#154 Be the Soft Landing

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Well, hey there. Welcome back to Your Favorite You.

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I am Melissa Parsons, your favorite general life coach for amazing women, and I'm so glad you're here with me today. I saw a reel recently that stopped me in my tracks, as they do often. It was from a mom directed to her children, and it said something like, if your relationship isn't working out, come home. If the bills get too overwhelming, come home. If you ever feel unsafe, come home. If you're struggling with your mental health, come home. And then it listed all these other reasons, you know, why a mom would encourage her kids to come home.

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And I just sat there thinking, yes, this, this is what I want for Jack and Owen. This is what I want for hopefully my eventual grandchildren. This is what I want for every mom listening to want for their kids.

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As a pediatrician, as a mom of two amazing young men, and now a life coach to so many incredible moms, I want to talk today about something that might go against everything you've been told about parenting, unless you've been listening to me for a while.

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And that is it's okay to be soft on your kids. It's okay for you to be their safe landing spot. Life outside your house is hard enough for them. Most of us have been told that if we're too soft on our kids, we're doing them a disservice, that we need to toughen them up for the real world, that if we don't challenge them, they'll be weak, that love means being hard on them.

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And I get where this comes from. We look at the world, and it is hard. There's rejection and disappointment and failure and heartbreak all over the place. And we think, I need to prepare them for this.

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I need to make them resilient. But here's what I've learned as both a pediatrician and a mom and a coach now. Life will provide all the challenges your kids need. You do not need to manufacture challenges for them.

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I have shared this before, but I can remember worrying when my boys were growing up that the life that we had provided for them hadn't challenged them enough to make them resilient. I often wondered if I was being too soft, too understanding, or too much of a safe place.

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I was worried I wasn't preparing them properly for the real world. And then because life is going to life, it happened to both of them. They had and experienced real challenges, real disappointments, real struggles that I could have never prepared them for, even if I'd tried.

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And you know what I discovered? They never needed me to challenge them. Life did that perfectly well all on its own. What they needed from me was to be their home base, a place they could return to and remember who they are underneath all of life's demands.

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The truth is, when we feel like we need to be tough on our kids, it's usually coming from our own fear. Fear that they won't be okay, and then consequently, we won't be okay. Fear that we're failing them if we don't prepare them for every possible hardship.

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Fear that us being soft means that we are weak and therefore they're going to be weak. But what if being soft is actually the strongest thing we can do for them? Now, when I say be soft with your kids, I don't mean have no boundaries. I don't mean have zero expectations. In fact, boundaries and expectations create safety, and kids need to know what to expect from you and what you expect from them, rather, in order for them to feel safe.

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Being soft means being their emotional safe space. It means they can come to you with their failures without fear of your judgment. It means they can be messy and imperfect and still know they're deeply loved and valued by you.

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What does this look like in practice? And why do we call it a practice? Or why do I call it a practice? It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to be perfect at doing this. Believe me, I am not.

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The boys will come on and testify to this fact. So when they come home from school upset, your first response isn't to fix, to teach, or to challenge. It's to listen and validate. When they make a mistake, they know they can tell you without fear of lectures or punishment.

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When the world beats them up, you're the place they can fall apart and put themselves back together. When they're struggling, your home becomes their refuge, not another place where they have to perform.

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Now, being soft doesn't mean being permissive. You can absolutely have rules and consequences, but the energy behind them is different. Instead of I'm disappointed in you, it's I love you, and this behavior doesn't work in our family.

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Instead of tough love, I would offer you to think of it as fierce love, fierce protection of their worth as human beings, even when and probably especially when their behavior needs correction.

Here's the thing about this idea that we need to prepare them for the real world. What is the real world? Is it a place where everyone is harsh and critical and unforgiving? Because if that's the real world we're preparing them for, maybe we should be working to change that world instead of hardening our kids and ourselves to survive it.

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Real resilience doesn't come from being tough. It comes from knowing you're deeply loved and valued. It comes from having a secure base to return to when things do get hard. Studies show that kids who have at least one adult who believes in them completely are more likely to overcome adversity.

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They're not more resilient because they've been hardened. They're more resilient because they know they matter to you. In my years as a pediatrician, I've probably seen thousands of kids. And you know what the most resilient ones have in common?

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It's not that their parents were tough on them. It's that their parents were their safe place. The kids who bounce back from difficulties, who take healthy risks, who develop genuine confidence, they come from homes where they're accepted as they are, where they don't have to earn love through performance or perfect behavior.

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They're not tougher because life has been hard on them. They're stronger because they know they have someone in their corner no matter what. Going back to that real come home. What does it take to create a home where your kids always know they can come back?

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It means that they know no matter what happens out there, no matter what mistakes they make, no matter how the world treats them, your door is always open and your love for them is constant.

Here are some practical ways to be that soft landing. When they share something difficult, resist the urge to immediately problem-solve or give advice. Just listen first. They always need to be heard before they need to hear solutions. Celebrate their efforts, not just their achievements.

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Let them know that trying matters more than succeeding. Let them see you be imperfect too. I do this all the time. Show them that making mistakes doesn't make you less worthy of love or respect. Create some rituals of connection that aren't contingent on their performance.

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So family dinners, bedtime talks, car rides, moments where they can just be themselves without having to do or achieve anything. If you notice them struggling, ask, how can I support you? Instead of, what are you going to do about this?

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Let them know that you're on their team. And yes, you can absolutely have boundaries and expectations while still being soft. In fact, like I said before, clear, consistent boundaries are part of what makes home feel safe.

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The difference is how you hold those boundaries. Instead of punishment and shame, you can have consequences that come from love. Instead of you're in trouble, it's this behavior doesn't work for our family and here's what needs to happen next.

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Think about what you want your relationship with your kids to look like when they're adults. Do you want them to know that they can call you when they're struggling? Do you want them to include you in their lives?

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Do you want to know their real selves, not just the versions of themselves that they think you want to see? That starts now with how safe you make it for them to be human in your presence. If you're worried or you've been worried that you're too soft on your kids, I want to give you permission to stop worrying.

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The world will challenge them plenty. Your job isn't to be another source of challenge. It's to be a refuge for them from it. You're not raising kids to survive a harsh world. Hopefully you're raising kids who might make the world a little less harsh for everyone, including themselves.

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So this week, I want you to notice, how does it feel in your home? When your kids walk through the door, do they relax and act crazy like we want them to, or do they brace themselves? When they're struggling, do they come to you or do they try to handle it all by themselves?

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There's no judgment here, just awareness. And if you realize that maybe home hasn't always felt as safe as you'd like, that's okay. You can ask for do-overs and you can start creating that safety right now.

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I want your kids to carry your voice with them when they're out in the world. Not the voice that says you better toughen up, but that voice that says you are deeply loved and valued exactly as you are, and you always have a place to come home to.

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Because ultimately being your favorite you as a mom means trusting that love that you have for them, that real, fierce, protective love is enough to raise amazing humans. It is. If this is resonating with you and you've been considering working with me, stick around for the outro where I'm going to offer you a chance to learn more about working together with a workshop that I'm giving on Tuesday,

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September 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you all next week.

Hey, before you go, I want to tell you about something special I'm doing that I think you're going to love. On Tuesday, September 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern, I'm hosting a free workshop called Why Smart Women Stay Stuck and the one ship that's set you free. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I work with growing accomplished women who have achieved everything they thought they wanted, but still feel stuck in one way or another. This workshop is for you if you're tired of overthinking every decision, if you're exhausted from seeking everyone else's approval, or if you know you're capable of more but can't figure out what more even looks like.

I'm going to share the one shift that changes everything, how to move from external authority to internal authority, and I'll tell you exactly what that looks like and how to make it happen in your own life.  Here's what makes this even better. Just for signing up, you'll be getting a 25-question assessment called Am I Giving My Power Away? That helps you identify exactly where you've been handing your authority over to others.

And if you show up live and engage with me during the workshop, you'll be getting two additional bonuses. My permission slips for smart women, a collection of 10 beautifully written permission slips you can save to your phone for daily reminders that you don't need anyone else's permission to want what you want.

Plus, you'll get my five-minute internal authority check-in. It's an audio to help point you back to your own intuition. The women who come to these workshops tell me that they get massive clarity just from the hour we spend together.

Some say it really helps them make sense of why they're doing what they've been doing, and it's completely free. Go to melissaparsonscoaching.com/workshop to save your spot. That's melissaparsonscoaching.com/workshop.

Tuesday, September 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern. Stop trying to think your way out of being stuck and start trusting yourself instead. I'll see you there.