Keys to Raising "Bully-Proof" Kids

Have you ever wanted to make parenting simple, straightforward and effective without compromising meeting the emotional needs of your kids, so you can raise kids who have skills to navigate bullies, can resist the temptations of drugs/alcohol, kids who have self confidence, resilience and grit??

Have you ever wanted to stop feeling like parenting is an uphill battle to …

• Instill confidence in your super sensitive kids.
• Prevent them from falling prey to bullying, online manipulation, risky behavior like drugs/alcohol.
• Have kids confide in you when they made mistakes or didn’t follow through on their promises because they trust you and feel safe talking about difficult experiences.
• Respond to your child’s meltdowns and outbursts with grace, compassion and calm.
• Trust yourself that you are giving them the right tools and developing the right skills they need to thrive as adults.
• Spend more time together in ease and joy instead of in conflict and stress.
• Learn how to identify your own emotional needs as well as your child’s emotional needs so you can meet both.

…perhaps you’ve tried all kinds of strategies and parenting styles but haven’t seen any long term results??

If so, you aren’t alone.?

I gave birth to twin boys in 2011 and then welcomed a daughter 13 months later, in 2012 and those early years of motherhood very quickly brought me to my knees.

Decades of higher education, experience as a family law litigator, problem solving skills, attention to detail,? and organizational skills didn’t help me one bit when it came to dealing with non stop crying babies, babies who fussed for no apparent reason, toddlers who clung to me, toddlers who melted down for extended periods of time and spending most days on my own with 3 kids under the age of 2.

It was in those early years that I started to seek out help. I had fought tooth and nail to become a mom, battling chronic illness, divorcing who I thought was my lifelong partner, then finding a new (wonderful) partner, getting married, trying unsuccessfully to conceive until finally we were blessed with 3 healthy kids - and after all that I wasn’t enjoying motherhood and I felt so guilty over it.?

I spent years being impatient, frustrated, resentful and overall unhappy in my marriage and my life; ending the day feeling like a bad parent and a disappointing wife. I worried that my super sensitive tantrum prone 2 year old would end up a victim of bullying if I didn't act now to help him lay the foundations of self confidence. I had concerns for my bubbly daughter who would shut down or change the subject anytime negative feelings were brought up - how would I ever gain visibility into her emotional world to help her through the social challenges I knew were ahead of her? I would ruminate on my other son's desire to please and fit in and would he end up not knowing how to stand up for himself and do the "right thing" because he so desperately wanted to belong?

I remember I even took two of my kids to every specialist I could find in hopes of them “fixing” them or helping me figure out what was “wrong” with them when all along - nothing was wrong with them.?

My kids weren't broken and didn’t need to be fixed. They did benefit greatly from the right support - and so did I. More than my kids, *I* was the one who needed support.?

And it’s not just me. Every single family I’ve worked with over the last 20+ years has told this story in one version or another. Loving and devoted parents, like you, who can’t even get out of the starting gate because …..

… the problem with building the dream family and being the parent you want to be is that kids don’t come with an instruction manual.?

Add to that the fact that no one teaches you how to parent except the one example you had in your own childhood growing up, and it’s no wonder parents feel like failures, end the day guilty for how they reacted in the moment, and struggle to find ease and simplicity in their family relationships.?

Makes sense, right??

The underlying problem most parents don’t even realize is that no matter what culture or family you were raised in, we ALL operate within a similar paradigm by which children should follow expectations and when they don’t - you give a consequence. The problem with this model of parenting is that it can be effective in the moment (as a parent you can always use fear, threats and leverage successfully since you DO have the power over your kids, especially when they are young) but it always results in long term disconnect and shut down between parent and child as well as a lingering guilt in the parent for not figuring out how to develop necessary life skills like self confidence, knowing how to navigate bullies or elicit cooperation and engagement WITHOUT powering over their kids. Taking away a child’s power NEVER feels good because we all remember how this felt in our own childhoods, and how much time we have to spend in our adulthood untangling ourselves from that - even though most of us are raised in “good” homes with loving and devoted parents. It is this exact overpowering parenting model that we default to which undermines the very skills we want to develop in our kids: skills like knowing how to stand up for themselves, how to have a voice, how to not fall prey to temptations, how to not be manipulated online.

How are we expecting our kids to develop those skills when we condition them to be subjected to our controlling and overpowering for the sake of meeting external expectations and managing their unwanted behavior?

I’ve dedicated 20+ years of my life to working with families and working through these exact hurdles and this is what I know….?

The keys to raising a family based upon your individual values, without your kids needing to recover from their “good” childhood, so they CAN develop a strong healthy emotional foundation:?

● Learn the language of your and your child's nervous system and start communicating “regulation” to it.

● Rewire old outdated patterns of behavior that get in the way of your dream family.?

● Understand how to support each child in the way they need in order to build resilience, grit, self confidence, self regulation and other life skills they will require in order to thrive and to remain connected to you.?

When you focus your parenting on providing the basics (food, shelter, education, love) and then managing or stopping unwanted behaviors while encouraging desired behaviors (all this is hard enough, right?) - it results in disconnection between parents and children. Disconnection then leads kids to orient more towards their peers and technology rather than their family. Disconnect that expresses itself in kids who are:

• Bullied
• Lack confidence and speak negatively about themselves
• Rude
• Shut down and don't share their internal world with you
• Defiant
• Uncooperative
• Don’t listen
• Lie
• Addiction/self harm
• Difficult to parent
• Susceptible to the influence of social media
• Unable to self direct or self motivate

If any of those problems seem familiar to you, you may want to keep reading because what we’ve all been sold on how to manage unwanted behaviors is sorely lacking in understanding how children develop and what behavior tells us.

Now obviously, that’s easier said than done, right? I mean we don’t all have degrees in child psychology, we’re just doing the best we can, and raising kids who are bully proof and won’t need to recover from childhood seems like a pretty lofty goal….

You can’t normally just build that dream family without guidance from a psychologist, without a village of support and without hours upon hours of conscious concerted effort - the kind of time and money that most working parents don’t have.

That’s why I’ve created the Powerfully Grounded Parenting Blueprint which not only lays out the exact steps you need to take in order to raise your dream family, but also provides you weekly guidance on HOW to implement those steps in your particular family.?

If you’d like to learn about it and how it can help your kids thrive, let’s hop on a quick Zoom call together to see if Powerfully Grounded Parenting is right for you.?

Just book a time to chat that works for you HERE.

During that call, we’ll look at how your family could benefit from guidance on how to develop critical life skills for your kids, how to deepen connection and increase cooperation without using rewards or punishments and what your best next steps would be if you decide to pursue this strategy.

Spots are limited, and there’s zero obligation to work with me, but if we do end up being a good fit I’ll invite you to become a client of mine and I’ll offer you a spot in my group or private coaching.

Look forward to speaking with you!?

Rachel