Deep Dive: @BusyToddler on Resilience and Academic Success

0:00 why is it so hard to find reliable answers to parenting questions how is it in 2022 parents still search on google for answers from strangers well now there's a better way introducing the good inside membership an expert guided community-powered platform redefining modern parenting in our library you'll find hundreds of bite-sized videos articles scripts and workshops tackling the trickiest parenting topics and it doesn't stop

0:33 here we've created a private community guided by me dr becky and coaches trained in the good inside parenting method here you can ask questions connect with other parents or attend a live event on a topic that matters to you this is the parenting handbook that doesn't exist this is parenting advice at your fingertips where you need it when you need it the most this is good inside membership hi i'm dr becky and this is good inside

1:07 i'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children [Music] i love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away one of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment so even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on

1:38 the outside we remain good inside [Music] today's episode is a deep dive with susie allison susie is an early childhood education advocate a former teacher an author and a mom you probably know her from instagram as busy toddler where she shares her ideas about child development and also lots of fun activities to engage your child in play

2:10 and learning susie and i are both moms of three and so we are both totally in the trenches right there with you susie has been an incredible support to me over the last year she's a mentor and friend in this parenting and social media space in this episode susie and i talk about how to help our kids become good learners after all what matters less than the age our kid is when they learn to read or

2:40 multiply is the relationship our child develops with learning and being challenged i know i speak for both of us when i say that we want our kids to learn how to tolerate the frustration of learning how to work hard how to overcome challenges these are the most important lifelong skills i am so excited to have susie here and to discuss these important topics and turn our ideas into actionable strategies for all of you let's jump in

3:12 [Music] hi susie i am so so happy to be talking with you so many interesting things to discuss so thank you for being here oh becky it is beyond my pleasure i just was tickled pink when you wrote and said do you want to come on the podcast and i was like on to your brand new baby of course it felt like when someone asked you to hold their newborn and you're like oh i'm working really hard

3:37 here to hold it steady get his head propped up i trust you with all my babies including this one um and including my actual my actual children so i feel like you and i could talk about a million different things and yet the thing i want to hone in on today are some kind of overlapping topics things that i know you and i both hear a lot about from people in our communities care a lot about and the three kind of words on

4:07 my mind are resilience growth mindset and perfectionism those feel like such the big three right now such the big three yeah right i mean resilience is this topic that's thrown around all the time i think we see growth mindset is kind of related to that and perfectionism is something i think we see in a lot of our kids kind of get in their way sometimes of accessing kind of their growth mindset and resilience definitely and i

4:38 think it's so important to really define these terms because i think there is a lot of just a little bit of a cloud around them and what do they actually mean how do they relate to our kids how do they relate to their development and then what can we do to support the good parts of those and help our kids handle some of the negative parts that are associated with those so for me that's really the big thing right

4:59 now with working in those those three the big three the big three so you know the way i think about resilience is i think you know it's it's kind of like our ability or this developing ability to recover from things that are hard and i think from an emotion regulation standpoint which is how i think about almost everything in child development is resilience is kind of our ability to tolerate hard things to be in something that's challenging and

5:31 hard and kind of say i can do this a little bit longer which is interesting because i think a lot of us we think about resilience as our ability to get out of hard moments like uh i have success and yet i think more and more with my own kids and families even with myself that the figuring things out or getting out of the hard moment kind of finds itself when it finds itself but it's our

5:54 ability to keep going when something's hard that really builds our resilience yeah i think one of the big ways that i look at it is one of the ways when you and i first started talking about this resilience is the ability to get back up and figure it out and it is but it's also the ability to keep walking i mean if there's if there's a metaphor if there's a way to look at it it's that

6:18 ability to just keep moving forward to dig deeper to keep going to keep trying and that's really what we want from any of us not just our kids we want that too i think that's exactly right and yeah that visual right and i know you and i have talked about that if everyone listening even can picture this point one which is not knowing i don't know how to read or i don't know how to build a tower with more than

6:42 three blocks that would actually stay up and then there's this end result like oh i know i know how to build towers and make them stable or now i know how to read well the space between knowing and not knowing is number one very tricky but number two it can be a while right before we actually can master a skill and what i think we really want to build in our kids is kind of a comfort in that space

7:09 or at least a curiosity or a sense of purpose like yes i'm working hard i'm in that learning space no wonder the ease hasn't come because i'm not at the knowing yet i'm in the learning yeah it's all about getting our kids to enjoy when something gets hard my kids and i talk about it all the time when you can't do something that's actually a chance to learn if you can't do something you've just been given a gift

7:37 to learn how to do it and that's so exciting for us and we really try in our house to kind of destigmatize not being able to do something but rather to reframe it as but now you get to learn something and i mean how cool how lucky are you right now you get to learn how to do something and then yeah this could take the day this could take the year this could take the next two years

7:58 but you get to learn something and how cool is that where's the situation in your home that you've you know maybe experienced before you're in right now where are your kids in this learning space i think one of the big things that we're working with right now is modeling resilience for our kids i'm trying so hard to just model the fact that i make mistakes too that i mess up to that i'm learning too and that's

8:24 something that my husband and i are both working through and i know that's something you've worked through with your kids too that idea of just modeling how we think inside our heads because our kids they just see us as so capable and they don't they don't hear what's going on in our side our head they don't hear our decision to switch from that onion to that onion or to grab a different knife then they need to hear

8:44 that they need to hear it exactly i i always think about this for the first even half an hour of a kid's day getting out of bed you know using maybe the toilet washing your hands getting dressed getting out cereal pouring milk these are things that you and i most days can do with ease right unless you know i've had one of those nights and each of those things is hard for a child we haven't even gotten to tying your shoes

9:11 right but if you imagine the tasks of daily life that you're doing that your kids are doing it's amazing our kids aren't melting down at every single second because i know when i think about myself if i was learning how to cook and the only people i was surrounded by were expert chefs and i burn garlic and i just think i don't think i've ever seen anyone burn garlic you're not supposed to burn garlic i would be flooded with

9:42 shame right it's so alone if you're the only person in your environment to be in that learning space if you see everyone in that knowing expert space and there is so much power and de-shaming the situation i'm i try to think about that proactively as much as possible rather than reactively with my kids what could i d shame before my kids have that meltdown so can i mess up when i put my shirt on right even if it's playful and maybe my

10:12 kids would say mom you know how to put on a shirt i can stay back it's true i do know how to put on a shirt i've been putting on shirts for years and look the tag is in the front or i'm working on a new yoga kind of arm stand i actually am and i really do try to practice it in front of my kids because i can't do it yet and guess what happens i i fall i literally fall on my

10:34 face because it's that kind of type of challenge and i think it's important for my kids to see me fall in my face in such a physical way and then even to model something that looks like the process we want them to engage in right this something i think a lot about is this realistic regulation that there's no way our kid is gonna struggle and then say i've got it no big deal try again right like i'm

11:02 sorry that's that's not what it looks like is that not gonna happen it hasn't happened in my house and you know not as my kids are building this skill right so what what might it look like well when i fall down from this arm balance i go oh i don't think i'm ever gonna try that again that is so annoying that even hurt wait a second wait a second wait a second let me take a moment let me take

11:23 a moment let me think about one thing i can do a little differently the next time just one i think about five no no not five things becky just one just one even if i fall i'm doing a good job and i'll sing that a couple times while my kids are off to the side and kind of just quote happening to be there and witnessing this and then i might try it one more time right because again that's going to

11:49 mimic something they could actually do rather than if i make the resilience process look too clean then they're gonna feel shameful around even trying to be resilient you know it's so true the way you said that it's we model so much for our kids and we're so good at that we're so good at modeling how we clean ourselves or modeling how we eat foods or modeling how we walk in public but then when it comes to

12:14 resilience we just kind of throw this term like well i want my kid to have resilience and i want them to be able to to you know do things when they get hard which is great and that's exactly what we want but are we actually modeling that for them and the more capable we are and the more they see us as capable the more they don't believe that you ever have to really work hard for something because they haven't seen us i

12:36 mean the fact that your kids are watching you learning this yoga pose it's so simple and yet it's so amazing what a gift for them to be able to watch their parent try to learn how to do something i mean that is just unbelievable my husband i would say is actually the best at doing that because he's the one who's constantly learning how to do new things and my kids will say well how did you know how to to take this parties well i

13:00 didn't and so now i'm going to work through the problem and i don't really know oh and i've really messed this up and i oh i think i've broken this tube i think i gotta go buy a new one and he'll kind of work them through all the time it takes him to fix something in our house things like that but it really is amazing how we expect kids to just be born knowing they need to do

13:17 stuff and things will be hard and they have to keep trying but if we haven't modeled that for them we really can't expect that out of them i i think that's exactly right i and i think our kids right there's things we say and i'm such a big fan of mantras right and i love saying to my kids uh you know this feels hard because it is hard right that's a great resilience oriented mantra or even

13:40 ugh not knowing sits next to learning something new so if you don't know wow you're about to learn something new and and i think those things are great to incorporate and yet if we're not simultaneously kind of in it ourselves modeling not just saying but modeling struggling talking about something hard at work with our kids or again just on the phone call with a friend and our kid just happens to listen

14:10 then our kid feels like i'm the only one who has to use that mantra i'm the only one who has to learn new things and if you build it in early now there's almost a family value around learning around trying new things around a more of an attachment to process than product and now being resilient is kind of being a part of the family instead of something a child has to do on their own i seriously think like we have all those

14:39 you know you have all those like signs around your house saying like you know home sweet home like i want one that says process over product and i you know wouldn't that be amazing if that really was one of those core values that every family was putting into their kids rather than oh i just i want them to be happy i want them to succeed i want this if we really you know drove into our kids this idea that it is

15:02 more important the process and the road you walk than it is the final product i mean oh my goodness where would we be and i think then even commenting on that right because i think often we have this choice with our kids in terms of building resilience right we have a choice when we see something they've done do i comment on the outside product or do i comment or even inquire into the inside process right i mean one of my

15:29 favorite i think resilience and confidence building questions is saying to my kids how did you think to build that how did you think yes to do the beads that way or even my older son how did you think to start your fairy tale that way it's such an interesting topic versus wow i see you got a really good grade wow that is the tallest tower you've ever built and we don't mean to be putting pressure on our

15:55 kids and we don't mean to be lowering their resilience but the more attached we are to product the more almost fearful a child is of being in that learning space because they're just trying to get to the result they're just trying to get to the product do it do it be good be good be good and yet if a kid has learned my parents are really interested in how i do things in my process then they learn to value that

16:20 themselves that's amazing and i know one of the ways that that you've helped me with my middle daughter about this kind of helping with the process is when you explain to us how to talk to perfect girl or perfect kid or perfect boy inside of them and that was such i know you can explain it so much better than i can explain it but that was such a change for my daughter to recognize perfectionism inside of her

16:48 and to recognize that and for me as well it was just amazing this is one of my favorite things to talk about i mean perfectionism right is actually an urge a lot of us have that takes us out of that learning space right because learning is messy resilience is messy right and perfectionism is the urge to just like have it all neatly tied up to make the flower look exactly the way you wanted it to look to spell every single

17:17 word correctly and susie you and i have talked about both of us have daughters who can be really perfectionistic and that's actually something that gets in the way of doing new things and learning so i think that there's a feeling a lot of us have when we see kind of perfectionism in our kids where we want to shut it down we want to say something to them like no it doesn't have to be perfect or your flower's good enough we want to

17:43 convince them out of the perfectionism right and yet we build resilience by helping our kids sit with their hard feelings sit with all the things inside of them including their perfectionism and so that's a really different framework i need to help my kid relate to her perfectionism not kill off or get out of their perfectionism that actually is what enables staying in that

18:14 learning space and being resilient and yes there's kind of a methodology to this so i think it's best to talk about these things at the moment right it's always best to strike when the iron is not hot because anxiety is lower we can actually learn better when we're not overwhelmed and so for anyone here who has a kid with some perfectionistic urges start this type of conversation do you know that i have a perfect girl inside me here do

18:42 you know that i have a perfect voice inside me making it your own before you introduce it to your child helps your child take it in because now it doesn't feel like they're doing something wrong or they're alone and you might continue because a kid usually is interested like what is my mom what is my dad talking about well when i do certain things like when i start drawing my perfect girl and me she always says the same thing becky perfect

19:08 perfect has to be perfect if it's not perfect put it away perfect perfect has to be perfect if it's not perfect put it away she always says that to me and maybe i would add more you know i think that voice really loves to do things a certain way but sometimes she really gets in my way because as we know no one can really ever be perfect and that's not really what we're trying to do and so what we're really doing with

19:37 our child is we're separating so it's really deep we're separating who my kid is from what this voice is saying and this is really true for adults too that we're only ever really overwhelmed by a feeling when it takes over us when we're able to name it or look at it now it's just a part of us and this is what we really want to do with our kids who have perfectionistic tendencies and once you've talked about that with

20:03 yourself you can often then kind of align with your kid as in huh i wonder if you have a perfect voice too i wonder if that's what comes up when and whatever feels relevant when you're drawing or when you're doing math or when you're doing all of your new reading assignments it's like there's this voice that says perfect perfect and what that voice does it could be so loud that it gets in our way of hearing a

20:33 different voice that i know we both have and that is our i can do hard things and what this really sets up is a really different intervention because then you can say to your child let's say before the next time she reads let's do something different today i want you to let me know when that perfect voice comes up let's just say hi to her i know i'm going to try that too you're going to be reading here

20:58 i'm going to be working on my work project and i'm gonna be saying oh there's my perfect girl hi perfect girl i see you and then maybe we can just also look for that other voice in us and you're really modeling this way of relating to a feeling relating to a thought without having that thought dictate what comes next so that's the idea tell me how that's played out for you in your home so with my daughter we

21:26 were it was during a specific time where she was working on writing her numbers which was this was her everest this was her hill to climb was learning to print numbers and it was very frustrating and these feelings that she would have during it were just overwhelming for her and would cause kind of a full collapse of the of the morning and so i i did my best dr becky and i leaned into it with her and we talked

21:51 about perfect perfect kate living inside and what were we gonna say to her and how were we gonna approach this when we felt these feelings we're going to name it just like we name every other feeling but you know this isn't a feeling that we often name but we're going to start naming it yeah and a few minutes later she's in the middle of writing and she jumps up and she says mom i heard her i

22:12 heard perfect kate and she said i have to make my five just right and and she said my five wasn't perfect and i said stop it i'm learning and you know then i just sat on the couch and i cried for like five minutes because she had so beautifully handled this moment in her life but this was this was a huge breakthrough for her for her to feel not ashamed of the feeling of perfect and to not also succumb to

22:38 the feeling of perfect and you know throw the paper away push the book away walk away from from this number five and it was just such a beautiful moment for her and i think one of the biggest things that i learned from you about this kind of perfect thing we are so often dismissive of perfect you know we tell our kids you know to name when you're sad name when you're mad name when you're angry name when

23:02 you're frustrated but the second that they show any inkling of perfectionism we're very quick to say you don't need to be perfect you don't have to be perfect you don't need to do that just right and instead we we have to start learning to to name that feeling too to honor the fact that that is a feeling too and that was certainly something that i was not doing in my house i'd never really consider perfectionism as a feeling the

23:23 way that everything else is and one of the best things you ever said to me was we can't unfeel feelings and i just lost it when you said that because it was so true because no matter how much i want her to not feel perfectionism and not feel this drive to have to do everything perfect i can't ask her to unfeel something she's feeling and so instead reframing it and rephrasing it and giving her power to

23:48 talk to that person to know that that perfect inside of her is just driving her to want to be the best she can be but at the same time doesn't need to overwhelm her i mean that was that was this parenting moment that i can look back on and just sit and marvel and kind of be in awe over that something so simple had such a profound impact on her and also then me so it was i mean

24:12 it's so powerful and so touching for you to relate that back to me and you know when i think about my kids as they get older i'm sure you too like that's insanely powerful for kate when she is in high school or in college or in her first job right i think we think so often about building our kids like concrete abilities right their reading their math and those things obviously matter right and yet our ability to

24:39 engage and learn that depends on our emotion regulation skills emotion regulation is the foundation for all academic or on-the-job learning because i don't know anyone by the time they're an adult who says i was really perfectionistic when i was kid but yeah my parent they got it all out of me they just got it out i they just you know sucked it all out and i've never had a perfectionistic thought again and so i

25:10 just love to learn and learn from my mistakes that's never happened that will never happen so either by the time a kid is 16 or 36 either a kid can say i've learned how to relate to my perfectionism i know when it's helping me i also know when it's a little bit on overdrive i don't hate on it i kind of have a playful relationship with it and that helps me access something else or they don't and if they don't the

25:35 perfectionism takes over or they feel totally stagnant and they feel stalled and it's like i can't do anything unless it's perfect and we don't want our kids with those options and so preparing our kids for life actually comes from helping them feel all their feelings all their parts all their urges and what a gift to kind of wire our kids with real skills to manage the things inside them because

26:06 that is going to help them really show that resilience as they get older well and i often think about how especially in early childhood we we pump kids full of very concrete skills skills that are testable skills that are measurable abcs colors shapes things like that and ultimately at the end of the day when that child sits down in high school what's going to determine if they keep pushing forward with trig or calculus is not going to be how old were they when

26:34 they learned to identify colors it's going to be whether or not they have the resilience and and the growth mindset to just keep trying and to keep walking you know when we think we have to think more long term with our kids we have to think what are the skills they're going to need to be successful in high school and while they do of course they need to read and they need math but really they need self-regulation skills they need

27:00 emotional confidence they need they need resilience what happens to that child in high school that thinks that failure is the end what happens and i think that that's something we really have to look long term at and say you know while we have these frustrating moments right now where perfectionism creeps up or gosh they just get so angry because they can't make their five right but if we could really help them learn how to handle that emotion instead of

27:27 pushing it away where that's going to move them to in middle school and high school is to being the middle schooler in high school that you want your kid to be that you dream of your child being yes when my child is like struggling putting together a puzzle or struggling reading i do say to myself like yes i'm like yes this is such a bang for my buck moment with my child like i can get in there and i can help wire something

27:55 that's going to help my child for decades you know what my child doesn't need help with succeeding like feeling great wow i scored the goal wow i figured out this math problem with no help wow i drew that rainbow exactly the way i wanted it my first time i don't know any adult who says that went exactly the way i want it to go and i have no skills to manage this situation i'm just a mess it doesn't happen so

28:25 it's kind of an amazing reframe to think i can have the biggest impact during my kids hardest times when my kid says i can't read and my friends can to take a breath and say everything good happens right now i mean it's not gonna turn into a good enjoyable moment it's not like my kids look back at me in those moments and say mom you're amazing now i feel like i can take on the world no it's

28:50 it's messy but if i can slow down and this is where i wanted to go because for us to tolerate our kids distress for us to be able to stay in that moment when our kid says i'm not doing it anymore because it's not perfect we have to be able to regulate some of the feelings we have in that moment we have to be able to access and this is that other term our own growth mindset we have to

29:13 be able to look at this moment and say wait i'm looking at my five-year-old who's struggling in this way that doesn't mean my child's gonna struggle in this way every time this doesn't mean this is going to be the type of learner my child is forever this is that moment that's hard and if i can stay with it if i can show my child i'm not afraid of the oh i can't do it moment if i can

29:39 regulate myself and show up then that's the first step for my child accessing that same so i'm curious for you then like your kid's doing a lego and they say oh i'm not doing this like how do you stay calm how do you stay hopeful i think you know first of all you have to take the deep breath you you have to because you can't they're not doing it on purpose they're not doing it to pick on you they're not

30:05 doing it as a targeted attack and this isn't going to go on your permanent record so i love that take a beat you know we we often rush into what we believe is the right answer when if we'd just taken half a second and said yeah this is hard or what i'm about to go through as a parent is going to be hard and even honor that inside yourself but i just take a deep breath and i sit

30:27 next to them and i say yes it is hard and it isn't coming easy and not everything is going to but i'm going to be here next to you to support you because i believe you can do hard things and i'm going to be here when you're ready because i know right now you're maybe a little hot under the collar and nothing ever goes well when we're hot under the collar so let's take a minute we'll take a drink of water

30:49 we'll sit together and what you really said susie is what's the first thing i do when my child gets overwhelmed or wants to shut down i try to be that calm presence that they can't be right and i think that's so much more valuable than we think we often think what's the exact right thing to say in these little phrases they're they're helpful and we've even said some of them today but more important than that is our child is

31:15 in a state of everything is awful and if we can access our state of wait we're safe and we can get through this which really we do by staying regulated taking that deep breath ourselves then what our kid learns i think our really our kid absorbs it in their body is wait there's someone here who's not overwhelmed by the thing that's overwhelming me so it's possible when instead and i've been there myself i know we're both totally normal parents

31:44 when we say come on this is not that hard why do you give up so easily what we're really saying to our kid is you're overwhelmed and kind of scared i'm overwhelmed and scared so how could our kid learn to quote be resilient when we are sending them that same message of impossibility so i really think for parents just to remember when i say nothing but just try to access that calm presence and what you

32:14 said of i'm here um here it's really the same as the perfect girl strategy kate says to her perfect girl kind of like hey i'm here now the perfect girl isn't alone when we say to our kids i'm here they're not alone and when we're not alone everything is more possible so i think that's so so important one of the things i often like to challenge myself with and other parents with is to treat your child the way you would

32:44 treat your friend and i don't mean that in the way that like you know they're going to be your best friend but if your friend came to you frustrated because they couldn't get this meal right you wouldn't respond back with screaming at them that they can do hard things and you're gonna be fine and it's not a big deal that you couldn't cook this meal you're gonna listen you're gonna be calm you're gonna respond back you're gonna mirror back

33:06 yeah that i'm so sorry that sounded like it was really hard oh my goodness that sounds terrible and we just would never do some of the things to our friends that we end up accidentally doing to our children and that's just such a something to hold on to and something to think about when you're in those tough moments is if this was my friend sitting next to me and if my friend was yelling these same things which we all have been

33:28 in that moment where a friend comes to us they're upset about work they're upset about their mother-in-law they're upset about this and we have to respond back appropriately we have to be kind of the calm person and and help them through it so if we can do that same thing to our children if we can afford them that same grace that we give to our friends that just little twist can also help so much in these regulation moments and i

33:50 think we can bring that full circle to ourselves i imagine there's parents listening who are thinking oh my goodness i don't i don't do any of this i i have messed up my child no wonder my child has such a low frustration tolerance i totally freak out when my kid freaks out i'm the worst parent so if we're thinking about the ways we can help our kids tolerate hard feelings and keep going we have so many opportunities to

34:20 practice that by noticing our own narrative to ourselves when we're struggling in a moment of parenting and same thing with a friend i can't imagine anybody listening if they had a friend who called and said i listened to this podcast and there were some interesting ideas but i feel like i'm not doing it i don't think any of us would say well yeah you're you're a pretty awful parent that's why like i just like that would

34:40 never happen i'm pretty sure someone would say you're so amazing and brave for listening to something and considering a new idea and thinking about trying something new you're basically the best human being in the whole world and you're inspiring me so maybe right now we can all take that moment and remind ourselves i'm learning to i'm practicing i'm doing enough because just like we say for our kids we have to regulate those hard feelings to learn

35:11 we have to regulate those kind of i'm not a good parent feeling to learn and try something new and i think we have to look at just what's manageable for you tomorrow just pick one action item one thing it's overwhelming to climb a mountain let's pick one thing can tomorrow be the day that you pick three times make a goal three times tomorrow i'm gonna show my kid my resilience i'm in a model failure i'm going to explain how i'm working through

35:37 this problem so that my child sees they're not the only one doing this start there start small this isn't about biting everything off this isn't about climbing everest tomorrow morning this is just about taking one step and having that in your brain that's all and and i know you and i both put out a lot of information to parents right but i know me and you have talked about yeah i hope people don't think we're like doing those things all the

36:02 time with our own kids like really people we're very human we're very human right and i sometimes read one of your posts sometimes honestly i read one of my own posts and i'm like i'm really gonna try to do that today that's a real that's a really good idea dr becky had because busy toddler isn't the mom of her kids dr becky isn't the mom of her kids becky is the mom susie is the mom and both of

36:27 us struggle we yell we mess up we react and we both need the advice we put out there yeah i'm equally learning a lot today listening to this podcast a hundred percent and i love that kind of very active takeaway take one thing you might have heard three things oh i can bottle struggling or maybe i could tell a story of when i was young and something was hard or i could do more realistic regulation instead of just the

36:56 wrapping it up nicely or i like that thing about uh this feels hard because it is hard maybe i'll write that up on my kid's room like one one one don't even think about two one one one and this you could always listen to again you can come back i think that's so important we're then building our own ability to learn and try new things that is going to be something and even anyone listening to this

37:24 what an amazing opportunity to even bring this to your kids and say i listened to something that was really interesting and it made me think about how we approach hard things in our family and i have a new idea i listened to something at first i thought i don't know this i don't know this this is new i'm not really sure and i wanted to stop listening and then i took a deep breath and i just

37:47 learned one new thing like what an amazing story to even bring this to life with your kids it's amazing when we can show our kids that we're learning too that we're evolving to and that we can look and say you know i don't think we were doing that quite right we're gonna make a shift here that is that's a gift in itself right there i i think that that's everything this parenting thing it's it's relentless it's unending

38:12 it is as hard as it feels right we're raising human beings who have different needs who are different from us who often kind of pull on our exact triggers so we're working on ourselves while we're taking care of small humans and probably doing a lot of other things that's a lot so giving ourselves that credit is what really i think opens up space to try that one new thing

38:42 one new thing all right susie this was amazing i love connecting with you always a pleasure [Music] i love talking with susie it's always so much fun to connect let's tie this all together with three takeaways one resilience isn't figuring out an answer when things feel hard resilience is the ability to tolerate

39:12 when things feel hard and you don't have the answer yet this reframe really allows us to focus our energy on helping our kids stay in that process of learning rather than trying to just get to the end of learning two model struggling yourself think about how hard it would be for you to learn if you were only around people who did things easily work on a tough crossword puzzle around your child and struggle with it mess up

39:43 while cooking dinner talk about a hard project at work this normalizes struggling and shows your kids without any lectures that everyone has to work hard three help your kid relate to their perfectionism instead of encouraging them to get rid of it we can't get rid of the feelings and urges in our bodies we can only leave them alone or offer connection and curiosity connection and curiosity are always key

40:13 elements in regulation so teach your child to say hi to a perfect voice and maybe even talk about your own perfect part inside you thanks for listening to good inside let's stay connected at goodinside.com you can sign up for workshops and subscribe to good insider my weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox and for more ideas and tips check out my instagram dr becky at goodinside

40:47 goodinside is produced by beth rowe and brad gage an executive produced by eric kabelski and me dr becky if you enjoyed this episode please take a moment to rate and review and if you really like the episode please share it with someone you know many of you tell me that sharing an episode has allowed you to start conversations about tricky topics with spouses or extended family members and to bond and connect with fellow cycle breakers

41:17 i actually do read each and every review so please know that your feedback is meaningful to me let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves even as i struggle and even as i have a hard time on the outside i remain good inside

41:59 you