Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Cooper City
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
EP #319: Parenting Made Conscious with Mihaela Plugarasu
Navigating the tumultuous waters of parenting teenagers leaves many of us feeling adrift and questioning our effectiveness. This raw, unfiltered conversation with parenting expert Mihaela Plugarasu offers a lifeline to parents struggling with children of all ages, particularly those weathering the storm of adolescence.
Mihaela reveals the profound truth that our teenagers serve as mirrors, reflecting our unresolved issues back to us with startling clarity. "By the time they're 13, they're our product," she explains, highlighting how our parenting choices during the first seven years establish the foundation for all future interactions. This perspective shift helps explain why even parents doing significant personal growth work may still struggle with their teens—the relationship patterns were established long before our own awakening began.
The most transformative insight emerges around the concept of self-parenting. Mihaela compassionately describes how parents often unconsciously regress to childlike emotional states when triggered by their children's behavior. This creates an impossible dynamic where "a child is trying to parent a child." Through practical techniques like strategic timeouts, conscious breathing, and physical grounding, parents can recognize these regressions and return to their regulated adult selves.
Rather than focusing on what to say to our children, Mihaela emphasizes the critical importance of listening. A dysregulated child physically cannot process parental wisdom because their prefrontal cortex temporarily goes "offline" during emotional flooding. The parent's primary responsibility becomes providing a regulated nervous system that can co-regulate with the child's, creating safety for authentic connection.
Whether you're parenting toddlers, teens, or any age between, this episode offers both validation for your struggles and practical tools to transform your approach. Discover how to break generational patterns and create the connected, conscious relationship with your child that you've always wanted. Visit parentingmadeconscious.com to access Mihaela's free weekly newsletter and additional resources to support your parenting journey.
For more information call (305) 433-0769 or visit https://www.mihaelaplugarasu.com/
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Jeremy Wolf.
Speaker 2:Well, hello, hello, friends, family, wonderful community. We are back for another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. You know to all those parents out there, we all know that parenting can be rather challenging. As many of you know, I have two kids, myself 11, and my daughter just turned 13. And, if I'm being honest, we are going through it right now with our 13-year-old. It has been challenging, to say the least. So I was at the local Davey Cooper City Chamber of Commerce luncheon the other day and I met our next guest. I was at the local Davie Cooper City Chamber of Commerce luncheon the other day and I met our next guest and she worked in the parenting space and I thought it would make a lot of sense to have her on the show and talk about what she does. I'm here with Mahila Plujerusu. I just butchered her name. I'm sorry about that. We'll get that right later.
Speaker 3:She is, with Parenting, made Conscious.
Speaker 2:Mahila, thank you for joining us today. Thank you, jeremy, and hello to everyone who's listening. Yes, yes, all right. So why don't we start there? Tell everybody a little bit about your business. Tell us what you do at Parenting Made Conscious, conscious.
Speaker 3:Yes, so I am a certified parenting by connection educator. I am also a college professor. I am also a certified neuromindfulness master coach and in the last two years and a half I've always trained in the Compassionate Inquiry for Professionals program with Dr Gabor Mate. Some of your listeners will know who he is, but he is a trauma and addiction specialist very much focused on the impact of childhood on human development, and I've been working with parents now for over six years. I am also a parent myself. My son is also 13, 13 and a half, and I believe it's the most important work that any adult can put their attention into.
Speaker 2:It is definitely the most important and, like I said earlier, the most challenging, and I am familiar with Dr Gabor Amate's work and a lot of what you do.
Speaker 2:I was reading a little bit about how your approach weaves psychology, neuroscience, spirituality.
Speaker 2:These are all things that have been a big part of my life over the last five or six years, with my own spiritual and personal growth development journey.
Speaker 2:So a lot of this stuff has been on my radar and it's so funny, the more work I seem to do in my own life, it's not translating to my child. So I think there's like we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as parents because our kids mirror what we do, but at some level our kids become independent agents and they're making their own decisions now. So the struggles that I'm having with my daughter it's perplexing me because, again, I'm doing a lot of work in my own life but it seems like it's just not translating into her life and I'm trying to kind of skirt this line and walk this balancing act and I'm having a lot of time, a lot of a lot of issues. Are there any tips or tricks that you can give me, being that this is what you do and you have a 13 year old. What can I start doing at home to create some balance in my own situation?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so teenagers are a very special demographic, and I agree with you. I think teenagers are presenting us, the parents, with very profound mirrors of the things that we have not been, we have not resolved for ourselves yet Our unresolved issues.
Speaker 2:they mirror that back to us and it triggers us even more, because we know these are things that are unresolved in us, that need work on, and we've been avoiding the work.
Speaker 3:So it's yeah so I want to invite parents who have either toddlers or teenagers and, by the way, I forgot to mention that I also wrote a book called Conscious Parenting of your Toddler, for parents with young children under the age of 10. But toddlers and teenagers, they present very difficult challenges for us parents because they they are both in the process of individuation. So, of course, at different levels, a toddler is just discovering the world for the first time in their life. That small little brain gets the perception that I am a different person, from my mom particularly, but from my mom and dad. So they start exploring and they start pushing back and saying no, and that's the beginning of the process of individuation. But they're still very dependent on the adult in their lives. Where the teenager they're continuing their process of individuation and complete and total, radical separation from mom and dad and they are independent to some degree. They can really walk out if they don't want to continue the conversation. So they are letting us know that they don't need us as much as they did before.
Speaker 3:The reason even though they still do need us, the reason teenagers are such a challenge, is because they are the product of our parenting. So if a toddler is a very young child and maybe he's two or three or four. There is nothing really. There's no history there. We can't really blame anyone for whatever the dynamic is, is it? He's a baby? She's a baby, she's just growing up and we're there to mold them and we don't know where this journey is taking us. But by the time they're 13, they're our product. There is nowhere to hide, because that's our result, that's the outcome.
Speaker 3:So in my coaching with the parents whom I work with, I emphasize to the nth degree the importance of parenting in zero to seven, because that is the foundation of the pyramid. If we want to think about life or parenting as a pyramid, let's think about the base of that pyramid. That's what we do in zero to seven, and then we can still correct things after seven, because the brain of the child is still very, very, very moldable and shapeable. But after the age of 12, there is something in the human brain that closes off and that's why teenagers are so difficult. Now I have to say parents who have been doing conscious, present, responsible parenting in zero to 12, they have an okay time with their teenagers after the age of 12, 13, because the base is very strong, the relationship is solid, there is trust, there is respect, there is communication. It's a safe place in which both the child and the parent can make mistakes and they still come back together. But that takes 12 years of very hard work in the beginning.
Speaker 2:Wow. So that really hit me on a fundamental level what you just said. It makes so much sense how, once they get, they turn into teenagers. As a parent, when you're seeing them have these shortcomings, it does. It's like a reflection, like you said, of the work that you've done, or the lack of work that you've done, and it feeds into that feeling in your own mind of you. Know what's the word I'm looking for. I'm having a tough time with this, mihaly, simply because I am struggling right now with my own child and a lot of this stuff is hitting so deeply on an emotional level. So you have to forgive me if I'm a little bit scattered Green. There's a lot of emotions surrounding this issue for me right now.
Speaker 3:No, I'm actually very happy that we're going in this conversation so natural and fluid and unscripted and real, because it is real for all the parents. I mean I've been parenting my son in the most trained and educated and conscious and I mean I went back to school just to learn to be a present parent for him ever since he was born. Even though my base training is a teacher. I discovered very quickly that I am not equipped to be the parent that I want to be. And I had the training, I had the degrees, I had the understanding of early childhood development and I was still, I didn't feel, equipped. So I went back to school, I started training and studying and I never stopped since then. So it's good for the listeners to see that whatever they're doing, they are good people. Whatever they're doing, they are good people, they are well-intentioned and they don't know all the answers.
Speaker 3:Nobody does, but that doesn't exonerate us from the responsibility of getting educated and looking for help. You know, working with someone who can help us become better at protecting the relationship is not shameful, it's courageous. Because I don't know if you want to go into the bigger layer of societal destruction that we're in right now. With teenagers, with young adults, with Gen Zers I mean. I teach college level.
Speaker 3:I can see at a societal level the byproduct of modern parenting and it doesn't look, look good, and it's not the children's fault. So there are so many layers. You know, we talk about devices and smartphones and how, how soon, parents make that available to their young children, toddlers. We go to restaurants and we see families sitting down and a two-year-old with an iPad because the parents believe that that's what it takes to keep them quiet. So there are so many layers to this. What I want to invite parents to reflect on is we're all good people. Parents are good people, we have good people. Parents are good people, we have good intentions, but modern life is not the most difficult time in human history to raise children.
Speaker 2:So for that reason, we all need help 100%, and you know, I was reading a little bit on your website. You describe your work as conscious parenting, starting with self-parenting, and this is another thing that really hits home to me, because, as a parent that's having issues with my children, if I sit there and beat myself up over this and I look at this as, oh, this is just a failure in my own ability to be a parent, well, that doesn't help anything. Now I'm being a bad parent to myself and I'm creating a situation where I'm just teaching my children that if things are going wrong, then you just beat yourself up over it and you really got to give yourself some grace in these situations. What does self-parenting mean and why is it so central to raising kids in today's society?
Speaker 3:Okay, yes, it's a very important question and I'll get back to that in one second. I didn't want to leave our listeners hanging on your first question, which was give me some tips of what I can do home right now. Right, if I have a teenager, but even if you have a 10-year-old at home, if you have a 7-year-old, they are already pushing back if you haven't done a really solid job in 0 to 7. So the first thing that I want to tell our listeners is we have to learn to listen more. We teach too much, we preach too much and we don't offer the modeling by which the child can shape themselves after. And that modeling starts with our capacity to listen more.
Speaker 3:So in Parenting by Connection, we talk about five listening tools, and there is a reason, and it's, of course, science-backed and evidence-based. There's a connection between connection and listening, between connection and listening, because connection, which means a safe space between two people, it cannot happen unless one is able to do most of the listening. Why? Because a nervous system who is dysregulated, which is usually the child, or at first is the child, then the parent becomes dysregulated, but let's just say the child goes into a tantrum or an emotional episode, rage. If we have a teenager, that's a dysregulated nervous system. If we have a teenager, that's a dysregulated nervous system. What that child needs in that moment is someone who can hold that space for them. It doesn't matter how smart we are and how many life lessons we can teach, there is nobody they are able to hear, because the brain is a machine and it's complicated. But when the emotion takes over the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive thinking, critical thinking, self-regulation, that goes offline. I want parents to imagine a light bulb that's being unplugged. It's dark, so that dysregulated nervous system can co-regulate in the presence of a regulated, calm nervous system, which is ultimately the most important and only responsibility of a parent. So, to go back to your question, that's how we can start making a difference.
Speaker 3:Today is increasing our capacity to listen, which is very hard because parents are very sensitive, they're very fragile, they get triggered, shame and self-blame kicks in, and then it becomes all about us, the parent. I do so much for you. Look at everything I do for you. I take you there, I do this and it's all about us. So now we become the child who needs mommy or daddy to validate our sacrifices, and that's where self-parenting comes in. So I'm closing from the mature, adult, self-regulated brain in the room into the young child's dysregulated brain in the room. So it doesn't mean I'm doing something wrong. It doesn't mean something is wrong with me or that I went from being the adult into myself now being the younger self.
Speaker 3:Then I can take a step back and I can apply immediate techniques and practices which could be. I excuse myself. I say to my child I love you. I can see that we're going through a bit of a rough time right now. This is not about you. You did nothing wrong. Allow me to go to my room. I need to take one minute for myself and I will be right back. I will be with you and I'll continue listening and paying attention. Be right back, I will be with you and I'll continue listening and paying attention to your needs, but for one minute I'm excusing myself. That's just one example.
Speaker 3:We can use breath. Breath is always available to us. We can use connecting to our belly, to our solar plexus, to our capacity to take air in exhale. So there's a lot of things that we can do in the moment only if we have the capacity to notice that we regressed from being the adult into being the child, because then we have a child trying to parent a child and our children notice the shift and they can't respect that right, because a child is fundamentally very self-focused and there is an order of things in nature that's the right thing to do for them until they really become independent or more interdependent by no earlier than 18, we should expect full independence and self-regulation from our children.
Speaker 2:So many useful tips and tricks. We could go on with this for quite some time. Unfortunately, we have to leave it at that. For those out there that are listening, that are also experiencing some issues in their parenting, what's the best way they could reach out to connect with you? Please share, maybe, your website, your contact information. Let our listeners know how best to connect.
Speaker 3:Yes. So if they go to my website, they can Google parentingmadeconsciouscom it will take them to my website or my name, mihailaplugarashocom. Either way, the first thing they will notice is a window that will pop up asking them to subscribe to my weekly newsletter, which is a free resource. I send that out every Saturday morning with a lot of tips and tools and recommendations and things like that. So that's the first thing For all the moms who are listening. I want them to know that I host and facilitate a monthly women's circle on Zoom, and that's also free for all moms and women all women, regardless of being a mother or not. So I welcome all women to join the Women's Circle on Zoom, and then they can buy my book if they have young children, and they can reach out to me with an email, a DM on Instagram if they want to work with me one-on-one.
Speaker 2:Wonderful. We will, of course, drop a link in the description below to all your contact information. Mahila truly appreciate the work that you're doing, touching so many people, clearly making an impact on our society, so thank you for everything that you do truly.
Speaker 3:Thank you, jeremy, and thank you to everyone who's listening to your podcast. It's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks everyone for tuning in. We will catch everyone next time on the next episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. Everyone, take care. Have a lovely day. Bye.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Cooper City. To nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to GNPCooperCitycom. That's GNPCooperCitycom, or call 954-231-3170.