054 - We Get the Behavior we Expect - with Gillian Boudreau

Parenting the Intensity · Oct 08, 2024

Transcript

SPEAKER_01

00:00:00

Welcome to the podcast. Today we are having a very interesting conversation about how when we expect bad behavior, air quotes on the bad, we might help create that behavior. And to talk about that we are welcoming Juliane over on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01

00:00:31

Welcome to Parenting the Intensity, where we'll talk all about how we can drop the general parenting advice that doesn't work with our emotionally intense kids anyway, and let go of the unrealistic expectations society puts on us as parents. Together, we'll find solutions and ideas that work for you and your kids. Chances are, deep down, you know what you need. But you need a little encouragement to keep going on harder days, and permission to do things differently, and help you fully trust that you already are a wonderful parent to your exceptional but challenging kids. Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed and uncertain when it comes to parenting your emotionally intense child? Do you often find yourself playing with guilt, fearing that you're not doing enough to help them navigate their intense emotion? You are not alone.

SPEAKER_01

00:01:34

Many parents face these challenges and struggle to find the right path forward. But take a deep breath, there's hope. That's why I created the Parenting the Intensity community. Imagine having a clear roadmap tailored specifically to your child's unique needs and your family's reality. Picture feeling empowered and confident in your parenting, knowing that you are providing the support and understanding your child needs. It may seem like an unattainable dream right now, but I'm here to tell you that it is within reach. Come join us for our monthly group support to connect with other parents and get supported with your challenge right now. You also get one -on -one chat and audio office hours for the things that you're really not ready to share in the group, and workshop tools, courses to help you

SPEAKER_01

00:02:20

in the process of finding that balance of parenting in a way that works for you, your child, and your family. I welcome Julianne over on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00

00:02:38

Hello.

SPEAKER_02

00:02:39

I'm so glad to be here. Thanks for

SPEAKER_01

00:02:40

having me. Glad to have you here. Thank you for coming. So we'll start with who you are and if you can share a little of why you do what you do.

SPEAKER_00

00:02:51

Sure.

SPEAKER_02

00:02:51

So my name is Julianne Boudreau. uh, professionally, I'm a clinical psychologist and also a school psychologist. Um, and I also was myself a very intense kid. So for me, I now know that came from a mix of ADHD and anxiety. Um, but also, you know, just being pretty, um, awake and aware maybe in certain ways, maybe

SPEAKER_00

00:03:18

sometimes

SPEAKER_02

00:03:18

a little too much. Um, and so, you know, what I sort of have gleaned from, you know, my own childhood and then, you know, becoming a psychologist and putting it all in context, um, is that intense kids can really bring things up

SPEAKER_01

00:03:32

for people that

SPEAKER_02

00:03:34

they may not always want to see. Um, and so, you know, certainly in my childhood, there was this predictable loop where, um, you know, I would perhaps be a little different than people were expecting, um, that would maybe create a little bit of a negative response and other people, and then it could just become such a self -fulfilling prophecy, right? Where, when I sensed a lack of belonging, or I felt unsafe, surely my own behaviors would get a lot less charming and savvy and nuanced, right? And then get more negative reaction. And then I would panic and have even less control, right over how I behaved in the world. And I think, part of why I do what I do is to really help unwind that process. So it's sort of to go back and find today's intense kids. And sort of, you know, help not only those kids, but also the grownups around them kind of understand what might be going on in cycles like that, and how to have it go the other way, right? Because what I often find both for my own, you know, inner now intense kid, and for intense kids who I know in real life, when there is belonging, when there is safety, right, all of a sudden, the behaviors really change, right. And and there might be tons of capacity, and also just tons of peace and tons of mental bandwidth available, that, you know, we're really could have been there all the time. But for maybe a

SPEAKER_02

00:05:04

mismatch between that kid and the expectations of the world around them.

SPEAKER_01

00:05:08

Yeah, yeah. I think that's really like, it's really interesting. And it's basically what we were talking about today. So right.

SPEAKER_02

00:05:18

Yeah, there's a reason why this is a lot of what I do in my work.

SPEAKER_01

00:05:22

Yeah. So yeah, I think we can we can dive right in. And the goal of like it was to talk about how when we expect bad behavior and like bad behavior and air quotes. I love to label it like that, but it's often how it's seen from exterior. So when we expect that from a child, it will likely happen. And I think you explained it already quickly how that might play out. But can you elaborate on that and how it plays out? And I want just to start by saying, and I'm sure you're there too, and I've heard you uh, share. So I know, uh, that it's the goal of today is absolutely not to guilt anybody, uh, any parents in, um, saying that it's your fault or anything like that. It really is to just realize what kind of pattern might be at play because when we see the pattern, then we can start to stop the pattern.

SPEAKER_02

00:06:21

Yes. And I, I really appreciate you framing that. So I am a clinical psychologist and actually one of the things about the history of my field, that's not so great, right, is the tendency to always, always blame the parent, in particular the mother, which I think actually comes from some fairly misogynistic groups in the history of my, of my field.

SPEAKER_01

00:06:42

We could name a few, a few psychologists, right then and there.

SPEAKER_02

00:06:47

You might come to mind. So no, that actually, I try to take a very feminist and hopefully liberatory approach in my work, right?

SPEAKER_02

00:06:56

So what that means is that we really want to get out of blame and shame cycles in general. And that's especially true as far as how parents understand themselves and their, their role. So what I like to think about is just, you know, the whole family as a system. And it's just really interesting to look at the system as a living organism and the feedback loops that can come up in the system, but it's always co -created, right? Whatever's going on between a parent and a child is always co -created. It's never just on one side. It just happens to be that in a world where the parent has a little bit more probably pre -frontal cortex development and access, parents tend to be a little more shiftable. Yeah. So I tend to focus there, but it's not because of a kind of a blame game.

SPEAKER_01

00:07:42

Yeah, I love how you're framing it.

SPEAKER_01

00:07:43

It's like, basically we're addressing the parent's way of acting because the parents can control the way they act,

SPEAKER_00

00:07:51

which the

SPEAKER_01

00:07:51

kids often cannot really control themselves. And it's hard as the parent, we cannot really control the kids, but we can control ourselves.

SPEAKER_02

00:08:00

And can get more insight into again, co -created, we can get more insight into what happens for us when kids do what they do. Right. So it really is two -sided. You know, we are being times negatively impacted by the behaviors of our kids. Like we as parents might show up much differently if we weren't being as stressed out by our kids. Right. So, so it's really in making room for that too. And being like, Oh, when my kid does this, it does negatively impact me in X, Y, and Z way. And then that probably does make me do more of this for more of that. So it's, it's just sort of understanding the levers of the system rather than placing blame on any one person

SPEAKER_00

00:08:40

because

SPEAKER_02

00:08:40

it's a relationship. It's a living organism. How could it ever be about just one person?

SPEAKER_01

00:08:46

And I love that the way you're, you're framing that is very interesting in the sense of, I think it alleviates another level of guilt in the sense of we might feel bad by thinking that we would act differently if our kids was different. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

00:09:06

Right. Where in fact, we can just turn toward that and be like, of course you would, you are a mammal responding to your environment.

SPEAKER_01

00:09:13

You're

SPEAKER_02

00:09:13

also responding to your kids. Right. And I sort of letting that be discussable, I think can open up a lot of room in the system as

SPEAKER_01

00:09:19

well. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's something that parents might, like, I should not feel it's kind of, it's almost a form of resentment against our child that we feel we should not be feeling. And so that brings guilt and it's an cycle.

SPEAKER_02

00:09:36

Yes. Also, of course, anytime we try to shame ourselves for a feeling, right, we try to squeeze that feeling into a tiny box and that just makes the feeling more intense, right? So the more we can turn toward and give room to everything that's going on in the experience of our family, I think the better.

SPEAKER_02

00:09:53

So, so yes. Right. So there is this idea that, um, The grownups around any kid, but especially intense kids can be feeding into behaviors without realizing, and this is going to sound sort of magical, but I promise we'll talk about the science behind it, where sometimes, sometimes we can almost make behaviors happen by worrying that they're going to happen. And you might say, Jillian, you sound like a charlatan, but hear me out. So there's a whole body of research that I love and that has helped me understand my own experience and the human experience so much more, which is that of emotion contagion. So it turns out that emotions are very contagious from human to human and especially fear. And the reason for that, or one theorized evolutionary reason for that is that we evolved in groups, we needed to be able to work together and keep ourselves safe even probably before human language was perfectly developed. So, you know, if we think about just kind of from a survival perspective, we are the descendants of the early humans who more often survived, and you would more often survive if you were able to kind of survey the group of folks you were living with, identify that they looked really scared, wordlessly catch that fear in your body, and then everyone can run away from the threat together or fight off the threat together. there. So because of that, we're really, really wired to catch the fear of other people. Um, and all kids that, that that kids are wired to catch adult fear and posit that highly intense kids because they are processing so much input from the world are perhaps even a little more likely to catch

SPEAKER_00

00:11:37

adult

SPEAKER_02

00:11:37

fear because they might be a little bit more tuned into it. So, um, you know, when I'm doing my trainings, you know, sometimes I'll, I'll show a slide.

SPEAKER_02

00:11:45

So I'm kind of running through that in my mind, but if imagine if you will, that an adult might worry what a kid might do. So, you know, let's say that I am an exhausted mom and I get overstimulated myself in the grocery store. And yesterday I had to go to the grocery store with my real life, six -year -old who I actually have. And let's say that the six -year -old had just a really, really difficult time in the grocery store. He really was out of control of his emotions. I felt embarrassed. I felt like other people were looking at us. Maybe I felt like I yelled at my kid or did something that I wouldn't have wanted to do either for him or for me or for other people to see. Um, so now understandably, I'm pretty freaked out about the grocery store. So if I have to go again the next day or the next week, I'm going to be worrying pretty hard. You know, what's going to happen? Is he going to do that thing? Are we going to be okay? So if we're rolling into the grocery store and my, you know, my, my kiddo at this point may have forgotten what happened last time. Um, he, he might be ready to kind of skip in there, hold my hand, right. Sing whatever jingles he happens to know of the product. But if I am worried about what he's going to do, if my mind is still on what happened last time, I am not really available for him. I'm not in the present because I am protecting against my fearful memory of the past and hoping that that doesn't replay in the future.

SPEAKER_02

00:13:10

So my nervous system is going to go into a fearful state. And even if I'm not talking about it, in fact, especially if I don't talk about it, because fear is jumpier non -verbally, right? My micro movements are gonna change. So even if I'm trying to stay super chill, my eyebrows will knit together a little more if I'm worrying about this. My shoulders will hunch up, right? If I'm replaying and replaying in my mind, And what happened the last time we were in the grocery store where my kiddo had a hard

SPEAKER_02

00:13:39

time, I am naturally going to be putting myself back in that role and I'm going to start acting a little more like that. So on the parents wiring, right, it's basically whether we tend to go more toward fight or more toward flight. If I'm really worrying and trying to defend against something bad happening or my defending against my kid behaving in a way I don't want in the store, I'm either going to lean out or lean in. So if I lean out, that might be sort of a, a flight kind of avoidance mode. So I might just not engage with him as much as I usually would, or I might just, we're just going to try to get through this. I might kind of check out to some degree, or I might go into a bit of a flight mode, which would look like I might lean in. Right. I might be like, I've got my eye on you kid. Or, you know, I might be sort of extra irritable or keeping a closer eye on him, but not in like a collaborative way. Either way, my wonderful awake sensitive kid is going to experience a disturbance in the force. He's going

SPEAKER_00

00:14:38

to be

SPEAKER_02

00:14:38

like, mom's acting weird. And there's something up. And so then his nervous system is going to start to react. Maybe, maybe his mirror neurons are going to make his eyebrows start to move together. Maybe he's going to start just mirroring my sort of fearful, stressful way. That's going to tell his nervous system, there's something to fear, right? His nervous system is going to say, Oh, well, we wouldn't be kind of slinking around like this or hunching up our shoulders. If we were safe, something's not safe. What's going on. So essentially I've now stressed my kid out by being preoccupied with the thing I'm afraid of. And is he more likely to do the exact thing I'm worried about if I've stressed him out? Yeah. Because it is a survival response. And once we throw a human nervous system into fear, the higher order processes of the brain, right? The prefrontal cortex, the places from which we can stay regulated, we can make sort of long range decisions where we see the forest for the trees. It just temporarily shuts down. So if I wasn't thinking about that causality, all I would know is that, gosh, darn it. I was worried that he was gonna give me a problem in this grocery store.

SPEAKER_02

00:15:52

and wouldn't you know, he did it. If I wasn't looking at causality, I would think I was right to worry, I better worry harder next time. I better either either check out more or become more punitive. And you can see how that's exactly wrong thing to do. Because that actually was to cause the

SPEAKER_01

00:16:09

behavior. Yeah, and I think like, and that's why I did that warning at the beginning. Like, when we listen to that, we feel like, but I it's my fault, basically, I'm the one creating that. So it's my fault, but it's very, like, it's just an instinct and we don't control it. And becoming aware makes it then, like you were saying, talking about it. So how would you suggest, in the same example of the grocery store, how would you suggest to act next time if it went bad once? How do you suggest to adapt things for next time?

SPEAKER_02

00:16:47

So I really like, you know, psychiatrist Dan Siegel has this slogan, name it to tame it, which I really believe in, right? So when we're thinking about emotion contagion, yeah, we can start to get into our heads about like, oh no, no, I can't stress anyone out. It's my fault if my stress makes other people stressed. That's not true. We're gonna be stressed all the time, but it's actually better to find ways to talk about it. One, so that we will calm down about it, but also so it makes it discussable in our relationship with our children. Right now, different children respond very differently to this. Right. So if, if you've got, if you've got a kiddo who is in, you know, PDA burnout mode, right. If you've got a kiddo who is there, there might be times where it would not be appropriate to actually have this conversation with your child, but you would still want to find a way to have a conversation like this with somebody else, maybe a safe adult, maybe a therapist, maybe a trusted partner or friend. But what I would recommend is that when, when parents start the first, that parents start to recognize the cues

SPEAKER_02

00:17:57

that they are, what I would call quote unquote going urgent, right? So if we walk into this grocery store, if we hadn't built a lot of mindfulness or self -awareness, we might not even really know the degree to which we were replaying this horrible experience last time. So first we want to develop a practice where maybe we wake up each morning, maybe we sit quietly just for a minute or two, and we ask ourselves the question, am I okay? And it's amazing what will start to come up, right? If we just gently inquire, right? Of our own internal state of our own internal parts, right? So if I've had a chance to ask myself that, then maybe in the morning I will get some

SPEAKER_02

00:18:35

insight that it's like, Oh, I'm really worried about this grocery store situation. Or if I don't do that, maybe I can start to learn my physical tells. Right. And as it's closer to the grocery store, maybe I can start to notice that my belly is not feeling good or my heart is beating faster. Right. Then I can start to be like, Oh, I'm worried about something. What is it? Once I figure out what it is, I can at least name it to myself, right? I can be like, Oh, the grocery store was really hard last time. I'm worrying about it this time. First step is to some self -compassion, which just sounds like saying to yourself what you're feeling and that it makes sense, right? Like, Oh my God, it's a lot of pressure bringing my child to the grocery store. And time it felt so awful. And now I'm scared to go back. That really makes sense. That's a really hard way to feel right. So we already start to change our fear response just by noticing that we're upset and talking to ourselves that way. Then we might be able to talk to a safe adult, right, to help, you know, to get it off of our chest and also have them help us make a game plan. And if it's appropriate with our own child, we might be able to use, before we started recording, we were talking about collaborative and proactive solutions, right? Ross Green's model, which is a model I love.

SPEAKER_02

00:19:50

Maybe we can actually talk to our child and be like, oh my gosh, did I notice that I'm still kind of thinking about what happened last time we went to the grocery store. And I'm so excited to be fully present with you at this grocery store and have a great time and not be thinking about that. You sometimes we can even just name that and other times we can say, you know, what are, do you want to make the plan together? Are there a couple of things that I can do

SPEAKER_02

00:20:13

to help you feel more supported at the grocery store? You know, is there anything that you would, you know, inviting children into collaboration about how to do a redo or how to do a situation different next time. Um, more for, you know, if we make it better for them, then it'll be better for us. And I find oftentimes, you know, the kids who I work with clinically are very willing to be like, I thought you'd never ask. Yes. Here are three things that would make this experience better for me. And oftentimes if we do them, it really does go better. But in any case, we will have spoken together about the worry so that the child isn't left just trying to guess at what is the matter with the parent, which is the most likely thing to dysregulate a child.

SPEAKER_01

00:20:56

Yeah. Yeah. And I love that. It's doable even if we cannot talk to the child because definitely like out of three kids at home, I do have some that it would not work to talk with them about it. Some others it would. So I'm sure it's the same for everybody. Like we have some kids that naming things will just make it worse or they will not just just not listen to what we are saying and it's not going to compute. and others it will make a world of difference. So

SPEAKER_02

00:21:24

And exactly. Thank you for highlighting that. The main thing is that we name it to ourselves and to at least one of their human outside of our body. And we would only want to bring that, you know, to our child. If based on our history with them, we know that it's a conversation that will help them too.

SPEAKER_01

00:21:42

And I would say like in an example like that, I would think many parents would be afraid that But talking about how it went last time would make it happen. Like as if helping the child remember that it was bad last time will make them react, like reenact it.

SPEAKER_01

00:22:03

Yes. What would you say to that?

SPEAKER_02

00:22:06

That's a great point too. And this comes up in a lot of places. So I find that parents make two common mistakes in understanding sort of child cognition or at least relational cognition. The first I'm gonna say, even though it's not really related to what we were talking about, but it's important. So the first is parents often don't realize that kids know everything already, right? that it's almost impossible to hide anything from a child if you're in a household with them, right? So parents will often say, oh, you know, we're planning a big move,

SPEAKER_02

00:22:44

but we haven't told our three -year -old yet. Like, I'm certain that doesn't explain their toileting regression. It's like, I think the three -year -old knows, right? So that's one. And the other is that if we mention a hard thing, we will somehow invoke it, right? Almost this superstitious sense that if we, if we talk about it, the kid will remember it and make it real, right? Or maybe it's just, it's scary to talk about hard things. But I find that the most grounding thing for kids is a transparent adult. And the more we can be transparent with kids, the less they have to kind of guess and try to mind read us and the calmer they can stay.

SPEAKER_01

00:23:28

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01

00:23:29

and I think that's both are really important things, as I would say half of what I do with parents is helping them say things, like, or it can be a lot of different subjects, but like, parents have a hard time explaining what is happening, and they're expecting that the kids don't, like you said, they don't know, but the kids, like, even if they don't know what is happening the same way as they are picking up the stress response in the grocery store.

SPEAKER_01

00:24:01

If there's something going on at home, they will be picking up and still like the general feeling of the house or our feeling of stress. I have one of my child that as soon as I was dysregulated or just sick, especially when was sick when she was little, she would lose it. She would get totally dysregulated because that she was not feeling safe enough when I was not feeling good. And so they just, they know, you know, they feel it. They have that sense of some, and like, I could not feel bad in any sense ever without the hurt, like completely getting dysregulated. That's

SPEAKER_02

00:24:43

exactly right. They do know. And we don't tell them why, honestly, their minds might go to much more catastrophic reasons. So we will reduce dysregulation by leveling with kids and letting them know what it is that's up, given that they already know something is up, at least on the nervous system level, even if it's not fully on a level of their mind.

SPEAKER_01

00:25:05

Yeah. Yeah. And it's hard because sometimes it's things that are really hard to talk about, like death, for example, if a loved one is dying, or if someone is very sick, or if we're moving house and we're going to lose friends and change school, it's things that are very hard to talk

SPEAKER_01

00:25:23

about with kids. But still, they're picking up on it, and they're acting on it, as you were saying. And the other part also, like I found myself sometimes, I need to force myself to like encourage, especially my youngest, and say, oh, good job, you did that right this time, because I'm afraid that by doing that, I'm implying that it's not good. I'm talking about what is bad. If I'm saying this is a good one, because sometimes she's not doing it good, it's talking about the not good thing. And so I found myself forcing the, yes, I need to underline the good action and did good things that she's doing. And now she's well, she was able to control their emotion and deal with her emotion correctly this time. And that doesn't mean anything bad. It's it's necessary, but it's not coming in. Naturally, I would say,

SPEAKER_02

00:26:26

SPEAKER_01

00:26:26

that's

SPEAKER_02

00:26:26

such an important one. And that's such a compassionate one, right? Because your desire not to bring it up is essentially your it sounds like your desire to help her quote unquote, like save face, right or not feel embarrassed. When And I would say, what I find in my clinical practice with kids is that they are often all too aware of things that aren't going well or haven't gone well. And sometimes are beating themselves up about that much more than you might realize. So that's a great one.

SPEAKER_02

00:26:55

It's like, yeah, she already knows that that didn't go well. You're not going to hurt her by letting her know that you also know that, that you and she are in a shared reality. In fact, sometimes it's very calming for kids to confirm that they and adults are in a shared reality. And given that she is probably already beating herself up about that, it would be so important to hear when you notice that it had gone a different way.

SPEAKER_01

00:27:21

Yeah. Yeah. But I feel it's not something that we naturally do as parents for some reason, and it's very hard to, to do. And, but it is very important. And I would say like, My youngest is very verbal about that, which is not the case for most kids. She will say things like, I don't like she, they were going to this pool with her preschool, part -time preschool in the morning, she was super excited to go. But in the morning of, she didn't want it to stay. And it took me a while, but she, she said that she was not able to listen the first time. And they told them that they needed to listen the first time otherwise they would not go into the pool. Oh, so she was able to verbalize that but at five year old I would say and she was four at the time, most kids won't be able to verbalize those things. And it's

SPEAKER_00

00:28:15

very

SPEAKER_01

00:28:15

hard because she was just physically not going into the room she was blocking and most kids will just do that it won't ever explain what's happening. But she was able to explain it. And the teacher, they were really great. And they said, Oh, yeah, we said that. And then they were able to like nuance and one offered to like older hand while they were going so that she would help her collaborate and do the things the first time because she has a hard time listening. She's she does not diagnose, but she likely ADHD. So she has a really hard time. And she's super impulsive.

SPEAKER_01

00:28:53

So controlling her behavior is very, very hard. So she wants to, but she's not able to, and she knows. She really knows. And like it's, for me, it's very interesting because it's kind of a window into the brain of a child because she talks about that in a way that most kids are not able to. So it's very interesting to see that. But is so

SPEAKER_02

00:29:16

amazing. It makes me think about the irony there, right?

SPEAKER_02

00:29:19

Because just as you say, Um, if she hadn't been able to verbalize that, I bet a lot of adults would have seen what she was doing as quote unquote, noncompliance, right? Um, she's not doing what we've asked her to do. She's refusing to go in where actually when you get more of a sense of it, and I don't even know that I think kids need to be compliant in the first place, but even if we take the idea of compliance, in fact, she was trying to be so compliant because she was like, no, you've told me to only go in here if I can listen the first time. And what I know about myself is I cannot be trusted to do that. She was trying to be extremely compliant.

SPEAKER_01

00:29:58

My gosh. But find it very interesting that she's able to do that because it's and it's my third and the other two were not that self -aware. Yeah. And as you were saying, it might be partially because of all of what I will learn. So I'm able to be more calm.

SPEAKER_00

00:30:16

in a situation like that, than I used to have

SPEAKER_01

00:30:19

my older that are teens now. So it's like, it's like I'm doing it all over again. So I've learned some things, you know. That's a beautiful thing, yeah. And I have one other that has a very close profile that she has. And it's even interesting because sometimes I will say things that I think she is more attuned with her emotion, for example, or more sensitive. And he's like,

SPEAKER_01

00:30:41

no, I don't think she's more sensitive than I am. So it's giving me when those and I

SPEAKER_00

00:30:47

went deep

SPEAKER_01

00:30:47

probably experienced it as a child, but was not able to express it the same way. So that's very interesting because I never seen a child being able to express their emotion as easily as a young age. So really like it just feel illiterate illustrate really well what you were saying with like a child words.

SPEAKER_02

00:31:09

That's an amazing illustration. Yeah. And gosh, that's so, I'm so glad that she has that self -knowledge and the words to explain. It's like, you know, I, I wish that I wish the onus wasn't so often on children to make themselves understandable to adults to get the

SPEAKER_00

00:31:27

benefit

SPEAKER_02

00:31:27

of the doubt, but it still is in a lot of ways. And she has some amazing skills to let, let folks know where she's really coming from.

SPEAKER_01

00:31:36

That's beautiful. And honestly, I don't take any credits.

SPEAKER_01

00:31:38

She's been able to name her emotions since she was 18 months old. So she's like born that way. I yes, we did it, but I did the same thing with my older one and they're not that able. So she was just born that way. She's like, it's her superpower.

SPEAKER_02

00:31:54

Well, and you know what, you didn't dampen it. No, no. And that's really cool.

SPEAKER_01

00:32:00

That's really cool. She wasn't like the first daycare she went in. And they supported that too. So that was also helpful. They were helping with naming emotion and deep breathing and yoga and things like that. So they helped support what she was already doing by herself in the preschool she's in right now is also great for that.

SPEAKER_01

00:32:19

So she was lucky in those way too, because she was supported in those way. But the fact that she's able to express what most kids that age are not able to, means that you get support that most kids that age would not get. Because she can explain, and of course she cannot always explain it, there's a ton of time that she cannot, but some of it can explain and it helps me understand better, so it's helping me to support her better. It's kind of

SPEAKER_00

00:32:46

a manual

SPEAKER_01

00:32:47

that we generally don't have.

SPEAKER_02

00:32:49

Yes. And you know, this is not her job. I mean to place any extra burden on her. And I, I also wonder if it helps the other adults in her midst, you know, sort of be like, Oh, initially this kid's behavior didn't make sense. And then this child themselves were able to explain it to me. And then it made sense. Like I wonder if so many other behaviors kids are doing similarly makes a kind of sense if, if only they were able to explain. And just that little bit of curiosity, just that little bit of benefit of the doubt, you know, willingness to believe that a child's behavior does make sense, even if we don't quite know what it is yet, I think can go a long way.

SPEAKER_01

00:33:27

Yeah. Very interesting. And I love that you talk about other adults because we talked about the parents since the beginning, but the concept that you were explaining works for any adults, right?

SPEAKER_02

00:33:39

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I actually do a great deal of this work in schools as well. And that's, know, that's a place where you can see really writ large, potentially that feedback loop between

SPEAKER_02

00:33:49

adults being what a student will do. Students, in fact, presenting like that, you know, a team getting more worried and student behavior getting worse and on and on and on until you can unwind.

SPEAKER_01

00:33:58

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's something that we see. Like I often I have friends and it happened to my kids. It's also like, some years, it goes really well in school. And some years, it's a catastrophe with the same child. And we think it's a child's fault. But in fact, it's the relationship between the child and the teachers. I'm not saying it's the teacher's fault. It's just the relationship between them is not the right one.

SPEAKER_02

00:34:22

Yeah. And that's co -created, too, right? Like sometimes it's an easier what I might call like a temperament match. And and sometimes it's not right, even with the most well -meaning adults. So it's really complex. It's such an interconnected web.

SPEAKER_01

00:34:36

Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it's like kids. Will one year be with a teacher when it doesn't go well and that information would be passed to the next teacher. And then the teacher will go in with fear.

SPEAKER_02

00:34:50

Yes. And that's so tricky, right? Because there's also this kind of shrinky term, it comes from object relations theory and Bowlby called the internal working model. But what that really means is we get more of what we expect, right? So in an attachment model, you know, typically that means that if we've had, let's say an attuned caregiver, right, we will kind of walk into the world, expecting the world to generally have what we need and generally be nice to us. And if you're expecting that, you're gonna behave in ways that are of course, more likely to garner that, because you're gonna be a pretty calm, friendly, seeming open person. Whereas if you've had negative experiences and you would have no reason to think

SPEAKER_02

00:35:31

that those around you would have your best interests at heart, then you're certainly gonna present as more prickly or more defensive and folks may treat you less well, right? There are all of these feedback loops in human experience. And so I think helping educators, especially work with their expectations, stay present in the moment, right? Really stay curious about what a child is going to present every year or every day is really great.

SPEAKER_02

00:35:57

Because if we don't expect that a kid will, you know, be a huge disruption in class, guess what? They actually might not be, depending on the shifting context of the situation.

SPEAKER_00

00:36:08

But if

SPEAKER_02

00:36:09

we treat them as if we expect them to be, then that is likely to spike their fear response and they may indeed have a harder time regulating.

SPEAKER_01

00:36:18

Yeah. And I can say it's kind of a bit of a more or less related, but I wasn't because I was an intern in social work. At some point, I a, I got like a family, Like, they gave me a family to go in that family. And there was in the file from the person who was in that family before, at some point he said, like, the dad is aggressive, I think, or something like that. And it was written in, like, capital letters in the file. So I went in as an intern. I was doing that for like five months. I wasn't, I went in afraid. And I still I remember I but I still went in with as much as I could like not wanting to disrupt that and like create that aggressiveness so I maybe was working really hard. I knew I was afraid so I was working really hard to not be and to be as calm as possible to not create that reaction. And I, and I honestly think it was racism, basically, of course, it

SPEAKER_00

00:37:29

was

SPEAKER_01

00:37:29

racism because it and I don't know, like, it even it was related to religion, I think, because it was a very religious family. That is a minority where I live.

SPEAKER_01

00:37:41

And I think that was just like a cultural difference. Yes. And I never had any problem with that, that he was super sweet. he was grateful. And day I decided that I would never read a file before you go into a final meeting.

SPEAKER_00

00:37:57

I do my own,

SPEAKER_01

00:37:59

yeah, exactly my own idea. But says a lot about the impact that it can have just passing information to another person expecting something bad. I could have created something very hard in that relationship if I was not aware that I was afraid I would probably have created him to react badly to me.

SPEAKER_02

00:38:22

And that's just so insightful, right? I mean, the fearful patterns in the human brain relates right to, you know, bias and stereotyping because, you know, and there, you know, when the human brain gets afraid, it tends to want to make shortcuts. And usually those shortcuts are really unjust to folks who are seen as othered in society. It also makes me think about the research on stereotype threat, which, you know, also come up for, you know, for, for kids who experience a lack of belonging in, you know, in families or especially school spaces where, you know, if we know that we are othered, if we know that we don't have belonging, if we know that we are kind of expected to fail, particularly if that's related to an identity that we, we know we hold, right. So this happens with folks of color in typically white spaces. this happens with women in let's say like the STEM world, right? Or science and tech and math. If folks know that they are being stereotyped in a space, that too will create enough fear as to temporarily, you know, take out some of the higher order processing and can incorrectly seem to validate a stereotype. When in fact, if you take out the information about stereotyping, right? So, you know, the classic example is if you give women who grew up in the eighties, when I did, when women were not expected to be so good at math, you give what you call a hard math test. And if you have a bunch of men watch them take it, they, their scores will be below what they would be if you gave them the same exact questions and just called it a set of puzzles.

SPEAKER_00

00:40:02

So it's also,

SPEAKER_02

00:40:03

right. So it's also so important to recognize if we are in the position of power, either because of having, um, an identity that is considered, um, you know, more valuable for whatever BS reason our context suggests, or if example, we have a position of power, like, you know, we're a practitioner or a therapist in a space or a teacher in a space or an adult dealing with a child, you know, power holders need to work even harder to address their fear. Otherwise we will just consolidate power where it already was. And it can lead to, you know, incredible injustice.

SPEAKER_01

00:40:40

Yeah. And I think like, most of intense kids are different than what the school system, especially or even the parents are expecting. So it can be like, honest, automatically, they are, I forgot to call that. Sorry. So automatically, they are. they are othered. They those kids that have that stigma around them. So are automatically more at risk of people expecting them to behave badly, to close the loop.

SPEAKER_02

00:41:16

Exactly. exactly right. Beautiful loop around. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

00:41:21

So thank you. We could keep talking forever, but it's already longer than I wanted to do that episode. But thank you so much for all of that. You add a few resource you wanted to share with. I

SPEAKER_02

00:41:37

Yes. So in my practice lately, I've been with families I've worked with, I've been using quite a bit of certainly at the Learn Play Thrive podcast. I I'm not the first to recommend this on this podcast, but it's a wonderful compendium of neurodiversity affirming resources. There's also the book, Calm the Chaos by Dana Abraham, which I've been really enjoying for parents in particular, right, to help families come to collaborative and compassionate solutions regardless of what's going on. And then, you know, when we're talking about addressing adult fear or adult dysregulation, sometimes that comes from adult overwhelm. So I've often just on a pragmatic level been recommending the website and the program Fair Play Life, which just honestly helps parenting partners really get everything out on the table as far as who's carrying what, where's the mental load landing, how can we divvy things up in a more equitable way, and I find that can siphon off certainly a non -zero amount of overwhelm that parents might be holding.

SPEAKER_01

00:42:41

Yeah, I think that's a very important one because especially when we have kids that are a bit different. So we might be working harder to get assessments and appointments and just school meetings and being called by a school all the time. And can bring a lot of overwhelm for sure. Yes, it can. It's a big one. I'm going

SPEAKER_01

00:43:02

to link to all of that in the show notes. So it's easier for people to find them. And where can people find you if they want to learn more and know more about you?

SPEAKER_02

00:43:10

Yeah, so people can find me. I have been building an Instagram where I try to just put all the nuggets that folks may get in a workshop with me or in therapy with me. So Calm Connection Psychology is where you can find just whatever nuggets may have come up recently. And I also have a website, JillianBoudreauPhD .com for more writing and more in -depth stuff. And then I have a couple of workshops coming up that are geared towards school professionals, But parents can join as well, that's through the Vermont Higher Ed, it's vthec .org. And there's a May 17 one on creating safe and smart learning environments. And the July 10 one might be especially great for parents. We've titled it, quote, is this kid just messing with me, demystifying barriers to connection between neurodivergent students and their educators.

SPEAKER_01

00:44:02

Which kind of tie really well with what we just talked about.

SPEAKER_02

00:44:06

It does, yes, it does.

SPEAKER_01

00:44:08

Well, thank you very much for being here today. It was a pleasure to talk with you.

SPEAKER_02

00:44:14

You too. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01

00:44:20

I'm so glad you joined me today and took that time out of your intense life to focus on finding a new way to parent that works for you and your kids. To get the episodes as soon as they drop, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and And please leave everything in review so other parents can find it too. Also check out all the free resources on my website at familymoments .ca so you can take action on what's the most important for you right now. And take a deep breath, keep going, we're all in this together.

SPEAKER_00

00:45:04

you