Ep 73: 6 Steps to Reversing Emotional Immaturity.

Emotional Immaturity is a major issue in relationships and parenting. And for many, we grew up with parents or caregivers who were themselves emotionally immature, making it challenging to develop maturity in this area. 

Today’s Episode breaks down what it looks like to be Emotionally Immature and Emotionally Mature, and how to move toward emotional intelligence and maturity. 

Pam highlights 6-7 steps to reach emotional maturity on your self-development and parenting journey. Have a listen and let us know how it goes! 

Join Aligned Moms Membership: https://www.pamgodboiscoaching.com/offers/G5PWJEJj

Follow Me on Instagram: @parentingtherapistpam

Join the Free Moms Facebook Community 

FEEDBACK: 

If you’re like “I love the Peaceful Home Podcast.” Please consider rating and reviewing our show! This helps us support women, just like you, on their motherhood journey. Click here →  https://pamgodbois.com/ApplePodcast, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with 5 stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode! 

The best thing you can do for yourself and your kids is effectively regulate your nervous system. And a great place to start >> to wire the brain for gratitude. Research tells us that gratitude increases happiness and a peaceful mindset. Make the shift and watch how things in your life start to change. Sign up today! www.pamgodbois.com/gratitude

Transcript

0:00

Welcome back to the peaceful home podcast. My name is Pam and I am your host. And this week we're talking about this hot button. Subject. Emotional immaturity in parents. And. Heard from a lot of listeners. That one of the things they struggled with growing up was having parents that were emotionally immature. And the question that I keep getting now as parents is how do I become an emotionally mature parent? What do I do? How do I show up the best possible way that I can for my kid? And so that's what we're talking about today. We're going to talk about emotional immaturity, how it shows up in parenthood and relationships and what to do about it. Because the truth of the matter is if that's the environment that you grew up in and you have not put in effort and energy to change. How you relate to emotions. Chances are you're struggling with some of these things as well. So let's dive in. Let's begin by looking at what it means to be emotionally immature. And when we have contrast it's helpful. So let's. Rally around this let's think about and explore this idea of emotional immaturity. Emotional immaturity can reflect as a lack of depth and understanding about one's own emotions and inability to communicate and process things related to any relationships. As well as a lack of empathy and ability to understand the other person's emotional experiences. So in general, Those that are emotionally immature share some common traits. They tend to be dismissive. Selfish self-involved and emotionally unavailable. As a parent. This might look like blaming your child for how they make you feel. It might be something like demanding compliance, right? These are the parents that. They say to me, my child doesn't listen, but what they really mean is my child. Doesn't obey. And obeying and compliance is really important when I say do this thing. Now, That's a sign of emotional immaturity. These parents also struggled with boundaries in place and do not respect. Their children's boundaries. They minimize the emotional needs of their kids. And. In general as a child in this relationship, it is not safe to have or express emotions. So if you grew up in an environment where you feel like you had to stuff your emotions all the time, you weren't allowed to feel because if you felt. You would get a response from your, one of your parents, your mother, or your father where they would say, oh yeah, you think you have it tough. This is how hard my life was. And I had to experience this and I had that. And my dad used to always say, I had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to school barefoot in the middle of winter. I'm like, dad, you didn't and then he would laugh about it. But that kind of energy from a serious place of my life is way harder than yours. My emotions are more important than yours. And so as kids we learn just to not have emotions. And certainly not to express them. Now this doesn't just show up in parent-child relationships. You might also see this in a partner. And in a partner, it may look like. Somebody that gets really defensive when there's a concern brought up. Someone who refuses to compromise someone. Who's really, self-centered, they're really more interested in the me, me getting my way then in the we of the relationship us doing the work or. Traveling or having experiences together that I'm really interested in that they're really focused on. What do I get out of this? These are the individuals that when you're in a relationship with them, You only ever do what they want to do. I had a young adult that I was working with and she was like, I don't dislike the things my boyfriend likes and I'm happy to do them. But, what's wild to me is that he is never willing to do the things that I want to do. And he doesn't stop her from doing them. He just says, I'm not doing that. I don't want to. And he disguises it as having healthy boundaries. It's not something he's interested in. So therefore he has healthy boundaries and he says, no, thank you. The truth of the matter is he's not able to put the we before the me, he self-centered. This is a sign of emotional immaturity. Another really common thing in relationships is individuals that are emotionally immature, tend to blow up. Or they refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. So if there's conflict, if you have a concern and you say to your partner, Hey, I'm concerned about this thing. Hey, I'm having this emotional experience. Hey, I'm feeling this way. They don't have the ability to take. In your information and hear it and support you instead, they blow up, they don't take responsibility. They make up excuses on and on. In all cases, whether it's a PA, a partner, a parent, or somebody else, someone who is emotionally immature struggles to talk about their feelings and tends to keep things surface level. They lack the ability to regulate. They can't sit with and not react to emotional experiences. And when you were with these people, You tend to feel isolated alone and not heard. It is very common. If you're in a relationship with someone. Where you're trying to get. Deeper more meaningful connection. And the only conversations they're ever willing to have is about. Surface level bullshit. Chances are the conflict. There is really that you're interacting with somebody who does not have the emotional intelligence, the emotional maturity. To dig below the surface. And part of the reason for that is because. They have no resiliency skills to manage their own emotions. So what they do is they practice not feeling. remember I said, when you're a kid and the other person blows up at you and then you stuff, your emotions because you say it's not okay for me to feel. This is that type of person, right? So there's not every single person that's emotionally immature has all of these characteristics because there's different types of emotional immaturity. These are categorically, the things that show up. So you might see some of these pieces, not all of these pieces, or you might be with someone or have a parent. Or a co-parent. That. Has developed some skills in their life. And mostly those skills are to hide numb and mask. Their inability to regulate and manage their own emotions. On the flip side, emotional maturity is the willingness to dive in and do the work. To talk about emotions to take responsibility and explore how those emotions as well as how their actions. Impact others and how other people impact them. So instead of pointing the finger and blaming, we're like, oh, Hey. We have an impact on each other. This is what that dance looks like. Emotionally mature parents are emotionally available for their kids. And are able to hold space for their kids, emotions, behaviors, and experiences. They don't take things personally and they understand that growth is messy. And they're skilled at validation, have emotional intelligence. And strive to build deep connections with their kids. Deep objective and healthy connections. Not co-dependency. So sometimes what we will witness from the outside is what is seemingly a deeply connected relationship. Oftentimes, especially with the pre-adolescent age, you might see a mother and a daughter, you say, oh man, he just seems so close. When you dig deeper when you get in side that relationship, what you start to see. Many times. Is that the parent is emotionally immature. And the child. Has needed to develop their own emotional maturity. Or numbing strategies to manage the adults immaturity. And that has created a codependent relationship. This is scenarios where the mom, in this example, using a mother and daughter. Might tell their daughter all of their emotional struggles, put all those struggles on their daughter. With the expectation that the daughter is going to hold space or fix them. I work with a lot of adult couples, adult relationship people in relationships. And I do this work with. Grown mothers and their grown daughters. And I'm hearing these stories over and over again that the daughter in the scenario has always felt parental side has always felt like it's her job to take care of her. Mother's emotional needs that our mom just couldn't do it on her own that she needed me. And then what that creates in our kids. Is more codependent relationships where we become people pleasers and all sorts of crazy stuff happens in the relationship dynamic, which is not what we want. We're not looking for that for our kids. We want our kids to be happy and healthy and whole, and that's individually. And in relation. So an emotionally mature parent will allow you to grow in the way that works for you. And not in the way that works best for them. So this is an understanding of my child is different than I am my child. In my scenario. I have a 14 year old daughter. She's an introvert. And her work, how she processes, what she needs. Is very different from how I process and what I need. And I have been able to give her the space and teach her the skills and the practices that she needs so that she can cope with her own emotions. And that looks different than how I cope with mine. I cope with mine by recording podcast episodes. I go with my, and by, connecting with other people in my life. She copes with hers by turning inward and doing some self-reflection and some journaling and that type of stuff. Her processing is inside. It's just as healthy. She's not hanging onto baggage. But it's different. It's different and. As parents we need to be okay with that difference. Emotionally mature parents also don't hold grudges. Have you ever seen that where maybe you've experienced it, maybe you grew up in a household where, when you did something quote, unquote, wrong or bad. Grudges were held against you. It was used against you as ammunition, right? It was used to manipulate your behaviors moving forward. Those are grudges or resentments, and those are super unhealthy. Emotionally mature parents. Admit their mistakes. And take care of their emotional needs. They understand and embrace the idea that. We are all responsible for our own emotional wellbeing. Each and every one of us. I am responsible for me. Your responsible for you? There is not another human on the planet that is responsible for your emotional wellbeing. Now the one caveat there is that it's our job as parents. If you're a parent listening to this as our job as parents. To teach our kids how to do that. So there's a process of teaching. This is no different than the process of teaching your kid, how to make themselves breakfast or make their bed, or, put away their laundry. Or any of the other things that you teach them? So that they can go out in the world and have positive experiences. So now that we're clear on what the difference between. Emotional maturity and emotional immaturity really is at the root of it. All right. The question I always get. Is. Now what do I do? How do I. Me personally, how do I become emotionally mature and specifically, how do I become emotionally mature? As a parent or in relationships, in the context of. Relationships. And the very first thing that you have to do. Is that you have to recognize that it's a lifelong journey. And there's no need to get to the finish line today. So often when we start. Or when we were on journeys of self discovery and self-awareness. We want to just get to the finish line. We want to read as many books, see as many experts listen to as many podcasts as we possibly can to get all of the answers so that we can just fix the quote unquote problem. But the beauty of this work. Is the journey. The beauty of this work are the moments when you go. Oh, my God. I didn't realize that's what was going on. Oh, wow. All of a sudden, like a door cracked open, and I just got all this awareness and insight into my own actions, my own thoughts, my own experiences, my own behaviors. That's the beauty of being here. We start there. The next thing that we have to look at is that, and I've said this a million times. I don't know if he said it on the podcast. I say it regularly. Is that. We strive as human beings for. We consider success a hundred percent. And I just want to. Say, and I want you to understand, I want you to hear me when I say. That 30%. From 70%. To a hundred percent. Is it a waste of effort and energy? This is not your nursing boards or. Test, you have to take at the end of grad school or even your SATs or testing to get into college or any of that stuff. And I was talking about that. Do whatever you want there, I don't care. I'm talking about when you put all of your effort and energy. Into self-development self-awareness. The self discovery work. And saying things like I want to be emotionally mature. And then you start going through this list that I just shared with you, all this information. And you're like, okay. So I don't really do that a hundred percent of the time I do it like most of the time, but I don't do it a hundred percent of the time. And then we start beating ourselves up for that. So instead of just being like, all right, I'm doing okay. We say things like, I blew up on my significant other the other day. And there was a time last week where if you take responsibility for something. And I noticed that I get really upset. When my kids don't listen to me. Not all the time, just some of the time. That doesn't make you emotionally immature. If you were hitting these milestones, 70% of the time. You're doing a good job. Okay. So let's just let go of this idea that a hundred percent is perfect and let's replace it with the concept that 70% is the new perfect 70% is the place. 70%. Is what we're striving for. That's reasonable because do you remember back when we were in school? There's this idea that like 70% a C was average. We don't really believe that anymore. We don't buy into that rhetoric. I still buy into it. I say. Average is great. But I know a lot of us are seeking to get, want our kids to get A's, wouldn't be high, achieving high, performing all of these things. We've got to compete. That's fine. You can have whatever thoughts you want on that. That's for a different episode. But going back to that idea when we were kids that 70% meant average, 70% was like, that was pretty good. You're doing a good job. You're meeting expectations. That's what average means. Meets expectations. If 70% is what we're striving for here. That means meets expectations. So instead of saying, or blaming yourself or give yourself a hard time, Because you struggle some of the time. Rather than giving yourself a hard time, because you're not able to regulate your emotions 100% of the time. Look at that grading system and go, okay. Would I say that 70% of the time I'm regulating my emotions. Okay. In the context of my parenting relationship with my child or in the context of the things that they're witnessing. Because the thing to remember is that this is a journey and there are going to be times that you're triggered and this is why we have the ability to apologize to our children. And sometimes those triggers come in the context of parenting, right? Maybe your kid does something and it brings you back to this old story that you haven't cleared out yet. And we can do that. We can clear that out. That's the work I do. But maybe that's what happens. Maybe you've noticed that you get triggered by this thing and it comes up over and over again. The emotionally mature thing to do would be to say, oh, Hey, I've noticed. That I have this pattern that when my child does this. X behavior. Slams the door stomps up. My stairs has a meltdown, tells me they hate me. Whatever right. Kids will be kids. This is how they express their emotions. It's not personal. When those things happen or some of the time when those things happen. I feel awful. And then I react. Somebody that is emotionally mature goes. That's so curious because every time my kid tells me, they hate me. This is how I feel. I don't always react this way, but that is a trigger for me. Oh, Hey. Maybe I should look at that. That's what an emotionally mature person does. I'm going to dive into that a little bit. I'm going to get some support on that. I'm going to try to understand that more. I'm going to do some journaling about it. I'm going to explore further what this shit's all about. That's emotional maturity. Emotional maturity is not not having the feelings. It's not shutting it down and being perfect and acting exactly the way that you think you should act. And every given scenario, it's the ability to look and reflect and recognize that we all make mistakes. That's part of the emotional maturity. So why are we striving for a hundred percent strive for 70%? It'll take so much of the pressure off and The moms in my membership, the ones from the early days have like they've written down 70% is the new perfect. I have it on my wall. 70% is the new perfect. It is the new, what we were striving for. And remember it's striving, not achieving striving. What actions are you taking to meet that goal? Not just hanging out at 70% all the time. And some things you might be 80%, 90%. Cause it comes easier to you. I tend to be pretty level-headed. And calm when it comes to specifically my child. Something I've developed and practice over the last 14 plus years. There are things that my husband does. That take a lot of effort for me to stay that same calm, cool collected. Parent or spouse that I am with my daughter. She can get pissed. She can have a meltdown. She can slam her door. She doesn't, or house is old and the doors are all swollen and they don't really slam anyway. They're just bounce. Uh, So she doesn't get the same satisfaction. But she can have whatever experience that she's having. Usually it's a frustration because something's not going the way she wants it to go. And I'm just calm. I'm like, okay, what can I do to support you? What do you need for me right now? How can I help? My husband could be doing the exact same thing and have the exact same experience. And I'm like, God, can't you just figure this out yourself. That's my reaction. Not all the time, some of the time. So we all have areas of strength and we have areas of Ooh, maybe I should do some work there. That's emotional maturity. I just want to say. So when we look at the process, the next step is. The ability to self-reflect and this is what I'm talking about, right? It's the ability to look at your emotions, your thoughts, your behaviors. To understand that patterns and triggers may result in reactions. And figuring out. What's that all about? Getting curious. Curiosity is one of those things that I use regularly. I say get curious. Be the researcher, be the scientist and say what would happen when. We have a tendency. Because we're striving for a hundred percent. Here's this thing again, because we're striving for perfection. We have this tendency to be like, what's the right way to do it. When you let go of this idea that you have to get a hundred percent and you're like, I'm looking for 70%. You stop worrying so much about the right way, because you're like 70%, I could take pretty much any test of any subject that I took in high school. And I'm 46 years old. And probably do fine. Like I probably could get a 70%. Maybe, I don't know, most things, anything that I took, like with the exception of maybe I don't know, World history. Cause I can't remember dates. But like pretty much everything that's, Marley's brought home things are clicking. I'm like, oh yeah. I remember that stuff. I remember that stuff. I remember that stuff. My brain like fires up and turns on. I remember ridiculous things except for dates. So I probably could swing that. Most of us could swing. A test or two on something, any given thing. And get a 70% right. It doesn't take a whole lot of preparation. To lean into that 70%. We stopped worrying about what's the perfect way to study. If somebody says to you, you just have to get a 70 and it's going to be. Uh, Based on stuff, you know, you're like, okay, I probably could do that then. Our adult brain, if you're anxious, teenage brain would have been like, oh my God, I still have to study. And I remember having a class in college that. Everybody felt that way about actually it was anatomy and physiology. Everybody felt that way about it didn't matter how much they studied. They were concerned about Fallon. Because they just couldn't retain the information. I am a visual learner. I love anatomy and physiology. If you've ever taken my yoga class, you know, that I'm all about calling on all the bones and muscles and how everything works and how all the systems in the body work. And. Yes. I was a professor for six years and taught human biology. For the social services. So I taught social workers and social scientists, how to. Look at the relationships between the systems in the body. So I love that stuff. But I could have literally not studied for that class because I was so interested in the content when the teacher was teaching it and I would've done fine. Okay. So the first one is the. Ability to self-reflect. The second one is to utilize practices. Of mindfulness, right? To be present, to practice being in the moment. To observe with. Out judgment. To observe your emotions without judging them. To go cultivate a greater sense of calm and awareness of your own experiences. This is what mindfulness does. This is what meditation does it. It creates for us. Uh, Space a container and opportunity. To find that pause. I had a mom say the other day. My goal for this month is to figure out how to pause. Before I respond. And she was just talking about her kids will say something and instead of just giving them the space and pausing. She's found herself. End of summer. They're getting ready to go back to school. She's been trying to work. She's stressed. They're stressed. She's found herself just being like, you think that's a good idea or whatever, right? Kind of just a little off the cuff remarks and she's I just want to be able to pause. And not say those things like boop. So keep those things inside. And then sit the things that my kids need me to say or give them the space to continue going in there in their story. Are there, whatever they're sharing. And she was like what do I need to do that? And I was like, practice mindfulness and meditate every day. And she was like, Ugh. I know. Okay. I'm on it. And I don't mean that if I practice mindfulness and meditate every day and people will often say to me, I have ADHD. I have anxiety, my brain super active. It. It never shuts down. There's no way I can meditate. And I just, if you were hearing me talk. I don't know, have a common, quiet brain. This information is being pulled from my brain. As we speak, I do not have a common, quiet brain. It's going all the time. But I'm very skilled at shutting it down. When I want to shut it down, like to go to bed. I don't have that. I don't have the racy mind unless I'm stressed or worried about something. But guess what? When I practice meditation, when I practice mindfulness meditation, and now I've moved to mantra meditation. Patients. Which I love. When I practice those regularly. What I find is that I don't quiet my mind. That's not the goal of meditation by the way. But what it does allow me to do is it allows me to clear away the stress to observe, to look at the things that I need to look at. And then to move on with my life, I'm shooting for 70%. There's no need to be perfect. Next step is the practice of emotional regulation. And recognizing that this is a practice that you're learning how to regulate and manage your emotions. Now here's the thing about the nervous system and the way that it works. Is that you have to experience some level of emotions and. Possibly emotional dysregulation. In order to practice wiring the nervous system for regulation. So that means you have to feel stressed in order to feel calm. Your body, your nervous system has to be like, oh no, are we okay? And then you go, yeah. Yeah. We're okay. We're doing some deep breathing. We're staying we're out in nature. Standing with our feet in the dirt. We're journaling. We're doing strategies that literally calm our bodies down. That's how we regulate emotions. We regulate emotions by allowing ourselves to look at them. Allowing. Ourselves to feel them. And then. Teaching our nervous system, how to deal with them. That's the what of what we're doing with emotional regulation. We are. Literally shifting our nervous system response. Now I do Vegas nerve training and we do EFT tapping. Tapping. And there's all different strategies that. You can use along with meditation, breathing exercises, journaling. Being in nature, connecting with. Earth the earth element, understanding how to regulate and align your energy and all that stuff. All of that helps with regulation. But none of it works if you don't allow yourself to feel, so you have to feel the thing. And then you have the ability to regulate it. And that's how EFT tapping works as well. We feel the thing we tap, we create a statement that rewires the brain with the tapping and then. Things shift. And I see it happen all the time. Very quickly, short period, very short periods of time. And when somebody doesn't shift in a short period of time, like 10 or 15 minutes, then I'm able to say here are the things peel away, these layers, right? So if you have somebody that's really skilled at EFT, And you're doing that work. Awesome. If you need support, hit me up. This is what I do. Okay. So that's emotional regulation. That is. Technically. Let's call it number three. Number four is building empathy and shifting your perspective. And being able to see things from somebody else's perspective, which is what empathy is, right. The ability to see your experience from your side. That's what empathy is. Empathy has this amazing ability to strengthen connections. And when you practice seeing something from somebody else's perspective, putting yourself in somebody else's shoes. What starts to happen is that self-centeredness that we talked about. And emotional immaturity starts to heal. Because now your focus is on what's going on with the other person. What's the experience of the other person. What's a view of the other person. And eventually that leads to how can I help you the other person instead of how can you help me? Now, if you've ever been in like business networking communities, this is like something that I talk about all the time. Being of service. So people that are emotionally mature. Don't have a difficult time being of service as a matter of fact. They are able to lean into that, but not in an unhealthy or codependent way. Not in a people pleasing. I only do you. I don't do me. This what's necessary here is that it's a two way street I give and have the ability to receive. Number five is learning effective communication skills. Having strong communication skills that allows you to express your emotions. And thoughts clearly and respectfully. Is it another thing that you can practice. To build emotional maturity. Had an episode handful of episodes ago, where we talked about the practice of holding space. And I talked about things like active listening and effective communication and seeing things from other person's point of view. This is what we're talking about here. We're talking about. Communicating effectively. And clearly and respectfully. I had a couple that I was working with. And when they arrived, started working with me. One of the things that she said was. I tend not to tell people when I'm upset or uncomfortable or bothered by things, because I don't want to hurt their feelings. If that sounds like you, that's something you have to change. That's not healthy. And I wouldn't necessarily call this person emotionally immature. And I tend to put labels on people. We label ourselves, you don't need labels from me, but this is a characteristic. This is something that we want to work towards. Moving away from right. The being able to share what we're experiencing. Remember I said, if you grew up. With emotionally immature parents. What you were, what you learned. Was there emotions are more important than yours. And so therefore there was no space for your emotions. I had someone say to me recently oh, this person in my life, they just take up a lot of space. People that take up a lot of space are emotionally immature. Strategy number? I don't remember. Cause I lost track. Maybe six is. Taking personal responsibility. And this is when you take ownership of your emotions, your actions, your decisions, you don't blame other people. You don't blame other people for how you feel. You don't blame other people for the outcome or the experience. Instead you explore how you can respond in a way. That aligns with your values. This is Who do I want to be? And how do I want to show up? What do I want other people to say about me? When you take ownership in the context of relationships that looks like. Say like a game of tennis, right? A tennis match. Where the ball is on my side of the net and I have my racket and the ball, and I hit the ball and send it over to the other side. That experience of me having the ball, hitting the ball, sending it over the net to the other side is me taking responsibility for my own thoughts, experiences, decisions, emotions, all those things. And so I might say, Hey, I'm having this experience. I want to share it with you. This is what's going on for me, I'm upset. This is what I've noticed. This is how I'm working on it, whatever that may be. This happens a lot in intimate relationships. And there's misunderstandings and there's miscommunications because we're not clear on this. So I hit the ball over the net. My partner on the other side of the net. Is responsible. For that ball. From the net. And anywhere over on their side of the court. As a matter of fact, I put pickleball with my kid. She's she'll hit the ball. They'll do some crazy things. It'll do some crazy things and it will, she won't get it over the net it'll land. And then. We'll roll to my side and she's like, oh, it's on your side now. Now it's your problem. Go get the ball. That's what I'm talking about. This back and forth of my side of the net as my responsibility, your side of the net as your responsibility. And so often to use this tennis and allergy. We hit the ball over the net with this string on it, and the string stays with us, but the balls on the other side, So then they, then there's a string that the other person grabs and the ball gets hit back. And so now there's this web of mess, right? This happens so often in relationships because we don't just take responsibility for our own emotions. We believe that the other person is responsible for fixing how we feel. Or we've been in codependent relationships, our whole lives. And we think we're responsible for fixing what the other person is experiencing. I see this in relationships all the time. Where one party will be like, it's not your responsibility. Why do you always try to fix me? And the other person deeply believes that it's their responsibility. This is why taking personal responsibility and giving the other person space to take personal responsibility is incredibly important. In this journey of emotional maturity. Next up is developing a sense of empowerment and resilience. This is the idea that you empower yourself. And you empower other people in your life. Like you empower your kids. To make their own decisions. You allow them to make their own mistakes. You don't try to fix things. You don't try to rush in this conversation that I just talked about, where, one party thinks that they're responsible to fix the other person. It's really disempowering. When you decide, I'm not going to tell someone how I'm feeling. Cause I don't want to hurt their feelings. You're taking away their personal power. You're taking it away. And our job in relationships when we are emotionally mature is to empower ourselves, to take responsibility for us and to empower the people that are, we are in relationship with to take responsibility for them themselves. And that includes our kids. That includes when your child has their shoes on the wrong feet, and you're trying to get them to fix it because you're concerned about how it's going to look out in the world. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. So we empower our kids. And allow them to focus on building strengths, looking at their abilities and learning how to bounce back from challenges. This means it's important to be willing to fail and to demonstrate that failure. In front of the people in your life, especially your kids. Emotionally mature parents are okay with screwing up and saying, I'm sorry. They're okay with falling on their face and saying their kids. Yup. I fell on my face. So big deal right now, I get to get back up and keep going. You're teaching your kids how to be resilient. You're teaching your kids. That having emotions being sad, failing, struggling is all. Okay. And it's empowering to have those experiences and resiliency comes from not being perfect resiliency comes from them seeing you bounce back resiliency is literally the ability to bounce back it's like a ball right you bounce it up against the wall and it comes back to me that's resilience that's where we're aiming for Now you and i both know we've thrown enough balls in our lives i'm sure you throw a ball up against the wall and sometimes it comes straight back to you And if you've ever played something like racquetball or handball or one of those right aren't those both where you hit it up against the wall that you can hit it against the wall in a certain way and it will come back in a different way you start to get more and more skilled at that's resilience right you're building skills and practice now Just like all these sports analogies that i'm using All of those things require practice you're not going to go out on the tennis court today if you've never played tennis in your life And be ready for wimbleton you're just not it's not how it works You have to practice so this is stuff that you have to practice as well And finally the thing that i want to wrap this up where there's so many more Components Two Building emotional maturity really But the final thing that i want to wrap this up with Which you're already doing because you're here Is people that are emotionally mature Our continuous learners They continue to seek opportunity for personal growth and self-improvement That could mean reading books attending workshops seeking therapy working with coaches enrolling in memberships i've got a mom's membership enrolling in something like that Anything to address deeper emotional challenges That's what someone that is emotionally mature does They're willing to dive in and peel back the layers They're not afraid To look at what's dark and scary on me inside and that doesn't mean you don't experience Fear But they don't allow it to stop them In a nutshell Those are the things that are necessary In order To move from a place of emotional immaturity to a place of emotional maturity And I would love to hear How this works for you. If you don't already follow us on instagram follow us on instagram Parenting therapist, pam Is my new handle If you've already followed the previous handle. You'll just get switched over no big deal but check it out this is the stuff we're talking about this is the stuff that on instagram you guys are telling me this is what i want more of that's the place to say hey pam we, i could really use an episode on this thing So go there DM me and tell me what are the things that you're struggling with right now And let me know how this work towards emotional maturity goes i would love to hear did you grow up in an environment where your parents or caregivers were emotionally immature And what have you done with that How have you worked to heal a resolve and move forward from that place Okay guys thank you so much have an amazing week and i look forward to seeing you all next week take care