The Stress Nanny with Lindsay Miller
Mindfulness and stress management for families raising kids with big goals, big feelings, and everything in between.
Hosted by mindfulness coach Lindsay Miller, The Stress Nanny is full of practical strategies for calming anxious kids, supporting high-achievers, and teaching emotional regulation in everyday moments. Each episode offers easy-to-use mindfulness practices, stress management tips, and confidence-building tools that empower kids (and parents!) to navigate challenges with ease. Whether you’re raising a child who struggles with big feelings, a high-performing student-athlete, or simply want a calmer home, The Stress Nanny will give you the resources and encouragement you need.
The Stress Nanny with Lindsay Miller
Ep 199: How Reflection And Reframing Help Kids Build Calm, Confidence, And Grit
What if the toughest parts of your year quietly made you and your child braver, calmer, and more connected? We dive into a gentle, science-informed approach to reflection and reframing that helps families convert stress into usable strength without minimizing real feelings.
We start by unpacking why curiosity-based reflection regulates emotions and supports meaning making, a cornerstone of mental health. You’ll hear how mindsight—observing your inner world with compassion—strengthens coping pathways that your kids can reuse when life gets loud. From there, we explore the research on stress mindset and the “challenge state,” showing how a small shift in interpretation can improve focus, performance, and health. Instead of chasing zero stress, we learn to find the optimal zone where tension becomes a tool.
Then we get practical. We model growth mindset language for everyday moments—like bike riding, auditions, or tricky school days—and show how to replace “I can’t” with “I’m still learning.” You’ll get a short guided reflection to try on a walk or before bed, plus simple family rituals that make resilience a habit: rose thorn seed at dinner, a “This year I…” courage jar, and monthly growth snapshots that help kids own their progress. Along the way, we normalize the messy middle, honor the cracks in the heart and celebrate the flowers that rise through them.
If you’re ready to trade perfection for progress and build ordinary magic at home, this conversation is your invitation. Listen, save the prompts, and share them with someone who needs a calmer way forward. If the episode helps, subscribe, leave a review, and pass it to a friend who could use a little extra calm this week.
Lindsay Miller is a distinguished kids mindfulness coach, mindfulness educator and host of The Stress Nanny Podcast. She is known for her suitcase tricks and playful laugh. When she's not cheering on her daughter or rollerblading on local trails with her husband, you can find her using her 20+ years of child development study and mindfulness certification to dream up new ways to get kids excited about deep breathing. Having been featured on numerous podcasts, platforms and publications, Lindsay’s words of wisdom are high impact and leave a lasting impression wherever she goes.
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Welcome to the Stress Nanny, the podcast where we take the overwhelm out of parenting and help kids and parents build calm, confidence, and connection. I'm your host, Lindsay Miller, Kids Mindfulness Coach and Cheerleader for busy families everywhere. Each week we'll explore simple tools, uplifting stories, and practical strategies to help your child learn emotional regulation, resilience, and self-confidence, while giving you a little more peace of mind too. I'm so glad you're here. As we wrap up the year, I want to invite you to a gentle reflection. Not the kind that feels like a performance review or New Year's Resolutions audit. This is just more like sitting on the couch with a blanket and asking yourself, what did this year teach me? And how did I grow through what I went through? This is a practice that I came to maybe early in my 20s as a result of some really challenging years that my husband and I faced when we were first married. And it changed me in that it helped me focus less on what I had accomplished and more on what I was becoming. So today we're talking about reframing challenges and again, not pretending they were easy, not just bypassing them, but recognizing the quiet ways that difficulty builds resilience, confidence, and emotional flexibility in our kids and in us. And if this year was really smooth for you and you didn't face a ton of challenges, it can also be a recognition of that and an opportunity to take stock of the ways that you took advantage of that sense of flow that you felt and created something as a result. So let's just talk for a minute about why reflection matters. It's a really powerful tool for emotional regulation. And especially when we can do it with curiosity. When we look back with curiosity instead of criticism or judgment, we activate parts of the brain associated with meaning making, integration, and learning. And a cornerstone of good mental health is the ability to make meaning. So in moments that life hands those challenges, a lot of times we feel a little bit jolted or jilted. We feel moved from our original way of making meaning. So the way that we thought we were going to move through something is no longer accessible to us. And so we have to find a new way to make the experience meaningful. So this idea of meaning making, it's really powerful both for like a just general mental health standpoint and then also to regulate our emotions. Because when we find ourselves bereft and grief-stricken because something was pulled out from under us or shifted or changed that's shifted the way we make meaning, this gives us an opportunity to repurpose the experience. And instead of making meaning in the original way we thought we would, we invite ourselves to find a new way to make the same experience meaningful. So Dan Siegel calls this part of his mindsight concept, and that's the ability to observe our inner world with compassion. So when we can reflect, we give our brain the chance to connect to the experience and create a sense of understanding. And that strengthens neural pathways for coping and resilience. So when we can understand ourselves, understand what happened, and give voice to it, we can use that compassionate mindset to really kind of nurture ourselves through it, as opposed to beating ourselves up for experiencing it or for handling it the way that we did. In fact, research from the Harvard School of Education shows that structured reflection boosts resilience because it helps children and adults recognize their own progress and strength. So taking time to actively reflect really does allow us this sense of accomplishment at intervals. This is something I like to do with the kids in my coaching practice, especially during seasons when they've grown quite a bit. So some of the kiddos will go through different experiences and some of them will be really challenging. And we always take time at the end of that, you know, couple of months or year or, you know, week and a half, whatever the time frame is, to look back and see the ways that they've grown, see how they changed and adapted to the experience. Because those ways of approaching a challenge, those are cornerstones of resilience. And that's something they can look back on and anchor to in other moments when they're having a rough go. They can remember how they handled something hard. So while we oftentimes just want to get past the challenging thing and let it go and forget about it, taking the time to reflect on it, even if it's a little bit uncomfortable to remember, is what opens us up to seeing the ways that we've grown through it. So reflection says, I made it through, I learned something, I'm different because of this. And those realizations calm the nervous system and give us confidence in future struggles. So let's talk a little bit about reframing. So if we are navigating a challenging circumstance, we take a minute to reflect on it. Maybe we're still in the middle of it. But reframing is an incredible way to build resilience because we take a challenge and look at it through a new lens. Again, we're not denying that it's hard, we're not denying that it's hurting or that we're really struggling. We're just expanding our view of what's actually happening. So another Stanford researcher, Kelly McGonagall, found that the way people interpret stress shapes how their body responds to it. So when individuals viewed stress as something that could help them grow or adapt, they became more resilient, more confident, and even healthier. So as you can see, this tethers to that idea of regular reflection, right? Because if we're continually supporting our kiddos and looking back and kind of noticing what stressors actually help them grow, we give them this gift of resilience. So back to reframing, it literally changes our physiological stress response. So instead of moving into fight or flight because we feel like we're getting chased by a bear, whatever the stressor is, that's really activating our nervous system, we shift toward what's something called the challenge state. And that improves our performance, increases focus, and reduces overwhelm. So this is what we talk about when we're talking about optimizing stress. And we're using it to our advantage and allowing ourselves to be challenged just the right amount that we have the tension that we need to perform, but we're balancing the stress or anxiety that we feel about the situation. This is something I love working on with kids who are high achievers. My athletes, especially, we work on this and my performers, because we talk about how being in a situation where you do feel a little bit of stress in a healthy way actually elevates your ability in that moment, right? But the key is to be able to keep it in control. So we want to make sure we're only feeling stress to the degree that we can handle it. And that's where our mindfulness tools come in because as we can look at a situation, use our tools to kind of keep our stress levels in check, we find this optimal space with stress, and then we can use it to our advantage. And once kids figure that out, they can do it again and again and again. And they're no longer afraid of stress. They just are in a position of like relating to it in a manageable way. And that's really cool to see. So, anyway, back to reframing. For kids, reframing helps cultivate growth mindset. And that's Carol Dweck's work, right? Around having a vision of yourself as someone who's growing through something and believing that abilities develop through the effort and learning, as opposed to you either have the information or the knowledge or the ability in this moment or you don't. You see yourself as a work in progress with someone who has a ton of potential to grow through any situation. So children who can develop this mindset, they handle setbacks with more optimism and persistence. They don't give up as easily because they know if I just try this different thing, I'll figure it out. If I just ask for help, I'll figure it out. If I'm able to keep, you know, moving toward my goal, I'll eventually get there. Those are the phrases they're using for a reframe, as opposed to saying things like, I can't do it, this is too hard, I'm never gonna get there. So, for example, riding a bike, that's an example that we use a lot here on the podcast, because a lot of my clients are of bike riding learning age. And so we talk about this idea of like, you haven't ridden a bike yet, right? Or you are still learning to ride a bike instead of I can't ride a bike. I'll never figure it out. I can't balance. This isn't something that I want to do. It's not even fun anymore. Like, oh, this has been a challenging situation and you haven't gotten to the fun part yet, right? So those reframing moments, I can't say enough about reframing. It's a tool that I use constantly in my own head, you know, when I'm facing challenges, but also with the kids that I coach in my own family. The reframe makes such a massive difference in terms of how kids see themselves and their potential. So as we take a minute at the end of the year to go back and look through some of the challenging moments, it might be that in those moments, we didn't have the capacity to reframe. We just needed to get through. Or maybe our kids were feeling so emotionally overwhelmed by what was going on that they didn't have the ability to sit with it and reframe. But when we can approach it with a bit of distance and with potential success around the outcome, then we're in a position to see the situation with new eyes. And that's one of the really powerful things about reframing as a part of reflection. So again, reframing is not minimizing the real feelings around something. It's not pretending it's all fine or offering like a shiny silver lining. What it is is acknowledging the difficulty, spotting the growth, like seeing the potential. What's the little nugget of potential in this moment? And then connecting the challenge to the strengths that we have to meet it. And again, this ties back to last month's conversation about gratitude, right? Where we talked about how an attitude of gratitude allows us to approach situations with an eye toward what we have instead of what we lack. And when we can do that with ourselves, we start to see the strengths that we have to meet the situation. And the reframe in naturally invites that because it gives us a kind of a stepping stone through the situation in that we're trying to see it as eventual growth, or we're trying to see it as growth that will inevitably happen. And we just have to figure out how to get through. So when families practice this together, they build what resilience researcher Ann Mastin describes as ordinary magic, the everyday systems of support and coping that help humans thrive even in hard times. So ordinary magic is something that is key to my mindfulness coaching and my personal life, really, but the practice of mindfulness can provide that kind of ordinary magic, right? Where we can notice, recognize, and really settle into the reality or the whole view of the situation rather than just being overfocused on the hard moment itself. So let's do a quick exercise together to just kind of guide us through a reflection. If you're driving, keep your eyes open, of course. But maybe just soften your attention and relax in your seat a little bit, keeping your hands on the wheel. If you're home, feel free to settle into if you can a comfy area, but heaven knows life is crazy. So maybe you're just walking around and that's okay too. So take a deep breath in. In out. One more breath in. In out. Now think back over your year. Not just the highlight reel, but the challenging things too. And let one moment flow to the surface. Then gently ask yourself, what made that moment or that particular season of life challenging? We're gonna notice our response here without judgment. So just let it surface for you. And then what did that moment ask of me? Did you need patience? Did you need to increase your communication? Did you need to practice flexibility? Did you need to learn to be a bit more assertive? Did you need to have the courage to stand for something that was important to you? And then what strength did I build even without noticing it at the time? And let the answer surprise you. I mean, maybe something's gonna come up for you that you didn't recognize until this moment. So what strength did you build without even noticing it at the time? And it could be like a baby strength. It could just be a tiny little burgeoning skill set that you're working on, but maybe it emerged because of that moment. So it doesn't have to be a full-blown, like 100% mastered strength. It could just be the invitation to a quality or a trait or a skill set, and you took the invitation and it's barely starting to grow. And then who supported me in those moments? And how can I acknowledge that? Again, back to last month's episode on gratitude. And then what part of me grew because of this? So because you have this new skill or this new strength, what are you able to do that you weren't able to do before? Do you have a clearer sense of boundaries, maybe with what you're able to say yes to outside of your home or work? Are you in a position where you have more self-awareness and you have a bit more confidence about what you're capable of? Are you in a position where you feel like the humility or softness that you feel has invited different connections with other people? What grew because of this? Now let's take another deep breath. And if you have a sense of heaviness still about this experience, that's okay. This isn't about tying the experience into a bow. It's about witnessing who you became in the process. One of the visuals that I love for this is the image of a stone in the shape of a heart. And the stone is cracked, and there are flowers growing up through the crack. We first came to that in a grief group. That image was part of a grief group session. And one of the things we talked about was the fact that the crack might always be there, right? Even if they kind of mend it together, the crack in the concrete stone is still going to be there. But the things that grow as a result of that are things that we can really respect and appreciate. So it almost gets to the point where we respect the moment in a different way because of what we became as a result. And that is not an easy place to get to. So if you're still working your way there, then more power to you and take your time. You're on a road with fellow travelers. Okay, so how can we use this activity for kids? So we can just ask them simple questions. And again, I do things like this in my coaching sessions all the time. And reflection is a regular part of coaching for all of these reasons, and that it helps us build resilience and it helps us notice our strengths. And I think one of the biggest gifts we can give kids as they launch into their teen years and into adulthood is a sense of who they are and what they can do. And so noticing and taking a minute to reflect on challenges is something that invites those realizations. And when we really focus on them, we let that awareness settle, right? We help the kids recognize and really own the things that they did to get through or the ways that they showed resilience by making it through. So we can ask questions like, what was something that felt tough this year? What helped you get through it? What was a challenging part of that experience? So whether it's being part of a show or a team or a school year, like what was a challenging part of that? What do you think you learned from it? What did you learn about yourself in this situation? Or what do we know about you now that you've gone through this? How are you stronger, wiser? You know, any combination of words there, whatever you're noticing about the experience as a result. And again, this is something that kids genuinely seem to enjoy. I mean, maybe they're faking it with me, but they tend to love this exercise because they begin to see themselves as capable and growing, even if they're in the messy middle of something. I think it also gives them a chance to talk through things that were important to them. And so if there are any loose strings as part of that experience that they're still trying to kind of wrap up and make sense of, this gives them a chance to do that. And again, if we've done it slightly removed from in time from the situation, it also gives them the ability to approach it with a different perspective, right? And so they might be able to pick up on aspects of the experience now that they weren't able to connect with at the time. So, how can we make this more of a ritual? Like I said, I do this with my mindfulness kids on a regular basis. If you want to make this a tradition or something that you explore at intervals with your family, you could use something like rose bud thorn and switch it into something called rose thorn seed. So rose is something good that happened, thorn is something hard that happened, and a seed is something you learned or that a strength that grew as a result of the experience. So we can talk through the hard things, acknowledging and normalizing that they're going to happen because we're humans, the good things, because those also happen as humans, and then the potential we have as a result. And it can they can be related or unrelated, but it's kind of a simple three step process to noticing your. Experience with a bit more reflection. And that's we do rosebud thorn every week on my mindfulness calls with my kids. And we'll talk through how their week went. So that reflection is a natural part of the process. And again, it gives them the opportunity to talk through and then own the experience in a different way. And even in just a week of time, sometimes they're able to talk themselves through the thorn. So the kids that I've had for a longer period of time, by the time we get to the thorn, they're often telling me how they learned or grew as a result of the thorn, which is really an incredible and great thing to see. Another one is a jar idea. We did a gratitude jar last month. This is a different way to use a jar if you're a jar person. You can write this year I, and then you can write one challenging thing you got through and drop it in the jar. And then you read it aloud and celebrate everybody's courage and resilience. And again, for kids, this might look like this year I showed up at ballet for the first time because we want to honor whatever scary thing they faced, right? And it's going to be different than our adult scary thing, but we want to validate. And maybe they're just owning that emotion now. And so in those moments, it can be really tricky sometimes to sit with our kids' worries or anxiety about something. And so if they say something that you thought they handled really well, you might feel tempted to say, What you did such a good job at that. Like you shouldn't have been worried about that. But the point, again, is that we're building resilience. And so what we want to say is, oh my goodness, you know what? It was so cool to see you do that because I couldn't even tell that you were nervous. So you were so strong and brave in that moment that it I couldn't even tell. And so again, that's it's a simple reframe, right? But when we can do that, what we do is we help them envision themselves as capable people, strong people who can do challenging things. And that mindset makes all the difference. One last one is a growth snapshot. So you can pick a month from the year and then share a moment when you didn't think you could do something and then did it. So if there was a particularly tricky month for your family where everyone shared the same experience, you could choose that month. If there was a month that was tricky for one kid and a different month for another kid, they can pick their own month. But the idea is that you time limit it. So for the kiddos who say, I can't think of anything, you can say, okay, let's think back to August when you were starting at your new middle school and you were a little bit nervous about having a locker for the first time and you weren't sure how you were gonna open the combination and get your stuff in and out in between your classes because you had a short passing period. Like, tell us more about that and how you got through. And a lot of times I might be like, yeah, that's like not even a big deal now. And then that's when you celebrate, right? And you take a minute to reflect and you say, right? That's so amazing because at the time it was so challenging for you. You were thinking and worrying about it so much. And then now it's just so natural for you. So look at all the ways you've grown as a result of that. And now we know the next time you face something hard that you've never done, you're probably gonna figure it out, right? And then they're, you know, like proudly looking up and saying, Yeah, yeah, I can do that. So again, we want to give them the narrative of I can handle hard things, I'm growing all the time, I'll just grow through this too, no matter what comes their way. So as we close out this year together, I hope you feel a little more anchored, a little more aware of your strength, a lot more gentle with yourself. And I hope we can all recognize that resilience isn't usually built in grand gestures. It's built moment by moment, breath by breath, choice by choice. And you're doing a great job. Your kids are learning from you, they're learning from all of the moments. And so we can embrace the moments when we're not showing up the way we want and the moments we're crushing it, and recognize that as we're practicing growth in those moments, they're learning right alongside us, and that's a beautiful gift that we're giving to them. So showing up as perfect would only set the expectation super, super high for them. So being in the messy middle of growth allows them to see you as someone who embraces growth as well. And so practicing these reframing techniques, these types of reflections, it invites them to do the same for themselves and creates this attitude and culture of resilience within the family. So thanks again for spending this bit of time with me here on the podcast today. I'm grateful for you, and I'll see you in the new year. Thanks for listening to the Stress Nanny. If you found today's episode helpful, be sure to share it with a friend who could use a little extra calm in their week. And if you have a minute, I'd love for you to leave a review. It helps other parents find the show and join us on this journey. For more tools and support, head over to www.thestressnanny.com. Remember, you don't have to do stress alone. Together we can raise kids who know how to navigate life with confidence and ease. Until next time, take a deep breath and give yourself some grace.