When To Give In and When To Stand Firm with Special Guest Amy Kalasunas

One of the more common questions parents ask is when do I give in and when do I stand firm.  Todays special guest speaker is an expert on this question. Amy Kalasunas is a board certified Dialectic Behavior Therapist who, among other things, provides interventions for parents of struggling and complex young adults using DBT and SPACE, which stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions.  We talk all about how parents can make an effective decision as to when to accommodate to their child’s big emotions and intense behaviors and when it's not effective.

Time Stamps

15:05  Six ways that parents accommodate

1. To avoid the big emotions and the intense behaviors
2. When life goes on. The parent has to deal with their lives as they are and they can’t deal with the consequences of setting a limit
3. Parents have their own history - their own childhood experiences which impact their current parenting 
4. When parents fear or are simply affected by the social judgments
5. When not accommodating may lead to self-harming behaviors or Suicidal Ideation

19:35 How to decide whether or not to accommodate

1. Do I have the bandwidth?
2. Does my child know that I am going to do this
3. Can my child do what I am asking?

22:25  Explanation of Three States of Mind - wise mind, emotion mind, reasonable mind

30:05 SPACE redefines what it means to support your child

1. Validate
2. Express confidence that they will be ok
3. Stop talking - Put a period after #2 (kids are master debaters)
4. Resist the urge to solve the problem
5. Be a Broken record

34:00  Aim lower:  Slice the salami thinner and set smaller realistic expectations

Leslie-ism:  Check in with yourself about your own bandwidth when dealing with your child.

Resources:  

Amy Kalasunas Website 

DIalectic Behavior Therapy Resources DBTSelfHelp.com

Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions - SPACE Website

For a full transcript of this episode and more information about the host visit https://lesliecohenrubury.com/podcasts/ . You can also follow Leslie’s work on Facebook,  Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Join the conversation with your own questions and parenting experiences.

Credits: Is My Child a Monster? is produced by Alletta Cooper, Camila Salazar, and Leslie Cohen-Rubury. Theme music is by L-Ray Music. Graphics and Website Design by Brien O’Reilly. Transcriptions by Eric Rubury.  A special thanks to everyone who contributes their wisdom and support to make this possible.

Transcript

[Music: The Wilds Beyond by L-Ray Music]

[00:00:00] Amy Kalasunas: Do I have the bandwidth to hold this limit? Some days I might be more flexible, and I can sort of let my kid putz around and put their own shoes on. Other days it might make a lot more sense to just put the shoes on and go, right, just do it, because you’ve got to function. That's a very real thing to consider when it comes to accommodation.

[00:00:30] Leslie Cohen-Rubury: Knowing when to give in and when to stand firm is an age-old parenting question. And the answer changes, day-to-day, based on a whole slew of factors. So today I've got a special guest here to help. I'm Leslie Cohen-Rubury, and this is, Is My Child a Monster?, a parenting skills podcast where you get to listen in as real parents and caregivers share their trials and tribulations. And no, your child is not a monster, just misunderstood. 

Today I've invited Amy Kalasunis to join me to talk about navigating that age-old parenting question. Amy is a licensed clinical counselor and behaviorist with more than 20 years of experience working within evidence-based treatment models. She is a certified Dialectic Behavior Therapy practitioner who, among other things, provides interventions for parents of struggling and complex young adults using DBT and SPACE, which stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. She's also the CEO of the Center for Evidence Based Treatment in Ohio. And I'm so excited to have her here today. 

Now, as a reminder, though I'm a licensed clinical social worker, this show is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapeutic intervention.

So let's begin.

[00:01:56] Leslie: Hi, Amy, how are you today? 

[00:02:01] Amy: I am great. Thank you, Leslie. It's an honor to be here. 

[00:02:05] Leslie: Oh, I'm so excited. Now I've got to tell you, I feel like we're friends and we've really just met. 

[Laughter]

[00:02:11] Amy: Yes, true enough. 

[00:02:12] Leslie: I think what makes me have this feeling that I know you so well is that we both share our DBT practices, working with kids and parents and caregivers to help them understand their complex emotions and behaviors, and things like that.

So, I think many people have, maybe have heard of DBT, and then there's a lot of people we want to assume do not know what DBT is. So, Dialectic Behavior Therapy. Can you give us a brief elevator pitch for what is DBT? 

[00:02:45] Amy: The elevator pitch. Yeah. So, DBT is a type of cognitive behavior therapy that Dr. Marsha Linehan developed in…I think her book came out in ‘93, but she was doing this work in the early ‘80s. And it was, frankly, developed by Dr. Linehan because she saw that cognitive behavior therapy had an invalidating landing spot with a lot of clients. And actually her first clients were suicidal women.

[00:03:12] Amy: So she took CBT—Cognitive Behavior Therapy—and added in a lot of Eastern philosophy and validation and radical acceptance and all these other things; and developed a, research would say, year-long program where clients with Borderline Personality Disorder or other disorders of emotion regulation can come and learn skills. To regulate emotion, learn to focus mindfully, interact more effectively, in a way that feels affirming to the person doing it, as well as affirming to the person you're talking to. And learn how to change emotions and tolerate distress. So, uh, I could go on forever, but that's more than enough.

[00:03:56] Leslie: In the podcast, I'm talking a lot about DBT skills and the framework, so that we can help parents. So, I know you're also working with the program, acronym known as SPACE, which is Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?  

[00:04:20] Amy: Sure. So I will say, the SPACE model was developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz, who's at the Yale Child Study Center. And it is a treatment designed for parents of anxious younger children, once upon a time. And again, it's a parent only-intervention that teaches parents to not accommodate their children's anxious behaviors, meaning…Teaching well-meaning, loving parents who don't want their kids to be wracked with anxiety to not inadvertently reinforce the anxiety by leaning into it, by trying to cushion it, et cetera, et cetera.

Flash forward, Dr. Lebowitz has an adaptation of that treatment for parents of young adults who are also struggling. I believe he calls it struggling to launch, which we, which I just…, “launching” is weird. But nonetheless, for parents of young adults who seemingly aren't reaching those adult milestones and the parents want and need help.

[00:05:26] Leslie: Right. And so helping parents who…what I find you're talking about possibly, and the work I think that you do is working with these young adults who are having difficulties with their emotions and their behaviors, and of course the parents as well, possibly helping these children to live their adult lives as they grow up.

And so for the parents who are listening to the podcast, I've heard it over and over again, the fear of: Will my child behave this way as an adult? Will my child make it as an adult? They are very, very worried and fearful, or just not sure how it's going to happen because what's in front of them is maybe a child who's talking back to them, throwing their…you know, refusing to do things. Throwing a book or a shoe at their sibling—how are they going to make it into adulthood? And so I think that's what we want to focus on here, because that fear affects their parenting in ways that aren't necessarily helpful or effective.

[00:06:36] Amy: Well, I do it perfectly. [Laughter] So I don't know about those people. I laugh, but I also know parenting is humbling. It's a humbling experience and that unconditional love does not mean we know what to do with these strong emotions and behaviors. And that fear that you just named is actually, like, if I had to pick one emotional state that the SPACE treatment for the parents of young adults addresses, it's fear.

It's fear, anxiety, and the paralysis that can come with that, or the anger that can come with that. Like, we are dancing in the same place here, right? We're talking about the same things. 

[00:07:16] Leslie: Exactly. And I'm glad you linked fear and anger because a lot of parents don't understand that when they are angry and yelling, feeling that kind of anger underneath. It might be very valid that they feel anger, but it may be a secondary emotion, as we say, to the fear that my child's behaving in a way that either I don't understand, I can't change, or I'm afraid is going to be detrimental to my child.

So in terms of that fear—this is where we're going to get into accommodations—that fear, how it leads. into accommodations that parents make so that they can help avoid some of the emotion, avoid some of the behavior that the child may have. It makes so much sense why parents do it, but would you start with what does accommodation even means?

[00:08:14] Amy: Absolutely. So, when it comes to parenting, accommodation is when a parent will lean into or interject themselves into their child's life in order to relieve disstress, to make things go smoother; and with young adults, especially sort of help them launch, do adult things, get a job, go to college. And the leaning in doesn't work.

It causes frustrated parents. I think the word in the literature is actually demoralizing. It can be quite demoralizing for both parents who are working as hard as they can. And these young adults. And kids, by the way—they're as miserable as they appear as well.

So both parties are miserable. Nothing really is getting done that's changing. And I have to say the best/worst part about the definition of accommodation is that it starts with excellent parenting. Which is sort of a kick, like, what do you mean? Like, because I think what I just said, the definition of accommodation sounds like parenting. Like, yeah, I put myself in my kids life, I'm trying to help them. And that's true. So it just at some point crosses a line and it's so maddening to figure out where that line is. 

[00:09:36] Leslie: And I hear that question all the time. “When do I accommodate? How do I know whether to give in, whether not to give in?” Because that's a phrase parents might use for “giving in.” It's a really confusing thing. And I love that you start from a place of really good intentions, solid parenting. And that it's an avoidance of trying to avoid something that if they avoid their child's big emotions, maybe that will help.

It's so counterintuitive. They're trying to help their child. And if we can explain, which we're going to both attempt to do right now, if we can explain that your best effort, your best intention, may actually have unintended consequences. That's what we really want to help them understand.

Because as you just said, the research shows that it doesn't work. And correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't work in the long term. 

[00:10:34] Amy: That's lovely. I love that distinction because short term, it kind of works: the big thing didn't happen or the problem was solved. But again, it doesn't stick. 

[00:10:47] Leslie: It doesn't stick. So if, for example, you have a child that is late for school and they're not waking up or something like that, what are we talking about here? 

[00:11:00] Amy: This is a classic example I use. So, regardless of the age of the child, if I am wanting my child to be up by a certain time so I can give them a ride to school…So let's say it's 8 in the morning and I want my child, I’ve got to go to work, my child has to go to school, I need you up and ready by this time. So, my child doesn't do it, my child doesn't do it. I've nudged. It doesn't happen. And I get angry, or even calmly—it really doesn't matter.

“Tomorrow I'm going to leave. If you're not ready to go by the time I'm ready, I'm just going to go and you're going to have to figure out your own way to school.” So I say that and I mean that, and I really do with best intentions, I'm going to do this. And then the next day at 7:59 when my child isn't up and ready to go…And I look ahead at the movie. What's going to happen when I leave? Well, if it's a young child, are they going to be home alone? Are they going to be scared? Are they going to throw a fit? If it's an adult, I'm going to start getting texts. I'm going to start getting phone calls. I'm going to be called names.

The last time I tried that and I got to the garage and my kid was screaming and all the neighbors heard. So in that moment we decide: you know what, it's not worth it. It's not worth it. I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this. And by the way, that's so valid. I tell parents all the time, one of the reasons that people accommodate, parents accommodate, is because life goes on and we have to function.

And in that scenario, I have to function, I have to get out of here. What's going to take longer? Getting them up and going. So you just do it. You just do it because you have to. So short term, it works.

[00:12:42] Leslie: Yep. You help them get dressed. You pack their lunch. You do whatever it is that you want them to do. But life, like you said, goes on and you're going to get out of the house if you do these things. 

[00:12:56] Amy: Absolutely. 

[00:12:57] Leslie: So, are there other reasons why parents accommodate? 

[00:12:59] Amy: Oh, Lord, there's six reasons. Again, they're, like, tattooed in my head. [Laughter] Because they're familiar, right? They're familiar to most parents. So, the very first one is that, because we see our child of any age struggling to manage a strong emotion—we see our child in some form of distress or upset—what parents do is what good parents do. We want to help them. It gets a little more complicated, though, because another reason that parents accommodate is that they've seen their child have strong emotion and not manage it well.

But they've also seen ineffective/destructive/impulsive behavior arise from not managing the emotion well. So parents want to help with the step one, the strong emotion, to avoid step two. And so it's almost a frantic, I want to help with the emotion and the behavior that results from that.

The life-on-life's-terms, I’ve-got-to-function-in-reality, is what I've already mentioned. Because I could hold this limit, but then I'm going to be late for work, or then I'm going to get another call from the school. So, life happens. I have to just keep going. 

Parents also usually have their own history of being more emotionally astute or acutely aware. Like, “Hey, I had a parent that didn't really take into account my big feelings, and that didn't feel good to me. I don't want to do that with my own kid.” Or it could be vice versa. I had a parent that met my every need, she was so annoying. I’ve got to hold back on this. So parents’ own temperament and experience is a reason that they accommodate.

This one is also huge. Social judgment. I'm sure your audience has their own files of feeling judged. That comes from people that love us and mean well, like our own parents or extended family. “If that were my son, I would…” Even if it's meant in a loving, supportive way, it hits wrong. It really is painful. It can be friends. Just that look. Like, “Oh. Still not going…”

[00:15:19] Leslie: Even when your friend gives you some advice that can feel like judgment. 

[00:15:28] Amy:  Right. Like, “Well, have you tried this? What about…,” and you're like, “Ahhhhh!”, because you know they mean well and love you. And, not to go on a rant because I know this is not what we hear, but social media is another way that parents often see everybody else doing really well. Those back-to-school pictures where their kids are on the porch, all clean and nice, and my kid couldn't get up and they're still in their pajamas. And it's just like judgment: I'm not doing it right. Everybody else does it right. It's really painful.

So parents tend to lean in and accommodate to buffer from the judgment. And the last reason is that parents, a lot of parents, have dealt with aggression from their children of all ages, throwing things, breaking things; or aggression aimed at themselves, self harming behaviors, thoughts of suicide.….And parents have learned, If I keep things as calm as I can, that might not happen. So they accommodate. Every one of those reasons is completely valid. 

[00:16:36] Leslie: It's completely valid. Thank you for laying out those six reasons. As I'm going to say it again, we validate. I know that you do the same thing—you validate the parents’ attempt to solve their problem. They're really, really trying. And then they get confused because if they're listening at this point, they're saying, “What am I supposed to do? You give me a better solution.” 

And we're not saying don't accommodate, that there's no reason to ever accommodate—we're not really saying that. There's a hierarchy and there's exposure and there's step-by-step and shaping behavior. There's a lot of things that we can do that actually teach our children the skills and all of that, and that we're not going into today. But how would you decide whether to accommodate or whether to not accommodate in these situations, knowing that our goal is to be the most effective, to do what works. Because you already said that if we just keep accommodating without understanding, we actually are not going to get the results we want. 

[00:17:42] Amy: Right. It's not a simple answer, but I like to distill it like it's simple. So please, for those that are listening, it sounds like I'm saying, just do this. That's never my intention. I really do teach parents, and this is all from the SPACE model. Here's what's important. You have to decide what the right size of your change is going to be. So if I'm thinking, I'm going to tell my kid I'm not driving him to school tomorrow no matter what, do I accommodate or do I not in the moment where they're not there?

Here's the thing I want to do in my brain. Do I have the bandwidth myself to hold this limit? And by that I mean: Do I have a presentation in half an hour? Do I have time? Because some days I might be more flexible and I can sort of let my kid putz around and get put their own shoes on and some days I can't. That's a very real thing to consider when it comes to accommodation. Other days, it might make a lot more sense to just put the shoes on and go—just do it because you got to function. 

The other thing is: does my child know in advance that this is what's going to happen? Orient your children to what you're going to do before you do it, because they'll understand it sort of sets a precedent for that. Does my child know, do I have the bandwidth? And this is a bigger topic, but can my child do what I'm asking? Because that's not always the case, or they can do it here, but they can't do it here.

And again, that's sort of the maddening part. Do they want me to help? Do they need me to help? I can't tell. So, again, it's not that simple, but can they do it? Do I have the bandwidth to hold the limit? And does my child know I'm going to be asking this of them? 

[00:19:33] Leslie: I love those three steps as very clearly stated.And the part about, do I have the bandwidth to do it, I think is really important because witnessing our children suffering, witnessing all of the reasons why we end up accommodating, is work that we need to do as parents. So, would you discuss what the three states of mind are, so that we can teach our parents this first skill in DBT, which really might help them guide their decision as to, Do I accommodate, do I not accommodate?

[00:20:11] Amy Kalasunas: Thank you. It's a great place to start. So, there's three states of mind in DBT and we usually teach it on a board with little Venn diagrams and the circles. And on one side of the diagram is emotion mind. And plainly speaking, emotion mind is a state of mind that's ruled by emotion…I'm kind of being circular…where logic doesn't come into it a whole lot. There's an intense feeling. If it were a temperature, it'd be hot, and it tends to move quickly and make emotional decisions in a rapid way.

So, it's opposite, because dialectical means balancing opposite truths. So emotion mind has an opposite, and its opposite is reasonable mind. Reasonable mind is driven by logic, by step A, step B, step C. There's not emotion in that state of mind. It's very sort of perfunctory, direct—how we know to get up in the morning, how we know what to do, that kind of thing.

The overlap of those two states of mind, the middle of the Venn diagram, is wise mind. And wise mind is when you have intense emotion, and you have the logical, reasonable self balancing each other out. So I feel what I feel in emotion—my anger, upset, anxiety—and my logical reasonable mind says, “I don't like when I act on intense emotion. I know when I'm vulnerable and feeling anxious, I do things that I regret later.” And with that balance, there is a decision that gets made from wise mind about whether to do something or not. 

When I'm talking to parents, I make this leap because in those three states of mind, when I'm teaching a client, a client learning how to manage their emotions, I will say, “We try not to act from emotion mind. We want you to move into wise mind. With parents, I am always very careful to say accommodation can be wise minded. It is not something that I always want parents to, “Oh, accommodation is from emotion mind. I don't want to act from that place.” That might be very true. But what's also very true is that it can be a wise, reasonably informed decision to decide to lean in and accommodate. It just depends on my bandwidth, my circumstances, things of that nature. 

[Music: The Beat of Nature by Olexy]

[00:23:01] Leslie: So let's put this to work with an example, where I would make the decision to accommodate or not accommodate through my wise mind versus my emotion mind. And my daughter has given me permission to use her example. So, she was going off to play little league and on the way—she had a lot of anxiety—on the way, it would be complaint, complaint, complaint. “I don't want to go. I don't want to go. I don't want to go.” And I definitely could have done…here the two approaches, one would have been, “Okay, forget it. We're not going, you either pull it together or we're not going.” That, I can feel my anger start to rev up and there's my emotion mind.

So that would be one way of handling it. And then what I figured out was I'm going to drive her there and give her permission to complain the whole way and just say, “Yeah, I hear your anxieties talking.” And I could feel my wise mind, my logic mind, saying, she wants to play. It's not that she doesn't want to go.

And so my wise mind helped me not accommodate and not give into: She's complaining. Therefore I'm going to do what she wants me to do and get her out of distress and help her just solve this problem. Because it would have solved the momentary emotion and pain… 

[00:24:22] Amy: I understand. So with this model, what I would say is, again, think about bandwidth of parents and can my child do it and do they know. We're going to say they know my child knows I'm going to try to do this. But if I'm thinking about bandwidth, did I get into the car after taking a Covid test but failing, but I feel miserable. And there's practice happening for a bigger game in two days, so there's a lot of pressure for me to go.

I'm feeling lousy And I can't hear her. This constant complaining is making me… If I don't have the bandwidth to say, I can just let her talk the whole way in the car. I can just do it. Like I can have no bandwidth either way, to be honest with you, I could, I can think: I can't do this. I can't do this. We're just going home. But if I don't also have the bandwidth to say, We're going home, like, forget it, right? I can't take this anymore. I'm just taking you home. You're not going. And giving into that. I want my bandwidth and my ability to tolerate it to matter a little bit more when I'm talking to parents, just a little bit more than your child's. So it can be wise minded because I can't hold up there, right? It can be wise minded for me. to say, Can I tolerate the talking or can I tolerate the…I'm going to give up and go home? Which one do I have the energy to manage? And so it might be accommodating for you to turn around and go home.

It might be accommodating for someone else to take the kid to practice because of a bigger picture item that's happening here. It really just depends on how the parent's feeling. 

[00:26:15] Leslie: Okay, so you're asking parents to focus on themselves and to really check in on their state of mind, their vulnerability, and how they can tolerate that and understand their bandwidth. That's a really good focus for parents. So let's start to think about the idea that our wise mind can help us make some of these decisions. What do you mean, “Making sure our children know about it”? 

[00:26:50] Amy: I'm glad that you asked the question. There is always something I want to say to parents. Because it can feel like…if I'm looking at accommodation, am I saying I'm not supposed to support my kid? Am I supposed to? When do I know? And I always say…there's a way in which SPACE redefines support. If you're the one driving your kid and the kid is, “Ahhhh,” you're like, I don't know what to do. I want to be supportive. I don't know how. To redefine support, the ingredients are this. I want to first say, “I understand you don't want to go to soccer practice.” Because it's raining outside because you're exhausted and sitting in the car with me makes you angry, right? You just say, I'm going to validate it.

And I'm going to then express confidence. “I understand you don't want to go. Because you don't want to sit in the car with me. Because you're really tired. You just got home from school. It's raining outside. I know how well you're going to do at practice. And it makes sense that it's going to be hard today.”

And then stop talking. Stop talking. Because I bet, I hope that your listeners are nodding, our kids are master debaters. They can be five and still push and push. They can be 25 and push. You're just like, Oh my god. And then what most parents do is lean in and say, “But no, no, no, I really mean it. But this is, I promise you, it's gonna, blah, blah, blah.” Of course, that's our instinct. 

Redefine support by validating and expressing confidence that they'll be okay and then stop and just sit. And they may not like that. The child may continue to push back. But if you can manage to not then lean in and try to solve the problem for them, you are offering support while expressing confidence that they can get it done and letting it sit. Because even the non-verbals sort of express confidence that they'll figure it out.

[00:28:46] Leslie: Right. So you bring up validation, which is another DBT skill that we teach. I love saying: when you're done saying it, put a period. Put a period after that. And it sort of gives parents permission, Oh, you mean I can stop? I don't have to keep going? 

And yes, our children will keep going. It will bait us into the conversation. We can practice staying mindful—pay attention to driving. And I tell parents there's a skill called The Broken Record, which is, “Can you just repeat what you just said?” If you need to say something, just repeat, right?

Just say what you just said. If you're desperate to say something, just be a broken record. [Laughter]

[00:29:29] Amy: Thank you! This is why we get along because we think the same way. Look, here's what I always say. It's okay if you fumble around and you don't come up with the perfect…because I don't know. That is so radically genuine, to just be like: I don't really know. It's okay. 

And use their words. There's no magic words. If you say it all wrong, but you are presenting as a radically, “I really don't want you to be upset. I have faith in you.” And just stop. It's better than trying to get the words down, have it all written out on your phone.

Just be your genuine self. Use their words. That broken record—I love that you use that. I just say use their words. They're not listening. That's right. It's okay. It's okay. Use their words. [Laughter]

[00:30:14] Leslie: Super. So, I think that was in reference to letting them know what you're doing. So what about the last idea, which is, are they capable? You said one of the pieces to help parents decide about accommodating is you do need to ask yourself the question, are they capable? And for some parents, that's a tricky question. 

[00:30:39] Amy: Very. And it means something different depending on age, depending on other vulnerabilities because a lot of kids are complicated. And again, not in a pathological way, but are complicated on several fronts—medical, social, psychological. So we don't always know what our children are capable of. So really the rule of thumb that I use is to say this. Think about, like, in a calmer, perhaps wiser minded place, do you think your child is capable of getting up on time to get dressed to go to school?

Now the answer can be yes, if they went to bed on time. The answer might also be: Not this morning because of X, Y and Z. Right. And then aim lower, slice the salami thinner—make it thinner. If it's smaller than you think, that's totally okay. So what I mean by that is, maybe just assume that they're not going to get up on their own, even though you think they're capable of getting up on their own, because let's just err on the side of caution.

So maybe they're not. And I can hear parents saying, “I'm not getting into this.” I hear that a lot, like I'm being taking advantage of there. They know they can do it.” And I'm like, “Okay, it's okay.” Because what the parents are doing is figuring out: are they capable? Maybe you need to see it a couple times first.

So slice thinner what your ask is, is what I say. So maybe they can't get up by themselves, or maybe they need you to have their clothes ready for them if they're a younger kid. Even though they might be capable under perfect circumstances. They may not be capable three of five days of starting all of it on their own. So I say: aim lower and know that it's okay. 

[00:32:31] Leslie: Yes. And what makes it even a little more confusing is Saturday, they get up fine and get dressed…

[00:32:40] Amy: Are you at my house? 

[Laughter]

[00:32:42] Leslie: Right! So Saturday they can do it, but Monday through Friday, they can't. Those are two very different contexts. And I do not think all those days are equal. So I want to honor the fact that getting up for school, that child has a lot on their mind. Is that friend in school going to be mean to me? There's so much on their mind as they're getting ready to go to school. That's why you might see a difference between Monday and Saturday.

And it's not that they're just manipulating you, which is a word we do not use in DBT. But one day is different than another. So they may be capable on a Saturday and a Sunday, but they may have real struggles on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So we want to, as you say, slice—I haven't heard that expression—slice the salami thinner so that our expectations are realistic for the context and the situation.

[00:33:37] Amy: Yes. And I know it can be a struggle. Like, this is nothing I'm asking them to do the smallest thing, they can do so much more than that. That's okay. I believe that is also true, but one thing I haven't said, and I know we're short on time, but when I teach accommodation in the SPACE principles to parents of young adults, I say to them all the time that this is for you, SPACE treatment, this is for parents to feel less stuck. If your kid actually changes and does what you're asking, it's really just a bonus, because that's not the point. The point is I want parents to feel like, “Okay, I'll try this. If it doesn't work, it's okay. It's for me. Like if they don't do what I'm asking, it doesn't mean my job isn't done that I haven't done what I needed to do.”

[00:34:25] Leslie: Right. So let's wrap up, hitting home that idea that these ideas are to support the parent so that the interaction and the feelings that parents have at this job is less about burning out and resentment; and those kinds of feelings and helping parents feel a little bit more competent, understanding. And maybe even, I haven't thought about it this way, prioritizing or bringing into the picture dialectically their own needs. Because maybe what's out of balance when we're accommodating is my child's needs, my child's needs, my child's needs. And maybe what you're really saying, if I'm correct, is that we really want to elevate the parent to say, think about your needs, think about your bandwidth, think about how to make this job sustainable for you, which will probably be a win-win situation for your child.

[00:35:22] Amy: There's no way that it isn't, right? Because if nothing else, if you wise mindedly decide to come accommodate that day, there's less conflict. There'll be less conflict that day, and then you might have more bandwidth the next time and decide not to. And it's okay. 

[00:35:44] Leslie: That's the thing I say to parents all the time: don't worry, you're going to have another opportunity to practice that. Kids give us plenty of opportunities. And the last thing is some of the parents and my other listeners, they have young children. Isn't it exciting that we're talking to parents with young children?

[00:36:01] Amy: I’ll tell you what, what a huge. Huge advantage that parents today have. Like, where was this podcast when my kids were little? [Laughter] What a huge advantage to start noticing right now, if you feel like you're accommodating. Parents, just notice, you don't even have to change it. Just pay attention to it. You think you're leaning in too much. Well, make a note, decide later if you're going to change, but yeah, this is a great, great time in parents’ and kids’ lives to start to pay attention.

[00:36:33] Leslie: One of the things that my podcast is for parents of young children and middle school and high school and all of that, is these skills are transferable. So here, you know, you're speaking to a lot of parents of the young adults who are out in the adult world. And we know that we're talking the same language because these skills are so transferable. We're very excited that parents are starting whenever they can. And starting [00:37:00] young has a great advantage. 

[00:37:03] Amy: The best. The best advantage. It's exciting.

[00:37:05] Leslie: It's exciting. Amy, I want to thank you for being here today. 

[00:37:08] Amy: Thank you so much for asking me. I'm happy that I was here.

[Music: Acoustic Guitars Ambient Uplifting by Oleksii Kaplunskyi]

[00:37:16] Leslie Cohen-Rubury: It's always exciting to talk to someone equally focused on helping parents feel more competent and confident in what they're doing. And research shows that it works. Amy was such a great guest because she works with the SPACE program, which does exactly that: It focuses the work on helping parents, rather than fixing the child. Because when we help parents, we help children. 

And this week, remember to check in with yourself about your own bandwidth when dealing with your child. To learn more about Amy's work and for additional resources about DBT and SPACE, visit my show notes at ismychildamonster. com. 

And join us next week when we meet a new family dealing with intense anxiety, especially around doctor visits. And how something that seems so small to you, like removing a Bandaid, is an overwhelming emergency for your child and can make you question your own sanity. 

Subscribe to, Is My Child A Monster? wherever you get your podcast, to learn how to help manage those big feelings. And please rate and review on Apple podcasts to help spread the word. You can also find a full transcript of this episode or sign up for my newsletter at ismychildamonster.com. The Is My Child A Monster? Team is Alletta Cooper, Camila Salazar, and me. Special thanks to Eric Rubury. Our theme music is by L-Ray Music. I'm Leslie Cohen-Rubury. Thanks so much for listening.

Transcribed by Eric Rubury