How The Mindful Solutions Method Helps Kids Move From Reacting To Responding

Stress isn’t just a feeling, it’s rewiring how kids pay attention, regulate emotions, and make choices. We sit down with clinical child psychologist and parenting coach Dr. Peter Montminy to break down a simple, powerful framework that helps families flip the script from reactivity to reflection. Instead of white-knuckling through meltdowns or nagging through homework, we teach a shared language—pause, breathe, choose—that makes self-regulation feel doable for kids and the adults who care for them.

We start by mapping the brain’s stress response—how the “downstairs brain” hijacks the “upstairs brain” under chronic pressure—and why neuroplasticity means whatever we practice gets stronger. From there, we dive into the three core steps of the Mindful Solutions Method. Awareness begins with a gentle check-in: “What do you notice?” Kids learn to scan their environment, body, and thoughts without judgment, reconnecting to focus. Acceptance follows with breathing space and a new question: “What do you need?” That shift from resistance to reality opens doors to self-care and problem-solving. Finally, aligned action asks, “What will you choose?” so behavior matches values and goals, not just impulses in the moment.

You’ll hear concrete examples for classrooms and living rooms: how to use prompts during transitions, how to adapt tone for a six-year-old versus a teen, and when to switch from questions to guidance if a child is highly dysregulated. We talk small wins—water breaks, movement resets, page checks—that build the muscles of executive function. With consistent practice at low-intensity moments, families strengthen the neural circuits for attention, calm, and cooperation. The result is a practical toolkit any caregiver can use to create safer, steadier spaces where young minds thrive.

If this conversation helps, share it with someone who needs a calmer afternoon. Subscribe for more science-backed tools, and leave a review to tell us which prompt you’ll try first.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 for immediate support.

This podcast is brought to you by Jana Marie Foundation and A Mindful Village.

Jana Marie Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization located in State College, Pennsylvania which harnesses the power of creative expression and dialogue to spark conversations build connections, and promote mental health and wellbeing among young people and their communities. Learn more at Jana Marie Foundation.

A Mindful Village is Dr. Peter Montminy's private consulting practice dedicated to improving the mental health of kids and their caregivers. Learn more at A Mindful Village | Holistic Mental Health Care for Kids.

Music created by Ken Baxter.

(c) 2025. Jana Marie Foundation. All Rights Reserved.

This podcast was developed in part under a grant number SM090046 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The views, policies, and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAMHSA, HHS or the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services.

Transcript

Introducing The Mindful Solutions Method

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 0:17

Welcome to the Ripples of Resilience podcast by Jana Marie Foundation, where we dive into the heart of supporting young minds. I'm Marisa Vicere, president and founder of Jana Marie Foundation, and I'm so glad you're here. The Ripples of Resilience podcast provides parents, caregivers, and educators with practical tools and insights to support children's mental health, emotional resilience, and well-being. Each episode covers strategies for fostering open communication, building resilience, and creating safe, nurturing environments where young minds can thrive. Today we're diving into the Mindful Solutions Method, a strengths-based positive way of supporting mental and emotional well-being by combining mindfulness, practical coping tools, and solution-focused thinking. And I'm not doing this alone. I'm joined by someone I deeply respect and have learned so much from over the years, Dr. Peter Montminy, a clinical child psychologist and parenting coach from a mindful village. Welcome, Peter.

Dr. Peter Montminy 1:23

Well, thank you so much, Marisa. Glad to be back.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 1:26

Yes, and this is one of your favorite topics.

Dr. Peter Montminy 1:28

Yes, near and dear to my heart, very much so.

Stress, Brains, And Neuroplasticity

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 1:31

So let's dive in. What is the mindful solutions method and why are we talking about it on a podcast that focuses on children's mental health?

Dr. Peter Montminy 1:40

Yeah, so the mindful solutions method is a mindfulness-based approach to children's mental health, as you've mentioned in the opening, that I've really been developing and bringing in from other evidence-based programs over the many years I've worked with kids and teens. And it's something I'm so excited about because it is the core of how I work with families and schools all the time, and really use it to kind of be a little more peaceful and well-balanced in my own life as well. So hopefully we will have an opportunity to share some good things here. But to really understand the power and purpose of a mindful solutions approach, we first need to talk about the mindless problems that are contributing to children's mental health difficulties these days. So let's just think about it for a second. What's the biggest contributing factor to child mental health problems in our society today? What might you think?

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 2:31

I'm definitely guessing it's stress. All the toxic stress that's just around.

Dr. Peter Montminy 2:35

Absolutely, right? And it's compounding our ability to pay attention, to think straight, to regulate our emotions, to control our behaviors and our impulses. The degree of chronic toxic stress is really taking its toll on our kids and us as well, right? So we've talked about that before. So let's dive a little deeper. We can think about how our nervous system responds to stress in general, and then let's talk about what about under conditions of chronic stress. In general, we won't think about the human brain and nervous system. For our purposes, we'll just borrow again from Dan Siegel, the downstairs brain and upstairs brain. Downstairs brain, the emotional brain, upstairs brain, the thinking brain for oversimplifying. The oldest part of our brain, the back bottom part of our brain, has a specific mission. Part of what it's doing at all times is scanning the environment, searching for danger or threat to help protect us for a survival mechanism, right? And if it sees anything that's threatening or overwhelming to us, right away it the emotional alarm centers in the downstairs brain, the amygdala, light up and fire off the those stress hormones of adrenaline and cortisol to get us all geared up for the classic stress response known as what?

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 3:51

Flight or fight.

Dr. Peter Montminy 3:52

Yes, fight or flight, right? And fight, flight, freeze, or faint, actually. So automatically, when we are feeling stressed, the system revs up with that adrenaline juice, and what happens? Your heart starts pounding more, your breathing gets quicker, the muscles tense up automatically, and you are prepared to fight or flee for survival. Sometimes we freeze or shut down too, right? So we've been through that before. But here's the key. When the stress has gone by, then, and and by the way, the part that's happening there too is that the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is lighting up. The gas pedal is juicing us up with that adrenaline rush to give us the energy to fight or flee for survival. Typically nowadays, that looks like argue or avoid. All right. How many of us snap or argue more than we'd like to or are or avoid or procrastinate or put off, right? One because we're just overwhelmed. So that's happening automatically. But then when the stressor passes and we're feeling safe and secure, the parasympathetic branch, we pump the brakes on all that adrenaline juice, and we start to calm back down into a state of rest and digest that you've heard before. Now it's not just digest our food, it's also being able to better digest information and think about things better. It's also we can shift gears into attend and befriend mode when we're feeling safe and settled. We can attend better, we can befriend, we can socialize, engage, stay in play, ready to learn. But here's the trick. When we're stressed, in other words, downstairs brain jumps in the driver's seat, hijacks the upstairs thinking brain, and we automatically react. Pause, breathe, calm down, we reconnect upstairs brain, we can thoughtfully respond. Here's the kicker neuroplasticity. Right? Reminding our listeners, neuroplasticity is this idea that the brain is a unique organ that responds and changes function and changes structure in response to experience. That is simply to say the more you light up certain parts, circuits of your brain, the more they get bigger, stronger, and faster. Right? The parts that we brain, our brain we use more often, get bigger, stronger, and faster. Parts of the brain we don't use as much, we lose that capacity. Now, modern life, chronic repeated stressors coming at us, 24-7 demands. We're feeling like we're never finished catching up. We're feeling like we're not enough, we can't keep up. And when those demands are lighting up those stress reaction circuits perpetually, we get in a state of lighting up those downstairs brain circuits over again. Guess which part of our nervous system gets bigger, stronger, and faster? Downstairs brain or upstairs brain?

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 6:44

Downstairs.

Dr. Peter Montminy 6:45

Downstairs brain. So that means we're gonna be more reactive and less reflective. We're gonna have less ability to pay attention and make thoughtful choices. We're gonna be more prone to be distracted, impulsive, and emotionally dysregulated. So in a nutshell, children's mental health today, why are we struggling with it so much more? Because kids are more distracted, distressed, and disruptive with their behaviors than they've been for a long time. I believe, in large part, because it is chronic stress cycle that has become toxic. And what if, what if we could find a way to help kids instead have more clear minds, calm emotions, and kind and cooperative behaviors. And that's where we're going with the mindful solutions method.

Triple A Framework Overview

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 7:35

Which is so amazing. You know, I know we've talked about before. I have a 10-year-old. We're often seeing this dysregulation that happens, not just with him, but across the board, They are constantly connected in ways that I never was as a kid. So there's so much stress that's coming at them or things that are coming at them, not always stressful even, but just constantly having them kick their brain on, and it really creates that dysregulation.

Dr. Peter Montminy 8:04

Yeah, I call it information overload creates emotional overwhelm, right? In a nutshell. And literally, we then become more reactive and less reflective.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 8:17

Absolutely. And so this approach that you are talking about, mindful solutions method, is amazing that it can give us that that chance to become a little bit more reflective and to start helping to regulate a little bit more for ourselves and for our kids. So, how do we do this? How do we use this method? Yeah. Well, there's three steps. It's it's narrowed down to be a simple yet powerful base that we can apply then to many different mental health challenges or difficulties with building resiliency. But at its core, it's really very simple. It's the triple A's of awareness, acceptance, and aligned action. If you're anal enough, you'll say aligned action is two more A's, so that's four A's. But let's say three steps. Awareness first, which is to see clearly what is. If we're going to be able to deal with things, we have to make sure we're seeing clearly what is here now. Not remembering how it was or how we think it should be or worrying about what if it's going to be this way, not getting lost in all the stories, assumptions, biases, and judgments about what is here, but just starting with pure awareness of seeing clearly this is what's here right now. So we start with cultivating the capacity of awareness. For kids, we start cultivating the capacity of self-coaching them on self-awareness as a prerequisite to self-regulation. And so we start with awareness, and then we move on to acceptance, which is to make peace with what is here now, accepting what is here now, and then stepping into aligned action, which is responding wisely to what is here now, rather that is to say, thoughtfully responding rather than emotionally reacting. So that's the overview, the basics of the three steps. We can get into them more. That is so helpful. Thank you so much. This is really about building skills for life that they can use, not just in that moment, but overall to help them be more attuned to that self-awareness and then learning how to regulate some of those different feelings or emotions that they may have into actions that can be really helpful in their life. So let's take this step-by-step and get a little more specific. How do you help kids develop better awareness skills and clearer minds?

Building Awareness: Pause And Notice

Dr. Peter Montminy 10:45

Yeah. So if we're going to go from distracted minds to more clear minds, we can do so. We begin with the power of the pause, which our very first episode ever focused on the power of the pause. So we're going to start with a mantra. The mantra of these three steps is pause, breathe, choose. To build self-awareness, the first thing we need to do is pause, and then we can use this universal mindfulness prompt that's simply, what do you notice? Pause. What do I notice? What do I notice going on around me right now? What do I notice going on inside of me right now? Pause. What do you notice? We can prompt our kids with this simple question, a kind inquiry. We're not telling kids, pay attention, hey, you're all distracted. Look, what are you doing? What are you thinking? We're going, pause, hey, buddy, what do you notice right now? Dot, dot, dot. Question mark. And we have many variations of how we can fill in that ellipse, those dot dot dots. For example, what do you notice about what's going on around you right now? In school, we might say, oh, I noticed that everyone else is open to page 43 in their math book, and I don't even have my book out yet. Good to know. Not, not, you know. So it's not taking a directive scolding approach. It's taking an empathic supportive approach to inquire. And in that way, we turn on, we reconnect the kid to their upstairs brain to consciousness to go, oh, gee, I don't know. What do I notice right now? What do you notice going on around you? What do you know is going on inside of you? What do you know's going on in your body right now? Are your muscles tense or relaxed? Are they are you jittery and hyper-energized, or are you tired and lethargic? No wrong answer here. What matters is let's begin with the awareness of what is. And we do that with the prompt of pause and inquire. What do you notice around you or inside of you? In your body, in your mind? What kind of thoughts do you notice popping up in your mind? And this begins the journey to quieting the downstairs brain and strengthening the upstairs brain.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 12:53

And I love that we're approaching this with curiosity. Yes. And so not telling them how they should be feeling or what they should be noticing, but just asking in that moment and then allowing that space for them to respond and build those skills themselves.

Practicing Awareness At Home And School

Dr. Peter Montminy 13:08

Exactly, exactly. And we don't want to just save this for when the house is on fire, someone's totally stressed out, freaking out, blowing up, or melting down. If you start doing this as a regular party or daily interaction with your kids, hey, let's just pause. What do we notice right now? It can be a fun, playful thing. You're going for a walk in nature. What do you notice around you? We're in the classroom and the noise is starting to get a little loud. Instead of going, everyone be quiet, we can say, hey, let's pause. What does everyone notice right now about the energy level in the room? So you can do this individually or collectively with groups of kids as well.

Acceptance: Making Peace With Reality

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 13:39

Awesome. So now we're building in that pause. We're helping them develop that awareness. And now we have to move on to the step of acceptance. So how do we develop better acceptance skills in kids? And what exactly does that mean?

Dr. Peter Montminy 13:56

Yeah, great question. Acceptance skills are about making peace with reality, even when, especially when we don't like the reality that we're faced with. I have a wooden sign hanging in my office wall that kids and parents face when they're meeting with me. It says simply, it is what it is. It is what it is. Reality happens. We don't have control of on a lot of it. As we've talked about before, we can't stop the waves of stress from arising in our lives any more than we can stop the waves of the ocean from coming ashore. But we can learn how to ride those waves with more ease and balance rather than being thrown off and drowning in them, right? So what really matters is how we relate to the stress to the realities in our lives. And acceptance, step two here, cultivating the capacity for more acceptance, is the pathway to more peace within us, even when there's chaos around us. The key here is to understand that acceptance doesn't mean approval or agreement. It doesn't mean you condone what's going on or like what's here now. It just means that you're acknowledging plain and simple, right now it's like this. And then the focus becomes more on how am I gonna be with it, how am I gonna relate to it. And what we use here is the step of breathing, allowing a little space, taking those few breaths to qu quiet the amygdala with the downstairs brain, and then step into the inquiry of what do I need? Pause, what do you notice? Breathe. What do you need? Dot dot dot question mark. So we bring in the prompt, what do you need, with things like this? What do you need to take care of yourself right now, given that it's a mess going on around you, or that you're starting to get out of control, or that you really feel that you're feeling temperature is going up, up, up. What do you need to take care of yourself right now? What do you need to get back on track? If you are off track, distracted, dysregulated, what do you need to get back on track? And we again post this as appreciative inquiry, as a compassionate question to lead the child to find their answers or for us to join with them to find the answers together. It's very empowering, and it's turning on the executive functions of the child's brain that's so depleted with the constant stress that they're facing.

Adapting For Age And Temperament

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 16:28

Thank you. And again, it's about that inquiry. And so, how does this work with just in terms of age difference? So I know that's a question that we get asked a lot. When we're talking to five, six, seven-year-old, that might look different than if we're talking to a 16, 17, 18-year-old with these types of questions.

Dr. Peter Montminy 16:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the beauty of these three prompts we're gonna walk through in these three steps. You know, simple questions with this dot, dot, dot. You can fill in the dot dot dots in different ways. So, one way with younger children versus older children or teens, right? One, we're gonna be more animated, playful, maybe the younger they are. Hey, wow, let's check this out. What are you noticing right now? And hmm, wow, what do you need? What do you need to take care of yourself right now? With a little bit more emotional, you know, playfulness, warmth, teddy bear cuddly ness, whatever it might be. Whereas with a teenager, especially or a preteen, especially, right, going through that transition or the middle school years, the tweens, we want to be a little like cool. Like, okay, so like what are you noticing? Like, okay, and what do you need? What do you need to take care of that right now? You know, so kind of lowballing it a little bit with our teenagers usually and not getting too animated. But then you're also again, again, for the age of the child or the specific temperamental difficulties, does the child are they more prone to anger and the fight reactivity or more prone to anxiety and the flight reactivity? So then you kind of finish the what do you notice or what do you need questions, really depending on the particular child's age, but also their their needs in the moment.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 18:04

Yeah. I love that this is one that we can really use no matter the age of the individual, whether they're a kid, whether it's another adult in the household or out in the community. This is something that really can go universal for everyone.

Aligned Action: Choose Wise Responses

Dr. Peter Montminy 18:20

And I I appreciate that because I really emphasize we want to ask ourselves these questions first and then ask them of the child that we're with. So we what do I notice? What do I notice about where my feeling temperature is right now? What do I need to take care of myself, to get back on track and be the better parent or teacher to this kid right now that I'm capable of being? And then we can turn and apply it to the kiddo. What are you noticing but kiddo? What are you needing right now to take care of yourself? And it's a collaborative effort at all times. So we absolutely want it to be applying to adults and ourselves as well as our kids.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 19:00

Thank you. So we've built this awareness, we've talked about that acceptance. So not necessarily agreeing with what's happening around us, but this acceptance that is it's going on. So what is this third step, and how do we develop aligned actions?

Dr. Peter Montminy 19:18

Yeah. Aligned actions. Why don't I put that funny little word in there? We want our actions to this situation, this stressful situation, this conflict, this behavior problem, this emotional overwhelm. We want our response to the situation. Remember, it's about responding wisely to what is. So what we want to be able to do is to respond or act in a way that is aligned with our clearer awareness and acceptance now. We want to act in a way that is aligned with our values and what we appreciate as being really meaningful, a meaningful value. We want to be aligned with our best selves. Our capacities when we know, hey, I was really good. I took care of my business there really well. That felt good. We want to get in touch with that. The awareness and acceptance helps us get there. Now we have a choice. The final prompt or question is, and what will you choose? What do you notice? What do you need? And what will you choose? Recognizing that now your behavior is a choice. And we want to support you stepping in to making behavior choices that are aligned with your values and wise choices that are going to get you a better result, better consequences, make life easier for you instead of harder, very simply put. Are you going to choose to respond more thoughtfully here now, or are you going to choose to keep reacting more emotionally or impulsively? And, you know, how's that working for you or against you? So again, there's lots of follow-up questions we can play with, but we start there with the core of a simple prompt. Hey, dude, what are you going to choose here now? You know?

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 21:01

Yeah. It's like a circuit breaker for our minds. Yes. Right. So all these things are coming in at us, and this allows us to take that pause, have that moment of break. Doesn't even need to be all that long, but it takes us out of that spiral that can often happen around us and give us that chance to recognize that we do have control over our actions and that we can decide how it is that we're going to move forward. Yeah.

Handling High Dysregulation

Dr. Peter Montminy 21:30

The important caveat to all that is this works best when children are mildly dysregulated, not highly dysregulated. Another episode can be more about, again, de-escalating the highest states of dysregulated. Because, you know, you ask this kind of question when somebody's at a nine out of ten on their feelings thermometer and you're going to get a shoe thrown at your head, right? Or later.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 21:54

Absolutely.

Dr. Peter Montminy 21:55

So we recognize this works, which is why I want you to practice it regularly as for the small pleasures as well as the small displeasures, unpleasures, whatever the right word is there in your day, and build up the capacity to use this three-step process of awareness, acceptance, and aligned action. What do you notice? What do you need? What will you choose at the little aggravations of the day to you build up the capacity to bring it online with the harder stuff? Does that make sense?

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 22:28

It absolutely does. And that's with really anything in life that we think about, right? When we're highly dysregulated or at that heightened state, it's so much harder to stop and pause and ask those questions. And we have to start coming down some before we can really do that reflection. And so, you know, we have to recognize that our kids also need that same kind of regulation again in order to be able to really reflect and understand what it is that we're asking.

Dr. Peter Montminy 22:56

Yeah, exactly. And I still use the three-step process of awareness, acceptance, and line action. When we're at lower levels of agitation, we can use the questions. When kids are at higher levels of activation, we want to make it more directive. Hey, it looks like you need this right now. Rather than asking them, we can be their executive function upstairs brain for them when they are completely don't have access to it. So we're actually going to use the same process, but apply it a little differently, more for another day.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 23:28

Love it. So thank you so much for taking us through the these three action steps and showing us how they can really work, especially when we're at those lower levels of intensity, or even just when we're going through our own day and noticing that hey, I'm starting to feel overwhelmed. I have emails coming in, I have phone calls going on, I'm running late for a meeting to be able to take that pause ourselves and do that reflection internally to help us become a little bit more grounded before going on to that next thing.

Dr. Peter Montminy 23:57

Yes.

Practice, Persistence, And Daily Routines

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 23:58

Are there other final comments or suggestions for our listeners today?

Dr. Peter Montminy 24:03

Well, as we've often said here on our show, you know, practice and persistence, you know, leads to progress, not perfection. So we want to start out with expectations of let's just practice the simple steps of this regularly throughout the day. And you brought in curiosity earlier, which we always like to bring in, right? Think about this in a playful way. Hey, you know what? Sometimes we get all disco-obulated, kiddo. We're gonna kind of practice some ways of kind of noticing what's going on, taking care of ourselves, and then kind of maybe making some better choices. And we're gonna do that, you know, in this way where I'm gonna kind of periodically check in with you and go, hey, what are you noticing right now? And we can fill in this follow-up questions however you want. And hey, what are you needing right now? And what are you gonna choose to do with that right now? Really bake it into a regular part of your day, and then it becomes a solid foundation for handling the higher stress situations.

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 25:03

Thank you. You know, really taking that pause. What do we notice? That breathing, reflecting on what we need right now to move forward, and then making a choice for our own actions. Yeah.

Dr. Peter Montminy 25:16

When I'm starting to get tense, out of sorts, flustered, I literally just catch myself and go, Okay, Peter, pause. Breathe. What are you noticing? What do you need here, buddy? What are you gonna choose? And it literally quiets the downstairs brain and reconnects me up to the upstairs brain, to my higher, better self. And that's what we want to keep coaching kids on how to do in facing their stressors in life as well. Yeah.

Closing And Next Steps

Marisa Vicere, President and Founder, Jana Marie Foundation 25:46

Yes. Thank you so much, Dr. Peter Montminy, for continuing these important conversations with us today. And thank you for all of our listeners for joining us on the Ripples of Resilience podcast. In our next episode, we're gonna explore mindfulness even further. So we're going to look at all the basics of how we can show up in the present moment to help build resiliency. And as you alluded to, this will tie in really nicely to how we continue bringing in that mindfulness solutions method into our everyday life. This podcast is brought to you by Jana Marie Foundation, where we're dedicated to opening minds and saving lives through conversations that matter, and by a mindful village, where Dr. Peter Montminy provides holistic mental health care for kids and their caregivers. If today's episode resonated with you, share it with a friend and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss a ripple. Together, let's keep showing up, speaking up, and supporting the young minds who need us most. Remember, even the smallest action can create a wave of change.