Emily Brown teaches Boundaries

Empowering Catholic Moms for Schoolwork and Homeschooling through Setting Healthy Boundaries for a Balanced life as we head back-to-school

Episode Notes:

Understanding Boundaries:
- Boundaries are often misunderstood. Emily explains that they are about protecting your peace, not controlling others.

- The goal is to have peace within yourself and to decide how you want to show up in any situation.

- Understand what is within your control: thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Implementing Boundaries in Homeschooling:
- Emily shares her experience of starting homeschooling and feeling overwhelmed with trying to do everything.
- She recommends transitioning from a doer to a teacher and eventually a mentor and consultant as children grow.
- Determine the best time for learning based on your child's unique needs and creativity.

Preparing Ahead of Time:
- Emily suggests setting time aside in your daily preparation to remember what you love about your kids and how you want to show up for them.
- Teaching From Rest by Sarah McKenzie is an excellent resource to ease overwhelm in homeschooling.

Applying Boundaries to Chores:
- Emily realized she was guilting and shaming her kids to do chores, leading to overreacting.
- By adopting an employer-employee approach, she detached emotionally from the outcome and allowed natural consequences to play out.
- Children become more responsible when they experience the natural consequences of their actions.

Conclusion:
- Remember to prioritize relationships over tasks in homeschooling.
- Get Emily's free download, "Creating Healthy Boundaries" worksheet, to explore your desires and show up intentionally in your homeschool journey.
- Check out the Happy Holy Mama podcast and explore life coaching options at fiatlifecoaching.com.

Amazing news: True Presence is on Feedspot's list of the Top 15 Catholic Mom Podcasts!!!! Thanks for everyone who tunes in.

Transcript:
(apologies— it didn’t pick up on the different speakers! Working on that soon…)

 [00:00:00] before we really dive in deep into our topic today, which is boundaries, I was just wondering if you would mind clarifying a little bit about what those are for anyone who might not understand yet. I think there's so many misconceptions out there.

 Anything from boundaries or like making rules for your kids to boundaries are, you know, just, Things I tell my husband to do so well, how would you define them? Yeah, I love that question. So really, I think most of us are doing boundaries, what I would call wrong. Granted, there may or may not be like a right or wrong way to do this, but the way that I find to be most useful are boundaries that help protect your peace.

So the way that I find most people are trying to do them is. you know, to control other people to try and control the circumstances around them. So a lot of the times that means trying to control the situation, trying to control another person's behavior, how they respond, how they show up. And then mom loses a lot of her peace [00:01:00] in the process because other people are actually completely out of our control.

And so, when I am teaching how to create healthy boundaries, the way that I teach it is, Being able to have peace inside of you. Okay? So inside of your body, you feel peaceful, you feel calm because you know what it is that you want. You know what it is that is going to, you know work best for your family or you know, what kind of outcome you wanna create.

You also know that you are the only person within your control in that scenario. And so being able to have boundaries around what is okay for you to do what is okay for how you wanna show up, just making those decisions ahead of time. And then what it is you will or will not be okay with or allow.

And. In regards to other people and then how you plan on showing up with them if they violate the boundary that you have. So I know that that sounds maybe just a little bit complicated, but it really just comes back to what's within my control. I. [00:02:00] Then making that decision ahead of time, of how you wanna show up in a potentially uncomfortable situation so that you're not going through all the steps of trying to create the boundary in the moment.

Because in the moment , your emotions might be pretty elevated, and if your emotions are high, your intellect is pretty low. Those two parts of your brain are not functioning at the highest optimal speed or level. At the exact same time. And so if that emotional brain is really high, your intellect is actually pretty low, your, your logic brain is pretty low.

And so in that moment, we wanna actually have the boundary already created and then be able to just tap into that wisdom from when you work home and implementing that boundary in the moment, so that you can get exactly what it is that you are hoping to achieve and show up exactly the way that you want to.

 I think ultimately creating healthy boundaries for me and for my clients are going to look like, focusing on what is within their control and making sure that however it is that they're showing up with other people is how they wanna be showing up.[00:03:00]

That's absolutely so helpful, and I think it's really good advice to be thinking about this in terms of what we're doing ahead of the moment versus in the moment. Because I think a lot of times when we hear the term boundaries, we think of it as, that's it. I'm like, really angry. I'm putting my foot down now.

Mm-hmm. But can you help me just a little bit with like, how could we really tap into understanding when we need a boundary? Like what would be a, a symptom that there's just, there's some lack there. You know what, most of the time I hear from my clients or my own experience is when I've lost control or when they have lost control.

So a lot of the times they've been overreacting quite a bit or the complete opposite. They're just not reacting at all. Kind of like being their words are typically like, oh, I'm just a doormat. My kids just walk all over me or they don't listen to me. A lot of the times it's like one extreme or the other, where they're overreacting using tones and language that they never would have.

[00:04:00] You know, if they were in their logical brain, they would not choose to do that. So they're being unintentional, right? They're not choosing it intentionally. So overreacting, or again, the opposite would be unintentionally not following through with boundaries, letting the kids say no or push back. And then mom kind of going into a freeze response, not knowing how to respond to that because she's probably never really considered what it is she wants in that situation.

How she wants to follow through, how she wants to respond, and then hasn't also solved for the potential obstacles of other people's human brains responding to not wanting to do the things she's asking. So again, not getting what she wants in either scenario. Can we dig in just a little bit? You keep talking about things that are in our control when we're setting boundaries.

Could you give a few examples of that? Oh yeah. So things that are within my control are me, my thoughts, my feelings, and my actions, and that is pretty much it. [00:05:00] Other people are a hundred percent out of our control. A lot of the times we think we can control them, especially if you have little kids. You are, a lot of the times you're the doer for your kids, right?

You pick them up, you move them around, you create the meal for them. You cut the.

Food, you're all, you know, especially when they're really little, you're actually feeding it to them. And so a lot of the times we're just the doer and we sort of kind of start to step into more of like a teacher mode. A lot of my clients are, are homeschoolers and so they're very much in the teacher mode, especially when their kids are really little.

But they really struggle to get past that. And so for me, I actually start really young with my kids. I focus on what's within my control when I show up with them. How would I speak to a friend? How would I speak to another person, another child who's not in my family when they're reacting a certain way or, or behaving a certain way.

And, you know, I really, I try to move from the doer to the teacher. Pretty early on. And then I even have [00:06:00] another step after that, which is being the mentor, where they're learning how to do something in my presence. And then eventually, once you get into the high school years and you're getting them ready for college and adult life, you're actually help actually turning more into like a consultant.

And so you can like give them instruction, walk away and they will do the thing. I think it's so wise to think of it that way because it, it, it really is this gradual process as they get older, as they get more responsible and more mature.

Now, tell me a little bit about what boundaries look like when it comes to homeschool. I. Yeah. Okay. So for, for homeschooling, I want you to think about what you, how you wanna show up with your family. Okay? So, like, on your ideal day, you know, if you were being super intentional all day long. How would you show up with your kids?

What kinds of emotions would you want to have? Because again, our emotions are one of the things that are worth in our control. We, a lot of the times overreact [00:07:00] because our emotions are all tied up in how someone else behaves. And so if you have a child who's not being quiet while you're trying to teach them something or staying focused, you might overreact.

Okay. Or you might just throw your hands in the air and walk away completely. You know, you might hyper focus and maybe try and spend way too long on something because you're trying to get the child to do something that they. Either they don't want to do, it's not engaging with them or we just haven't quite figured out how to communicate what it is you're trying to communicate.

And so again, if you were intentionally going to show up in that way, I would ask you to think about ahead of time when you're not in that scenario, how, how could I respond to this child? Because you are the expert in your children. No one else is the expert in your unique children. You are. Dad is a very close second.

But we want to tap into the wisdom that we have as their mothers and the expertise that we [00:08:00] have in who they are, who God created them to be, and their unique personalities. I always say, you know what makes your kid tick? You also know what ticks them off, right? So we can kind of find a happy medium where we can tap into what motivates them.

When is going to be, you know, the best time to do that learning? Are we trying to do it during a time? When is that we think is best for us? You know, a lot of moms have this. We need to learn first, play later, but I particularly have a few kids who really need to get their creativity out before they can actually sit down and do math.

And so some of my kids, I have seven altogether, 16 down to four and a half. Some of my kids love to get up and get their schoolwork done first thing in the morning, and then have the whole day to play. And then I have some kids who will draw or play music or go outside or whatever they need to do for a few hours, and then they come back.

And so for me, the boundary needs to be, you know, getting, really thinking about when I'm having my, my [00:09:00] clearest calmest body and brain, you know, how, how do I want to help this child? Meet not only my goals for their education this year or this week or today, but also theirs, you know, what do they want, and making sure that I'm trying to combine as much of what they want with what, what I want.

Making those decisions from with how we're gonna do that and how we're gonna accomplish those things from a really clear place, a really clean body, not worried, not fretting, not overthinking it, or worried about missing something or gaps or, you know, not hitting the curriculum just right, but really putting the relationship before the task.

That sounds like a really balanced approach to this, but like in a practical sense, how do you actually put that into place? Okay, so if you have, okay, so let's go back to the scenario where the kiddo doesn't want to do the schoolwork. Okay. So maybe they're, we'll say seven or eight years old and they're really [00:10:00] squirmy and busy.

They don't necessarily want to like get their handwriting just right. They don't want to sit and listen to a story, right? The boundary needs to be to protect your peace. Most of the time we try to create boundaries that are gonna control the child. If you don't do this, then you have to do this. And I totally get it.

We want, a lot of the times those are very punitive or we're trying to like dangle a carrot, right? Something in front of them to try and motivate them. But a lot of the times we lose our peace. We overreact or we completely give up because the child isn't like giving in to what we want them to do.

And so we're really delegating. How we show up to the child. We're really letting our emotions be dictated by the child. And so instead, it's a matter of taking a pause and like remembering what it is that you created as that boundary. And it's really just a two step process. So it's an if then statement.

[00:11:00] So it is if my child gets really squirmy and I feel like I want to lose my cool, then I'm going to take. A five minute break, or I'm going to just take a breath. Right? It's, it's a very, it doesn't have to be rocket science. It doesn't have to be something that's super complicated. In fact, the less complicated, the more simple it is, the more likely you will be to actually implement it.

And so we have to be able to willing, we have to be willing to take that beat, to take that pause to calm down before we respond to our child. A lot of the times it's a matter of taking a beat before responding. That sounds like a really great way to think of it for when you're in the moment.

I, I know for me, A really important thing that I do when it comes to boundaries is I have to set up boundaries around protecting my preparation time so that I can show up for the day too.

Yeah. One of the things that I will teach, and this again, comes from not just my life coaching [00:12:00] training, but my experience as a homeschooler and a mom for all this time is being able not just to get your curriculum ready for the day, not just cutting out all the things or, you know, making sure you have all the manipulatives or everything set up just right, but actually putting in time for you to decide ahead of time what you know, how you, how you want to show up.

So not just what you wanna do, which is our, our go-to. We think we need to do a lot of things. We don't think about how we wanna feel. We don't think about you know, thinking about our kids really intentionally, we don't think about remembering that they are just a child, right? We expect them to be like a producer of work.

And so we really need to remember to set time aside when we are getting ready for our day, to think about our kids in the most loving, most, you know, exceptional ways. Remembering who they are, remembering. How much of an expert you are in them and what kinds of things you absolutely love about them.

[00:13:00] Because when we don't think about our kids really intentionally that way, then we just kind of become just kind of coworkers in this homeschooling, like this homeschooling lifestyle that we're all in. And then we tend to get really irritated that they're not doing their jobs really well. So getting to be able to just set time aside in your prep day, in prep part of your day.

You know, if you take time to pray in the morning or take time to organize your curriculum in the day. I just really wanna be encouraging all the moms out there, especially if you have littles. And actually this applies to teenagers even more so I think To be able to really set time aside to just remember how much you love these kids and what kinds of things you wanna be creating in your relationships with them throughout the day and tapping into that throughout the day.

Having set it up already is going to be what helps you to hit the pillow at night with a more satisfaction and trusting yourself that you got the most important things done, even if every single math, you know Math formula. I'm trying to remember what the word is called now. It's [00:14:00] been, it's summer.

I can't remember them all. Even if everything didn't get completed for the day, you know, the most important things did get done.

Emily, I don't know if you'd mind would you be willing to share with us any times in this homeschooling journey where you felt really overwhelmed where boundaries helped with that? Yeah, so actually, you know, it's so interesting. I have an example with homeschooling and an example with life.

So home is more than just schooling. Home is home and school. So it's a lifestyle that we live. And so for me, homeschooling, I tried starting out homeschooling. We pulled all of our kids out of school after our surprise number seven was born. And so I had five kids in school at the time and I pulled them.

All home at Christmas and we started homeschooling and so I immediately jumped into what I have found to be a pretty normal thing to do which is buy a box curriculum and do all the subjects every single day and try and like hit every single thing because I was. Trying to just [00:15:00] replicate the only experience I knew, .

Brick and mortar. I think we always think that is going to be the easy thing to do. Yes. When it comes to homeschool is to buy like a packaged curriculum. Yeah. I think that that's, it really feels like it's going to be, and then it never turns out to be. Yeah, because it's a lot. And so what I have learned I actually read Teaching From Rest by Sarah McKenzie.

Somebody recommended that to me, like a month into homeschooling, and it just saved everyone in my life for love, everyone in our homeschooling. Yes, it's so good. I read it probably every six months. For at least the first two years. Just remembering like, oh, okay, this is actually why I am homeschooling was for the freedom.

And I felt very the overwhelm that you were talking about actually came from not allowing it to be as freeing as it really needed to be. Really being beholden to this idea of what I thought school needed to be for my kids and why we were doing it that way. So really letting a lot of those expectations go.

And it took a couple of years to really. [00:16:00] Like wean off of all of that. But the fruit of that now is I have these amazing teenagers who are just so incredibly independent and thoughtful and creative and motivated for their own sake, not because their mom is asking them to do all the things. They have their own goals and I help support their goals for what they want.

So that's my, my, one of my homeschooling examples was just having lots of littles, trying to do every subject every day and feeling behind, within like two days, like trying to do it all. And then my other, my home example actually was chores. And trying to organize all the chores, because again, we have seven kids.

Oh, I'm really curious about this. So I really I, I, it was, it was a kind of a, a multi-step process, but I really was thinking about how I learned how to be a good worker. I was like, oh my gosh, these kids are never gonna learn how to have a job someday because they argue or they whine [00:17:00] or they do something with like, Half an effort and then they walk away thinking that that's good enough and that they should be rewarded or praised for that.

And I was just too stubborn to really give into any of that. And so I thought about how I learned how to be a hard worker, and it was really when I had a job, when I had an employer, and I know my, we did not have chores and things when I grew up. So really it was when I was a teenager and my employers, I had to do things.

At certain times, and I was expected to do a good job, and if I didn't, I would get fired or they, you know, would probably be upset with me, but they would never shame me. They would never, I might feel some guilt, but it usually wasn't because they were intentionally like putting me down. My, sometimes my pay would get docked if it wasn't, if I broke something.

You know, there were just all these scenarios, but like my worth was never put into question. I was trying to think about how I was responding to my kids, which was a [00:18:00] lot of overreacting at the time. And I remember feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm just, I'm spending so much time guilting them and shaming them in all honesty to getting the things done that I wanna get done.

And my, I was losing my cool a lot. And so then I was seeing my kids respond and mirror what I was, how I was behaving. So the boundary came into. We're actually becoming more of the employer and having my kids become more of like the employee in that particular scenario. And so it was a matter of, so this is how I want to respond to my kids about their chores.

And, you know, we implemented an allowance system and that would take way too long to get into at this point. It allowed us to be able to respond to them with chores.

With absolutely no emotion. Like, oh, I'm so sorry you didn't get that done. I told them I'm not gonna fire you. You're my, you're my child. I'm your mother. You can't get fired from your family, but I don't have to pay you.[00:19:00]

As much as we originally talked about when you don't do it this way or when you have a bad attitude or, or whatever was established at the time, and it just totally freed me from having to overreact completely. It was one of the most frank things for our family. I think I. We've done and I've just been able to replicate that with school and like as a mentor, I wouldn't sh shame and guilt them for not doing something.

As a consultant, it has absolutely no emotional effect on me whatsoever. If someone I'm consulting doesn't take my advice so I can implement those things for my, especially my older kids. So that's kind of how it's, it's morphed its way through our family in, in many different examples. It's so interesting.

It seems to me like the whole concept of boundaries. It really is about deciding who we wanna be and deciding that ahead of time. We put a wall between ourselves as a person and the people around us and their choices and their actions.

And we say, that is them. That is, there's this wall here of where they [00:20:00] end and where I begin and I can operate within this. And it's so freeing. It takes that load off. Like we're, we're, as moms, we're always listening to the shark music about our kids' future and it it really affects. Our sense of self-worth.

 Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh yeah. And especially if you were, I. Like a high achieving student, right? Yourself? Oh yes. At school. And so you probably have the expectation that your children also produce a lot of work in the school environment, or you know, they just want to unload the dishwasher, or they just want to help wipe down the table.

And then you're just a lot of times baffled that they don't always want to do that because you grew up and you're like, I'm just gonna do the thing. And so it, you know, really learning how to operate, like you said, within your own sphere of what's within your control.

And then allowing, this is the tricky part. Okay. The hard part for us moms is allowing our kids to [00:21:00] experience consequences, natural consequences. And so what I mean by that is if my, my boundary is to not like for my teenager who's in theater, He will sometimes call or text me and say, oh mom, I forgot this thing.

Will you please bring it? And I'll say, oh, I'm so sorry you forgot that, but I unfortunately I can't do that for you today. And then he has to live with the consequence of not being prepared. And the next time he is more prepared. Not necessarily every time, this is an ongoing learning process and training process we have going on, but he's more likely to remember the thing he forgot.

Little like little things like that. We can, we can begin to allow them to have ownership of what's actually theirs, including the positive or negative consequences, and then not making those consequences mean something about us and our self-worth or our value, which has nothing to do with what our children [00:22:00] produce or not.

Thank you, Emily. That is so helpful. Now, if anyone has any more interest in diving in deeper into this, where can they find you? Well, they can combine me at Fiat Life Coaching. So Fiat is f i a t life coaching, and I also have a a pdf f It's just a free download for your listeners. It's called Creating Healthy Boundaries, and it's just a really simple worksheet to walk them straight through question by question.

It's very simple, but it's a really nice way for them to be able to journal about some of the questions about what they want. And how they want to go about getting it and how they wanna show up. And so this is really gonna allow them to understand a little bit more. There's some cute little stick figures on there about, you know, keeping people at bay or, or letting them all up in your business.

And where you in the sweet spot of where you really wanna be and how to protect your piece. So this, this is gonna help them you know, really learn. More about what it is that they want, and then thinking ahead of time at a really high level. 'cause again, we're doing this hopefully when you're [00:23:00] calm.

I don't recommend doing this when you're upset. But being able to do this when you're calm and you're thinking clearly, and you have a few minutes to just ponder what it is you want and how you want to show up with the people in your life. Because I really highly recommend prioritizing your relationships over the tasks.

And so when you do this work, I really want to encourage your listeners, To think about how you wanna show up with the people in your life and how you wanna talk to yourself about. How you're showing up with the people in your life. And then, and then come and hang out with me. I, you know, I have, I have a podcast.

They can come listen. It's called Happy Holy Mama. It's for Catholic homeschool moms You can also find more about my private life coaching, or I also have a group membership for. Catholic homeschool moms or@fiatlifecoaching.com. Well, thanks again, Emily. This has been so helpful