Hello, and welcome. I’m Laura Greco, and you’re listening to SuperPower Mommas. Today our topic is “The Truth About Meltdowns and What Self-Development Methods Really Work,” and we’re speaking today with Sandy Hall. I’m so excited to have her. I’ve known her for some time now as we network in parenting-type networks that we’ve been involved in. She is a parenting coach and CEO of Perfectly Imperfect Parenting Solutions and the creator of a non-method, which is to minimize our meltdowns.
She has helped hundreds of parents to discover the real solutions, the reasons why there’s meltdowns, how to resolve them, and I’m going to let her talk about that. But, in the meantime, thank you so much for being here, Sandy Hall. Welcome.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me here, Laura. I’m so excited.
I am excited you are here. So we’re going to start off our show with a traditional question, which is what is your momma superpower?
My superpower is the ability to see beneath the surface.
I love that question because I really believe that we all have superpowers and really lots of them, but there are certain ones that really, when you own your gift, it makes such a huge difference, not only in your family but in your entire life, right? So I would have to say that my superpower is the ability to see beneath the surface of what is going on.
I kind of think of it like a duck on the water. When you see a duck on a pond, it’s just gliding along nice and smoothly, but if you were to look under the water and see those little feet paddling like crazy, you would have no idea if you just looked at the surface how hard that duck is working. But by looking under the surface, you get such a bigger picture of what’s really going on. That is my superpower is to be able to see below the surface and figure out what is going on to actually cause these behaviors that are causing conflicts within the home.
That’s beautifully said. I like that.
Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, and what a great superpower. I’m sure it’s helped you in your personal life because you also have children, right?
Yes, I do. I do. I have a 13-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old son. So yes, it has helped me quite a bit.
Yes. Well, that’s great. Well, gee whiz, it’s almost obvious how that would help you, right? Because you’re able to show insight when you’re seeing behaviors, so do you want to expand on that a little bit perhaps?
Sure. Sure. By looking deeper at what is going on, it can help you to not be as triggered and not to respond quite so emotionally to an emotional situation. Because when your child is having a meltdown, it can be really easy to react rather than respond. For instance, one of the moms that I’ve worked with, her daughter was coming home from school in just a horrible mood and would have these meltdowns within five to 10 minutes of getting in the car sometimes.
In looking at all of the things going on, one of the strategies that we started to use was that she actually made a protein smoothie for her daughter before picking her up, and as soon as she came in the car, gave her that smoothie and got her eating something right away. That made a huge impact for the rest of the afternoon because we looked at what was going on. She hadn’t eaten anything for several hours. She was hangry, and she needed that almost immediately.
So that’s one of those type of situations where looking at the whole picture and looking underneath the behavior to what’s causing it can make such a huge impact.
That’s beautiful, and that’s so helpful, too. That you were able to offset a potentially … These kinds of things gain momentum when people are upset. It just continues and continues, and yet such a simple take a step back, look at the situation and create a new solution. It works, and everything’s great, right?
Yeah. I am all about trying to find simple solutions that have big impact.
Exactly. Exactly. How did you get into this work, Sandy?
Well, interestingly enough, I think that it started back when my son was in second grade, and he started having some school problems. It ended up he got diagnosed with ADHD, and I had to learn a lot of strategies to help him through that because he wasn’t at the level that we needed to medicate him or anything. It was more manageable with structure, strategies and diet is how we did it. But it took a lot to learn what would work for him. Then came my daughter, who didn’t respond to any of that that I had learned.
They are different.
Yeah. I learned, as many people with more than one child know, that what works for one child doesn’t work for another, or it has to be presented differently. So while I’ve always had a love of communication and relationship building, having that experience of learning to respond to two different personalities, two different set of needs, to get what needed to be done done, I learned so much. Then I found myself helping my friends and helping other parents. So it naturally developed into a desire to want to share this with more people because I found so many amazing strategies that work and different ways to communicate it and implement it for your child’s type of personality.
Love it. Love it. So out of your need was born something that you were able to also share with others good.
Yes. Yes.
I found myself helping my friends and helping other parents.
In a couple of minutes, we’re going to go for a break. But often, I just want to bring this up since you did, when moms are experiencing challenging situations, they can feel like they’re doing something wrong or not enough in some way with their children. Did you ever experience that?
Absolutely. I think when we feel powerless, it is really, really hard because we love our children, and we want to fix things for them and make life easier for them. When our kids are struggling, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of what did I do to create this.
In fact, I find it really interesting. One of the things I’ve seen is how easy it is for us as parents to accept the blame, even if it’s unfounded, but to accept that blame when our kids do something wrong or when they’re struggling. But when they have a success, most parents do not say, “That’s because of my good parenting” or “I made that happen.” No. It’s completely different. It’s like when they do something good, it’s all about them, and they did this, and “Wow, you’re so amazing.” But yet when they struggle, “Oh, it’s my fault. I did something wrong. I need to fix it.”
So that’s something really interesting that I have seen in my work with parents and in my own self-development, how easy it is to fall into that trap.
Yeah, and I think every single one of us as mothers has had that experience at some point or more. So it’s great to know that there’s tools out there that can help us. We have to go for a break, Sandy, so I’m going to let everybody know … Can you share your website where everyone can reach you and find you?
Absolutely. You can find me at sandyhallcoaching.com.
Beautiful. You’re listening to SuperPower Mommas, everyone, and we’re going to take a quick break. We’ve been talking with Sandy Hall about the truth about meltdowns and what self-development methods work, how they work. So we’ll be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Podcast: Play in new window
