Self-Reg with Dr. Stuart Shanker: Round 2

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated with the help of AI and may contain minor errors or inconsistencies. Please refer to the audio for the most accurate representation of the conversation.

Alyssa: [00:00:00] You're listening to Voices of your Village, and today we're rebroadcasting one of my all time favorite episodes. You're going to hear me fangirl real hard because I got to sit down with someone I so deeply admire, Dr. Stuart Shanker. His book Self- Reg was a game changer for me when I was teaching infants and toddlers, and honestly, it shaped so much of how I approach emotional development today. In this episode, we talk about what self-regulation really means, how it differs from self-control, and why so many behaviors we label as bad or actually stress responses. Stuart shares powerful stories and practical insights from what's going on in a newborn's nervous system, to what to do when your teenager melts down over the wrong hoodie. We explore the idea that all behavior is communication and how adults can become stress detectives, and why regulating ourselves is the first step in helping kids thrive. This conversation is packed with gems and I'm so thrilled to share it with you. All right, folks, let's dive in. 

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. 

Alyssa: Hey everyone! Welcome back to Voices Of Your Village. Today I'm here with Dr. Stuart Shanker, who has asked me to call him Stuart.

Alyssa: [00:01:32] And that's hard for me because the respect I have for you is outrageous. When I was preparing for this interview, I was going through not just the questions in our community, but I found myself being like, I don't want an hour of your time. I want like a lifetime of learning from you. It was so hard to condense all of like, oh, if I get an hour, what questions do I ask your book, Self-Reg? The full title, Self-Reg How to help your child and you break the stress cycle and successfully engage with life. I was teaching infant toddler at the time when it came out and got it right in 2016 and I was like, oh my gosh. It finally spoke to what I was experiencing as an infant toddler teacher at the time. And I actually had a kiddo in my classroom who had just started and when she was born, was in the NICU for a little while. And when she came into my classroom, we had like pretty immediate connection to each other. We just got each other from the get go, and she was one of my most challenging kids for sure. And I was hearing from my like, admin that I needed to let her cry a little bit more and just things that didn't feel right for me.

Dr. Shanker: [00:02:42] Interesting. Yeah.

Alyssa: [00:02:43] And then I read your book and I was like, oh, and I passed it along to my administration, and I was like, this is what it is. This is what I'm trying to do. Awesome, awesome. Oh, it was such a game changer. Can you share with our village before we dive in a bit about your background and kind of what led you into this work.

Dr. Shanker: [00:03:00] Well, you know what? Let's start with the story you just told. I got trained in psychiatry by an American psychiatrist called Stanley Greenspan. And Stan did a study back in 1989 90 with Stephen Porges and Giorgio Digangi, and they went into the NICU, and they were looking at preemies that were really struggling. And what they did was they reduced as many stressors as they could. So I'll give you one example. As you know, in NICU, you've got all these alarms that are going off and, you know, it's code red and all the all the staff rush over to, say, a preemie whose oxygen level has dropped below 93%. And so what Stan did was they got rid of the alarms and they used haptic signals, the things that we have on eye watches now, and they coach the nurses. You know, when you get one of these alarms, very calmly, just, you know, walk over. So what we want to do is we want to really lower the stress as much as we can on these babies. And the results were astonishing. The babies all started to put on weight, started to thrive, and they cut the average length of stay in the NICU in half. So that was my introduction to this. And I had been studying something called self-regulation was the perfect example of a theory that was developed by an American at the beginning of the 20th century, and the rest is where we are today. Self-Reg.

Alyssa: [00:04:36] Yeah.

Dr. Shanker: [00:04:37] So is that a good enough answer?

Alyssa: [00:04:39] I fully accept it. Yes. Yeah. That's awesome. And now, I mean, you are knee deep in Self-Reg, for sure, with so many different things that you are doing up in in Canada. Yes, in Toronto.

Dr. Shanker: [00:04:53] Actually, we just launched an international. We're now around the world.

Alyssa: [00:04:57] Awesome. That's so rad for everyone around the world. One of the biggest questions that came in from folks was, what's the difference between self-regulation and self control? And this is very much highlighted in your book. If you want to give us a little overview.

Dr. Shanker: [00:05:11] It's a really interesting question actually, because when I came back to Canada, I had been working on a theory that was developed for mechanical systems. They were looking at self-regulating, basically computers. How can you design a computer that will learn and regulate itself with different stimuli? And so everything I did was on this what's called a psychophysiological definition of self-regulation, which means how we manage stress. I'll come back to that one second. Okay. So when I came back to Canada, I was writing about this, but I was really writing about the psychophysics. And somebody from the Ministry of Education, got in touch with me and they had self-regulation on their report card. And the idea was to tell parents that your kid was either really great at self-regulation, not so great, or really needed to work on it. And I looked at this. I was kind of horrified because I was thinking, as a parent, I wouldn't know what to make of this. And in fact, it would probably, you know, like, I have two kids that would never, ever get anything other than an end needs to work on this. But it was grounded in a theory that was totally alien to all the work I'd been doing.

Dr. Shanker: [00:06:27] And it was really a version of self-control that your kid has to learn how to monitor and manage their emotions, their attention. And, you know, I was thinking about that, and I was thinking, well, you know, that's pretty hard for me. And I was an adult to ask a little kid to do this is, you know, it's a stretch, but there's a deeper issue. There's a reason why I think we need to stick with the original definition, which is very different from self-control. And the reason is this all kids self-regulate. They do it probably before birth, but certainly at birth. And what happens at the moment of birth is a newborn is overwhelmed with stress. The stress of, you know, breathing temperature, light, sound, all these things that they were really sheltered from inside the womb. And so they start to manage their stress right away. And if you're a pediatrician or someone like you who teaches this we have certain warning signs. If a child is sleeping all the time, like 16, 18, 20 hours a day, that's a warning sign for us. If the child refuses to engage with us, really shuts down. That's a warning sign. And those are primitive ways of dealing with stress.

Dr. Shanker: [00:07:54] They're what we call maladaptive. And what we mean by that is that a maladaptive way of dealing with stress might work for a moment, but it creates more stress down the road. And all of the work I was doing was with young children on the spectrum. And typically these kids find social stress more than they can handle. And so they do things like gaze avert. Gaze aversion is actually a way of self-regulating, but it's maladaptive. And the reason it's maladaptive is because kids really need to engage with their primary caregivers to learn language, to develop their emotions, their emotion recognition. And so by shutting out the caregiver, what was happening was they were dealing with their stress in the moment, but it was creating an awful lot of stress a couple of years down the road when they needed language, when they needed mind reading. And so all of the work we were doing was really trying to go back in time to the original psychophysics definition, which is basically how you manage stress. Do you manage stress in a way that is growth promoting or in a way that actually impairs growth? And that's what Self-Reg is all about.

Alyssa: [00:09:09] This reminds me in our village, we call it coping mechanisms versus coping strategies. Yeah. And our mechanisms being those like numbing agents.

Dr. Shanker: [00:09:18] Yes. Exactly. Right.

Alyssa: [00:09:19] Yeah.

Dr. Shanker: [00:09:20] Yeah, that's exactly right.

Alyssa: [00:09:21] Yeah. So for folks tuning in like that's that's the language that we often use around that. And when we're looking at this, can you break down for folks. What's your body going through throughout the day that affects your nervous system. You mentioned like a newborn comes out and it's like lights and sounds and so much stimuli. How does this affect your ability to self regulate throughout the day?

Dr. Shanker: [00:09:42] So that's a great question. And I don't know if you can do this for your listeners. We use a chart that was developed by an American psychologist called Bob Thayer. It's called a Thayer Matrix, and you can download it for free from our website. And it's a really great way for parents to see where their kid is in terms of how much energy they've got and how much tension they've got. And so basically, let's start with a, you know, a fundamental question. So I've used this term, you know, babies have being assaulted by stress. But maybe people are going to be confused by that because, you know, you think of stress, you think of, you know, the stress of a job or money. So how do we call these stress? And to understand this, we have to go back to the very original definition of what a stress is. This goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. A stress is anything that requires us to burn Energy glucose, in order to stay within some sort of what we call a functional range. So I'll give you an example. Our bodies are designed to maintain an average internal body temperature of around 98.6. And in the original example, when he was explaining what stress is, the guy who invented this, Walter Bradford Cannon said, cold temperature is a stress. It's a stress because it triggers energy burning reactions in the body, like shivering, teeth chattering, which generate heat, and that keeps that internal body temperature around 98.6.

Dr. Shanker: [00:11:23] So anything that requires us to burn energy. And I'll explain what that means in one second. Anything that requires that is a stress. It could be a physical stress. It could be an emotional stress, social stress. With older children, we start to work on cognitive stress and pro-social stress. So five different domains of stress. What happens when you have a stressor? Well, some stress is really good, right? So so we want our children to be able to deal with stress. You know, stress of exercise, the stress of going to school. These are beneficial stresses. The problem is when they are overstressed, when it's too much stress. And to understand what's going on here when you have a stress it triggers the autonomic nervous system. And it has two branches two components the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system. What it does is it triggers. If you have stress, it triggers a hormone that raises your heart rate. So think about when you get stressed, right. And you, you know, stress of exams. You can really feel your heart beating. And that's exactly what's going on with those premiums I was talking about. They had very, very high heart rates. And that's expensive.

Dr. Shanker: [00:12:42] That's using up an awful lot of glucose. And then we have another system which counteracts that. And it has a different set of hormones. So that's the parasympathetic. And what it does is it brings your heart rate back down. When a kid has too much stress in their lives, when they're overstressed, that mechanism for bringing them back down wears out. It loses its elasticity, and it gets harder and harder for them to recover, to restore, to repair cells, to digest their food. The reason why Stan's research was so important was by reducing the stress. They were giving that parasympathetic system a chance to recover. What we find is in 100% of the cases of the kids that we worked with that were having trouble, they had a parasympathetic nervous system that was exhausted. They had way too much stress in their lives. And you know, if if you're going to yell at them or you're going to try to punish them, you're just going to add to their stress load. Instead, you got to figure out why is this little kid so stressed? What are the stresses that my one month old that my one year old? What kind of stresses are putting such a heavy load on their heart? And you know what? We can always figure this one out. You just have to become a stress detective.

Alyssa: [00:14:12] I like that a stress detective.

Dr. Shanker: [00:14:13] By the way, I was. I was teasing you before we started about being a baby whisperer. But in my experience, there is such a thing. Stanley Greenspan was a baby whisperer. And baby whisperers have this sort of intuitive awareness of when a baby is overstressed and why the baby's overstressed, and that's why they're so effective. Because knowing what they're seeing, they can now begin to reduce the stress load on this kid, and the kid does better.

Alyssa: [00:14:40] Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, after working with hundreds of kids, especially infant toddler, it's a skill you can develop. When we chat about this in our village, we talk about it as, like, a sensory bank and then withdrawals.

Dr. Shanker: [00:14:54] Yeah. That's great. And that's really good.

Alyssa: [00:14:57] Yeah. Thank you. And for me, it was helpful to like, have that visual because the withdrawals column before like diving into this work didn't make sense. Like you said like stressors were rethink of stress in my life. And I'm like, oh, I'm stressed. It's not like, oh, the lights are too bright or there's sound in the background that comes up for me, you know? And so when we were breaking this down about kids, I think one of the things that's key is noting, like, what are those stressors that maybe we don't think of as adults, as categorized stress. And one of the one of the.

Dr. Shanker: [00:15:29] Things I give you a great can I give you a great story.

Alyssa: [00:15:32] Please?

Dr. Shanker: [00:15:33] Okay, so we were we had a family come to see us at our clinic. And they had a young son. He was about 14 years old. He was Aspergers. And they came to see us because he refused to have Thanksgiving dinner with grandma, who'd come all the way out of town, and he went to his room and wouldn't come out. And so they felt that he was being really antisocial and he was rejecting the family. And so they came to us as sort of, you know, family in crisis. And so we're sitting around the table and we're just chatting, you know, just to get to know each other. And our mental health clinician said to him so what'd you do last night? And he said, well, the whole family had gone to some famous burger joint steak joint. And everybody had steak except him. And he said, boy, it sure looked good, though. And so she said to him, well, why didn't you have a steak then? And he had a hamburger instead. He looked at her like she was an idiot. And he said, you know. And he made a gesture like this with a knife and fork. And she said to him, you mean the knife and fork bothered you with the steak? He said, yeah, it's the sound of the cutlery on the plate. He was very, very sensitive to. He had something called misophonia. So she said to him, is that why you eat the hamburger? And he again he looked at her and he said, you know, like, oh, duh.

Dr. Shanker: [00:16:58] You eat it with your hands. And so, you know, the penny dropped and she said, is that why you didn't have dinner with grandma? Because everybody was using cutlery. And he said, of course. He said, I always have dinner with the family when they have finger food. So, you know, it was a wonderful moment when we saw that, you know, here he had this heightened sensory response to something that you and I wouldn't even notice. But for him, it was like somebody dragging their fingernails on a blackboard. And it was really, really strong aversive. And so what he was doing was he was trying to protect himself. He was trying to self-regulate. It was maladaptive because he was creating all this family tension. And the solution was it was one of those things where we never got around to therapy. All we did was we said to mom, you know, let's switch to paper plates. And you know, there's actually other things that you can do to to reduce the, the stress load on a kid. But it's fascinating how once you start to think about this, you start to realize that what you thought was a misbehavior is, in fact, a stress behavior. And as soon as you see that everything changes, your whole attitude changes. And now you're on the pathway to recovery to to to healthy trajectory.

Alyssa: [00:18:21] Now you get to see the kid differently.

Dr. Shanker: [00:18:24] Yes. You see the kid differently.

Alyssa: [00:18:25] One of the lines in your book, I keep it right at my desk, is if a child is in a depleted state, he's going to find it much harder to resist an impulse. For me, this was like a reminder that I need over and over to fill that sensory bank. But when I'm thinking of, we often get this question from folks that it's like, well, my kid knows not to hit and they can tell me that I shouldn't hit my brother. I shouldn't do this behavior outside of the moment, but they're still doing it. How do I kind of like, break that cycle of dysregulation so that kids can have a more regulated nervous system throughout the day? Is a big question that comes up in our village.

Dr. Shanker: [00:19:08] So you just said two things there that I think are huge. So the first thing is right. We call it reframing the kids behavior. So what we tell all of our parents and all of our teachers is that when you get any kind of behavior that, you know, you think is inappropriate, whatever. First ask yourself why. And then ask yourself why now? And the reason we do that is it sort of makes a pause so you don't react instead. You know, we get that little moment where we can just reflect. Now, the second part of your question is that when a child's overstressed, let's take a kid that's in school and a kid who's very sensitive to noise or other kids, or here's a real interesting one. A lot of the children that we worked with had what's called poor body sense, poor proprioception. And what that means is that for most of us we, you know, I can sit on any kind of chair and I can find myself, you know, position where I'm comfortable. Doesn't have to be, you know, like, really padded or whatever. But for a kid that has poor proprioception, just sitting up on the carpet can actually be a huge stress. And so what happens is, you know, it's got a wonderful teacher. Come on, children, let's all sit on the carpet and we're going to have story time. He starts to poke other kids and he refuses to sit still. And we don't stop and ask ourselves, why is he doing this now? And we don't consider. Well, maybe it's that he feels claustrophobic with other children. Maybe he feels unsafe in his own body. And so when we work with kids like this, so what we found was if we could change the seating, if we could, you know, find a seating that he felt more secure, if we could do some exercises so he could feel in touch with his body or whatever.

Dr. Shanker: [00:21:11] Once we go down this road, then we don't get these disruptive behaviors. Now, there's another part here. I want to come back to you being a baby whisperer. So we have a channel, a brain to brain channel with a kid, and it's called now. The term they use is the interbrain. And so it's a system deep inside my brain. It's called the limbic system is hooked up with the same system in the child. If I feel at all irritated, annoyed, aggravated with the kid, it doesn't really matter what I say, because my limbic system sends its own message and it sends the message. I'm really pissed off. I find you annoying. You're a disturbance. And so, without meaning to, I can have all I can be saying all the right things and I can be smiling. But my tone of voice or my eye gaze. It's sending a very different message. And when a kid is overstressed already, that's all he hears. He doesn't hear the words. All he hears are the limbic cues. And so what we find is once we start to do this, once we start to reframe our perceptions of a kid, our own anxiety really just disappears. We become calm, and those are the messages that we send to the child. We literally share our calmness with him. He picks up that calmness. By the way. We've gone into situations where you would not think this was possible and it always is.

Alyssa: [00:22:45] Yeah. It's awesome. Those mirror neurons are so rad. Can be so rad.

Dr. Shanker: [00:22:50] Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Alyssa: [00:22:54] And so for folks tuning into that, like this might be something they didn't grow up with and they might be building their own self right skills as parents, as teachers, as caregivers. What does this look like if they're finding themselves in a dysregulated state? What are tools that they, as an adult, can tap into so that those mirror neurons can co-regulate so that we can bring the calm?

Dr. Shanker: [00:23:17] You know, we've been overwhelmed recently with calls from America. You guys are undergoing a real spike in Indian kids. But guess what? You know, your country's gone through a very stressful experience, and mom and dad are stressed and and, you know, you're stressed to begin with. And now we've got all, you know, the stress of Covid, the stress of politics. And so what's happening is it's a sort of, you know, we use a term in Self-Reg. It's called red brain. And red brain is when your strong negative emotions, let's say anxiety, are running the show. So what we have to do is, you know, we really want to help our kids. We see this really punishing stress load on. I'll just use Canadian kids. Now this is serious, but I can't do anything unless I can first address the Self-Reg needs of mom and dad or of the teacher. And so our slogan is Self-Reg starts. You know, the emphasis is on self. It starts with self.

Alyssa: [00:24:24] Yeah. Oh, I love it, I love it, and I think so many of us need to hear it. I had the privilege of working with a colleague to create what we call the collaborative emotion processing method and its five components, and only one is adult child interactions, and the other four are about us.

Dr. Shanker: [00:24:41] And that's really interesting.

Alyssa: [00:24:43] And I think that we often overlook that. We're like, what do we say to the kid? What do we do in the moment with the kid? And when we leave ourselves out of the equation, it doesn't super matter what we do in the moment with the kid.

Dr. Shanker: [00:24:53] So did you have you done that with educators as well?

Alyssa: [00:24:56] Yeah, yeah, with early childhood birth to five and with parents. And that's kind of what my work is based around.

Dr. Shanker: [00:25:02] That's really great.

Alyssa: [00:25:04] Yeah. Thanks. It's a joy to get to do. And so for folks tuning in who either have multiple kids or are in a classroom state, how do you help multiple kids that are in a state of dysregulation, like you at the dinner hour, and you're getting stuff ready, and it's maybe after school and things are moving a lot, and it feels like chaos or in a classroom setting when, I mean, I had nine one year olds, right? There was like always some sort of stimuli somewhere happening. And so what does this look like? How do we help folks who have multiple kids at one time?

Dr. Shanker: [00:25:38] So there's sort of two different ways of answering that what we do and what we don't do. So let's start off with what we don't do. So what we're not going to do is obvious. You know, we're not going to raise our voice. We're not going to yell but also we're not going to resort to devices as a way of occupying the kid. And the problem with that is, so we have lots and lots of research on this now, but basically you're avoiding the situation instead of, you know, addressing it head on. Now, when we go into let's take as an example, we do a lot of work in schools that or in a state of high distress. And so you go into a classroom and you've got. I don't know, 20, 25 kids and they're really bouncing off of each other. And there's a very strong likelihood that they're coming from family backgrounds, which are dysregulating in their own right. So the first lesson here is that you're not going to there's no magic bullet here. There's no you know, I wish I had, you know, like some magic word that would get everybody to calm down. So what we do is we use a Spanish word paulatinamente. And what it means is that step by step, you're going to get there. And so what we start to do is we look at our environment, whether it's, you know, at the home or, or in a classroom, and we start to figure out what are the things that I can do to reduce the sensory load in this environment.

Dr. Shanker: [00:27:14] Now I can start to introduce okay. So maybe what you're going to do is you're going to, you know, reduce the lighting or have some comfortable seating, different options. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to start to look at are there activities or experiences that we can bring in that the kids find calming, that they find regulating. So it could be music. I have a friend called Raffi, and we found Raffi's music has this magical impact on children. But the biggest one is the following. So to teach this, we use a video by a guy called Michael Junior and he's a Catholic comedian. You can download this. He's making a home movie of his the birth of his daughter and talk about a newborn that's overstressed. She's lying on a cold table. She's scared, she's cold, and she's really, really dysregulated. It's worth downloading this just to see what happens in a split second. He forgets all about he's making a movie, and he shifts into a dad who's wants to protect his his child. And he starts a mantra and he says to her, it's okay, sweetheart. Daddy's here. And the kid stops crying instantly. Now she doesn't know what the hell he's saying. She's an hour old, but the tone of voice, he lowers his pitch a couple of notes, he slows it down, and what she's responding to is his voice.

Dr. Shanker: [00:28:52] And what we find over and over is that you have a magical tool as a parent, as a teacher. And that's your voice. Slow it down, calm it down. If you're a parent, then a little bit of touch. If you know what kind of touch they like, do they like, you know, like scratching, whatever. Kids are all different. But what we're going to do is we're going to totally shift from any kind of disciplinary response to soothing. What can I. I know you're overstressed. Now. What can I do? And if it's siblings that are. You know, I've got two kids, and I'm, you know, I'm Doctor Self-Reg, and trust me, I can't do it with my own kids. Sometimes separation works. But the key here is always going to be afterwards when you're processing it. What was that all about? Trying to figure out what were the stresses that led up to this. And there's always answers. And then we can move forward. And that's what we mean by the next time. You know, I'll know that I had all the warning signs. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea to take them to Chuck E cheese or some. I don't know what you got in Vermont. So we're constantly reflecting on what happened and then moving forward.

Alyssa: [00:30:11] I love that you noted, like, reducing the stimuli and and our role in doing that. I know as a teacher it's so hard to tap into that in the moment, right when there's chaos around. I'm feeling chaotic inside. But for me, like even just lowering the lights a bit, if you have the ability to do that and being able to reminds me of Michelle Obama. But the opposite, when they go low, you go high. When they go high, I'm going low.

Dr. Shanker: [00:30:35] No that's great. That's I love it.

Alyssa: [00:30:37] You know, and and really being able to do that, it's so hard to do in the moment because our insides are saying to do something else. So.

Dr. Shanker: [00:30:45] Alyssa, can I give you another story, please? Okay. So this is in the book, and this one's stuck with me always. We had a mom come to see us and she'd had a wonderful relationship with her child. And the kid hit puberty, and everything fell apart. And that's not uncommon, right? I mean, it's that's a different lecture. You know what's going on in a teenage brain? It's it's a bit chaotic, but really, the driver in all this was the reason they came to see us, was that she was having these fights with her daughter every single night. And from her perspective, the daughter was nuts. It was totally irrational. And so she was going to explain, you know, that, you know, you're being irrational or always started off with the best of intentions. And then two hours later doors slammed and and they hadn't gotten anywhere. And this was night after night. So finally she came to see us because the daughter was starting to self-harm to cut. So we were sitting around the table and we said, okay, so here's what we want you to do. Don't say anything. Okay, so we're not going to we're not going to lecture. We're not going to explain. We're not going to talk. And if you feel absolutely compelled to say something to your daughter, tell her that you love her and that's it. And within a couple of days of her first session with us, the daughter had asked. We have a clothing line up here, and all the kids were wearing what's called a root sweatshirt, and it was a pink root sweatshirt, and she wanted one of these.

Dr. Shanker: [00:32:21] So mom was a working mom, and she took off her lunch to buy her the sweatshirt. And they didn't have pink ones. They only had gray, so she bought the gray one. This is a 13 year old kid, so you can imagine the scene that they had and all hell breaks out at bedtime again and mom wants to yell at her. I won't swear on your podcast, but it was not nice what she wanted to say to her, but she said the doctor said, I'm not allowed to say anything except I love you. So she left the bedroom and she went out into the hall, and she did some breathing exercises that we talked about, calm herself down, and then she came back in and turned off the lights in the bedroom, and the kid was sitting on the bed. Now, when the child's in this state and, you know, this is typical what I'm describing. It's very it's very typical for, say, a three year old. Not so typical for a 13 year old. But the thing is about the brain. When the brain is overstressed and, you know, you think about it, 13 years old, you got a lot of stresses going on in life, a lot of social stresses. The brain actually regresses to the neural state of a three year old. The needs that that kid had, that teen had were the needs of a three year old. So what she needed was she needed mommy to be soothing. So we have a real problem when kids go into this state.

Dr. Shanker: [00:33:47] And the problem is they can't actually process what we're saying. And the more we talk, the more that talking becomes a stress. We're doing our best as a parent. We're going to explain, you know, and you really are pretty and you're so bright and you're such a all of those words are stressors in their own right. And that's why we didn't want her to talk. And so what we wanted her to do was we wanted her to she turned off the lights. But the other thing we wanted to do was of all the mechanisms for dealing with stress, the number one, the most important is called social engagement. It's that connection with mom and dad or grandparent or best friend. But in that overstressed state, she'd broken off social engagement. She'd broken. She created this barrier between her brain and mom's brain. So we want to get that connection cooking again. And the best way to do it is through physical touch. But we have a problem here because language itself has it's suppressed and you need permission. You can't just barge in and start to touch the kid. That will just send the kid right around. So you have to get her permission. How do you do that when the kid can't talk now? Language may get blocked, but nonverbal communication doesn't. This is the initial the original communication between a baby and a caregiver. So gestures, eye gaze, all those things. So what we asked her to do was we want her permission to touch her. Basically, this was a kid who loved when she was a child.

Dr. Shanker: [00:35:43] Loved being scratched. Kids, they melt when we get the right kind of physical touch with them. So what we suggested was you ask the child. And the ideal way to do this is put your finger inside their fist and you just say, would you like me to scratch your back if you would squeeze my finger? And that's exactly what she did. And, you know, she gets back. A little squeeze. Now, what you've done is you've now re-established that interbrain connection. You've now re-established social engagement. The kid no longer feels alone, is no longer frightened. And this is the most frightening thing there is for a child, is to feel that I have to deal with this by myself. They're sitting in the dark. The child is lying on the bed now. Mum is scratching her back just the way she did when she was three. And within a few minutes, 15 minutes, the kid is ready to go to sleep. Now, these were fights that were going on for two hours. And the last thing she says is, she says, I need to sleep now. I love you, mommy. Well, this is very interesting. First of all, her language has come back. Now she can use language to tell mum that I'm tired now. I want to sleep. But I love you. Mommy is. She has. This experience is lodged deep inside her. It's something called the hippocampus. It's in her deep brain. The memories of when mum soothed her. Okay, so mum's saying, Holy shit, this is really.

Dr. Shanker: [00:37:23] This is magical stuff. You know, I got the kid to sleep and there was no shouting, and now mum starts to feel guilty about it. So she's rehearsing what she's going to say to the child the next morning, and she's going to say to her, look I'll leave work early. I'll pick you up from school and we'll go to the outlet. We'll find the pink sweatshirt. And the next morning the kid comes downstairs smiling, wearing the grey hoodie. So it's a really important lesson for us because what we thought was the stress wasn't the real stress that was going on here was the stress of trying to navigate her way through teenage dynamics, social dynamics, and not having that sort of anchor with mom that she'd had all her life. And so when we talk about this distinction I made between maladaptive and and adaptive or growth promoting ways of dealing with stress, the most adaptive, the most beneficial way of dealing with stress is going to mom and dad. And I had this experience with my own son last night. He's 19 and still needed. He resisted talking until he started to talk. So there's all kinds of layers here. And I guess the part I find most hopeful is that, you know, we've seen an awful lot of kids, thousands and thousands and thousands. And I never once seen a kid who didn't have the same need and never seen a kid that didn't respond to having his, his or her stress lowered and reestablishing that connection that that brain to brain connection. So that's what we do.

Alyssa: [00:39:08] Yeah. It's so powerful and so many things came up for me. I think one of the things that can be challenging in this is our desire to speed it up. Yes.

Dr. Shanker: [00:39:20] Yes.

Alyssa: [00:39:21] You know, we'll get folks who are like, okay, we have we outlined five phases of emotion processing. And our first four phases are just focused on connection and nervous system regulation. And the very last one is problem solving. When we can access it right. I love it. People will be like, okay, well I did this. I did this like check, check, check. And they're refusing coping strategies like, yeah, they might not be ready to tap into that yet.

Dr. Shanker: [00:39:49] That's right, that's right, that's right. I love everything you just said.

Alyssa: [00:39:52] But it's so hard to wait in the moment when we're like, well, I've done it. I've done everything I can do, and I like that. You noted that it was okay for that mom to walk away and do some deep breathing. I think sometimes there's this feeling of if we walk away, the kid will feel abandoned or there'll be some sort of disconnection there. But the reality is we can't connect until we are regulated and in a space to connect.

Dr. Shanker: [00:40:16] You're going to have to come work with us.

Alyssa: [00:40:19] Oh, please. That's a dream. And but I think that that is something that's so hard to do, and especially when we're looking at younger kids where maybe the two year olds following you as you take space, and that it can be hard to regulate that nervous system to to do this and to come back to a place of connection. Can you speak to what it looks like for some kiddos? I have a very different nervous system regulation than my husband. Right.

Dr. Shanker: [00:40:46] Yeah.

Alyssa: [00:40:47] And so he would love it if in the moment I would stop talking to him, I would give him a little space, let him regulate, and then we can come back together and connect when he's ready. And for me, I go into overdrive and I'm like, let me talk through it. Let me just fill all of the silence and have to work really hard not to do that. And so I'm a human who like, as a kid, really benefited from having a hug or having that deep touch. And now also in adulthood as well, in different ways. And for him, he he benefited from having like a rocking chair to go to and get some vestibular input.

Dr. Shanker: [00:41:25] Terrific. Terrific point.

Alyssa: [00:41:26] So what does this look like in terms of figuring out who's the kid in front of me and what do they need for their regulation? That for Zach, my husband, if I were to touch him in that moment, that's dysregulating. And so how do you how do you navigate that?

Dr. Shanker: [00:41:42] So we had this kid, we got called into a school and you know, we'd gone through our problem solving and, you know, we're the experts. And he was ten years old, and we came to the conclusion that what he needed was some quiet space to himself. Not a punishment room or anything like that. But we thought really what he needed was, you know, just it was a little office off the principal's office. So, you know, we're convinced that we knew exactly what he needed. And we get called back a week or two later and the kid is even worse. And so so, you know, we had this novel idea. Let's ask him. So we asked him, this doesn't seem to be working. Why not? Because he was a kid that we were quite certain he was overly stressed by other children in, in the classroom. That's why he needed a break. And he says to us, the problem is, I can't stand the quiet. If you could put a radio inside this room for me. And so we did. We put a radio in and then he was fine. And so one of the things that we learned, and this is hard when you're dealing with with infants. So remember, you know, they don't have the language. They can't tell us, but they show us in all sorts of ways. And so what we learned how to do is we learn to read all kinds of little signs.

Dr. Shanker: [00:43:11] It could be their the complexion, the color of the skin on their face or the back of their hands. That's a a good indicator of when a child is overstressed. Or it could be their eye gaze. You know, we have all these little things, and I suspect that that's what you're teaching. One of the things you're teaching is how to read these signs. Now, for us, this is always a trial and error process. You know, we're going to try things and we learn. We learned a couple of things, a couple of huge lessons. First of all, no two kids are the same. So every single kid has unique sensory thresholds. And sometimes, you know, they are bizarre. Like, there are things that we would never have guessed. But if you begin to reframe, look at the difference between misbehavior and stress behavior, you can start to figure it out. So that's the first lesson. Every kid is unique. And the second lesson is the little buggers change on you every week. So so you know what was a stress. You know you had it all figured out last week. And now you have to start all over again. But you know, we learn how to read these signs. And I'm going to guess that there are moments that even Zach wants a hug, you know, like and so it's it's really becoming responsive in the moment.

Dr. Shanker: [00:44:36] You know, seeing that that this is not a time for this is not a time for me to hold you. This is not a time for me. This is a time to just maybe just be here. Quiet. You know, for us, it's kind of. It's a constant learning experience, but we have certain indicators and the indicators are invaluable. One of them is what's my child like when they wake up in the morning? Are they smiling? Are they happy? What's my child like at bedtime? Is it easy for them to go to sleep? Do they welcome the sleeping? We look at their appetite how it's called rhythmicity. You know, like the regularity of, you know, whatever they're doing. And let me add what I think is one of the most important discoveries that we made. I don't know that this is in the book in Self-Reg. It's in a later book in so many of the families that we worked with, mom and dad or whoever, were actually pretty good at this. They were pretty good at figuring out what the child's sensory needs were, that it's called individual differences, figuring out you know, how to respond. They were actually pretty good at this, and the problems started when the kid went off to say preschool or school and hear what the issue is. Finally, we drew a distinction between what we call robust and fragile attachment.

Dr. Shanker: [00:46:08] So I can have in robust attachment. Basically, what that means is that the kid is securely attached with his primary caregivers, and I can switch the caregivers, and that kid is going to do fine. That kid can deal with any range of new experiences or new interactions. Fragile is very different. So the fragile, these are kids that were in fact securely attached with mom and dad, because Mom and dad had learned how to avoid certain stresses. Whatever. But when the kid entered into a school setting. So you now have an educator who maybe doesn't understand this child, doesn't have this background knowledge, or maybe even worse, who sees the child as misbehaving and needing discipline. And then what can happen is that it now looks like I have an attachment disorder with Mom and Dad. So an awful lot of the work that we do is trying to empower parents. If you sense that your child's educator is really not responding to your child's needs, go in and talk about it. Tell them what you know, share experiences and don't abandon, you know, like, don't think that, you know, like, I can just turn my child over. No. And and you know what? I think this is true. Whether they're an older teenager or young adult or a kid. So that's one of our big lessons.

Alyssa: [00:47:42] Yeah, I love that. And it gives parents that the advocacy role.

Dr. Shanker: [00:47:46] Advocacy. Thank you.

Alyssa: [00:47:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I dig that. One thing that I am curious to hear your thoughts on the role of, like, crying and experiencing emotions. Like, I'm thinking of the work around emotional agility and ability to experience sadness without trying to rush it away, or grief or frustration or anger. We reference in our work we created. I fully made it up, but it helped me visualize. I call it the Triangle of Growth. And at the base of the triangle is our sensory systems and emotional development and language. The idea being that I want to support sensory regulation before we can work on emotional regulation, before we can talk in access language.

Dr. Shanker: [00:48:29] And yeah, that's great. That's great.

Alyssa: [00:48:32] It was I'm a huge fan of the visuals. It helps me.

Dr. Shanker: [00:48:35] Yeah, it's really, really great.

Alyssa: [00:48:37] Thanks. But so in this, when a kid is, say, dad just left for work and they're crying and they're feeling sad, or when kids would get dropped off at school that we might feel this rush to like, help them stop crying and to rush away that sadness. And so how do you balance the co-regulation and supporting of the nervous system regulation with allowing them to feel?

Dr. Shanker: [00:49:03] You know, there's a real technical term for what you just described. It's called the affect diathesis hypothesis. And the point of it is that, look, as parents, there are certain emotions that we are uncomfortable with, and it's different for every family. So in my family you know, if it was anything of a sexual nature, my dad was great. Oh, we can talk about sex, you know, and and I'm sure as a five year old, I knew more than most adults. But anger was a different issue. So we weren't allowed to be angry. And so I could be having this wonderful co-regulated experience with with my my dad. And then, you know, you're a kid, right? And you get angry about something, and he would just stop. You're not allowed to be angry. And so what happened was, growing up, I had associations with anger like that. Somehow I associate it with a kind of shame. Like. Like it was a shameful experience to be angry at somebody. And that's not healthy, right? So. Because because you're going to get angry and you want to be able to express your anger. And so what we find when we work with families is that what you're describing. Typically it's around emotions that they're uncomfortable with. Right. That they try to short circuit the process. I love what you said before. Right. You're going to speed it all up. But this is a baby or an infant. That's that's experiencing these emotions, working through them. And what they need from us is, of course, loving support. What they need for us is that feeling that, you know, I'm not going to leave you at this point. I'm not going to withdraw. I'm still here and I can be a supportive presence, but I have to allow that child. What you're talking about is allow that child to experience these different emotions and to work through these different emotions and this real hard. Right? I mean, I find it really hard.

Alyssa: [00:51:09] Yeah, it's really hard. We have to we have two courses for parents, and now we are only selling them together because we realize you can't do this work without both of them. One is our tiny humans big emotions course, like guiding. Parents saw that this work and then the parenting course, which is the work of what makes me uncomfortable. What's coming up for me? How do.

Dr. Shanker: [00:51:30] Oh, you're doing you're doing that a yeah.

Alyssa: [00:51:33] Yeah, yeah. And so this like I'm like, thank you for this answer. This is what we found is we sold them separately and now you can only get them together because we realize that's great. So many folks would come into tiny humans, big emotions, wanting to know what to do with their kid, and we would end up leading them also to reparenting for what do we do with ourselves and what's making us feel so uncomfortable? Or maybe what's leading to us saying, but I feel like they need to be punished. Or we're working with someone who was like, okay, I get all that. I'm going to help him regulate his nervous system, but what's the consequence? And it gets back to that. And we were like, oh, let's dive into why you feel like there needs to be a consequence. So.

Dr. Shanker: [00:52:15] Yeah, it's just terrific.

Alyssa: [00:52:17] Yeah. Thanks. I, I'm so glad that you kind of brought those in together, that so many of us are going to have things coming from our childhood and our social programming and cultural context around what's allowed and what isn't.

Dr. Shanker: [00:52:28] And yeah.

Alyssa: [00:52:30] Doing that work is hugely important.

Dr. Shanker: [00:52:33] You know, there's I'm just reading a book right now by a guy called George Lakoff. And because I'm trying to understand what the hell's going on in the US with the polarization. And so, so what he talks about is he draws this distinction between two very different kinds of parenting styles. And one of them is authoritarian and one of them is authoritative. And so I have this little kid, and, you know, they're two years old, and I'm already programming them to be a conservative or programming them to, you know or programming programming them to be nurturing. And so what's happening is that the limbic system, which is, you know, driving everything in the early years of life, is actually being wired by these early interactions. The problem that we have is that the limbic system operates, we call it beneath the threshold of conscious awareness. So I can have these associations that, you know, Johnny didn't try. That means that Johnny is lazy. He didn't make the effort. Or I can have the opposite parenting style that says no, no, you know, there's something else going on. Johnny finds it over stressful for whatever. So how do we when we see that these things are getting wired very early in life? How do we address this? How do we get past the polarization that you guys have got right now? And I think you just put your finger on it with your two courses. You do it through awareness. You become aware of these patterns. And it's a real eye opener for everybody to say, oh my goodness, you mean I'm, I'm reacting the way my great great grandfather was?

Dr. Shanker: [00:54:22] You know, when when we become aware of these things, that's when change starts. It's.

Alyssa: [00:54:26] Oh, thank you, I that's so perfect. It literally are the method that I referenced earlier that we co-created Lauren and I collaborative emotion processing at the cornerstone of all of the components is mindfulness, which for me is awareness.

Dr. Shanker: [00:54:39] Yeah, that's there you go.

Alyssa: [00:54:41] Yeah. Oh, you're speaking to my heart. And I, we often get folks we do work in sleep as well. Again, coming back to we want to support folks with sleep if we're going to do this work, if you're exhausted. This is like. Yeah. And you know, we don't practice cry it out for, I think, quite obvious reasons. But we also get people who are in these two camps, and we are working to find that gray area. And I think the key in parenting is in the gray area. And we want that black and white. You know, we want the.

Dr. Shanker: [00:55:16] Like.

Alyssa: [00:55:16] Do this, don't do this. And I was just talking about this with social media. I was saying how I see this on social media a lot in accounts that are growing or being shared and going viral, and it's that black and white where that's a there's a comfort in somebody saying, do this, don't do this. And I'm just never going to do that. I'm always going to find that grey area. And I think that it's so key to be able to pause and take a good look around.

Dr. Shanker: [00:55:43] So that's why we do why and why now?

Alyssa: [00:55:45] Yeah I love yeah I love that. I love that again I could I, I don't want an hour. I want a lifetime of this. So where can folks find your work and access more tools from you? Where can folks find more and snag your books?

Dr. Shanker: [00:56:02] If you go on to the website. There's all kinds of things they can download for free. And some of the things they'll find really useful, like the stress inventory where you start to learn that, oh my goodness. You know, these are stresses that I never would have dreamt. Like we're going to Christmas now and I've always had a nightmare. My kids get overly stressed by presents. And it was a real shock to, to to discover that most kids get really stressed by presents. So So you go on to the website, you can get all kinds of free stuff. And the last book, the new book, I think it's a real important one because the very first there's three books here. It's a trilogy. So the first book was for teachers, the second book, the one you read, that's for parents. But the third book is The self book is really about a child's social emotional needs. But what about learning? What about cognitive? What about intelligence? And so to me right from the start, I've always hated what's called determinism. I hate it with a passion. One of the things that Stan taught me was when you do self rage, you're not saying, you know, I can turn, you know, any child into a Bill Gates or Stephen Hawking.

Dr. Shanker: [00:57:25] But what you are saying is that you never really know how smart a kid is, where their gifts are, what their. And so what we want to do is we want to figure out what's holding my child back. What are they're called limbic breaks. And if I can figure out those limbic breaks and release those breaks, guess what? That kid is going to blow you away. And so our final message is so you can give them all the materials that we've done, but our final message that we want everyone to to, to really take to heart is having spent my life doing this, I can now tell you that of the tens of thousands of children that I've seen, I have never, ever seen a bad kid. There isn't such a thing. Okay. And so what I'm. What I'm hoping for is if I can figure out, you know, what are the stresses with these with this kid? How can I release this? Oh, my goodness. I have yet to have an experience where that child, you know, you see the child differently. And this new kid is going to blow you away.

Alyssa: [00:58:33] Oh, I love it. We'll link to all of those things for folks if you're on the go or not able to jot things down right now. It was an absolute dream to get to meet you. Thank you so much for hanging out with me. This is awesome.

Alyssa: [00:58:44] Stay tuned after this note from our sponsors, Rach and I will be right back with the breakdown.

Rachel: [00:58:55] Okay, so we talked about me having that like weird reaction to the tea the other episode.

Alyssa: [00:59:03] Yeah yeah yeah.

Rachel: [00:59:04] Okay, so I'm pretty sure that I know that it was a blood pressure issue because I just happened to get my yearly labs back from my doctor. Like my physical labs, my sodium was low, which happens to me intermittently. And so I think what happened was I had the tea high in potassium. My ratios were off, my blood pressure was dropping and I thought it was a blood sugar issue, so I ate a banana. More potassium because I was like, blood sugar issues happen to me fairly frequently and like, sometimes I'll be nauseous or a little bit shaky, but this was more like, I'm gonna lose consciousness soon. And so the blood pressure really seems to make more sense for that of like, yeah, blood sugar, I can power through.

Alyssa: [00:59:52] I also think this is so good for people who have interoceptive like take the questionnaire seed quiz. Com and if you have a kid who shows up as interoceptive sensitive, especially if you are not interoceptive sensitive, you might hear rage talk about this and you're like, whoa, blood pressure and blood sugar and she's getting shaky. And whatever your interceptive sensitive human also might experience internal shifts in noticing those internal cues in a more heightened way than you do. And I think it's really helpful. Rach, whenever you talk about this stuff, because I'm not interceptive sensitive and I have burst and interceptive sensitive human, and it helps me remember that his experience of the world is real, even though it's not my experience.

Rachel: [01:00:41] Also, like some of this I think is related to my self-diagnosed pots, because I passed out a lot in high school and I didn't recognize the feeling of it coming on in high school. Like one time I passed out in the bathroom, which was on the opposite end of the house from my parents bedroom, and I hit the bathtub so hard that it woke my dad up in their bedroom. But he didn't, like, realize what happened. So he didn't come out. He was just like, oh, it was a loud noise, whatever. And then I tried to get up, to walk to them, to tell them that I was sick and passed out from standing and cracked my chin open. And so I do think that my interoception helps me pick up on the signs earlier now that I know what they feel like. But I think also, even if I wasn't interoceptive sensitive I when my blood pressure does that, if I don't deal with it properly, I'm going to pass out so I can use my interoception as blood sugar.

Alyssa: [01:01:33] Shakiness?

Rachel: [01:01:35] Totally. But that too is like usually I can power through.

Alyssa: [01:01:41] Its the yeah, but then you're kind of a raging bitch. I've seen it.

Rachel: [01:01:47] Totally, but it's not like I'm gonna get hurt because I'm going to pass out or I'm going to lose my vision.

Alyssa: [01:01:51] Absolutely. But that's the thing I think actually shows up for kids more is like, oh, this kid is interoceptive sensitive and their blood sugar is low, or they need something, or they're hungry or they're tired and they are now like melting down everywhere. And it's really coming back to like, interoception.

Rachel: [01:02:10] Totally how they experience it. Yeah. And then if you compound that with any sort of biology differences, like me wanting to lose consciousness like it's my job, then you It's literally so annoying. Like.

Alyssa: [01:02:26] Yeah.

Rachel: [01:02:28] Just drink some tea. And now I'm losing my vision. Okay, buddy. Thanks.

Alyssa: [01:02:33] Thanks so much.

Rachel: [01:02:35] It's so. And I can, like, laugh about it, but in the moment, it pisses me off because I'm just like, this is not a rational reaction to a cup of tea.

Alyssa: [01:02:44] I have a question for you, doctor. Rachel.

Rachel: [01:02:47] Okay.

Alyssa: [01:02:48] What? And for those listening, she's not actually a doctor. But I do treat her as my doctor because she's a research junkie. Why do you think I have gotten headaches my whole life? And why? Why do you think I get them? And is there anything you think I could do differently? Because I've had people be like, you're probably dehydrated. And I'm like drink more water than anyone on the planet, so probably not.

Rachel: [01:03:09] No, I think that so I think that there are a couple of aspects to migraines, and I'm not a doctor. But here's what I think. I think that at baseline migraine sufferers have. You have differences in your neurotransmitters in your brain and in your pain receptors. So at baseline you have some biology that's different. And then I think that a lot of migraine sufferers are also very sensitive to histamines in food and environment. And that when you have at baseline a brain that is sensitive, which you do if you are a migraine sufferer, then things that for other people are like minor stressors. They end up being major stressors for your brain. So like it might be histamines. It could be an environmental trigger.

Alyssa: [01:04:07] Mine's usually around hormonal stuff.

Rachel: [01:04:11] Right. So estrogen and histamine interact. And so a lot of people, like my mom is a migraine sufferer or was Premenopause, a migraine sufferer, and when she was your age, she went to the doctor and was like, hey, I noticed that these seem to happen around my cycle. And they were like, that's coincidence. And now we know factually that it's not coincidence and that estrogen and histamine have this relationship and the liver is responsible for clearing or regulating both estrogen and histamine. So the other thing that we can look at for people who are having hormonal headaches is like liver support. It's not a it's not a single factor situation.

Alyssa: [01:04:57] Yeah, yeah. It's like things coming together well in the estrogen makes sense because estrogen has come into play for me a number of times. I mean, even in getting and staying pregnant and then like, had a tear where I'd had a tear and they were like, oh, your estrogen is low because you're nursing still and you don't have to stop nursing. But when on estradiol cream, it's like estrogen has just been a thing in my life. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Rachel: [01:05:22] Yeah. And your body also struggles to regulate the ratio between estrogen and progesterone, which we saw when you were pregnant. And so that also could be because sometimes it's sometimes the baseline level is off. But sometimes too it's the relationship that's off.

Alyssa: [01:05:36] Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. For me the relationship between those two was what was off where my estrogen had been very high. When I stopped nursing sage. It was very high. And my progesterone was. Then they were like, your progesterone is actually kind of a normal level, but if you want to maintain a pregnancy, we need to balance them out. And so the fastest route for that for me at the time was to just take progesterone.

Rachel: [01:06:04] Yeah, I would be interested to see also because of your lifelong issues with anemia and iron also interacts with our hormones. And so you have this little bit of a puzzle where you have several factors, and I'm interested to see what will happen when you enter like perimenopause, menopause. And I think what's going to happen is they're going to get worse while you're in perimenopause. Sorry to be a downer. And then I think when you have gone through menopause I think they're going to end.

Alyssa: [01:06:35] Cool. All right. Sweet. Well I'll be your test subject over here I guess.

Rachel: [01:06:41] So.

Alyssa: [01:06:41] Knocking on perimenopause door. But I that actually for me nursing I was sage I was like feeling really done nursing. But I think also my body had just been through so much leading up to his pregnancy. And then I was pregnant and then postpartum and whatever. And I think I just needed to have my body be just mine. And then it was only mine for a month and a half and then I got pregnant with beans lol. And I don't feel that same pull now, and I wonder if part of it is I don't plan to have more kids. And so I'm like, once I'm done nursing, our body is just mine. Then, like, I'm not planning to grow more kids and not plan to nurse more kids. I feel less of a pull to stop. And she loves it so much. And also at this point, like when I travel, I pump once or twice and I dump it and it doesn't feel like a giant pain in the butt and she can take it or leave it in terms of if I'm gone. It's not like she's devastated. She doesn't use it to fall asleep. She doesn't need it for a thing. We just a thing we have together. And I also believe there are health benefits for her if I can, as long as she's doing it. I don't think it hurts her for sure. But I've noticed that in myself of like, oh yeah, I don't. I've had people now that she's turning two who have been like, oh, you're still nursing. And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, do you have a plan to like, people are curious about my plans around it. And I've realized for myself, this is longer than I nurse sage. I nursed him 22 months, and we started the weaning process at like 20 months. And it was officially done at 22. And I just don't feel pull to stop right now and I wonder if I will.

Rachel: [01:08:22] Well, it's interesting too, because Nora was beans age when I weaned her to start chemo. Yeah. And she was not ready to stop. And I did not have plans to stop. And it felt incredibly normal to be nursing her. And I did get a lot of questions of like, well, when are you gonna stop? Able weaned himself at like 15 months. So he wasn't a long nurser, but I it's been interesting, just like moving through the world and seeing, like, being out in public and seeing a toddler nurse and remembering how normal that felt in that moment. And also like our cultural conditioning. And there's a moment where I'm like, damn, that toddler is toddler, and they're on.

Alyssa: [01:09:06] And she is not a casual nurser. She's in down dog, she's doing flips. She doesn't stop moving. Not like she's just snuggled and no one knows she's nursing.

Rachel: [01:09:17] No. Also, like she's just being a toddler, right? And I think she's.

Alyssa: [01:09:22] Also a sensory seeker.

Rachel: [01:09:23] Dude, that was Nora. Just loved the boob and loved to, like, act like my nipple was made out of rubber and do whatever she wanted to do.

Alyssa: [01:09:32] Yes.

Rachel: [01:09:33] Yeah. But I think, like, the questions come from this cultural place of, like, we're used to seeing infants nursing and thinking about when I was nursing a toddler, it still felt so normal, and I do believe that it gives them health benefits. And also it's just like like you said, it's just something that you have together. It's kind of like a reset or like coming back to home base. And it was very regulating for Nora. And of course, we were building other strategies, and I wasn't whipping my boob out every time she was upset. But it was a way to like, connect and regulate. That was really easy.

Alyssa: [01:10:08] Yeah. Yeah. And she's so cute. Yes, sir. I picked her up at school and she goes, hi, mom. Are you nurse me at home? And I was like, yeah, I'll nurse you when we get home. But like, it's not like it's not, it doesn't feel like it's interfering with my day where like I go to pick her up and then I have to build in 15 minutes to nurse before I get sage, like, no, she can handle the like, yeah, no, not right now. Yeah. I just have, like, noticed that in myself. I'm like, oh, this is different this time where like, I don't have this like, oh, I feel done. I just want to stop. I'm like, yeah, we'll see what she does and how this happens. But just notice in it, who do we get to chat about today.

Rachel: [01:10:48] All right. This is fun. This is Stuart Shanker.

Alyssa: [01:10:52] Oh the amount that I love this man I have this book right here. Right here sits on my shelf.

Rachel: [01:10:59] First of all, it's a book that I go back to over and over and over again. And before tiny humans and big kids, it was pretty much the only book that I recommended to people who were like, do you have a parenting book recommendation?

Rachel: [01:11:12] Because it's such a gem. But one of the most fun parts of listening to this episode was you just absolutely.

Alyssa: [01:11:18] In love with him.

Rachel: [01:11:19] Fangirling so hard and just, oh man, I was loving it. But I this is a little bit of me fangirling. There are not a lot of people in this space that I'm like, okay, your work revolutionized my parenting and this work did.

Alyssa: [01:11:40] It did for me.

Rachel: [01:11:41] Too. And you recommended it to me. And this was years and years ago before seed and.

Alyssa: [01:11:48] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rachel: [01:11:49] I read it and I had already read a bunch of parenting stuff. I was like devouring it when Nora was younger. And nothing has influenced me more than this book.

Alyssa: [01:12:04] Same, same. It's still something I recommend. Like, I'm like tiny human self, like, here you go. It for me was I love like Tina's work and Dan's work and the whole brainchild and that and self Reg helped go a little nerdier for me while also still making it accessible with like whole brainchild. I think what's so nice about it is it's so approachable, you know, like you're in a reactive brain or you're in this other, you know, the like prefrontal cortex, like responsive brain and like breaking little things down, like, name it to tame it. I feel like it really came into pop culture, like brought parenting into pop culture. I think Whole brainchild had a huge role in that, in the way that we talk about parenting today. Self Reg helped me in practice start to see misbehavior as stress behavior.

Alyssa: [01:13:07] Like really start to see that and see that this kid wasn't choosing something, but that their nervous system was dysregulated and they couldn't access this thing. I was just yesterday sitting in on a meeting with one of our schools assistant superintendent and principal, and the person's the head of their behavior support team. And we were talking about a kid who's been having a hard time in school. He's an elementary school. And I was like, okay, share with me what your goals are for him right now because he's not meeting these social, emotional goals. And when they shared them and they're like, yeah, he's had a hard time meeting. He's not meeting them as they were talking about it. It was this like it was like a choice that he won't do X, Y and Z or he doesn't want to do x, y and z. And I said I just, for the sake of this conversation, want to pause and bring a different perspective in for a second. What if we rebrand this real quick and say, why can't he be successful in these goals? What's in the way of him being successful in these goals? When we can reframe that won't to a can't, then we were able to design goals to meet him where he is and say, okay, he can't take accountability for his actions in the classroom right now because he is feeling isolated and left out and he's high connection seeking. And so anything that's going to be socially isolating or vulnerable, he cannot access that right now. So what can we do if the goal is he takes accountability for his actions? First of all, why? Like what's the overarching goal of that and then what can he access? What can he do that helps teach that same thing that helps reach the same overarching goal that we have for him.

Rachel: [01:15:09] Yeah.

Alyssa: [01:15:10] And it totally shifted the conversation. But that comes from Doctor Stuart Shenker, right?

Rachel: [01:15:15] When I think about looking at a child and looking at a behavior and I think about like triaging it of like, all right, what's happening and why this is the foundation for that. You know, sometimes I think we get in the weeds with wanting to jump right into like, what's going on emotionally, right? Because emotional development has come into the parenting space and it belongs there. And it's so, so important. But it has to come after the nervous system has been addressed. And so that's where Shenker, for me, was so revolutionary because I was already deep into like emotional development of my kid and because this was pre able this was I just had Nora and I was into like emotional development and how to foster emotional development and respond in a way that is appropriate for their emotions. And I was missing this other huge piece of the puzzle.

Alyssa: [01:16:12] I think it's still largely missing. It's why when people got their hands on tiny humans and were diving into it, they spread it. And it's why every time I go and I do a workshop at a school, teachers are like, wait, what? Because this is still a part that's missing. It's still a part of the conversation that people are not yet having. When we're talking about deeply feeling kids. And you're not going to talk about the nervous system, good luck. Like you are missing so much of this puzzle. If you're not going to talk about the nervous system and then get to know each kid's unique nervous system, your own unique nervous system, because the overarching labels, big feelers, deeply feeling kids, even kids under like an ADHD or autism umbrella. There's so much more to know about them that helps us then respond to their unique being and figure out what do they need to thrive. And if your approach is one size fits all under an umbrella, give me a lot of kids that that does not reach.

Rachel: [01:17:23] Correct. I think about the deeply feeling kid label, and I think about my two kids who could both have that label ascribed to them, but one is neuro sensitive and the other is interoceptive sensitive. And so the root of those deep feelings is different, which means that the response has to be different, and meeting their needs looks very different. And if all I knew was that they were deeply feeling, and I tried to respond in one way to both of them, one of them would not be getting what they need.

Alyssa: [01:17:54] Correct. Yeah.

Rachel: [01:17:56] And what would happen is if I didn't know that there was a nervous system Reason for that. I would see that as like, okay, well, I'm failing or something's wrong with my kid because I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It's not working.

Alyssa: [01:18:08] For one kid. Yeah.

Rachel: [01:18:10] And so what's.

Alyssa: [01:18:11] Wrong with the kid? Like, well, in one of your kids has ADHD. The other one does not. And so even within that, where it's like, okay, both might be would be classified as deeply feeling kids, one would be classified as ADHD. And if you only looked at like the ADHD parts of this, the high movement, the need for a bunch of movement and stimuli and whatever, you still miss the neuro ceptive piece, which then informs how you respond.

Rachel: [01:18:42] Correct.

Alyssa: [01:18:44] This is still largely in like in the parenting space, especially in schools. It's why our work focuses so much on schools. It's still a missing piece.

Rachel: [01:18:55] Yeah.

Alyssa: [01:18:55] And I'm so, so grateful that this book came into my world and into my life. It was actually a parent at a school that I was teaching at five ever ago. It was pre. It was before seed existed, before the set method existed that this came into my world. Her kid wasn't even in my class. We had just connected. I did a little coaching consulting for the family around sleep actually, because they're tiny humans having a hard time in sleep stuff, and I'd done some work with them, and she had just handed this book to me, and she was like, this is going to be up your alley.

Rachel: [01:19:31] And was it ever.

Alyssa: [01:19:33] Oh my gosh, it changed how I show up in the world. It changed me as a teacher. It changed me as a parent. It led to so much of what we get to do now. Yeah, I'll never stop fangirling.

Rachel: [01:19:45] I mean, it's hard.

Alyssa: [01:19:45] Because.

Rachel: [01:19:46] I'm just so grateful.

Alyssa: [01:19:48] It's like meeting Brené, like she shaped my world in a whole other way, that they are the two greatest influences in the work that I get to do now, and the way that I get to live my life, and I have such a gratitude and respect for them.

Rachel: [01:20:08] One thing that I love about his work is the way he identifies stressors, and how there are so many stressors in this world that depending on your nervous system, you may not recognize as stress.

Alyssa: [01:20:29] They might be regulating for you.

Rachel: [01:20:31] Oh, totally. I mean, what's stressful to Nora is a lack of stimuli, and what's stressful to Abel is stimuli. So there you go in a nutshell. But I think about Abel as an infant. Right. And me wishing that he could fall asleep in my arms while we were out and about. And the reality for his nervous system is that lights and noise were incredibly stressful for him. And having that lens. As my children have grown and even as like I'm navigating stuff in my own adult relationships, but understanding that a lot of what we see on the surface as misbehavior is driven by stress changes the game. It changes everything about how I receive their behavior, about how I think about their behavior, how I respond to it.

Alyssa: [01:21:24] Well, and then how you know what to reduce, like how you know, like, yes, if they are stressed, what do they need? Because like you said, that she needs more stimuli. He needs less. Like when you understand those things as stressors to them, it lets you know, what do they need? Yes.

Rachel: [01:21:46] Yeah.

Alyssa: [01:21:46] Kylie, at the conference we were just at, that was like bonkers. It was just like, I mean, I have I'm not a high sensory seeker. I'm neutral. But I have a pretty high tolerance for stimuli. I am connection seeking. I have pretty high connection seeking needs and I left each day like woo. And we're like, at this conference, there's all these booths. No one in the world loves a deal more than Kylie and Kylie on our team. And and so there's all this swag. So she's, like, getting stocking stuffers for kids she's gonna bring home. It's like a tube of bubbles from this. Oh, yeah. Company table, whatever, stuff like that. And so she's like bopping around. She's like all full high energy at one point. And were the other three of us there are like sitting down in a chair because it was the only lull we've had all day. And she's like, I'm gonna go for a walk. I'm looking for one of those sensory strips. Does anybody know where those sensory strips are? You know, the ones that are like really bumpy that you can you can touch. And I really wanted one of those and I can't find them now, does anyone know where they are. And we were like, what? I'm sorry. First of all. What? And then second of all, you want to go get something that's going to add more stimuli, more.

Rachel: [01:22:58] Stimulation.

Alyssa: [01:22:59] For something to touch what it was just like it was just a perfect depiction of her nervous system and how different our nervous systems are. That like, she's at this conference with all the stimuli and she's like, give me more. And we were like, put me by a pool and give me a margarita, and I'm just going to close my eyes and eat a taco.

Rachel: [01:23:23] When I imagine what menorah will be like as an adult, I.

Alyssa: [01:23:26] So similar.

Rachel: [01:23:27] Kylie.

Alyssa: [01:23:29] Yes to a t the high movement needs the high connection, needs the stim, all of it. And it would be your actual nightmare would have been to be at that conference because it was a lot for me, and you would have been so whelmed and so stressed. We would have had to, like, put you in a room and then just like, pulled you out for when we needed you to, like, talk about the book and connect with people about the book?

Rachel: [01:23:53] Yeah, and I wouldn't have been able to then, like, hang with you guys at night.

Alyssa: [01:23:56] No. Absolutely not.

Rachel: [01:23:58] I would have been reading. Exactly. So when we were in the city for the kickoff of the big kids tour. Yeah. And I was like, looking around Times Square, and I just kept thinking like, oh, my gosh, Nora would love it here. Like, I have to figure out a way to bring her here without Abel, because Abel would. It's just his nightmare. He has no interest. It would be awful.

Alyssa: [01:24:22] I will say, like Zack is sensory sensitive. And one thing that he said about living in the city is that he was like, when you're there for more than, like a day or two, there's so much stimuli that it almost becomes background noise.

Alyssa: [01:24:39] And he was saying how for him he's like, I'd actually rather be like in a place like that where there's so much stimuli around me that it does become background noise Then be in a room in a house where there's like 12 people in the house and everybody's talking and there's so much movement going on and we're like, in a house together, and you can't escape it or leave, and you hear everything and you can see everything. And I was like, that's interesting perspective.

Rachel: [01:25:09] Yeah. I wonder if that would be similar for able, like if he would be able to tolerate walking around the city streets.

Alyssa: [01:25:17] Yeah. Well. And Zach said like when he's like when I've gone back and visited because, you know, he lived there for five years. That's where we met when we were both living there. And he was like, when I go back, it's like, oh, like a flood of stimuli. But living there, he's like, you just start to tune it out.

Rachel: [01:25:34] Yeah, that makes sense. But that is Nora's dream. Like looking around totally the lights.

Alyssa: [01:25:41] She'd get up every morning and we're like, Where's Kylie? And she's like, I just went out to go for a run and just to smell the smells of New York. And we're like.

Rachel: [01:25:49] What do?

Alyssa: [01:25:53] I love her, I love her so much. I love her because she gives me such great perspective on how that nervous system works.

Rachel: [01:26:01] Same. And she is truly one of the most authentically fun people to be around. And she's so kind and she's such, such a hard worker that I see that and I'm like, okay, it's okay that my ten year old with this neurotype has a hard time sitting still for homework like, it's okay.

Alyssa: [01:26:21] Totally.

Rachel: [01:26:21] This is what she can turn into, this super driven, super successful, fun, friendly human, you know? And I see that you.

Alyssa: [01:26:28] Have access to the sensory tools you need. I just popped out. She's here in the office right now, and I popped out.

Rachel: [01:26:34] She got her.

Alyssa: [01:26:34] Putty.

Rachel: [01:26:35] She got her putty going or.

Alyssa: [01:26:36] She got her putty. She was rolling it out. She was playing with her putty. She's got her feet on something underneath the desk. She's sitting in a swivel chair.

Rachel: [01:26:44] She chewing gum.

Alyssa: [01:26:46] She's chewing her gum. She's like snapping her gum. She's doing the putty. She's moving her feet. She's moving her body, and she's slaying work.

Rachel: [01:26:54] Yeah, she's getting shit done.

Alyssa: [01:26:55] This is why we do what we do in schools. Because Kylie is most successful at her job. When she can roll the putty, snap her gum, move her feet, twist in her seat.

Rachel: [01:27:09] Right.

Alyssa: [01:27:09] If you put Kylie in a stationary chair with no sensory supports, she's gonna have a really hard time focusing. And that's what we do in schools with kids. Or we say like, yeah, there are sensory seats available, but it's not the right type of input or they don't know this is the right type for me. And this is Kylie's a prime example of why we do what we do in schools. And then Zach, on the other side of that is a sensory sensitive kid who in preschool, he didn't when he was four, did not talk his entire pre-K year. And he went to pre-K and kindergarten in the same school. And then first grade goes to a school not eating lunch because it turns out a few months in they find out the lunchroom is too loud for him. And it's just like, this is why we do what we do. Because maybe you quote turned out okay, but we can make it so that you can thrive in school and have the best chance at learning and growing and accessing the social, emotional skills and the academics.

Rachel: [01:28:04] This is like actually becoming a pet peeve for me. Also, as I'm back in school and I'm like doing research on this stuff is thinking about somebody like Kai who like if Kai is a child and she's in a classroom with flexible seating, that's one aspect of what her body needs, right? Because she also needs she needs oral sensory input. She needs tactile sensory input. She likes to smell things sometimes.

Alyssa: [01:28:29] So like sometimes she keeps an essential oil roller in her bag, right.

Rachel: [01:28:33] Just to do her little forearm sniff. And so I think about that of like I think about my own child, which she's high masking at school. But let's say that she wasn't high masking for a second. Okay. Flexible seating is not going to give Noni enough input.

Alyssa: [01:28:48] Correct? Correct. Yeah. That's why we need a kids questionnaire results. To look at all nine senses and say with all nine senses at play, what tools do they need?

Rachel: [01:28:59] Correct.

Alyssa: [01:29:00] I can't just know they're in a chair that spins. For some kids. Sure.

Rachel: [01:29:04] Obviously I'm speaking to the choir here, but this is another thing that's come up in my research is like this concept when teachers are in the classroom and they're trying to provide accommodations, this concept of like fairness versus equity and understanding that, like, not every kid even needs flexible seating. For some kids, that input is actually dysregulating like, it's okay for your students to have access to different tools based on how their brains and bodies work. And you can just make that a culture shift in your classroom where like, we all work a little bit differently. And for it to actually be fair for everybody, seats are going to look different. Some people might chew gum. I love my niece's IEP. She has gum chewing written into her IEP and it's like I want that too. For kids who don't have an IEP I want that's the.

Alyssa: [01:29:48] Problem is when we're going into schools, what we're doing is rebranding. What tier one supports really mean. Because right now it's tier three is you have an IEP and you have specific supports and and tier two you might get like a visual schedule, maybe even a flexible seat. What I love about the schools that we work with is that when we say, this is what this kid needs, I've never once had a principal or an assistant superintendent say, oh, but do they have a 504 plan or an IEP? Is that written in? There's a trust that well, I mean we have data to back it up. We reduce behavior support calls by about 60% just by supporting the nervous system first and by rebranding what is tier one. And that tier one supports means everybody's nervous system gets what they need to learn and thrive. And then we might customize some additional things for tier two. And then like maybe everybody has access to a visual schedule that's in the classroom that you use. But this kid needs a first then chart. Great. That's a tier two support. And then tier three who needs speech, who needs OT, who needs counseling. We're going to tier three. For those it is a rebrand of what tier one is. Everybody's nervous system needs get met as part of tier one.

Rachel: [01:31:14] Yep in a.

Alyssa: [01:31:15] Period end of story.

Rachel: [01:31:17] Way. Yes. Correct. And Stuart Schenker's work is the foundation of that concept of understanding that what is stressful or regulating for one child is going to be different for another child. And if we are responding to all of the children the same way, we will have a lot of children with needs that are not met.

Alyssa: [01:31:39] I feel like I got to learn from Doctor Shenker as if he, like, passed me a baton and was like, go do what you can with this. And I'm so grateful. So, so deeply grateful. Thanks, Doctor Shenker. I still love you.

Rachel: [01:31:59] Fangirls. Forever.

Alyssa: [01:32:01] Thanks for tuning in to Voices Of Your Village. Check out the transcript at Voices Of Your Village. 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. Take a screenshot of you tuning in. Share it on the gram and tag. 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.