Episode 131: Keeping Kids Safe with Jen Szeghi

In this episode I am joined by a special guest, Jennifer Szeghi. She is a parenting expert and the founder of Successful Parenting.
Here's a summary of our conversation:

  • What we can do as parents to keep our kids safe

  • Having a conversation with kids on developing a healthy relationship with their bodies

  • Protecting Your Child from unsafe adults (and who is responsible for their safety)

  • Keeping our kids safe in the social media space


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 we are recording this episode of the Balanced Parent Podcast, live in my group, the balanced parenting community on Facebook. This is the first time I've done anything like this and I'm so excited to do this new thing with my special guest Jennifer Szeghi. And she is a parenting expert, she has a background similar to mine and she's going to be talking with us today about how to keep our kids safe. Jennifer, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the show and my group and please will you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?

Jen: Sure, well thanks for having me. Well, I guess a good place to start would be to think back on a day that changed the whole trajectory of my life. I found out in June of 2003 that I was accepted to graduate school, but I also found out that I was pregnant on the same day I moved away from anybody knew more than 350 miles away and I was a single parent. So being a single parent doing this on my own, a lot of people, you know, especially my parents and some family members were thinking I wasn't, you know, I was going to fail, but I took that as an opportunity to just dive right into what psychology had to offer and focus on child development, adolescent development. 

And I was determined to be prepared for anything parenting threw at me that I knew what was normal, what did I have to help my child through etcetera. And it was so helpful. I'm so glad I, you know, had that experience and I had that education not only for my personal goals but to help my child develop in a healthy manner as well. After graduate school, I was able to continue with my career goals and I became a child adolescent mental health therapist, which was very exciting. 

And I loved all the kids that I worked with. I even called them my own kids and that confused my son because he's like, you have other kids can go to work, but I just really loved what I did and I also found that I feel in a society we're waiting too late, we're waiting too late where kids are having anxiety and they're having depression and they're having extreme behavior problems and a lot of what I had learned, you know, in my master's program as well as I was actually teaching at the time in college child and adolescent development that really parents just needed this information, you know, unfortunately, there's not instructions that are handed to us when we have the kid, but it would be so helpful. 

So I changed what I did and I opened my own business called successful parenting to where I'm a parent-child coach, where I educate parents on what are the child's developmental needs and what are simplified parenting techniques that parents can do to make sure their kids stay on track and you know when are the signs and symptoms to identify if their child is starting to get off track and we can get them easier back on if we address the problem right away instead of letting it go for longer periods of time. 

So I find, you know different ways, what are some different ways that I can help parents, not only just, you know behaviorally and mental health-wise, but what else is going on in our society that it can cause developmental issues for our children. And you know, that brings me to why I created this training of keeping our kids safe.

And I know as parents, we were just appalled and horrified about what was going on and wondering, you know, what can we do next? And that experience had me reflect on when I was a mental health therapist and working with kids who were sexually abused and how often, you know when I first started and Doctor Laura, I don't know if you can relate to this, but you know in school they tell us, you know, you're a mandated reporter and you think, okay, you know, occasionally there's gonna be things that I'm gonna have to report, but unfortunately, like abuse happens so often in our society. 

So you know, I reflected a lot on how often it was happening with neighbors that was happening with aunts and uncles, you know, brothers and sisters. So you know to help educate parents, unfortunately how often this happens and how we can protect our kids. And it also made me reflect back on my childhood, on how there were some close calls that I had as a child. I actually learned to swim because of a pedophile. I was in Dallas Texas with my mom on vacation. I was gonna be a flower girl in a wedding and she was teaching me how to swim and she was in the deep end and I looked up on the balcony and there was a man who had his pants down and he was fondling himself. I swam. I didn't even think about it. 

I didn't even have the anxiety. I swam so quickly out to my mom and she turned me around and pushed me back because she was thinking I was doing such a good job and I didn't want to attract any kind of attention. So I swam back really fast and then swam back to her and she turned me around again and I couldn't take it anymore and I had to tell her what was going on. 

Laura: I'm so glad you had a relationship where you could tell her that you. 

Jen: Yes, absolutely. You know, I knew once I was in our arms that like I would be protected. You know, I didn't know too much about what was going on at the time, but my parents had educated me to say, you know, this is not appropriate behavior, this is bad behavior when somebody touches themselves in front of other people or if they asked to see you or any of those kind of things. 

So the education really did help and you're right, that relationship that I felt safe with my mom to tell her that had happened. Another instance that was a close call was about a year later when I was riding my bike to the park with my dad. And of course, when you're young, you're like carefree, don't think of any kind of consequences. 

And I got going so fast that I got around a corner and a car stopped and opened up its door, started to step out and reach for me when my dad came around the corner on his bike and they jumped back in the car and drove off. So as I was seeing these things on that were going on and you know, the whole issue of sexual abuse and kidnappings coming up how close this really is to us and how much it is happening around us. And as parents, we just have to make sure that we are vigilant and know how to keep our kids safe. 

Laura: Thank you for sharing those stories with us. I think it this is something that, you know, I think as parents were so scared of happening, many of us have had things like that happen to us. And so for some of us were hyper-vigilant trying to keep our kids safe. And for some of us were, it's so scary that we don't even want to look at it or think about it or think that it could happen. I would love if you could, if you wouldn't mind like sharing some of the, like the things that you think we as parents can do to help keep our kids safe. 

Jen: Okay. First of all, I think the foundation for so many things is to have that good relationship. Like you pointed out Doctor Laura that you know, I did feel safe with my parents, so having that quality time with your child, having open communication, letting your child voice things even when you disagree, you know, as long as it's in a respectful manner that they're allowed to say, you know what I don't feel like talking about that or I, you know, having some good boundaries up and developing that trust instead of getting mad or judgmental from what our children are saying and sometimes when we're stressed as parents, it's easy to go in that direction, but then we create obstacles for ourselves in the future that our kids are just gonna shut down and not want to come to us. So the very first thing is having that, you know, foundation that relationship with your child to make sure that they do come to you if something were occurring another thing.

Laura: Oh God, you know, you're fine. I just, one of the things that I was thinking of as you were saying that too is that part of building a trusting relationship with a child is understanding what's normal, like what's developmentally appropriate, like what the trajectory of sexual development for young kids and we don't like that's a weird phrase for most adults to hear. It doesn't mean what you think it means. But you know, we as psychologists, you know who are training, we know that that means just like kind of the typical normal development of a young child and having that knowledge I think is helpful to so that you know what's normal so you can normalize it for your child and so that they can carefully hone their sense of what's normal and okay and have it like open dialogue with their parents about it. You know.

Jen: Absolutely. And you know that starts and I think it's important for our parents to know that starts as young as two or three years old to where they start, you know, discovering private parts and you know what feels good And even little boys, it's very typical. I have this to where parents sometimes get very concerned about little boys like to compare their penises and show each other and you just have to, you redirect that behavior and say it's, you know, that's appropriate. We, don't show other people are private. 

You know, if you touched it, you do it in the privacy of your room. That's also important too because you know, I've seen cases in which sexual development was repressed and when that's repressed, then it goes to the extreme and really does cause sexual problems and you know, in the future. So I think that was hard for some parents to understand that these are typical behaviors, but we need to put some boundaries around that too, you know, to keep them safe and developing. But yeah.

Laura:  It's hard to do that if we ourselves were ashamed as young children or engaging in typical normal exploration of our bodies of our genitals like those. I mean many of us were punished or shamed for that and it's hard to do something different with our kids. But we really need to again, so that they are developing a healthy relationship with their body, a healthy comfort with the topic so that they can keep coming back to us and talking about us and knowing that were the source of information and safe for them.

Jen: And you just pointed out something else that is so important is that we do need to be aware of what our feelings are. And so if you have a child, you know, actually at any age, it's a good time to you know, tune into what your feelings are about sex and talking about sex with your child. Because if you come across where you feel shameful about it or you feel embarrassed, kids are very emotionally intelligent, they can pick up on that. 

And if they sense this is a topic that mom's embarrassed about their like, no thank you, I won't talk about that and then they'll end up talking to their friends about it later in middle school and high school and they're gonna get the inaccurate information. And so it's one of those things just to touch base with yourself and be self-aware as a parent, How do you feel about it? Make sure you're resolving your feelings so you can talk to your child in a very, you know, direct and it's just part of human development and you know, have a normal conversation about it. 

And I agree with you when I first learned that wait a minute we're supposed to, you know, it's okay for children to touch themselves. And I was a little bit perplexed by that too. But then when I looked at the research on how that can cause shame and how that can interfere with healthy sexual development, I was very that was another area and parenting. That I was able to have more of that open dialogue. 

Both my sons come to me still even in high school about sexual questions that they have and I'm very thankful that they feel comfortable because I could see if they had that question and they asked one of their friends, I don't know what kind of answer they would have got. But also if they would have spread that rumor of like, oh, you know, AJ thought this, you know, I'm glad that, you know, they feel comfortable. So.

Laura: And I mean, and we're talking about keeping our kids safe and this conversation might be seem like it's a little hand gentle, but it's not right, because that's how you build trust and safety and that's how you get information from your kids. Having that open line of communication gives you more influence and more ability to know what's going on in their lives. If you, you've always been a safe person to come to a trusted adult to come to then when things are not right, you know, they tell you, they let you know and you know them too, you're better able to be attuned to what's going on for them. You're more in sync with them, You're looking and watching and observing them too. Like that's part of conscious, respectful parenting is really knowing your kids, so that then, you know, if something is off right? 

Jen: Absolutely, Yes. You know, our kids, it is normal that our kids are gonna have some bad days and I start counting them happened recently, of course I have teenagers to where they're just kind of like, you know, they're not really engaged, We don't have disrespectful moments, but they're not really engaged. They kinda want to be on their own. So I give them a little bit of time, but it also when it reaches a certain point, I'm like, okay we've done this enough and I feel like we're moving in the wrong direction. 

So now we need to figure out, you know, ways to re-engage. So having that, you know, self-awareness of, you know yourself and what your child is going through helps divert and like I said, as soon as they start going off path a little bit, you can give them a little bit of leeway, but we can't let this continue. If it continues, then, you know, could lead to something like depression or anxiety, you know, that's self-isolation, so able to kind of I've caught it a couple of times with both my boys, like we've done this a little bit too much, we need to come up with a plan to get you back on track. So the normal ups and downs of teenagers but not letting it get out of control.

Laura: Yeah, I think that that's a key piece of like, of balancing, right? So, I mean, and that's part of what attachment is like as kids grow older too, is that the moving away and moving towards starts shifting and changing and we just kind of keep an eye on that, you know, they know that where they're secure base that they can always come back to us even when their teams and you know.

Jen: When they're adults and they need somebody to talk to, you still want to have that good relationship. I could go off on so many tangents, all of this, but, you know, just to let your listeners know, you know, just taking the time and having those conversations, having those conversations about the small things that you think might be annoying or don't matter, that's where they start to open up. 

So you have to have those small conversations for them to open up about the big things. I can not only speak for what research says, but I've gone through it too. So it works, it's great, but definitely, you know, when it comes to such a sensitive issue and something that is going on and it's so common in our society, we want to make sure as parents that we are meeting their needs as well, because what these pedophiles are doing is they're preying on the weaknesses and when a child's needs are not met, then they start meeting those needs. 

And if you think about it, we have a need to eat, you know, so often, and if we were to starve ourselves for so long and we were offered something that we knew was, you know, severely not healthy for us, but it would, you know, fulfill our hunger for that moment, like we go for that, right, we eat that cheeseburger, you know, and it's the same way with our emotional needs. Like if you're starving for emotional affection and quality time and the parents are not providing this, then somebody over here. 

That's exactly the way they work and they actually cause they have a name for it's called the Romeo technique to where they start to develop a friendship and give our children attention and start to create that relationship. And again, it goes back to 90% of the children who are sexually abused know their abuser 60% of those abusers are trusted by the family. So as parents, we have to make sure we're meeting all these needs. So our children aren't going someplace else in an unhealthy way to try to get those needs met and being taken advantage by others. 

Laura: Yeah. And pedophiles, not only groom children, they groom families too, they groom families to trust them so that they can be in that 60%. So what are some things that we can as parents look out for? So you're saying that one piece that we can do is make sure that our children like emotional needs are being met, that their cups are being filled by us. Like a true loving, healthy 1-to-1 relationship, a connection-based relationship. So that's one thing we can do. What can we be looking out for? 

Jen: There is a long list of symptoms anytime there is any kind of significant changes in your child's behavior. If they're great, start dropping if they, you know, their appetite significantly increases or decreases if your child, all of a sudden it wants to be more modest than usual. If, you know, older kids may use drugs and alcohol to try to cover up for some of the, you know, emotional response that they have, you know, there could be physical symptoms such as bruises, even choking marks. 

There's any kind of like sexually transmitted diseases pregnancies, those are some of the other physical symptoms. So depression and a lot of times in children and adolescent depression actually comes more across this irritability if there's increased fear, hopelessness or helplessness, increased anxiety, regress behavior. So if a child has achieved some milestones such as, you know, potty training and then all of a sudden they start, you know, having accidents again, this is, you know, assigned to be aware of, they have panic attacks, feel more paranoid, especially around a certain person, easily startled flat affect, which means that they don't really have much of emotional expression on their face

Laura: Liability, you know, up and down kind of.

Jen: Yeah, if they're deleting social media comments, trying to cover up if they, you know, had some, if there is some kind of relationship, there increased time on social media. 

Laura: One of my questions like as we get into the social media piece of this too, is that things have changed for families right now. We're not seeing the people that we used to see, we're not out in the world really and our kids really aren't out in the world without us most of the time right now at least those of us who have younger kids and you know, 14 and under really like we're spending a lot more time together, but kids are also spending a lot more time online too and I know like we spoke that you are not a tech safety expert, but I loved what you had to say about what we can do in terms of technology and keeping our kids safe because I hear from parents all the time, how their kids were on Youtube kids and they went down a rabbit hole and found things that they should not have been on there that shouldn't like got through the tags, got through the filters like so what can we do to be keeping our kids safe in this kind of digital age where they are online and using tech way more than ever before. 

Jen: The only thing at this point in time. Again, not having the knowledge of how technology works is just being right there with your child as they are using the electronics and checking in, like you said, there's a big scandal on Youtube last year in which pedophiles were commenting and having conversations with children on videos that were for children that we as parents would approve and you know, they're spending hours days that they're making this their career, the pedophiles in order to try to figure out how to get to our children. 

So you know right now is making sure that you are supervising your, especially young children, I do have confidence in, you know, older children to knowing what the appropriate boundaries and coming to us, you know, as long as you have that relationship with them and discuss, you know, here's some different ways that pedophiles work but still keeping some of those, you know, apps that monitor your child's, what they're doing online. 

Laura: Yeah. And so I think you raise a really good point that there are certain places where our kids go where they need supervision. If we were out like going to the mall, we might let our kids go to the mall and hang out but we might stay close by and shop nearby so that we can see them, you know, like a little bit of supervision. Youtube is one that my kids are not allowed to use without us sitting right next to them. 

We don't do anything else. The parent doesn't have their phone on them, we sit right next to them. Youtube is an app that like we don't use very often cause it's really scary to me, thank you for that. I think it's so important that like let our kids know like privacy is okay, especially as our kids age that's natural for them to want to keep things to themselves. It's natural for them to want to have privacy, but privacy and secrets aren't the same thing and they also deserve the gift of a parent who cares to monitor them, right? They deserve that as a child even if they don't always want it, what do you think about that? 

Jen: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And even though they don't, I mean they say that they don't want it. But I've seen kids who don't have that kind of care and those kind of boundaries and those kids do want the authoritative parents. And later on in life, the kids who did have the authoritative parents who gave them the, you know, the boundaries and you know, didn't let them to do everything they wanted. They appreciate that. And they actually have a better friendship with their parents as an adult because there was that respectful relationship and they understood why there were rules to keep them safe even if they didn't like them at the time. 

Laura: Yeah. Just like my three-year-old, you know, when my kids were three, they didn't like me stopping them from running into the street. They were annoyed by that. They wanted to run down into the street and I held their hands and held them while they cried and flailed and Said to them, it's my job to keep you safe. Like that looks different at 14 or 15 when we aren't letting them, you know, like saying like Tiktok needs to stay on the family iPad and not on your phone, you know, or whatever it is. Like they don't have to like all of our limits. And it's a conversation with older kids, right? Like we can collaborate to make the limit, you know, set the limits that allow for safe.

Jen: Yeah. And when they get older, it is more you got to think of adolescence as a transition. It's a transition that they should slowly be getting some more freedom as they prove that they have the responsibility. So by the time they get 17 they should be Having, you know, making a lot of decisions again, as long as they're staying within those boundaries because at 18 and if they plan to go off to college, we want to make sure that they're making good decisions when we're not there supervising them in college too, Even though it's only our responsibility to, you know, keep them safe till they're 18, we really want them to, you know, do well stay safe later on in life too. And that's how you set them up for success as you let them have, you know, a little bit of space and, and as they prove themselves, you can get grant them a little bit more freedom. 

Laura: Yes, exactly, Jennifer. I so agree. I grew up like with tight reins on me and when I got to college, hundreds of miles away from my parents, like the kind of, the training wheels were off and I was a little bit of a wreck for a while while I figured it out, you know, and I mean, and that's lots of people's stories. So I, I so agree with you on that. Okay, well, so I wanna be respectful of your time. I've loved having you here with us.

We have had quite a few people here watching. No questions have come in yet though. So I guess what is like if we had to sum up like thinking about taking a balanced approach to keeping our kids safe, Like thinking about like, okay, so we need to have well-educated kids because kids who know their body parts who are savvy are not good targets. Right? So we have well-educated kids, well-connected kids because those kids aren't good targets either. When people, you know, who are potential predators, see a kid with attentive parents connected parents, they move on to a different family. So, so like those were the two, like two big takeaways I feel like we got. And then one is another one?

Jen: as we're trying to juggle every piece of parenting and there's so many different things. Last week in my group, I did a training on how to help your child, like understand the signs of suicide and how to help your child with those. I think every month there should be a day, just like we have every month we pay bills every month. You know, there's a day that we pay bills. I think as parents, it's helpful to commit to a day to say, I'm gonna go over this list of symptoms here and make sure you know, my child is my child having any of these. 

So we are checking in every month to make sure that you know our child is staying on track and our child is not being abused and if they are, you know also having that direct conversation giving them permission because even though we tell them like, oh you can come to us from the perspective of a seven-year-old, it's still very nerve-racking to think, I have to tell my mom that somebody did something that they weren't supposed to do and am I responsible for this at all? 

But with the parent directly asking and saying, you know how we have this conversation about you know staying safe, you know, has there been anybody who touched you lately or you know and just giving that you can identify a lot sooner if it ever does happen. So I think having once-a-month check-ins at least with your kids, I would recommend more, but you're gonna save your kids from going off the rails too far.

Laura: I love that idea of like a regular kind of almost like a habit check in like, like a family culture piece and like in our family, we check in with each other, we check in on ourselves and we check in with each other, I think like helping kids to like learn to check in with themselves, like we can help them learn that really important skill that many of us don't have because many of us, we're so kind of numbed by our childhood. 

We got the message that our big feelings weren't important. We got the message that, like, if we were bumped our toe, like stubbed our toe and started crying, we heard like, that doesn't hurt. It's no big deal. Like, many of us were trained to not listen to our bodies to not listen to our feelings. So I love this idea of kind of proactively teaching kids to check-in. 

You know, were there any times when you were talking to someone and you got an icky feeling in your tummy? Like, like those types of questions can be really helpful and just to check in, like, and not even just for the abuse piece, but the, like, just the normal, like, how's it going? You know, many of us don't check in with ourselves, right? And all of a sudden were depressed or anxious and our hearts are racing and we're having a panic attack and if we had just been checking in along the way, maybe wouldn't have gotten to that point, right? 

Jen: Absolutely. You know, processing those feelings like it's okay, feelings are very normal and just acknowledging this is how I feel, it's normal that I feel this way and sitting with your feelings for a little bit and then it can be relieved instead of it stuffed on top of each other to where we eventually explode, exploding, you know, with anger outbursts or depression or anxiety and in our culture, especially with children and teens, we have more of those psychosomatic symptoms to where they can make themselves physically sick because they have so much stress. So they're getting a tummy ache or the headaches and so those are so important. Yeah, If we can just, that's my approach, let's just be proactive for humans. You know, there's things we have to do to take care of ourselves. Just as you know, when we were growing up, it was all about physical health and exercise and diet. It's like, what happened to mental health, you know, why aren't we taking care of our mental health proactively? You know.

Laura: I love that. I think that that's so important. And, and again, like that brings us back to this idea that kids who have invested interested parents who are savvy, who and kids themselves who are savvy and who have deep, like good connections with their parents, a healthy relationship. Those kids are safer. They are, they're not good targets. And so we can kind of protect our kids by building those things, right? 

Jen: Yeah, absolutely. You know, you've just spoken up about, you know, feeling more controlled and you know, when we were young, we weren't allowed to speak up as much and my husband kind of gets mad at the kids sometimes because you know, I'll say, you know what you think about dinner and he's like, oh, my son might say, you know, it wasn't your best or something like that and he's my husband gets so mad, I'm like, no, he's being honest, it wasn't my best, I'm okay with that.

But those are the types of things I see that he's more, they're both of them are more willing to speak up for themselves outside of the home because they felt comfortable just saying no peers where I'm at, here's how I'm feeling about it. And so I think that's something as parents, we have to remember to of like we're conditioning our kids on how they're gonna respond to others. So we allow them to say, you know what I don't like when you tickle me so that way it's and we respect that they can say that when the uncles tickling them or something, you know like that. So we have to remember that our interaction is the foundation for what they're going to be doing out in the world. 

Laura: Yes, absolutely. And not just on the big stuff, but on the very little like day to day, we are teaching them what it means to be in a consensual, respectful, authentic relationship each and every day, each and every interaction and sometimes like I was just talking with my girlfriend this weekend about like how like mind-blowingly big that is like we were both talking about things that we've kind of said like off the cuff that our daughters like bring back to us and they're like, mom remember when you said that, I was like, whoa! And luckily most of these times they were good things, but you think like they're listening, they're learning, they're watching us and they're learning from their experience with us about like, means to be in a mutually satisfactory and you know, respectful relationship as they grow. It's the biggest, most important job we've ever had, right? 

Jen: Yes. The toughest, but the most rewarding for sure. 

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for being here with us. Jennifer has a deep dive training on this topic and it sounds like other really cool monthly trainings in her Facebook group because it takes a village and the link to that is in the show notes, if you're listening to this on the podcast and she also has a book that you can get on amazon that looks amazing and I'm downloading it as soon as we get off here, Jen, thank you for being with us and sharing your wisdom with us. I really appreciate it. 

Jen: Thank you so much for having me. We just need to make sure parents mean the absolute best, but again, they weren't given instructions with the baby with the hand of the baby. So it's our jobs in our mission just to make sure they have this information so that they can keep their kids safe and we can keep more and more kids safe.

Laura: Absolutely, yes. And speaking of that. So if you are in my balancing you membership community, which is my paid membership for members who are in like my courses, Jen is also going to give us like 1 to 1 deep dive training on these topics too. So yes, I will be looking forward to talking with you again, Jen in the membership and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and very like, I don't know, comforting information, like I think sometimes when we start talking about this topic it can feel really scary, but when we realize how much power and influence we have to keep our kids safe, that feels empowering to me and this was a very empowering, like comforting conversation, so thank you for framing it in that way for us. 

Jen: Well thanks for having me.

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!