The Peaceful Parenting Podcast

In this episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I bring back one of my favourite holiday episodes, which is an interview with my kids, where we talk about ‘people, not stuff’.Every year around the holidays, I hear from parents who are worried their kids are too focused on presents, too greedy, or too materialistic — and they’re afraid they’re getting something wrong. I made this episode to offer a long-term perspective. I interviewed my own kids (then 14, 17, and 20) about what holidays and gifts felt like when they were little — and what actually mattered as they got older. Us last year at Christmas- on one of the Christmas Day walks we discussed on the podcast:In the episode, we talk about why “wanting stuff” is normal in childhood, how values really develop over time, and why parents can relax a lot more than they think.🎉🎂 Also- today is my birthday! If this podcast, our posts, or our work has helped you and your family, and you want to give back to us, you can help cover the costs of our free content by supporting us on Substack for the cost of a fancy coffee a month. Or you can support us- without spending- any money by doing any or all of the following:* follow the podcast and leave a 5 star review and rating on your podcast player app* leave a Google review of our work HERE* forward a newsletter or podcast post to a friend* share a post or a podcast episode to your preferred content sharing spot :)My gift to you is an ad free episode today, which is what you get for every episode if you support us on Substack! Thank YOU for being here!!xx Sarah (and Corey!)Your peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching sessionVisit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.We talk about:* 2:00 — Intro: replay episode + why parents worry about “greedy/materialistic” kids* 3:00 — Holiday schedule update + invitation to email podcast ideas/guest suggestions* 3:34 — Why this episode: parents’ concerns about consumerism + interviewing Sarah’s kids* 4:00 — Important context: privilege, money, and why this worry comes from a privileged place* 5:00 — Two practical ways to handle privilege: Santa gifts + donating new presents* 7:00 — Meet Maxine (14): how holiday meaning shifts with age (family time, traditions, coziness)* 11:38 — “Ungrateful” little kids: why it’s normal + what parents shouldn’t panic about* 13:23 — What helps long-term: building traditions + experiences as gifts* 16:34 — Meet Asa (17): growing out of the “wanting stuff” stage + values changing over time* 21:05 — Middle school + fitting in: when brand-name wanting peaks (and why)* 22:30 — What parents should do: keep kids grounded + relax* 23:01 — Meet Lee (20): consumerism awareness, “people not stuff,” and the post-holiday letdown* 32:00 — Gratitude + privilege: why kids can’t fully grasp it yet, and how it comes with time* 33:31 — Reassurance: if you’re worried about this, you’re probably already doing fine* 34:34 — Wrap-up: “the parenting podcast paradox” + holiday wishesConnect with Sarah Rosensweet:* Instagram* Facebook Group* YouTube* Website* Join us on Substack* Newsletter* Book a short consult or coaching session callxx Sarah and CoreyYour peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching sessionVisit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.Here’s the polished transcript of the interview-Today’s episode is a replay of an episode from four years ago.So many parents get worried, especially at this time of year, that their kids are materialistic and greedy and will never have good values. I thought you could use a little window into the future, and it would be helpful for you to see where we are in my family and what it’s like as kids get older.So I interviewed my kids about their experiences growing up with presents and holidays and stuff. So if your kid has a case of the greedy, you’ll see, if you listen to my kids, that it won’t last forever. At the time of the interviews, they were 14, 17, and 20. Today they’re 18, 21, and 24. Things really do shift as your kids get older.My older two kids live on their own—and they have for a few years—and so far, all they’ve said they want for Christmas is socks. Things really do change.If this holiday support episode is helpful and you aren’t on my email list, make sure you check out the other posts that we have on Substack. As I mentioned, just search up Substack and Sarah Rosensweet and you’ll find us.My team and I are going to be taking a bit of time off for the holidays. We will be back in the new year with new episodes of this podcast. And if you have any ideas for the podcast, or any guests that you’d like to have on, or you would like to be coached on the podcast, shoot me an email: [email protected]’d love to hear from you about any ideas you have for the podcast—what you’d like to have coming up in the new year.Here we go back to the podcast. Enjoy this replay, whether it’s your first time hearing it or if you’ve heard it before.Sarah: Today’s episode is a response to some parents’ questions and concerns that I received when I did a call-out asking people what they were concerned about over the holidays. And some parents were really feeling stressed about materialism and consumerism of the holidays, and their kids getting too many presents or wanting too much stuff.So I interviewed my kids about it—what their perspective was, having gone through the “I want more presents” stage, and now they’re teenagers. They’re 14, 17, and one of them’s not a teenager anymore—he’s 20. So I interviewed them because they’ve been through it, and I’ve been through it with them.But before we dive into the interviews, I just want to acknowledge that this is a very privileged position—that we have the privilege of being able to be concerned that our kids have too much stuff, or they’re getting too many presents, or that they’re worried too much about getting things and being able to buy things.For a number of years when our kids were little, my husband was a student and I was a stay-at-home mom, and we really didn’t have any money. We really had to watch every penny. But we still had privilege because we got government assistance—child tax benefit. We live in Canada where we have socialized medicine, so we didn’t need to worry about health insurance.And we also had the family safety net privilege, which was that we knew if we ever were really in dire straits, our parents would help us out.And our kids had privilege even though we didn’t have money in those years, because they got a lot of presents from their grandparents. I think we mention that in the interviews that are coming up.So my husband and I—we didn’t have much money, but we didn’t need to worry about buying them gifts because they had five sets of grandparents. Hello, divorce and remarriage.So I just really wanted to acknowledge that I am speaking from a place of privilege, my children are speaking from a place of privilege, and those parents who reached out to me concerned about too many presents and materialism and “What are we gonna do when our kids just want so much stuff?”—they’re also speaking from a place of privilege.And many, many, many parents don’t have that. They don’t have enough money to buy presents for their kids. And those kids might be in school with kids who get tons of presents at Christmas.So two small things that we can do—and I know these are really just a drop in the bucket—but while I’m here, I’m just going to make two suggestions for all of us listening who are coming from a place of privilege.One is that we don’t get big presents from Santa. If we do celebrate Christmas and we do the Santa tradition, we don’t give our children big presents from Santa. That’s one thing, because what about kids who are getting hardly anything, if anything at all, from Santa?Another is that we make donations. Those of us who have privilege—we either make donations to food banks, or we make donations by buying new presents. It’s great to donate things that your kids no longer play with. But what I’m asking here is that we donate new presents to organizations that will then distribute them to kids who are less financially privileged.I know that’s not a ton, and I always feel kind of nervous and vulnerable when I talk about things like this. I’m still learning and I’m not perfect. However, I just wanted to address the issue of privilege—financial privilege—before we dive in.So let me introduce you to my kids. If you didn’t hear them in episode one of the podcast, when they were talking about what it was like to be raised by peaceful parenting, you might wanna go back and give that a listen. But let me introduce you to Maxine, who’s 14; Asa, who’s 17; and Lee, who’s 20.You’re gonna hear each of their perspectives on stuff and presents and materialism and consumerism, and what they think parents should do to raise kids who have great values.Okay, let’s dive in. Hi, Maxine. Hello. Welcome to the podcast.Maxine: Hi.Sarah: Can you introduce yourself?Maxine: I’m Maxine, and I’m your child.Sarah: How old are you? I know how old you are, but other people don’t.Maxine: I’m 14.Sarah: All right. So do you remember when you were little, what was the best thing about birthdays—Christmas, holidays?Maxine: Oh… presents, I guess.Sarah: I think that’s what—well, I—Maxine: I probably shouldn’t say that, because I know that’s, like, what the whole podcasting is about.Sarah: No, it’s okay. That’s what I’m trying to normalize. The fact that for little kids, it’s all about presents, right?Maxine: Yeah.Sarah: So do you think you’re still in that phase at 14—that it’s mostly about the presents?Maxine: Well, not really. I like spending time with you guys—especially since Lee moved out.Sarah: So you’re looking forward to having your brother come home at Christmas. What else is meaningful to you about the Christmas holiday?Maxine: Well, literally you and Dad don’t have to work that much when it’s—so we get to spend, like, the whole day together. And we always have a nice breakfast, and sometimes we get to help you with that and stuff like that.Sarah: One of my favorite things the past couple of years that we’ve been doing is the family walk on Christmas.Maxine: Yeah. It’s fun. And we always take Emmy, and she’s always so happy to be with all of us.Sarah: Yeah, because she never gets all five of us to take her for a walk at once.Maxine: Oh—Emmy. Emmy’s our dog, by the way, if you don’t know that.Sarah: So do you still like the presents?Maxine: Yeah, I still like presents. But, like, who doesn’t like presents? Even you and Dad like presents.Sarah: That’s true. But the time with family—you’re starting to appreciate that more as you’re getting older. Do you ever remember getting a present you didn’t like when you were a kid?Maxine: No, but I remember being disappointed that I didn’t get presents that I wanted.Sarah: Oh yeah? Tell me about that.Maxine: When I thought Santa was real, I would make lists and I wouldn’t get all the stuff, and I would be kind of sad.Sarah: Yeah. And how do you think that affected you as a person?Maxine: I don’t think it really mattered. I think I was just a little kid who wanted to have all the presents that I wanted.Sarah: Yeah. Do you think that’s pretty normal?Maxine: Yeah.Sarah: Do you think parents should worry about that?Maxine: No. I think you shouldn’t worry. But I think it’s weird if your kids aren’t excited about presents and don’t want lots and lots of presents, because that’s a normal thing for kids to want.Sarah: And so what do you think happens as you get older, and now you’re like, “Yeah, I still like presents, but that’s not the most important thing.”Maxine: I think when you’re little, you just don’t understand what the holidays—and what that is all about. But when you get older, you realize that it’s more about just being able to spend time with people and stuff.And it’s also nice to give people presents instead of just always getting presents.Sarah: What have been your favorite presents that you’ve given?Maxine: I don’t know—like when I give my brothers records or stuff like that, and it just seems to make them happy, then it makes me feel good.Sarah: Do you remember making presents?Maxine: Yeah. I made presents—like this year or last year. I made those little tree decorations for my brothers and you and my dad and all the grandparents and stuff.Sarah: That’s right. Those were nice.Maxine: Those little candy cane things.Sarah: Yeah, those were sweet.Maxine: Also, I like Christmas because it’s all nice and cozy. And just—like on Christmas or just any holidays that we do as a family—but especially Christmas, when we’re all sitting around and listening to music and it’s all cozy in our house and stuff, and then we can look outside and stuff like that.Sarah: I love that too. I love decorating the tree and then sitting and looking at it afterwards, having hot chocolate.Maxine: Yeah.Sarah: You know, that was a tradition that I did growing up too.Maxine: Cool. Also sometimes on Christmas—or mostly Christmas or New Year’s—when our grandparents call to just say “Happy New Year” or “Merry Christmas,” that’s nice. And you get to talk to them.Usually I call your mom, and I always show her all my presents and stuff.Sarah: You know, Nana listens to the podcast. Do you want to say hi to her?Maxine: Hi Nana.Sarah: One of the other things that parents were worried about—and why I’m making this podcast—is that sometimes little kids seem really ungrateful. Like they get a whole giant pile of presents and then they’re like, “I wanted the blah blah blah,” or “I didn’t get that,” or “Why did he get more?”What do you think those parents need to hear when they have little kids? What do they need to hear from an older kid?Maxine: Like I said before, when I would not get presents that I wanted, but I would still get other presents—I would be sad or unhappy about it, that I didn’t get the other presents that I wanted. But after, I would realize how fun the presents I actually got were.And honestly, if you have a four-year-old and they’re upset about not getting something, then they’re literally four. So you can’t really think that they’re ungrateful, because they don’t even know what that word means. They probably don’t even know how to say that word.So you can’t really worry about them being ungrateful, because they don’t even know what that is.Sarah: Right. And they don’t have anything to compare it to, right?Maxine: Yeah, because they’re literally four.Sarah: So if parents are really worried about that—if they think their kids think that toys are the most important thing—what would you say to those parents?Maxine: Well, kids are just kids. I’m still a kid, but I know that presents aren’t the only thing that’s good about holidays and stuff. But I’m still learning. And if your kid is younger than me, then chances are they’ll know even less about that.So honestly, kids are just kids, and they just think presents are so cool and exciting that they don’t know there’s more to it than presents.Sarah: Right. Do you think there’s anything parents could or should do to teach their kids that there are things more important than presents?Maxine: Well, you could do traditions, like what we do—like where you go on a walk, or you decorate your tree as a family or something. Or if you celebrate Hanukkah, doing little traditions for that and stuff. So when they’re older, they’ll see, “Oh, when we did all those things, those were nice traditions that my parents did.”Sarah: Can you think of any other traditions that were important to you?Maxine: Decorating cookies.Sarah: I was thinking about that too. That’s a lot of fun. I’m really looking forward to doing that this year.Maxine: And I already promised one of my teachers, Ms. Miller, that I was going to give her cookies. So we have to do it.Sarah: We absolutely will, because she loves sugar.Maxine: Yeah, she’s sugar.Sarah: She does. Yeah.I think you’ve always liked giving presents too. Is there anything else you think parents should know if they’re worried about their kids thinking that stuff is more important than people?Maxine: Honestly, just what I said before: kids are just kids, and they don’t know anything other than presents. So don’t think it’s a big deal, because eventually they’ll realize more things about holidays, like I did.But if your kid’s, like, six and they’re so excited about the presents and that’s all they can talk about, then honestly that’s a normal kid behavior.Sarah: Right. And not worry about it.Maxine: Well, not, like, normal, but a lot of kids are like that.Sarah: Yeah. And I think if we can be excited for them too, right?Maxine: Yeah. If you can show them that it’s so great that they’re excited about it, and it can be like, “I’m excited too,” then they’ll see it’s not something bad. But if you tell them, “No, you shouldn’t be this excited about presents. That’s not allowed…”Sarah: That’s right.Hey, do you remember—this is one thing I forgot to ask your brothers about—do you remember times when you’ve gotten an experience instead of a thing you can hold in your hands for a present?Maxine: People have given me a ticket to go do something with me or something. Just for fun.Sarah: I think Mimi took you to a show once.Maxine: Yeah.Sarah: And Uncle Les used to do sleepovers and movie night.Maxine: Yeah.Sarah: Do you think that’s a good idea? Do you think kids like that?Maxine: Yeah. I liked—huh? But I’m not a normal kid.Sarah: You’re not a normal kid? Why aren’t you a normal kid?Maxine: Because I’m not. I don’t know how to explain it.Sarah: I think you’re a pretty normal kid.Maxine: No, I’m extraordinary.Sarah: You’re also hilarious.Maxine: Thanks, darling.Sarah: You are welcome. Love you. You look funny with those big headphones on your head.Maxine: Yeah, I’m sure.Sarah: I do love you, kid.Maxine: Oh, I love you.Sarah: Hello. Okay. Okay, let’s get started. Can you introduce yourself?Asa: My name’s Asa. I’m your son. I’m 17.Sarah: Thanks for coming on the podcast.Asa: Yeah, no problem.Sarah: So when you were little, you and your older brother Lee used to spend hours looking at the Lego catalog and circling all the things that you wanted.Asa: Uh-huh.Sarah: Do you remember that?Asa: Yeah.Sarah: And I remember Dad used to really worry about that. He used to worry that you guys—your values were out of place, and you were gonna be super greedy kids and not care about the right things.Asa: Right.Sarah: He was right?Asa: Yeah.Sarah: Are you super greedy?Asa: No.Sarah: Now, I remember one year when you were around 11 and I said, “The grandparents are starting to ask what you want for Christmas,” because they wanted to get you something. And you stopped and you thought, and you said, “Mom, I think I have a pretty good life. I can’t think of anything I want.”Do you remember that?Asa: Yeah.Sarah: So how did you go from the five-year-old who wanted everything in the Lego catalog to—Asa: I think I kind of just grew out of it, I guess, is the best way to say it. I don’t know. My brain chemistry changed.Sarah: Do you think that’s typical of 17-year-olds? Do you feel like most kids your age don’t want that much stuff?Asa: Yeah. The thing is, I don’t really play with toys anymore. So when I was little, you can never have too many toys. You just get more and more and more, and they’re all good.But now, thinking about it, the only thing I’m missing in my daily life is a backpack big enough to put all my stuff in. So that’s, like, the only thing I want. When I think about it—what would make my life better—the only thing I can think of is a bigger backpack.Sarah: A bigger backpack. Okay.Asa: Bigger backpack.Sarah: I think Santa has gotten wind of that, so you don’t have too long to wait.I feel like you’re sort of unusual for kids your age in terms of not being into brand-name stuff. Do you think that’s true?Asa: Yeah. I would say that’s true.Sarah: Why do you think that is?Asa: When you get older, you value different things. Your values change. You don’t really care so much about accumulating plastic chachkes, and you’re more focused on just having a good time.Sarah: I know you don’t want little toys from the dollar store or Lego kits anymore, but why don’t you want brand-name sneakers? You haven’t even gotten sneakers in, like, two years, right?Asa: I’ve evolved past that.Sarah: Okay, but what is it? I’m trying to say: I think you’re unusual for someone 17, in grade 12, who’s not like, “Oh, I need these sneakers and that expensive thing and the latest iPhone.”I want to hear anything you think would be helpful for parents who want to make sure their kids don’t grow up greedy and materialistic.Asa: They won’t. They won’t. Or maybe they will, but it doesn’t really—some people are like that and some people aren’t.Everybody when they’re little wants Lego and wants to look in the Lego catalog. Whatever you do then is not gonna shape that. Maybe your kid will grow up and be greedy, but you telling them that they shouldn’t look at the Lego catalog isn’t gonna change that.It’s not guaranteed everybody’s gonna grow out of it. Whatever you try and do isn’t gonna change that. It’s already kind of preset. Let the kids do whatever they want, and then maybe they’ll be greedy, maybe they won’t. But it won’t really have any effect on it.Sarah: So you’re saying it’s other things—not what they want when they’re little—that decide how they turn out.Asa: Yeah.Sarah: I think it’s pretty normal for little kids to want lots of stuff. It’s hardwired, evolutionarily, for them to want stuff—because if they were just quiet and meek in a corner, everyone would forget about them.Asa: Yeah.Sarah: Do you remember when you started to feel grateful for your life?Asa: I am grateful now, and I probably wasn’t when I was three. So somewhere along the line—maybe somewhere between three and 17—maybe five years ago. I don’t know. It’s sort of a gradual thing.Sarah: Yeah, it’s hard to pinpoint.You said that parents telling their kids not to want stuff isn’t going to make a difference. But do you think you internalized what was important in our family, and because Dad and I aren’t really into brand names and buying stuff, that’s how you developed too?Asa: Yeah. I would say I cared about the stuff most when I was in grade six and seven, and I felt really weird telling you guys that I wanted shirts with company logos on them and stuff. It just felt out of place in our family.Sarah: Why do you think it was grade six and seven that you wanted the most brand-name stuff?Asa: Because brain development-wise, that’s when you want to fit in the most.Sarah: That makes sense. And at a certain point, you just…One of the things I admire about you is that you don’t care what other people think—in a good way. You have your own idea of what you like and what’s cool. But when you were little, what was the most important or meaningful thing about Christmas or birthdays?Asa: I guess the anticipation. The anticipation of all of the presents and celebration and whatnot. When you actually get there, it’s like whatever, but it gives you something to look forward to leading up to it. That was probably the most important thing.Sarah: The excitement of the possibilities of what you might get and do.Asa: Yeah.Sarah: What about now? Has anything changed?Asa: Well, I used to have birthday parties when I was a little kid. I don’t really do that anymore, so birthdays definitely don’t feel as significant.Christmas is kind of the same mold, but again, I’m not so much into, like, “Which Lego am I gonna get this year?” So I don’t know. I guess now I value the food and the family and everything else. So Christmas, beyond the presents.Sarah: Nice. Well, thanks, Ace. Was there anything you think parents should know about this topic?Asa: Make sure your kids are staying somewhat grounded to reality, but just relax too, because they’re little kids.Sarah: Thanks, Ace. Bye.Asa: No problem. Bye. Love you.Sarah: Love you too.Lee: Hello.Sarah: Hi, Lee. Welcome to the podcast.Lee: Thank you for having me.Sarah: Can you introduce yourself?Lee: Hi, I’m Lee, your oldest son.Sarah: How old are you now?Lee: 20.Sarah: 20 and—Lee: A half.Sarah: 20 and a half. We missed your half-birthday this year.And for anyone listening who doesn’t celebrate Christmas, I think this applies to birthdays or any other holidays where kids get presents. Looking back on your childhood, do you remember really wanting to get presents and lobbying to get presents when you were little?Lee: Yeah, definitely. Next question.Sarah: I asked your brother this—do you remember looking at the Lego catalog, the two of you pouring over it and circling everything you wanted?Lee: Oh yeah, for sure. I think you and Dad tried to moderate that. I remember you talking to us about consumerism. I think I understood that stuff, but I still just wanted presents. I think that’s how it is for most kids.Sarah: For sure. It really stressed Dad out. He was worried about all the wanting, like a lot of the parents who wrote with concerns about this.But you’re a person now at 20 who I would say is pretty non-materialistic. When did you become aware of consumerism and materialism?Lee: I think I was aware as long as I can remember. Definitely you taught me early, but I don’t think it sank in until I was a young teenager.When was the first time I was like, “Oh, you don’t need to get me any presents”? I don’t know. By the way, you always still do, but I’m pretty sure I always tell you now that you don’t need to.Sarah: Yeah. We get you presents because we want to get you presents, not because we feel like we have to.Lee: But when I was a kid, I wasn’t like, “Oh, you don’t have to get me any presents.” I wanted presents very much.Sarah: For sure. Do you ever remember—Lee: I think it was enough times… Do you talk to your parents about the post-holiday letdown? We haven’t talked about that yet, but experiencing that enough made me feel like, “Okay, maybe presents are not the name of the game.”Sarah: Say more about the post-holiday letdown.Lee: Somewhere around 3:00 p.m. on Christmas, you’d be like, “Well, that was that. Back to my comfortable life, I guess.” But normal. You’d stop feeling excited and you’d feel like, “Was I really that excited?” Because once the suspense is gone—who said that? The anticipation is always better than the actual thing. Some philosopher said that.Sarah: That’s so funny because that’s what your brother said. When I asked what he remembered most, he said: the anticipation.Lee: Yeah, for sure.Sarah: So what would you say to parents who are worried their kids always want more stuff? And even the post-holiday letdown can look like crying about not having more presents at three o’clock.Lee: I would say it’s okay. The kids are victims of the mass media, but you’re probably already doing your best to counteract that, and just have faith. If you’re generally raising a conscientious kid, they’ll eventually probably come around.How many adults do you know who are obsessed with presents?Lee: Well… some are. Some people are very materialistic. But generally people grow out of it, I think.Sarah: There are tons of people who get the new iPhone with every update, or who want the newest, fanciest thing and brand-name stuff.Lee: Okay. I would say then: you guys really hammered it at home with me. And that’s probably why I think what I do now—“People, not stuff,” the old mantra.Sarah: People, not stuff. That really was a mantra in your childhood, wasn’t it?Lee: Yes, probably.Sarah: And for anyone listening, don’t get me wrong—you guys got a lot of presents for Christmas.Lee: Oh yeah.Sarah: Not from us necessarily, because we didn’t have much money when you were growing up. Just a lot of grandparents. You guys have five sets of grandparents—ten grandparents—and then aunties and uncles and big family.I wouldn’t say you were spoiled. Do you think you were spoiled?Lee: I don’t know. Maybe. I think it’s less about having things and more about having a bad attitude than anything else.Sarah: Yeah. I think spoiled is when parents can’t say no and they just give everything. You may have had grandparents who couldn’t say no and gave you everything.Lee: Yeah, that makes sense.Sarah: Looking back, what was really meaningful for you about Christmas or your birthday?Lee: I couldn’t tell you what was really meaningful—just the thing itself. You’re very conditioned to be excited for those things when you’re young. Santa and presents.Sarah: So what about now? What do you like about the holidays?Lee: I don’t want to say I dislike them. I don’t ever decorate, and I play Christmas songs when I get paid too.Sarah: You play them for free at our house.Lee: Yeah. On your request. That’s true.I don’t know. I’m pretty agnostic about it. I don’t mind it. I mind it in November when people get excited about it, but when it’s actually the season, it’s cool.Same with my birthday. It’d be cool to do something, but it always ends up being pretty low-key. I don’t think that’s positive or negative—it varies from person to person.Sarah: Is there anything you’re excited about with Christmas coming?Lee: I guess it still feels nice—like the intentional family time. And the new Lego and—Sarah: Sorry, spoiler: you’re not getting any Lego this year.Lee: Okay. Family time, yeah. Seeing extended family. I don’t know if we’re going to this year. I think Christmas is cool.Sarah: Do you remember making presents for your siblings when you were growing up?Lee: I remember making Asa the piggy bank.Sarah: Do you remember the sock monkeys you made them?Lee: Oh, vaguely.Sarah: Those were a lot of work.Lee: Yeah, I forgot about that. I don’t remember if they liked them.Sarah: They did. We still have them.Lee: Yeah.Sarah: Changing gears a bit—from holidays to consumerism in general—do you remember when you came home from Montessori and said you wanted some company—Lee: Yeah, I know what you’re about to say. Company shirts?Sarah: Yeah.Lee: Okay.Sarah: Do you remember why you wanted company shirts?Lee: Because it was cool.Sarah: We thought you meant shirts that said GAP on them or something. But when Dad took you shopping at a thrift store—Lee: I just wanted shirts with pictures on them.Sarah: Do you remember the trip?Lee: Yeah. I remember getting a Superman button-up. I don’t remember the others.Sarah: I think you got shirts that said T-Rex.Lee: I couldn’t read, so I didn’t know what a company versus just a picture was.Sarah: What do you think that did for you?Lee: Made me cool. I have more friends. I’m joking.I don’t know. I remember being happy to have a cool wardrobe. If you want to talk consumerism, I think I still like getting cool clothes. A lot of people do. Although I don’t go shopping that much.I do tend to buy secondhand clothes, and that’s just a style question. I think that fateful shopping trip—we went to a Goodwill or something, right?I remember going there as a child. And then I had one or two years in the beginning of high school where I wanted to get all my clothes from H&M, and then I just went back to Value Village after that.Sarah: Yeah, I remember that. Rebellious years of going to the mall.So another thing parents worry about is that their kids aren’t appreciative or grateful for everything they have in their life. And I personally think—of course they’re not.Lee: Yeah. Of course they’re not. They’re little dummies.Sarah: No. I don’t think they’re little dummies. I think they just don’t have anything to compare it to.Lee: Yeah, for sure. That’ll come with time.Sarah: Do you remember starting to feel appreciative and grateful for what you have?Lee: Do I remember becoming conscious of it? It always was something you guys talked about. It slowly, very gradually became less abstract as I got more world experience.I don’t totally remember what you said, but the message was: “You are fortunate.”But I never thought, “I’m not grateful.” When you’re a kid, you just don’t understand much. How could you expect them to understand something as nuanced as gratitude? Or privilege.Sarah: Yeah, privilege.Lee: That’s what I’m talking about. It comes with time. You still have to make an effort to show them that, because I definitely know older people who don’t really get that. And if you don’t, you’re one of them.Sarah: So it would be fair to say that the parents who are concerned about wanting their kids to be appreciative of their privilege, wanting their kids to be grateful, and not too consumerist—Lee: You’re probably already doing fine. Exactly. Talk to them about it, and within a decade they’ll get it. And within a decade, they’ll become the preachy ones and you’ll get annoyed.They’ll start lecturing you about capitalism, and you’ll be like, “Gosh darn it, what have I done?”Maxine: I think that’s happened to us a few times.Lee: All I was trying to say—I wasn’t trying to say don’t get your kids presents. I think I’ve been pretty clear. I never minded when you guys talked about privilege and stuff when I was a kid. Even if I did mind it, that would be more reason to reinforce those points.I think the golden rule of parenting podcasts is: if you’re concerned about this stuff, you’re already probably doing pretty well. And if you don’t think about it, then your kid is the one that needs help.Sarah: Yeah. In any case, those are not the people who are probably listening to this.Lee: That’s the parenting podcast paradox.Sarah: Okay, let’s close by saying—Lee: You better leave that in.Sarah: I’ll leave it in: “Parenting podcast paradox.” The Peaceful Parenting Podcast paradox—and add another P in there.Okay. Well, thanks, Lee, for coming on the podcast.Lee: Thanks for having me.Sarah: Love you.Lee: Happy holidays to all your listeners. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribe

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Shireen Rizvi, PhD and Jesse Finkelstein, PsyD, about their book Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships. We discuss what Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is, how it can help both ourselves and our kids with big feelings, and get into some of the skills it teaches including distress tolerance, check the facts, and mindfulness.**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.Know someone who might appreciate this post? Share it with them!We talk about:* 6:00 What is DBT?* 11:00 The importance of validation* 13:00 How do parents manage their own big feelings?* 16:00 How do you support a kid with big feelings, and where is the place for problem solving?* 23:00 Managing the urge to fix things for our kids!* 26:00 What is distress tolerance?* 28:50 “Check the facts” is a foundational skill* 34:00 Mindfulness is a foundation of DBT* 36:45 How the skills taught through DBT are universalResources mentioned in this episode:* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player* The Peaceful Parenting Membership* Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships by Shireen Rizvi and Jesse Finkelstein * Shireen Rizvi’s website * Jesse Finkelstein’s websites axiscbt and therahive Connect with Sarah Rosensweet:* Instagram* Facebook Group* YouTube* Website* Join us on Substack* Newsletter* Book a short consult or coaching session callxx Sarah and CoreyYour peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching sessionVisit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.Our sponsors:YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HEREPodcast transcript:Sarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today we have two guests who co-authored a book called Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships.And you may be wondering why we’re talking about that on a parenting podcast. This was a really great conversation with Shireen Rizvi and Jesse Finkelstein, the co-authors of the book, about all of the skills of DBT, which is a modality of therapy. We talked about the skills they teach in DBT and how we can apply them to parenting.They talk about how emotional dysregulation is the cause of so much of the pain and suffering in our lives. And I think as a parent, you will recognize that either your own emotional dysregulation or your child’s is often where a lot of issues and conflict come from.So what they’ve really provided in this book—and given us a window into in this conversation—is how we can apply some of those skills toward helping ourselves and helping our children with big feelings, a.k.a. emotional dysregulation. It was a really wonderful conversation, and their book is wonderful too. We’ll put a link to it in the show notes and encourage you to check it out.There are things you can listen to in this podcast today and then walk away and use right away. One note: you’ll notice that a lot of what they talk about really overlaps with the things we teach and practice inside of Peaceful Parenting.If this episode is helpful for you, please share it with a friend. Screenshot it and send it to someone who could use some more skill-building around big emotions—whether they’re our own big emotions or our child’s. Sharing with a friend or word of mouth is a wonderful way for us to reach more people and more families and help them learn about peaceful parenting.It is a slow process, but I really believe it is the way we change the world. Let’s meet Shireen and Jesse.Hi, Jesse. Hi, Shireen. Welcome to the podcast.Jesse: Thank you so much for having us.Sarah: Yeah. I’m so excited about your book, which I understand is out now—Real Skills for Real Life: A DBT Guide to Navigating Stress, Emotions, and Relationships. First of all, I love the format of your book. It’s super easy to read and easy to use. I already thought about tearing out the pages with the flow charts, which are such great references—really helpful for anyone who has emotions. Basically anyone who has feelings.Jesse: Oh, yes.Sarah: Yeah. I thought they were great, and I think this is going to be a helpful conversation for parents. You’ve written from a DBT framework. Can you explain what DBT is and maybe how it’s different from CBT? A lot of people have heard more about cognitive behavior therapy than dialectical behavior therapy.Shireen: Sure. I would first say that DBT—Dialectical Behavior Therapy—is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy. So they’re in the same category. Sometimes we hear therapists say, “I do DBT, but I don’t do CBT,” and from my perspective, that’s not really possible, because the essence of dialectical behavior therapy is CBT. CBT focuses on how our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions all go together, and how changing any one of those affects the others.That’s really the core of DBT—the foundation of CBT. But what happened was the person who developed DBT, Marsha Linehan—she was actually my grad school advisor at the University of Washington—developed this treatment because she was finding that standard CBT was not working as well as she wanted it to for a particular population. The group she was working with were women, primarily, who had significant problems with emotion regulation and were chronically suicidal or self-injuring.With that group, she found they needed a lot more validation—validation that things were really rough, that it was hard to change what was going on, that they needed support and comfort. But if she leaned too much on validation, patients got frustrated that there wasn’t enough change happening.So what she added to standard CBT was first a focus on validation and acceptance, and then what she refers to as the dialectical piece: balancing between change and acceptance. The idea is: You’re doing the best you can—and you need to do better.Jesse: Mm-hmm.Shireen: And even though DBT was developed for that very severe group that needed a lot of treatment, one of the aspects of DBT is skills training—teaching people skills to manage their emotions, regulate distress, engage interpersonally in a more effective way.Those skills became so popular that people started using them with everyone they were treating, not just people who engaged in chronic suicidal behavior.Sarah: Very cool. And I think the population you’re referring to is people who might be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I bring that up only because I work with parents, not kids, and parents report to me what their children are like. I’ve had many parents worry, “Do you think my child has borderline personality disorder?” because they’ve heard of it and associate it with extreme sensitivity and big feelings.A lot of that is just typical of someone who’s 13 or 14, right? Or of a sensitive child—not diagnosable or something you’d necessarily find in the DSM. I’ve heard it so many times. I say, “No, I don’t think your child has borderline personality disorder. I think they’re just really sensitive and haven’t learned how to manage their big feelings yet. And that’s something you can help them with.”With that similar level of emotional intensity—in a preteen or early teen who’s still developing the brain structures that make self-regulation possible—how can we use DBT skills? What are a couple of ideas you might recommend when you have a 13-year-old who feels like life is ruined because the jeans they wanted to wear are soaking wet in the wash? And I’m not making fun—at 13, belonging is tied to how you look, what jeans you’re wearing, how your hair is. It feels very real.So how might we use the skills you write about for that kind of situation?Jesse: Well, Sarah, I actually think you just practiced one of the skills: validation. When someone feels like their day is ruined because of their jeans, often a parent will say, “Get over it. It’s not a big deal.” And now, in addition to fear or anxiety, there’s a layer of shame or resentment. So the emotion amplifies and becomes even harder to get out of.Validation is a skill we talk about where you recognize the kernel of truth—how this experience makes sense. “The jeans you’re wearing are clearly important to you. This is about connection. I understand why you feel this way.” That simple act of communicating that someone’s thoughts and feelings make sense can be very powerful.Alongside that—back to what Shireen was saying—there are two tracks. One is the skills you help your teen practice. The other is the skills you practice yourself to be effective. In that moment, your teen might be dysregulated. What is the parent’s emotion? Their urge? What skills can they practice to be effective?Sarah: I love that you already went to the next question I was going to ask, which is: when that kid is screaming, “You don’t understand, I can’t go to school because of the jeans,” what can parents do for themselves using the skills you describe?Shireen: I often think of the oxygen-mask analogy: put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. That was certainly true for me when I had fussy infants—how do you manage that stress when you are already heightened?What do you need to do to regulate yourself so you can be effective in the moment? Sometimes that’s literally taking a time-out—leaving the room for a minute. The kid comes after you about the jeans, and you say, “Hold on, I need a minute.” You sequester yourself in the bathroom. You do paced breathing—a DBT skill that helps regulate your nervous system. You do that for a minute, get centered, and then return to the situation.If you’re not regulated and your child is dysregulated, you’ll ping-pong off each other and it becomes messier and messier. But if you can regulate yourself and approach calmly, the whole interaction changes.Sarah: It’s so interesting because people who’ve been listening to my podcast or know my work will think, “Oh yeah, these are the things Sarah talks about all the time.” Our first principle of peaceful parenting is parental self-regulation. It doesn’t mean you never get upset, but you recognize it and have strategies to get back to calm.And I always say, if you forget everything else I teach about dealing with upset kids, just remember empathy—which is another way of saying validation. I tell parents: you don’t have to agree to empathize. Especially with situations like the jeans.I love the crossover between the skills parents are practicing in my community and what you’ve written about. And again: those flow charts! I’m going to mark up my book with Post-its for all the exercises.One of the things you talk about in the book is problem solving. As parents, we can find ourselves in these intense situations. I’ll give an example: a client’s daughter, at 11 p.m., was spiraling about needing a particular pair of boots for her Halloween costume, and they wouldn’t arrive in time. No matter what the mom said, the daughter spiraled.This is a two-part question: If you’ve validated and they’re still really upset, how do you support a kid who is deep in those intense feelings? And when is the place for teaching problem solving—especially when there is a real logistical problem to solve?Jesse: I’m going to say the annoying therapist thing: it depends. If we think about how emotions impact our thinking on a scale from 0 to 10, it’s very hard to engage in wise-minded problem solving when someone is at an 8, 9, or 10. At that point, the urge is to act on crisis behaviors—yell, fight, ruminate.So engaging your child in problem solving when they’re at a 9 isn’t effective.Often, I suggest parents model and coach distress-tolerance skills. Shireen mentioned paced breathing. Maybe distraction. Anything to lower the emotional volume.Once we’re in the six-ish range? Now we can problem solve. DBT has a very prescribed step-by-step process.But it’s really hard if someone is so dysregulated. That’s often where parents and kids end up in conflict: parent wants to solve; kid is at a 9 and can’t even see straight.Sarah: Right. So walk us through what that might look like using the boots example. Play the parent for a moment.Jesse: Of course. I’d potentially do a couple of things. I might say, “Okay, let’s do a little ‘tipping the temperature’ together.” I’d bring out two bowls of ice and say, “We’ll bend over, hold our breath for 30 seconds…”Shireen: And put your face in the bowl of ice water. You left out that part.Jesse: Crucial part of the step.Sarah: You just look at the ice water?Jesse: No, you submerge your face. And something happens—it’s magical. There’s actually a profound physiological effect: lowering blood pressure, calming the sympathetic nervous system.I highlight for parents: do this with your child, not didactically. Make it collaborative.And then: validate, validate, validate. Validation is not approval. It’s not saying the reaction is right. It’s simply communicating that their distress makes sense. Validation is incredibly regulating.Then you check in: “Do you feel like we can access Wise Mind?” If yes: “Great. Let’s bring out a problem-solving worksheet—maybe from Real Skills for Real Life or the DBT manual. Let’s walk through it step by step.”Sarah: And if you have a kid screaming, “Get that ice water away from me, that has nothing to do with the boots!”—is there anything to add beyond taking a break?Shireen: I’d say this probably comes up a lot for you, Sarah. As parents—especially high-functioning, maybe perfectionistic types (I put myself in that category)—if my kid is upset, I feel so many urges to fix it right away. Sometimes that’s helpful, but often it’s not. They either don’t want to be fixed, or they’re too dysregulated, or fixing isn’t actually their goal—they just want to tell you how upset they are.I have to practice acceptance: “My kid is upset right now. That’s it.” I remind myself: kids being upset is part of life. It’s important for them to learn they can be upset and the world doesn’t fall apart.If they’re willing to do skills alongside you, great. But there will be times where you say, “I accept that you’re upset. I’m sorry you feel this way. It sounds terrible. Let’s reconnect in an hour.” And wait for the storm to pass.Sarah: Wait for the storm to pass.Jesse: I’ll say—I haven’t been a therapist that long, and I’ve been having this conversation with my own parents. Yesterday I called my mom about something stressful, and she said, “Jesse, do you want validation or problem solving right now?”Shireen: Love it.Jesse: I thought, “You taught her well.” I was like: okay, therapy works. And even having that prompt—“What would you like right now? Problem solving? Validation? Do you want me to just sit with you?”—that’s so useful.Sarah: Yeah. I have to remind myself of that with my daughter, especially when the solution seems obvious to me but she’s too upset to take it in. Just sitting there is the hardest thing in the world.And you’ve both anticipated my next question. A big part of your book is distress tolerance—one of the four areas. Can you talk about what distress tolerance is specifically? And as you mentioned, Shireen, it is excruciating when your kid is in pain or upset.I learned from my friend Ned Johnson—his wonderful book The Self-Driven Child—that there’s something called the “righting instinct.” When your child falls over, you have the instinct to right them—pick them up, dust them off, stand them up. That instinct kicks in whenever they’re distressed. And I think it’s important for them to learn skills so we don’t do that every time.Give us some thoughts about that.Shireen: Well, again, I think distress tolerance is so important for parents and for kids. The way we define it in DBT is: distress tolerance is learning how to tolerate stressful, difficult, complicated situations without doing anything to make it worse. That’s the critical part, because distress tolerance is not about solving problems. It’s about getting through without making things worse.So in the context of an interaction with your kid, “not making it worse” might mean biting your tongue and not lashing out, not arguing, not rolling your eyes, or whatever it is. And then tolerating the stress of the moment.As parents, we absolutely need this probably a thousand times a day. “How do I tolerate the distress of this moment with my kid?” And then kids, as humans, need to learn distress tolerance too—how to tolerate a difficult situation without doing anything to make it worse.If we swoop in too quickly to solve the problem for them—as you said, if we move in too quickly to right them—they don’t learn that they can get through it themselves. They don’t learn that they can right themselves.And I think there’s been a lot written about generations and how parenting has affected different generations. We want our kids to learn how to problem solve, but also how to manage stress and difficulty in effective ways.Sarah: I think you’re probably referring to the “helicopter parents,” how people are always talking about helicopter parents who are trying to remove any obstacles or remove the distress, basically.I think the answer isn’t that we just say, “Okay, well, you’re distressed, deal with it,” but that we’re there with them emotionally while they’re learning. We’re next to them, right? With that co-regulation piece, while they’re learning that they can handle those big feelings.Shireen: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.Sarah: I thought it might be fun, before we close out, to do a deep dive on maybe one or two of the skills you have in the book. I was thinking about maybe “Check the Facts.” It would be a cool one to do a deep dive on. You have so many awesome skills and I encourage anyone to pick up your book. “Check the Facts” is one of the emotion regulation skills.Do you mind going over when you would use Check the Facts, what it is, and how to use it?Jesse: Not at all. Check the Facts is, in many ways, a foundational skill, because it’s so easy for us to get lost in our interpretation of a situation. So the classic example is: you’re walking down the street and you wave to a friend, and they don’t wave back. And I don’t know about you, but it’s easy for me to go to, “Oh, they must be mad at me.”Sarah: Right, yeah.Jesse: And all of a sudden, I’m spinning out, thinking about all the things I could have done to hurt their feelings, and yada yada yada. Then I’m feeling lots of upset, and I may have the urge to apologize, etc.What we’re doing with Check the Facts is returning our attention back to the facts themselves—the things we can take in with our senses. We’re observing and describing, which are two foundational mindfulness skills in DBT. And then from that, we ask ourselves: “Does the emotion I’m feeling—the intensity and duration of that emotion—fit the facts as I’m experiencing them?”So in many ways, this is one of those cognitive interventions. DBT rests on all these cognitive-behavioral principles; it’s part of that broader umbrella. Here we’re asking: “Do the facts as I see them align with my emotional experience?”From there, we ask: if yes, then there are certain options or skills we can practice—for instance, we can change the problem. If no, that begs the question: “Should I act opposite to this emotion urge that I have?”So it’s a very grounding, centering type of skill. Shireen, is there anything I’m missing?Shireen: No. I would just give a parenting example that happens for me a lot. My kid has a test the next day. He says he knows everything. He doesn’t open the book or want to review the study guide. And I start to think things like, “Oh my gosh, he has no grit. He’s going to fail this test. He’s not going to do well in high school. He’s not going to get into a good college. But most importantly, he doesn’t care. And what does that say about him? And what does it say about me as a parent?”I hope people listening can relate to these sorts of thoughts and I’m not alone.Sarah: A hundred percent. I’ve heard people say those exact things.Shireen: And even though I practice these skills all the time, I’m also human and a mother. So where Check the Facts can be useful there is first just recognizing: “Okay, what thoughts am I having in response to this behavior?” The facts of the situation are: my kid said he doesn’t need to study anymore. And then look at all these thoughts that came into my mind.First, just recognizing: here was the event, and here’s what my mind did. That, in and of itself, is a useful experience. You can say, “Wow, look at what I’m doing in my mind that’s creating so much of a problem.”Then I can also think: “What does this make me feel when I have all these thoughts?” I feel fear. I feel sad. I feel shame about not being a good parent. And those all cause me to have more thoughts and urges to do things that aren’t super effective—like trying to bully him into studying, all of these things.Then the skill can be: “Okay, are these thoughts exaggerated? Are they based in fact? Are they useful?” I can analyze each of these thoughts.I might think, “Well, he has a history of not studying and doing fine,” is one thing. Another thought: “Me trying to push him to study is not going to be effective or helpful.” Another: “There are natural consequences. If he doesn’t do well because he didn’t study, that’s an important lesson for him to learn.”So I can start to change my interpretations based on the facts of the actual situation as opposed to my exaggerated interpretations. And then see: what does that do to my emotions? And when I have more realistic, fact-based thoughts, does that lead me to have a better response than I would if I followed through on all my exaggerated thinking?Does that make sense?Sarah: Yeah, totally makes sense. Are there any DBT skills that are helpful in helping you recognize when you need to use a skill—if that makes sense? Because sometimes I think parents might spiral, like in the example you’re talking about, but they might not even realize they’re spiraling. Sometimes parents will say, “I don’t even know until it’s too late that I’ve had this big moment of emotional dysregulation.”Jesse: I think there’s a very strong reason why mindfulness is the foundation of DBT—for exactly the reason you’ve just described. For a lot of us, we end up engaging in behaviors that are ineffective, that are not in line with our values or goals, and it feels like it’s just happening to us.So having a mindfulness practice—and I want to highlight that doesn’t necessarily mean a formal meditation practice—but developing the skill of noticing, of being increasingly conscious of what you’re feeling, your urges, your thoughts, your behaviors. So that when you notice that you are drifting, that you’re engaging in an ineffective behavior, you can then apply a skill. We can’t change what we’re not aware of.Sarah: I love that. It’s so hard with all the distractions we have and all of the things that are pulling us this way and that, and the busyness. So just slowing down and starting to notice more what we’re feeling and thinking.Shireen: There’s a skill that we teach that’s in the category of mindfulness called Wise Mind. I don’t have to get into all the particulars of that, but Wise Mind is when you’re in a place where you feel wise and centered and perhaps a little bit calmer.So one question people can ask themselves is: “Am I in a place of Wise Mind right now?” And if not, that’s the cue. Usually, when we answer that we’re not, it’s because we’re in a state of Emotion Mind, where our emotions are in control of us.First, recognizing what state of mind you’re in can be really helpful. You can use that as a cue: “I’m not in Wise Mind. I need to do something more skillful here to get there,” or, “I need to give myself some time before I act.”Sarah: I love that. So helpful. Before we wrap up, was there anything you wish I’d asked you that you think would be really helpful for parents and kids?Shireen: I just want to reiterate something you said earlier, which is: yes, this treatment was developed for folks with borderline personality disorder. That is often a diagnosis people run screaming from or are very nervous about. People might hesitate to think that these skills could be useful for them if they don’t identify as having borderline personality disorder.But I think what you’re highlighting, Sarah—and we so appreciate you having us on and talking about these skills—is that we consider these skills universal. Really anybody can benefit.I’ve done training and teaching in DBT for 25 years, and I teach clinicians in many different places how to do DBT treatment with patients. But inevitably, what happens is that the clinicians themselves say, “Oh, I really need these skills in my everyday life.”So that’s what we want to highlight, and why we wrote this book: to take these skills from a treatment designed for a really severe population and break it down so anybody can see, “Oh, this would be useful for me in my everyday life, and I want to learn more.”Sarah: Totally. Yeah. I love it. And I think it’s a continuum, right? From feeling like emotions are overwhelming and challenging, and being really emotionally sensitive. There are lots of people who are on that more emotionally sensitive side of things, and these are really helpful skills for them.Jesse: Yeah. And to add on that, I wouldn’t want anyone—and I don’t think any of us here are suggesting this—it’s such a stigmatized diagnosis. I have yet to meet someone who’s choosing suffering. Many of us are trying to find relief from a lot of pain, and we may do so through really ineffective means.So with BPD, in my mind, sometimes it’s an unfortunate name for a diagnosis. Many folks may have the opinion that it means they’re intrinsically broken, or there’s something wrong with their personality. Really, it’s a constellation of behaviors that there are treatments for.So I want anyone listening not to feel helpless or hopeless in having this diagnosis or experience.Shireen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.Sarah: Thank you so much. The question I ask all my guests—I’ll ask Shireen first and then Jesse—is: if you could go back in time, if you had a time machine, if you could go back to your younger parent self, what advice would you give yourself?Shireen: Oof. I think about this a lot, actually, because I feel like I did suffer a lot when my kids were babies. They were super colicky. I didn’t sleep at all. I was also trying to work. I was very stressed. I wish that at that time I could have taken in what other people were telling me, which is: “This will pass.” Right? “This too shall pass,” which is something we say to ourselves as DBT therapists a lot. Time changes. Change is inevitable. Everything changes.In those dark parenting moments, you get stuck in thoughts of, “This is never going to change. It’s always going to be this way. I can’t tolerate this.” Instead, shifting to recognize: “Change is going to happen whether I like it or not. Just hang in there.”Sarah: I love that. My mother-in-law told me when I had my first child: “When things are bad, don’t worry, they’ll get better. And also, when things are good, don’t worry, they’ll get worse.”Shireen: Yes, it’s true. And we need both the ups and the downs so we can actually understand, “Oh, this is why I like this, and this is why I don’t like this.” It’s part of life.Sarah: Yeah. Thank you. And Jesse, if you do ever have children, what would you want to remember to tell yourself?Jesse: I think I would want to remember to tell myself—and I don’t think I’m going to say anything really new here—that perfection is a myth. I think parents often feel like they need to be some kind of superhuman. But we all feel. And when we do feel, and when we feel strongly, the goal isn’t to shame ourselves for having that experience. It’s to simply understand it.That’s what I would want to communicate to myself, and what I hope to communicate to the parents I work with.Sarah: Love that. Best place to go to find out more about you all and what you do? We’ll put a link to your book in the show notes, but any other socials or websites you want to point people to?Shireen: My website is shireenrizvi.com, where you can find a number of resources, including a link to the book and a link to our YouTube channel, which has skills videos—animated skills videos that teach some of these skills in five minutes or less. So that’s another resource for people.Sarah: Great. What about you, Jesse?Jesse: I have a website called axiscbt.com. I’m also a co-founder of a psychoeducation skills course called Farrah Hive, and we actually have a parenting course based on DBT skills—that’s thefarrahhive.com. And on Instagram, @talk_is_good.Sarah: Great. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time today.Jesse: Thank you, Sarah.Sarah: Thank you. This is a public episode. 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You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I speak with Educational Psychologist Liz Angoff. We discuss when and why a child might need an assessment, what information you get from an assessment, how to help children understand their brains and diagnosis, and celebrating neurodiversity.**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.Know someone who might appreciate this post? Share it with them!We talk about:* 7:00 What are some signs that your child should get an assessment?* 9:00 Getting to the “why” and the “so what”* 10:00 What do you assess for?* 14:00 Why it is important to get an assessment?* 23:00 Should you tell your child about their diagnosis?* 31:00 Scripts and metaphors for talking to your kids about diagnosis* 39:00 Red and Green flags with clinicians* 44:00 Celebrating neurodiversityResources mentioned in this episode:* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player* The Peaceful Parenting Membership* Dr. Liz’s website and booksxx Sarah and CoreyYour peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching sessionVisit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.Our sponsors:YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERESarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today my guest is Dr. Liz Angoff, who is an educational psychologist. She does testing, looking at helping kids understand how their brain works and helping their adults understand how their children’s brains work. She has loads of wonderful resources, which we will link to in the show notes.I love how Dr. Liz takes this approach. It’s about how our brains can work in different ways, and understanding that really can help our child understand themselves, and help us understand our child in a better way.As you’ll hear in this conversation with Dr. Liz, she really talks about how, if your child is experiencing some challenges or struggles—or you’re experiencing struggles or challenges with them—it can be helpful to get an assessment and possibly a diagnosis to understand exactly what’s going on and how your child’s brain works. Whether it could be anxiety or depression or neurodivergence or learning challenges or any sorts of things that can be uncovered through psychological testing, you can really understand the differences in your child’s brain that could be making life feel more challenging for them and/or for you. And she has a beautifully neurodiversity-affirming lens, where she talks about—you’ll hear her talk about this in the episode—looking at a child’s brain in terms of both the strengths and the challenges.As always, we would love if you would share this episode with anyone you think might find it useful, and leave us a five-star rating on your favorite podcast player app and leave us a review. It really helps us reach more families and therefore help more families.Alright, let’s meet Dr. Liz.Hello, Dr. Liz. Welcome to the podcast.Liz: Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be here, Sarah.Sarah: Me too. So tell us about who you are and what you do before we dive in.Liz: Right. Well, I go by Dr. Liz, and I am a licensed educational psychologist. I’m in the Bay Area, California, and my focus—my passion—is working with kids to understand how their brains work. I am a testing psychologist, so I do assessment to understand, when things are challenging for kids, why things are challenging and what we’re going to do to really support them.But one of the things that really caught my interest a number of years ago is that so often we bring kids through the assessment process and we don’t talk to them about what they did or what we learned about them. So I got really passionate about talking to kids directly about how they can understand their brains—what comes easily for them, how they can really use their strengths to help them thrive, and then what’s challenging and what they can do to advocate for themselves and support themselves. So all of my work has been really focused on that question: how do we help kids understand themselves?Sarah: Which is perfect, because that’s exactly why I wanted to have you on. I’ve had so many parents ask me, “Well, how do I… I’ve got the assessment. How do I tell them? Do I tell them? How do I tell them?” We’re going to get into all of that.But first I want to start with: what are some signs… I imagine some of the people listening are already going to have had assessments or are in the process of getting an assessment. But there also are some people who maybe—at least in our world—what we look at is: if you feel like you’re struggling way more than everybody else, that could be one sign. And if you’ve already made shifts and you’re trying to practice, in our case, peaceful parenting, and you’re still finding that things are really hard—that could be a sign that you might want to get an assessment.But what are some signs that you look for that you might want to get your child assessed?Liz: Yeah, I mean, you named a couple of them that I think are actually really important. All kids have times when they struggle. Growing up is hard. There are a lot of challenges, and they’re really important challenges that kids face. They need to know that it’s okay when things are hard. They need to know they can do hard things and come out the other side.And there’s so much out there—what I think of as parenting 101—that helps us figure out: how do we help our children navigate these tough times? And then there’s kind of the next level where you might get a little extra support. So you read a book on parenting, or you find a different approach that matches the way your child shows up in the world a little bit better. You might meet with the school and get a little bit of extra help—sometimes called student study teams or SSTs—where you might meet with the teacher and the team.For most kids, that little extra boost is enough to get them through those hard times. But for some kids, there are still questions. That next level, that extra support—it’s still not working. Things are still hard, and we don’t know why.Sarah: Mm-hmm.Liz: And when you have that question—“Why isn’t this working? It works for so many kids, but it’s not working for my child”—that’s when an assessment can be really helpful to get at the why. The so what.So the why is: why are things harder for my child, and why are the traditional things that help most children not working? And then the so what is: so what do we do about it? How do we do things differently? And for kids who are wired differently, they need different things. And that’s what we focus on in the assessment process.Sarah: And so, what kinds of… You know, we’ve gotten extra support, we’ve educated ourselves, and things are still hard for our child—or maybe also hard for us at home with our child. What are the kinds of things that you assess for? I guess that’s the best way to ask. The big ones I think about are ADHD and autism, but what else might be possibilities that are going on?Liz: I really think of assessment—at the core of it—as understanding how this child’s brain works. The diagnoses that we look at… a diagnosis is just a kind of way to orient us toward the path of support that’s going to be most helpful. But even ADHD, autism, dyslexia—these common things we might look for—show up differently in different kids. There are diagnostic criteria, but they mix and match a little bit. No two ADHD-ers show up the same way. No two autistic kids show up the same way. Even dyslexic kids show up differently.So at the core of it, we’re trying to figure out: what makes this child’s brain unique? What are the unique strengths and challenges that they have? And we’re going to be able to explain that. A shortcut for explaining that might be dyslexia or autism or ADHD.We also might be looking at things like anxiety and depression that can really affect kids in a big way—sometimes related to other brain styles, because navigating the world as a different kind of brain is really hard and can lead to a lot of anxiety and depression. Sometimes anxiety can look like ADHD, for example, because it really hijacks your attention and makes it hard to sit still at school when your brain is on high alert all the time.So we’re really trying to tease apart: what’s the root cause of the challenges a child is facing? So that we know what to do about it.Some other things we might look at: one of the big questions that comes to me is when there are some really challenging behaviors that kids have, and we want to know what’s underneath that. Sometimes there might be questions about sensory dysregulation or emotional dysregulation—just real difficulty understanding the emotions that are coming up and what to do about them. Some kids get hit like by a tsunami by their emotions. And so learning how to regulate or manage those big feelings might be something we’re looking at. And again, that might be part of a bigger diagnosis, but more importantly it’s something we want to understand so we can support a child, regardless of what we call it.Sarah: That makes so much sense. And it makes me think about my daughter, who’s 18 now. And just for anyone listening, she’s okay with me talking about her assessment and diagnoses. And I think sometimes when you talk about challenging behavior, we think we know why there’s challenging behavior—but sometimes we can be totally wrong.I remember when she was in elementary school, her teachers—one after another—would always talk about how she was repeatedly at their desks asking, “What do I do next?” Asking for instruction. And she’s a kid whose connection is super important to her, and I always thought it was because she was looking for more connection from the teacher. That she was always at their side, and that was a “good” reason to go up and talk to the teacher because she loved her teachers.And then come to find out, when we had her assessed, that she has working memory challenges. She actually literally couldn’t remember what the next thing to do was, because she could only keep one or two things in her head at a time. And that was really helpful information. It completely shifted how her teachers—and how I—saw her classroom behavior.Liz: Isn’t that amazing? Just getting at the why. Getting underneath and figuring out the why completely shifts our perspective on things. And I think for a lot of kids, that first-line parenting—for many kids, yeah, they’re looking for connection. They’re looking for that. It makes total sense that that would be our first assumption. And for some kids, that’s just not true.So when we do the assessment, we find out this important information that is so important to understanding what’s going on. And for your daughter to understand: “Oh, there’s this thing called working memory, and that is different in my brain than in other brains.” So I’m not dumb or lazy or all these labels we give ourselves. It’s: “Oh, I have a working memory challenge, so let’s brainstorm some ways I can work with the way my working memory works.” And that might be asking the teacher—that might work for everybody—but there might be something else.There are any number of strategies we can use to really help her once we know what that is. And when we talk to kids about it, we can brainstorm with them to figure out what the best strategy is going to be—one that works for our child, that works for the teacher, that works for everybody involved.Sarah: Yeah, for sure. It’s so illuminating. There were so many things about her diagnosis when she got assessed that helped so much to explain behavior that a lot of people found perplexing, and also helped her understand herself and make adjustments she needed to make to be successful.For example, even now she’s in first-year college, and she knows—this has continued through her whole school career—that because of her focus challenges, she can’t really do any homework after six o’clock at night. Her focus is just not good. She can try, but it’s really hard for her. So she plans her day around: “I know that I’ve only got until six o’clock to really get my good work done.” She’ll even come home, do homework, and then go back into the city to go to the gym or something, whereas other people might do it the other way around.So I think just knowing—kids knowing—how their brain works is really setting themselves up for success.Liz: I love that.Sarah: Yeah. So, which brings me to the next question I was going to ask you, and I think you’ve already answered it or we’ve talked about it together: anything you want to add about why it’s important to get an assessment? I mean, you talked about helping kids understand how their brain works, really getting to the root of the problem, and helping the people around them understand how their brain works. Is there anything else you want to add about why we would want to get an assessment that we haven’t already talked about?Liz: Yeah. Well, one of the things we talk about a lot is that an assessment can result in a label of sorts. A diagnosis is a kind of label. And something I get asked a lot is: “What do we do when parents feel nervous about having their child have a label?”There is—as much as I am a proponent and supporter and celebrator of neurodiversity—the truth is that our society still has some pretty challenging stereotypes about what it means to be ADHD or autistic, or to have a different way your brain is wired.Sarah: Or stigma.Liz: Yeah—stigma. That’s the word. And so I think it’s a real fear that families have.There are a couple of things that are important to know about these “labels.” One is that the world is changing. We are understanding these diagnoses in a totally different way—not as something that’s broken or needs to be fixed, but as something that is different. A normal variation of how brains appear in the world. And that is a real change that is happening.And that label can be—as you were just saying—so helpful, as a way to guide what we do to support our children so they can be successful. Like your example with your daughter: she can learn how to work with her brain so she can be really successful. I think it’s brilliant that she knows that after six o’clock, her brain won’t study anymore. That simple change is the difference between feeling like a failure and feeling like a success.And I think the more dangerous thing—the scarier piece—is the labels we give children who aren’t properly diagnosed. Those labels are the ones kids give themselves, like “I must be dumb,” or the labels others give kids, like “This is a lazy child,” or “This is a defiant child.” Those labels are so much more negative and harmful to our kids because they tell them there’s something wrong with them.Are these diagnoses labels? Yes. But I would argue they are such helpful guideposts for us in understanding: this is a difference, not a deficiency.Sarah: I love that. And I’ve heard people say that you can avoid getting a diagnosis for your child because you don’t want to have them labeled, but they will still get labeled—just with the wrong labels instead of the right labels.Liz: Exactly. Yeah.Sarah: Mm-hmm. I know people who… I have a friend who didn’t find out until they were in their late teens, I guess, that they had inattentive ADHD, and they spent years unlearning, “I’m just lazy,” and, “I’m a lazy person, that’s why I have trouble doing things on time,” and really unlearning that bad… that bad idea of themselves that had been put on them when they weren’t aware of their inattentive ADHD.Liz: Exactly.Sarah: Yeah. I also have another friend who got diagnosed as autistic late in life, and they wish that they had known that so much earlier because they spent—you know, they’re one of those people that, back when they were a child, the diagnostic criteria missed them. Right? Like they were just quirky, odd, like the little-professor type of autistic kid. But they spent their whole life thinking, “There’s something wrong with me. I just don’t know what it is, but I know I feel different from everybody else,” and searching for, “What is this thing that’s wrong with me?” And finding it in all sorts of things that weren’t actually… you know, obviously there’s not anything wrong with them, they’re just autistic. But thinking how different their life would’ve been if they had known that, and hadn’t spent all those years trying to figure out why they felt so different from everybody else.Liz: Exactly. And that’s what the research is showing us too—that so many individuals who are diagnosed as adults had these really harmful and unhelpful narratives as kids. And the first emotion that those diagnosed adults feel is this relief: “Oh, that’s why things feel different for me.” But the second emotion I find so much more interesting, because across the board, the second thing that people report is anger. And it’s anger at having lost decades to those false narratives that were so, so unhelpful.And I think that there are kind of two facets to my passion about talking to kids. One was understanding that kids—they often know that something is different about them way before we even pick up on it, no matter how old they are. They have this sense that, “Oh, I’m walking through the world in a different way.” So the earlier we can have these conversations with them, the better, because we have this opportunity to rewrite that narrative for them.But the second huge piece for me was working with adults and doing that later-in-life diagnosis, and hearing time after time, story after story about adults who are completely rewriting their self-narrative through the process of our assessment—and what a relief that is. And how frustrating it is that they’ve lost so much time not knowing, and now having to go through the process of identity formation again, because they have this new, critical piece of information that helps them understand things so differently about their childhood, their young adulthood—depending on how old they are.Sarah: Yeah, it’s so important. And when you just said, “Kids often know that there’s something different about them,” I remembered my daughter. She didn’t—I think partly because I’m, I’m not saying this to toot my own horn, but I’m an extraordinarily patient person, and so some of the things about her ADHD—so she has an ADHD diagnosis—and some of the things about that, I think it took me a long time to sort of think, “Okay, this is unusual, that these behaviors are still happening,” because I was so patient with it, you know? And I think other parents may have been a little less patient at an earlier age and gotten her… and I feel bad about that, because I wish she had gotten her assessment earlier. I think it would’ve been helpful for her.But I remember one thing that spurred me to finally seek an assessment was she asked me what ADHD was. She was probably nine, ten, maybe. And I told her, and she said, “I have that.” She was like, “I have that.” And I’m like, “Really?” Like, you know… anyway, it was just interesting.Liz: I think kids know. I’ve had that experience so many times, I can’t even tell you. I’m halfway through a feedback session with a child and I haven’t told them yet, and they come out with, “Do I have ADHD?” Or in the middle of the assessment, they’re wondering about it and asking. And I say, “Well, what do you understand about ADHD, and why are you asking that question?” And I can kind of get more information from them and let them know, “We don’t know yet, but that’s what we’re here for. We’re exploring your brain and we’re trying to understand it.”But I think that information, I mean, that just speaks to how much our world is changing. This information is out there in the world. We’re talking about it, which I think is so, so important to normalizing the fact that brains come in all different shapes and sizes and ways of being. And so it becomes a point of discussion—like a really open point of discussion—about, “I wonder how my brain is wired.”Sarah: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So interesting. I’m pretty sure I know the answer that you’re gonna give: if you do get a diagnosis of something—ADHD or autism—should you tell your child?Liz: So I do believe that we should be talking to kids about how their brains work. And I want to be really mindful of the parent journey as I talk about this. I think that the most important piece is that, as a parent, you understand how your child’s brain works, and that you go through your own process of integrating that with how you see your child. And that’s a really important journey and a huge piece of the journey, because when we start talking to kids about how their brains work, we need to be really confident as adults.So I think that while I see this as so important—talking to kids about their diagnosis—I want to make sure that parents are taking time and space to understand it themselves first.Sarah: I love that. That’s such a sensitive answer, because if, say, you get the diagnosis of your child and to you it feels like, you know, it’s this horrible thing—that would not be a good frame of mind to tell your child about their diagnosis in. Right? So really working through your own fears and your own… getting proper information about what the diagnosis means before you go to your child with that information.Liz: Exactly. And understanding what it means and what it doesn’t mean. Because there’s a lot of messages out there, especially around autism and ADHD, that are negative: that your child is broken in some way, we need to fix them, we need to make them more “normal,” whatever that means. I mean, all these messages are not helpful, not accurate. So really diving into the neurodiversity-affirming framework around these different neurotypes or brain types is a really important piece to give yourself time to process as a parent.That said, I do think that being able to have a really supportive conversation with your child about, “What did we learn about the assessment?”—you know, we already talked about that kids know something’s different about them before we know. And so when they go through the assessment process, there’s no hiding from them that we’re doing something different for you. And they’re the ones that go through all these different activities as part of the assessment; they’re working very hard.And I, as an assessor, I’m very transparent with kids: “We’re here to understand how your brain works,” because I was trained to tell kids, “We’re going to play a lot of brain games, and it’s going to be super fun, you’ll get prizes.” Which it is fun until we do the thing that’s hard for you. And then suddenly, it’s not fun anymore. And kids are like, “Huh, I feel like you’re not telling me the whole truth. This is not fun.” They pick up on it, right?So I tend to be really transparent with kids: “We’re here to understand how your brain works. Some of the things that we do, your brain is going to find fun and maybe even easy to do. Some of the things are really going to challenge your brain. You might learn something new while you’re here. If something’s challenging, I want you to tell me about it, and we’re going to figure it out together—like, ooh, that’s going to be really interesting.”So we’re already talking to kids about what’s strong. And I use a construction metaphor that I can go into, but we talk about their brain highways and we talk about their construction projects—what they’re working on. So kids are already learning so much about their brain as part of the assessment. And even without sharing the diagnosis, we can talk to them about what we learned, so that there’s some de-mystifying there. “I went through this whole thing and now everyone’s talking behind my back. They’re having a bunch of meetings. There must be something wrong with me.” Instead, we can say, “I learned so many cool things about your brain. I learned that you are strong in this, and I learned that we’re going to work on this. And so that’s really helpful for me as a parent.”And then if we do have a diagnosis, what it adds when we share that with kids is: they know that they are not alone. It gives context. It lets them know that while the way their brain works is unique, there are lots of people out there who have very similar brains, who have been really successful with that kind of brain. There’s a path laid out—that we know what to do to work with your unique brain. And so it really helps them feel like, “I’m not alone in this. It’s not weird or broken in any way. This is just a different way to be in the world, and there’s a roadmap for me.”Sarah: I love that. Yeah. I often, when I’m talking to parents, and you know, often after a couple of parent coaching sessions there’ll be some things that make me say, “Have you ever… has anyone ever asked you if you were considering an ADHD assessment for your child?” I try to… you know, because I’m not a clinician, I can’t diagnose anyone with anything. But there are certainly things that come up that make me think, “I think these people should get an assessment.”And often they— you know, I try to be really as positive as I can—but often they do have these really negative associations with, for example, ADHD. And then I say, like, “You know, how many entrepreneurs… there are way more entrepreneurs that have ADHD than the general population, and way more Olympic athletes and professional athletes.” And, you know, there are things that are just research- and statistic-backed that you can say that are positive about this differently wired brain.Liz: Right. I love the research on entrepreneurship and ADHD. I think that it’s so amazing how well-equipped the ADHD brain is to be in a space where we’re disrupting the status quo and trying new things, thinking outside of the box, really using that creativity. And it’s just a world that needs this kind of brain to really move us forward. More neurotypical brains that work well with the way that society is built might not be as motivated to disrupt things in that positive way that moves us forward.Sarah: I love that. What are some other things that—you know, I feel like we’ve kind of covered most of the questions that I had planned on asking you—but are there any things that I haven’t asked you or that we haven’t touched on? You know, you’ve modeled some really beautiful ways of how to talk to your child about how their brain works. Maybe you want to go into your construction metaphor a little bit more, or maybe there are some other things that we haven’t covered that you want to talk about.Liz: Sure. Well, I think that one of the things that may be really helpful is thinking about: what is the script for telling kids about their diagnosis? The way that I’ve found most helpful is using this construction metaphor, because it is pretty universal and it has so many places you can go with it, and it just gives you a way to start the conversation.For parents, it may sound something like: “You went through this whole process and I’m so grateful that you did, because we were able to learn some really cool things about your brain. Is it okay if I share that with you?” So asking that permission to start the conversation, because it is vulnerable for kids. You want to make sure that it’s the right time and place. And most of the time, opening it like that will pique kids’ curiosity, and they’re like, “Yeah, of course, I want to know what you learned.”And then you might say, “You know, I learned that we can think of your brain like something that’s under construction, like the construction sites we see on the side of the road—that we’re always building our brain. And the way your brain works is that the different parts of your brain communicate through these neurons that make connections, like little tiny roads in your brain. And we learned that some of those roads are like highways for your brain. We learned that you have so many strengths.”“So, for example, we learned that you maybe have a great vocabulary and really express yourself well. We learned about your creativity, and when you’re really passionate about something, you can focus in so amazingly well on that. We learned that you’re a really loyal friend, or maybe that you have a really strong memory for stories”—you know, whatever it is. “We learned that you have these highways.”“We also know that some parts of your brain are under construction. Like, you might remember when you were little, you didn’t know how to ride a bike yet, but then your brain had to put all those things together and now you ride your bike all the time. Do you remember kind of building that road? Well, there are some new roads that we’re working on. And so we might be working on… one of the things we learned that’s under construction for your brain is something called working memory. And I think that’s why you’re asking your teacher all the time for the next step—because you’re doing something, you’re advocating for yourself, because your brain does best when it gets one piece of information at a time. And that was so important for me to learn as a parent.”“And when we put these things together, lots of people have highways and construction zones just like yours. In fact, we have a name for it. We call that ADHD—when you have such a creative, passionate brain that loves to focus on the things that you are really into, but sometimes have difficulty keeping stuff in mind, this working memory piece—that’s what we call ADHD. And it turns out there are lots and lots of people who have ADHD brains just like yours, and we can look at those people.”So that’s kind of how I go through it with kids. We’re really talking about their highways and construction projects and helping them understand that—and then repackaging it with that name for it. That there’s a name for how your brain works. And that’s where we start. And then from there, we can use that metaphor to keep building the next thing, working on the next construction project as we move forward.Sarah: Would there be anything specifically different or similar, I guess, about talking about an autism diagnosis for kids with that construction metaphor?Liz: Yeah, so I use the same metaphor, but the highways and construction zones, for every kid, are going to be a little different. So for an autistic kid—if I think of one kid in particular—we might say that we learned that you have this really passionate brain that loves engineering and building, and the things you did with Dr. Liz where you had to solve puzzles and use logic, that was a highway in your brain. And we know that one of the ways that your brain works really well is when you have space to move and to be able to use your body in different ways.Then some of the things that might be under construction are… usually I’ll start with something that a child has told me is more challenging for him or her. “So you know how you said that sometimes other kids might say things that feel confusing, or you’re not sure what they mean? That’s something that might be harder for your brain—or something that is a construction project that we’ll work on with you, so that it’s easier to understand other kids.”“And when we put these things together—when kids have brains that are really passionate and pay attention to details, that love engineering, but have trouble figuring out what other kids are saying or meaning—then we call that autism. And it’s a different way of a brain being in the world. And so, as you learn to work with your autistic brain, you’ll figure out how to really dive deep into your passions and you’ll be able to thrive, find the connections that you want, and we’re here to help.”Sarah: I love that. And I love how, when you talk about construction zones, it’s full of promise too, right? I read something from someone… that you can work on things—what I mean by full of promise is that there are things that can be worked on that might feel hard or confusing now, but it doesn’t leave a child with a sense of, “I’ll never be able to figure it out, and it’s always going to be this way.”Liz: Yeah. One of the ways the construction metaphor has really evolved is that for some things, we’re building that road, and for some things, we’re finding a different way to get there. One of the things that I write in my books is that you might build a road there, or you might find a totally different way to get there. In the new book for parents, there’s a picture of a flying car, you know, kind of flying over the construction zone. And I think that it’s really true for our kids that for some skills, there might be some things that we need to learn and really build that pathway in our brain, but for some things, there might just be a different way.I think for autistic kids, for example, they might connect with others in really different ways. And so it’s like building a totally new way to get there—building a different road, taking the scenic route. There are so many ways we can adapt the metaphor to say, “We’re still going to get you to your goal, where you want to go, but your road might look really different than somebody else’s, and that’s okay. It’s going to be the best road for you.”Sarah: I love that, because it also—I mean, not only is it promising that you’re going to get to where you want to go, but it also, I think, helps relieve parents of an idea that I see sometimes, where they want their kids to be more like neurotypical kids, right? They think that’s the only way to get to the goal, is for them to have, you know, just using the example of social connections: the social connections of an autistic kid might be really, really strong but look totally different from the social connections of a neurotypical kid.Liz: Exactly. Yeah.Sarah: That reminds me of something that I was going to ask you earlier and I forgot, which was: you mentioned that sometimes when you get a diagnosis, you have a clinician who wants to try to tell you how you should change your child, or help them be more “normal” or more “typical,” and that clearly would be from somebody who’s not very neurodiversity-affirming. But what are some things to look out for that might be sort of, I guess, red flags or green flags in terms of the person that you’re looking for to do an assessment—or if you’ve already got the assessment, how they’re interpreting the diagnosis—that might be more or less helpful?Liz: Yeah. So I love this question, because I think one of the most important questions you can ask a clinician when you are looking for an assessment is: “How do you involve my child in the assessment?” Or, “What will you tell them about what you learned?” Looking for somebody who is really well-versed in, “How do I talk to the child about it?” is going to tell you that they’re really thinking about, “How do we frame this in a way that’s going to be helpful and affirming to a young child?”Because anybody who’s really thinking about, “How do I communicate this in a way that’s going to make sense to a small person?” has really been thinking about, “How do we think about the whole person, and how do we capitalize on those strengths?” So that is kind of a tell, to say that this person is thinking in this more holistic way—and not just about, “Does this child fit the diagnostic criteria?”If you’ve had an assessment with somebody that is more coming from that medical lens that we’ve all been trained in—this is so new, and so, you know, a lot of clinicians were trained from this medical lens, which is looking at, “What are the child’s deficits, and do they meet criteria from this diagnostic manual that we have, the DSM, that is a list of things that are harder or quote-unquote wrong?”—from there, I think really getting connected with some more affirming resources is important.I have a ton on my website that can be really, really helpful. There’s a spreadsheet of ways of talking about autism, ADHD, dyslexia, behavior, anxiety, OCD in really affirming ways. And so just immersing yourself in those resources so you can get that positive language for talking to your child. Or working with the next practitioner—a therapist, a tutor—who has experience working from a neurodiversity-affirming lens, so that you can help to translate those testing results into something that’s going to really be focused on: how do we help your child thrive with the brain that they have?Sarah: Thank you. That makes so much sense.This has been so helpful, and I think that so many parents are going to find this really useful—in how to talk to their kids and how to think about it, how to think about it themselves. What it… oh, it has just totally thrown me that I couldn’t remember that thing. All right. So thank you so much for joining us and telling us about all this stuff. You mentioned a couple of books, so we’ll get your books in the show notes for folks, but where else is the best place for people to go and find out more about you and what you do?Liz: Yeah, so I have a ton of free resources for parents on explainingbrains.com. There are articles—just very, very short, parent-friendly articles—with both the strengths, the “highways,” and common construction projects for ADHD brains, for autistic brains, for dyslexic brains, for kids who have difficulty regulating behavior, anxiety, intellectual disability—just ways of explaining so many different types of brains, as well as what we do about things like screen time or talking about medication. So hopefully that resource is helpful for parents.And then I have a brand-new book out for parents called Our Brains, and it is an interactive, collaborative workbook that helps you explain a diagnosis to your child. So it’s something that you can get after an assessment, and it will walk you through explaining to your child how their brain works, what you learned from the assessment. Or, if you have a diagnosis that’s been on the table for a long time and you just haven’t had that conversation with them yet, it is designed to really help kids not just know, “Okay, this is my diagnosis,” but really understand how their brain works and how they can advocate for what their brain needs to thrive.Sarah: Fantastic. That is going to be so helpful for so many parents. Okay, now here’s the mystery question that I told you about before we started recording, and this is a question I ask all my guests. So, if you had a time machine and you could go back in time and give a message to your younger parent self, what advice would you give yourself?Liz: Oh. I would just constantly remind myself that there are so many ways to be in this world, and it’s all okay. I think—even I was amazed—that even as somebody who has decades of experience in this field and has made a life out of celebrating neurodiversity, there was a way that doctors communicated with me from this deficit lens that would just put my mommy brain on high alert all the time when something was just a little bit different. And I really needed just constant reminders that my child is going to show up how they’re going to show up, and that that is not only okay, but it is beautiful and amazing and so important to how they are and the unique contribution they’re going to have to this world.And it’s something that I’ve grown into—my child’s seven and a half now—and it’s something that we get to celebrate all the time: incredible uniqueness, and celebrate. But I think I remember very distinctly as a new mom, just with all the doctors using their jargony, deficit-based language, it was just really hard to keep that solid head on my shoulders. But I think it’s a really important message to keep with us: that there’s just so many ways to be, and it’s all amazing.Sarah: I love that. Thank you so much for joining us, and really appreciate it.Liz: Thank you for having me. This has been a blast. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribe

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we’ve included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Corey and I discuss why “Special Time”- the gold standard for cultivating connection with our kids- might not work the best for complex kids. We cover who complex kids are, what parenting them looks like, how to co-create interests and activities together, and being playful to connect deeply while getting through the daily routine.**If you’d like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! > > If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice.Know someone who might appreciate this post? Share it with them!We talk about:* 6:43 What is Special Time?* 7:51 What is a complex Kid?* 10:08 What does it look like to parent a complex Kid?* 19:30 What does daily life look like with complex Kids?* 22:03 What to do for connection when special time doesn’t work?* 23:05 Cultivating shared hobbies* 27:00 Finding books you both love* 30:00 Instead of only putting kids in organized sports, exercise together!* 33:30 Sideways listening with our kids* 37:00 Playful parenting as we move through the daily routineResources mentioned in this episode:* Yoto Player-Screen Free Audio Book Player* The Peaceful Parenting Membership* What you Can Do When Parenting Hard: Coaching with Joanna * When Peaceful Parenting Doesn’t Look Like It’s “Supposed To” Look * How To Take the Coach Approach to Parenting Complex Kids with Elaine Taylor- Klaus * What Influencers are Getting Wrong About Peaceful Parenting * Staying Close to Your Tweens and Teens * How To Stop Fighting About Video Games with Scott Novis * Playful Heart Parenting with Mia Wisinski xx Sarah and CoreyYour peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching sessionVisit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.Our sponsors:YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HERESarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s episode is about why you shouldn’t do special time, which is, I admit, a little bit of a provocative hook here. But it’s something that Corey brought to my attention that we have been talking about a lot. And then after last week’s podcast, we both agreed—after the podcast with Joanna and her complex kid—we both agreed we have to talk about this, because this is something that probably a lot of parents are feeling a lot of conflict, guilt, and shame around: not doing special time or not wanting to do special time or not being able to do special time.Sarah: Hey Corey. Welcome back to the podcast. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.Corey: Hi, I am Corey Everett, and I am a trained peaceful parenting coach, and I work for Sarah. I live in Ontario, but I work with clients all over the world doing one-on-one coaching. And I myself am complex and have a complex child. And I have two kids. I never can remember this, but I have a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old.Sarah: I am glad you’re not the only one who can’t remember their kids’ ages. I have to stop and think. Okay. Well, I’m so excited to talk about this. And this is actually something that you and I have talked about over the years, because you have found it really difficult to do special time with your complex kid. Maybe just tell us a little bit about what happened when you tried to do special time and why you eventually sort of gave it up. And, you know, this is something that Joanna in the podcast last week—the coaching podcast—she was talking about how she didn’t want to do special time with her kid because she was so exhausted. So I think this is sort of like a two-part: why sometimes special time doesn’t work for the kids and why it doesn’t work for the parents. So let’s start by talking about what happened when you would try to do special time with Big C, who’s your 10-year-old.Corey: Okay, so when I would try and do special time with Big C, I actually found—first of all—I didn’t really feel very present in it. I felt like I was trying to do it, but I felt like I didn’t have a lot of energy for it. I think he could feel that. So I just didn’t feel very engaged in it and I just felt exhausted, and it just felt like another thing on my to-do list. And so therefore he didn’t necessarily enjoy it as much either.We did do a podcast—it’d be really great, I can put it in the show notes—where we talked about some things for peaceful parenting that aren’t working, and I did a really good description in that one of why special time didn’t work for him.Sarah: Okay.Corey: And so we can have them listen to that if they want more details on that part. Instead, I think I want to really focus on why it didn’t work for me and why I’m finding with my clients it’s not working for them either.Sarah: You know what, sorry to interrupt you. I realize we should really just say what special time is, in case—like it’s such a gold standard of peaceful parenting—but there could be some parents listening to this, parents or caregivers who are newer to special time and might not know what it is.Special time—and there are, I think, some other brands of parenting that might have other names for it—but basically the gold standard is 15 minutes a day of one-on-one time with you and your child, where you put aside the to-do list, put away your phone, and some people suggest that you set a timer and say, “I’m all yours for the next 15 minutes. What do you want to play?” It’s really immersing yourself in the child’s world. That’s one of the main ideas of special time: that we’re immersed in our child’s world of pretend play or some kind of play. It can be roughhousing or it can be playing Lego or dolls—something that is really child-centered and child-led.So that is special time. And let’s take it from there. You had mentioned already that energetically it was really hard for you.Corey: I think the best way that I can explain this is if I paint the picture for you of what it looks like to be a parent of a complex kid. And—Sarah: Wait let’s give a definition of complex—we’ve got to make sure we’re covering the basics here. What’s a complex kid?Corey: Okay, so a complex kid. This term, I first heard it from Elaine Taylor-Klaus—and we can also put in the show notes when you had her on the podcast. She is amazing. And basically, we’re really often talking about neurodivergent kids here. But it can be more than that. It’s just kids who need more.Sarah: It’s that 20% of kids that we talk about—the 80% of kids who, you know, you say “Go put your shoes on and wait for me by the door,” and they go and do it and they don’t have the extra big feelings. So in my idea of it, it can be neurodivergent and also spirited, sensitive, strong-willed. The kids who are not your average, typical kids. And I always say that when I tell people what I do—parenting coach—some people look at me like, “Why would anyone need a parenting coach?” and other people are like, “Oh, I could have used you when my kids were growing up.”So really there are kids who are—I’m sure they’re wonderful—but they’re not as more or complex as some other kids.Corey: Kids that you almost don’t have to be as intentional about your parenting with.Sarah: Yeah. You don’t have to read parenting books or listen to parenting podcasts. I would hazard a guess that most people who listen to this podcast have complex kids.Corey: Yes. They’re our people. We always say the people who are our people are the ones who don’t have to talk about challenges around putting on shoes.Sarah: I love that.Corey: That seems to be the number one thing we’re always talking about.Sarah: We always use that as an example, whether it’s sensory or strong-willed or attentional. It is kind of like one of those canary-in-the-coal-mine things. Will your child go and put their shoes on when you ask them to? If the answer is no, you probably have a complex kid.Corey: Yes, I love that it is the canary in the coal mine. So that’s what our complex kids are. And for the parents of these kids, I think of these parents as being absolute rock stars. They are just trying so hard to peacefully parent their kids. And, like we said, they’re reading all the books, they’re listening to this podcast, they’ve probably signed up for all sorts of online seminars and courses and just do all of the things.Often these parents were not peacefully parented themselves. Most people weren’t. So they’re learning a whole new parenting style. And a lot of people today are getting all their information off Instagram and TikTok reels that aren’t very nuanced, so they’re also not getting really full information. They’re trying so hard off of all these little sound snippets.Sarah: Or the peaceful parenting or gentle parenting advice that they’re being given, and what’s supposed to happen just doesn’t look like that for their kid. And that reminds me—the other podcast that we did about when peaceful parenting doesn’t “work,” we could link to that one too.Corey: Yes. Parents of complex kids are also trying to problem solve so many challenges because the world is often not designed for their kids, and it’s often not designed for them.Sarah: Say more about that—about “not designed for their kids.” What’s an example of how that might show up?Corey: So an example is conventional schooling. They’re expected to go into this noisy environment and just be able to eat the food they’ve been sent and listen all day and stay in their seats and learn the same way that everyone else is learning. I didn’t really realize how complex my kid was until I tried to send him to daycare.Sarah: I was just thinking about the spirit days at Big C’s school, and how you’ve shared with me that those spirit days—like pajama day or “everyone wear the school colors day”—for some typical kids can be exciting and fun and a diversion. And for complex kids that can cause a whole level of stress and anticipation and the change of routine. Other parents of non-complex kids might be like, “Whatever, it’s not a big deal.” For our complex kids, it throws them for a loop.Corey: Yes. My first moment of starting to realize there was something I needed to pay more attention to was they were having a movie day at Big C’s daycare, and they said he kept covering his ears and hiding. And that was my first idea that every other kid was so excited that it was movie day. They’d been looking forward to it. And for my child it was just so loud, and then suddenly the lights were turned off, and the whole situation was throwing him off.So that’s what I mean. We’re designing the world for kids who are excited about movie day or special event days. But for complex kids, this is a complete change in their routine and all sorts of different sensory things that are happening that can make it really hard for them.Sarah: Or that they can’t handle as much as other kids. I have a client who was just talking about how she’s realized for her son, who’s nine, that they literally can’t do anything after school. They can’t stop at the store and run in and grab a few things. They really just have to come straight home and not do anything extra or different. And he does so much better when he can just come home and unwind and needs that.Corey: Yes, exactly. So the world wasn’t designed for them. And then consequently, the world was often not designed for those parents either. So many of the people we work with—including ourselves—only start to realize how complex we are once we start identifying it in our children. So it’s just not really an accommodated world.Sarah: So talk about how that has led to burnout for you. And by the way, when you started talking about rock stars—in the membership the other day, in office hours, one of our members, I’ll call him D, who works incredibly hard and has two very complex kids, was just sharing how dark and hard life had been feeling for him lately. And I said, honestly, I just want to give you a medal. And I grabbed this off my desk and held it up—this silver milagro from Mexico that’s a bleeding heart. It was the closest thing I had to a medal.But I really feel like so many parents who have hard or more complex kids, all they feel is that they’re doing a bad job. They don’t realize that they’re up against something other people are not up against. They don’t realize that because that’s all they know—unless you have one kid that’s not complex and one that is—you just don’t know that you’re working so hard and things are still hard. It feels like you must be doing something wrong or failing. What they don’t realize is that you can do everything “right” in peaceful parenting, and things are still really hard if you’ve got a complex kid.Corey: Yes. And the last thing I want to say to help paint this picture is that these parents—part of what they’re dealing with, and I actually think this is huge—all parents today have a huge amount of family admin: managing appointments and things from the school and all those kinds of things. But that’s this other crushing weight we’re carrying as parents with complex kids: the admin.Sarah: Right.Corey: The amount of communication we have to do with daycare providers and teachers almost every day at points—Sarah: And also the searching. I’ve watched you go through this, and I watched my sister go through this, and countless clients. The searching to try to figure out what exactly is going on with my kid so that I can best support them. And even with the privilege you have and my sister has in terms of being able to access specialists and testing and all of that—even with that privilege—it’s still almost a full-time job. And then getting the OT or the supports too.Corey: Yes. I started for this podcast listing some of the people I’ve had to coordinate with over the years, and I was like: different types of medical doctors, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, psychologists, social workers, dieticians… so many. And just so much coordinating and searching. And the other thing that’s hard is you also then have homework from each of these people. So not only do you have to make appointments and get your children to appointments, you then have to fill out all this paperwork to get reimbursed or get payment sorted. Then there’s all the paperwork they want you to sign for ongoing parts of that. Then they have homework for the kids that they’re supposed to be doing all the time to help them with whatever’s going on. It’s endless.Sarah: Yeah. And then there’s the day-to-day. Tell us—paint a little picture of the day-to-day living. Not only do we have the world that isn’t built for them or for you, and then all of the extra stuff that goes along with having a complex kid, but then the day-to-day life. Speak to that a little bit.Corey: Yeah. I think that’s the thing you just see is so painful to talk about for all the people in our membership and our clients, and I’ve experienced it firsthand. You had children to add love to your family. And then you love them so much and you’re struggling because there’s chronic dysregulation, and they’re having such a hard time getting through your daily routines, and they need more supervision than the average child does. Just getting through the day can be really challenging when you have a complex kid. And then if you yourself are complex, your nervous system is getting completely overwhelmed by trying to be the calm for everyone’s storms.Sarah: It’s a lot, Corey. I understand why you get emotional about it. It’s a lot. And you’re still in the thick of it with two young kids. I think everyone who’s listening to this can relate.Okay. So how and when did you decide that you were going to quit special time, and what does that look like? And—I just want to center us here—the reason why we do special time is for connection, right? Complex kids need connection just as much or more than typical kids. And so just because we’re saying you might want to quit special time, it does not mean we’re saying you want to quit connection. So what does that look like? What have you found? Because I know you’re super connected with your kids. I’ve seen you together. I know the things they say to you and about you, and that you have an awesome connection. So what do you do for connection when special time does not work?Corey: A big thing that I’ve been telling clients and that I’ve done in my life is—first of all, I had to acknowledge to myself, it felt like shame. Because here I am—it’s one of the first things we tell everyone we work with: “Are you getting one-on-one time doing special time with your child?” And then I’m sitting there being like, but I don’t really do this. I get a ton of one-on-one time with my children. And I think that’s at the heart of it. But what I realized is because we’re carrying all those weights we talked about, your whole life feels like it’s all about this kid. And then to be like, “You know what? Let’s make it more about you and give you another 15 minutes,” just feels—I almost felt like I don’t have this in me.So I realized: let’s pick things that we can do together that are interesting for both them and me. Instead of getting locked in their play and being led by them, I’m finding things that we’re co-creating together.Sarah: And can I just note too that you’ve told me—and I know you said you talked about this in another podcast—but I just want to say it again: a lot of times complex kids’ play doesn’t look like typical kids’ play. So you might be like, “What do you want to play?” and they’re like, “I don’t know.” They don’t have the same kind of “Okay, let’s play store and you be this and I’ll be this.” Or they play with their toys in a different manner. So it can also be just awkward to insist that you play with them when that’s not their style anyway. I just wanted to throw that out there.Corey: Yeah. And, or if I did, they’re always telling me I’m doing everything wrong.Sarah: Right. Because I do think that play—I do think that for most kids, even though we’re saying don’t do special time—I do think that for most kids it is important to put yourself in their world. And I don’t want people to think, like, “Okay, this means I never have to try to do special time.” We’re just saying if it’s not working for you for these various reasons—whether it’s because of your own constraints like it was for Joanna, or because it doesn’t work for your kid—it doesn’t mean that you’re doing it wrong and that there’s no way to connect and that you should just give up.But I do think that—just a side note—I’d say the majority of kids, play in their world is the key to a lot of connection. But for some complex kids, that just isn’t their mode. For some of them.Corey: Yeah. Because I think we were coming out of special time feeling angry.Sarah: Right?Corey: Because we were coming out of it like, “I’m trying to get lost in my child’s world,” and he’s just like, “You’re not doing anything right, Mommy.” It was frustrating for him because he had these ideas and he couldn’t really get me to do it right. And I think for some kids that can be really empowering, where they like that feeling of being in control and telling them. But for him it was frustrating because he’s like, “I had this vision, and you are just not executing.” I’m like, “I don’t know, I’m trying to execute your vision.” So I think that’s why for us, I could just tell it wasn’t just me—neither of us were finding it was working.Sarah: But—Corey: We were desperately wanting to be together.Sarah: Okay. So you said “finding,” right? I interrupted you when you were talking about finding things that were co-interests—things that work for both of you, co-creating.Corey: Yes. When they were younger, one of the big things I did was buy myself really special pencil crayons and nice watercolor paints because both of them loved doing art. So I could sit and do art with them and use my fancy coloring books and feel very “we are together doing something” that was making me feel really good, but they also felt really happy, and they loved showing me what they were making.Sarah: And did you let them use your stuff? Because I think that would be really hard for me, because you can’t really be like, “These are my special things, and you use these Crayola ones.” How did you navigate that?Corey: Okay, so that was really hard. This never would work for my husband, so I’m going to acknowledge for some people this wouldn’t work. I let them grab my crayons, and they dropped them a lot. I acknowledged that they were not going to last. But I still wanted good ones available to me. So I had to be flexible. They definitely grabbed them, and the watercolors were wrecked really quickly. But they respected not touching my special brushes for some reason. So I kept my own special brushes for the painting.Sarah: You know, that reminds me—one of our members has a just-newly-3-year-old who’s super complex, and she was talking about how she was doing a jigsaw puzzle, like a proper adult thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. And she was really worried that—since it was on the table in a room where the parents could be—her kid was just going to come in and wreck it. Instead, her child is really good at jigsaw puzzles and is doing them with her. So I think sometimes—she’s totally shocked and thrilled that this has become something—and this is clearly a case of coming into the adult world of a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. You just reminded me—she put a post in our Facebook group about how… I don’t know, did you see that post?Corey: Yeah, I did.Sarah: About how wonderful it’s been to have her just-turned-3-year-old do these adult jigsaw puzzles with her. So that’s a perfect example of what you’re talking about, I think.Corey: I think it’s—so I love what you’re saying here, because we’re always told “go into their world,” but there’s something really powerful about letting them into yours. I didn’t actually realize that’s what I was doing—I’ve been bringing them into my world with me, and then they feel really special being allowed in there with me. And so it creates this really beautiful thing, but I’m flexible about letting them in there, knowing it’s going to look different.Sarah: Right. What are some other things that you’ve done besides art that might be inspiring?Corey: I realized a long time ago I had to let go of the idea that I needed to read really interesting books to my kids so that every night we could look forward to reading beautiful stories that drew me in. We actually realized bedtime has started getting hard again, and we realized it’s because we’re in between books. So that is something—and a shout-out to my mom; she’s really good at researching books—she’s come up with some really cool books that have really diverse characters and really interesting stories. That’s been another really important thing: don’t just read. I’ve picked really good books that draw me in.And so last night we actually just started a favorite series of mine. I kid you not, I’m reading to my 10-year-old a feminist fantasy book that I read when I was a tween. It’s called Dealing with Dragons, and he actually is loving it.Sarah: Nice. So you’re saying—maybe you misspoke—you said you had to give up on reading books that you… beautiful books that you liked. But did you mean that you were finding beautiful books that you liked?Corey: Yeah, sorry, that’s—earlier on I felt like I was just reading, you know, books that I thought they would like.Sarah: Oh, okay.Corey: But instead I was like, “The heck with that,” and I found books that I loved, and I started reading those to my kids. And then they loved them. And then that really got us so excited about bedtime.Sarah: Great, great.Corey: We got through it, and we would read that together, and it became—I actually think reading books that I love to my kids has become one of the most important special times that we have each day.Sarah: So another co-creating—something that’s interesting to both of you. And it’s not necessarily going into their world and reading the Captain Underpants or something that they might like that you find mind-numbingly boring. And maybe Captain Underpants isn’t boring—I’ve never read it—but I’m just using that as an example.Corey: That’s a perfect example. So it’s like, here, I’m providing those books for them to read to themselves for their reading time. Absolutely—read all the Captain Underpants, the Dog Man you would like. But my goodness, when I’m reading to you, I’m picking something. And look, we’ve abandoned lots of books that we started reading that they couldn’t get into. We keep—we just keep trying.Sarah: Okay. What else—what else is next?Corey: Exercise.Sarah: Okay.Corey: I’ve realized exercise for me is the number one way for me to deal with stress. Of all things, I need to exercise to help manage stress. And it’s very hard to fit in exercise when you have complex kids. So from the time they were little, we’ve been very flexible about how we’ve done it. But my husband and I have—once again, instead of picking things they’re naturally into (this is starting to sound really funny)—we just brought them into our exercise with us, and they love it. From the time they were little, we had a balance bike for my littlest guy. He was on that balance bike, and we were riding bikes together.So my littlest one ended up being able to ride a regular bike before he was three.Sarah: Same with Maxine. Those balance bikes are amazing. She just—yeah. It’s crazy.Corey: Yeah. And sometimes—Sarah: Sometimes you’re like, “What have I done?” The 3-year-old is riding off.Corey: It’s true. It was unbelievable, though. So we just rode our bikes together. From the time ours were very little, we had them as little guys on—you can get an attachment to your bike—and my husband put them on his road bike with him and would take them for rides on his road bike.Sarah: There’s also the trailer bike too, which we had, which is good.Corey: So we did that. We had our youngest on skis when he was two. COVID kind of interrupted some of that, but now we ski every weekend with our kids, and we decided to do that instead of putting them into organized sports so that we would all be doing it together.Sarah: Oh, I love that. Instead of dropping them off and they’re playing soccer, you’re all doing stuff together.Corey: Yes.Sarah: I mean, and you could—and, you know, for other families—you could just go and kick the ball. Or I always say, chase your kids around the playground if you feel like you don’t have time to exercise but you need to. It can be that simple, right? Kicking the ball around, chasing them around the playground—get some exercise and have some connection time too.Corey: Yeah. One of the ways we got our one son kind of good at running is taking the kite to the park, and we just ran around with the kite. But we started even going to—and I advised another family to do this—going to a track together, because it’s a contained area where everyone could run at different speeds. And the really little ones were playing on the inside of the track with soccer balls and things like that, and then everyone else could be running around the track.Sarah: Love it.Corey: So getting really creative about literally bringing them into our world of things that we love, and then connecting deeply. And it’s one of those things where it’s an investment you make over time. It starts small, and you have to be really flexible. And there are these little hands grabbing all your fancy pencil crayons, and you’re having to deal with it. And then one day you’re sitting beside them, and they’re using them themselves—drawing works of art.Sarah: Yeah, yeah.Corey: And it’s happening now where my older son and I have been going for runs together around the neighborhood, and we have the best talks ever because I’m sideways listening. We should talk about sideways listening, actually.Sarah: Okay.Corey: So I learned about this from you. You have a great article—I recommend it to everyone—it’s called “Staying Close to Your Tweens and Teens,” and that’s where you talk about how it’s actually easier for people, I think, to have important conversations when you’re side to side, because it’s not that intensity of looking at each other’s faces. This is extra true for neurodivergent people who sometimes have a hard time with eye contact and talking in that way. So we go for these runs together all around our neighborhood, and I hear everything from my son during that time because we’re side by side. So it’s become special time, where it started when I taught him to come into my world with the track running and all the different things, and now that we’re running, he’s bringing me into his world.Sarah: Love it. Do you find that a lot of complex kids have special interests—do you find that there’s a way that you can connect with them over their special interest? Does that feel connecting to you if it’s not something—like, I’m literally just curious about that.Corey: I think that can be tricky, but I do think it’s very important. I’ve learned that I was having a hard time with how much my kids loved video games because I’ve never liked video games. And, you know, as someone with ADHD, it’s so hard to focus on things that I don’t find interesting. And I realized that I’ve spent all this time cultivating bringing them into my world, and we’ve gotten to such a beautiful, connected space that I do need to go into theirs. And now that they’re older, I’m finding it is easier to go into their world, because we’re not trying to make some sort of play thing happen that wasn’t natural.Sarah: Right.Corey: So I have been making a point now of—I’ve sat down and been like, “Show me how to play. I’m a beginner. Teach me how to do this.” And I’ve been playing video games with them. I’m so bad.Sarah: You know, in our podcast with Scott Novus about how to stop fighting with your kids about video games, he says how good it is for kids to see you be bad at something.Corey: They’re seeing it.Sarah: I love that.Corey: I’m so bad. I cannot even a little bit. So they find it very funny. I’ve been playing with them and letting them talk to me about it, and I’ve found that’s been really important too. Because I keep on saying, “Do you see why they love this so much?” And I’m kind of like, yes—and I see what skills you’re learning now that I’ve tried it. It takes so much skill and practice to be good at these complex video games on the Switch and on the PlayStation. So I am learning a lot, and I feel like we are shifting now, where I found a way to connect with them by bringing them along with what I was into, and now that they’re older, we are switching where I’m able to go back into their world.Sarah: Right. Love it. So we also—you know, I think delighting is something that probably you still do, and we always talk about that as the low-hanging fruit. If you can’t do special time or it doesn’t work for you, delighting in your child throughout the day—letting the love that you feel in your heart show on your face, right? And then finally, you talked about using routine—the things that you do throughout the day—as connection. Can you talk about that a little bit before we go?Corey: Yes. So this is where long-time listeners of our podcast know that although special time is a big fail for us, I’m really good at being silly with my kids. Really good at being silly. And I’m very inspired listening to Mia from Playful Heart—Playful Heart Parenting. I think I told you, listening to her talk, it was like the first time I heard someone talking about exactly how I do playful parenting. And it’s just injecting play and silliness and drama throughout your everyday things you’re doing together. And so we do that all the time to get through the schedule. Especially now, my 10-year-old is starting to act a little too cool for some of this, but it’s still really happening with my 7-year-old, where we’re always singing weird songs about what we’re doing, and I’ll take on weird accents and be my characters. I’m not going to demonstrate them here—it’s far too embarrassing—but I still have my long-running characters I can’t get over.Sarah: You’ve got, like, the dental hygienist—what’s her name?Corey: Karen. Karen the dental hygienist.Sarah: What’s the bus driver’s name?Corey: I have Brett the bus driver. We have “Deep Breath,” who’s like a yogi who comes in when everyone needs to take deep breaths. There’s—oh, her name’s So? I’m not sure why. So is the dresser who’s really serious and doesn’t know how to smile. So if my kids ever need help—this has also been a big way that I delight in them, I think—if they ever need help getting dressed (which complex kids need help getting dressed for a long—)Sarah: And even body doubling when they don’t need help getting dressed, right?Corey: Yes. So I would always pretend to be a dresser who was sent in to get them dressed in their clothes, and they didn’t know how to smile. So they’re always trying to teach me how to smile when I’m keeping a serious face. And actually, recently I was doing this and I was having such a hard time not laughing that my lips started visibly quivering trying not to smile and laugh.Sarah: I love that.Corey: I think it was the hardest I’ve ever seen my 7-year-old laugh. He was on the floor laughing because I was like—Sarah: And for anyone who this sounds hard for—just, you know, it takes practice, and anyone, I think, can learn to be playful. And I love Mia’s account—we’ll link to that in the show notes. I love Mia’s account for ideas just to get you started, because I know you—you’re a drama kid. I’m not. But I still found ways to get playful even though it’s not my natural instinct. And so you can—this way of getting playful and connecting through the day and through your daily routine—you can do that. It’ll take maybe a little practice; you might feel funny at first. But I think it’s possible for everyone to do that.So thank you so much. We have to wrap up, but I also want to point out that anyone who wants to connect with you, reach out to us. Corey’s available for coaching. She’s a wonderful coach. And I have people who specifically ask for Corey because they can relate to Corey’s experience as a parent of complex kids. And so, on our website, reimaginepeacefulparenting.com, there is a booking link for a free short consult or for a coaching session. We’ll also put that in the show notes. So if you want some more support, please reach out to us. Either of us are here and want to help you.And, Corey, thank you for your honesty and vulnerability—vulnerability about being a parent of a complex kid and sharing how you can do that connection, even if it feels like special time is just too hard and something that doesn’t work for you or for your kid. And thanks to Joanna for also inspiring us to get this out there to you all.Corey, before I let you go, I’m going to ask the question I ask all my guests, which is: what would you tell your—you had a time machine and you could go back in time—what would you tell your younger parent self?Corey: Okay.Sarah: About parenting? What do you wish you knew?Corey: I think what I wish I knew—I think this is easier than I thought it would be, because I just told my best friend who just had a baby this—and it’s: trust your intuition. I think I spent so much time looking for answers outside of myself, and I could feel they weren’t right for my kid or for me, that I was so confused because other people were telling me, “This is what you should be doing.” And the more I’ve learned to trust my gut instinct and just connect deeply—and this special time example is perfect—I knew it wasn’t working for us, and I intuitively knew other ways to do it. And I wish I could have just trusted that earlier.Sarah: And stopped doing it sooner and just gone with the other connection ideas. Yeah. Thank you so much, Corey. This has been so great. And, again, we’ll put the link to anyone who wants to book a free short consult or coaching session, and also to our membership, which you’ve heard us mention a few times, which is just a wonderful space on the internet for people who want some community and support with their complex kid.Thanks, Corey.Corey: Thank you.>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the spring for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. 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