The Mother Flipping Awesome Podcast
Season 4, The Before & After Series;
Episode 4: From Overwhelm to Confidence,
Featuring Prema
In this special series, Abigail focuses on what transformation really looks like for the families she mentors.
In this episode, we meet Prema, a mom who felt overwhelmed by her son's powerful personality and intense physicality. Little by little she learned the tools to be able to see him in a new light, and then also grew herself into a confident leader capable of guiding him well. Not only has this work transformed her personal life, it has touched every other area of her life now as well!
Sneak peek:
This week Abigail speaks with Prema, a mom who felt like her softer personality was no match for her eldest child's strong will. Together we talk about what it's like to raise these intense, highly-sensitive kids, and we explore what is possible for us parents when we learn how to truly rise to the challenge.
2:00 Let's meet Prema and learn about why she felt called to work with Abigail.
4:00 In the beginning, Prema's strong-willed, active son had her feeling overwhelmed. She was on a search for help.
5:48 Abigail shares that she felt so lonely in the first few years of parenting.
8:30 Prema talks about feelings of shame in her early parenting years.
9:45 Abigail explains what it means to "see the rightness in the wrongness" of the behavior in strong-willed or highly sensitive kids.
11:00 Prema helps support the MFA community and especially loves listening to everyone's shared stories.
12:15 Prema shares a story about her son taking a messy bath and how she handled this frustrating moment.
15:30 Abigail breaks down Prema's story and explains the parental twists and turns in it.
17:20 Prema talks about how she can now bridge over to her son and how he has taught her a lot about otherness.
18:40 Abigail talks about the kids that are so different from us that they don't fit into our ideas of what we wanted from parenting.
21:15 Prema shares how she struggled to connect to her son, because he felt so different, and didn't like the things she liked.
24:50 Abigail explains why she likes to look at parenting as if it were a math problem.
28:17 Prema shares a recent win they had in regards to her son's insatiable desire for Legos.
33:00 Abigail and Prema talk about how to deal with super physical kids.
35:40 What authentic, coherent parenting looks and feels like. Also, what it looks like to feel deep gratitude for our challenging kids, who challenge us to be better people.
38:00 Optimizing your life is so great it can be addictive. Bring on the dopamine!!!