June 29, 2026 • 46 mins
Watching our kids struggle can bring out every protective instinct we have.
But what if falling, failing, losing and trying again are all part of how kids learn to back themselves?
This week, Simon and Lachy chat with mental health clinician, surf therapy founder, dad and children’s author Joel Pilgrim about confidence, resilience, big feelings and the tricky parenting moments where stepping back might matter most.
HOSTS
Simon Pryce
Lachlan Gillespie
GUEST
Joel Pilgrim
You can find out more about Waves of Wellness here.
And you can find Joel's children's book Stand Up Stand Out here.
PRODUCERS
Produced by The Wiggles and Mylk Media
Madeline Joannou
Nick Webb
For more Wiggly fun, visit:
The Wiggles 🌏 http://thewiggles.com
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Twitter 🔵 http://twitter.com/TheWiggles
About The Wiggles' Podcast - Wiggle Talk
Welcome to Wiggle Talk, the ultimate parenting podcast brought to you by The Wiggles! With over 30 years of experience in early childhood education and a global legacy of entertaining and educating millions of children, The Wiggles are now stepping into the world of parenting to share their journey as parents themselves. This podcast is designed for parents seeking expert advice, relatable stories, and practical tips on raising toddlers.
In Wiggle Talk, you'll join Simon and Lachy, beloved members of The Wiggles, as they explore the real-life challenges and joys of parenting. From handling toddler tantrums to nurturing your child’s early development, Simon and Lachy invite guests to share compelling conversations that will provide valuable insights that every parent can relate to. Whether you're struggling with sleep routines, picky eating, or simply looking for fun and educational activities to do with your little ones, this podcast has got you covered.
Every episode also features founding Wiggle and early childhood expert Anthony Field, who will answer listener questions on topics ranging from child behaviour to effective parenting strategies. With decades of experience and a passion for helping children thrive – as well as being a father of three - Anthony offers trustworthy advice to help you navigate the complexities of raising a toddler.
As parents, we know that the journey can be both rewarding and challenging. That's why Wiggle Talk is here to support you every step of the way. Whether you're a new parent or have been on this journey for a while, you'll find a wealth of information and inspiration in each episode. Plus, you’ll hear from famous friends of The Wiggles who share their own parenting experiences and tips.
So, tune in to Wiggle Talk and join The Wiggles as they swap their skivvies for candid conversations about parenthood. Let's work out this parenting thing together, with a little help from the experts in early childhood education!
About The Wiggles
For over three decades, The Wiggles have been a beloved cornerstone of children's entertainment, captivating and educating millions of preschoolers—and their parents—around the world. Known for their high-energy performances, catchy songs, and colourful characters, The Wiggles have built a global legacy rooted in the power of music and movement to inspire early childhood learning.
With a mission to make education fun, The Wiggles create content specifically designed for pre-K, preschool, kindergarten, and nursery school age groups. Their unique blend of music, dance, and educational content not only entertains but also helps children understand the world around them. Generations of fans who grew up watching The Wiggles are now sharing that same joy with their own children.
The Wiggles’ impact is truly global: they
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Wiggles acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia
and their connections to land, see and community. We pay
our respects to elders, past, present and emerging.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to Wiggle Talk, a podcast for parents. My name
is Locky and I am the Purple Wiggle.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello Locki. My name is Simon and I am the
Red Wiggle. It's great to be here, and it's really
great to be here because today we're talking about how
children build confidence to have a go, not being told
they're amazing all the time, but through trying things, wabbling
a little, making mistakes and learning that they can try again.
But before we speak to Joel, who we're going to
(00:45):
speak to about confidence and all those things I just
mentioned in my preamble, Locky, you believe you've got something
to say.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I do. I am trying things myself.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I've picked up not confidence yet, but I've picked up
a lot of passion on cooking recently from these two
particular people I've seen on Instagram. One who just throws
things together. You can see his love of the food
and then he enjoys it at the end. But it's
so cool to watch that one, and then the other
guy who rates other chef's burgers, and he starts by going,
(01:19):
what does say Gordon Ramsey know about burgers? And then
he'll watch the clip and then do it step by step,
make the burger, taste it, review it. So on the
weekend I made a burger for DNA Dana I got
from one of the guys he recommended, and he reviewed
it looked really good. It involved smashing the burger.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Oh, smash burger. Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I was talking to friends from school about this smashing
and she said, hang on went to get her iron
cast smasher.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yes, they are obviously regular smashes. I know.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I knew there was a tool for it, but we
didn't have one.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
But you're smashing the bread and everything.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
No, no, just you make the paddy. You make it
like you have a meat ball.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
It's mint present. It is.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I had learned twenty five seventy five ratio fat and meat,
so it sears really well. It tastes good, not a
lower fat content. Isn't it tasty when you smash?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Anyway?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I made a beautiful raspberry bacon jam with apple cider
and brown sugar. That was the jam, and then I
had the beef.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Now the problem.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
My first problem was in the video the guy smashed
it on a beautiful, big, like restaurant style heat plate.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Oh right, like you know, like a barbecue, so you're
smashing cook at the same time. Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I had a fry pan, so I was smashing the
smasher took up almost the entire fry pan. So that
was the first rookie era. There was a few rookie
but it was really enjoyable. Darn loved it. I got
a ten out of ten.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
So your burger bit is smashed, so it's all in pieces.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh no, no, okay, hang on a second. These guys,
you don't just buy a paddy from the butcher or
meat chop. You go and you buy you roll your own.
It has to be a certain size for the paddy
to then fit on the butt. Okay, so you just
literally get a meat ball. Oh and you're pressing it
into its really quickly. I didn't press it enough because
(03:33):
I didn't have enough room, so that paddy was raw,
and I was so frustrated because it burnt. My first
two I had four. The first two when I flipped,
I was devastated because it was like black, and you
know me, I don't like anything burns. They have to
go in the bin. I to waste second ones I
(03:55):
got right, but it was really fun.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
My point was the cast iron presser has never been
washed in soap, right, it just retains oil and that's
how you keep it. So we were told when we
borrow the please, friends, please don't put soap on it
because it takes off the entire layer of.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Built up all these years of work.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
But when I washed it with water my hands.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
It's like, I hate that feeling, like even just if
it's butter or something.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It's like I worked on the stovetop cooker like installation,
like it was covered.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
What was?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I found out multiple smash burgers just all Also do
you pat dry that water? Basically leave your burger on
your back?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
You going to buy your own smasher? Yes, I will,
but a bigger pan. Well a barbecue really? Oh yeah,
have you got a barbecue? No, you need to get
a barbecue and a smasherash our next guest, Joel Pilgrim.
We're not going to find out. It's not what. We're
not talking to Joel about it because Joel's an occupational therapist, speaker,
(05:08):
and author and founder of Waves of Wellness Foundation. It's
an organization that uses surfing, movement and mental health support
to help people build confidence, connection, and well being.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
He's worked in mental health for more than fifteen years,
and a lot of his work sits around the idea
that sometimes we don't build confidence by talking about it.
We build it by doing things that feel a little
bit hard, a little bit new, or a little bit
outside our comfort zone.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
He is also the author of the children's books Stand Up,
stand Out, which uses surfing birds to explore feelings, courage,
and what it means to be comfortable in your own feathers.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Because for parents of young children, confidence often shows up
in really ordinary moments. It's the playground climb that makes
you hold onto your breath. It's the swimming lesson that
they don't want to try. It's the child who says
I can't do it before they even get started. It's
the moments that you're not sure whether step in, cheer
them on, or give them a little more space.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
So today's conversation is about how we help children build
confidence in real, practical ways through play, movement, safe risk, failure, frustration,
and learning. They don't have to be the best at
something for it to still be worth doing. So let's
get right into it. Joel, Welcome to wiggled Talk.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Oh you've got the wiggly fingers. Lucky always points to
I think it's the neon behind us here. This is
his proudest thing about wiged Talk. He went out there
and he ordered a neon.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
You've really stepped it up this season.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yes, thank you've noticing The plan's the same.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, it doesn't even never need water. That plan is magical.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Other, God's good. Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Yous.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Nice to talk in person. But you work with areas
of risk and confidence and well being. But you know,
when you're in the in the playground to your daughter,
are you want to kind of step back and let
the risk happen or are you like jumping in getting
in there. Yeah, I'm protecting.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
I'm pretty pro risk, being a big wave surfer and
a risk taking myself. Having a child in lexus two
and a half my daughter and having her take risk
herself is a little different, right. You almost want to
jump in and you want to save her and make
sure that you're stopping her from hurting herself. But I'm
the one nowadays that's learned the hard way too. You know,
we actually need to step back, We need to let
(07:30):
her fail or learn that lesson so that she can
almost build that resilience and confidence herself, because it's so
easy for us to almost I think as parents we're
actually trying to soothe our own insecurities or discomforts rather
than our child.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah that's true. Yeah, that's very true. It's about our
own fears growing up. Were you a risk taker? Did
your parents allow you to take risks and jump off things?
And obviously surfed from a young age.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
So over twin brother and we both were just pushing
each other to go and do the wildest things. You know.
We left home at sunrise and had to be home
by dinner, so it was literally the beach was our playground,
and we had the most amazing experiences. But I think
nowadays it's changed a little bit with the safety and
the importance of having our kids a little closer and contactable. Yeah,
but you know, risks for me are really a valuable
(08:21):
right of passage as you grow up.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Was there a lot of competition between you and your brother?
Was it very competitive.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
I knew you've can asked that, Simon, but the twins
conversation a while ago, Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, we
had a pretty competitive landscape. You often don't plan to
do that, just you put it off against each other sometimes.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And yeah, and I from wonder as sure he's five,
he's not overly competitive. I mean he likes to do
things and try to achieve things. But do you think
having competitive nature helps build more confidence in children or
does it work hand in hand with each other? Are
they're two very different things?
Speaker 4 (08:58):
I think so. I think you get thick skin pretty quickly,
you learn how to get back up and try again.
You've also got someone who is a great cheerleader to
get you back on that horse. But really, I think
for us as young kids, back then it was a
little easier to try things out and make mistakes, and
nowadays there's a little bit more risk associated with social media.
(09:20):
We've been outside, you know, we are a lot more
aware as parents, and it's only human to want to
try and curb some of that risk. But it's where
I have really learned the value of being able to
just pause and reflect and wait that extra thirty seconds
before jumping in.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah, I find the twin things.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I my girls are here today, great that they bring
you in they're dead, but they constantly surprise you with
what they find confidence in. And it flips. I reckon
every few months to the point where I walked in
before and the one who I thought would be finding
this day harder because they're doing a bit of filming
with Blue Cheer and EB today but is the one
(09:59):
that's totally in it. And the one who I thought
was all over it is the one making like they're
shy shy face and did you find that with your brother?
Speaker 4 (10:08):
And yeah, the label thing is interesting, right, like, yeah,
you've got a view as a father of you of
your girls, which one's what? There's a lot of fluidity
in that. And I was often the creative kid, the
more sort of softer sensitive one, and that was very obvious.
But then at times there was different things that we
move between. So yeah, I mean it's not really a
(10:29):
one size fits all kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
No, No, definitely not. What are kids getting from those
risk moments in themselves?
Speaker 4 (10:36):
I think they're actually getting feedback and evidence. It's like
they're plotting data points to learn what they're capable of
learn what happens when I fail? And I use the
fail word lightly because I'm a big believer that it's
always lessons not failures. Where you can use that to
then iterate in the future or make sure we do
(10:57):
it in a different way to.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Cope and is it good? You know, Ashue is sessed
with monkey bars, like obsessed to the point where he's
splitting his hands from you know. But through that, there's falls,
there's mistakes, there's all that sort of stuff. Is there
a point where parents where you if they have a fall,
(11:18):
they pick themselves up, they haven't hurt themselves, but they're
not actually wanting to have a go again. Is it
important as a parent to keep encouraging them to go again?
Or can you push it too far? Or your best
to sit back and wait under those circumstances.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
Yeah, I mean it's easier said than done, but I
would encourage everyone to go. You know what, like if
that person is hurt, let's see if they can name
the emotion. So what are you feeling right now? What
is it that's happening inside of your body? Can you
name where it's hurting or what is it that you're feeling?
And then you get a bit of feedback as to
the next Yeah, I guess fork in the road, do
(11:51):
you choose to close that down or do you go again?
And with Lexi, my two and a half year old,
it's like now she has in her vocabulary can do
hard things, but that doesn't happen overnight. We started to
hear from her, I can't do this, I can't do it.
And then Vanassa and my partner and I we both said, okay,
we're going to make a thing here of stopping and
(12:12):
acknowledging the moment, trying to name the feeling, and then
giving her a bit of re assurance that you can
do hard things, you're capable of more than you think,
and us role modeling trying and trying again was a
great way for her to see, oh, that's a good
thing I can do as well.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah I can't do It's an interesting one, isn't it,
Because you wonder how far you push as a parent
to You can say over and over again, yes you can,
Yes you can, but at some point you have to
try to convince them in a way to get up
and give it a go without feeling like you're forcing
them to do something. At the same time balance.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
If they're saying I can't, what they're really trying to
communicate to us is one of a couple of things,
I'm finding this hard, I'm scared, or I don't really
know how to navigate this situation that I'm so asking
them more about why is that that you're finding it harder?
Why do you think you can't do this? You often
surprised with what the answer is that comes back.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Do you find a physical accomplishments creates a level of
confidence and does that then relate to a classroom scenario
where they're willing to put their hand up and answer
questions and that kind of situation. If they have that
sort of confidence because of physical achievements, does it relate
or they are two very separate things. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
I like to call it like mental fitness as a whole,
and you're building up that mental muscle to feel comfortable
around resilience, determination, all of those other things. Confidence, and
if you are able to feel more comfortable in those
micro moments or those small little steps that build up
to confidence, then that will permeate through other areas of
your life. When you're in the classroom, when you're speaking
(13:53):
to a stranger, when you're at the cafe asking for
a baby Tino. You know, being able to feel comfortable
enough to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone but
within reason, because you know that you're capable of it.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
It's interesting we can't get Asher to ask for the
baby Chino, yet he'll always want us to come up
with him and do it. We're kind of gently kind
of encouraging him to do it, but he still sort
of won't do it on his own. But Rome wasn't
built in a day, and you know, get back on
the horse, you know, but it is important just to
I guess, keep that dialogue going over time, and then
(14:27):
eventually that sort of thing will start to happen.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
Yes, your idea of like doing hard things as a
build up. I used to stop Lexi from picking up
heavy things. I was really worried about her breaking it
or hurting herself. And often when I did just catch
myself and stop stopping her, she would then be far
more capable than I thought she was. She'd lift something
(14:49):
that was way more heavy, and then I'd be thinking, gee,
that was impressive.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
You're a weapon.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
And she's carrying this heavy Three later to think of
milk and I'm like, that shouldn't be happening right now,
but you're killing it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah. Yeah, that's often when the little walking moments happen
is and when we try to step in and then
everything just goes goes. I wanted to ask you, I'm done,
and I my wife when I watching.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Rugby the other day and rugby union.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Rugby union you just started playing last year, and yeah, good,
I'm at learning. It's that you get to pick a
sport each term, and he picked rugby union. Wow, well, okay,
we're in, but done. I made the comment that lots
of parents, including us, you say like, oh, bad luck.
And she was having this chat with one of her
friends during the week, like oh, bad luck you drop
(15:36):
the ball and bad luck you did this, And then
one of the other moms said, it was not really
bad luck. You just like you just dropped the ball
and it was not bad luck at all. You just
you made a mistake. And is that words and terms
that are better than she was meaning, like, you know
that just to say bad luck and sort of soften it,
but it was a mistake. You hear so many things
(15:56):
on the sideline. I don't really know where I'm going
with this, but the words and sentences matter when you're like,
you know, you're amazing and you can do it, and
is there a better terms that we can use or
I think lucky.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
What you're saying is spot on that language is everything
and it can make such a massive difference using just
a slightly different term framing, you know, on the sports
field and using examples like that or being a mental
health professional for fifteen years, I've seen the amazing benefit
of language being used in a good way and the
(16:29):
detrimental impact of negative used language, to the point where
someone who is very capable could think that they don't
even have a future because someone has labeled them as something.
So starting young with our kids, absolutely we need to
be mindful that we're giving them the right idea that
there's not luck involved with the fact that you just
(16:50):
drop that ball. It's that sometimes that happens, and that's okay, yes,
you know, you drop the ball. Whoopsies. You know, we
often talk about it as like daddy's a silly duffer
because daddy did something silly or made a mistake. Whoopsie,
dais his Daddy's a silly daffer. And now Lexi is
able to two and a half say, oh, Daddy made
a mistake, silly daffer. It's normal part of our life
(17:12):
to not achieve every time, especially the first time, and
we have to put the almost the pavers along the
driveway to build up that understanding so that when they
get to a major life moment and they don't achieve,
they have that mental muscle.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Can you give too much praise? So there's a balance
there too, that you're actually making them feel something above
and beyond where they're actually at.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Potentially and praising what are you praising the outcome or
are you praising the effort? And that I've found makes
a lot of difference. I'm really really proud of your
SOI for trying really hard versus oh, I'm so proud
of you for what you're able to achieve. It's two
very different things. And then you're actually attached to the
outcome rather than the effort along the journey to get there.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
There's the proud thing too, where we've heard spoken about,
where you say, oh, you should feel very proud of
yourself for what you have done, instead of always the
parents saying I'm proud of you. So the child acknowledges
they are actually also proud of themselves. I feel like
that's probably important part of the conversation too.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Absolutely, And so rather than I am proud of you
or are you proud of yourself? How do you feel?
Do you feel proud? And then you start with those
yes nos or the hows and then they can start
to unpack that. But it won't happen overnight. There's going
to be this sense of like, I don't know what
you're talking about. So the role modeling over time is
so valuable.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Yeah, back to Rome again.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Yeah, you got.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
As children get a little bit older, there's going to
be comparisons. So there's going to be children who are faster,
children who are apparently smarter, children who are more. To say,
how do we deal with that with our children? If
they're not the fastest, if they're not the loudest, if
they didn't get the A plus in their spelling, how
do we manage that with our children?
Speaker 4 (19:09):
It's a big one, isn't it. And how do we
have our children feel like they are enough as the
way they are?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Yeah, yeah, So comparison is very evil at whatever age
you are in the world, but having young people comparing
themselves to the people around them is even more detrimental,
I believe, because they're so malleable and being shaped by
their environment around them. So encouraging them to look within
(19:36):
and to come back to self rather than looking for
either that external validation or that external understanding of how
I need to show up in the world. In a race,
for example, if they weren't fast, it might not be saying, oh,
bad luck, you didn't win. You know, that's a great
example of language. Again, it's okay, sometimes we don't win,
but you have many other things that you're great at.
(19:57):
And so directing them away from the energy of that
hurt and that suffering I didn't achieve that race or
whatever it is to putting them onto something that's a
little more aligned with what they know that they're good at.
That might be you were amazing in drama, or how
did you feel when you did that maths test. You know,
(20:18):
it's important not to just distract and take them straight
away from that race, because you're actually trying to save
their suffering. They're allowed to feel bad about that race,
and often we might feel a little more upset about
that for them because we know how that felt as
a young person. So again, as an adult and as
a parent, we need to check our own emotions as
to how we're showing up in that scenario.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Yeah, yeah, it is tricky being a parent. It's a
lot because you do you just want to protect them
the whole time. But it's important for a child to
experience that. But then, like you're saying, it's a language
that we use about how does it make you feel?
What steps will we do next? If you're unhappy that
you didn't win, what could you do next time to
(21:02):
potentially have a better result for yourself? I guess there's
those kind of ways of framing things. Surfing for you,
is that a big part of mental health? Is that
what surfing has become for you?
Speaker 4 (21:16):
Yeah, I mean surfing is a part of me managing
my own mental health and wellbeing over the years. I've
surfered almost thirty years. But for me, it's almost like
I get to go out in the ocean and I
call the I don't know how you guys feel about
swearing on this show. I call the shoreline a bullshit barrier,
And as soon as you step over that, you get
rid of all the other bullshit in life that's thrown
(21:37):
at you, and you get to just be yourself out there.
And so for me, surfing has always been a personal
value to manage my own wellbeing. But now after spending
a decade in the world of surf therapy, like using
surfing as therapy for mental health and running therapy sessions
on the beach, I've seen so many people realize that
(21:57):
like the ocean, the outdoors, physical activity and combined that
with learning about your mental health is a great way
to actually thrive rather than just survive. So, yes, surfing
has been incredible for my life. And my fiance Vanessa
always says, like, get out of the house and go
to the beach, because you're a better person when you've
been surfing. Because that's my thing that I do to
maintain my own well being. But professionally now being able
(22:20):
to deliver that experience and that opportunity for people who
quite often are at the end of the road, and
you know, it is a very heavy thing to talk
about when someone's considering end in their life, but people
come to us at Waves Wellness Foundation at that point
in time and we have an opportunity to pick them
back up and put them back on the road of life,
and they get on with it because we've given them
(22:41):
the skills and the strategies to cope when things aren't
going well. And really that is the reason why I
wrote a children's book about mental health, because I saw
just how important it was for young people to be
learning about mental health, literacy, and emotions from a far
earlier age than what they're actually being.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Taught back then.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Every time I go into the ocean, which isn't a lot,
but there's just a it's such a magnificent power of
the water. I love that barrier idea. Did you a
lot of the times you were surfing alone? Did you
go with your brother or is it just tie that's
time for you just to be.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Alone with my brother? With friends in massive groups on
holidays overseas. There was many different scenarios, but often it's technology.
That's the most beautiful thing that surfing provides, is a
disconnection away from all of those things of being on.
You know, I don't have the ability for someone to
call me when I'm in their well, actually that I
do now because I got an Apple Watch. So I
(23:40):
don't recommend that, but it's an important thing right as parents,
with being on all the time and always having either
your work, or your home or your kids. There's so
much that we have to juggle, so finding something that
we actually can have disconnection and that time to ourselves
is so important, right And people often say with surfing
that they come down to the beach, I don't want
(24:02):
to do it because I don't want to fail. I
don't want to make myself look silly or what have you.
But it's actually a surfing lesson. You're going to have
many lessons here. You're going to fall and you're going
to get back up, and you're going to learn that.
That's just a part of the journey to being a surfer,
and very similarly, it's just a part of being a child.
It's a part of learning that you will fall over.
We just need to learn how to get back up
(24:23):
and build that resilience. Michelle Obama says, without struggle, there
is no strength. So it's really important to allow that
struggle to happen and normalize it with our young people.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Some of the best conversations I've had with Ashra about
how he's feeling is when we've been doing an activity together.
So whether whether it's actually coloring in or we're just
at the back kicking a soccer ball around and I
start to ask him about how he's feeling about things,
and that's when he's the most open and willing to
talk because he's engaged in something else at the same time.
(25:05):
I guess that's probably a little bit if you're with
your mates or whatever and your surfing, you've got the
ability to just talk about life at the same time
as you're engaged in surfing. It's a very kind of
it's not necessary with parents sitting down and saying, so,
how are you feeling? You actually take him out of
that world and let them explore and chat.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
As a five year old, absolutely, I call it a
third person activity shoulder to shoulder and as a young boy,
especially for boys, it's around that art of being in
encapsulated really with an activity, and as blokes like two
adults like you and I are driving in a car
shoulder to shoulder, we would have a far better chance
(25:43):
of having a deep conversation. We didn't have to look
at each and ask the question. So it's the same
concept that young people don't feel as threatened when you're
able to open up conversations in the art of activity.
Occupational therapy is all about that. As an occupational therapist,
they work with young people, and our job was really
to create that space for someone to be themselves and
(26:04):
to think through that creativity while giving them the skills
to manage.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
What changed for those people in the ocean the first
time stepping in or.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
It's almost like just a light switch turns on and
they just turned into a different person. The whole program
came about by taking one of my patients from the hospital.
He was experiencing first episode psychosis. He was a twenty
four year old, and it was my sort of clinical
reasoning as to I'm a lifeguard, I'm a surfer. I've
got this cupboard like, I'm going to take him from
(26:35):
hospital to the beach. Probably the worst clinical decision I've
ever made, because I could have had my head on
the chopping block, But it was incredible to watch that
happen and just to see how much of a changed
man he was from three months of therapy. We didn't
get anywhere near we did in like thirty minutes of
floating out there in the ocean, barely catching a wave.
(26:57):
And it's because he's able to let down that guard
and be in his environment that he's comfortable with not
my expected environment of the health setting or the hospital
ward or tell me everything you're struggling with right now.
You know, we have to get on the level of
the people that we're supporting, and that is the level
of our young people in this conversation as to if
(27:17):
our child is two and a half and is standing
there and having absolute meltdown, it doesn't matter if we're
trying to leave and get them in the car, Like,
it's important to be late to have them move through
these emotions by themselves rather than picking them up kicking
and screaming and then having a really negative experience for everyone.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
And you would have probably softened and been more in
your place in that moment for him too, right than
in earth.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
Yeah, we were just two people surfing together and there
was no clinical patient divide if you will.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
How cool.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Yeah, Yeah, it's so powerful to watch that happen. And
over the last decade, there's been countless people that have
said that this program has like genuinely saved my life,
And that's a pretty special thing to not be able
to count on two hands how many people have said that.
But it also really reiterates the importance of the mental
health messaging and the way we learn about this sort
of stuff has to be way earlier in our lives,
(28:13):
because I'm finding that when someone's sixteen and comes to
an early psychosis program that was my previous job as
an occupational therapist, their life understanding and the way of
the world working is already created. So we have to
start way earlier. And that's why this book has been
a beautiful tool to give people those identifiable metaphors to
(28:37):
identify those emotions and how that feels within the body,
and how you can start to get a bit more
comfortable with that over time.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Can you tell us a little bit more about your book,
Stand Up, stand Out? Yeah, just in the essence of
what it's about, and you've given a bit of why,
but actually what it's.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
About absolutely, Simon. So it's really it's surfing birds who
are from all different types of shapes and sizes, all
different feathers, and each bird represents a different emotion. So
Fiona the flamingo has butterflies in her belly and she
experiences anxiety that's represented through jelly legs and wibblewobble. On
the play, You've got Lori the lorikeet who struggles to
(29:13):
get out of bed, and sometimes she leaves the house
feeling worried and scared, but then she learns to cope
in the wave she shared. So the book rhymes and
it goes through the journey of these surfing birds, and
it's based on the true story of a mental health movement.
But it really is a way of children identifying visually
emotionally how these emotions show up and then how I
(29:35):
can start to see them within my own mind. The
book actually changes color and sort of grows with vibrance
and energy as the emotions start to grow, and that
connectivity amongst the birds happens. But the final page is
the message was clear for everyone to see. Be comfortable
in your own feathers, whatever they be. So it doesn't
matter what you look like, what shape or color or
(29:56):
vibrance and you have in your look. You are so
much more than your visual aesthetic. And it's important that
we start to realize that you're special.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Toy. That's beautiful, that's so cool if a child wants
to win, Because I remember, all of a sudden, at
some point at a certain age, as sure and his
friends and nieces and nephews, everything's all of a sudden
about being the fastest, about winning, about you know, just
getting somewhere first. If your child isn't winning and is
(30:28):
deflated by that, how do we encourage our children to
still continue on and to keep trying things. Because it's
obviously not always about winning, but in their minds at
that particular stage, they are wanting to win. How do
we keep encouraging them to keep trying.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Yeah, it's really tricky. I mean, I'm no parent expert here,
so I don't have the answer necessarily, but I would
often be feering towards the what are you excited about?
Or what were you happy about today? Bring them back
that sense of pride and ownership. They may say nothing
because all I wanted to do was win, and then
you're still in the same place. But that diversion into
(31:06):
there is more than just winning is something which I
would be striving for because it's a pretty lonely place.
There's only one winner in an event of like say
twenty runners or eight swimmers, or you're not always going
to be on the podium or even in the race
for first to third. So there's more to life than
just winning. I actually struggled with that as a young kid,
(31:30):
you know, always feeling like I had to be more
and be better, and that started to eat away at
my own self confidence, so you know, then bullying starts
to set in. Then I had my own experiences that
were pretty heavy and dark. That to me is where
if we had the tools and the language and the
ways to be able to navigate this, it probably wouldn't
(31:51):
have ended in that sort of state.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Got a steps on Jessper who's ten. Think about him
a lot during this chat, but just how he used
to be one of those. So I met him when
he was three and we'd play every kind of sport
game you can think of, and his thing was he
needed to win every time, and I had to let
him otherwise he'd absolutely lose it to the point where
I had to go. I started going, you know what,
(32:15):
this isn't fun anymore. I'm going to go inside and
we can come out and play again when it's not
about winning, when we're just going to have fun. And
that was a hard message to get through. But now
he's ten and he's playing rugby union. But just so
proud of him because you can see whether it's because
now he's in a group of boys at a school
where it's actually about just playing together and that real camaraderie.
(32:36):
And he's now already looking up to his school leaders
and coming out with sentence like he wants to be
a leader and the future, which is amazing And never
thought I'd beautiful hear that from him, but it was
through that he's just got so much better at he
still wants to win, of course, but so much better
at just not being about all of that being just
(32:57):
you know, he did a great rundown the sideline on
the week and I got so teary and I just
like looked out and I'm like, this is just so
such a cool step for him, and I think his
new school has a lot to do with that. But again,
absolutely no question in this, but just if it was
just that that constant reiterating that, and it was definitely
hard those first few years. I was like, I can't
play with you anymore.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Just this is full on.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
So at three when you met him, ye was he
still very I need to win.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
And absolutely that happened for a long a good till
he was four and a half five. It was just
every game we played I had to like I miss
and he was thirty goals in front.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Like you would you ever win or you would always just.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, and that would that would also then cause the
whole No. He'd actually then start getting quite aggressive because
he started like being too rough because he knew that
was the way of getting getting back, trying to get
points back, and it was like, that's my.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Freak kick Actually could have been a little closer.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
That's what I tried to tell you. I'm like you were,
so can I please kick a guy?
Speaker 4 (34:03):
What you're naming here is that he has a pattern
and behavior that he's established already well and truly at
the age of three. And so that's a great example
of how we need to start far earlier to start
to embed these realities for our young people. So if
(34:24):
we're talking about winning, if we're talking about this scenario,
maybe let's go back to one to one and a
half to two and something happened where he was always
given the win that then became normal and if I
don't get the win, then something's wrong. So our job
is not to let our kids win. Our job is
to give them an understanding of the world. Like our
(34:47):
job as parents is not to prevent struggle in our
children's life. It is to help them deal with said
struggle when it will definitely arise in your life. It's
so easy to want to cotton more of our kids
and to give them the best experience ever, but often
people try and protect them from the world. Instead, we
actually need to prepare them for the world. There's two
(35:07):
very different scenarios there, and what you're suggesting is you
kept going on that pathway because you didn't want to
have to deal with the repercussions. And that's human. That's normal.
As a parent or a step parent doesn't matter like
you are his person of value, and that is where
no matter how long you are along the spectrum, I
(35:28):
believe that we can always come back by slowly drip
feeding in to get them back to In a therapy sense,
we call it graded exposure, so slowly exposing you to
the discomfort that you're trying to overcome in your therapeutic journey.
In the same way we're trying to gradually expose him,
and over time, Jasper won't love it, but he will
get better and better at it over time.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
It is fascinating to think that it actually can start
from that age of one one and a half, because
if you think back, that's when that's actually when it
does start to happen. But you just and of course
you naturally just let your child win because that's well
if they can beat me.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
But you know, but what do you think, what do
you think actually snowballs? What are the contributing factors that
make it worse? Do you think something for.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
A child continuing to win, allowing them to Yeah, well
I think it's a.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Single child, yes, factors that can increase.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, well, I think that's definitely it. For Asher, who
is an only child, there is no sibling to compete again,
so that that actually I'm just always going to let
him win because it's just Lauren and myself and him,
you know. But he's actually now that he's playing more
or maybe the same thing happened with Jasper team sort
of sport and there it's just all fun still, but
(36:45):
there is other children score goals, other children are fast.
He's starting to kind of understand it and he will
now clap when and be happy when he's someone else
scores a goal and he doesn't. But there was an
initial period there where he started not wanting to go
to soccer so much because he wasn't scoring the goals
and somebody else was, but now he's kind of encouraging.
(37:05):
But I think they're all those You're right, there are
all those different factors. But it would start back from well,
would just let him win because he's the child, and
we want to make him feel good because he won.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
Totally totally, But it almost goes so far back in
the journey to when they wanted something for dinner and
they then demanded and always got what they wanted, when
they didn't want to share their toy and they didn't
have to necessarily share their toy as an only child.
So there's definitely compounding factors that all contribute to it.
But the I guess reality of you're not always going
(37:40):
to be able to have what you want to eat
for dinner, like chocolate cake for breakfast, or you know
you're going to have to work with the current scenario
or the reality of life that is the same sort
of route through all of these different examples is our
job is not to create an unrealistic joy or paradise
for our kids, give them a really valuable and clear
(38:02):
understanding that life is not always roses.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I needed to be two goals up at half time,
we did just to get the drawer. At the end,
you need to go back to changing.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Seriously, I think back at myself at school and I
never put my hand up to answer a question. I
was never that child. Even if I knew the answer,
I would never have the confidence to actually put my
hand up and say it. And I don't know if
a she is going to be like that or not,
but he says something, as parents, we can do to
encourage that kind of behavior within even like we're talking
(38:36):
about earlier getting the baby, asking for the baby Chino,
or putting your hand up in class or those kind
of well, as adults we think is fairly natural things
to do. But I look thinking back about my childhood,
I would never have done it. Are there things we
can do to encourage our children to be able to
do that? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (38:54):
I think it comes back to like enabling their belief
in the fact that they can do things, enabling them
to understand that what's the worst that's going to happen?
And it's a safe testing ground that we start and
we do things within the home environment, within the four
walls of their safety, and then we start stepping outside
(39:15):
and outside it could be crossing the road by themselves.
It could be making sure that they look left and
right and then say there's no cars before we then
go across it without holding their hand for the first time.
So they're slowly, slowly building up this understanding of oh,
I'm on my own here, I can do this, I'm
capable of that. And so there's millions of examples of
(39:36):
how we could slowly add those things up. But they
will compound over time, and they will get them to
order their own Baby Chino over time, but it won't
happen Rome wasn't Milton to Day.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
No, that's right, you get back on the horse. But
I love this book and I think it'd be a
beautiful book for parents how to read with their children
in bedtime. And I'm looking forward to reading with esher
this evening. Nice one, Yeah, beautiful. It sounds like a
beautiful story. And I think any way with our children,
(40:07):
we can kind of help give that little bit of
extra confidence in the day to day things and understanding
who they are. And I think that's a part of
our job.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Yeah, yeah, And sometimes we need things to be made
easier for us as parents. We don't have all the answers,
we don't have all the ideas. We're just bubbling long
doing the best job we can as parents, right, But
hopefully something like this is a tool where parents can go, Oh,
there's a way, there's a way in, there's a way
to open up the conversation to talk about the things
(40:38):
that I find personally hard as an adult, let alone,
how the hell I do this with my child?
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Yeah, and using the right language, which is so important.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
And what I have found fascinating through the last probably
decade is it's fascinating to see the amount of parents
that dive into therapy, accessing it themselves as an adult
for the first time when they have children, because they
want to ensure that they are giving their child the
best experience and potentially unwiring or unwriting some of the
(41:10):
negative patterns and behaviors they learn as a child from
their parents. So my message to your listeners would be,
if you're thinking that you are sometimes the person getting
the way of the struggle or giving the confidence and
resilience to your young person, then how can you then
be the best version of yourself to then show up
for your child in a way that's allowing them to
(41:32):
be the best version.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Yeah, that's really good. And I think like has been
spoken about on hearing the past, is that we naturally
things come out of your mouth as a parent, you
think I don't actually don't mean that, but it's pre
programmed because of how we were brought up or whatever
we went through, and so it's great for us as
parents to kind of, like you're saying, rewire some things
(41:56):
to actually do I really mean that. Would I really
feel that way in the way that we're talking and
dealing with our and communicating with our children.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
You're doing great. Bye, guys, just back yourself right, you're
doing great.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
It is out.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
I see what you guys are doing, and I'm proud.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Okay, get the surfboard out. We'll go. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah,
me and the bra I wouldn't last very long. I've
meant serving for years I had. I had a surfboard.
I had a surfboard when I was younger. And that's it.
Speaker 4 (42:35):
Maybe I'll hold you to that sign. We'll dust that
thing off. Yeah we're out there.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Please.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
But you know, we went on holidays at Christmas time
to the beach, even though we do live at the beach,
we went holidays the beach and in whether the house
that we hired, there was a surfboard in there. It
was too small for me, but actually being little, he
got up on there, rode the way he loved it,
had a boy was so good. He had the best time. Great,
(43:01):
come on.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
That's the best surfer, the one of the biggest smile
on their face.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I'm going to hold him to that too.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
All right, we're doing it.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
I'm going to start playing rugby union.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
At least should be less than thirty goals down.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Jolie speaks so beautifully. Thank you, thank so that was
that was really lovely. Thank you for coming in. And yeah,
I can't read wait to read.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
This to the good congratulations in the book. Thank you
for coming on talk.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
I've always looked at what you guys are doing from
being a two and a half year old myself. It's
like a full circle now, saying LEXI being obsessed with
you guys because the value has been literally for so
many years and still lives through every generation. So well done.
You're doing I think far more than you realize in
building the next generation after generation of great children.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Oh thanks, shel It's very we feel very fortunate to
be able to do what we do and fortune be
able to chat with you today. Thanks, thanks for coming in.
Take care guys.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
What a lovely guy, very softly spoken, I know, very
well paced. Yes, would you fit into Captain Feathersword's wetsuit?
Speaker 3 (44:14):
That's holy personal.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
I would love to see you, sir with the parents.
I'm finding that feedback straight away.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
A lot of arms and a lot of legs I need.
I need a much bigger board than I used to have.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
That's okay, Yeah, we can do that long board long Yeah,
aren't they more I know nothing about it. Are they
more easy to balance on long boards?
Speaker 3 (44:38):
We would think? So it's just more of it. Yeah,
like me, I'm easy to balance on. It's just more
of me. I'm six foot four, you are. And it's
a great stand up, stand out. It's a great book.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
That was a great shot forward.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
To reading that with that shirt. Yeah. You know, the
language we use is so important. And to remind ourselves
of how we frame things and phrase things for our children.
If you're old things over and over again, you'll believe it,
and that can be positive and negative. And so we
just need to keep reminding ourselves of how we speak
to our children. You know a friend of mine. They
(45:12):
were often told, and this was meant to be an
encouraging thing, saying, you know, we're not everyone's as smart
as each other. And so what the implication was for
that child was that they weren't as smart as other people. Now,
they were highly intelligent, but what they believed that they
weren't as smart as others. And even though the parents
were trying to frame it in a nice way or
(45:33):
not make them feel bad if they didn't get the
highest smart whatever it was, it actually had a negative
effect on that child. Just a good reminder. But how
we speak and how we talk.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, thank you to Joel for joining us today. If
you want to have a look at Joel's book, it's
called Stand Up, stand Out and that will be in
the show notes. Thank you for listening to Wegle Talk.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
Yeah, see on the waves? What do you say?
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah, well maybe not cap We'll get a red wet suit,
red board.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Yeah, yeah, I'll just be all read. Probably just read
a track sharks. I'm not sure anyway. Probably. Thanks for
listening to will Talk, the podcast for parents. It really is.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
Thank you by
Speaker 3 (46:23):
H
The Wiggles acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia
and their connections to land, see and community. We pay
our respects to elders, past, present and emerging.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to Wiggle Talk, a podcast for parents. My name
is Locky and I am the Purple Wiggle.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello Locki. My name is Simon and I am the
Red Wiggle. It's great to be here, and it's really
great to be here because today we're talking about how
children build confidence to have a go, not being told
they're amazing all the time, but through trying things, wabbling
a little, making mistakes and learning that they can try again.
But before we speak to Joel, who we're going to
(00:45):
speak to about confidence and all those things I just
mentioned in my preamble, Locky, you believe you've got something
to say.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I do. I am trying things myself.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I've picked up not confidence yet, but I've picked up
a lot of passion on cooking recently from these two
particular people I've seen on Instagram. One who just throws
things together. You can see his love of the food
and then he enjoys it at the end. But it's
so cool to watch that one, and then the other
guy who rates other chef's burgers, and he starts by going,
(01:19):
what does say Gordon Ramsey know about burgers? And then
he'll watch the clip and then do it step by step,
make the burger, taste it, review it. So on the
weekend I made a burger for DNA Dana I got
from one of the guys he recommended, and he reviewed
it looked really good. It involved smashing the burger.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Oh, smash burger. Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I was talking to friends from school about this smashing
and she said, hang on went to get her iron
cast smasher.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yes, they are obviously regular smashes. I know.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I knew there was a tool for it, but we
didn't have one.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
But you're smashing the bread and everything.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
No, no, just you make the paddy. You make it
like you have a meat ball.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
It's mint present. It is.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I had learned twenty five seventy five ratio fat and meat,
so it sears really well. It tastes good, not a
lower fat content. Isn't it tasty when you smash?
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Anyway?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I made a beautiful raspberry bacon jam with apple cider
and brown sugar. That was the jam, and then I
had the beef.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Now the problem.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
My first problem was in the video the guy smashed
it on a beautiful, big, like restaurant style heat plate.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Oh right, like you know, like a barbecue, so you're
smashing cook at the same time. Oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
I had a fry pan, so I was smashing the
smasher took up almost the entire fry pan. So that
was the first rookie era. There was a few rookie
but it was really enjoyable. Darn loved it. I got
a ten out of ten.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
So your burger bit is smashed, so it's all in pieces.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh no, no, okay, hang on a second. These guys,
you don't just buy a paddy from the butcher or
meat chop. You go and you buy you roll your own.
It has to be a certain size for the paddy
to then fit on the butt. Okay, so you just
literally get a meat ball. Oh and you're pressing it
into its really quickly. I didn't press it enough because
(03:33):
I didn't have enough room, so that paddy was raw,
and I was so frustrated because it burnt. My first
two I had four. The first two when I flipped,
I was devastated because it was like black, and you
know me, I don't like anything burns. They have to
go in the bin. I to waste second ones I
(03:55):
got right, but it was really fun.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
That's good.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
My point was the cast iron presser has never been
washed in soap, right, it just retains oil and that's
how you keep it. So we were told when we
borrow the please, friends, please don't put soap on it
because it takes off the entire layer of.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Built up all these years of work.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
But when I washed it with water my hands.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
It's like, I hate that feeling, like even just if
it's butter or something.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
It's like I worked on the stovetop cooker like installation,
like it was covered.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
What was?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
I found out multiple smash burgers just all Also do
you pat dry that water? Basically leave your burger on
your back?
Speaker 3 (04:46):
You going to buy your own smasher? Yes, I will,
but a bigger pan. Well a barbecue really? Oh yeah,
have you got a barbecue? No, you need to get
a barbecue and a smasherash our next guest, Joel Pilgrim.
We're not going to find out. It's not what. We're
not talking to Joel about it because Joel's an occupational therapist, speaker,
(05:08):
and author and founder of Waves of Wellness Foundation. It's
an organization that uses surfing, movement and mental health support
to help people build confidence, connection, and well being.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
He's worked in mental health for more than fifteen years,
and a lot of his work sits around the idea
that sometimes we don't build confidence by talking about it.
We build it by doing things that feel a little
bit hard, a little bit new, or a little bit
outside our comfort zone.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
He is also the author of the children's books Stand Up,
stand Out, which uses surfing birds to explore feelings, courage,
and what it means to be comfortable in your own feathers.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Because for parents of young children, confidence often shows up
in really ordinary moments. It's the playground climb that makes
you hold onto your breath. It's the swimming lesson that
they don't want to try. It's the child who says
I can't do it before they even get started. It's
the moments that you're not sure whether step in, cheer
them on, or give them a little more space.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
So today's conversation is about how we help children build
confidence in real, practical ways through play, movement, safe risk, failure, frustration,
and learning. They don't have to be the best at
something for it to still be worth doing. So let's
get right into it. Joel, Welcome to wiggled Talk.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Oh you've got the wiggly fingers. Lucky always points to
I think it's the neon behind us here. This is
his proudest thing about wiged Talk. He went out there
and he ordered a neon.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
You've really stepped it up this season.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yes, thank you've noticing The plan's the same.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, it doesn't even never need water. That plan is magical.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Other, God's good. Thanks for coming in.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
Yous.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Nice to talk in person. But you work with areas
of risk and confidence and well being. But you know,
when you're in the in the playground to your daughter,
are you want to kind of step back and let
the risk happen or are you like jumping in getting
in there. Yeah, I'm protecting.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
I'm pretty pro risk, being a big wave surfer and
a risk taking myself. Having a child in lexus two
and a half my daughter and having her take risk
herself is a little different, right. You almost want to
jump in and you want to save her and make
sure that you're stopping her from hurting herself. But I'm
the one nowadays that's learned the hard way too. You know,
we actually need to step back, We need to let
(07:30):
her fail or learn that lesson so that she can
almost build that resilience and confidence herself, because it's so
easy for us to almost I think as parents we're
actually trying to soothe our own insecurities or discomforts rather
than our child.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah that's true. Yeah, that's very true. It's about our
own fears growing up. Were you a risk taker? Did
your parents allow you to take risks and jump off things?
And obviously surfed from a young age.
Speaker 4 (08:00):
So over twin brother and we both were just pushing
each other to go and do the wildest things. You know.
We left home at sunrise and had to be home
by dinner, so it was literally the beach was our playground,
and we had the most amazing experiences. But I think
nowadays it's changed a little bit with the safety and
the importance of having our kids a little closer and contactable. Yeah,
but you know, risks for me are really a valuable
(08:21):
right of passage as you grow up.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Was there a lot of competition between you and your brother?
Was it very competitive.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
I knew you've can asked that, Simon, but the twins
conversation a while ago, Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, we
had a pretty competitive landscape. You often don't plan to
do that, just you put it off against each other sometimes.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And yeah, and I from wonder as sure he's five,
he's not overly competitive. I mean he likes to do
things and try to achieve things. But do you think
having competitive nature helps build more confidence in children or
does it work hand in hand with each other? Are
they're two very different things?
Speaker 4 (08:58):
I think so. I think you get thick skin pretty quickly,
you learn how to get back up and try again.
You've also got someone who is a great cheerleader to
get you back on that horse. But really, I think
for us as young kids, back then it was a
little easier to try things out and make mistakes, and
nowadays there's a little bit more risk associated with social media.
(09:20):
We've been outside, you know, we are a lot more
aware as parents, and it's only human to want to
try and curb some of that risk. But it's where
I have really learned the value of being able to
just pause and reflect and wait that extra thirty seconds
before jumping in.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah, I find the twin things.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
I my girls are here today, great that they bring
you in they're dead, but they constantly surprise you with
what they find confidence in. And it flips. I reckon
every few months to the point where I walked in
before and the one who I thought would be finding
this day harder because they're doing a bit of filming
with Blue Cheer and EB today but is the one
(09:59):
that's totally in it. And the one who I thought
was all over it is the one making like they're
shy shy face and did you find that with your brother?
Speaker 4 (10:08):
And yeah, the label thing is interesting, right, like, yeah,
you've got a view as a father of you of
your girls, which one's what? There's a lot of fluidity
in that. And I was often the creative kid, the
more sort of softer sensitive one, and that was very obvious.
But then at times there was different things that we
move between. So yeah, I mean it's not really a
(10:29):
one size fits all kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
No, No, definitely not. What are kids getting from those
risk moments in themselves?
Speaker 4 (10:36):
I think they're actually getting feedback and evidence. It's like
they're plotting data points to learn what they're capable of
learn what happens when I fail? And I use the
fail word lightly because I'm a big believer that it's
always lessons not failures. Where you can use that to
then iterate in the future or make sure we do
(10:57):
it in a different way to.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Cope and is it good? You know, Ashue is sessed
with monkey bars, like obsessed to the point where he's
splitting his hands from you know. But through that, there's falls,
there's mistakes, there's all that sort of stuff. Is there
a point where parents where you if they have a fall,
(11:18):
they pick themselves up, they haven't hurt themselves, but they're
not actually wanting to have a go again. Is it
important as a parent to keep encouraging them to go again?
Or can you push it too far? Or your best
to sit back and wait under those circumstances.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
Yeah, I mean it's easier said than done, but I
would encourage everyone to go. You know what, like if
that person is hurt, let's see if they can name
the emotion. So what are you feeling right now? What
is it that's happening inside of your body? Can you
name where it's hurting or what is it that you're feeling?
And then you get a bit of feedback as to
the next Yeah, I guess fork in the road, do
(11:51):
you choose to close that down or do you go again?
And with Lexi, my two and a half year old,
it's like now she has in her vocabulary can do
hard things, but that doesn't happen overnight. We started to
hear from her, I can't do this, I can't do it.
And then Vanassa and my partner and I we both said, okay,
we're going to make a thing here of stopping and
(12:12):
acknowledging the moment, trying to name the feeling, and then
giving her a bit of re assurance that you can
do hard things, you're capable of more than you think,
and us role modeling trying and trying again was a
great way for her to see, oh, that's a good
thing I can do as well.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah I can't do It's an interesting one, isn't it,
Because you wonder how far you push as a parent
to You can say over and over again, yes you can,
Yes you can, but at some point you have to
try to convince them in a way to get up
and give it a go without feeling like you're forcing
them to do something. At the same time balance.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
If they're saying I can't, what they're really trying to
communicate to us is one of a couple of things,
I'm finding this hard, I'm scared, or I don't really
know how to navigate this situation that I'm so asking
them more about why is that that you're finding it harder?
Why do you think you can't do this? You often
surprised with what the answer is that comes back.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Do you find a physical accomplishments creates a level of
confidence and does that then relate to a classroom scenario
where they're willing to put their hand up and answer
questions and that kind of situation. If they have that
sort of confidence because of physical achievements, does it relate
or they are two very separate things. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:32):
I like to call it like mental fitness as a whole,
and you're building up that mental muscle to feel comfortable
around resilience, determination, all of those other things. Confidence, and
if you are able to feel more comfortable in those
micro moments or those small little steps that build up
to confidence, then that will permeate through other areas of
your life. When you're in the classroom, when you're speaking
(13:53):
to a stranger, when you're at the cafe asking for
a baby Tino. You know, being able to feel comfortable
enough to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone but
within reason, because you know that you're capable of it.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
It's interesting we can't get Asher to ask for the
baby Chino, yet he'll always want us to come up
with him and do it. We're kind of gently kind
of encouraging him to do it, but he still sort
of won't do it on his own. But Rome wasn't
built in a day, and you know, get back on
the horse, you know, but it is important just to
I guess, keep that dialogue going over time, and then
(14:27):
eventually that sort of thing will start to happen.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
Yes, your idea of like doing hard things as a
build up. I used to stop Lexi from picking up
heavy things. I was really worried about her breaking it
or hurting herself. And often when I did just catch
myself and stop stopping her, she would then be far
more capable than I thought she was. She'd lift something
(14:49):
that was way more heavy, and then I'd be thinking, gee,
that was impressive.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
You're a weapon.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
And she's carrying this heavy Three later to think of
milk and I'm like, that shouldn't be happening right now,
but you're killing it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah. Yeah, that's often when the little walking moments happen
is and when we try to step in and then
everything just goes goes. I wanted to ask you, I'm done,
and I my wife when I watching.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Rugby the other day and rugby union.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Rugby union you just started playing last year, and yeah, good,
I'm at learning. It's that you get to pick a
sport each term, and he picked rugby union. Wow, well, okay,
we're in, but done. I made the comment that lots
of parents, including us, you say like, oh, bad luck.
And she was having this chat with one of her
friends during the week, like oh, bad luck you drop
(15:36):
the ball and bad luck you did this, And then
one of the other moms said, it was not really
bad luck. You just like you just dropped the ball
and it was not bad luck at all. You just
you made a mistake. And is that words and terms
that are better than she was meaning, like, you know
that just to say bad luck and sort of soften it,
but it was a mistake. You hear so many things
(15:56):
on the sideline. I don't really know where I'm going
with this, but the words and sentences matter when you're like,
you know, you're amazing and you can do it, and
is there a better terms that we can use or
I think lucky.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
What you're saying is spot on that language is everything
and it can make such a massive difference using just
a slightly different term framing, you know, on the sports
field and using examples like that or being a mental
health professional for fifteen years, I've seen the amazing benefit
of language being used in a good way and the
(16:29):
detrimental impact of negative used language, to the point where
someone who is very capable could think that they don't
even have a future because someone has labeled them as something.
So starting young with our kids, absolutely we need to
be mindful that we're giving them the right idea that
there's not luck involved with the fact that you just
(16:50):
drop that ball. It's that sometimes that happens, and that's okay, yes,
you know, you drop the ball. Whoopsies. You know, we
often talk about it as like daddy's a silly duffer
because daddy did something silly or made a mistake. Whoopsie,
dais his Daddy's a silly daffer. And now Lexi is
able to two and a half say, oh, Daddy made
a mistake, silly daffer. It's normal part of our life
(17:12):
to not achieve every time, especially the first time, and
we have to put the almost the pavers along the
driveway to build up that understanding so that when they
get to a major life moment and they don't achieve,
they have that mental muscle.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
Can you give too much praise? So there's a balance
there too, that you're actually making them feel something above
and beyond where they're actually at.
Speaker 4 (17:37):
Potentially and praising what are you praising the outcome or
are you praising the effort? And that I've found makes
a lot of difference. I'm really really proud of your
SOI for trying really hard versus oh, I'm so proud
of you for what you're able to achieve. It's two
very different things. And then you're actually attached to the
outcome rather than the effort along the journey to get there.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
There's the proud thing too, where we've heard spoken about,
where you say, oh, you should feel very proud of
yourself for what you have done, instead of always the
parents saying I'm proud of you. So the child acknowledges
they are actually also proud of themselves. I feel like
that's probably important part of the conversation too.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
Absolutely, And so rather than I am proud of you
or are you proud of yourself? How do you feel?
Do you feel proud? And then you start with those
yes nos or the hows and then they can start
to unpack that. But it won't happen overnight. There's going
to be this sense of like, I don't know what
you're talking about. So the role modeling over time is
so valuable.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Yeah, back to Rome again.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Yeah, you got.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
As children get a little bit older, there's going to
be comparisons. So there's going to be children who are faster,
children who are apparently smarter, children who are more. To say,
how do we deal with that with our children? If
they're not the fastest, if they're not the loudest, if
they didn't get the A plus in their spelling, how
do we manage that with our children?
Speaker 4 (19:09):
It's a big one, isn't it. And how do we
have our children feel like they are enough as the
way they are?
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Yeah, yeah, So comparison is very evil at whatever age
you are in the world, but having young people comparing
themselves to the people around them is even more detrimental,
I believe, because they're so malleable and being shaped by
their environment around them. So encouraging them to look within
(19:36):
and to come back to self rather than looking for
either that external validation or that external understanding of how
I need to show up in the world. In a race,
for example, if they weren't fast, it might not be saying, oh,
bad luck, you didn't win. You know, that's a great
example of language. Again, it's okay, sometimes we don't win,
but you have many other things that you're great at.
(19:57):
And so directing them away from the energy of that
hurt and that suffering I didn't achieve that race or
whatever it is to putting them onto something that's a
little more aligned with what they know that they're good at.
That might be you were amazing in drama, or how
did you feel when you did that maths test. You know,
(20:18):
it's important not to just distract and take them straight
away from that race, because you're actually trying to save
their suffering. They're allowed to feel bad about that race,
and often we might feel a little more upset about
that for them because we know how that felt as
a young person. So again, as an adult and as
a parent, we need to check our own emotions as
to how we're showing up in that scenario.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Yeah, yeah, it is tricky being a parent. It's a
lot because you do you just want to protect them
the whole time. But it's important for a child to
experience that. But then, like you're saying, it's a language
that we use about how does it make you feel?
What steps will we do next? If you're unhappy that
you didn't win, what could you do next time to
(21:02):
potentially have a better result for yourself? I guess there's
those kind of ways of framing things. Surfing for you,
is that a big part of mental health? Is that
what surfing has become for you?
Speaker 4 (21:16):
Yeah, I mean surfing is a part of me managing
my own mental health and wellbeing over the years. I've
surfered almost thirty years. But for me, it's almost like
I get to go out in the ocean and I
call the I don't know how you guys feel about
swearing on this show. I call the shoreline a bullshit barrier,
And as soon as you step over that, you get
rid of all the other bullshit in life that's thrown
(21:37):
at you, and you get to just be yourself out there.
And so for me, surfing has always been a personal
value to manage my own wellbeing. But now after spending
a decade in the world of surf therapy, like using
surfing as therapy for mental health and running therapy sessions
on the beach, I've seen so many people realize that
(21:57):
like the ocean, the outdoors, physical activity and combined that
with learning about your mental health is a great way
to actually thrive rather than just survive. So, yes, surfing
has been incredible for my life. And my fiance Vanessa
always says, like, get out of the house and go
to the beach, because you're a better person when you've
been surfing. Because that's my thing that I do to
maintain my own well being. But professionally now being able
(22:20):
to deliver that experience and that opportunity for people who
quite often are at the end of the road, and
you know, it is a very heavy thing to talk
about when someone's considering end in their life, but people
come to us at Waves Wellness Foundation at that point
in time and we have an opportunity to pick them
back up and put them back on the road of life,
and they get on with it because we've given them
(22:41):
the skills and the strategies to cope when things aren't
going well. And really that is the reason why I
wrote a children's book about mental health, because I saw
just how important it was for young people to be
learning about mental health, literacy, and emotions from a far
earlier age than what they're actually being.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Taught back then.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Every time I go into the ocean, which isn't a lot,
but there's just a it's such a magnificent power of
the water. I love that barrier idea. Did you a
lot of the times you were surfing alone? Did you
go with your brother or is it just tie that's
time for you just to be.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
Alone with my brother? With friends in massive groups on
holidays overseas. There was many different scenarios, but often it's technology.
That's the most beautiful thing that surfing provides, is a
disconnection away from all of those things of being on.
You know, I don't have the ability for someone to
call me when I'm in their well, actually that I
do now because I got an Apple Watch. So I
(23:40):
don't recommend that, but it's an important thing right as parents,
with being on all the time and always having either
your work, or your home or your kids. There's so
much that we have to juggle, so finding something that
we actually can have disconnection and that time to ourselves
is so important, right And people often say with surfing
that they come down to the beach, I don't want
(24:02):
to do it because I don't want to fail. I
don't want to make myself look silly or what have you.
But it's actually a surfing lesson. You're going to have
many lessons here. You're going to fall and you're going
to get back up, and you're going to learn that.
That's just a part of the journey to being a surfer,
and very similarly, it's just a part of being a child.
It's a part of learning that you will fall over.
We just need to learn how to get back up
(24:23):
and build that resilience. Michelle Obama says, without struggle, there
is no strength. So it's really important to allow that
struggle to happen and normalize it with our young people.
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Some of the best conversations I've had with Ashra about
how he's feeling is when we've been doing an activity together.
So whether whether it's actually coloring in or we're just
at the back kicking a soccer ball around and I
start to ask him about how he's feeling about things,
and that's when he's the most open and willing to
talk because he's engaged in something else at the same time.
(25:05):
I guess that's probably a little bit if you're with
your mates or whatever and your surfing, you've got the
ability to just talk about life at the same time
as you're engaged in surfing. It's a very kind of
it's not necessary with parents sitting down and saying, so,
how are you feeling? You actually take him out of
that world and let them explore and chat.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
As a five year old, absolutely, I call it a
third person activity shoulder to shoulder and as a young boy,
especially for boys, it's around that art of being in
encapsulated really with an activity, and as blokes like two
adults like you and I are driving in a car
shoulder to shoulder, we would have a far better chance
(25:43):
of having a deep conversation. We didn't have to look
at each and ask the question. So it's the same
concept that young people don't feel as threatened when you're
able to open up conversations in the art of activity.
Occupational therapy is all about that. As an occupational therapist,
they work with young people, and our job was really
to create that space for someone to be themselves and
(26:04):
to think through that creativity while giving them the skills
to manage.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
What changed for those people in the ocean the first
time stepping in or.
Speaker 4 (26:14):
It's almost like just a light switch turns on and
they just turned into a different person. The whole program
came about by taking one of my patients from the hospital.
He was experiencing first episode psychosis. He was a twenty
four year old, and it was my sort of clinical
reasoning as to I'm a lifeguard, I'm a surfer. I've
got this cupboard like, I'm going to take him from
(26:35):
hospital to the beach. Probably the worst clinical decision I've
ever made, because I could have had my head on
the chopping block, But it was incredible to watch that
happen and just to see how much of a changed
man he was from three months of therapy. We didn't
get anywhere near we did in like thirty minutes of
floating out there in the ocean, barely catching a wave.
(26:57):
And it's because he's able to let down that guard
and be in his environment that he's comfortable with not
my expected environment of the health setting or the hospital
ward or tell me everything you're struggling with right now.
You know, we have to get on the level of
the people that we're supporting, and that is the level
of our young people in this conversation as to if
(27:17):
our child is two and a half and is standing
there and having absolute meltdown, it doesn't matter if we're
trying to leave and get them in the car, Like,
it's important to be late to have them move through
these emotions by themselves rather than picking them up kicking
and screaming and then having a really negative experience for everyone.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
And you would have probably softened and been more in
your place in that moment for him too, right than
in earth.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
Yeah, we were just two people surfing together and there
was no clinical patient divide if you will.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
How cool.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Yeah, Yeah, it's so powerful to watch that happen. And
over the last decade, there's been countless people that have
said that this program has like genuinely saved my life,
And that's a pretty special thing to not be able
to count on two hands how many people have said that.
But it also really reiterates the importance of the mental
health messaging and the way we learn about this sort
of stuff has to be way earlier in our lives,
(28:13):
because I'm finding that when someone's sixteen and comes to
an early psychosis program that was my previous job as
an occupational therapist, their life understanding and the way of
the world working is already created. So we have to
start way earlier. And that's why this book has been
a beautiful tool to give people those identifiable metaphors to
(28:37):
identify those emotions and how that feels within the body,
and how you can start to get a bit more
comfortable with that over time.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Can you tell us a little bit more about your book,
Stand Up, stand Out? Yeah, just in the essence of
what it's about, and you've given a bit of why,
but actually what it's.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
About absolutely, Simon. So it's really it's surfing birds who
are from all different types of shapes and sizes, all
different feathers, and each bird represents a different emotion. So
Fiona the flamingo has butterflies in her belly and she
experiences anxiety that's represented through jelly legs and wibblewobble. On
the play, You've got Lori the lorikeet who struggles to
(29:13):
get out of bed, and sometimes she leaves the house
feeling worried and scared, but then she learns to cope
in the wave she shared. So the book rhymes and
it goes through the journey of these surfing birds, and
it's based on the true story of a mental health movement.
But it really is a way of children identifying visually
emotionally how these emotions show up and then how I
(29:35):
can start to see them within my own mind. The
book actually changes color and sort of grows with vibrance
and energy as the emotions start to grow, and that
connectivity amongst the birds happens. But the final page is
the message was clear for everyone to see. Be comfortable
in your own feathers, whatever they be. So it doesn't
matter what you look like, what shape or color or
(29:56):
vibrance and you have in your look. You are so
much more than your visual aesthetic. And it's important that
we start to realize that you're special.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Toy. That's beautiful, that's so cool if a child wants
to win, Because I remember, all of a sudden, at
some point at a certain age, as sure and his
friends and nieces and nephews, everything's all of a sudden
about being the fastest, about winning, about you know, just
getting somewhere first. If your child isn't winning and is
(30:28):
deflated by that, how do we encourage our children to
still continue on and to keep trying things. Because it's
obviously not always about winning, but in their minds at
that particular stage, they are wanting to win. How do
we keep encouraging them to keep trying.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
Yeah, it's really tricky. I mean, I'm no parent expert here,
so I don't have the answer necessarily, but I would
often be feering towards the what are you excited about?
Or what were you happy about today? Bring them back
that sense of pride and ownership. They may say nothing
because all I wanted to do was win, and then
you're still in the same place. But that diversion into
(31:06):
there is more than just winning is something which I
would be striving for because it's a pretty lonely place.
There's only one winner in an event of like say
twenty runners or eight swimmers, or you're not always going
to be on the podium or even in the race
for first to third. So there's more to life than
just winning. I actually struggled with that as a young kid,
(31:30):
you know, always feeling like I had to be more
and be better, and that started to eat away at
my own self confidence, so you know, then bullying starts
to set in. Then I had my own experiences that
were pretty heavy and dark. That to me is where
if we had the tools and the language and the
ways to be able to navigate this, it probably wouldn't
(31:51):
have ended in that sort of state.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Got a steps on Jessper who's ten. Think about him
a lot during this chat, but just how he used
to be one of those. So I met him when
he was three and we'd play every kind of sport
game you can think of, and his thing was he
needed to win every time, and I had to let
him otherwise he'd absolutely lose it to the point where
I had to go. I started going, you know what,
(32:15):
this isn't fun anymore. I'm going to go inside and
we can come out and play again when it's not
about winning, when we're just going to have fun. And
that was a hard message to get through. But now
he's ten and he's playing rugby union. But just so
proud of him because you can see whether it's because
now he's in a group of boys at a school
where it's actually about just playing together and that real camaraderie.
(32:36):
And he's now already looking up to his school leaders
and coming out with sentence like he wants to be
a leader and the future, which is amazing And never
thought I'd beautiful hear that from him, but it was
through that he's just got so much better at he
still wants to win, of course, but so much better
at just not being about all of that being just
(32:57):
you know, he did a great rundown the sideline on
the week and I got so teary and I just
like looked out and I'm like, this is just so
such a cool step for him, and I think his
new school has a lot to do with that. But again,
absolutely no question in this, but just if it was
just that that constant reiterating that, and it was definitely
hard those first few years. I was like, I can't
play with you anymore.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Just this is full on.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
So at three when you met him, ye was he
still very I need to win.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
And absolutely that happened for a long a good till
he was four and a half five. It was just
every game we played I had to like I miss
and he was thirty goals in front.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Like you would you ever win or you would always just.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, and that would that would also then cause the
whole No. He'd actually then start getting quite aggressive because
he started like being too rough because he knew that
was the way of getting getting back, trying to get
points back, and it was like, that's my.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Freak kick Actually could have been a little closer.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
That's what I tried to tell you. I'm like you were,
so can I please kick a guy?
Speaker 4 (34:03):
What you're naming here is that he has a pattern
and behavior that he's established already well and truly at
the age of three. And so that's a great example
of how we need to start far earlier to start
to embed these realities for our young people. So if
(34:24):
we're talking about winning, if we're talking about this scenario,
maybe let's go back to one to one and a
half to two and something happened where he was always
given the win that then became normal and if I
don't get the win, then something's wrong. So our job
is not to let our kids win. Our job is
to give them an understanding of the world. Like our
(34:47):
job as parents is not to prevent struggle in our
children's life. It is to help them deal with said
struggle when it will definitely arise in your life. It's
so easy to want to cotton more of our kids
and to give them the best experience ever, but often
people try and protect them from the world. Instead, we
actually need to prepare them for the world. There's two
(35:07):
very different scenarios there, and what you're suggesting is you
kept going on that pathway because you didn't want to
have to deal with the repercussions. And that's human. That's normal.
As a parent or a step parent doesn't matter like
you are his person of value, and that is where
no matter how long you are along the spectrum, I
(35:28):
believe that we can always come back by slowly drip
feeding in to get them back to In a therapy sense,
we call it graded exposure, so slowly exposing you to
the discomfort that you're trying to overcome in your therapeutic journey.
In the same way we're trying to gradually expose him,
and over time, Jasper won't love it, but he will
get better and better at it over time.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
It is fascinating to think that it actually can start
from that age of one one and a half, because
if you think back, that's when that's actually when it
does start to happen. But you just and of course
you naturally just let your child win because that's well
if they can beat me.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
But you know, but what do you think, what do
you think actually snowballs? What are the contributing factors that
make it worse? Do you think something for.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
A child continuing to win, allowing them to Yeah, well
I think it's a.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Single child, yes, factors that can increase.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, well, I think that's definitely it. For Asher, who
is an only child, there is no sibling to compete again,
so that that actually I'm just always going to let
him win because it's just Lauren and myself and him,
you know. But he's actually now that he's playing more
or maybe the same thing happened with Jasper team sort
of sport and there it's just all fun still, but
(36:45):
there is other children score goals, other children are fast.
He's starting to kind of understand it and he will
now clap when and be happy when he's someone else
scores a goal and he doesn't. But there was an
initial period there where he started not wanting to go
to soccer so much because he wasn't scoring the goals
and somebody else was, but now he's kind of encouraging.
(37:05):
But I think they're all those You're right, there are
all those different factors. But it would start back from well,
would just let him win because he's the child, and
we want to make him feel good because he won.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
Totally totally, But it almost goes so far back in
the journey to when they wanted something for dinner and
they then demanded and always got what they wanted, when
they didn't want to share their toy and they didn't
have to necessarily share their toy as an only child.
So there's definitely compounding factors that all contribute to it.
But the I guess reality of you're not always going
(37:40):
to be able to have what you want to eat
for dinner, like chocolate cake for breakfast, or you know
you're going to have to work with the current scenario
or the reality of life that is the same sort
of route through all of these different examples is our
job is not to create an unrealistic joy or paradise
for our kids, give them a really valuable and clear
(38:02):
understanding that life is not always roses.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
I needed to be two goals up at half time,
we did just to get the drawer. At the end,
you need to go back to changing.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Seriously, I think back at myself at school and I
never put my hand up to answer a question. I
was never that child. Even if I knew the answer,
I would never have the confidence to actually put my
hand up and say it. And I don't know if
a she is going to be like that or not,
but he says something, as parents, we can do to
encourage that kind of behavior within even like we're talking
(38:36):
about earlier getting the baby, asking for the baby Chino,
or putting your hand up in class or those kind
of well, as adults we think is fairly natural things
to do. But I look thinking back about my childhood,
I would never have done it. Are there things we
can do to encourage our children to be able to
do that? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (38:54):
I think it comes back to like enabling their belief
in the fact that they can do things, enabling them
to understand that what's the worst that's going to happen?
And it's a safe testing ground that we start and
we do things within the home environment, within the four
walls of their safety, and then we start stepping outside
(39:15):
and outside it could be crossing the road by themselves.
It could be making sure that they look left and
right and then say there's no cars before we then
go across it without holding their hand for the first time.
So they're slowly, slowly building up this understanding of oh,
I'm on my own here, I can do this, I'm
capable of that. And so there's millions of examples of
(39:36):
how we could slowly add those things up. But they
will compound over time, and they will get them to
order their own Baby Chino over time, but it won't
happen Rome wasn't Milton to Day.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
No, that's right, you get back on the horse. But
I love this book and I think it'd be a
beautiful book for parents how to read with their children
in bedtime. And I'm looking forward to reading with esher
this evening. Nice one, Yeah, beautiful. It sounds like a
beautiful story. And I think any way with our children,
(40:07):
we can kind of help give that little bit of
extra confidence in the day to day things and understanding
who they are. And I think that's a part of
our job.
Speaker 4 (40:16):
Yeah, yeah, And sometimes we need things to be made
easier for us as parents. We don't have all the answers,
we don't have all the ideas. We're just bubbling long
doing the best job we can as parents, right, But
hopefully something like this is a tool where parents can go, Oh,
there's a way, there's a way in, there's a way
to open up the conversation to talk about the things
(40:38):
that I find personally hard as an adult, let alone,
how the hell I do this with my child?
Speaker 3 (40:43):
Yeah, and using the right language, which is so important.
Speaker 4 (40:48):
And what I have found fascinating through the last probably
decade is it's fascinating to see the amount of parents
that dive into therapy, accessing it themselves as an adult
for the first time when they have children, because they
want to ensure that they are giving their child the
best experience and potentially unwiring or unwriting some of the
(41:10):
negative patterns and behaviors they learn as a child from
their parents. So my message to your listeners would be,
if you're thinking that you are sometimes the person getting
the way of the struggle or giving the confidence and
resilience to your young person, then how can you then
be the best version of yourself to then show up
for your child in a way that's allowing them to
(41:32):
be the best version.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Yeah, that's really good. And I think like has been
spoken about on hearing the past, is that we naturally
things come out of your mouth as a parent, you
think I don't actually don't mean that, but it's pre
programmed because of how we were brought up or whatever
we went through, and so it's great for us as
parents to kind of, like you're saying, rewire some things
(41:56):
to actually do I really mean that. Would I really
feel that way in the way that we're talking and
dealing with our and communicating with our children.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
You're doing great. Bye, guys, just back yourself right, you're
doing great.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
It is out.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
I see what you guys are doing, and I'm proud.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Okay, get the surfboard out. We'll go. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah,
me and the bra I wouldn't last very long. I've
meant serving for years I had. I had a surfboard.
I had a surfboard when I was younger. And that's it.
Speaker 4 (42:35):
Maybe I'll hold you to that sign. We'll dust that
thing off. Yeah we're out there.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Please.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
But you know, we went on holidays at Christmas time
to the beach, even though we do live at the beach,
we went holidays the beach and in whether the house
that we hired, there was a surfboard in there. It
was too small for me, but actually being little, he
got up on there, rode the way he loved it,
had a boy was so good. He had the best time. Great,
(43:01):
come on.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
That's the best surfer, the one of the biggest smile
on their face.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
I'm going to hold him to that too.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
All right, we're doing it.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
I'm going to start playing rugby union.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
At least should be less than thirty goals down.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Jolie speaks so beautifully. Thank you, thank so that was
that was really lovely. Thank you for coming in. And yeah,
I can't read wait to read.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
This to the good congratulations in the book. Thank you
for coming on talk.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
I've always looked at what you guys are doing from
being a two and a half year old myself. It's
like a full circle now, saying LEXI being obsessed with
you guys because the value has been literally for so
many years and still lives through every generation. So well done.
You're doing I think far more than you realize in
building the next generation after generation of great children.
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Oh thanks, shel It's very we feel very fortunate to
be able to do what we do and fortune be
able to chat with you today. Thanks, thanks for coming in.
Take care guys.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
What a lovely guy, very softly spoken, I know, very
well paced. Yes, would you fit into Captain Feathersword's wetsuit?
Speaker 3 (44:14):
That's holy personal.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
I would love to see you, sir with the parents.
I'm finding that feedback straight away.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
A lot of arms and a lot of legs I need.
I need a much bigger board than I used to have.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
That's okay, Yeah, we can do that long board long Yeah,
aren't they more I know nothing about it. Are they
more easy to balance on long boards?
Speaker 3 (44:38):
We would think? So it's just more of it. Yeah,
like me, I'm easy to balance on. It's just more
of me. I'm six foot four, you are. And it's
a great stand up, stand out. It's a great book.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
That was a great shot forward.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
To reading that with that shirt. Yeah. You know, the
language we use is so important. And to remind ourselves
of how we frame things and phrase things for our children.
If you're old things over and over again, you'll believe it,
and that can be positive and negative. And so we
just need to keep reminding ourselves of how we speak
to our children. You know a friend of mine. They
(45:12):
were often told, and this was meant to be an
encouraging thing, saying, you know, we're not everyone's as smart
as each other. And so what the implication was for
that child was that they weren't as smart as other people. Now,
they were highly intelligent, but what they believed that they
weren't as smart as others. And even though the parents
were trying to frame it in a nice way or
(45:33):
not make them feel bad if they didn't get the
highest smart whatever it was, it actually had a negative
effect on that child. Just a good reminder. But how
we speak and how we talk.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Yeah, thank you to Joel for joining us today. If
you want to have a look at Joel's book, it's
called Stand Up, stand Out and that will be in
the show notes. Thank you for listening to Wegle Talk.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
Yeah, see on the waves? What do you say?
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Yeah, well maybe not cap We'll get a red wet suit,
red board.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Yeah, yeah, I'll just be all read. Probably just read
a track sharks. I'm not sure anyway. Probably. Thanks for
listening to will Talk, the podcast for parents. It really is.
Speaker 4 (46:18):
Thank you by
Speaker 3 (46:23):
H
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