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 203: Disney Put Envy On Sale And A Three-Year-Old Said “Add To Cart”
A three-year-old hugging the Envy plush in a Disney store sparked a conversation we’ve been waiting to have: what if the feelings we avoid are the exact teachers our kids need? We walk through a simple, compassionate way to help children work with emotions like envy, sadness, and embarrassment so they gain self-knowledge instead of shame. Rather than pushing “clearance emotions” to the back of the shelf, we show how to name them, normalize them, and use the signals they carry to guide values, goals, and growth.
We start with thinking of envy as a compass—how comparison often points to a desire worth exploring—and how to turn that signal into a simple, doable plan. Throughout, we share everyday scripts and practical steps: notice what’s happening in the body, name the feeling accurately, validate the context, and choose a next step that restores agency. By meeting hard feelings with curiosity instead of fear, kids learn they can face what shows up and still live their best lives.
Listen for a story-driven guide that blends real-life moments with mindful tools parents can actually use. If this resonates, share the episode with a friend, subscribe for more calm in your week, and leave a review so other parents can find us.
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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This weekend is good.
SPEAKER_00: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. Hey there, this is Lindsay. This week I'm gonna be sharing a solo episode with a story that happened to us on our vacation over the holidays. So our family loves to go to Disneyland, and we were wandering around one of the stores in downtown Disney on Friday night, and I kept seeing the inside out dolls, the little stuffed characters, on these end cap displays, and they were marked down. And I was like, oh, that's cute. I love the inside out movies, the characters, I make my family go on the ride, even though we hardly fit in it. But I love all the things that we can learn. And as someone who works hard to come up with fun and playful ways to explain more advanced psychological concepts to kids, I really feel like that movie nails it in so many ways. And so I was paying special attention to these little end caps and wondering if I needed to maybe stock up on some inside out figures during our trip. So at one point, I was standing in the aisle, kind of contemplating a purchase, and this little girl comes up and she's clutching anxiety and just wandering around. And her mom was standing right there and was kind of exasperated, talking to what I assume was her grandmother, the little girl's grandmother, the mom's mom, and was like, she really wants that one. She like keeps grabbing it, will not put it down. I tried to get her to choose another doll. There's so many dolls in here. Every character that Disney makes is in this store, right? And this little girl's gravitating to anxiety, and her mom was like not having it. And I thought it was so interesting because I can totally relate to not wanting your kid to be best buddies with anxiety. And at first, like my first reaction was like, Yeah, that that makes sense. I could see that. And then the more I thought about it, the more I really was starting to side with the little girl. Because I was thinking about how a lot of times, as parents, especially, we tend to shy away from certain emotions. And ironically, the ones that were on clearance, they weren't all of them. It was just sadness, anxiety, envy, and embarrassment. Those are like the ones that were left. And so it was so interesting to think about in the context of real life, right? Because realistically, if we can befriend anxiety and these other like clearance emotions, the emotions no one wanted in life or in the Disney store, we really give ourselves the benefit of the wisdom that those emotions offer. And I'm gonna explain that in just a minute. But I think that our gut reaction, all of us, right, as kids, as parents, is often to push those emotions away and leave them like over off in the corner on the end cap where no one wants them. But like this tiny little three-year-old who just like couldn't get enough of anxiety. I think if we can find ways to embrace, acknowledge, accept, and work with those emotions, befriend them, that they really can serve us in a lot of different ways. And then what also happens is we can normalize those emotions and just make them part of everyday life instead of being afraid of them, right? Instead of feeling extreme discomfort about having them show up. And of course, I'm talking about more run-of-the-mill emotions. If we're talking about anxiety that's to the point of needing medication or depression that's, you know, at the point of needing medication, that's obviously a different conversation. But in this setting, with this little girl toting around this cute little anxiety doll, I was like, yeah, actually, that's what I do every day. I didn't bring it up to the mom, but I just was thinking to myself, that's what I do every day is I help kids make friends with those emotions, right? I help them know what to do when those emotions show up. I help them understand what information the emotion is telling them. And then I help them work with the emotion in a way that like it can stick around or it can go, but either way, the kids are gonna keep living their best life. And so, really, I was thinking this three-year-old, she's got it together, right? Like her deciding to make friends with anxiety early on, it's really gonna set her up for success because anxiety won't be something that she can't tolerate. It'll just be something that she's familiar with and can work with. So, as I thought about those specific emotions, I really was diving into what in my experience has given me a level of comfort or a level of respect for those emotions specifically. And I could think of some pretty specific examples where those emotions, anxiety, sadness, envy, and embarrassment, have offered me an opportunity to know myself better. Each of them in turn has given me information about what I care about, like what's important to me, what I might want to set as a goal, what is like something I could cultivate a lot of empathy around. And so I'll again, I'll share some specific examples now about how those emotions have enriched my life in a way that makes me glad to be friends with them, even if at the time I was a little resistant to the friendship, just like that mom at Disney at the Disney store. Like she didn't want her her kiddo to make friends with anxiety. And I will admit that at various junctures in my life, I did not want to be hanging out with anxiety either, but anxiety showed up and I needed to figure out what to do with it. So, again, like my preface in all the work that I do is that if we can teach kids what to do with these emotions when they're little, then it's not as jarring when they show up later because they've got a lot of practice working with the full range of emotion for their whole lives. So let me explain the first one. I took a class shortly after I finished my undergraduate degree. I took a class on abnormal psychology and I took it independent study. And this is back in the early 2000s. And so at that time, independent study really was like they sent you the coursework, like a bunch of papers printed out, and you got the book, and then you just proceeded through the course on your own, submitted assignments. You know, we did have email, so I could like print stuff out or and email it back in. You know, I would type it and attach it. But there were different ways that we worked with the material than now. So there weren't these big discussion groups and forums, we didn't have a ton of teacher interaction. It really was just independent on our own study. So I had taken a stats class, independent study, and it went fine, save for a bit of procrastination on my part. And so I was like, this is an okay way for me to study. I had a full-time job, and so it was a way for me to keep learning and working toward higher education without having the full-time commitment and like a the full tuition cost of like full-time enrollment. So I thought it was gonna work great. It was a subject I was curious about. I love psychology, and so I signed up and started the class. If there's one class that I would recommend that no one ever take independent study, it is abnormal psychology. So as I'm reading through all these different stories and all these different ailments and just like the myriad things that can go wrong with us psychologically and otherwise, I was getting kind of terrified. Like many of us do, I was like self-diagnosing every third chapter. I'm like, oh yep, I'm sure I have that and that. And what the trouble was in that instance, particularly, was that I didn't have context, right? So I didn't have a teacher guiding me through examples. And so I got in my head about it quite a bit. And that semester was really rough for me because I was constantly having to notice my feelings about what I was learning and engage with it anyway. And it took me some time to recognize that anxiety was what I was feeling during those long hours reading abnormal psychology on my own and then trying to process it without anybody's insights. At the time, I just knew it was uncomfortable. I didn't like it, right? Like I was trying to get through it and I just was grappling with this feeling of it all the time. And it, you know, there were some other things going on for us in our like newlywed life at the time, and we were starting to navigate our infertility journey at the time. And so there were a number of factors that played into the anxiety that I was feeling. And my response, much like that Mama Disney, was to be like, nope, nope, not going there. Especially because I was reading in abnormal psychology, what happens for people who can't get a hold of themselves. And so I was like, I gotta stay as far away from this as I can. And so what I didn't have was again that normalizing voice to help me just like tone down my anxiety and be like, yeah, like normal people would be anxious in this moment. Like not having this teacher to guide you through abnormal psych for the first time probably would be anxiety inducing. You know, navigating infertility as a newlywed, yeah, that's anxiety inducing. You know, there's a lot about that you don't understand or know, or you're trying to figure out. And and so having eventually someone say, seems pretty normal to feel anxious in that situation, I was like, okay, permission to feel anxious felt really good because I was just fighting it and thinking that anxiety was a sign that I was doing something wrong. There was just this fear in me of engaging with anxiety, especially in those couple of years. And I think that if I had just had a bit more, maybe like acceptance of it, and if I had learned some more tools to work with it, I wouldn't have needed to fight it, right? I wouldn't have needed to be afraid of it. I could have just worked with it. So that's an example with anxiety. And since then, I've learned a ton with anxiety, right? It teaches me stuff that I'm like that makes me nervous or things I'm scared about that usually points to stuff I care deeply about. And so if I can reframe and shift my awareness of anxiety, it's uh kind of like a flashlight for me to stuff that I that I care about and really want to be intentional with. So there are a variety of ways that anxiety shows up and helps me and supports me in in my life. And me learning to work with it and listen to it has been a big part of facilitating like the information anxiety can give instead of just shying away from it. So that's just one example. Envy is another one that was on clearance. So envy is one that I got acquainted with more fully in my like mid to late 20s, and I would look around maybe at some of my friends doing different things. One friend in particular who really had embraced like online businesses. And she was an entrepreneur is starting out, and I would just be like so envious of the fun project she was working on and of just the flexibility she had. And I was just like, that is so cool. And eventually I was like, oh, I shouldn't feel envious of her. I should, I just should be excited for her. She's my friend. I shouldn't envy her. And eventually over time, I was like, actually, envy is actually pointing me in the direction of something that I want, right? Envy is pointing me toward a part of my life that I would eventually be very important to me. And so in that moment, it again, my emotional intelligence had grown by that point. And so I was a little quicker to learn from envy than to fight it. But I think that again, the opportunity we have to take the emotion neutrally and then draw the information from it is key to working with it. Sadness, something that I've also, you know, we've all navigated that as humans. And during during again, this like stage in my late to mid to late 20s, I had some friends and family members navigate some deeply sad events. And as I was in like the world of infertility myself, those hit home for me in just a really real way. And so one of the things that I recognized during that time was that like my ability to feel sadness was pretty deep. And one of the ways that I decided to work with that was to recognize that in my life, there'll be many opportunities for me to use that empathy in really effective, meaningful ways. And so by not shying away from sadness, but embracing it, again, I'm not saying like embracing it for to the point where it's like, okay, you just need to deal with your depression and embrace it. I'm saying like if you're sad about something, if I was sad about these events that had happened to my friends, particularly around childbirth, and I knew that the empathy would be supportive for my whole life. And so while I didn't love sitting in sadness and I was devastated that those things had happened, I also recognized that sadness would serve, right? And that sadness would give me a depth of understanding that I wouldn't be able to get any other way. And so those experiences, again, like taking the emotion, allowing it and not fighting it, working with it, allowing it to become part of us and making friends with it enables us to access it again in other moments where empathy is really supportive. And so I think that if we can utilize the experiences that we have, notice the things that are like important to us, notice the information that the emotion is giving us, we're positioned to befriend it in a way that makes its presence almost supportive. Maybe not welcome, but definitely informational. And if we allow it to, it can lead to a lot of growth. So while I totally can appreciate that mom in the Disney store not wanting her friend, her daughter to befriend anxiety, I also feel like the value of befriending anxiety from a young age allows it to be like a trusted friend and teacher throughout your life instead of something that you're afraid of. So the next time your kiddo comes to you with some anxiety, envy, embarrassment, or sadness, remember those emotions on clearance and then see if you can engage with it in a way that allows both of you to just embrace its presence there and give it some space in the room and see what can be learned from it. Okay, that's all I've got for you today. 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.