How Breakdowns Can Lead to Relationship Repair and Growth In Your Family

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we’re talking about how times when our communications and interactions break down can feel like problems, but they’re actually an important opportunity for repair and growth. And this is the case whether we’re talking about our interactions in relationships with our children, with our partners, really with anybody in our lives. I find in the work that I do with families that parents often feel like their goals should be to make sure kids are happy all the time, to make sure all of their interactions are positive and that if that’s not happening, it means that there’s something wrong with the child or wrong with the parents or wrong with both of them. But the reality is that healthy relationships are full of breakdowns, miscommunications and how we navigate those determines whether we strengthen the relationship and experience growth, or whether we weaken those bonds and experience increased distress. In today’s show, I’m really happy to have the opportunity to learn more about all of this from Dr. Claudia Gold. Let me tell you a little bit about her. 

She’s a pediatrician and writer who has practiced general and behavioral pediatrics for 25 years, and currently specializes in early childhood mental health. Dr. Gold is on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Boston Infant-Parent Mental Health Program, the Brazelton Institute and the Berkshire Psychoanalytic institute. Her new book, “The Power of Discord: Why the Ups and Downs of Relationships are the Secret to Building Intimacy, Resilience and Trust”

, co-authored with developmental psychologist Ed Tronick will be released later this spring. She’s also the author of “The Silenced Child: From Labels, Medications and Quick-fix Solutions To Listening, Growth and Lifelong Resilience” and “Keeping Your Child In Mind: Overcoming Defiance, Tantrums and Other Everyday Behavior Problems By Seeing the World Through your Child’s Eyes.” Dr. Gold, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show today, welcome. 

Dr. Claudia Gold:

Thank you, It’s a pleasure to be here. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So, I’ve read your books previously, this new one, I’m almost through it. We could really spend this interview talking about so much from all of those books, but I think that I want to really focus in on this idea in your new book about discord and how breakdowns in relationships actually lead to progress, lead to growth. Let’s start with — The book is called “The Power of Discord”. Where did this idea come from? Talk to us about the meaning of the title of this.

Dr. Claudia Gold: 

Well. It comes from the groundbreaking research of my coauthor Ed Tronick, whose work really grew out of this idea of the importance of the attachment relationship, but this sort of mythical expectation that everything is attuned and there’s this kind of nice give and take all the time. When he did these microanalysis of videotapes of parents and infants, he found that at first he thought it was a mistake, what they were seeing, but that that was actually what is typical, is that we miss each other and then we — as long as the repair happens — so it’s about actually 70% of interactions are mismatched, but as long as they come together again in the majority of interactions, then kids develop in a healthy way. So this kind of a core idea of the central role of mismatch and repair in our development, that’s his piece of the work. And I would say that then my piece, which is much more the clinical experience is very much influenced by someone named D.W. Winicott who coined this term, “The Good Enough Mother”, which is the idea that it’s actually the things — not that it’s okay to make mistakes, but that it’s essential to make mistakes. And as long as those mistakes are kind of in proportion to a child’s ability to handle them, that’s how a child begins to grow a sense of themselves and an ability to be close with each other. So the discord concept comes from a combination of Dr. Tronick’s research, and then my decades of clinical experience, as well as, my experience being a mom, which is thrown in there in the book in a disguised form.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

When we become a mom or a parent, it puts everything that we learned and have done professionally into a whole new perspective, right? That lived experience of oh, I’m doing this now with my own children at home for sure. So let’s give some examples. You have some really wonderful examples in the book of what this can look like. Because, as I said in the opening, I think so many parents at least that I see in my practice have this idea that breakdowns of any type are really a problem, they’re something to be avoided. If we have miscommunication with our children, with our partners, then that in and of itself is a problem and we should avoid that at all costs. Parents fall into these different categories, I find, of how they manage that. And you talk about this a bit in the book. The ones that jump in to make sure that there are no problems before they even happen, and then ones who, if there is a breakdown or an issue with the child or with their partner, become extremely distressed and that kind of fuels that cycle. And then there are parents who can sort of roll with it and go, “These kinds of breakdowns/things happen and we can get through it”. Do you find those same patterns in your work with families? And maybe what are some examples just for our listeners to know what we’re talking about when we talk about these missed connections?

Dr. Claudia Gold: 

Well, actually I just yesterday heard such a beautiful story from a mom whose child is a teenager now, but when the baby was born, she was going through a very difficult time in her life and she had a lot of trouble feeding the baby, and the nurse, many different people came in and showed her what to do, and everybody was kind of usurping her role and she felt very inadequate and that she really needed the experts, but the baby just was holding out and really was beginning to lose weight. And then finally, she decided to take it upon herself to work through this with the baby. So it was very difficult, and then she herself was able to get the baby to start eating. And she describes this very, very fraught, difficult moment on multiple levels because it was the undermining of her and her relationship with the nurses, her own self-doubt, and then being able to get through that to the point where she was successful with the baby and she attributes that with complete transformation in herself and her child and her whole life really, until this point where her child is now a teenager. That was such a critical moment in changing the direction of her relationship with her child and with herself. So, I thought that was a very powerful story.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That’s a beautiful example, and I think it illustrates what I think a lot of our parent listeners can relate to: When you have a child with challenges, whether those are very early on in infancy, or as the child isn’t hitting milestones or is having challenges as they’re growing and getting older — I think there is this tendency for parents to either take a backseat role, or really, by professionals, be placed in that backseat role, right? We know what needs to happen here, let us swoop in and tell you and focus on the child and there’s a tendency for parents to feel like they are incompetent and doing everything wrong, that can leave them in a really powerless position that as you pointed out, there with that lovely story, when mom was able to come into a position of seeing how she could influence this and navigate this, it changed everything. 

Dr. Claudia Gold: 

Yeah. And I think that we live in a culture of How-To and advice giving. Certainly, a lot of that is well-meaning, and I’m not saying that parents should go at it alone, without any guidance, but I think that when we don’t let parents have an opportunity to work through these moments, we sort of — what we do essentially is we cut the repair process short. And if we can just kind of be present with the parents, and give them support as they find their way to their own solution because they know their child best, then that, in general, leads to a better place than if the parents own natural authority is kind of undermined by experts. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, I think that’s true, helping parents to embrace their own capabilities and the potential that they have to listen to their intuition, listen to themselves and really get through that repair process. I think that’s so important because so many parents, the moment something starts to go wrong, whether it’s in their child’s development, oh my goodness, my child is hyperactive and there are all of these problems, and the teachers are calling — there’s a tendency to take that on themselves, “I’m incapable/I’m screwing something up, I’m doing something wrong. I’m the problem here.” Do you see that playing out often in your practice as well?  

Dr. Claudia Gold: 

Yes. I mean in this issue of blaming parents and parents blaming themselves is a huge issue, and we actually have a whole chapter about that. As soon as you start talking about how important relationships are — as soon as you become a parent it’s just that guilt naturally comes with the job. So you then start talking about relationships, the natural progression is well, then it’s my fault and I’m to blame if something goes wrong. But Dr. Tronick and I came up with — I told you about the good enough mother, we came up with a sort of counterpart, which is the good enough baby. Because when things go wrong, it’s generally something that’s like a dance where people are stepping on each others’ toes. So there are qualities in the baby or the child that are impacting the relationship and then there are qualities in the experiences of the parent. They affect each other. So you can’t — you would no more blame the child for the problem than you should blame the parent. It’s that a relationship has gotten off track and the process of repair is not working properly and they need to find a way to understand each other. That just takes time and it takes often another person listening to the story, but not interfering to instruct the parent.  

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I find, and you make this point in the book as well, that when we start talking about relationships, when we start talking about the importance of parents as guides, parents as being able to take the lead in repairing these things and working on this, there can be this sense, even as professionals that we’re blaming the parent, right? By saying that we believe that parents have a really critical role in influencing and supporting their child’s development, there can be this sense of oh well, you’re blaming the parent, and yet, nothing could be further from the truth with that, right? 

 

Dr. Claudia Gold: 

Right. And I like to think of it, I mean, because responsibility is a much more positive word, certainly when you take responsibility for something, it’s kind of an empowering feeling. So how is it that we can — It’s kind of a paradox, how are we going to say that parents are really important and have tremendous ability to support their children’s healthy development and then not say well, then when things go wrong, that has something to do with them as well. So both things — to have one, you have to have the other. So it shouldn’t be about blame, but about supporting parents, helping them to feel less overwhelmed. I think generally, when parents aren’t available for that repair process, it’s almost always because they themselves feel overwhelmed. Whether it’s that they have other young children, whether they have stresses in their relationship with their partner, and of course now, we’re living in the middle of this enormously stressful period. 

So I think it’s rather than blame parents, what we need to do is see — what are the things that are going on in your life that are kind depleting your resources to be available to your child in this way, and then help parents to get resources, primarily as a clinician in the relationship with me in the clinical setting to engage their own resources and help them to find ways to minimize the ways in which they feel overwhelmed, creatively. And now, I would say in the time of COVID, we need to be really creative in how we help parents to not feel overwhelmed. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

It’s sort of the theme right now, right? I love that idea, and in some ways, I think this is really supportive and soothing to parents of helping them look at how their early relationships, how their history has shaped how they come into the parenting process and how they’re responding, because so many parents, I find moms especially but dads too, when they are struggling to respond to their children, particularly when we’re talking about behavioral kinds of issues or challenges that come up, when they’re struggling with that and maybe managing that in a way that doesn’t feel good to them — maybe yelling or being harsh or enacting punishments that they know aren’t helpful but they get overwhelmed in the moment… there’s a great tendency to blame themselves as being — “I’m just terrible at parenting” or “There’s something about this kid that just isn’t working.” 

I think it’s relieving for a lot of parents for us to step back and say, “Let’s look at what’s going on in the background here.” There are reasons why you are responding in this way, right? And when they can understand that, then that helps shift how they feel about themselves. You had a great example in the book. I wonder if we can talk through that, just to give people an example you cover about a mom and two younger kids and lots of one sibling one upping the other and mom getting very distressed about that and trying to get them out the door in the morning and her just getting very flustered and the child just continuing to escalate, and they came into your office and things really shifted. Can you just talk through that example or maybe a similar example so people can kind of get a picture in their mind of how this plays out?

Dr. Claudia Gold:

Okay, well that was an example of how there can be something in the way, in the parents’ life story that prevents them from really responding to what their child is communicating. So they kind of put some other meaning in it and that particular story was a very dramatic one, and this was actually my index case where I began to think differently from what I had thought as a pediatrician in more traditional training. So the mother had actually lost her older sibling to an accident when she was a teenager, and the family had never really fully grieved this loss, they kind of just moved to another part of the country and they had really repressed it. And now that she found herself as a mother, having an older and a younger child, a lot of her grief and feelings and fears about her lost brother were then kind of displaced into her relationship with her children, and so this very typical behavior in the older sibling was so, so disturbing to her. It was not until she really had a chance to kind of — in relation with me because we knew each other well, I had taken care of her kids for a number of years for their regular checkups, we took the time to think it through, and then she realized. She made this connection.

So that was a very dramatic story that had a very positive outcome, which highlights how taking time to listen when children are young can really shift direction. But also, you did say something about when we’ve had problematic relationships in our upbringing. And I want to, if you don’t mind, touch on that because I think people get worried — If I’ve had this difficult experience, how will I be able to change things for my own child? So I want to give people a message of hope because we can have these embedded experiences — In fact, the same mom was telling me about being sent to their room, being expected to be seen and not heard, very punitive kinds of discipline and very, very harsh kinds of upbringing and thinking about — how did she change that for her own child? One of the things that we talk about in the book is that even if we have had these problematic relationships, by immersing ourselves in a whole new set of relationships — not just one person, but a whole bunch of different people in different settings that the new sets of relationships in our lives can help us to shift those patterns so we don’t necessarily reenact the — it’s hard because there is a very strong push to do to your children the same things that were done to you. But as long as you, as a parent, can immerse yourself in a bunch of relationships that strengthen you, then it’s possible to shift the ways in which you carry on relationships with the next generation. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So important for people to understand because it’s true, many parents, especially if they’ve had a challenging upbringing or traumas or things in their own history, automatically assume that maybe this is going to be an extra challenge, or there’s something about me, that I can’t parent properly now because I’ve had these things happen to me, and what you’re saying is tremendously hopeful for that that absolutely, that can shift in the context of new and different relationships. I want to shift gears because there’s a connection with what we’re talking about here with these inherent breakdowns that happen in relationships and the repairs and the process of getting through that that leads us to think about this idea of resilience. Resilience is something that we talk about a lot these days, it’s sort of a pop psychology term even at this point, right? Everybody is talking about resilience for kids, for us, but you provide sort of a new way to think about that. So let’s talk about that.  

Dr. Claudia Gold: 

Yeah, well I think the term resilience often, in the pop psychology setting, is associated with words like grit and sort of has this kind of judgemental tinge to it — are you resilient, are you not resilient — that’s also something that you are either born with or somehow you have this ability to overcome some kind of very dramatic adversity. But really, resilience is something that’s woven into the fabric of your being through moment-to-moment experiences of mismatch and repair, starting at birth. So it’s really the way that we reframe it and it comes out of the combination of the research and the clinical work. It’s that it’s a developmental process. So by these hundreds of thousands of moments of things not going well and then going well, things that you don’t see with the naked eye or in real time, but that’s just what life is for you in a relationship, starting from birth. With the kind of healthy process of mismatch and repair, you have to have a store of positive stress, so to speak. So that when you do experience a major external adversity, you have an internal sense that I can go from a bad moment, and there will be a good moment sometime in the future. You have this kind of core sense of hope, because I think resilience and hope are also very intimately intertwined. When you haven’t had that experience and in the Still Face, which we haven’t yet talked about, but it’s the experiment where you see in the baby this incredible hopefulness like, even though the mom isn’t available, I know that I can shout and scream and you will come back to me. So when we have that sort of core hope that we will be in a difficult moment, but we will, at some future point not be in the difficult moment anymore, that’s kind of the definition of resilience. Again, it’s a developmental process that’s woven into us over time. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Building that bank up over time from birth on, how there are these uncomfortable moments, these mismatches, these breakdowns but then they get repaired, we move forward — I love that. Let’s talk about that for people who aren’t aware of the Still Face experiment. Some people may have heard about that, but why don’t you touch on what that is and how that weaves into this?

Dr. Claudia Gold:

It’s an interesting convergence of experiences for me and Ed because we taught together. He’s the researcher and I’m the clinician and the writer, and we decided to do this project together. So it’s been very interesting. Back when I talked earlier about the value of attachment, he was at that same time going on rounds with Berry Brazelton who is a very well-known pediatrician that passed away at the age of 99 about 3 years ago. They would go on rounds together at Malvern Hospital. Dr. Brazelton had this tremendous appreciation for how much a baby could connect and communicate, right from the moment they were born. That wasn’t really typically how attachment was thought of. It was thought of as led by the parent, not that the baby really had any say in it. 

So Dr. Tronick, who was there with Dr. Brazelton, going on these rounds, decided as an experimental psychologist to test this sort of theory that the baby actually was very actively involved in the interaction from the very beginning. So that’s where he set up the Still Face, because he wanted to see what would happen if you took the parent out of the interaction, how would the baby respond? So, people expected that the baby would just do nothing. Would just follow whatever the parent was doing, and in the experiment, which you can watch on YouTube, the mom plays with the baby, an infant, they’re facing each other for a short period of time, and then the mom is asked by the experimenters to have an expressionless face. Then you watch the baby. It can be very difficult to watch because the baby arches and shrieks and pulls out this whole bag of tricks to engage the mom, and then after that, the mom is instructed to interact in her typical way again. With a robust, healthy baby like you see in the video, the baby — she’s like a little tentative for a very short period of time, but she immediately goes back into playing with her mother. 

So it was kind of groundbreaking at the time to see just how competent the baby was and how much of a role in the relationship the baby played. I mean the baby hasn’t read books about social interactions. They’re just born this way. They’re just born wired to connect. So it was just a very, very dramatic example of that. And also, again, when you saw that, even though it’s disturbing to watch it at first, it’s actually very hopeful because you see that over the months, in the most commonly-watched video, the baby is about 11 months old, but they’ve done this Still Face with a 4-month old, and the baby who has grown up in a typical relationship with this kind of messiness that we’ve been talking about will have a very hopeful, robust sense of — I like the word agency. Like I, already at this very young age, I know that I have it in me to make my world better. So that’s really what this Still Face showed us.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

It then plays into, over time, that development of this internal resilience of “I know that I can”, that agency of “I can act on my parents and things in a way that gets us through, gets me through the messiness, which maybe really uncomfortable at the time, but then we come out okay on the other side.” And the flipside of that, I think for parents is to realize that we have those mismatches, right? Not always intentionally like in the experiment, we don’t intentionally with kids sort of check out and intentionally have a still face, but there are lots of times that that happens now. As you were talking, I’m thinking about how technology and parent use of technology plays into that, even from an early age of that sort of still face, I’m attuned to my technology and maybe not to my child and kids learn how to get the parents’ attention and try to repair that, and that builds that resilience. And for parents to recognize that we don’t have to hit it right 100% of the time for our kids to develop appropriately and be okay, right?

I have a lot of moms especially who feel like any mismatch, any distress on the child’s side of things, that that’s a catastrophe and that’s a problem, but what this showed us is no, that it’s actually an opportunity for growth, right?

Dr. Claudia Gold: 

Yeah. And it’s not only not a problem, but it’s essential. If you don’t have the space for the mismatch, then you don’t have the repair, and that’s where you get into states of anxiety, or even worse, hopelessness. This is where we were talking about hope going from mismatch to repair, either because your caregiver always has to be right there or because for a variety of reasons, they are not available in a timely manner for the repair. Then, your kind of weigh up being in the world and there’s also experimental evidence for this with depressed moms, it doesn’t have that kind of core hopefulness, that core sense of agency and you might see behaviors that are more associated with depression or anxiety. But the point is that those are not fixed ways of being. Those are just ways that are related to our moment to moment interactions and can always change in new relationships.  

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

So what are some things that you encourage parents especially — I mean we can certainly talk about how all this plays into any relationships we have, right? Whether it’s our partners or work relationships or siblings or whatever, but because we’re specifically talking about children and parents here — what are some practical tips or some takeaways that you find yourself giving parents who come in to see you, around what they can do with these ideas? What do you encourage them to do with this?

Dr. Claudia Gold:

I love that question because it sort of embodies the whole issue that comes out of this culture of instruction and tips. Again, it’s sort of like the paradox. I think that letting themselves off the hook, allowing for there to be the mismatches, and this really, is the core tip that I would give. It’s kind of to let themselves let go of that sort of quest for perfection and so I think that would be the core message. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And using then strategies I find in my clinic setting, working with parents on tools for how to manage the discomfort that comes with that sometimes within themselves of how to stay with something, how to stay in an interaction, how to stick with it long enough to get to the repair when you’re feeling really uncomfortable, right? So whether that’s some mindfulness strategy, staying focused on the present moment and not letting our mind go 18 years into the future of, “Oh my gosh, my kid’s having a temper tantrum now because I told him he couldn’t have a cookie, and this is going to be the rest of his life, and what am I going to do when he’s 18 and he’s too big and I can’t pick him up and put him in his room?” Like staying in the moment, breathing through it — parents needing some tools for how do I support myself in stucking with those mismatches so that we can get to the repair?

Dr. Claudia Gold:

Yeah, so I think the idea is staying in the moment and so yes, I think that first of all, that’s going to happen. What you just described is going to happen frequently, that you lose this ability to be mindful and present. That in and of itself is a mismatch. So it’s okay, as long as you come back and say, “Wow, I didn’t handle that well. I got so freaked out when you were doing that and I used that word”, with your child, but you know — “That really, really upset me and now we’re at a later moment and I am going to just try to reconnect with you.” So could our kids push our buttons? I mean that’s just what their job is, really. So that’s going to happen, but I think you rightfully point out that it’s sort of our own self-care and our own ability to kind bring ourselves into the moment so we don’t catastrophize that these tantrums mean that this is going to be a child who is going to be damaged for life. 

So we need some, as you said, coping skills to be able to bring ourselves into the present moment. And what really matters is what’s going on right now. I use that in my clinical work, where I’m often in a situation that feels very messy and complicated and I really don’t know what to do, is to say, “Okay, I’m just going to do what I’m doing right now. I’m not going to try to extrapolate this out into the future.” If me with a client or a parent with a child can have some kind of moment where we find each other in this mess, that’s all that matters. And then we string those moments together, that I think parents need whatever their own technique, whether it’s walking or mindfulness, whatever kind of techniques they use to calm themselves and being able to be more present in the present moment. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah and I like what you said about coming back after the fact, the repair doesn’t necessarily have to happen right in the moment. Sometimes, as adults, we only become aware of the breakdown in what actually happened for them and for us with some time, but to know that we can, after the fact, go to our children. I find that now as the mom of four teenagers and young adults, going after the fact and saying “Man, that didn’t feel good to me, I’ve reflected on that now and I didn’t handle that the way I wanted to.” And that’s a higher level repair from the standpoint of I am now engaging with people who can think and communicate at a higher level, as opposed to with the baby, but that same idea of the repair can happen sometimes right there in the moment and sometimes after it, but this idea of circling back and saying “Oh, we’ve come through the mess now, and we’re moving forward,” right?

Dr. Claudia Gold:

Right, and it also makes me think of a vignette in the book, which is also something that happens a lot in life, that we sort of make meaning of a situation in a reactive kind of way in our relationships, there’s the example which happens in people’s lives all the time that their partner looks at the mail while they’re telling the story of something that was upsetting to them, and that can lead to an explosive moment, and then we need to reconnect with our own body. Sometimes just to go for a walk or listen to music or something that allows us to get out of that kind of problematic meaning. So we then make a different meaning of what happened because we misunderstand each other. 

We are all separate people with our own sense of self, and so the fact that we would misunderstand each other and not particularly appreciate each others’ intentions in every moment, like in that situation where the intention of the partner is not “I don’t care about your story”, the intention of the partner is just that, “Oh, I wonder if this is that cheque I was waiting for.” But they misunderstand each other and in whatever way they need to — it can happen in a million different ways. They need to reconnect in terms of what the actual intention was. And then from there, they move on to a new moment of misunderstanding to understanding, and that’s just kind of — you used the lovely term “Roll with it”. That if we can roll with it a little bit then we can grow, whereas if we feel that that’s a sign of disaster and it’s a terrible indication that some terribly unhealthy thing in our relationship and we become anxious, then that’s where we get into trouble. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

So good. As we wrap up, I want to circle back to this idea or this term that you used, a ‘good enough mother’, or I’m going to insert ‘good enough parent’ there, because I think so much of the distress that we bring on ourselves in parenting our children is out of this idea that we need to be perfect in our parenting or that that is something to strive for. And what I love about what you’re saying is not only do we need to let go of that because it’s not healthy for us, but it’s actually essential that we not strive for perfection. It’s not only unattainable, but it’s essential that that doesn’t happen that where we really need to aim is to be good enough, which means we are able to navigate the inevitable breakdowns, right? 

Dr. Claudia Gold:

Exactly. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I love that. So for people to aim for ‘good enough’ and that that’s not good, that’s actually great from the standpoint of parenting our kids. Good enough is where we want to be and I hope that that speaks to our listeners today as something that they can hold onto. So many more things we could talk about with this, but I know we need to wrap up. I want to make sure that people know where they can get the book, where they can find out more about you, the work you’re doing, you’ve got some really interesting projects, and as I mentioned from the outset, lots of great books — so let’s give out those websites or where people can find more.

Dr. Claudia Gold:

Okay, so the website for the book is www.thepowerofdiscord.com. So that’s where you can see reviews and advanced comments and order the book. But on that website, you can also find a link to my website, which is claudiamgoldmd.com and there, you’ll find out about — actually, this is my fourth book. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yes, I have this one on my shelf that I love as well, “The Silenced Child”. Great book!

Dr. Claudia Gold:

Thank you, I’m so glad to hear that — because I have to tell you, that’s my favorite book. It didn’t quite get the same kind of splash as the other ones. I think maybe it’s a little bit more — I’m not sure why, but I think some of the things can be difficult to hear, but I hope that parents will take a look at it, because it’s all about having empathy for parents and really the importance of listening to parents in order to open us up to be able to listen to our children. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Particularly when kids are having challenges, for our listeners who have children who either have symptoms of or have been diagnosed with things all along the spectrum of neurodevelopmental disorders, mental health issues, behavioral challenges, I think that’s a particularly good reframe in a lot of ways for them, so I love the book and I highly recommend it. 

Dr. Claudia Gold:

Thank you so much. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And the books are available on Amazon too, your previous ones, I believe, right? 

Dr. Claudia Gold:

Anywhere, Indiebooks, Barnes and Noble and all the websites have all the relevant links. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And we’ll put all of those in the show notes so people can easily click and those of you listening, you can access the ones that speak most to you now and definitely check out more of what Dr. Gold is doing. I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. I know you’re very busy with everything you have going on with the book launching and all of that, but really appreciate you taking the time to engage in conversation with me. 

Dr. Claudia Gold:

Great, well, thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And thanks to all of you for listening, we’ll catch you next week for our next episode of The Better Behavior show.