Robert Trout (00:01.614)
Hello and welcome to the Parent Problems Today podcast. Today you’re joined by myself, Robert Trout and Mary Zahnbrecher from the Parent Trainers Team. And as we kind of move forward with topics of discussion that families kind of reach out to us about, we’re going to circle back to an old topic, but try to bring a more general view to it. Today, Mary and I are going to come and talk about what is progress.
And I want that to sink in just a little bit for everyone that’s listening to this. So what is progress? And our whole organization and podcast is built around this idea of parents understanding that there is no quick fix. There is a process to change and a process that involves understanding and interacting with mental health processes and
neurological processes and learning differences and all these different pieces that come up for families usually out of the blue. You know, no family is like, I’m sure this is going to happen to us. It seems to just step in at a random time during your life where you have a kid and then one day you go, huh, something’s not working or huh, they’re starting to fight back a lot or huh, he seems high.
Like, it is a surprise because when you’re in it, it’s hard to see what’s happening. So you need a disruption and that’s where a crisis happens or a suicide attempt or your kid comes home drunk or something like some event occurs that sets off this powder keg within the family system because the parents very often, and please hear this parents, you get caught off guard.
That is a normal part of the process. You get caught off guard because you thought everything was just normal and now you’re realizing that there is a process happening for your whole family that’s usually built around patterns and mental health and changing hormones and change like all kinds of things that step in for your children that’s going to impact the whole family system.
Robert Trout (02:24.96)
And there’s no way to stop that. No way. So, Mary, let’s kind of step into this because when we talk to parents about progress, like I said, we always see that thing of like, I just want them to stop doing that. It’s very black and white thinking on the parent’s side and very hope centered, but not in a realistic way. Hope has that weird thing, right? Where it’s like, well, I hope we don’t have to deal with this anymore.
Mary (02:40.038)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Trout (02:54.636)
Versus the I hope tomorrow’s 10 % better Which is what I think we’re gonna get into here So what comes up for you when we start talking about this with families? What is progress?
Mary (03:05.86)
Yeah, that’s such a great question that we oftentimes run into because parents do kind of set the bar too high or have this, you know, magic wand picture of like, if I just waved a magic wand and everything looked better, here’s what it would look like. And oftentimes what I tell parents is you can’t set the first rung of the ladder at 10 feet, right?
And so if we actually break it down into one foot, two feet, three feet, what does that actually look like for your family system? And a lot of times people have trouble with progress when it comes to therapeutics or just this process of building a family system that can
manage or get through these hard times in looking at how do we acknowledge that progress is not linear and it’s going to look messy, right? And I actually was speaking with a family about this last week and I said it’s kind of like if you picture a yo-yo as the marker of progress and you’re walking up
Mary (04:40.821)
no idea what happened.
Robert Trout (04:43.254)
It was just a blip. So we’ll have her cut this out. So you were there until you said walking up the stairs. So just start there.
Mary (04:46.411)
Okay. Yeah, it’s like walking up the stairs while, you know, playing with a yo-yo. That yo-yo is the indicator of the ups and downs that you’ll see. And all the while, sometimes we don’t notice that progress up because the lows feel really low or, you know, the issues that maybe one parent has pinpointed.
isn’t making progress, but there’s all these kind of underpinnings of progress that kind of get thrown out in terms of acknowledgement. and you know, we work with parents who are either like super hopeful and like ready to go or parents who are, know, like we’ve tried everything, like what, why, why, you know? And so it really is about, you know, working individually with each
person we work with, each family we work with and what would a good day look like if the really awesome thing didn’t happen, right? If your kid doesn’t go to school again or if your kid, you know, still sneaks alcohol into the house against your wishes, what does a good day still look like? And so we look at all these measurements that maybe parents don’t necessarily come to.
you know, the game plan thinking about, like communication, like connection and just spending a little bit of good time.
And so we kind of think about those indicators instead of the bigger picture.
Robert Trout (06:34.058)
Absolutely. So I want to step in with one aspect of this that I think is super important for every parent. And that is recognizing that
The past is gone. Very often part of the messaging that messes with the family system and messes with someone’s ability to recognize progress is that the parent is attached to things returning to normal, returning to the good times. And that is a dangerous trap.
that we really do need to open space for. So in this conversation, I want every parent to hear this. There is never going to be a time that your sweet little girl, sweet little boy, whatever your scenario is, becomes what they were. Mental health and developmental health and neurological health is a normal part of getting older and advancing into the next phase of development.
whether that be through puberty or adulting or whatever it might be. And it is on the parent, please hear this, this is on the parent to realize that that is normal. Staying the way things are is not normal. And too often the conflict is the parent trying to hold that child back and thusly preventing progress.
because they’re not allowing things to change. But the change is necessary for the process to move forward. So now we look at this word progress, and maybe there’s a definition in there that we need to kind of break apart. But progress in our world of families working as a group and within the container to develop youth into functional young adults, meaning they have life skills and they have
Robert Trout (08:45.582)
possibly a few options for what they might do for work or for connection or for launching themselves into life. That is the goal we speak to in the ladder of progress and the parent really needs to understand that a part of that is holding the ladder but not holding the kid back down the ladder because going up is more dangerous. The higher they get, the higher they fall from. That’s a fear.
That’s not a reality. That is a fear that parents create the dynamic for that prevents progress. So if we look at what is progress, a part of progress is the parent letting go, willingly supporting the process of your kid leaving you, leaving home, and developing the skills and abilities to get higher and higher and farther and farther away from you.
know that’s a broad metaphor, but it’s super important when we talk about what is progress. You have to let them get farther from you. And yes, sometimes they will fall. Maybe sometimes fall all the way back to you. The problem then is when the parent says, you fell, I can’t trust for you to go off again. And the parent locks the system down.
So progress then has to be looked at from this place of the parent. Progress for the parent is the parent assessing their willingness, their ability to support that kid getting back on that ladder after they’ve fallen, after they’ve made mistakes, after they figured out what didn’t work for them. We have to get on that ladder again and let them keep going, support them to keep going.
And very often parents ignore that because they say, the problem is they, when in reality progress is being hindered because of you as the parent. So there is a self-awareness and assessment for the parent and an assessment for the child. What are they now afraid of because they did fall? What do they need support in to get farther away this time as they do this?
Robert Trout (11:08.11)
It’s a two part system, a multi part system and involves everyone within the family system. So I’m going to throw that out there. Thoughts on that as far as like the self assessment and the assessment of the child together when we talk about what is progress.
Mary (11:24.838)
Totally, yeah. Of course, you know, there’s always that question of capability and limitations versus just the kind of, don’t want to, or I don’t know how to. I mean, I think we oftentimes forget how kids are doing life for the first time, right? And so a lot of times we interpret their unwillingness to move forward or they’re like very…
Robert Trout (11:44.919)
Yes.
Mary (11:53.434)
you know, off scale, like, I can do this, let’s go, right? Their, yeah, their enthusiasm a little differently than maybe we should. But I’ve worked with so many parents lately who, when it comes down to it, it really is about the parents’ fear of allowing the child to go off and make mistakes.
and learn their limitations and figure out hard relationships or hard instances in relationships because of just something that’s neurologically programmed in all of us, right? Biologically programmed in all of us where a perceived threat, right? my child might mess this up. How’s our nervous system going like?
my child’s going to die if they have a hard conversation with a friend and I’m not there to protect them. Right. And so it really is about sitting with parents for me and saying that is your fear. And notice how disproportional your anxiety, fear, anticipation, whatever you call it, right, is to the actual worst case scenario. And how do we plan for the boundaries and the limits that
do need to be implemented, right? For this kid to go out and make mistakes and fall on their face and have successes without getting hurt or too far off the edge of the cliff, kind of, so to speak, right? It’s how do you stop, assess, normalize, right? Not judge yourself for it, but normalize like, okay, this is my brain doing that thing. And then how do I say, this isn’t that bad?
My child is gonna learn something and I can be here to hold that if it’s hard or horrible or messy when they come back and say, ugh, that wasn’t great.
Robert Trout (13:58.2)
Yep. Well, let’s not miss the opportunity to, let’s talk about a skill for a second. One of the skills to this for every parent that’s listening is to help the child understand that you’re afraid and most likely this fear comes very, I mean, in most scenarios it comes because it’s happened before the kid got picked on or bullied or et cetera. And they came home and the parents had a horrible time of
Like, oh my God, I hate that my kid got bullied, et cetera. And now the parent’s afraid for the kid for it to happen again. And the fear builds from the child to the parent. The skill outside of that is for the parent to reassess. And I try to give a couple of examples, but for today, let’s just focus on a basic, like, okay, your kid comes home and they’re upset. They’re hurt emotionally. Maybe there’s something that has happened that’s wrong for them.
Mary (14:34.854)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Trout (14:54.496)
or has caused emotional distress for them. know, remove right and wrong, it’s just distress. As a parent, there is this moment where it’s like, I want to protect you. It’s very primal. I wanna protect you. I’m so sorry that happened. know, let’s protect you from that ever happening again, et cetera. It’s kind of very internalized there and natural that the parent wants to protect. The skill to this,
when we’re measuring progress is for the parent to look and say, okay, this has happened. Instead of saying, I’d want to protect you. You start meeting the child in the, tell me about your experience. Name the emotion to build emotional language. That’s the first part. And then the parent, the parent can do a great job with a skill of stepping in and saying, okay, now what can we do?
to get you ready for the next time that this happens.
That’s mind blowing for so many parents and children, by the way, when they actually have this experience, because the child will very often look and say, what do you mean the next time this happens? And how powerful is it for the parent to say, well, this is a normal part of life to find the rough edges, to find the things that hurt you. And in that normality,
Now is the point for you to learn and develop skills, language, and strategies for being ready for the next time it happens. Not, we’re gonna stop this from ever happening again. We’re gonna put up boundaries and walls and restrictions and whatever on both sides of it. Building anxiety, by the way, that’s part of where anxiety comes from for any parent that’s listening to this, is when you try to barrier off and build walls, you’re blocking someone in versus
Robert Trout (16:56.042)
Okay, let’s open the gates again, but this time when you go out into the world, you’re smarter. You have experience and you understand that you can be hurt in this way, but let’s build language, retort and process for you to be able to work through that faster and have a better understanding that what that person did to you also came from somewhere, probably emotional for them.
It’s learning how to be prepared for things to happen again. That is a skill that we often have to teach parents how to meet their children in a new way so that the parents don’t build, you know, levies of anxiety and dread that bad things are going to happen versus the, no, we’re going to send you back out because we trust you’re going to be able to handle this and understand that it’s okay that it happened. Next time you’re going to
process it differently, handle it differently, have different strategies prepared because we’re going to go through it with you now without judgment. Such an important skill for parents to learn how to do that in a different way.
Mary (18:07.996)
Yeah, so what you’re talking about is kind of like the rescuing side of things when we look at how like the roles we show up in sometimes when we’re not fully aware or fully present with our cognition and our emotions, right? I’m thinking and I’m feeling. And on the flip side of that, like the problem solver will sometimes jump in and start just asking questions, right? And then this kid is like,
I’m having to relive this. I’m having to answer these questions, right? And so sometimes progress is just silence and being with your child in that moment and saying, I’m sorry that happened for you. What can we, how can I support you in learning skills and tools to get through this next time? Right? Like you’re saying. So I was just thinking about that. Like I have these families who one parent will jump in that way. Like,
let’s build the wall and one parent will just kind of start playing detective to figure out where do we go from here, right? And recently I’ve been talking a lot about, know, back 20 years ago we were calling parents helicopter parents, right? It’s the parents who come in and swoop in and want to support and love their children and be in it with them. And now what we’re seeing a lot of is parents who just kind of want to clear the way.
Robert Trout (19:11.81)
Yes.
Mary (19:33.188)
and never have those adversities for their children, which again, that is biologically inherent for us to protect our loved ones, right? But by doing so, we don’t teach kids that they are resilient, that they can think through things themselves, that they can handle hard things and, you know, maybe have a hard discussion with a teacher or a friend and not die or crumble, right?
And so just being able to sit there with your child and be there with them is progress, right? Progress isn’t them never getting bullied again. It’s we talked about what this is like for them and we talked about what they can do next time.
Robert Trout (20:02.05)
Yes.
Robert Trout (20:21.346)
Yep. So looking at this for every parent that’s listening, what we’re just trying to do in this simple conversation today is outline that progress gets lost, first of all, in the stories that parents tell themselves about what should be different for it to count as progress. That’s first. Second to this would have to be an assessment of realizing that progress does not mean your child is different.
Mary (20:37.711)
I’m here.
Robert Trout (20:48.216)
Progress means that you are different, or they are different, or both are different. Mapping progress really comes from an all-angle look at who is different and why within the family system. So if you’re not seeing progress in your kid, turn the mirror around and say, am I different? Because maybe they’re not different, but I am. And then we are, because I’m different, then we are different.
I just can’t see it yet because I’m not seeing them act differently. Too often we tie actions to progress when in reality they may be fully well and prepared because of what you have done and how you have shown up for the next instance of whatever they might be struggling with. The last thing I think, and then I’ll pass it back to you Mary, like the last thing for progress, if we’re talking about what is progress,
from this model is really for the parent to be able to say, okay, I’m going to send you out. You’re gonna go off and attempt this process of life and I’m gonna gather data. So you send them off and they shut down immediately and refuse to go to school. Data, right? But let’s say they went to school three out of five days this week, but last week it was only two days.
Mary (22:09.435)
Mm-hmm.
Robert Trout (22:16.024)
that they went to school. That is progress. And it is up to the parent to recognize that we’re moving in the direction that we as parents are trying to facilitate for our children. That is progress. The kid decides to go and hang out with their one friend. Progress versus being isolated all the time. Having one friend was not the problem. Maybe they’re an introvert.
Parents need to open up to that too. Like, progress is that I am realizing that my kid is different than me. Their needs are different than mine. That is progress. The parents have changed and they’re starting to see in a new perspective. Progress is really about you as parents opening your perception to where you can step in and facilitate growth and change and
the and that’s for you and your child first of all, but then really opening up this space to saying okay Progress is is that next week or tomorrow or in a month things are going to be different than they are now I Didn’t say they’re perfect or all the problems are fixed. They’re just different Stagnation is what I will concede to any parent
is probably the biggest danger when it comes to the lack of progress. You didn’t change and they didn’t change. So as long as you keep adjusting and moving things and changing things, progress will look like things are worse today but better tomorrow, but things are not what they were. That is still progress. Progress can be messy. Progress can be up and down, roller coaster. I don’t care what metaphor you want to use.
What we’re really just trying to convey in this is that progress is change. Not always good change, but progress is change. Gather the data, facilitate the process of educating and building skill for yourself and them, and then try again, and again, and again. And in that is a message of hope. That’s where hope lives, is in the process
Robert Trout (24:34.378)
of slow developmental change for you and them.
Mary (24:39.952)
Yeah, I, know, what’s coming up for me in this process is a lot of times, you know, parents will work with us and go through our training and hear about all these skills and tools to use. And as they begin implementing the skills and tools, you know, we’ll have our check-in calls and I’ll say, it just, didn’t go well. you know, things are still messy. And, you know, I accidentally yelled, but then I caught myself or, know, some version of.
I don’t know if I did okay. I didn’t know if I created the environment of change for my child to change. And actually what happens is as we’re talking about the play by play, right of what went on, what we will actually notice as the coaches, right, is no, you did something different and your child responded differently. But you are interpreting this discomfort with trying something new.
or this discomfort with your child just kind of shrugging and walking away instead of engaging in a fight as not good, right? Because anything different, our nervous system is going to interpret as not safe. I don’t know this, so it’s unpredictable, so it might not be safe, right? But I just think it’s such a beautiful part of this process when parents can begin to really dig into what they would like.
to focus on for themselves in creating a different environment for their children and their family as a whole. And when they are kind of getting messy or doing something that’s really uncomfortable and feels robotic or feels weird or they pull out their notes, that’s okay, right? Like the effort that you are putting in to not continue doing the same thing.
Robert Trout (26:25.25)
Yeah.
Mary (26:33.668)
is what is important and progress is all of those moments that things might have gone differently a week ago, that they were 1 % different today. And that’s how change builds over time, right?
Robert Trout (26:47.224)
Yes.
Robert Trout (26:50.734)
Absolutely.
So in the end, when we talk about what is progress, progress is change. But please do not think that change is it went to exactly what you wanted it to be. It doesn’t mean it isn’t messy. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t mistakes made. Progress is not letting things stay in a dysfunctional state for your family system, for you, for your child.
You have to introduce skills and abilities and the steps necessary for things to be different than they are. So every time you put in one step, you have made progress. Your child has made progress. Your family has made progress.
Thank you for listening. As always, come join us at parentrainers.com to join the community and get the support that you might be looking for. Join our trainings and webinars so that you can develop the skills that you’re asking for, that you’re seeking. And as always, we hope to see you there.
