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Speaker 4Hello 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. Today's episode, I am joined by Emma and Eleanor from Reconnected. And we talk really about how disconnected we're feeling as parents, the secrets, which actually are super simple in terms of that reconnection, and how the world that we are living in at the moment is making it harder and harder for us as parents to be connected. And whilst we're in a world where information is absolutely at our fingertips all of the time, the advice that we get as parents, whether that's helping our children manage those big emotions, building their confidence, building up that resilience, the kind of the messages that we get are incredibly conflicting. You'll hear Eleanor will talk about sort of searching for the term boundaries in Instagram and finding 500 different opposing views. And so, I think now more than ever, it's about reconnecting with the intuition and the instincts we truly and genuinely have as parents that are there to help guide us into what might be the best next step for us, for our family. And that's all about reconnection. So, you're going to absolutely love this episode. I got so much out of it myself, even with my adult children. But just about how profoundly that reconnection, reconnection with ourself can have the effect that it can have on so many aspects of our lives. So, I hope you enjoy it. Please, please do share this episode. There is so much calm, collected, compassionate, wise wisdom within this conversation that I think it really is an episode to share with people that you know and love because I think they'll get so much out of it. And as always, if you enjoy the episodes, if you enjoy the podcast but have not yet, done so, then if you could just take a moment to rate and review the podcast, it'll do us a huge amount in terms of just putting us in front of people and other parents who may benefit from this podcast and therefore we can spread the love. So, until next time, here's my conversation with Emma and Eleanor. So, I think for context, what's probably going to be really helpful is if you just tell us a little bit about what you do and the background I guess to how you got to where you are at the moment. And I don't mind either of you start first.
Speaker 5Okay. I'll start. I'm Eleanor for the listeners who might not be able to tell our voices apart. So, I'm a play therapist, a counsellor, mostly children's counsellor. And I also practice breath work. But probably most importantly, I'm the mother of five kids. And so, I think the journey really starts with them, of course. I always share that how I came to be doing this work is that, you know, parenting felt pretty easy for the first little bit. But then when I had my second son, number two, once my eldest was a toddler, that's when I started to find myself feeling challenged and particularly feeling triggered by some of her behaviour. I always tell this story of, she just went through this terrible phase as a two-year-old of he was learning to stand and she would run to push him over. And I just did not know what to do. I was 22. There was no internet. Isn't that crazy? I hadn't yet found like the mother's group or the parents who I went on to find inspiring. And so, all of the advice that I was, I was given was really, nothing really landed, like put her in time out, do this, say that, et cetera, et cetera. And it was around this time that I kind of by accident found myself at a breathwork session. And breathwork is a practice of consciously breathing. If you haven't heard of it, it's really taken off in the last five years. But at the time, 2004, it was very odd, like not everyone was doing it. Again, no internet and all those things. And I had an experience that completely changed my path. I, in the breathwork session, recognized that the kind of anger that I was feeling about my daughter's behavior had more to do with my suppressed emotions from when I was a kid than it did to do with her. And the first thing I said when I came out of her, that experience was, "But I've already had children." Because I had seen, oh, this is how emotions get passed down. This is how generational cycles happen. So, I was confronted as well as being very inspired. And when I got back home and it happened again, I had a totally different reaction. I felt authentically compassionate. I fully understood where she was coming from. And I could respond in a way that just meant that the behavior stopped. I just knew what to do. I didn't need any kind of advice or anything. I just had an understanding for my child that wasn't there when I was looking through the lens of my own kind of dysregulation. So, I mean, that was the beginning really. And I went on to study and work with families for many years just trying to support people who have a similar type of understanding but then also ease to come into life.
Speaker 4Yeah. Oh, my God, Eleanor. There is so much of that that I want to unpick. I've been making copious notes. We're coming back to it. But I would love so thank you so much. And I'm going to come back to that. Emma, what's the context in terms of how you got to where you are now? Yeah. Well, when I first had children, I started to read all of the gentle parenting books. And I was like, "Oh, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do." And I was like, "Oh, I don't know what to do." And I was like, "Oh, I don't know what to do." And I was like, "Oh, I don't know what to do."
Speaker 6Yeah, well, when I first had children, I started to read all of the gentle parenting books and the conscious parenting books. And I, on an intellectual level, thought, "I am going to nail this. I am going to be the ultimate kind of conscious parent. And I've read all the books and I know exactly what I'm going to be doing." And when I first had my first son. I was, for the first year, I thought it was amazing. I thought, "I have changed everything in my family line. I'm not going to do anything the way that my parents did it. I'm going to be an impressive, amazing, conscious parent." And then he became a toddler and I remember this one moment where we're in the kitchen and he did something and I was distracted and I probably had a lot of stress going on in the moment. And the way that I reacted to him. I just had this real awareness that I was speaking through my mother's eyes and it really shocked me because I had said up until that point, "I'm going to do it differently. I'm not going to be the same. as my upbringing. And I was really curious about my own process and my own experience of life because I had moved through a lot of anxiety in my teens and early adulthood. So I was doing a lot of self work. I was getting right into breathwork. I was studying kinesiology. And when I went to breathwork, I was so blown away by the fact that there were adults from their 20s into their 60s who were only just working on their childhood trauma and the impact of their childhood. And I remember thinking like, wow, I just really don't want that for my children. I want them to feel so freed up as they move into their adulthood. And I was living in the same town as Eleanor just before I was about to have my second child. She invited me and a bunch of my friends to learn the play. And I was so grateful for learning that information because one of my own personal stories that I worried about a lot was sibling rivalry. I was one of four. I never felt close with my siblings. And so as I was about to have my second child, I was thinking about it a lot. I thought, you know, I really want to do things differently. And when my second son was born, I had the opportunity to use the play therapy skills that I'd learned with Eleanor. And it was just such a huge rewiring for my family line and my own experience. And it was such a huge rewiring for my family line and my own experience. And I remember seeing Eleanor again and I'd been studying breath work and we were just talking about conscious parenting. And I was saying how much the play therapy had really just been amazing for me. And we were just looking at the synergy of how breath and play, it's just so magical. And I went away from that, not thinking much, but Eleanor reached out to me and said, hey, I've got an idea for a program. Do you want to be a part of it? And I was like, yeah, because I know that I'm going to be a part of it. And I was like, yeah, because I know that parents need to know this information. This is something that everyone should have awareness of. And so Reconnected Parenting was born and it started out as a very simple online course. It was in a private Facebook group with a PDF download. And we had such a huge reception to that. People loved it. I think we had 100 people sign up and we got rave reviews. Everyone absolutely adored the content. And the ball just started rolling from there. And we've gone from that small course to now a huge community called the Reconnected. We have our own app. We have 130,000 plus parents inside our app. And there's so many incredible parents doing this conscious work. And we often attract the same type of people who say, I've done, I've read all the books, but in the moment. I don't have the space. I know what I should be doing, but in the moment, I react in a way that I don't want to react. And so we're just teaching parents about the nervous system, about the benefit of breathwork and play therapy. And we're seeing so many parents thrive. It's been incredible. And actually, we went on to publish a book called Reconnected Parenting, Healing the Whole Family Nervous System Through Breathwork and Play Therapy.
Speaker 4Oh, my God, that is just incredible. And 130,000 parents. I mean, that is one hell of a community. And do not worry, if you're listening, we will be sharing links to the app for the community and also to the book. So I just want to rewind for both of you, because obviously, what you're talking about, about parents in that moment, there are some real common themes here. And I've been doing a lot of reflecting recently as a parenting expert and a psychologist. Despite all of the advances that we have in understanding parents, there are some real common themes here. Despite all of the advances that we have in understanding about child development. And all of the proliferation, you just Google, there are experts everywhere, books everywhere. And yet I feel, and it seems to speak to what you're saying, and hence why the Reconnected program and then that community is that parents are feeling more disconnected than ever. Why do you think that that is?
Speaker 5It's actually, like, it's, it's actually simple. Like modern day life is set up for for disconnection. We've never been more up against the way that it quote unquote should go for families. Virtually every step of the way parents are disconnected from their own parenting wisdom, which is innate, like, it's there. We're just not, we don't feel in touch with it. And that could be as simple as, like, I don't know. I know that I'm very admiring that you're not on social media. I'll tell you why. Recently, I made the mistake of typing the word boundaries into my Instagram. And I have since been inundated with 300 different opinions that say every single possible different alternative. Like, I did not realize that parents today are absolutely at the mercy of every single possible opinion. You know, so I was thinking, if me, I have so many degrees, I have worked with families for 20 years, my kids are in their 20s. And I'm beginning to think, do I know what I'm doing? Because it's, it's that intense out there.
Speaker 4Yeah. And I think it's quite an interesting thing, isn't it? This concept about, which I'll put to you is this idea. I think that as parents, we do have a certain instinct. Yes. Our absolute gut and core. And yet, it's actually been almost like an existential crisis that I'm grappling with as an expert is actually, am I part of the problem? You know, do no harm. But it's this idea that we, I genuinely believe that parents have got within them this innate, but they seem to have lost that ability to reconnect with that. And that speaks very much to what you're saying then, Eleanor, is that if you put, search something as, as fundamental and day-to-day as boundaries, parents are inundated with every conceivable, potential viewpoint. Yeah.
Speaker 5Yeah. Think about it like this. Most parents, when they come to us, they want a script solution because we think that if I just say the right thing, if I just respond in the right way, then my child will listen to us. So this is missing a huge part of the communication that happens between a parent and a child, which is absolutely instinctual. It's not from our conscious verbalizing that most of our communication happens. I don't know if this is an accurate percentage, just let me say, but you know, perhaps 90% of our communication is actually in body language, in expression, in what's not spoken, in what we just pick up. And in order to pick those things up, we actually have to have a degree of self-connection. We have to be able to hear our own body signals and modern day life with technology, with, I mean, this is going to make, this sounds really extreme, but even like being disconnected from natural light, from just rhythms, the rhythms of the earth, um, you know, we're just getting so out of touch. How on earth would we be able to feel present in the moment with our kids in a way where we're going to be able to pick something up and then just know, access that just knowing.
Speaker 4So how do we begin that process? Because to me, there almost seems to be an MO that you spoke very much about this sort of the dynamics from your childhood around siblings. And then that, that was the trigger for you really wanting to kind of have that knowledge. Is there a difference here as in that there's work that we need to be able to do in terms of our own past, in terms of what we bring as parents, we took, we do a lot of preparation, don't we, about our birth plans and all of those things to do with that, the actual, when we have our child, but not about our experiences that we may bring into them. So are there, are these two distinct things, the sort of our past, but also that channeling into our instinct or do they all blend and merge together?
Speaker 6They definitely all blend and merge together. And at The Reconnected, we're not big about digging into our past. It's not about needing to like excavate what went on and why we are the certain way that we are, but it's about acknowledging that a lot of our reactions in the moment on a day to day basis are actually out of context to what's happening. We have a lot of stress. We are, our baseline is really dysregulated. We're either in complete overwhelm and we have a lot of sympathetic activity. And so we're quick to explode, quick to disappear, to like escape a situation or we have the parasympathetic overload and we're collapsed lethargic apathetic eye roll can't be bothered it's so annoying and we can blame our kids in the moment or we can blame you know um the circumstances you know maybe life's just feeling hard at the moment but what we tried to well what we share with parents is that there is has been this build-up and from your early life of this stress and that the the breath is the doorway into the nervous system and so when you use your breath consciously you give yourself this amazing way of unwinding and unburdening that stress from the nervous system so you can become current moment and you're no longer reacting from this dysregulation in you're no longer reacting from this dysregulation in you're no longer reacting from this dysregulation your nervous system and it's so empowering for parents because it's like oh there is a way like i'm not meant to be like this like i can have vitality feel good feel curious feel excited feel rested have time for myself and it's like leaving that old paradigm way of like parenting super hard you've just got to bear it until they're 18 um everything's difficult like that's actually not the truth and so many parents in our community are parenting in a way that they feel really proud of when they go to bed they're like oh i nailed that today something was hard but i was there for it i could stay with it in the moment i was able to be with the dysregulation because they have done the work in their own nervous system and it's such an empowering way to be as a parent and it's such an empowering
Speaker 4way to be as a parent and it sounds to me like there is a fundamental mindset shift that needs to happen because i mean i i don't know in your experience but certainly with when i work with young children there is an inevitable eye roll the moment you introduce this concept of breath work it's like oh here we go again it's that whole like take a deep breath in and i feel like parents will be listening to this thinking i get it i know i'm gonna do it but you know what emma and eleanor i am rushed off my feet i've got a million and one things to do what's the aha moment that you find parents have that really makes that connection with actually breath work is at the fundamental core of allowing me to to actually parent in that moment to the child that's in front of me rather than all of this other stuff that i bring
Speaker 5with me well this is possibly not the good news but unfortunately most people come to a practice like breath work because things have gotten hard enough that they're suddenly willing to give it a go if i'm completely honest with you and most people have a complete misperception about um what breath work is so a lot of people do think oh okay it means using your breath to calm down when you're feeling stressed in that stressful moment we actually all know that doesn't work don't we like who's got their wits about them enough to go okay just wait i'm just gonna take a calm breath and i'm gonna have this go the way i want so actually what we encourage parents to do is to make 15 even 15 20 minutes of the week set aside from the rest of their life to do some time consciously breathing and practicing we say just staying with what's happening it's not meditation it's not the same thing it's not you have to still your mind or anything it's just can you just be with yourself using your breath to activate the parasympathetic and just stay with your experience and normally you do need a little bit of support around like learning that framework but once you have where parents get hooked and where they where they then are sold so to speak is when they realize that doing that means over time they will come to a moment that used to go a very predictable certain way and it's different and they will catch themselves in that moment thinking oh my gosh i just didn't react oh my gosh i feel differently wow i can choose how i want to be right now and that's the moment when they decide oh okay i'm just going to take that time because then i can be the parent that i want to be and equal to the pain you know that gets me through the door in the first place is the satisfaction when we can actually be the parent like parenting the way we want to be whether people acknowledge it or not is really the only thing that matters to parents ultimately you know yeah i think we all just want to feel like we've done a good job
Speaker 6yeah and i think one of our like the key objections that we hear is the i don't we get it you know we're both very busy ourselves i have five small children eleanor has five near adult children we have businesses we have everything going on but your nervous system really is dictating to you what is happening in life and when you feel like there's not enough time you need to make the time because it's something that is just going to elevate your life so much like i know eleanor and i are so similar in that it's a non-negotiable for us it's like top priority and it doesn't mean that we like it's not like i get to go anywhere like i'm in it with the kids but there is a moment in my life in my week where i am tending to my nervous system and it's my level of self-care and it's what helps me show up as a good parent and it's what models to my children is like hey this is valuable as an adult as a human being to put this as a priority in life this is a priority and so we kind of get that question when people come into the community because they're like i don't have any space we have so many parents um when we first started reconnected parenting it was in covid so everyone was in lockdown everyone was stuck in lockdown everyone was stuck in lockdown everyone was stuck we had single parents in apartment buildings three kids you know just really extreme circumstances and it's not about separating or isolating yourself away from your family it's actually about doing the work having your family life around you and um yeah we teach parents that it's like you can do it and still have a lot going on and
Speaker 4i guess it's that suspending that quick fix i don't know whether it's it feels like a worldwide kind of culture isn't it it's like i have a problem whatever that might be parenting is just is one is one part of it but just give me hence this need for scripts give me a script because then that will just fix it but it's yes it really requires that suspension of there the the fix is not the situational fix the fix is within us yeah yeah
Speaker 5and don't you think this is interesting you actually experience time through your nervous system so it's the lens that we experience all of our world through so you know when we're busy busy busy busy busy and feeling harassed and need an urgent thing right now that's a state of dysregulation so if we can uh create little pockets of time where we're working on the baseline of our nervous system health and just bringing it into into more higher in parasympathetic when we're at rest then yeah we just can enjoy our life a bit more what you know one of the most beautiful things that any parents ever said to me was oh i thought i was angry i thought i was exhausted oh that's my stress responses like that's not who i am as a person you know but we get these ideas like i'm an angry parent as a parent i'm this i'm frustrated i'm just like this we're not who we want to be but yeah when we realize no that's actually doesn't have anything
Speaker 1to do with you 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 grows 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 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 special 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.
Speaker 2Hey! Awesome. Learn how to have the conversation at agree2agree.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council.
Speaker 4For those who are listening now and sort of really, buying into this and saying, okay, I see now that I need to reconnect with myself. What are kind of some basic introductory ways that parents can begin to dip their toes into this, just this aspect of it? We've still got the whole, there's a whole load of other things we can talk about in terms of play and other things, but just in terms of beginning to connect.
Speaker 5The number one thing is, if you can, just notice. Are you're breathing occasionally? So if you have a high level of stress as your baseline, your breathing will be similarly inhibited on some level. So if you can just take fuller than usual breaths a little more often, you will actually feel differently throughout your day. You don't have to stop and do it. You don't have to do it when you're stressed. Just any time you happen to notice, just go, oh yeah. My breath. Okay. Okay. Breathing's shallow. I'm just going to breathe a little fuller than I usually would. And that's just the most simple thing that anyone can do at any time. Right? And then I think the most powerful question that we can ask ourselves is parents. That's very caring that we all just need is a little check-in. Like what is coming up for me right now? And in that way, we just tend to. Like the parts of ourselves that go really unseen for most of our days as parents. You know, we're, you know, the leaders of our family, we're tending to everyone else. You might not have had someone say to you, Hey, like, how are you genuinely? And like, what's coming up for you and how are you going? So if we can just check in with our own self, it does wonders for our nervous system because it just gives us a sense of, um, even small, a sense of safety. And just doing those things might, you might find like, wow, I've got some emotion there. Like maybe I could just have a really big cry because parenting is actually hard, or maybe I need to bring a friend and have a laugh and I'll get the same type of like response. Like just making little spaces for our, ourself just to unwind a tad rather than keeping. Everything always so bottled up and contained. Um, we need this more than we can appreciate. And often no one checked in on our emotional wellbeing when we were kids or young people or young adults. So for some people that can be very foreign.
Speaker 4Yeah. I'd imagine that's quite an ex a common experience actually, that parents now of, uh, of our generation will, will say. Yeah. That's quite a common experience actually, that parents now of, uh, of our generation will, will say. That probably emotions were not things that we, our parents checked in with. Um, and so actually we're not accustomed to checking in on our own emotions. We're just, we've, we've carried with us this notion of just like dig deeper, a bit harder and work, just get on with it a bit more.
Speaker 5And simultaneously we're one of the first generations to be hyper aware that we actually need to be there for our kids' emotions. And so we're in between. We're in between this rock where we're trying to give and give and give and give and give things that we never received ourselves without realizing, you know, for that to be authentic, like for that to come easy for you, you have give it to yourself first. You can't give what you didn't receive. And it's a, I think that kind of pivotal moment for me when I first realized this was. I couldn't literally not be with the emotions of my kids that I was pushing down within myself. So it's an exact match. So if we want to be these, um, like emotionally present parents, we do have to practice it.
Speaker 4You know, you've given some great examples there. It doesn't need to be a huge amount of time. It's just that giving ourselves those moments that those prompts. Throughout the day, just to check in on our breath and just to ask ourselves that simple question. How am I doing?
Speaker 5Yeah. And then literally, like, if you want to take it a step further, it's like 20 minutes a week. You know, we don't actually need to do a lot. We're running on empty guys. We're running on empty out there. It doesn't take much to just start tipping the spiral of like to go a different direction.
Speaker 6You know, I love so much the moment in our community. When parents come in and we're huge on setting intentions at the reconnected. So really tuning into, um, how you would prefer things to be going in life. And I love when parents experience that because I think the old way of parenting, the old paradigm of parenting was like, life is happening to you suck it up. Just find the solution. Everything will be as it is. And it's not. It's not true. Actually, we get to determine how our life goes. We can sit in the driver's seat. You know, it doesn't mean that we have it perfect and we're going to get everything right, but we can say, this is how we would prefer it to be and really dream into what do I want to create for myself and my family? Like, what am I here to create with my life? And I think it's such a power move for parents to have that empowerment. Where they really tune into what is it I want to create? What do I want to have going my way?
Speaker 4And it's interesting because in all other aspects of our lives, I feel like when we're thinking about our careers, when we think about our friendships, there's an active intention in that, isn't there? We don't feel that we're passive to it. I know that there are times in our careers where things don't go to plan, but we don't feel victims to it. And yet with parenting, we often feel it's just like this arduous thing that we endure. We love our children. But that they're. There will always be these stages that we go through and challenges. And then, as you say, they get to be 18 and suddenly, miraculously, things are going to be different. But
Speaker 5actually, it's not the how, you know, it doesn't end at 18 either. If you've got adults with like young adult kids, you realize, oh, yeah, it's forever.
Speaker 4Yeah, totally. The relationship that we have with our children is significantly longer as a relationship with them as adults than we do as children. We have that connection with them so much longer and in lots of ways that connecting to ourselves and modeling for our children, how we prioritize our own. And I know that people get slightly eyebrow raising with this concept of self-care, but just that really tuning, connecting with ourselves is such a skill that we're modeling to our children so that they can then take care of themselves as adults. They can create boundaries. They can then, should they choose to be parents, they're doing. They're doing it from a whole different perspective of connection.
Speaker 5Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Sometimes I like thinking about how my kids, like they're not here. This is, it sounds like contradiction, but it's like they're not here to see how I parent only, like they're here to see how I live my life as a human being. And now that my kids are teenagers, like some of the things. That they like, can I tell you something cute? That's I was very, very proud of. My dad does all sorts of little cute conversations with my youngest daughter there. They love, they just love spending time together. And my dad was coaching her and saying, okay, so your top five most inspirational people. And I made, I want to say I was number one, but there could have been a celebrity that topped me. But I. I was on that list and I remember just getting really teary because I, and because he had asked her like, why? Cause he, he called me and told me, she was like, my mom goes after every goal. She, she makes things happen. She sees something, she works towards it. She's really kind. Like I was just blown away for a moment. Cause I was like, this is my 16 year old daughter, you know? And she. is watching the way that I live, and taking notes.
Speaker 4Yeah. Well, they are watching us all of the time, whether we want them to be or not, but they are. And actually, you know, we don't often get those moments until actually our children become adults themselves and nearer the time that they become parents or experience a situation that they have that true appreciation for some of the things that we've done. As a 16-year-old who could be classically doing the eye-rolling and that you have never been a 16-year-old, ever, how would you understand to get that just shows the level of impact that you've had?
Speaker 5Yeah. It was like one of my parent highlights, you know. I consider it to be probably one of, like, I'd love to share, when my eldest daughter was 16 was when I had the first realisation, wow, not everyone stays connected to their kids once they're adults. And I'd never fully comprehended that. I was beginning to see, you know, kids and parents having challenges and you always end up with a few extra teenagers who can't talk to their parents currently and all of those things start to happen. But also I was having arguments with my teenage daughter. She's very strong-willed and we just butt heads because we had this similarity of our character was just intense at that age. And I remember being in the midst of a fiery moment, a moment with her and just thinking, wow, this is how it happens. It's like you could easily, if you were blaming of them, if you demanded respect from them, if you felt that you had to be, you know, really boundaried or something or had the tough love thing going on, you could very, I could see how it happened. I have a lot of, like, I felt like I got a glimmer of that. And it meant that I, like, doubled down on the personality, personal work that I was doing and on my really working that connection is the only thing that ultimately matters because what is more satisfying than having a family who's close for their entire lives, including being close as adults? So, I mean, I always say we can take these things for granted if our relationships have gone easy, have been easy ones, but not all parent-child duos are seamless, you know, some kids, you know, we really just clash with or we have, you know, like whatever it might be, challenges that you've been through together, everything, all the things that contribute. But if you can have connection at the top priority for yourself as a parent, then I really do think you can, I don't know, arrive in places where you think, wow, I'm so glad I put the effort in.
Speaker 4And I love the way that you said that, Eleanor, because I would imagine that most parents that are listening to this and I hear it a lot, as I'm sure that you do, is parents who feel like I've got so disconnected from my child, you know, whether they're young children, whether we call them strong-willed, whatever label that we portion to them or whether we call it our teens that simply won't even have a conversation with us. And actually instinctively, it appears almost like a disrespectful thing and actually that we're dealing with it with actually being firmer boundaries and really exerting our authority. But actually, the reverse is true. And rather than this is an issue I need to take up with my child, this is actually something that I need to reconnect with me. Yeah. Just completely the opposite to what I think a lot of the advice when we do our searching and parenting would be. Yeah, 100%. Absolutely.
Speaker 6Many of us have never had that modelled either. We haven't had this modelled to us. You have to come from a pretty incredible family who are conscious parenting, before the early 2000s. So we have to be compassionate with ourselves about that as well. Like we're learning in it. We're really doing the work of a generation. Like we didn't even have screens. Like when I grew up, there were no screens. We were out playing all the time. And parents now are up against so much technology, so much societal pressure, so much stress. Like so. We ultimately have to be super compassionate for ourselves.
Speaker 5I remember thinking, I'm a young parent, so therefore I'll be a cool parent. And actually the world has changed so dramatically that I can't believe how out of touch I am with my children's reality. And I would say that it's gotten quicker because my kids are only aged eight years apart, so from the eldest to the youngest. And my eldest child can't relate to my youngest child and what they are going through because she didn't have the tech at the same age. So that's not even one generation being unable to relate, you know?
Speaker 4Yes. And it moves so quickly that actually if you're a parent of a child that's probably eight and below, the challenges that you're facing around technology is profoundly different. It's so different to that of a 17- or 18-year-old. It's just a whole different ballgame.
Speaker 5You know how much we've heard the word unprecedented over the last five years, but it just continues to be unprecedented. Like you wouldn't have experienced it before. It's phenomenal. But the amazing thing is like everywhere you look, the solution is always connection, basically. And what we're all really craving is connection. And the only thing that. we're really going to remember or worry about is how connected we were with our kids, ultimately.
Speaker 4And I think that, I mean, obviously in the UK, there are many that are watching with bated breath and lobbying our own government for the changes to social media and tech that you are doing in Australia. And absolutely, you know, congratulations that you've always prioritised children's needs above all else as a country anyway. But from the connection piece, can we speak a little bit about how we can do that? Because I think there's definitely. I'm hopeful that those parents that are listening are really sold on the fact that we need to reconnect with ourselves in terms of taking that time. I feel that the relationship that we. that as parents that we're having with our children can often feel super disconnected too. And yes, there is the work that we need to do with ourselves, but what can we be doing in terms of that connection? Because there will be parents listening, I'm sure, that will be feeling super disconnected from their children of all ages. It could be. It could be super disconnected with their three or four-year-old all the way up to what we might typically expect to be where the disconnection would happen, where they're sort of entering their teen years. And that could be, you know, teen years is no longer 13. It can be like 10 or 11. So how do we begin to repair that disconnection?
Speaker 6I think, like, this is something that parents really fear when they first learn information about the nervous system and they even come into Reconnected Parenting, and they're like, oh, you want me to, like, have an intimate conversation with my children through play, and, like, it just feels too big for them. And I know it can feel like it's not the ultimate solution yet, but really, really connecting with yourself and getting really okay to feel your feelings gives you more capacity to be with your children in states of dysregulation, and disconnect without taking it really personally, saying what you don't want to say, being reactive. And so if you can give yourself the space to be with yourself and to cultivate more space within yourself, it is natural for you to move into relationship, wanting to connect more and finding more space for connection.
Speaker 5Yeah, I was just, like, trying to rack my brain for, like, what a starting point might be for someone, you know? Yeah. Because I know for some families, like, our work can sometimes feel a little intangible because we do this, you know, we do say, like, yeah, we're not giving you a script, but we'll show you back to how you can find that you know what to say. And it can mean, like, yeah, it is a bit of a longer game than here. We'll do this. But if there was one maybe attitude that I think is really supportive for parents and kids, it's just probably curiosity, actually. You know, parents listening might not realise that kids, even up until the age of 12, verbalising their experience isn't their first language. Like, they play. And you can pick up what they're really saying through their behaviour. And it can take some time to learn that, like, language, the language of children and the language of play. But if you can just be curious. And I would say as well, like, children get so much when their parent is just simply interested and curious about the same things that they are. And that's probably the ultimate simplicity thing. I mean, I wish someone had have slowed me down when my kids were under the age of eight and just said, you know, you can just be interested in what they're doing. Just go right down with them and just get curious with them. And you don't worry about getting anything right or wrong, but just go there and be with them. And that's the biggest gift that your kids, you can give your kids is just literally your time. And if you can pick moments where things are going well for your child, whether they're in a happy mood or they're focused or doing something that they're curious in and join with them, then you're starting to speak their language and come in on their level. And if you can build up. Even one or two moments like that in your child's life, you watch the next time you say, Hey, okay, put your shoes on. Like they are 10 times more likely to just do it because you've got the connection. If you're connected with your kids, they feel like they want to please you. And they want to, like, you've got a natural authority that's happening. Then you don't have to rely on strategies and scripts and things because your relationship is solid. It's so satisfying when you have like kids who need a lot of autonomy and are, you know, who you feel like you're going head to head with when you invest all their time in feeling those moments where, oh my gosh, they're just listening to me. Oh my gosh, they're just coming around because I have. We feel clear. Close. You know, that's the best feeling ever. And I feel so blessed with my kids because I have two kids that I found so easy and two kids that I found so hard. So I knew it wasn't all me. I knew that it was like, okay, there's dynamics. Some kids have different needs. Some kids bring up different things for me. And so I learned, oh, you know, some kids. Do just naturally follow your instructions really easily. Other kids just don't. And you do actually have to invest a little bit more time in with them. That's why I know it's so rewarding when you have kind of built that connection with those trickier kids and just seeing trickier moments just get kind of magically fixed through having some good times. I mean, yeah.
Speaker 4It's almost that leaning in, isn't it? It's like when it's challenging. It's like that's almost a prompt to lean in. And if we want our children to, if we want to feel seen and heard when we make a request for our children to do in lots of ways, it's incumbent on us to start with that seeing and hearing them through
Speaker 5their play, through
Speaker 4their eyes, through their experience and their lens of the world.
Speaker 5Yeah. Don't you think parents don't feel that they have permission to do this either nowadays? Like there's, we're busier. Than we've ever been before. People are overly scheduled. Like some families don't have the downtime for kids to get into unstructured play, let alone the time for their parents to join them in that unstructured play time. And so then we're missing out on all these moments of just connection, spontaneous, authentic connection that just can happen. And around our day to day rhythm. And so we're missing out on kind of experiencing how life can be easy. And then we think we see all these behavior issues with our kids. And then we think, okay, I need a script and a strategy and a disciplinary technique. And then all that that does is drive a wedge of, of disconnect in, so we can just purely through not having enough time together. Yeah. And thinking that we want our kids to grow up knowing the right thing to do and, and getting some bad advice, you know, and have these relationships where we feel miles apart from our children.
Speaker 4And it's having that faith, isn't it? Because as you say, the breath work, the play that reconnecting with ourselves seems super intangible. It's not, it's like not a do A and I get B, but it's reverting back in lots of ways. Yeah. To that instinct and that faith. Yeah. That children fundamentally need connection. We all, I mean, we are human beings. We're social animals. We crave connection. We thrive in connection. And yet the one thing that goes to the bottom of our list. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. We're, we're never been so busy. You have, you notice the way you say, how are you going? Oh, busy. Like that. It's how we greet.
Speaker 5I'm guilty of this myself. Like, you know, we just get, we get too busy, but it's incredible. It like, what would it be like for parents to just hear, wow, all I need to do is make some time and space for my child to be able to be with me. And I think that's, that's a really important thing. I think that's a really important thing. I think that's a really important thing.
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