You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I talk about modeling the person you want your child to be—instead of trying to force them into having good character or good values. We discussed the difference between being a gardener or a carpenter parent, raising kind and helpful children, and how to trust the modeling process. We give lots of examples of what this has looked like for parents in our community as well as in our own homes.

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We talk about:

* 00:00 — Intro + main idea: be the person you want your child to be

* 00:02 — How kids naturally model what we do (funny real-life stories)

* 00:04 — When modeling goes wrong (rabbit poop + shovel story)

* 00:06 — Not everything kids do is learned from us (fight/flight/freeze)

* 00:08 — Gardener vs. carpenter parenting metaphor

* 00:10 — Why “don’t do anything for your child” is flawed advice

* 00:12 — Helping builds independence (adult example + kids stepping up)

* 00:17 — Hunt, Gather, Parent: let kids help when they’re little

* 00:19 — How to encourage helping without power struggles

* 00:23 — Family team vs. rigid chores

* 00:26 — Trust, faith, and “I’m sure you’ll do it next time”

* 00:29 — Respecting kids like people (adultism)

* 00:31 — Living values without preaching

* 00:36 — It’s the small moments that shape kids

* 00:38 — Don’t be a martyr: let some things go

* 00:40 — When this works (and when it doesn’t)

* 00:42 — Closing reflections on trust and nurturing

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* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* Hunt, Gather, Parent podcast episode

* Evelyn & Bobbie bras

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xx Sarah and Corey

Your peaceful parenting team-

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Podcast Transcript:

Sarah: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. I have Corey with me today. Hi, Corey.

Corey: Hey, Sarah.

Sarah: I’m so happy to be talking about what we’re going to be talking about today because it’s something that comes up a lot—both with our coaching clients and in our membership.

Today we’re talking about modeling the person you want your child to be—being the person you want your child to be—instead of trying to force them into having good character or good values.

Corey: This is one of my favorite topics because people don’t really think about it. There’s that phrase that’s so rampant: “Do as I say, not as I do.” And we’re actually saying: do the exact opposite of that.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think if people did this, that phrase wouldn’t have to exist. Because if you’re being the person you want your child to be, then you really can just say, “Do as I do.”

I guess that “Do what I say, not what I do” comes up when you’re not being the person you want your child to be. And it shows how powerful it is that kids naturally follow what we do, right?

Corey: Yes.

Sarah: Yeah. We both have some funny stories about this in action—times we didn’t necessarily think about it until we remembered or saw it reflected back. Do you want to share yours first? It’s so cute.

Corey: Yeah. When I was a little girl, my favorite game to play was asking my mom if we could play “Mummy and her friend.” We did this all the time. My mom said she had to do it over and over and over with me.

We’d both get a little coffee cup. I’d fill mine with water, and we’d pretend we were drinking tea or coffee. Then we would just sit and have a conversation—like I heard her having with her friend.

And I’d always be like, “So, how are your kids?”—and ask the exact things I would hear my mom asking her friend.

Sarah: That’s so cute. So you were pretending to be her?

Corey: Yes.

Sarah: That is so cute.

I remember once when Lee was little—he was probably around three—he had a block, like a play block, a colored wooden block. And he had it pinched between his shoulder and his ear, and he was doing circles around the kitchen.

I said, “What are you doing?” And he said, “I’m talking on the phone.”

And I realized: oh my gosh. I walk around with the cordless phone pinched between my shoulder and my ear, and I walk around while I’m talking on the phone. So for him, that was like: this is how you talk on the phone.

Corey: That’s such a funny reference, too. Now our kids would never—my kids would never do that, right?

Sarah: No, because they never saw you with a phone like that.

Corey: Right.

Sarah: That is so funny. It’s definitely a dated reference.

You also have a funny story, too, that’s sort of the opposite—less harmless things our kids copy us doing. Do you want to share your… I think it’s a rabbit poop story.

Corey: It is. We’re just going to put it out there: it’s a rabbit poop story. This is how we accidentally model things we probably don’t want our kids doing.

So, if you were listening this time last year, I got a new dog. She’s a lab, and her favorite thing is to eat everything—especially things she’s not supposed to eat, which I’m sure a lot of people can relate to.

Our area is rampant with rabbits, so we have this problem with rabbit droppings. And my vet has informed me that despite the fact that dogs love it, you need to not let them eat it.

So I’m always in the backyard—if you’re hearing this, it’s really silly—having to try and shovel these up so the dog’s not eating them.

Listeners, we’re looking into a longer-term solution so rabbits aren’t getting into our backyard, but this is where we’re at right now.

Whenever I noticed I’d be shoveling them up and I’d see her trying to eat something else I hadn’t shoveled yet, I’d say, “Leave it,” and then give her a treat to reward her.

One day, my little guy—little C—who loves taking part in dog training and is so great with animals, he saw our dog eating something she shouldn’t. He ran and got his little sand shovel and went up to her holding it—kind of waving it at her—like, “Leave it.”

And I was like, why are you shaking a shovel at the dog? Totally confused about what he was doing.

And he’s like, “Well, this is how you do it, Mommy.”

And I was like… oh. I shake a shovel at the dog. You just say, “Leave it,” and then you give her the treat—not the shovel.

Not an hour later, I’m shoveling again, she’s trying to eat something she shouldn’t, and I’m like, “Leave it, leave it.” I look at my hand and I’m holding the shovel up while saying it to her.

Sarah: Right?

Corey: And I was like, “Oh, this is why he thinks that.” Because every time I’m saying this to her, I’m holding a shovel mid-scoop—trying to get on top of the problem.

Sarah: That’s so funny. And when you told me that the first time, I got the impression you maybe weren’t being as gentle as you thought you were. Like you were frustrated with the dog, and little C was copying that.

Corey: Yeah. Probably that too, right? Because it’s a frustrating problem. Anyone who’s tried to shovel rabbit droppings knows it’s an impossible, ridiculous task.

So I definitely was a bit frustrated. He was picking up both on the frustration and on what I was physically doing.

And I also think this is a good example to show parents: don’t beat yourself up. Sometimes we’re not even aware of the things we’re doing until we see it reflected back at us.

Sarah: Totally.

And now that you mentioned beating yourself up: I have a lot of parents I work with who will say, “I heard my kid yelling and shouting, and I know they pick that up from me—my bad habits of yelling and shouting.”

I just want to say: there are some things kids do out of fight, flight, or freeze—like their nervous system has gotten activated—that they would do whether you shouted at them or not.

It’s not that everything—every hard thing—can be traced back to us.

Kids will get aggressive, and I’ve seen this: kids who are aggressive, who have not ever seen aggression. They’ve never seen anyone hitting; they’ve never been hit. But they will hit and kick and spit and scream because that’s the “fight” of fight, flight, or freeze.

So it’s not that they learned it somewhere.

And often parents will worry, “What are they being exposed to at school?” But that can just be a natural instinct to protect oneself when we get dysregulated.

Also, kids will think of the worst thing they can say—and it’s not necessarily that they’ve heard it.

I remember one time Asa got really mad at Lee. They were like three and six. And Asa said, “I’m going to chop your head off and bury you in the backyard.”

Oh my goodness—if I hadn’t known it wasn’t necessarily something he learned, I would’ve been really worried. But it was just a reflection of that fight, flight, or freeze instinct that he had.

So I guess it’s: yes, kids can learn things from us, and I’m not saying they can’t. Your example—with the dog, the rabbit poop, and the shovel—of course kids can pick up unsavory behavior from us.

But that doesn’t mean that every single hard thing they do, they learned from us. And also, they have good natures. There are things that come from them that are good as well, that they didn’t learn from us.

Corey: That’s right.

Sarah: I want to ground this conversation in a great metaphor from a book by Allison Gopnik. I think the title is The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children.

To really embrace what we’re talking about—being the person you want your child to be—you have to believe in the gardener metaphor of parenting.

The gardener metaphor is: your child is like a seed that has within it everything it needs to grow into a beautiful plant. You provide the water, sunlight, proper soil, and then the plant does the work of growing on its own.

The carpenter metaphor is: you have to build your child—make your child into who they’re going to be.

This idea we’re talking about—be the person you want your child to be—that’s the soil and the light and the water your child needs to grow into a beautiful plant, or a beautiful human being.

It’s not that we’re doing things to them to turn them into good humans.

And honestly, most parents, when you ask them what they wish for their child, they want their kid to be a good person when they grow up.

I want to say to parents: it’s easier than you think. The most influential thing you can do to help your child grow up to be a good person is to be the person you want them to be.

This goes up against a lot of common parenting advice.

One phrase I wish did not exist—and I don’t know where it came from, but if anyone knows, let me know—is: “You should never do anything for your child that they can do for themselves.”

Such a terrible way to think about relationships.

Can you imagine if I said to your partner, “You should never do anything for Corey that she can do for herself”? It’s terrible.

I make my husband coffee in the morning—not because he can’t make it himself, but as an act of love. For him to come downstairs, getting ready for work, and have a nice hot coffee ready. Of course he can make his own coffee. But human relationships are built on doing things for each other.

Corey: Yes. I think that’s so profound.

I think about how I was just telling you before we started recording how we’ve been spending our weekends skiing. When I first started skiing with my husband—even though I’d grown up skiing—I’d never done it as much as him. He helped me so much. He did so much of the process for me so I didn’t have too much to think about.

Now that we do it all the time, he said to me the other day, “Look at how independent you’ve gotten with this. You can do so much of this yourself. You’re managing so much more on the hill.”

He was so proud of me, and I was thinking: imagine if he hadn’t done that for me. If he had been like, “Just figure it out. We’re on the ski hill. You’re an adult.”

I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it very much. But he did lots of things for me that I could have done for myself, and that love and support helped nurture the shared love we had.

Sarah: Yeah.

And I think it’s tough because our culture is so individualistic. Hyper-individualistic—everyone should stand on their own two feet and do things without help and make it on their own. And that has really leaked into our parenting.

One of the major fears I hear from parents is that their kid won’t be independent.

So a lot of parents push kids to be independent—and what that ends up looking like is the opposite of what we’re talking about.

Part of the reason there’s pressure for individualism is because we see it as a way for kids to turn into “good people.”

But so many qualities of being a good person are about human interconnectedness: caring about other people, being kind, being helpful, being conscientious, thinking about what’s the right thing to do.

All of that comes from how we’re modeling it—the gardener metaphor.

But there’s always this tension: wanting your kid to be helpful, caring, kind, and thinking you have to make them be those things instead of letting that gardener process develop.

I’m on the other side of this because my kids are grownups, so I’ve seen it develop. One of the things I realized a couple years ago is this progression I saw with Maxine.

One time we were on our way out the door. My husband happened to be leaving for work at the same time we were leaving for the school bus. Maxine was probably around seven, and I was carrying her backpack for her.

My husband—who also has that individualism thing—said, “Why are you carrying her backpack? She’s seven. She can carry her own backpack.”

And I was like, “I know, but she likes me to carry it, and I don’t mind.”

And I really knew that someday she would want to carry her own backpack.

Sure enough, a couple years later, she’s carrying her own backpack, doesn’t ask me anymore. I didn’t think about it for a while.

Then one day we were coming from the grocery store and had to walk a little ways with heavy groceries. She insisted on carrying all the groceries and wouldn’t let me carry anything.

I was like, “I can carry some groceries, honey.” And she’s like, “No, Mom. I’ve got it.”

She’s carrying all the heavy groceries by herself. This full-circle moment: not only was she helping, she wanted to do it for me. She didn’t want me to have to carry the heavy groceries.

I just love that.

Corey: Yeah. And I love when we have these conversations because sometimes it feels like a leap of faith—you don’t see this modeled in society very much. It’s a leap of faith to be like, “I can do these things for my children, and one day they will…”

But it’s not as long as people think. I’m already seeing some of that blooming with my 10-year-old.

Sarah: Yeah.

And Sophie in our membership shared something on our Wednesday Wins. Her kids are around 10, eight or nine, and seven. She’s always followed this principle—modeling who you want your kid to be.

She said she always worried, “They’re never going to help.” And whenever you hear “never” and “always,” there’s anxiety coming in.

But she shared she had been sick and had to self-isolate. Her kids were making her food and bringing it to her. She would drive to the store, and they would go in and get the things needed.

She was amazed at how they stepped up and helped her without her having to make them. They just saw that their mom needed help and were like, “We’re there, Mom. What do you need?”

Corey: Oh—“What do you need?” That’s so sweet.

Sarah: I love that.

One more story: this fall, my kids are 20—Lee’s going to be 25 next week—21, and 18.

My husband and I were going away for the weekend, leaving Maxine home by herself. It was fall, and we have a lot of really big trees around our house, so there was major eavestroughs—gutters—cleaning to do, getting leaves off the roof and bagging all the leaves in the yard. A full-day job.

My husband had been like, “I have so much work to do. I don’t want to deal with that when I come home.”

So I asked the boys if they could come over and the three of them could do the leaf-and-gutter job. And they were like, “Absolutely.”

They surprised their dad. When we came home, they had done the entire thing. They spent a day doing all the leaves and gutter cleaning. None of them were like, “I don’t want to,” or “I’m busy.” They didn’t ask me to pay them—we didn’t pay them. They just were like, “Sure, we’ll help Dad. We know he has a lot of work right now.”

I just love that.

Corey: Oh, I love that. When they’re so little, they can’t really help take the burden off you. But knowing that one day they will—it’s such a nice thing to know.

Although this brings us to that good point about Hunt, Gather, Parent.

Sarah: Yeah. If people haven’t listened to that episode, we’ll link to it in the show notes.

Let’s talk about some things you can do to actively practice what we’re talking about—modeling who we want our kids to be.

One idea is really encapsulated by Michaeleen Doucleff, who wrote Hunt, Gather, Parent. She traveled in Mexico, spent time with Mayan people, and saw kids doing household stuff without being asked—helpful, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, taking care of younger siblings in this beautiful way that was pretty unrecognizable by North American standards.

She went down and lived with them and studied what they did. She found it started with letting kids help when they were little.

The two- or three-year-old who wanted to help a parent make food or do things in the garden—rather than the parents doing it without the kid around, or giving them something fake to help with, or not letting them do it—those parents let kids do it.

Even if it took longer, even if the parent had to redo it later (not in front of them). They let their kids be imperfect helpers and enthusiastic helpers.

That’s an impulse we’ve all seen: kids want to help. And we often don’t let them because we say they’re too little or it takes too much time. And we end up thwarting that helping impulse.

Then when we really want them to help—when they’re actually capable—they’ve learned, “Helping isn’t my role,” because it got shut down earlier.

Corey: Exactly. And I really feel that for parents because schedules are so busy and we’re so rushed.

But you don’t have to do this all the time. It’s okay if there are sometimes where there’s a crunch. Pick times when it’s a little more relaxed—maybe on weekends or when you have a bit more space.

Sarah: Totally.

And while we’re talking about helping: this comes up a lot with parents I work with and in our membership. Parents will say, “I asked my kid to set the table and they said, ‘Why do I always have to do it?’”

This happened the other day with a client. I asked, “What was your child doing when you asked?” And she said, “He was snuggled up on the couch reading a book.”

And I was like: I can see how that’s frustrating—you could use help getting the table ready. But let’s zoom out.

Modeling might look like: “Okay, you’re tired. You’ve had a long day at school. You’re snuggled up reading. I’ll set the table right now.”

Being gracious. Even if they refuse sometimes, it’s okay to do it. But also, in that specific helping piece, we can look at the times when they help without being asked.

When I give parents the assignment to look for that, every parent says, “Oh, I won’t find any.” And then they come back and say, “Oh, I did find times.”

So when they do help—carry groceries, help a sibling—how can you make them feel good about it?

“Thank you. That saved so much time.” “I was going to help your brother but my hands were full—thank you.”

Pro-social behavior is reinforced when it feels good.

If you want them to help more, ask: “What would you like to do to help the family team?”

Not, “This is your job forever.” More like, “I’ve noticed setting the table isn’t a great time for you. What are some other things you could take on?” And if they don’t have ideas, brainstorm what’s developmentally appropriate.

Often there are things kids would like to do that you’ve just never thought of.

Corey: It’s true. It’s kind of like how adults divide jobs at home—often according to who likes what. But with kids we think, “I should just tell them what to do, and they should just do it.”

It makes sense to work with what they like.

Sarah: And also the flow of the family and schedule.

That’s why we never had chores in the strict sense. My kids helped out, but it was never “one person’s job” to do the dishwasher or take out the garbage.

Because inevitably I’d need the dishwasher emptied and that person wasn’t home, or they were doing homework. And if I said, “Can you do the dishwasher?” someone could say, “That’s not my job—that’s my brother’s job.”

So instead, if I needed something done, whoever was around: “Hey, can you take the garbage out?” I tried to keep it relatively equal, but it wasn’t a rigid assignment. And I think that helped create the family team idea.

Corey: Yes.

Sarah: And that “it’s someone’s job” thing is that individualism again.

You hear this: “Can you clean that up?” and if you haven’t been modeling cleaning up messes that aren’t your own, you might hear, “Well, I didn’t make that mess.”

But if you model: if they make a mess and you say, “Can you pick up your crayons?” and they’re like, “No,” then you can say, “Okay, sure, I’ll pick up the crayons for you,” and they have the experience of seeing someone clean up a mess that isn’t theirs.

They’re more likely to absorb: “Oh, yeah, I can help with messes that aren’t mine.”

Corey: I’ve really seen this play out in my house this winter. One child loves shoveling. The second there’s any snow, he’s like, “Time for me to shovel.” It doesn’t matter if it’s early morning or dark out—he’s out there shoveling.

And I’ve been blown away, because first of all, I do not like shoveling. It’s genuinely helpful.

But he’ll also be looking out for when the plow comes by—this doesn’t happen where you live on the island, but for lots of people: the plow makes a wall at the end of the driveway. Even if you already shoveled, you have a new wall.

He’ll keep looking: “Just watching out for the plow.” Like a little old man. The second it happens, he’s out there so everyone can leave the house as needed.

And he’s even admitted, “There are lots of jobs I don’t like, but I really love doing this. This is something I can do for everybody.”

Sarah: That’s so great. That’s a perfect example of letting them choose something that helps the family.

In terms of flexibility—doing things for them—how have you seen that play out? Because for me, when my kids were small, they did very little. We’d do “Let’s all tidy up,” but maybe they’d pick up three things and I’d pick up most of the things. We’d do a 10-minute tidy.

Mostly I did dishes, setting and clearing the table, all of that. But then I found that as they got older, they just started doing it.

And I never got into power struggles because, honestly, it was often easier to do it myself. Maybe that worked out because I didn’t have a grand vision—I just lived it, and then I saw them grow into doing a lot as they got older.

What about you? How are you seeing that balance between what you do for them and how you see them growing?

Corey: I’d say this is where you really have to have faith. Something that maybe wasn’t modeled for us.

This comes up with clients all the time: they get anxious—“They’re never going to clean up, they’re never going to be helpful, they’ll be entitled.” They get stuck in “never” because it’s not happening right away.

So when I tell people: invite them, and if they don’t want to do it, say something like, “You don’t want to do it this time. I’m sure you’ll do it next time.”

But mean it—not passive-aggressive. Not “I’m sure you’ll do it next time” as a threat. Actually mean: “I’m sure you’ll do it next time,” and then go about it with trust that they will eventually do it.

You’re holding space. You’re not being anxious about it.

Sarah: Yes—holding space, having faith.

Corey: And I think it’s giving ourselves—and the parents we work with—a permission slip.

You can tidy up for them without being angry about it. If you’re doing this like, “No one helps me,” that’s not going to work.

You have to truly trust the goodness of your children—that they’ll want to be like this.

Sarah: Yeah.

And I think some of it comes down to how we treat other adults.

If your partner normally does the dishes and says, “I’m exhausted from work,” hopefully there’s give-and-take. You pick up slack when they’re tired.

A lot of this is: how do you want to be treated? How do you treat other adults? And how can you work on treating kids the same way?

So often we don’t treat kids the way we treat adults. And sometimes that’s appropriate. But often it’s just a lack of respect.

I saw a comedy skit once where these moms were sitting around drinking wine, and at first it was normal, and then one goes to reach for the bottle and another slaps her hand: “You haven’t finished what you have in your glass. Finish what you have first.”

Someone interrupts, and the other says, “I was still speaking. Wait until I’m done speaking.”

And you’re like: oh my gosh, that’s what people do to kids all the time. If you see an adult do it to another adult, it’s funny—but it’s also jarring because it’s considered normal when people do it to kids.

Kids aren’t always seen as having the same rights or deserving the same respect as adults.

Corey: Yes. And I think Iris Chen talks about this. You did a podcast with her back in season one—adultism.

Sarah: Yes, adultism—like racism or sexism, but adultism: prioritizing adults’ needs and rights over children’s.

Corey: And that really stood out to me. If we treat them like the beautiful little people they are—not “just children,” but people—that goes a long way in what we’re talking about today.

Sarah: Yeah.

And the last big point is how this works with values.

Corey: We hear this a lot: parents get worried about values. They really value the environment and worry their kids aren’t living those values.

Like a parent who was upset their kids were buying candy made with palm oil because of how it’s harvested. “Why don’t my kids care?”

If we get preachy—“We can’t buy candy with palm oil,” “We only buy thrifted clothes”—it can turn into, “You’re trying to control me,” and then kids push the other way.

Versus if we live those values and give them room to play with them and figure out where they land, they tend to be more open—and more interested in the why.

A strange example from this weekend: I don’t really like those disposable hand warmers because you can only use them once. I prefer things we can use multiple times.

It was supposed to be really cold, so I was like, “Okay, I guess I’ll buy them.” I didn’t say anything weird about it. We used them.

At the end of the day, he had to throw them out, and he goes, “I don’t feel great about this. It was helpful, but I don’t know if it was helpful enough that we have to throw this in the garbage now.”

And I was like: that’s exactly how I feel. But I didn’t get preachy. He was able to think about it himself.

So even with values, we live them. If kids aren’t agreeing with our values, sometimes we have to give space and pull back. When someone’s pushing something on you, you often feel like not complying.

Sarah: Yeah. It becomes a power struggle.

And I do think there’s a difference between pushing and educating. You can give them information in an age-appropriate way, and you can say, “You can buy that with your own money, but I don’t want to support that, so I’m not going to.”

Not in a way that makes them feel terrible. Just: “These are my values.”

I’ve said this to my kids. Maxine was maybe 14 and said, “My phone’s broken. I need a new phone.”

I said, “What’s wrong?” She said, “My music library keeps going away and I have to download it.”

I started laughing and said, “That’s not enough to get a new phone.” I said, “My values are we use electronics until they’re broken. We don’t get a new phone because of a little glitch.”

You should see our minivan—it’s scraped up and old-looking. Maxine actually said we’re going somewhere with her boyfriend and his mom, and she said, “Can you please ask my boyfriend’s mother to drive?”

I said, “Why?” And she said, “Our car is so embarrassing.”

And I’m like, “It works great. We drive our cars into the ground.” That’s our family value.

And then last year, Maxine’s phone screen actually broke. She wanted a new phone, and I said, “My values—because of e-waste—are that I’d get it fixed if I were you. But I promise I won’t judge you if you want a new phone. Do what feels right for you.”

No guilt-tripping. And she chose to fix the screen instead of buying a new phone.

So these are examples—like your hand warmers—where we can give the information without being heavy. And they usually absorb our values over time.

Corey: Because it’s not just that moment—it’s hundreds of interactions.

And that’s actually empowering: you don’t need one big conversation. You get to show them these little things throughout life.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Corey: I mean, if we’re talking about phones, goodness gracious—how long have I needed a new phone?

Sarah: I know. I’ve been wanting you to get a new phone so you can post Reels for me.

Corey: They’re like, “Corey, maybe you’ve taken this too far.” But I don’t know—the modeling I’ve given my children is that you can make a dead phone last for two extra years.

Sarah: And I like your point: it’s all of these interactions over and over again.

The opposite of what we’re talking about is you can’t tell your kids not to be materialistic if you go out and buy things you don’t need. You can’t tell them people are more important than phones if you’re on your phone all the time.

You really have to think about it. That’s why that “Do as I say, not as I do” sometimes gets used—because it’s hard. It’s hard to be the person you want your kids to be.

And it keeps us honest: who do we want to be? Who do we want them to be?

Corey: I mean, it’s that moment when I stood there holding the shovel and I was like, “Ah. I see.”

So we can see this as a beautiful thing for our own growth, too, because we’re going to keep realizing how much it matters.

Caveat, though: I don’t want parents to listen and feel pressure—like every moment they’re being watched and they must be perfect.

Because this is also a chance to model messing up and making repairs. So don’t take this as: you have to be perfect.

Sarah: And the other thing: if you’re listening and you’re like, “Why do I have to do everything around here? Sarah and Corey are saying clean up your kids’ messes, carry things for them, do the chores…”

I’m not saying every parent should be a martyr and never get help.

Remember what I said: where can your kids help? What are they already doing? What could they choose?

And I think I also let a lot of stuff go. My parents once came to visit and said, “Sarah, we really admire how you choose to spend time with your kids instead of cleaning up your house.”

I was like, I think that was a backhanded compliment. And also them noticing it was kind of a mess.

It wasn’t terrible or dirty. It was just: I didn’t have a perfect house, and I did everything myself.

I did a lot myself, but I didn’t do all the things some people think they need to do.

Corey: That totally makes sense. You’re basically saying: what can you let go of, too?

Sarah: Yeah. For the sake of the relationship.

And I think the last thing I wanted us to talk about is: does this ever not work?

You and I were thinking about objections.

If you’re living this way—gracious, helpful, flexible, modeling who you want them to be—you’re putting deposits in the Goodwill Bank. Your connection increases. They care what you think because that Goodwill Bank is nice and beefy.

The only time you could say it wouldn’t work is if you didn’t have a good relationship. But if you’re doing all this, it builds relationship—so I don’t even think you can say, “This doesn’t work.”

Nobody’s perfect. There were plenty of times I asked my kids to do things and they were grumpy, or I had to ask 10 times. It wasn’t like, “Of course, Mom, let me empty the dishwasher.” They were normal kids. But in general, if you trust the process and maturation, your kids move in that direction.

Corey: I’d add one other thing: it wouldn’t work if this is all you’re doing, with nothing else.

Sometimes people think peaceful parenting is passive, and what we’re saying can sound passive: “Just be who you want them to be.”

But there are also times you need to do something. Like we said: if you’re being the person you want to be and they’re never helping, there’s also a conversation: “What do you like to do?” There are collaborative steps.

This is the big philosophy—embodying who you want them to be—but there are also practical supports and conversations that help them be successful.

Sarah: Totally.

And the last thing is: remember this happens over time. Trust the growth process and maturation and brain development.

Remember that when they’re little, their agenda is not your agenda. And as they get older, they start to see the benefits: “Oh yeah, it is nice when the living room’s tidied up.”

When they’re little, they don’t have the same agenda as you. That’s a lot of why you get, “No, you do it.”

And I actually can’t believe I didn’t say this earlier, but a lot of times when we’re doing things for kids, they feel it as nurturing.

So sometimes when they don’t want to help, it’s their way of saying, “I want to make sure you’re taking care of me.” Sometimes that can look like refusal or not wanting to do things themselves.

Corey: Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah: Thanks, Corey.

Corey: Thank you.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Katie Kimball of Raising Healthy Families. We discussed getting kids in the kitchen and getting them to love cooking, raising teenagers and why they are wonderful, managing screens at different ages, and what kind of skills kids need to become independent, well-rounded and self-sufficient once they leave our homes.

Make sure to check out Katie’s course Teens Cook Real Food!

**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.

Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!

We talk about:

* [00:00] Introduction to the episode and guest Katie Kimball; overview of topics (cooking, teens, life skills, screens)

* [00:01] Katie’s background: former teacher, mom of four, and how her work evolved into teaching kids and teens to cook

* [00:04] Why the teen years are actually great; what teens need developmentally (agency and autonomy)

* [00:08] Beneficial risk and safe failure; how building competence early reduces anxiety later

* [00:10] Getting kids into cooking: start small, build confidence, and let them cook food they enjoy

* [00:16] Cooking as a life skill: budgeting, independence, and preparing for adulthood

* [00:21] Screen time: focusing on quality (consumptive vs. creative vs. social) instead of just limits

* [00:25] Practical screen strategies used in Katie’s family

* [00:28] Motivating teens to cook: future-casting and real-life relevance (first apartment, food costs)

* [00:33] Teens Cook Real Food course: what it teaches and why Katie created it

* [00:37] Fun foods teens love making (pizza, tacos)

* [00:39] Where to find Katie and closing reflections

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Teens Cook Real Food Course https://raisinghealthyfamilies.com/PeacefulParenting

* Evelyn & Bobbie bras: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/bra

* Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/yoto

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership

* How to Stop Fighting About Video Games with Scott Novis: Episode 201 https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/how-to-stop-fighting-about-video-games-with-scott-novis-episode-201/

Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:

* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahrosensweet/

* Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/peacefulparentingfreegroup

* YouTube: Peaceful Parenting with Sarah Rosensweet @peacefulparentingwithsarah4194

* Website: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com

* Join us on Substack: https://substack.com/@sarahrosensweet

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xx Sarah and Corey

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Podcast Transcript:

Sarah: Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Katie Kimball of Raising Healthy Families. She has been helping parents feed their kids and, more recently—in the past few years—teach their kids to cook. We had a great conversation about getting kids in the kitchen and getting them to love cooking, and also about raising teenagers and what kind of skills kids need to become independent. We also talked about screens, because any parent of a teenager who also supports other parents—I want to hear about what they do with getting kids to be less screen-focused and screen-dependent.

Katie had some great tips in all of these areas, including cooking, feeding our families, and screens. In some ways, we’re just talking about how do we raise kids who are independent, well-rounded, and have the skills they need to live independently—and those things all come into play.

I hope that you really enjoy this conversation with Katie as much as I did. Let’s meet Katie.

Hi, Katie. Welcome to the podcast.

Katie: Thank you so much, Sarah. I’m honored to talk to your audience.

Sarah: I’m so excited to talk to you about teenagers, raising teenagers, life skills, screens—there are so many things to dive into. You seem like a very multifaceted person with all these different interests. Tell us about who you are and what you do.

Katie: I do have a little bit of a squirrel brain, so I’m constantly doing something new in business. That means I can talk about a lot of things. I’ve been at the parenting game for 20 years and in the online business world for 17. I’m a teacher by trade and a teacher by heart, but I only taught in the classroom for about two years before I had my kids. I thought, “I can’t do both really, really well,” so I chose the family, left the classroom, and came home.

But my brain was always in teacher mode. As I was navigating the path and the journey of, “How do I feed these tiny humans?”—where every bite counts so much—I was really walking that real-food journey and spending a lot of time at the cutting board. My brain was always going, “How can I help other moms make this path easier?” I made so many mistakes. I burned so much food. There’s so much tension around how you balance your budget with your time, with the nutrition, and with all the conflicting information that’s flying at us.

So I felt like I wanted to stand in the middle of that chaos and tell moms, “Listen, there’s some stuff you can do that does it all—things that are healthy, save time, and save money.” That’s kind of where I started teaching online.

Then I shifted to kids’ cooking. For the last 10 years, I’ve been sort of the kids’ cooking cheerleader of the world, trying to get all kids in the kitchen and building confidence. It’s really been a journey since then. My kids currently are 20, 17, 14, and 11, so I’m in the thick of it.

Sarah: We have a very similar origin story: former teacher, then mom, and a brain that doesn’t want to stop working. I went with parent coaching, and you went with helping parents with food and cooking, so that’s exciting.

I can tell from what I’ve learned about you offline that you love teenagers—and I love teenagers too. We have people in the audience who have teenagers and also people who have littler kids. I think the people with littler kids are like, “I don’t want my kids to grow up. I’ve heard such bad things about teenagers.” What do you want people to know about teenagers? What are some things that you’ve learned as the mom of younger kids and then teens?

Katie: It’s such a devastating myth, Sarah, that teens are going to be the awful part of your parenting career—the time you’re not supposed to look forward to, the time you have to slog through, and it’s going to be so difficult.

It’s all difficult, right? Don’t let anyone tell you parenting’s easy—they’re lying. But it’s so worth it, and it’s so great. I love parenting teens. I love conversing with them at such a much higher level than talking to my 11-year-old, and I love watching what they can do. You see those glimpses of what they’ll be like when they’re a dad, or when they’re running around an office, or managing people. It’s incredible to be so close. It’s like the graduation of parenting. It’s exciting.

That’s what I would want to tell parents of kids younger than teens: look forward to it.

I do think there are some things you can do to prepare for adolescence and to make it smoother for everyone. I like to talk about what teens need. We want to parent from a place of what teens developmentally need, and they really need agency and autonomy at that stage. They’re developmentally wired to be pushing away—to be starting to make the break with their adults, with that generation that we are in. Sometimes that’s really painful as the grown-up. It almost feels like they’re trying to hurt us, but what they’re really doing is trying to push us away so it doesn’t hurt them so badly when they know they need to leave.

As parents, it helps to sit with the knowledge that this is not personal. They do not hate me. They’re attempting to figure out how to sever this relationship. So what can we do to allow them to do that so they don’t have to use a knife? If we can allow them to walk far enough away from us and still be a safe haven they can come home to, the relationship doesn’t have to be severed. It just gets more distant and longer apart.

When they want independence and autonomy, we need to make sure we give it to them. My tip for parents of younger kids is that, especially around ages 8, 10, 11—depending on maturity level—where can we start providing some agency? My team will say, “Katie, don’t say agency. It sounds like you’re talking about the FBI or some government letters.” But it’s the best word, because agency isn’t just choices—it’s choices plus control, plus competence to be able to make change in your own life, in your own environment.

We can’t have agency unless we give our kids skills to actually be able to do something. The choice between “Do you want the red cup or the blue cup?” is for toddlers. That’s not going to be enough once they’re in the stage where their mind is growing and they can critically think. We want to give our kids skills, responsibilities, choices, and some ownership over their lives. That starts in upper elementary school, and it gets bigger and bigger.

Sarah: I would argue it starts even earlier. Toddlers can make the red cup or blue cup choice, and as they keep going, you can give them more and more agency.

One of my favorite parenting people, Alfie Kohn, says that kids should have the power to make decisions that make us gulp a little bit.

Katie: Oh, I love that.

Sarah: I think that’s true. We come up against our own anxiety too: What if they make the wrong decision? But it’s incremental, so the decisions become bigger and bigger as they get older. That’s how they practice being able to make good decisions—through experience.

Katie: We know statistically that anxiety right now is spiking massively that first year out of high school—where young adults are heading into the world, either to university or for a first job. One theory—one I would get behind—is that everything of adulthood, all the responsibilities, are crashing on their shoulders at once, and they haven’t experienced that level of responsibility. Sometimes they haven’t had opportunities to fail safely, and they don’t know what to do.

Sometimes we think we’re pushing problems out of their way and that it’s helpful, but we’re really creating bigger problems down the road. So with that long-term perspective, I love that “gulp.” We’ve got to let them try and fail and hold back.

Sarah: Do you know Lenore Skenazy, who started the Free Range Kids movement? She has a TED Talk that came out recently where she talks about how she attributes the rise in anxiety to the fact that kids never have any unwatched time by adults. They never have room and space to figure out their own way to make things work. Of course, I don’t think anyone’s saying we should inappropriately not supervise our kids, but they need more freedom. If they don’t have freedom to figure things out on their own, that’s where the anxiety comes in.

Katie: For sure. When Lenore and I have interacted, she likes to call it “beneficial risk.” Climbing the tree is the classic example, but because I love to get kids and teens in the kitchen, we got to talk about the beneficial risk of using sharp knives and playing with fire—literally returning to our ancestral roots.

The way I see it, and the way I’ve seen it played out in my own home: I taught my now 20-year-old to use a chef’s knife at age 10. He built competency. He took risks. He discovered how he wanted to navigate in the kitchen. So when he was 15 and getting his driver’s permit, I felt pretty peaceful. I thought, “He’s so mature. I’ve seen him make good decisions. He’s practiced taking beneficial risks.”

I felt confident handing him the driver’s license. When it came time for him to get a cell phone—first a kid-safe phone and then a fully unlocked smartphone—I felt like we had been building up to it because of our work in the kitchen. I think he did better than his peers with taking appropriate risks driving a car and having a smartphone in his pocket, because he’d had practice.

Sarah: And that was in the kitchen for your family.

Katie: Yes.

Sarah: Cooking is one of my special interests. I love to cook. My kids love baking. They were never that interested in cooking, although they all can cook and they do cook for themselves. My 21-year-old who has his own apartment has started sending me pictures of the food that he makes. He made some baked chicken thighs with mushrooms the other day, and a green salad. He sent me a picture and I said to my daughter, “Do you want to see a picture of Asa’s chicken?” And she said, “Asa got a chicken?” She was picturing it running around. We all laughed so hard because I wouldn’t put it past him, honestly.

When my kids were younger, they weren’t that interested. Maybe I could have gotten them more interested in the cooking part, but I always felt like that was my thing. What tips do you have—for any ages—about how to get kids interested and involved? You said your son was using a chef’s knife at age 10. What are some ways to involve kids and get them interested in that skill?

Katie: Knives are a great start because they’re scary and they’re fun—especially for guys. You get to use something dangerous. My second son, John, asked to learn to use a chef’s knife, so he learned to use a sharp paring knife at age four and asked to level up to a chef’s knife at age seven.

For parents of kids who are still in that intrinsic motivation phase—“I want to help”—the good news is you don’t have to try. You just have to say yes. You just have to figure out what can my brain handle letting this little person do in the kitchen. If it’s “I’m going to teach them to measure a teaspoon of salt,” then do it. Don’t let cooking feel like this big to-do list item. It’s just one teaspoon of salt.

Can I teach them to crack an egg? Can I teach them to flip a pancake? Think of it as one little skill at a time. That’s what cooking is: building blocks. If it’s something like measuring, you don’t have to have them in your elbow room. You can send them to the table; they can have a little spill bowl. Then you can build their motivation by complimenting the meal: “This meal tastes perfect. I think it’s the oregano—who measured the oregano?” That’s how we treat little ones.

The medium-sized ones are a little tougher, and teens are tougher yet. For the medium-sized ones, the best way to get them involved is to create a chance for authentic praise that comes from outside the family—meaning it’s not you or your co-parent; it’s some other adult. If you’re going to a party or a potluck, or you’re having people over, figure out how to get that kid involved in one recipe. Then you say to the other adults, “Guess who made the guacamole?” That was our thing—our kids always made the guac when they were little. And other adults say, “What? Paul made the guacamole? That’s amazing. This is awesome.” The 10-year-old sees that and blooms with pride. It makes them more excited to come back in the kitchen, feel more of that, and build more competency.

Sarah: I love that. That’s an invitation, and then it makes them want to do more because it feels good. We talk about that in peaceful parenting too: a nice invitation and then it becomes a prosocial behavior you want to do more of.

I started cooking because I wanted to make food that I liked. I’m old enough that I took Home Ec in middle school, and it was my favorite class. I think about my Home Ec teacher, Mrs. Flanagan, my whole adult life because I learned more from her that I still use than from any other teacher. I remember figuring out how to make deep-fried egg rolls in grade seven because I loved egg rolls. You couldn’t just buy frozen egg rolls then. So I think food that kids like can be a good way in. Is that something you find too?

Katie: One hundred percent. If you’re cooking things they don’t like, you get the pushback: “Mom, I don’t like…” So it’s like, “Okay, I would love to eat your meal. What do you want to eat?” And it’s not, “Tell me what you want and I’ll cook it.” If you meal plan, you get to make all the choices.

My kids have been interviewed, and people often ask, “What’s your favorite thing about knowing how to cook?” My kids have gotten pretty good at saying, “We get to cook what we like.” It’s super motivating.

Sarah: When I was growing up, my sister and I each had to make dinner one night a week starting when I was in grade five and she was in grade three. We could make anything we wanted, including boxed Kraft Dinner. I can’t remember what else we made at that young age, but it was definitely, “You are cooking dinner, and you get to make whatever you want.”

Katie: Why didn’t you do that with your own kids, out of curiosity?

Sarah: It just seemed like it would take too much organization. I think we tried it a couple times. Organization is not my strong suit. Often dinner at our house—there were lots of nights where people had cereal or eggs or different things for dinner. I love to cook, but I like to cook when the urge hits me and I have a recipe I want to try. I’m not seven nights a week making a lovely dinner.

Also, dinner was often quite late at my house because things always take longer than I think. I’d start at six, thinking it would take an hour, and it would be 8:30 by the time dinner was ready. I remember one night my middle son was pouring himself cereal at 6:30. I said, “Why are you having cereal? Dinner’s almost ready.” He said, “Mom, it’s only 6:30.” He expected it later—that’s the time normal people eat dinner.

My kids have a lot of freedom, but nobody was particularly interested in cooking. And, to be honest, it felt a bit too early as a responsibility when my sister and I had to do it. Even though I’m glad now that I had those early experiences, it was wanting to make egg rolls that made me into a cook more than being assigned dinner in grade five.

Katie: That push and pull of how we were parented and how we apply it now is so hard.

Sarah: Yes.

Katie: I’m thinking of an encouraging story from one of the families who’s done our brand-new Teens Cook Real Food. The mom said it was kind of wild: here they were cooking all this real food and it felt intensive. Over the years she’d slid more into buying processed foods, and through the class, watching her teens go through it, she realized, “Oh my gosh, it’s actually not as hard as I remember. I have to coach myself.” They shifted into cooking with more real ingredients, and it wasn’t that hard—especially doing it together.

Sarah: It’s not that hard. And you hear in the news that people are eating a lot of fast food and processed food. I’m not anti-fast food or processed food, but you don’t want that to be the only thing you’re eating. It’s actually really easy to cook some chicken and rice and broccoli, but you have to know how. That’s why it’s so sad Home Ec has gone by the wayside. And honestly, a whole chicken, some rice, and broccoli is going to be way cheaper than McDonald’s for a family of four. Cooking like that is cheaper, not very hard, and healthier than eating a lot of fast food or processed food.

Katie: Conversations in the kitchen and learning to cook—it’s kind of the gateway life skill, because you end up with conversations about finances and budgeting and communication and thinking of others. So many life skills open up because you’re cooking.

You just brought up food budget—that could be a great half-hour conversation with a 16- or 17-year-old: “You won’t have infinite money in a couple years when you move out. You’ll have to think about where you spend that money.” It’s powerful for kids to start thinking about what it will be like in their first apartment and how they’ll spend their time and money.

Sarah: My oldest son is a musician, and he’s really rubbing his pennies together. He told me he makes a lot of soups and stews. He’ll make one and live off it for a couple days. He doesn’t follow a recipe—he makes it up. That’s great, because you can have a pretty budget-friendly grocery shop.

I also don’t want to diss anyone who’s trying to keep it all together and, for them, stopping by McDonald’s is the only viable option at this moment. No judgment if you’re listening and can’t imagine having the capacity to cook chicken and rice and broccoli. Maybe someday, or maybe one day a week on the weekend, if you have more time and energy.

Katie: The way I explain it to teens is that learning to cook and having the skills gives you freedom and choices. If you don’t have the skills at all, you’re shackled by convenience foods or fast food or DoorDash. But if you at least have the skills, you have many more choices. Teens want agency, autonomy, and freedom, so I speak that into their lives. Ideally, the younger you build the skills, the more time you have to practice, gain experience, and get better.

There’s no way your older son could have been making up soups out of his head the first month he ever touched chicken—maybe he’s a musician, so maybe he could apply the blues scale to cooking quickly—but most people can’t.

Sarah: As we’re speaking, I’m reflecting that my kids probably did get a lot of cooking instruction because we were together all the time. They would watch me and they’d do the standing on a chair and cutting things and stirring things. It just wasn’t super organized.

That’s why I’m so glad you have courses that can help people learn how to teach their children or have their kids learn on their own.

I promised we would talk about screens. I’m really curious. It sounds like your kids have a lot of life skills and pretty full lives. Something I get asked all the time is: with teens and screens, how do you avoid “my kid is on their phone or video games for six or seven hours a day”? What did you do in your family, and what thoughts might help other people?

Katie: Absolutely. Parenting is always hard. It’s an ongoing battle. I think I’m staying on the right side of the numbers, if there are numbers. I feel like I’m launching kids into the world who aren’t addicted to their phones. That’s a score, and it’s tough because I work on screens. I’m telling parents, “Buy products to put your kids on screen,” so it’s like, “Wait.”

I don’t look at screens as a dichotomy of good or bad, but as: how do we talk to our kids about the quality of their time on screens?

Back in 2020, when the world shut down, my oldest, Paul, was a freshman. His freshman year got cut short. He went weeks with zero contact with friends, and he fell into a ton of YouTube time and some video games. We thought, “This is an unprecedented time, but we can’t let bad habits completely take over.”

We sat down with him and said, “Listen, there are different kinds of screen time.” We qualified them as consumptive—everything is coming out of the screen at you—creative—you’re making something—and communicative—you’re socializing with other people.

We asked him what ways he uses screens. We made a chart on a piece of paper and had him categorize his screen time. Then we asked what he thought he wanted his percentage of screen time to be in those areas—without evaluating his actual time yet. He assigned those times, and then we had him pay attention to what reality was. Reality was 90 to 95% consumptive. It was an amazing lightbulb moment. He realized that to be an agent of his own screen time, he had to make intentional choices.

He started playing video games with a buddy through the headphones. That change completely changed his demeanor. That was a tough time.

So that’s the basis of our conversation: what kind of screen time are you having?

For my 11-year-old, he still has minute limits: he sets a timer and stops himself. But if he’s playing a game with someone, he gets double the time. That’s a quantitative way to show him it’s more valuable to be with someone than by yourself on a screen. A pretty simple rule.

We’ll also say things like, “People over screens.” If a buddy comes over and you’re playing a video game, your friend is at the door.

That’s also what I talk to parents about with our classes: this isn’t fully consumptive screen time. We highly edit things. We try to keep it engaging and fun so they’re on for a set number of minutes and then off, getting their fingers dirty and getting into the real world. We keep their brains and hands engaged beyond the screen. The only way I can get a chef into your home is through the screen—or you pay a thousand dollars.

We can see our screen time as really high quality if we make the right choices. It’s got to be roundabout 10, 11, 12: pulling kids into the conversation about how we think about this time.

Sarah: I love that. It sounds like you were giving your kids tools to look at their own screen time and how they felt about it, rather than you coming from on high and saying, “That’s enough. Get off.”

Katie: Trying.

Sarah: I approach it similarly, though not as organized. I did have limits for my daughter. My sons were older when screens became ubiquitous. For my daughter, we had a two-hour limit on her phone that didn’t include texting or anything social—just Instagram, YouTube, that kind of stuff. I think she appreciated it because she recognized it’s hard to turn it off.

We would also talk about, “What else are you doing today?” Have you gone outside? Have you moved your body? Have you done any reading? All the other things. And how much screen time do you think is reasonable? Variety is a favorite word around here.

Katie: Yes. So much so my 11-year-old will come to me and say, “I’ve played outside, I’ve read a book, my homework is done. Can I have some screen time?” He already knows what I’m going to ask. “Yes, Mom, I’ve had variety.” Then: “Okay, set a timer for 30 minutes.”

I have a 14-year-old freshman right now. He does not own a phone.

Sarah: Oh, wow. I love that.

Katie: In modern America, he knows the pathway to get a phone—and he doesn’t want one.

Sarah: That’s great. I hope we see that more and more. I worry about how much kids are on screens and how much less they’re talking to each other and doing things.

I had a guest on my podcast who’s a retired video game developer. His thing is how to not fight with your kid about video games. One thing he recommends is—even more than playing online with someone else—get them in the same room together. Then they can play more. He has different time rules if you’re playing in person with kids in your living room than if you’re playing alone or playing online with someone else.

Katie: Nice. Totally. My story was from COVID times.

Sarah: Yes, that wasn’t an option then. Someone I heard say the other day: “Can we just live in some unprecedented times, please?”

Katie: Yes, please.

Sarah: You mentioned the intrinsic motivation of somebody admiring their guacamole. What are your tips for kids—especially teens—who think they’re too busy or just super uninterested in cooking?

Katie: Teens are a tough species. Motivation is a dance. I really encourage parents to participate in future casting. Once they’re about 15, they’re old enough. Academically, they’re being future-casted all the time: “What are you going to be when you grow up?” They’re choosing courses based on university paths. But we need to future-cast about real life too.

Ask your 15-year-old: “Have you ever thought about what it’ll be like to be in your first apartment?” Maybe they haven’t. That helps reduce that first-year-out-of-home anxiety—to have imagined it. Then they might realize they have gaps. “Would you be interested in making sure you can cook some basic stuff for those first years? When you’re cooking at home, it’s my money you waste if you screw up.” That can be motivating. “I’m here to help.”

Sometimes it comes down to a dictate from above, which is not my favorite. Your sister and you were asked to cook at third and fifth grade. I agree that might be a little young for being assigned a full meal. We start around 12 in our house. But by high school, there’s really no reason—other than busy schedules. If they’re in a sport or extracurricular daily, that can be rough. So what could they do? Could they make a Sunday brunch? We come home from church every Sunday and my daughter—she’s 17, grade 12—she’s faster than I am now. She’ll have the eggs and sausage pretty much done. I’m like, “I’m going to go change out of my church clothes. Thanks.”

If we’re creative, there’s always some time and space. We have to eat three times a day. Sometimes it might be: “You’re old enough. It’s important as a member of this household to contribute. I’m willing to work with you on really busy weeks, but from now on, you need to cook on Saturday nights.” I don’t think that has to be a massive power struggle—especially with the future casting conversation. If you can get them to have a tiny bit of motivation—tiny bit of thinking of, “Why do I need this?”—and the idea of “If I cook, I get to make what I want,” and the budget.

Sarah: The budget too: if you’re living in your own apartment, how much do you think rent is? How much do you think you can eat for? It’s way more expensive to order out or get fast food than to cook your own food.

Katie: I feel so proud as a fellow mom of your son, Asa, for making soups and stuff. In Teens Cook Real Food, we teach how to make homemade bone broth by taking the carcass of a chicken. It’s a very traditional skill. On camera, I asked the girls who did it with me to help me figure out what their dollar-per-hour pay rate was for making that, compared to an equal quality you buy in the store. Bone broth at the quality we can make is very expensive—like $5 a cup.

They did the math and their hourly pay was over $70 an hour to make that bone broth. Then they have gallons of bone broth, and I call it the snowball effect: you have all this broth and you’re like, “I guess I’ll make soup.” Soup tends to be huge batches, you can freeze it, and it snowballs into many homemade, inexpensive, nourishing meals.

Sarah: I love that. You’ve mentioned your course a couple times—Teens Cook Real Food. I’m picturing that as your kids grew up, your teaching audience grew up too. Were there other reasons you wanted to teach teens how to cook?

Katie: Yes. We’ve had our kids’ cooking class for 10 years now. It just had its 10th birthday. The most often requested topic that’s not included in the kids’ class is meal planning and grocery shopping. It wasn’t something I felt like an eight-year-old needed.

For 10 years I had that seed of, “How can I incorporate those important skills of meal planning and grocery shopping?” Then my teens got older, and I thought, “I’ve told parents of teens that our kids’ cooking class will work for them, but it’s not enough. It wasn’t sufficient.”

It was so exciting to put this course together. Even just the thinking—the number of index cards I had on the floor with topics trying to figure out what a young adult needs in their first apartment, how to connect the skills, and how to make it engaging.

We ended up with eight teens I hired from my local community—some with cooking experience, some with literally none. We had on-camera accidents and everything. But they learned to cook in my kitchen, and it’s all recorded for your teens to learn from.

Sarah: I love that. What are some of the recipes that you teach in the course?

Katie: We have over 35. We spent a whole day with a chef. He started talking about flavor and how seasonings work, and he taught us the mother sauces—like a basic white sauce, both gluten-free and dairy-free, a couple ways to do that, and a basic red sauce, and a couple ways to do that.

My favorite cheeky segment title is “How to Boil Water.” We have a bunch of videos on how to boil water—meaning you can make pasta, rice, oatmeal, hard-boiled eggs, boiled potatoes. There’s a lot of stuff that goes in water.

Then we built on that with “How to Eat Your Vegetables.” We teach sautéing, steaming, and roasting. The first big recipe they learn is a basic sheet pan dinner. We use pre-cooked sausage and vegetables of your choice, seasonings of your choice. It’s one of those meals where you’re like, “I don’t need a recipe. I can just make this up and put it in the oven.”

Then, to go with pasta and red sauce, we teach homemade meatballs. We get them at the grill for steak and chicken and burgers. Of course we do French fries in a couple different ways.

Choice is a huge element of this course. If we teach something, we probably teach it in two or three or four different ways, so teens can adapt to preferences, food sensitivities, and anything like that.

We use the Instant Pot a lot in our “How to Eat Your Protein” segment. We do a pork roast and a beef roast and a whole chicken, and that broth I talked about, and we make a couple different soups with that.

Sarah: You almost make me feel like I haven’t had lunch yet.

Katie: I’m starving, actually.

Sarah: I’m quite an adventurous eater and cook, but I’m going to ask you about my two favorite foods—because they’re like a child’s favorite foods, but my favorite foods are pizza and tacos. Do you do anything with pizza and tacos in your course?

Katie: We do both pizza and tacos.

Sarah: Good!

Katie: Our chef taught us, with that homemade red sauce, to make homemade dough. He said, “I think we should teach them how to make a homemade brick oven and throw the pizzas into the oven.” Throwing means sliding the pizza off a pizza peel onto bricks in your oven. I was like, “We’re going to make such a mess,” but they did it. It’s awesome.

Then we tested it at home: can you just make this in a normal pizza pan? Yes, you can—don’t worry. You don’t have to buy bricks, but you can. Again, there are different ways.

Sarah: I think teenagers would love making pizza on bricks in the oven. For us we’re like, “That seems like so much work.” But teenagers are enthusiastic and creative and they have so much energy. They’re wonderful human beings. I can see how the brick oven pizza would be a great challenge for them.

Katie: It’s so fun. My kids, Paul and John—20 and 14—they’ve both done it at home. As adults we’re like, “It’s such a mess,” but we’re boring people. Teenagers are not boring. So yes—definitely pizza.

Sarah: That’s awesome. We’ll link to your course in the show notes. Before we let you go, where’s the best place for people to go and find out more about you and what you do?

Katie: Definitely: raisinghealthyfamilies.com/peacefulparenting. We’re going to make sure there’s always something about teens at that link—whether it’s a free preview of the course or a parenting workshop from me. There will always be something exciting for parents there.

Sarah: Amazing. It’s been such a pleasure. I thought maybe I didn’t do all this stuff, but considering how both of my sons who are independent cook for themselves all the time, I think I must have done okay—even if it was just by osmosis.

Katie: That’s the great thing about keeping your kids near you. That was your peaceful parenting: they were in the kitchen and they were there, as opposed to you booting them out of the kitchen. There are lots of ways.

Sarah: My daughter is an incredible baker. She makes the best chocolate chip cookies. I have this recipe for muffin-tin donuts that are amazing, and she’s a really great baker. She can find her way around a quesadilla, eggs, and ramen for herself. I think once she moves out, if she doesn’t have mom’s cooking anymore, she’ll probably also be able to cook.

Katie: Yes. And so many parents need that bridge. They’re like, “My kids love to make cookies. They bake, but they won’t shift to cooking.” I would hope that future-casting conversation could be a good bridge.

Sarah: Yeah. You can’t live on cookies—or you might think you can for a little while, but then you’d start to feel gross.

Katie: Exactly.

Sarah: Thanks a lot, Katie.

Katie: Thank you so much, Sarah.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Katie K. May, a licensed therapist and author of the book You’re On Fire. It’s Fine: Effective Strategies for Parenting Teens With Self-Destructive Behaviors.

We discussed children/teens who are “fire feelers”, why intense emotions can lead to risky behaviours, how to respond to self-harm urges, how to stay connected or rebuild your connection with your teen, and what parents of younger children can do now to prevent challenges in their teen years.

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We talk about:

* 00:05 — What Is a Fire Feeler?

* 00:06 — What Emotional Dysregulation Really Means

* 00:07 — Fire Feelers Often Have Fire-Feeler Parents- Genetic and Environmental Components

* 00:10 — Why Teens Are So Easily Overwhelmed

* 00:12 — What Fire Feelers Do When Overwhelmed

* 00:20 — How Parents Should Respond to Self-Harm Urges

* 00:22 — When to Get Professional Help

* 00:24 — Why Depression Looks Different in Teens

* 00:25 — Teens Still Need Their Parents

* 00:26 — How to Stay Connected to Teens

* 00:28 — Judgment vs Validation

* 00:31 — How to Rebuild Connection When Things Are Broken- Katie’s Hierarchy of Connection

* 00:34 — Sensitivity & Impulsivity

* 00:35 — What Parents of Younger Kids Can Do Now

* 00:37 — Why Control Works When Kids Are Young — and Fails Later

* 00:38 — Why “Tough Love” Doesn’t Work

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Podcast Transcript:

Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Katie May. She’s a therapist and the author of You’re On Fire. It’s Fine: Effective Strategies for Parenting Teens With Self-Destructive Behaviors. We talked about why some teens are what she calls “fire feelers,” and about how best to support them—and ourselves—when emotional dysregulation is common, troubling, and can be destructive.

If you don’t have a teen yet, but you have a kiddo with big feelings, have a listen, because Katie also talks about what she wishes parents of younger kids knew so they didn’t end up with these sorts of challenges down the road. Let’s meet Katie.

Sarah: Hi, Katie. Welcome to the podcast.

Katie: Hey, Sarah. I’m glad to be here. Excited to talk about teens and parenting today—stuff I’m jazzed to share.

Sarah: Me too. Yeah. And I loved your book. I’ll ask you about that in a second—or maybe you can tell us who you are and what you do.

Katie: Yeah. My name is Katie K. May. I’m a licensed therapist in Pennsylvania, and I lead a team of other therapists. We all specialize in working with high-risk teens and their parents. So every day, we’re in the trenches working with teenagers who are suicidal, self-harming, have eating disorders, are not going to school, and we’re helping them learn skills while also teaching their parents how to respond effectively—so the whole family is working together as a system in harmony.

Sarah: And your book’s called You’re On Fire. It’s Fine. I like it. My book—

Katie: Go ahead.

Sarah: No, it’s a great title.

Katie: Yeah. So I came to that title from this idea of biologically sensitive teens—or very sensitive teens—often feeling like they’re on fire with their own emotions. And I can dig into any part of that. But the idea is that parents who are well-meaning will many times say things like, “You’re fine. It’s okay. Go take a nap. Go get a snack.” And it feels like a little squirt gun trying to put out this big fire of emotion. So I thought that title captured those two points initially, to bring people into the framework that I teach.

Sarah: I love that. And it’s funny—I had a different interpretation of the title, and my interpretation, now that you said what you meant it to be, I can totally see that. But my interpretation was more like, “You’re on fire. You can handle these big feelings. It’s fine.” Like, this is just—let’s get used to feeling the feelings. So I guess it could be read either way.

Katie: I like both interpretations, and I think your interpretation speaks to probably how you support and parent. It’s nurturing and supportive of the process.

Sarah: Yeah. So tell us: what is a fire feeler?

Katie: A fire feeler is someone who is biologically sensitive. And what I mean by that is this is a kid who feels things very deeply. Their emotions are big and oftentimes overwhelming for them. And not just that—these are your zero-to-sixty-in-ten-seconds-flat kind of kids. They’re reactive, they’re easy to trigger, and when they’re triggered and they’re feeling their emotions in these very big ways, it also takes them a very long time to calm down or get back to their baseline.

And this is important because if you think about that slow return to feeling settled or centered again, oftentimes they’re being triggered again before they get back to that place of calm. And so they have a nervous system that’s constantly in a state of dysregulation—constantly triggered and upset. And it is very hard to access safety or calm or feeling okay because of that.

Sarah: And you mentioned emotional dysregulation, and in your book you have a very specific definition of emotional dysregulation. I thought it was a little more helpful and also a little bit more unusual. Can you give us your definition of emotional dysregulation?

Katie: So when someone is emotionally dysregulated, when they are triggered, it sets off this chain of emotions for them. Again, we go back to this idea that they feel on fire with their emotions. They’re often at this skills-breakdown point where it’s difficult to access skills or to calm down. And when you’re feeling on fire with your emotions, it makes sense that your brain comes up with escape strategies—things like self-harm, suicidal ideation, substance use—because it’s so big and hard to hold that the brain would do anything to make those emotions go away.

Sarah: I love that. And you also mentioned that people are biologically predisposed to be fire feelers, so I’m guessing that usually a teen’s one or both parents are also fire feelers, which would add a complication to the mix.

Katie: I would say so. I often find myself telling parents: some kids are born naturally good at sports. Some kids are born naturally good at music or art. And some kids are born naturally good at emotions—which means they’re very attuned to emotional states or nuances in the emotions of others.

And when we think about that as a genetic trait or a biological trait, it also makes sense that at least one of their parents carries this trait and is passing it down. And I think when I start to describe fire feelers—who they are and what it looks like—I regularly have at least one parent saying, “Oh, that’s me,” or “That’s you, honey.” They recognize it.

Sarah: Totally. Yeah. So I guess that makes home more complicated too when you’ve got a fire feeler and a fire feeler trying to find their way together.

Katie: It’s almost like if you yawn and it’s contagious—and the other person catches it. So if you have two people that are both biologically sensitive and they’re in the same room, one of them is triggered, one of them has a high state of emotional activation, it’s hard in general for another person in the room not to respond to that.

So there’s something that I teach. It’s called the transactional model. So let’s say a teenager is boiling over with frustration, and they’re exhibiting it. They’re bawling their fists. They’re snapping back at their parent. The parent then absorbs that emotion and they’re snapping back: “Don’t talk to me like that,” or, “It’s not okay for you to say that,” or “Don’t walk away from me.” Which then influences how the teen responds. And then the teen will continue to push or yell back, which then influences how the parent responds.

So we’re always looking at: How is it that I am influencing how you respond? How is it that you are influencing how I respond? And if everybody feels their emotions in these very big ways, it’s going to make that escalation that much bigger or faster because everyone’s overwhelmed in their emotions.

Sarah: So hard. I’m sure a lot of people listening can relate even when their kids aren’t teenagers yet—because that happens with little kids too.

Katie: Absolutely. It applies to all ages. I just happen to work with teenagers and parents.

Sarah: Speaking of teens, you mentioned in your book that teenagers are more prone to overwhelm. Can you briefly explain why that is? Because I talk about that too. I always say, “The drama is real.”

Katie: The drama is real. Thank you for saying that. So the way I look at it: teens are in this developmental state when so much is happening for them. They have unfully formed frontal lobes, which helps to regulate their emotions. They’re also dealing with hormonal changes, developmental changes, social stressors, peer stressors. They’re in school six hours a day, five days a week. There’s so much stress that’s placed on our teens.

And so if we think about a stress cup holding stress, it’s oftentimes just this one little extra drop that makes them lose control or makes them feel overwhelmed in their emotions. And I would say that’s probably true for everyone—that we’re all holding a lot, and it only takes a little to push us over the edge—but I think it’s the brain development that makes it even more challenging.

And then I’ll add to that the lack of control or agency over their own lives. They don’t have a lot of choice about what they do each day or what they have to do or who’s telling them what to do. So there’s a lot that’s outside of their control, and that makes it even harder to control or manage their emotions.

Sarah: I’m so glad you work with teenagers. You have such an empathetic view of what it’s like to be a teenager, and I think a lot of people—just a little sidebar—teens get such a bad rap in our culture and they’re so wonderful. I love teenagers. And also, I would never in a million years choose to go back to those years.

Katie: I wouldn’t either, but I do feel like I have a strong connection with the teen population. It’s interesting—we run parent groups at my center, and that’s a question that we’ll ask: Do you remember being a teenager?

And I think it’s hard for a lot of adults to empathize with the teen experience. But being able to do so—being able to put yourself in a teenager’s shoes—is going to help you support them so much more. Which is one of the things that I talk about in my book and in my work often: acceptance or validation before change. We always want to be understanding of the experience before we’re trying to problem-solve or change that experience.

Sarah: I want to ask you about validation a little bit later in our conversation, but before we get to that: what are some common reactions of fire feelers to overwhelm?

Katie: Yeah. Some of those common reactions tend to be self-destructive because, again, if we think about this idea that fire feelers are overwhelmed with their emotions—the big, fiery, painful experience for them—it’s not a conscious decision, but they would do anything to make that fire go out.

So this could be self-harm. This could be thinking about suicide. This could also be lashing out at parents. It could be numbing out in front of the TV or scrolling on social media for hours because it hurts too much to feel and I need to numb myself from that. It could be cutting themselves off from friends because the experience of relationships is so painful.

So a fire feeler will have a strong attunement to nuance and facial expressions and tones of voice. And so what might feel okay for one person, for a fire feeler might be interpreted as rejection or might be interpreted as “I did something wrong,” or “There’s something wrong with me.” And so the natural response of a fire feeler is to do whatever it takes to protect themselves from being on fire.

Sarah: I don’t even know if I totally understand it—but how do, and I know a lot of people don’t, how does self-harm bring relief to those feelings of overwhelm?

Katie: So there’s a biological response to it: when you self-harm—when one engages in a self-harm or self-destructive behavior—there is short-term relief. So if you think about emotions rising, rising, rising, what happens is it either blocks the escalation of those emotions, or it makes the emotional state come down quickly. It’s body physiology.

In addition to that, there are two parts to it. The first part is that it’s called negative reinforcement, and that doesn’t mean that something negative happens; it means it’s the removal of something that’s difficult. So that’s what I just described. You self-harm, you start thinking about suicide—it becomes an escape. It helps you to feel a sense of relief.

The second part of that is positive reinforcement, and that’s the social piece. A parent finds out that I self-harmed, and all of a sudden I am given warmth. You’re sitting on my bed. We’re having a heart-to-heart. You’re emailing the teacher to say that I don’t have to go to school tomorrow.

So there’s this one-two stack of: I feel better in the moment because it brings my body physiology back into a state of balance or regulation. And then on top of that, I’m getting my social needs met. And therefore it makes it really hard to break that cycle because there are all of these—this chain reaction of things that happen—that make me go from feeling awful to okay, and sometimes even more supported than before.

Sarah: That was such an interesting thing to read about in your book because I thought, “Oh man.” If I were a parent and had a teen that was self-harming, it would be so hard not to do that second part—the positive, what you call the positive reinforcement. So how do you support a teen without making it, “I self-harm and then I get a lot of really lovely warmth and attention”?

Katie: Yeah. So it’s not about removing the warmth and attention. It’s about changing where you put that warmth and attention. Instead of it being directly after self-harm, maybe it’s in structured and measured doses throughout the day.

So maybe we’re having a heart-to-heart in the morning. Maybe we’re going out and spending time together or watching TV together just because—and not because I self-harmed.

The other thing that I like to make sure that parents are familiar with and practiced with is how they respond when a teen shares an urge to self-harm or an urge for suicide. Because the way that it typically plays out—at least the first time a parent finds out about urges or that a behavior has happened—they’re crushed. Of course. Their face falls. They’re hurt. It hurts them to see that their child is hurting. They might cry. They might feel really anxious or helpless.

But a teen that’s witnessing that is interpreting that as, “My parent can’t handle this information, and therefore I can’t go to them with this information again.”

And so the practice for parents is minding your tone—being calm—minding your face, being more like, “Thank you for trusting me,” than, “I’m going to fall apart right now,” and minding your pace—staying calm and regulated and not rushing forward or feeling frantic.

And when we do this, what we communicate to our teens is: “I can handle this information. Therefore, in the future, you can come to me when you’re having an urge and we can handle it together, rather than you taking care of it by acting on it—and then me finding out afterwards.”

So that’s how we change the cycle: structured and measured warmth, consistent support, ongoing—not just after an event—and also being able to handle the information, even if you’re falling apart inside, because that is completely valid. But showing to your teen: “You’re not going to freak me out. I’m not going to fall apart if you tell me the hard stuff. I’m here for you. Come to me and we’ll handle it together.”

Sarah: And find your own support elsewhere.

Katie: One hundred percent. Yeah. Parents—I think any parent is going to need support, whether that’s their village, their people, their partner, their friend, a therapist. Parenting alone is tough stuff, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Sarah: And I should have asked you this earlier in the interview, but when—are there any signs? A parent finds out your kid is self-harming or telling you they have the urges—is it straightaway “get help,” or are there early stages you can handle it yourself as a parent? When is this 911 getting help, and when is it, “Okay, we’re going to figure this out”?

Katie: It’s somewhere in the middle of “911” and “we’re going to figure this out.” The stance would be: if your teen has already self-harmed, they need to be in therapy. It’s beyond the point of handling it on your own.

When you’re noticing—it’s such a tough line because on one hand there are these typical teen behaviors: “I’m going to spend more time in my room.” Teens are moodier. They’re more irritable. They want less to do with parents. They’re more private. They don’t want to talk to parents. And so I don’t want there to be an overreaction to typical teen behavior.

But if we’re starting to see a duration, intensity, and frequency of that behavior that’s beyond typical—which, again, is going to look different depending on the child—my measure is usually: if my teen for two weeks is more tearful, more self-critical, more hopeless, not enjoying or engaging in activities that they used to—these are signs of depression. And that would be the point when I would want to engage more professional help to support in the process, because that’s where we’re going to start being proactive and head off escalation of crisis.

What happens is—and especially for teenagers—the symptoms of depression can lead to self-harm because there’s an overwhelm of that emotion. There’s a sense of hopelessness. Suicidal thoughts are one of the descriptors of the diagnosis of depression. We don’t want it to get to that point. We want to put help in place sooner.

Sarah: That makes sense. I read something the other day that in teenagers depression can look different than adults and sometimes it looks like irritability.

Katie: It really depends on the person. So I always go back to—we’ve all heard “nature and nurture,” but I think of it as biology and environment. Same idea, different words. But for some people, their environment can feel really safe to be vulnerable. It can feel really natural to express emotions, to cry, to be in that more vulnerable state. And for others, it doesn’t.

Or for others, they’ve learned that being vulnerable isn’t safe for them. It isn’t manly enough for them. It really depends on the culture and environment. And so it can come across as irritability. It can come across as anger—different dispositions as to whether someone internalizes their emotions or externalizes them or sends them outward to others.

Sarah: That makes sense. I think it’s good for parents to have an eye on things that maybe look different than they expect, just to keep track.

Katie: Yeah. And parents and teens don’t always express emotions the same way. I’m a very expressive and emotional person. I’m a therapist. I’ve also spent my whole life figuring out how to express my emotions. And I would say that my child is probably the opposite of that and doesn’t like being vulnerable in front of other people. So what you think makes sense may not make sense to the brain of another person.

Sarah: You were talking before about warm connection with parents, and you mentioned that it is normal for teens to want to spend more time by themselves or with peers. But one thing I wonder—and I wonder if you come across this too—parents often think that means, “My kid doesn’t want to spend time with me anymore,” or, “My kid doesn’t need me.” And my experience with my kids as teenagers was that wasn’t true at all—that even as they were moving away and differentiating, they still did like to spend time with their parents, and they still did like to do stuff with us and be close to us. What are some ways that you find are helpful ways for parents to connect? And how do you assure them that, “Yeah, you still are important”?

Katie: Yeah. As a child is growing and gaining more independence, it is such a natural experience for parents to feel grief and loss in that process because the relationship is changing. Teens do need parents less. Teens are more independent. They don’t want as much time spent with parents.

And so it’s important, one, to recognize that as a developmental milestone, and two, to recognize that means the way that you interact and respond to your teen changes as well. And so you’re not expecting the same attention or response from them as you did before.

But this is a grief process because you’re grieving the relationship as it used to be. You’re grieving your teen as they used to be. But you’re also—and this is the part we don’t think about—grieving yourself as you used to be because you have to become a new version of yourself to show up for your teen in a new way.

And so all of that is to say that it requires a lot of flexibility, openness to evolving, willingness to change how you see, interact, and speak with your teen. And so in thinking about that, it’s helpful to think about: What is it that my teen needs from me now?

They might not need me to cut up their food or call their teacher for them or set up their playdate for them. They might need me to drive them somewhere and listen to the music that they like and not be the one leading the conversation. They might need me to sit on the couch with them while they watch The Office and notice the parts they laugh at and just be there with them.

And both of those examples really nicely illustrate that your teens need less from you, but they don’t not need you. They need you to be more of a partner and less of a doing-for.

Sarah: When my husband and I both had pretty stable teenage years, we also had parents who were working a lot and not home when we were home. And I’m not saying this to make anyone feel guilty who isn’t home after school, but we really tried to structure our lives so that somebody would be home after school even when the kids were teenagers. Because our joke was: even if it’s just somebody who’s there that they can ignore.

Katie: It’s so true. But they know that you’re there.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. So you talked a little bit about validation before. Can you talk a little bit about validation and its opposite—judgment—maybe starting with judgment: what to avoid when our teens are having big feelings? I mentioned before that I often say the drama is real. I think that’s where some of the judgment comes in with parents sometimes. Like, “Oh, come on, you can’t be that upset that the jeans you were hoping to wear are still wet in the washing machine.” Where do parents make mistakes in terms of that judgment?

Katie: For me, I see judgments as the fuel to the emotional fire. So when we are seeing our teen act in certain ways, judgments are our interpretation of their experience. One of those examples might be: a teen is having a hard time getting up and going to school because they’re really depressed, and they’ve been white-knuckling every single day, and today is just the day that they can’t. They can’t do it.

And so judgments from a parent might look like, “Why can’t you just go? Everyone else is going. Just get up. Here’s the list of coping skills that your therapist gave us. Use your coping skills.”

So it’s this judgment that they can, and they’re choosing not to.

Other judgments that I hear regularly are: “They’re manipulative. They’re doing this on purpose to upset me. They’re attention-seeking.”

Oftentimes our judgments are because if we weren’t judging and casting blame, we would be having to hold a really frustrating or painful reality. So if I’m not judging my teen and saying, “Why can’t you just get up and go to school? Just use your coping skills. It’s not this bad,” then what I’d be having to hold is: my teen is really struggling right now. My teen—the person that I love the most in the world—is thinking about wanting to die right now. And that’s awful for me.

And so judgments are a way of pulling ourselves out of this emotional pain, but also shifting that blame to the other person. And instead of being able to hold their experience.

And if we’re not judging, we’re able to first just notice and name and sit with the experience, which is kind of what I described: “My teen is in a lot of pain right now. They’re struggling to get out of bed and even function in their day, and that’s really hard.” And when I can name that, I can feel that for myself, and it feels really hard and painful and difficult.

And then the outward version of that is validating them: being able to say, “I see how hard you’re struggling right now. I see the pain on your face. I hear the lack of energy. This is really hard for you right now.”

So we can name the experience for ourselves with our notice-and-name, and then we can validate the experience for our teen by noticing and naming their experience.

And when we do this, it does often make the emotion feel more painful because we’re naming it. I think a common experience of that is: if you’ve ever been struggling and then someone in your life, in passing, says, “What’s wrong? You look like you’re going to cry right now,” and then all of a sudden the tears come because someone has named the experience. The experience was there all along, but having someone see it—having someone tell you, “This is real, this makes sense,” or “I notice what you’re going through”—it makes it come to the surface.

It’s actually a helpful experience, because if we don’t name what’s happening, we’re judging it, we’re stifling it, we’re ignoring it. And that’s like holding a beach ball under water. Eventually it’s going to pop out, but we can’t control what happens when it does. Someone’s going to get hit in the face.

So we want to take ownership, we want to validate, we want to notice and name what we’re experiencing, and these are the ways that we move toward acceptance of what is, so we have an ability to move toward problem-solving.

Sarah: Where would somebody start who’s listening to this and hearing all of the examples that you’re giving of communication—if they’re not even at a point where their teen is communicating with them? Like, things have gotten so fraught and feel so broken. Where would somebody start with that?

Katie: It’s what I call my hierarchy of connection. Oftentimes there is this big rift in the relationship because it’s not just one time that something has happened—it’s years or multiple experiences that have gotten them to this point, of this rift in the relationship.

So the hierarchy of connection is our blueprint and our path back to connection. It starts with parent and teen being in the same room together—not interacting, but also not criticizing, not having this tension or conflict happening.

The example I give often is: I’m in the kitchen putting groceries away. Teen is sitting on the couch scrolling social media or watching YouTube. But I’m not saying, “Hey, did you do your homework? Did you take your medicine? Did you do this?” I’m just existing and they’re just existing. And we need to practice being in the same space together without that criticism or nagging happening.

When that can happen, we can move into shared activities. This would be watching a movie together, watching TV together, driving somewhere, listening to music. Again: no tension, no conflict, no criticizing. Doing the same thing together without any of those things happening.

And this could take a very long time. It’s not one, two, three. It could be six months of doing the same thing at the same time before you’re moving on.

The final step is moving back to interactive activities. This could be something like playing a board game and talking to each other, having an actual conversation at the dinner table, or a deeper conversation about something that’s a bigger experience. It could be the ability to do this within the context of therapy, so you’re able to have some of those scarier conversations.

But there needs to be a level of trust, and an ability not to act on urges to criticize or lead the conversation to nag or check off the to-dos. You have to be able to hold the space—to be in the space with your teen—before that can happen.

Sarah: One thing that you mentioned in the book is that there’s a link between sensitivity and impulsivity. Can you talk about that? I found that really interesting. Why is that?

Katie: When someone is more biologically sensitive—again, there’s this urge to make those emotions go away. And so when you are more overwhelmed with emotions, the idea of impulsivity makes more sense, because the desire and need for short-term relief is higher than it may be in others.

And so when my emotions are really big, I also have really big urges to make those emotions go away, and it’s harder for me to hold these big emotions.

Sarah: That was really helpful. If you could have the parents and teens that you work with currently—if you could have had them ten years ago, because a lot of people who listen to the podcast have younger kids and they don’t have teenagers—what would you like them to be practicing or working on? Is there anything preventive that you’ve noticed, that if people had an awareness earlier on, when their kids were younger, they might not get to this point with teenagers?

Katie: Absolutely. What I find myself saying often is: parents go first. And what I mean by that is that it is a parent’s job to learn emotion regulation skills, to learn how to notice and name emotions, to learn how to validate—essentially to model all of the ways that we handle really big emotions.

So that when our teen is having this experience—or our child growing into our teen is having this experience—we have the skills to manage our own emotions and we know how to respond to their emotions, because that validation helps the emotion go down more quickly.

When I’m working with younger children—and I don’t anymore—but that is part of the process: we’re working with parents first for many weeks to give them the skills before we even start working with the child.

So that would be my biggest piece of advice for parents of younger children: practice the skills, know how to manage your own emotions, have your own support.

And I will add to that: if you had the experience of being parented in a way that was painful for you as a child, address those issues, because they’re going to show up in the teen years. In the opposite way, you’re going to feel like it’s karma, but it’s really just generational patterns continuing—and you want to be able to change those patterns and rewrite stories that were painful for you so they don’t repeat with your own teen.

Sarah: I love that. It’s interesting because I think when kids are little, fire feelers don’t develop as teenagers, right? Like a fire feeler is a fire feeler whether they’re five or whether they’re fifteen. But a five-year-old—you can put them in their room and hold the door shut. Not that I’m advocating that. You can pick them up and move them places. I think parents probably—unless they’re more aware of emotions and being, in my brand, a peaceful parent—they probably rely on things that then, as their kids get older, just don’t work. But they maybe have missed opportunities to practice all the things that are effective as teenagers because they were relying more on external control when their kids were younger.

Katie: I one hundred percent agree. I think coercive control is easier to implement when your child is younger. But practicing validation, direct communication, emotion regulation is going to pave the way for more success as a teen.

And what I would say is: I think most parents recognize, when I talk about this idea of fire feelers, when they have a three-year-old. I have a sister who has two toddler girls, and she’ll say, “I think they’re fire feelers,” and they are.

And so you know your kid. You know their disposition. You know when they’re more sensitive or they’re a deep feeler. And so knowing that now can help you pave the way for what’s to come.

Sarah: Can you speak briefly on—when I was a teenager in the eighties, there was a “tough love” approach for teens who were having a hard time: drugs and alcohol, not going to school. And the approach was like: crack down. Kick them out if they don’t follow your rules. I’m pretty sure that’s not what you would advocate for.

And I do think there has been a shift because people recognize that doesn’t work. So maybe if you could speak to that for a few minutes—why getting more strict and more controlling with a teenager who’s having a hard time isn’t going to be an effective strategy.

Katie: I have two thoughts on that: one is about the teen, and one is about the relationship.

So when we think about a teenager who’s struggling, who has these big emotions, if the message in the family is, “You’re too sensitive. Just suck it up. Just get it together. Why can’t you do this like your siblings can?”—what happens over time is they internalize that message as, “There must be something wrong with me, that everyone else around me can do this and I can’t.”

And so they begin to lose trust in their own emotional experience, in their own emotion meter. And that is one of the contributors to self-harm behaviors, because then when an emotion shows up for them, their brain thinks, “Well, this must be wrong.” Everyone keeps telling me that my emotional state is the wrong thing or it’s too intense, so let’s make that go away quickly so that I can continue to function in my life.

What I’ll say is: at my center, we see hundreds of kids every week—teens and families. A lot of them are these high-achieving, perfectionistic, private-school kids, and they’re self-harming and they’re suicidal. And one of the reasons is that that’s a strategy that keeps them going in this life that is expected of them.

So I want to be really intentional about broadening the picture that we may have of the type of teen who engages in self-harm.

The other side of that—the relational piece—is that when the parent is consistently giving this message of, “Just get it together. Suck it up and keep going,” it creates a rift in the relationship. The parent is no longer a safe person to come to when a teen is struggling, because they’re not going to get what they need.

And so if it’s important for a parent to have a strong relationship with a teen—and I think that is for most parents—we need to learn the strategies that welcome open communication, that are able to hold that struggle, so that teens come to us with the little stuff and the big stuff.

And I’ll add to that: so that teens want to stay connected to us after they leave home.

Sarah: Yeah, that makes so much sense. Before I let you go, there’s a question I ask all my guests, which is: if you could go back in time to your younger parent self, what advice would you give yourself?

Katie: To my younger parent self? I think what I would say is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. And that’s something that I learned through my own education and the theory of good-enough parenting: that you only really need to get it right twenty percent of the time, and the rest of the time it’s how you repair, how you respond, and how you keep moving forward in the most loving and compassionate way for both you and your child. So that would help take the pressure off—both for younger me and also for probably a lot of other parents out there—that you don’t have to get it right all the time. You just have to want to keep going and want to keep trying to get it right.

Sarah: Nice. Where’s the best place for folks to go and find out more about you and what you do?

Katie: Yeah. To grab a free chapter of my book, You’re On Fire. It’s Fine, you can go to youreonfireitsfine.com. And for a therapist or media listening, katiekmay.com has all of my other projects and my counseling center and endeavors there.

Sarah: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Katie.

Katie: Thank you

👉 Before we get started- On Wednesday, I’m hosting a live workshop called When You Know Better, but Still Yell, where we focus on understanding what happens in those moments and how to interrupt yelling and repair without shame.

If that sounds supportive to you, you can find more information at reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/workshop.

Now the episode!! You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Hunter Clarke-Fields, the host of the Mindful Mama Podcast and author of the book Raising Good Humans.

We discussed taking care of difficult feelings including how blocking our feelings can backfire and the role mindfulness plays in accepting and working through our own and our children’s feelings.

**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.

Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!

We talk about:

* 00:00:35 — Guest intro: Hunter Clarke-Fields (Raising Good Humans, Mindful Mama Podcast)

* 00:01:00 — Big feelings as the root of so many parenting struggles + why willpower isn’t enough

* 00:04:00 — Hunter’s background: mindfulness, sensitivity, and parenting an intense child

* 00:10:00 — Two common coping patterns: blocking feelings vs flooding (and why both backfire)

* 00:21:00 — Mindful acceptance: what it is + how allowing feelings helps them move through

* 00:27:00 — Reflective listening + “name it to tame it” (why labeling feelings lowers intensity)

* 00:31:40 — Co-regulation in action: a real-life story of staying steady with a dysregulated teen

* 00:38:10 — Takeaways + where to find Hunter + workshop reminder + closing

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Workshop: When You Know Better but Still Yell Workshop

* Evelyn & Bobbie bras

* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* Hunter’s website

* Raising Good Humans

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xx Sarah and Corey

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Podcast transcript:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Hunter Clark Fields. She’s a mindfulness teacher and parenting expert, host of the Mindful Mama Podcast, and author of the book Raising Good Humans. We focused our conversation today around taking care of difficult feelings—both yours and your child’s.

So often, big feelings are the cause of parenting challenges and friction in our families. Hunter shared some great strategies for how to make these moments that happen every day more tolerable, and even how our lives get better when we learn to accept our own feelings and our child’s feelings.

And don’t worry if you’re like me and you sort of shut down when someone starts telling you that you should have a mindfulness practice. You can use Hunter’s suggestions even if you know that meditation isn’t necessarily in your future.

Interestingly, one thing Hunter and I spoke about is that you can’t stay calm or not yell in difficult situations just by willpower. It’s not just a choice we make—how to react in difficult situations. If you’re listening to this and recognizing yourself, especially that gap between knowing what you want to do and what actually happens when things get intense, I want you to know that you’re not alone.

On Wednesday, I’m teaching a live workshop called When You Know Better but Still Yell. We’ll focus on regulation and repair in real, everyday parenting moments—without shaming yourself or forcing calm. You can find the link in the show notes, or you can go to reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/workshop.

Okay, let’s meet Hunter.

Sarah: Hi, Hunter. Welcome to the podcast.

Hunter: Thanks for having me, Sarah. I’m glad to be here.

Sarah: It’s nice to connect. I loved your book, Raising Good Humans. I was going to hold up mine—yours is behind you there. There’s some really valuable stuff in it around being the peaceful parent that we want to be. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do before we get started?

Hunter: Sure. I’m a mom of two daughters and a podcaster. I’ve been podcasting the Mindful Mama Podcast for a long time. I guess I like to talk, and I’m fascinated by people. I’ve been a student of mindfulness for many, many years, and a student of parenting because it was something I was very much struggling with.

So that’s me in a nutshell. I’m also really passionate about Scottish country dance. We used to have paintings and galleries, and I was a passionate painter—so there are lots of different things happening.

Sarah: I love that. Are you Scottish?

Hunter: A little bit by heritage, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Hunter: Hunter is actually a Scottish last name. My maternal grandfather’s maternal grandfather’s last name was Donald Hunter.

Sarah: Oh, that’s cool. What came first—the mindfulness? Were you already a student of mindfulness when you became a parent, or did you turn to mindfulness when you found parenting to be challenging?

Hunter: Both. I was already a student of mindfulness. I started reading about mindfulness when I was a teenager, because I’ve always been a highly sensitive person. So I would have big ups and downs, and corresponding pits that I would fall into. I started reading about mindfulness, and I kept reading and reading, and it did help to read.

Then, maybe about ten years into my reading journey, I started an actual sitting meditation practice, and lo and behold, that helped a lot more than just reading about it. It really changed things for me. I used to fall into these pits of feeling like the world was overwhelming and feeling like I couldn’t handle life. That stopped happening. I had difficult feelings, but I wasn’t floored by them, grounded by them, or left incapacitated by them. That was a big change for me.

That happened maybe two years before I got pregnant with my first child. I remember being pregnant with Maggie and sitting in a meditation group with my big pregnant belly, patting myself on the back and thinking, “Oh, this is going to be great. This child is going to be so calm. Everything is going to be so awesome because we’re doing this meditation practice.” And it’s like—ugh. Right. Life kind of slaps you in the face and says, “You think you know what’s going to happen? That’s right. No, you don’t.”

Sarah: And the best parents are always the ones who don’t have kids, right? You always think, “This is how I’m going to do things when I’m a parent.” I remember when I was in my twenties, I was a Montessori assistant, and I remember thinking, “Oh my God, these parents are so crazy and intense.” I couldn’t understand it. And then I had my first kid and I was like, “Oh, I suddenly get it.” That love—and the triggering, too—that you probably never felt in any other ways.

Hunter: Yeah. And there are so many other factors as well. I remember taking Maggie to her Montessori preschool and dropping her off with a teacher I’d become friends with and got to know and love. I would get her in the door, turn around, and just cry out of relief to have three hours where I wasn’t “on”—where I wasn’t there to take the intensity of this child.

Sarah: For sure. So it sounds like at least your older daughter is on the more intense side of things.

Hunter: Yeah. She’s a lot like me. She’s very highly sensitive. She was always very intense from the beginning. Her birth was intense. Her babyhood was intense. Everything is intense about her—very sensitive.

And about a year and a half into her being born, I realized I needed something to help me weather this intensity: the anxiety, her emotional storms. I was getting myself to the YMCA, and I got her to tolerate—just barely—the YMCA childcare. But I was like, “I need more.” I needed to really turn to my mindfulness and bring it back, because it was so triggering for me.

Sarah: Wow. I’m glad you found it, and that you’re sharing it with everybody else. When you were talking before about big feelings being a challenge in your life—managing the feelings, I guess is a fair thing to say—that was actually one of my favorite chapters of your book: “Taking Care of Difficult Feelings.”

I was hoping we could focus on that today, because I think so much of our parenting struggles come from difficult feelings—either our child’s difficult feelings, or our own difficult feelings, or both. I love how you frame working with those feelings.

You talk about two common responses to difficult feelings that are the flip side of the same coin: blocking and becoming flooded. Can you talk about those two responses—what they are, what they look like, and how we might notice if those things are happening? And to be clear upfront: those are the things you want to move away from—either blocking or becoming flooded by difficult feelings. So maybe ground us in what those are first.

Hunter: Sure. I think blocking is something a lot of us are familiar with. That’s the “Don’t cry, go to your room,” right? It’s basically the instruction to not have those feelings. So we’re blocking those feelings out in some way.

And like anything, it’s not completely black and white. Sometimes there are times in life where it’s helpful to block feelings temporarily. We know that. But in general, we try to avoid feeling our feelings, because difficult feelings are uncomfortable.

So we block them. Blocking can include: I remember the chocolate stash in my pantry was pretty robust when Maggie was little. It can include drinking. It definitely includes the phone and the scrolling as a way of blocking our feelings. Anything we’re doing to distract ourselves or stuff down and not look at those feelings. Shopping. Doing things to distract ourselves.

Sarah: Or being too busy, too.

Hunter: Yeah. Over-busyness is certainly one—the endless to-do list. The sad thing about over-busyness is that we’re rewarded for that so much in our society. We’re rewarded for getting things done and productivity. And for women, it can be like being a good girl or being a strong independent woman is to get stuff done and to be busy.

And yet it has this insidious side where, especially with our feelings, we’re pushing through. We’re not feeling our feelings. We’re training ourselves to not be present. We’re training ourselves to always be in the future.

The sad side of that is: when we’re always in this to-do list—“I’m gonna go, I’m gonna do, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna do”—then we think, “Oh, I’m gonna get to our beach vacation and I’m gonna be really present with my kids.” And then you can’t, because you’ve trained your brain and your heart to always go and do. It feels unbearably restless to stop when you finally try to stop.

So blocking can look like all of those things.

And then the flip side is: the blocking builds up. You block and block and block. It becomes overwhelming. You have no tools to deal with and process these feelings. You’re just trying to push them away, and then suddenly they’re overwhelming. You drown in them. You’re completely flooded by them.

Flooding can look like completely drowning in sadness, misery, shame. It can also look like anger—your temper. There’s a bunch of stuff coming out that you can’t stop, because you’re completely flooded by these feelings and you have no way to deal with them.

A metaphor I like is that the feelings are like a big hamburger—a big juicy hamburger with cheese, and it’s gooey and disgusting. You’re eating this big emotional hamburger, but you have no digestive system because you’ve tried to shove it away. And then when you can’t, it becomes a big, disgusting mess. That’s my disgusting metaphor for not having the tools to digest and process those feelings.

Sarah: Do you ever listen to Anderson Cooper’s podcast? I can’t remember the name of it now. I know who he is, but it’s about grief. He has a podcast about grief—it’s called All There Is. It’s a really wonderful podcast. He talks a lot about how he never processed the grief of his father dying, and then his brother dying. And then his mother died, and he realized he’d gone his whole life without processing any of this grief, and it had really robbed him of the ability to feel other things.

Like joy. He’s a father with a couple of young kids, and it wasn’t until he started to process his grief that he was able to access the other, more beautiful emotions. And I think that’s— for people like me, where I admit I have a hard time feeling my feelings sometimes—I try to remind myself: you have to feel the hard things to also feel the good things.

Hunter: Yeah, it’s true. There’s the research by Brené Brown, and it comes out pretty unequivocally that you can’t selectively numb. You’re either numbing everything, or you’re feeling your feelings. And if you’re feeling your feelings, you’ve got to be able to process it.

For me, I was never unable to feel my feelings. I felt everything too much. I was never able to block out much. So I felt like I had no choice but to learn how to process these feelings. And when Maggie came along, the thing that was coming out for me was my temper.

I felt very ashamed of it. This is exactly how I decided not to parent. My brain, my choice, my willpower was that I would be this peaceful parent, gentle—and I was not. I was scaring her. I was aggressive. I was loud. I could see I scared her multiple times, and it was exactly what I didn’t want.

So I could really see: this isn’t like, “Pause and choose X, Y, Z instead.” It’s not that simple. I would say, “How do you pause?” It’s a process of changing bit by bit over time, and making a different kind of habit—energy in your body—learning how to tolerate the difficult things. It’s so much more than willpower.

It gave me a lot of compassion for myself and for other people who struggle, especially moms who couldn’t even say they had any anger—who felt so ashamed of even having it. Because it isn’t a choice. Nobody listening to this podcast or my podcast is thinking, “I think I’ll wake up on Tuesday and scream at Joey.” That’s not happening.

It’s much more than a choice. So I really had to understand it and understand how to be the parent that Maggie needed me to be. She clearly needed somebody steady—steadiness, a lot of steadiness, a lot of rhythm. She was not a go-with-the-flow kid, and I needed to become the parent she needed me to be.

Sarah: I’m lucky—for all the parents you’ve helped out there—that you had that experience. If you had a really easy kid, you might not ever have had to learn all of these lessons that you now share with other people. So it’s a blessing for everyone else that you had to go through the hard time.

Hunter: Yeah. Sometimes I joke that I had just the right amount of trauma: enough that I was able to deal with it in a way that I could break it down, understand it, and deal with it.

But it is really helpful to understand: there’s so much more than, “Here’s how you respond to your kid.” Those skillful ways to respond are wonderful to know, but they go completely out the window as soon as you’re activated—when your stress response is triggered—because your brain is in limbic fight, flight, or freeze mode.

It’s important to understand: this is a biological nervous system response. It’s not your fault. There’s not something wrong with you. This is innate—baked into every single human who is alive. There are tools to deal with it, but we have to stop shaming and blaming ourselves for it in order to take the necessary steps to study ourselves.

Sarah: One of the necessary steps you talk about is that instead of blocking or becoming flooded, we can learn mindful acceptance when we have difficult feelings. Can you talk a bit about what mindful acceptance is for those difficult feelings?

Hunter: Sure. This is really where a formal mindfulness practice shines. It gives us an incredible skill and tolerance, because as we sit—say we take up a sitting meditation practice—we sit there for five minutes or ten minutes. Our mind goes to other things. Our emotions happen. All this stuff happens. And we practice accepting it, observing it. We’re not really doing anything about it except accepting it and observing it. We watch it come, and we watch it go, because nothing stays around forever.

This builds a muscle of non-reactivity. Normally, when we feel a feeling in our body—the tension in our throat, the tightness in our shoulders, the “I’ve gotta get outta here” feeling—we act from it. That’s what our nervous system designed us to do. We’re designed to act on a threat or anxiety. We’re designed to move forward.

So it’s a weird, anti-evolutionary, slightly unnatural thing to sit and feel the thing you’re feeling. But paradoxically, as you sit with the “I’ve gotta get outta here” feeling, it lessens enormously and sometimes completely goes away.

Mindful acceptance is what happens when, for me, I’m practicing my meditation practice on a daily level in little bits—when I’m not quite so activated. There are little bits of: “I’m accepting this thought. I’m accepting these feelings. I’m noticing what’s arising. I’m seeing there’s some anxiety today.” I’m accepting it, and I’m sitting with it.

That means I’m not trying to push it away. I’m opening myself up. I’m saying, “Okay, yes, you are here. Yes, it’s okay that you’re here,” and I’m going to be curious about it.

Instead of saying, “What’s wrong with me for having this feeling?” I’m going to say, “What does this feel like?” This feels like some tension right in the middle of my chest, underneath my collarbones. It feels like a tickly feeling and a little discomfort—maybe slight queasiness. I’m going to observe it with curiosity, as if I’m an alien beamed down into my body. Like, “What is this?” Just curious: “Okay, yes, this is here.”

And as we say yes to this, we stop that instinctive blocking and pushing away.

In the Mindful Parenting Teacher Training program, when we work on this, I invite people to think of a difficult feeling and first try to say no to it—say in their heads, “No, no, no, no, no.” You can watch their faces tighten and their bodies tense up. Then I invite them to say, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” And you can see everyone relax. You can see the unclenching. It’s paradoxical: as we accept, “Okay, this is here—this anger, this sadness, this anxiety, whatever it is,” it lessens enormously just with that acceptance, and often can go away completely.

It loosens the grip to say yes—to open our arms wide and say yes to the difficult feelings, as much as we don’t want to.

Sarah: I love that. And I just want to point out: if you’re listening and you’re like, “I’ve made it to this age and I’ve always intended to have a mindfulness practice, but I don’t”—like me, raising his hand—I think you can still use everything you just said, even if you’re not going to start a daily mindfulness practice. In the moment, accepting the feelings you’re having, and everything you were saying, sounds so helpful to say about your child’s feelings too.

Hunter: Exactly. When we practice accepting our own feelings, then we can accept our child’s feelings. We want to accept their difficult feelings—maybe not the behavior, but the feelings. We may say the words out loud, but our bodies might tell a different story: that we’re not really accepting those feelings. Like, “Yes, it’s okay. I need to be mad at your brother.” And kids have incredible BS meters. They can see right through that.

So for us to really accept them, we have to first accept ourselves. We have to be able to accept our own feelings in order to truly accept our kids’ feelings. Because if we’re secretly judging our own humanity—shaming ourselves for our difficulty—if we’re harsh and mean to ourselves, that’s eventually going to come out. It won’t stay hidden. Those parts of ourselves come out. We live with our kids for at least eighteen years, and it will come out. You can’t fake it. Kids will see the faking it, if we’re trying to—

Sarah: One thing you talk about—I understood it as one of the practices you can put in place to move toward mindful acceptance—is that reflective listening piece with our children. That reflective listening is a tool to help you with more acceptance of feelings. Is that how you look at it, or how do you see those as related?

Hunter: Yeah, they’re totally related. When we practice reflective listening—like, “I see you look really frustrated”—say our kid comes to us and they’re mad at their brother. Instead of saying, “You shouldn’t be hitting your brother,” or being defensive, or trying to make the problem go away, we say, “Oh, wow. You are really upset right now. I can see this was really important to you.” Then they say, “Yeah, because he did this,” and blah, blah, blah. “Oh my gosh. Okay. Wow. This was really upsetting for you. Hold on. I’m going to listen to your brother too.”

As soon as we acknowledge those feelings in our kids, it takes the temperature down. It takes stress hormone levels down in the body—that’s what the research shows.

It’s similar for us. As soon as we’re acknowledging—this is what Dr. Dan Siegel calls “name it to tame it”—when we name something, it’s like magic happens. The left brain and right brain come together. The verbal part of the brain helps take down the temperature in the emotional part of the brain just by recognizing out loud the feelings.

In the same way we’re naming it with our children, we’re naming it with ourselves. That may be out loud with our children, or it may not be out loud within ourselves, but either way it provides release to name it.

Sarah: In my coaching, I’ve heard lots of parents say, “When I do that, it makes my child more upset,” or “It makes them aggressive.” If I say, “I can see you’re really upset right now,” or “really mad at your brother,” do you think that’s because they’re not really acknowledging their child’s feelings and they’re just saying a script? Or is there something about having feelings acknowledged that makes a child go further into the feelings? Or neither, or both? What’s your experience with that?

Hunter: It’s interesting, and it’s really hard to tell when we’re not there in the moment and we’re hearing from one parent’s point of view. I have heard that. And I think being acknowledged is helpful—but it depends on the form the acknowledgement takes.

Maybe it’s, “Oh honey,” with your arms open—communicating acceptance: “I see you and I hear you,” with your body and your mind.

Sometimes we can practice a tool like reflective listening with a script, but without congruence of mind and body—where inside we’re panicked: “The ship is going down and I’ve got to do something. I’m going to do that tool that Sarah and Hunter said to do.” We’re saying the words, but behind it is the panic of, “Oh my God, my kid’s out of control,” and our own nervous system is starting to freak out, like it’s an emergency.

That’s an incongruent message between your mind and your body. It has to be honest and real, otherwise it can’t really work.

That’s why foundation is so important. It can’t just be scripts on the outside. It has to be the foundation of some kind of practices, some kind of intention, that helps you steady and calm your nervous system on a daily basis—so you can access it in a moment like that.

I was with my daughter Maggie not that long ago. She must have been sixteen. She was really mad at me and my husband for something. I think it had to do with swimming scheduling. I forget what it was. She was really mad at us, and she was saying this to us near our living room entryway area.

At first I was listening, and I could feel the agitation in my body. So I got a broom and started to sweep the entryway while she was mad and upset with us. And I was like, “Oh, look at what I’m doing.” I could see myself. So I put it down. I sat down on the ottoman and practiced feeling what I was feeling—feeling the discomfort—without trying to say anything. I didn’t say anything. I was just there, practicing being present in myself with my sensations and my feelings, with what was going on, with this kind of verbal assault that was happening.

Within about thirty seconds of me sitting down and practicing this, she also sat down right next to me on the ottoman and slumped her body against mine. She started to wind down. Nothing special or miraculous was said. It was just the practice of being present—being steady—listening to her, taking in what she was saying, feeling the feelings.

Kids can feel that. We can feel when someone is congruent with what they’re feeling and doing and saying, and when someone isn’t.

So I often encourage parents: reflective listening is an incredible tool and it really can help a lot. But with some kids it doesn’t mean you’re going to say a lot of words. It means you’re going to practice the number one thing about reflective listening: mindfully being present. “I am present in my body. I am seeing and hearing you.” And then offering empathy—whether it’s even just a sound that isn’t a word. It doesn’t have to be a ton of words.

Sarah: I love that. The anecdote you shared with your daughter was a perfect example of co-regulation.

Hunter: Yeah.

Sarah: And being that nervous system anchor—you focused on your own nervous system, and it helped her too.

Hunter: Exactly. I wish I could have figured that out when she was two, but at least I figured it out when she was sixteen.

Sarah: So true. Was there anything you think would be helpful to add about taking care of difficult feelings that I haven’t asked you about? There’s so much great stuff in your book, but just for the sake of keeping the focus on what we’ve been talking about today.

Hunter: It’s important to remember that we have a lot of resistance to doing the practices of taking care of difficult feelings. I offer the RAIN practice and different things for looking at our difficult feelings. We have a lot of resistance to that, and that’s very natural.

But it really does help our kids. Just like in that anecdote I shared with Maggie, for us to model how to do that as a human. For every skill you want your kid to have in life, you have to do it first. You have to model it first. Kids are terrible at doing what we say, but they’re great at doing what we do. They’re great at imitating our behavior and seeing the way we live our lives as a model for how to live life.

So regardless of how old your kid is, it’s an incredible practice for you to do. And it’s a two-for-one: you help yourself, and you help your kid. It makes things less scary. I have less negative anticipation of things because I practice being present most of the time—and because I know that when I get into the present moment of something, I’ll survive it.

I’ve survived a lot of difficult feelings. I’ve felt a lot of difficult feelings, and I’ll be okay. I can tolerate a lot of different difficult things. And it makes me more present for the positive things. It makes me more able to fully feel joy and excitement, and to join in their joy and excitement. So it has a lot of benefits.

Sarah: I love that. You were just talking about resilience—knowing that you can handle difficult feelings. A lot of parents mistake resilience for not getting upset, but I always tell parents: no, it’s not that you don’t get upset, it’s that you get upset and you recover. And the path to that is always going through the upset first.

I love when you talk about reflective listening and the empathy piece. In peaceful parenting we always talk about welcoming feelings, and I think that’s the key to taking care of difficult feelings: welcoming them, and knowing that every time you survive it, you become a little bit more resilient.

Hunter: Absolutely. There are a couple different ways to welcome them. One thing I want to point out—because I think it’s so beautiful—is that I studied mindfulness for many years, and my main teacher was the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who has since passed.

What he used to say about difficult feelings is that we want to imagine ourselves holding them in our arms like a baby: “Oh, hello, my anger. I’m going to take care of you. It’s okay that you’re here. My anxiety, I’m going to take care of you. I’m here for you.”

That’s such a beautiful image of how to accept and take care of our feelings. We’ve got to take care of these feelings. They’re kind of like toddlers tugging at our legs, and they’re not going to go away until they are seen and heard.

So you’ve got to get some kind of process.

Sarah: I love that. Thank you so much. There’s a question I ask all my podcast guests: if you could go back in time to your younger parent self, what would you tell yourself?

Hunter: I would tell myself to slow down. I don’t have to get it all done. I can give myself time to figure out this experience, and not rush forward.

Sarah: Love that. Where’s the best place for folks to go and find out more about you and what you do?

Hunter: You can find Raising Good Humans anywhere books are sold, and the Mindful Mama Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m at mindfulmamamentor.com, and there are lots of freebies there, and podcasts and articles, et cetera.

Sarah: Great. We’ll link to all those in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us.

Hunter: Thank you, Sarah. It’s been really fun.

Sarah: If this episode brought up that familiar feeling of “I know what to do—why is it still so hard?” I want to pause and say that this struggle is incredibly common, and it doesn’t mean you’re failing. On Wednesday, I’m hosting a live workshop called When You Know Better, but Still Yell, where we focus on understanding what happens in those moments and how to interrupt yelling and repair without shame. If that sounds supportive to you, you can find more information in the show notes or go to reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/workshop.

This week’s episode is a conversational invitation rather than a full podcast episode. We’re talking about why yelling happens even when you know better — and why willpower alone isn’t the answer.

If you’ve ever felt ashamed, frustrated, or confused about why old patterns show up under stress, you’re not alone. We also share details about a live workshop, When You Know Better but Still Yell, for parents who want support with regulation and repair in real-life moments. Happening on Weds. Jan 21

Workshop details and registration are HERE

or go to https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/workshop

In this episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I bring back one of my favourite holiday episodes, which is an interview with my kids, where we talk about ‘people, not stuff’.

Every year around the holidays, I hear from parents who are worried their kids are too focused on presents, too greedy, or too materialistic — and they’re afraid they’re getting something wrong. I made this episode to offer a long-term perspective.

I interviewed my own kids (then 14, 17, and 20) about what holidays and gifts felt like when they were little — and what actually mattered as they got older.

Us last year at Christmas- on one of the Christmas Day walks we discussed on the podcast:

In the episode, we talk about why “wanting stuff” is normal in childhood, how values really develop over time, and why parents can relax a lot more than they think.

🎉🎂 Also- today is my birthday!

If this podcast, our posts, or our work has helped you and your family, and you want to give back to us, you can help cover the costs of our free content by supporting us on Substack for the cost of a fancy coffee a month.

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My gift to you is an ad free episode today, which is what you get for every episode if you support us on Substack!

Thank YOU for being here!!

xx Sarah (and Corey!)

Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session

Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

We talk about:

* 2:00 — Intro: replay episode + why parents worry about “greedy/materialistic” kids

* 3:00 — Holiday schedule update + invitation to email podcast ideas/guest suggestions

* 3:34 — Why this episode: parents’ concerns about consumerism + interviewing Sarah’s kids

* 4:00 — Important context: privilege, money, and why this worry comes from a privileged place

* 5:00 — Two practical ways to handle privilege: Santa gifts + donating new presents

* 7:00 — Meet Maxine (14): how holiday meaning shifts with age (family time, traditions, coziness)

* 11:38 — “Ungrateful” little kids: why it’s normal + what parents shouldn’t panic about

* 13:23 — What helps long-term: building traditions + experiences as gifts

* 16:34 — Meet Asa (17): growing out of the “wanting stuff” stage + values changing over time

* 21:05 — Middle school + fitting in: when brand-name wanting peaks (and why)

* 22:30 — What parents should do: keep kids grounded + relax

* 23:01 — Meet Lee (20): consumerism awareness, “people not stuff,” and the post-holiday letdown

* 32:00 — Gratitude + privilege: why kids can’t fully grasp it yet, and how it comes with time

* 33:31 — Reassurance: if you’re worried about this, you’re probably already doing fine

* 34:34 — Wrap-up: “the parenting podcast paradox” + holiday wishes

Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:

* Instagram

* Facebook Group

* YouTube

* Website

* Join us on Substack

* Newsletter

* Book a short consult or coaching session call

xx Sarah and Corey

Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching session

Visit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!

>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.

In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.

Here’s the polished transcript of the interview-

Today’s episode is a replay of an episode from four years ago.

So many parents get worried, especially at this time of year, that their kids are materialistic and greedy and will never have good values. I thought you could use a little window into the future, and it would be helpful for you to see where we are in my family and what it’s like as kids get older.

So I interviewed my kids about their experiences growing up with presents and holidays and stuff. So if your kid has a case of the greedy, you’ll see, if you listen to my kids, that it won’t last forever. At the time of the interviews, they were 14, 17, and 20. Today they’re 18, 21, and 24. Things really do shift as your kids get older.

My older two kids live on their own—and they have for a few years—and so far, all they’ve said they want for Christmas is socks. Things really do change.

If this holiday support episode is helpful and you aren’t on my email list, make sure you check out the other posts that we have on Substack. As I mentioned, just search up Substack and Sarah Rosensweet and you’ll find us.

My team and I are going to be taking a bit of time off for the holidays. We will be back in the new year with new episodes of this podcast. And if you have any ideas for the podcast, or any guests that you’d like to have on, or you would like to be coached on the podcast, shoot me an email: [email protected].

I’d love to hear from you about any ideas you have for the podcast—what you’d like to have coming up in the new year.

Here we go back to the podcast. Enjoy this replay, whether it’s your first time hearing it or if you’ve heard it before.

Sarah: Today’s episode is a response to some parents’ questions and concerns that I received when I did a call-out asking people what they were concerned about over the holidays. And some parents were really feeling stressed about materialism and consumerism of the holidays, and their kids getting too many presents or wanting too much stuff.

So I interviewed my kids about it—what their perspective was, having gone through the “I want more presents” stage, and now they’re teenagers. They’re 14, 17, and one of them’s not a teenager anymore—he’s 20. So I interviewed them because they’ve been through it, and I’ve been through it with them.

But before we dive into the interviews, I just want to acknowledge that this is a very privileged position—that we have the privilege of being able to be concerned that our kids have too much stuff, or they’re getting too many presents, or that they’re worried too much about getting things and being able to buy things.

For a number of years when our kids were little, my husband was a student and I was a stay-at-home mom, and we really didn’t have any money. We really had to watch every penny. But we still had privilege because we got government assistance—child tax benefit. We live in Canada where we have socialized medicine, so we didn’t need to worry about health insurance.

And we also had the family safety net privilege, which was that we knew if we ever were really in dire straits, our parents would help us out.

And our kids had privilege even though we didn’t have money in those years, because they got a lot of presents from their grandparents. I think we mention that in the interviews that are coming up.

So my husband and I—we didn’t have much money, but we didn’t need to worry about buying them gifts because they had five sets of grandparents. Hello, divorce and remarriage.

So I just really wanted to acknowledge that I am speaking from a place of privilege, my children are speaking from a place of privilege, and those parents who reached out to me concerned about too many presents and materialism and “What are we gonna do when our kids just want so much stuff?”—they’re also speaking from a place of privilege.

And many, many, many parents don’t have that. They don’t have enough money to buy presents for their kids. And those kids might be in school with kids who get tons of presents at Christmas.

So two small things that we can do—and I know these are really just a drop in the bucket—but while I’m here, I’m just going to make two suggestions for all of us listening who are coming from a place of privilege.

One is that we don’t get big presents from Santa. If we do celebrate Christmas and we do the Santa tradition, we don’t give our children big presents from Santa. That’s one thing, because what about kids who are getting hardly anything, if anything at all, from Santa?

Another is that we make donations. Those of us who have privilege—we either make donations to food banks, or we make donations by buying new presents. It’s great to donate things that your kids no longer play with. But what I’m asking here is that we donate new presents to organizations that will then distribute them to kids who are less financially privileged.

I know that’s not a ton, and I always feel kind of nervous and vulnerable when I talk about things like this. I’m still learning and I’m not perfect. However, I just wanted to address the issue of privilege—financial privilege—before we dive in.

So let me introduce you to my kids. If you didn’t hear them in episode one of the podcast, when they were talking about what it was like to be raised by peaceful parenting, you might wanna go back and give that a listen. But let me introduce you to Maxine, who’s 14; Asa, who’s 17; and Lee, who’s 20.

You’re gonna hear each of their perspectives on stuff and presents and materialism and consumerism, and what they think parents should do to raise kids who have great values.

Okay, let’s dive in. Hi, Maxine. Hello. Welcome to the podcast.

Maxine: Hi.

Sarah: Can you introduce yourself?

Maxine: I’m Maxine, and I’m your child.

Sarah: How old are you? I know how old you are, but other people don’t.

Maxine: I’m 14.

Sarah: All right. So do you remember when you were little, what was the best thing about birthdays—Christmas, holidays?

Maxine: Oh… presents, I guess.

Sarah: I think that’s what—well, I—

Maxine: I probably shouldn’t say that, because I know that’s, like, what the whole podcasting is about.

Sarah: No, it’s okay. That’s what I’m trying to normalize. The fact that for little kids, it’s all about presents, right?

Maxine: Yeah.

Sarah: So do you think you’re still in that phase at 14—that it’s mostly about the presents?

Maxine: Well, not really. I like spending time with you guys—especially since Lee moved out.

Sarah: So you’re looking forward to having your brother come home at Christmas. What else is meaningful to you about the Christmas holiday?

Maxine: Well, literally you and Dad don’t have to work that much when it’s—so we get to spend, like, the whole day together. And we always have a nice breakfast, and sometimes we get to help you with that and stuff like that.

Sarah: One of my favorite things the past couple of years that we’ve been doing is the family walk on Christmas.

Maxine: Yeah. It’s fun. And we always take Emmy, and she’s always so happy to be with all of us.

Sarah: Yeah, because she never gets all five of us to take her for a walk at once.

Maxine: Oh—Emmy. Emmy’s our dog, by the way, if you don’t know that.

Sarah: So do you still like the presents?

Maxine: Yeah, I still like presents. But, like, who doesn’t like presents? Even you and Dad like presents.

Sarah: That’s true. But the time with family—you’re starting to appreciate that more as you’re getting older. Do you ever remember getting a present you didn’t like when you were a kid?

Maxine: No, but I remember being disappointed that I didn’t get presents that I wanted.

Sarah: Oh yeah? Tell me about that.

Maxine: When I thought Santa was real, I would make lists and I wouldn’t get all the stuff, and I would be kind of sad.

Sarah: Yeah. And how do you think that affected you as a person?

Maxine: I don’t think it really mattered. I think I was just a little kid who wanted to have all the presents that I wanted.

Sarah: Yeah. Do you think that’s pretty normal?

Maxine: Yeah.

Sarah: Do you think parents should worry about that?

Maxine: No. I think you shouldn’t worry. But I think it’s weird if your kids aren’t excited about presents and don’t want lots and lots of presents, because that’s a normal thing for kids to want.

Sarah: And so what do you think happens as you get older, and now you’re like, “Yeah, I still like presents, but that’s not the most important thing.”

Maxine: I think when you’re little, you just don’t understand what the holidays—and what that is all about. But when you get older, you realize that it’s more about just being able to spend time with people and stuff.

And it’s also nice to give people presents instead of just always getting presents.

Sarah: What have been your favorite presents that you’ve given?

Maxine: I don’t know—like when I give my brothers records or stuff like that, and it just seems to make them happy, then it makes me feel good.

Sarah: Do you remember making presents?

Maxine: Yeah. I made presents—like this year or last year. I made those little tree decorations for my brothers and you and my dad and all the grandparents and stuff.

Sarah: That’s right. Those were nice.

Maxine: Those little candy cane things.

Sarah: Yeah, those were sweet.

Maxine: Also, I like Christmas because it’s all nice and cozy. And just—like on Christmas or just any holidays that we do as a family—but especially Christmas, when we’re all sitting around and listening to music and it’s all cozy in our house and stuff, and then we can look outside and stuff like that.

Sarah: I love that too. I love decorating the tree and then sitting and looking at it afterwards, having hot chocolate.

Maxine: Yeah.

Sarah: You know, that was a tradition that I did growing up too.

Maxine: Cool. Also sometimes on Christmas—or mostly Christmas or New Year’s—when our grandparents call to just say “Happy New Year” or “Merry Christmas,” that’s nice. And you get to talk to them.

Usually I call your mom, and I always show her all my presents and stuff.

Sarah: You know, Nana listens to the podcast. Do you want to say hi to her?

Maxine: Hi Nana.

Sarah: One of the other things that parents were worried about—and why I’m making this podcast—is that sometimes little kids seem really ungrateful. Like they get a whole giant pile of presents and then they’re like, “I wanted the blah blah blah,” or “I didn’t get that,” or “Why did he get more?”

What do you think those parents need to hear when they have little kids? What do they need to hear from an older kid?

Maxine: Like I said before, when I would not get presents that I wanted, but I would still get other presents—I would be sad or unhappy about it, that I didn’t get the other presents that I wanted. But after, I would realize how fun the presents I actually got were.

And honestly, if you have a four-year-old and they’re upset about not getting something, then they’re literally four. So you can’t really think that they’re ungrateful, because they don’t even know what that word means. They probably don’t even know how to say that word.

So you can’t really worry about them being ungrateful, because they don’t even know what that is.

Sarah: Right. And they don’t have anything to compare it to, right?

Maxine: Yeah, because they’re literally four.

Sarah: So if parents are really worried about that—if they think their kids think that toys are the most important thing—what would you say to those parents?

Maxine: Well, kids are just kids. I’m still a kid, but I know that presents aren’t the only thing that’s good about holidays and stuff. But I’m still learning. And if your kid is younger than me, then chances are they’ll know even less about that.

So honestly, kids are just kids, and they just think presents are so cool and exciting that they don’t know there’s more to it than presents.

Sarah: Right. Do you think there’s anything parents could or should do to teach their kids that there are things more important than presents?

Maxine: Well, you could do traditions, like what we do—like where you go on a walk, or you decorate your tree as a family or something. Or if you celebrate Hanukkah, doing little traditions for that and stuff. So when they’re older, they’ll see, “Oh, when we did all those things, those were nice traditions that my parents did.”

Sarah: Can you think of any other traditions that were important to you?

Maxine: Decorating cookies.

Sarah: I was thinking about that too. That’s a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to doing that this year.

Maxine: And I already promised one of my teachers, Ms. Miller, that I was going to give her cookies. So we have to do it.

Sarah: We absolutely will, because she loves sugar.

Maxine: Yeah, she’s sugar.

Sarah: She does. Yeah.

I think you’ve always liked giving presents too. Is there anything else you think parents should know if they’re worried about their kids thinking that stuff is more important than people?

Maxine: Honestly, just what I said before: kids are just kids, and they don’t know anything other than presents. So don’t think it’s a big deal, because eventually they’ll realize more things about holidays, like I did.

But if your kid’s, like, six and they’re so excited about the presents and that’s all they can talk about, then honestly that’s a normal kid behavior.

Sarah: Right. And not worry about it.

Maxine: Well, not, like, normal, but a lot of kids are like that.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think if we can be excited for them too, right?

Maxine: Yeah. If you can show them that it’s so great that they’re excited about it, and it can be like, “I’m excited too,” then they’ll see it’s not something bad. But if you tell them, “No, you shouldn’t be this excited about presents. That’s not allowed…”

Sarah: That’s right.

Hey, do you remember—this is one thing I forgot to ask your brothers about—do you remember times when you’ve gotten an experience instead of a thing you can hold in your hands for a present?

Maxine: People have given me a ticket to go do something with me or something. Just for fun.

Sarah: I think Mimi took you to a show once.

Maxine: Yeah.

Sarah: And Uncle Les used to do sleepovers and movie night.

Maxine: Yeah.

Sarah: Do you think that’s a good idea? Do you think kids like that?

Maxine: Yeah. I liked—huh? But I’m not a normal kid.

Sarah: You’re not a normal kid? Why aren’t you a normal kid?

Maxine: Because I’m not. I don’t know how to explain it.

Sarah: I think you’re a pretty normal kid.

Maxine: No, I’m extraordinary.

Sarah: You’re also hilarious.

Maxine: Thanks, darling.

Sarah: You are welcome. Love you. You look funny with those big headphones on your head.

Maxine: Yeah, I’m sure.

Sarah: I do love you, kid.

Maxine: Oh, I love you.

Sarah: Hello. Okay. Okay, let’s get started. Can you introduce yourself?

Asa: My name’s Asa. I’m your son. I’m 17.

Sarah: Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Asa: Yeah, no problem.

Sarah: So when you were little, you and your older brother Lee used to spend hours looking at the Lego catalog and circling all the things that you wanted.

Asa: Uh-huh.

Sarah: Do you remember that?

Asa: Yeah.

Sarah: And I remember Dad used to really worry about that. He used to worry that you guys—your values were out of place, and you were gonna be super greedy kids and not care about the right things.

Asa: Right.

Sarah: He was right?

Asa: Yeah.

Sarah: Are you super greedy?

Asa: No.

Sarah: Now, I remember one year when you were around 11 and I said, “The grandparents are starting to ask what you want for Christmas,” because they wanted to get you something. And you stopped and you thought, and you said, “Mom, I think I have a pretty good life. I can’t think of anything I want.”

Do you remember that?

Asa: Yeah.

Sarah: So how did you go from the five-year-old who wanted everything in the Lego catalog to—

Asa: I think I kind of just grew out of it, I guess, is the best way to say it. I don’t know. My brain chemistry changed.

Sarah: Do you think that’s typical of 17-year-olds? Do you feel like most kids your age don’t want that much stuff?

Asa: Yeah. The thing is, I don’t really play with toys anymore. So when I was little, you can never have too many toys. You just get more and more and more, and they’re all good.

But now, thinking about it, the only thing I’m missing in my daily life is a backpack big enough to put all my stuff in. So that’s, like, the only thing I want. When I think about it—what would make my life better—the only thing I can think of is a bigger backpack.

Sarah: A bigger backpack. Okay.

Asa: Bigger backpack.

Sarah: I think Santa has gotten wind of that, so you don’t have too long to wait.

I feel like you’re sort of unusual for kids your age in terms of not being into brand-name stuff. Do you think that’s true?

Asa: Yeah. I would say that’s true.

Sarah: Why do you think that is?

Asa: When you get older, you value different things. Your values change. You don’t really care so much about accumulating plastic chachkes, and you’re more focused on just having a good time.

Sarah: I know you don’t want little toys from the dollar store or Lego kits anymore, but why don’t you want brand-name sneakers? You haven’t even gotten sneakers in, like, two years, right?

Asa: I’ve evolved past that.

Sarah: Okay, but what is it? I’m trying to say: I think you’re unusual for someone 17, in grade 12, who’s not like, “Oh, I need these sneakers and that expensive thing and the latest iPhone.”

I want to hear anything you think would be helpful for parents who want to make sure their kids don’t grow up greedy and materialistic.

Asa: They won’t. They won’t. Or maybe they will, but it doesn’t really—some people are like that and some people aren’t.

Everybody when they’re little wants Lego and wants to look in the Lego catalog. Whatever you do then is not gonna shape that. Maybe your kid will grow up and be greedy, but you telling them that they shouldn’t look at the Lego catalog isn’t gonna change that.

It’s not guaranteed everybody’s gonna grow out of it. Whatever you try and do isn’t gonna change that. It’s already kind of preset. Let the kids do whatever they want, and then maybe they’ll be greedy, maybe they won’t. But it won’t really have any effect on it.

Sarah: So you’re saying it’s other things—not what they want when they’re little—that decide how they turn out.

Asa: Yeah.

Sarah: I think it’s pretty normal for little kids to want lots of stuff. It’s hardwired, evolutionarily, for them to want stuff—because if they were just quiet and meek in a corner, everyone would forget about them.

Asa: Yeah.

Sarah: Do you remember when you started to feel grateful for your life?

Asa: I am grateful now, and I probably wasn’t when I was three. So somewhere along the line—maybe somewhere between three and 17—maybe five years ago. I don’t know. It’s sort of a gradual thing.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s hard to pinpoint.

You said that parents telling their kids not to want stuff isn’t going to make a difference. But do you think you internalized what was important in our family, and because Dad and I aren’t really into brand names and buying stuff, that’s how you developed too?

Asa: Yeah. I would say I cared about the stuff most when I was in grade six and seven, and I felt really weird telling you guys that I wanted shirts with company logos on them and stuff. It just felt out of place in our family.

Sarah: Why do you think it was grade six and seven that you wanted the most brand-name stuff?

Asa: Because brain development-wise, that’s when you want to fit in the most.

Sarah: That makes sense. And at a certain point, you just…

One of the things I admire about you is that you don’t care what other people think—in a good way. You have your own idea of what you like and what’s cool. But when you were little, what was the most important or meaningful thing about Christmas or birthdays?

Asa: I guess the anticipation. The anticipation of all of the presents and celebration and whatnot. When you actually get there, it’s like whatever, but it gives you something to look forward to leading up to it. That was probably the most important thing.

Sarah: The excitement of the possibilities of what you might get and do.

Asa: Yeah.

Sarah: What about now? Has anything changed?

Asa: Well, I used to have birthday parties when I was a little kid. I don’t really do that anymore, so birthdays definitely don’t feel as significant.

Christmas is kind of the same mold, but again, I’m not so much into, like, “Which Lego am I gonna get this year?” So I don’t know. I guess now I value the food and the family and everything else. So Christmas, beyond the presents.

Sarah: Nice. Well, thanks, Ace. Was there anything you think parents should know about this topic?

Asa: Make sure your kids are staying somewhat grounded to reality, but just relax too, because they’re little kids.

Sarah: Thanks, Ace. Bye.

Asa: No problem. Bye. Love you.

Sarah: Love you too.

Lee: Hello.

Sarah: Hi, Lee. Welcome to the podcast.

Lee: Thank you for having me.

Sarah: Can you introduce yourself?

Lee: Hi, I’m Lee, your oldest son.

Sarah: How old are you now?

Lee: 20.

Sarah: 20 and—

Lee: A half.

Sarah: 20 and a half. We missed your half-birthday this year.

And for anyone listening who doesn’t celebrate Christmas, I think this applies to birthdays or any other holidays where kids get presents. Looking back on your childhood, do you remember really wanting to get presents and lobbying to get presents when you were little?

Lee: Yeah, definitely. Next question.

Sarah: I asked your brother this—do you remember looking at the Lego catalog, the two of you pouring over it and circling everything you wanted?

Lee: Oh yeah, for sure. I think you and Dad tried to moderate that. I remember you talking to us about consumerism. I think I understood that stuff, but I still just wanted presents. I think that’s how it is for most kids.

Sarah: For sure. It really stressed Dad out. He was worried about all the wanting, like a lot of the parents who wrote with concerns about this.

But you’re a person now at 20 who I would say is pretty non-materialistic. When did you become aware of consumerism and materialism?

Lee: I think I was aware as long as I can remember. Definitely you taught me early, but I don’t think it sank in until I was a young teenager.

When was the first time I was like, “Oh, you don’t need to get me any presents”? I don’t know. By the way, you always still do, but I’m pretty sure I always tell you now that you don’t need to.

Sarah: Yeah. We get you presents because we want to get you presents, not because we feel like we have to.

Lee: But when I was a kid, I wasn’t like, “Oh, you don’t have to get me any presents.” I wanted presents very much.

Sarah: For sure. Do you ever remember—

Lee: I think it was enough times… Do you talk to your parents about the post-holiday letdown? We haven’t talked about that yet, but experiencing that enough made me feel like, “Okay, maybe presents are not the name of the game.”

Sarah: Say more about the post-holiday letdown.

Lee: Somewhere around 3:00 p.m. on Christmas, you’d be like, “Well, that was that. Back to my comfortable life, I guess.” But normal. You’d stop feeling excited and you’d feel like, “Was I really that excited?” Because once the suspense is gone—who said that? The anticipation is always better than the actual thing. Some philosopher said that.

Sarah: That’s so funny because that’s what your brother said. When I asked what he remembered most, he said: the anticipation.

Lee: Yeah, for sure.

Sarah: So what would you say to parents who are worried their kids always want more stuff? And even the post-holiday letdown can look like crying about not having more presents at three o’clock.

Lee: I would say it’s okay. The kids are victims of the mass media, but you’re probably already doing your best to counteract that, and just have faith. If you’re generally raising a conscientious kid, they’ll eventually probably come around.

How many adults do you know who are obsessed with presents?

Lee: Well… some are. Some people are very materialistic. But generally people grow out of it, I think.

Sarah: There are tons of people who get the new iPhone with every update, or who want the newest, fanciest thing and brand-name stuff.

Lee: Okay. I would say then: you guys really hammered it at home with me. And that’s probably why I think what I do now—“People, not stuff,” the old mantra.

Sarah: People, not stuff. That really was a mantra in your childhood, wasn’t it?

Lee: Yes, probably.

Sarah: And for anyone listening, don’t get me wrong—you guys got a lot of presents for Christmas.

Lee: Oh yeah.

Sarah: Not from us necessarily, because we didn’t have much money when you were growing up. Just a lot of grandparents. You guys have five sets of grandparents—ten grandparents—and then aunties and uncles and big family.

I wouldn’t say you were spoiled. Do you think you were spoiled?

Lee: I don’t know. Maybe. I think it’s less about having things and more about having a bad attitude than anything else.

Sarah: Yeah. I think spoiled is when parents can’t say no and they just give everything. You may have had grandparents who couldn’t say no and gave you everything.

Lee: Yeah, that makes sense.

Sarah: Looking back, what was really meaningful for you about Christmas or your birthday?

Lee: I couldn’t tell you what was really meaningful—just the thing itself. You’re very conditioned to be excited for those things when you’re young. Santa and presents.

Sarah: So what about now? What do you like about the holidays?

Lee: I don’t want to say I dislike them. I don’t ever decorate, and I play Christmas songs when I get paid too.

Sarah: You play them for free at our house.

Lee: Yeah. On your request. That’s true.

I don’t know. I’m pretty agnostic about it. I don’t mind it. I mind it in November when people get excited about it, but when it’s actually the season, it’s cool.

Same with my birthday. It’d be cool to do something, but it always ends up being pretty low-key. I don’t think that’s positive or negative—it varies from person to person.

Sarah: Is there anything you’re excited about with Christmas coming?

Lee: I guess it still feels nice—like the intentional family time. And the new Lego and—

Sarah: Sorry, spoiler: you’re not getting any Lego this year.

Lee: Okay. Family time, yeah. Seeing extended family. I don’t know if we’re going to this year. I think Christmas is cool.

Sarah: Do you remember making presents for your siblings when you were growing up?

Lee: I remember making Asa the piggy bank.

Sarah: Do you remember the sock monkeys you made them?

Lee: Oh, vaguely.

Sarah: Those were a lot of work.

Lee: Yeah, I forgot about that. I don’t remember if they liked them.

Sarah: They did. We still have them.

Lee: Yeah.

Sarah: Changing gears a bit—from holidays to consumerism in general—do you remember when you came home from Montessori and said you wanted some company—

Lee: Yeah, I know what you’re about to say. Company shirts?

Sarah: Yeah.

Lee: Okay.

Sarah: Do you remember why you wanted company shirts?

Lee: Because it was cool.

Sarah: We thought you meant shirts that said GAP on them or something. But when Dad took you shopping at a thrift store—

Lee: I just wanted shirts with pictures on them.

Sarah: Do you remember the trip?

Lee: Yeah. I remember getting a Superman button-up. I don’t remember the others.

Sarah: I think you got shirts that said T-Rex.

Lee: I couldn’t read, so I didn’t know what a company versus just a picture was.

Sarah: What do you think that did for you?

Lee: Made me cool. I have more friends. I’m joking.

I don’t know. I remember being happy to have a cool wardrobe. If you want to talk consumerism, I think I still like getting cool clothes. A lot of people do. Although I don’t go shopping that much.

I do tend to buy secondhand clothes, and that’s just a style question. I think that fateful shopping trip—we went to a Goodwill or something, right?

I remember going there as a child. And then I had one or two years in the beginning of high school where I wanted to get all my clothes from H&M, and then I just went back to Value Village after that.

Sarah: Yeah, I remember that. Rebellious years of going to the mall.

So another thing parents worry about is that their kids aren’t appreciative or grateful for everything they have in their life. And I personally think—of course they’re not.

Lee: Yeah. Of course they’re not. They’re little dummies.

Sarah: No. I don’t think they’re little dummies. I think they just don’t have anything to compare it to.

Lee: Yeah, for sure. That’ll come with time.

Sarah: Do you remember starting to feel appreciative and grateful for what you have?

Lee: Do I remember becoming conscious of it? It always was something you guys talked about. It slowly, very gradually became less abstract as I got more world experience.

I don’t totally remember what you said, but the message was: “You are fortunate.”

But I never thought, “I’m not grateful.” When you’re a kid, you just don’t understand much. How could you expect them to understand something as nuanced as gratitude? Or privilege.

Sarah: Yeah, privilege.

Lee: That’s what I’m talking about. It comes with time. You still have to make an effort to show them that, because I definitely know older people who don’t really get that. And if you don’t, you’re one of them.

Sarah: So it would be fair to say that the parents who are concerned about wanting their kids to be appreciative of their privilege, wanting their kids to be grateful, and not too consumerist—

Lee: You’re probably already doing fine. Exactly. Talk to them about it, and within a decade they’ll get it. And within a decade, they’ll become the preachy ones and you’ll get annoyed.

They’ll start lecturing you about capitalism, and you’ll be like, “Gosh darn it, what have I done?”

Maxine: I think that’s happened to us a few times.

Lee: All I was trying to say—I wasn’t trying to say don’t get your kids presents. I think I’ve been pretty clear. I never minded when you guys talked about privilege and stuff when I was a kid. Even if I did mind it, that would be more reason to reinforce those points.

I think the golden rule of parenting podcasts is: if you’re concerned about this stuff, you’re already probably doing pretty well. And if you don’t think about it, then your kid is the one that needs help.

Sarah: Yeah. In any case, those are not the people who are probably listening to this.

Lee: That’s the parenting podcast paradox.

Sarah: Okay, let’s close by saying—

Lee: You better leave that in.

Sarah: I’ll leave it in: “Parenting podcast paradox.” The Peaceful Parenting Podcast paradox—and add another P in there.

Okay. Well, thanks, Lee, for coming on the podcast.

Lee: Thanks for having me.

Sarah: Love you.

Lee: Happy holidays to all your listeners.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Shireen Rizvi, PhD and Jesse Finkelstein, PsyD, about their book Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships.

We discuss what Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is, how it can help both ourselves and our kids with big feelings, and get into some of the skills it teaches including distress tolerance, check the facts, and mindfulness.

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We talk about:

* 6:00 What is DBT?

* 11:00 The importance of validation

* 13:00 How do parents manage their own big feelings?

* 16:00 How do you support a kid with big feelings, and where is the place for problem solving?

* 23:00 Managing the urge to fix things for our kids!

* 26:00 What is distress tolerance?

* 28:50 “Check the facts” is a foundational skill

* 34:00 Mindfulness is a foundation of DBT

* 36:45 How the skills taught through DBT are universal

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships by Shireen Rizvi and Jesse Finkelstein

* Shireen Rizvi’s website

* Jesse Finkelstein’s websites axiscbt and therahive

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Podcast transcript:

Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today we have two guests who co-authored a book called Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships.

And you may be wondering why we’re talking about that on a parenting podcast. This was a really great conversation with Shireen Rizvi and Jesse Finkelstein, the co-authors of the book, about all of the skills of DBT, which is a modality of therapy. We talked about the skills they teach in DBT and how we can apply them to parenting.

They talk about how emotional dysregulation is the cause of so much of the pain and suffering in our lives. And I think as a parent, you will recognize that either your own emotional dysregulation or your child’s is often where a lot of issues and conflict come from.

So what they’ve really provided in this book—and given us a window into in this conversation—is how we can apply some of those skills toward helping ourselves and helping our children with big feelings, a.k.a. emotional dysregulation. It was a really wonderful conversation, and their book is wonderful too. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes and encourage you to check it out.

There are things you can listen to in this podcast today and then walk away and use right away. One note: you’ll notice that a lot of what they talk about really overlaps with the things we teach and practice inside of Peaceful Parenting.

If this episode is helpful for you, please share it with a friend. Screenshot it and send it to someone who could use some more skill-building around big emotions—whether they’re our own big emotions or our child’s. Sharing with a friend or word of mouth is a wonderful way for us to reach more people and more families and help them learn about peaceful parenting.

It is a slow process, but I really believe it is the way we change the world. Let’s meet Shireen and Jesse.

Hi, Jesse. Hi, Shireen. Welcome to the podcast.

Jesse: Thank you so much for having us.

Sarah: Yeah. I’m so excited about your book, which I understand is out now—Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships. First of all, I love the format of your book. It’s super easy to read and easy to use. I already thought about tearing out the pages with the flow charts, which are such great references—really helpful for anyone who has emotions. Basically anyone who has feelings.

Jesse: Oh, yes.

Sarah: Yeah. I thought they were great, and I think this is going to be a helpful conversation for parents. You’ve written from a DBT framework. Can you explain what DBT is and maybe how it’s different from CBT? A lot of people have heard more about cognitive behavior therapy than dialectical behavior therapy.

Shireen: Sure. I would first say that DBT—Dialectical Behavior Therapy—is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy. So they’re in the same category. Sometimes we hear therapists say, “I do DBT, but I don’t do CBT,” and from my perspective, that’s not really possible, because the essence of dialectical behavior therapy is CBT. CBT focuses on how our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions all go together, and how changing any one of those affects the others.

That’s really the core of DBT—the foundation of CBT. But what happened was the person who developed DBT, Marsha Linehan—she was actually my grad school advisor at the University of Washington—developed this treatment because she was finding that standard CBT was not working as well as she wanted it to for a particular population. The group she was working with were women, primarily, who had significant problems with emotion regulation and were chronically suicidal or self-injuring.

With that group, she found they needed a lot more validation—validation that things were really rough, that it was hard to change what was going on, that they needed support and comfort. But if she leaned too much on validation, patients got frustrated that there wasn’t enough change happening.

So what she added to standard CBT was first a focus on validation and acceptance, and then what she refers to as the dialectical piece: balancing between change and acceptance. The idea is: You’re doing the best you can—and you need to do better.

Jesse: Mm-hmm.

Shireen: And even though DBT was developed for that very severe group that needed a lot of treatment, one of the aspects of DBT is skills training—teaching people skills to manage their emotions, regulate distress, engage interpersonally in a more effective way.

Those skills became so popular that people started using them with everyone they were treating, not just people who engaged in chronic suicidal behavior.

Sarah: Very cool. And I think the population you’re referring to is people who might be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I bring that up only because I work with parents, not kids, and parents report to me what their children are like. I’ve had many parents worry, “Do you think my child has borderline personality disorder?” because they’ve heard of it and associate it with extreme sensitivity and big feelings.

A lot of that is just typical of someone who’s 13 or 14, right? Or of a sensitive child—not diagnosable or something you’d necessarily find in the DSM. I’ve heard it so many times. I say, “No, I don’t think your child has borderline personality disorder. I think they’re just really sensitive and haven’t learned how to manage their big feelings yet. And that’s something you can help them with.”

With that similar level of emotional intensity—in a preteen or early teen who’s still developing the brain structures that make self-regulation possible—how can we use DBT skills? What are a couple of ideas you might recommend when you have a 13-year-old who feels like life is ruined because the jeans they wanted to wear are soaking wet in the wash? And I’m not making fun—at 13, belonging is tied to how you look, what jeans you’re wearing, how your hair is. It feels very real.

So how might we use the skills you write about for that kind of situation?

Jesse: Well, Sarah, I actually think you just practiced one of the skills: validation. When someone feels like their day is ruined because of their jeans, often a parent will say, “Get over it. It’s not a big deal.” And now, in addition to fear or anxiety, there’s a layer of shame or resentment. So the emotion amplifies and becomes even harder to get out of.

Validation is a skill we talk about where you recognize the kernel of truth—how this experience makes sense. “The jeans you’re wearing are clearly important to you. This is about connection. I understand why you feel this way.” That simple act of communicating that someone’s thoughts and feelings make sense can be very powerful.

Alongside that—back to what Shireen was saying—there are two tracks. One is the skills you help your teen practice. The other is the skills you practice yourself to be effective. In that moment, your teen might be dysregulated. What is the parent’s emotion? Their urge? What skills can they practice to be effective?

Sarah: I love that you already went to the next question I was going to ask, which is: when that kid is screaming, “You don’t understand, I can’t go to school because of the jeans,” what can parents do for themselves using the skills you describe?

Shireen: I often think of the oxygen-mask analogy: put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. That was certainly true for me when I had fussy infants—how do you manage that stress when you are already heightened?

What do you need to do to regulate yourself so you can be effective in the moment? Sometimes that’s literally taking a time-out—leaving the room for a minute. The kid comes after you about the jeans, and you say, “Hold on, I need a minute.” You sequester yourself in the bathroom. You do paced breathing—a DBT skill that helps regulate your nervous system. You do that for a minute, get centered, and then return to the situation.

If you’re not regulated and your child is dysregulated, you’ll ping-pong off each other and it becomes messier and messier. But if you can regulate yourself and approach calmly, the whole interaction changes.

Sarah: It’s so interesting because people who’ve been listening to my podcast or know my work will think, “Oh yeah, these are the things Sarah talks about all the time.” Our first principle of peaceful parenting is parental self-regulation. It doesn’t mean you never get upset, but you recognize it and have strategies to get back to calm.

And I always say, if you forget everything else I teach about dealing with upset kids, just remember empathy—which is another way of saying validation. I tell parents: you don’t have to agree to empathize. Especially with situations like the jeans.

I love the crossover between the skills parents are practicing in my community and what you’ve written about. And again: those flow charts! I’m going to mark up my book with Post-its for all the exercises.

One of the things you talk about in the book is problem solving. As parents, we can find ourselves in these intense situations. I’ll give an example: a client’s daughter, at 11 p.m., was spiraling about needing a particular pair of boots for her Halloween costume, and they wouldn’t arrive in time. No matter what the mom said, the daughter spiraled.

This is a two-part question: If you’ve validated and they’re still really upset, how do you support a kid who is deep in those intense feelings? And when is the place for teaching problem solving—especially when there is a real logistical problem to solve?

Jesse: I’m going to say the annoying therapist thing: it depends. If we think about how emotions impact our thinking on a scale from 0 to 10, it’s very hard to engage in wise-minded problem solving when someone is at an 8, 9, or 10. At that point, the urge is to act on crisis behaviors—yell, fight, ruminate.

So engaging your child in problem solving when they’re at a 9 isn’t effective.

Often, I suggest parents model and coach distress-tolerance skills. Shireen mentioned paced breathing. Maybe distraction. Anything to lower the emotional volume.

Once we’re in the six-ish range? Now we can problem solve. DBT has a very prescribed step-by-step process.

But it’s really hard if someone is so dysregulated. That’s often where parents and kids end up in conflict: parent wants to solve; kid is at a 9 and can’t even see straight.

Sarah: Right. So walk us through what that might look like using the boots example. Play the parent for a moment.

Jesse: Of course. I’d potentially do a couple of things. I might say, “Okay, let’s do a little ‘tipping the temperature’ together.” I’d bring out two bowls of ice and say, “We’ll bend over, hold our breath for 30 seconds…”

Shireen: And put your face in the bowl of ice water. You left out that part.

Jesse: Crucial part of the step.

Sarah: You just look at the ice water?

Jesse: No, you submerge your face. And something happens—it’s magical. There’s actually a profound physiological effect: lowering blood pressure, calming the sympathetic nervous system.

I highlight for parents: do this with your child, not didactically. Make it collaborative.

And then: validate, validate, validate. Validation is not approval. It’s not saying the reaction is right. It’s simply communicating that their distress makes sense. Validation is incredibly regulating.

Then you check in: “Do you feel like we can access Wise Mind?” If yes: “Great. Let’s bring out a problem-solving worksheet—maybe from Real Skills for Real Life or the DBT manual. Let’s walk through it step by step.”

Sarah: And if you have a kid screaming, “Get that ice water away from me, that has nothing to do with the boots!”—is there anything to add beyond taking a break?

Shireen: I’d say this probably comes up a lot for you, Sarah. As parents—especially high-functioning, maybe perfectionistic types (I put myself in that category)—if my kid is upset, I feel so many urges to fix it right away. Sometimes that’s helpful, but often it’s not. They either don’t want to be fixed, or they’re too dysregulated, or fixing isn’t actually their goal—they just want to tell you how upset they are.

I have to practice acceptance: “My kid is upset right now. That’s it.” I remind myself: kids being upset is part of life. It’s important for them to learn they can be upset and the world doesn’t fall apart.

If they’re willing to do skills alongside you, great. But there will be times where you say, “I accept that you’re upset. I’m sorry you feel this way. It sounds terrible. Let’s reconnect in an hour.” And wait for the storm to pass.

Sarah: Wait for the storm to pass.

Jesse: I’ll say—I haven’t been a therapist that long, and I’ve been having this conversation with my own parents. Yesterday I called my mom about something stressful, and she said, “Jesse, do you want validation or problem solving right now?”

Shireen: Love it.

Jesse: I thought, “You taught her well.” I was like: okay, therapy works. And even having that prompt—“What would you like right now? Problem solving? Validation? Do you want me to just sit with you?”—that’s so useful.

Sarah: Yeah. I have to remind myself of that with my daughter, especially when the solution seems obvious to me but she’s too upset to take it in. Just sitting there is the hardest thing in the world.

And you’ve both anticipated my next question. A big part of your book is distress tolerance—one of the four areas. Can you talk about what distress tolerance is specifically? And as you mentioned, Shireen, it is excruciating when your kid is in pain or upset.

I learned from my friend Ned Johnson—his wonderful book The Self-Driven Child—that there’s something called the “righting instinct.” When your child falls over, you have the instinct to right them—pick them up, dust them off, stand them up. That instinct kicks in whenever they’re distressed. And I think it’s important for them to learn skills so we don’t do that every time.

Give us some thoughts about that.

Shireen: Well, again, I think distress tolerance is so important for parents and for kids. The way we define it in DBT is: distress tolerance is learning how to tolerate stressful, difficult, complicated situations without doing anything to make it worse. That’s the critical part, because distress tolerance is not about solving problems. It’s about getting through without making things worse.

So in the context of an interaction with your kid, “not making it worse” might mean biting your tongue and not lashing out, not arguing, not rolling your eyes, or whatever it is. And then tolerating the stress of the moment.

As parents, we absolutely need this probably a thousand times a day. “How do I tolerate the distress of this moment with my kid?” And then kids, as humans, need to learn distress tolerance too—how to tolerate a difficult situation without doing anything to make it worse.

If we swoop in too quickly to solve the problem for them—as you said, if we move in too quickly to right them—they don’t learn that they can get through it themselves. They don’t learn that they can right themselves.

And I think there’s been a lot written about generations and how parenting has affected different generations. We want our kids to learn how to problem solve, but also how to manage stress and difficulty in effective ways.

Sarah: I think you’re probably referring to the “helicopter parents,” how people are always talking about helicopter parents who are trying to remove any obstacles or remove the distress, basically.

I think the answer isn’t that we just say, “Okay, well, you’re distressed, deal with it,” but that we’re there with them emotionally while they’re learning. We’re next to them, right? With that co-regulation piece, while they’re learning that they can handle those big feelings.

Shireen: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: I thought it might be fun, before we close out, to do a deep dive on maybe one or two of the skills you have in the book. I was thinking about maybe “Check the Facts.” It would be a cool one to do a deep dive on. You have so many awesome skills and I encourage anyone to pick up your book. “Check the Facts” is one of the emotion regulation skills.

Do you mind going over when you would use Check the Facts, what it is, and how to use it?

Jesse: Not at all. Check the Facts is, in many ways, a foundational skill, because it’s so easy for us to get lost in our interpretation of a situation. So the classic example is: you’re walking down the street and you wave to a friend, and they don’t wave back. And I don’t know about you, but it’s easy for me to go to, “Oh, they must be mad at me.”

Sarah: Right, yeah.

Jesse: And all of a sudden, I’m spinning out, thinking about all the things I could have done to hurt their feelings, and yada yada yada. Then I’m feeling lots of upset, and I may have the urge to apologize, etc.

What we’re doing with Check the Facts is returning our attention back to the facts themselves—the things we can take in with our senses. We’re observing and describing, which are two foundational mindfulness skills in DBT. And then from that, we ask ourselves: “Does the emotion I’m feeling—the intensity and duration of that emotion—fit the facts as I’m experiencing them?”

So in many ways, this is one of those cognitive interventions. DBT rests on all these cognitive-behavioral principles; it’s part of that broader umbrella. Here we’re asking: “Do the facts as I see them align with my emotional experience?”

From there, we ask: if yes, then there are certain options or skills we can practice—for instance, we can change the problem. If no, that begs the question: “Should I act opposite to this emotion urge that I have?”

So it’s a very grounding, centering type of skill. Shireen, is there anything I’m missing?

Shireen: No. I would just give a parenting example that happens for me a lot. My kid has a test the next day. He says he knows everything. He doesn’t open the book or want to review the study guide. And I start to think things like, “Oh my gosh, he has no grit. He’s going to fail this test. He’s not going to do well in high school. He’s not going to get into a good college. But most importantly, he doesn’t care. And what does that say about him? And what does it say about me as a parent?”

I hope people listening can relate to these sorts of thoughts and I’m not alone.

Sarah: A hundred percent. I’ve heard people say those exact things.

Shireen: And even though I practice these skills all the time, I’m also human and a mother. So where Check the Facts can be useful there is first just recognizing: “Okay, what thoughts am I having in response to this behavior?” The facts of the situation are: my kid said he doesn’t need to study anymore. And then look at all these thoughts that came into my mind.

First, just recognizing: here was the event, and here’s what my mind did. That, in and of itself, is a useful experience. You can say, “Wow, look at what I’m doing in my mind that’s creating so much of a problem.”

Then I can also think: “What does this make me feel when I have all these thoughts?” I feel fear. I feel sad. I feel shame about not being a good parent. And those all cause me to have more thoughts and urges to do things that aren’t super effective—like trying to bully him into studying, all of these things.

Then the skill can be: “Okay, are these thoughts exaggerated? Are they based in fact? Are they useful?” I can analyze each of these thoughts.

I might think, “Well, he has a history of not studying and doing fine,” is one thing. Another thought: “Me trying to push him to study is not going to be effective or helpful.” Another: “There are natural consequences. If he doesn’t do well because he didn’t study, that’s an important lesson for him to learn.”

So I can start to change my interpretations based on the facts of the actual situation as opposed to my exaggerated interpretations. And then see: what does that do to my emotions? And when I have more realistic, fact-based thoughts, does that lead me to have a better response than I would if I followed through on all my exaggerated thinking?

Does that make sense?

Sarah: Yeah, totally makes sense. Are there any DBT skills that are helpful in helping you recognize when you need to use a skill—if that makes sense? Because sometimes I think parents might spiral, like in the example you’re talking about, but they might not even realize they’re spiraling. Sometimes parents will say, “I don’t even know until it’s too late that I’ve had this big moment of emotional dysregulation.”

Jesse: I think there’s a very strong reason why mindfulness is the foundation of DBT—for exactly the reason you’ve just described. For a lot of us, we end up engaging in behaviors that are ineffective, that are not in line with our values or goals, and it feels like it’s just happening to us.

So having a mindfulness practice—and I want to highlight that doesn’t necessarily mean a formal meditation practice—but developing the skill of noticing, of being increasingly conscious of what you’re feeling, your urges, your thoughts, your behaviors. So that when you notice that you are drifting, that you’re engaging in an ineffective behavior, you can then apply a skill. We can’t change what we’re not aware of.

Sarah: I love that. It’s so hard with all the distractions we have and all of the things that are pulling us this way and that, and the busyness. So just slowing down and starting to notice more what we’re feeling and thinking.

Shireen: There’s a skill that we teach that’s in the category of mindfulness called Wise Mind. I don’t have to get into all the particulars of that, but Wise Mind is when you’re in a place where you feel wise and centered and perhaps a little bit calmer.

So one question people can ask themselves is: “Am I in a place of Wise Mind right now?” And if not, that’s the cue. Usually, when we answer that we’re not, it’s because we’re in a state of Emotion Mind, where our emotions are in control of us.

First, recognizing what state of mind you’re in can be really helpful. You can use that as a cue: “I’m not in Wise Mind. I need to do something more skillful here to get there,” or, “I need to give myself some time before I act.”

Sarah: I love that. So helpful. Before we wrap up, was there anything you wish I’d asked you that you think would be really helpful for parents and kids?

Shireen: I just want to reiterate something you said earlier, which is: yes, this treatment was developed for folks with borderline personality disorder. That is often a diagnosis people run screaming from or are very nervous about. People might hesitate to think that these skills could be useful for them if they don’t identify as having borderline personality disorder.

But I think what you’re highlighting, Sarah—and we so appreciate you having us on and talking about these skills—is that we consider these skills universal. Really anybody can benefit.

I’ve done training and teaching in DBT for 25 years, and I teach clinicians in many different places how to do DBT treatment with patients. But inevitably, what happens is that the clinicians themselves say, “Oh, I really need these skills in my everyday life.”

So that’s what we want to highlight, and why we wrote this book: to take these skills from a treatment designed for a really severe population and break it down so anybody can see, “Oh, this would be useful for me in my everyday life, and I want to learn more.”

Sarah: Totally. Yeah. I love it. And I think it’s a continuum, right? From feeling like emotions are overwhelming and challenging, and being really emotionally sensitive. There are lots of people who are on that more emotionally sensitive side of things, and these are really helpful skills for them.

Jesse: Yeah. And to add on that, I wouldn’t want anyone—and I don’t think any of us here are suggesting this—it’s such a stigmatized diagnosis. I have yet to meet someone who’s choosing suffering. Many of us are trying to find relief from a lot of pain, and we may do so through really ineffective means.

So with BPD, in my mind, sometimes it’s an unfortunate name for a diagnosis. Many folks may have the opinion that it means they’re intrinsically broken, or there’s something wrong with their personality. Really, it’s a constellation of behaviors that there are treatments for.

So I want anyone listening not to feel helpless or hopeless in having this diagnosis or experience.

Shireen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Thank you so much. The question I ask all my guests—I’ll ask Shireen first and then Jesse—is: if you could go back in time, if you had a time machine, if you could go back to your younger parent self, what advice would you give yourself?

Shireen: Oof. I think about this a lot, actually, because I feel like I did suffer a lot when my kids were babies. They were super colicky. I didn’t sleep at all. I was also trying to work. I was very stressed. I wish that at that time I could have taken in what other people were telling me, which is: “This will pass.” Right? “This too shall pass,” which is something we say to ourselves as DBT therapists a lot. Time changes. Change is inevitable. Everything changes.

In those dark parenting moments, you get stuck in thoughts of, “This is never going to change. It’s always going to be this way. I can’t tolerate this.” Instead, shifting to recognize: “Change is going to happen whether I like it or not. Just hang in there.”

Sarah: I love that. My mother-in-law told me when I had my first child: “When things are bad, don’t worry, they’ll get better. And also, when things are good, don’t worry, they’ll get worse.”

Shireen: Yes, it’s true. And we need both the ups and the downs so we can actually understand, “Oh, this is why I like this, and this is why I don’t like this.” It’s part of life.

Sarah: Yeah. Thank you. And Jesse, if you do ever have children, what would you want to remember to tell yourself?

Jesse: I think I would want to remember to tell myself—and I don’t think I’m going to say anything really new here—that perfection is a myth. I think parents often feel like they need to be some kind of superhuman. But we all feel. And when we do feel, and when we feel strongly, the goal isn’t to shame ourselves for having that experience. It’s to simply understand it.

That’s what I would want to communicate to myself, and what I hope to communicate to the parents I work with.

Sarah: Love that. Best place to go to find out more about you all and what you do? We’ll put a link to your book in the show notes, but any other socials or websites you want to point people to?

Shireen: My website is shireenrizvi.com, where you can find a number of resources, including a link to the book and a link to our YouTube channel, which has skills videos—animated skills videos that teach some of these skills in five minutes or less. So that’s another resource for people.

Sarah: Great. What about you, Jesse?

Jesse: I have a website called axiscbt.com. I’m also a co-founder of a psychoeducation skills course called Farrah Hive, and we actually have a parenting course based on DBT skills—that’s thefarrahhive.com. And on Instagram, @talk_is_good.

Sarah: Great. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time today.

Jesse: Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah: Thank you.

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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Educational Psychologist Liz Angoff.

We discuss when and why a child might need an assessment, what information you get from an assessment, how to help children understand their brains and diagnosis, and celebrating neurodiversity.

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We talk about:

* 7:00 What are some signs that your child should get an assessment?

* 9:00 Getting to the “why” and the “so what”

* 10:00 What do you assess for?

* 14:00 Why it is important to get an assessment?

* 23:00 Should you tell your child about their diagnosis?

* 31:00 Scripts and metaphors for talking to your kids about diagnosis

* 39:00 Red and Green flags with clinicians

* 44:00 Celebrating neurodiversity

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* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* Dr. Liz’s website and books

xx Sarah and Corey

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Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today my guest is Dr. Liz Angoff, who is an educational psychologist. She does testing, looking at helping kids understand how their brain works and helping their adults understand how their children’s brains work. She has loads of wonderful resources, which we will link to in the show notes.

I love how Dr. Liz takes this approach. It’s about how our brains can work in different ways, and understanding that really can help our child understand themselves, and help us understand our child in a better way.

As you’ll hear in this conversation with Dr. Liz, she really talks about how, if your child is experiencing some challenges or struggles—or you’re experiencing struggles or challenges with them—it can be helpful to get an assessment and possibly a diagnosis to understand exactly what’s going on and how your child’s brain works. Whether it could be anxiety or depression or neurodivergence or learning challenges or any sorts of things that can be uncovered through psychological testing, you can really understand the differences in your child’s brain that could be making life feel more challenging for them and/or for you. And she has a beautifully neurodiversity-affirming lens, where she talks about—you’ll hear her talk about this in the episode—looking at a child’s brain in terms of both the strengths and the challenges.

As always, we would love if you would share this episode with anyone you think might find it useful, and leave us a five-star rating on your favorite podcast player app and leave us a review. It really helps us reach more families and therefore help more families.

Alright, let’s meet Dr. Liz.

Hello, Dr. Liz. Welcome to the podcast.

Liz: Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here, Sarah.

Sarah: Me too. So tell us about who you are and what you do before we dive in.

Liz: Right. Well, I go by Dr. Liz, and I am a licensed educational psychologist. I’m in the Bay Area, California, and my focus—my passion—is working with kids to understand how their brains work. I am a testing psychologist, so I do assessment to understand, when things are challenging for kids, why things are challenging and what we’re going to do to really support them.

But one of the things that really caught my interest a number of years ago is that so often we bring kids through the assessment process and we don’t talk to them about what they did or what we learned about them. So I got really passionate about talking to kids directly about how they can understand their brains—what comes easily for them, how they can really use their strengths to help them thrive, and then what’s challenging and what they can do to advocate for themselves and support themselves. So all of my work has been really focused on that question: how do we help kids understand themselves?

Sarah: Which is perfect, because that’s exactly why I wanted to have you on. I’ve had so many parents ask me, “Well, how do I… I’ve got the assessment. How do I tell them? Do I tell them? How do I tell them?” We’re going to get into all of that.

But first I want to start with: what are some signs… I imagine some of the people listening are already going to have had assessments or are in the process of getting an assessment. But there also are some people who maybe—at least in our world—what we look at is: if you feel like you’re struggling way more than everybody else, that could be one sign. And if you’ve already made shifts and you’re trying to practice, in our case, peaceful parenting, and you’re still finding that things are really hard—that could be a sign that you might want to get an assessment.

But what are some signs that you look for that you might want to get your child assessed?

Liz: Yeah, I mean, you named a couple of them that I think are actually really important. All kids have times when they struggle. Growing up is hard. There are a lot of challenges, and they’re really important challenges that kids face. They need to know that it’s okay when things are hard. They need to know they can do hard things and come out the other side.

And there’s so much out there—what I think of as parenting 101—that helps us figure out: how do we help our children navigate these tough times? And then there’s kind of the next level where you might get a little extra support. So you read a book on parenting, or you find a different approach that matches the way your child shows up in the world a little bit better. You might meet with the school and get a little bit of extra help—sometimes called student study teams or SSTs—where you might meet with the teacher and the team.

For most kids, that little extra boost is enough to get them through those hard times. But for some kids, there are still questions. That next level, that extra support—it’s still not working. Things are still hard, and we don’t know why.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Liz: And when you have that question—“Why isn’t this working? It works for so many kids, but it’s not working for my child”—that’s when an assessment can be really helpful to get at the why. The so what.

So the why is: why are things harder for my child, and why are the traditional things that help most children not working? And then the so what is: so what do we do about it? How do we do things differently? And for kids who are wired differently, they need different things. And that’s what we focus on in the assessment process.

Sarah: And so, what kinds of… You know, we’ve gotten extra support, we’ve educated ourselves, and things are still hard for our child—or maybe also hard for us at home with our child. What are the kinds of things that you assess for? I guess that’s the best way to ask. The big ones I think about are ADHD and autism, but what else might be possibilities that are going on?

Liz: I really think of assessment—at the core of it—as understanding how this child’s brain works. The diagnoses that we look at… a diagnosis is just a kind of way to orient us toward the path of support that’s going to be most helpful. But even ADHD, autism, dyslexia—these common things we might look for—show up differently in different kids. There are diagnostic criteria, but they mix and match a little bit. No two ADHD-ers show up the same way. No two autistic kids show up the same way. Even dyslexic kids show up differently.

So at the core of it, we’re trying to figure out: what makes this child’s brain unique? What are the unique strengths and challenges that they have? And we’re going to be able to explain that. A shortcut for explaining that might be dyslexia or autism or ADHD.

We also might be looking at things like anxiety and depression that can really affect kids in a big way—sometimes related to other brain styles, because navigating the world as a different kind of brain is really hard and can lead to a lot of anxiety and depression. Sometimes anxiety can look like ADHD, for example, because it really hijacks your attention and makes it hard to sit still at school when your brain is on high alert all the time.

So we’re really trying to tease apart: what’s the root cause of the challenges a child is facing? So that we know what to do about it.

Some other things we might look at: one of the big questions that comes to me is when there are some really challenging behaviors that kids have, and we want to know what’s underneath that. Sometimes there might be questions about sensory dysregulation or emotional dysregulation—just real difficulty understanding the emotions that are coming up and what to do about them. Some kids get hit like by a tsunami by their emotions. And so learning how to regulate or manage those big feelings might be something we’re looking at. And again, that might be part of a bigger diagnosis, but more importantly it’s something we want to understand so we can support a child, regardless of what we call it.

Sarah: That makes so much sense. And it makes me think about my daughter, who’s 18 now. And just for anyone listening, she’s okay with me talking about her assessment and diagnoses. And I think sometimes when you talk about challenging behavior, we think we know why there’s challenging behavior—but sometimes we can be totally wrong.

I remember when she was in elementary school, her teachers—one after another—would always talk about how she was repeatedly at their desks asking, “What do I do next?” Asking for instruction. And she’s a kid whose connection is super important to her, and I always thought it was because she was looking for more connection from the teacher. That she was always at their side, and that was a “good” reason to go up and talk to the teacher because she loved her teachers.

And then come to find out, when we had her assessed, that she has working memory challenges. She actually literally couldn’t remember what the next thing to do was, because she could only keep one or two things in her head at a time. And that was really helpful information. It completely shifted how her teachers—and how I—saw her classroom behavior.

Liz: Isn’t that amazing? Just getting at the why. Getting underneath and figuring out the why completely shifts our perspective on things. And I think for a lot of kids, that first-line parenting—for many kids, yeah, they’re looking for connection. They’re looking for that. It makes total sense that that would be our first assumption. And for some kids, that’s just not true.

So when we do the assessment, we find out this important information that is so important to understanding what’s going on. And for your daughter to understand: “Oh, there’s this thing called working memory, and that is different in my brain than in other brains.” So I’m not dumb or lazy or all these labels we give ourselves. It’s: “Oh, I have a working memory challenge, so let’s brainstorm some ways I can work with the way my working memory works.” And that might be asking the teacher—that might work for everybody—but there might be something else.

There are any number of strategies we can use to really help her once we know what that is. And when we talk to kids about it, we can brainstorm with them to figure out what the best strategy is going to be—one that works for our child, that works for the teacher, that works for everybody involved.

Sarah: Yeah, for sure. It’s so illuminating. There were so many things about her diagnosis when she got assessed that helped so much to explain behavior that a lot of people found perplexing, and also helped her understand herself and make adjustments she needed to make to be successful.

For example, even now she’s in first-year college, and she knows—this has continued through her whole school career—that because of her focus challenges, she can’t really do any homework after six o’clock at night. Her focus is just not good. She can try, but it’s really hard for her. So she plans her day around: “I know that I’ve only got until six o’clock to really get my good work done.” She’ll even come home, do homework, and then go back into the city to go to the gym or something, whereas other people might do it the other way around.

So I think just knowing—kids knowing—how their brain works is really setting themselves up for success.

Liz: I love that.

Sarah: Yeah. So, which brings me to the next question I was going to ask you, and I think you’ve already answered it or we’ve talked about it together: anything you want to add about why it’s important to get an assessment? I mean, you talked about helping kids understand how their brain works, really getting to the root of the problem, and helping the people around them understand how their brain works. Is there anything else you want to add about why we would want to get an assessment that we haven’t already talked about?

Liz: Yeah. Well, one of the things we talk about a lot is that an assessment can result in a label of sorts. A diagnosis is a kind of label. And something I get asked a lot is: “What do we do when parents feel nervous about having their child have a label?”

There is—as much as I am a proponent and supporter and celebrator of neurodiversity—the truth is that our society still has some pretty challenging stereotypes about what it means to be ADHD or autistic, or to have a different way your brain is wired.

Sarah: Or stigma.

Liz: Yeah—stigma. That’s the word. And so I think it’s a real fear that families have.

There are a couple of things that are important to know about these “labels.” One is that the world is changing. We are understanding these diagnoses in a totally different way—not as something that’s broken or needs to be fixed, but as something that is different. A normal variation of how brains appear in the world. And that is a real change that is happening.

And that label can be—as you were just saying—so helpful, as a way to guide what we do to support our children so they can be successful. Like your example with your daughter: she can learn how to work with her brain so she can be really successful. I think it’s brilliant that she knows that after six o’clock, her brain won’t study anymore. That simple change is the difference between feeling like a failure and feeling like a success.

And I think the more dangerous thing—the scarier piece—is the labels we give children who aren’t properly diagnosed. Those labels are the ones kids give themselves, like “I must be dumb,” or the labels others give kids, like “This is a lazy child,” or “This is a defiant child.” Those labels are so much more negative and harmful to our kids because they tell them there’s something wrong with them.

Are these diagnoses labels? Yes. But I would argue they are such helpful guideposts for us in understanding: this is a difference, not a deficiency.

Sarah: I love that. And I’ve heard people say that you can avoid getting a diagnosis for your child because you don’t want to have them labeled, but they will still get labeled—just with the wrong labels instead of the right labels.

Liz: Exactly. Yeah.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. I know people who… I have a friend who didn’t find out until they were in their late teens, I guess, that they had inattentive ADHD, and they spent years unlearning, “I’m just lazy,” and, “I’m a lazy person, that’s why I have trouble doing things on time,” and really unlearning that bad… that bad idea of themselves that had been put on them when they weren’t aware of their inattentive ADHD.

Liz: Exactly.

Sarah: Yeah. I also have another friend who got diagnosed as autistic late in life, and they wish that they had known that so much earlier because they spent—you know, they’re one of those people that, back when they were a child, the diagnostic criteria missed them. Right? Like they were just quirky, odd, like the little-professor type of autistic kid. But they spent their whole life thinking, “There’s something wrong with me. I just don’t know what it is, but I know I feel different from everybody else,” and searching for, “What is this thing that’s wrong with me?” And finding it in all sorts of things that weren’t actually… you know, obviously there’s not anything wrong with them, they’re just autistic. But thinking how different their life would’ve been if they had known that, and hadn’t spent all those years trying to figure out why they felt so different from everybody else.

Liz: Exactly. And that’s what the research is showing us too—that so many individuals who are diagnosed as adults had these really harmful and unhelpful narratives as kids. And the first emotion that those diagnosed adults feel is this relief: “Oh, that’s why things feel different for me.” But the second emotion I find so much more interesting, because across the board, the second thing that people report is anger. And it’s anger at having lost decades to those false narratives that were so, so unhelpful.

And I think that there are kind of two facets to my passion about talking to kids. One was understanding that kids—they often know that something is different about them way before we even pick up on it, no matter how old they are. They have this sense that, “Oh, I’m walking through the world in a different way.” So the earlier we can have these conversations with them, the better, because we have this opportunity to rewrite that narrative for them.

But the second huge piece for me was working with adults and doing that later-in-life diagnosis, and hearing time after time, story after story about adults who are completely rewriting their self-narrative through the process of our assessment—and what a relief that is. And how frustrating it is that they’ve lost so much time not knowing, and now having to go through the process of identity formation again, because they have this new, critical piece of information that helps them understand things so differently about their childhood, their young adulthood—depending on how old they are.

Sarah: Yeah, it’s so important. And when you just said, “Kids often know that there’s something different about them,” I remembered my daughter. She didn’t—I think partly because I’m, I’m not saying this to toot my own horn, but I’m an extraordinarily patient person, and so some of the things about her ADHD—so she has an ADHD diagnosis—and some of the things about that, I think it took me a long time to sort of think, “Okay, this is unusual, that these behaviors are still happening,” because I was so patient with it, you know? And I think other parents may have been a little less patient at an earlier age and gotten her… and I feel bad about that, because I wish she had gotten her assessment earlier. I think it would’ve been helpful for her.

But I remember one thing that spurred me to finally seek an assessment was she asked me what ADHD was. She was probably nine, ten, maybe. And I told her, and she said, “I have that.” She was like, “I have that.” And I’m like, “Really?” Like, you know… anyway, it was just interesting.

Liz: I think kids know. I’ve had that experience so many times, I can’t even tell you. I’m halfway through a feedback session with a child and I haven’t told them yet, and they come out with, “Do I have ADHD?” Or in the middle of the assessment, they’re wondering about it and asking. And I say, “Well, what do you understand about ADHD, and why are you asking that question?” And I can kind of get more information from them and let them know, “We don’t know yet, but that’s what we’re here for. We’re exploring your brain and we’re trying to understand it.”

But I think that information, I mean, that just speaks to how much our world is changing. This information is out there in the world. We’re talking about it, which I think is so, so important to normalizing the fact that brains come in all different shapes and sizes and ways of being. And so it becomes a point of discussion—like a really open point of discussion—about, “I wonder how my brain is wired.”

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So interesting. I’m pretty sure I know the answer that you’re gonna give: if you do get a diagnosis of something—ADHD or autism—should you tell your child?

Liz: So I do believe that we should be talking to kids about how their brains work. And I want to be really mindful of the parent journey as I talk about this. I think that the most important piece is that, as a parent, you understand how your child’s brain works, and that you go through your own process of integrating that with how you see your child. And that’s a really important journey and a huge piece of the journey, because when we start talking to kids about how their brains work, we need to be really confident as adults.

So I think that while I see this as so important—talking to kids about their diagnosis—I want to make sure that parents are taking time and space to understand it themselves first.

Sarah: I love that. That’s such a sensitive answer, because if, say, you get the diagnosis of your child and to you it feels like, you know, it’s this horrible thing—that would not be a good frame of mind to tell your child about their diagnosis in. Right? So really working through your own fears and your own… getting proper information about what the diagnosis means before you go to your child with that information.

Liz: Exactly. And understanding what it means and what it doesn’t mean. Because there’s a lot of messages out there, especially around autism and ADHD, that are negative: that your child is broken in some way, we need to fix them, we need to make them more “normal,” whatever that means. I mean, all these messages are not helpful, not accurate. So really diving into the neurodiversity-affirming framework around these different neurotypes or brain types is a really important piece to give yourself time to process as a parent.

That said, I do think that being able to have a really supportive conversation with your child about, “What did we learn about the assessment?”—you know, we already talked about that kids know something’s different about them before we know. And so when they go through the assessment process, there’s no hiding from them that we’re doing something different for you. And they’re the ones that go through all these different activities as part of the assessment; they’re working very hard.

And I, as an assessor, I’m very transparent with kids: “We’re here to understand how your brain works,” because I was trained to tell kids, “We’re going to play a lot of brain games, and it’s going to be super fun, you’ll get prizes.” Which it is fun until we do the thing that’s hard for you. And then suddenly, it’s not fun anymore. And kids are like, “Huh, I feel like you’re not telling me the whole truth. This is not fun.” They pick up on it, right?

So I tend to be really transparent with kids: “We’re here to understand how your brain works. Some of the things that we do, your brain is going to find fun and maybe even easy to do. Some of the things are really going to challenge your brain. You might learn something new while you’re here. If something’s challenging, I want you to tell me about it, and we’re going to figure it out together—like, ooh, that’s going to be really interesting.”

So we’re already talking to kids about what’s strong. And I use a construction metaphor that I can go into, but we talk about their brain highways and we talk about their construction projects—what they’re working on. So kids are already learning so much about their brain as part of the assessment. And even without sharing the diagnosis, we can talk to them about what we learned, so that there’s some de-mystifying there. “I went through this whole thing and now everyone’s talking behind my back. They’re having a bunch of meetings. There must be something wrong with me.” Instead, we can say, “I learned so many cool things about your brain. I learned that you are strong in this, and I learned that we’re going to work on this. And so that’s really helpful for me as a parent.”

And then if we do have a diagnosis, what it adds when we share that with kids is: they know that they are not alone. It gives context. It lets them know that while the way their brain works is unique, there are lots of people out there who have very similar brains, who have been really successful with that kind of brain. There’s a path laid out—that we know what to do to work with your unique brain. And so it really helps them feel like, “I’m not alone in this. It’s not weird or broken in any way. This is just a different way to be in the world, and there’s a roadmap for me.”

Sarah: I love that. Yeah. I often, when I’m talking to parents, and you know, often after a couple of parent coaching sessions there’ll be some things that make me say, “Have you ever… has anyone ever asked you if you were considering an ADHD assessment for your child?” I try to… you know, because I’m not a clinician, I can’t diagnose anyone with anything. But there are certainly things that come up that make me think, “I think these people should get an assessment.”

And often they— you know, I try to be really as positive as I can—but often they do have these really negative associations with, for example, ADHD. And then I say, like, “You know, how many entrepreneurs… there are way more entrepreneurs that have ADHD than the general population, and way more Olympic athletes and professional athletes.” And, you know, there are things that are just research- and statistic-backed that you can say that are positive about this differently wired brain.

Liz: Right. I love the research on entrepreneurship and ADHD. I think that it’s so amazing how well-equipped the ADHD brain is to be in a space where we’re disrupting the status quo and trying new things, thinking outside of the box, really using that creativity. And it’s just a world that needs this kind of brain to really move us forward. More neurotypical brains that work well with the way that society is built might not be as motivated to disrupt things in that positive way that moves us forward.

Sarah: I love that. What are some other things that—you know, I feel like we’ve kind of covered most of the questions that I had planned on asking you—but are there any things that I haven’t asked you or that we haven’t touched on? You know, you’ve modeled some really beautiful ways of how to talk to your child about how their brain works. Maybe you want to go into your construction metaphor a little bit more, or maybe there are some other things that we haven’t covered that you want to talk about.

Liz: Sure. Well, I think that one of the things that may be really helpful is thinking about: what is the script for telling kids about their diagnosis? The way that I’ve found most helpful is using this construction metaphor, because it is pretty universal and it has so many places you can go with it, and it just gives you a way to start the conversation.

For parents, it may sound something like: “You went through this whole process and I’m so grateful that you did, because we were able to learn some really cool things about your brain. Is it okay if I share that with you?” So asking that permission to start the conversation, because it is vulnerable for kids. You want to make sure that it’s the right time and place. And most of the time, opening it like that will pique kids’ curiosity, and they’re like, “Yeah, of course, I want to know what you learned.”

And then you might say, “You know, I learned that we can think of your brain like something that’s under construction, like the construction sites we see on the side of the road—that we’re always building our brain. And the way your brain works is that the different parts of your brain communicate through these neurons that make connections, like little tiny roads in your brain. And we learned that some of those roads are like highways for your brain. We learned that you have so many strengths.”

“So, for example, we learned that you maybe have a great vocabulary and really express yourself well. We learned about your creativity, and when you’re really passionate about something, you can focus in so amazingly well on that. We learned that you’re a really loyal friend, or maybe that you have a really strong memory for stories”—you know, whatever it is. “We learned that you have these highways.”

“We also know that some parts of your brain are under construction. Like, you might remember when you were little, you didn’t know how to ride a bike yet, but then your brain had to put all those things together and now you ride your bike all the time. Do you remember kind of building that road? Well, there are some new roads that we’re working on. And so we might be working on… one of the things we learned that’s under construction for your brain is something called working memory. And I think that’s why you’re asking your teacher all the time for the next step—because you’re doing something, you’re advocating for yourself, because your brain does best when it gets one piece of information at a time. And that was so important for me to learn as a parent.”

“And when we put these things together, lots of people have highways and construction zones just like yours. In fact, we have a name for it. We call that ADHD—when you have such a creative, passionate brain that loves to focus on the things that you are really into, but sometimes have difficulty keeping stuff in mind, this working memory piece—that’s what we call ADHD. And it turns out there are lots and lots of people who have ADHD brains just like yours, and we can look at those people.”

So that’s kind of how I go through it with kids. We’re really talking about their highways and construction projects and helping them understand that—and then repackaging it with that name for it. That there’s a name for how your brain works. And that’s where we start. And then from there, we can use that metaphor to keep building the next thing, working on the next construction project as we move forward.

Sarah: Would there be anything specifically different or similar, I guess, about talking about an autism diagnosis for kids with that construction metaphor?

Liz: Yeah, so I use the same metaphor, but the highways and construction zones, for every kid, are going to be a little different. So for an autistic kid—if I think of one kid in particular—we might say that we learned that you have this really passionate brain that loves engineering and building, and the things you did with Dr. Liz where you had to solve puzzles and use logic, that was a highway in your brain. And we know that one of the ways that your brain works really well is when you have space to move and to be able to use your body in different ways.

Then some of the things that might be under construction are… usually I’ll start with something that a child has told me is more challenging for him or her. “So you know how you said that sometimes other kids might say things that feel confusing, or you’re not sure what they mean? That’s something that might be harder for your brain—or something that is a construction project that we’ll work on with you, so that it’s easier to understand other kids.”

“And when we put these things together—when kids have brains that are really passionate and pay attention to details, that love engineering, but have trouble figuring out what other kids are saying or meaning—then we call that autism. And it’s a different way of a brain being in the world. And so, as you learn to work with your autistic brain, you’ll figure out how to really dive deep into your passions and you’ll be able to thrive, find the connections that you want, and we’re here to help.”

Sarah: I love that. And I love how, when you talk about construction zones, it’s full of promise too, right? I read something from someone… that you can work on things—what I mean by full of promise is that there are things that can be worked on that might feel hard or confusing now, but it doesn’t leave a child with a sense of, “I’ll never be able to figure it out, and it’s always going to be this way.”

Liz: Yeah. One of the ways the construction metaphor has really evolved is that for some things, we’re building that road, and for some things, we’re finding a different way to get there. One of the things that I write in my books is that you might build a road there, or you might find a totally different way to get there. In the new book for parents, there’s a picture of a flying car, you know, kind of flying over the construction zone. And I think that it’s really true for our kids that for some skills, there might be some things that we need to learn and really build that pathway in our brain, but for some things, there might just be a different way.

I think for autistic kids, for example, they might connect with others in really different ways. And so it’s like building a totally new way to get there—building a different road, taking the scenic route. There are so many ways we can adapt the metaphor to say, “We’re still going to get you to your goal, where you want to go, but your road might look really different than somebody else’s, and that’s okay. It’s going to be the best road for you.”

Sarah: I love that, because it also—I mean, not only is it promising that you’re going to get to where you want to go, but it also, I think, helps relieve parents of an idea that I see sometimes, where they want their kids to be more like neurotypical kids, right? They think that’s the only way to get to the goal, is for them to have, you know, just using the example of social connections: the social connections of an autistic kid might be really, really strong but look totally different from the social connections of a neurotypical kid.

Liz: Exactly. Yeah.

Sarah: That reminds me of something that I was going to ask you earlier and I forgot, which was: you mentioned that sometimes when you get a diagnosis, you have a clinician who wants to try to tell you how you should change your child, or help them be more “normal” or more “typical,” and that clearly would be from somebody who’s not very neurodiversity-affirming. But what are some things to look out for that might be sort of, I guess, red flags or green flags in terms of the person that you’re looking for to do an assessment—or if you’ve already got the assessment, how they’re interpreting the diagnosis—that might be more or less helpful?

Liz: Yeah. So I love this question, because I think one of the most important questions you can ask a clinician when you are looking for an assessment is: “How do you involve my child in the assessment?” Or, “What will you tell them about what you learned?” Looking for somebody who is really well-versed in, “How do I talk to the child about it?” is going to tell you that they’re really thinking about, “How do we frame this in a way that’s going to be helpful and affirming to a young child?”

Because anybody who’s really thinking about, “How do I communicate this in a way that’s going to make sense to a small person?” has really been thinking about, “How do we think about the whole person, and how do we capitalize on those strengths?” So that is kind of a tell, to say that this person is thinking in this more holistic way—and not just about, “Does this child fit the diagnostic criteria?”

If you’ve had an assessment with somebody that is more coming from that medical lens that we’ve all been trained in—this is so new, and so, you know, a lot of clinicians were trained from this medical lens, which is looking at, “What are the child’s deficits, and do they meet criteria from this diagnostic manual that we have, the DSM, that is a list of things that are harder or quote-unquote wrong?”—from there, I think really getting connected with some more affirming resources is important.

I have a ton on my website that can be really, really helpful. There’s a spreadsheet of ways of talking about autism, ADHD, dyslexia, behavior, anxiety, OCD in really affirming ways. And so just immersing yourself in those resources so you can get that positive language for talking to your child. Or working with the next practitioner—a therapist, a tutor—who has experience working from a neurodiversity-affirming lens, so that you can help to translate those testing results into something that’s going to really be focused on: how do we help your child thrive with the brain that they have?

Sarah: Thank you. That makes so much sense.

This has been so helpful, and I think that so many parents are going to find this really useful—in how to talk to their kids and how to think about it, how to think about it themselves. What it… oh, it has just totally thrown me that I couldn’t remember that thing. All right. So thank you so much for joining us and telling us about all this stuff. You mentioned a couple of books, so we’ll get your books in the show notes for folks, but where else is the best place for people to go and find out more about you and what you do?

Liz: Yeah, so I have a ton of free resources for parents on explainingbrains.com. There are articles—just very, very short, parent-friendly articles—with both the strengths, the “highways,” and common construction projects for ADHD brains, for autistic brains, for dyslexic brains, for kids who have difficulty regulating behavior, anxiety, intellectual disability—just ways of explaining so many different types of brains, as well as what we do about things like screen time or talking about medication. So hopefully that resource is helpful for parents.

And then I have a brand-new book out for parents called Our Brains, and it is an interactive, collaborative workbook that helps you explain a diagnosis to your child. So it’s something that you can get after an assessment, and it will walk you through explaining to your child how their brain works, what you learned from the assessment. Or, if you have a diagnosis that’s been on the table for a long time and you just haven’t had that conversation with them yet, it is designed to really help kids not just know, “Okay, this is my diagnosis,” but really understand how their brain works and how they can advocate for what their brain needs to thrive.

Sarah: Fantastic. That is going to be so helpful for so many parents. Okay, now here’s the mystery question that I told you about before we started recording, and this is a question I ask all my guests. So, if you had a time machine and you could go back in time and give a message to your younger parent self, what advice would you give yourself?

Liz: Oh. I would just constantly remind myself that there are so many ways to be in this world, and it’s all okay. I think—even I was amazed—that even as somebody who has decades of experience in this field and has made a life out of celebrating neurodiversity, there was a way that doctors communicated with me from this deficit lens that would just put my mommy brain on high alert all the time when something was just a little bit different. And I really needed just constant reminders that my child is going to show up how they’re going to show up, and that that is not only okay, but it is beautiful and amazing and so important to how they are and the unique contribution they’re going to have to this world.

And it’s something that I’ve grown into—my child’s seven and a half now—and it’s something that we get to celebrate all the time: incredible uniqueness, and celebrate. But I think I remember very distinctly as a new mom, just with all the doctors using their jargony, deficit-based language, it was just really hard to keep that solid head on my shoulders. But I think it’s a really important message to keep with us: that there’s just so many ways to be, and it’s all amazing.

Sarah: I love that. Thank you so much for joining us, and really appreciate it.

Liz: Thank you for having me. This has been a blast.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I discuss why “Special Time”- the gold standard for cultivating connection with our kids- might not work the best for complex kids.

We cover who complex kids are, what parenting them looks like, how to co-create interests and activities together, and being playful to connect deeply while getting through the daily routine.

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We talk about:

* 6:43 What is Special Time?

* 7:51 What is a complex Kid?

* 10:08 What does it look like to parent a complex Kid?

* 19:30 What does daily life look like with complex Kids?

* 22:03 What to do for connection when special time doesn’t work?

* 23:05 Cultivating shared hobbies

* 27:00 Finding books you both love

* 30:00 Instead of only putting kids in organized sports, exercise together!

* 33:30 Sideways listening with our kids

* 37:00 Playful parenting as we move through the daily routine

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* What you Can Do When Parenting Hard: Coaching with Joanna

* When Peaceful Parenting Doesn’t Look Like It’s “Supposed To” Look

* How To Take the Coach Approach to Parenting Complex Kids with Elaine Taylor- Klaus

* What Influencers are Getting Wrong About Peaceful Parenting

* Staying Close to Your Tweens and Teens

* How To Stop Fighting About Video Games with Scott Novis

* Playful Heart Parenting with Mia Wisinski

xx Sarah and Corey

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Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s episode is about why you shouldn’t do special time, which is, I admit, a little bit of a provocative hook here. But it’s something that Corey brought to my attention that we have been talking about a lot. And then after last week’s podcast, we both agreed—after the podcast with Joanna and her complex kid—we both agreed we have to talk about this, because this is something that probably a lot of parents are feeling a lot of conflict, guilt, and shame around: not doing special time or not wanting to do special time or not being able to do special time.

Sarah: Hey Corey. Welcome back to the podcast. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Corey: Hi, I am Corey Everett, and I am a trained peaceful parenting coach, and I work for Sarah. I live in Ontario, but I work with clients all over the world doing one-on-one coaching. And I myself am complex and have a complex child. And I have two kids. I never can remember this, but I have a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old.

Sarah: I am glad you’re not the only one who can’t remember their kids’ ages. I have to stop and think. Okay. Well, I’m so excited to talk about this. And this is actually something that you and I have talked about over the years, because you have found it really difficult to do special time with your complex kid. Maybe just tell us a little bit about what happened when you tried to do special time and why you eventually sort of gave it up. And, you know, this is something that Joanna in the podcast last week—the coaching podcast—she was talking about how she didn’t want to do special time with her kid because she was so exhausted. So I think this is sort of like a two-part: why sometimes special time doesn’t work for the kids and why it doesn’t work for the parents. So let’s start by talking about what happened when you would try to do special time with Big C, who’s your 10-year-old.

Corey: Okay, so when I would try and do special time with Big C, I actually found—first of all—I didn’t really feel very present in it. I felt like I was trying to do it, but I felt like I didn’t have a lot of energy for it. I think he could feel that. So I just didn’t feel very engaged in it and I just felt exhausted, and it just felt like another thing on my to-do list. And so therefore he didn’t necessarily enjoy it as much either.

We did do a podcast—it’d be really great, I can put it in the show notes—where we talked about some things for peaceful parenting that aren’t working, and I did a really good description in that one of why special time didn’t work for him.

Sarah: Okay.

Corey: And so we can have them listen to that if they want more details on that part. Instead, I think I want to really focus on why it didn’t work for me and why I’m finding with my clients it’s not working for them either.

Sarah: You know what, sorry to interrupt you. I realize we should really just say what special time is, in case—like it’s such a gold standard of peaceful parenting—but there could be some parents listening to this, parents or caregivers who are newer to special time and might not know what it is.

Special time—and there are, I think, some other brands of parenting that might have other names for it—but basically the gold standard is 15 minutes a day of one-on-one time with you and your child, where you put aside the to-do list, put away your phone, and some people suggest that you set a timer and say, “I’m all yours for the next 15 minutes. What do you want to play?” It’s really immersing yourself in the child’s world. That’s one of the main ideas of special time: that we’re immersed in our child’s world of pretend play or some kind of play. It can be roughhousing or it can be playing Lego or dolls—something that is really child-centered and child-led.

So that is special time. And let’s take it from there. You had mentioned already that energetically it was really hard for you.

Corey: I think the best way that I can explain this is if I paint the picture for you of what it looks like to be a parent of a complex kid. And—

Sarah: Wait let’s give a definition of complex—we’ve got to make sure we’re covering the basics here. What’s a complex kid?

Corey: Okay, so a complex kid. This term, I first heard it from Elaine Taylor-Klaus—and we can also put in the show notes when you had her on the podcast. She is amazing. And basically, we’re really often talking about neurodivergent kids here. But it can be more than that. It’s just kids who need more.

Sarah: It’s that 20% of kids that we talk about—the 80% of kids who, you know, you say “Go put your shoes on and wait for me by the door,” and they go and do it and they don’t have the extra big feelings. So in my idea of it, it can be neurodivergent and also spirited, sensitive, strong-willed. The kids who are not your average, typical kids. And I always say that when I tell people what I do—parenting coach—some people look at me like, “Why would anyone need a parenting coach?” and other people are like, “Oh, I could have used you when my kids were growing up.”

So really there are kids who are—I’m sure they’re wonderful—but they’re not as more or complex as some other kids.

Corey: Kids that you almost don’t have to be as intentional about your parenting with.

Sarah: Yeah. You don’t have to read parenting books or listen to parenting podcasts. I would hazard a guess that most people who listen to this podcast have complex kids.

Corey: Yes. They’re our people. We always say the people who are our people are the ones who don’t have to talk about challenges around putting on shoes.

Sarah: I love that.

Corey: That seems to be the number one thing we’re always talking about.

Sarah: We always use that as an example, whether it’s sensory or strong-willed or attentional. It is kind of like one of those canary-in-the-coal-mine things. Will your child go and put their shoes on when you ask them to? If the answer is no, you probably have a complex kid.

Corey: Yes, I love that it is the canary in the coal mine. So that’s what our complex kids are. And for the parents of these kids, I think of these parents as being absolute rock stars. They are just trying so hard to peacefully parent their kids. And, like we said, they’re reading all the books, they’re listening to this podcast, they’ve probably signed up for all sorts of online seminars and courses and just do all of the things.

Often these parents were not peacefully parented themselves. Most people weren’t. So they’re learning a whole new parenting style. And a lot of people today are getting all their information off Instagram and TikTok reels that aren’t very nuanced, so they’re also not getting really full information. They’re trying so hard off of all these little sound snippets.

Sarah: Or the peaceful parenting or gentle parenting advice that they’re being given, and what’s supposed to happen just doesn’t look like that for their kid. And that reminds me—the other podcast that we did about when peaceful parenting doesn’t “work,” we could link to that one too.

Corey: Yes. Parents of complex kids are also trying to problem solve so many challenges because the world is often not designed for their kids, and it’s often not designed for them.

Sarah: Say more about that—about “not designed for their kids.” What’s an example of how that might show up?

Corey: So an example is conventional schooling. They’re expected to go into this noisy environment and just be able to eat the food they’ve been sent and listen all day and stay in their seats and learn the same way that everyone else is learning. I didn’t really realize how complex my kid was until I tried to send him to daycare.

Sarah: I was just thinking about the spirit days at Big C’s school, and how you’ve shared with me that those spirit days—like pajama day or “everyone wear the school colors day”—for some typical kids can be exciting and fun and a diversion. And for complex kids that can cause a whole level of stress and anticipation and the change of routine. Other parents of non-complex kids might be like, “Whatever, it’s not a big deal.” For our complex kids, it throws them for a loop.

Corey: Yes. My first moment of starting to realize there was something I needed to pay more attention to was they were having a movie day at Big C’s daycare, and they said he kept covering his ears and hiding. And that was my first idea that every other kid was so excited that it was movie day. They’d been looking forward to it. And for my child it was just so loud, and then suddenly the lights were turned off, and the whole situation was throwing him off.

So that’s what I mean. We’re designing the world for kids who are excited about movie day or special event days. But for complex kids, this is a complete change in their routine and all sorts of different sensory things that are happening that can make it really hard for them.

Sarah: Or that they can’t handle as much as other kids. I have a client who was just talking about how she’s realized for her son, who’s nine, that they literally can’t do anything after school. They can’t stop at the store and run in and grab a few things. They really just have to come straight home and not do anything extra or different. And he does so much better when he can just come home and unwind and needs that.

Corey: Yes, exactly. So the world wasn’t designed for them. And then consequently, the world was often not designed for those parents either. So many of the people we work with—including ourselves—only start to realize how complex we are once we start identifying it in our children. So it’s just not really an accommodated world.

Sarah: So talk about how that has led to burnout for you. And by the way, when you started talking about rock stars—in the membership the other day, in office hours, one of our members, I’ll call him D, who works incredibly hard and has two very complex kids, was just sharing how dark and hard life had been feeling for him lately. And I said, honestly, I just want to give you a medal. And I grabbed this off my desk and held it up—this silver milagro from Mexico that’s a bleeding heart. It was the closest thing I had to a medal.

But I really feel like so many parents who have hard or more complex kids, all they feel is that they’re doing a bad job. They don’t realize that they’re up against something other people are not up against. They don’t realize that because that’s all they know—unless you have one kid that’s not complex and one that is—you just don’t know that you’re working so hard and things are still hard. It feels like you must be doing something wrong or failing. What they don’t realize is that you can do everything “right” in peaceful parenting, and things are still really hard if you’ve got a complex kid.

Corey: Yes. And the last thing I want to say to help paint this picture is that these parents—part of what they’re dealing with, and I actually think this is huge—all parents today have a huge amount of family admin: managing appointments and things from the school and all those kinds of things. But that’s this other crushing weight we’re carrying as parents with complex kids: the admin.

Sarah: Right.

Corey: The amount of communication we have to do with daycare providers and teachers almost every day at points—

Sarah: And also the searching. I’ve watched you go through this, and I watched my sister go through this, and countless clients. The searching to try to figure out what exactly is going on with my kid so that I can best support them. And even with the privilege you have and my sister has in terms of being able to access specialists and testing and all of that—even with that privilege—it’s still almost a full-time job. And then getting the OT or the supports too.

Corey: Yes. I started for this podcast listing some of the people I’ve had to coordinate with over the years, and I was like: different types of medical doctors, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, psychologists, social workers, dieticians… so many. And just so much coordinating and searching. And the other thing that’s hard is you also then have homework from each of these people. So not only do you have to make appointments and get your children to appointments, you then have to fill out all this paperwork to get reimbursed or get payment sorted. Then there’s all the paperwork they want you to sign for ongoing parts of that. Then they have homework for the kids that they’re supposed to be doing all the time to help them with whatever’s going on. It’s endless.

Sarah: Yeah. And then there’s the day-to-day. Tell us—paint a little picture of the day-to-day living. Not only do we have the world that isn’t built for them or for you, and then all of the extra stuff that goes along with having a complex kid, but then the day-to-day life. Speak to that a little bit.

Corey: Yeah. I think that’s the thing you just see is so painful to talk about for all the people in our membership and our clients, and I’ve experienced it firsthand. You had children to add love to your family. And then you love them so much and you’re struggling because there’s chronic dysregulation, and they’re having such a hard time getting through your daily routines, and they need more supervision than the average child does. Just getting through the day can be really challenging when you have a complex kid. And then if you yourself are complex, your nervous system is getting completely overwhelmed by trying to be the calm for everyone’s storms.

Sarah: It’s a lot, Corey. I understand why you get emotional about it. It’s a lot. And you’re still in the thick of it with two young kids. I think everyone who’s listening to this can relate.

Okay. So how and when did you decide that you were going to quit special time, and what does that look like? And—I just want to center us here—the reason why we do special time is for connection, right? Complex kids need connection just as much or more than typical kids. And so just because we’re saying you might want to quit special time, it does not mean we’re saying you want to quit connection. So what does that look like? What have you found? Because I know you’re super connected with your kids. I’ve seen you together. I know the things they say to you and about you, and that you have an awesome connection. So what do you do for connection when special time does not work?

Corey: A big thing that I’ve been telling clients and that I’ve done in my life is—first of all, I had to acknowledge to myself, it felt like shame. Because here I am—it’s one of the first things we tell everyone we work with: “Are you getting one-on-one time doing special time with your child?” And then I’m sitting there being like, but I don’t really do this. I get a ton of one-on-one time with my children. And I think that’s at the heart of it. But what I realized is because we’re carrying all those weights we talked about, your whole life feels like it’s all about this kid. And then to be like, “You know what? Let’s make it more about you and give you another 15 minutes,” just feels—I almost felt like I don’t have this in me.

So I realized: let’s pick things that we can do together that are interesting for both them and me. Instead of getting locked in their play and being led by them, I’m finding things that we’re co-creating together.

Sarah: And can I just note too that you’ve told me—and I know you said you talked about this in another podcast—but I just want to say it again: a lot of times complex kids’ play doesn’t look like typical kids’ play. So you might be like, “What do you want to play?” and they’re like, “I don’t know.” They don’t have the same kind of “Okay, let’s play store and you be this and I’ll be this.” Or they play with their toys in a different manner. So it can also be just awkward to insist that you play with them when that’s not their style anyway. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Corey: Yeah. And, or if I did, they’re always telling me I’m doing everything wrong.

Sarah: Right. Because I do think that play—I do think that for most kids, even though we’re saying don’t do special time—I do think that for most kids it is important to put yourself in their world. And I don’t want people to think, like, “Okay, this means I never have to try to do special time.” We’re just saying if it’s not working for you for these various reasons—whether it’s because of your own constraints like it was for Joanna, or because it doesn’t work for your kid—it doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong and that there’s no way to connect and that you should just give up.

But I do think that—just a side note—I’d say the majority of kids, play in their world is the key to a lot of connection. But for some complex kids, that just isn’t their mode. For some of them.

Corey: Yeah. Because I think we were coming out of special time feeling angry.

Sarah: Right?

Corey: Because we were coming out of it like, “I’m trying to get lost in my child’s world,” and he’s just like, “You’re not doing anything right, Mommy.” It was frustrating for him because he had these ideas and he couldn’t really get me to do it right. And I think for some kids that can be really empowering, where they like that feeling of being in control and telling them. But for him it was frustrating because he’s like, “I had this vision, and you are just not executing.” I’m like, “I don’t know, I’m trying to execute your vision.” So I think that’s why for us, I could just tell it wasn’t just me—neither of us were finding it was working.

Sarah: But—

Corey: We were desperately wanting to be together.

Sarah: Okay. So you said “finding,” right? I interrupted you when you were talking about finding things that were co-interests—things that work for both of you, co-creating.

Corey: Yes. When they were younger, one of the big things I did was buy myself really special pencil crayons and nice watercolor paints because both of them loved doing art. So I could sit and do art with them and use my fancy coloring books and feel very “we are together doing something” that was making me feel really good, but they also felt really happy, and they loved showing me what they were making.

Sarah: And did you let them use your stuff? Because I think that would be really hard for me, because you can’t really be like, “These are my special things, and you use these Crayola ones.” How did you navigate that?

Corey: Okay, so that was really hard. This never would work for my husband, so I’m going to acknowledge for some people this wouldn’t work. I let them grab my crayons, and they dropped them a lot. I acknowledged that they were not going to last. But I still wanted good ones available to me. So I had to be flexible. They definitely grabbed them, and the watercolors were wrecked really quickly. But they respected not touching my special brushes for some reason. So I kept my own special brushes for the painting.

Sarah: You know, that reminds me—one of our members has a just-newly-3-year-old who’s super complex, and she was talking about how she was doing a jigsaw puzzle, like a proper adult thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. And she was really worried that—since it was on the table in a room where the parents could be—her kid was just going to come in and wreck it. Instead, her child is really good at jigsaw puzzles and is doing them with her. So I think sometimes—she’s totally shocked and thrilled that this has become something—and this is clearly a case of coming into the adult world of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. You just reminded me—she put a post in our Facebook group about how… I don’t know, did you see that post?

Corey: Yeah, I did.

Sarah: About how wonderful it’s been to have her just-turned-3-year-old do these adult jigsaw puzzles with her. So that’s a perfect example of what you’re talking about, I think.

Corey: I think it’s—so I love what you’re saying here, because we’re always told “go into their world,” but there’s something really powerful about letting them into yours. I didn’t actually realize that’s what I was doing—I’ve been bringing them into my world with me, and then they feel really special being allowed in there with me. And so it creates this really beautiful thing, but I’m flexible about letting them in there, knowing it’s going to look different.

Sarah: Right. What are some other things that you’ve done besides art that might be inspiring?

Corey: I realized a long time ago I had to let go of the idea that I needed to read really interesting books to my kids so that every night we could look forward to reading beautiful stories that drew me in. We actually realized bedtime has started getting hard again, and we realized it’s because we’re in between books. So that is something—and a shout-out to my mom; she’s really good at researching books—she’s come up with some really cool books that have really diverse characters and really interesting stories. That’s been another really important thing: don’t just read. I’ve picked really good books that draw me in.

And so last night we actually just started a favorite series of mine. I kid you not, I’m reading to my 10-year-old a feminist fantasy book that I read when I was a tween. It’s called Dealing with Dragons, and he actually is loving it.

Sarah: Nice. So you’re saying—maybe you misspoke—you said you had to give up on reading books that you… beautiful books that you liked. But did you mean that you were finding beautiful books that you liked?

Corey: Yeah, sorry, that’s—earlier on I felt like I was just reading, you know, books that I thought they would like.

Sarah: Oh, okay.

Corey: But instead I was like, “The heck with that,” and I found books that I loved, and I started reading those to my kids. And then they loved them. And then that really got us so excited about bedtime.

Sarah: Great, great.

Corey: We got through it, and we would read that together, and it became—I actually think reading books that I love to my kids has become one of the most important special times that we have each day.

Sarah: So another co-creating—something that’s interesting to both of you. And it’s not necessarily going into their world and reading the Captain Underpants or something that they might like that you find mind-numbingly boring. And maybe Captain Underpants isn’t boring—I’ve never read it—but I’m just using that as an example.

Corey: That’s a perfect example. So it’s like, here, I’m providing those books for them to read to themselves for their reading time. Absolutely—read all the Captain Underpants, the Dog Man you would like. But my goodness, when I’m reading to you, I’m picking something. And look, we’ve abandoned lots of books that we started reading that they couldn’t get into. We keep—we just keep trying.

Sarah: Okay. What else—what else is next?

Corey: Exercise.

Sarah: Okay.

Corey: I’ve realized exercise for me is the number one way for me to deal with stress. Of all things, I need to exercise to help manage stress. And it’s very hard to fit in exercise when you have complex kids. So from the time they were little, we’ve been very flexible about how we’ve done it. But my husband and I have—once again, instead of picking things they’re naturally into (this is starting to sound really funny)—we just brought them into our exercise with us, and they love it. From the time they were little, we had a balance bike for my littlest guy. He was on that balance bike, and we were riding bikes together.

So my littlest one ended up being able to ride a regular bike before he was three.

Sarah: Same with Maxine. Those balance bikes are amazing. She just—yeah. It’s crazy.

Corey: Yeah. And sometimes—

Sarah: Sometimes you’re like, “What have I done?” The 3-year-old is riding off.

Corey: It’s true. It was unbelievable, though. So we just rode our bikes together. From the time ours were very little, we had them as little guys on—you can get an attachment to your bike—and my husband put them on his road bike with him and would take them for rides on his road bike.

Sarah: There’s also the trailer bike too, which we had, which is good.

Corey: So we did that. We had our youngest on skis when he was two. COVID kind of interrupted some of that, but now we ski every weekend with our kids, and we decided to do that instead of putting them into organized sports so that we would all be doing it together.

Sarah: Oh, I love that. Instead of dropping them off and they’re playing soccer, you’re all doing stuff together.

Corey: Yes.

Sarah: I mean, and you could—and, you know, for other families—you could just go and kick the ball. Or I always say, chase your kids around the playground if you feel like you don’t have time to exercise but you need to. It can be that simple, right? Kicking the ball around, chasing them around the playground—get some exercise and have some connection time too.

Corey: Yeah. One of the ways we got our one son kind of good at running is taking the kite to the park, and we just ran around with the kite. But we started even going to—and I advised another family to do this—going to a track together, because it’s a contained area where everyone could run at different speeds. And the really little ones were playing on the inside of the track with soccer balls and things like that, and then everyone else could be running around the track.

Sarah: Love it.

Corey: So getting really creative about literally bringing them into our world of things that we love, and then connecting deeply. And it’s one of those things where it’s an investment you make over time. It starts small, and you have to be really flexible. And there are these little hands grabbing all your fancy pencil crayons, and you’re having to deal with it. And then one day you’re sitting beside them, and they’re using them themselves—drawing works of art.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah.

Corey: And it’s happening now where my older son and I have been going for runs together around the neighborhood, and we have the best talks ever because I’m sideways listening. We should talk about sideways listening, actually.

Sarah: Okay.

Corey: So I learned about this from you. You have a great article—I recommend it to everyone—it’s called “Staying Close to Your Tweens and Teens,” and that’s where you talk about how it’s actually easier for people, I think, to have important conversations when you’re side to side, because it’s not that intensity of looking at each other’s faces. This is extra true for neurodivergent people who sometimes have a hard time with eye contact and talking in that way. So we go for these runs together all around our neighborhood, and I hear everything from my son during that time because we’re side by side. So it’s become special time, where it started when I taught him to come into my world with the track running and all the different things, and now that we’re running, he’s bringing me into his world.

Sarah: Love it. Do you find that a lot of complex kids have special interests—do you find that there’s a way that you can connect with them over their special interest? Does that feel connecting to you if it’s not something—like, I’m literally just curious about that.

Corey: I think that can be tricky, but I do think it’s very important. I’ve learned that I was having a hard time with how much my kids loved video games because I’ve never liked video games. And, you know, as someone with ADHD, it’s so hard to focus on things that I don’t find interesting. And I realized that I’ve spent all this time cultivating bringing them into my world, and we’ve gotten to such a beautiful, connected space that I do need to go into theirs. And now that they’re older, I’m finding it is easier to go into their world, because we’re not trying to make some sort of play thing happen that wasn’t natural.

Sarah: Right.

Corey: So I have been making a point now of—I’ve sat down and been like, “Show me how to play. I’m a beginner. Teach me how to do this.” And I’ve been playing video games with them. I’m so bad.

Sarah: You know, in our podcast with Scott Novus about how to stop fighting with your kids about video games, he says how good it is for kids to see you be bad at something.

Corey: They’re seeing it.

Sarah: I love that.

Corey: I’m so bad. I cannot even a little bit. So they find it very funny. I’ve been playing with them and letting them talk to me about it, and I’ve found that’s been really important too. Because I keep on saying, “Do you see why they love this so much?” And I’m kind of like, yes—and I see what skills you’re learning now that I’ve tried it. It takes so much skill and practice to be good at these complex video games on the Switch and on the PlayStation. So I am learning a lot, and I feel like we are shifting now, where I found a way to connect with them by bringing them along with what I was into, and now that they’re older, we are switching where I’m able to go back into their world.

Sarah: Right. Love it. So we also—you know, I think delighting is something that probably you still do, and we always talk about that as the low-hanging fruit. If you can’t do special time or it doesn’t work for you, delighting in your child throughout the day—letting the love that you feel in your heart show on your face, right? And then finally, you talked about using routine—the things that you do throughout the day—as connection. Can you talk about that a little bit before we go?

Corey: Yes. So this is where long-time listeners of our podcast know that although special time is a big fail for us, I’m really good at being silly with my kids. Really good at being silly. And I’m very inspired listening to Mia from Playful Heart—Playful Heart Parenting. I think I told you, listening to her talk, it was like the first time I heard someone talking about exactly how I do playful parenting. And it’s just injecting play and silliness and drama throughout your everyday things you’re doing together. And so we do that all the time to get through the schedule. Especially now, my 10-year-old is starting to act a little too cool for some of this, but it’s still really happening with my 7-year-old, where we’re always singing weird songs about what we’re doing, and I’ll take on weird accents and be my characters. I’m not going to demonstrate them here—it’s far too embarrassing—but I still have my long-running characters I can’t get over.

Sarah: You’ve got, like, the dental hygienist—what’s her name?

Corey: Karen. Karen the dental hygienist.

Sarah: What’s the bus driver’s name?

Corey: I have Brett the bus driver. We have “Deep Breath,” who’s like a yogi who comes in when everyone needs to take deep breaths. There’s—oh, her name’s So? I’m not sure why. So is the dresser who’s really serious and doesn’t know how to smile. So if my kids ever need help—this has also been a big way that I delight in them, I think—if they ever need help getting dressed (which complex kids need help getting dressed for a long—)

Sarah: And even body doubling when they don’t need help getting dressed, right?

Corey: Yes. So I would always pretend to be a dresser who was sent in to get them dressed in their clothes, and they didn’t know how to smile. So they’re always trying to teach me how to smile when I’m keeping a serious face. And actually, recently I was doing this and I was having such a hard time not laughing that my lips started visibly quivering trying not to smile and laugh.

Sarah: I love that.

Corey: I think it was the hardest I’ve ever seen my 7-year-old laugh. He was on the floor laughing because I was like—

Sarah: And for anyone who this sounds hard for—just, you know, it takes practice, and anyone, I think, can learn to be playful. And I love Mia’s account—we’ll link to that in the show notes. I love Mia’s account for ideas just to get you started, because I know you—you’re a drama kid. I’m not. But I still found ways to get playful even though it’s not my natural instinct. And so you can—this way of getting playful and connecting through the day and through your daily routine—you can do that. It’ll take maybe a little practice; you might feel funny at first. But I think it’s possible for everyone to do that.

So thank you so much. We have to wrap up, but I also want to point out that anyone who wants to connect with you, reach out to us. Corey’s available for coaching. She’s a wonderful coach. And I have people who specifically ask for Corey because they can relate to Corey’s experience as a parent of complex kids. And so, on our website, reimaginepeacefulparenting.com, there is a booking link for a free short consult or for a coaching session. We’ll also put that in the show notes. So if you want some more support, please reach out to us. Either of us are here and want to help you.

And, Corey, thank you for your honesty and vulnerability—vulnerability about being a parent of a complex kid and sharing how you can do that connection, even if it feels like special time is just too hard and something that doesn’t work for you or for your kid. And thanks to Joanna for also inspiring us to get this out there to you all.

Corey, before I let you go, I’m going to ask the question I ask all my guests, which is: what would you tell your—you had a time machine and you could go back in time—what would you tell your younger parent self?

Corey: Okay.

Sarah: About parenting? What do you wish you knew?

Corey: I think what I wish I knew—I think this is easier than I thought it would be, because I just told my best friend who just had a baby this—and it’s: trust your intuition. I think I spent so much time looking for answers outside of myself, and I could feel they weren’t right for my kid or for me, that I was so confused because other people were telling me, “This is what you should be doing.” And the more I’ve learned to trust my gut instinct and just connect deeply—and this special time example is perfect—I knew it wasn’t working for us, and I intuitively knew other ways to do it. And I wish I could have just trusted that earlier.

Sarah: And stopped doing it sooner and just gone with the other connection ideas. Yeah. Thank you so much, Corey. This has been so great. And, again, we’ll put the link to anyone who wants to book a free short consult or coaching session, and also to our membership, which you’ve heard us mention a few times, which is just a wonderful space on the internet for people who want some community and support with their complex kid.

Thanks, Corey.

Corey: Thank you.

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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.

In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I do a coaching call with Joanna who has a 2-year-old and a 7-year-old.

We cover how to make mindset shifts so you can better show up for your kids, as well as get into specifics around night weaning, bedtime battles, handling meltdowns, playful parenting and increasing our connection to our kids.

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We talk about:

* 6:40 how to manage meltdowns

* 9:00 Night weaning and bedtime challenges

* 20:00 Emptying a full emotional backpack

* 26:00 Kids who always want more attention

* 28:00 Understanding blame and anger

* 38:00 Games to play when a child is looking for more power

* 44:00 How our mindset makes such a big difference when parenting

* 47:30 Two keys to peaceful parenting!

* 55:00 Playful approaches to bedtime

Resources mentioned in this episode:

* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player

* The Peaceful Parenting Membership

* How to Help Our Little Ones Sleep with Kim Hawley

* Episode 100: When Your Child Has a Preferred Parent (or Not) with Sarah and Corey

* Episode 103: Playful Parenting with Lawrence Cohen

* Playful Heart Parenting with Mia Wisinski: Episode 186

xx Sarah and Corey

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Transcript:

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s episode is a coaching episode. My guest is Joanna, mom of a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old. Joanna’s 7-year-old is an intense child, and she wanted to know how to handle her big feelings and find more connection with her.

She also had some specific challenges around bedtime, namely that her partner works shift work and is not home at bedtime. She still breastfeeds her 2-year-old to sleep, so is unavailable to her seven-year-old for a bit, and then has trouble getting her seven-year-old to bed without a fight. Joanna also shared how low she was on resources, and we had a great discussion about how that impacts her parenting and what she might do about it.

Also, meltdowns—we talked about those too and how to respond. I know Joanne is not alone. One note: after we did the follow-up call, I realized I forgot to ask her about a few things. So she kindly recorded a couple of P.S.’s that I’ll include. If you’re curious, like I am, you’ll be glad she gave us the latest updates.

If you would like to come on the podcast and be coached by me, I am looking for a few parents who are interested. You can email me at [email protected].

As always, please give us a five-star rating and a review on your favorite podcast app, and if you know another parent or caregiver that this would be helpful for, please screenshot it and send it to them. The best way to reach more families with peaceful parenting is through word of mouth, so we really appreciate any shares that you might be able to give us.

Okay. Let’s meet Joanna. Okay.

Sarah: Hi Joanna. Welcome to the podcast.

Joanna: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Sarah: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Joanna: Sure. I live up in Ottawa, Canada, with my husband and my two kids. I’m a music therapist, so right now I’m working with babies. I teach Yoga with Baby and, um, a class called Sing and Sign at a local wellness center.

Sarah: Nice. How old are—

Joanna: Yes, I have a 7-year-old girl who we’ll call Jay.

Sarah: Okay.

Joanna: And then a 2-year-old boy called JR.

Sarah: JJ. Okay, perfect. Okay, so how can I support you today?

Joanna: Yeah, so my daughter has always been, like, a bit of a tricky one. Um. She was born premature, so at 29 weeks. And no kind of lasting effects. But as she’s gotten older, we’ve noticed, like, she’s really struggled a lot with emotional regulation. Um, and she kind of gets stuck on certain behaviors. So I feel like we’ve done a lot to change our parenting, in part thanks to you and your podcast and all the material. Um, I did finally read, um, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids this past summer.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: And I feel like it also had a huge effect, just having, like, that bigger scope of understanding of, like, the peaceful parenting philosophy.

Sarah: Uh-huh.

Joanna: So I would say, like, even from where we were a few months ago, we’ve experienced tons of positive shifts with her.

Sarah: Sweet.

Joanna: Yeah, so we’re already kind of well on our way, but there are certain behaviors that she has that still I find really perplexing. So I wondered if maybe we could go over a couple of them.

Sarah: Sure. Yeah, no problem. For anyone—if, for anyone who doesn’t know, Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids is the book written by my mentor, who I trained with, Dr. Laura Markham. Um, and just for my own curiosity, what do you think? Because, you know, I always worry that people are—that they don’t have the fully formed idea of peaceful parenting. And that—and I’m not saying you, because you’ve listened to the podcast so you probably have a deeper understanding—but some people are just getting their little snippets on Instagram reels, you know, and so it is hard to understand, like, the, the sort of the core reasons why we do the approach if you don’t have that deeper understanding. And also, I’m working on a book right now, so hopefully soon you’ll be able to say you read my book. But what did you—what do you feel like got fleshed out for you when you read that book?

Joanna: I think she really breaks a lot of things down step by step, such as, like, what to do when your child is going through a meltdown.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: And that has always been an area—like, when my daughter gets to that point where she’s, like, become really explosive and aggressive and she’s just, like, in it and she’s kind of unreachable at that moment—like, what to do step by step at that time. I think, like, that’s been the most helpful because I’ve been able to really settle into my own parenting and just, like, really trust myself and anchor in at that point, which is exactly really what she needs and what was missing.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.

Joanna: So—

Sarah: So I think, um—like I always say, focus on regulating yourself first. Like, when someone’s having a meltdown, empathize.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: Um, you know, it—yeah, it’s—it can be hard because you often feel like you need to do something. And even though you’re saying step by step, it’s less about doing anything than just centering yourself, staying calm yourself, trying to get in touch with the compassion and empathy even if you’re not—some pe—some parents say, “Oh, well, when I try to say anything, then my kid just screams more.” So sometimes it’s just empathize—like, getting connected in your own heart to the empathy and compassion, even if you’re not saying anything—and that, that does something.

Joanna: Absolutely it does. Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: Yeah, so that’s all been really helpful. Now, in—in terms of emotional regulation, I do definitely think that that’s the biggest piece.

Sarah: Okay.

Joanna: Uh, it’s been the biggest piece for me and sort of, like, one of the big things that I wanted to talk to you about today is we are still really not getting sleep because my 2-year-old is not a good sleeper and has never been a good sleeper. And we’ve gone through periods where I’m like, okay, now he’s only waking up, like, twice a night, and that feels manageable. Um, but he’s kind of been back to waking up, like, three to six times a night again, which is so hard. And then my husband’s very supportive; however, he works afternoons, so he’s gone from about 3:00 PM to 1:00 AM, so he needs to be able to sleep until about eight, which means I’m up with my son between six and seven. My daughter gets up for school around 7:30, so that’s, like, a tricky time of day because she’s really quite grumpy in the morning. He’s not—the toddler’s really, like, kind of a totally different temperament. But, like, I’m tired after struggling with, like, night wakings all night. And then I’m with the kids from the time that she gets home from school, um, and then doing both bedtimes myself.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: Um, so there’s a lot of time where, like, I am solo parenting, and I’m definitely, like, the preferred parent. Um, and both my kids really want me and need me at bedtime. So he is still nursing—like, I’m nursing to sleep and then nursing during the night. And I know that that’s probably contributing a lot to all the night wakings. So, I guess my question is, like, I am at the point where I am ready to night-wean. I probably should have done it already, but—

Sarah: Don’t say “should have.” Like, it’s—if you’re not ready to make that change, like, in your heart, it’s really torturous to try to—try to, like, not—so say you decide you want to night-wean, but you weren’t really ready to do it. It would be so painful for you to deny your son nursing in the night if you were—if you didn’t feel in your heart, like, “No, this is the right thing to do. I’m totally ready. I think he’s ready.” So, so I think waiting until you’re really, like, actually, yes, “I’m done with this,” is a smart thing. Yeah. So don’t beat yourself up for not having done it already. But you’re right, it probably does contribute to him waking up in the night.

Joanna: Yeah. And, um, I do feel like I—I’m ready. I just—I’m not quite sure how to make that shift. So what generally happens is, like, we have some, like, virtual babysitting going on with my mom, where, like, when I nurse my son to sleep, which generally takes, like, between maybe 30 and 45 minutes, she’ll, like, sit with her and do a workbook. So we’ll have, like, a video chat, and then after—

Sarah: Yeah, it’s great.

Joanna: So then after, um, I’m with her to get her ready for bed, and that oftentimes looks like a lot of, like, dragging heels on, like, “Oh, I want another snack,” and “I wanna, like, brush my teeth,” and “Whatever—don’t wanna brush my teeth.” So, um, then that ends up taking usually about an hour, but we both sort of have, like, this expiration at about 9:00 PM, where, like, she just gets so dysregulated because she’s so tired.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: So if I don’t have her in bed at that point and, like, already kind of with the lights out, there’s often just, like, a meltdown and some—like, she’ll start calling me names and start, like, you know, throwing stuff down at me and whatnot. And then I’m just really tired by that point too. Yeah. So we can kind of joke around about it now—like, nine o’clock is the time where we’re, like, where we both expire. So I’m trying to figure out, like, how can I night-wean? Because I know that that is supposed to start with, like, him being able to fall asleep by himself at the beginning of the night, so—

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: Slowly phasing that out and laying with him. I know it’s gonna probably take a lot longer in the beginning, so I’m just a little worried that, like, maybe if it takes, like, an hour, an hour and a half, then all of a sudden she’s kind of, like, left hanging and it’s getting later and her bedtime’s being pushed back.

Sarah: Are there any—are there any nights that your partner is home at bedtime?

Joanna: There’s two—

Sarah: nights that—

Joanna: he—

Sarah: is,

Joanna: yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. I mean, I guess I would start with those nights.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: Yeah. Start with those nights. And—and when was your son’s birthday? Like, like how—two—is he—

Joanna: He just turned two, like, two weeks ago.

Sarah: Okay. So, I mean, I think I would start with trying to just practice, you know, nursing him and maybe nursing him somewhere else and then bringing him back, you know, and then putting him in—are you co-sleeping?

Joanna: Sleep—yeah. Well, I put him—like, I generally nurse him to sleep. He has a floor bed in his room, and then I go to bed in my own room, and then at his first wake, then I go back in, and I just stay there for the room—the rest of the night from that point.

Sarah: Right, right. So I, I guess I would try just, like, nursing him and trying to, like, pat his back and sing to him and, you know, tell him that—that he can have—I, I mean, what we did was, “You can have milk in the morning,” you know, “You could have it when it’s light.” I remember my oldest son—when he—it took him a couple of days—and if you wanna hear the whole story of my failed night-weaning with my second son, it was in a podcast that we did about infant and toddler sleep, uh, with Kim.

Joanna: Yeah, Kim?

Sarah: Yes. So you could listen to that if you haven’t heard that already. But my second—my first son was super easy to night-wean, and a couple of—it was, like, a couple of nights of a little bit of crying, and he would just say, “Make it light, Mama. Make it light,” because he wanted—I said, “You can nurse when it’s light.” But, you know, I, I, I don’t wanna get into that whole big thing on this podcast because—mm-hmm—just because I’ve already talked about it. But if you wanna listen to that, and if you have any questions when we do our follow-up, you can, uh, you can ask me. But, you know, I would just try, you know, talking to him about, then, you know, “You can have Milky in the morning,” or whatever you call it, and, you know, those two—see how it goes for those two nights where your partner’s around. And if it doesn’t—I would say, if it still seems really hard, maybe just waiting to do it until—I don’t know if you have any other support you could enlist. You mentioned your mother—maybe she could come and visit, you know, because I do think it would be hard to try and do this and do the solo bedtimes for a while. So I don’t know if there’s a time when your mom could come visit or if there’s some other support that you could have. But yeah—

Joanna: I think the tricky part with that is that, like, she—even with my husband—like, she doesn’t want him to put her to bed.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: And depending on the kind of night that she’s having, sometimes she’ll end up, like, screaming, and their bedrooms are right beside each other. So we’ve had it before where, like, she’ll start having a meltdown and, like, wake him up, and then he’s not able to fall asleep either. And then we—

Sarah: There’s also—your husband could be with your son.

Joanna: It’s the same—same situation though. Like, he doesn’t—him—

Sarah: It sounds—it sounds like possibly—I mean, there—kids do have preferred parents even when, um, they do have good connection with the—with the other parent. And you could maybe still work—have some—that be something that you’re working on, having your partner, you know, maybe even practicing having—before you start doing the night-weaning—practicing having your partner doing some of the bedtime stuff. When you are—when, you know, when—before you’re starting to make a change so that your son doesn’t associate, you know, “I’m not getting what I want,” and my dad, you know, putting me to sleep.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: So I would maybe try to get your partner a little bit more involved in bedtime before making a change. And—and even if there’s some crying—we also have a podcast about preferred parents that you could listen to. So I—you know, I think maybe you do have a little bit of pre-work to do before you start doing the night-weaning, and, in terms of when—how can you get support at bedtime?

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: Okay.

Joanna: I mean, the other option is if you just kick it down the road more and—or, you know, there isn’t—there’s actually a third option now that I think about it—it’s that you still nurse him to sleep but then don’t nurse him when you wake him up—when he wakes up in the night. Get him to go back to sleep without that.

Sarah: I hadn’t thought about that, because I think that everything that I’ve heard has been, like, they have to fall asleep on their own because then they’re always gonna be—

Joanna: looking—

Sarah: for—

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: But I mean, you could still try it.

Joanna: Hmm. Okay.

Sarah: Or you could try shortening the—you know, give him a little bit of milk and then see if he’ll go to sleep, um, after he has a little bit, but without nursing to sleep.

Joanna: Okay. Yeah. Okay, I’ll give that some thought and try some different things there.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: Okay. Thank you. But yeah, I feel like just starting to get sleep again is pretty important. So, even in terms of, like, being able to center myself to handle all of the things that goes on with my daughter during the day, that feels like a really important piece right now.

Sarah: For sure. And if she’s—if she’s some nights not going—it sounds like quite frequently maybe she’s not asleep before nine.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: And what time does she wake up?

Joanna: 7:30.

Sarah: 7:30. So do you think she’s getting enough sleep?

Joanna: Probably not. She’s really lethargic in the morning.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: But I can’t really seem to figure out how to be able to get her to sleep. Like, I did talk to her about it, and she was like, “Well, maybe when I turn eight, like, I can start putting myself to bed.” And I was like, “Okay, well what—what would that look like?” And she kind of went through, like, “Okay, I’ll, you know, I’ll brush my teeth on the phone with Grandma, and then I’ll just, like, read in bed.” And—but this is, like, in a moment where she’s feeling very regulated.

Sarah: Right, right, right. And when’s her birthday?

Joanna: Uh, in about two months.

Sarah: Okay. Yeah. Um, have you had a conversation with her about how neither of you likes the fighting at night? And, you know—and does she have any, like—not in the moment, but does she have any ideas of, you know, how you can solve the problem of her not, you know, not wanting to go to bed and then getting too tired and then getting really cranky?

Joanna: Yeah, we have—we have talked about it, and we can talk about it with, like, a little bit more levity now, but I don’t think that she’s actually—we’ve gone to, like, the problem-solving—

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: of that.

Sarah: I mean, that might be a helpful conversation to have with her and just say, “You know, I’ve been thinking about what often happens at night, you know, and I totally get it, that you don’t wanna go to bed. Like, you know, when I was a kid, I never wanted to go to bed, and I would’ve stayed up all night if I could. And I’m sure you’re the same because it’s just—you know, when you’re young, going to bed is, like, you know, not any fun at all.” And you can make—you could even make a joke, like, “When you’re old like me, like, you can’t wait to go to bed.” But of course when you’re young, you don’t wanna go to sleep, and I totally get that. So, like, lots of empathy and acknowledging, like, her perspective. And—and then you could say, “And at the same time, you know, you do—you know, why do you think it’s important to sleep?” So I guess you could have that conversation with her too about, like, you know, what happens when we’re sleeping that—your, you know, you could talk about how your cells, like, fix themselves. Also we grow when we’re sleeping—like, we get the—like, the growth hormone gets secreted, and that’s the—if we don’t get enough sleep, we’re not gonna grow and we’re not gonna feel happy the next day. So you can, like, talk to her about the importance of sleep. And then you could say, like, “So, you know, I know you don’t wanna go to sleep, and I know how important it is, and now you do too. And, you know—and I hate fighting with you at bedtime. You know, do you have any ideas for how we can solve this problem? Because I really want us both to go to bed feeling happy and connected.”

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great suggestion. Thank you. I think the biggest barrier to her getting to bed on time is she is finally feeling, like, a bit more calm and relaxed at night. Like, she comes home after school with a lot—she’s holding a lot from school. They have, like, a point system for good behavior at school.

Sarah: Oh.

Joanna: And you should see how she racks up the points. She has great behavior at school. The teacher’s, like—would never believe what goes on at home.

Sarah: Of course, yeah.

Joanna: So then she comes home, and it’s, like, a lot of unloading. So I feel like by that time of night she’s, like, ready to pursue her hobbies. Like, she’s like, “Oh, I just wanna do this one more little”—you know, she’s drawing something, and it’s always like, “I just need to finish this,” because once she gets started on something, she can’t seem to break her focus on—We’re very much suspecting ADHD. That’s gonna be probably in the next year we pursue a diagnosis, but—

Sarah: Typically—do have a lot of trouble falling asleep—that’s with ADHD. What about—you know, so two outta three of my kids had a lot of trouble falling asleep, and they’re both my ADHD kids, and what really helped them was something to listen to at night. You know—

Joanna: Yeah, she does listen to podcasts falling asleep—

Sarah: Does listen to stuff.

Joanna: Yeah, she’s always listened—listened to, like, a story falling asleep. I think part of it too is we don’t get a lot of one-on-one time throughout the day.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: Because my son’s around in the morning.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: And it’s usually just the three of us until my husband wakes up, which is shortly before she goes to school. And then it’s again the three of us from after school till bedtime most days, except for the two days a week that he’s off.

Sarah: Well, I mean, that’s something to explore too, like, in—are there, you know—I don’t know if you live in a neighborhood that has some, like, tweens that could come over and play with your son for an hour—you know, just someone really fun that he would like to play with—and then you and your daughter could have some time together. Because what I was gonna say when you said that she comes home with what we call the “full backpack” in Peaceful Parenting—which is, she’s been carrying around, for anyone who’s listening who doesn’t know what that is, it’s a concept that my mentor, Dr. Laura, came up with—where you’re holding on to all of the stresses, big feelings, tensions from the day, and then when you come home, it’s too much to, you know, to keep holding onto it. And so that’s what you were just referring to, is just that she’s got a lot to unpack after the day at school. And so I’m wondering—so when you mentioned that, I was gonna say, like, what could you do to try to proactively get some of that emptied out? Couple of ideas: do you do any roughhousing with her?

Joanna: We actually just started doing that, and I couldn’t believe how much she was into it. Yeah, I was super surprised. But I also think that it’s taken just a lot of, like, repair with our relationship to get to the point that I’ve even been able to try some of this stuff. Like, because at first, like, when I first started hearing about some of these, like, peaceful—I, I don’t know if you’d call them techniques—but, like, being playful and, um, roughhousing and things like that—she was so not open to anything at all because she was just so serious and so edgy and like, “Get away from me,” like, so irritable. So now I think that we’ve just—I’ve poured a lot of time in on weekends just to, like, spend time together that’s enjoyable, and I’m noticing a huge shift. So now we are able to do some of these things, and it—it is turning out more positively.

Sarah: Good. I mean, as you’re speaking, I’m thinking that it sounds like there was maybe, um, quite a—a breach when your son was born, like, the last two years. Or, or do you feel like your relationship has always been a little strained even before that?

Joanna: I feel like maybe it’s always been a little fraught. I don’t know if his birth had, like, a huge impact on that. Um, it has always been pretty strained.

Sarah: Okay, okay.

Joanna: Just because she’s the more challenging kid?

Sarah: I think so. And, you know, when she was two there was the pandemic. I think, like, I was carrying a lot of trauma after the whole NICU experience with her. And then we had the pandemic, and then we moved, and then I got pregnant, and then I had my son. So it’s like there’s sort of been these, like, things along the way where—yeah, I don’t know.

Sarah: Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, that’s good that you brought that up because I think that, you know, maybe that’s gonna be the pre-work—that even before bedtime starts to feel better is really working on—you know, if you can get some support in, because it is really hard to have one-on-one time with a 2-year-old who probably doesn’t wanna leave you alone. But even if—you know, continue with your sort of bulking up on the weekends with that time with her and do some, like, roughhousing and special time with her. Do you guys do special time?

Joanna: Yeah. And that’s something I wanted to talk about because special time has been sort of a big fail when I call it special time and when we set a timer for special time, because it really tends to dysregulate her, I think, because she’s like, “Oh my God, I only have you for 15 minutes.” Mm-hmm. She gets really stressed out, and then she’s like—oftentimes she likes to do these, like, elaborate pretend plays—things which need, like, a lot, a lot of setup time. Yeah. So she’ll be like, “Pause the timer so I can set this up,” and then it just becomes, like, more tension between us. Like, it’s not enjoyable.

Sarah: It’s one of those things where, like, you really have to adjust it to how it works for your particular family. Um, so, you know, maybe you just have, like, a couple hours with her on the weekend and you’re—and it would be good for your—your partner and your son too. Maybe he could take him to the park or go and—you know, for them to work on their connection, which might make him a little bit more willing to go to bed with his dad, you know, on the nights that your partner is home. So, you know, I would really work on that connection with her and do those pretend play things with her. And even—you know, and this is maybe obvious, which is why I didn’t say it before—but, you know, partly she’s dragging her heels because that’s the only time she has you to herself—at bedtime, right?

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: And so she doesn’t want that to end because that’s the only time that it—her brother’s asleep—she has you all to herself. So if you can increase the time where she has you all to herself, she might be more willing to, um, to go to bed. Yeah. The other thing I was gonna say is, do you have anything that you do together at bedtime that would be, like—it sounds like she’s dragging her heels to actually get in bed. Is there anything that you can do to entice her to get in bed, like a chapter book that you’re reading her, that you read a chapter every night or something like that?

Joanna: Yeah, and that has worked in the past, but it can—it can also kind of cause tension because I find, like, then I am a lot more apt to kind of hold it as, like, a bargaining chip instead of, like, “Oh, let’s get to that.” Right. But lately we’ve been playing cards, and she’s really motivated to, like, play a game of cards when we’re in bed. So that seems to be working right now, but it’s always kind of like—it changes all the time.

Sarah: Right, right. Well, just keeping—thinking of something that you can use to make getting in bed seem more attractive? Um, maybe—I mean, my kids used to love hearing stories about me when I was little or about them when they were little. So it could even just be, like, a talk time. I know Corey, who works with me, does—she started doing a 10-minute talk time with one of her sons, who’s a little bit older than—than your daughter, but where they just have, you know, this time where they just get in bed and he tells her stuff and they—they talk. So that could be something too—just really pure, straight-up connection.

Joanna: Yeah. Okay, I like that. Maybe I can just ask you a couple more things about some of the things I—She’s kind of a person that really wants constant connection too. Like, it does feel like I could spend, like, all day with her, and then she—once it’s over, she would still be like, “Well, why are we not still—” like, it—we’ve always kind of—my husband and I will joke that she’s got, like, a leaky cup because it’s, like, “Just fill up their cup,” but it doesn’t seem to matter. He used to play with her for, like, two to three hours when she was younger, and then at the end she would just, like, not be satisfied. Like, it didn’t seem like anything was going to, like, fill her cup.

Sarah: And that—you know what, there are kids like that. I remember I had this client once whose son actually said to her, “Mama, all the—all the hours in the world are not enough time with you.” And there are some kids that are really just like that. And, you know, I’m not sure how you respond when she says, like, you know, “But we hardly even got to play,” after you play for three hours. I mean, that playful—like, “Oh my gosh, like, what if we could just play all day?” You know, either, like, playful response of, like, “We could play for 27 hours,” you know, “and—and—and we would still have so much fun together.” Or just pure empathy, you know, like, “Oh no, it just feels like it’s never enough time, is it?”

Joanna: And it almost seems like sometimes when I am empathetic, it almost, like, fuels her anger. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that before from anybody else, but—eh, I don’t know. Like, we had a situation with—like, she was looking for a specific bear last weekend—a teddy bear that she’s missing—because she wanted to bring it to a teddy bear picnic. And so we were sort of, like, you know, we had to get out the door to go to this party. She couldn’t find this bear, and I was, like, you know, offering a lot of empathy, and just, like—the more that I was like, “I know, like, you’re so frustrated; you’re so disappointed that you can’t find your bear,” it was like the more that she was like, “Yeah, and you took it, you hid it, you put it somewhere.” Like, it just—the more empathy I gave, it seemed like the more that she was using it as almost, like, fuel to be upset. Does that make sense? Right.

Sarah: Yeah. No, that’s pretty common. And the thing is, you have to remember that blame is trying to offload difficult feelings. It’s like, “I don’t wanna feel this way, so I’m gonna blame you.” And then—you know, it’s anger—have you ever seen the image of the anger iceberg?

Joanna: Yes.

Sarah: Yeah. So the anger iceberg is, like, the anger is the only thing you see coming out of the water. But underneath the iceberg are all of the more tender feelings, right? And anger is actually a secondary emotion. So you don’t start out by feeling angry. You feel—like, like for her, she maybe was feeling frustrated and disappointed that she couldn’t find her bear. And those are the first feelings. But those more tender feelings are harder to feel, and so anger is often protective. And the tender feelings also set off that—you know, that overwhelm of our emotions registers as a threat to the nervous system, which sets off that fight, flight, or freeze. So there’s all those things going on, right? Like, the blame of, like, trying to offload the feelings; the anger of feeling like it’s easier to go on the offensive than to feel those tender feelings; and then the nervous system getting set off by that overwhelm that registers as a threat, right? It sets off the fight, flight, or freeze. And they’re—they’re kind of all different ways of saying the same thing. And yes, empathy often will help a child—that they get more in touch with those feelings. And I’m not saying that you don’t wanna empathize, um, but just recognize that, you know, the feelings are happening, and when you empathize, they—you know, you’re welcoming the feelings, which sometimes can have that fight, flight, or freeze effect.

Joanna: And would you recommend that I continue to really lean into empathy more and just stay with all of that emotion until it passes?

Sarah: So—totally depends. The other thing I was gonna say is it’s possible—like the situation you just gave me—it’s possible—like, how—were you actually feeling empathetic, or were you trying to just get out the door?

Joanna: I think I was, but at a certain point I was like, “I think, you know, we have two options from here. Like, we can continue to be upset about the bear and it—it will make us late for the party, or at a certain point we can move on and make a new plan,” and, like, “get our—make our way over there.” So, um, is that effective? Yeah, I—I mean, she eventually was able to change gears. But, I mean, it doesn’t feel like real life to just be able to, like, sit in your negative emotions all the time. And I think, like, maybe I struggle with doing that for, like, a long enough period of time to actually let her—let them out.

Sarah: Well, I don’t know—yeah. So, I mean, there’s a difference between welcoming feelings and wallowing in emo—in emotion, I think.

Joanna: Yeah. And she definitely is a wallower, and she almost has really, like, attached so much sadness and frustration and anger to this bear. Like, now she’ll just, like, think about the bear and be like, “Oh, I still can’t find that bear.” Like, she was just, like, you know, exploding about it again this past weekend. So it almost feels like she’s just latching onto it to, like, feel bad there.

Sarah: I mean, some kids—she’s probably not choosing to latch onto it to feel bad, but she probably just has. So, so what I was gonna say is sometimes when kids seem to be wallowing, it’s just that there’s so much there that they haven’t been able to get out on a regular basis. So I think it is just like a full backpack, and there’s just a lot there. And it’s not—it’s probably not just about the bear. It’s probably just like she’s—it’s, you know, processing other older things too. And you don’t have to know what’s in the backpack or try and figure it out. But you might find that if you had more opportunities for her to process feelings, then she might not get so stuck when they do start to come out.

That’s one thing that I would think of. Like—and more laughter should help with that. Like, more laughter and roughhousing to help her sort of process stuff. And also sometimes—so the bear thing reminds me of—some kids will just feel bad, you know, like feel bad sometimes from, like, a full backpack, or maybe they don’t even know what it is, they can’t connect. Or maybe they’re just tired and low-resourced and their brain is kind of like, “Why do I feel bad? Why do I feel bad?” And she’s like, “Oh, the bear.” You know, she remembers, like, the bear. Like, I’ve had clients tell me, my kid will say, like, “I miss Grandpa,” who they never met, who died before they were born—like, just kind of casting around for, like, “Why could I be feeling this way right now? Oh, I know—it’s ’cause I can’t find that bear.”

Or maybe the bear is so important to her that it really is—that she thinks about it and it just makes her feel bad. But I think what you wanna remember when it seems like she’s wallowing is that, you know, getting—like, having empathy. And I actually also did a podcast about this too, with another coaching call, where I talked about, you know, cultivating a certain amount of nonchalance after you feel like you’ve been pretty empathetic and welcomed the feelings. Because I think if we’re too empathetic sometimes—and I do wanna be very careful with this because I don’t want anyone to take this as, like, “Don’t be empathetic”—but, you know, there is a time where you just say, like, “You know what? I hear how upset you are about this, and I get it. And I would be really bummed if I couldn’t find the bear I wanted also. And we have to decide, like, are we gonna stay here and just keep feeling sad about the bear, or should we figure out another plan?” Like what you said, right.

Joanna: Yeah, I have heard you say that before, and that’s been so helpful for her. Mm-hmm. It seems like if I’m not so reactive to her emotions, she realizes that they’re not an emergency either.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean—and that’s a good point too, because I didn’t even ask you, like, how’s your regulation when this is happening? Like, are you getting, like, annoyed, frustrated, upset for her, kind of drawn in? Are you able to, like, kind of center yourself and stay calm?

Joanna: It varies. I would say I currently am the most resourced that I’ve ever been—good with, like, the emotional regulation piece. And then that—I see, like, sometimes she is able to come out of it more quickly, or it just depends on, you know, what her tolerance is at that—at that time. So—

Sarah: Joanna, it might be that, you know, you’re coming out of—almost like you’re coming out of a fog of, you know—you said all the things: like the NICU experience, and then the—and then COVID, and then your new baby, and—and that it might be that you’re really, finally for the first time, kind of getting to tend—you know, look at yourself, your own regulation, and be more present and connected with your daughter. And all these things are gonna start having a little bit of, um, of a snowball effect. And it may be that you’ve just had this, like, seven-year period of difficulty, you know?

Joanna: Oh, that’s horrifying.

Sarah: Well, but the good news is it sounds like things are shifting.

Joanna: Yeah. It really does feel like that. Yeah. You’re—I feel like even if I talked to you a few months ago, I would’ve been like, “Oh, help me.”

Sarah: Well—and that you’re recognizing what you brought—what you bring to the table, and that, you know, things have been fraught with your daughter, and that you’re sort of starting to come out. And—and honestly, also doing that—doing that bedtime—after-school bedtime by yourself five days a week, that’s gonna be tough too. Uh, so you’ve got situ—just that current situation doesn’t sound like it’ll change, but you’re changing what you’re bringing to it.

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah. Um, if I can maybe just ask you, like, one more little thing?

Sarah: Sure.

Joanna: Maybe this is—it all comes back to, like, wanting a lot of connection, but this is also what kind of drains my battery. She constantly wants to, like, talk to me or ask me questions from, like, the time that she wakes up to the time that she goes to bed. And it will be—like, currently it’s, like, “Would you rather.” It’s like, “Would you rather eat all the food in the world or never eat again?” Uh-huh. In the past it’s been, like, “Guess what’s in my mouth?” But then she always really tries to make it—make me wrong in the circumstance, if that makes sense. Like, I don’t know if that’s just her, like, looking for power or, like, the upper hand, or like—I don’t know. I’m not sure what it is.

Sarah: Well, I mean, if you feel—if you have a sense that she’s looking for power, I would bring that into the roughhousing—where you are the one who’s weak and bumbling and idiotic, and, you know, you’re so slow, and she beats you every time at a race. So I would really try to bring some of that—some of that stuff into your roughhousing where she gets to be—Do you know the kind of stuff I’m talking about? Like, “I bet you can’t—um, you know, I bet you can’t beat me at arm wrestling,” and then, like, you know, you flop your arm over in a silly way, and like, “How are you so strong? Like, I’m gonna beat you next time.” And it’s obviously playful, because probably you are stronger than she is at this point, but, you know—feats of strength or speed, or, you know, figuring things out, and you act like you really don’t know anything. And—but in, of course, in a joking way, so she knows that you’re not—you know, you’re pretending to be all these things, but she still gets to gloat and, like, “Ha, you know, I’m the strongest, I’m the best.” So really giving her that in roughhousing.

And then also, like, real power. Like, I don’t know if she gets to make—what kinds of decisions she gets to make, or, you know, how much—how flexible you are on limits. Because sometimes, as parents, we do set unnecessary limits, which can make our kids, you know—make them look for power in other ways. So really looking at what limits you’re setting and if they’re necessary limits, and—and how you’re setting them. Uh, and also I think it sounds like it’s connection-seeking—like, she just wants you. You know, she wants to know that you’re there and paying attention to her. And so everything else that you’re doing—that we’re talking about—that you’re gonna try to do more—more time with her and get more one-on-one time with her, hopefully that will help too.

And I think it is okay to say, like, after you’ve done, like, 25 “would you rathers,” I just say—like, I used to say to my kids, “You know what? My brain is just feeling really stimulated from so many words. Like, can we have some quiet for a few minutes?” And not—and being very careful to not phrase it like, “You’re talking too much,” or “I don’t wanna listen to—” and I’m exaggerating for effect—but just framing it as, like, your brain and a regulation thing—like, “My brain,” and it is words. Yeah. And so, like, “Do you—should we put some music on?” You know, “Can we—like, think of—can you connect in a way that—let’s listen to a story.” Okay. Something like that where you still, like, keep up connection with her, but—and it might not work. She—she might not be able to stop talking, but you can try it at least.

Joanna: No, that’s a—that’s a really good suggestion. Almost like replacing it with some other kind of stimulation if she’s looking for that in that moment.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I think—I think it’s just—I think it’s fair. Like, it’s totally—I, at the end of the day, with people, like, talking at me all day, I sometimes am like—you know, when my kids were younger, I’d be like, “Okay, you know, I—I just need a little—my brain needs a little bit of a break. It’s feeling overstimulated.” So I think just using that language with her.

Joanna: Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you. Well—

Sarah: Yeah, I think you’re—you know, I think that I’ve—that we’ve connected at a point where you’re, like, at—you’re, like, at the—sort of the top of a mountain, you know? And you’ve been, like, having all this struggle and uphill battles. And I think you’ve put—before even we talk—you’ve put a lot of pieces [together] of what—you know, why some of the challenges were. And they do seem to be connection—you know, connection-based, just in terms of, um, you know, her wanting more and you not being as resourced. And so hopefully working on connection is gonna help with that too.

Joanna: Yeah. I’m gonna keep that at top of mind.

Sarah: And your self-regulation too. You said you’re—you know, you’ve been having—you’re more resourced now than you ever have been, so you’re able to work on really staying, like, calm and compassionate in those times when she’s dysregulated. Going back to what I said in the beginning, which is that, you know, the steps for the meltdowns really start with our own regulation.

Joanna: And I find it’s a snowball effect too, because once you start seeing positive changes, it allows you to, like, rest in knowing that things will not always be so hard.

Sarah: Yeah. So it—

Joanna: It gives you motivation to keep going, I think.

Sarah: Totally. And, you know, with complex kids—which it sounds like your daughter is one of those more complex kids—um, brain maturity makes such a huge difference. Um, like, every month and every year as she’s starting to get older. And, you know, you mentioned ADHD—that you—that you suspect that she might be ADHD. ADHD kids are often around three years behind, um, in terms of what you might expect for them in terms of, like, their brain development. And not—and not across the board. But in terms of, like, their regulation, in terms of what they can do for themselves, um, like in—you know, and obviously every kid is different. But it really helps to think about, um, your ADHD kids as sort of, uh, developmentally younger than they are. My—my girlfriend who has—her son and my daughter are the same age, so they’re both just starting college or university this year. And, um, she was—I—she lives in California, and I was talking to her, and her son has ADHD, and she was talking about how much support he’s still needing in first-year college and how she was feeling a little bit like, “Oh, I feel like I shouldn’t be supporting him this much when he’s 18.” And—and she said, “Actually, I just re—you know, I always remind myself of what you told me a long time ago: to think of him as three years younger than he is in some ways,” and that that’s made her feel a little bit better about the scaffolding that she’s having to give him.

Joanna: Yeah, I’ve never heard that before. That’s good. She’s also gonna be starting to work with an OT in a couple of weeks, so we’ll see if that has any effect as well.

Sarah: Cool.

Joanna: Cool.

Sarah: Alright, well, I look forward to catching up with you in around maybe three weeks or a month and seeing how things went, and, um, good luck, and I hope this was helpful and gave you some things to work on.

Joanna: Okay. Thank you so much.

Sarah: Hi Joanna. Welcome back to the podcast.

Joanna: Hi Sarah.

Sarah: So—how has—it’s been about—I think it’s been about four weeks since we talked the first time. How have things been?

Joanna: Yeah, things I think have been going a little better. Like, every day is a little bit different. We definitely have, like, a lot of ups and downs still, but I think overall we’re just on a better trajectory now. Um, it’s actually—I was wondering if things—if, like, the behavior has actually been better, or if it’s more just, like, my frame of mind.

Sarah: That is the classic question because—it’s so funny, I’m—I’m laughing because so much of the time when I’m coaching parents, after a couple of sessions they’ll say, “This isn’t even about my kids. This is all about me.” Right.

Joanna: Yeah, it really, really is and just continues to be about, like, my own—not just frame of mind, but, like, my own self-regulation. That’s always the biggest thing.

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: Um, I think the biggest challenge is, like—ever since, like, about six months ago, I just have had really bad PMS. So I find, like, the week before—

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: I just feel so irritated by everything.

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: So I feel like that’s a really—just so much more of a challenging time because then things that normally don’t bother me are bothering me a lot more.

Sarah: Right.

Joanna: And then it’s harder to keep that connection strong.

Sarah: Totally. Yeah. And you also—as we mentioned last time—you have come off of a whole bunch of different events of, you know—we talked your daughter’s premature birth, and then COVID, and then the new baby. And the new baby—you know, you’re not sleeping that much, and, um, all of those things would make it also have your resources be low. Like, not only the PMS, but, like, anything that puts a tax on us—on our resources—is gonna make us more irritable.

Joanna: Totally. And—but I’m really trying to lean into having a lot more compassion for myself, because I know that when I do that, I can have a lot more compassion for her and, mm-hmm, whatever’s going on that she’s bringing to the table too. So that’s—that’s, I think, probably the biggest thing. But I think that our relationship is just starting to have a lot more resilience—like, when things do start to go sideways, either she or I—we’re able to kind of get back on track a lot more quickly than before, and it doesn’t become as, like, entrenched.

Sarah: That’s awesome. And we—we talked last time about trying to get some more time with her so that the only time that she has with you isn’t just at bedtime when you’re trying to get her to go to bed. Have you been able to do that, and has it—do you think that’s been helping?

Joanna: Yeah. It depends. Like, we had a really busy weekend this past weekend, so not as much. And then I find that sometimes, like, a barrier to that is, like, by the time the weekend finally comes, I’m so depleted and really just, like, needing time for myself. As much as I’m like, “Okay, I need to spend one-on-one time with her,” I’m like, “I don’t want to—I just, like, be by myself for a little while.” So it’s—

Sarah: I hear that.

Joanna: It’s always that—like, yeah, it’s always that balancing act. And then, like, feeling guilty of, like, “Okay, no, I know I should want to hang out with her,” and I kind of just don’t really.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. No, you’re—you’re totally not alone. And it’s funny that you just—you mentioned self-compassion and then you said, “I feel guilty ’cause I—I don’t wanna hang out with her,” but we all—the theme so far in this five minutes is that, um, you know, what you’re bringing to the—what you’re bringing to the relationship has been improving. Like you said, your mindset has shifted, and that’s helping things with her. So even if you’re not getting time independently with her—and hopefully you can work towards that after you fill your own cup—but you’re still helping things with her by getting time to yourself.

Joanna: True. Yeah, because then I’m coming back just a much better, happier—yes—parent and person.

Sarah: Totally.

Joanna: Oh, thank you. That’s helpful.

Sarah: Yeah, and the—and I think you’ve—you know, you’ve touched—just in these few minutes—you’ve touched on two big things that I always say: if you can’t really take these two things to heart, it’ll be really hard to be a successful peaceful parent. And one is what you said—the mindset shift, you know, of how you see her behavior with, you know, that children are doing the best they can. You know, they’re not giving us a hard time; they’re having a hard time. And the other one is self-compassion. So making strides in both of those areas will really help you be that parent that you wanna be.

Joanna: Yeah. And even though we’re maybe not getting huge chunks of time individually, I am really trying to make the most of, like, those little moments—

Sarah: Good.

Joanna: —of connection. Yeah. So even, like—what we’ve started doing is, because my husband’s on night shift, he is waking up with her in the morning because she has a really hard time in the morning. So now he’s sort of with her, getting her ready in the morning. And then I am—like, we used to all walk to the bus together because my son likes to go too. But now my husband’s hanging back with my son, so now I’m just walking her to the bus. And even though it’s five minutes, it’s like we’re holding hands. She’s able to tell me—

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: —you know, talking about whatever.

Sarah: That’s still—that—that totally counts. That’s—and that also, um, that also takes care of something we talked about last time too, which is your husband and your son having more time together, um, so that the nights that—when your husband is home—maybe he can put your son to bed and start trying to shift that dynamic. So yeah. That’s amazing that you’re doing—that. Yeah, I think that’s a great shift—walking to her—to the bus by herself.

Joanna: And I think it—it actually makes a huge difference. You know, before it was like she would just kind of get on the bus and not really look back, and now she’s, like, giving me a hug and a kiss and waving—

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: —waving in the window. So, like, I can see that it’s having a positive effect right away.

Sarah: You could even leave five minutes earlier than you have to and have—turn that five minutes into ten minutes.

Joanna: I would love to do that. It’s always just—like, it’s really hard to get to the bus on time as it is. We will work toward that though.

Sarah: I hear that. Well, if you did try to leave five minutes earlier then it might be more relaxed, even if you didn’t even have any extra time, but you were just, like—leave, you know, change your whole morning back five minutes and try to get out five minutes early.

Joanna: Yeah. Yeah. True. So I think that we had talked a lot about roughhousing last time too—

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: —and I do find that that’s—that’s really—it works well for her, but I run into this really specific problem where when, uh, like, we start roughhousing, and then she’s enjoying it, but then my son wants to get in the mix—

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: —and then right away she’s like, “No, like, get outta here.” So then she’ll start kind of, like, pushing him or, like, throwing kicks or something. So—and then he gets upset because he’s like, “Mom! Mom!” So then I end up sort of, like, pinned underneath both of them—

Sarah: Right.

Joanna: —they’re mad at each other, hitting each other—

Sarah: Oh no.

Joanna: —they both want me.

Sarah: Well, maybe—maybe don’t do it then if that’s how it ends up. But I do have a couple of shifts that might help before you give up on it when you’re alone with them. One is, do you ever try to do those “two against you”? Like, start it out right from the get-go—“You two against Mommy. See if you can—see if you can—” Um, it’s funny you just said you end up pinned down because that’s what I often say. Like, “See if you can stop Mommy from getting up,” or “See if you can catch me,” or, you know, trying to align the two of them against you. That might help.

Joanna: Yeah, I love that idea. Never thought about that. Yeah, I think she would love that.

Sarah: Yeah. So, “Okay, you two are a team, and you have to try to stop me from jumping on the bed,” or “You know, you—you have to stop me from getting to the bed,” or, you know, something like that.

Joanna: Okay, I’m gonna try that. I think that they’ll love it.

Sarah: Yeah. Another idea is, um, what I call “mental roughhousing,” where you’re not doing, like, physical stuff, but you’re being silly and, like, um—I think I mentioned her last time to you, but A Playful Heart Parenting—Mia—W—Walinski. She has a lot of great ideas on her Instagram—we’ll link to that in the show notes—of, like, different, um, like, word things that you can do. When I say mental roughhousing, it’s like getting everyone laughing without being physical.

Joanna: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: Uh, which—you know, the goal of roughhousing is to get everyone laughing, and sometimes being physical might not work. But you can—like, I’ll give you an idea. This isn’t from Mia, but this is something that I used to do with my kids. Like, you know, one of you—you’re like—you say to JR, “Oh—where did your sister go?” And she’s sitting right there. “She was just here a minute ago. Where did Jay go? I don’t see her. What happened to her? She disappeared.” And meanwhile she’s like, “I’m right here! I’m right here!” You know—something like that that’s more of, like, a—more of a mental roughhousing.

My kids and I used to play this game that actually my brother-in-law invented called Slam, where, like, you both say a word at the same time. Um, so, like—I’m just looking around my—like, you know, “curtain” and, you know, “lemonade.” Uh, and then it’s like—you both say it—both—you both say your word at the same time. And that actually wasn’t a very funny one—kids come up with much funnier ones than I do—but it’s like, “Is that, like, a lemonade that is made out of curtains, or is it a—what—” It’s such a dumb example now that I think of it, but—but—or is it, like, a curtain that hides the lemonade? And so you just try and—like, you think of silly things that the two words together—the two words “slam” together—mean.

Joanna: Okay, great. That’s—that’s on my next book—that’s on my next thing to read. You—man—you keep mentioning—what is it? Playful—Playful Heart Parenting? She has an—I—

Sarah: There was a book—there was a book too. And—

Joanna: Oh—

Sarah: Playful Parenting—the Larry Cohen book.

Joanna: The Larry Cohen book, yeah.

Sarah: Yeah.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: That’s a great book. Yeah, and he was on my podcast too, so you could listen to that. We’ll also link to—Mia was on my podcast, and Larry was—so we’ll link to both of those in the show notes as well.

Joanna: Okay, great. I may have listened to one of those, but—yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Sarah: And Playful Parenting is really great for also talking—and, like, Mia is just straight up, like, how to be more playful in life and to, you know, make more joy in your family kind of thing. And Larry talks about how to be more playful to also support your child through transitions and through big emotions and different things—like, it’s a—it’s a little bit more, um, like, all-around parenting—Playful Parenting.

Joanna: Okay.

Sarah: But it is different.

Joanna: Yeah. I used to have a really hard time getting the kids upstairs to start the bedtime routine. And now it’s like—I’ll be like, “Okay, I’m gonna hide first,” and, like, I go upstairs and hide and we start—

Sarah: Oh, I love that.

Joanna: —we play hide-and-seek, and—

Sarah: Oh yeah, it was a stroke of genius one day, and it’s been working so well just to get everyone, like, off the main floor and—

Joanna: —upstairs.

Sarah: I’m gonna totally steal that idea. That’s such a good idea. Yeah, because you could also send them up—“Okay, go hide upstairs and I’ll come and find you.” And then you could do a round of you hiding. And I love that. That’s a great idea. Yeah.

Joanna: And I especially love hide-and-seek for sometimes when I need, like, 30 seconds by myself in a dark closet—

Sarah: —to, like, take a breath.

Joanna: That’s great.

Sarah: I love it. I love it. Yeah, it’s—that’s so great.

As I mentioned before, I forgot to ask Joanna for an update about a few things. So here’s the update about breastfeeding her son in the night.

Sarah: Okay.

Joanna: Hi, Sarah. So, in terms of the night-weaning, um, I haven’t gone ahead and done anything about that yet just because he does have his last molars coming in and has been sick. So I want to wait until he’s well and pain-free to kind of give us our best chance at getting that off on the right foot. But I have really realized that because he’s my last baby, that this is really the last little home stretch of being woken up by a baby at night—specifically to nurse. So that’s helped me kind of reduce my feelings of resentment toward it.

Sarah: I love that Joanna zoomed out and looked at the big picture and the fact that this is her last baby, and used that to sort of just change her mindset a little bit and make it a little bit easier to continue on with something when she knew it wasn’t the right time to stop. And now here is her update about bedtime with her daughter. And for this, I love that she got preventive—you’ll see what I mean—and also playful. Those are two really great things to look at when you’re having any struggles with your kids: like, how can I prevent this from happening? And also, how can I be playful when it is happening and shift the mood?

Joanna: And in terms of bedtime with my daughter, we’ve made a couple of schedule changes to set us off on a better foot once I get back together with her after putting my son to bed. So I think we used to have a lot of conflict because it was like she was still asking for another snack and then hadn’t brushed her teeth, and then it was just kind of getting to be too late and I was getting short on patience. So now we have, like, a set snack time where everybody has a snack, and I let them know, like, “This is the last time that we’re eating today,” and then we’re going upstairs—using hide-and-seek, like I mentioned—and then just really continuing to be playful in all doing our bedtime tasks together.

So, for example, I’m saying, like, “Okay, I’m gonna go into my room and put my pajamas on. Can you guys go get your PJs on—and then don’t show me, but I have to guess what pajamas you have on?” So she really loves that because, like I mentioned, she loves to get me to guess things. But also she’s then helping her brother get ready for bed, and he’s far more cooperative with her than with me in terms of getting his pajamas on. So it all works really well.

Yeah, and then just kind of continuing to be silly and playful is really helping with brushing teeth—it’s like, “Who can make the silliest faces in the mirror?” and stuff. So, really kind of moving through all those tasks together so that by the time I’m out of the room and ready to put her to bed, everything’s done, and we can just get into playing cards and then snuggling and chatting and—and leaving from there after maybe a five- or ten-minute snuggle. So there’s been way fewer meltdowns at the end of the night because we are able to just not get in this place where we’re getting into power struggles in the first place. It’s just really all about, like, the love and connection at the end of the day.

Sarah: The final thing I wanted to check in with you about is—you were asking about the meltdowns. You know, when Jay gets really upset and, you know, how to—um—how to manage those. Have you had any chances to practice what we talked about with that?

Joanna: Yeah, she actually had a really, really big, long, extended meltdown yesterday, and, um, I just continue to not really feel like I’m ever supporting her in the way that she needs supporting. Like, I don’t—I always end up feeling like I’m not—I’m not helping. I don’t know. It’s just a really, really hard situation.

Sarah: I was just talking to a client yesterday who—who actually wanted to know about supporting her child through meltdowns, and I said, “Well, what would you want someone to do for you?” You know—just kind of be there. Be quiet. You know, offer a—you know, rub the—rub your back—rub her back. I mean, I don’t know exactly what your child wants, but I think that’s a good place to start if you feel like you’re not being successful—like, “Well, what would I want if this was happening to me?”

Joanna: And I think that really—that’s enough, right? It’s enough—

Sarah: Oh, totally.

Joanna: —to be there. And it always—maybe I’m just feeling like it’s not enough because we don’t really even get, like, a good resolution, or, like, even—eventually it just kind of subsides, right?

Sarah: If you were having a meltdown, that’s what would happen. Nobody can come in there and fix it for you.

Joanna: Um, exactly.

Sarah: Nobody can come in and say the magic words that’s gonna make you not feel upset anymore. So it’s really just about that—being there for somebody. And we’re—it’s not that the resolution is “I fixed their problems.”

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: The resolution is “I was there with them for the journey.”

Joanna: Yeah. And it goes back to what you were saying, where it’s like, “Oh, this work really is just about me.”

Sarah: Yeah, totally.

Joanna: And learning how to show up.

Sarah: And not feeling anxious when your child is upset and you’re like, “I don’t know what to do,” and just think, “Okay, I just have to be here. I just have to be here for them.”

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: And help them, you know, feel not alone in their meltdown.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: Gosh. It’s also hard.

Joanna: Yeah, it’s hard.

Sarah: And it’s also, like—sometimes I think it’s more simple than we think it is. Like, it’s simple—simple doesn’t mean easy, but it’s—so—it’s not easy, but also can be simple. Like, just, you know—be there. Be there for her.

Joanna: Yeah.

Sarah: Keep forward and try not to—

Joanna: —get—

Sarah: —try not to have the wave take you over as well.

Joanna: Yeah. That’s always the challenge.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Joanna: But no, I’m—I am motivated to stay the course because I’ve already seen how—the positive effects of peaceful parenting, so—

Sarah: Yay. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Joanna: You’re welcome.

Sarah: Keep in touch, and, um, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your experience with other parents. It’s—I always hear from listeners how helpful these coaching episodes are.

Joanna: I’m glad.

Sarah: Yeah. So thank you so much for having me—for sharing.

Joanna: Perfect. Thanks, Joanna.

Sarah: Okay, bye.