Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and Raising Resilient Kids With Dr. Caroline Leaf

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Well God to my Moody's podcast.This episode is sponsored by one of my
favorite companies, just Thrive Health.They have several products that are a part
of my regular rotation and absolute staplesin my house. I know I've talked
about it before, but I'm ahuge fan of their probiotic, which has
patented strains of spore based probiotics thatsurvive longer in your gut so you actually

(00:25):
get the benefit of them. It'sa good rule of thumb that if a
probiotic can't handle room temperature, itneeds to be refrigerated. It's probably not
going to handle the temperature of yourbody very well. And many probiotics,
while they might have a lot ofconcentration in the capsule form, aren't surviving
well in the gut. And thisis what makes spore based probiotics different and
why I use them regularly. Theseare great to get all the way into

(00:47):
your gut and provide the benefits,and it's the first probiotic I've really actually
felt a difference from. They alsohave a new strain with a patented formula
called just Calm that is a gutsupport for healthy neurotransmitter function, and I
notice feelings of calm and better sleepfrom taking this one regularly as well.
I also want to highlight a newproduct they have which is a probiotic gummy

(01:08):
for kids. I love that theirregular probiotics are heat stable, so I
can easily add these two even bakedgoods that are baked in the oven or
to smoothies for the kids. Butmy kids are a huge fan of the
new dummy formula and I highly recommendit for kids as well. You can
check out these and all of theirproducts, including their K two seven,
their prebiotics, their immune support,and much more by going to just drive

(01:33):
health dot com, slash Wellness Mama, and if you use the code Wellness
Mama fifteen, you will say fifteenpercent sitewide. Again, that's jus T
T h R I V E he A lt dot com, slash Wellness
Mama and the code Wellness Mama fifteento save fifteen percent. This podcast is
brought to you by Wellness. That'sWellness with an E on the end.

(01:57):
It's the company that I co foundedto create truly safe and natural personal care
products that are safe for the wholefamily. Our products use only EWG verified
safe ingredients, and they go beyondjust avoiding harmful ingredients by including herbs and
botanicals that benefit your oral health,your skin, and your hair from the
outside inn. We believe that itisn't enough just to avoid the harmful stuff,

(02:20):
that natural products should work as wellas their conventional counterparts, and that
since the skin is the largest organon the body, adding beneficial ingredients is
an extra way to benefit the bodynaturally from the outside inn. I've been
fascinated by oral health since reading Westena price book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration years
ago, and we now have awhole line of oral care products focused on
supporting and nourishing the oral microbiome whilenaturally whitening and strengthening teeth through ingredient like

(02:46):
hydroxy appetite, which is a naturallyoccurring mineral that helps support strong enamel.
We have three options of toothpaste whitening, mint, charcoal, and strawberry for
kids, plus natural floss biodegradable individualuse flossers out new probiotic myths which are
designed to support the oral microbiome andfresh and breath naturally. Our products help
you have healthier, wider teeth naturallyand without the junk. Check out these

(03:09):
and all wellness products at wellness dotcom. That's w e lll n e
ssee dot com. Hello and welcometo the Wellness Mama Podcast. I'm Katie
from Wellness Mama dot com and thisepisode is all about cleaning up your mental
mess and helping your kids have aframework for doing the same, raising resilient

(03:30):
kids and finding mental peace. AndI'm here with doctor Caroline Leif, who
has been working in this world fora very long time. She's a communication
pathologist, an audiologist, and aclinical and cognitive neuroscientist specializing in psycho neurobiology
and metacognitive neuropsychology. Her passion isto help people see the power of their
mind, to change their brain,to control kaatak thinking, and to find

(03:53):
mental peace. And she has writtenseveral books. We get to go deep
on a couple of them today andshe really walk us through several frameworks we
can use with our kids to reallyhelp them learn resilience and have a better
lens for interpreting when tough things happento them and having a framework to not
get stuck in those emotions. Wetalk about the problems with how we take

(04:14):
care of depression and anxiety and mentalhealth. How the mind can influence the
brain, Why the brain isn't thecause that's a responder, and why this
reductionist approach has been a disservice tothose who struggle with mental health. We
talk about the problem with labeling conditionsjust based on looking at the brain.
We talk about what she calls mindmanagement, and also the neurocycle, which
is a tool that we can usefor ourselves or our children to help understand

(04:36):
and work through these emotions. Howsuppression creates imbalances in the brain and the
body. The most important thing wecan do for our children's mental health that
starts with us. How to modelmental health skills to our children, why
children can interpret body language so well, and how to manage our own minds
in a way that helps them.How to model the neurocycle for our kids
and make it part of our familyculture. Why you can't make your children

(05:00):
happy and you can't fix them.We talk about the difference between safety net
parenting and helicopter parenting. How mostkids are only getting seven to ten minutes
a day of free play, butneed three to four hours in an optimal
scenario. Why it's good to letour kids be upset and cry when they're
experiencing big emotions, and how givingour kids space to struggle will actually help
them work through their feelings safely andto shape their own identity, and so

(05:21):
much more. Very informative episode withdoctor Caroline Leaf. So let's jump in,
Doctor Caroline. Welcome. It's suchan honor to have you here.
Thanks for being here. Thank you, Katie. It's great to be with
you. We've been trying to dothis for a while, so I'm excited
to be talking to you. Youdo a great job with what you do.
Oh well, thank you. Yes, I'm so grateful to stars so
finally aligned. I think your workis so incredible and so relevant to many

(05:44):
of the parents and moms listening today, and I know that there is much
we can learn from you. Soto start broad, I feel like,
as a foundational piece, can youmaybe walk us through some of the things
that aren't optimized and how we currentlylook at things like depression and anxiety and
mental health, and then from therewe'll delve into the parents oide of that,
the kids oude of that, howwe can faster resultient kids, and
so much more wonderful that's fantastic,good, great place to start. So

(06:06):
around about fifty years ago, fortyfifty years ago, there was a shift
in how we look at people's mentalhealth, and that goes for all age
groups, from children through adults,and the shift it was focused around learning
more about the brain. So therewas a good it was there was there
was good and bad. It's alwaysgood and bad and things, and the
good side was that mental health becamesort of developing into an area that we

(06:29):
started speaking more about publicly in thatkind of thing to try and remove stigma
and that sort of thing. Thoseare great, but what was very negative
and has actually created a massive problemis the fact that people became so the
research became so focused on learning newthings about the brain, which is great,
as I mentioned, but it shiftedour focus on humans and human behavior

(06:50):
into a very what we call neuroreductionistic approach. In other words, it
became about the brain. So aswe got more and more excited about the
brain, so that became the focuspoint. And that may sound like it's
not a problem, but it isa problem if you reduce a person's experiences
down to what's happening in the brain. Because the brain isn't actually the cause.

(07:12):
The brain is the responder. It'snot the causative thing. It's the
actual thing that's responding. It's aphysical structure, very complex, but it's
driven by something kind of like weswitch a light on. A light cand
switch itself on. It has tobe operated. You've got to switch a
computer on. You've got to useyour computer. That's the difference between the
mind and the brain on a verybasic level. So your mind is your

(07:36):
aliveness, the thing that's switching thecomputer on, switching the light on,
switching the brain on, and thebrain is responding. So if we remove
that very big mind element out ofthe equation and we reduce a person's responses
to a set of symptoms that arethen supposedly diagnosed to be caused by some

(07:57):
kind of biological irregularity in the brain, some sort of neurobiological something like a
chemical imbalance or some genetic flaw,or some kind of brain damage or some
kind of well, let's not saya brain damage, sort of damage a
brain that is not functioning like ashuld there's something that's different about the brain.
When we do that, we arebut it's a very medicalizing of misery

(08:18):
approach, and then it's called thebiomedical model. So in essence, when
summary, the medical model is away of looking at symptoms, from the
symptoms, making a diagnosis which thenleads us to the biological underlying biological cause,
and then targeting a treatment or amedication at that underlying biological cause.

(08:39):
So diabetes present type once presents withcertain symptoms and they can test that and
you know that it's an incident problemin the pancreas and therefore do target it.
That beautiful for medicine works for thephysical brain, the physical body.
But that model has been adopted intomental health, and that's the problem because
you can't medicalize what someone is experiencingin their life. Whether if you bullied

(09:03):
at school and you and it's apersistent problem and you are very anxious to
go to school and maybe getting quitedepressed and maybe not able to concentrate at
school, that doesn't mean that childhas a mental illness. It means that
the child is experiencing something process throughthe brain. The brain and the body
are being affected, but the causesin the environment and not the brain.

(09:24):
And that's really it's a long answerto your question, but Essentially that shift
has created what we're sitting with nowis one of the main contributors is obviously
multitude of contributors, but it's oneof the main contributors to the fact that
we're sitting with such a pandemic problemor a crisis in mental health currently and
in our children. And that's veryinteresting because a few years ago, a

(09:48):
huge there's a huge survey, variousdifferent very good surveys that are done,
and this is a very high levelsurvey that's done on globally on different countries
and age groups looking at mental health, and children always came out, Adolescents
always came out, but especially childrenalways came out as being on the higher
end of the positive side, andadults badly more it's swapped, and so

(10:11):
that's very significant that we see that, and we see that we are sitting
in the worst time ever when itcomes to children's mental health. Now.
That is, as I said,we can track it back forty years ago,
fifty years ago. This model wasintroduced as biomedical model, seeing people
as sort of symptoms of their behaviorsand symptoms and then diagnosing, and as
we track the research parallel to that, we see that actually things have got

(10:35):
worse, not better, and that'sthe sting of the worst situation. So
if the bio medical model worked thatwas introduced all these years ago, we
should see an improvement, but we'venot seen an improvement. Things have actually
got worse for all age groups,and it's really got bad for kids.
Wow. I didn't realize some ofthat and how startling those numbers were,
and that they've shifted in kids.That's really to me like very telling of

(11:00):
that. We need to ask betterquestions and look deeper into this model.
And it makes sense when you explainit that unlike something that's strictly in the
physical body, there wouldn't be justa simple singular cause and effect symptom and
medication route for this. And becauseof that the interaction between the mind and
the brain that you explained I think, as a very simplistic example back to
I did some of the neurofeedback andbrain mapping a while back, and as

(11:24):
they were doing the whole process,they asked me, you know, has
your ADHD ever gotten in your way? And I was like, well,
that's the first I've heard of it, so no, But it was interesting
that they had just by looking atmy brain assumed that and assumed problems that
I wasn't actually experiencing, and sothat kind of made me look at it
and go, wow, I wonderif this is happening to kids as well.
And we know also from at leastfrom other mental health experts I've had

(11:46):
on here and from psychiatrists that obviouslythe things that affect us in childhood can
very much carry on into adulthood.I know I've done a lot of work
as an adult to sort of unpatternedsome of the things that I internalized in
childhood, and so I would assumethat if we're taking this reduction as approach,
especially with kids, this could leadto some longer lasting issues that are
going to carry over into adulthood aswell. Is that are you seeing that

(12:07):
as well? Oh? Absolutely,So there's you know, the we know
from the studies early childhood studies,and it's undoubtedly linked. So what we
experience in childhood, unless we teacha child how you manage that, it's
going to it's going to move overinto adult. It's shop in adulthood in
various different ways, physical challenges,mental challenges, and soign. So if

(12:30):
we do have to address that anddeal with it. Our life effects us.
It's just as humans, what yougo through. It's not about you.
It's about you your environments and whateveryou're going to go through is going
to affect you. You said somethingvery very interesting though, in when they
said your ADHD brain. This isnow so typical just that statement is so
typical of a biomedical model where yourcomplexity of who you are as a person

(12:52):
they just lumped and put into onecategory because they looked at a pattern in
your brain as though it was abiological marker of a disease. So they
would have been telling you. Theywere telling you in essence in that sentence,
that you have a disease of yourbrain called ADHD, and therefore that's
why you are who you are,and that's the wrong way around. First

(13:13):
of all, ADHD is not evena scientific category. It is basically a
hypothesis. And I'm not saying thatpeople don't have concentration and learning problems.
It's a huge part of the workI've done. But the concept of ADHD
also began about forty years ago,and we were warned by our professors at
that time and scientists at time sayingthat forty years in thirty forty years time,

(13:35):
we're going to have a problem withpeople being diagnosed with something that they
don't have. So rather than sayingI have ADHD or my child is ADHD,
rather say that ADHD is a descriptionof behaviors. So it's a word
that describes a pattern of behaviors.It's not a diagnosis of a disease.
Huge difference in how you look atyourself or look at your child and how

(13:58):
a child looks at himself, youknow, and that's really critical. So
that distinction. ADHD is a clusterof behaviors that describe a cluster of behaviors,
and there's a whole lot of themversus ADHD is a disease that your
child has or you have, youknow. And even the QEG that but
the neuro feedback, I'm very familiarwith all of that. I use QEG

(14:18):
in my research weed with my teamof neuroscientists. We still do a lot.
I've been in research for forty years. We still do research. We've
put many clinical trials running. Andthe QEG there's a tendency does biomedical model
takes something as as incredible as aQEG, which isn't looking at the brain,
electrical activity in the brain in responseto how we think or what we

(14:41):
just being alive and says looks forbiomarkets. So it's reducing it down.
Oh, that pattern means ADHD orwhat we've shown and many other researchers in
the field have shown, is thatthat so called ADHD pattern in a QEG
could be the same exact same patterna moment later in someone who's just someone
who's just had the most incredible insight, who's just played the most beautiful concerto

(15:07):
on a piano or something like that. So you can't just say it's one
fixed thing or brain waves or electricalactivity in your brain is responding in the
moment, and you can have thesame pattern for someone who's in a state
of extreme stress anxiety, and someonewho's an extra in a state of extreme
euphoria because they've just created some amasterpiece or something. So if you've got

(15:28):
to be so cautious about this tendencythat symptom equals that it's not quite so
simple. Yeah, And I thinkto your point, even the language around
that, I feel like might beharmful to children, especially if they're given
what feels like a very black andwhite diagnosis and told like you have ADHD
or you have this problem. Ithink of that as a corollary in my

(15:48):
own life when I found out Ihad hashimotos, and I eventually learned to
stop saying I have hashimotos and startsaying even I am healing from hashimotos,
because to me, a diagnosis feelsvery concrete, and then we often make
that part of our identity. Butfrom what you're explaining, this is something
that the brain is always probably movingand changing, and there's variation, and
just because an electrical pattern shows upfor a particular person, that doesn't mean

(16:11):
that it's going to exhibit in thesame way in every person. So I
just wonder, are we creating kindof a stagnant, concrete version of how
these children see themselves by labeling thatas such? Absolutely, I have a
whole chapter in this book that wethe latest book that I've read that I've
just bought that's coming out, howto help your chalking up their mental mess
story. It's reversed on the camera, but basically it's a whole chapter on

(16:33):
labels with all the scientific research.I write very simplistically, so it's very
scientifically based but it's written that anyonecan understand it. But there's a whole
chapter on the danger of high labelsblock us in and how they remove hope,
and how this extensive research showing thatwhen you tell someone you are or
you have it's you've got to beso careful how you explain that, because

(16:55):
it's way better to say to achild or an adult, which is what
I would do with in my practicepractice for twenty five years. I don't
practice anymore, but I had teamsof therapists that worked for me, and
we would never say you are oryou have It's more. These are the
things, These are the kinds ofbehaviors that are showing up, and let's
look at how they potentially are disruptiveand constructive, and let's see how we

(17:17):
can reorganize and change these things.I mean, there's no doubt that people,
certain people do experience birth trauma ortrauma in the womb, or are
exposed to chemicals or have a traumaticbrain injury. There's the neurological stuff that
does happen, But that is weneed to see the neurological stuff. We
need to make that distinction between theneurological stuff and then our life experiences and

(17:38):
how they impact us. And thatline was very clear forty fifty years ago,
but it's become very blurred now.And so yes, the labeling of
a child removes hope, it locksthem in, and it makes a parent
very frightened. It's scary to betold that your child's got ADHD and then

(17:59):
they show you tell you that thebrains that your brain looks different. Because
there was a very very popular studythat you probably have spoken about or heard
about a couple of years back.It was saying that ADHD brains are smaller,
and when that study was re analyzed, they had to publish a retraction
because it was incorrectly analyzed and incorrectthe results were incorrectly presented, they were

(18:22):
biased, and that isn't actually thecase, but that is one of the
most quoted studies that parents often hehas. Scientifically, we see that the
ADHD brain looks different to the socalled neuronormative brain, and that's very scary
to hear about yourself or your child. Yeah, and it seems like the
comparison I would make is like certainareas of medicine where it is that just
cause symptom treatment approach, Whereas itsounds like what you're talking about is almost

(18:45):
more of like a functional medicine approachto the brain. It's not a like
either or it's a yes, andlet's use this data, but also let's
take into account this whole person.Let's look at what the other potential root
causes that are happening. Let's lookat their life experience and what's going on
that ac might be the reason forsome of this, and let's give them
a more empowering ability to address someof those things versus thinking this is a

(19:07):
stagnant condition. And I know you'vewritten and talked extensively about this, but
can you walk us through your approachand what you see as the answer and
the better approach to handling the sortof mental health crisis that we seem to
be entering. Absolutely, So,basically, I'm a psycho neurobiologist, which
means symnd neurobrain biology of the body. So I'm looking at that relationship that's

(19:29):
very established in the scientific literature thatchronic, unmanaged toxic stress will lead to
physical and mental challenges, and sowe see, so what we have to
look at when we look at helpinga person very holistically and unlike your comparison
that you've, you know, thesort of the comparison you've may bit more
functional. Looking at the holistic person, we have to realize two things.
Yet, when we look at psychoneurobiology, we recognize that the mind works

(19:53):
through the brain and the body.So the mind is always using the brain.
So the brain and body are involvedin everything that you experience as a
human. So this is why thebrain is constantly changing. Back in the
late nine eighties, are did thefirst some of the first week work in
my field on neuroplasticity, which isthe ability that we have. And notice
how I'm using my language that wehave as humans to change our brain.

(20:17):
Our brain can't change itself. Okay, if you did, your brain's doing
nothing. But because you're alive,you're experiencing life. You are responding to
this conversation, to being a parent, to waking up in the morning and
going to school, you are inlife. You're active, you're alive,
you're thinking, feeding, and choosingin response to that. And that's mind.
Mind is aliveness. It has apsychological component, think they'll choose.

(20:38):
It has a biological component, whichis all of the quantum physics and electro
magnetics and all that fancy stuff.But the fact is that the mind is
the thing that's driving the brain.So based on that principle, if the
mind is driving the brain and thebrain is responding to the mind, not
only is the mind driving the brain, but the mind is also embodied.

(20:59):
So as you are listening to me, now, your mind is processing what
I'm saying and building what I amsaying into the gravitational fields of the mind
into the brain itself, the physicalstructure of the brain as a tree like
structure. And I always use likeone of these little plants to show the
idea I'm going to get out ofthe blur. Can you see the thing
over I'm holding up a little plant. So this conversation is going in three

(21:21):
places. In the mind is alike a field, in the brain like
a tree, and into every cellof the body like a change at the
genetic level as well as in thestructural level of the cell. So that's
quite powerful. That means that ourpsych is changing our biology, and so
do we have power over that?So my approach is looking at how does

(21:42):
that happen? How does stuff getinto the brain? Is a thought what
are memories? A thought? Isthe tree the memories or what the tree
is made of, all the littleroots and branches. What are emotions?
What are behaviors? How do theywilling to relate? Emotions, behaviors,
our body, fields, and ourperspectives of life are all signals that are

(22:03):
coming out of the thought that we'vebuilt. So we have an experience,
we build it into a mind,brain and body, and that combination of
mind brained body interacting generates how weshow up. In other words, as
we are in this conversation, wehave emotions, we have a bodily response,
we have a perspective towards this,and we have certain behaviors we interact
in talking, so we can everythingis operating like that. So the approach

(22:26):
that is more holistic is to lookat the human and in the environment,
child adults in the environment and thestories of their life and look at how
the stories are building into the brainand looking at the sick and the brain
and the body mind brained body,and how they're showing up with signals.
So it's actually not as complicated.So think of experience into the brain as

(22:49):
a tree, into the body asa change, into the fields of the
mind, and then that combines andhow we show up. How do we
show up? So let me giveyou a nice limple example. You pick
up your child from school. Theyget into the car and they are crying,
sobbing. They won't talk to you. So the emotions, they're obviously
very upset. So there's the emotionalsignal that you've seen. They then their

(23:11):
behaviors. They won't talk to you, but they're kicking the back of your
chair. I'm just making something upand more you say, please don't kick
my chair. I see you crying. They kick your chair more, they
cry more, and maybe they throwa little tantrum. So these emotions and
behaviors two warning signals. Then maybethey start saying, oh, I've got
to sort tell me yet, butit sort of tell me. So there's
a response in the body. Andthen their perspective is and you're trying.

(23:33):
As you're trying to talk to them, they just say, I hate hate
school. There's so you've got allfour signals. You've got four and that
had can happen in the first fewseconds that your child gets in the car.
So those are four signals. Nowthose let's say that this happens every
day for two weeks and then youstart thinking, hey, there's something then
you're going on. Then the teachercalls you in and says, little Johnny

(23:53):
is you know, not concentrating andit seems to be very upset all the
time, and it's really going toconstantly gelling in their seat and is not
asking and answering questions and I'll getwhatever. So you get a bunch of
emotions behaviors. He's always complaining ofgoing over saw Timmy and going we need
to go to the bathroom, andhis perspective, it seems to be hating
school. So now we've got thisthing, Oh my gosh. And the

(24:17):
teacher says, hey, you bettergo see our school psychologist or go to
the psychiatrists. You go to apsychiatrists, they'll ask you a fifteen minute
survey if you're lucky, and it'sbasically a check list, and very often
it's done by the PA, noteven the psychiatrist, and they just look
at the little report and before youknow it, oh, that's ADHD clinical
depression or one of the other combinationof the two. Let's put them on

(24:37):
medication. The messaging to the parentis that If you don't do this,
if you don't get to the psychologist, psychologist or psychiatrist, you're a bad
parent. You know, this isthis is something you have to prevent.
This is like diabetes. If youdon't give the person type one diabetes insulin,
they can die. You know,you have to. And because of
the mix up of the medical modelwith the human story, which is incorrect,
as I've said, the poor parentis receiving all this confusing mixed messages.

(25:03):
I'm a bad parent. I've gotto get this done. This is
going to help my child. Andyou know, my heart goes out to
this because I've worked so long inthis field and I saw this happening as
my career was moving forward, andhow many parents write into me and comment
about this and that sort of thing. So, and I'm sure you hear
the same thing. So what canwe do? What can we do differently
instead of going off to the psychiatrist. And I'm not saying don't go to

(25:26):
therapy, but I'm saying do thisfirst. Your mind is always active when
you're asleep, it's even active.It's your aliveness. Your child's minds also
always active, and you're alive.So you're a child's experiencing something. Their
experience is not something you can fullyunderstand, because no one understands, even
your own child. You may knowthem, but you still don't have you.

(25:48):
You don't have and inside of youinto the experience because you only know
your own experience. You can onlygo on what they say and the signals
they provide. But the experience istheir own unique thing. So that's the
first thing. Look at your child'sexperience as being absolutely unique to them and
in need of validation. Let them. We want to give them the tools
to talk about their story, talkabout their experience. Secondly, their ability

(26:12):
to experience is this mind thing.You can go to the therapist and the
coach and the psychiatrists and psychologists,but you're not with them twenty four seven.
You'll see them now and then maybeonce a week, maybe once a
month, who knows, But you'reliving with yourself and so is your child
twenty four seven. So what dowe essentially need to teach our children mind
management? We need to teach themhow to manage their mind in between being

(26:36):
able to talk to you if they'reat school, in between you know,
while they're playing with a friend inbetween maybe if you are seeing a therapist
because there's something else going on thatneeds a bit more attentional, or there's
some DC tool or something like thatthat's happening. So in a nutshell,
we want to teach our kids,and you can teach a child as youngest
too. And this latest book thatI'm releasing is basically helping parents help a

(26:57):
child from us between age is twoand ten. So this book is called
how to Help your Child clean Uptheir Mental message for ages two through ten.
Even a twelve year old, evenadults loves this concept. It's so
simple to understand. But the onefor adults is how to clean up your
mentalness. So the two together workvery well. And I have an app,
so there's a lot of ways tolearn what I'm about to explain to

(27:19):
you and to be My app literallywalks you through giving you therapy. The
new book walks you through giving youtherapy. It literally takes the science that's
complex and the concept that I'm goingto explain as quickly as I can and
simply as I can now and breaksit down into this is what you as
a parent, you don't understand.This is how you say two and three
year old how you say to asix year old and sign? And then

(27:41):
there's also images. I've created acharacter called Brainy and Brainy it actually twenty
five years ago. I had aDisney artist create Brainy and you've just had
it updated and it's throughout the book. So Brainy is we created a little
toy as well. So Brainy isthis character that walks your superhero that is,
and whose superpower is the Newer cycle, which is how we manage our
mind. It's a little toolbox literallyof how we manage our mind and how

(28:04):
we walk this mental health journey.So two year old and three year old
doesn't have the language to tell youthat a daycare there's this one little kid
who constantly is pinching them or somethingthat you know, we're a teacher maybe
who's you know, not being asnice as they could or something that could
happen. Your child is not linguisticallystrong enough to be able to give you
that exact languaging. But there theycome home with all these signals, behaviors,

(28:26):
change, etcetera, emotions, etc. This little what I've trying
to create is a contact point.So if a child picks up the toy
it's when you teach them that thisis how to talk about if I'm not
you know, if things are areproblematic or whatever. That's a way that
they can they pick up the toyand they point to the pictures in the
book. That's a way that youcan then form this connection. Then you

(28:48):
know your child's trying to tell yousomething. So what I'm trying to say
is that through through the tools thatI'm giving you even have a coloring book
with all this stuff, you canthen do what I'm about to do.
You can have that contact point andI'm going to give you some tips on
how you can also make this storysimple in your life. Okay, so
let's come back to the co exampleand let's come back to brainy. Here

(29:08):
at linked that with super the brainythe superhero's superpower, which is the neurocycle,
and with a child, this kindof language in works really well.
That you've hey, you've got thesuperpower, and the superpower is going to
help you with you know, whateveryou're going through kind of thing. And
so obviously this you've got to teachthis to the child. You've got to
make this a lifestyle. Then youcan use it at any point The neurocycle

(29:30):
is a system I developed over thirtyeight years ago that I still research constantly
update and it's a five step processthat is very scientifically research that each step
is driving the mind through the brainin a way that's actually rewiring those networks
of the brain and helping to healthe changes in the body right down to

(29:52):
the level of the brain waves obviouslyresponding in a more balanced way and your
body for example, like cortisol andhomocysteine and tell the meres and all these
things in our body that if they'renot working correctly, will set you up
for disease. And as we know, chronic stress tends to break those processes
down and over time the accumulatively willland up being a potential disease process.

(30:17):
So the neurocycle has been extensively researchedas a tool that you can use all
the time to be proactive and preemptiveand also to deal with things that have
already happened. So it's both endsof the spectrum, because things happen and
things will happen, and to driveyour mind in a way that brings health
into the brain and the body.As while you're managing the mental health.

(30:38):
So you first before you do thefive steps, you need to prepare the
brain, because if a child's hada bad day at school, you know
that they like need to be calmeddown first before you can do anything,
before you can even talk, Soyou may need to do something like you
know what we're breathing. And there'sare many different what I call brain prep
exercises. I'll give you a wholebunch in the book and in my app
and I think i've breathing of Oneof the ones that works extremely well with

(31:02):
kids is breathing in an adults twois breathing in for three counts and out
for seven, and it's a greatway of saying, well, even while
you're driving, you can Second,let's breathe in for three with your hand
on your tummy and it's you're obviouslygoing to drive the cart. Whet your
child can do that. And thenyou breathe out for seven and let's make
that mooshing sound. If you dothat ten second, little three seventeen second

(31:22):
exercise six to nine times, youhave calmed down the neurophysiology in the brain
to such an extent that you cannow connect with that child and tune into
that child. So think of brainpreparation being a way of tuning in.
And as I said, there's amultitude of different ways that you can do
this. Then you would move intothe neurocycle, and the neurocycles five steps
gather awareness, reflect, write,recheck, active, reach. Each of

(31:48):
those names has a brainy character associatedwith it, so that you can literally
teach your young kids that the actualfrom the pictures, reading this, emitting
this, emitting this. Each step, you're sequentially driving your messy mind,
which is what we all pretty muchoperate in. And you're training your wise
mind to manage your messy mind.And obviously that's not the wording you're going

(32:08):
to use. You're just saying you'reusing superhero Brainy is using a superpower,
and the superpower is let's breathe andlet's get our brain. Kids love the
brain. Young kids will respond verywell, we're making our brain healthy.
We're going to breathe to make usfeel that we can, that we feel
calm or peaceful, and then you'regoing to do these little let's do our
little superpower activity. And so there'smany ways that I give you ideas and

(32:32):
ways of doing it. So essentiallytogether when as the first step is how
you look at those those signals thatare telling you something. So let's go
back to the incident in the car. The child's very upset, so that's
the emotional So you could even sayto the child as they're getting in the
car, you may just say,let's do some breathing, let's prepare our

(32:53):
brain, or just let's breathe sothat you feel better, or whatever you
want to do. And you coulddo this in the car going home.
You could do this once you're athome, obviously, once you've explained this
to the child. So gather awarenessis let's see you very upset, or
I see brain is very upset.Maybe you have brainy in the coal.
Maybe they remember brain, or there'sanother toy or whatever. So you can

(33:14):
phrase it for them if they don'twant to speak, which is very often
the case if they're in that stateof mind, I see you very sad,
you're very upset. I see youcrying. I acknowledge you crying.
You you really upset. You're cryinga lot, and you're holding your tummy,
your tummy maybe sore. You're holdingyour head is your head so you
or you can see you've got littlefists or so you're acknowledging the fourth signal,

(33:36):
and then you say, did youhave a bad day at school?
Or did something happen? Or issomething making you very some some sort of
a question. The way I phraseit in the book is once I understand
perspective, which is the fourth signal, it's how you're looking at life in
the moment. So you could saysomething like, let's say this is a
three or four year old, youcould say something like, are you is
it? Are you seeing that it'slike horrible at school? You know?

(34:00):
Are you? And what you cando? What I've given The example I've
given is you can have when youteach this is to have two pairs of
sunglasses, one that's broken to getcheap sunglasses, and then a beautiful one
of the hearts or something and thebroken one. And you could even have
three, so you could have itgraded. So one is scratch, one
is broken, the glass is broken, you can hardly see your threatain ones
is really pretty. One. Andwhen you teach this concept of the perspective,

(34:24):
you can say to them which oneyou want to put on? Which
pair of sunglasses? Do you feellike this? You know, you feel
really bad, do you feel notso bad? Or do you feel happy?
You know, that's kind of there'slots of those kinds of examples.
And if you've talked in that inthe car, you could even say,
you know what sunglasses are you're puttingon? Are you're putting on the breath?
I think you're putting on the onesthat are really broken at the moment.

(34:44):
So what you've done there is somethingthat's incredibly powerful. You've you've labeled
for the child the four signals thatthey're giving you, not in a judgmental
way, not in a you've createda safe space. You've simply lay abled
for them and made conscious for themin its organized, systematic, four sentences

(35:05):
way. That is, and thinkof those four signals like little balloons,
and balloons have a string. Thoseballoons are attached to something. You don't
just show up with that for noreason. You're not saying this to the
children. I'm explaining this now toyou as a parent. When however we
show up in like us or ourkids, is never just there. It's
because of something. So we wantto go from the signals as signals as

(35:30):
giving us information, and we wantto go from the signal, and we
want to find what is it attachedto. So imagine those four balloons are
then attached to a thought. Andremember I said thoughts can look like trees.
So you've got a healthy thought,which would be kids. I've got
all these images in the book andyou can use plants and you can point
out trees. Kids love this.They respond be also at adults, there's

(35:52):
the health there's the unhealthy one.So obviously they upsets in prime. You
could say to them, I thinkthere's something not so nice. There's an
un there's an unhappy tree in yourbrain at the moment that something happened at
school to build an unhappy tree.So there's signals are attached. When you
label those four signals, imagine asyou say the sentences, this is moved

(36:13):
from then unconscious. It's moving intothe conscious mind. Now we know from
neuroscience that when we become aware ofthoughts, of what the signals which are
information are telling us, then youbring the thought into the conscious mind.
Now you won't see everything straight away, but the mere act of gathering awareness
in that very specific way is bringingthe thought into the conscious mind. Neuroscience

(36:37):
shows us at the minute we dothat, we weaken the bonds. This
is made of proteins and chemicals,and the information is stored as vibrations inside
the proteins which make these branches.And I know that's kind of technical,
but this is how real this stuffis. So what we want to do
is loosen the protein branches so wecan change the vibrations. In other words,

(36:58):
we are That's what mind may managementis. We find the experience and
then we look at deconstructing that experienceand reconstructing that experience into a way that
brings you a level of peace.Because what has happened at school to that
child is never going away. It'shappened. It hopefully won't happen anymore.
It may, but the fact isit did happen. So our stories don't

(37:20):
even go away. What we wantto do is change what they look like
inside of us. So if wedon't teach the child to manage that toxic
thought through this process of the neurocycle, which is a system into which you
can fit all kinds of TBT techniquesand affirmations and all the cute things that
you already do as a parent,I'm just giving you the vehicle that then
makes the brain and mind and bodydo what it's supposed to do. Essentially,

(37:43):
if we don't, that toxic issuegets bigger and it's undealt with.
So on an unconscious level, thechild's actually thinking about it, and on
a conscious level they are actively engagingwith it, and that makes it bigger,
and over time that creates an immuneresponse in the brain, and that
immune response becomes high per immune becauseinitially the immune response is to protect.

(38:07):
But then if you don't deal withthe issue, like once you know,
the immune responses to bring in thefighter soldiers and to fight the bad thing
and to get rid of it.But if you don't, if you don't
find the source, it doesn't goaway. So therefore you get a higher
immune response, which then upset yourhormone system and your quality of ASCID system,
And so we get that percentage thatsays, if we don't manage our
mind, this increases of vulnerability todisease by thirty five to ninety eight percent,

(38:30):
which is horrific. So over time, the very fixt question you ask
over time, undealta stuff in childhoodor any stage of life will increase your
vulnerability to disease and obviously mental healthchallenges because it tips the scale. So
if you think of a scale withtwo sides and the balanced thing in the
middle, the balance thing is allabout. Depression actually works for you,

(38:54):
Anxiety works for you. Those brainwaves, there's no one pattern it's bad,
there's a balance. So everything's aboutbalancing, and when we balance it,
our set a statement. Depression isactually good for you when it's balanced.
It is because depression, anxiety,these are emotions that help us to
become humans that experience life. Andso what happens though, if I don't

(39:15):
manage my stuff, then the depressivescales tips, and now depression and anxiety
and stress, instead of working forme work against me. Instead of enriching
me as a human, actually nowstart paying a destructive role. So this
neurocycle helps to keep that balance andhelps us to stop the suppression, because
suppression creates this imbalance and the tippingin the wrong direction. So when you

(39:37):
teach this kind of thing to ayoung child, they get better and better
the older they get. So theyounger we stop, but it's never too
late because I mean, my eldestpatient was an eighty four year old.
So I just think if we canequip our kids, especially our current day
and age. The earlier we doit, the better. Okay, So
gather awareness. Then once you've gatheredawareness, you then start reflecting. Reflecting
is focused reflections, not just ageneral notice. I say, gather aware,

(40:00):
very specific, not just be aware. Being aware would fall under brain
preparation. Okay, just general awarenessor mindfulness, that's brain preparation. But
gathering awareness is okay, what amI specifically? Gathering awareness of reflection,
focused reflection. Let me focus onthose four signals. Why do I have
those? So now you started todig. Third step is you would then

(40:21):
write all of that down. Ifyour child's not yet literate, you can
dramatize. You can make oh,I see Brainy's feeling very upsetting. Brainy's
crying a lot, and brain he'sgot to sort tummy and brain is putting
on the broken sunglasses. I wonderwhy brainy feels like this today. And
then in the child automatically all notwo and three and a burner five,
even a six seven eight year oldwill respond very well, and we'll jump

(40:42):
in and in act. Now thatthird phase of either dramatizing or visualizing,
or you paint a little picture forthem to imagine like a little movie in
their mind, or you draw picturessomewhere that is creating a genetic change in
the brain. So we bring thisthing up by the two steps, and
the first step brings it up.Second step starts looking at the branches,

(41:06):
the branches of a tree, whichis the interpretation how that child sees themselves,
more details about the behaviors and theemotions. They sit and they're frustrated.
This has been going on for quitea while. It's affecting their relationship
with these siblings, and it's affectingtheir schoolwork and all that stuff. So
where did this come from? We'vegot to go down to the root.
We've got to find the source,the origin story. So the writing is
now taking us deeper and creating deeperinsight. When you write, it's really

(41:30):
great, and an act is reallygreat to just let free flow happen because
the more free flow, the moreyou just write all over the page,
throw ideas down, words down,even if you're stimulating new writing and they're
drawing in a combination. That thirdphase is getting to the starting to show
you what's down and what the experienceis in the details. The memories of

(41:50):
the experience. In the fourth stepis to look at what you've written this
kind of big messy or all theenactment, all the dramatization, all the
pictures, and to talk about thatthis has happened, What can we do
about it? What are the patterns, what are the trickers? How often
is this happening? What could wedo? How can we manage a situation
in the moment. We're not goingto solve the world's crisis in one eurocycle.

(42:12):
This is something you can do thisonce you understand it within a few
minutes. But if there's a persistentpattern in a child's life, you're not
going to just one neurocycle won't fixit. If there's a pattern, you're
going to have to do a multitudeof neurocycles because it's going to take time
to get there and time to unpackall the details of the experience and reconceptualize
them. And that's a large partof the work that I've done, and

(42:34):
i've done there's a whole chapter inthe book helping you with the timing.
If it's a little thing, youcan do it one or two neurocycles.
If it's the bigger, the patternit's more established, more complex the issue.
Then you're going to be doing cyclesof sixty three days and I tell
you exactly how to do it,and you don't spend long each day.
It's very quick. Okay. Sothat's the big picture in as simple language

(42:55):
as I can put it, andit's in detail in all the resources when
I'll certainly link to all your booksin the show notes as well as to
your online works that people can findit and go deep on whatever specific to
them or their children. This episodeis sponsored by one of my favorite companies,
just Thrive Health. They have severalproducts that are a part of my

(43:17):
regular rotation and absolute staples in myhouse. I know I've talked about it
before, but I'm a huge fanof their probiotic, which has patented strains
of score based probiotics that survive longerin your gut, so you actually get
the benefit of them. It's agood rule of thumb that if a probiotic
can't handle room temperature, it needsto be refrigerated. It's probably not going

(43:37):
to handle the temperature of your bodyvery well. And many probiotics, while
they might have a lot of concentrationin the capsule form, aren't surviving well
in the gut, and this iswhat makes spore based probiotics different and why
I use them regularly. These aregreat to get all the way into your
gut and provide the benefits, andit's the first probiotic I've really actually felt

(43:57):
a difference from. They also havea new strain with a patented formula called
Just Calm that is a gut supportfor healthy neurotransmitter function, and I notice
feelings of calm and better sleep fromtaking this one regularly as well. I
also want to highlight a new productthey have, which is a probiotic gummy
for kids. I love that theirregular probiotics are heat stable, so I

(44:19):
can easily add these two even bakedgoods that are baked in the oven or
to smoothies for the kids. Butmy kids are a huge fan of the
new gummy formula and I highly recommendit for kids as well. You can
check out these and all of theirproducts, including their K two seven,
their prebiotics, their immune support,and much more by going to just drive
health dot com slash wellness Mama,and if you use the code Wellness Mama

(44:43):
fifteen, you will say fifteen percentsitewide again. That's jus T t h
R I V e h e Alt dot com, slash Wellness Mama and
the code Wellness Mama fifteen to savefifteen percent. This podcast is to you
buy Wellness. That's Wellness with anE on the end. It's the company

(45:04):
that I co founded to create trulysafe and natural personal care products that are
safe for the whole family. Ourproducts use only EWG verified safe ingredients,
and they go beyond just avoiding harmfulingredients by including herbs and botanicals that benefit
your oral health, your skin,and your hair from the outside inn.
We believe that it isn't enough justto avoid the harmful stuff, that natural

(45:25):
products should work as well as theirconventional counterparts, and that since the skin
is the largest organ on the body, adding beneficial ingredients is an extra way
to benefit the body naturally from theoutside inn. I've been fascinated by oral
health since reading West and a pricebook Nutrition and Physical Degeneration years ago,
and we now have a whole lineof oral care products focused on supporting and

(45:46):
nourishing the oral microbiome while naturally whiteningand strengthening teeth through ingredient like hydroxy appetite,
which is a naturally occurring mineral thathelps support strong enamel. We have
three options of toothpaste whitening, mint, charkle, and strawberry for kids,
plus natural floss, biodegradable individual useglossors, and now new probiotic myths which

(46:07):
are designed to support the oral microbiomeand fresh and breath naturally. Our products
help you have healthier, wider teethnaturally and without the junk. Check out
these and all wellness products at wellnessdot com that's w e ll n e
ssee dot com. I would saythis resonates deeply with my experience. I've

(46:27):
talked before about how I had traumain high school that I had largely suppressed,
and because I had suppressed it,I thought it wasn't affecting me at
all. And then when I finallydid something similar to this process in therapy
and just sort of intuitively of tryingto figure it out myself, my body
changed, how I interacted with theworld changed. I was amazed actually how
profoundly so many areas of my lifechanged from addressing something that I didn't even

(46:52):
think was a problem at the beginning. But I think this is also really
encouraging because you mentioned the A studythe Adverse childhood Experiences, and what stood
out to me and that and somuch of the other researches it's not just
what happens to us, but actually, more so our interpretation of what happens
to us that actually seems to causethose long term problems. And the exciting
part there is we can't always controloften what happens to us, but we

(47:15):
do have much more control over ourown inner process and how we interpret it
and how we move beyond it orwe don't. And so I love that
you are making this very concrete andapplicable and giving it as a foundational skill
even to children, because I thinkthis process you talk about of managing our
mind isn't something that maybe people haveever even thought to do or thought of
as a foundational skill that we canreally establish with our kids early on.

(47:38):
And I'd love to build on thatand talk about the parenting side a little
bit as well, because I feellike many parents share the goal of wanting
to create resilient kids and dependent kids, but that there are many methods that
parents will use to try to movetoward that goal, And so I would
love to kind of go deep onparenting strategies, obviously the neurocycle being a
huge one, especially if there's aspecific issue we can identify. But from

(48:00):
a foundational approach, how can wehelp our kids build this ability to interpret
well and not surpress emotions as afoundational skill and by doing so help them
to have more resilience in their life. Excellent question, and also your observations.
You know, the insight there ofthe fact that if you have suppression,
it explodes. And this is sooften the case, and I've done

(48:21):
some researchers well, around some ofmy clinical trials, We've had people that
they didn't know the terrible child trauma. The only way they could cope was
to suppress. But because these thingsare alive and living, you can only
suppress for so long and then itexplodes, and then, you know,
that's when we need to people needto know how to deconstruct, embrace,
process and reconceptualize, deconstruct and reconstructas opposed to just oh that's a symptom,

(48:45):
let's eliminate the symptom, or let'sdisrupt the symptom. Codn to behavior
therapy, for example, we'll talkabout disrupting the symptom and then trying to
trying to then build a replacement.You can't just disrupt. Disrupt means to
become aware of like I've been describing, Like you, you became aware of
some trauma and child in the adolescencethat you didn't in high school, that

(49:06):
you didn't recognize. Once you wereaware, it was kind of like a
disruption, and then from there youcouldn't just eliminate. You had to reconstruct.
So with that philosophy in mind,I was asked the question quite recently
and again yesterday actually in an interview, exactly the same question you've asked,
What is if I had to saythe most important thing that we need to
do for our children's mental health?I would answer by saying, it starts

(49:29):
with helping the parent, because theparent is the model a child's level of
stress and anxiety and how they dealwith life. As much as we don't
want to hear this, it reallydoes is modeled on how the parents.
You know how the parent is functioning, so they know they will pick up
if you get this diagnosis from adoctor and you really wanted and you try

(49:50):
and hide that from the child,they will pick up your concern. They
are much better than adults at readingbody language and nonverbal communication, which is
fifty percent. I believe it's higher, much higher than fifty percent. With
kids, it's probably about seventy percentof communication and they very very good at
it. But the interpretation of itis they'll read it, but they don't

(50:10):
always correct interpret So the most ofthe time what they'll do because of the
caregiver, your concern will be readand interpreted by them as Oh, I'm
bad, I've done something wrong andinternalize it in that way. So as
a parent, the biggest thing wecan do is put the oxygen mask on
sort ourselves out while we help ourkids. So you're never going to be

(50:32):
sorted out because it's okay to bea mess and you're going to be messy.
And that's the messaging when we helpour children that we need to say.
So in other ways, the answerto the question of what's the most
important thing we can do for parents, it is for your children is for
you to help yourself. Number one, it's the oxygen mask. Let me
get myself working on myself. Andthen number two, let me model as

(50:58):
a way appropriate out loud for thechildren. How I'm dealing with my stuff,
because, as we know, childrendo what you do, not what
you say necessarily. And then thethird thing is actively and constructively working on
making mind a deliberate and intentional practice. Mind management it deliberate and intentional practice
in your home. So as muchas we go to as much as we

(51:20):
teach our kids, we go torash our teeth to us a day,
and we do that in the bathroom. We don't do it in the garden.
And we've got to eat three timesa day or whatever, and we
don't eat, you know, wedon't eat. Eat. We go and
cook on the stove. We don'tcook in the bathroom, you know whatever.
We have designated times and areas,or at least in our homes and
our lives. You go to thegym, you go when you play ball,
you play outside. When you goto the gym, you generally go

(51:43):
to a gym or an area inyour house that's got that equipment. So
the concept of when I've got todo something specific, I go to a
certain areas. This is the partthree. A designated time and space in
your home is a great way ofinstilling a instant lifestyle of mind management.
So I would recommend that you toanswer those three. I'm going to answer

(52:07):
three first and then work backwards.First, the first one being the oxygen
principal mask a mask, oxygen maskprinciple being you know, as a parent,
it's important to work for your stuff. Secondly, that you work model
certain appropriate things in front of yourkids, and that you then have a
designated area. Let's start with adesignated area. If it will possible,

(52:27):
find an area in your house,like you have a kitchen, the cook's
food that you can dedicate to kids. Love the word neurocycle or brain.
Let's fix it. We're going towork on our brain or brainy's area,
or you find a name that worksfor your family. I give suggestions,
and if you can maybe take apart of a wall in a kitchen,
my sistant or did this and paintedthat blackboard chalk and have a little thing

(52:49):
of chalk, have some paper,pencil, crayons, sharpies, a toybox
with some toys, stuffed dolls,maybe a brainy if you get it.
The color book, because it's gotscenarios in and blank pages so that you
can choose a scenario and you canalso write on the corresponding page, a
bunch of those kinds of things,and in a little basket. If you
don't have a big enough area thatyou can dedicate a whole area, maybe

(53:13):
you can have a basket that canjust fit niquely into your into your sitting
room or something like that. Soin other ways, it's it's just that
deliberation of if you're feeling bad,we go get that stuff. It just
trains us to be dedicated, Likewe understand if if your child's learning a
musical instrument, there's a dedicated timeto practice. That's what I'm That's the
principle that I'm bringing into place here. So then let's let's says let's say

(53:37):
that now I'm going to go tonumber two, the modeling. What's the
third? Third? Third? Onewas a designated area, and I'm going
to go to modeling for your child. Let's say that you are busy in
a meeting, you're in a zoomlike now you've got you said you've got
six children, Katie, Wow,that's I've got four. So I'm very
impressed with your six. So let'ssay now you've got a dedicated space in

(53:58):
your house for you doing your pcastingand the kids are busy doing whatever they're
doing. And summer so they're obviouslyplaying and doing whatever. And now let's
say you've had like maybe technical issuesor you've had one podcast off to another
and you tie it, and whichis realistic these podcasting I know my podcast
to myself, it's hard work.And so now then you have other things

(54:19):
that are happening in between, andyou know that these things for you,
you know, the whole things oflife all the maybe one of the kids
are sick, maybe there's a parentwho are sick. This is putting a
lot of pressure on you. Andas you're working, maybe your kids have
a huge fight and you can hearthem through the door and you have to
stop the podcasts and go out andsort this out and do whatever, and
then come back in. And thisis all kind of stressful, and you
maybe yell at them and say thingsyou don't want to say, or whatever.

(54:40):
It may be threatened. You don'tmean to threaten, but because of
the situation, whatever finished, youcome back inside. You finished the podcast.
You can then go out and doingyour recycle with your child and children
and say, hey, listen,I was working very very hard, and
the noise, and it was thiswas a very difficult day for me,

(55:00):
and the noise and the screaming andthe shouting and whatever really upset me and
made me very frustrated. So there'syou've described the situation which you've now deid.
I was very upset and very frustratedemotions. It made me yell.
I yelled at you, and thatwasn't nice. And I said things that
weren't nice. I said things thatI actually didn't mean, and I'm really

(55:21):
sorry. We're going to talk aboutthat. And I my shoulders look.
I typed my shoulders on. Eitherwhole body came up because you said that
I've got my scary mummy face on. I don't know your kids ever said
that, but you have. Iused to they cooled with the Queen Victoria
look that I would give my kids. They would say, well, you've
got that Queen Victoria look on.Maybe there was something like that bodily sensation.
I had my Queen Victoria look on, and I was just so frustrated

(55:43):
with your kid's perspective. So you'velabeled the four sentences you've done together awareness
and then you say I did that, and then you can repeat the little
scenario. Or you could start withthe four sentences and say I did that,
I was podcasting this and this andthis whatever whatever language. You don't
have to say much a couple ofsentences to reflect. Then you could maybe
walk over to the chalk board areaand you know, just draw a picture

(56:04):
of maybe a cross face, orwrite the words frustrated and I've got a
lot to do and just you know, put your thoughts on the board and
you know, and then you'll seeit. Okay, I've got so many
things to do. I've got toget your kids here, I've got to
get you there. I don't haveenough time for that. This is I'm
just kind of under pressure at themoment. I have to sort out these
things. So so you put itall on the board. Whatever comes up

(56:24):
that that your children, that's overseaage appropriate. Some things you would keep
yourself, but you know, it'sthe process that you want them to see.
Then you reach it and say,ah, can you help me with
us? Kids love it. They'llcome in and kids are so full of
wisdom, even that three year oldis full of wisdom, and they'll say,
well look at that, mommy,And they may draw a picture for

(56:45):
you of like ten things on thewall because you they count. Oh you've
got ten things to do today,and look at those ten things. But
when are you going to eat?Mom? When are you going to play
with us? When are you gonnahave a little sleep? Mom? When
are you going to And you cansay, oh, okay, can you
help me? Maybe I've got toomuch? And you see you deep in
deep connection. You're rechecking and you'remodeling, and then your officer is amazing,
what can you do for now?Finished my work? From now,

(57:07):
let's all go for a walk withthe dog. I need to get clear
my head. And that's your activereach, your footstep, which is the
little It closes that you don't solvethe world's problem. You can't solve it
in one year a cycle, butyou resolve that issue and you're doing something
an action that ends the activity forthe day and is moving you in the
right direction. And what you've donethere is you have acknowledged to apologize all

(57:30):
these great things, created safe space, told your kids all the things we're
supposed to do, which is it'sokay to say sorry, It's okay to
be messy. Even mommy who's anadult gets messy. All those things which
allow a child to say okay,being a human's heart and life happens and
things make us mad, and wecan say sorry, and we can even
do bad things and say sorry,But those bad things don't mirror a bad

(57:52):
person. You're giving all that kindof stuff that I know you talk about
on your podcast, but you've modeleda very sequential step and you could you've
done it in that designated space.So you've now modeled that for the child.
So when they now are in asituation where they need to deal with
stuff they can, then you've they'vegot a model. They've got they've got
They may come home from school,go sit in that little area, pick

(58:15):
up the toy. Then you knowthat okay, I need to talk.
This is you go sit down andyou initiate and go through age appropriately and
as I said, I can,I'll walk you through that now within then
it's the first one. You maybegot your own stuff that you do privately
with your stuff, which we allshould do. We should. I spend
fifteen minutes between five minutes and fortyfive minutes every day when I'm getting ready

(58:35):
working on something. I'm always ina neurocycle. There's always we've all got
stuff that they'll be trying to change, and you're working these cycles of sixty
three days, which I've done thesigns of habit formation and a lot of
research in that area. It doesn'twe don't fix things that are long standing
in the day or in twenty onedays. It takes multiple cycles, and
the general average is about sixties butnine weeks. But it means it doesn't

(58:58):
mean you work long. It's justthe five steps that you do in a
round about five to forty five minutesfor the first twenty one days. They're
often it's about five minutes a day, and then once you've kind of fixed
up that, then you work onthe next one. So you need to
be working on yourself. The otherthing that's very good to work on yourself
is, let's say that your childrenare there's a persistent behavior happening, that

(59:20):
you've got six kids, you've gotfour kids, whatever, you've got one
kid, but life is happening,and you maybe miss we do, and
there's nothing wrong with it. It'sokay to be messy. It's okay.
Messy. Parenting is very normal andvery good, and we should allow it
because it allows us to grow butyou may miss something in one of your
kids and see, okay, thereis some sort of patne emerging, and

(59:40):
we mustn't beat ourselves out about that. But you may find that there's a
patne emerging in the only way youactually notice that there's something going on is
one of your children is maybe doingsomething that's kind of irritating, and you're
finding yourself reacting and thinking, oh, not again. Okay, we've all
done it. It's okay, youcan do it. It's you don't have
to feel bad. This is partof being a parent. What we need
to do is manage that. Soyou may need to do a neurocycle on

(01:00:04):
your own very quickly when you seethat that behavior is starting to manifest.
Maybe you've got all the kids aroundyou in the kitchen and you see this
and you can feel yourself getting reactive. That's when you can just move away
for a second, do something inthe kitchen, maybe pack some groceries or
unpack some grocers, just to createspace, and you quickly run through the
neurocycle. I'm getting reactive, Whyam I doing this? Kitch under control?

(01:00:25):
What's my active reach? I'm goingto breathe in and then I'm going
to handle this even if you dothat in thirty seconds. So there's an
example of kind of how you woulddo those three. One thing I want
to really stress is that there's somany beautiful techniques out there in books,
you talk about them on your podcast. These things CBT techniques. I'm not
saying throw those out the door.I'm saying use everything, just put them

(01:00:46):
in the right sequence because if youdo. For example, CBT is cognitive
behavior therapy, there's a lot oftechniques that visualization and all these little cute
things, they're very technique focused.The philosophy of CBT, for example,
is to disrupt and eliminate it thatthroughout the door you don't want You can't

(01:01:07):
ever eliminate something, but you canreconstruct it. But the techniques are very
good to use as active reaches,so active reaches your footstep. So I'm
not saying don't throw it, don'tuse those because a lot of therapy therapists
will use CBT type techniques. ACTis another type of therapy, act theory
that has great techniques. It's justwhere you use them. So generally those

(01:01:27):
come in quite nicely around step fourand step five. But if you jump
straight to a positive affirmation or straightto a technique. It's a band aid
on the wound. You're not necessarilygoing to treat the You've got to get
to the course. If you putyour hand on the stove and you burn
your hand, you don't take apain killer and keep your hand on the
stove and then keep my handstill swordtake more pain killers and take more.

(01:01:51):
You actually have to find the cause. It's the stoves. Aren't take your
hand off the stove. Such astupid example, but it is. We
are so often living in a worldof putting the band aid, all these
beautiful, fancy looking band aids,but you haven't got to the calls.
You've got to get your hand offthe stove and to the stove off.
And that's kind of what I'm tryingto teach with this concept. And I
love that you brought it back tomodeling, because certainly I've talked about that

(01:02:13):
a lot, and my children havebeen great teachers for me in the importance
of that in so many areas oflife. And I like that you also
brought that distinction of having transparency,communicating your own emotions and by doing so,
giving them permission to be able todo that, but in a way
that's age appropriate, where we're notemotionally depending on our children, but we're
modeling the fact that adults have emotionstoo that aren't always positive, and that's

(01:02:34):
okay, and I think too.As examples, a study came out recently
that said a mother's fitness level hasa direct impact on the health of her
children. Because I would say thissame principle of modeling, and the same
it seems is very true with mentalhealth in small ways. I've noticed this
even with my kids, where it'smuch more effective if there's tension or things
are coming to a head with oneof my kids, for me to say

(01:02:57):
it feels like we're both having somefrustration right now, and instead of saying
go to your room, which I'venever liked that like, go isolate because
you're having emotions, I'll say,I'm going to go to the bathroom or
go to my room and just breathefor a few minutes, and then I
would love to come back and talkto you about this because you're really important
to me. And then often justthat little mental break. I hope I'm
modeling for them. It's okay sometimesto breathe, it's okay sometimes to go

(01:03:19):
work through this and then let's havea loving conversation after. And I love
that you even give it more withthe steps of the neurocycle, a really
tangible way to work through that,both for us and also to model that
for our kids. Another term Iknow from your writing that you've talked about
is what you call safety net parentingand kind of contrasting this with helicopter parenting.
And I would love for you tobreak down that distinction for us because
I know parents, we all comefrom a perspective of wanting to keep our

(01:03:43):
kids safe and to help them growinto the best versions of themselves, and
that often that approach can veer moretoward helicopter parenting. And I like your
safety net approach so much more socan you walk us through that so beauty?
And there's a whole saction in thebook on that as well. So
basically, if you think of ahelicopter's home and with there's so much pressure
on parenting today, not that therehasn't been before, but it's definitely in

(01:04:05):
an era with social media and youknow, perfect parenting and these like you
think, oh my gosh, lookwhat she's doing. I don't think I
can ever do that with my kids, and I'm a bad parent because I
can't do that. So parents,there's also this almost this this philosophy and
pressure through and social media has beenhugely helpful, but it's also got that
negative side. And I know youtalk about that, but this pressure of

(01:04:27):
of I've got to do it thatway and if I don't do it that
but I've got to make my kidshappy. I've got to fix my kids.
You can't make your children happy andyou cannot fix them. And the
more you try and do that throughthese wonderful so called parenting techniques, the
works you're going to get it's goingto lead to helicopter parenting. So helicopter
parenting is it comes. It cancome from multiple sources, and generally the
first source is in our parent dayand age. I believe is coming from

(01:04:51):
what we are expected to make ourkids be in as a parent, and
if they aren't. If your child'sbehavior problem, it's your fault as the
parent of your child's got trauma,it's your faults as a parent. Everything
becomes a parent's faults. Appearance underthe most horrific pressure and That's why I
say number one, give yourself grace, give yourself a chance to neurocycle,

(01:05:11):
give yourself a chance. Number two, tell the kids listen, this is
normal, this is who I am. And then number three work with the
kids, you know, and inthat designated space. So that's extremely important
to stop a helicopter parenting. Helicopterparenting is this hovering trying to bubble wrap
your child, trying to make surethat you are doing everything that's perfect for

(01:05:32):
them, that they not have anyanything wrong with them, which is impossible
to do. So the pressure isterrible. It's kind of like not letting
them have sufficient free play, whichis the average child is getting seven to
ten minutes. I think it isof unstructured, unsupervised free play, and
they need around three to four hoursa day for decent cognitive and brain development

(01:05:57):
and independent development and that kind ofthing. Hovering, helicopter parenting seems to
be very everything structured, everything's organized, every moment is organized, trying to
not let the child, the child'supset, trying to not let the child
be upset. Let your child beupset. If your child is crying,
as long as they're not hurting asibling hurting themselves, let them cry,

(01:06:18):
let them go to that. That'swhy I say have the designated space.
If you need a cry, let'sgo sit there. Let me give you
a hope. Here's brainy, whatdo you need, Go and cry,
not stop crying. You know.It's that kind of thing. It's let
them cry, let them feel safe, because if you let them cry,
they're going to stop crying pretty quicklywhen they know it's safe. That kind
of thing. So safety net parentingis looking at all the scary things of

(01:06:42):
life in a very different way.The only way a child get through the
scary things of life is if theyhave the skills developed. Helicopter parenting doesn't
allow the skills to be developed becauseyou're doing too much for the child and
they're not getting enough of the timeto why the networks in their brain.
That's what a helicopter parenting is stoppingthat, so they don't have fully developed
networks of resilience being unmasked and developedin the brain. The safety net.

(01:07:05):
If you think of going to likean acrobatics show, you're going to have
the tent, you're gonna have thosepoles that got really high, and you're
gonna have those little platforms and you'regonna have a net underneath, and the
acrobat climbs all the way up andthere's maybe different levels, and then they
stand on the edge and then maybethey've got to rope around them. Maybe
some do, some don't, andthen they do these different things and they

(01:07:27):
swing and they catch and do allthat stuff, and there's a net,
so they fall, the net catchesthem. That is safety net parenting.
You want to let your child climbup so they think of different levels.
If they're young, they're going toclimb to that level and they're going to
walk along and along the tight ropeor the whatever it is, swing whatever.
They're going to do the stuff.But you're there to catch them when
they fall. So it's allow themto do it, to make the mistakes,

(01:07:50):
to try to fall, to beupset, to have problems with friends.
You're there when they come to.You're not there to take it away.
You're there to help them conceptualize it. You're there to help them deconstruct
this is what's happened. Is thisgoing to happen again in a different way?
How can we reconstruct as opposed tothat's bad? Go jump in,

(01:08:10):
fix the thing for the problem,move, go to the teacher, remove
the source of the You can't dothat. So that's what safety need parenting
is. And as scary as itis, you watch them climbing up the
latter and going to the different levels, you have to let them do it
because you're always at the bottom andyou can catch them when they fall.
And it goes into upward adult children, and still that's even applicable. You
want a parent, always a parent. It's still pliable. They have to

(01:08:33):
make those mistakes that you're there tohelp pick up the pieces. So if
you've created an environment in a safespace where child feels comfortable coming to talk
to you, you're creating safety needparenting. Yeah. I think that's such
a beautiful explanation, and I knowyou talk about that. This is actually
such an important concept of giving themthe space to have that struggle, to
have failures, to feel impatient,to have to learn these skills. We

(01:08:56):
can't just give to them resilience andgive to them patience and give them kindness.
These are actually all things, theskills, actual skills they have to
develop through times when they feel impatient, and then they get to learn patients
through it, through times when theyfeel overwhelmed or frustrated or angry, and
they get to learn resilience through theirown journey of working through that, not
through us taking away the journey.So I love your approach to that,

(01:09:18):
and I know that there's so muchmore in your work than we can go
into in one hour podcast episode.Though perhaps we can do a follow up
one day with questions and more detail. But I'll make sure we linked all
your resources in the show notes soparents can continue to learn. A couple
of questions I love to ask atthe end of interviews though, the first
being if other than your own,if there's a book or a number of
books that have profoundly impacted you personally, and if so, what they are

(01:09:41):
and why is a number of books? But the Lord of the Rings series
is something that has been very bigin my life and the life of mind
time family. So all kids we'veread them together, We've watched the movies.
There's just so many liasons I loveit. I love that series.
And lastly, any parting advice forthe listeners that could be related to everything
we've talked about or entirely unrelated lifeadvice that you find helpful. I think

(01:10:02):
that's what really important is to realizeyou can't change what's happened to You can't
change a story that you can changewhat it looks like inside of you and
taking it one step further. Youcan't change your children's stories. You can
only help them to learn how tomanage and change the stories within what they
look like inside of themselves. Beautifulwell, doctor Caroline, thank you so

(01:10:24):
much for the time today. Iknow I've learned a lot. I think
this is such an important topic,and I love that you've dedicated so much
of your life to helping individuals andparents in this whole process and giving tangible
tools for people to improve in theirown lives. Thank you so much for
being here today. There's just thankyou so much for having me. It's
been a great conversation. I've lovedit me too, And thanks as always

(01:10:45):
to all of you for listening andsharing your most valuable resources, your time,
your energy, and your attention withus today. We're both so grateful
that you did, and I hopethat you will join me again on the
next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast. If you're enjoying these interviews, would
you please take two minutes to leavea rating or review on iTunes. For
me, doing this helps more peopleto find the podcast, which means even

(01:11:08):
more moms and families could benefit fromthe information. I really appreciate your time
and thanks as always for listening.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and Raising Resilient Kids With Dr. Caroline Leaf

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Dateline NBC

Stuff You Should Know

Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2

All Episodes

Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and Raising Resilient Kids With Dr. Caroline Leaf

Dateline NBC