302: Bratty Little Baby Moments and Sneaky Perfectionism

Audio MMP 302

[00:00:00] Randi Rubenstein: My name is Randi Rubenstein, and welcome to the Mastermind Parenting Podcast. At Mastermind Parenting, we’re on a mission to support strong-willed kids and the families that love them. 

Hello, hello, welcome to this week’s episode all about sneaky perfectionism. That’s what I’m calling it. Sneaky perfectionism. There always seems to be themes that I don’t intend to be themes and I, when I’m coaching moms, it’s just like all of a sudden there’s a theme and it appears and I’m like, Oh, that’s interesting. Didn’t see it coming. 

So I was coaching a mom the other day and she was really beating herself up. She said, you know, I’ve been working with you, I’ve been in the Mastermind for literally years, and she’s like, this is a way of life. Like I use the things that I have learned and I practice, I’ve changed the way I think I’ve, I use it in my work life, in my, obviously in my home life with my family, um, just in like I think differently than I used to.

And yet sometimes I have these moments, like, so we’re getting ready for my daughter’s baptism. I don’t know how baptisms work. Um, apparently, you know, I always thought babies got baptized, but this is her daughter is I think in second or third grade. And so they’re preparing for this big baptism weekend and they had all this family coming in town.

And this is a mom who has a really big, um, she works outside the home and she has a really big career and she just juggles a lot. Okay. She just juggles a lot and she’s amazing. I know because a lot of people come to me who she has been a mentor for them and, um, and she’s been very generous over the years. Like she gives talks to, she works for this big oil and gas company and she gives these big talks and sometimes she’ll even mention me. And, um, like my parent coach, you know, and she’s this big business exec. 

So love her. you know, she’s like a free marketing person for me. And so she really has incorporated the tools that she’s learned through being in the Mastermind, um, she’s incorporated them into all these different areas of her life. 

And so she says, well, the other, so we’re preparing for this whole baptism and, and we’ve got all this family coming in from out of town. And I was out, I was running errands. I was, she goes, I was actually having fun, like picking up some knickknacks for the house and just like getting the house ready. And I walk in and my daughter’s got like, like she decided that that day was a good day to like be working on a slime project. And there’s just like slime all over the table, slime everywhere. And she said, and I just like lost it. And just like had a little bit of a hissy fit about it.

And I said, okay. And I said, so what’s, what’s the problem? And she’s like, why am I having hissy fits about like, I know big deal, little deal, this is a little deal. Why am I having a hissy fit? I just had this lovely day. I’m picking up the knickknacks. I walk in, everybody’s happy. And I have to have a hissy fit about there being slime all over the table. Like what is wrong with me? 

And I said, well, nothing’s wrong with you. Why are you making this mean that there’s something wrong with you? And so as we, you know, as I coached her through this, the thing that she, that was really the pain point was, I shouldn’t be having hissy fit moments. I call them bratty little baby moments. 

And what I said to her is I’m like, when I say it’s messy being a human for little humans, for big humans, like all of us, we’re all going to have bratty little baby moments. I have them all the time. I would argue that my husband has them even more than I do. He might argue that I have a more than he does. We all have bratty little baby moments. 

When we have this vision for how the weekend’s going to go, the baptism weekend’s going to go and, and we’re out and we’re, and we’re picking up knickknacks, so the house looks perfect. And then we walk in and there’s freaking slime all over the table and we have a bratty little baby moment. Why? I don’t know, because you’re human. But she was beating herself up that she shouldn’t ever have bratty little baby moments. 

And I said, I think this is sneaky perfectionism. And she said, whenever you like, she goes, I, whenever you say perfectionism, she’s like, I bristle inside because I do not consider myself to be a perfectionist. I work with a lot of perfectionists. Um, I’m a lawyer by training and I kind of pride myself on like I can dot all my I’s and cross all my T’s and, and focus on all the details, but I really don’t. Like I’m a big picture thinker. Um, I really kind of pride myself on that. I really don’t think of myself as a perfectionist. 

And I said, yeah, perfectionism can be sneaky. Like here you are, beating yourself up for a bratty little baby moment that you should be a perfect human. You should be a perfect parent. You should never have bratty little baby moments, right? I know what to do, why am I still yelling at my kids sometimes? And it’s like, I don’t know, because you were feeling dysregulated in your body. Maybe you got a shitty night of sleep. Maybe you were hungry. We’re all going to have these moments.

It’s just like whenever I’ve heard MIchaeleen talk about when she was doing all the research for Hunt, Gather, Parent and she was out, she was with the Inuit, um, community in Alaska. And like her daughter was, I don’t know, having a bratty little baby moment about something, as three year olds do because they live in their emotional brain. So they have them a lot. 

And she was having kind of a bratty little baby moment as an adult in return, because like they were out, they were in public, her daughter’s having, I mean, we’ve all been there, right? And you feel like people are judging you, but the Inuit community understands that three year olds have lots of bratty little baby moments. They don’t have a problem with that. They’re like, of course. Right. 

But the, but when big people respond in the bratty little baby ways, the Inuit people are like, really, like, isn’t this just to be expected? And so Michaeleen could tell maybe she was feeling a little bit judged or she was judging herself. And I think the thing that helps us to have less bratty little baby moments is when we start to understand sometimes you’re just going to have them. 

You know, maybe if when we were three, our families and communities understood, of course, three year olds are going to have lots of these moments. And if we didn’t have some kind of shame living in our bodies for when we had those moments when we were little kids and the big people just sort of, you know, shepherded us through them without making them into a big deal. Right? Maybe if we didn’t carry shame within us for those bratty little baby moments when we were little, maybe we wouldn’t have as many of them when we’re bigger.

And so I think when we start to show up for ourselves in that way, you know, and what it would look like for the mom I was just talking about is, Oh, I had a bratty little baby moment. Yeah, I’ve got a lot of pressure on me. I’m trying to, you know, I had a very full week. I got a lot going on with work and now I know I’m going to, we’re going to be hosting all these people coming in town next weekend. You know, this baptism is a big deal. This is a big memory we’re making. It’s a, you know, it’s a big ritual within our family and it feels pretty important. And so I, I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself and I was the tea kettle and I erupted and I needed to blow off steam and that happened.

It doesn’t make me a bad mom, a bad parent, a bad person. I don’t have to be a perfect parent, a perfect person. Sometimes we’re all going to have bratty little baby moments. And that happened. Okay. And that happened. And I said, so I think it’s more about like, stop putting so much pressure on yourself, that you should know what to do at every moment. I said, and it’s kind of like when people over the years have asked me for the scripts and the scripts and the scripts. 

And I know there’s a lot of parenting professionals out there who are happy to give you the scripts and the scripts and the scripts. You’re not going to remember the scripts when you’re in a bratty little baby moment, which you’re going to be sometimes. You’re not going to remember any of those scripts. So what if, instead of thinking that we need to robotically memorize scripts, what if we just start to bring a little curiosity after a bratty little baby moment and look, start looking at, Hmm, what brought that on? What brought that up? 

You know, and that’s what I coached this mom through and that’s what we got to. And we got to something pretty deep. We got to something pretty, pretty deep that had to do with her growing up as an only child with a single mom. And she’s like, at the end, she’s like, like, who knew we were going to get there?

And I was like, yeah, but if you had just been stuck in beating yourself up that you should know how to show up as a perfect parent and a perfect person, because you’ve been here studying for so many years and you didn’t give yourself a little bit of a hall pass. Oh, I had a human bratty little baby moment. Okay, that happened, right? If you hadn’t come here for some support, so we could maybe look at what was going on and get to the root of what led to the bratty little baby moment. Um, you wouldn’t, we wouldn’t have been able to connect all these dots. 

And so I don’t think we’re able to get there unless we start to release all that pressure, right? Just because you’ve been listening to podcasts like this and maybe reading lots of books and maybe watching lots of social media clips and trying to memorize all the ways you can show up as a perfect parent until you start to realize like that. Is not, is that is not going to help you show up perfectly. You’re still going to have the human moments. And it’s really more about that surrender of, okay. And that happened. Hmm.

One of my favorite tools that I want, I would love for y’all to put in your toolboxes. Hmm. I call it my curious puppy. Hmm. What was going on there? What was really coming up for me there? If we can bring a teeny tiny bit of curiosity well, then we can get to what led to the bratty little baby moment and we can start to connect some dots. And when we start to connect the dots out of those moments, we have less of those moments in the future. 

Doesn’t mean we’re never gonna have those bratty little baby moments I don’t know. I still have them. I still have them. They make for great stories Right. they make me laugh after the fact.

So after her coaching lots of the moms in my in my groups on all of the different threads that we communicate on, they all started to sharing that they had sneaky perfectionism. And it was interesting because it looked different for different moms. So one of the moms left this message and several other moms said that this really nailed it for them. So I thought I would share this with all of you. 

she said, I totally relate to bristling when Randi mentions perfectionism. For me, it’s more of a, I’m not good enough to be a perfectionist. And I’m realizing that it’s not that I feel I have to be perfect consciously. It’s that I beat myself up brutally when things don’t go the way I anticipated. And then I blame and shame myself. Subconsciously, right, the invisible way she blames and shames herself. And then it makes me irritated and mad and that is perfectionism.

Now let me say the invisible blaming and shaming might look like all of a sudden binge eating. You find yourself in your pantry and you’re binge eating like handfuls of cookies or you had made a commitment that you weren’t going to drink a bottle of wine every night and you, and you haven’t been drinking for a couple of weeks and then you find yourself pouring yourself, you know, that third glass of wine. So sometimes the blaming and shaming is we fall into certain over behaviors that, that that we’re not sure how we got there. And usually, um, I think that that all can be connected. 

So it’s just something to bring your little curious puppy, you know, in, Hmm, instead of, Oh, what is wrong with me? Why do I do that? I said, I wasn’t going to eat all that, or I was not going to drink all that. And instead of staying in the blame and shame, bringing that curious puppy to what was really going on. What was underneath that? Okay. 

So she says, so it makes me irritated and mad and that is perfectionism, right? Beating herself up brutally when things don’t go the way she anticipated. She blames herself. It’s all my fault. I should know better. I’ve been here learning for years. What is wrong with me? You know, you talk to yourself in those ways that you would never talk to someone you love. 

She says, so I’m really trying to notice and embrace my human moments. And when I feel my inner bully part beating me up and beating and being judgmental, I’m going to try and recognize it for what it is and have compassion for myself. I might need to develop a mantra around it. Like, see, Randi, I’m not a perfectionist. And so she said, I was like, I’ll take the hit. I’ll take the hit. You can blame me. 

So like when I say, Hmm, I think it’s sneaky perfectionism, all these moms were like, it makes them bristle. They’re like, I’m not a perfectionist. I’m not one of those people. But then they realize thinking that you are never allowed to have bratty little baby moments, thinking that you need to be a perfect parent and memorize the script and you’ve been studying and you know what to do. And then having those human moments when you don’t do it and feeling like, you know, it’s like shame on you. You should know better. That is sneaky perfectionism. 

So I don’t know who else feels like this was the message that you needed today, but apparently lots of my Masterminders have needed this message this week and this has been our conversation. So I thought I would share it with you here. 

And maybe we need to start a movement of embracing our inner bratty little baby selves because sometimes we just are going to be that way. And it, you know, what we resist persists, as they say. So the more we shame and blame ourselves for that, rather than, Hmm, that happened. What was really going on? What was coming up for me? Right? Bringing some of that curious puppy ness to the mix, I think helps us to have way less of these moments. 

And when those moments arise, maybe we can even just bring a little humor to it afterwards. Um, we were laughing on the call with the mom who had the bratty little baby moment about the slime. Um, she was definitely laughing about it at the end of it. And I think, you know, look, I think humor is healing. I think anytime we can bring a little bit of humor when we reflect and look back and realize like this is, we don’t have to be serious as a heart attack really. Like our kids are going to be okay even when we have bratty little baby moments sometimes.

So that’s what I’ve got for you all this week and yeah, have a great one. Bye.

 Thanks for listening today, guys. I hope you picked up some tips, tools, maybe some baby steps for creating more balance and boundaries in your life. And I just wanted to let you know, if you want to continue moving the needle forward in creating this for yourself, having a happier household, I want you to go to my website and check out mastermindparenting.com. We have three beginning programs, and if you need some accountability and more support then please look for the one that would be a good fit for you.

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