Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, research-based parenting ideas to help kids thrive

Explore the journey of two expectant parents as they navigate the emotional rollercoaster of preparing for a new baby. Discover the contrasting personalities of a meticulous planner and a laid-back partner, highlighting their unique approaches to parenthood. Delve into the significance of family dynamics in shaping their parenting perspectives, and the importance of community support and reliable resources. Hear about their aspirations, fears, and how they aim to nurture their child's individuality with positivity amidst the uncertainties of new parenthood.

Sleep!  It’s a topic that’s on pretty much every parent’s mind.  We’ve already looked at this from a cultural perspective, where we learned our Western approach to sleep is by no means universal, and that this can result in quite a few of the problems we face in getting our children to sleep.   In this episode we dive deep into the practicalities of sleep with Dr. Chris Winter, who has practiced sleep medicine and neurology since 2004.  His first book, The Sleep Solution, Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How To Fix It (affiliate link) was focused on adults’ sleep challenges, and I’ve been putting the ideas in it into practice and have been getting better sleep as a result.   His new book is The Rested Child: Why Your Tired, Wired, or Irritable Child May Have a Sleep Disorder--And How to Help (affiliate link), and is based on Dr. Winters’ almost two decades of experience of evaluating children in the sleep clinic that he founded.   We’ll look at ways that you can get more sleep (or maybe even more rest that feels almost as restful as sleep), whether you can shift your (or your child’s!) sleep patterns, how to banish bedtime struggles for good, and so much more!   This episode is for all parents, but especially for those who are expecting or have a child under the age of one, and who are desperately trying to get more sleep (or worried about being in that phase of life in the near future!).  We’ll help you get started on the right foot so you can know you’re doing the best for your child - and for yourself as well.   If you are expecting or have a child under one and you’d like to join the Right From The Start course to help you find the path that’s right for you and your child on sleep and feeding and independent play and brain development and not lose yourself in the process, then we’d love to have you join us. Get notified when doors reopen. Click the banner to learn more.     Dr. Chris Winter's Books: The Rested Child: Why Your Tired, Wired, or Irritable Child May Have a Sleep Disorder--and How to Help The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It (Affiliate links).     [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives. But it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a free guide called 13 reasons why your child won't listen to you, and what to do about each one, just head over to yourparentingmojo.com/subscribe. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners and the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen Lumanlan  01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we're going to talk about a topic that I know interests parents everywhere and that is sleep. We've already covered this on the show from the perspective of looking at cross-cultural ideas about sleep. But today we're here with an expert who's going to give us some practical ideas about how to get more sleep. Now I know that sleep is an important topic to parents with children of all ages, but it's especially important to expecting parents and those with newborns. And if that describes you right now, I also wanted to let you know that the Right From The Start course is reopening for enrollment on Sunday, October 24th. I run this course with the amazing Hannah and Kelty of the upbringing podcast. And I truly love doing it with them. Because our skill sets complement each other so well. I bring all the research-based information you've come to expect from this show as well as 100 hours of coaching, training, and a good deal of experience in coaching parents over the years. And they bring a lot of training and topics relevant to new parents. But the reason that I wanted to work with them specifically on the course is that they're trained in resources for infant educators or RIE methods, but they aren't RIE associates, which means they help parents to take what they find useful out of RIE rather than seeing it as a prescriptive set of tools. And of course, as twins themselves and being the parents of four children between them, they've just about seen it all from the perspective of siblings, so they can offer a lot of guidance to parents who aren't new at the parenting thing, but who also know that they can't do things the same as they did them with their previous child, or they don't want to do them like that. So the course has 10 modules and runs over nine weeks, all of the content is available in video and audio, and there are transcripts as well so you can learn in the way that you learn best. We have a supportive community of parents who are on this journey with you that isn't on Facebook. And we also meet for group coaching calls regularly as well. The parents who have taken the course tell us that they got the knowledge they knew they needed, but what they didn't even know they needed was the community of parents who really do get to know each other and us as well on the coaching calls, who offer support and guidance related to whatever struggles we're facing during this period in our lives from trying to figure out who you are as a person with a newborn to your shifting relationship with your partner, and your own parents as well to navigating difficult sibling behavior. We cover it all. So if you're expecting a child or you have one under one year old, the right from the start course was designed for you and I'm as I'm sure you can tell, it doesn't mean that we're going to tell you the one right way to raise a child but rather to help you find the right way for you. So once again, enrollment is open starting Sunday, October 24th. And we start as a group on Monday, November 8th, you can learn more and sign up at yourparentingmojo.com/rightfrom thestart. So our guest today Dr. Chris Winter is a board-certified neurologist and a double board-certified sleep specialist who is in private practice in Charlottesville, Virginia. He consults with athletes on improving their sleep and his first book The Sleep Solution: Why your sleep is broken and how to fix it, was geared towards adults’ challenges with sleep. His new book just published in August is called the Rested Child: Why your tired wired and irritable child may have a sleep disorder and what to do about it. So today we're going to talk about sleep for children, sleep for parents’ and sleep for everybody. Welcome, Chris. It's so great to have you here.   Dr. Winter  04:20 Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.   Jen Lumanlan  04:24 So I would like to start by addressing the elephant in the room because I know that parents who are listening to this I want to know your stance on these topics because they want to know if this person's approach is aligned with things that I believe about sleeping, about raising my children, and about my values and beliefs. So bed-sharing. I will say that I found your approach in the book to be a little bit flippant and I will quote what you said, “We used to sleep piled on top of one another in a cave, I suppose. But we also used to banish people with leprosy and smoke cigarettes in operating rooms. We evolve.” And that to me sort of implies the only backwards people in backwards countries, you haven't yet seen the light in the sort of Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic approach to sleep, they're just, you know, our approach is clearly superior, and they're missing out on some important development. When actually I know the research has shown that people who live in those countries, you asked them about their children's sleep problems, and they're like, “What sleep problems?” So tell me more about your stance on bed sharing and where that came from, and what you believe about it.   Dr. Winter  05:30 Sure. So, I think it's important to define evolve, because you're putting a judgment on it, when in fact, evolve just means take something that's simple and make it more complicated. And we do that very well in this country. I used to be able to fix my own car, I cannot do that anymore, because the cars have evolved to the point now where it doesn't allow that to happen. So I do think that sleep was very simple in the past, and it's become very complicated. People did sleep in one room at some point in the past, and now you have a nice house in Gwinnett County, you know, Atlanta, and every one of your seven kids have their own bedroom and their own situation. So I'm not here to pass judgment on anything, my stance on co-sleeping is, you do what's right for your family and your children, I don't really have an opinion on it one way or the other. Outside of two things. One, I do think that it is important to be careful with little children when you sleep with them just out of a danger perspective and I don't think that's particularly radical, although I do think it took a while for the American Academy of Pediatrics to really come out with a position on it just because of this kind of, you know, feelings about it. It’s deeply personal to people the way they sleep, so I personally believe that it's probably not a great idea to sleep in a bed with a child under the age of one. Just because, you know, I think that we have seen bad outcomes. I've seen, I think, as of today, 32,233 people in my clinic, and four of them have had issues where children have perished in the night because of a family member role on top of them. That's a very, very, very small percentage, far less than what you know, would be quoted for SIDS. So to me if a parent understands that, and it's very important to them to take that risk. I'm not really here to judge that. I can say that of the people that we spoke to when that happened, including a family member of somebody who works for me, it was deeply traumatic, and something that they never wanted to repeat again. I think that's different, though, then a family bed or co-sleeping, I mean, I think that's a very different situation. The other bias that I have is that of those 32,000 people that have come to my clinic, I have yet to encounter somebody who says, “I'm sleeping with all four of my children and it's going great. I just wondered if you give me some tips on how to make it even better.” The vast majority of people that we're seeing are sort of the opposite. It's like help us to make the situation that we've chosen, which is to not have a child in bed with us, more functional and better. So I’m here to support anybody. I think that the people who are co-sleeping and doing well with it, don't really have to see me or by the book. And I think co-sleeping can be really helpful because when you look at some of the disorders of sleep that we talked about in the book, there's sort of a mystery to the parent or parents that aren't with their children until they share the hotel room, until they go to grandmother's house, and share a bed because grandma has one spare bedroom, where they're like, “Dear God, my child does this thing at night. We had no idea.” So, you know, even if you're somebody who believes not, you're not in co-sleeping, it might not be a bad idea once a month to kind of check-in like, “We're all sleeping together to make sure we're not harboring bad sleep problems.” And so anyway, I think and then the only other thing I would say that again, there's a selection bias here too, is that when kids come to have sleep studies apparent we make a parent accompany them. And so our sleep centers and hotels, it's very comfortable that the child has a bed and the parent has a bed in this you know Hotel it truly, it's a Hilton Hotel. It's amazing how many times the parent is the one diagnosed with the sleep problem. The tech will say, “The kids are okay, dad is suffocating 38 times an hour kind of thing,” so I do sometimes wonder if, you know, if you're going to co-sleep it might be a good idea to make sure your sleep is really healthy and positive before you subject your child to it, but that's a small percentage, probably.   Jen Lumanlan  09:52 Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, thanks for clarifying that. And I guess my stance on co-sleeping has always been, I don't believe It's currently being itself, it's necessarily dangerous. It's currently being in the way that we tend to do it in this country, on a soft bed with a duvet and pillows and above the level of the floor, so the child could potentially roll off the bed. There is some potential danger of rolling onto the child, but my hypothesis based on the research that I have read is that the danger of that happening is much less than the danger of the child suffocating from a pillow or from getting a duvet on them, or rolling off the bed, or something else happening that's based on the practices that we use when we sleep. And that if we didn't use those practices, if we use practices that are more like the practices used where people do co-sleep routinely, then chances are that would be much, much less dangerous. Do you agree with that perspective?   Dr. Winter  10:50 Yeah, that's probably very true. You know, a lot of the things that we talked about in terms of having bumpers and cribs, and soft pillows, and stuffed animals, you know, really having a hard surface and a simple surface, and, you know, just and creating things that make you as the parent comfortable, or we co-slept with our kids, they were just in a little bassinet, kind of like you described next to our bed just because I am not interested in sleeping on the floor, even though it might be better. And I know from experience that my wife would sometimes say, it's truly disturbing how deep, deeply you sleep sometimes, because she's been screaming for 30 minutes, and you haven't moved to the point where when I was in residency, my wife would not let me be at home with the kids while I was sleeping unless I was sleeping literally on the floor, as you said, in the nursery away from them, so they could like throw stuff out of the nursery onto my head to wake me out just because I was always, even just kind of on a couch, which is the worst place you sitting there watching TV and you kind of drift off with them on your stomach, like, I was always very paranoid about that. Absolutely. But I would agree with everything you said.   Jen Lumanlan  12:03 Okay, I can fully empathize with your wife, too.   Dr. Winter  12:07 Yeah, she really feels like I mean, I probably shouldn't announce this. But if people came into the house and announced at night, I would be no help in terms of dealing with the situation. I'm not sure what she thinks I could do in that situation but might be better to sleep through it. I don't know.   Jen Lumanlan  12:22 Yeah, maybe. And then you do sort of casually toss out this idea that if we start out co-sleeping, then children are going to refuse to sleep on their own later. And you have this little footnote that says, “Sweetie, can you take your laptop somewhere else to do your calculus homework? Daddy and I need to sleep.” And I have this statistic that quotes a paper that “researchers suggest co-sleeping children slept fewer hours had more sleep disturbances and bedtime resistance, more behavioral and emotional problems than independent sleepers,” but that study involved school-aged children, and also found that the anxiety and nighttime fears predicted co-sleeping rather than the co-sleeping was generating anxiety and fears. So it seemed to me as though it was unlikely that co-sleeping was going to cause behavioral and emotional problems, which is what I understood when I was reading that in your book. What do you think about that?   Dr. Winter  13:10 I don't think it causes it. Again, it's just a matter of what does the parent want? And most parents are probably not letting those it's sort of like, oh, no, I remember having a conversation about parents when they said you're too old for a blanket. I have no idea why they chose that particular Tuesday to just take it away from me. My guess is at some point, I would have not been that interested in the blanket, we never told our kids to stop. We call them booze. Okay, no more booze because you're this particular age. So again, I think the footnote was more in line with at some point, parents are like, we don't want to let this sort of play out naturally, I have no doubt in my mind that it always does. I mean, I've never met a family who said, “He's 17. He's still in the bed with us and we really just losing our patience. So to me, that's more about at some point, most co-sleeping families that are coming to see us have decided we're done with it; It's affecting our intimacy, and we want to have some time by ourselves at the end of the night that don't involve the kids in the bed with us. I had an NBA player that had two children in bed, one went to bed every 3rd or 4th nights and he was like, “This is affecting my career because I'm having to get up and change sheets every night. My wife is like that's okay, because this is what we're going to do.” So, again, these are probably true, It’s just I think it's hard to find some parents with the courage to let it play out. They kind of want their lives back. And to your point, that's a big problem when it comes to sleep, I mean, one of my mentors said, you know, most kids sleep problems are parents’ sleep problems, and it's an expectation that we have of our kid that's not meeting our needs, “I've got a lot of work to do. And I'm falling behind and watching episodes of white lotus. So I gotta get this kid in her bed so I can do what I need to do.” If your expectation is they can be in bed with me, they might sleep, they might not, everything. Even adult sleep gets better. So a lot of what we're managing is now, that's why you said what is your stance on sleep training, I love that term as if we're doing like, the parents that didn't train their kids to sleep and now they can't, you know, I mean, it's, it's not swimming, for God's sakes, like they're going to sleep, they may sleep differently than what you would expect or on a different schedule. But the idea that we're training them, we're just kind of guiding some little parameters here and there. So it's interesting the way we think about these things, kids are good sleepers and good eaters, and good breeders and good drinkers, like we just kind of need to step back and let it happen and be on the lookout for problems in those areas. But our dominion over the situation, I think, is a lot less than what we think it is.   Jen Lumanlan  16:00 Yeah, and I wanted to translate what you're saying into language that I think will be familiar to people who are longtime listeners of the show, we're really talking about needs...

Sugar has a bad name these days - much like fat did back in the 1990s.  "Research shows" that it's addictive...that it shrinks your brain...that it's likely to lead to all kinds of health problems.   But will it really?   I interviewed Dr. Michael Goran, author of the recent book Sugarproof: The Hidden Dangers of Sugar that are Putting Your Child’s Health at Risk and What You Can Do.  This is a pretty alarming title, and I was interested to dig into the research behind the book as a continuation of our exploration of topics related to parenting and food.  It turns out that yes, there’s a lot of research on this topic. And a lot of it supports the idea that sugar may be harmful to children...but the case wasn't nearly as clear-cut as I'd imagined it would be.   In this episode we discuss the research on which the book is based, and what practical steps parents can take to reduce their child's sugar intake if they decide they want to do that.   Dr. Michael Goran's Book Sugarproof: Protect Your Family from the Hidden Dangers of Excess Sugar with Simple Everyday Fixes (Affiliate link).   Jump to highlights 01:01 Introduction of episode 03:50 Children's preference for sugary foods 08:27 How does fructose differ from glucose and other forms of sugar that humans ingest and where can we find it 12:46 What is the effect of fructose on our body 16:04 Why Dr. Goran would recommend dried fruit as a sweetener when we see fructose should be less consumed off 18:19 How children respond acutely to different types of meals 21:53 Where can we truly understand children's behavior after they've consumed sugar and low-calorie sweeteners and no sweetener at all 38:20 A Big source of added sugar is in liquid form 39:52 Dr. Goran's breakfast experiment 43:12 Why does Dr. Goran recommend less intake of carbohydrates 46:31 Overall message to parents about the episode   References: Bayol, S.A., Farrington, S.J., & Stickland, N.C. (2007). A maternal ‘junk food’ diet in pregnancy and lactation promotes an exacerbated taste for ‘junk food’ and a greater propensity for obesity in rat offspring. British Journal of Nutrition 98, 843-851. Cohen, J.F.W., Rifas-Shiman, S.L., Young, J., & Oken, E. (2018). Associations of prenatal and child sugar intake with child cognition. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 54(6), 727-735. Davis, J.N., Whaley, S.E., & Goran, M.I. (2012). Effects of breastfeeding and low sugar-sweetened beverage intake on obesity prevalence in Hispanic toddlers. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 95(1), 3-8. DeBoer, M.D., Scharf, R.J., & Demmer, R.T. (2013). Sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain in 2- to 5-year-old children. Pediatrics 132(3), 413-420. Francis, H.M., & Stevenson, R.J. (2011). Higher reported saturated fat and refined sugar intake is associated with reduced hippocampal-dependent memory and sensitivity to interoceptive signals. Behavioral Neuroscience 125(6), 943-955. Goldman, J.A., Lerman, R.H., Contois, J.H., & Utall, J.N. (1986). Behavioral effects of sucrose on preschool children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 14(4), 565-577. Grossman, A., & Grossman, E. (2017). Blood pressure control in type 2 diabetic patients. Cardiovascular Diabetology 16, article 3. Jensen, T., Abdelmalek, M.F., Sullivan, S., Lanaspa, M.A., Diehl, A.M., & Johnson, R.J. (2018). Fructose and sugar: A major mediator of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Journal of Hepatology 68(5), 1063-1075. Jung, S.W., Kim, S-M., Kim, Y.G., Lee, S-H., & Moon, J-Y. (2020). Uric acid and inflammation in kidney disease. American Journal of Physiology – Renal Physiology 318(6), F1327-F1340. Lago, R.M. (2007), Singh, P.P., & Nesto, R.W. (3007). Diabetes and hypertension. Nature Clinical Practice Endocrinology & Metabolism 3, 667. Luo, S., Monterosso, J.R., Sarpelleh, K., & Page, K.A. (2015). Differential effects of fructose versus glucose on brain and appetite responses to food cues and decisions for food rewards.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(20), 6509-6514. Noble, E.E., Hsu, T.M., Liang, J., & Kanoski, S.E. (2019). Early life sugar consumption has long-term negative effects on memory function in male rats. Nutritional Neuroscience 22(4), 273-283. O’Reilly, G.A., Belcher, B.R., Davis, J.N., Martinez, L.T., Huh, J., Antunez-Castillo, L., Weigensberg, M., Goran, M.I., & Spruijt-Metz, D. (2015). Effects of high-sugar and high-fiber meals on physical activity behaviors in Latino and African American Adolescents. Obesity 23(9), 1886-1894. O’Reilly, G.A., Huh, J., Schembre, S.M., Tate, E.B., Pentz, M.A., & Dunton, F. (2015). Association of usual self-reported intake with ecological momentary measures of affective and physical feeling states in children. Appetite 92(1), 314-321. Pan, L., Li, R., Park, S., Galuska, D.A., Sherry, B., & Freedman, D.S. (2014). A longitudinal analysis of sugar-sweetened beverage intake in infancy and obesity at 6 years. Pediatrics 134(Suppl 1), S29-S35. Pase, M.P., Himali, J.J., Jacques, P.F., DeCarli, C., Satizabal, C.L., Aparicio, H., Vasan, R.S., Beiser, A.S., & Seshadri, S. (2017). Sugary beverage intake and preclinical Alzheimer’s disease in the community. Alzheimer’s & Dementia 13(3), 955-964. Pase, M.P., Himali, J.J., Beiser, A.S., Aparicio, H.J., Satizabal, C.L., Vasan, R.S., Seshadri, S., & Jacqques, P.F. (2017). Sugar- and artificially sweetened beverages and the risks of incident stroke and dementia: A prospective cohort study. Stroke 48(5), 1139-1146. Philpott, T. (2016, March 16). We don’t mean to ruin smoothies, but…. Mother Jones. Retrieved from: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2016/03/are-smoothies-devil/ Rodríguez-Artalejo F, García EL, Gorgojo L, et al. Investigators of the Four Provinces Study . Consumption of bakery products, sweetened soft drinks and yogurt among children aged 6-7 years: association with nutrient intake and overall diet quality. British Journal of Nutrition 89(3), 419-429. Sullivan, S.A., & Birch, L.L. (1990). Pass the sugar, pass the salt: Experience dictates preference. Developmental Psychology 26(4), 546-551. Watson, E.J., Coates, A.M., Banks, S., & Kohler, M. (2017). Total dietary sugar consumption does not influence sleep or behavior in Australian children. International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition 69(4), 503-512. Welsh, J.A., Sharma, A.J., Grellinger, L., & Vos, M.B. (2011). Consumption of added sugars is decreasing in the United States. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 94(3), 726-734. Wolraich, ML, Wilson, DB, and White, JW. “The effect of sugar on behavior or cognition in children. A meta-analysis”. JAMA, 1995. 274(20): p. 1617-21. World Health Organization (2015). Guideline: Sugars intake for adults and children. Author; Geneva.

I hear from a lot of parents who are worried about their children’s learning.  They tell me things like:“I want to encourage my child’s learning and creativity and confidence as a learner without solely focusing on literacy and numeracy.”   “We’ve been in lockdown here in Melbourne for a very long time, with my older kids learning remotely, and I feel that a lot of the tasks they are given by their school are a bit … uninspiring. It’s so cool when there is something that really engages them and I’m trying to find more things like that.”   “I am wary about the school system squashing the natural instinct to learn, as I feel it did with me. But I'm hoping we can provide the attitude and environment at home to mitigate this.”   “What we have read about traditional schooling is a bit disheartening but something we have to embrace for now. So it is important that with the time we have outside of school we do the best we can to encourage his spark for exploration and learning.”   “My children are already in school. Even though they (and I) are happy with their school and learning so far, I would love to learn how I can support them better and help them being more motivated and stay curious. The challenges of distant-learning that we experienced during the lockdowns have highlighted that I find it difficult to be a good teacher for them and I would like to change that.”   If you could have said (or have already said!) one or more of these things yourself, then I want to introduce you to Madeline.She describes all three of her children as ‘spirited’ (you can kind of see it in their eyes, right?!)   When I first met her, she wanted to know that she was doing everything she could to support their intrinsic love of learning in the preschool years - and she wasn’t sure whether or not they would go to school.  In this episode we discuss some of the Learning Explorations she’s done with them, how she became confident that she really was meeting each child’s learning needs, and what decision she ultimately made about school!   Ready to Support Your Child's Natural Learning Whether this episode has you considering unschooling, reinforced your commitment to traditional schooling, or left you somewhere in between, one thing is clear: every child deserves to have their natural curiosity and love of learning nurtured.   The challenge for parents isn't choosing the "right" educational path, but knowing how to support meaningful learning wherever your child is.   The Learning Membership gives you the tools to nurture your child's development whether they're in traditional school, homeschooled, or unschooled.   Inside the membership, you'll find research-backed strategies that work alongside any educational setting, helping you become the parent who nurtures learning rather than forcing it.   Your child's curiosity is precious - don't let it get lost in debates about educational methods.   Click the banner to learn more.     Jump to highlights 00:02 Introduction to the episode 05:08 Kids’ creativity encouraged through Kid Kitchen Creations 06:38 What Madeline values as a parent: Autonomy and skills 08:23 How being a perfectionist affected Madeline’s parenting 12:30 Finding balance between allowing her child to make mistakes and providing guidance 14:19 The effectiveness of workbooks in supporting children’s love of learning 16:26 Madeline discusses her middle child’s interests and learning style 18:47 Madeline discusses how joining the joining the Supporting Your Child’s Learning Membership supported her 23:04 Madeline shares a specific example of how she applied the learning framework she gained from joining the membership 27:59 Madeline reflects on the importance of keeping the balance between her children’s learning and their emotional, social and psychological wellbeing 29:40 Madeline shares the importance of documenting her children’s learning 38:08 Madeline shares how being a member of both Parenting Membership and Supporting Your Child’s Learning Membership supported her 42:05 Madeline’s advice for parents

Is your child gifted?   Do you wonder if they're gifted but aren't quite sure?   Do you want to know how to support your gifted child's learning in a way that doesn't pressure them or make them resist working with you?   If so, this episode will help.   I have to say, I wasn't sure where this one was going to end up.  I was really uneasy about the concept of giftedness from the outset, perhaps because the way I had previously come into contact with it was through our conversation with Dr. Allison Roda, from whom we learned how some parents manipulate the Gifted & Talented program in New York City to perpetuate segregated education.   But even so, I tried to go into the research with an open mind.  What if it's just the G&T programs as they're set up in New York City that are the problem, not the entire concept of giftedness itself?   The good news is that there's a good deal of evidence on what kinds of programs benefit gifted children.  And in this episode I end up arguing that we shouldn't just put gifted children in them, but that all children would benefit from learning using these methods.   Ready to transform how you support your child's curiosity? While we're all trying to figure out what's really behind rising teen anxiety and whether phones are the problem, there's something we can do right now that helps nurture our children's natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation to learn.   The You Are Your Child's Best Teacher masterclass shows you how to do exactly that without adding pressure or creating elaborate activities that exhaust you.   When children feel competent and engaged in learning that matters to them, they develop resilience that serves them well, whether they're facing social media pressures, academic stress, or the general challenges of growing up in today's world.   Click the banner to learn more!     Learning Membership Do you want to turn your child’s interests into learning opportunities? The Learning Membership is here to help you. Make learning a fun adventure that not only strengthens your bond, but also nurtures your child’s intrinsic love of learning—an essential foundation for success in an AI-driven world.   Get tools and strategies to support your child’s love of learning and future-proof their success in navigating whatever comes their way. No special skills needed—just a willingness to explore alongside them.   Click the banner to learn more!     References Adair, J.K., Colegrove, K. S-S., & McManus, M.E. (2017). How the word gap argument negatively impacts young children of Latinx immigrants’ conceptualizations of learning. Harvard Educational Review 87(3), 309-334. Aiegler, A., Balestrini, D.P., & Stoeger, H. (2018). An international view on gifted education: incorporating the macro-systemic perspective. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.15-28). Cham, Switizerland. Begay, H. & Maker, CJ. (2007). When geniuses fail: Na8Dene’ (Navajo) conception of giftedness in the eyes of the holy deities. In S.N. Phillipson & M. McCann (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness. Sociocultural perspectives (pp. 1278168). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Berry, K. S. (2004). Multiple intelligences are not what they seem to be. In J. L. Kincheloe (Ed.), Multiple intelligences reconsidered. (pp. 236-250). New York, NY: Peter Lang. Carrillo, J.F. (2013). I always knew I was gifted: Latino males and the Mestiz@ Theory of Intelligences (MTI). Berkeley Review of Education 4(1), 69-95. Chandler, P. (2011). Prodigy or problem child? Challenges with identifying Aboriginal giftedness. In Vialle, W. (Ed.), Giftedness from an Indigenous perspective (p.1-9). Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented Ltd. Retrieved from https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=uowbooks Christie, M. (n.d.). Some Aboriginal perspectives on gifted and talented children and their schooling. Charles Darwin University. Retrieved from https://www.cdu.edu.au/centres/yaci/docs/Aboriginal-Perspectives-On-Gifted-Children%20190910.pdf Ford, D. Y., Orantham T. C. & Whiting, G. W. (2008). Culturally and linguistically diverse students in gifted education: Recruitment and retention issues. Exceptional Children, 74, 3, 289Q306. Jiuliani, A.J. (2013, June 25). Why “20% time” is good for schools. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/20-percent-time-a-j-juliani Kanevsky, L., & Keighley, T. (2003). To produce or not to produce? Understanding boredom and the honor in underachievement. Roeper Review, 26, 20–28. Mayes, R.D., & Moore III, J.L. (2016). The intersection of race, disability, and giftedness: Understanding the education needs of twice-exceptional African American students. Gifted Child Today 39(2), 98-104. Miller, E.M., & Cohen, L.M. (2012). Engendering talent in others: Expanding domains of giftedness and creativity. Roeper Review 34, 104-113. Novak, A.M. (2021, February 5). Black (Gifted) Joy: A critical race theory perspective. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/xdpwr Peterson, J. S. (2001). Successful adults who were once adolescent underachievers. Gifted Child Quarterly, 45, 236–250. Pfeiffer, S.I., & Prado, R.M. (2018). Counseling the gifted: Current status and future prospects. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.299-313). Cham, Switizerland. Reis, S.M. (2005). Feminist perspectives on talent development: A research-based conception of giftedness in women. In R.J. Sternberg & J.E. Davidson (Eds)., Conceptions of Giftedness (2nd Ed.) (p.217-246). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rinn, A.N., & Majority, K.L. (2018). The social and emotional world of the gifted. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.49-64). Cham, Switizerland. Silverman, L.K. (2018). Assessment of giftedness. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.183-207). Cham, Switizerland. Sternberg, R.J., & Kaufman, S.B. (2018). Theories and conceptions of giftedness. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.29-48). Cham, Switizerland. Ziegler, A., Balestrini, D.P., & Stoeger, H. (2018). An international view on gifted education: incorporating the macro-systemic perspective. In Pfeiffer, S.I. (Ed.), Handbook of giftedness in children: Psychoeducational theory, research, and best practices (p.15-28). Cham, Switizerland.

We don’t just think with our brains.   What?!   How can that possibly be true?   I struggled to understand it if myself for quite a while, until I read the fabulous English philosopher Andy Clark’s description of what happens when someone writes, which essentially involves ideas flowing down the arm and hand, through the pen and ink, across the paper, up to your eyes, and back to your brain.   The ideas don’t literally flow, of course, but the process of writing alters the process of thinking - which is why research has shown that processing traumatic memories through journaling about them is more useful just thinking about them - the act of writing about them changes our interpretation of them in a way that just thinking about them doesn’t.   The challenge with school-based learning, of course, is that it’s primarily concerned with the brain.  Our task is to remember facts and ideas so we can recount them when asked about them at a later time.  Children who fidget are told to sit still, when the research that Annie Murphy Paul cites in her new book The Extended Mind indicates that this instruction is entirely misplaced - fidgeting can be a way of managing excess energy, and movement can actually help us to remember things more effectively than we otherwise would.   In this episode we learn many of the different ways that we our brains interact with the outside world to learn in ways that we might never have considered up to now.   Ready to transform how you support your child's curiosity? While we're all trying to figure out what's really behind rising teen anxiety and whether phones are the problem, there's something we can do right now that helps nurture our children's natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation to learn.   The You Are Your Child's Best Teacher masterclass shows you how to do exactly that without adding pressure or creating elaborate activities that exhaust you.   When children feel competent and engaged in learning that matters to them, they develop resilience that serves them well, whether they're facing social media pressures, academic stress, or the general challenges of growing up in today's world.   Click the banner to learn more!     Learning Membership Do you want to turn your child’s interests into learning opportunities? The Learning Membership is here to help you. Make learning a fun adventure that not only strengthens your bond, but also nurtures your child’s intrinsic love of learning—an essential foundation for success in an AI-driven world.   Get tools and strategies to support your child’s love of learning and future-proof their success in navigating whatever comes their way. No special skills needed—just a willingness to explore alongside them.   Click the banner to learn more!     Annie Murphy Paul's Book The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain (Affiliate link).   Jump to highlights 01:00 Looking at the idea that our mind isn't actually only located inside of our brains 01:46 An open invitation to join the free You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher Workshop 05:30 Learning does not just happen within the brain, but with things and people that are outside of it 06:44 The metaphor of how our brains are like magpies nest: we draw raw material available to us as resources for our thinking process just like how magpies incorporate materials available in their environment when building their nests 09:22 The movements and gestures of our bodies, the internal sensations of our bodies are part of the thinking process 10:34 Interoceptive sensitivity 13:07 The gut feeling is your body tugging at your sleeve saying that you’ve encountered this situation before and this is how you should respond 14:53 Moving the body is a way to stimulate mental processes in specific ways and you can use different kinds of movements to produce different kinds of thoughts 16:53 Recess -  the great invention that allows students to move and break the monotony of sitting down all day in school 17:49 Fidgeting is  a very subtle way to calibrate our arousal level so that we're in this optimal state of alertness 19:00 We're creatures who are good at moving our bodies and navigating through space and interacting with other people 20:23 We rely on our surroundings to shape our sense of ourselves 26:48 We can interact with our environment in a way that supports our learning 28:33 What are some ways that we can support children in using the space around them in their learning 31:49 Journaling and sketching as a tool to process learning deeper 36:47 Thinking with relationships; encouraging children to learn from and with other people 45:25 Allowing your children to genuinely work together so that parents don’t need to support their learning individually 46:29 We tend to think of learning as when a person sits down at a desk but in fact there are all these cognitive processes that get activated in social interactions 48:08 Argument is very valuable and can be a really effective way of solving problems 52:43 It is a different cognitive process when we do learning with other people 55:45 Human thinking works best when we are able to create “loops” and the best way for parents to support their children’s learning is to look for those loops   Other episodes mentioned: 113: No Self, No Problem137: Psychological Flexibility through ACT with Dr. Diana Hill   Links You Are Your Child’s Best Teacher WorkshopThe Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, by Annie Murphy PaulOrigins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, by Annie Murphy Paul   References: Andrade, J. (2010). What does doodling do? Applied Cognitive Psychology 24, 100-106. Bobek, E., & Tversky, B. (2016). Creating visual explanations improves learning. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 1, 27. Church, R.B. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1986). The mismatch between gesture and speech as an index of transitional knowledge. Cognition 23, 43-71. Fishburn, F.A., Murty, V., Hlutkowsky, C.O., MacGillivray, C.E., Bemis, L.M., Murphy, M.E., Huppert, T.J., & Perlman, S.B. (2018). Putting our heads together: Interpersonal neural synchronization as a biological mechanism for shared intentionality. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 13(8), 841-849. Glenberg, A.M. (2011). How reading comprehension is embodied and why that matters. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education 4(1), 5-18. Kandasamy, N., Garfinkel, S.N., Page, L., Hardy, B., Critchley, H.D., Gurnell, M., & Coates, J.M. (2016). Interoceptive ability predicts survival on a London trading floor. Scientific Reports 6, 32986. Kelly, S.D., Singer, M., Hicks, J., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2002). A helping hand in assessing children’s knowledge: Instructing adults to attend to gesture. Cognition and Instruction 20(1), 1-26. Knight, C., & Haslam, S.A. (2010). The relative merits of lean, enriched, and empowered offices: An experimental examination of the impact of workspace management strategies on well-being and productivity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 16(2), 158-172. Kontra, C., Lyons, D.J., Fischer, S.M., & Beilock, S.L. (2015). Physical experience enhances science learning. Psychological Science 26(6), 737-749. Langhanns, C., & Muller, H. (2018). Effects of trying ‘not to move’ instruction on cortical load and concurrent cognitive performance. Psychological Research 82, 167-176. Link, T., Moeller, K., Huber, S., Fischer, U., & Nuerk, H-K. (2015). Corrigendum to ‘Walk the number line – An embodied training of numerical concepts.’ Trends in Neuroscience and Education 4(4), 112. Link, T., Moeller, K., Huber, S., Fischer, U., & Nuerk, H-K. (2013). Walk the number line – An embodied training of numerical concepts. Trends in Neuroscience and Education 2(2), 74-84. Lozada, M., & Carro, N. (2016). Embodied action improves cognition in children: Evidence from a study based on Piagetian conservation tasks. Frontiers in Psychology 7, 393. Meagher, B.R. (2020). Ecologizing social psychology: The physical environment as a necessary constitutent of social processes. Personality and Social Psychology Review 24(1), 3-23. Mehta, R.K., Shortz, A.E., & Benden, M.E. (2015). Standing up for learning: A pilot investigation on the neurocognitive benefits of stand-biased school desks. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 13, 0059. Shteynberg, G. (2014). A social host in the machine? The case of group attention. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 3(4), 307-311. Zhang, T. (2017). Back to the beginning: Rediscovering inexperience helps experts give advice. Academy of Management Proceedings 2015-1, 15215.

Do you worry that your child isn't eating enough...or is eating too much? Do you wish they would eat a more balanced diet...but don't want to be the Vegetable Police? Do you find yourself in constant negotiations over your child's favorite snacks? You're not alone! Join me for a conversation with Ellyn Satter MS, MSSW, author of many books including Child of Mine: Feeding With Love and Good Sense. Ms. Satter developed the approach to feeding children that's known as Division of Responsibility, which means that the parent is responsible for the what, when, and where of eating, and the child is responsible for whether and how much. It all sounds pretty simple, but when you're actually navigating eating with your child it can seem a whole lot more complicated: Should we worry about our child's eating in the long term if they won't eat vegetables now? Should we restrict access to children's food? What should we do about picky eating? Ms. Satter helps us to understand her ideas on these important questions and much more. In the conversation we discussed some questions that you can answer to identify whether you are what Ms. Satter defines as Eating Competent: Do you agree or disagree with these statements? I enjoy food and I am comfortable with my enjoyment of food and I take an interest in unfamiliar food. I eat as much as I am hungry for. I plan for feeding myself. Agreeing with these statements indicates you are likely Eating Competent. Disagreeing means you are missing out on eating as one of life’s great pleasures and putting up with a lot of unnecessary misery. Do you have to be miserable to eat well and be healthy? Not at all. People who are Eating Competent eat better and are healthier: they weigh less, have better medical tests, and function better, emotionally and socially.   Ellyn Satter's Books: Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family: How to Eat, How to Raise Good Eaters, How to Cook How to Get Your Kid to Eat: But Not Too Much (Affiliate links).   References Chang, S. (2019, December 4). Back to basics: All about MyPlate food groups. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Retrieved from https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2017/09/26/back-basics-all-about-myplate-food-groups Cooke, L.J., Wardle, J., Gibson, E.L., Sapochnik, M., Sheiham, A., & Lawson, M. (2003). Demographic, familial and trait predictors of fruit and vegetable consumption by pre-school children. Public Health Nutrition 7(2), 295-302. Curtin, S.C. (2019). Trends in cancer and heart disease death rates among adults aged 45-64: United States 1999-2017. National Vital Statistics Reports 68(5), 1-9. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_05-508.pdf Fayet-Moore, F., McConnell, A., Cassettari, T., Tuck, K., Petocz, P., & Kim, J. (2019). Vegetable intake in Australian children and adolescents: The importance of consumption frequency, eating occasion and its association with dietary and sociodemographic factors. Public Health Nutrition 23(3), 474-487. Fryar, C.D., Carroll, M.D., & Attful, J. (2020). Prevalence of overweight, obesity, and severe obesity among adults aged 20 and over: United States, 1960-1962 through 2017-2018. National Center for Health Statistics https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-adult-17-18/overweight-obesity-adults-H.pdf Jones, B.L. (2018). Making time for family meals: Parental influences, home eating environments, barriers and protective factors. Physiology & Behavior 193, 248-251. Larson, N., & Story, M. (2013). A review of snacking patterns among children and adolescents: What are the implications of snacking for weight status? Childhood obesity 9(2), 104-115. Satter, E. (2007). Hierarchy of food needs. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 39(5), S187-S188. Satter, E. (2007). Eating competence: Definition and evidence for the Satter Eating Competence Model. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior 39(5), S142-S153. Satter, E.M. (1986). The feeding relationship. Journal of the American Dietetic Association 86, 352-356.

When you’re learning a new skill, information is critical.  Without that, it’s very difficult to make any kind of meaningful change.   But I see a parallel between learning new skills and respectful parenting: I like to say that love between parent and child is necessary but not sufficient - and that respect is the missing ingredient.  With learning a new skill, knowledge is necessary - but not sufficient.   And support is the missing ingredient.   You might remember from our conversation with Dr. Chris Niebauer a while ago that our overactive left brains tend to make up stories about our experiences to integrate these experiences into the narratives we tell about ourselves.   If we’re “the kind of person who triumphs through adversity,” a setback will be taken in stride.  If we’re “the kind of person who has been hurt,” each new individual hurt makes much more of a mark.  The new experiences have to be made to fit with the framework that’s already in place.   Especially when you’re learning a skill related to difficult experiences you’ve had, your left brain wants to keep itself safe.  It might tell you: “I don’t need to do this.  Things aren’t that bad.  I’ll just wait until later / tomorrow / next week.”   And when that happens, you need support.  That support can be from a great friend, although sometimes you don’t want even your closest friends to know that you shout at or smack your child.   Therapy can be really helpful - but it’s also really expensive.   Sometimes the thing that’s most helpful is someone who’s learning the tools alongside you (so they aren’t trying to look back and remember what it was like to be in your situation; theirs is different, but they are struggling too…) who isn’t a regular presence in your life.   There’s no danger you’re going to run into them at the supermarket, or a kid’s birthday party.   You can actually be really honest with them and know it won’t come and bite you in the butt.   That’s what today’s guests, Marci and Elizabeth, discovered when they started working together.  Separated by cultural differences, fourteen(!) time zones, and very different lives, they found common ground in their struggles and have developed a deep and lasting friendship.   If you’d like to work on taming your triggered feelings - and get help from your own Accountabuddy in the process - the Taming Your Triggers masterclass is for you.   Get instant access for $7. Click the banner to sign up!!

How does trauma affect us?   Yes, we feel it in our brains - we get scared, frustrated, and angry - often for reasons we don’t fully understand.   But even if our brains have managed to cover up the trauma; to paper a veneer over it so everything seems fine, that doesn’t mean everything actually is fine - because as our guest in this episode, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk says: The Body Keeps The Score.   What he means is that the effects of the trauma you’ve experienced don’t just go away, and can’t just be papered over.  Your body will still hold the evidence in tension, headaches, irritability (of minds and bowels), insomnia...and all of this may come out when your child does something you wish they wouldn’t.   Perhaps it’s something your parent always used to resent doing, and made it super clear to you every time they did it for you.   Perhaps it was something you did as a child and were punished for doing (maybe you were even hit for it...your body is literally remembering this trauma when your child reproduces the behavior).   Lack of manners, talking back, making a mess, not doing as you were told, being silly...even if logically you now know that these are relatively small things, when your child does them it brings back your body’s memories of what happened to you.   Dr. van der Kolk helps us to understand more about how this shows up for us.  Sometimes understanding can be really helpful.  But sometimes you also need new tools, and support as you learn them, and accountability.   If you’re struggling with your reactions to your child’s difficult behavior - whether you’re going into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, the Taming Your Triggers masterclass can help.   Get instant access for $7. Click the banner to sign up!!   Dr. van der Kolk's Book: The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Affiliate link).   Jump to highlights: (01:00) Introducing Dr. van der Kolk(01:58) Invitation to the Taming Your Triggers Workshop(02:56) A note on some technical difficulties we had while recording this episode(03:14) People often want easy answers: Talking about why we feel like we need pills and alcohol to deal with trauma and not make use of other methods which seem more beneficial(08:16) "We become who we are based on the experiences we had and these early experiences really set your expectations"(11:53) Dr. van der Kolk’s ongoing research on touch and trauma that looks into the virtually unstudied field of touch(14:42) To effectively deal with trauma, people need to discover who they are and find the words for their internal experiences(16:10) On mindfulness and yoga: the physical focus on movement in yoga may open up some space for mindfulness(20:45) Rolfing : opening up the body so that it is released from the configuration it adopted to deal with trauma(23:07) The importance of words and finding somebody who can helps you to find words as cautiously as they can, without inflicting too much of their own value system on you(25:31) Dr. van der Kolk’s current agenda for kids to be taught to have a language for their internal experience(28:27) Two of the most important scientifically proven predictors of adult function(31:26) Dr. van der Kolk talks about Developmental Trauma Disorder(38:31) The power of peer and community support in healing trauma(41:32) Wrapping up   Links: The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of TraumaMy Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and BodiesNo Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to BuddhismTaming Your Triggers Workshop     [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We all want our children to lead fulfilling lives but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting.   Jen Lumanlan  00:28 If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Isn't Listening To You and What To Do About Each One, just head on over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the free Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us   Jen Lumanlan  01:00 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today we're here with a guest who is a luminary in his field of trauma psychology, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. Dr. van der Kolk has been at the forefront of translating emerging findings from neuroscience and attachment research, development and study a range of treatments for traumatic stress in children and adults for decades now. He began by studying post traumatic stress disorder in veterans and has gone on to study it and other adults as well as how trauma affects children. He's studied treatments to help people improve their functioning in the world by looking beyond symptoms to understanding the causes of their behavior that's generating their problems. And then not just shifting their cognitive understanding of the problems and the causes, but also showing them how to change their physical experience of their lives. Dr. van der Kolk's book The Body Keeps The Score is required reading for anyone who wants to begin understanding that trauma isn't just something we experience in our brains, but something that lives in us.   Jen Lumanlan  01:58 If what you hear in today's interview resonates with you and you see how the trauma that you've experienced in your life is impacting your relationship with your children today, I invite you to join my Taming Your Triggers workshop, which is open for registration from Sunday, August 1st through Wednesday, August 11th. It's a 10-week course where you learn the real sources of your triggered feelings which either lie in the kinds of Big T traumatic experiences that we'll discuss here today or potentially in not having your needs seen and met by your parents. You'll get all the support you need in our private, non-Facebook community. And you can sign up to get an Accountabuddy to bounce ideas off as you're learning them, and to hold you gently accountable for doing the work when you might otherwise just let it fall by the wayside because it's difficult or maybe even threatening to the stories that your overactive left brain has told you about your experiences for all these years. You can go to YourParentingMojo.com/TamingYourTriggers to learn more about the course and sign up.   Jen Lumanlan  02:56 I also wanted to mention that we had some technical challenges during this interview. So you may notice a little bit of choppiness as we had to remove some sections because they weren't understandable. But even so there's such an incredible amount of value in what Dr. van der Kolk was saying that I know you're going to get something useful out of it. So here we go.   Jen Lumanlan  03:14 I was curious to hear your interview with Krista Tippett and on being which a number of people have recommended as a really stellar interview. And you had talked about how people in other cultures have things like dancing and moving and singing really integrated into their cultures and religions. And I've been to church since I was a child, but there was no there was no dancing, there's no moving the Church of England, and it also reminded me of Resmaa Menakem's book, my Grandmother's Hands where he describes people who were enslaved, using exactly these practices to continue their culture and heal their trauma. Yeah, but we just kind of stuff it down and then it comes back to bite us later. And we find that we need the pills and that we need the the alcohol, or it feels like we need that. What's what happened in our culture, do you think to make us, sort of head down in that direction instead of these other practices that seem like they're much more beneficial?   Bessel van der Kolk  04:08 Well, of course, it depends on the culture, we live in and like, let's say you would live in Berkeley, California would not be unusual to go to your yoga studio. In other parts of the country, you are a traitor to your religion, if yoga or your environments in among the people I hang out with having a yoga practice and meditation practice would be or even martial arts practice would be very common. But that's a small segment of the population of course. You know, people like easy answers. And, and that's true all over the world. Let me give an example. A few years ago, there was this huge tsunami in in the Indian Ocean and a group from my clinic, went down to Sri Lanka to do first aid. And they called me for the beach in Sri Lanka and said, Bessel, they have everything here that they need to recover. They are moving together, they are singing together, they have rituals. It's beautiful. But down the street, Pfizer pharmaceuticals has come with pills. And they all the Sri Lankan people are lining up behind it, the Pfizer truck to get the pill to make the pain go away. And I think that's always, around the world, the issue is is the community strong enough to induce you to share your pain communally, Or do you go off drinking or drugging by yourself? I think that's, you know, you see that all over the world in some ways, but in other parts of the world, the other things are more easily accessible.   Jen Lumanlan  05:58 Yeah, and I think it might have been in the On Being episode or another interview that I heard from you where you were talking about how you helped out in Puerto Rico after the hurricane, I think I think it was, if I'm remembering that correctly. Yeah. And that I that, again, people were sort of taking charge of what needed to be done and they had a sense of autonomy over the start of the repair work. And then FEMA arrives, and and completely takes over the whole thing and, and says that you're going to do it, how we're going to do it and stop doing all these things you've been doing. And it just seems as though we sort of impose these ways on other people a lot of the time as well.   Bessel van der Kolk  06:35 Yeah, of course, American society has these inborn things about top down versus individualistic enterprises. But, you know, you can say all kinds of things are inaccessible. But America is still the land of innovation. Somehow, our culture is still off, it's okay to start something new and start to try out new things. And you see things happen all the time. So this is tension between. But we don't have a government that really for us, for the people, but at least we still have a culture where there's a relative amount of possibility for people to develop alternative structures.   Jen Lumanlan  07:15 Yeah. So I'd love to sort of go back a little bit, as it were into your history of working with people who've experienced trauma. And I know that you were really struck by the early, early animal research where researchers not including you, were giving painful electric shocks to dogs while they were trapped in cages. And then they would open the cage doors, and the dogs who had been shocked would just kind of sit there whimpering. And I think this has obvious parallels to situations like domestic abuse, where we might say, Well, why doesn't the patient the person just leave. But I'm also interested in the implications of this for people who are not in the thick of the trauma right now that it has happened to them in the past something like, you know, divorce and bullying and things that happened in our childhood, and that this has profoundly shifted the ways that we show up in our relationships with our children today. And I think it's so tempting to just say, well, you're not in that hurtful situation anymore, that you were in when you were a child, why don't you just do it differently? Why, why doesn't that work?   Bessel van der Kolk  08:16 Because you still are in a situation, because we become who we are, on the basis of the experiences we have had. And the experiences that we have had in our brain mind, predicts how things will be in the future. So if you're experienced as a kid is that the people who are supposed to take care of you, regularly humiliate you, put you down and make you feel terrible about yourself, that becomes your map of the world. And later on, you may meet somebody who puts you down and humiliate you, you go like, wow, this person is terrible person, but I feel at home. You may feel more comfortable in his in his own bizarre way with that person who does nasty things to you, does somebody who's actually nice to you. That's, so these early experiences really set your expectations as set your reward system of your brain. So that certain things become pleasurable, for other people may not be pleasurable, or they may feel terrible for other people feel terrific. And it's not a conscious decision because these things get laid down in the nether regions of your brain.   Jen Lumanlan  09:33 Yeah, and it I think it has a lot of connections obviously to attachment theory and I've been digging into a lot of reading on that lately and how babies will even seek out attachment they'll they'll be motivated to connect with a parent even if the parent is abusive towards the child. So it's   Bessel van der Kolk  09:54 ...we're we're very communal creatures. For me, by far the most interesting course at the college was about Harlow and his monkeys. And it turns out that now, several of my closest friends, were working for Harlow at the same time that I was studying Harlow. And, you know, seeing how we as human beings really are little monkeys with a gigantic frontal lobe. And I always love to look at monkeys because they chase each other, and they groom, each other, they fight they do things very much like human beings. And what Harlow found is that monkeys need to be attached. And humans need to be attached. There's not like an option... COVID is not like, oh, let's just be by ourselves for a year and not connect with other people. No, that is who we are. We are defined by our context, defined by people who know us, people don't know us, the people who recognize us to make people may feel special. That's who we are. Most of our brain is for social enterprise.   Jen Lumanlan  11:12 Yeah, so there's severe problems there where we can't do that. And just for anyone who's listening, who is not familiar with the Harlow's experiment, this is where he's creating these monkeys made out of wire that I mean, some of them would puff air at the baby every time the baby tried to hug up to it. And some of them had spikes on. Some of them were just a Terrycloth over a piece of wire and you see these pitiful pictures of baby monkeys hugging on for dear life.   Bessel van der Kolk  11:34 There is clue to the mothers hugging the Terrycloth. The mothers who feed them, which is really interesting. Touching, actually just, you're doing research right now with touch and trauma. Being touched being held, is very much at the core of who we are here.   Jen Lumanlan  11:53 Oh, can you tell me some more about that? What are you looking at in that research?   Bessel van der Kolk  11:56 Are we looking at the a lot of challenges, people are terrified of touch, don't feel comfortable with touch, or need touch all the time, or don't get comfort from touch. So there's a real altered relationship to your bodily systems. And you know, because we have been so drugs or yakking in our field, we haven't paid attention to that. And for me, it's interesting that there have been Nobel prizes figuring out how vision works, and how audition works and how smell works, and some people left out touch. And touch has been virtually not studied, even though the first thing we do when we're distressed is to hold on to each other. And often when something terrible happens, we don't even have words, but just feeling somebody hope even better is bigger and stronger to you or to hold you said it will be okay. It's very powerful. And people who are traumatized, have terrific difficulties taking in the comfort of touch, living with it, and I think just a dimension that we need to pay much more attention to.   Jen Lumanlan  13:11 Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think it's partly to do with the body brain split that we enforce through various aspects of our culture where...   Bessel van der Kolk  13:19 That's culture. It's who we are.   Jen Lumanlan  13:20 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we privilege everything that happens in the brain is rational and better than anything else that's happening elsewhere in the body. And yeah, so I was thinking then about some of the ways that people who maybe don't have access to therapy can do work on on some of the trauma that they've experienced. So it seems as though touch could be a really important part of that. Is that right?   Bessel van der Kolk  13:43 Oh, yeah, but the other thing is becoming increasingly clear to me is so I went to medical school, and so good psychiatry school. And they you think that, okay, this is the avenue for mental

When we're having a hard time interacting with our family members, it's pretty common for our first reaction to be: "I need this person (or these people!) to change their behavior" - especially when this person (or these people!) are children.  After all, we've been around for longer and we know what we're doing and we were fine before our children started misbehaving, right?   My guest today, parent-of-three Chrystal, had encountered this mentality not just about her children, but also about her husband.  In fact, when she went to couple's therapy with her husband it was with a sense of relief: "Finally, I'm going to find out what's wrong with him, because there's nothing wrong with me!"   She always figured: "If that person didn't act like that then I wouldn't need to react the way I'm reacting...and I legitimately thought that everyone else was responsible for my behavior."   Then she realized that her husband wasn't responsible for how she was feeling...she was.   Now she was ready to make the same leap related to her relationship with her spirited children, but needed new tools.  They would melt down over every tiny issue (not enough honey on the oatmeal!  Now not enough cream!  I don't WANT to get dressed!), and Chrystal found herself constantly scrambling to placate them.   Join us for a conversation about the new ideas she's learned, and how her children now don't cooperate blindly because she's forcing them, but express their agency while finding ways to collaborate that also meet their needs.  They have real agency in her family (they know she'll hear them and respect their ideas) and because of this, the little issues that used to provoke regular meltdowns are easily solved.  And Chrystal is learning how to set boundaries so she doesn't get walked all over - by her children, or by other members of her family.   Want to make a similar shift in your own interactions with your children?  My Taming Your Triggers workshop will help.   Get instant access for $7. Click the banner to sign up!!   Jump to highlights: (01:00) Inviting listeners to join the Taming Your Triggers workshop(04:43) A little bit about Chrystal(11:06) Chrystal’s journey as a parent(13:58) How Chrystal found it difficult to build lasting relationships with parents who were raising their children the same way they were raised and how she found her people in the Taming Your Triggers community.(16:32) The fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses and how Chrystal resonated to the fawn response.(18:22) The first time Chrystal was able to connect what she’s feeling in her body with her belief systems(20:36) As the eldest of eight children, Chrystal felt that it was her responsibility to make sure everyone is happy when her mother couldn’t cope due to severe postnatal depression, and this has continued on with her character now that they’ve grown up(24:51)  When Chrystal decided to set boundaries and have it respected, she found out that her family’s issues can resolve themselves without her getting involved(28:14) The profound shift with for Chrystal in terms of what changed in her family after going through the Taming Your Triggers workshop is that she is now able to see situations as more than a win-lose situation(32:20) With two strong-willed daughters and a son who is also energetic, breakfast has been a challenge in Chrystal’s home. She’s learned to apply problem solving to find solutions, but the biggest revelation for her has been that it is okay for her children to have these big feelings(38:15) Chrystal explores the question, “Why should our children listen to us?” as she discovers extrinsic and intrinsic motivation(38:55) A beautiful moment when Chrystal was having a hard time getting her daughter ready for school, and another instance when she was having some friend over their house(47:08) Having the tools is great but it is just better to have a framework to implement it and really being intentional(51:20) Wrapping up with a sense of compassion.   Resources mentioned in this episode: Taming Your Triggers workshopUpbringingwith Hannah & KeltyNonviolent Communication Podcast EpisodeThe Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, by Daniel Siegel   [accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen Lumanlan  00:02 Hi, I'm Jen and I host the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of respectful parenting.   Jen Lumanlan  00:29 If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released, and get a FREE Guide called 13 Reasons Why Your Child Won't Listen To You & What To Do About Each One, just head over to YourParentingMojo.com/SUBSCRIBE. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us.   Jen Lumanlan  01:00 Hello, and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Today we're going to talk with a parent, Chrystal all the way from Tasmania, Australia. I've been working with Chrystal for a few months firstly in the Taming Your Triggers workshop, and then she joined the Parenting Membership after that, and she's seen some truly profound shifts in how she interacts with her children. She recently posted about them in our private community and she gave me permission to share these updates that happened since we talked a few weeks ago. So not long ago, Crystal's toddler was having tantrums every morning at breakfast and for about 20 to 40 minutes she would grit her teeth through that as well as through a 30 minute car ride to school as he screamed through the whole thing. Now she's found ways for him to have more autonomy over his own breakfast, which means he's not resisting every step of the way. And it sets their whole day on a different track.   Jen Lumanlan  01:53   Her relationship with her eldest daughter had been marked by resistance as well. But recently they were in the car together and her daughter asked to put on pop music while they were driving. Chrystal said she was too tired for music, so her daughter asked if she could put on some quiet music instead which crystal likes. Crystal was shocked by her daughter's willingness to work with her because just a few weeks ago, her daughter would say no to her all the time. Just not do what crystal asked or ignore her. But now they're in a flow of working together. Now when her middle daughter's screaming whining having tantrums, Chrystal now sees that her daughter is having strong feelings about something like not being able to go to a party. And rather than getting angry herself crystal is able to reframe her daughter's anger because crystal understands that underneath that anger is disappointment about missing out on a fun event that all her friends are going to and that helps Chrystal to truly empathize with her daughter. Later on that night, they were able to have a problem solving conversation about seeing her friends over the holidays instead. And her daughter was completely on board with it.   Jen Lumanlan  02:55 And finally, through this work, Chrystal realized that she basically has never put up any boundaries in her life. She's always been a people pleaser, and put everyone else's needs first. So when her children used to cry or rage, she would do anything to get it to stop. Through this work, she realizes that her children have needs that really matter. But Chrystal herself also has needs that matter. And she signed up for therapy to help her work through the guilt and shame that she has when she even thinks about setting a boundary. So if there are echoes of your relationship with your children, and any of these stories are the ones you're about to hear, or if you're struggling with triggered feelings in other situations with your children, I invite you to join my taming your triggers workshop. It's open for enrollment from Sunday, August 1 through Wednesday, August 11. You'll get the knowledge you need to make the same kinds of shifts that Chrystal has made, a supportive community of parents, one of whom will often ask a question that's just floating below the surface of your consciousness. So you couldn't even articulate it yourself. But yeah, once you hear it and the answer to it, you realize that was just the key you needed to unlock a big revelation. And you also have the option to partner up with an Accountabuddy to provide encouragement, to dig deeper, and maybe even to develop a lasting friendship. You can learn more about the course at YourParentingMojo.com/TamingYourTriggers. So without further ado, hello to Chrystal who joins us all the way from Tasmania, Australia. It's great to have you here.   Chrystal Potter  04:20 Thank you. It's exciting to be with you.   Jen Lumanlan  04:22 So can you tell us a little bit about you and your family, please?   Chrystal Potter  04:25 I'd love to, firstly that I just want to start by thanking you for everything that you've done to invest into my life in the last couple of months. It's just been such a joy and an honor to get to know you through the Taming Your Triggers workshops. I just wanted to start with that.   Chrystal Potter  04:41 A little bit about me. I am the eldest of eight children. Blaine is 210 years old. So that's my you know, extended family, my family. Now I have three small children at home. So I've got an eight year old, a six year old and a three year old and they would what I would classify as strong willed and spirited children, so life is a lot of fun. A lot of high energy, a lot of high needs, um, you know, a family situation. So that's a little bit of a background about me.   Jen Lumanlan  04:41 You're welcome.   Jen Lumanlan  05:14 Okay, super. And I'm curious to just get to know you a little bit more and understand a bit more about your values and your beliefs as a person. And I think this is going to take us into some interesting territory.   Chrystal Potter  05:28 So values and beliefs as a as a person, I think he's a really interesting one like family's hugely important to me. And then growing up, as we will explore as I go through, I'm sure but growing up in a family context, where my family was very religious. And being the eldest of eight children, I felt a lot of responsibility on my shoulders to not only please my parents, but from a faith-based perspective, I felt like not only did I have to keep my parents happy, I then had this figure in the sky, I guess, kind of view that I had to keep this, God happy as well. And so it's been so interesting, I really walked away from my faith for a long period of time, because I'm like, well, I can't make my family happy. I definitely couldn't make this figure in the sky happy, and then it'll be so interesting as we explore like that ACE score. I was when I was reflecting on, you know, just the different modules and how that is an ACE or A.C.E.?   Jen Lumanlan  06:25 ACE. Yeah, yeah.   Chrystal Potter  06:28 I was really something that came out for me over the last couple of months has been you made this comment once that said, after everything I've been through, it's no wonder I react the way that I do. And that just was like the start of these amazing self-compassion for me and this realization. And so I had walked away from my faith for like a really extended amount of time. And then as a young adult, I found myself in a situation where I was heavily caught up in the drug scene, heavily caught up in drinking alcohol, and I thought, Ah, you know, there's something wrong with me, I can't believe that I'm in this situation, doing the things that I'm doing, you know, in really toxic codependent sort of relationships. And it was so eye opening to have this score and realize these are all contributing factors for how you end up in this situation. And so I found myself probably in my young, probably around about 20, had had a drug overdose moved from I hadn't moved away from my family situation, but obviously needed support. And I found myself back in Tasmania, where I grew up, and my family was going to this church at the time, and I was like Ugh church, but I went along with them. And from the minute I walked into the doors, I experienced this grace that I'd never experienced before. And I experienced, you know, what an actual faith based community could be like, which was loving and accepting, and grace. Yeah, I just had this experience that I'd never had before. And, you know, that has really contributed to where I am today. And I guess the journey that I've been on, but yeah, it's really interesting, looking at different people's values and faith based perspectives. And so that's Yeah, really important part of my journey, but has definitely changed from, you know, thinking that religion was about punishment and control to really been about acceptance, and love and grace, and so has really contributed to that self-compassion and self-awareness that I've been on over the last couple of years.   Jen Lumanlan  08:25 Yeah. And wow, I had no idea about all that background, I had thought we were going to get right into the part where you're a pastor and I'm an atheist. And you sent me a link to a sermon that you preached where you were essentially talking about Taming Your Triggers in this context of being in church, and wow, so so all of that backstory behind it, I mean, just to add so much more context to your journey, and how far you've come.   Chrystal Potter  08:55 It was a funny moment, wasn't it? I thought, um, I had obviously been so focused on these Taming Your Triggers for three months and like, Oh, I wonder what Jen's background is, maybe, you know, I can see that you are hopeful. And you know, all of the components of what I would think from a faith based community saw. Jolly. An you respond, like, Oh, yeah, it was, but it was fun. It was a fun time.   Jen Lumanlan  09:19 Yeah, for sure. And so I guess the point that I took really take home from it is that it doesn't matter whether you have a strong faith based perspective or not, that the this these ideas can really fit into a value set that prioritizes unconditionally loving relationships with our family members, and with a higher being as well, if that's the way you perceive it. Is that sort of what you take away from it, too?   Chrystal Potter  09:43 Yeah, definitely. But I also think, kind of that shift for like, there would be a high number of people in your community I imagine that do come from a faith based perspective, and helping people along like this is my passion helping people move from a God who just wants to punish them and you know, that control as we were growing up, and it's so interesting, that often how people perceive, you know, God or Jesus or a higher being is exactly how they would perceive how their family interacted with them. And so I've learned, you know, in my worst moment, I want a God who is able to be loving and compassionate and kind. And yet you my worst moment, you know, I'm running 100 million miles away, because I'm just going to experience more judgment and condemnation and guilt and shame. And so it's been really beautiful to bring those two into context of being actually I'm just welcomed for how I am and I am accepted how I am, and I'm worthwhile and valuable because of who I am, and not because of what I do what somebody kind of says about me. So that.   Jen Lumanlan  10:40 Yeah, how fascinating that the the model that you grew up in with your family, is essentially what you imagined God to be like.   Chrystal Potter  10:49 Exactly.   Jen Lumanlan  10:49 Yeah. And it makes sense logically right, that these people are supposed to be looking out for me, they're supposed to be caring for me, and this is how they show it. And therefore, this must be how everybody shows that they look out for you and care for you, even when it can be so damaging to us, as well. So Wow, that's super fascinating.   Jen Lumanlan  11:06 And so let's go a little bit more into your journey as a parent, and I think you've put a lot of thought into this before you ever stumbled on my work. And, and I know you were already familiar with respectful parenting, can you tell us a bit about how that process unfolded for you?   Chrystal Potter  11:22 Yeah, sure. So I have a daughter who's turning nine in July. And, um, and it's just so interesting how all the components come together, but she was born, and you could see from day one, that she was strong willed, like she, you know, from six weeks old, want it to be held in a certain way, and you couldn't lie her down and you know, just was really very strong in how she wanted to be treated. And, and as she grew up, probably, you know, as she hit two or three, I was looking at all my friends around me who had essentially that toolbox of control and authoritarian, and I could say that the majority of my friends' kids just wanted to keep their parents happy. And so they were super compliant, and the parents could throw at them, you know, this whole toolbox, and the children would comply. And yet here I was, with this toddler who, I mean, I could send her to timeout, I could, you know, put in these authoritarian things, but I could see long term a, when she was 12, or 13, what would I have when she says, you can no longer control me? I'm like, What am I going to have at that point? And, you know, that's where we often see these super uncompliant children just completely rebel, you know, and that was my experience, you know at 13, 14, when you realize your parents can't control you. And so I was like, I need a different I want a different style of parenting and a...