Don’t be Childish | LQ051

Crystal Clark: 00:00:00

Welcome to our love space. Today. I'm so glad that you're here joining me, exploring a few more April showers before we end off this theme for the month. And you know, I have to say we've been talking about April showers because it's important for us to bring the May flowers, right? We're talking about all of these hiccups and things, because they really if we can navigate them, explore them, find out what works in our love space, in our relationship dynamic, we will, for sure have May flowers, which weeds. We will for sure have a relationship that's even stronger and more vibrant and more full of joy and will stay sparked, and that's really what we're looking for. But you know, it's kind of hard for me to think of April showers right now as I record this, because it's an absolutely gorgeous spring day. So great that I walked to my spark forever love space office today, and have now walked here to record this for you. So I'm excited to be soaking up all this wonderful vitamin D today. But that being said, let's think about our April showers, because really exploring these, the research will you know shows us pretty blatantly that you know when you're having these kind of repetitive arguments in your relationship, in your marriage, or these, you know, having lots of instances of miscommunications, lots of instances of arguments, that it's really you're going to start to view the big picture of your relationship, right? Someone were to ask you, how's your relationship going? Or ask you, you know, are you happily married? You're going to start to say no. You're going to start to say that you are not really happily married or happily together with the love of your life. And lots of these studies actually, when they get couples to report on their relationship satisfaction, they're often just on like, a five point scale or three point scale, and lots of times the options are as straightforward and simple as happily married, okay or fair? Unhappily married, okay? So they can a lot of the times they're even that basic. But the interesting piece here is that the group that reports to have an okay or fair relationship often has similar divorce and separation rates to the couples that report being unhappily married. So it's really only that first choice of Yeah, happily married or very happily married or in a great relationship, those are the couples that are being more successful. So you may think, I'm just at an okay, fair place, not too bad, but that actually, as that goes on over years and years, that okay, slash fair place, that's where we end up making our bad habits. And we can think of this with the five to one ratio our golden relationship rule, right? You know, I know we all know here in the love space, right, that we need five positive right? Five positive interactions with the love of our life for every one. Hic, Prickly, not so good interaction. And you know, if we think about this, how it would play out, how it might look in our everyday lives, as maybe in the morning, you're rushing around, you're getting ready for work, you're trying to make the kids breakfast, we're trying to get everyone to school and out the door on time, and maybe a little miscommunication at prickle happens, and, you know, we're a bit grumbly to each other, and then maybe in the afternoon, there's a miscommunication about the dinner plans, and we have a bit of an argument about whose responsibility it was. And so we've had another prickle, but maybe we both had really busy days at work, so we haven't you haven't talked to your love of life all day. So you've had a morning prickle. Not talked all day. Have had a dinner afternoon hiccup that's caused another prickle or disagreement, maybe a bit of blaming one way or the other, those kind of interactions, and then after dinner, you know, maybe we see that there's still dishes in the sink, and that was supposed to be someone's responsibility, and now we're doing an eye roll and a huff and a sigh and a blah. Well, that's three times in one day, and now maybe it's eight o'clock at night, and we need 15 more positive interactions between the two of you before we're back at neutral or okay for the next day for the rest of the week, right? So think, and you know, after you've gone through that, if you're at the sink, eye rolling and huffing and like, ah, being like, they always do that. They always leave the dishes in the sink. They never do this chore. They always blah, blah, blah, when we start talking about our partner and those kind of absolutes and get caught up in that, are we there? Gonna walk through, you know, to the TV room or living room, or wherever you're watching TV, and sit down and have a snuggle and watch some Netflix and laugh with each other and catch up on our day. Share a funny story that happened at work. No, maybe we got one or two in, right? Because we need 15 to those three. Maybe we got a few in over dinner after we had the dinner prickle, but maybe not. Maybe dinner was a bit quiet, maybe dinner was a bit prickly. And so you can see that even though we're not having these full out yelling arguments, you can see how these little things can really build up and can really erode all of the love and understanding and kindfulness that you might have for each other, right? And it can really just wear that away. And you know, then, if we have anything that's maybe a stressful change to your relationship dynamic that can also throw things off. And so today, the April shower, going to be talking about is the dynamic change that can come along when you have kids, right? Because last episode, we talked about finances, which is a very, very common couples argument. We talked about finances, and so the next most common couples argument is over parenting and children. So not whether to have children or not, but how to parent and how to get through the everyday life once you've had kids. So don't get me wrong, I am kids are a blessing, but they're a change in your relationship dynamic, right? They change the logistics of when, where, how loud you can have sex and intimacy in your own house, right? They might change the dynamic of how often you get to share affection with each other. They might change. They change the dynamic of how many household responsibilities and chores there are, right? They change the dynamic of the budget, which we touched on a little bit last episode in our finance fights, right? And now you are looking after the two of you are looking after something that is helpless, really, right? And who knows how long they're going to be helpless for? Really depends on their personality. I have found with raising children, but you know, it's even going to maybe change your values, and we'll get into how it might change your values, or it's going to maybe change your perspective on some of your values. But really, the biggest potential shift that adding kids to relationship dynamic is going to do is that your babies slash, your children are going to train you. They're going to train you. And this comes from my kind of behavior analytic, right? Because, as we know, I'm a trade behavior analyst. This comes from my behavior analytic point of view of how humans work. And if your children train you, and the training happens to come out opposite have opposite effects for each of you, then we might feel like there's a shift, like there's a disconnect in in your dynamic. Okay, so let me dive into that a little bit more. So there is no I just want to put it out there. I am not giving you in this episode any parenting guidance, okay, so I'm just going to put it out there. I know we all know that there are, like, if we think of extreme cases. Sure, there are right and wrong ways to parent, right, obviously, abuse bad,

Crystal Clark: 00:08:46

right? I just, you know, I just have to put that disclaimer in there, in case someone's like, no, there are right ways and wrong ways to parent. Sure, yes, abuse, bad, okay, got it. But whereas I'm talking to you guys, you guys, I'm sure are all lovely parents are, or if you're not parents yet, you're planning to be lovely parents. You're planning to do your best. There's so much information out there, you know, just like you're listening to this podcast, because there's way too much relationship information out there, and we need some big picture thinking ideas. Okay, there's so much, way too much parenting information out there, and it almost makes you think like I just wish I was too busy surviving and hunting and gathering to think about all the ways I could raise a child, because it can be confusing and intimidating overwhelming. So this episode is not about the right and wrong ways to parent your child. This episode is thinking about how children change your dynamic and how you are going to continue to be a teamwork, collaboration, despite that dynamic change. It's similar to COVID, you know, when I worked with, you know, a lot of couples after COVID, or maybe, like, at the tail end of, you know, lockdown and things like that. And. And what really, I think what COVID ended up doing is it ended up showing that it really polarized a lot of couples. So other couples did awesome. Like, hooray. I'm spending all of this time with my very bestest friend at home, and this is fantastic, and I love it. Or, oh my gosh, I have to spend all of my time stuck with this person. You know, we're used to having so many outside distractions, and now I am here, and I'm only with them, and oh my gosh, this is too much. And so I found that, you know, obviously the couples where it brought their dynamic together, they they got to have even more of what they loved and cherished and whatnot, and knew that, like they would get back to, you know, normal things and friendships and and, you know, getting to see being out, being out into the world more often. You know that they they were fine to be patient and wait for that, because they were having a great time with the love of their life, whereas other people, who I think, start to realize like, oh, actually, I only have a great time with the love of my life when there are certain percentage of my life, right? We had systems and routines that kept us organized, kept us going, and we got to do all of the other things that fed our emotional cups. And now we've hit COVID, and I have to rely more on my love space and my significant other to provide, you know, some of that cup filling up, and it's actually not working. Okay, right? So I did have to work with a lot of couples through that, and I feel like children can sometimes create that kind of polarizing dynamic where maybe some couples, it brings us more, it brings you immediately more together as a teamwork, collaboration, and other couples get really lost, okay, and then everything in between. So there's no right way to raise a child. Also remember that when you're thinking about your teamwork, collaboration, and when I say children train you. So I will just give you an example so we can have some shared values. Maybe we've talked about how we want to parent. Maybe we've talked about, you know, what is going to be important to us about parenting, what our childhood experiences were like, and many, many times as a parent, we bring our childhood experiences into it. And if we thought that our parents raised us just fine, or maybe, you know, maybe some things they did were a bit meh, a bit like, you know, but we were like, Hey, do you know what I turned out fine. You know, no one got hurt, I think, you know, they did a good enough job and or a great job, then we're probably going to carry on those practices ourselves, of what we saw modeled to us. Then on the other end of the spectrum, you have people who maybe did not like the way they were parented. Maybe it's because it didn't match their personality type. Maybe it's because they didn't, you know, it wasn't the best situation, it wasn't a nurturing parental environment, whatever the case may be, but they didn't like what their childhood experience was, and now they are very concerned and are very stuck and are very determined on having their children have a different experience, and that is great. What I would caution people who are on that train about is just doing whatever the opposite is 100% of the time of what their parents did okay, because sometimes that can almost get us stuck in in the other end of things, and that will can make conflict between our partner, because our partner might be like, Ah, well, I understand your parents did, like, you know, these one to 10 things, but you know 10 through 15 that they did with the same as my parents and I would like to do that 10 through 15, and then the, you know, the you might be shut off to that 10 through 15 because you're lumping them all together in Just what your parents did. Okay? So that's the only thing that I caution is like, yep, you maybe want to give your children a different family experience, but let's just not, let's make sure that we're not just doing whatever the absolute opposite was, or just throwing, you know that old saying, throwing the baby out with the bathwater,

Crystal Clark: 00:14:20

which I know what it means, right? It means, like, don't throw everything out, right? But who's throwing the babies out with the bathwater? Actually, I guess that's a good metaphor to use when we're talking about raising children. There you go. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. You just because you don't like the way you're parented doesn't mean that everything that your parents did was horrible and awful and gross, disgusting, not mindful, however you want to label it. You can pick and choose. They could have maybe done some things, and even if you're like, you know, I want to hate everything that they did just attribute to someone else, and stick your brain from that, there we go. Okay, so you can see how background right back. Ground of personal experiences can affect our parenting style, so that's one thing to think about now, when we're thinking about this and when we're discussing this, this is what we want to be vulnerable and open and honest with with our partner. Sometimes you need to come see crystal, so crystal can help you explore that piece. Sometimes you might even need more, rather than just a coach or someone to give you some nice guiding questions to help you with that exploration. Sometimes you might need more counseling if there is past trauma that's associated with that, because that's going to need a registered clinical counselor to really help you dive in there and heal up those pieces so past experience can affect you and then. But you know, we also have to think, what's the thing under the thing? And let me give you this example. So we have a kid, we're in the supermarket, and we are at the checkout stand, and they start screaming and crying because they went to chocolate bar, and we have said no as a parent, okay, both of you are there. Both of you have said no. Great teamwork, collaboration. We're on a similar front. Now, this is where your children can easily train you. This is where, actually how all of life can easily train us. Okay, so when we experience things in life, when we have something going on like a child crying. We that will invoke something in us. That's going to invoke some sort of feeling, some sort of behavior, right? It's going to invoke something in us. And for people who find that very aversive, very yucky, I never want to see my child cry. It does something inside my heart, my body, and that none of us want to see our children cry. But for some people, it's very visceral. And if it's very visceral, you want to turn it off in the fastest way possible. Now in behavior terms, this is called negative negative reinforcement, because you have something that's in the environment, it's making you feel gross and horrible, and you will do whatever behavior you can to turn it off, right? So if you have that kid tantruming and you said no to the chocolate, and now they're screaming and crying, and for some people, maybe not even the crying, maybe it's the social embarrassment of other people staring at you in the store, I'm not sure, but whatever is happening that is that about the crying that is making you feel uncomfortable, you're going to want to turn it off, off, off, off. You're pushing that off button. And so maybe you're just going to give them the candy bar, right? Maybe you're going to pick them up and walk out of there and forget about all of your groceries. You're going to do whatever is going to turn it off faster. I mean, typically, that's like a very simplified behavior example that we that lots of people use, and normally we just say, like, yeah, we give them the candy bar, right? Because that's going to turn it off the fastest. So most likely, right, giving them what they wanted. So if you're a parent where that is very aversive to you, it's a bad thing to hear the crying, or to hear the whatever, to experience the whatever, okay, then your kid might be training you to go along with their plan, because you're going to do whatever you can do to turn it off. Or what happens with negative reinforcement? It's actually very unethical children. What happens with that negative reinforcement is you actually get so good at turning off the behavior that you don't even want it to start. So then you might shape your life around like, how do I not make my kid cry, right? Um, so that's kind of your kid can train you that way. Now, what happens if you're the parent who actually gets rewarded rather than, rather than your kid crying, and you're like, I need to turn that crying off. What if you're the parent where you hear the crying? It's like a challenge. It's like, Ah, here is my parenting challenge, and I'm going to be the parenting superstar, and I'm going to hold that line. No, there's no chocolate, no candy happening 100% No, I don't care about the social embarrassment of having my kid rolling around on the floor and screaming that I'm the worst parent in the world, right? I'm holding that line. Some people find that rewarding and reinforcing to hold that rule. I've told my kid a rule, and I follow through on it, and those are really kind of like the sort of opposite ends of parenting styles, right? So the person who feels like a superstar for for getting their kids to follow every rule and letter to the T, and the parents who are like, Oh, I just want my child to be happy, and I will remove any discomfort from them so that I also don't get the discomfort of seeing them in discomfort, and that's really how our children can accidentally train us. And so if you're in that parenting situation with the love of your life, okay? And one of you is responding to being like the rule following superstar, I want an A plus on my parenting of I've. Said no, and I'm following through on that no. And then the other one of you is like, I want an A plus on my parenting for making sure that we're not having any traumatic childhood tantrum events. Neither of you is necessarily wrong in that situation, right? Because, again, we're not talking about the rights and wrongs of parenting styles or of parenting in certain situations. I'm just talking about your reactions as a parent in those situations. Neither of them is right or wrong. That's how you are programmed. That's what you either find reinforcing or punishing in your life. Right reinforcing as in you know, if you're a person who's said no and you withst the tantrum and you felt like you did a good job, that's going to mean that you're more likely to do that in the future. If you're the person who gave the chocolate bar and they stopped crying right away, and then people stopped looking at you, and then your kid was happy for the car ride home, you might think, Ah, this is wonderful parenting, and this feels good, and so I'm going to do it again in the future, right? But now, if you have two of you who are having opposite experiences, even though you talked about the values of parenting, you talked about how you want to raise children, you talked about all of these things, you could start to see how, how this dynamic is going to open up some disagreement between the two of you, right? Because the parent who wants to give the chocolate bar when you're not giving the chocolate bar is going to say, like, just give it to them. Just give it to them. Why is it such a big deal? Right? And vice versa, what the parent who likes to say no and follow through is going to be like, Why did you give them the chocolate bar? We already said no. We agreed that it was a no. Why did you do that? And we're going to have these arguments and these disconnect over parenting. And now it can seem a little bit like parenting styles, right? Some of us have already decided whether before we've ever even and this is kind of more where that, like gentle parenting style or whatnot, comes from. Some of us have already decided I never want to see my child cry even before I've had a child, so anything that happens, I don't even need to experience that. Right? Some of us don't realize that about ourselves until we have that experience, and then we might not realize that that's what we're doing. And again, neither of none of this is inherently right or wrong. It's just about really stepping back and seeing the behavior dynamics right, the the relationship dynamics that change, because now we're no longer, you know, just two people working in a love space. We might be three people or four people or five people, or how many other people trying to navigate this love space to gather so often, I help couples figure out, you know, what that is, and what they're kind of, not necessarily with their parenting style is, but where we're finding that the kids are training each of their behaviors right and The and from that, we're able to kind of step back and have some understanding for each other. You can have more understanding for each other if you can see like, hey, oh, that's why that person doesn't like that, or that's why they're that person is makes that choice in their parenting, right? So we can step back and we can see that more clearly, and that's going to allow us to have more understanding and acceptance for each other's parenting style. It's also going to let us see maybe to think about what

Crystal Clark: 00:23:30

we could let go of, can I let go of the fact that I know when that parent is experiencing a tantrum that they are going to you know, go along with what the child's request is, or go again. This is just a silly example, but it helps make it a little bit more concrete, black and white. Am I, as the other parent, going to be able to let go of when that parent is trying to hold a firm ruler standard in place? I'm not sure this is where we can all explore and chat together and figure out this new dynamic, right? Because we've never had this dynamic in your relationship before, right? If you've gone from no kids to kids no parenting to parenting, that's why some people get a dog, right? Cats, you don't need it so much because cats don't have to follow as many rules for the most part and are less trainable for the most part. They mostly train your behaviors a little bit like kids in that fact. But dogs, that's why lots of couples, right, have like a dog as their practice child, because dogs have more they're a little bit more helpless, right? We have to actually take them out of the house, to go to the bathroom. You know, we have to feed them. We have to not give them too many treats, all of these things. Maybe we can still leave them home alone, which can't do the baby, but you can start to start to see people's parenting dynamics in those situations, right? Because, you know, we need to know what. We are able to let go of what we need to work through, what we need to maybe compromise on, because if we don't, that's going to drive a wedge between you guys. That's going to drive a wedge between the two of you, that's going to stop you from being a team. So sometimes we're going to have to you're going to have to agree to disagree, right? You're going to have to agree to disagree. And if you can both let go and be accepting, right? Because, again, no one is doing any abusive parenting, right? If you can agree to let go of certain things, agree to be accepting and then do some tag team parenting. That is going to bring you back to a teamwork collaboration, right? Because it's never that one parent is 100% right. And we all know that different kids and different personalities, right? Like, if you are listening and you have multiple children, you can probably agree that maybe one of your parenting styles actually matches one or a few of your kids better then and then the other kids are matched by the other parenting style, maybe a bit better, right? And sometimes you might be like, That's why, sometimes I think you get black sheep with the family too. Is you might have two parents that have the same parenting style, but you might have a kiddo who has, you know, the personality or what they find punishing or reinforcing is different from the rest of the kids in the family, and that parenting style doesn't really work for them, but maybe it worked for all of the other kids. Who knows, right? We're all humans. It's hard to human, it's hard to be human. It's hard to help other humans be humans, right? And that's what we're doing when we're parenting. We're just trying to help our little humans become better, older humans, right? And be self sufficient and grow wonderful love spaces and wonderful lives for themselves. So we do need to keep in mind that it's never one parent that's 100% right or wrong. We all know that kids are all different, have all different personalities, and could benefit from different parenting styles. And this is where you and your love of life. Really do need to be vulnerable. Really do need to have a teamwork, collaboration plan, which we can do together. I can help you with creating that plan. We also want to think back to the 8080, marriage book by the clems, about the fact that we don't really have a modern standard, right? We don't really have a modern standard for our relationship dynamics. Some of you out there are following the, you know, what is it called? A Trad wife, a traditional you know, couples trend, where you're doing the 8020 marriage, right, where it's a little bit more like a 1950s 1940s whatever dynamic, that's fine. That has a clear definition of gender roles in it. But if you're not following that, then the 8080, marriage is what you want to do. Because if you're trying to make things 5050, and everything be equal, and you're trying to take care of another human, impossible, if you're trying to take care of two other humans, impossible, more other humans, impossible, right? Because things are just going to come up that are unpredictable when you are raising children and life, I mean, life is not, you know, 100% fair and equal any who's right. And you can't just guarantee that between the two of you when you're raising another little human being and or multiple human beings. So do keep that 8080, marriage idea in mind that if we're all, you know, bringing our best selves, if we're all bringing main parent energy, right, like main character energy, we're all bringing our main parent energy to the teamwork collaboration, then we're going to be okay. And finally, let's just take a moment to really acknowledge that Parenting is hard. I don't know if social media or, you know if just hearing stories of our parents parenting, if anyone is under you know the myth that parenting is easy. It's not easy, because we wouldn't have the saying that it takes a village to raise a child if it was easy, right? And I know that, and that's specifically like in our modern world, where we have so many more expectations, like parents were not expected to spend as much time one to one time or time, you know, really making sure their children are having full lives, right? It used to be more like, Hey, I just want to make sure you don't die, right? I'm making sure you don't die. I'm making sure that you become an adult that can hold down a job, and then, you know, it's up to you to make your life fulfilled. Now we're. Hyper focused on our children having their best lives before they're even five, before they're even 10, before they're even 15, right? Well, I just don't, I really, actually don't know what kids are going to do once they're 20 now, because they've had so so much support and love to help them have their best lives as children, which is fantastic, but also they've got another 60, 7080, years to go after that. But I digress. So I just do want to recognize to all of you out there who are parenting, who are dreaming of parenting, who are on their way to parenting, who are unsure about parenting, but maybe we'll get there one day that Parenting is hard and that's okay. It's okay for it to be hard, and it's okay for us to do hard things in life and still enjoy them. If it's hard, it doesn't mean we have to hate it. We can be like, Wow, this is really hard, but I'm so glad I'm doing it and it you know, even though it's hard, it does bring me joy and it does bring me fulfillment. That is okay for those two things to exist together in your heart and in your mind, right? And I know that it does take a village to raise a child, and some of us feel that we don't have a village, but you do have a teammate. You do have a love of life with you that wants, that wants to be a teammate, that wants to do a teamwork, collaboration with you. Otherwise you would be married, otherwise you wouldn't be in a committed relationship. And sometimes we need a little extra support. Sometimes your village might be crystal, right? It might not be grandparents or extended family or whatever you would like your village to be, but it can be crystal. I'm here for you. I am your village. I will put you right. We will work all as a team together to get your teamwork collaboration plan, you know, going, tweaking, moving along, moving you forward, right? Because you do have a teammate, and when you realize that you are raising little humans together as a collaborative team. You know, then you're going to be able to be vulnerable, be loving, and that's going to keep you sparked.