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Staying Conscious And Connected With Your Kids Without Getting Caught Up In The Drama
Do you guys have kids? This is an episode we’re going to talk about because obviously when you have a conscious connected couple and you have kids that are also in part of that relationship. How do you stay conscious and connected when the kiddos have their own agendas, when they come to the family with their own energy, with their own contrast, with their own dramas? We wanted to talk about some of the things that we do. One of the things that we’re going to talk about is bullies when you have a situation with a bully and your kids might have that drama, what do we do?
Another aspect that we’re going to talk about is how not to get caught up in those roles of being a parent. Before you’re a parent, I’m Frederic, I’m myself. Christy is Christy. We are a couple to two individuals inside the couple. We have to be careful not to be too wrapped up into our roles of parents.
We have to parent as a verb and obviously care for our children. I was having a conversation with my girlfriend who’s an amazing mom. She was saying that she was having a conversation with a friend of her and her friend said that, “As a parent, you’re only as happy as your saddest kid.” I thought, “That’s horrible,” because what that’s doing is that’s putting all of your feelings and all of your everything, you’re determining, you’re signing your feelings outside on what’s happening with your kid. What if you have two kids and one is always in drama and the other one is calm, cool and collected. Does it mean that for Alex and our family, he’s more the theatrical one?
He’s more of screams when he gets hurt and has the little dramas that he has. Does that mean that I have to match his mood and I can only be as happy as he is or as sad as he is or gets caught up in his drama? I used to, but we don’t do that anymore because I realized that I get to keep my own feelings and that my kids, they’re not our kids when you think about it. They are the Divine’s kids. They are a gift that we get to have that we get to create. Each soul that comes to the planet needs a vehicle. It takes the sperm and the egg and creates the baby in the uterus. The baby comes out. There were the ones that feed the child and that’s how it works.
Talking about energy, the energy of a child, I’m finding out is very similar to the energy of the puppy. We are learning actually how to deal with our new puppy. It’s so true. If we come up with energy where we match the energy of the puppy, all of a sudden, the puppy will continue piddling or continue to bite us or nip at us and do things that we don’t want him to do. It’s similar to children. When our child has a very high theatrical energy, for example, we have to make sure that we don’t meet him at that level.
Like, “You’re kidding me,” because we play into his theatrics. The more reaction that we give him, he feeds into that and the more he could grow.
We have to keep the energy a little low, reassure him, “All is good, Alex. Everything is going to be fine. You’re not hurt. You might’ve been surprised.” His energy can match us.
He could also feel that the security of us, if we as parents go into the, “Oh my God.” The kid doesn’t feel as secure. Kids want love and structure. They want to know that they’re safe. By us as parents staying solid in ourselves, not getting reactive, not getting caught up in the drama, and they see that we’re solid, they’re going to trust that. They’re going to feel safer. As Frederic said, we’re not matching those theatrics. It’s important to understand that, but you don’t get as sad as your saddest kid. It’s like saying, “Once I accomplish this thing, I’m going to be happy. Once my kids are healthy, happy and they’re on their own, I’m going to be happy.”
Connecting With Your Kids: When your child has a very high theatrical energy, make sure that you don’t meet him at that level.
You get to choose to be happy and joyful in any moment that you have. That is our birthright. We have kids. We had such a situation that happened where our kids are at a summer day camp. It’s a sports camp. Maxim calmly came in the house and he goes, “Mom, I have a story to tell you.” I’m calm about it. I’m nonchalant. He starts telling me that he got this kid who was three times bigger than him, pushed him down on the ground and basically jumped, which we now know he fell on his face. He sat on my face.
He hears this as he’s coming in the house. They are walking in the door. Frederic is like, “Why didn’t you tell me this when we were there?” Because nobody informed him. Alex said, “I took care of it.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” The kid jumps on, pushes Maxim to the ground and falls on him. Maxim couldn’t do anything to defend himself and get up. Alex, his big brother, picked the kid off of him, which is also two sizes bigger than Alex. He took care of it. He protected his brother. There was this constant talking about the situation that entire night. I was like, “Let’s figure it out. What are we going to do? Do we have to call the kids?”
I’ll text the guy from the camp to make sure he’s aware of this. That kid’s parents need a warning because that can’t happen. That kid can’t go around bullying kids. We want our kids to be in there in a safe place. I did what I needed to do as a parent to calmly take care of the situation so that this doesn’t happen again. Frederic and the boys kept talking about it. They were getting caught in the drama. I could see he wasn’t with me that evening. We even went on a walk. He’s like, “Let me call Tom. I want to find out what he knows.” He’s caught up in the drama.
To say that we’re not always in our right mind, in our head, always trying to verify, “I’m not in the bright emotional state right now. Maybe I should back down.” Sometimes it does happen. That story, I wasn’t in the right state of mind. I got caught up in it. I was like, “Why is my boy being hurt? Why can’t he defend himself? He knows karate. He’s had karate lessons.” I was asking Maxim, “How come you couldn’t escape from his pull and basically stop him from pushing you around?” It got to me. For me, it was very personal. There is a personal button that was also pushed inside of me that I realize coming from my childhood. I felt that. I was in it. I wasn’t able to console Max or even tell him everything’s going to be fine. Only after I was able to regain and come back to my adult space, probably more towards the end of the night and towards in the morning when I decided, “I need to go speak to the head counselors to make sure that the situation was being handled the right way and in a way that we were going to be pleased with as well.”
The point I’m making here is that not all of you, not both of you at one time when you have kids, when you have some drama that’s happening, if you have one person that has their energy set, I was solid. I was like, “What are the things that we have to do? I understand this happened. Are you hurt? Let me do some healing work on you.” I helped him because his face was red and his jaw was upset. Frederic took pictures to show that he had a red face. There are things and actions that we need to do. He set up so that he was going to go there at [8:30] in the morning and talk to the counselor. I was solid, “This situation happened. This is their drama. This is their contrast that they have to deal with. This is their lessons, especially Maxim’s, his life experience. I’m going to do everything I can as a caring, loving parent. I hugged him. I consoled him. I healed him, his jaw.
We looked for solutions, but sometimes you’re going to have one parent that gets caught up in it. It was personal to him. I had to keep saying, “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. There’s a solution for this.” He was able to come out of it. It wasn’t like it was days and weeks. He had a process through his own stuff. Sometimes the roles are reversed, we’ll all get hooked in. He’ll be solid. I get to look at him. With his reassurance that you’re getting caught in the drama of that. It’s like, “It’s a nice reminder.” When you have this understanding and you’re a couple that the kids are going to come with drama. They’re noisy. They’re loud. They’ve got things where they think that if something is happening, it’s like forever.
Alex hurt himself in playing soccer. Frederic called me and said, “I don’t know what to do. He might have broken his wrist or his arm. We don’t know what to do.” It was like, “I’m coming home.” I came home, he was bawling and crying. He was so upset because he thought that his wrist was going to be broken for the rest of his life. He was in pain. As a little child, their brains haven’t developed. Our brain development ends the full development around the age of 24. That’s the prefrontal cortex, which tells us that we can see into the future that things are going to be okay.
When they’re little kids and something happens to them, they get their heartbroken or a friend says they don’t want to be friends with him anymore, the bully picks on him or they hurt themselves. We as parents, have to stay in our adult space and be able to reassure the child. One of the parents could get caught up that maybe that happened to you as a kid. Maybe you also got your heartbroken and now it’s like bringing up that space in you. It’s up to us in our own development, whatever age your kids are, to be older than your kids are.
Connecting With Your Kids: Kids are going to come with drama. They’re noisy, they’re loud, and they’ve got things where they think that if something is happening, it’s forever.
To be more conscious about what’s happening to you because it’s easy to say, “What’s happening with your wrist? Why are you like that? Why didn’t you be careful?” and go on and on. Be again involved in that drama and not knowing how to respond in a mature adult way. It’s knowing that this is your child, it might be activating and pushing some buttons where you had situations earlier on in your childhood. That’s a difference between being in a conscious couple versus unconscious couple. That leads me to say, if you want to know more about functioning in a conscious way with your couple, go to ConnectedCoupling.com and fill out the form that we have. We’ll be able to help out, give you some steps and things to do in order to be in a more of a conscious loving couple versus a nonconscious couple.
In all those cases, Alex with his wrist, I could see it in his eyes. As soon as I started to say, “You’re going to be fine. It’s going to get better. You didn’t break your wrist. You didn’t break your arm. I know it hurts. Breathe.” He started to calm down. He stopped crying. It’s us as the parents that need to be in that steadfast place, that need to be in that grounded place. If we’re getting, “You’re ruined. You’re never going to play soccer again.” If we get into that, it’s like the puppy. He’s going to piddle all over the place. His energy is going to match my energy and get excited. When I calmly see him now, he’s calmer. When I’m calm, my kids can be calm. It’s important not to get caught up in their drama.
It is easier said than done. We all have our mishaps, but it’s good to be aware of what’s going on so you can be in the right place afterward.
The other thing I wanted to talk about is that Frederic and I, a couple of years ago, put into place a family contract. We put in a contract when we got our kids, it was the Xbox, this is a privilege and you’re going to do so many different things to be able to earn points to play. You’re not going to play during the week. You’re going to play only on the weekends. You’re going to have to earn through what you do, making your bed, brushing your teeth, getting yourself ready in the morning through those things to be able to earn points to play. Once we started getting with that practice, it worked out well because they understood what the expectations are with us with that game. What we expect of them, what they can expect of us, how they earn privileges.
Everything was written out. We had them sign it. We signed that. We extended it. We call it our family contract. Each boy, Alex has one. Max has one. They’re very similar. One of the things was we would have Alex come downstairs and he was grumpy in the morning. He wouldn’t say good morning to us. The very first rule on there was, “You say good morning to every member of the family with a smile.” Now he does that. He comes down, he might be sleepy and tired and he’s like, “Good morning, dad. Good morning, Max. Good morning, mom.” It makes it much more pleasant.
They’re not just saying anything. Noticing his mood or his face and he might not be in a bad mood. He’s waking up. It’s good to hear that he’s saying good morning to us before.
Also, the other thing that’s on both the boys’ contracts is when we ask you, when we request that you do something, you say, “Yes, dad, got you,” with a smile. We don’t want to hear, “Yeah, but,” or all these other rebuttals and things like that. We’re asking you to do something because we need your help. We want to hear, “Okay, dad. Okay, mom,” with a smile.” Listen and respond, there are other things we were having, “It was an accident that I hit my brother, but the accidents kept happening every day.” There’s no hitting, no biting, no punching, not any of these things. That’s on the contract. What we do with this contract is we’ve gamified life for them. We have five different levels. They earn so many points. They earn points for if they do the dishes. They’ll unload the dishwasher and they get points for that.
Our kids at ages seven and eight, actually at a younger age, we taught them to do it at two and three. At seven and eight, and now at eight and ten, they are consistently helping us unload the dishwasher. They also do the laundry now. They start loads of laundry. They’ll take the laundry from the rooms. They’ll put it in. They’ll sort it. They get points for that. They get points for picking up Jack’s poop, our puppy’s poop. They get points for different things. It’s helping them get involved in the family. It’s helping them get along better. If they break any of those rules that we all have signed, they lose all of their points and they can only go to the level one for the rest of the week. It has them thinking and becoming more conscious about what they’re doing in the family.
Connecting With Your Kids: Teach your kids that when they do something of value, they get something back of value; that’s work.
They’re helping their parents out. That’s the important thing that they’re helping around the house. They’re creating less work for us. That’s what we tell them. In that way, they’re helping and at the same time their effort is being rewarded in some way.
We’re teaching them that when you do something of value, you get something back of value that’s work. We’re teaching them at a young age, but we’re also teaching them the way that the universal laws work. Law of Attraction, what you give out, you get back. As they’re helping, you get a reward. We’re not going to reward them and just give them stuff for not doing something or they’re acting rude to each other or fighting and stuff like that. We’re not rewarding that behavior. We’re giving them a consequence for that. They might lose some points. We’ve gamified life that might be different. The allowance that they get, game time that they get, extra cuddle time, different gifts or things that we get them like go, “You hit level five this week, let’s go on Amazon and get you a gift, a toy or a Pokémon card or whatever it is.” They love it and it’s really working for our family. It has taken the drama out of the family because of everything in black and white. It’s like, “Alex, you just punched your brother. It was an accident. You lost all your points.”
It helps us to stay centered and not be like, “Why did you punch him in the face? What happened?” That can happen too. That has happened. Sometimes I’m wondering, “Why is he hitting his brother like that?” They’re brothers. They’ll fight. There will be some wrestling around that happens. He’s got to be aware that punch that goes in the face, that has consequences basically right now for him. It helps them figure out that whatever they do, there’s either a reward or there is a consequence for it. We don’t need to be in a state of big drama. This is part of the contract. In the contract, there are all the points taken off or there are many points that we give you.
It’s great to reward them too. The boys came home with their report cards. Both of them had amazing report cards and we were able to give them tons of points. It’s a way of saying, “I noticed that you helped your brother with that.” I’m impressed with that or Alex when he helped with the kid that was bullying Maxim or hurt Maxim, we gave him points for that. It’s a great way to say, “You’re doing a great job. I appreciate how you’re helping us. Here are some points.” It’s a great way not to get the emotions involved. It creates a structure for the family and it helps with the drama, not just for them, but the reactions that we also have. Like Frederic was saying, instead of getting all upset, you know what the consequences are.
You know what the rules are. There’s a structure that they’re clear on. They know what the expectations are. If you want more information, go to ConnectedCoupling.com. Please leave us a comment. We want to know what questions we can answer for you. What situations are you mulling over in your head, maybe with kids, maybe in your couple, we’re happy to answer it on these shows. Please come back and leave us a comment. Thank you so much for reading. Thank you so much for participating. Next, we are going to be talking about how to manage the day-to-day responsibilities talking about laundry, dishes, garbage and all that kind of stuff. Be sure to come back.
