So we are giving a lot of young children decisions that their little brains really can't handle. And how it's playing out for us is we are feeling guilty about not being able to buy stuff. We're feeling guilty about not giving enough options for shirts, not giving enough color choices for water bottles. Like I see it in all kinds of spheres. And we feel bad because we're saying no.

Instead of saying, Hey, I wanna foster a sort of an understanding here that we can't have everything, that choices are limited, not limitless. Welcome to the Money Mindset Podcast. Well, you'll find a judgment free zone to help you free yourself from overthinking and the fear of doing things the wrong way. It's time to shed yourself of the mom, guilt,

procrastination, and perfectionism so you can start doing the things that you really want to do with your money instead of just working to pay bills. I'm Ashley Patrick, ex detective turned CEO of my very own business and stay at home mom of three. Not too long ago, my dreams of staying at home with my kids seemed impossible. I thought I'd have to stay miserable in a high stress and demanding job just so I could retire someday.

After gaining the confidence in my own ability to manage my family's finances and a simple step by step plan to make it happen, I was able to pay off $45,000 in just 17 months, which then allowed me to finally quit my job, stay at home with my kids, and build a debt free business. Now my mission is to help moms like you conquer debt and free themselves from the mental load of handling their family's finances.

If you're ready to shed the guilt and shame surrounding your past money mistakes and tackle your debt, this is the place for you. Let's get started. In today's episode, we are talking with Tara Grotto. So she's the founder of Raising Resilient Children and she's a social emotional expert experience educator and a former preschool owner. She supports parents with what they need to become the parent they want to be.

Through her exclusive support and group program options, Tara will teach you her signature framework, the language of kindness and parent clues for problem solving. The system makes parenting easier while fostering connection and building essential life skills for resiliency. And in today's episode, we are diving into how you parent, how your stress, especially your money, stress affects how you parent and how the way you react to stress affects how you handle your money.

And of course we also talk about mom guilt, parent guilt, and getting through that so that you can raise resilient children and some tips and things to think about so you can learn to say no, do your children, which really makes them better off in the long run and will help you as well. And I know it's hard, it's hard at first,

but it takes practice. And so let's dive into Tara's episode. Oh, but before we dive in, I totally forgot to mention that I am hosting a money plan bootcamp this month. So go to budgets made easy.com/bootcamp. It is free. There will be lots of prizes and giveaways. And I will be teaching my five steps to creating a money plan that you can actually stick to.

So go to budgets made easy.com/bootcamp to join in on the fun. And of course, like I said, it is free. We start on October 16th. So I hope to see you there. Now here's Star's episode. Hey Tara, thank you so much for coming on the Money Mindset Podcast to talk about raising resilient children, but also how stress affect, how our stress as parents affects us.

You know, in our parenting styles and money, stress is a huge, huge factor in our lives. But before we dive into that, why don't you just give us a little bit of background about yourself and then we'll dive in. Sounds amazing. So yeah, my name is Tara. I'm the founder of Raising Resilient Children. I work with parents to help them put together the tools that they need to be the parents that they wanna be.

So I think one of the things that is happening in the world is that a lot of people are looking to parent differently, but when you haven't, when you don't have the background or experience, how do you parent differently? Right? Right. And one of the things I learned when I owned a preschool is when you support parents with some tools for feelings,

kindness, everyday mental wellbeing, that kind of stuff, that it's really, it helps everybody. It helps you parent, it helps your children function in their communities. And it's just generally makes life easier. The the, the professional is social emotional skills. So that's sort of my little area where I support parents with building those tools so that you can really become who you wanna be instead of trying all the things.

Yes, and I know at least from my own experience, as my children have gotten older, my oldest is 11 and a half. It's like I've had to do so much work on myself in order to parent better. And it has just been so stressful because you think, you know, especially before you have kids, you think you're gonna be this perfect parent and you're never gonna do certain things and then,

Huh, Life kids. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So you know, as we're dealing with money, stress and all the things, you know, cuz obviously we talk about money mindset here and you Yep. Deal with mindset a lot. Obviously in your line of work as well. I wanna kind of talk about how they're related and before we dive into,

I have several things I wanna talk to you about, but let's talk about how like our money, stress and our parenting are related. Like why should people listening today care about how they are as parents? How are they go together? Right? How you show up, right? How you show up. So it impacts, I mean you talk about mindset.

I talk about mindset directly or indirectly, right? How you're able to show up to any conversation, whether it's with your children, your partner, yourself, right? It all comes down to what's going on inside. And we live in a world of high stress. Yes, No, there's like no if ands or butts about it. It doesn't matter what the topic,

there's stress, there's a layer of stress there. So the very first thing that I actually do help parents do, I actually have a boot camp coming out. Like one of the topics is this, what is stress? Where, what is it? Right? So I have a system, I call it dino Brain, right? This idea that some people call it reptilian brain,

lizard brain. There's all, I like to call it dino brain. Cause you can imagine Theranos rest, right? Yeah. It's sort of that like really great visual and kids really get behind it. Parents really get behind it. And what is Dino brain? It is the three F's, fight, flight, freeze. There's also a fourth one called fun.

That one's a lot more layered, has to do with like trauma informed approach to stress. So I don't really tackle that one so much. But fight, flight freeze is super important to sort of think about because it is everywhere. Once you realize that it's everywhere. So when we have stress, how we respond to stress is probably in one of those three categories.

Are we a fighter? Do we yell, do we kick, do we scream, do our children yell, kick, scream, fight, all those things. That's the fight response, right? The sort of the one that everyone thinks of, right? The unwanted behaviors usually fall into that category. And then there's the freeze response, right? That's where you,

like your, I say, I say it's ice block. Your brain turns into like an ice block. You can't get the words out, you can't formulate your thinking. You could be such a rational person, but you're in that moment and you're like, I can't make a decision. You see this a lot with like kids at restaurants, right? Yeah.

Or there's like the ice cream board, right? There's like the 31 flavors and you're like, you don't know what to pick because you think you're gonna pick the wrong one. That's the freeze response. That's when our brain cannot compute. Yes. And then there's the flight, flight responses leave. I don't wanna be here whether you physically leave or not.

And we all know that sort of the child that runs, right? I gotta get away from this stress. I think a lot of people when we're thinking about the three Fs, so fight, flight, freeze, they think it's only for really big things, Right? And it's not, it could be your child doesn't get their way. It could be you're not,

not handling a situation the way you hoped you would. It could be self-doubt, it could be money, it could be all of these things create some sort of stress response. Now the level of stress response, I'm actually writing a picture book about, about this with graphics, graphic illustrator, and we have like four stages of the D brain. There's like the really like low end.

And that's kinda like where we're all operating all the time, right? We all operate in stress. Yeah. And, and for some people, right? Professional athletes, surgeons, these kind of people, they say they need that stress actually. It's what helps them be really great at their jobs. So not all stress is bad stress, right? So that's something else to understand.

But then there's the other part of like, where in the stress are we? Are we sort of that low end, we can manage it stress? Or are we in the level four full toran ORs, Rex brain shuts down, Can't think, can't reason, can't do. So when you're in full stress response, you actually can't learn, you can't make decisions and it may not look like anything.

It could be just the person in front of you. We like to think of it as, oh, that person's yelling. So that's stress. But it could be a person's completely shut down in front of you. That's also stress. Or when you're looking at your, I can imagine with people you're, you know, sort of working with, looking at their money and like blank,

right? Like, I just don't know what to do. That's the stress response. Yeah. I never Thought about it that way because when you were talking about freezing and not making a decision, that's where the majority of the people that I work with are at. Like, they just have, so their information overload and they just freeze. They just don't do anything.

So I never thought of it as a stress response. And I'm sorry I interrupted you. Oh no, that's okay. No, I'm, I'm, I'm no problem at all. And that's, and I think that's the thing, right? We only think of stress as this really horrible, like past the point of no return thing. But it's, it's a lot of different things and it can be helpful and harmful,

right? There's different layers of stress, how we build tools for it. But the thing that I think is really, really important is when you are in full DNO brain, like full on DNO brain, you can't learn, you can't think, you can't make decisions. When I'm talking about parenting, when you're in that situation, that's often when we try to teach our kids about their emotions,

Wow, you're angry. And then people are like, It doesn't work, Tara. When I label my child's feelings, it's not working. That's because they're in brain. They're not in a space to learn about their feelings. And one of the things I talk a lot about in my work is how do we find other spaces that are in calm and connection to teach about feelings?

Because we are trying to maximize our time. We're all doing it. We're all busy, we're all over busy. So we don't do it intentionally. We're like, okay, I, I wanna handle this situation differently. I wanna be a better parent. I wanna show up differently. So I'm gonna try this validation feeling thing. Oh my goodness, it just blew up in my,

my face. And that's why I teach about the stress cycle because your child isn't in a learning zone and you're trying to teach them about their feelings in a non learning zone, right? And that, I'm guessing this happens with you too. Like when someone's in freeze mode, they actually can't, they can't compute their money challenges, right? We gotta use some tools,

we gotta identify. So as an adult, we gotta be able to identify and say, Oh, I'm freeze right now. I need to do something with my freeze. And then we can have a conversation. Maybe I need to go do deep breaths. Maybe I need to go get a drink of water and come back. Maybe I need to put some space here in this conversation.

It doesn't have to be like a day break. It doesn't have to be something grandiose. But you, you need to bring your brain down, right? You gotta bring it down to the, the lower end stress versus the full dinosaur. I love that because I do teach people Inside Money Success Club about taking breaks and only doing like 25, 30 minutes at a time.

And I love the idea of the Dere techniques during that break time. So that's kind of a piece that I, I could bring into it from you as well. So I, I love that you mentioned that. Now I, so we do have a lot of busy moms, as you know, as listeners. And a thing that has been coming up a lot lately that we've discussed inside Money Success Club as well as on the podcast,

is teaching our kids around about money in terms of dealing with our mom guilt. So that's another stressor we feel like we don't like to tell our kids. No, it's come up where, you know, there's guilt about being a single mom not having dual income. So you feel guilty and by the kids, the toys, it came up yesterday during another budget strategy session that'll be coming out soon as well about,

you know, their kid asking, Well, do you have money for this toy? And that made them feel guilty that their kid asked if they had money for a toy. So that kinda level of stress plays into it as well, that guilt leading to stress. So Do you have Insight with that or maybe some tips on dealing with that kind of that mom guilt,

but also wanting to teach our kids about money and so we kind of have to get past that guilt because Yes. What it's good that, in my opinion, it's good that they asked if you had the money because that way they, it's a yes or no Question. Yeah, they understand too. Yeah, they understand. So I just had a different perspective on that where she took it as guilt because her kid asked her if she had the money or not.

Right? So let me get your opinion on that. I think parent guilt is weighing in on a lot of our decisions in, in, again, it's kind of like that good stress, bad stress. There are healthy levels of guilt and there are really unhealthy levels of guilt. And I think as a whole right now, society is really operating at an unhealthy level.

Yeah. And part of that, you know, in the beginning conversation you said I had to do a lot of work on myself Yes. To parent this different way. Part of the work that people are doing on themselves or reflecting on themselves is playing out as parent guilt because they're having these sort of memories of childhood memories of things that they wish they had or when a parent said no to them,

how they felt. And there's an interesting nuance there because your parents saying no to you, you're not gonna like it. But it's a really important thing that ha needs to happen. And I'm gonna say it's not actually happening enough in the world right now. I think parents are stretching themselves to maximum capacity or past to try and like sort of avoid saying no.

And it's actually landing a whole generation of kids who really have a difficult time with disappointment. Yes. They were really difficult time with frustration, annoyance. My educator friends, I used to, I mean, I was, I've been in ed in education in this sphere for over 20 years. I owned a preschool, I worked in guidance administration. The world has shifted a lot.

And one of the things that I see and sort of really is a foundation of my work is we don't have enough tools for feelings. So emotional suppression used to be what we held at high regard, right? If you could suppress your feelings, you were awesome, you were succeeding. This is, this was the model. And now we're saying, Oh,

huh, that's not so good. Right? We really shouldn't be doing that. It's, it's shown that it's got some traumatic effects on people. It's like really not a great thing. But what's happened is we've had this sort of like free for all. It's like, here have all the feelings and like people are getting late and they're having a hard time saying no,

they don't know how to set limits. They don't know where those limits lie. And that's actually really where my program came in. So my program's called Building Resilience through Kindness. And it actually came as a part of my preschool when I was helping parents who were trying to parent differently with this idea, what is developmentally appropriate? Where do we set boundaries?

How do we set boundaries? That sort of framework And the whole point of the program, like when you really like step back and look at it, you say, Oh, this is about how I navigate my parent guilt and when is that parent guilt informing me? And when is it holding me back from doing something? And things like being okay with saying no,

that's a big deal. Knowing when it's okay to say no, knowing that that's okay. And so my, the language of kindness, which is my signature framework, is based on three pillars. And this is one way that I help parents with parent guilt. One is kindness to self. How do we treat ourself? How do we help our children build their inner voice?

Right? How do we do those kinds of things? Two is kindness to others. How do we treat each other in calm and conflict? Right? That's the area everyone wants to focus on. I want my child to get along with people, I want them to have friends. I don't want them to grab things from me. I don't want them to hit me.

Write different children. Some children at school are like, you know, they know what to do. Come home, they have a hard time, some kids have a hard time every, right? There's all kinds of different dynamics that happen in that, that little sphere. My third pillar is kindness to the planet. And this is where questions about toys and all those things,

That's where I, where I tackle those with parent guilt. We are living in a highly consumer driven society. Highly consumerism, right? The idea that we should have tons of things. We should give children tons of choices. One of the things I talk about a lot is the idea that we are giving children far too many choices than their actual development.

Their brain, their prefrontal cortex. So the very front of your brain is the thing that helps you make decisions. It helps you deal with stress, it helps you regulate your feelings, it helps you organize your thoughts and yourself. It helps you manage your time, right? It's this really important part of your brain. And this is where I parents is where I tell you to take a little deep breath.

That little piece of your brain takes 20 years to develop. So we are giving a lot of young children decisions that their little brains really can't handle. And how it's playing out for us is we are feeling guilty about not being able to buy stuff. We're feeling guilty about not giving enough options for shirts, not giving enough color choices for water bottles. Like I see it in all kinds of spheres.

And we feel bad because we're saying no. Instead of saying, Hey, I wanna foster sort of an understanding here that we can't have everything, that choices are limited, not limitless. And maybe I'm giving my kids choices that they actually can't handle just because everybody else is doing it. Yes. Right? This idea that everybody's doing it. So we gotta get on board instead of saying,

Okay, I'm actually gonna tackle my parent guilt by saying, You know what, here's this thing that I'm gonna say no to. Because in the big picture, it's better for our family. Yes. It's better for our financial decisions and it's better for the planet, right? Yes. Yes. I, oh my gosh, I just feel like you're talking to me right now.

This is like exactly what I've been working on for the past year on myself. I mean, it has been so freeing to be able to limit the number of choices that I give my children. Yeah. And I make them decide. And I usually, now I have found, like with my middle child, even when she was little like a toddler,

I had to give her two choices and she would pick one. But if I just told her to do something, she's my rebel. She's my free spirit. She Wouldn't, she, she's like, She's the future leader. Yeah. She will not do anything she doesn't wanna do. Like, and that's been since she was a baby. Like, but if I gave her two options,

she would pick one and do it. Right. So I learned that a long time ago, but too Amazing. Two options. Yeah. But yeah, I totally understand. Giving them too many options. Like not, I didn't consciously realize that until you said it, but Right. That is definitely, And I've had to say no because I was about to have a mental breakdown last year with all the different activities plus my mom guilt and the stress of like trying to do everything.

I literally couldn't handle it. And now this year it's like, nope, you can do this or you can do this. I am not doing this. And it has helped tremendously. Yeah. What's, I mean, it's, it's, it's, there's a lot of research that says the more choices you have, the less incisive you are. Right.

That's for adults. I mean, think about tv. That's true. Right? Think about all the stations and sit down to watch. Right? You're trying to find something to watch and there's literally too many options. So that's part one. Part two is there is a, there's a, a proven relationship between too many choices and anxiety, which is what you're describing here.

Yes. Right? That's true. Yes. Too much, too many choices. And we have the most anxious generation of children to date. Yeah. I believe there's a huge connection here between materialism, consumerism, and giving children choices that they developmentally can't handle. That makes sense. Right? Because and and tons of, tons of like the leading psychologists are saying,

give children choices. Empower children with choices. I'm not saying don't give children choices at all. Giving children, as you just mentioned, you give your daughter true choices. It makes things so much simpler. She feels like she's in control. You can make it happen. Right. What I'm getting people to think about is what are developmentally appropriate choices? Right?

And this is where consumers and can guide you. When I was younger there was only one color of, of cup. There was not 10 colors. It didn't exist. Right. Plastic didn't exist like that to me then when I reflect on that, I'm like, is consumerism giving me my choice or is developmental appropriateness giving me my choice? Right. And when I think about consumerism,

I'm like, well there's rainbow colors of cups that's probably not developmentally appropriate for a toddler. Right. They actually can't weigh those options. That's us having too many choices. Right. I only had one or two pairs of shoes because shoes didn't exist. And this is, this goes back to your original sort of point about like when we're thinking about our parent guilt and thinking about the past,

we're like, well I didn't have any choices. There's another layer there. Yeah. There wasn't that many choices to have. Right. It really was one or two pairs of shoes and like five shirts and Yes, your parents picked things for you because it was about sustainability, it was about durability. Right. It was about very different things. And we sort of,

when we're, when we're reflecting on our past, we don't have that parent lens that our parents had. Yes. Right. The financial that we don't have that we, we've removed it and all we're remembering is our, our memories which are valid. Right. It's frustrating. So what's missing, What's missing is we weren't given tools for handling our disappointment.

Not that we should, should not that we shouldn't be saying no. We should be saying no, we need to give our children tools for handling the No. That's what we didn't have. Yes. So we don't need to say yes more. We need to still say no. Just like our parents said no to us. The difference is we need to help our children process the no sit with the no.

And how do we do that? We build skills and calm and connection. Not in the DNO brain moment when you're saying no dto brain moment child is not happy with you saying No, that's not when we have that conversation. Cause that's what we do in that moment when we're trying to parent with intention. We try to explain and we try to explain and we try to explain and we try to rationalize and we try to use logic.

Yes. And everything just goes downhill, downhill, downhills. Right. Yeah. So this is what I teach in my program and I'm gonna be talking about in my bootcamp is this idea that we as adults when we're trying to parent differently, talk way too much at the wrong times. Yeah. Because we just want them to understand we don't wanna yell,

we don't wanna hit, we don't wanna do all the things, but our kids still have these big feelings and they're yelling at us and they're kicking us. Yes. And they're, they're frustrated. Mm. Right? Yes. Definitely. I have been dealing with this with one particular child and she, it was disappointment. She doesn't like not getting what she wants and as she's gotten older it's become a bigger problem.

So it's definitely something that we have been working on and she has gotten so much better and it gets easier when you tell them no more often. So cause you know, just let her do it because I didn't wanna deal with it. Right. I didn't wanna deal with the fight. I just like whatever, just do whatever. But realized that wasn't good for her overall.

Right. And so, Right. That's A great Catch. Working on it for the past couple years and it has definitely gotten better. Everybody has their moments of course, but ugh, way Better. Well we're not perfect. Right. There's no perfect. Exactly. I don't believe in, there's two things I don't believe in the people who tell you that parenting you can be perfect and you'll never yell and you'll never lose.

Your cool and everything will go well and your children will always listen. That's all nonsense. Yeah. Can we do things better? A hundred percent. Do we need tools to do them better? A hundred percent. Will everything ever be perfect? Well, no. Otherwise we don't be robots and we're not, we're people and the people within our families are different.

You're not your child and your child is not you. And I think that's a mistake that we sometimes make as parents. We're like, Oh man, you have this, this and this characteristic of me. True, but they're not you. Right, exactly. And the tools that work for you may or may not work for them. Right, exactly.

So there's this like piece there of this like these, these like little people that you see but you're like, Oh wait a second, that's not me. And I need to, I need to sort of separate myself from this dynamic. I think something that you caught onto that I give you kudos cuz it's something that's really hard to catch onto. And that's this,

when we give into our children to make them just cuz we can't handle it, we do something called unintentional reinforcement. That's where we're actually teaching our children to do the very thing that we don't want them to do because it works. Yes. Right. Exactly. And I have to make a caveat, a very important caveat here because people be like, see she's saying my kid is defiant.

It's true. What I'm saying is this is not conscious though, right. Your child is not plotting. Right. You're teaching their brain that, hey, when I do this thing my parent gives in because they can't handle it. So your child doesn't plot that out. That's, that's older children. There is a bit of a thing there where kids,

older children will make decisions that have certain, but young children, it feels like they're being defiant. It feels like they're plotting again, they're not. Right. It's just their brain has learned A plus B equals C. And so I'm gonna do a Exactly. Because it always gives me C every time, which Is what I want. Yep. Exactly.

Exactly. So I just had to laugh when you said we're human, we're not robots. Cuz I say that all the time. Oh, amazing. That's so funny. Cause it's so that's why I was laughing when you said that. Cause I, I say it all the time. So I definitely for myself, I'm going to sign up for the bootcamp and learn more about your program.

Where can other people do that as well? Where can they sign up and learn about it? Yeah, it's on my website at grado slash join. So T a r a g R A T T O slash j o i n. That's it. And all the information for the bootcamp is there. It's kicking off really soon. It is totally free.

It is hosted on my exclusive community. So you can come learn a bit more about Dino Brain and I teach a little bit about social emotional intelligence. So this like feelings. How do we, how do we tackle feelings? What do we do? You just said do it in common connection. I don't have time for that, Tara. I, I show you how to make it happen in the time you don't have.

I get it. I'm a busy mom. I'm a small business owner. My kids are in middle school now. I owned a preschool. I get it. I I get it. I am you. So, and then I'm also sharing what I call parent clue for problem solving, which is my sort of signature approach to what does behavior actually mean.

Everybody tells you you need to understand your child's behavior is telling you something. Well what? Right. And so I help you understand, cause that's kind of my, like, my thing that I think is so important is helping parents get to the root. There's so many bandaid solutions out there. Instagram's full of them. Here's the easy quick fix Here.

Here's the hack For you. Here's the great thing to say in the moment. People will say that they're like, it worked so well for a couple of years even, and then it didn't. Yeah, because it, you're only bandaging behavior when you don't get at the root, you can actually get through a couple years even. I know that sounds crazy.

You're like, what, A couple years and then something, you have a five year old who's got these like massive, you know, feelings. So that's, that's We were, Well yeah, cater, cater, cater until they're too big and it's like, oh, what did we do? So, but I will also point out that even if you're not struggling with this or don't feel like you're struggling with this with your children,

if you apply the concepts to yourself and your own behavior and your own childhood and everything relates to what you do, including money. So if you can get to the root and really change your mindset of your behaviors, then you can change your money behaviors as well. They're all connected. And that's what I want people to understand. So, you know,

join her boot camp. Decide even if you don't think that it's for you, because you're not dealing with this with your children or your children are older, it can still work on yourself and for sure it's great information to have because it still will help you improve your finances. So go join our bootcamp. I will link to it in the show notes as well.

Now if they, how else can they follow you? Are you on Instagram? Yes. I'm raising resilient children on Instagram, on Facebook. Pretty much I'm raising resilient children on my podcast raising. So if you look up raising Resilient Children with Tara, that's me. And I'm sorry for mispronouncing your name. I always ask people, even when I think I know how to say their name and I totally forgot today.

So I said your name wrong. I'm sorry. Don't worry. All right, well thank you for being with us today and I can't wait to come join your bootcamp as well and start working on myself. Amazing. Thanks. Thank You. Now go join her bootcamp with me. I am for real. I am going to do it. The things that she talked about in this episode are things that I have been working on as a parent with my children for the past couple of years.

And I have literally spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars for those resources to learn. So she's going to be teaching this stuff for free. So go join her boot camp link in the show notes. Also, I will be doing the Money Plan Boot Camp this month. We start in a little over a week and I hope you will come join us there as well so you can work on your stress and managing all of those things and creating a Money plan goes along with that.

So come join me@budgetsmeeteasy.com slash bootcamp. And don't forget, we will have lots of giveaways and prizes and fun things through the month as we work through Creating Your Money Plan One that you can actually stick to. I will see you there.