Creating Parent-Child Connection and Harmony That Lasts with Lorena Seidel

Mindful Impact with Justin Francisco

On this episode of Mindful Impact with Justin Francisco, the host speaks with a purposeful parenting expert Lorena Seidel about creating a parent-child connection and harmony that lasts. They will also talk about proactive tools to address children's dynamic and family issues.

3 Key Points:

1. What parents really wanted is to raise good human beings and have a lifelong connection with their children.
2. Both parents must be on the same page to create a more consistent household, thus, setting clear boundaries with their children.
3. Break the negative cycle by creating positive interactions with your children, thus, creating better strategies to end children's bad behavior.

Episode Highlights:

• 5:10 Lorena learned that at the bottom of it all, people want to be better parents, to raise good human beings, and want to have a life long commotion with their children.
• 6:20 Daily, parents are fostering relationships with their children in every interaction that they make.
• 9:27 Research shows that most adults have the maturity emotionally of an 8-year-old.
• 13:36 Understanding each other's programming as parents is a big piece of parenting.
• 15:35 Most issues with couples in parenting are being too kind and/or too firm. Then, they end up compensating for one another.
• 17:30 Parents compensating with each other for being too kind or too firm will end up creating a very inconsistent household with no clear boundaries.
• 19:07 It is essential to understand the root cause of the sibling dynamics by understanding the impact of adding a child to the family.
• 20:44 When there's a sibling fight, parents must be neutral and never take sides.
• 21:30 Taking sides will create the "bully and the victim" mentality thus, developing sibling rivalry.
• 25:44 Be more proactive rather than being reactive as parents.
• 27:05 A pro-active tool is having a family meeting at least once a week.
• 31:16 Start a gratitude practice in a family meeting.
• 32:30 Know the "bug and wish" of each family member to brainstorm the solution.
• 36:00 In mindful parenting Lorena recommends, connecting before correcting.
• 46:45 Children tend to negotiate but stay with the boundaries that you set.
• 48:25 Give yourself a time-out to calm down and brainstorm a different approach to teach children when you feel guilt and shame.
• 50:21 Change the mindset, as there's so much power in doing it over again.
• 50:47 Work on repairing the connection with your children
• 56:07 Negative interactions such as shaming and blaming create disconnection, thus, creating negative behaviors.
• 57:27 Break the cycle of negative interactions starting with the inner work to access better strategies (e.g. validating, brainstorming, connecting before correcting, apologizing, etc).

Tweetable Quotes:

• "I live and breathe this topic of parenting because it is not just what I do, but what I studied, it's what I teach, it's my work."- Lorena Seidel
• "All of us, we learned the love that we live, we learn the parenting that we experienced."- Lorena Seidel
• "Parenting is one of the jobs that didn't have a strategy. A proactive tool is having a family meeting." - Lorena Seidel

Resources Mentioned:

• Justin Francisco: LinkedIn, Website
• Lorena Seidel: Youtube, Instagram