I am so excited for today's episode on The Balanced Parent Podcast because our guest is one of my favorite authors. She's got a great book that you may already have read: Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children’s Behavioral Challenges. Plus a brand new book we are going to be discussing that will radically change the way you approach your child's challenging behaviors! Her work has transformed the lives of so many children and families, including my own, and I am so excited to share what I have learned from her with you!

I know learning to understand our kid's challenging behaviors can be really difficult as there's so much for us to uncover. And so for this episode, we will be figuring out how to see beyond our kids' challenging behaviors and really dig deep and understand what's going on for them, the underlying reasons for why they are the way they are, and how to support them more fully. To help us, Dr. Mona Delahooke has joined me in this conversation. She is a licensed clinical psychologist with more than thirty years of experience caring for children and their families. She is a senior faculty member of the Profectum Foundation and a member of the American Psychological Association. She is a frequent speaker, trainer, and consultant to parents, organizations, schools, and public agencies.

Here is an summary of our conversation:

The importance of looking beyond our children’s behaviors
Difference between stress behavior and intentional misbehavior (This is IT!)
The importance of knowing our child's nervous system
Co-regulation: Why is it important? And how to do it?
Advice on raising resilient kiddos

To get more resources, follow Dr. Delahooke on social media and visit her website.

Instagram: @monadelahooke

Twitter: @monadelahooke

Facebook Page: Mona Delahooke, Phd

Website: monadelahooke.com

Dr. Mona's new book BRAIN-BODY PARENTING: How to Stop Managing Behavior and Start Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids is on-sale today!

GRAB A COPY HERE

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 and on this episode of The Balanced Parent podcast, we are going to be figuring out how to see beyond our kids' challenging behaviors and figure out what's really going on for them and how to help them and to guide us in. This conversation is one of my favorite writers. Her name is Dr. Mona Delahooke. She's got a great book Beyond Behaviors and she's got a new book coming out called Brain-Body Parenting that is going to change the way we see our children and see ourselves and see our role as parents. So Mona, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm so excited to talk to you.

Mona: Oh, I am equally as excited Laura. I'm just thrilled to be here so much to talk about.

Laura: Oh, there is so much to talk about. Right before we were hitting the record, I mentioned to Mona that this book was the next one that I was going to ask my husband to read because we've got a kiddo in our lives who can be quite reactive, you can have kind of some big challenging behaviors seemingly out of the blue. And I know that this book will help him understand her in a way that I do because of my background and training, but he doesn't have that background and training.

And I think that, that's one thing one of that is so important about your book is that most of us don't have this kind of basic knowledge of our nervous systems and what's going on kind of under the surface, not just for kids, but for ourselves too. I just so appreciate that you bring that to this book in a way that parents can actually learn and then see visually happening in their kids lives with their kids.

Mona: Thank you so much for that affirmation because it's kind of the lens that I wish I would have had looking back on myself as a young mother who struggled so much and who couldn't find anybody to tell me that there was different lens other than pathology in myself or my child or my own dark thoughts that I wasn't a good enough parent, you know, and why am I losing it? So, thank you for that. It's a great joy for me to talk about it in this end of my life where I've got grown children and I've seen clients in my office for three decades now I can speak with confidence and I'm so grateful if this can help one parent at a time, feel more compassion for themselves, then my day is good.

Laura: Oh! What a mission to have. Right? Hmm, that's good stuff. Okay, so you hit on something there that I just want to pull out because I do think that when parents are dealing with struggles with their child, when their child is behaving in a way that they think might be somewhat developmentally appropriate, but also seems kind of extreme and that they don't really see other kids doing and we go to seek help for it often times either the kid gets blamed.

There's something wrong with the kid or we get blamed that there's something wrong with how we've been doing things. We don't have enough limits or boundaries, we’re pushovers, we’re permissive or we’re, you know, too strict, too harsh for those folks who are in that place, who are trying to figure out like what do I do with these kids? What do I do with myself? What would you say to them?

Mona: Yeah. Well, the first thing I would say to them is be prepared to get a lot of noise from the world about what's going on. You know, and it's well intentioned noise. I'm not saying that pediatricians and teachers and even those in our own field of psychology, Laura, aren't well intentioned, they are. But the training just really hasn't been updated. The lens by which we view behavioral challenges, has not been updated in the last Say 50-75 years. It's so true and that's because system change takes a long time.

But also the decade of the brain was not that long ago. So with compassion for the human beings who are trying to do the research, it hasn't translated for parents. And so parents suffer a lot. We suffer when I say we, you know, I had a child who had developmental differences and regulatory issues. And the only framework that I was given were like the DSM Diagnosis situation, like it could be X. Y or Z.

Which as you know, is very limited. And the demons in my head saying, you know, oh, my own dark childhood, maybe he's catching up with my children or genetics. All these things that I was taught in graduate school, right? But my story has a coda, it has a really wonderful piece to it and that was that about 30 years ago I had a colleague who was in the same position but she wanted to go into neuroscience studying neuroscience and she had twins who were struggling. And she contacted this neuroscientist named Dr. Stephen Porges who was actually doing research on the nervous system on the brain and body.

So I was introduced to a lens shift very early in my career and that changed my life over the years. Of course it took me quite a while to integrate it, to study it and to practice it to make sure I was able to say with confidence that there is a new way to view behavioral challenges other than through the lens of pathology or through the lens of self blame and that's basically what beyond behaviors was about.

A new lens that blends compassion with brain science so that you have the evidence that you need to say, oh wow, it's not because I'm a bad parent or I'm inconsistent in my discipline or I have to do a better sticker chart. It's about two nervous systems trying really hard to stay safe to survive and to make it through the day.

Laura: Yeah, I really love that. I love your emphasis that there's two nervous systems that play. I think so often as parents, we’re, are given the message that we really just need to focus on the child's nervous system but ours plays a big role in it too. So, okay, let me ask you a question then.

So when we think about kind of looking beyond children's behaviors or coming to understand that not all behaviors that a child is kind of engaging in, particularly the ones that we classify as challenging or misbehaving are actually willful because I think that that's something that trips parents up a lot. Parents think, well, I know he can do this without having a tantrum. I know that she can, you know, she knows not to hit her sibling. So she must be choosing to do. So she must be choosing these bad behaviors. What do you say to that?

Mona: That is brilliant. And I get it. We're thinking, wait a second. They just did they were able to do it an hour ago. What's with the program and now they're flipping out, throwing things at their sibling. And to be honest, if it doesn't piss you off as a parent, then, you know, you're in the minority because that would be like, oh my gosh, you just did that. I know you can do it try harder. I know you can do it, try harder. Come on. All right.

Laura: So what's really happening then?

Mona: Here's one way of looking at it. We're not distinguishing between top down and bottom or body of behaviors and a little way of an easy way of thinking about that is that top down behaviors are all mediated by a child's effort and thinking about it. In other words, I'm choosing to slap my sibling right now and you're actually thinking about it through your brain. But not all behaviors are mediated. Not all behaviors are top down our culture doesn't know that yet. We really think of all behaviors as being a choice.

So there's something called the autonomic nervous system which is basically our brain and body connection we think of as a neural platform, a brain body based platform that launches behaviors. Sometimes in children oftentimes in toddlers. But even if sometimes as adults, we have behaviors launched their protective subconsciously to our bodies, but end up being very challenging. And for our children, we have to remember that the thresholds for our ability to control our behaviors float throughout the day and that is why your child may be able to comply with the task one hour and the next hour they can't because their platform has shifted towards a deficit and they are unable at that moment to control their behaviors.

Laura: And so, okay, so then how does a parent know when that's happening when the child's kind of platform has shifted when their capacity has narrowed to the point where they can't handle something that they could handle before?

Mona: That's the huge question and it's not always easy to distinguish. Let me just say that in our field the research, you know, some of the older research said that there are signatures on the face, for example, that you can tell what a child is feeling by looking at their facial expression. But actually that research has is being challenged very strongly by the work of neuroscience, some neuroscientists in affective neuroscience and how emotions are constructed. But let me just say that the way I found that's the most useful is that we look like clusters of markers, what we call physiological markers on your child's face and body.

And that way you'll know if the child's physiology is producing a shaky platform, what does that mean? For example, your child may have different ways of moving their body if they are throwing, kicking, hitting, screaming, foaming at the mouth if they're crying. If their voices really strained and whiny and loud and controlled. Those are some signs of a signature autonomic distress or of what we call the fight or flight response. Like the, I call it the red pathway. Is the child or am I in the red? Is there a rapid heart rate? Sometimes you can put your hand gently and maybe if the child looks you, if they're a little one on their chest or in their in their back and you can feel that heart rate just like racing.

That's one sign. We look at clusters, not just one because a child could have a racing heart because they're playing and having fun, right? And they're excited. But we look for signs of distress and what I call the red pathway and in the book and Beyond Behaviors. And in my new book, Brain-Body Parenting. I lay out all of those lists of things that we look for. So you can actually tabulate in your child if they're calm in their nervous system. If we could, if they're in the green, what we call it, the green pathway, meaning their body is common, alert, then we might say, okay, this child is being a scientist.

They're trying to test this limit and their physiology is supporting that. I go one way with my parenting, right? That's certainly happens as we all know because children are scientists there have to discover the limits of their own authority. That's fine. But if a child is out of control of their physiology, we go another way. And as I know, you know, because I've listened to some of your podcasts, compassion can lead the way of those directions. We can always be empathic and kind not that it's easy, we can tell ourselves like Ross Greene says, children do well if they can. I do believe that parents do well when they can. We just sometimes we can't.

Laura: Oh my gosh, I love parents so much. I have so much compassion for them for us. You know, for yes, you said something there that I just want to pull out that I feel like not very many people can say. You said they might be on the green pathway, you know, and testing the limits of their own, you know, autonomy and you said and that's fine. And I just want to like highlight because this lens shift is important.

Being able to see like this limit testing is not about defiance, it's not about disobedience, it's not about authority, it's not about them disrespecting you, it's about a biological developmental drive to figure out their world and like and when we can have a like and that's fine attitude about it, it releases it so much. I'm so glad you tease that out.

Mona: I'm so glad you tease that out because for some parents that could sound like almost trivializing it and let me say, yeah, the reason I said and that's fine is that I've seen it work out. I've worked with, you know now probably thousands of families either virtually or in person and then you see these testing behaviors and while they're happening in the moment, especially thinking about teenagers, like I'm thinking as a mom when I'm like, and that's fine. Yeah. How did I feel when my child, you know, snuck in a phone to school when cell phones were not allowed right?

And I get called at the moment and did not feel fine, but I can tell you now that I've gone through teenager hood with three children that these behaviors that humans do to test out their authority starting in toddlerhood thank goodness they have them because if they didn't they would never leave us and as hard as it seems or as sad as it seems when you have little children for your children to be independent and go to college if they want to or live on their own. The reason these behaviors are there is that they can survive on their own one day. So this parenting journey is one heck of an emotional trip. But when you see your child doing some of these behaviors that your neighbors or maybe even your own parents might be like oh my gosh what's happening?

Laura: They need a time out.

Mona: Yeah maybe you're not disciplining enough or if a teacher or an IEPT. Maybe again well intentioned lee says perhaps you're inconsistent with your discipline at home. You can tell yourself a different story that behaviors are adaptive and protective, we just have to understand them better.

Laura: Okay and so I feel like this is something that is really important to tease out and and then I want to ask about older kids. So when we say that behaviors are adaptive and protective and when we say that you know when some kids are having really challenging times there on this kind of red pathway in the fight or flight system, tell us a little bit more about how some of these challenging behaviors that we perceive as being challenging, hitting, kicking, spitting, you know, screaming, yelling, how we can start shifting to see them as adaptive and protective because I think that that's a key piece.

Mona: Yeah. And certainly I'm not talking about them being adaptive in the conventional sense, so functionally in our world, in a little preschool, when a child is hitting, that's not adaptive. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is from a neurodevelopmental perspective that they are adaptive to that child's nervous system. What does that mean? It means that through a process called your assumption that I talk about the new book and brain body parenting as our safety detector, it's our safety system detector kind of like a fire alarm for internally.

That's subconscious when that goes off inside a person's body. Whether whether it's a child or an adult, the body is instructed to move in ways, get the child back to feeling calm in human beings through our evolutionary history, that's through movement through movement, can be running away, could be hitting, shoving, it could be kind of hitting your or slapping your mama's face if you're a toddler and oh my gosh, that feels so horrible to us as parents were like, oh my gosh, you know, that's not good.

But what we think about is that this is protective to the child's nervous system and the child doesn't know it, the child's invisible to this, especially toddlers, right? They have their less mediated by their ability to explain themselves and more mediated by this nervous system adaptation to stress, which involves movement. So if you see your child fly off the handle, you can also think their nervous system has shifted into the red path. We get into the red, what I call the red the fight or flight response without their permission. And what we need to do is adaptive lee help them get back to green.

And how do we do that is through our relationship in human beings. We lend our nervous system to another nervous system, our child and we co regulate through our interactions and there are certain ways there's certain keys to unlock for each child. I don't believe in scripts because one script might work great for one kid and but you're often your tone of voice and that sends the child further into the red. So we develop our interactions to customize to each of our child's nervous systems and that is the basically the magic bullet is we customize our interactions to every child's nervous system.

Laura: I love this so much. I get asked for scripts all the time from parents. Yeah, we totally get it. We all want to know what to say. Please just tell us the right thing to do and say so we can be okay, totally understand those things. But the important, I think the piece that you really are highlighting here is that you and I don't know your kid is the one who knows you're the one who has your child and you are the ones with the true capacity for knowing.

Mona: That is absolutely right. And until our child is developmentally able to tell us right. Being able to talk about your internal world and let your parents know what you need is a huge social emotional acquisition. It's a milestone in the process. And so many it takes years and years.

Laura: So many of us are still working on that. Right.

Mona: Right. And that's why sometimes reasoning falls short. But the idea about co regulation affect our emotions through our relationship, basically the research is showing us that our emotional tone is more important than the words we say. And that's where parental self-care and balance and I love again your podcast because it's the balanced parent, a balanced parent. And one that is a little bit mindful. You don't have to be a yogi.

You don't have to do anything that's not you. But if you can observe yourself again, I think about like the stories I tell in brain body parenting or on myself. I was living in an out of body experience. There were times where I forgot to drink water during the day and I was you know like so disconnected from my body because I was so busy parenting and working that when we can self observe, why am I hungry? Am I thirsty? Where are my emotions right now? Am I red or green? Then we can be that co regulator. Research shows us the best thing for a nervous system in distress is the another nervous system who loves them and who is not in distress?

Laura: Mm hmm. Yeah.

Mona: And it's, it might sound like a lot of pressure but we have to take pressure off ourselves because there's so much redundancy in our system so we can ruptures are going to happen more often than repairs.

Laura: I love that part of your book. Listeners, I hope you do pick up her book, but there's an entire section that kind of describes the importance of rupture and repair and the reality that there will be more ruptures than kind of getting it spot on perfect. And that's okay.

Mona: And that's okay. We are not our children, our children from the moment they're born, they have a different brain and body than we do. And so we'll never know what it's like to live inside of them because we're not them. We love them beyond measure. And we love them more than we've probably ever loved anything in the world.

That's why I think in the scheme of things, repairs are so magical and we don't have to be perfect parents. We don't have to get it right. We can't get it right because we're not them. But what we can do is be keen observers of them and ourselves. And I hope my work will help move the ball forward away from generic parenting advice or what is good for a generic child to helping us figure out what's good for us and what's good for our own beautiful child, one child at a time.

Laura: Oh yes, I love that so much. I so agree with the observation thing. So in my community we spend the entire month of January which we're recording this at that point right now, where my community and I spend an entire month just learning how to be keen observers of our children in their play, a very deep dive into learning how to be non judgmental, present mindful observers, which is so important to what you're teaching in your book. It's a really important skill to build as a parent so that you can figure out what's going on.

Is my kid in the red zone or you know, in the red pathway, I love that you talk about that so much and being a keen observer of ourselves of our own internal states. I want to ask about older kids because that is something that as of my child moves into middle childhood, I have a nine year old, there is so much less out there for older kids. So I do want to move there, but I think before I do, I want to talk a little bit more about co regulation.

I do feel like it is a buzzword that we're hearing a lot and we're hearing about it in marital contexts and with friendships. And with with parenting and I kind of just, I wanna like no, like okay, so as a parent, what does co regulation literally look like in practice with my child when they're just regulated. So let's say just the common scenario. Kiddo is we set a limit there, it's put them onto the red pathway and they're hitting us. What does co-regulation look like in that moment?

Mona: It's the best question because I agree with you, co regulation is getting thrown around so much kind of like a buzzword and everyone's assuming. I think that I don't know what people are assuming about what it means, but some parents I've talked to think that it means just being nice or you know, and there's so many definitions but to me the definition of co regulation is it goes back down to very young developmental stage which continues throughout the lifespan and that is our role as a parent.

Is to help co regulate the physiological state of our child, of our baby, that's our sole role. What does that mean? It means paying attention, feeding the baby when they're hungry, attending to the crying baby or toddler giving attunement which is noticing. So if I had to say the steps of co regulation one the first step in the example you gave the child is just like freaking out. You know…

Laura: We've all been there.

Mona: We've all been there, so two letters, one word, so stop and observe, okay stop for a second and observe two things observe yourself in that moment because if you're nervous system has just gone red with your child, that's valuable information. Have so much compassion like okay stop and observe. I'm in the red, the child's in the red. We got a problem here. And so that little problem is for the moment, what can I do for myself in the moment?

We do take care of our nervous system first because we are the tool were the tool. Our ability to see a human in distress. If a child has just hit a sibling and you know they're a loving child, you know that that was a stress behavior and not an intentional purposeful bad behavior. We need to keep the child safe and then help them get back to green. So keeping the child safe would be making sure your values are projected. No no sweetheart. We, in our family, we do not hit our siblings and oh my sweetheart, how are we going to feel better right now? So we stop and observe and then we attend to that child's nervous system. If we're able to, if we're not we take a few breaths if you have a partner close by a co partner, you know, grab them.

Laura: In my community. We have little code words for when you need to tag and tag out for sure.

Mona: Love it. You love it. Tag somebody. Many parents are single parents or you are not with a person right? Then, you're really needing to pull for that self compassion and find a moment to get back to green because if you're in the red yourself, you likely will not be as effective for your child as if you're in control. So stop and observe and then check in with that child depending on where they are at. If they're up regulated. If their body is needing to move, then we really try to provide that some ability to move their body.

Not a good idea to force a child to sit down. If they're in the red, we really would like to allow the child to move about the room. Of course making sure they're safe, but letting them know that we see their distress. So if we're yelling and screaming at the child and saying that's really bad to hate your sibling. What I want parents to know is that that child as soon as they get back to green is going to feel remorseful and they're not gonna know why they hit their sibling if it truly was a stress reaction and we see this very often in neurodivergent children and in toddlers who are, you know, don't have the capacity yet.

And frankly, you know, a lot of humans, especially through this pandemic are on their knees with their regulations. We have to love and have compassion for those humans who can't control their behaviors right now because they're suffering too.

Laura: Yes. Oh my goodness, they are. You know, something that I do for myself when I'm find myself in the red zone, when my kids are in the red zone, I have a little thing that I say to myself that helps me. So I put my hand on my heart and I say, here I am, I am here. I am safe. I am loved just a few times to just kind of get myself back into my body.

I think that our you know, if that if we're in the red zone, then all our bodies really want to know is am I safe? Right? That's really what they want to know. Yes. You know, and for our kids to and what's beautiful. I think about that too, is that that's good modeling for them. You know.

Mona: It's beautiful or it's so beautiful. This recognition, the stopping and observing so that we can ground ourselves and not beat ourselves up. You know, because sometimes when your child does that, an automatic thought is I've taught them better than that or we might project in the future and think, what kind of person are you going to be in the world?

I have to train you not to be aggressive because then you'll do really bad at school and, you know, our minds go tell a story, of course they do what our child's behavior means. And we can start telling ourselves a news story, starting with ourselves.

Laura: And staying, you know, I found the stories that we tell ourselves are either way in the past, our way in the future. And by observing, we pull ourselves into the present moment where reality is actually happening versus, you know, those stories, you know?

Mona: Yeah, we totally do. And I'm hoping that this knowledge of the different types of behaviors that stress behaviors are qualitatively different than than purposeful misbehaviors that we can start to be more granular in our parenting techniques and use more specific techniques that are better for each issue and child and for each child's nervous system for each town. So it's about customizing our interactions and that is so exciting. That's really fun.

And yeah, it's also hard. I wanted to follow up on another thing that you said about this month for your community and we are not really trained, I think as parents and even as again as as professionals to just follow our child's lead and spend some time marveling at how they play because let's remind ourselves from birth to really, you know, it could be up to 10, I don't know, I played as a 10 year old, but let's say for sure, birth to seven or eight plays the natural language and if we can watch our children play and play with them that oh my goodness.

The research on that is again, it's in the book, You've probably read it, the research on play is through the roof. It's the natural best way to boost our relationship with our child, but also to boost our child's cognitive development, their social development, their emotional development. It's insanely powerful to learn how to play. And most of us don't know how or aren't comfortable with it and that's okay, there's support for that five minutes a day, it can be five minutes, it doesn't have to be all day and then, you know.

Laura: Oh, of course, no. You know, around here we love play and we recognize that parents don't always have the time or energy for it. But yes, five minutes. And, and when, you know how to play with a child, it's much easier than we think it has to be. I think we all think it has to be like we're like being really active and have art using our imaginations and our mental capacity and really when we step back and let the child lead, which is what really they need to have happen anyway.

You know, if they if we think about it from a therapy perspective, if we're sitting down with a therapist and the therapist is doing all the talking, we're not getting the best bang for our buck on that section, Right? And so when it comes to a play session with kids, if we're doing all the playing the kid is not getting the benefit right?

Mona: Absolutely. If you do it in a way that is actually fun for you and there is a way to learn how to do it. It's like you're also having fun both of you but we don't have to do the heavy lifting. In fact we don't recommend that parents don't do the heavy lifting bench following the child's lead. So anyway.

Laura: Absolutely. I had a podcast episode coming out on in January on that exact topic on stop doing the heavy lifting of the play, okay. We talked about this kind of scenario, we envisioned a young child completely on the Redpath hitting and what to do how to engage in co regulation. And I'd like to kind of bring this out to older kids. I think older kids are really struggling in this pandemic and they're not getting a lot of attention.

The parents of nine to kind of 18 year olds that I work with right now, Their kids are we're seeing a huge right like increase in anxiety, depression and ADHD. diagnoses right now and these are you know, manifesting in some big behavioral responses and these kids are bigger now. They're not three, they're not easy to kind of you know scoop up and kind of push put into a place that's safe to keep them safe.

They're big and so what are some of the advice or guidance you have for these parents of these big kids who are struggling. Like it's struggling. They're struggling like legitimately struggling right now.

Mona: Definitely struggling because they're legitimately suffering. So, let's think about just for a moment, like a context for us to understand what our older children that are, you know, think about 9-18, that age range of child is wanting developmentally are launching into the world of peers and launching into their own world.

This is the third year, beginning the third year of the pandemic. That ability to launch into the world has been thwarted. My idea is one of the reasons we're seeing increase such huge increases in depression and anxiety in that demographic is because developmentally they have been put in kind of these artificial cages.

Laura: I so agree, right? It's like, you know, it's like when your kids are learning to walk when they're babies or learning to crawl. Like my kids, both of them went through sleep regressions because they literally couldn't sleep because they would spend all night up on their hands and knees rocking and trying to crawl. You know, it's a developmental imperative for them. It is a development or biologically driven need. And I also agree that these older kids are being caged. They're being confined, confined.

Mona: So let's draw the analogy of the human nervous system and what is the nervous system do when it is sensing threat because it can't move. The symbolism of movement is like our children, we have been telling our children now that you can't move, you can't go back to high school, you're, you know, many of them didn't go back to college? Middle school is a huge movement away from parents and it's that first tentative one, right? And it's scary, but it's exhilarating at the same time.

So I think the upswing is definitely, it's a deal and it wasn't easy before that because teenager hood and seeking independence biologically for humans isn't necessarily easy for the parents. It's easier for the teenagers, but it's much less easy for these dear parents who adore our children and who have kind of maybe hovered over them more than our parents hovered over us or previous generations because of the way the world has progressed and we do have a situation. So the basic idea I think would be first of all co regulation happens throughout the lifespan.

So what does that mean? I think from a nonverbal and verbal perspective of our whole bodies, if a child is upset, suffering, struggling to try to withhold judgment and use our presence if we can just again stop and observe and say things like or slow down our bodies, be able to tolerate hearing that, that your child is suffering. And I know as a sensitive mom that was really hard for me because I wanted to fix it right away and I don't like to see my kids suffering, but to be able to just be there and say, this sucks, this is so hard honey.

I see that you are upset right now and I'm just wondering, is there anything I can do to that would support you at this moment or would you like just have some time to yourself? I think our presence is we can't underestimate the power of presence. And I think I remember in my life when when my teenagers were struggling, one of the most powerful things I did was kind of hang out in their room or hang out where they were. But without saying anything I was like, hey, I've got some papers here, I'm grading or I've got, you know, I'm working on something.

Can I just hang it, can I just sit here with you? Hang out and I think your music school and I just want to be there and sometimes they look at me like “what, that's weird”. But sooner or later sometimes it took days, Sometimes it took hours. We just like, hey, can I talk to you for a sec now? Taking locks, maybe going to grab a coffee or making coffee and tea, whatever. You know, presence really helps. And so that's one piece.

The other piece is to just try to be creative I think to help them help support, they're finding ways to be with their friends creative ways and to have a big band with maybe for the amount of time they want to spend online with friends because that is again, it's their natural instinct is really teenagers want to spend less time with us and more time with their peer group and that's what we call phyllo genetically adaptive, you know? So I wish I had really some, some ants of other answers. What have you found or is helping most with your kids with your older child?

Laura: Well, so I mean, I think as a therapist, we are well trained in cultivating silence and trusting our partner in the silence to come in and into the silent space and so learning how to tolerate a little bit of silent, creating that vacuum then that they will then kind of fill in trusting that they like, that's something that just naturally happen. So I love that you, I do that too. I will, if my daughter is in her room, I will say, hey honey, I want to do a little knitting.

Do you mind if I come in, you know, nick next to you while you're reading and then sooner or later we're chatting, we keep a journal together. I find that sometimes there are things that are hard to talk about and I know that this is helpful for lots of older kids too, who can't say the things that they want to say to their parents. And so, you know, for those of us who have younger kids are still kind of into it. If you start the practice now when they're younger than you'll have that journal to kind of fall back on when if things get rough.

I found with some of my older clients to that texting between parents and children often gets a little bit more of the nitty gritty and the honesty and two, there's something about that platform and using the notes app, having a shared notes because sometimes teens will be less likely to to text something because it feels very like in the moment like, oh my mom's gonna see this and then she's gonna come busting into my room but using a shared no app where you can almost like the journaling but digital,

Mona: You know that it's kind of a little bit like a google doc that you can update.

Laura: Exactly yeah, so those are nice little things to build connection, but I think that there's also room especially with their older children and in your book, I think you call it kind of this top down educating, starting to teach them about their brain and about what's going on for them and about why things maybe are harder, you know right now developmentally and kind of culturally sociologically because of what we're going through. Do you have any recommendations for how a parent can kind of start those conversations of teaching their children a little bit about their brain and about the different pathways.

Mona: Totally yes, it starts with modeling and I think we can model when they're younger. I encourage parents to model our internal process and the way we do this is that we actually start with modeling self awareness to our bodies? Because that's where emotions ultimately come from is from our physical bodies, not from our brain remember that our brain gets fed operating instructions from our bodies. And so, so when you're with your child, you know, something happens, like say you say you're driving and you're with your child in the car and all of a sudden a large fire truck and police cars zoom by and you didn't really see them. It was scary, like, oh my goodness, that was so loud.

Oh my goodness, wow! Or oh, my heart's beating a little fast. I'm glad they passed. And let me make sure there's no more cars coming. Take a breath. Okay, now, let me continue driving. I mean, so just like allowing children to see that we notice shifts in our body is really powerful. So modeling that and I have examples of happy. Yeah, for different age ranges. So modeling is is sets the table this future ability to self observe. And then the idea that we can also teach children about the fact that we have these nervous systems. And I don't usually use that word.

I, you know, I use the wording of our bodies give us information and sometimes it gives us information that makes us feel like we have to get away from something like that. We get maybe get really angry or agitated or want to hit something and there are ways that we can begin to notice that and then ask the child, have you ever felt that way? If you ever felt like so pissed off that your sibling or so upset and then have the child come up with a word for that? What might, what word do you have for that?

You can even let them know, what would you if you have a word for that? You know, when I get a blow up or a child might have and say, well, I feel like a firecracker, like, oh my goodness, firecracker, Yes. Tell me if you remember the last time you were felt that way your body was feeling that way. We don't just have, you know, one pathway. We have multiple pathways in the book. The newest, the latest research is also that in addition to those three main pathways, you know, you have your calm alert, which is the ventral vagal pathway, you have the fight or flight, you know, the red pathway and then the the the shutdown, the dorsal vagal would be the, what we call the blue pathway that research is showing that there are like overlapping pathways. So it's very complex.

But for for kids, we don't want to over simplified to the point that we're saying this is exactly what the science is, but more of here's how we can observe our body reacting to different things from our inside of our gut and from the outside world. Sometimes we have stomach aches right? And then or sometimes we have a rapid heart rate that sometimes we will hear or think about something that makes us feel upset and then other times there will be like we'll hear loud noises. Is that a gunshot? Is that a, you know, a car backfiring depending on our situations, we humans have different ways that our bodies and brains manage stress and helping our children come up with their own ways of understanding how their body is managing stress is what I talked about, I think in chapters seven and eight and nine in the book and I the only caveat is that I really think it's important to not teach too soon.

So for preschoolers for example, if we're, if we're busy teaching them about their brains and bodies, it kind of cuts into co regulation, which is really non verbal and not teaching, it's more relational. So the embodied experience of it starts first and then as our children age and coming to you know later childhood and teenager hood of course we can talk about our nervous systems.

Laura: Yeah, I like that you're mentioning that that it's the younger kids need to experience it, they need the modeling, they need the presence, they need experience of it and as kids get older and have more access to language and executive functioning, then they can start talking about it a little bit more that it's it's meta cognition is what we're talking about and that's something that is a very advanced skill.

Mona: Worry, it involves concept formation. Yes, that's an advanced skill so yeah, I don't know if you're trying to teach too soon, that's okay just you know that you know if it's it's not really taking taking hold in your child, there's a developmental reason why.

Laura: Okay we've talked longer than I expected to. I'm so sorry Dr. Delahooke, I did want to just you know because we're the balanced parent here and we do you have an entire chapter devoted to kind of taking care of your own self and how important that is. Do you have any just like little things? You know I, I know parents are sick of hearing about self care and were just sick of it but what are some like some things that we can do to take really good care of our nervous systems that are easy though, don't add more to the to do list.

Mona: Well I've started talking about micro moments of self care. Micro moments because some of the blog posts that I wrote about self care, like no one read because I think it was like oh no who has, I'm barely surviving. How can I even think about self care right?

Laura: I think we have to radically change the way we even think about self care at some point, you know?

Mona: But I'm not even sure that's the right word.

Laura: It isn't.

Mona: No it isn't but I think but in the moment let's say we've hit on it already is that awareness mixed with compassion. If we have awareness that's okay, that's kind of more generic mindfulness. But to me one of the best mental health studies I've done and deep dives I've done is with Dr. Krsiten Neff. I went to two week long workshops with her and Chris Germer and it was about and when you couple mindful awareness of the present moment with self compassion it's pretty powerful. It actually reduces your heart rate.

So some of the things I might do would be especially if I'm by myself is literally put my hand on my heart right and take a mindful moment and just like say to myself this is a difficult moment human beings struggle and I'm a human being and may I be gentle, may I be kind and sometimes I shorten that to may I be gentle to myself gentleness because for some reason us mommies and and many daddies are really hard on ourselves.

Laura: We are. We're so committed to being gentle parents and at the same time we enact on ourselves all the things that were done to us. You know we don't make that internal shift to be you know as we're cultivating a wise compassionate outer parent. I I hope that we are also working to cultivate a wise compassion in our parents too.

Mona: So in the moment, I do. I do have some mantras that I use and I guess some of the things that I do for myself now, I mean I do have the benefit of having not doing actual care for children. However I do have a super busy life is trying to get outside or either look up at the sky and I love looking at clouds because I envision the problems in my life as the clouds and me as the sky, like the greater perspective of the sky isn't going to take me down you know, but the clouds are gonna pass so I can feel like those are clouds and my children's problems and my issues are clouds that do pass are suffering shifts and changes. So getting outside for a few minutes a day grounding your feet taking some steps. It's really helped my mental health and it's great for for exercise to, to walk a little bit during the day. And some of the things that you can do.

Laura: Oh and there's so much research to back up the benefits of being in nature, to our nervous is so much.

Mona: So much. And if you're not, if you live in a city you can even find nature in a you know something growing out of the sidewalk, right little sprout of a weed coming out of the sidewalk can be beautiful because it's green and it's it's alive and sometimes we feel so alone if we reach out to other humans and also feel that sense of shared humanity and hopefully it will help.

Laura: Absolutely Mona. Thank you so much for this time and for your wisdom and for your work. I know that you have already changed the lives of thousands and thousands of parents. I hope that everybody listening gets your book. I'm planning to host a book club and my membership so we can go through it and really dig in and figure out how it all applies to our own kids.

Mona: That's so wonderful. Thank you.

Laura: Oh, it will be wonderful. I want you to know that we are also so grateful for your contribution to this world because it's it continues and like, you know, we went through our trainings at different points in the trajectory of kind of this field and I learned everything I know about this aspect of things after grad school. You know, it's it was just wasn't part, you know, all of my training was behavioralist and because you have to unlearn a lot.

Mona: We have to unlearn a lot and it's a pleasure to be with and amongst and talking to colleagues like you who are shifting the paradigm and helping support parents feel more compassion for themselves and for their kids. And so thank you again for having me on, I'm so grateful.

Laura: Oh my gosh, well, me too, thank you so much.

Laura: Oh my gosh, how awesome was that interview with Dr. Delahooke, I love her work. I think that she sees children and parents through this beautiful, compassionate and science based lens and I still appreciate the invitation to look beyond our kids misbehavior, challenging behaviors and start seeing them clearly now. I hope that you will all grab her book, brain body parenting. I of course don't benefit from that in any way. I just think it's a really great book. Um it has a real lot of really important information in it. Um but books like this can be a lot to navigate on your own sometimes.

And so I just wanted to invite you in if you're not already in my balancing new membership community, but we are going to be doing a book club with this book where we are having regular meetings to discuss and to figure out what does this mean for our individual children and how do I apply this in my family in a way that works for us.

And so if you are wanting to read this book once and support, just know that our book club is going to be starting for this. The book comes out on March 16, so we'll give you a little bit of time to get the book and I think we'll probably start the book club in April. So we'd love to have you join our book club in the Balancing U membership community. Alright, that's it for this episode. See you soon.

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

Laura Froyen, PhD

Laura Froyen, PhD

Balanced Parent Podcast

Laura Froyen, PhD

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Episode 109: Challenging Behaviors Re-Imagined with Dr. Mona Delahooke