Episode 310 Transcript
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[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 310 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place for creating the peace of mind. You need to be the best mom you are created by God to be. If you want to bring more balance, more joy, and more peace to your motherhood, this is the place for you. I'm your host, certified life coach at Catholic Mom Danielle Thienel
In the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Let's get started.
Hello and welcome back to the podcast everyone. I'm Danielle, and today we're talking about a question that comes up for almost every mom at some point. It's also something in my coaching practice, this is where I get a lot of my ideas and content to come out, and [00:01:00] help. You all is real life scenarios that one of my clients is personally dealing with at the time.
And as I go through the prof process of helping them, I'm always thinking about I know you're not alone in here and that other moms are also going through this. So that's how this idea and episode was born for today. But this question is, what do I do when my child's choices challenge my values? So maybe your teen has started dating someone who doesn't share your beliefs.
Maybe your young adult child no longer wants to attend church. Maybe your child is spending money in ways you wouldn't. Or perhaps your child is setting goals that don't make sense to you, or you don't hold in the same again [00:02:00] esteem or feel that is either a worthy goal or even if you're thinking that's not what they should be spending their time or reaching for.
I know you love your child deeply. You have taught them. Everything you know, or at least we try and attempt to. And now the situation is they're making decisions that leave you feeling uncertain, disappointed, or even a little afraid. And I say even a little afraid. And a lot of you, there's a lot of fear there.
Like it's big fear. So what do you do in that moment? This is the question we're posing today. And I'm always looking to bring you all more peace of mind into your busy mom lives. So let's get some more peace of mind around it, right? So let's start here. When your child's choices, you challenge you, [00:03:00] the hardest part usually isn't the decision they're making.
It's actually the meaning that your brain is assigning to what they're doing. So you might start thinking about any situation that challenges you. They don't care about what we've taught them, or I must not have done enough or did a good enough job of explaining, perhaps we're thinking this is going to lead them down the wrong path.
There is this, we're older, we're wiser, we know, and underneath all of that is one thing. That fear. That fear. I mentioned fear of what might happen. Fear of losing your influence on them. Fear that the story of your family, like the one you hoped for and like dreamed or played out in your mind [00:04:00] is changing.
And I want you to know that fear is normal, right? Nothing's gone wrong here. That just means you are navigating this human life and you have a human mind. But it's also where we definitely can get stuck and sometimes unintentionally, we then cause harm to the relationship.
So when something feels off or out of alignment with your values. Like when you see your child's, certain actions or maybe something they tell you, it's so very tempting to jump in and then try to course correct. We wanna say something, we want to protect them. We wanna make sure they've thought it through. And yes, sometimes there [00:05:00] is a space for wise loving counsel, but often the urgency we feel to speak up really isn't coming from love in that moment.
It's coming from your own discomfort. Discomfort with watching them struggle, discomfort with not. Feeling in control of the situation, discomfort with letting their life unfold differently than ours did, because we have this belief system that it should look a certain way. And again, this is all coming from a place where you think that if they did follow what you wanted, that would be better for them and that they would be happier.
But really why we do that? Why we want to change them and control them and tell them that it's wrong and help course [00:06:00] correct them. It's literally so that we can feel better.
It's so important to see, and it's not like that is wrong. It's just not going to lead you. It's having your focus and all your mental and emotional energy go to a place where we will lose our peace. So the next time if we talk about what do we do right? The next time you feel that pressure bubbling up, try asking this instead.
Ask yourself. Have yourself go within. So remember, we don't wanna look to them and try and change and fix and course correct. We wanna bring it back to ourselves. And we wanna ask ourselves, go inside, go internally and ask yourself, am I about to speak from a grounded place of love, or am I [00:07:00] about to speak to them from anxious fear?
Because let's be clear. Allowing your child to make a different choice than you would does not mean you're abandoning your values. You're simply choosing connection over control, and that's very highly valuable too. There is no rule that says you have to micromanage your child's spiritual growth, their finances, their relationships, or their path to becoming an adult.
And this also is for people who have children who already are an adult. In fact, this might come up even more so than right because there is a little bit of when they're younger and under our roof and there are certain things that you know that are just. Assumed and instilled that they're gonna have to [00:08:00] follow, like when we ask or what we do.
But this comes a lot up more often I would say, as the children are really getting to those ages of more independence. And there again, there's no rule that says you have to micromanage. Your values are not weakened by your child's choices. See, this is what happens is we relate them, right? We make their choice in what they do means something about us, our per our own personal values.
That's where our brain goes to make the connection. But this is where. Your values can become strengthened because you live out your values in how you respond to their choices. And what I wanna offer is the what you might wanna choose. I invite you to, instead [00:09:00] of the course correct and the feeling like you wanna show up and respond with a steadiness, with curiosity with.
Peace with your own kind of sense of knowing what you have control of and what you don't. And there may be moments where you feel prompted to ask something or open a dialogue with your child. And when that moment comes, just ask yourself can, again, notice I'm saying ask yourself, so this isn't ask them.
Before you talk to them to get your answers so that again, you can hurry up and make yourself feel better, it's to go within and to get yourself in that grounded place. And so a beautiful question would to a, would be for you to ask an answer. Can I be curious? Not corrective. [00:10:00] Okay, so here is a few examples of what that might actually sound like.
If you have noticed that your child is making a choice that kind of goes against your values or what you would hope for them, and you want to show up with steadiness and curiosity and peace, and you're not controlling, but you're taking ownership for your own life, but yet you feel compelled that you want to be able to create a different kind of.
Connection with your child in relation to this whatever choice they're making. And so you ask yourself, can I be curious? Not corrective. So curious has us asking questions, but the type of questions you ask is everything. It will tell you the type of question you ask, whether you will set your child to be on a defensive mode and maybe shut down or maybe not wanna be honest with you because it knows what the consequences will be.
Or there's type of [00:11:00] questions that you give them, ownership, you acknowledge their agency, their independence, their free will of choice that God gave them as well. And it's supportive and guided and it's not, pressured or trapping. And so here's a few examples of what that might sound like. What's most important to you in this season of your life?
What kind of support feels helpful to you right now? Maybe even say what kind of support from me feels helpful to you right now? What are you hoping for in this relationship if the choice that your child is making has to do with a relationship they're in, right? What are you hoping for? What values are you using to make this decision?
Do you see what, where you are going in this [00:12:00] curiosity, these questions spur that and give them ownership, and it gives you insight to their, what they might be thinking, and it's not corrective and they're not trick questions either. They're actually like an invitation. They signal that you trust your child's ability to think for themselves, and this is what you want mamas, right?
And it also signals to them that you are a safe place. For reflection and discernment and maybe a transfer of wisdom if they're open to it or a perspective that they again might not see. But again, if they're open to hearing it, you know what, it's not. It's not interrogation because here's the thing.
And I know some of you logically know this and I'm here to remind you, [00:13:00] is you cannot control their choices. And though your lower brain thinks that you want to or you should, or that your life would be better be if you did right. I'm here to remind you that peace of mind, more peace in your life will come.
When you commit to focusing on the only things you can control ever, and that is your own thinking, your own feelings, and your own actions, right? This, you cannot control these things. You cannot control the energy you bring to the relationship. I'm sorry, you. What you can control is you can control the energy you bring to the relationship, you can control and to bring to that particular conversation you're having with them.
You can control whether or not you [00:14:00] rush to fix something that isn't yours to fix. You can control how you process your own emotions privately, and you can control whether you approach your child with presence or pressure. You can love someone fiercely and still let them learn. Let them learn. I know it's hard.
We have this false sense that their life should be easy all the time and no struggles and no challenges, but we, that is not the most helpful thing for our children. We want them to face hard things so that they can learn from 'em and they can empower themselves and grow confident and be resilient, resourceful.
These are the things, and you know how your children get that way. From struggle, from making bad choices and wrong choices and seeing the outcomes and course correcting themselves. [00:15:00] And you can model strength without pushing an agenda on them, and you can show up in alignment with your values without needing everyone else to live by them.
Isn't it interesting about how we have certain values and we know that there's other people have certain values and we don't feel the need or pressure or the worry to convince them to come to our side, but yet with our children, there's this different kind right, of fear that bubbles up that has us trying to do that.
Mama, this is where your piece begins, not in their decisions and what they're choosing to do, but in how you choose to think about them and their choices and their decisions. So when your child's choices challenge you, [00:16:00] here's what I want you to remember. Your discomfort, your feeling isn't a danger, like your brain will say that it is.
It's actually an invitation. An invitation to show up differently, an invitation to show up from a grounded place. And I want you to remember that you don't need to control the outcome in order to influence it. There is a huge difference, right? How can you influence it that would ha be happen with what they see with you?
Show up how, what you say, the type of things you say that goes back to whether you're like, coming from curiosity and questioning, then you are with trying to course correct. And I want you to know that when you take your mind off of it, when you let go about trying to manipulate it, control it, change it, that is not giving up.
If your brain offers you like, oh, that's you giving up on [00:17:00] them, mama, that is a thought error. That is your brain being mean. That's your brain trying to protect you. I want you to counteract that by saying, no, it's making space for my growth, and it actually is making space for your child's growth. So ask yourself, what would it look like to stay grounded in my values and.
Open up to their journey at the same time. This is the work. This is the invitation I have for you today. If you wanna step into more peace of mind when your children are making choices that you would rather they don't, and you are more than capable of. Holding the truths that I've offered you today and being tender with yourself when we don't get it right all the time.[00:18:00]
So I hope that this has given you some things to reflect on. It might be an episode you wanna listen to, again, have a piece of paper. I've given you some real tangible questions to ask yourself and some ways to speak to your child. And there might be some phrase or something that I've said that can become maybe like your, focus or mantra and or you just wanna keep in mind or remind yourself before you're going into conversations with your kids and.
If this episode spoke to you, that's amazing. I'm so thrilled. And, but if it brought to mind somebody else who you know of that, that needs to hear this today around this subject, would you consider sharing it with them? Sharing it with that, another mom who might need to hear it or leave a review so other moms can find this [00:19:00] episode and message too.
You're doing holy work with me when you do, even when it feels messy. Mamas, okay. Our motherhood is holy work and it's messy sometimes. All right. That's what I have for you this week. Until next time, may peace be with you always. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
If you found value in today's episode, I'd be so grateful if you could subscribe and leave a review. It not only supports the podcast, but ensures you don't miss out on future episodes packed with insights and tools. To create peace of mind in your busy mom life. And if you're of the Catholic faith like me or any Christian mom seeking to feel better in any area of your life and to show up more calm, connected, and confident, I can help become an empowered mom who knows how to bring about the changes you desire, [00:20:00] no matter the circumstances.
Whether you need one-on-one guidance to get there, prefer a group coaching program with like-minded women or a self-study course I've got you covered. Explore my private one-on-one packages. Join my Busy to Balanced group life coaching program, or delve into my signature course Divine Time. To find out which path is right for you, let's meet and see what's the best fit.
Schedule a free call with me at daniellethienel.com or send me a direct message on Facebook or Instagram @daniellethienelcoaching. And also don't forget to get your copy of my book, the Cyclone Mom Method, How To Call On Your god-Given Power To Remain Calm, In Control, and Confident as a Busy Mom. Dive into the digital and bonus audio version when you go to book.daniellethienel.com/new-book.
You'll find all the details in the show notes [00:21:00] too. Until next time, peace be with you always.
