Hi friends, Tim Villegas here from the Maryland Coalition for inclusive education. This week we have a feed drop from an amazing podcast learn with Dr. Emily. Dr. Emily King is a child psychologist and former school psychologist specializing in raising and teaching children and teens diagnosed with autism, ADHD, anxiety, learning disabilities, and or giftedness. Each week, she shares thoughts on topics related to psychology, parenting, education, or parent teacher collaboration. And the episode I'm going to share with you today features Dr. Tina Payne Bryson, who discusses the topic of attachment and its significance in child development, emphasizing the role of parents in providing secure attachment, regulating children's emotional and physiological states approaching discipline as a teaching process, supporting neurodivergent children and trusting the non linear development process. And while this information was directed mostly toward parents, I think educators can learn a lot from this conversation, which is why I wanted to make sure to share this episode with you. But before we get into the episode of learning with Dr. Emily, I want to tell you about Bookshare are your students reading below grade level? Do they struggle to read due to a learning difference like dyslexia, visual impairments or physical disabilities Bookshare is a free ebook library that makes reading and learning easier designed for students with learning differences Bookshare it lets students read in ways that work for them with ebooks in easy to read formats. Students can access millions of titles including textbooks, educational materials, and popular titles like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. Students read with free reading tools on the devices they already have access to at school and home. They can listen to words read aloud, follow along with highlighted text, read in large font or Braille and customize their reading experience. Bookshare is 100% free for all us students with qualifying disabilities in schools through funding from the US Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs. Sign up today@bookshare.org That's bookshare.org And now, here is learn with Dr. Emily. Enjoy and we will be back with another episode of thinking cluesive Next week
a lot of people call my work gentle parenting. I actually don't like that name. Discipline should be boundaries with limits and high expectations. And we are not pushovers. But we bring empathy and connection and emotional responsiveness and regulation to those limits and boundaries and expectations.
Welcome to learn with Dr. Emily, the podcast where parents and teachers come together for neurodivergent youth. I'm your host Dr. Emily King, child psychologist and former school psychologist and I am on a mission to help everyone understand that nurturing neurodivergent children isn't about changing them, but about changing us. Each week I share my thoughts on topics related to child development, mental health, parenting, education, and parent teacher collaboration. You can read more on my substack at Learn with Dr. emily.substack.com Or listen here. So let's get started with today's topic. All right, y'all today on the podcast. I am more than honored to be welcoming Dr. Tina Payne Bryson. We have come across each other many times online but are going to dive into a discussion today. I'm so excited to have So Tina, welcome.
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to talk with you because I love your work. I think you're doing such important things and important spaces. And sometimes this unique lens that you and I and many others bring can feel a little bit you feel a little bit lonely and on the fringe because it's still not it's still counterculture. So I'm always so happy to get to join with people, especially you to talk more.
Thank you so much. So for anyone who has not followed Tina Payne Bryson's work and also Dan Siegel's work. If you don't know me, then you haven't realized that I recommend their books all the time. So I'll give you a quick background. So Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is the author of bottom line for baby and the co author with Dan Siegel. Have two New York Times bestsellers the whole brain kiled and no drama discipline. Each of those has been translated into over 50 languages which has gotten to feel so validating and awesome just to know that there are other cultures reading those books. Also the yes brain and the power of showing up which is probably my personal favorite. She's the founder and executive director of the Center of for connection and multidisciplinary clinical practice in Southern California, Dr. Bryson keynotes conferences, and conducts workshops for parents, educators and clinicians all over the world, and she frequently consults with schools, businesses and other organizations. Dr. Tina is an LCSW, a graduate of Baylor University with a PhD from USC, the most important part of her bio, which I of course relate to is being a mom, she has three boys. And you can learn more from Dr. Bryson at Tina bryson.com. All right, so I thought we would start with the foundation of it all attachment. So I want to begin just by hearing you explain like how do you define attachment when you're just starting out and working with parents not only have young children, but of maybe older children who are still trying to figure out that attachment with their kids.
Let me start by saying what it's not. I'm not talking about attachment parenting. So many of you have heard about Attachment Parenting, which is really kind of like a, a list of behaviors we should do for our babies to bond to us. And attachment is not about a list of behaviors. I'm not, you know, you can certainly do Attachment Parenting and have securely attached children. But you don't have to do any of those things. And you can still have securely attached children. So let me start with the punch line. The punch line is one of the best predictors for how any kid turns out no matter what we measure them on, based on longitudinal cross cultural research, under the umbrella of developmental psychology, is that they have had what's called secure attachment with at least one person. Attachment is an inborn mammal instinct. And the purpose of it is to help us have a better chance to survive. So if you think about a little bear cub in the forest, who sees a predator or gets hurt or, or is frightened by a sound, the first thing that bear cub will do out of a biological instinct is to run to mama bear or whatever, attach whatever parent bear, typically the mama bear to be connected and protected. When that happens, not perfectly, but repeatedly enough, predictably enough, over time, the young mammal learns that if I have a need, someone's going to see it and show up for me and meet that need. Now, I want to say a couple of really important things here. When that bear cover now let's switch over to our infants. And I will talk about our older kids to when my infant toddler school aged kid, or even college aged kid reaches out to me, keeping in mind that, you know, with the bear example, that attachment is most activated when we're in moments of distress. So when we're in moments of distress, that's when the attachment system really comes into play. It happens obviously, when good things happen and the micro moments too, but if my college kid calls me in, you know, massive stress mode. And he hears my voice and I listen and I say Oh sweetie, that sounds so challenging. You sound exhausted, that's so hard. And I just give empathy in that moment, right? I'm not actually protecting him from a predator or anything like that. This is still attachment. And what happens in those moments, the bear cub, the college kid making the phone call and lots and lots of stuff in between and even in the discipline moments we could talk about is not just that I'm being sweet, and he knows I love him, something much more important is happening. And that is that when we show up for our I made up a word, it's not even a word, but attached. Ling's right are the people who are attached to us. I love that when we show up for our attached Ling's what's happening is we show up and we help them feel safe and seen and soothed and secure and knowing we're going to keep showing up and I'd love to hit those again in a minute. But what happens is our emotional states and our physiological states are two sides of the same coin. So when he hears my voice when I show up for him when I protect my kid when they're afraid whatever it is, in those moments, their heart rates actually slow down their body temperature becomes more regulated, they feel more, you know, less stressed. So there's a physiological and emotional regulation that happens by me showing up. So I'm actually attachment moments, let me say it this way, attachment moments are moments where we regulate the emotional and physiological states of our attached links. So it's so much more important than it's like, Oh, I'm just, I'm just being a nurturing Mom, there's something else happening. So the nervous system, each time we show up like that, and help them feel connected and or protected, we're giving their nervous system a rep. Just like when I lift weights, my muscles get stronger as I do reps, we're giving their nervous system and their implicit memory for relationships, a rep of what it's supposed to feel like, and how to regulate their physiological states and how to regulate their emotional states. So we're actually helping them learn how to do that this is what we also call co regulation. So let me say one more thing, and then we can go any direction you'd like. So if it's the most important thing we can really do for our children. How do we do that? If that's the most important thing? How do we do that. And so in the power of showing up, Dan, and I wrote about doing the four S's, that when we help our kids feel safe, that's not just physical safety, protecting them from harm, but also repairing with them when we become frightening or when we are unpredictable, lose our cool etcetera, helping them feel seen where we understand the their minds and who they are, we sue them. So especially when they're in distress, we call them we comfort, nurture, we support provide help, then when they have enough repeated experiences of feeling safe and seen and soothed their brain wires to create that fourth s of security, which is where their brain knows and anticipates that someone will see their needs and show up for them. And when we do those four S's, they just know like, oh, yeah, my, my, my mom's gonna show up for me, then they learn how to do all of those things for themselves. So it's not making them fragile. It's making them resilient when we show up in those ways.
Exactly. And I want now to layer on the lens of parenting a neurodivergent child. So that child who is autistic and may have rigidity about how they are doing things, or they may have ADHD and have big impulsive emotional struggles and meltdowns, there may be aggressive behavior, there may be things in the relational dynamic with the parent, that make parenting hard, that make soothing that child hard, there may be sleep issues, or impulsivity, that is really hard to get in the rhythm of CO regulation with kids. And this is something I help families with in my practice, but I think that there's so much parents can do on their own with their children, because they they know their child best. And one of the points I want to bring in to this podcast, and the work that we do outside of our clinical work is just spreading these messages of the power that parents already have in their hands, if they just kind of shift that mindset to thinking about, okay, how can I keep my child safe, seen Sue's and secure, but also right in my work, recognizing there are moments where the parent doesn't feel safe. If there's aggression happening, there may be moments where your child is really hard to soothe. And of course, all parents want to show up, they want to help their child feel seen. But I'd love your thoughts on the challenges and the ideas that you come across that are helpful for neurodivergent kids. Yes.
So the first thing is, we can't provide the four S's to our child in any given moment if we're not regulated. So and keeping in mind if our sense of safety is violated, and I'm a huge fan of polyvagal theory and Dr. Steven Porges. And he has this beautiful term called neuro ception. And neuro ception is a type of perception that's typically outside of our awareness, that really gives us cues for safety versus threat. And when we experience a neuro ception of safety, we have access to more of our brain and, and regulation. When we have cues of threat, we have less access to our whole our, you know, the parts of our brain, like dancy GLONASS in our, in whole brainchild call the upstairs brain, where we really can pause before action and we have insight and empathy and all of these things. We don't really have access to that part of our brain. So what happens then is if our child is doing a behavior that activates our sense of threat, we don't feel safe or in some way, or we've been, I don't know, I know any parent has had this experience. where you're patient and your patient and your patient and your patient for like 40 minutes, and you've been kind of a saint for 40 minutes, and then you can't anymore. And your nervous system really goes into a reactive state, you flip your lid and you know, you yell or you, you know, I have a story I share about a time I was playing board games with my boys, we were playing yatse And I got so mad events, I was patient forever. And then I got mad enough that I threw the dice across the room, like a crazy person. You know, we started learning our own tells, like after enough time to doing that I'm like, okay, when I start getting really immature and sarcastic, I know that I'm on my path to throwing the dice like, so we start learning our own tells. But I think we have to understand and be compassionate with ourselves about our own nervous systems. And that when we get cues of threat, we can go into reactive mode. So we need to know that about ourselves. Be compassionate towards ourselves. Shame doesn't do us any good in those moments. Because actually, you know, we we are falling asleep at night. And we're thinking about all the terrible things we did and said and, and actually, that leaves us more vulnerable to flipping our lid the next day. Instead, I really encourage parents to ask themselves a question what got in the way of me being the parent, I wanted to be in that moment, and lean into curiosity, because curiosity allows us to access more of our brain. And usually, when we answer that question, it's that we have a pretty significant need that's not being met. And then it gives us a way to do some problem solving. Like I'm so exhausted, that's what's getting in my way. What can I do, I need some respite, I need actually, to get away for 24 hours, I need to I need to go to bed early tonight, whatever it is. Okay, so let me back up one more step. If we're gonna give the four S's to our kids, we have to be regulated, right? We need the four S's ourselves. Attachment needs our needs throughout the lifespan. So I need people who helped me who give me the four S's, I need people who helped me feel safe and sane and soothed and secure, and I need to do it for myself, I have to fill up my tank. Now, if that's happening, I'm going to be much better at giving it to my kid. And if you have, you know, if you have a kid, you know, if you've had more than one kid, you know, they have unique differences, whether you know, neurodiversity is a whole other layer to that. But one of the key elements of attachment and this scene s is that we are attuned to our child. So what your child what might soothe and regulate your child in one moment might not work 10 minutes later, but you we typically know what are the things, you know, one of my kids when he would get dysregulated needed to run away get under things like he would withdraw, I had another kid who would go into full attack mode, right to complete opposite responses when they were in dysregulated states. And they were really different in what they needed to stay regulated. So we really need to kind of figure out our children's tells figure out what are their areas of dysregulation or triggers for dysregulation? What are their things that help them stay regulated, prevent the dysregulation. But what I'll say to Emily, is that when we're talking about neurodiverse kids, I think, in a way, like sometimes people will ask me, like, does the four S's work for neurodiverse kids or for Neuro diverse parents? And I actually, I really feel like they need it even more. And here's why. If you have ADHD, or you're on the spectrum, or you have a learning challenge, or you're a to e kid, or whatever the neurodiversity is, we tend to see less nourish a perception of safety in the world just in going through the day, right? So emotions can run higher over smaller triggers or on triggers can be cumulative. The world can be really overwhelming in certain ways, if you're talking about particular, like sensory neurodiversity, and so they may need more signals of safety from the parent. They need to really be seen and understood by their parent because their teacher and the coach may not understand them, they may see them as a behavioral problem when we know it's actually a stress response or a neuro diverse response. And they may need more soothing from us. When you think about bowling like in the bowling alley. You know how like, if you're not a great bowler like me, the ball goes into the gutter a lot right and I almost think about the lane is like being emotional regulation and the gutter being like hyper arousal and hypo arousal like shutdown withdrawn or over reactive acting out kinds of things, right, the gutters. I feel like the four S's are the bumpers that come up and they actually provide a protective factor for our children from having, you know, going having their sort of emotion and physiology go into the, into the gutter. So they need it even more. And I'll say one other thing and that is this. When we provide these reps of The four S's, it really does give our kids nervous systems, as I said, opportunities to practice going from dysregulated states into regulated states with our help. And so the more reps we can give neurodiverse kids have that experience, the better, they're going to be able to do it for themselves. Yep.
And it's just going to take more practice. And it's also possibly going to be a little bit unpredictable because of asynchronous development, which we're going to get to in a minute. But I wanted to lean into circling back to discipline, which you mentioned, briefly and talking through how I think we're in agreement, that discipline has to be less traditional and more of a collaborative coaching type of dynamic for all kids, but especially for neurodivergent kids who tend to have sensitive sensory systems and may not see something coming in terms of an expectation or something that needs to be practiced a lot. So I would love to hear your feedback on how you think about discipline with kids who have a sensitive nervous system who are quick, quick to anxiety, who may be very impulsive and get reprimanded a lot. So they're quick to go into negative self talk and things like that. I just love to hear how you frame discipline for parents.
Yeah, I think about those kinds of kids having many, many, many reps throughout every day from lots of adults and peers, that don't feel good in response to their behavior. So I think this is really crucial. This is my favorite thing, pretty much. Well, actually, I say that about lots of topics. But I love talking about. I talked to a group of teachers about this day before yesterday, and I wore myself out with just bringing tons of energy because I just I feel, I feel like this is one of my missions in my life's work is to change how we see kids behaviors, and how we respond to them. And the way our current culture works throughout most of the world around discipline is outdated, in my opinion. So here's the punch line for this sort of what we wrote about in no drama discipline. And what I've been teaching is, we have to, first of all, revisit the whole word discipline and bring it back to its original meaning, which is about teaching and skill building, keeping in mind that for all of our kids, the end goal, what we're really going for is that they become self discipline, so that they handle themselves in the world, without any coaching without any Inner Inner intervention or influence from anybody else. And they handle themselves while they make good decisions, et cetera. The way we get them there is through lots and lots of reps of teaching and skill building in regulated states, because the brain is either reactive, where it's really, really almost impossible to learn, or it's in a receptive state. Or we can also call that a regulated state in which it's ready to learn. So in the name of discipline, and what I mean by that, of course, is teaching and skill building, one of the first things we may need to do is to get our kids into a regulated state. Keeping in mind, if you're wanting to teach, they have to be ready to learn. So really, before we do anything, we want to ask, is this child is their little nervous system, ready to listen and learn? Are they ready to do that? And am I in a regulated state where I'm ready to teach? If the answer to either of those questions is no, it's the worst time. And really, we've been told wrong information based on outdated research mostly on animals in the 50s, that you have to respond to a behavior right then and there or they won't learn that's not even true of two year olds. After a nap and a snack, we can say to a two year old let's tell the story of when you threw your shoe at mommy's face, right? So we really need to remember, timing is crucial. The goal is crucial. I'm teaching and building skills. And this is a really important question. I would say that most of what we do in the name of discipline in typical, you know, typical ways that discipline is handled is not only not effective, but it's counterproductive. And here's the question I want us all to ask, is the way I'm responding to this discipline moment, this behavior that needs to change in some way. am I responding to that and using discipline in a way that makes it more likely my child will be able to do it better the next time and over time as development unfolds? Or not. If I just send my kid to their room, I'm like go to timeout in your room. They are not sitting and reflecting about the role that they played in the interaction with the sibling. They're not taking accountability for anything. They're not thinking, you know, I really need to regulate my emotions. They're thinking my mom is so mean to put me here because it was my brother's fault in the first place. And it's not not going to change any behavior. So we really need to ask ourselves, you know, so in this way, but I'll tell a really quick story. So this is a, it was bedtime. My youngest, my boys are all three years apart. So my youngest is six years younger than his older brother. So his older brothers were like, you know, 12 and 15. And he was like nine. And the one thing I would say I was militant about as a parent was sleep. And so I tell my little guy, he's probably, you know, nine at the time or something. I said, it's time to go to bed. And he's like, the brothers have friends over, I want to stay up. And so I say, you can stay up 10 more minutes, which just meant he was 10 minutes more dysregulated when it was time to hold the boundary. And keep in mind, I'll just pause here and say that discipline requires effective discipline based on decades of research requires. I know I'm a little bit all over the place here, but I actually push back a little, a lot of people call my work gentle parenting, and I actually don't like that name. Discipline should be boundaried with limits and high expectations. We are not pushovers. But we bring empathy and connection and emotional responsiveness and regulation to those limits and boundaries and expectations. So so in this moment, you know, he's, he is I'm trying to read stories to him, because it's bedtime. I've got the books were in the bed. And he is so dysregulated and angry that his brothers get to stay up and he doesn't, that he is flopping like a fish out of water on the bed and yelling and stomping and kicking, and his limbs are flailing and he's nine, he's almost as big as I am. I'm small, and my boys are big. And so he could have hurt me, right? So this was a big emotional moment. So what do I do? And I will say to I really try, there are so many moments, I'm like, I don't know how to handle this, what I want to do is, is threat based, I want to say, if you're gonna do this, I'm not reading to you tonight, and you go to bed right now, which actually only makes him more dysregulated. And it makes it more impossible for him to turn down the dial of his nervous system to go into a relaxed enough state to fall asleep. So it's not gonna work. It doesn't teach him anything, either, right? It's not like the next night when his emotions are running high. He's gonna say, um, I'm going to pause. And that's not how they work. So in this moment, I know my number one job is to get him regulated. So I say to him, Oh, buddy, it's so hard when things feel unfair, you're feeling really, really angry right now. Is that right? And he's like, yes. But what I've done there is I've responded to him in a way that's going to connect with his internal state and be a match. And when we bring that kind of scene, and we bring that kind of, you know, we also talked about name entertainment, we bring that kind of connection and empathy, it actually turns down the reactivity of the nervous system. And so I say, Yeah, that's really hard to feel that. So now I'm going to let my kid feel that feeling without distracting him without bribing him without threatening him, and I'm gonna let him feel it. And so I say, it's so hard to feel that angry. And it's so hard to feel like things are unfair. And I'm right here with you while you're feeling it. And I pause and I stay regulated as best I can. Because if I add to his storm, we're both going to be miserable. But if I can be the calm in the storm, the eye of the storm, that's going to be helpful to both of us. So finally, so I wait a minute or two, and then I say, let me know when you're ready to read or if there's something else you need. And usually, it's like in this situation, he was like, Fine, just read any kind of like, flops his body into me in an aggressive way. And I begin to read and over a minute or two, his breathing gets regulated, his body softens. And then we move into that. So I think that's an example of, there are so many moments as a parent as a clinician. When I don't know the right answer, I don't know the right thing to do. I don't know exactly what I should be doing in that moment. But I know I want to teach, I want to know, I want to respond in a way that makes it more likely he can handle disappointment and unfairness later. So what he's gotten in that moment is a rep have feeling disappointed and angry, and moving back into regulation, and knowing he can tolerate hard emotions. So I guess I'll say this, Emily, and then we can go on is that, for me? The four S's is my Northstar, even in discipline. Because if I don't know what to do, or say, if I can hold in my mind, I want to respond in this moment where I'm teaching in a way that helps my kid feel safe, seen and soothed and secure, knowing he's not going to lose my love, and I can handle his big emotions, then I know I can get to teaching. And I know that even just the four S's even if we don't have a conversation or work on the behavior, I'm still building prefrontal cortex which allows my kid to be more regulated and have better behavior over time.
Yes, and one thing I want to point out to everyone and get your thoughts unto is what you said about what you wanted to do. And that situation is what we all want to do in that situation. But that's because that's what was done to us. That's right. And that's what's deeply rooted in our nervous systems. And so this is why I always say, we have to change to help them, we don't need to just sit around, making them change. That's not the goal here. We eventually want to build skills. But like you said, we can't until we have our four S's are safe seen Sue's secure feeling. And in that moment, we're not feeling secure. And what it really boils down to, I think, and lots of parents I work with is it comes from a place of fear that you're losing control. Yeah, so two things you said hit on that I think for many parents, and it's the waiting until later to address it makes them feel like they've lost control of this current situation. And then letting your child kind of aggressively bump into you and read the book. Right? As long as you know, they're not hurting anyone, right? I mean, kind of what's your boundary with? You know, what do you allow? As I get that question a lot like, well, how far do I let them push me? Because so many parents go to this, this fear based of feeling disrespected? Yeah. Which flips their lid, right? And it makes it hard for them to hold these secure, but firm boundaries, I think
what you're saying is so important, I'm glad you slowed us down to look at those things. I think, you know, knowing that, like, when your kid is regulated, they typically behave much better, right? And when they're not, they're not really making choices. And so in that moment, you know, when he kind of slams his body into me, he wants connection, but he has his heart is beating fast. His muscles are tense, he's having a stress response in his little nervous system. He's not fully in control. But that was him actually moving a step toward regulation, it was moving a step toward connection. So if I had been like, you can't do that, to me, you hurt my body. And I could just escalate things back again, counterproductive. You know, what, look, two things I want to say. One is, had I done that, okay. And I've done had lots of practice doing it the bad way, where I'm like, Fine, if you're going to do that, you know, I'm not reading to you tonight. And then let's say maybe 20 minutes later, I hear him up in his room, destroying his room, because now he's even more out of control. But I feel bad. And I'm like, dammit, I wish I had done that better. Or the next day, maybe I let him go to sleep by himself. And then I woke up in the middle of the night feeling better, I woke up the next morning, maybe I slept great. And then I woke up in the middle of in the morning, and I was like, Ah, this is when we repair. And the research shows that when we mess up, as long as we make the repair, it's actually good for our children. So I go to him. And I could say, Oh, buddy, I got mad, and I didn't handle it. Well, I'm not blaming him. I don't say, if you had listened because I want to teach my boys that they are responsible for their own behavior no matter what anybody else does. So I have to model that. So because kids learn best from modeling and practicing it themselves. So I can say I really wish I'd handled that differently. Will you forgive me? Or can I have a do over? That's really important. The other thing I will say is that, you know, we have so many opportunities, they're gonna mess up over and over and over. We don't have to do it perfect any one time, and there are there. There's no one right or good way to do anything. Because every parent is different. Every kid is different. And every moment is different. So let me give another really quick example. Let's say your kid is being disrespectful to you. Okay, that's a huge trigger for us. And I love that you called it out as fear based parenting, I talk about that phrase all the time. And the problem with fear based parenting is it snowballs. So I might start out by being like, my kid is so disrespectful to me. And within 20 seconds, I have gone through every, it's like, they're so disrespectful with me, they're gonna do that with other people, no one's ever gonna want to be friends with them, no one's ever gonna marry them, they're never gonna get a job. And they're only going to live in a van down by the river. And so I freak out. And then I don't act out of the parent I want to be. So first I want to say, I want to give all of us permission. Our reactive nervous systems work really fast, our reactive, our reactions are super fast. But you know what, our prefrontal cortex is a little bit slower, it's actually quite a lot slower. And so the part of our brain that helps us pause and make calm kinds of choices, and consider all of our options. And remember that discipline is teaching that takes a minute, I want to give all of us permission to not deal with something in the moment if emotions are running high to say, and this is a phrase I use with my boys all the time. In fact, sometimes I use it with my spouse is to say, I really want to think about how I want to respond to this. So I need some time, I will come back to it. And that gives my prefrontal cortex a minute to catch up with the more reactive, vindictive, immature part of myself, so that I can handle it well. Now, let's say your kid disrespects you. They say to you, I hate you. You're the worst parent in the world and they're screaming at you. There Lots of ways to handle that. One way to handle that is to realize my kids having a stress response. I'm going to come with the four S's and I can say, oh, man, I can see you're so angry right now. What do you need? How can I help? I will listen, something really warm and nurturing, knowing that the part of their brain that registers physical pain is the same part of the brain that registers emotional pain. So if your kid were physically hurt, it'd be really easy to say, Oh, you're so hurt. How can I help? What do you need? I'm right here, right? So same thing with emotion. But it's much harder to do, because it comes out behaviorally. And it feels personal to us. So you can respond that way. But one other way you can respond. And there are probably six other ways. But for time sake, I'll just give one other, you can start with the boundary, you can say, I don't let anybody talk to me that way, just like I would not want you to let other people talk to you that way. Don't let anybody talk to me that way. And so I can see that we're not going to have a productive conversation right now. So either I can stay here with you and help you calm down. Or we can take a minute. And then we'll, I'll come back and check on you in a few minutes. So you can hold a boundary and say, I don't let anybody talk to me like that. I'll come back and check on you in a few minutes, and then see if you're ready, or if you need help, I will help you. So it's fine to do that, too. But I think what we usually do is you can't talk to me like that. And which is kind of a dumb thing to say because they can they absolutely can because they just did. Well, and they will Yeah. So I think there's no like, you know, people are like, Oh, I wish I had you like giving me a script? Well, you know, there's lots of scripts, it doesn't. It's really about remembering, it's about teaching. And truly any behavior, even big ones can be thought of as back burners. And the relationship and connection and giving the brain practice regulating are all front burner, Always.
Always. And what I love right there that you gave everyone permission on is that time the waiting, coming back to it later repair building, we cannot learn when we are in a heightened state. So if we're going to think of discipline as coaching or skill building, we have to align it with when kids brains and our brain is open totally to repair and teaching and coaching. And so let's say everyone's you know, in theory got that they may not be able to implement it consistently yet, but they've got it. So one additional layer that is so hard for neurodivergent developing brains is how a synchronous their developmental milestones can be. So one of the most confusing thing I think, for parents new to this journey is that they could have a child who's reading five grade levels above where they are, but not be able to get themselves dressed in the morning. Yeah, you know, so I do, of course, a lot of work I'm sure you do. And helping everyone understand that those are totally different parts of the brain areas of the brain, there are all these different skills we've got firing kind of at the same time. So there's some education about that. But I love what you I've heard you say before, which is trusting development. And it can also part of that fear with raising neurodivergent kids is, will they ever get this? Will they ever be able to remember this, these three steps that I have said to them, and we we don't have a crystal ball, but I would love your thoughts on trusting development, when our kids development is unfolding asynchronously. And we don't know which skill is going to pop up next. Yeah,
I think one thing is, children are amazing. They're incredible. Like if you are around a two year old, and you watch how they interact in the world, and how, you know, for most of them language is really coming online, but they're so curious and stuff, and you just watch it and you're like, This is a marvel, like, sort of coming at all of development with Marvel. And with sort of like how amazing that these little tiny people grow up to be adults and how they get there. I mean, really kind of coming with a, a perspective of whatever unfolds is actually all of it's a miracle. It's kind of amazing. Development is not only not synchronous, particularly for neurodivergent kids, but development is also not linear. And actually this is really interesting. So one thing that's really typical of development is that there are regressions with progressions, right? And we know that there's a period of disorganization before reorganization in the brain. So it's really common for kids around ages four and five and six, to have a second bout of pretty significant separation anxiety, not wanting to go to the bathroom by themselves not wanting to go in parts of the house for someone else isn't not wanting to go to sleep by themselves. And this is not a regression, it's actual so it seems like it's a regret Since it seems like oh, there's, you know, there's something that has gone backwards, or will they ever get to go to, you know, go to sleep by themselves. But actually, and this is why I'm asking for this perspective shift. The reason that that's happening is a progression and development because what has happened is they've had a cognitive burst that allows their brain to imagine scarier things happening, including even something bad might happen to my parents, but they don't yet have the emotional development to handle those big new thoughts. So sometimes when things look like regressions, it's actually evidence of something amazing that's happening, that that we haven't really been able to see yet. So that's one perspective to hold. The other thing is to say, for me, one of the things that's really helpful is okay, Emily, you know, the pediatrician might tell you, when you have really little kids don't think about what they eat in a day, think about what they eat in a week, you know, like, we would get really annoyed, if like, my kid won't eat lunch, you know, or whatever. They just want to play that when he, I think this is actually really helpful advice for development. And that is, when we're worried about a piece of our child's development. Usually social and emotional is the biggest one that we're worried about, particularly around asynchronous development, like a kid super bright, but more immature in terms of the social and emotional stuff. Or any asynchrony. asking ourselves, is my kid better at this, whatever the thing is, that I'm worried about than they were four to six months ago. And usually, we can see, yeah, actually, they're doing better. And you know, this is this is what I think about in terms of my kids school and executive function stuff. I'm like, Okay, are there less missed assignments? Then there were four to six than there were last semester. Okay. Yes, we're moving in the right direction, because what it feels like sometimes is they're never going to learn, I can't believe you have another missed assignment or another late assignment. How did you miss that? And it's so exhausting and freshmen, because we feel like we're never going to come out of it. But taking a step back and saying, Is this better than it was four to six months ago, if it's not, that's a great time to, to talk to anybody that you're working with, or go talk to a clinical psychologist or developmental psychologist, talk to your pediatrician. Because there might be an area of support or something that's been missed that would could be helped by intervention. But usually, that gives us a sense of confidence and trusting development to unfold it takes time, it's not going to go the way you want it to on your timeline, or unfold the way you want to, and every kid is different in their developmental journey.
Exactly. And it's not gonna go how we want and I always get curious about why do we think it will, you know, like, why do we think that we're gonna get what we want, it's just so fascinating to be that I don't know, if it's because of how organized our education system is with it, this grade, you do this, or if it's the, you know, the whole medical model says, At this age, you're gonna do this and hit this milestone and, and there's just, there's trust, and there's fluidity and asynchronicity, like you said, for all kids, but especially neurodivergent kids, so you just have to trust that I love that idea of, if there's progress, we're going in the right direction. And
one other thing, Emily, and that is that we don't have to just passively sit and wait for development either. Like, for example, if you have a kid who struggles with executive function challenges, we know that the brain changes from experiences, right? Well, of course, there's the confines and limits of each unique brain, right? I'm an our genetics, right? Like, I'm five, four, no matter what I do to stretch, I'm not going to grow taller than five, four, right? So there are constraints that genetics have upon us. But we also know and you know, so many professionals have done so much damage, and so many families by saying your child will never fill in the blank because of a diagnosis that they have wrong. No one can predict what a child can do and, and children surprise us all the time. So that's how you want to have hope. And we want to be not passive, but the brain is incredible. And it can often do much more than anyone can expect it to do based on experiences. So what that means is if you have a child who has challenges around executive function, the way that they can get better within the con confines of you know, genetics, etc, is by giving them reps doing those things. Right. So and this is this is connected back to discipline and I tell the story all the time, like my eighth grader came to me one time on a Sunday night at 6pm and asked if I could take him to the craft store. And he's not a crafter. He did this because and everyone knows why he did this. When I do this in audiences they can always fill in the rest of the story. He had a project due the next morning that he had waited and waited and waited here played football with his buddies all weekend, he had had the assignments for two weeks, and he had done nothing. And he had to make a 3d model of a cell by the next morning, and it was 6pm. On a Sunday night, he knows even as an eighth grader, nine 930 is bedtime. And so I was so mad at him in that moment, I was so mad. I'm like, You're so disrespectful of my time you waited till the last minute, you blew off your homework all week. And you kept saying I don't have much. And now you know, you were lying. Like I got really mad. A few days later, I remembered something because I was working on the no drama discipline manuscript that was due that week. And so I reminded myself with my own words, behavior is communication about the skills they don't yet have. So what I love to have parents do is make a list and I have them write the words discipline problems, and list the three or four issues that they think are discipline problems. And then I ask them to cross out the title of the list. It's not a list of discipline problems, the same items are on there. But the list we're going to retitle skills my child needs to build. And so instead of doing something to them, like I could say to my kid, hey, you're you are grounded next week, and you don't get to play with any friends, because you didn't reward responsible this weekend, that's not going to change his behavior. So instead of doing something to him, I want to do something for him, because basically his behavior said, Hey, Mom, I need help with all those executive function skills of planning, considering what materials I need time management, etc. So instead of me doing something to him to punish him, which doesn't do anything, I need to do something for him to help him build those skills. So what that meant is reps. So the next Friday, when he came home, we pull out the planner, and lo and behold, shocking, not really, I'm being sarcastic. Nothing's in the planner. So we start by going to the teachers websites, and we begin filling out the planner. And then we have a conversation, how long do you think this will take you Do you need to work with a partner on this, and then we start walking through all of the the mental journey that he needs to have for those executive function skills. And we did that every Friday until I felt like he had it. And then of course, he didn't have it and have it and have you know, it's not linear. But this is how we think about this as well.
Yeah, and I what you're saying goes straight into the next thing I want to ask you is fostering that independence. And because the success is not linear, I talked about this in my parent course, and I teach it to everyone I work with is I call this the learning circle, there's like skills that you are nowhere close to getting skills that are mastered and everything in the middle is that learning circle of where all the mistakes are happening. And the the, you know, development is up and down. And the success with it is very inconsistent. And so parents will often think, well, they've got it, they're independent with it, I can step back, and then they don't have it. So my question for you is some sometimes parents will get scared of their it's again, a fear based thing. And they step in too much. I know this is something just like He talks a lot about and the Gift of Failure that kids are going to learn by doing that feels very scary with a child who we're not quite sure if they're going to speak up for themselves. Or if they have social anxiety, we don't know if they're going to ask for help if they need it. So talk to me about the the parameters kind of around like not enabling your child because you want to jump in and help them but then stepping back enough to let them fail. And then of course, it's a moving target because of this development. Yeah.
Boy, I know this, this, well, I know this, well, I've messed this up. I still am working on it. I think you know, I do things I do things that they should be doing. I think fear gets into it. The other thing is sometimes it's so much effing easier to do it for them than to the excruciating experience of them doing it in a way that isn't great. And so then we have to step in, also. And so sometimes we're just frickin tired, Emily. And so this is so it's fear, and I think just trying to survive, too. I think that's a piece of it. Here's the question I really tried to ask myself, is me stepping in, which could be calling the teacher helping with an assignment doing a chore for them setting up a playdate? For them whatever it is compensating to overcompensating for them. Am I doing that? For my child's best interest? Or in my child's best interest? Or am I doing that to regulate my own fear and exhaustion. So it truly it we have to have the courage to look in the mirror there and ask ourselves, Am I doing this for myself, and my interests, or for my child? And usually that question helps get me on the right path. Because then I of course, I want to do everything in my child's best interest. I'm happy to sacrifice I'm happy to sit in fear if I need to. But oftentimes, we're not even thinking about it's just automatic, because we're just trying to survive. It's really hard to raise children. And when we have neurodivergent children, it's a whole other level of stress and a whole other level of additional things and support and scaffolding that our children may need for longer or in different ways. We have to remember that they have to have reps to be able to do it for them for themselves. So sometimes we're actually making it a lot harder on ourselves thinking we're making it easier on ourselves in that moment where it's too short of a window of perspective, because if I want my kid to be able to do it independently, then I have to let them practice doing it. It's just like when they're little when they're pouring water out of a pitcher into a glass, and you know, they're gonna make a mess, it's so much easier to pour it for them and not have the mess. But they're never going to learn to do it unless they make the messes. And so it really is about asking that question, being willing to do that. And I'll say, I see this all the time, I had a family that came to me. And they had a high school daughter, and they were like, we've forbidden her to date until she's in college. And they were spying on her on all the her media and all hers tech devices and stuff. And they knew she was actually seeing someone. So they were really mad. They didn't know how to approach it. And I'm like, Well, let's not spy, you know, let's, I love Devorah Heitner, who writes about media and she says, We want to be monitoring instead of me, sorry, we want to be mentoring instead of monitoring. But what I told them, I said, let me ask you a question. Would you like her first experiences of dating to be away from you where your eyes aren't on it? Where you're not able to have any input? Or would you like her to practice that while you still have some input, and you can lay eyes on it. And, and I think that's such an important thing to think about for everything, right? We really want our children to have experiences I live in LA. So I always think about freeways. At some point, your kid like the kid, your kids with you in your car, and you're in the you know, you're in the fast lane, your kid has to start getting their over and lanes eventually closer and closer to you know, the right side. Because they're going to exit there's an off ramp for them, for them to go off to college or to a work to overdose or to work or whatever, eventually, they're going to leave your supervision. And so we have to help them move lanes to move more and more towards independence. And that's a process. And so much of the time we're interfering with that independence.
Well, you're leading me right into my final question for you, which is, when we show up for our kids, we're teaching them how to show up for themselves, but then also teaching them how to look for people who get them and can show up for them. And so I want to talk about kind of well, and this this also goes together with the fact that we are all very tired. This is not a one person job, this parenting thing. So at some point, we have to expand our circle. And we've got teachers and coaches and therapists in our village that usually most families that I've worked with, at some point along the way, have a wonderful team of people. But let's talk a little bit about trusting those people to show up trusting our kid to show up for themselves and anything you would want parents listening and teachers listening to know of how they can support that self advocacy piece and showing up for themselves but also advocating. It's funny,
we were having dinner with some friends last night, and one of my my college kid was was there. And we were talking about how however you grow up, you think that's how other people grow up. You think that you know, whatever happens in your family, you think is normal. And when you go off to college, or you go to camp in the summer or whatever, when you're a little bit older, as a young adult, late teenager, and you start kind of peering into how other families have have done things, you start getting perspective about how there are lots of ways things are done, but what your experiences are really get wired into your brain as to what is the set point? What is the what, how do things typically work. And that can be for good or for bad, obviously, I think when we show up for our kids as best we can. And when we rupture of one of the four S's we make the repair, that when that gets wired for kids, they really do learn the ability for how to do that for themselves. But what's even better is that's what they expect from other adults. And it's what they expect from their, their friends, they expect their friends to show up for them, they expect their future romantic partners, or current romantic partners, depending on their age to show up for them. So this is actually a well documented outcome of secure attachment in the literature is that healthier peer and romantic relationships and better relationships with adults. I think it's really hard because there are 100% of our kids have adults in their lives that do not do the four S's and a lot of them are important people that have a lot of even power over our children and their experiences. So I think know that there are things that we can control and that is what kinds of experiences we give their kids, our kids that they can seek that out in relationships as they move towards independence. And then there are going to be things not within our control. And in those cases, we have to know that what we've done for our children gives them a lot of robust protection, even when they're in situations with with other adults that aren't aren't positive. And then we have to model how to advocate and how to use our voice in effective regulated ways. I'll tell you, particularly during and since the pandemic, I've had a huge increase in numbers of schools that reach out to me to ask me to give talks to their parents about being regulated in their the way that they communicate with other parents and with the school. So we have a lot of, you know, as parents, we can get really reactive. And we might call and scream at another parent for something that their kid did. And by the way, even though you think your kid tells you the truth, all the time, all kids are liars. And you only have their perspective, right? So I always coach parents, too. If you feel like you need to call another parent, or talk to the teacher about another kid's behavior. A great way to do that is to say, hey, here's what I'm hearing. But I know it's only one side of the story. What are you hearing? What are you seeing and be humbled that you probably don't have the whole story, but I think parents if we're screaming, or we're being out of control, and dysregulated, and how we are advocating for our children, because it can be so maddening and feel so important. And it's, it is awful. Sometimes the things we have to advocate for our children that aren't already happening. It's so maddening. But we have to wait, be ready to be regulated, because that's what our children are watching. And so if we want them to be effective and advocating for themselves, we have to model how to do that effectively.
I love it. Thank you so so much for joining me today and for explaining all of these things so well. And so clearly, where can people find you on social and and find any new things about you or more recent things? Yes.
And there's tons of free content on my website, which is Tina bryson.com. That's B ry, s o n. And then on social I'm Tina Payne Bryson PAye.
Awesome, thank you so much, Tina.
Thanks for having me.
This has been learned with Dr. Emily the podcast. For more resources including both parent, teacher and school resources. Visit learn with Dr. emily.com or read my substack at Learn with Dr. emily.substack.com. Also, we are publishing this podcast weekly, so make sure you're subscribed by pressing the plus follow or subscribe button on whatever podcast app you're using right now. This podcast is edited by air fluence. All information discussed on this podcast is for educational purposes only. If you have immediate concerns about your child, please reach out to a mental health or medical professional. I'm Dr. Emily King, and we will keep learning together next week.
