Breaking the Cycle with Posttraumatic Parenting Expert Robyn Koslowitz, PhD

In this episode, we discuss "posttraumatic parenting"- how to be a great parent to your child while, at the same time, addressing your own history of trauma. 
Dr. Robyn Koslowitz is a clinical child psychologist, trauma treatment expert, TEDx speaker, and author of Post-Traumatic Parenting: Break the Cycle, Become the Parent You Always Wanted to Be. As the founder of the Post-Traumatic Parenting model, Dr. Koslowitz helps parents break free from inherited patterns and become the parents their children—and their inner child—need.
Her core message is simple yet profound: Your inner child can’t raise a child, but raising your real-world child can heal your inner child.
Dr. Koslowitz combines research-backed tools, clinical insights, and lived experience to help parents transform trauma into growth. As she says, Adulting is hard. Adulting is especially hard if you never childed. And parenting? That’s adulting on steroids.
Her “trauma app” metaphor has reached thousands, empowering parents to recognize and rewrite the patterns that no longer serve them—or their children.

 Post-Traumatic Parenting (Book): https://bit.ly/4lRIyuL
  TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF09vjKqCyo 
 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.koslowitzpsychology/
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drrobynkoslowitz/
  Threads: https://www.threads.com/@dr.koslowitzpsychology
  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@posttraumaticparenting
  Podcast: https://posttraumaticparenting.com/podcast/
  Website: https://posttraumaticparenting.com/about/
  Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/targeted-parenting

Please note that while I am a pediatrician, I am not your child's pediatrician. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. For any medical concerns or decisions, please reach out to your child’s health care professional.

Cover art by Charlotte Feldman

Transcript

0:11

Welcome to Kids Matter. I'm Dr. Elisa Minkin. As a pediatrician, mom and grandma, I understand how challenging it can be to help our kids grow into their best selves. We are so much more powerful together. Here I will be sharing the knowledge and wisdom of a wide range of people who understand and care deeply about children. I'm hoping for your input as well because kids really do matter. They are our future.

Alisa Minkin 0:46

Welcome back. I am super, super honored and excited to have as my guest today, Dr. Robin Kasowitz. Hi.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 0:54

Hi, so happy to be here.

Alisa Minkin 0:56

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm gonna start with your bio and say a few words and we're gonna go into your topic, which is so important. Dr. Robin Sitz is a clinical child psychologist, trauma treatment expert, TEDx speaker and author of the Post-Traumatic Parenting, break the Cycle, become the Parent you always want it to be, which I read, which is awesome. And that Ted Talk, I'm going to make sure we link to the show. I don't know how you encapsulated into 17 to 18 minutes, everything important, but you did and it really was awesome.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:30

Thank you.

Alisa Minkin 1:32

Amazing. So you help parents break free from inherited patterns and become the parents, their children, and their inner child need. This is to me, so critically important. I feel like a broken record. I've been saying on pretty much every episode, parents put your oxygen emotional oxygen mask on first. And that can be easier said than done for the typical parent. And it's a whole other issue for what we call the post-traumatic parent. But before we get to post-traumatic parenting, I wanna start with please just telling us about trauma and welcome to the show. Thank you.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 2:06

Thanks so much for having me. I know it took us such a long time to schedule this, but I kept like, yes, this has to happen. We're gonna make this happen. So you know, and it did. Yay. So first of all, trauma to me, is any experience too big for our brain to metabolize? You know, sometimes people confuse trauma with stress. We are actually incredibly anti-fragile creatures. Humans are capable of handling a tremendous amount of stress. Stress in and of itself is not a bad thing. We pay money to be stressed out. If you go to a horror movie or you go to an amusement park, you're paying money to feel the pleasurable parts of stress. It's not a bad thing in and of itself, but when stress persists too much too long, or when you're alone with coping with that stress and you don't have anyone to help you make sense of a stress, we can then lean over, tip over into what we call trauma and.

Alisa Minkin 2:58

and

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 2:59

The most important thing to remember about that?'cause I feel like nowadays you get a lot of pushback about trauma where people say, well, I went through difficult things and I'm not traumatized, first of all. Sometimes doubtful, sometimes I'll have someone say that to me and like it's very clear that there's some sequelae of their trauma that they're living. But you know, most, the most I think egregious one was someone who had every one of her adult children estranged from her and had been divorced three times. And she said, I went through really hard things in my childhood and it didn't affect me at all.

Alisa Minkin 3:29

all.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 3:29

And I just remember thinking like, but maybe, perhaps, maybe it did, right? Like There's been a lot of experiences in your life where maybe you didn't handle stress well. Again, I don't know anything about your life except for these two facts that you told me, but I wonder, right, so. When I say that, when, when I say that someone experienced trauma, that's really more of a scientific, psychological term. It doesn't mean you're weak. It doesn't mean that your psyche is somehow toxic or poisoned or like you don't know how to think about things or how to look on the bright side. It simply means you went through a certain amount of stress that was more than your brain could tolerate, and then later on your brain couldn't metabolize it. Boom, you're traumatized. That's all that means, right? It doesn't mean anything more than that. It doesn't say anything about your character or your morals or your value as a person. It just says you went through this and you hit a certain invisible threshold and now it tipped into something else. Well, that's what trauma is, that that's all.

Alisa Minkin 4:28

that's

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 4:29

It's no more and no less than that.

Alisa Minkin 4:31

than

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 4:31

just an experience too big for your brain to metabolize that then didn't get metabolized later, didn't get processed properly later, which is why by the way, that going through a terrible, stressful experience does not automatically make you traumatized. If you go through a terrible, stressful experience and someone helps you make sense of it and supports you through it and helps you understand like your adrenal response and your body flooding you with like cortisol and adrenaline, which are the hormones that manage our stress response, and someone helps you make sense of the story and think it through and helps you understand why your brain is giving you flashbacks now and all that stuff. You may not become traumatized. You may be stressed out, but you may not be traumatized. So that's all trauma is. It's a very predictable response. It's a cluster of symptoms that we say, oh, that's called trauma. I think we give it this moral weight that it doesn't really need, right? It's just you hit a certain threshold and that's all.

Alisa Minkin 5:26

all that makes so much sense. And you hear people saying trauma, it's over overused. They took up a big T trauma and little T trauma and I think there's some mockery, of the overuse of the word trauma. But I think we underestimate it.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 5:38

Yeah.

Alisa Minkin 5:39

That's what I think we're really doing.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 5:41

Yeah. And I think that, you know, I actually don't believe in Big T versus little T trauma'cause I don't believe in the, I don't think the content of the trauma story matters nearly as much as. Who it happened to, where it landed, and who was there to support them afterwards. You know, I look at my own story, right? Where I, you know, this is a trigger warning. This was, you know, my own story is sometimes disturbing to hear, but I had a very chronically ill parent my whole life. My father, he developed his heart condition and I think I was like five or six. And he, you know, was really ill. Like, you know, we would have ambulances at our house. He had multiple, like, you know,

Alisa Minkin 6:19

you

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 6:19

cardiac,

Alisa Minkin 6:19

cardiac events

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 6:20

that we had to deal with. I spent a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms as a child until when he was, when I was 16, he had his fatal heart attack, and I actually attempted to do CPR on him and I failed. Now, everybody would call that big T trauma, right? Like trying to do CPR on your dad. That grabs your attention, right? It's ripped from the headlines, like, whoa.

Alisa Minkin 6:39

Like,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 6:40

Honestly, in some ways what left a bigger impact on my psyche was the years and years and years of him being sick and how hypervigilant and anxious I became during that time, and how much I learned how to like, sort of people please and make sure everything was calm in my home,

Alisa Minkin 6:57

my home

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 6:57

or keep myself very quiet by reading books because I wanted my house to be calm.'cause when things were calm, my father was calm.

Alisa Minkin 7:04

was

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 7:04

I also, and I, I equated

Alisa Minkin 7:06

I

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 7:06

lack of calm with danger,

Alisa Minkin 7:08

danger, right?

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 7:09

I was older, after my father died a lot of my friends didn't know how to treat me because, you know, they didn't even know if they could say the word father in front of me. And when teenage girls dunno how to treat you, they just don't talk to you.

Alisa Minkin 7:21

You.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 7:22

And that was painful and that was hard. And in some ways that left more of an impact on my psyche. Like the death of my father was terrible. The trauma of doing CPRI had to undergo trauma therapy for it. But there were other things that left more complex and longer lasting sequelae. And I've had that with so many patients will tell me a story. Right? My mom died of cancer, but then,

Alisa Minkin 7:42

then

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 7:42

my stepmom moved in and she was super critical and every move I made was wrong.

Alisa Minkin 7:45

wrong

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 7:46

And it sounds crazy, but the fact of my stepmom is what traumatized me. Losing my mom was just sad. And anybody who's not a post-traumatic parent won't get that. Right?

Alisa Minkin 7:56

no, I see that. And I, and it also brings up the topic of ACEs, of these adverse childhood events, like you were bringing up several of them and I think you also were bullied, if I'm correct.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 8:05

Yes. I was bullied and that definitely left its mark, right? So prior to my father, prior to like. Me being in like high school when I like sort of got out of my shell, I was that very shy, quiet kid who sat in the corner with a book because I couldn't let myself get stressed out and reading a book kept me calm. So like in first, second, third grade, like that's okay'cause you're basically toddlers and no one cares what you do. But by the time you get to like fourth, fifth grade, especially middle school, that's weird. Right? And the social world is very feminine and very, you know, the way girls bully each other is very relational. And I didn't know how to deal with it because I was an only girl in my family and I didn't wanna stress my mother out too much by going to her for help, which is ironic'cause she was a school guidance counselor and she probably could have helped me.

Alisa Minkin 8:50

help

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 8:50

But.

Alisa Minkin 8:51

but

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 8:51

was a lot of, I'm just gonna figure this out and there must be something wrong with me. By the time I came to high school, I was much more calm and I found my, I sort of found the ocean I needed to swim in, and I found my groove and I found my friends. So when I lost my, some of my friends in high school after my father died, it was like another blow to me, right? Because it was like, I thought I got the social world thing. What happened?

Alisa Minkin 9:12

happened?

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 9:12

You know? And it really wasn't their fault, like they were actually trying to be nice, you know what I mean? Like, they were trying to not step on my toes by avoiding uncomfortable topics, but that just makes a friendship very uncomfortable. Right, and that's where in the book I talk about this idea of ACEs and s ACEs, secret ACEs. Because I think when we talk about big T trauma, we talk about the acess from the famous Kaiser Permanente study, which is like,

Alisa Minkin 9:36

Like

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 9:36

if you have had certain experiences in your life, having a parent incarcerated, moving frequently, having a parent die, living in a neighborhood that's you know, subject to a lot of violence, living below a certain poverty level, right? There's a specific factors. It's highly correlated with certain adverse experiences in adulthood, cardiac events, getting sick, all sorts of like autoimmune diseases. And it's just like, wow, the more these things happen to you, the more likely you are to get these conditions. That's really all that study said. It wasn't

Alisa Minkin 10:06

It

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 10:06

anything more people like

Alisa Minkin 10:07

like

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 10:08

assign magical powers to that study. It was a correlational study. The more of these events you experience, the more of these diseases you tend to have. Whoa. Interesting. And it's, you sort of can see the map of

Alisa Minkin 10:17

map

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 10:18

was sexually abused autoimmune diseases in adulthood. Like you, like, wow, you can't deny the connection. Correlation's, not causation, but a lot of correlation tells us something. We're like, oh, this keeps happening. Right? So

Alisa Minkin 10:31

so

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 10:32

that is nice. Those are the acss. It's great to have them. But what about secret acess? And that's, I think where we get to the Big T versus little T trauma. What are the things that happened to you that didn't make its way onto that Kaiser Permanente list, but also leave an indelible mark? Like someone who was not raised in poverty, but the home was extremely critical. Right? Someone who was not raised in, you know, not raised with a parent who's frequently incarcerated, but they were constantly bullied by their peers their entire life. Like, that's gonna leave a mark, but it's not on that study.

Alisa Minkin 11:05

So what? I'm sorry. Do you, when you say secret, do you mean ones that are not included on the normal list or ones that you don't know about? When you said secret, I thought you meant ones you don't know

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 11:13

Both, I think. Right? I think first of all, they're not normalized on that list. So you don't look at, you don't look at yourself and say, oh yeah, well my dad was incarcerated most of my life. Of course, look, the study says, of course I'm gonna have all these problems. These are the things that are sometimes kept secret also from you. Like, no, we're a very happy family. We're a very normal family. Everything's great here except mom's a functional alcoholic, so everything's not great here. Right In, in a family like that, or

Alisa Minkin 11:40

Or

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 11:41

sibling abuse, right? One sibling is

Alisa Minkin 11:43

is

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 11:44

not just teasing a younger sibling, but like harming them.

Alisa Minkin 11:48

them.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 11:49

whether we're talking about incest or whether we're talking about something more insidious, like bullying or like really making them second guess themselves. Constantly targeting one child in the family where No. What do you mean? We're a normal family. We're a regular family. We're, we're a fine family, but then.

Alisa Minkin 12:05

then.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 12:05

That's not my experience of this family, right? This isn't what my life was like. I had someone who,

Alisa Minkin 12:11

who

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 12:11

Was in one of my post-traumatic parenting classes who said that,

Alisa Minkin 12:14

that

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 12:14

her stepmother, who really was insidiously bullying her, like she would talk about the passive aggressive comments her stepmother made, and like they were like very clearly out to harm her. And she even had receipts, like meaning WhatsApp chat messages and things. And it was very clear that this is a heads you lose tails. I win dynamic. Where no matter what she does, she's wrong. And this stepmom was somebody who was looked up to for being such a wonderful stepmother that she was like giving stepmother in classes, right? So can you imagine being that the stepdaughter of this woman and going to your teacher and saying,

Alisa Minkin 12:46

and

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 12:47

my stepmom says these really hurtful things to me. What's the teacher gonna say?

Alisa Minkin 12:50

say?

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 12:51

Right? The teacher's gonna be like, oh, well your stepmom didn't mean it that way. You're misunderstanding her. She's wonderful. I mean, she gives stepmother in classes. So it's secret because you might doubt the reality of your own experience

Alisa Minkin 13:03

gaslighting

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 13:03

'cause the world doesn't know about it. Right. So you might, but you might even gaslight yourself. Right?

Alisa Minkin 13:08

That's what I meant by gas line. You're gaslighting yourself because you're being told it's normal and everyone's telling you it's normal. Like you have a parent, for example, who's very prominent in your community, but things are happening behind the scenes.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 13:18

Right. And it's hard sometimes to listen to kids. Right? Sometimes when kids say something that just flies in the face of, you know what? We expect to hear it. It's hard to hear them and say, wait, huh, maybe something is going on that I don't know about. Right? And this is just like

Alisa Minkin 13:35

just

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 13:35

the job of a child psychotherapist in general. But I think secret acss are important.'cause just'cause your a CES didn't make its way onto Kaiser Permanente's list doesn't mean it didn't leave the same lasting harm.

Alisa Minkin 13:49

And it's also very individualized.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 13:51

Right? It's not, it's not the content of what happens, it's how it lands.

Alisa Minkin 13:55

It's what it means to you.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 13:57

Yeah. Yeah.

Alisa Minkin 13:58

So now we're gonna get to post-traumatic parenting and I'm gonna ask you to, I don't know if you trademarked this term. I never heard it anywhere else.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 14:05

I did trademark the term, but

Alisa Minkin 14:07

for

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 14:08

But yeah, post-traumatic, I mean, I copyrighted it I guess, which is, you know, same idea.

Alisa Minkin 14:11

thing. Yeah.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 14:12

but post-traumatic parenting is simply what happens when you are parenting with a trauma history. And I think that parenting is sort of the perfect storm for any adaptation we made to trauma to suddenly fall apart. Because another thing I didn't say about trauma is that

Alisa Minkin 14:31

that

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 14:31

when we experience trauma, our brain creates what I call a trauma app, which is a way of handling overwhelming psychological experience. And it tends to work and it works really well.

Alisa Minkin 14:42

well.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 14:43

So let's say someone like me who was bullied, you might become a people pleaser because don't bully me. If I'm really people pleasing and I'm really nice and I'm really kind and I'm always volunteering and helping out and, and stepping in, you know, to smooth over troubled waters, then, then, then nobody's gonna wanna

Alisa Minkin 14:58

nobody's gonna

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 14:59

Right. And, and for like a fourth grader's logic, that's really smart, right? And that, and often works, right? It's sort of like the stereotype of like,

Alisa Minkin 15:06

of

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 15:07

you know, a kid who, you know, the funny, fat person, right? If I poke, poke fun at myself, then nobody will poke fun at me. And after a while, that becomes a talent, right? Jay Leno said like he attributes his entire career to being like, I like, you know, I think it was like a fat Italian kid in a different ethnic group's neighborhood, right? So then he learned to be really funny'cause you don't punch as hard when you, when they're laughing. Like he, he has a whole comedy routine about that. It worked, it created a superpower in him. But it's a trauma adaptation, right? It's a superpower for me, I learned I'm really good at dissociating. Like I can block everything out to like to like a really strong extent and I can focus on my work. That adaptation worked very well for me in graduate school, right? Like that's a great adaptation to have. I can concentrate anywhere, right? And. What happens when you try to parent, right? Because what happens is you learn this and then you start, start thinking that this is your only way of dealing with stress. So if you are somebody who, let's say I'm never gonna get bullied again, so I'm gonna lash out. Anytime I perceive any sort of disrespect, I like go in there and I lash out first. That works great until you're parenting toddlers or teenagers, right? Like that might work great if you're a lawyer and might work great, like, you know, if you're the boss and in, in the corporate America, depending on you know, how well you handle it and how socially you on are, you are about like using that aggressive impulse doesn't work with parenting and there's so many trauma adaptations we have and they fall apart when we parent. And that makes so much sense because parenting is the one time that those coping tools don't work, right? I can't parent with presence and dissociate. It's not possibles.

Alisa Minkin 16:46

right, I want you to tell that story because that really resonated with me when you talked about what your son said to you. So I want you to really go into that a little bit about the dissociating.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 16:55

It is so interesting'cause that story that I'm about to tell, some people totally relate to it and some people are like, I don't get what happened. So one of my sons, when he was 10 years old he asked me where I go when I go away behind my eyes. At the time he was like telling me something and I really was a way behind my eyes. I was, I was completely pretending to, to be, to be there and present and listen to him, but most of my brain was somewhere else'cause I was feeling a lot of stress. And, and then he started to cry and he said, I don't like when you do that, when you go away behind your eyes like that because it's really scary and.

Alisa Minkin 17:32

and

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 17:34

There was a part of me that really wanted to gaslight him and just say like, no, I'm, I'm right here. What do you mean? I'm, I'm, no, I'm just, something crossed my mind for, I spaced out for a second, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. I was distracted. Right.

Alisa Minkin 17:45

being distracted.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 17:46

just counting how many tablespoons I was putting into the recipe. Right. Or something like that. But I wasn't distracted. I was dissociated and he was pointing to something very real. And at that time, I had, I thought that I had really dealt with my trauma because I had done a lot of trauma therapy specifically for my flashbacks and my panic attacks. Like I had done a lot of, you know, very good evidence-based work on managing my panic attacks, managing my flashbacks, because when I had been pregnant with my oldest child, I knew that that was gonna be a problem. Right. I was like, how do I explain?'cause when I have a panic attack, like I'm, I'm not functional. Like how do I explain that to a toddler? That must be really scary. I remember even being pregnant and, and going to the stacks at BS library and looking for research on.

Alisa Minkin 18:26

find,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 18:27

What is this gonna do to the developing fetus? Like, like they're swimming in a soup of, of, of, of stress hormones. That can't be good. Right? And there was no research, like there was nothing partially'cause I was looking in the wrong places, but there just wasn't research on what a panic attack during pregnancy does to the developing baby.

Alisa Minkin 18:44

baby.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 18:45

So that was just, I knew that that was something I needed to get a handle on. So I did do really good therapy on my panic attacks, and I learned how to manage them with deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation. And like all the ways we teach people to manage panic attacks, I learned how to really manage my flashbacks and intrusive thoughts so that they rarely attacked me anymore. But dissociation was one of my go-to strategies. Because it works, dissociation completely takes you out of your body and you actually become extremely calm. So all those stress hormones that are building up go away. I actually have a really interesting episode of my post-Traumatic Parenting podcast with Dr. Frank Putnam, who's like a psychiatrist, like a leading researcher on dissociation like in the world. And the, and we were talking about how you just feel calm. So it's like an off button, which is great, except my kids could see it, right? Which meant that it wasn't great.

Alisa Minkin 19:39

right? What made you do it at that moment in time? What triggered it?

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 19:44

I think he was, I think my son was asking me to solve a problem that wasn't in my power to solve, which was very triggering for me because as a kid I felt like it was my job to keep my father alive. I felt like I was being, I was alone with a problem that was too big for me.

Alisa Minkin 19:58

for me.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 19:59

So, and no one necessarily gave that to me. I was just a very conscientious person and like,

Alisa Minkin 20:04

like,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 20:04

why did I know CPR when I was 16? Because like, you gotta know CPR'cause what if someone drops dead in front of you? Right? Like that was always my thinking. It was always the way my brain worked.

Alisa Minkin 20:12

worked.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 20:13

So I really felt like Responsible for things that were too big for me. And because I was a very good conscientious kid, I sometimes was given certain emotional jobs in the family that were too big for me

Alisa Minkin 20:27

that the parentified child,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 20:28

right? I wasn't necessarily parental because I had no younger siblings to care for, but in other ways.

Alisa Minkin 20:33

you mean. Adultified. Adultified would

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 20:34

I was adultified like I remember, and my mother was one of the most amazing mothers. She was a guidance counselor. She was warm and present and kind, but very, very anxious. But I remember her saying to me like, I can't argue with Tati about taking his medication anymore, and I have to leave for work. So, so just make sure before you leave that Tati took his medication. My mother was an incredible person. She did not mean to give me anything

Alisa Minkin 20:55

anything.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 20:56

that, first of all wasn't given to her because she remembered, she told me stories about her father had a heart condition and how she would help her mother with like very primitive forms of like, I guess like asthma's treatments and, you know,'cause my mother also has asthma, but like, like, like making like tenses so that you can breathe in steam and things like she would help her mother do that for her father. So this is like not necessarily a pattern that she would realize would be harmful in any way. And also I was an only girl and my father loved me very much and I was able to like be like, come on Tati, before I go to school, could you like, you know, and my father would do it for me. Like it, it was effective and my mother was trying to keep a very ill man alive. So there was that aspect. I

Alisa Minkin 21:36

when you were just a kid.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 21:37

Right, right.

Alisa Minkin 21:40

So I wanna move on to you describe, I think, five subtypes of the post-traumatic parent, because I want people to really understand what it means to be a post-traumatic parent, how it affects your parenting when you are post-trauma,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 21:55

So I just wanna explain that the five subtypes, they're research based in the sense that this is my personal research amongst the post-traumatic parenting community. It's not like peer review double blind studies where we can be like, okay, this is a diagnosis. Right. It's just, it's just something that I noticed over the years, giving post-traumatic parenting classes, people would tend to sort themselves into groups. I'd be like, oh, that's interesting. Sarah asked the same question as Danielle and they come from a similar background. And that's sort of how I created those categories. But it's not like a diagnosis. I think we sometimes, on social media especially, we sometimes like give weight to things that don't actually exist as diagnosis. Right. So, but the subtypes are. The number one is the entangled post-traumatic parent. That's somebody who is so enmeshed in like her family of origin

Alisa Minkin 22:43

or

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 22:43

or in a toxic ex relationship, or maybe even in like a golden handcuffs job, that they can't actually parent the kids in front of them'cause they're held back, right? They're entangled in another relationship. So that's one subtype. And then we have the disengaged post-traumatic parent. That's somebody who's so terrified that their harm will harm their child, that they dissociate, they take a step back. They might outsource their parenting a lot, so they might give it over to a spouse. They might give it over, they might hire people,

Alisa Minkin 23:12

people.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 23:12

right? A homework tutor, a personal shopper, a pastor, a rabbi, right? Someone else, like, you know, this person will give my kid the sex talk. This person will go shopping with my kid for camp. This person will do homework with my kid. My husband will do this, right? Like everybody else is getting a job because I'm gonna harm the kid. I'm gonna do it wrong.

Alisa Minkin 23:30

I'll say though. Okay. I just wanna interject for a minute that outsourcing something that you don't feel capable of doing might be actually a really positive thing,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 23:38

Yeah, every adaptation is sometimes positive,

Alisa Minkin 23:41

right?

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 23:42

And in fact, I'll sometimes give people the, I'll sometimes give people the advice to outsource. Like, you know, you and your son get into a lot of like little altercations over everything. Why not hire a homework teacher? And then like, it's the whole and someone who he likes to work with. And then the homework teacher's gotta keep him motivated and everything while you focus on something else. We sometimes do that, every single one of these, right? Entanglement. There's something to be said for like, I feel close to my family of origin. I wanna support them. I want my children to have grandparents. I, this job may take a lot outta me, but it provides our lifestyle, right? All of these are something that can sometimes be good, but then it takes over and it becomes the default and the go-to. It's a matter of balance. It's also a matter of fear. Are you outsourcing this because. I am not the best person to do this, but I am the best person to do something else or you outsource through this.'cause I'm not the best person to do anything with my child. Right. That's where I worry, like when I had a mom say to me, I want you to give the sex talk to my kid because I was molested and I, I am going to say it wrong, like my emotions are gonna get there. And I said, I think we we're better off working with you until you are comfortable having this conversation with your kid. She said to me, yeah, but my kid's going to camp now and I'm not gonna be able to have this conversation in a way that will be healthy. So can you temporarily do this? And I said, you know, I actually consulted with some like supervisors of mine and like I said, yeah, we can do that.

Alisa Minkin 25:07

yeah,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 25:07

And

Alisa Minkin 25:08

And

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 25:08

did that. Then she and I worked heavily on her experiences so that when her kid came home from camp, she was able to sort of, because the sex talk is not a one and done thing, right? It's a process and we should be doing it a lot

Alisa Minkin 25:21

lot

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 25:21

our kids every so often. So by then she was comfortable being able to have this conversation with her kid.

Alisa Minkin 25:26

I love that'cause it makes me think about the intertwining of anxiety and avoidance and the more you're anxious about something you avoided and then it builds the anxiety. So if your message is I can never do this, that's very different

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 25:37

Yeah,

Alisa Minkin 25:37

this moment in time, it needs to be done and it cannot be

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 25:40

right. When you work with children, which is what I primarily do in therapy, and parents, you gotta be a pragmatist because ideally I should not be the one giving your kid the sex book. Absolutely. You mom should be the one. In reality, kids gonna camp in four weeks. Someone's gotta have that conversation, right?

Alisa Minkin 25:55

Right.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 25:56

A mental health professional's probably better than, you know, your great aunt, right? You've gotta like, at that point, we gotta have someone do this because you can't go to camp without having to have that conversation with.

Alisa Minkin 26:07

with

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 26:07

A figure that your parent trusts and you know, so that made sense in that moment then, but yeah. Right. You gotta do the thing you're afraid of because otherwise it will just get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's, you know, the, the basis of treating any anxiety based anything. Right? So that's the disengaged parent. Then we have the perfectionist parent.

Alisa Minkin 26:27

parent,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 26:28

perfectionist parent is trying so hard to do parenting perfectly that they forget to be present. Like they're the people who are buying all the parenting scripts and all the parenting courses and

Alisa Minkin 26:36

and

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 26:37

constantly policing themselves. And I find that very often perfectionist parents marry each other so they're policing each other, which is great.'cause we should parent well. And you know, if your mom's default strategy for anything you did wrong was whacking you across the face and you're tempted to whack your kid across the face every time you feel stress, it is good to try to do better. Right. That, that's, that's wonderful. And you can't be perfect. You're not gonna be able to be perfect. You're gonna burn out. No one's perfect.

Alisa Minkin 27:07

this is the one that breaks my heart the most because I see it as a pediatrician the most, which is why I'm nodding furiously. You're talking

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 27:13

Right,

Alisa Minkin 27:13

subtype. I see a lot of parents who did have traumatic childhoods and are determined that their child's childhood will not be like theirs. And they do go into this whole perfect parenting. I call it a trap because social media is, constantly making it sound like this is the way to be the perfect parent. It's impossible, and it just interacts with their anxiety. That's, goes overboard. So that could be a whole separate podcast. In fact,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 27:40

Yeah.

Alisa Minkin 27:41

one recently, which I

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 27:42

Yeah.

Alisa Minkin 27:43

with Stephanie

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 27:43

With Stephanie Fu. Yeah. Yeah. She's amazing. Yeah. But yeah, and the idea I think is that. Your kid is not you. Your kid has you and your kid has you for support. So when someone comes to me and says, today I yelled at my daughter, and it's exactly like when my father used to hit me. Well, no, it's not. Words are arguably less harmful than physical violence. Is yelling good? I'd rather you not yell. But

Alisa Minkin 28:09

but

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 28:10

is not exactly the same thing. You are several levels, more competent of a parent than your father sounds like, right? And okay, so you yelled and now she's gonna feel abandoned and alone and she's gonna feel like, and I say, what's the worst thing that will happen? She's gonna feel like her mother hates her and doesn't even love her.'cause why would you yell at someone you love?

Alisa Minkin 28:28

love.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 28:29

She, she may feel that way, but she may also understand that mommy is human. And sometimes humans lose their temper, and you always have the possibility of repair, right? You can go to her and you can say, you know, today things got a little loud. Let's talk about it. I shouldn't have yelled right. And whatever else was going wrong, I shouldn't have yelled, would've been a better way to handle this situation. And then tomorrow you can have a separate conversation about whatever the problem was that led you to yell. Meaning you don't wanna have that conversation when you're doing a repair, especially if you're a perfectionist parent. You don't wanna make your child responsible for your emotions.'cause you don't wanna people please your child where they're gonna forgive you.

Alisa Minkin 29:02

you.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 29:02

it's not like, well, I wouldn't have yelled if you would've put on your shoes right

Alisa Minkin 29:05

right.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 29:06

tomorrow. It's a separate conversation about,

Alisa Minkin 29:08

about,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 29:08

it seems like every Wednesday when we're running out to like gymnastics, there's always this rush to find your shoes and there's always a fight with your sister. How do we, now that we know this pattern, what do we do about it? How do we make sure that Wednesdays go smoothly from now on? I don't wanna yell, you don't wanna be yelled at, you don't wanna be late to gymnastics practice, soccer practice, whatever. I don't want you to be late. How do we make this work? Right? It's a separate conversation.

Alisa Minkin 29:34

One, if many. I'm sure

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 29:35

Of course.

Alisa Minkin 29:36

I'm jumping up and down for repair because I love this idea of repair and I wanna get to it, but first I wanna start from the beginning of this idea of, you describe the trauma app. I like that metaphor on many levels, but especially the idea that it's software and you can change software,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 29:52

Yeah,

Alisa Minkin 29:53

hardware, it's not fixable.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 29:55

software is, yeah, software is programmable. Right? And it's a program I have my dissociation program likes to run and it frequently wants to run. And there are times, and that's when it's like called a flashback, right? Where I can't stop it from running. But usually I can be like, oh, trauma app you're activating. I am gonna mindfully deselect your permission. You know? And sometimes there's like really silly things we can do. Like, I'm gonna sing everything I, let's say a mom doesn't wanna yell. I can, I'm gonna sing everything I say for the next half hour. It's very hard to yell and sing at the same time, unless you're like an opera singer. It's like really difficult to, I had a mom tell me that. She's like, I can yell and sing. And I'm like, and, and I'm like, wow, I can't, how can you? She's like, well, I'm a classically trained singer. I'm like, okay.

Alisa Minkin 30:37

Wow

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 30:38

Most humans cannot. Right, right. You know? But the idea is there are ways of interrupting that programming. There's a ways of noticing, oh, this app is turning on and I'm gonna turn it off. I personally find it a more helpful metaphor than the idea of the body keeping the score. Right. Because if it's your body, you can't control your body. There's so many things puke happens. There's so many things about your body that you cannot control. And I feel like we all know that about our bodies. Like Sometimes I faint or like, or whatever it is. When I'm starving, I need to eat. Like Control my body fully. So when you think of the body

Alisa Minkin 31:13

the

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 31:13

keeping the score, it feels like, okay, so my body is taking over. Now when, when you think of it as software, right? I like Lisa Feldman. Barrett has a much better metaphor, which is the body is the scorecard, right?

Alisa Minkin 31:25

I like that

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 31:26

Right, because like if, if I'm, anytime I'm in a medical situation, I'm gonna start feeling this dissociative calm that allows me to actually handle emergencies really well. That's my scorecard. That's my body having an adaptation to a particular situation, right? That, that adaptation wasn't good for me, but it is an adaptation to a particular situation. My brain would like to run this program right now, and I can tell my brain, no, don't run this program. I just don't find my body fundamentally controllable. I find our bodies are mysterious. Like we just, we can't always control them. Ask any teenage girl. You can't control your body, right? Sometimes you just start to cry, right? All sorts of things happen to your body.

Alisa Minkin 32:05

body. But in terms of control, you can't necessarily control your brain or your trauma app. I don't wanna get all perfectionistic

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 32:11

Yeah, yeah. No, you can't necessarily control it, but you can work on reprogramming it. You can gain a lot more measure a, a, a bigger measure of agency. I guess I feel hopeless at the thought of controlling my body, like at, at a fundamental level. Like if I was trying to control my body from having a panic attack, that would be terrible if I, because that would never work. And in fact, it would reinforce my panic attack if I would say, oh, oh, trauma app. You are turning on the panic attack mode right now. Okay? This is gonna be uncomfortable for a couple of minutes. I'm gonna have to breathe for a little bit.

Alisa Minkin 32:40

bit.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 32:41

Maybe I should pull over to the side of the road depending on like what I'm doing and it will pass, right? If I, if I was trying to control my body, heartbeats, heart stop beating, I can't do that.

Alisa Minkin 32:53

I really wanna get more into breaking the cycle because, you talked a little bit about deselecting, the trauma app, but you have this great framework, it's called Aim Acceptance Integration and Meaning making, and I would love for you to go into that, please.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 33:07

So a lot of post-traumatic parents, oh, by the way, we didn't say the last two subtypes, which is paralyzed and survivor, right?

Alisa Minkin 33:12

oh.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 33:13

is just a post-traumatic parent who doesn't trust their own judgment. So they're always second guessing themselves, and they start one thing and then they start something else, and the next parenting influencer says something. So they try that and like, and they're just running around all the time. Paralysis, paradoxically looks, frantically busy,

Alisa Minkin 33:28

busy.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 33:29

and then we have survival mode. And that's just like right after you were traumatized and you're still reeling and you haven't yet settled into a subtype. So those are our types that I, I see over and over and over again.

Alisa Minkin 33:38

again,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 33:39

in terms of the AIM model.

Alisa Minkin 33:41

model,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 33:41

Here's why I came up with it.

Alisa Minkin 33:43

up with it,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 33:44

A lot of post-traumatic parents cannot access therapy. Like someone will read the beginning of my book, right?'cause the whole beginning of my book is the impact of trauma on parenting. And they'll read the beginning and they'll be like, you know what you're, you're right. I'm totally a post-traumatic parent. I cannot access therapy. I can't afford it. There's no therapist I trust around me. It's not a good time in my life. Whatever. I'm in therapy for something else that's more primary than the trauma for all sorts of reasons. So what I try to do is, having been trained in so many trauma treatment modalities, I try to boil them down to like their essential ingredients. Every trauma treatment that works essentially has these three components. It has an acceptance phase, it has an integration phase, and we'll get into that. And it has a

Alisa Minkin 34:26

a meaning

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 34:27

phase. I defy anyone to find me a trauma model that works, that doesn't have those three. Sometimes some of them start with integration before acceptance. Some of them start with meaning making before the other two, but they all have these.

Alisa Minkin 34:41

things.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 34:42

most trauma treatment models.

Alisa Minkin 34:43

treatment

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 34:44

First it's acceptance. We undo counterfactual thinking. We stop wishing life had been different. We stop having we, we start noticing our flashbacks for what they are, which is, it's our brain trying to reshape history,

Alisa Minkin 34:55

history,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 34:56

has to do with where trauma's encoded in our brain. The part of our brain that encodes trauma doesn't know the difference between past, present, and future. So if you have a flashback, let's say you were in a car accident, you have a flashback to the moment before impact, that part of your brain is trying to say, you dummy turn left instead of turning right? And then the truck won't hit you.

Alisa Minkin 35:11

hit

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 35:11

that part of your brain doesn't understand that. You can't say, oh, good idea. Let me press the rewind button and let me go to the moment before impact. Let me turn left instead of right. And yay, the accident never happened. Right? We can't do that. So that's what your brain is trying to accomplish, right? That's what the acceptance model is. Ha. Like, you know, if you think through your childhood and you think through your childhood, maybe you'll figure out a way that it was okay, some of the things that happened to you,

Alisa Minkin 35:35

happened

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 35:35

this is what happened to you. It wasn't okay. People were doing the best they could with the tools they had. Those tools were not always adequate.

Alisa Minkin 35:41

adequate,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 35:42

that we are undoing counterfactual thinking, we're accepting it. It is what it is. It happened.

Alisa Minkin 35:47

that happened.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 35:47

Then we have integration. What does this mean about me and my personality and my sense of self? How do I make sense of this knowing who I am in the world, right? How do I, how do I let this just be a thing about me, not the thing about me, whatever the trauma was, right? It doesn't matter what it was.

Alisa Minkin 36:04

what it

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 36:04

You know, that could, and by the way, the trauma could be something like,

Alisa Minkin 36:07

like,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 36:08

I have a, I had a post-traumatic parent talk about like

Alisa Minkin 36:11

talk

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 36:11

having learning disabilities, but being in a school where they thought what they should do with her is give her a lot of tutoring, but keep her in the general classroom. So she constantly felt incompetent and I think her parents were trying their hardest and I think the school was trying their hardest and they were trying to help her. But then you become a parent and you feel incompetent, right? Very hard. Parenting makes you feel incompetent all the time. I bet you're a pediatrician and I bet parenting can make you feel incompetent, right? Like,

Alisa Minkin 36:36

it doesn't end when they grow up by the way.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 36:38

Right. It, it does, it never ends. Like, you know, like, you just feel incompetent. And so when you already have fears about your incompetence, it's gonna make it even harder. So first accepting that maybe there would've been a better way to handle your learning disabilities in school, right? Like, this happened to you, it shouldn't have happened. You won't do this to your own kids. Like that approach of like sort of glossing over your difficulties didn't work. Okay. Integration. This taught me some lessons about myself in the world. Like, I'm super resourceful, I'm super creative, I figure out workarounds. I know how to do things, not the things that my third grade teacher wanted me to do, but I know how to do a lot of things in my own way,

Alisa Minkin 37:13

way.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 37:14

right? And you integrate that into your sense of self, right? The reason I am in the profession I'm in is because I figured out so many workarounds that it, it worked well for my artistic side of me, and that's why I'm so artistic, right? And that's integration. And then mission. You make meaning out of it. Whether it's a mission of like, I'm gonna change the world, right? Like, to a certain extent, part of writing the book for me was my m right? This was my mission. I am gonna change the world. I'm gonna get other parents who feel as desperate and alone as I felt when I became a mom.

Alisa Minkin 37:43

a

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 37:43

And I said, what do I do with my PTSD? I'm gonna make them feel understood. That's a big mission, and maybe it's a tiny micro mission of like,

Alisa Minkin 37:50

of

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 37:50

in my family, we're gonna do things differently. In my family, we're gonna communicate with respect and my family, my kids are always gonna feel whatever, right? I'm gonna work on making sure my kids know I'm there for them. Whatever

Alisa Minkin 38:03

whatever.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 38:03

your lack was in childhood, right? You make a mission out of it,

Alisa Minkin 38:07

it,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 38:07

and that's health, right? When you've done the AI am when you've really accepted it, you've integrated into your sense of self and you've come up with a mission And you can't do all the things. My kid's childhood will be perfect, is not a mission.

Alisa Minkin 38:18

a mission.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 38:19

My kids will always know that I am someone who is there for them. When they have a problem, they can come to me. That can be a mission,

Alisa Minkin 38:26

be a mission,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 38:27

right?

Alisa Minkin 38:27

right?

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 38:27

will have a home where

Alisa Minkin 38:29

Where

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 38:30

the balance, there is more laughter and joy and positive communication than there is hitting and yelling. That's a mission, right? My kids will never be yelled at, not a mission.

Alisa Minkin 38:41

This is amazing and you said, perfect. We want kids to be happy all the time. And that is such a huge mistake and that's an entire other podcast.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 38:49

Yeah.

Alisa Minkin 38:50

actually, and this is what's so amazing, and I love how you talk about how when you heal your inner child, you can also raise your child at the same time. And it's not like two separate things,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 39:02

Yeah, it's not, I think a lot of post-traumatic parents, I believe in inner child as a metaphor for sort of like unhealed versions of ourselves that are sort of floating around in there. You know, like there's a part of me that will always wonder if I'm being socially rejected, right? Like, I will be very, I, I will notice social nuance a lot. I think it's why I am very effective when I do like anti-bullying programs in school because I, I get that, I get how bullying amongst girls works. How it feels. How it looks, right? I have that nuance of it because I've experienced it. But then at the same token, that part of me, that little, like that little girl will always be there, but it doesn't have to be screaming. It doesn't have to take over. It has to just inform me, right? It has to give me some information of like, oh, this is valuable when somebody who I don't know, lost a parent in childhood. Maximizes certain family times is very into like, let's, let's prioritize family togetherness. You know, we're gonna have a family game night or something like that. That's'cause she's listening to the little girl that felt very alone and didn't have a mom. So now my kids are gonna have a mom. Right. And you're listening to that little girl without letting her take you over.

Alisa Minkin 40:12

right, you're taking from your pain and you're helping others not have that pain, right? You are. That's the meaning. And that's how a post-traumatic parent can be the best parent for their child. Because a lot of times, for example, dyslexia or neurodivergence, I've heard of that. The neurodivergent parent can be the best parent for the neurodivergent

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 40:31

A hundred percent. A hundred percent.'cause you get it and you're like, no. When she says, like when she says that she can't eat that, I just had this with a parent who has arfid, although it wasn't understood as arfid when she was a kid with a kid with Arfid who's like, no, when she says she can't eat that texture, she means she will throw up the minute it hits her throat. Like, and she can't control it at that point. It doesn't mean that she needs to like man up and swallow it anyway. It's not picky eating. It's something else. She gets it because like, oh, this is what I went through. I understand it. And at the same token, then they can say, but you know, if we, if we play around with the texture a little bit, she might, we might be able to stretch it to the point where she can try it. Why? Because you have that window, that insight of like, oh wow, this, this feels impossible to swallow. Right. I get it. And very often after that first alarm of like, did I do this to my kid? Or

Alisa Minkin 41:22

Or

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 41:23

or that, that sense of like, oh no, I know exactly what they're gonna go through. This is the worst thing ever, which is your inner child. Right. Then the parent says, wait, I have competencies. I learned how to eat more foods. I bet I can help my kid learn that too. And it, and it's like that with anything. Shyness, bullying, right. Learning disabilities, anything. Right. Oh, I used to get angry really easily, and I learned to get a handle on it, and now my kid has that same tendency. I bet he can get a handle on it. I hate that I gendered anger as male, but whatever. Okay.

Alisa Minkin 41:53

But it really flips the script. The same

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 41:55

Yeah.

Alisa Minkin 41:56

you're trying to recover from is actually your superpower. I know it sounds like toxic positivity. We don't mean that here.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 42:01

Yeah. We don't mean that. We just mean that when you integrate, you're saying, oh, I actually have some unique insight onto this that I understand. I have patients with OCD who will say to me.

Alisa Minkin 42:11

to me

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 42:12

you get the way my brain works and I think it's'cause you have PTSD. I'm like, yeah, we are both psycho diverse, right? Our psyches work differently than other people's. And what I'm getting is the level of distress that it can feel to do something that OCD says not to do

Alisa Minkin 42:28

to.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 42:28

that everybody else looks at you like. So just hand your kid the apple that might be contaminated with pesticides. She's asking for an apple, you washed it with fruit wash, it's fine. Just hand it to her. And that feels like a mountain to go over, right? To just hand your child that apple. Right? And I get that like everyone else is looking at you like, what? Why are you shaking after you handed your kid the apple? I get why that was so scary. Like, I, like I can see that I don't have OCD, so I've never experienced OCD, but I know what it feels like to be terrified of something that everybody else thinks is

Alisa Minkin 43:01

is

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 43:02

normal.

Alisa Minkin 43:03

See? But see, but again, this is something that's to be a double-edged sword and I'm thinking again about gentle parenting and how a lot of post-traumatic parents, I think are very susceptible to a misunderstanding of responsive, or unconditional or gentle. All these names, the ideology behind it is something that I subscribe to, I believe you subscribe to,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 43:22

Yeah. I mean, we should parent really what

Alisa Minkin 43:25

right?

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 43:25

the best of gentle parenting content is really about authoritative parenting, right? It's that straightforward, what I call our two parenting in the book, responsive and responsible, right? We're, you know, I get that you don't wanna wear shoes and like hot pavement. Broken glass, right? Like and, and you should be able to do both. I think there are parents though, who are maybe people pleasers and then they think they're gentle parenting or they're perfectionist parents. And wait, if I truly get your distress at wearing shoes outside, then it kind of makes sense. If I really get it, I'll carry you. Right? You're four, but I'll carry you because you really don't wear to wear shoes. You're forgetting the other side of like, and the pavement's hot.'cause like theoretically I could carry you, but like you're four. So this is getting difficult to do and I'm not gonna be a very responsive parent if I'm carrying a 4-year-old and 80 degree weather all day long. Right? There comes a point where I'm gonna lose it

Alisa Minkin 44:19

lose,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 44:19

I should because that's too much. So.

Alisa Minkin 44:22

But not just that, I'm sorry, but not just that, but coming from the aspect of I had the same problem, I not tolerate my distress, and now I can't tolerate my child's distress, right? Then you're in that anxiety avoidance cycle

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 44:40

Yeah.

Alisa Minkin 44:41

parenting. This is what I see a lot as an error. It's an unfortunate error. It's an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 44:47

I'm gonna, I'm going to tell you a funny story, although I'm changing the story because. Kind of to protect the identity of the guilty, so to speak. I was talking with a parenting influencer and she was like, so you're basically saying, I was talking about about her assertion that behavior charts are always abusive and I think that a behavior chart done properly is not coercive or abusive. Like if you give your kid a sticker every time you put a little chart on the bathroom wall and every time your kid brushes their teeth, they get a sticker and after a week of stickers they get to watch an extra episode of Bluey. I don't consider that coercive. I consider that how the world works,

Alisa Minkin 45:20

works,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 45:21

YY you don't wanna, and but you're gonna, and then we're gonna be so proud of you'cause you stuck to your commitment of brushing your teeth and we're so proud. And now you can watch this extra episode or you can whatever, if have 10 minutes extra of against bedtime or whatever, the will will play an extra game of Lego, whatever it is. That's how the world works, right? You study hard, you get a hundred on your test, you feel good about it. You know, like that's sort of just like life.

Alisa Minkin 45:41

life.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 45:42

And so she said to me, so basically you're saying we should stress our kids out in order for them to learn how to handle stress. I'm like. No, life will stress your kids out. Your job is to help your child learn to deal with the stress. The stress will happen because like I said, shoes, toothbrushes, healthy food, homework, other people, right? Stress will happen. I also think, and this is gonna get like me being very nitpicky and very like, like geeky PhD ish, but. You know, in the eighties we had this like idea of like, this very like positive discipline, right? Like the 1, 2, 3 magic kind of like do as I say, and that's it. And there was a lot of like, we're gonna shape kids to be exactly as the parent wants, which is wrong. It's inaccurate, it's, it's impossible. It's authoritarian, right? And there was a lot of authoritarian parenting that was being sold as authoritative, and it wasn't one of the reasons why is Diana Bain who did this research, right? She's the one who said authoritarian. Authoritative, permissive. She's the one who, who coined all those terms. She talked about how parenting is a, a balance between responsiveness and demandingness. Somehow in the eighties, demanding this became this idea of power struggles. I am demanding this of you. I am demanding good grades of you. I'm demanding perfect attendance of you. I am demanding perfect behavior from you. Demanding. This actually means helping children navigate demands. When I tell my child it's bedtime, it's not me demanding bedtime of them.

Alisa Minkin 47:10

for

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 47:11

There's a clock and it's 7:00 PM and you have to get up at this time. Your body is demanding sleep. The clock is demanding bedtime. I'm not demanding of you'cause I'm in charge. I'm helping you navigate the demands of the world. It would be lovely if we could like live on candy and go to sleep whenever we finally feel tired and have screen time all the time. Like all those things. That would be so fun.

Alisa Minkin 47:33

so fun.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 47:34

And you can't live on frosting'cause you're gonna get a tummy ache, right? Like the demands of your body are that you have to eat more nutritious food than not nutritious food because otherwise you won't feel very well, right? The demands of the clock mean you gotta go to bed. The demands of other humans means you gotta like keep your voice down in the library, right? Like the library is a space that demands quiet. The librarian's not demanding. Quiet.

Alisa Minkin 47:56

quiet.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 47:56

The space is demanding. Quiet, right?

Alisa Minkin 47:58

You know what's an important nuance here that I just really, I just thought of now, is that there's a difference between trying to control the child for the sake of control and demand things of them that maybe you shouldn't be, like say performance getting into an Ivy League school, for example, sports what you're talking about, which is regular demands that you need to function in the world. Those are two different things and so maybe there's a backlash here

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 48:24

Yeah, and there was a time, right, I think perfect attendance awards. Like when I look at those, we had those when I was a kid, so you just don't get strap. You come to school even when you like raging high with fever to win that award. Like that just doesn't make any sense, right? Versus even perfect grades. Some of us are academically gifted, some of us aren't. So. If I'm mom and I'm demanding perfect grades, I mean, I, I am a fairly good student. I have good feelings of my academic competence. I did very well on my SATs. I, I got a PhD. I probably am good at academics. I'm not amazing, like right. I'm not amazing at math. Like I'm good at statistics'cause statistics is not math. It's logic. But I'm not good at trigonometry. I'm not, I was not good at chemistry in high school. Like, these were just not great subjects.

Alisa Minkin 49:09

subjects.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 49:10

I did okay because I was a conscientious student, but I didn't get a straight A's, right? Like because, or maybe, well, I guess in high school I did get straight A's,'cause I cured deeply about getting those straight A's, but

Alisa Minkin 49:21

but

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 49:22

not effortlessly, right? I had to work really hard at like, doing well on certain subjects, but my, my parents never made me feel like To get all the As because like, how dare I get an A minus? Right. If I got an A minus on chemistry, my parents would've been very proud of me.'cause that was clearly the best mark I could get. And it's probably better. Mark, had I not studied as hard as I would, I probably would've gotten a B. Right? Like, but it wasn't like, oh no, I can't come home with a b. I came home with a B minus in trigonometry. You know what? My parents were proud of it because like

Alisa Minkin 49:50

like

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 49:51

for my math brain, I can only learn math as I've learned now in adulthood one-on-one, I cannot learn math in a class of 30 people. So I was never gonna do well in trigonometry unless I was gonna like hire a tutor. But why I was doing fine. So like no one's hiring me a tutor to go from like a 87 to a 92. Do you know what I mean? Like that doesn't, that's just like not wise use of resources. Okay. Right. But I studied hard and I did as well as could be expected. But if you, if my parents would've like demanded straight A's in that way from me, I would've felt like a failure with a, you know, A or a b plus in trigonometry. When

Alisa Minkin 50:22

When

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 50:23

this day I'm pretty proud of my B in tri whatever mark I got in the end, like B probably of the year in trigonometry. I'm super proud of that. That was probably as much trigonometry as I ever could have learned.

Alisa Minkin 50:31

learned. But for people who've grown up with truly authoritarian parents

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 50:36

Right,

Alisa Minkin 50:37

have, right. It's not surprising that they might go to the opposite end and

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 50:42

right,

Alisa Minkin 50:44

permissive.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 50:45

right. Being afraid that if you come home with a B on a subject that truly challenges you and the B is honestly you maximizing your abilities, but dad's gonna take out his belt. I can understand why having a sticker chart for brushing your teeth feels coercive.'cause it reminds you, right? That's the trauma app turning on. I'm forcing my kid to do something he doesn't wanna do.

Alisa Minkin 51:06

wanna do, an

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 51:07

Building a healthy habit that is.

Alisa Minkin 51:09

is

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 51:11

good for the child that we can all understand. Your kid's gonna grow up one day and say, yeah, it's good that I brushed my teeth right.

Alisa Minkin 51:16

right.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 51:16

very different than forcing someone into a behavior pattern that they absolutely cannot

Alisa Minkin 51:22

not

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 51:23

to. Like if like I, there was no way I could have gotten an A in trigonometry in high school. Right. That would never happened. Forcing a kid to get that a when they can't, I'm being terrified of you. So they go beyond their capacity. Yeah. That's coercive saying to a kid, I want you to study as hard as you can and do as best as you can. And I do expect them. I do expect a certain level of effort, like you can't just blow off the class. Okay. That's authoritative. And I think that, I get it. I get the trigger, I get the trauma app turning on at the thought of making a child do anything at all. But there's a far cry between helping a child navigate demands and being demanding. It's not the same thing.

Alisa Minkin 52:03

Exactly. But I think it's really important to point out that I think what people are complaining about with gentle parenting is that reaction, right? Of being afraid to make demands. Because that would be authoritarian, right? That

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 52:18

Yeah,

Alisa Minkin 52:19

trying to control their kids and thus the aversion to say sticker charts and the

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 52:23

right.

Alisa Minkin 52:24

Now, by the way, of pathological demand avoidance, have you heard

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 52:26

I was about to bring that up as an example. I was consulting in a school and the parents said to the principal and the principal was like, just help us understand this.'cause they never heard of this before. They're like, they're saying that my child, that their child has pathological demand avoidance, and therefore we cannot demand anything of him. So Dr. Cosmos, how do we educate this kid? Like, we can't do this. Like the rabbi says something and he says, no, he just storms outta the classroom. He hits people when he wants. Like, how, what are we supposed to do? I said, I, I myself do not know. So I came into the room, we're having this meeting, and the principal and this kid Emmy, and I said to the kid,

Alisa Minkin 52:59

kid,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 52:59

you know where the prize closet is? Like, where the treats closet is? And he is like, yeah. So I said,

Alisa Minkin 53:03

I

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 53:03

okay, so do me a favor. I I really want a, I didn't say, do me a favor. I said, I really want one of those like drizly snack bags that they have and you can have one too. Go to the cabin and get me one. And I purposely word it as a command. So the kid went to the cabin and got me a drizly bag and got one for himself. And I said, okay, so the kid's not pathologically demand avoidance, right? Because pathological would mean when it's harmful, right? You just drank poison. Drink this, drink this antidote right now, no.'cause you can't tell me what to do. That would be pathological demand avoidance, right? Because that's a bad thing for you. Like you're gonna be in a lot of pain in five minutes if you don't drink this antidote, this kid, when the demand was good for him. Wasn't demand avoidant at all. He was very happy to go to the cabinet and get me a, a treat and get himself a treat. So he's demand avoidant, but he's not pathologically demand avoidant. And that matters because,

Alisa Minkin 53:57

matters because,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 53:57

so you're demand avoidant. How are they supposed to educate you then, then, then homeschool. Right? Because a school cannot, you literally pay a school to make demands on your kid, right? When the teacher says, open your math books to page 27, that's a demand.

Alisa Minkin 54:13

I think more and more of these kids are being homeschooled for that reason.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 54:16

Which fine, that's a choice. And if that's the choice you wanna make, that's fine, but you can't de, you can't demand that a school is going to educate in this way, because that's not how schools educate. Now, if it's pathological, then you've gotta work to overcome the pathology, you've gotta stretch the rubber band. Now that does mean

Alisa Minkin 54:34

mean

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 54:35

very low demand, and I work with PDA kids and we do work on a.

Alisa Minkin 54:39

on

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 54:40

Navigating Demandingness by removing as many demands as possible and removing as much, you know, allowing the environment to control the child rather than the, than the parent trying to control the child. So you set up the environment in such a way that there aren't so many difficult demands on the child, but then our entire job is okay. Right now you can tolerate demands at a level two, let's get you to a level three,

Alisa Minkin 55:05

right? It's not to permanently keep the bubble at low

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 55:07

right?

Alisa Minkin 55:08

That's the problem.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 55:10

Right. It's like if you have arfid and you can only eat two foods and one of the foods is about to be discontinued, that's a problem, right? So we wanna get you to three foods and then seven, right? Like, and we're gonna, we're gonna get you there. We're not staying stuck. I really dislike when a parent's like, well, my child has sensory needs,

Alisa Minkin 55:26

need,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 55:27

then

Alisa Minkin 55:27

then

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 55:28

years later we still have the same sensory needs being given to the teacher. What was happening in your occupational therapy from third grade till seventh grade that we're still making the same accommodations. There should be a point where now we're teaching you how to handle being in a classroom where there's a lot of noises, right? Use the technology you have available to you take, you know, let's make your breaks further and further apart. If we're still taking

Alisa Minkin 55:53

taking

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 55:53

a sensory break every five minutes in seventh grade, as we did in third grade, then we made no progress. Right? If you, if I see every five minutes in third grade and every seven minutes in fourth grade and every 10 minutes, whatever, and then by the time we're in high school, it's, there's just three subjects that you're excused from. Okay? We're making progress,

Alisa Minkin 56:12

You know this actually illustrates a problem that I see, which is that you can have therapy, but it's not always good therapy.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 56:20

right?

Alisa Minkin 56:21

And that's true for trauma, for parents who are trying to get therapy for their trauma, which we talked about before. I find that a lot of times people confuse trauma informed with trauma focused therapy

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 56:33

Right,

Alisa Minkin 56:34

can go for years for therapy that's not really focused or addressing their trauma. And I

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 56:39

right.

Alisa Minkin 56:40

is true for kids who have whatever we're calling pathological demand avoidance or sensory issues or whatever, it's hard to get the right kind of therapy. You should see progress

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 56:48

Yeah. You should see progress. Sometimes you don't. And also not every therapist is the right therapist for every case, right? I've had kids come in and refuse to talk to me and we've sat in silence or we've played stupid games, right? Like really like, like when I say stupid games, I just mean like really like burly interactive games. Like we're gonna play rat attack cat or something where like

Alisa Minkin 57:06

for

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 57:06

for a few sessions before they were willing to talk to me, right? And then I have kids that That for a few sessions. I said to the parent, I don't think this is ever gonna happen. So I think we need to discontinue therapy. And I've had kids who, I once had a kid who I said that about, like I said, like I don't like, all we're doing is like chitchatting about fashion and we are never getting past that.

Alisa Minkin 57:25

that.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 57:25

And I actually had to say that to the parents, like, that's

Alisa Minkin 57:28

that's

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 57:28

we can't get to the next place. And the kid said, no, no, no, don't step therapy. I'll start talking. Right. I, I wasn't doing that to be coercive in any way.

Alisa Minkin 57:35

any way

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 57:36

I, but I was just like, look, we, we, we are doing, we're doing this and doing this and doing this. I don't think, I don't know that I'm the right fit for her. I didn't say to the parents were chitchatting about fashion'cause I can't actually say what's happening in therapy. I'm like, I don't think I'm the right fit. I don't think we're making any progress. I don't think that she trusts me enough. I'm just, I'm probably the wrong style therapist for her. And the kid came back the next session, I said, maybe we'll have a goodbye session next time. And the kid came back and said,

Alisa Minkin 57:56

and

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 57:57

no, I like you. I, I just, I don't know, I just.

Alisa Minkin 57:59

dunno, I just

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 58:00

it's stressful to come right after school. I need to decompress and like the whole time we were talking about these things, but I really like coming here and I do wanna talk to you about what I'm in therapy for. I said, great, I get it. How much decompressing time do you need? And how much talking to me time can we do? Let's negotiate it. And like we negotiated it, like Let's do this amount of a game and this amount of chit-chatting and then let's talk about the issue. And yeah, maybe the parent would be hoping that for all 45 of those minutes we are talking about, I don't know your OCD and I wish we could do that, but actually we made better progress with 20 minutes of chit-chatting and 10 minutes of a game and 20 minutes of talking about your OCD or 15 minutes of talking about your OCD. And that worked because the alternative was doing nothing, right? That's therapy. Sometimes we're not always gonna be the right fit for every person, but if there's no plan to make progress. Then we have to rethink and sometimes and, and I have to also say sometimes the holding pattern

Alisa Minkin 58:56

pattern

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 58:56

valid depending on the situation. Sometimes we're not trying to make progress, sometimes we're trying to keep things as they are. So I don't wanna say you are always making progress in all therapies.

Alisa Minkin 59:06

And things change and new stressors come and sometimes kids need medications or new schools or there's so many different pieces to this.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 59:13

Yeah. I had a supervisor who said that she went through a very deep, deep depression at a point in her life when I think she had several losses at the same time, and she was in therapy just to stay stable and to like be able to meet her work demands and her life demands. And she wasn't trying to make quote unquote progress. She was like cautioning us about like being so focused on progress all the time. She was just trying to, like, the therapy was allowing her to tread water, which was what she needed to be able to do at that time. That's also true.

Alisa Minkin 59:41

holding onto the edge of the water, trying not to

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 59:43

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Alisa Minkin 59:45

I see that. I really respect your time and I know we have to go soon. I just want to go back over just for a minute what you called R squared parenting, which I think should be R cubed. Okay.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 59:55

Okay.

Alisa Minkin 59:55

have responsive and reliable, and I want repair in there.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:00:00

Although repair, see, responsive and responsible are simply the two sides of responsiveness and demandingness, right? There's nothing when you're being responsible, right? When you're teaching a kid a skill, even if they don't wanna learn that skill, I don't wanna brush my teeth yucky. I don't care. So what? So I won't have teeth when I grow up. I don't need teeth. I don't care right? Where. Yeah. But as a responsible adult, I know that like you're gonna need your teeth, right? And like your distress, it's just distress and it's okay. And you're allowed to be mad about the fact you have to brush your teeth and you gotta brush your teeth, right? Nothing in that approach. Is stopping you from being responsive. It's like, I think people think you have to choose, right? Like, like you can either be this like authoritarian, we're doing sticker charts and we're punishing you and like wait till your daddy gets home kind of parenting or we're responsive when in fact you can be very responsive and there's also consequences, you know? And there's also, you know, and there's also an expectation made on kids' behavior,

Alisa Minkin 1:01:01

Yes, but the reason I wanted to have repair there is because at any given moment you might not be able to be so responsive.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:01:07

right. And then you'll repair. Right, exactly. That goes with responsiveness. Like can always fix it and you know, you can always, you know, I just think that there's something to be said for not throwing out the baby with a bath water, natural and logical consequences if they're natural and logical are never abusive. Right. It's the unnatural, illogical consequences that can easily become abusive. Like, I don't know if you remember on social media, there was that controversy where a mom made her kid walk to school with a big sign saying, I bullied someone on the bus, so now I have to walk to school. That's an unnatural unlogical consequence. Natural, logical consequence. Might be walking to school, but the sign isn't natural. Like when you bully someone, you don't get a mark of cane on your face, right? That's not what happens, right? So it was an UN and people were like, well, she did a natural and logical consequence. The logical consequence is you have to walk to school like right, the school kicked you off the bus and now you have to walk to school. And if it's a reasonable distance on Safe Streets, fair enough, figure out a way to get yourself to school because you can't be on the bus. That's hopefully you'll then not bully people because you'll be like, oh, being on the bus is a privilege and I wanna keep that privilege. So you know, I'm not gonna do that the same way. Like when I was a lifeguard and if kids were running by the pool, I made them sit out for part of swimming period. Because you can't run by the pool if you wanna swim, right? And since next week you're gonna wanna swim. You're not gonna run by the pool, which is good because as the lifeguard, I can't Simultaneously, I never understood this how we made like 16-year-old lifeguards like watch an entire pool area. What happens if one kid does slip and does cut their head? Then I'm dealing with your cut head, but not a pool full of children. Like I always felt like my attention was way too fragmented when I was a lifeguard. Like that wasn't safe.

Alisa Minkin 1:02:42

safe.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:02:43

I have hyper vigilance when it comes to health, but. The idea of, but the idea of next week, I, I remember being a lifeguard and kids coming into the pool and seeing that I was a lifeguard on duty and starting to run and then stopping themselves. Great. You learn self-control. Fabulous. You're not running by the pool. That's a natural and logical consequence. You didn't wanna miss half swimming, so you didn't run. That's not mean, that's not coercive, that's not, that's just, yeah, you didn't do your homework and now your teacher is like, okay, your grade's going down

Alisa Minkin 1:03:10

down

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:03:11

if you care about your grade, that's a problem for you. I'm not gonna write you an excuse note. You're gonna learn.

Alisa Minkin 1:03:14

gonna learn.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:03:15

Right. There's nothing. I can also be super responsive and be like, oh shoot, it must have so hard to walk to school. You really didn't wanna have to walk to school. You really wish you could have ridden the bus.

Alisa Minkin 1:03:26

bus.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:03:26

know, I, you know, I hope next week when you ride the bus, you don't ever do anything that makes you lose that privilege again. Yeah, I bet your feet do hurt here. Lemme give you some Epsom salt so you can soak your feet. Right, like The one does not cancel out the other. Right. Yeah, I bet it was. I bet that kid was, in some ways annoying you and that's why you did that bullying behavior towards him.

Alisa Minkin 1:03:45

him.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:03:45

I get it. What else could you do when someone's annoying you? Besides, besides hitting them, right? Like,

Alisa Minkin 1:03:50

Like

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:03:50

can be so responsive about that conversation. So responsive,

Alisa Minkin 1:03:54

I love it and I just wanna keep parents with the idea that this is a work in progress, right?

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:03:59

right?

Alisa Minkin 1:03:59

when experts talk about something like, but I can't do that, but I suck at that.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:04:03

Yeah,

Alisa Minkin 1:04:04

And that's why I keep emphasizing the concept of repair. And I wanna end with a line that I saw you write somewhere. Not only will your damage, not damage your kids, but your damage can be the catalyst for you to break the cycle.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:04:17

yeah, yeah,

Alisa Minkin 1:04:19

that.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:04:20

yeah. Because I think so many post-traumatic parents come into parenting feeling like so polluted by their trauma, feeling like such a, like their body is such a source of uncomfortable feelings that they just feel. Unable to parent, right? Parenting is so much about gut instinct, but if you have PTSD, your gut is very often wrong. It's either very, very wrong or very, very right. So it's very hard to know, and I think for a lot of post-traumatic parents, you feel so damaged by your damage. How can I possibly then be a good parent? It's such a common thought. It's like that mom who is, who is molested, who's saying to me, I can't have the sex talk with my kid because this whole topic makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Right? She's feeling damaged by her damage, but that's just the starting point. Ultimately, not only was she able to have these conversations with her kids,

Alisa Minkin 1:05:04

kids,

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:05:06

actually she had, she had experiences where her kids were the ones who noticed unsafe, confusing adult behavior and reported it

Alisa Minkin 1:05:13

oh my God.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:05:14

because they were so used to having these conversations with their mother that when somebody acted, and it wasn't anything like so terrible, but a teacher acted somewhat confusingly and they were like the first ones to be like, mommy, this felt confusing and like, right. Like they, they noticed it'cause she became the best person to talk to her kids about it.

Alisa Minkin 1:05:33

That's amazing. That is really a great way to end.'cause we could talk all night, but I really appreciate you doing this with me finally. Thank you.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:05:42

Yeah, sure. I'm so sorry that it was so hard to to schedule with me.

Alisa Minkin 1:05:46

No, it was worth waiting for. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:05:50

Sure. I really appreciate it and I appreciate what you're doing with your podcast because I think that the more educated we are as parents, as as professionals, the better job we do. Like, we wanna keep thinking about this stuff.'cause you're right, experts talking sounds very like Pat, easy answers. But the messiness of real life decisions right, is much, much harder. And I think that the more you hear about the messiness of real life decisions when you're like thinking deeply about your parenting better a job you do.

Alisa Minkin 1:06:19

And to know that there's definitely hope out there and help out there and you're doing an amazing job with what you do, so Thank you.

Dr. Robyn Koslowitz, PhD 1:06:24

Thank you. Thanks so much.

1:06:29

Thank you for listening to Kids Matter. Raising Healthy, happy Children Takes a village, and I'm grateful you are part of ours. If today's conversation resonated with you, please share this episode with another parent, grandparent, teacher, or anyone who cares about kids. Together we can build a supportive community our children deserve. I'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, questions, or suggestions for future topics at Kids Matter podcast@gmail.com. With no explanation for your voice truly matters. Until next time, keep advocating for the children in your life because kids really do matter. They are our future. I'm Dr. Elisa Minkin and this has been Kids Matter. Please note that while I am a pediatrician, I am not your child's ped. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical. For any medical concerns or decisions. Reach out to your child's healthcare professional.