Just exacerbates the issue. So I really love the approach that you're using here. Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever wondered how to elevate your team's negotiation game and how you can help the folks on your team have better, difficult conversations? At the American Negotiation Institute, we offer transformative keynotes and workshops tailored to empower professionals with top tier negotiation and conflict resolution skills. Whether it's a keynote for your next event or hands on training for your team, we've got you covered. Don't just negotiate. Master the arts with, with the American Negotiation Institute. Click the link in the description to find out more. Elevate, negotiate, and succeed.

You know, I want to say what those steps you just, I remember reading this about you. But the compassionate curiosity, acknowledging emotions, future problem solving, those are literally tools that we teach parents. So if you want to help, if you want to help a child regulate their emotions, one of the first things you can do is recognize their emotions and understand them. And as parents, we think we know our kids, we think we know why they're upset. And that compassionate curiosity is one of the foundations of having an authentic, positive interaction with your kid that leads to problem solving. Because when they came in the door yesterday and slammed their book bag on the floor, you might have concluded that it was their math teacher again. And maybe it was. But if they slam their book bag down on the floor today, we really have to clear out our assumptions and go, wow, you seem really, really frustrated. And you take a shot at guessing what the feeling is. And that gives them, it's called an open response. It invites them to say, no, no, no, I'm really, really hurt. And then you can have a conversation from there. The very first step, which is really hard for parents, is to understand the problem according to the child. The parent always has a theory about why this kid is having a problem with the math teacher. But when you listen with that open, compassionate energy, you may hear another thing underneath this that you didn't realize. And you're also strengthening your child's emotional intelligence because you're giving them an opportunity to explore their emotions and why they're happening. There's so many positive things happening. So it's a complete parallel process to what you're describing. Kwame.

Absolutely. And I love that you said we have to understand the problem from the perspective of the child because in difficult conversations in general, our goal is to understand the problem from their perspective as well. Because we understand from our perspective. Okay, we got that. But true empathy is understanding how they see, think, and feel about the situation. It doesn't mean we agree, we don't need to agree with what they're saying, but we do need to empathize and acknowledge that and have them feel heard and seen. And what you said was brilliant. You said, as parents, we think we know what the problem is. But let's zoom out to us as professionals and practitioners as well, because a lot of times we might say, I've been here before, I've seen it all before. So as practitioners, we may think we know what the problem is. And what we have to recognize is that, again, the goal is compassionate curiosity. But a lot of times we don't get to the curiosity part because we are not humble enough to accept the reality that they might see the situation differently from us. And we have to be able to truly believe, like, I might not know everything. So I do need their assistance in order to get me to understand it from their perspective. So I really love the, like the, the ethos you're bringing into this approach.

Often when I do a consultation with a parent, the first thing I do is a quick genogram. I want to understand their relationship with their parents. I want to understand their parents relationship with their parents. I just want a general trend and ethnicity and culture. Just, I can do it in Seven minutes with somebody. And because once you hear all that, when they start to describe the challenges in the family and you ask how have you been handling that, you can put their responses in a context. So I just was talking with a dad and he was describing how his father never really realized his potential and he was often depressed. And so this father, now he's talking about, his father was so disappointed in his son because his son wasn't a perfectionist like he was. This father did everything he could to make his dad happy and to accomplish everything his dad never accomplished. And he can't understand why his son is not devoting his entire life to making his dad happy. So he's very critical of him and negative. And now they have this problematic relationship. But it's really that father's perception of the father son relationship that's based on his history. So if I can hear that with a lot of care and get. You really loved your dad and you really believed that getting all A's was the way to show him love. And maybe your son loves you in a different way. That's compassionate curiosity and that's helping dad see himself as good, not as a negative authoritarian, which sort of flashed through my mind also, but isn't really helpful. You know, it's like understanding, you know, what's the motivation?

Let's dig deeper into that because I think that's really important, because in a lot of these difficult conversations, we're going to be confronted with somebody who might be demonstrated behaviors that we find abhorrent for one reason or another. And sometimes it feels as though empathizing with somebody who sees the world so differently and approaches things so differently is almost like, let me use a technical term here, yucky.

Very yucky.

And so how, first of all, why should we take the time to empathize and understand with people whose behaviors might be yucky to it?

I'm going to give you a pragmatic reason. There's a lot of reasons. If you want peace on earth or peace at home, you have to take in the other person. But that's not the pragmatic reason. The pragmatic reason is from my point of view, you can ask Kathleen. I'm kind of a zealot. Like I'm on a mission. Okay, so when you're a zealot, I don't know. Thirty years ago I declared that my mission was to eliminate aggression visited upon children in their homes and behind. Everything I'm doing is still that 35 year old mission of, you know, it doesn't help to yell, scream, threaten, criticize, judge, compare. It harms children. Now we know it harms them neurologically and physically, but it harms children. So while I'm a zealot, at the same time, if I can fully understand where that other person is coming from, I can have much more influence to achieve my mission. And that's, in a way, you can look at that as power, which I always think is a bad word. But we can't influence each other or learn from each other if we don't understand where the person's coming from. And that takes time.

And I think the other thing, you know, when we put together this hot topics, you know, handling hot topics with your kids and colleagues, specifically when it came out with the Roe v. Wade decision, it was theories and principles that are applicable to both. And I think that that's your point, is that whether you're talking to your kids often, those self care principles and those self value principles, where you want to be a calm center, where you want to, you know, be able to be curious and listen and without understanding that, you don't have to change your opinion. But we need positive ways to communicate with each other and to lower our stress levels. And, you know, corporations bring us in to have these conversations with their working families and we have other people who don't have kids who come to these things because all of these principles are applicable to just general conversation, relationship, and being effective in life.

Agreed. Yeah. And I love that we started with a pragmatic response, right? Because one of the things I said in, in my first book, Finding Confidence in Conflict, I talk about compassionate curiosity, treating people respect, those type of things. I have a section called But Kwame, what if I'm evil? And it was just pure pragmatism. I'm like, even if you're evil and you don't care, this is why you should still do it because it's more effective.

I just want to say many parents ask that question because sometimes they just want to be aggressive with their children. I'll say, but, you know, as a therapist, one of the principles is human behavior is always logical, but you just have to be patient enough to find the reasons behind the behavior. And honestly, you know, people come in to my office, they do, you know, online coaching, and they're describing things they're doing in their relationships that are mind boggling and that, but they know it. They're saying, I can't stop yelling at them. I can't, you know, whatever. But if we look back at their childhoods and we look back, what's triggering them. We're working with David Hanscome, an orthopedic surgeon who's talking a lot about chronic threat physiology. That many of us are walking around in this state of just, you know, what we call fight, flight or freeze. And it doesn't make any sense to say, oh, that parent's going in to fight, flight or freeze when they walk past their kid's bedroom and they're on their phone instead of doing their homework. But the truth is they're having a thought that this kid is going to end up living in my basement. And that thought creates cortisol, adrenaline, all the same stuff as a car coming down 100 miles an hour on the road and you jump out of the way. It's the same stuff biologically. And when that's happening, people don't have access to the thinking parts of their brains very well. So the other things are happening. They're getting angry, they're trying to control the situation, they're panicked. And our relationships are operating like this and media is feeding that like crazy with quick messages about that and with big long stories and dramatizing things. So teaching parents the essential skills of calming their brain and recognizing the impact of their childhoods on their behaviors really puts them at ease. They're like, I'm not an evil person. They feel like an evil person. They go to bed every night and say, I'm not going to Yell at that 2 year old. And then tomorrow morning when they're late for work, they're yelling. But when they understand how scared they get if they're not going to show up on time or what's going to happen for them based on their childhood, then they have compassion for themselves, which is what really matters.

Absolutely. This is so well said because, and I like that point that you made about everything being logical. If you take the time to understand it, and we're not condoning bad behavior, we're saying we're taking the time to understand the roots of that bad behavior so we can actually address the real problem. Because I mean, anybody can go into any home and say, hey, stop, stop hitting your kid, stop yelling, stop doing those type of things, anybody can do that. And then the thing is, it's not going to stop. Well, the question is why isn't it going to stop? And going back to the word that you used before, the power based approach, most of the time in these everyday human interactions, we don't have the power to compel somebody against their will to do the right Thing. So a power based approach is completely lacking in legitimacy because we don't have the authority to just force people to do the thing.

And it's ineffective.

It doesn't work 100%. Right. Because it's kind of like a toothpaste. Right. So if you squeeze the toothpaste, it just like moves to another area. So if we just say, decide by force to like, shut this behavior down, cool, cool, cool. I'll explode elsewhere, you know, so. So it's so important that we take.

The time to understand and Kwame, I want to say something. Not being able to change people's behavior and understanding that behind behavior there's some logical explanation. That is one of the biggest messages we're giving parents right now. Because parents often perceive misbehavior in children as something to be managed or controlled. But in fact, you know, with the pediatric mental health crisis and rates of depression, anxiety and self harm soaring among children and teenagers, teaching parents that when your child is constantly, you know, oppositional, constantly not following directions, constantly fighting you, or not coming to dinner or staying in their room or those behaviors that you want to manage by taking away their phone are really symptoms. And quite honestly, parents are the missing piece in all of our efforts to address the pediatric mental health crisis. I see governments and nonprofits all creating trainings for therapists trying to increase the mental health, you know, the number of mental health providers. They want schools to do mental health services. They're doing everything. They're pouring, you know, millions of dollars into all kinds of resources, but they're not giving parents who Bessel van der Kolk, the father of trauma, says are the most powerful mental health intervention known to humankind is the parent child relationship. They're not giving parents the tools they need. We're not born recognizing that a kid screaming and yelling might have an unmet need behind it. We just want them to be quiet and we'll do whatever it takes. But parents are hungry for this, and it's very hard to take the time to do it because we have 66% of working parents experiencing parental burnout. So there's too many demands on them with too little resource inside them. It's a very complex moment in our culture, and I don't know how it's going to unroll right now.

Yeah, and the other side of that statistic, Ruth, that people don't talk about enough, when you say 66% of parents are experiencing parental burnout, this is the part that other people don't really appreciate. The other 24% are lying. True.

I've never met a parent that didn't say, that's me, that's me.

I'm like, exactly who are these 24%.

I'm going to remember that one, Kwame.

And so before we go, I want to make sure that we're leaving parents with some tools here. So parents and professionals, because I feel like if you can start to manage your emotions effectively at home, it becomes a lot easier to do it elsewhere. So what would you say are the key tools that parents need in order to be there and be that calm center for their kids?

Well, it's different for each parent. I want to say there's no one size fits all. And we have lots of classes on this, Kwame, so people can reach out to us. But one thing I want to say is that there's a new book by Mona Delahook called Brain Body Parenting. And that book really talks about the neurobiology of kids. And she points out that kids have different ways of calming down. And as parents, we often use our way of calming down to calm the kid down. So I feel better if somebody talks to me in a soothing voice. But my granddaughter, if she goes off to her room, she goes to her room, she slams the door, and in like two minutes, she's calm. She needs space. So some parents are kind of trying to move in, get their kid take a breath, Take a deep breath and. But really, the kid needs space for their brain to calm down. Some kids calm down with action and noise. Some kids calm down with quiet. So for kids, we have to be observers and see and even talk to them when they're not upset and say, you know what else? What helped you calm down before when you were so disappointed that we weren't going out? So we talk to the kids, and for parents, it starts with attunement to your own physical sensations. Many of us are just walking heads. We're not noticing that our chest is tightening up while we're talking to somebody. So it's noticing your physical sensations and having a brain calming practice that you do every day. So it becomes a reflex. For me, that's diaphragmatic breathing. If I'm stressing out in a meeting or something, I'm going to take deep breaths down to my belly. My shoulders will go down, My voice will get quieter. That's mine. And I do it every day. And I'm really good at it. Now. It's a reflex. If my husband starts to be an idiot, I take a deep breath automatically. So I think that Everybody, we have teachers that specialize in this, and they say, and mindfulness practices are great, but we just say, find that practice, do it five minutes a day, become expert at it and call on it. That's the most bare bones, simple answer that I have.

We like to remind parents that old airline adage, put your own oxygen mask on first. Right. So take care of yourself, because you're going to be better for your kids, your partner, and anybody else you come in contact with. And I think the whole idea of curiosity and listening, there is power in being quiet sometimes, and I think that that's important. And then I think one of the things that we all have to get back to real fast is joy and playfulness, and we all have to be a little wacky and a little fun and just remember what that's like to be like with each other and our children. And I think we'll all get there together.

I love this. Could not agree more, my friends. Well, both of you, thank you so much for coming on the show. This was incredible. If you see I have just not stopped taking notes throughout this entire thing. This is great. Before we go, just remind the listeners about how they can get in touch with you and learn more about peace at home.

Sure. So you can find us on the web@peaceathomeparenting.com and you can always email us at Solutionsace in Home Parenting. And we'd love to hear from you and connect. So thank you.

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