053 – There’s no bad Emotions – With Penny Williams

Anouk:
Welcome to the podcast. Today, we will be talking about good and bad emotion and good and bad behavior, or is that really a thing? Let's welcome Penny once again over on the podcast to talk all about that. Let's do it. Welcome to Parenting the Intensity. Where we'll talk all about how we can drop the general parenting advice that doesn't work with our emotionally intense kids anyway and let go of the unrealistic expectations society puts on us as parents. Together, we'll find solutions and ideas that work for you and your kids. Chances are deep down you know what they need. But you need a little encouragement to keep going on other days and permission to do things differently and help you fully trust that you already are a wonderful parent to your exceptional but challenging kids.

Anouk:
Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed and uncertain when it comes to parenting your emotionally intense child? Do you often find yourself playing with guilt, fearing that you're not doing enough to help them navigate their intense emotion? You are not alone. Many parents face these challenges and struggle to find the right path forward. But take a deep breath, there's hope. That's why I created the Parenting the Intensity community. Imagine having a clearer map tailored specifically to your child's unique needs and your family's reality. Picture feeling empowered and confident in your parenting, knowing that you are providing the support and understanding your child needs. It may seem like an untenable dream right now, but I'm here to tell you that it is within reach. Come and join us for our monthly group support to connect with other parents and get supported with your challenge right now.

Anouk:
You also get 1 on 1 chat and audio office hours for the things that you're really not ready to share in the group and workshop tools, courses to help you in the process of finding that balance of parenting in a way that works for you, your child, and your family. Welcome, Penny, over on the podcast. I'm glad to have you here over once more.

Penny Williams:
Thank you so much for inviting me back.

Anouk:
Well, I'm gonna link, in this show notes episode the other, episode that you were on. But for those who didn't listen to it, can you try this to yourself again?

Penny Williams:
Yeah. So I'm Penny Williams, and I am a parenting coach for neurodiverse families. I help parents, educators, and other caregivers and caring adults in neurodivergent kids' lives know how to pivot in order to show up in the ways that our kids really need us to so that they can live their best life, whatever that looks like for them.

Anouk:
Right. And why did you start doing that?

Penny Williams:
Because I have that kid. Right?

Anouk:
Of course. It's basically all my braces.

Penny Williams:
Yep. I have again who's neurodivergent, and he was diagnosed in 2008, and there was no help, like, zero help. And so I had to figure it out on my own. I became very obsessive and spent so so much time. And it wasn't until, like, 3 years into it where I finally started to see what I needed to do that was actually going to get the right results. Mhmm. I started really trying to fix it, and you can't change the brain. You can't change the kid that you have.

Penny Williams:
You can certainly build skills, and the brain does, you know, change over time.

Anouk:
Yes.

Penny Williams:
But you can't take, like, the autism out of the brain, right, or the ADHD out of the brain. It is wired the way it's wired in those ways, but we can teach skills. We can, you know, show up in the understanding and compassionate and radically accepting space for our kids, and that's what they need from us.

Anouk:
Yeah. And I think that's very important to address because there is a lot of information out there about changing the kids. Especially in the neurodivergent autism and ESG word world. There is a lot of advice in professionals even that are talking about changing the kids. We we experienced it firsthand in my house. We had some professional coming, and it took me a meeting, and I was like, not gonna work. I'm not gonna let you do that to my child, but it it's hard because lots of that information is going that way, even still now. So, like, 10 years ago, I can't imagine how much that was the case because it's changing slowly, but it still is the dominant things that is taught in school for professionals.

Anouk:
So

Penny Williams:
Yeah. Culturally, we wanna make everyone fit. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just wrong. To be very blunt, that is just wrong.

Anouk:
Yeah. That's

Penny Williams:
not what we should be doing. We want people to be individuals. We wanna celebrate individuality and uniqueness, and we need to do that for our kids. That's how they are able to really live a happy, joyful, successful life in whatever way that looks like for them.

Anouk:
Mhmm. Mhmm.

Penny Williams:
And as long as we're trying to make everyone fit,

Anouk:
then we're

Penny Williams:
trying to change the essence of who someone is. And Yes. That just feels awful. Right? Like, that just feels awful, and that's where we see a lot of deteriorating things happen for our kids because we're not seeing them. We're not hearing them. We're not understanding them. And that's all every human needs.

Anouk:
Yeah. Yeah. And, we wanted to talk today about the behavior, and I think that's a great segue in the way of, like, those those kids that are acting out, that have behavior, that are looked at to be bad behavior, air quotes here.

Penny Williams:
Mhmm.

Anouk:
And, like, non appropriate and not socially acceptable behaviors and things like that.

Penny Williams:
Yeah.

Anouk:
When we have a child that is acting that way, and some some will act that way everywhere. Some will act that way more at home, less in public, which makes it sometimes a bit less challenging on the social expectation aspects, but it's still challenging for other reasons. But when the kid act that way, it's so socially seen as a child is bad. Like Yep. This like, a child is bad, and we are not letting them be who they are to to some extent with yeah. It's like it's an expression of emotion. That's what we wanted to address. But Yeah.

Anouk:
We see it as bad behavior.

Penny Williams:
So We're culturally very judgmental also. Yeah. So we judge behavior. We judge it as a character flaw, as poor integrity, as selfishness, so many things, when we only look at it on the surface and we judge it for how it makes us feel. Right? We talk a lot about in parenting disrespect. Yes. And it drives me up a wall because kids don't typically intend disrespect. Yes.

Penny Williams:
Now I will say older kids, maybe teenagers, sometimes they intend it, but there's still a reason for that. They're putting up a wall to try to protect themselves. They're pushing you away to try to protect themselves. There's always, always, always a reason for the behavior. But if we judge it as just what it looks like on the surface and just how it makes us feel, then we can't address it. We can't meaningfully create change. So if we decide that behavior is good or bad, then we either accept it or we reject it. And when we reject it, we just wanna punish it away.

Penny Williams:
Mhmm. And when we just try to punish it away, we're typically not successful because we haven't addressed why it happened.

Anouk:
Yeah.

Penny Williams:
And that trigger is potentially going to keep happening.

Anouk:
Yeah.

Penny Williams:
And we also make kids feel really bad because we are trying to control them through fear. I mean, if you get really down to the nitty gritty, traditional parenting, traditional, you know, educational systems, most often are trying to control through fear. Yep. Yeah. And what science tells us is when we do that, we create adults who are much more likely to have struggles with depression, with anxiety, you know, who have maladaptive behaviors, who have poor self confidence. Right? So we know that it's bad, but we still have the inclination to use those traditional paths. And I'm so happy that we keep talking more and more about behavior and what science is really showing us, which is our bodies, our biology is triggering us to not feel safe.

Anouk:
Yeah. As long

Penny Williams:
as we don't feel safe, we can't act in those ways that we deem, air quotes, good

Anouk:
Mhmm. Behavior. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's that, that moment where, like, the the behavior is seen as not socially acceptable, but lots of emotion that are triggering those behaviors are also seen as not acceptable. Like, it's we're in our society, basically, we cannot be sad. We cannot be mad. We cannot be Mhmm.

Anouk:
Like, aggressive is not really an emotion, but, like, we cannot be ex like, exteriorize our emotion in an aggressive way. This is considered bad. So, basically, half of what we're feeling as a human is bad. Yeah.

Penny Williams:
But I mean, maybe more than half. Yeah. We really like, we all just wanna be happy. Right? We would love to be happy all the time. We want our kids to be happy all the time. But the problem is that that's not life. Right? There's always struggle, period. Doesn't matter who you are.

Penny Williams:
There's always some struggle. And so when we deem that happy is the only acceptable emotion, we teach people to hide the rest of it

Anouk:
Yeah.

Penny Williams:
To bottle it up. Yeah. And when we do that, we you know, especially to our kids. What are we teaching our kids when we say, you know, if you're angry or if you're sad, you know, don't talk about it. Don't show it. They're just bottling it up. It's building

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny Williams:
For them. They're not dealing with it. They're not working through it. Right? And it will be damaging. It will come out later. Maybe, you know, it gets way more explosive because they can't hold it in anymore. Maybe they become way more aggressive because they can't deal with it anymore on their own.

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny Williams:
And we are doing every human being a disservice by saying that some emotions are good and some emotions are bad. Yeah. Every single emotion is natural. Our biology triggers all of these different types of emotions, and that is just the way it is. Right? It's a human experience. It is natural. What we feel about having those emotions and how we deal with those emotions is either, I would say, healthy or unhealthy.

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny Williams:
You know? Again, we don't ever wanna use the words good and bad Mhmm. In my opinion. I always wanna replace that. So, like, good behavior, bad behavior is actually regulated behavior and dysregulated behavior.

Anouk:
Yes. I think I just wanna pause here because I think this is very, very important. Like, what we consider good behavior is basically a kid who's going well, is feeling good. And what we consider bad behavior is a kid who's not feeling good, but, like, we are labeling them as if they were doing it on purpose, which is not the case. Yes. And when children are generally in life having more trouble with dealing with their emotion because they're both sensitive or they're more illate triggered for whatever reason, they will most often have what is considered bad behavior and bad emotion. And so they will they're trying more. They are trying more than other kids who are having a just a hard easier time in life to deal with their emotion for whatever reason.

Anouk:
So we are putting so much pressure on those kids. And

Penny Williams:
Yeah. I had this epiphany listening to Brene Brown's podcast several years ago, and I cannot remember the topic of the conversation. I can't remember who her guest was who was talking about this, but they basically said that if you don't feel good, you are not capable of doing good.

Anouk:
Mm-mm.

Penny Williams:
And that has stuck with me, and it is now the core of the work that I do with parents and the work I do around behavior. Because we can also tie that to the science in the nervous system. Right? When we're regulated, we're feeling settled. We're feeling good. We're feeling safe. Right? If we're dysregulated, we are not feeling good. Our body feels out of whack. Our emotions feel out of whack.

Penny Williams:
We're not as much in control as we want to be of what is going on within us. Right? And so I just keep coming back to you have to feel good in order to do good.

Anouk:
Yeah.

Penny Williams:
And that is true for our kids. It's true for adults. It's true for every different type of neurology and every human being. And if you think about that, you know, as an example from your own life, you know, like, if you go to work every day and you come home and then you make dinner and you help kids with homework and all of these things, how well do you do that on a day where you've had a really bad day at work?

Anouk:
It's very hard.

Penny Williams:
Really a day where you're really exhausted.

Anouk:
Yeah. It's very hard.

Penny Williams:
Where you had an argument with somebody. Mhmm. And you just can't. Like, it's so hard to show up

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny Williams:
And put good energy out. And that's part of it too, I think, is, you know, we wanna show up in ways that support our kids, and that we're giving them that calm anchor, that energy that things are okay, and you are safe. And if we don't feel good, also, we can't do that. And that's why self care is so important for parents. That's why I manage our own stress and our own perspectives and mindset about struggle is really, really, really vital to being the parent that we wanna be.

Anouk:
Yeah. And, like, the same way children are experiencing what is considered bad emotion, we also are experiencing dosing emotion. And often we don't give ourselves as parents the right to experience those emotion. Like, and it can be again, it's not really an emotion, like, like, everything related to grief. Like, it's seen as we should not be grieving the fact that our children are different, or we should not be mad at our kids, or we should not like, it's all of those things that we think we should not be feeling. But if we feel those, we feel those. There's nothing we can do about that. We actually

Penny Williams:
make you a bad person. Right? No. No. Exactly. Make you a bad person, but that's the way we interpret it. And we have to stop doing that to ourselves. You know? We just have to be kinder to ourselves and to others.

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny Williams:
It gets such a good point is that we have to deal with our own emotions, but we also have to show our kids that we have those emotions

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny Williams:
And how we deal with them. Right? We have to be really transparent with our kids, and it's not the traditional way of parenting.

Anouk:
No. The

Penny Williams:
traditional way of parenting says we need to show our kids perfection. Yes. Perfection doesn't exist, and it's a measure that they can never ever fulfill. Right?

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny Williams:
And so they interpret that as something being wrong with them and not being good enough. And if we can just show them what we also struggle, we also make mistakes, and this is how we deal with it. That we're giving them the example that it's okay to have all these different emotions. Mom does, dad does, everybody does. And it's okay to maybe not feel real great for a while, or it's okay to need some time alone in the quiet, or it's okay to need to talk something through. Right? And we really have to be more open in front of our kids. We have to be more real. We have to be a real human being, not this, you know, idea of perfection that they can't measure up to? Because we're just doing them so much more harm than good by by putting that sort of facade out there.

Anouk:
Yeah. True. And we were most of us were were raised that way. So it's hard to do something different. But, yeah, it's it's the first step in showing them that all emotions are acceptable.

Penny Williams:
Yeah. And I'm not saying spew all over your kids. No. You know? If they make you mad, it's not an excuse to show them how angry they're making you. I'm just saying, you know, if you're frustrated, something didn't go the way you planned it, Express that verbally in front of your kid. Wow. You know, I'm so upset with myself. I forgot to set the timer, and I burned the cookies.

Penny Williams:
Mhmm. What in the world am I gonna do about that? You know? Mhmm. And then maybe it's, I need to take a break for a few minutes and just be able to get myself calm so I can problem solve and sing think this through. Yeah. And then, oh, I I still have more cookie dough. I can just put another batch in. Or Mhmm. Oh, I can whip up another batch real quick.

Penny Williams:
Mhmm. You know? Just showing them I had the emotion. I had to do something for myself to help myself get regulated again

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny Williams:
And to deal with the emotion. Right? And then I was able to problem solve and work through it. It was a really simplistic example, but

Anouk:
it's something

Penny Williams:
I think everybody can relate to. So, you know, we're not saying be be super open all the time with all your emotion and, you know, spew it on your kids. No. We're just saying be more

Anouk:
Especially when it's related to them. Yeah. Once they would be, like, good to them. Yeah. It's not necessarily the the right moment and we don't want our kids to be our emotional support either. But some things are easier to digest for them and it's okay to show at least some of it in some moments. Some sometimes it's just too too intense to share with them. But also sometimes it's not a choice.

Anouk:
Like, when it's very intense emotion, sometimes we just cannot hide them. So it's better to talk about them than to just try to hide when it's just not doable.

Penny Williams:
Mhmm. Yeah. And if you're too intense and things maybe went wrong, you know, in front of your kids, you behaved in a way you wish that you hadn't. Right? You made a mistake. You have a conversation about it later. Mhmm. You make amends. You make repairs.

Penny Williams:
And you can say, you know, wow. I just got so overwhelmed with my frustration and my anger, and I acted in this way, and I really wish I hadn't. I really wish I had done a better job of expressing how I was feeling. I'm sorry if it scared you. I'm sorry if it hurt your feelings. You know, those sort of things just

Anouk:
Yes.

Penny Williams:
Again, that's so such an important idea to model for our kids.

Anouk:
It's

Penny Williams:
super, super crucial, in all honesty. It's really crucial.

Anouk:
Yeah. Definitely. Well, thank you very much for that. I think that's, again, a good way to to end that topic. Before we we close, is there any resource that you would like to share with the listeners, on that topic or related more or less related that you love as a parent or that you recommend to your clients?

Penny Williams:
Yeah. I love Elizabeth Sautter's work on social emotional learning. She has a great book called Making Social Emotional Learning Stick, and it is full of just activities to weave into your day to day life to help kids learn how to regulate their emotions, how to identify them, how to talk about them. Right? How to, have the interoception to understand when your body's giving you signals and what you might do with those signals. And it's just it's written in such a great way. It's all, like, categorized into different activities you might be doing as a family or in your day to day life, and it is all stuff that you can just weave into what you're already doing. So you're not having to find 20 or 30 minutes to carve out and teach these skills.

Anouk:
That's great. It's like, hey.

Penny Williams:
If you're riding in the car to go to, you know, school, you do this. If you're maybe making dinner, bring your kids in and do this, have these conversations, or ask them to do this for you. And it's ways to just get little bite sized tidbits of social and emotional learning, and it's it's marvelous.

Anouk:
Oh, that's great. And, like, especially putting that in our everyday routine because then we know that with Emotion and Dance kids, we already have so much to do and so many things that we should be doing that we don't have time or energy to do. So the fact that it's in everyday thing, I love it. I've I've I've definitely gonna look to it myself.

Penny Williams:
Yeah. It's amazing. It's an amazing book.

Anouk:
That's why I love asking those question to my guests because we cannot know all the resources and I love having new things to look at myself and share that with the listeners. So thank you very much. Penny, where can people find you if they want more about you?

Penny Williams:
Everything that I'm into, everything I'm doing is linked up at parentingadhdandautism.com, and you can find the beautifully complex podcast on all of the main podcast apps wherever you're listening to podcasts already.

Anouk:
Yes. Yes. It's a very, very great podcast. I think it's one of the first I started listening to when I started down this this journey. I don't remember how I found it, but yeah, it's a very great podcast. And I I went it was on a few weeks back. I don't remember when, but yeah, it's it's a very great podcast. So thank you very much.

Penny Williams:
Yeah. It was a great conversation.

Anouk:
It's always great talking with you. So thank you very much for being here today.

Penny Williams:
Thank you so much.

Anouk:
I am so glad you joined me today and took that time out of your intense life to focus on finding a new way to parent that works for you and your kids. To get the episodes at So Does Die drop, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. And please leave everything in review so other parents can find it too. Also, check out all the free resources on my website at familymoments. Ca so you can take action on what's the most important for you right now. And take a deep breath. Keep going. Weire all in this together.