Ep #104: Vulnerability: The Secret to Connecting with Your Kids with Kristina Lucia

Do you ever hear one of those just simple tweaks that you’re like, “Oh my gosh, why hadn’t I thought of that? That’s so good.” And it’s so simple and easy to implement and you can do it like immediately. I got one of those from today’s podcast and I can’t wait for you to hear it.

So today I’m having a conversation about emotions and feelings and how to talk to kids about emotions and feelings and improve communication with children. And my guest, Kristina, shared an idea with me that I don’t think I’d thought of before, but my goodness, I really liked it. And it’s just a simple, simple tweak when we’re having a conversation with our kids and instead of saying, “Well, back when I was a kid,” and she’ll tell you what to do instead. I loved it. I hope you will too. The conversation is 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: Kristina Lucia, welcome to the show. I’m so happy to have you on today.

Kristina: Oh, thank you for having me. I’m so grateful to be here.

Amy: Okay, I have to tell you, I am obsessed with children’s books. I always have been. So when I get to have an author on, it makes me really happy. And you are an author and illustrator, is this? Oh my goodness. So that’s so amazing and I’m excited to get into it. But I also want to just kind of give our listeners really quick before we get into it, a preview of what we’re going to be talking about today, which is feelings and emotions and communication with parents and how important this is.

And so this is where we’re going and I’m really excited about it. But maybe just tell me how you got into writing, like what made you decide to become an author and then this topic that you really get into with helping children and parents talk about feelings and communicate better.

Kristina: Oh, such a great opening. Yes. So I actually have been an artist since I was seven years old. I was raised by both my parents are not creatives. My dad is a medical engineer focusing on cardiovascular and my mom, God rest her soul, was a lifetime educator focusing on English and special needs. My father still is very successful in his field. My mom was very well respected in her field. I’m the oldest of three and they had this overly creative child and it was like, what do we do with her?

And it really was like a fish out of water because for parents out there that are listening, the mindset you need to be successful in both an educational and engineering field are very, it’s just a different mindset than a creative. And they sensed I had these creative aspirations.

And my mother literally took my art that she had from me and brought it to a local art teacher, Mrs. Gaquin was her name. Normally she didn’t take children until they were at least nine years old or older. I was seven and a half and she said, “I see potential in your daughter. I will take her under my wing.” And she did. And yeah, so I was very fortunate that I got taken on so young.

And Mrs. Gaquin was really an amazing teacher because she taught me something that I still carry on to this day. She taught me both technique and how to play as well with my art. And I say that because she was teaching me techniques that I still took courses on with both my art careers. Both my degrees are in the art. So she was teaching me at seven years old how to shade, perspective, mixed colors. She had me working in multiple mediums.

I mean, she really was teaching me things that some artists don’t learn till they’re maybe a little bit older, but she started me very young. I realized it was because she knew I needed that discipline. And also she knew that with technique, you have to do it 100 million times over before you’re even comfortable with it.

Amy: Yeah. That’s how we learn things. There’s lots of repetition. But she also let you play with it, which I think is so valuable because that’s where that creativity side and getting to explore and actually do something new and play is just so good for our brains, right? And so how lovely that she would include both of those things.

Kristina: She did. And she always let me choose my own subjects, even if it was, I always, all I wanted to draw was animals. And then I started drawing people in my teen years. And it’s ironic because now, eventually one of these days I’ll figure a way to show people my full art portfolio, but it’s everything from Disney characters to what I do in my current series to Italian cars. I’m a dancer and all my instructors love Italian cars. So like I draw Maseratis and Ferraris.

Amy: I got to draw Italian cars. I love it. That’s so fun. Okay, so like going to your books though, these books are about feelings, but we were talking before we got on and one of the things that I thought was so interesting that you were talking about is that you talk about feelings and books and it’s kind of this way to maybe help improve communication with parents.

Talk to me a little bit about that and then I have some follow up questions because you said something really interesting that I think would be really helpful for our listeners. But maybe just kind of start talking about how, why did you decide to write books about feelings? And how did you maybe write them for children and parents?

Kristina: So I actually grew up in an environment where I was unfortunately abused and bullied in multiple settings. And I developed a shield of not being my true self. A lot of people didn’t know thing like my art, for example, like very people knew I was an artist. You know, I hid a lot of things and I had one of those bottom moments that I feel like so many of us go through and I realized like I made a choice that I want to live a better life. Something’s not right here. I need tools.

And so my first day of therapy, my therapist handed me the feelings list and I had no idea how to answer the question. She asked me, how are you feeling? I didn’t know how to answer. She might as well been speaking to me in Japanese. I had no idea. Through that, I realized, and that’s where going back to what I said about Mrs. Gaquin teaching me both discipline and play. I relate to that with my own healing because we all have an inner child and critical parent. And it’s really about living in harmony with the two.

And I feel like with my art, because it’s so ingrained in me, I’m able to pull from that with my feelings and with my healing process. And for me learning to talk about my feelings was a huge thing. So when I’m around, for example, like one of my immediate family members, we were having a really deep conversation about something. And I noticed when I calm my voice and I speak calmly and I say, this really hurt me. I was really frustrated when this happened and I’m able to spell out my feelings in a calm way, but not in an accusatory way. My other family member was able to understand me more clearly.

And even as an aunt and a godmother, and this is also something else I’ve realized through my journey, like I am a toucher and I am a words of affirmation person. And I’ve noticed, okay, I need these things. And my nephew who I love to the cows come home, he isn’t necessarily a toucher. And whenever I see him, all I want to do is clobber him and he’s four now and luckily my niece who’s seven months is a toucher, so like we’re good. Like I can hold her and hug her.

But even that, understanding people’s boundaries and giving them the space to meet you halfway. I’ve seen how, like for example, with my nephew, he always comes looking for me. Like he’ll always come and find me somehow. And then he’ll command me and we’ll be on our own like playing in the other room where all the adults are all sitting at the table, like adults having conversations and I’m playing with garbage trucks.

But I’ve noticed that with adults too, when we give each other space and we recognize, oh wait, they’re frustrated, or they’re stressed, or they’re depressed, or they’re anxious. Like I remember once, it was actually, it was actually my birthday party of all things. I invited my instructor because one of his other students was also working at the restaurant where I was having this gathering. And so I said, “Oh, you have to come jokingly,” not thinking he would come. And I clearly remember because this is one of those restaurants where the music gets pumped up and like it’s like a club even though it’s a restaurant. And his energy was so tight, was so tight. And I was like, okay, he’s stressed. He’s clearly uncomfortable. How do I help? How do I ease? Like, how do I make him feel more comfortable?

And so seeing that, like seeing all these situations in my life and seeing where for not just from my, my side, but also from the other person’s side, when I’m able to recognize their feelings and also be able to say, “Hey, you know what? I’m overwhelmed right now. I need a minute.” or, “Hey, can you help me with this?” or just give people that space to process it and also vice versa, process their feelings, how more effective things are, how much better communication comes, how much deeper our relationships grow.

And I see this especially with the kiddos. You know, because I read a lot and so I work a lot with schools and one of the biggest things I say when I do events is I really, really am adamant about sitting on the floor or even if the kids are on the floor and it’s not appropriate to sit on the floor, I try to sit as low to the ground as I can. Like if I’m on a stage, I’ll sit on the stage so I’m not on a chair on the stage because it’s all about relatability, you know, meeting people halfway.

Amy: You know what’s so interesting is we’re talking about this, the image that came to my mind was I had this experience and I was in a school helping in a classroom. This is when I had really young kids. I think my oldest was like in kindergarten. And I was helping at a party and there was another mother there and I felt like she was like feeling obligated to take care of me and to like be like, I don’t know, like, like she was feeling like she needed to serve and clean up after all. Like I don’t know, it was really interesting. There was a language barrier because English was her second language. She didn’t really speak English.

And I just wanted to talk to her and be able to say, “Oh my goodness, I see you and you are valued here and you are on the same level as me and we are good and just, just like express gratitude for the effort that I see her putting in to her child.” all these things, right? And my Spanish wasn’t good enough for me to be able to say the things I wanted to say. I had a limited vocabulary to say what I, all the things I wanted to say that I was feeling inside of me. And it was so hard and I’m like, I just, and I couldn’t express it all. And I felt so limited and I still to this day and it’s been a lot of years, like 15 years, and I still just like, it haunts me a little bit because I wish I could have said what was in my heart.

And I think when we don’t have the vocabulary for emotions, we have a language barrier. And so it’s so important to have the safety to speak our emotions, but also to have the language for it. And you know, we start out maybe with some basic ones. I’m sad. I’m mad or whatever. But like learning how to go deeper and it is good to be able to say I feel sad or I feel, you know, whatever. But learning more, like more vocabulary, more context, more depth.

And so one of the things I’ve been doing as an adult person, I love Brené Brown, and she’s written a book. Yes, yes. Okay. So Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart, and I feel like it’s like the encyclopedia of emotions. And I just have it to for myself to try to get better language around emotions so that I can use it. And then as my kids are getting older, of course, when they’re little, we’re not going through the whole encyclopedia of emotions, but trying to have more language for it myself so that I can use it. And then modeling that for my children.

And I think when we can name emotions, it gives us space. It gives us a little more perspective because it’s all like right up in our faces. Like we are feeling all the feels and it’s right here and all we can see is this thing that is happening right now that is the whole biggest world and it’s everything. And then, you know, our parents looking at it and they’re like, but it’s just because the cup is pink. And the pink cup is fine. It’s not a big deal. But it’s everything in that moment, right?

And so being able to say, I’m just so like frustrated, or it just feels so unfair, or I feel like, and then when they can start expressing, I feel like this person always gets the thing that they want and I never get it. And then you start seeing it’s not about whether the cup was pink or green, it’s about something so much deeper, right? But being able to have that and step back, I feel so frustrated. I feel like something, you know, whatever and being able to express the feeling. And it’s so powerful for adults and for children and all of us, which is why I love that you wrote these books.

So tell me about these books. One of the things we were talking about was that in your books, you said that an adult, as an adult, shares like an experience of having that same emotion, not like, well, back when I was a kid, right? So tell me about why you did that, because I love that you said that. I’m like, I need to know like more, tell me more, because I have my own ideas about it, but tell me why you did this.

Kristina: I did that because as an entrepreneur, every day you’re learning something new. And to quote our favorite Brené Brown, and I promise I won’t swear because I don’t think that’s appropriate. We just met. But Brené Brown, I remember her, like I was listening to one of her podcast episodes, I think it was the very first one she recorded. She’s like, okay, get away. If you’re on kids, get away, get away. And she said, okay, F-ing first time. It was that freedom of you’re not supposed to have it perfect the first time.

And I feel like that’s a gift Mrs. Gaquin gave me as a child, as an artist, because yes, she saw a lot of potential and talent in me and I’m also a competitive dancer. And I am an environments where you don’t get it right the first time and you do do the same skill 100 million times, but I think there’s this kind of mentality that we have to get things right. And I becoming an author, so my writing was actually the glue of the puzzle of all my creativity that looped everything together. But once I discovered all these things, once I discovered I was an entrepreneur, I discovered I was a writer, it was like, I’m a huge Robert Redford fan. So if anyone here has seen The Candidate, you know what I’m talking about.

At the very last scene when he’s in the hotel room with his manager, and he says to his manager, what’s next? That literally is how I feel as an entrepreneur. It’s like you figure one thing out and then what’s next. And it’s the same thing as life. Like everything I’ve done in life, like I lived in, I grew up in a small farm town in Massachusetts and then I moved to New York at 18 and I’ve been living there ever since. And I had no idea I was take a subway. So all these things.

So dialing back to what you were saying is I felt it was so important to showcase that as adults, like we’re still learning. Like we’re still growing. I think again, as an artist, as a creative, as an entrepreneur, I’m always in environments where I’m always learning. I’m always striving to be better. I’m always striving to learn. And I feel like unfortunately there is this mentality like I got the A in the class, I’m done and you’re not. You’re not done. You have to keep working. And I think part of another part of this inspiration pulling again from my nephew and I do have a Godchild and I do have a niece now and but especially with my nephew, it was just a little, I think because it was the, you know, it was like my first blood niece and nephew of a blood, you know, it’s like your own blood.

And I remember so clearly, his name is Caleb, when he was officially walking at this point, but he couldn’t go up the stairs. And so when I’m, when I was there, when I was on my visits, like I would follow him up up the stairs and I would see how one time he fell back into me, thank God, I was right there, you know, and he didn’t cry when he fell, he just cried when I adjusted his pants, you know, to make sure he didn’t fall. And I was like, of course you’re crying now, but it was that moment of seeing how he didn’t give up.

He kept trying, even when my sister was sending me the videos of him wanting to crawl and learning to walk and even those moments, and I know everyone out there has probably seen this, like I’m always so touched when kids feel that accomplishment putting on a rain boot. And I see how they, yes, he, I saw him get frustrated. And even my niece now, Adeline, like I’m not saying she doesn’t get frustrated or she doesn’t get, but she gets up and she tries again just the way Caleb would.

And I think, wow, if a little tike can do this, I have to embody this as a grown woman. Okay, if I write to someone about an idea and they don’t write back, I got to keep going. I got to keep going. So in my books, I wanted to showcase that. I wanted to showcase that as an adult, it’s okay to admit like, I need to ask for help because we do need to ask for help. Like we do, like I still need to ask for help. I still need to ask for advice.

Most of my, both with my business, with my dance coachings, with my editor, I mean, a lot of it’s me asking like for translations, for guidance and vice versa so that I can be a guide to others so that I can speak fully when I’m talking. So that really was that inspiration because I think it’s much easier to be condescending and brush something off as like…

Amy: Why is this such a big deal? Like, why do you care so much? It’s a cup. Like, it doesn’t matter.

Kristina: Yeah.

Amy: And I think we do that because it doesn’t feel like it’s, it’s just a little thing. And yet, this is like, but these things do feel big later and we get to model how to kind of deconstruct it and figure out what’s really going on and how to problem solve through whatever our feelings are that we’re having. I thought it was so interesting when you said you did this because I think you brought up some interesting things, right? It is less condescending maybe to say that.

And I think about it too, I had a kid once, and I don’t know how this happened, but we’d gotten to, it was kind of a teenage kid with me and she said something like, and I don’t remember exactly the conversation, but it was like she felt like she was never going to be able to like live up to what I did because somehow she seemed to think I had it all together. And like she didn’t feel like she did at that time in her life. And so there was this huge gap. First of all, I’m like, you live here. Like you know I don’t have it all together. How did that even happen? I don’t know. But children aspire to be like us, right? They do. They watch us, they admire us, they aspire to be like us. We’re the ones they look up to, right?

And so when we say back when I was a kid, it just feels so distant and so far away and my kids will be like, your childhood was weird. It’s not even relevant. And I’m like, whatever. But when I say things like right now, and when I say something like, oh my goodness, my thing that I had is different, but I can kind of relate. I know how it feels to feel frustrated. I had this frustrating thing this week and this is what happened to me this week and I was so frustrated because of, you know, this thing that happened. And it doesn’t feel like you’re taking away from what they had because you’re like, I don’t know what your frustration feels like, but I know what mine feels like and this happened and I felt frustrated. And here’s what I did with it. What do you do when you feel frustrated? And I think it just brings that back to reality.

Like you said, it’s like we’re adults, we’re still learning. And so they get to see that it’s, we’re not like some impossible to reach like, I don’t know, whatever thing as adults, we’re just human and it’s okay and we’re practicing and we’re learning and we’re getting better at it and better at it and better at it. And we can, we are going to keep talking about these things for the rest of our lives, hopefully, and keep having these conversations. So I love that you did that. I think that’s such a neat thing to include a really good perspective to have.

Kristina: Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, because I feel when we’re able to be vulnerable, we’re able to learn. And that’s the biggest thing because like in light of what you said, like this past holiday season, so Christmas is my favorite holiday. And so I do go in it like it’s like my Olympics. I go in full force and fall is my favorite season. So it’s like a lot of excitement for me personally. And there were things this holiday season that triggered me, but I was able to talk myself through it because of these tools I have from therapy and my own healing. And because I was able to do that, I didn’t have an outlash that could have happened. And I was also, but also that vulnerability gives me that space, gives us that space to learn in general.

And so I feel like it’s so important because there are in life what you said about the pink cup, it usually isn’t about the pink cup. It’s all these things. And that’s what happened over the holidays. And like, it happened last holiday season too. And I realized going into holiday 2025, like I have to actually talk more directly to the people I’m around and say, hey, I am doing ba ba ba ba ba. And like really communicating.

I feel vulnerability sometimes I think is seen as a weakness. And I know for myself in my own journey, people have ridiculed me for that sometimes. And it’s not because I wouldn’t be an entrepreneur. And one of the biggest things I do when I talk to, especially when I first started my business and I didn’t realize I was a writer yet, I remember talking to this one man, he made balloon animals. And he was kind of like telling me what to do. And I was like, no, wait, how, how, how, how, how?

And it was funny because everyone on that call, the other two people on that call, why they were there, I didn’t know, but they were kind of assuming like I was behind everybody else. And I was like, no, no, no, this guy. And I kept poking him and asking the how, how, how. And he left out a big piece of the puzzle. He had an agency behind him that was booking him for all of these parties. That’s how he was able to do all these other things.

And it was just frustrating. I know, I remember feeling so frustrated because he wasn’t explaining things. He wasn’t talking things through. He was telling me, “Oh, this is what you need to do.” But it’s like, “Okay, you missed a huge step here.” It’s like telling a newborn, “Okay, you need to walk out and walk down the street now.” No, you have to learn to roll over and then you have to learn to crawl and then you have to learn how to prop yourself up and then you have to learn to take a couple of steps and then you have to learn to walk with the toy and then you have to learn.

And most things in life involve a lot of steps and that’s not a bad thing and that’s how we grow more fully when we embrace all the steps and we evoke it. And I might be going all over the place, but another big thing that I noticed too is as when kids are little, especially when they’re learning to walk, we cheer them on. We cheer them on when they’re using their push toys to learn to walk. We cheer them on when they fall and we encourage them to get back up. And if we can do that more as adults, how different would this world be? How different would it be if we’re cooking something on the stove and oh, maybe we put in the wrong spice and we’re like, “Hey, that’s fine. We learned something new. Like maybe we’ll do it better next time.”

Amy: Yeah, new experiment. Yeah, you know. I kind of, I love that piece that you’re talking about around, the piece that I’m kind of pulling from what you’re saying is being able to talk about emotions with children as an adult from now, like, “Hey, this week I felt an emotion too and it was this, right?” And that piece of vulnerability. And I think that is so good because I think maybe part of the reason kids feel like we’re so, I don’t know, on this other level as adults is because we act like we are sometimes and like we have to know everything because we’re trying to like create confidence and I don’t know, whatever, right? And I think that there is this idea that vulnerability is weakness. I think that’s a thing we’re trying to correct. There’s some good authors out there like Brené Brown like changing that story, right?

But learning that being vulnerable is not weakness, that it’s, it’s part of, I would say, grit and growth mindset and all of those things that I kind of felt like you were pulling into this, right? So we are learning and we’re going to keep learning and we’re going to have feelings and it’s going to be good some of the time and some of the time it’s not and that’s okay. It’s okay to not be happy all the time. It’s okay to have experiences and feelings and this is healthy. This is part of being alive and it’s so good.

And so I love when we can have these kinds of conversations. I love that you’re bringing it into books because it’s such a good time for parents, I think, to be able to communicate so naturally about these things because you’re reading a story about it. And someone in the book is expressing, you know, if there’s an adult in the book expressing that emotion, it’s kind of like, yeah, and then you as the adult while you’re reading can have that conversation and kind of model those conversations for kids and it’s just such a lovely introduction into it that you’re just building it into your bedtime or whatever.

And so I love that you included that. We are like out of time, but I wanted to ask you, I know, time flies. I want to ask you where can they send people to find your books that we’ve been talking about?

Kristina: Yes, absolutely. So I can I’ll give you my Amazon link. I’m on Amazon. I also have my own website too, and I have all my books on my website. I also do coloring printables as well, because coloring is another thing that I do, another avenue in addition to books that like also promotes us to be able to unwind and practice our communication skills with each other. So I love to share my current printable with you and I have so much on my website and, and I’m also on Instagram, so I’ll make sure I give you that link as well. So you have that because I’m always posting about that too.

Amy: I love it. Perfect. We’ll post it on the website. And I know we kind of ran out of time to talk about coloring, but I love activities that kind of use hands but leave the brain open to do things. And I know you were talking about that with coloring. I’ve actually been doing this recently. We’re on a bit of a puzzle kick at our house. And so we do like puzzles together because it’s winter and my husband and I used to go out and sit on our back porch every night and just talk in our swing. And this was like our, we put the kids to bed and go chat in our swing. And then I’m a wimp and it got cold and I’m like, I’m not going out in the swing. There’s snow. I’m freezing. So our new like winter tradition is puzzles.

And so we’ve gotten really obsessed with puzzles. And then the kids will come in and do them with us. And we’ll just be sitting there and our hands are busy and we’re, we’re like doing things together and creating and solving together. But your brain is kind of free and it’s not like overstimulated like we were talking about. And so you can talk and you can think and you can have these really deep like conversations and let things come out that I think are so valuable. We’ve had some good puzzle talks. There’s been some good puzzle talks with my little kids.

And so anyway, the coloring stuff, so we’ll send people to your Instagram so they can hear more about the coloring because we didn’t get a chance to talk about that today, but thank you so much for coming on and sharing today your story and about your beautiful books. And we will include the links in the show note listeners so you can go and check those out and get to try some of those out and see if they can help you kind of start having more of these conversations with your kids and, and think about that idea of talking about emotions from where you are right now. Not just back when you were a kid, but like what’s something that you felt this week and how can you kind of start that conversation? Because I think that’s kind of a powerful, powerful takeaway for me for today. So thank you so much.

Kristina: Thank you for having me.

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