EP116: Parenting Strong-Willed & Spicy Kids

LISTEN HERE!

LISTEN ON YOUTUBE!

Does your child push every boundary, question every rule, and seem immune to traditional parenting strategies? 

Parent coach Mary Van Geffen returns to discuss "spicy ones"—the intense, strong-willed children (about 20% of kids) who feel everything deeply and need a radically different approach. 

She shares why these passionate trailblazers require a radically different kind of support and how adults can shift from control and correction to attunement and regulation.

Mary takes us through:

—Who the “spicy ones” are, and how to reframe "strong-willed"

—How your own nervous system and need for control affect the parent-child dynamic

—Why modeling matters more than demands when dealing with demonstrative children

—Using heavy body work and movement to help kids process big feelings appropriately

—Why standard approaches often fail with high-intensity temperaments

—How your parenting role must shift dramatically as spicy kids enter the tween and teen years

And so much more!

Mary Van Geffen is an international parenting coach and parent educator for overwhelmed moms of strong-willed & Spicy Children™. She teaches monthly workshops to help moms gain confidence to choose gentle, respectful parenting, especially if they weren’t raised that way. 

Mary has a ministry on Instagram where she posts an inspiring parenting tip every single day.  Just reading her social media will help you delight in your child and remember that you are enough. Mary believes that when a mom realizes how hard she is on herself and cracks the door open for some self-compassion, her entire family is bathed in light! 

Mary is a certified Simplicity Parenting Counselor® and Professional Co-Active Coach®.  Her greatest achievement, however, is cultivating a calm, kind, and firm relationship with her spirited go-getter daughter (17),  polar-opposite introverted son (15), and un-Enneagramable hubby.

Link to preorder the book Parenting A Spicy One: A compassionate guide for raising a deep-feeling and wonderfully strong-willed kid

Preorder here to access Mary’s Affirmations Masterclass and the Meltdown Meditations for Moms. https://www.maryvangeffen.com/parentingaspicyonebook 

Are you a spicy one quiz:

https://www.maryvangeffen.com/quiz?mcp_token=eyJwaWQiOjc0Nzg3MSwic2lkIjoxOTE2NDY3NjY0LCJheCI6IjlhN2IxZWIxMWUxNTFjYmM3YzMyMDA1Y2RiNjUyMGI3IiwidHMiOjE3MTEzMDM2NjIsImV4cCI6MTcxMzcyMjg2Mn0.z2efLk8K2Glc2ijQxNcZKc2akcaB79gw5CBSUVr5HeU 

To hear Mary’s first episode on Free Your Soma: Gentle and Respecting Parenting

Please see episode 15. https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ID869HSvNd6Kx05HPkk71?si=-W1pIMV0SN6R7KrmUcZWmw&nd=1&dlsi=1342404c4fc04415 

Connect with Aimee:

Instagram: @aimeetakaya 

Facebook: Aimee Takaya 

Learn more about Aimee Takaya, Hanna Somatic Education, and The Radiance Program at⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠www.freeyoursoma.com⁠⁠⁠.

LISTEN WHILE READING!

A: Hey there, listener, welcome back to the podcast. I'm Aimee Takaya, and I'm curious, do you have a child in your life who is intense, or maybe you were an intense and strong-willed kid yourself? Today I've got Mary Van Geffen to talk about spicy ones, right, which is her term for intense kids. And we're going to explore the ways we can start relating to our own children and maybe our own child selves with more compassion and understanding for our somatic intensity. So stay tuned. 

A: Every day, there is a forgetting, and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world, to the experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy, and here is where you free your soma. I'm your host, Aimee Takaya. I'm here to help you move from pain to power, from tension to expansion, and ultimately from fear to love. Hi Mary, I'm so excited to have you back on the podcast. You were on season one, and now you're here two and a half years later. 

M: Yeah, and we never even got into like the stuff about what a spicy one is, so I'm excited for part two. Absolutely, yeah. 

A: So if you want to go back, if you're like that kind of person, like you have FOMO and you don't want to have missed anything, totally you can pause this episode, or after you listen to this episode, go back to season one and find it. I think it was the most of the conversation was about gentle parenting, what does that really mean, and somatic parenting, right? Or parenting from an embodied place. That's what our previous conversation was about, but you're right, we didn't actually get into the full topic of spicy ones, and that is the topic of your new book, and I'm really super excited to talk about that today. 

So maybe you can start us off with just, you know, I think you told your more like full background in the first podcast, right, but like just maybe add that relate to like where you're at now and what your function is out here in the world. Maybe tell us a little bit about what you do and how you came to write this book about spicy ones. 

M: Yes, I am the, I call myself the international parent coach for moms of spicy ones and I am really just on a mission to make sure that no kid and no mom feels broken. And when you have a kid who is like, I would say 20% of the kids out there, when you have a child who doesn't maybe respond to gentle parenting in the way that all the videos do, or who doesn't have that innate desire to please that usually is developmentally appropriate for, you know, three to 10 year olds that are three to nine year olds, they really want to be and all kids do, but this kid is not what you expected. 

And there's a whole kind of just heroin's journey that takes place when you realize, wow, I can't, I can't control this kid, and I can't necessarily have the parenting journey that I imagined. We're not going to be wearing matching outfits, and it's just not going to be, it's not, I'm not going to have a mini me that just wants to do whatever I want to do. 

There's going to be a lot of negotiation and a lot of power struggles. And my mom is a spicy one. I am a spicy one. My daughter is a spicy one. And I'm also raising a mild child. And so I like to say, like, don't take advice from somebody with one kid, because often you can think that it's your parenting that has molded this kid. And a lot of it is temperament and how they come fresh out the womb. And this type of child, a spicy one, is just a name for what used to be called strong-willed. And I think a lot of damage was done in the service of breaking a strong will. 

And so many people that I coach have been harmed because their own parents were following maybe really conservative Christian doctrines around, you know, what flows out of the heart and stuff like this that made domination the goal and breaking a part of them. And we don't need to do that. We need to be aware that this is a different kind of human. Like they are intense. 

They feel things deeply often their impacts or highly sensitive people processing everything coming at them at a, at a higher degree, which means their body budget gets depleted quicker. And so they have big flashy reactions. But they're also like from another planet on some level, they always have this intuition, and they say things that you're like, wow, have you been on this planet for 80 years or what? 

And they're spirited, they're louder than your typical kid, often more active and moving around. And they're not necessarily neuro divergent, I would say, like an informal poll in my stories, like how many people who believe they have a spicy one based on all the things I say also have a diagnosis, it's only about 50%. So there's ADHD and all of its complications, autism, OCD, a lot of that is also spicy one behavior. 

But sometimes we will talk a mom, and I and it will turn out that their kid is not a quintessential spicy one to me. But what they're bringing to the equation, the mother, maybe their need for, for order and like, I just need things to be a certain way, like an eagram one stuff, if you're into the enneagram, or maybe they need to be perceived as perfect. Like they have it all together, there's this some control around in their child. Right. 

A: Say that again, like some control issues that the parent is having, like where they really they really need to feel like they have control of the situation and their child is not necessarily, as you're saying, like as maybe it's like not as spicy as some other children, but to this parent, the child feels really spicy because they're triggering all their control issues. 

M: Exactly. It's a spicy situation because they're and I don't want to talk too much so much because you could probably talk rings around me. But I would, this parent feels unsafe in their body when their kid is drawing attention to themselves or not going with the flow. And then there's also parents who are high sensory processors and this kid is making up over-stimulated. 

Yeah, they're overstimulated. And so that's a part of this equation too, figuring that out a little bit. But I do have a quiz. 

I have a quiz with like 22 different questions to get at like how spicy is your kid or maybe is it you? Oh, I love that. I think you can link that in the show notes. 

A: Please do. Yeah, no, that is a great nuance that you're adding in here because we can tend to, you know, as parents like kind of flip flop in two directions. It's like, oh, our kid is the problem, or we overtake responsibility. It's like, oh, it's me. I'm a bad mom. 

Like I'm just not doing all the things that I could. And but it's always going to be a dance. It's always going to be a back and forth. You know, and so having that understanding of like what's happening on both sides, you know, as you're talking about this, like, I think if I were to just like based on what you said, my kid, he's seven, right? He's very extroverted is how I've explained him to people before. He's very he likes to talk loud. He likes to make a lot of noise. 

He likes to run around. But in terms of like his motor patterns, in terms of like his ability to focus on things, in terms of other aspects, like I don't think he would get called ADHD. Like I don't think that he is neurodivergent. I think in a lot of ways he's neurotypical. He's just like, got a big, fiery personality. So I feel like I'm already starting to see like these just like different nuances that you're speaking to, right? 

M: And yeah, and it sounds like you've done the work because it is work to see the beauty in that, like even just calling it extroversion instead of attention seeking, right? Like a big part of my book, Parenting a Spicy One, is about retraining our brain to see all the beauty in front of us. So we don't wake up at 50 with no relationship with this kid because the spicy ones are the ones who go no contact. 

They're the ones who wash their hands of us eventually if we haven't figured out a way to be in some sort of symbiotic relationship. And there's so much beauty about this child. They are highly persistent. When they decide to do something, they get it done. 

A: That is so true about my son. 

M: And what we have to lament and grieve is that we can't hand them a goal. They don't like just because we want them to do something doesn't mean that, but when they decide what their path is, get out of the way because they are the trailblazers and the social activists and the world changers. But wow, that's hard to parent. 

A: Did you know that your muscles are holding on to thoughts, memories and feelings? If you have a tight neck or back, you're not just getting old. You're experiencing a buildup of tension from the life you've lived. Most people don't know this, but there is a part of your brain that can reverse and prevent chronic tension. When you relax your muscles, you not only move better and regulate your nervous system, but you also free yourself from the grip the past has over your body. So you can live with freedom, confidence and enjoy your life now. How does that sound? Join me, Amy Aimee and discover what my clients are raving about at youcanfreeyorsoma.com. 

A: Oh, totally. And I was thinking about that when you were describing this whole strong willed, phrasing in this way that it's done some damage because as a grown person, so much of people's healing journey is like to recover their strong will. This conversation people have about boundaries and around like, how do I go after what I want in life and be successful and have self-confidence and all this stuff. People are trying to recover that strong will from whatever stuff they went through, whatever kind of trauma or abuse or neglect or all those things. 

And here's this kid coming into the world with this incredibly strong will and then you're saying we as a culture, for many decades, we're really trying to beat that down. And that's such a sad thing because it's like, well, but that's what you want when you're grown. That's what you want when you're going to be, like you said, a leader in an organization. You want to have all those characteristics. 

M: So true. And then there's even a darker side to it of the more you force them to go with an authoritative rule or what you say is more important, that the more you put them in a position of vulnerability to be inappropriately led or touched or like, we really have to find that middle ground of like, yes, you do not want to do this. 

And I'm your mother. And here's what I'm, you know, there's this boomer mentality of like, my way or the highway, and it just doesn't work with this kid. It either goes underground and we don't ever get to know their full self and they hide it for a while until they go insane once they're out of the house, or they see it as a challenge. And now we're like using battle metaphors with them because that's what it feels like. 

A: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I can definitely see like there are some, I mean, pretty important things that you're speaking to here. I mean, before when you talked about the no contact thing, like, these are real consequences of how we show up with our kids that can have long lasting effects on our lives and our kids lives. 

And so, you know, I can see how important it can be if you're a parent who is struggling with these kinds of challenges to get educated, to get support, to start changing the way that you're thinking about your child. Because yeah, this is big stuff. This is really like, again, I said like life altering stuff. Yeah. 

M: Yeah, it really is. And it has to start with us because we're the one with power in the relationship. We're the one with maturity. And so, if we're stuck in this loop, which I totally get, I was there. That's why I'm the one to teach this because being in relationship with a strong-willed kid did not easy to me. 

And I made a lot of mistakes, including getting really physical. And when we can figure out that like, wow, it's hard to be on the same team with this kid, but we are teammates. And this kid is going to need a lot of, a lot of yeses to accept my nose. And like, there's just a different way to be in relationship with this kid. But what's amazing is if you figure it out in the ages of like two to nine, by the time they're teenagers, everyone else is going, oh my gosh, what's up with these individuating adolescents. And you're like, oh, I've been doing this for 10 years. Like, my ego has been tamed. I can be in relationship with another being and not have total control over them. 

A: Yeah, well, that's maybe a great time for me to ask this question. You know, I think that some people who are in this kind of like, older world mentality about children, you know, that we're speaking to, and this being a more holistic approach, right? Understanding, oh, well, yeah, there's these, these things that are really hard to deal with. 

And there's also like on the other side of this coin, like a lot of beautiful things, right, that come from this, you know, also challenging part of their nature. What would you say about parents that feel like when their kid is saying, no, or not going along with things, or talking back, that this is like disrespect, and that you have to like somehow make your kid be respectful. Like to me as like a somatic educator, I understand, you know, and it can be a frustrating thing even for me as a mother sometimes, that there's like, no way that I can make my kid respect me. I have to show my kid what being respectful sounds and looks like, you know, that's how I see it. 

Like I have to demonstrate that, you know, but what about for people who are not only struggling to demonstrate that because nobody ever demonstrated that for them, they're still struggling maybe to be respectful to themselves on a regular basis, like the noise that's going on in their head. But then when they're looking at their kid, they're just seeing, oh, this kid is disrespectful. And I have to like, you know, punish or change them or push back in order to make them respect me. And making them respect me maybe looks like they're doing what I say. What would you say to that whole kind of conundrum? 

M: I mean, we all want to know what to say to our mother-in-law and some of our moms. I mean, you kind of alluded to it like the power of modeling. And when someone witnesses a parent staying in their grounded calm self when their child is not doing that, I think something shifts. We are changing the course of history when we just on an individual basis can calm our bodies, even though on the surface, if you took a video of it, our kid is acting disrespectfully. I mean, if I think we have to get really granular and say, what's disrespect? 

Okay, it's not giving me eye contact. It's using a harsh tone. Well, what's a harsh tone? 

A lot of air coming through clipped. Like I think the more we can move away from what somebody else would think was disrespect and what we think is disrespect. And then what's the opposite? So what would respect look like? Would it be letting me finish what I'm saying before they talk? We kind of, we write it out and we name what it is. 

And then we have to model that. So I can't tell you how many families one parent has come to me and been like, I want to start being respectful and conscious and intentional and gentle in my parenting. But my partner, and usually it's a man, is not going to do that. So what's the point? And I see it over and over again. The point is, is that one person changing in a family system necessitates that everybody has to change. 

And it's like taking a huge ocean liner and just turning it one degree to the south begins to turn the whole thing around. And so what I would say to that person is, let that person who's, you're trying to convert, witness you giving unconditional love to somebody who's not acting very loving and to notice and to watch that like you're still safe when you do it. It's almost like we have to experience it. I had to see the parent educator in this mommy and me class when my daughter was like, I don't want her to play with me. She has bad breath. And I wanted to rage like, that is so rude. 

How dare you. And she just got down on her knees and said, are you hoping that you can play with this by yourself? And her, her friend at the time was like, yeah, and they just had this beautiful conversation. And it didn't meet it. This child didn't need to be cut down to size or reprimanded. 

She need to be heard. But like a lot of times we have to go under that disrespectful wording to what's underneath it. And I call that like ninjaing, like a, like a, an emotional ninja when someone's like, he got more pancakes than me. 

You can say, instead of no, he didn't, I measured it and each person got the same amount. And how dare you, you know, instead we can be, we can go underneath it. This kid wants to know, are they as valued and beloved as their sibling? So instead of worrying about the pancakes, I can take a moment to ground myself, give my return, give my full attention and say, are you still hungry? We're out of pancakes, but I'd love to get you some blueberries. 

Or are you needing something from me? And so to that person we're trying to convince, we can, we can let them witness us doing it. We can also talk about, hey, mom, there's usually a need underneath it. And in my family, we're trying to give someone grace who's kind of new to the planet and get underneath what they're having a hard time expressing and then model for them how to express that. But it is slower, it's less efficient, but it's what creates measured, calm folks who worry about other people. And that's the work that we're doing. 

A: Love that. Yes. Well, and, what you're speaking to as well is that the parent has to come up with tools for themselves. Because as you're talking about this mom who's like, I want to be the respectful one, I don't think my, I want to start gentle parenting, I don't think my husband's going to follow suit. Like I have been that woman, I have been in that position being like, okay, I'm going to start taking on these things, especially as my son got into toddlerhood, I was like noticing myself becoming like my mom and ready to yell at him over little stuff. 

And I was like, I don't want to do that. And then I could see also that like, if I again went along this path of like, I need to model this, like I need to show up this way, right? And I want my partner to, I had to actually look at how I was communicating with my husband in front of my son. Because sometimes what I would like, someone would like record me because I'm like in a bad mood, he didn't wash the dishes, he said he would do this thing with the car, it didn't happen. He slept in and I've been up for three hours, doing everything, you know, and I'm irritated, I'm like having a little hissy fit, I'm the spicy one here getting like, right, like things aren't going my way. And how I'm speaking to my husband in front of my son is exactly how I don't want my son speaking to me. 

But here I am engaged in it with my projection of how things are, instead of going, Hey, what's actually going on with my husband? Oh, he was up till like two in the morning, like doing this project. And he's like, you know, stressed about it or whatever it is, you know what I mean? Like not really giving it that space, but like, again, give in to it. Can 

M: I use my, yes, or can I use my own, you know, we're always saying use your words, use your words. Can I use my words to ask for what I need? Like, I have to voice it, martyrs make terrible mothers. And so we have to get to a place where we ask for and get what we need, where we can control it ourselves. 

And somebody gets to say no. But I love that you're noticing this kid, this spicy one is a little magpie mimic. I mean, they are watching and absorbing and spinning it back to you. I'll never forget my daughter saying, I am done. I am done to her little brother. And I was like, I got to stop saying that at bedtime. 

That is like, she's literally saying what I've said. And they especially love to curse. So we have to be, if we don't want our child to curse them, we have to not curse, or we have to be like, okay, we're a cursing household. And this kid's going to figure out that in other situations, it's not okay. 

A: But here it might be. Yeah. If I got to like raise my hand here, if there's one that's like the cursing one, it's me in my family. But my caveat is like, only when something ridiculous, like an upsetting happens, like, you know, I did totally drop a bunch of F-bombs the day I was late dropping my son off at school, drove by a trash can and knocked off one of my, you know, rear view mirrors. You know, it was an F-bomb kind of day. 

It was a bad morning. And like, you know, so my husband's always like, God, like, why do you do that? Like when I, and I'm like, but I only do it when I get really, really upset. Is that okay? Like, because I feel like, you know, yeah, they're going to want to curse. 

M: Well, I actually have a section in this book, apparently, Spicey One, about cursing, because there is, there's some research that says cursing helps to So decrease our sensation of pain and discomfort. 

Like it basically allows us to like keep our hands in icewater longer. And it, and there's been a professional cyclist that can go further when they curse. And then there's even connection of cursing to higher IQ. Like there's a lot more there. And that is yet another place where the spicy one's going to push us out of conformity with the culture and show us that there are, like you will be asked to figure out why you have certain rules over and over again with this kid, because since they're going to push every boundary, you're going to have to determine, okay, I said I didn't ever want to use the word stupid in my house, but he seems to get a lot of joy out of shouting. That's so stupid when he hurts his foot and like, who is it hurting? 

And is it actually helping him expel some of that out of his body? I mean, every family will have to decide, but in some ways you'll become kind of a counter cultural family because the basic rules don't work. And then you're going to start to question them. Like, why is that important? Like, why is it important that, that he bathe every day? If I'm changing his clothes, like, and it's a big hassle, whereas by the way, if you can get a spicy one into water, it makes everything better. But sometimes that transition, maybe you don't have it in you for a day or two. He's going to be fine. Right. 

A: Right. Again, it's about loosening that sense of needing to control, right? As the parent, like, you know, negotiating that with yourself. Like, can I accept things being a little bit not as I expect them to be in order for other things to kind of balance out or pay off here? Yeah. Well, tell us more about like in this book, the spicy one, right? You were mentioning something called the control destruction dynamic. Can you tell? Oh yeah. I feel like that's right in where we're going here. 

M: Yeah. I think that we have to have tools that, um, sweet Jane down the street doesn't use on her kids, um, because this is a different kid. And when things start to heat up with the spicy one, whenever you can get them to use their body in a way that feels, um, like heavy, deep work, you're going to help them work out things in a much socially appropriate way than they might without that. 

And I'm talking about army crawling, pushups, other resistance activities, but you can start to call it like control destruction. Like, like, I can see you have a lot of big feelings in you. Should we go destroy something together? And maybe it's, um, ripping up, uh, the egg carton, which feels so good. Maybe it's taking ice and throwing it hard against a gate. Maybe, uh, or you can hear that ricochet. Maybe it's taking a hammer and smashing apart some old pottery or a, it can also be allowed like raucous game of chase. 

Like that, that predatory games, prey games, um, are a really great way to work all of this, um, anger through our nervous system. Obviously, if you have a trampoline, that's great. But, um, I just want movement to be a part of your family's way of working out big feelings, uh, rather than like, you know, um, you can leave until you're feeling better. That's why kids slam doors and things like that is they want to have some whole body pressure, some way of, of getting those feelings out. Um, do you have some other ideas? Because I know this is like, you're the somatic person. 

A: Well, I mean, what you're saying makes a ton of sense because like stomping, like that I feel like my son likes to stomp. And when I was younger, I liked to stomp. There was something so satisfying about feet, feeling my feet like booming against the floor, right? And then later on when I was like, you know, few years ago after I had my son, I got really into running like trail running and it was the same feeling. 

It was this like boom, boom, boom of my feet against the surface and feeling that whole like shift, like bounce right through the center of my body. And so I totally get what you're saying, like on a, some personally on the somatic level. And I think that it's actually something we all need and we don't realize we need it. But especially if you have a kid who's a very like intense and like high energy kid, I can see why this would be particularly effective. And are you saying that post ripping the egg carton, stomping around, running around that there's this like easing of their energy? Do you feel like what you notice is that kids seem to like quiet down after that? 

M: I mean, every kid is is different. But I think if you can make it a part of your, like you can normalize it and have like one family I worked with had like a throw basket and it was a basket filled with soft squish mellows and things you could throw against the wall. And mom wasn't going to get upset about it. Generally this kid's not going to listen to you once they've reached a certain point. So you can be like, Hey, do you want to go throw ice? 

And they're going to give you the middle finger. But you can, you know, when you become a student of your child and you can notice like, okay, we're home from school and things are heating up. Like you can kind of get in front of it and be like, let's go outside and put chalk and water and scrape it across the bottom or let's go have an obstacle course. Just knowing that like you can maybe divert some or in the after time, you can do it. But when the storm is happening, I just want to make it clear. There's not always a magic way to stop that. 

And I don't think that's the goal. I think that a lot of times when people are saying, what do I do about the meltdowns? How do I stop the meltdowns? And I actually want to equip you to feel safe as the meltdown happens to think of it more like you don't want to stop storms in a forest that needs it. You just need to be safe during those storms and really ask yourself like, who's upset here? 

Can I be okay while my child is not? And this kind of kid though, does sometimes get aggressive. And so I actually have a whole chapter on what do you do when things get violent because that's not in any of the parenting books I could find. Right. 

A: Well, I think that there's also, there's so much violence that we are exposed to that we don't even realize we're exposed to. I mean, I remember when my son was like three years old, he said something like totally scared the crap out of me. He was like, I'm going to shoot you when he was mad at me. And I got so alarmed and I like totally got triggered by it. And I was like, oh my God, my kid's going to grow up to be a mass murderer. Like I got like really out of hand inside myself with it because I did not expect, you know, my three year old to say something like that to me. 

You know what I mean? With like anger in his eyes. And then I had to realize, okay, well, where has he seen this? Probably everywhere on TV with like, you know, any kind of movie, even though we don't like let him watch like all kinds of things like you just get exposed to this stuff. There's violence in our culture, you know, that they're exposed to all the time. 

M: There's violence in our culture and the spicy one is a demonstrative poet. And they are going to find the most powerful words to try to change your face when they're feeling something. And so they're the ones who say, I wish I could cut your head off here. Or I wish I could kill myself. They'll say that when they're very young and it's not suicidal ideation. 

It's I need to find, I'm looking everywhere for the most powerful words I can say, because I need someone else to know how big these feelings are. And that's even more reason for us to figure out what our calm down recipe is. And I go through this on the book about how, how do we stay the calmest person in the room so they can borrow some of our nervous system and, and co-regulate with us until they can learn to do it themselves. But they take longer than other kids to learn how to soothe and calm themselves. 

So it's even more important that we go through that process of learning it for ourselves. And I'm, I'm a fiery redhead. I did not know how to calm down. 

I have a parent who doesn't know how to calm down and just kind of comes at you. And so that's where I started. I had to do a lot of work, but the beauty of self-regulation is it's a learned skill. It's like learning how to basket weave or saddle a horse. It takes some time and you start off being very aware that you were not doing it. And then you slowly learn how to do it. 

And I just want you to know there's hope if you're like, well, I'm a, I'm an erratic person or I've been through trauma. Yep. I believe it. And there, you can learn your own, your own body, your calm down recipe. And I go through that in the book. And sometimes you just need some, some calm mothering from someone else so that you can do it for your child. Yeah. 

A: I was just thinking that because, you know, I feel like, and I love that in your content on Instagram, you totally talk about this. I've seen multiple videos where you like kind of share your own individual journey with this. But like, as you're saying, the spicy one being this demonstrative poet, right? Especially as you get into teen years, like your kids can say some really hurtful stuff like that can personally hurt because they know you, you know, they know how to push your buttons. They know how to, you know, make you feel bad about whatever it is you already feel bad about, you know what I mean? So like in this kind of approach that you're talking about with learning to soothe ourselves, some of that must also be like getting support from someone else who can listen and encourage and help you deal with the things your kids are triggering in you. Yes. 

M: And also learning how to be vulnerable enough to tell your story to someone. Because a lot of Daniel Segal's work who's sort of like a pioneer in research on parenting is that the most important determinator of how attached or how healthy your attachment is going to be with your child is how versed you are in describing and unpacking what your own childhood was about. And there's a lot of us who are like, I was a terror. 

I deserved everything I got. Those are like indicators of somebody who hasn't done any work to sort of make sense of what it was like to be little. And then we can't articulate what our childhood was like and what it heard and what was okay and what was scary. We just perpetuated. We're on autopilot. Yeah. I'm not sure how I got off on that on that target. 

A: No, that's like, I feel like that's a really important piece here for our listeners to hear because a lot of the people that I work with and the somatic work that I do are on that journey of looking at the past from a new lens and being able to express and share and rediscover, you know, how did this experience that I might have seen from this angle like truly affect me, my body and the way that I experience life through my body? Right? And so as you're saying this, it's like, yeah, we need to go there. 

M: And part of going there, it'd be great if you can get a therapist. But if you can't, literally just telling your story to someone who's empathetic and you have relationship with, you're not going to go dump this on your coworker, right? But saying to a friend like, Hey, I'm working on being a better parent. And what I'm learning is that to be a better parent, you have to have a really robust understanding of your own childhood. 

Could I tell you some stories from my childhood that I remember and maybe you can just listen, you don't have to, all you need to do is validate. If you hear something, you know, I mean, those are the best friends, the friends that can just say, I'm hearing this from you who can reflect back, reflective listening. That is very powerful because every time we tell our story, our story changes based on like, Oh, wow, her eyebrow went up when I said that. She felt something. Maybe I feel something like it, it really does change our story to tell the story. 

A: I remember hearing that that we don't actually remember things as they were. We remember the last time we remembered it. So the repetition that you're speaking to, we're like remembering the layers of like, Well, the last time I told this story, I was at this place in my life and you're remembering the perspective you had then and you're drawing from that perspective and the perspective before that and the perspective before that and adding it to your current perspective. And so it's like this layers of understanding that kind of emerge. I mean, ideally layers of understanding other times it can become like, Wow, this story is getting really far from what actually happened, you know, because we're getting, you know, so 

M: far into our own vision of it. It could also become a calcified script that's based in kind of being a victim or the opposite, which I see a lot of, which is like, I deserved what I got. No, you didn't. You were right. 

A: Yeah, yeah. That's a really probably a big one to try to get through to people. You know, do you work with people one on one? Do you have like private coaching clients or is that is it mostly groups now that you do? 

M: I built my business on private, I did. And now I'm to the point where I have a coaching subscription where it's a group coaching. So a whole bunch of moms get on and then one person or two people each call I coach. And usually it's something that everybody can relate to. Beautiful. 

A: Like they send in their questions ahead of time and you pick like these questions and then people can listen in. 

M: Yes. And I also put them in small rooms because again, telling your story. So there'll be like a reflection question. 

A: Wow, that sounds incredible. What's the, what's that program called? 

M: It's called the spicy one society. Of course it is. Yes, love that. We got the kids section and we got the parents of teens section because there's very, very different needs. 

A: Oh really? Can you describe a little bit about the change that goes on for, you know, the approach between young children and teens? 

M: Our parenting completely has to shift. I mean, we are, we are appropriately the benevolent queen when our children are little. Like we, they need that energy from us, that royalty and that like, in our family, we do this or no, thank you, you may come with us over here, right? 

Like there's a, I'm in charge and that should feel good to you kind of vibe in the two to nine year olds. But then right around the nine year change, you have to start shifting to becoming more of a gardener. And this, this metaphor has come from Kim John Payne, not from me, but you, you have to start thinking of your child as sort of this, this wild thing that is going to either grow into a bush or a tree and that's not entirely up to you, but you're going to make sure the conditions are as good as they can be. You're going to get rid of the pests, help them choose good peers, you know, be more of a support to them rather than the governor of them. 

And then the next right around 11, 12, 13, you start wanting, actually it's a little bit older than that, but you want to start shifting to being the guide. So it's like, I've been on this path before, there's a few things you should consider and they become less and less interested in your perspective because it's just, it's just developmentally appropriate that they're like, no, I want to know what my peers think and I want to know what I think and you don't even know what you're doing, right? And so we're, instead of you may language, we're saying, how do you think you will or what's your plan for? 

And we're, we're trying to coach them almost or guide them to think about the things that they haven't thought of and to verbalize them very different. And some of us get locked in still speaking to a teen like we spoke to a child and we're just creating these power struggles over and over again. I also have a class called Parenting Teens and Tweens. I recommended. 

A: Yeah, no, that sounds very vital to a healthy working relationship between you and your budding young adults, you know, because kids are, I mean, I moved out when I was still in high school and last year of high school, like I moved out with a boyfriend, like change can happen really fast once they're of a certain age. And it's important for us to like have that relationship where they know that they're still safe to come to us and get help from us and get guidance from us, you 

M: know, I just had to apologize to my 21 year old because she was interpreting something I was saying as trying to control her. I was asking, oh, is your friend staying in this town or this town and she was like, you know, I already told, anyway, I had to say, you know what, I'm sorry, I know that for most of your life, my job has been to critique and coach and control, you know, I've tried my best to not do that in a heavy handed way. 

That said, I know you don't need that anymore. And I need to really reserve, like the best thing you can do with a teenager is ask them, what are you looking for as you tell me this story? Are you wanting some advice or you just need me to listen? And generally, they're going to say, I just want you to listen, or I just want you to know, or I don't know. 

A: I love, I love being asked that question. I love being asked, like, do you want my solutions? Or you just want my kind ear? Like that is, I think that's just a beautiful question to ask anybody who's in a state. Yeah, fantastic. 

Well, maybe tell us a little bit about some of, I know you have this book coming out, you can tell us maybe the release date and then also share about the pre-order special offers. 

M: Oh yeah. If there's some free, thank you for reminding me that. If you pre-order a parenting a spicy one before February 10th, you get two goodies that I have created. One is an affirmations masterclass with 50 affirmations every spicy one wants to hear, as well as like teaching on how to affirm a spicy one. Because I think so many of us either were not affirmed growing up. 

Nobody said the, nobody spoke truth and life over us. And so there's a 30 minute class on that along with a PDF and it's totally going to help you start to, even if it feels really unnatural to say things like you have a tender heart and you feel things deeply and just leave it at that and not follow up with, but I need you to, you know, anyway, there's a whole thing on how to affirm your child. Also, if you pre-order a parenting a spicy one is three meltdown meditations for moms. So after your, you've like blown up on your child, basically you've melted down and you're seeing red. These are like, you can listen to them in my most sexiest mom voice and I will help you find your calm and one of them. 

So anyway, three different meditations. So the link will be, I think in your show notes and it means so much to me for you to pre-order it, even though I know you don't get, you also get a free audiobook read by me, but that doesn't hit your inbox until February 10th. And all this is only if you order it before February 10th. Fantastic. 

A: Yeah, those are some really great, really great offers. I think everybody should check that out and I'm excited. I'm interested in reading your book because I do feel that, especially after this conversation, combined with, you know, viewing your previous content on Instagram, like I'm like, I'm pretty sure I'm dealing with a spicy one here, like in my own situation. Like my son is definitely, you know, got his own idea of what's going to happen, you know, like definitely falls into that category of like, he asks me if he can do something and I'm kind of like, well, we have to leave the house in 10 minutes. 

So the answer is no. And then he's like, please, please. I'm like, no, I just said no. And then he's already doing it. And I'm like getting everything in the car and he's like doing the thing that I said we didn't have time for. And it's just as, as we've been talking, I've been thinking about all these little micro circumstances. 

And it's like, how can I, how can I ease this, especially as he gets older, so that I'm able to feel empowered in my relationship to what's going on with him and not like some kind of victim of his strong will or some kind of like dictator who has to like, you know, suppress a population or something. Like I really, I really feel like this personally spoke to me today. So thank you so much for that. I'm sure that everybody listening got something out of this. 

If you want to share what you got out of this with us, please feel free to message me or Mary on Instagram and just say, Hey, I listened to the podcast and thank you so much, blah, blah, blah, or ask a question. I always love to keep the conversation going. Check out the show notes and pre-order Mary's book and follow her on Instagram because your content, you're, you're super funny. You're, you're like funny person to follow in like the best possible way, like creative. I'm trying to keep it silly. Yeah, it's, it's great. I love it. Yeah. Any last words for our listeners here as we close? 

M: I would just say kind of what I would say, what you said is so true is that if you're a parent of a spicy one, you are caught between walking on eggshells, so you don't wake up their beast. And then also maybe feeling like the things you're doing are harsh enough that you're dimming some of their sparkle. And it's this tightrope you're on and I, see you and you are perfectly designed for this kid. You just both have some growing to do to make it work and it's all going to be okay. 

A: Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Well, thanks again for coming on the show again. For those of you listening, go back and listen to the first episode because Mary goes into her whole origin story and everything like that. And yeah, and keep the conversation going. Thank you. 

A: Hey there, friends. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. Follow me on Instagram at AimeeTakaya and send me a DM about this episode. I'd like to thank you for being part of this Somatic Revolution. And if you'd like to support the podcast and help more people learn about somatics, consider leaving a review or a rating. And finally, if you'd like to have the experience of relief in your tight hips or back and learn to understand what your body is really saying to you, visit youcanfreeyoursoma.com. I can't wait to share with you what is truly possible. Bye for now. 

⁠⁠