Change Your Family Legacy to One You Can Love with Randi Rubenstein
Meet today's guest:
Randi Rubenstein
As a parent coach and author, Randi Rubenstein, offers programs to support parents in raising confident and kind kiddos that live up to their fullest potential as independent thinkers.
Randi, is a fellow mama in the trenches that helps parents replace negative patterns such as threats, bribing and name calling with a new positive parenting toolbox that inspires rather than backfires during the teen years. Randi walks her talk and her signature program, Closing the Parent Gap, has had transformative results for countless families.
Randi is a regularly featured parenting expert in local media in her beloved hometown of Houston, Texas.
Have you ever found yourself in that place where you promised yourself one thing and then, in the heat of the moment, did exactly what you said you'd never do?
I'm never going to yell at my kids… …I'll never give my kids this early curfew…I'm never going to be looking over their shoulders or going through their room…
My guest this week, Randi Rubenstein, calls this idea of having a discrepancy between who you want to be and who you are being, the parent gap, and has made it her mission to help parents close this gap so that they can be the parent they want to be most of the time.
We're the adults, we're showing up as the adults and really no matter what their [your child's] behaviour is we're like, I've got this. I'm not going to lose it, you're just a kid going through a stage that you need to go through and I'm still going to restate whatever the rules are, follow through consistently and make sure that you understand that this is really not a democracy.
Randi shared why this is so difficult for most parents and how social media can contribute to the problem by adding shiny examples of people in their moments of excellence rather than what they are actually feeling on the inside.
Now-a-days in the age of social media I think it's even harder because you see everybody's shiniest outsides and moms LOVE to post pictures about their kids. It's kind of like how they are doing this motherhood thing in such an amazing way, look at my kids….look at my kids and everything looks so wonderful and peachy and perfect. Most moms… and I don't know if you feel this way too… but it's like everyone feels like they are screwing it up.
(Yes Randi…I have felt like I am messing things up – many times)
So if that's how we feel on the inside and we're over here scrolling on social media looking at everybody else who seems like they're just kicking butt at it, it feels crummy.
Randi talked about kids pushing your buttons and how many of the tools that are put out there for us to use, really aren't effective.
I wish those 1-2-3 [Magic]and the sticker charts worked, because I know we are all instant gratification junkies and we just want the answers, but those are band-aid solutions. They may work for a week but your kids very quickly catch on and then the reward needs to get bigger, and the counting thing stops and we get more forceful.
Randi shared with us what we need to do instead; why technology is actually a wonderful gift and not the detriment people often talk about it as; why the old style of parenting is no longer effective; how to have a productive conversation with your kids; and more.
Here's a few highlights, but be sure to listen to the podcast to enjoy all the wonderful tips:
Raise your hand if you want to raise a factory worker… We want to raise change agents, innovators, doctors and people who think for themselves and kids who grow up to be teenagers that don't succumb to peer pressure.
I don't have a 1-2-3 Magic approach, what I have is a process for going through how to retrain your brain so that you can show up during those triggered moments as the parent that you want to be.
By retraining my brain I feel like I've changed my family legacy.
The productive conversation is really about building this foundation of trust where our kids really trust us not to jump in and automatically fix them, but to show up for them when they are having a moment of upset or when we've had an argument with them.
Learn how to be an empathic listener and when you get that urge to jump in and fix it, should on them, or lecture…remember you're not actually teaching them anything in those moments.
Kids learn by what we do - when we model what it means to be a good friend, to be a respectful person, treat them with respect, treat our spouses, best friend and our own mothers with respect, our kids are taking all of it in.
What we focus on grows – if you're focusing on all the terrible things you have to do that day you will have a terrible day… So this idea is retraining your brain to focus on what you really want in that moment and putting that out there instead.
Be sure to tune in to the podcast to enjoy the many thought provoking ideas Randi shared with us.
