No-Problem Parenting 2022 Wrap Up; Become a Confident Leader for your kids in 2023!

Hey, as 2022 winds down over this holiday season, I took a couple of days off and I'm really reflecting on this past year, all the parents I've met and all of the networking I've done and the resources that I've been introduced to many of whom you have heard from on this podcast. And I'm so excited to be able to share their resources with you and create this resource community on our website, noproblemeparents.com. You can go to the website, check out the resources page.

There's actually different categories and it will connect you to people that I know and trust in just a variety of different resources for all of you parents out there doing the best you can to be that confident leader that your kids crave you to be. And then the other exciting thing that happened this year was the launch of our first book, first collaboration book, No Problem Parenting, Raising Your Kiddos with More Confidence and Less Fear.

21 authors plus myself all sharing tips and tools and things that you can do with your kiddos right at home even if you never reach out to these other authors for their services which of course I highly recommend that you do. So the book was really fun and we're working on our second collaboration book which is going to launch this coming spring and I'm also working on getting that No Problem Parenting book done and in your hands. There's just so many things going on right now. We have a lot of new things coming up in 2023. And if you're a company that would like to sponsor No Problem Parenting, we have options for you. When you sponsor us, we will advertise your company and you're going to provide with your sponsorship scholarships for families to take my No Problem Parenting program and do a little bit of coaching with me. And I'm also going to refer out to a lot of these other parenting services that, like I said, that I have connected with. And so you can give the gift via scholarship to families who are struggling in a variety of areas. And so that's another exciting thing that's happening with sponsorships. And there's even a few more things, but I'm not going to disclose those quite yet because I'm just in the meeting phase with some other companies and corporations to talk about next steps.

And speaking of sponsors, I want to thank our sponsor of today's episode, H&S Heating, air conditioning plumbing and electrical hns heating has won best of central minnesota six years running they're the receivers of the 2022 rude difference maker pro partner award and i gotta tell you i know jeremy and emily personally and if you if nothing else head over to their website every each and every year they do a video just to celebrate hns and it's usually something super fun and they both sing on the video so you just gotta head on over to hs H&S Heating and Air.com and learn more. When it comes to repairing and maintaining your furnace, you can count on H&S's team. Heating equipment isn't a one-size-fits-all. An improperly sized furnace or boiler can result in poor performance and high energy bills during the heating season.

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H&S stands for happy and satisfied. Call 320-654-1522 today. Thank you, H&S, for being a sponsor of the No Problem Parenting Podcast. And your sponsorship has awarded four scholarships to families who have already begun the No Problem Parenting program and are well on their way to becoming the confident leader their kids crave them to be.

So thank you H&S for helping us help more families. We're offering training next year for daycares. Well, we've already done that this year, but we're going to continue our training for teachers and daycare staff and after school kid care providers. And just all, you know, a whole bunch of different things to get No Problem Parenting to become really a household name and actually good stuff.

And it works and we can really get off that fear bus of raising kiddos. and we can just be, you know, human with our kids, right? So one of the things that I've learned over this past year is that, you know, when you're an entrepreneur like me and you're doing parent coaching and it's not therapeutic and it's not clinical and all those things, people say, well, you have to have a guarantee for your families. And, you know, I've worked the last two years on coming up with, what is my guarantee?

It's really hard for me to guarantee my services and the things that I offer because it really so much depends on you and if you're using the information and if you're practicing and if you're sticking with it. So I've really decided that my only guarantee is that I guarantee you're going to have problems raising your kids. And now I know that all of us really know that. And most of us expected that parenting wasn't going to be super easy.

But then when we actually become parents, we're kind of like, holy crap, like no one said it was going to be like this. And that's because no one else has raised your child in your situation with your family's experiences and in your family's specific environment. We are all unique. But here's the thing. Since we know that kids are going to misbehave, let's get ourselves prepared for that misbehavior as much as we can so that when they do misbehave, we can say, I wondered if you were going to do that.

Or I wondered when you were going to do this. Or I wondered if this would happen to you. And you can say, no problem. I've got this.

In the Becoming a No Problem Parent program, the first thing I do is I identify for you what is a problem. You know, so often we say, oh, we have all these problems with my kids or whatever. And it's like, well, what is a problem? A problem is a matter or a situation that's regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.

Did you catch that? Problems are meant to be dealt with and overcome, but what do we do? as parents we get so frustrated with our kids behaviors that we actually often feed the behavior problem instead of overcoming it. We actually unconsciously welcome the problem to stick around by feeding it and giving it so much attention and having it kind of wreck our whole day when there's an issue or situation with our kid or our whole week or our whole year.

I mean how many times have you said stop doing that or I'm going to take your iPad away or if you don't stop behaving, you're never going to go to your friend's house again. Or maybe you've said something like, if I have to tell you one more time and then you follow that up with, I'm serious. I mean, what you're actually doing when you say things like that is feeding the problem. You're inviting the problem to stick around by threatening to do something that is ultimately going to cause you more problems.

So when you do take the iPad away, the child screams and you get more mad and then you get caught up in that battle. or when you never let them go to their friend's house or you ground them. You're actually feeding the problem, first of all, by having to stick around a kid who's unhappy because they aren't with their friends and they're mad at you instead of changing their behavior. They're now misbehaving even more just to get back at you.

Or when you say things like, if I have to tell you one more time and your kid still doesn't do what you asked them to do, so you tell them again and again, you're feeding the problem. I can tell you're never going to be able to deal with and overcome your kid's behavior problems when you're engaging and putting in as much emotion to the problem as the child is. So in other words, when you become part of the problem, it's really hard to deal with and overcome that problem.

So instead, I want you to stay out of the problem. Your kids' problems aren't meant for you to solve. Your job is to guide them to solve their problems. Guide them to solve their problems.

Allow them to feel the discomfort of their misbehavior so that they don't want to misbehave again because it's not fun for them and it's not getting them what they want. Many of you have a relationship problem right now that you're trying to overcome. Someone in your life that's causing a problem for you, or maybe they're causing a problem for someone else. But you're the leader. You're the parent. You're the boss. Or you're the coach.

And as the leader, you're responsible for providing a clear vision with courage, with integrity, honesty, humility, and a clear focus. Great leaders help people reach their goals, whether it's a leader at work, your boss, or it's you the leader as the parent. Confidence is key in that. How confident are you that you can deal with and overcome the problems that you're having in your relationship with your kids?

How many of you avoid problems? Kind of like the plague, right? But then 2020 happened and the plague forced you to be cooped up with your problems. Took away your livelihood and the ability to distract yourselves from dealing with the problems in your relationships.

Well, in this podcast and by becoming a no problem parent, I want to give you permission to deal with and overcome the problems in your relationships with your kids or your partner or anyone you have an emotional relationship with. So if you're ready and open for a new perspective and if you're sick and tired of all things resistance, fear, worry, and behavior problems, then get ready for a very matter-of-fact and sometimes bass-ackwards approach to becoming a confident leader for your kids. In my program, I'm going to teach you what to do before you respond to your kid's behavior, how and when to respond to your kiddo's negative behavior, and why acknowledging and overcoming your own resistant behavior before you discipline your kids is the secret to bringing peace back into your home and strengthening your relationship. So let's start with identifying the real problem, taking a minute to get to the root of what's causing your kid's behavior challenges. The three-step no problem parenting approach is to seek first to understand why is my child behaving the way they are and why am I responding or reacting the way that I am.

Step two is to prepare for the worst. We cannot always be prepared because life throws us curve balls and our kids certainly do. But being prepared for those behaviors that happen day in and day out helps us to be able to respond instead of react and we're not joining in especially emotionally in the problems. And then step three is to change the conversation. I believe we're giving our kids way too much unconditional praise, so much so that they don't even believe our words themselves.

So becoming a no problem parent, you're going to learn the difference between conditional and unconditional praise and how a heavy dose of conditional praise before you pour on the unconditional is a game changer in your relationship with your kiddo. And we're also going to talk about the difference between empathy and sympathy. We don't need to be feeling sorry for our kids. Instead, we can understand when they're going through something tough or when they're struggling or when they've made a big mistake and we can say, hey, I'm here for you.

And we're going to let them figure out how to solve the problem with our guidance, but not with us taking over and solving it for them. Your kids crave your leadership. And while it might not seem like it all the time, trust me, in my 30 years and over 50,000 hours of experience working with families, you are the most reliable, safe, and trustworthy person your kids can count on. And if you're not feeling like you are right now, then we definitely need to work together. As helpful and kind as your extended family members, the teachers, friends, maybe you have a therapist working with you. As supportive as they all can be it's up to you to handle and deal with the unwanted behavior, the worry, or the crisis that your kiddo is facing right now in your home. And that's not only the biggest responsibility of all time it's also the biggest honor. So stop shitting on yourself, head over to noproblemparents.com,

get signed up to become a no problem parent and you even get a couple of coaching sessions in there as well some of the things that parents wish they could fix about their kids when they come to me is they say things like i wish that i could make them reciprocate my love and affection they kind of shut me out or they push me away i wish they would stop these annoying behaviors like chewing with their mouth open picking their nose spitting swearing and other gross stuff i wish i could hold their attention for more than two seconds and make them interested in what i have to say and actually say, hey, thanks mom, thanks dad, every now and then. I wish I could take their worry away or make them feel confident in themselves. I wish they had friends and would get asked to go to other kids' playdates and events. I wish my consequences would be enough to make them want to do better. I want to make them aware of how they present to others and make them care just a little bit about what others think. I wish I could help them to become smarter and get good grades a lot easier, to focus, to get along with others, to quiet down, to listen to me,

to sleep better, to eat better, or to be concerned about their health. I wish they'd stop hurting their siblings or other kids at school or stop back talking or stop manipulating or lying or stealing or threatening me or others. I wish they'd talk more and wouldn't be so shy. I wish they'd hang out with me and dad a little bit more instead of staying in their room by themselves all the time. I wish they'd have more control, stop reacting with anger and aggression, to stop bullying other kids or being bullied, and to stand up for themselves. I wish my kids had more motivation. They seem so lazy, not inspired to do anything. They'd rather just be on technology all day. I want them to get involved, be in a sport or an extracurricular activity. I want to stop the tantrums. They're interrupting me, begging for my attention all the time. Or get them to stop running away from me and actually hang out? You know, all of these kinds of things. In some instances, they might seem like little problems and others, they're a big deal. If you're feeling like you resonate with any of the things that I just mentioned that parents come to me with,

and you think you do parent coaching for that, you know, how can that help? Literally, parent coaching will help give you different ways of responding and relating to your kids and understanding and also how you can be firm and set good structure and boundaries and consistency with your kids without always being the bad guy and instead being the leader. You know, my approach is very matter-of-fact. I just give you a different way to communicate with your kids that actually holds them accountable and even better builds trust between you and your child. So whether you're a single parent, you're divorced or separated from your child's other parent, or you're in a relationship right now and you're doing a lot of arguing and disciplining different,

maybe if it's a two-parent home, you have different approaches to discipline and you think one of you is being too soft and the other one's being too harsh. I mean, that is, oh man, I love helping parents get on the same page, whether you're in the same home or not. There's a lot that you can do. And again, not being resistant to each other, because when we do that in front of our kids, if our kid is already feeling bad enough about themselves or feeling like there's something wrong with them and then they see their parents arguing and fighting and it's you know in relation to something they've had to deal with with you know them with themselves the kids can often feel blame and shame around that and so I help you get your poop in a group parents like I'm going to help you get on the same page so you can stop arguing stop fighting and trust me we all go through it my husband and I have been through this I mean I help people with that all the time. So while I only have a few openings on any given month, I don't take a ton of clients because I want to focus on the ones that I have and I'll make sure I can pour into you.

I do typically have two to three openings each month as, you know, some of the families phase out, then I enter other ones in. And so it's usually a rotating two or three families each month that I can take. That's not always the case, but usually. Most of the families that I work with need between six to ten parent coaching sessions. All the packages that I offer, you get the online course, the program right, you know, with that that's included in the package and I do like you to watch that by the second week for sure. I want you to have started at least some of those videos.

The videos, it's 96 minutes total. They're broken up into two to ten minute video segments that you can also just listen to audio and in about a week or so here the full version in I had a parent suggest to me that he would prefer to listen to the training all the way through the information all the way through in his earbuds and then be able to like listen again and again as he's working on different projects but he doesn't want to have to stop and like hit continue to get to the next video so I was like hey in the three years that the course has been out I've never had anybody suggest that to me but he did and so um it should just be another week and then we'll have the full like we'll have the program all in one like it's an hour and a half so that you can just pause it when you need to and resume where you left off uh so we're going to do that and then like i said we're going to finish up the book version of the course as well so that'll be coming but i do like you to have uh those videos watch it's just going to save you time and which also saves you money. Before I actually had the Becoming a No Problem Parent program recorded,

it would take me weeks to teach people this, right? So I put it in the packaged program specifically. And again, it's not like a forever course. It's not a six week or an eight week or a 10 week course. It's just really foundational information that once you know that, then you can ask me questions. It doesn't give you every technique on how to solve every challenge or every problem specific to your kiddo's behaviors or your relationship with your kid.

But it is a good foundation and it shifts your mindset to have you thinking a little bit differently about parenting. And you can have a kiddo that is struggling. I've worked with really severe situations where children have had to be removed from the home. They're in out-of-home residential placement.

I've had excruciatingly hard situations where I've actually had to help families come to the realization that their child was not going to be able to stay in home with them because of their behaviors being destructive and or unsafe or they needed specialized mental health care you know we often recognize and we understand adoption we understand when a parent is unable to care for their child or provide for their child and we say as hard as that is we we admire those parents when they've given their children for adoption to a family who can provide. But in my 20 years of working as an in-home family counselor, I saw a lot of families that either had birth children or adopted children that the system, the supports just weren't in place for them to be able to care for their child at home. And they've had to make that just heart-wrenching decision to give up their rights to their child so that financially the child could be cared for and their mental health needs could be met and that just it's heart-wrenching so that's one end of you know the tough stuff that parents go through that's one side of it but also you guys there are everyday things that are happening and sometimes as parents we're embarrassed or we're just like ashamed or we think there must be something wrong with us how come we can't deal with this like other families seem so much happier or can they can raise their kids just fine stop shitting on

yourself we all need parenting help and support we all do at one time or another and do we have to have it no of course not but could life be so much easier and happier with just a few sessions and somebody helping us to kind of validate support tweak our words our responses and things to help us help our kids. And really, I'm a firm believer, and it starts with you. You are the best person for your child. You are the best parent for your child.

But that doesn't mean you have to know everything. And so we don't know what we don't know. And I am an avid learner. And when I don't know something, I like to find someone who does so that I can learn.

And I encourage you to do that as well. I shared with you what parents come to me with, the concerns, the behaviors they want to correct, to the problems that they're having in their home. Well, I also, I want you to know a little bit about what happens after they've become a no problem parent and a few months have gone by, maybe even six months or nine months have gone by. Every now and then I do a survey and I actually poll the parents.

I ask them some questions. So that, before I wrap up today, I want to make sure that I share some of those responses with you. So you kind of know what you're in for. Some of the things parents have said is that the number one thing was taking the time to pause.

It's preserving their relationship. one of the biggest things they learned about is that there's the relationship should always come first ask about why the behavior to understand where the behavior is coming from and so that they can get to the root cause breathe remembering to breathe that goes right along with the pause giving yourself time to figure out what you're going to do i love this this was one of my favorite responses from a parent she said i learned strategies for not losing my crap on my kids the pause empathy natural consequences are often enough i don't need to engage emotionally into the battle. Another parent said the natural consequence approach was the most refreshing and the shift in the brain part really made sense to us. It was another way to look at their approach and how they were responding to things as parents and be able to make some changes.

Not reacting. I don't react as much. I take six seconds. I put my hand on my chest and my stomach.

A lot of the parents said it's just refreshing to know we're not the only one dealing with some of this stuff and that we're not the only ones that get reactive as parents. Another parent said my husband and I can find middle ground. I have more patience than I really thought I actually did. I understand I'm not screwing up as bad as I thought I was. I just need to think sometimes before I react. And another mom said she learned she's resistant to her partner and needs to work on that. One parent said, I didn't know I could be that creative. I found that when I take six seconds to think about my response, I come up with a very fun way of dealing with what could have been a super big problem behavior. So I'm better able to plan ahead now to prevent the conflicts even before they happen and be prepared so I'm not flying off the handle. One parent said I doubted the immediate impact of little things like empathy or tone of voice or how that really changes a child's attitude, but it actually works. Sometimes it's hard to admit that you need help with your parenting. I wasn't sure what I was getting into. Self-reflection isn't much fun,

but of course it's always valuable so this parent was saying she questioned being able to commit that to the time that it took but she said this was actually the most practical and realistic kind of parenting program that she had ever taken or had ever invested the time in she actually made room for it and was eager to learn next steps another parent said I really didn't know if anything could make things better in dealing with my child it felt like I was stuck in this difficult situation forever, but I got out of my stinking thinking and I had learned a new perspective on what was actually happening with our child and in our family. I asked, how would you describe this course to a friend? And they said, valuable, informative, and that even if you have it all down and things are going great for you as a parent, you still take away good reminders from the course and they stick in your head in those bad moments. So even if you're not having challenges right now, become a no problem parent anyway. It's fun and refreshing and validating. And another parent said, I was explaining it to my friends like an ongoing training that I would do for my nine to five job. And instead of new tools for my job, I'm actually learning new tools for my mom job. People always say that parenting doesn't come with a manual,

but this was the Cliff Notes version of what a manual would be like. It wasn't long or overwhelming, but rather gave us small snippets of easily digestible and applicable ideas. It's so fun. I get so excited when I hear this stuff, you guys, because it's just validating that my 30 years and all these different things I've learned, it's actually helping you. And so I just love it. It's fun. It's kind of exciting. It's like a happy new year celebration. Another parent said the parenting course helps you recognize what's inhibiting your ability to help your child learn how to handle situations and stresses on their own and suggestions to help you respond instead of react when those situations happen. It's real, it's simple,

example-driven ways to better your parenting. Examples that work well with a wide variety of ages, as well as a wide variety of issues. I took the course to learn more about Jackie and her work. I didn't actually go into it needing parenting help per se. I don't know if it's just coincidence, but it doesn't seem like we've had near as many issues at home since I started the course.

Maybe it's just because Jackie's helped me to be more patient and less reactive. No problem. Parenting works even if you don't think you need it. Thanks, Jackie. Oh my gosh, you're welcome. I love this so much. Okay, last one. I love how positive Jackie is. It's also very nice to actually hear that other people deal with the same things that we do. We always feel so alone when dealing with some of our family issues. It just seems like no one else deals with the same things that we have to. It often feels like people think that we are bad parents, but taking this course helped us realize lots of good parents feel that way, and it's simply not true. It's nice to hear positive things and that it's okay to turn a problem into a no problem. We don't have to let problems define us. All right, I want to stop. I've got lots more feedback on this. Maybe I'll share a little bit in some other episodes but hey guys for now just remember on particularly rough days when you feel like you cannot possibly endure your track record for getting through those days so far is 100 and that's pretty darn good and you don't have to go it alone happy new year everybody and if there's just one thing i can ask of you before we head into the new year we are so close to hitting that top three percent globally a podcast we're in the top five percent right now i could use some more five-star reviews and a couple of comments. Tell me what you enjoyed about the

episode. Just say, Hey, Jackie, love the podcast short and sweet. That would be so helpful. I appreciate it so much. You guys welcome 2023. I am ready for you. I hope the rest of you are let us deal with and overcome the behavior problems and challenges within our home.

No problem. We got this. Thank you for tuning in to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Join Jackie next time for more tips, tools, and resources that will help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be.

Who do you know that we could support on their parenting journey? Like this podcast, subscribe, share, or leave a review of the show. Your support of the No Problem Parenting Podcast pays it forward and helps us help more families. Thank you.