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Parenting with Presence: Mindfulness Tools for Sensitive and Intuitive Kids with Lindsay Miller · The Spiritual Parent: Mindful Tools for Raising Spiritual and Conscious Kids

• 0:00
  Lindsay Miller: If we can just be present in the moment that we're in with our kids, like we can have all the wisdom in the world coming at us and we can have all the knowledge and read all the parenting books, but like, if we don't have that peace with presence, like that's where the translation can come through Right and that's where we can use our own intuition, our own spirituality, our own knowledge and synergize all of those things, like it's in the present that we do that.
• 0:25
  Lindsay Miller: And so if we can practice presence and just being in this moment with our kids, no matter how uncomfortable it is right and no matter how joyful it is, just all of those things, we will have what we need.
• 0:39
  Lindsay Miller: And so I would say, like your presence practice, as simple, it sounds so simple, right and so elementary, but just like I started mindfulness practice, it's been.
• 0:52
  Lindsay Miller: I think my daughter was three or four when I started my practice and I was, like you know, like doing my meditation.
• 1:05
  Carrie Lingenfelter: Hi Conscious Parents.
• 1:06
  Carrie Lingenfelter: It's Keri here and I am here with a little info about raising our mindful kids.
• 1:08
  Carrie Lingenfelter: I've got some tips and tricks about breaking free of the box and becoming who you are and teaching your kids how to do that.
• 1:13
  Carrie Lingenfelter: Along the way, join us.
• 1:15
  Lindsay Miller: Hi there and welcome back.
• 1:16
  Lindsay Miller: It's Keri, your friendly, intuitive mama here, and I'm so excited I have a wonderful guest today.
• 1:21
  Lindsay Miller: She's somebody who also has a podcast going in a very similar aligned mission.
• 1:27
  Lindsay Miller: I have Lindsay Miller here, who is a mindfulness kids coach and she hosts the Stress Nanny podcast.
• 1:35
  Lindsay Miller: I'm so excited, lindsay.
• 1:36
  Lindsay Miller: Thanks so much for joining us today.
• 1:38
  Lindsay Miller: Keri, thanks so much for having me.
• 1:40
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, I can't wait for our conversation me.
• 1:47
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, I can't wait for our conversation.
• 1:48
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, so I'm.
• 1:48
  Lindsay Miller: It was so cool to run into somebody who's also so dedicated to helping kids on this mindful journey, helping parents on this mindful journey.
• 1:54
  Lindsay Miller: I wanted to jump right in and ask you what are some of your favorite mindful practices that you like to share with other parents to help kids?
• 2:03
  Lindsay Miller: So mindfulness tools for kiddos.
• 2:07
  Lindsay Miller: So and I love that you brought parents and kids kind of into the same space with both your show, you know, and your work, because I think that that's such a key element to teaching kids mindfulness at home is the recognition that often as parents, we're learning alongside our kiddos, right?
• 2:22
  Lindsay Miller: So if we can take our mindfulness practice down to like the basics, it really supports our own growth as well.
• 2:28
  Lindsay Miller: Right?
• 2:29
  Lindsay Miller: So, making it accessible for kids even as young as three or four I know your kids are six and nine right so having a mindfulness practice that's accessible to any range, it really creates like such a beautiful space, because mindfulness is so simple that it can apply and support, you know, folks of any age.
• 2:48
  Lindsay Miller: So us learning it on the level with our kids is such a beautiful way to get into the basics of a practice.
• 2:54
  Lindsay Miller: So I'm really glad you asked.
• 2:57
  Lindsay Miller: One of the things that I like to think of right off the bat is a tool by Becky Kennedy, and one of the things she talks about is like benches, the idea of each emotion being a bench.
• 3:09
  Lindsay Miller: So if you imagine this beautiful park like, think of Central Park or any park that you've been to just like a big, wide, vast area with all these different, you know, sections to it, different things to see, and it's like it's got benches everywhere, right.
• 3:24
  Lindsay Miller: So like a bench over here under this tree, a bench over by the pond, a bench over by, like the playground, and each bench represents an emotion and, like throughout our lives, our job is to learn to sit on all the benches.
• 3:36
  Lindsay Miller: So we need to be able to sit with each emotion right, like in a different space in our life, in different experiences, and so when we look at the idea of benches as emotions, it's not as scary, right.
• 3:49
  Lindsay Miller: We're like, oh, that little part, like that dark corner of the park over there, that seems a little creepy, where we might feel a little fear on that bench right, it's just a part of the park, and so if we can learn to walk to that part of the park and be okay sitting there, then we learn to sit on that bench and it's not as scary anymore because we're like, oh, we've been on that bench, like it's okay, there's some actually really interesting stuff over there, right, and as parents, our role is to be able to sit on the bench with our kids, right, and a lot of times it can be so tricky because when we're looking at the like, the situation that they're in, we might want to be like, let's go to this bench over here.
• 4:26
  Lindsay Miller: Like this bench seems like a much easier or more fun or, you know, just more comfortable space for all of us.
• 4:33
  Lindsay Miller: Like, we don't, let's not go over there in the bench.
• 4:36
  Lindsay Miller: In like the shady part of the you know, the park.
• 4:39
  Lindsay Miller: And I think that learning to sit on all the benches with our kids is such a beautiful metaphor for mindfulness because, as you know, throughout our parenting journey, we're going to find ourselves in a variety of situations, and some of them are ones we anticipate and some of them are ones that really are invitations to something we never would have chosen on our own Right.
• 4:57
  Lindsay Miller: And so when our kids starts darting off into this part of the park where we're like, well, I don't even know what to do here.
• 5:03
  Lindsay Miller: I've never been here before.
• 5:04
  Lindsay Miller: This is scary to me and uncertain.
• 5:06
  Lindsay Miller: Our inclination is going to be to pull them to one of the benches that we're okay with.
• 5:10
  Lindsay Miller: But I find that in my own parenting journey, and like in in you know experiences with kids who are highly sensitive they're taking us to all kinds of benches that we've never even dreamed of Right.
• 5:21
  Lindsay Miller: And when we, when we can learn how to trust, like and just be able to sit with them on that bench and our job isn't only to sit be able to sit with them while they figure out what it's like to be in that bench Then, like, it opens up so many different opportunities for us to be a little more patient with ourselves, to acknowledge and accept with presence where our kids are at.
• 5:41
  Lindsay Miller: So that would be the first one.
• 5:45
  Lindsay Miller: Along with that, I guess, before we go on to other ones.
• 5:48
  Lindsay Miller: I feel like that opens the door for the self-awareness or the self-acceptance right, because if you're able to be on that bench.
• 5:55
  Lindsay Miller: What are your thoughts on that?
• 5:57
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, no, definitely, and I think you know, at least for me, growing up, a lot of those benches were like taboo, a little bit like don't you know.
• 6:05
  Lindsay Miller: At least for me, uh, growing up, a lot of those benches were like taboo, a little bit like don't you know.
• 6:09
  Lindsay Miller: And my parents are great and they did the best that they could and they did, you know, the best with what they had at the time.
• 6:15
  Lindsay Miller: But, like in a, in a society with an emerging sense of emotional intelligence, we're, we're just invited to to understand emotions a little differently, right, and so when I was little, like going onto the benches where it was sad or you were mad, or maybe you were stewing in some grief for a while, those were benches that were kind of like stop, maybe we don't want our kids to go there.
• 6:35
  Lindsay Miller: That wasn't a bench that I was maybe taught to sit in comfortably, and so now as an adult, I'm learning to go to those benches.
• 6:43
  Lindsay Miller: Life is inviting me, in a variety of situations, to go to those benches and really get okay with sitting there.
• 6:49
  Lindsay Miller: And it's it's entailed, you know, like what you just said, sitting with like this kind of disconnect and a little bit of dissonance between, like this bench being wrong, this bench being bad, this bench being like off limits, or you know like something inherently not okay about it To me, just having like a sense of like this is a bench in the park, all the benches are equally, you know like.
• 7:15
  Lindsay Miller: It's just life, right, the emotions are just a part of life, and so when we can acknowledge and recognize our own humanity in those moments by just accepting, like the fact that, like me, being on the loss, sad grief bench for a while, it doesn't mean something's wrong with me, it doesn't mean something hasn't you know like I've made a choice that somehow you know like made it so that I had to sit here, or it like there's not a part of judgment.
• 7:41
  Lindsay Miller: You know like about sitting in that bench anymore where I had to work through that you know, for quite a while, be like if I'm on this bench that means I did something wrong, when it just actually means that I'm human.
• 7:54
  Lindsay Miller: I was thinking.
• 7:54
  Lindsay Miller: There's a lot of people that have mentioned when their kiddos are going through different phases.
• 7:59
  Lindsay Miller: Maybe three, I feel like, was kind of a bubble of hypersensitivity in our house Age six was kind of six and a half was kind of a bubble of it again and our kiddos can become very hypersensitive.
• 8:12
  Lindsay Miller: Do you have any ideas about trying to keep our kids in the positive version of the self-awareness if they're having meltdowns a lot or these type of or sometimes it's anger and they react toward you in a way and then later on they're saying I'm a bad kid like what are your?
• 8:29
  Lindsay Miller: thoughts on those pieces yeah, the such again great awareness right about the seasons in life where, like sometimes we just find ourselves in these moments where it just feels like everything all at once and it's a lot right.
• 8:43
  Lindsay Miller: One of the things that I think was key for me, like in my own parenting journey and then also just as an individual wandering around in this world, was the recognition that in moments when we're feeling something strong, or when our kiddo is feeling something strong and we're either kind of attuned to it really deeply or we're just trying to figure out how to work with it, is like understanding that, like we can feel the thing and then choose how we move through it.
• 9:12
  Lindsay Miller: And I think, for for kids, that's for adults I think that's a novel concept, but for kids, as they're learning to like, feel all these big things right Especially kids who tend toward more sensitivity right, like as they're feeling so much, being able to like, feel that and then move through is kind of like the practice that we work on with the kids that I work with.
• 9:35
  Lindsay Miller: So I have here like a beach ball, so one of the activities I do with the kids is like a emotion beach ball, and so we talk about, like in moments when we're feeling a lot of things.
• 9:44
  Lindsay Miller: It's kind of like we're filling our beach ball, right, and we're it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
• 9:49
  Lindsay Miller: And in those episodes where that emotion just kind of like pops out of the water, it's because, like over time, if any of us try to hold a beach ball underwater for long enough, right, it's going to pop up somewhere.
• 10:02
  Lindsay Miller: And a lot of times it's where we don't expect it or don't want it to be or don't?
• 10:06
  Lindsay Miller: You know all of those things.
• 10:09
  Lindsay Miller: And so with kids, like we just normalize.
• 10:12
  Lindsay Miller: For for me at least, what I do a lot with kids is I normalize and I say like hey, any human right, Like you're sitting in a pool, imagine that feeling right, like I'm trying to hold that beach ball underwater.
• 10:22
  Lindsay Miller: Somebody comes along and bumps you, somebody jumps in and the water shifts.
• 10:27
  Lindsay Miller: You know like any small change in the circumstance can create a scenario where that beach ball just flies out of the water, usually like waxes in the face on the way up right and like hit somebody else and they get mad.
• 10:38
  Lindsay Miller: So I think of those moments in that way where we have like, if we're holding those big emotions down and just trying to like keep them contained all the time, there are going to be moments when they pop up.
• 10:50
  Lindsay Miller: But if we can learn to work with the emotion as it arises and as it comes up and move through it, that's when we can be letting air out of our beach ball and making it a little bit easier to manage.
• 11:02
  Lindsay Miller: So first, normalizing for me is always the big one, because I never want kids to feel like, like feeling something is bad or feeling something is going to be, um, like getting in their way, like we talk about it more like a tendency.
• 11:17
  Lindsay Miller: So your tendency is to feel things deeply, my tendency is to feel things deeply.
• 11:22
  Lindsay Miller: My tendency is to feel things deeply, like our tendency here is to feel things deeply.
• 11:28
  Lindsay Miller: And so if, if that's the tendency, then we just need some tools to figure out how to work with that tendency, like if that's how our brain works, that's how this beautiful body that we have works, that's how our spirit is kind of taking in the world.
• 11:38
  Lindsay Miller: Those are all like inherent to our journey through life, right, and so, for a kid, I don't want them to turn that off, yeah, right, cause that's going to be the way that they interpret and move through the world and find the things that are resonant for them.
• 11:52
  Lindsay Miller: But as a mom, it's super challenging, right To be in those moments and to be like, wow, that was a lot all at once.
• 12:00
  Lindsay Miller: And, like your, your sensitivity to all the things is, you know, like it's something we need to work with and manage.
• 12:06
  Lindsay Miller: So the beach ball we, one of the ways we let let air out of the beach ball.
• 12:09
  Lindsay Miller: We, we like breathe, right, obviously.
• 12:12
  Lindsay Miller: So I have a lot of different breathing exercises, whether it's like heart, belly breath, where we have one hand up here, one hand on our belly, and we're breathing.
• 12:19
  Lindsay Miller: We'll do box breath, we'll just do like a four count inhale and an eight count exhale to try to like study the nervous system so we can process and then naming the emotion.
• 12:33
  Lindsay Miller: I love um Lindsay Braman's work.
• 12:35
  Lindsay Miller: She has a like an emotion sensation wheel that she uses and I have used that with my clients and it's.
• 12:42
  Lindsay Miller: She had just developed one for kids and so it has emojis as part of it so you can look at it like you can.
• 12:49
  Lindsay Miller: You know it has words but also emojis.
• 12:52
  Lindsay Miller: So in those moments where the emotion is so big that we're feeling a disconnect from our logical brain, we can use the emojis to just like this, it's this, it's this you know.
• 13:02
  Lindsay Miller: So naming it first, normalizing it, then naming it and then having the awareness around, like for my specific mind, my specific body, what are the tools that support me when I'm feeling something that's really big and it's not about like when I say, move through it.
• 13:19
  Lindsay Miller: We don't always have control over how fast that process is right, like there are some instances where we can be a little more intentional and some where we ride, ride it out, right.
• 13:28
  Lindsay Miller: But I think in the moments when we are like needing to take extra good care of ourselves because we're feeling something deeply, those are the things we like we teach our kids right, like what are the things you need when you're feeling something really deep?
• 13:41
  Lindsay Miller: Do you need, like that, you know, soft blanket of yours?
• 13:45
  Lindsay Miller: Do you need you know, like, what are some of the things for your kids that they use when they're feeling something deep?
• 13:50
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, Some I tried weighted blankets.
• 13:52
  Lindsay Miller: That was not one, but we have like cozy corners.
• 13:55
  Lindsay Miller: We have beanbags and cozy blankets, lava lamps, swings, trampolines.
• 14:01
  Lindsay Miller: We have lots of movement or cozy cozy it's.
• 14:04
  Lindsay Miller: I really try to follow what they're in that mood for.
• 14:07
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, I love that and I think like one of the things that, at least for me, when my daughter was younger, when I felt like this, like that she just had a different orientation to the world than I did and there were things she took in at a level that was different than what I was accustomed to.
• 14:22
  Lindsay Miller: I remember thinking like feeling like I needed to and I think you've made it through this much quicker than I did but like make, make, make it a little bit more like mainstream for her, like help her acclimate to the things other people did.
• 14:36
  Lindsay Miller: You know, or help her figure out how to be okay in this situation.
• 14:40
  Lindsay Miller: And then I got to the point where I was like, actually she's not okay in this situation, so I'm going to change the situation.
• 14:46
  Lindsay Miller: You know, yeah, you know.
• 14:48
  Lindsay Miller: And so I think that like honoring and working with those tendencies.
• 14:53
  Lindsay Miller: I remember, when she was young, feeling like I might be doing her a disservice because, like she had to live in the real world and I didn't know what that would look like.
• 15:01
  Lindsay Miller: You know, like kind of helping her with this awareness at a young age.
• 15:04
  Lindsay Miller: And I've just recently been thinking about how grateful I am to myself and my support circle for supporting my efforts to like help her know herself.
• 15:15
  Lindsay Miller: She's 15.
• 15:16
  Lindsay Miller: She's almost 16.
• 15:17
  Lindsay Miller: And so seeing what that looks like you know, like 10 years down the road, like there are so many things I would have said to myself back then about like you know how this is going to turn out.
• 15:29
  Lindsay Miller: Like it feels so scary right now because this is a different way of parenting than maybe you've seen, or different than what other people are doing, or it feels like is this really going to serve in the long run, you know, but it's been so beautiful to me to kind of look back and see those tiny spaces where we practice the self-acceptance right and we practice like these are your tendencies, let's figure out how to work with them, and we kind of just tuned in with a lot of self-awareness, as highly sensitive kids have to.
• 15:56
  Lindsay Miller: Like what is going on right now and what do you need in this moment, and like the accumulative effect of that over the years has just it's left me in awe of, like the person that she's becoming.
• 16:08
  Lindsay Miller: That's so beautiful, okay.
• 16:11
  Lindsay Miller: So it's left me in awe of, like the person that that she's becoming.
• 16:13
  Lindsay Miller: That's so beautiful, okay.
• 16:13
  Lindsay Miller: So then, what would you tell us if we're like the next?
• 16:15
  Lindsay Miller: Era back right With the younger generation right now.
• 16:17
  Lindsay Miller: What would you tell parents?
• 16:19
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, Well, I think, I think one of the I mean one of the most challenging things that I know we were going to get to this, but I think one of the most challenging things about parenting in modern life is just like this complete inundation of information.
• 16:33
  Lindsay Miller: Right Like there are so many ways to be a great parent right now, right, whereas, like you know, I just wasn't there, just, and I'm only like I'm 44.
• 16:44
  Lindsay Miller: Right, and so I think, even back when my daughter was little we were just talking the other day and I was like I think I got my first iPhone when she was like 18 months or, you know, it was around the age of two and so, if we think about that trajectory and just like the information I had access to when she was little, it was much different than you know what what parents of young kids have access to now.
• 17:06
  Lindsay Miller: Even just those couple of years made a huge difference.
• 17:09
  Lindsay Miller: Right, that's true.
• 17:12
  Lindsay Miller: And so.
• 17:13
  Lindsay Miller: I yeah, so I think that no, no.
• 17:15
  Lindsay Miller: So I think that, like, having the information on how to do something can sometimes be super overwhelming, because you have this expert telling you this and this expert telling you this and this expert telling you this, or, like you, you're trying to remember, like what was that thing I was supposed to do, or how was I supposed to be in this moment, you know?
• 17:34
  Lindsay Miller: Or like what was that phrase?
• 17:35
  Lindsay Miller: It can be so overwhelming, right, to look at all of the input on how to do it correctly or how to do it the right way, and then to feel like you need to translate it immediately into the moment that you're in.
• 17:47
  Lindsay Miller: And so it's one of the reasons I love mindfulness and why it's one, why I'm passionate about sharing it with families is because, like, we're not going to go wrong with presence, right, like if we can just be present in the moment that we're in with our kids.
• 18:04
  Lindsay Miller: Like we can have all the wisdom in the world coming at us and we can have all the knowledge and read all coming at us, and we can have all the knowledge and read all the parenting books, but like if we don't have that piece with presence, like that's where the translation can come through Right, and that's where we can use our own intuition, our own spirituality, our own knowledge and synergize all of those things.
• 18:24
  Lindsay Miller: Like it's in the present that we do that.
• 18:25
  Lindsay Miller: And so if we can practice presence and just being in this moment with our kids, no matter how uncomfortable it is right, no matter how joyful it is, just all of those things, we will have what we need.
• 18:40
  Lindsay Miller: And so I would say, like your presence practice, as simple, it sounds so simple, right, and so elementary, but just like I, I started a mindfulness practice.
• 18:52
  Lindsay Miller: It's been.
• 18:54
  Lindsay Miller: I think my daughter was three or four when I started my practice and I was like meditate, you know, like doing my meditation, I would just sit on my next to my bed before I went to bed, before I said my prayers.
• 19:04
  Lindsay Miller: I would sit for two minutes and I would just like breathe for two minutes and that was it.
• 19:09
  Lindsay Miller: I didn't have a lot of energy because I was chasing like a toddler around, right, like a preschooler, like I didn't have, yeah, exactly, but that was my practice, right.
• 19:18
  Lindsay Miller: So two minutes before bed at night and two minutes after I woke up in the morning, if I wasn't like chasing someone already at that time and those two minutes, like morning and night, have made like a world of difference in the way that, like I, have been able to parent in the way our life is.
• 19:37
  Lindsay Miller: And it's again it's not to say we've had some really, really rough moments, right, but being able to be present in the rough moments is what has allowed my own intuition, my own like wisdom, also like the wisdom of the universe, to find me when it needed me and the education that I've garnered to be in that moment with me.
• 19:54
  Lindsay Miller: But if I'm fighting the moment and not wanting to be in it and just thinking I'm a failure and going to mess it up, those things all keep me from presence.
• 20:02
  Lindsay Miller: Right, I'm fighting what is so as hard as some of those moments are, and I hear, like I mean, I I've been in some gut wrenching moments, right, and they're.
• 20:13
  Lindsay Miller: It's rough to sit on that bench in those moments and also it's the place where the magic happens oh, that sounds so simple, but also I feel like parents need a little bit of simple sometimes because it's so hard.
• 20:34
  Lindsay Miller: You're, you're on Instagram and you're seeing the 85 different things that you're supposed to do as a parent and then you start to compare yourself like, oh, I did, oh, oh, I reacted the wrong way.
• 20:43
  Lindsay Miller: Oh, great, great, I, you know, I, I ruined them for life.
• 20:46
  Lindsay Miller: No, it's just.
• 20:47
  Lindsay Miller: There's just so much pressure that we put on ourselves now, because I was 10 years later with my kids, even though we're the same age, grad school for life, but it was.
• 20:57
  Lindsay Miller: I feel like there was so much parenting advice out there, that and online, so much that, yeah, it's just this bubble of anxiety that can come up for parents.
• 21:07
  Lindsay Miller: One of the things that I really needed around that time, and my sister shared this tool with me that she had learned in grad school because I was really hard on myself, like it took me a long time to get my daughter here and then, once she was here, I really wanted to parent her great right, like I wanted to be a model mother not, yeah, exactly Perfect, not necessarily I just like, like had had spent so much time and energy hoping for her that I wanted to do right by her.
• 21:33
  Lindsay Miller: Do you know what I mean?
• 21:34
  Lindsay Miller: And so my understanding of what do right by her means has changed a lot in you know, the 15 years almost 16 I've been parenting her, and again I think it comes back to like, instead of me having all the answers and knowing exactly what to do in every situation, my understanding of do right by her became like be present with her in the moment that we're in and respond with compassion and acceptance to whatever we're facing together in that moment, right, and that's a totally different practice than me having this roadmap of, like how life is going to go, how I'm going to do things, what the you know what an expert said I should do, but me understanding her.
• 22:13
  Lindsay Miller: But one of the the roadblocks for me of doing that was my own criticism of myself, right, so in that moment I'd be like if I did something that I wasn't comfortable with, or I had, you know, maybe had spoken to her in a way that I, you know, I realized like, oh, that probably wasn't ideal or that was mean, or, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't as patient in that moment as I should have been.
• 22:33
  Lindsay Miller: In those moments, I had to sit with my discomfort, my disappointment, my, you know, shame, you know whatever the feeling was, and I had to just sit with it and process that, simultaneously being present with her Right.
• 22:46
  Lindsay Miller: And so that's the shift that I had to make, and one of the tools that really helped me was this tool my sister shared, which is a thought river, and the idea is that we all have, like this river of thoughts flowing through our heads and at any moment we like often find ourselves drowning in the river right, like we are the thought and we're getting like battered by whatever's coming down the river.
• 23:05
  Lindsay Miller: And we.
• 23:06
  Lindsay Miller: We have the choice to like stand up, it's not a very deep river.
• 23:09
  Lindsay Miller: Stand up and walk to the side and sit on a rock and just watch those thoughts float by and choose the ones right that are going to serve us.
• 23:17
  Lindsay Miller: Let the rest go.
• 23:17
  Lindsay Miller: So I had to become a real expert at letting all the self-deprecating thoughts go down the river because they weren't serving me, they weren't serving my daughter in that moment, and it only took a small amount of like regret about how, like the tone I used or you know something like that, for me to acknowledge like I need a reset right now or, oh, I need to be a little bit.
• 23:37
  Lindsay Miller: You know, I need to do a redo with her.
• 23:39
  Lindsay Miller: So we would do a redo and I'd be like, can I have a redo for that?
• 23:42
  Lindsay Miller: And then, you know, we'd go back and kind of replay the moment.
• 23:50
  Lindsay Miller: But in those moments I had to be letting, like, all of that self-talk that was negative and that was mean to myself be floating away and let that not be the thing I pulled out of the river.
• 23:56
  Lindsay Miller: Right, like when my sister first explained the tool to me, she, her teacher, had said like a lot of times we're pulling the dead pig out of the river and carrying it around with us all day long.
• 24:04
  Lindsay Miller: You know which is the stark image, but it really does speak to the kind of things that we often stew on Right.
• 24:12
  Lindsay Miller: And if we can learn to recognize those thoughts that we have about ourselves that are really like off-putting or really mean and not in judgmental about ourselves, we recognize those, we can start to be like oh, there's that one again letting it go.
• 24:24
  Lindsay Miller: Oh, there's that one again letting it go, before in the river getting whacked by that thought over and over again and we don't realize we have some like a measure of control over which thoughts we choose to believe and act on.
• 24:35
  Lindsay Miller: That's when we're stuck right.
• 24:38
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, yeah, it's.
• 24:39
  Lindsay Miller: You know.
• 24:40
  Lindsay Miller: It's so interesting because, as we've been talking about parenting today, it can feel almost like so much pressure, but also speaking a different language for ourselves than what we received as children and that can put more pressure on trying to accept ourselves for who we are.
• 24:55
  Lindsay Miller: All of these pieces come in and they kind of mold together, put us in the thought river.
• 25:01
  Lindsay Miller: I love the thought river.
• 25:02
  Lindsay Miller: That's beautiful was thinking with the self-acceptance, modeling that for our kids as parents and also trying to use this new language that parenting can feel like since we're parented so different or we're parenting different than we were parented.
• 25:18
  Lindsay Miller: Oftentimes, along with that journey is so much healing, as a parent too, looking at pieces of why we're not accepting ourselves, why does it feel like we're speaking a foreign language and why is that so challenging for us too.
• 25:32
  Lindsay Miller: So that was kind of where.
• 25:34
  Lindsay Miller: I was thinking of.
• 25:36
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, no, I think that's such a great point because in the Like, in those moments again, this is like us being able to kind of quickly determine or quickly and it's not quick at first, right but like us being able to discern how we're feeling.
• 25:53
  Lindsay Miller: A lot of that comes with the self acceptance, right, like if we're afraid of the bench of shame or we're afraid of the bench of doing it differently than our parents did, and that like uncertainty than our parents did and that like uncertainty Cause sometimes, you know, we all have had a range of experiences being parented and sometimes it like we may be like, well, the model they used worked great for me and I'm great Right, like things have turned out and also I maybe want something different.
• 26:17
  Lindsay Miller: Or we may be working from a range where we're like there were quite a few things that did not work for me, right.
• 26:23
  Lindsay Miller: Or that were really off putting, or really hard for me as a kid those things I want to change.
• 26:27
  Lindsay Miller: Right, so it there's going to be a spectrum for all of us.
• 26:30
  Lindsay Miller: But I think the key in those moments is to recognize, like, whatever's coming up for you, that's the self-acceptance you're practicing in that moment, right, like that's the piece, you're just letting that be there and you're like, yes, it's, you're not holding it under in your emotion.
• 26:45
  Lindsay Miller: You know, like beach ball, you're just letting it come up and you're feeling it.
• 26:50
  Lindsay Miller: And it's sometimes challenging, and sometimes you're maybe needing to journal a little bit later Cause you have a little person in front of you that you're also trying to interact with, and so you're like, okay, shame, I see you there.
• 26:59
  Lindsay Miller: I'm going to address you in a second.
• 27:00
  Lindsay Miller: Right now, I'm going to try to have compassion in this moment for both of us, right, like for me and for the little face sitting in front of me.
• 27:07
  Lindsay Miller: But I think, yeah, it's such a good point that we can.
• 27:10
  Lindsay Miller: We can be feeling all of the things and simultaneously trying to model a skill that we are like kind of just grasping at in terms of self-acceptance.
• 27:20
  Lindsay Miller: Yes, yes, that's so beautiful, it's so well said.
• 27:23
  Lindsay Miller: Thank you, lindsay, and I think I sidetracked a little bit, but I loved what you were sharing at the beginning about some of the mindful pieces.
• 27:30
  Lindsay Miller: What's another favorite mindful practice of yours for kids?
• 27:35
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, so I definitely use the thought river like that.
• 27:38
  Lindsay Miller: I just described and kids can use that too right.
• 27:42
  Lindsay Miller: And I'll have them draw.
• 27:43
  Lindsay Miller: So the kids that I coach, I meet with some kids like one on one every week and we kind of practice the tools and then I send the parents an email and we update them on what we learned and how they can practice together at home.
• 27:54
  Lindsay Miller: So one of the ways I teach the Thought River is they all have a mindfulness journal and we'll do like a little collage.
• 28:00
  Lindsay Miller: So I send like fabric that's like for some of it's the dirt on the side of the river and some of it's the river.
• 28:05
  Lindsay Miller: So you can do this at home.
• 28:06
  Lindsay Miller: Right, make yourself a thought river artwork with your kiddo, especially like, if it's if the sensory is off-putting, you don't have to use that, but if the sensory is actually supportive, that you know that can be a way to connect.
• 28:18
  Lindsay Miller: We'll make the rock on the side of the river and then I use these small post-its and we'll just talk about some of the thoughts that the kiddo has in their river.
• 28:26
  Lindsay Miller: And a lot of times it's just like parents right, it's like I'm doing this wrong, I'm awful, I'll never figure this out.
• 28:34
  Lindsay Miller: I don't know why I even try.
• 28:36
  Lindsay Miller: You know, those are a lot of the things that are in their river too.
• 28:40
  Lindsay Miller: And again as a parent.
• 28:41
  Lindsay Miller: When you're having that conversation as a parent that's hard to hear, right Like you're listening to what your kid's thinking about themselves, and you're like, and your initial reaction is like, what have I done wrong?
• 28:51
  Lindsay Miller: Or like I'm such an you know what I mean.
• 28:53
  Lindsay Miller: It's just natural, yeah, but we take, we'll like, take it upon ourselves to to own their river.
• 28:59
  Lindsay Miller: And really, again, in that moment, it's the self-compassion for ourselves and our kids to be like, hey, whatever's in your river, we can work with it, right.
• 29:10
  Lindsay Miller: And that's the self-acceptance where, like, we can work with any tendency, any thought, any emotion, like we have the resilience in our house to work with that.
• 29:15
  Lindsay Miller: And so that's where we can start to like, okay, what are some other thoughts in your river?
• 29:20
  Lindsay Miller: And usually the most prominent ones are like the dead pig thoughts that are the things that are holding you back, are just awful, you know, and those are the things that stick out to us the most.
• 29:29
  Lindsay Miller: But when we look at it, we're also, like, you know, our kids might say, like I'm, like I wish I was better friends with Amy, or I think it would be fun to learn to dance.
• 29:38
  Lindsay Miller: Or, you know, like I'm curious about dinosaurs.
• 29:41
  Lindsay Miller: Or you know, I'm wondering what I'm going to play in my basketball game this week.
• 29:46
  Lindsay Miller: You know, like what position or how I'm going to.
• 29:48
  Lindsay Miller: And so, when we can, again, a lot of times it is just those few moments of sitting with the discomfort of what's coming up for them initially.
• 29:57
  Lindsay Miller: That get us, you know, bridge us to the other things we could focus on.
• 30:01
  Lindsay Miller: But if we don't have kind of the ability to sit on that bench yet, that's okay too.
• 30:06
  Lindsay Miller: We can say something like can we you know what?
• 30:09
  Lindsay Miller: I need a, I need a minute.
• 30:10
  Lindsay Miller: Can we revisit this, can we?
• 30:12
  Lindsay Miller: I really want to hear what you're saying.
• 30:13
  Lindsay Miller: Can we come back to this later tonight, you know, so we can give ourselves a break then too.
• 30:18
  Lindsay Miller: But if we can sit with it, we can also just recognize that, like, if we can move through that little bit of discomfort, we find like an amazing array of other thoughts that are in their river.
• 30:29
  Lindsay Miller: And those are the ones where, like okay, like noticing all those things, what are some of the ones you want to take out?
• 30:35
  Lindsay Miller: Like what are some of the thoughts you want to carry around with you?
• 30:37
  Lindsay Miller: And those are the things that are going to be like I think I could figure it out.
• 30:42
  Lindsay Miller: I've done this before.
• 30:44
  Lindsay Miller: Like I think if I try I can do it, or if I ask for help, there's a way.
• 30:51
  Lindsay Miller: You know, those thoughts are all there too.
• 30:53
  Lindsay Miller: They just don't get our big, you know, most of our attention, and so, when we can sit with the discomfort of hearing the thoughts that are really holding them back, help them practice and it's a practice right, like in our house.
• 31:04
  Lindsay Miller: We are still letting thoughts go down our thought river in a lot of situations, but like that's the reason we have them in our house for so long, right Is, one of the reasons is to give them the opportunity to work through some of that stuff while they're under our roof and we can just love them so deeply while they're doing it, and then from there they can take the practice on their own right.
• 31:24
  Lindsay Miller: So there's nothing wrong with you if your kids are having those thoughts.
• 31:28
  Lindsay Miller: That's actually like a moment where, like having a parent is such a gift.
• 31:33
  Lindsay Miller: So beautifully said.
• 31:34
  Lindsay Miller: I love that.
• 31:35
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, everybody experiences life in a different way.
• 31:38
  Lindsay Miller: So, yeah, you never know what's going to come out of their river.
• 31:42
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, for sure.
• 31:44
  Lindsay Miller: Thank you so much, lindsay.
• 31:45
  Lindsay Miller: It was a wonderful conversation.
• 31:46
  Lindsay Miller: I think our listeners will be so excited to have so many tools and practices to put in our pocket, and also just a little self-love for parents, this magical world we're raising our kids in today.
• 31:59
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, for sure.
• 32:00
  Lindsay Miller: Well, thank you so much for having me.
• 32:02
  Lindsay Miller: It's been so good to talk to you and, again, I just have so much respect for the work you're doing in the world.
• 32:07
  Lindsay Miller: So thank you for the ways that you're making changes like ripple out from your podcast.
• 32:12
  Lindsay Miller: Yes, I love talking and connecting with other change makers out there.
• 32:16
  Lindsay Miller: Thank you so much.
• 32:17
  Lindsay Miller: Yeah, thank you.
• 32:20
  Lindsay Miller: Well, that's a wrap.
• 32:21
  Lindsay Miller: Thanks so much for tuning in.
• 32:22
  Lindsay Miller: Change.
• 32:22
  Lindsay Miller: Makers.
• 32:23
  Lindsay Miller: This is Keri, and if you haven't done a review for us, five stars and a little few words about what you've enjoyed in our podcast episodes, we would really appreciate it.
• 32:33
  Lindsay Miller: If you guys would like to ever message me, I would love any questions you have or any feedback.
• 32:39
  Lindsay Miller: At info at hearttoheartlifecom, we also have a brand new website which we're super excited to share it's hearttoheartlifecom.
• 32:46
  Lindsay Miller: We also have a brand new website which we're super excited to share it's hearttoheartlifecom.
• 32:49
  Lindsay Miller: Thanks so much for tuning in and happy life, happy times, Changemaker families.
• 32:54
  Lindsay Miller: Bye.