“In difficult relationships, you can’t control the other person. Often, if you make a change, the relationship will change. The first step is to manage yourself.”– Sarah Rosensweet
Does your mother-in-law think you’re not hard enough on your kids and tries to make up for it by yelling at them? They’re just being kids! And, frankly, you’ve got this.
Maybe your dad has always been critical of you and you just can’t stand it when he’s now critical of your partner and your kids. You feel yourself getting more and more upset.
This can feel even more challenging during a special event or the holiday season. Not only are you dealing with the stress of getting everything done, and your child’s big emotions- you have to navigate the complicated relationships in your extended family.
You can only control yourself. Most of the time we are trying to change a situation by trying to change the other person!. (It never works!) But if you make a change, the relationship will change.
The most important step is to learn to not act when you are upset.
You WILL get upset; it’s your job to manage your feelings. How do you do this? STOP-DROP-and-BREATHE.
Stop what you’re doing (snappy retort, raised voice?)
Drop your agenda. You don’t have to solve things right this minute.
Breathe. You need to calm yourself. It will FEEL like an emergency because you’ve been hijacked by your body’s fight-flight-freeze response. Take a few deep breaths or take a break if you need more time to shift your energy. Laugh, cry, meditate, talk to a friend.
(If this is particularly hard for you, check out my How To Stop Yelling At Your Kids course. It works for in-laws and extended family also!)
Want some more support?
Book a free short consult with me.
You can also join our free Peaceful Parenting Facebook group.
Sarah Rosensweet is a certified peaceful parenting coach, speaker, and educator. She lives in Toronto with her husband and three big kids (ages 15, 18, and 21). Peaceful parenting is a non-punitive, connection-based approach that uses firm limits with lots of empathy. Sarah works one-on-one virtually with parents all over the world to help them go from frustrated and overwhelmed to, “We’ve got this!”
Read more at: www.sarahrosensweet.com
![As parents, we all face challenges, but what happens when traditional parenting approaches don’t work?
That’s why my client during this call, Samantha, is actively transitioning to a Peaceful Parenting approach.
We’re talking through how those challenges can feel even more intense when your child is more sensitive and needs additional attention and understanding.
Join us to discover major tips for a more peaceful parenting journey.
Go to https://link.chtbl.com/Z_YOP4jb to listen to this episode now, and share it with a friend you know needs to hear it too.
[ID: Photo of child and parent arguing on a blue background. Audiogram reads, “Yeah. The fact that he brought it up again tells me that he’s got some shame around it and feeling bad about it. So we don’t need to bring it up in a corrective way. I’m going to exaggerate for the purposes here, but, you know, yesterday when you bit me, biting is not okay. We don’t bite in our house. We don’t want to do any of that. He already knows that, right? There’s no information gap where he thinks biting is okay. So the healing that has to happen is around he needs to feel like, back to the beginning when we started talking, he needs to feel like you still think he’s a good person and that’s why he brought it up, because he feels bad about it. So you can say to him and he says, oh, what did he say again? Remember yesterday when I bit you? Yeah. And he said, I’m a bad boy. So you can say there’s no such thing as bad boys. Mhmm, that is, yeah. They’re only boys who sometimes are having a hard time.”]
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