Episode 52- Positive Parenting Tricks with Malva Gasowski

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the kids sleep show, where we help tired parents from around the world to get their children to fall asleep independently, sleep through the night and build healthy sleep habits for life.
I’m your
host, Courtney Zentz. Now let’s sleep together. All right, thanks, everyone for joining the kids sleep show. I am excited today to be joined by special guest malba Gus koski. She is joining us and is going to talk all things positive parenting. So first and foremost, thank you. And welcome to the show. Why don’t we kick things off by telling our listeners a little bit more about you your background and what it is that you do in the space of working to make mothers and all of them in the family happy and positive.
Thank you very much, Courtney, for having me. Well, hello, everyone. Thank you for tuning in. Like you said, my name is Malika Celski, I’m a mom of three. So just that she’ll tell you I understand juggling. And I understand the whole concept of Oh my god, what am I doing here? I’m a mom. But to top that off, I have a background in sociology and psychology and child development and project management and communication. Having said that, my background is counseling and actually helping people with psychotherapy and whatnot. And so I was equipped Well, at least I thought I was eclipsed. I always say I had 1,000,002 theories about parenting, how kids develop, what parents should do, and so on and so forth until I had my own children. And then I realized all right now I have three kids and zero theories, because everything depends on the child, the mother’s mood and everything around us. So my approach has kind of evolved from the quote unquote, young no at all to the I understand life is hard. Let’s try to figure it out and make it as easy as possible for everyone. And that is where my area of speciality and expertise is right now. I call it under, it’s under the umbrella of communication, which means positive parenting also means being a positive worker, being a positive stay at home mom, being in a positive relationship with my partner, even if my partner is my ex, okay. So all of this goes down to you need to know how to communicate you with yourself, you your own needs, you with your children, you with your partner, your ex, your boss, and even your business. cooperative’s if you do run a business, and if you’re an entrepreneur, everything does break down to good planning, understanding, prioritizing and communicating because no one has a glass ball, neither do your kids, nor do you and you sometimes find yourself thinking and wishing someone would read your mind. And I tried to debunk that.
That’s amazing. Yeah, I was actually just taking a couple of notes. Because things I think, as a parent, for me, resonates right, like my mood or behavior, or my views on that given day really depends on what’s going on around me. And I think, you know, in my space with what I do with, you know, pediatric sleep coaching, it’s like, if the parent is loud or angry kids feed off that right, so then they’re louder angry, right? And I always say, like, calm be, you know, calm breeds calm. You know, but really, I think positivity is negativity, I should say the other way around, seems like to be infectious, right. And I think positivity can be infectious as well. But I feel like we as I don’t know, maybe just I don’t know, if it’s a generational thing about like, I think it was thrive on negativity, which I think is terrible. You know, so it’s almost, you know, just taking a different perspective at it, I think it’s so interesting to get to have the positive, like, my glass is half full. And here are all of those great, you know, things that as a parent I can be proud of and positive about. And sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes you got to, you know, eat a little crowd, as they say to, for your children, show them a different side of it’s very easy to be like this stinks and COVID is terrible, and all these people are dying, but like to a six year old, what does that look like? Right? Right, you know, so I definitely think the past six, seven months had been interesting in the overall realm of trying to be positive in a crazy world. You know, but I certainly love that perspective on it. How did you get into, you know, kind of working with parents, right as as a coach, and tell me a little bit about the way in which you work with families, mothers, and you know, the the clients that you see kind of how do you how do you work with families and how has that changed since March?
Well,
I just want to go back to what you said before I answer your question. You are a sleep coach. So one of the best things that you do is actually help Eric parents understand the process of the sleep when it comes to the children and that kind of ties into what I just said that how You feel as a mom or as a parent is exactly your your kids are going to reflect that and mirror that. And just to kind of touch base and make it more realistic to every parent listening to this mom, dad, have you ever been in a situation where you thought you have everything ideally planned, the babysitter is to come at 815 you are to leave at 830 because at nine you have a movie to see your child generally sleeps at eight, everything is planned and you think it’s going to work fantastic. And all of a sudden, you’ve got that excitement and anxiety going on in your body and your child. For some reason, this is exactly the day that he or she is not going to sleep at the exact time where they should. Well, this is exactly what I mean your children feed off you. So that’s why everything depends on you. And so what I do is I try to help parents, not only moms, but dads as well understand that children sometimes have a different perspective, children feed off of energy, because that is where they, that’s where their super power is they feed off of your heart rate, they feed off of the way you’re talking to them. And sometimes just sometimes, because you’re stressed at work, they try to seek your attention because they want to help you, but it comes off the wrong way as if they’re needy. And you’re like why don’t you just leave me alone, but they’re really trying to help you Mommy, can you give me a cuddle? Mommy, can
you spend some time with me, because they know in the past, when mommy spent time with me, she was happy when mommy read me a book, she was happy. And now she’s upset. So I’m going to push her into doing so in order to make her happy. So very often children have an attempt at helping us parents balance our working life and balance our emotions, but they do it in such a way that they come off as needy were de facto is there just trying to be helpful. And as parents, we need to understand that sometimes the words that we say or the phrases that we say are misinterpreted by our children and vice versa, what our children say might be misinterpreted by us. And this is where our war worlds kind of collided. I just recently because we as parents, if we have children that are a little bit older, by older I mean they did go to a care system by care. I mean anything from daycare, nursery, preschool, school, high school, college, okay, so care away from us. And then we also went into care away from the home, which means work, or our gym, or pool or whatever areas we had outside of the home. And we had that breather period of Alright, I’m going to miss my kids, I’m going to miss my spouse, I’m going to miss home, I’m going to miss mom, and our worlds collided and all of that crumbled under one roof. Which means if you wanted to go to the movies, you have to watch it together on the sofa, if you wanted to exercise you have to kind of plan it into your day, if you had to work you have to work from from home, if you have to go to school, you have to school from home, and so on and so forth. And all of a sudden, we didn’t have that. breather, that alone time that even that, that 30 minutes in the car when you’re listening to your music loudly as a parent and you don’t have Mom, Mom Mom all the time. So that those things, we just realized how important they were in our everyday life. And we we had that taken away from us. And it is a new era of parenting. And I help parents constantly I have calls, online calls or phone calls or messages where I chat with parents and I try to help them first and foremost, I’ve been saying this since February, stay safe and staying sane. Everything else is gonna be fine. Okay, that extra load of laundry that’s been lying there for a week. If it’s not wet, it’s fine. Okay, let it be just stop stressing over that that extra layer of dust, it’s fine. Most important is that you’re safe, you’re healthy. And you’re saying because our sanity really got a kick with. It’s so easy to be negative, it is really easy to be negative, it’s really easy to fault ourselves, the system, the world, the universe, you name it. But it’s so difficult to to value the things that we have. And this is a practice that I advise all parents to do every day and consciously with themselves and consciously with their children, even towards their children. Very often when our children get a bad grade an F or a one whatever the school system is we’re like, oh, why did you get that grade? But we don’t say why did you get a plus? or Why did you get an A right so very often should parents even concentrate on the negatives. That is why children concentrate on the negatives as well. So it is our conscious decision every day to practice positivity and gratitude because we have a lot of things to be grateful for. The fact that you and I met today and neither of us have an oxygen tank connected to our body. That is amazing. The fact that we were able to talk today because of the internet. That’s amazing. Imagine COVID in 1850, when you’re the only people that you can talk to are the pigs in the in the barn. Hey, this is good. Yeah. So again, there are a lot of things that we can be grateful for, we just have to open our eyes and remove the negativity filter from our vision and our talk. And then see that positive parenting in the sense of informed positivity and understanding psychological and developmental areas of our children will make it so much easier for us.
That is such an important perspective. Now, I think, you know, for me in March, I was here all day with my children, I was running my own company schooling, babysitting, playing daycare, you name it, like we were doing all the things, right. And it was very quick to be negative. And then I looked at it and like, you know, what we started, we started a family walk every night, we never would have done that. I never would have done that, you know, and I get it, you know, and I realized I was doing all these things, but I wasn’t present. So I was here all day, but I was not present with my kids. And they were packing me My mom had assigned when I was a kid that said, having children is like being pecked to death by a chicken. And my kids were picking me all day, you know, and I would get that point where like, I am busy. I’m on a call, I’m recording a podcast right now, you know, like, stay out. And, you know, now I’m just like, you know, what it is what it is? Like? Is it gonna flow my podcast if a four year old walks in? No, it’s the reality of life. You know? So I’ve kind of taken my own self like less seriously, right? And have just opened up to like, what are my kids going through? You know, how are they processing this because as adults, we know what’s happening, but like our children don’t. And they are a reflection of what we’re putting out in the world. Like we made it kind of a rule in our house. Like we don’t turn the news on, we just don’t turn us off because I don’t like my son will see like a six year old died from COVID. I’m like, okay, like, let’s, you know, yes, that’s a reality. But in our home, like that takes a different sensitivity level, because I was sick for a year and I have very sick and my son equates people being sick to dying, and mommy was sick, and mommy might die. So like, for us six to trigger in our house. And so I like we’re just gonna block that, like mommy’s not sick. None of us are sick. We’re all healthy. We’re doing all the right things that we can do as best we can. Right? to hopefully, you know, prevent things from happening. But that positivity, I think is so important. Like we started to be mindful of our behaviors and our attitudes and that gratefulness. Right, like, I’m grateful we started a neighborhood kickball week, you know, like, we never would have done that, you know, we do neighborhood walk. Like I saw more people in my neighborhood since March than I’ve ever met in the five years I’ve lived here.
And it’s
so amazing to me.
Right? It is so amazing. Especially, you know, I know, some people might not like me for saying these words. But I think that there are so many positive things that come out of COVID for families, of course, no, not those that went through tragedy. But again, you know, airplanes are amazing, because we can travel from one part of the world to the other part of the world in a very quick and short area time span. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t accidents. Yes, there are. So will I hate airplanes and never want to go on them? No, of course not. But do I feel sorry for the people that been in an airplane accident? Yes, of course. So the same approach I tried to put around this area meaning thank goodness for all of the things that was I was able to do to have to experience with my family with my neighbors and in like close the area of society as opposed to traveling the world because I wouldn’t have done half of the things that I had done had it not been for this this lockdown and other things. So again, trying to find the good in the things that we’re doing. Furthermore, I it’s quite interesting, what you said is that you had the possibility to implement new habits or new routines within your family. And very often parents. When they don’t do that, they realize well, we’re just stuck at home well Don’t be just stuck, make that stuck into something fun, right? Let’s do everyday board games or every week board games or let’s have the possibility to create a game or there are so many things that you can do even online to show your kids that we can have a lot of fun. Like zoom parties are amazing for children. You There are even animators who do zoom parties online and it’s great because it gives you the possibility to have a different perspective and still have some fun. But then again, like you said, we have some parents and my myself included I am guilty of that. We have some parents who are so concentrated on trying to keep up to whatever they consider perfect and then it’s it’s it’s an irritation when you can hear children in the background. Or when a four year old comes in, or when I’m having a recording and someone’s baby starts crying, I’m like, that’s fine. Bring her in just just, it’s better for you to cuddle that child than to have her screaming bloody murder, two steps away in the background, okay, so there are things that we have to understand. And it actually brought a humane face to a lot of the professionals. Because looking at you, you look very pretty right now I have the privilege to actually see Courtney. And very often, we also compared ourselves to the Hollywood Bollywood team of people styling one person’s hair, and then all of a sudden, 90% of the interviews that are done right now are via zoom, and we see Oh, okay, so these people look normal to you, but they don’t have those stylists. So that kind of brought in a new reality. When it comes to our psychology of comparison, like, okay, it’s not as disproportional as we thought it was, because those people have a team to look pretty and I don’t and now when I look at those people that don’t have a team anymore, and neither do I, I’m like, okay, so it’s not as bad. So there are a lot of things that are positive when it comes to our mentality and our environment, and even our self worth, that are happening because of the lockdown and the COVID situation. So I believe there are a lot of things that we could look at and say, okay, that’s not as bad as I thought it would be.
Yeah, I think it’s interesting. I’ve done a lot more work since March on mindset, right? tapping into my subconscious. I’m reading, like three different books going every night. Like it depends on what night I feel, you know, tapping into the subconscious and mindset and mind work. Like we’ve started meditating, we use a little Zen animal, it’s called every night it’s my favorite product. My girlfriend Anna designed it but like we do mindset meditations every night as a family. That’s a new thing. My husband calls them ablutions. We do our ablutions every night, you know, as a family. Like, I’m actually I’m using a virtual background, which again, I know, nobody can see today, because I started to paint my office. So half my walls white, half my walls blue, I didn’t finish it yet. You know what I? Okay, so I’ll use a virtual background. And I’m in a fancy modern chic office today, you know, and it’s kind of fun.
I was gonna do my office is in my garage, right now, my car got kicked out of the garage, and I had to repaint my garage, and I have an heater here because it’s starting to get chilly. And that is where my office is. It used to be in a fancy place where it no longer is. So my office is in my garage, it’s got a camera. And look, this is my garage, you would never say because it’s all widen, with flowers, and it looks pretty. Again, make it work. Really just stay safe and stay sane. That’s all that matters. Make sure that your mentality is rather let’s have fun with the things that I can have fun with. And if it’s not perfect. Oh, well, like, Yeah,
I think that’s the part like, Oh, well, like it’s okay. I mean, I’d love for your perspective mobile on. Like his parents listening to this right. Many are tired. Many right? doing many of trying to do all the things be all the things be the teacher, be the professional, be the mom, you know? And like, what would be, I guess, in your perspective, the best things that they could do, once they take that deep breath and go, Okay, what in the situation? can I control? Right? Now, based on that? How can I incorporate this in to release the negativity to release the overwhelm? And just, again, any forward momentum is still forward momentum, right. And I think we forget that. And sometimes we’re like, we have to do all of these things and make it beautiful. And it’s like, just take a step forward. Because guess what that means you’re one step closer to moving forward than you were yesterday. Right. Right. Well, I love kind of your thoughts on like, when you coach, you know, parents and a lot of obviously females. But like, as you coach parents and say, like, here’s where you are today, all the things seem like a dumpster fire.
Let’s start here. Right? What would be like a couple actionable tips for parents right now that are going I don’t even know where to plan. I don’t know what to prioritize, right? Like, where do you have somebody start so that they feel I think that small when that small sense of accomplishment to start the journey to move forward into it, frankly, I think a different mindset.
Right? So there are many things that are coming into my head right now as you’re asking this question. So I’m going to try to go slowly through them. The first one is the name of my company is coaching mother and all Why? Because I help mothers and all other people, so grandparents, educators and so on. But also I am a mother and all the other things being thrown at me, right? So I’m a mother, I’m a cleaning lady. I’m an ironing lady. I’m a cook, I’m a bake. I’m a businesswoman. I’m an entrepreneur, and I’m sometimes a business trainer. So I go into corporations and I train them. And it seems like a lot. My goodness, you’re wearing a lot of hats. It’s true. I can be whoever I want and so can any one of you listening, but that doesn’t mean you have to be that same thing at a given moment at the same time. Okay, this is one thing that I would like every single parents to understand right now parent and corporate workers, meaning you don’t have to do everything at the same time. I know that in the past there was this, oh, if you’re multitasking, then you’re awesome. Are you really, if I’m hot on a zoom call with you, I’m cooking soup. And I’m stressing out that it’s going to overflow. My children are crying because they need a diaper change and the oven is beeping because the bread is in there. Am I really doing a good job? I personally would judge that as too much. It’s hectic, okay, instead of an hour and a half talking on a podcast, make it 30 minutes, instead of cooking the soup and having a podcast, you know, maybe delegated husband? Why don’t you do the soup? And that’s fine, too. And then why don’t you take 1520 minutes to play with your kids and just actually be there. So when I say be grateful and be mindful, I mean, be present in the moment with your kids, and with your partner and with yourself. Whatever it is that you’re doing, say, Honey, Mommy needs five minutes to do something. And they’ll understand that when mom when you say Mommy, can I talk to you, and you’ll say sure, I’ll come in five minutes, then they’ll know you’ll give them the same respect as you were giving to your work. So if your email requires you to write it down 10 minutes, and then you devote 10 minutes to your children, they’ll know, I leave me alone when she’s writing an email, then she’s going to leave everything else alone, and she’s going to devote that time to me, right. So it is creating this balance of respect for responsibility and time and respecting your work. respecting your own time and respecting your kids is something that I would like every parent to understand that this is when what it means when I say be mindful, be mindful and be grateful for what you have. Because I guarantee every single parent, if you lose any of the things that are driving you crazy today, you are going to long for them. Okay? Meaning if your child goes away for two weeks, let’s remember that you’re going to long for them, you’re going to miss them, you’re going to say Oh, where are they? Why is it so quiet here, if you are no longer able to cook that soup, because your stove is broken for the next two weeks, trust me, you’re going to long for that homemade soup, and so on and so forth. The same goes for on when it comes to your work. So all the things that are driving you crazy, it just means you are not devoting all of your attention to them to make them pleasurable for you. Even cleaning can be pleasurable if you have the time to do so and listen to some music while you’re doing so. So when I am ever found in a hectic situation, and whenever the parents that are found in a hectic situation that I coach, I always say you know what, there was a little rule that I was taught when I was a little girl. When I went to school firemen came to my house, it’s not to my house went to my school and they said whenever your house is on fire, and whenever you catch fire, it’s stopped dropping roll. Which means you stop what you’re doing. You drop on the roll, you roll to put out the fire not to give it any oxygen. And then I transferred that into something that I work with my parents and I say stop dropping listen. So whenever you’re doing anything and you see a quote unquote fire, this hectic fire of emotions, your children are screaming soup is overflowing and phone is ringing. The dog is barking Okay, so stop, stop whatever you’re doing. Drop means go to the level of your kids. assess the situation. If no one’s being hurt, then the soup can wait. If the dog is barking and it’s not tearing down the house, it can wait. If someone’s knocking, they can wait in someone’s calling they can wait. Okay, assess what can wait and what cannot, most likely your children cannot. So you say you drop to their level and say what can I do for you? Okay, and then with that is when you listen, even if you don’t like what you’re hearing, sometimes you’re all day at home. And then your kids say, Mom, you you haven’t spent any time with me and you want to pull your hair out of your head because you were trying so hard to color with them to do their homework and to answer all their emails. But what they’re really trying to say is pay attention. Only me. So that is what I mean. Stop, drop and roll is what the firemen say I say stop, drop and listen. Listen to what they’re trying to say. And know that sometimes it is your fault. Meaning if you are on your phone and you don’t listen to what your children are saying they will start acting up because they this is what they learned that they can do in order to get your full and undivided attention. And the question is, what do you want to teach your kids? If you want to teach your kids that if they throw playdough on the wall that is when you pay attention to them, then that’s going to be a problem but if you show them that as long as they say mommy I’m here then you will listen. That is exactly what is going to be safe space for you. in your home,
I love that I love, love, love the analogy. And I think that’s fantastic. And I wanted to take a minute malva to have you just talk a little bit about how you work with parents, the way the coaching works and where people can find you both on social and on your websites. If they were interested, I’ll obviously be sure to link all of this in the show notes. But I would love you to tell us a little bit more about how folks find you and how they can work with you.
Thank you so very much for asking. I work online mostly. So any online sessions like today, we’re having a quote, quote unquote, coaching session like a podcast recording, but that’s exactly how I work with parents and they get, they get worksheets, they get notes, they get reminders on their, on their fridge to kind of remind them in between the sessions, what actionable steps they need to implement. Like I said, My company is coaching mother and all.com. So you can you can grab me there also hashtag melva guess auskey or hashtag work with Malveaux with a V ma L. va. It’s quite easy that way, because I know I have a difficult night. So hashtag works with Malika and you’re able to find me either on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or my own web page.
I love it. Thank
you so much. This has been awesome. I know I could talk to you. I feel like so much more. And hopefully we’ll stay connected. And yes, please. I’ll share everything with you now. But I appreciate you jumping on today. And for all the listeners Be sure to reach out to Melba follow, she is a ball of positivity and I know you can see her now but her beautiful face is shining. So thank you for Thank you for having me. Thank
you everyone for listening.
And I appreciate it. And I’ll share everything with you shortly. Thank you. Hold on. One more thing before you go. As a valued listener of the kids sleep show, I want to help you build a great sleeper not just in the times you’re listening to the show. But all day every day. Every week of the year. I have a new Facebook group called slumber Made Simple. It’s a place to gather with other parents looking for sleep support, laughs and the latest in sleep research to build a family that is rested and at their best day in and day out. If you want to be part of the community where you can get free sleep support, weekly training sessions, unbelievable content and so much more. Head on over to tiny transitions.com forward slash community. That’s tiny transitions.com forward slash community or head over to Facebook and search slumber Made Simple. drop me a note and let me know when you join. I can’t wait to see you there.