Latest / Man In Your Corner with Shaun Tucker / Ep. 49 | Mastering Mental Fitness: How Founder Dads Can Model Self-Regulation for Their Kids
Transcript
- Shaun: Welcome back to episode 49 of the reset. Why is self-regulation an important skill to teach your kids? First of all, the only person that needs to learn to self-regulate is not your child. It's actually you. And they will model it and learn it through you. So let me explain. Self-regulation just means that you are learning to respond rather than react. whatever situations come to you, whatever situations or kind of challenges that you're facing, it's a matter of learning how to respond, overreact. Because constantly what's happening now in your body and in your mind is it's only taking in a very very small amount of information out of the billions and bits billions of bits of information that are available Why is it doing that? Why is it sorting through all this stuff? If you actually tapped into the subconscious brain for a second and actually see all of the information that it's working with right now, like your heart is beating without you having to think about it. Your blood is pumping all through your body without you having to think about it. Your breath is happening without you having to think about it. You're blinking without thinking about it. When you were just a little fetus, you grew into this human being that you are right now, you didn't have to think about that. and also. when it comes down to learning. Most people just learn by being there and observing how they respond. It's not about repetitious learning for some people and sometimes it is, but most of the time it's just taking action. That's the best way to learn. Make mistakes. That's the best way to learn. Fail. That is the greatest way to learn. Because you learn what not to do. And the reason why this is important is because when you look at it, and this has been a challenge for me as it probably has been for you. how quickly you come back from a failure, from a mistake, from a negative piece of feedback and bounce back to your being yourself. That's what it means to self-regulate. If that period takes a very long period of time and you know, it's really stuck in your memory and it's triggering you pretty badly to the point where now you're changing the way that you are. you're changing how you show up based on something that happened. You know, these are real things by the way, not just people who have gone through very traumatic experiences or you know, they have PTSD or anything like that. That is still obviously very, very real. But what I'm saying is, Even one of your work colleagues saying, hey, I hate the way your hair looks today. You can easily just brush that off, but for some people who are quite sensitive might actually see that as, ⁓ no, someone doesn't like me. I feel rejected from that. And now that's gonna affect me, because that thought of me not being good enough or me having to dress a certain way. it means that I can't show up as myself anymore. And you probably have many experiences of these when you're a kid, right? And you you were probably taking out the textures and you had so much fun, right? You had the textures or the paintbrush in hand and you were going, painting all over the walls and painting all over the floors and, you know, and then next second your mom or your dad comes in or your caretaker comes in or your brother, older brother or sister, whoever comes in. and just starts yelling at you saying, what have you done? Or maybe it was your teacher. What have you done? You're a stupid kid, right? That is a reaction. That's a reaction that is now from the kid's point of view is perceived as a threat. Cause the mind is pretty smart. will take something that has high amounts of energy, like an emotion, right? Say it. as anger or frustration and it will see it as a danger. So now that kid is gonna respond to feedback that might not be helpful, but it's helpful for growth, right? Later down the track, if it's not healed or if it's not looked at and it's not allowed to be there and it's not allowed to be felt, then it's gonna happen the same way. It's gonna be projected as a reaction. That same reaction that you... had as a child when your parent or your caretaker or your teacher yelled at you for putting text to marker all over the floor and on the walls. You were just having fun, right? You were just painting curiously. You were just going with life, ebbing and flowing and loving it. There are no rules to that. And I'm not saying that there's no rules and boundaries when it comes to keeping kids safe and You know, like teaching respect and discipline and all those things. No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying here is there's a way to deliver the information. There's a way to keep the rule known or keep the boundary there without having to lead an imprint on your child. And it's not by being overly fragile. It's about being true to your own word. It's about how you handle that situation because the natural instinct for you when you see that as a parent, it's probably like, ⁓ no, I spent so much time and so much money getting this right. And this kid has just come destroyed it, right? That is such a reactionary response in your body, in your system. So the invitation for you, for me, is to actually breathe through it. So just inhale. and breathe out. The kid doesn't know that they're doing anything wrong and you're just going to make them wrong by saying that this is not the right thing to do. Right. So it's in the delivery of the information and not so much from ⁓ what you say point of view but actually they are more impacted by the emotion of it by the tone by how you present by how you show up in that moment. and they will continue to test your boundaries. Right, so I actually see kids as a great gift to learn how to self-regulate and learn how to become an emotional master of yourself. And this is such an important skill because... I can't say, but I know a lot of people really struggle with their emotions. I can't give you a number of what the percentage is of how many people are actually emotionally intelligent. I could definitely cannot do that. But what I can say is it is a huge advantage in the workplace when it comes to the speaking arenas, when it comes to networking, when it comes to basically any kind of life skill. Learning how to regulate your emotions and self-regulate is one of the most important skills you'll ever have, especially as a parent. And I'm thinking, because my daughter is only two years old, when she goes to school, she's currently in childcare, but when she goes to school, there's going to be times where the teachers might be annoyed with her, And they might call us up for a parent teacher interview. She could be a golden student as well, I don't know. but it's more those moments of how you respond when the teacher's delivering the information and notice how they are. Because what happens is it's a bit like a domino effect. If you're in control of your state, and what I mean by that is when you're regulating your breath, you're listening to the information and you're allowing the response rather than reaction. So you don't just get angry at the teacher and say it's your fault. No, you slow down, you take a breath and you listen to what they have to say and then if they're quite angry or if they're quite direct and it actually hurts to hear Be with it and allow that calm state that you have to actually go over to them as well. Because the more calm you are, the more calm they will become. It's just the natural law of action and consequence. Every action has equal and opposite reaction. So this will happen at an unconscious level. They won't even know that they've just calmed down. You could point it out to them, but that would that might make it seem like you're a dick. And maybe you are, I don't know. But when it comes to being a parent, this is one of the most important skills you can learn. Because then you can actually allow your kid to flourish. grow in the environment that it's in instead of just thrashing on it and saying you're not good enough because receiving those messages as a kid is damaging not only for the childhood but actually for the rest of the life. So what are one or two things you've learned from today's conversation that you can take away with and actually use in your life? Maybe it's just taking a breath when someone gives you feedback or maybe it's just... listening instead of telling. know what it is for you but hey if you found value in today's episode I invite you to share it with one person. Doesn't matter who it is if you if you know someone who you can get value from this share it with them. Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to seeing you in tomorrow's episode.