Uncommonly Good Common Sense Parenting Advice

Do you have a child who is strong-willed or highly sensitive?  Abigail Wald, mentor and advocate for parents of strong-willed and highly sensitive children, shares her experience and insights.  Visit her website.

Emmalou Penrod
Welcome to In Support of Families. And today I’m talking to Abigail Wald, and she is a mentor and advocate for parents of strong-willed and highly sensitive children. Abigail, welcome.

Abigail Wald
Thank you for having me. I’m really glad to be here. Emmalou. Thank you,

Emmalou Penrod
I am excited to learn how you became a mentor and advocate. I’ve worked as a teacher. I’ve worked with children who are strong-willed or highly sensitive. So I can tell this is going to be an interesting story. Yeah.

Abigail Wald
Well, you know, I think that before I had children, I didn’t understand enough that each kind of child, not only each child, but also each kind of child, that there were different kinds of children. That there were kind of like how people have different kinds of marriages, different kinds of jobs, right? So it really actually makes a difference. And that it’s not just what the parent brings to the equation, but that the child is bringing their own story, their own temperament. And this was not something that I fully understood before I had children. I guess I just thought, you know, my child was going to be who they were, and of course, they’d have their own personality, but that, you know, that we had the ability to shape them in parenting. And I don’t know, to be quite honest, I don’t even know if I thought that far. Like, I just thought, I’m going to love this person, and they’re going to love me, and we’re gonna have a great time. You know, I don’t know that I thought much beyond that. And then I had two boys back to back who are now 12 and 14. And my oldest is strong-willed and highly sensitive, with the emphasis being on the strong will, and my youngest is strong-willed and highly sensitive, with the emphasis being on the highly sensitive. I do believe that they are flip sides of a coin, I should say. And in fact, I think that coin is even more complicated than that. It’s more like a decahedron. With like, a lot of difference. And, yeah, so my kids dragged me kicking and screaming into this world, I should say, and I have risen. And now I love it. So that’s really the real truth.

Emmalou Penrod
I just need to comment that I think most parents go into it with the same attitude. They just know, I’m gonna love this child. They’re gonna love me. It’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be wonderful. And then, and it is interesting too, even though both of your children are strong willed and highly sensitive. They’re not identical.

Abigail Wald
No, absolutely not. And I do find that the way each child expresses that kind of temperament, then that’s all also filtered through the child’s personality and needs and experiences. And so yeah, there are a lot of different levels to what comprises temperament, and then what comprises the child’s experience. And then our experience as the parent and that’s really my love is helping parents optimize both their children’s temperament, but also that parent’s experience of parenthood, right, and that child’s experience of childhood.

Emmalou Penrod
And so I am gathering that you went through quite a learning curve yourself. As you were raising these two boys.

Abigail Wald
Yeah, I mean, let me make this easy for you. Emmalou, I absolutely sucked at it. I was horrible. I hit a wall. I hit. I broke, I broke, okay. You know, I will often say a strong willed child. . . So, you know, I sometimes say to people, like, I’ll be in a room full of, you know, several, 100 parents and I’ll say, “Do you have a strong-willed child?” And some of the people their hands just shoot up right away. And some people go like, kind of and then a few people just don’t raise their hand I go, “Listen, if your hand didn’t shoot up right away. It’s a no.” You know, I’m joking, right? Of course, there are kids who can be somewhat strong-willed and yes, that exists. But at the end of the day, for those parents who have strong-willed kids, you know it and you know it quickly, you might have even in the womb, if you are carrying them yourself, they make their personality known. And the highly sensitive child is also strong-willed. And that actually can take a little more time to see, interestingly. So there is some room there, but but the truth of the matter is, I always tell parents, if you’re getting into a lot of power struggles with a kid, first of all, it’s not just the kid, right? It’s also the parent, you know, I always think of this like, you know, ODD, oppositional defiance disorder. I say it’s a disorder of a relationship, not of a person, right? It’s really a relationship that’s disordered Yes. And it’s complex, because there’s always, what is the person opposing? You know, there’s always two sides to that, and have we taught that person how to co-create with others? So that’s a whole other complicated discussion. But what I would say to you is, when a parent is face to face with a toddler, and any parent, like power struggle, right with this child, that child has nothing to lose other than their own dignity and doing things the way you want. And they’ve got all the time in the world to have this conversation with you, and they have far more energy than you have. So if you’re going to engage in a power struggle with a strong-willed child, you’re going to lose. They don’t have to wash the dishes. They don’t have other kids they need to deal with. They don’t have a job to get to. For them, their dignity is on the line, and they’re gonna fight until it’s over. And that usually means until you lose, that’s the truth. That doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with that child. They’re actually fighting for something really beautiful, which is their dignity, and also to help us become better people. And I have found over the process that at first, it broke me, it confused me, it devastated me, I was in grief that I couldn’t figure this out. And then I just, like, started to break open instead of just break. And I started to listen to my children. And I started to learn what wasn’t happening. And then I started to learn how to listen to them. And then I learned how to actually affect change. And that was crucial for me, because I didn’t want to be a parent who just listened like, Okay, I’m just going to give you what you want. I’m just going to listen and love you like, that wasn’t enough for me. And honestly, I don’t think it would have served my children well, no, right?

Emmalou Penrod
No, no, not at all. I love the way you put that you broke open. That is so empowering. And you learned. You started paying closer attention, not just to give them what they want, take the easy way out, but to learn how you can better serve them. That’s beautiful. I love that.

Abigail Wald
Yeah, thank you. It was a really genuinely beautiful process. And it changed my life forever. It absolutely changed every single thing about my life.

Emmalou Penrod
It would. it would be a total, not just a mind shift, but a heart, heart and mind. You both had to change.

Abigail Wald
Absolutely, absolutely. And I call it mind flips. There were a series of mind flips that I really started to understand. And I started to understand the nature of transformation itself, which really is parenting, right? Like, what does it mean to be able to have a child come to you and say, “Absolutely not, I’m not getting in the pool.” And you’re like, Okay, well, I know that for this child’s well being I need to teach this child how to swim at some point. That’s a very important value, let’s say for me and my family, right? But I’ve got a strong-willed, highly sensitive child who’s saying no, so I could sit here and fight all I want and miss every swim lesson possible. Or I could actually begin to listen and go, Oh, the temperature of the water for you. Oh, it’s too many people. It’s too noisy, huh? Well, here’s my value. Okay, how can we transform this moment into one where. . . Here’s the thing about strong-willed children. They are deeply wise but they are not experienced. So they have no. . . I’ve loved this term that when I was speaking with Julia. She referenced a friend of hers, I think Dina. Oh, gosh, I wish I could remember her name right now. Oh, I’m so sorry, Dina, that I can’t remember your last name. But she referenced a term that her friend Dina and taught her which was the “event horizon,” and how children don’t have an event horizon. They can’t go forth and say, You know, I’ve experienced X, Y and Z so like, I know my ice cream falling on the floor is not like the worst thing in the world. I know that there are worse things. I know that it’s happened before. I know I can pick it up. I know I can earn enough money to get another one. I know we can ask kindly. I never can solve this problem. Children don’t have that. And strong-willed children especially don’t have, also not just the event horizon, they also don’t have the temperament with which to handle that failure with ease. And so, you know, that’s why you get such a combustible situation, right? And so, if you can actually learn how to be the event horizon for your child, and you can actually learn how to listen to them, and how to earn their trust, you can actually become their bridge to transformation. And they will, as I say, hire you to parent them. Does that make sense?

Emmalou Penrod
Hire you to parent them? Because you have established that trust. You have shown them that you can understand them and you can help them bridge.

Abigail Wald
That’s right.

Emmalou Penrod
Oh, yeah.

Abigail Wald
Yeah, because at the end of the day, parenting is a consensual act. And we don’t talk about that. We think of parenting as, I’m your parent. You’ve got to accept that I’m in charge. You’ve got to learn to listen. But at the end of the day, there are some kids who will do that, but certainly not a strong-willed, highly sensitive kid. And if you’re not lucky, by the age of 12, though, they’ll fire you, essentially, and you’re still paying for everything. And so you actually need to build that consensus, you need to have them be wanting you in their life, because they see you are of benefit. And you as the parent, get to see that you actually can change the arc of their behavior. I can actually have you land in different places, because you allow me in and you allow me to mold you. It’s really a cocreation. And when you’re in that space in parenting, not only is the child getting what they need, but the parent is getting the intellectual and spiritual stimulation and the return on the investment that a parent needs in order to not feel so exhausted all the time.

Emmalou Penrod
What a gift. Wonderful. So I don’t even need to ask how you help families, I can hear it with this beautiful perspective of seeing parenting as a partnership. You’re forming a partnership with your child.

Abigail Wald
Absolutely, there’s no other way with a strong willed child, right?

Emmalou Penrod
You’re not molding a lump of clay, you’re working with another human being.

Abigail Wald
Yeah. And, and here’s the thing, parents have wisdom, we have wisdom and experience. And that matters. But we don’t get to force it upon our children. We have to make them want it. You know, much the way like a company gets you to want their brand of tea. You know, they can’t even if you would love that brand of tea, if they showed up and said you have to drink this, you’d be like, No, thank you. Okay, but instead they make it enticing. And that’s what parents have to learn how to do is how can I literally, like market my wisdom to you? So that you can actually want to learn and let it be your story, not mine? Let it be about your joy of learning. Let it be about how you love to transform and not I’m going to get to mold you. Right? Yes, that’s when we’re creating beautiful people who can take on the world and Gosh, knows we need them to take on the world at this point.

Emmalou Penrod
And the parent is helping them find their purpose in life and helping them on their journey.

Abigail Wald
Exactly.

Emmalou Penrod
Ah, so do you help with. . . Do you do one on one coaching, classes? What do you do?

Abigail Wald
I cannot do one on one coaching anymore, because I’ve had so many parents that I’ve worked with over the many, many years. And so there are two different reasons that I don’t do that. So one is I literally don’t have the time. It’s not the best use of everything that I know. Okay, so yeah, I need to be able to work with 1000s and 1000s of parents at a time. And so, because this information needs to get out there. This information is literally life saving. It’s life saving for the children. It’s life saving for the parents. And we have an epidemic of anxiety, depression, suicide in our children today that are so sensitive, and they are so overwhelmed and this was even before the pandemic. You know, it’s many factors coming into play that have really changed the story for our children. And we have to understand that they are not living in the same world we were growing up in. It is a fundamentally different world. And so when we say, you know, well, I wasn’t like that, or, you know, whatever, it’s meaningless. It doesn’t matter, these children are here for now. And they need support. So number one, we have to help these children who are growing up with low self esteem, with tremendous amounts of anxiety, because remember, I said it was a decahedron. So anxiety is one of the faces, you have that strong-willed, highly sensitive child. And so this is a child who is much more likely to be anxious. This is a child who, if they are unoptimized, we could be looking at some very unfortunate future trajectories, right? And we’re talking about eating disorders, suicide, drugs, you know, all sorts of things that I don’t even necessarily need to go into, video game addiction, failure to launch, failure to thrive, all sorts of things, right? We don’t need more children in that space, quite frankly. So that’s one piece of it. Another piece of it is that our parents today are tired. Our parents are exhausted. And again, this is even prepandemic. But now, I mean, how many parents just feel like, I give up, like, the world is asking too much of me. I can’t raise these children, and have a job and pretend that I’m single, unable to work out and eat well. You know, it’s just, I can’t do all of this anymore. And so our parents desperately need help. They need proven ways that work to connect with these children that don’t tell them all the old things. You know, all of the old parenting strategies that have been around forever and make parents feel bad, or like there’s something wrong with me or wrong with my kid, you know, or feel like they have to keep up with 90 different podcasts and 90 different books and 90 different ways of being and this one says, do a timeout, and this one says, don’t do a timeout. And this one says that, you know, a lot of. . . What I help parents understand is, there’s no answer but your answer. Your answer is the only right answer. And until you write your book, you don’t know what works for your family. And that’s what I do is I come in, and I personally help people write their book, but I do it on a large scale. So I’ll explain to you what that means. And by the way, the other reason that I work this way is that I realized that parents didn’t just need the information, and they didn’t just need my touch, my help personalizing the information, they also needed each other. Community is huge. And we don’t have community. Too many of us are hiding in our families, hiding in our homes, you know, presenting some picture on Instagram, but the reality looks quite different. And we don’t know what it’s like to listen to each other’s True Stories anymore. And too many of these parents are surrounded by people who don’t have strong-willed highly sensitive kids and go, “Well, gosh, you know, I tried out that lullaby and it worked. I don’t know, gosh, have you thought of closing the windows? You know, maybe if you get some felt on your windows and make it dark? Have you tried all that? Yeah, I don’t know. You know, kids really need to sleep. It’s very important for them. It’s important for their brain development. You should really get him to sleep.” And all sorts of things that they tell you to do with a strong-willed child, that you’re like, Are you kidding? Do you know I’ve been doing this for three years, like, I can’t get this child thinking, that child doesn’t want to take a nap. Do you know what I mean? Or whatever it is that your strong-willed child doesn’t want to do, right? And so, parents keep hearing the same things over and over. And it’s not until they are in a community with a bunch of other parents with strong-willed highly sensitive kids who look at them. And for the first time these parents feel not gaslit by the world. Somebody gets it. Somebody knows, right? So not just me, who knows and can then actually help them out of it, but people who at least can acknowledge, “Hey, me, too.” Right? That’s huge. Huge. So in any case, the the long and short of it is the way I work with people, I offer a six month mentorship twice a year, usually in October and February. Sometimes the timing is different. And it’s a six month mentorship where I give people an entire basically MFA in parenting. I joke it’s an MFA in parenting, right Mother Flipping Awesome, but also literally a Master of Fine Arts and you are learning everything you need to know about how to parent a child this way, but then I also run groups coaching, where I actually get on with the parents very directly, and I am working with them one on one in that space in cohorts of 25 people at a time. And then I do have a VIP group that I work with individually on the side of that as long as they are in my program, then yes, I will do one on one work with them. So you know, there are different levels at which people join the program. And then there’s also the Mother Flipping Awesome app that people can download on their phone, which will give them access to over 150 podcasts that I’ve done, but with the hand in hand podcast, but also the Mother Coping Awesome podcast, and then also give them access to a private podcast that actually is called Daily Abigail, and that’s on the Mother Flipping Awesome app, and that I get on share stories from my life, raising my children every day and little things, nuggets of learning from my community that I want to share. And that is, you know, into many 1000s of people, so. So that’s how I help, you know, individuals to 1000s of people daily.

Emmalou Penrod
Awesome. So just running this group twice a year with 25 people.

Abigail Wald
There’s more people in it, but it’s broken up into cohorts of 25. Yeah,

Emmalou Penrod
Okay. Oh, okay. So you do work with more than 25 parents at the time. Wonderful. So how do parents contact you.

Abigail Wald
So if you have a strong-willed child, if you have a highly sensitive child, if you have an anxious child, if you have a child that you have not been able to decode for whatever reason, and you wonder if it’s them, if it’s you, if you are tired, if you are not able to see the return on your investment, if you feel like I’m pouring into this child every day, and nothing changes, or it’s getting worse, or the relationship is breaking, or I wanted to love my child, and I do but the truth is, I don’t like my child as much as I wanted to, or I don’t like the experience of parenting my child as much as I want to do, then they should definitely contact me, they can go to motherflippingawesome.com. If they know they want to work with me or learn about what it would be like to work with me, which again, is a very special thing to do, a beautiful gift to give to your family. And that you would just go to the Mentorship Project. And you would learn about what I call the Mentorship Project, which is called Transformation Team Project. So if you ever hear me talk about TTP, or Transformation Team Project, or the Mentorship Project, that is that line of how they work with me, they could write me at Abigail@motherflippingawesome.com. They could go to Download the App, on their phone. Mother Flippin Awesome app that will give them access to the podcasts. They have many different ways of connecting with me from free to a real genuine investment in their family, where I will walk alongside with them being invested in their family. So there are many different ways that parents can reach out and get the help that they need. And, you know, money doesn’t need to be an option. Because again, there’s free paths in there. And then for people who are able to and really ready to commit, then there’s some very beautiful prescribed journeys. So you know, it’s open.

Emmalou Penrod
Wonderful, I love it, how you’re making it available to all.

Abigail Wald
It’s really part of my mission. I don’t want ever for there to be people who feel that they can’t do this work. It’s very important. So I have a lot of free work. Obviously, I’m not able to personally get in and help people with their families. Otherwise, unless you know, we’re working together.

Emmalou Penrod
Well, I I like what you said about, you’re helping them go within. Their answer is the only right answer. You know, parents need to hear that. They they really take a lot of criticism right now.

Abigail Wald
Don’t they? Yeah, it’s heartbreaking. Yeah, it’s heartbreaking. And that’s one of the things that parents get when I work with them at the end of the program, and I’m very excited personally, you’re catching me right at the tail end when I’m literally just about to graduate, a cohort, actually three cohorts. And I’m very excited because I’m just about to be able to hear all their stories, but the thing that typically parents say every time they graduate is they’ll say, You know, I feel amazing. I have so many tools like my child is not a mystery to me anymore. Anytime I feel like I’m going down I have these nets of support under me. I’ve got people I can call. I have my listening partnership which is actually a hand in hand. parenting term and, you know, which is another parent that I have, that’s like my buddy. But I also have this cohort and I have this material and I know 10 different ways to solve whatever my kid is throwing at me. And I have confidence. I also have free time, because I can like, be done with all of the help I was constantly seeking 10 hours a week. I now just go inside for a moment. And I know what to do. I’m skilled, I’m done. I don’t need to spend that time searching. I know. And it’s impossible to completely convey to a parent until they’ve had that experience, the freedom that comes with that kind of confidence and knowledge. It’s huge. It’s very life altering.

Emmalou Penrod
Yes, it would be and how wonderful to get this support. Thank you so much for doing this, Abigail, and thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Abigail Wald
It’s my pleasure, I have a question for you. What brings you personally to doing this work all the time?

Emmalou Penrod
You know, my story is similar to yours. I also raised a family. And I worked as a school teacher. So I saw this from the perspective of a parent, and also of a teacher and viewed parents who were just trying desperately. I worked in special education. So I worked with students with special needs, and saw their parents struggling to help them, to support them, to understand them, and suffering, the criticism they would get from neighbors, school personnel, you know, blaming them, and, you know, I, my heart went out to them. That’s why I started this podcast show, I just wanted to provide useful information to parents.

Abigail Wald
Absolutely. I love that. And it’s so true. And so many parents, and so many educators don’t honestly, deeply understand what’s going on. And you know, those judgments are not meant to be judgments. Maybe sometimes they’re meant to be help. But the truth of the matter is that they often don’t help and there is actual real help out there. There really is. And when you find it, you will know it. So you know I may not be it for some of you. Everybody’s going to need different things, you know. Everybody’s going to resonate, but I asked you to go in your heart. And, you know, look through Emmalou’s archives look through, you know, wherever you can find not people telling you how to do things, but the philosophy that makes your heart stir. When you find the truth inside, you’re gonna feel it in your heart. That’s what you should double down on. Okay, so don’t look for like, Oh, this potty training, or that potty training, or this one, or that those things are like, tiny little flowers. You need to plant a seed. You need to find the seed that you want to plant in your garden, right? So try not to get like have shiny squirrel syndrome. It’s just like, you know, looking for the nuts that are falling and try to actually figure out what’s the seed. You want to plant the seed of knowledge in your family, and whoever it is that you identify with along the way that can help you plant that and root down into your family value systems, not some other value system. You’re borrowing your family’s value systems. Whoever can do that for you. That’s what you want.

Emmalou Penrod
Yep. Well put Abigail, thank you so much.

Abigail Wald
My pleasure. It’s my pleasure. To all of the families out there listening, you’ve taken time today to you know, learn more. And if you get nothing from this conversation other than you are not alone, then this will have been a value.

Emmalou Penrod
True. Abigail, you have a great day.

Abigail Wald
Thank you so much, You too.