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Speaker 5Hello and welcome to the How. Not to screw up your kid's podcast. So pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. Today's episode, the five things all children need is all about distilling the five areas as parents. We can focus our time and energy on now. Parenting is tough. We are pulled in multiple directions and I felt by giving you some core areas, it might help you find clarity, target your efforts, more precisely and hopefully give you some confidence and maybe, maybe less guilt. Now there's a story to this episode, which I would like to share with your permission. Now I listened to a guest on a well known podcast talking about parenting and their views on why we have a mental health crisis in young people. And I'll be honest, my first reaction was anger. In fact, I would go as far as to say rage. Now whilst so much of her commentary of the research was reasonably grounded and reasonably sound, I felt her headline guidance, two of which I'll share. Women should be at home with their children for the first years of their lives and children should not be in daycare. I felt was too dogmatic. Now as someone who regularly reflects and advocates for reflection and journaling, I decided to sit on my thoughts and reactions for a few days before I finalised my notes for this episode. I mean, I started this episode immediately after I'd finished listening to the podcast. Now I chose to really try and see this other professional's perspective so that I could respond compassionately because of course that professional's perspective in their view is informed. It comes from research. It's valid. It's validated. And I felt that I wanted to respond to it compassionately by sitting with it. Let's, you know, let's face it. The world is full of people disagreeing in a very destructive and non-constructive way. So I have chosen for this episode to focus on what I feel are the five core things every child needs and to leave it to you as a parent to decide how you might be able to provide that within your family framework, your family makeup, your family dynamic. I am making no judgment on whether you, whether you work or you don't work, whether you work part-time full-time, whether you work shifts or not shift, whether your child is in daycare or not. If we focus on providing these five things, our children will flourish because to me, these five things are the life force of raising a resilient adult. And remember, I always talk about this idea that we're reverse engineering. We're looking at the adult, the resilient adult that we want to raise and then considering all of the tools, the strategies that we use, all of the decisions that we make based on does that get me closer to my end goal now? So I'm hoping that you'll find this a super helpful episode regardless of the age and stage that your child is at. Now, what I will say before I share the five areas is as parents, it is tough parenting alone. And when I'm talking about alone, I'm talking about even if we're in a situation where we are co-parenting in the same home, it is tough. So whether you're co-parenting in the same home, whether you're single parenting, whether you're co-parenting different in different homes, we all need a village, a tribe to support us and our family when it comes to raising children. So all of the things that I'm going to talk about are in the context of really encouraging you. Of course, there's a huge amount that is down to us as parents, but actually there is a huge amount of support that can be done. It can be sought and optimal optimally. That's what we ought to be doing beyond our immediate family dynamic. So it's really helpful if we do that now, as you listen to the five things that all children need, and these are, as again, I've said, it's regardless of age, it'll be helpful to recognise where you're currently nailing it. Yeah, because we have a tendency as parents to really home in and focusing in on the things that we're not doing as well, or we think we're not doing so well. And we don't take a moment to actually congratulate ourselves on the things that we are generally consistently managing to nail. So please do that first. Congratulate yourself where you've nailed it and then work out where there's scope for you to do a little bit more and make a decision to focus on just one of those for now, because when we're consistent, we're much more likely to make progress and then we can move on to another area. Some of the things I'm going to talk about will seem as if they're very specific to really young children, but they are things that we can be looking at doing and fostering at any age and stage that our child is at. Okay, so here they are. The first of the core things that all children need is around this notion of a secure attachment. So let's just talk a little bit about what this is. If you've not, I have got a whole episode on attachment and why it's really important for our children, but let me just explain a little bit and then I can talk about the factors around secure attachments that we're, particularly interested in when it comes to helping and supporting our children. As humans, we are mammals and our young are vulnerable for a really long time because they can't feed themselves. They can't move, they're immobile, so they can't get out of the way of danger. And so they are dependent on us for quite a long time. If you think about actually how quickly it takes for our children to be able to walk competently and carefully and then be able to feed themselves. It is some time. And so there's been lots of theories around this notion that children will blueprint in some ways. They are born, we birth them with a desire, an innate desire to make a connection with and an attachment to an adult. And that attachment has multiple benefits. That benefit is that if I have this attachment as a young baby with this individual adult, then what that means, is that I know that I'm always going to be safe. I'm going to be scooped up if that saber tooth tiger comes along, my emotional needs are going to be met. And what that then allows me to do, if I know that I'm safe and I'm going to be protected, if I know my emotional needs are going to be met as well as my basic needs around food, water and those sorts of things and protection, then what that allows me to do is instead of me using up a lot of brain space, worrying about those sorts of things, I can use my brain space instead to assimilate lots of information about the environment that I'm being raised in. So it means I can explore and I can use that attachment, that individual as my safe base from which to explore and navigate and learn about my environment. And so that's in essence what a secure attachment is. It's having that one individual that we can go to, that we can use, can lean on that then allows us to do these things. Now typically that is and has historically been the mother. There is conflicting evidence, and particularly in regard to this particular podcast, as to whether others can fulfil that role. There are gender differences. As women and as men, we generally respond and bring with us different benefits when it comes to raising our children. But in essence, it's about being emotionally responsive and meeting that child's needs. So it is not necessarily about changing their nappies, it's not necessarily about feeding them, but being able to pick up when they're tired, when they're bored, when they need a cuddle, when they need some security, when they need that emotional skin-to-skin. And so the kind of critical period that we often talk about, so what is a critical period? It's this notion that we need to be able to take care of our children, we need to be able to take care of our children, an attachment needs to be formed within a specific period of time from birth, and if it doesn't, then it can have a significant impact, negative impact, on the children in terms of their social development and their emotional development. And this is a pretty robust piece of evidence. But 75% of children will have a secure attachment, and that is because as parents, we instinctively respond to our children. So when we talk about the five core things that our children need, secure attachment is that prerequisite, it's almost that foundational bit, and it's because of this notion of responsiveness, but it's also this huge piece of this is around meeting our children's emotional needs. In those early years, it's often also how children begin that process of understanding self-regulation. They're learning that because if their emotional needs are being met by us, because we're being responsive, then that helps them to regulate their emotions. And so they don't find themselves, you know, feeling fearful or crying for extended periods of time. What I will add to this, and this is a really big piece that was lacking in this particular episode that I listened to, is that as human beings, as adults, and also as young children, there are mechanisms within us internally, biologically, that we need to actively seek that secure attachment out. However, there are some things that can make this difficult. And one of those is the temperament of the child. So some of you will be listening to this and will be able to kind of recall either you're in it at the moment, you've got a really young child, or you're able to recall that you're in it at the moment, and you've got a really young child, or you've got a really young child, or you've got a really young child, and you've got a really young child, or you've got a really young child, and you've got a really young child, and you've got a really young child, and you've got a really young child, and you've got a really young child, back on your child, and those early weeks and months in terms of creating that bond. And the critical period is generally viewed at around, you know, those sort of first 12 months, first 8-12 months of their life, is that some children, their temperament is that they can be particularly challenging. There are children whose temperament is that they are almost, and I know that parents have said this to me, they're almost born angry. They seem to be crying all of the time. And despite every piece of you that tries to soothe, that tries to be responsive, that tries to meet the needs, nothing ever seems to work, or nothing feels like it's working. So what I would say is if you're listening to this and you had a child when they were younger, where it was just really difficult or nigh on impossible to soothe them, please do not feel that your child does not have a secure attachment. There are factors that we know, which are specifically around the child's temperament, which can have an impact on what might be deemed and looked on the outside as a secure attachment. Our responsiveness, our attempt to meet their emotional needs, our provision of that security means that most children do develop a secure attachment. And what that does also mean is that whilst the emphasis is very much on secure attachments, when we're talking about young babies and young children, we're talking about young children, we're talking about young children, in those sort of early years of their life, I feel it is something that we can continue to cultivate because you could have an incredibly secure attachment with your child when they're younger, but if we don't cultivate that, and we're going to look at that as part of some of the other four areas that all children need, is that that can be missing a huge piece later on when we really want to ensure that that connection is there for our teens as they're going through the next big age of brain development and are struggling with who they are, how they fit in, that transition between wanting to still be nurtured and looked after and childlike by us, but also pulling away at that level of independence, but feeling fearful of that. So secure attachment is something that we talk a lot about with young children, but it is something that I think we will touch on and should still be an area of focus. So that's number one, is this idea about the secure attachment. Number two is around emotional support. And this is about helping our children learn to regulate their emotions in a constructive way. Now, when we're talking about managing or regulating emotions, we're not saying that their emotions shouldn't occur. They shouldn't have highs and lows. They shouldn't become enraged at times, incredibly nervous at others, supremely sad. The intensity of the emotion, it is much more around helping our children find appropriate mechanisms to be able to respond to those emotions in those particular situations. So adaptive responses is not about intensity. So all children at every age and stage require us as adults to remember their emotional regulation and their emotional support. And at the basic level, in terms of where it starts, it's about helping them. Initially, it's about helping them understand emotions at that basic level. So labelling emotions, being present to help them as they navigate those big, intense emotions, as we all know really young children do. And also, as they move on and become older as well, we, we all experience these huge emotions and can feel overwhelmed. So our role is much more around providing that scaffolding in those moments. And we start by labelling it. We start by being, being present around that scaffolding. And it's this notion that we talk, sort of talk about, you know, when a child is emotionally dysregulated, that is they're feeling an emotion that is so intense that they're struggling to understand or to know what to do with that big emotion. And so we start by labelling it. And we start by being present around that scaffolding. So it's this big thing. And so what we can then do is provide this container, which I've spoken about before. And the container is not about sort of, you know, penning them in and trying to contain them. It's much more around, there's this, I'm feeling this big emotion. If it's almost like, imagine it as a metaphorical hug. We're not necessarily hugging our child, but we're giving that emotion a bit of a hug. So it has a bit of a boundary, has a space within which it can then work through. And then that hug almost becomes a bit of a tighter squeeze so that what we then help them do is create that dissipation of that emotion as we hold them metaphorically. Some children, it's helpful physically, but that's, that's in essence, what we're doing. We're providing that hug so that what feels huge and overwhelming eventually becomes something that is something that we feel that is much more contained for them. And what happens with what we want to consider with that is that obviously our child is massively dysregulated when it comes to providing that emotional support. Of course, that is in terms of the strategies, the language that we use, how we help them move through, and then how we then reflect on it afterwards. But a huge part of it at the very beginning is my child is dysregulated, huge, big emotion. We want that met by our emotional regulation, not dysregulation. So when we talk about the five things that our children need, and the fact that they need this emotional support, we've got to also think about how do I make sure, how do I give myself as a parent, the best possibility that I'm going to show up emotionally regulated? What do I need to do to take care of myself? And whilst I've been banging the drum about self-care for eight, for decades now, I think it's important to think about the it's about helping us reframe that self-care is about making sure that when our children need us at the times when they are dysregulated, I'm not talking about when they need us because they need us to take them to the toilet and wipe their bum. I'm not talking about when they need us because they need us to physically drive them somewhere or to provide them with food. When they really need us, as in us, it is much more around being present for them when they're feeling emotional dysregulated. That's the time that we want to have given ourselves the best possibility that we can show up as we hope to do as often as we're able to and that means not a hundred percent because it's impossible we're going to be dysregulated at times because we're human so I think when we're thinking about this idea about emotional support and self-care it's about marrying those two up so that we're there so that emotional support is a really big part because if you consider so much of the challenges that you face as parents that you write into me around around helping my child manage their emotions about helping them feel more confident helping them manage friendship issues helping them because they're feeling unmotivated or they won't do anything or they won't push themselves out of their comfort zone or they've got you know they're arguing with their sibling the common things that I get asked about either to go and speak in schools or companies or write episodes about or relate to how our children manage those emotions and that's why it's such a crucial part of where we focus our time and our energy as parents because if we can do that and it's not a one-hit thing it's something that we're going to be regularly revisiting with our children as they with every age and stage that they go through but that's such a crucial skill that when we get the foundations for that it means that as we layer up it gets easier and so many of the other parenting challenges around confidence and doing things out of their comfort zone and friendships and other areas then naturally manage to be easier for them to navigate because they're all hinged on how they manage and regulate their emotions so secure attachment is number one number two is around that sort of emotional support and that
Speaker 1emotional vocabulary 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 $1 a month and some pay as little as $1 a month and some pay as little as $0 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 in as little as two days not the national 48 day average see if you could pay as little as $0 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 the third one
Speaker 5leads on in lots of ways from that and it's about communication what's really helpful in so many if you listen if you're a regular listener to the podcast you'll see that a lot of the strategies that i talk about are pretty much hinged around and you know the precursor is that we have some level of communication with our children we have some level of communication with our teens and so keeping that level of communication open and that's part of that is also about managing our own expectations you know some children communicate in ways where they share everything with you you know they come back from school we've all been there at the some children that come back or even from nursery and they tell us everything they tell us a breakdown of every single thing that's happened and who played with who and what happened and what the lesson was like and what they ate and there are other children who say nothing it doesn't matter how skilled you are in the art of questioning and getting them to open up it's just simply like yep that was all i can't remember i don't know very short sharp kind of commentary and of course there's particular extreme ends so communication is around simply being able to have time and opportunity to connect with your child and to connect through their lens to get a bit of a glimpse about what might be going on in their world now for some that will be easier than for others but it's such a crucial part if we're going to if our children are facing challenges or difficulties if our to be able to support them and also just for us to know what's going on in their world it all hinges on this this idea of being able to communicate so if we can create opportunities regular opportunities to communicate with our children that's super helpful now of course when our children are younger in lots of ways the bedtime routine is often a great opportunity to communicate because we often will read them a story we'll have a bit of a cuddle in their bed and so that creates this really straightforward easy framework for us to have those opportunities to communicate and we tend to lose that as our children get older and they're more independent maybe they bath or shower themselves and then they go up so we don't necessarily have that so it's thinking about within your family what ways can you really regularly cultivate and create opportunities to communicate now i've mentioned bedtime but there are so many others there are meal times there are times when you're in the car there are times maybe that you can create in terms of family meetings and get togethers once a week you know i am a big fan of family meetings and if you haven't yet listened to the podcast about it i would highly recommend that you look at that and there is a template for that in the bucket emptying episodes just go to the website and search for family meeting and you'll find the podcast episode and also you can head to the results website and you'll find the podcast resource library for the template but it's it's just really keeping that front and center because what can happen when we're busy and our children are busy is that days turn into weeks that turn into months and we don't always necessarily have that time and it's not i'm not going to give you a you should be having 15 20 minutes a day communicating it's just simply taking moments and opportunities when they arise and it's not about drifting them it's not about asking multiple questions it's just simply about maybe just sitting next to them when they're reading a book oh that's your what that book looks interesting tell me a little bit about it you look really engrossed in that oh what is it that you're looking at you know looking at or playing with on the ipad tell me a little bit about it just really trying to connect with them through their lens rather than necessarily trying to always pull them into communication from our lens and our time so communication is a really big part because it's having that connection opportunity but it's also allowing them to always feel that you are there for them when and if the time comes that they might need that so children need that secure attachment they need that emotional support they need to be to know and to feel that we can communicate with them regularly at their level as well the fourth one is probably one that doesn't necessarily feel instinctively one of the five core ones but it is a really crucial one it's about children need boundaries and structure now if we go back to this sort of secure attachment and this idea about knowing that you're that safe space that safe base from them to explore well in lots of ways boundaries and structure also provide that really safe space and that sort of containment as such with which our children can begin to navigate life now obviously boundaries and structure is sort of almost like i sort of talk about this idea about elaine it may well start quite narrow in certain aspects of their our children's lives and then they become wider as we then move the responsibility or transfer the ownership and the responsibility of certain things to our children and then we begin to kind of expand that but children really love some very clear boundaries some very clear framework around which that they can operate in because that gives them a sense of security doesn't mean that they're not going to push those boundaries and some will push them more regularly than others and the more consistent we are within those in a compassionate way the more security that provides our children and when we're talking about boundaries and structures these are boundaries that we may put in place because of our responsibility to keep our children safe so those might be boundaries that we may put in place because of our responsibility to keep our children safe so those might be boundaries that we may put in place because of our responsibility to keep our children safe around technology what they use what they don't use what they have permission to access and what they don't have permission to access but boundaries and structures may well be around bedtime it may well be around responsibility it may well be around the way that families speak to each other it may well be around how meals are consumed in terms of providing those boundaries that we eat at certain meals all together as a family and the boundary is that we do that at a table together once a week or once a day this particular meal it's really thinking equally with boundaries the things that we possibly don't think about is the boundaries in terms of our time in terms of the way that we are spoken to in terms of what our role is what we do for our children what we don't do for our children so I think in this idea about boundaries and structures is there's the obvious things around you know what's right and wrong what our values are and how we go about you know instilling those within our home but it is also about how we provide boundaries around ourselves because what that does is that also creates a really clear narrative for our children around them being able to create boundaries themselves the way that people are with them around their particular friendships so that's number four you the fifth thing that all children need is around this idea of positive role models now let's unpick this because I don't want you to be beating yourself up or thinking that you know oh my goodness me I'm doing something hugely wrong children are much more likely to do what they see than what we say so when we're thinking about the four other areas the secure attachment the emotional support the communication the boundaries and structures our children are going to be more likely to do is to be watching us and looking at how we navigate those how do we manage our emotions how do we communicate not only to them but to others even on the telephone how do we create boundaries and structures with other people how do we ensure that we take care of ourselves how do we you know it's how do we take care of our time how do we prioritize all of these things are really important because our children are always watching they're always listening so when we talk about you know my child never pushes themselves out of their comfort zone they're not very confident they're not terribly sociable they don't try new things they always give up really easily the first question always has to be as a parent how am I modeling resilience how am I modeling pushing myself out of my comfort zone how am I modeling that expansion of myself how am I modeling prioritization all of these things it's a really big part now what typically happens when our children are younger is the emphasis in terms of the role modeling is very much on the the same sex so a girl will often look to her mother for a lot of these things a boy will often look to their father and all of the and all of the significant females within your family within your tribe within your community and that's why it can be so helpful you know when we think about you know Mary Han you've given me a huge list of five things that I need to do but actually when you've got a tribe when you've got a community when you've got an extended family and that doesn't have to be biological family but people who are there who are helping you raise these resilient adults then this isn't just about you anymore the responsibility the seeming weight of what needs to be done is then distributed around others how do how do other people that are really important in your children's lives communicate how do they set boundaries how do they emotionally regulate and that's all really helpful because we want our children to have a breadth clearly we want them to be able to understand and manage their own emotions but they want to see how lots of different people go about approaching the same thing because that's what really gives them that lovely broad base of experience and exposure that they can then take with them as they then become this resilient adult so it's really thinking about ways that we can be a positive role model ways that we might be able to without saying because often you know children will often kind of get caught in this sort of narrative around oh good my parents are always nagging me they're always telling me this and instead what we can do is silently begin our own journey of emotional regulation our own journey of improving the way that we communicate our own journey around boundaries and structure that can be as powerful if not more powerful than those sort of conversations that we have with our children around ways that we can help them in those particular things so that positive role model can be huge start with thinking about us but also the people in our community the people in our tribe the people in our village that can also be a really big part of this positive role model for our children now i'm hoping that having those five is a really helpful to help you we i we will have a free resource which is lists these five areas because i think sometimes it can be quite helpful to have those to make notes on to reflect on maybe to make some actions in your life and i think that's in terms of those so as always you can access access them from the free resource library all you need to do is head over to the free resource library which is drmaryhand.com forward slash library you'll be asked for your email address and then you'll get instant access not only to this week's free resource but all of the free resources across all the podcast episodes and as you can imagine with the podcast going nearly four years now there are a lot of resources and so all you need to do is search just type in and you'll probably find that there is a resource there for you now as ever if you have enjoyed this podcast episode i would be eternally grateful if you could love rate and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love so until next time
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