Learning to Parent in the Language of Play with Georgie Wisen-Vincent, LMFT
0:00:00 Alyssa
You're listening to Voices of Your Village and today we get to talk about a topic that I really need consistently just around me in my space. We got to dive into learning to parent in the language of play with Georgie Wisen -Vincent. She co -authored with Dr. Tina Payne Bryson, one of my favorite parenting authors, their new book, The Way of Play. Georgie is the founder and director of the PlayStrong Institute, a center devoted to the study, research, and practice of play therapy through a neurodevelopment lens, along with Dr. Bryson, the founder and executive director of the Center for Connection, a multidisciplinary clinical practice in Southern California. These are two powerhouses in the field of child development, and I'm so jazzed about this book. It's a phenomenal resource, and you get to hear the real talk with Rach and I at the end in the breakdown. Head on out and snag The Way of Play if playing with the tiny humans doesn't come naturally to you either. I feel ya, my friends. Alright, folks, let's dive in.
00:01:19 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.
00:01:40 Alyssa
How did you meet Tina?
00:01:41 Georgie
It was funny. It was kind of by accident. When my son was that little, I was just trying to pass a, you know, a long, tiring afternoon. And so I went out like to the local, it was, it's kind of like an outdoor mall. And I was just pushing him around in the stroller and I ended up in a store and I looked over I was like, Oh my gosh, I recognize her from YouTube videos and stuff. But like, that's Tina Bryson. So I was just looking, you know, like how you kind of because I live in LA. So in LA, you see a celebrity, and you're supposed to act like you don't know them, you just kind of keep pushing your cart and keep going. But with Tina, I just kept looking. And she was like, she noticed, and then I went over and introduced myself. And I said, I'm, I'm a play therapist. And she was like, Oh, that's so cool. We're just opening a practice in Pasadena. So we ended up having lunch and got to talking and then I came on board to work at her practice, the Center for Connection and that's been 10 years now. I can't believe it's been as long as it has, but yeah, it just, you know, sometimes talk to your heroes and it all pans out in like a really good way.
00:02:46 Alyssa
Also, I feel like so many of us have been in that space where we're like, I just need an outing where I can go with my tiny human and I'm not just going in like the same walk around my neighborhood.
00:02:57 Georgie
Exactly, yeah.
00:02:58 Alyssa
I just step out like I'm going to the mall or I'm going to just do anything so I can, yeah.
00:03:04 Georgie
I'm trying to do something for myself, but I also get a good stroller walk in and maybe he'll fall asleep or whatever. Because we were doing like the, you know, kids space, you know, kids museum and the big gardens where you walk around and smell the flowers and play around in the mud and all that stuff. So that was just an odd day. It was just a very happenstance thing to occur and then it led to all this. So it's kind of be in the right place at the right time and things will happen.
00:03:34 Alyssa
And so now you're a play therapist at the Center for Connection?
00:03:38 Georgie
Yeah, it all happened kind of in a bit of a whirlwind where I was coming on board and just opening my own office in the space that they had at the time, which was a really cute little craftsman building. If you watch the Rose Parade, you know what Pasadena looks like. We've got all these fun old houses. And so the Center for Connection was originally in one of these older kind of craftsman house spaces. And so I was setting up my room with all the toys in it and everything and therapists were getting interested. And it turned into like starting a whole play therapy team there that I started supervising. Then we opened the Play Strong Institute, which is now grown so much like most of those therapists are working in this in the larger Center for Connection, because they've learned so much that they're thriving. And then I could turn my focus to writing this book and doing more research on play and parenting as well. And we do tons of trainings. We have a play therapy training certificate. We have a neurodiversity training. It's all online. So we have all of these really cool offerings for professionals. And then we've done like studies on parents learning how to play with their kids to learning these really specific strategies that we talk about in the book. So that's how the Play Strong Institute has grown out of Tina's organization.
00:05:04 Alyssa
When we think of play, I think there's a few different reactions that come up. In fact, in a recent podcast breakdown with Rachel on my team, we were chatting about how my husband and son play very similarly. And my daughter and I play very similarly. And so when my son's like, mom, can you come build Lego with me? And I'm like, yeah, of course. And I like go up and I'm like four seconds in, I'm like, oh my God, here's another tower. Like, and then I just start like looking around the room and I'm like, I should put away his laundry or like grab this, I could pick this thing up.
00:05:44 Georgie
Yes.
00:05:45 Alyssa
And I have such a hard time just like focusing in on play with him versus with my daughter who we share a lot of similarities in our nervous system and how we navigate the world. And we both play in a very, she's so connection focused so for her, she doesn't really care what the like tangible thing is she's doing as long as she feels connected and that fills my cup as well. And so we play very similarly and it's so much easier for me to get like lost and play with her. And I think that the word play for a lot of, you know, we have both parents and teachers and caregivers that tune in here. And I think for a lot of parents especially it's like, ugh, like I'm not great at play because it means I'm also gonna choose to do this thing when there's 7 billion things on my to -do list and this feels unproductive.
00:06:45 Georgie
Right. And that's such a common experience when I've talked to parents or parents have brought their kids in to work with me in family therapy where they say, please don't prescribe play. I know the research. I know it's important for my kids' development. I know that they're getting so much out of play. I wish they would, you know, learn how to do it by the age of two by themselves, like there's so much that I need to do as a parent and you highlight some, some gender differences in play as well. Although I think it's really good for kids to have exposure to lots of different forms of independent free play. That's one of the healthiest forms of play, actually. But when they're that little, they're really looking to us to help scaffold their skills and to be in connection, as you said. And and so I talk about a little bit in the book with Tina, the The Way of Play, we talk a little bit in touch on how, you know, when we were kids, we got lost in our Lego builds. And we love the magic of playing with our dolls, and, you know, endless hours with our siblings and all of this stuff. But as we grow, you know, this is where the brain science comes into it, our brains actually develop beyond the stage of wanting to just completely immerse ourselves in these playful, you know, frivolous, you know, what adults, a lot of adults see as sort of frivolous pursuits. Our brains keep growing sort of in the synaptic connections from the bottom to the top. And we have really strong top, you know, cortical structures of our brains now, which we absolutely need to be good parents, because we have to do the executive functioning, the task side of parenting. There's so much, right? So when our kids say, hey, will you stop for a second and just be with me? And they just wanna like, you know, bang the same drum, you know, and show you all the different ways that they can bang a drum. You're like, okay, first this noise is just, you know, tearing my brain apart. And I don't really get it in the same way that I used to when I was a kid. And so it can be hard, it can be painful for some parents whose kids tell them, you're not getting it right, you're doing that wrong. Like that's not how an evil witch cackles. And you're like, I saw Wizard of Oz, I know like the classic witch cackle. And they're like, no, not in my game, right? And so there's a lot of like negative reinforcement that they get when they're playing with their kids and it just doesn't feel good. And so what we're trying to offer parents is like, yes, good, we're glad that you're so great at executive functioning and parenting. Let's use some of that and let's teach you a few kind of top -down tips for making play a lot easier and getting more out of it, like maybe solving some of the other problems that come up along the way as you're parenting. So that was really some of the thinking in the ideas that went into the book, because we'd like to blend in Tina. You know, Tina wrote like The Whole Brain Child and No Drama Discipline and all these amazing books with Dan Siegel who founded like a whole new way of doing mental health based on really understanding the organ that we're working on, which is the brain. So Tina brings all that to life and she adds so much of the reasoning of the why we're doing all this. And now we just want to add in like how you can play with your kids to get more out of it, but also more enjoyment in the process, have a little bit more fun together so it feels good to everybody, not just your kid, and you're trying to fake it or pretend you're having a good time.
00:10:30 Alyssa
Well, and I think too in the how, and Tina's been on the podcast here before folks have heard from her here, but when we're looking at the how, I think too of like, so I'm one of five kids, and my parents didn't play with us, right? Like it wasn't something I remember. It was like, I played with my brothers and friends and that was kind of the expectation in my household growing up. And so there's a part of me where this feels new and foreign of like, how do you? And I have a master's degree in early childhood education, right? And like, as a teacher, it feels way easier than as a parent because as a teacher, it felt like this was my job. And while there's always seven million things we could be doing as teachers and our attention can be pulled, it also felt easier for me to be like, yeah, and if I don't fill out that ASQ today, whatever. But as a parent, I can't be like, well, if we don't eat dinner tonight, whatever. It feels different as a parent than as a teacher. And so the how aspect I think is really helpful to have outlined for me all, not just the like, do I think there's so many narratives and we hear so much of the research and the play's really important. It's like, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm four seconds into playing with these Legos and I'm so done. So like, what do we do then? You know, the how piece. If you can kind of, I guess, lean into that a little bit. Is there something from your book that you wanna share that give us an example of the how that people could put into practice?
00:12:14 Georgie
Yeah, I think that you bring up a couple really good points here, Alyssa. One is that parents tell me all the time, I'm not meant to play with my kids. That's why I had a second baby so they have a sibling to play with, right? And it's funny to hear them say that. But it ends up being true. Kids are going to learn so much from playing with siblings and peers and the kids in the neighborhood and all of that stuff. We know that they come in contact with different ideas and different agendas and they have to be flexible, and they have to solve problems. And we want them to do that with little people like themselves, who are not going to be as moldable and flexible as the adults are. Because when I see, sometimes, and I have an only child, I have a 10 year old son, when he's playing with me, he's like, cool, I get to be totally in charge and make all the rules. And you're going to do exactly what I say, right? Which can, that can be really bothersome for parents, because parents feel like, am I turning my kid into a tiny little king or a despot or something, and they're going to think that everywhere that they go, everybody's just going to bend to their wishes. I think that there's different types of play have different advantages to kids. And one of the big advantages of having parents to play with or having teachers to play with or having at least one secure attachment figure in your life play with you is that we're teaching kids that play is a valuable, meaningful, and important way of spending time. Because we're also seeing a lot of troubling statistics around the rise in mental health issues because I'm a therapist. So families are walking into my office every day. And not every family is dealing with really high levels of anxiety or depression in their kids or a lot, a lot of behavior problems and things like that. But for families that are, they, you know, the research is starting to attribute some of these challenges to the amount of time that kids are spending being over structured. Yeah, that's in the classroom, or, you know, after school, all these hours are filled up with activities where adults are telling them what to do and how to do it. And kids may not have enough control to develop the kinds of independence and competence that we, you know, turns into this snowball of resilience for them. Like, I feel like I can come up with my own plans, and I can carry them out. And I feel good about the way that I'm functioning in the world. And I feel good about myself. And so that means that I'm going to be able to become the adult that I want to be, let's say, like self reliant and driven, and all of that stuff. But then there's also this other, you know, this statistics I'm reading about how much screen time increased over the pandemic years. And now we're seeing that kids are the other day, I read that before pandemic kids were spending on average 4 .4 hours a day on some screen based activity. And that rose by like an hour and a half or so during pandemic. So we know that you know, there's not, there's not like super damaging harm that's coming from every single hour that your kid is spending on screen that kids can build a lot of skills, you know, having a virtual playdate where you're doing Minecraft with a friend or something like that as well. So we're not--
00:15:29 Alyssa
Frankly, I I would just like pause to think for myself and I was like, I spent a lot of time playing Mario Kart, playing Bond, playing Donkey Kong, right? Like four brothers and we played all these games and it would, and then also watching TV and stuff. Yeah, when I think back to my childhood, I'm like, because at first when you said that number, I was like, whoa, okay. And now when I really think about it, I'm like, yeah, I probably did a lot of that too.
00:15:53 Georgie
Yeah, yeah. So it's not necessarily just, you know, this sort of post pandemic generation kind of thing. And we are seeing some kids who, they have some sensory vulnerabilities or they already have some individual differences that made it a little bit harder for them to transition back into school and teachers are noticing the differences and things like that.
00:16:14 Alyssa
We also, we do a lot of work with schools and especially with elementary schools. A lot of the education is happening from a screen, right? Where it's like a screen, there's instead of what used to be a chalkboard or a whiteboard in the classroom, there's a screen. And so now the movement break is instead of a game that's led by a teacher, it's a video that's on YouTube or something. And things like that, that we have noticed because a lot of our work is in sensory supports and emotional regulation. And there's way more screen action happening throughout the day at school that if you combine that, I'm sure with the home pieces, where like when I was growing up, unless you got that rad day where that TV cart was rolled into the room, unless you got that, we weren't going to have a screen. I wonder how that plays into it too, like from a numbers perspective.
00:17:11 Georgie
Yeah. Yeah. I think that a lot of us are nostalgic for a slower play -based childhood and a lot of parents are looking for ways to kind of, can I get my kids off screens a couple more hours a day? Can I influence them in a way that's gonna make sure that they're not struggling with bigger mental health problems as they enter adolescence, which is such a tumultuous time for so many people and all of that stuff. So we're trying to come at it from, and we actually did a study on this during pandemic where we found that when parents learn a little bit more about the how of play. And we developed these strategies really in a time where everybody was dependent on screens, for example. And when we were living tech -centric lives in pandemic, we were like, how are we gonna help families address this? And one of the ways that we can open up more sort of better outcomes for kids is to teach parents a little bit more about the how of play, how to do it, but not because we want parents to be right there sort of, you know, on, you know, hanging on every word that your kid is saying while they're putting on a puppet show or something. But just to sort of, you know, know what to do when they invite you in, or spend a couple of minutes here and there, or maybe set aside 15 minutes when they get home from school, or something like that, like, to kind of elevate those moments that you have without feeling like you have to spend hours and hours doing it. So that's really my long answer to your short question, which was why should we teach parents the how in this book?
00:18:53 Alyssa
Yeah, well, and then when we look at the how, let's break this down a little bit. You just mentioned like maybe it's 15 minutes after school. Can we speak to the like, what does it actually look like? Do I, we talk about this with sensory regulation a lot, that if you're like, well, I don't have time to like work out for 30 minutes or whatever, we're like, great, yeah, you don't have to, right? I think you can do this in, when you go to the bathroom, don't bring your phone and take deep breaths for one minute. Or little bits and chunks of time that are just way more accessible than I think we often realize until we're presented with it. And I'm wondering if that's true here in your research around play, that if you're like, yeah, I have to, when we come home from school, we've got two or three kids here, and like, how do I play with everybody in the way that they need? and then also make dinner and do the nighttime logistics stuff. Can you speak to the how pieces of like, what does that look like from a practical application standpoint?
00:19:53 Georgie
Yeah, I think that we, it's really nicely broken down in the book where we describe like, there are different strategies for different moments. So let's say that your kid has just invited you to, you know, watch their puppet show, or you're making something together, you're, you know, painting a picture, or you decide to build with Legos, or whatever it is, that's, you know, sparking their interest at that particular moment in time, what they've just grabbed, there are strategies for, you know, how to do that for a couple of minutes that is going to deepen their feeling of connection with you. And that might even then result in them turning and sort of going, oh no, now I have this whole new idea and I'm gonna do that by myself or something. Although our goal is not always to get our kids to play independently. Sometimes these strategies nicely lead into your kid going, wow, that's giving me a whole idea of a whole thing that I can do all by myself. Other times, some of the strategies are really useful when you're kind of in the thick of it with your kids. Maybe you started having a little wrestling match on the bed before bedtime is supposed to happen. And all of a sudden, it starts feeling like it's getting out of control. And then they flipped into sort of a this is real fighting instead of just play fighting. We have strategies for what to do in that situation. So some of them are like, here's what to do when you're just enjoying each other. And it's just for a couple of minutes at a time, or however long you want to spend before you feel like you're gonna, you know, go nuts and you need to go get something else done. And then there's other strategies where you're like, I need to gain cooperation. I need to get them to do something. I need them to listen. I need them to leave the park and I need to help them transition. We're heading up for bath and bedtime or whatever. So we really feel like, and there's so many beautiful illustrations in the book too that are kind of reminiscent of The Whole Brain Child and Tina's other books. We got the same illustrator to do them. So they're really broken down kind of step by step. You can turn to any chapter of the book and you're going to learn something useful and it's going to be in a way that, you know, if you've got three kids and they're all under the age of five, you don't need to spend a bunch of time like reading the entire book to get the gist of the approach. It's like, you know, you can use it just to reference things even while you're sitting there with your kid. You're like, oh, what was that one again? I need that right now. So it's a great resource for of parents just to have on hand when they're trying to approach play and maybe infuse some new ideas and skills into the process.
00:22:34 Alyssa
Sure, what does it look like with the kid where you're like, all right, yeah, we just played for 20 minutes and now I do have to leave this play to do something logistical? We'll do making dinner as an example.
00:22:47 Georgie
Yeah. Yeah,
00:22:47 Alyssa
We got home from school, I poured into them, they had my full attention, we just played, and where it feels like a leaky cup and they're like, they don't want you to go and they are keep asking you to come back into their play, et cetera, et cetera. What do you do? What does that look like?
00:23:01 Georgie
Yeah, I think we knew that this was gonna come up for families where once parents start using some of the techniques, they're finding that kids want us to stay sometimes a little longer and longer. Sometimes they are sort of like, there's one strategy that's really great that involves mirroring your kid in their play. So if they're doing something that has like a sort of, it's not just they're telling you like, oh, I'm building a Lego house and this is the person that lives here and this is the, you know, now the family's coming in and they're doing this and that. But maybe they're telling you so much more in the way that they're just using their body or their facial expressions are kind of lighting up as they're doing it, or they're using their voice, like maybe they're singing a song or they're creating like a rhythm to go with it or something. If you just simply mirror some aspect of what they're doing with your body, face or voice, then they're going to have the experience that you're like a way better player than if you don't do those things. So it's sort of like a, it's a great thing, but then when you're trying to leave the play or transition into something else you gotta do, they're gonna want more of that mirroring because we're actually biologically wired to want our caregivers to mirror us because it just feels good. We've seen in studies where caregivers are told stop mirroring, stop playing along and sort of your eyes are lighting up and you're smiling along with them and you're doing the same things at the same time, that kids start flipping their lid, they start getting really dysregulated around it, right? So that can happen as you're trying to transition out of the play. So long story short, we just offer like a list of tips and I think this is like toward the second to last chapter in the book.
00:24:49 Alyssa
Can you give us a couple?
00:24:50 Georgie
So those transitional tips are like, help your kids learn to, you know, bookend their play a little bit. So let's say that they've just gotten done telling you a story about who lives in the Lego house or the puppet show is coming to an end or something like that. And there's a little bit of a performance quality to it. Then you might want to say something like, do you want to take bow at the end, like you're kind of showing and modeling how you would actually end this play. It could be as simple as like, do you want to end this chapter by saying the end? Or do you want to take a bow and I'll applaud before I go off to make dinner? How do you want to end it so that they learn how to put an end to their play? Or they may decide that they want to continue, you know, how would you like to continue this while I go and make dinner? Do you want to bring it into the kitchen and play at the kitchen table while I'm making the dinner or something like that? So are we, you know, bookending the play with a start and a finish or are we, um, you know, transitioning it into the next activity together or, you know, do the puppets want to help me make dinner or something like that? You know what I mean? So it can be like a transitional thing if your kid does have a hard time winding down and there might be a big meltdown over it. The other thing that we say is sometimes they are just going to have the meltdown because it's really hard for little ones to transition. That's a really hard skill to learn in life. So sometimes we just have to sort of, you know, pick them up from the park and gently put them in the car and say, I know it's really hard, you don't want to leave yet kind of thing. So we don't want to shy away from emotions, especially when we're playing, because sometimes that's just part of the transition and it's okay, we'll be able to play again soon and it's gonna be all right. So having that sort of confidence as a parent that it's gonna be okay too. And then the other thing that you could do is sort of bring a quality of what they were playing. As I was just saying, you can bring a quality of what they were playing into the next activity. So if it's like they've been hunting for bugs in the backyard and they wanna spend another 275 minutes doing that, but you have to go to the store, you could say, do you wanna bring your magnifying glass to the store and we can see if there's any bugs in the fruit aisle? I hope there's no bugs in the fruit aisle, but let's look for bugs while we're in the grocery store as well. So this idea, those are two of the many tips that we talk about in helping with transitions. But a lot of times parents just think, I gotta cut them off, I'm just gonna get up and go. Or they don't even say anything when they're about to get up and go. And they forget that kids need sometimes us to help them just a little, a little bookend or a way of bringing what they were just doing into the next activity, whatever works best in that moment.
00:27:41 Alyssa
I love that. A couple of things came up for me. One was this memory, Sage watched his first movie probably about a year -ish ago. And he, up until that point, had only watched shows that we'd chosen, right? And we were watching, we watched Elf and he, oh, it was filled with 7 million questions because there were a lot of new things he was exposed to. Of course. They're having a snowball fight and he's like, what's a fight? And we're like, oh wow, yeah, okay. So many new things as the first child. Whereas at that age when I had three older brothers, I for sure knew what a fight was. But just funny to witness. But he, at the end, when Elf ended, he started sobbing, because he was like, where is it? And I was like, what do you mean? I was like, oh, it ended, buddy. That's the end. And he just started sobbing. And he was like, do it again, do it again. And I was like, oh, did you not know it was going to end yet? And he was like, yeah, there was no song. And I realized at his show, it was like Daniel Tiger or whatever. At the end, there's something thing that lets him know, that bookends it, that lets him know this is coming to an end. So I love that tip for play too of like, how are we helping them bookend this and know that it's coming to an end and that feels then like an end for them. I love that suggestion. It was really sweet to see.
00:29:14 Georgie
Sometimes we just like think we'll set a timer and our kids will just know how to wrap it up because obviously the timer says that we just have one minute left or something like that. But kids, like they are now in this imaginative space where time has no meaning. I think that's like a really important thing for parents to know and they're still learning the concept of time for a lot of our little ones. So if your son loved being a part of that story in that movie, then he's not going to want it to end. I mean, how many movies do I watch where I'm like, I don't want...
00:29:46 Alyssa
It's also just like the first time where he saw credits, right? Where he was just like, where did it go? It suddenly turned into... there was no thing that wrapped it up for him.
00:29:55 Georgie
Yeah. Yeah.
00:29:55 Alyssa
It was so interesting.
00:29:56 Georgie
So having a way of sort of bringing it to an imaginative end for your child can sometimes help them make the transition from, you know, one setting to another or being in a story to coming back to real life. I think that's something that helps to remember. Yeah.
00:30:12 Alyssa
I also love the note, and we talked so much about this, of like the feelings component. It's not our job to make sure they don't feel disappointed or sad that it's ending. It's our job to be prepared for that, actually, and to know that, yeah, it's okay to feel disappointed. I feel disappointed sometimes when I have to stop doing something I really enjoy too, or when the person that I'm playing with has to go. And I recently, my son wanted to keep playing and I had to go do dinner and I was like, oh my gosh, buddy the other day I was working on a project at work with Auntie Rach and I had to go to another meeting and I was having a lot of fun working with Auntie Rach. We were doing something new and we're creating something we're really excited
00:31:05 Alyssa
about and it was so hard to leave that project and to go to my meeting. And just like shared that and he was like, he just like slumped down and, but just the like, yeah, you get to feel disappointed that this is ending. And it's not our job to make sure they don't feel that. It's our job to let them know it's okay to feel that.
00:31:28 Georgie
Absolutely, yeah. It can be sometimes way harder for us to tolerate our kids' emotions in those moments, right? And I think one of the things that we also touch on the book, which is so fantastic to let parents in on, is that kids are exploring the emotions of the characters that they're inventing. Whether it's your son watching a movie about a magical elf who is trying to help Christmas, the spirit of Christmas that he brings everywhere he goes, or whether they're setting up a tale of two characters that want to do something together, but they have different ways of going about it and they've got to figure out how they're going to live together in peace and harmony, let's say. I've seen so many kids bring stories into their play that really look a lot like things that we deal with in real life because they're looking out at relationships and they're trying to make sense of the feelings that they have in those relationships. And they bring them into their stories almost like the themes of fairy tales and things like that. And a lot of adults, they look at kids play and they go, well, they're just playing Spider -Man because they like Spider -Man, like they just are into Spider -Man. But we don't realize how many real life lessons are coming out through the characters that they choose and the characters that they gravitate because that might represent something to them, like the hero being able to swing in and save the day dramatically really sets up sort of a template it for, you know, how could I come and help somebody in the moment? And how would I feel if I was the person that came in and sort of saved the day? Or was the big helper or something like that? So I think we need to remember that kids are working through a lot of the problems, but the lessons that they're learning in life in the way that they play. And if we attend to those things a little bit more, just for a second, and the way that we reflect it to our kids, it's just like you sharing the story about not wanting to leave Auntie Rach. It sort of helps kids make sense of the way the world works. And it's just so nice to be able to also have play as a language, to be able to share that, that it's really their first language when you think about it.
00:33:46 Alyssa
One final question for you here. I am thinking about kids who we have especially found this with our sensory sensitive humans that we work with who really want control over all of it, right? Whether, and that's if an adult's included or not, it can make it challenging to navigate peer play. So like, nope, that's not where that goes. That's not how we say that. This goes here and there. It's very black and white. And it's building the cognitive flexibility for a plan B or for someone else to come into the play and for their original plan to shift or ebb and flow can be really challenging for these humans. For parents and teachers of these kids, do you have any words of wisdom or thoughts on how do we help them navigate and build the skillsets for cognitive flexibility to allow them to navigate play with other humans where they feel safe, of not being in control of every piece of it.
00:34:55 Georgie
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the biggest reasons kids love to play is because they have the sense that they get to be in charge of what they're doing, right? But my son as well has neurodivergent differences, especially in his sensory processing. So we learned this sort of early on. He was the kid that if you take him to you know, the big community gardens, he's going to find the biggest stick in the whole place. And instead of going up and touching like flowers and leaves and you know, jumping in big piles of leaves or being able to sploosh through muddy puddles and things like that, he's just going to whack everything with the biggest stick he can find. And we found out later that that's because he has some tactile aversion. And he didn't want to touch it with his hands, but he was too little to tell us like, ew, yucky, that doesn't feel good to me. So he was literally like, I'm not touching this except with a 10 foot pole, that sort of thing. So I encourage parents and teachers to remember that there's usually a why behind a behavior, even if we don't understand it in the moment, that there's a reason why a child might be seeking more control in their play. And a lot of times it points back to sensory differences. not always, sometimes it is like a cognitive flexibility difference, like you said, and it's more of a cognitively, you know, upper brain based issue situation. But we do have a lovely strategy in the book called dialing intensity up and down where kids can actually practice becoming aware of their own sensory needs in their play, while parents are also helping to adjust the amounts of sensory input that are coming their way. So really thinking about it as like a big dial. So imagine like a big old fashioned thermometer on the wall. And instead of just saying stop, you know, grabbing that stick and hitting everything with it, or, you know, you're coming at me with a pillow and you want to have a pillow fight, but you keep making up all the rules and you keep changing all the rules and you just keep hitting me with the pillow. Like you just think it's funny to keep hitting me on the head with the pillow. And you see your child becoming more and more upregulated by this activity. And you want to sort of come in hard and put a stop to it, and you want to tell them, like, this isn't okay, you can't hit people that hard, or you can't make up all the rules, it's not all, you know, you're not in charge of everything kind of thing. I invite parents to think of it as a little bit more like just adjusting notches on a dial, and using play as a place to practice. So this is safe. There's no big consequences here. If my kid, you know, takes a stick and wants to whack a rock with it, it's probably gonna be okay. So in play, we can practice things that we can't necessarily do when it's like they're in the middle of the classroom and they're in the big situation with all the friends and they all wanna hold the class hamster and they're just holding it and they won't let anybody else hold it, right? So the stakes are a little bit lower in play. And so it's a great place to practice turning the dial up and down. And a lot of parents are more concerned about turning the dial down. You know, it's like, I don't want my kid to be screaming at the top of their voice while they're playing, or I don't want them to be like that rough, or I don't want them to be running that fast around the house. They're going to bump into somebody or something, all of these things. So often we're more concerned with dialing the dial down. And I would say like play, if you're having a pillow fight together, see it as an opportunity to make them aware of what they're doing. So kind of say, it looks like you want a lot of feedback in your arms when you're hitting me. Or if you have a younger child, you could say like, you like how it feels to really hit hard right now. But I'm wondering if you could try medium. Can I show you what medium feels like? And it doesn't mean that you go and whack them in the face medium. You kind of take the pillow and give a little pressure. Because kids need sensory feedback to know even what we're talking about, my kid was like, what are you talking about? Be gentle. What is gentle hand? And then boom, he'd hit really hard again. That's gentle, right? So being able to give them the bodily feedback then gives bottom up messages to the brain, to the sensory centers, like, oh, that's what you mean by medium. So practice and play, help them adjust the dial a little bit, make them aware of what sensory inputs they need, and then let them have at it, like put them back into the situation. Don't say, give me the pillow, we're done, but sort of go, can you try medium? And if that doesn't work, we've got a whole other bunch of things around dialing intensity that can be really useful and creative and model for kids. Like I have a parent or I have a teacher that's modeling flexibility with me. And we found that cognitively speaking, that that's transferable to kids. So when kids have really flexible players to play with, they become much more flexible in the moment too. So we give them lots of ways of trying out more flexible options in their play.
00:40:06 Alyssa
Sure, sure. What do you do in the moment if you have two kids playing and one is really dominating the space of like, no, this has to go there, that has to go, and now there's conflict over this because one child is trying to be in control of all of it and wants to guide the shots. Yeah, what do you do?
00:40:29 Georgie
I mean, I think sometimes you just have to sort of come in as the third, the mediator or the third person in the space who's coming in and saying, I don't think she wants to do it that way. Let's ask her what she wants to do and then we can take turns doing it this way or that way. And then, but that kind of puts your kid or that child in a situation where they could then opt out of the play completely. And again, I want them to learn how to dial intensity, not sort of go, well, fine, I'm not playing anymore, which is a way of sort of going, now I'm in a freeze state, I don't wanna do anything, I've decided I'm angry about it, or I've just gone completely blank about this, and I'm not gonna play with anybody. But if we dial that down a little bit, or we tune in a little bit to what the agenda is there, then we might join by saying, oh, no, no, I observed for a second and I saw that this is what you wanna do and this is why you wanna do it. Let's check if it's okay with her and see if she wants to do it that way too. Okay, she doesn't. So how about if you do that with me for a second and then she gets a turn to say. So sometimes inserting yourself as the other party that comes in and sort of goes, you can do that with me or I'll play that role or even helping the child to think about what would really happen in that role? Like, let's say you're playing restaurant, and that child wants to be like the chef that decides what's on the menu, and everybody just has to eat what they make or something like that, then you could say, well, I'll have that for my main dish, but I want a different kind of dessert, you know, then I want her to make the dessert, that sort of thing. So can we agree on that? Can we agree on this? Or like, can I go and get the dessert that I want and I'll make it and I'll put my own chocolate sauce on it kind of thing. So really, and some kids have a hard time even with that. I realize like it's really hard to take any kind of input in this situation. But I think the more playful that you can be in that moment, like, whoops, I spilled the chocolate sauce on it. Now what do we do? You know, that sort of a thing. You can hear the change in my voice. Suddenly I'm now in that playful mode where anything could happen, then oftentimes those kids kind of read safety in that situation, whereas before they couldn't read safety because play is kind of incompatible with a threat state. If I feel like I'm under threat because somebody's gonna take my control away, then that's not really play anymore, is it? But if it's just like, oh, this just kind of happened, okay, let's roll with it kind of thing, that's real play. And so I want those kids to experience real play as much as possible, because I think they can only stand to benefit from learning how to do something about what nobody expected. You know, without threatening them too much, without saying, no, it's gonna be my way because I'm the parent, and I decided for you in this situation, which is probably not gonna go great.
00:43:33 Alyssa
Sure, sure. Well, thank you so much, Georgie. Can you repeat again the name of your book and then where people can find you and Tina to dive more into this.
00:43:43 Georgie
Yeah. So the new book is called The Way of Play: Using Little Moments of Big Connection to Raise Calm and Confident Kids, and it's coming out January 21st. I don't know when this interview is gonna be released, but there's a whole bunch of cool pre -order bonuses that you can get right now if you wanna go to tinabryson.com or playstronginstitute.com to read and learn more about the book and take advantage of some of that. If it's after the release date, then you can find the book wherever you normally grab copies of new favorite books and audio books.
00:44:24 Alyssa
Perfect, who read the audio?
00:44:26 Georgie
Oh, we got to do it ourselves. Tina and I got to record it and that was, wow, that was a lot of fun.
00:44:32 Alyssa
Yeah, it's wild, right? Yeah, I recorded Tiny Humans, Big Emotions and I was like 22, 24 weeks pregnant. And my whole goal was like, don't be in like pregnant voice as I'm recording, because you know that like, you're just so short of breath. Like from first trimester on, that was like my whole, it was, that was my biggest challenge. But I loved reading it.
00:44:57 Georgie
Everything's pushing your diaphragm, like, so you're feeling like,
00:45:01 Alyssa
They're not even that big yet, how can I not breathe?
00:45:03 Georgie
I know. Wow. Amazing how much you've done in this short space of time where you're having kids.
00:45:10 Alyssa
Oh, thanks.
00:45:11 Georgie
That's so incredible. Yeah.
00:45:12 Alyssa
Thank you. Yeah. No, thank you so much for your work. It's so nice to get to chat with you.
00:45:17 Georgie
Thank you. You as well. Nice to meet you.
00:45:19 Alyssa
Stay tuned after this note from our sponsors. Rach and I will be right back with the breakdown.
00:45:23
[Music]
00:45:31 Alyssa
This flu.
00:45:33 Rachel
Yeah.
00:45:34 Alyssa
It was the sickest I've been and the longest I've been sick, maybe ever.
00:45:41 Rachel
That's what's happening to me. Yeah. I've never needed steroids or an inhaler when I've been sick. Like that was new. I'm on day 12 and I'm still not right. I just don't have a lot of energy and I'm still congested and still coughing. I don't think I'm contagious anymore and I can do life. I'm back to bringing the kids to school and trying to dig us out of the hole of what our house became when I was completely incapacitated. But like, it's just, first of all, it's so wildly inconvenient to be sick as a parent. I'm so grateful for my mom and my sister because Cody was out of state.
00:46:38 Alyssa
For a whole week, which like never.
00:46:42 Rachel
So I brought this sickness into my parents' home and they took care of me. And I like when my breathing was getting sketch, I was like stressed because I've never had that happen before. That's not like a thing that happens. I'm not like, oh, I get bronchitis when I get colds, like, no. I was like, this is so uncomfortable. I hate this. I'm stressed. My kids were also sick. Just my mom is an angel. And totally was like, yes.
00:47:12 Alyssa
Was your dad stressed?
00:47:15 Rachel
At first, when we first got there, he was like, what, you're sick? And I'm like, yeah, and he's like, great. And then he low -key avoided me for a couple of days. And then I was like, dad, I'm really sorry, but I can't take care of the kids by myself when I'm this sick. I just physically can't. And he was like, honey, I'm not mad. I understand. We want to be here for you. But he does get stressed about illness. I think my mom must have had whatever it is first, because she had pneumonia a couple weeks ago.
00:47:45 Alyssa
That's right.
00:47:45 Rachel
And like, with the amount of time she spent taking care of me and literally snuggling my kids while they had active fevers and stuff, like, she just must have had it before us. Because otherwise, it just doesn't make sense. But yeah, so I'm getting there. I am. But I am tired. And I'm realizing that the pace of life that I usually maintain is honestly bonkers. Because then when I can't do it, I'm like, like I literally never stop as a human. And it took getting really sick to be like, whoa, maybe I have a little too much on my plate. And also it's just so triggering for me to be really sick because it reminds me of chemo. So at one point I'm just like crying to Erika and my mom and I'm like, I don't feel good. And this is so triggering for me. I just want to feel better and be able to take care of my kids. Like, there's always that emotional aspect to it too, of like, not just physically feeling like garbage, but then all of the illness PTSD that it brings up. So anyway, my mom and Erika were saints. Erika's now sick.
00:48:57 Alyssa
Yeah.
00:48:59 Rachel
I don't think from us, I think from Leelee got something at school, but maybe from us, I don't know. She doesn't have, she has a fever.
00:49:06 Alyssa
I mean, who knows?
00:49:06 Rachel
You can't even keep track, you really can't.
00:49:09 Alyssa
No, you can't.
00:49:11 Rachel
And I'm like, so Nora has, her school does this thing called art clinic, which is actually rad. So today, tomorrow in the first half of Saturday, she doesn't have regular school. She has this like intensive where she's at school from eight to six. It's all art instruction. It's amazing. It's rad. But it's like other schools come and I'm just like, I don't wanna be sick anymore. and I don't want to have a new sickness happen. So that's what I'm feeling.
00:49:44 Alyssa
Yeah. It's so real when you're like in it. I mean, legit right now, we started the year or started, I mean, Christmas Eve, I started to get not feel good, whatever. The flu, it was a full two weeks of me not feeling well. And then still even after that, like low energy for a little bit. And just like ridiculous. And interestingly, Beaners and Zach had the flu vaccine this year. Sagey and I did not. Honestly, we didn't just on accident and Sagey and I were down and out for two full weeks and they were down and out for 24 hours. And I was like, oh my gosh, okay. But so we had like flu and then Beaners just like never seemed like fully better after that, but also it was like forever cutting a million teeth. And so we were like giving it time. We popped in, had everybody's like lungs checked and whatever, all clear on the lungs. And when we popped in, they said, oh, Her right ear is a little red, but also we see she has her two bottom canines coming in in one molar. Maybe let's like see, and they gave us these like eardrops we could do that weren't antibiotic. It was like some garlic something. And they were like, this might like help in whatever. Spoiler alert, it didn't. So two weeks later, she's like pulling at her ear. She's sobbing, she's waking up all night long. And I'm like, I'm gonna take her in. And, of course, this starts on a Saturday night of a holiday weekend.
00:51:27 Rachel
Obviously.
00:51:28 Alyssa
It's Martin Luther King weekend, because duh.
00:51:30 Rachel
When else would it happen?
00:51:31 Alyssa
Jeez. So, and like mom of the year, I was like, eh, we've waited a couple of weeks, I'm sure she'll be fine. We wait till Tuesday when I can get her in. And then I feel like a total a -hole because she has a double ear infection and whatnot. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I should have gone on Saturday to urgent care. But so she's right now at the end of her antibiotic dose and woke up this morning and it's like a low -grade fever with a runny nose.
00:51:57 Rachel
No.
00:51:57 Alyssa
You're not done with your antibiotics from the ear infection and you have a new virus? Like what is happening?
00:52:03 Rachel
No. Also, like I understand.
00:52:06 Alyssa
Also, I got winter formal this weekend. I got winter formal and I really want to go for folks tuning in. Zach and I are hosting our first annual Winter Formal, which is adults only. We invited friends of ours. If you have a newborn potted plant, you can bring them, but no other kids. It is a party that's themed after a high school dance, like a winter formal dance.
00:52:37 Rachel
Like a prom.
00:52:38 Alyssa
Yeah. Like a prom. and I got a bunch of decor to decorate like prom vibes. And we have two Airbnbs, we have a duplex that we bought that we lived in until Sagey was born and we still own it and we Airbnb the upstairs and downstairs so we just blocked them both off and we're hosting it there. And I am getting, Kylie's wearing literally her high school prom dress. We have actually a number of people who are wearing prom dresses of theirs or friends that still have their prom dresses. I got a prom dress and we have Zach's curating the playlist right now and it's all late 90s, early 2000s high school dance vibes.
00:53:27 Rachel
Love it.
00:53:27 Alyssa
We're super stoked. My mother -in -law's coming and staying overnight with both of my kids and it's the first time we haven't been overnight with Beans and I'm like, girl, what do you think you're doing?
00:53:40 Rachel
Don't do it.
00:53:41 Alyssa
Don't do it.
00:53:42 Rachel
Franny can handle it.
00:53:44 Alyssa
Yeah, totally. But I would like feel guilt if she's like really sick and I'm partying and placing that on Fran.
00:53:52 Rachel
You're like, Deuces.
00:53:52 Alyssa
Deuces. Have fun with this kid.
00:53:57 Rachel
Yeah. I mean, you can't cancel winter formal, so like it is going to be a Deuces situation.
00:54:04 Alyssa
Correct.
00:54:05 Rachel
And fingers crossed that Mila is not super sick.
00:54:10 Alyssa
And that if she is super sick, her dad just volunteers as tribute.
00:54:13 Rachel
How likely is that?
00:54:16 Alyssa
I don't think it'll come to that, but he would.
00:54:22 Rachel
Aw, that's sweet.
00:54:24 Alyssa
She would be pissed about it because she wants me.
00:54:27 Rachel
Yeah, I know she wouldn't be happy.
00:54:29 Alyssa
That would not be her first choice. But yeah, he would. She has, knock on wood, been sleeping through the night.
00:54:42 Rachel
Wow. What a road.
00:54:47 Alyssa
What a road.
00:54:50 Rachel
Sleep hater.
00:54:53 Alyssa
Yeah. Yeah. Who we get to chat about today?
00:54:57 Georgie
All right, today we're chatting about Georgie.
00:55:00 Alyssa
Ah, Georgie and Tina's book.
00:55:02 Rachel
This is like such a challenging area for me. I'm not playful. I hate it. So it's always helpful for me to hear like new strategies or also just the validation of like, it doesn't have to be elaborate. It doesn't have to be for a long time. I can do it in short doses, but I'm just not a playful parent. I really wanna be, I don't even know if I was a playful kid, if I'm being honest, like I was reading books.
00:55:29 Alyssa
Yeah, I was like thinking about this too, because Zach and I were talking about play and cause he is a way more playful parent. And we were talking about then as kids, and Max was saying, like, oh yeah, he loved Lego. He would get lost in it for hours, and I was like, literally never, never would I get lost in Lego. I didn't have baby dolls. So much of when I think back of play, I just did whatever my brothers were doing. And so we were playing kickball in the backyard, or I don't have strong memories of imaginative play or creative play. There were definitely no like invitations to play being set up in my household.
00:56:15 Rachel
Same.
00:56:15 Alyssa
LOL. And I mean, like we had, we had masking tape that we would use in our living room and put down and make like a three -point line or a goal or whatever. And we would just play sports either inside or we'd go outside and play sports. I don't have the only imaginative play memory I really have that's distinct. I guess two. One, at Ali Tigh's house, she had Dodge Creek. It started near her house and then it would flow by her house. We would go down and pretend we had a water park. We would create this whole water park idea and take tubes and set a tubing thing, whatever, and we'd go play in Dodge Creek. That and then Kelly and I, I don't even know if this is imaginative play, but we would make up dances to popular songs, right? Little Britney Spears, little NSYNC, BSB, and we would just make up dances to songs. Outside of that, I'm like, yeah, we played Dream Phone and board games and stuff, but not like imaginative, creative play. And that is bonkers to Zach, who just can get immersed still. Like he loves play that's creative and imaginative. And so, yeah, I think that's such a good point, Rach, that I'm not great at that as an adult, but also it wasn't what fired me up as a kid.
00:57:52 Rachel
Same, I'm not into imaginative play. Like all my memories from childhood are either like, I shouldn't say all, but the vast majority are me either reading or being creative in some aspect, but not like imaginative play, like painting or like making sculptures or doing papier -mâché. My mom was really awesome about letting me have access to art supplies and craft supplies, and that's what I did. I wasn't sitting down with my dolls. I watched my niece play Barbies, and I'm like, you are so creative and imaginative. And like, I could never as a kid, it just wasn't my thing.
00:58:30 Alyssa
No, no, it's not what... Also like, Beans is so similar to me in that like, I watch her try to figure out how to play in a space. And it really is like, what are the people around me doing? Because I just wanna be connected to them. So how do I kind of fit into their play? And I was just like observing it. We had Francesca came and stayed the night. I had a little sleepover and the girls stayed over and they are almost six and almost three. And Sagey is almost four, right? So he's like right in their age range for play. And then Beaners just turned one. Beaners was the happiest human on the planet to have two other kids. And just whatever they were doing, she was going to keep up. And she was going to like figure out how to play within that space. And Sage was just trying to figure out how to get out of the space and not play with anybody. And I was just like watching this all happen where he's like, no, I want to go do my own thing and play by myself and get lost in my play. And she's like, oh, are we playing this game? Cool, I'll just like bring this thing over and join your play, like great. And I was like, oh girl, I get that.
00:59:51 Rachel
Yeah, totally. My, it's similar here. Like, Abel does like to connect and play, but he also is like, can have like four matchbox cars and like a cushion as a ramp and like make up a full, like, they're all different characters. And like, there's a whole plot happening. There's like a trajectory of events. And Nora, like, has literally never engaged didn't play like that, because
01:00:17 Rachel
she is moving her body or talking. Like, those are her things.
01:00:22 Alyssa
So Beans.
01:00:23 Rachel
She's not about, like, playing alone with Matchbox Cars. She's not about playing alone, period. It doesn't fill her cup. She hates it. So it's a no. So it's a, like, pull for me, because Abel will be like, will you play with me? I'm like, oh my gosh, I cannot be this Matchbox car character and then he wants to like smash into each other and I'm just like, I hate this. And I have to do it because at least for a little bit, because I know how much it means to him.
01:00:55 Alyssa
And it's how he feels connected.
01:00:58 Rachel
Yeah, totally. But inside, I'm just like, how many times can we crash the same two cars? Like, is there anything else that's going to happen at all?
01:01:06 Alyssa
For sure. I think what's really rad about their book is that there are so many like tangible strategies in it. In fact, I just saw Tina Payne Bryson's, the co -author of this for folks who are new to her. She is a prolific early childhood author. She wrote The Whole Brain Child, No Drama Discipline and so many incredible books, but she co -authored this and she was sharing over on Instagram some of the tips, like a very concrete actionable thing. And I was like, oh, I love this. I need that for play because yeah, it just is, it's harder for me to access. I feel like I am the parent that is there for your emotional needs and will make sure your physical things are also accounted for. And then I wanna hang out with the adults while you play.
01:02:06 Rachel
Yeah, that's the same for me. I'm the emotional point person for sure. And I'm grateful because Cody likes to play.
01:02:15 Alyssa
And I will say, as I was chatting with Zach about this the other day, he's like, you're playful. And I was like, excuse me? And he was like, you do it all the time in transitions. And I was like, okay, I guess that's true. But I feel like that at this point is second nature for me because of teaching. The only way you can get 18 three and four -year -olds out the door in snow gear is through play, in my experience. Otherwise, it's just a disaster. Even still, it's usually a disaster. The like, we're playing a game and we're going to get into these boots or we're going to be a character. I'm going to tell you a story while we're navigating this transition. Those are the ways that I play. It's really just because it serves me. Like it helps us move through this transition so that I don't end up in like a power struggle with this child and we can like navigate it through play. Really just comes back to me.
01:03:15 Rachel
Yeah, I also like the times that I'm most playful are when like particularly with Abel, like sometimes in order for me to get him to a point where he's ready to like talk about what happened, he needs like a dopamine hit. So I will get playful with him as a means to kind of like break the cycle because he gets stuck in some feelings, man. And that feels really easy for me to get playful, because I'm like, this is going to help him, like, move into the next step of processing what he's experiencing. So I'm like, totally, I'm here for it. But when it's just like, because he wants to play, I'm like, ehh I guess so.
01:03:55 Alyssa
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Sagey's very into fart and poop jokes right now and probably forever because Zach still makes them. So this doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I, for one, don't think that they're funny. And he got a whoopee cushion for Christmas and the other day he did not want to leave his room and come downstairs and get ready for school, whatever. And I had the whoopee cushion and I was like, yeah, totally. I'm just like talking to him and I had it on the floor and I just like stepped on it and then made fart jokes and it like got him laughing and then we were connected and then I was able to like help him move through to like come downstairs and get ready. And it's like things like that. Like, yeah, I'm gonna make fart jokes and whatnot as like a way to play just to connect so that then we know that collaboration, cooperation are way more likely if they feel connected. And so I feel like that's how I use play is as a form of connection, but honestly often when I need something.
01:05:07 Rachel
Yeah, same. Also I'm picturing Sage like in his facial expression when he's about to trick somebody and then like the huge open mouth laugh when the trick happens. You guys must be getting a lot of that with the whoopee cushion, huh?
01:05:21 Alyssa
Oh my gosh, it's so good. Yeah, his cute little face. You're right, it's that open mouth. He right now, Madi, my cousin Madi is coming for winter formal and she is staying first at our house and then we're staying at the Airbnb on Saturday. But she is sleeping over and Sage has bunk beds and no one's ever slept in the bottom bunk. And so Madi asked, can she sleep in the bottom bunk? And he at first said no. And I was like, what? I was like, why, Buddy? And he was like, wait, does Aunt Madi snore? So we asked her and she said, no, I don't snore. And he said, okay, then she can sleep there. And then he goes, wait, there's also a rule, no farting in my room. And she was like, okay, great, bud. Yeah, I don't snore and I don't usually fart in my sleep unless, and it's like a video she sent, she's like, unless I'm eating broccoli and she like is taking a bite of broccoli as she's talking about it. And so if I just avoid broccoli for a couple of days, we should be all good. And she's like chewing the broccoli and he thinks this is the most hilarious thing that's ever happened. And it's like that, like he just gets that like big smile. He's so jazzed. He wants to show everyone that comes into the house this video. He's like, look what Aunt Madi's doing. And--
01:06:43 Rachel
I can totally picture it. Also, wait, hold on. Backing up to the bunk beds. If nobody's ever slept on the bottom bunk, is Sage sleeping on the top bunk of a bunk bed these days?
01:06:53 Alyssa
Yes, he'll only sleep on the top because it has a guardrail and he's nervous he'll fall out if he sleeps on the bottom.
01:07:00 Rachel
The irony. Wow.
01:07:05 Alyssa
Immediately when he got the bunk beds, he was like, I want to sleep on the top, and we were like, oh, okay, tell me more, like, so not what we expected, and he was like, well, because there's a rail there, so I won't fall out, and he was like, there's no rail on the bottom.
01:07:19 Rachel
I'm having like a culture shock, because the last time I was at your house, he was still in a crib.
01:07:24 Alyssa
Yeah.
01:07:25 Rachel
So the transition from crib to top bunk of a bunk bed is throwing me a little.
01:07:30 Alyssa
Yeah, it was quite a jump. He did go from crib to like we took the side off the crib and put the toddler rail up, so crib to essentially still crib bed to then bunk bed.
01:07:46 Rachel
I'm flabbergasted.
01:07:50 Alyssa
Oh, man. Yeah. No, but I'm jazzed about this book. I think like we often overlook the value of play to connect with kids and then we just want them to do things for us all the time because we want them to get dressed, brush your teeth, eat food, get out the door, go to school, yada, yada, yada. And they are just so much more likely to do those things when they feel connected and play such a rad entrance into connection.
01:08:23 Alyssa
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