Hey, everybody. Welcome to My Guest Tonight. I'm your host, Jeff Revilla.
We've got an amazing guest joining us tonight. An author, a parent,
coach, entrepreneur, a mother of four, including triplets,
Author of Parenting Without Giving an F. It's
Sue Donilan. Once a mom on the edge,
raising triplets and more.
She traded chaos for come. That's what
we're here for.
Fell into healing, she found
her groove. Now she's
teaching parents how to find
their move. It's My Guest
Tonight with Jeff Revilla in the
chair. And soon,
wisdom. She's bringing it to
share from Fibri.
Parenting, laughter and
love. She's proof that
change starts with what you're made
of.
Sue, welcome to the show. Thank you so much.
I appreciate you having me. Oh, we're so glad to have you here. We're going
to do a lot of discussion tonight over the next half an hour. And
this podcast is an origin story. We like to go back,
trace those roots, see what made you who you are today. And
I gave you a little introduction at the beginning. We got a lot of things
to cover, a lot of bullet points to hit over the next 30 minutes. But
let's go way back before being a
parent. What was life like back then?
It was fabulous. It was full of selfish
years and fun and spontaneity.
Yeah, it was, it was good. It was good times. I, we didn't have our,
our first child until early 30s, so
we, we enjoyed life very, very much. Traveling, starting
jobs, you know, building my own business. My husband was a fighter pilot.
So we, we had a lot of fun. And what, what kind of, what
drew you to business back then? What kind of business did you start way back
then? I was in sales. So I am a manufacturer's rep and
I sell, I work with small, like inventors and real estate
innovative companies and I sell their products to mail order catalogs. So
it's kind of a very niche business. But I've always been able to work from
home and the sky's the limit, you know, in a commission sales
business. So it's trade shows and I did some travel. But
yeah, it was mostly sales business sales and marketing.
You mentioned marrying into military. So traveling around having that
flexibility is a good asset to have with your
job. That was all by design. So once we met in college
and I went back to New York and did my thing and he was getting
his engineering degree. Plus he's a year younger than me in school years. And so
we, by the time we started getting more serious and he was done with a
lot of his training, and we were going to be getting married. It was very
much by design that I took bits and pieces of the corporate job
that I had and figured out a way to turn that into something entrepreneurial.
And I've never looked back, but now everybody's figured out a way to work
from home. But I was doing it 30 years ago, and it's been wonderful.
And you've kind of described your. You mentioned, you know, having children later into your
30s, and you also described yourself once as a
reluctant parent. You were once parent. What
was kind of. What's that mindset like? The hesitation or.
Or maybe maybe was. Was you're more focused on your
career. What was that early mindset like? It
was really just more that I never had a lot of access to kids, and
I didn't grow up with younger siblings. I have an older brother and my husband
wanted a big family, wanted kids. And I was just kind
of apathetic. I wasn't overly drawn to people's
babies or I wasn't. I just wasn't overly
interested in, you know, being a
mom. It wasn't. It wasn't the overall goal. I wasn't against it, but it wasn't
really something that drew me, you know, toward wanting that.
Now. I wasn't getting that itch, you know what I'm saying? I wasn't. My clock
was not ticking. My clock was at a standstill. It was just kind of
like. But, yeah, I
figured if I was going to have a kid for him that I needed to
get going around 31. So, yeah,
it was the nicest thing I've ever done for anybody. And that. You started
with one child? Yeah, we started with. We had her first, and then
after he started becoming the center of attention
and, you know, it just felt like, ah, we got to get another. We got
to add something to the mix here. So we decided to have our second baby,
and I ended up with natural triplets. So that's what.
Yeah, that's what happened to me when I was just sort of a reluctant
parent in the beginning. That's. That's what would happen. So the. The
universe has a way of balancing itself out. It does it
really. It's karma. It's karma for sure, but it's.
It, you know, it was a beautiful gift, but I went from one to four
kids overnight. So that was. That was definitely overwhelming. When you start talking about
how. Where. Go back to the beginning and how it all started, that was
me being thrown into the deep end of motherhood.
Overnight and overwhelmed. Yeah, and that's
something to talk about. You have to figure out systems or ways
to keep a household in order or keep the kids in line or get
the even scheduling becomes a problem. What were
some things that you had to change that mindset early on
from being this free, independent traveler
to now mother of four? Pretty quickly they've got to make some changes
pretty quickly. Well, I love that you said the word system because when I
wrote my book, I actually wrote a chapter about do you have a system that
works? And I being a business minded person and running my own business. Entrepreneur
wearing many hats. I was accustomed to
balancing a lot of different things at one time. And that's just the entrepreneurial
spirit I wasn't able to really outsource back then. So I was
accustomed to balancing a variety of different subjects and things, you
know, at one time. So when we
had the first baby, I'm like, okay, I need a system. I need organization.
I need to be able to see how I can restructure my
life to fit this child in. Because I am of the
opinion that he adapts to us. So he's coming into our lives
and the world does not revolve around him. He needs to adapt to
what we're doing and how we're doing it. So systems are really,
really important. But overall, I would say what really
kicked me into gear was the fact that I was yelling all the time, because
my first one is, has a wonderful
characteristic of wanting to always be, you know, in control
and wanting to know why for
everything and beyond what was normal. So he was definitely
a challenge in like all the right ways that make him difficult to parent but
will be successful someday with some of his personality traits. And
with my first child, it was just a real challenge to try to
figure out how to reach this kid and get him to do what I needed
him to do. And so that was really
what got me into learning more about behavioral psychology
and what how to get through to a child. Because during your
selfish years and when you're just living your life and you're working with other adults,
it's like, I say it, you know, you hear me, you do it. It's. I'm
not used to the psychology of what it takes to get through to a little
child brain and that whole teaching and TR. Training model, that
was really what flipped the switch for me was, oh, they're adults in training,
okay? They, I, they depend on me for absolutely
every learning everything. So that's.
It took me a while to get to that Point. I have two, two
daughters myself, they're four years apart. My journey now seems easier. But
I do remember one point when my daughter was in kindergarten and I called
my dad. I'm, I'm stressed out and I'm just like, why
doesn't she know this? Like, I'm trying to teach her like basic math or
something. And I'm like, it's just so it's two plus two. Why does she
like, it's very frustrating. You think, like
it's just common knowledge and there's, there's stress points when you're
trying to, to, you know, just get somebody up to speed and, and
to learn new skills. And you touched on something a little bit about
yeller, right? You called yourself a reformed yeller. Yeah, at
some point. And, and was there, like
you mentioned you had to change something. Was there a specific breaking point or
was there a moment you're like, hey, this, this, this method isn't
working that I'm trying to deploy or I'm not reaching, I'm not reaching
out to him properly. Is, was there just a moment that you realized
to make a change? Honestly, it was my husband that
was, that called it out and said, you know, honey, you're yelling a lot. And
of course that met with, you know, immediate resistance
and justification. Well, of course I'm yelling. You know, I've got four kids under four
and I'm, I've got my own business and you're, you're deployed or you're
gone. Of course I'm yelling. It's, you
know, being. We never, in society, we never talk
about a working dad, it's always a working mom.
So I'm running my own business and I've got four kids, I'm running a household.
I had two full time jobs. And not to say he didn't, but I had
the steady diet of. Was all happening under my,
all day, every day. And it was, it just
becomes overwhelming. So yeah,
I was yelling all the time. My husband, you know, said, you're yelling a lot.
And you know, I had to be honest, my throat did hurt from yelling.
I am Italian, I'm type A, you know, I had a lot to learn.
Okay. So I,
the real turning point was him sort of cracking that seal of
telling me that I was yelling a lot and me not really embracing that right
away, feeling justified in the yelling
until then. After that idea got a chance to percolate in the back of
my mind, I was able to look at my oldest son who I
was kind of screaming at not Screaming, but, you know, yelling
and him just glazing over and him just going, I am
not. The more you yell, the less I hear. I just saw his eyes
glaze over, and I was like, I'm yelling and I'm not getting through to this
kid. He doesn't even know when he's shutting down. So
I did admit this is counterproductive. I'm not getting through. It's
not working. And so we had our child
at a Montessori preschool at the time, and they offered a
parenting class and a book that really turned me around and got me
started onto my journey of behavioral psychology. It was studying the
Montessori psychology behind autonomy, independence,
accountability, just how to foster that
independence and get kids doing things for themselves and feeling good about
it and by default, fault. Once you learn
these techniques, these methods, the psychology and this approach,
you realize that you don't have to yell. You know, I really never had to
yell, and I never had to punish after I sort of
restructured my. My form of communication.
And as you start transforming your parenting approach, do you
start to notice these small changes, or was it a gradual
process? Or was it kind of like. It's either. It's. This is the. This
is a better way to do it, and once you deployed that, it was. It
was easy peasy going forward. Or. Or did it take time to.
To learn this communication method? You know, a little of
both. I had one example that
really turned me around very quickly, which I can share,
but the overall, it took me a long time to get there,
because the. The studying that I did
is like, I don't know why. I don't know why
everybody doesn't know this. When you study Montessori, you
study some of these techniques and these. These practices. I'm like, why are we
not all collectively aware of how. How to
do this? And I was kind of struck by that. And
so I. It did take me a while. It was almost like learning a foreign
language, because a lot of what I learned isn't intuitive. It's
counterintuitive. So all the things that you think
that you're supposed to do and the ways that you were raised that, you
know, don't work, but we still fall. Fall into that pattern.
A lot of those things we have to retrain ourselves.
And it was a lot of role playing in the class and then me going
home and, you know, trying to remember what I was supposed
to say, how I was supposed to say it, and when I was supposed to
say it, and me going, oh, darn, I Should have said so it took
me some time of like a foreign language, just practicing that. And
after a while I ended up taking, I mean, many classes. I did study
throughout, which is why I'm now coaching. But I would say it took me one
or two full classes and really rolling around in the material.
I'm not the quickest study on this type of stuff. So it was, you know,
I was busy, I was working and the kids and. But I, I did
adopt a few simple little redirects that were like,
oh, you know, like a. When then. Well, when you, when you get your shoes
on, then we go. Or like kind of restructuring things for the, the
earned approach, which I now use for everything
for, for when they were in teens and. And beyond
is, is that, you know, before you get the screen time, you know, before you
get the thing you need to earn the access and here's how you need to
earn it. And here's how I'm restructuring my expectation of you. So
you're going to do X, Y and Z. And then. So
when. Then something that simple,
you know, and then the logical consequence idea
where instead of controlling the communication.
What? Wear your jacket. Put your jacket on. It's cold. No, we're not going into.
Put your jacket. Hey, I'm not the one that's cold. So, you know, you're.
You might be five and you can freeze or maybe you won't really be as
cold as I think you are. But it's that whole respect of thinking
that I don't need to answer things for you. You can go live the life
and experience life and have that logical consequence teach
you the lesson that I don't need to be up
in your face telling you how, when and why, you know, So
I really learned how to sort of back off, which is partially why
I ended up naming the book I the Way. What I Did, which is parenting
without giving an F, because it's. It's really steeped in that counterintuitive.
We think we need to be, you know, drilling down and being strict and
controlling and punishing and. Well, that'll teach you. It teaches nothing.
So that was really just one of the
big turning points was just the simplicity, the restructuring of
communication and just
telling my child how I wanted him to behave up front.
So my example that I was referring to earlier was when my oldest one wanted
to go in the playpen with his triplet siblings, he would always make them cry,
and I was just reacting. Every time I'd walk over, I'd get even madder
every Time he went in there, they start crying times three. And I was like,
you always, you know, you, you. But it didn't. So.
But it didn't change anything the next time you went in there. He thought it
was fun to make them cry because any attention is good attention. So
now what I learned to do was back it up and say, when you go
in there, if you choose to make someone cry, what should we
do about that? So now I'm backing up
the. The behavior I already knew was coming because he always makes them cry.
So Montessori really just taught me how to sort
of parent in advance, how to take
my communication style and have a better process
for it and to get the results that I needed without needing to yell.
And as you continue to study this and you start to develop your own techniques
and maybe figure out what works best for you, might also work
best for people. Was there something that
led to the Fight Free Parenting is how do we get to. How do
we get to this next stage where we're. We're absorbing these
methods, we're building upon them, and we're making something new?
Well, what does. What does that process look like to get to the book, to
get the Fight Free Parenting as well? Well, Fight Free Parenting
is my. My course, which I didn't
create until just a couple of years ago. So Fight Free Parenting is really kind
of born out of me coaching a lot of families and
seeing that the. The struggle, you know, the
just stepping into that struggle of fighting and conflict and
yelling and punishment, that cycle that just continues repeating and nothing ever
changes. So Fight Free is like, I'm giving you the methods to stop yelling and
to stop fights and just those power struggles.
But so as far as the book is concerned that I wrote when the kids
were teens, and again, you know, when
I learned these techniques, my oldest was five, so I had,
you know, four kids under five. And I learned all of this
early on in terms of building and baking in
accountability into my conversations with the kids, which prevented me from
ever having to yell or punish. By the time my kids
got to be teens, they were very independent, very full of
wisdom beyond their years, because they were listening and they were learning from
life's experiences. And I saw, because
of four kids, I got to see a lot of, you know, other friends.
They were all, you know, three were at the same age. I got to see
other parents and a lot of other kids rotating through our home,
and I saw just how parents were drilling down
on punishment. And I'm taking the keys and you can't go to the dance and
get all of this. By the time your kids get, get to be 13, 14,
15, if you've been successful in
building that trust, that relationship, the accountability in those
earlier years, you don't have to talk to your kids like that. You don't have
to dangle that carrot and say, you can't, you won't. I won't
let you know they're going to be at a place where they're ready to
kind of spread their wings and be responsible. And I mean, kids are kids.
So yeah, we've, of course things are going to happen. But when you view your
child as an adult in training, you are able
to sort of redirect and reframe
your conversations and it's a lot less
punishment taking keys. All of that. None of those things that
were done to us and that we instinctively want to go
toward doing solves a single problem. It doesn't teach a kid
a single lesson. It doesn't hold them accountable. It doesn't teach them a
consequence that's going to translate out into the real world.
So, you know, you can tell them you're not drinking, you're not drinking, then they
go to college. And those are the kids that like, you know, die from, from
alcohol poisoning because they don't know how to.
They don't. They, they. And I'm not saying I'm a proponent of telling my kids
to drink because I don't even drink, but, but my point is just in life,
kids have to experience certain life lessons
and the more they can do it under the safety net of my home, by
the time they leave at 17, 18 for college or trade school or wherever
they're going, they'll have seen more of life and
experienced it. And I've helped them through
those processes more effectively than me
trying to control and, you know, corral them
and keep them in their room type of thing. You mentioned some of
the neighbors kids come over, you see their parenting. I'm thinking about how I parented
and my girls are. One's in college, one's a, a sophomore. And I.
It's stressful at times as a parent and you trying to figure these things out
and you're trying to, you know, just get them to practice on time and keep
them alive and fed and everything. And there, there's some
stereotypical things that you had mentioned that you've seen from the friend's
parents and, and I'm guilty of those as well. What are some of these
misconceptions that maybe we have as what a good parent
is. You know, a lot of us think this is the way to do it.
Maybe that's the way we were raised, and we're just thinking that's how you do
it, or. But, you know, you're. You're telling us that there's a different way,
another way to communicate properly, to. So that
the child understands, you know, the consequences. And what are
some of the misconceptions that maybe I had, you know, anybody. I'm just
using myself as an example. But we thought this was good parenting. And,
and maybe we. We were misled. Well, you know, I wouldn't
say misled, because everybody has different goals for their families. But, you know,
it again, I, I live in that counterintuitive space.
And, you know, my kids are now grown. I've got 27 and 24, 20 triplets,
and they're all off doing amazing things because they were raised to
find. Find their purpose, and where are they going to add value in the world?
And so they're all out. And I know. So I know I've. I've got,
you know, parenting is in my rearview mirror, and I know that what we did
worked. So I do feel a lot of credibility in that way. However,
every parent has their own. Their own goals. But
some of the things that I teach, some parents just can't get to. For
example, grades. Not my problem, not my deal.
I never once demanded a single grade. First of all, I
was a C student, so I don't prioritize grades. I got
my master's degree. I'm running my own business. I make a great living. I'm an
author. I, you know, it does. It doesn't matter
in the end. Now, I know a lot of parents might think that's
like nails on a chalkboard. Like, that's not true. Okay, you're free to think that
that's fine. But, you know, in terms of the question you're asking me, these
counterintuitive ideas of, like, I am. I've already been to school,
so I don't. I'm going to provide the, The.
The. The home and the culture and the.
Just the background for you to thrive and be successful in school.
But, you know, I am not going to ride you. Did you do your homework?
Did you have to go in early to talk to your teacher about that grade?
Like, that's up to you. That's up to you to email your teachers. It's up
to you to say, can I come in after school? Where did I go wrong
on this test? I'M not going to ride you by the time you 16.
These are things you know. But what will I do? I
will on every vacation, starting From when you're 8
years old, go visit college campuses and show you what college
looks like and show you what opportunity looks like. And we will travel and we
will see a variety of what jobs look like. So I will perform
this more like background program of showing my kids
what the world is and what opportunity looks like. But what I won't
do is get into the mud with you and tell you how, when, why and
where. Like that's where I saw the parents. You, you know, I
saw some parents like you got an A minus, a B plus,
that's not good enough. You're not going out for two weeks, you're grounded until you
get, I mean, like what? Yeah, you know, so that's one example. I don't, I
never ever had a conversation about the grades. I guess what, that
it took care of itself. All my kids did really well in school. They, they,
because they were self motivated, they knew what they had to do to get there.
Because once they get off to school and they have to talk to their
professors or they have a job and they have to talk to their boss, what
does me writing them do? It's not teaching them
anything, it's kind of crippling them to be honest. So it's this
counterintuitive way of thinking, of respect. So
do I really respect my kids? If I should. If I respect my kids, I
respect them to solve it. And
so it doesn't mean that I'm not engaged in what they're doing. I might
have a prompt, I might go, oh, you know, how's homework work? You know, I
might say a few things, but I'm not punishing, I'm not taking
away opportunities, I'm not restricting, I'm not
controlling. So those were some of the things that I saw. And the
funny thing is that you have to ask yourself, is it working? So one of
my kids friends, his parents were notorious for
punishing him and he was not getting the grades they wanted,
so they took the keys away. But what did that really do? That
just inconvenienced my son because now my son had to go pick him up for
school and I'm just like, you're not teaching a
single thing. Grounding him isn't teaching him well. I gotta,
you know, I gotta study harder, I gotta listen more in school. I've got to
go talk to my teacher and find out what it is they need Being stuck
in your room isn't performing a single
skill for your kid. So those were. Those are some of the
types of things that I'm talking about that by the time they get to be
teens, you know, they, It's. It is a
huge leap and it is scary. But have
faith and things work out, and, you know, we just hope
that they survive those lessons. That's. That's it. And we're all in the same boat.
But you. Controlling and restricting isn't. It's only
delaying that happening. But
by the time it's delayed, they're out on their own and they don't have you
there. So. And you've coached parents all
over the world. Yes. Is there anything that's like a
universal struggle that you see, no matter what continent or
what city the parents are from? Is there any, like, global
parenting struggles that you've. You've come across? You
know, there really isn't. I. I'm noticing a lot of niche
issues. Okay. Well, I guess one of the things that's different is co parenting. If
families are. A lot of families are, you know,
broken up and with new, new partners. And so co
parenting is a real struggle for a lot of families. That's. That's a very,
very common thing that we, that we work on. But just,
I would say kids lack of motivation and kids
just not listening that. That's one of the things that parents
are really universally frustrated with is like they
just can't get their kid. It's like you're. You're getting your kid the
gaming system. You're getting. You're paying for the
phone and the gaming console and all of that, but then you're
upset that the kid is not doing his chores or you're not. You
know, it's. It's all in the structuring. Right. So
we have to be careful how we hand these things over to the
kids. Like, I just did a podcast on how to hand over a
first phone, and the, the methodology
there is that I'm not just handing a kid a phone. I'm. It's tied
to a purpose. It's tied that. All right, you're doing a sport and you're away
from home, and you need to be able to call me when things change. You
need a ride. It's tied to a. A business transaction. Right. So
I'm sort of positioning it like that in the home and with the kids is
that it's. And we're going to have a phone agreement. And I go. I go
through what the phone agreement should look like and we're both signing it, we're both
accountable and all of that goes. Gets baked in prior to the phone
being handed over and you're going to show me all the
passwords. Like so there's, there's an element of parenting and
training. We forget that as parents we have to do the
trading. Like you were saying earlier with your daughter. Doesn't she just know this?
I went through that myself. I was like, oh my gosh, I have to teach
absolutely everything. It's, it becomes pretty
overwhelming when you start to realize all that is demanded of a
parent for the kids to learn. But
yeah, it's, it's. I would say that would be a
universal thing. Is that the, the A lot of times it's co parenting
issues or just my kids not listening and they don't have any motivation and I
don't know why they're. I can't get them to stop gaming. Well, let's
back it all up. Let's get back to the beginning. That's what we do.
You've got the Ask mom parenting website, the fight Free parenting
course. You got the parenting without giving an F.
Where do you, where do you see yourself five years from now? Is this.
You mentioned you used to travel a lot. Is, is getting back onto
conference circuits and public speaking or do you want to continue
building this program? You know, possibly, I think I would like
to just help as many parents as I can that are looking for some of
those quick redirects, that quick new frame of mind
that's going to be helping them get a little bit more harmony in their home
and get their kids listening and then to stop yelling and sort of just stopping
those fights and power struggles. I would like to be able to help
as many as I can. So that would mean group, group classes,
group coaching, more, just getting more people in the tent and being able to
share some of these methods with more parents. Because the way that
coach, which is different than a lot of other people that I know is like
once you learn the process that I teach,
it's duplicate, it's foundational and it's
duplicatable at every age and phase. So you don't need
months and months and weeks of, of coaching. We just need to get the
foundations straightened out and understood and embodied
baked into your communication style. Once you see the
psychology and you get the hang of how this works, you can
take the methodology and apply it at every
agent phase. That's a good question. If
you're becoming a parent or thinking about Becoming a parent,
when is the best time to start thinking about this type of training? Is it
after the kids are maybe 18 months or when
do. When do you need or at least consider
some sort of training on being a parent? What's the best time for them that.
Well, with what I teach, I love to get parents around three
or four. You know, three to five is a good age for me to grab
a parent because at that time, you're going through and have been through the terrible
threes, which is really not terrible. It's terrible twos. Maybe for girls, but for
boys, it's terrible threes. Once you hit that first tantrum at three
and you're like, oh, my. Oh, whoa. You know, who is this kid?
That's about the time I can start making an impact in your life. But
that, you know, there are, there are other methods that are great for the baby
years and training kids and getting them on a schedule that's separate.
And I have ideas and contacts in that area. But for what I do,
if we can get parents to understand between three and five what I teach,
the foundational aspect of what I teach, that can then be
used and duplicated at every age and phase.
That is my ideal, My ideal parent. But I
can. I can help anyone at a point of readiness. I especially
love the teenage and the preteen seniors because parents are so scared and overwhelmed.
And within a quick amount of time, I can really turn
them and. And the child quickly into a very
productive, respectful, trusting conversation and relationship.
And if people listening at home want to learn more or what's the best way
to get in contact with you, Sue? Ask mom parenting on
YouTube, Instagram and Facebook and also
askmomparenting.com awesome. We'll have all
those links in the show notes. Let's go back to that song.
Once a mom on the edge
raising triplets and more
she traded chaos for come that's what
we're here for.
From yelling to healing she
found her groove move. Now
she's teaching parents how to
find their move. It's My
Guest Tonight with Jeffrey Villa
in the chair. And soon
wisdom she's bringing it to
share from fiery
parents
she's proof that change starts with what
you're made of.