Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Parenting with Impact podcast. We are so excited to be here. And I am particularly excited to welcome our next guest. Our guest today is now many years friend and colleague and client, Anna Hill. Anna, thanks for being here with me today.

Anna Hill: Hi. Thank you for inviting me. I'm glad to connect again. We have lots to talk about, and I think it's going to be a good visit.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Absolutely. And I invited you honestly because you volunteered if you recall it so thanks for raising your hand and saying yes. Part of what happened some of you have heard already, that when we decided to start this podcast, we didn't want it to be just the experts and talking heads and all that. We'd like to make it real.

We want to make it practical. So we went to our private member's forum and we said, what do you all want to hear? And where we kept it is that we want to hear success stories. We want to hear how this has worked and how it's worked for other people.

So Anna's here to talk with us about what works and what doesn't and how she uses a coach approach in her life and how it changed things for her so I'm so excited to have the conversation. Let's start with you telling about the before, before we get to the after, like who was Anna as a mom, as you came to us and found us, and what brought you in here?

Anna Hill: Well, she was a mom who showed up wanting to know how to change her child so that he would do what she thought was best for him. Very good intentions, very poor approach.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But that's the key is that you were looking to do what was best for him? You didn't think it was about you. You thought it was about him.

Anna Hill: Right. Yeah, well the joke was on me.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So then what happened? What brought you to choose to lean into the coach approach?

Anna Hill: Well, honestly, I think a lot of parents can relate to this. I felt very desperate. I was raised in a household where you just did what you were told and that's that. So I thought, oh, good. I have a son, I will just tell him what to do and he will do it. But when you have a child in general-

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And I want to interrupt. You were raised by a military dad.

Anna Hill: No mom, military dad, so there was really not a lot of flexibility in my household.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. And how did you respond to that? Before we get to the current day how did you respond to that?

Anna Hill: Well, it's interesting, because again, my father had very good intentions. But what he inadvertently did was, when I went off to college, I didn't have the tools I needed to fail safely and I didn't have a lot of experience making decisions for myself that were good, safe decisions. Everyone in college goes off the rails a little bit.

I think I went more off the rails than I probably would have. Had I been allowed to have some say failures along the way, instead of being told what to do. Again, he had very good intentions and he probably didn't have the flexibility to do some of the wonderful things that I've learned from you guys as a parent.

Having a controlling parent makes it really hard because you have to reparent when you get out on your own and that was tough.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. And it's interesting you and I've talked about how a lot of the work I do is with adults who are re-parenting themselves in some way or another because if the paradigm that we learned as a kid growing up doesn't work for our kids, then we're stuck without a model.

You know what we're looking for. You were repeating this pattern of, what we would call director mom and you were still directing a teenage kid who was ready to not be directed. So then what shifted? What happened?

Anna Hill: Well, I just realized what I was doing wasn't working. And everyone knows if you keep doing the same thing, it's not going to change unless something changes. So I approached you guys to let me know how to change him so that he could fit this model and mold that I created. As I said, the joke's on me because that is not what happened.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So before we get to the joke, like, what was it about what you were hearing at Impact that pulled you in because we're really not about fix your kid? And that's obvious, but you don't know what that means till you get there, right?

Anna Hill: Right. I think it was just, the realness, the compassion. I've lived in a community where there's a lot of moms competing, and I'm not that kind of mom. I'm not able to keep up with the Joneses so I really felt alone.

So when I learned about you guys, it had a little funky family feel. I'm like, wow, I can be more myself here and own this big problem that I have that I don't know how to deal with and I wouldn't be judged. I actually was going to be around others who were like me, and it was a huge relief.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, I get that. I get the sense of just not being judged for the first time in a long time or in this space as a parent because we get judged for the moment we start this journey, don't we? We used to call it the parenting police.

Anna Hill: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And the interesting thing, too, is there were actually parents who had situations maybe more difficult than mine, and it was a reset, like, okay, I know this is hard, but at least you don't have this that you're also dealing with.

So it was a reality check too like Anna you need to cool. You can do this. It could be worse so let's get it together.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, right. Sometimes a little perspective goes a long way. Okay, so then you got into this. I don't remember your journey once you got it in. Did you start directly with private coaching or did you do something else first?

Anna Hill: I did Sanity School. I went through all of the modules. And it was great, but you know me well enough to know, I think I did, like all the modules and like 24 hours.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You binge-watched it, didn't you?

Anna Hill: I did. I binge-watched. I was like, okay, my nature is not one to do this and I needed some more help because the information was so good. I'm like, this is really rich material but if you binge something, it goes in quickly, and it goes out quickly.

So I needed some accountability, some pacing. I just needed help. So that's when I decided to do the coaching that we did.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. So we work together in a coaching relationship. It was the first you and I worked together. Diane comes into the picture a little later. So what happened within your relationship with your son, and as it began to dawn on you that it wasn't about fixing him was going to change things?

Anna Hill: Well, I want to I want to give a quick example. It was something you and I talked about. It wasn't a heated discussion, but it was very passionate and it was about my son's backpack, and it's a horrible mess. And I was like Elaine, his backpack is a mess. How do I get him to organize it? It's going to make such a difference.

Round and round and round and finally, you said to me, you and I both know that an organized backpack, in general, would be probably better. However, that is not how he thinks. That's not how he works. Let the backpack go. Getting permission that I wasn't a bad mom, letting the backpack go, began everything for me because I built the standard in my head if I'm a bad mom, or I'm not doing what I'm supposed to, if I don't hold him to the standards that I believed were appropriate.

So I had to switch that whole thing around, get rid of that and unwind my thinking. Alexander, I'm curious. What's going on? Why is it helpful to you to have a disorganized backpack? We talked about the backpack so many times, but as it turns out, for him, the backpack was just a way to carry stuff around and he didn't use it as the organizing station.

So I was trying to give responsibility to a thing that wasn't doing what fit into his thinking and that was really frame.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, well, and as I hear you talking about the backpack, I think about how many conversations I've had with parents about their rooms which is the same thing. It's like, this is their space. We think it should be for one purpose, and they're using it for something else.

And what a great awareness when you slow down enough to say what's going on with you. What's important about this with you? So that was a shift and what I'm hearing and what you're saying is the shift was really permission to not tackle everything at once.

Anna Hill: Yes, absolutely.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So talk a little bit about that. So, in our framework, we call it taking aim, narrowing in on what's the change you really want to see and not trying to change absolutely everything, because you'll make everybody crazy.

Anna Hill: Well, for me, it was really letting go of these rules I've made for myself. And I think part of that was because I was raised without a mother and a very controlling father. I had this standard for myself that really wasn't healthy, and wasn't realistic, but it was also self-deprecating.

If my son doesn't do X, Y, and Z, it's on me, and I'm a bad mom because the last thing I wanted to do is be a bad mom and so I had to let all of that go.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I'm just realizing I can't imagine what it would be like to raise a complex child when you didn't have a mother so technically modeling for what it really means to mother or child that had to be a really hard place to be and then to move into this acceptance of who he was. 

Anna Hill: Yeah, it's true. But what's one of my guilty pleasures is I love watching Dr. Phil, I don't know why I just do but he said one time, and I'll never forget it, it was a parent struggling with parenting, and everyone does it no matter where your kids are. The parent saying this is hard for me because I had a bad childhood.

And Dr. Phil said, look, you gotta rise above your raising and so that has been my motto for myself. I'm rising above my raising. My father was very loving and made appropriate choices based on the situation but I had to rise above that. But you know what, I think every parent, no matter what kind of child or young adult you have, has to do that.

Times change, finances change, situations change. That's just part of being a parent, and I let go, the woes of me, and I let go of the bad mom stuff and just focused on the mission. It helped incredibly to get that burden off my shoulders.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So you're talking about letting go so letting go of woe is me letting go of a bad mom. So there's this all of this, this junk in the story about me that you had to let go of but then there's also this stuff about your son. So let's talk a little bit about what it was like to let go of the expectation of a pristine backpack. Why did you let go of?

Anna Hill: Oh, so many things. And I will tell you, he's 20. He'll be 21 next week, and I still am letting go of things. His hair drives me insane but you know what? His hair, his consequences of having the hair I let go of, how many showers a week are you taking?

You're the one that's going to school with BO and you have the social consequences. You taught me this and he needs to do it because he wants to do it for himself not because mommy said so. And it's so hard when I think-

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Mommy can space [inaudible] five maybe, but not at 15 or 25.

Anna Hill: Exactly. It's not going to work but it was very freeing. And then you think, well, why does it matter if he doesn't? He honestly brushes his teeth before school. He's the one that's going to have bad breath, and he'll have social consequences, and then it will happen and that is exactly what happened but it was hard. And it still is hard.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It is still hard. I mean, I've got a 27-year-old and I'm still practicing letting go every day daily and I'm not even parenting anymore. They are independent beings making their own choices. Damn it. 

Anna Hill: I know.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And then we have to let them make their choices and then be there when they screw up with love and acceptance and compassion without judgment. This is hard stuff. Was there anything in the work that you did as you went through coaching that was a real light bulb moment for you? Any tool that you really use a lot or anything that comes up for you?

Anna Hill: Well, I think really getting curious, has been a huge thing for our family. My son is the type who will sit down and have a conversation, maybe not in the moment, but he and I do have a good connection.

We're really good about going really deep on all sorts of things. So we can dig deep in a topic, getting curious about whatever the thing is. In a strange way, being able to have those authentic conversations have helped us build our mother, young adult son relationship in a more healthy manner so it's not just constantly school stuff. It's giving us something to talk about.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: What I'm hearing is not having it always be about what he is or isn't doing. It's like you had to shift in a relationship with this person who also happened to go to school or not rather than being the mom of a kid trying to get him to get through school.

And let's be honest, you were trying to get him to get through school. So what y'all need to know is he's brilliant and not so into school. We know this in our community, right?

Anna Hill: Yes. You remember the teary phone call two days before graduation? How do I get a GED?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: What do I do? And it was this whole like, okay, are you going to drag him kicking and screaming to his success? Are you going to let him falter on the path to his success? It's really his. That was a huge part of it with him.

Anna Hill: It still is.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, this is the thing, y'all is that they're learning it, but they're learning it at their pace, and their pace is not going to be ours. Again, we wanted to have it done by 20 and it just doesn't work that way.

Anna Hill: Yeah, it doesn't. I've also learned not to do the comparison math. My mom people, I know all their kids are doing this, that, and the other and they're posting it on Facebook and that's the worst thing that you can do. I've learned not to judge my parenting based on what others are doing. That's just not going to work for me.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So is it okay to tell the story of what happened around it after graduation? 

Anna Hill: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Okay. So a couple of days before senior graduation from high school, there's a glitch. So what happened?

Anna Hill: Well, there was a glitch in the form of him not turning in an assignment that was make it or break it, like literally, he had to turn in an assignment to pass, and he didn't do it. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So what happened?

Anna Hill: I thought he wasn't going to graduate. And I called you, I think I was crying from school. Somehow I had to let it go. There was literally nothing I could do.

Nothing I could do and he ended up working out something himself with the teacher, and he did get to graduate and so it worked out. But the universe forced my hand to not be involved and I was sitting on the sidelines watching what I thought was going to be a train wreck. And really all it was was just a detour and a different path to what needed to happen.

So it was incredibly painful and scary for me, but it was a sneak peek into what the future was going to look like and it all turned out. And if it hadn't, that would have been okay, too, because it would have been something that he could have done something about later.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right, which is what happened when it came time to go to college.

Anna Hill: Right. Yeah. And he took some time off for a whole semester and we talked about this, the okayness of doing nothing for a semester. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Talk a little bit about that, because at the at the moment, it took a little time to become okay with that.

Anna Hill: It took some helps a little bit of coaching because again, I had this mindset, well, what we do is we take the summer off, and then we go to college. And the fact that there was any other path honestly hadn't entered my mind.

I was working towards graduation means we take the summer off and go to college. And that wasn't what ended up happening and literally-

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: But why didn't it happen because this piece is really important. Do you remember?

Anna Hill: You tell the story in a succinct way, please?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So what I remember is it was a registration issue, in part and it was about not doing not had pulling together the organizational piece and not asking for the help he needed to get registered. So what happened in the fall is all his friends went off to college and he didn't. And actually, that was one of the best things that ever happened to him.

Anna Hill: Absolutely because he literally did nothing. He didn't work. He didn't do anything. He just lounged about and it was good. He deserved a break. He needed a break.

School is tough for kids. It's the executive function issues and the overload and being in tougher classes. And you know what, it's not a race, and he needed a reset. As it turns out, I did too, and it was great. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So he had a great semester, and he had a little bit of regret that he hadn't gotten it together. 

Anna Hill: He did. Yeah, he was like, I'm not letting that happen again. Now he still waits far longer and closer to the registration deadline that I'm comfortable with. I'm literally now at the point and we've been told this before the podcast started if he does not get signed up in time oh well.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, he's on his path. It's he's on his I'm framing his time frame is very different from what you might have expected or wanted but he's moving forward. It may be three steps forward and one step backwards but it's still a forward movement.

So I want to hit one more thing if I can before we close off. We heard from you again recently. You and I stopped coaching a couple of years ago and recently you came back. So what happened then? Because this is a thing like, we feel like okay, I've done it.

I'm done. You have a 20-year-old kid, and you still came back and said, I need some help again. So what happened here?

Anna Hill: Well, again, this is a recurring theme. I had an assumption that okay, he's going to get into college and eventually go to the dorm and I will be an empty nester. And then in about two years that wasn't happening and I know COVID was the overlay, but he was not doing anything anyway to make progress towards what I thought would just organically happen.

And again thought, well, what have I done? What happened? I'm done. I need help. How do we make peace with wherever he is and I needed to make sure I was doing my part and that is where I eventually got coaching. Am I doing my part? Because that's the only thing I can do. The only thing I can control is me.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, well, and that's what we always say is you can't control what happens, but you can certainly control how you respond to whatever happens.  

Anna Hill: Yes. And I had a spidey sense that my response needed a little tuned up.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Tweaking. A little tune-up. And so when Anna came back to me, I think it's Diane's turn this time, because what you were looking for specifically was a little bit more Diane's had more of that experience of having a young adult male living in her house. Actually, mine will do anything to avoid being there for more than a few days.

I'm telling you right now. So then you sat down and started doing some private work with Diane. So I guess the reason I'm highlighting that is because it's very common in our community for people to be with us for a while, and then to leave and then come back. Maybe they will come back to group coaching. Maybe they will come back to private coaching.

We had a bunch of people when we redid Sanity School, I have a ton of people who came back and redid Sanity School live. I guess I'm saying it to give yourself permission to know that this is your journey too and you're going to be in and out of support for years around it around this [inaudible]

Anna Hill: You may remember, I also did one of the group sessions in between along the way, which was a nice way for me to do a check-in and it was a refresher. I'm doing some things and in a really strong way. And then other things I totally forgot about, yeah, let me try that so I ventured back out.

And then I decided, at the end of the day when I go to sleep, I want to feel good that I've done the best I can. So we've been having a lot of conversations about that.

It is about Alexander, but a lot of our conversation is around me and my feelings and how did this incident make you feel? What conversations can you have with him and it's more of the same, but he's at a different point in life so it has a different tone to it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: What I find when we're dealing with was supporting parent of young adults or beginning to call emerging adults we've been doing a ton of that since the pandemic started is that we end up doing more taking on conversations, and really ending around what conversation want to have with your child around this or that instead of I'm trying to get my child to X or Y.

Now it's how do you want to talk to her or talk to him about that. And that's I think the stage that you've moved into is now it's really about how do I have these conversations? 

Anna Hill: Yeah. We just did a session the other day, and it was literally, how do we have a conversation about the dynamic that happens when there's an episode? And I've never talked to him about that. And like, that's going to be really interesting. How do you feel about this dance we do every time, Alexander? What is your perception of the dance?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, in coaching, we call it a debrief.

Anna Hill: Okay. Well, debrief it is.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And then you tell me what it is. Debrief these episodes. So we need to wrap up the conversation. If you bottom line up for yourself, what is it about this experience? Part of it is just having a coach, part of it is the coach approach.

As you take this forward with you into your life, what are some of the greatest lessons or insights like what do you want to leave people with?

Anna Hill: Oh, gosh, I think my biggest takeaway in general is that doing nothing is a choice. And if I choose to do nothing about whatever has happened in the moment, that doesn't mean I'm being neglectful. It just means I'm choosing not to address it right now.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That's brilliant. I love that. Is there anything else you want parents to know?

Anna Hill: I would tell parents who are struggling, you're not alone, you're not the only one. There are situations that are much harder, that may never really improve very much. and that's terribly sad.

Make sure that you know that you can get help and that you're not a bad parent if your family situation isn't working out the way that you dreamed, and it may never happen and there's some sadness with that.

But it's really important to know that it's not because of anything that you did, or that you're a bad person. It's just how it worked out.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. I think I would say that I don't know a parent whose life with their kids turned out the way they thought, whether a complex kid or a typical kid, whatever. It's like we have a vision and then reality hits and then we have to adjust our vision to meet the child we've got, not the dream we have. That takes some work.

Anna Hill: It does. It's very hard, but it's the important work to do and it's so freeing, and it's really improved the quality of my family's relationship with each other and even mine with my son in an appropriate way.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah, it's hard work, and it's worth it.

Anna Hill: Totally worth it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Oh, yeah. So thank you, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story and I've really honor you and acknowledge you for the work you've done. We've had some great conversations over the years with Anna.

It's like, okay, what's really going on here and doing the really deep work because we got to do our work as parents to be there for our kids in the way they need us to be. And you've really done the work.

Anna Hill: Well, thank you. I appreciate you guys. I've learned more about myself than I ever thought I would in this process and it's helped me throughout my entire life. So thank you guys for being a great resource and I'm just glad we were able to talk today and I hope we are offering to share my story and help some others.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Absolutely. I'm confident it will. All right, I have one final question. Fun wrap-up: do you have a favorite motto or a quote that you'd like to leave people with today? 

Anna Hill: Yes. Our family motto is well, that escalated quickly. Things move quickly in our house. I don't know if anyone else has that same experience, but they move very quickly. There's never a dull moment so we embrace it now. We embrace it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: With a great deal of humor. I love it. Well, that escalated quickly. You're going to hear that again in one of my family group chats.

Anna Hill: Good. I think we can all relate.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: All right, my friend Anna Hill, thank you for being with us. Thank you for your vulnerability and thank you for modeling what it means to really step in as a parent and do the work. It was a beautiful thing. It's a pleasure to be on a journey with you.

Everybody else, thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for the work you're doing for yourself and for your kids. Remember, it's what makes the difference. Take care, everyone. Bye.

 

Helpful Links:

• Parent Expectations: 2 Steps to Success 
• Parenting is Leadership Guide