Supporting Families of Intense Children with Samantha Moe

Welcome back, No Problem Parents, to part two of my conversation with Samantha Moe from Mad to Glad. In episode 258, we began our conversation talking about parenting emotionally intense children. And today's episode is all about the professionals working with kiddos and families. So not only must we understand what works with these unique kids, we also need to sensitively guide parents through a different approach when traditional parenting isn't working.

So today we're going to introduce the Mad to Glad comprehensive skills training and certificate programs that are designed for professionals like you who want to confidently support families of intense children. Whether you're working with kids with anxiety, sensory processing disorder, ADHD, autism, giftedness, or oppositional defiant disorder, the Mad to Glad programs prioritize a trauma informed approach, a brain-based approach.

So learn how you can become a confident guide for parents, equipping them with the positive tools and behavior strategies that work best for their kiddos. In today's episode, there are links in the show notes for more information. Samantha Moe and Associates provides continuing education, advanced training, and parent coach certification for professionals who support intense kids and their families. There's nothing wrong with these emotionally intense children.

They just need a different approach to communication and parenting. Parents, are you stressed out, frustrated, irritable, and just exhausted? Well, confident parenting begins with a good night's sleep. So lower your stress and fall asleep easily with NuCalm.

Unwind, sleep, and wake up renewed with NuCalm's audio journeys powered by patented neuroacoustic technology. And it's available right from your phone. There's a link in the show notes for a seven-day free trial. And if you choose to subscribe, enter the code NOPROBLEM for 15% off.

you're second guessing yourself and you're not feeling very empowered or skilled at responding to your kiddo that's defeating yeah whenever I hear the word defeat I am flashed back to the fall of 2020 because my kiddo was born a few months earlier in August of 2020 and we're a pretty crunchy family my husband's a pediatric gentle chiropractor here in Minnesota and so we had planned a home birth supervised with a midwife and a doula. And it was successful after 30 hours of posterior labor. God bless you. The whole situation. And when my kid was born, he had this shrieking pain cry and it didn't stop for months. It didn't stop for months. And I remember calling a friend of mine who's a therapist. She was actually filling in for me. And she was also a certified parent coach had been through my trainings knew my curriculum was able to help my clients during that maternity leave and she said I have never heard you sound like this before it's almost like you said you're defeated and I'm like I am defeated all the stuff that I'm teaching parents about calm and connection and collaboration what was I thinking and you know I had like weeks of no sleep and new parenthood and shrieking child where my husband and I were very concerned, like what is going on here? And ultimately what it got traced back to were a couple of things. My kid was underfed because of a posterior tongue tie. So he was hungry.

He was losing weight dramatically and he had an unidentified broken collarbone from birth. Oh my gosh. So you think about this little newborn and you like hold them and you put a onesie on and their neck, you know, you move their neck or you, I was nursing and like, I'm like, why does it work on this side? And I think back to the side that the collarbone was broken. And, and we were, I was, I was so defeated. And I share the story because the other thing that happened was I broke my ankle when I was 34 weeks pregnant. And so to get help, we hired people to come into our condo because I couldn't navigate stairs and clinics with crutches and a baby.

And I remember the midwife looking at me when I'm in my bed. And not the midwife, excuse me, the lactation consultant. And she sees the crutch on the floor next to me. And I'm super defeated.

We've established that. And she said, Samantha, some of the tools you've learned from other people are correct and they're working, but some of them you're not doing right. And some tools are missing entirely. but like that crutch you can lean on me and I will impart knowledge and confidence until you feel confident and wise enough knowledgeable enough to do it on your own and now we're thriving and that moment Jackie I think about this because that consultant's name was Liz like I highly regard her and respect her and admire her and I always think about that like what what do you as a professional want people to say about you? Do you want them to say stories where like that person guided me, they knew they saw what they saw where I was doing things right, but they saw where I wasn't getting it right, too. And they were courageous enough to tell me and be gentle about it, but also direct. And that's what that's what I stand for. That's how you're going to create more peace at home and parenting. Okay, so you said something really important there, too. It's It's about hearing, listening to the parent.

You experienced that yourself. I did as well. I had a, again, similar situation as the attachment specialist. I want to have my baby naturally.

I want to do all the things like you said, you know, we're able to do with your birth. And that wasn't in the cards for us. We, our son was born C-section five weeks early, seven pounds, two ounces. He would have been a big guy if he'd went full.

Yeah. Wow. but you know c-section and jaundice and in the hospital for the whole first week of his life we were in and so totally different then i bring him home and i'm of course going to breastfeed because i'm the attachment specialist and i really want to do that for bonding and like five weeks in i don't even it doesn't even look like my little baby's in there like his eyes were just not you know how they don't focus right away but you still know they're looking at you're taking it in and that wasn't happening i'm like oh my gosh how can i be the specialist i'm not getting it right with my kid. And it turns out I wasn't producing enough milk. So he wasn't getting full. And he was spitting up, you know, a lot. And so we had to supplement with formula and then we had to find the right formula. And that took so long. And as a parent, you're there going, this is defeating.

You know, I don't feel good enough. I don't feel capable. What is wrong with me? And then as a professional, you're like, how could I be helping these other parents? Yeah. What I love about your work is not only are you helping parents, but you're also recognizing the professionals, the paraprofessionals, the other coaches, the daycare providers, the teachers, the residential workers, therapists, like saying, Hey, there are, yes, you have your degrees or you have your training in whatever way you do, but how can you help support those parents? And you have a specific program for professionals to learn how to do this. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I like things that are really simple. So I like my eight pillars. I like the Mad to Glad blueprint because it's brain based. It's from the bottom up. And when it comes to, so it sticks is kind of the point.

So when it comes to training professionals, what I do is I certify mad to glad parent educators, because I think that if there was somebody leading my eight week parenting curriculum on site at every mental health clinic, sensory like occupational therapy and speech therapy clinic in any school setting, if there was somebody in all of these buildings where children frequent. what could happen is we could create community and support around learning these skills and not feeling alone. And that's one of the pieces that I hear a lot from parents. They'll say, wow, I thought it was the only person going through a divorce, having a kid with challenging behaviors and not knowing how to focus on connection in a way that brings out happy chemicals. But I'm also allowed to have boundaries during this tough time because PS that helps a kid feel safe when there's boundaries. And there's a container. So for professionals, what they do in my certification program is they get to go through the eight week parenting cohort. And then like, listen to the coaching calls for parents, for professionals who have kids themselves, this can be highly enlightening. I have principals go through it. I have pediatricians who've gone through it. And they're like, I was missing three to five tools. And I'm like, I know because you're a parent.

And that's what I've seen is that we're missing three to five key pieces. And when you have them, that's going to follow you, your entire child rearing experience. Like if I was, I didn't grow up with a yeller in the family, a yelling parent. And so if I was a yeller myself, I would notice that one of my primary pillars is to calm the fire in myself.

Because how is my kid going to have calm brain if I don't model calm? But that's not the key one for me. And so some families are finding like the key thing for them is more like having routine because if they're nailed down, it makes them feel like loss of freedom and loss of control. So why should I create a morning rhythm?

But when you understand that, yeah, but creating a morning rhythm means helping your child start the day on the right foot. And maybe they're slow to warm up and they need to snuggle a little bit before you move into all of the like, get your stuff ready, get your stuff on, get out the door in this timely hurry sort of fashion. so when professionals go through the program if they're parents they start realizing like oh these are key pieces for my family which helps them hold that space of transformation for another family because it's vulnerable like I was missing these pieces and so for the professionals who aren't parents they also when they're learning these tools they're like oh I'm going to reflect on my own childhood to see what was missing because professionals who get certified and have a heart for parent, first of all, it's pretty unique. A lot of people are specializing in working with the children and to have a space for parents, a lot of individuals going through the program will realize I'm in this space because of a reason not too unlike my situation. You have a heart for creating peaceful homes, possibly because of your own childhood. So then what happens with all of these professionals is they have, while the parent is going through the eight-week cohort,

the parent the professional goes through a 10-week cohort they listen to the parent training and then we deconstruct it and we look at what is the arc of the tool why does the tool work when does it not work what are faqs how do you apply this to different situations based on diagnosis or based on age oh and by the way when we're having these debriefs and talking about the arc let's also talk about what is your wisdom that i'm not teaching on and your unique knowledge because you need to bring you into the program.

You need to bring your attachment knowledge. You need to bring your sensory knowledge. You need to bring your, I know a lot of weird stuff. So I'm like, I'm going to bring in my knowledge about screen time and electromagnetic frequencies because I'm really sensitive to it.

So I'm going to bring that in and talk about screen time with families. So it's a way to understand the tools, internalize them, get actual practice time with teaching the class because I have a whole facilitator guide and PowerPoint slides. And then they run their pilot program. And so they work with people wherever they prefer.

Some of these are independent contractors already. They run it at their therapy clinic. Some people have a relationship with the local child care center. So they talk to the director and they run it there.

And it's a win-win for everybody because now we've got tools. We've got a passionate certified parent educator. And we're creating community for families. And that's the big vision.

That's the mission that I'm on in the world. I love it and I've got so many people I'm going to connect with you I would really love to see this in daycares and after-school programs I love that you can teach one key or one lead person at your daycare center or your after-school program and then that person can become certified right and then they can provide more training right to the families that's right that's right they can invite the the parents on and the parents are learning in a community for eight weeks and run it once a quarter. Oh my gosh. I can just imagine how much this would help parents and providers because how many providers are having to say, Hey, if your kiddo continues to bite,

hit, kick, scream, meltdown, we got to go. That's right. And so families will contact me because their kid's been kicked out. And I'm really happy. I'm really happy to like be a support person and provide some individualized coaching. But the next natural question is now that I know these tools for my kids. I know how to shift things at home. Is there any chance you'd go and teach in the, in the school or in the daycare center? And I can only go so far. So really like if the call people who are listening to this, if the call to be the parent specialist, like the go-to for the parents resonates with you, you are a unique person. Email me hello at Samantha Mo like seriously email me because I would love for you to be that person in your community.

And I'm going to have a link in the show notes for people to reach out to be able to do that. All right, Samantha, we could talk for hours. So all the links will be in the show notes. But you also have a free download for parents that are listening today that they can access called the Make It Better download.

So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, yeah. It's a PDF I put together. It's this workbook because when you're parenting an intense child, sometimes the thing that we need to understand is really what is our starting point?

How do we make this better? And so I put together this workbook that you can go through and start reading about some of these pillars. And it's designed to help stimulate your thinking like what's my first step? What could I do at home right now to make it better? And maybe people already have some idea if they're identifying as being a yeller type of parent from just this podcast recording.

But I'd be happy to email that to you. And then if you wanted to connect further, I do a free monthly webinar on how to make it better, where we talk about kids firing the brain, what do their behaviors look like, what happens if we misperceive it and we judge it as manipulative or defiant or an aggression problem, so that we can look beneath the behavior and change things quite quickly from a practical tool standpoint.

I know you're really great, Jackie, at the mindset standpoint. And I wanna look at like, what are the tools to influence kids behavior? Yep. It's a great little partnership we got going here or collaboration, I should say going between, between the two of us. You talked about your training that you do twice a year, March and October. So there's one coming up parents, there's time to register and to get in. Or if you feel like you want to have a conversation first, there's a link to my schedule. I do complimentary 30 minute, how to make it better calls, because there's a few things I want to know. I want to know your background. What is it that you've tried that's worked and hasn't worked. And I also want to understand like, what is the cost of behaviors? Because this is an important starting point to change our own behavior. So I have you answer seven questions around like, how much time do you spend worrying? How much time do you spend talking to the school? How much time do you spend researching and trying out programs? And how much money do you spend on appointments and supplements and, you know, all of those things? Because that clear snapshot can be a light bulb for us sometimes so that we're not like waiting and waiting and waiting. If we could even gain five hours a week back, that is a big deal. Or if we can invest in something that gives us practical tools instead of something that might not be

paying off for us, makes our lives easier. I think the biggest game changer for my clients too is the amount of time you get back, not yelling, not crying yourself to sleep at night, not going to appointments or taking phone calls at work, you know, from the teacher, the daycare provider, all of that. It's just, oh, I can feel my shoulders releasing just thinking about that. Yeah. I hope to save people from having to read a hundred books. Like I've read, you know, like trying strategies. Let's take some time back and let you sleep through the night instead of wondering what do I do at 3am when my kid won't go to bed. And then you're like looking on your phone and now you're alert. Like let's make things simpler. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Simpler is always better. Thanks, Samantha, for being on the show and for sharing your resources with parents and professionals. Parents, there's a link in the show notes for a free online class called Parenting an Intense Child, How to Make It Better. And for professionals, there's a link in the show notes for you to learn more about how you can become a certified Mad to Glad parent educator. Thanks for tuning in today, parents, and be sure to check out all the links in the show notes for the New Calm app, 60 Ways to Respond to Your Kids Without Losing your cool and the free make it right technique for now hugs and high fives parents you got this