May 17, 2022
Cindy Lopez:
Welcome. My name is Cindy Lopez, the host of this CHC podcast, Voices of Compassion. We hope you find a little courage, feel connected and experience compassion every time you listen. Being self-aware is essential to connecting with your kids. Self-reflection and self-awareness make us more flexible and adaptive as parents and caregivers. Your awareness helps you to make intentional choices, both for yourselves and for your kids. You know, we can have the best intentions, but sometimes the messages we communicate to our kids are really not what we intended. What clouds your ability to authentically see your child? Listen to this podcast episode with CHC clinical services experts, Audrey Schield, bilingual associate social worker, and Karly Crockett, licensed clinical social worker as we discuss why self-awareness is so important in parenting, and how you can develop greater self-awareness that will benefit your kids. Welcome Karly and Audrey.
Karly Crockett, LCSW:
Thank you, Cindy, this is Karly. I’m a licensed clinical social worker here at Children’s Health Council. I’ve been here at CHC since 2018. I’ve been in the field for over 10 years. I’m a bilingual therapist, I speak both English and Spanish, and I really enjoy working with teens and their families.
Audrey Schield, ASW:
I am grateful to be here with both of you. I am Audrey Schield. I am a bilingual therapist as well, working in English and Spanish. I lead the parenting groups here, and I love working with parents because I know that part of our goal here is to work ourselves out of a job, and part of that is helping parents be there for teens.
Cindy Lopez:
Well thank you Audrey and Karly. So let’s talk about parenting. I know it can be a challenge. You know part of the work of parenting is developing self-awareness. I think self-awareness is really important for parents to understand kind of what they’re bringing to the conversation with their kids or to the table with their kids, to that relationship. So what does that mean really? What is self-awareness?
Karly Crockett, LCSW:
Absolutely Cindy. Self-awareness is the ability to see yourself clearly and objectively through reflection and introspection. One of the books that I’ve looked into regarding self-awareness, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about how self-awareness is derived by asking hard questions and answering them with honesty. So it is not a simple thing to build self-awareness, but as you were hinting it is a very important aspect of our lives as humans and in particular in the role of parenting.
Cindy Lopez:
So why is self-reflection so important for parenting? When I was doing my research for this episode, I really didn’t find a lot of resources on this topic around self-awareness and parenting. Why do you think there aren’t that many resources out there?
Karly Crockett, LCSW:
So first I want to speak to why we think that self-awareness is important in parenting partly that’s because it’s hard to be there for your kid if you don’t know what’s going on for yourself. And it’s also hard to know how to be there for your kid if you don’t know what your feelings and thoughts are doing to impact how you’re showing up for your child and how you’re feelings and thoughts are impacting your child. So by building that self-awareness, by asking yourself those tough questions and recognizing what your truth is, what your reality is in that moment, you can be a more present and wholehearted parent for your child, especially in moments of intense emotion.
Audrey Schield, ASW:
I completely agree. One of the things that I’ve seen with parents is how well they’ve integrated their own stories into their understanding of their lives. Something that research has shown from Daniel Siegel, who has written, The Neurobiology of We, is that when a parent understands themselves better, the child has better overall life outcomes. And so if a parent has integrated their life story, reflected and understood things that have happened in their life, doesn’t matter necessarily what that is, but if they’ve made sense and reflected their child is more likely to have better overall life outcomes because the parent can be more self-aware. So there’s a lot of good research to back up what you’re saying.
Karly Crockett, LCSW:
Thank you Audrey, and I wanted to then circle back to Cindy’s other question about why she didn’t find much research on this topic, and I think what we’ve seen when preparing for this podcast is there’s a ton of research and blog posts and articles about how to help children build self-awareness. What about the parents? What I’ve seen in our practice here at Children’s Health Council is that parents often come with concerns for their child. So the focus is on the child and in the role of the child’s therapist, I almost always bring the parent into treatment too because they are a family unit and how the parent’s doing so directly impacts how the child’s doing. So I think the reason you’re not finding research on it is that it’s kind of overlooked because parents are so concerned about how their child’s doing, and what we see in the field is that it’s important for the child to develop self-awareness, but also for the parent to do so. And if the parent practices skills to develop self-awareness they are able to then teach their child, model for their child and support their child’s growth and wellbeing.
Cindy Lopez:
Linking back to what you said Audrey too in terms of the research out there – so interesting that if parents are able to kind of reflect and unpack some of their stuff that leads to positive life outcomes for their kids. So, okay now we’ve established what it is, why it’s important, but how do I do that? So if I’m a parent how do I develop self-awareness?
Audrey Schield, ASW:
Great question, Cindy. I think there are so many things to hold in mind: work, chores, safety, basic hygiene, and so mindfulness really does help. And so I want to emphasize that the goal of mindfulness is to learn how to control your attention so that your mind does not control you. When thoughts and emotions can be overwhelming, you can notice them and then see yourself in others with less judgment. I know that especially as parents the goal is always to do more, to be better, to be the best and being aware of everything that’s going on it can be uncomfortable, but just doing a body scan, noticing when things become a lot, you can see what is your body telling you, maybe you have a headache, you feel a little nauseous, there’s a heaviness in your chest or restlessness in your hands or feet that can tell you a lot about, okay, you’re having a strong emotion. That’s a form of mindfulness, and you can then take that and become more self-aware of what your feeling to put aside your own emotion to be present for your child or for what else is going on in the moment.
Karly Crockett, LCSW:
I want to chime in here Audrey and share cause body scans are such a helpful tool, and I’ve used them both with kids and with parents. One of my favorite resources for guided practices of mindfulness and body scans is a website and a free app called Insight Timer, and I love using it for guiding parents through the exercise, but I also then encourage them, hey, will you just practice this together. I’ve introduced it to your child as well, and now you can practice it at home as a family and that’s another way to kind of build the comfort in something that can be new or uncomfortable.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah, it’s so interesting cause people think about mindfulness, and I feel like we’ve used the term a lot, right, but I think it’s so important and just that idea of being present, like reflecting back on how am I feeling in this moment and the body scan, as you said Audrey really helps you do that and you referenced too Audrey, like in a non-judgemental way, don’t judge yourself. You know, if you’re like thinking, “why am I so uptight? I shouldn’t be so uptight,” like that’s not the kind of self-talk that’s really helpful at this point.
Audrey Schield, ASW:
Absolutely. And you can’t control your body or your emotions. So just noticing that those are all signs that there’s a big emotion or something big is happening in the room and using that awareness to step back. Another skill that I really appreciate is self reflection, and the way that I invite parents and kids to practice it is asking a simple question: how does this serve me with an action? So, when I do something or say something, what am I hoping will happen? So with parents, the question might be when I take away my daughter’s phone, am I hoping that she will use her phone more responsibly in the future? When I leave the room during an argument am I hoping to give myself time to cool off? When I create family ice cream Fridays, am I hoping to create a family tradition? So just before taking the next step with self-reflection, sometimes taking a breath and asking the question: what am I hoping will happen can give you the chance to act with more intention and more self-awareness.
Mike:
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Cindy Lopez:
So what does self-aware parenting look like, and any examples you can give us?
Karly Crockett, LCSW:
I think I’ll start with one with a mom I’ve worked with who has a twelve-year-old boy, and she brought her son to CHC because she was concerned about his anxiety, and in my work with both the son and then with mom what I realized was that mom also has her own anxiety, and this is something we see where a child might be struggling with something and maybe because of family dynamics or the environment where they’re living or genetics, like the parent can also have similar struggles and parents have different levels of self-awareness of their own struggles, and so in working with mom, what I realized was that her anxiety came from her love of her son. She just wants him to be healthy and happy and to feel successful at school, and she’s worried because he’s struggling at school that she’s not doing enough for him. And the piece that she wasn’t seeing was how her worry was contributing to his anxiety. He picked up on how worried she was, and he became more worried, and the way that she presented her worry at home increased the tension and the nerve wracking energy at home. So what I did with mom was bringing in insight timer and mindfulness practices. I guided her through some exercises to encourage her, to sit with how she’s doing and to ask herself, how am I feeling? And then with those practices over time, that built that sense of, oh, I’m worried. Oh, I see it in my body this way. Oh, I’ve seen that in my son. And so by building her awareness of her own anxiety, then she can practice other strategies to manage her own emotions so that she could be more available to her son, listen to how he’s doing at school and hold her anxiety so she could be open to how he was feeling about his own school success. So that’s one example of many where building mom’s awareness created a stronger relationship for her and her son.
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah, that’s so important.
Audrey Schield, ASW:
Yes, Karly, I love that example and the way mom can then become a teacher and a role model for her son. I have seen similar things in my work with the parenting group at CHC, where I speak to the importance of self-awareness in parenting. Many parents don’t realize that they have expectations in their relationships with their kids, especially about how they will receive and give love. For example, one parent talked about how she gave and expected love from her nine-year-old by sharing hugs. And what we discovered in the group was that her nine-year-old really doesn’t like being hugged, especially when she’s upset and by helping mom build her awareness about how she preferred giving love, then she was able to notice how her daughter responded to that, and mom was able to learn how to more effectively give love in a way her daughter could receive and feel supported by her mom.
Audrey Schield, ASW:
As we talk about this, I’m also thinking about an older client of mine who was preparing to go to college and parents were starting to ask the client to pay for more of her own expenses in the home and this was part of the mother’s experience and the father’s experience growing up. And this was also part of their values in terms of wanting their daughter to be ready for college life and for adult life. So we used the question, “how does this serve you” to think about what was the intention? Because their daughter became really frustrated and started to rebel in some ways, and that was really new because there daughter used to be really close to the family and used to voluntarily do household chores and kind of stopped. When we asked, “how does this serve the parents?,” they were able to be more direct in why they were asking their daughter to pay for these things, and why it was important to them, how it related to their childhood experiences and that self-awareness also created a bond within the family about what are their values, and how does this reflect their hopes and dreams for her in the future?
Cindy Lopez:
Yeah, that’s so important. I think, you know, as parents, I’m sure you’re thinking, well, this worked for me, and so you bring that experience with you, and your child doesn’t respond the way you thought they would. So it is important to just take a step back and ask why do I think my child, my daughter, my son’s not responding like I thought. I’m just wondering as we finish this up, thinking about this idea of parenting and self-awareness, what final thoughts or advice do you have for our listeners?
Karly Crockett, LCSW:
I think the first takeaway is that building self-awareness is an ongoing process. It is not easy. It takes a lot of practice, and as you practice a new skill it’s helpful to be patient with yourself and compassionate, which is the opposite of judgment because it’s hard. It’s hard to be honest with yourself, it’s hard to ask these tough questions and to maybe see something you didn’t want to see within yourself. That’s part of being human and a very important way that you can help your child reach their goals is for you to see how you’re contributing to your family dynamics and doing that requires self-awareness and practice.
Audrey Schield, ASW:
Cheers to that Karly. Nobody is perfect. And parenting is hard. Being a kid is hard and one of the most challenging things that I talk about in the parenting group and that I see is children change over time. So as parents you’re constantly adapting to the fact that your two year old is suddenly starting kindergarten, and then they came home from fourth grade and they’re best friends dumped them and you have everything that’s going on with your work and the grocery store closed early. All of these things that are constantly changing in the world and in their world that you do and don’t know about. It’s okay that this is not okay.
Cindy Lopez:
I liked that, “it’s okay that it’s really not okay.” I’m thinking about self-reflection and self-awareness and how it makes us so much more flexible and adaptable or adaptive as parents or caregivers.
Audrey Schield, ASW:
Self-awareness is ultimately just about asking yourself or someone else, and it’s okay when you have questions or doubts or judgements, and you can ask us too, and if there’s not an answer, it’s all right just to sit with that discomfort. You’re not alone and other people are there to help.
Cindy Lopez:
Thank you for your time, Audrey and Karly and sharing some of your experience and expertise with us. It’s been really helpful. If you are interested in finding out more about our parenting groups or more about CHC, or you have concerns about your child, please reach out. You can reach our Care Team at careteam@chconline.org or you can call at (650) 688-3625. Thanks so much for joining us, and we hope you’ll listen to it again next week.
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