How to help kids in hard times?

[Intro] Hi, and welcome to my podcast. I'm your host, Corinne Powell. I'm an intuitive guide and the owner of Change Radically.

My intention, both here and in private sessions, is to come alongside you in a way that feels safe and empowering.

So many of us are experiencing similar things and feeling common emotions, but we won't know that unless we talk about it. You aren't supposed to have to go it alone.

I specialize in helping people pleasers change patterns and create a life they feel good about. Life should not be consumed by doing things you feel obligated to do. Do you want to feel a lot less frustrated? Then stop living in a way that benefits everyone else at your expense. 

Empowered to Thrive is a place of safety. Conversations focus on topics that impact our mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Parenting comes up too. Because I'm a mom to four kids, and it's natural for me to talk about the impact that has on life.

Bottom line, you're always welcome here, no matter what type of day you're having. Your friends and their friends are welcome too. Please share the podcast.

Let's create a place of community and connection that is saturated by authenticity and transparency. I'll start. Now, on to today's episode.

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Season 5 of Empowered to Thrive is here, and I'm excited to be back with you again. Today and the next couple weeks, we're going to be talking about parenting, and specifically today, how you can help your kids through difficult times. 

Perhaps you're in the middle of a traumatic situation right now, or you're just going through the ups and downs of everyday living.

Either way, there are difficulties, and our kids need us to know how to navigate through the difficult times. So, I am going to give you practical ways, going to talk about practical things you can do for yourself and for your kiddos. I hope that you will join the conversation and invite a friend. 

Hello, friends. I am here with my newborn. So, if you hear any little baby sounds in the background, that's Brielle. And I am learning in this season to make it easy.

I have heard this before, but I'm able to comfortably do it right now. And, hey, it's taking more, doing more of the inner work to get me to a place where I feel comfortable just showing up with life as it is and not needing to make it look different and perfect or right for the business owner, but just letting it be what it is for me right now and in this season.

So, today, we are talking about a topic that was requested by one of the listeners, and you know who you are if you're listening.

I had a few listeners asking for conversation around parenting and how to help our kids navigate through different times in life, through different seasons.

So, today, we're going to touch on how to support your kids when you're going through a difficult time. Maybe it's a traumatic time. And remember, trauma is not about the event. It's about how we interpret the event, how we experience the event. 

So you and I could both go through something that one of us might feel is traumatizing and the other one might feel is not. And so whether it's traumatic or just difficult, this will apply.

And we need to start by acknowledging that what we model to our kids is more important than anything else. We've heard it said, you know, that actions speak louder than words, but really they do. So first, it starts with us. And that's why each one of us doing our own inner work is so important.

Because our kids will learn by observing us. So how do you go through different difficult situations? How are you processing and dealing with the trauma in your life? Past, present, it doesn't matter. 

Remember that that is going to impact your kids more than anything else. Being a support to your children looks like being there to listen as they talk. Maybe because you've been quiet, it just gives them space to actually start to talk. 

Maybe it's because you asked a question. What was the most difficult part of your day? Or what was the most exciting part of your day?

Because that's going to invoke a response more easily than how was your day. Think about when we ask our kids or ask certain people, how was your day? And they're like, good. Okay, that didn't really help us understand much more about their day. It really didn't help them to be able to talk about it. 

So we can ask questions like, what was something exciting that happened in your day? What was something difficult that happened in your day? Or take it any direction you want. Come up with something. Try different things. 

Become a safe place for your children that they can actually share their heart. That's going to mean when they share, you can't pounce on them, which you can. But if you do, it's likely they're going to stop sharing.

And I have to check myself with this as well. Because my kids might say, “Hey, mom, one of one of my friends at school traded with me for lunch and I got, this candy from them. And I gave them my other snack”. Right? 

And I have to be careful. I need to pause and check myself.  Because it's really easy for me to say, wait a second, I didn't want you to have that sweet. You traded them something that wasn't sweet. Trade a sweet for a sweet.

Trade a snack for a snack. Trade a protein for a protein. Or a veggie for a veggie. Right? Like, I'm trying to keep it balanced. I packed a certain lunch intentionally. 

But on the other hand, I need to remember that it's actually a gift my child is sharing with me. That they're letting me in on these little happenings in their day. That they feel safe enough to tell me this. 

And food may not be an arena that is important to you. It is important to me. But make this, relatable. So, take my example and relate it to your own conversation with your kids. And we all know this isn't just about how we relate to our kids. This is how we relate to people in general. 

Your friend or your family member says something that you have a completely different opinion on and a strong one at that. Well, pause, friend. Watch yourself. Because witnessing ourselves and observing ourselves, recognizing what we're going to say and how we're going to respond before we do it, gives us a chance to actually do it differently. 

That pause is powerful. It is important to pause. And everyone hopes to have a safe place to simply share things, not needing an opinion in response. There are times someone is looking for feedback. They are looking for your honest opinion. That's fine. Give it to them when they're asking for that.

Or if you're not sure, you can ask them, are you open to my feedback? Would you like to hear my opinion on this? And they may actually say one way or the other, hey, maybe they don't feel comfortable or safe enough to actually answer honestly. But you ask the question and that's kind of you to ask the question.  So, even if they say yes and they really don't want your opinion, hey, you asked the question, they said yes, then give your opinion.

But we often give our opinions when nobody's asking for it. That's where we have to be careful. So, we want to become a safe place for our children to share. We want to model for them how to be transparent, how to express our emotions so that they can do the same.

So, if you feel the need to cry, there's going to be times you're going to need to let yourself cry in front of your kids. When I do this, some of my kids hate to see me cry.

But I've let them know that mommy is feeling something right now. And sometimes my tears aren't even because I'm sad. Sometimes it's because I'm filled with like gratitude and a joy that's inexpressible. And it shows up in emotion, tears come up. But I've had to let my kids know I feel this way and I get to express my emotions too. 

Because I don't know for you, but I know for me, I suppressed and shut down my emotional response when I was younger for numerous reasons. So, start with yourself, be vulnerable, be transparent. You don't need to tell your kids everything that's going on. 

They certainly don't need to be your therapist. I don't mean be vulnerable and transparent where you're sharing all of your troubles with your children. Their job and their responsibility

isn't to be there for you in that way. Even if they're grown adult children, of course, it's fine. You're two adults. You can share what you want. But in your mind, remember, they are not supposed to be your support system. 

What I mean by that is you should have other people that you can go to first. Don't make your kids be your support system. Be friends. And friends are going to be there to support each other. But friends are not meant to be the therapist. They're not meant to be the person who simply listens. Who you come to and you always have something that you need to unload. 

That's what a therapist is there for. That's what you pay them for. But our friends shouldn't have to be that all the time. And if you as a parent should not expect your children to be that, even if they're willing to be. That's where you have to be extra aware. Because some kids, even when they're young, they're just very, they're empaths. They're very easy to talk to. You feel their compassion. They're willing to listen. Be careful to not put that all on them. You have to be the one to pull back. You have to be the one to find other outlets for support for yourself. 

So what else? What else can we do to help our kids as they're going through a difficult time? Be sure to create spaces and places and times where they get to do fun things. It's really easy to forget about doing fun, lighthearted things when you're going through a difficult season. Even if it's just you going through a difficult season. 

Your kids, they live with you or they're around you enough. They're going to feel that from you. We have to be aware enough so that we create spaces for them and outlets where they don't have to think about the heaviness going on in life, in your life, in their life, in the collective. 

We all went through the pandemic. For some of you, you're, still might be in an area of the country, an area of the world that is still operating with a lot of precautions. You have to become responsible to make sure that your kids can have normalcy in their life, even when it feels like nothing is normal. 

There's ways to do things that are familiar, to do things that are fun and that become something familiar, even if they're initially something new you're trying to do. So a lot of this falls on us as parents.

But really, if we're modeling it and we're doing it ourselves, it's not going to feel as heavy it's not going to feel like hard work. It's going to feel intentional. Yes, you're going to be purposely living this way, but you're going to be already functioning in this way. So bringing your kids into it isn't going to be as difficult or challenging as it will be if you're learning it and practicing it for the first time. 

And if that's you, if you are like, “Hey, this is not how I typically live. I don't express my emotions. I don't let them see my emotions. I don't actually create safe spaces for them to come and talk to me. I have a response to what they say. I have an opinion on how they are living or what they're saying or how they think and act. And I express that to them”. 

Well, then it's going to have to start with you where you're changing your patterns to then in turn help your kids out.

Focus on you first so that you can actually show up as the parent that your kids need. I say that with so much love and compassion. I'm not shaming you. I'm not trying to make this a downer. I'm here as a support. And if you wish to, set up a session and receive my support in a different capacity than just this podcast, I'm here for you. 

I can help you. We can come up with actionable plans. I can help you understand why you're functioning in the way you are. And as I help you, it will help you to be able to relate to your kids differently.

So we're touching the surface as I always do with these episodes. They're not super in-depth. This is not meant to answer all your questions about how to relate to your kids as you're going through a difficult or traumatic time.

But run with one thing at least that I'm talking about. Implement something that you're not already doing. Give yourself time so that it becomes a habit, and then bring in a new practice. And let me know how it's going. I am here supporting you, rooting for you. I'm on your team.

And I'm wishing you so much goodness in the middle of whatever it is you're going through. That you would feel in the middle of this heaviness, maybe this dark time, that you would be able to feel the sunlight breaking through the clouds.

Close your eyes. Absorb that sunshine. Let it hit your face. No, maybe the sky is still cloudy. Maybe the clouds haven't all disappeared, and the sun isn't like super bright. It's not one of those hot, hot days. Take advantage of whatever sunlight is coming through, and absorb it.

Take hold of it for yourself. Bask in it. Remember, goodness does surround you. It envelops you. And it holds you.

And my hope for you today is that you would be able to feel that goodness. That you would be able to see the good things in your life, the gifts in your life, the kindnesses that come your way. Much love to you, my friend.

[Ending] We've come to the end. What did you think about what you heard? I hope that there's something you pulled from today's episode and start implementing it into your life. Create the change that you want to see, the change that you hear about. You have the opportunity to transform your life. And I'm ready to link arms with you, and to help and guide you to the life that you want to live.

If you resonated with what you heard today, and it touched you, would you share it with your friends? Would you also go ahead and rate my podcast, and write a written review?

It would mean so much to me. I hope that we'll connect, whether it's for a session, or just to connect because I enjoy meeting new people. You can find me on Instagram,

@corinne_changeradically, or on Facebook, Change Radically. You can also always email me, corinne@changeradically.com. If you have thoughts, questions, or anything that you just want to talk about, send me an email. 

I hope that you have a wonderful week, but no matter what your week is like, in the meantime, maybe it's in the moments that are quiet.

Maybe it's when you pillow your head at night, or when you're driving in the car, or taking a walk, or maybe it's going to be in the midst of the chaos with your children, or the craziness of work.

I hope that you'll remember how significant you are, that there is meaning and value to your life, and that I, for one, am so glad that you're alive.

Catch you again next week.