292. The Better Mom Process

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 292: The Better Mom Process.

Did you know that you can live a life that’s even better than happy? My name is Jody Moore. I’m a master certified life coach and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And if you’re willing to go with me I can show you how. Let’s go.

Hello everybody, welcome to Better Than Happy. Are you ready to live a life that’s better than happy? Let’s do that. Today I want to talk to you about your relationship with anybody that you have authority over. So a lot of you who listen to me are parents, majority of you are moms, but we have some dads too. Some of you are not parents but I promise you that this is going to be useful because even if you’re not a parent you have influence, and leadership, and authority in some way in some point in your life. Or if you don’t right now, you will, I promise you.

So maybe you’re a teacher. Maybe you have a church calling where that you have a little bit of responsibility and authority over some people. Maybe you have a job and you have some authority even if it’s, you know, maybe it’s over staff or maybe it’s just with regards to your clients or customers, so lots of different ways that these tools can be applicable.

And I will say that my background as many of you know, I used to work in corporate and did some training and a little bit of leadership coaching. And I was constantly using parenting metaphors to try to help leaders. I would say things like, “Well, if this were a child for example, we might think about it this way.” And not that it’s exactly the same, more like I said, metaphorically to help get your head in the right place. And then now that I coach mostly moms or parents I’m constantly using workplace boss metaphors to get their heads in the right place.

So I don’t know. It’s just interesting to me. And it’s a subject that I really like talking about and I’m excited to teach you about today. So we have an interesting situation going on in our world today I feel like, where our kids are going through some challenges that none of us really anticipated and challenges that we didn’t experience.

We’re experiencing of course challenges as well, but we didn’t, for example, I was never a high school senior who suddenly got told that I’m not going to be going to school. I’m going to be at home on Zoom. I’m not going to get to play the sports I thought I was going to be playing or participating in the social activities or any of the other things I thought my life was going to look like. I personally didn’t experience that as a high school senior.

So we have a lot of these really unique situations that our kids are going through and I hear from so many of you who say, “I don’t know how to help my child. And I just want to be a better mom.” Pandemic or not that is one of the most common things I hear from women is, “I want to be a better mom”, or, “I want to be a better dad.” “I want to be a better parent. I want to be better for my kids.”

Now, this idea that we should be better for our kids I think is coming from a great place. I think the idea of continually trying to improve ourselves, trying to grow, trying to learn more, trying to get better at anything we’re trying to do is a healthy idea. It’s a healthy place to be coming from. But it easily can become unhealthy when we use it to judge ourselves, we use it to criticize ourselves, we use it to feel bad. So there’s a lot to be said about that that I’m not going to go into a whole ton of detail on today.

I do just want to preface this by saying that you do not have my permission to use any of this to judge yourself. Some of you might do it. I can’t stop you, you have agency. But if you’re doing it, you’re doing that against my will and my intention of what I want to teach you. I really don’t see an upside to you judging your parenting. I don’t. And I don’t think you have to judge your parenting to improve your parenting. So what I mean by that is maybe you want to assess yourself, maybe you want to observe yourself, maybe you want to become more aware of yourself. I’m all for that.

But ideally we want to do that with curiosity, not with judgment. I’m just going to put that out there. I hope that some of you will take that to heart, that you really aren’t ‘doing anything wrong’ but are there things that might be more effective that might help you help your child more? Yeah, I think so. I think there are some things.

So in Be Bold which is my gym membership for your mental and emotional health that if you’re not in there you should be in there. And here’s what I want to say about that. I was thinking about this just this morning because I was listening to a podcast of somebody who was talking about weight loss, a fellow coach friend of mine actually.

And she was saying that you have to remember that losing weight isn’t going to make you happy. It’s not the thing that’s going to create confidence for you. You have to be bringing your head along. You have to learn to be happy and be confident all along the way.

I was thinking about why that is because I get it, I still believe that when I reach a certain point or change something about me, or achieve a certain goal, or something changes in my child or whatever it is, that then for sure I’m going to feel differently. We all kind of believe that, even though mostly we know that’s not true. And what I was thinking about as I was listening to my friend is yeah, so what we have to do is change the software.

If your brain is like a computer and it’s running a software program called something’s gone wrong, something’s wrong with me, or something’s wrong with my life, or I’m just not good enough. We all have a version of that software and it may be everybody’s has a slightly different specific name. But if that’s the software running, that program is just looking for reasons to validate that story. What’s gone wrong? What’s wrong with me? In what way am I not good enough?

And so we can’t just change circumstances because if the brain says, “I know how you’re not good enough. You’re overweight, or you’re not a good mom.” And then we fix that in whatever way our brain thinks we should fix that. Then the software is still running. It will go, “Okay, that’s not in anymore. Let’s go find something else. What’s wrong with us now? What’s wrong with our life now? What’s gone wrong now?”

And so I like to think about it that way, okay, we have to uninstall that software, there is some malware on the computer that we need to uninstall it. And we need to install a different program. But that’s where I think people get stuck. People don’t know how to do that. We don’t know how, we’re not trained how to do that. We’re not taught that in school. And that’s why I say you need to get into Be Bold because that’s what we do in Be Bold. We are uninstalling toxic software and we are reinstalling really useful software.

And a lot of you listening are in Be Bold, I want to make sure that you are listening to coaching calls. That’s where the software gets rewired. You have to listen to them. Of course you have lots of ways to also bring questions in. You can get coached and there’s lots of things in there. I’m not going to go into detail right now. I just want to make sure that you are uninstalling the toxic brain software and installing something useful. And it works the same way physical exercise works to help your body.

I have to keep exercising, this was disappointing to me. Some exercise I really like actually, there’s certain types I like. There are other types that my body needs that I don’t love, that I wish I could just get to a certain point and then be like, “Phew, I’m done lifting weights. I don’t have to do that anymore.” But that’s never going to happen. If I stop lifting weights then my muscles are going to suffer the effects of that, my body’s going to suffer the effects of that.

So the good news is lifting weights gets easier, the more I lift them the stronger my muscles get and the better I get at knowing what I like to do and how to even use the weight machines in the gym. And it gets easier as I become a person who lifts weights. It just becomes a part of my routine. But that doesn’t mean I’ll ever be done with it and that’s how keeping your brain software healthy works as well. So you’ve got to have a way. Maybe you want to hire a private coach, great, do that, hire a private coach.

Or you maybe you want to come into a program like mine, Be Bold, it’s 49 bucks a month. So get in there because you need to do it. Now, this is not a sales call about Be Bold, so sorry, I got off on a tangent there, but I was just thinking about this morning. And the reason I bring it up is because next month, which by the time you hear this episode means basically in a week, maybe a little over a week, in March anyway, we are going to dive into how to better help your kids. That is what I want to teach.

Every month I teach a new topic that we deep dive into and then we do, you know, we can coach on anything you want to. But we kind of hyper focus, if you will, on one particular thing and we do the work all together. And that’s the work I want us to do in March is how to help your kids.

Now, like I said if you have employees instead of kids, great. If you want to just take it and store it for later because you don’t have kids, great. I guarantee though you probably have some kids in your life that you influence. So I think you’ll find it useful. But that’s our focus for March, how to help your kids because I’m seeing a lot of kids struggle right now. And of course kids always struggle, humans always struggle.

But I think we have a disproportionate amount of kids struggling, because in an attempt to keep ourselves physically safe we have negatively impacted our mental and emotional health. And I don’t say that with blame or judgment for anyone. I just notice it to be true. I think a lot of you would agree that it’s a tough time.

And so I want to better equip you to better help your kids. So a portion of that is The Better Mom Process that I’ve created and I’m going to be teaching it to all of you in Be Bold. We’re going to be walking through it together. We’re going to be doing the work together in the workshop. So if you want to join me in Be Bold the doors will be opening on February 22^nd, Monday and they’ll be open just for that last week of February and then the doors will close again. So make sure you don’t miss it. If you want to go get on the wait list we’ll remind you and I’ll tell you how to do that after.

What I want to teach you today is that there are five steps of The Better Mom Process that we’re going to go through. And I’m going to teach you one of those steps today here on the podcast. So this is not the first step but it’s the step that I felt like if you just listen to this podcast I hope that this will help you. But I really do want to encourage you to come in and get all five of them. But I want to begin here for today with all of you on the podcast. This step is what I’m calling knowing the difference between parenting and controlling.

Now, again you can substitute out parenting for leading, or managing, or teaching, or whatever applies to you. But there is a difference between parenting, good parenting and controlling. So let’s dive into it, what’s the difference. It’s not about so much what happens in your actions. It’s not so much about what you do or say. There is a little bit of that, your actions will change a little bit when you’re parenting versus controlling. But it’s much more so about how you’re feeling and what energy you’re coming from as you do the things in your action line.

So, people like to ask me a lot, “Should I have a conversation with my child about this or not, should I allow them to make this decision or not?” “Should I punish them for this thing they did wrong, hold them accountable in this way or not?” “Should I teach them this thing or not?” “What should I do?”

And what I’m constantly telling my clients is that, “I don’t know what you should do as much as you know what you should do because I’m not you, and I don’t know your child as well as you know your child. And I don’t have access to the internal wisdom, or inspiration, or spiritual guidance”, or whatever you want to call it, “that you have for you and your child.” And in some cases the right thing is to punish the child. And in some cases the right thing is to not punish the child. And sometimes the right thing to do is to have a conversation and be very upfront about this thing.

And other times the right thing to do is to not address it yet or not the same way. There’s no easy answer because there is no one size fits all when it comes to parenting, ever, there’s just not. This is why we get confused. But I’ll tell you what’s true. Sometimes the difference between parenting and trying to control your child is just the emotion fuelling you.

So let’s say my child who normally gets really good grades, has decided that now that school is a 100% on Zoom and he doesn’t get to go to class. And the teachers are doing their best, bless their hearts, but may be struggling too to make it engaging or to know how to manage everything going on. Maybe that child has decided that she doesn’t care about school anymore. And she’s not doing her schoolwork, and she’s not turning in assignments, and maybe she’s even failing out of school. What do we do? How do we help that child?

Do we get really strict and say, “You are required to turn in your homework and get”, whatever certain grades you want to hold them accountable to, “and if you don’t these are the consequences. You’ll lose privileges with the car. You’ll lose your phone. You’ll lose whatever else you want to have them lose.” Or do we just try and incentivize them and say, “If you get these grades then you get this reward?”

Or do we simply let the child make some mistakes and navigate them and maybe have conversations about what’s going on and why? But ultimately let them know it’s their decision and let things play out how they will? What do we do? Well, I don’t know. What’s driving you? What is the emotion driving you? What is the thought driving you? If you are panicked, and worried, and stressed then any one of those conversations is going to sound different than if you’re calm, and peaceful, and confident.

One of them will turn into you trying to control your child. One of them might be you being the kind of parent you want to be. It’s true. We are like, “No, I don’t tell my child that I’m stressed. I’m not going to let her know.” And I call some BS on that because even though you don’t say it she can tell. She knows how to read you. She’s a human being. Human beings are very good at reading one another. She will feel the difference. You will feel the difference. I had this happen just this morning.

So my first grader said to me, “Mom, I have a sore throat.” Because he’s learned that he can’t go to school, he is going to in person school, I should add. But he’s not allowed to go if he even has a runny nose. He knows a sore throat is one of the key indicators that he’s supposed to stay home from school. And he loves to not go to school. He loves to stay home from school. So all he has to do is say, “I have a sore throat”, and then I can’t send him to school.

I have to sign something every day saying, “My child does not have a runny nose or a sore throat.” I always feel dishonest every morning when I sign that because I’m like I don’t know. What if he blows his nose today? Which has happened by the way, he’s blown his nose at school and they called me and said, “You need to come and pick him up.” So, anyway, sorry about my little venting tangent for a moment, but instead of being a good mother I turned into a controlling person. I was irritated and frustrated because he’s already missed so much school for little things like runny noses.

And we’ve already had multiple Covid tests, every time they come back negative. But for him to go back to school if he stays home one day with a sore throat then he’s going to have to stay home for at least five days and we’re going to have to go get another Covid test and it’s just a whole circus before he can go back. And so I immediately went into crazy mom, not crazy mom mode, I wasn’t yelling or acting crazy. But in my head I was just like, he cannot miss more school, I can’t have him home more, this is ridiculous.

It’s winter. It’s 10 degrees outside today where I live with crazy winds. You have a little bit of a sore throat because the air is dry. So you’re not sick. I took his temperature, he has no temperature. He has nothing. Pretty sure he’s not sick. But also I don’t want to be dishonest. I don’t want to send him to school if he’s not supposed to go. So instead of being a good parent I started to try to control him, which by the way I’m pretty good at because he’s only seven. But it’s going to get harder as he gets older.

So what does that look like? It looks like me assessing whether or not he’s really sick and whether or not he needs to stay home from this energy of frustration. Again, even my seven year old can sense it in me. And it looks like me sort of becoming maybe manipulative. I start saying things like, “You know what, you know how you and your sister like to sleep out in the living room on the weekends and watch TV? No more of that, you’ve got to sleep in your own bed because we can’t have you sick all the time.”

Anyway I just start listing off all the things that I can think of to make his life miserable if he stays home from school. “If you stay home you’re going to need to take a nap. You’re going to need to stay in your room. You’re not going to be watching TV. You’re not going to be playing Xbox.” This is what I’m saying and all of it fueled by frustration because my hope is that he’ll start being reasonable and say, “Okay, you know what? My throat is feeling better now that I’m awake. I think I’m okay to go to school.”

But notice it’s me trying to control a little bit, manipulate him because I’m frustrated and I’m frustrated because this is – I should say this is the reason I think I’m frustrated in this moment. I think I’m frustrated because he’s missed so much school and now he might miss more. And this is going to really inconvenience my life. But the only reason I’m frustrated is because of what’s happening in my head because of what I’m thinking.

So, me trying to control my son so that I cannot be frustrated is just not my best parenting. I know that. It’s not me at my best in general. It’s not really going to serve anyone in the end, especially not me.

Now, is it appropriate to say, “You know what? It seems like you’ve been getting sick a lot. I don’t think we can sleep in the living room on the weekends anymore because you don’t get quite enough sleep when you do that. I think you need more sleep. I think we need to be more cautious about making sure you’re bundled up warm when you go outside, or that we are taking some vitamins, or that we’re eating better”, or whatever. There may be things that as a good parent, as a good mother I do want to enforce with my seven year old, there may be things.

But ideally I don’t want the frustration driving me because I can feel it. I feel myself being a little bit passive aggressive and manipulative. I did, I felt it. And it doesn’t feel good to me and it’s just not who I want to be. I don’t want to get good at manipulating people. I want to be a good mother. So notice how my action could be the same. I could be, again, enforcing all the things I want for my child to help him be healthier and not miss school. But the energy driving it will change everything. It would change the tone of my delivery. It would change even the ideas I would come up with.

Here’s the thing, when I’m frustrated and in that controlling place I can get pretty creative. I can be pretty passive aggressive I should say and manipulative. But I guarantee I have much better ideas, much more creative, not about how to control him, about how to genuinely help him.

There is this whole piece I haven’t even entertained about why he doesn’t want to go to school. What’s that about? Why is it that – is he afraid of something? Is there something going on at school that I need to know about? What’s the deal with him not wanting to go to school? That’s not even crossed my mind. I’m just like, “Yeah, he doesn’t want to go to school so he’s pretending to be sick.”

And are there resources and tools, things I could try, things I could teach him that would help me to nurture my child, and love my child, and support my child in a way that I genuinely want to rather than just manipulating and trying to control my child? I think there’s a lot to that. Now, I’m not going to be able to do that in the moment on a random Tuesday morning when it’s time to get ready for school and I’m getting ready for work, and there’s a lot going on. And my child suddenly says, “I have a sore throat.” I don’t expect myself to be perfect at it. I don’t expect you to be perfect at it.

I mean maybe you could be perfect at it, I know I’m never going to be perfect at it. But what I do, do is I assess myself periodically when I decide I think it’s time for me to work on being a little bit better mom. And I take a step back from a situation like the one I just described to you with my first grader and I asked myself, alright, what went on there? Not what went on for him, it has to begin with what went on for me.

And so many of you, I can tell by the questions you write me, you will just want to jump right to what’s going on for the child. It’s not going to be nearly as effective if you don’t start with what’s going on for you. What’s going on for you? What are you thinking and believing? All the things I told you earlier, this is fun because I’m self-coaching myself as I record this podcast. But this is what I do, I sort of get it out, maybe I say it to one or two people like my husband, or a friend or someone.

And then I take a look at it when I want to. I stop and go, “These things are all thoughts that I think are just observations of the world.” For example if he misses school today he’s going to miss at least five days and he’s going to have to get a Covid test before he can go back. Is that really true? In my head I’m like yeah, that’s true. That’s what we’ve had to do in the past. But I do think that goes in the thought line. Maybe not, maybe that’s not true at all, there’s a lot of rules, I don’t know them all.

Or he needs to go to school he’s missed too much school. That’s just a thought. Something has gone wrong here, this is going to be really inconvenient for me if he’s at home, that’s just a thought. He’s just using this to get out of school, that’s just a thought. I mean these are, some of them I’m going to decide to keep and believe. But I like to always stop and go, “These are all just thoughts.” What’s frustrating me is my thoughts you guys. So I can try to manipulate and control my children but it’s not me at my best. It’s not the best mothering I can do.

Much more ideal to first diminish my own frustration, to get myself to peace, and again I do this all the time after the fact which makes it much easier the next time it comes up. Or even if it’s not this thing, something different will come up but overall I’ve learned how to get my head in the space I want to. I’m rewiring the software of it’s so hard to be a mother and these kids are just so inconvenient. And Covid is so inconvenient and this is such a tough time we’re living in. And this is all ridiculous. And the policies are ridiculous.

All of that software makes me frustrated so I have to gradually with patience, and curiosity, and compassion, uninstall that software. And I have to install different software. I’ll tell you where I’m going to go with this, again, as I’m saying it out loud I’m realizing. Any time there’s self-pity I know what’s available is being the hero. Any time we’re feeling sorry for ourselves, it’s just so hard, the kids are all home and we’re doing online school and we don’t even know the rules. And now they’re sick and it’s 10 degrees out and I have work, all of this.

Self-pity means I’m not owning being the hero. I like to be the hero. I like to go, “You know what? We’ve got this. I’ve got this because I’m Jody Moore.” So we need to figure it out, alright, I’m in. I’m part of the solution here. I can do hard things. We all have to do some hard things right now. So I can sit around and feel sorry for myself or I can say, “Listen, I’m here and I’m part of the solution. And I’m in, and I’m a team player, and you can count on me. In fact give me more, I can handle more. I can handle quite a bit of hard stuff.”

Do you see what I’m saying? I still need to sort through it a little bit. I still need to coach myself on it. But even as I say it out loud I can feel the shift from I am going to stop trying to control my child so I can feel better. And I’m going to step into being who I know I’m capable of being. I know I’m capable of a lot more than I give myself credit for even. I know I’m capable of showing up and doing hard things.

And I know I’m capable of being patient, and kind, and available to my child. And I’m going to parent him, meaning I’m going to have expectations, there are going to be consequences. I’m going to make decisions that he may not always like. But I’m going to do that from a place of confidence. I’m going to do it from empowerment and peace. I’m not going to do it from a disempowered, you’re frustrating me so I need to control you place.

And I know the example I gave you, some of you are like, “Well, that’s fine if it’s your first grader missing a day of school.” “What about my child who is addicted to drugs?” “What about my child who’s failing out of school?” “What about my child who has left the church?” Whatever it is you guys, I promise you, I’m just using that example because it just happened this morning for me here on the podcast. But I promise you that all of this applies no matter what.

Trying to control your children will never serve you in the end, it won’t. And mostly doesn’t work anyway. Haven’t you noticed? So instead we want to be a good parent. And we’re going to dive into that like I said, a little bit more in Be Bold. We’re going to think about it all of us together, I’m going to give you ideas about how to hold kids accountable, how to have clear expectations. We’re going to go through the other four steps of The Better Mom Process.

But I want you to be onto yourself. Am I trying to control or am I being a good mom right now? Because it’s up to you, you get to choose. I’m going to be working on it with everyone else this month. So again, if you want to join us, go to jodymoore.com/membership. And the doors will be open on February 22^nd for just a few days.

So if you are listening to this a couple of days before that you can go there and you’ll get on the wait list and then we’ll remind you. Or you can just wait and sign up when the doors open but don’t miss it because they will be open for a few days. And this is such an important class.

Alright, I will see you guys soon. Take care.

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10x level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.