Dori Durbin: Welcome to That's Good Parenting, the podcast that searches for simple steps to reduce your parenting stress.

Dori Durbin: I'm Dori Durbin, children's book illustrator, book coach, ghostwriter, and podcaster

Dori Durbin: parents, do you wish you had a calmer home? Fewer arguments and children who would just cooperate?

Dori Durbin: And when that doesn't happen, do you feel more stress, frustration, or other emotions that just totally confuse you and throw you off your best parenting plans? You are not alone. Today we're exploring how understanding the link between how our own emotional reactions change and what our kids do in response to us.

Dori Durbin: Today I'm talking with Emily Hughes, a conscious parenting coach, breathwork teacher, and semantic therapist based in London, Emily helps parents move from overwhelm and conflict towards calmer, more confident relationships with their kids. Emily, welcome to the show. 

Emily Hughes: Thanks so much for having me. 

Dori Durbin: I am [00:01:00] so excited to talk to you because I keep hearing over and over again about parents really struggling with stress, overwhelm, burnout, Can you just tell us a little bit about what you do and how you work with families? 

Emily Hughes: Yeah, so those issues, stress, burnout, they are things that people who come to see me are definitely struggling with, and I really help parents through the mind and the body because parenting, as we are all aware, it's just this intense.

Emily Hughes: Full body experience. Whether it be through the sort of physical relentlessness of like the pace of life when you have children, you know, and the fact that however hard and how stressed you are, you still have to wake up the next day and make breakfast and send children to school.

Emily Hughes: It's just relentless. And so what I help parents to do. [00:02:00] Primarily, often it's just to slow down and often when parents slow down, they have a bit more spaciousness in order to start trusting themselves and to be living life and moving through life and a less urgent way. And that urgency is often in their thoughts, but it's also in their nervous system as well.

Dori Durbin: It's interesting that you want them to slow down because I think our natural go-to is to speed up and try to do more, right? 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. 

Dori Durbin: So it's opposite of what our brain tells us we should be doing. Do a lot of people struggle with that concept? 

Emily Hughes: I think it's one of the hardest things to do because so many of us as.

Emily Hughes: Parents in the modern age, we've really grown up with a lot of like good girl conditioning or good boy conditioning, that your worth is [00:03:00] based on how productive you are, how much you're striving, how much you are trying and achieving, right? And then you bring small children into that, or even larger children into that and.

Emily Hughes: They don't have any of that yet. They don't have any of that conditioning, and they are just naturally slower in their way of being. And often it's the case that you can't really work your way, strive your way, be more productive out of your parenting challenges because your kids are really just inviting you to be, and it's an invitation to slow down.

Emily Hughes: There is often. Counteracting with this desire to just strive, get things done, and I think so much as well. A big word that comes up in my coaching sessions is failure people saying. I'm, I feel like [00:04:00] a failure. I feel like I'm failing. And I think that often this is because most of us have been brought up in a schooling system where it's like you pass or you fail.

Emily Hughes: And one of the big things that I try to do with parents is reframe this, that this is a really long journey. You have enough time. There is really no pass or fail because it is just you loop back, you repair. You get back on the path, and that's just so much more of an abundant, less high stakes way of thinking about things when you just trust in the long-term journey of your life and your child's life.

Dori Durbin: do you feel like school itself puts a limit in parents' mind? I've heard so many parents who have kids who are older, graduating, going off to college, All those years went so fast and now, now what am I supposed to do? 'cause the time is quote unquote up. But I have older kids and I'm [00:05:00] like, the time is not up.

Dori Durbin: It's just different. Yeah. Right. 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. 

Dori Durbin: Do you feel like that's what people have that experience? 

Emily Hughes: Yeah, I think there's often this idea that can come up so much of this word behind, right? We don't wanna fall behind and you know, what are we falling behind? Well, we're falling behind what school says, right?

Emily Hughes: And that's only one way of looking at what a successful life is. And actually parents can find a bit more in their life when they look at, you know, almost like they throw those success metrics out of the window, and then they just choose to focus on their own success metrics, which are really like their values, things that they value, and are you living your life according to those values?

Emily Hughes: And in a way we're not behind, no one's ever behind. We are just on a pathway, on a journey. And that word behind can often [00:06:00] throw people into shame and fear and panic and urgency. And actually, what would it be like to just be like, I'm fine as I, I'm, my child is fine as they are in that belief.

Emily Hughes: We can be truly present, but when we are feeling like we're behind sending our nervous system into panic, or even if you don't feel behind the threat, that behind could come at any moment if we don't keep on going. But actually I'm fine as I am. My child is fine as they are. We can take action, but from a base of being fine.

Dori Durbin: I'm trying to think of how to verbalize this because I feel like, we are comparing ourselves to what we see and social media takes all the rap of that's So negative. But I feel like even if you hadn't been on social media, there would still be a sense of comparison.

Dori Durbin: And is that kind of what is. [00:07:00] Causing some of these hiccups in people's experience As parents, it's the comparison factor. Or are they trying to be so different from their family, their parents, that it's, making things tougher on them. 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. You know, and I think humans are hardwired to compare because we want to know where we are within the social hierarchy.

Emily Hughes: Because if we were in a tribe, which is what our bodies and minds are programmed to operate on, And unfortunately, we're not in a tribe, but you would kind of need to know where you are in the tribe, what your role is in the tribe. And because we don't live in this tribe, we haven't got any sense of what our place is.

Emily Hughes: And so it makes sense that people get quite stuck in comparing themselves to other people because just feeling very isolated and alone and looking for really inner worth. [00:08:00] Because parenting is not gonna give you that immediate sense of satisfaction and inner worth that maybe the aspects of your life, like you're not gonna get a performance review.

Emily Hughes: Unless you're very brave and ask your children for one, but you're not gonna get a performance review, you are not gonna get employee of the month, you are not gonna get like company perks, you know, in the way that you're not gonna get a certificate from your children, right? It's not gonna happen.

Emily Hughes: And so it's really, if you are somebody who thrives on validation, and let's face it. Most of us are conditioned to need a lot of validation, right? if you are someone like that who thrives on validation and whose worth is almost like topped up when you receive validation, we are not gonna get that in parenting.

Emily Hughes: And so then of course we are gonna start looking outside [00:09:00] ourselves for that validation. 

Dori Durbin: That makes a lot of sense. If we could get certificates, do you think it would solve the problem? 

Emily Hughes: If we could get certificates, would it solve the problem? No, I don't think so, because it would still be sort of deferring our inner authority to other people when actually maturity is deferring our authority to ourself.

Emily Hughes: And unfortunately, like most of us, were not given. rites of passage into healthy adult maturity so often because we don't have that often parenting becomes like this brutal 18 year rites of passage into becoming, you know, a wise elder, you know, or maybe that's the end goal to be a wise elder, but to be, to being an adult.

Emily Hughes: It's a brutal initiation. And what if we [00:10:00] could have gone through sort of like rites of passage, felt like a secure adult who deferred authority to themself, right? And then become a parent. Who does that? I don't know anyone who's done that. It's just not the way our culture works to, support people.

Dori Durbin: As you're talking, we're laughing and enjoying it, but it's so true. It is just so true. And I was thinking about like when my kids were younger and they would do something that just spent all of the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up. And I was sometimes surprised by my reaction to them, like when I started the intro and said, well, your plans, your best laid plans go bad, right.

Emily Hughes: Yeah, yeah. 

Dori Durbin: There was a thought in my head of how this should work, and that's not what came out, and I feel like there's a lot that we need to learn about ourselves or there are things that we should know as parents to stop that from happening. Are there tricks to this or awarenesses that we should be aware of?

Emily Hughes: I think that [00:11:00] nervous system awareness is just such a powerful desing thing to do, and it really helps us to understand ourself more accurately. Nervous system. Everybody kind of knows about like fight or flight, but there's more. There's fawn, which is where we might go if we're like pleasing and app appeasing, that kind of people pleasing mode.

Emily Hughes: There's hyper vigilance where we're sort of like low down and activation, sort of like looking out for threat. And there's freeze, which most of us have heard about, but we kind of tend to think of freeze as being like, a deer in the headlights. But actually as parents, so many parents are actually operating in a way of being that's like functional freeze.

Emily Hughes: They actually feel really stuck. They feel trapped, they feel numbed out, but they can't. all of those things because they're having to make breakfast. They're having to put their kids uniform in their [00:12:00] wash or their, whatever it might be, right? And so one of the things that I think can be so powerful is to just start labeling where you are in your nervous system and, Just seeing what it feels like for you. So for example, if you are somebody that just gets the urge that something goes like, I just want to move away from my children, I just wanna get away from them. And often that can come with like a lot of guilt and shame. Like who, what kind of parent wants to get away from their children, right?

Emily Hughes: And then you get even more activated. Actually it's really Deming to just say, ah. I'm having a flight response in my nervous system. This is my body responding to a perceived threat and trying to protect me. Hello, body. This is not a tiger. This is my two children [00:13:00] having an argument with each other. In fact, I am safe.

Emily Hughes: That's easier said than done, but it's like baby steps to practicing these things, you know? And it can be really des shaming if you are a parent who yells to just label that as like a fight response in your nervous system. Heck, oh, I'm having a fight response. I'm not a terrible person. This is just my body.

Emily Hughes: Thinking that it needs to move forwards in conflict, in order to protect something. And then a great question is, well, what are you trying to protect? And that can be like a deeper level of knowing yourself, well, what exactly am I trying to protect here? 

Dori Durbin: I love that. What, how would you know if you were fawning as a parent?

Emily Hughes: So, yeah, th can sometimes sound like, kind of like pleading with your children. So for example, you set a boundary andthe child doesn't wanna [00:14:00] play ball with your boundary. And you might start kind of like even in your body, just sort of moving into a sort of shrinking position and like pleading with them or even kind of like being very sweet with them 

Emily Hughes: Sometimes falling can look a bit in parenting, a bit like mommy's going to be very upset. You know, this kind of like, we're trying to we are trying to make everybody happy. And sometimes also fawning can look like flip flopping on your boundaries because you feel like you have to keep everybody happy.

Emily Hughes: Yeah, fawning. Fawning is like self abandonment because you are not aligning with your values. When you are fawning. You are kind of sacrificing yourself and your wants and your needs and your values in order to keep the peace. 

Dori Durbin: That's, and if you were being hypervigilant, would you be really adhering to the boundaries or making the boundaries tighter?

Dori Durbin: Like what [00:15:00] would that look like? 

Emily Hughes: I think the way to tell whether you are in hypervigilance is just if you feel very alert all of the time, that would be like the biggest clue. And sometimes, with people who are in hypervigilance, one of the things that they can start to notice is like their eye movement.

Emily Hughes: so often people who are experiencing hypervigilance, they're constantly looking around, and they're just sort of, I had one client who was describing it a bit like she felt like she was having lightning bolts constantly attacking her. And it was just these sort of like threats coming into her body and sort of like electrocuting her nervous system was how she described it.

Emily Hughes: And it could be. Anything that could be hypervigilant. So for example, some people are very hypervigilant to their children getting hurt. other people are very hypervigilant to shame or being perceived as being a bad parent. So for [00:16:00] example, like If they're at, for example, like a in a public space and their child starts to have a meltdown, they might become very hypervigilant to their surroundings looking around and just.

Emily Hughes: Looking at any tiny micro expression in other people as being a sign of like judgment and shame. And then I think you can be hypervigilantto other things as well. But I think those are probably the two main ones, sort of like safety and shame. 

Dori Durbin: That makes a lot of sense. And I, I could see where that would just raise the stress levels that much more.

Dori Durbin: Yeah. And the search, like you mentioned earlier for validation, well, everybody thinks you're doing a bad job because you're finding a gritz or a smirk or whatever. 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. 

Dori Durbin: It just adds to the pot of that being true, right? 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. and kind of going back to that tribe analogy, it makes sense, right?

Emily Hughes: Why we would be hypervigilant because we are doing the job of many other eyes, many other nervous [00:17:00] systems. And so if you are in hypervigilance, just reminding yourself, you only have one body, right? You are not 10 adults. Because in hunter gatherer societies, they have many adults responsible in the care for each child.

Emily Hughes: and they have these things called hallow parents who are like these just other people. So it could be like aunties or grandmas who are just, they're all responsible in caring for the children In the hypervigilant body, it's almost like perhaps we don't trust just ourselves and we're trying to do the job of kind of all these other bodies that unfortunately aren't there.

Emily Hughes: So it makes a lot of sense. But there is also stuff that we can do to calm that response, to be more aware. Rather than alert can still be in control of things. Still be aware, just from a place of a bit more trust. 

Dori Durbin: So what would somebody do if they recognize that they're hitting one of [00:18:00] these, reactions, 

Dori Durbin: Who a situation, what is like their next step to figuring out how to answer or react appropriately?

Emily Hughes: Sometimes it can be through addressing your beliefs because your beliefs are really connected to your nervous system, and you can really feel that when you start to practice more life affirming beliefs and just sort of say them and see how your nervous system reacts to them.

Emily Hughes: And one of the, phrases was a belief that I think is. A really useful one for parents is this belief of I am capable and it can be very calming and resourcing for the nervous system. And it's a bit like how we were saying before all of the school stuff. It's a bit like, well, I'm not gonna consider like good, bad, I'm not gonna consider pass fail because all of those are too fixed and binary and [00:19:00] actually.

Emily Hughes: I am capable. And so I've had some clients when they notice they're going into hypervigilance who've said that, they just found it really, really reassuring to just say that I'm a loop to themselves. I am capable. I'm a capable person. And I feel like within that, like another one is like, I can handle things or I can do hard things, 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. Feeling like you're capable. That's just so grounding. It's like, I've got this, I'm capable. 

Dori Durbin: So the first thing that came to my mind was the fake it till you make it kind of thing. 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. 

Dori Durbin: At that moment that's possible or that you are capable, convincing yourself to believe in that at that moment and continuing to practice it.

Dori Durbin: It gets easier. 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. Just say it to your kids, let them not be, because sometimes I feel like I'm saying these things to myself and then I'm like, wow, how cool would this be if I told my kid that he was capable? And sometimes it sounds a bit like [00:20:00] clunky, but. You know, if, I just feel like things would be so much easier if that had been like, embedded earlier for me.

Emily Hughes: Like when I was about 35, someone told me for the first time in my life I was a strong person and I just had like a, what? And it was like, it blew my mind. And so now I tell my kids like. You are a strong person, just pop it in. You know, some, when it's relevant yeah, you really demonstrated what strong person you are there.

Emily Hughes: I'm like, it's like if I'd have had some of that when I was a kid, just what would've been possible for me, so yes, sometimes when we're saying these things to ourself, it's like a gift and then it's doubly a gift. If we then pass it on to the, to our kids. 

Dori Durbin: If you could have said this to you as Emily, the youngest Emily version of yourself, what [00:21:00] else would you have wished you could have heard?

Emily Hughes: I think that I definitely have a thing and you know, I had a pretty Ordinary upbringing. Not super like there's no like big traumas or anything, but I do feel like just because of the type of punishment culture that I grew up in, I definitely had like a limiting belief of like, I am bad.

Emily Hughes: And I think, whilst I kind of like knew that my parents loved me, et cetera, I think that I sort of struggled to, whenever I would experience like a situation where shame might be present, I would go straight to, I'm a bad person and I think it's cheesy, but I just think we all kind of need to know.

Emily Hughes: And it needs to kind of be explicitly said. And so often with my [00:22:00] clients, what comes up is like underneath stuff is like people saying I'm not good enough, which is like the classic core limiting belief. But even like when you take away the enough, it is just like I'm good. And I think just trusting in my goodness, I think I could have benefited from hearing.

Emily Hughes: That as a kid. And I think that would have made me more shame resilient. 'cause I think I've been on a big journey over the last sort of 10 years really of becoming more shame resilient. And I really feel like I am becoming more shame resilient and I really notice when I'm going into like old patterns, but shame is definitely.

Emily Hughes: Think about 10 years ago, I had this big realization of like, wow. I'm like not resilient to shame at all. 

Dori Durbin: So if somebody realizes that, then that we're talking to yourself and telling yourself you are capable, that comes back [00:23:00] in. 

Emily Hughes: Yeah, and you know, one of the things I think about shame is like the more you start talking about shame, shame can't exist when you talk about it out loud.

Emily Hughes: So it's quite funny 'cause people will often say to me, and this is just my personality, people will often just say to me like, oh wow, you're like really comfortable with being like vulnerable. And I'm like, I don't really feel like it's difficult for me. I feel like I just am quite like openly vulnerable, but it's a way of des shaming. That's what I kind of realized I was doing. Sometimes I go a bit too far, I think with like, being like really open, but like why I do it is to like bring it all out in the open, so that it's not because shame eats away at you when you leave it inside.

Dori Durbin: One of the things I wondered about with emotions like that, that are really strong, we've talked about saying things to ourselves like, I'm capable, I am [00:24:00] strong. Yeah. Are there ways physically to deescalate some of that emotional buildup that we can. Slow things down or at least kind of lessen it.

Emily Hughes: Yeah. So I also do like personally on the client side and also as a practitioner, I'm trained in somatic therapy and in somatic therapy often what we are doing is. Bringing in resource to our nervous system. And so in practical terms, what this can sometimes be like is not relying just on us.

Emily Hughes: Okay. So kind of asking like, what could I bring in? That would help to ground me and like help to resource me. And sometimes that can be like imagining things because you know, one of the great things about your nervous system is it is just a bunch of wires. It can't really tell the difference between you.

Emily Hughes: Well, it can, but to a [00:25:00] certain extent. It can't tell the difference between you deeply imagining something. For you actually going and doing it. So for example, like with me, if I'm feeling nervous or kind of like ungrounded, I find trees really help. And so I can, if I have time, I can go out and like. Walk amongst some trees.

Emily Hughes: I live in London, but London's got sort of like a forest running through the east part of it. So I live right next to that. I'll go out and connect with my trees and I just imagine like the roots going into the ground. But it can have the same effect even if I'm just in my house and I kind of push my feet into the ground and imagine like, roots coming down through my feet.

Emily Hughes: I think another thing is just when I notice sort of like, shame or anger coming up, one of the nicest things that we can do is just say hello to [00:26:00] it so in the somatic training that I did, there was this really nice phrase where you say to the activation that's coming up almost like you're speaking to a small child.

Emily Hughes: You just say I hear you. I see you. And often things soften quite a lot. Just through that small and simple phrase. So something comes up in your body, close your eyes for a second. I see you. I hear you. It's just giving attention to the parts that are making themselves very loud in your body. It's like they're calling for your attention, so give it.

Emily Hughes: Give the attention. 

Dori Durbin: I see. And so you're not trying to push it down or ignore it, you're actually just bringing it up to the surface. 

Emily Hughes: I think one of the things that I've learned most from the somatic therapy is that you don't need to get rid of anything.

Emily Hughes: in some [00:27:00] types of somatic therapy, there's sort of like purging, you know, but actually in the type of somatic therapy I trained in, and it's through the Vocalizing Institute they sort of spoke about composting, integrating. So you kind of take something that is like maybe not serving you.

Emily Hughes: You're just kind and gentle with it, until it finds a way to integrate just naturally. And it's not bad. You're never labeling anything as bad. You're just treating it all like kind of, you would a like gently, like a small child and it's just so soft and gentle, but in the soft and gentle, there's just so much power, 

Emily Hughes: So often in that trying to get rid of something that we just end up fighting with ourself and then things stick around longer or perhaps even get more intense. 

Dori Durbin: That makes sense. it's the opposite of what you would think, You're not batting it down. You were talking a lot about parents, [00:28:00] and we did talk about kids too.

Dori Durbin: I'm curious, do you think it's better to treat the family and focus on how the family is interacting or do you think it's better to focus on the kids and the parents separate. 

Emily Hughes: I think one of the things that has happened culturally. Is we've moved to like a very, obviously I'm in the uk, but I think there's a lot of similarities between UK and US parenting and I think we've really moved towards a very like, child-centric culture where, there's a lot of the clients I've worked with, they.

Emily Hughes: Sometimes a lot of overscheduling because of some of those reasons that we said before of like wanting to be, wanting to not be behind. So let's give our child lots of opportunities, and there's lots of lovely things about that. But one of the things that, a phrase I really like is protect your energy.

Emily Hughes: And sometimes it's a little bit like the energy of the [00:29:00] family is all on the kids, and then there's nothing left for the parent. And I think that actually one of the greatest gifts we can give to our kids is to protect our energy and model living a really good life. And this kind of lends us a bit to more of like a family centric model.

Emily Hughes: So the way I describe this with my clients is like everyone in the family is important, and sometimes that means doing things that are gonna benefit someone else in the family. I feel like, I dunno whether it's quite like this in the US but a lot of my clients are saying that they kind of can't run errands with their children because they're worried that their children are gonna like tantrum but the thing is their children are then much more likely to tantrum 'cause they're never building the.

Emily Hughes: Skill to be in adult spaces and to not be entertained. And I feel [00:30:00] like the culture has just gone so far into like entertain the kids, entertain the kids, and you know, then we hear about like, oh, it's important for kids to be bored, but actually that's a skill. You can't just expect a child to be fine with being bored if you haven't practiced that skill over and over and over again.

Emily Hughes: 'cause that is a massive skill. And being a a family-centric family as opposed to a child-centric family means that you are going to be building your kids' tolerance to futility, tolerance to boredom. and also you're going to be building their skill in understanding that other people have needs in the family.

Emily Hughes: And yeah, you're going to be building belonging that they are one of many, they are part of something bigger than just themself. And that's quite grounding to feel like that. [00:31:00]

Dori Durbin: Yeah. I love that, all of it because I, I think about some of the past guests that I've had who talk about how kids really don't know how to just sit.

Dori Durbin: They don't know how to be in an environment where the attention isn't focused on them. Yeah. and they're. Most of them addicted to some sort of device because they want that connection, like 24 7, instant gratification. There's a lot of things that are pulling on them that just sitting at, I think you mentioned a hardware store when we first started talking, like being in line and not having something to distract you and just learning about what's around you and who you are.

Emily Hughes: and I think. The reason why parents are often giving those devices and entertaining the children, it's a really good question to ask oneself is like, why am I doing this?

Emily Hughes: And often it is to protect yourself from shame because people don't want their kids to scream in the [00:32:00] hardware store. And so it's easier to placate them with a device, but then. It's just a perpetuating thing. If we don't build that tolerance. If we don't build that skill. 

Dori Durbin: Yeah. For both of you, honestly.

Emily Hughes: Yeah. Both of you definitely. 

Dori Durbin: it definitely is gonna work. It's gonna work on both people. 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. 

Dori Durbin: I'm curious when you think about working with parents and kids, is there a specific thing that you find very common, like a common. problem, concern, issue besides shame that comes into play for most of your clients?

Emily Hughes: Yeah, one of them is actually a fear that their children are not going to want to spend time with them when they're older. That comes up a lot I normalize that with them, but one of the things that I do is just ask them, tell me the qualities of people that you like to spend time with.

Emily Hughes: And just [00:33:00] simplify this because sometimes we can over complicate things and another one that I hear a lot is, like I'm scared that my children are gonna end up in therapy like. I want my children to go to therapy. Like I'm pro therapy, you know, I'm more than certain that they will like when they're grown up.

Emily Hughes: So I think, sometimes it's about like. Just simplifying and reframing these things, like if your kids end up in therapy, like good, an opportunity for them to become more self-aware of themself and to process things that are perhaps not processed right. And with the bit about the parents.

Emily Hughes: Yeah. Parents not want the fear of their kids not wanting to spend time with them. So often it really comes down to this, like, can you listen to your kids? And if you can, they're gonna wanna spend time with you. And it's not complicated. Ultimately that's, we are meeting the core basic needs where someone feels [00:34:00] safe around you, someone feels heard by you, someone feels understood by you.

Emily Hughes: That is enough. We don't need to. you don't need to be like totally inseparably bonded sometimes parents are putting a lot of pressure on themself. And yeah, taking it down to the bare basics of who would you wanna spend time with, be that person. 

Dori Durbin: I really love that perspective, and I, I think it just takes a lot of pressure off of parents as far as, what they're doing and promoting down the road.

Dori Durbin: But like you said in the very beginning, it's a journey. It's a process. It's not a short little sprint, it's a lifetime of connection. So I think, I think just in that, if anybody walks away with one thing, it's like just being able to connect and hang out with a person you would want to hang out with is.

Dori Durbin: So important to keep in your head. So that's, 

Emily Hughes: I think trust that if you're the sort of person who is worried that your child might not wanna spend time with you when they're older. [00:35:00] Then you aren't, gonna let that happen because you're already so conscious, caring, loving, and aware. You're not the sort of person who's going to let that happen.

Emily Hughes: You are gonna do what it takes to maintain that relationship. If you are worried about it, it means that you are a good person doing a good job. 

Dori Durbin: That's awesome. I agree a hundred percent.

Dori Durbin: Emily, you are amazing. I feel like people, once they hear this, they are going to wonder how to get ahold of you. do you talk to people from the US and London? How does this. 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. So I work with individuals and with couples, and I do coaching. I work with people from all over the world.

Emily Hughes: So my main thing I do is like a 12 week course and coaching all on conscious parenting. Conscious parenting, just meaning, understanding yourself and your kid. More expansively, and I also do somatic therapy with [00:36:00] people. I don't do that with couples, just with individuals. And yeah, it's just a very gentle way of addressing anything you want to address.

Emily Hughes: So that doesn't have to be just parenting issues. That can be any issues that you might have. 

Dori Durbin: Is the best way to get ahold of you on your website? 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. So my website is WW Finding Flow Parenting Coach, and you can find me on Instagram. I am on TikTok, but I haven't uploaded anything for a while on there.

Emily Hughes: And I'm on all the other stuff too. YouTube and LinkedIn and all these kinds of places. So yeah. 

Dori Durbin: It's finding Flow Parenting or is it Emily Hughes 

Emily Hughes: Finding Flow Parenting. Okay. 

Dori Durbin: Awesome. Before we finish, I have one more question to ask you, but I'm gonna limit myself to one.

Dori Durbin: If a parent is listening today and they want a better connection, they want less stress, what is one thing that they should do right away? 

Emily Hughes: I think the word, [00:37:00] the first thing that came to mind there was, a word that I've used so far in the podcast, which is skills.

Emily Hughes: And I think this is such a grounding way of looking at things. It's just this question, maybe get a piece of paper and write this down. what skill does my child not yet have that if they had this skill, this situation. Wouldn't be an issue and then put that on a post-it note.

Emily Hughes: So your kids are, you've got two kids and they are fighting with each other. Okay? So use that question.

Emily Hughes: Do they have the skill to not fight with each other? Do they have the skill to solve conflict without resorting to physical violence? Okay. Probably don't yet. And then the goalpost changes not to, how do I get these kids to stop fighting? How do I get these kids to comply? How do I get these kids to build the skill that this is not [00:38:00] an issue anymore?

Emily Hughes: Let's take the hardware store again, as a thing. Your kid is starting to whinge and things are escalating in the hardware store Do they have this skill at the moment? To tolerate not having their needs met, being in the queue, not being entertained. Do they have the skill? Okay.

Emily Hughes: And then the next question might be, well, how am I gonna build that skill? And the biggest answer to that is you probably already are building the skill. It might just take a little bit of time and maybe a bit more intentionality to get there for it to click So des shaming, it's almost like you take that shame and fear that activates your nervous system.

Emily Hughes: And then you take skills and it's like, oh, that shame and fear just goes away because this is all skills. Just gotta build this skill. I'm not a bad parent, we just need to develop the skill together. 

Dori Durbin: I think you just gave them a [00:39:00] roadmap to parenting, Emily. 

Emily Hughes: Yeah, 

Dori Durbin: Because if you think about each of those situations or any other situations and you say, what's the skill that's not appearing here?

Dori Durbin: What's something they haven't learned yet? 

Emily Hughes: Yeah. 

Dori Durbin: , That's golden. It's given you a place to start. 

Dori Durbin: Yeah. And then you might also ask, do I have, am I missing some skills that I need to develop? So it goes on and on. Oh, thank you so much for this. Thank you for your insights, your perspectives.

Dori Durbin: And I know that there are parents who are probably starting to look up themselves a little bit and say, okay, what really is at the heart of what's going on in my body, but in my reactions and how is it affecting our whole family? So That's huge. That's gold right there, Emily.

Emily Hughes: Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me on. 

Dori Durbin: Parents, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of That's Good Parenting. If you found today's conversation helpful, definitely share it with other parents who might want the little extra bit of encouragement. Sometimes that smallest shift can make the biggest difference, [00:40:00] and we always want you to be able to say at the end of the day, now that was good parenting.

Dori Durbin: Talk to you soon.