The Whole Parent Podcast

Gentle Parenting with KJ from Big Life Journal #27

• Jon Fogel - WholeParent

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Episode Number: #27

Description: In this guest episode of the Whole Parent Podcast, Jon welcomes KJ from Big Life Journal. They discuss the transformative power of reparenting, the difference between gentle and conscious parenting, and the resources available to support parents on their journey. KJ shares her personal experiences transitioning from authoritarian parenting to gentle parenting, offers her top reparenting tip, and explores how journaling can help parents and children develop resilience and growth mindsets.

Timestamps:

  • 00:00 - Introduction to KJ and Audio Disclaimer 
  • 02:34 - Conversation with KJ begins
  • 03:12 - KJ's background and journey in reparenting
  • 04:21 - Difference between gentle parenting and permissive parenting
  • 06:15 - Importance of questioning authority and fostering safe challenges
  • 09:09 - Explaining the difference between gentle and conscious parenting
  • 14:48 - The necessity of effective and conscious parenting today
  • 16:21 - The role of journaling in reparenting and parenting
  • 19:26 - Discussion on the downloadables and free resources from Big Life Journal
  • 23:33 - KJ's number one reparenting tip: Recognizing what’s happening in your body
  • 30:22 - Conclusion and final thoughts on reparenting and gentle parenting

Key Takeaways:

  1. Reparenting: A crucial step in becoming a better parent by understanding and addressing one’s own triggers and reactions.
  2. Gentle vs. Conscious Parenting: Gentle parenting is what children experience, while conscious parenting involves the internal work parents do to improve their interactions with their children.
  3. Journaling: An effective tool for parents and children to develop resilience, growth mindsets, and critical thinking skills.
  4. Big Life Journal Resources: Offers journals and free printables to help children and parents on their growth journey.

Resources Mentioned:

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Contact Information:

  • Email: podcast@wholeparentacademy.com
  • Instagram: @wholeparent
  • TikTok: @wholeparent

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Whole Parent Podcast. We hope you found it insightful and helpful in your parenting journey. See you in the next episode!

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Jon @WholeParent:

Hello and welcome to this episode of the whole parent podcast. My name is john, I'm at whole parent on all of your social medias and today we have a guest episode for you. It is a conversation that I had with a friend of mine named kj. She is on instagram at two handles. One of them is gentle healing mom that's her personal handle that talks about parenting, specifically gentle parenting or conscious parenting and she also is one of the co-creators of at big life journal, which is a resource for parents. They put out like weekly downloadables and stuff. You can find out more about them in the show notes. But I had KJ on because I just think that the resources that they put out and the things that she says specifically are incredible. So I have edited our conversation, uh, broken down and we talk about a lot of stuff. We kind of go on some tangents and so I've tried to cut those down a little bit, but it's been a. It was a really amazing conversation connecting with KJ. I'm really excited for you to hear it. We talked about reparenting. We talked about, again, those resources that they provide. We talked about her number one tip for learning becoming the parent that she wanted to be. She talks about her journey from being raised in an authoritarian household raised with spanking and timeouts and all of those ineffective punishments that I talk so much about and moving into becoming a parent and just doing those things and then changing when her child was a toddler and she shares, like her number one tip for that.

Jon @WholeParent:

One quick note about the audio in this episode. Kj's audio is fantastic, but this episode was recorded on like the day that my book was due Uh, one of the editing cycles, I think. It was like the line edit and so I was just absolutely exhausted. I wasn't thinking super clearly, tired, hungry, all of the ways in which you should not have try and do work. I was, I was there, I was trying to do it anyway, and I made the mistake of of recording the entire episode through my computer speaker instead of through my microphone. So I was talking to my microphone.

Jon @WholeParent:

If you're watching the YouTube version of this, I was talking to my microphone the whole time, but it was only being picked up by my computer, so my voice sounds really bad. But honestly, I really care that you hear what KJ has to say more anyway, so I'm going to put out the episode with the full knowledge that I sound like I don't know what I'm doing, so I appreciate the grace. I'm really glad that I got my book in and, yeah, a little peek behind the curtain what it's like. So, without further ado, this is the episode with KJ. I don't want to talk any more about it. I just want you to hear it from her.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

It's a brand new day. Wake up every morning and say it's a brand new day Take a good day. Make it great Okay.

Jon @WholeParent:

KJ from Big Life Journal. Welcome KJ.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Hi, thanks for having me on.

Jon @WholeParent:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're excited to hear more about Big Life Journal, but we're also, today, talking about resilience. We're talking about journaling, which is something that I am working on, and we're talking about reparenting, which is something that I am working on, and we're talking about reparenting, which is something that I have not done an episode on yet. So I'm excited about this episode. What about you, kj? Are you ready to be here?

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

I am so excited to be here, and reparenting is a topic that I love talking about and sharing my own personal journey and helping other parents on their journey, whether they just started, want to start, or have been on it and just are seeking some additional guidance. I think it's such an important step in the way we are parenting this new generation of children, so I'm excited to be here.

Jon @WholeParent:

Yeah, so one of the yeah. I cannot agree with that more, and I think that this is like the missing link for so many parents. Would you agree with that, Like?

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Oh, absolutely.

Jon @WholeParent:

So many of us on social media are, are, are giving the like tactical, okay, here's how you do this thing with your you know, here's like, bend down in this way, you know, I, I speak in this intonation of voice but all of that requires that parents are in control of what they're doing, which is, I think, an assumption that many of us kind of make but is maybe not accurate For so many of us. It's not, we're not in control in those moments, generation of.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

I call non-traditional parents because there's so much, you know, negative connotations of whether you call yourself a gentle parent or a respectful parent, whatever label you use. If you are a traditional parent or you know somebody that's skeptical of this new wave of parenting, you view every non-traditional way of parenting as permissive parenting. So I talk a lot about how there's a difference between permissive parenting. So I talk a lot about how there's a difference between permissive parenting and being an authoritative parent. And, like you said, you can follow. You can read all the books, listen to all the podcasts, follow all the parenting accounts and learn different techniques, but they're not going to work if you haven't also worked on yourself.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Because those techniques or reparenting or doing things differently from how you were raised and if your child is still continuing to behave in ways that are triggering for you, you're going to view those tactics or those strategies you're trying as failure.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

You're not going to feel like it's doing anything and you're going to think it's not working for us or my child can't be gentle parented or I just cannot be that calm parent. I'm just not capable of it. And so I try to help parents differentiate the difference between what it means to be a gentle parent, like for me. I call myself a gentle and conscious parent and I tell parents gentle parenting isn't a solution or a way to fix your child. It is a lifestyle change, it's a mindset shift. It's a way to commit to raising children in an environment that is free of shame, judgment, fear, basically giving children, recognizing what each of your children needs, because every child is different, whether they're siblings and growing up in the same hole, same home. Every child has different needs and we need to be able to recognize their needs and support them and give them a childhood where they can be kids and learn in a non-stressful environment.

Jon @WholeParent:

I love that you said that they're growing up in the same hole, because to me, I look back on so much and maybe this is just me being weird, but I look back on so much of our. This is just like me being weird but I look back on so much of our parenting conventional parenting, wisdom, or why kids do the things they do from a somewhat evolutionary psychological perspective and so often, like our kids are behaving like they're like little cave people like, and they're just, they're just going through the world that way. And so you're like yeah, I mean, you have to treat every kid individually. I think that there's so, there's so much power in that. And then, at the same time, I think that that mindset also leads to, kind of my only pushback against that is that when I say that it becomes evidence or justification for some parents to say, okay, yeah, you're right, every kid needs something different and my kid needs to be hit, my kid needs to be screamed at Like if you had my kid, you would do that too.

Jon @WholeParent:

And I think that that's the the, the kind of unfortunate truth that I that I would offer is what I like to say to those parents is this and maybe I'm going to like lose a bunch of followers over this, but what I like to say to those parents is, if I were you, I would probably feel the same way, and and what I try and say and that's a phrase that I use my kids all the time too, and it sounds a little patronizing because of the way I'm about to describe it, but it really is a really empathetic thing to say and it's a humble thing to say because it it acknowledges that if you were raised in the way that that parent was raised, if you came from the same cultural and religious context as them, if you had their parents and all of their life experiences, that they're not just a hateful, hurtful person who wants to hurt their kids, that they think, because of the collective of those experiences, that this is not only warranted but necessary.

Jon @WholeParent:

And you know I run into that constantly in comment threads, but even in like research for the book. You know what a lot of people fail to realize is that until like 2012, this was 70% of American households that said you know, hitting kids is not only warranted, not only like do I do it sometimes, but it's necessary that kids require this form of discipline, and so if you're expecting, that's 2012.

Jon @WholeParent:

So, if you're expecting to be able to parent in a different way, without going back into your own childhood and appreciating the fact that seven out of 10% chance like 70% chance you had a parent who probably had that perspective that that you're not going to be able to parent in a what you're what you're calling a non-traditional way, right, so tell us more about that, because you're trying to reach people who are already on the path. They're already like, oh okay, I'm doing parenting.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

And I always, even when I, when I am explaining, right, when I'm trying to explain the difference, I'm constantly now like gentle parenting is not permissive parenting, and in my captions on posts and stuff on social media, it's like not to be confused with authoritarian parenting. Or I'll say gentle parenting is under the authoritative parenting umbrella, not to be confused with authoritarian parenting, because that's completely different too and that's something that you can't just like quickly explain to somebody that you run into, you know, on the street, right. So people like people recognize the term gentle parenting and you're either going to have somebody that's anti-gentle parenting because they think it's permissive parenting and they don't want to take the time to learn the difference. That's not, those are not my people, and I wish I could reach them because I want to help every child out there. But there are groups of parents out there who are like OK, I don't like how I'm parenting right now, I'm losing control. I'm I'm, you know, I would consider myself an authoritarian, traditional parent, but I don't want to be. So what else is there?

Jon @WholeParent:

I think that, yeah, in that way, your, your mission and my mission are somewhat different in that a lot of times I tend to be the guy who's reaching people who are, who are not sure yet. They're like okay, but convince me. Not sure yet, they're like okay, but convince me. And so I'm going to co-opt you and I'm going to bring you onto this side for a moment and help me understand. Why is this way of parenting? I mean, like, I have my perspective, but you have your perspective why would you say this? But this form of parenting raises more resilient kids.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

How much time do we have today, just kidding. Well, I want to go back really quick, because conscious parenting is a little different from gentle and authoritative parenting. It is still underneath the authoritative parenting and the way I describe the difference because I call myself both a gentle and a conscious parent and the way I define them is gentle parenting is what people see on the outside, how your children experience your parenting, right, like we, we. We offer them choices or we remain calm, or we speak respectfully. We model the behavior you know. To me, that's gentle parenting. Conscious parenting is internal. It is how we are gentle parents. In order to be a gentle parent, we have to know, okay, what's going on for us internally.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Why is my child's behavior triggering me right now? You're asking those questions to get to the root, right. Why is my child behaving this way? What are they needing from me right now? Is it a physical need? Is it a need for attention? Are they tired? Like, what do they need? And then, it's okay, I'm triggered. What, like what do they need? And then, it's okay, I'm triggered. What do I need right now? And if something is difficult, a parenting moment is difficult, it's reflecting later on, like, okay, I didn't handle that very well. Why is that and what can I do differently next time? Like that is conscious parenting. You can't see conscious parenting on the outside, because that's the work that we're doing on ourself in order to be the gentle, respectful, peaceful parent to our children.

Jon @WholeParent:

Well, and you can't, I guess. I guess my argument would be like the reason why I don't love these labels with gentle parenting is it is not conscious parenting, like part of my gripe with it is that so many parents try and do this work without doing their work, and even you know we were talking about this before we hit record. But even some of the best parenting books, the ones that I recommend above all others and that don't try and cover everything, because, as you know, as I know, you can't cover everything in one book, although Elisa Pressman sure did try the five principles of parenting, but you know, in like the whole brain child, like there's not a lot about doing your own work, there's not a lot about deconstructing your childhood, and so that's, I think, a struggle for so many parents is that, like, in order to move forward, you have to be willing to go back.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

I can tell you I was very much raised in a traditional home and I was punished, timeout, spanked, all those things. I love my parents, right, like they it's not to say that our parents were all terrible, but they they raised us with the tools they had in that time and they raised us by how they were raised. Right, it's a cycle and now we have so many more resources and we're learning to to break some of those cycles and to parent differently. And it's hard because we're learning at the same time that we're teaching our children and that's very hard. But you think about, okay. So you ask why is it important for us to parent our children this way? Now? Well, think about your own childhood and think about how that's affected, how you are today. I can tell you I'm very much a people pleaser. Still, I've been working on it for years.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

I was raised in a home. You don't question authority ever, right? Adults tell you something, you listen, and also my mom's from the Philippines, and so there's a high respect for elders there, right? You don't ever question elders Like you do something, and or they tell you to do something, you do it, you don't question it. And it's dangerous to teach children to follow authority blindly right, like we want to raise children to question authority blindly right, like we want to raise children to question things.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

I'm raising my son to question. I don't want him to just do something because I told him to. I want him to know the reason why I'm asking him to do it right, and I want him to question things. And if he challenges me or questions me, I want to take the time to explain the reasons behind it. And the reason why this is so important is because if our children don't feel safe, challenging safe people, us in our homes, how are they going to learn to challenge other people outside the home who maybe are unsafe? Right, and so we were not. As children did not receive those tools to be able to stand up for ourselves outside of the home, to be able to stand up for ourselves outside of the home.

Jon @WholeParent:

So how can parents break that? If we're like, okay, we want out, we want to move to a more effective form of parenting, and I'll just offer that my 30-second reason for wanting to parent this way, beyond everything that you said about obedience and compliance being problematic. And goal is that we are in a time in history where children have never been more vulnerable, and so our parenting has to be that much more excellent.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Absolutely.

Jon @WholeParent:

Our parents could kind of phone it in. But we were growing up into a world where I'm not going to say that that was good, but they could. And we were growing up into a world where, like, bad parenting didn't result in, like massive teen mental health crises.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Now it does so so we're playing a different game.

Jon @WholeParent:

It's harder now.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

It's so true, I mean, and there, even though we're trying to break a lot of those traditional ways of parenting from when we were kids or kids of the eighties and nineties right, we're trying to break some of those cycles, but we're also still very much in this new way of parenting that nobody's been through before. Social media, the internet, this is all so new to everybody and we're like we're adapting as we go. We're seeing how social media is affecting our children. Now they're teenagers now, like, and so now children with kids. You know my age, my, my son is six. I'm like already thinking, okay, how do I protect him from social media? Like having a smartphone, right, like we're seeing things as they're happening and that's so scary and at the same time, we're trying to work on ourselves while we're trying to break other cycles from when we were kids.

Jon @WholeParent:

Yeah, let's talk about journal. So what? As a tool? This has been the tool that's been most effective for me. Obviously, you work for a company called Big Life Journal. So what is journaling? How is it effective for parents? How can we use journaling alongside other resources that you all provide to actually get to a place where we can, on a reparenting journey, move forward?

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

we can, on a reparenting journey, move forward. Yeah so, big Life Journal, I would say one of our main focus, one of our main goals, is to help parents and educators raise growth-minded, confident, resilient children. So it's really in addition to everything you're talking about, about reparenting and raising children differently from how we were raised. But now we're kind of at let's take it another step further. Let's give our children the tools they need to think critically, to view failure as positive instead of something negative, where they want to try and fail versus avoid because they're afraid of failure or rejection. Right, we want children out in the world feeling confident in who they are, so they can go make friends and not worry so much about, you know, becoming people pleasers and worrying about what other people are thinking about. And, honestly, our journals are just one like little part of our company. I mean, it's a huge part of it. We have so many of our members who have benefited so much from our journals and we have a lot of them, but that's one tool, right, that we can help children use to build that growth mindset. So our journals, specifically, are specific. We have a bunch of them. Depending on how old your child is, we have a journal for them, and so I'm actually working through our daily edition with my six-year-old right now, and it's perfect because I have.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

I have a child that doesn't want to do it, like he does not want to do the journal, and so my approach to it is okay, like let's just do this one page today, like we do it slow. It's not something where I'm like you have to do this, you know, for 20 minutes or whatever. It's more of like, okay, let's just read what this page says, right, and it's, and it's, it's a way for them to kind of start building those skills and learning. What does it mean to have a growth mindset? What does it mean to build resilience? What do I like about myself?

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Right, you're starting to help them establish that inner voice already through working through the journal. So my goal with him is, you know, this year we're planning on going through this journal and we'll see, you know, what he learns and over time he'll be able to practice spending time thinking critically, thinking about himself, thinking about how he can communicate differently. And then, you know, progress to other journals we have. We have one for tweens and teens. We actually have an adult journal too for parents to do for themselves. So we those are. That's just one tool that we offer for parents to help their kids.

Jon @WholeParent:

And the thing that I so like the reason that I got into big life journal also is the downloadables too, which I'm I I'm kind of putting you on the spot to pitch your product.

Jon @WholeParent:

So, like I've said this a bunch of times on the whole parent podcast like I don't do sponsorships and I don't do like ad revenue, like maybe someday I'll like do ad revenue I don't really know even how to do that, but I don't do like you know kind of force endorsement where, like somebody comes to me and they're like, okay, I'm gonna give you this product, but like talk about how great it is. Like literally, yours is like the only one that I've sought out because I've been like no, I actually really like these, these downloadables, and I have some of them printed out. I meant to put one up behind me, but my, for those who are watching like the whole screen, like my house is a disaster right now because my kid tried to put an aquarium together behind me, but anyway, I was not paying attention and it's it's a huge mess, but but yeah, so these downloadables, can you tell us more about those? Because, honestly, that has been hugely helpful for me.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Yeah, yeah, and I I honestly don't come on and really promote our products either but since we've been talking so much about just the tools and resources for parents and we really do like just working with a team of parents and our goal really is like, okay, how can we make this easier for parents? Like what we're constantly thinking, like what do parents want to learn? Like what do they need? How could it make, how could we make these parenting challenges easier for them? So we do have a lot of free resources. So I don't want to share all of our products. We do have products that you can see on our page, but our journals are one of them. But we do have free printables Every Friday. We have a free printable that we release every Friday in our newsletter, so you can sign up for Friday newsletters for free and get a new printable. It's available for seven days and a new one was released every Friday.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

And then we also have a newsletter every Monday for parents of younger children around you know, I would say five to 10, and we have a parenting guide attached to it for free, like just a resource for parents, and now we have. We also have a teen newsletter on Wednesdays and we are now starting to add free resources for teens that are more digital, because teens don't want to do printables but maybe they'll save up a screensaver that has a quote on there, an inspiring quote. So we're coming up with content to help parents help their children, and that's what I love about this company so much. I joined Big Life Journal a couple of years ago and I just fell in love with the mission of Big Life Journal because it aligns so much with my own parenting goals and values, and I just love that we like.

Jon @WholeParent:

Honestly, our main mission is to help parents, and so that's why, yes, I want everyone to know about what free resources we have available if they want additional tools, no, and I think that, like, I mean that's I guess I can kind of sense that because, like, when, when I so I do this work and I oscillate back and forth between the like, okay, we had to hire, like, a person to help us marketing because, like, literally, you know, if I don't, I don't make X amount of money, then, like, I can't cover the cost of my email list and like, so you know, I'm podcast hosting, like, and so there's a, there's an aspect of like you have to be able to, to, to have some sort of revenue coming in, but like, truly, this is that's that's been my mission too which is just how can I help parents to grow to kind of have these tools, to really rethink this, and if I can help parents to do the reparenting journey, like I said, like this is probably the second great point of me writing the book is that I feel like that's just not, we don't talk about it. Of me writing the book is that I feel like that's just not, we don't talk about it. I mean, yeah, shefali does, but very few parenting people out there are saying the truth, which is you can have all of the tips and tricks you can listen to all of the podcasts. If you don't do your own work surrounding your childhood, how you are reactive, then what is this really going to accomplish? Which is just no. You're just going to create a shame system for yourself where you continue to act out of your own dysregulation.

Jon @WholeParent:

You continue to get triggered and react and I've talked about this a million times but you literally have to change your emotional response because your logical brain is not going to work as quickly as your emotions and so people who are like I'll just out logic, my emotions, like you're always going to be in second place, like you're never going to be able to get there. So do you have a tactic or a tool that you would say? One thing in your parenting journey that has been like transformational moving from growing up in an authoritarian household Like what is the thing that, from the reparenting aspect that you've said okay, this is something that I started to do completely changed the way that I engage my kids?

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

I would say the main thing that if I could share one tip or one thing that changed my life in parenting is I learned to start recognizing what's going on in my body.

Jon @WholeParent:

Like I, just started to become aware.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

And so in the in the past, right, I started becoming a gentle parent when my son was in a toddler. So he was two, two and a half, and I was the authoritarian, yelled, timeouts, all that stuff, Right, but I was that parent that felt terrible. Afterwards I'm like there's gotta be a better way to parent. There has to be like this. I'm only parenting this way because that's how I was raised and that's what society is telling me I need to do to get my child to listen to me because he's naughty, he's bad, all these labels, right, and it wasn't until I started learning, ok, so things are happening inside my body, right, when I'm getting triggered, I didn't even know what it, what it meant to be triggered, and I just would react, whereas now I'm able to take that pause, which is so important, and just recognize like, oh, okay, like something's happening. I'm, I'm clearly triggered right now. I'm not, I'm not in control of myself right now.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

And being able to recognize.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

That is huge, because until you get to that point, you're just going to react, you're going to yell louder than your child, you're going to hit, you're going to do everything that your body does when it's in survival mode.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

And until you can pause and be aware like, oh, okay, I'm there, I'm triggered, and then you can take a moment and figure out okay, what do I need to do right now? So a lot of this work has to happen before you're in that triggered moment. You have to have a plan. You have to think okay, when I'm triggered, I'm going to do this, I'm going to pause, I'm going to focus on deep breathing, because I know that that's going to help regulate my nervous system I'm going to walk out of the room, I'm going to go outside. You need to have a plan of what you're going to do so that when you're in that moment, you're not struggling, because it's hard for us to think logically, we're not in our logical brain when we are triggered. So I would say I would say that was a long answer, but I would say that being aware of what's going on in your body is like a huge skill and something that even I'm still working on.

Jon @WholeParent:

Yeah, it's a work in progress for all of us. I love that you said that, because so, like my, my one, my, my one and only paid workshop that I've ever done, like I have the membership and then there's that, but I've done one off paid workshop about how to stop yelling at your kids, and that workshop this is the exact conversation and the metaphor that I use for that is downhill skiing, where I feel, like so many of us I don't know if you've ever been skiing it's something that when, when I learned how to ski this is kind of a funny, random story but when I learned how to ski, the person who is teaching like just it was a perfect storm of of like bad circumstances, so that. So I I thought that I was going to snowboard, but I didn't really have. Like it's like I had a snowboard that I got from walmart and like I was on a real hill, so like you can't do that. So so like I got stuck somewhere for like an hour and a half and I missed all the skiing lessons. And then I came back and I said, okay, but like I actually need to rent some skis or whatever. Like can I, can I rent skis? And the guy who was on the school trip with me. He's like yeah, yeah, we'll run you skis. There's no, no, no, big deal. Your parents like told us that this might happen.

Jon @WholeParent:

So like, here it is, and we like rented the skis but I missed all the ski lessons and so I went down the bunny hill and I had like grown up like rollerblading, doing different things, so like ice skating, oh, this was like not so bad, like I wasn't even really falling. I was like that's fine and I feel like that's parenting right. Like all of us are like well, I feel like I kind of got this, you know, all right, like my kid's one year old Like, yeah, I did not do well with the sleep deprivation, but like, on the whole, like, look at this, I'm like fast at changing diapers now. I like, look at this, I'm like faster changing diapers now. I like know how to feed them. I like know how to do these things. And then he was like I was like okay, so how do you get? Is this? It like this is bunny hill. He's like no, no, you gotta go like up the ski lift to the big. So I go up the ski lift and he's like just do the green ones. Those would be the easiest ones.

Jon @WholeParent:

I didn't want to slow down. I didn't know how to stop, I didn't know how to turn, really, and so I just bombed these hills, Like I'm just flying down these hills totally out of control. And if anyone had come into my path the rule in skiing is the person above you on the mountain has to watch out for the person below you and if anyone had wandered into my path, any of these three-year-old kids who were learning how to ski had just faded into the wrong area, I would have just decked it like I would have just run over him. I had no way of stopping whatsoever. Now, thank goodness I did, yeah, but I feel like when you're in a before you do your reparenting work, it's like trying to ski down the mountain without ever learning how to slow down or stop.

Jon @WholeParent:

And, like you, you're like skis pointed straight down and by the time you even realize that you're triggered, you're halfway down and and, as anybody knows, like, I guess, anybody who's like a pretty confident skier unlike I was at 14 years old, like you you don't like't like really, really great skiers, like the best in the world, the Olympic guys and Olympic women, like they can stop on a dime going super, super fast.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

That's. I love that metaphor and I honestly I think that's the perfect metaphor to be speeding down the hill and then being like what just happened. Like what, what just happened. But then the important step that a lot of parents don't do is they don't take that moment to look back and be like what did just happen. What could I have done differently to make that a little bit less stressful or a little bit less overwhelming, so that when I go back up and try again, I have a little bit more control over what I'm going to do?

Jon @WholeParent:

Right, and so I think, yeah, I think that that's I don't know, that's kind of a weird metaphor to end on, but I really appreciate all of your time having this conversation. How can we follow you? How can we get your free resources? How can we learn how to slow down before we go plummeting down the mountain and absolutely run over all of our kids?

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Yes, we have all of our resources on Big Life Journal. We're on all social media accounts, so whatever social media platforms you follow, we're on there Big. Life Journal. You can check our link in bio on Instagram for all of our.

Jon @WholeParent:

we have a bunch of free resources in our link in bio and every day we post your link in bio will also be in the show notes of this episode.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Oh, amazing. Yes, that's perfect. There's a ton of free resources on there and we have daily posts on tips for parenting, reparenting. We have events, live Q&A events that we open up to the public to talk to experts in the field, to learn about things, and, yeah, and then the newsletter. So we have a ton of free resources to help you on your journey. So, yes, I think there's something for everybody.

Jon @WholeParent:

Perfect, awesome. Thank you so much, kj, for being on the Whole Parent Podcast.

KJ @gentlehealingmom and @biglifejournal:

Thanks for having me.

Jon @WholeParent:

Thank you again to KJ for an amazing episode. Such good information, such good takeaways. I obviously am recording this a little bit later, this outro, and just going back and listening to the podcast, I'm thinking about all the things that I want to change about my own parenting and all the things that I learned listening to it. After the fact, If you want to connect with her all of her information is again in the show notes below and make sure that you rate and review this show. I told you I was going to have an update on who had more reviews on the Thursday episodes and this is a Thursday episode at least, so that's when it's being released and so I checked and currently the Spotify listeners have raised their lead. They are not looking in the rearview mirror at this point. They have 56 more reviews than the Apple listeners.

Jon @WholeParent:

So if you're an Apple listener and you haven't rated and reviewed the show yet, please go and do that. Try and make up some of the ground. Again, you guys outnumber the Spotify listeners two to one. So you guys got to show up, you got to show up in the ratings and if that's not a good enough reason for you to rate and review the show. It really does help to push this out to parents so that more parents can hear about the types of things that we're talking about in this episode. More parents can hear from people like KJ, they can get the resources that she's offering and that Big Life Journal is offering, and they can learn more about their own parenting journey on other episodes of the podcast. So if you haven't shared this with a friend, that's another great way that you can grow the base of people who are listening to this show and trying to become more holistic, wholehearted, whole parents Until next time. This has been an episode of the Whole Parent Podcast.

People on this episode

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Jon Fogel

Host