Ana Serratos, MSSW, LCSW

05/16/2023

05/12/2023

Let’s talk discipline. It’s confusing AF. Everyone has an opinion about it: your MIL, your neighbor, Uncle Steve, even the stranger at the grocery store.

Listen, we get it. We want to raise kind, good kids. And there’s SO much conflicting advice out there. Punish them - do time outs - DON'T DO TIME OUTS! - take away dessert, take away their favorite toy to teach them a lesson - etc etc.

We’re going to super simplify this and zoom out: what’s the *goal* of discipline? It’s to teach our kids better behavior, right?

Now, let’s think about how to effectively *teach* – how do kids (and adults) learn best?

Pretend with me, for a moment, that you’re teaching your child a new skill – learning the ABC’s, hitting a baseball, tying their shoes, etc. and when they go to try it themselves, they mess up. We would never punish our child in order to make them hit a baseball better, and why is that? Well, punishments are rooted in fear, and fear is a terrible teacher. In fact, research shows that fear impedes long term learning.

So, let’s think of behavior as a skill that we’re teaching our child. Let’s think of ourselves as coaches, as bosses, as CEO’s of our own homes.

Think back to the worst boss you ever had – they probably barked orders at you, were quick to scold and threatened your job security to get you to do as you were told. Did you feel motivated to learn and do better, or did you only focus on “not getting in trouble” and count down until you could leave?

Now, picture the best boss you ever had – they calmly and confidently led the team, they noticed the *good* work you did, when you made a mistake, they didn’t shame or threaten you, they worked with you to teach you how to do better next time – you felt motivated to learn and grow.

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05/05/2023

05/03/2023

For your Saturday. Find your “soft” places to land ❤️

04/18/2023

03/16/2023

Let’s start off this week on a good note, and release the human tendency to speak harshly to ourselves and about ourselves 🙌

You may not be where you want yet, and you may being seeing old patterns repeating themselves. You won’t get past that by beating yourself up.

You may not be where you want, you may even see old patterns repeating themselves. But you still deserve kindness 💗

Self-Compassion Says: created by the amazing

03/09/2023

If popular parenting advice seems to fall short for your situation, it's not you, it's that generic advice simply can't cover the wide range of individual differences & variability in nervous systems. That's why I wrote Brain-Body Parenting, to help parents customize interactions based on the *child* in real time-not simply the tool or technique.

03/08/2023

🗣🗣🗣

02/07/2023

Via