EU372: Building Trust with Our Kids
Description
</figure>In this episode, Pam, Anna, and Erika talk about building trust with our children. We regularly mention trust on the podcast, as we’ve found that trust is the foundation of the strong relationships that help unschooling thrive.
We had a lot of fun talking about ways to build trust in and with our children. We hope you find our conversation helpful on your unschooling journey!
THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE
The Living Joyfully Shop – books, courses, including Four Pillars of Unschooling and Navigating Conflict, coaching calls, and more!
Watch the video of our conversation on YouTube.
Follow @exploringunschooling on Instagram.
Follow @pamlaricchia on Instagram and Facebook.
Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about navigating relationships and exploring unschooling.
Sign up to our mailing list to receive The Living Joyfully Dispatch, our biweekly email newsletter, and get a free copy of Pam’s intro to unschooling ebook, What is Unschooling?
We invite you to join us in The Living Joyfully Network, a wonderful online community for parents to connect and engage in candid conversations about living and learning through the lens of unschooling. This month, we’re talking about seasons—in unschooling and in life. Come and be part of the conversation!
So much of what we talk about on this podcast and in the Living Joyfully Network isn’t actually about unschooling. It’s about life. On The Living Joyfully Podcast, Anna Brown and Pam Laricchia talk about life, relationships, and parenting. You can check out the archive here, or find it in your your favorite podcast player.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
ANNA: Hello everyone! I’m Anna Brown from Living Joyfully, and today I am joined by my co-hosts, Pam Laricchia and Erika Ellis. Hello to you both.
Before we get started, I wanted to encourage you to check out our shop where you can find books, courses, coaching, and information about the Living Joyfully Network. The shop has resources and support for every stage of your journey, and you can find the link in the show notes, or you can visit livingjoyfullyshop.com.
Today we’re going to be talking about how to build trust with our kids. It’s such a critical part of the process. That foundation of trust helps us navigate all that life throws at us, keeping our connection at the forefront. So, I’m excited about this one. Erika, would you like to get us started?
ERIKA: I would. I really love this topic, because trust is something that comes up so often in the podcast conversations, in Network conversations. It’s a big part of what makes unschooling, in quotes, “work”. And it’s a big part of what we mean when we talk about strong relationships that we’re cultivating with our kids.
And trust is really a two part thing. It’s my kids trusting me. I want my kids to trust me, to know that I’ll follow through with what I say and that I will listen to them when they tell me about who they are. But it’s also me trusting my kids. I want to trust that they know what works best for them, that they are on their own path.
And so trust is going in both directions and for me it’s such an important focus to build trust and to avoid doing things that would undermine trust. I know we have a lot of different aspects of building trust that we will dive into. But what came to mind first to me was one of the tricky parts about it, which is that you can’t just say, “Trust me,” to your kids, and then they’ll trust you.
Trust is really something that builds over time and it takes patience and it’s more about our actions than it is about our words, which can be difficult. It takes more intention. And it’s something that comes as a feeling from within the other person, in this case, our kids, and we don’t have any control over whether they’re feeling that or not.
So, we can’t rush the process. It just takes the time that it takes. I think if there’s been a history of us pushing through their consent or a history of my child not feeling heard or seen by me, then trust could take even a longer time to build. I think that each step we’re taking, each intentional trust building step that we’re taking, along that path to being a more trustworthy parent, to being more trusting of them just adds, it’s building that relationship, building strength into the relationship. And that trust will just grow from there, one interaction to the next.
PAM: That was a huge one for me, understanding that trust is something that I build through my actions. I think that’s something that can trip us up, especially in the beginning when you realize, oh maybe my child doesn’t trust me.
They’re not doing X, Y, Z, or acting like they trust me. And that can feel like, oh no. Oh no. But the shift to, okay, I want to be a person that my child trusts, what does that look like? How can I actually do those things? I don’t literally need to go up to them and say, do you trust me? That would be a weird question to ask yet.
It’s one of those things where it’s through my actions and through their actions. That’s how we’re communicating about trust. Versus the actual meta conversations about it. The fascinating thing is the timetable, right? It’s not our timetable to control, even though that’s what we’re trying, we’re trying to build trust with them.
We want them to trust us. And we can even talk about why, when it comes to life, you want someone to trust you so that they will come to you when they need help. They won’t try to figure things out on their own. But same with learning, right? When you first come to unschooling, looking about learning that strong and trusting relationship is so valuable for learning too.
Because they’ll come, they’ll feel more comfortable coming to you with the questions. Instead of worrying that maybe this is a dumb question or worrying about being judged. Thinking that, my mom won’t like that. I’m interested in this thing, so I need to hide that.
When you want a more engaged and open relationship, trust is an important part of it, and to take the timetable out of it entirely. And Anna, you say, be the parent that I want to be now and, and I want to be a parent who’s trusted by my child and my partner. So that’s how this person acts. You don’t wait till they trust you.
And once you trust me, then I’m going to be a trustworthy person. No, it goes the other way. I need to be that trustworthy person upfront and eventually, on their timetable, they will come to trust us as much as they will. And it’s so interesting to see, that’s your feedback from them.
If you see them hiding things more and you feel it’s more out of a worry about your reactions, then you can be a little more cognizant of your reactions. Try to take that little beat and instead of reacting more, give myself a couple choices in this moment rather than just react.
Maybe my instincts are something that I’m trying to move through a little bit.
ANNA: A couple things that came to mind from what you all said. There’s two things I’m hoping I’m going to remember, but one is. I think we can also be paralyzed by this piece of, it’s going to take time and what do we do?
Or there’s been a problem. And so I think it’s really important to let it sink in that this is not about being perfect. This is not about never making mistakes, that it really is about showing up for the repair. Because that builds trust too. When there’s a problem they know I’m going to come back.
They know I’m going to come back and figure out, how do I repair it? And it really creates a climate where they can do the same, because there’s going to be times when they impact our trust in them, but then we know we can make the repair. And so as much as it’s about building trust, it’s about learning how to make a repair too.
And so I think that can lighten some of the panic about, how do I always be perfect with my words? How do I always follow through perfectly? How do I always do this? Let go of that and instead think, how do I just stay connected? You know? How do I make a repair? How do I recognize it? And I love what you just said too there, Pam, about that
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