Fostering Positive Sibling Relationship with Kira Dorrian and Deana Thayer

0:00 [Music] hello and welcome to the sharing your parenting mojo segment of your parenting mojo podcast and for those of you who are watching on youtube you're seeing a bit of a different background than you normally see welcome to the your parenting mojo studios east which until two days ago was my sister-in-law's bedroom and we have a couple of guests today who apparently usually record together

0:31 in kiera's laundry room which you can see you can you can only see the sound panel she did a nice little pan for me before we get started and i could see her washer and i guess they're both normally in there but now due to covered they're recording separately so um so lots of different locations today and so my guests are kiera dorian and deena thayer and they co-founded the future focused parenting organization which is a groundbreaking parenting

0:53 philosophy that starts with the end in mind encouraging families to make intentional parenting choices and together they co-host the raising adults podcast where they discuss various topics related to parenting with a long-range view and both keira and dina are parent coaches and are passionate about repairing families to thrive rather than just survive on their parenting journey so welcome to the laundry room and to those of you who should be in the laundry room thanks for having us jen and so um i was

1:24 super interested to talk with you because when we were thinking i i've been listening to your show for a while and um was thinking we should get together and do something and i thought what could we do you have a number of children between you so when you propose we talk about siblings i said yes we should talk about siblings so um i wonder if you could tell us maybe just a little bit about your families and where you are

1:45 and how many children you have between you i'll go first sure yeah sure we both we both have something that's a little bit unique in our situation so with mine i'm in a blended family so that means i've got some biological children but i also have some stepchildren and together my husband and i have a total of five so the other thing that is unique is ours are on the older end so in kira and i's podcast we're able to

2:09 kind of bring both elements you know she's got earlier grade schoolers which she'll talk about in a moment and then i'm a little bit further down the road and can talk about hey here's what went great but also hey don't copy me on this so we've got um five children that are actually today the youngest turned 17 so they are 17 18 18 20 and 21. wow i got a little misty i'm used to you saying no means i know

2:32 but thank you oh my goodness um yeah and i'm kira dorian and i have twins so that's my unique funsie that i bring to the table um so i have boy girl twins they are nine years old and in the third grade awesome all right so you have lots of information for us and experience to share with us on raising siblings and i'm wondering if you can start by maybe telling us what what you've done in your own families

3:00 and also kind of how you cancel families as well to start laying the foundation for positive sibling relationships which i know is sort of this this big hairy audacious goal as it were for for many families yeah i think it feels like a lot and especially depending on your own sibling relationships so i it's funny because jen i think you and i are similar but different in this way i'm an only child and i have twins

3:26 and one of the things you know you you talk about the fact that you had like no parenting instincts i have no sibling instincts right i mean one of the things that was scariest we were only planning to have one child and that was one of the scariest things was i actually have no frame of reference for this um but i think you know i have a mental health background and one of the things that we talk about a lot when we're

3:49 working with families is really thinking about the fact that the sibling relationship is actually the first peer relationship and so what you set up in your home is going to set them up for all their future peer relationships both friendships colleagues romantic relationships um you know friends on the schoolyard like this is how they're going to learn how to engage with someone approximately their own age and so part of laying that foundation is having that in mind

4:15 that i really have to pay attention to how i'm encouraging them to problem solve together how am i encouraging them to use conflict resolution all these things so that they are not just set up to have a great sibling dynamic they're actually set up for all their future conflicts with peers okay that's so true and yeah no no no none none at all not at all and there are there are a couple practical ways to do this

4:44 obviously when we're talking with families who have youngers and maybe are expecting their second third and so on baby you have a really unique opportunity to set this up in advance with that sibling who's already there that big brother big sister to kind of get them involved to frame the way you talk about this to use the the words kira's describing and thinking about wow this is this is their first peer relationship the first time that they're not just

5:08 interacting with a grown-up and you get to set the stage for that at home so we really recommend you know start before the birth if you can or like in our case before the remarriage and we did we involved our kids in that and talked with them about hey you're about to add some siblings to your world that you didn't even ask for and so how can we coach them through that and with youngers it's true especially if they're really

5:32 little they might not totally understand that but there's some ways they could help maybe they could pick out a fun stuffed animal for the nursery or maybe they can you know feel the belly and you can talk about the baby being in there and they can just be a little bit involved in advance and of course if they're older they can be super involved with helping pick things out with talking about what are they going to need we often

5:52 suggest that families ask the older sibling maybe what are your special toys that you don't want the baby to mess with and we'll figure out a safe place to tuck those away so they also feel like you know i'm not going to be just lost in the shuffle here what i need and what i want still really matters so we really recommend that that starting in advance piece and let them have a say in the if they can

6:13 but also framing it in a positive way if it's picking out a gift if it's picking out something for the nursery my kids they picked out how they wanted to meet each other and they wanted it to involve food so we literally we literally the first time that all the kids met even while my husband and i were dating it we got we went and got cupcakes and it was like that just kind of softened it

6:32 made it less intimidating we weren't just expected to sit and chat it was like we're eating it's so involving them in that is really helpful but starting in advance too letting them know what's coming really helps kids not feel so blindsided mm-hmm yeah and i would think that um i mean one of the questions i see coming up in parenting books over and over again is uh firstly parents will well you know oh i'm expecting how am i

6:55 going to prepare my child okay so we walk through that and then everything's okay for a little bit and then after some period of time we see that there is there's conflict there there is tension in that relationship right and the the elder child is is being aggressive is maybe um being aggressive towards the younger sibling or maybe towards the parents and their parents are like help um i i don't know what to do about this

7:19 i keep telling my child not to hit the baby but they keep hitting the baby what do you normally advise in those kinds of situations yeah when you have when you have a struggle like that where you see the other thing that you can see all the things you mentioned absolutely but we also can sometimes see regression where maybe some a substage and age appropriate things that have already happened like potty training or being in their own bed

7:42 just go totally backwards and that's really kind of tricky to unpack but that's why we're saying what we're saying so much of this is about laying the foundation well early and then it doesn't mean those things won't still crop up but you might be able to while maybe not eliminate definitely mitigate some of those responses and then it's about talking about the sibling relationship in this in this really positive way and one of the ways we kind of suggest that is is

8:12 leading with vocabulary i'm the self-professed word nerd on the on the of the co-hosts and so we talk a lot about how words are how we create meaning and how important that is so if you do have a child who's starting to lash out or is starting to express some resentment we've got to communicate communicate communicate that is big it doesn't mean there won't need to be other boundaries in place and i'll let kira pop in with some of

8:34 that too but i just really want to suggest to parents not to overlook how we speak about the sibling relationship and that means it's okay and encouraged to say things like you know what your brother or sister fill in the blank they're your first friend and they are going to be around even after we're not if you have older kids who can understand that that is an important thing to talk about when when there's no longer this parent

8:56 child dynamic maybe you're not close with your co-workers maybe some of your friends have moved away you still have your sibling and the relationship you cultivate there early can really turn into a beautiful lifelong friendship and so framing that as a friendship is really huge and the other thing that we encourage vocabulary wise is when you do see those squabbles and disagreements like you mentioned because it's a when not an if it'll happen is talking about

9:22 that in a way that's positive as well not saying oh you're in a fight you know not causing calling it a fight not leaning into name calling talking about one of you is acting like a brat or something how we speak really matters we're modeling constantly but saying something like it looks like you might need some help with some problem solving well that's accurate there's maybe a problem here we need to unpack it and solve it

9:47 and of course this is going to come a little bit more along the way with older ones when they're little and less understanding we're handing them the vocabulary here's what i'm noticing it looks like you're frustrated you know those kinds of things but when they're older absolutely unpacking that in a way that's positive and and also being available to help with that it looks like you might need some help with some problem solving and we're going to talk in a little bit

10:10 kyra and i about just ways you can do that when you do maybe need to intervene on a squabble because you're right we also need to keep everybody safe and and little ones can sometimes lash out that resentment they're feeling or that feeling of oh maybe i've been put to the back burner sometimes comes out in some undesirable behavior so kira i'm sure you have more to do i yeah and i think you you took me right

10:29 there and i think that one of the things that we see parents do a lot it comes from such a good place but is sometimes a little bit misdirected is they want the older child to be sensitive to the fact that the younger child doesn't know you know and you're the big kid and they don't know yet and that is absolutely valid and absolutely right but what we also have to do is acknowledge how hard that must be for

10:50 the older child because if we don't do that that's where that resentment comes from is i just keep being expected to put up with this behavior this little person is stealing my toys and my parents just keeps telling me well you're the big kid they don't understand without acknowledging that you know that must feel really hard that you have to keep putting up with that i so appreciate that you're trying to understand but i'd like to give you a big kid opportunity

11:15 to fill in the blank acknowledge and validate what they're experiencing because if we don't do that piece it's going to be really hard for the older child to not be resentful because they don't feel like anyone's actually noticing what's happening for them yeah yeah yeah and it's a step that gets skipped i think a lot the acknowledgement of the feelings first leading into then here's what we what we need yeah yeah i definitely see that too and

11:40 um when we're working on solving problems with children parents tend to want i mean they want the problem solved right so they jump right to the problem-solving part and and aren't sure why the child doesn't want to engage you know the child won't propose any solutions the child won't engage with any of my solutions and well what are the reasons for that well it's probably because they weren't heard they don't feel heard in in themselves that they their experience

12:04 is valid and valued by us and when they do feel that then they're more likely to be able to engage with us and be willing to engage with us in developing solutions to what is essentially a problem between two people right it's not a bratty kid hitting another hitting the baby it's it's a problem that we have in this family that we need to figure out and as those kids grow if from a young age they have felt constantly seen heard

12:30 and validated and their experience has been constantly normalized that doesn't mean you put up with bad behavior but you can acknowledge feelings and validate those feelings and still set a great boundary but if they feel that way then when we move into those teen years and they get older they feel really safe to come to you with how they're feeling because they've had a lifetime of being seen heard and validated so it's not only like going to impact

12:51 that sibling dynamic it's also going to impact the dynamic between parent and child yeah which is so important going into those years right when we're playing the long game and we're thinking okay well how how do we want these teenage years to be when my kid is now old enough and big enough that i can't physically remove them from a situation force them to comply with me there has to be something else there in our relationship that makes them want to

13:14 comply and and to work with me on on figuring out solutions to the problems between us okay so um so we're we're sort of working towards squabbles if we're kind of moving out of the the baby years and the fact that they're they're probably not always it's not inevitable the research says that this this difficult period is not inevitable it doesn't happen to everybody but if it has happened to you and you've kind of been in that

13:40 that period where there has been resentment and um your your younger child is now maybe old enough to stick up for themselves a bit then where we start to think of it as a squabble or a disagreement between two people what's your approach to those kinds of things well i think i'm going to talk a little bit about the theoretical and dina is going to talk about the practical so from a theoretical perspective in terms of parental mindset because you know so

14:01 much of empowering our actual choices is what are we thinking as we're making those choices so dina and i on our show we always start with our why we have to understand why we're doing what we're doing in order to feel empowered to actually go do that thing so in terms of the why behind the squabbles we really want to be thinking about things like empathy we are teaching our children empathy and again this is the first peer relationship and we want

14:23 them to be empathetic with their future schoolmates and with their future colleagues and you know friends etc so the concept of coming into problem solving with the goal to teach empathy i want to help you understand how stealing that toy made your sister feel and i want your sister to understand maybe why you felt you needed to steal that toy if everyone can kind of understand where everybody's coming from we're a lot more likely to solve this problem

14:49 so teaching empathy skills by asking great questions dina and i are big fans of questions and helping kids talk and share their feelings because this is also a wonderful thing to be teaching i mean sibling squabbles honestly in some ways are one of the best opportunities to really show your parenting mojo and and embrace the opportunity for teachable moments because they really they have everything in them so really teaching active listening so you know oh i can see that you're not

15:17 looking as at your brother as he's communicating how he's feeling can we please look him in the eyes it's really important people feel seen when they're sharing their feelings is just a great example of how you teach active listening um asking a question how did it make you feel when your sister took that toy is a great way of helping the brother or sister understand what's going on for that child and then flipping two did you know it would make her feel sad

15:39 when you took that toy right allowing this dialogue that when they're little you're gonna be really walking them through um is gonna develop into them internally understanding how to do that for themselves so i'm gonna kick it to dina because she has some amazing just practical ways like that sounds great kira what does that actually look like dina's gonna tell you that no but that really is important and kiera touched on an important thing too this also takes the

16:05 blame out of it and as a parent i think that's important to recognize we're not trying to figure out who's at fault and why it happened we are a fan of asking really good questions but why did you do that and who started it are never on the list of good questions so really what we want to help our kids do is be empathetic enough and skilled enough to finish it not to start it but to solve the problem and

16:29 come back together in good relationship with their sibling and of course i'm gonna start again with the words and kira is spot on we talk about this all the time at the beginning you will probably have to hand them those words would you like to ask your brother how it made him feel when you took the toy they're gonna need some help kind of going along through that conversation and so we might need to hand them that

16:49 vocabulary even the feeling vocabulary because a lot of words for feelings are really big like frustrated and exasperated they're not going to come up with that they're just like i'm mad you know and so kind of peeling back the layers for them as we walk them through the conversation let's be cognizant of our own words and help hand them the words to do this but there's also two just quick things i want to mention that that sometimes get

17:09 overlooked kind of like what kira talked about with that normalizing an empathy piece before asking for a behavior this gets skipped too and that's thinking about location and posture and the stance of of the issue that we're trying to solve literally and so when i'm thinking about solving a conflict i'm going to look at the levels of my children and i mean with their bodies so if you have one child standing over a sibling and pointing and looking down

17:35 and yelling at them that is really intimidating and scary for that other child and it also doesn't put them on an equal footing to be able to assert their self and share how they're feeling so one thing i've always encouraged is that getting those siblings on the same level before we problem solve whether that means we're both going to sit down or we invite one the other one to stand up whatever it is so that they're literally while they

17:59 might not be eye to eye if their height is different they're literally on the same level nobody's over each other and that's a visual way that we create a picture of what's actually happening figuratively no one is over each other everyone's feelings in the situation matter and let's try to to solve this problem together so thinking about levels and watching for that is really helpful and again kyra said this beautifully it's also really helpful if you just

18:25 talk about what you're noticing around that you know what i noticed that you're standing up and your sister's sitting down could you join her on the floor and then let's talk about this so really easy to do and then a second one is location i think even as adults we know sometimes how just a change of scenery can be so helpful and just getting a location change it's the same thing for younger kiddos and i think all

18:47 the way up sometimes just the break it takes just to even walk somewhere different might calm you down give you a chance to take a breath count to 10 whatever you like to do internally whatever you'd like to help your children do but that that break to go somewhere different is helpful so something i really love that i first saw in the montessori classroom but can easily be done at home is called a piece table where there's literally a little

19:09 table and some chairs and you go there to solve a problem and that's where we go to make peace and so families can set this up in their home and again literally just the walk there could be really helpful but there's also this expectation that it brings that kids now know oh when we go there we come out with everything being better and we're friends again and we've solved the problem we've moved past it so there's

19:30 almost this anticipation and expectation that that's where we work it out and so if you don't if the peace table doesn't resonate with your family i mean certainly it could be a special little love seat it can be a corner of their playroom it doesn't have to be the peace table per se but if you have a designated spot in your home that is the problem-solving corner it can be just game-changing yeah yeah thanks for the that sort of practical lens on it um

19:57 and just kind of thinking hearing you talk through those and relating it back to some of the things that kira was saying um it seems as though some of this this stuff seems as though it's not intuitive like it's harder and i can imagine parents thinking but i just want it to stop i just want them to stop and and when when what kira is saying you know this this is an opportunity this is an incredible opportunity for us

20:25 to help our children because yeah it's easier to say well he had it first give it back or um just stop doing that i'm going to take it away and if we take that approach then the immediate conflict has stopped right there because the thing is gone there's they're not going to fight over that anymore but it's it's like the the teaching of man to fish um give a man a fish teaching around a fish analogy that yeah if we're telling them

20:50 what to do every single time then that's our role in their relationship our role is always going to be to tell them how to fix their conflicts and what you're describing is how to teach them to fix their conflicts by themselves so i don't need you to do that anymore exactly and i think i mean i love i love how you put all that together because you know if you think about the name of our show

21:12 is raising adults we are future focused parenting we start with the end in mind and so when you are coming at it from that viewpoint and you're going okay i i need to think about what am i doing in this moment what's that going to look like when they're an adult what does it then make you do and how do you parent differently when you understand why you're going to sit down and for the hundreds of times right because that's

21:40 really hard i mean let's be honest like i think we can all admit parenting is really intense and really hard and sometimes you just want to say just give it back and you know what sometimes you will and that's okay but if 95 of the time you're taking a deep breath and sitting down at the peace table and teaching them teaching them teaching them then not only are you setting them up for success with their own relationship you

22:04 are going to see them problem solve at school you're going to see them problem solving work you're going to see them problem solved with friends you are going to see that everywhere and so it becomes so much easier and we say this all the time it is not easy to do what's best but it is so important we do what's best instead of what feels easiest or most expedient because we want to raise healthy functioning adults who contribute to the

22:27 world and we're just not going to do that if we aren't thinking in this long range way yeah and we say all the time that the absence of doing something is still doing something and so we we have to it yes it's exhausting and yes it's tiring but when you think about the dividends that that will pay it is actually worth it to take that time to do it so that you get those results later but there's no question that it's

22:52 challenging and we want to acknowledge that kyra and i are never like parenting it's a breeze no it's the whole reason that we that we care about doing it well so that we get to be done and i think this lends itself to that piece too is that when you instead of just taking over give back the toy and you shut it down you maybe have squashed that for the moment but the children haven't learned any problem-solving skills

23:16 and when we teach them the problem-solving skills guess what we actually get to delegate this part faster and then we're not the one refereeing all the squabbles right because they know how to do it yeah yeah and absolutely just to pick up on the point of uh you see it come out elsewhere um we we were seeing that in school as well you know we only have one child but we do this kind of problem-solving approach with her

23:39 um with our own disagreements you know we don't see it as well you need to do it my way because i'd say so we see these kinds of things as as problems in our relationship and how can we approach this problem in our relationship and so yeah we were hearing from the teachers when she was four that when the other kids in the class have a problem they come to her to figure out how to solve it

24:01 [Laughter] oh yeah so we see it pop up and and this is going to be a skill that carries them through the rest of their lives in all of their relationships with their colleagues with their i mean with their partners their significant others if they come into a romantic relationship able to do this kind of problem solving then i mean they're they're on so much of a better footage than footing than those of us who didn't learn these kinds

24:25 of things when we were children so we have a we have a sort of tool that we apply to a lot of different parts of parenting and it really applies here and it's dinas i want to credit her it's we teach it but it's her amazing philosophy and it's called i do it we do it you do it and the idea is that we're handing off but we can't just hand it off and so we have to

24:49 lay the foundation so i'm going to do it just like she said i'm going to give you the words i'm going to ask the questions when they're small and then we're going to move until we do it you might see them starting to do some of it and you might still have to do some of it but the best part is when you go now you do you do it and you say why do most of it and i mean

25:08 i handed this off and i have twins so you know it was kind of interesting to see here you've got two kids at the same age at the same really developmental stage this got handed off for me at four by four years old because they were both four so you're probably waiting for the littlest to get to four right but at four years old i remember saying to them one day they had a squabble and i said you know i actually feel like you

25:31 have all the tools that you need to solve this together so i'd like you to try if you still need me come get me but i'd like you to try it on your own and here's what happens when you do that handoff is you actually empower them to want to fix it because they want to show you at four i i can do that i can totally do that thanks mom i'm ready you know and so

25:52 they're so much more likely to solve it which then makes them feel next time like they're more capable of solving it and you get to actually watch those squabbles get less and less they don't go away we're humans we're all going to have conflict that's just normal but what you're going to see and what i see and what i know dina saw is that those conflicts get resolved faster in a much quieter way i mean there's i

26:14 my kids never scream at each other ever a conflict in our house is really a sh like a firm and impassioned sharing of feelings hey that really made me mad you hurt my feelings when you did that i mean if that's as bad as it got we're gonna take that but i really think that's because they just learned from such a young age how to communicate around these things there isn't a need to scream at each other

26:38 it's just not necessary you know yeah so since you are all about raising adults how do you kind of move through this as children get older yeah that's a great question and i i know that we've talked a lot about maybe some things you would employ while they're younger but then that does start to translate into into some different things and there's there is this kind of long slow handoff and so one of the things that i would say

27:05 changes around when you're first handing off so in kira's case as young as four and then all the way kind of into those early grade school years as you move to instead of you're in the mix with them we move to more of a posture of availability so that is they're handling most of the conflict resolution but it's very clear that if they get stuck or hit a speed bump or they just really still can't solve it

27:28 that you're available to help and then as they move older your role is really more of like a mentor or a coach you might be asked occasionally for input on you know what my sister and i are really having this hard time you know what are your thoughts could we ask you to weigh in could you hear from both of us about how we're feeling so you might be able to kind of just pour into their lives a little bit with

27:50 that way but only on an invitation right so it's very different than i'm just gonna be there for sure and then you can come get me more like five six seven come get me if there's a problem this is more the invitation hey you know mom we're stuck and that's what i've seen kind of more in the teen years is i mean because even my teenagers and especially with there's some biological lines and non-biological lines the communication styles are different

28:14 they were in different families of origin for like the first decade of their lives and so sometimes they do need a little bit of support but we have to be invited in we don't get to just butt in and and that's really different but the other thing i've seen is that this develops that beautiful friendship too because when they've learned how to problem solve with each other and they know they can get to the other side the

28:37 conflict isn't this roadblock that you can't get past it just does something to the bond that's amazing too and i think kira would agree i mean her two are very close my two are very close we we actually shared a video when we first gave this talk of my daughter surprising my son at school she came home from college and he didn't know she was coming and it was after she had just moved away for the first time

28:59 and basically he pummeled her like he dropped his textbooks and ran and it's just one of my it's like only an eight-second video but it's like one of my favorite eight seconds because they just i mean as soon as he saw her when he came around the corner he just loves her and i think this is part of what's so worthwhile for us as parents to do the hard work because you get to watch it slowly

29:18 change now i'm just available now i might be invited for input but along the way you know what else they're learning is this is my friend i can count on this person they listened to my feelings when we had problems all the way since we were small and and then they're going to be someone they want to go to too we want our kids to want to come to us but i love that my kids also want to go

29:37 to each other that that's actually a win for me for sure and i think too you know i think i would assume because i don't have siblings but i see this a lot in conversations i have because our generation was not raised this way i mean let's be honest right we just weren't um people see it as very normal like oh that's just normal sibling stuff and i would just encourage parents to ask themselves does it have to be

30:02 yeah is it normal because that's the way we were raised or is it maybe something that we can shift and change and not lean into throwing that away like oh you know all siblings scratch each other i mean maybe not mine don't my kids don't so and i'm not saying my kids are perfect by any means i'm just saying that i don't think we have to say oh that's normal i think we can challenge that way

30:26 of thinking and ask what do we want our normal to look like in our family that's a really important mental shift to me love i love that kira and it goes to this other saying kira and i talk about that is what we permit we promote so if we're just allowing the sibling fight because we're like dad that's what happens we're actually promoting it and in a way encouraging it to continue by our lack of intervention and

30:49 and again we're not saying you intervene every time maybe there's some things that you you do need to let go as a parent i think that's healthy but the strategic intervention actually sends the message to our kids i actually think you can rise above i think you can do better i think this can look different and that's what we're telling ourselves too it doesn't have to look that way they don't have to be at each other's throats

31:06 absolutely not they can be best friends yeah yeah i think there's a really good parallel there to social exclusion in schools as well um and the research is heading in that direction too i talked to the researcher on that topic who's kind of saying well if you interview uh pre-service teachers they'll kind of say social exclusion's just part of school it's just part of being a kid and he's kind of saying well does it have to be

31:29 if if we could change our attitudes towards it and and like you said if we permit it to happen we're encouraging it um if we can help children to set up different kinds of relationships this doesn't necessarily have to be a defining feature of school so um yeah so i love how all this is kind of coming together the the groundwork that we're setting here in our families is what enables these kinds of shifts to happen in other places like school and

31:56 and frankly this is this is what gets me excited about this work is like the things that we're doing here in our families are what is going to shift our culture in in more inclusive directions in ways that welcome more people into it um than than has historically been the case so um so thank you so much for being out in the world and sharing that work with people i wonder if you could tell us where to

32:19 find you online please absolutely so all about us and the parent coaching and online resources that's all at our website which is futurefocusedparenting.com and if people watching this have a question or a topic they'd like to see or a parent coaching question they can email us it's also info at futurefocusparenting.com and then of course as you mentioned at the top we co-host a podcast called raising adults which is all about this intentional proactive parenting and that can be found on all

32:51 major podcast platforms and we are also on social media so people can follow us at future focused parenting and we do have a freebie for your listeners so yeah so just for you guys um so if you go to bit.ly that's bit.ly slash raising adults podcast um you will be able to receive we have a video which is three essential strategies for raising adults and then we have a very cool printable

33:23 which is we call it the calendar of character traits and what it is is actually 12 months where each month we focus on a different character trait that you may want to instill in your child so integrity or gratitude or empathy and we look at what does it mean what are activities you can do to instill that character trait what are some of the books you can be reading with your child what questions do you need to be

33:44 asking yourself and communicating with a parenting partner if you have one it just sort of deep dives into each of these things one per month so it breaks it down so it's in easy chunks so if you go to bit.ly slash raising adults podcast um that will come into your inbox and you'll have it ready to go awesome and we will put links to all of that good stuff at your parentingmojo.com forward slash future focused