Ep #250: Why You Stay Calm at Work But Lose It Over a Breakfast Dish (And How to Fix It)

Welcome to Real World Peaceful Parenting, a podcast for parents that are tired of yelling, threatening, and punishing their kids. Join mom and master certified parent coach Lisa Smith as she gives you actionable step-by-step strategies that’ll help you transform your household from chaos to cooperation.

Let’s dive in.

Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to today’s episode. I am so grateful to be with you here today. Today’s episode is something a little different and I’m really excited about it. A few months ago, I had the honor of being interviewed by Shauna Samuel on her podcast, the Mental Offload. Shauna works with professional women on balancing work and life, and she wanted to explore how relationship skills translate from the workplace to home.

What I loved about this conversation is that we dug deep into something. I don’t always get to explore on this podcast, the parallels between leading teams at work and leading your family at home. Because here’s the thing, many of you are incredible leaders in your professional lives. You motivate teams, you handle difficult conversations with grace.

You work with the public to serve, and you stay regulated under pressure. But then you get home and somehow that three-year-old or that teenager pushes every button you have. Yes, I know. And in this conversation, Sean and I explore why that happens and what’s really going on in your child’s developing brain, and how to bring your best leadership self home, day in and day out without falling into the trap of command and control.

We talk about regulation. Connection is your 401k and why parenting isn’t a checklist to complete. And if you’ve ever wondered why you can stay calm in a boardroom, but lose it over a breakfast dish left on the table, then today’s episode is for you. So settle in and let’s dive into leadership at home.

Oh, Shauna, thank you so much. I was up at the crack of dawn. Super excited about this. It’s a topic that I am passionate about leadership at home, and you know, the rising tide that lifts all boats. So I’m really excited to dig into this topic with you today. And I’m so glad that you’re here. I think one of the things that really drew me to you and to having you on the podcast in particular, um, so everyone knows you as a parent coach of course, but I also know you as a big time corporate leader and rockstar from the corporate world.

Would it be fair to say, Lisa, that you felt in your life very much in control at work, but. Not so in control as a parent, very much so. I was an executive in a medical device company. I’d worked there for about 15 years before I had my son and I could lead and speak to and motivate thousands of people on any given day doing million dollar transactions.

And then I wouldn’t be home 10 minutes. And this 3-year-old, you know, had me. Yelling, frustrated out of control. I thought it was the 3-year-old. Turns out it was me, but I thought it was the three, four, five-year-old, and I just felt brought to my knees over parenting and I, I couldn’t figure out how to take the skills at work, the leadership skills, and bring them home.

I had a block about it and it caused me really to investigate. Kids and brain development and parenting and created this complete career trajectory or, or pivot that I wasn’t anticipating. Right? And here I am now, almost 18 years later. Working with parents to recognize what’s getting in their way of being a peaceful leader at home.

What is getting in the way? Many of us have things that are getting in the way of being a peaceful leader at home, even if we’re a peaceful leader at work, and that’s what I really help parents do. I think that’s so relatable for so many people. Like we feel. Really in our element and on top of our game in the workplace.

And then we get home and, and our kids, they just, they have that unique ability to just push all the buttons. And just this week, the other week, I, I was with my 7-year-old asking her like, can you please take your plate to the dishwasher? And it, it seemed to me like the most simple of simple requests and I had to ask five times and got.

So much pushback and attitude for what seemed like the most basic of requests. And I’ll be honest, the first two times I asked, I was calm, I was empathetic. I was doing all the like patient and kind things. But you know how mornings are when you’re working a big job, like they’re already time pressed. And I was like, I do not have time for the back and forth negotiation.

I could just feel my. Internal temperature rising with each success of time. I had to ask to take the plate to the freaking dishwasher, and in my mind I’m like, I could hear my brain saying things like, why does everything have to be such a battle with her? Why is she so defiant? Mm-hmm. Can you shed a little bit of light on like, what’s really going on there when like we are in that moment and the kid has pushed your buttons very successfully?

I can, I’m gonna guess it’s probably one of two reasons, and we can go down each path. On one hand, we need to understand, and this is what makes leadership at home different than the workplace. So I need to share two important pieces of information with you. The first is, is that when we’re born, we’re born with our organs fully developed unless we have a congenital defect, right?

We’re born with. Four chambers of the heart. We’re born with four. You know, lobes of the lungs. We’re born with a hundred percent of our skin. The skin is the biggest organ on the body. I was a biology major in college. You know, you’re not born with 70% of your skin with connective tissues showing through, and then as you grow, your skin develops.

You’re born with all of your organs fully developed. They just expand as you age. However, biology always has an exception. And the exception to this rule, which is really important for parents to understand, is the brain. The brain develops. It not only grows and expands, but it develops from really conception to about the age of 25.

And so, you know, this is why a newborn can’t do anything for themselves ’cause they don’t have a fully developed brain. To make it even more complicated, the brain develops from the bottom back to the top front. And this thing sitting up here in the front called the prefrontal cortex is the last to develop.

Okay? This is important to understand. Your prefrontal is where you have executive function. You connect dots, you’re scanning the universe, you’re multitasking, you’re pay attention to more than one thing. Your brain is going, oh, about 10 to seven every Monday or every weekday, she asks me to put my breakfast dish in the dishwasher.

Let me anticipate that that’s gonna happen and scan for it. Ironically, your daughter is seven. We don’t even touch into the prefrontal until the age of seven. Wow. So you are right. I mean, I wish everybody knew this. If, you know, if I went on Oprah tomorrow, this would be the thing I would message to people.

Because we’re often, and I know I was guilty of this too, I would be at work all day. 10, 12 hours dealing with other adults. Mostly with emotionally intelligent, fully developed brain people. And I would come home and wanna treat my son like he was a work peer, you know, or subordinate. And he wasn’t at the time, right?

I mean, let’s do this. I do this all the time for my clients. Your daughter is seven. Let’s do the math on this. Seven. Your daughter is. 28% of the way to a fully developed brain, 28% of the way to a fully developed brain. So at every offload, listening, like do the math right now. Right? How close is your kid to being fully developed in the brain?

And she shows it regularly. Yeah, right. I have a 21-year-old. He’s still four years away and he demonstrates it. You know, he’s 21 is, has more brain development than seven, but he’s still a bit out into the future. So that’s number one. And then number two, the auditory system of a child is not fully developed until the age of 15.

So the auditory system is. I am a single task oriented 7-year-old sitting down reading a book. I’m gonna make up a scenario. She’s reading a book that she enjoys while eating her toast or her, her lovely chocolate croissant in the morning, which I’m sure you run out or freshly baked for her daily. And she’s sitting at the kitchen table with her, you know, latte and her chocolate croissant and she’s reading a book.

Totally immersed in what she’s doing. ’cause the thing about kids is they’re, they’re single task oriented and they’re all in. Okay, and often the distance you are saying, put your dish in the dishwasher. You’re assuming she’s tuned in listening, digesting, processing, putting it into the brain, creating a task in her mind that motivates her to get up and put that dish in the dishwasher.

You need a lot of prefrontal cortex and you need a lot of audio auditory development to accomplish that on the first time. Then the other problem comes in. Oftentimes we train our kids to not listen by repeating ourselves over and over again with the tone and the volume escalating, right? So it starts out, Hey, put, sweetheart, put your dish away.

Hey, come on now. Put your dish away. Hey, put your dish away. Alright, now, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna tell you again, put your dish away right now because that’s the cascade. Do you have a camera in my house? That’s me. That’s me. People say that all the time, but what happens is her 7-year-old, 28% of the way, who’s enjoying her book, has trained herself.

When the volume and tone hits X, then I look up and I digest what she just said, and then I go do it. Ooh, that’s fascinating. So I’ve probably unwittingly. Trained my child to kind of ignore me until it gets to the point where I am pretty much at my wit’s end. Right? And on top of that, like the auditory system, the prefrontal cortex not fully built yet, so.

Wow. Okay. So it’s not that our kids are, have figured out our buttons and are willfully just jamming ’em like they do on the elevator. No. Right? Ah, I mean, think about that. You need motive, right? In order to get up in the morning and say, you know what, man, I’m gonna push that woman’s buttons today. I’m gonna disrespect, I’m gonna give her today’s goal and mission and intention is to give that woman.

Who loves me and provides for me a hard time and disrespect her today. I mean, you need prefrontal cortex to have motive, right? I mean, this is why in America if a 17-year-old commits a crime, they have to decide if they’re gonna try them as an adult or a child. What are they looking for was their motive?

Kids are not born with motive. It develops with prefrontal. They also don’t understand typically. As the tone increases, the frustration is increasing as well, because they don’t have the skills to read the room. So sometimes what happens, and you tell me, right? The the parent will scream, you know, get your shoes on now.

And the kid looks up and is like, geez mom, you don’t have to yell. Well, apparently I do. Apparently I do. ’cause that’s the only way you hear me. It’s like, well, that’s not actually what’s going on. What’s happened is you finally gained my attention. You finally have disrupted what I’m doing and gained my attention, and now I’m tuned in and listening.

And I didn’t understand that your frustration was increasing because frankly I don’t read the room. Yeah. I don’t have the skills to read the room, right? Yes. I mean, when my son was in high, in high school, we literally worked on developing the skill of reading the room. I had to explain, instruct, help him understand, ask a lot of questions.

Now he’s pretty good at reading a room, but that’s not an innate skill our kids are born with. So again, we can’t bring our corporate skills home and expect them to work. We can bring our leadership home, right, but we can’t bring our skills home and expect them to translate to an underdeveloped brain. Mm.

So I. Dive into this a little bit more because this is so insightful and sometimes it feels like as, as a parent, there are two, I don’t know if they’re equally bad options, but bad options. It’s like there’s the, the one who kind of ramps up the volume to try to get attention and ends up feeling out of control.

And then it seems like there, you know, turn on any kind of social media and you see this school of parenting where it seems like the parent has. Zero authority. Like the goal is to constantly be like, honey, honey, please could you, could you now please consider maybe taking your dish to the dishwasher if you are so inclined, please, pretty please, pretty please it.

It doesn’t seem like it gets the job done either, and would probably personally. Drive me to the brink, feeling like I was not in control there. So on one side you’ve got the outta control, like I’m losing my temper. And on the other you’ve got the, I don’t feel in control because I don’t feel like I have any authority.

Talk to us about leading at home. Is there kind of a middle zone here? Absolutely. And I’m, it’s a great question and it sets it up nicely, although we didn’t plan it for me to share this. So here’s how I define peaceful parenting, which is what I’m all about. I’m not gentle parenting or no consequences or un parenting where the kid, you know, doesn’t wanna turn in their homework and you know, in 12th grade doesn’t wanna turn in their homework at second grade.

And in 12th grade will feel the natural consequences of never turning in homework. Hmm. So let’s define what peaceful parenting is and isn’t. So dominant parenting, which is what you described as the angry, losing control, punishing, which means to harm parent is when we use our power and we have power as the parent to come over and control our child.

So that’s, you know, put that dish away right now, or there will be a punishment to you. And if this is repeated enough, the kids sort of like anticipates that the punishment is coming. So they’re either, they either resist it or you raise a people pleaser that’s scanning the universe for the punishment.

So the parent is using their power to come over and control the child. At the other extreme, we have permissive parenting. Which is where the parent allows the child to use their power to control the parent. I don’t wanna be mean. I don’t wanna set consequences, I don’t wanna hold to it. Sometimes you birth a really strong-willed kid that pushes back on everything, and so you become permissive because it’s easier for you, the parent to just put the dish in the dishwasher than experience the Battle of the Strong-willed kit.

So we allow the child to use their power to come over us. Peaceful parenting is when we use our power to come alongside our child. Guide them. Right? The goal is at some point, not only for you to be able to tell your daughter once or twice, most of us aren’t doing something the first time, right? We’re both former marketeers.

We know people need to hear something seven times before they remember it. So we also need to just lower our expectations that our kid hears us the first time. But in peaceful parenting, we use our power to come alongside and guide our child. So eventually your daughter. Puts the plate away in the second or third time, but even more importantly, eventually the internal compass comes on and her brain as the prefrontal develops, goes, oh, when I’m done with the meal, I clean up after myself by putting the dish in the dishwasher, and you’re relieved of your duty of being dish monitor.

She’s doing it herself, right? But in order to do that, we have to come alongside our child and guide them rather than control them or let them control us so that over time the internal compass will get turned on. So I love this and I love this way of thinking about it, that that sort of coming alongside and, and guiding.

Obviously this change happens over time, but can you talk to me like, okay, let’s take the dish example. Yeah. Someone not putting their dish away or a kid not, not doing the thing that you’ve asked ’em to do. What would kind of coming along and using your power to be alongside and guide them look like in a successful version of that scenario?

Absolutely. So at seven it might be making sure you literally. Walk into the kitchen, make eye contact with your daughter, say her name, have her look up at you, and then you make the request connect before the request. Right. So you’ve gotten her attention, and I’ll give you a beautiful example of this.

What grade is your daughter in? She’s going into second grade. Okay. So in her second grade classroom, there’s probably somewhere, let, let’s say, let’s make up this scenario. She’s gonna go to second grade and there’s gonna be 20 kids in the classroom, and her teacher has these things called pattern interrupters that she uses to move the entire student body of 20 kids from one task to another.

So let’s say all 20 kids are sitting on the carpet, on the floor, reading to each other in groups of two, and now it’s time to go to lunch. The teacher isn’t gonna say, okay, everybody stand up and go to lunch, because some kids are listening, some aren’t. Some are follow rules, some don’t. So the very first thing the teacher’s gonna do.

If she’s gonna get the kids’ attention, and she might say she has these little, little games. One of them is a teacher will say, 1, 2, 3, and some of the kids will say, eyes on me, and then she’ll do it again. She notices like, okay, five kids said it. Then she’ll say it again. 1, 2, 3, and 10. Kids will say, eyes on me.

Then she will say it a third time, and now all 20 kids are saying. She’s thinking to herself. Great. Now that I have everybody’s attention, let me hand out the instruction on the count of three. I want you all to stand up, put your books in your cubby, grab your lunch and line up along the wall to go to the lunchroom.

What does she get? She gets pretty good compliance because she has done a pattern interrupter before making the request and connected with them. So if you were at seven to walk into the kitchen and say your daughter’s name, have her look up and say, when you are finished, please put the dish and the dishwasher.

Yes. Yes. Okay. Now she’s nine or 10. You’ve been repeating this process the same way you might come into the kitchen and now transition into, Hey, when we’re done with breakfast, what do we do? She says, oh, we put the dish in the dishwasher. Excellent. Well done Then now she’s 12 and you see her putting the dish on her own and you, you praise that.

Oh my gosh. You are so good at cleaning up your after yourself after breakfast. I love that you put the dish in the dishwasher. See how we’re progressing. Yes. Ooh, this is absolutely fascinating. I love this because as, as you were first talking about, you know, coming alongside and guiding my corporate leadership self kind of thinks naturally of what we do with a new direct report, you know, the situational leadership, they’re not yet up to the task.

So we kind of, we need to sit alongside and guide and give a lot of direction and, and really help them through the process of. Mastering a task that they don’t yet know how to do. But what strikes me as being really unique to the parenting context is. Bringing it down to the 7-year-old level, that connection, the, you know, pattern interruption, making sure we have that attention, the things that we don’t necessarily need to think about and, and do with a 30 5-year-old direct report, for example.

This is so good. Yeah. Now let me add another layer that I think you’ll love too, because you, you reminded me of this as you were talking. I now, I was thinking about the analogy of a new employee versus a veteran, right? You might have a new, you know, SAP system with a veteran, you might integrate that new system differently than a new system and a new employee, right?

The other most important thing we do as a parent is modeling kids don’t do what we say, they do what we do, just like in corporate America, right? If I was. Late all the time when I worked, which I wasn’t. But if you’re a manager of people and you’re late all the time, you come to meetings unprepared. You let meetings go longer than they should.

You sort of have these bad corporate habits, but then you’re holding your people to the other side of the standard that doesn’t go well. Right. We both know that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But if you’re modeling. Listen, I show up to meetings on time. There’s an agenda. I’m prepared. Shauna, if I tell you the meeting’s gonna take an hour, it takes an hour.

Think about what I’m modeling for you if you’re my employee, right? Mm-hmm. I’m, I’m walking my talk. I’m showing you the corporate culture and our department culture, and I’m modeling it for you. So also, let’s say. Back to your 7-year-old, maybe you are sitting at the breakfast table with her and you finish your croissant and you stand up.

And you could also say to her, Hey, in this family, when we’re done eating, we carry our dish over and we put in the dishwasher. Or maybe you just, you just do it and you show her what you’re doing. I promise you the biggest tool we have as parents is modeling, because again, what is a hundred percent true is kids do not do what we say they do what we do.

They do what we do right? In the seventies, I’ll give you an example. Many parents raise kids. While smoking saying, don’t smoke, don’t smoke, don’t smoke, don’t do what I did, don’t do it. Don’t do it. And the kids growing up going, yeah, sure. And then one day the parent’s like, why are you smoking? Well, because what you modeled is smoking.

Kids follow what we do more than what we say, right? Yes. So here’s another example. If you want your kid to eat healthy. And limit the sugar and move their body. Your biggest chance of influencing that is by modeling that for them rather than talking at them about it. So it might be every Saturday morning we go for a hike, or I take my kid to the farmer’s market and I educate them about vegetables and if we eat sugar, it’s through fruit instead of processed food.

You’ve got to walk that talk. Walk it, not just talk it for kids to follow and be influenced by us. That is also a part of peaceful parenting. Love it. Yeah. ’cause talk is cheap, right? We know it in the workplace too, right? You know, if I have bad habits is the manager, I’m 10 minutes late for every meeting.

What happens, Shauna? Right? Then you start being 10 minutes late and then if I’m yelling at you, why are you late? You’re looking at me like, really hypocrite. Right. You look at the, your manager, like they have two heads, right? Yeah. Because everything that you’ve seen is that this is acceptable behavior. I sometimes joke with my clients that leading direct reports is a little bit like parenting children, but I love how you sort of take it in the other direction and kind of remind us that parenting is really about using our power.

A way that that leads by example and helps our children come along in the direction that we hopefully want to take things. Yeah, I mean, in my coaching community, I often, parents will bring to me, you know, a, a question and I often reframe it as imagine, well, here’s a good reframe. Imagine your daughter was your employee.

You told her to put the plate in the dishwasher, you wouldn’t keep telling her over and over and over again and then yell at her at some point. Right, right. Never, never, never. Yeah. Right. You might call her in for a one-on-one meeting as an employee and say, Lisa, I don’t understand. I am asking you to produce this report every Monday by 8:00 AM and you know, by noon, I’ve reminded you four times.

What’s happening here? Right? Right. You, you would get curious, not furious. And instead of focusing on the behavior at the top, you would, instead of, I call it, instead of snorkeling with the behavior at the top, you would scuba dive down to the feelings and needs am my, and you might ask me in this business meeting, am I not being clear?

Do you forget? Do we need to set a timer? Do you not understand what’s right? You would, you would come to me and you would say to me, why is this report not on my desk by eight o’clock on Mondays? And I might say, you know what, Shauna I, on Monday mornings take, I drop my elderly mother-in-law at the community center.

It takes longer than Monday is my day in the family. I do it. Mm-hmm. And it takes longer than normal and so I don’t get here in time to get that report written right now. You might say to me, well, I am sorry. I hear you. Validate me. Right. Validate. Wow, I didn’t know that. Thank you for sharing that with me.

That sounds really stressful. I still need that report by eight o’clock. Could you switch with someone else in your family and take her on a Tuesday or Wednesday because this is part of what’s expected of you at work. And although I appreciate that you’re not getting here in time, I need that report and not getting it to me is unacceptable, right?

Yes. But we don’t do this with our kids. We don’t get curious. We don’t ask, Hey, what gives you’re seven? You should be able, do I need to put a post-it note on the dining room table? Do I need to ask you on the way from the kitchen to brushing your teeth if you did it? Do we need to not read in the morning while we’re having breakfast?

Right? So I’m not suggesting you bend on putting the plate in the dishwasher. That would be. If that’s important to you and that’s a family value and she needs to pitch in bending to the excuse would be permissive, I am asking you to get curious about what’s going on here. What’s the process like, and how do we fix the process so this gets done.

She might say to you, you know what, mom, honestly, I don’t actually hear you until your voice is super loud. Then it might be like, okay, she is seven. I can’t be standing in the bathroom putting my lipstick on, shouting for her because she’s not dialing in. I need to take the 30 seconds and walk from the bathroom to the kitchen to make the request.

Or I could put a post-it note up in the bathroom mirror that says, when you’re done brushing your teeth, put the dish in the dishwasher. Mm. So I love that. So instead of thinking about us needing to. Change the goal. Goal or the goalposts. It’s about really getting curious and digging into the process to see, yeah, what works for our, our unique kids and our unique households.

Yeah. I wanna kind of pull back for a moment because we’ve talked about some of the parallels that exist between leadership at work and leadership at home. If you had to give like a couple of recommendations, and we’ve already talked about some of the things that you recommend, but if you had to give us a couple recommendations or tips to feel more effective and less overwhelmed as a parent, what are some of the things that you think are most important that people could go out and put into place today at home?

That’s a great question, and I would share two important tips. ’cause I’ve already covered modeling, which is really, really, really important. Uh, I would say as a parent, our most important skill is getting regulated when interacting with our kids versus dysregulated. And I like to say, Shauna, there’s a right time to parent and a wrong time to parent.

Ooh, right. Tell us more. Yes. And this. Parallels beautifully to the corporate world. In fact, I have goosebumps to my arms right now. This parallels beautifully to the corporate world and what you work with your clients on. I am sure. So if I am a parent and I am dysregulated, I’ve triggered. I’ve gotten triggered.

Okay. And we’ll stick with the plate and the dishwasher example. I’ve gotten triggered. I’ve asked her, you know, maybe it’s Wednesday, Monday, we, I had to ask her five times Tuesday. I had to ask her five times. It’s Wednesday. I have a big meeting at work. I’m a little stressed about it. I’m in the bedroom getting ready, and I’m thinking about, Ooh, I wish I would’ve reviewed my notes.

Gotten up early this morning and reviewed my notes. Ooh, I hope today when I present, Dan isn’t there and doesn’t say something. I hope my boss is pleased with my work. Oh, this shirt I decided to wear. Today’s a little tight, right? We’re already getting a little worked up about some things and then, and then in our minds we’re like, oh, and I wanna leave a little early today to try to drop her off to get to work, to give myself a little cushion.

And I have asked her three times already to put the dish in the dishwasher. And I, I, now, I am green, which is regulated to yellow, orange, and red. That’s kind of the scale I work with. Green is, is regulated and red is. I am full storming, and when a storming child meets a storming parent, there’s gonna be explosion a hundred percent of the time.

So I’m already leaving my bedroom in yellow or orange, heading into the kitchen, and I see the plate is still there, and maybe she’s sitting reading the book and I am already triggered. Then I want to parent in this moment, what is wrong with you? Why can’t you put your dish away? Why can’t you ever do what I ask?

This is ridiculous. You’re so disrespectful. I can’t believe this. Like, what is getting accomplished in that moment? Nothing, nothing, nothing. In that moment, it might actually even be better to either leave the plate, she can put it away when she gets home from school, or take it into the kitchen and set it on the counter.

Look at your daughter and say, go get in the car. You use the walk to the car to calm down and regulate yourself. You get, you go from red back to orange, yellow, and green. You’re driving to school. Maybe you can’t get to green. So you say, you know what, I’m gonna drop her off and wish her a great day. And on the ride home from school today, when I pick her up, we’ll talk about what happened this morning and my expectations.

Hmm. Right? Hmm. So there’s a right time. I’m not saying again, you don’t go, well, let me make excuses for her for not putting plate, or, you know, maybe this is not important. If the plate is important to you, I support that. But you, there’s a right time and a wrong time because when we come in, our kid dysregulated, first of all, we’re modeling that.

We’re modeling, solving problems in a dysregulated state. So now they think, Hey, this is what happens. I wait till I get really upset and then I scream at people and I say unkind things. We’re just modeling that dysregulation for them. We can’t be surprised then when they go to school and yell at somebody.

Oof. So true. Because we’ve just modeled that. But also what gets accomplished when we’re screaming at our kids or yelling at ’em, or projecting all of our. Dysregulation onto them with unkind things. In that scenario I just described, there is no way your daughter is learning to put a plate away. What she’s learning is, Ooh, this might not be a safe environment.

Mm ooh, yes, I’m a bad person. I guess I’m disrespectful. I don’t, I’m seven. I don’t even know what disrespect means, right? This lady that I love keeps telling me I’m disrespectful, so I better grow up being disrespectful because she’s giving me this identity and I better live into it because she’s my mom and she loves me.

So if she’s announcing that I’m ex smart, pretty disrespectful, horrible, entitled, whatever she’s telling me, Peggy O’Mara, one of the first. Persons in the parenting space to bring conscious parenting coin. The phrase, our outer voice becomes their inner voice. And here it is, ladies and gentlemen, in living color.

Yes. Right? So your daughter isn’t learning to put the plate away. She’s learning. I better scan the universe for safety. She’s mad at me. She’s telling me my identity, that I’m disrespectful. She’s telling me I don’t listen. And I go to school feeling dysregulated and bad about myself. So what’s the corporate parallel, right?

Again, let’s say that I’m your boss and you’re late to a meeting again, right? And you walk in with a, you know what looks like a fresh. Ice cold brew from Starbucks that you stopped on the way to work to get because there’s nothing sipped out of it. And you walk in, you know, all smiles and giggles and my brain is like, she is so disrespectful and what’s was stopping at Starbucks and does she not know This meeting starts at eight o’clock?

And how dare she and I confront you in that moment in front of all my other direct reports. From a place of dysregulation who looks like the butthole me. Mm-hmm. And then what gets accomplished? Are you on time for the meeting or do you then decide, I pick on you and I don’t like you, and then you, you know, like it sets a off, off, a whole cascade.

Right? For sure. It’s not making anyone respect you more. Right. And it’s not helping you get to the meetings on time. Yes, but Wednesday afternoon I schedule a 30 minute meeting with you, not in the morning with your Starbucks at three o’clock, and I call you in and I say, Hey, for the last eight weeks I have data for the last eight weeks.

You’ve been at least 10 minutes late to the meeting at eight o’clock. I don’t bring up Starbucks. I don’t bring up smiles and giggles. I say, why are you late for the meeting? Help me understand this. Why Shauna? And then I say something like, being late is unacceptable. I need to hear you acknowledge this, and I need you to know that if this pattern doesn’t stop immediately there will be consequences to your choices.

Right, right. Which is more effective. Yep. Definitely not losing your cool in the moment. So parents can learn tools. Tools are important. I teach tools. There’s, you know, there’s 2 million parenting books. There’s people that follow online and I am all for, you can follow me online, I am all for that. But the missing link that I don’t think a lot of people really understand, because most of us grew up in dysregulated households.

No one modeled. A regulated parent for us. I know that certainly was my story, so I had to learn what does it look like? How do I get there? How do I spot when I’m dysregulated, when I am in red, how do I bring myself back down to green? How do I stay in green when all hell is breaking loose? Fourth day in a row of not putting the plate away or worse, right?

Missed homework assignments. Sneaking out in the middle of the night of teenagers. I had to learn all this, but tools without staying regulated as a parent, it’s like setting a policy in place at work without having the forum to educate, model and talk about it. Yeah, it’s, it’s kind of, it’s almost like the culture that you want to create, the organizational culture of your household.

You know, it’s like you can have a great output at work, but if you don’t have a culture where people are kind and respectful and treat each other well as colleagues, it’s gonna be a horrible place to work. And sounds like seeing parallel at home, if you don’t have that culture set up, you can have all the right tools.

You’re not gonna create that safe, warm, healthy environment at home. Yes. Yeah. If people are dysregulated at work, there’s drama and chaos and fighting and missed deadlines and the, uh, profit isn’t there. If people are dysregulated at work, show me dysregulated workers. Right. And you can see an unhealthy workplace in terms of culture and profit, right?

I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s what you help people figure out. So I like to say getting regulated as the parent is the rising tide that lifts all boats in a, that is peaceful leadership. The number one way to be a peaceful leader parent at home is to start with being regulated. I absolutely love that. Uh, and I think that’s going to hit so hard for so many parents.

Actually, there’s, there’s one thing that I wanted to ask about because your example was so spot on about some of the stress that builds up at the start of the day. But one thing I hear a lot from clients who are parents is at the end of the workday, so. You’ve got the big job, you’ve had a busy day of meetings, you’re tired, and there’s that moment where you arrive at home and you know you need to walk through the door and you want to be on, you wanna be the best version of yourself as a parent for your kids.

When you walk through that door. Is there something that you think can help us kind of like either. Leave the workplace stress behind or just get back into that green zone, as you call it, from a regulation standpoint, so that when you walk through the door, you feel like you can be fully there for your kids, even after a bad workday.

Yeah. Well, the answer will probably surprise you. I think the secret, you know, I have a 21-year-old, so I’ve been through, you know, up to this point, who’s away at college and. What I really think is the game changer for parents parenting is not tasks to be checked off. We fall into this trap. 2025 is busy.

I mean, we are busy human beings, right? There’s work and meetings and we need to check our phone and we’ve gotta. Scroll Instagram, and we’ve got dinner and there’s 8,000 soccer forms to fill out, and we’ve gotta get our kids to soccer practice and gymnastics and cut the oranges for snack on Saturday.

And oh, they need new shin guards and their feet are growing and they need new shoes. And I mean, granted, life is busy. There is no, and that’s without even trying to maintain a romantic relationship with the co-parent and friends and self-care. Oh yeah. I’m supposed to be meditating and Right, you know, out my ears and, you know, whatever, you know, organizing my closet and there’s a million things on Instagram to get links to, to buy.

So it is easy to get sucked into life is checking tasks off a list and nobody loves a good checklist more than Lisa Smith. I live for a good planner. Sometimes I write things on the, on the list just so I can check it off. Brush teeth, oh, I already did that. You know, there’s a dopamine hit that comes from checking things off and people in corporate America or corporate world are drawn to checking things off.

That’s why they sort of gravitate towards that, you know, corner of the world. So given that, I appreciate all of that, but I then will come back to. Parenting is not a task list. It is connection. It is the other person feels, I use Brene Brown’s definition feels seen, heard, and valued. Hmm. So kids don’t know.

We’re tired and stressed and have a busy job and, and honestly it means nothing to them because they have an underdeveloped brain and they’re self-centered. I say the kids are very selfish and our job is from zero to 18 to work the self-centeredness out and the humanity in. But it’s a process. You know, they’re very self-centered.

Kids care about two things, Shauna, getting their needs met. There’s five core basic needs and FUN, capital, FUN, and that is all they care about. Okay. So given that the game changer is come home from work, and again, this might shock you, put everything down and spend five minutes with your kid. 10. If you wanna be an overachiever, spend five to 10 minutes fully focused on your kids.

Put your phone away. Don’t make the taco meat. Don’t have ’em come in the closet with you while you change your clothes. Give them your undivided attention for five minutes. It is like a 401k. The investment that’s gonna come back around is priceless. Not only in that day, that week, that month, but over a lifetime of investing in connection with them.

Because I’ll tell you what follows connection is cooperation. Otherwise you’re in command and control. Right? I come in the door and I’m like, hi, Sean, and you’re like, mom, let me tell you about, uh, just a minute, honey. Just a minute. I’ve gotta go change my clothes and I need five minutes to myself, girl, and then I need to go start dinner.

You know? Ouch. Yeah. They don’t have the ability to kind of put all those pieces together. They just want connection. So five minutes, you know. Five minutes of putting and most of us are unwilling to put the phone down and focus on our kits. And then so then what do we model that this thing is more important than them?

So then guess what they want in life? They want this thing because we modeled. This is what looks important. This is where connection lies. I’m holding up my phone. Forgot we’re audio. Wow. So five minutes of just connection. Sit in your suit, in your high heels with the taco meat raw and sitting on the couch.

You know what I mean? Like, just give him five minutes. Tell me about your day. Can I wanna connect with you? I wanna let you know you’re important. I missed you today. You know, when my son was little and I was making this transition to peaceful parenting, I made a decision. It sounds a little silly, but I, I decided that every time I saw my son, whether I left the house or he left the house, or I went to pick him up, or he came out of his bedroom, no matter what was going on in our life, every time I saw him, I would smile at him, look in his eyes, and say a pleasant greeting every single time.

I didn’t grow up with this. And in the beginning I had to like, it was almost like I had to write it on my arm to remember to do it, you know? But I have done it for 21 years and what a difference. Just those little moments of connection. Hi sweetheart. Welcome home. It’s so good to see you. Good morning, Malcolm.

And sometimes that’s all I would say. Good morning, Malcolm. And. That, those, it’s connection. I mean, even think about work relationships, right? Think about a, a boss that you feel connected to who really sees you, values you, and hears you, sees you and values you. They’re still holding maybe the same boundary as someone who’s in command and compliance, right?

You still, we keep, you still need to be at that eight o’clock meeting on time. But before I tell you, you need to be at that. I ask you, Hey, what’s really going on here? Why are you struggling to get to the meeting? I wanna understand it. Right? That’s connection. That’s connection. That’s the boss you’ll stay late for and work on the weekends and walk over hot calls for, because there’s a connection there.

It’s no different with our kids. I love that phrase. This is gonna stick with me. Connection is a 401k. For your kids. Yeah. I love that. For your relationship with them. Yeah. Yes, yes. I love that. So Lisa, I think there are so many things that you pointed out there that I, I think resonate. And one of them, just to come back to it really briefly, is this.

I think so many of us are box checkers, right? We’ve gotten to where we are because we’re really good at being able to set our own plans and check those things off one by one. And I really feel like, as we talk about leadership at home, I think in some people’s minds that can be like. All right. Leading at home means I need to, I need to take charge.

I need to do everything perfectly. As a parent, I have to be super organized. I’ve gotta have all the perfect meals, manage the entire mental load of the household, and I love the way that you kind of bring us back to say, no. It’s not about command and control, it is about connection. That’s where the foundation is.

Yes. So I think if people take nothing else away from this episode, and I’m sure they will take a lot more away because there’s so many gems here, but nothing else that I think that that bit of switching from command and control to connection is gonna be huge. I agree. I agree. And I guess I would just also add to give people some relief.

Take some things off your to-do list, you know what I mean? Figure out what three or four things are really important to you as a parent that, that circle around your family values. You know, I, I’ll, I’ll confess something. Growing up when my son was growing up, I mean, I wanted to eat vegetables, but like, eh, I understand taste buds.

I understand how they change over time. He ate, you know, he’d eat cucumbers and broccoli. So I left it at that. Now he eats every vegetable under the sun. When he was a teenager, I decided the three or four things that were important, being on time, looking people in the eye, doing what you say you’re gonna do, picking up after yourself.

I didn’t care if he knew how to vacuum. You know, I looked up the other day, there’s 2,400 videos on YouTube for how to vacuum a rug. I said to myself, you know what, when he gets to college and he needs to vacuum a rug, he can go to YouTube. So I didn’t try to cram every single thing I wanted him or thought he should know into 18 years.

I picked the four or five, three or four that were really important to me and my husband, right? And we focused on those. Academics were important to us. Moving your body, doing what you say you’re gonna do, being on time for things. That’s what we focused on. And you know, if he learned how to vacuum along the way, great.

Now he’s gonna be, you know, in his third year of college and guess what? He knows how to vacuum. Amazing. I love it. And I think that’s a good reminder to really think about our priorities and our values and put that in front of everything else. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. To translate it back to what you work, like there’s a scope of work at your job.

Yeah. Right. If you’re a product manager, you have this responsibility, and if you’re the controller, you have that responsibility. But as the controller, you’re not trying to do accounts payable. Right, right. There’s someone that does accounts payable as the marketing person, you’re not actually going into the warehouse and printing the brochures.

You’re ordering ’em, you’re not doing everything. So as a parent, take that concept of scope of work and scale down your scope of work with your kid to age appropriate, right? You’re, you’re just asking your daughter to put the dish. The dishwasher. You’re not asking her to scrub the sink, take out the recycling, sort the garbage, get the menu ready for dinner.

That’s way above her pay grade, right? You’re just asking her to do this one thing, and the truth is, it probably hearkens back to a family value pitching in as a team cleaning up after yourself, right? That’s the other thing is make sure that the three or four things on your list scope can, can point to something that’s really important to you.

People that. One of their kids to eat lots of vegetables and we’re putting spinach and brownies so their kids got lots of nutrients. I respect that. That was important to them. Mm-hmm. It was not important to me. There might be a family who thinks vacuuming is very important, you know, like maybe they have Persian rugs in their house and they need to be maintained and taken care of, and they know one day their kids can inherit the rugs.

We don’t all need to teach our kids everything. Just figure out what’s important to you and focus on that. I like to call it writing your own job description. As a parent, I’m gonna borrow that. Yeah. Choosing where you wanna focus. Yeah. And writing it out. Because the world out there will tell us we need to be all things to all people and do it all perfectly.

And the truth is right. We really don’t have to. Amen. Lisa, thank you so much for sharing your, your time, your insight, your wisdom, and your approach with us, because I think this is really gonna liberate a lot of people to think differently about what it means to be a good parent and what it means to lead in the home.

It’s been my pleasure. So thanks for having me, Shauna. It’s a great conversation. I enjoyed it. And um, I love what you do and I just see so many parallels and if this, you know, if everybody takes away at least one idea from this and thinks about how to lead at home and we’ve done our work Indeed, and I’m sure that people are gonna want a lot more of your insights.

So where can people find more of Lisa Smith and the peaceful parent? Well, I think the best place to start is to go to my website, which is www dot the Peaceful Parent, all one word. All together, capstone matters. So the peaceful parent.com, and when you land on my website, you will get invited to sign up for a free, peaceful parent mini course.

I deliver three vi videos that are an extension of what we’ve talked about today that parents can watch over and over again. As they choose, that will help them get on the path to peaceful parenting. And then if those visit videos resonate with them, it will also show them what some next steps are for them if they wanna learn more.

So that’s the best place to start, the peaceful parent.com, the peaceful parent.com. We’ll put that in the show notes. And what an amazing resource for everyone who wants to take their parenting skills to the next level. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. Shauna asked such thoughtful questions and talking about the parallels between workplace leadership and home leadership really got me thinking about how many of you are already incredible leaders?

You just need permission or encouragement or support to bring those skills home in a way that honors your kids’ developing brains. If today’s episode resonated with you, if you’re realizing that maybe the missing piece isn’t another parenting book or strategy, but it’s learning how to stay regulated when your kids are dysregulated, then I want to invite you to join us in the hive.

In the hive, I teach parents how to lead at home with calm confidence using personalized strategies created just for you. We work on that regulation muscle we talked about today. We’ll practice connection before correction and we’ll build the kind of peaceful leadership that will transform your entire family dynamic.

Because here’s what I know for sure, connection leads to cooperation and it all starts with you showing up regulated even when everything around you feels chaotic. So if this speaks to you, I want you to run, not walk. To the hive coaching.com. That’s the hive coaching.com to learn more and join our community of parents who are bringing their best leadership selves home on a daily basis.

I want that for you. I want that for your kids, and I want that for your family. Until next time, I’m wishing you Peaceful parenting.

Thanks for listening to Real World Peaceful Parenting. If you want more info on how you can transform your parenting, visit the peaceful parent.com. See you soon.