Become A Calm Mama

• Being What Your Kid Needs (Internal Family Systems, pt 3)

  Today, we’re wrapping up the 3-part series on Internal Family Systems (IFS). This episode is all about being what your kid needs, with lots of strategies to show up as the calm, connected parent you want to be.You’ll Learn:The 4 parts of emotional literacyHow to let your child “borrow” your nervous system as they build their own emotional strength3 things all kids want to hear from their parents7 strategies for leading your child toward emotional healthNote: If you haven’t listened to the first 2 episodes in this series, I recommend you go back and do that. There’s a lot of background information that will help this all make a lot more sense.------------------------------------------Preventing Childhood TraumaA lot of parents come to me with the goal of not f*cking up their kids. They don’t want to do something that creates trauma in their children. But when you are parenting from a place of reactivity, insecurity, stress, or overwhelm (your wounded parts), you may end up accidentally injuring parts of your kid. Trauma happens when we have a difficult experience and the emotional pain is not processed. It gets stuck inside of us. If your child’s pain is not validated and seen by the grown-ups in their life, they may end up confused or thinking that something is wrong with them. They might feel worthless, unlovable, or shameful. One common example of this is bypassing emotion. It can look like rescuing, jumping quickly to logic or a solution, bribes, looking to the future. Doing this can give your kid the message that their emotion isn’t okay or valid. If you’re sitting there thinking, “Great, I’ve already done all these bad things to my kids. I’ve already created trauma,” take a deep breath. Your children are still children, and they’re still processing their feelings. You can start now being that compassionate leader for your family. I’ve seen it thousands of times. Mom changes >> Kids change. They heal in real time. It’s incredible and so, so beautiful. Compassionate parenting is not about making sure our kids don't ever feel badly. It's helping them learn what to do with those bad feelings when they happen (i.e. growing up to be emotionally healthy).I think of emotional health in terms of emotional literacy:I know what I’m feelingI know how to talk about my feelingsI know what to do with my feelingsI can recognize and understand how others are feeling (aka empathy)And just like literacy in reading or writing, these are skills that can be taught and must be practiced. Being What Your Kid NeedsUltimately, your kid needs you to be available to help them process their big feelings and provide a model for emotional health.Once you’ve begun to step into your SELF energy (like I talked about in the last episode), you start leading your life from a more grounded, calm place. You become less reactive toward your children. Here are some ways to bring that SELF-led energy to your kid. Be a witnessIt can be difficult to be around someone who is very emotional and activated. Your child’s big feelings might trigger emotion in you (that’s your amygdala at work). A lot of parents fall apart when their kids fall apart. And this is actually pretty terrifying for the child. When you are willing to witness your child’s pain and help them process it, it can be released. Your kid needs you to be the grown-up in the room. And they need to feel safe enough to express their authentic pain, desires, and whatever...

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• Finding Your SELF (Internal Family Systems, pt 2)

  There are many different religious and cultural traditions and concepts that help us understand what I’m referring to today as the SELF. This is the term used in the Internal Family Systems approach (IFS) to describe our inner being, essence, soul, or spirit. Find out:What SELF (yes, in all caps) is and how it helps you heal from withinHow to know when you’re accessing your core SELF (and how to get back to it when you’re not)Strategies for finding and accessing your core SELFCheck in questions you can use to reconnect with SELFIn this episode, you’ll learn about finding your SELF so that you can live from a place of peace and strength.---------------------------------------------------The concept of SELF reminds us that we are not our pain, our personality, or our behavior strategies. We are something else entirely. At our core, we are pure and unwounded. But as we go through life and get hurt, we become disconnected from that core SELF. We develop maladaptive behavior strategies to help us deal with that burden and pain. We lash out at people. We hurt ourselves and others.In order to be a Calm Mama, you need to be able to tap into the calm that lives within you. You need to tap into your inner wisdom so that you can respond instead of react. Finding Your SELFThink about a time in your life when you felt very calm or loving, or you stayed really grounded during a tough situation. Your mind isn’t spinning. You’re not thinking or worrying about all the things you need to do or what might happen later or money or your body or whether people like you…See if you can feel this in your body. Maybe you feel a gentle weight in your belly, like you’re sitting more grounded. Maybe you notice a lightness in your chest and head, softness in your shoulders and neck. You’re breathing a little deeper and easier. Your core SELF’s intention is to heal you and to give you more and more access to that SELF. Here’s how to reconnect. Notice when you aren’t in your SELF EnergyIFS gives us the 8 Cs of the SELF: Curiosity, calm, confidence, compassion, creativity, clarity, courage, and connectedness. If you feel any of these (and especially if you feel more than one), you’re likely connected to your SELF.When you are disconnected from SELF and in your wounded energy, you might notice yourself feeling panicked, anxious, stressed, insecure, or judgmental. Take a Pause BreakThis is a tool I teach a lot. It’s simply taking a moment to slow down time. Buying yourself a few seconds so you can get ahead of the next moment instead of reacting to it. Getting to a place where you can respond slowly. When you see everything as an emergency that you need to respond to right away, you get sucked into the drama and overwhelm. You get into fix it/change it/stop it/solve it mode. When you want to jump in and control things - that’s not your core SELF reacting. It’s your wounded parts, your ego, your fear, and your stress.I truly believe that even 10 seconds can help you settle your nervous system and feel more calm. Get into your bodyNotice the feelings in your body. One thing that really helps me is to lay flat down on the ground with my arms and legs extended (similar to Savasana in yoga). I remind myself that the earth can hold me, and I feel my body relax and release. A body scan is another helpful technique. Visualize each part of your body - from your toes up to the top of your head - recognizing and feeling each part as you go.If you’d...

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• Re-Release: Late Summer Pep Talk

  Moms often start the summer feeling energized, encouraged and ready to go! Then around week 6 or 7, the kids are fighting, they never seem happy and everything sucks. This is your late summer pep talk to help you get out of that funk and get through the rest of summer.If you're having a great summer, I love that for you. But if you're struggling, if you're burned out, resentful or overwhelmed, if you're feeling like your kids are out of control, then this is your episode. You’ll Learn:Why this late summer with kids feels so tough (it’s totally normal!)How to get what you want out of the rest of the summerWhat to do when your kid’s behavior has gotten out of controlHow to fit mini breaks into your busy dayI’m giving you 3 strategies to help you reset your body, mind and limits. If you’re feeling crappy about how things are going, your kid is pushing boundaries or you’re just plain exhausted, these are for you.You can read the full show notes here.-----------------------------------------Want to binge all of our best summer parenting tips? Grab the free summer toolkit here and get a link to the full Calm Mama Summer playlist on Spotify, plus lots of other great resources!Get your copy of the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet!In this free guide you’ll discover:✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)✨ 40 things to do instead of yelling. (You only need to pick one!)✨ Exactly why you yell. (And how to stop yourself from starting.)✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)Download the Stop Yelling Cheat Sheet hereConnect With Darlynn: Book a complimentary session with DarlynnLearn about the different parenting programs at www.calmmamacoaching.comFollow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips Rate and review the podcast on Itunes

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• Internal Family Systems (pt 1)

  Years ago, I was talking to a client about what it truly means to be a Calm Mama. And she realized that the absence of yelling ≠ calm. There is something deeper that we’re working toward. An inner wisdom, inner peace, and knowing that you can handle anything that comes along. There might be a lot of chaos around you, but inside you are calm and steady.Today, we begin a new 3-part series on Internal Family Systems (IFS) - a therapeutic model created by Richard Schwartz. One of the central concepts is that everything you need for deep healing and wisdom are already within you.You’ll Learn:The 4 parts of Internal Family Systems and how they go togetherHow we get stuck in past pain and traumaExamples of burdens you might be carrying from childhood (and how I’m working through some of my own)How to befriend your core SelfListen to find out how IFS works and how you can use it to move into Self-led energy and feel more peace.-------------------------------------------Why Does Your Peace Matter?We talk about this a lot on the podcast, but in case you’re new to my world (or need a quick refresher), there are a lot of reasons that being calm matters as a parent. The big picture is about raising our children in emotionally healthy families so that they grow up to be emotionally healthy adults.This looks like:Letting our kids experience their negative emotionsBeing able to witness their emotional pain without getting upset about their big feelings or behaviorsCommunicating to your kid that they are going to be okayLetting your child know that they are safe and loved, no matter what is happeningWhen we try to prevent our kids from experiencing or expressing negative emotion by over-protecting, over-planning, over-organizing, or bypassing that emotion, we're actually creating little micro wounds in our kids. They are learning to shut down their own feelings, which is not what we want.In order to be able to do the things our kids need for emotional health, we often need to reparent ourselves and heal our own emotional wounds. Maybe there were times when you were told that you weren’t good enough, or that you didn’t matter, or that the way you felt didn’t matter. In order to feel truly at peace, we have to believe that we are loved, safe, worthy, and that we’re going to be okay, too.This is much easier said than done. So, how do we get to that place of deep, legit calm? 4 Parts of the Internal Family SystemFeelings drive behavior. And when we don’t know what to do with our feelings, we act them out in behaviors or strategies that we think will protect us from pain or help us deal with pain when it comes up.When we’re acting from our wounded parts, we act in ways that might hurt us or others. The goal is to act from our whole, healed, healthy parts - the Self. The Self is an embodied sense of who you are at your core - without any pain or wounds. We all come into this world pure and filled with joy, ready to experience all the things in life that come. At our core, what we want to feel is peace.But then the world steps in. We experience all kinds of discomfort, and if we don’t get to express and process it, it can get stuck within us. Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an approach to healing that identifies the wounded parts of you, as well as the whole, not wounded parts of you. And it helps you to build a relationship between your core Self and those wounded parts so that they can heal, have a sense of wholeness and become what we call “unburdened”.Imagine your internal family as your core Self, plus the other parts of you that are related to your Self and your pain (aka burden). There are...

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• Digital Detox Made Easy with Molly DeFrank

  If you’re feeling like your family could use a break from screens and a reset, this is the episode for you. You may remember a podcast I recorded last year about how to do a digital detox. Well, that episode was based on an amazing book called Digital Detox: The Two-Week Tech Reset for Kids, and I am so thankful to have the author, Molly DeFrank, here with me today.You’ll Learn:Why letting go of control can actually help you find solutionsOur real-life experiences with digital detoxes in our own familiesHow to help kids manage their boredom and big feelings without screensThe 4-step method to a digital detoxMolly normalizes tech overuse (it’s not just you!) and lays out a simple, accessible way for you to give your kid a break from digital input, reset their nervous system, and allow your family to become a bit more whole and integrated. You’ll love our conversation and hearing Molly’s perspective.------------------------------------------Molly DeFrank is a mom to six children, ages 8 to 15, and the author of two parenting books, including Digital Detox: The Two-Week Tech Reset for Kids. She lives in California and has helped thousands of families break free from digital dependence. The State of Screen UseI often think of the pandemic as “letting the cat out of the bag” when it comes to screens. Even for slow tech families, school was online and our kids were spending way more time on screens. So now, 5 years later, our kids are struggling and we’re seeing a lot of families doing some course correction.Molly shared that the vast majority of parents say that their kids’ screen use is their biggest parenting struggle and that “8 to 12 year-old kids are spending 40 hours per week on digital entertainment…13 to 18 year-olds are spending 50 hours a week. Our kids are spending the same amount of time as having a full time job being digitally entertained.”Molly was heavily influenced by Dr. Victoria Dunckley, who coined a new condition called Electronic Screen Syndrome that is brought on by too much digital entertainment. It can disguise itself as ADHD, bipolar disorder, or OCD, when it’s really just the adrenaline, cortisol, and dopamine that is hijacking their brains. She saw so much of this that she decided to no longer diagnose a new client until they had undergone a digital detox. And most of the time, symptoms were resolved and medication was not needed. That’s how powerful this is. Some of these symptoms that come with screen overuse include irritability, aggression, low frustration tolerance, problems sleeping, and inattentiveness.Parents know that something needs to change, but they don’t want to deal with the fallout and tantrums of reducing or taking away screens. I know you’ve experienced this. The timer goes off, and the monster comes out. The negotiations (just 5 more minutes, pleeeease) and big feelings begin. This is purely dysregulation from the transition from stimulation from that device to non stimulation. I call this the boredom gap, and believe it or not, there is so much hope and freedom on the other side. Benefits of a Digital DetoxMolly wants us to know that a detox doesn’t mean you’re signing up for 2 weeks (or forever) of screen tantrums. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. She says, “You’re actually getting your kids back.” A detox comes with benefits to your child's creativity, mental health, social life, and academics, as well as your relationship with them. In fact, every parent she knows who has...

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