Episode 423: Beautiful Behavior Blueprint for Parents

Hello, everyone. This is Rebecca Green for the Winey Palooza podcast, and I am very excited today because I get to speak with the fabulous Diane Sorensen. Diane, thank you so much for doing this with me today.

Thank you, Rebecca, for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Yay. Well, we're going to learn so much from her, and I want to tell you about her first. Diane is a certified transformational life coach. Specializing in parenting and relationships. With 30 years in early childhood education and degrees in early education and behavioral science, she brings extensive knowledge to her coaching. After her daughter's mental health crisis, Diane discovered relationship-based practices, transforming her parenting and relationships. She now empowers parents and educators of course, I'm looking at the camera and losing my spot, to shift from control to self-management, fostering emotional intelligence and healthy boundaries. As creator and CEO of Beautiful Behavior and host of its podcast, Diane shares these transformative practices to help families thrive. And I told Diane I have way too many questions for her, so we'll see what we get to today. And I really wanna start with, I would love to hear about what inspired you to go from early childhood education to life coaching.

Yeah, yeah, it's been a journey. Um, so yeah, I was in the field of early childhood for, like you said, 30-ish years, um, as a teacher and then later as a behavior specialist. And What changed the trajectory of my life was my then teen, 17-year-old daughter. I had a teen who was self-harming. And so we went on a journey. You know, it was so devastating and a big growth journey for, for my whole family. Um, what I discovered through that process was patterns, generational patterns that I had no awareness of, um, but that were playing out in our relationship, and it was contributing to this mental health crisis. And so I learned, um, I, I just, I did a lot of research, um, and learned some new way, learned that there's this whole new way of being in relationship with our children, um, that is much healthier and that promotes not just— it promotes all the parts of us. It promotes our emotional health, our mental health, our physical health. And so I started practicing this new way of showing up in relationship with my own children and in the classroom. And what happened was, people just really started noticing, you know, people that were coming into the classroom and saying, what are you doing in here? It feels different. So anyway, over time, people then started asking me, would you consider working with our family? Would you consider working with me outside of, you know, the school system? And so that kind of took me into the coaching realm, and the rest is history.

Wow. I mean, what a story. I mean, I had no idea. I was so curious. I was like, what happened? Because it says mental health crisis. I'm like, oh, that doesn't sound good. So I would love to hear how you started showing up differently. Not only for your daughter, but for your students. I think we could definitely learn from that.

Well, and part of that was showing up differently for myself. It was really understanding my own self, and it was radical self-awareness of how I was showing up, the behaviors that I was using. When I was growing up, I really got the message. I mean, nobody told me this, but, you know, the ex— the lived experience of that— the parent's job was to control the children, or, you know, to make them behave. Yeah. You know, I would always hear these messages of, oh, you know, who, who's controlling you know, that household, or the parents need to get control of that child, or you need to tell them, you need to show them who's in control.

Yeah.

And so I thought my job was to, you know, make my children behave. Um, and, you know, with that job title, you know, our good— our— I think the other thing is in our culture there's this there's this belief that a good parent is a well-behaved child. Um, and, you know, my mother— we were raised on that. And, you know, I, I always— I, I'd gotten the message really growing up that, um, when I started doing all this work that uncovered was I— it really didn't matter who I was. It mattered how other people saw me, right? It mattered, um, how I performed really out in the world. Um, and so some of those patterns just repeated themselves. So I, I had a very specific lens that I allowed people to see me through, right?

Yeah.

The good enough lens.

Yes.

And what happened unconsciously was that my children then needed to fit into that lens, just as I had to fit into that lens for mine.

Sounds familiar.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Really what was missing was the emotional support skills. And even as an educator, this wasn't taught to me. And so that is what I started to unfold and started to, um, build, is that the focus was not on the behavior. The focus was to understand the behavior, but the focus was on how we were relating to each other, right? Because when we, when the, when we focus on behavior and we have this sense that my being a good parent is tied to my child's behavior, we really become victim. To our children, and they become victims. Then also we create victimhood, um, and what happens is, unbeknownst to us, we, we become a threat to our children and they become a threat to us. Their behavior is threatening to our ability to be a good parent, right?

Yeah. I mean, I think we— I think that is also true, and I think we don't necessarily understand this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you move—

yeah, so we just, we just go through life reacting to things, right? Like, I was a yeller. I, you know, my mother was a yeller as well, you know. We when things weren't going the way I thought they should, or when I perceived my children as not listening, um, then I was yelling to gain, I guess, compliance, um, to be heard, really, uh, but really not having any idea of the impact that this was having on them. Right.

Yeah. I mean, my kids hate it if I, if I get a little bit heated that you can, they're like, don't yell, don't yell.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so this all, I mean, this is a whole paradigm shift. Yeah. Right. Where we're shifting to shining the light instead of on our children and their behavior. On how do I feel and what do I think and how am I reacting or responding and what impact is that having. So one of the things that happened in the classroom when I started shifting to this and practicing these things, um, was that the people couldn't really put their finger on why it was different, but what it came to was it feels different. The feeling was different, right? And that is so huge that the children and the adults in the room all really felt accepted in there. And, and, and my biggest thing was in, in that that I just loved about this was that it took away— there were no more bad kids, good kids in the classroom. Because even in early child— I mean, by the time they're 3, they know who the bad kids are and the good kids, right? They do. And that took it away. And they were all— we were all just like a team. This was our classroom. And so I take that and help people put that into the home environment so that— and I also actually work with educators too. But really, my passion is creating compassionate environments where both children and adults thrive. And really teaching women that you can live a full life and feel good in your life while you're raising children instead of the old, you got to sacrifice yourself and give everything up.

Because I, I think that you, you'll agree to this. I think that what I see a lot with women, and, and some are just like thriving on motherhood and they just eat it up and love it, but I would say more often I'm seeing women feeling like they're just trying to survive and get through each day, like they're in the weeds and they're just trying to plow through their days as best as they can. And I don't see the joy. And, and I would love to bring that to them, which is why you and I are here. So you shifted from a real control mindset to what you call more of a self-management mindset.

Can you—

so can you help these women with telling us like what that looks like in your actions, feelings, behaviors?

Yeah, so really to create a feeling of safety and trust between each other and even with ourself, we really need to understand how to identify and work with our own distress, and so that we can help or support our children when they're in emotional distress. Um, because here's the thing, we get into this— really, we've been conditioned to almost fear upset, right? Which is fearing our emotions in other people and in ourself. Like, I'll just speak for myself, and, you know, and, and, and all the people that I talk to, um, so, so often, many of the conversations I have, that, you know, anger was something that was not acceptable to express, right? You, you couldn't be angry, um, or that was scary, right? If we saw it on the— if I saw it on my parents, like my mother yelling, that was really scary as a child, um, and then I would push down my own anger. And what happens is over time that energy inside builds and builds and builds until Right. It explodes. And it usually explodes on the people we love the most because they're the safest.

Exactly.

And so one of— that was really my starting point, was to understand my own emotions and that they were actually inside my body because I really had never thought about that. Um, there was a time when I started this training and I was asked, what, what do you feel? And I think at that time I said, angry. They said, where in your body do you feel it? And I was like, what does that mean? And it was in that moment that I realized, oh, I know how to label. I mean, I know names of emotions. We read books about emotions. We talk about emotions and feelings. We, you know, talk about body language and facial expressions and what emotion goes with, you know, what facial expression. But what I realized was, oh, I don't feel my feelings. And I'm not teaching my children at school or in my home to feel their feelings. And so that was a huge piece for me. I realized the only two emotions that I even allowed were happy and mad. Those were the only two I really identified with, and I acted them out. I didn't feel them. I was, you know, When I was mad, I was stomping around and, you know, whatever, you know, I was acting it out on the outside. That's how I communicated, this is how I'm feeling. And when I was happy, did the same thing. I was, you know, all bubbly and, you know, and they were kind of extreme too. I'd be really mad or really happy. Did not do sad. I did not do sad at all. And I do remember my mother being very judgmental of people when they expressed sadness, you know, that was some kind of a weakness or—

yeah, you know.

So I think that is one of the first keys in our relationship with our children is to be able to start the practice of tolerating uh, feelings, emotions that are in our body, the discomfort that are in our body, because this is what actually drives the behavior. The behavior, the distressful behavior, is being driven from internal distress. So if we are trying to stop the behavior, we are stopping the support of that internal distress. And what happens is our children are then alone with that distress. And what do you do with it as a child, right? And here's the thing, is emotions— unprocessed, unidentified emotions— that don't leave our body. They stay within, in our cells, in our tissues, and they create a lot of stress, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah. And this is so important because it connects to almost everything when we aren't identifying and working with our emotions, feeling our feelings and learning how to— I almost hate to use the word regulate because I think a lot of times regulate is— we think of just not having them, you know, kind of pushing them down and not expressing them, but how to work with them. Because when we don't, this stress inside our body, it stresses the brain. And what happens when our brain is stressed? We can't focus, right? We can't sit still. We can't regulate our behavior, our emotions. I mean, and this is what's happening inside of children. And then we're like, oh, but you need to sit still. So it's really important that we have this emotional intelligence piece because that is what creates safety within our relationships and opens them up for learning. So if you have a child in school who's, you know, can't sit still, can't focus, um, and is really shut down to learning It's because they've really kind of— they're not connected, right? They're disconnected.

So you've described emotional intelligence. Do you mind defining it for people? Because I don't think people know what emotional intelligence actually is.

Yeah, the way I talk about emotional intelligence is the awareness and the connection to what is happening internally in our internal world. When we get triggered, let's take that for instance, triggers. We think triggers are something coming from the thing in front of us, right?

Yeah.

Yes, where the thing in front of us is actually just this— our— what is enlivening the trigger is the thing in front of us is triggering a thought, right? A perception. And we're— our brain is like a meaning-making machine, so we're making it mean something, which causes emotion. So In a simple way to say this, you— when we get triggered, some kind of insecurity that we are carrying, um, gets enlivened. It's trying to get our attention so that we can heal that piece. It's not something that somebody else needs to change. They're actually giving us a gift. Sometimes that's a little bit of a stretch to think of it that way, But I always say triggers are showing up for us, not something that is being done to us.

That's such a good way to look at it. I'm just thinking about myself because my husband actually notices this, is that I will get triggered when I don't feel like my kids are appreciating me. So it's like, I just did blah, blah, blah. And this is how you act. So we had a good conversation about that. I mean, that is a common mom trigger. Like, you need to appreciate me.

For sure. Not feeling appreciated. And why is that, that we don't feel appreciated?

Well, I certainly feel appreciated, but in the moment, in the moment, when, let a perfect example. And I think everyone will relate to this, is if I have done a ton of stuff for my children that day, then I think I deserve them to act a certain way to feel appreciated. Right? Which is totally setting myself up for failure.

Right, right. And that's what we do. You know, so often we are doing, doing, doing, doing.

Yes.

Or others, because we've learned that that gets us gold stars, right? That is what we were taught we're supposed to do. We're supposed to be giving and, you know, doing for everybody. That, you know, makes us feel important. But then what happens is we end up being resentful because now we're taking care of everybody else and who's taking care of me? It is not our children's job. No, take care of us. It is not. And so when we don't feel appreciated, or so-and-so's not appreciating me, I always invite people to turn that back to I. I'm not appreciating me. Is there any truth in that? Can you find any truth in that? And then How— what can I do to appreciate me?

Always comes back to ourselves, doesn't it?

It always comes back to ourselves. It does. And you know, it's so funny because then what comes up is, oh, then they get left off the hook. They just get off the hook for everything, right? And here's what I like to say about that is It's not about letting them off the hook. It's about creating more freedom for ourself.

I like that. I like that. I think that, I think that is taking back— what I love that you're explaining so well is that we're giving them too much power with the way that we're thinking.

Totally. We're giving our power to them. And what a heavy weight. For children to carry, to carry our power. They don't want our power.

No.

And then there's other instances where we want to take their power.

Yes, so true.

They want their power. They need to be able to have some say, you know, in their life. They don't have a lot of control over things. So when we can allow them to make some choices and, um, to have some of their own power. And sometimes we're really afraid of that because then we're like, oh, but they'll fail, or they're, you know, whatever, they'll— we can't let them, you know, fall down. And what if they don't get back up?

Um, yeah, yeah.

And that again comes back to self-trust. Trusting ourselves.

I like that. Always comes back to us. We all need to remember that whatever we're feeling, it comes back to how we're feeling about ourselves. That's really good advice. Really good advice. I think that what I've learned is my, my kids would rather me not do a thing as long as they get a content, calm mother, right? If I'm a calm, sweet mom, they don't care about all the stuff that I'm doing.

Right. Yeah. And so for me, part of my story is, you know, I always had this sense of needing to perform for everybody, right? This need to prove myself. Whether it was, you know, part of my story is proving myself through thinness. I was good enough because I was thin. Yeah. Or I was good enough because I was so bubbly and went with the flow, you know, never got mad about anything, um, which left me with a lot of suppressed anger that, you know, came out sideways, um, later on. But it was this good enough stuff, this, you know, the need to feel good enough. And I just thought, oh, now that I'm a parent, everybody's gonna see how good enough I am, really through my children. And although that wasn't a conscious thought. Um, what I realize now is that my sense of self-worth was on the shoulders of my children, and my daughter felt the weight of that. Um, you know, and she had no way of expressing her emotional distress, or when she did, I didn't understand how to read that and how to quarter. Um, and I wasn't listening to all the little red flags. Um, and you know, it— I didn't want to look at myself. I was like, oh no, no, this is, you know, let's look out here. Um, you know, until it just got so big. You know how the universe is, it gives you little, little taps and then you ignore that, and they give you a little bit of a shove and you ignore that until you are like you know, falling to your knees, and then it's like, okay, ready to listen, you know. And it doesn't have to be that way, um, if we can start talking about these things and learn, you know, that those little nudges. And that's just really what I want mothers to know is that there is another way to, to mother that is fulfilling. Right? And I realized one of my mother's patterns was she was always so busy, and if she wasn't busy, she was exhausted, right? So she was either too busy or too exhausted to pay any attention to me, really. And what I realized is, oh my goodness, I created that same pattern in a different way, but I created the same pattern. I would be doing until I was exhausted.

Yes, right.

And even, you know, Rebecca, I, I remember doing all the things too that, you know, you're supposed to do as a parent. Um, you know, like have family nights, have family game nights or things like that. And so, okay, we'll have a family— we'll have family game nights, you know, we do that for a while and then it would fall off. But here's why. Is because it never felt good. It never— we weren't attuned to the emotion in the room, right? We didn't know how to deal with people's anger or conflict or upset. And so then it would kind of fall away because, well, this is too— this isn't working. Why are we doing this? Because all we're doing is arguing. Um, when we get together, so why are we even doing this? So, and what I realized now is that that really was the missing link, was the ability to, um, be aware of emotions and how they actually are our internal guidance. And we can work with that. It didn't mean bad, but growing up for me, upset meant bad. Any kind of of anything other than happy.

I know. I think that's— I think that's very, very common because— because we're all so uncomfortable with anything but roses and sunshine is what I tell my family. I'm not all roses and sunshine, I tell them.

Right. So I love now living a messy life.

Yes. Oh, I love that word.

It's a messy word.

It's a messy life.

It's a messy, beautiful life.

Yes, yes, exactly.

When you can invite the messy in, it can be beautiful.

Such a good way to look at it.

We have to accept our own imperfections, right? This isn't about performing for the world. This is about living a fulfilled life and creating that, because otherwise we're victim. We're living our life in survival as a victim. And I lived my life in survival unknowingly for decades. And I tell you, it was exhausting. And I didn't know how exhausting it was until I quit doing it.

Yeah.

And then it was like, wow, that was a lot of work.

Yes.

And I'm having way more fun in my life now.

Oh, I love that.

And so, yeah, so my message always is, you know, I was there. I was there as a parent, and I also created change. And so I know that change is possible, and it's possible for you. Anybody out— anybody out there listening to this, it is possible for you.

I don't know that I believe you. I don't know that everybody listening believes you. So can you give them a starting point?

Um, well, let's change our job description as parents, right? Rather than our job is to make our children behave our job is to make them happy or create some kind of outcome. Even our job— what if we, what if we changed it to our job is to provide safety for our children? Our job is to provide safety that is within our control.

Our—

it is to provide safety in our relationship, right? And to empower them to become the person they want to become.

Yes.

Yes. So rather than do as I say, the upgrade is to become the change. And you're like, uh, how do you What does that mean? It is creating, creating the change I really want. And you can start here. One, start prioritizing yourself. And so I teach boundaries, which I did not have any boundaries.

Yeah. I don't even think that people know what boundaries are.

They don't. They don't. So here's the first thing with boundaries, giving yourself permission to put yourself as your number one priority. Now, we did not learn this. We are learning now what an impact that makes. This isn't putting ourself as a number one priority over others or at the cost of others. This is Putting yourself as your number one priority for the benefit of those in your life, for your children, because you are going to be able to show up in a fulfilled way when you do that, in a more genuine way where we're giving out of our genuine ness, not because we think that's how it's supposed to be. So does that make sense?

It does make sense. I'm just looking for, can you give them an example of setting a boundary and taking care of themselves?

Okay, so start with this. Start with the not this list, or you could start with the wouldn't it be nice list. But I always think not sometimes You know, if we, if we go to, um, here's the transformation equation that I, that I use, um, which was coined by Nancy Levin, but it's change equals vision plus choice plus action. So vision is just what you want, what, what comes from your soul, and if it's in you, it's for you. So sometimes though, when we say, well, I mean, vision can be a really overwhelming word, or even saying, what do you want? It can be really overwhelming. So start with what? Not this. Not this. What is not? What do I not want? I think sometimes it's easier to start with that. What do I not want? And then what is the opposite of that? So maybe what I don't want is I don't want to keep yelling at the kids.

Right.

And then what's the opposite of that?

I want to show up as a calm mom for my kids.

Calm mom. Okay, so write this list out. Not this. What's the opposite? Those are the things you're really craving. And then putting those on your calendar, your to-do list. You go on your to-do list first. What is— how can you start to create more calm?

I love that.

This is really taking ownership. Yeah, taking ownership of ourselves. How can we— what is one choice and one action you can take? It's not this whole big thing like, oh, how am I going to do that? One small step that will move the needle in that direction. And then here's the other thing. So create steps that will move you towards more calm, and as you're doing that, watch to see what gets in the way.

That's really good.

What gets in the way? Yeah, because a lot of times here's what we want to say— our children get in the way. Well, yeah, but we can't control that, right?

Right. He—

here, the— I think culturally we have come to believe— well, you know, we were talking about, I thought my job as a parent was to make my children behave. Well, guess what? We— that's not even possible. Even if we— I mean, we might believe it's possible, but doesn't mean it's true, because one human does not control another human. What happens is we coerce, we manipulate, we control, and that is what is the breakdown of the trust and the safety in the relationship. So it's really not about changing somebody else, and sometimes that can be a hard place to get. But what gets in the way oftentimes is our own thoughts and our own feelings.

100%.

And so what I teach women to do is to not become victim to their own thoughts and feelings. They are not the driver of them, right? I mean, we are the driver of them. Our thoughts and our feelings are not the driver of us, and that's the pattern we accidentally get into.

Yeah, I mean, I hope that everyone is feeling how I'm feeling because I feel a sense of power and control over myself instead of worrying about what everybody else is doing.

It's so liberating. I, I mean, being on— in both— on both sides, it is so liberating.

Well, I feel terrible for why this whole thing started. But look at how— I mean, this is amazing how far you have come from what you described from the beginning. So that's amazing.

Yeah, it is possible.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure you've given everybody hope and inspiration and tips. And you know that I could ask you 50 more questions, but I will not.

Yeah. And I just want to say too that it doesn't matter what your background is, your education background, your socioeconomic background, we all struggle with this. And it's so possible to live in more freedom. And that's what I really want people to know.

Well, and I was flipping through and listening to your podcast, where people can go for more help. So can you, can you tell everyone where they can find you, your podcast, all the things, because I'm sure that we all want more.

Yes. So my podcast is Beautiful Behavior. So I would love to have you come join us over there where we talk about relationships, parenting, and creating connection. Um, I think we're all so longing for connection and I will tell you that there came a point where I was like, oh, I don't even think I know what connection is because, you know, I didn't have that in my life. So we talk all about all those things. Yeah. So go over to Beautiful Behavior. You know, you can find all my links and things there too. I am on Instagram. @dianesorensen.bb. Oh, and I do have a gift for all your listeners, so I will give you the link for that if you want to put that in the show notes.

Of course.

But yeah, if you head on over to Beautiful Behavior, you will see in the show notes all my other links too.

Okay. And as far as life coaching, yes. Do you do that all over? Is this a local thing?

This is online. I do, I do go out and do some when I work with educators. I do some local things, but otherwise my one-on-one coaching with mothers is online. I have two different programs, Empowered Living and Connected Parenting, so you can check those out on the website. Yeah, I'm gonna be having a group program launching in March. So keep your eyes and ears open for that. Um, it's gonna be called Reinvention. Yes, Reinvention.

Oh my goodness, so many good things. Well, I can't thank you enough for your time and expertise today. It was so wonderful talking to you.

Thank you, Rebecca. It was a delight to be here.

This is Rebecca Green, and I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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