Parenting With Presence

Parenting isn’t easy. Showing up is. You don't need to be perfect. Discover the building blocks of healthy development of the 4 S's: feeling safe, seen, soothed, and secure. One of the best scientific predictors for how any child turns out - in terms of happiness, academic success, leadership skills, and meaningful relationships - is whether at least one adult in their life consistently shown up for them. Also, the importance of parental regulation and repair after ruptures.

Transcript

I am Anna Siwold and this is Authentic Parenting,

A podcast about personal development in the context of parenting,

Where I explore how you can find more calm connection and join parenting through the process of self-discovery and inner growth with a trauma informed lens.

I'm a parent educator and my mission is to help children by helping parents.

The motto of this podcast is raising our children,

Growing ourselves.

Today,

A must listen interview with an incredible guest.

How parental presence shapes who our kids become and how their brains get wired.

We are talking about the power of showing up.

What do children really need from the adults in their lives?

It turns out parents don't have to be perfect in case you didn't know that.

They don't have to have all the answers or be able to fix things they can't control.

Instead,

All they have to do in those difficult moments is to simply show up.

You might have guessed who my guest is for today.

He's the co-author of a very timely,

Relevant and essential book every parent should read called The Power of Showing Up.

How parental presence shapes who our kids become and how their brains get wired.

It's Dr.

Dan Siegel.

You may recall my conversation with his co-author Tina Payne Bryson back in the beginning of the pandemic.

It's a really valuable interview and it's episode 223,

Parenting in Quarantine.

I highly encourage you to check it out.

Together these two are a powerhouse.

They have written four amazing parenting books rooted in attachment research and highly practical.

The Whole Brain Child,

The No Drama Discipline,

The Yes Brain and the latest book,

The Power of Showing Up.

Dr.

Dan Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA.

He's also the executive director of the Mindsight Institute,

Which focuses on the development of mindsight,

Teaches insight,

Empathy,

And integration in individuals,

Families,

And communities.

Dr.

Siegel has published extensively for both the professional and lay audiences.

He has several New York Times bestsellers and his books include,

Aware,

The Science and Practice of Presence,

Mind,

A Journey to the Heart of Being Human,

Brainstorm,

The Power and Purpose of Teenage Brain,

The books that I mentioned with Tina Payne Bryson and other books,

The Developing Mind,

The Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology,

Mindsight,

The Mindful Brain and The Mindful Therapist.

Please enjoy this fantastic conversation with Dr.

Dan Siegel.

Well Dr.

Siegel,

Welcome to Authentic Parenting.

Thank you for having me on.

It's great to be here.

I am so delighted and honored that you are my first interview of the 2021.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year to you as well.

Since the pandemic started,

I've been asking one question to all of the guests and I want to start this interview with that question.

And the pandemic hasn't ended yet,

Right?

How have you personally coped with this experience?

What it's been like for you?

How have you been challenged?

What was your experience with this pandemic?

Wow.

Well,

That's a big question and I would just start with saying that feeling the suffering of so many people in the world,

How to hold that in mind.

And when I say mind,

I mean the head,

The heart,

The hands,

You know,

How to be of service,

How to feel things,

How to think about things has been the biggest challenge.

And at the same time,

Really trying to be of service,

Also trying to take care of my family,

You know,

Which includes my 91 year old mom.

So she's isolated by herself.

She's wants to be independent,

Likes to be independent,

Lives on her own.

And yet she's isolated.

So to make sure relationships are a part of her life and we don't spread the virus,

It's been,

You know,

A challenge I think for everyone it is.

And so that's been something our two kids are adults.

So they're out with their partners in the world and we try to maintain our connections with them as best we can and really try to navigate when it's safe or not safe to be physically close to them.

So we try not to socially distance while we are physically distancing.

And for me personally,

You know,

I've been doing very regular meditation every day and exercise,

Physical exercise and trying to prioritize sleep and eating well.

So we've been cooking a lot and you know,

I've had a bunch of projects that have kept me focused and yeah,

So I mean,

Fortunately we are personally doing well dealing with different losses over these months.

Like many have,

You know,

Just trying to maintain a sense of hope and energy and optimism.

And you know,

I think really taking into the saying,

You know,

Into our life,

The saying,

You know,

When you feel helpless,

The best thing to do is to be of help.

So we're really trying at our Institute to provide services for people to build resilience and wellbeing.

So that's,

I guess,

In a nutshell,

How we've been doing.

What have you missed the most?

You know,

I think I've missed the most,

The sense of ease in being with people.

Everyone is very tense and the news doesn't seem to get better,

You know,

Even now with the vaccine and all the information coming out.

So you know,

How do I think I missed that feeling of ease where you could just feel the breeze and watch the sunset and not worry about too many things.

But instead,

Of course,

Everyone's masked up and looking terrified and looking terrified of each other.

And so I think I missed the social ease that we used to feel in our community.

Yeah,

I can relate to that too.

I think that's the most I miss.

And I sense that it's increasing in me,

Even if this is over one day,

I feel like it's going to take a while to readjust to being with people without fear or that sense of alarm even.

Some people are very alarmed.

Yeah,

Exactly.

How has it been for you this time?

Very similar to your experience.

You know,

We've been,

It's been very difficult for my daughter.

She's in seventh grade,

Especially with the virtual school,

Extremely challenging.

She cannot adjust or even like one aspect of virtual learning.

I had a conversation this morning and I said,

If you had a magic wand,

How would you make this experience a little better?

And things like that.

And she says,

Mom,

I just hate virtual learning.

It just doesn't work.

Stop being positive.

And so it's been challenging for her.

And because of that,

We've been challenged as parents and pushed to the capacitance of our nervous system and patients and all the limits that we had.

The things that I have said and done during this pandemic as a parent,

I am even ashamed to acknowledge.

There was a post recently on Facebook.

It said,

Forgive yourself for the things you did or said during the pandemic.

And you know,

It's just summarized,

It's very well what most parents of school-age children probably felt.

Yeah,

I can relate to that.

I have neighbors,

We don't have little kids at home,

But we have neighbors with children the same age and they're facing many of those things.

And we talk about it a lot.

It's a huge,

Huge pressure,

I think,

On parents to try to maintain a positive stance like you do and also try to be helpful in tuning in.

We can talk about some of that in terms of showing up for our kids and also showing up for ourselves,

To really take care of yourself in some of these ways we're talking about,

You know,

Exercising,

Meditating as best you can,

Even if it's a few minutes a day,

Taking that special time to take care of yourself is really,

Really important.

Yes.

I think this book is so timely.

And I had Tina Bryson on the podcast in March,

I believe,

And it was the beginning of the pandemic.

And I'm glad I'm speaking with you today as things have shifted,

But not quite.

I have been practicing a lot of showing up for myself,

Unfortunately,

I think due to trauma history,

My own activation and trying all the tools that we know that you highlight in your books that I know as a parent educator,

At some point you just give up and resort to the things that you know very well are not going to be helpful.

And of course,

As you very well suggest in your books,

We've done a lot of repair this year.

Good.

Well,

Repair is the most important part of parenting in many ways,

Because if you think there's something called perfect parenting,

You're going to be very disappointed in yourself when in fact there isn't perfect parenting,

There's just being present for parenting and making repairs when the inevitable ruptures happen.

And I think part of why in all the parenting books I write,

Including the ones I write with Tina Bryson,

There's always a statement about how we've messed up in our parenting so people can realize that there's no such thing as perfection.

There's just showing up.

Yes.

So from all the books that you have written on parenting,

The No Drama Discipline,

The Yes Brain,

My favorite,

The Whole Brain Child,

Parenting Inside Out and the Showing Up,

Which one to the best of your knowledge has had the most impact in the world or feedback or landed in some surprising way?

Yeah.

Well,

That's an interesting question.

I think the power of showing up,

The one with the paperback just came out,

Has a really,

I think,

Inviting way of sharing with parents what the science of attachment is and really emphasizing this point we're making that there's no such thing as perfection.

There's just showing up and then it teaches you the ways that you can show up and the ways that showing up actually helps a child's development.

So I think showing up has been the power of showing up has been just an exciting building on some of the things Tina Payne Bryson and I have written before.

Yes Brain,

No Drama Discipline and the one you liked,

The Whole Brain Child.

All of those books in many ways,

They work together as a team and they build on a book I wrote with my daughter's preschool director,

Mary Hartzell called the one you mentioned,

Parenting from the Inside Out.

And that also has a different take on how to apply attachment by understanding your own attachment history.

So in The Power of Showing Up,

We build on what's in the Inside Out book to say,

Okay,

Well,

This is now how you can interact with your child to build secure attachment in them.

In Parenting from the Inside Out,

What Mary and I did was show you how you can reflect on your own experiences when you were a kid.

And even though you can't change what those experiences were,

They were in the past,

You can change how you make sense of them now,

How they've impacted you.

And that's what people are sometimes very surprised about.

Like why would I bother looking at the past if I can't change the past?

Well,

The reason to bother is that when you've made sense of things that didn't make sense before,

It frees you to be more present and show up for your child now.

Yeah.

I've been reading the book by Edith Eger,

The Gift.

I just finished it.

I'm not sure if you read that book and she talks about making sense of our story a lot as an A.

S.

H.

U.

I.

T.

Survivor.

Really powerful story and she's an incredible human being.

So the power of showing up,

What does showing up mean?

It seems like we do know what it means,

But I would love for you to still define and say what it means to truly show up for our kids.

Yeah.

It really just apparent that a comment about why Tina and I chose that name of the book.

There's a whole science that I write about in a science book called The Developing Mind that essentially reviews all the different sciences that relate to how we develop.

And what came out of that scientific review was a really kind of amazing finding was that no matter how you look at the science,

Parental presence is really what facilitates a child growing well.

And presence means how we as a mother or father are actually there.

And this is where Tina and I came up with the word show up,

That you're there.

Presence means you are there in your awareness and attention.

You're there physically,

Not all the time,

But when you're there,

You are showing up for emotional communication that is real,

That is about authentic ways of being in the world.

That's really tuning into what a child may be fearful of or excited about,

What's going on in their sensory world right now or what they're remembering or what they're fearing for the future.

And so in all those ways,

There's a deep communication that happens between the parent and the child that allows the child to have the experience of feeling felt.

They feel in that moment when they're with you as a mom or dad that literally you're showing up,

That you are there for them,

That they exist within your mind.

And I don't distinguish heart from mind.

What I mean by mind is your subjective experience.

You feel the sense of your child's experience in the inside out,

Basically,

Not just their behavior,

But what they're going through.

That's what showing up means is being present in all these ways,

Tuning in,

Connecting,

Being available,

Being able to be there when it's uncomfortable,

Like your child is really upset or maybe you've messed up and you show up and say,

I'm sorry,

I messed up.

Or if your child's upset,

Instead of running away or telling them not to cry,

You're actually there and say,

Tell me more about that.

And the prerequisite for that is the parental well-being,

Parental,

The parents being well resourced internally,

Right?

Having made sense of their story and all of those things because someone can theoretically know that this is important,

But I know in our community,

A lot of people truly have a hard time showing up.

Some people during discipline,

Some people during emotional moments.

I think many people get really triggered because of their own history.

I'm wondering if you could talk about the parental regulation just a little bit and how it affects all of those moments in how we show up.

Well Anna,

That is so powerfully said.

So let's just take a pause and really think about how you've beautifully worded that.

When you say,

Yeah,

If we're not internally resourced,

Then it's hard to show up.

So let's really dive deeply into that because that's at the heart of the whole issue of showing up.

So let's say if I'm holding some kind of way where my mother,

I don't know,

Let me make something up.

My mother didn't see me or what was more devoted to my brother or something like that and I felt really invisible,

Right?

So then now if I haven't made sense of that in my life,

If I haven't developed what's called a coherent narrative,

So I'm blocked in my capacity to show up because at the moment,

Let's say interacting with my child,

Let's say she's focusing more on my wife or mom than me and I feel invisible,

Right?

So that will trigger in my nervous system what's called a reactive state.

So the brain and the whole body,

I call it the embodied brain,

The whole your nervous system can be either reactive or receptive and internal resourcing,

The beautiful phrase you're using,

Really means a receptive state that's filled with resilience versus easily being triggered and becoming reactive.

And when we become reactive,

We can fight,

We can flee,

We can freeze and we can even collapse in a faint.

Those are four Fs of reactivity that are the opposite of showing up,

That the opposite of being receptive.

So the internal resource for me that you're so beautifully talking about is saying,

Look,

I know I have a trigger point.

Mary Hartson and I call that a hot button where when I'm ignored,

I feel invisible because of my child's experiences,

I can tend to get reactive.

So I show up for myself.

I internally resources,

Maybe I'm journaling about that,

About what it was like to be with my mom who ignored me,

But paid attention to my brother.

And then when I notice I get triggered,

I do my own internal work.

So instead of just getting in a fighting mode and yelling and screaming or running away or pouting or whatever I might do,

I can feel the discomfort of being ignored and I can address it and say,

I know this is going on with mom right now.

It'd be really good if we could all talk about whatever,

What game we play tonight or something like that.

And what might seem like a minor thing is I can just stay present with that.

It doesn't mean I say to my daughter,

I need to tell you deeply about how your grandmother was really not very fair to me.

That I do with my therapist or my own journal.

So it means I can be internally resourced,

Stay receptive,

Even with the minor things and certainly with the big things that might throw me into a reactive versus receptive state.

And when Tina and I wrote the book Yes Brain,

It was to give parents a direct experience of knowing the difference between receptivity,

That's the yes state,

And reactivity,

That's the no brain state,

Meaning if you say no really harshly several times,

You can activate this fight,

Flight,

Freeze or faint reaction versus yes saying yes,

Yes,

Yes,

You get into this receptive state.

So showing up is saying,

Get yourself to a receptive state and now be present,

Attuned so you can resonate and develop trust between your child and yourself.

Yes,

In the book you talk about the four S's.

I am wondering if you could talk about the two of the S's in depth today.

Not that the other two are not important,

But I want the listener to get the book first and foremost to study and learn on their own.

Second,

I want to be respectful of your time.

I don't want to keep you forever here.

And the two that I have selected are safety and soothe.

So let's start with safety.

What does safety mean?

Are we talking about physical safety?

And then I have some other questions.

Yeah,

So let's start with safety.

And again,

These things we come up with are all,

The science of them are all deeply studied and reviewed in a book called The Developing Mind.

So when you take the science and say,

Well,

What does safety have to do with anything?

And then here's the answer.

It has to do with everything.

And in fact,

That's part of what makes the pandemic so hard is when we feel unsafe,

We get reactive,

We go into survival mode.

And that's very understandable.

When we're threatened and we don't feel safe,

Literally our brain in our head activates a whole particular system of how to do that.

Now some people react to a lack of safety in one way.

They may get really frightened.

Other people may get really angry.

Other people may get really sad.

We have different temperaments,

So we may react differently.

But the overall idea is that for a young child,

Our job is their attachment figure,

Which means the caregiver.

Often it's the parent,

But in human beings,

We have more than just the parent.

That's the attachment figure.

So we need to recognize that in something called ALLO parenting.

A-L-L-O means other.

So safety is basically what attachment is all about.

So I'm glad you're starting with this,

Anna,

Because safety is the bedrock of what a child needs from us.

So yes,

It's physical safety for sure.

Our job is to keep our children physically safe,

Keep their bodies from harm.

And here's the other thing it also is.

It's emotional safety.

And what that means is,

Let's say I've had a really bad day and I come home screaming at the top of my lungs.

Even if I'm not screaming at my daughter or my son,

I'm scaring them because I've kind of lost my mind.

I'm really agitated.

Not at them.

It's something that happened at work or in politics or whatever.

So I'm screaming,

Screaming,

Screaming.

Now it's one thing to express an emotion like anger or a sense of disappointment in the world or whatever.

That's fine.

But when I'm expressing something so intensely that it actually terrifies my child,

This is what we mean by emotional unsafety.

They're not emotionally safe.

Now I can make a repair and that's something I should do.

Let's say I come home,

I'm agitated at work,

And my daughter hasn't done her homework or my son hasn't cleaned up his room or whatever.

I can now scream at the top of my lungs at them.

So now I am terrifying them.

Now you can say,

Yeah,

But you're not hitting them.

That's really terrible to hit them.

I go,

Yes,

Hitting them is bad.

The research shows there really isn't anything good that comes when you hit your child.

It's a bad thing to do.

It's bad for them.

It's bad for you.

It's not helpful.

And it usually shows you don't have any other effective strategies.

So you need some help building strategies.

So I'm not hitting them,

Yes,

But I'm yelling at them.

And that's another way of them not being safe because the terror they feel is what colleagues of mine in the field called fright without solution.

Now why is it without solution?

Here's why.

If you go inside the brain of the child,

The deepest part of the brain says,

I'm being terrified right now.

I need to get away from the source of terror.

Okay,

Well that makes sense.

Terrified of a barking dog.

I run away from the dog.

Terrified of a scary movie on TV.

I run away from the TV.

Fine.

That's pretty straightforward.

Here's the problem.

When the attachment figure is the source of terror,

There's a higher part of the brain in a child that says,

I'm scared.

I should go to my attachment figure to be protected because that's the most foundational role you play with your child.

So if you are,

Even unintentionally,

If you are scaring your child,

One part of their brain says,

Get away from you because you're the source of the scaring.

The second part of their brain at the same time says,

Go toward you.

So their brain fragments because one part says,

Go toward you.

The other part says,

Go away from you.

They have one body.

There's no solution.

So this is called,

In our world,

Disorganized attachment.

And it has the most challenging outcomes for a child because they have what's called dissociation.

They literally have a fragmentation of their mind.

And it's healable,

But it's a serious condition that can be prevented.

So that safety is a great one to start with,

Anna,

Because yes,

Of course,

We want to keep our kids physically safe.

But especially during a pandemic,

We are what's classically called flipping your lid.

You are flying off the handle.

You are becoming unintegrated is the way I would say it,

Where your behaviors are either chaotic or rigid.

But in whatever way,

They become really terrifying to your child.

And a state of terror induced in a child caused by the parent is the cause of disorganized attachment.

And you can prevent that.

You really can.

So safety needs to be repaired if it's ruptured.

And it is the most concerning one because the most disabling form of attachment that's not secure is called disorganized.

And so this is a great one to start with.

And so it is more than just keeping kids physically safe.

It's really showing up and understanding when we ourselves are in a reactive state,

Doing things that are terrifying to our kids,

And then making repair.

If we have done that and trying to reduce the frequency at which they happen,

The intensity of which they happen,

And the duration at which they happen,

But realizing it is significant if you are repeatedly terrifying your child,

Even if you're not touching them.

Emotionally terrifying them is a fragmenting negative impact on your child.

And so doing the inner work to say,

Why am I flipping out?

What is going on?

I need to actually find a way to keep my child emotionally safe.

Yes.

I was working with one dad.

I teach court ordered parenting classes and co-parenting therapy.

I do.

And most of my clients are dads because they're the ones who are mandated by the court to take parenting classes usually.

And one of the dads was confessing that he hits the child and he has temper and all of that.

And he was feeling bad and he needed new strategies and he wanted to work on himself.

But before he got to that point of recognizing that this is harmful,

He was justifying basically his actions and his behaviors.

And I just had to pause and ask him,

I said,

What if somebody treated your child the way you do?

Like,

What would you do to that person?

And he looked at me with such anger and said,

Are you kidding me?

And,

You know,

And he became very angry.

It's like,

It's a perspective shift,

Right?

We would never allow other people to treat our children the way we treat our children ourselves.

Exactly.

It's just so startling sometimes.

Right?

Well,

That's a great example of not showing up.

You know,

When you're there physically and emotionally tormenting your child,

You're not showing up.

You are dumping on them unresolved stuff usually from your own past.

And your question is so brilliant,

Anna,

Because,

You know,

When that father could try out looking from a distance at his child,

Being treated by another person like he treats his child,

I assume he wasn't angry at you,

But he was angry at the person you were imagining.

Yeah.

And this is where,

And this is hard to say,

But parents have also this process of dissociation.

So they can fragment their minds and a part of their mind can feel justified in yelling and screaming at their child.

Partly it could be,

Oh,

They were yelled at and screamed at so they think it's the norm.

But even more than that,

In that alternate state of mind,

They actually rationalize,

Many parents do,

Why what they're doing is good.

Why the way they're doing is okay.

Teach their child a lesson the child deserved,

Things like this that are absolutely irrational.

And if they thought of another person doing it,

They would actually go after that person.

But here they are in an alternate state.

So that's the problem is that when most parents are doing actions like that,

They're in a different state of mind than when they're calm and you ask them,

What would you do if someone else is doing that?

You know,

They're in a different state of mind,

So they don't even see that because the mind has these state dependent ways of acting and we have to have a kind of a deeper perspective.

So to make sense of that,

You need to understand how the brain gets into these very specific states and understanding how your own history may have made you vulnerable to these terrifying states to your child is essential for your child's wellbeing.

Yes.

What other ways parents might not be protecting their children besides the ones that you mentioned?

Well,

You know,

This is a little different than causing disorganized attachment,

But there is a way where kids may feel like their inner life is not being,

This is the S you don't want to talk about,

Or it wasn't on our list,

Of not being seen.

And so in that way they can start feeling like they're invisible,

But it's also a form of lack of safety.

If I come to my parents and say,

Oh,

I'm feeling really scared of this,

They go,

No,

You're not.

No,

You're not.

Pretty soon you can get terrified that the actual experience you're having is being treated as if it doesn't exist.

And you can be obliterated that way.

One of the emotions that sadly come up in that situation is shame,

Where a child,

Different from guilt,

Where you feel like a child may feel like,

Oh,

I did something wrong.

I'm going to correct my behavior.

With this kind of lack of safety,

The feeling of shame comes up and shame is not that I've done something wrong.

It's I am wrong.

And in being a defective piece of garbage,

It's so painful because it's so,

I'm helpless.

There's nothing I could do.

It's not about changing my behavior.

It's just who I am.

So when parents sadly do things that have a child feel shame,

Not just,

Oh,

You shouldn't hit your brother.

That's a bad thing to do.

And okay,

I won't hit my brother anymore.

That's guilt.

But a deep kind of shame where a child doesn't feel seen and is made to feel terrible about who they are,

They carry that with them and it goes underground.

And when it travels through adolescence and adulthood,

And then we ourselves become parents,

That shame can be triggered.

So that,

You know,

In that case of,

I was talking about a father feeling invisible,

Not only just being irritated that my daughter's paying more attention to my wife,

But I might start feeling shame.

Like this is revealing how really invisible and deserving of invisibility and how bad I am and I'm not lovable.

All of these things go along with shame.

So I then react to that with fury toward my daughter.

And this is,

You know,

You can see this in parents,

You can see this in politicians,

You can see this in all sorts of people in the world.

And when that behavior takes over,

It obviously can become very intense and frightening for everyone around it because it's a,

As a child,

Of course,

It's like,

This is your whole world.

And the parent acts with such fury and focus and they're not open to reasoning in that shame state.

Yeah.

And that's what trauma can do to people.

And if they don't do their inner work and they start shoving that onto their children,

You know,

Then it's this cross-generational passage of this behavior that is so unhelpful.

Yes.

Can you share some strategies?

You have in the book very well outlined strategies that promote feelings of safety.

And particularly,

I want to talk about the repair,

Repair,

Repair one.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean,

There,

The idea is that,

Okay,

You know,

None of us are perfect.

There's no such thing as perfection.

It's just about being present as a parent.

So showing up,

You know,

And so if you do something that scares your kid,

Which I've done and maybe you've done Anna.

Many times.

Yeah.

You don't know what I did yesterday,

So I don't even want to,

I hit the rock bottom of my parenting.

I ran out,

You know,

I used the strategies that I would never use.

Yes.

Okay.

Well,

We've all done that.

So I'm not going to ask you to give us the details unless you want to,

But we've all done that.

And in the books I write,

You know,

When my kids got older and they saw what I was writing in the books about how I would really do inappropriate things,

They go,

What's wrong with you that you would make that public.

You look like such a jerk.

And I said,

Yeah,

I'm putting this in these books because I want people to know that even if you study this stuff,

I'm an attachment scientist,

You do therapy,

You know,

I'm a therapist,

You know,

You are still prone to being a human being amazingly and you can mess up.

And so the idea is repair.

And I would say to my daughter and my son,

You know,

You guys are just fantastic at,

You know,

Articulating yourselves.

So I,

If it's okay with you,

I'm going to write this.

So when they were younger,

They said it was okay.

When they got a little older,

They said,

You can no longer write about us.

And I said,

Okay,

Okay,

Okay.

And then Tina was able to write about her kids.

So that was very helpful to have her then become my coauthor.

And so,

But so the issue is repair.

So the idea,

Let's say I'm a person with shame and I've done the inevitable thing that most parents,

I've met a couple of parents who haven't done these things,

But they're very rare and usually there's some other issue going on.

Like they're very emotionally on present anyway.

So they just never get emotional about anything and that's got its own problems.

But for the most part,

Most parents flip out sometime and do things that are scary for their kids for sure.

So if part of that action is filled with shame,

You yourself may get so angry at yourself say,

Oh,

Look what a piece of garbage you are,

That you don't have the inner resources that you referred to,

To get present,

To show up and say,

I'm sorry,

What I did was wrong.

Because when you say,

Well,

I'm sorry,

What I did was wrong.

It unveils a deep sense of pain you have about your own shame that you're not lovable,

That you're a piece of garbage.

And so you don't even want to bring that up.

So ironically,

The deeper the shame,

The more likely it is you'll make a repair and that will induce more terror in your child and more shame in them.

So this is where you see cross-generational passage when parents aren't showing up.

It can lead to kids not being able to show up even for themselves.

So the repair process sometimes begins with the inner work of saying,

Okay,

I see shame isn't an accurate belief I'm defective.

It's a developmental acquisition at a moment when I was not being seen and maybe I was unsafe,

Maybe I wasn't being soothed.

And I felt the reason I wasn't getting what I needed was there was something wrong with me.

So instead of going and losing my mind because my parents weren't reliable,

I said,

Oh,

My parents are reliable.

The reason they don't give me what I need is because I'm a piece of junk.

So that's kind of the developmental equation for shame.

And so once I got to realize that,

Then I can say,

Okay,

All right,

I reacted in this way,

I need to go back and say,

I'm human.

That's what making ruptures means.

You're human.

Doesn't mean you're defective.

It means you're human.

And then you go,

Okay,

And then I show up and then I reconnect with my kid and tell them,

You know,

Let's talk about what happened because I think what I did was really not right and it may have terrified you.

What was it like when I was screaming at the top of my lungs and telling you,

You're not going to have your guitar for two years or whatever,

You know,

And that's the most important thing in your life or things that I've done,

You know,

You know,

What,

What do you,

What did you feel?

And then you talk about it.

And in my kid's case,

They had this incredible skill of,

You know,

Loving way,

But kind of painful,

But I had to take it.

They could say,

Yeah,

This is what you did.

And they would act like me to show me what I was like.

Cause I said,

Well,

How did it feel?

And they said,

This is how it felt.

And then they would show me and it was really quite accurate and painful to see how excellent they were at mimicking my outrageously inappropriate behavior.

And and then we can work it through and you know,

And I would work on the issue.

And in the book Mindsight,

I actually talk about one incident in a chapter called crepes of wrath started a crepe store,

But you'll see the whole sequence of,

You know,

A lovely interaction going to a crepe store that turns into a disaster.

And then going for a rollerblading time with my daughter who then says,

You know,

What was going on?

And I tried to explain the issue of my brother's relationship with me and how it related to her to brother,

Relationship with her brother.

And then she goes,

Why don't you figure this out on your own time?

So that brings me to a question that I'm dying to ask you.

Is there a degree to which a parent can overdo the repair process?

Is there that the child can view it as my parent is weak,

My parent is not even a good parent,

My parent is not a confident parent.

I'm wondering if you can speak about this.

Does this give us permission to mess up all the time knowing that we're going to repair?

Can it trivialize this process?

Yeah,

I mean,

I think that's a,

Those are great set of questions,

Anna.

So let's just say that if the repair process makes you think you have no work to do and you can keep on terrifying your kids cause you can always repair,

Then that's,

That's a problem for sure.

Right?

So I w I w I think it's great that you're bringing that up.

So no,

It isn't like,

Oh,

Keep on doing this cause you can always make a repair.

No.

The idea is that things will inevitably happen.

You should try to reduce their frequency and all those things you mentioned.

And so here's what I'm,

I want to share with you.

The idea of a,

Is this a weakness?

There's a word called mind sight,

Which is the ability to see the minds,

Feelings and thoughts and memories and stuff like that.

There are mind sight skills of insight and empathy that children can learn from their parents.

Now,

When I,

We,

When my wife and I were raising our kids,

Our friends in the children group,

We would have,

They would say,

I talk too much to my kids about their feelings.

Now I'm a psychiatrist,

So I would look at them and go,

What did you just say?

They said,

You talk too much to your kids about our feelings.

Well,

There was this moment when our oldest kids were getting ready to go to high school.

And one of them,

His parents really never talked about his feelings,

But they told them what to do and how important was to achieve.

And when he ultimately went to college and our son went to college,

The difference between the two of them was so stark that when their son got lost,

Cause he had no idea what his feelings were,

His thoughts,

What had meaning to him,

His personal sense of an inner compass that could guide him on his way,

Which our son had,

Because those are mind sight skills,

Their son didn't have them at all.

And that those parents came and said,

You know,

We really made a mistake because now our son's off of college.

She's completely lost.

He knew how to do what we told him to do,

To build his resume,

To go to college and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

But he doesn't know idea who he is.

And so as he's trying to make decisions and we're not making them for him anymore,

He doesn't know what to do.

But look at your son.

He's got this inner guide that stays with him forever,

Even when you're not there.

So that set of experiences told me that even though some parents may say,

Oh,

You're talking too much to your kid about making repairs or things like that.

I don't see it that way.

The research is very clear.

Parents who make repairs have parents who are parents who are able to help them have security and secure attachment is the bedrock for building resilience.

Now part of that is the soothing.

That was the second S you wanted to talk about.

When you're distressed and your parent sees you,

Even if there's been a repair,

I mean a rupture before the repair,

The parent then wakes up from their reverie of anger that they're going through and says to you,

Whoa,

Whoa,

Whoa,

Whoa,

Whoa,

Let's talk about what just happened because I don't think I should have been yelling like that or giving you a time out for two years or something.

So let's talk about it because,

Well,

You're such a jerk for doing anything like that.

And you say,

Well,

You don't need to call me a jerk,

But I appreciate what I did was very jerk-like and you're right.

And let's talk about how you feel.

So then you are showing up as a parent for the repair.

And the soothing part is that instead of being alone in despair,

What the repair does,

It makes a bridge that links the two of you as a we,

Because all these ruptures we're talking about,

They separate us from being a we.

It's your kid and you,

And that's your kid versus you.

And we're not even talking about adolescence,

Which I talk about in the book Brainstorm,

But that's a whole different level of potential fiery stuff going on.

But you have a seventh grader,

So you know what I'm talking about.

So the big challenge for soothing is,

Do you have the inner resources to show up so that you can tune into what your child's experiencing?

Let them feel a part of a we.

And in doing that,

Whatever the emotion is,

Terror,

Sadness,

Disappointment,

This feeling of anger,

All the basic emotions we might feel,

Including shame,

If we're not able to feel those,

Then when our child has those emotions and is wrestling with them inside of her or himself,

When they're trying to share them,

We just either ignore them or deny them or in other ways get distressed by them.

And our child learns,

Wow,

If I show sadness,

My father freaks out.

So I think I'm going to learn not to show sadness.

And if after a while you can't show those feelings,

Then you kind of don't even show them to yourself.

So soothing is also a really important S,

Where it basically means if I'm the child,

I'm in a state at this moment that's really,

Really uncomfortable.

I'm in a state of distress.

It could be any of these emotions or others that we're talking about.

And in that state of distress,

I'm really suffering.

And soothing means a parent shows up,

Notices the suffering,

In their mind says,

What can I do to help reduce that suffering?

And then takes action to reduce the suffering.

It might be just sitting with you if you didn't get accepted into a play you were auditioning for.

Maybe that was hard,

Let's talk about it.

Or it could be problem solving.

Or it could be just getting at your child's level and tuning into the feelings they're having,

So you don't feel alone.

And just exploring whatever those feelings are,

Not trying to get rid of the feelings or solve the emotional equation,

Just exploring what is.

So I have an acronym part,

Which is be present.

That's the showing up aspect.

A tune,

Meaning tune your attention into the internal experience of your child with a lot of curiosity and openness.

So P-A is a tune,

R is resonate.

Let yourself feel what your child is feeling inside of you.

You don't have to become them.

Like if they fall down and hurt their knee,

Run up to them on the sidewalk where they fell down and you fall down and you grab your knee and go,

Oh my God,

My knee.

No,

That would be mirroring.

This isn't mirroring,

It's resonating.

You can feel their fear of falling,

That they're bleeding from their knee.

And now you hold that inside of your change because of it.

And the T of parts of presence,

Attunement,

Resonance,

Trust is that there's a trust that's created that your child knows that even if he falls down and gets a huge scrape on his knee because of something he did that was quote irresponsible because he's a kid,

You don't go and yell at him,

I knew you would do this,

You stupid kid.

No,

You get down and you are present,

Attunement,

Resonate and trust is created in the we that is part of that soothing process.

Yeah.

And I just want to comment on something as adults,

I see a lot of adults like this,

That when they were kids,

They were not allowed to feel or express any feelings,

Right?

Any quote unquote negative feelings,

Let's say,

You know,

The parents were happy when the kid expressed joy or other positive emotions,

But the negative ones were shut down,

Dismissed,

Minimized,

Punished for,

And things like that.

What I've noticed is a lot of children,

You know,

When they were young,

They learned to cope with situations.

So they learned not to feel those feelings and sort of shut their heart.

But when you shut your heart,

It's not like you selectively shut your heart to negative feelings and leave it open to positive ones.

You completely shut down your heart to the positive ones too.

So I feel like people,

This kind of people who were not soothed properly in childhood or they were not raised in what I call emotion friendly households have a hard time,

Not only relating to themselves,

To others,

To know what they're feeling,

But they are also,

There's this dullness of experiencing vitality and enjoying life.

There is,

I agree with you.

And it's a,

You know,

When you look at the ways kids develop in part,

And part of it is temperament,

But another part is attachment,

This range of emotions.

If those emotions in the emotionally unfriendly house are really constricted in how they're shared,

You know,

Emotion is a very social experience.

They're going to be very dulled.

It's true.

One thing I also want to ask you to speak about very briefly is the difference between soothing our children and cuddling.

And in one of my recent arguments with my husband,

You know,

There are many recently because of the school and our child and parenting differences,

Everything is sort of on the surface.

You know,

His male brain is trying to find an answer to this crisis.

Why is this child not wanting to do her homework or participate in school?

He just said a statement to me.

He said,

It's all because of you.

You cuddled this child,

You loved her too much.

You love all this peaceful parenting you did.

And so I want you to speak about that,

You know?

Yeah.

Would you want to bring him in?

We'll have a little session.

Sadly,

He is not home.

I wish he was home.

I can bring my daughter.

Go ahead if you want to.

Yes.

Well,

Yeah.

So first of all,

Cuddling versus soothing.

Soothing questions.

So the word cuddling usually means not letting your child experience the challenges of life and trying to protect them from all of life's disappointments and painful experiences.

I mean,

That's how I would interpret the word cuddling.

Is that how you mean it,

Anna?

Yes,

I think so.

Yeah.

So soothing is not that at all.

Soothing isn't protecting them from the pain.

Soothing is when the pain is there,

You tune into that pain to teach them through relational communication how to develop internal ways of soothing themselves.

That's what the research shows.

So soothing is almost the opposite of cuddling.

Now when your husband says,

Oh,

You've loved our daughter too much.

That's why she doesn't have resilience now.

I've never seen a single study that would support what he's saying,

Loving a child too much.

Now,

If you interpret loving as I've coddled them,

Meaning I've protected them from dealing with challenges so that like when they had a hard homework assignment,

I just did it for them.

And then when they failed on a test,

I said,

Oh,

My kid had a dog problem.

And so that's different.

You can do all sorts of things to prevent,

And maybe that's what coddle means,

To prevent your child from learning what Carol DeWitt calls a growth mindset.

Like I can take on a challenge,

And if I don't succeed,

Great,

Another opportunity to learn and try a different way versus a fixed mindset,

Which is you are what you are.

And so if I don't succeed,

I better not try again because it'll show I'm really not as capable as I would like to be seen as being.

So those kids are very fragile.

When you don't have mind-sight skills,

Yeah,

You have a difficult time with life.

So in this situation of the pandemic,

There are many,

Many,

Many things going on.

First of all,

Your daughter's in seventh grade,

Right?

So as an adolescent,

There's an essence,

There's an emotional spark and a social engagement and novelty seeking and a creative exploration that are just beginning in her.

And that essence,

That spelled the word essence,

It's really challenged by the pandemic because emotions are more intense for an adolescent anyway,

The research in the brain shows that,

And the pandemic is bringing up all these intense meanings and meaning and emotion are woven together in the brain.

Social engagement is thwarted.

An adolescent is not supposed to be just staying at home because of the virus with their parents.

They're supposed to be out with their peers.

Well,

That's not happening because of the virus.

So that's a problem.

Novelty seeking,

You can't really seek much novelty when you're just like in your same house,

Same bedroom,

If you're lucky enough to have a house.

So even though you might say,

Yeah,

You're so lucky you've got a house,

It's still hard.

These are real things that are hard.

I've got some cousins who are all adolescents and boys,

It's challenging,

Understandably for them.

And different kids' temperaments will make virtual learning more acceptable to some,

Less acceptable and almost entirely unacceptable to others.

My daughter said today,

She said,

Mom,

Just to answer you,

The simple answer is it's the environment.

The school environment makes me focus,

Makes me learn when I'm in the hallways chatting with friends or when during the class I am doing something that I'm not supposed to do.

She just loves all aspects of school.

She says it doesn't translate into this virtual learning.

She said,

But some of my friends actually really love virtual learning.

Yeah,

Exactly.

It's very different things.

So it's hard for some people to say,

Ah,

Alone at last.

Now I can just focus on the work.

But it's really a social thing.

So learning is for most people very relational.

So to yank someone out of the relational settings,

Your daughter's speaking so articulately about it.

And I don't know if there's a way to creatively build little study groups or have a way where she studies with friends on the phone or something to try to acknowledge that.

I wish we could say the vaccine is here and now we're going to all go back to school,

But that's not going to be a while.

And so maybe there's a way to really build on the relational side.

I think it's hard to build viral bubbles where you physically get together because of the risk of all that.

But there should be a regular way where you just put on Zoom and you have kids just do their studying together,

Even if they could just interrupt each other by accident,

Whatever.

I think that little study buddy groups might be a good way to go.

Something because your daughter's right.

It's the setting,

The environment.

And while you can't physically be there,

Maybe there'd be a way to socially set it up.

Yeah,

That's good advice.

I have thought about it.

Yes.

And they do their own way of,

But of course it deviates into playing games and doing other things.

Well,

That should be a part of their day too.

It is.

It is.

It has lowered all our standards,

Believe me,

Dr.

Siegel.

So here is what I'm thinking.

This is the last question.

If someone is listening to this and if they are new to this,

And this person is saying to himself or herself,

I have messed up my kids.

I didn't have this information.

I didn't have this knowledge.

Have I messed up my kids?

What would you say to that parent?

Is it too late to start?

No,

It's never too late to start.

Never.

I even have an adult who was in her late thirties who brought her parents in their late sixties in to do some repair work.

And once the repair work could be done,

I mean,

Now their relationship is fantastic when for decades it was a really problematic relationship.

So it's never too late.

And the six parenting books that I've written are all complimentary to each other and they build this framework of science that I've been working on for decades called interpersonal neurobiology.

They basically give you a solid scientific framework for how to approach your parenting in a very practical way.

So any of them is a place to start and it's never too late to begin.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What are you reading these days?

Wow.

You know,

Well,

You know,

I'm writing this new book about the nature of the self and identity and belonging.

So I'm reading a lot of books about what challenges that for us today.

So I'm actually reading a lot of things about basically racial justice,

Social justice,

And I'm reading a lot about environmental protection because we live in a culture where a lot of people are disenfranchised and marginalized.

And so we really need to address that,

Whatever our racial background.

And we live at a time when earth life on earth is being hugely challenged.

And I think,

You know,

For people,

For example,

Your daughter's age,

Adolescence,

But all of us are realizing something needs to change in the way humanity lives on earth.

So a lot of what I'm doing,

I'm reading a lot of poetry and getting inspired by different poets.

And a lot of the poetry books and these other books on different issues are really trying to think what's the direction humanity can take now.

And it begins with parenting,

That,

You know,

Parents can really help children become engaged citizens in the world.

And a lot of young people now,

Even in the workforce,

Are realizing they don't want to just work for money,

Which,

You know,

Having enough money to survive,

Of course,

Is crucial.

They want to work for meaning and purpose.

And so many of the books I'm reading,

And certainly this book now I'm writing,

Is all about that,

Is all about how do we,

We as a humanity,

Find meaning and purpose in changing the direction that we've been in.

Because I think the pandemic has revealed the incredible social injustice,

But also revealed how we as a humanity can,

On a dime,

Shut things down and let the environment start to flourish when we stop polluting it like we are.

So if we can do that because of a virus,

Maybe we could do that because there's actually an equally dangerous pandemic,

Which is the threat to our environmental health.

So that's what I've been kind of working on and figuring out how to create a short book.

I'm trying to write a short book.

You know,

That when experienced can give people the hope and the skills on how we can collectively move together.

We have a fun phrase where we say,

You know,

Instead of the vision of a totally isolated separate solo self,

You know,

It's more an integrated self,

Which would be me.

Yes,

You have a body,

But a we,

That's our connections to people in the planet.

And we use the word mwe,

M W E.

And so that's what the book is all about.

And that's basically what I'm,

I'm reading a lot about anything to support that.

Fascinating.

If you were to go back in time,

Knowing what you know about parenting and all of the books that you have written,

What would you say to yourself as a new parent?

I would say,

You know,

It's what I always say now.

I mean that just please remember the days can be long,

But the years are short.

You know,

I've got a almost 27 year old and a 31 year old,

You know,

And I remember the days when they were really young and some of those would be really long days.

You know,

Parenting is the hardest job in the world and yet the years go really fast.

I'm so thankful that Caroline Welch,

My wife and I,

We,

We took,

She has a book called the gift of presence as a mindfulness guide for women and her teaching me in so many ways,

The idea that,

You know,

We really need to be present for our kids and the gift of that presence when we meet now with our daughter or son,

You know,

Is all the time that we did spend with them and the ways that we could show up and also I remember taking out when my daughter was in preschool,

Just times of taking off from work and dancing with her and taking naps with her and you know,

We'd have this special time and when you show up for your child,

The relationship you can have when they're adults is so beautiful.

It's so beautiful.

So you know,

I guess I would say to myself,

Keep on showing up.

That's what you can do and just try to as hard as it is,

Even with the pandemic now,

Try to appreciate the incredible privilege it is to help raise your children.

Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for your heartfelt message,

For your wisdom,

For your presence,

For your generosity.

I truly,

Truly admire you,

Your work.

It has been such an impactful for me as a parent and as a professional and just the legacy that you have in the world.

Really deeply thank you,

Deeply grateful.

Thank you,

Anna.

It's great to be here with you.

Keep up your wonderful work and good luck to you and your husband with your daughter.

And next time maybe we'll have her come in and she can teach us something.

Unless she locked herself in her room and she goes,

Go away.

Yes.

We should have your wife on the podcast.

Sounds like her book would be a wonderful fit for this show.

Oh,

That's great.

She would love to.

Caroline Welch's,

The gift of presence is so,

She's just coming out with her paperback soon and so she's been reviewing the book and it's really a great book.

I've learned so much reading it.

Okay,

Great.

Thank you so much again.

You're welcome Anna.

Thank you.

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