Identifying the Emotional Culture of Your Home

Hi everyone, it's Sam and John here. Hi. Back with the second audio lesson in our Mindful Parenting Collection. It's all about why the emotional culture of your home is so important. But before we begin, it's worth mentioning that this lesson could bring up a lot of emotion. We're taking a bit of a deep dive into early childhood memories, and if big feelings come up for you, just please be kind and gentle with yourself. Feel free to pause at any time. Alright, so let's get started. John, I'm gonna kick it over to you and I want you to tell us what the emotional culture of a home is and why it's so important. Thanks, Sam. We talk about emotional culture. We're talking about the spoken and unspoken rules and expectations around the experience of emotions in your home. What are the most common emotions? Are they equally distributed at your family members? What's safe to be said and what isn't? Thinking and reflecting on these really can help provide a pulse check on where our starting point is. I find this concept and the term really helpful to give us some kind of structure to start to reflect on patterns we might have inherited, and then taking that insight and using it to craft where we wanna be. Okay, maybe I don't do so well with anger. It upsets me, it triggers me. But how do I want to respond to anger? How would my best self respond to my child's outbursts? For sure. And to think about what happens in my own home. I find that really, we wanna think about how this is a culture that is flexible. On best days it's one that I would say is supportive and playful and we can make space for emotions. But often when there are periods of stress, someone's juggling lots at work, or someone doesn't feel quite well, it can shift a little business-like. There's less time to process it. We just gotta get our shoes on. We just need to do this. And noticing that it can be both. Absolutely. Coming back to this idea of mindfulness, that mindfulness is the foundation for all of what we're talking about. Because if we can be aware of the feelings that are coming up and noticing our urges to wanna yell, that ability allows us to flexibly attend to the needs of our children and to ourselves. My children all have lovely different temperaments and we've needed to develop different approaches to notice what would be necessary to create the space for different emotions. So how are we going to notice the emotional needs of the child in front of us? And I think one of the first things is learning from our good friend, Mr. Rogers. What's mentionable is manageable, right? So let's talk about this emotional culture. Let's ask questions. What happens in this house when somebody's upset? What happens in this house when...