Parenting Strong Willed Children
Do you have trouble getting your strong-willed children to listen to you? Does it feel like your relationship with your child is rife with fights, power struggles, and challenges? Then this is the episode you have been waiting for! Superpower Mommas host Tatiana Berindei and parenting coach Allison Livingston team up in this valuable conversation about how to work with your strong-willed child. After working with hundreds of children and families with challenging dynamics, Allison has distilled the 5 key elements to connect with your child, which she shares with us here on the show. Tune in now to hear what you can do to take your family from struggles and stress to thriving and finally have the peace at home you have been so longing for.Â
Tatiana Berindei:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Superpower Mommas podcast show. I am your host, Tatiana Berindei. And my guest today is Allison Livingston. I’m really excited about this conversation, you guys. We are going to be talking about parenting strong-willed children. I’m sure there are many of you out there who are just champing at the bit to hear what I do with my kid who won’t do anything I ask? That’s what we’re here to talk about today.
These strong-willed children are such a blessing. They are coming in full force. We need them and they can present us with super challenges to traditional parenting models and to just getting them out the door at the right time. So we’re going to talk about all of that today. Let me tell you a little bit about Allison before we dive in.
Allison Livingston is a conflict resolution specialist, mediator, and parenting coach for those struggling with intense family dynamics. She has observed a lot of human nature over the past 30 years while being a parent of her own strong-willed child, a mediator, an office coworker, and a kid’s soccer and running coach. The great news is that she developed survival tools she calls the Five Steps to Connect, a set of practices that allow parents to prioritize self-care, reclaim their emotions, stop taking things personally, that’s an important one. Deeply listen and set limits.
These practices allow parents to recenter during or after a reaction and to connect in a deep, real way to themselves and to their child. No longer just do life, avoiding conflict or swinging from autopilot to reaction, but to truly connect with your most important relationships to experience a full life. Welcome to the show, Allison. This is going to be an awesome conversation. I just know it.
Allison Livingston:
Thank you so much. I’m really looking forward to this. It’s my passion and yeah, just really glad to be here. Thank you.
Tatiana Berindei:
Yeah. So before we dive in, will you tell our listeners what your parenting superpowers are?
Allison Livingston:
Yes. I have a superpower with strong-willed kids. I’ve figured it out, and I would say I figured it out the hard way because I was terrible at it in the beginning. And this superpower has developed over the lifetime of my daughters. Actually, I have two daughters and they’re strong-willed in their own way, but I didn’t want to not like my child and we were on that course because we just kept having these power struggles. And so I got support and it was mostly through nonviolent communication and then lots of other wisdom teachers that came into my life and it allowed me to go from conflict and power struggle with her, my oldest, to understanding each other, to know how not to trigger each other, to how to notice when we were triggered, reactive and how to deescalate and come to a place where we could connect. So that’s my superpower.
Tatiana Berindei:
Yeah, that’s a total superpower. And I’m so excited to have you on here today to share it with everyone. Let’s just for fun, I mean, I think most people know what we’re talking about when we’re talking about a strong-willed child. But do you want to give people some of the hallmarks? What’s the difference between just like a normal toddler being obstinate and what you define as a strong-willed child?
Allison Livingston:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ll tell a story just as an example. I would look around the park and see kids playing and even moms and there would be a certain level of kids that are little ids, so they all have will, but these strong-willed children are just a whole level of intensity higher, of rigidity, of inflexibility. And I’ve come to study them through a process called the Enneagram and they have this challenging nature most of them. There are lots of, I guess, like you said, lots of moments when all children can be strong-willed because they are low resourced, but these that I work with, families that self-select who come to me, there’s a level of intensity and a level of rigidity because their core fear is to be told what to do and controlled.
And so they are in direct conflict with the traditional parenting paradigm. And that is what makes these kids, they just obstinate. Many of them who’ve come to me has been described as obstinate, defiant disorder or disrespectful, or mean. I mean, the words, labels that come are just on a higher level, because they can be very triggering, very frustrating. But the reality is, they’re just misunderstood. And when we approach them in a different way, they are passionate. The other side of them is like you said, they are amazing. They’re powerful, they’re spirited, they have created. And so it’s just that they’re so often misunderstood.
Tatiana Berindei:
I’m so looking forward to this conversation today. We do have to go on a quick break. Before we do, will you tell our listeners where they can go to find more about you and your work?
Allison Livingston:
Yes. My website is 5stepstoconnect. And it’s connected with yourself and with your strong-willed child. And I will have a free offering at the end for all of your listeners today, the three things I wish I’d known sooner to parent my strong-willed child.
Tatiana Berindei:
That sounds great. So please stay tuned for that. And listeners, I’m so excited to let you know that I am now offering a new moon circle virtually through the Superpower Universe. If you have not yet come and joined our community over there, I’m also going to be offering a series of courses with our High Frequency Healing host, AngelaMarÃa. She and I are going to be talking about using essential oils to live a high-vibrational lifestyle. So I’m really excited for these offerings that are coming through the Superpower Universe. You can only access them there.
If you’re not yet a member, please go to superpowermommas.com and sign up right there for the Superpower Universe. We are talking with Allison Livingston today about parenting strong-willed children. I’m so excited about this conversation. We’re going to dive in deep as soon as we get back so don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back.
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