Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Motherhood isn’t all Pinterest boards and playdates — it’s beautiful, messy, exhausting, and full of moments that make you question everything.
Hosted by Karen Chirivi, mom, positive discipline educator, mindset coach, and founder of Keeping Moms Real, this podcast is your safe corner of the internet — where we talk about what motherhood really feels like.
Each week, we unpack the emotions that moms carry: guilt, burnout, identity loss, and the pressure to be perfect. You’ll hear real stories, honest reflections, and practical mindset tools to help you release the guilt, reconnect with yourself, and raise your kids with more love and less overwhelm.
Because you don’t need to do it all — you just need to be real.
✨ Topics include:
Mom guilt & emotional burnout
Balancing motherhood and identity
Gentle parenting & real discipline moments
Self-care that actually fits your life
Mindset shifts for calm, confident motherhood
💛 New episodes every week.
Follow now — and let’s redefine what it really means to be a “good mom.”
Hello everyone! I'm Cali2DV and I help moms balance parenting with their personal and professional life! I also have a beautiful little girl who's four years old, her name is Abby and she has put into test everything that I'm gonna talk to you today! So, I'm gonna go straight to the point and start with my number one truth and that is that you are going to feel like you're doing it wrong more often than you think. I'm getting better with it but I promise you, in the beginning when I would say something that I wasn't supposed to say or do something that I wasn't supposed to do, I would feel like I'm failing, this positive discipline thing is not for me, I can't do this right, I'm gonna keep making the same mistakes that my mom did and I was so hard on myself.
Karen:I always said to my daughter, mistakes are opportunities to learn. Oopsie, it's just a mistake, mistakes happened, accidents happened. And I was trying to teach my daughter with words that doing things wrong is okay, that making mistakes is okay, that you don't have to do everything perfect, that progress is better than perfection, yada yada yada. The problem was that I wasn't doing that or giving that to my myself. And the truth is that kids are looking us and they're observing everything the way that they see it.
Karen:And that was a motivation that I needed to have more compassion towards myself, to be more okay with making mistakes and to be less worried if I wasn't doing the things right or perfect. I wish we as parents could treat ourselves the way that we treat our kids sometimes. You love your kids, you see your kids with such love and respect and admiration. I wish we could see ourselves the same way. Because we are.
Karen:These little humans came from us. They're so special because you are special. The second truth is this: your healing is non negotiable. You can't be a gentle or positive parent effectively without doing the inner work. What I thought being a gentle parent or a positive parent was, was doing the things like all the books say or saying the things like the script that I read on Instagram was or, you know, having my house very perfectly organized and like, you know, with all the perfect toys, yada yada yada.
Karen:And what I didn't realize is positive discipline is not about none of nonsense. That is the result of a lot of inner work, a lot of healing, a lot of self reflection, and a lot of effort that you do by working on yourself and learning about yourself and doing all these things over and over and over again every single day. And by doing that, you will mirror all of that to your child. And because they're watching you, they're gonna repeat the things that you do, they're gonna say the things that you say, they're gonna believe the things that you believe. So it's not enough with loving them.
Karen:When you love your kids, your kids are seeing the way that you love somebody else. But when you love yourself, you're teaching your kids how to love themselves. There is no script! I am the type of person that I want to have a plan and follow the plan. If I don't follow the plan, then I did something wrong.
Karen:If I follow the plan, then thumbs up! What I realized is all these scripts, all these things that people tell you to say or how to handle these problems, as much great for inspiration that can be, truth is that there's no scripts for parenting, there's no scripts for saying the right thing, there's no script for handling a tantrum. I love to share with you guys how I handle tantrums or situations with my daughter but I always say I did it this way but I could have done it another thousand ways and still be effective and still be good and still be considered positive discipline. I develop different strategies, different principles, different values that I want to teach my daughter. But the way that I deliver the message, the teachings, the lessons, it varies.
Karen:The way that I respond, the things that I say, even the strategies that I use change depending on my mood or depending on her mood, depending on the situation, depending if I am with people or not, depending if it's at school, depending if it's something that I can control or I can't. So there's so many different variables that that's why talking about specifics is super hard. But when you know that the basic of what you're saying has a main principle, has a main value that you want to teach your kids. That's what is really important. And if you want to learn any of what I do, the strategies that I use, the plan that I follow, I created a seven day positive discipline plan for busy moms and if you're interested, I'm gonna leave that link in the description below.
Karen:But let's go with our next truth. There are gonna be days when you are so stressed, so overwhelmed, when your cup is so empty that you just want to give up and go back to the old patterns. And if you're going through one of those days or if you've had those days, just remember that feelings come in waves. And if you know a wave rises and then goes down and then disappears. Feelings follow that cycle.
Karen:So something that I'm practicing is allowing myself to let the feeling have its own cycle. You have a feeling, it rises and then it slows down and then it goes. And that same thing happens when you're angry, when you're sad, when you're happy, when you're excited. Good feelings, bad feelings, whatever category you want to play around. And what I'm practicing is allowing.
Karen:Allowing myself to feel those feelings, allowing myself to go through it, to feel the emotion and know and trust that all of these emotions come and then go. It gets worse before it gets better. The thing with positive discipline is that if you're doing it since the beginning, great, because that's the only parenting your kids are exposed to, right? But if you're starting at a point where your kid is even one, two, three, four whatever age they are, then you gotta understand that we are creatures of habit which means that even if it's serving us or not, we are used to the same patterns, same habits so when there's a change where you decide to do things differently then kids are gonna push back because they don't feel comfortable. It's scary when there's something new happening.
Karen:So what's gonna happen is that they're misbehaving, misbehaving, misbehaving, misbehaving, then you decide to make a change and practice positive discipline and what that's gonna happen is that those misbehaviors that weren't that big are gonna start being so big and being so big but then with time there's gonna be a little stuff and then it's gonna be a misbehavior then it's gonna be more time misbehavior and then after they get worse it's gonna get better. So when I'm talking to my clients and they're like this is so bad they're reacting, they're throwing tantrums. I always remind them listen it's not gonna last forever and you gotta trust the process and you're gonna trust that you're making the right choice and if it feels good in your heart, if you know that what you're doing is the right things just stick to it. Do not give up. I promise you that it's the same as our feelings.
Karen:It comes in ways. It's gonna get worse and then it's gonna get better but you have to push through the worst part you are going to feel judged by everybody your parents, your in laws, your partner, your friends, everybody Especially if you are not doing it right. I remember in the beginning, I would talk about positive discipline, Montessori, all of this with everybody because I was super proud of it. I was super excited. I was super into it.
Karen:And I remember in the beginning, my daughter would do something or yell or misbehave or something where in front of people I'd be like, or do a look or say something or yell or whatever I did. And I remember the first thing people would say, especially people close to me would be like, look at that positive discipline. And I used to feel so judged, so bad. I'm like, I should just shut up. I shouldn't be talking about all of these because every single time I will be punished for making a mistake and that's how it feels.
Karen:Even if they say it as a joke you're gonna feel that judgment from people and that's okay. I encourage you to let it go. When you care too much of what people say about you or what people think about your parenting or your life in general, you are giving people power to control your life. Hey, you have control over my life. You tell me how am I doing.
Karen:And what I'm asking you here is take that freaking power back. They wanna judge you? Let them. They wanna say something? Let them.
Karen:They wanna make fun of you? Let them. And take your power back and remind yourself that what you're doing, you're doing because you want it, because you feel like it, because it's the right thing to do in your heart, because you love yourself and you love your kids and they deserve that effort of you. Being calm is a natural, it's a skill that you have to develop. Especially if you didn't grow in a family where your mom was super calm or that was the way that your family raised you in this calmness.
Karen:Usually being calm is just something that doesn't come natural. But it doesn't mean that you can't be, it means that you have to make a choice of developing a new skill like patience, discipline, working out, cooking. All of those are skills in life that you didn't have but you cultivated. And this is a great exercise that I do with my clients and I tell them think of the hardest thing that you've done in your life and then remember how you felt when you first started and use that as your evidence to prove yourself that you can do hard things, that you can develop new skills. And whenever you feel like you're losing it, that you can't do this shit anymore, that this is harder than you thought, just remember yourself that that's okay.
Karen:Allow yourself to go through your feelings and then remind yourself that all the amazing things that you're being able to do in your life and that just as you did that, you can do this shit too. You will mess up a lot more often than you think. But the most important thing is not whether you mess up or not, is how you repair. I talk about this in my seven day positive discipline plan and that's making amends. It doesn't matter if you make mistakes.
Karen:In fact, you should. That's how you learn. That's how you grow. I think the most important thing that people forget to mention is the afterwards of that mistake. How you handle those mistakes, what you do after you make a mistake.
Karen:That's what really matters. How you repair your relationship, how you apologize, what are the things that you say yourself you're gonna do, the way that you problem solve your situations, the compromises that you make, those are the things that really, really matter. Here's another one that I absolutely adore. Your child will still hit you, bite you, throw tantrums, make messes, cry, scream, all the things that you don't like or all the misbehaviors, all the power struggles, they will still happen because Positive Discipline isn't magic. I think that people don't understand that positive discipline isn't about avoiding those things because by the way, all of those things are developmentally appropriate.
Karen:If toddlers don't throw tantrums, I will be concerned. And although misbehaviors will decrease in frequency, that doesn't mean that it's not gonna happen. To me positive discipline more than avoiding or eliminating tantrums for good is about cultivating a healthy relationship between my daughter and It's about learning to regulate myself so that I can help my daughter to regulate her own nervous system. It's about teaching my daughter the emotional skills that she will need in her own life. And that for me is the most important thing of all of this journey.
Karen:You can't force your spouse, caregivers, grandparents, friends or anybody into doing the same things that you're doing. If you keep trying to control what you can't control, you're gonna burn out. I know that we want everybody on board, I know that we want people to treat our kids the same way that we treat them, or teach them things the way that we want to teach them, but the truth is that life doesn't work that way. The only thing that you can control is what you do and the way that you react and the way that you parent your child. You can't control anybody else and it sucks, right?
Karen:Because we don't want people to come and yell at our kids or we don't want people to come and do things that we swear never do. And unfortunately that happens. You know, I co parent and I know that discipline looks very different in mommy's house and in daddy's house and I can't do anything about it. There are battles that I choose not to fight because if I wanna fight them, I'm gonna lose. I'm gonna lose myself in the process.
Karen:And as defeated as it can feel, as frustrating, it's just the way that it is. And what I can focus on is on what I do, what I react, my journey. I stop putting energy into what others do or say and put more energy into making sure that when my daughter is with me, I give her the best version of me as I can and take the energy that I was wasting on other people and bring that energy and start focusing in what I can do better, how can I say things better, how can I compromise, where is the next thing that I can work on, how can I show more compassion to myself, how can I show more compassion to my daughter? And finally, this whole thing about being a gentle parent, it's not about being gentle, it's about how we stay connected through the hardest times. How do we repair after making mistakes?
Karen:How do we accept and love ourselves so that we can teach our kids to love and accept themselves? How do we regulate our own emotions so that we can show our kids how to regulate them? How do we treat ourselves and others so that we can teach our kids how to treat themselves and others. So if you are new to Positive Discipline, Positive Parenting, I created a seven day Positive Discipline Plan for busy moms. It's a short course that I am giving away for a very affordable price and the reason why is because I want everybody to have it.
Karen:I want moms and parents to be able to access to this information and be able to practice all of these strategies from now. And also, I am from Colombia and my dream ever since I became a mom was to have a non profit in Colombia where I could help little kids and single moms and we've been able to do it. We started last year with Abby and my family and it's been so rewarding and beautiful and if you want to be part of that journey, go ahead and get your course right now because that portion of your purchase goes towards helping moms in a third world country. Thank you so much for all your support, your love. I'll see you guys in the next one.
Karen:Bye.