This is a two-part podcast series in conversation with Justin Coulson, leading psychologist and parenting author. The conversation was so good we had to split it into two series. So in this first episode we talked to Justin about helping tame that tantrum. Well actually no, we're really just talking about emotional regulation. How can we help our children to move through hard emotions with some simple and tangible strategies that you can actually use today?
UNKNOWNMusic
SPEAKER_02Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education and stepping into the wilderness, however that looks, with your family.
SPEAKER_00Each week we'll be interviewing experts that truly inspire us to answer your parenting and education questions. We'll also be sharing stories from some incredible families that took the leap and are taking the road less travelled.
SPEAKER_02We're your hosts, Vicki and Nikki from Wildlings Forest School. Pop in your headphones, settle in and join us on this next adventure. Hello and welcome to episode three of the Raising Wildlings podcast. I'm your host, Vicky Oliver, and today I'm really excited to be chatting to Dr. Justin Coulson, one of Australia's most respected and popular parenting authors and speakers. Justin is sought after for his expertise in family life, relationships and wellbeing, and something we're particularly interested here at Wildlings is resilience. And he's also the founder of Happy Families. Connection is at the core of what Justin does, and he's passionate about helping others to transform their relationships and their lives for the better. He is the author of five books and is a three-time best-selling author. And he knows a lot about parenting and positive psychology. He lives it. He and his wife, Kylie, are the parents of six daughters, so he really walks the talk. So Justin, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. We're really excited to have you here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's great to be with you, Vicky. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02You're welcome. I know you must be really busy right now because everyone would be wanting your advice on all things COVID parenting and COVID schooling. So the first thing I wanted to know is how you're managing to find some space in Yeah, you
SPEAKER_01know, we're in a really wonderful position where I work from home. Well, I mean, I travel the country normally, but my job usually involves getting hundreds of people together in a room. So we're all meeting there and sitting close together so I can talk to them. And that job has kind of vanished in the last couple of months. probably imagine. And so I'm running my business from my study slash office downstairs. My wife only recently stopped working part-time because she wanted to concentrate on things more at home. And so COVID has kind of, well, you know, we're in this remarkable situation that not everybody gets to say that they're in. We've had time together as a family. I've been working from home. My wife's been supporting me and supporting the kids. And while we could do with a few more bookings, that's not going to happen for a while so we're making the most of what we've got and we're we're actually really enjoying it i know that that sounds like rubbing salt into the wound for some people but that's that's where we're at
SPEAKER_02yeah and i i think that both nikki and myself are in a similar boat it's actually been and i think for a lot of people a chance to really slow down and re-evaluate and maybe pivot a bit especially when it comes to business so um i can understand how there there are silver linings sometimes to these situations i think
SPEAKER_01there are and you know the I've got about somewhere in the vicinity of 140,000 people who have pressed the follow button on to follow what I do there. And I asked the question similar to you, has this been a good or bad experience? And if it's been a good experience or a bad one, why? And the overwhelming response that I got from people on my Facebook page was we're slowed down. We're connecting with what matters most. We love the fact that we're not driving from A to B to C to D every afternoon after school. And this is kind of how we want our family to feel. So I think that while there's been some tragedy and while there's been some real financial pain uh for people who are going through issues with job losses and so forth in the main the message that i'm getting remains somewhat optimistic and positive i think that mostly it's been good for families with obviously skin infection
SPEAKER_02yes i think i'd have to agree with you there i think one of the the questions that we've had a little bit and i'd love for you to to help us with this one is how is we as parents help our children or even ourselves to regulate our emotions right now particularly in response to like the pandemic but also in going back to school after having such a long period of time off school it's not like school holidays it's a completely different situation
SPEAKER_01right so emotional regulation or management is a kind of a tricky thing and and i think i'd like to go to the very beginning and talk not just about us but also our children and then tie it all together because there's there's so many things that we could discuss here and they all kind of interconnect and and it's important that we're across them all so first off, when it comes to emotion regulation, this means that we're able to use our emotions in the right way at the right time, at the right level, for the right reasons. It's a really tricky thing to get right. And when you think about children and their capacity to regulate their emotions, they don't actually do it at all. Emotional regulation is a thing. They just have an on-off switch. And this is why parents, particularly of preschool, kids under about the age of four or five, they'll say, oh, my child goes from zero to 100 in 1.3 seconds that's not unusual a lot of parents think it is unusual but that's normal because children don't have a volume control it's either on or it's off they're either or they're not they're either angry or they're not whereas as they get older once they get past about five or six they start to really learn how to moderate or regulate or manage those emotions and by the time they're about eight or nine they've usually got a decent handle on it under normal non-stressful situations now i emphasize this for two reasons the first reason is most people are surprised to hear that it's eight or nine but i want to be really clear on that because every now and again my heart breaks when i see a mom or a dad usually say to a little boy sometimes it's to a girl but it's to a little boy would you stop being such a sook would you stop being such a girl crying and and that kind of a thing to a six-year-old or even a seven-year-old who still doesn't have the developmental capacity to regulate those emotions What it's actually saying to the child, they're internalizing the message. I'm no good. There's something the matter with me. I'm faulty. I'm dysfunctional. So I wanted to emphasize that really clearly. The second aspect, I said under typical non-stressful circumstances.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01Because I know plenty of adults who still can't regulate their emotions when- A
SPEAKER_02hundred percent.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so there's five triggers that I talk about all the time that really account for what I think would probably be 80 to 90% of the emotion regulation challenges that we experience, both as grownups and for our children. And the easiest way to remember these five triggers is to use the acronym of the German policeman who tells you to stop. So, Vicky, do you speak German? Do you know how a German policeman says stop?
SPEAKER_02No, I don't.
SPEAKER_01He says halt. Paint a picture. Halt, H-A-L-T, halt. And if you're driving through the intersection too fast, he halts you. So we're going to add an S to halt. And these five letters, H-A-L-T-S, form the acronym that highlight these typical triggers for emotional regulation disorders. H stands for hungry. Have you noticed how hard it is to stay in control?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yes. I think that a lot of parents do realize, well, I think there's some parents that do realize it and some that don't, but definitely can understand when their children are in need of a good feed and things will change pretty quickly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and even though we know that now while we're listening to this podcast and having this conversation, have you noticed how often, even as somebody who knows this stuff, you'll be able situation your child's going bananas and you're trying to get things done and you've got another child over there on your left another child over there on the right and this one here that's actually screaming and you don't actually pause to think i wonder if this tantrum is being triggered by hunger even though it's been yes i fed them because they had an early lunch and then they were you know off playing outside all day or
SPEAKER_03whatever
SPEAKER_01so so even as obvious as it is and even though it's you know going ding ding ding of course when we're in it's actually really hard to remember so h for hunger is the first the first uh issue that gets in the way of our children and even us as adults regulating our emotion. One is A for anger. And it's really important here to highlight that when we're angry, that already seems to suggest that we're probably at risk of not managing our emotions particularly. But it's worth taking 20 seconds to understand where anger comes from. See, anger is a secondary emotion. We're angry because we're angry. We feel angry because we're something else and we don't know how to deal with that something else. And so we get angry about it. And the two primary drivers of anger are profound fear and and profound sadness. So if I'm afraid that my child was about to run across the busy road, what do I do? Do I look at my child and say, I was so scared when you went near the road? Not you. No. Say, don't you dare go near the road. You know, we get angry at them. But it's not an, that anger is secondary. It's the fear that was the primary emotion that led to the
SPEAKER_03anger.
SPEAKER_01And so when we're honest with ourselves, we've got to be able to say, why am I actually angry? What am I afraid of? Or, What's making me sad? Is it just made me so sad? And I don't know. And this is usually in the male of our species.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was going to say, it's usually a little bit harder for males to express sadness and a lot easier to express. Or it's more acceptable for them to express anger than
SPEAKER_01sadness. In fact, that may be one of the only acceptable male emotions in some places, which is where we get phrases like toxic masculinity, because this is the only thing that men have ever been allowed to express. I don't totally buy it. that, but it's a general kind of a statement. Now, if we've got hunger and anger making it hard for us to regulate our emotions, well, what does the L stand for? That's loneliness. And I want to highlight when we talk about loneliness that you can be in a room, Vicky, with somebody that matters tremendously to you sitting right beside you. But if you're not feeling connected, you can still feel that sense of loneliness and isolation. When you feel that, then that's obviously a trigger for emotion dysregulation. And you think about our kids, right? So our kids are feeling nervous about going to school. Oh, they're feeling nervous about passing on coronavirus to their grandparents. They're nervous about whatever it might be. And what do we usually say to a child who's feeling worried or anxious about something? Typical parent response that I hear is, oh, don't worry, you'll be right.
SPEAKER_02Yes, absolutely. I see that. And particularly when it's obvious they're not okay, like when they've fallen over even. You'll be okay. And then I think to myself, but they're obviously not okay. It's a reactionary, you know, it's just something that has... crept into our parenting vocabulary. We don't actually realise the impact of what those words mean.
SPEAKER_01It's so much more important to connect with the emotion that the child's feeling or our partner or whoever it is that's having that emotional experience rather than trying to give them advice, fix them, tell them to stop it, calm down or just tell them they'll be okay. Or
SPEAKER_02logic them out of it. Give them a logical reason why they shouldn't be worried or all the reasons why they should be happy and okay, which is not, as you say, it's not really addressing the underlying feeling.
SPEAKER_01Right, which makes them feel disconnected from us and in their hearts even if they're right here with us and so loneliness is definitely a trigger for emotion dysregulation oh by the way we're thinking well what am i supposed to say instead of you'll be right uh just just very quickly i would say something like i would reflect their emotions so i would say you're really nervous about going back to school aren't you or you're really worried yeah or oh you hurt your knee when you fell over come and give me a hug uh yeah we're not actually saying any of it's right or any of it should be encouraged but what we're doing is we're just tapping into their emotional world and we can connecting with them, we can deal with what comes next later. So those are the first three triggers, hunger, anger, loneliness. Then we've got T for tired. Good luck reaping the emotions when you're tired.
SPEAKER_02I think that goes. And the funny thing is when you say all this, I'm like this is the same for adults as it is for kids, but we don't make allowances for children like we do for adults.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, spot on. We just expect that our children will do our bidding. And it's funny because we say to our kids, what do you think, the world revolves around you? Mm-hmm. well, what we're really saying is, well, no, it doesn't. It revolves around me and you're being pretty convenient right now. Yeah. So we need to, and this is why I highlight the stuff because we kind of, we know it intuitively, but we forget it in the moment and we get caught up in our agenda and moving the kids through the afternoon and the evening or the morning routine or whatever it might be. The S, by the way, the last trigger for reduced emotional regulation is S for stressed. So if our children are feeling hungry, angry, lonely, tired, or stressed, they're not going to regulate well. And often, Vicky, they're feeling more than one of them at once.
SPEAKER_02I was just going to say, when you put that combination of those together, then you're really going to have a tough time helping them to move through that when most adults don't have the tools themselves to regulate their own emotions, let alone helping someone else through it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, spot on. So if that's what's going on with emotional dysregulation, our job then is to help our children to regulate their emotions and also to recognize when these triggers are about to kick in. So that was your question. What do we do about emotional dysregulation? Where does it come from? Well, the first thing we need to do is recognize that it's a real thing and that it's a developmental thing. And the second thing is to recognize that there will be triggers and times when dysregulation will be higher than other times. So they're kind of the things to remember. Now, once you've got a child who's feeling dysregulated, who's out of sorts, who's upset, who's screaming the house down and who doesn't want to do this or who's being defiant and oppositional, that's when we need to move into the the strategies and while we could spend a couple of days on these
SPEAKER_02certainly could
SPEAKER_01yeah I'm just going to share two strategies with you and I'm going to start with one one first and then we're going to do the serious one next although you wouldn't believe how effective the fun one could be So underlying everything that I'm going to share here is the importance of empathy. Okay. Empathy is the block of responding to emotional dysregulation. When the kids are upset, they need our empathy. Now, sometimes in real life, I don't want it to sound like I'm talking out of a textbook. So I just want to be in for a second. Sometimes we do need to just look at our kids and say, I know you're upset, but Let's just go and do it anyway. Or we've got to say, you know what? I know you don't want to do the dishes, but tonight it's your turn. Your name is on the list. And unless you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, and stressed all at once, you're going to get in here and do it because this is what we do in our family. We cook and we make stuff work.
SPEAKER_02That's right. And I think that people will often realize that setting firm boundaries isn't i i think people just don't know how to set those boundaries to be perfectly honest is that they don't actually know what language to use to be able to say yes are we accepting your emotions but that doesn't mean that there aren't there isn't a boundary around an action that needs to happen now
SPEAKER_01yeah yeah yeah often when i'm talking to parents about this vicky they they hear me talk about empathy and understanding our kids emotions and they think therefore that uh we're gonna let the kids get away with or they actually do that because they want to be that soft kind compassionate empathic parent and so i i want to be explicit at the outset that this is not about letting the kids have a whinge and a whine. No. They don't have to do anything. But it is about just acknowledging that sometimes it's hard to be a child. So my favourite fun one is this. It's called giving them in fantasy what they can't have. Henry? Yes. You've heard me talk about this.
SPEAKER_02I have heard this. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a brilliant strategy. Paint us a picture so people can use this themselves as a tool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sure. So let's imagine that we're in the shops you know this is the classic thing right you're in the shops with the child and the child says I want a lollipop and you've already had that conversation before you walked into the store no treats today you've had too much sugar and we're just not eating good food today and they're like
SPEAKER_02feels like a very familiar situation yes you've all
SPEAKER_01been there and I know it's stereotypical but but it's I think that it's a useful illustration it's
SPEAKER_02universal
SPEAKER_01yeah when we give them in fantasy what they can't have in reality we we essentially say Wouldn't it be great if, or don't you just wish that? And then you finish the sentence based on what it is that they're asking for. Now, this works for two reasons. When we say, wouldn't it be great if, we're actually saying very clearly, it's not going to happen.
SPEAKER_03That
SPEAKER_01statement draws a very clear boundary. Wouldn't it be great if, don't you just wish that? We're drawing a big line underneath the fact that it's not happening. But what we do then, and let's go back to the lollipop, we might say, oh, don't you just wish that you could have a lollipop? Even though we talked about it before we came in, wouldn't it be awesome? Wouldn't it be great if you could have the lollipop of your dreams? Which colour would you choose? What about if the colour hasn't even been invented yet? What flavour would you have? And then you start to distract, well, not distract, but you start to really... Turn it into a fun game. I remember the one time I did this in the shops with one of my kids and I said, can you imagine if we could get a lollipop that was as big as my fist? And I held up my fist, which is obviously bigger than a lollipop. And my daughter's eyes just went wide. She was like, no way. And I said, imagine if we could get one as big as your head. How long would that last for a week? And she started to giggle. And I said, can you imagine if we could get one that was so big it wouldn't fit in the trolley and we had to tie it to the roof of the car to take it home? We could have lollipops for the next. And, you know, we're laughing and giggling. And then I smiled at her as we got to the check-in. I said, so I wish we could have all that too. But we talked about lollipops before and as much as I wish we could, you know what, this shopping, this supermarket owner gives us bananas and apples and mandarin for free. Which one would you like? And
SPEAKER_02he
SPEAKER_01was like, oh, I have a banana. Now I shared this. I actually love sharing this part of the story. I shared this example in a parenting seminar in the CBD in Sydney one evening. And there was a dad sitting in the second row. He'd been sitting there looking like he was reluctantly attending. He had a shape, a big beard. He had his arms folded across his chest and his legs stretched out in front of him and he was there like I'm here because I have to be and I'm going to get really cranky. And I was feeling the pressure. And as I talked about giving them in fantasy what you can't have in reality, he literally snorted and guffawed in front of everybody. And grumbled to himself about what a stupid idea it was. Anyway, the great part about this story is the next day, maybe the day after, I can't remember, but within 24 to 48 hours, I've opened up my email and he sent me an email. And I didn't know it was him. But in the first few lines, he identified himself as the guy that was sitting there, you know, with the beard and the shaved head in the second row. And immediately I thought, oh, no, what's he emailing me for? Maybe he's a bikey and he knows where I live and he's waiting for my seminar. And he said, here's what happened. I want to tell you a story about what happened this afternoon. He described picking his two children up from school and taking them to swimming lessons. On the way home from swimming lessons, he gets a text message from his wife. Sweetheart, I'm just looking after dinner and I need a couple of things from the shops. Could you please run in and grab X, Y, and Z? So he stops the car. Obviously, he doesn't want to leave the little kids in the car. So he takes them into the shopping center, gets to the checkout. And just as they're about to walk through and have their groceries scanned, one of his kids looks up and says, Dad, can I have a lollipop? And this guy, he says, he looked at me, is there somebody filming this? What's going on? And obviously there was nobody filming, but he thought, okay, I'm going to try it. And so he did. He said, oh, don't you just wish you could have a lollipop? Wouldn't that be so awesome if you could have a lollipop? And he turned it into this little conversation about how nice it would be to have a lollipop that was, I don't know, rainbow unicorn poo flavored or something like that. And he grew up with the kids about the flavor of this lollipop and then reminded them that the shopping center had bananas and apples and they could either go through the checkout or they could go and get a banana or an apple and then go through the checkout what did they prefer and the kids were like oh we'll just go home and he paid for his groceries as he walked out of the checkout having just paid he turned and looked over his shoulder to when there was a lady behind him and a man in line behind the lady and both of them met his eyes and at the same time they lifted up their hands and gave him a round
SPEAKER_02yes
SPEAKER_01that's
SPEAKER_02amazing
SPEAKER_01he said It works. Now, some parents think that I'm being really cruel and horrible, but let me put it in adult context just to flesh it out a touch more, because I think that it's worth it so that we can understand how and why it works. Some years ago, my wife, Kylie, and I were looking to buy a new house. We'd been looking for months and couldn't find anything. We had a fairly limited budget and we've got six kids living with us. We needed some fairly specific things in this house to make sure that we could all fit. And it was turning out to be a real challenge. The market was on the boil. We didn't have the funds. It was just really tough. But one Saturday, as I sat staring at the real estate pages, I found the house that was built for my family. It was in Bronte on the beachfront in Sydney, and it was owned by Sarah Murdoch. They only wanted $13.5 million for it,
SPEAKER_02Vicky. Only.
SPEAKER_01It was only about $13 million more than I had. Nevertheless, I was not deterred. I looked at this and I saw the image and I went, oh my goodness, this is incredible. I said, Kylie's my wife. Kylie, you've got to come and have a look. I found our home. I found our dream home. And Kylie walked in, and obviously the first thing that she saw was the price. And at that point, she couldn't keep up. You've got to be kidding me. Or stop wasting your time. Stop wasting my time. What are you doing? Could you just give it up? I could have said any number of things. But instead she quite literally gave me in fantasy what I couldn't have in reality. Stepped through every room of that house. We looked at every photo. We looked at the description. She said, could you imagine what it would be like? to look at that view from your bathroom? Like who has a view like that from the bathroom? She said, they've got a car elevator. How amazing would it be to drive your car into the elevator every afternoon? I'm like, who has that? And after I looked at this house for three or four minutes, Kylie looked at me and smiled and said, that sure is an amazing house. Wouldn't it be great if we could afford that one? Now, do you think that I would have said, oh, you are so cruel? oh, that is so nasty. I can't believe you made me believe I could have it. No, that's
SPEAKER_03right.
SPEAKER_01I felt so honoured. I felt like she really understood how it was to be me and to want something. Yeah. And I think that that's...
SPEAKER_02It's a really powerful tool of connection, isn't it? Like when you think about that moment you could have with your child in the supermarket or that moment you had with your wife where you could have made them feel really bad about it and for nagging you and instead you made it into a game or for you and your wife, you sat there and had this beautiful moment of connect and dreaming. And it's something that you will hold onto as opposed to building on resentment and making you feel awful. Like it is so powerful.
SPEAKER_01And so that's my favorite fun technique. And it's incredible how often I get emails from parents saying, I can't believe that it worked. I did it and I'm still laughing about it while I type you this email because it really worked. Now you can't do it all the time because there's a novelty factor to it. But you can do it more than you think. And you don't always have to turn it into a game. You can just say, oh, don't you just wish and kind of leave it at that because there's empathy, but there's also boundary setting. Now the other, I said that There were two things that I wanted to share. And the other one is a little bit more... Well, I think that it's still cutting edge science because when we look at what most parenting programs are offering, they don't teach this. But I think it's been... Well, it's been described in two ways. John Gottman calls it emotion coaching. And Mark Brackett from the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence, he has an acronym called RULER. And both of these things are essentially on the same principle. Yes,
SPEAKER_02I've been reading his book.
SPEAKER_01Oh, Permission to Feel.
SPEAKER_02Permission to Feel. Yes, I'm loving it. I'm absolutely loving it.
SPEAKER_01He's done a great job on that book. I really like Mark. He's a little guy and he's written a really smart book to help parents to tap into the emotional world of their children. So my easy to use version of their two models, their models have a lot of overlap and a few things that are distinct. And what I've done is I've taken all of their research as well as a handful of other bits and pieces of data from around the place. And I've created one that I think is just a little bit more accessible for parents because, you know, sometimes it's hard to remember the five steps of emotion coaching. Sometimes it's hard to remember the rule acronym and know how to do each one of them. So this is what I recommend to parents. Number one, when your children are being challenging in their emotionally dysregulated, see the opportunity or see it as an opportunity to connect rather than
SPEAKER_03connect.
SPEAKER_01And I recognize in saying that the people were probably nodding their head and going, yeah, when my children are upset, I've really got to connect with them. The thing is, you know, like tomorrow morning when you slice that peanut butter toast into triangles and your four-year-old says, but
SPEAKER_00I want rectangles.
SPEAKER_01Let's connect about this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, in the moment. definitely not as easy as when you're removed from the emotion.
SPEAKER_01Really, really tricky. So by the way, rookie error, rookie, rook error. Oh, absolutely. Never go triangle first because if they want rectangles, it's all over. You've got to chuck them in the bin. If you go with rectangle first and they want triangles, it's just one simple diagonal cut.
SPEAKER_02Gold nuggets coming out all over the place here, Justin.
SPEAKER_01I think about the deep things of parenting, believe me. So you've got to see it as a chance to connect with them. And the way we do this is we go through these couple of steps. Number one, you won't find any research anywhere, by the way, that says this, but I still think it's some of the best advice I've ever been given. A grandma was attending one of my workshops for her daughter and her grandkids. And I think she was there in a professional capacity as well. She came up to me afterwards. She said, I love what you talked about, but I want to add one idea. She said, my mom always told me that whenever I needed to discipline my children or work with them through their big emotions, I needed to make sure I had I had soft eyes. What about it? I thought you can't have soft eyes and be angry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Soft eyes almost demand, almost force compassion.
SPEAKER_02And
SPEAKER_01that's really what we're
SPEAKER_02talking about. That's
SPEAKER_01a great tip. What a beautiful tip. Now, you won't read that in any peer-reviewed scholarly articles, but my goodness, it's good advice. So if you want to connect with your child because they're having a hard time, make sure your eyes are soft. Look at them with kindness and compassion. Then instead of focusing on the behavior, that is the tantrum, we need to remember that our children's form follows feelings. They're going to behave bad because they feel bad. They're going to behave in a challenging way because they're feeling challenged. So focus on the feeling and actually say the feeling that you think they've got. So soft eyes and focus on the feeling. You might say you're feeling really upset. You're really struggling with this. Oh, this is such a big challenge for you and you do not like it one bit. What you do as you do that is you're tapping into their emotional world. See, the words that come out of their mouth, or the way their bodies behave is one thing, and they certainly send signals. But the feelings in their heart are actually what we need to tap into because when somebody taps into those feelings, everything else takes care of itself.
SPEAKER_02Yes, we all want to feel heard, don't we?
SPEAKER_01We do. It's the basic fundamental need that we all have. The central thing that we do as parents that's really, is we try to fix things too fast.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And if we can let go of that. We're
SPEAKER_02all guilty of
SPEAKER_01that. Including me. But if we let go of our fixation on fixing and just spend a few more moments on the emotions, what will happen is that the emotions will calm down and then you can have a logical conversation with your child about what needs to be fixed. And the amazing thing here is you don't actually have to fix it then because they're calm. And so you can say, so what do you think we
SPEAKER_02should do?
UNKNOWNYeah.
SPEAKER_02And I think that maybe adults underestimate kids in their ability to fix their own problems, to solve things on their own without someone having to fix it for them. And I think that's a really important skill that all people need to learn. And the more that we try and intervene, the less opportunities they have for that growth in themselves.
SPEAKER_01I think the answers are inside them. We've just got to give them the emotional regulatory capacity to be calm and level-headed so they can find those answers. I say this all the time, Vicky, emotions are high and intelligence is low.
SPEAKER_03High
SPEAKER_01emotions, low intelligence. So let's help them calm their emotions and then they'll become remarkably intelligent and capable again. And they'll be able to work through their issues.
SPEAKER_02That's really great advice. Well, that brings us to the end of the first part of this two-part conversation. Justin and I still have so much to chat about. So in our next episode, we're going to explore some big questions around school readiness, the idea that our children will fall behind academically during this time of isolation schooling. We touch on sibling rivalry and I ask his perspectives on the dreaded homework. I've had so much fun talking with justin about how we can help our children move through big emotions and we've added some resources to help you over in our show notes and while you're there you can download our free respectful parenting printable with phrases of validation and empathy at www.wildlingsforestschool.com forward slash raising wildlings three we've made sure it looks beautiful so that you can stick it on your fridge to refer to it in those times when you or your children really need it but before we go we've got a huge favor to ask we would love for you to subscribe or follow raising wildlings on the podcast platform of your choice so that more parents can learn the importance of play and how children learn. Or you can take a screenshot of the podcast artwork and post it on your Instagram or Facebook pages. We really love sharing your posts. Thank you so much for joining me today. We love doing this journey with you. And until next time, stay wild.