Episode 224: Resolving Family Conflict with Emmalou Penrod

No need to whine, it's Whiny Palooza! Have some wine and join us on the Whiny Palooza podcast with Rebecca Green.

Welcome to the Whiny Palooza podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca Green. I'm a wife, mother of 3, and licensed clinical social worker. I also have 3 fur babies at home too. My passion has always been to help children and their families. I always dreamed of being a wife and a mother. Parents are always learning through their struggles failures and successes and joys. I am no stranger to this wild ride of parenting, and I know behind every great parent lies a team of supportive friends and family. I want to be part of your support system. I want you to know that you are not alone. We are in this parenting world together. Join me every week for insightful discussions with experts on parenting and marriage, as well as other parents who have found the secret to successes in parenthood. You'll learn tips and tricks to make life with your family better than ever. I hope you will follow along with me while we dive into what it takes to achieve a happy family.

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Green for the first Winey Palooza Marriage and Parenting Summit, and I am so excited to present our third presenter, Emma Lou Penrod. Emma Lou, thank you Emma Lou, thank you so much for being here with us today.

I'm glad to be here, Rebecca.

Emma Lou is going to talk to us about resolving family conflict, and we all— none of us, all of us need this topic. I'll put it that way. Emma Lou is a wife, mother, grandmother, retired schoolteacher, author, and owner of the business Healing Your Families. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education with an endorsement in special education from Weber State University. She also earned a Master of Arts in Educational Counseling from the University of Phoenix. Emalu ended her 24-year career as a teacher at a residential treatment facility for youth at risk. Most of her career was spent as a special education teacher. She completed training through the National Guild of Hypnotists in November of 2018 and was certified through them as a consulting hypnotist. That is a hard word to say. Thank you so much. I'm very excited for this topic because there is not a family that doesn't have conflict, so this is going to be so helpful.

Thank you, Rebecca. I'm so honored to be part of this summit. I've been following Wani'palusa for years, couple years now, and I love your message. I love how you support and help and strengthen families. As you mentioned, this is an issue that involves all families. So Anytime you have more than two people sharing living space, you will have conflict. It's inevitable. There will be disagreements. But I maintain you can address that conflict without contention. Contention and conflict are not the same. I want you to observe this photo I chose of a mother and daughter. Definitely there's a conflict here. The mother's got her hand out. Can you see the cell phone flying through the air right here near the table? It looks like the mother just grabbed her daughter's cell phone and threw it. Can you relate with that? Maybe the daughter came to the dinner table for the umpteenth time with her cell phone when she had been told not to. And the mother was done. She'd had it. Electronic devices can be a source of conflict in families, and we'll get back to this scene later, but right now I want to talk about the difference between conflict and contention. They are not the same thing. Conflict is a disagreement. It's a you're at variance. You have different ideas, purposes, and it can be longstanding and it can be antagonistic, but it is temporary. It is a problem that needs to be solved, and conflict can actually strengthen your relationship because as you work through this conflict, You learn more about each other. It deepens your relationship. And especially when you can do this without contention. Now, contention, on the other hand, damages relationships. You've heard the expression, "Would you rather be right or would you rather be married?" Have you known someone who argued their way right out of a marriage? It's dehumanizing. You're not seeing the other person as an individual. You're seeing them as an object, something that's keeping you from getting what you want. And quite often there's a lot of resentment and anger. And you're focused on right and wrong, and usually it's, I'm right, you're wrong. Your thinking becomes very restricted. There's only one way to do it. This is how it has to be, and I know the right way, and you just need to listen to me. And you start to feel, I can only win if you lose. Can you see how contention can severely damage a relationship? How many adults do you know who no longer have contact with their parents due to past contention. And this is a serious problem for children. They're growing up without grandparents. They don't have the benefit of their heritage. And studies show that when children know their heritage and they hear the stories of their grandparents and great-grandparents, they become more resilient because they learn that their ancestors had challenges and difficulties and they overcome— overcame them. And they know that they can do the same. Heritage is an important thing for children. We need to be very careful about any time we're separating them from that. I want you to consider this example. I love the way the dad is sitting down so he's more at eye level with his son. And right now the dad is talking, but I bet you just before this he was listening. He was hearing his son, listening to understand him, learning where he's coming from, what his concerns are, how he feels. And now he's responding. This could also be a conflict, but it's being resolved with one very important key word: respect. Many people argue that respect is even more important in a family than love. How many times have you said something cruel or even hurtful to someone you loved that you may have refrained from saying to someone you respected. Because when you respect someone, you value their opinion. You, you want what's good for them. You want to help them reach their goals. You don't view them as an object, something that's getting in your way. And you want to— you're aware of their needs and their goals. So let's look at what happens if we begin to resolve a conflict with respect. We no longer see the other person as an enemy. In fact, they're an ally. We see them as someone we can work with. Here's the issue. Here's the issue that's coming between us. Now, how can we work together to resolve this issue? There isn't the anger, there's the calm. You know, we have two parts of our central nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. And Josephine mentioned this. That how we can, you know, the sympathetic is that fight or flight. And it's really an important part. You know, if you're in a time of crisis, this can save your life. This is what gets the adrenaline pumping through. You can move quickly out of the way of an oncoming car, but it would be so damaging to our health to remain in this state all the time. It would be exhausting. We need the parasympathetic, the rest and digest. And this is where we do our best thinking. This is where we do our best parenting, our best communicating, when we're able to be calm. And rather than blaming and accusing, we're finding a solution. We're not stuck in a rigid way of thinking. We're open. We're ready to be creative and come up with new ideas, new ways of doing it. We're not judging each other. We're curious. Okay, here's this issue that's come between us. So what are some ways we can solve this so that both of us win? Your needs are met and my needs are met. And it strengthens our relationship. How can we work together and do this? So let's look at these two examples one more time. Which one shows anger? Which one— think about— now we're not talking about an isolated incident. No parent should feel— beat themselves up if they lost their temper once. We're talking about an ongoing daily pattern. So look at the mother and daughter. How will this impact their relationship? Read their body language. The mom is clearly angry, and look at the way her daughter is responding. Does she feel comfortable around her mother? Is she likely— again, if this is an ongoing situation that happens frequently— is she likely to turn to her mother if she has a question, a problem, a concern? And then look at the father and son. Can you see that there's some trust being built? A rapport is developing. They're strengthening their relationship. See the difference between trying to use contention to resolve a conflict and using respect. Now, I had personal experience with this, and let me tell you how I learned this. When I was about 11 years old, I witnessed an incident between my parents that had a profound impact on me. You know, it must have because I still remember it, and that was almost 60 years ago. At that time, the routine in our house was that when we came home from school, once we got our chores done, we could watch TV until it was time for dinner. And at this time, my parents had been married for 14 years when I was born. So by then they had been married for 25 years and they had done a very fairly good job of learning to work out their differences. They were so effective, in fact, that I really didn't remember any time that they got into a serious argument. But one day I happened to be in the living room and my father got home from work. And I saw him walk up to the mantle in the living room. He emptied his pockets, took out his keys, his wallet, his handkerchief, his comb, and he put them on top of the mantle. And then he turned to go upstairs and change his clothes. And my mother immediately swooped in and grabbed them right back off the mantle and just looked at him defiantly. And my father was completely taken aback, and I was amazed. My parents had a disagreement, and it seemed small and minor, but I could tell each of them felt very strongly about this, and neither one was going to back down. I was fascinated. This was better than TV. And it didn't— wasn't resolved in one day. It was a scene that played out for several days. And I didn't mind missing my TV time because I really wanted to know, how are they going to handle this? And what I observed is that in spite of their strong feelings, they did not raise their voices. They treated each other with respect. Each person had the opportunity to express their feelings, their needs, and the other one listened and did not interrupt them. It didn't happen for long. They stopped when it was time for dinner, and they ended with some indication that they still loved each other and they wanted to work together to find the solution. They even injected a little humor. It was like watching a game of tennis, and I found myself mentally keeping score. My father would serve with, "I want to keep these things on the mantel so they're easy for me to find when I'm getting ready for work tomorrow." My mother would respond with, "But I want to keep the living room neat and tidy." And I'm going, score one for Mom. Dad has a good point there. And later it became, my father would say, "I'm the family breadwinner. Shouldn't I be allowed to have things arranged conveniently for me?" And my mother acknowledged and appreciated his role as the family breadwinner. And returned. And shouldn't I be— I'm the family homemaker. Shouldn't I be able to arrange things the way I want? It was amazing. And after a few days, my mother bought some decorative wooden dishes that fit in with her decor, put them on the mantel, and my father could empty his pockets and put his items in those, and it satisfied my mother's need for order and my father's need for convenience. Love overcame all. Peace reigned again in the home, and I went back to watching TV. But I never forgot it. And as Josephine pointed out, know that your children are watching you. The most powerful teacher for your children is your example. You're teaching them how to have a healthy relationship, how to resolve conflict. So how can this help you? Well, I would like to invite you to go through this process. I would invite you to identify a conflict in your family. Now it could be a, just a new one, something that just came up, or it could be one of those longstanding situations that you've been dealing with for a long time. I loved what Dr. Liz said about co-parenting and having different parenting styles. Sometimes that's, that's definitely a conflict that needs to be resolved with respect. If you're divorced, maybe you can agree, even if it's the only thing you can agree on, agree that you both want what is in the best interest of your children and then base your parenting around that. So identify that conflict and then consider your relationship with the other person and your desires for that relationship. It could be with your It could be with one of your children or even an extended family member. If it's an extended family member, maybe you just want to be able to be civil and courteous so you can be in the same room. And maybe that is all you need. If it's one of your children, now consider it's a 4-year-old child. It's very easy for you, for a 4-year-old child to refuse to do what we've asked them to do. And it's tempting as a parent to pull rank and say, "Knock that off. Do it now because I said so." That authoritarian parenting. But consider, your child is 4 years old. In 10 years, they will be 14. This is the age when they face decisions and dilemmas that can impact the rest of their life. They're meeting new friends, considering new ideas, take— deciding what to take into their body, what to do with their body. This is an age when they really need that trusted mentor, a mature adult who can guide them through these treacherous years, and if they don't find an adult, it'll be one of their peers. Would you like to be able to be that mentor? Do you want the kind of trust and rapport that will enable you to help them? So you're focusing on what would be best for this other person and your relationship with them. And Use empathy. Put yourself in their shoes. How would you feel if you were them? You're, you, you're very much aware of how you feel about this conflict. Understand how they feel. And if you don't know, spend some time listening. And then invite them to collaborate with you to find a solution that works for both of you. Find a way that you both can win and your relationship can win. And then here is the last step, and it's probably the most important, and it is simply to persist. It will probably take more than one conversation to undo years of a consistent pattern, especially if it was negative. If trust was lost, It will take time to rebuild trust. You may need to agree to disagree and accept the fact that the only person you can control is yourself. We can influence our children, but especially in those teen years, we need to accept that they will start making their own decisions. And do we only love them if they do what we want them to do? Or can we give them our unconditional love, our commitment that we will always love them, care about them, and be in their life? With consistent effort, you can heal old wounds and you can transition to a healthier approach to conflict resolution. And if you're starting out with children, you can start setting those healthy patterns because there will be conflict. You'll have it. Learn to resolve it with respect. Now, what about those times when the emotions are so strong, you don't feel like you can listen? You don't know if you even want to hear what their side is. I invite you to consider the words of Viktor Frankl. As you may already know, he was a Jewish, Jewish psychologist during World War II. He was incarcerated in a concentration camp for 3 years. He saw the worst of humanity, the most severe treatment of human beings, and this was his observation. Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. And in our response lies our growth and our freedom. It may be a very small space, but it's there. We can choose how we respond. And I think Josephine brought that up too. We respond. Rather than react. I wrote an ebook on how to make the most effective use of that space. It's called Feeling Triggered: Change Your Response. It briefly outlines what you can do in those tense moments. I invite you to go to feelingtriggered.com and get that ebook. and I would love to hear from you on how it goes as you resolve a conflict with respect. I'd love to hear your stories. How did it go? Share that. You can reach me just at emmalu@healingyourfamilies.com. Thank you again.

I can't thank you enough. That was so helpful. We all have conflicts. I love that you are talking about how to have healthy conflicts because we need to be able to model and have it and teach it.

All right, everybody, virtual round of applause for the amazing—

thank you, Emma Lou, so much.

Thank you.

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