Ep #45: Connected Parenting: From Combat to Connection with Jennifer Kolari

Would you like to be able to improve your relationship with your child? No matter where you’re starting from, even if you have a great relationship and want to make it even better, if you’re worried it’s struggling a little bit, and want to know how you can prove that, you are going to love today’s episode. Today, I got to talk with Jennifer Kolari. She is a clinical social worker and a child and family therapist. She’s a board certified hypnotherapist and the founder of Connected Parenting. Jennifer’s brilliant. We had the most amazing conversation.

She’s a highly sought after international speaker. She is a therapist with a busy practice. She’s an author. She’s also a podcaster. And we talked about some really fascinating things, like what is mirroring versus active listening? We talked about how to have it be you and your child versus an issue as opposed to you versus your child. And we also talked about what is the difference between punishments versus consequences.

Jennifer also talked about whether you can be too childish when talking to your kid, when you do that baby talk or do loving childish things. Can you be too kiddish with your child? There were so many fascinating things in this conversation. I can’t wait for you to hear it. It’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy: Jennifer, it is so good to have you on the show today, thank you for being here.

Jennifer: I am so excited. Thank you. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Amy: Yeah, me too. So tell us a little bit about your background and a little intro to you.

Jennifer: Sure. So I’m a clinical social worker and family therapist. I’ve been doing this work for over 30 years. I really love what I do. I love being in the people’s lives and connecting with people. And my sort of dream is to bring this methodology to as many families as possible so that we can help families engage with their kids, use connection, use empathy, learn to use language as medicine. Kind of heal the world one family at a time because we’re not doing so well as a planet, so if we can’t figure it out on a grand scale, maybe we can figure it out on a small scale and that way the whole world can get better.

Amy: Oh my gosh, there was some I just want to pull things out for my quote well from you just said, I love it. Using language as medicine and just changing one family at a time. So beautiful. How did you get into being a social worker and therapist, how did you find that?

Jennifer: Weirdly, I sort of always knew. When I was 15 I knew that I wanted to do something like this. So I’ve kind of always had that path, so went into, did my undergraduate degree in psychology, finished that. In between doing that and doing my graduate work I wanted to get in the field and do real kind of gritty work with families and kind of get in there.

Then I started working, that’s the first really significant place I worked, was this group home for street kids. So this was in Toronto. And these were kids who had run away from home, who had gotten involved in sex trafficking rings, basically with what’s called a Romeo pimp, some older person that pretends that they care about them, loves them, and then brings them into that horrible world in exchange for money. So they were all deeply traumatized. All had been sexually abused, physically abused.

So it was called the Receiving Home. So these kids were sort of brought off the street and taken to the suburbs to this kind of group home where they were far enough away from the downtown core. It was semi lock-up. So the doors weren’t locked, but all their belongings and shoes and coats and all those things were. So it was definitely trial by fire. I started working there. I had not a clue what I was doing, I really had no idea. And this was all new to me and I was green as the grass and it was very overwhelming.

But what happened to me there was pretty incredible. And we were sort of trained at the time, these kids will take advantage of you and don’t turn your back on them. Don’t be too nice because they’ll walk all over you. And these kids were 11 to 16, by the way. And none of that made sense to me. What do you mean, they’re children? So I didn’t follow any of that advice and I connected with them all and we’d giggle and we’d laugh and they were difficult. And they had a pretty gritty edge to them. They could be pretty scary.

But their bedtime, when the jammies came on and the teddy bears came out, they turned back into children. And I made sure that every night I spent a special effort with each one. And I’d sit on their beds and I’d sing them lullabies and I’d tell them bedtime stories. And they would have this kind of connection time at bedtime that I think many of them have never had, and they loved it. They didn’t want to talk about it the next day because it was embarrassing.

But I started to notice that it was so much easier to get them to do the things that I needed them to do, to flow through the day and to follow the rules, suddenly something had shifted and I could feel it, and they could feel it. And the other staff were like, “That’s not going to work. You’re going to see, they’re going to take advantage of you. It’s going to backfire.” It really didn’t backfire. This is such a significant story, I’ll never forget it.

There was one little girl there who was really difficult. She was very, very behaviorally tough and scary. And she particularly loved this bedtime routine. She was only there about a week and a half. She was leaving that morning with her social worker to go to a new setting. And I can see this as clear as day, she’s walking down the sidewalk to get into the car. She pauses at the door of the car, the staff were kind of standing on the porch, waving goodbye to her. And she came running up the stairs right up to me, put her hands on my cheeks and looked right into my eyes and said thank you.

This is the face of someone who actually cared about me. So I never forgot that moment. That was the moment I knew, this, this, I want to know what is this. And I wanted to understand more about why is compassion and empathy and connection so powerful? How can you get these kids that everyone else is having trouble with, it weren’t perfect, but it was much easier. And this is just a total aside. But there was another staff member there at the time who was also kind of on the same wavelength as me and was doing the same thing and that’s my husband now. We’ve been married for 33 years, we actually met there.

Amy: How cool is that?

Jennifer: And he went the education principal route. And I did the social worker route. And actually we’ve come back now, he works for Connected Parenting now, but yeah, we met there.

Amy: That is the greatest story. I love it so much.

Jennifer: That is awesome. So that was the beginning. That’s when I realized, I need to know the science behind this. I went back to school. In my master’s degree I worked at an agency and did an internship and then worked there for 10 years at an agency where the focus was on learning disabilities and the behavior and emotional impact of having a learning disability. And I got trained there in a model of therapy called self-psychology.

So the other sort of origin story there is my very first client when I was starting fresh out, this was my first foray into the therapy world, was this little girl, she was about 11. She was wild, absolutely wild. She would sit in the waiting room, she’d trip people that walked by. She’d throw magazines on the floor. She’d go in the bathroom and plug up the sinks with toilet paper and run the water. I mean, she was wild. And she was my first client. And I found it really challenging to be with her.

And I would come in the room and I would sort of take a couple of seconds before coming in to collect myself. And I’d come in a couple of minutes late and I’d get swear words at me and you’re an idiot and I want a different therapist. And how did I ever get you? And you’re terrible. And I would do therapist things that I’d learned like, “I understand, that must make you very frustrated.” And then she’d just respond with, “Of course it does, you idiot.” Everything I kind of learned in the clinical world backfired wildly on this kid to the point where I literally dreaded Thursdays, honestly.

And I saw myself as such a compassionate, empathetic person. And I thought, oh, Christ, Thursday. But the whole office sort of would batten down the hatches when she came because she was so difficult. And she was just the kind of kid where she’d say, “Your teeth are crooked on the bottom and you pronounced that word wrong.” She’d looked for mistakes. and then she would find things I didn’t even know I didn’t like about myself and find them.

Now, the background to this child was that she had actually been the product of a rape, her mom had kept her. So there’s a lot of attachment issues going on between the mom and this little one. And the mother had her own issues for sure. And I think she’d tried to do her best but could not connect with this child, plus she’s a very difficult child. And I think the sort of combination of those two things. This little one used to throw herself down the stairs at the age of four, just to get her mother to pick her up.

So by the time she came to me, she was very prickly and had a big thick wall. And she was going to keep people away because they end up hurting her anyway. And I remember my coping strategy was to be late a little bit. And we’d go through this whole thing. And I remember going back to my supervisor at the time who, she was really into self-psychology and a beautiful teacher and really sort of lived by it and started to teach me the technique of mirroring, which we’ll talk about today, which I’ve developed into what I call the calm technique.

So she taught me how to go back and be present with this child, to be non-defensive, to use language as medicine to calm and soothe this child. And speak to this child in a way that the rest of the world would never speak to her. So the next time I was late, “You’re an idiot. I hate you.” And instead of going, “That must make you mad. I’m sorry, I understand but I had something to do”, or whatever kind of clinical response.

I looked into her eyes and I said, “You know what? This is your appointment. It’s your time. You are never late. And this isn’t the first time that I’ve been late. I’ve done it to you before and I’ve left you waiting in this room all by yourself.” And all of a sudden I see her eyes fill up with tears a little bit. I could see that moment. Then a few minutes later, she’d say, “And your teeth are so crooked on the bottom, I can’t listen to what you’re saying because you’ve crooked teeth.”

And I would say, instead of saying, “That’s not very nice, what’s that coming from? Have people hurt you or how do you think someone would feel if you spoke to someone like that?” Which would just create this defensiveness and bring her into a situation of combat and verbal arguing which happened every day of her life everywhere. I used a different approach and I said, “You know what? You notice when things are straight. When things aren’t lined up and they’re not where they should be, you have the kind of brain that notices that. You see that kind of thing.”

Completely, non-defensive and all of a sudden I get, “Oh, it’s okay, your top teeth are really nice.” Now, I’m seeing a change in the relationship. And I think I was doing this naturally a little bit anyway, but this was very powerful for me. So I started using that. I went back, I became trained in self-psychology. It enhanced my practice. It changed everything. And then I got the idea, what if I taught parents to do this, wouldn’t this be amazing? And of course I had a bit of a reaction from people. “You can’t, parents can’t be therapists. They’re too involved with their kids, they can’t have that. And the distance that you need to do that.”

And I thought, I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s true. I think parents just need the tools. They need the language. They need a way to interact with their kids. Every parent, in their own way wants to find the best way to reach their child and love their child and give their child the best possibility, having social health and mental health. And I began to teach parents and it was unbelievable. And then it just kind of took off from there. And I was in a private practice before no time and writing books. And Connected Parenting kind of took off and trained other people in the method and yeah, and there we are.

Amy: Amazing. I’m so excited. And as you’re talking about connection, and I just feel this is so important. And this isn’t something I really talk about on the show, but I have a child that has been diagnosed with a pretty significant mental health illness. And I remember early on, just feeling so lost and discouraged.

And I was at the pharmacy picking up yet another medication, trying to help figure this out for this kid that I just adore, and meeting a neighbor there and them telling me, “I wish I could tell you it gets better.” And I was just so discouraged. It can’t get any worse than this, is what I was feeling. And he had actually lost his entire relationship with his child that had the same diagnosis. And I just kind of thought through that. And he said, “If I could go back and change anything, I would focus on the relationship.”

And that really, really stuck with me because when you’re working with, at that time I was a very young teenager and it’s so hard. That was so empowering to me. And that’s kind of my natural instinct as well, but it just was such a good reminder for me and it has completely changed the outcome and the process and everything over the last six/seven years of working with that kiddo. And we have a beautiful relationship and she’s an adult and living her best life. But it was reminding me, I think Dr. Becky, a quote from her book, Good Inside, I think it was, said something like connection always increases cooperation. And I love that.

Jennifer: And healthy compliance, not compliance because I’m scared of you, but because I love you and you love me, however that’s defined. And I think connection is everything. It is everything. We’re all social beings and none of us are at our best when we’re not good with our people. We thrive on connection. You have an argument with your husband, you’re off all day. We just really feel this tight network together.

And it’s really interesting, the parenting world, there tend to be like everything else in this world, everything is polarized. So it’s either all about connection and attachment and don’t set limits and don’t ruin your child’s sense of self and don’t say no and so it’s kind of it’s that. Or it’s, you’ve got to take control and you have to be setting limits and you’ve got to be tough and you can’t go back on your word. And the truth is you need both of those things to be a good parent. It’s very nuanced. It’s an integration of those two things because limits are love too, but it’s how you deliver it.

Amy: This is so good. I just want you to tell us all the things. This is so good, talk to us about this calm method because I want to know more about that.

Jennifer: So the two branches of Connected Parenting. The first half is connection and deep empathy and psycho neurobiology and learning to use language as medicine. And it literally is medicine and I’ll explain in a moment why. But, so here’s the thing, the calm technique, which is based on a technique which is based on mirroring, which a lot of people think they know how to do, but they’re usually doing active listening. And I’ll explain the difference in a moment.

It’s really quite a unique skill and it sounds easy, but it’s not so easy. But it’s a way to kind of deeply connect heart to heart with someone. And by the way, think spouse, think colleagues, think neighbor. You don’t just have to use this on your child. This will enhance your life in every relationship that you have, but it’s basically deep listening and deep connection. And what happens in the brain are some pretty amazing things. So the good news is most of us can mirror pretty naturally with a baby.

Somebody picks up a baby and they go, “Oh my goodness, look at you.” They match the face, they match the voice. There’s this beautiful stuff happening. And when that happens, even that little smile which you just made because I did that. It’s the way we are as people. What happened is you got a little tiny dose of oxytocin. The same thing when you see a puppy or a chubby baby, or your best friend. You get that warm flow, that is oxytocin.

So we think of oxytocin as the drug that induces labor and stimulates breastfeeding, all of that, but it’s so much more than that. It’s known as the tend and befriend hormone. And it is really how humans connect to each other. It’s really what bonds us together. It’s why we don’t leave our screaming babies in the grass. It’s love itself. And there’s many other chemicals as well, but oxytocin’s a really powerful one.

So when you talk to a baby that way, the baby gets that same flood. It calms the brain down. It tells the baby, I’m safe, I’m going to be okay and that gets repeated over and over again. And that’s sort of the building block for human development. So most of us are pretty good at it. Where we kind of drop it is around the time of language acquisition. So I’ll give an example. If you have a baby that’s four months old and you’re giving them a bath, nobody says to the baby, “This is ridiculous, we’ve done this every night for four months. You’ve been fine. I’ve got a show to watch.” Nobody talks to a baby like that.

You would look at the baby and you’d go, “I know, you’re cold and you don’t like this towel and this towel’s scratchy.” And the look on your face matches what they’re feeling, it surpasses language because babies don’t have language yet. It goes right to the limbic system, which is the part of the brain that is the safety and security system of the brain and calms the baby down.

So the baby doesn’t know what you’re saying, but on your face is a perfect representation visually of what they are feeling, which lets the baby know, mommy gets me or daddy gets me or grandpa gets me. Releases then oxytocin, opiates and natural endorphins which calm the baby down. And as that’s repeated over and over again, the baby starts to feel safe and can reach and grab and look for things and take risks and learn about the world, because they feel safe in it. Most parents do that pretty naturally. You don’t need a lesson on how to talk to a baby, it just happens.

Where we drop it is around the time of language acquisition. So now think about a four year old, who’s in the bath. Now how does that look?

Amy: So different.

Jennifer: “No, in a minute, get out of the bath, please. You’ve been in the bath for a long time, we’ve got to go. Get out of the bath. I’m going to start counting, one, two, three, four.” Now looks totally different. The earlier your child speaks, the sooner we drop that. And if you have a child that’s not neurotypical, so they’re not catching facial expressions or they’re not catching your language the same way or they’re ADHD and they’re looking at 5,000 other things other than your face, they’re going to miss some of those messages.

And we talk about that at Connected Parenting, how to make sure those messages get in, but that’s happened and then explodes. And then they’re crying. And then your other kid is running down the hall without pajamas on and it’s just a nightmare. So what I teach is how to use language to bring oxytocin, opiates and endorphins into the bloodstream, deeply into every cell of the body. And by the way you get the bounce back, so that they are much more likely to get out of the bath and it’s much less of a hassle.

So how would that look? So there’s four things you do with the calm technique. You’re going to connect first. So before you go in with your agenda, come on, you’ve got to get out. Let’s go. First of all, kids don’t think that way. They’re in the bath, it’s warm. They’ve got a whole game going on. They know what they’re going to do next and you’re going to yank them out of the warm water. It’s hard enough for us to get out of a warm bath. Try being four and doing that and not having a concept of time. Plus they’ve got to go to bed, which is either scary or boring. So there’s a whole bunch of things after that.

So when you take your agenda aside for a moment, you get to bring it back because you have to. And you come in, not in a huge rush, expect there to be a few minutes of getting this kid out of the bath. There is probably not a kid on the planet, goes, “Okay”, and they stand, they’re ready. Unless they’re freezing and they want to do something else, they’re not getting out without you helping them. So you sit on the ground beside them, you put your hand in the water. “Oh, my God, it’s the best temperature. And what are you playing with? And, oh, look, you’ve got your boat and your soap”, or whatever they’re doing.

Get them to tell you about what’s happening in the bath. Quiet the part of your brain going, “I’ve got to go, I’ve got 5,000 other things to do.” But honestly, you’ll get them out of the bath much faster this way. “It’s such a cool temperature, now I understand why it’s hard for you to get out of the bath. “Okay, I’m going to give you a second to make a really good choice and I’m going to come back and let’s see if you’ll be ready then.” And most kids, when you’re not staring at them, telling them to get out, will get out, they’ll get out of the bath.

And instead of going, “Look at you getting out of the bath all by yourself, that’s amazing.” Because that’s too much energy. That’s setting up expectations for next time. You just do a low key like, “Nice. Cool. Okay.” So you just sort of stay in this flow. And as ridiculously easy as that sounds, it almost always goes that way. But it has to be genuine. If there’s a flicker of this better work so this kid gets out of the bath. Kids are really intuitive, they’ll feel it. They’ll feel that urgency from you.

And we’ll talk about what happens when it doesn’t, because probably 5 or 10% of the time you’re going to have a fight on your hands and not going to get out. But more often than not, there’s a flow there and it works. And because it’s love based, one which is, “Get out of the bath, hurry up”, is all fear based. You’re not listening to me, what does that mean? What else won’t you listen to? What about my other kid that’s not listening? I’ve got to get you in bed. I’ve got a zillion things to do. It’s all fear based and kids are very intuitive, so they pick up on your fear.

Then we get angry because they’re not listening, because there’s nothing more triggering for a parent than a kid who will not listen to you, it’s infuriating. And if you have multiple kids, that’s multiply infuriating, because you’ve got so many kids. So parents say to me, “That sounds like a lot. How do I do that? I don’t have time to do that.” The truth is you don’t have time not to. That’s the truth. It’s going to turn into a whole thing if you don’t. So it really is a practice. It’s something that you have to get good at. It’s absolutely counterintuitive. Nothing in your body is going to want to do that, trust me, nothing.

But you have to do it a few times and practice enough that you start to go, “This is a superpower. This is like having a magic wand. This is incredible.” And here’s the other reason for doing, that’s just the bonus, by the way, reducing conflict, increasing healthy compliance, that’s just the bonus. What’s actually happening in the brain is all those beautiful reward chemicals are strengthening and speeding up neuroplasticity. They’re helping your child learn better and faster in all settings because they feel secure and they feel safe and their biochemically solid.

It strengthens the immune system. Look what we’ve been through in the world in the last two or three years, how amazing is that? It blocks cortisol. Interacting constantly with your child like that decreases anxiety because it decreases cortisol. So you’re just creating these safe situations where they’re sort of being strengthened from the inside out. It bounces back, you get the same amazing benefits. You get a blast of oxytocin and all those beautiful chemicals, which. helps you to calm down and learn faster and feel better and be more integrated and emotionally regulate better.

So there’s just a zillion reasons why it is a great way and a great approach with your kids and a phenomenal tool. And there’s a ton of science to back all of this up. And so the calm technique, which I’ll kind of go through again in a second, is really just one piece of it, but I would say it’s the pillar. It’s the foundational piece. And most people hear it and go, “Oh, my God, it sounds amazing.” But you go out into the real world and try it and it’s not so easy. It’s a little bit hard. So here are the four things you’re going to do.

The first one you’re going to connect, you’re going to take your agenda, get out of that bath or whatever the scenario is and you’re going to put it over here. You’ll bring it back, but you put it over there. Second, is the effect matching. So the look on your face needs to match the look on their face. So if we use the bath as an example again, they see you coming, they’re like, “No, I’m having fun. I don’t want to get out.” And if you come in with, “Come on, let’s go,” and they’re like, “No.” You can already see how rash they are. If you come with, “Oh, I get why you don’t want to get out. I wouldn’t want to get out either. This is so warm, it’s so toasty.” Now you’re joining with them. Now you have a connection. And now you get the flow of those beautiful chemicals.

Now you can use your words. So now the kid says, “I don’t want to get out. I’m having so much fun, it’s too warm in here.” Now you can paraphrase, you can say the same thing, “I get it, it’s toasty warm in here. It’s not bad once you’re out, but as soon as you get out, it feels really cold on your skin, totally get why you don’t want to get out.” So I can paraphrase. I can summarize, “You know what? Now that you say it, you hate getting cold, that’s a hard thing for you, that’s been a hard time every time we’ve tried to get out of the bath.” So I’m showing that I listen, I’ve listened every other time too.

I can clarify, “What is it specifically, is it the itchy towel that we use? Is it that it’s too cold when we get out? Maybe we can figure that out for next time.” You can start problem solving, but maybe you want to pick a detail, not such an emotional thing. We’ll talk about for highly sensitive kids. Sometimes when you go deeper into the emotion they’ll reject it a little bit, so you pick a detail, a very kind of neutral detail.

Sometimes if you go too deep in the emotion, they experience what I call glare because they’re already upset. You’re now reflecting it back to them and they’re like, “Stop, no.” So you want to pick something that doesn’t have that glare. So there’s little, there’s sort of nuances in here which we’ll take apart in different scenarios if you like. And then you can wonder out loud. Maybe it has nothing to do with the bath. Maybe they’re afraid to go to bed or maybe there’s something really scary that’s coming tomorrow and they want to stretch out the day as long as possible. So it’s not really about the bath.

So you can start talking about, “You know, what? I get it, it’s kind of warm and toasty in the bath but you usually have trouble getting out of the bath. I’m wondering if this has to do with.” And then you can connect it to something else that you think it is. So wondering out loud is really important and that also helps with emotional literacy. Helping kids make connections, they feel a lot of things and they don’t always knit it together.

And they don’t have a fully formed frontal lobe yet to be able to do that. So that’s kind of our job while we do that, which means going into the pain sometimes with our kids, which is not easy to do as a parent. I mean you were a moment ago talking about your child. There is nothing harder than seeing your child suffer and your child’s pain. That is a really difficult thing. And so part of this method asks you to do that. You have to dare to be there. And we can touch on that also in a moment.

And then the final thing there is the mirror, is the M, when you’ve kind of had a moment, you’ve pulled all those things together, you’ve had a mirroring moment. And you don’t just have to wait for your kid to be freaking out about getting out of the bath. It could be something happy. It could be about a show that’s coming up or something they’re excited about, you use the same method to engage with them and talk to them and get that oxytocin flowing all day long over different things. And it’s really powerful. It’s a superpower, it really is.

Amy: That is so amazing. And one of the things that I noticed as I’ve kind of read a lot and done some research on relationships in a marriage or a partner relationship. I thought it was interesting. You’re trying to, I read recently, you’re trying to get on the same side against the issue instead of against each other. So can you get on the same side against whatever the issue is?

And I felt like that’s kind of what you were doing too, bringing the kid with you so that it’s you and your kid versus the issue of not wanting to get out of the bath. Instead of you versus your kid because you’re trying to make them get out of the bath and they don’t want to. So I love that because you’re kind of putting yourselves on the same team, which I think is the most powerful thing ever.

Jennifer: Yeah, and it’s wonderful. And the bonus to all of this too, the kind of super bonus is when you raise your children this way. And I have three adult kids now, my youngest is 19 and just went off to college. They naturally intuitively do this with other people. Imagine if everybody could do this, how different this world would look, how different conflict would look, how much safer and more comfortable everybody would feel, how less defensive people would feel, how much more solid they would feel. Self-esteem improves, everything improves when you feel loved and lovable, that changes everything.

So I love that, getting on the same side. That’s exactly what mirroring is. That’s why they call it mirroring. And then the other piece I like to think about when you’re entering any kind of conversation with anyone is if you can seek to understand instead of seek to be understood, you’re way ahead of the game. The minute you enter a conversation, trying to be understood, it’s now a battle. It’s now a conflict. It’s now a confrontation instead of a conversation.

And the lovely part here is you can model this and live this and bring this into your family philosophy. It’s not a strategy, it’s a philosophy. It’s a way of being. So when I work with families, you don’t just do this with your kid, you do it with everyone, the cranky person that butted in front of you with Starbucks, everyone. This is now how you approach the world and the gifts you get back, it’s priceless, it’s infinite, it changes everything. It changes your whole relationship to conflict, it will change conflict for you.

Amy: It’s so interesting, and I feel like often, I love that idea of being curious, coming into it curious because it takes away. It’s hard to be in fear and curious at the same time, I think in defense and curious. I think curiosity is just such a powerful emotion that I feel like I don’t know. I feel like I grew up on this idea that you had to be happy all the time and if you weren’t happy then that wasn’t good. So there was happy or there was bad. I’ve kind of gone away from that. And so in trying to help my kids understand, being healthy doesn’t mean you’re just always happy. That’s not what healthy looks like.

Jennifer: Happy is just a feeling. It’s a feeling.

Amy: But maybe being open and curious is maybe a little bit of a better goal of shooting for open and curious because that looks like a lot of different emotions. And you’re willing to experience them and not having that resistance or that fear to whatever emotion comes because we’re being open and curious, allows us to connect with people, allows us to connect with ourselves and things like that.

Jennifer: Absolutely. There’s so many facets to Connected Parenting, but one of the big things that we really try to do is help kids with emotional literacy. So feelings are information, that’s all they are. It’s your body trying to communicate with you. It’s trying to take information from the outside and help you figure it out. And we like to think of ourselves as rational beings, but we’re feeling beings, we really are. And in order to teach this to your children, you have to be able to do this yourself. And our culture, I don’t even know any cultures that are really great at this, maybe just as human beings we really in general struggle with this.

But we have such a difficult time tolerating feelings and emotions, we run from them. We do anything we can to not feel what we think are negative emotions. But there’s no such thing as a negative emotion, it’s all information and everything is in a duality. You cannot be happy without being sad. You can’t have light without dark. It’s the way that our entire world works. It’s the way physics works. So in order to experience happiness, you have to have experienced the opposite of happiness. And fear, all of the emotions work that way.

And so what happens with feelings, it’s your body trying to talk to you and in our culture, we don’t really listen, we ignore it. So what do people do as adults? They blame somebody, they get in a fight, they drink something, they smoke something, they buy something, they dive into their phone. They start a whole conversation with somebody to make it about that, they do whatever they can to distract from the intensity of the feeling itself. But what’s so important as adults, but also for adults to teach children is to feel. You’ve got to feel it to heal it.

You can’t go over, under or around it, you’ve got to go through it. And the more you do that, the easier this all gets. So when you’re working with a child or your own child is crying because something’s disappointing. What a lot of parents do is say, “Well, don’t worry. You know what? We’ll have your cousins over. You didn’t get invited to that party, well, that’s terrible and I’m going to talk to that mother and fix that situation. And let’s have your cousins over, and we’ll do something else that’s fun.”

And all you’ve really done is taught your child, I need an adult to fix my problems. And two, my problem is so bad that look at the lengths my parents are going to, to try to fix this problem for me. Where what mirroring asks you to do is to sit there and go, “That sucks. So this person and this person and this person are invited, and you’re standing there waiting for an invitation that didn’t come.” You stay there with how terrible and you put your hand on your heart and go, “Let’s just feel that for a minute. That’s crappy. Let’s let our body pay attention to that.”

And what you teach your child to do is to surf, they ride through that feeling . And feelings like anything else will crest and let go. And just when you feel like it’s so hard, you go right kind of to the center, to the hot spot of that feeling. And what happens is your body goes, “Okay, you’ve listened. I’m obviously not in immediate danger.” Because the limbic system, the security system in the brain, doesn’t know the difference between not getting invited to a party and a saber tooth tiger that’s chasing you down the street. It’s the same thing to the brain. That’s not the midbrain’s job.

So as you kind of ride through that feeling and register it, then your brain can let it go. And that kind of ability to feel your feelings, let them flow through you, they flow through you, but most of us have just let them stick and pile up and pile up and pile up. And then we wonder why we’re anxious and stressed and angry and can’t have conversations and we’re running all these programs all the time. And then we’re trying to parent.

So we get triggered by our kids, from our childhood, our stuff that we haven’t worked through and carried through. So it’s a big job, but the whole method is really about feeling your feelings and not being afraid of your feelings and not being afraid of your child’s feelings. And that is the greatest setup for them to have a successful life and to have more moments in life where they feel happy. And when they’re not happy, they’ll know what to do. They’ll know that it’s temporary. They’ll know that they have everything in them that they need to ride it through.

Amy: Right. And I think that’s such a powerful thing is that confidence that this sucks, this feels like the absolute worst but I know that I can make it through this feeling. It will end, and then I’ll get to do the next one. And not having that fear, I think is confidence, knowing that you can face any emotion and ride it and get to the next one. I love that. And I love the word, you talk about, flow. That’s actually how I talk about it too in my world. But I feel like we so often are trying to block ourselves from feeling a feeling like that’s a bad feeling, one of the bad ones. We don’t want that negative emotion so we’re going to block it.

Or we’re trying to hold feelings inside of us like I have to stay happy all the time. I can’t let this go or whatever. We’re always blocking or holding on to whatever and just letting it flow through just knowing more coming, just let it go.

Jennifer: And what’s so ironic about that is you’re trying to hold on to happy. I’ve got to be happy. I’ve got to look happy. I’ve got to do this. And you’re in fear anyways. You’re not even happy. you’re in a state of angst. It’s funny, we were talking about puppies before we started recording. We have a puppy in our house, we have other dogs too. So any time she gets something great like a little bone or a little toy or a little stick or something, she walks around crying. She’s so happy to have it but she’s crying because she figures somebody’s just going to take it, she’s going to lose it. How can I hold on to this thing?

It’s just, it’s ironic, but there it is. You end up constantly in this state, but if you learn how to flow and that pain is the greatest teacher, it always is. I mean you have to have healthy adversity and a reasonable amount of adversity and challenge in your life. That’s how we learn. Nobody grows comfy. Nobody grows comfy. And it’s really interesting, I’m going to divert for a second to kind of talk about parenting in a really general way.

But I would say in the last, if I think back, 30 years I’ve been doing this. I would say the last 20 years for sure, maybe more, there’s been such a shift in parenting. And some of them, it’s been good and some of it has been really not good. So I’m sure I’m much older than you, but when I was a kid there was a very clear adults were here. There was a hierarchy, adults were and kids were here. And if you were watching TV and your dad came in, you got up and gave dad the TV because he wanted to watch the news.

And your parents played with you sometimes, but most of the time they were busy or reading the paper or relaxing after work or preparing meals and go play. And I don’t remember being traumatized by that. I remember playing and playing outside. And that’s a whole other part of the conversation, kids years ago used to be able to play on the street and play in large groups and learned a lot through play, how to be heard and how to back off. And I mean yes, and bullying happened and things that happened weren’t so great, but we learned a lot of really amazing things about being adults in those situations as well.

And then somewhere, everything changed and it went from sort of a parent centered model. And there were certainly things about that that were not great. Kids were not necessarily heard very much or if they came home and cried because they were bullied, they’d often get messages, “That happened to me too, You’ll be fine.” So there were things that were not great about it, but there were some things that I think we’ve sort of lost, maybe that we shouldn’t have lost.

And so the swing became this child centered model, which really meant that the children have a ton of power and that adults are giving decision making over to the kids. And freaking out and panicking every time their kids are upset and running into the school and solving problems. And I don’t know if parents still do this, but when my kids, so my oldest is turning 30, then my daughter’s turning 28 and my little one is 19. And I remember when my two older kids were in middle school, I don’t know if this still happens. The parking lot would be full at lunch because the parents would be dropping off fast food for their kid for lunch. What?

And then it became, well so and so got Wendy’s and so and so got McDonald’s and how come? And I’m like, “No, I love you way too much, I love you so much I’m not going to do that. I’m not bringing fast food to you. Maybe once a month I’ll do it, but no, that’s not happening.” So there was this weird kind of shift, maybe it’s swung back, I don’t know. But I feel like parents are over-functioning for their kids. They are terrified of their kids being unhappy.

When you were kid did you play musical chairs? Do you remember that game? I don’t think anyone had to go to therapy because of musical chairs. So what, one person won, and that’s how life works sometimes. All of those games, a lot of that’s sort of gone now because it’s not fair and kids get too upset. But what you’re doing is you’re robbing your kids from childhood healthy adverse experiences where they can learn, well, that was disappointing. I tried really hard. That sucked and I still lost. And you know what? I’m okay.

We’re missing out on some of the resilience that comes from this. So it very broadly, and I’ve seen this over my career, and it’s worse than it’s ever been right now. Mental health issues in children and teenage and adults, by the way, is worse than it has ever, ever been. And I think it’s always been there, but I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s so much worse. And it’s not just necessarily each family, it’s the kind of collective idea. And I think that’s part of it.

And so let me dive to the brain for a second, because this is very nuanced, the conversation, multifactored. But let me talk about the brain for a minute. We’ve talked a lot about the midbrain that freaks out and overreacts to things and pulls the safety brake.

But then there’s the frontal lobe, that’s the part of the brain that makes executive decisions. That’s the executive functioning part of the brain. That plans where you are in time. I’ve got to do this and then I could do that or I shouldn’t say, that’s going to hurt that person’s feelings. It’s impulse control, it’s time management, it’s organization, it’s shifting from one task to the next. It’s holding on to something you’d really want because you’ll get it later. That’s all really sophisticated. And it takes about 35 years really to officially grow one of those.

So one of the things that makes parenting so complex is you’re not actually a parent, you are a substitute frontal lobe. That’s what you are. So your job is to organize, prioritize, motivate, all of that stuff for your child because they don’t have that brain function yet on their own. Each year they get a little older, you can step back a little more. That’s the role you’re providing. So when parenting switched too much to don’t say no and consequences are bad and all of that stuff. What ended up happening is children got this sort of general sense that they don’t have that frontal lobe support anymore.

A six year old should not be weighing in on what kind of car the family buys, I’m sorry, they shouldn’t. That is way too much responsibility. And what’s so interesting is children know this intuitively. They don’t like when you say no and then suddenly you say yes, they do in the moment. But if you give a child a consequence and then you give it back, they’ll remind you, “I’m not allowed to have that, remember.” They like to know where the walls are and as long as consequences are delivered in love and with neutrality, with love at the center, because love is limits. They will intuitively understand as an anxiety will respond. They will feel better.

Now, you don’t want people to think that you’ve made a mistake and your child’s anxious and you didn’t do something. There’s a whole other part of mental illness, which is genetics and predisposition. And it’s so much deeper than that. So I’m kind of talking about general kind of, not an anxiety disorder but kind of generally elevated anxiety this way and this is why. You don’t need any more proof than this. What happens when your kids have a supply teacher? The whole class, which is normally very well behaved and fine, is out of control when a supply teacher comes. Why? Because they’re not sure what the rules are.

Why are there children who are absolutely out of control at home and at school they’re perfect? The teacher wouldn’t even believe you if you said, “My child is out of control at home.” It’s because limits mean something. And it is a substitute frontal lobe and they feel safe. And then within that safety, then they can explore and take chances and take risks and figure out who they are. So that’s the really big reason why Connected Parenting is the integration of those two things. It’s really, really important.

I do want to say that punishment is not the same as consequence. Punishment is you did this, you’re going to feel it. You hurt me, I’m going to hurt you. That will never work. That’s from fear. That will never have other than the kid being afraid and not doing it again, that’s the only thing that will happen. That’s not good. That’s not good for mental health. That’s not good for sense of self. It’s just not a healthy way.

Consequences though are different. Consequences is, you know what? I feel really bad about this, but I told you if you use that word and I love you enough to set this limit for you, that this is going to happen, or if you did x, it’s going to cost you y and you front load it. If you continue this behavior, this is the consequence you’re going to be choosing. I just want you to know that. And then when the consequence comes, okay, well, now you’ve lost screens for the night. “You’re mean I hate you.”

And you can mirror, “I would hate that too if I was a kid. I hated having stuff taken away from me, but I love you so much. I know you understand this and I know you made that choice. And you knew that if you made that choice, this would follow. And I love you enough to follow through. So make all the noise you want to, be as mad as you want to, but you will not get your screens back till tomorrow.”

And usually the big explosion that you’re expecting is much less because they believe you. There’s confidence in the way that you say that. And when it’s coming from love, even just saying, “No, I love you enough to say no. It’s not good for you to have that. You don’t need to have something every time we go somewhere. Part of me would love to buy this for you every time we go out, are you kidding? But I love you too much to buy something every time we go out, because that’s not what your brain needs. That’s not what your heart needs.”

Amy: And I think when it comes from that place of authenticity, when that’s really what it is, they feel that so much and they can respect it and they know it’s true. And it’s hard to be mad when mom or dad are just loving you.

Jennifer: And you can be mad and guess what? You’ve done all kinds of work on how to let mad flow right through you. You can feel anger and deserve it, absolutely. And as a parent, we get so afraid, I think we parent from afraid, a place of fear. Oh, God, if I say no, it’s going to be a whole thing. Are we going to have a tantrum that’s now going to last three hours? And sometimes you just have to see the bigger picture. I love my child enough to follow through on this. And we might have the night from hell tonight but that will mean other nights are going to go a lot better because I followed through this night.

And you roll up your sleeves and you love your child enough to follow through and stay as neutral as you can. Once you’re yelling and screaming, which I know is really hard, we can even talk about some strategies, how not to yell and scream. But once you’re yelling and screaming, well, there’s a few things that actually happen if we’re sort of within the context of the brain. Children don’t have fully formed frontal lobes yet. So they will butt up against you until they believe you. Once they believe you then they’re “Oh, there’s the wall, okay, I’ll back off.”

But what we often tend to do as parents is, it’s too soft and we’re coming from a fear based like, “Honey, please, please don’t do that. Could you not, could you stop doing it?” What kid is going to? No, there’s a question in there I can say no to. So, no, I don’t believe you when you’re like that. And if you come in the room screaming, “that’s ridiculous, stop!” Then you’re either scary and mean or you’re hilarious. There’s really nothing in between and they don’t believe you anyway because now you’re out of control.

The example I give is, let’s say you’re on an airplane. And it is a turbulent, absolutely petrifying flight. You are white knuckling. You are scared to death. And let’s say in the middle of all this, the captain comes wandering down the aisle and says, “Hey, everybody, I know you’re really scared. I know it’s bumpy but I can go 30,000 feet if you want, I can go 28, what do you think? I can go around the storm.” How would you feel?

Amy: Very uncomfortable. That would be so scary.

Jennifer: Because the person is not in charge. Dear God, who is in charge then? Or let’s say for the sake of argument, the cockpit door is left open and the captain’s in there screaming, “Where is that control tower, why aren’t they answering me? They don’t pay me enough for this.” You’re going to feel equally as scared because that person is out of control. You want to be the captain flying the plane. Remember, this was years ago now. I think they made a movie of it with Tom Hanks. I think it was Captain Sully, the pilot who landed the plane in the middle of the Hudson River.

You’ve got to be Captain Sully, you have to be. And if you do start to get out of control, you can say, “I’m not liking how I sound. I need a minute. I’m going to go do some breathing. I’m going to get myself together because I don’t sound good and I’m coming back.” And you can even kind of yell when you’re doing that. I don’t like how I sound. I’m sounding horrible in this situation. I’m going to go figure it out. I’m going to take a breath.

So you’re actually modeling that you can be escalated and de-escalate because the thing is, we often expect our kids to de-escalate on a dime but we can’t do that. How can we expect our kids to do it? They don’t even have a frontal lobe yet. So it’s all very nuanced and all very complicated and it does start with the parent. Maybe we can talk touch on self-carer. I don’t even know how we’re doing with time but we’re probably just about done, aren’t we?

Amy: Yes, we are. There’s so much. I know, I’m like, “Oh my goodness, I just love this.” And I feel like you’ve given us so many good nuggets to talk about. I guess one thing I want to ask you is if people want to work with you, what is the best way to connect with you?

Jennifer: Sure. So they can go to connectedparenting.com. We have a number of ways to connect. We have a whole team of people and we see people from all over the world. So there’s a group of us. You usually don’t have to wait very long. So connectedparenting.com. We also have, I created this because I just think it’s a great online resource for parents, but I have two versions of an online course that take you through every step of Connected Parenting, everything that you’d be doing if you were sitting in front of someone individually. And there’s two versions of that.

There’s one that’s just, and it’s all on demand and it’s all kind of whenever you need it. So there’s just video and you can just go through the modules. And then often people will do that and then they’ll book a few sessions with a Connected Parenting practitioner or a therapist just to kind of pull in on certain things. And then we have a version where there’s an online coaching call where I’m on there with families from all over the world talking about stuff.

And then what I didn’t touch on today, we work with all families, but we do work with a lot of kids who have mental health issues, who have extreme anxiety, depression. We specialize in what I call gladiator kids, such as sassy, feisty, fiery kids who are very challenging to parent, but most likely the people who are going to save us all, if you can get them to adulthood. That’s kind of our niche, but we work with all parents and kind of ordinary regular kids too.

And what else do we have? I have my books, I have two books that you can kind of follow the book online. And I have the Connected Parenting podcast where I am sharing all kinds of things with parents because some people can’t afford, it’s just too much. So we try to give as much as we can for people, to help people on their parenting journey. And there’s a number of ways to do it.

I have a second podcast too called The Mental Health Comedy podcast. I co-host that with a comedian named Ed Crasnick. And we interview well known celebrities and comedians about their mental health. And we’ve had some amazing guests on there and everyone’s really open and vulnerable and talk about mental health. We spin a little comedy in there. And then I finish every episode with practical strategies that you can do to help to regulate your own emotion. I think that’s everything. That’s all the things we have.

Amy: That sounds so fun actually. I love that because when we can, I think, talk about it and bring humor to it, it just seems to kind of break some of the tension, some of the stigma, some of whatever, and just make it so real and so reachable. And we can just talk about it, work on it all together. I love that so much.

Jennifer: I have one other thing, I’m so sorry.

Amy: Yes. No, please do. Yeah.

Jennifer: If there’s anyone listening who is a social worker or a psychologist or anyone in the kind of health field or anyone who wants to become a parenting coach. I also train other people in the Connected Parenting method so they can take it out to people in their world and their field. So I think the next one is starting November 3rd.

Amy: Okay, amazing. So we will put links to that in our show notes, make it easy. I guess my last question I just want to ask you, is there anything else I should have asked? Do you have any last thing you want to just leave with our listeners before we go?

Jennifer: I have a million, but this one’s really important. So I forgot to mention, this is really, really key, I call it limbic bonding or baby play. This is a really important way to get a very quick uptick in oxytocin. It’s 10 or 15 minutes a day, not even that much time if you don’t have it where you’re rubbing noses with your child and you’re looking them right in the eyes and you’re tickling them and you’re talking to them like a baby or you’re showing them baby pictures. And that is a phenomenal way to get oxytocin flowing.

And if you literally do the calm technique and that, it will change your child’s behavior, just doing that will change it. If you have a child that’s really difficult and really challenging and you think, really, I have to do that. That’s the child that needs it the most. The child you least feel like doing this with is the child who needs it the most. And when we work with people, we teach you exactly how to do that, but it’s medicine. It’s medicine, to make sure you do it every single day.

Amy: So let me just follow that up with a quick question because I actually have this in my notes to ask you. I’ve had a comment lately because sometimes I like to do stuff kind of like that with my kids. But as they’re getting older, I’ve had people give me feedback sometimes that they’re afraid I’m babying my kids too much, which I’ve found interesting because I try to raise really independent, really capable, very self-confident capable kids.

But I do, I talk, my teenagers, we come up with nicknames and we baby talk a little bit sometimes or have our secret symbols and goof off. Is there a thing where you can be babying them too much or what does that look like?

Jennifer: Absolutely not. The more they feel filled up inside, the less they need it from anyone else, and the more independent they become. And then it becomes this healthy and they’ll tell you, they’ll be like, “Come on. I’m over that.” They’ll just tell you, but most of the time, they don’t. Most of the time they absolutely love it. So no, the exact opposite is true.

You can baby them by doing things for them that they’re capable of doing and say, “Oh no, you can’t do that, mommy will do it.” That’s different. But just connecting in this delicious kind of oxytocin fueled way, it does the exact opposite. It strengthens them from the inside out. It is medicine, that is the medicine. And there’s no negative side effects. And you don’t need to pay for it. It is literally filling them up from the inside out. Love is the drug kids need, period.

Amy: So good. Okay, we’re going to leave it at that. And that is amazing. And I’m going to send everyone to you because my gosh, I just feel like we got so much value out of the last, what, 45 minutes, 50 minutes. So thank you so much for coming to share with us and having this conversation with me. I know I’ve learned a lot and I’m sure that everyone else is going to appreciate and be able to take some of these tips too.

Jennifer: I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you so much, it was delightful. Thank you.

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Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website planningplaytime.com. See you next week.