Harmony in the Home

I’m always trying to think of things that worked in my classroom with 20 kids so they’ll scale down and work in your four walls. One thing that helped my 1st-graders was teaching them tangible words to stand up for themselves and be assertive. At the beginning of the year, we’d teach them to counter teasing, bullying, etc. with a polite but assertive “please stop, I don’t like that.” Why this phra...

What if I told you there was a real unicorn in Paris you could visit? Well, hold your horses, because there isn’t really a unicorn in Paris! But for children, and not just young children, that might be totally believable. Why is that? A child’s mind is full of imagination and floats along to the whimsical tune of adventuring through a totally unexplored (to them) world, and it really seems magical...

Imagine you’re on a flight and the plane starts experiencing serious turbulence. How do you react? If the flight attendants are freaking out, you might also freak out — maybe even start calling people to say your last goodbyes! But if the flight attendants are calmly carrying out their tasks, you may be more inclined to be calm as well. Children are the same way around their parents and leaders. T...

This week I thought I’d touch on a serious life hack that I use ALL the time. I’m amazed that we’re so far in and I haven’t shared this trick with you! Mel Robbins, who has a formidable skill set as a lawyer, journalist, and keynote speaker, gave a talk at the 2011 TEDx San Francisco called “How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over” . The last couple minutes of her address deal with what she calls the “...

If you know me, you know I’m obsessed with ChapStick. It’s my FAVORITE lip balm. My dad used it all the time, I use it all the time, it’s great. (I promise there’s a point to this.) I recently discovered Graham Cracker flavor, which is my new favorite — but my family doesn’t get my obsession with ChapStick, and in fact, Grady is grossed out by the smell of Graham Cracker. But that doesn’t change h...

Do you ever start doing something different because there’s a possibility you’re being watched? I know I have. Recently I was thinking about an event early on in my conscious parenting journey. I was at a restaurant with my family and I saw an acquaintance (let’s call her Margaret). I impulsively began to play with Lily’s hair. Why did I do it? Was it to show off how connected I was to my daughter...

You may be thinking, what’s with this title? I know “boomerang judgement” may sound weird to you, but hear me out! This is an important principle. Within Byron Katie’s coaching and healing regimen, which she calls The Work, she has a worksheet called “Judge Your Neighbor” where the coachee would describe a bothersome, annoying, or otherwise disturbing aspect of a close associate. For example, a co...

As a follow-up to last week’s episode regarding imago theory and therapy, I wanted to talk a little bit about what Brooke Castillo calls “emotional childhood.” It’s the stage we’re in before we arrive at “emotional adulthood,” which is balanced, rational, guided by the prefrontal cortex and the conscious mind at all times. Incidentally, it’s also the state we will revert to given negative stimuli,...

This week I thought I’d touch very briefly on a concept that helped me understand a LOT of things about my romantic relationships and my marriage to David. The “imago” relationship theory developed by Dr. Harville Hendrix and Dr. Helen LaKelly Hunt appears in their joint-authored book “Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples,” and it’s been formally codified as IRT, Imago Relationship Thera...

Today marks our ONE-HUNDREDTH EPISODE! WOOOOOOOO! Parenting is an incredibly difficult task even under the best circumstances. I’m blessed to have the support of my husband David. Together, as we’ve adopted the conscious parenting model, we’ve been able to give more to parenting where it matters. We’re learning to accept the inevitable truth of our children eventually leaving home to be adults. We...

Is it bad to fail at something? Does it mean anything about us or about or worthiness or good-enough-ness? The answer to these questions is a resounding NO, and I want to talk about how failure is an important process you should be undergoing on the regular. As children in our natural developmental process, we try to walk, talk, eat, play sports or musical instruments, and so on. We generally fail...

Do you ever feel like you don’t measure up to the ideal? What can you do about that? The axiom “comparison is the thief of joy” is attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. Regardless of its origin, it rings true for me and many other parents struggling to cultivate harmony in the home. When I was just beginning my parent journey, I compared my circumstances and my children to those of other parents far t...

text Last week, we talked about how other people’s opinions of you are basically always their opinions about themselves, projected onto you. This episode is the natural follow-up to that one. We all know at least one “people-pleaser” in our life: somebody who’s spread themselves just a little too thin between work, their kids’ extracurricular activities, the PTA, their church and community groups,...

How important is an opinion? Specifically, how important is an opinion about YOU? Some questions that come up a lot with my clients include: what do other people think about me? Am I good enough? Am I worthy? So this brings up an excellent question: why the fixation on other people’s opinions? Now, before we even begin, let’s get one thing clear: the vast majority of people are not silently judgin...

What’s in a friend? On social media I asked you about what attributes you look for in a friend. The biggest responses were LOYAL and HONEST. That’s no surprise. We have a natural instinct to surround ourselves with people who value us and tell the truth. In this episode, I want to encourage you to cultivate just such a friendship with your body. Now, Byron Katie’s concept of loving “what is” appli...

In 2013, things were not great in Kelly land. I felt like I had lost my mojo. I felt stuck at the time. To be fair, there were a lot of stressors in my life: we were living in a house with a mold problem - we’re talking so much mold that living there was unsafe! - we were briefly homeless because of it, David didn’t like his job, my mom had a 15-pound tumor. Anyway, it was not great. As I began to...

Would you like to help your kids stay clear of the dreaded red zone? Would you like to spend less time there yourself? Try HALTing! People in addiction recovery learn the acronym H. A. L. T. to identify four triggers that exacerbate their cravings: hungry, angry, lonely, tired. The word “halt” literally means “to come to an abrupt stop,” and taking a quick personal H. A. L. T. inventory does just...

When I was unconscious — I mean, before I began my inner work of mind management and conscious parenting — the kindness (or lack thereof) of my kids was a big trigger for me. David and I decided to find ways to quietly, anonymously do service to others in the outside world and even within the walls of our home in order to teach them how to have an attitude of kindness. Now, don’t get me wrong, kin...

I’ve noticed that there are two main groups into which all people fall in terms of handling tricky emotions: calzone people and Coke people. Allow me to explain. First, there are calzone people, who hold in their emotions and suffer their grievances in silence until at last, all their metaphorical cheese and tomato sauce comes running out in a flood of tears. Then there are Coke people, who are li...

Everybody knows this phrase: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” We push this idea for children to say in order to not cede emotional control to a bully, but the simple truth is that words DO hurt. When I was an elementary school teacher and counselor, I did an exercise I call “toothpaste words” to demonstrate this principle. The origin escapes me, but I have used...

Before I dive in, a little thing that’s been on my mind recently. I’ve noticed that when I have a question or am looking for a solution to an issue in my life, it helps to sit in on a coaching session where a coach is assisting another parent with a similar difficulty. I’m thinking about setting up an online space where we can all meet together and learn from each other, and I’ll mention that in t...

Last week, I asked you all over social media: what are some traits of a toxic friendship or relationship? I got answers from “feeling drained all the time” to “feeling anxiety” to “thinking about the relationship takes away from family time.” A toxic interpersonal relationship in any form is a massive drain on body and spirit, and it’s often necessary to set boundaries for your own sanity. This ep...

Last week, we discussed what happens when our kids have big emotions. This week, we’ll talk about some examples from my life (that I share with my children’s permission) about how David and I helped our children work through strongly emotional moments. As you develop grace and compassion for your child, you will be easier on yourself, and vice-versa. When your child feels a big emotion with a caus...

How do we help our children manage big emotions? I recently helped Grady with homework. This boy is multiplying triple-digit numbers by triple digit numbers. I marveled at his skill with multiplication. It didn't come naturally to him; he had to learn by trial and error, and nobody got mad at him when he didn't know how to multiply big numbers. Now, here's the parallel. Our children experience the...

This episode is a doozy. I want to start off by letting you know that I know how hard you are on yourself — because I used to be super hard on myself. I always said “I’m not good enough,” first with infertility and then with my struggles raising my kids. That translated into being super hard on them, and pretty hard on David as well. Not so good! I discuss parents being hard on themselves as I do...