- Stefani's background as a parent coach and child life specialist
- Understanding whether your child reacts with fight, flight, or freeze (or even fawn) during stressful situations so you can ailor your approach for better outcomes
- The perception vs. reality of gentle parenting and the importance of structure and firm limits
- Strategies for handling strong-willed children with examples of what it can look like in multiple scenarios
- How to implement confidence in your parenting, including setting core family values and boundaries
Capture Your Confidence
Confidently Parenting Strong Willed Kids with Stefani Hart
Ever wondered why some parenting tactics just don't work with your kids? 'Gentle parenting' might be failing, rather than helping, you. This week, we have the pleasure of hosting Stefani Hart, a clinically trained child life specialist and parent coach. Stefani is revolutionizing the way we understand and approach parenting, particularly when dealing with strong-willed children. Stefani dives deep into her practice, explaining how she helps families navigate difficult behaviors and trauma through structured support and coping mechanisms. You'll learn about the impact of a strong-willed child, the pitfalls of gentle parenting as it's often portrayed on social media, and practical strategies for setting boundaries and limits that foster both child and parent confidence. Tune in for many invaluable insights into effective parenting while keeping your own central nervous system in check. Today we cover:
[MUSIC PLAYING] Women in the 21st century are facing a crisis, a confidence crisis. Recent studies have shown that women's confidence actually decreases with experience, and 67% of women say they need more support in being confident. We're committed to changing this, one conversation at a time. Because when women show up to their lives with confidence, everything is better. Organizations run more smoothly, families experience more harmony, more things get done. And this isn't just some you can do at cheerleading session. This is a confidence intervention. We're your hosts, Stephanie Hannah and Whitney Abraham, two successful mothers and entrepreneurs that are here to help you understand what you need to do to capture your confidence. [MUSIC PLAYING] She's back. The 30 Annual State of Women Conference will be held on October 10. And it's the conference for ambitious women looking to dial up their impact, scale back their stress, and create the connections that will fuel their next bold move. The State of Women Conference is an all-day personal and professional development program with a focus and confidence to equip and elevate women who are called for more. This is for you if you know the value of getting in the room with like-minded women for a day of growth and connection. If you're interested in sponsorship, you can email Whitney at WhitneyAbraham.com. And if you'd like to join us live, you can visit the link in the show notes to purchase your ticket. Welcome back to the Capture your Confidence podcast. I am so thrilled today because we have not only somebody that I think is going to revolutionize the way that we look at parenting, but a client of mine that I am literally so excited to introduce you to. Stephanie Hart, welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. You get two Stephanie's today. I know. So Steph, can you tell us a little bit about the work that you do? I mean, obviously, I can call you a parent coach. I can call you a child life specialist. But I think a lot of us probably don't really even know what that means. So talk to me a little bit about the work that you do. Yeah, absolutely. So I am clinically trained as a child life specialist. And not a lot of people know what that is, but we work in pediatric hospitals, community settings, foster homes. And a lot of what we do is try to decrease trauma for parents and families. And in doing that, we use bite-sized pieces of education to make sure people understand what they're experiencing, the sensory experience within their body. They're able to process what's happening to them in real time. And then we're able to do a post-procedural processing or a post-experience processing to really integrate what happened so that your body can respond with coping skills that create lasting change. And so this work in the hospital really led me to realize that once you leave the hospital, it doesn't stop, right? Like these families that I worked with, whether they're chronic illnesses, or they come in for a one-time surgery or whatever have you, they leave the hospital. And that's really when all the behavior challenges happen, whether it's a parent's own previous trauma being brought up. Maybe they had a medical history, or maybe they were in a foster care system, or they had trouble with their own parents. The way that your body responds as a parent is affected by previous experiences. And so being able to support your child through processing a trauma they may have experienced, or just in general challenging behavior at home, is not something that everybody's equipped to do, right? So I really wanted to branch out of the hospital system, branch out of the community settings, and start something on my own where I could coach parents through this type of situation, whether it be tantrums, or school refusal, or just in general, your child is defiant and challenging. Like those are my jam. The kids that look at you and are like, I don't have to, no, I don't want to. - I want to normalize the traumatic feeling of your children being absolutely obstinate. Whether or not you've had like a hospital experience, like in the moment when your child is literally like refusing and acting almost borderline crazy, and you are trying your best to not pour gasoline on the situation, like that is a traumatic experience in and of itself. So thank God for you to be here to do the Lord's work, because we don't know what we're doing, and we need your heart rate. - Yeah, it triggers your central nervous system in the same way, right? Like your brain has the ability it steps down into the automatic responses of fight-flight freeze, and every person's experience of what steps them down is unique, right? It's essentially an acute stress response. And those are supposed to happen all day, every day. And with children too, right? It's like a roller coaster. You come up, you come down, you come up, you come down. But the goal here is that we can eventually get you to come down and not go up as easy. - Can we play a quick game called? Like I'm just thinking like a lot of parents listening might not know if they go into fight-flight or freeze. So quickly, like if your child does this one scenario, and you respond this way, can we like role-play that out really quick? - Yeah, absolutely. Do you want to give me the scenario? - Yeah, so we have to go to your grandmother's house for lunch, and you need to wear this outfit that I picked out for you. - Obviously, no. - Yeah, your child's like, no, they rip the shirt off. I'm not going to grandma's. I don't want to wear that. Your heart starts beating faster. You start to have flashes of you putting the shirt forcefully over their head, and being like, you are wearing this, we're going to grandma's. That initial response of like instant heightened and like intensity in your body is your central nervous system responding. It is alerting you to a danger or a threat. And yeah, in that moment, your child is the danger or the threat, like they're sending your body into this. And that's an experience that that's your, your central nervous system responding for you. - So if I fight, I actually do put the shirt on the kid. - Oh yeah, so the fight flight frees like fight. So you experience, if you have multiple kids, right? So I'll use mine as an example. My first is a fighter. He will go to blows with me. He's almost six, and I mean, and I've never done it, but if I were to like shove him down, he would get up and shove me back. Like he isn't a kid that backs down in any way. And then my middle is definitely the flight, right? So if he gets in trouble or he gets upset in any way, he just cries and sprints to a bedroom and shuts the door and wants to be alone. And I'm like, great, perfect. Enjoy your time to yourself, right? And then if you're a freeze person, you just stop, right? You're like a deer in the headlights, and you don't really know what to do, and you just like panic mode, right? And then there's actually a new one that's been added lately on, and that's people pleasing. Those are usually kids or people that have experienced a lot of trauma in their life or negative experiences where they just want to be like, okay, how can I help? What can I do to like de-escalate this situation? I'll do anything you want, please, just stop yelling. - I have a flight and I have a fight. What do you have? - I have a fight and a flight slackies. - Okay, so this is good. Like even just knowing that about your kiddo, like, oh, this is how they respond. Like that's one closer step to awareness, right? Which I think we need in order to deduce like what the world we need to do for them in order to get where we want to go. - Yeah, absolutely, knowing your child's temperament is one of the very first steps in being able to help them, right? And so when I work with clients, that's one of the first things I do, is I do like an environment assessment and interaction assessment. Like tell me your kid does XYZ, okay, what do you do? But the key is I gotta be honest, right? Like if you tell me like, oh, I try this, something like that, and I can see through your stuff. Okay, if my child told me to shut up and slammed a door in my face, I would whip that door open and I would be so angry. And then maybe I'd catch myself quickly, right? Like, okay, they're a kid. But most people in that situation are not going to be like, I took three deep breaths and I said, are you feeling mad right now? Like that's not realistic, maybe some. I'm not, can't say for certainty that not everyone, but that's not my experience of people I've worked with that their initial response is to just be very calm and take deep breaths. So one of the things that I think is really interesting, you have like a really cool stance on this, and I wanna dig in a little bit deeper to sort of like what happened to you and why this has become sort of a pillar of some of the work that you do. But you on social went pretty hard at the concept of gentle parenting and it like blew up your account. Like people started following you. I'm sure you got lots of like hate for it too, but things blew up for you. And so I wanna talk to you about your stance on gentle parenting and sort of what has come from towards your business from the decision to be like, yeah, this is not a solution. - Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, the history of gentle parenting, right? Is that it was essentially a coin's term that was meant to describe authoritative parenting. But social media has really twisted it into more of a permissive style of parenting. And this is where I got a lot of hate with that. I said that gentle parenting has a hyper focus on emotions. And it leaves parents not knowing what to do if they have a child who is fight, who comes back at them, who is defiant or obstinate or doesn't want to listen or do what they're asked to do. There's tactics that I have used and like what really sent me down this path was my firstborn son. He's incredibly strong-willed. His tantrums were not, you can say big, but I mean, I got bloody noses. He broke utensils in the kitchen. Like they were intense and I was convinced he was diagnosable. There was something that was wrong with him or wrong with me. And then I stopped just validating his emotions, sitting near him when he was having these upsets. And I thought to myself, okay, if this were a hospitalized child and they were unsafe in their environment, they were unsafe to the people around them, like how would you support them, right? They would get a big bear hug to be kept still. They would be a move to a different environment to help de-escalate them. They wouldn't be trying, I wouldn't try to convince them to take deep breaths in that moment, right? Because they're too far gone. They need more structure, they need more boundaries, they need more consistency, and they need firm, confident limits. But that is incredibly hard to do. If you don't, one, know that the way that you're responding is supportive of your child's development, and two, you don't feel confident that the way you're responding is true to your family values. So when I would come in a room and try to de-escalate him, and I was trying to stay as calm as possible, like my internal body did not want to respond that way. And he could smell it like a shark in the water. He knew, he saw straight through my bullshit and was like, this lady's not serious. I only have to do what she says if I can withstand her annoying requests, essentially. And then once she stops asking me, she's gonna eventually throw up her hands and give in 'cause she has no one else to do, right? They learn these behaviors back and forth. Like it's a thing in development where they understand what they can get away with with each person. And I essentially became a permissive parent by accident. And my education told me otherwise, and my experience told me otherwise. And then I had my second son, they're two years apart, right? So all this intensity began, I mean, it began at birth. He's always been intense, but truly, I had this experience when he was around two and a half. And when my youngest son was one, one and a half two, I started using these tactics, normal tactics, that I would do, holding boundaries, and he complied. And I was like, oh, maybe I do need a different tactic with my first born, maybe he does need more structure, he needs different type of communication, clear cut responses. And so on social media, I basically shared that. That I tried gentle parenting and the way that it's presented now, not the way that it was intended to be. And I failed. And I failed even with a background in understanding of trauma and social emotional development, cognitive development, and I still failed. So how could a person without that understanding, without that experience, without that education, feel confident enough to parent their child in a way that's supportive of both of them? I just didn't see how it could happen. And when I said that, it was wild. People loved it. - I love that you highlight the semantics of it, 'cause I think that's really important in this space. I do think that gentle parenting has gotten a bad rap because of social media and the clips and little 30-second sound bites that does kind of translate it into the permissive space. So for someone who's trying to, that's listening, that's trying to kind of build their competence in parenting a more strong-willed child, what would be some of the first things that you would suggest to that? - Yeah, absolutely. So first, I would want you to pay attention to what your child's triggers are, right? What are the moments during your day where they are the absolute most challenging? Don't pick all of them. Start with one. You need to pick one part of your day and own it and be like, this is the hill I'm gonna die on. I'm going to pick this battle until I see change. If you start with all of them, you're going to fail because nobody can withstand that much, I mean, basically abuse every day because it is hard, it is constant, and it takes a lot of confidence and power to stand in front of your child and be like, this is the way it's gonna be and I'm not gonna budge and you have to be able to manage the upset that follows. So after you determine where you wanna start, I want you to start to reflect on your own body's process. When that trigger happens, what happens in your body? Does your heart beat faster? Do your hands make fists? Like, for example, for me, my very last clue that I'm about to lose my shit is that I literally envision myself doing what I'm about to do. It's almost like a premonition. Like, I see it in my brain. Like, I picture myself like throwing his toy against the wall or like slamming the door and then I'm like, okay, oh, Stephanie, we are not going to do that. They're a child, right? And so once you recognize those clues, there's a couple coping skills that you can implement in under five seconds that are proven to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, right? Which calms you down. One is cold. Another is actually speaking out loud, which feels the silliest to most people, but it works for me as I'll be like, you're just a kid, you're just a kid, right? And saying it out loud brings you out of that emotional brain into your logical brain. And it's able to help you calm your body down. So starting with picking your poison, checking your own body, and then knowing what coping skill you're going to implement because if you don't have a plan, you're going to fail. And then you're going to lose the confidence you need to keep going. - Okay, so let's take, I like the example you started with the, or that Whitney gave out there, like getting dressed, right? So let's say getting dressed, like you're a person who, and I'm laughing because both of us, our kids could wear whatever and we don't care, but let's say you're a person who cares, right? Like you better look a certain way. - You're going to church with grandma and you're going to wear these shirts. - That's your hill, all right, got it. - Right, that's our hill. That's the morning, there's the roughest time, it's just around getting dressed. And so here we go. So I know that my kid will refuse, they'll say no. Maybe they'll get like a little physical, but mostly they're just sitting there and they're like, no, like I'm not doing it. And they're, let's say six, seven, right? So old enough to kind of, you can't just, I mean, you could slam the shirt on, but that's not your idea. You're late, you gotta go, you can't like literally sit here and headstrong like wait, wait on them all day. - So you know what they're doing, you've got yourself in check, okay? You kind of know your triggers and you're kind of willing to work through them. Okay, then what do we do? - So your decision has to be, do you continue to pick that hill and be very late? Or do you give in and let them wear whatever they want? Because if you're already late, your kid's already refusing and you need to get out the door, you're really limited in your options. And this is, I hear these questions from parents all the time, it's like what was this to do in this scenario? You needed to have a plan ahead of time. - So yeah, take out the time part 'cause that's what you're thinking too. So let's say we're committed to doing this going forward. So we're preparing ourselves, we're gonna get ourselves more time, take us down that scenario. - Yeah, so you have enough time. You don't move, you stand in front of your child, you do not walk away, you do not engage in any other activities and you use language like before you do XYZ, I need this shirt on your button. You need to put the shirt on before you do anything else and you stand there. And in a way, like what if they are in a way that like is preventing them from leaving the room? - If they're fighting you, my understanding is they were just sitting there chillin' and being like, no, gonna, so you wouldn't need to, but if they're trying to leave the room, yeah, it's like we're in this space together, the shirt goes on before we do anything else. And then it becomes a natural consequence, right? Like if they had time to play afterwards or they needed to watch the show before they left, they wasted time, they ran out. Now, the upset's gonna continue, they're gonna freak out, right? And then you're probably gonna end up late either way, but you picked your hill, you made sure that they knew you were serious. And like for strong world kids, like behavior is like research. They're trying to figure out like, what can I do now? Is she really gonna hold it? And strong world kids, the reason it makes them different is that they usually have to have the consequence a couple times to feel satisfied with their research. Then they're like, okay, she won't, right? - It is starting it's hard. - They gotta know, it's like they know, listen, she held up that one time, she didn't have a finder, she's not gonna hold up this time. Like 'cause I know that too, like if you're not consistent every time, it's not gonna work. And one of the things that you said, like as you were talking through this whole idea like picking a hill to die on, and we were giving the example, I was trying to like, well, shit, wow, like put a different shirt on and walk out the door like, what do I care? Or like walk out with your top off? Who do, what do I care, right? Like that permission of knowing like, hey, why are you fighting? Like is this really that important to you? And just allowing us as adults to let go of some of the things that are not that big of a deal. So we can focus on the ones that really matter. It's such a gift because when I was growing up, I just remember everything being like, there were no picking of the battles, everything. If I didn't do every single thing the way they wanted me to do it, then I was like in trouble. Are they, and knowing like I can get my kid, the gift of getting off their back for things that don't really matter? I think it's beautiful. - Absolutely. And it comes a lot to like picking your family values, right? And that's one of the exercises we do in the very beginning is like, you sit down, if you have a partner, you sit with your partner and you're like, okay, what matters? Like what truly matters? If it really matters for you with the clothes, then fine. Like that's the hill you're gonna die on, but that's gonna be a really challenging one because if you think about it, clothing is a sensory experience. And if your child is fighting you on that day in and day out, there's an unmet need. Maybe something is itchy, maybe they don't feel good in their clothes. I like, I would say to this person, imagine if I just went to Nordstrom, picked out a dress and said, you have to wear this to work today. You do like to hell with you? No, I don't. Now, I do understand if it's like church and there's like a requirement or school and there's a uniform. Those are different hills, right? If it's just a standard everyday thing, I get it. But there is something beautiful about picking your battles because when we get in this dance, this family cycle of just power struggles, we're holding resentment and anger towards our child. And we're like, this little shit is not gonna do it. I say anyways, so we come into the room with this like perception and this preconceived notion that they're gonna fight us back. Yeah, and they feel it. And they're like, here we go and you're both ready for blows, right? So if you could just give them a win once in a while, it goes a long way, it builds their confidence too. Yeah. It's like instilling their own confidence formula. So Steph, if you don't know, we often will reference our formula to confidence here on the podcast, which is positive self-talk plus action plus repetition. Those three things over and over again, build confidence in us as adults, right? Like before we go and do something that maybe we're a little bit unconfident in, then we start with that positive self-talk. We pull the trigger, we realize we didn't die, we do the whole process again. And for more time, really builds confidence. And it is the same, sure, for kiddos too, whether it comes in confidence and articulating how they feel with us or trying something new or whatever that thing is. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so interesting. You said it's such a beautiful way to present it. I never thought of it that way, but it is exactly what kids need. They need a positive experience. They need to do it time and time again to learn that like, oh, okay, this is how it's gonna go. And that's honestly boundaries and discipline, they make kids feel safe, right? And I'm not talking discipline as like punitive punishments where you're like throwing in a room and slamming the door shut and like taking things away all the time, like, yeah, there's a time when things get taken away, right? Like my kids love Nerf guns. I got three boys. And today my oldest was mad at my middle and he pointed the gun at him. There's no Nerf in it, but he pulled the trigger. He knows we don't use guns when we're angry. You don't point at people when you're angry. They're not to be used as a weapon in the home. They're for play, gun got taken away, right? Pulled out another gun, did it again. Gun got taken away. And so there's reasons that things do need to be taken away, but there's no need for people to have such a negative view on punishment or discipline, like discipline is to teach. And if you don't incorporate limits and disciplines that match it, you won't see behavior change. And they will continue down this negative cycle path of behavior and negative feedback from you that diminishes their confidence. The kids need boundaries to feel safe and to feel confident and then confidence increases attachment. I mean, I could go forever. - Look, I really needed to hear this message and I needed to meet you when I did because for so long in our house, there's only been one rule, which is that we use our birds and our bodies for kindness. That's literally the only rule. If you want to jump off something high, whatever, I don't care, right? Like we use our words and our bodies for kindness in my kiddo that has that fight in them. Like naturally, whatever things are going their way, what do they do? They use their words and their bodies not for kindness because they know that's the one thing that's going to make me mad and meet figuring out like how to navigate and keep us from getting to that point has a lot to do with the fact that like, because there was only one rule in the house, there weren't a whole lot of boundaries. There weren't a whole lot of, but he needed that, right? And so gosh, we're just figuring all this out to the best of our ability with whatever we have, right? Like parents and tensions are good, but if they don't have the skills and the resources to be able to give their unique kids what they need, then like they kind of feel up a creek without a paddle. And so I'm so happy to have people give language to the kids that really do fight, right? Because we got to know how to parent these kids. - Yeah, absolutely. And I think you've shared so many things here that will hopefully peak people's interest in learning more. And so I'm so excited that you have started your own business where you are offering coaching services that can help people in a more customized sort of way. - Yeah, absolutely. - I was gonna ask you, so I know you have a masterclass coming up and I kind of want to hear a little bit about what brought that masterclass on and sort of what you're teaching about. - Yeah, absolutely. So I am, I'm hosting a masterclass in early August on the seventh and it's called Ditch the Drama, which is such a great name. And so in this masterclass, I had a lot of people reaching out, right, that they didn't know the basics, the basics of how their kid's brain works. Why do they respond the way they do? Like how we just talked about, you step down. It's an acute response. These are the things that you can do and you can't do. And here's why they're behaving this way. So I realized that we got to start at the bottom, right? And I wanted to be able to reach the masses. I didn't want to have to do it one-on-one. And I know that it's a thing that people of all different economic backgrounds can access, right? It's at a price point that's accessible to most. And so we start with education on child development. Why are your kids the way they are? And it's not just the strong-willed kids. It's the way the brain works, right? And then we go into what to do in those challenging moments. Like recognizing your body and those coping skills we can implement in five seconds or less. And then also that three-step method that child life specialists use with preparation, procedural support and post-procedural support. I implement that in a way for you and your child to connect after challenging moments so that you both can process what happened and you can learn together and create lasting change. And then last, we're gonna go through limits and consequences, right? Like, okay, so cool. I know how they work. I know a little bit about how to stay calm. That goes pretty deep. A little bit about how to stay calm. And then, so what do I do in the moment? How do I actually make change? So we'll have some time to go over examples of limits and consequences, why they're important. And then I'll stay on a little bit extra and do some Q and A for people so that they can give me their actual scenarios of like, okay, this is my hill, I wanna die on it, what do I do? - I love it so much. - Yes, where can people find you, learn more about you and hopefully join the class? - Yeah, so my business is called Heart to Heart Family Support. They can find me on Instagram. The handle is the same, Heart to Heart Family Support. My website is Stephanie Heart Coaching, but either of those you can find it. The master class is linked on my Instagram at the top of my bio, it's on my stand store. And then there's a bunch of posts too that you can see how to gain access to it as well. - And we'll make sure that we link everything on the show and so they can get to it easily. It's been such a joy, not only to be able to hear more about your coaching that I can apply directly to my own child, but also to just watch you build your business and to be able to be behind the scenes and support you. It's been such a joy and I'm just so glad for the rest of the world to get to know you too. - Yeah, you're the best, talk about gaining confidence. Gotta work with the Whitney. (laughing) - Yeah, all right, thanks for being with us. Talk to you soon you guys. - Bye. - Bye. - Thank you for listening to the Capture Your Confidence podcast. If you've loved it, do the thing you do. Share it with a girlfriend, subscribe, rate, leave a review if you would be willing to do that. We are so happy to be able to support you on your journey to confidence and we will not stop until every single woman that we come in contact with knows her own power and she walks firmly in it. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)