Episode 200: Becoming Calm and Steady Through Reparenting with Tania Johnson
/In this episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast, I am joined by Tania Johnson, a registered psychologist and play therapist, and a dedicated mother of two. She also co-founded the Institute of Child Psychology. Together we’ll explore how the challenges and experiences from our childhood often resurface as we parent our kids, creating "echoes" that can sometimes make things bumpy.
Here are the topics we covered:
How childhood experiences influence brain wiring and lifelong emotional responses
Understanding why we repeat harmful behaviors despite knowing they hurt us
How insecurity drives control, affecting attachment and behaviors
How parents can pause before reacting emotionally
Parental memory and emotional responses, using "shark music" as a metaphor for triggers
Emotional regulation and self-awareness for parents
Repairing relationships with children and the need for parents' internal emotional healing
Vulnerability in parenting and repairing emotional responses that make children feel burdensome
If you’re looking to connect with Tania and learn more about her work, you can visit her website Institute of Child Psychology, and her social media accounts Instagram @instituteofchildpsych, Facebook @instituteofchildpsychology, Twitter @instituteofchildpsychology, TikTok @instituteofchildpsych, and YouTube @instituteofchildpsychology.
Resources:
Remember that parenting is a beautiful, evolving journey, and every step—smooth or bumpy—offers a chance for growth, for both you and your child.
I would love to hear from you! If you have any questions you’d like to have answered on the podcast or any takeaways or wins you’d like to share you can leave me a message here: https://www.speakpipe.com/laurafroyenphd
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 Balance Parent podcast, we are going to be talking about one of my favorite topics re-parenting and how we can be faced with the echoes of our own childhood when we're working with our, with our kiddos, the things that were maybe bumpy for us and for our parents come up in our bumpy for, for us and our kids and how to navigate those moments in a way that affirms our kiddos affirms their emotions is supportive of them and helps them become mentally and emotionally well and whole and also supports ourselves in the midst of that. So to help me with this conversation, I have Tania Johnson. She is one of the founders of the Institute of Child Psychology and I'm so excited to have her here. Tania. Welcome to the show. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?
Tania: Oh, thank you so much, Laura. It's such a pleasure to be here. So I am, I'm a registered psychologist, a registered play therapist. I'm also a mom to two little girls. Two beautiful little girls at the institute. We basically started the institute about eight years ago because Tammy and it is the other co-founder, Tammy and I were working together in private practice. And we were kind of feeling as if the process in private practice was very slow, particularly working with kids. And we were both pulling our hair out saying we want to be talking to a child's village, we want to talk to mom and dad and grandma and to the daycare workers. And then we said, well, why don't we? So we did our first presentation on childhood anxiety and it was really well received. And basically, we sat with a group of parents for it was about seven hours and we just really got into the nuts and bolts of anxiety and rick covered the same sort of material that we probably would over a three month period in clinic and really just started brainstorming, what do, what do we need to do to really make this work for our children? And then really the institute grew from that first presentation.
So then we started visiting other cities, including more presentations, and went online when the rest of the world went online a little bit before. But basically when everybody had to go online and now we have the institute which has over 80 courses on the website. We have a professional membership, we do parent coaching, there's a whole community involved. So it really has just been this incredible journey of being able to walk alongside parents as they discover what's ahead and as we discover what's ahead with them, so it's just such a beautiful journey that I'm so incredibly humbled and grateful to be on.
Laura: Yeah. Gosh, you know, I feel so much the same about my community. You know, the my listeners are so important to me and I feel so just so grateful to get to walk alongside them, you know, and I love that you're saying that okay, so one of the things that we were kind of talking about before we hit record, you know, as we do, when we're, you know, chatting and preparing, it was about those moments in time where things are hard as a parent and we have this idea of what we are going to be doing or what we should be doing or, you know, we, we watch the Instagram videos and so we know how, what we're supposed to say and then reality happens and it's very difficult to do what we know we're supposed to do or if you even know what's right in the moment, maybe our kids are dis-regulated, they're not listening, you know, all of those pieces. And so I would love it if we could have a kind of a juicy conversation about those moments because they happen in every family. I know they happen in mine, I'm positive they happen.
Tania: They happen in mine, and you know, I said I've got two little girls so they're seven and five. And I always say I live and breathe and teach the stuff and I still have these moments where I'm like, what just happened there? Like I just, I just, I just did something that I never think would come out of my mouth. So I think what's going on there? Why does that happen? Why is it that we can know all the things and then the knowing and the doing are so separate, right? Like what's going on there for us? The parent at that moment? Well, I mean, and that there's so much for us to dig into and I'm so curious to hear your thoughts on this Laura. But I think in those moments, I think we all have so not only is it Instagram, but I know that when we all hold that little baby in our arms for the first time, we all have a vision of what our family is going to look like. And for me, it always comes down to like the values and the energy of what we want in our family. But I think that when life becomes frazzled, when we're picking up kids and dinner has to be cooked and then the two kids start scraping on the floor by your feet and the pots boiling over and the pasta is going everywhere. I think that in those moments of frazzle, that idealized version of our values and our energy of what we wanted to be. Although so important, I think that very often within the actual trigger moments, we go back to some of our wiring from our own childhood.
Laura: Tell me more a little bit about that wiring and that process. You know, I feel like we, you know, we hear a lot about kind of triggers and wiring and stuff, but like how does that actually happen? How do we get the wiring that was kind of handed to us in childhood?
Tania: Yeah. So when we are in that frazzled moment, I want us to all kind of visualize two little kids at your feet. Pest is boiling over, the waters are going everywhere. We need to get off the stove, they're killing each other on our feet. We go into a stress mode which really then kind of activates the lower parts of our brain. And when we go into that stress mode, very often, we go back into early wiring from our own childhoods where we go back to that kind of, it's like it's a younger brain, it's a younger self where we go. Okay. So I am now gonna respond in the way that I was often responded to when I was little. So, you know, that might be. So for me as an example, my mom would use a very stern voice and very angry eyes. And when I am not aware, I will do the same thing with the girls, just not the stern voice, but the angry eyes. And my girls will always say to me, they'll say mom, you don't really yell but your eyes get really angry, which is a form of communication, right? It's aggressive communication towards them. So we go back into that very, very early wiring where we go. Okay. This is what I know. This is a more primitive way of responding to my kiddos right now, even though it's not consciously where I want to respond to them from. So it's almost like resettling back into those childhood patterns that we grew up with, with those neural connections that were repeated again and again and again, we end up repeating it often with our own kids.
Laura: And okay, so tell me, I think that we understand, you know, most of my listeners, we've talked, we talk about the brain and the survival brain a lot here. But I feel like one piece that we haven't talked about a lot that I would love your help really pulling out is why we do the thing that we know hurts us. Like, tell me, you know, because I, I know for, for me and, you know, in my, my work and my learnings that the, that there's this part of us that wants to protect, right? That wants to protect our kid from, you know, from losing love, you know, all of those things. But there's a piece of this that's very rooted in attachment. Like, tell me though, like why it makes sense that we would do those things? Because to the logical brain, the brain that has decided like, oh, we're not going to do those things our parents did. It doesn't make sense. And so I would really love for you to like to make it make sense because I think it does make sense that we do the things that were done to us. And I would love to really just lay that out.
Tania: So I agree with you 100%. We all want to move forward with our kids in different ways and we're all learning as we know more. We do differently. I think my parents did the very best with the tools that they had at the time. And I'm doing the very best with the tools that I have. And one day my girls will go, this is what my mom used to do. She, I'll tell you a story about my daughter and that's one day what I'm sure she will tell her therapist one day. But in those moments where our stress response at survival brain is really, really activated. I believe that reverting back to those childhood patterns has to do with us trying to find some form of control. So deep inside of our psyche, somebody controlled us through enacting certain patterns. And so we go okay, when my mom needed control or when my dad needed control, whoever was a caregiver, this is what they would do. And so deep within us, that pattern has been set that that was how we were controlled. So when we're not responding with that deeply logical brain, when we state we're going back to that survival brain, we go back into what we on a deep, deep level tend to feel control is.
Laura: Yeah. And I mean, oftentimes when we feel unsafe and unsteady, we go to control, right? We go to that to reclaim that feeling of safety. Do you see a relationship like attachment with the attachment relationship? I like these kinds of internal stories that we tell ourselves that are kind of the scripts underlying some of our behaviors and our automatic thinking.
Tania: I do think that there are the underlying stories. So like the one I just gave you is one of control there. So I do think the underlying stories are there. However, I would probably counter whatever your attachment style is, whichever category you fall into and the work that you've done around it will determine how much power you give to those scripts. So for me growing up, I definitely had a secure attachment with my parents. So those scripts are there, but they're not overly powerful. I revert back to them in stressful moments. I revert back to them when there's a lot of stimulation going on. Like boiling over a beep is tight. The timer is beeping, the girls are my beat. Those scripts will pop up. But because those inborn pat also laid in patterns of security that are there. For me, the type of the type of, of the, what's it called? The font of the script isn't very large. It's actually quite small. So I can, it's, it's not, it's there, but it's not dominating. Whereas I think that when people have grown up in a world where they don't feel secure with their parents, they don't trust themselves, others in the world. I think that that script is very, very big for them. And I think that it almost takes over your capacity to be able to regain that breath.
Laura: Yeah. Okay. So I feel like that begs the question then. So if we have those moments for us that, you know, kind of activate the big flaunted scripts where it makes it nearly impossible to slow things down, you know, things are just happening in a very reactive and dis regulated way. You know, our parents, all always are coming to me asking, how do we get the pause? Right? And that's what they mean, right. How do we get that moment where, you know, that moment between the thing that happened and our response having that moment stretch long enough to actively choose what we're going to do. Right? And you're saying in that moment for some folks who've had harder things happen that, that font of kind of like this is the emergency, this is the script. What we do know is big and domineering. What do we do with that now in the moment, you know, with our kids or, you know, in, in our lives now as we grow up.
Tania: So I'm going to step outside of the moment for a sake. And then I'm going right back into the so outside at the moment at the institute, we often call it a shock music like in jaws. So, you know, when you can feel it. Yes. Okay. So coming to recognize how shark music plays out in our body, right? So it's like um do your shoulders kind of tense up? Does your stomach tense? Does your face kind of get red? Does your breathing change? What happens when we feel that trigger that shark music happening? And very often that shark music is also centered around emotions that were permitted in our house when we were growing up, versus not permitted. So I'll give you an example in my household growing up. Happy, sad, excited were acceptable emotions. So my parents were 100% there supportive, connected emotions that were not okay in parentheses, not okay. Were um kind of more anger, disappointed at them disrespect or feelings of disrespect towards them. None of those things were okay. So those sorts of feelings are where my shock music comes up. So I know that when my girls, when they're angry, when it feels as if like, especially the, the nearly eight year old now is being sassy. When those sorts of things come up, I can feel that my body gets tight. And that's my Shark music. So I think becoming aware, doing a little bit of work and saying what sort of things were ok when I was growing up because those probably aren't my triggers whereas what wasn't ok and the big, the big title things. So like I said, anger, disappointment at my parents, what wasn't okay in my household because it's likely that those feelings of where my shark music comes up, that's, that's, that's where we have the issues.
Laura: I'm sorry, I just want to pop in here because so many parents and I'm sure you hear this too, tell me that they have no memories of things that they don't have. You know, I have very specific memories of like my, you know, parents delivering the script to me, you know, but lots of parents don't, right. And so I just want to like the highlight of the Shark music piece of it. Sometimes I feel like people have to go backwards, right? Like okay. So I'm noticing my body responding as if there's shark music playing. Okay. So what's happening right now? And I don't need to remember exactly how I got that shark music or how, you know, because so many of our memories, especially under the age of three are very, you know, nebulous, they're very in our bodies, you know. Do you know what I'm saying?
Tania: 100%. And I, I agree with you so much work backwards and we don't agree with you. We don't need to go. This is because of this. We just need to know that this is something that creates a shock.
Laura: Like frustration is hard for me when I see it, when I feel it, I don't know what to do it with it for myself or, you know, I really, you know, get dysregulated when I see it happening in my child. I don't need to know that it's because, you know, my parents said Xy and Z whenever I was frustrated, like I don't need to know where that came from. All I need to know is in the moment right now. This is an emotion that makes me really uncomfortable seeing it and experiencing it. Yeah.
Tania: I love it. I love it. You know, some something that I sent sometimes do even with myself or with clients, I draw. So I have a piece of paper and in the middle, I put a little circle. So emotions that were comfortable in my household growing up or if we don't know emotions that I'm comfortable with presently. So just things that are okay. And then on the outside of the circle, I put emotions that were a, either not allowed in my household or b that I already know that I'm uncomfortable with.
Laura: So I love that. I love that exercise. Let's highlight, pull that exercise out for listeners because I really love it when we can give them homework. So you take a piece of paper and in the middle, you put a circle and you put in all of the emotions that you feel safe with now that we're safe growing up or that you feel safe with now and then a larger circle with all of the emotions that feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar. You know, either because, you know, they weren't allowed in the past or because you just know right now that these are hard for me to deal with and cope. Yeah. Okay.
Tania: Absolutely beautiful. And I find even so we can look at that and explore it further. But I think even the process of just doing that exercise to go like, oh, interesting, interesting, interesting.
Laura: I'm such a big fan of just like noticing and curiosity. Look at that.
Tania: Yeah, we don't need to do anything with it. It's just, it's, it's interesting. But very often our shock music has something to do with those feelings that are around the outside. So doing a little bit of work outside and then we find ourselves in this moment of high stimulation where, you know, I think prior to being a parent, we can kind of logically look at parenting and say this is what should be happening or we see somebody in the grocery store before we've had our own kids and go, why is that through a child? I was such a good parent before I had kids. I was such a good parent before I had kids. I mean, I'm a good parent now, right? We're all good parents. Yeah, but, but I think none of us actually realize that in those moments in the grocery store when the kid is having a meltdown, mom's probably having a complete stress response which is activating the lower part of the brain. So, you know, it's such a different experience. It's like we're on two different planets watching the same, same thing happen. So in that moment with your kiddo, when that shark music is coming up, it can be super helpful if you've already recognized what your shark music is. I always say to parents the moment you feel shark music or you suspect shark music. This is when we want to zip our lips. This is when we want to say as little as possible because at this point, nothing good is going to come out of our mouth.
Laura: So this is, this is the moment when our mother's voice falls from our lips. Yes. Yes. This is it.
Tania: This is it, zip the lips, zip the lips. And if you know, and it's so helpful, if you've had somebody give you feedback about what you do when you're angry, whether it's a partner or a child or a therapist. Somebody who said when you're mad, this is what you do. Your voice changes or you sigh a lot or like I said, your eyes get angry. So for me, when I hear my shark music because it's, it's all fine and dre and to have all of these wonderful things like tap out with a partner. What happens if you're a single parent? What happens if there's nobody else home? What happens if you can't take a time out? All lovely ideas but not always practical. So I always just say zip your lip and for me because I'm aware that it's my eyes. I get angry. I just with my girls, I'm like I breathe into my heart center and I really focus on softening my eyes because I know that that's where my emotion shows. And I'm not trying to, I'm trying to keep them safe. So I make sure that they're not near the boiling pot of water that, you know, big sisters, not bonking little sister's head on the floor. So I'm trying to keep them safe and I'm only using words to keep them safe, but nothing else is happening at that point.
Laura: I love that. I think that there is so much pressure on us. We're so afraid of being permissive that sometimes I think we act way too soon. So I really love this permission to just slow it down most of the time. Nothing is like these things aren't an emergency. Like, yes, if your child is running into the street, you have to go get them. That's an emergency. Right. You know, most of the time, but even though it feels like an emergency, right? Because, like, because of the things that happened to us, those things feel like we're perceiving them as a threat. Right? And so then our lower brain is activated. So even though it feels like an emergency in our body, it actually isn't. And I love this permission that you're giving us to just slow down, take a beat and get back to yourself.
Tania: Yeah, totally 100%. And I know that if I keep on talking at this point that not only am I going to get flooded, but they're going to get flooded too. So it's actually not helping the situation at all. You will have Children, I believe who have been taught compliance. So, you know, we're going to have a parent that keeps talking, there are consequences if they don't respond in the correct way. So you will have kids who will be quiet and go to their time out, whatever, whatever it might be. And I think that there's still tons bottled up inside of them. So for me, what I'm wanting at that moment, not just for my kids, but for myself is quiet so that I can anchor into the best version of myself. And the only way to do that is to stop talking because if I keep talking, they're going to respond to me. She did it first, he did it first. Whatever it might be, the more I interact, the more engagement there's gonna be, which is the last thing I want at that moment.
Laura: Why, why?
Tania: Because if I keep engaging with them and I'm in a stress response, they keep engaging with me in a stress response. Everybody's activating everybody at this point. My answers might be a little bit more sophisticated. I might actually have more control over them over what's gonna happen next. But the truth of the matter is if our brains were all wired up, you're just going to see those lower brains lacking up. There's not, there's nothing good coming out of that interaction.
Laura: And I feel like the interaction isn't actually an interaction because everybody involved is just in their own system, right? They're not actually starting to understand the other ones. They're not seeking, you know, to see and hear and you know, be loving towards the other ones. They're all everybody is just, we're all in our own little silos near each other exploding. You know, like there's not actually a relationship and connection happening. Yeah.
Tania: 100%. Yeah. It's not an interaction. It's a reaction. It's just a reaction.
Laura: And everybody's just reacting, you know, and it can feel like you're doing something. But yeah, I think that the risk is so much. I know for me, like when I get flooded and I keep pushing myself to keep interacting, you know, like when I have that little, one little script of, don't let her get away with that, you know, like, I mean, oh gosh, that's, those are the times when I make the biggest mistakes in my parenting, journaling, you know, you know, those are the times where I have to be like, it takes like willpower to like zip the lip, walk calmly into my office and sit down and maybe Rage journal a little bit. I say those things into a notebook that I'm not gonna say out loud and damage my kid's lip, you know.
Tania: 100%. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Or brand a coffee or your therapist whoever it might be. But, you know, I, I think for me, the definition of emotion regulation is the ability to pause. And I think that we try to teach our kids these skills all the time. Pause, take a breath, you know. Um but we don't use them ourselves totally. They're never gonna do it if we can't do it. And I think, you know, even sharing with them sometimes, like when, you know, when, when things are stressful or when we've had a big explosion at home, mom is quiet because she's trying to take that pause. Mom is still learning and sometimes she messes up but mom is still learning to try and take that pause too.
Laura: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I think how powerful too, you know, we have, we have we say so much to kids, take a breath before you speak. You know, like, like it's the easiest thing in the world, right? Like it's not easy. We know it's not easy. We're here talking about this because it's not easy. So, you know, and we act as if gosh, why can't these kids do this by now? But like we also struggle with it and what a beautiful human thing, a gift to give to our kids. Acknowledging those moments of humanity of man, taking a breath when you're mad actually is really hard. It's not easy. It's hard.
Tania: Totally. Totally. And that mom is also a dad, whoever it is is also messy and just trying to figure out life as we go. And I think it gives them permission to be messy too.
Laura: I agree. I agree so much because we are messy. We're human beings having a human experience. You know, there's gonna be lots of mistakes on the way, you know.
Tania: Totally. Yeah. And, you know, I, I think Laura, the other thing that, for me is that when I speak too quickly I'm more likely to punish, to make them feel bad for what just happened, which is not what I want to do.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah. I think we can all agree with that. Okay. So, I feel like we've been, you know, we've, we've talked a lot about kind of when we hit those bumps with our kids, what to do, what does it say about what happened to us, how to do some of that work with ourselves in the moment so that we don't pass it on. I feel like we can go to two places and I'm kind of curious about where you wanna go. One is okay. So we're working on this, we're making some changes, but we're still making mistakes and our kids do or say something but let us know like, oh, I missed the mark, you know. So like, what do we do then? How do we repair? How do we move forward without, you know, like engaging in a, you know, like, how do we take accountability with our kids? Yeah. So there's that, that and then I also would love to talk about the kind of the internal healing that needs to happen to you because I think there's a lot of this that can, like we can just kind of white knuckle our way through this. We can think that regulating means just like shoving it down and holding on for dear life versus actually like healing some of these things so that the font on those, you know, those scripts, it can get smaller over time or, you know, that we can get off of those like neural super highways and onto the side streets where there's a little bit more time and ability to make good decisions, you know. So like those are, I feel like that's two passes. I would love to go with you and I'm happy to go either way.
Tania: So I wonder if this is going to be a typical psychologist response. How about we go right down the middle, the mediator, the mediator, because really to me, we're talking about the concept of courage there. So courage, let's talk about reparation with our kids and courage and then let's talk about courage with our own journeys. So when we look at reparation with our kids you know, the behaviors that we try and squash within our kids is very often the behaviors that we want them to exhibit as adults. So I think about my own little girls one day and, you know, while they may be sassy now, or they might talk back or they might question the direction that I've given. I want them to be able to stand up in a boardroom one day and say this is not the culture that I stand for or this decision does not feel good to my guys. Yeah, and they are never going to be able to do that unless they can do it with me first. So we don't suddenly get that skill at 25. This is something that we really start to nurture at five or if we get on this journey a little bit later with our kids, 15, whatever it may be. But I want my kids to be able to have a voice with me and to be able to tell me when things don't feel right, when it doesn't stand for what we are teaching as a family, what's important as a family. And that can be tough too.
And I also believe that this is wiring from my own childhood. So my husband, for instance, is very, very, very good at apologizing. He apologizes authentically quickly with lots of vulnerability. He's fantastic. And I I think that that was modeled to him within his own household for me. My mom had a very hard time apologizing. And so it's taken a lot of work for me when the when my girls come to me to be able to go again, Tania, this is your turn to be quiet, to feel those feelings in your body like well, I am sorry but to really notice that but and to go hold on, what is she saying? To me right now. How do I see her deeply for what she's saying to me? She's, she's little still. But her words hold so much importance. So how do I hear those words deeply and see the little human being in front of me? And then how do I have the courage to actually go? Mom is sorry, I should never have spoken to you in that way. That was scary for you without the but which so many adults put on at the end. Yeah. So I think we again need to do some reflection on what happened with apologies in our own home when we were growing up.
Even before we had kids, what was our history like of apologizing to other people? Because that very much will tell us what's going to happen with the Children in front of us. So if we know that this is potentially a trigger moment, I really want to always remain cognizant of what I want for my child one day. Do I want them to be able to have that voice that stands for when something doesn't feel right? Because it starts with me. Like I said, it doesn't start in the boardroom, it starts with me and that's the reminder that I give myself. So sometimes I just say like mama mom needs like just to have a cup of coffee and then we can talk I have a highly sensitive child who wants to talk about all of her feelings and she's very good about coming to me when something's wrong, but she wants to talk and talk and talk about her feelings. And so often not to say mom just needs a little bit of space because in giving myself that space before we have the conversation, it allows me to reset what's an important value for myself and for my girls.
Laura: Yeah. Oh, I love that so much and I love to, I, I feel like there's this undercurrent of what you were saying too is that when they do give us that feedback, right? When they do tell us like, oh, that didn't feel right to me. That didn't, you know, that means that or even when they're like, they are advocating for something that they really want, right? So like there's like, no, I want this, you know, or even like when they're lit really little and they're having those tantrums, they're, when they are doing that with us, there's two, I feel like they're communicating two really important things. One is that they trust us to hear their voice, right? Which is beautiful and they're still in touch with themselves. They're still, you know, so many parents I talked to have no idea what their unmet needs are. You know. So like if I go to a parent and not say like, you know, what are some needs of yours that aren't being met right now, you know, they have no idea. They have no idea because they spent their entire lives suppressing their needs being disconnected because we get the message early on. We ask for too much, you know, all of those things. And so, like when a child is asking and advocating for their needs, they're still in touch with those parts. Which is, oh, so good. So good. It's so beautiful.
Tania: Yeah. And I love what you're saying, that, you know, we, we might be able to have a very adult conversation around not knowing my needs or what my needs are. Whereas for our kids very often they'll come to communicate that in different ways. So through the tantrum maybe a conversation that doesn't quite yet kind of dig underneath to see what's going on. They're not very sophisticated.
Laura: You have the skills, the communication skills for sure.
Tania: But the only way they get better is to keep coming to us and knowing that they're heard totally. So it's always just a reminder to kind of be aware of my own stuff, to be aware of that shark music and to go, ok, what do you want for your kid? And how do I look underneath at what's really happening here?
Laura: I love that. Okay, so just in a moment I want to be completely vulnerable and I know you do some parent coaching. Will you coach me on something like that? Is on the topic that just happened with one of my kids. So, because again, I think it's, I think it's really good for people to get to hear this sort of thing that we can do this little thing too. Right. So, my youngest daughter, she's almost nine, a couple of weeks ago, she had an accident, she fell from, her favorite climbing tree and, while she was okay, she had a pretty severe concussion and whiplash. So she's been in a neck brace for two weeks. She just got it off yesterday, got cleared, she returned to most activities by the neurosurgeon. And instead of going back to school after her doctor's appointment, we just went to a park to do all of the playing that she hadn't been able to do, you know. And so we were playing and stuff and it's been a really stressful two weeks. I will, like, my nervous system has been pretty activated during that time. Like, there was a time, you know, when we took her to the, er, she couldn't walk on her own, she had really spotty memories. It was, it was scary. Right. And so my nervous system, like, was very relieved yesterday, you know.
And there was this moment at the park where I communicated to her, you know, that I needed a break and while she was playing I was still watching her, but I'm just gonna kind of sit and, and be with myself for a moment. A couple minutes into that. She was, I don't know, on some play equipment and had taken off her shoes. But wanted them back because she wanted to go into the wood chips. But she didn't communicate that to me. So she said, hey, mom, come here, have something to ask you. So I, I got up from where her shoes were, walked across the park to her. And then she said, will you bring me my shoes? And I was like, I was just buy your shoes. And she hung her head and she goes, I know I'm an inconvenience mommy. I was like, oh God, you know, because I mean, I remember I have very specific memories of feeling like an inconvenience to my parents. You know, I'm one of those people who has all the memories of, you know, I think that I think I had an, as a child, I had an innate wisdom that like I would, I needed support in my emotions.
And so I like to attempt to support myself in them. I think lots of people who don't have that support just kind of because no one is helping them have that internal narrative. They just don't create the memories, you know. But anyway, I mean, so like that was definitely like a life in the heart got punched like crap, you know, I mean, and so, like, tell me a little bit like, so, I mean, I sat with her and I repaired and I, you know, I asked her how she was feeling and all of those things and we try we tried but man, I had no idea. I was making her, you know, that I was making her feel at times like she's an inconvenience to me. And so can you just coach me a little bit on that piece of things? Like what, what do we do when we realize? Oh, we've been making a mistake. How do we change it and all of those things?
Tania: Yeah. So I think the first one that I would advocate for is probably changeful. This with yourself is just to go like, honey, we've just been through a really rough few weeks here. It's been hard and I think being able to give space for those feelings so often we, in these sort of situations, I think we flip into caregiving roles. So is she okay? We've got to figure out this. We've got to figure out that we're going to do the doctor's appointments. But I think that when we can give space a little bit to our own feelings, it allows room for their feelings in turn because we can give space and go like, you know what? Maybe I do not right now when she really needs me, but maybe there's something inside of me telling me that maybe on Saturday night I need some time or I need to build in some sort of cocooning for myself where I just get to go like, hey, am I? Ok, lots has happened because when we don't stuff it down, it helps to release those feelings which then gives more space for our child's feelings. So I would start with that and then I think that I would probably not bring it up too quickly again. But one day back in the near future when I'm going for a walk with her.
So I always love talking to kids when we're not sitting opposite each other, but instead we're walking in the car or we're building a Lego Tower. I would just slip in something like, yeah. Sometimes when mom was growing up, she would feel a little bit like she was an inconvenience to people. And I wrote to, to grandma and grandpa and I didn't like feeling that way. I don't want you to feel that way. And then I would just keep building the Lego Tower. I would just leave it at that. So, and you know, we could even make it simpler like mom heard what you said the other day and I felt like that too sometimes like a little girl and I would just leave it at that and then I would just wait to see what she does with that because you've repaired and then if she still needs to talk about it, my guess is that she will then pick it up from there. But I think sometimes for kids sharing a little bit of yourself and your experience in a way that's appropriate is incredibly powerful because it creates this deeper connection where they go. Oh, wow. Mom felt like this too.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I like that. And, you know, when you invited me to give myself a little compassion, you know, a little bit of grace that felt really good. You know, it's so amazing how I can tell that to everyone in the world, you know, like that is like my thing kind to yourself, give yourself grace, you know, man, it's hard to do for yourself, right?
Tania: It totally is especially when, when something so big comes from our kids, right? We're like, oh I should have been playing well. I should have, you know, I shouldn't have like I shouldn't, shouldn't, could have, should have, would have. It's also like I want her to be JSA with herself and the only way for her to do that is for me to be gentle.
Laura: Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that so much.
Tania: Of course, of course.
Laura: Yeah, I think too, you know, so we were kind of talking a little bit about the, I love that you called this courage, the courage to do this with our kids. I feel compelled to, you know, I haven't had time to sit down like, with myself with my journal on, on this topic yet because it, it just literally happened yesterday. And, you know, we're busy people, but I do, I do feel like I will need to interact a little bit with some little parts of myself that felt that way. You know, I think that something that occurred to me in the midst of kind of dealing with this, too is that we, you know, when we think of those little punches come from our kids, we have the ability to really make that about ourselves wanting to dissipate our guilt, you know, you know, dissipate the hard feelings. And I think in the moment I stayed very present with her feelings on, on that, you know, I reassured her, you, you know, I'm so glad that you asked me for what you need. You know, that's, I'm here to support you, you know, like I stayed with her on those things. I think it will be really important for me to not forget to like to go back and like to process what little Laura was thinking and feeling, you know, because little Laura would never have been able to say that to mom and dad. Like I know I'm an inconvenience to you even though she might, she would have felt that. But yeah, that would have been too inconveniencing, you know, she would never have had the guts to say that.
Tania: Yeah, totally. So, to go back to that place of little Laura and then also ask what you need in that way.
Laura: Yeah. Absolutely. And seeing those as two separate parts too, you know, like those are two separate things, the repair that has to happen with the kid and then the repair that has to happen within yourself too. And, you know, you, you're like, your parents don't have to be involved in that at all. You know, that's another thing to like when we talk about re parenting, like it feels very daunting, you know, because we think there's so much that has to go on, you know, we really don't have to, it's all within us, you know.
Tania: So, yeah, everybody's journey and where they need to have to do how they do that repair is going to look different. But I know even for me, my journey is exactly what you're saying there is that it's, it's recognizing the parts of self and then giving grace and space to go what needs to happen here. It's not necessarily about sitting down for a family therapy session, which might be what some people need to do. But it's not, it's not what everybody needs to do. And I think that that is a fear, right? That we're going to have to sit down and do that, but not necessarily.
Laura: Or even it's a fear, you know, we're getting to,, I don't know about you, but I'm getting to the age where my, my contemporaries are losing their parents. And so then if you discover something that needs healing after your parents are gone, it can leave you feeling like, ok, what now? You know? But we really, we don't, there's lots of ways to do that. Healing works totally without, without them at all. You know, it's interesting the stuff that was the most hurtful from, for me growing up with my dad, he doesn't have any memory of doing or saying, you know, which is I recognize as a completely active of him, you know, of himself, you know, because those things were out of alignment with his values, you know, he was triggered and, and operating outside of his own values and his brain is protecting himself from that, you know.
Tania: That's so interesting.
Laura: Yeah. Oh, sorry, I got a little deep in there.
Tania: That's okay. So, exactly the way I love it. Me too. So, Laura, I think, you know, your, your other question about how we sit with ourselves. I think you just managed to answer it there. I think it's uh as I said earlier, I think it's just grace and space to go. What do I have the capacity to look at now? All the capacity? Yeah. And then what do I, what do I need to truly look at it? So and again, that's gonna look different for different people. It might be, I wanna work with a therapist for one person. It might be for somebody else. I would really like to start taking longer walks or I wanna wake up 10 minutes before the kids each morning and journal a little bit. It's going to be different for each person. But I think that when we create space and grace for ourselves in turn one day, our Children will create grace and space for themselves.
Laura: Yeah, I love that. I mean, and that's the, that's the kind of that generational change that we're looking for, right? And it starts with us and with ourselves. Thank you so much Tanya.
Tania: Oh, you're so welcome.
Laura: I really, oh my gosh. I feel the same. I really love this conversation. I would love for my listeners to know where they can find you and your institutes and learn from you and with you.
Tania: So you can go to our website which is Institute of Child Psychology. We are also on Instagram and also Facebook. We have a great Instagram. Actually, our Instagram is chock a block full of just short little parenting suggestions, little infographics reels. And then we also have our parenting handbook, the parenting handbook and book you have out. It's beautiful, which is available everywhere. Basically, it's funny. Actually, I recorded a podcast with somebody and he said, you know, people always end interviews when you have a new book that says and where can we find the book? And he's like where most people find books, like they're not just all sitting in my garage. So the parenting handbook can be found anywhere that you can find books basically.
Laura: Yes. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, beautiful. Thank you so much Tanya. I really appreciate it. Getting to talk with you.
Tania: Thank you, Laura. It's been an absolute 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 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!