287: The Power of a Break
I'm Megan Hillukka, a mother to a large family, a wife, a business owner, and a homeschooling mom. This podcast shows you how to find joy in motherhood, even when it's busy, overwhelming, and chaotic, so that you can have peace and energy and be the mom you thought you would be. We'll talk about mental health, business, homemaking, marriage, raising kids, and all the ups and downs that a mother might experience as she raises her family.
This is the Joyful Mom podcast. Hello there! I've been MIA for a bit. I'm working on getting my ducks in order again to do this podcast because I love doing it. And for however many years, I have only rarely missed an episode. But I've been so busy with one-on-ones that I haven't even had the space to think about podcasting.
Which is so amazing! I love doing the one-on-ones, but I also love doing the podcasts and that's why some things are changing. My prices are doubling again because of how I help people get rid of anxiety and trauma. It's working and it’s amazing. It's incredible. In just a few sessions, it's gone and my schedule is so busy.
So my prices are doubling on March 1st, which is tomorrow. Here's a mom who shares her experience with why she worked with me and how it went for her.
What she says is that she had a mother's guilt around not being able to change the past to take away my son's addiction issues and severe anxiety in all aspects of my life.
The guilt and anxiety were all-consuming. It's so hard to describe and she's talking about RRT and what I do. I've been in therapy for quite some time and I don't feel I heard anything new from Megan; she just delivered it differently. The way she helped me work through the guilt and anxiety just really connected with me and I'm amazed at the results in only two sessions with her.
And she would tell you to listen; she says to trust the process. I'm amazed at how much better I am after working with Megan for only two sessions. It really does work and I would do it again because I'm feeling so much relief from crippling guilt and anxiety.
If you want these kinds of results that my clients are getting, where anxiety is quickly cleared and trauma is cleared, go to meganhillukka.com/anxietyfree. My prices are again doubling tomorrow, March 1st, so don't waste any time; go do that now. And today we're going to talk about the power of a break and I share this at the risk of parenting experts coming at me and telling me how I'm supposed to parent my children. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong and I should be different.
There are a million opinions out there about gentle parenting and authoritative parenting. I don't even know all the terms, but anyway, I want to share this because I know I'm not the only one who has experienced something like this. And the helplessness you feel, how you try everything, and how exhausting it is.
We had this experience last spring that was pretty awful. We had an experience where one of our children had this pattern that started to emerge as soon as we said no about something or she didn't get her way or was like. As soon as anything was not exactly how she liked it, this slow train wreck emerged.
And it was like a switch flipped, and then slowly but surely things just kept going downhill, where she would be bugging her siblings, hurting them, and kicking them, and it just got worse until she was screaming at the top of her lungs and screamed for hours, kicking, punching, and hitting everyone in sight.
It was stressful. It was pretty awful. My thoughts would go to the future, like, wow, what if this only gets worse? Like, how do we connect with her? How do we even stop this whole cycle in the first place? We try to, like, talk to her, try to hug her, try to be with her, try to do anything, and nothing seems to work.
And I would think, What if, as a teenager, she is a million times worse? I can't handle this now. How are we supposed to do this in the grips of the teenage years? So, anyway, it was a very rough time because it seems like that kind of outburst might happen sometimes, you know, with a kid here or there or for a short period, but it was continuing for weeks on end, every single day, and even multiple times a day.
It was wearing on all of us, the 280 square feet and there were nine of us in there. And so if a kid is screaming at the top of their lungs in 280 square feet, not one person is finding any enjoyment anywhere. So anyway, I began looking for resources to help me try to figure out what to do with the situation.
And I want to back up, even though, you know, when that was happening, it took all of my energy, it took my husband's energy, so all of a sudden all the other kids weren't getting the attention that we wanted to give them because she was taking all of our energy just trying to figure out how to deal with her.
So it was just really not fun for any of us. But anyway, I began looking for resources to help me. I was trying to figure out, like, what do I do in this situation? I listened to a few books where I tried their methods and even though I didn't agree with them because they said it's the best way, they didn't work, so I will not recommend these books.
It seemed like nothing was working. As I said earlier, we'd try to hug her, talk to her, snuggle her, and connect with her. After she calmed down, we'd talk about it afterward and be like, Okay, so what can we do differently? What is Mom missing? You know, we just have all these conversations, whatever, and it would not work.
I didn't know; I didn't know what to do. My sister recommended this book called Raising Lions. It's by Joe Newman, and so I listened to it. On the surface, it doesn't sound all that different from other discipline methods of timeouts and such, but here's what I learned this time. He changed the name from timeouts to taking a break.
And you'll have to listen to or read the book to get the full details and I highly recommend it. But I started to implement what he offered in our life with our daughter. Previously, it was this crazy cycle that the more worked up she got, the more worked up I got. And I got so angry and frustrated and I didn't like how I was responding and reacting.
I didn't like how she was responding. It was just that it was going nowhere. In this book, when you tell a child to take a break, there's no anger, there's no emotion, there's nothing, just neutral. Like, okay, it's time to take a break. And they're not going in the corner or somewhere because they're in trouble.
It's more like taking a seat right here. It sounds like you need to take a break right now. And you can set up an age-appropriate time. For my little kids, it was like a one-minute break and for my older kids, it was a longer break. And if they didn't want to go to the break, then I would just add more time.
I guess you would like a two-minute break instead of a one-minute break. And they quickly learned that they'd just go take a break right away. And here's what I've realized: the power of a break. If kids are fighting, it interrupts their fighting pattern and the energy they're disagreeing about.
Even a minute of pause gives them a little rest to recharge and then come back together with better energy. I've thought about it for myself. Like, it's good to take a break. If we're frustrated trying to do something and a lot of times we're like, No, we've got to figure it out, I'm so frustrated.
It's like, go take a little break. Step back from it. You know, get fresh eyes and then come back again, like taking a break in so many ways, not only for our kids if they're fighting or frustrated or screaming or yelling or whatever. It's like taking a little break is not a form of punishment. It's a form of like here. This is a beautiful gift to learn how to take breaks to step back to refresh and then try again and so it's not when you're having your kids take a break; it's not done in anger or because they're bad; it's just like a break.
It looks like a break is in order, and it takes all the emotion out of it. Now, I cannot say that I always have them do breaks with no emotion, but that's the intention of what I try to do and what I intend to do. Because it's not about getting angry. It's about interrupting the behavior or pattern.
Part of his philosophy in this book is that if a kid is throwing a tantrum or screaming, you don't help them calm down. You don't like to try to snuggle them or try to get them to calm down and then take a break or you don't even have them take a break when they're worked up. You let them self-regulate themselves and calm themselves down.
And then they take a break when they're done with their tantrum. So this might sound odd to some of you who believe in always meeting your kid's cries and needs with love, attention, and all that. But I found this to be very useful, especially when my daughter was having her fits. There was nothing I could do at the moment to, um, calm her down.
I tried everything and nothing worked. And so I do think you have to listen to the whole book to get a full understanding of this part where there's no. You don't sit and try to calm them down. You let them go through. Okay, yep, you want to have a tantrum? That's fine.
Sure. Go ahead. Finish your tantrum. When you're done, we're going to take a break. So there's no anger in it. But he tells this story in the book that stuck out to me about teenagers playing basketball. Maybe it was at school and they're having a problem with the kids swearing all the time while they were playing.
And so Joe, the author, was brought in to help. So he goes out there and he sits out there with the teenagers. And each time someone swore, they had to go take a break for a few minutes. And the kids were swearing so often that they could hardly play their game because people had to keep taking breaks.
And then they started getting annoyed at each other for swearing because it interrupted their game so much. Like, hey, don't swear. They realized that it was more beneficial to them not to swear. And they could have a more enjoyable game, and so the swearing stopped. So, what happened to my daughter?
We started implementing this and right away, she just ignored us and ignored me. And I tell her, That's fine; you can keep screaming; that's okay; just when you're done, you're going to get to take a break. And I would add more time to her break, the longer she screamed. It's like, okay, that's fine; you can have a two-minute break instead of a one-minute break.
It doesn't matter to me; I don't really care. And her breaks got to be about 30 minutes. And I think she had maybe two 30-minute breaks. And then this behavior completely changed and stopped. And she's able to communicate her needs rather than throw a fit. We have more conversations about it. It's been so, so huge for us, for her, and for our family.
The thing about having them take a break is that it's not about having them, you know, be entertained; you're not giving them books; you're not giving them anything to do. It's just really to get them to be bored, to have a moment of boredom. You're not trying to connect with them at that time. There's none of that.
And the book is amazing for understanding that. It's more; here's a break. There's nothing to do in here. You just sit and chill—no distractions, nothing—until your break is up. And we use this method a lot now. Hey, it looks like you can take a break. And again, no anger; no what's wrong with you, or why are you doing that?
And not even explaining to them why they get to take a break because they already know. It's worked really, really well for us and our family. I highly recommend this book if you're struggling with behaviors in a child; it's been huge. And it's also been huge for me to take anger and frustration out of it because it's not useful and it never does any good.
Again, the book is called Raising Lions by Joe Newman. And I just think we can also take this to ourselves, you know, and how can I take breaks for myself when I'm getting frustrated or feeling intense emotion? Just take a break, step back, clear our brain and our eyes, and then go back when our mind is clear.
And if you're looking to get rid of trauma and anxiety for good again, let's do this together and get you cleared in just a few sessions. Go to meganhillukka.com/beanxietyfree and get registered. Once you register, you'll get an email with the link to schedule your calls immediately. So in just a few minutes, you could have your first appointment booked and know that you're on your way to a clearer mind, calmness in your body, life connection, ease, and peace in your life.
Again, my prices are doubling tomorrow. See you next week, my friends. Take care. Bye bye.
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