Sue, The Intrepid Solo Traveler Day 11/20 Travel Angels

Sue the Intrepid Solo Traveller March 15, 2019
Day 11/120   Ask and You Shall Receive.

Remind me... WHAT did I ask for on this 4 month Odessey?  Oh... that’s right....  I asked for the groves on the long-playing LP record of my already pretty good life to change pattern!

But how does change happen?  Certainly NOT without a little chaos thrown in.
Why Chaos?  Maybe if it was all smooth as a calm flowing, lotus and lily pad pond, with sweet frog and cricket sounds, there’d be no reason to change.   So let’s get to the meat of all this ‘ask and you shall receive’ stuff.

Travel Angels...  that’s what I’m talking about!  I‘ve never travelled much and it wouldn’t have occured to me, until today, to overcheck my plans in advance.  For example, in Israel, not all intercity buses travel to every city between  sundown Friday and sundown Saturday.  The Sabbath is a big deal here.  This means the intrepid non-driver traveller, like me, who relies on public transit, might get stuck in an unplanned location if she didn’t take this into account when planning a weekend trip to Haifa from Tzfat!  Like this weekend!

Big OOPS!

#1   Check connection times...  Not paying close enough attention!  Big Ooops

#2    Be on time...  no loosey goosey ... oh well I’ll catch the next bus  ‘cause maybe there isn’t one!  There wasn’t a next one for that bus number, but a sweet young couple, travel angels, pointed out the next last bus, a different number, to my destination was leaving in just 10 minutes from exactly where I was standing. Big whew!

#3    Ask questions and ask the same one to more than one stranger to be sure you’re in the right place.   Ohhhh yeah...  that means talking to strangers...  a trust issue?  Get over it!

#4    Don’t be too cheap on your accommodations  AND try to have a back-up just in case the first choice is a distressing error, SUCH AS the door code to the little cheap hotel not working!  Back up was found on my behalf, by another travel angel.

TRUST is the secret and the deepening new groove in my old LP record.  Confidence in myself to manage is the second new groove.  Being Strategic before impending doom crashes down... is my third new groove.

#5    Look around for a travel angel whenever you are in need...  there’s always one close by.

Enjoy Enjoy, Enjoy...  onward.....   and I don’t know what will happen tomorrow...

11:11:11 SoulDance Channeled Meditation and Learning Conversation

The MAGIC OF SEVEN

TRUST: Kids ALWAYS Parent the Parent Who Messes Up!

TRUST:  Even a toddler will hug and nurture his Mom when she is crying because he knows he is the only one at that moment who can show her love.   

Kids automatically flip into parenting mode when their parent is unable to fulfill the role of protector.

Her voice softened becoming fearful, and child-like.  Almost apologetically she began to share her life as the 7 year old daughter of an alcoholic single Mom.  This 55 year old woman was reliving all the pain, insecurity and regret.  Most importantly she displayed HOW she, at 7 years old, took on her mother's guilt!  

Her body felt those same emotional sensations of pain, tension, and knots just as she had as a small child 47 years ago. 

She felt shame as fresh as it was then, when intuitively, she protected Mom from neighbours, teachers, pastor and playmates. 

Slowly, curiously she unpacked her lonely childhood, sharing how she lived in fear of inviting children home to play or have pajama parties. In wonder, she discovered that even as a 7 year old she OWNED her mother's behaviour believing it was her   fault, for failing to save her mother.  

Today, was the first time she allowed herself to consciously mourn her childhood inability to save her mother and to release the guilt.  Her adult life has been coloured by this failure.  Her fears of risk, of challenge, of taking responsibility, of relationship all stem from self-beliefs formed as a vulnerable 7 year old parenting the mother who should have been parenting her!  

Which messed up parents do kids choose to parent? 

• The alcoholic parent is protected \ enabled by the child UNTIL one day the child grows up. 

• The addicted parent leaves their child no choice but to parent the parent through their weakness UNTIL one day the child grows up.  

• The martyred parent guilts the child into protecting their image of themselves UNTIL one day the child grows up.

• The hypochondriac parent unconsciously relies on their children to fill in the gaps and take care of them UNTIL one day the child grows up. 

• The angry parent: intentionally scares the child into feeding Mom or Dad's ego UNTIL one day the child grows up. 

• The neglected parent begs the child to fulfill their version of love UNTIL one day the child grows up.  

This list could go on and on but what we are really talking about is that every parent no matter how good, giving, loving, and well intentioned at some time or other needs even their youngest and tenderest children to be their support.  We lean on our children for exactly the same kind of love and support they need from us.  AND they rarely disappoint us.  

In small doses, when emergencies happen and the family requires a child to temporarily take on adult responsibilities this experience can be a proud moment for the child and a quantum leap into healthy maturity.  Many military families, families of cancer victims and other equally devastating illnesses rely on every family member to step up and do the unexpected.  This is what families do and it is good... in small doses and of short duration.  

But this is not the scenario of which I write today. To be clear, I am talking about generational co-dependent family patterns handed from parent to child down through the generations.  If you were a child victim you know how this life style affects how you live today and how you parent your own children.  Is it time to release your children?   

Children are born empaths, mind readers and nurturers.  The puppy, kitten and even a new baby are nurtured and loved by your children. Their first instinct is to love, pet, cuddle and protect.   Children read our transparent need and respond accordingly.  Children also have the need to be needed much the same as we do. And like us, they need to be consistently and appreciatively recognized for providing the love and protection we ask of them.  The youngest child is proud to be the nurturer and protector of their emotionally dependent parent.  However, the needy parent is crippling their child and dooming them to unconsciously repeat similar dependency patterns with their own children.  

Have you ever noticed that the most messed up parents seem to have the most attentive children. Their children are at hand when the parent falters, picks up after them, prepares meals, runs errands and fiercely protects their parent's pride and image in the community.  Is it because they are embarrassed by their needy parent?  Partly, but they are also secretly proud of the role they play in the family.  More importantly they are scared about their own security and confused by their conflicting feelings of resentment and love, responsibility and burden, pride and embarrassment, naivety and reality. 

These young warriors know that they are the glue that keeps their family together and functioning and they actually imagine \ know what would happen if they chose irresponsibility instead.  

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Enjoy InJOY

Sue Rumack, Parent the Parent Mentor

Author:  The Pulse of Awakening, How to Connect With Soul and Life Purpose

              The Top 10 Tools Every Successful Parent Needs (release FALL 2015) 

Blog:         http://parentingsuccesstips.blogspot.ca/

Website:   https://www.pulseofawakening.com/parent-the-parent.html

Questions? email portalcoach@live.ca  subject line Parent the Parent Support. 

   

TRUST: Tantrums RULE: Theirs and Yours

Trust:  Tantrums RULE   

Your adult tantrum beats ANYTHING the kids can throw at ya!  

You are feeling it... The rage like a runaway train builds momentum heading down the mountainside; faster, faster,  impossible to stop... The bridge is out and there's no stopping.  In horror you watch as it plummets over the edge, falling... falling... falling headfirst into the abyss... down... down... down...lost in the mists.   And then, it gets worse!  You aren't the only witness to this disaster. The reporters are there, The photographers, The moment has been frozen in memories forever....

You lost it and everyone saw you lose it....  your kids will remember the train crashing into the abyss and figure out that if it's OK for you to have a major freakin' public tantrum with all the bells and whistles, attention and immediate results, then it must be OK for them to copy you!  AND THEY DO!!!  Brilliantly!

Tantrums rule because we trust the results we always get from out of control behaviour to get what we want, when we want it.  On the negative side, we can also trust the fallout...  fallout that affects how we attempt to control our kids and how others learn from sad experience to trust their expectation of our public and behaviours.

For some people, tantrums are their go to behaviour. They get what they want because nobody wants to deal with their tantrum.

Who are these adult tantrummers?  They are often your garden variety grown up bully.  You trained your parents with your tantrums when you were a kid.  You trained your friends and teachers with your tantrums, you train your spouse and you train your kids.  And no big surprise, within the first years of life, your kids are your best students because they copy you to the letter.  

Now here is the confusing part for both you and your kids if the tantrum is your go-to solution for most challenges.  You love your kids and hate them at the same time especially when they begin to control you with their tantrums.  At first you are confused, then you are annoyed, then you are frustrated and then the rage begins to build, you know the feeling... your kid is tantrumming and so are you.  They are screaming and you are screaming at them...  it gets out of control and you don't know how to put on the breaks.  Then everyone plummets over the edge down into the abyss.  

What happens next is textbook...  Your dislike of their behaviour often feels like dislike for them. They feel it, and begin to believe that you don't like them... You translate dislike into no longer loving them.  They respond to this misperception by tantrumming even more because that is the only control they have in their tiny lives.   The divide between you and your kid grows as they grow and one day you realize that they are repeating your life and there is nothing you can do about it.  Family patterns are established and history repeats and repeats and repeats. 

The solution is in developing new ways of communicating.  It is possible to reverse tantrums in both adults and children with a few simple tools.

6 Tools to Reverse Tantrums:  Theirs and Yours

Parent the Parent Home-Study Tools  -  Short Version 

Tool #1  Acceptance 

Accept that you can't change anyone else's stress patterns but that changing your stress reactions will impact everyone in your family, and workplace

Tool #2  Observation

Take time to review your past to isolate those stress triggers that always ruin your holiday

Tool #3  Intention

Set the intention to defuse just one trigger at a time.  Choose to become nonjudgmental of yourself, and kind and compassionate to yourself and others as you work through these life spoilers

  

Tool #4 Belief

Proof:  Decide to believe that your own reactions to stress are controllable!

Take action: Use new tools in this lesson to prove how your own reactions to stress are controllable

Tool #5 Tenacity

Don't give up!  

Plan out-of-the-box new solutions to each old trigger to get it gone and keep it gone.

Tool #6  Practice

Practice the de-fuser tools in this lesson and adjust them to each situation 

For the Full Version of this list with questions and answers please email  portalcoach@live.ca 
Subject Line: Tantrum Tools

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Want to help grow your own parenting success network?  Help grow this blog by SHARING.   There is someone out there in the blogosphere waiting to read your comments.  Please help others.  

Enjoy InJOY

Sue Rumack, Parent the Parent Expert, CCFL

Author:  The Pulse of Awakening, How to Connect With Soul and Life Purpose

              The Top 10 Tools Every Successful Parent Needs (release Christmas 2014) 

Blog:         http://parentingsuccesstips.blogspot.ca/

Website:   https://www.pulseofawakening.com/parent-the-parent.html

CCFL Global Academy:  http://www.CCFLGlobalAcademy.com?ref=3
Parenting Resources- 31 parenting experts, free videos, courses, 1:1 connection  

Questions? Contact  Sue Rumack, Parent the Parent Mentor via email portalcoach@live.ca  subject line Parent the Parent Support. 

TRUST: The Vulnerable Parent

How  much more might others trust you, if you knew what you trusted about yourself?  

Trust is a funny beastie.  Every day you prove your love or lack of love for yourself and others in how you treat yourself and them.  How you choose to be trustworthy every day, is the provable reinforcement that builds trust or distrust.

Just as showing your love is one big proof in action parenting bundle of trust so is sabotage; you can trust that there will be those times when you talk yourself out of what might have been the best thing to ever happen to you and your family.  What about trusting yourself to repeat the same mistakes your parents made raising you until you consciously work to change history.  AND at the end of it all, can you trust that your kids will see right through you and love you anyway?  

This post is split between What You Trust About Yourself and What Your Kids Trust About You. I am trusting you to be kind and even a little curious as you step inside my life, family history and trust issues because sometimes it's easier to learn from the mistakes of another.

Here goes...  I trust you to see yourself in my vulnerability...

Parental Self Trust Issues never go out of style. As a matter of fact trusting yourselves is the foundation on which your kids, your spouse, co-workers and boss rely on you to be consistently identifiable and valuable to them.  

As a parent, perhaps like you, I sensed what I could trust and not trust about myself even though those trusting behaviours might not have been obvious or top of mind.  My younger self acted from those instincts not from conscious choice. Since then, as a parenting expert, I've learned that most people get confused by the cause and effect relationship between the positive pieces of self-trust and those gnarly bits of self-distrust guaranteed to sabotage what should be our most productive and lasting relationships.  Trust issues cause us to be consistently inconsistent. 

Coach Sue's Trust Issues: As a young parent, I was pretty egotistical about my trustworthy decision making processes but when I messed up... for months afterwards, I could be trusted to beat myself up over my failures. This form of self-indulgent self-abuse reflected in how my kids over-reacted when they made mistakes.   I got lost in the emotions of distrusting myself. And the guilt... jeez... the guilt invaded my sleep, my rare alone time, and my daydreams.   On the positive side of self-trust, I really liked that I could trust in being an incurable romantic because this meant my kids learned positive outlook especially in the face of disaster and we had plenty of disasters that I did not cause.   I learned deep loyalty from my parents and so I grew up loyal beyond all reason.  I see that loyalty being replayed in my adult kids and love watching my grandchildren naturally slide into loyalty as a supportive tool for their parents and playmates.  We are talking about little kids trusting parents who sometimes have to make difficult life altering choices.  

About guilt... Guilt is a funny one, we either have reasonable cause or are just neurotic about it but for the most part, we all suffer from it... my parents demonstrated generational guilt, I copied them unconsciously becoming a equally guilt ridden parent. Back then I actually felt guilt as a pain in my body.  This was one little trust glitch, I somehow managed to reverse before it became a pattern for my own adolescent children.  In divorce, I learned to give away guilt, thus modelling how it's possible to change a life long habit. Now guilt is an occasional tickle rather than a huge body slam.  

In a different vein, my maternal grandmother was pretty special.  I had all kinds of trust issues with her, but she showed me the power of dedication.  In particular; dedication as in... "until death us do part" even if it was killing me.  This one got branded into my own offspring in a positive way. Dedication is one of those things I gladly trust today.  The perfect example is delivering on promises. My husband promised our 5 year old daughter a bird if she did what she was told.  She delivered, but she didn't get the bird.  To this day, 30 years later she still remembers that breach of trust by not being able to entirely trust her Dad to deliver on a promise.  Being the MOM and keeping those promises often meant driving everyone in the family crazy. But promises and how they are kept are the backbone of creating security in home, work and relationships.  

On the other side of the trust coin, my kids could trust that I always had goodies hidden in my coat pocket when I got home, and would be there with them late into the night helping with  homework deadlines. They have also accused me of driving them crazy by being over-protective or hiding the truth when I was afraid of making them feel insecure.  As humans and parents we are vulnerable to our ability to trust and to generate trust in others. 

And this brings us to our kids.  Have you every been called out by your kids for your actions?  Our kids actually do see right through us, they know what they can trust; both the positive and the negative.  They love us anyway.  AND more importantly they copy us without hesitation.  We are responsible for their patterning, just as our parents were responsible for ours AND this is where the divide comes in.  We can consciously choose to change the trust patterns that drive our actions when we become aware that they exist and how they impact not only our lives but the futures of our kids.  

When we take the time to sit quietly and without judgment observe our behaviours, we can clearly see our trust patterns and how they affect our choices and behaviours.  Similarly we see how closely our kids mimic what we do.  This is where trust originates between kids and parents. This is where parents become vulnerable.  Now is moment when you reflect on how trust creates vulnerability in YOU!"

Your Parent the Parent Home-Study Homework: 

1. Identify 3 positive and 3 negative trust behaviours in your kids that copy your behaviours. 
2. Notice how these behaviours affect how much you like your kids when they are displaying these behaviours.  
3. Choose which single behaviour you want to change in yourself.  

• If you let me know which behaviour you want to change, I will post a blog on how to make that change.  
• If you want more help, I will be available with resources.  

Please join me again tomorrow to explore:  "What make you the best person to raise your kids?"

I'm Sue Rumack, your parent-the-parent coach.  My entire goal in writing this blog is help parents who may not be able to access group or individual coaching to get as much help as they can, with each homework to make change begin to happen for themselves. Choose a week, any week and try just one of the suggestions above for that whole week.  Then let me know what changed at your house.  It's FREE and it will change your life.  

Print this post so you have the questions handy and keep it with your journal.  

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Want to help grow your own parenting success network?  Help grow this blog by SHARING.   There is someone out there in the blogosphere waiting to read your comments.  Please help others.  

Enjoy InJOY

Sue Rumack, Parent the Parent Expert, CCFL

Author:  The Pulse of Awakening, How to Connect With Soul and Life Purpose

              The Top 10 Tools Every Successful Parent Needs (release Christmas 2014) 

Blog:         http://parentingsuccesstips.blogspot.ca/

Website:   https://www.pulseofawakening.com/parent-the-parent.html

CCFL Global Academy:  http://www.CCFLGlobalAcademy.com?ref=3
Parenting Resources- 31 parenting experts, free videos, courses, 1:1 connection  

NEED HELP? Contact  Sue Rumack, Parent the Parent Mentor via email portalcoach@live.ca  subject line Parent the Parent Support. 

Remember: you can unsubscribe at anytime by clicking unsubscribe at the bottom of this page.  

TRUST: Kids Trust Adults Who Trust Themselves

The secret sauce to parenting is that your kids will only trust you as far as you trust yourself.

Who said your kids are supposed to trust you or you them?   Who wrote in stone that trust is a requirement of parenting?

It's true that many generations of families exist where not only is there no trust, but lack of trust is a reliable family pattern with a long and colourful history full of generational stories that keep repeating. Look around at the adult relationships you currently have, and ask if you implicitly trust these people to protect you, love you and believe in you?

Trust is a really tough ideal for people to buy into and yet we still naively expect that between parents and their kids, something unexplainable and unbreakable called trust exists.  So how does trust in families actually work?

Over the next few days, we will be exploring different facets of trust within the family dynamic. Please be sure to check in daily for the next installment or subscribe at the bottom of this post so you don't miss a single post.

For today we will play with definitions, and ask a few foundational questions to get you curious about tools to improve your own trusting relationships.

Definition:   Trust:  A relationship between 2 or more people who choose to open a vulnerable bond with one another.

Synonyms for Trust:

confidence, belief, faith, certainty, assurance, conviction, credence; reliance

Biology:  There is no guarantee in the familial genetic bond that guarantees TRUST between parent and child, and we aren't even touching sibling trust or extended family trust.

Intellectual:  Trust is an emotional state that permits a person to feel safe within a relationship

What is TRUST?   In all its guises still comes down to your kids trusting adults who trust themselves.  Even if that trust is misplaced, and the adult is not worthy of the trust being given, your child will still give their trust to any adult who displays self-trust.

WHY when you are the person who brought them into this world, takes care of and loves them, would your child ever consider trusting someone other than you?

• Explore where your kids put their trust.  

Homework for Parent the Parent Home-Study Members: 

1. Write one or two paragraphs exploring Trust and how it is playing out in your life.  
2. Look for repeating patterns of both positive and negative experiences.  Journal about them.
3. Ask what you learn from positive and negative trust experiences that support your building of successful trusting relationships? 

Come back tomorrow to explore The Vulnerable Parent.

I'm Sue Rumack, your parent-the-parent coach.  My entire goal in writing this blog is help parents who may not be able to access group or individual coaching to get as much help as they can, with each homework to make change begin to happen for themselves. Choose a week, any week and try just one of the suggestions above for that whole week.  Then let me know what changed at your house.  It's FREE and it will change your life.  

Print this post so you have the questions handy and keep it with your journal.  

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Not yet a Blog Subscriber?   Scroll to the bottom of this page and click subscribe so you won't miss a single post. 

Want to help grow your own parenting success network?  Help grow this blog by SHARING.   There is someone out there in the blogosphere waiting to read your comments.  Please help others.  

Enjoy InJOY

Sue Rumack, Parent the Parent Expert, CCFL

Author:  The Pulse of Awakening, How to Connect With Soul and Life Purpose

              The Top 10 Tools Every Successful Parent Needs (release Christmas 2014) 

Blog:         http://parentingsuccesstips.blogspot.ca/

Website:   https://www.pulseofawakening.com/parent-the-parent.html

CCFL Global Academy:  http://www.CCFLGlobalAcademy.com?ref=3
Parenting Resources- 31 parenting experts, free videos, courses, 1:1 connection  

NEED HELP? Contact  Sue Rumack, Parent the Parent Mentor via email portalcoach@live.ca  subject line Parent the Parent Support. 

Remember: you can unsubscribe at anytime by clicking unsubscribe at the bottom of this page.