Breathe, Pause, Calm: Raising Good Humans Every Day with Hunter Clarke-Fields

All right, welcome back. No problem. Parents to Mindset and Motivation Monday. We are excited to have Hunter Clark Fields, a returning guest on the show. She is a mindfulness mentor, bestselling author, and the host of the top rated mindful parenting podcast. Hunter brings over 20 years of experience in meditation and yoga practices, and she's taught mindfulness to thousands of people worldwide. As a certified teacher of parent effectiveness training, Hunter helps moms bring more calm and family cooperation into their daily lives. You can go back and listen to episode 42 where we talked about how to stop yelling at your kids and be less reactionary. But in today's episode, Hunter's going to share valuable insights from her latest book, Raising Good Humans Every Day, which was just released on August 1st of 2023. She's going to share principles of mindful parenting, offering stress reduction tips tailored for the challenges that all parents just might face in 2024. Hunter discusses how cultivating mindfulness can positively impact our parenting journey, ultimately contributing to raising compassionate and resilient children. Listen in and learn how mindfulness can empower you starting today.

Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. From toddler tantrums to teenage eye rolls, this podcast is your go-to for updated and old school tips and tools that are going to help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be. I'm your host, Jackie Finnaman, a 30-year counselor turned parenting coach, and I've got a lot to share, including hundreds of resources that you have access to right from your home and strategies that are going to boost your confidence and energize you. So whether you're knee deep in diapers or navigating the tween years, or you're launching your child into adulthood, subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, teachers, and daycare providers. We're going to turn your parenting problems into no problem, one episode at a time. All right, so welcome to the show, Hunter. Well, thank you. I was about to welcome you. Thank you for having me here. Yeah, fellow podcaster, you've been podcasting much longer than I have, just celebrated your 10th year. Yeah, it's been 10 years now, 10 years. We recorded,

oh my gosh, I think it's almost two years ago. I think I was just a baby podcaster when I had you on. And we were talking all things raising good humans, talking about your first book. And now you put out another book based on that first book, Raising Good Humans Every Day. And it's 50 simple ways to press pause, stay present and connect with your kids. And then a subsequent guidebook has come out too. So you've been really busy. Yeah, yeah, we put out the guided journal after that. I think the my publisher was, you know, we're all very surprised at how well Raising Good Humans did all around the world. And so we wanted to give people more. And so it was really, this was a really fun book to write, actually, because it's like 50, super short, super digestible chapters. And I got to kind of, you know, have this all this experience is 10 years of talking to amazing people on the podcast. So, you know, there's this whole range of things that I wasn't able to get into raising good humans. So I was able to fit into this. It's a great read parents and a coffee table kind of book or bedside table kind of book. That's exactly how I picture it,

like bedside table, you know, where you're like, okay, it's all been crazy chaos today. I'm like spent. Let me just like begin a new tomorrow, set a new intention. And yeah, you can focus on one thing. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And now with our daily episodes in 2024 for the No Problem Parenting podcast, Mindset and Motivation Monday, we talked about really being intentional this year and being optimistic. And so with the start of the new year, why do you think parents should prioritize self-care over self-sacrifice? Why is that so important? Well, self-sacrifice leads to burnout and resentment. You know, actually it's funny because I can see this in people in my life.

Like there is a parent of someone close to me who did a lot of self-sacrificing and she is burnt out and does not have, you know, the energy for things like, you know, grandchildren, things like that. It's really interesting to sort of see that. But yeah, I mean, we're, the thing is like, we want to, for me, it all comes down and with mindful parenting, it comes down to, you know, we want to be able to choose how we want to respond, right? Like you're listening, you listen to this episode because you want to be, you want to be able to parent better, right? So if you want to be able to listen to the great advice that Jackie gives you and that other people give you, you have to be able to use your whole brain. And if you're sacrificing yourself, you're not going to be at your best to be able to use your whole brain. You're going to be so much more likely to be stressed, to be triggered. You're so much more likely to be overwhelmed, to yell at your kids. And that does not, is not the optimal way to like model healthy living because our kids are watching what we do much more than what we say. Right. So if we want to be able to, I mean,

I remember, I remember when my daughter was little and she was having temper tantrums all the time, And it was so frustrating. She felt like a ticking time bomb, just waiting to go off. And it was incredibly hard. And I would, I would get good advice on like, this is how you should respond to your kid in these moments. I'd be like, okay, I'm going to do this. And I'd get into a situation and I'd start to like, feel that stress and start to lose it. And all of that good information, I couldn't remember any of it.

And there's a reason why I couldn't remember any of it, because our biological stress response is cutting off access to the higher order, slower reacting parts of our brain, which include impulse control and verbal ability and creativity, problem solving skills, all these things we need to parent. So if we want to do anything, we need to have a foundation of a little less stress, less busyness, taking care of ourselves so that we can be grounded.

And then when we're grounded, when we're less stressed, then that's the only way we're going to be able to access our whole brain and be able to then implement any of the things we learn in any of these episodes you talk about, right? So it's really the foundation for mindful, thoughtful parenting to take care of ourselves. It's absolutely not selfish to take care of yourself. It's the foundation.

It's the foundation for being a good parent. Absolutely. And I think there's this myth around being self-sacrifice that, you know, we have to put our children first and we're doing it all for our kids. But, you know, there's the whole oxygen mask on the airplane.

Put it on your sack before you can help your kiddos. And we shouldn't just be saying that we need to be doing things so that we can be in that mindful place. Where do you where do parents begin? In your mind? How can parents be less busy so that they can find more time for self care?

I do think taking care of ourselves and taking care of our needs doesn't need to take a lot of time. It can be also something that, you know, I know that we have five minutes for social media. So I know we have five minutes to stop and maybe sit and quiet, right? We may be, you know, there are things like there are real basics that we need to take care of, like regular exercise, prioritizing our sleep and and doing the steps we need to take care of that and seeing, you know, supportive family and friends.

But a lot of us, I think we're really, we get caught up in the lifestyle that, you know, is promoted today through like social media and through commercial culture, often through, you know, our neighborhoods and our communities. there's a real like push towards being really busy. And I think that can be really toxic. And that of course can take time away, then you feel like I have to sacrifice myself because, you know, there's no time. But, you know, the whole idea, I think it's important, like, so what I write about and how to be less busy is like, one of the things we have to think about is starting to see it as a choice, it might be a habit, it might be social conditioning. But it's in your power to change it. You know, we can start to slow, slow things down, even if our friends and neighbors are going to travel soccer and, you know, taking a language and piano and tumbling class, right?

Like you don't have to do that. You can, you can buck the system. You can start seeing it as a choice. You can take a Sabbath day, like a day of abstinence from work where you don't look at your email. I know it's a radical idea, right? Like you don't look at your email, you don't look at social media, you don't schedule too much, you maybe even actually scheduling downtime for your kids. And, and I really recommend when kids are young, you know, preschool, early elementary, really, it's really, really helpful to only do one activity or one sport per season. Because our kids, not only for our own sanity and our own ability to be grounded, but our kids' free play time, which is the essence of childhood, which is where they work out all their issues,

which is where they understand what they're interested in, where they learn to relax and enjoy, you know, be comfortable in their own skin. It's like the most important work they do is just having free unstructured play, right? That's being really, really attacked and eroded in our culture. So I really recommend that we protect it. And that may be by restraining ourselves from, you know, signing up for all the activities. We don't, you really don't have to build your kid's resume when they're five. And it really, really helps them to have more time where they're, they have time for play, where they have ease when they're even bored, all of those things.

Yeah. And I love that you say that even bored, we just did an episode about being bored and how that's actually a good thing. And it really sparks creativity and curiosity and the kids just need the downtime, but so do we. So I think you're absolutely right. We are in some ways, we feel like as parents, we need to keep the kids busy and active. And so we're putting them in all the things. And then we're wondering why we're having meltdowns before bed and right after school and our food schedule, everything's just kind of out of whack, you know, it's chaos, but we're feeling sort of like, that's what we're supposed to do to be a good parent. I know. And it's, it's absolutely, if it's stressing you, if you feel stressed, getting your kids to the different things,

you can guarantee that your kid feels the stress. The pace of childhood is slower. They need time to, to take in the world that, you know, they can be really fascinated and occupied by simple things in your household and by, you know, your, your kid, they can help you mess up the laundry or quote fold it, you know, you don't, you don't have to keep them. Your job is not to keep them occupied. Your job is not to, to make sure they're entertained all the time. No, not at all. In fact, it's so great. If they're bored, you can say to them, this is what Kim Payne who wrote simplicity parenting says. He said, say to them, there's something to do right around the corner. There's something to do right around the corner. And just like be so boring when you're responding to that,

that they just finally get fed up with you and they walk away. Yeah, right. I love that there's something to do right around the corner. You also talk about to plan downtime is super important to actually put downtime in your calendar. Yes, when you are, you know, when you're scheduling, like a birthday party, schedule a day where there are no birthday parties the next day, don't do two birthday parties back to back, don't run back to back events, if you can, And recognize that just like if, you know, you have a clutter of toys and your child, you can see that obviously they don't, they're not valuing that toy in the middle of the pile.

It's the same with our schedules and our events. You know, for us, like we can't really be present if we're overwhelmed and stressed for whatever the events are. So, you know, plan that downtime into your schedule. You know, block a few days off if you have something big.

And then my favorite thing from like how to be less busy is that there's a mantra that I remind myself and is that, you know, when I can feel it in my body, you know, part of a mindfulness practice is learning to sort of sense in your body. When am I getting tense? When is it feeling like too much? When, when am I feeling overwhelmed?

And then taking steps, right? Okay. This is, I want to feel at peace. I want to feel ease in general in my daily life. I don't want to go through my life anxious and tense.

So if I'm feeling like things are a little crazy, I use this mantra. There's more than enough time for everything important. There's more than enough time for everything important. So I have to tell that to myself. And then it's okay for some of the less important things to drop away. You don't have to get everything done perfectly. You'd be amazed at what you can let go of. And if it's not that important, it just drops away. It's fine if you schedule your pet's vet visit one month late this year. That's okay if it's not working out for you this week. That's so funny. That actually happened to me back in November. I was like, it's just not happening this month, bud. You're going to get your haircut next month. Yes, exactly. I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to achieve, to do, to go, to strive. And that's really one of the attitudes of mindfulness that I invite people into in Raising Good Humans Every Day is this idea that sometimes when we're in this mode of like going and achieving and striving, it comes from a place of like, actually, I'm not good enough as I am. I have to do more. I have to achieve more. I have to make sure my kid then checks off all these boxes too, to be good enough for us to be up to snuff with everybody else.

And that's BS. That is not true. You know, in mindfulness, we have this attitude of non-striving and it doesn't mean you don't get things done. It means that you hold them more lightly. And then And when you are doing something, you are present with that and you let go of the mental checklist and you can practice to just be present.

And that it really helps if we don't, our checklist isn't 10 miles long to be able to do this. Right. So I think it's important to reduce, to simplify our lives a little bit or like, you know, at least our scheduling. Yeah, for sure. I love that. There's more than enough time for everything important.

I do something similar with, you know, when you look at your calendar for a day and you're like, oh, my gosh, I'm back to back or I have, you know, eight hours of work and then I have to get right to this event, that event or, you know, get the kids ready for a concert or, you know, all the things. And you're already making chaos in your head thinking about how am I going to get this all done? And that's the message you start your day with is how am I going to get this all done or how am I going to have time for that?

And then what if there's a wrench in your plan? You know, what if you're on the interstate in between picking your kiddo up from school and getting them to their event? And, you know, there's a traffic jam. And now we're really like, oh, my gosh, I'm never going to get it all done.

But being able to say it'll happen, there's more than enough time for everything important and to pause. And then one of the other things you talk about in that chapter is not to multitask and to do one thing at a time. And I think especially moms, I would say, I guess I'm just more familiar maybe with moms doing the multitasking. we feel like we can and we're super you know accomplished when we do and and that we can do all the things probably should practice more of a intentional approach with not doing that yeah and there's a really good reason for that you know so we're trying to check all these things off our list we're trying to get it all done we're going going going we're doing doing doing and then we schedule something like we schedule our like our big you know whatever we get to our Florida a vacation where we're going to go to the, we're going to go to the beach or we're going to the lake house or whatever it is. And then you get to this place with your kid where you're finally going to rest. You're finally going to be present. You're just going to be there. And you know what,

you get there and you discover that you can't, that your brain can't rest. Your brain can't stop. Your brain needs more, more, more to do to check off on the list because that is how you've trained your brain. That is what you do every day, all the time, right? So then we get to these moments with our children, where we're there, it feels like it should be special, we should be really present, and we can't be there. And there's this really beautiful quote that motivates me.

I studied for many years tangentially with the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. And what he said was when you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there? And the thing is, many of us for much of the day, all the time, we're not there.

Our minds are off somewhere else while our bodies may be here. And so if we want to be able to, you know, really be here for the moments that our kids are here, your kids are gone. I have a 16-year-old and 13-year-old. We know at this point, holy moly, that time when they were little kids, that went by really fast. Now I know it's not forever. Now I know it goes by really fast.

And if you want to not look back at that time and think, oh my God, I missed it all. You really, really need to stop. Make it a practice to stop. Make it a practice to take a walk.

Make it a practice to sit in quiet for three minutes every morning. Make it a practice to stop and breathe and not do so that you have the capacity to be present for the people that you love. Yep, absolutely. Great advice.

And I love that you said breathe, because obviously we're breathing or we wouldn't, you know, be having this conversation. And yet, for especially many of us who are sitting at a computer all day, we aren't really breathing, you know, deep breathing or breathing well. And so we're forgetting how to actually just to calm and to breathe. Yeah, and that can have big consequences.

Actually, my husband went through a few years of major challenges with health and was having these, what ultimately ended up being like anxiety attacks. And he had to make a practice of deep breathing because his, you know, if we don't breathe deeply and we start to practice shallow breathing unconsciously, of course, it's not something he wanted to do, but it can like change the carbon dioxide levels and all this stuff in your body and lead towards more, you know, easily tipping into anxiety. So it really is what you practice grows stronger. So yeah, deep breathing is incredibly, incredibly powerful. There's a breath tool that I offer in Raising Good Humans Every Day, the 478 breathing. And I think that's important. Parents, make sure you're catching this.

It's not always the anxiety that's causing the shallow breathing. Sometimes it's the shallow breathing that is causing the anxiety. That was really key, what you just said there. Yeah, yeah, it's the body leads the mind and the mind leads the body it's you know it's all interconnected you can't separate these things so.

So yeah, you know, if we're physically tense we're going to be mentally tense, all of that goes together. so yes right um in the first chapter i offer a breathing practice that's so so simple um called tactical breathing because this is from the navy seals that's what they call it and they know of course that they don't you don't make great decisions when you're dysregulated because you're not using your whole brain we talked about that right and so when a seal is in a stressful combat situation they use this super simple tactical breathing to slow down the heart rate and become more regulated. And it's just, you breathe in for four and you breathe out for four and you repeat it four to six times. So simple, right? But if you start every day like that, then you're making it part of your life. Yeah, that's really good. And I teach the remembering the pause that before we respond to our kids, especially if we're caught off guard,

and this is something we can, we can retrain the muscle memory of our brain, but to pause hand on your heart, hand on your stomach, that helps regulate your central nervous system. Pause for even just six seconds. And I like that you have this in your chapter as well with the tactical breathing that if the four count is difficult, start with three. You know, when I first learned the pause, it was at a period in my life where I was super busy. Some of that was self-inflicted, right? But I couldn't even catch a breath. I couldn't even get myself to like catch a full breath where your stomach, when you breathe in your stomach's going out instead of, you know, sucking it in even more when you breathe in kind of thing. So sometimes it's weird, but we need to actually retrain our brains on how to, and our bodies on how to breathe.

You, at the end of each of these chapters, you have a take action step for parents. And so in this particular chapter, you're encouraging parents to cut out one thing from their calendar. Yes. I know it's a big ask. I know it's a big ask.

Take one thing off your calendar and reserve some downtime. What can you say no to? And it's like, I also want to let you know, dear listener, like you don't have to say yes to every thing someone asks you to volunteer for. You don't have to say yes, even if you're free, you know you can still say no even if you're free because you want to protect some downtime so all of these things like our emotions are palpable we inter are with our children we are not some independent silo right we feel each other's emotions human beings feel each other's emotions and our kids often need to borrow our calm right if you have little kids they often need to borrow your calm. They can't do it on their own. And if you never have any, they're up a creek. You have to prioritize your calm, your peace, your ease. That's important. It's really important. You're never going to be able to give it to others if you have none yourself.

It's the oxygen mask. Absolutely. Go back and listen to our previous conversation with Hunter, where we talked all things reactivity and how to not be reactionary. And then pick up this book one.

I mean, I'd get the whole set if I were your parents, because it's just such good information and easy to follow along with. Raising Good Humans Every Day, 50 Simple Ways to Press Pause, Stay Present, and Connect with Your Kids is a great tool for you. And then grab that guided journal as well. I appreciate you so much helping us slow down, be mindful, and really be intentional with our kiddos.

Thanks for being on the show. Thank you so much, Jackie. I really, really enjoyed it. All right, that's it for today's episode of the No Problem Parenting Podcast.

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Until next time, remember, your confidence comes from embracing both successes and setbacks. So take a deep breath, embrace the chaos, and remember, you got this.