Transcript of “It Had to Be You – The Struggles and Joys of Raising a Child with Disabilities (with Loryn Brantz)”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, welcome to Unruffled. Today I have a very special guest joining me, her name is Loryn Brantz. She’s a bestselling board book author and illustrator for children, including her latest which is It Had to Be You. She writes for a popular online website and she creates comics. She also shares uniquely uplifting posts on social media about her journey as a mom of a daughter with disabilities. I’m so touched by the beautiful faith that she has in her daughter. She embodies everything that I admire and aspire to as a parent and a person, and I know you’ll be inspired by her too.

Hi Loryn, thank you so much for being here.

Loryn Brantz:  Thanks for having me.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, as you know, I discovered you through the interview that you did with Humans of New York, which was so inspiring, and it felt like something that every parent should read and be aware of because of the attitude that you’ve developed about being a parent, and your child, and your relationship with her. So I was hoping that maybe you could start with sharing some of your story, and whatever feels important to share with another parent that might be experiencing something similar.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah. I like to preface anything I say with, I think a lot of parents with children with disabilities will relate to this, the way I feel all the time, my life is so chaotic, you know when you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and you’re just a little like you could fall over at any moment, I feel like that all the time, so please excuse anything I say that’s a little off because I’m just almost in survival mode.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, that’s hard in itself.

Loryn Brantz:  It is, it’s a lot, but it has its benefits too. So a little bit about Dalia and how she came to be, I think I said in the interview with Humans of New York that I knew something wasn’t right, right away. I looked down and I was like, “I think my daughter has some kind of syndrome.” And everyone thought I was crazy, they were just like, “Oh, she was born a little early, so that’s what preemies look like,” and yada yada, and the pediatricians said, “She looks fine to us.”

But at the hospital, she couldn’t latch on, and I had so many ideas about what parenthood would be like and what kind of parent I would be. I was hellbent on breastfeeding, I was going to breastfeed, my baby’s going to have breast milk, that’s the plan.

And even at the hospital, there’s a point where they said, “Oh, you’re not making that much yet, we usually give the baby a little formula,” and I said, “Oh, okay, I guess that’s okay.” And then fast forward a few months later, she wouldn’t drink anything, and I was trying to, I put maple syrup in formula, because I was like, I will do anything for you to get some sort of nutrition in your body. It’s amazing the stories we tell ourselves of how things are going to be, and then how things can actually be when you experience them.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, and I mean, there is grief in all of those things. Even if we don’t have the kind of birth we want to have, there’s a sense of loss in those experiences.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, there’s an expectation, and then there’s a reality. So we got home, and a couple of days later, she was having trouble feeding and I thought, oh, I’m going to feed her in the middle of the night by myself. My husband had been helping, I had been pumping, and she choked on the milk and turned blue, actually choked on it. And then I felt like I knew something was really wrong.

But we were also in that newborn phase, and I had never had a child before so I was like, I know it’s supposed to be hard, maybe it’s just really hard. And so we started asking the pediatrician, then having breastfeeding consultants come over, and the whole thing, and as time progressed, noticing that she wasn’t really holding her head up, or this or that.

And a lot of this… I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I hadn’t even really held a baby until I had my daughter. I thought she felt floppy, but I brought her to a pediatrician and I said, “I think she feels floppy, but I haven’t really held many babies,” and he was like, “Oh, she’s just premature.” So a lot of it was chalked up to her being premature at first.

Eventually, our newborn phase was so difficult because she really couldn’t drink, and I was buying every bottle and thing on the market to try to get her to have anything, and eventually, I figured out I could get her to eat a little bit if she was half asleep in my arms. So I was rocking her 24/7, drip-feeding one ounce an hour, and there wasn’t a lot of time in between to figure out what was actually going on.

My husband was really on the hunt for what was happening, and we were hiring women to help at night because we were so tired and delirious, and this night nurse said, “This isn’t parenthood, this is torture.” And I was like, “Excuse me?” And it broke my heart into a million pieces, I really started to realize something was definitely wrong.

There was another night nurse that was so nice and she said, “You need to take your daughter to the hospital right now, just tell them she’s having seizures, and then they’ll take you in.” Because otherwise if you go in, “We think something’s wrong, but I don’t know,” you always end up with no answers. So she was like, “Just tell them she had a seizure so that they actually look at her,” and I said, “Oh, okay, I guess we really need to do this.”

So we did go to a specialist’s and they ended up sending us around town to different doctors, and we ended up at a geneticist. Stop me at any time, I feel like I’m just talking on and on, it’s a really long story.

Janet Lansbury:  No, no, no, not at all, please, just let go of that thought, this is absolutely important and helpful for parents to hear.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, so I think she was three and a half months when we went to the geneticist, and before this even happened we already had started early intervention because the feeding and everything was so hard, and the specialist came and was like, “Oh yeah, there’s definitely something very wrong,” and we were like, “Okay, thanks, what do we do?”

So the geneticist very quickly discovered she has trisomy 14 mosaicism, and this is something that there are only 50 cases of in the world. There aren’t really any answers.

I’ll never forget my husband, he left work early and he was crying, he said, “I have to talk to you, we just found out Dalia has trisomy 14 mosaicism,” and I was like, “Oh my gosh, is it fatal? You’re crying.” And he said, “Not that I know of.” And I was like, “Is she in immediate danger?” And he said, “No.”

And I said, “Okay, we’ll figure it out. Everything’s okay, she just has this diagnosis and we have to look into it.”

And it’s kind of mysterious. The thing about when your child is diagnosed is something that no one’s ever really seen much of before, there’s really no roadmap for it. So we went on these deep dives, my husband especially went crazy finding every person ever diagnosed on the planet, and he actually even, he got a friend’s doctor credentials to get into medical journals so he could read real medical journals about it, and everything, so he got really deep in all of that.

Meanwhile, I was just trying to keep our head above water, keep Dalia alive, do all her therapies with her. And I do attribute a lot of my blase reaction to everything… my dad has Tourette syndrome and he’s a surgeon, he’s a doctor, he’s one of only two surgeons ever to have Tourette syndrome. So in my house, big diagnoses and syndromes and stuff were never really… it’s like, oh yeah, he has Tourette’s syndrome, but I never really thought of it as a bad thing, and I figured, well, a diagnosis is a diagnosis, you just have to see how the kid actually is, and I was just eternally optimistic.

We were very lucky in that Dalia was an early smiler, so even though she didn’t crawl or lift her head or clap or talk, or this or that, she was smiling. And I just felt like, I don’t really care if she meets these milestones as long as she’s happy, and she seems happy to me.

Eventually, she started eating. I think a lot of parents with kids with disabilities would also understand that she took so long to do anything at all, like be able to lift her arms, so that when she was able to it’s so exciting, it just makes all those moments so much more thrilling. She picks up a fork and I start to cry because she’s had to work so hard to do all these things — because of the hypotonia and the muscle weakness. It’s just a really amazing thing to watch.

So anyway, she’s almost a year old and suddenly she starts growing really fast, off the charts, and something about trisomy 14 is that you’re generally small, the people that have had it are very, very small. So we’re like, what is happening? Are we missing something?

And we actually pushed the geneticist to do further testing because we felt like there was more to it, and we were right. She had Soto syndrome, and again we almost went through the whole process of discovering it and acceptance again. I was actually kind of relieved because I felt like there’s so many more people with Sotos, even though it is very rare. I immediately joined this Facebook group for Soto syndrome, and all these kids kind of look like Dalia, and it was just so nice to have a community and see the potential of how she could be and just know more about it. There’s a very wide spectrum of outcomes, you can be anywhere from just really tall and kind of odd and not great at coordination and this or that, to not able to feed or anything. So I’m just so grateful every day to have her be able to do anything.

We have a toy set where she plays with groceries and I’m like, she can bag groceries right now and she’s only two and a half! So I feel good about her future. I’ve never been the kind of person to measure success in life by the typical: money, power, whatever, so I’m happy if she’s happy and is able to enjoy life. And she seems happy and can enjoy life, so we’re just doing our thing.

Janet Lansbury:  You’ve got something that is what my mentor Magda Gerber used to recommend to every parent, which is to enjoy what your child is doing, enjoy what they’re doing right now, instead of focusing on trying to get them to do more or different. Embrace the child you have, because the messages that you give your child by doing that, and it sounds like you do it naturally, are just so healing and empowering and confidence building. It actually helps for them to do more because they don’t feel that stress coming from you around it. They don’t feel that pressure coming from us as parents.

Loryn Brantz:  That’s definitely how I was raised. I come from a family of people with delays. I walked late, I talked late, and my parents just weren’t worried, they were like, “Oh, she’s observing.” And I walk now, and I came around, so I had high hopes to not be really fixated on those sort of things when my daughter was born. Of course, after we joined early intervention I have three specialists to date coming in every day to tell me what she should be doing at any given moment, so the pressure is always on, but I try to take it in stride because I know that people can be capable of so many things, even if they get a slow start or have crazy diagnoses or syndromes.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, it sounds like you’re compartmentalizing that they’re just doing their job, which is to say “this is what we want to happen,” but that doesn’t mean that you have to embrace that attitude.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, we try to do everything we possibly can to help her reach her potential, so therapy is all day every day, I do them with her almost always, I’ve been really lucky my employer is flexible with my time, and just going with her and celebrating the little milestones that she makes.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, what you’re sharing in every way is so amazing. I told you also that I love your Instagram series on children bonding with different objects, holding onto certain random objects, and some of them are so fun, and you got submissions from all these people, right?

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, people have just been responding with their own stories, and they’re all so cute and funny. I’m just saving them all up and going to keep sharing them. Dalia, if you give her a new object, like I remember the first time she got a kiwi, she had this huge smile on her face. She was so excited and carried it around for a day. Kids are funny.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, I mean, they see the beauty in things. They see the specialness in things that we just don’t. And the way that you were able to find humor and help people find humor in a way that’s so delighting in children, the fondness for them that comes through that.  Instead of that really common way to laugh about children that’s not respectful, that’s laughing at them for having strong feelings about things that we wouldn’t have strong feelings about and being upset, or laughing because we’re doing silly things to them to get a reaction. People that know me know I’m very against that stuff and I’m told I have no sense of humor when I say that that’s not okay. But what you’re doing is, to me, the opposite, it’s delighting in children. It’s seeing ourselves in them. And I think anything that helps us to relate and see the humor and that adoring laughter around them is-

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, it’s so important to laugh with your child and not at them. I have a really clear memory from when I was a little kid. We were at the nursery at the hospital, because my dad was working there, and one of the nurses was showing me the baby, and I thought she was offering me the baby to hold, so I put my arms out, and she laughed so hard and I was so embarrassed. I remember feeling humiliated. And in retrospect, she probably just thought it was really cute and was laughing, but I think about that and I try to make sure that when I laugh at what Dalia’s doing it’s more with her and appreciating her. And I tell her that. So I’m not making fun of her, because they really, they get it, they’ll understand if you tell them.

Janet Lansbury:  They feel what you’re seeing in them. It sounds like all along you have seen her as a capable person with these disabilities. Everything I’ve seen you post shows that you see her that way. So that’s what she feels, that’s what she feels about herself, that she is a person who’s capable and can do things, and she’s just going to keep trying, and not that you’re pitying her or feeling like she can’t do it anything and you’ve got to do it all for her. That outlook is just invaluable.

Loryn Brantz:  Totally, I’ve always felt like she’s a little person and I respect her, and I talk to her the way I would talk to a friend that I respect. It’s so important to treat her kids with respect, and then they become little respectable humans.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, and you always hold the space for her to show you that, that she can do things, and that she’s… I don’t know, it’s hard for me to explain in words what comes across from you in the way that you see her and your relationship with her, but that’s really what I was so struck with that made me want to have you here to share with us, or just for me to spend time with you, to be honest.

Loryn Brantz:  Thank you. When I talked to Humans of New York I did not expect the huge reaction that it got at all, I was just telling our story, and I was so happy to share it. So many parents with kids with disabilities reached out to me to say it’s hard for them to put into words why people shouldn’t feel sorry for them, or this or that, and they felt like I expressed it, and it’s something they can point to. It was just so meaningful. I didn’t realize that it would be so helpful, so I’m really glad. I’m just really glad it all worked out like that.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, it absolutely is helpful. And this part where you said, “Everything in my life just makes it seem like I meant for this child,” that acceptance that you have of her, that’s where everything stems from for a child, that we want the child we have, we accept the child we have, and it’s not easy for most of us. Maybe it’s easier for you, but parents struggle with that. No matter what the issues are with their child. They could be a very typically developing child that just has personality issues that the parent is not happy with, maybe because it’s showing them something about themselves.

Loryn Brantz:  True, yeah. I think people have a natural level of optimism and acceptance, and I’ve been lucky to be that way. At my wedding my dad was talking about how I could take care of a pet rock. I love people and things, and I knew I would love whatever my child is like, but then meeting her in person really drove it home how everything… it just makes sense.

Janet Lansbury:  And that is the formula for happiness as a parent, that you accept and actually genuinely enjoy your child for who they are. And that we feel that way about ourselves too, which maybe has to come first, I don’t know. Or maybe it can go the other way, that our child inspires us to accept ourselves more.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah. We’ve just been talking on my Instagram page about body positivity and how we show that to our kids, and then they can take it in to themselves. I know a lot of moms have been commenting that they accepted themselves more after having a child because you see yourself through their eyes, and my daughter doesn’t think that my pants are making me look bad, or this or that, she just wants to hug me, and I’m her squishy, warm mom. All the body stuff can get very minimized in the process of becoming a mom.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, I think you’re talking about what children teach us: that things that we thought maybe mattered don’t matter at all.

And then you’ve got this book! You had another book before this newest one?

Loryn Brantz:  Yes, I have a couple of baby books. Feminist Baby, my first baby board book, it’s about a feminist baby.

Janet Lansbury:  Was that before you became a mom?

Loryn Brantz:  It is, and I can tell you how I thought of it because it was a very specific moment in time also. I was looking for a baby shower present for my friend, and I went to Barnes & Noble and I asked, “Oh where’s the feminism for baby section?” And they were like, “That’s not a thing,” and I was like, oh my God. So I literally ran home and drew it and wrote it within a few hours, I was so excited.

Janet Lansbury:  Oh cool, I want to see that.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, and other than A is for Activist (which is an amazing book), it’s the first feminist-focused baby book ever, which I’m really proud of. And a lot of other people were looking for that, because it did pretty well.

Janet Lansbury:  And then you’ve got this book called It Had to Be You, and it’s about your experience with your daughter, right?

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, it’s so many things, not just the journey of meeting her and how unique she is and how it felt like it had to be her, but even the process to getting pregnant. We had infertility issues. I had a miscarriage. And it’s just such a long journey to parenthood sometimes, and the way you meet your child, getting to know them, and realizing that it’s so meant to be, is what inspired it. I actually wrote it shortly after she started taking a few steps, and I was just feeling really inspired and amazed. We worked so hard to get her to be able to do that.

Janet Lansbury:  Because you were told she might not, right?

Loryn Brantz:  Oh yeah. I love her therapists. I genuinely think of them as angels sent to earth to help her, they’ve just been helping us all through the way.  But when she was really little and we were trying to get her to crawl, we were very worried parents, we’d ask, “Do you think she’ll walk?” They’d be like, “Well, I’ve seen miracles happen, so it’s possible.” That is not what I wanted to hear, but I guess it’s better than having too high expectations. But yeah, we didn’t know.

Janet Lansbury:  So then you were surprised when she actually did it on her own?

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, the process to getting her to crawl was excruciating in a lot of ways. Therapy, it’s really hard work for the babies, and she’d be crying, and we’re really just holding her in positions, they’re not painful positions, it’s just a position she doesn’t want to be in, her arms don’t really go that direction, but just holding her arm gently in a position where she’d be screaming, and we kept having to do it until it got more comfortable.

Janet Lansbury:  So just in small doses.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, small doses every day. Of course, once she’s able to start doing things she’s so much happier, but the process is so exhausting. I didn’t know if she was going to crawl, it was really hard to get her even into that doggy position, but little by little. I see my friends, they post on Instagram, “Woke up and my kids crawling today,” or, “Looked over and my kids standing up,” and I’m like, wow, what does that feel like? A lot of the getting Dalia to crawl and walk was with snacks. I’d have a fanny pack with Cheerios in it and I’d be like, “If you can get to me, here’s a Cheerio,” which is not something I ever wanted to do as a parent, and it to me seemed like maybe some food issues would come up, but it was the best thing to get her moving. And she doesn’t seem to have food issues now, but she was really little, a lot littler when this happened.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, I think if you’re just using it for that kind of thing, you’re not bribing her to be nice to you, or anything.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, no, it was a very different experience.

Janet Lansbury:  Very different. But yeah, we also see our children struggling to gain those motor skills, but it’s like nothing compared to the struggle that Dalia’s had to endure. Children, it’s not that they want to be uncomfortable, but they want to push through, and sometimes there is struggle involved, but also they don’t expect life to be easy. They come in expecting whatever happens, and then that teaches them what to expect, and they can really inspire us that way, that they keep going and keep trying.

Loryn Brantz:  And her therapists were so helpful with that, we were so lucky. Her physical therapist is a very strong person. It was really hard for me as a mom to see her struggle, hear her crying, and she would just be like, “This is good for her, I promise, this is normal, this is what happens when we do physical therapy,” and a lot of times I would just hide during the sessions because I just couldn’t handle seeing her struggle.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, you adore her, it’s clear, you’re totally smitten with her.

Loryn Brantz:  And it’s funny, she’s done so much physical therapy and all this stuff growing up that she loves working out now, and anytime she sees anyone working out anywhere she goes over and tries to mimic what they’re doing. She loves little classes and exercises. It’s just a part of her nature because she’s so used to having to work out a bunch of times a day.

Janet Lansbury:  What’s most challenging right now?

Loryn Brantz:  Most challenging…  we just got through a bunch of health scares that were different than what we were used to, which is more neurological, motor skills, and this sort of stuff. She had TEC, which is she wasn’t making hemoglobin on her own. I did find those health scares and struggles a lot more difficult to deal with than what we’ve dealt with before. We’re always worried something’s going to come up because she has such unusual genetic makeup, and we don’t really know what to expect.

But other than that she’s doing great, she’s making oxygen again herself, so we’re really happy, and I think the health stuff is so much scarier. Even if she wasn’t able to walk, as long as it seems like she’s feeling good, that would be fine, but health danger is really scary.

Janet Lansbury:  Of course, yeah.

Loryn Brantz:  You know, this good with this bad… I think a good microcosm I could relate it to (I was just thinking about this), is like when you get a cold. I always forget what a cold feels like until I have one and then I feel like: oh my gosh, this is the worst, I should really appreciate it more when I’m feeling healthy. Parenting a child with disabilities or health problems, it’s like that. When she’s feeling good, those days are so much more meaningful and happy and exciting. I’m just over the moon just to walk with her, smiling, it just amplifies everything.

Janet Lansbury:  The gratitude.

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah, the gratitude is huge.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, I’ll be thinking good thoughts for you, and I hope we do keep in touch. I’m reminded of… I think my favorite part of your book…  you say at the end, “For every one of our wishes, for every bump along the way, now that you’re here, we’ve known all along, it had to be you.” I love that you acknowledge that it’s not easy, and there are bumps, and it’s not just all this perfect, magical-

Loryn Brantz:  Yeah. It had to be this, whatever this is, it had to be this, had to be you.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, and it had to be the bumps, those were part of it, not something to forget or put away or see as something we should feel bad about, you know?

Loryn Brantz:  Exactly. You know, my dad is one of my heroes, and I always thought of his Tourette’s as almost a good thing, I just think it’s amazing, I know it’s really hard on him in a lot of ways, and it’s hard in society, like people give him looks and stuff when we’re walking, but just everything he’s overcome, and the way he is, it’s kind of how I see Dalia. I see her disabilities and her uniqueness as part of what makes her so amazing and special, and anything she does is going to be even more amazing because of everything she’s had to go through to get there.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow. All right, you’re going to leave me in tears of gratitude for you, and yeah, just the beauty of you. So you take care of your beautiful family, I know you will, and it sounds like you’re all really blessed to have each other. Thank you so much for being here to talk to me today.

Loryn Brantz:  Thank you so much for having me.

Loryn’s wonderful new children’s book, It Had to Be You is available HERE. You can learn more about her at her website lorynbrantz.com. I also recommend following Loryn on Instagram and Facebook!

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 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 all your kind support. We can do this.

The post It Had to Be You – The Struggles and Joys of Raising a Child with Disabilities (with Loryn Brantz) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I’m joined by Dr. Meghan Owenz. She’s an author, a parent, a psychologist, family, counselor, and therapist. She’s currently a professor at Penn State University. When Meghan became a parent, she developed a special interest in researching the effects of screen use on developing minds. And this education and research led her to decide to raise her two children screen-free in their early years. And with her husband, she created the popular website Screen-Free Parenting, which offers thousands and thousands of independent plays screen-free alternatives for children. And then the emphasis of Meghan’s new book, Spoiled Right Delaying Screens and Giving Children What They Really Need is not so much on what not to do and why, but rather on comprehensive practical answers to the question, what should parents do instead?

Hi, Meghan. Thank you so much for being on my show again.

Meghan Owenz:  Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Janet Lansbury:  You were one of my first guests, I think back when I started in, I don’t know even when that was, 2015, I think, and I so appreciated connecting with you and you have your new book out Spoiled Right Delaying Screens and Giving Children What They Really Need. And it is dense with information. This is a comprehensive book, you cover every study that’s ever been done on screen use, and you also offer very helpful practical advice for delaying, minimizing, moving away from the dependency that I think we obviously all have on screens these days, we all have a dependency on it.

Meghan Owenz:  Right, and there’s so much debate and so much controversy and so much noise around it that we forget some of the basics.

Janet Lansbury:  And then especially now. Being a parent is already a lot of stress, but now there are all these added factors, and kids being home and people weren’t able to maybe have the childcare that they were used to, and everything has just been to the max. So parents have, naturally, a lot of them have fallen into using a lot of screens for their children, maybe more than they wished to. And some of them want to figure out a way to minimize that, but still to be able to have time for themselves where they don’t feel the need to use that for entertainment every time, to keep their children busy.

Meghan Owenz:  Yes, the burnout in the last 18 months has got to be tremendous because there are those logistical things that you mentioned, like maybe not having childcare or not having programs for your young children. And then there’s the broader cultural water that we’re swimming in of lots of conflict, lots of civil unrest that we’re just bombarded with all the time. That is in our minds and our bodies when we’re trying to interact with our children.

Janet Lansbury:  So how do we manage all of this? What could we hold on to?

What have you done? Because you have two young children. How has it been for you?

Meghan Owenz:  I think taking a breath and recognizing that the amount of stress that we’re dealing with is abnormal as a society, both from the election to murders that we had to witness and wanting to be educated about and advocate about, to a global pandemic, to losing family members, to worry about losing family members. That level of stress, it’s putting our nervous system in a place that it’s not meant to be for a long period of time. And you could see that in terms of how we’ve handled the pandemic as a society.

So in month one, we were like, “Flatten the curve, we’ve got this. We’re really excited about everything we we’re going to do at home.”

And 18 months or so later, we just don’t have the energy anymore at that the same level. And our children still do not have the opportunity to be vaccinated and there’s a lot of controversy over what’s the best way to keep them safe and just navigating through all of that information is exhausting.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. And just like you said, you make it work for a while. I can only relate this, because my children aren’t young and they don’t need that kind of care from me, they’re all adults now… I can only relate it to times where, for some reason, children were sick or it was raining and raining for weeks and it was harder to do the things that we normally wanted to do. And you can handle that, as you said, for a while. You can rise to that occasion as a parent and say, “Okay, well maybe we’ll do this screen thing now because you’re sick and I need you to rest.” Or, “I can go get you some stuff for new projects that you can play with.” But after a while, it’s like the special time that was, I mean special, not necessarily in a positive way, of course, but that’s old. We didn’t know we were going to have to maintain it this long, right?

Meghan Owenz:  And so being able to take a breath and recognize that this is not a normal amount of stress, likely, that many parents have been under in the past year and a half, and then figure out where you are on that hierarchy of needs in your family. If you are still in that, meeting basic physical needs, scrambling, making sure that you are able to do your job and your baby is fed and that’s all that you can do, then it might not be the time for reflection on your parenting strategies. Just some recognition that reflecting on screen time is a little bit higher on on the hierarchy, and so it might be frustrating to parents to hear information about that in the last year when they’re barely surviving. But then there are parents who have switched out of survival mode for a variety of reasons, structural and personal. And so they may want to reel in the screen time a little bit. And I think if you’re in that place, we have some good information for you, but recognizing which place you’re in first will be helpful in terms of how you hear things.

Janet Lansbury:  That makes a lot of sense. And having that self compassion to say, “This is where I’m at. I’m not in that place. I’m not in that space.” So rather than feeling bad and guilty about that, really accepting that for where you’re at, and what your needs are, you are doing the very best that you possibly can. And giving yourself that break, that there will be a time later on. And there’s nothing that we can do as parents that can’t be undone or can’t be changed.

Meghan Owenz:  I think that’s such an important message because I hear from people all the time, “I slowly introduced screen-time to my infant or to my toddler. And then it just spiraled out of control.” Which is what it’s designed to do, so that has no reflection on you, your family or your child, but it’s spiraled out of control. And now, “Oh my gosh, have I damaged my child’s brain?” And fortunately, most children are pretty elastic and we can make some changes and they can come along with us as long as we know where we’re going. And so it’s okay if things devolve for a while.

I went through a period this month where I don’t think anybody took a bath rather than once every 10 days. The adults did, but the children definitely didn’t. So we reeled that back in once we got things a little bit more under control in other areas of our life. It’s okay to let go of some other things when you’re working on things and then you reel it back in. And now they’re clean, they’ve been bathed in the past 24 hours.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes. I love that permission to give ourselves that we are in a process and it’s always going to be a process. We’re not done, “Now I’m there, I’ve got this parenting thing.” We’re always moving through the different stages, the different challenges, and then in this period right now, we’ve got all these added challenges.

Meghan Owenz:  And screen time is like that too. When we’re talking about under five, zero to five-year-olds, I really encourage the message of “not yet.” If you’re able to do the “not yet” thing, it is so much easier. It really is. And I’ll give some reasons as to why it’s easier, but then you’re moving through that. And then they’re five or six or seven, they’re 12, they’re 16. And “not yet,” isn’t an appropriate philosophy anymore at that point, but you can keep it really simple when they’re little and know that those things will come later for them.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. Actually there are two big things I want you to share about. I would love to hear about the “not yet” and how you do that. And then I would also love to hear your thoughts on weaning out of using screens, even with babies, if that’s going on, if you can recommend steps for how to move out of this.

Meghan Owenz:  There are so many research reasons for the “not yet.” Your child’s attention is developing, their sleep habits are developing, their ability for emotional regulation is developing. And most of the time media is not helping with any of those three big things that they’re doing. The biggest “ot yet” is that emotion regulation piece for me. And that’s where we get stuck, where it seems like the screen is helping us out, or the media that we’re using for our toddler is helping us out. And it’s really not.

They have such strong emotions that are really intense and hard to not get wrapped up in, and it seems like the media makes everything better. So you can see a child starting to melt down and you can give them some media and they are pacified or they’re really needy and they’re clingy and they’re looking for you for interaction and attention and entertainment at a time when it is not possible for you to provide that. And you give them the screen minutes, and it seems like the screen resolves that.

Well all those little things are these tiny little normative experiences with negative emotions like: Mom’s in the shower, she can’t pay attention to me, I’m frustrated, I’m bored, mom’s talking to someone on the phone, this line of the grocery store is too long. All those little exposures we give our kids just naturally, without even thinking about it. They learn to tolerate negative emotions.

And what happens is we realize really quickly that the media makes it easier for us because it calms that negative emotion, or it seems like it does. But all that’s really doing is distracting them from the negative emotion. And so they’re not getting that exposure, and they’re not learning how to work through it on their own. They’re not learning how to tolerate it and move into the next thing and direct their own attention.

And so when a child has had that experience, it feels like, how could you do it without a screen, right? Because they have very limited capacity to tolerate their own negative emotions or to tolerate time independently of an adult or an entertainer or an entertainment device. And so that’s why the “not yet’ is really helpful for toddlers and preschoolers, babies, because we want them to have those exposures and learn that, “It’s okay to feel bored, and I’ll be back with you in the set period of time. And you might not like it, but I know that you can handle it.”

Sometimes if we can do that, they actually are able to handle it better than we thought over time, because they’ve been learning. So that’s the big “not yet” in my mind, is, let’s wait until they can understand how to handle their negative emotions before we distract them from them.

Janet Lansbury:  That makes a lot of sense, just so they can know that that’s a normal experience. It’s just part of life that you sometimes feel like life isn’t fun and you’re not busy and there isn’t anything to do. And it’s a dull moment or moments, and you’re not getting your parents’ attention at that time and that’s disappointing, but that’s what life is, those age appropriate moments of downer feelings.

Meghan Owenz:  Then when they’re older, now they’re being introduced to media in a way that is fun. It’s not being used to cover for a negative emotion or to cover for somebody’s absence, but it’s being used as a way to connect as a family when you watch a movie or something like that. That’s the “not yet” to me. Is all that good stuff, all those good memories you have about watching a movie. “Am I never going to be able to do that with my kids?” No, you will. Just when they’re ready for it.

Janet Lansbury: So what does the science say about… because one of the perspectives I posted about screen use, a lot of parents complained that for their children with autism, there were studies showing that it actually did help them to use screens. And I was wondering if there was actually science on that.

Meghan Owenz:  A lot of the media research is painted with a really broad brush and it is appropriately critiqued for being done so. But that is the development of social science research and the way that it happens to look broadly at a population before you start looking at smaller individual groups.

So we might see that overall screen-time, for example, is negatively associated with book reading and the screen-time is what’s driving the relationship there. We see that the more time a 24 month old spends with a screen, the less time they’re reading at 36 months.

So we can see some negative effects really broad there, we’re not looking at individual gender or race or ethnicity or a pre-existing diagnosis or things like that. It’s definitely a fair critique that this research might not be true for my child.

There’s a model that’s applied to all sorts of things, not just media, and that’s the orchid and the dandelion metaphor. The idea is that children are on this continuum from dandelions to orchids. Everything in the middle is great. Neither one is better. But we know that dandelions are really hearty. And so research-wise, these are the kids that do the same, whether their environments is negative or positive, they’re really hearty. We can mess up and we can try really hard and they do the same.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, we have orchids, which we know are really hard to care for. These are the children who do exceptionally well in a positive environment, but they also do really poorly in a negative environment. So they’re just more sensitive to the environmental input that they have.

We’re starting to look at… the media research is starting to look at children individually this way, kind of trying to separate out. Because when we look at things and we see a mild or moderate effect of media, it might be that that effect is really strong for some kids, like our orchids. And that affect is just not present for other kids, like our dandelions. And so they’re canceling each other out in some ways.

You might say, “Well, I have a kid who we read all the time, they play independently, they watch this hour of TV and I turn it off, and they move on. They have absolutely no problem with it. And I’m tired of hearing of that.”

Well, you have a kid who’s more on the dandelion side of the continuum and that’s great, but your neighbor might have a kid who’s a little more on the orchid side of the temperament, where the child has a really difficult time turning the screen off. Or when you turn the screen off, moving away from it, the child has a really difficult time finding things to do when they’re not in front of the screen, decreased interest in other activities.

There are scales to measure whether your kid has this problematic attitude towards media, where your child, your orchid is so dysregulated after the screen that you’re like, “Why did I use that for a break from myself? Because now my kid is melting down and just so fussy. And it’s so much worse than if they would’ve played by themselves.” You’re noticing that in your kid.

So there is some difference in terms of how children are responding to media. And we’re only just starting research-wise to get into what some of that difference is.

We know for example, that children who have previously been diagnosed with ADHD are more likely to choose media that is fast paced, that’s changing and that’s violent. And that, that media might have more of an effect on those children.

So there are ways in which your individual child is going to respond differently than other children. And you have to take a breath when you read things and wonder whether it fits for your child or not. And if it doesn’t, you move on and if it does, you see what you can garner from it.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s really interesting. So a child with ADHD, why are they drawn to those more violent, quick paced shows that actually have a worse effect on them? Is that like wanting the kind of food you’re allergic to, or-

Meghan Owenz:  No, I would say that it’s more like that the brain of a child with ADHD is looking for stimulation and they’re not finding their environment to be sufficiently stimulating often. And so they appear inattentive. So the media that’s the most stimulating, that we have for a lot of children that might be overstimulating, it’s hitting a sweet spot for children with ADHD. It’s really appealing to them because it’s so stimulating, because it’s fast paced. Oftentimes because it’s violent, that’s not the child’s fault, but that’s the way the media is designed.

But it’s just one teeny tiny example of the way media is going to affect different children differently. And why, as a parent, you have to pay attention. What really matters for you is that one child affect. And so noticing what is your child’s behavior like after they’ve had some time with a screen, and then looking more broadly: what is your child’s behavior like as the screen-time has increased?

I’m sure you noticing that they’re more dysregulated that they’re having more difficulty playing by themselves. So they’re having a really hard time getting started, that other things that were interesting to them previously now, really aren’t, and they’re asking constantly, for their favorite show or for their favorite game. Those are all signs to me that my child is having some difficulties. They’re having a little bit of a problematic relationship with the media. And you may want to think about how you’re going to reel it in or how you’re going to wean them down off of a screen habit.

Janet Lansbury:  Is that also what you meant by the stuff that’s going on on screens is actually designed to create more, I don’t know if I want to use the word “addiction” but… create a greater need for it?

Meghan Owenz:  Yeah. So persuasive design is something that I’ve written a lot about. We just published a journal article about it, should be out maybe next month. Just the idea that you’re using media to change someone’s behavior.

Now, when the field was first developed, the idea was like, “Oh, we can use media to change people’s behavior and all these positive ways”. Well, the primary way that persuasive design has been implemented is to try to increase quality time on device. How much time are people spending on a particular platform or a game or program? The more that you increase time on device, the more that you increase your revenue, largely through advertisements or subscription services. Netflix, one of their CEOs is famous for saying that their biggest competitor is sleep.

So there’s evidence that adults are not particularly good at recognizing the elements of persuasive design — things like auto-play, push notifications, the way a story arcs, so it doesn’t end at the end of your episode, but it actually ends in the middle of the next episode, algorithms on different social media platforms that are really designed to draw you in and pull you in, and also maybe show you more controversial stuff that might rile you up.

There are all these efforts that adults need to try to manage their own habits.

We know at a basic level that under eight, children can’t really recognize, for example, advertising, and the fact that somebody is trying to persuade them to do something that maybe they don’t want to do. Before age eight.

So little babies, they can’t recognize persuasive design. Toddlers can’t recognize that this show was actually just trying to reel you in or this game is trying to get you to play longer. They’re only holding that little jewel out in front of you, so you’ll play longer. And the intermittent rewards and things that are really ever present in children’s applications in games. They can’t recognize that at all.

And it’s difficult for us adults to recognize that. So when you think: I’m going to use this for this set period of time, like maybe I did when I was a kid… I remember Sesame Street, and then I went out and played and whatever it was fine. Well, the media landscape has changed so dramatically and now we’re putting all the onerous on parents. Like, “You should really move it to this period of time.” And it’s so hard for the parents because it wasn’t designed that way. It wasn’t designed to be consumed in 30 minute fights.

So that’s when your child has a meltdown and that’s why the “not yet” model is really nice before your child develops some of the cognitive ability to recognize and discuss some of these things, which is not going to happen before they’re six.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow. So what about this task then of helping wean our children off screens maybe at various ages, if it’s different for various ages. What are your thoughts about that? I love your method. You call it the “SPOIL” method and what does it stand for?

Meghan Owenz:  One of the problems with screens might be not so much what your child is doing or seeing, maybe they’re not watching anything violent and it’s developmentally appropriate, but displacement is the idea that it’s taking time away from things that your infant or toddler or preschooler would be doing otherwise.

So it’s maybe not so much the media itself that’s problematic. It’s just… what would they be doing if that wasn’t there? And we don’t really know the answer to that unless we turned it off for a while and saw.

Research-wise, we know that there are five big things that all kids under five need a lot and is really associated with positive child development in terms of their social, their cognitive and their physical development.

So I use the acronym SPOIL… Maybe try to forget about the screen time for a little bit, just in terms of how you’re monitoring it, how you’re assessing it, what you’re doing, and really try to pay attention to how much…

S – stands for social time that the child has with you, with other babies, with other toddlers.

P – How much play time do they have? Both with others, but also independently. Whether exploring objects, they’re scoping, they’re pouring, they’re dumping, they’re melding, all of the things that young children are doing with toys and things.

O – stands for outdoor time, which is essentially the antidote to screen-time. For kids and adults alike it’s associated with improved sleep, improved attention, it’s called Attention Restoration Therapy, which basically means go outside because it helps you. It helps you with the ability to focus and pay attention, reduce stress, increase serotonin production. So it helps with mood stabilization.

I – is for independent work. Just about every developmental theory highlights, like from three to six, kids really need the opportunity to feel like they have some impact on their environment, that they’re capable, that they’re autonomous. And that looks like child-sized chores that looks like maintaining their own hygiene, dressing themselves, all those things that kids say, “I want to do it by myself.”

L – And then the L in SPOIL stands for literacy because you basically can’t overdo that.

So, focusing on the things that children really need, you can’t overdo. There’s no harm in your child having too much time to play prior to age six. No harm of reading to them too much. You know that those things are really good and you don’t have to worry about: Let me look at the clock. How long have they been doing this for?

If they get really involved in it, that’s great. If they can keep doing it, and you’ve got this little quote unquote “bonus time” where you didn’t realize they were going to be so involved in those Tupperware containers and other things that you had laid out or that they discovered.

And so if we can focus more on those things, those are the positive things that also have the opposite research interactions with brain development and social development and physical development that screen-time has.

Janet Lansbury:  So creating in your environment more opportunities for those things, if possible, instead of just thinking about cutting out screens. I mean, you would be doing that — cutting down the time, but opening up to how you can make those other things more possible.

Meghan Owenz:  Yeah. And how can you make those things more possible in a way that recognizes your limits as a parent? So it doesn’t mean when turning off the screen that you are entertaining your child all the time. That’s not helpful, right?

It’s not that you’re involved all the time when they’re not on the screen (that can be problematic in other ways), but that they have time for independent play. Children can listen to stories on CD, or through a player when you were not available to be reading to them. They can sit outside in a safe space and watch the sun and play with leaves and do all sorts of things that you don’t have to be involved in. You don’t have to direct it.

So get away from that myth that if you are not using a screen, you’re orchestrating every minute of the day, because that’s where it gets exhausting. That’s where we really get into trouble.

Janet Lansbury:  Exactly. It’s totally unsustainable, you can’t do it. And you are going to give up some point very early on.

But you know, it’s like what you were talking about the quote “negative” emotions. That’s what I think keeps a lot of us from making those boundaries and just saying, “No, I’m not going to play with you right now. Here’s when I’m going to be available. And I can’t wait to play with you then, but now is a no. And it’s okay. If you get upset, you can be really mad at me, but this is what I’ve got to do.”

Instead of: Now I’ve got to go set up an activity for them and make sure that they’re okay.

Maybe in the beginning, if your child isn’t used to this, maybe that will help you scaffold into the next step. But ideally you want to get to where they’ve got the ideas and they’re using their own imagination and innovation and their instincts about what they actually want to work on and need to work on in this step of their learning, and they’re creating those as well. So that’s where we ideally want to be. But in the meantime, it’s okay to give them some options of things to do.

Meghan Owenz:  Yeah. I want to comment on that. You said there were two things that I think were really good there that I want to highlight.

The first is the difference of the message when the child is upset and we think that they can’t handle it. So we try to fix it for them. We’re inadvertently sending the message that they can’t handle it: You can’t handle this time when I’m going to be away from you. So I have to be with you, or I have to give you this device instead.

Instead of the message of, “I know you’re frustrated right now, or you’re mad at me right now, and you really wish we could do this thing, but I know that you can move through this and that you can tolerate this. I know that you’ll be okay and I’ll be over here or I’ll be wherever I’ll be.”

It’s a really different message of empowerment that we’re giving our children when we’re saying: I know you can tolerate this emotion. I know you can tolerate this period of time without me.

Maybe changing your mindset around that might be helpful, too, to see that they’re really smart, creative, independent people who can come up with really good things to do that you wouldn’t have even thought of. I think that’s a different message.

The other piece, Janet, that you said that I want to touch on is that we’re talking about a time when you’re able to step back and that might not be right away if you feel like you have had a media habit that has gotten out of control. So having that empathy around, “We used to do this phone thing or this tablet thing for this many hours, we’re not going to do that anymore.”

Coming up really clearly in your mind and your partner’s mind about what the new limit is, what you’re going to be doing going forward. And then having empathy for the idea that these applications, programs, streaming devices are designed persuasively to reel your child in. And it is not within their brain capacity at this time to understand how to put limits around it. So you’re doing it for them, but understanding that because it’s designed that way, it’s going to be very frustrating for them. And it’s a transition and it’s a change for them. And during that time period, you might step in a little more.

Now, the way that I would step in is less of being an entertainer and more of consciously setting up their space ahead of time. And then being able to sit with them through some frustration. So not weaning them from the TV to you, but weaning them from the TV to their environment.

If you know that your child likes stamps, stacking things and stickers, whatever it is that they like, you set up their environment with a space where they’ll be able to do those things when they would previously have been using media. And you sit with them and say, “these are the types of things we’re going to do instead.”

And you pay attention to your child over time too, to modify the environment of what they have in their space that’s really safe and has also been previously interesting to them.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, that’s great. And I think even also pay attention without playing “with,” which is another thing that helps your child to feel freer, to invent their own games and not have you as part of it. Because a lot of times children feel, especially very young children… they notice that unless they’re getting the parent to play with them, the parent is putting their attention elsewhere. So to sometimes give those periods where playing with your child looks a little different, and it looks more like you’re just there, fully attentive. You’re just interested in what your child’s doing.

And they say, “Play with me, do this, be this character or whatever.”

You just say, “You know, that’s an interesting idea, but I just want to see what you’re up to. I’m just here.”

No expectation that they have to perform. No expectation that they have to draw you in or you’re going to go elsewhere. Giving them those moments can be very, very powerful, showing them that anything that they do is interesting and worthwhile, also, that it doesn’t have to be fancy stuff that looks like imaginary characters, or a game or a board game or something. It can just be somebody puttering around or sitting there and looking out the window, just being together.

Meghan Owenz:  When you talk about that. It just makes my shoulders kind of relax, envisioning myself as that child, that I don’t have to do anything to reel you in. Because I think we feel like that all the time in our relationships — that we have to reel people in and keep them entertained. And how relaxing that must be if we give space to our children, that they don’t have to reel us in. We’re there. It doesn’t matter what it is they’re doing or what role they give us. We’re just going to be there for them to do whatever it is they want to do.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah.

You mentioned to me what you’ve noticed about your children with what’s going on now, where they’ve had to be homeschooled and what they’ve gained from that. Because I think it’s really an example of… I’ve honestly seen the amazing results of being careful around about screens with my children. I’ve really seen how it’s helped them to flourish in so many ways. And it sounds like you’re doing that too with your children. Can you share a little about that?

Meghan Owenz:  My children are six and nine, and they really had no exposure to screens prior to age five or six. And again, that was the lazy parent choice, in my opinion. Knowing the research, it is so much easier to just “not yet” that problem than to open the door to something that was not really designed for them and for their developing brain.

So as a result of that, and the fact that I work full-time, my husband works full time, our children have had a lot of exposure to directing their own time, their own day, which started really small when they were infants and now has expanded into, “How much time do we have today, that is free? We have four hours. We can’t go anywhere…” You know, during the pandemic. But to them, it’s “four hours but we don’t have to.”

They just have no problem directing their time for really extended periods, because you’re building that muscle over time with children, by not over-entertaining them.

And that’s a screen thing, but that’s also, a sport thing really early on, an enrichment thing really early on. If you give them space that the world is theirs to explore, rather than it’s a world that adults need to teach them about constantly, then they have this different attitude that makes it easier for them to entertain themselves and direct their day. And it’s made them a little more resilient, though they’ve had their struggles here and there with the pandemic. It’s made them a little more resilient, I think, to having a lot more time on their hands.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, thank you so much for your time, your book, and sharing with us today. I enjoyed it, personally, I always love connecting with you, and thank you for all of your work.

Meghan Owenz:  Janet, it goes the other direction too. I’m constantly leaning on you for the support in managing children’s emotions and setting boundaries in a way that feels really accessible and really possible for parents. I love your work around that.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow. What a nice thing to say. Thank you so much, Meghan.

Meghan’s offers a wealth of information, practical suggestions, and support on her website Screen-Free Parenting and you can check out her new book, Spoiled Right, right HERE.

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.

For further information, Dr. Meghan Owenz was kind enough to share references for the studies she mentions in this podcast:

The Orchid and Dandelion Model:

Boyce, W. T., (2020). The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Sensitive People Struggle and How All Can Thrive. Bluebird.

Pluess, M., Assary, E., Lionetti, F., Lester, K. J., Krapohl, E., Aron, E. N., & Aron, A. (2018). Environmental sensitivity in children: Development of the highly sensitive child scale and identification of sensitivity groups. Developmental Psychology, 54(1), 51-70. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000406

Applying the Orchid and Dandelion Model to media use:

Piotrowski, J., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2015). Finding orchids in a field of dandelions:Understanding children’s differential susceptibility to media effects. The American Behavioral Scientist, 59(14), 1776-1789. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764215596552

Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2013). The differential susceptibility to media effects model. Journal of Communication, 63(2), 221-243. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12024<

The research study regarding ADHD and violent media:

Nikkelen, S. W. C., Vossen, H. G. M., Valkenburg, P. M., Velders, F. P., Windhorst, D. A., Jaddoe, V. W. V., Hofman, A., Verhulst, F. C., & Tiemeier, H. (2014). Mediaviolence and children’s ADHD-related behaviors: A genetic susceptibilityperspective: Media violence and children’s ADHD. Journal of Communication, 64(1), 42-60. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12073

Thank you again, Dr. Owenz!

The post Parental Burnout and a Reasonable Approach to Screens (with Dr. Meghan Owenz) 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.

The post ADHD and How to Support All Children to Fulfill Their Dreams (with Lynn Miner-Rosen) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “What Parents Need to Know About Anxiety (with Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart)”Janet Lansbury:

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today, I have the great pleasure of chatting with Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart. She’s a pediatric psychologist. She’s a parent coach and an author. She speaks nationally at schools and conferences and corporate workshops. And she coaches parents who have kids with anxiety, behavioral issues, and ADHD, and she has a couple of kids. So this is a very busy person. I’m thrilled she’s taking the time to join me today to discuss anxiety in children — what we can do to prevent and help.

Hi, Dr. Lockhart, how are you?

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  I’m doing good, Janet and how are you doing?

Janet Lansbury:  I’m doing really well. Thank you so much. I feel like I know you. I’ve been following your work for a long time and I’m so glad to finally actually get to meet. I’ve been looking at your bio and really noticing the breadth of your work. It’s incredible. And just want to say thank you so much for all the service that you provide to parents and other professionals.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Thank you. I appreciate that. I’ve been following your work as well too. So the feeling is definitely mutual. And I think we’ve done things parallel, being on some conferences together and that kind of stuff, but never directly together. So I’m happy to be here and talking with you about the stuff that we both love as well too.

Janet Lansbury:  One of the many things that you help parents with is when they have children who have anxiety and other behavioral concerns. I wanted to kind of zero-in in this podcast on anxiety. This is a time for anxiety if there ever was one, globally, and there are people that have chronic issues and then worry that their children are maybe moving into that. I wanted to hear your take on what we can do as parents. First of all, maybe… how do you as a clinician define anxiety?

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Yeah, that’s a great question because I think that people use a lot of mental health diagnosis and terms interchangeably with just regular speak. When we say, “Oh my gosh, the weather is so bipolar.” Or, “Oh my gosh, that movie was so schizophrenic.” We use a lot of those kinds of mental health terms to describe everyday life and it’s very inaccurate most of the time. And so I think anxiety disorders are one of those things, because we have feelings like fear and worry. And then we have anxiety disorders, which can include a lot of things like a fear of being in a crowded space where you can’t escape, which is agoraphobia. We have panic disorders. We have specific phobias, so a fear of dogs or snakes or flying. We have generalized anxiety, which is kind of a general feeling of uneasiness, about a multiple sorts of things. They actually included selective mutism a few years ago into the anxiety disorder spectrum of diagnoses as well too.

So, you have a lot of different things that cover that. So really what distinguishes fear and worry from an anxiety disorder that’s severe is when it causes significant impairment on your everyday functioning.

It’s one thing if you’re a little afraid of dogs, for example, or spiders, and you just don’t like them. But if you’re constantly checking corners and you’re obsessive about it, and you’re always asking for reassurance from your parents and making sure that nothing is going to hurt you in the middle of the night, “You sure there’s no spiders in my bed, mommy?” And it’s constant and it’s impacting their ability to function in their everyday life, that’s when we’re looking at more of like an anxiety disorder type thing. And that’s where the category of anxiety falls, because it impacts everything, school, learning, friendships, their thought life, all of that kind of stuff, and that’s where that distinction between the worry and anxiety come into place.

Janet Lansbury:  And what causes that, where maybe, like you said, it’s the one time being afraid when they see that animal or spider or whatever, but when it goes from that to now I’m checking every corner and doing very unreasonable things around this?

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  It’s a variety of things. There’s a hereditary factor. So there’s a lot of people that it’s just in your family, where a lot of people when I’m talking to them and doing an intake, they’ll say, “Yeah, anxiety runs in my family. My mom was a worrier. My grandma was a worrier and her grandma was a worrier.” And so it’s kind of like this hereditary factor. There’s a genetic component to it.

But there’s also a learned component as well, too, where if you have a parent, who’s a very anxious person and they act in anxious ways, then if you’re around them, then you are going to be more likely to be anxious as well.

When I was growing up, for example, my mom was hugely afraid of frogs and I grew up on an island. So I grew up in the Virgin Islands and we’re surrounded by water and she loved plants. So we had plants lining the entry to our front door and where do frogs hang out? In moist plants. So there would be these huge frogs over our doorway and that’s the only way to get in the house. And so then she would be like, “Okay, well, I guess we can’t go inside the house.” And I’m like, “So what are we supposed to do?” So that I started becoming hypervigilant and scanning all the time, because then I’m like, “Oh, well, what if there’s a frog?” Because the frogs on the island are huge. They’re huge.

So then it kind of became this learned fear of frogs because she was so worried. I picked up on it from her. Would I have been afraid of frogs if she hadn’t been? Maybe, maybe not. But it can also be a learned factor because anxiety is not something that we just have, it’s something that can be learned, definitely-

Janet Lansbury:  Right.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  … but then there’s another piece of it, which is there’s a predisposition factor where there are some personalities and temperaments that are predisposed or more likely to have anxiety or have an anxiety disorder because they’re more sensitive or they’re more observant or they’re in tune with their environment. And there’s a lot of evidence that shows that individuals who are more intelligent, even, are more likely to be anxious because they have very divergent ways of thinking. They’re kind of outside the box kind of thinkers. So they’re always thinking of what could possibly go wrong, anyway and that’s just how they normally think about things

Janet Lansbury:  And sensitive, picking up all these different layers all the time, things that are going on. Yeah. That makes so much sense though, about the environmental factor of the parent, having that power, since children are always looking to their parents to check their center and really hoping or needing those parents to be centered as much as possible.

You see it when children are even… They fall and they look up at their parent to see, “What do you think about this? Is this all right?” Like, “Am I going to be okay?” And children are picking up everything constantly from their parents.

So what do the parents do if they are like your mother, or they are very easily anxious or they have clinical anxiety? How do parents manage this to try not to have it affect their children so much?

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Yeah, that’s a great question. And the thing is that when I often see children or teens with anxiety, I prefer to see them along with their parent. Because as I teach the child or the teen about specific strategies, I also want the parent to learn, because more often than not, the parent is also struggling with it. And the cool thing about anxiety strategies is that they’re pretty much universal across the board. You just tweak it a little bit based on age to make it more digestible for a child to understand.

So I think a big part of it is, for the parent, that they need to address their own anxiety. They need to do the work like anything else, right? It’s that we have things that are going on that we’ve been rehearsing and habituating for decades, which is often the case. Then, we’ve gotten really good at being anxious and it’s just an automatic default.

And so if our kids are constantly hearing and seeing and living it out, then we’re always reinforcing it. So they can get all the help they want, but if you are still then reinforcing the other way of thinking, then it’s going to be hard for them to get out of that anxious mindset.

So I think a big part of it, first, is the parent has to be aware that they actually do have anxiety and then do the work to overcome that. So they’re not constantly giving it to their child. And I think that’s a really, really important first step.

Janet Lansbury:  And this is just one of the many, many important ways that children inspire us to work on ourselves in a positive way and heal ourselves. And-

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Yeah, exactly. For me, I always like to start with education because once you can understand: this is what this is, this is why you meet the criteria for this diagnosis, for example, if that’s the case. Or, this is how it impacts you physically, emotionally, mentally, cognitively. When you can get that and you understand where it comes from, then when you start learning the strategies, you understand why the strategies work.

So I always like to start with that insight, kind of doing your work, the education, and then starting out with a very basic, the easiest type of stuff, which is just the deep diaphragmatic breathing. So teaching the parent and teaching the child how to take deep belly breaths, because that helps with a lot of physical anxiety. And that’s just one component of anxiety. But teaching the child to have control over their body, that they have agency over the way they react physically to something and they can respond instead, can be really empowering. Because that’s what happens a lot with anxiety: you’re having this panic attack and you can’t breathe. You think you’re going to pass out. You think you’re going to throw up. You’re sweating profusely. You’re shaking. Your body is literally in control and you don’t even feel like you have any type of say in what’s happening.

But if you can teach some deep breathing, then you can say, “Okay, this is what’s happening to your body.” That’s through the education. “Your blood pressure’s going up. Your breathing is becoming shallow, because all of the blood and all the breath is kind of centered in your chest area. We got to bring that down, bring it into your belly and allow you to breathe in, hold it and breathe out.”

There are all different kinds of breathing that you can learn. But that’s really, really important — to teach that individual that you do have control over your body in the way you physically respond to this trigger.

Janet Lansbury:  And then is there anything else that you generally do to help?

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Yes. So another big part is helping them to redirect their focus so that their thoughts don’t become the enemy. Because what often parents will do is say, “Oh, just don’t worry.” And although that’s well-intentioned, that’s not easy. Obviously people don’t want to worry and if they could stop worrying, they would.

So we want to then, instead, be aware that we’re even having the anxiety or the worry in the first place and then help them to redirect it to something else. So maybe saying like a mantra or an affirmation: “Yes, I know that frogs look nasty and gross, but I will be okay.” Or, “I know that the dark is uncomfortable for me, but I know that I’m safe.”

So being able to acknowledge it and then replacing it with something that’s a more helpful and more adaptive thought. And then using a lot of affirmations to kind of make like this new imagery. I like to use a lot of visual and sensory imagery.

So what would be a safe thought, a safe place? And integrating what you would hear, see, smell, taste, feel. What would the temperature be? Who would be there? And creating this whole imagery to kind of help ground you that you’re safe and that you’re okay.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. And I think normalizing that it’s okay to have that feeling, instead of saying, “Don’t worry.”

“You are worried about this. This is troubling you. This is bothering you.” And even wanting to know more about that and actually letting ourselves go there.

I actually had a bout with anxiety this summer, I think many people have this year, and it was kind of this free-floating thing. I wasn’t thinking anything in particular, but it was like a constant state of a stress cycle. And I realized that there was some grieving I actually needed to do that I hadn’t done. Like kind of long ago grieving, and it sort of came up for me. And that was part of my healing process to actually feel the feelings that were underneath the anxiety.

Do you ever get the feeling that anxiety, sometimes when we get caught up in that, it’s like we’re kind of avoiding the deeper feelings that are behind it?

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Oh, definitely, because one of the things that people mistakenly do is that they engage in a strategy that they think is actually a coping strategy and it’s actually an avoidance strategy. So for example, if you say, “I have anxiety about studying for my test, because I don’t think I’m going to pass. So I’m going to take a nap, because my body needs rest, because I’m feeling very anxious about the test.” So then you think: Oh, taking a nap is a coping strategy.

No, what you need to do is study. Taking a nap is actually an avoidance strategy. And that’s the problem with a lot of strategies is that it can seem like it’s a coping when it’s actually an avoidance.

Or saying: Okay, I’m going to go for a walk because I’m feeling overwhelmed by what’s going on in my house. And so then yeah, going for a walk might be a coping strategy, but if you have a lot of things that you need to do that you’ve been avoiding doing, and you’re procrastinating, that’s actually an avoidance strategy. It’s a fine line between the two.

But one of the things that we do know is that the biggest thing that feeds anxiety is avoidance. When you avoid, it creates the short-term relief of: Oh okay, great. Now I don’t have to deal with this studying of the test. Okay, great and now I don’t have to deal with all this loads of laundry. Or: I don’t have to deal with speaking and on this particular topic to this person that I have to talk to.

But then what you’re doing is you’re reinforcing for your brain: Oh, okay, so avoiding that actually provides short-term relief. And then it further reinforces the anxiety and then you have this whole cycle all over again.

So avoidance is the worst thing to do. And that’s what a lot of really effective parents do is that they think: Okay, I’ll just pull my kid out of this program. Or, I’ll just tell them that no, they’re not going to go back to the Zoom meeting, thinking that that’s going to help them with their anxiety.

And it does provide that short-term relief, but the problem is now that we’ve taught our kid: Oh, avoidance is the way to make yourself feel better. Not doing the thing that scares you actually provides relief.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah. And it’s saying: I agree that you can’t handle this. The parent isn’t saying that overtly, but by avoiding it, the parent is saying: I also believe that you cannot handle this normal anxiety people get before a test, or something. Or: I feel like that’s not safe for you to feel that. That’s going to hurt you to feel that or that. It IS a problem.

So it’s that validation of normal feelings as things that you can’t handle.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Right. Then they’re getting that message and then you’re further reinforcing it, although you think you’re protecting them. But, no, now it’s getting reinforced.

The big thing about anxiety, too, is that it’s one of the most common struggles that people have, but it’s also the most treatable. And many people will go years without treating it because they’re like, “That’s just how I am. That’s just who I am. That’s just my personality.”

And the longer anxiety goes on because we’re constantly in a cycle of avoidance and reinforcement, it starts to spread into other areas. So you’re anxious about taking a test. Now you’re anxious about public speaking. Now you’re anxious about speaking to people at school. And now you’re anxious about traveling, and it like starts to bleed into other areas. And then now you have this more generalized anxiety where you just have this uneasy feeling about everything. And that’s why it’s important not to just let it go and pretend like it doesn’t exist, because it doesn’t go away on its own. It needs to be addressed in some way, in a healthy way.

Janet Lansbury:  Wow, yeah. That makes a lot of sense.

So if you could have a few things just generally to offer parents to help them avoid creating this kind of anxiety, what do you say to them? Let’s say they have a very young child and the parent maybe has suffered anxiety in the past and feels there may be that genetic component and that there may possibly also be an influence of the parent, because the parent is kind of containing it. What kind of general guidelines can you give parents for when children appear to be anxious at a situation?

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  So I think, first, to be able to tell yourself and tell your child that you’re not alone in struggling with this. Lots of individuals struggle with this. And what we do know, stats-wise, is one out of every five children is dealing with some kind of mental health issue. So it might be anxiety; it might be depression, ADHD. Lots of kids struggle with this, but they don’t all present the same way.

So first of all, understanding there’s nothing wrong with you and there’s nothing wrong with your child. They don’t need to be fixed.

The other thing, too, is it’s important for the parent to explain to their child how anxiety works.

Children developmentally are very concrete thinkers, very tangible, very here and now, they take things literally. So for example, my brother-in-law when he was a kid and people would say, “Hey, Christmas is around the corner.” And he would look around the corner, go on the street and look around the corner. That’s that tangible… You know, phrases of speech don’t make sense: “frog in your throat,” “butterflies in your stomach.” They literally think those things are there.

Anxiety is abstract and many kids can’t process abstract things. So a lot of kids suffer by themselves in isolation because they can’t put words to what they’re experiencing. That’s why it’s so important as the parent to educate yourself and then to explain to your child how anxiety works, how anxiety tries to act like it’s a friend, but it’s kind of a bad friend because it tells you all the things that are wrong with you in the world that aren’t always true, or it’s an exaggeration of the truth.

So it’s explaining to them how that works, so they know they’re not alone and they know that: Oh, there’s a name for this.

And then they can externalize it. So it’s not me that’s worried, it’s these intrusive thoughts that are invading my brain that’s telling me that things are true that’s not actually true.

And then the other thing is to help guide them in changing their thoughts and challenging their behaviors. Stop rescuing them from their thoughts and their behaviors and actually give them the tools. So taking deep breaths, being able to replace the scary thoughts with more adaptive thoughts.

And then, like how you said, Janet, like normalizing the feeling and acknowledging the feeling. “Oh, I know that it’s hard when you feel so worried about going back to school. It’s hard to feel that way, isn’t it? So when are some other times that you felt like something was hard and we were able to overcome it together?” And helping them with that problem-solving mindset where, “Yes, this is the problem. This is uncomfortable.” Acknowledge it. “And then what do we do with that discomfort? How can we get past that?”

I did that with my son when we were in the middle of this pandemic and it was like a couple of months in and myself and my family, my in-laws, we were all kind of isolating as well. And they wanted to come over for a Memorial Day. And my son is like, “I feel uncomfortable with them coming over.” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m uncomfortable too.” And he was like, “Really?” And I said, “Yeah, we haven’t seen human beings in two months, so I feel uncomfortable too.” And so he’s like, “Oh.” And I said, “So then let’s just be uncomfortable together.” And he’s like, “Okay. But I’m not hugging them.” And I was like, “Me neither.”

So acknowledging it-

Janet Lansbury:  I just felt my temperature drop when you said, just that “let’s be uncomfortable, let’s be this.” Or, “Oh, that’s how you feel? Yeah, that’s normal.” Giving that permission to feel it. It’s all good. It’s all okay.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Right. And you should be uncomfortable. It’s not abnormal to be uncomfortable when we haven’t seen people in two, three months, however long it was. And so I think we have to be able to normalize it rather than dismissing it or trying to fix it real quick to make them not feel it.

Janet Lansbury:  Or being afraid of it ourselves, which will come through. Like with the school, you could even find out more if you’re holding space for that feeling to be okay, like, “Oh, you’re anxious about school starting?” And then you can ask, “What worries you?” And you can get that information to actually help them make a plan or make it a little easier for them.

But yeah, it all has to come from that beginning place of normalizing it, accepting it.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Exactly. Because if we dismiss it or we rush through it or we say, “Oh, you shouldn’t feel that way.” Then they’re going to feel like that something is wrong with them. And why is my parent dealing with it fine and I’m feeling all horrible? So there must be something wrong with me. And there must be something that I need to fix.

But if we can validate it and say, “Yeah, I get why you feel that way.” Or even if we don’t understand it, we can just say, “Oh, I get why you would feel that way. It makes sense.” And then making those connections.

I think it’s really important for parents to really make connections for their child between their emotional experience, their somatic experience, like what they’re feeling in their body. “So yeah, when I feel nervous, my heart beats really fast in my chest. I can feel it, I feel the lump in my throat. Because we’re seeing people we haven’t seen in a long time and we’re kind of afraid of getting sick, I totally get that.”

And so if we can make those connections and they understand that I’m just not anxious for no reason, there is a reason why I feel this and this is why. And it’s a valid reason because it’s valid for me. That’s what we do in cognitive behavioral therapy. We’re literally making the connections between our thoughts, our behaviors, our emotions, and our circumstances.

Because people automatically assume, “Oh, everybody in this pandemic is having a hard time.” That’s not true. There are some people who are thriving. There’s some people who… They’re doing remarkably well. And then there’s other people who are doing not so great at all, but all of those experiences are valid because we all have different experiences. So, although everybody, the whole world is experiencing a pandemic, we all have different perceptions of the event. We have different life experiences because of the event. 10 people can go through the same thing and 10 people will have completely different reactions and responses to it and we have to normalize that all of those responses are valid given that person’s experience.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  And also I think a big, big thing for kids with anxiety is to create a lifestyle where you’re beating anxiety on a daily basis. So, you’re giving mini challenges, like, “I know it’s really hard for you to walk down the street because the dog behind the neighbor’s fence always scares you, do you think as we go on our walk today that you want to challenge yourself by staying on the same side of the street, or do you want to do it a little bit easier today and go on the opposite side of the street? What do you think?”

And so kind of giving them opportunities and empowering them. “How would you like to beat your fear today? How would you like to beat your anxiety today? Do you want to take it a little bit easy today because you don’t feel equipped or do you want to see how brave you can be?”

And you even saying that… So if you know that you’re struggling, your kids know that you’re struggling with certain things, you could also then say that…

Perfect example, a couple of weeks ago I had a cool opportunity to be on a panel for PBS Kids. It was being done live and streamed, and I was in my office and my husband and kids were at home and they’re going to catch me live. Afterwards, when I came home, my son is like, “Mommy, you did such a good job.” My daughter was like, “Yeah, good job.” And then they were like, “Were you nervous?” And I said, “Yeah.” And they were like, “Really?” And I said, “Yeah.” And they were like, “But you didn’t look nervous.” And I was like, “Because right before we started, I closed my eyes. I took a breath and I said, ‘I can do this. I’m excited about this. My heart’s beating fast because I’m super excited.’ And then once I started, it was enjoyable. It was fun. It was engaging. And so then, yeah, I wasn’t nervous anymore.” And he was like, “So you did it while scared?” And I was like, “Yeah, exactly. I did it while scared.”

And so being able to let them know that I did feel nervous, even though this is something that I do often, I still do get nervous and this is what I did about it. And that’s how I was able to overcome it. And that’s a good model because that way you’re showing them, you’re creating a lifestyle that mommy doesn’t get it right every time either. And sometimes I have these fears that I have to overcome, and this is the way that I do it.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. And even seasoned professionals get-

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Yeah.

Janet Lansbury:  … nervous and it’s just human experience not to feel shame about, or extra worried because: Oh, I shouldn’t be feeling like this.

Man, I used to feel like that with speaking that I’m sweating and all these things are happening and this is my problem and I’m messed up. And then of course it just makes it a ton worse. When I finally realized that: Oh no, these are normal things and you breathe through them. But it’s perfectly valid to feel that way, it really helped me a lot.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  And sometimes we misinterpret our somatic or body experiences. So that’s a great example that you gave is that you’ve that feeling before speaking, that your heart might’ve been racing, maybe you kind of felt this dryness or lump in your throat, whatever it was. And then what happens is that when people have a lot of anxiety about those things, they’re like: Oh my gosh, I must be feeling this because I’m anxious because I’m thinking I’m not going to bomb this experience. When maybe the feelings that you’re having are actually because you’re really excited. And maybe you’re like 80% excited, 20% scared.

And the fact is that when we’re excited and when we’re scared, our body kind of does the same thing. With worry and anxiety, we tend to get those wires crossed and we misinterpret the signals that we’re getting and we’re thinking: Oh, my heart is racing, so I must be scared and I must be the wrong person for this. They made a mistake. And then we interpret that feeling as worry and anxiety. And that we’re now this imposter who can’t do this job.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes. That’s a really good point. And it reminded me of something that I try to remind parents about this time of year when it’s before their birthday or we’re going to take them somewhere that they’re excited about that for children, especially for young children that don’t have the life experience to be able to compartmentalize: Oh, I’m excited about this thing that’s going to happen, it really does feel the same as fear to them. So, when everybody’s getting them all excited about the holidays and the presents they’re going to get or something, now their behavior is going off the rails or they seem so fragile or they’re acting out or whatever. And there’s a reason for that. And it’s that dysregulation that’s the same dysregulation they would feel if they were upset or afraid, but it’s just about happy excitement.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Right. And that’s where we have to make sure that we explain to them that those sensations can feel and be experienced in the same way in very different circumstances. And it doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing, it just means that our body is reminding us, that it’s working the way it’s supposed to, and that we have to then bring in the cognitive part of it of saying: Okay, oh my heart’s racing. Rather than interpreting it as fear we can say: Oh, my heart’s racing. I must be super excited and maybe a little bit scared.

And then being able to just come to terms with that and putting words to that so that they’re not just alone suffering in these abstract experiences and they don’t know how to use it. And that’s why I’m a big proponent of using feeling words and empathizing with kids and equipping them with different types of feelings, so that we can expand that feeling vocabulary. And they can be able to say, “Oh, yes, I’m very frustrated. I’m very irritated, I’m very overwhelmed, I’m very bored.” And we can really help them understand what that experience is, that: Oh, when I experienced that, it must be that I’m feeling that.

Janet Lansbury:  And also it helps, I think, for us as parents not to overstate. Sometimes the child will be startled and the parent says, “Oh, you’re scared. That was scary.” Where in fact, they were just startled or surprised.

Like what I was thinking about the holidays and such is that anticipation — that’s a feeling that you have anticipation. It’s a little different from excitement, because excitement is more like you know what’s going on, and anticipation is like you don’t really know how it’s going to be, but you’re thinking about it. It’s wonderful for parents to think in terms of specifics and what is really happening here, instead of like, “Oh, that made you sad that I said no about the…” whatever it was, “the boundary that I had to set.” It makes it harder for us to set boundaries if we start believing that we’re making our child sad every time, instead of “disappointed” or something that doesn’t feel as heavy and damaging.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  And we may get the word wrong, we may be totally off base-

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  … but at least it’s a starting point.

And I think a big thing that I hear from a lot of parents, especially now after… what is it, nine months now of quarantining? For many people, they feel like: Okay, well, that’s all well and good. I can empathize and I can reflect their feelings and I can educate them. And then what if none of that works? What if it crashes and burns and now they’re having this big old tantrum? What do I do now?

A lot of what I really encourage parents to do is to be okay with your child’s big emotions. Like it’s okay that they’re upset. And if they’re having a tantrum, if they’re having a meltdown, if they’re saying they hate you and they don’t want to talk to you and… It’s okay for them to feel that. And I think we have to allow them that space to be upset, to be overwhelmed, to be disappointed, to be scared and upset, all those different things and to say, “When you’re ready to talk about it with me, I’m here.”

I think that so often parents put a lot of pressure on themselves to feel like they have to solve it in the moment and that I’m going to do this strategy and it’s going to work. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes it crashes and burns and sometimes your child is not following the strategy and doing it the way you think it’s supposed to work, and that’s okay too, because again, you’re modeling for them that there’s going to be disappointment and there are going to be times when things don’t work out as planned and that’s okay too. Having that resilience and having that growth mindset and having that feeling that I can still move on, I can still have grit and resilience, that’s also a good lesson too.

Janet Lansbury:  Absolutely. Yeah and I think it starts with trusting the feelings — that it’s not only normal, but probably really positive experience that your child is letting go of, a lot of pent up emotion. And it’s very rarely just about that one experience that set it off, it’s almost always that they’re having this cathartic release of everything they felt coming from us and in their lives. And so it’s all good. And yeah, talking to children during that gives the impression that we’re not comfortable and that we want them to stop and that we’re not okay.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Right. And even with the little ones, the ones, the three-year-olds, you don’t even have to use the words, just your presence is your posture, it’s your energy in the moment. Because if you’re huffing and puffing and turning all kinds of colors and rolling your eyes, they’re going to feel that what I’m feeling isn’t okay because obviously the way this parent is showing their frustration is showing me that it’s not okay.

So it’s about really doing your best to tell yourself in your mind: It’s okay that they’re having a hard time. It’s okay that they’re having a tantrum. This is developmentally appropriate and normal. I’m not a bad parent. Like to really be saying those things to yourself, to dial down your emotions because you’re going to feel them. So it’s just a matter of what is the energy you’re giving off when your child is in that moment of nuclear explosion, right in that moment.

Janet Lansbury:  Exactly. And I think this is probably the biggest challenge for parents, because what we’re giving off is what we’re actually feeling. So we really have to feel safe, which is for most of us turning a 180 from the way that maybe we were raised or we instinctively feel. We really have to feel that: okay, this is the right thing to be happening right now. This is important for my child. This is positive. They’re going to feel better after this. This is all good.

And just taking care with our own anxiety to breathe and not try to say anything, not try to use a tool to fix it or do anything, but just trust. And then yeah, afterwards, maybe we can think about it and say: you know what, we’ve been doing too many activities. Or, this is too late in the day for me to have done this. Or there’s other reasons that it’ll make sense to us to problem-solve for what’s going on.

But yeah, it just takes practice to see how much clearer and better children feel when they’ve gotten these feelings out of their system and haven’t gotten the message from us that they should be afraid to even feel that way — you know, that it’s wrong to have that feeling, which is… Yeah, it’s very easy for us to give that impression, because it does feel all wrong to us when our child that we’ve spent so much time trying to keep happy and content… that they’re not. It can feel like a failure to us as parents.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Oh yeah, definitely. Especially when you’re putting your all into something and you’re planning this amazing outing or whatever and then they ruin it with this tantrum and you’re like, “Great, you’re so ungrateful after everything I’ve done for you.” And it’s really easy to feel that way.

But I think it’s really important to know that a lot of behaviors of kids do, it is really developmentally appropriate. It is expected. It’s not out of the ordinary. When it becomes out of the ordinary, when it’s excessive, when it causes significant impairment for a long period of time —  and a really long period is like four to six months for kids in terms of excessive behavior, tantrums, excessive anxiety and worry — then that’s when you want to seek out more professional help to make sure you’re on the right track. Because doing it on your own is probably going to be too overwhelming and you want to get additional support. But for the most part, most kids, the way that they handle things, it’s pretty much expected. And it’s normal. If we can tell ourselves that, it will be easier to handle it.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, thank you for being somebody that’s helping parents handle it. And thank you again for this discussion today. I really enjoyed it-

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  … and I learned a lot.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Thank you. I really appreciate being on here and talking about this, because I think that if parents and kids are more equipped, we can really change the way people perceive a lot of stuff.

Janet Lansbury:  Is there anything you have coming up that you want to share with us?

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart:  Yeah, definitely, related to this topic, so it’s great timing. I have an online course coming up that will be live. And then also the recording will be sent to those who registered in advance and it’s called “Fear, Worry, and Anxiety: Tips for Parents.” It’s next Thursday, December 17th at 6:00 PM Central. And again, it will be live, but also recorded. I’ll go into a lot of the things that we talked about here today, but then a lot more in-depth strategies that parents can use. And there’ll be a big portion of the course where people can ask questions live as well too that I’ll answer.

Janet Lansbury:  Sounds excellent. Thank you so much.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart: Thank you too.

You can follow Dr. Lockhart on Instagram and Facebook and find more information about her events and other resources HERE on her website.

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 in paperback at Amazon: No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame and Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting. You can also get them in e-book at Amazon, Apple, Google Play, or Barnes & Noble and in audio at audible.com. 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. We can do this.

The post What Parents Need to Know About Anxiety (with Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “The Real Reasons for Your Child’s Behavior (A Science-Based Approach with Dr. Mona Delahooke)”

Hi. This is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled. Today I have the great pleasure of welcoming a special guest to the podcast, Mona Delahooke. Mona is a pediatric psychologist who has worked for over 30 years with children and teens with behavioral challenges and developmental differences. She uses the latest studies in brain science and human development.

She has a new book that I’m raving about and recommending at least twice a week or three times a week to parents that I work with: Beyond Behaviors: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children’s Behavioral Challenges. I’ve told Mona this, she’s going to change the world with this book and this perception of children. It resonates with me because it’s supports, in so many ways, the work of my mentor, Magda Gerber, her conclusions through her extensive observations and ultimately her approach to parenting infants and toddlers. I feel like this is the brain science behind some of the things that we’ve intuited to try to help parents. What Mona does in her book is she helps us to understand our children and also ourselves and our reactions to our children. This is how we make a difference in really helping children with their behavior. Thrilled to have her here.

Here she is, Mona Delahooke. Hi, Mona.

Mona Delahooke:  Hi, Janet. Thank you so much for having me on.

Janet Lansbury:  I’ve been looking forward to this for a very long time. I’ve been kind of savoring your book. Everything I’m reading is teaching me a lot. It’s actually pretty dense. You offer so much information in this book.

Mona Delahooke:  I’m just so relieved and grateful that you’re resonating with it and so many people are. There’s a lot of stuff in there, but I wrote it with the intention of just helping create less suffering in the world and more joy. Thank you.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, you definitely do that. Again, I’m going to recommend this to every parent or professional working with children. It’s a must.

I wanted to see if you could share a little about your professional journey. I found what you shared in your book very interesting and I don’t know that much about you in terms of how you came to these understandings. I would love to hear a little about that.

Mona Delahooke:  Somehow, I just knew I wanted to be a psychologist when I was a teenager. I ended up becoming a psychologist pretty young, in my twenties, and I began working with teenagers, young adults, older children, because really traditional training in clinical psych is for children over five and everyone thereafter. I worked in the field for about a decade before I had my own children. I kept on hearing stories about some of the pain teenagers and adults had when they were children and even when they were younger children and things they wish their parents knew way back then. I’m a sensitive psychologist and person. I thought, well, I wonder if I could be more effective if I was working at younger levels like with parents with babies and toddlers.

After my third daughter was born, I decided to go back and go into more of a prevention kind of idea and become an infant mental health specialist. The training program I worked with was with founders of the infant mental health association, Zero to Three, in Washington, DC. I went there for several weeks every summer for five years. And In the meantime, I did two programs. One was at Cedar Sinai in LA for two years in infant mental health and the other one was at Children’s Hospital.

Long story short, what I learned in these programs changed my life. It wasn’t anything that I learned in psychology in graduate school. It basically was the beginning of what was known as “The Decade of the Brain” in the ’90s, and that was bringing the body and the brain together and seeing little people and babies, of course, and toddlers as a whole, in this wonderful way the body and the brain connect with each other through the information highway. We can read behaviors way before people are able to tell us what they need and talk to us.

So I became an infant and toddler specialist and my perspective started from there in understanding the role of stress and stress recovery, and how we can prevent misunderstanding in a lot of the ways we try to help children and teenagers that are ineffective. And I think that was kind of the magic behind some of the work I do. I gathered a lot of information from a lot of different fields and put it together in kind of a new way.

Janet Lansbury:  Well, that definitely comes across in your book. You use so many case studies. You take off this veil of the way that we still as a society tend to see challenging behavior and show us what it really is and what it really means. And by seeing what it is and what it means, we can understand how to help children with it and how to stop it. It’s a much more thoughtful, aware approach than just trying to fix the behavior.

I really love something you said, too, just zooming to the end of your book, where you spent a little time talking about as adults, why we react to things the way that we do, how we get triggered into this … you take about the negativity bias that Rick Hanson, I guess that’s his term… and how we get triggered into wanting to fix that and change it. I thought that was fascinating, too, because just understanding why we have such a hard time. So we can not only not blame our children for their unconscious behavior, that so much has to do with stress and the way that they’re processing things they’ve been exposed to, but also understand that it’s not our fault either that we are reacting.

Mona Delahooke:  Yes, and what the negativity bias is, is where we are reacting instinctively out of our desire to be good parents. This human tendency to look for the negative rather than the positive. It came out of what’s called our phylogenetic history. Our ancestors were ones who looked for threat and who successfully fought threat off, right? Many millions of years ago that threat would have been maybe a lion or tiger, but now we are in such a complex world. And if we understand that we have a tendency towards maybe seeing the negative rather than the positive, and then remembering that having compassion for ourselves as parents, and then opening to a whole new way to view behavioral challenges, a way that just turns on its head our notions about that intentionality that we often assume that children have.

Oftentimes behaviors, they’re not incentivized by children wanting to prove a point or test limits or do something wrong. There are so many more complex reasons that we see behaviors.

Janet Lansbury:  Can you explain a little about the physical science behind what’s going on in those challenging behaviors? What’s going on when they are caught up?

Mona Delahooke:  Absolutely. There are kind of these different states that people are in. A lot of people talk about it in terms of colors. One is where we feel like we can engage with others. We’re talking, we’re calm, we are conversant. That social engagement system when you’re able to engage, and smile, and feel calm, and take information in, we call that the green pathway, and that’s being in the green. There’s a scientific word for it, but we don’t have to know that.

We all know the fight or flight. That’s another pathway that’s in the brain and body connection. Here, children and adults, our heart starts to beat fast. We feel like we’re under attack, even if we may not be. Oftentimes, for children, we will see they’re crying, yelling, kicking, screaming, what our typical notion of a tantrum is, fast movements, and the child may be running away or otherwise having a really hard time. So we call that the red zone, the red pathway.

The third major one is where people shut down. That would include just giving up on social communication or trying to communicate. Luckily, that’s actually more of a rare state for children. But we do want to be aware if children are ever not communicating with us. I don’t mean like a regular teenage phase where you just don’t really want to talk to your parents. I’m talking more about checking out, where a child might look through you rather than at you, very flat and blank look on their face, slumped body position, and frozen, and kind of looking very, very sad. That would be another way our brain and body are in the world. And combinations of these things.

But the roadmap comes in when we link behaviors to what color the child and we are in. We always want to understand the answer to a very big question and that is, is the child experiencing a response to stress, which would put them in the red pathway, feeling anxious or hypervigilant, or are they feeling socially engaged with us? Then if they are, then we would treat those behaviors very different than we would treat a child who was in the red zone.

We actually use these markers of what’s known as the autonomic nervous system, but just think about it as our nervous system, to understand, for example, when we try to reason with a child or when we don’t try to reason with the child and we just maybe hold them, or gaze at them with loving eyes, or sing them a song. So we kind of use the child as their own roadmap for how we can connect with them.

Janet Lansbury:  Then what do you think about behaviors where a child does not seem stressed, doesn’t seem like they’re on the red pathway, but they’re still doing things that they know the parent doesn’t want them to do?

Mona Delahooke:  I love those kinds of behaviors because-

Janet Lansbury:  Me too. It’s about children wanting to learn from us.

Mona Delahooke:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  How do we respond to things…. What kind of leader do they have?

Mona Delahooke:  Well, once we figure that out, check out the body signals because sometimes a child might look green but they’re actually red or even yellow, right? They may have a smirk on their face, but if you put your hand on their back or on their chest, you feel their heart beating really fast. We really want to make sure.

Neurodivergent children, children with brain wiring differences, their facial expression may not match their internal state.

The body language, the tone of voice, and the facial expression is the polygraph for how the child feels inside. I explain that in the book.

But having said that, if the child is in that green zone and they are going through the natural testing, like not following our directions, or doing something that we don’t like or that’s not part of our family’s values, I love your advice along these lines that I’ve read in your book. Being a leader and staying calm ourselves and patient and letting our child know that we will give them a redirection if it’s something that is important for us to let them know that that’s not okay. It’s just how we go about it. It doesn’t have to be with a hammer. It can be with our relationship.

Janet Lansbury:  I love what you said about the smile because I’m often asked about that. “Well, my child is smiling. How could this be about stress? How could they be uncomfortable here?” I sometimes think of it as when we’re on that roller coaster that we really shouldn’t have gone on. It was a little too much for us, and we might be smiling, but it’s not that centered, calm, joyful-from-within smile.

Mona Delahooke:  Absolutely. It’s a stress smile.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes.

Mona Delahooke:  Yes.

Janet Lansbury:  Similar to when children are tickled, or thrown in the air sometimes as babies.

Mona Delahooke:  Absolutely.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, it’s not a comfortable place. And for parents to understand that, that their child isn’t evil and it’s not that they’re really enjoying hitting you.

Mona Delahooke:  Sometimes, too, with kids when they do something that is not voluntary, that is part of that stress response system. Say they hit you or do something that really is wrong, and then you let them know, and then they laugh or smile… I have a lot of parents who asked me that, too. That can enrage a parent because it’s not a response that we’re expecting.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. It does seem really mean and cruel, or we could see it that way.

Mona Delahooke:  It’s disturbing. I just want to encourage parents that you don’t have to be too concerned with that, because oftentimes that is crossing over very quickly with embarrassment and shame. What comes out when the child is in distress inside is inappropriate emotion that doesn’t reflect the child’s intentions. If they’re feeling really embarrassed and shamed, they may giggle or laugh, but it doesn’t mean that they are not thinking, Oh no, I’m kind of lost here. We remain that beacon, that strength. Staying positive and calm ourselves, but appropriate to the situation, and guiding them.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. It also feels like, even if it is more of just an exploratory thing that our child is doing, there still is an element of discomfort in there when they get a puzzling reaction. It’s not necessarily that I’m on the red pathway and that I have a lot of stress, but it’s just a little weird that you reacted that way. It’s like a little uncomfortable. I’m still impulsively trying it again.

I almost feel like all these behaviors are impulsive. Every time a child does something that they know that we don’t want them to do, it’s impulsive because they haven’t quite gotten a comfortable answer about it from us.

Mona Delahooke:  Absolutely. That brings up this word, “neuroception,” that I talk about. What neuroception is, is that human beings are always being informed about their level of feeling comfort or discomfort, right? What you just said reminds me so much of this reading that we all do, but especially children because they’re always reading the world and they’re reading our emotional tone. They’re also taking in the world through their sensory systems. So much information is getting processed for little humans. Sometimes they get a read.

Think of neuroception is like a little TSA agent or a little thermometer and it’s subconscious. This is going on in the background. But if that awareness picks up a goofy signal, either of, I’m not feeling comfortable, or, Ugh, this is just not a comfy zone for me, they go out of the green and into some sort of yellow, orange place. Then they will have what looks like impulsive behaviors. But there’s actually a neurobiological reason for those behaviors.

It’s brilliant because human beings have this built-in threat detection system. So that’s why I talk a lot about giving children the benefit of the doubt because they’re responding to their threat detection system and every child is going to have different settings.

So, again, that feedback to the child that you are safe and I’m calm…

Janet Lansbury:  Yes. I am unthreatened.

Mona Delahooke:  Yes. You are safe and I’m not threatened. Because it’s so easy for us… As a parent, I know I did this. It’s hard to keep our calm all the time. It’s hard to not react impulsively ourselves. We’re human beings, too.

Janet Lansbury:  Absolutely.

Mona Delahooke:  Yeah.

Janet Lansbury:  Then when should a parent or professional be concerned that they need more support than just reading a book ,or talking to someone like me that can sort of help with some behaviors, but I don’t have a background in neurodiverse children or children with autism. Where should parents begin to understand if this is a concern around their child and how to get help?

Mona Delahooke:  To me, if you have something that you’re concerned about with your child and it’s bothering you or causing you worry or concern, it’s always fine to reach out for support. If you find answers in a book or general parenting advice, that’s great. But if you don’t, if your child has behaviors that you don’t understand, know that there are reasons and there are resources.

I’d say, first of all, if you have a child who is having behaviors that don’t seem to have a reason or a cause that you can easily identify, in other words, if the child is getting triggered into either different emotional states or behaviors that are confusing, then we would want to look below the surface. There are millions of differences in children that can cause those behaviors. We’d want to look a little bit deeper. And sometimes that might be asking your pediatrician. Sometimes that might be asking if you feel like the child is sensitive to noises or certain types of touch, certain types of clothing, experiences like brushing their teeth or having their hair washed, very large reactions to certain everyday experiences. You might want to contact a qualified occupational therapist who understands sensory processing.

If you are concerned about your child’s emotional life, if you’re concerned that your child seems very sad or overly active, like an engine that can’t slow down, then you may want to ask again your pediatrician or a developmental child psychologist, just to put your mind at ease and to mostly get reassured and find out if there’s anything else you could be doing.

I’d say trust your instinct as a parent. If you’re confused about something, you don’t have to worry alone. Reach out and get some supportive advice. Most of all, understand that every sort of difference has a supportive, positive, hopeful intervention, interaction, and approach. Children’s brains and bodies are so open to support. It shouldn’t be scary. It should be just getting information and having just a lot of hope and knowing that you will understand your child better and better as they get older.

Janet Lansbury:  Yeah, so that feeling of openness towards our child… that, instead of fear, which is very, very hard for all of us, I think. One of my favorite messages in your book is about the best therapeutic tool that we have, which is ourselves and our relationship with the child, and our presence in those moments and being unthreatened ourselves by the behavior, which means not blaming ourselves. It’s not a reflection of something that we have to jump into far in the future. It’s just right now what’s going on.

If we could have that curiosity rather than fear around it, it would help us to be that person children need, and really help them with their stress and things that are making them so uncomfortable, making it hard for them to be the people they want to be, which is behaving beautifully. I love that you emphasize that in your book that every child wants to be doing the right thing. They don’t want to be doing that behavior.

Mona Delahooke:  Yes, children want to please their parents. And it’s so easy to personalize our children’s behaviors. I know the thing that would get me revved up and in the red zone would be when my child would do something and then I’d feel this need to correct it right away, because I want to raise them right. This responsibility of, oh my gosh, you have to understand this. You can’t go and do that in the world, you know?

We have this protective instinct for our children to raise them such that they will be safe and accepted in the world. We have such a big responsibility as parents. But you’re absolutely right. If we remember that we are the therapeutic tool, and that means our tone of voice, our facial expression, our body language, that’s the first thing that another human gets from us even before words come out. That’s why I call this a tool. The way we look at our child. I think I posted someone’s a blog post yesterday. “Does your face light up when you see your child?”

If we’re in control, we are going to be able to navigate figuring out really if the child is in a stress behavior, which is kind of known as “bottom up” behavior or if the child is “top down,” if they’re able to reason with you and have a discussion with you or not. Sometimes we just need to back down and not even have the discussion until the child is back open.

Janet Lansbury:  Right. The way to get that presence that you’re talking about is this perspective. It’s this understanding of what is beyond the behavior, and that what we’re seeing is just the tip of the iceberg of something important that we need to understand about our child. That will help us to let go that fear. That’s the key — the way that we see. You’ve said that. I say that a lot. The way that we see the behavior is what’s going to give us that feeling of calm around it, because we are not taking everything they do as this horrible sign that we’re doing something wrong and that we’ve got to fix something. We’re seeing, wow, this is a three dimensional person with all systems going that they’re supposed to have.

I also love in your book that you say that all three of those pathways, none of them are bad. They’re just different ways that we can be. There’s no judgment on them.

Mona Delahooke:  Yes, they’re different ways that humans experience the world. We would not want everyone to be green all the time. You wouldn’t be alive if you were, right? You wouldn’t be aware. Of course, it’s not as comfortable, but the whole point is that we come to this new appreciation of all behaviors and throw our notions of appropriate and inappropriate and rather look at behaviors through this new lens of how they are a tribute to human adaptation. And how brilliant these behaviors are because they protect our children. They’re not meant to disappoint us or make us angry. They are actively protecting our children. Once we understand that, you’re right. It really makes us more calm. At least it did for me and for many of the parents that I work with. Once we kind of go through and dismantle the notions that unfortunately are promoted a lot, even in the education system where certain behaviors, parents are called from the school, and oftentimes those negative behaviors are the child’s protective adaptive mechanism to manage their world. It is a paradigm shift. It’s kind of a mind bender, but it’s pretty exciting. It’s pretty exciting. It keeps us much calmer as parents.

Janet Lansbury:  Yes. You go into great detail in the book and you illustrate with all these specific examples of people that you’ve been working with, and the children that you’ve helped, and the lives that you’ve changed. I really hope people are going to read this book. It’s got something helpful to say to anyone whose around children, ever. I can’t recommend it enough. Thank you so much, Mona, for giving us your time, and your wonderful expertise, and your helpful message for parents.

Mona Delahooke:  Thank you, Janet. It’s such a joy to be able to speak with you. Thank you for all you do for parents, as well. It’s just wonderful to not be alone and get support in all these different, wonderful new ways.

Janet Lansbury:  That’s how I feel, too. Thank you again. Bye bye.

I really hope some of that is helpful. 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! And 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, please check them out. Elevating Child Care, A Guide To Respectful Parenting and No Bad Kids, Toddler Discipline Without Shame. You can even get them for free from Audible by following the link in the liner notes of this podcast, or you can go to the books section of my website and find them there. You can also get them in paperback at Amazon, and in ebook at Amazon, Barnes And Noble, and apple.com.

Thanks again for listening. We can do this.

Beyond Behaviors is available HERE. Mona also shares her wisdom on her website: monadelahooke.com

The post The Real Reasons for Your Child’s Behavior (A Science-Based Approach with Dr. Mona Delahooke) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Transcript of “Supporting A Child Who Has Differences”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.

Today, I’m responding to an email I received from a mom who has a three-year-old with a developmental coordination disorder. She says that as he matures, he’s becoming aware of his condition and, because this will be a long term issue for him, this mom wants to give her son the social tools and the emotional support that he’ll need now and in the future.

Before I begin, I don’t have a sponsor for this particular podcast. The sponsor is me. And I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of you for tuning in, for making this a top parenting podcast, and for your reviews, even the critical ones. I always learn something from them if they’re constructive criticism, and it helps me to adapt what I’m doing, because this is to help. That’s the only reason I’m doing this. And thank you to all of you who have left encouraging comments and reviews for me that tell me that I am helping you. That makes me want to carry on. That’s all I want to say. I appreciate and am touched by your support, so thank you very much.

Here’s the email I received:

“Hi Janet. We really like your podcast. I’m struggling with something I’d love your input on. My son is three and has been diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder. Without going into the details of this disorder, the thrust of it is that, among other issues, he is very clumsy and often stumbles, trips, and falls. These are usually benign. My question is: I want to try to frame this issue for him in an age appropriate way, and give him a supportive self mantra around this, because it is going to be a long term issue.

I have realized recently how many times these stumbles lead well intentioned onlookers to gasp, exclaim, ask if he’s okay, etc. This happens I think out of surprise more than the trip being anything significantly upsetting, but they don’t realize it’s not the only time he’s having this happen. It happens pretty regularly. He’s already becoming more aware that he has some deficits compared to his peers, even if he doesn’t have the language skills to articulate this all the time. I don’t want these reactions to make him feel overly scrutinized, anxious, or insecure.

I dread the day I’m going to get the questions, ‘Why am I so different, why am I so clumsy,’ and so forth. For my part, I try not to make those things a big deal, and just nonchalantly help him up, and sometimes ask if he’s okay. We say a lot of things like, ‘Just try again,’ or, ‘No worries,’ and, ‘Not a big deal.’ I really want to help his inner voice be kind. I realize I can’t control the reactions of others, and it would do no good to explain continually to well-meaning strangers about invisible disabilities, so what I can control is our reaction and what we do to support my son so he has tools to handle this. Do you have suggestions? Thank you so much.”

First of all, I want to say that this parent has a brilliant attitude. I love the way she’s thinking about this. It’s so helpful. And you can feel her care for her son in everything she says here.

I thought this would be a great one to respond to, because my advice for this mom to just help her fine tune her approach to getting what she wants actually covers a whole assortment of differences that children have. There are all kinds of things that we have as people that other people might notice and comment on or react to.

The interesting and inspiring thing about children is that, more often than not, they do have a lot of self acceptance around these differences, and they will naturally actually accept them in others as well if we can approach them honestly, if we can work on calming our own fears and anxieties about our child, if we can really trust that our child will be okay. Our acceptance is a big key to this.

How do we demonstrate our acceptance? First of all, we have to feel accepting. We have to trust and breathe and know that our child is on a journey, and he or she deserves our honesty about what’s going on, and that they are different in this way and that that’s okay. Just as we trust our child to face all age appropriate challenges, to have those experiences being rejected by people, let’s say, or struggling to engage with friends, or struggling with tasks that they want to master, it’s okay for our child to be in all those uncomfortable in-between places, experiencing life.

I’m going to talk about now a couple things that stood out for me here that I would like to help this parent shift their view on a little bit. One is “a supportive self mantra” around this. That makes a lot of sense. But the idea that our child needs a self mantra is already a little bit veering into that they’re not going to be okay with this about themselves, and that they need to try to talk themselves into being okay, to talk themselves down from what they’re feeling.  I think, already, that that view of this is not quite the healthiest one.

She said, “Because it’s going to be a long term issue.” Right, so acceptance is the key. Children surprise us with their ability to accept. It’s often, if not always, easier for them than it is for us. I don’t think this child or any child in this situation needs a self mantra. Again, what they need is honesty and acceptance. In this case, acceptance of all their feelings around this issue that they have.

Another thing that sticks out for me is that she says, “He’s already becoming more aware that he has some deficits compared to his peers, even if he doesn’t have the language skills to articulate this all the time.” I can understand this parent perceiving this as a deficit, but to a child, they don’t have to be deficits. Sometimes it might feel like that, if this little boy, let’s say, is trying to race his friends and it’s harder for him, but it’s actually more of a difference. We all have differences. We have differences that put us ahead of other people in some ways (not that this is a race). We have differences that stand out as very positive, and we have differences that tend to hold us back a little. It’s all going to be okay.

She says, “I don’t want these reactions that other people have to make him feel overly scrutinized, anxious, or insecure.” That’s an area that really we have no control over as parents and, really, we shouldn’t try to, because trying to fix that in any way is going to give our child a less accepting message and lessen their self acceptance. We are so powerful with our children — what we think, how we perceive things, everything we worry about. All of that, for better and worse, is felt by our children. That’s why I wouldn’t see this as a deficit so much as a difference.

I would let go of what he feels about this. That’s his journey and, ideally, it will all be welcomed by us, all the things he feels about it. That’s what self acceptance is. It’s not just feeling okay about things because other people want us to, or that we’re not supposed to feel anything else. It’s: Okay, I don’t like this, but this is who I am, this is me, and I’m perfect as is. That’s what we want to get across, and that’s the way children will naturally feel.

This parent says she dreads the day she’s going to get the questions, “Why am I so different? Why am I so clumsy?” Those are all actually healthy, positive questions — wanting to understand himself. I understand how scary that can feel for a parent, to feel like your child is uncomfortable and not liking certain things about himself. That’s what we have to work on ourselves, trusting it’s okay to like things and dislike things about ourselves, self acceptance, and it begins with our acceptance.

Then she says, “For my part, I try not to make those things a big deal, and just nonchalantly help him up, and sometimes ask if he’s okay.” Asking if he’s okay, wonderful. Helping him up if he needs help, great. He may be able to get up himself. And we’re there noticing, “Oh wow, you fell.”

I wouldn’t be nonchalant as to discount it. What I believe we all have to do as parents with any struggle that they’re having or any challenge that they’re facing is to be right beside them in this journey, or even a step behind them, not ahead, not deciding, Oh, they might feel this way and I don’t want them to feel that way, so I’m going to try to get on top of this. We don’t mean to, but it’s kind of like, Push it down, push it away. I don’t want him to go there, so I’m not going to let him go there.

That’s stepping ahead. That’s actually not accepting. We want to stay beside. So wherever he is, whatever he feels about that fall, that’s what we want to encourage. We check it out, “Oh wow, yeah. You went down.” We don’t make a bigger deal out of it, but we don’t lessen it for him. How does he feel? What support does he need right now? We’re not trying to rush him to get up.

With the RIE approach, we do this with infants, toddlers, or any child. When they fall, we don’t want to pick them up too quickly, because we want them to notice that they fell and what happened there and what they tripped on. We don’t want to just magically make it disappear. I mean, we do  but we try to counter that impulse to swoop them up and, “Oh, you’re fine,” or … I don’t know that this parent is doing that at all, but to really let him have the time to get up.

But we’re there. We’re not leaving him to do this and not helping him. We’re helping him in a more sensitive, attuned way, noticing where he’s at and observing and allowing him to let us know when he needs help.

She says, “We say a lot of things like, ‘Try again,’ or, ‘No worries,’ and, ‘Not a big deal.’ I really want to help his inner voice be kind.” That kind inner voice comes from self acceptance. Self acceptance means we’re okay with ourselves. We’re not feeling judged. We’re not feeling other agendas around us. We trust ourselves, and that makes us kind to others. These are the kindest people out there, the ones that have self acceptance and are comfortable in their skin.

So he will have a kind inner voice, but I wouldn’t say, “Just try again,” “No worries,” and, “Not a big deal.” I know this parent doesn’t mean it that way, but that is discounting. It’s invalidating anything that he might feel. Just fix it and cover it up and make it okay. “Oh, just try again, that was nothing. Not a big deal, no worries.” It’s similar to saying, “You’re okay,” to a child who doesn’t feel okay. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” and the child feels like they’re not okay. Maybe they’re disappointed that they fell. Maybe it was a big deal to him in that moment, because now all these people are coming over and checking on him. We don’t want to decide that for our children. I understand the impulse so well. I have it every single time still, but it’s not helpful.

Asking if he’s okay, that’s great. “Oh wow, are you okay? I saw you fell.” But then he gets to feel however he feels, and having that accepted is what makes our inner voice kind. When we feel people trying to rush us to feel better or that our real feelings aren’t okay, we don’t have that same sense of security and comfort in our skin that I know this mother and all of us want for our children.

She says, “I realize I can’t control the reactions of others, and it would do no good to explain continually to well-meaning strangers about invisible disabilities, so what I can control is our reaction …”

Yes, exactly. And that’s what I just hope to fine tune a little bit.

“… and what we do to support my son so he has the tools to handle this.”

Right, the good news here, the great news is he does have the tools to handle this. He really does, if we can believe in him.

When he asks those questions, “Why am I different, why am I clumsy?” or when you notice him seeming uncomfortable by the people’s reactions to him, that’s when I would start, again, standing next to your child figuratively or just a step behind. That’s the responsiveness that’ll help. Responding to what you see in him, responding to his look of puzzlement maybe when people come over. If you notice something like that, maybe you already are noticing this, say something, not in that moment but afterwards. In the moment, I would just acknowledge those people, “Yeah, he fell. Yeah … I don’t know, are you okay?” to him. “Yeah, he seems okay, but thank you for your concern.”

And then after they’re gone, “Yeah, those people were worried that you fell. They seemed to care that you fell, and they wanted to make sure that you weren’t hurt.” Just something in that moment, and then when he seems to notice that this is happening more to him than it is to his friends, let’s say, or to other people, or when he opens that door to want to know more about it, that’s when it’s the most important to quell our own fears, to trust him, to believe in this guy. Children are so capable, so much more capable than we give them credit for.

When he asks why: “You have something different about you. You were born with this,” or with some children, it will be, “This happened to you, and so it gives you a tendency to do this, or it makes you look this way to other people, and other people notice that because it’s different.”

That’s all you have to say. Just the simple truth, not trying to fix it for him, not trying to give him some tool from outside himself. He’s got the goods and, believing in that, his parents believing in that is the only tool that he needs. And instead of dreading the day she gets those questions, I would see that as a gift, a time when you will get (or times because it may come up a lot of times), to acknowledge whatever he feels, not decide what he feels, but really notice what he does feel, and acknowledge that, validate it.

“Yeah, it must feel hard when this is happening to you and you’re trying to keep up with your friends. Yeah, that is hard.” Just letting that be, braving the silence after we acknowledge those feelings, avoiding trying to tie a bow around it with: “But you’re fine, and it’s going to be okay, and you can do other things really well.” Trying not to jump there. Just letting those feelings have a life, letting him know that he’s safe feeling that.

Those are my little tweak thoughts for this parent, and for any parent dealing with this issue in any form. I really hope that’s helpful, and again, thank you all for listening. We can do this.

The post Supporting A Child Who Has Differences appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

​Transcript of “Coping with a High Needs Baby”

Hi, this is Janet Lansbury, and welcome to Unruffled. This week I’m very excited because I have Lisa Sunbury Gerber with me. Lisa, as many of you know, she studied with Magda Gerber in the ’90s at Magda’s original office in Silver Lake, and she and I were both there at the same time. She served on RIE’s board of directors. She spent over 25 years in the field of early education as a caregiver, a program administrator, presenter, and teacher, and she offers parent/infant classes and private consultations as well as workshops and training for professionals through Regarding Baby. Check out her blog, RegardingBaby.org. There’s a treasure trove of information and insights there. Anyway, I’m very excited to have her here and we’re going to be discussing a parent’s question. The parent is concerned because she had what she described as a Velcro baby, and she is about to have another baby and she’s concerned that she will get caught up in the same patterns that she did the first time.

​In case you missed my announcement last week, there’s a project I’ve been working very hard on for the last several months and it’s finally ready. It’s available on my website. It’s an audio series called Sessions, and these are recordings of my private consultations with parents discussing their urgent parenting issues. We get to have a back and forth, so it’s very helpful to me because I can ask all the questions I need to ask and we can have a whole conversation about their issues from aggressive toddlers to independent play to limits, and so these are real parents, very brave parents that allowed me to record our consultations with real issues, and hopefully I’m offering them real answers. So if you enjoy these Unruffled podcasts I think you’ll appreciate the more in depth explorations that we get to do in Sessions, so go to my website, JanetLansbury.com, and at the top of the homepage there’s a button that says Sessions. If you click that you can read the complete descriptions of each episode and the common and sometimes not so common parenting topics that are covered.

Okay, here’s the letter that I received:

“Hi Janet. I was lucky enough to discover your work before my baby was born and it really resonated with me. I was and am very committed to parenting in the way you suggest. As my daughter has gotten older it has become easier and I’m so grateful to you that she is growing into a happy, confident, and wonderful little girl. However for a really long time I found it incredibly difficult. She was an extremely unsettled baby right from the start. I believe now that she had problems with reflux and pain in her body due to problems with her hips. She slept terribly for over a year and I was frequently up hourly no matter what I did. This really took its toll on me, physically and emotionally. She was un-soothable a lot of the time in the day as well.

What I particularly struggled with was the advice to meet her needs then let her be. I really wanted to do this but it felt to me that her needs were never met. The doctors were extremely unhelpful and I was never able to figure out what was the matter with her, which affected my self-confidence as a mother dramatically. I guess I’m asking what I should have done differently. She hated being put down right from birth, I guess because of the reflux. The only thing that seemed to help was to carry her around in a sling. I tried to avoid doing this because I didn’t want her to get used to it and I wanted to follow the RIE approach to natural motor development, but what do you do when being on their back seems to cause them genuine physical pain?

​I’m pregnant again now and frankly terrified of having the same experience again. I know all babies are different and everyone tells me it’ll be easier this time as I will be more relaxed, which I’m sure is true to a point, but that kind of annoys me a bit because I feel like people are saying she was the way she was because I wasn’t relaxed, which I don’t believe was the case for a second.

​If you could direct me to any articles that I may have missed that particularly offer suggestions for this situation I would really appreciate it. I feel that there must be other mothers out there who would benefit from some guidance on what to do when you feel like you’re doing everything to follow a RIE approach and nothing seems to be coming easily any of the time, day or night. My friends’ babies and in fact pretty much every other baby that I’ve ever come into contact with were all much more settled, at least some of the time. I love RIE and I think it’s a brilliant approach but it was so hard to implement with my pained, unhappy, Velcro baby. I guess I’m just a bit traumatized by how hard it was. I know you must be very busy. Please don’t feel you even have to respond if you are unable to. Thank you so much again for all you do. I regularly recommend your books and approach to other parents that I meet.”

​Okay, so Lisa, do you have any thoughts you want to share first?

Lisa Sunbury:​ You know, they all come with their own temperaments, and some babies have a harder time. Either if that is their temperament, they’re just more sensitive. They’re more of everything. They’re more sensitive. They’re more irregular in their eating and sleeping patterns. They’re more intense in their responses, and then some babies legitimately do have physical factors that can complicate things. Physical pain. Reflux. But within that, I think parents, they have to take care of themselves and I think that even a baby, or especially a baby that may have an intense nature that may have physical pain for whatever reason, can benefit from RIE and can benefit from Mom taking care of herself and being more relaxed.

Janet Lansbury:​ If we think about it, they’re adapting so intensely. All their systems are developing. Their digestion. Their respiratory system. There’s a lot going on and it makes sense that they’re uncomfortable, and some of them even more uncomfortable, but what comes to mind sometimes is I remember Magda telling the story of the two parents. Let’s say two mothers with their infants. Both the infants are crying and uncomfortable obviously, and one mother is swooshing the baby around and rocking and maybe sticking a pacifier in and moving the baby back and forth, up and down, bouncing, bouncing, and the other mother is just still and holding the baby and maybe nodding her head and hearing the baby cry.

​Both of those babies cried for a period of time. And her point was that there really isn’t something that we can do about it a lot of the time, and I think if we get caught up in that, I’ve got to fix this, I’ve got to fix this, then yes we’re going to put an inordinate amount of stress on ourselves. We’re going to add more discomfort to the mix with our baby because we’re so uncomfortable, which is only going to exacerbate things. And, for what?

​What RIE gives us is the understanding that crying is communication. There are very few times when it’s an emergency that we really need to do something about right away, so we can take our time. We can listen. But we’ve got to, I think, work on our perception of our baby’s discomfort and our role in it, which is to obviously help our baby to be as comfortable as possible. That’s going to be in preventative ways as well. Having as calm and quiet a day as we can arrange for our baby in these early months especially. Giving them free movement.

​One thing that was interesting about my son… You can’t really compare. As you said, the babies are all different. They each have their own temperament and their own sensitivities and their own levels of sensitivities, but I found it interesting that my son, he only had difficulties in the night. He would be up for two hours straight and I’d have him in my bed with me while he was crying. He had a little basinet next to  where I was sleeping, but I would be holding him and he would cry for two hours, and there was really nothing much I could do about it. Nursing didn’t help. In some cases it made it worse at that point, and there we were. And I remember getting up each day and, getting up. I mean I was up so much of the night between the two hours of crying and then the feedings. In the morning I would feel like I can’t do another day like this, and then there would be another day, and another day, and another day. But what was interesting with him is that, and he’s the happiest person in the world now.

​There’s no happier person I’ve ever met than this guy, but during the day he I think was moving more. Even when he was just a tiny infant he was moving his limbs more, and I think that that was maybe part of the reason that he was better during the day. He’s a very active guy still and I think maybe just being asleep kind of slowed everything down. His digestion or whatever. Slowed it all down and then it got really uncomfortable for him, but when he was awake he could move around and I think that worked better for him. So what I’m saying is the free movement that Magda recommended, I do think that it makes a big difference for some babies.

Lisa Sunbury:​ Yeah.

Janet Lansbury:​ Another wonderful thing that RIE gives us is we’re able to see our child or we try to see this as an evolving person moment to moment and not making these decisions (and I don’t know that this mother did that at all), deciding that this is a certain type of baby that needs a certain thing. Instead of seeing that well, oh, in this moment, here on this changing table, my baby seems fine. So why don’t I just wait here a bit and let her explore a little or look around or be fine on her back in this moment? Being open to all the shifts moment to moment that our baby could make, instead of deciding, which would tend to lead us to over-intervene that my baby can’t handle being down on her back and making a blanket decision about that. I think that gets in our way.

Lisa Sunbury:​ And recognizing how it does change from moment to moment, from day to day, from week to week and so at a month old, maybe it’s true that the baby is needing lots of holding and the baby is uncomfortable and unhappy a lot of the time, and every time you do put her down she seems like she’s upset. But noticing how that changes with consistency, with giving her these opportunities. The slow pace and like you said, noticing on the diaper changing table, “Oh, she’s pretty content right here right now,” so you’re right there with her and you just slow that whole process down and let her be there, and so today maybe it’s for a five minute period of time. Noticing that, building on that, and acknowledging.

​I think consistency is so important so you have that time when you’re feeding and you’re holding and if you believe that your baby has reflux, you’re holding her up on your shoulder after feeding for a longer period of time, but then do put her down. Do put her down, and maybe it’s only a few minutes but that’s a start, and then you build on that, and talk to her about what’s happening.

​The freedom of movement I know from my little one who did have reflux, silent reflux, was incredibly helpful for her. She would pull her legs up to her chest from very early on from four months, and she’d pull them up in a rhythmic motion. That seemed to help her but that was not something that I ever did with her. I didn’t bicycle her legs, but I did talk with her. Get down there on the floor and talk with her about what I was noticing. “It seems like you’re a little uncomfortable,” and I might place my hand on her tummy but letting her have that time. Letting her find the way to move on her own that was comfortable.

​Then, you’ve touched on this too, it’s our piece of it. If we’re holding, because we decide, “Okay, my baby’s in pain. I can’t possibly put her down. She’s miserable if I put her down. She needs to be carried. That’s the only way that she seems to sometimes not be so uncomfortable.” If we believe that about our babies then that’s what we’re going to do, and whatever we do is what they come to need and expect, if we’re feeling exhausted and stressed and doing all of this carrying, and I’m certainly not blaming parents.

​Again, that’s why I started with making this distinction that they come to us with their own personalities, their own temperaments, and some babies are more sensitive, are more intense, but if we’re exhausted and we feel like this is what I have to do because this is what she needs, they feel that too so it becomes a feedback loop. A negative feedback loop. They absorb our exhaustion. They absorb our worry. They absorb our stress, and this is not to blame a parent, and in terms of doctors not being helpful that’s something that I’ve also experienced with my girl. There were things that I was observing and that I knew were problematic for her. She was struggling and she was in physical pain and discomfort and she was not responding to the typical prescriptions or advice that the doctors were giving, and that’s something that I feel a parent should trust themselves, should trust their observation if they are observing the baby closely. I went so far as to document in written form.

​If you have an intuition that something is not quite right or that your baby is in pain and it’s based on your observations and you go to a doctor and they’re telling you it’s not a problem or you’re imagining this, or well just do this, and you’re not feeling listened to, you’re not feeling supported, you feel that there’s something that’s being missed, trust your intuition. Trust your baby. Trust your observation, and find another doctor.

Janet Lansbury:​ No doctor knows your baby as well as you do. I could see how that would strip her confidence though. It’s scary to be a first time parent and then to feel like you are kind of impotent in your ability to help your baby become comfortable.

Lisa Sunbury:​ Yeah, and to be exhausted. I mean that’s the other thing. I think it’s important for the parent to be supported, to have rest and to have breaks, so part of that is within the course of the day with your baby. If you’ve got a baby that’s high needs that gets up every hour at night despite whatever you’re doing, you’re going to be exhausted. The parent’s going to be in need of support or time away, time to sleep, time to exercise, and there can be this, “Well how can I leave her when she’s experiencing this?”

​It can seem like, well, it’s selfish, but it’s not. Over the long haul your baby’s going to be a lot better off if you are getting as much rest as you can. If you get out to take a walk. If you get to take a shower. And again with RIE, there’s some of that that’s built in because you’re going to tell your baby, “I know you’re really unhappy right here right now,” and this is after you’ve spent the time with them, “But I’m going to take a shower and then I will be back.” So you establish those kinds of things. Not trying to eat while holding the baby or wearing the baby. Not putting all of your needs off all of the time because the baby needs me.

Janet Lansbury:​ Yeah, because again as you pointed out earlier, the same sensitive baby that’s very sensitive to the discomforts that they have is also, as you said, very sensitive to what’s going on with the parent, so taking care of ourselves is going to make our baby feel better. That sounded like a really quick shower she was going to have to take with the baby crying, but yeah, I mean it’s hard. I remember with my son, one of the things I knew that probably would help. It may have even been one of the causes of his discomfort in the night was that I drank coffee in the daytime when I was breastfeeding, and not a lot of coffee, but I knew I should probably cut it out, but you know what? I needed that coffee, and that’s where I had to draw the line. It’s like, don’t take away my one crutch that I need to survive right now, and I think also knowing that whatever it is it really will pass. It really, really will pass. It seems endless when you’re in the middle of it.

Lisa Sunbury:​ It does, yeah.

Janet Lansbury:​ But it does pass and then, like I said, I’ve got the brightest spark of happiness in this whole family. So if we can just do our best, get through it, there’s no perfect RIE way. RIE is just there to help you. To help you think about the habits that you’re creating. To just keep our eyes open. It’s not some judgment thing saying, “Don’t do this and don’t do that,” or, “No, you’re not getting it right.” It should be the opposite of that. This gives you confidence that crying is okay. Your baby’s just sharing her feelings with you, and you need to take care of yourself, and all of those messages, and just do your best.

Lisa Sunbury:​ Yeah. Letting go of the expectations that it’s supposed to work a certain way, or that if you do this then the baby is going to be happy. The baby is going to respond in this way. That’s not necessarily true. You know, from reading blogs and reading online, or even comparing looking at your friends’ babies you can get a skewed kind of view. It’s like oh, everybody else’s baby can lay there happily and play for an hour and is happy and easygoing, but you don’t know. You know what I mean? You don’t know, because you’re only seeing a little glimpse of someone else’s experience, someone else’s baby.

​So letting go of an expectation that it’s supposed to look a certain way, or if you do this then the baby will respond in this way. I know this mom is expecting another baby and she had not such a great experience to begin with, so now there’s already this anxiety and this fear about well, what if it’s like this again? And it may or it may not be, but trying to let go of that projection as much as possible. Is this going to be the same thing, and how am I going to deal with it?

​Possibly, she can learn from her first experience having a toddler now. She said that her toddler is happier and more easygoing now, so having that it’s like oh, yeah, it does change. It does evolve. It does pass, and having that experience of oh yeah, it did. It did change. And recognizing what you can do, what she can do differently. Not assuming and giving those moments and getting comfortable with cry.

The Period of PURPLE Crying, they talk about … This is actually an abuse prevention program and they have a website. They talk about, and it goes back to the story you were telling of two babies. Two parents. Both babies crying, and they cried for the same amount of time no matter what the parent did, and the different response of the different parents. All babies cry as they’re maturing, adjusting to being in this world, and like you said, there are so many things in the first month just adjusting to being in the world.

​All babies do cry, and there’s a peak which happens right around the three month mark, and the difference is that some babies cry more and some babies cry less, and babies with colic tend to cry longer and harder and typically in the evening hours, and it can be three or four hours every night, no matter what the response. Whether you’re carrying them around or not, but it peaks at the three month mark and then it rapidly declines, and they talk about again, letting the baby know, “I’m here. I’m listening. I want to do my best to make you comfortable,” but not having that expectation that you are going to be able to take it away or that you’re going to be able to necessarily soothe the baby, or that that should be a goal, and so letting yourself off the hook a little bit for it.

Janet Lansbury:​ That’s wonderful. I mean I feel more relaxed hearing you say that, and I don’t think I’m going to be having anymore babies but wow, what a relief. They’re going to cry anyway maybe, so let it go. Let it be. Yeah, and I think all of those things. The projections. The labeling. The fear. All of those get in the way with our best tool which is to attune to our baby as much as possible moment to moment. Maybe not every single moment because we need breaks, but seeing our baby for what’s really going on with them instead of all of our own feelings around it. That’s the best partner you can be.

​I remember another thing I love that Magda Gerber said was that the process of learning and understanding your baby is like two adolescents learning to dance together. This is how this moment is supposed to be right now. That’s what that moment was supposed to look like. That acceptance that you’re on track. Everything’s fine. It’s going to be okay. I think that will help. I hope that helps this mother, and if not, she should have a consultation with Lisa Sunbury. Because you are wonderful. Thank you so much for being on here with me. It’s so sweet of you. I love hanging out with you. If this is the only way we get to do it that’s okay with me too. I’ll take it!

​Anyway, I do hope our discussion today helps people out there and thank you so much all of you for listening. Please check out some of my other podcasts. They’re on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Stitcher, and again both of my books are available on audio at Audible.com and in paperback at Amazon and ebook at Barnes and Noble and Amazon and Apple.com. Check out my new audio series Sessions, the individual recordings of private consultations with parents. Also please take a look at the wonderful website RegardingBaby.org and check out all that Lisa offers there on her website.

And don’t forget, we can do this.

UPDATE 3/1/20:

“Hi Janet – I wrote to you a few years ago and you and Lisa Sunbury were kind enough to do a podcast about my letter. It was called ‘Coping with a High Needs Baby.’ I just wanted to write quickly to say how grateful I was to you both. I must have listened about 50 times. My second baby was a completely different experience. He was calm, easy to soothe, and it was always obvious what was bothering him. So interesting isn’t it how unique their personalities are right from birth! He is nearly 3 now and is still laid back and calm. My daughter is still VERY loud and can be a challenge although she is wonderfully imaginative, joyful and hilarious. Parenting her has been hard at times, and I put a large part of the wonderful relationship that we have, and also her confidence and self assurance, down to the advice in your books and podcasts. She has recently started school and her teachers have told me that it is a joy to have her in the class as she is so enthusiastic about everything, self motivated and independent. Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks again for the thoughtfulness, kindness, and compassion with which you and Lisa addressed my question. Those first few years were a very hard time for me. You helped me so much and I am so grateful.”

The post Coping with a High Needs Baby (special guest: Lisa Sunbury) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Based on the feedback I have received from parents and professionals in the field, the answer is a resounding “yes!” But since my own work with families has not included many of these children, I don’t have experiences and details to share firsthand.

Enter Sandra Hallman, a child development specialist and early intervention therapist who recently contacted me by email.

Hi Janet,

I have been following your blog for a few years now and have to say thank you for all the wisdom and raw honesty that you share with your audience.  I have learned so much!  I often tell my colleagues and clients that I have learned more from your blog and Magda Gerber‘s RIE approach than I did during the seven years I spent studying child development.

I have worked with infants and toddlers (and some pre-school and school-age children) with special needs and their families for about 15 years.  I have been blessed to work with some amazing people in my field and am so grateful that one of my colleagues told me about your website.  I have been reading, learning, and implementing the information from your blog articles, and I have to say that my work with families and children has become infinitely more effective, yet at the same time way more simple. It almost feels wrong, though I know it’s not.

In the world of Early Intervention and those working with children with special needs, there tends to be a “do, do, do” mentality instead of “watch, wait, and wonder.”  I think that we, as therapists, often don’t feel like we are being effective unless we have our hands on the child “facilitating” some sort of position, skill, or activity, or are giving out commands for them to follow.  I remember a saying from one of my professors in grad school: “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

That made sense to me, but I didn’t know how to just stand there (i.e. just be with and support a child and his caregivers) until I learned the RIE approach from you.  And the progress that I see in children and their parents is like nothing I had observed before!  It’s incredible, and it always works when the parents follow through.  Of course, it’s a process, but the parents who seem to “get it” and implement a little more readily than others, consistently see greater progress in their child’s development or resolution of prior issues (i.e. sleep).

I have a desire to create an Early Intervention alternative for families, an approach where therapists are trained in the RIE philosophy and blend their expertise and training in whatever area they specialize in with the best practices in Educaring. I just don’t even know where to begin and wondered if you have had any similar conversations with anyone, or if any thoughts come to mind.  If nothing else, I’d just love to connect with like-minded people who can inspire me and fuel my dreams to ultimately help more children and families learn the incredible principles of RIE.

I’d love to know your thoughts on my thoughts…

Thank you for your time!

Sandra Hallman, MS, CEIM

Naturally, I jumped at the chance to have Sandra share some of her specific experiences in detail, and she graciously agreed.

Here are a few examples of my observations on how educating parents in the RIE philosophy and implementing this approach during therapy sessions has elicited positive outcomes related to the parent-child relationship, overall development, and behavior.

Possible Autism and Severe Behavior Concerns

Ethan was a 2-year-old boy who had been receiving speech therapy, developmental therapy, occupational therapy, and social work supports for a few months prior to my meeting the family. He was also referred to a developmental pediatrician for concerns about Autism.  Ethan’s mother was desperate for help with his frequent, intense, and very long tantrum behaviors, which had not improved at all after about six months of therapy.  She shared that they couldn’t go out to eat at restaurants or even to the store because his behavior was so difficult to handle.

Some of our sessions revolved around mealtimes and store outings.  During these challenging routines, Ethan’s parents were provided with supports to slow down, observe, acknowledge, and co-regulate (i.e. allow emotions to be fully experienced, expressed, and released without judgment). When Ethan lost control, the parents remained calm, accepting and supportive. This, in turn, provided Ethan with an increased sense of safety and trust in his parents, which I presume decreased his levels of stress and dysregulation, opening him up to being more available to learn and engage with his world.

Ethan’s mother read several of Janet’s articles and quickly became well versed in implementing RIE-inspired parenting.  Within a few weeks, Ethan presented as a very different child and was beginning to engage in more purposeful and symbolic play, use speech to communicate, show enjoyment during social interactions, and separate in familiar environments from his mother more easily. His body awareness and motor planning also appeared to increase, and his sleep became more regulated.  More specifically, Ethan was able to participate in meal times without tantrum behaviors (which previously happened at almost every meal, per mother) after he was allowed to work through a very long tantrum at mealtime during one of our sessions.

Janet often talks about the healing power of a toddler’s tantrum in her blog, and I truly believe this to be true.  After parents and I support a child through a very intense tantrum, it’s almost like a switch gets flipped and their nervous system is re-set, which equals a well-organized, engaged child who shows profoundly increased social and play skills.  In the past, prior to my knowledge of RIE, I considered a session without a tantrum a success. Now, as difficult as it is for everyone to get through, I consider a session where a child is allowed to fully feel and express themselves during a tantrum (which has occasionally taken up almost an entire session) a huge success!  Especially when the parents can be supported through it and see for themselves what it looks like on the other side of the tantrum.  More often than not, the child wants to cuddle with/stay close to their parent for a while and demonstrates affection that is rarely observed.

One last anecdote about Ethan…when the developmental pediatrician saw him (which was a few weeks after his mother started implementing RIE-inspired parenting techniques), he asked Ethan’s mom, “What are you doing here?”  He wondered why she had brought him in with the initial concerns of possible Autism, because he certainly didn’t present this way any longer.

A Child with Down Syndrome “Who Didn’t Know How To Play”

If you have had any experience with children who have Down Syndrome, one of the things you likely observed frequently is throwing…everything. In one of the centers I worked there was a huge emphasis on hand-over-hand to “teach” children how to play “appropriately” with toys.

Emily was a child who had been participating in the group program for several months where this strategy was widely used and taught.  When I started seeing Emily for individual developmental therapy and talked with her mother about her strengths and what she enjoyed doing, her mother adamantly stated, “She “doesn’t play with anything. She just throws everything!”

What a shock it was for both her mother and me in our first session when this two year old little girl purposefully initiated play with a shape sorter and completed it independently with occasional “sportscasting” (what I consider co-regulating). It just took a little bit of encouragement and prompting from me to help Emily’s mother take a step back and allow her daughter to initiate and engage in play that until this moment she thought was impossible.  This continued to happen every single time we met, where Emily would surprise her mother with all kinds of play skills that she never knew Emily possessed.  And all this happened not because of some magic therapeutic intervention or hand-over-hand assistance, but because we just “stood” there and trusted Emily’s developmental process after providing her with the opportunity to explore.  After watching, waiting, and wondering, we joined Emily’s play and added other ideas, all of which she was able to imitate, expanding her play even more.

I think one of the most difficult things for us to do as therapists (and adults in general) is to slow down and allow the child to lead the way, showing us where they’re at, what they’re interested in, and then, if the opportunity presents itself, joining them in a playful interaction that shows them we are attuned to them and value their ideas.  I’ve learned that when children feel that we “get” them and have confidence in them, they are much more likely to respond with joint attention and play, reciprocal interactions, and imitation/demonstration of higher-level skills that are likely buried under a lot of stress, overstimulation, and insecurity.

The Mystery of Sleep and Hyperactivity

This brief experience still baffles me sometimes when I think about how simple the answer was to the sleep and hyperactivity issues that were going on.  I was seeing a toddler for therapy, and one day her mother shared concerns about her other child, three year old Jenny, who had difficulty transitioning to sleep and frequent night wakings, as well as her very high, disorganized activity level.  The mom shared suggestions that her pediatrician had offered (i.e. no TV during the day, changes in diet), but she didn’t feel these were issues or the cause of her daughter’s dysregulated sleep and hyperactivity.

After our first one-hour session, it was very apparent to me that Jenny was stressed out by the authoritarian parenting style her mother had demonstrated during our time together, and in my opinion, this was likely contributing to her many areas of dysregulation.  After giving Jenny’s mother my solicited opinion and information about RIE, two weeks later I was shocked by how well-regulated Jenny was and how different her mother interacted with and parented her.  And, her mother happily reported, Jenny’s sleep was significantly better. Wow!  I almost didn’t believe it.  This dramatic change definitely confirmed for me the power of the parent-child relationship and that it can be either a source of stress or a source of support for a child. To be sure I could believe what happened in just two weeks, I asked Jenny’s mother if she did anything else differently to address the sleep, and her answer was “no.”

Ex-Preemie with Sensory Integration Dysfunction or Lack of Limits and Emotional Regulation?

Noah was born extremely premature and showed many of the typical ex-preemie challenges around sensory processing.  I started seeing him when he was about 2.5 years old, and at that time, I was fascinated by sensory processing and all the “tools” that could be used to help support integration for a well-regulated nervous system.  Noah presented as what some refer to as a “sensory mess,” as he had limited attention, decreased body awareness, difficulty motor planning, high levels of sensory-seeking behaviors (i.e. climbing, jumping, throwing), as well as sensory-avoiding behaviors/sensitivity (i.e. gagging, tactile defensiveness).

I initially approached all of these challenges strictly from a sensory perspective and implemented many of the calming/organizing activities that Noah’s OT recommended. They occasionally worked for short periods of time during my once-a-week, 60-minute sessions.  Even the most helpful sensory tool (compression garment), which appeared to be a miracle the first time we tried it, only lasted a couple of weeks and then seemed to have no organizing effect for Noah.  His occupational therapist and I spoke multiple times and collaborated extensively to share things that did and didn’t work, but ultimately, neither of us felt like we were providing Noah’s parents with any effective long-term strategies.

The challenges that were presented during my work with this child and family were what helped me shift my focus and look for other possible resources. I was completely out of ideas.  So I took what I had just started learning about RIE and implemented it into my work, and voila!  I’m certainly not saying it was perfect or that the child’s development miraculously advanced to age-appropriate; however, the results that we were seeing in our sessions warranted a call from the occupational therapist. ”Ethan’s parents said he is doing so much better in your sessions.  What are you doing?”  I sheepishly replied, “I’m setting limits and acknowledging his emotions.”

That was just the beginning…the hardest part was helping the parents learn to set limits and acknowledge emotions as well. For many parents of ex-preemies (or any child who spent time in the NICU) this is incredibly hard to do because any negative emotion that is exhibited by their child often triggers the trauma they experienced, and all they want to do is make it stop. To most effectively help these children and their families, I believe parents should be provided with trauma-focused therapy with a mental health practitioner before ever starting therapy services for their child. I believe the “therapeutic” affect this can have on the child is more powerful in the long-term because it supports the very relationship that will have the biggest impact on the child’s development.

Even though I’m still learning and often fumbling my way through this work, I’ve found it to be so much more effective and rewarding since learning about RIE and sharing this parenting philosophy with families.  I’m so grateful for Janet and all the other RIE-inspired resources that have helped me better understand development, how to support it, and that respectful parenting is what every child thrives on, special needs or not!

Sandra Hallman, MS CEIM has been working with infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers with special needs and their caregivers since 2000.  She has provided families with service coordination in Early Intervention and developmental therapy in a variety of settings, including home, school/day care, community environments, and hospital.  Sandra also has a private practice providing families outside of Early Intervention with supports around challenges they experience in parenting.  She is NDT (Neuro-Development Treatment http://www.ndta.org/ndt-certification.php) and NIDCAP (Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program http://nidcap.org/en/) trained.   Her areas of specialty include prematurity, attachment, behavior, and routines-based intervention. 

Contact: sandra@healthyparentingresources.com / 773-653-4889

(Photo by Maria Grazia Montegnari on Flickr)

The post The Powerful Effect of Respectful Parenting for Children With Special Needs (Case Studies from Sandra Hallman) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

The stimuli which nature provides is unparalleled. Even the youngest infant becomes fascinated by listening to birds, watching the movements of flies, butterflies, shadows and leaves. Air circulation, temperature change, the playfulness of sunlight and shadow are strong stimuli to the senses. ” – Magda Gerber, Dear Parent: Caring for Infants With Respect

Infant specialist Magda Gerber believed in the therapeutic power of nature and encouraged parents to find (or create) safe outdoor play areas for their babies to explore, enjoy and move in freely. Pediatric occupational therapist Angela Hanscom agrees and is successfully using “nature therapy” to not only treat, but also to prevent vestibular and sensory integration issues, which seem to be on the rise.

In her recent article for Richard Louv’s Children and Nature Network, Hanscom notes, “The more we restrict children’s movement and separate children from nature, the more sensory disorganization we see. In fact, according to many teachers, children are frequently falling out of their seats in school, running into walls, tripping over their own feet, and unable to pay attention. School administrators are complaining that kids are getting more aggressive on the playgrounds and “can’t seem to keep their hands off each other” during recess.”

“I’ve used my skills as an occupational therapist in an unconventional manner,” explains Hanscom. “I view nature as the ultimate sensory experience for all children and a necessary form of prevention for sensory dysfunction.”

Here she shares her experience and enthusiasm for outdoor baby play and some of its many benefits.

Nature Makes Sense
by Angela Hanscom

Magda Gerber talks about the importance of environment in her RIE approach. She explains that a child’s surroundings should be physically safe, cognitively challenging, and emotionally nurturing. For me, what comes immediately to mind is Nature.

Nature in its purest form is all of the things Magda describes. It is free from chemicals, plastics, dyes, and other manmade items; Nature is both physically challenging and forgiving; and most importantly, nature provides innumerable sensory experiences that can’t be manufactured.

As a pediatric occupational therapist that uses the outdoors as both a form of prevention and treatment of sensory issues, I feel that even the youngest of children, whenever possible, should be playing outdoors, and at a very early age. Recently a local parenting organization asked me if I would be willing to host their group of mothers and babies. While I was thrilled by the invitation and absolutely willing to accept, I was somewhat surprised when the group’s director asked if we do this group indoors instead of outside. “We wouldn’t want the young children to have to sit on the ground. They would get dirty,” she said.

Is this a common worry, I wondered?

Many children are kept from crawling. Even more children are kept from falling. Plenty of children are told “no” when they attempt to climb on top of a rock or pick up a stick. Little kids are told not to spin in circles and are kept from rolling down hills. It is my opinion – supported by observing scores of kids, in clinic and out – that by constantly restricting children’s movements we impede the development of strong vestibular systems (balance), which most children will achieve naturally through physical trial and error. If we don’t allow children to take (safe) risks and test themselves, they can seem clumsy, uncoordinated, and unsafe at an early age.

In a perfect world, all children would be allowed not only to crawl, fall, climb, and spin – they would be experiencing it all outdoors. Not only does outdoor play inspire creativity and imagination, but it also engages all of their senses — setting them up for healthy sensory integration.

Outdoor play is important because we are the only animals who don’t live outside. Outdoors is real life.
– Magda Gerber

Crawling, for example, is so important for healthy child development. Crawling helps babies to develop a strong shoulder complex, develops both sides of their brain, develops the arches in their hands, integrates reflexes, and is the foundation for basic coordination patterns. By taking the crawling outdoors, other therapeutic benefits are added to the process. The change in terrain challenges their muscles in new ways. They also get to experience the sensations of the wind on their skin, the warmth of the sun, and the touch experiences of dirt on their hands and legs.

Here are a just a few examples of how nature nurtures child development:

1. Bird Sounds. Listening to bird sounds helps gives a child a sense of space by figuring out where her body is in relation to the chirps and the tweets. In fact, therapists have figured out a way to capture and enhance these bird sounds on CDs to help children with auditory processing (the brain’s interpretation of sound), body awareness, emotional regulation, and attention. Spending more time outside is a natural way for children to improve these same sensory issues.
2. Spinning in Circles. Occupational therapists encourage children to spin in therapy and will often use this type of rapid vestibular movement in treatment sessions. Spinning helps children to establish their midline–awareness of their center. It also helps give them great body awareness and supports visual skills and emotional regulation. So next time your child starts rolling down the hill or spinning in circles for fun – let him!
3. Walking Barefoot. Walking barefoot outdoors is so great for little feet. Going barefoot helps to integrate the Babinski reflex and prevent complications such as toe-walking, balance, and coordination issues. Going barefoot outdoors also provides great tactile experiences that prevent intolerance to touch later on.

It is time we leave our fears and worries behind and start taking our children outdoors at an early age to let them fully explore the world around them through all of their senses, facilitating healthy sensory development.

I believe an outdoor play area is a must. The more that children play outdoors, the better they eat, sleep, and feel.
– Magda Gerber

***

Angela Hanscom is a pediatric occupational therapist and the founder of TimberNook (www.timbernook.com), which focuses on nature-centered developmental programming in New England. Angela holds a master’s degree in occupational therapy and an undergraduate degree in Kinesiology (the study of movement) with a concentration in health fitness. She specializes in vestibular (balance) treatment and sensory integration. She is also the author of the nonfiction book, Balanced & Barefoot, which discusses the effects of restricted movement and lack of outdoor playtime on overall sensory development in children.

Angela Hanscom’s book, Balanced & Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children is now available HERE.

(In the “Outdoor Living” chapter of Magda Gerber’s book Dear Parent: Caring for Infants With Respect she shares advice for developing outdoor play for babies.)

The post Your Baby’s Call of the Wild (Guest Post by Angela Hanscom) appeared first on Janet Lansbury.

Dr. Jonathan Evans is one such specialist, and he generously offered to share his insights in this guest post about a subject “dear to his heart”: behavioral and learning difficulties in children and sensory processing:

What Parents Need to Know About Sensory Processing and SPD  

Sensitive observation is a central element of infant expert Magda Gerber’s RIE philosophy. When we practice the RIE principles and are present for our child, our sensitive observation often enables us to better understand what is going on for them, and parenting is extremely rewarding both for child and parent.

However, even in a perfect world where we are completely present and available for our child, there will be moments when we simply don’t understand why they are behaving or reacting a certain way. If these moments become more frequent, then we may find ourselves putting a label on our child’s behaviour. For example, “they’re colicky” or “they are teething”.

Sometimes this is 100% correct. Often, however, we simply don’t know. As our babies turn into toddlers, these difficult moments can multiply. If they start to join up, then we may start to describe them as behaviour issues. If things get really difficult, then our child may be described as being on the ‘spectrum’ or his behaviour may have other labels attached such as Aspergers or ADHD or SPD.

This is a subject very dear to my heart because not only do I specialize in the treatment of children and babies, but my 7 year old Makani has sensory processing disorder (SPD).  It’s all quiet in my house now as both my boys are in bed, but half an hour ago it was chaos – it was the nightly ‘teeth cleaning’ routine for my two boys, and unfortunately we had run out of their toothpaste so it had to be the adult brand.

First my 4 year old, on goes the adult toothpaste. A little bit of a registering from him that it tastes a bit different, but all good and off he goes to mum for a story. Next, my 7 year old. First, a calm explanation of the situation from me as he doesn’t handle surprises well. Then the toothpaste, and as soon as he tastes it things get difficult – tantrum, shouting, feet stamping, spitting out of the toothpaste and general refusal to co-operate in any way. It’s not fun, and I want to shout back at him. I manage to stay calm. I back off and we sit down in the bathroom to discuss the issue, his view, my view etc.

In the end we manage to compromise over a reduction in length of the teeth cleaning for tonight, along with the promise of his usual toothpaste tomorrow and the lining up along the sink of what seems like every vessel in the house that is capable of carrying water. We go at it again, and after an eternity involving all the water vessels and much rinsing and complaining, we are done!

So what have we got here? A naughty child and a good child? An indulged, spoiled 1^st born and a meek 2^nd child?  These types of questions and the behaviour that prompts them is what I talk to parents about every day that I’m in clinic.

“What is going on inside your child’s head when they are being difficult?”

Sometimes the answer is obvious – hunger, fatigue — but let’s look at a model that will shed light on the behaviours that we can’t explain.

The Sensory Processing Model

The understanding behind all human and animal behaviour is stimulus and response. There are the 5 senses (hearing, sight, touch, smell, taste) and a sixth, the balance mechanism (vestibular system).

• We use our senses to gather information about our world
• We send this information to the brain where it is processed
• The brain then tells us what action we should take in response

Simple and predictable? Unfortunately not, as everyone processes the same stimuli slightly differently, and this is why we see different responses to the same event. This is true in adults and especially so in children whose brains are still developing.

The term sensory processing disorder (SPD) is used to describe a child who has difficulty processing ‘sensory information’. However, all children will experience situations where they can’t process the information that their brains are receiving. It is only the frequency and severity of these situations that separate these children from those with an ‘official’ SPD diagnosis.

Relevance for you as a parent

Let’s go back to my boy Makani. Taste is not his only Kryptonite. He also has an Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), and we see difficulties in the other senses as well. If I was unaware of these sensory processing difficulties, then I would consider him very defiant, which would probably have led to one of two parenting options:

1)    Increase the discipline to combat the defiance

2)    Give in and let him do whatever wants

3)    A combination of both

None of these methods is addressing what is going on and, in fact, make matters worse. The third option is disastrous. We see this played out when a Dad (it’s usually Dad) enforces discipline for what he sees as an unruly child, and then Mum tries to dilute the discipline as she senses her connection with her child being permanently broken.

All three of these options create immense stress for the child which hugely influences the brain.

Stress and the Fight/Flight Response

If a child encounters a stimulus that he can’t process easily, how will he respond? In one of two ways: fight or flight. This fight/flight response is hard-wired in humans. In children we will see:

• Fight – tantrums, shouting, crying, refusal to do something etc.
• Flight – withdrawal – stopping of movement and hunkering down, avoidance of eye contact, refusing to speak or answer, refusal to do or go somewhere (by peaceful means as opposed to the defiance seen in flight response).

What is vital to know is that a little bit of stress = improved brain performance. A lot of stress and/or continued stress = poorer brain performance. This means that if a child is stressed by a stimulus and isn’t supported appropriately through that situation, then they are likely to get more stressed and less able to handle the next stimulus. Now and then isn’t a problem, but on a continuing basis this can lead to serious problems for that child.

Adaptation

If the overloading stimuli keep coming, then it is 100% certain that the child will adapt his behaviour in expectation of the next unwelcome stimulus. How does an intelligent child do this? He does it by controlling his environment. Can he control it 100%? Of course not, but he gives it his best shot anyway. This is when we start to see some of the following:

• Continual movement and activity: flitting from one activity to the next, never stopping for one second. The child is trying to fill his brain 100% so that there is no room left for other unwelcome information. If the child initiates the stimulus, then he is in control of it, and it isn’t overwhelming. This is what is generally diagnosed as ADD or ADHD.
• Ordering and making lists: whether it is dinosaurs, pencils or your desk (if you are an adult), excessive ordering and tidying is a way to control our environment, to block out stimuli and attempt to prevent future change. Diagnosis for this is OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)
• Defiance: if I just say ‘no’ to everything, less will happen that is outside of my control. How do we diagnose this behaviour in children? We call it ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder).
• Talking loudly, making lots of noise, shouting, continually interrupting and asking questions. A child who exhibits this behaviour to an extreme is probably trying to drown out noise so they only have to process their own noise. With the interruptions and questions, they are pausing the flow of information to their ears in order to give themselves a chance to catch up and process what has been said. This is a classic APD (Auditory Processing Disorder) trait. I know I have done this myself all through my life, and I only realised it in my 30’s when I started working in this field! (Apologies to past girlfriends for all those arguments in the car when you were giving me directions and I got us lost and blamed you!)
• ‘Perfect’ behaviour when away from the home and/or when away from parents; poor behaviour at home. This often occurs with kids that have very high levels of stress. They often shut down and go inward when they are out of the home as a defence mechanism, but then they can blow up when they are at home. This is because home is actually the only place they feel safe enough to express their bottled up feelings. Very common is to see school reporting a model child (i.e. one that doesn’t cause any trouble or disruption or says nothing much at all), and this leaves the parent a  bit confused as this isn’t the picture at home at all.

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far from the Tree

So I have a son with APD, and I have APD. Coincidence? Of course it is. He had a difficult birth, and I was hit on the ear by a cricket ball when I was four. Anyway, this is what I’d like to believe, and definitely those two incidents have affected our ability to process. However, having worked in this field for a while now, I have seen far too many ‘coincidences’.

I mention this because it is very important for parenting. If you or your partner have a similar ‘processing issue’, then both parties are probably creating a lot of stress for each other and winding each other up until one or both explodes. This is a negative downward spiral that must be addressed. Now, it is also likely that if a parent has reached adulthood without realising they have a processing issue, then they are usually very reluctant to look at that. So please don’t bash your partner over the head with an accusation and lay all the problems at their door!

So what can we do about this?

1)    Make sure you or your partner aren’t making the problem worse. Do you have processing difficulties or relationship issues that are creating a spiral of behaviour within the family?

2)    Now that you know what triggers difficult behaviour, look to identify specific stressful stimuli. Avoid or reduce them wherever possible. If you need more details, Google SPD and APD, and you will find lists of triggers.

3)    Time is your friend. The more time your child gets to process, the less stressed they will be and the more able they are to deal with a situation. So, if they have auditory issues and you are in a noisy shopping complex and you are rushing them, then you’re either going to get a ‘blow up’ or they will withdraw and bottle that stress. It will come out at a later time.

4)    Growing up is also your friend – as a child gets older his brain matures and he is far more capable of dealing with the sensory information that he struggled with a few years earlier. This is usually seen from five to six years upwards. However, if stress levels for the child have been very high, then it will take further years of supportive work to see these improvements.

5)    Appropriate classical music can be very beneficial. This is a topic in itself, and is the basis of the Integrated Listening Systems, a home program for APD & SPD.

6)     Osteopathy and other hands on therapies. Cranial osteopathy is an excellent modality for treating the cranial bones and birth trauma. For most people birth is the most traumatic event that their body will encounter, and this will influence the cranial bones which can in turn influence the brain and its ability to process, especially under stress.

Dr. Jonathan Evans is an osteopathic doctor that specializes in children and children’s development and the founder of Kindred Academy. If you wish to read more of his articles on children and children’s health visit his website: http://kindredbe.com 

Please note: extreme cases of any of the conditions described should be diagnosed by a specialist.

Jonathan welcomes your comments and “will do his best” to reply to your questions!

The post Recognizing Sensory Processing Differences: Guest Post by Jonathan Evans appeared first on Janet Lansbury.