Hi there. I'm Jill Allen and this is find your fierce, the show designed for women to discover your fierce, unlock and unstoppable mindset. Build unbreakable courage and completely transform how you show up every single day. Each week I will bring ideas, methods and strategies that will inspire you to step into your greatness and live life on purpose. Let's be fit, fierce and unstoppable.
(00:38): Love that you're with us. Once again, we have a special guest. I cannot wait for you to meet her, but first I have to thank you for your love and support. I appreciate all your feedback, your reviews, and I love that you share this podcast with your friends and family. So if you can keep on doing that, it helps reach more women and it impacts more lives. And that is what we are all about. So thank you so much for all that you do for who you are and for listening in each week. So now back to our special guest, Mary van Geffen is an international parenting coach for overwhelmed moms of strong-willed and spicy children. She helps moms over the phone or on FaceTime to gain confidence, to choose gentle, respectful parenting, especially if they weren't raised that way. And I know she has a ministry on Instagram where she posts and inspiring parenting tip every single day, just reading her social media will help you delight in your child.
(01:24): And remember that you are enough. Mary believes that when a mom realizes how hard she is on herself and cracks the door open for some self compassion, her entire family is bathed in light. Mary is a certified simplicity, parenting counselor, and a professional coactive coach. Her greatest achievement, however, is cultivating a calm kind and firm relationship with our spirited. Go-Get her daughter who is now 16, the polar opposite introverted son who is 14 and a hubby that can not be any Enneagram. Please welcome, Mary, how are you girl? I'm so good. I'm so glad to be here. I just, yeah, it's so good. I, this is our first time actually meeting face-to-face. I kind of want to tell the gang a little bit how we met though. Cause it's kind of crazy. Oh, I'll tell you how we met. I was on and there was somebody on there and I don't really go on much.
(02:14): Cause Instagram is more my jam, but there you were being so funny, but also so profound because you had that tic talk about like coming upon a big old empty gallon of milk left in the fridge. And instead of like raging, just going, you know, Oh my kids must love me so much. They want to give me a chance to lift this up and care for them. And it was just, it just hit me because it's, if you can't laugh at some of the things teenagers do, then you will cry and I just loved your spirit. So I, I shared it on my account. Nope. That's how, yeah. That's how we met and we connected and I just loved your fire and it turns out that, you know, you're a parenting coach. I mean, this is so, so good. I've just knew that I had to have the on here you know, to share with all the mamas that listen in. So yeah. Thanks for being here. Where should we start?
(03:03): Well, I I'm really fired up about helping moms. Self-Regulate like become the calmest thing in the room. And so I'd love to kind of give some advice or drill into that. Oh, let's do it because I know I need this. I know I've been working on that myself with five kids. It's definitely a journey. And I know actually, you know what? Just like last week I said that the way I raised our first son is so different than how we're raising the other four because of that shift. But I love learning. So let's yeah, let's start there, dive in.
(03:39): And I bet your first one's going to be the most resilient of the bunch. Yeah. Yep. Well, I think before I give any advice, I think I should sort of talk about what perspective I come from because you gotta be careful who you take advice from. And you know, I am, I'm a Christian. I don't believe in spanking, but I'm not going to come for you. If that's what you feel like God is asking you to do. I'm more in the camp of trying to continually do the inner work to be calm kind and burn, no matter what craziness and chaos your kids are bringing to you. And I define discipline, not as like, you know, how am I punished? What's the right consequence for this. I define it the same way Jesus did, which is teaching folks to come along and be more like him when that's discipleship. Right? And that's what the word discipline comes from. So that's kinda my background. And you should just know that because every there's a thousand experts out there telling you stuff, and that's sort of where I come from. And so I believe that self-regulation is the first step in any effective discipline. If you're not long and regulated your child just can't receive what you're bringing to them. And I think we've all had an experience where the way we showed up to our child's upset or their conflict actually made the whole thing worse. Please say that that's happened to you too. Oh yeah,
(05:04): No, I'm just sitting here. This is definitely a God moment for me. Because again, from a Tik TOK introduction to this, I mean you're in California. I'm seriously. I'm in all right now because this is, yeah. We, we always say what we need to know that we need to hear or that we hear what we need to hear at the moment. We need to hear it. And this is it right here. So, wow. Yes. I'm guilty of that. Yeah.
(05:28): And we also, Jill say, well, what we need to hear, because I've been saying this for 10 years as a parenting coach. But if you saw me the five years prior to that, you wouldn't want any advice from me. So I've been on a journey to have the don't think that I popped it out of the womb, ready to be a great parent. But I guess the point I want to make is that people need to be responsible for their emotional energy before they can expect their children to keep it together. So it's like, and this isn't really, I'm not talking the oxygen mask metaphor, which is pretty cool. You know, like to get, to make sure you are caring for yourself before you care for your kids. I'm talking about like, what is the internal weather like inside you, as you move towards your child to either set a limit or even just try to connect with them, like really taking a moment to check with how, how are you being before you even get to the doing? Does that make sense?
(06:21): Yeah, no, this is good. I'm, I'm taking notes by the way. Well, I love metaphors and like, they just speak to me. If there's a word picture and the word picture I want to give your listeners, is that an inner benevolent dictator, that that's the part of you that I want you to call up, not call in because you already have it. You are a daughter of the King of Kings. You have this inheritance, that's imperishable and depleted unfading you are royalty, but often you're not cleaning it. So I'm wanting, I want you to imagine a queen and bring that energy of calm kind and bird that a good queen has. And unfortunately we're usually carrying other archetypes and metaphors within us. Like the beggar, the beggar is like, Oh, please don't touch that. Can you for once quiet while I'm on a call, this is sort of parenting from a fear of tantrums are big feelings.
(07:19): And it's also kind of like in your nervous system, some people befriend, some people freeze, some people flight this, the beggar is a person who's trying to appease. And it's just not a, it's not, it's not powerful. And it's not the leadership that your children need. Another archetype that, that we sometimes go to as a teenager, who's sort of like, what were you thinking? Of course you spilled the milk. Now I've got to clean it up. I'm so over this, right? And that's, that's kind of a cruel energy. We can accept it from our teenagers because they don't have the prefrontal cortex that we do. But for us, the teenagers not okay. And then the last, and you can tell me when I'm done these, which one is your bad mom, go to the other one that comes a lot. And this was my go-to is the monster. And this is like, imagine Gollum in the cave from the Lord of the rings. And he's, he's thinking, Oh, that's it. I have every right to unload on you. It's almost like there's this line and you just crossed it. And now I will unleash my anger and my rage and I have every right to do that. So, Hmm. I often was the monster. Yeah. And that is not good. So instead, well, which one before we move on, what, which one do you feel like you go to if you're not thinking it through?
(08:37): Well, I think I've done all of these for sure. And you talk about being transparent. I mean, I guess everything's out there. I mean, I guess the biggest thing or the, to get the right step in the direction that you need to be is to acknowledge. I'm assuming, so man, to acknowledge that I am probably my go-to is the monster. Yeah. Okay. Wow.
(08:59): Yeah. And it, and some of that is literally just in your nervous system. Like if my sweet, passive Enneagram, nine son steps on my foot, do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to push him immediately without thinking, I'm going to shove him to get him off my foot. And that's just kind of in me that I'm fiery and I'm working on it. You know, I'm asking the Holy spirit to always make me choose love and to keep my mouth shut and to, and all that. But there's some of it, it's just like how our body works. And so being aware of the metaphor we want to carry, we want to carry the demeanor of a good queen, best interest for her kingdom she's wise and compassionate firm and kind, and she does not abdicate her beloved land to the whims of little tyrants or inexperienced princesses. You know what I mean?
(09:49): Yeah. This is so good. You said I asked good questions, but me and I don't even know if I have like, I'm just soaking all of this in. Yes. I want to be, I want to be a queen. So keep, keep on going about what a queen says. Okay. Queen does not say, what do you want for breakfast? Or are you ready to go to sleep Queens? Don't talk like that. They say we have oatmeals on, we have oatmeal on Mondays. Oh, I know it's not your favorite, but Tuesdays is pancakes. They say it is bedtime. And 10 minutes they, they make proclamations and that's a different energy than, Oh, is this okay? Like, especially ending sentences with we're going to go soon. Okay. We don't realize it. But what we're doing is asking for permission from a young child. So instead we can say, it's time to put your suit, your seatbelt on. Do you understand me? That's a different, if we need to end in that kind of high sound and our voice, then that's a great substitute. Do you understand me? Or do you have any questions?
(10:48): So another thing is about like how we hold our body. I can't see you right now and you can't see me, but would you be so brave as to stand up Jill? And if our listeners would do the same, I want you to notice in your body what it feels like to kind of bring up your queen. Like, for me, my legs are, you know, hip width apart. Like they tell us to do and all of our exercise classes and my head is pulled up by a string almost. So each vertebrae is stacked and my movements are the Royal. Instead of rushed, like Queens don't rush. They, there's not a constant state of emergency, which some of us are in and it's not appropriate. So anything else you notice about how your queen holds her body,
(11:30): Joe? A straight, a straight torso, upright versus slouched. Yeah. And when we slouch, when are the points of our shoulders come forward and our spine kind of goes in a C curve, that's the beggar, that's the victim like, Oh, of course this is happening to me. That's not anybody. Anyone wants to lead and, and, or follow, I should say. Right, right. For, yeah. They have
(11:54): That. Yeah. You need that confidence. Yeah. Y'all can sit down. This is good. How do you move? And moving slower with, with in a pace that says I have all the time in the world, because it's going to happen as, as I'm putting it out there. And I do want to make a caveat that this way of being is most appropriate for zero to seven, eight or nine, we do need to begin to shift the way we show up when we get our kids into the tween years, because they need more independence. But during these younger years, you also want to solidify your inner queen because you're going to need her at different parts of your family's life. And let's talk about what your queen says. She says things like you may, you, you may set the table now. And in our family, we in our family, we close the door. When you put in, when we come in, you may hang your towel up before leaving the bathroom in our family, we keep bottoms on couches. So there's a way of talking that that lets people know, Oh, Oh, we've got somebody there in charge versus a spicy seven-year-old who is not in charge. Any questions about that?
(13:01): No, I love that. You may. I mean, it's a, it's a very nice command. Yes. And it's okay to command our children because what I'm finding with a lot of my clients is that they want so much to be kind and respectful that sometimes they go off the deep end, the other way, which is instead of having a child centric home, they end up having a child led home and that doesn't do anybody any good because children really flourish when there are some boundaries and some limits that they can see and understand and get to test. So it's okay to say you may.
(13:36): Oh. And it creates that personal ownership too. I'm I'm going to start using that as in, you may start dinner, who's starting dinner for you. I don't know. I'm thinking which one I would, I would probably lean toward either. Yeah. Harrison or Hadley. Both have a Harrison. How cool is that?
(13:55): So that's crazy. Yeah, you may, I love that. You may, it's giving that ownership, that empowerment to those kids. Yeah. And so that's what they say Royal says, but let's talk about what a Royal thinks. Like if you're in your inner queen, are you thinking, Oh my gosh, they're doing it to me again. Or this child's going to kill me. Nope. Those are victim and, and sort of beggar thoughts. And you're not thinking saying, I'm, I'm so sick of this child. Or I've had it with this person. Those are not queenly thoughts. Those are sort of the teenager slash monster. So instead what we need to think, and we have to nurture, we're not responsible for our first thought, Jill, but we are responsible for what we marinate on and meditate on. And we have to guard our heart because these thoughts come in and then we have to let them go and choose the right thought. And so Royals think things like, I know what's best for my family, or they will thank me later because I'm acting out of love and, and discernment or I'm in charge. And what I say goes, so I'm just thinking of that, that, that pleaser or that service oriented person, who's listening to this going, Oh my gosh, I feel like everyone would be angry at me. It's actually the opposite. When our children don't really know that we're in charge a lot. There's a lot of anger that comes up. They need to know that we've got this.
(15:13): Yeah. The confidence within you, I'm still hanging on to what you just said. We are not responsible for our first thought, but we are responsible for the second and third and whether or not we like continue to stay there. That's so good because I think that puts it in perspective of, you know, we always talk about, you know, the power of the tongue and you know, our thoughts, you know, go into what we speak and what we speak becomes a reality. But not always because we're human that first thought, is it always positivity that we like to have? Gosh,
(15:45): I don't think it ever is. Unless we've done a lot of work on mental fitness and constantly coming back to prayer. And what does God think about me? What my experience is, mostly women whose first thought is highly negative either about themselves. Like, what are you doing? There's a lot of people with these inner drill surgeons, surgeons, inner drill sergeants in their brain that is saying like, get up, do it. You can do better than this. You're messing this up. You're not a good enough mom. And it's like, it is so hard to be joyful in your parenting when you have an inner bully.
(16:20): Yeah. Oh yeah. And the shame and the guilt that just keeps rearing its ugly head or feeling not worthy or not. You just not being a good enough mom or the comparison mode is nursing thoughts that are not healthy. So really like making a commitment to mental fitness is too. If you're plagued with these negative thoughts, then you write out what the positive ones are. Like. I am a daughter of God, you know, my weaknesses made strong in him, whatever it is that makes you feel like an out-breath like, okay, yeah, this is an empathetic, compassionate thought about myself. Or I was designed for these children and I am doing a wonderful job. I'm a good mom. You know, that kind of thing. And then you just like, I don't mean to be all Stuart Smalley on you. I don't know if you remember him, you might be too young, but you say it in the mirror to yourself once a day. Like if this is foreign to you to have positive kind, compassionate thoughts, zinging around in your head, then you need to be really literal and concrete about fixing it. And that is looking in the mirror and with kindness and maybe your hand on your heart saying, you are enough, you are a good mom and God sees you and loves you, whatever, whatever you're sort of saying it,
(17:31): Oh yeah, you need to flip the script. There was a time where we need to say enough's enough and draw the line in the sand that we need to flip and, and, and create new pathways when it comes to our thinking.
(17:44): That's why it felt good to sort of meditate on a scripture that is like inspiring. And just to keep saying it, keep saying it because then that's what pops up in, in a time of that sort of chaotic and traumatic versus, Oh, I'm messing this whole thing.
(17:59): Right. And there's nothing stronger than the power of prayer. So that's absolutely to combine those and weave those into our thought process and into our heart. So yeah,
(18:10): And, and this might be new for a lot of women, so it's okay to fake it until you make it. When it comes to sort of embodying an inner queen. There's some research out there that shows that there is as much, actually more communication coming from your gut and your heart up to your brain as is coming the opposite way. So your body communicates to your brain. So go ahead and hold your posture before you like power in and go after a child or begin to wind back at a whiner, take a minute. And embody that queen find your, your, your feet grounded into the earth, put your hands on your hips, like your superwoman tilt your chin up and feel like the light and the gaze of God. And just take a moment because your body can communicate to your brain. Oh, really? We're confident right.
(18:58): Doing this. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and one time when you were talking there too, I was, I found myself doing those things. And one thing, when you asked me, what else, you know, do you feel, or that you can add to the posture it's taking that big, deep breath in and actually breathing, bless yourself with your breath. Take
(19:19): There's no emergencies really? Unless your kid is being hit by a car or has a hammer in the middle of a sibling interaction. There really aren't emergencies. And the more riled up the people are around you. The less, this is a teaching time. Anyway. So yeah. Taking a moment to just bless yourself with your breath. I had a client a couple of days ago who I, she gets so worked up that we said, okay, your job is going to be counting back from a hundred by seven. And she was like, Ooh, I'm not good at math. I'm like, perfect. Right. Cause I
(19:50): Don't want you to be thinking, I don't want you to be ruminating on a negative thought instead. I want you to slowly wall breathing, you know? And there's like something like 12 different numbers that get you to back down to the bottom to seven. And so anything that's going to help you pause and check in with yourself before you head out into battle. Yeah. Yeah. Before we respond. Yeah. This is so bad.
(20:13): Oh good. Th the last few things I would say is that be were overreacting. Cause that's what a monster does. Like if a two year old slaps mom across the face, the monster says, how dare you hit me? How could you, and some of that is like a blast from the past. If there's a significant rage in a moment for my mom, it's really not what's happening in the current. It's generally from a time in the past when you felt sort of small and, and you're like, heck no, it's not going to happen again. But a queen under reacts a two year old slaps her and she simply holds his hand and says, no, thank you. We touched gently. And now it's a learning opportunity. And maybe you have to do it two more times, but to go, all ballistic is not a queen. And you know, this is a part of every person listening. You have a queen within you. I love the first John three one says, see what great love the father has lavished on us. That we should be called children of God. We are daughters of the King. And so we are royalty. We are, we are Queens. And so it's just a matter of remembering it. Sometimes we've got spiritual amnesia and we forget, oops, forgot. I'm a queen and I'm beloved. That's okay. Get back on the horse, remember it, and then ride out with your nose.
(21:27): Yeah. And when we know that we are loved, that's where it overflows. And we walk in that and operate in that versus the hate, the anger. Yeah. Completely. Can I ask you a question about teenagers? I know we touched a little bit about, is there anything that we need to do a little bit different once they get into those teenage years when they're showing us their independence a little bit longer?
(21:53): Okay. If we're going to stick with our metaphor, I would think of it. Like the teenager is beginning to walk into the, to the world. And it's almost like if you were the queen and now like back in the day when your son is becoming the Prince and you are now an advisor, you are not necessarily, you are not the end all be all anymore. So now instead of you may, and in our family, we, it's saying, what's your plan for, how would you think you will or knowing that your sister has practice on the same day? What's your suggestion for how we get everybody's needs met? So your job is now less inner benevolent queen and it's more a gardener or a guide on a hike. Right? And so now we were just pointing like, Oh, you, I think you want to get to the top of that mountain. What supplies will you bring? Or I've gone this way before, but what are you thinking? So it's a lot less talking and more like powerful questions that get them. Pre-Thinking about stuff that just isn't on their radar.
(22:57): So it's going to require us to let go a little bit for all, all the women out there that like to white knuckle, when it comes to parenting, we need to be able to let go. And yeah, I got to say this and it's not popular, but your greatest influence is kind of over by 11 or 12. That's when you can bring up any conversation and say, let's talk about how babies are made or, or whatever values you want to impart. And your children are all ears and ready for it. But now that they're in the teen years, they are less interested in your perspective and more interested in their peers. And obviously we need to do things to hold them close. And there's actually a a great book called hold, hold them close. And and that means like making sure that we are creating opportunities where it is just us, them, you know, whether that's camping trips or and sometimes we got to bribe them. I'm making, you know, your favorite meal tonight. Do you wanna bring a friend over or is it just you, but we're now in the role of witnessing what they're going to do and the more they can fail fabulously and fall on their face while we are there to help them stand back up the better, because there is an epidemic of teens going to college who have never had to struggle, never had to because they're, their parents were kind of snow blower.
(24:16): Parents preparing the way for the child rather than the child for the way. And what happens is they get into school and they have a mental breakdown because there's little mini failures all over the place. I don't, I don't have a friend yet. I, I got to see that the principal or the principal, the professor wasn't there at office hours and now I've missed, you know, things happen. So the more we can stop over controlling our teenagers and let them feel the full weight of some of their goofy destructive choices, the more we're actually like fortifying them and creating resilience. And I like to think like, it's not about being in control now. It's about being in charge. You're in charge of the home. You get to say what goes, but you can't control them anymore.
(25:03): So needed this. This is perfect timing. Perfect timing. So we need to, we need to understand and know, just to kind of like bring this in, in breakfast altogether here that we are, we have a queen inside of us already. So now we just need to kind of activate, activate that role when it comes to that, self-regulation you brought that up, the self, the self, and that we are responsible for our own energy. That we're, that, you know, we got to check our internal weather, right? So we need to be able to identify whether we're the Baker, the teenager, the monster first, and then operate, choose to operate is what I, these are just from my notes. We need to choose to operate as the queen. Yes.
(25:45): Yes. That's so good. Joel, you're a good student. No, this is, yeah, this is awesome. And then we need to be able to what we say, our posture proclaim proclamation, what else am I missing? The way we think that we, that we have to kind of believe and marinate in that I'm, I'm doing what's best for my kids and it is enough.
(26:07): Well, and we're enough. That's the other thing I think I want to add on that. Like we are enough. Yeah. And I love that. You're saying that Joel, cause I feel like a lot of Christian speakers will like push back on that and say, well, no, we're not because we need God. Yeah, of course we need God. But he didn't create, you know, jellyfish, sad, you know, not enough beings. He created these masterpieces that are in Mago deal. Like they are in his image. So we are enough, especially with the Holy spirit powering us. Yeah.
(26:36): Wow. Yeah. We don't need fixed. We're created in his image as parents. And I think, I know the kids that we have been blessed with our children are the ultimate gift that God is allowing us to help shape and mold. And yeah. And that reminds me of, especially in the teen years that we can, we can let go of our clenched white knuckled hands because God's got them. And sometimes our hubris is like, if I just do everything right, and call me back and call that teacher, or I can follow them to wherever they're going. Like we have to trust that God has them and lean into the prayer that the Lord will protect them and teach them. And it's not all up to us. Yeah. Yeah. If God loves us and created us as you know, in his image, then he loves our children as his own.
(27:29): Right. And probably well more than we can ever love them. That's what's so hard to imagine. So yes, he does have them. This is awesome. Where can they find you? Where can they connect with you? Well, the best place is on Instagram, just at my name, Mary van Gethin. Okay. I also have a website, simplicity parenting with Mary and I offer all your listeners a free coaching parent coaching session. Should they want one? And it's 25 minutes. I won't sell you on anything. It's just a moment to get into the details of your family. And what's kind of stealing your piece or what skill you're looking to grow. So if you go to my link in my bio, you can schedule a session or maybe you even put it in your show notes if you want to. Okay. No, I will. For sure. That is awesome.
(28:16): Thank you so much. This is really good. Thanks for joining us. Shifting gears here for a moment, I cannot wait to share with you my book set free, and I know it is releasing in just a few weeks. And so if you've ever felt like something was missing, either within yourself or in your life as if there's this void that you can't define and can't escape, or maybe you've been trying to find your purpose. And sometimes you even question whether you have one, I'm going to help answer those questions and share how I discovered the way to show up as the woman. You want to be the woman God designed and created you to be. And I'm going to share with you, you know, some of my struggles, some wins some game changing moments, and I will trace my path to where I am today.
(28:55): And I'm going to give you every step I took along the journey that led me to God's unconditional love so that you can take these exact steps to freedom and enjoy his peace too. I pray that you realize that with God, you can overcome anything. So I invite you to take a sneak peek of set free and join us at free book club, go to Joe Allen, coaching.com, or you can find the link in our just brief Facebook group heads up on the next episode, we're going to dive in into how we can overcome that hard in our life as we continue to set free journey. So be sure to come back next week. Thanks so much for joining us today. Please subscribe, share this episode, link on your social media. If you felt encouraged or inspired, as we all know, someone that can benefit and that I would love it. If you would give some feedback and a review as well, talk with you next time, beat the beat fierce, be unstoppable.
(29:47): This is ThePodcastFactory.com.
