[00:00:00] Sapna Rad: Then it's a cue for us to back up, back off of it, the conversation, meaning we still have their back if something goes off, you're not going to lose me, but if this is so important to you, I'm going to back off.
[00:00:13] Sapna Rad: Even when we know this is not going to happen, they're going to fail, they're going to reject, it's important for the child to know that we have their back. .
[00:00:23] Dori Durbin: Maybe you're a parent who has realized that you have some unsettling patterns in your responses to your kids. Maybe also, you wonder how you can get your kids to listen without your raising your voice. Or how we can build trust when you disagree on a really big issue that really matters to them. In today's episode parenting coach Sapna. Red hoc reach non sheers, valuable insights from her book, from yelling to zenning on how parents can improve communication and deepen their connections with their kids.
[00:00:58] Dori Durbin: So if you'd like to stop yelling, be calmer and deepen your relationships with your kids, then keep listening.
[00:01:06] Dori Durbin: Hi, Sapna. When we are talking as parents and we think about trying to communicate with our kids, a lot of times we don't realize how often we yell. And I think it's because we don't think that they hear us. So to help us feel a little bit normal, you actually wrote a book that was called From Yelling to Zenning, and I'm just curious, what are some of the top complaints that parents have about trying to communicate with their kids?
[00:01:36] Sapna Rad: That's exactly what you said. They say they don't listen. They don't feel heard. The parent doesn't feel heard. They have to say, multiple times before the child actually pays attention. These are some complaints. that I hear from parents. But when we look back, we have trained the child to listen to us when we have increased our voice.
[00:01:58] Sapna Rad: So we train at our coaching, we train parents to do the opposite. And we give them this calm acronym, where C stands for collect yourself, really get present in that moment. And then reach your child, like A stands for attune, attune to what's happening around you. Is your child really into some game or are they really involved talking to their friends or peers for some reason?
[00:02:27] Sapna Rad: Are they involved in their homework? Lower your voice, walk up to them and lower your voice instead of increasing. And then communicate, M is modulate your voice and then communicate with them.
[00:02:38] Dori Durbin: It's funny, you were talking about the videos. And I've watched adults play videos and they're just transfixed.
[00:02:45] Dori Durbin: So why would it be much different with the kids, right? Yeah. Your first reaction would be to talk as loud as you possibly could over the noise and not to bring it down to where they're paying attention. So that idea of calming things and quieting things. It's contradictive to what we would do naturally, right?
[00:03:01] Sapna Rad: Yeah, because we have, we don't feel heard. What is the natural instinct? To tune up that volume, right? To increase the volume so other person hears us. But what if we did the opposite and they have to hear us? Because we are not activated. See, that's the first thing. What we normally do is we come up.
[00:03:21] Sapna Rad: I'll share the story with your audiences. So I came from work one day and my son was home. He was off from school and I had to go to work and I come back and I see him playing with his electronics there. First of all, I was tired. It was evening and My initial instinct was to go there, grab that remote, yell at him, send him to his room because he knows better not to be playing this long.
[00:03:47] Sapna Rad: But I paused. This was through the practice which I do for myself and which I teach is pause. First we pause. We collect ourselves. Because I was at the door. Let me ask you, Dori, at this moment, what would most of us do? I would yell. That is what I wanted to do. Yell, scream, grab, send him to the, offer some punishment and some kind of a thing.
[00:04:10] Sapna Rad: Or, you can pivot. Pivot to staying calm. Like attuning to what is happening, maybe. We don't know what's happening, right? First we need to attune. And then walk up. This is what I did. I wanted to yell, but at that moment, I calmed myself. I walked up to him and asked him, Hey, aren't you supposed to be doing your homework at this time?
[00:04:32] Sapna Rad: How long have you been playing? And knowing my child he doesn't lie. At least he doesn't need to lie. So he was like, Oh mom, I've been playing for an hour. Look at me. I put the timer on. He had a timer next to him. And he said, I'm just finishing up the game right now. And then I will. I will go do my homework and I stood there when he finished his homework and he's okay, mom, I'm go do my homework.
[00:04:55] Sapna Rad: Do you need any help in the kitchen? And I was like, because this whole thing could have gone another way. I would have yelled at him. He would have said, you don't understand me. Door slams. Then I would have felt guilty for yelling at him. And then the patch up, the repair work is harder. It takes longer because the damage is already done.
[00:05:16] Sapna Rad: So instead of pivoting back to my own old patterns of yelling, screaming getting him to do things my way, we have to choose another way. And that is what I teach in, I write about in my book and in my coaching
[00:05:31] Dori Durbin: courses. You said the patterns. So a pattern would be reactive. What are some of the other patterns that parents typically fall back on?
[00:05:41] Sapna Rad: Reactive or shutting down. Maybe you're not attending to your child, you're just not talking. You would rather be quiet than yell. But the quiet is, are you shutting them down? Meaning, are you shutting them down in a way of punishing them? That is something you need to look into. Or, what are the other patterns?
[00:06:03] Sapna Rad: Maybe You're avoiding the conversation. Maybe you don't want to have big conversation with them. What are the patterns you have learned growing up, you have seen your parents do in their relationship or something that we have done? We're so unconscious to this. We just rivet to that. Something happens in the environment and we just go there.
[00:06:24] Sapna Rad: Maybe it's yelling. Maybe we leave the house. We don't want to have those conversations. We cry. We feel crying is good. But if you're feeling helpless, that's another pattern. You're crying because you're helpless. You don't know how to fix this. You're frustrated. We get angry. These are all some patterns we revert to.
[00:06:45] Sapna Rad: We constantly go back to. Now, what do we do with this? When we are feeling certain emotions. Maybe it's fear. Maybe it's helplessness. Maybe it's frustration. Maybe it's tired. What do we do with that? That's another pattern, [00:07:00] right? You can scream at your child. You can shut down. You don't want to be involved.
[00:07:05] Sapna Rad: You can fall sick if you're constantly pushing down what you want to say and you're not able to say. You can fall sick because of that. You can have constant headaches because of that. These are all some patterns we are not aware of.
[00:07:17] Dori Durbin: I never thought about the health end of that too, but that's so true that stress of not being heard or not getting your point across in a way that isn't forceful.
[00:07:29] Dori Durbin: That kind of force to have to yell just takes so much out of you anyway. IT just would eat at your health.
[00:07:35] Sapna Rad: Yeah. Yeah. And then you feel guilty. That's another thing. Another pattern. Because you feel When we say something to them, our child might push back, then they might stop talking, and then we feel guilty, and then we become wishy washy.
[00:07:50] Sapna Rad: These are all some patterns we are unaware of.
[00:07:53] Dori Durbin: That's really fascinating. I when you talk to guests, sometimes your brain goes back to the the mistakes that you make as a parent. [00:08:00] I have
[00:08:00] Sapna Rad: made a ton. We all have. We all have. And that's the normal way of parenting.
[00:08:05] Sapna Rad: There is no perfect parenting. And if we are good parents, we are going to mess up. Because we are trying. Nobody gave us this handbook, right? For parenting.
[00:08:17] Dori Durbin: It'd have to be changed every day anyway, if they had, , but that's so true. There isn't any perfect form. And that's where your calm is so good, is because if you're assessing what's going on at that moment, it could be completely different, could be the same scenario, but completely different feel than the day before, even if it happened two days in a row.
[00:08:33] Dori Durbin: Yeah, so
[00:08:34] Sapna Rad: if we have to ask the question, but what we do is we go back to our heads. We go back to the stories we tell ourselves, because let me take you back to that incident which I was just sharing. I was in my head. I was thinking he is purposely trying to annoy me. He is being so lazy. He does not listen.
[00:08:55] Sapna Rad: And if he keeps doing this, I'm going to be a bad parent and I'm losing at [00:09:00] parenting. See, all this was going on in my head at that moment at the door. And if I, spoil this one relationship that I have, which is so important to me. What kind of mother will I be? And what will people think of me?
[00:09:13] Sapna Rad: I'm a failure. So many things was going on in my head. All I had to do was collect myself and walk up to my child and be vulnerable and ask, Hey, what's going on with you? And that opened the door for him to be honest.
[00:09:27] Dori Durbin: Imagine if he had yelled at him, he had this all planned out. Like he had it down.
[00:09:34] Sapna Rad: Yeah, he would have been scared, scared of me which I had done that before coming back to how so many times I have, I wish I could have done things differently. But if I'd done that, I wouldn't be who I am today. But when my child was younger, about three, I think we were potty training him. And at that moment,
[00:09:53] Sapna Rad: I had just started parenting. I was new at parenting. I didn't know what was happening. My child would not sleep through the night. I was [00:10:00] tired. And potty training. I don't know how many of us have gone through this where you have to be constant vigilant. You have to have the constant vigilance, right? And for me, I thought, oh, you just tell them how to do it and they should be able to do it.
[00:10:16] Sapna Rad: My child was having constant accidents because he isn't he's a child. He's learning about his body He's learning about his impulses, right? But I was so restless so impatient and tired changing his diapers over and over again I had become I had turned into this yelling monster because by the third time if he had an accident, I would scream on top of my voice because I was exhausted, but that was not the excuse because I was the adult here, but my child had become very afraid because of my reactions.
[00:10:48] Sapna Rad: And one time, my house had become very quiet and I realized, where's my three year old? It's too quiet. When I woke up, I noticed he was in the [00:11:00] toilet taking care of himself. Because he was so afraid of my reactions. He was making it more messier than where it should be. That's another thing.
[00:11:10] Sapna Rad: But he had become so scared. So when he saw me standing at the door and asked him what's happening, the shock on his face, like he was terrified. My child should be coming to me when he needs help, not terrified. That was one of my big epiphanies. That's the word, right? Yeah. But I was like, if I kept going on this route, I'm going to rift this relationship and he's going to be scared of me.
[00:11:39] Sapna Rad: I had to do, I had to make that change. I had to look into, why am I yelling? Yeah, it's one thing to be frustrated and I can say, I can ask for help, I can ask my spouse to come take a look at it, or I can just breathe for a moment. Why did I have to have him, have trained so fast or quickly or, I had to look into those. life.
[00:12:01] Sapna Rad: Those are hard to look at too, because I think, we start to give ourselves these impossible standards to live up to. And like you said, you're afraid that people would find out that you'd be embarrassed. Maybe people would think that your child wasn't developing well enough into your bad mom, whatever the case might be.
[00:12:17] Sapna Rad: You put all these expectations on yourself. And I think that happens so fast, so early. And that if you hold on to that, then like you said, you don't have, there's this big tear in your relationship. Terror, either way, where you, your kid doesn't want to come to you. They're afraid of you. And there, it's just going to spiral down from there, right?
[00:12:38] Sapna Rad: They're going to be scared. They might start lying. They might not come to us. And, Gavar Mohte is one of my mentors and he says, your parents should matter more than your peers, at least, into their teenage years. And I would have pushed him more towards, and what do children know? They are all on the same level.
[00:13:00] Sapna Rad: They are developmentally all on the same level. They need an adult to guide. If they're going to each other for help, then this will be a whole lot messier than it should be.
[00:13:14] Dori Durbin: Yeah, I think it was interesting. And I think you're probably willing to share this. We both had conversations that are really been tougher with our kids, especially as they get older and they start to do some of these things on their own.
[00:13:26] Dori Durbin: So like, when you have a three year old, you're probably thinking this conversation is going to get forgotten. But you also see echoes of it as they get to be in their 14, 15, 20 plus, you see those conversations coming back. So I know we talked about dating. Do you mind sharing that with the listening
[00:13:43] Sapna Rad: group? Yeah, that was one of the hardest conversations. Now, let me tell you, Hi, my son was around 14, turning up 15, he wanted to date and all his friends were dating and for us, we felt developmentally he's not ready, he's still immature because it takes a lot to be in a relationship. You have to, they don't understand what dating is, they think it's holding hands, but I felt he was not ready for it yet.
[00:14:12] Sapna Rad: So we had to have that conversation. And to have that conversation, why he would say, why, but this one's dating, this is happening, I will do this. It was back and forth, stressful conversations. But by then, I had created, it's that little drops of water. Create that mighty ocean.
[00:14:29] Sapna Rad: I had built that relationship to have that conversation so that we could have that, like he could come to me and be honest I wanna have this. And when I was saying no, he was pushing back, back and forth. It was not just I'm waiting and, or he didn't lie to us or he didn't go behind our bags or it was honest, vulnerable conversation.
[00:14:51] Sapna Rad: That was frustrating for both of us. But we were in that because of the work I had put in, because of the work I had put [00:15:00] in for myself, and in the relationship. So it was based off of trust. Like no matter how much we don't agree with each other, we still love each other. The love and connection was built off of which we were having this argument back and forth.
[00:15:17] Sapna Rad: He know, he, I had built that trust in him that no matter what happens. I'm not going to threaten our relationship. It's not, I'm not going to put our relationship at risk. That's what I'm talking about. I had built, I have to build, we all have to build that connection drop by drop. That doesn't mean we are perfect.
[00:15:37] Sapna Rad: I still lose it even after years. I have to sometimes pick out my own book and read. I'm like, what did I just say? It's not about perfection, but it's, what do you have more of? Moments of connection or moments of
[00:15:51] Dori Durbin: disconnection?
[00:15:52] Dori Durbin: Oh, that's beautiful. I think you're right. It takes so many drops that at the time, it doesn't seem like they're really doing [00:16:00] anything.
[00:16:00] Dori Durbin: It's just you've got a wet floor. You don't realize that it's actually creating this path and the older they get, I feel like the more serious the questions get. So if they can't come to you, like you said, if they're going to their peers for some of these answers, who knows what answers they're going to get.
[00:16:17] Dori Durbin: So being able to talk back and forth is really important. Yes.
[00:16:22] Sapna Rad: And making sure your relationship's not going to be threatened. Like what, this is what most parents do. They threaten the relationship. If the child does not submit to whatever the parent is asking in that process, what happens is the child ends up disconnecting from themselves to please the parent.
[00:16:41] Sapna Rad: So that is the basis of conscious parenting is what we do in our coaching practice. That first the parent connects to themselves. In that, they, the child connects to themselves. They become whole. There are no parts of them that's not rejected. In that way, you have a [00:17:00] bonded, connected relationship.
[00:17:02] Dori Durbin: So do you feel like it sets up a sense of trust, obviously, but like this unconditional love that the kids can just rely on, I can go to my parent and they're going to accept me, even if it's not something they agree with. I can still bring it to
[00:17:16] Sapna Rad: them. Yes, that's the core premise of this, right?
[00:17:19] Sapna Rad: I can go I know I messed up, or I did something, my car broke down. Let me take you back, I've written about this in the book too, Dorit. When, I think my child was just born, I was taking my son out on a walk, and I heard somebody on the phone this grown up person, this elderly person, she was talking to her daughter, who had just crashed her car.
[00:17:41] Sapna Rad: And she was talking to her on the phone with such kindness Are you okay? It's okay. You don't have to be scared. I had brought up if something like that happened, I would be yelled at and Can't you be careful? How many times have I told you not to do this? You still don't do this? So for me, this was [00:18:00] like a big shift.
[00:18:01] Sapna Rad: Wow. That is what I want my child to get from me. No matter how much they've messed up, we can fix this together. We are there. I know I might be mad at the moment, but I'm here. I will be there. So sometimes my son, I know we are running out of time, but quickly I'll just tell you this. My son will question me.
[00:18:21] Sapna Rad: He'll say, what if I don't study and go homeless? And I say, if you do, then I'll come sit next to you on the street and we both will figure out how to get you out of homelessness.
[00:18:33] Dori Durbin: That's great because he knows he can come to you even in that moment.
[00:18:38] Sapna Rad: I know it's not an ideal moment, but who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. Yeah,
[00:18:44] Dori Durbin: That's one of my questions I had for you I have seen so many prompts, like download this profit.
[00:18:51] Dori Durbin: It's like prompts to talk to your kids ways to, engage them. And I do believe that some of that works, but I also believe that if. If you haven't been building [00:19:00] that, then you can't just drop a prompt and expect them to divulge everything that's on their heart. They're gonna be like, what is this failed attempt, this crazy new approach my mom's trying to use to get me to talk, right?
[00:19:12] Dori Durbin: Do you have any advice for parents who Maybe they don't have those drops lined up as a bridge. Maybe they're just starting to drop them. Like, how do you start to get those older kids talking to
[00:19:20] Sapna Rad: you? You can start wherever you want to start. Doesn't matter. The age doesn't matter. Important is we are vulnerable.
[00:19:28] Sapna Rad: We can say, I want to change our relationship. I'm trying this new thing. I'm learning to be a better communicator. You can be open about this. And not immediately ask those questions, but you can start off. I want to, what do you think we can change about our relationship? Opening those doors, and those prompts are always helpful, but attuning to when you need to drop those.
[00:19:52] Sapna Rad: Prompts, right? Is my child walking in because he's stressed at school and then you go and use that prompt, he's obviously, he or she is going to shut [00:20:00] down, but attuning to my child are they coming to have their drink or their hot chocolate and how is the energy, looking at their skin tone, their eyes their body language, all those things matter.
[00:20:13] Dori Durbin: That's really important. Yeah. Cause they could be, maybe they missed the boss and you had no idea. And you're saying, so what's the best thing about your day today, honey?
[00:20:23] Sapna Rad: And they're going to look at us like we're crazy.
[00:20:27] Dori Durbin: Exactly. Exactly. . Another question that I had was when you were trying to talk about something you know that they really want to do, but it's something that you really don't think that they're ready for or that is in their best interest. Are there better strategies as far as getting to the heart of why they want to do that thing? I can give a personal example. I know when I was in college, I dated somebody that my parents were like, no.
[00:20:55] Dori Durbin: And their approach was you can't know what, and I love, love my parents to [00:21:00] death, but that was the only thing they knew how to do. So how do you approach some of these situations where you as a parent know, this is actually a pretty big deal. It's not just one decision.
[00:21:10] Dori Durbin: This leads to more decisions. How do you go about that?
[00:21:14] Sapna Rad: It's hard being a parent. We want to protect our child. We want to bubble wrap them. We walk we feel as if our hearts are walking outside of our bodies. That's how parents feel. We want to keep them home and not let anything happen to them, right? That's what parents want to do. We want them to be happy.
[00:21:34] Sapna Rad: That's the most genuine authentic thing that a parent wants for the child. But if you look at it, is a life like that? Happy. Life is ebb and flow of happiness, sadness, frustration, anger. It's all of these parts. When we come with a genuine interest and if the child is not open to it, Then it's a cue for us to back up, back off of it, the [00:22:00] conversation, meaning we still have their back if something goes off, you're not going to lose me, but if this is so important to you, I'm going to back off.
[00:22:09] Sapna Rad: Even when we know this is not going to happen, they're going to fail, they're going to reject, it's important for the child to know that we have their back. Because it's going to happen. Something is going to happen. If you're a human being, we all are going to get frustrated. We all are going to get rejected at some point.
[00:22:28] Sapna Rad: We are going to have those heartbreaks. This
[00:22:31] Dori Durbin: is life. So true. So true. As adults, we still do. So true. So give us like a brief summary of what is in your book and where we can find it.
[00:22:45] Sapna Rad: Yeah, you can find my book on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It's a small, it's like a story of my journey, the quest that I went on to reach the conscious parenting method, my NLP tools, and the [00:23:00] mishaps that I did.
[00:23:00] Sapna Rad: I wish a young parent would pick up this book and say, I do this and maybe change. There are tons of tools in the book, NLP tools that they can use. Some conscious parenting myths that they can look into and I give them strategies that they can use in the daily parenting.
[00:23:18] Dori Durbin: That's awesome. It's called from yelling to Zenning.
[00:23:21] Dori Durbin: Yes, okay. And NLP training, conscious parent training and little EFT. Yeah.
[00:23:27] Sapna Rad: Okay. Yes. We haven't used in the book. It's but that's another process called compassionate inquiry. I have spoken about that as well. Awesome.
[00:23:38] Dori Durbin: Awesome. And then as far as them finding you to work with you, cause I know you do coaching, how do they find you?
[00:23:45] Dori Durbin: What's the
[00:23:45] Sapna Rad: best spot to get ahold of you? You can go to my website. It's sapnarad. com and download my freebie there. You can follow me on my Instagram or Facebook page. That is sapnaradcoaching. I give tools and tips [00:24:00] every day or even all the Mistakes that I do with my team is out there. So follow me out there and thank you so much for having me, Dori.
[00:24:08] Sapna Rad: This is,
[00:24:09] Dori Durbin: Oh, thank you. I'm going to make you do one more question though, before I get, my one last question is what are three to five steps that parents can do as soon as they get off of the podcast to start to have this better relationship with their kids and stop yelling so much,
[00:24:26] Sapna Rad: grab my book first, if you can do that.
[00:24:30] Sapna Rad: I would say take an honest inventory of what's not working. Rather than going back to those patterns of doing the same thing, you've heard this quote by Einstein, insanity is doing the same thing and wanting a different result. So take an honest inventory of, oh, okay, I'm trying to get my child to wake up every day so that they can be on school on time, but they're not.
[00:24:52] Sapna Rad: And I'm getting frustrated and they're getting tardy. Instead of yelling at them and doing the same thing and hoping and wishing that they will wake up or they'll change, [00:25:00] take a look at that. What's happening? How can I help my child? How can I be, not be so frustrated? How can I be supportive of them?
[00:25:08] Sapna Rad: What can I do? That's something we need to look at that and break those patterns. So 1, 2, 3, get my book. If not, look at those areas. Of your life. That's not working.
[00:25:19] Dori Durbin: I love it. You have so much information and I know that if somebody reached out, you could help them tremendously. So I just feel lucky and fortunate to have had this time with you today.
[00:25:27] Dori Durbin: And hopefully people got a ton out of this.
[00:25:30] Sapna Rad: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:25:31] Dori Durbin: Thank you for being here.