Raising Resilient Kids with Chelsea Brouse, LMSW
- Madeline Kraut, LMSW
- Jul 28, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Dec 1, 2024
Article #6 - Raising Resilient Kids with Chelsea Brouse, LMSW
July 28, 2024
Today’s article has an accompanying podcast with much more content than I could fit on here. It is also a very special one, because it is an interview with my dear friend and colleague, therapist Chelsea Brouse, LMSW. You can find the link to the full conversation here.
Chelsea is an LMSW, a dedicated wife, and a mother of four. As a therapist, she specializes in helping clients navigate unsatisfactory connections or relationships, life transitions, grief, anxiety, depression, and parenting challenges. She owns her own practice, Psych Collective, and dreams of expanding it to include a team of multiple clinicians and multiple locations throughout the Inland Northwest. Her passion for psychology has led her to make vital changes in her own parenting styles, and she aims to teach others how to enhance all their relationships for a long and fulfilling life.
This conversation was incredibly powerful and insightful, as Chelsea shared her own evolution of parenting, which started when she was a young mom and “felt like I had a lot to prove” and over time has morphed into a mental-health informed, resilience-focused collaborative style of parenting.
Chelsea shares how her previous style of parenting enabled her to not do her own personal growth work as well as how her relationships with her children have changed significantly since adopting a new mentality toward parenting.
The following article has Chelsea’s summarized answers. I recommend listening to the podcast to hear the full conversation.
Madeline: When you had your first kid, what was your understanding of your role as a parent?
Chelsea: I felt like my role was to raise well mannered and obedient kids.
M: What did you initially believe to be goal of parenting?
C: I thought the goal of parenting was to raise children that were good by society’s standards and contributed to their society. Subconsiously, I wanted them to keep me emotionally stable and not embarrass or humiliate me in front of others. I wanted to prove that I was a good mom. And if they wavered from that narrative, it threatened proving that I was a good mom to others.
Because I was such a young mom - I was 20 when I had my first kid - I felt like I had a lot to prove. So when my kids were good and had good manners, I also would get validation by society that I was such a ‘good mom’ because I had such ‘good kids’. That also set me up to continue my behavior in that way because I thought that what I was doing was productive and good.
M: How did your own childhood inform this?
C: I was raised the same way. I was expected to be a good kid to protect my parents’ ego and make them remain emotionally stable. I remember that responsibility being on me from a very young age that what I did and didn’t do would either create stability in my life or create instability.
There was always a deflection of responsibility [from my parents] on me as a kid, especially to keep my mom emotionally stable and to make her happy or joyful. I was always the reason for her being either upset or disappointed or whatnot.
Because I was raised that way, it also set me up to think that that’s what my children were supposed to do for me until I went back to school and study psychology. Then I began to realize that wasn’t their responsibility. And through my own therapy too in adulthood. There was just a change in perspective after I went back to school. There was a lot of role reversal. It’s hard when you don’t know or experience any other way, then you just role play what you know until you have information to do it any other way.
M: What were some common recurring struggles you had with this style of
parenting?
C: I never got close to my parents, especially my mother. I desired to be close to my mom, just like my friends were close to their mothers. I was always striving for approval, and I could never quite hit the mark because whatever I did was never good enough to keep her emotionally stable. I wanted to have a closer relationship with my kids that when I personally experienced, however I didn’t know what or how to do anything differently.
M: What values did this style of parenting embody?
C: You are valued by what you do and not just simply for being who you are. It exposes the need for others to keep you emotionally stable, which is a lie. We are the only ones capable of working on this - building our bandwidth and tolerance for emotions. It exposed an element of people pleasing and a lack of healthy boundaries in exchange for disingenuous or sub-par connection.
M: How did this style of parenting enable you not to do your own personal growth work?
C: I expected my kids to keep me emotionally stable and to also protect my ego. It was at the mercy of their own emotional well being to expect them to be fortune tellers and mind readers. Because they became so hypervigilant, I was rarely challenged, which then perpetuated my own emotional immaturity.
M: What price did your kids pay for you not doing your personal work?
C: They suffered from not learning how to regulate their own emotions while they continuously were focusing on mine. It was at the cost of their value of self feeling confident and secure. Each one of my kids struggled with symptoms of anxiety, worry or fear. My oldest daughter struggled with perfectionism and the need to control.
M: Why do you advocate for people to go to therapy before they have kids?
C: I advocate for people to seek therapy before they have children to seek curiosity around their families' generational dysfunction. We all have it, and the only way to become self aware is to see a therapist and find out the solutions to combat passing through another generation.
M: What caused a shift in your parenting?
C: Studying Psychology, attachment, and reading current research on cause and effect of raising resilient children.
M: What personal work was required of you in order to parent in a new and healthier way?
C: Attending therapy myself, reading and researching new ways on how to raise children, and actively practicing a new way. Committing to the process, even when I didn't see an immediate result.
M: How did your relationship with your kids change?
C: If you were to ask my teens, they would say their parents are completely different. Comparatively, their peers have what their parents "used" to be.
M: How did your kids benefit from your change in parenting, specifically as it relates to their self concept and mental health?
C: They now know how to practice having compassion for themselves and others. They know they are human and are still deserving of love and connection despite them making mistakes. They know their worth comes by overcoming hard challenges and being proud of their resiliency. They have a heart to equally serve themselves and others. They know how to speak up about what their needs and wants are and how to ask and communicate them appropriately to the people around them.
M: What are the new values that reflect ideal parenting for you?
C: Respect is earned by first prioritizing relationships and gaining influence.
I am part of a team, and that means I have to equally show up for my kids as much as I expect them to show up for me.
My kids aren’t responsible for protecting my ego and keeping me emotionally stable. It's my responsibility to show them how to regulate their emotions.
Compromise.
Every person deserves to have a voice to speak their needs and wants.
Every person deserves to be treated with care and kindness.
Mistakes are essential to learn, grow and become the people we are called to be.
M: Can you give an everyday example of how this parenting style looks? How would you have handled the same situation before?
C: I previously strived for them to make little to no mistakes, so that I could remain in a constant state of calm.
I now allow and welcome mistakes as a new learning opportunity for the both of us. We have created a culture of learning and growing in our home. Our value is not based on what we do or don't do.
We teach that we learn, grow and evolve over time. We begin to grow confidence in ourselves if we can look back and see our growth.
I used to demand and expect obedience from them. Now I ask or request. I also allow my kids to use their voice. Negotiate or compromise and as long as we communicate kindly and with respect.
M: What advice would you give to someone who wants to change their parenting style, but has a partner who isn’t on board?
C: I would say to them - One day you will have to face your spouse and your children. Would you regret more not asking and setting the bar higher for your spouse? Or would you rather face the pain and hurt you allowed for your children to experience?
It can seem easier to enable your adult spouse for momentary peace; however it’s at the long term expense of a shattered sense of self, unnecessary anxiety and depressive symptoms in your kids.
For me, I knew I was created to protect my children. I no longer wanted to accept less than what I knew they were worth. No other person could advocate for them like I could. It was easier for me to ask my husband to grow up emotionally and step it up than to have to face my children in adulthood and have them ask me why I didn't do my part to protect them and advocate for them like I should have.
M: What advice would you offer to people who have adult children and didn’t have this information when they were raising their kids and want to pursue repair with them now?
C: I first would empathize with them. I would affirm they did the best with what they knew at that given moment in time. I would also remind them that it's never too late to invest in repair. We as humans make mistakes. We as a society make relational fractures daily, what we don’t do well as a society is repair well.
What it takes to do repair well:
Take ownership, responsibility, or accountability for your hand in the fracture.
Apologize, without dismissing or justifying your behavior.
Communicate to the other person what you plan to do better for the future.
Ask the person what they think could have been done differently by either party.
Prove you care by investing energy in modifying your behavior for the future.
M: What are some resources or thought leaders that have helped you grow as a parent that you would recommend?
C: Dr. Shefali’s books, namely The Conscious Parent and The Parenting Map
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