Latest / Get Curious, Not Furious / I'm Here For You

Transcript

I'm Here For You · Get Curious, Not Furious

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: You love your child more than anything, and some days they drive you crazy.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Colette, a speech and language therapist, sense maker, and mom of three.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Get Curious, Not Furious.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Together let's make sense of your child and what's really happening in those moments that feel out of control.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Less reacting, more understanding.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you're ready to get curious instead of furious, keep listening.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Our children experience a whole world of feelings, and learning how to support them through those feelings is an important part of growing them up.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we explore what it means to come alongside your child's emotions and feelings rather than trying to fix, dismiss, or talk them out of it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: We'll look at why all feelings matter, how our response helps our children make sense of their experiences, and how staying curious and connected can help them feel safe, understood, and supported.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Our children need us to be their safe haven to come back to for reassurance, connection, support, enjoyment, delight in what they're doing.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they need this for the full range of feelings and experiences they have.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm talking about coming alongside their feelings, I don't just mean when they're sad, upset, or angry.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the full spectrum of feelings that they have every day, in every moment.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: What feelings do you notice in your child every day?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do they move from happiness to sadness to anger to frustration, moving from one to the other, sometimes lingering a little bit more in happiness and joy, a little bit of frustration might pop up, and then they're back to happiness and joy again, and then eventually there's tiredness coming through.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Moving between those feelings, um, and I guess you know, bouncing back from some anger or some sadness is part of sort of healthy and normal development, to be able to move through our feelings without being derailed by them.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: If your child is really volatile in their feelings, so moving so quickly from one feeling to another, then I would wonder if there's something else going on.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'd rule out the basics: hungry, thirsty, tired.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also think about what age and stage are they at developmentally.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also ask myself the question, are they stuck?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Stuck in a feeling in a particular way.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when I talk about stuckness, what I mean is stuck in some feelings, some ways of behaving.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: It might show up as being rigid in their play, rigid about things having to be a certain way, only wanting a particular cup, a particular food, particular clothing.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some of these sensory preferences are rooted in their developing sensory system, and what shows up as stuckness can often have sort of a sensory-based reason behind it.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, particular clothes might be really, really irritating for them, and their inflexibility around wanting to wear different clothing is because how they experience it in their bodies is really unpleasant.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not about, you know, this isn't about disregarding those sensory-based experiences.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are wondering about your child's sensory system and sensory differences, find an occupational therapist that has a really good understanding of children's sensory-based needs.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: If our children's feelings get stuck and they haven't been able to get those feelings out, if they haven't been heard and listened to, if we haven't been able to come alongside those feelings, then often those feelings will get displaced and they might fixate on certain things.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: They mightn't have the language to describe how they're feeling.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: The experience comes first, and then they learn the language to make sense of those feelings.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: How we as adults narrate for them what we are seeing without making any assumptions about what we think they are feeling.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's how they begin to learn to tune into those experiences that first happen in their body and develop some language around what those various feelings and emotions are.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: What it's super important as adults is that we don't jump in with an assumption that we know how they are feeling.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked about this in earlier episodes.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Your child is really angry about something and you come in and say, Oh, I can see you're really angry, and they yell back at you, I'm not angry.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: When they're younger, we might be, as we know, they haven't sort of developed the language yet.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Then, yes, we might come alongside and make some comments about the feelings, but we can do it in a wondering way so that we offer them that language.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: We can also model for them about our own feelings so that when we're feeling a particular way, we can say, Oh gosh, I'm feeling really sad right now, or I'm feeling really frustrated.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like you to pause for a moment and reflect on your own experiences growing up.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: How were your parents and caregivers able to be there for you?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: When you were happy, sad, angry, scared, exploring, feeling ashamed?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: What was it like when they were there for you with any of those feelings and experiences?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Were some of them easier than others?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Were they able to be there for you when you were happy but not when you were sad?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: How has that influenced how you can be there for your child with their feelings?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: I know for me that anger in my children is one of the hardest ones for me to be around.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: I get all stirred up, and I know that when I think back to growing up, we weren't allowed to be angry.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a feeling or an emotion that we were allowed to express.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that as a parent I've had to learn to be okay with when my children are angry, to not take it personally, to not respond with my own anger and furiosity, to not shut them down, but to get curious and work out what's beneath the anger and the frustration.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: We all get stirred up.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a natural and human response.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens if we as parents get too stirred up and our emotional responses get in the way of us tuning in to what our children need?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or what if we are so absorbed in our own needs that we don't pause and connect?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do we need to do this all the time?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Do we need to be tuned into our children's feelings and emotions 100% of the time?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: There is so much pressure on us as parents to know what to do.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to share some research that was done by Edtronic in the 70s and 80s, and he looked at attunement in how in sync parents were with their infants.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And his research showed that in low-risk, what he termed low-risk caregiver infant pairs, that the caregivers are only accurately in sync with their baby signals about 30% of the time.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest of the time, they were out of sync, mismatched in their emotional state.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Missing the cues, misreading the cues, getting it wrong.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so what this means is that most of the time as parents, we do misread, guess it wrong, are distracted, maybe overwhelmed or unsure.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: What's more important than this number, in terms of what Edtronics research showed, that yes, the number 30% is important, but the factor that made the most difference was the willingness of the parents to come back and keep trying to tune into our Charles cues and coming alongside their needs.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this number 30% can give us some reassurance as parents that we don't need to be in sync 100% of the time.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I've talked about this in earlier episodes that this wouldn't lead to healthy development in our children, to be there for them 100% of the time in terms of being attuned.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I would add a caveat.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: 30%, I don't want this to have us feeling like we can let ourselves off the hook and go, oh, I just did it 30% of the time, that's fine.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: My caveat is if your child is all stirred up, or if you've been parenting with punishment, disconnection, separation-based strategies like timeouts, then 30% probably isn't going to meet that need.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: It might take a bit more than 30% to turn things around in your relationship with your child.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's no blame here.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not helpful as a parent to get stuck in a shame cycle.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Neither is it helpful to get stuck in anger and blaming our children for their bad behavior.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not easy parenting our children when their feelings are running riot and our own emotional system is totally overwhelmed.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: But ask yourself this.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to raise a child who's compliant and performs for others?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you want to raise a child who feels safe and secure in relationships to express their feelings?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And a child who can be there for others.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: What are all the alternatives to coming alongside our child's feelings?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, things like rewards, punishments, distractions, diminishing their feelings, shutting them down.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think happens if we reward children to get them to change how they are feeling?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: What messaging does this give them?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: They learn to numb, dissociate, seek a dopamine hit.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: They never really get to experience their feelings.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where the adaptation and the growth comes from.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: From being able to feel our feelings, find our tears, and then bounce back.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: If we punish them, like go to your room until you stop crying, or go outside the back door until you can stop yelling.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or we punish them when they've been aggressive and angry.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: What message does that give them?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: That it's not okay to be angry?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I know what that's like.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up with that.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you as an adult, it takes a lot of work to unlearn that pattern of not being able to be there with that feeling of anger.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it erupts like a pressure cooker.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not helpful for me or for my children.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: So what about distraction?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Your child is upset and you distract them with some food or a game or a show.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is it ever okay to distract?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in a therapy session recently, um, a four-year-old that I was working with was really upset at the end of a session.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: The upset seemed to come out of nowhere.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now his um language is delayed and he has few words to communicate yet.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was hard to work out what he was upset about.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in the moment it was time to transition and for the therapy session to wrap up.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: We had time to make it a nice, slow, smooth transition.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: However, um his parent jumped in with um offering him uh, you know, a YouTube video to watch to distract him.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now I have to say that this really stirred me up, and I will admit that I instantly went to judgment thinking, oh my goodness, why is that parent offering the child the device to distract them?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: It stirred a response in me about not being listened to when I cried, when I was sad and upset growing up, and tears weren't allowed.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I had to step back from judging and going, okay, in this moment, what does this family need?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I can see that the parent doesn't want right now to come alongside how their child is feeling.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And although I might have, you know, felt that that would have been a more helpful response, I also know that in that moment that was the capacity that that parent had was to go, okay, this is a strategy that I can use.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And sure enough, when the child started watching the YouTube video, he stopped crying, he wiped his tears away.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that I will explore with this family when I next see them.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: But in that moment, the most helpful thing for me to do was to support both of them and not to pass any judgment on the strategy that they were using.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: What I do know or wonder about is if that's how, if that's the strategy that's been used every time this child is upset, then we definitely have some work to do.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is going to be problematic if every time this child is upset is offered a distraction, whether that's a screen or something else.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: There are times, often out in public, I will admit, where distraction is kind of what we do because being in the supermarket, the library, in a public place around others, very few of us, you know, really have the courage to want to go through a big massive cycle of emotions and feelings in those public places.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: I remember being in a car park.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: I said, gosh, this is going back a number of years, and my middle boy was really, really angry and yelling at me in a public car park.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: And a stranger came over to me and admonished him, you know, admonished, you know, said, Oh, you know, your child is behaving in that way, and how dare they, etc., etc.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And my mother instinct kicked in and I said to the person, you know, you don't know anything about what's going on here, please walk away.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I was ready to defend my child at all costs, even though, yes, how my child was behaving was wild and aggressive and out of control.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I knew in that moment that that's not who my child is, and he needed my help, not my punishment or the admonishment of a stranger.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: When I was growing up, tears were not okay, and neither was anger.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I recall my mother dying when I was eight years old, and you can imagine what that's like for an eight-year-old.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Your response is that you really, really, really want to cry because there's nothing else to do when you lose a parent.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: The words that came out of my father's mouth were, whished now, stop the tears.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, can you imagine?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I've come to learn as an adult, as I've become a parent, is that that was all he had capacity for.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Our tears were too much for him, his own tears were too much for him, and that was the best that he could do in that moment.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is it okay?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Has it led to a lifetime of, for me, I guess, getting triggered around tears, my own tears and others' tears?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely it has.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's what's, you know, given me the capacity to have compassion for others when they are sad.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Will coming alongside the feelings of your child make the feelings go away?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, and that's the whole point.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're not trying to make our children feel less.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Arguably, this is one of the problems of our modern world.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Excessive screen time, social media use, our children are withdrawn from social human connection, they feel less, they get more dopamine hits from a device or from likes, and they also can't read those social cues or attune to others when communication is done through a device.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: How often are our written messages misunderstood?
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: You read someone's response or post and you add meaning when meaning isn't there?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: If our children are interacting primarily through devices, how do they learn the nuances of tuning into others, reading their feelings, and responding in ways that build capacity for meaning relationships and social interaction?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, how can we as parents and educators create the conditions for these skills to develop and unfold?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying no to screen time.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's yes, certainly for you know our preschool children, children under the age of you know, two, three, four, then under the age of two, yeah, no screen time.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: As they get a little bit older, maybe a little bit.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that we as parents, you know, really, really need to manage carefully.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: There is lots of research coming out now about the damaging effects of screen time.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think a balanced view, there are also times where there are benefits to screen time.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: If I think of all the various things our information we have access to and the things our children can learn, but you can't learn social interaction through a screen.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can't learn to tune into the feelings of others through a screen.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when we give our children screens or other ways of dissociating and numbing from their feelings, then those feelings get stuck.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Our feelings need to move through us, not be punished, shut down, disregarded.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're hoping that coming alongside your child's feelings will miraculously mean they won't have any feelings, well then I'm sorry, but that's not what's going to happen.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: But there are lots of good things that do happen when we come alongside our children's feelings.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: What does it look like to come alongside a feeling of joy?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: My eldest is currently loving, um, building his empire in farming simulator.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: I have very little interest in computer games, I never have, but I do make sure that I share in his joy and come alongside when he's playing or give him time to tell me about what he's building.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was chatting to a friend recently whose eight-year-old is, you know, going through some feelings of really intense rage.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked about well, what does it look like to really come alongside his anger and his rage?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: What does it look like if you don't try to stop him or contain him or shut him down?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: But you make things safe, but you let the anger and the rage find its way out.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I can think of coming alongside, you know, children's sadness in my therapy sessions, where again parents think, you know, we need to shut them down and distract them.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, just allowing space, acknowledging how they're feeling, oftentimes things move much more quickly.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Shame, that's a tricky one to come alongside.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly for me.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe for some of you, you shame isn't something that you hold space for in yourself or in your children.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Recently, my 11-year-old, you know, burst a balloon that his younger sister had.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And in the moment when he did it, his impulses got in the way, but I saw this look come across his face of shame and regret for what he'd done.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I was able to sort of, you know, add words to that, and he looked at me and was like, Yep, that's how I'm feeling.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: What's it like to come alongside when your child's being curious and exploring and engaging in risky play?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: How does that leave you feeling?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: How can you do it in a way where they get to be curious and explore and it's safe?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: What about coming alongside our child's feelings?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: For example, you know, they're scared about getting a vaccine, they're scared about saying goodbye to you at Kindi, they're scared about jumping in the pool for the swimming lesson.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do you distract them and reward them and say, okay, well, if you do your swimming lesson, I'll buy you an ice cream afterwards?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it might work in the short term, but does it really address the feeling that they were having about being afraid?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things our children, as part of, I guess, healthy development, is learning to mix those feelings.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I talked about mixed feelings in last week's episode.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Learning to mix the I'm scared and I also really want to do something.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna remind us all don't assume that you know how your child is feeling.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Say as little as possible when those feelings come up.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Use your body language, sometimes a nonverbal, hmm.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, this is tricky.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here for you.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Matching what you see in them.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Turned up to a child's um house yesterday for a therapy session, and it was pretty clear that he was super disappointed that I had turned up, because it meant that he had to finish what he was doing.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now he knows that I bring lots of fun games and exciting things to do, but in that moment he wasn't thinking about the fun games I had in his bag.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was thinking about the thing that he had to stop, which happened to be TV time.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I just said, hmm, looks like you really don't want me to be here.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: I just left it at that.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: I got out my games, and then he came along and joined in.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: What can you do if you revert to old ways?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Don't manage to come alongside their feelings, punish, react in unhelpful ways.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you can always have a do-over.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can go back and repair, you can try again.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Be gracious with yourself.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Coming alongside feelings is harder for some of us than others.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some days and moments will be easier than others.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on your capacity.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a lot of practice to build a skill of coming alongside, especially if this is a new way to respond.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain will default, and you need to override that.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: It does take time, and even with years of having done it this way, coming alongside my children's feelings, I still make mistakes, I still get reactive.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I always take that as a sign for me to get curious about what's going on in my world.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: What does it look like in our children when they have experienced us coming alongside their feelings?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they'll feel safe to express their feelings no matter what they are.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: As they grow and develop, they'll then be able to use this experience and these skills when they are overwhelmed with feelings that need to come out.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: We can gift our children the permission to feel their feelings.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: We can find a way to embed ourselves in the care of others so that we can feel our feelings.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying this is easy.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: We can be kind and patient with ourselves and accept that we all have growing to do.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Our children will grow us up if we're brave enough to do the work it takes.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Curiosity, courage, kindness and grace, accepting that we will all make mistakes.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I invite you to come alongside your child's feelings, whatever they are, and see what happens.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear what's happening in your family.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a parent in question, challenge, or concern, send me a message.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Together we can make sense of what's going on.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you found this episode helpful, please like it, share it with another parent, and follow the podcast to help grow this community.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay curious.