Episode 163: Learning to Process Big Emotions with Alyssa Blask Campbell

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In this episode, I’m excited to share with you that I am joined by the woman behind one of my favorite Instagram accounts (@seed.and.sew), Alyssa Blask Campbell. She is the CEO of Seed & Sew which offers a range of services, including consulting, online courses, and early childhood professional development programs, all aimed at promoting emotional intelligence and providing support at any life stage. She will be sharing with us tips on how to help kiddos process big emotions and telling us about her new book that is out TODAY: Tiny Humans, Big Emotions

Here are the topics we tackled in the episode:

  • Collaborative Emotion Processing (CEP) Method and what it is

  • Three questions to ask when attempting to raise an emotionally intelligent child

  • Parenting “shame-free” and what to do to move past the shame for your kiddo and yourself

I hope that this episode resonated with you and you learned from Alyssa just as much as I have learned from her. If you want more guidance on this matter, follow her on Instagram @seed.and.sew and visit her website: www.seedandsew.org.

Resources:

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 Doctor Laura Froyen. And on this week's episode of the Balanced Parent Podcast, I'm so excited to bring in a guest from one of my favorite Instagram accounts. And so she's got a new book out, Tiny Humans, Big Emotions. Alyssa Blask Campbell. I'm so excited to have you here. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about what you do and who you are and then we'll jump into talking about how we can help our tiny humans with their big feelings. 

Alyssa: Yeah, totally. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to get to hang with you. I have a Master's in Early Child Education. And I had the privilege of doing research and how to build emotional intelligence in kids. And spoiler alert, it's a lot about us. Turns out we play a big role. I, after we finished, so I co created uh the collaborative emotion processing method with my colleague, Lawrence Stale and then we partnered with a university in Boston to research it across the US.

And then after we finished collecting data, I started seeds so that I could start sharing about this work outside of my in person community. And at that time, I was doing a lot of workshops, a lot of presentations for teachers and workshops for parents in person. But hadn't the the digital space was so different at that point in the parenting world, like it, it really shifted during the pandemic. But at that point, it was middle of 2018, I just started sharing about it and it just kind of took off.

People were hungry for this. It turns out a lot of these tiny humans have big emotions and folks were wondering what to do with them. And so as we started sharing seed really grew organically and pretty quickly. And then from there, I created a professional development program, workshops and ongoing coaching from experts in early at like occupational therapists and psychologists, et cetera. That teachers can access at any point through an app. So we have kind of two arms now of seed. One that really serves teachers with these tools in the everyday classroom life. And then one that serves parents and caregivers of like what does it look like to do this work at home and um outside of school. And then in conjunction with your school. We have a podcast, Voices of Your Village and a pretty bump in Instagram, I like to hang out on and now the book Tiny Humans, Big Emotions. 

Laura: That so wonderful. I love that. So I, I have a question for you and this was a little off topic and I wasn't expecting to ask it, but I was just thinking about how wonderful it would be if our kids were getting this kind of emotional support both at home and in the classroom. And if parents are, you know, reading your book or learning from you, and they are curious about having their child care setting, their preschool get training from you. How can they go about supporting the teachers that their child is interacting with? Getting this training? I mean, I'm kind of like, do you work with parent organizations and schools? 

Alyssa: Yeah, exactly. So we get this question actually quite a bit and I love this question because I also want families and schools doing this work together. It's the most impactful way to do it. Right. And actually everyone, we have a Tiny Humans Big Emotions parenting course as well. And every parent or family a seat certified school gets access to that for free, so that we can bring parents into this. Yeah. And yeah, I know we're like, I'm like, how do we bring everyone into this? 

Laura: I love that model. 

Alyssa: Thank you. And so when we're looking at this just this morning, actually someone was it reached out and was like, oh my gosh, I'm reading the book and I'm loving it. I want to share this with my child's teacher, but like, you don't want to be like, hey, maybe you could use this, right? Like how do I kind of gently share it? And I was recalling there was a parent that pretty early on in my career who I just like had this connection with and she loved to read and anytime she was reading something new, she would be like, hey, I found this book. I know that you love this stuff too. 

If you're interested I'm buying a copy for the school. If you want, I can pass it along to you once it comes in, if you want to dive in first, and it felt like a really like kind way to be like, hey, I'm reading this and I would kind of maybe like you to read it too. If that was her goal, she delivered it in a really kind way that made me feel like, oh yeah, I do love this stuff and I would like to dive in and have these conversations with you. So that was one way from like the book perspective. 

And then from the seed cert first, I think the book is like a good intro to the seed cert. And we talk about our Seed Certified Schools program in the book, too. And so the teachers are reading and then they want more. It's like a nice intro to it. And we have, if you reach out to us at support at seedandsew.org, we have information we can shoot over to you. Like here are ways you can communicate with your school about this. Like, hey, I just found out about this program, I'm really interested. I love that and that they can, it just gives them a kind of an overview of what it is and then we'll jump on a call with the school and chat with the director or whoever is in like the admin role there. Yeah. 

Laura: Oh, I love that. And I, I love that the way of approaching this. Like, we're a team because that's really what we are. You know, I, I love partnering with teachers and school communities because it gives us an opportunity to feel like we're a team that we're all in this together, raising these wonderful humans to be more kind and conscious and there. Yeah.

Alyssa: We are a team, right? Like we, at the end of the day, we want the same thing. I think like a 100%. I really do. I, I have a 2.5 year old and I just yesterday reached out to his teachers and said, hey, something's been coming up that he's been talking about at home. I would love to connect with you to hear how you're talking about it at school and what is really happening outside of the maybe two year old lens I'm getting so that we can collaborate on navigating this together. And I, I just like, truly see these humans as a part of my village that are helping me raise my children. And that I got to play that role for so many families over the years and saw myself as a part of their village. Like we are working together to raise these humans and we have that same goal. 

Laura: Absolutely. Alyssa, I just heard you say something that reminded me of the work that you talk about in your book. In order to be able to do that and have that conversation with your child teacher in a well regulated and compassionate mindset. You're I'm guessing working through the steps that you talk about in collaborative emotion processing, which is the process that you talk and teach about in your book.

And can we dive into what some of those steps are? Because I think a lot of the people who are listening are actively attempting to do this. We recognize that we did not come up with these skills most of the time through no fault to our own parents who were doing the best they could with what they had at the time. But we don't know a lot about regulating our own emotions and caring for ourselves. We know how to stuff, we know how to shame and guilt trip ourselves, but we don't really know what to do in a positive way so that we can take care of ourselves and take care of our kids. Can we jump in? 

Alyssa: Yeah. Can we hang for seven days and talk about it again? My favorite. I love it and we can absolutely jump in. So when we're looking at this, we created this set method collaborative of emotion processing ce P. We call it S for short. And that's the method that we researched across the US. And it's five components. One is adult child interactions, the other four are about us because like you said, like yeah. I, I don't know. I definitely didn't grow up in a household where I was taught these things and I think a lot of us didn't and now we're trying to teach kids and what I kept finding for myself over and over in like, social emotional workshops.

And frankly, even through my master's program was a heavy focus on, like, behavior management and getting certain behaviors out of kids or getting certain behaviors to stop. And what I realized was that what I was desiring was the ability to like, connect with this child and truly see beyond the behavior to see what's their need, which sounded good outside of the moment. And then in the moment when a kid like slaps me across the face or throws a toy or whatever in that moment, I want to like fight a two year old and I can't access that language and those tools. And I'm definitely not looking at them with compassion in the moment. 

Laura: I mean, and you're a human too, right? We have a that's active and moving to protect us too. So, yeah. 

Alyssa: Yeah, exactly. And so when we were putting together this set method, adult child interactions is obviously a huge part. How do we engage with the kids to help them build these tools? But this the other, the other four which we can dive into are specifically focused on us so that we can even access the adult child interactions part it gives us access to that. So we have self awareness, really noticing for ourselves. Like what is coming up here and what really like, how does it feel inside my body when it's building? This is something that I didn't learn when I was a kid of like, what do things feel like in my body? And I would just experience something and cry or yell or like have a reaction, hide fawn, but no one ever broke down like, yeah, how does it feel in your body? Because what we often want is self control. 

We want to be able to control our words, control our tone, control our actions. Like we want this from kids for them to say things in a kind way or to talk to us instead of hitting et cetera. Self control requires self regulation and you can't regulate what you're not aware of. And so it really starts with this part of like noticing what's happening for us. When my heart is racing, when my shoulders go up to my ears, when my voice starts to get loud, like starting to notice those cues so that I can pump the brakes on it. And when we're pumping the brakes on it, this is where we're gonna look at like our regulation tools. Now there's we, we put, put this part into self-care. We have proactive and reactive self care. Self care has gotten really buzzword, which I think is cool. 

But for us it's not something you like occasionally do for us. It's looking at how do we take care of the nervous system. And for me, as a mom of 2.5 year old who's running a business and doing life and growing a new human. This isn't like, oh, I have a spare 30 minutes to go for a run or whatever. Like, that's not my life right now. And so it really looks like, ok, am I drinking enough water? Have I eaten breakfast and not just say just scraps like, am I pause like a lot of this for me is boundaries of like buddy I would love to come watch you play with that. I'm gonna set the timer and when it beeps, I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna pause to eat my breakfast so that my body can feel good, right? Like boundaries are huge for me in self-care. And so we look at these proactively, what are we doing throughout the day and then reactively in the moment, how do we take care of ourselves in the moment? And yes. 

Laura: So I really love how you're talking about self-care. I, I agree. It's super buzz wordy and we think it's bubble baths and yoga classes and well, yoga classes are great but and so are bubble baths. It's much more about the nervous system and how do we care for this human body and this human heart that we have? 

Alysaa: How do I take care of myself. 

Laura: How do we take care of ourselves? How do we get good mothers to ourselves, good fathers, to ourselves, to our own, our own beings and recognizing that, that we are humans and we get care, you know, we get to be cared for and are worthy of that. I love that. I also really loved in the book you break down coping strategies versus coping mechanisms. I really love how you break those things down because I think a lot of us have developed coping mechanisms in order to do the stuffing and the numbing that was required of us as young children to hold it together because for whatever reason, our big feelings really weren't acceptable or the adults in our lives couldn't handle them, you know, and we needed to kind of get a handle on them. 

So for parents who are maybe at the beginning of starting to really notice this aware, building this awareness and learning how to care for themselves, how can they go about shifting out of some of the coping mechanisms and moving into the strategies and how can they go about finding the ones that are right for them because we're all different. 

Alyssa: Yeah. So I actually wouldn't shift out, I would add in. So when we're looking at coping mechanisms, these are usually things that produce dopamine in our brain. And so this is going to activate that reward center of the brain and it numbs us temporarily. The thing about dopamine, everybody has it. It's like become a four letter word, but dopamine is great. We all need it. We all have it. And when we're tapping into it as a response to like that adrenaline or cor all rush of a big feeling where you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so activated right now and I'm fired up or I'm triggered when we then tap into a coping mechanism. We're usually looking at something like a distraction or scrolling on a screen or sometimes food. We sometimes use like playfulness or silliness to like, get out of the moment as fast as possible.

This is like my dad will go to like silliness or sarcasm. So interesting to see it play out now as like the grandparent of the grandchildren. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is familiar, this is why I am the way I am. But when is having a hard time and my dad pops in and he just like, wants to distract him out of it. He wants it to make it go away as fast as possible. He's really just trying to get the back to tap into some dopamine here. Dopamine is not bad and we all have it. And what we're finding now too in research around neurodivergent children is that we can see a lower dopamine store in their body. And so we're noticing is that using a coping mechanism can be like a bridge to a strategy. 

So a coping mechanism might be like, okay, actually, this literally just happened the other day. I, my husband was traveling for work and I was solo parenting for a few days and my world is nutty right now and I have a 2.5 year old and I'm 31 weeks pregnant and I had just like hit the spot where like he was having a hard time and I literally was like, I can't do this right now. Like I need a minute. He needs me to show up in a way that I can't show up in this minute. And so I popped on Daniel Tiger coping mechanism and I was like, OK, he's gonna tap into that. And I know that once that dopamine starts to wear off or sometimes when we just like turn off the TV, we're gonna see this emotion come back like it, we're just temporarily hitting, hitting a button. Yeah, I think if it a snooze button on an alarm clock where it's like, get back in nine minutes, right? Like this is gonna happen and but this like hitting that snooze button allowed me to step away and to take some deep breaths and to like really calm my nervous system. This is where I'm then tapping into strategies. So I'm using a mechanism for him for the moment so that I can step away. Deep breathing is the fastest way to regulate. I find it annoying how like if somebody was like, just take deep breaths, I like having a hard time. I'm like, I want to throw a punch. You like, no, this is too big, like everything I'm feeling is too big for deep breath. Like it feels condescending and then you do it and you're like, oh God, it's working, shoot. 

Laura: Most of the time when we're in those places, we're holding our breath and we're not breathing, right? You know, so that, absolutely.

Alyssa: That is like an accessible strategy that I really learned to lean into because I can do it when we're on the go. I don't need a thing for it. I don't even need to step away to do it. Like I can do it with a crying baby on my body just taking deep breaths. I have to pair it with like a mantra or a phrase. Otherwise, I'm like taking deep breaths and still like fired up. But if I pair it with a mantra and I'm like, OK, this is temporary. He's having a hard time. He's not giving you a hard time, right? Like there are some that I turn to, then I can start to come, we dive into the sensory systems in the book like we all have eight sensory systems and I wanna get into that a little bit. 

But what I'll do here is pull from the ones that I know are regulating for me, which are touch and proprioceptive input, pro perceptive is that like big body play or heavy work. So sometimes all I can do is like, squeeze my fist and let them go. Like that's all I have access to. Sometimes I can literally like, I'll like clean a little bit in the, in like the kitchen or whatever, like step away from him and clean where I can like literally lift something up and move it. And that act of like moving my body can help me start to calm.

Laura: Laundry is my go to. 

Alyssa: I love that. 

Laura: There's always laundry, especially moving, always laundry and moving. Especially moving wet laundry to the dryer is it's heavy. There's repetitive motion and our, our nervous systems love repetition and rhythm too to help us get grounded and that, yes.

Alyssa:  I love that. I love that. And so then like, I got to a place now I'm not in like the most Zen state. Like I just left the spa. I'm calm enough to be able to then show up and support him. And so I came over and I was like, all right, buddy. After this episode of Daniel Tiger, we're gonna turn off the TV, which he already then hated that news. And then when it came down to it and they're like singing the song in the end at the end. All right. But do you want to push the button or do you want me to push the button? When the timer, he loves a timer, we have a visual timer. When the timer beeps, I'm going to push the button. If you want to do it, you can do it before the timer beeps and he has it, he can see it. And then when that turned off, he still like had a meltdown because I had just pushed the snooze button on it. Right. But now I'm in a space where I can hold space for that. And now I can dive into that adult child interactions part, which is literally part two of the book, specifically, chapter five dives like deep into what does that look like in practice. 

Laura: I'm gonna pause for just a second and recap because I really love what you're talking about. I was just talking about this exact thing with my membership community yesterday. One of the parents has this kid who gets kind of stuck into deregulated loops where they're not really solving a problem. And we were talking about mindful distraction, that distraction when it's used unint, you know, without clear intention and without the child's kind of say, you know, awareness, it can feel mani manipulative and not so great. But when we're mindful with it, when we say I can see you're stuck, do you want to get out of it for just a minute?

We do the thing we put on the Bluey or the Daniel Tiger, both of which I love and are high dopamine producing things and also just good quality content, you know, for our kids. Um or even just the, the silly. Do you want me to distract you? You want to get outside or do you want me to, you want to play a game that we know is, you know, good for your body that I love that, that mindful and intentional distraction. I think we in the like gentle parenting and respectful parenting world, distraction gets a little bit of a we get told not to do it, to not distract our kids from their emotions.

Alyssa: There's confusion about distracting from their emotions versus helping them get into a safe body. We separate these. 

Laura: Yeah. 

Alyssa: And we separate too that like my goal, isn't it? Because even if I don't need a break at that moment or whatever, and I'm using like playfulness or distraction, this happens a lot for us and it's like time to go up for bath or bed and he doesn't want to go. And now I use like a, a game. I just said literally the other day, I was like when you were at school today, I was practicing and I know that I'm so fast and I think I can beat you up the stairs on your mark. Get set, go right. And then we're racing. He's like, I'm gonna beat you, I'm gonna beat you and we're playing this game and he had just been feeling disappointed to go up to bed. Now, what I'm doing is helping his body get back into a safe body. We're getting movement in. He's getting the game part. It's gonna give a little dopamine, the movement's gonna provide some serotonin to regulate the nervous system. It's, that's a coping strategy and we are getting back into like a way where we are connected. 

Laura: It's the connection. He was probably not wanting to go up to bed because he knows that means you separate for the night. Of course. 

Alyssa: I hate what's coming next. 

Laura: I know it means we're done for the day and mom of course.

Alyssa: And it's ok to like get into a safe body and get back into connection and then process these emotions. In fact, that's what we guide folks through that. We're not actually gonna do emotion processing work when, when this ends say you like are feeling sad or disappointed about something and you need like a good cry and you cry and then you move your body or you journal or you call a friend or whatever. And now your body starts to feel better and you still feel sad. You still feel the feeling. You just can now access more of your brain to access more of your tools for how to process this.

And what do you do with this feeling when we're in that space where we're in a dis-regulated state in our nervous system, we can't access those tools for what do I do with this feeling. And so often we jump to that, we're trying to emotion coach them when they don't have access to those tools. And so when we help them first get back into what we call a safe body or like it can present us a calm body. Um But really where we kind of have that connection and they have that like we're like their nervous system starts to let its guard down and relax and come back into safety, then they can access the tools for what to do with the emotion. 

Laura: I love that. I think that that's so helpful to, to frame it like that. Okay, so question. So I talked to lots of parents who say that when they attempt to talk about their emotions with their kids that they say no, stop talking. Don't say that like when

Alyssa: I'm not feeling that.

Alyssa: I'm not feeling that yes, what is going from your, you know, I, I have my ideas about what's going on for, for those kids. I would love to know what your ideas are for, what's going on and how do we approach that? If we know we've got one of those kids who really can't in the, you know, especially in the moment, can't handle us talking about those things. 

Alyssa: I'm glad you brought up in the moment because there's two things we can look at here. One is, are we trying to emotion coach too soon? Are we trying to talk about emotions when their nervous system is still too dysregulated to do that. It's like if somebody comes in and tries to like, solve your problem or like comes in and this, like I had folded, I shared this story in the book, but I had folded these piles of laundry and Sage came in and knocked them down. And as you said, there's always laundry, right? So like folding all the piles feels like a feat in and of itself and he came in and destroyed them. And I like to think about like in that moment, if somebody came in, it was like A trying to say a script of like, wow, you must be so frustrated right now like, yeah, I am way go. 

You identified it, right? Like I don't necessarily feel connected if they aren't showing up as their authentic self and B in that moment, if they came in and they tried to solve it like, oh, wow, you're so frustrated. I can help you build it or I can help you fold it again or we can fold it again. Like I know that's what I have to do. I'm not ready to do that yet. I'm not ready to talk about it. I'm not ready to fold it again. I'm not ready to make a new plan. I need a minute. I'm dysregulated. My nervous system needs a minute to maybe feel deregulated or move through it and then we can get to the emotion part. And I think we rush this for kids where we jump in first with the emotion stuff. And I want to be really mindful of this. And so when we go through this, we have five phases of emotion processing. Phase two is recognizing their perceived emotion. And we talk about like what happens if you say an emotion word in this time where you're like, oh man, you were working so hard on that and your black tower crash, gosh, it's frustrating. If you throw in the word frustrating in there and you see that your kid escalates great. Leave it out. We can build emotion concepts and talk about those emotions later. If you have a kid who when you mention that word or any emotion word, they fly off the handle. Perfect. That's fine. Leave it out just like you can do everything I just said without the, that's so frustrating man. You were working so hard on that and your black tower crashed, right? Like pause. Now we're still just holding that space for them to be dysregulated. 

We're going to help them move through the dysregulation to get back to a regulated state. And then if when they're calm and regulated and we've gone through these five, the first four phases of emotion processing and we get to the fifth, which is like the problem solving. Moving on. This is where we talk about it. Conflict. If we get there and you mention an emotion word and they again play off the handle. It's either they aren't actually regulated yet or that they feel shame around certain emotions, which is common for a lot of us and it doesn't mean any parent is failing or has done anything wrong. A lot of us have certain emotions that we observe even socially that we feel like we're not supposed to feel or whatever. And so if you then name the emotion and you're like, wow, that was really frustrating earlier. And they're like, I wasn't frustrated, then I might just say totally, it's fine if you weren't. And if you were, that's fine too. I can handle it if you were. And that's it. Like, they don't have to participate in the conversation of just dropping in these little seeds of like you are lovable even when.

Laura: Yeah, I love that. Okay. So you said the shame word and I would love to talk for just a second about it. So many of us are attempting to parent without shame and we're being really mindful about that. And at the same time, our kids experience shame because they're humans and they're out in the world. And so I would love to just for a second. Can we piece that apart for the listener around how we can be sure that we're not actively shaming our child and understanding that they may also experience shame. 

Alyssa: They probably will experience shame. In fact, like, you know, our Queen Brunet Brown in this work and she has done so much research on shame and I turned to her for a lot of this and one of the things that she talks about that for me as a parent and as a teacher, we're both really helpful to hear was that we aren't looking for shame free. We're looking for shame, resilient. And this delineation is that like they are gonna, like, somebody is gonna say like you are so yada ya, like that's gonna come up even if we're not saying you're so lazy or you're so dumb or you're so stupid or whatever, we might not say that to our kids. They're probably gonna hear it from somebody else because a lot of people don't have these tools yet and everyone around us gets dysregulated sometimes and we say things we don't mean and we make mistakes and that happens, kid to kid all the time. 

Laura: And even if someone isn't saying things actively, most kids know the expectations and they know when they haven't been able to meet them, they know when they've done something that's kind of outside of our, our set of social rules too. 

Alyssa: Yeah. What we do here is separate, shame and guilt in that instance. Like, rather than like you are so dumb, like, oh, you made a stupid choice, right? Like it was just having a conversation with the teen about this the other day where he was, he's 13 years old and we were chatting and he was like, oh, I'm so stupid. And I was like, you made a stupid choice if you were having a hard time and you made a stupid choice, you're not a stupid human. Like, you're not a stupid person and just that little delineation of, like, the focus on the behavior. Like, yeah, he didn't make a kind choice.

He knew that he wasn't supposed to do what he did and he did it anyway and he was dysregulated and also trying to feel like he could fit in and connect with others and like that all makes sense and you're gonna make a lot of stupid choices. It doesn't mean you're a stupid person. And so popping in with that like clear language of rather than the I AM or you are, is focusing on the behavior like that behavior is right. Just the other day. Sage was my, my little guy, my toddler was having a hard time accessing kindness, which is something we talk about a lot in my house. And I just said, hey, buddy, we were like snuggling after a nap time. He'd had a really hard morning and we're snuggling after a nap. 

And I was like, hey, bud, I noticed this morning that it felt like it was really hard for you to be kind. You were having a hard time being kind. And I know that you're a really kind person. I wanna help you so that we can figure out what's going on and really focusing on that behavior though. Like, I know you are kind, I know you're lovable. I know all these things about who you are and this behavior didn't align with that. I want kids to experience guilt. Guilt tells us, hey, I am outside my values. It's like such a good marker for us of like, oh, I feel guilty usually for us is an opportunity to tune in to like, what was my value? And then what was my behavior? And did they match up? And so when kids are coming home and they are, they are expressing shame of like this. I am language and we start to notice those signs for us. We can just pop in and validate who they are and how the behavior showed up and what the behavior was and that helps them foster this relationship with guilt rather than with shame. And that's where we have that shame resilience. 

Laura: Uh gosh, I think we all, I think parents, I feel like the best place to start would be with ourselves on that. I don't know how many times I've thought in my own head, I'm the worst mom, right? The mom, right? And that warm wash of shame come, you know, as Brune calls, it comes flooding over me, you know, and I mean, and even saying that those types of things out loud. I'm feeling like a terrible mom right now and I know that I'm also a human who can make mistakes. I'm actually a really good mom who stepped outside of my values right now or who's going through a hard time who's struggling to handle what's going on in our family with grace and compassion right now. You know?

Alyssa: Who's underresourced and overwhelmed and like, yeah, we, we have a section in the parent about or in the book about being a good parent. And because I had made this comment to a friend where I was like, oh, she's such a good mom and my friend was like, what does that mean? I was like, you know what? Thanks. What does that mean? And as I started to like really dive into it, I outlined three questions that I now walk myself through. What are they when I feel like, oh hang on, let me find them. Now. They're like escaping me in this moment. But I, when I am in this spaces, I have for instance, like I'm scrolling social media and I see like, oh they did like family photos, right? And then I'm like, oh shoot like I'm a terrible mom. Like we're not doing family photos. We're barely like, it's hard enough for me to like put a bran to bring him to child care. Like we're not getting life together, right? 

Like, and then I have these things and so I as I started to like, really look at this, I was like, ok, but does that actually really matter to me? Right. Like, maybe that's something that really matters to that person and that helps them feel fulfilled and helps them feel potentially like a good parent or just fills their cup? But I'm now comparing myself to this person or this situation that maybe isn't important to me. So the three questions that I outlined and that we outlined in the book are one. What's my long term goal for this child? Two, what's my goal for our relationship? And three, am I modeling the values I want them to inherit?  And when I can come back to those three, like that's my outline for, am I being a good parent? And for me that doesn't have anything to do with like cutting sage's sandwich into shapes for his lunch, right? Or like those things that like can really add up for me where like, oh my God, this is what a good parent does. And then when I come back to those three and I'm like, what's my long term goal for him? What's my goal for our relationship? And am I modeling the values I want him to inherit? Like cutting shapes doesn't fit into those three for me. And then I can be like, ok, cool. That's actually not something that matters to me for being a good parent. 

Laura: I can let that go. 

Alyssa: Yeah. And that is gonna go.

Laura: With it and not let it tie it be tied to my worth. 

Alyssa: Correct. If it is, if it fills your cup. Great. Do it have a blast? Right. Like shopping for my kids' clothes fills my cup. Love it. I don't feel like I'm thriving as a parent because he has a matching outfit back. Right. I'm just like that fills my cup. Gives me a little dopamine one of my favorite coping mechanisms. I love it and it doesn't fit into those three questions. It's not a part of the criteria. Yeah, for me of, am I a good parent? 

Laura: I love that. Yes. You know, I was just thinking, you said dopamine and I wanted, I way back in our conversation, you were talking about an interaction that you've been noticing between your dad and your son and his grandpa and I just, I wanted to pull out the refrain you did. I don't even think you noticed that you did it, but it's so important to do. You ascribed good intentions to the annoying behavior of your father that seems counter to your goals as a parent. And I, I think that that's so important if we're talking, you know, so I'm a marriage and family therapist by training. So I love thinking about kind of the the family system and there's so much that we, we put on our parents. So we, we've decided to parent differently. We're stepping into this new place and it can feel very like we're parenting at them to the older generation. It can feel like we're gentle parenting at like our, at our parents. I love that you really, you ascribed good intentions to your dad. He is trying, you know, that's what he was going for when he goes to distract or, you know, my kid from his feelings, what he's going for like by telling him a joke or getting him to laugh, he's trying to give my kid dopamine. He doesn't know that that's what he's doing. But underlying it, it's an act of love and compassion that's coming from dad or from grandpa, you know, and I, I really, I love seeing those things because that again, if we are wanting to have a conversation where, hey, we're raising these kids in a village, we want our parents to kind of be partners with us. It allows us to come in and say dad, I, I know that when you see, you know, my son or my daughter having a hard time with their feelings that pulls on your heart and you just want to ease their pain, you just want to ease their suffering. 

Alyssa: That's it. 

Laura: You know and 

Ayssa: It's like pause, you want to ease their pain because it's uncomfortable for you because no one allowed you to be in this. Like that's not the part I'm putting into this, but that's really, it's true. Sage. To not have a hard time because when sage has a hard time, one of the, yeah, one of the other components is that scientific knowledge part of like we fire off each other, emotions are contagious if we are accessing regulation. And so when Sage is having a hard time inside, it's so hard to be around somebody who's having a hard time and not make it go away because your nervous system is going to react. And so for my dad, like it makes total sense for him to be like this is so uncomfortable for me. No one taught me what to do in these situations. And so if I can get Sage to not have a hard time, my nervous system can feel more at ease and often get back into this. 

Laura: Yeah, often for our parents generation too. It's not even that they taught them like they didn't teach them what to do. They actively taught them that this is dangerous or have these feelings. You will be hurt physically, you know.

Alyssa: I will spank you or you'll be emotionally like a switch, you know. Yes, yeah. 

Laura: I mean, that's, that's the emotional thing to see many of our children and ourselves are still living with. And if they're lucky, you know, we're lucky enough to have parents who are kind of willing to step into that arena with us. What a beautiful gift of healing for across the generations that can happen. When we have those vulnerable conversations where we see our, our parents with compassion and give, you know, assign good intentions to them and let them know that no one's gonna get hurt if our, you know, if our kid has these skins and these are the things that we can do to regulate ourselves and them in the moment. Oh, love it. 

Alyssa: And your parents might not change and they might not do. Right. We have a whole section at the end of the book. Actually, in part three about this, like, or if your co parents or your partner is not doing this and is showing in a different way, there's two things. One is to grieve the relationship we envisioned. Like maybe you really wanted your child to have that safe space in your partner or your co parent or to have this relationship with your parents that you didn't get to have around emotions. And so grieving the loss of that is part of it. And then the other part is recognizing that we actually only need one human that we can break down to, that we can be vulnerable with who can handle our hard stuff. Again. Thank you, Brine for your research on this because that for me is so comforting of like, cool, my parents just probably won't be the people that he turns to when he's having a hard time and I can be that person and that's enough. And so if my dad goes in and distracts him out of his feelings and taps into the dopamine and never comes in with the emotion coaching or serotonin or anything like that. It's okay. He's gonna experience that through life. He's gonna have a different experience with me. 

Laura: I love that so much. Alyssa. I so appreciate your willingness to dive into some of these topics with me today. I want to be super mindful of your time. I know that you're talking about your book on the lots of shows and everything. But I, I really appreciate you coming in and sharing, sharing this with us and making this book so accessible. Reading it was delightful. Oftentimes, parenting books can be a little heavy and cumbersome, but the language you use is just like you, we're having a conversation. So it was really delightful to be too. 

Alyssa: Thank you. And there's one more component of the set method we didn't talk about. I just want to touch on. No, that's Okay. I could literally do this for bias, uncovering, implicit bias. And this is the part of our social programming in our childhood that will come up that once you, when you're in these moments, you might find yourself being like, well, this kid's being defiant or they're just being manipulative, they're trying to get their own way or they're just looking for attention or they can't go through life being disrespectful, right? 

Like all these phrases or things that are gonna come up for us, maybe age biases, they're old enough to know better, right. That like we're gonna have different biases and narratives that come up from our childhood and our social programming that can access the driver's seat of our brain and we guide you through what it looks like to help regain access to your brain and to notice these parts and to see that they're all parts of us that are trying to keep us safe based off of what they learned in our childhood and that we are safe and our child is safe and that our child is in a different scenario, in a different culture, in a different relationship than we were in with our attachment figures as kids. And so we can do something different now. 

Laura: I love that. Oh, yes, so good. Okay. So I know that we've talked about it a little bit already, but just let's wrap up by reminding people where they can find you and access your work including your new book. 

Alyssa: Sure. Tiny Humans, Big Emotions wherever books are sold. And it's available globally. So you can head to our website seedandsew.org/book. If you are outside of the US or Canada, you can find the links there to purchase for your country. And if you don't see your country there, reach out and let us know and we can reach out to Harper Collins and say, hey, people want to read this in Lithuania perfect color at us. And you can follow me on Instagram @seed.and.sew. I love continuing these conversations. So as you're reading the book and like highlighting or finding passages that like jump out at you or that you're like Alyssa, this is making me mad. I'm feeling frustrated about this or this. I have pushed back on. I wanna hear from you. I love that. II, I love continuing the conversation. 

Laura: Yeah. And the constructive feedback and being open to criticism. I, I love that you're willing to entertain that. I feel like there's very few of us out in the world who are willing to hear the negative feedback and take it on board and engage in the conversation. That's great. 

Alyssa: Well, I think there are different ways to deliver it, right? Like if you're an idiot, this is terrible. It one way versus like, oh man, I'm having a hard time seeing how this part would fit in with my kid. Here's the breakdown of my kid, you know, like that feels different to me and feels like a conversation and like, we really want to both be productive in this. And but anyway, take a picture of you like reading the reading the book or if you're listening on audible, I read the audio book. Take a screen shot and tag @seed.and.sew. on Instagram and let me know your thoughts. Let's keep chatting about it. Thank you so much for having me on Laura. This is lovely.

Laura: I hope you. I hope that the book gets into lots and lots of hands. Thanks for putting it out into the world. 

Alyssa: Totally my pleasure. 

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 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!