Self-Care Micro Actions for Parents to Avoid Burnout and Boost Resilience

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Hi everybody, welcome to the show, I am Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we’re talking about parents and the very real risk of burnout, especially when you have one or more kids with special needs or challenges and especially in this ongoing pandemic situation that we’re all in. Raising kids who struggle can leave us feeling wiped out and that was even before coronavirus entered our lives. We tend to put our self-care at the bottom of the priority list thinking, “Well, I’ll get to it at some point, I don’t really have time for it.” But it catches up with us and the stress increases. It’s important for us to realize that parent wellbeing matters because when we are healthy in our mind, in our body, in our spirit, we can give kids the compassion and connection they need to strive. So I’ve invited Kendra Wilde on the show today for a conversation about the realities of parental burnout and how we can make tiny tweaks in our everyday mindset and habits to transform our parenting experiences. Let me tell you a little bit about Kendra. 

She’s the founder of Wild Peace for parents, a resource to bolster parent resilience. She knows that when kids struggle, parents do too. After burning out from chronic stress, she dedicated herself to discovering simple strategies to manage stress and restore wellbeing in the midst of it all. Now she’s on a mission to lift other parents in workshops, digital art and writing. Kendra inspires parents to take care of themselves so their children can thrive too. She’s a BA in Economics from Colorado College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She lives in the Boston Area with her husband and has 3 almost-grown sons. Kendra, welcome to the show!

Kendra Wilde:

Thank you so much for having me!

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

I can not think of a better time to be having this conversation. I mean I think as parents, we’ve said that every year that goes by, there’s more stress, there are more things going on. But then 2020 comes around and it just sort of takes that to a whole new level and I’m hearing parents across the board going, “Help. This is really a lot now.” So I think this conversation about parent wellbeing and the fact that that’s a necessity, it couldn’t come at a better time. So let’s start out with your journey with this, how you got interested in this topic. What led you to sort of start this mission and be spending your time talking about stress and preventing burnout?

Kendra Wilde: 

Well, I have some serious lived experience. I have three boys. As you said, they’re in their late teens and early twenties now. And they are, knock on wood, in pretty good shape. But growing up, we had so many struggles, emotional and behavioral issues and sensory stuff and meltdowns. I was always on high alert, like I was always waiting for that call from school to say, “Can you come on down here, we can’t handle this.” I think I was just wondering how we would ever survive. And I’m sure now with the pandemic, so many parents can relate to that feeling. I pretty much gave up my career because one of us needed to be home. And it felt like I was just doing everything I could to hold things together and do all of the advocacy and all of that. It was really exhausting and isolating. And about 10 years ago, I ran into all these scary health symptoms that seemed unrelated. I won’t go into it all, but digestive issues, dizziness, extreme back pain and so I went around to the doctors, and my primary care physician said I was clinically passing. I was like, “What? I know there’s something really wrong.” Finally, I was fortunate enough to find a functional medicine doctor who said, “Guess what? You have almost no more cortisol.”, which is this really important stress hormone. So for me, that was a really serious wake-up call that I had to make a change and I couldn’t change my circumstances. I could only change the way I related to the situation and so I started researching and experimenting, trying to figure out: How can you restore your energy and resilience in the midst of it all. So I started collecting all these tools and things that are mostly science-based, and experimenting. Along the way I just kind of realized that this is so important and other parents are suffering, so it’s kind of my new calling. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

And it’s so needed. As you were telling the story of your experience, I just can hear this collective “Yes!” and nodding from so many people in our listening audience, because I think that in one way or another that really captures what so many parents, particularly mothers, but parents in general, in those circumstances are living with on a daily basis. You know, when you described that sense of always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even when things were good, having an ear out and an eye out for there being something around the next corner and how exhausting and depleting that is over time. 

Kendra Wilde: 

Yeah, and I just realized that the more wiped out you are, then you try harder with diminishing results. So you get more reactive, then you feel worse, then you feel guilty, then you try harder, and it’s like this downward spiral. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That’s such a great way to describe it. And as parents, we do tend to push and push and try to push through those things. I’m guessing your body probably tried to send you some early warning signs, as our bodies do and we go “Nope, don’t have time for that! Got to focus on the kids, got to keep everything together!” And at some point our bodies just go, “Hello, this is not happening for us anymore. We literally can’t do this.”

Kendra Wilde: 

Yeah. One of the things that validated things for me, and I realized I wasn’t the only one, as I started doing research on some of the biomarkers of parents who endure this kinds of stress, mostly the look at moms of children with developmental differences and behavioral challenges, and we have much higher incidents of anxiety, depression, burnout, illness. So it’s a real thing that we need to look out for. I think you hear that you should put your oxygen mask on, and you think, “Yeah, right. I can hold my breath for a minute and help my kid.” But the thing is you can’t live your life holding your breath. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

It’s so true and one hour becomes a day, becomes a week, becomes a month, becomes a year, becomes 10 years, and suddenly you go, “Wow, I have not taken care of myself.” 

Kendra Wilde: 

There is a researcher in Belgium. She came out of Stanford and I can’t pronounce her last name, it’s Moïra Mikolajczak, I think, and she just started studying parental burnout last year, and her research came out and showed that it’s a real thing and it’s a little bit different from work burnout and it has sort of 3 main attributes. One is just overwhelming exhaustion. Another is that you feel emotionally distant from your kids, and you just feel ineffective as a parent. If you’re thinking that you don’t feel like yourself, that’s a real red flag to make a change. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

That takes some real willingness to be honest with ourselves, right? Because as parents, the last thing we want to acknowledge is that we’re feeling distanced from our kids and just feeling like “Ugh” about the whole thing because there is guilt and shame that goes along with that. So it takes courage to sit back and go, “You know. That really is what’s going on with me.” And to realize that that’s normal and important to be aware of, not something to avoid or have shame about. 

Kendra Wilde:

Yeah, there are a lot of — I call them “script feelings” that parents have and it is really important to say, “That’s okay, I feel those things and what can I do about it?” 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, the “What can I do about it?” is key, because when a parent is burned out and progressively struggling more and more with functioning, that obviously is not helpful to our kids. So often there is this idea of “I need to sacrifice myself for the good of my kids.” But as you noted, there are real diminishing returns from that. And while your intent may be good, over time we end up doing nothing good for our kids when we let ourselves fall by the wayside. 

Kendra Wilde: 

I just think that it’s just so important to make a shift. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that suddenly you need to go on a weekend retreat or get a massage or do some major indulgent thing. It’s really just what little things can you do to nourish yourself, your mind, your body, your spirit? And some of those are actual habits and things you can do, and some of them might take a little bit of time, but you can kind of weave them into your day. Some of those are really more mindset shifts in becoming more aware of what you’re thinking and feeling, so that you can try to, again, make a mindset shift. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah. The way that we think about things and perceive things makes a big difference in how we’re able to manage them. You know, you talked a minute ago, you said it doesn’t have to be going on a spa weekend. I think parents have all kinds of ideas built up in their mind about what it means to have self-care and those kinds of things. I’d like you to touch on what self-care really is. It’s not going away for a week without your kids, although that may be an awesome form of self-care that none of us can participate in, particularly right now because of the situation we’re in. But what are we really talking about with self-care and what are some of the big barriers that you hear come up or that you see or that the research shows come up around self-care for parents and caregivers?

Kendra Wilde:

Again, self-care doesn’t necessarily mean taking a long indulgent bath for an hour with your book and not interacting with your kids, it’s just finding anything that fills you. And I really think that tiny, tiny, I call them micro-actions, make a difference. Because if you think about it, an airplane changing its vector by 1 degree, it’s going to end up in a very different place. I know you just put a quote up from Ruth Bader Ginsburg today on your Instagram, that she said something to the effect of, “Small steps can lead to enduring change.” And that’s really true for your body and your emotional health too.

A lot of parents say they feel guilty. That’s the most common barrier. They also feel like self-care seems too big or maybe they have super high expectations that it should be something, again, like something they should be doing. We all know, you’re supposed to exercise and you’re supposed to eat right and you’re supposed to do all these things, and I think we feel overwhelmed, and therefore we decide, “Oh well, I just can’t do any of it.” So I, again, just like to say, think of sprinkling tiny, little restorative practices into your regular day, all day long, right in parallel with living with your kids.  

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

Yeah, which is a much more realistic way of approaching it, right? because while some of the big things we might think about are great to do once in a while, we really need these little restorative practices on a moment-to-moment day-to-day basis. So I love that idea of sprinkling those in and sort of laying the foundations throughout the day for that. So you’ve identified the guilt and also the overwhelm. And I think that’s so true for anything when we feel like it’s going to be one more thing to manage, one more thing on our plate, one more thing that’s going to cause us to feel like we’re not doing enough. We just shut down to that, right? It’s like, “No, not going to do that.”

Kendra Wilde: 

Yeah. So I think the first step is to respect the stress. The respect that you are in it and it’s really important to take moments during the day to check in with yourself and I’ll give you an example of just sneaking little micro actions into the day. All of us probably either brew coffee or tea or have some ritual in the morning. Let’s say you’re in the kitchen, you’re with your kids and you’re starting to brew your coffee. Why not also drink a glass of lemon water and do a plank for 60 seconds on the floor? That may not be your thing, but the example is just to show that it might take you two minutes to do that. You’re already brewing your coffee, you’re already standing in the kitchen with your kids. They might roll their eyes at you, but after you drink the water you’re kind of rehydrated for the day, and doing a plank, you kind of activate your core so that you feel like, “Okay, I’m empowered to face the day.” That’s an example of a little thing you can do that actually makes a difference. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens: 

And I love that idea of building it into things you’re already doing and anchoring it to routines we already have. We know the research shows that when we’re trying to build new habits, and I think that this is a habit, right? These little micro-steps of taking care of yourself, it’s building a new habit, and we know that in order to build new habits, we anchor them to things we already have routines for or are doing, we’re more effective with that, right? 

Kendra Wilde:

Yeah, totally, and also there has been some research into celebrating that you did something for yourself. I did a parent workshop where the mom said, “And I say ‘Yay, me!’” I loved it. That was so cute because it’s actually a science-based thing to feel a reward, give yourself a reward. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, we had BJ Fogg on the podcast several months ago, and that’s his area of research, you’re talking about tiny habits, and those of you listening, if you missed that episode, go back and catch because it dovetails really nicely with what Kendra and I are talking about right now, how you establish these tiny little moments of change with that celebration. You know, so often, we spend so much of our day in a negative, or in the “Ugh” of things, and to stop and celebrate? I love that! Yay me!

Kendra Wilde:

Yeah! When do you do that? You don’t, really, but it’s worth a try. It makes a difference.  

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

That’s right. So let’s talk about you. You gave a great example there of a little sort of physically health-supportive routine that you can build into the two minutes when you’re making your coffee or whatever in the morning. Drink something that is nourishing and supportive of your physical health and do some kind of physical activity. I’d love to have you share some of your favorite tips. What are some of the micro-actions or things that you feel people can really start incorporating pretty quickly? 

Kendra Wilde:

Well, I have to talk about deep breathing first, because even though we all know that we need to breathe, I think a lot of us think we need to deep breathe, and then we hyperventilate. Shoulders up, you’re only really getting oxygen into your upper lungs. So the first thing, of course, is to breathe. Just a few little tricks: One is to just fill your entire belly like a balloon so that you’re really getting the air down. That’s how you reverse the stress response and try to exhale twice as long as you inhale. So if you inhale for, let’s say, for a count of 4 and you exhale for a count of 8 — and I’d like to say something too, that that kind of makes it have more power. So if you think as you’re breathing in, “I am…” and then exhale, “…letting go.” I am letting go.

And maybe you do that from a count of 10, down to 1. 10 times. Again, you can do that with your kid, your kid can be going off the rails, you can still be doing that. Because back to the guilt thing about taking care of yourself and feeling guilty, what I think a lot of us overlook is that we need to regulate ourselves for our kids to co-regulate with us. So we need to learn how to find that calm and that stability to help them feel safe, and they will completely reflect or mirror whatever state we’re in. It’s so important then to become mindful, which is what I’m about to talk about. 

I think it’s just to become more mindful of you and where you are so that you can be that calm. I think it’s really important to do — mindfulness has been huge for me, studying mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based emotional balance. So another quick thing to do again is just a quick, mindful check in with yourself. So when you notice that things feel stressful or even if they’re not stressful, you can practice. Just take a big breath and drop your shoulders and just try to notice what’s happening inside of you. What are your feelings, what are your thoughts, what’s going on with your body? And after you have a moment to kind of observe what’s happening inside of you, consider what you need in the moment.

Maybe you need to drink water, maybe you need to go take a timeout in the closet. Maybe you need to go to the bathroom, you’ve been holding it in. Or maybe you just need to go outside and look up at the sky. But paying attention to your own basic needs, you know that little acronym HALT? Are you hungry? Are you angry? Are you lonely? Are you tired? Do that little check-in to yourself too, and I think if you do a little micro break like that, it can give you some space. And then there was another mindfulness-based power tool, I would say, called STOP. It’s kind of related to doing your own internal check-in. But it’s really like let’s say some really hard things are happening and the kids are pressing your buttons and everything is swirling and you just feel like you’re about to lose it and react in a really unproductive way.

The most important thing is recognizing that you’re getting to that point and being able to stop. So the tool is called STOP, and it’s just: Stop, which means pause, and take a breath, T, and O is observe what’s going on, what are you thinking and feeling? Also observe what’s going on with your child. Maybe get curious about why they’re having this struggle. And then observation in mindfulness is about taking a step back and not getting attached or judging but really just watching them and trying to understand what’s going on. When you can get that little bit of space, then you can P, proceed. Proceed with a more productive choice about how to respond to them. Maybe it’s that you need to go walk away for a minute or maybe it’s just that you had that moment to gain your upstairs brain again so that you can respond with something that’s more empathetic. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Those tools are so helpful, not just for the parents in that situation, but as you mentioned, for the child as well. I find that one of the reasons that parents really struggle with pausing and getting in touch with what’s going on with themselves, or allowing themselves to stand back and take care of themselves or observe what’s going on before acting is there is this compelling feeling that rises up in us when there’s a problem or something happening with our kid that we need to immediately do something about that or make it stop, right? There’s a sense of “Make that stop! I have to do something about it right now!” And that really then, it feels counterintuitive to go “Okay, wait a second, I really need to step back and pause.” And for people to — I think it’s hard for parents to learn to lean in and trust that you can still navigate that situation, you can still raise kids who learn how to behave well and all of those things, even if you’re not jumping on problems the second they come up. 

Kendra Wilde:

It’s so interesting because it’s kind of indicative of this whole habit that we get into, which is trying to fix. Because you really feel like if you’re resourceful and you’re a good parent, then you should be able to fix everything. I heard this speaker one time say, “We’re not trying to prepare the path for our children. We’re trying to prepare our children for the path.” And there are times where you need to let them struggle a little bit and it’s painful to watch. But you gain a lot of information by doing that, because you’re watching. I mean as long as they’re safe, you’re watching what they’re having a hard time with and you’re trying to understand the why instead of just jumping in all the time and sort of teaching them that you’re going to just keep clearing a path for them. 

I think it kind of leads into self compassion, which is another micro-action because when things are going sideways, it’s really easy in your mind to think, “Oh my gosh, this is totally beyond me. What am I going to do!” We are going off the rails, and the next thing you know, this kid is going to never be able to fill in the blanks. You start thinking ahead and projecting all the problems you could run into. You start thinking “I am not up to this task, and maybe I’ve totally screwed them up and they’ll be in therapy for the rest of their lives.” Who knows what you’re thinking.

So I think what’s hard is in our culture, we think that if you’re hard on yourself, you’ll somehow buck up and figure out an answer and get stronger. I’m always so intrigued to realize that everything you think and do has a chemical reaction. So if you’re thinking, “I am a terrible parent”, you’re setting off a stress response. You’re using up all that precious cortisol and adrenaline that you need for other big things. So if you actually turn things around — and there’s all this research by Kristin Neff and other people on self-compassion. If you can turn things around and be kinder to yourself, it actually helps you release oxytocin, which makes you so much better able to rise to the occasion. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

It’s so true and that’s hard. Stopping in a moment when you feel really incompetent or you feel really overwhelmed and have compassion for ourselves, it is a tough thing. I’m curious if you have some favorite tools for spotlighting positives or just people to tune in more to that, because I find that’s really hard for people. 

Kendra Wilde:

Well, I have this little self-compassion mantra. It’s “This is hard, I’m doing my best, I’m a good _______” You can say mom or caregiver, grandparent, father, it sounds kind of like nothing, it’s just 3 little lines, but there have been so many times I’ve used it when I was in a situation where I really did feel like “I’m in over my head, this is not what I signed up for. I don’t even know what else to do.”, and you just want to cry but you can’t because they need you. If you just say “This is hard, I’m doing my best, I’m a good mom.” That little mantra is so meaningful and it actually goes back to science. Because the first line, “This is hard.” Is just helping you become mindful of the moment and acknowledging it for what it is. “I’m doing my best” reminds you that nobody is perfect. You’re human and you can only do what you can do. And “I’m a good mom” — you can say whatever words you like. I say that because you may not believe it in the moment, but it’s an affirmation that kind of plants a seed for you to start feeling that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I love that, it’s such a — talk about a micro-action that we can embed as many times as we need to throughout the day. That’s perfect. And it strikes me too as I’m listening to you describe the science behind why that’s helpful, what a valuable model this provides for our kids, particularly kids who tend to be more emotionally and behaviorally dysregulated. What a wonderful model these tools are for them of how we would want to encourage them to respond or to manage themselves when they’re feeling overwhelmed or angry or frustrated or whatever it might be. 

Kendra Wilde:

Totally. You could use it as something that you speak out loud to them too. It’s a way of validating what they’re going through as well. This is hard. We’re trying to figure it out together, aren’t we? It doesn’t mean you’re a bad kid. It doesn’t mean everything is over. So you can use it in a lot of ways. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I think that’s so cool as well, when we think about — again, going back to one of the barriers that we both see with people, of “I don’t have time, I can’t fit one more thing.” It’s like, well, if we can frame it as doing these things is not only helpful to you, but it actually is directly benefiting your kids by modeling really helpful strategies they can use, maybe that’s a way then some parents can tune in more if they’re not willing to do it for themselves, realizing that this is something they can do for their kids too. 

Kendra Wilde:

The first time I started reading about self-compassion, it sounded kind of corny to me. I thought “Yeah, right.” And then I started noticing my inner critic and how many things I was saying to myself during the day. It doesn’t matter if you’re like, “Gosh, I should have been able to get twice as much done and I did a crappy job at that IEP meeting. I haven’t even managed to get to the grocery store. My pants are too tight!”, whatever you’re thinking. I decided to name my inner critic, and I have since read that there is a science on this, and I name her Ardnek, which is my name spelled backwards!

And so, for a while, I would just be like, “Oh, here she is again! Ardnek’s here!” It was really a way to have instant mindfulness to realize, “Oh, I’m hammering away at myself again. What’s another way to turn that around and be a little more encouraging.” It doesn’t have to be super sappy, but it could be this, “You know what? You’re trying. Keep going. Whatever.” I really like that too, and that’s another little action you can do. Just name your critic and just keep catching her or him and try to turn it around and make it a little more encouraging. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I love that. And it’s so important right now when — so many parents, if they have a child with special needs or various types of challenges are very hard on themselves anyway and feel like somehow, they’re supposed to be doing better, inherently knowing better how to do this, which hello, none of our kids come with instruction manuals. We’re figuring it out. But I think especially right now, during this whole pandemic situation, so many changes. Parents, so many still trying to navigate working from home or having their kids at home navigating the whole new school thing.

There can really be just this oppressive sense of “I’m not doing any of this right.” And to stop and recognize, okay, first of all, who does know how to do any of this? No one, because there is no playbook for this. But also just stopping to recognize how often we’re criticizing. Also, I think another piece of that, perhaps, and maybe you can speak to this is the importance of stopping to acknowledge the things we are doing well with or the things that are going well. 

Kendra Wilde:

Yeah. One of the little exercises that I like is whether you write it down and you’re a journaling kind of person or you’re just the thinking kind of person, maybe this is before bed, but if you have a gratitude journal and you just try to think of one thing that went well today or one thing that’s wonderful about yourself, one thing that’s wonderful about your child and one thing that’s sort of wonderful about the world. It doesn’t have to be amazing. Sometimes days just aren’t great, but it really does help wire in that positivity, and I don’t mean toxic positivity.

I just mean really wiring your brain to see that and kind of savor that. Especially with our kids, it’s really easy to start looking at them like they’re broken and just wishing you could fix it all so that life could go on, instead of realizing that you need to evolve yourself and they are actually independent sovereign beings, and we can’t control anyone but ourselves. We can only really create the scaffolding to nudge and support them along their way.

Anyway, I think becoming more mindful and getting yourself more into the moment and really being with them in the moment, even if it’s painful and you’re trying to deal with a million things. If you can just find those micro moments to be in the moment, be present with them. Something like 50% of our brain is spent on thinking about the future and 40%, isn’t that right, on the past? So 10% of the day you’re actually in the moment. I think we could nudge that up a little bit. And when you’re really living in the moment, you don’t have the chance to get all anxious about everything that could go wrong and everything you haven’t gotten done. You can just really be with the pain and the challenge and be more resourceful and be more empathetic. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, one of the amazing and also really difficult parts of having a human brain is how easily it conducts mental time travel, right? How easily we go into the future, we think back on the past, and I love that you’re talking about reining that in and staying focused here in the moment. And I think especially with our kids, we do that, that mental time travel into the future of — I’ve had parents of toddlers who will, in the moment their child is melting down, they’re having this whole thing, and parents’ minds will go to “Oh my gosh, what if she’s still doing this when she’s 18.” Or “Oh my gosh” with a 5 year old, like, “He’s never going to live on his own! How am I going to deal with this?” And then what we’re reacting to in the moment isn’t actually what’s even happening! It’s our fears and anxieties about something that we’re projecting way into the future. I think that happens a lot. 

Kendra Wilde:

I do too. It’s like you’re inviting more trouble. Why would you pile that onto yourself? And then, I guess another thing that I found that’s really helpful beyond the mindfulness is that it’s not all your head. There’s a lot you can do in getting into your body to calm yourself down. So whether you want to do some grounding, there are so many little mind-body tricks that can help you stop spinning like that. So for me it’s some grounding exercises, with your body. You can just dig your heels into the floor. One thing I heard that I really like is to kind of imagine a laser of a color that you love, and you’re outlining the shape of your foot on the floor, and then wiggle your toes.

So you’re really, really focusing on your feet and feeling yourself again. Another one of course, a lot of people probably know as doing a mindful 5 senses. So what are 5 things you can see and 4 things you can hear and 3 things you smell — or even if you just focused on everything you could hear. Sometimes, say you’re on a walk or you take your kid to the park. Just take the moment to notice everything you can hear. It’s just a really great way. When you’re busy thinking about everything you can hear, you can’t think about all those troubles that you’ve been inviting into your mind

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

So true. When I started learning about and practicing mindfulness and tools for mindfulness years ago, it suddenly struck me. I was unaware of how unaware I was of my surroundings. Like suddenly, when you start really focusing in on like, “Let me take in 5 things I can see right now.” Suddenly I would find myself realizing, “Okay, that thing has been there forever and I never even noticed. You become really aware of how unaware we are of even our physical surroundings, what’s going on in our body, and it strikes me that that’s really an opportunity then, just on a very tangible level to just start to become more aware of and in touch with what is happening in the present moment. 

Kendra Wilde:

And I guess a couple other quick things, I remember I heard once that kids laugh 300 or 400 times a day, little kids. Adults only laugh about 10 times a day and that might be lower right now. So if you can find a way to laugh, it can help. It releases, what is it, serotonin? It helps you just feel a little bit better, it decreases stress. Endorphins is probably what it releases, but just find a funny YouTube video or think about a dumb joke you told as a kid and tell that one to your kids. Just trying to laugh more and find a little levity is a really good antidote to the stress that feels unnatural, but you can actually make it happen. I think with nutrition, I like to say, feed yourself as if you have another kid. Because we love to just — you make all your kids a meal and then maybe you eat the crust of their toast or something. But if you had another child, you’d feed them, right? You’d make time to feed the extra kid. So just think of yourself that way. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Again, it’s always taking care of yourself and building in. We’re already feeding our kids. And yet, as you said, we take the time to do that. And then mom is standing at the counter eating something out of a container. It’s like, wait a second! We can sit down, prepare food for ourselves just like for the kids. We’re here anyway, they’re eating, and just being aware that, “Oh, why don’t I do that! That’s not any extra work, I could just do that right now!”

Kendra Wilde:

Yeah. A lot of us aren’t driving around as much right now because you don’t drive around as much with the pandemic, but I used to always say, just put a bag of almonds in your purse. Like purse nuts. Where are your purse nuts? Bring something that’s your thing that’s in your purse so you don’t have one of those hangry emergencies for yourself, so that you can kind of sustain energy across the day. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Being aware of our own blood sugar regulation. It’s so important for kids. That makes me think of yeah, most parents will have a snack in the car to give their kids on the way home because they know that they’re hungry, they’re grumpy, and yet how often do we land ourselves in that same situation and then we’re overreacting and we’re overwhelmed and distressed, it’s like, “Oh, when was the last time I ate?” 

Kendra Wilde:

It’s all that shift in mindset about not sacrificing yourself because your kids really need you. I could go on and on about so many other micro-actions. I really do think the other one that I would just love to highlight is just to really think a lot about your sleep. Even if you have lots of interrupted sleep and your kids are tough sleepers, try to prioritize sleep because you’re such a different person in the morning when your brain has a chance to clean itself and reorganize and defrag. I know that a lot of people go to sleep still in fight or flight, and of course it takes forever to fall asleep.

So if you can do something to reduce that, I like to put my legs up the wall, just lie down on the floor and put your seat up against the wall with your legs up for a couple of minutes, and it really helps sort of balance your blood pressure and relaxes you. You would probably say what you think about magnesium, but whether you’re taking magnesium supplement or you’re taking epsom salts in your bath or you’re spraying your feet with a magnesium spray, that can really help you relax too. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, absolutely. I think those tools that help promote that relaxation to allow for a good restorative sleep to happen are so critical. And again, we tend to think of those with kids, especially if the kid is not sleeping well, but are you thinking about that for yourself? So magnesium is great, I love the legs up the wall. The other thing I would add to that is being aware of your device use and making sure that you’re not going to bed with your devices and that that’s keeping you up. But devices are sort of the bane of our existence where mindfulness is concerned anyway, right? 

Kendra Wilde:

Yeah, and then that ties in to the whole idea about light and helping your body know its circadian rhythm. So the quick thing on that is just get some sunlight in the morning. Get some bright light in your eyes in the morning so that your brain knows it’s day time. And then at night time, start dimming the lights. That’s a trick with kids that works wonders. Dimming the lights. And they even have these light bulbs that are amber-colored, if you think about cave dweller times, we like to be around orange firelight, right? So you put on this orange lightbulb and it helps signal to your body that it’s time to make melatonin and go to sleep. You can even read a book, you can read a child a book with one of those amber bulbs. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

I think the beautiful thing about these strategies is they’re so appropriate and supportive of kids as well as adults. These are things we can be doing as a family that support all of us. And again, going back to that piece about parents feeling guilty, that resolves that issue because it’s not just something you are doing for yourself, you are doing these things for everybody, to help everybody’s health and stress and functioning. Such great tips and strategies. As we wrap up, I would love to know: What’s your overarching message? What’s one thing that you’d want to leave parents with as they think about this idea of their own stress response, their potential for burnout, how to manage that — what do you want to leave people with? 

Kendra Wilde:

I think I would say that self-care is not a prescriptive thing. It’s a personal thing. So if you just take a post-it note and put 3 micro-actions on it that you’re going to try and put it on your bathroom mirror or whatever, you’re bulletin board, your refrigerator, and just put those 3 things on there and try them for a week and see what you notice. It can be so simple. It can be like, “Take Vitamin C in the morning, walk around the block after dinner and put my legs up the wall before bed.” Pick the things that you think will actually work for you, because I guess going back to BJ Fogg and in my own personal experience, it needs to be something that really will fill you. It can’t be what someone tells you you need to do. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. It’s personal, it’s not prescriptive. It’s perfect. Such great information. I want to make sure that people know where they can find out more about you and your work. So where is the best website or social media places for them to go?

Kendra Wilde:

I have a website that I started up. It’s not for profit, it’s called wildpeace.org. Wild peace is the idea that you can still find peace even in the chaos, in the wildness. It has a whole bunch, a menu of these micro-actions and some other resources in there to inspire parents, especially parents who have kids with different brains. And then I also have my hand on Instagram, which I’m just figuring out is called @wildpeaceforparents, and that’s the same thing on Facebook, my page there at wildpeaceforparents. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

And you provide amazing content on your Instagram and Facebook pages, great reminders of these micro-actions, I highly recommend because I know a lot of our listeners are on those platforms, so definitely go and follow Kendra there and get her daily doses of all of these tips and strategies and pieces of information. Kendra, such an important topic at such a challenging time for so many people. I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today.

Kendra Wilde:

Thank you. I hope everyone finds a way to feel a little bit better, and thank you so much for having me. 

Dr. Nicole Beurkens:

It was such a pleasure, and thanks to all of you for listening, we’ll catch you back here next week for our next episode of The Better Behavior Show.