Transcript of “Raising Motivated, Self-Confident, Less Stressed Kids in an Age of Anxiety (with Dr. William Stixrud)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m pleased to host Dr. William Stixrud. He has a wealth of experience and wisdom to share from his decades of working with families as a therapist for children with learning and mental health challenges. He often sees the same client from childhood through adolescence and adulthood, so he’s able to see the results of his practice.

He’s the co-author, with his associate Ned Johnson, of two popular books: The Self-Driven Child, which to me feels in many ways like the perfect counterpart to the ideas I share for caring for kids in early childhood and how they might translate to understanding our role as parents with grade school, middle, and high school age children. I love this book and I’m looking forward to reading their recently published follow-up offering, What Do You Say? How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home. I’m hoping Bill will share his secrets for encouraging our children’s healthy motivation and their and our sense of control, which, as he believes, is the key to mental health. I’m excited.

Hi, Bill. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here.

Dr. William Stixrud: Thanks for having me, Janet.

Janet Lansbury: Well, I just adored your book. It’s so compatible with the kinds of messages that I try to give to parents as well, so it was wonderful to experience how this looks and feels in your work with children who are mostly grade school and older. Right?

Dr. William Stixrud: I would say that, yeah. I test kids, I’m a neuropsychologist and I test kids for a living, and I test kids from four to about 40 or so. But mainly I see school-age, middle school, and high school kids.

Janet Lansbury: And you work with them and their parents as well?

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah, I do evaluations and then I tell parents what I learned, I tell kids what I learned. And probably most of the kids I follow over time. So I’m seeing a lot of kids now that I tested initially 20 years ago.

Janet Lansbury: And did they come to you because they have issues or concerns?

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah, I see kids primarily because they’re having learning problems or attention problems or emotional problems or social problems, and I try to figure out what they’re good at, what’s going right, and what’s going wrong and how to help them.

Janet Lansbury: And you’ve written this book, The Self-Driven Child, a bestseller, with Ned Johnson, who is, what is your connection with him?

Dr. William Stixrud: Well, we became friends probably 10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago. Somebody introduced us and said, “You guys think so much alike.” And we’re very different. I’m 20 years older, I’m a neuropsychologist. Ned is the Washington, D.C. area’s test prep guru. He has a big business helping kids do better on standardized tests. And he realized that the way he does it is very similar to the kind of things that I’ve been lecturing about for many, many years. And we started lecturing together about motivation and about how too much stress affects kids’ brain and their development.

And we realized as we worked together that we saw we had two major concerns, and one was this, what people are calling an epidemic of mental health problems in adolescents and young adults, but also in the last several years in kids from five to 11. And then also so many of the kids we see have what we considered to be unhealthy motivation in the sense that either they’re obsessively driven, they’ll sacrifice anything to get into the most elite college. Sacrifice their health, their friends, and their family. And other kids who do as little as possible, don’t seem to have any kind of internal drive.

And we realized that there’s something that connects these two things, that points to a cause and a solution. And what we concluded was that what connects these two things is a low sense of control, because a low sense of control is at the root of all the mental health problems. I mean, think about it. If you’re anxious, your thinking’s out of control. If you feel depressed, you’ve got no sense of control. If you have substance use problems, your life is chaotic. So we realized that that’s the key to mental health.

And also every place we looked, Janet, to try to understand how do kids, little kids, grow up to be self-motivated, all the arrows point in the direction of autonomy. They have to have a sense that this is their life, and they aren’t continually being forced to do things.

Janet Lansbury: And they don’t have these areas that are free and clear for them to be autonomous.

Dr. William Stixrud: Right.

Janet Lansbury: That downtime and self-directed play, it’s everything, right? It’s therapy for them. It’s how they learn, it’s how they practice taking on different roles.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s so interesting. Two of my granddaughters, their mother was very strict about very limited technology, virtually none for the first few years. And all they did when they were five years old is play. They’re 10 and seven now, and whenever they have a minute, they play, they make up games. They go to the dentist, they come home and they play dentist. That’s the way that mammals have always learned to be adults. As you said, that’s the way they manage their feelings. That’s the way they try things out. That’s the way they learn how what they do affects other people.

Janet Lansbury: And I think on the parents’ end, it can be hard. I mean, there’s all this peer pressure to have your children in classes from the time they’re infants and have these schedules during the week where you have these scheduled events and you can’t really have that kind of play that you’re talking about and that I promote also, which is about good periods of time each day where there’s really nothing that children have to do. And I think if children aren’t used to that, then it can be tough for them to kind of wind down into that space. So that can be tough for parents sometimes, but it’s really everything.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s huge. I agree.

Janet Lansbury: It’s interesting what you said before, how you saw the two different ways that this manifested, this feeling of lack of control. That it manifested in obsessively wanting to try to keep control, in terms of, I’ve got to keep achieving, I’ve got to keep doing, I’ve got to keep holding this all together and keep on this track, or I can’t handle what happens if I feel like it’s falling apart, and then the other end of it where they kind of give up and say, What’s the point? I can’t control anything, and so I don’t want to do anything.

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah, yeah. The more I’ve been thinking about and lecturing about and writing about this sense of control for, I guess about six or seven years now, it’s a really, really powerful construct. The research on anxiety problems, it looks like they’re all rooted in low sense of control. Same thing with depression. And the research is looking at cognitive behavioral therapy, which is probably the most effective approach for treating children’s anxiety and mood problems. The reason it works is it increases their sense of control. And again, every place that we looked to try to understand how do kids develop that healthy self-motivation, that drive to develop themselves, and as they get older to realize, I need to develop myself to provide useful service to this world. That’s the kind of way that I think about developing kids’ motivation, is that healthy self-drive to develop themselves to have something useful to offer this world.

Janet Lansbury: And that starts with them getting a chance to connect with themselves and see who they are, which goes back to the play thing. From the time that they’re babies, they can feel a sense of agency about, Do I want to reach for this ball or do I want to suck my fingers, or do I want to look over here at this corner of the room where I see a shadow that’s interesting? Allowing them to have those kinds of options gives them this sense of, This is what I like to do.

Dr. William Stixrud: Yes, yes. It’s so interesting that some years ago I was reading the work of this guy named Reed Larson who studies adolescent development, and at one point in his career, he was looking at how do young children turn into self-motivated adolescents and adults? And he said, it’s not through dutifully doing their homework every night. It’s through what he called the passionate pursuit of pastimes. He described that flow experience, that experience of flow where you’re actively engaged in something that you’re interested in or that’s fun for you, or trying to solve a hard problem where it’s not so easy to be boring and it’s not so hard that it’s wildly stressful, but it’s kind of in your sweet spot and you’re working hard to figure it out, to solve something, or to beat somebody for competing.

And so the idea is if a three-year-old is building a little fort out of Lincoln Logs or playing with Legos and building something, they’re really concentrating on it, they’re really focused on trying to make it right. That experience shapes the brain in a way that develops that intrinsic motivation, that self-drive. And so it wasn’t through somehow doing what’s expected of me, what other people are telling me to do. It was through that passionate pursuit of pastimes. And we can start, as you said, by respecting that they may have different tastes and they may like some things and they may see something differently than I do. And respecting that individuality I think is really healthy, at the same time that we’re helping them be part of a family and part of a community.

Janet Lansbury: You made a really good point in your book, and it’s a question that I’m asked often about, “Well, if you’re allowing children to play as they wish and you’re not trying to engage them in focusing on certain kinds of learning that you think they should be working on, in the early years especially, then what happens when they get to school and they can’t focus?” And you made this great point that my mentor, Magda Gerber, used to also make, you say: “The best way to motivate him for the things you think he should focus on is to let him spend time on the things he wants to focus on.”

Dr. William Stixrud: Right. And for my co-author and me, our north star in thinking about motivation is self-determination theory, which is one of the best supported theories in psychology, developed about 30 years ago. And the main idea is that to develop that intrinsic motivation, the drive is coming from you, you have to have three needs met: one’s for a sense of competence, and one’s for a sense of relatedness, and a sense of autonomy. And I think that when we respect autonomy, that kids feel respected and it really helps our relationship with them, and those two things. And as we foster competence and we point out, “Gosh, look what you just did. Six months ago or three months ago, you couldn’t do this.” You foster that sense of competence, that they can develop skill. These are the most important ways that I know of for us to build that kind of healthy self-motivation in kids.

Janet Lansbury: Well, that reminds me of another quote that I wrote down from your book. You talked about competence: “It’s an internal rather than external barometer of accomplishment (growth mindset—you’re getting better). Remember that you can’t develop competence for them, and any attempt to do so will just undermine their own motivation.”

Dr. William Stixrud: Makes sense to me.

Janet Lansbury: Me too. But it’s very powerful actually, because I think that a lot of times as parents, we’ve put that on our job description that we’ve got to help them achieve this and help them achieve that, and it really can create a lot more anxiety in us and isn’t helping.

Dr. William Stixrud: Right. It’s so interesting because anytime a kid tries to do something, whether they’re two years old, they try to do something or they’re three or four, and they can’t do it, and they try again and they figure it out, it changes the brain, it develops the circuits in their brain to when something hard happens, to cope and to feel confident they can cope. Because when you’re dealing with something hard, even something that’s stressful, what happens —unless you’re just overwhelmed— what happens initially is that your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that can think logically and put things into perspective and calm yourself down when you’re stressed, your prefrontal cortex activates and leaps into action. And when the prefrontal cortex activates, it dampens down the stress response.

So we want kids, ideally even when they’re little, as much as possible, with our support, to solve their own problems, to deal with the stressful things they handle, but also just when they’re playing— the kid is trying to get a Lego construction together and it’s frustrating for him and he eventually figures it out, that’s what builds competence. And if we pointed out to him, “Man, you just stuck with that incredibly. A lot of kids would’ve given up.” You made those just kind of off-hand comments, in my experience, those are the things that really structure in a kid’s brain: I’m a competent person. I can learn, I can get better.

Janet Lansbury: And when they do need help doing the smallest thing, if they say, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this.” “Hmm, well, what are you trying to do? Where are you trying to put that one?” Asking questions, but keep bouncing the ball back to them, just being an emotionally supportive person. And it’s hard to do. It’s kind of like an art, to be able to give that minimal intervention.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s true. One of the things I used to do, Janet, when my kids were little, if they get frustrated, “Daddy help me with this,” I’d say, “Well, I’m going to look at my watch here, and if you try for a minute and a half to figure out on your own and you still can’t do it, then I’m going to help you, but I want to give you a chance to figure it out.”

Janet Lansbury: Oh, that’s a good idea.

Dr. William Stixrud: And then if they still couldn’t get it, I said, “Well, I wonder what would happen if you tried it this way.” That kind of suggested way as opposed to telling them what to do.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah, you can always break something down into steps and just give them the first step. I remember my son had to draw a picture for a book report, and he had to draw a picture of this wolf and he said, “I can’t possibly draw this picture.” I think he was maybe in third grade. And I said, “Yeah, I mean it is hard to draw pictures. What do you want to draw first? Which part of it do you want to draw first?” And he said, “The nose.” And I said, “Okay, what shape would the nose be? How would you like to draw that?” And it was amazing. He made this pretty cool picture. I was so proud of myself, because it was an experiment on my end. But to see how that worked with an older child.

I work a lot with the younger children, I’m used to doing it with them, and it’s amazing. And they don’t naturally have this feeling like being stuck is a bad thing. That’s something that we can unfortunately influence them to feel more when we’re worried they’re not going to finish it or get it, or that we’re starting to feel for them, Oh gosh, maybe they can’t do it and I’ve got to help. I’ve got to rescue. And then they start to pick up from us that anxiousness and receive that same sense of urgency from us and see that, Oh gosh, this isn’t a safe place to be, just in the middle where I’m not getting it.

Dr. William Stixrud: Right. And as you said, it’s hard because we’re mammals. We evolved to soothe and protect our young. And in our second book, we talk about this research of a person by the name of Jessie Borelli. She studies what she calls parental overcontrol. And she has a study where these kids are in a room with some kind of computerized puzzle and they’re trying to put it together and the moms are in the room and the moms are only given one instruction: Don’t help. And they’re measuring the kid’s heart rate and the mother’s heart rate. And so the kid starts to solve this puzzle and it looks easy, but it’s much harder than it really is. As he starts to get frustrated, the kid’s heart rate goes up. Mother intervenes and says, “Honey, try it this way or this way.” Mother’s heart rate goes down when she is doing something that gives her a sense of control, but the kid gets more stressed as the mom gets involved.

Janet Lansbury: Wow.

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah. So I think it’s not that we don’t want to be supportive. It’s not that we don’t want to help our kids. It’s just that we don’t want to jump in. I did this exercise, I did it with a parent educator some years ago, where we thought about, Well, let’s say your second-grade girl comes home and she’s crying because everybody in her friend group got invited to a birthday party and she isn’t invited. And what we asked the parents to do was to ask themselves, Whose problem is it? Because the way that we’re wired, it’s so hard to do that. It’s hard to resist wanting to start soothing or, That’s okay, I’ll call the mom. And just remind them that we can listen, we can try and understand, but if we jump in and solve it for them, we deprive them of that opportunity to solve it themselves and to shape that brain, this experience of going into coping mode.

Janet Lansbury: And it makes it harder for them the next time because they feel dependent on us for making them feel better.

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

Janet Lansbury: You talk also in your book about the concept of the non-anxious presence. What are some of the keys to being able to be that for our children?

Dr. William Stixrud: Well, can I just mention how I got to this idea?

Janet Lansbury: Please.

Dr. William Stixrud: When my daughter was just turning two, her language was coming along really well, but she stuttered and she started to stutter really badly, and she went for a couple days where she didn’t talk. And I’ve never been more panicked in my life, Janet. I’m thinking, Oh God, if she doesn’t talk, she’ll never get better. She’ll be teased the rest of her life. And a couple days later, basically her mouth caught up with her brain and she just stopped stuttering. And I realized that all of our fear as parents, it’s about the future. It’s about, They’re going to get stuck in some ways and never get better. So that was a really formative thing for me was realizing that all our worry, all our fear, it’s about the future. That kids are going to get stuck.

And my experience is, if we as parents don’t get highly anxious and too involved, kids, they go through stuff and they grow out of it. The other thing was when I used to do therapy, I’d sit with parents and one of the parents would start to cry and they’d say, “I just want him to feel good about himself.” It struck me many years ago, I said, “Well, I think it would be easier for us to help him feel good about himself if we weren’t worried sick.” And then somebody introduced me some years ago to this idea of a non-anxious presence. I love the idea. I love the term, and I didn’t make it up unfortunately, but I was introduced to it. And somebody at an independent school in Washington, D.C. asked me to do a program with parents on how to become a non-anxious presence.

And I never quite thought about it in terms of parenting that exact way. But then I realized if you’ve got an infant who’s crying and wailing, it’s a lot easier to soothe them if you stay calm. If you’ve got a two-year-old who’s having a tantrum in a store, it’s a lot easier to handle if you stay calm. If you’ve got a 16-year-old who’s coming home and his girlfriend just dumped him, if you can stay calm, you can be much more helpful. And we know that kids are certainly much more stressed now, much more fearful. It is like the message that young kids get is, Be very afraid. As they get older, it seems to be be very afraid, given how many kids are so anxious and fearful.

Janet Lansbury: And you’ve really seen that rise in time?

Dr. William Stixrud: Oh, yeah. I see it in my own practice, but the statistics on it are just mind-boggling. The surgeon general now calls the status of mental health in adolescents the defining public health crisis of our lifetime. And I think for parents of young children, there’s so much we can do to strengthen them. And I think in part by, if we move in the direction of being a non-anxious presence, we help kids in just dozens of ways. For example, if a little kid falls in the playground and we go, “Oh, oh, are you okay?” Kids learn to react to things that happen to them in part by watching how their parents react. And so, many kids, they fall on the playground and they look to see, Should I cry? Am I okay? If we stay calm, it’s different than if we’re, “Oh, honey, are you okay?”

And I’m not saying if something’s really bad, we shouldn’t be nurturing. We want to be nurturing to our kids. I think in our first book, we quote this book, it’s something with a magical character, and he says to this group of kids, “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.” And the kids say, “You did something much more important. You helped us feel brave.”

And part of the way I think about this non-anxious presence is not being overly emotionally reactive and not being burdened by excessive anxiety or worry and being able to communicate that courageous attitude as opposed to a fearful one. There’s a lot of things that you could worry about in this world, and I’m not saying we should never worry. Worry helps us stay safe in many ways, but ideally if what we communicate is, Yeah, that makes me anxious too, but I know I can handle it and you can too, it’s a very powerful way to help kids develop confidence that they can handle stuff and also to communicate that courage.

I’d love any thoughts about what I just said, and then I’ll tell you some of the ways that we think about encouraging parents to move in that direction of being a non-anxious presence.

Janet Lansbury: For me, when you said courageous, that really hits home for me because I started to imagine —and this was when I had to take my upset first toddler out of a grocery store or someplace or when I had to do anything— I would see myself, and I’ve talked about this, the parents that listen here probably have heard me say it, but I would put on a superhero suit in my mind to be confident for you. Because I’m very sensitive, I tend to take on everybody else’s mood. So if my child’s afraid, that affects me too, and then I’m sure I affect them back.

And I would imagine, if you were a fireperson coming in here to help somebody that had to jump out of a building, you would be very confident for them. You would know that this is the most important thing, that you weren’t panicking and that you weren’t afraid, and that you believed that they could fall into that net and they’d be okay. So I take it to that level. I really needed a lot of work. And what I found is it’s easier for me to be courageous for my child than for myself.

Dr. William Stixrud: And my co-author, in our second book, his twin brother is an EMT, and what he does, he goes into situations, an emergency situation in a family, and he says, “I think we’re under control here. You don’t have to panic. Should I let you know if it’s time to worry?” Just model it. Because when we wrote our first book, The Self-Driven Child, one of the things we emphasize is the research on what’s called stress contagion. The idea that stress is contagious. I mean, if you’re around a really stressful person, your brain picks it up and it increases your stress level. As we were researching our second book, I learned that one of the mantras of the Navy Seals is “Calm is Contagious,” and it’s contagious because all emotions are contagious. And that’s part of the reason why I encourage parents to move in that direction of being a non-anxious presence in your family, because then what you do is you communicate, you infuse calmness into your family and your kids feel it.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. And so how else can parents do that when there are so many concerns, especially as parents? There’s a lot of concerns in the world, and then there’s concerns as parents, which magnify everything.

Dr. William Stixrud: One of the things we talk about, I think in the introduction to The Self-Driven Child, is that most human beings are living in the safest time, in the safest place in human history. And many of our fears as parents are related to this 24/7 news cycle and the fear that parents have of young children, like, being abducted. It’s all based on that, we get these alerts. And it turns out that the rates of child abduction are extremely low, except for if parents are divorced, one parent will take a kid without the other parent knowing it. But the perception of danger is much greater than it really is. So that’s one thing.

What I ask parents to do is to take a long view, in the sense that most kids turn out fine. And because I test kids who are having problems and I’ve followed kids for 40 years, I know that in the vast majority of kids, even the ones I see that are having problems, they turn out fine. In fact, I got a Christmas card two years ago, Janet, on the outside it said, “You were right.” And I opened it up and it’s a picture of these three young adults with their spouses, and their parents had written, “They all turned out great.” These are kids who I evaluated at various points starting in probably the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, and I hadn’t seen any of them in 10 years. And I just got an email from a mom who I saw, whose kid I saw when she was eight, who’s now like 38, and she had autism. And mom’s just saying, “She’s so great and doing so great.”

So just take a long view and remember that all our worry about our kids, it’s about, Something’s happening now, oh my God, this is not going to get better. And it’s because a low sense of control is the most stressful thing you can experience in the whole world, that if a kid has a problem and we don’t know how to solve it, it’s very stressful. So we kind of work on ourselves as you did, Janet, to experience more of that kind of inner calm so that we can radiate that calm to our family. We train ourselves to remember that if I don’t get stuck, my kid’s not going to get stuck, that we can take steps to solve these problems. And that usually they turn out really good.

Janet Lansbury: So if our children aren’t going to feel that sense of control unless we feel that sense of control, we can maybe derive our sense of control from that visualization or belief, that trust, that my child probably will be just fine and get through these things. And you know what? Our job as parents is not as complicated as I think we can make it. Just like with the news cycles, there’s so much parenting advice out for people now, and it’s overwhelming and it can sound like this is such an intricate thing. Something that we’re putting out there to try to help —the various parenting advisors, like me— it can make it appear as if, Oh, there’s so many details we have to get right. And really those are just supposed to help you if you’re stuck, maybe. But it’s not that complicated.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s really not.

Janet Lansbury: And you and I, that have adult children, can acknowledge that. I have three adult children also.

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah. I remember my son had tics and learning disabilities, and I worried about the tics and about being teased and that. I realized that the most important thing that I can do to help myself is to work on my own fear, my own anxiety, and realizing that my fear was all about as he got older, if his tics were terrible, that that might affect him negatively somehow. And he’s a PhD psychologist, he’s a very successful, wonderful human being, beautiful wife, beautiful children. And yeah, I had a lot of worry, but I realized that I was more upset than he was, and I just worked at it.

What I realized is that if I see kids are going through a hard patch, that if I see it as, This is part of their path and I’m going to help them through it, as opposed to thinking, This is a disaster! That perspective of accepting where kids are. If we think about the idea of unconditional love and unconditional acceptance, arguably the most important thing we can do for our kid is to let them know we love them immeasurably, no matter what they do or how hard they try or how they behave. This is one of the ways that we do it.

Janet Lansbury: And if we look back on our own lives, how many rough spots have we all had? And how positive were those for us?

Dr. William Stixrud: Right. Before we started recording this, you mentioned this experience I talk about in The Self-Driven Child where, when I was in first grade, I cried the whole first week. I’d never been in a situation where I didn’t know anybody, none of my friends from kindergarten were in my first grade class, and I was kind of a little bit on the anxious side anyway. And one day the girl sitting next to me said, “Ms. Ward, Billy’s crying.” And she said, “He’s going to be fine.” And I realized, she’s just modeling this non-anxious presence and communicating confidence that I could handle it.

Janet Lansbury: I love that teacher, she should get an award of some kind. And how simple that is: She believed in you. She believed in you, and that feels good.

Dr. William Stixrud: I know. And there’s this new program, this brilliant program out of Yale, for helping kids with anxiety. The acronym is SPACE. It’s Supported Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. And one of the main things that parents are taught to do is to express empathy. “I know this is really scary for you.” And then, “But I’m a hundred percent confident that you can handle it.”

Because what we do, because we’re mammals, what we do when kids find something stressful, we try to protect them from it. If a little kid is afraid to go into the bathroom by himself, we go in there with him, that kind of thing. And it turns out that when we make that kind of accommodation to a kid’s anxiety, it just makes them more anxious. And so what we’re taught to do is to eventually not make those accommodations. But the first step is you express empathy. “I know that going into the bathroom by yourself makes you anxious, but I’m also a hundred percent confident that you can handle it.” Which requires us to manage our own anxiety and then to communicate confidence that you can handle it so that we communicate that brave, courageous attitude.

Janet Lansbury: That’s so important, I think. But again, it all stems from the trust that we have in, I guess in ourselves as parents, and therefore towards our children. You said it well in your book: “It takes courage to trust a child to make decisions, to trust in a child’s brain development, to ignore the pressures that cause us to protect our kids from themselves, or to be overly involved in their lives. It takes courage to face our fears about the future. It also takes humility to accept that we don’t often know what’s in our kids’ best interest. It takes a change in mindset to focus on ourselves—our own emotions and attitudes—as an extremely important element of our child-rearing.”

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah, I like that. Five years later, I still like it.

Janet Lansbury: I like it too. But then you also say: “As hard as all of this is, the harder route by far is trying to control what we really can’t.”

Dr. William Stixrud: Yeah. In the book we talk about some postulates of motivation, and one of them is that you can’t make a kid do something against their will. And I think that knowing that, knowing you really can’t make another human, even a little kid, you can’t make a little kid do something. Your kid, you need to get in the car to go see grandma, and they’re refusing. You can pick them up and put them in the car, but then they aren’t getting in the car, you’re putting them in the car. You really can’t make somebody do something. And when you make peace with that, that if theoretically I really couldn’t make him do something, you make peace with that, you realize, Well, that’s not my rule. It couldn’t be my responsibility to always make him do the right thing. And for me, the older I get and the more I see that something that looks like a disaster leads to something really good, I get more humble about knowing what’s in a kid’s best interest. And inclined to take that attitude that this is your life and you get to figure it out and I’m going to help you.

We talk about the idea as parents being a consultant of their kid rather than their boss or their manager, their homework police, who’s always running their lives. Because our goal is for kids to be able to run their own lives before they leave home. And that’s what I’ve suggested to parents of young children, is think about, you aren’t going to start turning over the keys to your five-year-old, but the idea is, let’s move in that direction. For myself, I’m going to move in the direction of a non-anxious presence who can support my kid in making wise decisions, practice making decisions for themselves, learning from their feedback, who can trust my kids. I can say, “I have confidence you can solve these problems.” That’s my role. And the kid’s role eventually is to figure out who they want to be and be able to run their own life.

And I say that because I was giving a lecture about The Self-Driven Child in Houston before the pandemic, and I happened to mention the most elite high school in Washington, D.C. and a woman came up to me afterwards. She said, “I’m a therapist at The Menninger Clinic here in Houston,” this really good mental health clinic in Houston. And she said, “We know this school in D.C. really well, because so many of the graduates get into the top colleges in the country, but as soon as they get a B, or as soon as they realize that everybody there is as smart as they are, or as soon as they ask a girl out and she dumps them, they can’t handle it. So they take a medical leave of absence and they come here for treatment.” And she said, “To the one, they just don’t have enough experience making their own decisions, solving their own problems, running their own life.”

And I gave a lecture recently and this guy came up to me and said, “I just finished my doctoral dissertation on promoting autonomy in two-year-olds by, ‘Do you want to do it this way or this way?’ Start out by giving them a limited number of choices.” So you’re coming back to that treating them respectfully that you mentioned earlier.

Janet Lansbury: So for the parents that listen here regularly and know my work, they know that a lot of what this podcast ends up being about is how to actually set limits with children and have those boundaries for them and all of those things, which are to me in a different category than what you’re talking about, but not completely. We still give children choices with things that we have to help them do, like getting into the car seat, for example. “Do you want to be the one to go in by yourself?” But we do have to take charge of them, because if we don’t that creates the kind of stress that doesn’t help them to function either.

Dr. William Stixrud: As we say in The Self-Driven Child, this idea of being a consultant, it doesn’t mean that the kid’s the boss of the family. We see this as squarely in the tradition of what’s called authoritative parenting, as opposed to authoritarian or laissez-faire. And in authoritative parenting, we’re the guides of the family. We’re the leaders of the family, and we work out limits with kids. And ideally, when our kid’s, say, three or four, we sit down and talk about limits so that they’re kind of agreed-upon and everybody knows and they feel fair. We want to minimize the extent to which we’re forcing limits when we’re mad, go to your room kind of thing. But if little kids have too much freedom, as you said, it just makes them anxious. They can’t have that. Kids with laissez-faire parenting, where there’s very few limits, very few family rules that are enforced, it makes them really anxious because young people, they need to feel that my parents are in charge.

And ultimately, from that position, we treat them respectfully and know that the way kids become good decision-makers is by practicing making decisions. And the way kids learn to treat other people respectfully is by being treated respectfully. And so we can give kids choices, we can give them freedom, but we don’t let them walk all over us. They aren’t the boss of the family. They can’t do anything they want. It’s a delicate balance, but it’s doable if we realize that kids need limits and it’s really good to treat your kid respectfully. Like he or she is a human being who has a mind of her own. And it’s also true that when we treat kids respectfully that they’re more likely to go along with us. When they feel loved and appreciated and enjoyed, they’re just more likely to just go along with us and not fight us.

Janet Lansbury: Because we’re on the same team. And they know that, they feel that. The way I see it and teach it, again from infancy, so there’s sort of two areas. Even though we want to give children choice when they can handle it, sometimes they can’t in the boundary-type situations or situations in their care where they really need us to take the lead. But then there’s this whole other area of play, learning, that’s theirs, that belongs to them. And the more we support that while staying in our lane and not trying to micromanage it and decide what it should be, the better.

Dr. William Stixrud: I love that. It makes complete sense to me.

Janet Lansbury: That’s how I learned this, and it just felt really clear. I’m a person that needs things to be very, very clear in my mind to be able to even try to do them.

Dr. William Stixrud: And I really feel like my major mission, and certainly one of the reasons that I wanted to write The Self-Driven Child, is to help parents feel that it’s safe. It’s safe not to worry about your kid all the time, it’s safe to feel that you can trust your kids a lot of the time. It’s safe to feel that you aren’t supposed to know who they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to be like or what’s always right for them. You couldn’t know because when something happens to a kid, do you judge whether it was good or bad the next day or five years later or 10 years later? Certainly one of the most important experiences of my entire life was the first time I went to graduate school, in English literature. I went for 20 straight weeks and I didn’t turn in a single assignment because I was just so anxious and insecure. I work with a lot of underachievers and I say, “Twenty weeks, I turned in nothing. Top that.”

Janet Lansbury: I have nightmares about that.

Dr. William Stixrud: But my point is, so after the second quarter, I hadn’t turned anything in, so I flunked out. And I felt like my whole life had gone up in smoke. And it took me about a month to realize it was the best possible thing that could have happened to me. No way should I have been an English professor. I always felt like an imposter, I felt out of my league, and I wanted to do something with children. Most of my professors gave me incompletes. This one flunked me, so I couldn’t go back. And I prayed that I’d meet him and be able to thank him. But honest to God, Janet, two years later, I’m walking on the campus of the University of Washington where I’m taking some classes in education, and I see this guy and I go up to him and I say, “You probably don’t remember me.” He didn’t remember me, but I said, “You flunked me two years ago and it was the best possible thing that could have happened to me. Thank you.” It was a very satisfying experience.

But the point is that if we see what kids are going through as part of their path to figure their lives out, and our job is to support them and help them and, as you said, to provide structure and direction as necessary, it’s just a lot easier.

Janet Lansbury: Yeah. It works better for us, it’s easier, it’s less stressful when we stay in our lane and let them do their work and we do ours and trust everybody to do their job.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s safe to do it. And I have great confidence in this as you do, because I walk this walk with my own kids, and I have two wonderful adult children who grew up with no academic pressure at all, and both have PhDs. And this approach of really fostering a sense of control, as they get older playing more that consultant role to help them figure out who they want to be. The three questions that I ask to think about my relationship with the kids is, Whose life is it?, Whose responsibility is it?, and Whose problem is it? And I want to remember that I don’t know who they want to be, it’s their life. I want to remember that I don’t want to take responsibility for something that’s really a kid’s responsibility, like doing their homework, for example. And also that I don’t want to solve problems that they’re capable of solving themselves.

Janet Lansbury: And you share so many incredible case studies. And you have a whole chapter on navigating learning disabilities, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders and how your approach can work with children that have those challenges.

The other thing that you said is the enjoyment factor. So not only is it easy for us when we’re not trying to do jobs that aren’t going to work for us because they’re not our job, we’re not as able to enjoy the unfolding of the person because we’re so busy worrying about if they’re measuring up in this way or that way. And you offer these points around being a non-anxious presence: “Make enjoying your kids your top parenting priority. Don’t fear the future.” Maybe easier said than done, but we’ve got to put trust out there, right?

Dr. William Stixrud: Yes, yes. The enjoyment piece. When I used to do therapy, starting about 35 years ago, I did a lot of therapy with parents. And what came to me is that, let’s set our highest parenting priority as simply enjoying your child. Because when you enjoy your child, she experiences herself as a joy-producing organism as opposed to an anxiety-producing or an anger-producing or a frustration-producing organism. And it’s not that we have to enjoy every second, but the idea of just being spontaneously enjoyed, that’s how people have a sense of, “I’m likable.” And so what I’d do with parents is we’d work backwards: Let’s make that our goal. What’s keeping you from enjoying your kid most of the time? And it may be some behavioral thing, it may be something in the marriage, maybe some pressures at work, maybe insomnia and said, let’s work on these things, with the goal being to enjoy your kid, so your kid starts to see himself as a joy-producing organism.

Janet Lansbury: Yes. And it also can be because we’re trying to do right by our child, putting them on the team or whatever, and now we’re dragging them to practice because they don’t want to go. And it’s impossible to enjoy your child that way. But what I remember is when I could observe my children playing —which they allowed me to do about to the age of five, and then they didn’t want me to anymore— but their ideas. And I just remember one time my daughter, she was waiting for me, I was teaching actually, and she had to come that day. And I see her over there, she was using paper clips, something that was there, and she was making people out of paperclips and they were talking to each other, without even bending them or destroying them or anything. She made up this whole story with paperclips. And it’s just that kind of stuff that children do that’s so cool. And we can really see who they are and their imagination and interests and all of these things. It’s so much more interesting.

But anyway, I’m going to finish your list here: “Don’t fear the future. Commit to your own stress management. Make peace with your worst fears. Adopt an attitude of nonjudgmental acceptance.” What is that, nonjudgmental acceptance?

Dr. William Stixrud: Well, I think most parents buy the idea that it helps kids to feel that they’re loved unconditionally. And I think what that means is kind of warts and all. That it means that we accept them and we love them and we approve of them, even if they’re having a hard time, even if they’re trying to figure stuff out. And so this nonjudgmental acceptance just means that, if they’re acting badly, we’ll intervene in some ways. But we take the attitude that we aren’t judgmental, we don’t give them the idea, You’re a bad kid, or This is unacceptable to me, kind of thing. That we deal with them respectfully and say, “This isn’t working.” Or, “I don’t let people talk to me that way, I’ll see you in five minutes.” And find ways of dealing that’s respectful to the kid and gives the kid the message, I can handle your strong feelings. I can handle your bad behavior.

Janet Lansbury: Because we know there’s a reason they’re acting like that.

Dr. William Stixrud: Exactly.

Janet Lansbury: It’s usually about what’s going on inside them. It’s hardly ever really about us. So we don’t need to take offense.

Dr. William Stixrud: Right. Part of the goal of becoming a non-anxious presence is that when we’re calm, we’re much better listeners, we’re much better able to convey empathy, to express empathy for kids. We’re less controlling.

Janet Lansbury: And we’re much more able to solve the problem or figure out the issue because we’re not under stress, yeah.

Dr. William Stixrud: That’s exactly right. Just recognizing that once you’re stressed or your kid is stressed, you can’t think clearly. Don’t bother trying to teach a lesson, or don’t try to tell your kid something that you really need to get their attention. If you’re stressed and they’re stressed, they really can’t hear it, because we evolved to respond instinctively. So the prefrontal cortex that can think logically and rationally, basically it gets shut down, because the last thing you want to do if you’re being attacked by a wooly mammoth is to stop and think about it. So, recognizing that when we start to feel stressed is not the right time to lecture our kid or to try to teach him something, we say, “I want to talk about this. I want to help you with this. But I’m a little stressed right now. I’m going to take a walk or I’m going to go into my room for a few minutes. But I’m going to come back and let’s work this out.” This non-anxious presence is a powerful idea. And it’s a goal.

Janet Lansbury: And it’s a goal moment-to-moment, I feel like. It’s not like, Oh, I got it. I’m the non-anxious presence forever. It’s something that we are constantly just trying to keep in our mind the importance of. And we see when we do it that it really, really helps. It helps calm that person down. It helps them pass through it. It helps them figure things out and not get stuck in our stuff.

I could talk to you all day long, gosh. I’m fascinated by all these topics that you’re an expert on and I would love to have you come back another time and we’ll go over one of these other topics. For now, I want to thank you so much for speaking with me today, sharing all your knowledge. As you say, “We think of chronic stress in children and teenagers as the societal equivalent of climate change—a problem that has been building over generations and will take considerable effort and a change of habits to overcome.” And that’s what you say in your book and wow, that’s scary. But we can all be taking steps in that direction.

Dr. William Stixrud: The idea is if we want a calmer world, a more peaceful world, then we work on that in ourselves. There’s so many things that we can do to make lives better for ourselves and our kids, and we can model for our kids really taking good care of ourselves when we work on our own stress management. Whether that’s with exercise or meditation or yoga. We model for our kids that I take care of myself so I can be at the top of my game. And I think, what more can we do?

Janet Lansbury: Not much, but try to enjoy our kids. Even as they get older too. I am having just as much fun, if not more, with my adult children as I did with my little ones. And I love working with little ones. That’s why I do it.

Dr. William Stixrud: It’s true. And I love being a parent at every age. I loved raising teenagers and having young adults is just fabulous. It’s a great role.

Janet Lansbury: Same. Alright. Thank you so much.

Dr. William Stixrud: My pleasure, Janet.

Janet Lansbury: Alright, you take care.

Dr. William Stixrud: Okay, you too. Bye.

Janet Lansbury: Okay, bye-bye.

Dr. Stixrud is the founder of The Stixrud Group, a member of the teaching faculty at Children’s National Medical Center, and an assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine and co-author with Ned Johnson of The Self-Driven Child and What Do You Say? How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home.

Please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. And my books, No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame, and Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting, you can get them in paperback at Amazon and In ebook at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and apple.com.

Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.

The post Raising Motivated, Self-Confident, Less Stressed Kids in an Age of Anxiety (with Dr. William Stixrud) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Janet’s No Bad Kids Master Course is available at NoBadKidsCourse.com and JanetLansbury.com.

Her best-selling books No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline without Shame and Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting are available in all formats at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, and free at Audible (https://adbl.co/2OBVztZ) with a trial subscription.

Transcript of “How to Help Kids Behave in Restaurants, Church, Storytime, Music Class, and More”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today I’m going to be addressing a topic that I receive a lot of questions about, which is, how do we help our children to be at their best, or at least not be disruptive, in situations like a restaurant, a library storytime, church, music class, or any other type of class? Parents often reach out to me concerned because their child wants to run around during the storytime or can’t be in church or sit in the restaurant. So I hope that what I share here today will help give you some clarity on what to expect and also how to help our child to meet these situations, and therefore help us to meet these situations, with as much success as possible.

1. Have Reasonable Expectations

Okay, so the first thing we want to do when our child is in one of these situations, setting ourselves up for success, is to have reasonable expectations. And that means to not expect that our child is necessarily going to be able to thrive in any of these situations. What will help guide us in our expectations is seeing through our child’s eyes, our individual child, what we know about them. But what we know about all children when they’re one, two, three, sometimes even four, five years old, is that it’s not developmentally appropriate for us to expect that a child will be able to sit in a restaurant, sit through a church ceremony, that they will want to sit when somebody’s reading them a book in storytime, or pay attention to a music teacher or some other kind of teacher.

What children are geared to do in these early years is be explorers, inner-directed explorers. And they explore with all their senses. Often that means movement, not sitting still. They’re gathering all of this information about their world, taking it all in. They’re learning so quickly. Self-directed means that they instinctively know what they want to learn next about that environment, that their interests will often be different than what we might put out there for them. And the more that we can trust that, the better that system will work for them. And the more confident they will feel and motivated they will be to keep learning. So it is something that we want to try to implement for them, that they get to direct their learning.

The situations I’m going to talk about today are all ones where there is an agenda that is more adult-centered. That we want them to sit for this period of time, that we want them to focus and pay attention to what the adults are doing, as in the case of these classes or storytime or church. So we’re kind of putting our child in, I don’t want to say an unnatural position, but it’s not what they’re organically geared toward. If we can come into these situations with the expectation that it very well may not work out for our child to be there, or be there in the way that we want them to at least, that’s the way to start in setting ourselves up for success. Because even though some of these classes are meant for children, like storytime, when children aren’t the one choosing that—and this can be true even with an older child, if they’re in a lesson that they are doing because we want them to, or they’ve got this idea that we feel that they should want to but they’re not genuinely interested in it themselves—then that also becomes a mismatch for them in their development as self-motivated learners and explorers.

The less that we expect our child should be fine in these situations, therefore, the less that we try to control. Especially if we’re frantically managing, putting a lid on behavior, trying to help our child conform to a situation, getting stressed about it, right? Because if we have that agenda, if we feel that responsibility on ourselves and, Oh, maybe other children are fine with this, why isn’t mine?, then yeah, we’re putting a lot of pressure on ourselves that will immediately get absorbed by our child. So the less that we expect our child will be fine, the better chance our child has to handle it well and surprise us. Why is that? Because we are feeling and being able to be that calm, safe, empathic leader for our child. We see them, we get them. Instead of having those “shoulds” about our child. Because even if our child can do this sometimes, they can’t always.

So that open perspective, knowing that I’m putting my child into a situation that is not going to be the best organic fit, because I want to be in this situation, right? That’s why we do it, because we want it or we think that this is what we should do for our child. But if we can let go of that, it will decide our outlook on the entire experience and how we react to our child’s behaviors. I know that sounds maybe really general, but I’m going to explain with more specifics, I promise.

So am I saying, though, that being a calm, safe, empathic leader, does this mean that we’re just chilled out and we let our child carry on as they wish and run around and maybe be disruptive? Absolutely not, in my opinion. Because our child is showing us that they need our help to be safe and appropriate and not a bother to others. Our child can’t be the one that’s in charge of that. It’s kind of leaving them high and dry, letting them be this person in the room that they don’t want to be, that will feel to them like they are failing. I mean, children are quite aware of people’s energy and their feelings around them. So if other people are annoyed and our child is not behaving as expected in that environment, then our child is taking that in as This is who I am with other people, maybe. At worst, I guess. Or, I can’t face these situations because I’m kind of failing here.

So that’s the first point I want to make. Have reasonable expectations. Don’t expect that children can conform to adult-agenda activities.

     2. Know Your Child

Second, know your child. Consider your child’s temperament, their readiness, what they’ve shown you. And sometimes they’re maybe ready one time, but this other time they couldn’t handle it because they were too tired, too hungry, we were stressed that day, we were rushed. All those things can make it less possible for them to approach a situation.

To give you an example, I have two daughters and a son, and the son is the youngest. My daughters both were, amazingly to me, the kind of children who, even as babies and toddlers, could sit in a restaurant longer than just while they were eating. And they were also both the type that, they’d be at a birthday party and they’d be sitting there finishing their cake while the other kids were up and running around. So they enjoyed the whole meal experience. Then we had our son and he’s a very active temperament, loves to move his body. Even as an infant, he wasn’t able to be in a family diner with us. He wasn’t able to hang out like that, you know? So we would get takeout instead when we could. But we learned this by trying it and then seeing, Uh-oh, this is not going to work out. And then we didn’t try it again for a long time. I mean, he could definitely sit while he ate, but not in a restaurant situation. It was harder for him. Therefore, we didn’t take him out to restaurants. We would get takeout, we would go sit outside somewhere. We would go places where he could just eat and then get up and jump and go around, because we weren’t going to let him do that in a restaurant and be maybe unsafe and disturb other people.

So, knowing our child. They will show us what they can handle and what they can’t.

      3. Prepare and Inform Your Child

The third point: we want to prepare and inform our children, so that they have the best chance of meeting the situation with more confidence and maybe even eagerness.

Telling your child about the story time at the library, We’re going to go there, this person is going to read a story and all the children are going to sit on the rug and listen to the story. This isn’t a time to get up and run around. If you feel like you have to do that, then we’ll leave and we’ll try again when you want to. Or, This is what happens at church. We’re going to go in, we’re going to sit down in this pew. And we’ll hear music, there’s people singing and we’re going to sing along with them. You can sing along with us. Then there’ll be a part where we say prayers. So whatever we know about the situation. You’ve heard me recommend this a lot—going to a doctor’s appointment, going to a new school, getting ready for a new baby in the family—to give our children all that information. Just what we know for sure. Or we could say, I think there might be this. So not trying to pump them up or get them excited about it.

Maybe even openly sharing some of the downsides, like, Sometimes it feels hard to sit while people are talking and if you want to sit on my lap, you can, if you want to sit next to me, you can. But we have to stay sitting. Or in the restaurant, We have to wait a little while to get our food and we’re going to bring some crayons for you. If you want to color, you can, or draw, while we’re waiting. Or we can talk to each other or we can look around at all the people. Giving that kind of information. That helps children, even in the dull parts, to know that, Oh, this is all part of the story that I heard was going to happen. And it’s very empowering for them. Young children tend to love the idea of knowing something. Because so much of their world is overwhelming and they don’t understand it. So giving them as much as we can to understand, it’s a great setup for success.

       4. Prepare Ourselves With a Plan

The fourth point: we want to prepare ourselves. And that goes with that expectation thing. Preparing ourselves, which means we’re going to have a plan B, hopefully, ideally. What if they can’t be there? What if they want to get up and run around? If I’m with my partner, maybe you can take them out for a little walk or we can take turns or maybe we get takeout. I’m talking about a restaurant now, obviously. But having an exit strategy in all kinds of situations, even a party or a place that we know they want to be. Because stuff happens, and we’ll feel less disappointed and thrown by these things if we’ve included all of them in our plan. All the possibilities.

So now the next five points I want to make are under the heading of once we’re there.

       5. Allow Your Child to Engage on Their Terms

Number five is allow children to engage on their terms, following their interests as much as possible. Oftentimes as parents we have these ideas, especially if we’re excited about sharing something with our child, like the storytime or the music class, we kind of have an image of what it’s going to be like. There’s nothing wrong with us for doing that, right? The fun of parenting is getting excited about things. But it can be just as fun to not have expectations and be really open to learning about who our child is in those moments.

For example, I was doing an in-home consultation for a few days with this family and they took their boy, who was not even one-and-a-half I don’t think, something like 15 months, to a music class. I’m not sure what it was called. And the mom asked me to come along, so I did. What I saw was similar to what I’d seen with my oldest daughter when I tried this with her. That very sweet, lovely adult was the one directing everything, of course. I mean that’s the way most of us think we should do a class like that. So she was deciding what they would do next, the next song, and what everyone would do, clap their hands, or the way that she wanted everyone to participate. One of the reasons the mother wanted me to come with her was because her boy wasn’t really participating in the past and she just wanted my input on why that might be. He was a newish walker. He was interested in chair legs and pulling himself up. And he was just interested in the whole environment, as children are, exploring. He was listening to the music. I mean, how could he not, right? And seemed to enjoy it sometimes. But he wasn’t sitting there and following her direction. And actually most of the children weren’t, but the moms were kind of helping them.

When I saw this, though, and I think I even said this to the mother beforehand, it made sense to me that, yes, he’s doing really age-appropriate learning and exploring. And really there was nothing wrong with that there because he wasn’t disrupting anything, he wasn’t doing anything unsafe. He was just doing his own thing in this classroom.

And there was a point where the teacher was having them all drum on these rhythm instruments, they had little drumsticks that they were supposed to be hitting the instruments with. And she was showing them the beat that she wanted them to do. And there was this one little boy, he started doing this really quick bum ba bum bum bum with the stick, just waving his hand furiously. And I was a little disappointed because I thought that the teacher could have maybe let him take the attention for a minute. Oh look what he’s doing. Wow, you’ve got your own beat there! And maybe, I’m going to try to follow what he’s doing. In other words, encouraging that contribution, that participation, that children have to an experience. For me it’s the main reason to be in these experiences, is to see what the children are bringing to it or what’s holding their interest in that experience, what they’re learning about. And fostering their self-confidence at the same time: You’re doing something valid. This is interesting. You’re going to take the floor for a minute, we’re watching you, we’re welcoming this. Instead, this teacher did what I think is normal and, again, very well-intentioned. She kept going with her way, her plan that she wanted this to go.

So what I’m saying, as parents, is to be open to that. Your child may be in church, they love that red hymnal and they want to be the one to hold the book open while we’re singing. Or maybe they love the little nook in the pew bench and they’re just enjoying that. They’re meeting the experiences on their terms. And that’s gold, that we often miss. And that ends up kind of discouraging children when what we want is to encourage them to be there as themselves, bringing in who they are, as long as it’s appropriate.

       6. Encourage Engagement, Not Distraction

So six, under once we’re there: take them outside if needed, but as much as possible encourage engagement rather than distraction from the experience. So have boundaries in this situation like taking them outside of the restaurant or outside of the church, removing them from those situations as needed. But otherwise, as much as possible, encouraging engagement rather than distraction from the whole experience. You know, bringing in your crayons to a restaurant or having them utilize the ones that are there, or maybe even bringing a little small toy in that they can use at the table safely. That allows them to still stay in the experience.

But when we do something that’s really common these days, and I do understand it, we take out our phone for our child or a little tablet or something while we’re at dinner. We do whatever it takes, right? But if this is a regular practice, what we’re teaching is that, You can’t handle this experience with us. And we’re also teaching that it’s okay to not pay attention to what’s going on in life right now. It’s okay to just totally be somewhere else. Probably for most of us, that’s not a message that we want our children to have. No judgment if you do. But it’s sort of the opposite of encouraging mindfulness and presence and values that a lot of us have.

Now, if this situation is a car for a long trip or especially an airplane, then yes, these are kind of static situations for a child. There’s not more happening, it’s sort of a lot of sameness. That’s when I might give them something that removes them a little more from the experience. But still I would do that as a last resort.

And this is also something to prepare for, going back to those first points I was making. You’re going to be in your car seat and we’ll be driving. It’ll be a long time. Would you like to hear music? Which music should we bring? What kind of object would you like to bring, or a book that you can look at, or a toy? If you want, you can always look out the window. There’s going to be sights passing by. What can we do to help you be comfortable in this situation? And of course if our child isn’t able to answer yet, then we’ll have those options. But still, I would prepare even your baby for what’s going to happen. And, You know, you may want to go to sleep because you will feel sleepy in the car probably. And we’ll be there in the front, but we won’t be able to sit with you until it’s time to stop. So all of that honesty, putting it out there. If you’re like me, you want to avoid the negatives, but that really doesn’t help our child. So to be brave and say all of the stuff, that’s a gift that we can give children. And ourselves, because it will probably go better.

        7. Give Your Child Autonomy by Inviting Their Participation

Okay, seven: consider and invite participation for that healthy sense of control and autonomy. Again, following your child’s interests.

Maybe in the library, they can still be there without running around, but they want to stand or they want to be the one to choose a book to bring and see if the librarian will read that book. And if not, you can read it to them after. My children, we were able to manage church for all of them, somehow. But you know, it was touch and go, and we used Sunday school, too. In those cases, maybe one of you, if there’s two of you, or just you, if you’re a single parent, you go to the Sunday school and you miss the service for a couple of Sundays, so that you can help your child get accustomed to those people. Because nobody wants to be left—especially when you can’t express yourself that well yet—with people that they don’t know, that don’t understand them, that are going to have a harder time knowing what they need. It’s uncomfortable, right? So give your child time to get used to a situation, it will pay off.

So yeah, we used Sunday school and also involving them in the experience of church services. And sometimes when they were quite young they were able to do it, and I was always amazed. I just remembered, because my mother-in-law brought it up recently, my son, he was four years old and he was an acolyte. He was carrying, in the procession, this huge candle. What my mother-in-law said the other day was, “I remember when I went to church with you all once and saw him doing that. And there was this girl walking right in front of him with long hair, and I thought, Oh gosh, he could set her hair on fire.” But you know, he was rising so much to that occasion, as children do when we give them ways to participate like that, real ways, that he took that job more seriously than anybody else there. He was so into that.

So if we give them that purpose, based on what they’re interested in, it can really help them settle and enjoy. Children want to feel autonomous. They want to be involved, not be bystanders. Allow them to express their autonomy and their capability.

Another thing to do in all these situations is, if you have more than one child, invite an older child to help with the younger one. Do you want to be the one to sit next to your brother and help him stay comfortable in the service or at the restaurant or in the storytime? That’s a very powerful way for an older child to participate and feel autonomous, feel that sense of control. That’s healthy.

         8. Let What They Do Be Enough

And then number eight: let what they can do be enough. If they’re like this boy in the music class, if they’re exploring around the room, not disturbing anyone, it’s perfectly appropriate for him to do that there. Let that be enough. See that as a success.

         9. Create Shared Rituals

And finally, number nine: create rituals together with your child around these experiences. So with what your child enjoys, or what you enjoy and decide to introduce them to, have those routines that you develop.

For us, for example, my oldest daughter, we went to this little Mexican cantina in our neighborhood, and we tried to go once a week when we could. Well they had an old-fashioned jukebox there. And we tried that one time and I let my daughter push the buttons, and I think she was barely one. But this became our thing. We enjoyed Here Comes The Sun, we enjoyed La Bamba, and all these great oldies that they had. It was so exciting for her to know we chose the song and it’s going to come on. And to be a part of that and enjoy that together. So that became our routine in that restaurant, and I love those memories. It was an amazing time with her.

We also had, there was this little sandwich shop that we used to go to. And we would sit outside on benches, and the pigeons would always be there trying to get your food, and have our sandwiches. And then they had a little playground, very small playground. She would play on the playground a little while and then we’d walk to a bathroom in this little shopping center. So we would do that. It was a ritual that we both looked forward to and that she felt, again, that on-top-of-it feeling of, Yes, I’m a part of this because I know everything that’s going to happen. Pretty much, I mean obviously she didn’t know what children were going to be at the playground or how many birds there would be that day. But those rituals frame our whole experience.

And then all of our children, in the local restaurant, it was the cantina and this other restaurant that was right next door to it that was a Japanese place where they would have rice and miso soup and it was the most inexpensive meal and they loved it. And then there was a little fish pond outside and either my husband or I would take them out to the fish pond while the other one got to stay in and finish their food. And then everybody would come back and maybe eat a little more.

So find those rituals that work for both of you. And, if they’re like my children and most children, they’ll never get old. We’ll only miss them when we all grow out of those experiences and look back with nostalgia.

I hope some of that helps. And, as always, these are my opinions based on my training and my extensive observations of all different kinds of children over the years in my work, and of course my own personal experiences with my children. So you don’t have to agree, these may not be right for you. I would love to hear if you can write to me or share somewhere in a comment or review some of your ideas or what’s worked for you in these situations. I would really love to hear it. So I guess this is the first time I’m saying I’d love some feedback.

Thank you so much. We can do this.

The post How to Help Kids Behave in Restaurants, Church, Storytime, Music Class, and More appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Educator Ashley Causey-Golden was drawn to Montessori principles but felt something missing that she longed to provide: cultural relevancy. She wondered, “What would it look like to create a Montessori space that uplifted, affirmed, celebrated Black children?” Fulfilling this desire has been a journey of discovery and grace (with a lot of mistakes along the way). Ashley’s ultimate success gave her the courage to pursue another passion: nature education. As the co-founder of Gather Forest School and creator of Afrocentric Montessori, Ashley has a wealth of experience to share with all families and educators interested in nurturing our children’s spirit, sense of community, and connection to the natural world.

Transcript of “Nurturing a Deeper Connection to Nature and Heritage (with Ashley Causey-Golden)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I have an awesome guest: educator, Ashley Causey-Golden. She founded Afrocentric Montessori, which blends Afrikan principles into Montessori education. And she’s the co-creator of Gather Forest School, which offers a totally outdoor learning experience with the mission to guide children in their lifelong relationships with the natural world. She’s also the mother of a toddler and she’s actually hiding out in the closet to be able to record with me today.

Ashley has a lot of wisdom and experience to share and I’m really excited to have her here.

Hello Ashley, welcome to Unruffled. Thank you so much for being here.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  I’m excited.

Janet Lansbury:  Thank you. It’s so great to reconnect with you. I really wanted to share your work. It’s so inspiring and uplifting and really life-changing and I wanted to share it with my listeners here on Unruffled. Could you talk a little about how you got into this, the work that you’re doing now, how you got on this path?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yes, because it definitely wasn’t a straight path.

So my background is in elementary and special ed and when I was doing my teaching internship it just didn’t connect with me teaching within the public schools. I was always asking questions about race and equity and my professors were just like: “You know what? You should go to graduate school. You can get those answers met there.” And so when I went to Columbia’s Teacher’s College, I worked at Hollingworth and that actually was the first time I was in a classroom that was focused on aesthetics, discovery, that was child led.

Janet Lansbury:  Can you talk about what that is?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  It was Montessori inspired, a little bit of Reggio Emilia, a little bit of Waldorf. It was a mixed ideology practice, definitely child led. We did have themes that we explored with the children. But let’s say the theme we’re exploring are trees for three weeks… If the children get really into it and start getting more to the nuances, those three weeks might turn into a month or two. So we really looked at children stretch our own imagination and we just made sure the environment was prepared for the children each day.

And I came from scripted lesson plans. That’s the world I came from. Then I came here, I was like Wow, this is exciting! And then I instantly thought about how would this look like for black children? So that question was in the back of my mind throughout everything.

After leaving Hollingworth, I was like, I need a job <laugh>. So then I went into the charter network and that also was very eye-opening to me. I’m not here to say there’s anything bad about charter schools, but for me I just felt like there wasn’t enough grace for parents, especially for the Black parents who were trusting that charter network. We came in with our own preconceived notions, right? Children falling behind, some children coming to school, not having a full meal… All of these things were like preconceived notions

Janet Lansbury: That the school had about families, you mean?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Also what we as educators, as workers in the space also had about families. Because it was a very savior-like mentality. Like, if we’re not doing this for the kids, who’s going to do it for the kids? That kind of mindset.

Janet Lansbury:  Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  And so I just really wanted to understand, because I didn’t have kids at that time. I worked with children but I didn’t know what it felt like to be a parent.

So I actually got into birth work, and being in the room with families with birthing women, it’s like a light bulb went off. I was like, oh, they care about their children, like the light, the love that oozes from the body when the child is born. I was like, oh okay. That’s when for me, grace became part of the equation when it came to education, and it was less about theory, less about doing it right all the time. I thought, oh we just need to be practical. It just needs to make sense. And then after working with families and being a doula, I was like, oh okay, let’s make it practical and realistic and not that the sky is falling

Janet Lansbury:  And really connected with people’s experience, right? It sounds like you identified with those birthing mothers and you realized this is about connecting and being supportive to individuals.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yes. Working with them to get them what they need. And sometimes that school was what they needed and sometimes there are actually other ways that were better suited for the child and their family. Just being honest and real with families and students.

And that experience led me to fall into Montessori in a way, because the practices and the theory of Montessori aligned. But I didn’t know why it aligned. You can read about something or hear something and it just clicks and that’s how Montessori was for me. It was a very respectful ideology that I was like Ah, I wanna learn more about it.

But as I got into the world of Montessori, again I was wondering about Black children because it was Uber-white. My instructors was white, the schools that I worked at predominantly white, the children that I was serving, predominantly white. And I just wanted more. 

How can I learn more about Montessori but also be true to my own identity and culture?

So after my stint at the charter school, I actually went to Brooklyn to work at to Seneca Montessori School and Seneca is a truly a hundred percent Black space. Everything that’s brought into the classroom needs to be represented of Black culture. So when I first started working there, it was a huge mind shift, because I actually never worked in this space that was, one, a hundred percent Black, and two, pro-black and very firm in that value.

Janet Lansbury:  What was different about that? Like what are some of the details? Because one thing I would love to help parents get from this podcast is how to bring their culture into their children’s education, whether that’s at home or in a center. What are some of the things that you do to make it richer culturally and help them feel more of their identity in the classroom?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  So for us, we had to do a deep dive with in the continent of Africa. So we had to look at each country and study each country in terms not just the flag, but in terms of food, clothes, music, language. On a higher education level, yes I could pull books, articles, but I’m working with three, four and five-year-olds. So I couldn’t find easy principles or even information that was broken down to a level that a child could understand. So a lot of things I was typing out, writing out, freehand drawing for the classroom.

We celebrated the major holidays that are relevant within Black culture, which was really fun because we were able to bring in elders from the community to help us with those celebrations. So, I talked to families. It can start very simple. Like you can bring in books but also touch into your community and see what’s available for you to visit, to see. Intergenerational education is key. So are there any elders in the community that you can bring in. Food is another wonderful touchpoint. Music. So I was able to bring those touchpoints into the classroom that actually made parents interested. They’re like, “Hey, my child came home talking about this and I never thought about it but I used to make this with my grandma.” It started larger conversations.

Janet Lansbury:  Wonderful. That’s so encouraging, right? For the parents to embrace more of their history and their culture and bring that alive for children. Everybody benefits from that, right?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  They do. And I will say I do find that sometimes there is so much hesitancy to wanting to do it quote, unquote, “right,” that the ball never gets started. We never get started on it because we’re always reading, we’re always buying another book, always researching so we can get it “right” so our children can be politically correct and make sure they don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. And that’s draining. It’s draining and it’s daunting when you’re a parent and you have so much on your plate already. I’m just like, “y’all, let’s just make it make sense, to be honest.”

And it is messy. There are so many times I have said the wrong thing, put my foot in my mouth, offended, and then that’s where grace comes in, and apologies, just letting go of the ego of I’m going to be right all the time, because I’m not.

I feel like when you take your dive and you just start, it gets easier along the way, it becomes more freeing where it is actually second nature. Now you’re like: hmm, I’m curious about this. I don’t have to have it all together <laugh> before I say something.

Janet Lansbury:  Can you give a specific example of that?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Of having it all together before I say something?

Janet Lansbury:  <laugh> Well what you had to look up or what you thought you had to look up.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yeah, so we just moved out of Native American Heritage Month and for me that was a huge area that I actually did not know much about. My trajectory within schooling was very traditional. I still remember my kindergarten, we were doing pilgrims and Indian play.

Janet Lansbury:  Oh my kids too. I have the pictures and they’re mortified now, you know?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yeah, I know this might be embarrassing to say, but I was in my mid-twenties, I’m cringing, I was in grad school before I realized: oh a lot of the lesson plans I did during my teacher program were wrong. And this time around I checked out books, I listened to pronunciations of tribes. Children asked questions where I’m like, “I don’t know, let’s look it up.” We still have students who believe that Native American and indigenous people still lived in teepees. And so it was like, wait, let’s just jump into it and talk about it. And it became more frank.

When I tell you that was very like cringeworthy to me — things that you learned about yourself and things that you did were like wrong <laugh>, you’re always like, I don’t want anybody to know or I don’t want to step back in that trap. And now I feel like yeah, I did all of that. I got really messy. But it’s freeing in a way saying yeah, I learned that way but now I want to do something different. I want to do something better.

There are so many other voices talking about their history and culture that I don’t have to spend hours researching on my own. There are so many voices out there today that I can listen from and share.

Janet Lansbury:  And find that you do relate to, you know, every kind of person.

And also you’re modeling for these children. I’m thinking as you’re talking, you’re modeling how to be an open-minded, self forgiving a lifelong learner, which is the only way you can be a lifelong learner is to be self forgiving, staying open. Because just as you said about all the things that people are afraid to step into because they might not do it perfectly or get it right, get it politically correct, you know, that’s how we close off to learning and that’s the opposite of what we want to teach children, right from when they’re little.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Oh yes. To be open and accepting. And I do have in the back of my mind and I’m totally aware of, it’s a real thing about being called out. It’s a real thing about being blacklisted. Those are real things but if we think about how we’re teaching the next generation, how we’re teaching our children… I try not to let those concerns and those fears limit my work. That’s just a part of the reality that we live in. People live off soundbites, <laugh>, yeah people live off soundbites, snapshots Instagram captions

Janet Lansbury:  And they can read into it a really extreme thing too, you know, because it’s just… If all you’re giving is a sound bite, you know the meaning is is lost and kind of corrupted.

So yeah, I mean, what you’re doing is so, so freeing and you’re giving people permission to do that too.  And you know, definitely white people, well I can’t speak for everyone but I definitely feel that: oh gosh I am going to say it wrong, I’m going to do it wrong. And and I have. I have done it wrong plenty of times but we keep trying, you know, we just keep learning and trying and doing better and that’s really all any of us can do.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  That’s it. Keep showing up.

Janet Lansbury:  The other area that I really wanted to dive into with you is the nature education, because for me it’s like the ultimate, the idea of like going to a nature school sounds so incredible and I wanted to hear a little about that. And also how parents in urban environments or home environments where there’s no outside yard can bring nature into their children’s lives, if you have any ideas about that,

Ashley Causey-Golden:  To have nature and to be in nature doesn’t mean that you’re hiking in the forest every day. It can be just walking in your community. It could be bringing plants inside your home, having plants accessible.  If you have animals, that’s a part of nature too. But it is really teaching children: how can I coexist with Mother Earth?  Because yes, it’s freeing for children to run around, it’s freeing to also just exist, but we also were teaching children: “How do you care for the trees? How do you care for plants, animals?” I’m talking also about earthworms and insects and spiders. Things that you kind of step on and crush because you’re scared of them or you run for them. Things that people are like ugh, it’s just a bug. We’re really teaching children that every, every essence is important to the grand scheme of things. Even the mosquito. Everything is important to the greater picture. And so that’s what working and being in nature has taught me.

Janet Lansbury:  And so what do you do when a child stomps on a bug?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We actually had to sit a child down today about harming earthworms. We remind children that even the ant, mosquito, fly earthworm, we’re in their home. We are visiting their home for these four hours. Just like you wouldn’t want someone to come into your home and squash you, hit you, pull you apart. We have to keep that same mindset when we are in these animals home.

Some children, even myself, I’m not even going to exclude myself, I am afraid of bees, spiders. You won’t see me walk deep into the woods cause I don’t do well with spiders. I said, “If you’re scared of these things, make space, let’s not tear down a spiders web, because it takes spiders many, many days to make these homes. If you are afraid, let’s not go down that path, or we’ll walk around.”

So some of our children take it very much to heart when another classmate sometimes intentionally or unintentionally harms the animal. Now, my co-founder Shelby and myself, we actually don’t have to say much because the children actually step in and like ask questions like, “Hey why did you do that?” And then they problem-solve like, “You could have did this, this, this, this or this” <laugh> “before you actually stepped on this animal.”

So it is expanding children’s ability to empathize and think about how are we co-living? How are we sharing this space?

Janet Lansbury:  That’s so cool.

And what do you do then when it’s really, really cold or boiling hot? Don’t the children complain? .

Ashley Causey-Golden: Yes. So your listeners have probably heard “clothing is everything.” Clothing helps keep your body warm. Certain clothing helps keep your body cool. But sometimes you’re just hot and many times I’m just cold as well. So we will sing, try to do hand work, we try to do something to activate the mind.

I will say our children move their body a lot more than Shelby and I. So a lot of the time when I’m super cold, it’s because I’m not moving my body enough to generate heat. But the children will find ways to get their bodies warm again.

If the plans that Shelby and I have don’t work out like: “oh let’s do this, let’s do that,” they’re like: “Nah, we actually want to play tag.” We’re like, “cool,” because they’re moving their bodies.

On days that it is pouring down rainy we will find shelter.

Janet Lansbury:  So you don’t actually have an indoor space?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We don’t.

Janet Lansbury:  Cool. That’s so brave of you <laugh>. You don’t close the school if it’s pouring rain? Wait, does it snow there? No. You’re in the… Where are you?

Ashley Causey-Golden: In Atlanta. No snow, thank goodness.

Janet Lansbury:  But do you have rain days or days when you close the school because the weather’s just too much?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We will close if it is lightning. Let’s say we’re outside and it’s rainy and we hear on the forecast (since we’re constantly checking our phones on days that it’s rainy), we will let parents know ahead of time that we need to close early because lightning’s coming around 11 o’clock. And so parents who picked their children up early.

Where we’re co-located, we do have an indoor space but we only used that indoor space when it’s heavy rains. If it’s drizzling, we’re all fine. Two weeks ago it was about 30-ish degrees and it was pouring rain. So we did spend an hour inside reading doing community circle for us to warm up our bodies but also to just take a break from the pouring rain. And so by the time we went back outside it was drizzling, the kids were playing, no one was thinking about going back inside. But in that brief moment of that heavy rain we’re like, we just need some relief <laugh>. And to speak for myself, I needed some relief. 

Janet Lansbury:  Yes, I do think we feel it worse than the children. Sometimes their bodies just work better too. Besides the fact that they’re moving a lot, their engines are newer, they’re a little fresher than mine for sure.

So what’s an example of a curriculum that you would have for your day? Is it totally child led or do you do the, the Reggio Emilia thing of gathering from them what they want to explore further and then you go with that? How do you do it?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We have a mixture, a Montessori-Waldorf flow but it is sprinkled with Reggio Emilia. So we do have a rhythm for the day where we have our community circle, we have lesson time, nature exploration time, snack. We might have a daily activity which is based in nature. Then we have lunch and then it’s time to say farewell.

And so when we have our work cycle we do align it to the Georgia State standards. We use the standards just as a guide because many of our families are homeschooling families or wish to homeschool. So we try to align ourself with what parents need. A lot of them are new to homeschooling. We have a few that been doing it for a while so they use us more as a a place for their child to be social. But for those who are new to homeschooling, we always remind families about the state standards, to use it as an alignment. But we’re not regulated like a traditional school who will go strictly by standards.

Janet Lansbury:  And what grade do you go up to or what year?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yeah, three and our oldest is nine.

Janet Lansbury:  And are you sort of increasing it as you go or you decided to stop there at that age?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We’re such a tight-knit community so I don’t see much turnover. where we will just keep having that same aged people. I think we’re going to increase it as we go.

What is so refreshing about Gather is that we get to know the strengths of our students and we get to know what they’re interested in and that helps us prepare what’s going to be at community circle. It helps us prepare what’s going to be given during the work cycle. And that’s why I’m able to bring in some Montessori elements to help teach those ideas. It’s nice that we have that flexibility that we’re not solely using one curriculum. We’re able to just flow with the different needs of our students.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s great. But going back to your curriculum, what’s an example of nature exploration? Is that children doing what they want or is that guided?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  It’s two-pronged. Yes, children do what they want and it’s also guided. So before we go into morning circle, we let the children do nature exploration and that’s free play. So we have some children who will like to dig, children like to find rocks or fossils. Some children like to run and move their bodies. We allow children to climb on trees. They each get to do what they choose.

After we do community circle and set the expectation for the day… We’re learning about animal habitats. So everything after community circle is more guided or what we could call structure. So if we’re doing our watercolor station, children are finding items in nature that the animals will use as habitat and then they’re recreating that using watercolor. Or we’re finding native trees in Georgia, so they’re finding leaves that they can write about in their journal. So it’s still in nature but it’s much more guided in structure than what it looks like in the beginning of the day.

Janet Lansbury:  Ah, that sounds so idyllic to me.

What are some big mistakes that you’ve made where you learned, oh gosh this doesn’t work. Or have there been things like that that come to mind?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  It does. Because idyllic is a beautiful word to use for this environment, I also want to be realistic when parents are listening to this because some parents would be extremely skeptical. How are they learning math? How are they reading? Those are really big questions too. And I will say that the biggest learning curve I learned about our community co-running Gather is how we serve children. I strongly believe that children should be in the environment where they have some elements of the natural world. I’m not saying that you have to be outside all day or even six hours a day, but I do believe children need to be tied to some aspect of the natural world.

But there also needs to be a balance cause a lot of our families are layering what we’re doing at Gather within their home. So they are doing the math, the reading, the science on top of what we’re doing.

Families who have this idea of the school should do everything: the school should teach my child, the school should do the social and emotional work and when the child comes home, we’re just doing routines. You get snack, rest a little bit, dinner’s prepared, bedtime routine and then we start again. I will say Gather is not a best fit for a family who operates that way. This is really a place where we are partnering with parents who are also doing some of the work at home. So that was the biggest learning curve. I think as parents, as loved ones, we do want the best, we want the best for our children. I think there are very few people who’ll be like, nah, I wanna give my child just 30%.

Janet Lansbury:  Right? Mediocre, mediocre education for my child.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Doing the best for our child just looks different based on what we have and what our needs are.

Janet Lansbury:  Of course. You shared this quote from Queen Taese, is that how you pronounce her name? 

Ashley Causey-Golden: Yeah, Taese.

Janet Lansbury:  Queen Taese, on your Instagram page. And it stuck out to me:

“Your life is a curriculum and you need to take ownership of that, whether your child attends public private charter school or is homeschooled.”

Yes. And that feels very true. You know, even to when you have adult children like I do. The gatherings, the way that you connect with them and continue to engage with them and be with them and your relationship is… you’re teaching, you’re teaching relationships, you’re teaching what it’s like to be adults, together with what it’s like to be an older adult. Yes. You’re teaching how your career or your life goals keep maybe changing and you know, it is so rich, the whole experience, and to have that understanding that all of a child’s life is learning, it’s not just what they go to Gather school for.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  That is key. It changes. We all go through seasons. We all go through changes, and I wish that I could sprinkle fairy dust on all parents to realize that things change. Children change styles of learning, styles of parenting sometime change and that’s all okay.

Some of our families I know for a fact Gather is perfect. Can I say that Gather will be a perfect fit for that same family 2, 3, 4 years from now? I can’t, because the child might need something new, something else that another environment can provide for. And that’s okay.

I think sometimes we get so rooted in a certain philosophy or ideal that we totally miss the child who is in front of us. And we also silence our needs too. As parents, as adults, we put our needs on the back burner when it’s just seeing shift and change and that’s okay.

Janet Lansbury:  Exactly. This is also answering my other question which is: what positive things have you learned or what kind of secrets have you learned about education?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Being able to walk with parents but not being too invested in the decisions that they make. I don’t know if that’s clear, but what I mean is- 

Janet Lansbury:  Totally clear.

Ashley Causey-Golden: Okay.

Janet Lansbury:  As somebody that works with parents, totally clear. And as a parent myself, yeah. I mean that’s the thing about parenting, everybody gets to make those choices and they’re not going to make the choices that you would make for them maybe, you know? And that’s how it has to be. That’s the beautiful part of it: they’re developing their own relationship with their child.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  That’s it. And I think that has been the greatest lesson: that parents are going to make their own decision and that’s okay. And I can still be the individual I am, the teacher, all of the things that I am. And still also being in community with those families and be of like mind and finding those spaces. I think at year one, when we first started, we wanted do everything right. We wanted to be everything to every parent. I remember making those calls, trying to get people to like come to Gather <laugh>. That was, I want to say stressful. But they were like: “What are y’all doing outside? How is my child learning anything?”

“They will,” we promised. We wanted to meet every parent’s need or desire and it was just too much. It was too much. And so that’s the secret I learned, just letting go. Saying, “this is what we offer, this is what we can provide your child.” And just leaving that on the table. “And if you want to join us, we’d love to have you. If you’re like ah, this isn’t for me. That’s great. You can still communicate with us online. We have community events. If you would like to stop in, we would love to have you.”

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. I think being very confident like that “this is what we offer and it may not be right for you.”

When my children were in preschool, there were big problems going on with a couple of the local preschools in that parents really wanted them to teach more academics very early on. And the schools were feeling pressured by that. And some of them succumbed to that because they had to please the parents. And you know, I was trying to support the early childhood educators. “It’s okay if people don’t want what you have, but believe in what you have.”

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yes. Believe in what you have. And parents can like mirror that back and believe in how you are parenting your child. Because it is incredibly hard when we live in such a society that everything is outward facing. It seems like you are looking into everyone’s home seeing what they’re doing and, of course, everyone’s only showing the glamorized version

Janet Lansbury: <laugh> Right, where they got it “right,” 

Ashley Causey-Golden:  But it is so hard to be like, I am doing this right? It’s always like a question mark. I need the validation from someone outside of my own mind. Yeah,

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. When in fact there’s actually no right way <laugh>. I mean that’s the secret too. As somebody with older children, I can say there’s no right way. It’s a journey. You’re learning all the time. Your child is changing, you’re getting surprised and seeing that what fit before doesn’t fit. It’s just life. It’s a journey. There’s no end.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury: You have found something that inspires you. And I love how you said, I don’t know if this was on your Instagram or on your your website, which is by the way, Afrocentric Montessori, you said, “I keep asking myself the question, what would it look like to create a Montessori space that uplifted, affirmed, celebrated Black children?” And that’s what inspires you. That’s what you wanted to offer. That and the nature education, which is also incredible. And you know, I’m sure there may even be Black families that don’t necessarily want that.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  We were pressed against the wall for many Black families who were just like, “my kid’s not going to be running around outside when they can be reading, writing above grade level. I want my child to excel beyond their age.”

Oh, you hear my little one.

Janet Lansbury:  I do <laugh>.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  <laugh>.

Janet Lansbury: Anthony, hey, your mom was hiding in the closet. How crazy is that?

Ashley Causey-Golden: He’s on my lap now so he’s fine.

Janet Lansbury:  She’s in the closet. What’s your mom doing in the closet? Talking to some lady in the computer. How could she do that?

Ashley Causey-Golden:  So now he’s happy. He’s like, ah, reunited.

Janet Lansbury:  Well we should probably end, but you know, I could talk to you all day. I just love hearing about your work. It’s really inspiring. It’s just bringing back a lot of memories for me about the early years with my children as well and the choices that we’ve had to make and how imperfect it all was. And thank you for all you do. 

And again, Ashley has an Instagram page, Afrocentric Montessori, and also one for the Gather Forest School.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Thank you for inviting me. And also <laugh> allowing my little one to join.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s my favorite thing. Bye, Anthony.

Ashley Causey-Golden:  Oh, he’s waving to you.

Janet Lansbury:  Oh, nice. Okay, take care. And we’ll talk soon.

The post Nurturing a Deeper Connection to Nature and Heritage (with Ashley Causey-Golden) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Lessons, Sports, and Hobbies: A Child-Led Approach”

Hi. This is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m going to be talking about an approach that I believe in for handling our children’s extracurriculars as they grow, so lessons, sports, clubs, and other activities. How can we help them navigate these and how can we navigate them ourselves as parents with our own limited resources and time? How can we make the most of these types of opportunities for our children?

I think one of the reasons I’ve hesitated to broach this topic… Well, I guess I have in other podcasts touched on it, but I haven’t really hit this topic head-on because, honestly, I feel like my approach is very unique in that I’m really the only one, even within the communities or people I know who studied with Magda Gerber or study her approach, or follow this way of parenting, I’m sort of the only one that believes in this so strongly, in what I’m going to share.

I see this way of approaching extracurriculars as a very natural extension of what Magda Gerber said in her first principle, that we can have basic trust in an infant as an initiator, an explorer, and a self-learner. They know themselves better than we know them. One of the joys of parenting, of course, is that we get to learn about them.

That’s one of the big benefits of this approach I’m going to share. I’m going to call it the “wait” approach. Just as we waited for our baby to show us what they’re going to be reaching for, what they want to do with that object, whether they even want that object or they’re just reaching out for another reason, checking out the distance between that ball and how far their arm can reach, that we’re not making assumptions about children in their play, that we’re allowing for that wait, that openness on our part.

Instead of saying: Oh, let me give that to her. She must really want it. She’s reaching out for it, we wait to see what they’re actually wanting to learn about rather than me saying, “Here’s some cool toy that I think you should want to learn about right now.” Maybe if I have new toys, I’m just putting them in my child’s play area for them to discover and decide to choose, so they’re not getting this subtle feeling for me that this is what I should want to do right now, rather than what I really want to do.

It’s encouraging inner direction. When we take that approach, it makes for so many wonderful surprises. I thought for sure my child was going to do that with the blocks. Instead, they lined them all up, or who knows. Maybe they were listening to the sound that the block made by hitting different things in their play area, hitting the wall, hitting the floor, hitting another toy.

We’re opening up to seeing our child a little more clearly. We can do that with their extracurriculars. Instead of saying to our child, “Do you want to try this or do you want to try that?” we can actually wait until the idea comes from them. I mean, that’s the really hard part, I guess.

This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with giving your child options, but it’s important to understand how influential we are as parents. We are very powerful to our children, and the need to please us is strong, even when they’re toddlers and they’re rejecting us or they’re teenagers and they’re pushing us away because developmentally they have to do that to individuate from us. Underneath it all, they really want us to be happy with them. They really want us to be proud of them. When we’re offering suggestions like tee-ball, or, “Don’t you want to play the piano?” or, “Do you want to try this?” even just offering those can sometimes… With some children, it can indicate: My parent wants me to do this. But if we wait for our child to actually share their wish with us or their idea with us of something that they want to do, and, of course, if we can make that happen — we may not be able to with the resources that we have or the time that we have. But if we can, then it really pays off. Here are some of the ways:

We never waste our money or our time signing children up for things that they end up not enjoying, that we end up having to maybe coax them to, or drag them to, or maybe they get there and they don’t participate. All of these things parents share with me can be avoided if we really leave it up to our children to be the ones to tell us what they want to do. Because they know.

In my experience with three children and with the other parents I know that follow this approach, they always benefit. Even if they end up not staying with it for that long, they always benefit from it when it’s their choice. It’s like the way that we choose to take a course rather than feeling like we have to take this course to get our degree or to get the job that we want. When we actually want to take the course, we get so much more out of it. When we want to learn a new hobby or a sport, we get excited about that. We’re engaged, and it’s that engagement that causes us to learn so much more, and be encouraged as a learner, so we actually enjoy the process of learning. Besides learning that specific subject, we’re gaining confidence in our abilities, in our choices, and validation that learning, which is such an important aspect of life, is rich, fun, and exciting.

We’re all born with the ability to do this. But as a child, those messages that come from inside of us, those messages of what we want to do can get a little muddled when we want to do it because our parent is smiling about it, or because our parent seems to think that it’s cool or that we should want to do it.

I’ve never known my children to come up with an idea that wasn’t valid for them at that time, something that would actually enrich them. These are called enrichment, these activities. They’re enriching if our child is drawn to them. But if not, they can be a source of disinterest. They can maybe be a source of feelings of failure and disappointment in themselves.

Another benefit for us, just on a practical level… If you’re anything like me, setting boundaries… I know I talk about it all the time, and that’s because I had to learn this. It’s not my natural way to be a boss, to be a leader with children, to want people to do things that they’re saying they don’t want to do or stop them from doing things that they do want to do. Even though I know how important it is, and I really had to step up and learn all this, I have a limited amount of, I guess, you could call it “boss juice.” If I had to use up some of that juice on getting my kids to go to practice, getting them to go to a class that I signed them up for for six weeks, getting them to stay on that team to finish their commitment, if all of that was up to me, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. The place that I have to go in myself to step up to try to make my child do something when they’re pushing back, I find it exhausting.

But when we wait, when we use this wait philosophy, and allow children to choose, and allow them to navigate this journey, which is really a life journey and a journey of their passions, their essence exploring itself, then I get to go along for the ride. Just like I do when I practice observing and being responsive in children’s play and don’t put myself in the position of being the teacher or entertainer. This can continue. This is my favorite part of parenting, so of course, I wanted it to continue, but also because I just don’t want to be that person trying to drag kids. I’ve worked with so many parents that have gotten themselves stuck there, and it’s not fun. To my mind, it’s not necessary, and we can wait right from the beginning and not get them started on something that is a little bit more on our agenda than theirs.

The coolest surprise is in the things that children choose. Just like the way that they play so differently than we might expect, they’ll surprise us with their choices in extracurriculars. This can be outside of school as children get older or it can be choices that they make at that school. Did they want to be on this team? Or what language did they want to choose to study? Any time that they have choices in their learning, I believe in honoring that and opening up those green lights for them, because there are so many red and yellow lights. The more green lights we can give children, the easier it is for them to accept the red and yellow lights.

We get to learn about them, see their choices, be surprised, sometimes amazed, get these glimpses of their essence.

It’s questionable how appropriate it is for a child to start taking a lesson when they’re only two, or three, or even four. They’re still benefiting so much from their self-directed play. Lessons or sports can take time away from that.

For children of all ages, free play is therapeutic. It gives them the opportunity to assimilate all the experiences, including educational experiences that they’ve had. It allows children to daydream, learn to entertain themselves with less, and enjoy being with themselves. This is a gift for life.

In that sense, structured activity agendas take time away from these other types of play and learning that really matter most.

And the onus is off of us to try to direct this journey, which maybe for some different personalities than me that’s a disappointment or a problem. For me, it’s a gift. The more I can go along for the ride and enjoy and not have to be the director, the better. I want to keep learning about and understanding my child.

Another benefit is that allowing children to choose and waiting for them to do that is the best way to gauge their readiness. Magda Gerber said, “Readiness is when they do it.” In this case, readiness can also be when they express a desire to do it that comes from them.

Oftentimes, children, we put them into classes, and parents will ask me about that: “Other children seem to be listening. My child isn’t. My child wants to go do their own thing. They don’t want to join in.”

But when a child brings something up that they want to do… I’m going to talk about how that even happens because I can hear parents feeling like: my child’s not going to bring this up. When they bring it up themselves, when it comes from them, that means that they are ready. It means that they’re ready to take direction from others, which doesn’t happen usually until at least, at least three years old, often older, or that maybe they’re ready for that kind of teamwork feeling, that they’re ready to participate in a team, ready to compete. With a lot of these sports, there’s competition. Some people think competition is a bad thing. I don’t agree with that. It’s a positive thing when children are ready for it. When they choose it, it almost always means that they feel ready for it.

But if they’re doing these activities even a little bit for us and then they lose the game or they struggle with the skill, that hurts harder than if they’ve chosen this challenge themselves. It’s still going to hurt, and they learn to deal with that, but it can hurt much more when it feels like, I’m letting my parents down.

Another benefit is this feeling of being trusted. When we trust in our children, that they know themselves, and we’re giving them free rein to decide some of these things, it empowers them. It builds self-confidence. But, it is challenging. I know it’s so challenging. We’re getting peer or societal pressure. “Your child should be doing this. My child’s doing that. Aren’t they doing this?”

I hear about it from parents, whether it’s just other parents or maybe other people that want to sell their programs to you. That’s one of the challenges we face.

To clarify this even more for yourself and combat some of the peer pressure around putting children into activities, David Elkind has a wonderful book, The Hurried Child, with a lot of information on this topic.

Another challenge we might face is our own natural eagerness. I have this for my children to enjoy some of the experiences that I did. I just want them to get to do that. It’s really, really hard to wait.

Again, none of this is make-or-break if you don’t want to wait. This is just my suggestion that, as you can hear in my voice, I totally believe in, but you’ve got to go with what resonates with you, what feels right to you. I’m not even trying to sell you on this. I’m just offering it because it’s been so helpful to me on this path with my children. I see it as so helpful to them. How could I not share something that feels so good to me?

I think when we’re challenging ourselves to try to trust, we can have that sports equipment, or those instruments, or those craft materials, or art materials at home for our children to experiment with at any time. We can see what they’re drawn to or we can even try to show them something and see if they pick up on it.

Children will, If they have those interests, they will explore them at home or at their friend’s house. If they love to dance, then they’re going to dance at home and they’re going to make up dances, and it will be creative for them.

They don’t lose interest by not taking a class that puts structure on these activities for them. They don’t lose interest by not doing that, but they can sometimes lose interest or lose confidence in themselves around that particular talent when they go into something structured where they have to conform to whatever’s going on in that group, or in that class, or with that teacher that they’re not ready for because they haven’t chosen it. It can turn them off, unfortunately.

I think we can all relate to this when something that we just love doing as a hobby is fun. Then, now I’ve got to do it, and I’ve got to do it this way that these people want me to do, and now it’s not fun anymore. Children are very impressionable that way, much more than we are as adults.

What this wait approach does is helps them to stay in tune with that voice inside, that sense of themselves and their inner direction, their calling or callings. If it’s in them, it will naturally build. But putting that structure on children’s natural desires and talents too early can have a negative effect.

How do we do this? Children catch wind of ideas: hobbies, sports, and other things through books, maybe other media, through their friends. We could still maybe expose them if we’re afraid that they don’t know something exists that they might really enjoy. But interestingly, the thing I’ve noticed about readiness is that it really seems to coincide with children being naturally exposed. For example, they hear about that sport, instrument, or type of art through a friend, a book, or other media. That happens and coincides with them being ready for it.

When they’re at those ages where they don’t hear about those things or they don’t relate them to themselves… Like maybe there’s a child in a book that does ballet, but I don’t consider that as something I want to do yet because I’m actually not ready for that. I’m not ready to benefit from that. That’s really what this is. It’s not about that we’re damaging them by putting them in that ballet class at two years old because we really want to see them in the tutu and enjoy that as a parent. It’s not that we’re harming them, but they’re probably not going to benefit from it and it might turn them off. I think if we do want to approach those things that way, just even acknowledging: this is for me, can help us to stay clear on the difference between our child’s inner-directed desires and ours for them.

Our child, let’s say, brings up that they want to do something or they ask about it. The next thing I would do is take my child to go see what that really looks like so their image of dance class, let’s say, because we were talking about that. Their image of what a dance class is like from a book or something might be very different from what it’s really like. So I would take them to go watch the actual class. Or if the people in charge let them try one class, they could do that. No strings attached. Still seeing this in a wide, open way as parents, but just to be more sure that they know what they’re getting into so that it is beneficial and set up for success for them. Keeping that open mind and open heart of trust for our children is really hard, but one of the gifts that this experience of raising children can give us.

Here’s one question that I received on Instagram. This parent says:

Would you consider discussing children’s activities and balancing their desire to try a lot of different things and not overloading them? Also, societal pressure that parents may feel to do everything. My oldest children are six and four, and we homeschool. Somehow, our schedule seems overwhelming at times, but I can’t seem to drop anything, piano, soccer, tee-ball, et cetera, all the while they’re wanting to try martial arts. Thank you. Your work has changed my life. I definitely would not enjoy parenthood this much as a stressed-out military wife and mother of children with neurodiversity if it weren’t for your content and guidance.

That was nice of her.

This is a high-level problem. It’s a privilege to be able to offer children any extracurriculars, especially this many, and that her children are so engaged and interested in all these different activities is cool. I think what I would do is, first of all, consider what works for you, number one. Because the most important thing is that we don’t feel like a harried accommodating parent. That’s the self-care in this. We don’t bite off more than we can chew. We know that downtime and home time are very positive, beneficial experiences and that children aren’t going to lose out if they don’t go to a class. They’re not going to lose out on a talent, cultivating a talent. That interest will remain with them.

What I would do if I did have all these options and my child kept wanting to do more things? I would observe how engaged my child is in these experiences. Sometimes it’s not even just the activity itself, it’s the relationships that they’re making through those experiences with the other children, with the coaches, or the teachers. From there, I would ask them what matters most to them. Certainly the six-year-old could answer that. I would ask them to choose because they can always do something else later. I mean, the positive with a lot of team sports is that they end up being seasonal, so children can maybe do community sports throughout the year. I would ask your child to choose what matters most to them, also using your own experience of observing that child, their interest, and their engagement in the activity. Of course, if they were the ones to choose it from the beginning, there’s probably a lot more chance that they’re more engaged in that.

Now, just to speak one more time about the societal pressure thing, here’s how I feel… There’s never going to be a better reason in our lives to practice ignoring societal and peer pressure, and putting it in its place, than in this experience, this journey of nurturing and building relationships with our children. I would look at where this pressure is actually coming from. Why is it coming at me? Pressure can only work on us if we allow ourselves to be open to it.

For me, I was learning and resonating with Magda Gerber’s approach. It was so out there at the time. It was so different that I learned to jump off that societal pressure track very early on. I knew what I was doing was different, and I became very confident and proud of what I was doing.

That’s what I’m hoping for all parents. I want you to feel confident in your choices. I want you to feel self-reliant.

My hope is that you will cultivate your very own unique parenting model and feel proud modeling it for others. When others doubt you, disagree, or try to convince you that you should validate their choices for whatever reason, hold onto yours. Be that person who believes in yourself so that you can believe in your children. Keep your focus on what matters most — the relationships you’re building, how much you’re enjoying this time of life, and seeing your children thrive overall in the ups and downs that they’re going to experience discovering themselves. We can do this.

Please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlandsbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. Both of my books are available in paperback at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting. You can get them in ebook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, or barnesandnoble.com, and in audio, audible.com. As a matter of fact, you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast. Thanks so much for listening!

Recommended in this podcast: The Hurried Child by David Elkind

(Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash)

The post Lessons, Sports, and Hobbies: A Child-Led Approach appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m going to be talking about a topic that’s very intriguing to me because it’s so counterintuitive for most of us. And those kinds of challenges really interest me. This topic is helping children feel more self-confident and more positive. How can we do that? The advice I give in this podcast may be a little bit surprising.

Parents often reach out to me on a topic that was really important to me as well as a parent, it’s about encouraging our children’s self-confidence. How do we do that? Well, simplifying this, we can look at the Oxford Dictionary definition of self-confidence, which is “a feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgment.”

So how do we encourage children to trust themselves and their abilities? Well, we trust them and their abilities because we are these powerful influencers in our child’s life. It’s just like if we want our children to feel that they deserve respect, then we have to respect them to show them that. It’s the same with self-confidence. And this is why Magda Gerber’s first principle of her approach is “basic trust in the infant as an initiator, an explorer, and a self-learner.” Children have the goods to be learners, they know what they’re doing in this department. They don’t need us to decide what they should learn when in these early years, or maybe ever.

So we want to trust in them, meaning we are trusting the way that they explore, the way that they process, and the way they learn from their experiences. To do that, we actually want to lean into what they’re feeling and what they’re exploring, and what they’re interested in, in their time, rather than taking it upon ourselves, or maybe following the normal urge that many of us have, I have it, to try to work them through what they’re learning, their issues, work them through situations, work them through feelings, to fix them, to try to make it better.

If you would’ve asked me years ago, before I studied with Magda, how to help a child feel more self-confident, I would probably have answered, “You build them up. You tell them how wonderful they are and how great they are, and how capable they are and that they can do things.” That’s not really trusting. And that doesn’t build self-confidence as much as when we actually lean into taking interest in and encouraging our child’s process.

The easiest way for me to explain this is through questions that parents have shared with me, so that’s what I’m going to do. I have three here. The first one is in the comments section of my website on a post for one of the podcasts I did with Australian parenting expert Maggie Dent, called “Boys Do Cry and They Need To.” So here’s what the parent asked, she said:

Being a mom of two boys, one rooster, age four, and one lamb, age 8, this is very helpful, but it is so challenging. Switching from the rooster to the lamb is exhausting. My lamb has recently started saying things like, ‘I’m stupid,’ ‘I hate myself,’ ‘I don’t deserve anything,’ ‘I’m not good at anything.’ How do I address this? I’ve tried saying it might feel that way because of the situation, and it’s okay to be frustrated, disappointed, et cetera, but it doesn’t seem to change things. He’s very hard on himself. And it is hard for me to let him feel all these negative feelings, especially when directed towards himself. When I was younger, I suffered because of a lack of self-confidence and a negative self-image, so it is a very difficult thing for me to address with him. My instinct is to tell him, ‘You shouldn’t hate yourself, you can hate the situation,’ or to try to get him to journal about the things that make him feel that way. We try to discuss things like the things he likes about himself or what he feels good about. It seems hopeless at times. He has no problem sharing his negative, sad feelings, but cannot seem to find positivity.

So just to explain what this parent was saying about the rooster and the lamb, those are Maggie Dent’s terms for two different types of personalities. The rooster is the more assertive, maybe stronger-willed child, and the lamb is the maybe more sensitive, quieter child, less dominating.

The first thing that stuck out to me in this note, as just an aside, is that she said this switching from the rooster to the lamb is exhausting. So right there, that gives me a clue that maybe this mom has taken things upon herself, seeing things as her role that actually she could let go of and trust more. Because ideally, it really shouldn’t feel exhausting for us, and it shouldn’t drain us to engage with children that have opposite types of temperaments or personalities. The reason it does usually is that we are trying to help lift this one up, we’re trying to help put this other one in their place because maybe they come very strongly. And really, it’s our job to give boundaries and be the leader to these children, but not make up for or, in some way, fill in for their strengths or their weaknesses. In other words, I think this parent may be taking on too much in her role.

Now, then this parent says some other things that, to me, they ring so true as common ways that I would want to react, and I know a lot of other parents do too, to a child saying these kinds of things, which are alarming. We don’t want to hear our children saying those things about themselves.

She says, “I’ve tried saying it might feel that way because of the situation, and it’s okay to be frustrated, disappointed, et cetera.” So right there, she’s doing a common thing, which is she’s analyzing for him what’s going on. And what I want to encourage her and other parents to do is instead of analyzing, to really connect. And to connect with a child, we have to meet them right where they are and hear what they’re saying, and allow those feelings to be valid and have a life. And I would say straight off too, that everything children say is not a fact or heartfelt deep way of thinking about themselves. It’s a feeling. Feelings come and go, they’re like waves passing through.

So we have to be careful as adults not to take everything that children say as something that our child believes as a fact. It’s not a fact when they say to us, “I like my other parent better,” it’s not a fact when they say, in this case, “I’m stupid, I hate myself. I don’t deserve anything.” These are feelings that he’s having. So it’s really safe for us to allow those feelings and encourage children to have those feelings.

Getting back to encouraging self-confidence, what is that doing when we lean into where a child’s actually feeling, and connect with them there? It’s trusting. It’s trusting that child to feel what they feel, be who they are, know themselves best in that moment, and be able to process situations.

Then she says something wonderfully revealing, she says, “I suffered because of a lack of self-confidence and negative self-image, so it’s a very difficult thing for me to address with him.” This is a common theme that comes up for us as well, as parents, that the things that we’re sensitive about are places where we can get stuck. And those places are much harder places for us to trust, to trust that our child is different than us, a different person, and needs to be in their process, whatever they’re feeling needs to be okay, really okay.

Again, I think it will help if we realize that feelings aren’t facts etched in stone that our child’s going to believe forever, or even more than for a few moments. These feelings, he can hold onto them longer if he doesn’t feel that they’re being really heard and accepted all the way. If he feels this kind of uncomfortable, pushing back, not really allowing and accepting, not trusting that it’s safe and okay for him to feel those things.

So she brings up such great examples of human impulses that we have, especially if we’re parents. We don’t want to see our children suffering and we want to help them come out of that. But all of that gets in the way of our ultimate goal, which is that we want him to feel self-confident, which means trust in himself and his abilities and his process.

She says, “My instinct is to tell him, ‘You shouldn’t hate yourself, you can hate the situation.'” And right there, that’s another common thing that every great parent I know has probably felt at some point, which is, we just want to say, “You shouldn’t feel that way, I don’t want you to feel that way. Don’t feel the way you’re feeling.” She says that’s her instinct, so I don’t know that she’s actually telling him those things. But that’s the message that children get. “You shouldn’t feel depressed, look at all the things you have in life that are so positive.” Have we ever heard that? Or have we ever said that to someone? “Well, yes, this sad thing happened, but look at all the good things that you have going on in your life. It could be worse.”

We’re denying feelings when we do that. We’re denying the other person’s feelings, we may be denying our own feelings, and it doesn’t help us process through the feelings, learn from them, and move through them, leave them behind. Somebody else can’t do that for us, we have to do it for ourselves, and children have to do it for themselves, in their own unique way and time.

She says, “We try to discuss things like things he likes about himself, or what he does feel good about.” So discussing things that he likes about himself is trying to insert positivity, trying to get a child to feel better and think positively, which is understandable because this is a soft spot for her, this is a tender place for her, the self-confidence. She doesn’t want to think of him having a bad self-image. And honestly, I don’t think that he does, but again, seeing everything as a process, this is something he’s wanting to express to her, to share with her. It’s the healthiest thing. How great that he’s saying these things, instead of just thinking them to himself! And the fact that he’s sharing them means that she can receive them.

That’s what I would do, I would lean into, “Wow. You’re saying that makes you feel stupid. What makes you feel stupid about this? Because you couldn’t do it the first time. Ugh, that makes you feel like you can’t do things, huh?”

Or, “I hate myself.”

“Ooh, you’re really getting down on yourself, huh? You don’t like yourself right now. What’s going on with that?”

“I don’t deserve anything.”

“Wow, it feels like you don’t deserve anything. That’s some pain inside. I want to know about that, I want to hear more about that.”

So I realize that leaning into the feelings always takes this leap of faith. For me, I think I’ve said this before here, I feel like I’ve actually left the water running in the bathtub and it’s just going to overflow if I really allow this. But this is the key. This is what helps him to feel trusted in his process and trust in himself. We can trust in ourselves when it’s okay to go to all those dark places in ourselves.

When we can share those, just that act of sharing them and being accepted and acknowledged for what we’re sharing, sometimes that can be all we need to start to let go of them and move through them.

But this is not our process, it belongs to our child. So we have to trust him to do it his way, and staying connected is the best thing that we can do. Show him that support. Obviously, you’re not agreeing that he can’t do anything, or that he doesn’t deserve anything, but you’re really interested in what he’s feeling, where he’s getting these things, and what’s the feeling within those feelings? It sounds like he’s hurt, and that’s the part we want to help him get to if possible.

This parent did all of these intuitive things, normal things, and what I’m suggesting is not intuitive at all, I realize that. And when things aren’t intuitive, that means, for most of us, we will never reflexively be able to do these things. And so we may need to take that pause to reenter ourselves because reflexively, we’re going to do all of these wonderful, loving things that this parent is doing.

Okay, here’s another question. This parent says:

Applying your principles of respectful parenting has helped equip us for raising a wonderful, empathetic, and curious five-year-old girl. But lately, we’ve been struggling with a high sensitivity to embarrassment. We’ve been traveling and visiting friends and family of different ages. It started when we were spending time with one of my adult friends and I was teasing my friend, and we all had a good laugh. But my daughter thought the laughs were directed at her and was very sad and shut down. She repeatedly said throughout the day, ‘I didn’t like it when you all laughed at me.’ And I assured her that we were all laughing at my friend and not her. We’ve already talked about the concept with her friends at preschool, that it’s okay to laugh with each other, but not at each other.

While this incident happened a couple of weeks ago, she still struggles with the feeling that everyone is laughing at her. It’s gotten to the point where when she’s trying to make us laugh, being silly, and making jokes, she’ll immediately regret it and get that self-conscious and defensive reaction. I hate to think that something we are doing or not doing is causing my daughter to shut down and downplay her awesome sense of humor, spontaneous fun, and self-confidence. Please offer any experience, advice, or perspective you have.

Okay, so this event happened where the daughter got confused, and it brought up feelings for her that were really uncomfortable. This mother is handling it in very normal, loving ways. She says, “I assured her that we were all laughing at my friend and not her.” That was a good thing to clear up for her. But the truth is, that just as with the previous child’s feelings about, “I’m stupid, I hate myself. I don’t deserve anything,” this child felt upset that maybe there was this attention on her, that she was being laughed at. This is a feeling that she’s processing.

As I said, it was good that the mother clarified that it wasn’t about her. But then I would still go from there straight to what my child is feeling, leaning into that. “Wow, it felt like they were laughing at you. And how did that feel?” Asking your child, engaging with your child around this, with that openness, letting that feeling be — that she felt like she was being laughed at. “And how did that feel?” That didn’t feel good to her.

The reason that children get stuck where they seem like they can’t get beyond it is because they don’t feel trusted and encouraged to process the situation the way children do so brilliantly. There again is that self-learning ability that children have. It’s phenomenal. And the way this girl’s doing it is she’s feeling the feeling, and the parent says she’s still struggling with the feeling that everyone is laughing at her. So now it feels like she’s imagining this happening with other people too.

There’s something really interesting that this little girl is processing in herself. So obviously, I don’t know exactly what’s going on in this little girl’s mind, but she’s clearly in a process that, ideally, if we want her to come out of this, as soon as possible, and with it encouraging her confidence, then we’ve got to trust her.

Children process situations so wonderfully — things that disturb them, things that bother them, situations that touch things off in them, things that are maybe scary that happened, or someone talked a certain way on the streets, and it could be someone they don’t know, or maybe it is an exchange that they’ve had with the parent, or a sibling, or another caregiver. What they do is they bring it up and they bring it up and they bring it up. It’s like they’re turning it in every direction, they’re imagining it, experiencing it, letting it happen to them again and again.

It’s really this thorough, very therapeutic learning process that they have to making peace with it. And this process can’t be rushed, can’t be taken on as ours to manage. It really has to be trusted in our children to give them this self-confidence that children are born with, these seeds of self-confidence. It’s not like we have to build it for them, they already have the seeds there, they just need to be nurtured. And nurturing it is, back to that word again, trust. Trusting them so that they have more and more trust for themselves.

The really cool thing that this little girl is doing is actually recreating the situation again and again, for herself to explore it more fully and deeply, and also explore her parents’ reaction to it. She’s, obviously because children do, she’s getting the feeling that her parent is not comfortable with this, and wants to resolve it for her. And what that does is cause a child to have more interest in: Wow, why is this so disturbing for my parent too? So she’s got that to explore, so that’s why our responses that aren’t as trusting can actually make the issue go on longer, which is obviously the opposite of what we hope for. That’s the part that we can play in this without meaning to, with all of our best intentions.

So I think that may be happening here, and in the previous note as well. In this case, the parent says, “I hate to think that something we’re doing or not doing is causing my daughter to shut down and downplay her awesome sense of humor, her spontaneous fun, and self-confidence.”

Yeah, so that’s a disturbing worry that this parent has. And this is such normal adult thinking that we think of things as kind of done. And for children, we see things as a result, that: oh no, this is done, and she feels this way now, and what’s happened here? Instead of realizing that children, their minds and their imaginations, and their emotions are all in motion, they’re always in that process. We’d be so healthy to be more like them.

But of course, as parents, what do we do first? (I’m raising my hand.) We worry. So it makes sense. But what I would do is, again, lean into this and trust her process. “Wow, now you’re being silly. And then you are feeling that feeling of what it’s like to be laughed at. That felt upsetting to you or disturbing.” Or, “how did it feel?” is even better. Not deciding how she should feel, but really curious.

“How does that feel when it feels like people are laughing at you? And even when you’re making us laugh, that is uncomfortable. What is that in you?”

None of these specific words matter, what matters is that we’re open to and we’re receiving and allowing the feelings to live and breathe, trusting that these are all in motion, they’re passing through, and she’s learning from them, she’s learning about the situation. She’ll be a master at this idea of being laughed at versus laughing with by the end of this if we can trust her.

All right, here’s one more:

Recently, my four-year-old daughter has been experiencing anxiety with me on the scene but does well when I’m away. She was taken out of her gymnastics class because of compulsory masking, and eight months later, we rejoined, but she cried when I left her side and kept running to me. I tried rewards and empathy, but she ultimately did not want to stay in the class.

If I’m helping her at school, she wants to be near me. She cries when I drop her off in an unfamiliar setting, but then does fine after a couple of minutes. How can I teach her to be confident right away? I admit I am not this way, but I want her to be.

I love this parent admitting her soft spot. Oftentimes, again, it’s about us and that we struggled with something, and so we’re extra uncomfortable with our child struggling with it.

And again, with this type of process of getting comfortable… The girl was away from the class for eight months, and maybe the other children were all still in it so now she has to start all over again. And it’s even a bit more challenging than that because the other children may have been continuing. Now she has to come into this situation where other children are more comfortable and in the groove of it, and she’s not. So that’s challenging. She has anxiety and she’s doing things that I would expect.

So what I would do is understand that this is a really typical process for a child. Even with a separation to a class — the other thing that she brings up at school — that she has a hard time with that. Yeah, these are times that bring up emotions, but that’s okay. We can trust that that’s part of the process of saying goodbye to someone or to stepping up to be back in this class again. It’s going to take some push-pull on her part.

So I would, number one, as in all these cases, trust her process. Maybe you can make a decision that this isn’t the right class for her now, that’s a fine decision to make. But I would first trust her process. And what I would do instead of me leaving her side is that I would sit in one place, and let her stay with me and branch out as she’s ready. This is assuming that the teachers will let me stay in the class, but I don’t know why they wouldn’t with a four-year-old child taking gymnastics. She’s very young to be in a structured class.

So I would be there, so calm and so expecting her to take her time to get comfortable and not be confident right away. No child is always confident right away. That wouldn’t be a thoughtful, engaged human child, especially after all this absence. Eight months is a really long time for a four-year-old.

I think the expectation is maybe a little bit unreasonable, that she’s going to be confident right away. There’s no weakness, there’s no problem with taking your time, and having some anxiety around it. This is appropriate anxiety. But if the child feels her parent not trusting her in this process and that the parent is uncomfortable because the parent wants her to be able to do these things a bit more readily, then that’s going to breed a little more doubt and a little more anxiety. Oh, I should be doing something that I don’t feel I can do yet. But I feel this expectation. Nothing gets by children, and that’s why they’re such incredible learners.

So in this case, as I said, I would sit in one place, let her stay with me as long as she needed to, let her run out and come back, and take it in her time. As long as she’s not disrupting the class, I would be fine with that. I would try to totally trust that this girl knows what she’s doing and she’s doing it her way, as all of these children, it sounds like, are.

They’re pretty inspiring. They are accepting of being in these discomforts. It’s just harder for us to let them.

Then if she cries when the parent drops her off in an unfamiliar setting… So as the parent, I would try to take your time with that. If it’s unfamiliar, maybe she needs a little more time with the parent there to get familiar.

I also was struck that the parent said it right in the beginning, “The child has anxiety with me on the scene, but does well when I’m away.” So it really feels like this might be something about the relationship, and the daughter wanting more trust from her parent and needing to maybe explore her parents’ impatience with her process.

These are all wonderful examples of children being able to immerse themselves in learning. And I totally understand, boy do I understand, how hard it is as a parent to trust these processes. But if we take those leaps of faith, we will get the results that we’re hoping for, which is a confident child, a child who trusts themselves and their abilities, their feelings, and their instincts.

So I hope that perspective helps a little bit.

And by the way, if my podcasts are helpful to you, you can help the podcast continue by giving it a positive review on iTunes. So grateful to all of you for listening. Also, please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. They’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. And both of my books are available on audio, No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame, and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them for free from Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast. You can also get them in paperback at Amazon and in eBook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and apple.com.

Thanks for listening. We can do this.

The post Boosting Your Child’s Self-Confidence appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Don’t Let Your Kids Miss Out on Play (with Kisha Reid)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I have the pleasure of hosting Kisha Reid. Kisha’s been in the early childhood field for 28 years. She’s a true veteran and she continues to actively work in the classroom. She’s been a tenacious advocate of developmentally appropriate play-based education for young children for decades and has collaborated with Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, Explorations Early Learning, and many, many more. She sits on the board of Defending the Early Years, which is an early childhood advocacy group. We’re going to discuss the importance of a play-focused early childhood for all of our children, why this matters, and should even take precedence over other kinds of learning.

Hi, Kisha, thank you so much for being with me today.

Kisha Reid:  Hi Janet, I am so excited to be here and talk with you.

Janet Lansbury:  Me too. I feel like I’ve known you for a long time because I’ve known of you and your work, and you’re quite renowned in my world. And you’re a veteran in this. I think we’ve almost been in this field the same amount of time, or maybe you’ve been in a bit longer even. So I can’t believe we’ve never talked before, but I’m really glad that we’re going to do it finally.

Kisha Reid:  Same here. I feel like I know you. I’ve been listening to your podcast and reading your work and I’m just honored.

Janet Lansbury:  Thank you. Well, I want to jump right in and ask what first lit your fire with the power of play. What made you first realize how important it was to support, protect, defend, and advocate for play in the early years?

Kisha Reid:  I think I have to go honestly all the way back to my own childhood, because that is where I learned who I was, like who I am. That’s where I learned how to take risks, how to be strong and powerful, and where I first learned that: Hey girl, you are smart. Leaning back on those times, those times when I can remember a particular time that my friends and I had ventured further away from home than we had ever ventured. I remember actually having this conversation with myself that I’m doing this without my mom. I’m going far away and I’m doing this exciting thing, and just the exhilarating feeling that I had, that sense of freedom going out on an adventure.

So that feeling is what I always want to evoke in other children because it started from there, and what’s in me… something grew, like just this sense of self and this strongness. I had proven to myself through my adventures outside and play, through my playing in the creek and climbing trees and running fast — it just kept solidifying within me how strong I am, how capable I am, how smart I am. And I took that with me all the way through school. When I felt like something was too tough or I wasn’t ready for something, I was reminded through those times that I was playing, that I can do it, that I’m strong, that I’m confident, that I’m creative. And I just fell back on that.

So when I began working with young children, I just had this playfulness because I’ve always pulled back there. But being in programs that were more traditional and not play-based, I had to keep reminding myself of those feelings and going back to that place so that I can make sure that I provided an environment that evoked that same feeling in young children. So it’s digging way back into myself to remember the importance of childhood.

Janet Lansbury:  And it sounds like even though maybe you weren’t encouraged in school to engage your play self into learning, that you were able to balance that at least beyond school. As you said, you would remind yourself: Oh yeah, I can do stuff. I’m capable. I’ve got all this in me. These people’s measurements aren’t as important or this is just as important and this is who I really am. That’s amazing that you’re able to do that because I think sometimes not all children are able to stay in tune with that side of themselves.

Kisha Reid:  Mm-hmm. Yeah. Working with young children in a more structured environment in the early part of my career, I found that I was always the teacher who had to close her door because we were the noisiest classroom and we let the kids get the messiest. We had the most open-ended materials and maybe we went off the schedule and maybe we stayed outside 30 minutes or 40 minutes longer than we were supposed to. So I was that teacher that everybody else looked at, like, “What is wrong with her? She can’t control her class.” And then a shift for me was that I began to share what I was seeing in young children with their parents and with other educators that worked with me. I did that through photography. I would take pictures of the children. Not having them freeze and smile at the camera, but really taking pictures of what they were doing, really trying to retell the experiences that they were having. I did a lot of writing that went with the photos and I would put them in the hallway.

So this started to create interest. Parents would stop and read it and look at it and start having dialogue around the photos and talking to their child about it in the hallway. And then I think other teachers started to notice: Oh, well, the parents are interested in that. I want them to stand around my door in the hall. So let me kind of figure out what this documentation stuff is. And we just started to value sharing what we knew and saw that children were capable of doing in our play environment, within my classroom, and with others. And it just started to catch on to other teachers in the building.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s so cool. It sounds like you were photographing the process, which is what does get lost when we might wonder as parents: What is my child learning? and then we’re not seeing any concrete example of that. They’re not coming home with a sculpture or a math worksheet. But what you did was find a way to capture the beauty and the much more powerful learning that happens in the process of a child engaging actively in learning, instead of just trying to make a result. That’s what real learning is, is being able to be in a process.

Kisha Reid:  Yes. And watching it unfold. There was a sense of excitement around that. So the language and the idea started to shift from, as you said, that product and, “Mom, this is what I made” to here is a more detailed conversation, a nuanced conversation, that’s back and forth about what we experienced.

Janet Lansbury:  And look how engaged they are.

Kisha Reid:  Yeah. And look how excited they are about the whole idea of learning something and doing something with their whole selves. It wasn’t just sitting at a desk and completing a task that an adult gave to them. It was the opposite. It was standing up moving and doing the things that their bodies told them that they needed to do.

Janet Lansbury:  I love that.

Kisha Reid:  So I was still working in traditional programs for a while even after that. I was always the sore thumb, always the person asking, “Well, why did we have to make everyone nap at the same time? Why can’t they play in the mud?” I was the teacher who took her kids to the creek, stayed all day, came back. I’ll never forget the day we came back and we were muddy. This was not the school for that, but we came back and I had the kids… we were all standing on the wall and I’m like, “All right, I’m going to hose you guys off so we can go in this building.” And right before I turned the hose on, the owner comes up and she gives me just this look. And I’m like, “Oh, don’t worry. We’re going to be clean when we go in the building.”

I had to make compromises, but nothing got in my way of allowing these children to play. If we had a math objective and I had to allow them to go into the forest and search for rocks and sticks and whatever and just document their experiences with those things and then fit it into the curriculum into what was required of me, I’d do that. It may be a little bit extra work for me, but it’s so much more meaningful. So I was just attempting to prove that it didn’t take a worksheet. In fact, real-life experiences were much more valuable.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. Because it’s not only what they’re learning there, but it’s that they’re learning to love learning and they’re learning how learning works and that they can do it. That thing about being capable again, that: Hey, I’m really good at this when I’m into it, because I’m doing it through my own interest. So yeah. I mean, you’re preaching to the choir here. I’m totally on board with this.

One thing you brought up also makes me consider if we do value this type of child-driven play and a lot of parents do, what gets in the way of us allowing this, do you think? As parents, as teachers, and as a society maybe, what are the barriers that are making it harder for us to allow children this extremely valuable, for life, experience?

Kisha Reid:  I think there are so many things. We have more parents who need to work now. We have smaller families. So grandparents may not be living with them. I grew up with my grandmother living with me. So somebody was always home. We were always outside, always able to play. Someone’s mother or grandmother was in some window watching us from somewhere. We knew all of our neighbors. It was just a slower pace. Everything was slower. We weren’t rushing off to soccer, gymnastics, or swimming. Our extracurricular was to go outside and play until the street lights come on.

So I think just the faster pace of life, the necessity for multiple parents to work find children and after-school programs more often. The high-stakes testing and pressure on academics and homework that has started to take up more of children’s lives than they ever did before. So before, you went to school, you came home, you did a five-minute coloring page or something, and then you were out the door. Now it’s so much more of a burden on young children’s time. They just don’t have as much time as they did before.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. I mean, even those after-school programs though could be designed the way you designed your program. They could still offer that. But I think just putting myself in the parent position and all the parents I hear from, we worry sometimes that our child is going to miss out on something else. Or maybe we think that we’re being neglectful or lazy just to let them go run off to the creek or go play or do their own thing. We feel like we’re being better parents to make sure that they’re getting all this enrichment. But it’s exactly what you said. That slow life, that simplicity is where the freedom is for them.

Kisha Reid:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  I guess there are worries, maybe as parents. And then the worries as parents get transmitted into the worries as educators. They’re picking up: “What if our child misses out on these windows for language learning, for music, taking an instrument, for sports? They’ve got to know what it’s like to be on a team.” We’re deciding all these experiences that we want to make sure that they have. And therefore we’re eliminating the most important things of all.

Kisha Reid:  Yeah, which is just time and space to be creative, to play, to make friendships with people in authentic ways. I think there’s a time and a place and an age for team sports and those different experiences. But I think when children are young, they don’t need that. “You like soccer? Okay, let’s go kick a ball. Let’s go to the playground, bring a ball, have some friends gather around and experience the idea of kicking the ball, running after the ball, playing with friends, creating new games.”

When I was young, we would arrange huge games of kickball and dodge ball and soccer and all these amazing things that we had to come up with the rules for. We had to organize the players. We had to go around and knock on doors and find the players. We had to negotiate to make teams. We had to decide who was in charge of who is out or who is in, who’s the ref. All of those things we did within our community of mixed-age group players.

So if you really think about it, the only thing that we were missing out on is having someone outside of the play, an adult, tell us how, where, when and what. But how much more valuable is it when you have to organize, you have to plan, you have to think, you have to negotiate? It’s just so much more valuable. And you still get the team play. You still get the collaborative play. You still get the excitement of a win. All of those things that people look to team sports to achieve.

Janet Lansbury:  I would even argue that it’s more conducive to being a team player because when you were saying that, it almost made me picture a lens where you’re all the way zoomed in and you’re just zoomed in, maybe as a parent on I want my child to get the skills in this sport and everything that they need to be on this team. I want to make sure because I’m a caring parent, that my child becomes the best soccer player they could be let’s say. And so we’re zooming in and we’re kind of getting this really myopic perspective on it. Rather than zooming way back out and saying: Oh my gosh, the learning that’s going on here is a million times more important!  And in that zoomed-in less our child maybe feels, “Oh, well, this kid is doing it better maybe and the coach likes them better. They’re getting a better position or they’re getting…” It’s not conducive to real team playing.

Kisha Reid:  And you know what? A lot of this is attached to academics because if you’re going to get into the best college, you got to have a resume. And it’s starting younger and younger where we’re looking for scholarships to such and such a school. So it starts to become this resume builder at such a young age. And it’s a lot of times attached to that academic piece, that ultimate plan of happiness that we, as a society, feel comes with checking off the boxes to getting into the right college so that you can get the right job, chasing after this happiness when really that comes from that sense of knowing, that following of your passions, that sense of community and belonging and all those things that can sometimes be missing when we’re chasing happiness.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, exactly. Those life skills. Absolutely. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense that the rush to get kids ready for the next thing gets in the way with the thing, which is that they need to experience every stage of development ideally and to be trusted to know what they’re ready for and what they’re interested in. And yeah, I mean, it doesn’t really help a lot of parents either… because I do hear from many people who have their child in gymnastics or a music class or dance, and they get frustrated because their child doesn’t want to go. This might be a four-year-old, five-year-old child, or even a six-year-old child or older. The child doesn’t want to go, the child doesn’t want to go to practice. They won’t participate when they get there. It becomes this kind of feeling of failure, I think, for everybody. For the parents, for the child.

So it often doesn’t serve us as parents because now we’re putting ourselves into the situation where we’re frustrated because of our agenda when all we had to do was really let go of our agenda and trust a little bit more.

Kisha Reid:  But it is hard to be that parent who believes these things and have the child who’s not signed up for anything when everybody else in their preschool class is on the tee-ball team or is taking whatever the lessons are. It is hard to be that parent.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, that peer pressure. I know. I hear that a lot from parents too, that they want to trust, but everybody around them, even family members or everyone around them, is giving them more doubt. So that’s why I love that somebody like you is out there. You’re so important because you’re a defender of this type of learning and you’re out there advocating. But yeah, it’s hard to hear that with all the other noise.

Kisha Reid:  My advice for a parent that feels that way, if everyone around you is… their child is in something or multiple things and you just don’t think it’s the best thing for your child but you also feel kind of left out of that, my advice would be to invite them over in your backyard if you have a backyard or a grassy area that you can find and just play. Invite them over for open-ended play so that your child now still has some experiences with these children and they’re doing something, but it is open-ended in its play. And the parent still has that social aspect.

Because I think a lot of it is social for the parents. The kids are in whatever the sport is. They’re playing or they’re practicing. And now the parents can sit back and hang out and chat and talk. There’s a social aspect of it for the parents as well. So I think that we can kind of meet a lot of the needs or a lot of the desires of everyone involved with a simple backyard — bring a snack, bring some balls, and play.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, just a gathering. A weekly gathering.

Kisha Reid:  Just a simple gathering.

Janet Lansbury:  I would say also in my experience that a lot of these things that maybe we’re excited about as parents: the other parents are going to be there and my kids are all on this team or my kids are all in this dance program and that community feeling that I have, or maybe we loved dance as a child and we can’t wait to get our child in there, there were so many things like that. Even taking my child to an amusement park or story time at the library, I couldn’t wait. I was excited to have my child do that. I’d been trained with Magda Gerber who was so much about, “Let the child lead their development.” Trust them, trust them, trust them. Basic trust in them. But I would feel myself being like: Oh gosh, I want to do this now.

I would make myself wait almost always. There were a couple of times I didn’t. And then I learned. You know what? This would’ve been more fun just to be in our backyard this afternoon than to go to that puppet show with the marionettes where she had to sit there.” It wasn’t as great as when I was a kid, or maybe I was older and I was able to appreciate it more. But when we wait and we allow children to come into an experience, first of all, because they want to, because they’re eager, they’re ready and therefore you can trust their wish to do it, if we’re not the ones bringing it up at first. If it actually comes from them, you can really trust my child might be ready for this experience now.  And then maybe we’ve read a book about it, or they’ve gone to watch a practice or they have a real sense of what it is. And then they come into these experiences that we’re so excited for them to have with this grace and all these things that readiness offers that we can’t force.

And so many times that happened where I was like: Oh gosh if I would’ve taken them to this thing earlier, we did it earlier, they would’ve been striving, they would’ve been trying, they maybe would’ve been trying to please me on some level– 

Kisha Reid: I was going to say. Yep.

Janet Lansbury:  Because they feel they should. The idea of coming in at the top of an experience, so ready for it is just this magic, but it’s hard to wait. So I think our impatience sometimes can get in the way.

Kisha Reid:  It’s just this sense of them having an intrinsic motivation versus something that comes from outside of themselves. I had a student once, and she just… I mean, she was born to dance. She’s born to dance. She walked around like a dancer. She carried herself like a dancer. I have a dance background. So she literally had me. I mean, this child had me. She’d grab my arm. She started this at four years old. She would come to school with leotards, not just for herself, but for her friends as well. Ballet slippers. All the things. And she would tell me the different types of music that she wanted to listen to. “Slow. Or I want to listen to just pianos.” And she would say, “Okay, teach me.” And she would have me teach her. “Okay. All right. So what is this called?”

We would do a lesson as long as she wanted to do a lesson. And it was her. It 100% came from within this child that she wanted to do these things. I don’t know if… she probably had seen something or maybe an older sister who did ballet. I’m not sure what it was, but there was a deep interest within this child to move in this way. Even when she wasn’t dancing, she moved with grace and on her toes, stretching her arms out fully.

I don’t deny that.

When there’s an intrinsic passion, by all means, allow them to shower themselves in it, because play and dance are not the same as actually having to do an hour of standing still, waiting your turn, standing up straight. There’s a difference. There’s playing around with the passion until her development is in a place where she can do those things in a structured fashion. I don’t know. I just found it very magical to watch this child grow into her passion at such a young age.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. And sometimes they create their own dances, but then once they start the class, then now they know there’s a right way and a wrong way. And if I only can do it this way, then it actually makes them less free. A child like that…  you were able to follow her lead and do all of that, I can see how parents… Because probably everyone else would be telling them this too. They see this talent and they’re thinking, “You’d better get her in a class now or it’s going to go away somehow.” I think that’s another thing that gets in our way. We think something’s going to disappear. If our child seems interested in reading. Gosh, we might think we better start really teaching them because this might go away and then they’re going to lose this.

Or even with toilet training or something. Maybe their child goes on the potty once, so gosh, we better stay on this track. I’d better make sure that my child doesn’t ever use diapers again because otherwise, she’s going to lose something. So I think we can fear that too, as parents, that somehow our child is going to lose momentum on something. But that’s the opposite of what it’s really like when you’re ready for something. You can’t put it out, really. Or it’s hard to. I guess you can if it becomes not fun. I’ve also known a lot of children with that experience. Something was really fun for them, but then they took the course, maybe too early, or maybe it was the wrong kind of course. And then it wasn’t fun for them anymore.

Kisha Reid:  And they drop it. The passion’s gone.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. So it’s almost like the fear that we might have is in the opposite direction of what we should fear if anything. Not that we should fear anything as parents, but what we should care about protecting.

I love that your podcast was called the Defending the Early Years Podcast. So you’re a defender of play in the early years and you’re promoting developmentally appropriate play-based education. So what goes on in your programs? What are you doing?

Kisha Reid:  Almost everything we’re doing here is playing. When we’re getting dressed, it’s play. When we’re having lunch, when we’re reading stories, when we’re running around outside, it’s all play because they’re choosing to do it. They’re choosing how they do it. They’re choosing with whom they do it. It is creative and playful because they’re leading it.

I think one of the most important things about this place and about what I’m hoping for all early childhood settings is relationships. Just authentic relationships where you know each other, and flexibility so all these different diverse needs can be met. I think the difference between what we’re doing here as opposed to what a more traditional preschool setting does is we’re not getting them ready for our next step. It’s a byproduct of playing. It’s a byproduct of feeling safe and happy and confident in knowing yourself that you’re going to become ready for the next step, but that’s not our focus. Our focus is really on the right now and meeting the needs of right now and what that looks like through the process of inquiry and co-learning and trial and error and creativity.

We’re just playing and living together. We’re eating when we’re hungry. We’re napping when we’re sleepy. We’re crying when we’re sad. It’s a second home for them. It’s not what we as a society would picture a classroom being, but it is what we as a society should decide that a classroom is.

Janet Lansbury:  I love that. So what should parents do if they have concerns that seem valid that their child isn’t at a level that they should be at in some way, or they don’t seem to have their age-appropriate skills? Even a child with disabilities, or…

Kisha Reid:  We have had children that had diverse needs. We still have children that have diverse needs. All of them have diverse needs, but then we have children who have additional needs. I believe that all children need play. All children need freedom. All children need to express their personal passions. I like to think that we can meet those needs. There are cases and times where we need to call in extra help and we need to help parents identify support. For us there are so many local organizations that step in and help with assessment, supporting the parent to understand what the child is going through or where they are developmentally, or what special accommodations they need. And then we do our best to meet those needs.

We have, over the years, been able to observe children who are on the autism spectrum within our play-based program. I’ve worked at lots of places that have a strong belief that those children need structure and control and rewards, punishments, these things that we do not believe, I do not believe, typically developing children need, nor do I believe that children on the spectrum need those things within my program. None of these children need to be fixed. They all need to express who they are within. They all need to be met where they are, loved, and supported in order to have whatever their needs are met.

So if that is to be swinging or moving their body to get that self-regulation, then we figure out a way to put a swing in the classroom and lots of swings outside because we know that that is soothing and that child needs that.

Or if it’s heavy work — they need to really move those muscles and lift up heavy things — we fill our environment with those things. If it is special one-on-one support that they need, we look for the resources. And there are times when we don’t have the resources so we have to go outside of our program. For me, it’s the goal to support every parent that walks through the store in any way that I can. I don’t know all the answers for them, but I will sit with them until we find the answers for their individual child.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s wonderful because I agree with you that every child… I mean, you could even argue that a child with delays or disabilities deserves even more trust, more belief in them than the typical child. But yeah, they all deserve that.

What do you think about summer learning loss?

Kisha Reid:  Well, I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe that when you truly have learned something, deeply understood a concept, you don’t lose it. It’s like riding a bike. You just don’t lose it. I do believe you can forget things that were quickly taught to you, that you learned by memory, or that you were taught by rote, or that you learned for a particular test or that you had zero interest in but you had to learn it because it’s a part of the curriculum. Those things can surely be lost. In fact, they probably are almost pruned out as soon as the test is over, as soon as the school year’s over, as soon as the class is done. But you do not forget the things that you learn through your whole self when you’re using your — I just wrote a post on this — your mind, your body, your hands, your soul, your whole heart. You don’t forget that stuff. You just don’t forget it.

I always joke that sense, it ain’t common. We’re not all born with common sense, but so many of the things that are common knowledge that you never had to read about or ask questions about, or take a class about, that we just learn as humans. Like we observe people walking, we learn to walk. We learn to talk. We learn that some things are heavy and some things are light. We learned that when you throw something up, it comes down. All of these things that we keep gathering.

For example, if you watch children at play and they have multiple items, let’s say rocks because I observed this yesterday. They sort, they arrange. Sometimes they line them up like a graph. They count. They look at what’s different and what’s the same. They can classify them in lots of different ways. This is ingrained in them. They understand these mathematical concepts. They understand these similarities and differences in size and shape and all this. You can’t lose that because you know it.

Janet Lansbury:  Right.

Kisha Reid:  There’s a difference between remembering extrinsically because someone else is telling you you have to and seeking out knowledge.

My daughter, for example, wanted a piano in the house. Somebody was giving away a piano and I’m like, “Okay, we’re going to get this piano, put in the house.” And I said, “Well, I know someone who teaches lessons. Do you want me to sign you up?”

“No, I want to teach myself.”

I’m like, “Okay.”

My other daughter asked for a guitar. This is when they were preteens. And I said, “Do you want to take a class? You can take a class.”

And she said, “No, I’m going to teach myself. I will enjoy it more and I’ll be more proud if I teach it to myself.”

And I’m like, “Okay.”

And they taught themselves. It was a passion from what was in them. And they taught themselves at their own pace, in their own way.

I know I went way off your question.

Janet Lansbury:  No, that excites me too, because we all need to remember and just remind ourselves maybe every day of what you’re talking about. It’s gold. It’s the most powerful thing to be able to create your own learning and have all that autonomy. I mean, you could take lessons for years and never have that.

Again, it’s about the way we’re setting children up for life rather than college, I guess. Which is just so much more important. But yeah, to be trusted to create that learning, there’s no replicating that. And it’s just so much more powerful than any other kind of learning.

I love that they want to do that stuff. It’s so great.

And I also love what you said about “as soon as they’re done with the test, they lose that.” So, well, should summer learning be every day the parent has to drill them? Obviously not. Because if they’re just going to lose it, it wasn’t really embedded learning anyway. It’s not going to carry them into the world. It’s not going to do what it’s supposed to do. So why?

I have a post called “A Summer to Forget ” that’s about… maybe it’s okay for your kids to forget. How important it is to shift gears and have this more freeing, forgetting, but still learning new things the way that you’re talking about, teaching yourself things, or just learning what this certain kind of water in this pond feels like compared to the ocean. I mean this is-

Kisha Reid:  And learning who they are.

Janet Lansbury:  And learning who they are. Yeah.

Kisha Reid:  What would I do if no one was telling me what to do every minute of the day? That’s what I think summer should be about. Honestly, that’s what I think every day should be about.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah.

Kisha Reid:  But if summer’s the time that we’re giving children, then we need to give it to them.

Janet Lansbury:  I would give it after school too, like the way you describe for yourself that you had that.

But with that post or anytime I’ve brought up this idea, I get the response, “Well, that’s a privileged perspective.”

Kisha Reid:  Mm-hmm. I’m sad that that is a privileged perspective. I’m very sad that young children of color or children with a lower economic status aren’t seen to be able to have the same freedom. It upsets me because what I know about play and what I know about how much you actually learn and how far that will actually take you in this world and that sense of self that you’re going to develop, I know that every child, and in some cases especially the child that is not privileged, deserves that.

Janet Lansbury:  I agree.

Kisha Reid:  Part of what I want families to understand. I want to make sure that Black and Brown children are having access to play. I read studies about the number of words that children hear and that there are less words in this type of family and more words in that type of family. I just squint my nose up because I’m in a Brown family and there are so many words. And I’m around a lot of Brown families and there are so many words. I’ve grown up without many means, and there are so many words and so much dialogue and so many experiences. They may be different from the traditional White or American experience, but they’re rich. Listening to family stories and playing games with our families. And so I think that we just need to shift the measuring tool that we use for some of our assessments of young children so that it’s inclusive in values, more diverse things.

Janet Lansbury:  I couldn’t agree more. I think it comes from the same perspective that we’re talking about, that we want to help some group of children that we perceive as disadvantaged. We’re trying to help give them a step up, but that’s the wrong way to look at it because this is actually getting in their way and maybe creating a deficit in the kind of time that’s so much more valuable. These kinds of experiences children get from free play, they’re ultimately much more important for developing higher learning skills and self-confidence.

Back to the story you started about yourself, you actually have been able to stay in tune with yourself. And how confidence-building that was. I don’t think about that a lot for myself, but it’s actually true for me too. For us, it was dolls. My sister and I lived through our dolls. But what we learned about relationships and people and these stories that we created about these families…

I love Stuart Brown’s book (Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul). He talks about how as adults we can say where our talents come from. We can look back and see, Oh, that’s the way that I played. He goes into this whole thing about all these different areas. I looked at them, all that he suggested, and I thought, I’m none of those. But then I realized, Oh my gosh, “storytelling.” It’s a type of talent that’s developed through play. And it was what I was drawn to as a child. And it’s what I’m drawn to now, understanding the story, what’s behind this, what’s happening with these children in this family. Anyway. Yeah.

Kisha Reid:  It’s so deep, isn’t it?

Janet Lansbury:  It’s so deep. And it’s so much more fun as a parent too when we can just relax and trust a little more. Doing nothing is doing a lot. It’s healing when children can come home from school, even a center like you have which sounds so idyllic, and still come home and switch gears into this: You know, I just want to sit and look out the window or, I just want to, I don’t know, do nothing and just see where my mind goes.

Kisha Reid:  Yep. And I love to watch that. I love to just observe the children as they come in and see what’s going to spark their interests, what are they going to do, and where are they going to hang out. That to me… I just wait for that. I don’t put things out. We have our materials that are our materials. They know what’s there. And I just don’t know what’s going to come of it each day. I love to see where it goes and how it develops.

We’ve had balls in a basket in our classroom since the beginning of the school year. I don’t think I recall anyone ever touching them. The other day they had all the balls out and they arranged five different games with the balls. The games kept getting more intricate and involving other materials and rules. It was just so interesting to watch a group of three and four year olds get a spark for an idea from a material that’s so just simple and open ended and play for over an hour on their own, going through conflict and negotiation and figuring it all out. But everybody had one goal and it was to keep that play going. So I got to witness that and it’s amazing to see.

Janet Lansbury:  I’m totally with you on that. I love it with an infant, I love it with a toddler. I love it. As long as my kids will let me watch them, which unfortunately wasn’t that long. At around seven or eight, they were like, “Just stop watching me” with the doll house or something like. Oh my gosh, I get goosebumps, I love it so much. Parents could maybe enjoy the experience so much more if we took a little pressure off of ourselves.

Kisha Reid:  Yep.

Janet Lansbury:  And tune out the people that are making us doubters and listen to people like you.

Where can we hear more about you and the work that you’re doing? I know you have your podcast, the DEY Podcast with Kisha Reid.

Kisha Reid:  You can find that on dey.org. I really enjoy talking with teachers who are working in classrooms and bringing play to public schools or bringing play to communities where maybe there’s not as much access. So many wonderful people doing lots of great work. I’m just excited to be able to amplify their voices and spread the word about all we can do for children, and all we can do really for society, because anything we can do for children, we’re doing for society.

Janet Lansbury:  That sounds really inspiring. I haven’t listened to enough of them and I’m going to listen to all of them because I need this inspiration.

Kisha Reid:  Well, I’ll be listening to you while you’re listening to me.

Janet Lansbury:  It’s so great to be with a kindred spirit in this work, who I’ve again, known and admired for so long. Thank you. Thank you for sharing with us.

Kisha Reid:  Thank you so much. This was great. Thanks.

Here are some links to enjoy more wisdom from Kisha Reid:

Defending The Early Years and Kisha’s podcast

The DEY Facebook Page

Kisha’s center: Discovery Early Learning Center

And please check out the other podcasts and posts on my website. They’re all categorized by topic and you should be able to find whatever you’re looking for. There are many of them. Also, if you’re not aware of my books, please check them out. They’re best sellers on Amazon. No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting are also available on audio at audible.com. You can get one for free by using a link in the liner notes of this podcast. You can also get them in paperback at Amazon, and an ebook at Amazon, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, and apple.com. If you find this podcast helpful, you can help it to continue by giving it a positive review on iTunes and by supporting my sponsors. Thank you again. We can do this.

The post Don’t Let Your Kids Miss Out on Play (with Kisha Reid) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Balancing the Needs of More Than One Child (with Erica Orosco Cruz)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m very excited to share a guest with you, Erica Orosco Cruz. I’ve known and admired Erica for many years. We both studied with Magda Gerber. She’s also a RIE certified educator. She’s been in early childhood since she was a teenager and she, 20 years ago, founded Homeschool Garden, which is a childcare center, preschool/kindergarten for children ages one to six years old. Erica’s also a mother and she’s used Magda Gerber‘s approach with her children. I’m really looking forward to hearing Erica share her experiences and wisdom for parents or professionals who want to care for more than one child with respect.

Hi, Erica. Welcome and thank you so much for being here.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Hi Janet. I’m so happy to be here. It’s great to hear your voice .

Janet Lansbury:  And yours, and by the way, congratulations on your 20-year anniversary of the founding of Homeschool Garden. That’s amazing.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  I know, it crept up on us.

Janet Lansbury:  What an accomplishment and I love your mission statement, “To provide a safe environment where parents and children can learn and grow together. We believe that when children are truly seen and heard and parents learn to see with new eyes and listen for what is unsaid, families flourish.”

With new eyes is the way Magda Gerber asked us to see infants. It’s so true, isn’t it?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  It is. I learned so much from Magda. She’s right up there with my grandma as far as mentors and women in my life that really guided me. And yeah, I couldn’t rephrase it in a different way. It’s so clear and it gives people a great perspective.

Janet Lansbury:  So you said your grandmother, does this mean you were raised with this kind of respectful approach?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  I want to say she was the one that truly saw me and she was so attentive to all her grandchildren. Unfortunately, I only had her for the first four years of my life. She ended up passing from breast cancer. But I am proof of how they always say the first five years are so important. She left such a lasting mark in my life that I am the person I am today because of her.

Janet Lansbury:  Was she a primary caregiver for you?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  She was when my mother returned to work when I was one. And she was the matriarch of our family.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow. And then how did you end up starting a preschool and being a consultant for parents and doing these courses that you teach? How did this all come about?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yeah, I don’t think that was ever my intention. I joyfully worked with children since I was 15. I was volunteering in daycare centers and I was a camp counselor and a teacher assistant, various avenues of work in early childhood and I really enjoyed it.

I actually came across the RIE Philosophy, the RIE Manual, in an early childhood course for infants and toddlers. And I was fascinated by it. I had never read anything like it, it was so different from what I experienced, even working in the field already. It was so different from what I experienced and I loved it. As an 18-year-old learning this for the first time, I said: This is great, but you can’t really do this with children.

Janet Lansbury:  What do you mean?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Well, you couldn’t talk to children where they would understand. You couldn’t not teach them. You would have to teach them how to do things, teach them to sit up. It was so different.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, this idea that they are coming into the world as people with their own abilities and can be treated like an aware person. I know it was shocking for me too when I first learned this.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yeah. And so I had that experience in school. And then a couple of years later, as I finished up my education, I was looking for employment and I came across a center that actually had sought out Magda Gerber for some consulting: Glendale Adventist Medical Center. They have childcare onsite for their employees. And I went there for an interview and the director, who was a very tall woman, over six feet, was giving me a tour of the location.

“Here’s our pre-K room. Here’s our preschool room. Here’s where the two-year-old toddlers are. Here we’re going to go into the toddler and infant space.” And it was very reminiscent of Magda Gerber’s space. They had an outdoor deck, there was a door that was propped open that the children could go in and out of.

When we walked in, we both saw an infant about 8 to 10 months old. She was sitting up on her own, and we saw her pick up a leaf and she put it in her mouth. And then what came next is what was so different. The director walked over to her, she squatted down in a kneeling position, and she even tilted her head so that her eyes were at eye level with the infant. And she said, “I saw you put a leaf in your mouth,” and she waited. And then she put her hand out and she said, “I’d like it now.” And the young infant opened up her mouth, stuck out her tongue and the director plucked the leaf off of her tongue.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yeah. What was that? And it was so different. I expected her to run over to the infant, scoop up the infant in her arms and then stick her finger in the infant’s mouth to get the leaf. And that was not what happened at all.

I even asked the director, “What is that? What did you do?” And that’s when she talked about the RIE Philosophy again. And so seeing it in action, I was like, “I want to learn more, whatever that is. I want to learn more of that.”

Janet Lansbury:  Right, it totally stands out as just so different from the way our society treats children and the way that most of us instinctively would treat a baby.

So you studied with Magda and some of the other wonderful mentors at Resources for Infant Educators, and then you started teaching, right? You started teaching parent-infant classes and parent-toddler classes. And then at some point 20 years ago, you decided to start Homeschool Garden and care for groups of children.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yes. I had a then five-year-old and two-year-old and had been teaching classes and was looking for a school for them. I didn’t find one that where I was seeing that they were respected, seeing that they were taken care of in a way that I wanted them to be cared for and so Homeschool Garden was born.

Janet Lansbury:  So you decided I’m just going to do it myself.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  I was determined that there was a space for that and that other families are also looking for that as well, and 20 years later, here we are.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow. And this is actually one of the reasons I especially wanted you on the podcast. There are a lot of reasons because you have so much wisdom that you’ve gathered through all this work with children that you’ve done over the years, your own children, how many do you have now?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  I have 4: 25, 23, 14, he just turned 14 and then a two-year-old as well.

Janet Lansbury:  Quite a spread. That must be such an education in itself. And then your Homeschool Garden is a mixed age group, right?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yes. Our youngest right now is actually my granddaughter who is nine months old.

Janet Lansbury:  Oh my gosh.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yeah. And then we go up all the way to six years.

Janet Lansbury:  How wonderful. Well, so many parents and professionals ask me, “How can this approach work, how can you respect a baby or respect any age child (the way you talked about respecting that baby with the leaf), when you’ve got twins, triplets siblings, or groups of children? How do you give them that respect? How do you handle their behaviors?”

And what I often don’t get the chance to explain, in fact, I rarely get the chance to explain is that this approach is actually geared for caring for groups of children, because much of it was developed as you know, by Pediatrician Emmi Pikler in an orphanage setting where the ratio was one caregiver to nine babies or toddlers. And most of us, at least as parents, are dealing with a better ratio than that.

Through those respectful care practices that Pikler developed and then Magda Gerber developed further, they had remarkably positive outcomes for institutional care, unheard of outcomes where these people grew up to be typical in wanting to have relationships, wanting to have children, things that just don’t usually happen in an institutional setting. So it works. And you have had all this practical experience putting that into action and developing your own ways of giving attention to all the children and giving them what they need, taking care of their needs so that they can flourish. That’s what I want to hear more about.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Even when we have licensing people come out or physical therapists or people that have a variety of the experience of childcare and different locations, they come here and they sense right away this is different. We are not trying to micromanage the children’s time or what they’re doing. We are really giving the opportunity for them to play freely. And when we have routines like snack or a transition into the program, or a transition of getting picked up, or even a transition to go wash hands, we’re doing that with individual time and respect. And so those visitors, even when we have parents observing, are in awe of how it all flows. And I, 100% attribute that to the RIE Philosophy. The idea of children being an active participant in their care, the safe environment that we create, the consistency of our routines.

I often will tell parents who have twins or more than one child that you have to be even more RIE so that you can create that kind of environment and that flow and ease of being with your children.

Janet Lansbury:  Right, that’s what I feel too. And finding that time for self-care in all of that as well. It’s even more important that you put that oxygen mask on first when you’ve got the challenge of multiple children to take care of.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  And I think something that was very different for me going through the RIE Program as a parent was that I was a single mom, a single mom of two young children. So I got to apply this practice every day. And when I had my second son and my three-year-old was demanding of my time and my attention, okay, how can I be here for both of them? How can I be present? What would that look like?

For me, it’s really about having one-on-one time with each child, even if in a group care setting. If that means that’s the potty break that’s happening. If that means it’s the diaper change. If that means it’s a child who wakes up late and everyone else has finished snack. And so this child has one-on-one time with the caregiver having snack, then that’s how it happens.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, somebody actually asked a question about that on a comment on one of my Facebook posts recently, it’s actually a podcast post “Damage Control When We Feel Like We’re Failing,” and it’s talking about multiple children. So I had brought up the study by Sherry Turkle about the way that children feel when the phone or the tech device takes the parents’ attention at any time, they get a text message and they go or whatever. I had shared a study about that in the podcast. And this parent said:

“What if that something is not your phone, but your other children, because I feel like this happens constantly? I’ve read your words on being present for the “wants something time,” and being there during caregiving moments. And I try, but I’m with one, and there are two other children in a similar state needing help. I’m doing someone’s hair and from across the house, someone else is screaming for me to help them on the toilet. I’m just sitting down to color with one and another has spilled their drink all over the floor. There seem to be so many interruptions that I feel this is the sense that I give to my kids: that I can always be taken away. And on the other side, I try to give “needs nothing time,” (I think she’s referring to “Wants nothing quality time,” Magda’s term)… and make time to be present and play. But what ends up happening is they all try to play with me individually at the same time. It normally ends with frustration because no one is getting what they want.”

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yes, I can relate to all of that.

Sportscasting. Sportscasting is huge. “I’m coloring with your sister right now. I hear you’re asking for help on the potty. You may have to wait until I’m done using my red color.”

I always want to be sportscasting so that each child knows where my attention is. I had a three-year-old and a three-month-old and I was spending all my time focused on both of them at the same time, where I didn’t have any individual time with them. And so instead of bathing them both at the same time, I had decided that I would have my one-on-one time with them each by bathing them separately.

So I started with my three-year-old and would bathe him. And at that moment, sometimes my three-and-a-half-month-old would cry and would want attention. And I would remain with my three-year-old as I was sportscasting to my three-and-a-half-month-old, “I hear you, Jacob. I’m bathing Andrew right now. And when I’m done, then I can be with you.”

As my three-year-old started to hear that over and over — that I was choosing to stay with him as his brother was calling for my attention, it then became the three-year-old that said, “I’m okay, mom, you can go check on Jacob right now.” The baby was just outside the bathroom door, laying down on the rug, and the three-year-old was within arm’s reach of the bathtub. But it was the understanding and the empathy that he was developing by me being present and staying with one child at a time.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. They both get a positive message from that. They get the message that even if he’s getting the attention now, I’m going to get my own version of full attention at some point, too, instead of nobody’s ever getting it all the way.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yes. And trying to meet everybody’s need at the exact same time.

Janet Lansbury:  Right.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  We have a new child that’s transitioning in. And before I get up and leave the space, I let him know I’m going to be going to the kitchen and getting some dishes and I’ll be back. And he may toddle behind me and follow me in that direction.

When I come back, I let him know: “I’m going to be serving lunch right now. You can come sit down.”

The other children are like, “I want agua,” because we’re a bilingual school, asking for more water. And I’ll say, “I’m helping this child right now. And when I’m done helping this child, then I can start serving water,” sportscasting whose attention I have right now.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes. But what if that other child doesn’t accept this gracefully at all and has the impulse to go and do something destructive with another child or with something in the room or scream really, really loudly? How do you handle it when it’s not easy like that?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  So one of the things I recommend not only to my staff but to caregivers and parents is to have an environment that supports you. So when I am going to the kitchen, I am bringing actually a basket full of every single thing that I’m going to need. We’ve got extra plates, we’ve got the extra napkins, we’ve got extra silverware, extra glasses. Everything is in one space. And so when I put it down near the children that are sitting at child-sized tables and stools, it is again within arms reach. So I can put my hand over it. If a child is like, “I don’t want to wait. I’m just going to grab a glass,” or, “I’m going to reach for the water pitcher,” everything’s within arms reach of me so that I can put my hand over it and say, “I’m not offering that right now.”

And I would repeat, “I’m still helping so-and-so sit down, and then I can serve you water.” And I even point to my ear, “I hear you, I hear you asking for water. I want to remind you that I’m going to help this friend to the table first.”

And I’m pausing. I’m not reacting. There’s not a big reaction from me so I get to set the tone. I’m not going to amplify it. I don’t need to yell. I don’t need to move quickly because I’ve created an environment that supports me right along with Magda Gerber’s example of a safe environment.

Janet Lansbury:  Also I’ve got to believe that the fact you’re not getting triggered, well, it’s a lot of practice, but the way that you’re perceiving that it’s normal for children to do those things…  it’s normal for them to object when they’re not getting what they want. It’s not a bad sign that you’re doing something wrong and that you’ve got to fix something and everybody’s unhappy and that’s going to rock you. It’s a mentality of normalizing a lot of things, our perceptions, our expectations.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yes. So as soon as the children arrive, they get either sun hats or beanies, depending on the weather, and a child who’s been here for five years and their routine is the same (we’ve always gotten a hat), I still will remind them, I’ll be touching my head: “It’s time for you to get a hat now.” Just as if it was a child who’s only been here for three months.

So it’s not the expectation of, well, they should know, they’ve been here for five years or we’ve been doing this for three months. It’s with the understanding of, there are a lot of stimuli. And I don’t know if they got the breakfast that they wanted or if the parent that they wanted to see in the morning is the parent that woke up. I don’t know how their day is and I just want to be supportive in any way that I can.

Janet Lansbury:  That reminds me… It’s almost like a literal version of a touchpoint, that you’re giving the children just those little moments. Even that’s a moment of attention that you’re giving solely to that child. It just lasts for one second, but it matters because you’re connecting right there and saying: I see you and I’m here to help you. I’m here to remind you and help you. Not be angry with you for not getting it, but to show you that I’m here caring for you as well.

So it doesn’t take as much energy as I think we sometimes believe it might, to give a child that feeling of being seen and being cared about in a small way.

One of the common issues parents have and I remember this being an issue for me, is that they need to put their baby to sleep, and their toddler, or in my case, it was a four-year-old, is not able to be quiet in the area because they can’t control their impulses at that time. So, therefore, they’re disrupting and they’re making it pretty much impossible for that baby to fall asleep and for you to have a little bedtime moment nursing or whatever it is at bedtime. And then you ask the child to leave the room and then they’re screaming outside the door, crying, and you feel terrible as a parent that you’re abandoning them and neglecting them. How would you handle a situation like that?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Janet, I think it goes back to being able to give the children grace. That’s normal, they’re tired, they’re wanting your full attention. They don’t want you to be separated from them. But I wouldn’t be able to give that grace to the child unless I was giving that grace to myself too.

Janet Lansbury:  Giving yourself that grace of…

Erica Orosco Cruz:  It may not be perfect. I might unravel just as quickly as the other child or it might feel rushed. I might have both of the babies in my arms at that time. So knowing that it doesn’t have to be perfect every day and being able to give myself that grace.

But I want to be able to meet both of the child’s needs. Okay, how can I do that, if I’m thinking about it? Okay, the youngest one I would like to put to bed early so that I can spend the time with my four-year-old or older child. How can I do that? Oh, okay, does that mean that I move up one child’s bedtime an hour earlier, instead of just 30 minutes earlier? Maybe I don’t need to put the child completely asleep. Maybe I just need to feed the child, burp the child, put the younger child in the crib while I go and sing songs, have a cuddle, have a story time with the older child, and then come back to the other child, the younger child if he’s not asleep.

I’m always trying to think of possibilities. What are other possibilities? So that it’s not just, I need to do this, because that rigidity, the rigidity of it has to be done this way or they’re calling me, so I need to go over there, even though I’m being here in this moment.

I remember being that parent: it has to be this way and not giving myself that grace of, I can take a breath and then I can go attend to that child that needs me.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. Or we can have a very messy moment here, it’s not going to be smooth. Which is most of the time, especially if you have more than one child, it’s hardly ever everybody’s just perfectly content. Those moments happen and then you’re wondering, Oh gosh, I’ve got to pinch myself here. I must be dreaming.

I think getting used to that it’s going to be… And also for that older child, that’s the moment where maybe all that envy and jealousy and feeling about having this new child in their life, this new child in the family is coming to the fore right there and it’s spilling over and it’s getting expressed and in a way that’s such a positive, healthy thing.

And we can acknowledge and help someone feel heard, even outside of a door. You can help someone to feel that you care about them and love them, even if they’re not right there with you.

I think that’s another thing with caring for children in groups or caring for multiple children in a family. Yes, it’s nice when a child is having a feeling and we can just drop everything and be just with that feeling. But oftentimes, when there’s more than one child, it doesn’t happen that way, and we have to find ways to accept feelings and encourage children to share feelings with us, without us stopping everything for that to happen.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yeah. Even if they’re on the other side of the door. If you’re going to the bathroom and there’s a two-year-old demanding your attention and the door is closed, you can still, even then, “I hear you, you’re wanting me to be present with you and I’m taking care of myself right now.” Whatever that might be.

Janet Lansbury:  Right and unplugging that thing in us that’s like, I can’t relax. This again comes from expectations and perceptions of what it means when children behave like this. It’s not a bad thing that’s going on. It’s not a negative thing. It’s very healthy for children to feel: sometimes I don’t get what I want. My life is a flow of feelings and it’s not this static — I always feel a certain way. I always feel calm and happy or just calm and settled. It can be ALL those things. And that’s healthy for children to experience. It happens naturally when we, as you said, kind of prioritize one child or even ourselves sometimes.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  And when they’re receiving the focused attention at some other part during the day, I can even bring that: “I remember when you were pounding on the door when I was in the bathroom and here I am, I’m all yours now. We can go and read your story. Now my time is with you.”

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. “And that was so hard for you. I could hear how hard that was. You didn’t like that.”

Another practical example people need help with is let’s say… Well, actually I did a post recently, just a little post on Instagram, about transitions and helping a child to leave something, like the park. It could be also leaving daycare or leaving childcare or school or some other situation or a play date with a friend. The child is having difficulty in that transition as children often do. They’re getting overwhelmed and they’re getting dysregulated. And how can we respectfully help them to get from point A to point B? They’re not usually able to be given a lot of choices then or whatever. They’re not in a reasonable frame of mind and they really need help. So I had a post about this and somebody said, “Well, what if there are two children and they’re both running in different directions when you try to help them. What do you do if everybody’s running away?”

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Again, creating that safe environment for yourself, a supportive environment.

So if I have two children and there is a possibility that they might run in different directions, I maybe bring a wagon to the park so that I can corral them into a space, so that I don’t have to carry two children out of the park.

I also like to talk about routines and consistency. So one of the things that we used to do with my children when we would go to the park is that: “Before we leave the park, we will go on the swings. And when we are done with the swings, then we’re going to go to the car.” So they may ask for the swing earlier in the park visit. And I would remind them, “We do that before we leave.” And so they would go off and play again.

And then when I was getting ready to or it was time for us to leave, “Okay, we’re going to be getting ready to leave so I can offer the swing now.” So they got into the routine of Oh when we go in the swings, that means we’re going to leave, and it would be pretty much smooth sailing.

So again, when we take a group of children to the park or another visit: What kind of cues can I give them? What can I let them know? So when we start to put our shoes back on, that’s going to be time for us to leave, and we’re reminding them of that as we arrive at the location. “When we get our shoes back on, we’re going to be leaving.” And shortly before we’re leaving, “Okay it’s almost time for us to get our shoes on. And then we will be leaving right after that.”

So lots of physical cues. If I’m at a friend’s house and my children have come along, “When I go get our jackets from the other room, it’ll be time for us to leave.” “When I put my dishes on the counter, it’s going to be time for us to leave.” So I’m trying to give them physical, not only visual cues, which is super helpful.

And then there are times where they’re tired and they’ve had tons of fun and they don’t want to leave. Now you’re dealing with a tired child who might be throwing a fit. You can give them all the cues and they’re still not participating. So it’s, “You may walk to the car or I may pick you up and take you to the car,” pausing and waiting, giving them every opportunity that you can, that they will participate. And then it’s, “I see that you’re not walking, so I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the car.”

Janet Lansbury:  I love that idea of the transitional activities, sort of like a bedtime routine, where once the child is in that activity, they’re already feeling themselves getting ready to leave, or they’re feeling themselves getting ready to go to sleep because they’ve associated that activity with the next activity or the next situation that’s going to happen. That’s brilliant. I actually haven’t heard of that before and I love it.

Erica Orosco Cruz: There have also been times where we’ve had an “after RIE class.” So a class for children that are over two years. And I remember we were wrapping up class, the volume was going louder and the parents are in the class going, “Oh no. How is this going to unfold?” The children were running around in the indoor space. And I got out a box of silks and I just slowly folded them. And the energy slowly shifted into much calmer. Some of the children started joining me. But it’s so much about being the calm in the eye of the storm of just being present and slowing down. I don’t need to raise my volume. I don’t need to stand up and lift my arms. I don’t need to react to what’s going on in front of me. I just need to know where I want to go. “Do I want to bring the energy down? Okay, I can do that. How can I do that? What are the tools that I can have? Is it sweeping? Is it raking? Is it something that I can do, repetitive and calming as well?”

Janet Lansbury:  Do you ever get wound up and you feel like: Okay, I’m getting wound up. What am I going to do? I’m going to breathe, or whatever it is. Do you have a self-dialogue that you do at all or imagery?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  I even talk it out loud with the children. Say they’re moving their bodies precariously on something. I might go, “I’m watching. I’m not sure about that. I may come closer.”

So it’s not even in my head, it’s just something oral. And I’m saying it out loud and they’re like: Oh, what does that mean? She’s watching, what are we doing that’s bringing her attention to it?

Or I might say, “I’m coming closer,” when I’m getting behavior that’s out of the norm and screaming and amplified and they’re having a good time, but I’m not sure about it. So I’ll go, “I’m not sure. I’m going to come closer.” And so I’m checking in with them, but I’m also checking in with myself. Is this something I’m okay with? This is something I’m not okay with. Well, let me get closer. Maybe I can be closer and feel more comfortable with what they’re climbing on.

We had a parent that came in and was volunteering, but was very fluent with the language that we use: “I’m not sure, I’m coming closer.” And I remember at the end of the day, one of the staff members says, “She’s not sure about a lot of things.” And I thought that was so great because at least she was vocalizing it for uncertainty with the children and with the staff. So I was happy. That made me laugh.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. It’s always better to put it out there because children are feeling that, they’re feeling that trepidation or that discomfort a little bit in the person. And then it’s kind of scary if they don’t hear somebody put words to what’s going on with them. So, it really helps to calm children even just to be that honest about what’s going on with us, cluing them in. It also helps model a process for them, for themselves: I’m not sure about standing on that rock. So let me think about it. Okay, I’m going to try putting one foot up. Not that they would verbalize that, but they might internalize that kind of dialogue.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yes. And its familiar language. So even the other children might say, “I’m not sure about that,” when they’re referring to another child.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. I love that. That’s so great.

What else do I want to ask you about… What about the conflicts between children? What about when they’re using unkind words or being unkind or they’re being physically unsafe or maybe they’re fighting over toys? What kind of responses do you have to those things?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  I feel like it’s the same responses when we’re in a RIE class and it’s infants exploring each other’s bodies and things like that. And the same thing with the preschool or a child who has a whole lot more language. One of the words that we use often is “ouch,” if we see something that’s rough or hear something that’s rough, or if it’s unkind words. So we come closer, we sportscast, “I saw that you were both holding onto it. Ouch, that’s rough when you’re pulling on someone’s hair,” or “Ouch, that was rough how you said, give it to me.”

So we are still sportscasting, even with children who have a full round of language because they still are centering on themself and what they desire instead of really looking at the other child who may have that same desire. And so that’s where the sportscasting still comes into play. And it’s so helpful, especially with siblings who have varying degrees of language and comprehension of what’s going on.

Janet Lansbury:  But you stop some of the behaviors, right?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yes. We are definitely putting our hand in there to make sure everybody’s safe. We intervene if there are children that are being rough with each other, or if they’re being rough with an object, like a toy, or even — we have some chickens here — if they’re being rough with themselves even. We’re intervening, putting our hands in the path where they could do harm, and still continuing the sportscasting. “I may hold onto that car, I see that you’re both pushing. I’m going to make sure that you’re both safe.”

Janet Lansbury:  But you’re allowing them to resolve the conflict if possible by themselves. And at what point would you decide that they can’t be in this conflict or they’re not able to be here right now, or I need to pull them aside, how would you do that?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Sometimes we will stop the harm from happening. And then it may be, we can be in that space with them and see how it unfolds. “Okay, I’m going to have you stay close to me, but you’re still going after that person. Okay, I’m going to have us move into a different space.” So that there’s a clear boundary of what’s okay and what’s not okay. Yes, it’s okay to struggle over a toy or want to be sitting on the same stool or to have conflict is natural, but to be forceful with someone’s body, that’s a hard boundary.

Janet Lansbury:  Absolutely. But you’re still not judging the child as a bad child or shameful or anything. Yeah-

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Definitely not.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s the key to so much. Our reactions are what make certain behaviors repeat or make things a “thing.” Like children running away from us when they’re supposed to do something, it’s often because of the way that we’ve reacted to that in the past or the way that we’ve been judgmental.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Here on site with the staff, it’s like okay, what is that behavior desiring? Is that child wanting to play with those children? We see them knocking down a structure that the other children built with blocks, but does that need mean that they want to be playing? Okay, how can we facilitate that? What is behind the behavior? What is the need that’s trying to be met?

Janet Lansbury:  Right. And sometimes it’s the opposite. This child is trying to get some space if it’s too stimulating for this child to be this close to these children. So they’re pushing, hitting them.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  You can’t discover that unless you’re observing. Because if you’re in it and you’re like oh, I’m constantly having to stop this child from pushing friends away from them. And you’re not observing… Okay, what happened before? Okay, what was happening earlier in the day? If you’re not trying to figure out through observation what’s unfolding, then you’re not going to be able to see it. And then I would say, then you would move towards the labels or you would get frustrated or you would say: Oh, not again.

Janet: Lansbury. Yes, and that’s such a cornerstone of Magda Gerber’s approach: sensitive observation of children and it really makes a difference. I’ve noticed when I’ve been able to go into a preschool because a parent maybe asked me to assess their child for something. I’ll be the one that gets to observe because the other teachers are sometimes busy and I’ll see everything — how things went down and what really happened. And you learn a lot about each child just in a short amount of time. It’s really, really powerful.

But how do you do that if you’re the parent with a bunch of children? How do you carve out that observation time? You learn to not get involved in their play for one thing, so that becomes observation time.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  And then you get curious. Okay. I was putting the groceries away and a child said something to me, but I continued to put the groceries away, and then all of a sudden there was spilled milk on the floor. Oh, did I miss that opportunity where they were asking for help pouring the milk? What could I have done? Could I have set the groceries aside and maybe the child could’ve helped with the groceries away and then I could have served milk?

It really goes to the curiosity that children instinctively have, that we often lose because we’re just trying to find the answer.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. So it’s not really observation in the sense of the way we do in the classes, which is where we’re actually sitting and observing. We’re reflecting more on what just happened, so that’s another way of learning the way observation teaches us.

We can also learn by actually being open to… which always has to start with self-compassion and non-self-judgment, I think. But reflecting on: Oh, there’s a reason this happened with my child and the reason is not my fault, I’m bad or that they’re terrible, that I’ve done a terrible job with them, that they’re not a good person. None of those are ever the reason. The reason is something else. So to let go of all those other things so that we can love ourselves and have peace with ourselves enough to be open to what it really is, I guess, is what you’re saying.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  That’s what I call grace, to give yourself some grace.

Janet Lansbury:  I love that. Wow. What a gift you are.

So you consult with parents, you coach parents, all of that information’s on your website and you have online classes as well?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  We do. We have online classes for parents, we weekly come together. And what we receive, Janet, is like when we were in class with Magda, the decompression of: Now I get to reflect.  Or, where can I fit in this observation time? Or as Magda used to say, “What are your three wishes?” And by asking that question, it really opens you up to: What is the possibility? How could this be different?

Being a mother is no easy feat. Being a caregiver of multiple children is no easy feat, but when we have a love and a curiosity for it, it gives us a lot of opportunities to be able to shift, to try different things.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. What do I need? I feel like you’re saying. That’s what Magda was saying. She was saying, “If the good fairy could come and give you a wish or three wishes, what would they be?” And what she was saying was: Think about what you need.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Yes, because we teach ourselves first. So if we’re frustrated or tired or not taking care of ourselves, that’s what we’re modeling for our children.

Janet Lansbury:   This is wonderful. Thank you so much, Erica. I’ll be linking to all your information in the notes of this podcast. And then in the transcript, which will be posted on my website. I wish you had been my preschool teacher and I may have wished you were my mother too, at some point. You exude that grace that you’re talking about, you really do.

Oh, there’s this video of you, if it’s still on YouTube of you helping your son brush his teeth, and goodness, that alone, is worth a million words. Is that still available?

Erica Orosco Cruz:  It is.

Janet Lansbury:  Okay, great. I’ll include that in the transcript as well. Wonderful. Thank you so much. And you have a beautiful day. I’m thrilled you’re out there helping so many people, so many parents, so many children to give themselves grace.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Thank you. This went by so fast. I’m so grateful that we got to do it.

Janet Lansbury: Me too. All right, take care, my friend.

Erica Orosco Cruz:  Bye.

Please check out the wonderful resources Erica offers at http://homeschoolgardensite.com

And HERE’s Erica’s toothbrushing video on YouTube, it’s worth watching!

Also, please check some of my other podcasts on my website janetlansbury.com. There are 200-and-something of them at this point and they’re all indexed by subject and category so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. And I have two books, they’re available at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them in eBook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, or barnesandnoble.com, and in audio at Audible.com. Actually, you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening and for all your kind support. We can do this.

The post Balancing the Needs of More Than One Child (with Erica Orosco Cruz) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Attention-Getting, Inappropriate Behavior”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m going to be responding to a Facebook message exchange that I had with a parent who’s concerned about her daughter’s inappropriate attention-getting behavior and is wondering how to handle it to make it stop, because it’s embarrassing her and she’s struggling to understand what’s going on and help her daughter to stop doing this. Okay, so here’s the message I received:

Hi, Janet. I wanted to reach out and tell you how much I enjoy listening to your podcasts. They’ve been a big help through my parenting journey. I’m having concerns with my 3.5 year old daughter. She’s very bright, sweet and a lot of fun. She started preschool this year and began coming home with new behaviors. When we are FaceTiming with her grandparents or when people come over, she will start lifting up her dress to show her bottom, touching herself or making poop and fart sounds. I understand some of this behavior is natural self exploration.

We recently had an electrician work on the house and she proceeded to try and take off her clothes and say she wanted to shake her butt. I asked her to stop and I told her that it is something to do in private and that it wasn’t safe to do that when company is over. I’ve asked her why she likes doing that and she says, ‘I like to be funny.’ I told her, ‘let’s try to find other ways to be funny,’ but she says no or begins having a tantrum. We’ve also tried ignoring the behaviors, but that seems to escalate things further. Do you have any recommendations for us? Thank you.

So the specifics in this parent situation may seem a little unusual, but all of the themes in this type of behavior are very, very, very common and they show up in a lot of different ways that parents ask me about. So I’m really going to touch on not just the specifics here, but all of the themes. And the first thing I thought of was something that my mentor Magda Gerber always did, and it was so patient and wise of her. Instead of jumping in with, “here’s what might going on and here’s what you can do,” which is sometimes my tendency, because I like to figure out what’s going on and try to help, she would ask the parent questions. Because her goal and my goal, too, was to help the parent become confident in themselves and self-reliant, able to figure out situations. So it’s that thing of teaching somebody how to fish, trying to help people do it for themselves.

I remember my acting teacher doing this, and it used to actually drive me a bit mad that after I did a scene, he wouldn’t let the other students applaud because he didn’t want us to be playing for audiences. He wanted us to be self-reliant. And so after the scene, he wouldn’t say, “oh, this was good,” or “this part worked” or “this part didn’t work.” He would say, “Tell me about your experience. Tell me about your experience.” Because he wanted you to be able to have a sense of: this is where I went there. I was in this. The story was very real for me at that time. And then I kind of got jarred out of it at this point. Because that’s where the power is, that’s where the confidence comes from.

And it’s the same with parenting. What I want to give parents is confidence in themselves that they’ve got this job. They can do this. And when they’re out in front of other people, maybe their family members, or strangers on the playground, or wherever, that they are proud of what they’re doing, that they feel like they do know what they’re doing.

That’s my goal, and it was Magda Gerber’s as well. So she used to probe. “Well, what do you think about that?”

So, anyway, I thought of that with this parent, and I also was genuinely curious what she thought about all of this. So I asked her, “Do you have a sense of why she is continuing this behavior?”

And the parent came back to me, and I had to smile because she totally is all over this. She gets it so well it surprised me a little. She says:

Thanks so much for your response. In the beginning, her grandparents would laugh if she did something outrageous and say, ‘oh, you’re being silly.’ I think she can tell it bothers me, so I wonder if she is getting a reaction. We also have a six month old, so I think part of it is adjusting to being a big sister.

I loved getting this response from her. Yes, yes, yes to all of this.

So when we know, then we can figure out the need that is not quite getting filled here. And so I want to get into those specifics.

First I’m just going to talk about how some of these themes affect a lot of families in a lot of different way: the child bringing home behavior that they’re experiencing in preschool or some other group situation. Or maybe they’re being cared for by relatives one day, and they notice that certain behavior has a bit of power, maybe with teachers or with other children — that people are laughing, that maybe the adults are getting a little riled up by it.

So they see that and it’s interesting to them. And as these expert learners, they want to follow their interests and explore.

So she probably saw some of this happen at preschool, I’m guessing. Maybe it was just making the poop sounds, or maybe it was that somebody actually showed their butt at preschool, I don’t know.

With children, it can be words that they hear, language, behavior around violent play in terms of gunplay or “good guys, bad guys” type of play. They’re interested in the power that something has, so they bring it home like she did. And she tried it out with her grandparents.

Her grandparents thought it was funny. And I don’t actually think that’s what encouraged her to keep exploring this. I think it was much more the parent being bothered, being worried, naturally, when she saw that. Uh oh, that’s not good. I don’t want her to be doing that. That’s what children zone in on, these most important people to them — their parents or primary caregivers.

And how interesting this situation was for her, because these people are laughing, but this really, really important person is not amused. And I sense she’s bothered by it.

That’s something that most of us, if we were young children, would want to try to figure out. Whoa, what is the power in this? It’s bothering her and these people are getting a kick out of it. Hmm. So she has to pursue that. And again, this type of exploration is common.

The first time… somehow they get the feeling that this might be something that bothers their parent and that their parent also really doesn’t have a lot of control over, isn’t able to just stop me doing that easily.

Sometimes it can be telling a parent rejecting type of things. And I’m just seeing that the parent is taking it personally, even though I’m just this little, tiny girl who is just learning and trying to figure it all out. And I love my parents more than anything, and I don’t really, really want to bother them, but it’s just interesting to me.

And then another common reason that children do these things is not just pure exploration of the parent’s response, but also because they sense that this is a way to communicate something to my parents.

None of this is on a conscious level, by the way.

It gets my parents attention in a certain way, and it communicates that everything is not hunky dory in my world right now. I’m going through a transition of some kind.

Very commonly it’s this sibling transition. Other transitions can have this effect too: moving houses, a new school, parents separating or other big changes happening, and it throws children off balance. They don’t understand, oh, this is just this thing happening right now and then it’s going to be better. It’s just this period of adjustment. It just feels like somebody pulled the rug out from under them and they don’t know that it’s ever going to end.

So she’s got some uncomfortable feelings, and she notices, as children do: this is a way of getting a reaction out of my parent that feels like I’m getting through to them, that I’m feeling kind of out of control and off-balance about a situation that’s going on. It’s not all okay with me.

Often what can help is this child getting enough opportunities to share “negative feelings.”

It’s very challenging for us as parents to see all the places the feelings pop up, and to remember to encourage those rather than do the normal thing, which is kind of push back on those, or explain children out of them, or even a little bit deny them, because oftentimes they don’t make sense, because feelings don’t.

So a child will say, “I don’t like these clothes today.” And a parent wants to say the sensible thing, which is: “Well, that’s your favorite dress. What do you mean? Or, “those are your favorite shoes.” Instead of trusting every feeling our child expresses as something that actually just needs a place to land.

With the younger sibling, who she may adore, I mean, it’s not about that; it’s about the transition she’s going through with the betrayal of her parents loving somebody else, somebody taking all of this time, wondering where she stands at any given moment with the parents. That’s where children are feeling it.

It’s not a bad sign that they don’t like their sibling or any of that. It’s really all about them on the inside and the way they’re perceiving the situation.

So sometimes parents will say to me, “We’re giving our child so much attention (the older child), because we know this is a tough time and we’re giving them so much one on one attention.”

But this isn’t about giving more attention. It’s a certain kind of attention. It’s that attention of, “Huh, you don’t like that dress today. You don’t like this food for breakfast.”

That doesn’t mean I’m going to go run and make you another one. It just means I accept you get to feel this way.

So it’s that certain kind of connection and attention the children are looking for. And people call it negative attention, but it’s not negative attention. It’s see-my-disruptive-feelings attention. See that I’m doing things I know I’m not supposed to do, or that really don’t make sense, because I’m not comfortable 100% and I need you to accept and help me with these uncomfortable parts of me too.

See me.

So understanding all of these elements, how do we approach the behavior? How do we dial it back?

By seeing it, and pondering it and understanding where it’s coming from, it helps us not be bothered so much as feel, wow, she’s found this interesting way to get to me.

I mean, you’ve got to admire them because they find these ways. Sometimes they’re a little less obvious than this one, which would bother any parent I’m sure.

So let’s say it does bother us the first time because we’re not expecting it. It’s a little scary that our child does something like this. Uh oh, what’s going on here?

Again, children will bring home everything they were exposed to. That’s what they’re supposed to do. That’s how they learn about it. That’s how they process it. It’s even empathy — understanding where that child was coming from that was doing that. Exploring, learning, that’s what they’re all about. It’s really positive.

So this parent could almost, in her mind, admire what her daughter’s figured out here, when the parent can stop being afraid about it. Because it will go away. And one of the big signs that it will go away is that with the electrician, she said “she tried to take off her clothes and she said she wanted to shake her butt.”

She’s sharing the feeling there instead of doing the behavior. And that just shows how she just wants to be seen in this.

She doesn’t really want to do it. She has a filter that is telling her that wouldn’t be safe with the electrician. I mean, even at three and a half, she’s already sensing that. But she has to gauge her mother’s response and share this with her. “See me, mom. See me wanting to do this inappropriate thing. This is where I am right now.” What is she going to do now?

So right there, if this parent could say, “Ah, hmm, well, I’m not going to let you do that but that’s an interesting idea.” Or, “do you think he would laugh like your grandparents did? Yeah. I can’t let you do that, babe. But interesting idea you’ve got there.”

Again, that has to come from the place that I’m not actually bothered and I’m not worried.

So that’s the most important thing is to work on our perceptions so that we feel more comfortable about the behavior. And this can be a gradual change for us. We’re not going to right away snap into it. That’s okay. But the sooner we can, the sooner this behavior will vanish, because we’re not going to give it the power to upset us anymore.

We’re going to be open to the more appropriate ways that are less bothersome and scary for us that our child will be sharing.

And even in this moment right here, we’re going to hear the feeling while we stop the behavior. “Come over here,” if we see her running off to try to do that. And that’s what she wants us to do. She doesn’t want to run in there and expose herself to the electrician. She’s looking for a certain kind of attention and connection here.

See me. Don’t judge me. Don’t be mad at me. See that everything’s not perfect in my world right now and I’m feeling a little goofy. I’m a little out of control. Is it okay to feel like this? Can you handle me?

And then asking her why she likes doing that, that could be a way to connect, actually. “Is that really fun for you? Are you enjoying that?”

But if she’s asking from a place of being bothered, then it will only keep communicating to her daughter that she’s bothered, which keeps giving power to the behavior.

The girl said, “I like to be funny.” And then the mother said, “I told her, let’s try to find other ways to be funny, but she says no or begins having a tantrum.”

So I wouldn’t get into that kind of dialogue, because the parent saying, “let’s try to find other ways to be funny,” it’s again, communicating: I don’t want you to do this and it’s uncomfortable for me. So don’t do what you’re doing.

Instead of really genuinely trying to understand what she’s doing.

But then if she says no or begins having a tantrum — that may happen if the mother’s gently, but firmly keeping her away from disrobing in front of the electrician. She may start to cry. She may start to protest. And that’s exactly what she needs to share. Those are the feelings that will heal her.

If we can accept those just as what they are, but knowing in our heart that it’s not about that, it’s not about the need to do something with the electrician, it’s not about the need to bother her mother. It’s about, I need to share that I’m sad. I need to share that I’m scared. I need to share that. I’m worried that you don’t love me as much. I need to share that.

All of that is going to come through by the parent stopping her and then simply saying, “I can’t let you be funny with the electrician in that way, my love.”

She starts to cry, and maybe we just let that happen and we just calm ourselves. Or maybe we say, “yeah, you wanted to have some fun there and your mom said no, and that’s upsetting.” Saying those words and meaning them.

So instead of trying to talk her into doing this another way or whatever, I would meet her where she is. She’s trying this out. I get it. And yeah, it’s bothered me in the past, but it doesn’t bother me. “Sweetie. I know you’re just having fun, but I can’t let you do this in certain situations. You can do it with me at home, just us, all you want.”

Because if we see that as just silly, and that it’s not intimidating to us in any way, we can just laugh and not make a big deal out of it, and that’s how it goes away. It doesn’t get the uncomfortable type of attention that we’re giving it anymore, and then it doesn’t have a purpose anymore for her.

So, anyway… A gain, this applies to so many kinds of behaviors that they do catch wind of or bring home from school to try out. They try it out and the result will either keep them hooked into it and stuck there repeating it with us, or we’ll see it for what it is.

I remember this friend of mine, actually, her son was my son’s best friend, and he heard the phrase “chicken butt” at preschool. And the mother wasn’t prudish or anything, but for some reason this particular expression just drove her mad. And sure enough he was saying it the entire year. And I don’t think my son ever said it, or maybe he said it once, because he saw me when his friend would come over and say it, I would just shrug my shoulders and smile like: ah, okay, sure. Whatever. So my son saw it didn’t have power, no reason for him to keep saying that.

But it’s just so interesting. We don’t mean to do this as parents, but we give things power and then our child has to keep checking it out. Not because they don’t like us or they’re mean to us. They’re learners. They’re expert learners. And the thing they want to learn most about is their relationship with their parents, where they stand, where they fit, how my parents feel about me, how they perceive me, if they accept me, if they’re on my side, always helping me. Those are the things children explore. It’s really, really healthy.

So I hope some of this is helpful to this parent or any parent listening. And if my podcasts are generally somewhat helpful to you, then please consider giving a positive review on iTunes. Not very good about asking for these things. But as we’re getting towards the end of another year of this podcast and we’re considering devoting our energy to this for another year, it’s always good to get some encouragement.

And thank you to all of you for listening.

Please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. There are many of them, and they’re all indexed by subject and category so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. Both of my books are available in paperback at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them in eBook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play or barnesandnoble.com, and an audio at Audible.com. Actually, you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening and all your kind support. We can do this.

The post Attention-Getting, Inappropriate Behavior appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “‘Earlier Is Better’ and Other Child Development Myths (with Rae Pica)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I’m joined by Rae Pica, a true standard bearer for early childhood education. I’d never met Rae, but I certainly knew of her and her work. She’s been focused on this for over 40 years. So I’m thrilled she agreed to come on the podcast. Rae is dedicated to developing and educating the whole child and she’s written 20 books on the subject. She’s a brilliant keynote speaker and, as a consultant, she’s offered her expertise and experience to an incredibly diverse list of organizations, both public and private, including the CDC, Sesame Street, Mattel, Gymboree, Nike, Nickelodeon’s “Blues Clues,” and many health departments in schools. Rae and I will be discussing how children actually learn, how to encourage their intrinsic developmental processes, and some of the parenting myths that are so common these days and can stifle a child’s natural instinct to explore, discover, learn, and flourish.

Hi Rae, welcome to Unruffled and thank you so much for being willing to share with my listeners today.

Rae Pica:  Oh, I’m happy to. Thank you so much. I love the title, Unruffled, that’s just great.

Janet Lansbury:  Oh, well, it’s something to strive for. I think when we do understand child development and our place in it, all of that perspective can really help us. We don’t have to pretend we’re unruffled, but the way that we see children and trust them as capable, it can help us to actually be unruffled.

Rae Pica:  Yeah, understanding child development is so important.

Janet Lansbury:  And I know that’s been life’s work and that you have been such a wonderful communicator of your knowledge to the public. So, anyway, I’m thrilled to have you here.

There are so many things we could talk about, but I was thinking the other day that what I would like you to share is, I think, something that will be very practical for parents and helpful. I always try to focus on what can I offer that might help, and one goal that we all have as parents is that our children thrive. That they flourish physically, cognitively, creatively, socially, emotionally; that they reach their potential in all those areas. Sometimes there are things that we don’t realize are getting in the way of that.

What are some of the common hinderers of this desire that we have for our children? What gets in the way?

Rae Pica:  Well, Janet, I think the biggest one is, I hate to say this, all the misinformation floating around out there. There’s just so much information. I mean, there’s so much information. Never, in the history of parenting, has there been so much information and so much of it is wrong, in my humble opinion. It just is wrong. Ugh, gosh, that just sounds so negative.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, I think what you’re saying is this is a blessing and a curse. I think most of us understand the blessing, hopefully: that it’s helping make our lives easier and making our role clearer, helping us with our children’s behavior in the moment, all of that. So hopefully it’s doing that, unless we’re just getting very confused, which is also very possible. So what do we need to look out for? Like when we’re getting information, how do we know…?

Rae Pica:  Yeah, how are you supposed to sort through it all and know what’s right and what’s wrong? I mean, we mentioned child development earlier. Most parents, unless they’re in a field that requires it, haven’t studied child development, and they sure as heck don’t have the time to keep up with the research and anything pertaining to young children or early childhood education. So, yeah, there are several pieces of misinformation. Let me just start with the biggest that has become very prevalent in our society and that is keeping children from thriving. We think that it’s doing the opposite. That piece of information is that earlier is better.

“Earlier is better” is a myth. I don’t know how all of this started. I do know that traditional and social media haven’t helped. They’re very good at perpetuating myths and in fostering competition. And I’m not just talking about parents, but policymakers, adults in general have received the idea that we have to give children a jumpstart. Whether we’re talking about academics or athletics, we have to get them started as soon as possible because if we don’t, they’ll fall behind forever and stay that way.

And it’s just not true.

The harm is that, well, for one thing, it puts a lot of pressure on parents. Pressure that doesn’t have to be there.

For another, it puts a lot of pressure on the children because child development is a process and it can’t be accelerated. You know how much they want to please the important adults in their lives. The little ones do, and when they can’t do what we’re asking them to do because they’re not developmentally ready to do it, they’re not supposed to be doing it yet, it puts a lot of pressure on them. They feel anxious and depressed and just plain unhappy. So let’s start there, Janet, because I can just ramble on.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes. I’m absolutely in agreement with you here, nodding my head, and that’s exactly what Magda Gerber used to say, “earlier is not better.” I have a couple theories as to how this could be being perpetuated. One is from when I had my first daughter, which was 28 years ago. There was this whole “super baby” trend at that time and it was so much pressure and it just always seemed so arbitrary to me. “Stimulate them this way at this age and then by this many months, you’ve got to do these games to your baby and do this to make sure they’re getting that,” and the whole responsibility was on us. That we were going to miss windows or we were going to-

Rae Pica:  Yes, the windows.

Janet Lansbury:  Those horrible windows. It was up to us to make sure those windows were getting filled with something.

Rae Pica:  Well, if you could name another group of people easier to scare than parents, I mean, of course, they were frightened by that. I mean, they want the best for their children and if they didn’t get on board with all of this … and, part of it, I remember, and I don’t know what year it was, when Rob Reiner came out with “This is Your Child,” I think the program was called. He was very excited. It was very well-intentioned and I really don’t know a lot about it, except that it was based on the new research about the first three years of life, how many brain cells and neurons and all of that. All of that that’s happening in the first three years. Well then, then the marketers jumped in and they aren’t necessarily well-intentioned except to line their pockets.

Janet Lansbury:  True.

Rae Pica:  But they jumped in with, “Well, you need these flashcards and you need infant lap wear, and you need all of these doodads.” So parents wanted to be good parents and they rushed out and bought them. It was based on the idea that enrichment matters in the first three years, but nobody told them that enrichment is really as simple as paying loving attention to your child.

Janet Lansbury:  Right, and trusting them to play and see what they’re interested in. Taking a step back and observing who they are.

Yeah, so I think the other part is this sort of general idea that I know I had before I started working with Magda Gerber and learning from her, that children respond because we do something to them first. That we have to teach them everything that they are going to learn.

Both of those ideas, the “super baby” and this other kind of more general idea that if we don’t pull a child’s hand up and get them on their feet, they will not walk…

Rae Pica:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  Magda countered that with, no, children are actually born self-learners. That there’s a wisdom in all children that should be trusted in terms of their timetable, what they’re working on, who they uniquely are, and that there is something there. They’re not just blank, waiting to be filled in by us.

Rae Pica:  Exactly. Exactly, they’re born with a love of learning. I mean, they’re all about learning and asking questions, exploring and discovering, and they need the time and the space to do that.

I hear so many stories about children who were really excited about learning and so they were excited about going to preschool and kindergarten and, days in, they’re miserable and they’re burnt-out in kindergarten, because learning, this is where the policymaker piece comes in, the curriculum has been pushed down to accommodate this education race, and it’s just preposterous. Again, child development cannot be accelerated. So why has kindergarten become the new first grade?

A University of Virginia study showed the differences between kindergarten then and kindergarten now, and, oh, it’s just horrifying. You talk about your empty vessels. We’re trying to pour information into their little blank heads, forcing them to sit and do worksheets, and it’s just …

Janet Lansbury:  And there’s no joy in it for the adults, either because, again, as we were saying, the whole onus is on us to do everything. So, of course it’s, well, let’s get it done sooner because then we’ll be done with that and onto the next thing and we’re doing a better job that way if we get them all doing this, really.

Rae Pica:  Yeah, it’s a terrible amount of pressure. Parenting, I think, has become harder because of all this misinformation.

I remember the young mom who approached me after a keynote speech and said … this was a few years ago. She said, “Is it okay if I don’t sometimes… if I don’t always play with my child?” I honestly, Janet, did not know what the heck she was saying. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it, and then it dawned on me. She thought she had to play with her child all the time in order to be a good mom. “I have to keep my child entertained” is another one of those myths that I’m trying to debunk.

I like my mother, I love my mother, but I can’t imagine her playing with me all the time when I was little. Benign neglect was sort of our parents’ parenting style and it worked fine. I mean, I think I turned out okay.

Janet Lansbury:  I think we can say yes on that. I think also that parents do want to be more involved. I mean, that’s why they’re taking in all this information and they’re excited and they want to learn, and that’s such a positive thing.

The thing about the benign neglect is that you can give children the benefits of that, that you got and I got when I was just playing all day, making up games, discovering our own ways to play. They can have that benefit, but still be involved, if we can learn to tune in and just enjoy what our child is doing and be the audience, not the player. So we can still have that.

I don’t think it’s a question of: Well, I’m just ignoring my child, or I’m playing with them. There’s this whole other area that brings so much joy and discovery of our own child. It’s so educational for us. We’re the passive partner in their play, just responding when they’re asking us to, and letting them know that we’re there and we’re present sometimes when we can be.

Rae Pica:  You’re right, there’s definitely a balance involved. I’m just encouraging parents to know that it doesn’t have to be as challenging as maybe it’s been to this point.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes.

One more thing I just thought of when you were saying about the parent believing that we need to entertain and play with our children all the time, which I definitely did at first. I believed that with my infant, that I had to keep her busy. In fact, I was completely over-stimulating her and then she would get really cranky and I wasn’t understanding the sensitivity of her to stimulation actually.

But one of the big pieces of misinformation parents are getting is that their children being disappointed or having feelings or crying about something is actually dangerous. That whenever a child is crying, because they maybe want the parent to do something the parent can’t do it right then or doesn’t want to do in terms of play, or any boundary, really, the child is disappointed and cries about it, then that child is in danger of what people call “cry it out” and this causes brain damage. So there are parents living in that fear.

This was brought to my attention recently by a psychologist who follows my work and said she finally realized that this fear was what was behind parents never wanting to say no to their child in regard to play or anything. So that’s heavy.

Rae Pica:  If you hear these things often enough, of course, you’re going to believe them and that puts even more pressure on you, doesn’t it? You must say yes to your child all the time.

I mean, I think that boredom is a gift for children because then they will use their creativities, their imagination, their wonderful mind to come up with something to do. Now, I’m not saying that you just say, “Go away.” Maybe you have to ease into the child learning how to play on his or her own. You set up some art materials over here and maybe some blocks and Legos, construction materials over there, and you give the child a choice. “Well, there’s this over here. There’s this over here. Pick one.”

Do you want to hear some other myths?

Janet Lansbury:  Yes, I absolutely do.

Rae Pica:  One is that “play isn’t a productive use of time,” and it’s closely linked to “earlier is better,” because if we believe that earlier is better, then what we value is accomplishment and productivity, and I’m not so sure those two words should be associated with early childhood. So, play seems like something frivolous, not a productive use of time. But nature had a plan in mind and we really can’t imagine that we have a better one. Nature intended for the young of almost every species, including human species, to learn through play. It’s the basis of the adult personality. They learn self-discipline, conflict resolution, negotiation, cooperation, and collaboration, how to take the perspective of others. They learn all of these skills that will serve them so well throughout life through play, through free play.

Free play, authentic play, is child-initiated and child-directed, which is why we can’t put them in an organized soccer game and feel that they’re getting the opportunity to play. It’s not the same thing.

Play is how they express their fears and their feelings. During the pandemic, a lot of children were playing doctor or hospital. Right after 911, a lot of children were building block towers and knocking them down, and that is how they take some control of their world and they need to have that. No matter how loving we are toward them, how much love and attention we shower on them, they still need to have some control, make some sense of their world. And they do that through play.

Janet Lansbury:  This is true on their own, not just with others as well, right?

Rae Pica:  Oh yes, absolutely.

When I did workshops in the past on creativity, I would ask the participants to list some words related to creativity and then list some words related to play and they always, they always intertwined. There was such an overlap there. We give a lot of lip service to creativity in our society, but we don’t do a lot to promote it. We don’t really value it the way we should. It might be because we associate creativity simply with the arts, but we need creativity in business and industry, technology, science, medicine. Creativity is about problem-solving. It’s about seeing beyond what already exists, seeing beyond the problem to the solution.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, I think we can get caught up seeing creativity as a product, that our child is able to finish a drawing or something like that. Instead, it’s a process, it’s a way of thinking. It’s an aspect that I think we all have in ourselves to some degree. It’s not just certain people are creative and others aren’t.

Rae Pica:  In early childhood education, we’ve been saying it for decades, if not longer: with young children it’s all about the process, not the product. It doesn’t matter if the finger painting ends up all black. It really doesn’t matter, that’s the product. What matters is the process in getting there. So, yeah, it’s hard to describe how important these things are in early childhood.

Janet Lansbury:  One of my mentors actually, an associate that also studied with Magda, she, I remember, brought up an example once of a teacher going over to a child who was painting, a young child, and saying, “What are you painting?” and the child says, “Paper.”

Rae Pica:  I love that. I love that.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s a good answer.

Rae Pica:  Yeah. Well, there’s a whole podcast to be done on how we should respond. “Oh, I see you’re using a lot of purple in that drawing,” is non-judgmental and gives the child some information and values the process, not the product, so yeah.

Janet Lansbury:  It’s all about the process, and that’s the learning process that we want them to stay in love with as they get older.

One of the things we notice with young children, with what I do, we notice in infants that they’re fine with not being able to reach what they’re reaching for, unless we start to react to that. They don’t mind challenges. They don’t mind “failing.” I don’t think they even understand that’s a concept that applies to life. It’s just: I’m doing this, I’m reaching my arm out. I’m trying to touch this. It’s beyond my reach. Let me try something else. Or not, and I’ll do something else altogether.

So it’s just not this fraught thing that we can sometimes feel as parents like: Oh my gosh, I better get it for her because she needs it.

Rae Pica:  Exactly, because the reaching is the process and if you get there, that’s great. But if we make a big deal about them not getting there, then we’re putting our emphasis on the product again.

And that’s one of the other myths, that “we have to protect them from ‘failure and mistakes.‘” My gosh, you and I know we learn more from mistakes and from failure than from successes, and there’s not a single life that avoids failure and mistakes. Not that they have to get used to it when they’re little, but they have to learn how to begin to learn how to deal with it in a positive way.

Janet Lansbury:  And that is normal, right? I mean-

Rae Pica:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  And we’re not trying to train them into that. It will happen, if we can trust that it’s okay. It will just naturally happen. Children will seek out those challenges that are just beyond their reach, or…

Rae Pica:  Yes. Taking those risks, climbing the tree or hanging upside down from the monkey bars, and all those things that we’re frightened of these days, because we’ve been made to be frightened of them. We’ve gone a little bit overboard on that.

Janet Lansbury:  Would that be another myth that we need to-

Rae Pica:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  … protect them from doing anything that could possibly be a failure or dangerous, or?

Rae Pica:  Exactly. I mean, it’s funny, I had a call this morning, a voicemail on my phone from a grandmother. She follows my work and she and I have become friendly. She had to pop in to say, “I’m here at the playground with the little ones, and even with everything I know about how we should let them take risks and find the edge of what they’re capable of doing,” she said, “I heard myself saying, ‘Be careful.'” I thought: Well, of course, you did! I mean, we all have to retrain ourselves, right?

Janet Lansbury:  Yes.

Rae Pica:  I mean, I know the statistics, and this is true, that it is the safest time to be a kid in America. It’s the truth, and the information is out there. I know all of that. Yet we hear so many horror stories through the media that if I see a little one outside playing by herself, my first instinct is, “Huh,” and then I have to think it through, like someone who knows better, but it’s hard.

Janet Lansbury:  It really, really is hard to calm ourselves. And I think that’s a good place for us to segue right now…

Okay, so we know that these myths are getting in our way, but how do we stop? How do we trust that it’s okay for my child to be doing what they’re doing right now, and not doing this next thing that my friends are doing?  Or that I saw somebody on the internet doing? That their kids can do? How do we find that in ourselves? How do you help parents and professionals understand this?

Rae Pica:  The comparisons are brutal, aren’t they? I mean, if you do happen to believe and know in your heart that your child doesn’t need to be enrolled in 47 million programs, but another parent looks at you and says, “Seriously?” with horror on her face, then you’re going to start to doubt yourself.

So, you’ve used the word “trust” several times and we do have to trust our instincts, trust our hearts, trust that the children know best.

One of the ways that I’m trying to help parents … Obviously, if you’re finding information, you need to be able to trust the people you’re getting that information from.  Like you. And, I hope, like me. And I’m not sure how we know that we’re the right people to get information from, but I have started a new program for parents, because I want to reassure them, and I want to make parenting easier. I want to help them to make their children’s lives… to live that life that we’re talking about, the healthy, physical, social, emotional, all of that. It’s a monthly membership program and anybody who wants to know anything about me can go to raepica.com.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, tell me a little about what you’re going to be doing in the program.

Rae Pica:  Well, I’m offering a video a month and it’s just 10 minutes max, because parents are busy, so I keep them short. In each video I tackle a myth.  I don’t think it’ll be ending anytime soon because there are so darn many of them floating around out there!  And then there’s also a transcript.

Maybe, most importantly, there is a private Facebook group with like-minded parents. Because I want to also share… What kind of things do you say to the mom who looks at you in horror or doubts what you’re doing? How do you respond to that?

So I want to support the parents, but it will also help early childhood education. Because so many parents believe that play isn’t productive, that they have asked when they’re interviewing at preschools… They want to find the academics-oriented ones. And the play-oriented ones are sort of going the way of the dodo bird and we can’t have that happen.

So anyway, I’ve taken on this huge task and I would just love to have people join me on this journey.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, I’m sure they will.

What you were saying about preschools, that’s absolutely the case that the one that my children went to. Didn’t have a fancy name for the philosophy or anything, it was just the old-fashioned kind that I’m sure you endorse, that I know Magda Gerber used to endorse, which is this-

Rae Pica:  It didn’t have academy in the name?

Janet Lansbury:  No, just learn through play, what we used to call “developmental preschool,” right? But then they started having to make an agenda for parents that said “science” and “math.” Then what science would actually be was that their children were playing with water tables and sand or something like that, but they would translate that to make the parents feel more confident that they’re not going to fall behind, that they’re going to be learning all the things they’re supposed to be learning.

So that was unfortunate that they had to do it that way, and then, of course, the school did go away, like you said, like the dodo bird. So I’m totally with you on that. I would love to see the re-emergence of places that really understand development and where children can really thrive and enjoy learning.

Rae Pica:  Exactly. I mean, other myths are that “sitting equals learning.” Absolutely false, but the belief in it has children sitting for hours either in front of a screen or doing worksheets.

When we look at play, and it is hard to have to justify play in terms of academics or whatever, I mean, the truth is that they are gaining academic knowledge through play, if we could just trust that that’s happening. The research shows that the more senses we use in the learning process, the more information we attain and retain. Doing worksheets isn’t authentic learning and it’s not indicative of what’s being learned. It’s not indicative of intelligence and it doesn’t provide evidence of any kind of what children are capable of. Of course, it uses one sense, the sight.

Janet Lansbury:  And that’s the exciting thing about children that makes them so fun to watch. When they’re given free rein to play and do what they want to do, they use their whole body. They put everything into something, whether it’s an emotion that they’re having or the way they’re playing or the way they’re learning. And that’s what they’re supposed to do. And that’s how it integrates into our whole system — what we’re learning — and it becomes part of us, instead of just this lesson that someone gave us.

Rae Pica:  Exactly, exactly. You just touched on another myth, that “the brain and the body have nothing to do with one another,” and that, that goes way back. That goes back to Descartes saying, “I think therefore I am.” Again, it’s not the truth. There’s more and more research about how the two are … They’re interdependent, and when we make children sit, we’re not providing opportunity for optimal brain development. They do learn with their whole selves and all of their senses.

So if we want children to be successful and to thrive … and I’m talking about successful in terms of being happy and healthy and all the ways that you mentioned … then we need to let child development guide the process and we need to let child development guide our decisions. So I’m on a mission to make sure that happens.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, I’m with you all the way, and thank you so much for sharing with us, and especially sharing your program as well so that we can turn parents onto that. Our job is doing less and enjoying them more.

Rae Pica:  I like that.

Janet Lansbury:  That was a phrase out of Magda Gerber, “Do less, enjoy more.”

Rae Pica:  Writing this down. Magda said, “Do less, enjoy more.”

Janet Lansbury:  Enjoy more. She actually said also, “Do less, observe more, enjoy most,” about children.

Rae Pica:  What a brilliant woman.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, she really was. But anyway, I love all of it, and I’m really glad that you’re out there supporting children, and love you. So thank you again.

Rae Pica:  Thank you, Janet.

Rae Pica’s exciting new (reasonably priced!) program for parents is called: “The Truth About Children.” You can get more information and sign up HERE.

Also, please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, JanetLansbury.com. There are many of them and they’re all indexed by subject and category, so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in.

And both of my books are available in paperback at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them in eBook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play or barnesandnoble.com, and an audio at Audible.com. Actually, you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening and all your kind support. We can do this.

The post “Earlier Is Better” and Other Child Development Myths (with Rae Pica) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “ADHD and How to Support All Children to Fulfill Their Dreams (with Lynn Miner-Rosen)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I have a special guest who also happens to be a dear friend of mine. Lynn Miner-Rosen is an ADHD coach and a board certified career development coach. She is an expert on ADHD. She was a special education teacher in New York City for 12 years. Her own child has ADHD and she found out that she does as well. So she has personal experience and a lot of encouragement to share. Her mission these days is to help people feel supported, empowered, loved, and to find the career that they love.

Janet Lansbury:  Thank you for being here.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Hi, Janet. I am so excited. This is a lifetime dream to be here with you.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s so sweet. Yeah, so-

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  It’s going to be hard to not laugh, or cry.

Janet Lansbury:  So everybody you should know that Lynn and I grew up together. We were in grade school together, and we’ve stayed in touch all these years. Lynn has blossomed into this amazing career with two specialties, really. She is an expert in ADHD, and she’s also a career coach for people with ADHD, and also everybody. And she is credentialed in that work as well. So she works in those fields kind of separately and also together. So thrilled to have you here!

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Oh thank you, likewise.

Janet Lansbury:  And wanted to ask you first for people that don’t really know, what is ADHD?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  I think the most important thing that people need to know is that it’s not a disability in the sense that people can’t have their own wonderful lives. So it used to be called ADD, or ADHD. So we hear a lot of people still saying, ADD, thinking that that’s different than ADHD. And what we found about 13 years ago is that it’s all ADHD, but there’s three types. There’s the inattentive type, the hyperactive type is what we normally think about, little boys. And there’s combination.

We also used to think that ADHD were mostly little boys and they would grow out of it. And now what we’re finding in the last 20 years, the research has been so incredible that we’re finding that, no, people don’t grow out of it. And women and girls have ADHD, but girls don’t show their symptoms till usually middle school.

So back then they would diagnose little kids in elementary school and they would say the little boys that were running around hyper and couldn’t sit in circle time had ADHD. And that was that. And now we’re learning that it’s a lot more than that. It’s not just sitting in circle time. It’s not just about focus. It’s not just about talking or being hyperactive. It affects a lot of areas of our brain. We call those executive functions, and that’s where the ADHD really can be a challenge for kids and parents, everybody.

Janet Lansbury:  So what does it affect? I mean, if you could generalize, or maybe just talk about the different types. How does this show up in children? What should parents notice to get a screening, or to find out more, to see what help they can get?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Most parents hear from their teachers first, and that’s good. If I brought that up to a parent for the first time, I wouldn’t want them to worry about it. It’s not a bad thing. Think of it like this, your kid has a Ferrari brain and tricycle breaks.

Janet Lansbury:  I love that.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  So, we want to welcome the brain power, but they don’t know how to manage it. My son had ADHD. We knew very early on and he didn’t want to sit in circle time. We were at some Mommy and Me, that, “Where’s Joe? He has to sit in circle time.” And I kept thinking: Why? Why does he have to sit there? Why can’t he just wander around? So that’s part of where parents will start to see it, through teachers.

But going back to the question about executive functioning, I think that’s really important to know. There are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about ADHD and they’re passed on from what our parents told us, or what their neighbors told them, or even if they come from a culture that doesn’t believe in it. So there are a lot of things that can get in the way of getting a diagnosis, or knowing that your kid might have something. And my suggestion, if you’re not sure, is to always see a specialist. Not all pediatricians, not all of them are trained in the current ADHD research, and they don’t know the correct procedure. So we want to make sure that those kids see an expert, a developmental pediatrician, and a neuropsychologist.

Janet Lansbury:  To get a screening and to find out. And what is the screening like?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  It usually probably takes three to four different days, maybe consecutive days. Or two days. And it’s fun. It’s actually toys for the kids to play with. “What’s bigger? What’s smaller?” They do a whole testing on, they’ll test their IQ, because they want to see if it’s a learning disability, as opposed to ADHD. A learning disability is when you have one specific area that you struggle in.

Janet Lansbury:  And then ADHD is more of a difficulty with attention, or like a difficulty, like you said, putting brakes on all the distractions.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  It’s executive functioning, and it includes memory, short-term memory and long-term memory. It includes how kids think about themselves. They tend to feel harder and express harder. Like, those are deep feelers. So, little things, they feel more. It’s really also managing their health. They’ll eat when they want to eat. Their sleep might be different. We sometimes think that people with ADHD are on a different circadian rhythm. They want to stay up late and they have a hard time getting up in the morning. That’s a very ADHD type thing. The research is showing a possible shift, that the circadian in our brains are different.

Janet Lansbury:  And what I’ve heard you say before is that there is a whole spectrum, and that oftentimes there’s also maybe learning disabilities that are involved with certain children that have ADHD.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Absolutely. I’m so glad you brought that up, because ADHD never comes alone.  It always comes with something else. So it might be anxiety. It might be depression. It might be bipolar. So those things tend to be the alert that there might be something else going on.

Most people aren’t able to diagnose ADHD by just looking at a kid. You can’t, because it’s in the invisible disability. But it’s the other things that come with ADHD that we pick up on, that’s when the ADHD gets diagnosed. Is when we say, oh, we see depression, anxiety, possibly sleep issues. Hyper-focusing on video games. Having a hard time transitioning from one activity to another without advanced notice. That’s a real ADHD thing, we call that time blindness. And some young people have a very hard time thinking about the future, because of their ADHD. They can’t, they don’t know how to visualize their future, and it’s so stressful. It’s like too stressful. They don’t think about where they’re going next or what they’re doing next. They’re in the moment.

Janet Lansbury:  With this Ferrari that they’re driving.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  With a Ferrari.

Janet Lansbury:  Who can think of what’s happening next? You’re trying to manage the Ferrari.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  And if they’re forgetful or procrastinate, those are all those negative words. It’s not on purpose. They’re not trying to do that. It’s a lot of other things. It could be memory, it could be fear. It’s also ADHD people are very, very, very sensitive to what other people think about them. And that’s like an intense sensitivity.

Janet Lansbury:  That makes sense.

I want to ask you a little about some of the therapies and what parents can do, but also I just wanted to note, because I keep hearing this coming up in my world, parents saying, “I found out my child has ADHD, and I found out that I do as well.” So, how does that come about that the parent, they didn’t know all these years, how does that feel? You have told me that… and I only just learned this recently about you, I never knew, that you have ADHD.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Yeah.

Janet Lansbury:  So how does that feel to, I don’t know, look back on all these things that you thought were your fault, or just something wrong with you, and to see it in this beautiful, forgiving, bright light.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Yeah. It’s hard. I mean, and we are getting so smart. The research we’re learning about ADHD right now is just incredible. Study after study. And we’re learning that untreated ADHD shortens your lifespan, because of the things that you do. The impulsivity, the stress, but also not taking care of your body, not taking care of your sleep. Many people with ADHD, self-medicate. Pot is not a good self-medication for ADHD.

The other thing is there’s a lot of controversy about ADHD and meds, because people think right away, if you diagnose my kid with ADHD, we’re going to have to put them on medicine. And that’s what I hear the most from parents. I worked for a middle school in New York. I was the special education teacher. I was the IEP and 504 coordinator. And it was a school with a thousand kids, and I had to sign off on every single IEP. So I did a hundred a year, where I was in the meeting, and reading the reports, and reading everything and talking to parents, and their biggest concern is giving medication to their kids. And I totally get it. But, if you go to the right professional, the first line of defense should not be medication. I would say to your parents, if you go to a doctor and the first thing they want to do is give your kid medicine, get a second opinion. You have the right. You don’t have to do that. If you go to the right doctor, there are really good therapies.

So cognitive behavior therapy is really good, and they use pictures, and they use real life experiences, and they involve the parents and the families. And there’s also dialectical behavior therapy. So if you look that up, you can find it on the internet. And there are a lot of good therapists that do that. Also, we can do a lot of natural things. The biggest thing that helps kids with ADHD is exercise.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  The biggest. And I think, when you say that I got diagnosed in my fifties with ADHD, and I look back at all the things I did, if I didn’t dance as much as I did, I probably would not have done well in my life. That saved me. Dancing, gymnastics. That was what I needed.

Janet Lansbury:  I had no idea that exercise was that powerful.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Exercise, drinking water. And I talk a lot about this because I’m a research geek. That’s all I do. And there was a study about 300 people. This is in the last three years. They came in thirsty, and they were anxious, and they were all saying they were fighting anxiety and it turned out that they were all dehydrated. And when you’re dehydrated, that makes you feel anxious. Oftentimes people with ADHD, when they feel that anxiety, they don’t know why. And sometimes drinking water can be a big help. I say that if kids are taking a test, they should have water.

I had one client that I put on his accommodations at college that he’s allowed to have water at his tests. And there was a professor that said, “no water bottles allowed in for the test,” and I’m like uh-uh (negative), you have an accommodation for that. And that’s why I step in and help them, because water can help you manage your anxiety.

Janet Lansbury:  So water, exercise, what are some of the other ways that we can help children or adults?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  I think if they’re ready to transition, or you want them to get off of the video, or stop doing something, or you have to go to another activity, the best thing is to just say, “Okay, 10 more minutes. Okay, five more minutes.” Give them a heads up, because that transition can cause complete chaos. And I’m sure all your parents are going, “oh yeah. oh yeah, that happens all the time.” Because when you grab a kid and you say, “Okay, we’re leaving now, let’s go. Turn off the video game. Come on.” It’s freak out. So what you want to do is respect that, and just say, “Okay, 10 minutes, we’ll be leaving.” Also using a clock, having watches and a clock, a digital clock. No. I mean, a…

Janet Lansbury:  Whatever they call it.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  A regular clock.

Janet Lansbury:  There is a name for it. There is a name, but we just don’t use that term very often. But the regular clock shows you how much time you have until the next thing. And that’s why I remember a teacher telling me that a long time ago, and I thought, wow, that’s why I like regular clocks better. I don’t have to subtract, and do all that. I can just look at it and see it visually.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  And that’s why it’s in every classroom, because we all know we look in a classroom, “Oh, the clock’s there. 10 minutes more.” And then we’ll go to the next class.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. Then in terms of the screen time, screens are so engaging for all of us, and video games are so exciting and engaging. And I know that there is some research. It’s not quite conclusive, but it links attention issues to a lot of screen use.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  No doubt. And we’ve known about this for 20 years. That is a tricky thing. And you have to put limits on it. But even when my kids were little, I’m here in LA visiting my son, who I haven’t seen. And he remembers that we didn’t watch TV in our house. And we had limited time for those things and he was not mad about it.

Janet Lansbury:  Mine are sort of the same. They were a little annoyed at the time because there were certain things, there would be a birthday party where they were showing a film that was a PG-13 and my kids were seven or eight years old, and I said, “Absolutely not.” And so they were a little annoyed at the time, but they definitely appreciate it now. We’re caring about the brain development. It’s important.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  It’s so important. And we can see the difference in kids that are now 30 and 40 in terms of reading, in terms of writing.

Janet Lansbury:  The brain is definitely changing. And yeah, I’m sure there are negatives to that, but maybe there are also positives to that. I try to keep an open mind, because I was so strict about that with my children and I believe in it very strongly, especially in those first few years where they’re developing so quickly, but I know that times are always changing and it’s…

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  You still have to do what’s right.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  For the best of your kid. For sure.

Janet Lansbury:  So when you found out about your son, Joe, is that what led you to find out about yourself? Or was it much later?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Yeah. So when Joe had it, I remember talking about it and I didn’t think that I had ADHD. But then I went through a few trauma things myself: 9/11, I lived on Long Island and I could see the burning towers from my backyard, and my kids were in kindergarten and second grade. And it was just so frightening. I went to a doctor, because I was so anxious. And I was a woman that was anxious, and what do you give a woman who’s anxious? You give her an anxiety pill. So it was just a whole bunch of things like that that happened. And it was-

Janet Lansbury:  And then the pill didn’t help, or you-

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  No. Well, I would get a sleeping pill or an anti-anxiety pill. I probably went to five or six doctors. And then I went to a CHADD conference, and CHADD is Children and Adults with ADHD. It’s a big, huge worldwide conference. And I speak at the conferences now, but I went to my first one, about nine years ago. And it was given by Dr. Ellen Littman. She had just finished doing research on ADHD in women and girls, because we really didn’t know. This is so new. And I sat in her slideshow talking about her research and just crying. Every slide was like, oh my God, that was me. Talking about things that we did as kids, driving too fast, too many boyfriends, not working to my potential in school. Very, very sensitive to what other people thought about me, and wanted to be the best person. And I had a very strong mom. And anyway, Dr. Littman was amazing. And if any of you want to read that book, it’s ADHD for Women and Girls, and it’s just shocking when you read it.

So I really didn’t do anything about it again, just typical ADHD. Oh no, not me.

Janet Lansbury:  Oh, even when you cried? You still didn’t think it was you?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  No. I did not go get a diagnosis. I just kept going.

And then when I moved to Florida, it was hard to move to a whole new… I didn’t understand what was going on. And then I understood, this is like that transition thing. It’s really hard to transition. And then I finally got a diagnosis. So I walked in and the doctor goes, “Oh yeah.”

And my friend, Jill, who’s an ADHD coach, she said, “Duh.”

I’m like, “Well, why didn’t you tell me? You’ve known me all these years? You never said.”

Janet Lansbury:  Well, why didn’t she tell you? She thought you already knew.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Yeah. And I’m classic. I can look back at everything.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow. That makes me want to cry.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  And I remember Dr. Earhart, who was our dentist, and I was a little girl like seven. And I remember Dr. Earhart saying to my mom, “Your daughter’s grinding her teeth. She’s a nervous wreck.” And my mom’s like, “Well, that’s ridiculous. That can’t possibly be.” And that was the end of that.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow. Well, I’m so glad that you found out. And so you could forgive yourself.

So let’s veer into this other wonderful service that you provide, that you were credentialed in, and that you help so many people with. And that is: who am I and what do I want to do with my life? What’s my calling? What’s my career supposed to be?

When you brought up the exercise, I was thinking, because I know that this is part of your work, and it’s totally mine as well. You trust children to find their own interests. Maybe you expose them to something, but you really trust that they know themselves better than we know them. And we don’t want to judge them, we just want to encourage them as much as we can to keep going. And you chose those things because you wanted to do them. No one told you to go into gymnastics or dance.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Right.

Janet Lansbury:  You found those.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Right.

Janet Lansbury:  And so, when we say maybe you could help your child with more exercise, it’s so important to allow them to be the ones to, maybe they just want to do jumping jacks. Maybe they want to do-

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  And that’s what my parents did. You find what you like. Okay, you don’t like violin, try tennis. Tennis, isn’t for you? Okay, try yoga. And we did. We all picked something different that we liked and that’s huge.

Temple Grandin is one of my idols and she has Asperger’s, which is much more complex than ADHD. It’s on the autism spectrum. She’s an incredibly successful doctor, scientist, engineer, writer, public speaker. I mean, she’s just phenomenal. And she always says that kids won’t know what they like until they do it. Like show your kids how to screw on a hose and water the plants, because they won’t know if they like doing that, or how to do it unless you show them. So it’s just exposing your kids and letting them try a whole bunch of things and letting them learn about themselves. What makes them excited? What gets them excited? What’s fun? What are their dreams?

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. It sounds like that requires relaxing our own… which I think is probably much more prevalent today than when you and I were kids, parents were a lot more trusting in those ways. Much more letting go. There wasn’t that kind of managing that could become micromanaging that parents believe it their job to do. I feel for these parents that might worry, “my child has ADHD, I better get them on a team” or whatever, when that could be totally not the right fit. It requires really finding that place of trust in your own child and how that’s probably one of the most important things in terms of who they are and not going with our reflex to judge and correct and say, “Well, oh no, you couldn’t do that. That wouldn’t work for you.” Or, “My Uncle Sam did that, and it was terrible for him. He was bored out of his mind. He shouldn’t do that.” Or, “I tried it and I didn’t like it.” So really understanding that your child is a separate person with their own journey.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Oh yeah. I mean, Janet you’re right on, and it happens all the time. And I work with…  I start at age 17 and work with people who are 70, but lately I’ve been getting a lot of 30 and 40-year-olds coming back and going, “My mom said, this is the career I should do. My parents wanted me to do this and I hate it.”

But can I share a story about my kid? You know I’d love to talk about my own kids.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes. Yes, yes.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  I was just talking to Joe last night, and we were talking about this. When he was little, when he was very, very little, he wanted to be either a firefighter, or a police officer, or a limousine driver. And I mean, I would always say, “Joe, you can do anything you want to do.” Always said that to him. And, “I wonder what a firefighter does. I wonder what their day is really like.” So that’s how I used to talk to him.

And I also used to read to him and my other child the Berenstain Bears books that talk about careers. Because when you think about little kids, all they know are parents, doctors, and teachers. They don’t know what other people do. So we, as parents, we definitely can educate them and share and talk about it. But we have to try really hard not to direct and say, “that’s good” or “that’s bad.” And I never did that with Joe. And I got a lot of pressure from my neighborhood, from parents saying, “You can’t let your kid be a firefighter. You can’t let your kid be a police officer. That’s too dangerous.” Or, “Jewish kids aren’t firefighters.” I used to hear that a lot. Really, I know. I was like, where is that coming from? I had no clue what they were talking about.

So I always kept saying to Joe, “I want you to do what makes you feel good. I want you to find something that’s your passion. And if this is it, then that’s awesome.” So at 13, he wanted to have a walkie talkie and he started volunteering at the fire department at 13. Worked his way up. He was a lifeguard at a pool. Then he was a lifeguard at the ocean. Then he worked for the Nassau County Police Department as a paramedic. He has a degree in nursing from Adelphi, and he’s a New York State Trooper. And if I had said to Joe, “No, you can’t do that,” He wouldn’t be the amazing person he is. This is what he wanted.

Janet Lansbury:  He wouldn’t be a fulfilled person. I think that’s the most… you know, even more important.

What do these 34-year-olds do when they realize that they have been kind of living out a path that wasn’t their choice? Do they get upset at their parents? (She’s nodding her head.)

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Yeah.

Janet Lansbury:  I always saw it as this inner-directed kind of precious thread that we want to keep our child in touch with, by allowing them to direct their own play, by allowing them to direct their own extracurriculars, decide things and go on their path. And what happens when somebody gets totally off of that? How do you get it back? How do you help those people? All the ages that you work with, how do you help them get back on track when they’ve gotten off?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Yeah. So, the career development process is, to me, a process. It starts in high school, and it’s year after year. And it’s not something you just start when you’re a junior in college. It’s a whole life process. Maybe it’s keeping a journal and writing down things that you really love and you don’t love. Or, what I do with adult clients, is I have them do their job history, but I have them list what tasks they did on each of those jobs. And then, “Did you like it? Or didn’t you like it? Which part of that job?” And so this one client, he remembered this job. He worked in the deli and he hated the deli, but he loved slicing the sandwiches, and making them, and wrapping them all nice. So we started to talk about those past dreams and we considered culinary school as an option. And it was just exploring himself, exploring his interests, what his skills are, what skills he wants to learn, what things he never knew and would like to learn about. It opened up a whole new world for him of possibilities.

And that’s another myth with ADHD, I’m sure a lot of your parents hear it, that if you have ADHD, there are only certain jobs you should have. We used to hear, “Oh, I have ADHD. I can’t have a desk job.” And I would say, “Well, what does that look like? What do you mean by that?” And then COVID hit and I’m like, oh, everybody’s got a desk job now. And same thing with the kids, “Oh, I can’t take online classes.” Well, sure enough, they’re taking online classes, right? So people with ADHD can adjust to the challenges. It’s finding the passion and the motivation that makes them happy. Connecting something in their life, in their leisure, that they love with their work.

Janet Lansbury:  And then also, you can change, right? You can be so into this…

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Yeah.

Janet Lansbury:  If Joe was so into this police thing, but then suddenly he was, “I kind of explored that to the end of my interest.”

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Well, that’s true too. That’s another challenge is that a lot of parents, in their generation they’d go to college, get their degree, get their job, stay in the same job for 30 years. But it’s not like that anymore. It’s not a straight path. It’s not a linear path. So yeah, there is so much opportunity to change. We don’t have to be stuck.

So I tell college students: “College is your job training before the job. Take as many classes as you can, learn about as many careers. Ask your professors about careers, volunteer, join clubs. Just to see the world. Open up all the possibilities.”

Janet Lansbury:  And how does that mix with the colleges saying you’re not going to get requirements if you don’t get your major right now?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  They told us that when you and I were in college, right? Just pick a major, it didn’t matter. And it’s still true now. So I studied business administration and marketing, and then I went into the Garment Center and worked my way up to be a buyer. And I was a buyer at Lord and Taylor in New York. Ran a $20 million petite sportswear business. And then I went into sales. And then I got married and had kids. And then I went into teaching. I went back to school in my forties.

Janet Lansbury:  And then what got you into the… well it was your son probably that inspired you…?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  My second one, my younger, so I had another child, have another child. Child’s 25 now. And it was a scary time. It was nobody’s fault just he got stuck in my birth canal, and came out blue and not breathing. It was bad. And they told me he had cerebral palsy and they didn’t know how bad it was going to be and if he was going to make it out of the hospital. And so, as a mom, you go right into, I want to see every report. I want to see every everything. I want to be in every single meeting. And it was years and years and years of IEP meetings and doctor’s appointments. And he had physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, five days a week. And schools and the whole thing.

Janet Lansbury:  And they also have ADHD?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Yeah, he has ADHD. They have ADHD, and probably other things. Probably a borderline on the autism spectrum, maybe? Extremely high IQ. I actually did my thesis on twice exceptional children. Back when I was doing my thesis, twice exceptional children meant somebody who was significantly disabled on the low end, but extremely high IQ. That would be twice disabled, because having that high IQ is a disability as well throughout schooling, to get him the services he needed for that.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, because you’re thinking outside the box, you’re not fitting into the conventional education that they’re trying to give you.

So that’s when you were inspired to go get your special ed-

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  Well, I wanted to go back to work, and I wanted to have a career, because I was going through a divorce, and I knew I was going to be on my own. I wanted to support my kids. I also knew they were off on summers, had summers off, vacations off. So how do you find a job like that? You’ll be teacher. So I went back to school to be a teacher, and then interviewed to be a teacher in my forties and they said I was too old to be an elementary school teacher. I had two little kids at home, and they’d said that I was too old to be an elementary school teacher.

Janet Lansbury:  People aren’t saying this anymore, I don’t think. You know my sister, she just got her nursing degree. She’s in her early sixties. She is a nurse.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  There is ageism. They probably can’t say it, but they said it to me. So I continued and did a second master’s in special education. And that actually was the best thing I ever did. Then I was a special ed teacher for 12 years in New York City.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow. Well, you are an inspiration.

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  No, you are. You, Ms. Lansbury. All my clients follow you. All my clients.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s so sweet. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. I know that people are going to be as interested in this as I was. A lot of these things I didn’t know. Do you have anything coming up important that you want me to mention?

Lynn Miner-Rosen:  I do group coaching, which is a new thing. So I do groups for six people, but I usually do mostly individual coaching, and I do have a Facebook group, and I’m on social media, and I do all of that stuff too.

Janet Lansbury:  Great. Well, you’re a gift. Thank you.

You can find out more about Lynn Miner-Rosen’s programs at ADHDJobSquad.com.

And please check out some of the other podcasts on my website, janetlansbury.com. There are many of them, and they’re all indexed by subject and category so you should be able to find whatever topic you might be interested in. Both of my books are available in paperback at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting.  You can get them in eBook at Amazon, Apple, Google Play or barnesandnoble.com, and an audio at Audible.com. Actually, you can get a free audio copy of either book at Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening and all your kind support. We can do this.

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