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Speaker 2Hello 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 106 and today's episode, Rise Strong. I'm talking about an acronym that I've been playing around with. So, we're going to try something slightly different. So, I'm sat here in my comfy clothes, feeling slightly sorry for myself because I've got a stinking cold, which I haven't had for a very long time. And I wanted to share with you something that I'm going to be sharing in the book. But I thought I would share it with you while it's still sort of being incubated in my head. So, kind of bear with me. But Rise Strong is something that I've been kind of playing around with probably for about a month now. Because you know me with my tools and strategies, I like to kind of come up with stuff that I think is easy to remember, easy to use, practical. And I talk often about this analogy about what I believe is our role as parents. and being very mindful of that input not from a fear perspective but just from an awareness it's just really keeping that in front and center so r is for regulate emotions i is for input s is for sleep this is absolutely crucial i cannot over emphasize how important it is that our children are getting the right amount of sleep now of course they're going to go through periods of time in their life where their sleep might be slightly off track but we need to make sure that we prioritize sleep sleep has functions and there are the two broad functions of sleep are as it helps it helps restore your body and it helps restore your brain from the brain perspective this is where our knowledge and our learning becomes consolidated and when those neural connections get made of course during the day that our neurons are firing together but they get wired when we go to sleep so we consolidate our learning and then our body is restored and we're able to do things that we don't want to do and we're able to do things that we don't want to do and we're able to do things that we don't want to do and we're able to do when we go to sleep so our muscles are repaired while we sleep hormones are secreted while we sleep so this is how our body recovers and so it's really important that we prioritize and ensure that our children get enough sleep so when we're talking about sleep it's not just the amount of sleep that they get but the quality and the transitioning that they have from their wakefulness to their sleep now sleep is part of a circadian rhythm so it's this basically a circadian rhythm is something that happens within a 24-hour period so we have a time of wakefulness and we have a time of sleep we all have our own slightly individual circadian rhythm and you may well have heard about the whole notion of an owl and a lark so an owl is someone who's probably most alert maybe later on in the day a lark is more alert earlier in the day we will be naturally owls and larks and that'll be exactly the same for our children so it's being able to recognize that you might have some children that are naturally more awake and alert early and then will naturally want to go to sleep earlier and that you will get some children that will naturally sort of want to wake later and will then go to sleep later so you've got that inherent part and you'll probably begin to start working out from your children as they get older what what kind of pattern they are what we then also know is as our children go into those i'm going to say tween because when we think of teens we typically think 13 but what we know is the brain goes through its second kind of redevelopment from the age of 10 so around that and remember we're talking about ages and stages so it's not absolutely 10 it could be 10 years old it could be 10 years old it could be for your child it doesn't happen till 11 or 12 but from around 10 their brain is then going through another restructuring and what can typically happen is their circadian rhythm can be affected by up to two hours the other way so if you've got a child who would ordinarily be happy to go to sleep at half past seven eight o'clock will suddenly naturally their circadian rhythm won't want them to sleep for anything up to two hours later and they won't want to naturally wake up until two hours later we're stuck with the system the education system that we're in and if you're listening to this podcast this podcast is global we've got downloaded in over 60 countries you may well be in a system where school kind of works around that older children their school day starts later unfortunately if you're listening to this in the uk we just don't have that flexibility and that's that's how it works so we need to just understand that that happens for our children and then we just need to understand for us how we can best help support that change in our children so that we can make sure they still get enough sleep the other thing that i would add in terms of sleep is that we need to understand that sleep just so that you understand is that when we sleep we have 90 minute sleep cycles where we go from a non-rem sleep into a rem sleep so we basically go through light sleep into deep sleep and then we dream but we do that every 90 minutes so if you've got a child that's struggling with sleep and is waking up they're likely to be waking up at the time that they're going into that light more wakeful sleep that is potentially more possible for them to be disturbed so just understanding that we've got these sleep cycles hopefully at least allows helps you just it makes it a bit easier for you to understand if you've got a child that's struggling with sleep go to this previous podcast episode where i've talked about it what i want to do here is really talk about the acronym and what it means then i'm happy if we get some feedback to kind of dive deeper into some of these again if i need to so r is for regulating emotions i is for input s is for sleep e is for exercise it is really important that our children get activity now obviously there's a whole load of mental stimulation which we'll come on to later but it's really important that they have physical exercise outdoors it's just such a crucial and important it's great it's important for our brain it's important for our mindset at harmony bank
Speaker 1we believe that better happens together we're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions no big deal bank bureaucracy just a custom approach to help you thrive from business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs harmony bank provides a secure modern experience with a touch of texas hospitality we're harmony bank where better happens together it's important for
Speaker 2energy focus so it's have it being mindful that what we're trying to do is make sure that our children have a good relationship with their physical well-being as well as their mental well-being of course in lots of ways you know when our children at school the exercise bit's taken care of they have break time and play time or they'll have pee or games or whatever your school calls it but i think it's really important that we have conversations with our children around exercise and how important exercise is to their overall well-being and their overall health because that's something that they want we want to take into their adulthood remember we're working with the end in mind and part of just a normal good well-being with us as adults is also having some form of exercise in our life from my own personal perspective when i was at secondary i've always been quite active and when i was at secondary school i literally signed up to almost anything so i was in the school gymnastics team and so i did gymnastics two days a week i did trampolining another day and i did athletics another day so i almost every single day after school i had a normal school day with all of the physical activity that you would get from that and then i had these two days of exercise and i did gymnastics another day so i almost every single day after these clubs every single day but i hadn't made the connection between the importance of physical activity beyond school so i was like this massively physically fit person and i have got quite a large appetite as lots of people will know who've been around me and so when i then left school and started work because i left school and started working immediately i didn't go to university until i was older i hadn't made that connection between the importance of physical exercise in my life and the importance of physical exercise in my life so i had a very steep learning curve in terms of understanding how important it was to exercise for my just my general well-being and so it took me several years after i left still eating huge amounts of food that would have fueled me for all the various different activities that i had and hadn't made that connection so i think it's you know i'm not talking about this from a perspective of weight management i'm talking about it from a perspective of well-being and being able to understand that actually in order for our brain to be able to understand that we're not going to be able to work optimally we need sleep we need exercise they go hand in hand so it's really making sure that our children have that exercise and you'll notice that particularly if you've got children in school holidays you want to make sure that you know we need to be remembering that that's part of their raising a resilient adult adult is about making sure they also understand that's the exercise is a really important factor we've got rise regulate emotions input sleep exercise strong sleep so you've got to make sure that that's part of their raising a resilient adult is about making sure that that's part of their raising a resilient adult is about making sure that that's a part of their raising a resilient adult is about making sure that that's a part of their raising a resilient adult is about making sure that that's a part of their raising a resilient adult is about making sure that that's a part of their raising a resilient adult is about making sure that that's a part of their raising a resilient adult is about making sure that that's a part of their raising a resilient adult is about making sure that that's a part of their raising a resilient adult is about making sure that that's a part of their raising a resilient adult is about making sure that that's a part of their So when I did my mindfulness training, you know, you have the whole like we are human beings, but we end up becoming human doings. So it's that's the notion behind it. And silence could just simply be allowing them, you know, encouraging them to just have periods of time of just doing nothing. It doesn't have to be very long. But the reason why silence is such a crucial and important part is it helps our children and our teens be able to connect with that internal dialogue that they have rather than always running away from it, rather than always trying to pacify it, rather than always trying to avoid it. Because if you are aware of that internal dialogue and what it's saying and the narrative that it's creating, you're then aware that that ebbs and flows, that in the same way as emotions ebb and flow. That chatter ebbs and flow. And I always remember this particular analogy on an app that I used to use that talks about this idea. If you're standing on the side of a road and just imagine yourself standing on the side of the road where you live, or if you live on a quiet country lane, then just go a few roads visually a bit further up. And just imagine that if you were to stand on the side of that road, there would be times of the day where there would be quite a lot of traffic and the traffic basically are your thoughts. So there are periods of time during our day when we would notice there. There are lots and lots of thoughts. What tends to happen when we're anxious and we're ruminating and we're worried is rather than standing on the side of the road and observing, we tend to rush in after the cars. We rush after our thoughts, after a thought about how rubbish we are or that somebody doesn't like us or we're not good enough at this. race after that and that's where we end up becoming you know caught down this rabbit hole whereas actually if we could just stay on the side of the road we would notice that whilst there are some periods of time when there are lots of thoughts and lots of cars there are also times when there's not so many you know we see this notion of not that many cars on the road it's reminding us that rather than chasing after the traffic chasing after thoughts getting caught up in that rabbit hole instead if we can just be that's why we've got the whole silence thing we can just be we will notice and we will observe that sometimes we've got lots of thoughts and sometimes we don't and it's not about trying to change them it's not trying to stop them but it's just trying to observe them it's that whole notion is can we step out of the road can we step back onto the pavement and observe rather than get caught up in traffic so silence is a really good thing and that silence doesn't have to be complete and utter silence silence could simply be an appropriate way of saying silence is a really good thing and that silence doesn't have to be an appreciation of some music it can be directed silence but it's just being comfortable and familiar with periods of silence so s is for silence t is for toxins so this is about being aware actively and consciously aware of the toxins that may impact your child and your teen's thinking be aware of the toxins through tech through social media through poor relationships that they're having through the media just generally through messages that they're getting being aware this is not about we're never going to be able to eliminate toxins from our children's lives and you know when we're talking about you know food and and other things it's just being aware about what level of toxins is my child exposed to at the moment how is that impacting how they view the world how they view their relationships yeah how they view their self-esteem how they view their gender their sexuality so it's really being aware that the all of these factors massively impact the adult that we're trying to be aware of and how we're trying to raise so we are trying to be aware of those toxins we're looking at can we address maybe there's some some toxins that are coming in in terms of their view of themselves or their body image that we can have conversations around so we can turn that particular toxin around but it's so we can't eliminate toxins we just need to be aware of them so we can minimize them because you know our children every encounter every interaction leaves a trace if the level of toxins that are fueling in terms of their poor self-esteem and their self-esteem are poor self-image poor body image then that of course is going to impact on their mental health so we want to be kind of aware of what those toxins are and then be able to have conversations around either eliminating them or changing the way that they view them so it's that kind of reframing so it's being really aware of toxins are is reflect you know me well enough you've been listening to the podcast for long enough to know that i am a huge advocate of some form of reflective practice whether that is for our children or whether that's for us and it's not about me being dictatorial that children and teens need to have a diary but they do need to be able to reflect back and that reflection back may well simply be in a problem solving scenario where we talk through a challenge that they're having with a friendship or the challenge they're having with their school work or challenges around them going up to bed at the right time and they're able to reflect back on what is working what isn't working and what they might need to do differently so don't kind of get caught up in this notion that reflect has to be about a written practice it can be and i do think that there's a there's a huge amount of merit in that but i'm also aware that that not everyone's able to access that or reliably do that when they're younger so instead it's just being aware of are we actively encouraging our children and our teens to reflect on the choices that they've made and how they might do something differently next time reflection as a practice is really important for us as adults but when we're rise strong and become these incredible homes in which they inhabit then reflective practice is a really important aspect of that so we've got silence we've got toxins we've got reflection o is really looking for opportunities for growth and this goes back to a lot of things around goal setting now are we actively encouraging our children to look for opportunities for growth you know this is where i'm at this is where i'd much rather be we don't children don't necessarily teens don't say it in that in that way but we often have conversations with them about things that they would like to be able to do so it's really encouraging them to actively look for opportunities to grow is the whole growth mindset notion that the brain is a muscle just like any other muscle in our body the more we exercise it the stronger it becomes so what opportunities are we looking for for growth because our children will always say that they want to be able to do x and y and they wish they were more this and that and we can reframe that away from it being a negative that i'm not able to do that so and so but really encouraging them to think what are some of the things that really matter to you what are the things you would like to do and how can we look at it as an opportunity for growth it may be that you've got a child that wants to climb a mountain it might be a child that wants to do run a marathon or a half marathon it might be a child that wants to play be able to play a music instrument might be able to want to do stunts on a skateboard it's something that matters to them rather than necessarily matters to us maybe it's a child that wants to feel more comfortable in a way that they want to do it so it's really looking at it and using that kind of language around it's an opportunity for growth it's an opportunity for you to practice being person that you imagine yourself to be that's what's so incredible about this is it's really encouraging them to see rather than worry about perfection rather than worry about being able to do something you know i can't do this now so i can't try it it's much more a case of when we're talking about opportunities for growth it's really looking at ways that our children can practice stepping into the character stepping into the person that they want to be and it's really encouraging them to see that they're the person that they want to become and being aware that in that practicing process they're likely to make mistakes things are not always going to go to plan but failure is all part of growth so o is opportunities for growth n is for novelty and this is that as human beings we actively seek new challenges novel situations and those are the things that fire and then eventually wire our neurons together so it's encouraging our children not to get too staid and too familiar but to push themselves in that novel situation it's different from an opportunities for growth because opportunities for growth are often around building on some skills that we've already got novelty is about being inquisitive and inquiring about new things things that are not currently on your radar things that are not currently within your repertoire of skills but actively seeking something new to try and i think that that novelty one is a really important one it's one of the areas that has been looked at a lot in the past and i think it's a really important in terms of older adult aging brains is that when we continue with novelty when we learn new things and we try new things it helps keep our brain healthy and novelty can be as simple as being i'm right-handed every now and again i'll try and brush my teeth with my left hand we're not talking about some kind of incredibly novel but it's just about doing things wouldn't ordinarily be exposed to as part of your day-to-day so n is for novelty and then g is for gratitude gratitude is such an important piece of the jigsaw when it comes to our mental health when it comes to taking care of ourselves emotionally and the reason with gratitude is that it encourages us to actively seek out and reframe our experiences so it's really important that we when we're talking about children that rise strong is that we instill a process of gratitude and gratitude is simply a being able to recognize the very small things within a day that we are grateful for the sunshine when it's break time the the smile from a passerby and you know your favorite lunch or breakfast yeah you know it's it's the really really small things that make all of the difference when it comes to gratitude and that's a really important thing and i personally that gratitude is best done in the evening before bedtime and the evidence shows that it needs to be written the um significant effect the positiveness from it what you get the improved well-being doesn't come from us verbalizing what we're grateful for but actually comes from what we've written down that we're grateful for so that's a kind of a really important thing and i hope that this has been quite an interesting thing because it's i've never done this before where i've kind of talked about something that i'm currently working on and thinking and it's sort of helped me even as i've been talking about it i've got no notes whatsoever normally when i record a podcast episode i've got some notes and i've got some notes that i've written down and i've got some notes that i've and in front of me of some main points and all i've literally got is my what i've written down each by each letter so that's really helped me crystallize but hopefully also helped you when with when you think about my analogy of this building that rises which is our children and why then we're talking about making sure that that building rises strong because it comes from these components that are you know these these sort of 10 codes i don't know i'll play around with the wording for that but you know these these sort of 10 things are really crucial in terms of that building rising strong so my give this week is going to be these 10 sort of focus points that we need to have when it comes to building rising strong we'll have them on a checklist so that you can see what each letter stands for and then a little space underneath so you can make some notes it can serve as that reminder maybe helps you kind of crystallize and it will be in the book and probably we'll have a few tweaks here and there so all you need to do is head over to my free resource library drmerryhand.com forward slash library where you'll find the link to download the book and i'll see you in the next video the resource all you need to do is pop in your email address and you'll get instant access not only to the rise strong resource but all the other free resources across all my other podcast episodes as ever if you have enjoyed this episode i would love it and obviously be eternally grateful if you could follow rate and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time hey it's your ceiling vent
Speaker 3so i'm dripping could be the rain could be the upstairs bathroom yikes you could hire the guy your neighbor recommended but i'm pretty sure that's just his cousin do we know if he's licensed or does he just own a ladder listen
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Speaker 1harmony bank we believe that better happens together we're a locally owned bank built on relationships and personally committed to your success our community bankers are ready to make quick decisions no big bank bureaucracy just a custom approach to help you thrive from business loans to mortgages and everyday banking needs harmony bank provides a secure modern experience with a touch of texas hospitality we're harmony bank Harmony Bank. Where better happens together.
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