Speaker 1Hello 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. Before I start, I just want to say a huge thank you to all of you who listen regularly, to all of you who dip in and out, for those of you who share episodes with friends, families, colleagues, neighbours. The success of this podcast is all down to you and spreading that love. So, I genuinely want to say a huge, huge thank you. To those of you who love this podcast, who have not yet followed, rated and reviewed the so much. If you could just spare five minutes, that's literally all it takes to give it a rating out of five, to maybe write a couple of lines about how and why you enjoy listening to the podcast. And then if you press the follow button, what that does is it makes sure that as each episode comes out, it just gets put into your library, downloaded, ready. You never miss an episode. So, that I'd be so grateful if you could do that. Now, this episode, your favourite Dr. Mary Hand moments is a compilation of a number of episodes where there's been some really juicy bits that we've had feedback to say it's been supremely helpful. So, we thought we'd pull it together. It's a great time for us to do that sort of reflective piece. And so, that's what we're going to be giving you. Now, there will be no specific download for this episode, however, the library, actually the free podcast library, resource library is huge. So, if you haven't already done so, I would really encourage you to sign up for it and then you'll get access to all my free resources across all the different episodes. If you haven't done so already, then you head over to drmaryhand.com forward slash library, where you'll find the link to download all of the access to everything. As ever, if you enjoy this episode, I would be eternally grateful, just a second nudge, if you could rate, follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So, until next time, here are your favourite Dr. Mary Hand moments. Essence, we know that repeated interactions of the same type will build permanent connections. We talk about this idea that our brain is a muscle and I'll talk about it a little bit more in these five skills. So, we want those to be helpful, these interactions, helpful ones which build resilience, this notion of I can pick myself up and try again, rather than reliance on us to solve their problems. So, let me talk to you about my five, what I think are the five crucial things that we should be looking at doing in terms of building that foundation for our children. Now, part of that foundation of that building are going to be things like moral values, which I'm not going to talk about today. But I'm going to talk about these five competencies that I think really equip our children to be resilient, to be confident, to be able to manage those big emotions. And the first one is build communication skills. This is so crucial. And I know, goodness me, I was thinking about this the other day, when my children were younger and you're worried about them speaking and learning their first words. And obviously, that comes in time and it may well be you have a late talk or there'll be somewhere in between. But what I'm talking about with communication skills isn't just the words that they use, because you could be listening to this and you've got an eight-month-old, but it is much more about that ability to communicate, which goes beyond just words. Researchers talk a lot about this notion of serve and return style play. So, you may well have come across this, but maybe not necessarily the term. And it's this idea that if we, it's time taking. We serve, our child returns. Sometimes our child serves and then we return. So, it's this notion of play interactions, these serve and return interactions, which build our children's brain architecture. So, simply put, these are the things that build the neuronal connections, that build that muscle in our children's, that helps with those connections that wire. This idea that every interaction we have with our child, if we've had an interaction with our child, the structure, the architecture, the wiring in their brain is going to be completely different after we've spent time with them. And it's even with us as adults, but as we get older, the wiring just takes that bit longer. So, repeated patterns of serve and return are absolutely crucial in terms of building our children's brain development and building those communication skills. So, at the basic level, if you're listening to this with a really young baby, it's things that you probably have read about already. So, when our children babble, it's babbling back to them. It's having that kind of communication because our children will inherently look to us and seek to communicate with us in some ways. If we then return that communication through whatever means, if our children are using words, then let's use words. If they're not, but they're babbling or they're making noises, it's that serve and return. You say something in whatever that language might be, I return back. I say something, you return. Wait, listen, turn taking. And these are really, really crucial. So, it may well be when they're younger, it's that babbling. As they get older, it's that conversation of that interaction and games that we play with our children around that. Now, what I will say as part of the research that I did when I did my doctoral is this notion that it's really crucial when we're talking about managing big emotions, and we'll talk about that in a moment, but what the research has found is that there's lots of idea about these toddler tantrums and children might go through them at different ages and stages. Some children don't necessarily do that. But what the research has shown is if we can give our children, if we can equip them with means of communication, what we usually find is those really big emotions at a really young age generally tend to disappear. Because if you think about it, what is generally happening is our children's brains are being wired. They're making all of these incredible connections. There's so much going on, but they don't necessarily, what's happening in their developing brain doesn't always match their ability to communicate with us their needs. So, there's lots of research evidence that supports this notion of if we can find other ways for our children to be able to communicate when they are pre-verbal, so they're not able to say, I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm bored, these sorts of things, then if we can give them other ways to communicate that. So, it's looking at potentially aspects of sign language or ways that we communicate with them. It may be our own sign language that we make up, but it's being really aware that quite often with young children, preschoolers, they're not five. A lot of the challenge is I've got these feelings, I've got these ideas, and I cannot express them. I cannot communicate with you precisely what I need. The words won't necessarily come out, or I haven't got the combination of words. So, building those communication skills through that serve and return, but also through finding mechanisms with which we can teach our children to be able to communicate with us is the first step to helping them in terms of managing those big emotions. So, the first one is around this building communication skills. As you may or may not know, I studied psychology as a mature student in my late 20s. I was about 27. And I can remember quite vividly a research study we covered as part of that undergraduate psychology degree in a module around human memory. And it talks specifically about divers and learning. So, bear with me. So, it was Godin and Badley back in 1975. Now, they showed that divers, when they were given a set of words to remember, basically, learn these words and then recall them back. What happened was that the recollection of those words were much better when they matched the original learning environment. In other words, whether they learned the words underwater or on land. And so, they were able to understand with the condition that they had to then sort of recall them. So, now, there's some question marks over how much we can generalise the findings from this particular study. But to me, it really highlights a super important psychological concept that we typically perform better if the conditions that we learn are similar to the conditions in which we're asked to perform and recall and use what we've learned. It's one of the reasons why I typically perform better if the conditions that we learn are similar to the conditions in which we're asked to perform better. So, I typically advocate for a little bit of stress when children and teens revise and learn, because by using practice papers and those sorts of things, because an examination or a test situation is going to create stress. So, if they're learning and revising and working through things that they're going to be examined in or tested in, in a super, you know, relaxed environment, you're not really simulating the environment that they're actually going to have to recall and test it in, you know. And that's what generally happen. so what this has got what you know what has this got to do with being too soft when it comes to parenting so in my view it has everything so if we go back to my usual children are building under construction analogy yeah the idea that children are a building we create the foundations through the values and their character that we develop at home and then we move to becoming the scaffolding as that building rises but our children get to choose what building that they construct now the reason why it's so important this particular study and that study has literally not been linked to parenting in any way it's just me it's a study that i remember really vividly but if we don't train or instruct or teach or educate our children in a similar context to the world with which they will find themselves inhabiting in this house that they've built then they're highly unlikely to succeed and succeed in my view is not just about getting a high paid job it's about getting along with people managing setbacks having difficult conversations persevering understanding money and so on and so on we know because we're living in that real world and that's the context in which we should be educating teaching and and for our children to be learning and so that they can apply that knowledge so when we ask ourselves the question or people throw out the easy criticism that we you know the issues that we have in society now are because we have gone all soft on children and teens we have to ask ourselves the question of how can we make sure that we're educating our children and teens we have to ask ourselves the question are we teaching and instructing our children and teens in a context which is similar to the one that they will live most of their lives as a fully paid up adult or not you know remember we our children are sort of with us maybe they're with us till they're 18 or their early 20s that's a fraction really a quarter maybe of the life that they're going to end up leading so 75 percent of their life is going to be lived beyond our home beyond what we give them and actually we need to be thinking about in those in those years that we have them and that we can have that most significant input are we preparing them for the context in which they're going to be living and if the answer is no most of the time then we're not parenting in the most effective way and this could be because we're either being too soft or too hard you know like the whole goldilocks porridge story we want to get it just right we don't want to swing the pendulum one way and be too hard too rigid too dictatorial too helpful all of those two bits and we don't want to go the other way and being too soft so like goldilocks with her porridge we want to get it just right how do we do that well i'm going to do this slightly differently typically i'd give you my top five tips i'm going to give you three today that's all i'm going to give you because what i want to do as i was sort of planning out this podcast i realized that actually this is a massive topic it's huge in the not only in terms of the strategies we use but actually how do we apply those so i'm going to do this in two parts i'm going to give you my top three tips in this episode and then in the next episode i'm going to give you some more but i'm really going to dig deep into some of these strategies and how do we actually implement them what does this look like if you've got a toddler what does it look like if you've got a 10 year old what does it look like if you've got a 16 year old because all of you that are listening to the podcast have children at different ages you've got children of different characters how does this how do these do we implement these when we've got a child with neurodiversity how do we implement these when we've got a child who's really sensitive or who is really struggling with anxiety all of these things i want to really tackle because i think of all of the episodes that i've written and recorded this one to me is is almost the one that i want you to keep coming back to because this is the one that is going to have the most impact on your parenting but also the most impact on your children i want to talk about the very real and the very important factors we need to be aware of which impact our daughters quite crucially as they grow up so this is a very specific around girls because i do think that there are some really sort of crucial aspects that makes the development process for a girl different and warranting an episode on its own in lots of ways raising boys is a whole different one as well but this episode is about raising girls now remember when i talk a lot about how not to screw up our kids it's very much from that perspective of working with the end in mind and the end is raising a resilient adult one that is inhabits the adult world is able to form relationships is able to find some form of occupation whatever that might be something that they feel they don't even have to necessarily feel passionate about the career that they take on but it's that that sort of self-sufficiency and that resilient adult to be able to deal with life's inevitables up inevitable ups and downs in this episode i'm thinking about the crucial elements the crucial factors that we need to consider to make sure that they're in place as part of the foundations remember we talk about our children being a building um is under construction the factors that i'm going to talk you through around understanding some of the things that are really important in those foundations and then when we shift our focus away from the foundations of their building to then becoming the scaffolding what we need to do so that we can help our daughter's buildings rise strong so i want to just start with i don't want to try and blow your mind too much here but i do think that it's helpful to talk through some brain facts for a little bit of context before i give you my usual five kind of key things that i want you to consider so let's just talk about some brain facts i'm no neuroscientist i'm no expert here but i do think these are some easy to understand areas that we need to understand around around the brain so the first one to remember is that between the ages of between six and eight years our children will lose gray matter so this is part of all children whether they're girls or boys and the gray matter is to do with the process these are to do with systems and it's this notion of you use it or you lose it so the essence of this is that our children's brain development goes through the biggest biggest sort of surge in those early years we've talked about this before on previous podcast episodes why those early years are particularly crucial after that point between the ages of six to eighteen is they're making new connections because they're learning new things and then they're hardwiring those aspects of the brain what then happens is things that were wired in those early years that are then not used then get pruned away and that's in essence what this whole idea about brain development is and that's why it's so important to remember to use it or lose it remember that the brain remains plastic so connections can be made at a later stage you know even in our 40s 50s 60s 70s we can still learn new things we can make new connections they just take more time you know in those early years that's when they're most most primed so they begin to lose some of those between 6 and 18 and that's all children and what then also happens is they gain white matter now white matter are all to do with the channels of communication and this is all to do with how information goes from one to another and that happens throughout their teen years into their 20s because that's where the the brain doesn't really fully mature we used to think it was much younger but now we know the brain doesn't really fully mature until around 23 24 those channels of communication or myelination just think old style very clunky internet access to super fast broadband that's really what we're talking about with these with myelination and channels of communication so the speed at which things are going to change is going to happen then that white matter just amasses throughout those teen years into the 20s so these are pretty standard boys and girls now we have some of the differentiators the amygdala don't worry you don't need to know anything other than that's the part of the brain where emotions typically will arise that's where that's kind of a processing unit now the amygdala develops 18 months earlier in girls so when we when we typically see some of these differences this is where some of it is coming from so that's that's the first one as does the hippocampus so the hippocampus is another part we'll talk about the different functions in a minute but that it develops earlier with girls and and what's difference between girls and boys is that the hippocampi just bear with me with these technical terms but in essence if you think of your brain it's got two bits and you've got that you've got one on each side left and right with girls their hippocampi are symmetrical with boys they are what we call asymmetric so one will be larger than the other all right but what that means is that there's more what we call left to right connectivity so in essence the left brain and the right brain talk to each other much more with girls than they do with boys all right so it will all make sense just bear with me okay the amygdala and the hippocampus are these things that develop 18 months earlier in girls than they do with boys are part of the limbic system and the reason why i want you to to be aware of the limbic system is that system is affected by hormones and that system is also the system that is activated in our fight or flight all right so there's a bit of context here so let me tell you a little bit about the amygdala and the hippocampus before i move swiftly away from the brain the amygdala is the major processing center for emotions and it links the feelings the emotions to memory learning and senses all right so that's what the amygdala does the hippocampus plays a major role in learning and memory what we know is that the memory that we have of something if there's a really strong emotion connected to it we're much more likely to remember it and access it and the hippocampus is also involved in taking information that comes in, in our short-term memory and putting it into our long-term memory where we can store it. That's our kind of infinite storage capacity. The hippocampus also has a big role in emotional processing, specifically including anxiety and avoidant behaviour. So that's the context that we've got. We've got the grey matter and the white matter, which is the same for boys and girls. But we've now sort of seeing that girls, their brain, if we think about it as a computer and a software, is already predisposed and pre-programmed around emotions and is developing much faster than it is for boys. And I want us to look at that in the context of some other major factors, because when we're thinking about raising girls, we need to take these factors into account when we're encouraging and supporting them, and particularly in the language that we use. But I shall come back to that. So we've got the brain context. Now I want to give you some other context. Confidence levels for girls and boys are pretty evenly matched until around the age of 12 years. Girls' confidence starts higher than boys' and then girls' dips. Between the age of 8 to 14, girls' confidence plummets by 30%. That's quite a staggering amount, which is why this episode. Emotional intelligence, which is, I believe, the superpower of women, can also be their nemesis. And the reason why it can be their nemesis, emotional intelligence is about being able to understand your emotions, but also being able to understand the emotions of others, and then to adapt and modify your behaviour in a given situation to accommodate the feelings of others. Now you can see how that is a phenomenal superpower, but you can also see how that could be particularly damaging when girls can be overly empathetic, overly emotionally intelligent. And what's crucial about this is also understanding this notion of emotional contagion or mirror neurons. And the idea behind this, I think, is in essence that what typically happens is that girls, because of this emotional intelligence superpower, is they're really, really quick to pick up and be able to read the emotions in a room, in an environment. They kind of, they become sponges to that emotional barometer. And so what can tend to happen is that if we've got particular challenges going through within a particular girl and her friendships, it then tends to permeate, it tends to ripple out. You know, these, these are things that are just about being aware, you know, knowledge is power. Understanding this then helps us to understand, where our girls can be phenomenal, but also where they have their vulnerability. Now, it's really important to remember that obviously friendships is quite an emotive subject. We all want our children to have this fabulous group of friends. We want them to have that connection. We want them to come back with their friends to our home. We want them to kind of continue those connections, particularly if we ourselves have had and continue to have really great friendships. What we have to remember is that we're parenting the child that we have, not the child that we want to have. And so their friendships are going to be, could look very different. And their, the way that they interact with their peers could be very different. So be mindful of any sort of internal pressure that you're putting on yourself, which you're inadvertently then putting on your children, because you're just so keen for them to have these wonderful connections. It happens in time and it happens in different ways for different children. Our children all have different personalities. Rest assured, if your child is struggling, there are things that we can do to help. And as you might guess, or know from listening to the podcast often enough, their groundwork starts at home. So let's look at some, kind of key facts about friendships just generally. As we move into the next two episodes, I will talk a little bit more about how the process of friendships and the dynamics around friendships change, but let's just look in terms of just some sort of some real key foundational facts about friendships. And the first one is they're not permanent. Some friendships that we have, I'm very blessed at the age of 55 to have some great friendships still from when I started school in year seven, all those 44 years ago. But some of those friendships have not stood the test of time. My friendships from my primary school, from when I was sort of four up to 11, have not been that permanent. So the first thing to recognise is that friendships themselves are not permanent. And whilst we know that as adults, because of course we've transitioned and we're in our twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, our children don't necessarily because they're really important to them at the time. And that friendship that they have with Jack that has now been sport because the new boys come in James and now it's mixed things up or Sophie's friendship with Kate has now been completely blown apart because their interests have changed hugely or their sense of humour has changed. Whatever it might be, it's that important thing to remember is that friendships themselves are not permanent. And sometimes a friendship is sort of, has reached its natural end of that journey. So that's the first one. The second one, if it's not permanent, but it continues, then we can be guaranteed that it will change over time. And of course it's going to change over time because we as individuals change over time. And one of the great ways that I illustrate this with children and teens that I'm working with is I'll ask them, remember what you were enjoying when you were six or seven? You know, what were the games that you were playing? Did you have particular toys? You know, what was the television programmes that you were watching? And you can ask them those questions at six, you know, when they're older to reflect back at a particular period of time and then to reflect on where they are at the moment. And of course that they can see as an individual, they've changed so much. Their personalities, the things that they enjoy, the things that they spend their spare time on has changed hugely. And so as they evolve and change, so will their friendships. So they may well be drawn to different people or it may actually strengthen a friendship that they already have. But these are part of, I guess, the friendship truths is that they're not permanent. They do change over time. Number three is we can have different friends for different seasons and different reasons. For example, your children may well have friends that they see when they do a summer camp. Maybe they really love football and maybe every summer they do a two-week course or maybe they are part of a local football club and so they do that. Or maybe you've got a child that's into scouts or girl guides or brownies. And it may well be that the people in that particular activity have no overlap with you at all. So they may well have friends that they see when they do a summer camp. Or maybe they're geographically so they don't see them because they're not neighbours. So it's recognising that actually when we're looking at our pool of friendships, it's really helpful if our children are given opportunities to be exposed to and to meet other children and to almost gather their own collective, their own tribe, their own village across the various different things that they do. So that may well be neighbours. It may even be cousins that they see maybe twice a year. So it's understanding that you can have different friends for these different reasons because that's the sort of way you see them. But also different seasons in that there can be friendships that really have a very finite time in which they are. So it may well be you have a friend that you had particularly for certain years in your primary school or a friend that you had at nursery or a friend because your parents did some form of antenatal class. Whatever that might be, it's recognising that some friendships by their nature sort of only last those particular periods. But also that there are certain friendships that we seek out when we are feeling overwhelmed. Certain friendships that we seek out when we want to have fun or when we want to do certain things and that that is acceptable. That's all right. There's nothing wrong with that. We don't have to have deep, meaningful, vulnerability sharing friendships with every single person that we have. So that's number three. Number four is that opposites can attract and they can come from the most unlikely circumstances. When we think about friendships, I think we often sort of think that they're built on some sort of common ground. And in lots of ways they are. But the common ground could just simply be, the environment in which that connection is made. It could be at school. It could be at a club. It could be at an after-school activity. It doesn't have to be that actually the people that are friends share similar hobbies and interests. It doesn't have to necessarily be that. So sometimes we can see these incredible friendships being formed and they seem so unlikely. They just don't seem as if that connection and that friendship would be something that would happen naturally. So if your child is making a connection with someone and really enjoying that, and you've got concerns because you can't quite see how it can last, you might be surprised. And equally, it may well be for a particular season. So it's like, let's go with these sorts of things rather than have our own preconceived ideas of what that should look like. So number four is opposites can attract. Number five is that some children like lots of friends with no one. Others really want just one friend and that can be a super intense. Again, it depends on the personality of the child. It doesn't mean that the child is unpopular if they've just got that one friend. In my experience, I usually find children who are worriers or a little bit anxious or nervous will often gravitate much more to having that one best friend, that one really intense friendship. Because of course, the play is going to be a little bit more intense. So I'm going to of course, the playground or that unstructured time that we get when they go to secondary and senior schools can be really scary if you're quite a nervous or an anxious child, or you tend to worry about what other people think, whether you fit in. Having that one friend, that really one good friend can provide a huge amount of security and safety. That doesn't mean if you're listening to this and you've got a child who has just one best friend that they are anxious. I'm just saying that I tend to find children who worry a lot will often do that. So if you've got a child who's anxious, that'll explain why they're very keen to have that. But it's also recognising that different children want different things. Some love that real intensity of that special friend. And sometimes it's that special friend at school, but they've got another really super special friend in a completely different context. Whereas others love this whole idea of flitting between one group and another group and just sort of spending time with everybody. And obviously there's lots of bits in the middle. It's not just one sort of extreme at either end, but it's accepting that your child will do what they want and what works for them. So if you are somebody who has always enjoyed lots and lots of friendships and you're really concerned because your child is struggling, or they just have this one friend and you think that that friendship is in a particularly healthy friendship, but you're really trying to encourage them to expand their friendship group, then I'll be covering that in the next episode. In this age of instant access and easy access to information, a bombardment of views, politicisation, opinions, how do we help our children to be a little bit more discerning about the information that they receive? Whether that's through social media, news, friends, gossiping, newspapers, books, magazine, blogs, podcasts, family, including you. So how do we take all of this information that our children are being bombarded with? And let's face it, compared to when we were growing up, it's pretty open access for our children. And a really crucial part of that adult that we're end in mind is going to be this ability to question the information that they're receiving. So this is not about us. Well, this episode is not about how do we encourage children to think the way that we think or to adopt our beliefs and our values, because our children are going to take an element of what they've learned through their childhood, the values that we instill within our home through what we do, not what we say. And ultimately, it's about them forming their own beliefs, having their own values and taking that not only from what they've acquired and has been the culture that's been cultivated at home, but also what they then consume. And of course, this is all aspects. So I'm not just talking about toxic masculinity or media around conforming or gender stereotypes or any of that. It is simply aspect of the information that our children are sort of, that's, you know, we often use this analogy that children are sponges, but they have so much information. And it's how can we help them rather than lecturing them, rather than telling them, how can we equip them with the skills so that over time, as they grow older and they become this independent adult, they're able to do their own critical thinking about information. So this is some really sort of important framing and important groundwork in developing the character that our children are going to have. So I'm going to share my usual top tips with you, but I'm going to share five. So let's start with number one. And this is about how we help our children understand that we all see things from our own lens. Human beings are not 100% rational. We know that. Human beings aren't accurate in recalling an image. We know that. We know that. We know that. We know that. We know that. We know that. We know where you have witnessed something, whether it's you and your partner, whether witnessed a specific behavior that your child has exhibited, particularly challenging, or you've been at a party, whatever it might be, where there are multiple people witnessing exactly the same situation, exactly the same event. And you ask all of those individual people to then recall what happened. There's going to be, of course, huge similarities. In their narrative, but there are also going to be big, big differences. And that comes because as humans, through our own experience of life, what has happened to us as we've grown up, how people have communicated with us and the belief systems that we have, means that the lens with which we view any situation, life just generally, is going to be different. No lens is exactly the same. And so part of this helping our children become more discerning about what they think, or helping our children to become more discerning about how they think, the views that they acquire, has to start with an understanding that every single person views things through their own lens, rather than them being as they are. And often, I mean, we see this when we have sibling arguments, is that obviously an event happens, there's been a kerfuffle, maybe there's been some biting, hitting, pushing, shouting, unkindness, and our children scurry to us. And then each one will have their own narrative as to what happened and whose fault it was, because they're looking at it through the different lens. So helping children understand this is crucial, not just in terms of teaching our children how to think, but also encouraging empathy, encouraging compassion, friendships, communication. So it's all aspects, but with this one, it's particularly crucial. Because if we can understand, we all see things from our own lens, what we can then do is encourage our children to question the lens that any information comes to them, whether that's gossip from a friendship group, whether that's being told something that has previously happened, whether it's reading a post on social media, whether it's somebody's opinion, whether it's something at home that you discuss, it's always encouraging them to consider, what's the lens that that person is using? Now, I might not necessarily use that language, but that's what we're looking at doing. And one way that this is particularly helpful is to consider an analogy, like a sports venue. And the idea here is that you could all be watching the same sport that's occurring at that particular time. At the time of this episode recording and going out, we've just had the Paris Olympics, for example. Now, if you were sat in that sports stadium or sat in a football stadium, you could all be watching the same sport that's occurring at or sat in a basketball or a cricket stick, whatever it might be, that analogy has to be something that is live. It could be a concert. The idea here is that different seats within that venue viewing that specific event will then yield different views. And so that's a really crucial part of helping them understand is that actually it doesn't, where you're seated changes the angle with which you see things. And where we end up sitting in that sports analogy depends on things that have happened in our life, our experiences, what we've taken from those experiences, how we've interpreted those experiences, and that can have a huge impact. Why validating emotions works is all about addressing this concept that we read about, that I often advocate for, why it's super important and super helpful. to validate our children's emotions, what I wanted to do was sort of unpick why that is such a good way of diffusing what can often be a pretty explosive scenario. Now, as you'd imagine, I have done my research and I've done a bit of reading around as well as exploring some of the content that I've had in previous episodes. When we talk about this idea of validating emotions, the principle behind it is very much grounded in being able to meet our children where they're at. Now, I'm not going to talk through specifically the processes of how do we deal with a big emotion in the moment. I'm simply going to talk through why validating a child's emotions in a moment may be particularly helpful. I guess what I think is also a really good way of doing it is to talk about the process of how do we deal with a big emotion in the moment. A good thing to tackle head on at the beginning is that there is some evidence that in a truly explosive situation, that by validating a particular emotion at that time, we may actually escalate a particularly big emotion. And in some situations, when we overplay this notion of validating our children's emotions, it provides a really good way of dealing with a big emotion. It provides a get out clause for children who might manipulate and use it. So I'm going to kind of tackle those bits specifically in the why validating emotions works and my sort of the top five reasons as to why. So don't worry, I've got you. I'm going to cover that particularly. But I want to start off with a scenario that I witnessed while I was on holiday. And I'm not recording this scenario from a judgment. I'm recording this scenario from a judgment. perspective. I'm recalling it because it took me right back to when my children were younger, and so much of what typically played out before I understood why it's so helpful in that moment to validate and to acknowledge and to label their emotions. So just bear with me, because I think for a lot of you, when you hear this scenario being played out, equally, that either this has happened to you repeatedly, or some paraphrasing situation like this has happened to you. And it's just a really good scene setting. So let me talk you through this. So familiar situation. So it was outside a restaurant. So we were walking into a restaurant and outside the restaurant, there was a mother with her child, possibly, I'd say probably about five years old. Now, he'd clearly done something that he didn't want to do. And he didn't want to do something that he shouldn't have. Didn't witness it, only saw what was happening outside. Mum had obviously taken him outside the restaurant to have a conversation, to talk to him. And the conversation went along the lines of the mother saying that his behaviour had been unacceptable, and he couldn't act that way. And with the five-year-old repeating back over and over again, every time the mum had made a comment that he was tired. Now, you surely have had this. I mean, the number of times tiredness has been at the root cause or the blame for almost any aspect of poor behavioural choices. But in that moment, what struck me was that the mother was 100% trying to do the right thing. She was trying to address the situation. She'd removed him from the situation. She was having a conversation. But the only response that the mother had was to say, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And the mother wasn't able to acknowledge what the poor choice was or how he might have responded better in the moment. Was this almost felt like this standard patter that we often get as parents, and it's just simply, I'm tired. Or it may well, you could substitute that for, I'm sorry. It's that kind of repeat phrase that tends to happen, but with really no understanding. And we don't move forward necessarily in that. So I thought, oh my goodness me, this would make a really, really great episode because it's a scenario that we're so familiar with that we've all lived through. And so what I want in this particular episode is to look at with that particular situation, had there been all the other aspects of what the mother did, which was incredible, just added that final element of validating the emotion. Yeah, I can see that you are. Then how might it have replayed? Now, obviously I wasn't there until the end. So mum could have done this. No judgment. It's simply a real opportunity to learn. So let's replay the scenario with this addition around validating emotions. Remember this is a holiday. So this is how it would go. So mum, it's not acceptable to behave that way. Child, I'm tired. So that's how it started. Yeah. What we could have added was, I know you're tired. We had a super late night yesterday. We've had lots to adjust to. We're somewhere new with lots of exciting things to do, and that's exhausting. And I know how tiredness makes me make poor choices. I'm not always my best self when I'm tired. And that's why we're chatting and why I'm talking to you. So just, I want you just to consider, I mean, I've done it incredibly longhand. There's no need to go into that level of depth, but I'm just showing you how that additional piece changes that repeat pattern of I'm tired, I'm sorry, or whatever it might be that we typically get. So this episode is all about, what is it about just adding that piece to managing a big emotion that makes it so particularly powerful and why I would encourage you to consider it as one of the tools in your toolkit whenever your children experience or your teenagers a big emotion. So we're going to take a look at some of the tools that we've used in this episode, and we're going to talk about some of the things that we've used in this episode. So we're going to talk about some of the things that we've used in this episode. So we're going to talk about some of the things that we've used in this episode.
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