How To Solve Challenging Behavior With Observation, Brain Science, and Compassion

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we are talking about understanding children through the lens of the brain-body connection, specifically how to parent and support behavior challenges in ways that get to the root of why kids are struggling with regulating their behavior in the first place. We understand so much more today than we did even a decade ago about neuroscience, brain development, the foundations of regulation, the role of relationships, and so much more. But what’s been a bit frustrating is in the fields of medicine, psychology, or even mental health more broadly, and education have been slow to incorporate these new understandings into practice with kids. And parents, by and large, are still given pretty outdated information, advice, and even strategies about how to navigate challenges with their kids. So one of the professionals on the forefront of shifting this paradigm is my friend and colleague Dr. Mona Delahooke. Mona was on the show a couple of years ago, it was a very popular episode, we talked about these types of topics, but I’ve asked her back this week to share with us new insights, updates, new strategies, new things she’s thinking about and working with because she has a new book for parents coming out. We are going to get into all of that, but let me tell you a little bit about Mona if you don’t already know who she is.

She’s a licensed clinical psychologist with more than 30 years experience caring for children and families. She’s a senior faculty member of the Profectum Foundation, and a member of the American Psychological Association. She’s the author of Beyond Behavior: Using Brain Science and Compassion to Understand and Solve Children’s Behavioral Challenges, and as a frequent speaker, trainer and consultant to parents, organizations, schools and public agencies. Mona lives and works in the Los Angeles area. She is one of my favorite colleagues and people in this field. She just gets it; you are going to love her. Mona, welcome to the show.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Oh, Nicole, thank you so much. Kindred spirits! I just am so happy to be back.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

So great. And it’s time to update this conversation and put this back in our listeners’ conscious awareness, especially coming off of this entire period of life and the world that we have lived through. When you and I had our first conversation on the show, it was right back even a little bit before all of this started, and wow, has it been a stretch of months in two years here. So I’m excited to put this back in people’s awareness. I’d love to have you just expand a little bit from your bio on your journey of how you came to be doing the kind of work that you are doing today?

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Well, you are right, two years is a long time. But this one, it was really a long time because our world changed so much. And parents were under stress and pressure before, but now we are just, we are just trying to, I think, regulate and recover. So I’m really happy to be back. And so I’ve been a child psychologist for almost 30 years, and I had the privilege of studying early development, of studying infant and toddler mental health. About a decade into my practice, I was seeing adults and teenagers and I was just frankly, getting burned out and feeling like okay, all those tools and techniques that I was taught in graduate school, they are okay, but this is an easy job. So rather than leaving the field and becoming a florist, which is was my second thing I wanted to do

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I forgot that about you!

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

That was my favorite! I would make beautiful flower arrangements! So anyway, I decided to go and look at prevention through the lens of early, early development. What can parents do from pregnancy on to maybe prevent some of the pain and suffering that I saw in teenagers and in adults? And in that journey, I met and became very familiar with a new theory that was just being kind of birthed into the world, the polyvagal theory, which actually looked at the brain and body connection and looked at the autonomic nervous system, which is basically one of our main nervous systems that is automatic. It keeps all our systems going and we don’t think about it, but it really launches our sensations, our feelings, our emotions, our behaviors. So once I had that lens on, I looked at child development, resilience, behaviors in a new way, and I’ve never looked back. So now I’m kind of bringing it from — I talked a lot before about the difficulties I saw in our educational system where children were being blamed for behaviors that were automatic and protective. Behaviors coming from their nervous system and not intentional misbehaviors defiant, willful behaviors. And now I’m looking at just the general area of resilience: How do we raise our children so that they can be flexible through change? Which is kind of the definition of resilience. And if we have learned anything over the last couple of years is that it helps humans when we are flexible when we can shift and sway with the winds of survival.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And I think it has spotlighted for us as adults how much work we may need in that area too. It’s easy to put the blame on kids, “You are the problem, you are dysregulated, you need to learn to be more flexible and resilient.” And actually, what the last two years has shown us is that across the board as an adult population, we are not too fabulous at doing that a lot of the time either, and perhaps some of this in terms of our desires and our goals for change in our kids needs to actually start with us doing some self-analysis around that.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

I just love that. It’s so true. And with no blame or shame to ourselves, we can all use more flexibility and self-compassion, and an understanding, kind of unawareness, a deeper awareness, I should say, of our state, because our physiological state, our body’s state — and the body and brain are connected, of course, so we can’t really separate them, really is our main tool for parenting. It’s our main tool. So if we are out of connection with our bodies, if we are out of connection with our brains, then our tool is less effective, I should say. It’s a little bit more dicey. And it’s also a Suniya Luthar is an amazing parenting researcher, and she says, “Who mothers the mommies?”, and the answer is usually “nobody”, right? Nobody. No one’s mothering us, right? We are soldiering on, and a lot of us are really needing more support.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I love how you just put that around that understanding this brain-body connection and understanding the body regulation piece is the best tool that we have as parents. You know that I 100% agree with that, and yet, you and I are the exception in terms of understanding that and saying that to parents, right? Like, actually, this is the best tool, because still what’s happening out there in the world, whether it’s pop culture, whether it’s social media, whether it’s in a psychologist’s office, whether it’s in a school education program, wherever it is, parents are still, by and large, being told that the best tools they have are things like timeouts, sticker charts, behavioral programs, suspensions, detentions in school. Parents are being told these are your tools. And you are saying, actually, the most important foundational tool that we have is understanding this neuroscience, understanding body regulation. I just would love to have you comment on that, because it’s a real shift from what most parents are being told.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

It really is a real shift, and the idea of behaviors, as our target is still the status quo. We focus on behaviors as the most important thing. And I’m thinking that the paradigm shift is moving away from behavior management, and towards understanding and supporting nervous systems, which is the whole thing, and you beautifully talk about this and all your work is around this whole idea that we also have a body. So let me just say that it’s confusing for parents because you will likely get information from your pediatrician, from your school, from educators and well-intentioned people around us, relatives, what have you, because our culture is focused so much on behavior management, our culture is focused on labeling when children are misbehaved as either they’re not polite, or maybe even worse, they may have a psychiatric disorder. So first of all, no blame, no shame for parents, and everyone around you wants what’s best. But paradigm shifts, this translation from neuroscience into our common usage, into the practice of education and mental health takes a long time, and we are really in the early phases of that understanding. So yeah we are really not the norm for the culture in our field. And I should also say that it’s the behavior management and technologies corporations are billion dollar businesses. They are worldwide businesses that are very powerful and make a lot of money. I’m only saying that because they have more coverage, and parents will be more apt to be sent to a behavioral management specialist than they would to somebody who’s more of a developmental specialist. And that’s why, one of the reasons I’m excited about this new book is it gives parents the stuff to ask for or to look for beyond just looking at your child’s behavior.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. And that’s such an important point. Because often, whether it’s around this issue of what is the best type of treatment or intervention for a child who’s having challenges? Or it’s around “What do I do for my high blood pressure?” or whatever, people often make the assumption that what’s being recommended, particularly if it’s being recommended by a high-level professional like a clinical psychologist, like a physician, that that recommendation is being made because that is definitively the right, or the research-based, or the best thing to do. And unfortunately, as you are really beautifully pointing out here, there may be a lot more behind why that thing is being recommended than it being the best or the research base, or the most appropriate approach for your child. And there’s this whole medical industrial complex around this, particularly when we get into things like Applied Behavioral Analysis, ABA, that has become an industry. You and I have watched that industry grow to astronomical proportions, not having anything to do with better research behind it or better practice, but simply because it’s very, very lucrative. And parents are led to believe that this is being recommended because it truly is based on the most current science and the best thing for their child. And so I’m glad you raised this, because I think it’s something a lot of parents aren’t aware of.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Yeah. And I raise it not because I want to stress parents out if they don’t have a lot of options in their area, but just to have the information, because you are absolutely right. The research that is cited as evidence behind these practices is actually over 25 to 30 years old. So like I said, the whole idea of what evidence is and how choices are made in that big business, it’s a little bit messy. And yeah, there are choices. And I think the field for change is being driven by, number one, neurodivergent adults who went through these systems, who had a behavioral analysis done to them or with them, and who are speaking out about what it was like. They are my main guides, number one, my patients now that are our teenagers and young adults who talk to me about it, they are my witnesses. So people can find those websites, including the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. People can get information. But the other piece is that parents are driving change, and I love that. I love that parents are saying, “You know what? I’m hearing that different things are more important.” And then looking at the neuroscience that really backs this idea. The neuroscience around resilience is unequivocal, that relationships of safety and nurturance for our nervous systems is how we build resilience. So that’s the cool part, is that we do have all that neuroscience research that is not ambivalent, it’s all pointing towards security in relationships.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Absolutely. And I want to go one more step with this and then shift topics, but where I want to connect this to, is that this work that you are talking about, this body of research, these tools and strategies, these understandings that you are talking about are for every child, not just “neurotypical” kids, because I think there is a big misunderstanding around the idea of “Oh, this type of parenting and  brain, body and relationships, that’s great for typically-developing kids, but for kids with diagnoses of Autism Spectrum Disorder or ADHD or traumatic brain injury or  bipolar or whatever it might be, well, no, they require something different. These sort of more developmental relationship focused interventions, that’s not for them.” And I want to address that right now to frame the rest of the conversation for any parent who’s listening, who’s going, “Okay, this is really nice, but I have an autistic child with severe issues. And so this doesn’t apply to me.” Can you just speak to that for a moment?

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

I am so glad you brought that up. And you really named it right there. The same processes, human processes that work for children who we may call neurotypical are good for all humans. Co-regulation of emotional states is good, and is necessary for all humans. And I might go so far to say that our neurodivergent children and those who have gotten labels such as, like you said, different types of psychiatric labels or conduct disorders or oppositional defiant disorders, they need this application of what’s good for typical kids in spades because they don’t get it. Even more. They are more vulnerable, their nervous systems are more vulnerable due to the different ways their information is processed, only because our world doesn’t understand neurodivergence as well as it should. So thank you for bringing that up. These are points that are good for humans, and adults as well as children, they are not just for what we would consider in “neurotypical” children.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Beautiful. So I want to shift now into some of the nitty gritty of this. Let’s circle back to this idea of focusing on behavior. So what we see is the behavior, my kid is melting down and tantruming, my child is running and hiding under the bed when it’s time to go to school, my child is screaming or resisting those behaviors versus what we really need to understand about what’s going on there. So set the stage for us with that about how you think about what we see versus what’s actually happening.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Right? So the analogy of behaviors as the tip of the iceberg is one visual we can think about. So when we see a behavior, the first thing that we should ask in my opinion, isn’t how do we get rid of it, but what is this telling us about the child? What valuable information is this telling us about what the child is going through internally and externally, how they are taking in the environment? So behaviors provide such rich information, and we tend to be — I say we because I’m in the same boat, those behaviors where a child is throwing a remote or melting down because you are asking them to just finish their homework. It’s difficult. It’s not easy. It’s difficult to be equanimous about those behaviors and think, “Oh, this is valuable information” instead of just “No, you may not ever throw the remote.” But here’s the point about that, is that we need to distinguish a purposeful, willful, intentional misbehavior from a stress response. And that is where we have looked under the waterline, underneath the tip of the iceberg to see, “Oh, is this a nervous system in distress?” And sure enough, for most of those behaviors that are highly agitated, or conversely, extremely checked out, there is this physiological distress or this nervous system automatic reaction that happens, that we know through our autonomic nervous system, that is propelling, that is that is the foundation of these behaviors. And that tells us that we don’t go towards discipline for the stress behaviors, we go towards finding out how to use our relationship to co-regulate essentially, to help share our calmness with the child, because that’s how we build resilience essentially, day by day.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And so much of traditionally how we have managed those things in professional realms, therapy, schools, and how we have helped parents to do that has been focused on the external behavior. And the assumption there is really, you could stop doing this if you wanted to. Right? That old model assumes that the child 100% has the capacity in that moment to not be melting down or mouthing off or whatever. And they are choosing not to. And so we need to have rewards and punishments so that they more often make the choice to control that. And what you are talking about here is a totally different way of seeing that which is actually that kids in many of these situations are not making an intentional choice. This is not a cognitive process. And I think that that’s a really new idea for a lot of people to understand.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Yeah. And it was a new idea when I first learned it. As a therapist, it’s deceptive. Even a toddler, they can walk, they can talk, they can tell you what they want to eat. I mean, it’s very deceptive, because they seem to be in control of what they do. But there we fall into something called the expectation gap, it’s that we expect more self-control and self-regulation from children than they are actually able to do, because while it looks like “Look, just try harder. You are not trying hard enough.” That’s why we use the sticker charts or the incentives or the taking things away. If it’s not mediated, and intentional on the part of the child, no amount of sticker charts or try harder pep talks, as well intentioned as they are, is going to help. And I think that is, like you said, kind of new information for a lot of people, including teachers, and our well-meaning supporters, because the idea of the difference between a top down and a bottom-up behavior, that is a behavior that is mediated by the child thinking like sneaking into your parents’ bedroom and taking an iPad, testing out your limits, that is a top-down behavior, and a tantrum or a child screaming or biting or kicking. Those are body or bottom-up behaviors. And the way we deal with them really should be quite different.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, absolutely. That idea of top down, bottom up is so, so helpful. And I’m going to ask a question here that I think probably has entered into the minds of many listeners. And I know this comes up in every school consultation I do, most parent consultations I do, and the question is: So how come some of the time, this kid seems to be able to manage it, and then other times not?” Because we take that message, and we will see they can control it and they are choosing not to. Speak into that.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Thank you for naming that. And it’s a really good question. It’s like, “I’ve seen them do it. I know they can do it. They did it yesterday”, right? And so I get that. We tend to think — again, there’s that expectation gap, we tend to think that if a child can do it some of the time, they should be able to do it all of the time. But here’s why that’s not necessarily true. Our thresholds for what we call self-regulation are very dynamic. They shift, our bodies’ states shift throughout the day. And one of the useful concepts that I talked about in brain-body parenting is that idea of the body budget, of allostasis, that Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett has introduced in her lab and her work about how emotions are made. And it’s related to the fact that our body actually runs a budget. Our brain is determining what we need 24/7, where to put the energy, where to put the glucose, how much oxygen, salt, water, all of those things. There’s a body budget that’s always going on. And our body budgets can get depleted and need deposits when they are in certain states. So you might have a child who one hour can accomplish a task, and then the next hour will be melting down, thoroughly upset. Their body budget is completely almost into a withdrawal, and they can’t do it. It’s not that they won’t. But physiologically, from the nervous system perspective, they are depleted enough so that they are not able to accomplish a task. So this is looking under the hood, this is looking at a very — I know, it sounds a little complicated, but that’s why our thresholds shift. So even for adults, something you might find easy one hour or one day, you may find impossible the next. But it’s a great question. It’s deceiving. It seems like “Come on! I’ve seen you do it, you can do it.” We are cheerleaders, and I get that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And also, that way of thinking feeds into why I think so many things like sticker charts and those things perpetuate, because it’s like, “Well look, it works, some of the time he’ll work for the reward and get the stickers”, but how you are explaining it makes so much sense. And I think we really can relate to that as adults. I absolutely have the capacity to remain calm and regulated when my teenage daughter is mouthing off, having an issue, whatever. I completely have the capacity to do that. And depending on the day I’ve had, and the time of day — if I’ve had a super stressful day, lots of things not going right in my world, and I walk into the kitchen after work, and she starts in, I may or may not exhibit that ability that I have to stay calm and regulated. And so I think when we really look at it, of course, we inherently understand this idea of body budget and of context making a big difference. At the start of the day, maybe we do notice that we are more patient and more regulated and whatever in responding to our kids. And oh my goodness, by the time it’s bedtime, we are running around like our head’s on fire going “Everybody just be quiet and get in bed”, right? And over the course of the day, we really can relate to this, and it’s not any different for our kids.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

It’s so true. And we tend to be really self-judgmental of ourselves like “Oh, I don’t know why I was so short with my kids, why did I yell at them?” Many, many, many parents are just so self-judging, we judge ourselves.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Especially moms.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Especially moms. You know the studies on that. We judge ourselves so much. But this will give us a more compassionate approach, and that is, yeah, we have body budgets too. And our levels of depletion are going to show up in our own behaviors and emotions. And we can be compassionate about that, and also remember how important it is to take care of ourselves.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, and that self-care piece, then, which I know, is sort of a tricky thing to talk about now, right? Because it’s sort of become this cliche, But really, this does become foundationally important in terms of supporting our kids and helping them develop regulation. We have to be taking care of ourselves.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

It is such a used term that brings massages and getting your nails done to mind, but it’s so profoundly more, like our life support system, it’s more like when we have a sense that we are not just a body that’s constantly giving and doesn’t have a stable base, a stable foundation, it really handicaps our ability to be present. And in addition to that, over time, it can create our own internal stress. So that could show up later on in high blood pressure or other inflammatory markers in adults. So it really does impact our overall well-being, especially over time.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I think it’s hard for so many parents, especially moms, because we think of that as not prioritizing our kids. We are prioritizing ourselves, not our child. But as I’m listening to you talking, I’m thinking about this idea of body budget, actually, our ability to care for ourselves and keep ourselves regulated is a part of our child navigating their body budget, right? Because when we are dysregulated and not taking care of ourselves, that is depleting their budget, right?

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Absolutely. Whether we like it or not, we are connected. Nervous systems communicate with each other. It happens. And we don’t have to view that as something scary, but rather, we can view it as really — if it feels like selfishness to you, and I know that oftentimes, when I had some extra free time, because I was working mom, I just wanted to spend it with my kids. I didn’t want to be by myself. But this idea that self-care is somehow selfish, we can also think about it as that our nervous system is the best parenting tool we have. And the better care we take of our own nervous system, the better our physical and mental health will be, and will provide what we call co-regulation, that back and forth goodness that helps develop our children’s resilience over time.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. Let’s get a little practical. Let’s get tangible here. One of the things that you talk about is understanding, knowing about a child’s platform. You have a color system that you help people think about — because the next question is sort of “Okay, I understand this. I get that, we need this. I get that nervous system regulation is important. This top down, this bottom up, I get that. But how do I know? What are the signs? How do I really understand what’s going on for my kids?” So let’s drill down into some of the nitty gritty of that.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Yeah, so the nitty gritty of that is that there are three things we want to think about in terms of our kids. Number one, is the state of what we call their platform, their body budget, their body. The other one is their developmental abilities. So their social emotional development. And then the third is their individual differences, because each child is different. So those things are not rocket science. They are ways to figure out where your child is in each of those areas. But the one you asked about, the “Where’s their platform? What is that? How can we gauge it?” Pretty easy. I translated the polyvagal theory of the autonomic nervous system into three colors. So we don’t have to think about the scientific names. But basically, there are three colors to think about: In the green, our child or ourselves are calm. We are steady, we are alert, we are able to play, to learn new things. In the green pathway, parents are kind of — this is where the sweet spot is in some ways. So when we are green, that’s a green light, you can ask your child to stretch, to learn new things, etc. It’s a good state to be in. We want our kids to be there about 70% of the time, right? It’s where the learning happens. Importantly, it’s not any better than the other colors, red and blue.

Red is when the body’s compelled to move, and under certain situations, we go into something called the fight or flight response. And in the red, a person, an adult, or a child, is going to be moving their body, their mouth. You will see the agitated behaviors here, you may see yelling or screaming or saying things that you don’t really mean, running away, kicking, hitting, spitting, biting, some of those. As they get more and more agitated, the child’s nervous system is more and more vulnerable. So you look at the color. If the child’s out of control, that’s kind of a red light just to stop and try to help calm the child’s nervous system, of course, make sure everyone’s safe, but then we go to calming rather than disciplining. And that goes back to what is the misbehavior? If you determine that the child is in the red pathway of the nervous system, you are not going to say “I’m docking you, you get your star in your behavior chart move down”, because that’s going to make the nervous system feel worse and get more agitated. So look for the red. Look at those characteristics on your child’s body, on their face, their eyes, their posture. Are they clinching? Are they gripping? And use that as a marker for sharing calmness.

And then the third path, the third color to think about is blue, and that’s when people, humans are really checked out, disconnected. This happens when your nervous system is under stress. It’s either a very, very extreme stress or under stress for a long period of time where your nervous system starts to conserve energy, and you have less movement, and your kids don’t want to play, they don’t want to talk. They tend to be checking out. And again, we don’t worry about this if it happens—We would expect us to cycle through these every day, but we don’t live there, right? We may get agitated and upset and come back to green. We may feel blue and low energy and disconnected for an hour, but then we move back up. We want to really be concerned if children stay locked in these areas for weeks or months. But these colors can help us determine what to do. How is my child really doing in their body and brain?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I’m curious in talking about the blue: Some kids do just check out. We might use the word “passive” to describe them. Sometimes parents will describe, or teachers or therapists will describe to me “This child is completely prompt-dependent. I have to do everything for them, move them through it.” To me, that’s an example of a kid who really is in that blue, is so checked out and shut down as a self-preservation thing. That’s like “I’m physically here, you can take my hand and make me go through the motions, but I am completely mentally checked out, my nervous system is shut down.” It’s self-preservation. So firstly, I wonder if you agree with that. And second of all, if so, I think that’s really important to look at, because those kids often don’t end up getting what they need. They are seen as “Well, they are being compliant, they are not causing a problem, they are not flipping chairs over, they are not screaming at people.” But actually, though, those are the kids that I tend to worry about the most, really.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Me too, absolutely, those are the kids that don’t grab our attention, right? They don’t have those big behaviors where a lot of adults are thinking about them and trying to help them. So in some ways, the kids that — and let’s distinguish between an hour or a day or moments in the day where you are just feeling down in the dumps, we all get that, but what you are describing, the children that I have observed myself, is when the teacher or the parent is persistently saying “They just don’t seem here. They look out through me, not at me, it takes so much prompting to get them to do the smallest thing”, then for those children, they tend to not be behavior problems, because they may appear to be compliant, but they are actually shut down. So I’m so grateful that those kiddos are on your radar screen as they need to be on more, because they can slip through in the education system because again, the non-compliant children are the ones who get more attention.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. And I think for parents to hear that, yeah, notice those things. Noticing those things and those patterns about your child are every bit as important as noticing the more externalizing behaviors, and what you are talking about here is so relevant to those kids too. And I think parents do get frustrated about that because they are like, this doesn’t seem normal,  this seems like a really big problem. And yet, nobody really knows what to do about it. And so I just think that for those of you who are listening who have a kid like that, to recognize, that is also giving you information about the status of their nervous system and where they are in terms of brain-body.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Valuable information in terms of brain-body. And especially for children who don’t want to play with anybody, and play doesn’t just mean playing with toys, but to be social. Our social engagement system, that green pathway is the natural default. This is where we want humans to be. But if your child doesn’t want to play with their friends, if they are shutting themselves off for long periods of time, again, we don’t freak out about it. You don’t have to worry that you have done something wrong. Just with curiosity, look at that as a valuable sign that this child needs some more social engagement, whatever accommodations they need to start to feel that energy of being human, that energy of being in connection with others because that’s just where most humans do their best.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And to feel safe doing that, which is the key to all of this, right? So as we think about “What’s really the goal here of understanding where our child is, in terms of green, red, blue, really, it’s so that we can better understand how to best support nervous system regulation, which really requires helping them feel safe in their body, with us, in the environment. So I’d love to have you just briefly touch on that. And maybe some of the things that we are well intentioned with, but maybe lead the child to feel unsafe versus something that we can do, that any of us can do to help bring more safety to those situations.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Yeah, and when we are talking about safety, like nervous system safety, it’s really very subjective to the child. It’s not like “Of course you have a safe home and your child goes to a safe school.” We are talking about this subjective sense of safety or coziness. And so we might want to think about what are those things that — I love the word coziness, and this idea of a cozy, warm blanket. Can we be that with our children? What are those things that help your child’s nervous system feel safe? Because that is that zone where the good things happen, those good memories, and those feelings of I am a human who can control my emotions, who can name my states, who can name what I’m feeling. It’s the pinnacle of resilience really, it’s getting to know themselves. So some of the things we can do for that felt sense of safety is follow the child’s lead, see where they go? What is that child’s natural language of safety? Is it sitting in your lap if they are little? Is it taking walks and just marveling at nature? Is it snuggling by the fire? Or is it lying on the sidewalk and looking at cloud formations? Those moments of coziness when your child seems relaxed, calm, alert, and even maybe joyful, those are sure signs of a nervous system that feels safe and connected. And the two characteristics that I think create these memories that people have throughout their lives are: Number one, they are relational, they are usually with another person. And number two, they are respectful of the child’s sensory systems. Your child may not enjoy doing what you like to do. A child may not necessarily enjoy roller skating around the block or riding a bike with you, but they may love baking cookies together or listening to music together. So those moments that you can curate, you can follow the child’s lead, and they are very wonderful. They are totally deposits in the body budget. And if your child is struggling, they may need more deposits. And then you can do the withdrawals, like setting the limits for the chores and the homework and having them do those things that they need to do as part of the family. So it’s a nice balance.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

It’s an awesome way to think about it, when a kid is in the negative with their body bank account, and you keep trying to make withdrawals by getting them to do things, it’s not going to work. So we have to put deposits in, and really what I think about these deposits and what you are talking about with following their lead, it’s really us being willing to get curious about who the child is and what works for them, and get out of our own perspective of what we think should work or what another kid that age would find enjoyable, or what we like and really about tuning into “Let me try to understand more about you”, which is remarkably scary for a lot of parents and professionals to do because we like to have this idea of this is the norm, this is the box, this is what you should be interested in, or this is what should help you feel safe, but we have to get out of that and look at “What is it that is right and good for this kid?”

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

I love that. Yeah. And it is scary. And it’s likely not how we were parented or our parents were parented by their parents. I mean, it’s a new way of looking at really customizing our parenting, and of course, realizing that this is the hardest job in the world, and it’s so remarkable because our children’s nervous systems don’t need us to be perfect. They really don’t. They need us to — if we mess up bad, we can repair, and that’s what again, in the resilience research, it shows that repairing when we know we have kind of done something that was out of our own instincts that may have not been great for the child, is that we can repair. Children grow from that too. So it’s kind of cool that there’s a lot of leeway built into our systems because we are all vulnerable humans. But yeah, it’s pretty nice when we get to start to customize what we are doing and build, and build, and build. But like you said, it’s kind of drilled into our heads that when our children are misbehaving, that we have to continue to give them more limits and more kinds of disciplinary measures so they learn a lesson. And that model doesn’t really fit with brain-body parenting because we are respectful that you can’t pour from an empty cup. And we often ask our children and ourselves to pour from an empty cup.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

It’s a beautiful visual. You and I could talk all day, all week, all month about this. I want to make sure that we tell people about the new book, about where they can get it, because I am super excited. Every single one of you listening, whether you are a parent, you are a family member, you are a professional, whatever your situation or interactions with kids, diagnosed, not diagnosed, whatever, this is a book that everybody should have. And so Mona, tell us about the book and tell people where they can get it.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Oh, thank you so much. Well, it’s called Brain-Body Parenting, and it is available pretty much in a lot of different places. Amazon, of course, but we love Barnes & Noble and independent booksellers. I’m told it’s also available at Target and Walmart. So it’s getting around, and you can find more information on my website monadelahooke.com, and social, Facebook and Instagram: Dr. Mona Delahooke. I’m just so excited to be able to talk to you about it, and thank you for all you are doing to help bring the brain and body together for our parenting.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Thank you so much. This book is just a great resource, and you have a way of distilling things down into frameworks and practical things that people can actually implement, which is a challenge, and you do it so beautifully. So go get a copy of this book. If you don’t already follow Mona on social media, definitely do that. Great, great sources of information there. And Mona, thank you so much for the important work that you are doing, and really for the courage and the tenacity that you have to continue pushing the envelope on this, to continue finding ways to bring this more into the mainstream. I admire you for it. I’m honored to be a colleague and just thank you.

Dr. Mona Delahooke 

Thank you so much, very grateful.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And thanks, as always, to all of you for being here with us and for listening. We will catch you back here next time.