Parenting often means walking a fine line between setting boundaries and showing warmth, all while managing your own feelings in the process. In this episode of Psychologists Off the Clock, Emily chats with Dr. Alissa Jerud about her book Emotion-Savvy Parenting and how recognizing and working with both your emotions and your child’s can build stronger connections and a calmer home life.
Dr. Jerud shares her approach, Emotion Savvy Parenting, which draws from evidence-based methods such as exposure-based treatments and dialectical behavior therapy skills. She breaks down what makes up our emotional experiences, offers tools like the CARE skills for navigating intense situations, and explores topics such as the limits of gentle parenting, why mid-meltdown logic usually falls flat, and how differing parenting styles between caregivers can create challenges.
Listen and Learn:
- How can parents respond skillfully and effectively to their children while managing their own strong and uncomfortable emotions?
- Combining respectful parenting and evidence-based therapies to help parents manage their own emotions, maintain firm limits, and model emotional regulation for their children
- The ways parents navigate the gray areas and overlaps between gentle parenting and autonomy-supportive parenting while avoiding the black-and-white thinking often seen on social media
- Parents often step in to fix their child’s struggles, but noticing and accepting their emotions and behaviors as they are can help children build resilience and support more effective parenting
- The primary and secondary ingredients of emotions, their triggers, how thoughts shape them, and how they show up physically and behaviorally, help parents regulate their own emotions by targeting these different aspects of feelings
- Quick, practical ways to manage intense emotions by regulating the body’s physiological response
- Why rigid beliefs that children must always obey can create frustration and disconnect, while accepting their emotions and allowing authentic expression supports both kids’ and parents’ emotional well-being
- The importance of accepting and validating a child’s emotions during emotional storms rather than trying to immediately fix or suppress them
- Recognizing that each child’s emotional needs are unique, and effective parenting often means staying present and supportive without trying to immediately fix or validate the emotion
Resources:
About Alissa Jerud
Alissa Jerud, Ph.D. is a mom of two kids, a licensed clinical psychologist, a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of Emotion-Savvy Parenting: A Shame-Free Guide to Navigating Emotional Storms and Deepening Connection. She has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Washington and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety. In her private practice, Dr. Jerud specializes in exposure-based treatments for anxiety-related disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, specific phobias, and generalized anxiety disorder. Additionally, she specializes in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills training and particularly enjoys helping other parents learn research-backed strategies for accepting, regulating, and tolerating their emotions, as well as their children's. Dr. Jerud also trains other clinicians in exposure-based treatments and frequently gives workshops on anxiety, stress, mental health, parenting, and social support to companies large and small.
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