The Antidote to Modern Over-Parenting

In this episode, returning guest Allison Beck, a psychotherapist and parent coach specializing in reproductive psychology and anxiety, joins us to discuss the powerful concept of how "doing less is more". In an era dominated by an abundance of conflicting social media advice, the parenting pendulum has swung toward an exhausting state of over-parenting. Allison explains how this constant pressure to manage, fix, and perfectly execute every interaction can actually block the essential experiences and manageable doses of discomfort that children need for healthy development.

The conversation dives deep into the psychology of childhood anxiety and a phenomenon Allison calls "yellow lighting". She explains how well-intentioned parents often inadvertently speed up or escalate a child's emotional distress by either over-demanding or over-accommodating their feelings. Instead of swooping in to fix the problem, the most effective strategy, recognized as a gold standard for treating childhood anxiety and OCD, is to offer a brief supportive statement and then literally do less. Allison also emphasizes the crucial difference between parental agency and control, reminding listeners that parenting behaviors cannot completely override a child's genetics or natural development.

Finally, Allison unpacks the practical steps parents can take to sit with their own discomfort and regulate their nervous systems. She highly recommends meditation as a tool to build the neurological skill of observing without reacting, which directly translates to calmer, more flexible parenting. By redefining what it means to be a "good parent", and accepting that calmly and accurately responding to your child's needs just 20 to 30 percent of the time is a massive success, parents can finally let go of perfectionism. Tune in to learn how to parent more intuitively and find out more about Allison's one-on-one coaching and therapy offerings.

Allison has served as an advisor and written contributor on perinatal mental health, child development and parenting for various professional service providers and organizations. She received a BS in Human Development with a dual concentration in Early Childhood and Adolescence from Cornell University and an MSW from NYU. Allison has been supporting individuals and families as a Psychotherapist and Parent Coach in NYC agencies, hospitals, and in private practice for over a decade.

Connect with Allison: 

allisonbeck.com

@_allisonbeck

Check out her past episode here: “Tackling Anxiety & Depression: One Thought At A Time”

Click here and use your exclusive 20% listener discount (Code: Fit20) to enroll in Master Your Pelvic Floor, our signature self-paced course that will change the way you understand and care for your body.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

One thing we can do is set values and goals and go find a script, right? Or find an influencer who tells us how to do that at every age and every stage. Even that we're going to get stuck in, right? Because what if we don't have a child who responds to verbal recognition of their feelings? What if we have a child who actually rejects that? What if we have a child who's a more of an internal processor, right? What if we have a child who that worked for at three, but now we're doing that at six and seven. And actually we are getting too involved in experiences that are really appropriate for them to be managing independently, right? What if we're creating a dependence in talking through things, naming emotions, and then they get to middle school and they just freeze on the playground because they don't know what to say without being able to remove themselves from the situation, have a conversation, and talk themselves down.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Hello, everyone. I'm your host, Dr. Sneha Ghazi, a physical therapist, course creator, and mom. I own Sneha Physical Therapy, a private practice in New York City, and created the course Master Your Public Floor to help you transform the way you think about and move your body. Use discount code FIT20 for a special 20% discount exclusively for my listeners at the link in all show notes. Each episode brings phenomenal guests in the health and wellness space who share inspiring tips and tangible advice. All things health and wellness starts right here. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode on Fit as a Fiddle. Our guest today is a returning guest. Her name is Alison Beck, and she is a psychotherapist and a parent coach in private practice. She specializes in reproductive psychology, postpartum mental health, parenting and anxiety, and moon disorders across all life stages. And today we are really excited to talk about something very relevant for ourselves and for lots of people out there, which is a concept of how doing less can actually be more. And it's funny because I talk about this a lot in my PT world where I'm like, where people like will talk about like a muscle and movement, and then they'll be like doing this really late. And then I'm like, oop, calm down. We're gonna do a small movement. We're going to target what we want to target. And it's like, I always say that less is more in like this physical capacity. Yeah. I'm super excited to explore it from a mental intellectual uh philosophy as well. Um, so thank you for coming onto the show today.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And I'm so excited to talk about that as well because I think that just like I often say that one of the most effective communication skills is listening. Um, I think that that we often do not conceptualize doing less and turning things off as a skill set, right? And I'm sure that sometimes in your work with muscle patterning, right, actually one of the skills that people have to learn is how to turn off over firing muscles, right? In order to get the balance and relieve pain, right? So I think that comes up uh in mental health, in in psychology, certainly in parenting, which is, you know, my my wheelhouse uh working with individuals as humans who also are parents and also crossing over into more focused parenting work. Um and so for me, that's that's where my bread and butter is. I've been studying human development across the lifespan for way longer than I would like to say. Um, but you know, that is really the intersection of phases of development in adulthood and of course in childhood and early child and adolescence, um, you know, which is where I studied and started studying in college, and then in my professional experience, have worked with children, with families, and with adults, and have really found that having that knowledge base and focusing it on working with parents as they're moving through all phases, all ages, all stages of parenthood, um, you know, has been what's the most rewarding, what I'm most passionate about, and really just such a great place to put together all of those varied knowledge bases and skill sets. Um, and certainly in parenting and in modern parenting, um, one of the themes that has keyed me into how doing less is more is just sort of seeing the pendulum swing so far for parents who felt like there wasn't enough information, perhaps when they were growing up for parents on social and emotional development, on child development, and you know, with technology, um with the internet and now with social media, of course, there is such an abundance of information. Um, and I feel that the outcome for parents has been there's too much information, it's been thrown at parents at all times, there's conflicting information, um, and there's just this constant messaging that you always have to be thinking about, executing on, knowing what to say, managing your child's development, right? Whether it's through managing yourself, it's through managing them, it's through how you communicate, it's through activities. Um, and the pendulum has swung too far because I think it has left parents in a constant state of stress. It's actually created a lot of pain points, even though it solves some, leaves parents confused and it leaves parents in an impossible place where with all this conflicting information and the volume of expectations on how we should parent, you can never execute on it all. And so there's a sense of kind of constant, I don't know if it's failure or just uncertainty about effectiveness as a parent and your child's wellness. And the ultimate irony is the overparenting, as I will call it, actually blocks a lot of the essential experiences that our children need for the development of mental outcomes that we as parents are trying to create. Right. And so I'd love to get into more specifics, but um, yeah, I think the key is trying to help parents find that balance between having the knowledge, building the skills, identifying their intentions and their values and their goals, but ultimately figuring out how to apply those things in a dynamic way that also leaves space for everybody, space for parents to just be and move intuitively, whether it's in their parenting, in their humanness, and how they relate to the world as humans who happen to also be parents. Um, but also just leave space for kids, right, to not have everything fixed, managed, responded to perfectly, right? To just sort of experience life and challenges and manageable doses of uh discomfort, right? We all need that, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Oh my God. Allison, this is so important. It resonates with me so much. It's like the topic of conversation often amongst so many of the mom groups that I'm in and friends, um, as like a mid-30s millennial with a toddler, which is a lot of my community right now. Um there is that conversation about the pendulum swinging. And um, I don't know if it's maybe because it's so top of mind for us because we became parents as it was swinging. Yeah. Or if it was like always kind of like that over the last like decade or two, or if it's just like right this particular second that it's yeah in that transition. We are not sure because we haven't experienced, we haven't been parents for very long. Um, but I definitely do see that a lot, is um even amongst friends where we were raised very similarly, it's like, oh, but you should do it this way, but you should do it this way. And we're both like, I don't think it matters. I really don't think it matters. Like, I think you should just not beat your kid. Like, I think we can all agree on that. Like that's good, that's good. That's like baseline is don't beat your kid. Like, oh, but maybe some people have other opinions and have other thoughts on it, but like we usually collectively agree on that kind of level of physical trauma, right? But there's like certain things that were like absolutely, it's like safety, or it's like um something, and then then and then there's the other one, which is like, are you gonna let your kids eat a bag of Oreos?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Are you going to let your kid watch a screen for five Henness?

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Exactly. So it's like a screen and like what are they eating, and then the sleep scheduling and the uh sleep training, and then it's the like gentle versus permissive parenting. It's so many like codified, regulated, systematic things, and like people teach these courses or classes or have these like ways of explaining things in very specific ways. And I think that it can be extremely overwhelming to a new parent who's especially as millennials, like we are like we we knew a day when there was no cell phones, and then we knew a day where we're consumed by the cell phone. Um, whereas like our parents, like for the majority of their frontal lobe functioning time, there was none of that. When I hear cell phones, I'm saying everything related to social media, technology, internet, all that stuff. So I think as millennials being in the middle of all of that stuff, I think it um it's an interesting, challenging space to be in. And everyone experiences as a generation and as a whole, we have experienced life in certain ways, but it also is like very nuanced, right? Because my experience as an Indian American whose parents immigrated to America, but was like raised in this country my whole life. I have a very different perspective on the way that I was raised compared to somebody who lived next door from me, whose parents and grandparents, like they don't know like where they're from. They're just like an American family who have very different values and customs, religious beliefs, spiritual beliefs, uh parenting beliefs, and all of that stuff influences how you parent because it influences who you are as a person, right? Um, and so I guess I want to dive into and have you comment with your expertise on knowing that there's so many ways to do things and knowing that there's so much information out there. What are the first steps to kind of figure out what you want to do? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Um, it that's hard, right? I mean, I think the first step is really uh in my work is always like adopting a growth mindset and recognizing that a goalpost is moving and that it's not a static process, right? I mean, it is, I think, constantly tagging in and out of setting the intention, right? And like having strategies, like writing down your values and goals and writing out like what are some behaviors as a family we're gonna engage in to support that, right? What are some barriers to those values and goals that are coming up now or might come up? And it's about setting those intentions, but then it's being able to tag into living in it and like, is this working, right? And what worked when our baby was one? Is this now working when they're three or five? Right. And I can give you different examples. Like, for example, uh in a in a pure parenting strategy, right, like communicating to a child three what they're feeling by telling them what you see in their body, right, isn't not going to work when your child is 10, right? But if your goal is to have communication fluency and for your child to have emotional fluency, right, then you can tap in and out of that and hold that, but redirect the behaviors that are getting there, right? And so I think if we think as parents that one thing we can do is set values and goals and go find a script, right? Or find an influencer who tells us how to do that at every age and every stage, even that we're gonna get stuck in, right? Because what if we don't have a child who responds to verbal recognition of their feelings? What if we have a child who actually rejects that? What if we have a child who's a more of an internal processor, right? What if we have a child who that worked for at three, but now we're doing that at six and seven? And actually we are getting too involved in experiences that are really appropriate for them to be managing independently, right? What if we're creating a dependence and talking through things, naming emotions, and then they get to middle school and they just freeze on the playground because they don't know what to say without being able to remove themselves from the situation, have a conversation and talk themselves down, right? So I think that like it's very important from the beginning to engage in both of these practices in parallel, right? Which is having practices, tools, containers for identifying your values and goals, for talking about that with your partner, for communicating them to your children, but always being able to have a process for being flexible to see if as you apply it in the moment, is this resonating with this kid at this age, right? In this context, in the brain that they're in right now. And if not, right, adapting. Also, is it working for me? I thought that was my value and goal. I thought I wanted to be completely tech free. But now I'm seeing that at eight, my kid is exposed to technology everywhere. Maybe it's at school, if not, at a friend's house, uh at the a restaurant, right? Like technology is everywhere. Maybe now it's important to me to engage with them on technology in certain ways. So I feel confident that they have skills to safely navigate it, right? You as a parent can change your mind, right? So I think it is finding comfortability in having intentions, values, and goals, but being flexible to revise those values and goals and being adaptable to observing if they're landing with the intended effect for you and for your kid, and then like being willing to change it up if it's not. And I think that's where people get lost. Like that's the ultimate skill that I work on with parents is having a process to work through moving between those two places, right? Um, and I think the the problem is like, you know, when parents hear, you know, I should talk to my kids about their feelings to support social and emotional health. What they don't realize is they're creating emotional fluency. But if they're doing that too much, they're only creating emotional fluency and they are not creating the skills to work through the emotions, or they're just not giving their kids the space, right? So their kids can independently build the skills in age-appropriate ways to work through the emotions that they can name. It doesn't mean anything if you can say you're feeling sad or mad, if you can't move through the world with those feelings, right? And still function, right? And that's hard as a parent, right? Because what it means is that your instincts to protect, to fix, to uh talk things through, to give solutions, to tell your kid they don't have to do uncomfortable things because you don't want to see them suffer, mean to have to tolerate that, right? But that's I think often what I mean by the doing less is more, right? It's it's especially as they age with every stage and every sort of new developmental experience, being able to say, I need to do less, right? Because I've already given them the skills. And if I don't give them the space to put them into practice, right, they're not gonna go anywhere with it, right? And and you know, I think it's especially hard when you have a really young child to have the foresight of recognizing how quickly they're gonna be moving through the world in highly independent ways and to recognize that the container, right, has to be put into them to carry with them. And that if you don't do that, right, in small ways when you're together by stepping back and doing less, you're not gonna have the skills to move when you're not there.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Absolutely. And I'm just thinking about like as you're talking about this, I'm connecting like two things in my brain, which is a thesis that I wrote back in the day when I was on NYU and I can't remember the name of it and I can't remember like the exact methodology. But the outcomes I found in that I still think about and do today when I'm treating pediatric patients. So like the smaller toddlers, and when I'm um, you know, doing anything with my daughter in terms of when they're learning a new skill. So basically, this in the study, myself and my colleagues, we found that when um a child is first learning how to navigate small objects, like opening containers, use scissors, hold a pencil, like doing things with their hands. And my specific one was like, how do you open very different kinds of containers, like screw tops versus uh caps, all those things? The number one thing that um created the greatest success in outcomes, which is opening the container, was the maternal language of encouragement rather than showing, physically handling, giving verbal or ver uh visual instruction of any kind. And we found that just by the the mom's words of you can do it, or you got this honey, or whatever it was that they were saying that was forms of encouragement, confidence building, and independent execution of the task was actually the most created the most success. And so um, when like even yesterday, I had a pediatric patient, I treated him in his home, we're working on jumping off of uh like blocks and objects. Um, and so I put a block in front and I asked him like to jump, and he didn't want to do it because he was scared. So, of course, we do the small step and the medium step, but still when we get to the large step, he's like, I don't want to do it. And I all I did was just sit there for like three minutes, saying everything that I could to encourage him to do it without demonstrating it, without telling him to bend his knees, without telling him to do anything. And then he just jumped and he did it. And even though the session was over and I was like, I gotta go now, he just kept doing it. And I was like, I had to call the nanny to be like, you need to watch him here. Right. He doesn't want to stop jumping off of the thing, but I gotta go to my next patient. Yeah. Um and I think that uh what I think about, and even when I'm with my daughter, is when we do that, do the things for our kids, when we we're trying, it's like it comes out of a good place, right? Often you're like, I want to help. But sometimes that helping is actually hurting them. And we don't know this, it's not an intentional harm in any way, because everyone wants to do the best for their children. Um, but we we end up not really doing the best and not in and equipping them with the tools that they need to navigate the difficulties and the challenges of life that they will have to face independently.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

I always like have my daughter like, like, when you come across something like that in the playground or when you something is really hard, like think about I'm telling you, like, you can do it because you know how you did this, this, this, and this, and you thought it was hard, but then you did it, like you can, you can do it. I want you to remember that you're, you know, I say all that you're the strong, confident, brilliant young lady, you know, we we say all these things, but um in your work and in your practice, what are instances where this becomes more important? And where are examples of ways that parents can disengage in a way that's actually optimal for the child?

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Um yeah, yeah. So I mean, I see it in in a multitude of ways, right? It's parents who often swoop in when when when you're dealing with child anxiety, or really when you're dealing with um holding a parental authority, is often where I see it come in and and challenges in those areas. But we have this concept called yellow lighting, right? And like it's rooted in literally a yellow traffic light, which is designed to slow things down, right? But you and I and everybody listening probably knows when you see a yellow traffic light, 90% of the time you're speeding up, right? And so in in parenting, I think often what we see is parents' instincts and their intention to well-intentioned efforts to alleviate their child's suffering, often yellow lights and speeds up their child's anxiety, worry, fears, discomfort that are the things that the parent is trying to help them work through. And the irony of this is it can come in a multitude of formats. It can come in sort of an over-demanding way where it's like, well, just get over it and do it, right? Which doesn't leave the child feel like they're seen and that induces more discomfort. But ironically, it often comes in the opposite, which is what we would call overaccommodating, which is over-explaining, sometimes it's lecturing, it's tell me more about how you feel, it's, you know, um asking questions, it's saying, well, okay, we'll do it in five minutes, or what if we do it in 10 minutes, right? Because the reality is if a child is feeling discomfort, right, anxiety in particular is a social emotion, right? It's activation is based on a genetic predisposition, right? So how much or little distress it takes to activate a nervous system, right, is highly genetically variable. However, once it's activated, the social cues a child gets from the adult around them can determine whether or not it escalates and it stays on, or it's not a big deal. This situation is safe. And then the child can have the space to regulate and work on the skills that you give them outside of these moments, right? Like thinking about how they feel in their body, like problem solving, like engaging in cognitive flexibility, taking deep breath to regulate themselves down, right? And so the idea that I work on with parents is no parent ever causes their child's nervous system to activate, right? And whether it be they're anxious or it be they're resistant, right? These are all sort of child behaviors and parenting child uh parenting behaviors that come into my space. Quite frequently. The nervous system is underneath all of those things. And once it's activated, how you respond to that activation, right, can determine if it goes up and stays up, or it can kind of stay stable or go down just enough that the child then can actively engage in these skills and like look back and be like, holy crap, I did that hard thing. I jumped off, right? I jumped off the high level. And so, you know, there are ways to shift from yellow lighting, right? Or over demanding that might keep it or increase a child's discomfort that might be driving the behaviors that as a parent you're trying to help them work through, or might be blocking them from developing the skills that you want them to develop. Um, and it's sometimes just subtle shifts, right? There's ways to validate that, but still not get overly involved. And so we talk a lot about supportive statements, right? Which are statements that say, yeah, this is hard for you. Yeah, you're really nervous. You've never done this before. It makes sense, you're uncertain, but I know you can do hard things. And then that's it. And then that is it. And then it is literally doing less. It is sitting, it is holding your own discomfort as a parent. It is, it is holding your urges to do more, it is holding your urge to encourage, it is holding your urge to talk through it again, it is holding your urge to say, just do whatever. It is literally just acknowledging, encouraging, and then doing less. And the research shows over and over, not only is this a highly effective parenting strategy in any context, but it is so effective that it has been shown to be an effective treatment for childhood anxiety and OCD disorders, right? Um, and and in fact, parent behavior modification in this way is now increasingly a gold standard for the treatment of childhood anxiety and OCD. The child doesn't even have to be in the room. They don't even have to participate in treatment. It is so effective, right? And so if it's going to be effective for that piece, right, it's certainly going to be effective across the spectrum of parenting behaviors. And, you know, I think that doing less is more. Like I said, listening is the most important communication skill we have. And so that is also what I redirect parents to. Listen to your kid. You don't have to do, you don't have to fix, right? What we also then often have to work through is, but I don't want my kid to feel like I felt when I was a kid, right? I don't want to do what my parents did, right? I don't want them to feel like I abandoned them or left them alone in this emotion, right? And that's hard work. That's the hardest work to really executing on some of these skills, right? Is just working through our own emotions, right? That are so sensitive to what our kids are going through. And really being able to like recognize that actually doing less is living in the values and the goals and the intentions we have for our kids, even though perhaps social media has told us that it's not, or perhaps our instincts or our reactions to how we felt as a kid, right? All these pieces might be telling us it's not.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Yeah, I think what you said there, which stood out to me, is that dismissing emotions and neglecting is a very different thing to acknowledging sitting with it, but not overly parenting in a way that's making them feel more uncomfortable. Yeah. And I think Or doing the work for them, excuse me. Exactly. Doing the work for them. I think those are two very different things. And I think that um, like personally, my parents were all like really there with me, like sat with my emotions, like when I was growing up. But I definitely have observed and have seen like friends or like people that I know or like family members whose parents would be just like just get back up, like you're fine, like just stop crying, like you're good, you know? Yeah. Um, and I've seen that before. Not that my parents maybe haven't done that occasionally, but that was not the overarching way that they parented. Um, but it is interesting that you are constantly reflecting on the way that you were parented and you're literally re-living it as you are a parent going through those different stages. And it's what you just said, I'm regurgitating about the constant um kind of the evolution or however you put it, as you have to keep reinventing your new parenting strategies as your child grows, because the way that you parented parent when they're literally like six months old is very different from when they're six years old, is very different from when they're like 20, you know? So um that's really interesting. And now I want to based on what we just discussed, I want to talk about the work that parents can do in their own therapeutic rehabilitation processes and what about themselves, especially as it comes with the sitting with discomfort, the doing nothing. Yeah. Because the way that we live our lives, our our children see it, right? Like they're more observing of how what we do than what we say. And so we could be the ones being like, you know, screen time, for example, and then be there on our phones the whole time. And they're sitting exactly, and they they see that. And so because oftentimes we're so on all the time, we can't sit with our own discomfort and sit with our own silence and our own stillness. And then we're expecting our children to like, you know, we want the pendulum to swing this way and for them to be able to do that. So, how do you talk to parents about this and navigating their own um inner struggles with yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Well, I definitely think there are just practical things that uh, you know, that are more like behavioral that I definitely want to talk to. But I also think that one of the big things that constantly comes up is defining being a good parent. And that is part of the work too. It's really redefining that. It's redefining it to align with the science and the facts, which are not the messages we get from social media. And I'm so glad you said something a minute ago. You said that my parents may have done that at times, but that wasn't the overarching experience I had of them, right? And I think that's something that parents get caught up in, and that's often why they're afraid to sort of do less and just sort of be in a moment and like parent intuitively or parent in context, right? Like, yeah, you cannot sit and validate and provide supportive statements when you watch the bus coming down the street and you have to be off the door, right? But to that point, it's like really realigning what it means to be a good parent and shifting from it means being perfect and being high uh attuned to every social and emotional experience my child has and every motor need they have and every academic need they have, and like recognizing that like the literature and the research is clear 30% of the time, like 20 to 30 percent of the time of being able to recognize what your kid needs, respond to it in a way that fits this balance of like giving comfort, but also space for discomfort and growth and being calm and responsible 20 to 30 percent of the time. That's it. Right. And you can misread, not have time, have competing priorities a huge percentage of the time. If you think about how many times you're interacting a day with your kid, that's huge. How many emails you're getting from school of things you need to do, right? Like, okay, you cannot do 50% of them, and your kid is gonna feel well beyond and heard in that space, right? And I like to use this um analogy, just be like Aaron Judge, the best of the best, arguably one of the best, if not the best, baseball player in history. Is he batting a thousand? Nope. Does he go out there and strike out more times than or ground out, get out more times than he hits? Yep. What is his average? The best of the best of the best, right? So the best of the best professional baseball players, potentially of all time. You know what his average usually is? High 200s, low 300s, right? So, like, if we can give the best of the best credit for being the best of the best at that average in professional sports, why can't we accept that within ourselves? And I think that's a big part. It's reframing what it needs to be a good parent, right? And then I think a second piece is sort of pulling away from this high American value of um of high agency. This is a term I've heard before. Like, are you a high agency person or are you a low agency person? Agency is like, yeah, agency is like the ability to impact on the environment around you. And it's a very important psychological concept, this idea to feel like you have choice and can have some effect. You are not just helpless and being pulled along in any circumstance. It's a huge component of psychological resilience. But it has been misconstrued just like working hard or not working hard to be some sort of like personality trait that's like predetermined and like very binary in its value, right? And so it's sort of been like hijacked as this concept of like, if you are not always setting intentions, always working on improving yourself as a parent, improving your kid, building their skills. Like if you're not always working on it, right, you're not a good parent. And that is the complete opposite of what we're talking about doing, right? And it's a complete opposite of what the science says, which is you can like just sort of intuitively be present and in a moment, right, and not get it right 100% of the times, not be working on it, not trying, not working hard, and still be not just highly valuable as a parent, but highly, highly valuable and even more valuable as a parent, right, than you might think. And also recognize that like this is not like a personality trait. Like you can build skills, right? You can make an active choice. And sometimes that active choice is to not be working on it, and there's value in that. Um, so these are these are like really, really important pieces for parents to work on. Because if you don't feel like you can be a good parent, if you're not working on it all the time and you're not hitting a hundred percent success rate, you're never gonna feel like you can pull back and pause and create space, right? And so then the practical strategies, like you're just not gonna be motivated to use them. So I think those pieces are really, really, really important. Do you see like this this like overagency, which, you know, I have to say there's a difference between agency and control, right? And I think that high agency kind of can cross into that. But do you see it in your your work too?

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Yeah, I mean, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone um saying it in that way, but I do think that in general, um, we do see this like just this concept of like living too intentionally and like living too, you gotta do all the things in order to accomplish all the things and in order to like whatever the case is, um, achieve these certain things. And whether that's personal or professional or relationship-wise, um there is this con this like struggle, and not this is not for everybody, but it's definitely for like the high achieving caregiving role of New York City, New Jersey, like metropolitan women who are yeah, you know, mothers and they feel like they have all these things that they have to do and they're juggling as default parents, like not just, you know, their own like life and career, but then of their families, which they didn't like necessarily go into the workforce being like, oh, I'm gonna have to have like five different jobs. It's not just this career, it's five different things that I'm gonna be fully in charge of. Right. Because I think, I mean, I know there's like every a lot of differing opinions, and it doesn't matter what kind of a role that you play, like which one is harder, which one is easier. It's all hard in its own way. But I am specifically talking about the working mother who's also the default parent. So yeah, the full-time mom, full-time career, but juggling all of those things in like a single 24-hour day, their self-care always gets kind of like lost at the end of it. And I don't mean the self-care of going to a spa or getting a massage. I actually mean the self-care of what we're talking about here, which is quiet, pausing, and conscious grieving and just uh awareness of oneself. Like it's actually like way simpler than booking a vacation with friends as a self-care or going to get your nails done. Um, it's like much more simple than that, and that's the most important stuff, and then that ends up getting lost, and then they get into this cycle of like, okay, well, now we're dealing with toddler tantrums and then the sleep regressions, and there's like all these psychosocial factors systemically with lack of support and you know, childcare costs and this and that. And at the end of the day, it's like, what were you doing all this for? You know? Yeah, yeah. So I I have this conversation with a lot of moms, like a lot of my patients, especially when they go when they're entering like pregnancy and postpartum. And I think I've said this so many times to my pregnant patients. I'll be like, but the best advice I can give to you is don't listen to anyone, including what I say. Just don't listen to anybody. The best advice is don't take anyone's advice. Yeah, because all I mean by that is there's so much conflicting opinion on like taking it back to the beginning of our conversation, like do this, do that, do it this way, do it that way. And I don't think at all, like there are things that matter, and then there's things that don't that don't matter. And completely to do some differentiation of all of those things.

SPEAKER_00 35:29

That's the perfect word for it, right? And I also think it's like differentiating between agency and control, right? And asking yourself, why am I doing these things, right? Am I doing them because they align with my values? Am I doing them because they're working? Are they yielding the results that I want, right? Am I doing them because if I don't do these things, like my child's needs won't be met, right? Or am I doing them because if I don't do them, I won't feel like I'm meeting my child's needs, right? But also like, what's the cost, right? That's really, really significant. So that differentiation is huge. And I also think it's about like, again, understanding and realigning expectations of what it means to be a good parent, but also like knowing the limitations of parenting. Parenting does not override genetics, it does not override peer influence, it doesn't override cultural and social norms, it does not override your child's development. And that's in good ways and bad ways, right? Like I think that like when I talk about doing less is more, it's also just like shifting away from this mindset that again, I think social media and technology and just the pendulum swinging so far has basically told parents you can parent your kid to a certain outcome. And I know that sounds ironic because I work with parents to create certain outcomes in their experience, but part of that work is recognizing that like it's a dynamic process, it's a responsive process, and like we don't know which baby has the underlying sleep temperament that can be easily shaped by parent behaviors and sleep training, and which baby you're gonna go through that sleep training with over and over and over, and they are still going to wake up in the middle of the night for contact, right? And this obviously shifts, especially as your kids get older. You realize your influence dwindles very, very quickly. But I think that parents feel like they can parent their child out of their genetics, they can parent their child out of future outcomes by doing things here and now that just you have to know the limitations. What I like to say to parents is shift the mindset from I can parent to this outcome to I can parent in a way that can impact on that outcome, but I cannot override all the other things that inform it. You just can't, right? And especially as kids get a little bit older and they are moving through all these independent spaces, I see that backfire. Parents getting so overinvolved in their kids' athletics, getting so overinvolved in their social dynamics, getting so overinvolved in academics. And ultimately what happens is their kids then don't want to come to them and talk to them about these things, right? And so, like the work is not to prevent them from ever having social challenges, prevent them from ever having academic challenges. It's to make sure that you create a safe container so they will come to you and talk about those challenges and talk through those challenges. And that's where you have to do less, right? Like when your child does something socially that you're like, oh my God, she can't do those things. If that were five years from now, the kids at school would be talking about da-da-da. I'm gonna tell her right now she can't do that. The only thing you are gonna do is stop her from coming to you five years down the road because she'll remember those times where you embarrassed her in front of her friends when she was younger by saying, Don't do this, don't do that, or what were you feeling when you did that? What, right? Like we have to understand that we have limitations and we have to do less, right? Acknowledge what we see, create the space to have those conversations, but do less, right? So those pieces I think are so, so, so important. Recognizing again the science of what means to be a good parent, um, and how to shift your mindset around what what it takes to be a good parent, what your role is as a good parent, but also like not all being overintentional, acting all the time out of intentions and efforts to control and engage, and like accepting that like you can do work, it can have an impact. So you do it, but you have to see how it's landing and you have to be adaptable and you have to accept who your kid is and help them prepare for that person to move through the world, right? Um, by giving them space to figure it out on their own.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

100%. And I'm just gonna connect it to the physical really quickly because it's the same thing, like I said, with the muscles firing and like the patients doing more. It's the same thing for me when I see two patients coming in with the exact same diagnosis, like whatever the case is, like this particular sake or the act drain from dysfunction on the particular side caused by the same whatever thing, or somebody coming in with stress incontinence, and they'll come to me with the same problem. And the way that I describe it and the way that I begin my care will be from what I believe based on what they said is the way to start, but they will take off in two completely different directions. Correct. Because what they take in that dynamic conversation that happens in this like biopsychosocial capacity to rehab from that is just totally different from patient to patient. So there is no like particular blueprint, and that's like this wonderful dance that we have to do from session to session. 100%. And even from pregnancy to pregnancy, at this point, I've treated people through the three or sometimes even their fourth pregnancy, and it's they're they have a different body, they have a different experience, they're in a different stage of motherhood with a different stage of support. And so what we do, even if it was with the same thing, looks different on their next pregnancy or subsequent ones. And so I think that just speaks to the fact that we are human beings at the end of the day. We are not robots, we are not AI, we are not codified and structured. They come from this very complex and nuanced space, and each one of our brains is so rich with um, you know, just life and experiences and our expectations. And um, we need to honor that and be patient and understanding of ourselves in order to create the wonderful human beings, um, brains that we are we have birthed and that we are taking care of, you know. It's like if we just really look look at it from like a macro level, it's this beautiful, wonderful thing that we're doing, which is why we all end up doing it and evolutionarily wired to do this whole parenting thing. And sometimes it gets so hard when we're stuck in the weeds of it. But if you really step back and keep, I know it's so cliche to see to say, you know, think of the things that are important, but truly, if you really do that in the moment and practice it because it is a skill to understand and practice and differentiate between the important things and the things that are not that important that you don't need to intervene in and do less for. Um, I think it that you learn that skill. And then when you keep learning it, you get better at doing it for yourself and those around you. And I think you just do develop this patience. Um, I'll just say one really quick story. Yeah. Um, this this we just had spring break. We were in LA with my um with my family and my parents and my brother and his kid, his newborn. And uh my parents were watching me parenting my toddler in over the course of a week. And I remember at one point, I remember Gio was like being fussy and crying about something, and like, you know, when they do the leg hang, they grab your thigh and then hang on it because they just can't anymore. But like you're like in the middle of like carrying something that you need like three more feet to walk to put down safely to not injure the things around you or hurt, you know, whatever. Anyway, so it's this like little funny thing that was happening, and um in that moment, uh she's being fussy, my dad's watching me. I put the thing down, and then I like giggle a little bit, and then I think I like chuckled, and then I like pick her up, and then I like just squeeze her and kiss her and just like hold her. And my dad laughs from the other side of the room, and I'm like, what are you laughing at? He's like, it's really interesting watching you do different things in different situations because like the day before I did scream at her because we're running late, and I did say, That's enough, put your shoes on. Yep, context. There's no more, there's no more of that. We do not have the capacity to do that. We're gonna get in the car and then you get the thing that you want. You know, we're doing this thing in this particular way. So I did raise my voice and like I did yell at her. And um, everyone heard me doing that. But I was like, guys, listen, I told my brother, I was like, I know your child is three months old, and you'll say you'll never scream at them ever, but you will scream at them once in a while. Uh huh. Because it works. It really does work once in a while.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

Well, and I think that brings up such a funny point, which is like you can set all the intentions in the world, do all the work, but 90% of the time we parent to context, right? And I and I alluded to that earlier, right? And so, like, why do why put so much pressure on yourself if you're just gonna be responding to the context anyway, right? And I joke about that, but yeah, context is a really, really big piece of it. And you know, I mean, this is this is all part of it. And um, you know, we talk about setting the intentions, but like then being able to accept the limitations, right? And like really practically meditation, some form of of non-judgmental awareness practice is such a great skill for that. Because if you've ever sat down and tried to meditate, your intention is to just sort of sit still and breathe and be quiet. And you and I both know that's usually not what happens. It's usually you have an itch, or your body is like, I want to go for a run, or your mind is like, well, let's think about this and let's plan for this thing we have coming up. And so it really is like the neurological practice of observation without judgment and without reaction. And it's really a just sort of replication and embodiment of exactly what we're talking about, which is the skill set of being able to set an intention and be have the motivation, right? And put in the work to have a certain outcome, but like then observe if it's happening, if it's working or not. And if it's not, to not freak out and get worked up about it, and then to just sort of like have the flexibility to redirect. So, like for parents, I really think this is an important practice. Plus, it brings into play what we talked about, which is stillness, slow breath, right? It has amazing impact on nervous system regulation. And then it becomes a skill that you can also activate when you're with a screaming child and your head is about to explode because you're overstimulated. So do not undermine meditation. I will not go into an entire whole other podcast about the neurophysiology of meditation and that it's not just like this like weird thing that people do. There is so much neuroscience and neuroresearch on how it actually activate certain areas of the brain and strengthen, strengthen certain areas and communications within the brain, and it's all related. The brain, the thoughts, your feelings are all part of your body. So that is one huge, huge, huge practice that I really encourage for parents. But it also comes back to making space, right? And that's the number one thing. If you don't put the phone down, if you don't tell yourself it's important to take a break, if you don't shift your mindset to be comfortable again in feeling like a good parent, if you're not always thinking, always doing, always intending, right? Um, you're not gonna create the space for yourself, you're not gonna create the space for your child. So like creating space, putting time on that calendar to do nothing and practice doing nothing, right? Um, is really, really, really, really important. Um, you can execute on these things with your kids, but if you're not offering them to yourself, it's only gonna go so far, you know? Um, and I think that like really being able to get clear on why you're working so hard in parenthood is just so important. You said this earlier, I reiterated differentiating between agency and control, um getting clear on why you're so intensely focused on not doing the things your parents did, um, getting so clear on why you don't feel confident, just trusting your intuition when you're talking to your kid, right? Getting clear on why it's so uncomfortable for you to not be able to have a 30-second conversation or offer a script to your child and for them to be fully regulated, right? Getting clear on your understanding of child development, because a lot of parents expect even at eight, nine, 10, 15, 16, certain effectiveness of parenting behaviors on their child that doesn't even hold true for full-blown adult brains, right? Like, raise your hand, probably nobody, if you uh have never had a feeling and not been able to keep it inside or talk through it in a calm voice and let go of it immediately, right? A hundred or if you've never, if you've ever done that 100% of the time, excuse me, I misspoke, right? Nobody, right? So, like when we're in these loops of thinking that we can just aid these things to our kids. And by the time they're eight or nine years old, right, they'll be able to do that a hundred percent of the time for themselves or respond to us when we say please don't do that, just look at us and be like, okay, I'm sorry, I was just feeling very overwhelmed because I had a busy day at school. You're right, I shouldn't hit my sister, I'll never do that again. Like, good luck, right? 100%.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

So I think meditation is a great practice. Making space is a great practice, getting clear on why you're doing what you're doing, right? Um, and then finding space to try out doing nothing or to try out parenting intuitively, like without overthinking it and just seeing how it feels for you. Those are really, really helpful strategies. The last one that I'll say is what you mentioned before, working with two patients, right? And having a generalized protocol, but needing to be adaptable and dynamic and flexible in how you move through that protocol with them to get to the desired outcome. Nothing is as effective as having an expert and individualized one-to-one support in learning how to apply these skills, apply these tools, figure out what these practices and processes look like and feel like for you, apply the science of child development to your child at that age and that stage or your family, right? Nothing is as effective as having someone work through it with you dynamically and essentially recreate with you as a parent what you're trying to put into practice with your child. Because we, as providers, similarly, like you said, you don't have, we don't have the science to say, like 80% nature, 20% nurture the pain point you're showing up with. We know it's both nature and nurture, and they're constantly interacting, but you don't know you can have one patient come to you with like a certain degree of muscle tone potential and another with less. So what you do in those first couple of sessions is gonna have a different impact. And so that skill set, but that container of having somebody to say, we don't know what percent of impact you can have on this area, but we're gonna try these things. And in the process, we're also gonna work through accepting what percent of impact you can have in this area so that you can move forward, not just with the skills, but with the confidence and the mindset that you can navigate the best way to apply those skills and have the best skills for any job that comes your way as a parent, right? Like there's just obviously nothing like it. There's no script, there's no social media account, there's no workshop, right? There's nothing like that one-to-one dynamic support. Um, and so if if parents really want to be unburdened by constantly worrying if they're doing it right, again, it's not about doing more. It's not about knowing what to do in every situation, it's not about feeling like you know what to do in every situation. It's feeling comfortable with doing less. And it's feeling comfortable with not knowing what to do in every situation. It's feeling comfortable with that being an effective parenting tool, right? And it's feeling comfortable with like having a process for working through it.

SPEAKER_01 51:59

Absolutely. And it's obviously wonderful to have a process to work with somebody one-on-one like yourself, because that's what you do. You understand all of the neurophysiology mechanisms and really like the relational aspects of everything. And then also as a mother who lives in America, there's a very there's context to this because that you come from personal experience navigating some of these challenges and the culture and cultural environment that we live in. Um, so we're so grateful for you and um people like you because um I really do believe that mothers, especially caregivers of all kinds, but especially mothers who in America are the default parent most of the time, to understand these concepts and re-if this episode did anything for you, it's just to rethink about how your belief systems and it's to explore different ways of thinking about the world and your role as a parent and your relationship with your child and the relationship with people around you as well. And um, so I'd love for people for you to tell how people can get in touch if they have questions, if they want to maybe work with you. What's the best way to reach you?

SPEAKER_00 53:06

Yeah, absolutely. Well, right now you can reach out to me through my website, www.allisonbeck.com. Um, I offer individual and couples work in both a therapy and a parent coaching format. Um and so you can reach out to me there. You can check out my social uh at underscore Allison Beck. Um, you know, really right now I am focused as much as possible on that one-to-one or you know, parent-to-parent work because I just think that's really the most effective way to reach people. Um, so feel free to reach out to learn more if you have questions about how I can support you and your family, the differences between therapy and coaching. A lot of it is outlined on my website, but you know, I'd love to chat. I offer free consultations. Um yeah, I just want to help parents feel free to do their best and feel confident that that's enough.

SPEAKER_01 54:01

I love that so much. We all need that. I need that. I know people who are listening would really benefit from this conversation being on repeat in the background multiple times to Yes, we need constant prompts. Yes. We need to remember and reapply. It's like a constant work in progress. Like we talked about the evolution of parenthood over the stages of our child's lives, too. So thank you so much, Allison, for your time. But share with your uh with our guests all of the wonderful work that you do. Thank you for being here. Thank you for returning onto the show as well.

SPEAKER_00 54:32

Oh, any time, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

Thank you all for tuning in and investing in yourself and your well-being. If you listened to the show today and gained anything out of it, share it far and wide. It means a world when you rate and review the show. Don't forget to use your exclusive 20% discount code FIT20 when you sign up for our signature course Master Your Public Door, linked in the show notes. See you again next week with an exciting new guest and topic.