Great Habits for Super Young Children

at edward jones we believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning that's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts let's find your rich edward jones member sipc therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's exactly what grow therapy is here for grow is therapy that works covered by insurance sessions average 21 with insurance and some pay as little as zero dollars depending on their plan there are no subscriptions no long-term commitments you just pay per session grow connects you with thousands of people and you can make a difference in the world and you can make a difference in the world thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the u.s offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends you can search by what matters like insurance specialty identity or availability and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days not the national 48 day average see if you could pay as little as zero dollars for therapy in seconds at grow therapy.com slash a cast that's grow therapy.com slash a cast grow therapy.com slash a cast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan so you're not worried about hosting the whole family for the holidays why would i be wayfair had everything i needed to get the house holiday ready what if mike brings his cheerful dogs my tree has tons of five-star reviews telling me how sturdy it is but what if everyone's plus one brings a plus one we'll see how extendable this extendable table really is and extra chairs are on the way okay what if there's a blizzard and everyone has to sleep over ready to go with extra bedding and towels from guest ready essentials to holiday decor you can trust wayfair deliver hello and welcome to the how not to screw up your kids podcast so pour yourself a cuppa find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation this is episode 84 and today's episode great habits for super young children comes at the request of a listener and is all about ways we can incorporate my top tips for raising confidence in our children and how not to screw up your kids podcast so pour yourself a confident resilient children who are able to manage those big emotions from the outset so i am talking about children that are younger than school age so super super young how can we start putting these things in place really early so that we can give them the best possible start and potentially the best possible outcome now you might not know this but my doctorate research so the research that i did for my phd was all about children who were younger than three years so i'll be drawing on some of my findings today when i share my top tips for raising confidence in our kids so here we go now for context i think it's really helpful if i remind you about the analogy that i like to use about what our role is as parents when it comes to raising children so you'll you'll be familiar if you've been listening to the podcast for a while if you're new to the podcast then this is a useful sort of starting point and it's this notion that our children are a house a building under construction what that building looks like at the end we don't know it's not down to us it's down to our children they're all individuals that all you know create their own home but our role as parents is to provide the solid foundations on which this building will eventually rise and stand firm tall and strong so our role as parents is initially is to provide the solid foundations on which this building then rises and then once those solid foundations are created and are there and the building itself starts to kind of rise and erect properly we then shift our attention to becoming the scaffolding so in those early years so from birth to five our focus really needs to be on building those solid foundations so that when the building rises it's it's able to rise strong and the research shows us that time and time again if we get those early years right when our children's brains are growing rapidly and making lots of new neural connections then we are likely to be able to set up our children to do really well in the future doesn't necessarily mean that we protect them from everything but those early years are supremely important and if you're not aware the center and for the developing child at harvard are really researching a lot of this and pioneering how you know what do we need to know about those early years in order to protect children and particularly they're looking at it from a position of you know how can we change policy and particularly for children that may well grow up with adverse conditions but we can incorporate some of the kind of broad findings from that study i just wanted to share three before i start going into my my top tips three that i think are particularly relevant they've come up with more but i think because they're also looking at adverse sort of outcomes and adverse situations as children are growing up it's not necessarily going to be relevant here but these these are the three that i think are particularly relevant the first one is that positive early social and emotional development is critical for life chances so children who do better than in terms of adulthood life chances you know being happy having their own emotional well-being being met it's all related to those early social and emotional development which we will talk about so that's number one the second is what parents do is more important than who parents are and i think this is such a crucial thing it is around this notion of what do we do day in day out children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say so this is about making sure it's not about guilting us it's not about making us feel that you know everything we do is going to have this profound impact on our children and i'll talk a little bit more about this and shortly but it is remembering that what we do is really important than who we are so it is it's that you know what are we doing and then the third one that i think is particularly relevant is that parental mental health is closely linked to early childhood inequalities so when our mental health is poor we're not taking care of our own mental health we're struggling with our own challenges then that usually then builds in these inequalities i don't want you listening to this if you are a parent who struggles with anxiety you struggle with depression that doesn't mean that because you have it that your child is then going to have challenges it's much more a case about actually what do we do about supporting our own mental health and if we're putting in all the framework we're putting all the right support for ourselves doing the right things taking care of ourselves then we don't necessarily see that so i think for context we've got this idea about our children are building under construction and we might not always sort of make that connection when our children are really really young they're under five but if we can start with that and really think about what are those foundations that we're going to be building on and i'm going to talk to you about what i think are the five crucial foundations that we should be putting in place from the word from the get-go i think that would be helpful but whilst also understanding that this backdrop about around these early experiences these early years these first five years can really be supremely pivotal for our children so a thought for you just before i started recording this podcast i was i've been consuming uh lots reading lots and just a thought for you every interaction you have with your child will leave a trace in the wiring of their brain now if you haven't already listened to episode 82 wiring our children's brains then i would highly recommend you go and listen to this episode after you've listened to this one but in essence we know that repeated interactions of the same type will build permanent connections we talk about this idea that our brain is a muscle and i'll talk about it a little bit more in these five skills so we want those to be helpful these interactions helpful ones which build resilience so this notion of i can pick myself up and try again rather than reliant on us to solve their problems so let me talk to you about my five what i think are the five crucial things that we should be looking at doing in terms of building that foundation for our children now part of that foundation of that building are going to be things like moral values which i'm not going to touch on i really want to touch on these five competencies that i think really equip our children to be resilient to be resilient to be resilient so first one is build communication skills this is so crucial and i know goodness me i was thinking about this the other day when my children were younger and you're worried about them speaking and learning their first words and obviously that comes in time and it may well be you have a child who's an early talker you might have a child who's a late talker or there'll be somewhere in between but what i'm talking about with communication skills isn't just the words that they use because you could be listening to this and you've got an eight month old but it is a much more about that communication skills and it's not just the words that they use it's that ability to communicate which goes beyond just words researchers talk a lot about this notion of serve and return style play so you may well have come across this but maybe not necessarily the term and it's this idea that if we it's turn-taking we serve our child returns sometimes our child serves and then we return so it's this notion of play interactions the serve and return and interactions which build our children's brain architecture So simply put, these are the things that build the neuronal connections that build that muscle in our children's that helps with those connections that wire this idea that every interaction we have with our child if we've had an interaction with our child the structure the architecture the wiring in their brain is going to be completely different after we've spent time with them and it's even with us as adults but as we get older the wiring just takes that bit longer so repeated patterns of serve and return are absolutely crucial in terms of building our children's brain development and building that those communication skills so at the basic level if you're listening to this with a really young baby it's things that you probably have read about already so when our children babble it's bubbling back to them it's having that kind of communication because our children will inherently look to us and seek to communicate with us in some ways if we then return that communication through whatever means if our children are using words then let's use words if they're not but they're babbling or they're making noises it's that serve and return you say something in whatever that language might be i return back i say something you return back wait listen turn taking and these are really really crucial so it may well be when they're younger it's that babbling as they get older it's that conversation of that interaction and games that we play with our children around that now what i will say as part of the research that i did when i did my doctoral is this notion that it's really crucial when we're talking about managing big emotions and we'll talk about that in a moment but what the research has found is that there's lots of idea about these toddler tantrums and children might go through them at different ages and stages but what the research has shown is if we can give our children if we can equip them with means of communication what we usually find is those really big emotions at a really young age generally tend to disappear because if you think about it what is generally happening is our children's brains are being wired they're making all of these incredible connections there's so much going on but they don't necessarily what's happening in their developing brain doesn't always match their ability to communicate with us their needs so there's lots of research evidence that supports this notion of if we can find other ways for our children to be able to communicate when they are pre-verbal so they're not able to say i'm hungry i'm tired i'm bored these sorts of things then if we can give them other ways to communicate that so it's looking at potentially aspects of sign language or ways that we communicate with them it may be our own sign language that we make up but it's being really aware that quite often with young children preschoolers they're not five a lot of the challenges i've got these feelings i've got these ideas and i cannot express them i cannot communicate with you precisely what i need the words won't necessarily come out or i don't i can't haven't got the combination of words so building those communication skills through that serve and return but also through listening and finding mechanisms with which we can teach our children to be able to communicate with us is the first step to helping them in terms of managing those big emotions so the first one is around this building communication skills and play you will find across all of the five areas that i'm going to talk about in terms of building these great habits is a crucial part because play is our children's work we have a job we will go to work we'll have certain tasks that we need to do as part of that role play is the exact same thing for our children it's what fundamentally helps make those connections builds up their muscle in their brains and helps them assimilate information about their environment and then helps them interact within their environment in that confident and resilient way so it's really crucial that we have those interactions with our children around play but it doesn't mean we you know don't get me wrong we'll talk about this as well it's not about playing with them all of the time but just making sure that when we do play we're fully present so that's what i'm going to talk about in terms of playing with them all of the time and so the first one is about building communication skills the second one is around emotional literacy this is all about the building blocks to being able to what we might call emotionally self-regulate so in other words it's about being managing those big emotions without needing an adult to do it for you so it's crucial at the very very basic levels even with our super super young pre-verbal children so they're not communicating in words but it's really crucial we talk about emotions it's really crucial we label emotions i can see that you're happy i can see that you're sad so at those basic levels i'm happy i'm sad exaggerate those emotions wait for your child to then you know to serve and return let them come back why are you feeling sad how can we make up you know how can we change how we're feeling so it's that conversation so at the basic level we want to be labeling our emotions and there's lots of games and things that you can do so i'm going to share some specific activities that i've done so i'm going to share some specific activities that i've done that will help to build that kind of emotional literacy because at that basic level and then we can move on to that sort of problem solving so you can get things like paper plates and you can draw eyes and a nose and then you can use plasticine play-doh some sort of sticky substance to then draw the mouth expression so really young children they can then make it into a happy smile they can make it into a sad downward turned mouth they can you know make it like eyes whatever that might be there's it helps our children in terms of that manipulation we can then play around with what might that emotion look like in a face how might we be able to recognize it so that you can do that on paper literally you just draw the eyes or even stick the eyes on you know put a nose with spaghetti or something or pasta but it's about helping them see that at the basic level one of the ways that we can tell how somebody's feeling is through their face and obviously the mouth is only one aspect of how we can tell someone's but these are some of the things that we can do at that basic level so that's one thing that we can do that kind of kind of helps build that and one of the other ones i used to love to do with my children was that you know those times that we would sort of sit maybe you take them to a coffee shop or maybe you go to the park and they're sitting and they're eating a sandwich or they're eating their ice cream or whatever it is or they're drinking their water is doing a bit of a sort of people watching and maybe sort of say pointing somebody out and in a subtle way rather than in an obvious pointy finger way but you know that person in their red coat they look really happy i wonder what made them happy i wonder whether they ate a huge chocolate cake before they came out or maybe it's their birthday and they're really excited and they're going to go and open their presents whatever that might be it's about labeling emotions for your child helping them being able to work out how that they can tell the difference in people's facial expressions but then actually now can we apply it in the real world can we observe other people and we can maybe problem solve and try and think and the more ridiculous it is in some ways the better maybe that person looks really cross i think they stubbed their toe and when they got out of bed and they're still feeling grumpy about it or their favorite breakfast wasn't wasn't available at home they didn't have it they'd run out and they're feeling really hungry whatever that might be we're making a bit of a game of it it goes back to the serve and return you know we're having that conversation we're beginning to make those connections if you really can think of it in that way how can i make sure that the data input that my child is getting is helping them understand the emotions and what might cause those emotions and how that might affect somebody so that's in terms of being able to label and identify emotions but when we're talking about emotional what being able to self-regulate obviously labeling our emotions is only one step of it the next step is obviously got to be how can i best manage that emotion what do i need to do for myself in order to help that so the next step if you're layering this up is then looking at helping our children problem solve and i can't remember if i've talked about this before i feel like i have talked about this before in a previous episode but i'm going to share it again it's something that i that i do is when i feel i may i need so this is something that you can do as the children are have then got more language but adapt and modify this is a perfect activity for super young children for sort of like children who are not at school but also for big kids too so you can do this with a 20 year old this is such a crucial one so it's this idea about when i feel blank put the emotion in when i feel sad i may so this is about how would i know that you are sad so how would i recognize that so with young children you might do this not necessarily starting with your child but you might do it with a teddy bear that they've got or a doll or it may well be that they have a sheep or a cow that they love to play with so it's like how would we know that sheepy is sad how would we know that cow is sad how would we know that you're sad so it's this idea of helping our children make those connections then to the smiley faces and the sad faces we've made with our play-doh or the people that we've observed how would we know that they're sad what does that look like for sheep cow child so that may be crying it may be quiet it may be withdrawn it may well be angry it may well be not angry well although actually some children when they're sad can get frustrated but it's helping them be able to understand when i feel an emotion whatever that emotion is i may how would an onlooker be able to tell that you're feeling that emotion and then the crucial part the next part is i need so in that moment what do you need helping children understand what they need at edward jones we believe rich isn't about having life all figured out it's opening yourself to all the possibilities that's why your dedicated financial advisor provides long-term planning built around you meeting you where you are and helping you get closer to where you are so no matter where you're starting from you can move forward with confidence the key to being rich is knowing what counts let's find your rich edward jones member sipc therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's exactly what grow therapy is here for grow is therapy that works covered by insurance sessions average 21 dollars with insurance and some pay as little as zero dollars depending on their plan there are no subscriptions no long-term commitments you just pay per session grow connects you with thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the u.s offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends you can search by what matters like insurance specialty identity or availability and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin your journey with grow therapy in as little as two days not the national 48 day average see if you could pay as little as zero dollars for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash acast that's growtherapy.com slash acast growtherapy.com slash acast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan because if we can help them work out what they need this is part of the self-regulation now it may well be in the instance of sad it may will be that they say i need a hug and that great amazing that's what you need at that moment but then i would encourage your children to think beyond that okay you might need a hug but what happens if mummy daddy sister teacher nanny childminder preschool key worker is not able to give you that hug what else might you then be able to do to make you feel less sad because we're encouraging our children to be able to look inwards for what they might need and we're encouraging our children to look inwards for what they might need now obviously the language will change in terms of how you use that but you can use this on really young children you know it may well be that you begin the first layers because that's what we're doing when we're observing when we're playing with play-doh and these paper plates it's helping them begin to recognize what emotions look like and as our children get older get really diverse with the emotions that you that you use because a lot of the research shows that we quite often restrict the number of emotions we talk to our children about about how they feel about what they're feeling about what they're feeling about happy sad angry or cross we don't expand that we can feel frustrated annoyed angry irritated jealous so let's begin to diversify those and obviously with young children we may not necessarily go into all of those subtle nuances but we certainly want to expand the more emotions that our children understand the more they understand those subtle differences the easier it is for them to be able to self-regulate because the reality is quite often with anger there are aspects within anger it isn't just anger it may well be sadness there may be shame there may be embarrassment so it's how can we begin to build some of those subtle things because if we can help our children in those moments where they're not experiencing the big emotions by being able to understand and label them when they experience those big emotions we can then help them with that self-regulation because they might have their we can then create a special box or a basket or something that they can go to when they're feeling sad when they're feeling angry that helps them dip into that box what might they need and this is where certainly when we're talking about emotions where the glitter jar can be so so helpful because they can see that these big emotions like the glitter swirling and swirling around and that it feels big and that's a great activity for them to see shake that glitter jar see how that glitter is swirling around and then being able to observe that it then settles and calms so two are that i've covered so far is build communication skills the second is around emotional literacy the third one is building problem solving skills from an early age because problem solving skills and some of the things we're going to look at for problem solving might not seem to be obvious ones in terms of helping our children self-regulate but if we if our children regularly feel that they get a choice that they get to choose that that they are beginning to solve some simple problems when they're younger it means that they're much more likely to then solve problems when they're younger it means that they're much more likely to then solve bigger problems because they're used to that process of making a decision and then living with what the outcome is so problem solving skills is about let's help our children make decisions where we possibly can so do you want peas and carrots or do you want peas and broccoli it can be as basic as that where possible encourage our children to make choices give them those choices should i put on this she want when our children are dining on this foot or this foot you know which feet are you going to put on this foot you're going to give me it doesn't even need to be when our children are able to necessarily communicate it's where possible let's hold up choices for them let's say we can play this now or play this or this one and we can play that later or we can play this now give our children those choices so they can regularly see that they're empowered to make choices but then then they can then because they're making those decisions and they see the consequence of those decisions not in a negative way but they see what happens they then feel much more empowered so it's really encouraging those our children to be able to do that and if they do sort of if something comes up it's really trying not to jump in straight away and i know that this can be a really difficult one because and particularly when our children are quite young and they're falling over when they're learning to walk or they're getting supremely frustrated because they're trying to learn how to do something whether that's you know do some velcro or post some you know a square peg in a square hole it's that really try to make sure that we don't jump in and that we encourage our children to keep going and problem solve and just help in certain ways so that they can then experience that success because it's so much more powerful for them if we do that so it is about just you know encouraging decision making processes through problem solving and not jumping in straight away and that's a kind of that's a really crucial and it's also about sort of using language of sort of like you know uh-oh rather than you know so that it's it's light rather than our children feeling like they're not going to that they've made this huge huge error or huge mistake so build those communication skills build that emotional literacy encourage problem solving skills by giving our children decisions and those decisions and those choices will obviously change as they get older they can get that we encourage them to do more choices and it's within the framework of we fundamentally know what we want our child to do we know what those parameters are but what we want to make sure that we do is give them choices within those parameters and making sure they do that the fourth one is about building natural curiosity our children's brains are developing at phenomenal speed phenomenal speed so if we encourage our children to be curious so when our children ask questions sometimes we can respond to those questions we can give them specific answers but sometimes it's actually better to say i wonder that isn't such an interesting question how could we find out so it's about looking at ways that they might then be able to do that so it's about looking at ways that they might then be able to do that so it's about looking at ways that they might then be able to do that so it's about looking at ways that they might answer those questions so sometimes that might be experiments so i remember very vividly the children took i think one i can't remember which child it was was asking about why do we have to wash our hands and of course you know you want to do that well germs and so in the end it was just like well that's really interesting i wonder well why do we wash our hands so we then got pieces of bread and we cut them out with a cookie cutter and you know we washed our hands and put our hands on the bread well we did we did obviously first one we did without washing our hands and then we and putting our hands on the bread and then other one washing our hands and then we just literally put them on plates on the windowsill and saw what happened so it's that you don't necessarily have to do that but sometimes it's about thinking about how can i children have got such inquiring and inquisitive minds and sometimes from a time perspective we just answer and respond because that's the right thing at the time but sometimes there's so much it's so much more powerful to help them go through that learning process so when our children go through those periods of time maybe it was just a matter of time and then we just answer and respond because that's the right thing at the time and then we just answer and respond because that's the right thing at the time and then we just my children where they didn't want to take a coat with them they didn't want to wear their cardigans or they didn't want to wear their raincoats you then give them that decision you're helping them be curious well i think we probably ought to put the raincoat on and i know it feels a bit itchy and annoying because i think if it rains you're going to get wet but if you think if you want to see how it goes then that's fine so we're helping them be curious and learning from their environment and sometimes absolutely it's about us giving them the answer but i think if we can help them explore rather than us restricting them to something else we're helping them be curious and learning rather than us restricting and saying no no you mustn't do that we can talk about you know well what might happen if we did that and really kind of help them understand but where we where possible it's help them to kind of work through that curiosity and find ways of them learning and being that and that's really about us being creative and sometimes we don't have the opportunity we don't have the time we don't have the space but i think where we where we do i think that that's a really crucial one it's about encouraging that curiosity encouraging children to sort of feel textures of things learn different things take different steps go down different routes that we know are not necessarily going to be fruitful but let's see let's be curious i wonder whether this person might be doing this i wonder if that's how they're feeling i wonder what might happen if we do this so it's really encouraging them because that helps them again with you know what's so crucial is that they are so malleable their brains are so open to discovering and finding things that it is so crucial that we kind of build and encourage that curiosity about what might happen if I do this. This might be what I should do. but what might happen if I do this? What happens if I maybe put cheese with my broccoli? What happens if I might try this food combination? You know, it's that sort of thing. So it's really trying to promote and encourage curiosity within our children, because that just helps with their kind of the next step, which we're going to talk about is this idea about growth mindset. So very much by the work by Carol Dweck and her incredible TED talk, The Power of Yet. So we really want to promote our children's growth mindset, which links into curiosity, which links into problem solving and growth mindset simply, and Carol Dweck's work basically comes from this premise that we can learn to do anything. We just need to put the work in rather than a fixed mindset, which tends to see abilities as very much innate. You are good at maths or you're not. You're a great communicator or you're not. You manage your emotions or you don't. It's this idea and growth mindset is simply this notion that our brain is a muscle, which it absolutely is. And it's not just a muscle, it's a brain is a muscle, which absolutely is. And if we exercise it enough, if we repeat certain patterns of behaviour, those muscles get stronger and those connections get faster. And so we can learn and we can do anything. Riding a bicycle, learning to swim, all of these things that we tend to teach our children when they're really young. So it's about how can we as parents begin to foster and create this growth mindset with our children? Well, the simple answer is by praising process. Being really supremely aware of what we praise in our young children, because that will then feed in to their mechanisms and then we will get more of that. So if we praise process, you know, this idea of you've tried really a great trying with your words or whatever it might be, or trying to build something or make a connection with something or learning to ride their bike, if they all fall over and they graze themselves and they pick themselves up, it's praising the effort that our children put into things, rather than great job, you were able to achieve this. You're so smart, you've managed to do this puzzle. It's the process that they go through, it's the trying the puzzle and the different combinations. And that's the thing that we want to be praising. So it's being aware of the language that we use. And I just love this idea, you know, Carol's notion of the power of yet. So I often talk about this idea that I can't fly a plane. I can't. But if I add the word I give myself the option that someday if I choose to, I could learn to fly a plane. So it's even at those really young ages when our children say I can't do it, then we can add the word yet. I can't do it yet. So let's try, let's practice so that our children understand that everything is within their reach, anything, whether it's managing those really big emotions, or whether it's that puzzle or that learning to tie their shoelaces or do a button or, you know, whatever that might build in something. And that frustration that that build those tower block keeps falling over, is that it's that process, they're learning, you know, it's not there yet. And it will be because that's such a crucial part. So it's, it's making sure that we don't get caught into this rabbit hole of our children ticking certain boxes and being able to achieve certain things great, they're now doing this. But actually, it's reinforcing constantly around that process, rather than always necessarily praising that final outcome. Let's quickly recap these five. So the first one is around building communication skills. It's that notion of this serve and return play, which comes into every single one of the five crucial areas that I think we need to be working on. When our children are super young. It's that notion of how can I help my child at whatever developmental age they are not actual chronological age, because children learn to communicate, and their ability to communicate their needs, and their feelings is going to be different. There isn't a by the time your child is two, they're going to be able to communicate, some children are communicating really effectively at two, some are not really communicating effectively till six or seven. It's not an issue. It's what does that look like to build those communication skills through the serve and return style play, build that emotional literacy to help our children self regulate again with serve and play, understanding those different levels of helping them self regulate, they need to be able to label their emotions, so that when they experience these big emotions, eventually, they're then able to problem solve, but they're not going to problem solve. In the heat of the moment of those big emotions, they're going to problem solve through the activities that we've done with them around building that emotional literacy. It's about encouraging problem solving skills by giving our children choices from super, super early, as soon as we're able to give them the options of things, then let's do that so that we can give them choice and they can see how their choices empower them and what then happens in terms of outcome. It's building curiosity, let's not always jump in and give our children answers to things, but maybe ask about how we might find out, build up, you know, make little experiments where it's possible and it's feasible to do so our children learn through experience. That experiential learning is so important, but build that curiosity around them about cause and effect and what might happen. And then this final one about this growth mindset, it's being really mindful of the language that we use with our children, so that we encourage this notion of trying and effort and praising the problem. And then the final one about this growth mindset, it's being really mindful of the language that process rather than that outcome and using this power of yet, simply adding the word yet to absolute statements and being mindful of the language that we use about ourselves and adding yet to what we say, because children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say. So it's about remembering that what we communicate, how we take care of ourselves has a profound impact on our children. So my give this week is going to be these top five strategies, again, in my usual checklist with GAP. So you can go to GAP.org and you can go to the GAP.org website and you can start reflecting on which are the areas that can I currently work on, depending on how old your child is, where is that emphasis and that, you know, I've almost kind of listed them in the order, you know, that communication is crucial. And that serve and return, that's what we should be doing at the absolute basic level. And then we can start layering these up. So as usual, head over to my free resource library, drmaryhand.com forward slash library, where you'll find the link to and you'll get instant access, not only to this week's resource, but all the other free resources across all my other episodes. As ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would be so grateful. I would love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time.