Being at Your Best as a Parent.Taking Care of Your Health and Wellbeing Podcast

0:00 MUSIC

0:07 ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

Hello, I'm Annmarie McMahill and this is a Tools for Your Child’s Success podcast.

As parents, we want to be at our best for our children. I’ve learned that if I want to be at my best, I need to take care of my own health and wellbeing, and that includes my social and emotional health along with my physical health.

JENNIFER MILLER:

We need to look at ways to care for ourselves, care for our wellbeing in order to be the parents we want to be, and I think it starts with really small steps.

ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

Many of us experience changes in our relationship with ourselves when we’re in a parenting role. A child brings about positive changes in identity as we play a necessary role in their lives. But a child can bring about some strains too - less sleep, less time to connect with others, less time for nutrition, exercise and reflection. We might find ourselves feeling stressed, depleted, or even overwhelmed more often and feeling incapable of devoting energy to our own well-being when we are so focused on caring for others.

JENNIFER MILLER:

I think our kids need to understand that we are human and that we are constantly learning and developing, and that they are part of that learning and development.

ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

I’d like to introduce our guest for today’s podcast. Jennifer Miller, author of the book “Confident Parents, Confident Kids; Raising Emotional Intelligence In Our Kids and Ourselves from Toddlers to Teenagers.” Jennifer has over 25 years of experience working with adults - whether educators or parents - helping them become more effective with the children they care for by learning to nurture their social and emotional well-being. She will be sharing some valuable insights on ways in which busy parents and caregivers can care for their own well-being in the midst of the many demands they face.

ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

Welcome, thanks for being here.

JENNIFER MILLER:

Thanks Annmarie, I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

So, to get started. Most of us know that we should eat healthy food and get exercise to feel better and contribute to our health. But what do you mean when you say contributing to a parent's social and emotional health? What is social and emotional health and what does that look like?

JENNIFER MILLER:

I'm going to start out with emotional health. I think we, uh, have to know our inner expressions, our inner states and, uh, that's no small feat in a culture that tells us what we can feel, what we can't feel, what we can show in public, what we can't show in public. So most of us are not that well in tune with what's going on with our emotions. So, it takes attention, it takes acceptance of what we're feeling, it takes some reflection to ask questions about the what and the way. What are we feeling? Often it's a constellation of a mix of emotions.

Sometimes they're conflicting, sometimes we don't have language that really works for us to pinpoint what we're feeling, which can be really frustrating. And, we see it in our children, we see it in our teens when we ask them what they're feeling and they can't really well communicate what's going on inside. So, it takes that reflection of asking both the what, what are we really feeling here? And then why. What- what triggered it? What circumstances are surrounding it? And an even deeper question is where did it come from?

So emotions are created, are learned over a lifetime, and often our emotions stem from situations that occurred when we were young. And when we have those emotions as a parent, we don't necessarily draw that history or connection to that...