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Rachel, hello and welcome to teenagers.
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Untangled the audio hug for everyone supporting someone going through the tween and teen years. I'm Rachel Richards, journalist, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters. Now what's one thing can we teach our kids that will make the most difference to their lives? Today's guest is convinced that teaching our kids emotional regulation is vital.
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What do we mean by emotional regulation? Why is it so important, and how can we teach it? Dr Jody Carrington is a psychologist who's written three best selling books, speaks on hundreds of stages globally each year and hosts the podcast unknownly. She's also a monthly briefly, being a healthy host for compassion.
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Welcome to the show.
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Thank you for having me. That long list has made me exhausted so much of a business
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with My own experience, both in terms of around me, definitely,
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relationship, we're all born with three ways to regulate emotion. We get them for free. Okay, regardless of age, race, religion, socioeconomic status or gender identity, we all come with three for free fight. The job of great people is to teach so I'm girl and Adam. Don't know if you get a video on this, but if you're just listening to this, I want you to just imagine in your mind's eye, okay, I want you to put your hand up, hopefully you're not driving. Put your hand up and tuck your thumb on the inside of your palm, okay?
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And they're wrapping your face with your thumb turning.
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Perfect system. Around your family at your prefrontal cortex, and it's what sits right above your eyeballs. It's a perfect it's but it's your eyeballs. Is where your prefrontal cortex sits, and it houses everything you've ever learned in your life. Okay, so for you and me, if I were to ask you your first childhood phone number, if I were to ask you the pin number to your bank card, you could many people could regurgitate that. For me, my childhood phone number was 3363234, I can tell you the pin number to my bank card any bank card, any language you speak lives up there, any musical instrument you play, if you play a musical instrument, if you've ever play a sport, everything you've ever learned in your life, including how to use your words, how to be kind, how to apologize, anything you've ever learned in your life. So my friend Dan Siegel said, I want you to think about this like a lid. Is on, you have access to everything you've ever learned in your life. So if you've ever looked at your children and you were proud of them, they were using their words, or they were being kind to grandma, or they're finally being nice to their siblings, you're like, that's who your baby is. That's them with their lid on. And rarely do we judge our babies in this capacity. We usually judge it in any other way, right? But that's who they are. Like. If you've ever went on a second date in your life and you you decided to go on that second date because your prospective partner's lid was on, yeah, have you ever heard this? She's flipped her lid. He's lost his friggin mind. That's the definition of emotional dysregulation. You don't lose your ability to be great. You lose access to it. And when you bring a baby home from the hospital, yeah, when you bring a baby home from the hospital, how do they let you know what they need? They cry. They lose their friggin mind. Because there's not a lot up there yet that says, Listen, mom, gonna need a bum change or Dad, let me out of here. Grandma's voice is annoying. They lose their friggin mind. And you know what the job of big people is? It's in the words of Ram Das, who's a dead guy, a philosopher, a yogi, changed my whole life. He said these, this string of words that changed everything for me as a mom and a clinician. He said this, we are all just here walking each other home. Oh, that's wonderful. Nobody gets out of here alive. And the only job of. Parents is the walking and so what's interesting is it's in our bones. You don't have to learn this, you don't have to read another parenting book, you don't have to do anything else. You already know moms. You already know Dad, what you need to do, because it's in your bones. You could read my book, which was really helpful, but most other things you already know. And I'll tell you why, the first sound that every human felt first on this globe was what Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, the heartbeats of our mamas, and whether she's alive or you have a relationship with her or not, your understanding of emotional regulation is in your bones. Because what we don't need in times of distress is somebody to tell us what to do. We need somebody to show us.
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And if the big people aren't okay, the little people don't stand a chance. You can't tell anybody how to calm down. You have to show them. Never in the history of telling, I mean, anybody still married. Never in the history of somebody saying you, oh, relax, Rachel. Did you go? So here's what's interesting. Yeah, good point, right? When you were this is a universal response to crying infant. Okay, in your country, my country, globally, okay, regardless of age, race, religion, socioeconomic status or gender identity. If you're emotionally regulated and come upon another human and infant that's crying, you are neurobiological, wired to pick that baby up. Okay? If it's just you and that kid, you come upon an infant in a car seat. Nobody else is around. You're like, oh, you wouldn't just walk by and be like, oh, shoot, I hope somebody gets that one. You are neurobiologically wired pick that up, and even if you've never held a baby, like, if I were to zoom in into Afghanistan or Nigeria or Guyana or Scotland or Newfoundland, Canada, and I were to watch somebody come upon a crying infant, they would pick that baby up, even if they've never held a baby, and they would engage in a rhythmic exchange in an effort to regulate them, to put their lid back on, to walk them home. So here's what's interesting. If babies have people walkers in their world that are regulated, they start to learn how to regulate their emotion, because people are showing them that. So if you come you can imagine the exact opposite of this. You come from multiple generations of abuse, neglect and trauma. Big people are not okay. They're dysregulated. They're losing their mind, usually for their own because nobody's done it for them. You can't give away something you've never received.
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And our greatest job is in the walking because you can't teach anybody whose lids flipped. It's neurobiologically impossible.
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You cannot learn with a flip lid. And historically, what we've learned about behaviorism is we know people are best when their lids are on, because they're predictable, they're calm and they have access to the best parts of them. So my forefathers of psychology were sitting around, I imagined this in my mind, and they were like, how do we get people to be calm?
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Because we need people calm on this globe, what are we going to do? And my forefathers of psychology, the boys, I like to call them, Watson and Skinner, were sitting around, and Watson was like, I got it. Come to my lap. Look what happens when you shock a rat. Oh, son of a gun, it stops the behavior. Huh? And then Skinner was like, I got the other side of that. Come to my lab. Look what happens when you reward a pigeon with colored water. Oh, shoot, it does more pecking. Let's do that with children. Okay, let's do the rewards and consequences, because look how effective this works to getting people back home. The interesting thing is, there was a lot of other things that were going on when we implemented the concept of behaviorism. Because the the problem with the strict behavioral model is it works. If you have a big enough stick, you can get anybody to comply. Okay, just ask Yeah.
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My husband pointed that out. I said, torture doesn't work. He went, No, it does actually work. It does the question, lives with family.
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The question is, then, what does it leave you with? And historically, what we didn't know we had to measure was relationship and connection, because that was built in think about in one generation, Rachel.
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Think about the square footage of the house that our grandfathers were raised in, and the square footage of the house in which we raise our babies. It is estimated that our great grandparents looked at their children 72% more of the time than we look at our babies today. So if you were parenting from a strict behavioral model, it was kind of okay, because I always give this example. So I grew up on a farm in rural Alberta, Canada, and if we were out chasing the cows, and I'm not very fast, I'm five foot frig all in real life, and so if I couldn't catch up, and I'd let some cow through the gate, my my dad would be like, What the hell Jesus H Murphy, what are you doing? And so then I'm devastated, I'm sad, but within 30 minutes, we're back in the house, sitting around a kitchen table the size of a coffee cup.
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And he may never have said to me, I don't remember this. Him saying to me, baby girl, I'm so sorry. But he would say, pass a piece. Or he would say, What time is your ring neck game, and so there was opportunity to repair and bring them back home, and there was enough connection in that community to walk us back there. Now, in this last decade, we've never seen anxiety depression this high in kids.
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For the first time in history, we are dying faster from emotional illness than we are from physical illness, and we are worried about. The kids. I am not worried about the kids.
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I've been a child psychologist for over 20 years. I've assessed and treated over 1000 kids, and I had not one time have I met a bad baby, not one time I've met a lot of babies who are emotionally dysregulated. And the issue is, you can bring your kid to me all day long and say, I need you to see my kid every time I say, Absolutely, I'd love to assess your child, but I need to see you first. And people say, Oh, you think I'm the problem. You think I'm the problem. And I say this, no, I'm nodding my head, yes, no, but you know the solution? Because if you are not okay, I can do a quality, gold standard treatment an hour. I can charge you 300 bucks an hour. I can do all the things and assessments important, because I need to know what's going on with that baby. What's going on with that baby. The treatment lies within the system, because emotional regulation is a practice again and again and again. The job of little people is to lose their mind. The job of big people is to walk them home again and again and again and again, and it's exhausting, which is why we've never needed so much important, like support for parents. This is why your podcast is critical. This is why we need to, in solidarity, come back together and say it's never been so hard to parent, because this world is so disconnected and overwhelmed. We got so many stupid people on dumb platforms telling people erroneous and harmful information, like, did you have a dolphin assisted pool birth? Oh, you didn't. Okay, shit. Well, your kids gonna have
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ADH, yes. And this whole, this whole kind of narrative that if you didn't do all of this before the age of two, forget it. They're broken.
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Surely it's never I
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wouldn't do what I do if this is true. Now, the data is really clear. I mean, zero to two, particularly early on, is really critical in terms of neural development. Okay, so we want to the greatest investment, if I were to ask, and I, you know, I spoke at the United Nations just over a year ago, and the question to me was, what do we do about this mental health crisis? And I said, here's what's interesting, we're in an understandable human response to a loneliness epidemic, and your greatest intervention is in the big people, teachers, parents, police officers, those doing the walking, because if they're not okay, the people we're serving don't stand a chance. And one of the loneliest groups on the planet right now are young moms.
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Because if you're breastfeeding in the middle of the night, I mean, I our oldest is 15, and so when I had him, so introduction of the smartphone is 2006 introduction of the forward facing cameras, 2009 we saw a massive decline in emotional health in about 2013 when I was breastfeeding our son at 2000 in 2010 you know? And I overwhelmed as many parents. I mean, I had worked as a child psychologist.
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I wrote a best selling book called Kids these days. It's so friggin good. If you watch me with my own personal children, you wouldn't buy the book. I wrote that thing when I was regulated.
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So what is so great, exactly, yes
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is, how do we walk each other back home? And so back then, in 2000 I had access to one major opinion that could derail me when I was feeling incompetent, and it was my mother in law, you know, because I'd be like, Lori, I don't know what to do. Would she be like, Oh, just put some booze in his bottle. And I'd be like, listen, I think things have changed a little, right?
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This is the advice for me, you don't do that.
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Is dip their soother in a little rum. And so I was like, Oh, buddy. I think times have changed a little now, mamas who are breastfeeding in the middle of the night, scrolling, emotionally exhausted, hormonal, they have access to 48 million opinions, saying things and usually with with people in platforms that are wearing creams, and they're just got their shit together. It appears that they do. They don't Okay.
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And so this constant comparison with a first generation of parents to have access to social media, we are so concerned about kids, they're gonna be all right, I promise you, our greatest intervention and support right now is places like this for people to land to say, Is this supposed to be hard? Oh, my God, never harder. Can you do it absolutely. And the only way we do this well is if we continue to fill each other up.
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Come on back home to the best parts of us. Your baby's gonna be okay. If you're invested in listening to a podcast called teenagers untangled, your babies are lucky to have you full stop.
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Well, you're so lovely. Thank you. And I'm learning all the time too. And the whole point is that I'm making mistakes. We're all making mistakes. It's fine. It's about how do we get back from those mistakes?
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You only need to get this right 30% of the time. So the data would suggest that we're going to screw this up 70% of the time in order to create emotionally regulated children.
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You will have bad days. You will be overwhelmed. You will be fighting with your partner or their father or their mother, you will be losing your ever love in Jesus mind. Let's like assume that full permission.
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Okay? Our job is to figure out how we stay relate, regulated and connected to the best of our ability, at least 30% of the time. Okay? And we can do that.
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That's gonna be okay. In this very noisy, busy world, we need to watch what we're consuming, staying very connected to the people who also get it and bring us back home and back home. I mean, our shoulders are dropped.
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Our tongue is from the roof of our mouth. That's what an emotionally regulated body feels like. You can wiggle your toes, your breath is easier, and typically speaking, Rachel, we wake up checking our phones.
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We're. The first generation in history who, who've done that, yeah, and our cortisol is through the roof before we even step into our kitchens, we've strapped on an Apple Watch.
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That's a cortisol shooter. It's shooting us. Everybody's connected to my Apple watch.
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Okay? My parents checking your sleep, checking your sleep, before you put Yeah, I got a ring, I got a watch, I got a phone. I got all this data that suggests to me your disaster.
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That's why I want to throw a punch everybody. At least we got a reason, you know, but they think the greatest thing we will ever teach this next generation is understanding the importance of your neurochemistry, the connection between your head and your heart. Because you can drink all the kale and do all the yoga, but it's a waste of time if you're doing that in a dysregulated body, I need to bring you back home so you can show your babies how to do that again and again and again, and it's never an end game. We won't arrive.
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Yeah, and I loved one of the things you said in your book, and it was about the real critical importance of children having at least one adult in their life who is irrationally passionate about that child. And I learned that actually, after I'd had kids and I'd had dogs, and the dogs, you know, when you come home, they are absolutely wild, crazy as soon as you walk through the door, and I remember thinking, wow, why did I have kids? I mean, I could have just had the dogs and they love me immediately. But the whole thing was, I thought, What about if I met my children and my husband every morning with that much enthusiasm.
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And it's, it's amazing.
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Toni Morrison, she wrote The Bluest Eye. She's a most beautiful author. She calls it the light up. And give you examples of this all the time.
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You know, you watch airport reunions or a grandma who hasn't seen her grandbaby for a while, that's the light up and and we're so good at it. You're right. Animals do not give us the negative feedback that humans do, so we light up much easier. Yeah, but we all need it, and the ones listen this is so critical, the ones who need it the most are the hardest to give it to our personal husbands. I mean, like, I lit up on our first date. I was so impressed. We've been there at 18 years. I was so impressed with him. He's got his PhD in ruminant nutrition, which basically means he feeds cows.
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And I was so impressed he had a pickup truck and, like, he was so smart, he judged cattle all over the world. I was enamored.
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Okay, could not wait. I was so Oh, do you want to check cows?
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Yes, I do. Oh, my God, do you want to like, now I'm like, Are you kidding me? You got a couple of bloats in the yard. Won't bump agriculture so hard. I'm saving the children of America.
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Okay? So what happens is we lose the light up, and it is still the greatest gift you can ever give anybody. Acknowledgement.
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Do you know I heard this quote the other day that just blew my mind. Rachel, I think I need to write a whole book around it.
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Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
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Yes, yes, what?
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And we are allowing up devices to steal our attention. And I noticed when my kids were little and I'd started coaching parenting in inner city London for parents of younger kids, and I realized I would be talking to my kids, and I'd be like, Oh, you're so cute, and I love you, and I love you, love you, and then suddenly there'd be a ping on my phone, and I think, oh, no, I need to pay attention to that. And they'd get a cold shoulder. And once I was aware of that, it made me much more careful about the way that I related to my kids, because why do they deserve that from me?
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And that that intentional. You know, putting your phone away or whatever when they're around can make such an incredible difference to this connection and this relationship, right?
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It's so freaking hard, though, isn't it? We've never been this attention fragmented, and we've never been this sleep deprived as humans. We'll stay up and watch Netflix till two o'clock in the morning because we just got to get one more show. And we were watching a movie last night, and Evan, our middle guy, was so excited for us to all watch this together.
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So everybody was down there.
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We're watching this movie. And I'm, I was like, I'm very connected to this game called Block blast right now. I'm, I'm just committed to getting the highest score. So while the movies on, I like, pick my phone up and just like, play a little game. You know, that's attention fragmentation. So you're doing two things at once, right? And we do this all the time now, double red, greening, yes, they call it, yeah. And so he said to me, he pauses the movie, and he said, I we're not we're not continuing until you're ready to watch him. And I was like, me, my husband was like, as I'm always saying to him, like, put your phone down. And he's like, Okay, I have to leave my
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phone in another room. Otherwise I'm tempted. I will pick it up. And I know that when we're together, I need to pay attention, because it's so tempting. While we're on this subject, repair is critically important, too. He did a very simple mom, you know, and then you say, oh, yeah, sorry, sorry, but we can't always feel regulated. We can't always be in a mood that Kate that where we can walk our kids home, and that requires us to somehow get from there to the point where we can either apologize or we can support them in some other way. What are your suggestions? How can we manage these sorts of situations? Or, you know, if they come home and there'd be. Artsy with us, and you just want to slap them or just shout at them, and
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yeah, so I this concept of repair is really interesting.
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So the gottman's John and Julie Gottman have done probably the most profound work on relationships and connection.
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Okay, and I often think about this from a couple's perspective. So the greatest predictor of marriages that make it in marriages that don't come down to one thing after they're like multiple decades of research and they can distill it to one thing. Okay, so it's not how much money you have, how much sex you have, how much a like or different you are. The greatest predictor of couples that make it in couples that don't is your capacity to repair, whoa, because we're critical for us. And you can't tell anybody how to apologize.
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You have to show them, one of the greatest things you will ever do with and for your children is to apologize to them, apologize to your partner in front of them. And mean it, I've often said this. I mean, I remember I read this research earlier, when I was writing, feeling seen, and I was like, Oh God, we got to demonstrate this for our children. So Aaron and I had a big fight about something like ridiculous. And then I was like, Hey, kid, get back in here. And so like, we would apologize in private, you know, we would figure it out, or he would send a text or make me laugh or something like that.
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And I'd be like, Okay, fine, fine. That was ridiculous. I'm sorry. I'm like, now we have to go apologize in front of the children. He's like, what? I'm like, well, they need to know that they just had it. So, like, I would haul him out and be like, okay, babes, Daddy would like to say something to me, and he's like, love it. Mom said she's sorry. And I like, I that's not how it went, but I think it's, it's so fascinating, you know, like when we, if you think about the square footage of the house that you were raised in, you know, if your parents had a knock down, shoot'em out, you knew about it. If they fixed it, you also knew about it, right? And we, we don't have that same capacity, and so you can't give away something you've never received.
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And so sometimes, on purpose, it's a lot of our capacities to repair, respond, and, you know, sort of demonstrate what that looks like. Because, you know, I say this to teachers all the time. I work, you know, lots in the education system, because teachers spend more waking hours with our babies in the middle of a school week than their parents do and they are teachers. Thank you. Oh my gosh, they're the greatest investment right now of all time. Yeah, we've done a historically very poor job of that in many countries. But the idea is, you know this capacity to know that we're going to screw it up. We're going to mess it up. We come from a generation that would suggest might is right. Do not show weakness.
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Consequences must be immediate.
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The hard part about that is that when your lid is flipped of consequences immediate, it is falling on deaf ears, not because your kids cannot attend to it. It's because neurobiologically, they can't.
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So I often think about these words that I think are so critical these days, more than anything, in this attention, fragmented, overwhelmed, noisy world, you have to collect before you direct, which means you have to pull a prefrontal cortex on before you can teach or consequence or make sense of the behavior. Consequences are not bad. It's when you do them that matters. If you're consequencing, when somebody is emotionally dysregulated, it's a waste of time. They'll say things like, Oh yeah, fine. Take it away. But then you're losing your iPad and your iPod. They're like, Fine, you suck. Take it all. And in your head, you're like, holy shit, we're in trouble, right? Yeah, that baby's not gonna go next. Yes, that baby's not regulated, right? So when that happens to me, I always think, and it happens often, I need a timeout.
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I'm a massive believer in timeouts for you, not them, okay, because I don't know what we think, but when we send a kid, you know, out into the hallway or to their bedroom, what do you think they're doing in there? Just deep breathing.
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There? Just deep, breathing and reflecting. They're 12. They're whatever. They're 34 doesn't matter. It never gets old. I take a break and and, and then my lid comes back on, and then I teach, right? And it's like you're the you're the greatest investment of all time for your children. And I promise you, your babies are doing okay. I promise you that when we think about them as regulated humans, their job is to lose their mind.
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I say this, parents often, I want their hearts to get broken.
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I want them to get fired from their jobs, all in the context of the safety of your relationship. Because as we walk them home, we're creating scripts for them to figure out how to do that when they get away from us. And part of the issue is we just want. Most of the time, when I ask parents what they want for their kids rates, they say this, I just want them to be happy. It's so dumb, right? Because nobody's happy all the time. You and I didn't wake up this morning be like, Oh, I'm just so happy with this 50 year old body, or I'm just so happy with this person I married. You know, we're not happy up. My greatest wish for your children and mine is that they have the capacity to feel all the emotions, and one of the greatest strategies to pull a lid back on are these simple words.
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Ready Tell me more. Yes, curiosity,
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because when people are losing their minds, I hate you, Mom, you suck. This is so stupid. I'm never doing this again, you fat cow. What we want is to teach in that moment. Hey, enough. Watch your tone. That is, use your words. You don't speak to me like that, all of which are true. It's not if I'm going to have that conversation, it's when, if I take a I do this and go, that's not my kid. What is happening here? Tell me Hey, tell me more. What am I I say this to my kids, often, mostly, I say this to my team. But. What am I missing?
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What's the hardest part? I like that. What am I missing?
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What's the hardest part? And typically, when I say, tell me more or what's the hardest part, I don't want it. I don't want you to tell me more.
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I've already figured it out. I just want you to listen for the love of all that is holy, but I am Tell me more and what is the hardest part? Are really strategies for us as parents to get lids back online, and that works for your partner, that works for your employee, that works for the you know, upset person at the coffee shop. The fundamental prerequisite of all of this is that it requires our own emotional regulation. So you are the greatest investment right now of all time, not because you're the problem, but because you're the solution. And we spent a whole sort of decade talking about self care, which is such BS, because you can drink all the kale and do all the yoga, but if you're doing it in a dysregulated body, it's a waste of time. So our greatest intervention right now is spending a lot of time wondering about where our shoulders are and dropping them, giving ourselves permission to be like it's okay to rest to nap. We come from a generation where our dads would have said to us, taking a nap is asinine. You know, you're lazy. But our dads were raised in a generation where when they came home from work, nobody could get them my work starts generally when I put my babies to bed. And so taking a rest during the day, napping, putting my shoulders down, doing a workout class, whatever the deal is to sort of regulate my system. Doesn't happen anymore on nine to five because we were supposed to make hay while the sun shone, because that's all we had time for. After that, everybody went home. Shops were locked up. We had no access to anybody's and Sundays were a day of rest, so you had to work your ass off Monday to Friday. And then the society built in this rest concept for us, we're not we're not made for this much noise. We're not made for this much stimulation. We don't even pee, and we're checking our phones. Then we, as we said, you know, we strap ourselves to watches and rings, and then when our babies ask us a question, we're like what? Because the concept of burnout isn't you, isn't isn't a function of the work you do. It's a function of your ability or lack thereof, to rest. And we are not good. We don't have a script for rest.
00:27:49.769 --> 00:28:04.069
And I love your point about how your you want your child to go through dysregulation in your own family, in your home, in your relationship, more than anywhere else, because you're the person who's most connected to them.
00:28:04.069 --> 00:28:23.889
You're the person who can do that walk home. And also, what I found fascinating was I recently wrote a sub stack about this, is that we don't actually have to have an answer. And it took me a while to get that. And, you know, I remember saying that to her mother, and she said, always be like, I need to give them an answer. And I said, No, no, no, you don't. You're not that good with a soft landing place. You just need to be able to listen
00:28:24.609 --> 00:28:25.450
collect before
00:28:25.450 --> 00:28:27.309
you direct.
00:28:25.450 --> 00:28:27.309
Collect. I love that.
00:28:27.490 --> 00:28:31.569
In fact, you don't even have the answer most of the time, and that's what you know.
00:28:29.409 --> 00:28:40.409
When you come home from work, you don't want the answer. If you just said to your partner, oh my gosh, this was awful. I hate people. This is so dumb. I want to throw punch everybody.
00:28:38.129 --> 00:28:40.409
You know what I'm gonna quit?
00:28:40.409 --> 00:28:52.649
What we don't want is somebody to fix it. We don't want someone to be like, oh, did you drink your water today? Did you go for a run? Hey, you What you want is somebody to be like, Okay, let me pour the wine. Come here.
00:28:49.529 --> 00:28:52.649
Tell me more. Tell me more.
00:28:53.129 --> 00:28:55.970
Because, you know, I'm not gonna quit. Generally speaking, right?
00:28:56.089 --> 00:28:59.869
I may feel like it, but you know, I know what I need to do.
00:28:59.930 --> 00:29:21.670
And like, let me give an example of this in my practice, when people come to me and just say, You know what can I see you? Dr Carrington, I'm feeling anxious, depressed. Should I leave my husband? Should I ever talk to my mother in law again? I don't know, but you do. And my job is to walk you home. My job is to get you back out of your head and into your heart. Because you're like, This is so stupid.
00:29:18.789 --> 00:30:38.369
She's such a cow. I did this. I don't even know I should have married my husband. Some of those things might be true, but we need to bring you back to the best parts of you, to regulate you, to walk you home. Is what the best what our best friends do. It is, what's it's what it is, what the best leader does, and it is certainly why we fall in love with people. And when we fall in love with people, we fall in love with people because they had, at one point, the capacity to regulate us. Now, the longer we stay with people, we tend to want to fix them, because if they're not okay, we're not okay. Yeah, like in our first date, I could listen all day long to my husband. My husband, or our second date where he's like, you know, I have this cold and I'm feeling yucky, and I just just like, whatever. And like, in the beginning, I was like, Oh, baby doll, I'll make you soup. Now, we got three kids on the ground together, and you know, we're trying to lose our minds every single day, keeping everything afloat. And if you were saying to me, I'm so sick and tired, I'd be like, Oh, you're fine, because now we're in this position that if he's not okay, I'm not okay, he's my person, and so my intention isn't to sort of thwart his efforts for connection. It's self serving. I want him to be okay, and I'm just concerned that if I like, give in to this process subconsciously, then he's gonna stay whiny and. Broken, and I'll have to do all of this alone.
00:30:35.069 --> 00:31:10.970
And so the ID cards on your hands, which is so true, and women, you know, I historically, women are much better at this than men. I have two sons and a daughter. So this isn't about feminism versus patriarchy. It's patriarchy. Has been such a system that kills us, the high street of suicide in most countries around this globe are middle aged men, because we have come from generations that indicated this. Boys Don't Cry, and you see, anxiety and depression will not kill you, not talking about it might. So this idea of, tell me more of bring me into an emotional language where I can regulate your neurochemistry. It is not only life changing, it is life saving.
00:31:10.970 --> 00:31:19.389
What we really stood out to me was you were talking about how the kids who need this most are the ones who are they're harder to deal with.
00:31:16.809 --> 00:31:34.329
We've got we've got teachers who listen. We've got all sorts of people who listen to this. If you've got a child who's quite defensive, who's lying, cheating, stealing, whatever, and they're difficult to reach, are there suggestions you can do for how? How can we help that child kind of calm down and feel safe with us?
00:31:34.750 --> 00:31:47.609
This is my favorite. So I worked 10 years on a lock psychiatric inpatient unit for kids. So the hitters, the kickers, the biters, wants to tell you to f off. I love those babies, and I'll tell you what.
00:31:42.149 --> 00:32:49.230
I learned nothing in grad school that equipped me for hanging on to some of the most dysregulated babies, because I was trained to ask this question, what is wrong with this one? And they came with litanies of stacks of diagnoses and files the size of the St James, and it'd be like, This guy's a hitter, a kicker, biter. This one got ADHD, odd CD, he's whatever, whatever attachment disorder. We always ask, what was wrong with this one. We never asked, What happened to this one? And when you start to ask that question, what happened here. It evokes in us as parents, caregivers, teachers, empathy, and empathy is the antidote to burnout. I promise you, I've assessed and treated that 1000 kids, and I have not met a bad one. I've met a lot of people who don't ask that question because we're we want them to be regulated. The intention is good. We want to fix them. We want to give them the strategies, the motivators and the triggers that's going to keep them calm, but you have to figure out why they're doing it first, because you can give them all the anxiety regulation strategies, but if they're getting the heck beat out of them at home, do not do that.
00:32:44.970 --> 00:32:53.009
You have to ask what has happened here first. It doesn't excuse or condone the behavior.
00:32:53.009 --> 00:33:06.289
Don't get me wrong. Okay, it's not okay to hit and kick and lie and cheat and steal and tell people laugh off okay. But there's a reason. Every single time there's a reason, really, yes, and the job of big people is to figure out what happened here, not
00:33:06.289 --> 00:33:09.289
what's wrong here. Yes. And so go low and slow, as you said in the Oh
00:33:09.289 --> 00:33:46.170
my goodness. I'll give you an example of this. So oftentimes, how I started writing books and speaking is so after I left the Children's Hospital, I met my husband, we had our babies, we moved to a small town, I opened his practice, and I started to consult with schools in a rural part of our province, and there was not a lot of resources. And so teachers would be like, Oh, my God, we don't know what to do with this kid. We have never seen a kid like this. And I'd be like, okay, which is quite common, you know. So I would come in and there would be a file and motivators and triggers, and, you know, individual program plans for these babies. And, you know, all the best intentions, all these people just exhausted and overwhelmed and so committed to this child. And I would say, Okay, this is beautiful work. I just have a few questions. Okay, who can tell me his middle name?
00:33:46.170 --> 00:33:48.930
What level is he on in Fortnite?
00:33:46.170 --> 00:35:40.949
What's his favorite chocolate bar? Oh, yes, but color up in his eyes. And when I start to get a team of people who can tell me those things, you watch that baby do amazing things, because when you're acknowledged, you rise. And when we don't feel seen or acknowledged, we lose access to the best parts of us. So we have to stay in fight or flight just to get connection. We call it attention seeking. I call it connection seeking. And if all you know how to get connection is to say, shut up, you fat cow, or my hoodies up, my hair's down. I'm not listening to anybody. We can only treat people the way we've been treated. The chaos is necessary to learn the com you have to get emotionally dysregulated to learn how to regulate. You could read all about building biceps and getting fit, but you have to do the work in order to do that, right? If you never done a push up in your life, you're not going to get a bicep. Okay? Same is true for emotional regulation. If I need to learn how to breathe through something or use my words or be kind, somebody has to show me that create that neural pathway again and again and again when my lid is flipped and they bring me back home, that's creating a neural pathway that that baby will have access to when you're not there, and you have to put a lid back on umpteen million, 100,000 times. That's why the job of parenting and teaching and educating and grandparenting. It's why it takes a village, because none of us are this good to do it alone, and we've never seen, never seen such a high rate of single parent households. We've lost access to grandparent and grandparent like figures in the last 10 years like we've never seen. The job of educators has never been this important, because they are actually not doing the work of literacy and numeracy anymore, because you can't teach literacy and numeracy to emotionally dysregulated babies. And so my biggest point in our country has been a lot of conversations about training of educators, because if you get into this to teach literacy and numeracy. To get out. You have the holy calling of building relationships with humans.
00:35:37.650 --> 00:35:44.130
That's your job. And if you do that, well, you will teach them astronomical thing, fascinating.
00:35:44.190 --> 00:35:50.009
Are there things that we can be doing on a day to day basis where we can say, we can put these things in place and this will help us?
00:35:50.009 --> 00:36:18.070
Yes. So there's five things that I talk about in kids these days, and there's a million, but I'll just give you my top five, and they sort of go like in succession. Okay? So one is sort of before we even have that ass holery ish like behavior come up. So I want you to show genuine interest in the things they care about. So I want you to spend a little bit of time thinking about, like, what gets them right now, and it's usually things that you don't care about, like Starbucks, Sephora, silly, ridiculous, like Tyler, The Creator, same Clown Posse.
00:36:14.210 --> 00:36:23.829
That's all music that they listen to, right? Clash of Clans. I just downloaded Clash of Clans on my phone so I can learn how to fight battles.
00:36:23.829 --> 00:37:06.230
Battle of the clan. I can't remember some kind of game that both of my boys are playing right now. And like, you can't support video games. Yeah, you can. You got to meet them where they're at I am over Taylor Swift. But I'll tell you, I know every single word to every single song that woman has ever and she's, you know, an icon, obviously, but I you know, so we got to show genuine interest in the things they care about. And likely you will not give a rip about it, but seeking first to understand this is Stephen Covey's basic stuff on leadership. He stole it from the Bible, and he basically said, Seek first understand before being understood. So trying to understand a 13 year old right now is asinine. Because you're like, what is the snap face?
00:37:03.409 --> 00:37:53.009
Show me how you give me a filter. How do I do this? If you don't know what's cool right now, ask them awesome. Just awesome. Yeah. So number one, showing genuine interest in the things they care about. You know, get to get to play video games, listen to their music, go for it. Okay. Number two, getting eyes is really important to me these days, okay? Because we look at our kids far less than any generation prior to us ever have. And so I think about one of the greatest places to get eyes with your child. And people say, what about, what if they're on the spectrum? What if, like, you know, if they're visually impaired, obviously physical proximity matters. But I even babies on the spectrum who are neurodivergent make eye contact to judge safety. And so I want you to really notice. You being able to see their face is critical, because you can tell more about what's going on with your baby, rather than texting, you know, are you okay? Fine?
00:37:53.610 --> 00:38:13.309
And you take one look at their facial structure, you know, right? You've raised these babies. You give them birth to them, you understand what's going so getting eyes becomes important. One of the most important things you can ever do with a teenager these days is go for a drive. Cars are so critically important these days, you don't know why, because they're locked in. They can't get out, and it affords us the only place where physical proximity is still
00:38:13.309 --> 00:38:15.429
a thing, okay?
00:38:13.309 --> 00:38:18.190
And you're not, and you're not, and you're and it's not too intense. It's like you're side by side.
00:38:19.929 --> 00:38:54.090
So really critical bedtime, regardless of age, still becomes important. I have a 15 year old, so I always have to knock now before i do a tuck in, but he's often in bed before I am. So even if I can do one night a week, one night a month, just to say, Hey, can I just step in for a second? I'd sit at the foot of the bed, grab onto their feet, especially if the lights are out. Those are sometimes the best conversations my 13 year olds both. I tucked them both in last night for the first time in a couple of weeks, and Evan just said to me, Oh, this has been a long time since you rub my back, mom. And sometimes I get the best conversations, Mom, did I tell you that this kid was smoking weed? Tell me more.
00:38:55.349 --> 00:38:56.750
That great phrase. Tell me more.
00:38:57.710 --> 00:39:13.730
You know, my Libby said to me those days, oh, my God, I got a huge crush and a boy named Jamie. And so it's like, really creating those spaces really happens in that the double oh seven secret trick for me is food you cannot chew and swallow with a flip lid. It's neurobiologically impossible.
00:39:14.029 --> 00:39:19.989
And we come from a generation, right? We come from a generation where food is seen as a reward.
00:39:17.349 --> 00:40:41.489
You pick up your toys, you get a snack. You You know, do all these things. I'm going to reward you with a cookie, whatever the deal is. And the hard part of particularly the Children's Hospital, I would walk around everywhere with snacks in my pocket. So gummies, cookies, Skittles, whatever, because you can't regulate a kid with a carrot stick. Don't be dumb. Okay? When we just had the worst breakup of our life, we were like, Oh, I just want a salad. No, we wanted ice cream and wine. Okay? And kids are the same, not the wine part, but they when they're really dysregulated, I would come onto a unit and like, for example, like, if I take you to the nth degree and I have a kid hanging from the ceiling and they've destroyed something. I would walk in and be like, This is a tough one. I and the nurse would be like, if you give the kid a cookie, if you will, Ward this behavior. So the idea would be, I would sort of get eyes if I could, and if they were grunting or hissing, I have to stop too speaking, because if you can't produce language from a neurophysiological perspective, you can't process it. So if kids are going like this, and you are like, use your words, that's ridiculous, because they can't process it yet. So if kids can't produce language, if he's so distressed that he's just going like this, to me, my only job is to do this. Okay, and the second he can start to swear at me, I now know. His lid is coming back on because he's now accessing his Broca's and his www area in the left prefrontal cortex.
00:40:38.670 --> 00:40:41.489
Okay, so he goes, like, shut up.
00:40:41.489 --> 00:40:44.550
Get out of here, you stupid cow.
00:40:41.489 --> 00:41:14.590
The question is, Is now the time to teach? Should I be like, we don't use those words here at the Alberta Children's Hospital, no, because what would happen is his letter just flip right? It's not time yet, so I might say to him, oh my gosh, this was a rat, a bad one. Hey, Jacob, yeah, she's a stupid cow. She made me do my math sheet. I bet I just got some snacks here. I'm wondering, do you want some some snacks? I don't like snacks. Do you got any cookies? Oh, let me see. I think I got some here.
00:41:11.509 --> 00:41:22.150
And the second you can chew and swallow, then your lid comes back on, which means you're safer for me and everybody else.
00:41:17.349 --> 00:41:59.570
And now I teach now I say this is a bad one, Hey, and if you see kids do this, take that deep breath. You can't do that with a flip lid. So now I know he's coming back home to me, and now I'm gonna say she, you know what happened here? You know? What should we do next? Or whatever the deal is? And he might say, like she told me, if I didn't finish my math sheet, I couldn't go out for recess, and I built that forward out there. And I don't know how to do math. I know math is hard for me, too, buddy. Okay, come here, come sit here, over here. Let's figure this out. And then we talk consequences, if that's what's necessary. Then we talk about what's next. Okay, it's like a two part process. I need to get that lid on, and then we teach.
00:41:56.750 --> 00:42:05.750
So he might say, well, this is a really bad one, and I wrecked everything in here. Okay, well, what do you think we should do?
00:42:02.269 --> 00:42:38.489
Well, I could, I could clean it all up, yeah. I mean, I could help you do that. That's part of it. And I think maybe we need to apologize to Mrs. Okay, can you help me? Yeah, I can. Because if nobody's never apologized to a kid, they can't give it away, right? So I am gonna show you how to do all these things. And now maybe you miss recess, or maybe you have to do your mass shooting, or whatever the deal is, the consequence is really relevant. The teaching has just happened in the bringing home, that's what's critical. Okay, you've noticed this. Have you ever seen a kid lose their friggin mind and they're just like, so awful, and then you bring them back home, and they're the sweetest. And I say, like, what do you think we should do here to fix this?
00:42:38.489 --> 00:43:03.769
Well, okay, I'm gonna, I'd like to pick the whole school, and I never need to go for recess again, you know. Because the thing is, when people are flipped, like you and me, when we're flipped, I say asinine things. You know, my kids play hockey, and when I get emotionally dysregulated on the bench, as a mom, if they call a wrong thing, I'm like, what was that burns dog with? You know, you're 13, and in fact, the ref is 13. I'm a local psychologist.
00:42:59.630 --> 00:43:15.909
I'm screaming on the bench, right? We all get emotionally speculated. Our job most of the time is, how do we bring it back home? And the last thing I always think about is, this is never an end game. They are such slow learners. It doesn't mean you're not doing it right.
00:43:16.090 --> 00:43:21.909
People will say this to me over and over again as we develop programs globally for schools.
00:43:18.550 --> 00:43:55.789
You know, this relationship stuff doesn't work. No, no, no, no. Look at me. It shouldn't work because it's getting undone every night. Their job is to lose their mind. Our job is to walk them again and again and again. And where I want you to judge your parenting behavior is with other people's children, you're an amazing parent with other people's children because it's easier to stay calm. This is why grandparents tend to be better with their grandkids than their own personal children, because you have less skin in the game, so you stay regulated more readily. I want you to judge your kid in the presence of your best friend, if you sent your teen over to teenagers to my house, you know, would they be okay? Rachel? Would they?
00:43:53.670 --> 00:43:55.789
Would they use their manners?
00:43:55.789 --> 00:43:57.170
Would they be kind to my children 100%
00:43:58.130 --> 00:43:59.630
and people are always saying that to me.
00:43:59.630 --> 00:44:06.829
They're like, your kids are the most amazing kids. They're so polite, they're so, you know, helpful. They're constantly asking what they can do. And I'm like, really, is that my Yeah,
00:44:07.550 --> 00:44:15.849
so you're that's my child. Your kids should be the worst with you. Then you're doing something right? And if you've ever got that compliment as a parent, you can retire.
00:44:16.269 --> 00:44:25.809
You're crushing it. Your babies are lucky to have you. You cannot judge your success as a parent by the feedback of your children in times of live flip.
00:44:22.029 --> 00:44:43.650
What we're looking for is how they're doing outside of your presence, and that if they collapse when they come into Your presence at the end of the day, at the end of a long school day, when they've been holding it together, or when they're on sports teams and they're doing their thing, and they come home and like, this kid's a jerk and this coach is awful. Like, yeah, tell me more. It's not how I want you to speak about people, but we're going to get there. I think, yeah.
00:44:43.648 --> 00:45:00.349
And I love I love you saying, Yeah, tell me more. And I think one of the things that most of us really struggle with, and I know that I've struggled with it I'm getting better at it, is not getting too emotionally engaged in the story they're telling me.
00:44:57.048 --> 00:45:19.148
So the problem is when you pick up their problem and decide that you've got to hold the problem, because when you try and take the emotion from them, you end up dysregulate. And my daughter told me, even explicitly, it was amazing. Probably when she was about 14, she said to me, mommy, one of the reasons why most kids won't tell their parents what's going on is because they think the parents don't care or they think the parent will overreact.
00:45:20.529 --> 00:45:34.889
Two ends of the spectrum, Wow, she's so profoundly right, and yeah, and she's exactly right. And so that's the greatest work, I think, of parenting in this season of such overwhelm and such influx of data that suggests the kids are not okay.
00:45:31.809 --> 00:45:46.170
They're exposed. To way too many things, which is all true but but our regulation, our time off social media, our capacity to find people who can remind us that we're doing a great job.
00:45:43.110 --> 00:46:08.750
Seek platforms and communities like yours, like mine, that just say we're in this together. If we can't build villages like we used to in our small communities, let's do this in places where there's educated platforms where we can find data and support and connection and understand that we're none of us are going to get this right, and our only job is to do it again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, and the kids will
00:46:09.829 --> 00:46:11.389
be all right.
00:46:09.829 --> 00:46:40.409
Is there anything else you'd like to say to any parents who maybe are beating themselves up about about their parenting. You know, because I always say to people who listen to my podcast, you're a great parent, because the fact that you even taking time out of a very busy day to listen to anybody talking about parenting means you're seeking support and doing your best with what you've got. What do you think with parents who are who feel bad about losing it, and, you know, having to say sorry, and
00:46:41.550 --> 00:47:49.769
Okay, so first of all, it should be this hard. I've said this so much. My husband and I were, like, looking at each other the other day, I was like, you know, I don't think we want kids. I think we're out. I think we should let them know that the ship was still out. It was, it was a good time. I mean, we really enjoyed we've had some nice memories, but we're done now, okay, because it's only Holy moly. I remember when we brought the twins home, I had three under two, and I said to my dad, I can't do this. He's like, Oh, babe, like the little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems. And I'm like, it gets worse than this. And now, you know, with three teenagers, I mean, I've never loved them more. I don't think, because I just, I'm enjoying this phase so much better than any other phase, same. But I've also just, I've never felt this incompetent, I've never felt this scared. I've never felt this like level of failure and and I know this stuff, right? If that's any solace. Like, as I said to you, like, you know, best selling parenting book, I know this stuff in my core, I lose access to it all the time, and I think normalizing that experience, particularly in this season where we've never had a script and so much to compare to we our greatest investment is not in our kids, it's in each other.
00:47:49.769 --> 00:47:58.369
That's wonderful. Thank you so much for filling up our cup and making us understand how important it is to just stay regulated and find our way back to it,
00:47:58.369 --> 00:48:01.849
and you'll screw it up.
00:47:58.369 --> 00:48:03.230
That's okay too. Okay. Come on back. And I we got you,
00:48:03.769 --> 00:48:12.710
yeah, how many times a day? Not just whether you do it. I mean, so if people want to get hold of you, because I'm sure they will, what? What should they do?
00:48:12.710 --> 00:48:26.590
Yeah. I mean, I would love your community to be a part of ours, where Dr Jody carrington.com is com is where everything lands on our website, and I do lots of fun stuff on social, we've created just such a safe, connected community where we have hard conversations. So come on over.
00:48:28.570 --> 00:48:34.829
Thank you very much. I'll put the contact details in the podcast notes.
00:48:30.670 --> 00:49:14.269
That's it from us. If you want to find out more about my podcast, it's www.teenagersuntangled.com. I'm on substack. You can email me at teenagersuntangled@gmail.com I'm on Instagram. All the socials, some of them are better than others, and that's pretty much it. Have a great week. Big hug from me. Bye, bye. You.