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Know Their Hearts
31 Plays7 months ago
Welcome to The Positively Healthy Mom Podcast! I'm Laura Ollinger and today I’m excited to share the latest episode of The Positively Healthy Mom podcast—this one’s a bit different. For the first time, it’s just me! No guest, no script—just an honest conversation straight from my heart to yours.
In this solo episode, I dive into a topic close to every parent's heart: Do you really know your child’s heart? I explore:
- The logistical grind that can prevent deeper connections with our kids
- How self-awareness and emotional regulation can help us become better listeners
- Six key reasons kids, especially teenagers, struggle to open up
- Why it’s crucial to teach resilience and help our children process pain without passing it on
Whether your child is struggling with mean comments from peers, wrestling with their identity, or simply navigating everyday challenges, this episode offers insights on how we, as parents, can become their emotional anchor—without rushing to fix things or judge.
I hope you’ll tune in, reflect, and feel inspired to create those meaningful, heart-centered moments with your child.
If this resonates with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. And as always, thank you for being a part of this journey with me!
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Transcript
Introduction to Positively Healthy Mom
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey moms, it's Laura Olinger.
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast.
00:00:05
Speaker
Because there's no manual for the hardest job in the world.
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast.
00:00:15
Speaker
I'm Laura Olinger, your host, and today is my very first solo episode.
00:00:21
Speaker
I decided to just do my own thing today and I'm going to have a conversation with you all.
00:00:26
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So very unscripted, bear with me, hope I don't ramble too much.
00:00:30
Speaker
And so today's topic that I wanted to talk about is, do you know your child's heart?
00:00:35
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And
00:00:38
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And what I mean by that is, do you know what their hopes and dreams are?
00:00:44
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Do you know what their fears are?
00:00:46
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Do you know how they feel about themselves?
00:00:49
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Do you know if they're having any pain or any stress or what is causing them any harm?
Self-awareness and Emotional Regulation
00:00:57
Speaker
So a lot of times we as moms or parents go through our lives and we're so focused on the logistics.
00:01:05
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I know I am.
00:01:06
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It's all about what are we having for dinner and what time are we leaving and what equipment is needed?
00:01:12
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You know, what has to be done?
00:01:14
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And so often, we kind of forget to go deeper.
00:01:19
Speaker
And in order to do that, a lot of times what needs to happen is we kind of first need to connect with ourselves.
00:01:26
Speaker
So when I teach my Cracking the Parent Code course, the first step is being aware of yourself and having that awareness about kind of who you are, how you're showing up.
00:01:39
Speaker
That level of self-awareness is so important.
00:01:41
Speaker
But then the next step is emotional regulation and getting yourself regulated so that you can tune into your kids.
00:01:49
Speaker
So if we really want to know what's in our kids hearts, we really have to slow
Challenges in Parent-Child Communication
00:01:55
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down.
00:01:55
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And so in order to learn about what is in our kids hearts, they need to feel comfortable talking to us.
00:02:01
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And what I found is there's about, you know, six major reasons why our kids won't open up to us, especially teenagers who are kind of getting out on their own, wanting to have their own identity away from their parents.
00:02:16
Speaker
And a lot of times that means they're spending more time in their rooms or they're spending more time with their friends.
00:02:22
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And we don't always know about what is really going on in their hearts.
00:02:27
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So let's talk about those things.
00:02:29
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The first thing that reason why parents don't always know what's going on in their kids' hearts is because parents' reactions to things, whether they're responding or reacting, the way to know the difference between those two is to know, are you feeling activated?
00:02:45
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Are you feeling emotionally activated?
00:02:47
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And if you are, then most likely you are reacting to something.
00:02:52
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It's probably some trigger from your past experience
00:02:55
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And so you're reacting to this present moment with a big emotional charge.
00:02:59
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A response is more regulated.
00:03:01
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So that is more coming to a place, and it doesn't mean you can't have feelings about things, but it's coming to a place with kind of more intentional response to things.
00:03:11
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So if you are dismissive to your child's feelings or invalidating to them, that's something to look at to see if you are...
Teenagers' Quest for Identity
00:03:22
Speaker
reacting versus responding.
00:03:24
Speaker
And so you may not really know.
00:03:26
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Unless your teenager tells you that directly, you may not really know.
00:03:29
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But that's something to kind of ask yourself and build that self-awareness.
00:03:32
Speaker
You know, if your child comes to you and they say, hey, I have this problem, and you say something like, no, it'll be fine, or don't worry about it, or it'll work itself out, or you're overreacting, then
00:03:43
Speaker
That's likely being taken as a dismissive response.
00:03:47
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And so therefore, they're not going to open up to you again in the future when they do have some hope or dream that they want to share with you or a pain or a fear or some type of self-doubt that's creeping into their lives.
00:04:01
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The next thing is that they feel like you might not understand.
00:04:05
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So maybe they really do want to talk to you about something, but for whatever reason, they feel like you will not understand where they're coming from, why they want something, why they did what they did.
00:04:17
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And so that's something to look at too.
00:04:21
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What is it that you are doing that's making potentially your child feel like you don't understand?
00:04:28
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The third thing is fear of being judged.
00:04:31
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So I know I can relate to that as a teenager.
00:04:35
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Thinking back to my days that I was worried sometimes that my parents were going to judge me for a way I did a certain thing.
00:04:44
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I know my style of doing things is very different than how my dad did things.
00:04:49
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And I always
00:04:49
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I was always worried maybe he would judge me for how I was doing things.
00:04:53
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And the next thing is fear of consequences.
00:04:55
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So this is like the most common one that a lot of times kids don't want to deal with the consequences, which is, you know, some type of discipline or punishment or time out or getting their phone taken away.
00:05:10
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So they may not always be open and honest with you about what they are doing and what they're thinking and feeling because they don't want to deal with the consequences.
00:05:19
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The next thing is they do have an image to uphold.
00:05:22
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So similar to that feeling of being judged, you know, maybe your child is the golden child and they're always been the responsible one and they're the oldest.
00:05:30
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And so they're the most mature and maybe they do something, you know, just stupid like everybody does.
00:05:36
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And they don't want to disappoint you and they have this image to uphold.
00:05:40
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And so they're they don't want to like lose that label as the responsible child.
00:05:45
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The next one is just.
00:05:48
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You know, everybody's trying to find their own identity, who they are in this world, how they're showing
Building Resilience and Emotional Growth
00:05:53
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up.
00:05:53
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And a lot of times when teenagers are, you know, creating their own identity, they know that it may not mold with the family's values.
00:06:02
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And so there's a good chance they may not open up to you about that if they feel like
00:06:06
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maybe there's going to be some conflict or there's going to be judgment or there's going to be a consequence or if your response is going to be dismissive or invalidating.
00:06:15
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When they're trying to figure out who they are, they really just need some space.
00:06:19
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And if you can't give that safe space for them, they're not going to open up to you.
00:06:25
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So the reason why I share all this today is because I want to talk about the fact that
00:06:31
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You know, what I realize is that every child at some point has some type of pain that has been inflicted by a peer.
00:06:42
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So you probably, you know, recognize this in your own child where some kids said something mean to them.
00:06:48
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And it could have been when they were three years old.
00:06:50
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I know one of my kids had something, you know, that really hurt them, said to them,
00:06:54
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at preschool when they were three years old.
00:06:56
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It could be in middle school.
00:06:57
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I know a boy said something to me that was really hurtful when I was in, I can't remember if it was seventh or eighth grade, but I remember the boy's name and I remember what he said and it really stuck with me for a long time.
00:07:10
Speaker
These things continue even into high school, where I know recently someone said something mean to one of my kids and it kind of hurt their feelings and it affected them.
00:07:20
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And so the more I kind of share this with people and talk to people about this,
00:07:26
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Everyone kind of has their story.
00:07:27
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They remember when someone said that thing to them or right current in the current stage of their life when someone said something mean to their kid.
00:07:36
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And so when we have that pain, we want to, you know, because it happens to all of us, we want to be able to have some resilience around that.
00:07:45
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We want to recover.
00:07:47
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We want to realize it hurt out, you know, that hurt that made me feel bad.
00:07:51
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but we don't want it to define us.
00:07:53
Speaker
We don't want it to stick with us for the rest of our lives because that's not helping anyone, right?
00:08:01
Speaker
And so the more we can understand what is going on in our kids' hearts, the more we are better able to know who they are and that they will come to us.
00:08:13
Speaker
So when something hurts.
00:08:15
Speaker
So here's the thing.
00:08:17
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You know, that kid that said that mean thing to me in seventh grade or eighth grade, I now realize after, as a wise old adult, that he was really the one that was struggling.
00:08:27
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He was really the one not feeling good.
00:08:30
Speaker
And he had to find something to do with his discomfort.
00:08:33
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And so he put that onto me.
00:08:35
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Same with, like I said, something just happened to one of my kids recently.
00:08:40
Speaker
And I said to my kid, you know what?
00:08:43
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That is not a you thing.
00:08:44
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That's a him thing.
00:08:45
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That person that said that to you, that is his own insecurity.
00:08:50
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So all this to say is...
00:08:54
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As adults, we really want to be the solid foundation for our kids who can help them feel through their pain, feel through their sadness, feel through their disappointment.
00:09:06
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And on the counter side, you know, this isn't always sad stuff.
00:09:08
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This isn't always depressing.
00:09:10
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We want to feel through their hopes and their dreams and their excitement and their good news.
00:09:15
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But the key is to help.
00:09:18
Speaker
Be available, to be present, to know their hearts, to understand what they're feeling.
00:09:22
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And the only way we're going to really get in there and know their hearts is if we're having self-awareness and emotional regulation so that we can put ourselves in a place of being.
00:09:33
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really good listeners and not coming in to fix the situation, not coming in to say, hey, I'm going to go, you know, find that kid who said that to you.
00:09:43
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I'm going to call his parents or I'm going to call the school.
00:09:46
Speaker
You know, and there are times when that is totally justified in a case of bullying or cyber bullying.
00:09:51
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We do need to escalate those things.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:09:53
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But I'm just talking about run-of-the-mill, everyday, kind of like mean comments.
00:09:58
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We want our kids to have resilience and we want them to open up to us.
00:10:01
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And we want to walk them through that pain so that they're not going on and passing that down.
00:10:09
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Because that's what I found is that pain is always getting past.
00:10:13
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It's getting past generationally.
00:10:15
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It's getting past from peer to peer.
00:10:18
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And so the more we can heal ourselves,
00:10:20
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you know, ourselves, our own past pain, the more we're available to help our children process their pain, be there for them and help them be resilient, learn how to bounce back and learn how to not let these things define us.
00:10:37
Speaker
So that is it for today.
00:10:39
Speaker
This is short and sweet.
00:10:40
Speaker
Thank you for listening.
00:10:41
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And I hope to see you next week.
00:10:43
Speaker
Thanks.
00:10:43
Speaker
Bye.
00:10:45
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast because there's no manual for the hardest job in the world.
00:10:52
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe and share with your friends.