Kimberly [00:00:05]:
Hello, beautiful souls. It's Kimberly Virginia, your host of the Soulful Motherhood by Design podcast, where we go deep on all things motherhood. I'm a certified Positive Discipline parent educator, accredited life coach, human design specialist, and mother of two precious kiddos. Through inspiring conversations, I'll guide you on this Soulful Motherhood journey and help you to create peace in your home and your heart, raise kind and loving humans, all while living your soul's purpose. So let's get started. I'm so glad you're here. Hey, hey, everyone. It's Kimberly.
Kimberly [00:00:41]:
Welcome back to the Soulful Motherhood by Design podcast. Really thrilled to be with you here today. I have an exciting solo episode talking about what I facilitated at the Positive Discipline think tank this past weekend in San Diego. But before I get started, I want to make sure you all know about an offering that is complimentary to all of you as listeners. It's called the Parenting by Design guide. This guide is free for you to download once you subscribe to my email newsletter. And you can do that by jumping on my website and you'll have a pop up come through about 10 seconds after you join on my website. Everything will be linked in the show notes, by the way.
Kimberly [00:01:23]:
So, Kimberlyvirginia.com, that will be linked in the show notes once you enter my website. A pop up will show for if you want to join my newsletter, and if you'd like to, you get the free copy of Parenting by Design. This guide is chock full of guidance from me on what I recommend you start with as you begin the human design journey. The things that I recommend and most human design guides and experts and specialists will recommend, is that you start with your type, your strategy, and your authority. And for those of you who don't know what that is, you might be like, what are you talking about? So this is a great place to start, not only for you, but for your child. And a bonus as well on my website is that you can get your body graph chart for free, entering your birth date, your time, your location, and you'll automatically join my community by doing that. So you get my updates, my offerings, my newsletters, all of that which is completely complimentary just from joining the Kimberly Virginia community. So I highly recommend, if you haven't done that yet, to go on there, download it.
Kimberly [00:02:35]:
It's a PDF you can keep forever, and it's also interactive. So what I mean by that is you pull your own design through my website, and then you fill in the blanks and prompts based on what your body graph is and what your child's body graph is saying, okay, I'm this type, I'm this strategy, I'm this authority. Here's my reflection based on the tips that are being provided in this guide. So this is a really wonderful starting off point for you as a beginner for those of you who are maybe more further down the line on Human Design or have even had a reading with me, this is still useful for you. It's useful for your friends, your family as well. So send them my way. And for those of you again who maybe are a little further down the road and experiment with Human Design, I have some offerings coming up soon for workshops with me and Human Design healing for the holidays, which I'll share more about in my newsletter. So make sure that you are on that list.
Kimberly [00:03:40]:
So without further ado, I'm going to get into this episode and I had the amazing opportunity last weekend to speak at the Positive Discipline think tank. And for those of you who haven't been listening, maybe this is your first time and you're like, what is Positive Discipline? Maybe some of you are even turned off by the word discipline, which I totally understand and want to make sure I clear up that this is a modality of parenting in a kind and firm and conscious way. It's a way for you maybe to gentle parent. That's also a very popular word that's coming up with a style of parenting lately. But positive discipline is an actual discipline. That's funny saying that word back to back, but it's an actual discipline, modality and method of parenting based in Adlerian psychology. The founder of Positive Discipline, her name is Jane Nelson, dr. Jane Nelson and her daughter Mary Tamborski was a guest on the podcast.
Kimberly [00:04:46]:
She was, I believe, episode six or seven. Go back and listen. It was a great episode. I found out about Positive Discipline through them. So fast forward to now, I'm certified educator. I educate other parents along with learning, right alongside all of you. By the way, I had the opportunity to apply to do a breakout session. I was really nervous, but I thought, hey, if I'm going to take the leap and really begin my own business with Human Design and some spiritual healing and Positive Discipline, I'm going to put myself out there and start to do some facilitation on this.
Kimberly [00:05:25]:
I applied to do an amazing exercise from the Positive Discipline workbook called Labels and Their Impact, and I was accepted to do that. So I actually had the experience to be with other certified trainers, lead trainers, and Dr. Jane Nelson herself joined my session. It was absolutely transformational for me, and I want to share a little bit with you about Labels and their impact, what this exercise was, the experience that people had from engaging in it. Even though most of these people know what this is all about, they got a chance to play and practice as kids and parents, label each other, interact with each other based on those labels and see what it could possibly do and produce for the child. So I'm going to explain a little bit about that and then I'm going to share a little bit with you about my own experience as a kiddo, being labeled as something, oh, I know you're on the edge of your seat to hear about this and connected a little bit to human design as well. And then towards the end, I'm going to share some real practical tools for you, whether or not you're a mama listening to this. You could be a friend auntie who watches the kids sometimes.
Kimberly [00:06:48]:
You could be a caretaker, a babysitter. I had a grandmother connect with me today saying she really needs a reading for her and her grandkids because she's watching them a lot and she would really love to have some insight into their human design and some positive discipline tips. So without further ado, I'd love to introduce this exercise to you. It's called labels and their impact. And again, it's from the teaching, parenting the positive discipline way workbook. Crediting Jane Nelson, the work that she's done to produce this Lyn lott. This is from the Parent Educator Facilitator Manual, 7th edition. Just want to make sure I credit their work, getting Into It labels and Their Impact.
Kimberly [00:07:32]:
The objective of this whole exercise is to really understand the importance of avoiding labels for children. Bottom line, labels, positive and negative block. Both the parents and the child's ability to experience and express and or acknowledge the whole person belonging and significance are really enhanced by believing that someone knows who you are, not what you do, and gosh, let's face it, as parents and as human beings, it is really easy to get into labeling someone. I do it. It's a default reaction. Why are you being so difficult? Why are you so angry? Just even those questions that you're asking them kind of sarcastically, but really you're giving that person a label, that child a label, and it can be pretty detrimental. This again, I will say this every single time I talk to you about positive discipline tools. This is not to blame or shame anybody.
Kimberly [00:08:42]:
I have labeled my children. I'm just going to come out and say that I have done that and am I super proud of that? No. Do we always do better when we know better? No. Do we learn from our mistakes? Yes. So this is an opportunity to learn. I want to make sure you all know I'm learning right alongside you. I am not perfect, but I'm a facilitator of learning and development and education. So that's why I'm sharing this with you.
Kimberly [00:09:13]:
So I'm right alongside you. Everybody at the edge of my seat trying to make sure I can learn this for the next time around. Something upsets me with my kiddo. So what I did in this exercise is break people into two groups. So the room was, I don't know, there was maybe 2030 people, something like that. So we split up into two groups. One group was the parents, one group was the kiddos. These kids in this group, quote, unquote, kids who are really adults.
Kimberly [00:09:42]:
I put sticky notes on their heads, and everybody had a sticky note, and they didn't know what it said on it, but it was a label, and there was positive, quote unquote, positive labels, and there was quote, unquote, negative labels, and they didn't know what they had. But I spread everyone around the room and I said, okay, you're going to stand here with this label and all these parents, parents, the other half of the room, are going to walk around and interact with you based on this label, but you're not going to know what it is. They're not going to tell you what you are or what you're being labeled as, but you're going to guess at the end when I say, hey, whoever thinks you have a positive label, stand on this side. Whoever thinks you had a negative label, stand on this side. So there we went. We put these kids around the room and we gave them labels like smart, lazy, cute, rebellious, selfish, angel, brat, hyperactive, shy, forgetful, athletic, clumsy, troublemaker, demanding, charming, good, bad, et cetera. We had these parents interact with these kids as if they didn't have any positive discipline tools. So there was a lot of shaming, a lot of judgment.
Kimberly [00:11:01]:
And for the kids who had positive labels, there was a lot of praise and adoration. And at the end of this exercise, I said, okay, I want to split everybody up who thinks they had a positive label, who thinks they had a negative label split on these sides of the room. And it was really interesting because there were some people who had quote unquote positive labels and they actually didn't know what side of the room they should go on, because the positive label praising and adoration was actually kind of confusing for these quote unquote kids because they didn't feel empowered. They didn't really understand their place or their value or their belonging or their significance. So we went around and let everybody process. We let them share how they felt, so what they were feeling, what they were thinking, and what they were deciding. And I will tell you, not many people, whether it was the positive or negative side of the room, made any sort of decisions that were empowering. There was hardly any decision making going on that was based in belonging and significance and feeling like they were being valued for who they were.
Kimberly [00:12:31]:
And it was just really interesting. Even though I knew what I was doing, I was leading the exercise. I have the author of Positive Discipline in the room, interacting as a parent, pretending like she doesn't know what positive discipline is, and we're just really getting into it. And people got really emotional. They shared how it was making them feel, how they felt worthless, how they felt they couldn't move forward. There was nothing they could do, even the people with positive labels. So then we erased that whole experience. We're like, okay, now parents, I'm going to give you some positive discipline tool cards.
Kimberly [00:13:13]:
I'm going to give you these amazing skill sets. You've gone through a positive discipline course with me and you've learned some tools that you can use. And we're going to interact now again with these kiddos with these labels on their head. But we're going to use these positive discipline tools. So I gave some tool cards out to these parents. I'm going to share a few of them with you. One of them was the 3 Hours of recovery. Making mistakes isn't as important as what we do about them.
Kimberly [00:13:43]:
So use these steps after you have had a chance to cool off. Compliments. Compliments and appreciations bring us closer together. Taking time for training. How do you train? Making sure that you're not expecting the children to know what to do, but you give them step by step training. Encouragement, validating feelings. Encouragement versus praise. Using eye to eye conversation because it isn't respectful and doesn't work to sit on the couch and yell at your kid from across the room.
Kimberly [00:14:16]:
Hugs connection before correction. Silent signals, problem solving, distracting and redirecting. Breaking the code. I just did a podcast on that a couple episodes ago. One word avoiding lecturing and nagging. Use one word as a kind reminder. Showing faith and focusing on solutions. There's many more.
Kimberly [00:14:42]:
There's 52 of them, but I just gave them out. Let people choose some that felt empowering and had these parents go back around and interact with these kiddos with those tools in mind and gosh, some of the parents, even though these are lead trainers, these are highly educated people in the space of positive discipline. And they're like, oh, my gosh. How do I interact with a child using the tool Hugs, who is a quote unquote brat? I said, you just give them a hug and then let's see how they felt. So we did that again and we let the kiddos process again afterwards to see how they were thinking, what they were feeling and what they were deciding. It was amazing processing with them again and the emotion that came through that. I know that there was something that I was doing, quote unquote wrong, but I got a hug and so and so put their hand on my heart and they just said, we're in this together. Let's focus on solution and the empowerment, the encouragement, the shift in the belonging and the significance and hope that oh my gosh, I really am in this with my parent.
Kimberly [00:16:00]:
And the contrast of that and the contrast of how the parents felt. Focusing on wow, we're going to get through this together. I have some hope that I have a tool that might make a difference for you. Whether or not you're the star athlete or you're this adorably cute person or you're a brat. Quote unquote brat. We don't really think anyone's a brat. But you know what I mean. And to hear the parents process and say it felt so much more empowering to have a tool to use to support versus shaming and blaming.
Kimberly [00:16:37]:
I didn't feel good the first time around. I felt like a bad parent. I felt guilty and I felt hopeless. So to wrap up, we didn't get a chance to do this here on this podcast. It would be something we would do in person, in my coaching or in a workshop for parents. But there's this really important part of all this called Life Skills and Characteristics. There's also a part of the list called Challenges and we talk about all the challenges we're currently facing with our kid tantrums, power struggles, screaming, yelling at me, anger, not listening and the list goes on. And then we think about the life skills and the characteristics that we hope and we want for our children.
Kimberly [00:17:24]:
Things like responsibility, care, love, social interest and so on and so forth. And the difference of these kids feeling like they were able to embody those life skills and characteristics after the second part of the exercise versus embracing more of the challenges and the challenging behavior. From the first time around, it was a stark contrast and it was impactful and it brought up a lot of emotions and it helped us to remember that there are tools that we have so that we can interact with our child based on who they are, not what they're doing. I hope that you take something from that caregivers, parents, mamas, babysitters, anybody out there who's listening in general just about labeling people and then I just want to share a quick story about being labeled as a child. And again, this is not shaming blaming anybody who called me this as a kid, if you're listening. But I just highlight this to share the impact that it can have. When I was a kiddo, I was often labeled as wishywashy people will laugh. But it had a huge impact on me for a really long time, into my late 20s probably until I met my husband.
Kimberly [00:18:49]:
I would continually want to try new things and I would flip flop pretty quickly between what I thought I wanted and then what I actually wanted and just was excited. I just remember feeling really excited to try new things a lot and then having more information come through that had me change my mind. I was continually judged for that and made fun of for that and it was a joke. It was kind of like being made a joke because of that. And it became such a common thing for people to joke about and say about me that I finally just really believed it. That you know what, I'm not able to make a decision. I need to rely on other people to decide for me because there's something wrong with me. I must just be so ungrounded that I don't have enough authority to decide what's good or best for me.
Kimberly [00:19:50]:
So I'll just let everybody else decide for me what I should do. And that is the impact I carried with me probably through college, letting others decide things for me, make up my mind for me, and make me feel kind of silly or stupid for changing my mind. I'm not saying this to be like, oh, what was me? Poor me? Because look where I am now. I have a lot of empathy for people being labeled and I'm able to do this work and it's so powerful and it's interesting because connecting it to human design, in human design, I am a profile 62. There's some in depth meaning behind that that we can go into in another episode, but high level. I'd like to share that with a six two profile. We live our life in three stages. And the first stage of our life, from about the age that you're born from birth until about age 28, you're in a period of experimentation.
Kimberly [00:21:01]:
And that experimentation, which is like the line three, is really about letting life bump into you and bumping into life. Trying things on, quitting them, deciding you want to try something random, brand new, so that you can gather all of these amazingly rich life experiences or things or foods or whatever it might be, relationships, then retreat in the second stage of your life, the middle stage of your life, which is what we call going on the roof. And that's from about age 28, 30 until about age 50. And that's the time where profile line six will retreat and go on the roof and observe after gathering all these life experiences. And then around age 50, we emerge into the six line profile, which is the role model where we've gathered all this experience and we've gone on the roof to observe and retreat. And then we come forward with being a leader in some certain area to show people how to live a unique life. And so I look back on that period of life when I was being called Wishywashy and it turns out that that's exactly what I needed to be doing. And it goes into what we say in human design around the conditioning, people conditioning you into being what they think you should be and how you should act.
Kimberly [00:22:31]:
And then this process of deconditioning, which takes around seven years if you haven't grown up with human design and kind of unlearning deprogramming what was pressed upon you. So there's a lot of nuance here. And this is really an episode around the positive discipline opportunity I had to do that exercise and the understanding around labels and their impact. I just want you all to know I have this big smile on my face and I hope that you are filled with a sense of renewal and excitement around this versus, oh my gosh, what did I do? What have I done because this is again not a place for shame and blame. This is a place to just feel like you learned something. Whether it's about somebody in your office that you've been labeling or a friend or a family member or most importantly on this podcast, your kiddo. This is a chance for you to try a different tool and take a deep breath before you say why are you so this? Or oh you're so this. Or interacting with someone based on what you think they are or what they're doing, but really being able to see through that behavior and be like, I see you.
Kimberly [00:23:52]:
I see you, and I'm going to interact with you with some kind and firm and loving tools to really show you that you belong. And I love you and you're significant. So with that said, that is it for this episode. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed this and we will see you next week for actually another solo episode and then we have a special guest the following week. So thank you everyone for being here and have a glorious day wherever you are and whatever you're doing. Bye for now. Thank you everyone so much for being here.
Kimberly [00:24:31]:
If you're enjoying this podcast, please subscribe rate and review so we can continue to bring soulful content your way each week. You can also join my community via my socials which you can find in the show notes. Until next time, bye for nowhere.