Episode 73: Raising Little Brains: How Neuroscience Can Inform Our Parenting with Dr. Sarah Allen

For this week's episode on The Balanced Parent Podcast, we are going to GEEEK OUT on the amazing stuff going on in your kid’s BRAIN. If you have been following me, you would probably know I love this topic. I love to talk about brains and understanding what's going on inside our kids' brains and I truly believe it can help us understand their behavior, tap into compassion, and meet them where they are!

So, we will be geeking out on this episode, and to help me in this conversation, I have invited Dr. Sarah Allen. She is a mother and a pediatric neuropsychologist. She specializes in making neuroscience translatable in our lives, and so, Dr. Allen aims to help kids and parents find their strengths and who they are so that they can live as healthy, happy, and self-aware adults.

Here is an overview of our conversation:

  • Neuroscience and how we can use it in parenting to boost our kids' learning

  • Understanding what's going on with our kids' brain

  • Skills needed for our kids to be healthy and heavily developed

  • Modeling self-care and "glow and grow" practices

If you want to understand how our kids' brains work, head over to Dr. Allen's website at www.brainbehaviorbridge.com. You can also find her on:

Facebook: Brain Behavior Bridge

Instagram: @dr.sarahlallen

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-levin-allen-ph-d-cbis-75a9b668/

And if you're looking for more support, send her an email at drallen@brainbehaviorbridge.com. She would love to hear from you.

And I just have a perfect game for you that you can play with your kids to help them hard-wire these self-regulation skills into their brains! With practice, they will be more able to stop themselves when they get the impulse to hit, kick, throw, smash, etc. and YOU will be able to relax a bit more! 


TRANSCRIPT

Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.

Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go! 

Laura: Hello everybody, This is Dr. Laura Froyen in and on this episode of the balance parent podcast we're going to be kicking out all about brains. You guys know that I love this topic so much and to facilitate this conversation a little bit better and bringing on a guest and colleague that I'm really excited to share with you. So Dr. Sarah Allen is a mother, a pediatric neuropsychologist and she specializes in making neuroscience Translatable to our actual lives. Oh my gosh, Sarah thank you so much for helping us with this topic coming in and having this conversation. Welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do? 

Sarah: Sure. Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. As you said, I'm a pediatric neuropsychologist. I call myself a brain gal because any time I go to a cocktail party and I say pediatric neuropsychologist, somebody says oh you're a nurse. And I say no and then I say I deal with brains and then they say what am I thinking? 

And then I have a little fun of course because you know you're at a party so might say oh you shouldn't think that or something like that and then I have to go and explain, you know what I do anyway, so, but like you said, you know, I am a neuropsychologist and I do brain health and wellness and I really helped my family that I work with raised happy brains and I do some assessments as well. But most of my love is in coaching parents to help figure out what the skills that they need for their kids to be healthy and heavily developed. 

Laura: Yeah, okay. So tell me a little bit about, you know here at the balanced parent podcast. We really believe that to raise Holwell. Openhearted self-aware kids. We've got to be those things ourselves. And we talk a little bit about how those things go hand in hand and how we can knowing about ourselves can help us also raise kids who know about themselves. 

Sarah: Absolutely. So we know from a brain standpoint and actually, if you look at the history of therapy, you can even see some of this woven in in order to make change. We need to have insight. So therapy is all about insight and the reason it is that way is because we need to bring things into our conscious awareness in order to be able to change them. And so what happens to us as parents and I'm a mom of two kids myself is that we tend to lose who we are in the first place and when we do that, we're not able to model for our kids what good self-health and self-care and brain health is, and we're not able to transfer those skills to them either.

 And so it's really important for parents to know who they are and then start to model this and I do this through a growth mindset approach. So we always do glow and grow charts with my family. So where are you glowing where you just rock in life and where do you need to grow? And if you start to do that process as an individual, as a parent, you model that for your Children and so doing that for yourself and then doing one for your child and then even doing one for yourself as a parent. 

So you start to develop what your values are as parents and you get that balance that you speak of so often so much better when you can do it that way because now you know who you are, you know who your child is, you know what your values are as a parent and that makes that path a lot easier to follow. I call it sometimes a parent manual but really what it is is this guide to help make decisions when kids completely take you off the rails which is their job to do?

Laura:  Yeah. Sarah but I love what you're saying because you're talking about a manual or a path or a map but it's not one that some expert has given you that you've built for yourself by looking within figuring out what your values are, what your goals are for your family, You create this map yourself. So what are some of the questions that you can ask? Like I love this idea and I know parents are going to want to do this for themselves. So what are some things that they can ask themselves to figure out? Okay, so what does this manual look for my family? 

Sarah: Yeah, well I love that you said questions you can ask because one of the tips as parents and I'll go back to your question but is about asking questions so we want to know what is happening with these little brains that we're raising, you know, and I know it's crazy, but that's how I see kids as little brains. We really want to know what is happening with them. And that's one of the main ways of starting to get that manual down is to say what's happening with you. Do you need to talk about something, what do I need to teach my child? What do they need to learn? 

And when you start asking those questions, you really start to get some great goals down for your kids. But before you can start that process, the first page is getting to know yourself, right? We just talked about that. And so what you can do is start to say to yourself, okay, what are my values number one? I love the question, what are my superpowers? And then I also encourage my clients to go ask three of your friends or your partner what they think your superpowers are and have that reflected back to you, Who are you jealous of? 

I know that's a strange question, but this really starts to tell us what we want to be, what we value, what we're interested in. So although jealousy is a funny feeling, it's a good one to really hone in on and see who is that person that you're jealous of? Who do you admire? On the other hand, and then you start to really build this picture for yourself of who you are and who you want to be and what you value, what is important to you and then from there that's where you can start to develop that glow and grow chart, what are the top three things that you think you're just really, really doing really well at and what are the top three things you really feel like you want to work on?

Once you start to go through that process yourself as an individual, then you can help your kid through that do the same process. Let them find their superpowers. Kids often need a lot more guidance in it, you can kind of give them some ideas but they're really good at coming up with and sometimes even if you ask them what your superpowers are and you'll get some neat things reflected back to yourself too and it becomes this process. Like I said this growth mindset that you set up in your entire household and everything shifts from that point. 

Laura: Yeah, I love this. I feel like this really ties into the idea of plasticity that change can happen that we have a lifelong potential for growth and change and rewiring of the brain and I think that's so beautiful to be doing that ourselves and modeling it to our kids doing it. I think it's really powerful to do this work allowed to our kids, you know to let them see us doing this work, we are journaling about something explaining what we're doing, telling them why we're doing it what we're thinking.

I mean even just moments where one of my biggest things that I consistently work on in front of my kids as being kind to myself because I'm not very kind to myself in my head at times and so out loud if I make a mistake who I'm feeling really bad about that you know I'm thinking some bad thoughts about myself. Yeah and I also know everybody makes mistakes and I also know I can be kind even when I've made a mistake. You know like just out loud talking modeling that that is a good dialogue to have.

Sarah:  Well and from a brain standpoint it's probably one of the top tips that you can do because you're actually changing brain pathways that way and you're teaching the how in how to think and feel or how to approach something. Those houses are things we don't often teach, we expect kids to pick them up and it's especially important if your kid has a different brain, you know if your kid has been diagnosed with A. D. H. D. or autism or other things they don't necessarily pick up on some of these what I call executive skills or some of these kinds of problem-solving how to skills as much as other kids at times.

So just speaking those things out loud, not only is it a good model emotionally like you're suggesting and such, but you're teaching them problem-solving skills. I used to play this game with my kids, we'd be on the way home from my mother's house from their grandmother's house and it would always be later at night and I need to get a bedtime routine going. 

So half of this is just self-preservation and the other half is really, here's a teachable moment, which I love. I love natural teachable moments opportunity to teach sequencing and problem-solving in the brain. So I'd say, what are we gonna do when we get home? What do we do first? Right. I know we're going to get in bed and then brush your teeth and go to the bathroom. I mean my kids are really little at the time to go mom, you're so silly now.

Exactly they would start, we joked about the order and I would do different things like that with them and now building off of that. Having taught my daughter the skilled out loud, I swear my daughter could solve any problem faster than me, I'll just ask her what to do. She usually, well she'll tell me what to do anyway, but normally she, she really does have some good ideas so.

Laura:  I love this. Equipping kids with those problem-solving skills is so powerful. We do a lot of problem-solving in our house and when my kids are at their school whenever there's a problem their friends come to them to help them solve because they know that they've got those skills that my kids have, that skill that they can help figure out. Okay, so what's everybody's priorities, what's everybody's concerns, how can we collaborate to make sure that everybody's needs are being met? They know how to do that.

Sarah: And those are so essential. I mean we spend so much time thinking about math and reading, writing these academic skills with our kids and you know, did they get this great on this test and these men as they get older, did they learn this material? You know, and I hate to say this may be a little parents’ secret, but they can google any piece of information that they need to know. 

So really we need to stop worrying about academic learning as much and really focus more on these social-emotional problems solving these brain-building skills because these are the things that are long-lasting, these are the things that create connected kids that are socially and emotionally intelligent, that can help their peers that can build businesses and think creatively and abstractly and that are happy and healthy and connected. It's not just about those academic skills. So I love that your kids are doing that.

Laura: And that's what the research is showing us to. This is what the career trajectory research is showing us is that those skills that we're talking about today are actually going to be much more impactful in future careers for kids. So you're setting them up for financial and stability. Success too. 

So yes, okay, so I want to just connect a little bit more on the idea of that. We are raising little brains. There are times in my parenting journey where I can see their brain very clearly in their actions, I don't know, do you see that with kids? Like communicating with an immature and undeveloped brain? Like I have to remind myself of that with my little ones. So what are some things that parents need to know about their kids growing? 

Sarah: Oh, I love it. So let's just start under five, right? And even when kids are born, when kids are born, they have more neurons which are the brain cells we have in our brain than 2-3 times more than adults, they actually are born with more brain cells than we are. I often used to joke my kids were little, like, don't tell him because my daughter and my son knew that it would completely, you know, up reroute the imbalance of our whole thing, but really it's not about the number of neurons, but it's about efficiency and connections. 

So as kids are under five, they go through this process, we call pruning and they get rid of the cells they don't need and they keep the ones that they do need. This is why for kids under five, it's really important to give them exposure to sights and sounds and experiences and connections so that we can lay that groundwork for their brains for the future. The most learning you'll ever have in your entire lifespan is under the age of five. 

Now fascinating. I mean I freaked out about this when my daughter turned five, you know, I remember distinctly in the minivan when I have it, you know, driving and realizing her birthday was the next day and she's gonna turn five, she's going to be over this brain hump, which just for everybody's benefit, it doesn't happen in a day, but in my mind, it was five.

Laura: There's no clock in their brain clock. You know, I just remember screaming, you can do anything you put your mind to and what happened I tell you what can I get it? Just trying to give her every little thing. So it doesn't end just for people who might freak out like me. But it really is this opportunity for great growth. 

So any experience and exposure that we can give kids to playing with other kids to interacting with other people to learning how to think is really helpful under the age of five. This is why early intervention is so important because we can really lay the groundwork, this brain development, but I was reminded of when kids are about to three when they're first starting to kind of communicate with you and you can see the brain skip at this point. 

I always call like a record skip where you, they'll ask you a question. Mom, mom, mom, mom! Mommy um can't and you're like do you want juice? Do you want something to eat? Can I feel this is because it's taking forever? And there you can actually see the fact that they're laying the brain pathway. They're trying to functionally connect these networks and get this efficiency and learn how to use their voice here. 

They have to think of what they want and then they have to say it out loud and communicate in an appropriate way. And it's no wonder we then have some kids, some two-year-olds especially fallen on the floor screaming and crying because they can't communicate what they need because it's a lot of work for those little brains.

Laura:  Can you imagine how frustrating it must be. It is so hard to be two and three and to not have the vocabulary that you need to express. The complex thoughts that you're having and your wants and your needs or if you have the vocabulary and you know what you want to say, it's not have like the mouth muscle development to be able to get it out of your mouth. It must be so hard.

Sarah: It takes time and this world doesn't give us a lot of that time so we're moving a mile a minute. So you know if a child needs some more time to express themselves, you know, and you're running out the door trying to get another child to a game or something like that, that's when those things can happen, and it's just part of the nature of the world.

But also something to pay attention to is apparent because the more that you can recognize what's happening there, the more you can think about what does this little brain need, what can I teach it, you know, what does it need to learn right now? Doesn't need to learn. I want to hear what you have to say, let's get in the car and then tell me all about it, a little inhibition. Do we need to teach the frontal of a little control?

So and then allow it to express itself. I find as a parent, when I can shift it that way, it reduces my emotion about it. And then it allows me to make these more logical, reasonable decisions as a parent also.

Laura:  Tell me more about that, about how knowing what's going on in their brain helps you be less emotional about it and let and be more conscious and in the moment and intentional. Tell me about that, make that connection for us. 

Sarah: We are, as parents, so passionate about our Children and our Children are so passionate about hitting every button that we have right there, just really, really, really good at it and that evokes emotion in our brain. So we have a part of our brain called the Amygdala, I like to call her Amy G because she's just so emotional.

Laura: Oh my gosh, I'm gonna start calling my mind that too. 

Sarah: I hope everybody does because it really is helpful to recognize that you have this, you know, Amy Gs in your brain, spicy and totally feisty, angry and passionate and all these other things all at one time, right, can't control it. I always pictured her like a teenage girl, I don't know why, but so you know, all crazy and so as a parent, when your Amy G gets triggered the frontal lobe of your brain, I call her Franny just because I like Franny. 

So Franny and Amy G like trying to have a conversation basically and Franny has to call me Maggie down, you know Franny think of Franny like the, you know, I like the secretary of the school, you know the one that really actually runs everything the principal thinks they do, but Franny actually does and she's kind of saying Amy G, hey, I get it, this is emotional but calm down, right? 

And so this happens in our kids’ brains when they're freaking out and when Franny is common, Amy G down, Franny can't do anything else that's supposed to, it can't regulate your thoughts and feelings, you can't make logical decisions, it can't pull other information from your brain, it can't say, hey I just heard this podcast and I'm supposed to do this. Yeah, I can't do that. 

Laura: And parents, this is why right now, what Sarah's explaining to you. This is why in the moment you can't say all the things like this is why all the scripts just fly out of your head in the moment and then you end up repeating what your parents said to you. This is why.

Sarah:  Right. Exactly. And also by the way, just verbal expression is a frowny task. Also you're, you're really overtaxed in front here. She can only do so much at one time. So when our kids evoke that Amy G and Franny's kind discussion, we just can't think and do an act in the ways that we would want to, when Amy G calms down. Right And then the mission ng right Yes. And so there's a couple of things that can help for me.

It's a matter of common MG down in a way that will allow my Franny to kind of open up and think more logically. And the way I do that is kind of by externalizing some of this and objectifying a little bit of it. So if I can look at my child instead of seeing that thing that really knows how to push my buttons and I love him or her to death, but they're driving me crazy right now and instead I can say, okay, well what's happening with that brain?

Maybe that Amy G needs a little bit of help right now. You know, instead of thinking of a kid as well, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed is just really misbehaving today. I might think, mm when's the last time that he ate? You know, maybe his brain needs some fuel right now or hey, you know what? He had three hockey games yesterday and we didn't get to bed till really late. Maybe that brain needs a little bit of sleep and so I'm going to lay off a little bit. I'm going to pull back a little bit from my expectations and get it some rest and then really start to think about it or even say, okay.

I often give the example of a two-year-old crying and clicking on the floor right? Instead of thinking they're misbehaving and how am I going to manage this behavior? You think, okay, like we spoke of earlier, Maybe I need to teach this little brain how to use his words or maybe I need to teach the little brain how to, how to calm its body down and that tells you what to do in that situation versus just screaming and doing all the things like you said that your parents may have done or that you've seen or even that Amy G just naturally wants to do.

We all want to yell and scream. We all want to say, why are you doing this now? We have two minutes to get out the door. I don't need you on the floor. But if you can shift you the way you think it will calm your Amy G and your family will be able to make find the thing you want to do and make those logical decisions.

Laura:  I think that's so beautiful and helpful to think about. And you know when we do that, when we're calm our state helps regulate their state, right? I just wanted to highlight something that you just said when you were thinking about, Okay, So what does this little brain need to learn in this moment? Thinking about this two-year-old who's kicking and screaming on the floor? We mean by this?

And I'm just guessing because I know you and I'm just guessing. But what we mean by that is that we're not going to overtly teach them with our words and say you need to learn to use your words like that. We're going to show them how to calm down. We're going to be there with them, we are going to help them calm down and be able to express themselves. Not by saying overtly? Like when you're mad, you need to say that you're mad and not fall on the floor. Like that's not what we mean by teaching. Am I right? 

Sarah: A little bit of both? I would say so in the moment anything you say to that little brain with Amy G freaking out is not going to be heard. But when you see, let's use the two-year-old, when you see if they need a break and you give them that break of space and then their body comes down, I think it's very important to connect the two to say okay your body was very excited and needed to calm down, so you know mommy asked you to go in this room and calm your body down. You did that, I'm really proud of you for doing that and if it's about communicating, say next time I want you to use your words, if you tell me I can help you try it now, what did you want to say? 

Laura: And then you practice Yes yes during your calm, I think that this is something that I see all the time, like when I used to drop my kids off at daycare, you know in different scenarios, a kid would be having a hard time and the teacher would be saying in the moment, use your words and if they could use their words right then they would be like wait we can trust, you know, they're overwhelmed, they've got a little overwhelmed brain that needs to.

I think sometimes it's helpful to think about like the three levels right there in their primal level and they, you know to use words, they need to move back up through the levels and so we've got to help them get up through the levels into their more logical executive brain and then they can use their words and then we can teach them the words to use. 

Sarah: And I also think that the only time the accused are helpful is before the meltdown. So if you can start to see my son would have great signs of when his whole body was. You can see it coming. You can totally see you know they start to hunch their shoulders or they get really tight in their body or the face there's a certain face that he makes that's a great time to say wait a minute. I want you to use your words and you know as kids get older you can cue more often. Um And, and that can help upfront because once a kid's body goes up you get this fight or flight response and again you trigger Amy G And then you have to wait when you come down. 

There's no like real good way of calming down. You can try breasts and stuff like that. All that has to be practiced ahead of time though. It can barely be used in the moment and for kids who have different brains and have more trouble regulating. You just kind of have to ride them out. You know I used to see this with kids in schools that their kids with different brains would get these big emotional reaction to nine or 10-year-old who really can't control his body or what he's saying or doing and once he's already up, you have to wait till it comes down to just keep them kind of in a safe space until his body comes down. 

But other teachers are professionals would try to walk towards, that child would try to, to use more of those kind of strategies. You just want to let your kid calm down and learn how to control their body. People towards them. They're going to end up hitting or kicking. You're getting themselves in trouble when they didn't need to, they're not trying to hurt you. They're trying to get rid of this feeling in their body that Amy G is just slamming them with. 

Laura: Right and they perceive that their brain perceives it as a threat, right? It feels threatening and scary.

Sarah: And overwhelming to the brain. The brain can only handle so much and can only regulate so much. So extra stimuli coming at them is going to be problems. We've even used tips like turning off the lights calming the room, you know, those things, your brain is constantly processing these external stimuli.

So if you reduce those and you can use this tip at home with your kids, if you notice they're getting really agitated, try turning off the lights, Try creating a calmer quieter space. Pay attention to the senses in the room and see if you can reduce those that always helps a, an agitated brain calm down a bit more. 

Laura: Yeah, and saying less right? You know, I think that popular kind of message out there in the peaceful parenting world is to validate their feelings and you know, we talk a lot and sometimes when a kid's brain is activated and overwhelmed, we need to talk a lot less. 

Sarah: Oh yeah Tom Fallon and who wrote 123 magic says this all the time and he is absolutely right about, right about it. You know, they're not little adults and you do need to reduce the language that you're using at times, but that doesn't mean you don't talk to them. That means in the moment you don't and this goes back to what we talked about creating goals and grow and grow charts because I can tell you my son's nine and I can't tell you how many conversations we've had later at night where I lay down and say, I understand that you felt this way, but you can't act that way when we're outside in public. 

If you have something you need to say, you can come and talk to me about it. But in that moment, if you act in that way, this is what's going to happen every single time. So come and talk to me about it. It's absolutely valuable what you're feeling. I understand you don't like being in that situation. I understand that how you feel about this and thank you for telling me and we can talk about that and now is a great time, but it's not good to talk with your behavior and I always say kids speak with their behavior and so when you see a lot of this stuff, it really does the outward displays of behavior. 

If you start thinking of them as little brains, you'll start to realize ah they're speaking to me, they're trying to tell me something and I'm going to put that one, tuck it away for later and then I'm going to put it back into their brain plan and I'm going to use this to make sure that I have a conversation with them to kind of empathetically listen, make sure they feel hurt all of these things, but not in the moment, if there's something that's happening that they need to learn how to control. 

Laura: Yeah, I love that, I think it's so important, that's not in the moment. So in the moment our only goal is to get their brain back online, right, and then we can either be proactive and if we know they're working on a skill, they're working on building things, we can be proactive or we can kind of go from a retroactive place and book in those experiences, but in the moment it's their brains aren't available, they're just not available for that, right? 

Sarah: And I think a good tip for parents, I love that, by the way, the retroactive and productivity, that's absolutely a great tip and I would say for parents the majority of the time, the behaviors in the moment that you're talking about are about teaching the brain control and regulation right? Or teaching it that it needs communication because remember if kids are speaking with their behavior then they're trying to tell you something.

Either they need to communicate that to you in a different way or they're not really sure how to regulate the way that emotion makes their body or mind feel. So those are two tips when you're starting to think about your kids’ brain. All right, what are the skills that they might need to learn? Those are usually key ones?

 You know if I have a teenager who's refusing to get in the car, going to make me late for work and having all these issues when really it's about a fight they had at school and they don't want to go to school because they're worried about seeing their friends that's a communication issue even though the behavior is not getting in the car on time and making everybody else late. So you kind of shift the way you think about it and it helps to, to chill out Amy G.

Laura:  And you just beautifully circled back to the importance of insight and modeling that and inviting them to check in with themselves what was going on for you right then what were you thinking about? Where were you feeling it in your body? You know, what were you thinking about right before you got overwhelmed all those good insight questions. 

Sarah: Right? And sometimes kids don't know, sometimes I don't know right? Sometimes I don't know absolutely to be able to those questions as we even started talking about their great things to ask because they start to help kids gain this insight and this self-awareness and you know, I was thinking about it, I don't, the first time I probably ever saw myself on paper or who I was was maybe when I wrote a resume or college essays or something like that, you know, you don't get that opportunity very often. 

But if we start young 2,3,4 you can, you don't have to have glow and grow charts out the wazoo but you can start the concepts uh what did you do really good, What do you really like about today? What are you working on when you go back to school? You know those, those concepts you can do at a younger age and build up, they work all the time. I was going to say twenties, but they work for me now, you know, to say, you know what I really loved how I did on this, but I'm going to work on this thing today because I think that if I work on that, I'll feel better about it, you know, it's a great conversation. 

Laura: Absolutely. I think you're touching on something that's really important to is that we don't do this just around the problems right? So if we're practicing this and teaching this as a skill that we want our kids to know how to do. It's got to be, you know, it can't just be problem focused because then they're going to be like, oh, I'm in trouble again or oh, I did something wrong again and no, I only do this when I'm in trouble or when I did something wrong. We don't want those negative associations.

Sarah:  No, you definitely want to kind of do them. I don't know, once a month, once every couple of weeks of just having the conversation, I'll have a conversation with my kids in the car. Hey guys, you know, I was just thinking about it. It's time to read. You are rhetorical, what is, what are you working on? What should I work on? What do we want to get better at doing? You know, my daughter might say, you know, I'd like to get better at doing this craft. She likes, she's a crafty person, so she likes to do that a little bit more. You know, my son is more of a sports guy, so he might want to work on his hockey, does deck hockey.

 It's the biggest thing right now. And so he would love to work on a stick handling skills or something. So we do it across the board, including things like I want to make some more friends, mom, which we moved in September of the year, we went into the pandemic. So we were here for school from September through March and then the whole world shut down. So my kids were lucky in a sense, they got some friends, but they didn't really get to make those deep connections in school.

So that's when their list of things to do is, you know what I really want to connect with some more people and we talked about different ways we can do that. Can we get into some clubs, can we do some things online until the world opens up? You know, what could we do that might meet that goal? And it's a fabulous way of doing it and it makes these happy, healthy brains that we're raising.

Laura:  Beautiful. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and kind of geeking out a little bit about brains with us. This is a lovely conversation. Why don't you tell us where my listeners can come and find you and learn more about brains from you?

Sarah: Yeah, well my website is a great place to start. So it's brainbehaviorbridge.com. You can also find me on Facebook and all of my Facebook and Instagram links are their, LinkedIn links are there. So I would be happy to talk to people. 

And then, you know, I would say just send me an email or give me a call. I always anyone, I mean you gave me this great opportunity to talk about brains. I'm happy to talk about raising brains with anybody and that's just Dr. Allen, drallen@brainbehaviorbridge.com. So thanks so much for having me. This is probably my favorite conversation I've ever had. 

Laura: Well, awesome. Well, we love talking about brains here, so thank you so much for having us. I really coming on with us. We really appreciate it. 

Sarah: Thank you. 

Laura: Wow, that was such a great conversation with Sarah and I'm so glad that you all stuck around towards the end because I wanted to mention, I don't know if you know this, but I have a freebie that you can download that actually teaches your kids brains to wire up for self-regulation and executive functioning. 

So some of the things that we were talking about in this episode, there are ways to practice these skills with your kids that are fun and engaging that your kids won't even know that they are building in things like emotion regulation and impulse control because they're having so much fun. So if you go to laurafroyen.com/selfreg, you will get my beautiful list of self reg games, fun games you can play with your kids um to help them build and hardwire self-regulation into their brains. So I hope that you go check that out and thanks for tuning into the balance parent podcast. See you next week. 

Okay, so thanks for listening today. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from. 

And if you're listening, grab a screenshot and tag me on Instagram so that I can give you a shout out um, and definitely go follow me on Instagram. I'm @laurafroyenphd. That's where you can get behind the scenes. Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like in action with my family, and plus I share a lot of other, really great resources there too. 

All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this.