How Our Coping Mechanisms in Childhood Show Up in Our Parenthood with Dr. Gabor Mate: Round Two
0:00:00 Alyssa
You're listening to Voices of Your Village and today we are sharing an episode we've aired before with Gabor Maté. It's been two years since the air date and it's still one of our most popular episodes because it absolutely slays. I adore him. He's a renowned speaker and bestselling author. Dr. Gabor Maté is highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics including addiction, stress, and childhood development. He's written several bestselling books, I love The Myth of Normal, there are so many more here, Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Close Encounters with Addiction, When the Body Says No, Exploring the Stress -Disease Connection, and Scattered Minds: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It. He has also co -authored Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More than Peers. He is so profound and I learn from him every time I get to hear him talk. I'm so excited to dive into this episode with you again because I learn new things every time I listen. All right, folks, let's dive in.
00:01:14 Alyssa
Hey there. I'm Alyssa Blask Campbell. I'm a mom with a master's degree in early childhood education and co -creator of the Collaborative Emotion Processing Method. I'm here to walk alongside you through the messy, vulnerable parts of being humans raising other humans with deep thoughts and actionable tips. Let's dive in together.
00:01:37 Alyssa
Hello everyone and welcome back to Voices of Your Village. Today I get to hang out with renowned speaker and bestselling author Dr. Gabor Maté. He is so brilliant and I've been absolutely loving his latest book, a New York Times bestseller that I am sure you've been exposed to at this point, The Myth of Normal. Dr. Maté, I'm so excited to get to hang out with you today. How are you?
00:02:04 Gabor
I'm very well, thank you. And I hope you call me Gabor.
00:02:06 Alyssa
Okay, great. I can. Gabor, I am curious what, when you were coming to this book, I mean, you've written so many incredible books. I love your work specifically around ADHD and and think that it's really, really crucial. What was it that inspired the creation of this book?
00:02:28 Gabor
Well, this book took a long time to generate itself and to gestate itself, about 10 or 11 years. My previous books had all tackled certain aspects, important aspects of the human experience, child development, childhood, mental health challenges, if you can call it that, such as ADHD, addiction, and the mind -body unity in health and illness, which is the subject of my book, When the Body Says No. But as a physician, and then also getting into the therapeutic world, it's impossible to escape the knowledge that it's all connected, that these individual issues don't develop in a vacuum or of isolation, that really we have to look at the whole context in which people develop and in which they either do well, they thrive, or they suffer. And so many people are suffering these days. And so one has to look at the whole culture and the relationships between our personal interactions with others and the cultural context in which that takes place. And how all that affects our minds, our brains, our physiology, our health, our illness. So really I was compelled to look at the large picture and to bring it all together. And hence was the genesis of the myth of normal.
00:03:57 Alyssa
I think it's so powerful. I think of it as like going upstream to look at the source of a problem rather than staying downstream and pulling people out of the water. And it had me reflecting on my own life and my worldview as an early childhood educator and so many of the things that our day -to -day experiences that I navigate with kids as a teacher or as a mom, I have a toddler and things that, yeah, we just chalk up to like, this is normal, this is how it is without taking that step back to say, is it just standard because of our culture or is it normal? And your book really challenged me to take that step back and really look at the whole picture. One thing that I'm curious about, I find myself then being like, okay, I don't wanna repeat the challenges from my childhood, right? And so there's kind of like this pendulum swing sometimes inside of me. And I think that one of the challenges in parenting today, and maybe it's always been, and I'm just living it now, is this idea of perfection, of making sure that our kids don't experience anything hard and trying to show up perfectly and what happens if we don't sort of thing. And I'm curious about your thoughts on that.
00:05:23 Gabor
Well, yes, here's the reality. Life is hard. The Buddha said 2 ,500 years ago that life is suffering. Not that it needs to be, but that it is, you know? And the fact is, our children will get hurt. They'll have disappointments. Their friends won't want to play with them sometimes. Their grandmother may die. Their parents may fight. All kinds of things happen. So the real question is not how to safeguard our kids from difficult things happening, but how do we help them develop the resilience and the trust in themselves and the belief in the world and the capacity to ask for help so that they can negotiate and navigate these challenges. That has nothing to do with perfection. And that has nothing to do with trying to save them from the hardships of our own childhoods. And even the desire to be perfect and the desire to protect them comes from our own difficulties facing reality, which does reflect our own childhoods. So on one hand, we don't want to expose our children to unnecessary pain. We don't want to hurt them with our own hurts. We don't want to pass on to them our own traumas that we haven't dealt with. I mean, I did. I passed my traumas onto my children. I didn't know I had traumas to pass on when I passed them on. I was just being who I thought I was being, that I was being someone who was still carrying their own trauma and unwittingly manifest them in my life in a way that would affect my kids. I had no idea about. So as much as possible, we wanna work that stuff through. But on the other hand, to be over anxious about having to be perfect and to protect their kids from all manners of difficulty and pain, that itself is gonna make them anxious and they're gonna absorb our own anxiety about life. So how to say this in a nutshell, we have to protect them from unnecessary pain at the same time, give them the resilience and the capacity and the trust and the strength to handle what pain does inevitably come along.
00:07:44 Alyssa
Yeah, I think that that's so huge and so hard to keep front of mind is that like, it is okay and they are gonna experience hard things. And one of the things you dive into in your work is how are coping mechanisms from childhood show up in parenthood? And I think personally, like building awareness of that is so key to being able to regulate it and go to those next steps, just like you said, like you passed on that, some trauma to your kids unknowingly, it wasn't like you were like, I'm going to pass this on. It just happens when we have unresolved traumas. And so can you walk us through like, how do our coping mechanisms in childhood show up in parenthood? What might that look like as an example?
00:08:35 Gabor
Well, so let's begin with what children's needs are. And these are not arbitrary, they're not invented. They are really what evolution has ingrained in us. Now, every creature has certain needs. You might say every creature has certain expectations. In fact, you might say even more deeply, every creature is an expectation. So a fish is an expectation for water, and for a certain salinity in that water, and certain nutriments. It's not that the little fish is hatched from the egg expecting that, it is very existence expects all that. And what those expectations are, like our lungs don't expect oxygen, our lungs have an expectation for oxygen. If it wasn't for oxygen, our lungs wouldn't have developed. So when I talk about children's needs, I'm talking about what evolution has ingrained in us. So what are those needs? Unconditional, the accepting, safe, secure attachment, relationship with nurturing adults. Not negotiable. Not negotiable in the sense that we can survive without it, but we can't thrive without it. That's the first one. The second one is really essential, is that within that relationship, the attachment relationship, the child should not have to work to make their relationship work. In other words, the child should, and this is outlined in The Myth of Normal, so that the child should have rest in that relationship. There's nothing the child should be able to do to break their relationship with the parent, and there's nothing the child should have to do to rebuild it. That work is 100 % on the parent, and on the parenting environment, I should say. I think that's so important, that need that you just outlined. It's crucial, and denial of it leads to pathology. And I'll explain in a moment why. The third need that the child has is the freedom to experience all their emotions. Now, our brains are wired for certain emotions which include joy and love, and also fear and panic and grief and anger. Not only our brains are wired for it, so are the brains of all mammals. This is pure evolution. And for us to be healthy, we have to be able to experience all those emotions and have those emotions be accepted and validated by the environment. So that's the third need. And the fourth need, non -negotiable for healthy child development, is spontaneous free play out in nature. Not play on the internet, not games, not cell phone games, but free spontaneous creative play out in nature. Those are the four needs. Now, if those needs are met, we have healthy child development. For most children in our society, those needs are not met. Number one. Number two, if those needs are not met, the child has to cope somehow. So, for example, the child needs to be able to express their anger. There's nothing wrong with a two -year -old being angry. But if the parents regard that based on the advice of any number of, and I say this advisedly, stupid parenting experts, that the child's anger should be punished and discouraged, The child will cope. The child has a decision to make. The child can say to themselves unconsciously, I can belong to my parents and be accepted by them, or I can experience my genuine emotions, but it seems I can't have both, because if I express my genuine emotions, my parents give me a time out. They banish me from their presence. This is what I call, in one of the chapters, the conflict between attachment and authenticity. The need for the child to attach to the parent, which is non -negotiable, and the need for the child to be able to experience themselves as they truly are. Well, if the parent is unwilling to give the message that you're not acceptable the way you truly are, the child will then cope by repressing their anger, by pushing down their anger. Now, what's another word for pushing down? Depression. That child will then be prone for depression later on. And because of the mind -body unity, which I can't even go into in this conversation, but I write about it in my book, When the Body Says No, and in this one, The Myth of Normal, when we suppress our healthy anger, we're also suppressing our immune system. So that coping mechanism that was essential for the child to maintain the attachment relationship, Therefore, it was the wisdom of the organism that the child should repress their anger, but the same coping mechanism, once ingrained, creates mental and physical health issues later on. Or if the parents are emotionally needy and upset and the relationship is not functioning, the child automatically takes on the work, trying to make peace in the family by being good and being nice and being cooperative. That's a coping mechanism. That same coping mechanism will lead the child to ignore their own needs and to focus on the needs of others. That is a cause of pathology later on. So these early coping mechanisms, when our essential needs are denied, these early coping mechanisms, they are not mistakes. They are important for childhood survival, but the same coping mechanisms become the sources of pathology and dysfunction and self -rejection later on.
00:14:46 Alyssa
Yeah, and it's so, sorry, go ahead.
00:14:49 Gabor
No, I just hope that's clear enough because it's a mouthful, but it's essential.
00:14:55 Alyssa
It is essential. And I was thinking about, as I was reading the book, like, what does this look like for me as a parent? And I grew up in a large family. I have four brothers and it was a low -income household. And my mom, you know, waitressed on weekends to make ends meet and all that. And one of the things that I learned growing up was that having needs and expressing my own needs was not how I would receive or give love, right? Like that was not a basis for love and that having low needs, like was it, that if I could just be the easiest, that that was lovable. And really looking at like, what did that look like down the road? Like when I experienced trauma as a teenager, I couldn't ask for help because that would be a burden to them. Right? And then in parenthood, even now, like the idea of saying like, hey, I have needs too. And I need to lean on other people in my village so that my needs can get met. There's a part of me that is constantly showing up and saying like, that's not how you receive love. That's not how you show love. and you won't be lovable if you have those needs.
00:16:09 Gabor
Yes, so a couple of points here. First of all, no infant is born like that. I mean, have you ever met a one -day -old infant that doesn't know how to ask for what they need?
00:16:18 Alyssa
They're so good at asking for what they need.
00:16:22 Gabor
So something happens that disconnects us from ourselves. And so by the time you become a teenager and say you're bullied, you don't wanna ask for help. As a matter of fact, the bully knows that, that's why they bully you. The bully can pick up with 100 % certainty, they have laser -like awareness of who is defenseless. And the kids who get bullied repeatedly are the kids who are caught off from asking for help. And I've talked to a lot of people over the years, were you bullied, were you ever abused? Yes, who did you talk to? The answer is nobody. So that early message that you're not entitled to ask for your needs, then creates all kinds of problems later on. And yet nobody's born like that. So it's a coping mechanism that helped you fit into your family of origin. You know, and by the way, two things I need to say. One is nobody's parents are being blamed here.
00:17:18 Alyssa
Sure, a hundred percent. I have fantastic parents.
00:17:21 Gabor
You know, they did their best, but they weren't present for you emotionally.
00:17:24 Alyssa
Sure.
00:17:25 Gabor
You know, which is an essential need that you had. You know, there's not a question of do we love our kids and do we do our best? The question is, what are our own limitations? And the other limitation, the big one, you talked about the village. Well, we're meant to parent in villages. We're meant to parent-- as we evolved as human beings, and as we lived until a blink of an eye ago, historically speaking, we lived in small band hunter -gatherer groups where all the kids were parented by all the adults, and they were with the parents the whole day. That's how we evolved. In today's culture, parents are so strapped, so isolated, so belabored. And so that when we see the preponderance of childhood mental health conditions, ADHDs and so -called diagnoses like the non -existent oppositional defiant disorder, which is total nonsense, and the rising rate of childhood suicides, all the kids being medicated in North America, which is unbelievable. What is that a sign of? Not lack of parents loving or trying to do their best, but parents being so stressed that kids' mental health is being affected by the conditions under which they grow up. And this is what we consider to be normal.
00:18:44 Alyssa
Right. Yeah, that's the toxic culture part of it.
00:18:48 Gabor
That's the toxic culture, yeah.
00:18:50 Alyssa
Yeah, yeah, and I feel it, you know, like even with the awareness of it, it's like, yeah, for me, that challenge can sometimes be the balance of meeting my needs and my child's needs. And how do we do both? And, you know, for my parents, it wasn't that they didn't want to meet my needs, it was that they didn't have the bandwidth to meet my needs, that they were trying to meet needs for our survival that came first, right? And I have so much compassion for that.
00:19:23 Gabor
You know, in the world's richest country in history, the United States, which is where you live, the average family is within two paychecks of bankruptcy.
00:19:37 Alyssa
Yeah.
00:19:38 Gabor
Now that's an incredible stress on the parents.
00:19:41 Alyssa
Yes.
00:19:42 Gabor
You know, and that stress, and we know that children absorb their parents' stresses. So if you look at who gets diagnosed amongst kids, it's not surprising that it's kids of color and minorities in poverty who get diagnosed, more likely to get diagnosed and medicated for things like ADHD and other things. So rather than looking at the conditions that generate these problems, we keep trying to just deal with the manifestations and the symptoms.
00:20:11 Alyssa
Yeah.
00:20:12 Gabor
And in fact, my profession, the medical profession, is basically trained to deal with symptoms rather than causes. So whether it comes to cancer or autoimmune disease or depression or anxiety or bipolar illness or psychosis, we're dealing with symptoms. These diseases themselves are symptoms. The underlying causes being people's life experience, which as physicians, we're not trained to look at.
00:20:39 Alyssa
Yeah, yeah, such a broken system, such a broken system. And while we're looking at the United States here, It's so much of, you know, my work is with early childhood educators too. And like talk about stress and being below poverty wages. And when parents are stressed and we're working and we're then passing our children off to now this village that we pay for, we often pay more than our mortgage for, and we're passing them off to teachers who are stressed because they're receiving below poverty wages often and are working long days and and really trying environments where they're not supported enough. And it just is the cycle that every adult that this child is interacting with so often is in a similar state of kind of like spinning on a hamster wheel.
00:21:27 Gabor
Well, as I, in the book, The Myth of Normal, I quote my friend, the children's singer, Raffi. And with his music, my kids grew up as did generations of other kids. And Raffi had this concept of what he calls a child -honoring society. What if we had a society that begins with the question, what are the children's, what are the needs of children, how do we honor them? Well, then we'll take different care of the food we give them, the food that we manufacture, the air that we breathe, and so on. Now, if you look at, you talked about teachers and childcare workers, these are amongst the lowest paid people in our society. They're doing the most important work, because there's nothing more important. We could live without any number of corporate executives, or any number of historians of the Middle Ages. I'm not putting down those professions, I'm just saying, you know, what's the priority? But how will we do without people that really know how to nurture and educate our kids? but we don't value that at all. These are most underpaid professions, and which means, as a society, we actually don't think that kids are very important. We pay lip service to it, but look at the conditions in our schools, and look at the education teachers get, which is all about conveying to kids facts and skills rather than how do people more healthy child development?
00:23:07 Alyssa
A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, it is while I have a master's in early ed and there was such a giant focus on even, even when it looked at like social emotional development, classroom management was what it's called, right? Behavior management. And I, so much of what I learned in social emotional learning was outside of my degree program, which is outrageous. Because what we're doing then is grooming teachers to have kids stand in a line. And I was just chatting with an administrator the other day about a preschool teacher who was having a really hard time getting her group of kids to, they were going to a physical education class, like a gym class, and they needed to walk in the hallway and she wanted them to be quiet as they were walking, and this one kid didn't want to go, and then she's telling him he's not going to get access to the reward jar if he doesn't go, and it's all bribery and a series of punishment reward systems. It's all in the effort to just get him to walk in this line, to be not seen or heard or valued. There was no connection, and without connection, we won't have that collaboration. But I think so often we don't slow down to just say like, what's this, what's really going on?
00:24:35 Gabor
Well, it's all about behavior. And we don't realize that behavior is the outward manifestation of internal emotional dynamics. So there's this phrase acting out, kids are acting out. Now, Alyssa, when I say a kid is acting out, Don't give me your understanding of it, because I'm sure you have a good understanding of it. What's the image that comes up in your mind? What does the average person think of when we talk about a kid acting out?
00:25:02 Alyssa
Yeah, I'm seeing a kid like scream or push or hit or push boundaries, not do what they're supposed to.
00:25:10 Gabor
Good. Let's speak English for a minute. In fact, I used to be an English teacher, you know, before I became a doctor. And acting out, it's a good phrase. We act something out when we don't have the words to say it in a language. It's a game of charades. When you're not allowed to speak, what do you have to do to convey the message? You have to act out. If I landed in a country where nobody spoke my language and I didn't speak theirs and I had to portray hunger, I'd have to make some gestures with my mouth and my hands to indicate hunger. I had to act it out. Kids are acting out, but what they're acting out are their unmet emotional needs and their frustrations. And what if we teachers and parents were actually trained to understand the message, and rather than respond to the behavior, we actually responded to the message. So maybe that child that doesn't want to walk in line lacks the connection with the teacher, so they don't trust or heed the teacher. And what if that teacher learned how to build a relationship? That child will want to then walk with that teacher. You know, what if the child has been pushed on too much by the adults and he's pushing back? And then we call that oppositional. Even this diagnosis, oppositional defiant disorder, think about how stupid that is. It's really literally stupid. I keep using that word because here's the thing about oppositionality, like in the case of this kid. If I was talking to you right now and if I had a cold or a flu, would I have less of a cold or a flu, whether I was on the line with you or not? Or if my ankle was twisted, would it be any less twisted because you're talking to me?
00:27:00 Alyssa
No.
00:27:01 Gabor
But could I oppose you if I wasn't in interaction with you?
00:27:07 Alyssa
I guess technically, yes. We could have opposing viewpoints, but you could have...
00:27:11 Gabor
No, no, no. If I wasn't in a relationship with you, could I oppose you?
00:27:14 Alyssa
Uh -huh. No.
00:27:15 Gabor
Okay. In other words, opposition, by definition, implies a relationship. Why are we diagnosing the disorder in a child? Why don't we look at that child's relationship with the adult world?
00:27:29 Alyssa
Yep. Well, because it's about power and control.
00:27:32 Gabor
Exactly. Rather than understanding the child's needs. So if we really wanted to help these children, some of them are oppositional. But it's not a disorder, it's their response to how they've been treated by the adult world. And if we want them to change, all we have to do is to change how we relate to them. And believe me, they'll change very quickly. But instead, we diagnose them with this so -called disorder. It's, well, I don't need to characterize it. It misses the point entirely.
00:28:07 Alyssa
It misses, that's just it, is that like, I think the word stupid comes up here because it's like, it's just not effective either. If what we really want is to connect with kids and collaborate, we have to bring awareness to our desire for power and control. And realizing that when we say our goal is connection with kids, if that is the goal, then we have to slow down. Then we have to slow down and take a bigger look. You know, just this morning, my child was angry because he couldn't go into the basement at the wanted to go into the basement and he's screaming and he threw his body on the ground and in reality, he hadn't eaten breakfast yet and he was hungry and he receives that information at another point and he isn't throwing his body on the ground. Right? So the, the external reaction was, I feel hungry and now this experience of not getting to go in the basement feels really, really big. And I think for us, it's the ability to slow down and say, yeah, I don't have to punish him or yell at him or teach him that he can't scream right now. I have to make sure that he has food earlier in the morning so that he can have it in the world.
00:29:25 Gabor
Well, there's more to it. Yes, that's all true. And there's more to it. We don't want power and control for its own sake, but we do have to, in a sense, dominate our kids.
00:29:37 Alyssa
Sure.
00:29:37 Gabor
I mean, like a two -year -old kid doesn't get to vote on whether to crawl out into the winter snow.
00:29:45 Alyssa
Sure, sure. Or whether or not to be in a car seat.
00:29:48 Gabor
When it's 10 below, you know, so that it's a question of domination for the sake of keeping them safe and supporting their development. You know, so we shouldn't be afraid of our power as parents. The question is, what is that power based on? The real power is not based on because you're bigger and stronger, it's based because they want to connect with us. Because they trust us, you know? And it's that attachment relationship that gives us the power to parent. Number one. Number two, there's nothing wrong with the kid being angry because even if they're not hungry,
00:30:31 Alyssa
Sure.
00:30:32 Gabor
They want something. Now, children don't have the capacity to distinguish their needs from their desires.
00:30:41 Alyssa
Same as adults for a lot of us.
00:30:44 Gabor
I was about to say that. I know there are a lot of adults, which is, and by the way, this whole economy is based on confusing our needs with our wants. They keep convincing us that we need something that we don't. They make us want it so bad that we confuse it with our needs.
00:31:00 Gabor
the whole consumer economy is based on that misapprehension. But anyway, there's nothing. So the kid wants to go down to the basement and you say, for good reasons, no, this is not the time to go down to the basement. They get angry. Now the question is, how do we respond? Time out? Or do we say, oh, you're really angry. You really want to go into the basement and you're really doing like the mummy doesn't let you.
00:31:29 Alyssa
Correct, yeah.
00:31:29 Gabor
You validate the emotion without allowing the behavior. That's all the kid needs, is to have the emotions understood. So it's not that they shouldn't be angry, they're gonna be angry. How do we respond? What's the message that we give when they are, you know?
00:31:47 Alyssa
Yeah, it's huge. And I think, but that's where I think people can confuse the perfection part of like this idea that they aren't supposed to be angry or they aren't supposed to throw their body on the ground and express it, it's almost as if like, sure, you can be angry. And here's exactly how you have to show up when you're angry. And it's this like regulated state that's unrealistic.
00:32:13 Gabor
Well, you know what, at one and a half, two year old is probably too young for even for you to tell them how they should show up. What they just need to experiences that you got their anger and you're regulated. You don't get dysregulated by their dysregulation. Now, you may know the work of Dr. Dan Siegel. He wrote a book called The Developing Mind. And Dan says in The Developing Mind that the child relies on the regulated circuitry of the adult brain to regulate the immature circuits of the child's brain. So the basic thing about regulation it's not that we teach them ways to regulate themselves, but that we stay regulated ourselves. That'll allow for the healthy development of the child's self -regulation circuitry. So I'm not sure I necessarily agree that you have to tell a two -year -old how to show up. Later on, it is. Once they're a little bit older and they can actually comprehend, you say, well, next time you're angry, can you just tell mommy? Mommy, I'm really angry with you. You know, but basically what they really need from us is to stay regulated when they're not.
00:33:24 Alyssa
100%. I meant it as like, that's a shortcoming. I think that that's something that we are expecting from any human, that we're saying like, when you are angry, when you are disappointed, you can only express it in these ways because of my comfort, because that makes me feel the most comfortable, or it doesn't feel embarrassing for me in public if you express it like this. And I think so often we see this come up in parenthood where we're expecting kids to express their emotions in ways that make us feel comfortable.
00:33:59 Gabor
Well, first of all, to ask a subversive question, why would I be embarrassed because my two year old throws a tantrum in public?
00:34:10 Alyssa
Oh, I think it happens all the time because it feels like a reflection on us, like they're not supposed to throw a tantrum.
00:34:16 Gabor
You know, that's only because I care about what other people think.
00:34:19 Alyssa
A hundred percent.
00:34:21 Gabor
I'm asking you, why would I really be embarrassed? What's the big headline in the New York Times? Two -year -old throw a tantrum in a store, in supermarket, you know, oh my God, stop the process. You know, like part of it is our own need to fit in socially and to look good to others. Then we use our kids to make sure that we don't look bad. Well, that's using our kids. Those kids shouldn't be used. It's not the child's job to make me look good in front of others, you know? And if I have a big need to look good in front of others, I need to examine, well, what is it in me that doesn't accept me enough that I need to rely on the acceptance of others, you know? So our kids have a way of confronting us with our own challenges, don't they?
00:35:07 Alyssa
Yeah, I mean, put it on a billboard.
00:35:10 Gabor
Yeah.
00:35:10 Alyssa
Put it on a billboard. So it's so real that like that trigger, yeah. Oh, it's so much of it's about us. So much of it's about us. The CEP method that I co -created with a colleague, it's five components. One is adult -child interactions. The other four are about us. Like if we're not taking a look at ourselves, what are we doing? Yeah.
00:35:37 Gabor
So my parents asked me actually how to avoid passing on their stuff to the kids and my first advice is work on yourself, you know, deal with yourself, don't make it about the child, make it about yourself. And Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Buddhist teacher, he said that the biggest gift that a parent can give to their child is their own happiness.
00:36:02 Alyssa
Yeah. Yeah, it's so true. but it lets them know that their happiness is valued, that they get to value their own happiness.
00:36:11 Gabor
That's right.
00:36:12 Alyssa
Yeah, that's huge.
00:36:14 Gabor
And so they don't have to work to make you happy.
00:36:16 Alyssa
Correct, yeah. They're not responsible for my happiness. Someone asked me the other day about, I was speaking at an event in the evening and missing bedtime. And it was another mom that had asked, like she was also in attendance and was missing bedtime. And she was like, how do you navigate that feeling, the guilt of not being there for bedtime and the truth is that I want my child to see that I have joy and things that bring me joy outside of him because if it's only him then he's responsible for my happiness. If he's the only thing that brings me joy that's a lot that's a big weight to carry and I want him to see me live my life and experience it fully because I want that for him too. Like I want I don't want him to look to somebody else for his happiness either. I want him to be able to experience things that bring him joy, and I think it's okay for him to experience the disappointment of me not being there for bedtime.
00:37:17 Gabor
Yeah, as long as you repair that.
00:37:20 Alyssa
Sure,
00:37:21 Gabor
You know because and here's the problem for a lot of parents in our society. In the United States 25 % of women have to return to work within two weeks of giving birth.
00:37:34 Alyssa
It's outrageous.
00:37:36 Gabor
Which amounts to a massive abandonment of infants, because there's no way, other than as abandonment, the child can experience that. And the message they get is that they're not worthy.
00:37:48 Alyssa
Or that their secure attachment caregiver isn't there, that they're not safe.
00:37:53 Gabor
Yeah, yeah. And so it's not just a matter of, like for certain class of parents, it's a matter of choice. You know, do I honor my own joy and my, you know, and for a lot of parents in this society, there's not a whole lot of choice involved. They have to leave their kids in the hands of strangers very early on, just to bring bread to the table. And really what it amounts to is that, and furthermore, even in good daycares, very few daycare workers are trained in attachment, understanding the needs for the child to attach. So they're caregivers, but they're not emotional nurturers. And so if it so happens that the way we live today, we can't go back to hunter -gatherer days, we can't recreate with the best of goodwill that attachment village that used to exist, but we can understand what we've lost. And if we need to spend so much time away from our kids, we need to make sure that the environment in which they go, the adults there are connected with us and with the child, so that the child's, so that, what can I say, that attachment baton that is passed on from one adult to another, so that the child is always in a context of supporting, nurturing relationships. And that should happen all the way through schooling, because the child's brain develops from before birth until adulthood, which means that every environment the child goes into, whether it's preschool, daycare, kindergarten, school, needs to be emotionally informed to promote healthy child brain development, which depends on nurturing emotional relationships. And this is pure brain science. It's not even controversial. An average physician, teacher, daycare worker, policymaker never even hears about it.
00:40:06 Alyssa
Yeah, it's, it's that shift to classroom management and behavior management right that like when that's what we're focused on, we're not focused on the relationship, we're not focused on attachment and connection. We're focused on power over.
00:40:21 Gabor
Yeah, yeah,
00:40:23 Alyssa
Yeah, no, absolutely. Oh, I am so grateful for your work and for your brilliant brain and for you sharing it with us today. Can you share the full title of your book and let people know where they can connect with you, find you, follow you, learn more about your work?
00:40:41 Gabor
Sure, well, thank you. The book is entitled, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture. This is the fifth of my books. It's currently still in the New York Times bestsellers list and it's being published in 30 languages internationally. My other book, Scattered Minds, is on ADHD, which is not an inherited disease. It's a response to the environment, as I put it. When The Body Says No on the mind -body connection in illness and health. Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. Do you know that book?
00:41:20 Alyssa
Yeah.
00:41:20 Gabor
You might really want to have the main author of that book Gordon Neufeld on sometime. He's the most adept, deepest developmental psychologist in the universe. I wrote the book with him, but that book is really his, hold on.
00:41:34 Alyssa
Yeah, I would love to have him on.
00:41:36 Gabor
Well, send me an email and I'm happy to put you in touch with him.
00:41:39 Alyssa
Thank you.
00:41:40 Gabor
Yeah, and then my book on addiction is called, In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. There's a million of my talks on YouTube, all you have to, there's nothing to sign up for. You just put my name into YouTube and you're gonna find any number of talks on child development, addiction, health, mind -body unity, The Myth of Normal. But there's also my website, drgabormaté.com, where you can sign up if you want to be on my mailing list where all the resources, all my books and so on, events are listed. So there's also a film you can find online called The Wisdom of Trauma, which was published a year and a half ago and it's been seen by about 10 million people internationally. You can make a donation to the filmmakers if you want to fund that next project, but you don't need to. You can put in zero, zero dollars. You still get to watch the film. It's called The Wisdom of Trauma. You can find it online. And finally, there's an organization called wholehearted.org that has some of my programs for fairly inexpensive purchase on trauma and addiction. They're really good programs. It's hard to avoid me is what I'm saying. Google my name and find it.
00:43:06 Alyssa
That's awesome. Thank you so much for all of your work. And I hope folks wheels are turning whether they're thinking about what this looks like in the classroom and some of the practices that we have and the environment that they're in and what it creates and also for our parents that are tuning in really looking at what this means for us and go out get that book snag at The Myth of Normal and I'm excited to hear how it shifts their perspective.
00:43:35 Gabor
I also have an Instagram account at this point we have about 1 .2 million followers and I do Instagram live stuff, no cost to anybody, with my daughter, who's studying psychology in New York. You know, people send in questions and we just answer them. So it's always a lot of fun. So anyway, listen, thank you so much for giving me this platform, for your interest in my work, and for the work that you do as well. It's not enough people are doing that kind of work. But I think there's a tide that's rising, I really do.
00:44:11 Alyssa
I think so too. I mean, there is investment in it and hopefully we can see some shifts.
00:44:18 Gabor
Yes.
00:44:19 Alyssa
Thank you.
00:44:20 Alyssa
Stay tuned after this note from our sponsors. Rach and I will be right back with the breakdown.
00:44:24
[Music]
00:44:31 Alyssa
Remember how when we traveled before, I was like, I think Beans likes the pack and play better for sleeping?
00:46:14 Rachel
Yeah.
00:44:31 Alyssa
And then we like did it for a little bit when we got home and then we had a crib and the pack and play both in her room. And I was like, this is ridiculous. And so I removed the pack -and -play and her sleep was bad again. And I refused to allow it to be true that she liked the pack -and -play for the crib. I was like, well, so you're just looking for things. And then we put her back in her pack -and -play and she started sleeping a lot better. And finally I broke down the crib and now her room, it just has the pack -and -play. And then accidentally, she has like a pile of stuffed animals in her room and we went to vacuum, like moved the stuffed animals into the pack and play and just like forgot to pull all of them out, like the small ones or whatever. So she had like a bunch of small stuffed animals in her pack and play and somebody else put her down for bed and she snuggled into those stuffed animals and slept through the night for her first time. And I was like, wait, what? And now she sleeps with a million stuffed animals in there. And I was like, wait, this makes so much sense. As my proprioceptive sensory seeker, she wants to snuggle into the side of the pack and play. She likes that pressure and the feeling of like the mesh and wants to live in a sea of stuffed animals. Again, with the sensory seeker nature of her, or like wants to be touching them and have that pressure. So if anyone wants to come donate their stuffed animals, they will all live in Bean's bed.
00:46:14 Rachel
Hilarious, but hey, better sleep is so welcome.
00:46:21 Alyssa
Whatever you want in there.
00:46:23 Rachel
So this is completely off topic, but have you ever seen the posture correcting bra that Taylor Swift has worn?
00:46:31 Alyssa
Not only have I seen it, I have it in a cart and I just can't bring myself to pull the trigger, but my posture is so terrible.
00:46:38 Rachel
Same. And it's causing me pain and I'm turning into the hunchback.
00:46:43 Alyssa
Are you going to do it?
00:46:45 Rachel
I think I'm going to. Yeah. I think I'm going to.
00:46:48 Alyssa
Okay.
00:46:48 Rachel
Because I'm trying so hard to sit up straight all day, but it's just not... Anytime I'm not thinking about it, I'm back to being slouchy. This has been going on for a long time. My slouching really got aggressive when I started breastfeeding because I'm like...
00:47:03 Alyssa
A hundred percent. You're just hunched forward all the time.
00:47:07 Rachel
For two years with Nora, right? And that girl lived on the boob. I literally turned into a hunchback. So it's just like now I feel like I have such bad holding patterns in my muscles. I think I need to get this bra.
00:47:23 Alyssa
Okay. I want to co -buy it with you so that you can try it out and let me know if it's worth me spending money on. I want somebody that I genuinely know to own it.
00:47:33 Rachel
Okay.
00:47:33 Alyssa
And then I want feedback. Like, real feedback. I don't want, like, you try it once and you're like, this is the best thing ever. I want, like, you're going to dedicate some time to this and give me feedback because they're expensive.
00:47:45 Rachel
They're super expensive, and I've been thinking about it for months. One thing that is, like, kind of pushing me towards it is there's an adult in my life who is my parents' age who is, like, a hunchback, and I'm like, that is my future if I do not get this under control.
00:48:01 Alyssa
Okay. Hang on. This is so funny because I vacillated back and forth between, there's a part of me that's like, yes, you need to do this. Like exactly. You're going to be a full hunchback, whatever. And this other part of me that's like, posture doesn't even matter. What are you doing, Alyssa? Like maybe do some stretches or exercises instead of just trying to buy a bra and like what, change your posture with this? Like what's it even matter? I have these two parts that like battle and typically they're like, you're going to be a hunchback one wins out.
00:48:30 Rachel
Yeah, I just really don't want to be a hunchback. And also I don't want to be thinking about it constantly. I want to put something on that helps me have better posture so I don't have to constantly be like, oh, I'm slouching again.
00:48:42 Alyssa
You know what I'm not looking for is more crap to think about. I'm not like, you know what? I have extra brain space and I've been really looking for something I could really think about. Like what in what world? No, no. I'm not adding posture to that.
00:48:57 Rachel
Hate. And also, I think part of why this happens for me, and probably for a lot of women, is this internalized idea that my body is shameful, and when I have proper posture, my boobs are out. You know? And so a lot of my slouching, I think, is to make myself smaller in that area. Because when I sit up straight, it almost feels like I'm parading my -
00:49:23 Alyssa
Yeah, really showing the ta's.
00:49:26 Rachel
Yeah.
00:49:26 Alyssa
Yeah. Sure.
00:49:28 Rachel
You know?
00:49:29 Alyssa
Sure. I've been trying to show mine for, I don't know, 20 years and there's not much to show there.
00:49:37 Rachel
I mean, mine aren't huge. Mine are average, but I just feel like, I don't know, I have this internalized shame about sitting up straight and having them be there.
00:49:49 Alyssa
Out there. Yeah. I don't think that's happening for me. I think mine is pure, frankly, laziness probably, or lack of core strength for me really probably comes into play. Where like, if I sit up straight, my core has to be activated in a way that I don't care to activate all the time. And so I think that's really a big, and yeah, I've been like nursing. We actually just going over this yesterday, Kylie and Dana were here. I nursed Sagey for almost two years, stopped in January of the year he turned two in March, got pregnant in March, had Beans later that year in December and have now been nursing for almost 14 months and really only had a break from nursing to be pregnant, which just pulls my body forward anyway.
00:50:38 Rachel
That doesn't count.
00:50:40 Alyssa
No, I've been pregnant or nursing for five-ever.
00:50:43 Rachel
Yeah. Okay. Well, it seems like I'm getting the bra. Okay.
00:50:47 Alyssa
Oh, my gosh. I can't wait for the review.
00:50:49 Rachel
Okay. I'm going to wear it for like a couple of weeks.
00:50:52 Alyssa
Yeah. Mm -hmm. Don't talk to me until you've worn it for a couple of weeks. I mean, talk to me, but not about the bra.
00:50:58 Rachel
Not about the bra. Yeah.
00:51:00 Alyssa
I don't want to be influenced by your early adopter. Am I into this at the beginning nature? I want to really hear some results a couple of weeks in. Who are we chatting about today?
00:51:10 Rachel
Gabor.
00:51:12 Alyssa
Oh, I love him so much. so much. Okay. You know, there have been many a time in this life that I'm so privileged to lead where I get to meet, whether it's on the podcast or at events or whatever, humans that I respect and who have influenced my work and yeah, that I'm like really into. And a lot of the time, I feel a little disappointed with the result of meeting those people. And he is not that person. I was like, oh my gosh, yes. I love him. I love his work. I love him. And I am so deeply in love with the consistency with which he goes beneath the surface of behavior or diagnoses or whatever, and looks at the root cause.
00:52:15 Rachel
Absolutely. So I went back and listened to that episode for I don't know how many times I listened to it, but I listened to it again this morning. And it's one of those episodes where like you can listen to it over and over again, because there's so many like gems. And one of the ones that stuck out to me was when he's talking about how like if we don't, like our kids are wired to make sure that they are attached to us. And so if we make them feel like our attachment is conditional by not allowing them to express emotions or like letting them know that it's really inconvenient for us when they do, they will choose being securely attached to us over their own emotional needs. And it's like, yeah, duh, they will, that's like a survival instinct, but it's so easy to lose sight of that in like the day to day of parenting where there's so many emotions that are being thrown left and right. And it was just such a good reminder for me that at the core of my goal as a parent, I don't want my children having to choose between being true to who they are and knowing that I'm there for them.
00:53:32 Alyssa
I also love this and I think one thing that people often confuse or have a hard time kind of wading through with this is what it looks like to set and hold boundaries and maintain secure attachment that like you can say, hey bud, it's time to leave for school and they can not want to go to school and they can say like, I don't wanna go and they're like dragging their feet if they're anything like my child, they're like, I can't put my boots on by myself. I can't, no, my legs are broken. That's the latest. My legs are broken, they don't work anymore, in like a whiny voice. And then he'll say in the whiny voice, I'm using this voice because I don't want to go to school. I know exactly why you're using the voice. That is all clear to me. It doesn't make the voice less annoying. But that you can like set and hold those boundaries. He can have his feelings and express them. And it doesn't mean that I'm like stopping and we're pausing the whole morning so that he can work through this and yada, yada. We are moving through the motions and I'm validating as we go, but I'm like still putting his boots on, getting him out to the car. He gets to continue to feel and express and be safe in that expression while I maintain the boundary that set of going to school is our expectation. And so the boundary for us is that when the timer beeps, if your boots aren't on, I'm going to help you put your boots on. And if you're not walking to car. I'm going to help you get out to the car. I think that sometimes people have a hard time with this. Then I think kids end up in charge too often where they are dictating what's going to happen because the adult is worried about them being upset.
00:55:38 Rachel
Absolutely. And I think that distinction is so important. And he talks in this episode about like how sometimes as parents, part of our job is to dominate over our children. And it's those boundaries, right? It's like, today's a school day, you're going to school. And that doesn't mean that you're like, if you don't stop using that voice, you're going timeout, right?
00:56:01 Alyssa
Correct.
00:56:01 Rachel
It just means like, I hear that you don't -
00:56:04 Alyssa
We're not going to have iPad later or whatever. Yeah. Whatever. There's no punishment.
00:56:08 Rachel
Totally. You don't want to go to school. I get that. Sometimes I don't want to do my job. Sometimes I don't want to do work. It sucks when you have to do something that you don't want to do.
00:56:17 Alyssa
Mm -hmm.
00:56:18 Rachel
I'm going to help you get your boots on because we're running out of time here, right? I think it's that distinction of kids don't get to run the show. That's not what he's advocating for. That's not what we advocate for at Seed, but they are allowed to feel things.
00:56:34 Alyssa
Yeah. Correct.
00:56:36 Rachel
You don't have to be happy about going to school.
00:56:39 Alyssa
And I think we're still so afraid of hard feelings that there's this idea that you can be connected with your kid and you can say the boundary the right way and you can do all these things for regulation. And then when it's time to like leave for school, they're going to be like, okay, let's go. Or they're going to say, you know what? I'm feeling disappointed about going to school today, but I'll come over and pop my boots on and go out with you because I know that's how this works. Like that's not how this is gonna shake out. And if we are constantly parenting from a place of fear of their hard emotions being expressed, then we are not going to let them know that they're safe to feel hard things with us. Then it looks like, oh, actually my parents going to avoid my hard feelings at all costs because my hard feelings are too much for them.
00:57:30 Rachel
Yeah. It's also, I think, important to distinguish that allowing emotions doesn't mean a free for all in how they express them. It's not just about kids shouldn't be running the show, but also, yeah, you're not going to hit me, and I'm not going to respond to that, right? You can be mad, and I still have safety boundaries, and there are boundaries and expectations and how we treat each other in this family. And so sometimes that's like, hey, I'm gonna step away and I'll come back to this conversation when you're ready to not shout at me. I'm not gonna try to talk to you while you're shouting at me. And I think those kinds of boundaries can be difficult for parents who have like abandonment wounds from childhood or who were isolated and punished. And there's a difference between like, you need to go in timeout if you're not gonna stop and saying, like, I'm not going to allow you to talk to me like that. I am here for you, but I'm not gonna chat about this until we can be respectful to each other.
00:58:37 Alyssa
A hundred percent. And this is a lot of what we wrote about in Big Kids Bigger Feelings of like, what does this look like as kids get older? And yeah, it's maybe not the hitting, kicking, biting. Now it's the, they're being rude to you. They're screaming at you. They're slamming a door, whatever. And how do you respond to that? Yeah.
00:58:55 Rachel
Totally.
00:58:56 Alyssa
I love that distinction, Rach, of the boundaries piece. I also think it was Aliza Pressman who I heard talking, or maybe even when I interviewed her, where we were talking about boundaries and where it's like, where do I hold a boundary? When do I hold it? Sort of thing. And that you really have to start to notice, what are the boundaries? I'll give you an example. In our household, the rule used to be that we had dinner together at the table. And I found myself moving that boundary a lot where he'd be like, I just want to watch a show and eat my dinner, or I don't want to sit at the table. I want to go play. And then he'd pop back and have a bite and go out and play and pop back and have a bite. And it just started to be this boundary that I found myself not really holding and had to look at and say, do I actually care about this? Where did this come from? And realize, no, this is a thing I've heard people say I'm supposed to do, but actually, I don't care. This isn't a part of our family values if we sit at the table all together and eat. Actually, I don't even care if you watch a show on the couch while you eat and I sit at the table with your dad. I don't care about that. There are so many other ways that we connect as a family. This isn't one that feels important to me. And really looking at, okay, but when he says he doesn't want to get buckled into his car seat, I'm not like, okay, yeah, let's drive for a couple minutes, see how that feels, and then we'll get buckled in, right? That's not how that goes. I'm like--
01:00:29 Rachel
Absolutely.
01:00:30 Alyssa
He's allowed to feel upset about getting buckled in, and that's a boundary I'm going to hold 100 % of the time. I'm going to buckle you into the car seat. So when we look at this and it's like, if we find ourselves moving the boundary a lot, I think part of it is looking at like, why did I even set this
01:00:47 Alyssa
in the first place? What's my goal with this and does it really matter to me? Is this something I really actually care about that's a part of our core values or not? Because a lot of them you're gonna answer real quickly and actually it doesn't matter to you. Yeah, and if you can let go of those, then you have more bandwidth to hold the ones that really do matter. I also think like it does get a little bit more complex as kids get older. Like I find myself with Nora, my boundaries are more flexible than they are with Abel. Like, just as an example, she missed a bunch of school with this illness. Yesterday after school, she spent literally the entire afternoon, like, getting herself caught up. And then she had a test today, so she was, like, doing a bunch of work. And I had said, like, make sure that, like, you make time to study for your test, even if it means you don't get all the makeup work done tonight. So anyway, bedtime rolls around, and Cody's like, all right, Nora, you've got to go to bed. And Nora's like, okay, I just need a few more minutes to study. And he's like, no, you've got to go to bed. So Nora comes to me, and she's upset and stressed and whatever, and I'm like, yeah, how about let's compromise. You can study for 20 more minutes, and then why don't you wake up a little bit earlier tomorrow morning, and you'll have a little bit of time to study before you go to school. So that worked for her, and that was fine. And she's old enough where she understands that this is an exception. It's not going to be the new rule that she says she wants 20 more minutes, and I give it to her. But there was a reason, a valid reason, that she wanted to stay up later. And it's okay to just say like, okay, yeah, like they're humans that we're in relationship with. Like they're not machines and it's okay to have a back and forth, right? Of like, she's trying to express this need to me. She feels like she needs a little extra time. Can I slow down and think and say like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And I think about if I was 10 and I was trying to prepare for something and my parents were like, no, go to bed because it's seven. and I'm like, I just need 20 more minutes. And they're like, no, I'm gonna be like, the hell's your problem? Do you not understand what I'm going through right here?
01:02:52 Alyssa
And we want to foster this skillset, right? Like you want her to be able to have collaborative relationships where she has a little give and take as well, where if somebody comes to her at some point, working on a team project or whatever and says, hey, I actually, I started to do this and I think we should do it this way, or what are your thoughts on tweaking this? We want her to be able to pause and think about it and let go of the control of, well, I envisioned it this one way and have the cognitive flexibility to say, okay, yeah, no, that makes sense. We can, let's try that out. Let's see if that works. Let's see what happens. And the way that they learn these skills for cognitive flexibility is by us modeling them of, yeah, here's what I was thinking. And when we look at younger kids with this, we can foster that with the like, tell me what your plan was, what's your plan with this? And helping them start to build awareness of their plan and then seeing like, oh, your sister came in and wanted to be included in your plan only involved you. Hmm, now that she's here, what do you think we could do to include her in your plan? And helping them start to stretch that. And then as they get older, yeah, they're doing it with you where they're practicing cognitive flexibility. And if we can't have cognitive flexibility, if we can't sometimes say, you know what? That's a great point. Let's tweak this. Let's have that 20 extra minutes, whatever. Then we end up in this power struggle with them. And we don't have that. We miss this opportunity to model that back and forth in relationship, collaborative relationships and collaborative problem solving.
01:04:34 Rachel
Absolutely. And, you know, in Cody's defense, he's not the bedtime parent. Like he is the morning parent at night. He just wants to be done. So like, I could totally feel him just being like, yeah, no, like I need to be done parenting. You need to go to bed. And that's where I can step in because I'm the more regulated parent at bedtime. And I'm like, yeah, you can have 20 minutes and I will do your bedtime on the other end of that if dad doesn't have the capacity.
01:05:01 Alyssa
Yeah.
01:05:02 Rachel
I think too, something that is really helpful in understanding, cause he talks in this interview about like, when kids act out, they're literally like trying to communicate and act out their needs, right? So something that is a game changer for me in that is understanding my kids' sensory systems because the way that they act things out, those challenging behaviors, the way that they manifest, are so interconnected to how their nervous systems process the world. And I think without that information, it would be really hard for me to access empathy in the moment. And just thinking about like, I have two very different children in terms of their sensory systems, and so do you. And knowing that and knowing that my approach needs to be different because of that makes this work so much easier.
01:06:04 Alyssa
A hundred percent. I actually had this little girl come to mind. I just had a coaching call with one of our Seed Cert teachers who's a kindergarten teacher. And this little girl is connection seeking. Like that is what drives her. She's got some proprioception needs for sure that we incorporate as well, but connections at the root of so many the challenging behaviors we see. And there's a lot of acting out and misbehavior in search of connection. And the one we were chatting about today, she's like biting an eraser off of a pencil as she stares the teacher in the face and then spits it across the room. And she was like, I just... And this teacher is incredible. I literally at the end was like, can I send my child to your kindergarten classroom? She's so fantastic. And she was like, I just don't know what to do when she's doing that. Like if she needs to chew on something, I'm happy to find something for her to chew on, whatever. And I was like, I wonder what would happen if you said, hey, I saw you bite that eraser off the pencil. Did you want my attention? Did you wanna connect with me? And she was like, oh, okay, okay, I can say that. And I was like, you could totally say it. Like attention isn't a bad thing. Anytime we are asking for attention, it's because we need to feel connected and included. that we are social animals, but so many of us grew up in cultures where attention's a bad thing. Attention means you're needy, it means you're high maintenance, it's attention -seeking behavior as a negative connotation, and the reality is we're all getting attention. I actually just did an interview that will be airing later with a psychologist, and she said something in it that I was like, I love this. She was like, everything we do is for attention. She's like, I raise my hand in class because I want attention. I want somebody to call on me. I hand in my homework and I have done all of them correctly. I want you to notice that I've worked really hard on this and I have learned this. Everything we do is for attention because we're social beings. We rely on each other to be connected. What we have determined societally is that there are some behaviors or some expressions of that need for connection that are not okay, like biting the eraser off the pencil and spitting it across the room. And if we're going to replace a behavior with a different behavior, if we want her to be able to say like, I need to connect with you, or I feel left out, or we want her to do something else, she's gotta be aware of what her need is so that when she feels herself going to bite that pencil, she can start to notice, and then we say, you know what? If you feel like you want my attention and you want me to notice you, you can come over and you can squeeze my hand. And when I'm done teaching this part, I will turn and you can tell me something, or you could share something with the class, or you could sit in my lap, which is one of her favorite things. And giving her the like, what can she do for attention? Because just ignoring it is just going to it escalate.
01:09:12 Rachel
Totally.
01:09:13 Alyssa
It's a need. Driving it.
01:09:14 Rachel
I think the other thing that's important to keep in mind is it takes repetitions of identifying that need for children and offering alternatives. Just last night Abel was really upset. I can't remember why. I think Nora threw a notebook or something that he wanted. I'm not sure. In the past, that could have gone, and it still does sometimes, but that could have turned into like, Abel basically attacks Nora and like hits her or kicks her or scratches her or whatever. He went into his room and I went in there and tried to talk to him. And he, instead of like, being like, go away or like, I don't, you know, there's so many iterations that could have been. He said to me, I need space. And I'm like, OK. It's sinking in the thousands of times that I've modeled for him or told him, like, if you don't want somebody near you, you can say, you can tell them, I need space. That takes a lot of repetitions. He's almost six. And for him to be able to do it in the heat of the moment, he knows in a calm moment that it's a choice to say, I need space. But for him to be able to access that while he is actively melting has been years in the making.
01:10:38 Alyssa
I mean, same, right? Like I can tell you outside of the moment that when I'm annoyed with my husband and he's trying to talk to me about something or he doesn't, that in the moment, I can say, I am not ready to talk about this yet. I know outside the moment I can say that, but there are still times where in the moment, no, I'm just rude and sarcastic and snippy because what I really need to do in that moment is say, I'm not ready to talk about this yet.
01:11:09 Rachel
Yeah.
01:11:10 Alyssa
But accessing those skills in the moment takes so much repetition and it's so hard. And I think it's a huge part of getting people to like understand this work, is that like it is a long game. And so you're not going to tomorrow start working on this and next week your kid's gonna say, I need space. You gotta commit to it and know that like the results are coming in a while. And that's a really hard sell.
01:11:40 Rachel
Well, also to know that you can't hold kids to a higher standard than you hold yourself. I get snippy and rude sometimes when I'm dysregulated. Kids are also going to do that. And we can work on building the skills for them to make a different choice. But those two realities can coexist. Cause I have the skills to make a different choice. And sometimes I don't have the capacity to use those skills, right? And so understanding that distinction and remembering something that I remind myself a lot is like, my child is a person that I'm in relationship with. They are not somebody that I need to power over. I don't need to try to control who they become. They already are who they are, right? My job is to connect with them and be in relationship with them. And just reminding myself of that, of like, I don't have to parent from a place of fear. I really can, I can just show up from a place of connection and relationship.
01:12:40 Alyssa
Mm -hmm. 100%. Oh, I love that. I love this episode. I'm so glad that we are -
01:12:46 Rachel
It's so good.
01:12:46 Alyssa
Re -airing it for folks. And I love him -
01:12:48 Rachel
Me too.
01:12:49 Alyssa
And this work. And I love you.
01:12:52 Rachel
Love you.
01:12:54 Alyssa
Thanks for tuning in to Voices of Your Village. Check out the transcript at voicesofyourvillage.com. Did you know that we have a special community over on Instagram hanging out every day with more free content? Come join us at @seed.and.sew S -E -W. Take a screenshot of you tuning in, share it on the ‘Gram and tag @seed.and.sew to let me know your key takeaway. If you're digging this podcast, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. We love collaborating with you to raise emotionally intelligent humans.
Connect with Dr. Gabor Mate:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gabormatemd/
Website: https://drgabormate.com/
Order the book: The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture
Connect with us:
Instagram: @seed.and.sew
Podcast page: Voices of Your Village
Seed and Sew's Regulation Quiz: Take the Quiz
Order Tiny Humans, Big Emotions now!
Website: seedandsew.org
Music by: Ruby Adams and Bensound
