Libsyn Directory

Podcast Episode #34 – Gun Violence: Listening to Understand

Release Date: 04/15/2020

Podcast Episode #47 – Raising Boys Q&A: Deescalation Techniques

The Consciously Parenting Podcast

Rebecca and Nathan look at how intentionally connecting with our children throughout their childhood can help us when we get to the teen years, by giving them and us the tools needed to move through intense emotions as they come up, before they escalate into something hard to handle. They also discuss ways to compassionately work with our teens in those situations where emotions have gotten very intense and the situation has escalated or morphed into something it wasn’t about originally.

Podcast Episode #46 – Raising Boys Q&A: Maintaining Connection Through the Teen Years

The Consciously Parenting Podcast

If we have laid the groundwork by modeling healthy relating, by empowering our children to be able to identify their own feelings and needs, and by maintaining a connection with our children, we do not have to buy into the ideas of teenagers breaking away and becoming disconnected from us.

Podcast Episode #45 – Raising Boys Q&A: Encouraging connection with others

The Consciously Parenting Podcast

As parents, we all have a similar concern when it comes to raising our kids (both boys and girls). What’s going to happen when they start to go out and have their own relationships? Have I done enough to prepare them to connect with others and have healthy relationships?

Podcast Episode #44 – Raising Boys Q&A: Talking Bodies and Sex

The Consciously Parenting Podcast

I’m wondering how much I should “push” to have conversations about sex & sexual matters. Everything including erections are common topics, but they really shut me down when I try to take it to another level. Should I just talk to the air but out loud, should I zip it, should I just hand over a book, or wait until they are more open to talk about more? I just don’t want them to get used to holding back. I’m thinking that later it would seem awkward for them to initiate the conversation.

Podcast Episode #43 – Raising Boys Q&A: Healthy Masculinity

The Consciously Parenting Podcast

Q&A: Healthy Masculinity

Podcast Episode #42 – Raising Boys Q&A: Wiping, Connection, & Respect

The Consciously Parenting Podcast

Question: Why can’t my kid just wipe?

Podcast Episode #41 – Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys (part 2)

The Consciously Parenting Podcast

In this episode, we talk about how to support our children when they are angry or upset. Similar to when children are little, we can use the skill of being patient and waiting, being with them to name their emotions but not trying to make anything specific happen faster. We need to focus on getting ourselves back to a state of regulation so we can support them.

Podcast Episode #40 – Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys (part 1)

The Consciously Parenting Podcast

How can we best support our boys when they are young and as they grow into men? There are many cultural messages for boys around feelings, so how do we navigate that territory? How do we stay respectful of our boys’ biology and neurobiology? We want to make sure we are creating the space for their emotions and really respecting that they’re different than we are as women and moms.

Podcast Episode #39 – Moms’ thoughts about raising boys

The Consciously Parenting Podcast

Whether you’re expecting a boy or already have one in your family, we want to do our best to raise them to be emotionally healthy members of our families and then their own families one day. But how do we do raise emotionally healthy boys?

Podcast Episode #38 – You can put “Sad” in your pocket

The Consciously Parenting Podcast

I told her that if she was feeling sad and either she couldn't find someone in that moment to give her a hug, *or* if she just didn't want to have to do it right then, because she was out or having fun or something, then she could put her Sad in her pocket for later. I went on to say that she couldn't put Sad in the trash can. There's no getting rid of it and not taking care of it. But she could put it in her pocket and then later she could pull it out when it was a better time and get her hugs then.

More Episodes

Gun Violence, Safety, and Support for Families

We have a serious problem in the United States of America with gun violence. It feels really scary to us and we’ve felt powerless to make it stop.

This podcast series is about gun violence, safety, and support for families, In this first episode, we’re going to be looking at what it takes to really listen to understand, and another way we can look at what’s happening with the boys and men in our culture that I haven’t seen anyone talking about.

Next week, we’ll be taking a closer look at Gun Violence as a Collective Trauma – what it does inside our bodies when this is happening in our country. After that, we’ll be looking at what’s happening for YOU in Finding Your Mama Bear, followed by what’s happening with your kids and what they need in Supporting Your Kids.

Today, we’re talking about listening to understand.

Everyone is shouting.

It’s been happening in our country for a long time, but it has gotten increasingly loud, and true listening is happening less and less.

Maybe it’s the fear. The fear of each other. The fear of not knowing what’s going to happen to us. The need to control something that feels completely out of control. It could be the way that things are being talked about – putting up defenses before the conversation even gets started. Whatever it is, we stop listening and we get nowhere.

Perhaps we need to stop listening to the media, who seem to be adding to the fear, and empowering those who feel strongly about something to shout louder and listen less. And by not listening to the media, I mean turning off your television if you still have it on and finding your own sources. Read both sides, even though it’s hard. Model that for your older kids.

Maybe it’s a byproduct of this age of disconnection when we’re communicating without seeing each other’s faces. As humans, we get so much out of facial expressions, eye contact, and body language, but our virtual world is devoid of these communication cues. And our children are growing up in this environment. What impact does that have on them?

We need to learn to listen to one another.

Today I’m going to talk about the general climate, the roots of violence, and something called ACEs to look at what might be happening with these individuals who are hurting and hurting others so violently.

Parents right now seem to have two main fears specifically related to parenting. One is that their child is going to be a victim of gun violence, especially going to school, church or another public place. The other is that their child could grow up and be that person who is violent.

When we can remember this, it can help to put us on a similar page with most other parents.

When no one feels heard, the shouting to be heard gets louder. We also feel really isolated in so many ways as parents, and we either feel like we just can’t take on one more thing or we feel like we have to do it on our own.

The Old Story and the New Story

Charles Eisenstein, author of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, talks about the Old Story and the New Story. The old story is a story of separation, disconnection, depersonalization, isolation, of needing to do everything ourselves. The New Story is one of connection and interbeing, that we are interdependent, that we don’t have to make changes by force, but that we can find ways to work together.

In the United States of America, we’ve been immersed in the Old Story. Because you’re listening to this podcast, you are part of the big transition that is happening here of moving to the New Story. You are part of the story between the stories, as Charles calls it. You’re making these changes in your home, little by little. You’re working to apply the ideas of The New Story through parenting consciously with your children and that’s part of a bigger and very important movement.

Violence is a huge part of the Old Story.

Growing up without support for the things that have happened to you, and growing up without enough people who have the time, energy and understanding to see and hear you is significant.

The space we cultivate in our families matters. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but there needs to be space to understand another person’s view point and their story.

Hurting people hurt others.

So what’s happened to these boys and men who have perpetuated the violence?

We need to ask what happened to them instead of blaming. And we need to look at it deeply because it is happening a lot.

People who are hurting want someone else to get how badly they feel. A small child who is frustrating you is probably feeling frustrated.

People who kill a lot of people are showing you how they’re feeling.

What happens to someone to make them feel so bad?

ACEs – Adverse Childhood Experiences

I’d like to share a tool for you to understand a new way of looking at what’s happening with these boys and men. It’s called the ACES study.

Dr. Felitti, MD, discovered the idea of ACEs in his obesity clinic. He had a patient who had followed his protocol to lose weight and had great success. Within a short period of time after completing the treatment, she gained back all the weight. Normally, he wouldn’t ask his patient directly why they had gained the weight, but he did and she answered him. She explained that she was sexually abused as a child and that when she had lost weight, men had been paying attention to her. She didn’t know how to deal with and the flood of memories that was coming up for her, so she gained the weight back as self-protection.

He was surprised that something that happened to her so long ago, when she was not even a teenager, was impacting her today. They began asking all their patients about what had happened to them in their early life and started documenting what they were saying. They eventually got approval to do the ACEs study and looked at prevalence and consequences of early adverse experiences. What they found was a strong correlation between the number of adverse childhood experiences a child had before the age of 18 and physical and emotional problems, including violence.

It’s what happened to you AND it’s also how you make sense of what happened.

There are some great shifts happening with this information. Trauma-informed communities are popping up, doctors are working using the ACEs to understand what’s happening with their patients (like Nadine Burke-Harris, who is on the ACEs main page with her latest book) and CPP or Child-Parent Psychotherapy which helps parents help their children ages 5 and under to make sense of what’s happened to them.

We need good parenting information to help us identify when our child is at risk or other children we know are AND we need good support that actually addresses underlying trauma and ACEs.

Next week, we’re going to be looking at cultural trauma and the emotional and physical impact of cultural gun violence on our bodies and nervous systems.