Episode 126: Tiny Hands, Big Hearts: Transformative Acts of Kindness for Young Families with Tania Lopez

Children  0:00  
We think you should know that Imperfect Heroes podcast is a production of Little Hearts Academy USA.

DJ Stutz  0:09  
Welcome heroes and heroines to Episode 126 of Imperfect Heroes Insights into Parenting, the perfect podcast for imperfect parents looking to find joy in their experience of raising children in an imperfect world. And I'm your host DJ Stutz.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Imperfect Heroes Insights into parenting, where we explore the extraordinary world of parenting. I'm DJ Stutz, your go to early childhood specialist podcaster, author and parent coach and today I am thrilled to introduce Tania Lopez, who is a phenomenal parent coach from the UK. Our conversation centers around a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of family life, engaging busy parents and their young children in acts of service. Modern life I know can be a bit of a whirlwind with juggling responsibilities, which really does make it quite challenging to carve out time for others. However, weaving acts of service into our daily routines holds immeasurable value. What can be seemingly small gestures, like helping to carry someone's groceries to the bigger things like community projects not only benefit others, but it also deeply enriches our lives. Tania Lopez is a guiding light for parents navigating the beautiful chaos of raising young children. And with over two decades of experience and a specialized focus on busy parents. Tanya has dedicated the last 15 years to empowering families through tailored programs. Her background as a qualified teacher, a counselor, and even get this a hypnotherapist uniquely equipped her to support parents in infusing joy and fun in their lives, even amidst hectic schedules, which is also a key focus of mine. Today, we will delve into practical strategies and tips and insights that are specifically designed for parents of young children. And together, we will explore how weaving acts of service in our daily rhythm not only cultivate strong family bonds, but it also shapes the moral compass of our little ones. Tania's passion for reshaping societal perceptions of both parents and children will inspire and empower us all. So pop in your earbuds and listen as you multitask through your busy day. And let's embark on this transformative journey together. 

But before we get started, I want you to get ready for an adventure. That's all about real parenting, real laughs and real solutions. Welcome to the Cicerone Society, your haven for live parent coaching and camaraderie. Do you ever feel like you're the only one in the world dealing with a messy tornado that's disguised as an adorable child? Trust us. You're not alone, join the Cicerone society and meet other parents facing the same whirlwind experiences, from the chaos of mess making to those what were they thinking moments? We've seen it off, biting shirt soaking, and school mischief. Yep, that's all part of the adventure. But here's the twist. We're not just here to moan and groan. We're diving deep into the whys behind those behaviors. Let's tackle the roots, not just the symptoms. Oh, and did we mention we'll share a chuckle or two along the way. So join us make new friends and gather fresh ideas to tackle those tricky parenting puzzles. And besides, when we come together, we're stronger registration for the Cicerone Society is open now. Through the through November 28. But hey, don't wait until the clock strikes midnight. Head to www.LittleHeartsAcademyusa.com today and secure your spot and dive into the sea of parenting wisdom and laughter with us. Remember, you're not alone on this wild, messy and beautiful journey. Let's decode those kiddo quirks together. I'll see you in this is Ron society. Don't miss out. Registration closes at midnight on November 28. Now, on to my conversation with Tania Lopez. cuz there's so much to learn. So let's get started. 

Hey, everyone, thank you so much for choosing to spend the next few minutes here with us at Imperfect Heroes podcast. And we have so much to get to today, we just got off of our five-day challenge on service. And we had so much fun. And we're going to continue talking about that a little bit with our guests today, Tanya Lopez, who comes to us from the UK. But before we get started, I want to remind everybody that up until this coming, oh, gosh, probably next Monday, I think it is, we are going to have our group coaching the system society, open for registration. And so I only open it for 10 days, just three times a year, because people get coalescing and getting to know each other. It's kind of hard to introduce new people constantly. And so we only open it three times a year. So this is one of those times that won't be open again until next March. Ooh, right. So you want to get in on it. And to with the holidays coming up, it might be a wonderful gift to give to a sibling who has young kids or maybe someone who is expecting or a friend. And it's really reasonably priced. So go to the website, a link is in the show notes. So just join us and have some fun with us. All righty, now let's get on with our topic. And Tania Lopez comes to us she's with full-circle parenting. And Tony talked to us a little bit about that first.

Tania Lopez  6:41  
Okay, so thanks, DJ for having me on. So yeah, I'm from Full Cycle parenting, and I help mums and dads take parenting challenges in their stride. So whether it's tantrums, defiance, any of those behaviors, which will happen, especially when you've got young children, it's not about avoiding those challenges. It's about how to take them in your stride. So as a family, you can start having fun again. So my background is that I've been a teacher for 15 years, I've also worked as a counselor and Hypnotherapist. So I've put all of that kind of practice that I've had working with parents and children. And I'm a parenting coach,

DJ Stutz  7:21  
I love it. So we share that space a little bit as a parenting coach, former teacher, and we both understand, you can't avoid the temper tantrums all the way. You can do some things to help you mitigate them, or you can lessen their frequency, but you got to figure out how to manage through them. And sometimes laughter is the best way to get through them sometimes. Absolutely.

Tania Lopez  7:43  
Yeah, rather than having a tantrum yourself.

DJ Stutz  7:48  
Let's have one together. We can have some fun. So yeah. Today we're talking about, as I mentioned before, we just came off of our five day challenge on service. And we were talking about in the challenge, some small ways to do service. We also talked about having a big project that you could do together as a family and plan for and come together on that. But I think too, especially when you're working with the little guys, starting with those small things is just a great way to get things going. And especially even starting within the family. And that even helps build those relationships between siblings as you get them used to doing service for each other. What are some of the things that you start with or some ideas that you have for recommendations to kind of get them going, if we can have them build those service attitudes at an early age, that's going to help them throughout their lives?

Tania Lopez  8:50  
Yeah, so I think one of the best ways to get started, especially when you're talking about developing their attitude is everyday things you know, when you're watching TV, or you're reading books, if services being displayed, or demonstrated in a book or a TV, talk about it, turn that into a conversation. And that will help your children recognize what services. So it's really important that you catch those moments when you're just doing ordinary things as a family, that you start talking about conversations. So you start talking about service, and what it means. And I guess the best way to help children starve. The best way to teach children anything is through play and through modeling as ourselves. So I always think it's, it's good to start small. So for example, modeling it yourself. So say when you're cooking a meal, make some extra portions, and then involve your children ask them who in our neighborhood should be surprised with some meals so they don't have to cook tonight or they don't have to cook tomorrow. So you know, you're always bringing an element of fun and playful us rather than Who should we help who should be surprised. Yeah. And then, if you're donating things to a charity, for example, don't just decide what will be donated, help your children, pick out the charity, who wants where you know all of those things, get them to decide. And then also get them involved in picking out the things that could be donated to the charity. And then don't just take all the things that you've collected yourself, get your children involved in taking the things in, if you're taking it to a charity shop, for example. So they're involved at every stage, you talked about siblings, so one of the things that you could do is get them to surprise a sibling doing a chore that another sibling really doesn't like. And you could ask the parent or to do something for your sibling. And talk about and so I'm going to do this for my brother or sister. So then they know that your siblings are people that you do serve and help out. Something else that you could also do is bring creativity into everything. So what is it that your children really love doing? Could that be incorporated into service them in some

DJ Stutz  11:10  
way? Just hit the nail on the head there. And I'm sure you already do these things they'd love to

Tania Lopez  11:15  
do? Absolutely, yeah. Cuz some of the words that I really am very reluctant to use when it comes to children is calling them lazy or selfish. Because when we can really engage children in playful, fun ways, we can really encourage them to do things. And if we tap into the things that really, that are joyful to them, that they know might bring joy to other people, that could be a really great way to incorporate service. And another thing that I think could be really helpful is Have you heard of gratitude, jars,

DJ Stutz  11:46  
jazz, but talk a little more about them, they might do in UK than here. So

Tania Lopez  11:51  
gratitude jars are basically just you know, like a gush jar. And as a family you're all put in so you write on a piece of paper, something that you're grateful for. And you all put it into a jar. And then maybe at the end of the week, at the end of the month, you pick some out and you read them out. So you could use that idea for a service job. So as a family, what you could do is write down all the things that you enjoyed when you serve someone. So everybody in the family writes down something that they enjoyed when they were serving someone else. And maybe at the end of the month, you could all pick one out, or pick a few out and read out, what did I really enjoy? Oh, this child really enjoyed serving a friend or whoever, somebody in the neighborhood. So that way, you're keeping it really alive. And after they've done the service, you're keeping it going, you're talking about, oh, you really found pleasure in this. And I would say another thing is to really praise them, to encourage them. So really notice when they're serving, they might not even know sometimes when they're serving someone, so notice it and acknowledge it and give them some praise for it.

DJ Stutz  13:02  
You bring up such Well, you brought up several really important points here. Great points. And so one of the things though, is that I noticed in when I was teaching kindergarten is that you'd say we need to be kind to one another, we need to be kind. And yet some of the kids didn't really understand they knew I have to be kind, but when you ask them to describe what does it mean to be kind be good. I heard that a lot. Well, I have to be good. Well, what does it mean to be good? Be nice, you know, like they were just kind of ambiguous in their answers, because they really didn't know the specifics of what is to be kind or to be in service. What does it really mean to be happy? What does it mean to be joyful? And so I love that you talked about helping them understand what does it mean to do these things or to be joyful or to help others or put actual definitions to things so that when you see the kids doing things, you are being helpful, you are serving somebody else. That is what this means is what you just did right now. Right on and very specific and great. I love it. And then when you were talking about the service jar, right, and when did they how they felt when they did something for something. I came on to the about, oh gosh, it's probably been a couple of years now. I came across a show called family rules. I found it on YouTube. And they just go around with different families they meet different for I don't know how they find them. And they just talk about what are the rules and how do they engage their kids and blah, blah, blah. But they had this one family and at dinnertime, they had these discussions and everybody had to share something somebody did to serve you. And then tell me about a service that you gave to someone else and They went around the table, and everybody had to share. And so what that did was because they knew they were going to be asked that question at the dinner table, they knew we were better do something, you know, I picked up

didn't yell at him when I was really mad, like,

Children  15:27  
come up with just the silly things because they

DJ Stutz  15:29  
hadn't really pondered on it, especially at the beginning. But as the family got used to knowing that they were going to be asked that at the dinner table, it was a tradition in their family, then they started becoming more thoughtful. And they became more thoughtful about noticing when someone had done something for them, had done a service for them. And so you know, it was this two way street then that they were thinking of things they could do for someone else. And it didn't even have to be someone in the family. It could be, I saw this kid sitting alone at lunch. And so I went and sat by him. It could be something like that, or I helped my teacher pick up the room, whatever, then they were more thoughtful, it was more prevalent in their mind.

Tania Lopez  16:17  
Yeah, I think it's really important that children, you know, like, we were focusing on the smaller things that we can do with children. So it's really teaching children that small acts are meaningful. It doesn't have to be big things. And quite often children think that they can't have much of an impact. But it's really for us to kind of recap, no matter how small and actors, it can still positively impact on someone else if it's served them. And exactly what you've said about a two way street, always think about a tennis match, where you use the word serve. And at some point, you'll be serving someone else, and someone else might be serving you. So it's always like a two way thing. Yeah,

DJ Stutz  16:56  
yeah. And so I love that idea. I love to that service within the family is the best place to start, honestly, when they're really young. And starting with that. It's funny. So I grew up, I'm the oldest of seven, people are gonna get tired of hearing me say that, but I only have one sister, five brothers. And this is just meant the world to me. So she's seven years younger than me. Never have had an argument with this sister, ever. And she was just so cute and adorable, and just so sweet and kind. And I enjoyed doing things for her and with her. And I've had some conversations just this past week, from people who had a lot of sisters. And I always kind of thought of when I was young. I thought it was horrible that I had all these brothers or sisters. And then I hear though, from families who had a lot of sisters, and I was like they're fighting and arguing, and it was always the one. But I've heard from other people this week that just had the one too and someone who was significantly younger. And they're like, Oh, she was a brat. She was this and that. And maybe I was just blessed with an amazing little sister who was just kind and I thought all little sisters. I thought it was great because she was too young to get into my clothes, too young to be a threat with any boyfriends

aren't those big things right?

And my mom did a great job at keeping around of my stuff. And so I remember coming home from school one time, and poor little sunny her name's Sunny. She was just beside herself. She's nearly hysterical. Well, I was in high school and some boy had given me some perfume. I didn't even really like the boy. But it was in a bottle shaped like a cat. It was cool with the bottle. So I put it up on my dresser. And Sunny was just like, you know, so upset. And I'm like, Whoa, what's going on? I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

What? Okay,

what's going on? I broke it. I broke it. And so she just climbed up on my dresser, got that cat bottle because she was interested in it. And she's probably I don't know, seven or eight years old. And she broke the cat bottle. But she was so hysterical that she had broken. Well my mom. That was deejays favorite bottle, and you broke it. She's going to be so sad. She's going to be so upset, you know? And she just wants my sister into this huge frenzy that she had gotten into my stuff, which she knew she shouldn't do. And you're gonna have to tell I'm not telling her you broke that. You're gonna have to tell her you broke that. And so I was like, Well, honey, it's okay, like, so then I got to be the hero sister. No, it's okay. I don't even care about it. We're fine. We're fine. So she was this great little Sister, and maybe I took even that for granted that I thought I'll, why wouldn't you get along with your sister?

Tania Lopez  20:06  
But, you know, I think even if you don't get along with your siblings, they can still be a gift. Because your siblings teach you how to how to deal with conflict, because they're the first people you're probably going to. Yeah, exactly. So your siblings do. Yeah. So if you have a sibling that you don't have arguments with a fight with, then they're a gift. But if you do have siblings, you have arguments, that's still a gift, because then you learn how to navigate conflict with your peers with when you get older. So I think in a lot of families, I would say, there is conflict between siblings. And it sounds like your mom helped you both navigate that really well. So you were able to enjoy each other. Yeah, that's great. And that was one of the things is what you did with your sister was you enabled her to, even though she all she was doing was being a little bit of an explorer, and things didn't go quite to plan. But you help to keep an image of, I'm still a good kid. It's, you know, like, I always think it's really important that we help children maintain that there is goodness in them. And that even if they make mistakes, things go wrong. We don't think differently about them, we can see where something's mistake where things have gone wrong. And we still hold them in esteem. And I think that helps them to hold themselves in esteem, because they don't have to have that big fall, and then have to work really hard to get back into the Good Book Store the things that children normally feel like they have to do, I think you helped him maintain her goodness. And I would say service really helps children to kind of help all of us actually realize all the goodness that's out there. And when we're serving other people, or they're serving us, when you think about all the doom and gloom, and how people talk about humans, when we're doing service, we realize that there is so much goodness out there. And I guess the other thing I was going to say was that when we think about service, it's really should be fairly intentional. So whether we are saddled to serving somebody, or whether we are helping children serve someone that there's got to be some intention that you're going to serve someone. And it may be that you have to go out of your way to serve someone, and there might be a cost. So there might be a cost in terms of high energy, or even money. But that cost shouldn't be so great, that you feel drained or resentful. When we've served wholeheartedly, we should feel energized. So it's really important that when we're guiding children in this, that, and this was where I think we need to be mindful. This isn't about making children into people pleasers, that they're just doing things to please other people. That really pressure is theirs, because they've got pleasure from serving someone else. And that can be a difficult balance to strike, especially if children aren't used to doing service. So service can really help bring balance into our lives. So we don't want service to be a burden. We actually want service to bring balance into our lives. So then we're much more aware of the needs and wants of other people. And that's where we start seeing the goodness all around us.

DJ Stutz  23:18  
Yeah, that's such a gift for our children to have. And again, when we start with that very early on, when we help them notice, oh, look at that smile on your brother's face, you made him feel better. You know, that's so sweet. And they start identifying as someone who can, but yet at the same time, they can make others feel better, but they can have their needs met as well. We're not giving up on all of our own needs all the time. So it's a balance. I love the way that you talked about that balance in our lives. And I don't know my mom, no one's perfect, right? And But mom did really good at finding that balance of us watching out for each other as we were growing up. And so my brother just younger than me, Spence, he has eight kids, and I can remember to go to Disneyland. Can you imagine the costs of that? Wow. Yeah. And they saved up for a long time to go to Disneyland. And the kids were helping to contribute so that they felt like that was their thing. And then of course, you know, Mom and Dad were doing the most of it. But it was fun for the kids to kind of put in for it. And they were almost ready to go. And there was a guy at their church and I don't know what his medical issue was, but he needed some kind of a procedure and what the insurance was covering and what he had to pay. He didn't have the money for his family didn't have the money for and they had a family meeting about what do we do? What do we do? We've got this stash for Disneyland. And, and he needs this. And it's going to make a big difference in his life. And the kids voted, they had it was a vote. And if you would decide we want to get we'll go to Disneyland, we're going to feel good about it. And we're going to have a wonderful time. Or, you know, what, what are we going to do with it? The kids voted unanimously, we're going to help the sky.

Tania Lopez  25:22  
Wow. That's amazing, isn't

DJ Stutz  25:24  
it? And so they just gave it two years later. They went to Disneyland with Oh, yeah. But so lovely. I love the way that it wasn't just that, well, we're going to do this for this family. And this is the decision we're making. You know what I mean? They brought the family and either side was fine. Whatever you decide, is okay. And if you decide to go to Disneyland, we're not gonna feel guilty about it. We're gonna go and have a lovely time. But here's the here's the options here. And unanimously, well, I don't know if the two year old voted but but those who were able to, anyway, yeah. When you give kids a chance to make a decision, you have to be fine. You honestly have to be fine with the choice. You can't try to coerce them, or then make them feel guilty to for taking an option that you offered to them. Does that make sense?

Tania Lopez  26:35  
It's got to be a real choice.

DJ Stutz  26:38  
It's got to be a real choice. Yeah, yeah.

Tania Lopez  26:41  
And I think another important point that you've kind of talked about is doing service, they really shouldn't. It's not about feeling guilt, or really kind of pitting someone, either. No, you know, it's almost like when you when you serve someone, there is pleasure for you. You rest in a really good place when you've served someone. So you're you know, like before, when I was saying the feelings we don't want, we don't want to encourage other feelings of feeling drained or resentful, or feeling guilty. It's the feelings of actually, the stress really good for me to serve someone without going into the people pleasing. And that's the balance to strike there. That's not about sacrificing yourself for someone else. And I think the from the story that you've just talked about with your brother is that it wasn't this or that, that either we we help this man or we go to Disney, Disneyland or Disney World. It was just Neela Disneyland, that actually, Disneyland was still on the cards. It just happened a little bit later. It just happened a little bit later than was planned. And I think that's a there's not a sacrifice as such. So there's intention right now to do something different. But there's still a benefit. Yes, a postponement. And it's still going to happen. It's not just this rate, but that way. Right.

DJ Stutz  28:11  
Yeah. And so I think that there are some good keys. And I think there's some things that you can do to teach them that service doesn't have to be the big expensive, you know, giving somebody all this money, and giving up your Disneyland or postponing your Disneyland trip. It could be something like, one of the fun things that I've heard of, and I always connected it to the Christmas holiday. But you could do this anytime during the year was we would do. You could do Secret Santa or, I don't know, call it whatever you wanted. But we would draw names, I was the only one who knew who everyone had. Right? And you you couldn't spend any money. But you had to do service. For every day, you had to do one act of service for the person that you drew, the kid that you drew. And I guess if you only have two kids, it's not gonna work. Unless you include your parents. When we adopted my fifth child, the other four were out of the house. So we had the four, but that you had tried to keep it a secret so that the last person who got found out got to go out for ice cream or something fun, but you couldn't get any money and you had to do an act of service every day and try not to get caught.

Tania Lopez  29:34  
So yeah, it's such a fun way of doing it. Well,

DJ Stutz  29:36  
yeah. And so then it becomes fun and exciting. And there's that adrenaline piece that comes in with trying to be stealthy and not get caught. And so it doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to be a big deal. And it had to be something that the other person would notice though, right? Yeah,

Tania Lopez  29:54  
yeah. Yeah, right. So yeah, so it's got to be small but it has is the impact on the other person. And that's probably the best way to children know that. Even if something seems insignificant to them, it still matters to someone else. So yeah, they're probably the best kind to start off with.

DJ Stutz  30:15  
Yeah, yeah, so fun. So fun to do those. Or sometimes you might notice, we had a lady at our church who was going through a divorce. And she was just feeling so sad. And you could just see it in her whole countenance. And so we decided we, and we just went to the grocery store, you know, you get those, you can see at the grocery store those bouquets of flowers. And I had like, all of these vases at home from, you just wind up collecting them. So we made this little arrangement with it. And we didn't spend a ton of money on it at all. And then we put a card in the flowers that just said, somebody loves you. And then I had my grandkids involved in this because my other kids were grown. But so I took my grandkids and we scoped out the house and figured out the best way. And where were we going to hide? And how can we park the car and they were so excited. And we went and left the bass on the porch. And we had to make sure she was home, right? Yeah.

We did a little ding dong ditch and rang, the doorbell rang like maniacs. And hid. And she came to the door, and she's looking all around. And then she looks down and sees the flowers. Just like what you can hear her what she picks them up. She's looking around, and my grandkids was like, like, they're so excited. And you see this big smile on her face. And she reads the card and she looks around again. And then she closes the door. And we ran back to the car. It was like two blocks away. Like so excited. So thrilled, you know, so their emotions were so big and positive. Yeah. And they were like, we want to do that again.

Tania Lopez  32:17  
Exactly, because like you were saying, it's like that feeling of adrenaline, and just that excitement and planning it. That's just wretched. And I've got to be involved, you know, planning is using their ideas. And then when you're actually doing the thing for them to be involved at every stage. And that way they can really own it. And they can own the pleasure, because it's not somebody else's idea that they're executing. Yeah, no, this time. What a great way of doing that DJ. Yeah, brilliant.

DJ Stutz  32:44  
Oh, well, it was fun for me too. So yeah, yeah.

Tania Lopez  32:51  
That's probably the best way.

DJ Stutz  32:54  
It is. It's a lot of fun. And as the kids get older, you can do maybe so a little bigger things, you know, something like that with the flowers isn't going to work with the two year old. First off, they can't run fast. Yeah.

Tania Lopez  33:05  
Yeah, yeah.

DJ Stutz  33:09  
But it would work with maybe even a five year old or seven year old or teenagers. I mean, yeah. And my grandkids that I took with me, they were in their early teens. Two of them were in their early teens, when we did that.

Tania Lopez  33:24  
And this is why I think, you know, when you're sitting down and talking about service, get your children to come up with some ideas. And that when you're thinking about what to do for service, you've got like a range of ideas that you can pick, you know, rather than to have to think about it, you've already got some ideas about what fun things we could do to serve other people. And children are the best at coming up with ideas, aren't they? And they were come up with creative ideas that we hadn't thought about. So really involving them useful ideas, and then they'll really learn the fun part of being of service to someone. It's not just the final act. It's all of us. And even after the act. Yeah.

DJ Stutz  34:07  
Yeah. So with our five day challenge of service, I made this available to everyone who's registered, but if anyone wants this, like they can, I'll put the link down in the show notes. But so I have a donation bingo for kids. And it's just like this bingo sheet, but it's things that they can find to donate to whatever. And so it's like something blue, a truck doll, something yellow. It's got a bunch of different things. So it was fun, because when I first introduced this three years ago, probably three years ago, I had a mom that downloaded it news and she sent me this sweet email, and she said that she had done it with her three year old and she told him that they were going to take it to his Women and Children's Shelter. This was in Denver. And you explained that there were kids there that they didn't have any toys. Some of them didn't have any clothes, or jammies or whatever. And so he went down and he got his bingo, he was so excited. And so she said, Well, great, you got your bingo. And I think like he was, she gave him a popsicle or something, you know, for getting his bingo. And he said, Oh, no, I want to do all of them. So in order to get everything that was on the sheet, not just do a bingo. So okay, so they went through, and they did the whole thing. And they had their box. And then even after his bingo was done, he was like, well, maybe they need this. And at one point, he wanted to give one of his favorite toys. And she was like, sweetie, this is your favorite. You sleep with this every night? And he said, Well, maybe they will get scared, and they need this. And she said, Well, I think you can keep this one. Let's find another thing they can sleep with. Because she's thinking, Oh, he's gonna be screaming in the middle of the night. But yeah. But this was a three year old. That yeah, that sense of service and generosity, and wanting to do something for kids. He, he didn't know these kids. He just heard but I find that little kids when they hear about other children in distress, they really can relate to that and want to reach out.

Tania Lopez  36:32  
Yeah. Yeah. Because I suppose yeah, it's really hard to think that you're getting all these things. And some of the another child your age, possibly isn't getting anything. So yeah, yeah. And it's hard to make fun. So children don't end up with that sense of that feeling of guilt, and doing things from kind of a place of obligation. But they're doing this. And it feels good as they're doing it. And I guess that's the challenge, really. And it's about being mindful a bit like this parent, you know, because children must sometimes put their favorite things in, and then really regret it. And then that was putting them off. So we don't want to ever put them off, we want to encourage them. So if they were putting things in valuable to them that are important to them. It's kind of picking them out and saying, we know you love this. You deserve to keep it it's okay for you to have it. Yeah.

DJ Stutz  37:22  
Yeah. That's one of the things I've been doing is sharing. It's okay to have things that you don't have to share. Yeah.

Tania Lopez  37:30  
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's so difficult for kids to share as well. So, yeah, yeah, definitely.

DJ Stutz  37:38  
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Tanya, I really appreciate you taking this time. Can you talk to my listeners and my watchers? You know, we're on YouTube. We're on rumble now. And so could you share with them? Like, how do they get in touch with you and, and find out more about all the stuff that you do?

Tania Lopez  37:59  
That's great. So I have a website, if you Google full circle hypnotherapy.co.uk. So I'm in the UK, you should be able to find my website, I have a Instagram account, which is full circle hip. And I'm also on Facebook. So there are different ways to find me. But I would say probably my website is the best way, which is www dot first, I can have the therapy for secular parenting.co.uk.

DJ Stutz  38:24  
Great. And so we're gonna be sure and have all that information down in the show notes. So you're just a click away. Brilliant. Yes. Before you go, I always ask my guests the same question at the end. And I know that my listeners kind of look forward to some of these answers, we get some great answers. But we know that there are no perfect parents, hence the title of our show. But how would you describe a successful parent,

Tania Lopez  38:51  
a successful parent. So I would say, it's really about when I'm working with parents, some of the things that really come across are their feelings of guilt, shame and failure. So really, for me, a successful parent is somebody who really finds the joy and pleasure in being a parent. And I know that it's not always going to be joyful and pleasurable because there are so many ups and downs. But really, even with all the ups and downs, you're still compassionate and kind with yourself. I think that probably for me is the key to a successful parent is can I be kind and compassionate to myself, even but I haven't lived up to my own expectations. And that trickles down to children. Because, you know, we want our children to be kind and compassionate to themselves. They haven't lived up to their own expectations. So yeah, kind of compassionate towards ourselves is, I would say the key to success.

DJ Stutz  39:48  
Wow. And you bring up just such a great point, because our kids are watching everything that we do. Right? And they watch us when we're hard on ourselves, and they pick up on that And then would I want my kids to treat themselves? The way that I treat myself? Yeah, great answer you just gave. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. It's been such a great conversation. And

Tania Lopez  40:14  
thank you for having me. Oh, good. And you've shared some great ideas as well, DJ, some really fun things that you've done. So yeah, brilliant.

DJ Stutz  40:22  
Thank you, everybody. Remember that? I am going to have that donation Bingo is available to anyone. It's free. And the link is going to be where where do you think in the show notes, so just go on down while you're checking out Tania's stuff, just click on that. And you can go and get that and you can download it and have that as maybe part of your donation and to you know, Christmas coming up, they're gonna get a bunch more toys, where are you gonna put on maybe it's a good way to clear the space a little bit as well and do some good while you're while you're at it. So thank you, everyone, for listening. Thank you, Tania, for being a part of it. And until next week, let's find joy in parenting. Bye, guys. Bye. 

Tania is truly amazing. I follow her on Instagram. And if you want to learn more about her, and Full-Circle parenting, just click on the links in the show notes. And while you're there, hit the Follow button to make sure you are getting in on the amazing episodes that we have each week. They always drop on Mondays. And if you like what you hear in today's podcast, be sure to rate and review and tell a friend. It's so easy, and it really does help us reach more families. And remember, you can always check us out on YouTube and Rumble. And next week. My guest is the amazing Jeff Nelligan. He is an author, I actually have two of his books, and the father of three amazing sons, one of which was at West Point with my nephew. And we are talking about the power of gratitude. The power that gratitude has on families and children as they grow together. You really don't want to miss this one. So check it out and see and until next time, let's find joy in parenting.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai