How to Support Your Growing Preteen

0:00 hi it's daddy whoops are here and we're doing a Facebook live on parenting tweens teens little you know very young teens like children who are making that transition from you know the messing around as a kid to little heading a little bit towards becoming a teenager and we've got lots of questions to answer so I think I'll go ahead I think I'll preface it a little bit first to

0:30 say that one of the things that happens when children get to be about 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 is that school and expect social expectations pull play away from children and play is actually the most encouraging the most inspiring and in a way the most intellectually integrating the kind of thing that a child can do

1:00 play involves the whole limbic system and the cortical structures as well it uses your whole brain it's a very kind of nourishing healing way to be in the world and children love to play the school and art expectations that they should be getting older now and you know should be doing things of significance really get in the way of play and so one

1:31 of the things that makes preteens and early teens grumpy is the fact that they're just not having any much laughter they're not getting to be creative in that way they're not getting to connect with others in that way now they're expected to go to school in middle school and sit down and eat lunch during during their break time and there is no sort of recess no permission to be running around messing around goofing around having fun and laughing so we as

2:03 parents would do well to understand this that play is still really important that play is still a prime way of connecting or with our children and that our children still need that connection so they're not going to think we are as funny as they used it's they used to think we were they're not going to appreciate our jokes is fully they may groan and I roll when we try to ruffle their hair or give them a little back

2:31 rub while they're eating their breakfast before school but all these things are still important and we need to not take you know they're sort of typical flack when we reach out to them or you know just offer a little bit of clay or a little bit of lightness you know if they're not up for it they'll signal that but that doesn't mean they don't want us to try they want us to try to reach them and they want us

3:04 not to get discouraged when they're it's just not quite the right moment or we didn't do it in quite the way that they were hoping for so I think the other thing that I'll say is that as as young people get older the obvious kind of connection cables between us and them kind of start getting buried underground so that no longer do they run to us when we come home from work or from the gym or

3:36 wherever we've been they kind of look up and go hi you know and and look back at whatever it is that they're engrossed in their homework or their screens or talking on the phone so we need to know that although they are not reassuring us and the way that young children will reassure us that we're important and that they care about us and that the connection that we offer is really vital to them so we're getting no reassurance

4:07 however the connection that we're offering is still vital it's as vital as it ever was so in a way becoming the parent of a preteen means that you have to work on your feelings of needing reassurance to know you do the right thing to know that your your presence is important that the connection you offer even if it's rejected at that moment is still important so it's really in a way the

4:38 importance of using listening partnerships to keep our side of the relationship moving in a good direction it has never been more important it's really important so we don't lose our patience with our little ones who seem to need our attention in every every three seconds it's important you know early so that we can uncover our ability to play but it's important in these tween years the years approaching being a teenager and shortly into that to keep

5:11 our longings for reassurance or our dependence on signals from our children that they care about us that they didn't know we're connected we need to wean ourselves from meeting all of that and we also need to start working on our children are growing up they're no longer little we have to work to see their sweetness we have to work to see how beautiful they are when they wake up

5:43 grumpy or our ignoring our every offer of connection for on a bad day so that's what I'll say in preface it's not the only thing to say about parenting tweens but if you are looking for reassurance and sad that you're not getting it are feeling rejected because you're not getting it or feeling like there must be something wrong you're doing because you're not getting it you are not alone almost every other parent is in the same

6:12 boat if they have a child in this age group and there are things you can do about it you don't need that reassurance to keep reaching out you don't need that reassurance to be sure that connection still is the key focus for your parenting connect and reasonable limits and play and listening these are the ingredients of our listening tools early in your child's life and they are still the vital ingredients of our listening tools

6:44 as you parent your tween so here we go on the questions okay the first one is a really important question and it's a you know it's when we all will face at some time unless we've been able to be very very careful so and take reasonable precautions so the question is how do you restore a childhood when children have seen or received information that

7:17 is beyond their years how also to manage over stimulation in a busy world I think that is one of the factors involved in my child starting high school in the UK and suddenly developing more attitude there is no way to undo a child having seen or been exposed to material or experiences that are beyond their years you know seeing traumatic incidents all

7:52 it takes these days is reading the newspaper really to have them have to face things that are just not understandable and that hurt deeply if we are open enough to actually feel what's going on feel what we're reading in the newspapers to feel the the many sore spots in the world that urgently need attention however what we can do is to continue to offer play continue to

8:25 offer connection and to listen so in a way I think what's really helpful to think about during these tween and teen years first of all there it is important to protect our children as best we can from seeing or being exposed to stuff that they're not ready for pornography is one topic that is important I think and difficult to talk about but we live in societies that feed

9:01 off of addicting young people to things that are not good for them and the way addiction happens is that a person is exposed to something that's not good for them and if it's a substance it sort of hooks on to their physiology in a way and then they they don't have any help unhooking that physiological response and in terms of pornography it hooks into fear and embarrassment and shame shame that they

9:35 saw something that they then that they know they shouldn't have seen or heard embarrassment because it is deeply embarrassing to be faced with you know information that that looks to be intimate and private when you have just walked in on it somehow or been brought in on it somehow and fear because young people can't really understand a sexual relationship and and until they begin to

10:09 feel that pull and even then they don't understand the snares and the ways in which they can be manipulated it's very difficult to to inform a young person about the possible manipulation of their wants their desires and and and the manipulation of their maturation process that pornography creates so if you haven't already as a parent in between you're going to want to find an Internet

10:41 blocking program to make sure that porn can't reach inside your house can't reach onto your phones as best you can there are programs out there this is not my area of expertise but you people around you who have a good idea of how to do this you find people do a search online and do all you can to protect your devices at home from intrusion from pornography sites it's really really important we have a few

11:12 instructors whose children as young as nine have somehow you know been drawn into pornography sites have seen stuff that they didn't have any idea how to process and then because of the fear factor fear creates addiction the fear kind of hooks you into money to go back and see again things that you didn't understand the first time and that is how billions of dollars worldwide are made off of pornography it really

11:44 basically is a money-making proposition to feed on our children so I would be careful there and once that has happened you need to basically work on you are upset that it's happened so that you're not tight and worried and feeling hopeless about it and then use the listening tools to create enough safety so that your child can talk to you about what they've seen so that they can ask the questions that might be on their

12:15 mind so that you can give them better information and so that they can ask for your help to stay away from the sites and the the things that they were exposed to so that they it doesn't so the addiction factor doesn't kick in so that there's one exposure or two exposures and then they can work on their their feelings with you just in sort of I think the parents that I know

12:46 that have worked on this have kind of lain with their children at night and just waited until the child could talk to them about what they'd seen and heard ask the questions and as long as you can keep working on your brief and upset - about what your child's been exposed to you'll be able to relax enough that your child can trust bringing up the images that they that make them uncomfortable that return in their mind

13:16 the things they're trying to figure out and ask you about them and talk to you about them and perhaps crying about them so in a way play child's play is a huge antidote to seeing and hearing things that you know that are beyond a child's can and so I think play and a special time are kind of the way to build enough trust so that your child can begin to

13:46 talk to you about what they've been exposed to that's true and early childhood and that's true you know in the in the between years as well and that's that's all I'll say there is that all the listening tools will be needed any time any time you're trying to undo a fear whether it's you know leading to an addiction or whether it's a fear of something that that children should ordinarily not have to deal with all the

14:16 listening tools are going to be needed to get that sticky emotion kind of to heal that sticky emotion and freedom from feeling bothered by the thoughts that occur to them unbidden because they were exposed okay okay best response - I hate myself it's not a regular thing that my child says but it would be good to have a go-to response especially as my nine-year-old daughter has moved past

14:47 the stage of always wanting a hug for comfort so I think that our expectation that there would be a go-to response for anything that our children do is kind of a funny expectation because our goal is to really take each thing that our children do and say as a fresh incident unlike the last time they didn't said that because they're in a different place they are responding to a different

15:20 stress now they've lost their ability to see their own goodness for a different reason this time and so I don't think there's any one response you want to do over and over again the second time you do that one response that's supposed to be a tip from me say the second time you do it they're gonna look at you like oh not this again because children have really as they become teens they develop a stronger and stronger sense of when

15:51 their parents are for lack of a better word bullshitting sorry I couldn't think of anything better there when their parents are kind of in in in a in a habitual groove and so pretense that we know what we're doing and we are the expert I don't know they just have a really strong sense of when children parents are pretending and when they are you know kind of in a rut in a response right so we don't really want to adopt

16:21 that same response sometimes I hate myself good ringing Oh tell me what made you feel that way you know an invitation to look at what was the trigger for that do you want to talk about it so that would be one response I just tell me more another response would be to just say how can I help you with that and let a

16:53 child direct what happens next because a child might say oh I just need a hug or they might say I don't know I don't know what you can do you know or a child might say just lets you know let's snuggle or let's read a book or they might have an idea and you could ask one response that I have seen work very very well but it's not one to use all the

17:26 time again you kind of want to feel your way along trust your best judgment and do an experiment rather than come up with you know a an old chestnut of a response but this one is good it's kind of like oh no does I hate myself bugs they they must be bothering you let me see and you go over and you just kind of go through your child's hair as if it was lice that you're trying to find oh here's one right here

17:51 and you find an imaginary I hate myself bug and you do let's stomp on it you throw it down you know it's an imaginary thing you throw it down on the floor and you squish it with your with your toe and I bet they're small round there let me see what I like and you look under their arm you look between their fingers and you you know you pull up pull their pockets out to see if there's any bugs in there

18:14 and just it's kind of just a little light playful you know I'm not worried about you we're just gonna play with this feeling that you have or I'm gonna give you an imaginary fix and you know see if that goes over it's like it's not the magic answer to everything it's not gonna work every time but it's friendly it's physical but not intrusive it's got a little humor to it oh I found one what shall I do with it

18:44 you know you can get your child involved in the imagine in the playful response so that's one Oh sweetie what about tonight I lie down with you and if you want to talk about it some more we can you know you can just propose a if you're in the middle of cooking dinner and you don't have your wits about you to really get into a long deep conversation you know that your child just walks by and drops that

19:14 little bomb but you know it's a busy time you could just sit at the time or say that you'll be a listener at a time in the in the near future and park it trying to park it I don't know those those are the things that I think of but in a way that feeling of you know there's something wrong with me and I'm really unhappy with myself is a symptom of a lack of connection or of a hurt

19:47 that's back there and the really the overall response needs to be finding ways to do more special time finding ways to integrate play into the family routine on a regular basis play that your child enjoys and so in and I'm really emphasizing play because it's so important so the ways that families create a play groove sometimes the these groups are based on

20:19 what the child loved to do when they were little you know if you had a child that just loved for you to give them horsey rides around the house and they used to laugh and giggle and laugh and giggle and somehow that was a thing that you always did there's no reason why you have to stop giving them horsey rides around the house you'll be slower you're not going to be as Swift as you where when they just wait you know forty

20:41 pounds but there's no reason why you can't you know say come on hop on I'll give you a ride around every now and then with your older child no they may go oh I don't want to do that anymore but you can just kind of wiggle your butt oh alright Josh you tempted aren't you tempted to just hop on so you don't have to take you know an immediate no you know you ridiculous parent you as

21:07 the final answer you can you can cajole you can tempt you can kind of dangle a fun little moment oh just for three seconds hop on let's see if I can carry you no mom you can't do that you know I bet I can might only be three seconds but let's give it a try so you kind of want to be in a way we have to relearn how to flirt how to offer our attention

21:38 and assume that we're gonna be able to find a way to lure you over here have something fun happen yeah I kind of want to have a little sparkle in your eye and little you know not too much investment in what exactly happens just a little moment of connection a little moment of an offer even if they just you know mom no I said no and I mean no you know okay I'll try again you know you don't have

22:09 to be wilted because your child rejects you at that moment and when you find yourself wilting that means listening partnership is necessary it's like we need in a way we need to take the responses of no not now I'm I just can't receive your offer I've got so much stuff in my head I can't focus on you at all you know these are all legitimate states that our children are in at this age their minds are very very busy with

22:41 trying to figure out the social scene trying to feel okay about themselves trying to do a ton of schoolwork and and meet expectations there or trying to not meet expectations there and that takes a lot of a lot of intellectual space in their brain how to you know how to rebel successfully that that can take up a lot of time so they are busy doing necessary things necessary experiments now

23:11 responding to a much more challenging environment and they were in in elementary school and we just need to know that you know the state they're in sometimes is just not one in which they can allow a connection or or reveal to you that they're open to a connection sometimes they're really open but they cannot show you you know they're in in a moment of rebellion right now and the need for connection and the desire for

23:42 it is under the surface so they don't even know it's we have to just be roll with what they show us and keep bouncing back like those little those little clowns that have a you know their their blow-up clown and they have a weighted bottom and you punch them and down they go and it's very satisfying you give it a punch and that clown you know goes down but it pops back up again and you can punch it

24:07 again and in a way we kind of in the US they call this Bobo the clown you know we need to be like Bobo where you know they can reject us but we hop back you know interested in making a connection still and we may not press at that moment we need to pop back and and offer again so let's see so I think that I hate myself is a sign that there are

24:38 tears and grief and maybe some fears that need to be released and creating play making offers of connection setting up special time and then set ain't making grooves where it's okay for your child to talk to you there aren't a whole lot of distractions the way there usually are in life busy lives these days now that your child is in heavy-duty school years so I am an

25:10 advocate of lying with your child at night before they go to sleep and setting that up as an expectation even if it's just ten minutes just getting in snuggling maybe offering a hand rub or a back scratch or a scalp rub or I don't know I'm some children like their faces to be stroked and you know what your child likes will be very some kids want their feet grabbed but finding a way to physically connect in a non demanding

25:41 way and not asking probing questions at that time just being there offering a very quiet understated connection and seeing what they want to talk about if anything some families like to read a good book and the parent reads to the child and then the child reads the parent or the parent reads the book to the child even though the child is and he's a fine reader or isn't a fine reader it's not a not a lesson time

26:12 but it's time to go together to an imaginary place we get involved in this story and be invested in the same story for a little while that's another way to make a connection any of these things just kind of setting up that expectation that we will be together and I will be there for you and you can talk to me or you can not talk to me I'll be equally happy either way and where you're not

26:39 equally happy either way where your oh my gosh I think my child doesn't have is in the middle of X Y Z kind of trouble that you take to your listening partners so that you're not pushing and jabbing at your child to tell you something that you just guess is there are urgency to solve problems makes it very difficult for our children to confide in us and to confide in us is what they need to do so

27:05 in order to open up areas where they have feelings and to make it safe enough or to build the safety that they can reveal those feelings to us and release the tension and tears our trembling or or anger so there's another question related to this let's see you know I can't find it at the moment when you

27:37 have tried to remain calm and keep your cool all day while suffering attack after attack from your tween because they lost their phone privilege and you finally snap and lose your mind how do you repair the damage the next day well first of all of course this happens it's like we all blow it as parents because we don't have enough support or because we have no idea that there is such a such a trigger such a hair-trigger in

28:07 this particular place and so we just kind of walk right into it raishin not knowing how easily we're going to be triggered in them Vavoom we are lost and it's not at not a happy moment and once we see this once we see a trigger that you know left out of the dark and grabbed us and took us away that's a really good topic for listening partnership you know just so I think one response is to go release the grief and

28:36 upset and the embarrassment of having had a moment like that and to or end or to finish the anger response it's like we gently were just getting going with a really heated anger response when we know we realized oh my god I've got to stop this and we didn't finish the lecture we really wanted to deliver and so using a listening partner to deliver the whole lecture to five times over with all the heat that it deserves it

29:03 needs to go somewhere and oftentimes their deep feelings underneath that anger response that is really really fruitful to get to because that really deconstructs the trigger so that's one thing to do after we've blown it the second thing to do is to say just again we don't want to ambush our children with heavily Freight 'add interactions

29:34 you know they could they walk home from school they're tired they're hungry they walk in the door it's like oh I'm so sorry for last night you know and that is kind of afraid it may be afraid of interaction especially if we haven't gotten listening time yet so they're seeing us looking worried and guilt and guilt-stricken and they just have no space for it and they just kind of ignore us and walk by and so the the

30:00 apology the way we wanted it to land did not happen and it's one more feeling of failure and upset so I think on interactions that have some import that you really want to go well it's a good idea to begin notifying your child that you would like to talk about XYZ and and to give them permission to decide the time and the place so sweetie I'd like to I'd like to apologize for last night and I wanted so

30:32 would you let me know when you've got a moment and I can and I can do that properly and just let them say oh yeah not right now I'm just I'm Way too hungry you know and and let them decide so and if they can't decide by the end of the day then maybe you include that in your little time that made rich you lie with your child before they fall asleep something like that or cuddling

31:01 on the couch or you know eating the last bite of a really good dessert together you just then pick a time and go ahead and spring it we do need to apologize for our children for when we lose it and we can also empower our children if we're finding that we are getting angry again and again and again because we are able to do the emotional work fast enough that we need to do to kind of

31:30 diffuse the know a particular set of triggers we can say look you know when I start raising my voice or when I you know start looking like you know a wild animal and I start talking to you disrespectfully here are three things you can do and just and think about these things and then offer them to your child so when you can call you know this person this person or this person and say my mom is starting to yell at me

32:01 which she talked to her for a little while and you can you know you can ask for help you can tell somebody this is happening again and I will talk to them although I'll be furious to have to do that but but it'll be better that I talk to them then continue being hard on you so you give them someone they can call you give them a little sign or a little paper that says no mom please don't talk

32:29 to me that way or mom I love you don't talk that way so they can kind of go get this piece of paper and hold it up they don't have to say something they can just show us that we're locked in an interaction that both neither of us want to be in but they give a sign that they notice this and that will help us notice that we are locked in that interaction rather than being caught in the hole

32:56 you know lecture disapproval pattern that comes up for us they can ask us to lie down on the floor say mom you have to lie down on the floor now or dad you have to lie down on the floor now and the agreement is you know that you will lie down on the floor if they tell you to and so you lie down on the floor taking you out of the you know I'm the boss around here

33:21 attitude that most of us get when we are lost and and then basically we just have to kind of deal with what's going on inside ourselves from the I'm not in charge anymore position and it takes us out of a scary mode puts us into a more or less approachable mode sooner or later and sometimes lying on the floor means that we can get to the feelings that are roiling around inside of us the

33:52 anger or the upset or the fear or the whatever it is whatever it is is probably old the heat comes from older older incidents that happened when we were very vulnerable and young and in a way very little of the reaction is about what's going on right now and when we lie down we can sometimes feel feel the heat without aiming it at the child so those are the things I have to say about that let's see okay we have several

34:31 questions about children and anger and we have a booklet hidden hand called reaching for your angry child and that booklet is geared for a of any age actually the principles are the same no matter what the age is the older a person is in a way the more their anger triggers experiences of

35:02 being with our own parents or people bigger than us people more powerful than we were when they were angry and I bet there's not a person on the planet who wasn't a child at a moment when there was an angry grown-up around to frighten them and intimidate them and make them wonder if they were going to make it through this incident so we have those and as our children grow it's those incidents that get triggered and and make our our own anger or our

35:34 self defense mechanisms flare so as our children get into this stage of feeling more disconnected and also feeling more disappointed in what the world has to offer disappointed that you know play is not accepted anymore disappointed in not being seen as an individual in a class of thirty two kids you know five or six times a day as they go through their Junior High schooling disappointed that girls are excluding girls and boys are

36:06 making fun of girls and you know whatever it is that's going on that boys are competing against one another and really trying to you know figure out who's dominant all of those dynamics are things that kids face every day as they go to school they're not easy dynamics to figure out to navigate as a young person they're intimidating dynamics that can really make a young person feel like they don't belong no matter how

36:37 sweet and wonderful they are so kids are facing a lot of a lot of challenges at school every day and they do come home disappointed disconnected and having been dissed disrespected or treated badly or simply not having had anybody's warm attention all day long not having been safe all day long so of course they're angry any self-respecting

37:08 human being would would respond like this is not good enough and the safest person to aim that disappointment that I want better and I want it now kind of energy is mom and dad we didn't enter parenting thinking that we were going to need to handle you know highly upset teens and preteens this is not what we got into it for all of the the sweet

37:40 little coos and and little romping around and delight that little children show us you know that was kind of what we imagined parenting would be and now we have these children who are facing a world that is not not healthy in every way and having to navigate having to find their way in kind of a jungle of of poor treatment human beings treating one another poorly of there being no sparkle

38:14 in the eyes no no release and laughter no not a whole lot of humor so they are angry for good reason we will not necessarily know the reasons but I think the you know what what our approach says is that anger is a sign that there are heavy feelings that need to be released anger is a sign that what needs to be released is a mixture of fear and grief

38:47 yeah but it's covered by a sense of isolation it's like the hard outer shell is this sense that nobody wants to help me nobody even cares nobody has any idea what I'm going through and that's this really hard outer shell that makes an angry child very difficult to be with because you can be kind and you can reach out but it all bounces off that hard outer shell at first your child is

39:17 inside aching to to have a way to show you how scared and or how hurt they feel how sad it is to have a life that is not full of laughter fun and closeness every moment of every day and none of us get that but you know they were hoping and now they're disappointed and there may also be particular incidents particular

39:49 harsh things that have happened or harsh things that have been said or fears of not making the grade that eat at our children and so there may be particular things that they haven't told us about that also you know fire up that anger so what we need to be prepared to do and and it takes in a way it takes training we have to consider that we are in training to deal with anger it will make

40:15 us stronger people at work make us stronger people in our lives it will help us improve our self-esteem and our command of ourselves to work on the feelings that we have about what we're being told no and and children know exactly where we are most vulnerable somehow they know you know if we don't feel socially acceptable you know if we have if we struggle socially we may have

40:47 never told them that that's how we feel but they've watched us operate for years and years and years and so when they're angry and we're you know making a little sweet little offer of help they may go you know you have no idea what to do socially I wouldn't take advice from you and did ten million years you know you don't even know how to have a friend you know and it's like it just goes right to

41:07 the place where we feel our confidence is is has never been good you know or if we took us a long time to decide whether we wanted this child or not and we finally decided yes we would have this child but it wasn't easy to make that decision for reasons of you know circumstance and you know all kinds of good reasons we had to think very very hard a child will often

41:38 somehow know this and so when we're reaching for them trying to really be there for them you know they'll go you you don't care about me anyway you never really wanted me know and and how they know this about us is very difficult to understand but somehow children know this by the time they're 9 or 10 or 11 years old they know our weakest spots and that's right where they're gonna hit us it happens in every family and so

42:08 what this means is that as people we have the opportunity and in a way the necessity to go in and work on the places where our confidence got quipped when we were little the place is where we are very very unsure of ourselves so that whoops so that we can really hang in while our children are showing us how hard that outer shell is because the way to deal with an angry child and you

42:41 can't do this every time your child is angry but slowly but surely we need to develop the stamina to hang in with a child who's angry and to to excuse ourselves from their presence when we begin to get reactive so I had when my son was I think my second son was 12 or 13 he was really angry a lot he was furious and I wasn't exactly sure what

43:13 it was about but it came up often and I would go in and try to stay with him and basically be a listener because the longer you stay with an angry person the more likely it is that they will finally that that be you know somehow the the limbic glow of your presence although you're struggling not feeling particularly glowing the fact that you're still there the fact that you didn't go away the fact that their

43:45 rejection of you did not make you disappear slowly makes an impression on their limbic system and it kind of melts that hard outer shell and so the longer you stay the more likely it is that at some point they will just be able to leak a few tears and tell you a little bit more about what's in that soft clay that soft vulnerable very hurt place inside or they'll be able to finally shout at you one big terrible shout and

44:18 tell you you know what it is that's been eating them on the inside for the last three weeks you know and and begin to cry and sob and use your presence again not not happily but once the feelings are out in the open then you can basically stay but not you know you don't want to zoom in on them you don't want to change anything very quickly you just want to be present

44:49 and your presence will slowly soften that outer shell and it might not soften at this particular angry incident it might take three or four and in the meantime you know if they zing you with some you know horrible assessment of who you are and how you operate you just go oh my gosh I think I have to leave for a few minutes that you know I'm gonna get mad at to you if I don't so I'll be I'll

45:18 be back in three minutes and then you go into another room and maybe you count on the wall maybe you jump up and down maybe you what I used to do is walk around and around little sir tight little circle going goddamn kid because parenting really sucks I don't want to be here all I want to do is get out of here this is just I am so tired of this you know and so just kind of let her under my breath until I

45:45 could felt like I could kind of keep my keep my attention on him instead of on my own issues then I go back in say I'm back and oftentimes he would just now look at me and just give me another really hard shot verbal shot and I just okay I'll be back in another three minutes and I just go out trying to collect my wits trying to say enough under my breath that I could then think

46:12 about again going back in and offering my presence and my caring so we would we would just in in this halting way kind of make it through an anger incident so that I could finally sit next to him on his bed while he was facing them all and sometimes we would lie together he would lie facing the wall and I would just lie with my back to him also if I was feeling upset and mad we would just lie

46:40 there back-to-back just letting the physical contact and the physical presence in the same place and have work its do it's smelting work and you know after 15 minutes of lying back-to-back you know him seething on hidden suicide and me kind of trying not to see that you know I was indeed saving on my side and slowly you know he would sort of turn turn around so that he'd be facing up and then I would turn around and then

47:10 we would just make a fresh start it's like you know are you hungry I'm kind of hungry you know and it's like well what if we got in the fridge well I could make you a ham sandwich oh that doesn't sound good how about tuna yeah all right let's do tuna I could use some too and then we could finally reconnect and kind of start start from go so but really hanging in with an angry person doing

47:39 what we can to not react or if we get reactive making a quick exit you know gathering our prize our presence of mind again going back in and actually there's a really great anecdote I'll tell you it was a mom of a ten-year-old I think she was maybe an 11 year old fifth grader and this child had been screaming had

48:11 suddenly started screaming bloody murder and would refusing to go to school and just you know her mom did not want to try to pick her up and put her in the car to force her to go to school because she was you know she was a large child but this child did not want to go to school she was in a class that I was teaching and started class and the other things that I knew about them were that

48:35 the mom was living in an undisclosed location she didn't give anybody her phone number or her email address and the only reason that a parent would live in an undisclosed location is that someone is trying to hurt them so I'm assuming that there was a presence in their life that was harmful and threatening and that and anytime a child is screaming and screaming and screaming you know they have fear to work on so this mom had a very unworkable situation

49:06 she'd taken her child to a psychiatrist she'd taken her child to I don't know a counselor you know nobody had been able to help her figure out what to do so she came to our class and people in the class were very concerned about this mom people who listened to her said oh my gosh no this is a terrible situation but she came back the second class and she got all the materials and got the booklets and then she didn't show up for

49:35 three classes and I had no way to get ahold of her I didn't you know what could I do so I just assumed that we were one more agency that had you know failed her we were one more try for what should I do with my child that didn't work for her but she came back actually the second to the final class and said what I I read the booklets and I gave my daughter special time you know five times one day

50:09 and I took four days off of work and I decided to stay home and try to connect Connect connect connect I figured that she must be really scared and the mom didn't refer to her situation at all but she said you know this must be fear so we did special time she laughed a bunch she loved it and then the second day she started screaming and being furious at me and I just stayed and I listened and

50:37 I stayed and I listened and her she would go back and forth between screaming bloody murder and being furious with me for a really long period of time and then wanting to play and laugh and play and laugh and then something would set her off and she'd scream and be furious with me again and this happened off and on for two days and at the end of the second day she was like her like her normal self

51:03 again like she was calm she was able to focus we could she was easy about what we did she wasn't on a hair-trigger and she wanted to go back to school and so she's back in school she's doing fine I got my daughter back and it was really just you know doing special time and then hanging in through this these terrible storms of feeling that really turned things around for this mom who had been in a really dire situation with

51:34 your daughter so it it's not something we can just kind of pop up and do oftentimes we have to really work on places where we've been deeply hurt or deeply frightened by people who were highly irrational in our presence when we were small but it is well worth doing and there's one more question in here about a child treating their sibling badly and I think I'll take that one but you know as the last question that I'll

52:05 answer let me see if I can find it okay my son of 13 is polarizing for the moment with his sister of 8 I often have the feeling it's never good for one of my kids I have 4 16 13 12 and 8 so when a child is targeting a sibling limits need to be

52:38 set it's really not healthy for the family to have that kind of targeting going on at random times kind of blowing up the peace and the family at will that just doesn't doesn't make for a family life that is fun to come home to for anybody and the child who is doing this he has got feelings under the surface that are popping up and for some reason getting aimed at a sibling and it it's

53:10 not good for them to be doing hurtful things to someone that they are close to and will have a lifelong relationship with kids don't want to hurt one another but when they're hurting so badly and there's no they have no they don't know how to show it or how to work on it that's sometimes what happens so one good way to deal with this is to just basically kind of put your arms on your son's shoulder you don't have to do that

53:42 but it's just the image of you know connecting physically and saying you know your little sister is getting hurt by some of the hard things that you have to say to her and it's not really good for the rest of us to have to listen to that so but I know you really have big feelings about her and so I'm gonna show you know it's my husband so I'm going to make a time every day when we are going

54:16 to talk about your feelings about your sister and you can I'll make anything I'll be delighted to hear I want to hear and I will write down you know all of the things that make you upset about her so we'll have five minutes of you know you get to complain about your sister every day and then you keep to it you know you set aside a time and you go okay let's go let's go back in the back bedroom we're

54:41 going to have our appointment now and you take pencil and paper sometimes it really helps children to feel like we're taking them seriously if we make a list and show them the list and and we just listen to the complaints listen to the things that his sister did listen to the way he hates how she chews she hums all the time and he can't stand all that humming bothers in the whole LA and now why do you let her hum like that and I

55:10 don't know it's just it's like these tiny little pretext that bring up big feelings of upset that's you know that that the upset is made perhaps not even related to his sister but these little tiny pretexts let him feel it because they're tiny you know because they're not related and in order to help get closer to being able to help him with the core issue you really do need to pay attention to all of the all the

55:40 complaints so set aside some time but then when he's complaining out in the open air and the family know oh there she goes again her chewing is just you know then you do you try you know a vigorous snuggle it's like oh there you go yeah that I save that for our appointment Kimmy are you you know and you just kind of haul him out of his chair at the dinner table and haul him into the next room and give some playful

56:05 punches or or maybe it looks like being humorous and and physically kind of both affectionate and offering a limit is not going to work because you're you know your 13 year old is 6 feet tall and you're only 5 - then what you can do is to ruffle their hair you know I don't know it just sort of you could playfully change the topic of

56:35 oh let's talk about kangaroos you know tell me anything you know about kangaroos and you just kind of like I am sort of divert attention in a totally strange way you know without announcing anything you just bring everybody's attention to a topic that is you know so far away from what was just offered that it's a surprise you could try that actually I have I have done this with siblings with people on the street who

57:07 are actually punching and harming you know another person on the street you know and just run up to them and say what kind of milkshake do you like you know chocolate vanilla or strawberry and I'm very insistent come on tell me which kind of milkshake you like this happened a long time ago when there was a big teenager kind of punching his little brother I mean really socking him hard right in the middle of the street and I

57:31 had no idea what it was about but I just ran up and gotten it you know got close and just started asking these very insistent questions to which I got no answer but the very puzzled look and no and I didn't get an answer to the milkshake question I said ok well then in your lunch do you take an apple or an orange or banana come on tell me what you put in your lunch apples aren't just

57:52 bananas tell me what you like and you know both he and his brother who thought I was absolutely out of my mind but they run across some crazy lady and they kind of pulled themselves together and looked at each other and said we're going home and because I started walking home but the you know the punching incident was over because I've been so insistently posing questions that have nothing to do with the situation so that's that's a

58:21 technique you've been trying when things are you know kind of out of hand I don't know you you want to make a place for the complaints you in that place for the complaints you can say okay here's your sister and you hold up a little pillow what do you feel like doing and your your child can punch the pillow can squeeze the pillow can bite the pillow and it's like ooh ooh you're getting there oh my gosh look at that Oh No

58:50 the bite of death and you can add a little humor there see if you can get them laughing it's like just being able to do something about the fury inside can be can can lead to some emotional release it could possibly lead to crying it could possibly lead to laughter it could possibly lead to well you know she gets all the attention around here and I don't get any you know slowly but surely over five days or ten days of having

59:18 this little okay you know I'm ready to hear your complaints about your sister now your point is not to solve anything your point is to set up a time to listen to make it safer and safer to say what his feelings are and for that safety to slowly but surely you know reduce the walls that he feels are between him and you so that he can tell you what's at the bottom of this and begin to be able

59:45 to feel the hurt feelings that are there that he's been trying to flag you about for a while so we have lots more questions but I hope that some of the thoughts I've given have answered questions that I haven't read and the class that we'll be doing that preteens class that we'll be doing I'm putting that class together I'm filling it with anecdotes I'm hoping to have many really juicy anecdotes from parents who have

60:18 struggled with this age this stage of parenting and I've come up with interesting ways to solve the problems interesting ways to reach their child interesting grooves of connection that they have been able to revive out of childhood and get them started again or that they have been able to start now that their child is you know verging on on adolescents that have served them well so I will be bringing lots of other

60:49 parents experiences to you and telling you just some of the principles that we kind of need to hang on to as we find our way through the sometimes difficult to navigate territory of having a tween so I have a little blurb about the class and I'm supposed to tell you about so it's being designed for parents of children between 9 and 13 but

61:21 anybody's welcome of course and you can pre-purchase the class you can even do this today and if you pre-purchase I think you get a perk of being able to use a discount code and then you get access to our building a listening partnership class which is a pretty thorough introduction to the art of listening in the art of finding a listener and developing listening partnership which ordinarily costs $89

61:54 but you get a discount code so that that class costs just five dollars on top of the tweens class so you can pre-order we're coming out with a class in January and I think it's going to be unhelpful I'm really trying to season it with lots of experiences that will encourage you and and remind you that you're not alone in this struggle that your children are good that many of the behaviors they

62:24 have are just little signals that life isn't as easy as it was used to be for them and that they've got challenges that they need time and attention in order to tell you about so when our listening tools will be helpful so thanks for being here thanks for the love that you share even when your children don't tell you that they are receiving it and are you know that that's the fuel they run on it is the

62:53 fuel they run on and they would tell you if they could and eventually when they get into adulthood they may be able to you know appreciate you as fully as you deserve so meanwhile I'll appreciate you very very fully for all you all the caring and all the love and all the patience you're pouring in your child's direction Thanks bye-bye