Episode 77: Using Brain Science to Understand Challenging Behaviors with Lauren Spigelmyer (Challenging Behaviors Series No. 1)
/Sometimes kids can be so tricky, right? We don't know exactly what will set them off, and then what do to when they are in the midst of their big feelings and the challenging behaviors that can go with them. Things like defiance, aggression, and destructiveness. It can be a lot and it's no wonder we can get super triggered by it all. It's so hard to keep our heads on straight and remind ourselves that these are little humans that we love that are simply having a hard time. As a parent of a kiddo who has had some super challenging times, I promise, I get it and I want you to know you're not alone in it. AND there are some pretty simple things you can do to help.
Which is why I am so excited for the next two weeks on The Balanced Parent Podcast because we will have a two-episode series on Challenging Behaviors. We are going to talk about behavior, what it tells us about our kids, and what they need from us in moments when they are dysregulated.
For the first episode, Lauren Spigelmyer will help us understand how to use brain science to understand our kids' challenging behaviors. Lauren is a parenting and education consultant and runs The Behavior Hub. It is an organization that works with schools and families to address the needs of students with challenging behaviors through a holistic whole-body approach.
Here is a summary of our discussion.
Five general need areas of children
Why considering communication is essential
Behavior and the brain
Body language (Changing the way we respond)
If you wish to get more support on how to handle challenging behaviors, please check out Lauren's website thebehaviorhub.com where you can find quite a few online courses on this topic. You may also contact her via the website for coaching support, follow her Facebook page The Behavior Hub and join her Facebook Group Raising and Teaching Respectful Children. And as a bonus, Lauren is going to giveaway a few phone backgrounds on the five needs area discussed in the episode.
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! Welcome to an episode of The Balance Parent Podcast and I'm so excited to have you here with me today because we are going to be talking all about behavior, what is telling us about our kids, what they need from us in those moments when they're having a hard time and how to help them and ourselves through this and we have a great expert who's going to help us have this conversation. I want to introduce you to Lauren Spigelmyer. She is Parenting and education consultant and runs the beautiful website, The Behavior Hub. And Lauren, I'm so glad to have you with me. Welcome to the show.
Lauren: Thank you for having me on here. It's a pleasure to join.
Laura: Yeah. Why don't you tell us, just to get us started, a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Lauren: Of course, yeah. So I run The Behavior Hub. It's an organization that works with schools and with families to address needs around challenging behavior and we do so through this very holistic whole body approach. So those psychological supports embed nutrition and we also do exercise in there to all go together to help kids to neutralize more naturally. And when I'm not doing that awesome work and course creating for that and coaching and teaching on there, I am course creating and teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. I work on there and develop their trauma-informed education program.
Laura: Oh my gosh, beautiful. I feel like you're doing it all. That's amazing.
Lauren: I try to.
Laura: Yeah. Okay, well thank you so much for coming to chat with us today. I think one of the things that parents really need support with and I know that I've needed support with myself from time to time because I've got a strong-willed spirited daughter who has some challenging behaviors and I kind of wanted to just dig in, to when we are seeing those behaviors with our kids. So if they're calling their sister a name, they're refusing to do their schoolwork.
I know lots of parents are having that happen right now, especially with kids still going to virtual school and they're refusing to log on. They are maybe lying about what they have done for their homework. Maybe they are just yelling or name-calling at home with the parents, maybe they're hitting kicking. So when we see these challenging behaviors and they are challenging, their triggering, they push our buttons, what's going on there for the kids?
Lauren: Yeah, that's a great question and I think something we share is it's communicating something. So we have to try and figure out what is the need that that behavior is communicating something. I think we so quickly just want to jump in and fix it and reverse it and change it.
Laura: And stop it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Laura: Stop that behavior.
Lauren: Yeah, for sure. So she was driving us crazy or it's making us become more stressed or overwhelmed.
Laura: Yeah!
Lauren: But I think it sometimes just can't be done in the moment because you are too stressed out but afterwards or if you can in the moment there are five general need areas that we can identify the heat we’re swelling into. So it could be the need for control which I think right now is a lot and that makes perfect sense. So much of the world is out of control right now. So that falls over into kids trying to do everything they can to keep control in their own lives. So that that's not logging on, that's something they can control. Like I don't have control here, but I'll get control there. So control is one.
The need to emotionally or self regulate which again, I think it's another area that a lot of kids are having some concerns in right now and that's because of the overwhelming stress of what's going on. And then you've got maybe a sensory need. Just thinking about how to sensory play into this. You might have an attachment or a relationship needs. So maybe a child just seeking that relationship with you or siblings or someone else, they need that attention. And the last of which is a physical need. So are they hungry? Are they tired or all of their needs, physical needs getting met?
Laura: Yeah. Okay, so I love that you're breaking it down into these five areas. Like how as a parent in the moment when this is happening, how can we figure that out?
Lauren: Yeah, it's tough. For sure. So I just, what I try and do is like at first I kept visuals like now I have the five needs memorized, but if I didn't have the memorized, I might put sticky notes around my house to remind me of the five needs. So if I'm in the dining room at the table and they're having a behavior and I have a sticky note reminder of these five needs. So when that behavior happens, I quickly scan those five needs areas and which one of these are they? Why do I think this behavior is happening right now?
Ugh, okay. Loss of control. So then I had to quickly flip gears and think about how can I respond to this behavior to give the child back some control because if that's what they're seeking right now, that's what they need. And if I can get them to comply and still give control, then we both win. And there are some easy ways to do that. Like even offering fair and motivating choices to a child for how to do something or when to do it or where to do.
It gives them some level of control. They don't log on. I might say, well, would you rather do your schoolwork, you know, on the couch or in your bedroom? The choices are neutral. They're fair, they're motivating and they're not thinking about not doing it. They're thinking about which location they'd like to work in.
Laura: And you're partnering with the child, right? You're coming alongside them seeing their need for control and offering it while still staying in within like the bounds of your expectations for the kiddo.
Lauren: True.
Laura: Alright. Okay so, that's in the moment. I mean, I don't know about you, but in my experience for some kids, actually for many kids attempting to do some of that work in the moment is really hard.
It's hard for the parent because they're overwhelmed by the kid's behavior. But it's also hard for the kids because the kids got a lot going on if they're dysregulated. If they've got some like a need for regulation, it's really hard to drop into kind of rational thinking. So I was curious if you could maybe tell us a little bit about what's going on in a kid's brain and maybe even in our brain and in our nervous systems as we are moving through these spaces and why circling back can be helpful like not trying to do all of this necessarily in the moment.
Lauren: And changing the way that we respond as parents or adults. It's kind of like learning a foreign language. Like it's so new to us and it's so unfamiliar and in some ways uncomfortable, you're going to mess it up. Like you do that when you're in a foreign country and you do it all the time. So giving yourself grace for…
Laura: Yes.
Lauren: …times we don't get it right and that's fine.
You're learning, they're learning, we're all learning and then just kind of reflecting and thinking about how can I change that for next time. How can I make improvements for next time in those needs areas too? It's not always just one like you could double up…
Laura: Oh, of course.
Lauren: Like the need money control and self-regulation.
But I think working on those things preventatively to when we can't do at the moment and if there's too much elevation and heat going on there working out preventatively beforehand when they are calm.
Laura: Yeah.
Lauren: Or later when they're calm again. But essentially what's going on in the child's brain, there's a really great hand signal. It's developed from Dan Siegel's work, but it's actually from Georgetown University, they took it and really brought it down to a much more simplified level. So they tuck them fingers on top of your thumb and...
Laura: You guys can't see Lauren but she's making a fist with the thumb tucked in to the fist of her fingers, her forefingers over top of her thumb. And you have maybe seen videos of me where I'm using this same signal to demonstrate this. So I have a video on my Instagram page for example, that shows this signal. But yes, keep going. Explain it to us what's happening here.
Lauren: You're tucking your thumb across your hand and then you're wrapping your four fingers around your thumb. And it's a child's brain and the thumb represents what Georgetown we call the barking dog. So it's your emotional control center. And what's happening in those moments where the children are displaying behaviors is that the dog barks. So then use your thumb to show like a dog barking and it means emotional elevation. And when that happens, the four fingers across the top who represent the wise owl or the thinking brain, they get scared by the barking of a dog and it flies away.
Laura: Oh, I love this and I've never heard it explained just so beautifully like this. This is the way you can explain it to your children, too. Lauren, if it's okay with you, I'm going to post a video of you explaining it, on when this episode goes out so people can see what you're doing because it's so helpful. Okay.
Lauren: What that means is if dog is barking and it scared away the wise owl and it's you know if a child is emotionally elevated and their logic and their thinking is like not, it's not accessible like you have to calm the barking dog, you have to get them to like calm down first before you can have any type of rational conversation or redirection or anything like that because they don't have access to their thinking brain they can't even understand here follow through, make a move. So the first step is just to get the dog to stop barking.
Laura: Yeah.
Lauren: The emotional energy just come back down.
Laura: Yeah and I think it's so important to understand too as parents is that we have a barking dog often too. And so, and kids are still you know especially our youngest ones who are five and under there are still very regulated by our state, you know that our state of minors and kind of our physiological regulation is something that they are very attuned to still. And so if we are triggered or upset by what's going on and we've got a barking dog in our brains and our wise owl has also fled the building, then we're really stuck right? Like then it's because how on earth can we help the kids parking dog calm down and have them return to a kind of rational thought. We ourselves aren't there, right?
Lauren: Absolutely.
Laura: Yeah. It's so important for me too, you know, as a systems thinkers and my, you know, my degree is in family systems. Kids are never in isolation. They are always embedded in the system that they're in and the adults that they are being cared for their teacher, their parents are a huge part of their experience, you know? And so it's so important to remember that our state and their states are not happening in isolation. Right? There's a feedback loops there.
Okay, so then how do we go about calming the barking dog for our kiddos and for ourselves?
Lauren: Yeah, it would be easier to do adults first because we have a little bit more emotional maturity. We should have more parts of our brain fully developed. So it should be a little bit easier for us to calm ourselves though when we are in constant states of stress or anxiety, we tend to jump into one or the other side of the nervous system, which again makes it hard to think clearly and that becomes a more stable state for us. So it's even more important now that we find ways to neutralize so that neutralizing and getting back to balance and equilibrium is our stable state and not one of those heightened energy states.
Laura: Yeah. And I think it is so important to note here too that yeah, we have more experience in the world, more time having spent, you know trying to regulate our emotions, but most of us didn't learn how to do this as kids. Most of us have really poor mechanisms for attempting to return to calm. We stuff, we dismiss, we push away, you know, we berate ourselves, we shame ourselves, we judge ourselves as in an attempt to regulate our emotions, but that's not really what you mean by regulation. Is that… that's not how we actually down regulate.
Lauren: No. Do you think about two for each child, even like within your own family, like each child within your family might be a different response tool and you would need something different maybe based on what motivates you, what you enjoy what you like. So like for example for me when I feel like I am in those heightened states, I will do a couple of things.
So if I have access to it, I will just step outside for a few minutes. Step outside, get some fresh air, take some deep breaths, 30 seconds to a minute, I can come back and that works well for me. I may not work well for someone else. Some deep breathing could work well for some people or it may not getting a drink of water could be helpful, a crunchy or chewy snack can be really like de-escalate the jaw muscles and can really be helpful.
Maybe it's turning on a song for a minute dancing. Maybe it's doing some like physical exercise. Like maybe you can just do some like wall push ups or like some squats or something just to get your blood pumping and get your oxygen going to your system and just really bring you down. Everything about like what kind of feels good to you? Like what are some things that you do as an adult that when you do them, you feel really good and can you embed like micro snippets of that into your day when you're feeling stressed out?
Laura: Yes. Oh my gosh, I love this. And so this is like almost like preventative maintenance. You know how we hear with kids, we need to spend, you know, 10-20 minutes a day connecting with them as a form of preventative maintenance to build that strong connection. We have to be doing this with ourselves too. And I think that parents, you know, think like we're talking about self-care here, but I mean we're talking about real self-care and we're talking about sustainable self-care. Self-care that's built into the rhythm and the fabric of your life, kind of self-care. Like I have a little bit of a tea ritual that I do that's soothing and calming.
So every time I feed my kids, I also make myself a cup of tea. And there's a part like when I'm preparing the meal where I mindfully like as a kind of almost a meditative practice where I'm preparing a cup of tea for myself and that's just built into the rhythm of our day and it's always a touchpoint for me to, you know. If we think about we all have this kind of windows of tolerance and when our window of tolerance is narrowed, we are more reactive. We can are less able to flexibly handle the stressors of being a parent and little practices like what you're talking about, widen that window and then they're on hand and our practice and almost habits for when we are overwhelmed. You know?
Lauren: Yeah, and we might use them more reactively initially. Like you'll, you'll feel the sensation, you're like, okay, I need to use that. Sometimes it will be too strong and it will override and you won't use the practice and that's fine. That's where you give yourself grace. You're like, okay, I didn't use it, it's okay next time I recognize I didn't use it the next time I'm going to try and use it. And then you may remember next time and then you feel good and you get that motivation, all those happy chemicals in your body and like I feel good, I'm gonna use that again.
It becomes like you said a habit or pattern that becomes more natural and then what the ideal thing to do is once you've got that kind of figured out that reactive response is trying to shift it and make it more preventative, like even embedding those things before, like if you know a certain time your day is going to be more stressful, like go ahead and do those things before that moment even comes up. Like if you know breakfast is gonna be stressful, go ahead and go outside and like take your deep breaths or whatever before breakfast starts, you're already like grounded and feeling good before you go into breakfast.
Laura: Yes, this is something that I use, so one of my kids does not transition off of screen time. Well, so when her show was ending, I always go and join her five minutes before it's ending. But in the five minutes before that five minutes before I do something for myself to center myself, make a plan for myself, refocus on this is what happens sometimes, this is how it goes. Sometimes this is what I'll do if it goes this way and I'm prepared for it and then I go in and better able to handle that situation.
Oh, I love this. Okay, so I think that it's hard sometimes for parents, we don't know what soothes us. I love that you're inviting folks to, to find that out for themselves to figure out, like what is it that helps me feel calm, what is it that feels good to me? What is something I can do to bring myself back to center, back to balance? I love that this is an area.
Lauren: I recognize that a lot of adults don't necessarily know. We actually, that's one of the courses the self-care course goes through like a whole personality profiling. So you take multiple personality types quizzes and you record the data and then you go through when you find the similarities between the personality types and that will drive you to your core values and things that really make you feel good and that that list then it's like, okay, here are all the things that I do or that I like or that I enjoy. I now have them in front of me. I just need to align my common coping mechanisms to this list because now I know what the things are.
Laura: Yeah, I love that. And I also, I encourage my clients and students to do something similar and then once they have it to make kind of like a menu for themselves of things that are kind of like the appetizers or the tapas that our little pieces that hold you over to the bigger stuff and then the main courses and then the desserts, you know like I like posting it like you would a take out menu on your refrigerator, you know, and having it available for yourself. So good. Okay, so then how does that all of this translate them to our kids. So once we've got our wise owl back in line, back at our disposal, how do we help our kids?
Lauren: Absolutely. So similar approach. Like they may not again know what it is that they like that calms them. That feels good. So it's a little bit of like intentional watching. Like I try and watch kids do some observations like okay, they're playing that game. That game really seems to keep them mellow or calm and just kind of making no of those things that I see in the environment and then asking them because sometimes they do know sometimes they know more than we realize. So they might know what makes them feel good and what makes them calm down.
Laura: I think they often no more than I realized that when we give the design to.
Lauren: Yeah, human biology is like knows it. We just don't always were not able to like always pull it out or say it. We do have the answers inside of us. I believe that as well.
Laura: I think that we are so kids are so used to us not asking them to, they don't even know sometimes that they know until we start consistently asking them encouraging them to check-in and think about them and listen to their intuitions for themselves and I think those are beautiful skills to be building with our kids, you know.
Lauren: You're so fine. That was good. It was a great introduction. I don't notice something in the environment and they don't give me enough data themselves. Then what I'll do is I'll start to just share options that I know of. So there could be things like I mean there are all types of breathing, like I sometimes breathing isn't motivating for kids but you can find ways to make breathing more motivating. Like for young kids, there are all kinds of like animal breasts, interactive breath, things that they can blow on, blow in like so.
Laura: one of my favorite ones is to have a big bowl of water with a little bit of soap in it and then have them blow bubbles through a straw in through the nose and out through the mouth. Those are, it's a great way to and that kids like love who, what kid doesn't like to blow bubbles in a bowl of water, you know?
Lauren: Absolutely. The straw is a great point I heard this is a seminar one time that when you breathe in your nose and out through a straw, the ratio is 1 to 2 and you want to breathe slower out than you do in.
Laura: Yeah, it forces and yeah, it forces them out like a like a longer out-breath which is good and shifts you into a different nervous system pathway into Yeah, so yeah, yeah, absolutely, I love that. Good. Well, so I just want to ask a little bit. So we've been focusing on kind of how to kind of get kids calm and back to balance and I know that you and I feel similarly about how behavior is a form of communication.
There is a lot of focus I think in the parenting world, on how to get kids to stop doing challenging behaviors and I like that So far our conversation has been more focused on understanding the challenging behaviors, understanding what the underlying cause for the challenging behaviors. I think that that's a really important part of the conversation, but there's still, I think, a tendency, a very natural and normal tendency for parents to want the behaviors to stop, you know, to want compliance. I heard you use the word comply earlier.
They to want compliance, to want the, to not see those behaviors as much anymore. And so they look for methods that stop behaviors and I'm just kind of curious about what you think about that when we focus on reducing behaviors versus maybe some of the things that we've been talking about so far.
Lauren: Yeah, my concern like our impulsive desire still even like having this background in that way too. Like I just want screaming to stop.
Laura: Me too for sure. Oh my gosh, Lauren everybody who listens regularly knows that my kids are always pretending to be dragons and they're loud. Dragons are loud and sometimes I just want them to not be dragons in my house. Absolutely. So of course this desire to just stop is there all the time? All right. I interrupted you.
Lauren: So you're fine. I love those injections cause they're so funny. They're so personal, their lived experiences. But I think when we just focus on stopping the behavior, my concern becomes well that behavior just manifest itself in a different way. We may stop this one pathway of behavior, but because the need hasn't been met because we haven't gotten to the underlying cause of the behavior, will it just shift and display itself? Like maybe we stop the trial from screaming but now do they start hitting or you know, just just for.
Laura: Yeah, there's different methods for approaching behaviors and there's a very behavioral approach to getting a behavior to stop and we can get behaviors to stop in the short term using things like punishments, rewards and timeouts. Kind of more behavioral approaches to challenging behaviors with kids when they're used properly. That there's research to show that they do work. And I'm using work with quotation marks because the behaviors stop.
And I just was hoping that maybe we could just have a little bit of a conversation about what do we mean when we say the word work? Right? So like when we want to know like is this going to work oftentimes we mean is the behavior going to stop. Right? I was hoping that we could just, I don't know, talk about and maybe give parents a different understanding of a way to conceptualize work. We know something is working, you know, what do you think about that?
Lauren: Yeah, it goes back to that five needs areas. Like if we get like I have a child is seeking attention and we just get them to stop nagging us because we want to stop the behavior and that need has never been met. And I just wonder like in the future because of the way we responded to that, like are they still going to seek attention from other people in other ways?
In inappropriate ways? Like it would be better to think about what the need is, make sure the need is met and that way in the future that need isn't still coming up for them in different ways. In inappropriate ways are ways that could be more hurtful or harmful. So I'm just thinking about the long term because the short term is like stop the behavior. But what's the long-term impact of just stopping you?
Laura: Right? I think the focusing on kind of the long game is so important. And I think also that a lot of the techniques that get you quick results, like fast in the moment, stop results. They don't actually teach the kid what to do instead, right? They don't teach the skills many of us really believe that when kids have challenging behavior as it happens because they don't really have the skills that they need to meet the expectations in that moment, they don't have the, you know, the, either the self-regulation abilities or the communication abilities or kind of what they need to be able to tell us without those behaviors, what they need in that moment.
That really they just have, like, this kind of Dr. Ross Screen calls them unsolved problems and lagging skills that are getting in the way, you know? And so, a time out might make them stop nagging us, you know? Or if we say, you know, for every time you ask me that question again, if they're asking the same question over and over again, every time you ask me that question, I'm going to take away one minute of screen time, let me stop them asking the question.
But like, question asking like that usually is a form of connection seeking a behavior, right? Like you said, that need is not, it doesn't teach them how to say, hey mom, I really would love you for to just chat with you for five minutes, will you sit down with me? Like, I mean, I think if a three-year-old said that to their mom, their mom would be like, oh yeah, I'll sit down with you, I want to hear exactly what you say, but instead, we get the like, but what about this? But what about this? But what about this? And we don't see it as this is my kid asking me to sit down and have a moment of community with them, you know, and look to just get it to stop and it doesn't teach them the skills they need. I don't know, I feel like I just went a little bit on a tangent there, but.
Lauren: I completely agree with you though. I mean again the long-term effects and what are we doing to meet this need so that they don't keep coming up again and to build that relationship is so important. And then also give them the skills that they need to thrive in everyday life. Like we are have these kids that are growing into young adults and they don't understand how they feel and I don't understand what needs they have and that aren't getting met and how to meet them appropriately.
And then we have people who are in the world who I just don't understand how to respond and deal with emotions and don't understand why certain behaviors are happening, but if we start that at a young age and we do our best to not respond and react to stopping the behavior actually teaching them skills, they don't make them so much more successful later in life.
But I think all parents want like we want our kids to be independent, successful, empathetic and passionate beings and that starts within childhood teaching them, you know why these behaviors are happening and how to stop them and how to get the needs met and all of those things instead of just jumping to like stop and then they question things as adults like I don't know what I'm feeling or what I'm doing or why I'm acting this way.
Laura: Yeah, I think it's so important to focus on that long game perspective, you know, for I think when we think about like is this going to work? When is this going to work? And if we are saying that to ourselves as we are making efforts to change or parenting, we have to spend a little time on just even just journaling about like what do I mean by work, what does work mean? You know? And I mean, I think even like we have, I know we have educators who listen to this podcast too, like that is the same in the classroom to like when is this going to work, is this approach going to work? I think we really have to spend time thinking about like what do we mean by work? What is our actual goal here and purposely moving beyond a short-term goal?
I mean, of course, there's times when short term goals, goals have to take precedent like if a three-year-olds running towards the street or you know, a five-year-old is hitting the three-year-old in the classic, you know, or like somebody's throwing something like of course we need immediate stopping, you know, like those are things where that has to happen, but when there's time when it's not an emergency, you know.
Lauren: I think that the neural connections, to go a little bit science and.
Laura: oh please go sciences, we love it here, we love nerding science here.
Lauren: Your brain is making me, it's like firing and these connections are wiring together and that becomes your default, then you can default pathway or default behavior and what's happening is like when we just stop these behaviors, these neural connections aren't necessarily being made, just being like cut off, but if we instead nurture these choices and these behaviors and these things that these neural connections are made and then we do it again, it gets stronger and gets stronger and gets stronger and this becomes our default pathway and we want this to become our default pathway, not this broken pathway or this very insecure pathway that is just stopping behaves from happening. So we want to essentially change our child's brain chemistry like we want to create these neural networks, these strong connections that wire them in the direction for success later in life, and sometimes those quick fixes don't do that.
Laura: Oh my gosh, so beautifully stated, Yes, that's what we're doing right as parents, we are wiring their brain. Yeah, okay, so can we go a little bit deeper into kind of how to go about building kind of those good supportive pathways for our kids, helping them build those strong neural connections that are going to be supportive for them as they grow.
Lauren: Yeah, for sure. I think that starts with us and the adults in the family, I think about like what are your family? Like I always have families with the activity of family values like what do you, what are like 3-5 things that you value as a family? Okay then let's break that down into okay, these are your values, these are these broad concepts, but for kids to be able to understand them like maybe like respect as a value like we are respectful as a family, okay, what does respect look like in all areas with respect look like in the grocery store, at school, in the kitchen at bedtime and just kind of break it down to like what do the behaviors that fall into each of those areas?
And then we slowly start to teach kids those expectations what those behaviors look like and reinforce them and by doing so we are making those connections and our wiring those connections that those other behaviors happen and that they fall under the, this value category. So now these Children are developed neurologically too, be respectful, be kind be courteous, like whatever you get your values are but it also takes a lot of shifting with us as well, like these mirror neurons, so what we do becomes what they do, so.
Laura: they're learning your modeling. Yeah. And I think too that many of our defaults, the things that we're wired in us as children and have been wired kind of repeatedly as we age, that those defaults often undermined some of our deeper values and goals. So if we are one of our values and our families that we are respectful of each other, but then we tell our kids, you know, that they can't wear what they want to, to school or you know, we get in there and we're controlling with them or we shame or punish them because of how we were parented, how we think it's supposed to go then sometimes our practices.
I think don't always align with what we state our values to be. You know, kids are so good at spotting hypocrisy. My kids give us feedback all the time where like so risk being respectful of everybody like that's a big value in our family and there are plenty of times where unintentionally we are not respectful of their bodies or of you know, their needs in those moments and my kids are so good at giving us that feedback. You know, mom, I feel like you're not listening to me mom, my needs matter to you know, like just beautiful language, advocating for themselves.
Lauren: Yeah. And you can do a little like check-in some reflect like I encourage the families, your family dinner, like bring up your values, like can we all think of one way we were respectful today, can we think of one way we can grow like just having little points of reflection for both them and for you to make sure that you're all staying on track and, and holding each other accountable.
Laura: Yeah, I think that that's so important. I know too that you would like to talk about communication and communication that was, you know, we've been talking about how kids have these stress responses and we've been talking about the barking dog and the wise owl. What are some ways that'll tie into our nervous system and if we've got a kid’s nervous system is on high alert and highly activated, how can we go about? What are some communication strategies that we can use to help them come down?
Lauren: We want to use things to keep that barking dog from starting to bark and there are different ways to do that. So developed a whole course in my top seven, the ones I've developed a runabout, maybe just a few of those which ones we would use.
Laura: Don't share. You know, we can't overwhelm.
Lauren: Yeah, some of the secrets you think, oh gosh, I probably my favorite one and this one can be hard for families and for adults because like you have to tap into your inner child kind of allow yourself to be vulnerable here. But the one I probably use most frequently is humor. So how can I embed humor to get compliance to get kids to shift or change behaviors or listen? And the reason being is because when you add humor and I'll give you an example here in a second and the dog is barking or not yet, barking humor takes a child from their emotional brain up into their thinking brain insane for adults.
Like if you are really upset by something and you get exposed to like a funny gift for funny meme or something funny, it will shift you up into your thinking brain. So I try and use that one a lot gets kids out of this brain and gets them into their thinking brain. But an example for young kids, like an easy way for me to do this because again if you're stressed out at the moment, it's kind of hard to act funny or be funny. I will just make objects talk. Like for example, a child, remember a couple years ago he would come in his mom and pack his lunch and you always want to eat the snacks first. You won't want to eat good food first.
The teacher would always take the snacks until you get a good food and they would just sit there and not eat lunch and they would have lunch. So I think we get it later. But it was a whole ordeal and I was like, let's just try something here. So I think he had, like some grapes or something in his lunch box that she wanted him to eat first. So I started making his stomach talk as if like I were the stomach and the stomach was so hungry for a great, just please just give me one grape. And he was like giggling and laughing a degree.
But I'm like the stomach So happy. And I was talking as the stomach more grapes give me more grapes. And within 30 seconds all the groups were gone and I was like so easy. Like that took me a minute to get compliance versus you know, he's fighting for control. I'm not eating this food, I want that food. I'm just not going to eat. I'm going to maintain control if I add a level of an element of humor in a very easy fun way. That doesn't take too much time or energy. Suddenly he's compliant.
Laura: Yeah.
Lauren: like tooth brushing, shoes, clothes, eating like all these different things.
Laura: I think it's so important to, to frame this. You know, so that's play, right? You were inviting him into play, which is a way that kids very wisely and very easily and very naturally used to do the things that they need to do in their life. They have not separated the work of life from play yet. For most kids, most kids are still very close to them and it's their language, right? And so I think it's really important to differentiate this from being manipulative, right? So we are not manipulating the child were speaking their language.
We are dropping in to play with them in a way that will make kind of what they need to do a little bit easier. You know, like how can we just make this a little bit easier, a little bit more fun And what a beautiful skill to have in your life. I mean, there's things that like, oh my gosh, laundry is my least favorite thing to do and I can make it playful. It goes so much faster. I'm really not very good at making it playful, but when my five-year-old folds laundry with me, oh my gosh, we have so much fun doing it together. You know, should we like we make the little things that were folding talk. You know, and I mean, it's so much fun.
Their kids are so wise in the way that they use play and we can join them in that I think I'll play is such a lovely tool. You know, I used to think that it was a form of manipulation, but I really don't think it that way anymore. I really think that it is a, you know, when we go to a foreign country, you know, and we go to a place where we, you know, that language is not our first language.
There's nothing more respectful to the folks that live there, then at least attempting to speak their language. You know, there's nothing more respectful than that. And it's languages play than what could be more respectful than attempting to speak their language when they've got to do hard things. And in my experience, very few Children can resist like the shoe monster who wants to eat their toes when you're trying to get the shoes on when you go out the door, very few Children can, can resist that.
Lauren: You can translate it to kids of different ages. Like that's great for like three or four or five years old. I'm like, you know, there are ways to do it for kids in primary school, in middle school, and high school and it looks very different to take a moment and think about what would make kids of those age.
Those they just laugh and maybe it wouldn't be like making things talk. But even for some primary school, like, I've used like foreign languages and my accents are shameful. Like I would adult, heard me, anyone in any other country heard me trying, It's horrible. But the kids love it are then fully engaged or like teens, maybe it's through like gifts or jokes or memes or something that feels a little bit more of their level. But you know, whatever you can do to get them to laugh or two experience that level of humor. We'll flip them up to the top of the brain, which we want.
Laura: Yeah, I love that. Yes. My kids also enjoy when I use an accent that's also helpful. And there will be times where I will be kind of being playful with my eight year old and she's like, mom, I know what you're doing, but okay, let's do it. You know, like she was like, here for it even though like she wants me to know like she knows that I'm just, you know, being playful because we got, to get this done, but she's still here for it. You know, I don't, I mean, I think that that's beautiful. I do you have other examples of like what playfulness would look like for the tweens and teens? Because I know we have a, a few of those folks who listen to this podcast, and then my kids aren't there yet. So I haven't practiced that as much. You have some idea?
Lauren: It's definitely harder because they are more challenging if you have like a comedian like those that each group is the hardest to like break lap. But I have done a lot of memes and GIFs, like funny images online or funny things online. I've done a lot with like note writing to like kind of a silly, funny playful notes because it seems to remove the energy and it's more like it's coming from the note and not from the person and they know that it's coming from the person, but teams scene and tweens to seem pretty receptive to note-taking, especially as a note that like in-site sent to say something back.
Like the note-taking back and forth are taking note writing a lot of the notes and sometimes just like breaking out a little bit of dance like that they act kind of embarrassed at first but I think that internally like they're like this is really funny, this is like my energy is shifting and changing. I'm not gonna participate because I'm too cool for that but inside they're feeling that shift.
Laura: Or even just like oh my gosh, this is so mortifying, I just got to get this to stop. So just to get it to stop.
Lauren: I imagine the energy of like a child getting to stop in that situation versus like a heated head to head like verbal argument. Like it's very different energy that is being exchanged.
Laura: when you're laughing with people, when you are joking around, when you're having fun and playing, you're also connecting, right? So this builds these are things that rather than rupturing a relationship with your child, actually build and maintain the relationship. I think we often think that conflict is by its very nature disconnecting and really conflict has the potential of course to be disconnecting. But it also has the potential to be very connecting very an opportunity to hear and understand and connect on a deeper level with someone. Yeah, that's beautiful. Lauren, thank you so much. Where can people find you and learn more from you.
Lauren: Yeah, the best place is probably the website, thebehaviorhub.com. You can email any avenue, on there for coaching support and there's quite a few online courses all around these topics we discussed today. It's not social media is the second alternative, not quite as interactive, on there, but either of those spots would be easy access to me and great resources.
Laura: Okay, we'll have all of those in the show notes and I encourage you all to go out and check out what Lauren got going on. She's got so much great stuff and I really appreciate this conversation with you today. Thank you.
Lauren: Thank you.
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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.