27. How to Support Your Child in Overcoming Obstacles You Face Yourself

What if the struggles you’re working through could become the blueprint your child uses to overcome theirs? 

Today on the podcast, Alyssa Carlene shares a five-step process for facing your challenges and using them as a powerful teaching tool for your kids!

Whether it’s fear, self-doubt, or anxiety, you’ll discover practical ways to model resilience and break cycles of perfectionism, people-pleasing, or avoidance. 

Listen to the episode to answer the following questions: 

•  What simple steps can I take to model resilience for my kids without pretending I’m “fine”?
• How do I talk about my feelings in a way that’s age-appropriate for a young child?
• How can I teach my child to separate emotions from logic when facing an obstacle?
• What small, practical actions can we take together to build confidence and courage over time? 

1. Want to join a supportive, heartfelt community with other moms who are also navigating motherhood without their mothers? Join our Facebook Group today!

2. Are you ready to build confidence and emotional resilience as a mom, even without the support of your mother? Access the free video training now: Five Steps to Navigating Motherhood Without Your Mother!

3. Want to chat more about what it's like to mother without your mom and get personalized support? Send Alyssa Carlene a DM on Instagram!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Last summer, two of my brothers-in-law decided it would be a fun idea to bleach their hair. And so they decided, okay, we're going to do this on our own. But what they didn't take into consideration or even know was that when you bleach your hair, especially if it's darker, you need specific shampoo and toner to even out the color to get the color that you want. So as you can imagine, their hair turned orange. The reason I'm telling you this is because they came down to visit and when my five-year-old saw them, she was terrified. This change in their appearance and the wild look of their hair really scared my daughter and it sparked something inside of her, this level of anxiety that she would then deal with for a long time and is still dealing with to an extent today. Children struggle and we also struggle with anxiety. This episode is going to be about how to support your child who is struggling with obstacles that you face yourself, how to do it in a kind way, what to say, what not to say, and what I have learned in overcoming this circumstance and trying to teach my children and break any of the harmful generational patterns that I learned myself. You're listening to Navigating Motherhood Without Your Mother. Here, we help moms with young children who lack support from their mothers to make peace with the past, build confidence in their present role, and break harmful generational patterns for the future through the five-step Roots Framework. My name is Alyssa Carlene. I am a motherhood empowerment and generational healing coach. My mission is to help you discover the root causes of your struggles so you can foster emotional resilience and create a healthy, loving home environment for your family. Please remember my podcast content is for educational purposes only and should never replace proper medical and mental health guidance from licensed professionals. Let's get started. Hello dear friend, I'm so happy that you are back and listening to the podcast today. Today's episode is very personal and I know a lot of them are, but we are living this in live time right now, trying to deal with this, trying to figure out this obstacle and how I'm using this very struggle to help my daughter learn resilience herself. So before we really dive deep into this, I just want to say if you haven't joined my Facebook group, it's there. and waiting for you it is an amazing place with moms alike who are ready to heal grow and thrive together all navigating motherhood without their mom and that want community community is something that I've dreamed of it's something I've wanted to create for so long and we need you we need you there we would love for you to be there So whether it's anxiety, self-doubt, or the fear of not being enough, so many of us moms carry baggage that we never had help processing ourselves. And for me, when my children come up to me and share that they have an issue, I want to be there for them. Because a lot of the time, I was left to... figure out and work out emotions on my own. And it was very hard. So I want to walk you through five steps that my husband and I are using to, you know, help me face my own fears and then simultaneously teach our five-year-old how to move through hers. And I want to share a little bit more about this story. So I talked about how, you know, my brothers-in-law decided to dye their hair. Eventually she got used to it. She got over it. But then my husband wanted to cut his hair. So whenever he cut his hair, she would get scared and it became a whole thing. And then at one point I cut my hair and it was very long and now it's short and she was okay. So we thought, wow, okay, I think she's worked through this. We've taught her, you know, hey, people change their physical appearance all the time. It's a part of life. Fast forward to about a month or two ago when my brother, it's these darn uncles, okay? How did they have the audacity? My brother decided that he was going to shave his beard and he had had a beard for a long time. That's all my daughter knew when it came to her uncle. And so he shaved his beard and it just triggered that anxiety in my daughter again. And so we are in live real time working through this and we're she's been really nervous to be around him, to see him, because it has just been this huge thing where she feels like he looks different and it's bringing on anxiety and maybe even sparking anxiety for some other things. So as we are trying to teach her, you know, that this is real and give it a name, I wanted to share these five steps. So the first is to acknowledge the obstacle, okay, for you and for your child. I really want to make about you as well, the listener. I wanted to share the story of my daughter just to kind of put into context what this can be like. But today while you're listening, really think about yourself because this podcast is for you. It's for the moms, okay? So you want to name out loud what's blocking you. Maybe you are feeling really overwhelmed by your to-do list or say like, oh, I noticed this physical sensation in my body when I think about it, when I think about this feeling that I've had so for my daughter you know we try to say we want to mirror that same acknowledgement what is what where do you feel do you feel nervous does it make your tummy hurt does it make your hands sweaty like there's always a connection we know that anxiety can do things to our body it can make our heart race it can make us experience these very physical real symptoms and the reason why we recognize and acknowledge is because it matters that our struggle is real that we acknowledge it that it's there we're not suppressing it or pushing it away and that it's okay to feel it so then we want to label the number the step number two is labeling we want to put your emotion into words like this is anxiety this is frustration this is sadness maybe you are feeling a lot of grief the other day I was experiencing a A lot of sadness, and I realized that it was actually grief. It was grief over some friendships that have sort of just shifted and changed in my life. Grief. Grief is a big one, and I think sometimes we forget, or maybe grief is... right there and it's in your face and you know maybe you have lost your mother and you are in a deep state of grief so acknowledge that and label it for your child teach them teach them these emotions i i know my husband has been wanting to put up a little emotion board you know, on our wall of, hey, this is sadness, this is fear. We watched Inside Out. That was really fun to kind of show her, hey, you know, especially the second one about anxiety. And this matters because we have to name our feelings and naming them, it's going to take away any of that power that it has over you. And then we turn that into something that you can handle. It goes from chaos to peace to feeling like we're human. It's okay to feel these things. Next, I want to... Number three, share our story for you. I want you to tell yourself the story of how this obstacle is and how it showed up in your life. Where was the moment that you felt it the biggest? And this might take some retrospection, some hindsight feeling. Did this show up to you as a child? And now I have story time for you. As I've been recording this, I literally just had this memory pop into my mind, which is crazy. But when I was a little girl, my mom decided that she was going to dye her hair blonde. Now, if you don't know much about my relationship with my mother and my why for this show, and you would like to, you can listen to my very first episode, Welcome to Navigating Motherhood Without Your Mother, for some more context. But my mom growing up, It was not healthy. She was addicted to alcohol, over-the-counter drugs, and really just in and out of rehabs. Not a very stable person I could rely on. Honestly, a person that I was afraid of. So when my mom dyed her hair and came home with bleach blonde hair, which, oh my gosh, this is crazy, you guys. This is crazy in real time as I'm recording this, realizing maybe my daughter is carrying some of what I carried when I was a little girl. I was terrified. My mom walked in the door. She had bleach blonde hair. My mom is a dark brown brunette. And I remember running away, hiding in fear. And gosh, this is crazy. This is really affecting me as I'm talking about this because I'm thinking about my daughter and the fear that I actually had in that moment. It's real. And this thing with my daughter that has felt kind of annoying sometimes where she's like, I don't want to go over there. You know, if your brother's going to be there, if my uncles are going to be there, I don't want to see them. And I've sort of felt like, you know, stop it. This is silly. You know, you're not making any sense. But I'm getting emotional as I'm sharing this because that fear that I had of my mom and the change was real. So gosh, this just like all hit me at once. But when you share your story, it really helps. And I think I'm just kind of receiving this divine invitation and prompting to share with my child when she gets back home. My husband has him out right now to share my story with her. And then for your child, use a simple story or analogy. Remember how You know, you felt nervous with something in your life or your husband or whoever, you know, another figure in your life share. You could talk about a movie, this person, they experienced anxiety. Stories create connections and when your child sees you as the hero of your own story and then you can tell them they're the hero of theirs too, they learn that these obstacles aren't the end and they can overcome them. Number four is to kind of distinguish the logic from emotion. So practice saying, you know, my body's feeling this way, but I know that I'm capable. Affirmations are huge. I love putting affirmations on a sticky note and just having them. And then teach your child the same language. Okay, you could say, your tummy is feeling kind of funny, right? You're maybe feeling a little nervous about... going to school or whatever it is, but your brain knows that you can do this. So that's number four. And number five is to take small steps of exposure together. So identify one tiny action that you can take toward that obstacle. Maybe it's speaking up in a meeting, sending an email, confronting somebody about a boundary. If you want more about boundaries, listen to my last episode. And then for your child, invite them to take one little brave step. Maybe they need to walk closer to the slide or sleep with a nightlight instead of the full light on. Whatever it is, I'm just thinking of little things in my head. It matters because... You're exposing them and you are sharing that every small win is a victory and it's going to boost both of your confidence and doing it together side by side amplifies the impact. Gosh, this episode has been kind of a roller coaster for me. It's very interesting to see how our children mirror us in ways that we can't even imagine. And sometimes we have these things come back to us that really scared us. And it's easy to think that our children are being illogical or they're being silly because it's a burden. They don't want to put their shoes on because they're worried about how they look or whatever it is. Our children go through a lot of And sometimes we need to remember or we'll be flashed back just like I was while recording this to when we were a child and think that, you know, this is a real thing. And when we model how to face what scares us, we're giving our kids this blueprint to be resilient, to break the cycles of anxiety, perfectionism, self-doubt. whatever it is, because all of that is starting here. It's starting in the home, in our everyday moments. So let's really quickly just rehash these five steps, okay? And I'm just so excited that you get to take this information and use it to help your children and to help yourself, mama, because I know that you struggle in certain ways and It's hard. So one, acknowledge the obstacle. Two, label what you're feeling. Three, share your story. And this is what I'm going to do right after I'm done recording. I'm going to go share the story with my daughter. Four, distinguish logic from emotion. Five, take small steps of exposure together. If you loved this episode, share it with a mom friend who might be walking on her own path with certain obstacles and come join my Facebook group. We need you there. We need any mama who desires community and support because that's what this is all about. It's about navigating motherhood without your mother, breaking any harmful generational cycles, transforming, transforming your grief into a gratitude and love transforming your life and teaching your children how to do it along the way. I am also so excited to say that very soon I am going to start having guests on the podcast. So stay tuned for that. That's going to be so fun as I start bringing other women who have experienced similar things to you, different things for me. They're Thank you for listening, Mama. Stay tuned for the episode every Tuesday. Can't wait to hear from you. Join the Facebook group and follow along on social media.