Ep. 3 Gentle & Parenting..In The Same Sentence?

Monique Rochon discusses the importance of self-love and introduces her podcast, "On My Way to Love," where she empowers women to explore their femininity. She then delves into the challenges of parenting, emphasizing that parenting is different from being a mom and can be tough, especially when dealing with stress and the pressures of adulthood. Monique shares her personal experiences of physical punishment as a child and how she now practices gentle parenting, promoting empathy, respect, and understanding towards children. She urges listeners to create a space for practicing gentle parenting and to show compassion and empathy towards their children, as they deserve the best. Hey loves it's your girl Monique Rochon and I am just wondering if like me you have ever questioned your self-worth. Have you ever wondered why you attract toxic relationships? Have you experienced burnout on a daily? Well guess what sis I have too. That is until I learned what self-love actually is. Now I am ready to embody the woman who is calm, the woman who lives in her purpose, and the woman who gets to have the life that she desires. It is my absolute pleasure to be your host of the On My Way To Love podcast. That's right I bring to you an all-inclusive open platform where I get to empower women to explore their femininity. Yes and I get to chat with like-minded individuals like you and I. So come join me on not just my journey but our journey together through this crazy maze of self-love and self-realization. Do I have a story for you? Hello hello and welcome back guys. Happy fall by the way. Like this is my favorite time of the year. I definitely love seeing the trees turn colors. Like the feeling of holidays and family time is in the air and actually speaking of family today's episode gentle and parenting in the same sentence. I this is one I'm super excited to get to chat about right because being a mom in its entirety is the most incredible fulfilling and oftentimes challenging roles that we have been blessed to experience and I want to start by saying that parenting isn't definitely not an easy thing to do right. Now notice I'm using the words parenting and not things like motherhood or being a mom because to me parenting and being a mom are two different things and what I mean by that is anyone can be a mom or a dad right but parenting is what we are focusing on and parenting especially alone can be tough like I have done it I have been there and I definitely always say and I quote these new kids are something else and I laugh because nowadays we have new technology we have new ways of our kids retaining information new habits brands that are impressionable on our kids and then on top of that as parents we have to deal with the stress of bills other financial responsibilities creating time in our relationships right our boss work in general right and sometimes it can get overwhelming now on the other hand we have children that don't listen we have children that may have been diagnosed with some form of a disability we have teenagers of attitudes right lazy children does that ring a bell so with all the with all the stresses of adulthood and parenting clashing and not coming from a place of our own mental stability it can sometimes cause chaos let me repeat with the stresses of adulthood and parenting clashing and not coming from a place of our own mental stability it can sometimes cause chaos when this happens we're feeling defeated right we feel overwhelmed sometimes underpaid miserable and lacking and so today I want to talk about gentle parenting when I let me just start when I was a little girl I got whooping I still have scars from getting them actually and I can remember one specific time where my stepdad would have booked myself and siblings for shit we didn't even do and I mean hard and with things that a child should not be getting hit with so as a little girl I experienced this I felt so hurt so confused and scared of this man to be honest with you so to me this is not what a parent should do to a child how can I teach my child that me loving you means me inflicting any type of harm on you whether that's physical mental or emotional now I am not going to sit here and tell you that I haven't popped my child upside the head for sogging bag or something or I'm not going to say I didn't curse when I was angry before or I'm not even going to say that I probably have caused some type of trauma in my children's life at some point because I didn't always feel this way right I didn't always feel how I feel now about parenting because guess what I wasn't educated then I wasn't educated on trauma on mental health on how childhood experiences can affect our adulthood but now I am educated right and I know this is a hard topic with so many actually different opinions it seems like from anybody and their mama these days and I just want to say disclaimer I am not a medical professional if your child has any of the diagnoses that we speak about in this episode I urge you to speak with a medical professional if you have any questions or concerns I can recall outside opinions on how I parented my own children I would often hear things like you're not strict enough you don't punish enough they're gonna grow up to be bad or something to that effect an actual doctor actually told me one time that I should whip my child I'm not even lying an actual doctor told me I should whip my child and I would always say in the back of my head like shut the fuck up right because who are you telling me who are you to tell me how to parent my child and so you're probably thinking the same of me right with this episode but look stay listen there's more so yes that's exactly what I thought right so I have a wonderful son who's diagnosed with ADHD and ODD now if you don't know that's oppositional defiance disorder and since he was a little baby I definitely felt like his behaviors were not of that of his peers so I knew right away something wasn't quite how it should be so over the years before he was officially diagnosed and as he got older he he would cry a lot he would throw tantrums a lot he would destroy things and it was very hard for me to understand I looked at it from a lot of anger a lot of frustration right and then you got people from outside looking in telling you that oh he just needs a whipping that he needs a man in his life that shit used to piss me off so bad you know these people don't know mentally what my child is going through what his thoughts are what's causing him to act this way and went straight to immediately it's my parenting so I said that to say when I got educated on mental health and on these specific diagnoses with the help of his doctors actually in therapy you know instead of getting angry when he had an outburst because that's what I would do at first I would get angry and I would argue back and forth and if you have a child with ADHD and ODD it's argument like every day back and forth like if there was arguments every day with a child how frustrating can that be like literally so instead of me getting angry you know I listen so what does it mean to gentle parent you ask well gentle parenting is raising our kids to be happy confident kids right to be happy confident safe showing your kids empathy respect and understanding that's a big one right when our kids do something that we know we would not approve of you have got to look at it from a place of understanding and of course if it's something huge punish accordingly but I think it's important to realize and know that these kids will get older and they will unknowingly inherit some of the same trauma that we had so if we can teach them and show them what we didn't know at their age imagine just imagine what beauty would derive from that the opportunities your child will have imagine what our children can do if we taught them how to self-regulate their emotions what would the world be like decreased domestic batteries decreased homicides maybe I certainly would think so you know the same kids who were not being punished enough are cleaning up when I don't even have to tell them to those same kids are taking out the garbage without complaining getting good grades at school and I want to say they are not perfect by a long shot because none of us are but I want you to know that kids are innocent right they really don't know any better they may think they know everything but we know how that goes so today I challenge you to create a time and space to commit to practice gentle parenting and I'm not saying don't have a backbone because they will for sure test you but practice not yelling practice not cursing practice showing compassion and empathy and understanding because at the end of the day no one is going to love your kids like you love your kids so when they leave out of your house they don't get the same treatment that you're you're giving to them right they're treated differently because they're someone else's kid when they when they leave your door so show them that you actually do want the best for them and not only want it for them but give it to them right give it to them they deserve it so well that's it for today so thank you for tuning in I really hope you guys all enjoy the rest of the day and of course if you ever have any questions comments concerns anything at all please feel free to reach out to me guys all right I'll be talking to you soon same time same place next time