Emotional Bank Account (How to Fill Up Your Child's Love Cup!) - YouTube

You're about to learn how to make your kids rich.

No, not that kind of rich.

Emotionally rich.

Stick with us until the end to find out one way you may not have thought of that can actually

make our kids emotionally poor, but just being aware of it can really help our kids stay

out of the red.

If you're ready to love parenting and parent from love, slam on that subscription button,

the big red button, and hit the notification bell next to it so that you're told every

time I upload a new video every Monday.

The Parenting Junkie.

I'm Avital, mindful parenting coach and mother of four.

I've been blessed to help thousands of parents reclaim presence, peace, and play for their

families.

Today I am joined by Hunter Clarke Fields of The Mindful Mama podcast.

Hunter is a mindfulness mama mentor with over 20 years of experience in yoga and mindfulness

practice.

She's an artist too and a creator of The Mindful Mama podcast on which I've happily been a

guest.

Hit that like button and let's get started.

Hunter, Hunter's here with me in person today, I'm so excited, I'm honored.

Thank you Hunter.

Thanks for having me I'm glad to be here.

I'm so excited.

To be in person is just ... takes it to a whole new ...

High five.

So Hunter, what is an emotional bank account and how do you use it?

How do you get rich?

I go to my emotional bank account downtown ... I'm just kidding.

No, an emotional bank account is just a metaphor, it's a great way of thinking about your relationship

with your child because everything we do with our kids, all the cooperation, all the gold

mine of emotional regulation, all that stuff, that all comes from having a rich emotional

bank account with your child.

And so, what I think about it as there's deposits and there's deficits, right?

There's deposits that you can put in and then you can pull out from the bank account, just

like anything.

So you want to, just like anything, you want to put in those deposits as much as possible.

So that might by tickling your child, that might be lots of hugs all day, that might

be singing before they go to sleep, that might be just really listening to them and giving

them your attention and really being present with your child.

That might be using your robot voice.

I don't know what that is.

I am a robot.

You must put your shoes on.

So then when you have a request ...

Withdrawal.

... that maybe your child doesn't love, then you can withdrawal from the bank account and

if you have enough built up in that bank account, it doesn't hurt it that much.

But if you're always trying to withdrawal, withdrawal, withdrawal ... do this, do that

commands all that stuff all the time, then your bank account gets into a deficit.

Does this make sense?

It makes total sense.

And I love this metaphor, it helps me so much.

Yeah, it helps me.

Because we all know that we don't want to be in the red in the bank, right?

We all want to put more deposits in than we withdrawal, that's just basic accounting.

That's it.

So, emotional accounting, right, just making sure that we're emotionally rich.

Right?

Yeah, yeah, and sometimes you can really feel that really immediately.

Like if I take one of my daughters out on a date, if I take my youngest out for sushi

because she loves sushi for some reason, I don't know why ...

Smart girl.

... she's always liked ... so we go out for sushi and then the four days after that it's

like it's so easy, everything's great, because I've made this big deposit.

Yes.

In her bank account.

Right.

So there are different kind of levels of deposit right?

It could be just like a smile or a sweet little touch or reading someone a book, or it could

be full blown sushi.

It doesn't require sushi, but yeah.

It doesn't always have to be a trip to the ice cream store.

Right.

But all the little stuff is really more important ...

Yup.

... then the big day or waterpark or all the different things.

It's all the daily interactions.

They're really those little deposits that are like your recurring deposits.

Want a printout cheat sheet to stick on your fridge with ideas for filling up those emotional

bank accounts until your kids are filthy rich each and every day?

Download the free list in the link in the description box below this video.

So let's talk for just a moment on how we withdrawal.

What are the things that kind of bring us down in the bank account?

Yeah, so withdrawals, it depends, like some people are withdrawing a lot with unskillful

language.

So if we're using kind of the unskillful language that maybe our parents used us that are orders

or commands or threats ...

Stop it.

Put your shoes on right now.

... we're probably all going to do that sometimes, but it definitely withdrawals from the bank

account.

Criticisms, why didn't you do this this way, that kind of stuff, those are all withdrawals.

Sometimes withdrawals are when you really kind of need to create a boundary like the

other day we had to get my eight year old to the bus stop and we had to create a strong

boundary for her and ... anyway, that was probably a withdrawal from her bank account,

but she's got enough cushion in there that it's okay.

So if you think about ... I think all of us kind of mentally have the balance of what

is going on in this relationship bank account.

You know, I don't think all of us ... we do have it, but we might not be thinking of it.

Yeah, sure.

I think this really helps to get a visual, like where are you at.

Like take the assessment for yourself right now, how is that emotional bank account doing

with each of your children and possibly with your partner as well.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

If you think about it, like if you go on an amazing date with your partner and you feel

really connected, then the next day when they ask you to do a bunch of stuff to help them

with annoying errands you have a lot more ...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, goodwill.

... depositing.

Exactly, right.

So same for your kids, if they feel like mom's really pumped me up with love, then ...

Do you ever feel like your emotional bank account is in the red?

Listen, parenting and partnering can take a lot of emotional labor, am I right?

Give us a love in the comments below if you feel us on this, and if it were high time

you were filling up your own love cup.

One of the ways that I like to actually teach my kids about the emotional bank account is

I actually ask them how full is your love cup right now, I say like from zero to 10,

how full are you right now.

And they'll say, "It's completely empty."

Or they'll say it's overflowing or somewhere in between and then I'll say, "Come here,

we need to fill you up a little bit."

And I'll fill them up with hugs.

I used to do that, I used to call it the kiss tank.

Did you?

I need to fill up your kiss tank.

Withdrawals could also be any kind of circumstantial withdrawals, like if they've started a new

school, if they have a new sibling, if they're moving house, if there's some kind of trauma,

or event ... those are gonna demand a lot of emotional resources, right?

If there's changes to the schedule, if mommy sent me away for a weekend, then that's going

to deplete that bank account because they need their emotional resources to get them

through.

And those are typically the times where it's also hardest for us to fill them up.

So not only are they in deficit, but also we're not filling them up.

So just to keep an eye on that and try to fill them in any way you can, especially when

you're going through something a little bit hard.

Yeah.

Hey, listen, Hunter and I would love to hear, on a scale of one to 10, how full is your

little one's emotional bank account these days?

Let us know in the Love Parenting with Avital Facebook group, or on Instagram.

You can tag @mindfulmamamentor and @parentingjunkie or use the hashtag parentingjunkie.

Make sure to hit subscribe because next week I'll be showing you how to be super judgmental

about other people's parenting.

This is particularly fun when you try to catch someone who's breastfeeding in public and

shame them.

That's just disgusting.

If you've ever wished you could be more judgmental but weren't sure how, this is the episode

for you.