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Welcome back to Parenting Without Power Struggles. What a fun series this has turned out to be, exploring internal family systems and the overlap with the work I've been doing as an educator and a family therapist for so many years. I love talking about being that captain of the ship, and hopefully in our last episode you understood a little bit more how these two ideas overlap, being our true self, our wise self, our Self in IFS terminology, and our captain using Susan Stiffelman's terminology, and the ideas of the lawyer and the dictator.

Lots of information here. If you haven't listened already, then go back. The episodes aren't too long, but they are packed with lots of information that might give you things to think about and consider as you go about your parenting day, and start to become more aware of which version of you is showing up as you interact with your children.

If you don't know me, you can find out more at susanstiffelman.com. There's lots of resources there by the way, a free newsletter, membership groups, 50 master classes with wonderful colleagues, and of course look around here at the podcast series. Wonderful episodes here with the best of the best. I'll leave it at that. Hopefully you'll explore. Let's get started.

So if you're familiar with my work or you've been listening to this podcast series, you understand this idea of being the captain or being in our wise self, which has a lot of benefit in terms of raising our children. Because when we're rooted and clear and compassionate, our kids are much more responsive. They feel more secure. They know that there's a steady hand at the wheel, and everybody just enjoys life more. There's fewer power struggles and arguments and pushback and explosive drama and fights. However, we're all human, and we all had a childhood, and we all developed our own wounded places and suffered our own kind of neglect or trauma or difficulties or losses, and so we have these protective parts inside.

And those parts can make it pretty easy for us to move into lawyer mode, where we're arguing, negotiating, justifying, giving advice that our children have not asked for and don't want. Or dictator mode where we're shouting, yelling, threatening, bribing, punishing, withdrawing our love, ignoring, sending our kids off, exiting. We move into those places because, as you've heard in this series, our protective parts can take over and move us away from the parent that we'd most like to be, the one we're resolved to be, committed to be when we listen to these podcasts and read the books and take the classes. Because in the heat of the moment, a lot of that flies out the window, try as we might to stay steady and calm, and we get reactive.

Happens to the best of us, including yours truly. It has happened to me, and probably prompted me to do a lot of the work that I do and have developed because I, as a young mother, knew who I wanted to be and the ways I wanted to be the same and different from my own parents, what I wanted to give my child that I didn't get growing up. And in some cases I succeeded, and in some didn't, because I had these parts that were still in the way of me having access to that wisest self inside. So the beauty, I think, of raising children, one of the quiet gifts that come with having a child, is that we are often deeply motivated to grow and grow up, to heal those places inside.

And how do they show up? When we get triggered by our kids, when they push a button, when they do something that we don't want them to do, or they don't respect a limit or a boundary, we move into that lawyer mode. We move into dictator mode. "Go to your room. Go live with your father. No dinner for you. No sleepover this weekend." And we lose it. We lose our cool. Okay, it's happened. You've defended yourself. You've argued. You've been the version of you that you would really, in your best moments, not want to be. Your head hits the pillow later at the end of the day and maybe you feel regret or you feel ashamed. Why did that happen? I promised myself I wouldn't yell like that. I promised I would be different from my mother. I can't count how many people I have coached over the years who have confessed that they absolutely were certain that they weren't going to follow in the path of a parent who they felt was not safe, not loving, not secure, not steady, and here they are repeating that behavior.

And this is how it happens because it almost becomes cellular, that those patterns take root inside of us. But the good news is even when we think we can't change, we can. And it's not so much about changing our behavior. We can all try to change our behavior. My goodness, we try everything to change our behavior. Promises, contracts, agreements, therapy. But it doesn't change until we've healed the place inside that spurs us to yell, to threaten, to shame, to argue, to give advice. Until the place inside that gets rattled is healed, and that's the beauty of the work that I'm doing with my membership and the IFS coaching that I do because it can be healed, and my gosh, it's like being liberated. It's like being set free, let out of the cage. And again, often this is inspired by our children because we look at their faces while we're yelling or shouting or threatening, and there is at least some part of us observing this going, "Oh my gosh, what am I doing again?"

So in this episode, I want to talk a little bit about repair. Because the goal is not that we never lose our cool, we never yell at our children or say things that we later regret or that we can't even believe are coming out of our mouth in the moment, and we can't stop it. That's not the goal. We're not going to be that captain of the ship 100% of the time, probably, unless you're really doing some deep work. But we can use those challenging moments, those breakdowns, for some really deep healing for ourselves and for our children and for the relationship with our children and our teens.

First thing I want to say by way of reassuring you is it's not even good for your kids for you to constantly be this saint-like being, right? They need to encounter some tough moments to discover that relationships can survive them. Terry Real talks about rupture and repair. We did a beautiful class together, by the way, that's on my website. Just love his work so much. Rupture and repair is baked into relationship. Rupture without repair, that's where we have concerns. Because what we want is for a child to experience that, yes, people lose their cool. "I'm going to lose my cool when I become a grownup or a parent," thinks the child. "I'm not always going to be even-keeled, and when I do lose my cool or I get really frustrated or angry, I can repair the relationship. I can repair that rupture." This allows a child to develop resilience, and flexibility, and adaptability, and move toward becoming that resilient grown-up. They go through tough moments, and they survive them. And part of that is that we make repair with them.

And this is not about "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I wouldn't have shouted at you if you'd gotten in the car the first time I called" — that is not repair. Okay, let me say that again. Repair is not, "I'm sorry I yelled at you guys, but if you'd gotten in the car when I told you to, we wouldn't have had this craziness." That's not repair. That's something else. Repair is that your child can discover there's a rupture, and that you can restore connection. And it doesn't happen with these words, "I'm sorry." Sorry in and of itself says very little, if anything. Your child senses the difference between a genuine apology — everybody senses the difference — one that reflects true empathy and true remorse and regret, versus, "I'm checking this 'I'm sorry' off my list."

So what does this actually sound like? Let's go back to the dinner example from the last episode. I was talking about the child who really wanted pasta with butter, and the parent had served stew. Now, in lawyer mode you're going to see this parent explaining why they can't always have pasta with butter and the nutritional value or lack thereof of pasta and all that kind of stuff, lawyer stuff. Or dictator, of course we know, would be like, "Fine, don't eat anything then. Less work for me." So we know what those things sound like.

Repair is once you've kind of landed back in your own skin, saying something like this: "Johnny, I got really worked up earlier about dinner. That's on me. You're allowed to be disappointed about the stew, and I don't feel good about it. I feel bad that I sent you to your room. I'm really sorry." So there's an authenticity to it. We're not saying, "I only sent you to your room because you were being so ungrateful." You don't need to explain why the behavior happened, just, "I got really worked up earlier when you made some comments about not wanting the stew, and how things weren't fair, and I wish I hadn't sent you to your room. I regret that. I'm sorry."

So you just keep it short and clean, and this is even if you go into lawyer mode with your child. "You know what, honey? I got really defensive earlier when you were trying to ask about having pasta, and I regret that. That's on me." So in both cases, you're naming what happened. You own it. You keep it brief. You don't need to justify or explain. And then you move back to, "I'm going to work on that. And I want you to be able to have the feelings you have and be disappointed." Now, it doesn't mean you're going to say, "And I'll start making you whatever you want for dinner," but you're acknowledging that he or she has a right to feel what they feel without you getting pulled in.

Repairing with your child is really important because it teaches a child that relationships can endure or sustain a little bit of rough and tumble now and then, disagreements, disappointments. But it also is good for you, right? It allows you to soften toward the part of you that pushed you to be demanding or difficult or closed-minded or threatening. So the more you can stay with that protective part and explore it, that can be very beneficial if there's resistance to just acknowledging, "I lost my way there for a minute."

Now, I just want to make a point. Sometimes kids are not going to take it well. They may receive your genuine repair effort and say, "Whatever." That's okay. Don't make this a whole big psychotherapy session. "I apologize for how quickly I snapped at you about the pasta. I can't imagine that felt very nice. I'm really sorry." That's it. That's the repair. And whether or not your child goes, "Thanks, I really appreciate it," or just walks the other way, doesn't even seem to have heard you, doesn't really matter. It landed. It's about what you're doing that they're observing and taking in, that this is how humans relate to each other — that they acknowledge when they've hurt somebody or lost their way.

So repair, I think, really is so primal in this process of forging a healthy relationship with our children and with ourselves. But as we bring ourselves, our best selves, to that captain of the ship role, knowing that we're going to move into that argumentative lawyer or the threatening dictator, we see that those are parts of us, that's not entirely who we are at our core. And when necessary, we make the repair, we make the gesture, we acknowledge the disappointment or the frustration or the hurt or the anger. "I, sweetheart, I really see that you were hoping against hope that you might get to watch this show, and here you're finding out it's not in the cards, and you have every right to be mad." So we offer that, and if we can't, and we say, "God, it's never enough with you. I let you watch one show, and now it's two, and then I let you watch two, and you don't appreciate the dinner I've made. My gosh, do you appreciate..." And we lose it, right? All this stuff comes tumbling out.

The beauty of that, even though it might seem weird that there's beauty, the beauty is that later you say, "Sweetie, there's something I really want to say to you. Would it be all right if we sat together for a couple of minutes here?" And if she says okay, great. If she says no, then say, "Okay, you let me know in the next couple of hours when you have time." So you're not forcing this on your child. But let's say, okay, now that your child said, "Okay, what?" — "I said some things earlier when a part of me got really frustrated, and I'm really sorry. You didn't deserve for me to say the things I did or act the way I did. In my heart, I just love you to pieces, and that was a part of me — like we have parts inside — that kind of took over, and I'm really sorry." So that's kind of it, and there's lots more, I've done lots of things on apologies if you want to go further with it, but in the short version here, just owning it and introducing this idea that we have parts and that they can co-opt us and hijack us, and our best intentions can be another benefit of this — that this part of me, it did this, took over.

So I hope that's been interesting for you. I hope you can tell, I imagine you can tell that I love this work so much, and I love sharing it. Again, if you go to susanstiffelman.com you'll find so many resources, free resources, very low cost resources. Right now our membership is just $25 a month, and twice a month you can ask a question and I'll expand on it for a good while, really offering lots of angles of both the emotional side and the practical, and just a way to keep the continuity and keep growing as a parent. I do — I have a son in his 30s, and I am still growing and learning, and it's my privilege to share what I'm learning with all of you, so thank you.

If you've enjoyed the series, I hope you'll leave a rating or a review, share it with a friend, subscribe, all those good things. Trying to build this back up. We've had close to two million downloads for this podcast, and I took a hiatus and now we're revving it up again. And if you want to do some coaching with me on the series, drop a line to support@susanstiffelman.com. Love to have you.

Meanwhile, remember, no matter how busy life gets, look for those moments of sweetness and joy. Stay well, take care, and I'll see you next time.