[E218] Replay Back to School w Mona Delahooke

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:04] Speaker B: Welcome to the Empowered to Connect podcast where we come together to discuss a healing centered approach to engagement and well being for ourselves, our families and our communities. We are so excited today to throw it back to one of our favorite episodes with one of our favorite parenting voices, Mona De La Hook. This is Back to School with Mona De La Hook. We're going to dig into this concept of brain body parenting, the brain body connection. And Dr. Mona is going to help us understand our ourselves and our kids and how to support both of us better. So here where we are in the United States, we are gearing up for back to school. Many of you may have been back for a couple weeks or you may be looking forward to that in a couple weeks. But either way, it's just such a critical time where us, our kids, our communities, we're going through a huge amount of transition and we're gearing back up. And so understanding the Spring Body connection can really help us set everyone up for success. This episode is a treat. Thanks for throwing it back with us today. [00:01:06] Speaker C: Well, as we mentioned in the introduction today, our guest today is Dr. Mona de la Hook and we're so glad for her to be back today. Tana Oettinger is with us also, and we, I mean, this podcast could be seven hours long with all the stuff. We want to talk with her about this new book, but we're going to limit it for her sake and ours and yours. But her new book is Brain Body how to Stop Managing Behavior and Start Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids. Mona, thank you for being back and for writing this book and just for your work in general and all that. I wanted to just kind of start by saying, would you just kind of share with us where the idea from the book came from and where, you know, where you were coming from? More of the professional world training into parenting. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, thank you again for having me back. It's so fun to talk to you both. And it's, it's really been a, it's, it's really been a joyful journey, I have to say, over my career as a psychologist over all those years. And really it started with this interest that I had very, very early on in my field in my career. And that was because I had a premature child myself and my best friend who was a therapist had a child who had an autonomic disorder. And so we studied the polyvagal theory as it was emerging. And what that is is a researcher named Stephen Porges was looking at studying essentially the autonomics of babies and so we had babies at around the same time he was writing about it. And it just brought me to this interesting career path in looking at infant and toddler development, which really led to looking at the body's contribution to our well being, to our development. And then it's just the research has been just amazing the last, again, like 10 to 20 years about the importance of our body. So this latest book, Brain Body Parenting, is putting together that information to help parents understand how to understand their child better. Not just looking at behaviors, but really looking at the influence of how your child, and we as humans too, constantly process, integrate and experience the world around us. So that was kind of the arc. And Beyond Behaviors was the book I wrote, really talking to professionals and giving parents information about how our education system and how even the field of psychology is pretty much still focused on surface behaviors as the target rather than the signal. And that is the shift, the paradigm shift really is looking at behaviors as useful information and the signal of much deeper underlying information about our kids. [00:04:16] Speaker D: Mona, when you think about that from a parenting perspective, why do you feel like it's important for us to be mindful and thinking about the way we're taking in information through our bodies. [00:04:28] Speaker A: For. [00:04:28] Speaker D: Us to think about? [00:04:29] Speaker A: Yeah, it's such a good question. Really the reason is that I think we get so thrown off by worrying as parents about, is this behavior normal? Quote, unquote. Is this something I should worry about? Why is my toddler doing this? You know, I'm raising my child in a certain way. Why did they just mouth off and say something horrible to me? And it's hard to be a parent. It's so hard. And so, Tanya, I think one of the benefits of looking a little deeper under the hood of how humans react to the world around us is that it gives us more compassion as parents, but it also gives us more compassion for ourselves so that we can be less blaming, less like, oh, no, I'm doing something wrong, and more curious because there's answers there in our bodies and in our children's bodies. The answers are like really useful and incredible. And science is proving that. It's really the importance of that feedback up from our bodies helps shape the behaviors we see in our children and even their emotions. [00:05:47] Speaker C: So, Mona, there's so much in the book we want to get to, but I think one of the things that I would love for us to start with is you talk about having different pathways that our bodies use to communicate. Will you talk about that and kind of explain sort of the overview of that for our listeners who might not be as familiar with the whole polyvagal system. [00:06:09] Speaker A: Sure, sure. So when we think about the child as being the body and brain. Right. Not just the brain, because we tend to think about children once they can walk and talk as we talk to them, to their brains. But when we think about something I call a platform, a platform is our body, brain connection. Because we're never just a body or a brain. We're always both. So this platform actually launches how we are in the world. What's happening inside of our physiology, inside of our bodies, and what's happening outside. And one really useful model for understanding where our child's brain and body is is understanding their autonomic nervous system. It's one of our nervous systems that doctor, like I said, Dr. Porges has researched. And we know that this system has at least three main pathways. And the research on it is quite complicated. They are finding out that these pathways can be mixed or blended as well. But just for our purposes, it's been very useful. And Dr. Porges is completely happy that it's been translated into a way that we can understand ourselves and our kids. So these pathways make up our platform. These pathways we can look at. Where are we and our child in any given time. To make things easier, I talk about them in terms of colors rather than the scientific names. And the green pathway, for example, is when we're calm and alert. And this is when we are as parents, we're feeling in control. We're feeling pretty optimistic. Our body's feeling. Feeling good. And in our children, it's really where they are at the best place to learn new things. Right. And we kind of know a child in the green pathway. They are. They have a relaxed body posture. Their facial expressions are. Can be neutral, or they may be joyful or laughing. This is where children want to play because plays are natural language. They will be just very in their body posture, in their eyes and in their face, and even in what you can see in terms of how they are clutching or not clutching or their hands. Right. They're not all hot and sweaty. They are relaxed. This is called the green pathway. It's the ventral vagal pathway of the parasympathetic nervous system. Yeah. [00:08:54] Speaker C: Thank you for the color system there. [00:08:55] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Right. So we all know that we can't, as humans, we don't live in the green. Right. There is always something that's gonna happen that's gonna cause us to take action, thankfully. Right. Because we're not robots. And so when Something happens. It could be a thought, it could be a sensory experience, it could be something happening in our tummies, like a tummy ache, right? All of a sudden the red pathway comes online automatically. We don't choose it, we don't choose our heart to be faster, right? We don't choose our sweat glands to start excreting sweat to help us activate and move. But this red pathway happens when humans experience some sort of subconscious, or you could be aware of it, but mostly subconscious threat to our safety. And again, it doesn't mean our objective safety to a child. It could be hearing a very loud noise or it could be this certain feelings in listening to various pitches and frequencies of sound. And all of a sudden you see them start to move their body, they're tense in their face. They may scream, they may yell, they may have wide open eyes and start darting around the room. They may try to escape you, run away from you, or they may start to hit or scream or stick or spit. This is when the red pathway, the fight or flight response, is predominating. And in this pathway the human being wants to move. And that could be moving your mouth or moving your whole body. But that's the main feature, that the child is no longer calm, they're tense, they're clenched and they are not in a place to reason with us very well because their hearing is attenuated to low frequency sounds and not the human voice. So it's really a physiological piece where our children, we need to get them back to some semblance of the green. This is why trying to reason with someone in a tantrum, which could be very often, is that red pathway doesn't work right. They're not cueing into what you're saying. And their bodies really need to work through some movement in order to get back to the green. So that's the red. We're all pretty familiar with it as adults. That is somewhere when we lose it and we all know what it's like to lose it with a partner or even with our children doesn't feel good. But it's a human experience, so we have to kind of have compassion for it and then figure out, you know, self awareness is huge here. Like, oh, I'm in the red right now, maybe I need to do something to help myself before I help my child. Just to finish up on the pathways. The final blue pathway that is described in the polyvagal theory is really when there's extraordinary amount of energy being expended by the child such that the red pathway is no longer effective, and they start to conserve energy. Here's where you may see a child begin to lose contact with other people. They may seem hopeless or withdrawn. They don't want to play. They may appear at the very end of the extreme, frozen or just kind of slowed down. But you might see just kind of a glazed overlook in the eyes. And this pathway, I'd say, is not as. We don't see this as commonly, except for possibly in children who have had a trauma history. But again, we all cycle momentarily through the blue, Right where we feel like a pit or disconnected or sad or hopeless. But we want to make sure that our child isn't in this pathway. Living in this pathway for weeks or months. That's where we want to concern. But realize that all three of these pathways are adaptive. Right. They are protective to our nervous system. We don't choose them. And awareness really helps us kind of tabulate what to do next. Yeah. [00:13:19] Speaker D: I think for me, you've said so many things that have just. My mind's, like, spinning a million different directions. But a couple of things that I feel like you've said that have been and continue to be incredibly important for me in my parenting of my kiddos is the idea that when they experience those things, it's subconscious and it's not willful. That it is something that is happening. [00:13:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:45] Speaker D: In them. And even that slight paradigm shift, like, honoring that human experience in them and in myself, like, if I can just sit with that and, like, unlearn probably a lot of things about what I think is really happening there and just make that slight paradigm shift. It informs, like, everything else that happens from there, doesn't it, Mona? [00:14:12] Speaker A: Like everything else that happens next. It kind of does. Yeah. And I am with you in that my heart is there with you. Because I honestly, I remember saying things to my children because I didn't get this. I didn't understand about. About our physiology and its impact on us. But I'd say things like, why are you saying that? Why are you doing this to me? You know, as a parent, I'd be like, I didn't have any other explanations. [00:14:41] Speaker D: You're assigning, like, motive and intent. [00:14:43] Speaker A: You're assigning a motive as if everything is motivated and intentional. And that's not how our culture is. We're trained. My child's pediatrician, early on, before I really understood this, never said, well, you know, there are some behaviors that are really automatic. And please don't take it personally. Mama, she's just into a stress response in her body. And that's informing it. You're right. It opens up so many doors. So many doors. [00:15:14] Speaker D: I think when we see it as automatic, and I don't know if this is always the right way to explain it, but it's been the shift for me. It's like, if I can see it, I can honor it, actually. Like, instead of taking it personal or trying to extinguish it, I can be curious about it and sort of honor that part of my child's experience in that moment, for whatever reason they're experiencing that. It really does allow me to sort of look at them with a completely different posture of, like, curiosity and support. Right. Instead of personal or squelching or fixing or whatever else might come into my mind. Does that resonate with you? [00:15:56] Speaker A: Well, that word curiosity is just such a beautiful word, and in so many ways, not only does it bias some time to check ourselves to see what our state is, but curiosity allows this lens shift to happen where we allow ourselves to begin to believe that all behavior is not motivated. And we have to give ourselves so much compassion because chances are we weren't raised this way. And our culture again, in education, everything is as if a child is always in control of their behaviors and that we need to focus on behavior management. And so I love that word curiosity. This is our helper. This is our helper to say, huh, maybe there's something more going on here. [00:16:51] Speaker C: Well, one of the shifts that has happened for me, just personally, and I've shared this before in the podcast, but I tend to hear people's advice and it goes in one ear and out the next because everybody's situation is so different. So a lot of times, if I can hear some science connect, that will help me understand, you know, like. Like you were talking about involuntarily, what's happening in the body. And we were talking before we started recording about some of Dr. Porges research about the polyvagal nerve and how those signals are sent. Will you touch on that? About the way they're sent from the brain to body, body to brain. [00:17:25] Speaker A: Right. So as. As we know, or as we maybe should know, I should say, is that. Is that our brains fully rely on all those sense organs to feed information to it. Right. That is how we are in the world. The only way human beings know what's up and what's down, what's going on inside of their body and through the world is through our sensory systems. Right? And so. And we have these sensory systems, but guess what? We all have different thresholds. On them. It's like we don't all experience the world in the same way. Our children don't experience the world in the same way as we do, necessarily, as I found out with one of my dreamies who had extraordinary sensitivity to foreground and background sounds and volumes and pitches that would send her into distress, including my own voice. And no one ever told me that the reason she would start to hiccup when I was singing her songs and rocking her and loving her as this desperate mama, and eventually she would throw up is that I was sending her into distress. So this idea that our body's physiology feeds information to our brain, that shapes the way our infants, toddlers and children view the world, it's kind of mind blowing. So that mind is an extreme example, but in an everyday example, let's just say that once we get to know more about how our child is experiencing the world, which is basically that body to brain feedback loop, which I go back and call the platform, because we don't have to get all involved in sc, but just think about what's my child's platform like right now. And then I've linked it in the new book in Brain Body Parenting. I've linked it to the very exciting research that of one of the top 1% cited neuroscientist in the world, Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, who talks about a body budget. And that's one of her primary concepts, is that our bodies are constantly running a budget. As a bank runs budgets based on finances, you know, deposits and withdrawals. Our bodies are constantly balancing our, what's called our allostasis, our homeostasis, the way our body balances things like oxygen, water, salt, glucose. You know, all of that's happening in our nervous systems beyond our awareness, and it impacts our children's feelings, sensations, which inform our emotions and our behaviors. [00:20:30] Speaker D: Yep, yep. [00:20:31] Speaker A: Gosh, it's almost like I'm wondering how I could have ever understood children before I knew about this feedback. For real. [00:20:41] Speaker D: Yeah, right. [00:20:43] Speaker C: You know, I think that, you know, you mentioned this on the Raising Good Humans podcast recently, that, that 80% of those signals are coming from the body up to the brain, and only 20% are going from the brain down to the body. And I just think of that as a, as a current toddler parent, an older child, even a four year old, but like a current toddler parent, just even having that information, it keeps me in the green when I see behaviors go nuts, because I can just go, wait, what's going on? Oh, she did just eat a whole patch of sour. Like a bunch of Sour Patch Kids for breakfast. And now she's, like, using it. Like, that's kind of. That's probably what's happening, is her body can't handle all that surge of sugar right now. And so then I can go and, like, pick her up and be silly with her and carry her while she's thrashing around and say, hey, let's go get some water and hang her upside down to help her kind of regulate a little bit. [00:21:32] Speaker D: And. [00:21:32] Speaker C: But if I don't know that, then all I do is just get so angry while I'm trying to get her dressed for school and just, like, you know, drive to school, call my wife. Well, she. She was off the train again this morning. She was going nuts. She wouldn't be good for me. Like, I don't know what the still is. [00:21:45] Speaker A: And so that's a beautiful example, J.D. that's a beautiful example. This whole concept can. Can shift our. Keep us green because it shifts our lens from judgment, which, again, is I so get like, what is this child doing to an understanding of, oh, this is what's happening. I mean, it was like, I was with a family of the toddler yesterday, and, you know, it was. All of a sudden, a tiny thing happens, and she's screaming and yelling, and her parents are like. But then everybody in the room realized, she is ready for bed. Her body budget is 90% gone. We need to transition to a cozy, sweet bedtime. And then the parents got more playful, just like you said. They stayed green. It's like, oh, bitsy, bitsy time. Okay, my sweet girl, what books are we gonna read? And within seconds, she flipped back to a short period of green because we knew it was gonna be tenuous green, but it was like, does this child. And toddlers are so, so volatile, but we totally can expect that. Does this child need a deposit or withdrawal from us? A withdrawal is using a louder voice, using discipline. And all those are fine, right? Appropriately when we need them. Or does this deposit need. Does this child need to deposit like your little girl? Oh, she's had a lot of sugar. Maybe we don't want to have another five, you know, Sour Patch Kids right now. And. And. And, oh, maybe a little bit of protein right now. And maybe my soft, playful voice hanging her upside down. We all of a sudden, we're back to the green. It has to do with the framework by which we're viewing our children. Yeah. [00:23:54] Speaker C: Gosh, it's so good. Well, one of the natural outcomes of that is then we all feel Terrible because of what we've been missing as parents. Right? Like, we, we begin to learn this and we're like, oh, I'm the worst. How could I have possibly gotten so frustrated when this is what's happening? And I do feel like you speak to that so clearly in the book. And one of the things that you talk about is parenting worries sticking to us like Velcro. And so if you don't mind, kind of, we lead us into that conversation about self compassion as a parent and why it's so important for us. [00:24:26] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. Well, you can't produce this kind of information, in my opinion, without providing parents. And that started with me with some soothing, calming love to say, it's okay, you did not mess up your children. Your children are going to be okay. And take this information and let's put it into perspective. So for me, my leaders, when I began actively writing about this kind of stuff, because I'm learning it with you all, I'm not a perfect parent. And I parented my children through early childhood, before I knew any of this, was a lot of work related to mindfulness and self compassion, which really helped soften my own edges of guilt and worries that I may have damaged my children. And one of the people that I just think is one of my teachers is Rick Hanson, psychologist Rick Hanson, who wrote Buddha's Brain. And he has this beautiful saying that our worries as parents stick like as people, but as parents stick like Velcro. And the good experiences, those positive experiences slide off like Teflon. And so if you're one that worries a lot, as I did and that my worries stuck like, oh my gosh, those were the things that would keep me up at night. And those positive experiences felt so, like, amazing but ethereal, like, oh, I wish I could make this moment last forever. You're normal, you're human. From a phylogenetic standpoint, from an evolutionary standpoint, we tend to remember bad things because we want to keep our children safe and we want to protect ourselves. So let's just take a deep breath and realize, oh, we, okay. What are greater stakes than our children? Of course we worry about them. This is a huge responsibility. We're wondering all the feedback we get from the world, are we doing it right? So remembering to me, this is why I have a whole chapter in the book about learning that our best tool is self awareness, because then we can provide ourselves. As another great teacher of mine, Kristin Neff, says that we can provide ourselves with that loving touch, with that self compassion that allows us to Provide it to our children. And it's a parallel process. And once we are forgiving of ourselves as humans and. And recognizing our colors. Right. If we are in the red or in the blue or the green, we have these tools that are so awesome, that are actually hefty parenting tools. Yeah. But they're about us. Right? We are the best tool in our tool chest. [00:27:38] Speaker D: I love that. I resonate with that so deeply. Even just that process of, you know, not having had all the tools early on in parenting and learning some things along the way and making some adjustments and offering a lot of compassion to keep on learning, you know, and I'm guessing we all will continue to keep on learning. And I'm sure there's going to be things that we come to understand in a decade or two decades from now that are even going to shed light on the here and now in our relationships in a way that, I don't know, I feel like it's just about being kind. Kind. You know, we're all showing up in every moment the very best way we can in that moment. So I appreciate that. [00:28:27] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And knowing that, you know, our children can be our best teachers. My children are my best teachers, and I've learned. I'm learning with them. My children are adults now, but I am learning how to be a parent of adult children, just as I learned how to be a parent of a toddler, a middle schooler, and of a teenager. We are always in flux. This parenting gig is lifelong. Let me say forever. [00:28:58] Speaker D: We kind of say, like, our kids are our biggest invitation to change and grow. Like, we don't have to. We can, like, double down and, you know, sort of choose to dig our heels in and not kind of be willing to flex and grow or they're standing right in front of us, inviting us to just be curious with them and learn new ways of thinking and doing and being. And so I feel like that's been the. That's been my lived experience as a mom is just this invitation to something deeper and richer. And I'm so grateful. It's hard. I'm not saying it's flowery and rosy, but my goodness, y', all, it's so rich. I'm so, so thankful. [00:29:37] Speaker C: Well, something that you touched on, Mona. That. And I've. I've shared this before. So those of you who listen all the time, broken record me and showing this way. But, like, you talk a lot about self care in that. That section of the book and how unnecessary it is. And it. I don't think this is necessarily tied to our gender. But I typically think, and I know that men typically hear self care and it's like, oh God, okay, all right, well, I don't go get pedicures, so I don't know what she's talking about. So can we, can we have a reset? One of the things that was a little bit staggering was even hearing you talk about the number of young adult and kind of adult parents who then begin to experience body breakdown from all the trauma of raising toddlers and how, how much it wears and tears in your body. And so if you can, I mean, I'm needing to remind myself of this as someone who is on, I don't know, maybe five hours of sleep from last night. You know, I gotta remind myself, would you mind talking to us about just those very practical, kind of the main elements of self care we need to be aware of right now? [00:30:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that you, that you mentioned dads, because this whole idea of self care can bring up images of our mind of spa day, right. Or of getting a massage. And who doesn't love that once in a while? But that is definitely not what we're really talking about. We're talking about, we're really talking about remembering that as parents we live in a human body. And especially dads, I should say. If you look at the rate of inflammation based diseases that humans get in the western world, that starts in the 20s, cardiovascular disease being one of them, which is so highly linked to stress. And of course, mommies and daddies now have many options open to them that we didn't have 100 years ago. But men have extraordinary stresses in this life too. And I don't think oftentimes men have as many outlets for stress reduction through social engagement as mommies do. And I don't mean that to be sexist. I'm just saying that there are a lot of mommy support groups and fewer dad support groups. But what am I getting at? I'm getting at this whole idea that self care begins with taking care of our bodies. And we can look at something as simple as sleep. And I hear you had five hours of sleep. But if you. In that chapter, it does talk about the leading sleep researcher in the world who says that sleep is our life support system. So what? His research has shown that over decades, not over years, but we look at these things over decades. This is why some of us start breaking down in our 50s. And if you're in your 30s, that may seem like forever away from now, but believe me, it comes quicker than you think, and your children all of a sudden will be teenagers and young adults, and you don't want to have cardiovascular disease. And then you have to manage a chronic illness. The links for stress's contribution to our most common diseases is very clear. So if you're a dad listening to this, and if you're a mom, of course you will be able to reduce the amount of inflammation in your body if you do a certain amount of, maybe we can call it self awareness and just realizing, what does your body need to stay in the green? What does your body need? Is it six hours of sleep at least? Is it maybe having some outlet for physical exercise? Human beings need to move. If you're at a job all day and you're sleeping at night, you're not moving very much. That could be increasing your red pathway tendency during the day. So it's really customizing it to you, to who you are. What do you need? And believe me, if you need, if it feels like taking a walk or going to the gym for a half an hour, or even running on a treadmill or doing jumping jacks for 10 minutes a day, if those things help you feel more green, your children will also benefit, but your body will benefit and you'll last longer in good health. So it's very holistic. And gee, you know, I wish I could say the research was pointing otherwise that self care was optional because I honestly, I believed it was. For me, I felt like. I felt pretty. I felt pretty like super mommy sometimes, because I do have a lot of energy and I love to multitask. But it takes its toll on all of us because we're human and slowing down sometimes is hard. It can make us feel a little anxious sometimes. It may feel selfish, even. Like any amount of time, like, if you're a working parent, sometimes you may feel like if I take any more time away from my kids, then that's like, not okay. So there's a lot. There's a lot to unpack there. And. [00:35:11] Speaker C: Well, here's what I would love for us to kind of wrap up today and talk last about this. For those of us who are parenting toddlers, there is just a myriad of emotions that it brings up, especially when we, when we do forget the developmental stage they're in and these behaviors being more signals than they are, you know, personal attacks on our character as people. [00:35:38] Speaker A: And. [00:35:38] Speaker C: But I told you before, we recorded, this is maybe my favorite turn of phrase kind of chapter in any book I've read. But one of the chapters you have toward the End of the book is Tantrums Throw Toddlers Putting Toddlerhood in Context. I want to read this quote from Janet Lansbury and I would love for us to talk about this whole idea with the idea that hopefully we'll build some empathy in us as parents as we stop listening to this podcast and start heading back into, you know, the daily grind of parenting. Janet Lansbury says, wouldn't life be easier if parents would observe, relax and enjoy what their child is doing, rather than keep teaching what the child is not yet capable of. [00:36:18] Speaker A: That is such a great quote. And actually you had the unedited copy, but that quote actually from Magda Gerber. But Janet, Janet has another incredible quote that is in that same vein that once we understand toddler development, we don't have to be hitting our head against the wall as much. And isn't it interesting that what we call social and emotional development that I'm finding that pediatricians and preschool teachers and most of us don't really talk about it that much. I know it's so expected that a toddler will flip the switch from green to red on a dime on a regular basis. And I know that again, it can startle us and it can turn us into, oh my gosh, if I don't nip this in the bud, if I don't have a behavior plan or if I don't have a certain consistent response as an authoritative positive parent, which is kind of in the zeitgeist right now, being authoritative and being positive that, that I may be like this child might turn out to be less self controlled in the future. It's so much pressure. But this whole idea, let me just say toddlers don't throw tantrums. Tantrums throw toddlers and their bodies are constantly in this unregulated state in which their body budget is shot or running low and they need a deposit or they've switched from the green to the red pathway, which is expected because they don't have the trips around the side that we do. They only have a limited amount of self regulation on board, which is how humans are designed. Very, very needy on an emotional level. And once we put it into perspective, we can be more light hearted. I think about these toddlers and we say, oh, there it is, let's figure out what this one needs right now. Let me soften my voice, let me maybe become a little playful. Let me think when was the last time they ate and how late did they take a nap today? Oh yeah, they didn't take a nap and Then we start to put the pieces together. So thank you for. I'm glad you like that tantrums throw toddlers. I'm glad you like that chapter. [00:39:03] Speaker C: Well, I think it's just a good paradigm shift and I, I know that like again, anytime we can understand and kind of decode what's happening, it just gives us the ability to be empathetic with our kids and to, and to, you know, address, address these things. [00:39:19] Speaker A: It helps us not personalize it as much, I think. And I'd have to say that we repeat there's this kind of new version of that in the teenage years. It looks different, but it can feel the same. It can feel really like we take it personally. But remember, again, there are these spurts and growth that humans have. This drive towards independence that starts in toddlerhood and is not at times, certain times in our development is not very well regulated, nor should we expect it to be. It all is about CO regulation and how we help them, little by little, become more controlled and more rational people. [00:40:07] Speaker C: Well, I want to end on one thought before we just ask you if there's anything you want to talk about. One of the times that I've heard you talking about CO regulation, you talked about, to put it in different terms, it's really kind of shared regulation like we're sharing. Parents, at least in theory and in intention, are going to their kids to share their regulated state with their unregulated kids or dysregulated kids in the hopes that that regulation catches eventually and picks up and whatever illustration you want to use, whether it's seedlings that grow and come to fruition or it's, you know, just the strength eventually to regulate on their own. It's sharing regulation in the beginning. And you know, for those that are new to that concept. Could you walk us through that briefly before we wrap up? [00:40:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Human, Human infants are born in a very kind of. They're baked in a certain amount of ways, but they're unbaked in terms of their emotional development. Their social and emotional development is pretty much a blank slate. And every single piece, every single activity that they experience, including with their caregivers, is shaping the way their brains make sense of the world and what their brain begins to predict about how I'm going to be, how am I going to be seen, how am I, how calm am I going to be? Which is basically self regulation, if we think about it, is this ability to maintain one's state and stay in the green essentially through challenges, right through the asks of Our life. Human babies and toddlers are not wired to do that for themselves. They are wired to have their needs met. And I talk about responsive care in the book. This is why we really don't want to attend to a crying baby after a half an hour or an hour. We want to attend to a crying baby in real time because that brain is wiring itself to the environment. Will my needs be met? I'm feeling a physiological state. I'm feeling something and my body is expressing it. They're not knowledgeable of what they're doing. They're not saying, oh, I'm going to cry right now because I'm hungry. We meet their body's needs and they come to expect that those needs will be met. So co regulation starts with meeting all those physical needs. But through toddlerhood and through childhood and even through through teenagehood, it's about helping humans understand that they can trust themselves by sharing our calmness with them and letting them know that they're not alone. [00:43:17] Speaker C: Oh, so good. So good. Gosh, Mona, thank you so much for coming on today. Anything that you want to share the listeners before we go, like anything that's been on your mind or that you feel like is for the moment. [00:43:31] Speaker A: Well, thank you again for having me on. I'm so grateful for you both and the information that you're giving to parents. So thank you for that. And on my heart at this moment in time is I have to say that I have not in my whole career ever witnessed more suffering for us parents, for human parents. No one could have imagined that we would have been in a pandemic situation. And I just want to wish you, wherever you are, so much compassion and also this awareness that you're not alone if you are feeling at the end of your rope and that all you can do is survive with your kids, that's good enough for now because it's not going to last forever, even though we feel like it is and our own body budgets are at all time lows. So any tiny thing you can do for yourself, even if it's just saying I forgive you, it's okay, I'm doing the best I can. I'm a well intentioned parent and I love my kid. Just give yourself that and know that there are communities holding hands with you, symbolically getting through these hard times that hopefully will be better as the months go by. [00:45:00] Speaker D: Thank you, Mona. I've got little tears in my eyes. I'm receiving that as a parent that's currently parenting. So thank you for those just words of encouragement and affirmation. We so appreciate you and just the camaraderie of heart and desire to love children well and with curiosity. So thank you for what you're doing and how you're supporting us with good ideas and thoughts and resources. So we deeply appreciate your work. Thanks for being with us. [00:45:29] Speaker A: You got it. Take care. [00:45:35] Speaker B: We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, the best way to support us going forward is to subscribe. We'd love to hear from you, leave a review, drop us a comment or or email us to let us know what you hope to hear in future episodes. Thank you to Kyle Wright, who edits and engineers all of our audio, and Tad Jewett, the creator of our music. On behalf of everyone at etc, thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on the Empower to Connect podcast. Until then, we're holding on to hope with you. [00:46:09] Speaker A: Sa.