Are you feeling overwhelmed with all the conflicting parenting advice out there? In this episode, I’m joined by Raised Good’s Tracy Gillett to discuss how one simple guiding principle can serve as your parenting compass. Whether you’re new to parenting or looking to deepen your connection with your kids, this conversation will offer valuable insights and practical tips on how to parent with intention and authenticity.

Tracy (00:00:00):

I like to think of this way of parenting through attachment as this perfect system that Mother Nature designed. And when she designed it, she knew that she was designing it for imperfect parents. So there are a lot of built in like safety nets within that. It’s not something that we’ve got to get right all the time. We’re not going to, it’s just not possible.

Dr. Sarah (00:00:30):

In a world where we’re often bombarded with conflicting advice and societal pressures, it’s easy to lose sight of the simple, yet profound principles that can guide us through parenthood. Today’s guest, Tracy Gillett is the founder of Raised Good, a platform dedicated to helping parents reconnect with their natural intuitions and parent with deeper attunement to themselves and to their children. Tracy has spent years exploring how we can raise our children in a way that nurtures their wellbeing and draws on insights from science, psychology, a range of cultures and her own experience as a parent. In this episode, we’re talking about what it means to parent through the lens of attachment theory, using connection as our compass, why it’s not about following a rigid set of rules, but rather about tuning into what feels right for you and your family, to foster connection, to build trust and to parent in a way that honors your child’s needs as well as your own.

(00:01:35):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology, and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(00:02:12):

Hello. Welcome everyone. Today we have Tracy Gillett here and I’m so excited to talk with you. How are you doing today?

Tracy (00:02:21):

Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me and yeah, I’m doing great.

Dr. Sarah (00:02:26):

I’m so glad. So you are like the creator of Raised Good, which is a whole platform for parents that I’ve been following since I became a parent. And I really love the messaging, not just the messaging, but the tone and the permission to show up wherever you’re at in parenthood that you just give off all the time in your work.

Tracy (00:02:55):

Thank you so much. They’re very kind words, and that’s certainly my intention is to try to let parents feel seen, especially moms. They sort of make up the vast majority of my audience as I know they do yours. But yeah, as a new mom, I felt quite alone in a lot of this kind of stuff, which can sort of feel counter-cultural when you’re parenting in a natural or conscious way, and I really wanted to help light the path for parents as well. So yeah, I’m thrilled that you enjoyed it.

Dr. Sarah (00:03:34):

Yeah, and I know a little bit about your path here, but for people who aren’t as familiar, can you share a little bit about what moved you to create Raised Good and just in general how you were inspired as a parent to move into this space that you do and with your own kids and when you’re helping other parents?

Tracy (00:03:57):

Yeah. Well, originally I thought that I would start a fertility blog. I was trying to get fall pregnant and having trouble there, and it took us three years to fall pregnant with our son. I’d learned so much along that path that I thought, I’ve got to share this with other women who were going through this as well. But then as soon as I became pregnant, what I was focusing on really shifted and I started to learn about things like co-sleeping. My midwife said to me one day when I was there for a checkup when I was pregnant, and we just ordered the crib and we’d had it all set up and it was non-toxic and the paint was fume free and the mattress was bamboo and all the things. And I remember her saying to me, no, he’s going to sleep in your bed. And I was like, you’re crazy.

(00:04:57):

What are you talking about? But she’d really piqued my curiosity. And so I went and started reading about it and learning about it. And in a past life I was a veterinarian and I love animals and I love looking to nature, and it just made sense that we’re social mammals and that we’re supposed to hold our babies close. And so it didn’t take too much convincing. I started reading about things like sleeping. I had an appointment with my naturopath after my son was born when he was about three months. And I remember her asking, how long do you think you’ll breastfeed? And I said, oh, until a year maybe I’ll try to make it to a year. And she really challenged me. She said, well, if you could make it to two years, that would be amazing. And I was like, but he won’t be a baby anymore.

(00:05:50):

And she said, he’ll always be your baby. And she was so right. And we went well beyond two years, and all of these ideas that I’d had in my mind for what motherhood would look like and what babies needed were just shattered one after another. And in those moments, motherhood became so much more exciting and so much more fun, and I was so connected to my baby and I was tired as all new moms are. There’s no avoiding that. But I was just so happy in those moments and I really wanted to share with other moms who I was meeting in real life around me who were really struggling. They were being told to leave their baby to cry it out. They were being told that they should stop breastfeeding through the night at some random age that their pediatrician made up. And I wanted to give them confidence to do what they wanted to do and to trust their instincts and to trust their babies. So yeah, I started writing and I haven’t stopped. I discovered that I really had a passion for it, and I was not too bad at it either. I had a science background, so I’d never really written much, but it was a real creative outlet for me as a mom as well. So yeah, it’s a passion that I can’t let go of. I think that the way that mothers, especially in those early years raise their kids, we’ve got the ability to change the world, and I think our world needs changing. So yeah, that’s sort of the story behind it. Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (00:07:40):

That’s so beautiful. And I really agree this idea that how we raise our kids, it really matters not just for our children, but very much for our own mental health and our own sense of self and our own harmony as a family system. But then to your point for the future, because these kids are going to grow up and be the next kind of round of humans in this world. And one thing that I really like about what you write about is that you look at a lot of different cultures and you look of two minds. On the one hand, I think that the attuned parenting being in attunement with your child and being kind of a symbiotic unit of parent child is the most healthy possible way to go about this. And I also think it gets misunderstood by a lot of people as child-centric or at the absence of the mother or at the absence of the needs of the family.

(00:08:50):

And it’s like you’ve done a lot of research into cultures that have kind of always stayed in touch with the natural symbiotic relationships between parents and children and have found ways to, they’re not in a child-centric culture, they’re in a family-centric culture. But I think we’ve, parents have sometimes been pulled out of that in our culture in some ways, and then they get a little bit, I don’t want to say gaslighted, but kind of gaslighted to think that wanting to reconnect to that relationship and use that as the sort of compass for the family is in some ways it doesn’t work or it’s not good for our families, or it’s not good for our kids, or it’s not good for us. Can you talk a little bit about what you’ve found in the research you’ve done in other cultures and where else this is working?

Tracy (00:09:44):

Yeah, for sure. I think there’s so many threads that I could pick up there. Yeah, I think we talked before we started recording about, there’s different words that get thrown around. I use the term natural parenting. There’s Sarah Ockwell-Smith uses gentle parenting. Laura Markham uses peaceful parenting. There’s conscious parenting, there’s evolutionary parenting, there’s all these different brands, there’s positive parenting, there’s all these different words that we can use to describe it. I wish it could just be called parenting, but that’s been taken by mainstream. And I think in these traditional cultures that you talk about, they don’t need to have these conversations and they don’t need to read the books because this is just passed down through culture.

(00:10:39):

If they’re living within a village and you’ve seen your aunts and cousins and breastfeeding, I don’t remember actually seeing that many people before I breastfed actually breastfeeding. These things we’ve lost from our culture. One of the ceremonies that I love talking about the most is a ceremony from Bali. And when a baby is born in Bali, they’re considered to be of the heavens. And so for the first three months of life, their feet don’t touch the ground. So they’re always held by someone. Now, that’s not always the mother, it’s not always the father. It can be the grandparents, it can be the cousins, the aunties, the uncles, but that culture knows, and it’s built into their rituals and their traditions, and that baby’s feet isn’t going to touch the ground, therefore they’re always being held by someone and they’re always being comforted.

(00:11:45):

And they know that crying is something that they want to avoid for babies. So they don’t need to learn all of this stuff. It’s just in. And then at three months of age, they have this ceremony where the feet touch the ground and then they’re considered of the earth. So there are these beautiful ceremonies and rituals in more traditional cultures that we’ve just lost, and we’ve gotten a little bit off track. And so I think that’s why we need to talk about these things and get back on track and really put parents in the driver’s seat. And I think when we talk about things like child-centric, we tend to go to extremes, don’t we? And we just want a quick fix. And I think it’s at one end, we’ve got authoritarian parenting where the parent’s in charge and the child’s going to do what they say, and while you’re under my roof, and you’ll do as you’re told, and all of those things that we remember from when we were kids that are just on autopilot because that’s how a lot of us were raised.

(00:12:52):

Then we can very quickly go to the other extreme permissive parenting. And I’m not saying that child-centric parenting is necessarily always down that end, but we need to recognize that our role is to guide our children. Our kids are immature. They’re not meant to be in the driver’s seat, so they need us to be their guides and they need boundaries and they need limits and all of those things. But the way that we deliver it can be with kindness and compassion and warmth. And Gordon Neufeld talks about attachment existing in a hierarchy and words like hierarchy when we’re talking in this sort of conscious parenting space can feel a bit icky, but it really does need to exist in that way because our kids are little and they need us to guide them, and we need to put ourselves in a position so that they can be led by us. So yeah, I hope that answers that a little bit.

Dr. Sarah (00:14:01):

Yeah, no, it really does. And I think I do a lot of work around attachment. And one of the things that I often will try to explain is when a kid is just pushing every single button, they’re just testing every possible crack as I like to say, and we can sort of look at that and be like, oh my God, my kid is just trying to get me mad. They’re just looking for a way to see if I’m going to get mad at them. And we can look at that as such a frustrating point in parenting that we’ve all been, we’ve all experienced because just part of it, and the reframe I often give parents is they are not seeking attention or seeking, they’re seeking safety. They’re literally looking to see what’s going to happen if I do this? What’s going to happen if I do this?

(00:15:03):

They’re checking all the cracks and pushing on all the cracks to see if everything is stable. And the parent, my person who’s supposed to keep me safe and be in charge, am I going to be able to flip that and be more powerful than you? And that’s terrifying for kids. And they don’t consciously think about this. They’re not consciously aware they’re doing it, and they’re not consciously thinking, I want you to be more powerful than me, but their inner just state does because that’s the attachment system. The attachment system is a threat response. We seek out attachment when we are afraid because that’s what’s going to keep us safe. And so we have to remember a lot of attachment is built around us being that steady, sturdy leader that can totally tolerate and handle and absorb a lot of this safety, pushing, safety testing, which is super hard to do in the moment as the parent because we’re also still human beings who will flip after we’ve been pushed hard enough. But I just think it helps us, remember, we’re not in this sort of attuned, responsive, whatever you want to call it, parenting. We are not permissive, we are not boundaryless. That would not be attunement. They really need us to just anchor them. But to your point, how we anchor them if we have to maintain that sense of safety for this to work.

Tracy (00:16:47):

Yes, I love how you described that, and Vanessa Lapointe talks about this in a beautiful way as well, that we need to be soft and kind and warm in our delivery of what a boundary is. But what you are talking about, they need to know that they can push up against us and that we’re not just going to fall over that. We’re not the jellyfish parent that is just they’re on their own five or they’re 10 or they’re 15, and they need to know that their parent is solid enough to push to hold them up. So yeah, I love how you described that. And Vanessa also likes to talk about, and you might’ve shared this with your listeners before, but thinking about going over a bridge. So if you are driving over a bridge and you’ve driven over that bridge a hundred times and there are guardrails on the side of the bridge and you’ve never hit the guardrails, and one day you turn up and the guardrails aren’t there, you suddenly don’t feel safe even though you’re not hitting those guardrails. You don’t need them, but they make you feel safe. And that’s what boundaries and what parents are here for is to make our kids feel safe and to let them know that the relationship is bigger than any mess up.

(00:18:13):

They can push us and push us, and we’re still going to hold it and they can have a meltdown. And then that’s when the warmth and the connection comes in. That’s when it’s like, yep, I held this boundary. And it’s more than okay that you’re upset about that, that you’re frustrated about that. I would be too, that you’re disappointed and I can handle those big feelings and I’m still not going to cave and give you what you want because holding this boundary right now because there’s a good reason behind that boundary. And I think that’s one of the things with this type of parenting as well, is we’re not just having boundaries just to be the boss of the kid or just to dictate over them. They’re genuine boundaries that our kids need in order to feel emotionally safe or physically safe.

Dr. Sarah (00:19:00):

Which is, I think also when I think about common misconceptions of positive parenting, one is that I think a lot of people misunderstand it as permissive, which I think we’re laying a fairly coherent case against right here, but I think they also think of it as perhaps unattainable. Oh yeah, that’d be nice in theory. Of course, I want to be gentle and kind and deliver these things softly, but they are being little right now, and I can’t be warm and soft and kind and gentle all the time. So then I want to sort of distanced myself from this because I feel kind of like it shines a light on things and may not feel good about how I always show up in parenting. And one of my biggest things that I like to do as a human being who talks about parenting in public is to talk about how I yell at my kids, and I do stuff that’s not gentle and kind and warm all the time, and that’s still my compass. And I don’t know, do you feel people think this is like, oh, this is only for people who can sing kumbaya and wear granola pants?

Tracy (00:20:19):

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. And that’s how I felt when I got into this.

(00:20:26):

I thought not so much when my son was little. I remember looking at the blogs and stuff, and that was why I wanted to create a blog and a website that really felt aspirational. I felt the same. You had to have chickens or dreadlocks or all the different, the clothing. None of this is about perfection. It’s about a direction. So it’s about where generally the direction that we want to be taking our families. And it’s so important that we don’t try to be perfect, I think for our own mental health because there is no such thing. Nobody can be perfect. We come into parenting with our wounds that we’re completely unaware of that our kids press on and we feel triggered and all of those things. And so it’s good to get curious about those things and really try to reparent ourselves along the way.

(00:21:34):

But yeah, none of this is about being perfect, and I yell and I mess up. I’m a sarcastic Australian. I’m not a gentle, I’m not knitting. I’m not baking all the time. I don’t have, it’s about honoring authentically who you are so that then your kid can be authentically who they are as well. And I think once I started to get deeper into this work, the more I realized how important it was to be imperfect, the more that I could embrace it. So rupture and repair within the context of attachment is so important. So we rupture connection and then we get to repair it. And so it’s like instead of berating ourselves, and I’m such a bad mom and how could I say that? And I’ve ruined my child’s attachment. Attachment is not that fragile, is it? It’s very robust system. We’re not going to break it with one bad day of parenting.

(00:22:39):

So when I realized how important repair was, I was like, oh, I wasn’t like awesome. I just messed up as a parent. But I was like, cool, I’ve got this opportunity. I messed up. I can own it. I can show, I can teach my kids so many things in this moment. I can teach them that it’s okay to make mistakes. I can teach him that I can own it without shame. I can talk through why it was that those things might’ve happened. Like, oh, bud, I’m so sorry that I yelled at you. You must’ve felt so scared and I really haven’t been looking after myself. I haven’t eaten breakfast, I haven’t done these things. I’m overloaded with whatever, not making it their fault. So you never want a sorry to be like, I’m so sorry about that, but it’s just you didn’t clean up your toys, really owning it and then repairing with them. And in that moment you are showing them that their relationship can handle mistakes, can handle their mess ups, that we’re not expecting them to be perfect in life, that we can show up and we can problem solve together and we can figure things out. So yeah, trying to be perfect as a parent, it’s just a recipe for disaster, isn’t it?

Dr. Sarah (00:24:02):

I think it increases the pressing on the cracks, right? Because kids are like, if we don’t talk about all the things that don’t work in our relationship, I yelled or you hit your sister. And I had a really, really, I was being completely unreasonable with what I was expecting in this moment. I didn’t think about all the different pieces that were happening. Hold on, let’s reset. It just sets this tone in the family about, like you were saying, mistakes are part of this, and we’re modeling that. Of course they happen. They happen to all of us. They’re not a big deal. They’re so survivable. And then when we can really repeat that enough that it gets internalized by our kids, then this idea of being on that edge of like, is this going to result in a big icky thing? Is this going to be the thing that makes them mad?

(00:25:07):

Is this going to be the thing that breaks something here? That feeling is not as intense. Kids aren’t sitting on the edge like that. They still will totally push buttons, don’t get me wrong. But they’ll do it because feeling icky for other reasons, and they’re just trying to figure out a way to release, and they know that they can release into our safe space, but we don’t want to be the source of their edginess. And that can happen when we’re not talking about and repairing the times where we lose it because we will and we do.

Tracy (00:25:44):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And it’s not about intentionally doing those things like you talk about because they are just going to happen. So it’s just most of the time we’re going to try to be attuned to our kids. We’re not going to get it all right all the time. We are not mind readers and we just try our best. I think it’s all just about trying our best. And you can show up again tomorrow and start anew. So yeah, I think this way, I like to think of this way of parenting through attachment as this perfect system that Mother Nature designed. And when she designed it, she knew that she was designing it for imperfect parents. So there are a lot of built-in safety nets within that. It’s not something that we’ve got to get all the time. We’re not going to, it’s just not possible.

(00:26:48):

We were meant to be parenting in a village and so many of us find ourselves parenting alone and the amount of energy and resources it takes to raise a child are just immense. So I think it’s about cutting ourselves some slack, particularly as mothers scrolling through things like Instagram and seeing people’s best versions of themselves, but not seeing the rest of it. I think the comparison game and all of those things I think can really wreak havoc on mom’s mental health. So I think really cutting ourselves some slack and just doing our best and leaning into the relationship and just always trying to build connection when we can and when we don’t have the energy giving ourselves a break.

Dr. Sarah (00:27:41):

Yeah, so love that. One of the things you were saying at the very beginning where you were saying how you’d bought this crib, this was your plan, you were following the sort of rules of all the baby books and your midwife was like, I’m going to sleep with you. And on the one hand, my kids, I co-slept with my kids a lot. They have cribs, they slept and they have their own rooms, and sometimes we co-slept and that worked for us. And I feel like just this idea of having an idea in your mind and realizing, oh, perhaps this idea, whatever it is, it doesn’t really matter, but this picture you have in your mind of a rule you’re supposed to follow in parenthood, and then the moment when you realize, oh wait, I have permission to break that rule. I’m allowed to do that. I can parent in a different way. I could parent in a way that I choose that’s not allowed.

(00:28:40):

That could be a really empowering moment for parents. It can also be a really scary moment for parents. What do you think would be helpful for parents who are kind of at that wherever it is, if it’s co-sleeping or breastfeeding till two and a half, or it’s figuring out preschools or daycares or whatever learning styles, if they’re at that inflection moment where they have to decide, I want to do something because it feels right to me and my kid, but I’m not sure if I’m allowed to do this, and that’s how do we help them feel empowered and not scared?

Tracy (00:29:20):

Yeah, it’s really hard and it’s one of the most common questions that I get, and it’s one of the most common questions I ask myself. It is really challenging. I think there’s so many layers to this. If we talk about we were raised with conditional parenting like most of us, and even if it wasn’t in parenting then it was in the school system or wherever we were in society, we’re rewarded for doing things that please others. So many women are raised to be people pleasers, to get the gold stars, to be a nice girl, to not cause a fuss, to blend in, to follow the rules. And for whatever reason, I’ve tended to be a rule breaker most of my life and a critical thinker and to be very curious and to ask why. And I need to know why I’m doing something before I’m going to do it.

(00:30:28):

I’m not just going to do something somebody else told me to. And that goes for mothers that are getting on my blog or following my, don’t just do what I do, read it and have that as an option or I just want to light a path like another option. But to figure out for yourself what is authentic to you. And Gabbo mate talks about this a lot in his work about that When we’re little kids, we have that real need for attachment and we also have a need for authenticity. But if a child has to choose between those two things, if they’re upset and their parents aren’t, they’re going to get sent into a timeout. They’re not accepted for who they are in that moment. Their emotions are too big for their parents, then they will forego their authentic selves and they will choose attachment every single time.

(00:31:26):

And so many of us get to our twenties or thirties or forties and are trying to figure out who we are and we’re forgotten who we are, and then we’re going to go to therapy and try to uncover all that. I think most three-year-olds know who they are until we drum it out of them. So I think we come to parenting and suddenly the stakes get higher because we want to get it right. We love our kids so much and we want to make the right choices for them. And we have society telling us that you just need to get on this bandwagon. You just need to get on this conveyor belt where you’re going to stick your kid in the crib. You’re going to do sleep training, they’re going to sleep from seven till seven, then you’re going to stick ’em in daycare, then you’re going to put ’em in school, and then hopefully at the other end they’re going to be fine.

(00:32:18):

And I think we need to look to how is that turning out? What is the mental health of our society right now? It’s not that good. I think we need to be questioning these things. And we’re a species that is driven by connection and by attachment we’re meant to be connected to others. We’re not meant to be connected to a device and be scrolling. We’re not meant to be soothing our needs with alcohol or drugs or online shopping or binging Netflix. We are meant to be turning to other people. And that’s what I want my child to be turning to when he needs somebody in the future. So my question, whenever I’m trying to make a parenting decision is what I’m about to do, going to strengthen a weakened connection? And it always comes back to that. I want him to feel connected to me.

(00:33:15):

I want him to trust that he can rely on other people, that the world is a safe place. And I think for parents, when they’re making a decision to step off what society is telling them to do, I think it’s easy and simple to go with what we’re told to do because if it doesn’t work out, we can blame somebody else. We can blame the doctor, we can blame our parents, we can blame society. Well, I was just doing what I was told to do. If we make our own decision, then we’re taking full responsibility and that’s our choice and the buck stops with us. So that can be scary. But I see that as a real opportunity and I see that as really exciting. You don’t go to a movie that how it turns out. And so I love not knowing exactly how things are going to turn out. I loved making the decision, I’m going to breastfeed one more day and one more day might turn into five years. And that’s when I start to look to other cultures and I start to look back in time about from an evolutionary perspective, how did we used to do this? What are other cultures doing? What are other species doing? Look beyond what is just right in front of us. So that’s a very long ramble to your question. But yeah, hope that helps.

Dr. Sarah (00:34:55):

I mean I hope it helps too. It helps me to hear that. And you said something that felt really important to me, which was that every time you’re faced with a parenting decision, this can all sound very complex and lots of things to remember. But if all you have to really sort of hold is every time I have to make a parenting decision, I want to come back and look at it through the lens of does this lead to connection? And I think if we’re using that as a basic framework, one, it’s very simple. Two, it doesn’t have to follow a particular set of rules. To your point, the rules, I’m using quotes, you cannot see this if you’re listening, but the rules of mainstream western society parenting since maybe the 1950s has been, we need to create independence. We must breed these children to be independent at all costs.

(00:35:59):

I would love to hear some of your thoughts that I know you have on that because I know what you have written about dependence and independence and how do we actually foster true independence is so I’m going to pin that. I want you to come back to it, but I also think, so just as there are these rules that we have now, we’re talking about permission to break, you can also have rules from the gentle parenting movement that you have permission to break this idea of saying, I want to breastfeed one more day where I’m at today versus I’m ready to stop breastfeeding today. Maybe my kid isn’t, but I am. Versus someone else is telling me, this is the cutoff time you’re supposed to start or stop here. It’s totally okay to do any of these things when they’re coming from an internal check-in system, what is going to help me feel like I’m parenting in a way that fosters connection.

(00:37:05):

If breastfeeding is causing me so much pain and distress and exhaustion that I’m losing my ability to stay connected and have this be a joyful part of my relationship with my kid, then I might really choose to stop to support the connection. And if it’s bringing connection despite the fact that it’s past some expiration date that someone else set, I might choose to keep doing it because it breeds connection. And I think that’s so helpful because I think so many people feel like parenting no matter what end of whatever spectrum you’re coming from, feels very prescriptive right now. And to just be able to say like, I’m not going to follow any rules except tuning into what helps me feel connected to my kid and helps my kid feel connected to me, that’s a compass. It’s so helpful. And then it allows people to just really be, like you were saying in the driver’s seat, you’re the person making the decisions for you and your family, not somebody else.

Tracy (00:38:05):

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I love where you took that because that’s exactly where I take it because you come in, you’re a new parent and you’re like, I got no idea what I’m doing. I dunno. And you got to figure it out and you got to have some, I love how Gordon Neufeld talks about he doesn’t want parents to let their kids see them reading his book. He is like, don’t let them see you reading my book. Then they know you’re not in the driver’s seat. Read this when they’re not looking because you have to be in the driver’s seat. So it’s kind of faking it till we make it. And yeah, the connection piece, it’s like if I talk about really finding your why you’re doing things, but how you do that could be very different. So how I get to connection could be very different to how you get to connection.

(00:39:14):

And that’s because we are two different people and then we’ve got two different kids. And so there’s different relationships. And I think with the breastfeeding example, you can breastfeed in a disconnected way and you can bottle feed in a very connected way. So I don’t think it’s not about the thing. And I think that when I was a new mom, I came into it and very quickly found attachment parenting, and I think that can get mixed up with parenting through attachment, with attachment theory and all of that. But I love attachment parenting and I love what Dr. Sears has done for parenting as well. But at the same time, if a mom can’t follow all of those eight baby bees, if she’s got a sore back and can’t baby wear and can’t be the poster child for attachment parenting, then you don’t want that mom to feel like a failure.

(00:40:19):

It’s not about the things. You don’t have to be bed sharing or have to be breastfeeding or baby wearing or doing those exact practices. It’s the connection that comes behind it. It’s the intention and the energy that you bring to those things. So don’t do something out of resentment because you think you should be doing it. And at the same time, definitely don’t do something just somebody else has told you to, especially if there’s someone in a position of authority. Really question that because I think we’ve been trained to think that doctors and pediatricians or teachers, they might know better than us. No, that’s BS better. Doctors are not trained about sleep. I wish we could shout that from the rooftops. They sort took that up. But yeah, I think parents really need to be in the driver’s seat and have a lot more confidence.

(00:41:21):

And you can have a team of experts around your child that can help you, but you are the one that makes the decision. So just like any service provider might come your house, the plumber comes in and helps to fix the toilet or whatever, your doctor might make some suggestions and you’re like, yeah, and I get to make the decision about what we are going to do and I want informed consent and I’m going to figure it out. So I think it’s really important. The sooner that we can do it, the better as well. I think new moms will not be honest about say bed sharing as an example. And I completely understand why, because there’s so much judgment around it and it’s easier to just avoid it. And I’ve done it at times in the past as well, but the questions and the judgment keep coming because as soon as you don’t put your kid in a timeout, then you’re questioned for that. So I think, yeah, really stepping into that and having some courage and confidence can really help. But it’s not easy. It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

Dr. Sarah (00:42:32):

And I think to your point too, I mean even if you are a full baby in the crib, kind of that’s how we’re going to do it. You’ve slept with your baby, you’ve fallen asleep with your kid at least once because you’re tired. You’re tired. And sometimes when you wake up in the middle of the night, it’s just easier to get them in the bed with you. And if you don’t know how to do it safely because it’s this shameful thing that you feel like you’re breaking some terrible rule and now I’m not going to go there and I don’t do that and I don’t read those articles, then you’re doing something that actually could be dangerous. Whereas there are totally safe ways to co-sleep and talking about it with your pediatrician and hopefully having a pediatrician who’s open to having those conversations and pointing you to the resources to be able to do it in a safe way is actually so important and healthy.

Tracy (00:43:32):

Yeah, it sure is. And that’s one of the things that I am super passionate about is that I think all parents should know how to bed share safely even if they don’t intend to, because falling asleep with a baby on a couch is one of the least safe places that you could fall asleep with a baby, they can fall through the cracks. There’s so many dangers when it comes to that. And we put so much pressure on new mom, well, not pressure, but we’re really encouraging new moms to breastfeed, but we’re telling them at the same time not to bed share. Well, those two things go hand in hand. Professor James McKenna has coined a phrase “breastsleeping” because he says one doesn’t really exist without the other, and they’re designed to go hand in hand. So we’re setting moms up for failure one way or another. Either they feel guilty for bringing their babies into their bed because they think they’re not supposed to, or they’re getting up 10 times a night trying to breastfeed their babies and then they’re so exhausted that then they might fall asleep with their baby in a dangerous place. So yeah, I’m super passionate about parents knowing how they can bed share safely because most parents will end up doing it at some point.

Dr. Sarah (00:45:01):

So I think that’s super valuable. And I think that’s the beginning early, early on when you’ve got an infant and you’re figuring out feeding and sleeping. But we could take this all the way. I mean, you could take this all the way to teens years, but most people who are listening probably have younger kids. I feel like we were talking about discipline and timeouts versus finding more productive, constructive ways to teach. This is all kind of, you’re building the same, it’s the bricks that build the same house. It’s just which ones go earlier and which ones come later. But I think you can take these same reframes that we’re talking about of try trying to figure out how to do something that in a way that is effective at getting what you’re trying to get done, done, and is also serving that connection. It’s not one or the other.

(00:45:56):

It’s not we discipline or we have connection, which I think is a massive misconception around these parenting approaches. So I’m curious too, just some of your thoughts on fast forward from the infant years up to you’ve got these little beings who are starting to come into their power and they’re really excited about it, and guess what? They’re like wrecking balls and we have to figure out a way to teach them how to use their power in an effective and safe and pro-social way that doesn’t drive us crazy or trash our house or get us disinvited from play dates, the things.

Tracy (00:46:37):

Yeah, for sure. And I think like you said there, misconception between choosing between connection or discipline, and we’re always using connection. We’re either leveraging connection or we’re severing it. We we’re breaking connection because things like timeouts are just taking what a child values most just connection and attachment, what they need most, and we’re using it against them. We’re saying, I’m going to take away connection. To me, it’s taking away oxygen for a young child to take away attachment and put them in a timeout and say, you’re not welcome in my presence. When you behave like that, it’s incredibly damaging. And the idea of the word discipline, I’m sure you’ve talked about it on here before, but it does mean to teach and we’ve really sort of misunderstood it in modern society, it’s almost just become punishment dressed up in different ways, either as a timeout where we’re just going to punish the child by banishing them or we’re going dish out a consequence.

(00:48:00):

We use the term consequence. I think it might sound nicer to adults than punishment, but I think consequences are possibly even worse. They often come with a threat and a punishment. You’re going to get a consequence. So yeah, we’re always using connection, and that’s what we were talking about earlier is what I’m about to do, going to strengthen or weakened connection. And when we just dish out punishment and tell our kids that they’re not welcome when their behavior doesn’t please us, then we’re really weakening that and we all love our kids. No one could question how much a parent loves their child. But when we talk about unconditional love, that means that we love our child for who they are, not what they do. And when we use discipline in that way, what we are really communicating to them is that what they do is more important. Even though we’re not consciously doing that, subconsciously, we’re communicating to them that what they do is more important than who they are, and we’re not accepting them for that in that moment. So, yeah.

Dr. Sarah (00:49:14):

Which is a hard pill to swallow, right? Because I know that parents are not using those strategies with the intention of severing connection or the intention of communicating that usually. And I know this because I’ve literally said, I remember standing in my kitchen not even that long ago, maybe a couple of weeks ago, and my kids were being absolute nightmares. I have a six and a 5-year-old, and I was literally, I was so desperate and mad and I had nothing. I had no cards to throw. So I was just like, if you don’t do this, I am going to give you a consequence. And I didn’t actually have a consequence. I was just talking about it in this as though it were a thing that I was going to pull into the room. I was backed into a corner, I was tired, and I was just frankly at the end of my rope and I was like, I’m going to threaten this thing that isn’t even really, I heard myself saying, I’m like, you sound so ridiculous right now.

(00:50:18):

What is this thing you’re talking, you’re going to bring in? I didn’t even actually have a thing to deliver upon, but I know that one, it’s not effective. My kids didn’t listen to me anymore. They just kind of got more agitated. But I also, it’s very hard when you’re very frustrated and you feel like you have no other leverage to make your kid do something that you need them to do in that moment, to not use those threats of consequences, maybe, hopefully a better one than one I was using, which was not one. But I think my point is, we’re still going to do this. It’s going to happen, but how do we get out of this pattern and how do we give ourselves some grace for having used these strategies and still kind of work towards more effective things? I don’t want someone who’s listening to this who’s like, well, okay, that’s my toolbox right now and I don’t have another toolbox. How do we help them feel like, okay, that’s not a problem, and let’s add some things to your toolbox, no shame. And also go back to whatever minute it was in our episode, we were talking about repair and let’s just move on with some new strategies.

Tracy (00:51:45):

Yeah, yeah. What we’re talking about is huge. It’s breaking cycles. It’s changing things that we experienced when we were kids and what we see happening all around us and trying to change it. So it’s not just going to happen overnight. And that’s what we’ve talked about. I yell and I threaten and my son, and it sounds like it’s exactly what you do with your kids too. You couldn’t even think of what kind of consequence you were going to pull out. If you were doing that all the time, you would have a dozen ready to go.

(00:52:27):

And when I threaten my kid, he’s had enough experiences of not being threatened and not being put in that position that he knows how he deserves to be treated. And that’s what we want to raise our care, because they’re going to leave our care and then they’re going to get into relationships and friendships. We don’t want ’em to be pushed around. We don’t want their peers to be pushing them around, oh, I did it because my friend did it, or they told me to. Well, we want them to be able to stand up for themselves and they get to practice that on us, which is really hard.

Dr. Sarah (00:53:06):

So hard.

Tracy (00:53:07):

But it’s the way it is. And so when I use it, if I am having a bad day too, and I’m overwhelmed, and my husband’s been traveling for two weeks, and I’m like, just crazy times, my son will say to me, mom, that sounds like a threat. We don’t do threats in our family. Oh man, this is hard. So I think it’s just acknowledging that it’s really hard. It’s hard, and that’s where we have to cut ourselves a break and to say, give ourselves a pat on the back, and you’re doing a really good job. You’re getting this right most of the time, and it’s really hard sometimes. So I think there’s so many different tools that you can use as a parent, and it’s so big. I mean, some of the things are, and this is going to sound like a cop out, but it’s checking your expectations and reframing ’em is what you’re expecting of your child, reasonable or unreasonable?

(00:54:19):

They’re immature, mature. So many of children’s behaviors can be explained by immaturity, can’t they? But we expect ’em to be more mature or more independent or whatever it is. So getting a good understanding of brain development and a really basic understanding could be really helpful to understand that their brains aren’t going to be fully developed until they’re in their mid to late twenties. Their ability to do some of the things that we expect them to be able to do. They might look like little adults, but they’re not, their brains are totally different to ours. So I think having some good expectations around that. When things are going well, you’re just banking connection, banking connection. So that then when you need to make a withdrawal later on, you’ve got something to pull from. So making sure that your kid is just so full up with connection.

(00:55:19):

So many, we get to bedtime, don’t we? And you’re just at the end and you’re like, I just want to sleep work. It’s like, I want another drink of water. I want another story. I want to play. I want to do this, I want to do that. And they’re just trying for connection. So one of the things with sleep is start early in the day, be building all those things in play time, two hours before bedtime, start playing. Then playful parenting. I just love playful parenting, Dr. Larry Cohen who wrote the book, Playful Parenting. And How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. They have such awesome ideas in there, trying to drag a kid around a supermarket. It’s really boring for a grownup, and it’s even more boring for a kid. Of course. It’s boring. Can we make it playful? We’re going to set a timer.

(00:56:18):

We got five minutes to grab 10 things. Let’s go and run around the supermarket and have fun with it, and don’t care what other people, if they’re looking at you. I remember I wrote a blog post about my son and I, we had to go get soccer shoes. I think it was about seven or eight, and we went to the first place to get soccer shoes, and they didn’t have any soccer shoes. They’d all sold out like a last minute person. I was like, shoot. And I’m going through my head, I’m such a bad mom. And then finding where to go. We had to go all the way into the city. We had to park. There was roadworks. We had to walk eight blocks to get to this store, and my son and I have this game, and so I just pulled it out and he loves dinosaurs.

(00:57:02):

And so I’m like, velociraptor, quick run. And we’re running through the city and there’s dinosaurs chasing us. And then 25-year-old guy was walking towards us and he saw me running, ah, dinosaurs, and he was like, what’s coming? And I was dinosaurs, and he was like, oh, wow. And he started running with us. Amazing. You can spread this joy. You think you’re just going to be embarrassed, but it can be fun and you don’t have to go that far. Maybe it’s just that you’re putting your kids’ shoes on and they’re not wanting to cooperate, and you’re like, oh, oh, Mr. Shoe’s talking to me. It needs a foot. Like, oh, what’s inside these shoes? Or the things that you can pretend are inside your kid’s mouth when you’re brushing their teeth. And I think just bringing a bit of playfulness, and you don’t always have the energy for that, but sometimes you can think you don’t have the energy for it, but it can be a lot faster than a power struggle.

Dr. Sarah (00:58:01):

I often will say playfulness. I know it feels exhausting, but you’re front, you’re front loading the work to definitely get a payoff on the backend, putting in that effort to be playful. If someone tells you that’s not more work, they’re lying, it’s more work, and you’re still going to get in the aggregate more rest out of that, it’s a better bang for your book almost nine times out of 10. Yeah.

Tracy (00:58:31):

Yeah. So I think to your question about the toolbox, and I think that’s a really good way for parents to think about it. I like to think about that that way too. If you acknowledge that there is a toolbox, you can replace those tools and you don’t have to just go with what we’re told. So yeah, there’s so many different tools that you can replace inside that toolbox.

Dr. Sarah (00:59:01):

No, I love that. I have a free guide that I made about talking about the sort of science we have about timeouts and the research, confusing research about it. Some people will cite research saying, this is scientifically backed. This is really helpful. People use it in a lot of manualized therapy treatments to go to effect. And that’s not untrue, but we need to look at those studies and understand what it is we’re measuring. And yes, we’re looking at shift in behavior, but when they’re not measuring connection, and also it’s most people are not using timeouts the way those laboratory manualized treatment sessions are using them either. And I think that we’ve really understand that there’s a lot of other approaches that are far more effective in terms of what we’re talking about, which is it does improve behavior. It might not improve it immediately in that moment, but we parent over the aggregate, and I think we can all agree that we’re more interested in the long run, the long-term health and wellness of our kids, and their ability to learn these life skills over a longer period of time than for them to always be obedient in the moment in a snap second.

(01:00:17):

And that’s hard. That does give up some things that we might make our lives easier as parents to have immediate obedience. It is harder. I don’t disagree with that truth. And it’s also, in a lot of ways, easier to build, put in this front load, this work to have greater cooperation more reliably in the long run. I have this guide that talks about the science of timeouts and also alternatives that are pretty helpful. So if that would be a helpful resource for anyone, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. And I know you have a ton of resources. If people want to learn more about your work and how they can follow along with the stuff that you are writing about, where can they connect with you?

Tracy (01:01:09):

Yeah, just my website is raisedgood.com, and I have a similar, I’ll give you the link to the blog post. There’s a blog post on alternatives to timeouts.

Dr. Sarah (01:01:22):

Amazing.

Tracy (01:01:23):

Yeah. Yeah. So it might be time ins and all that kind of good stuff. So yeah, I will share that as well. But yeah, everything is on my website: raisegood.com.

Dr. Sarah (01:01:34):

Wonderful. And you have a summit coming up, right? Yes.

Tracy (01:01:37):

Yeah, number five.

Dr. Sarah (01:01:39):

Amazing.

Tracy (01:01:40):

Yeah. Yeah. Number five is coming up on September 12th to 16th. So we have 28 speakers and incredible speakers on topics like what we’ve been talking about. We’re talking about breastfeeding, we’re talking about sleep, we’re talking about all of the emotional regulation stuff that we’ve been touching on today, discipline raising teenagers, screens, all of the different things my head’s spinning with. I’m still working on getting all the backend stuff sorted, but there’s so many amazing conversations, and I feel very privileged to be able to have them and then to be able to share them.

Dr. Sarah (01:02:23):

Yeah, I mean, the lineup is, these are some names that I am in deep, deep awe of and deep respect for, so I’m really excited to follow along with that. But yeah, it’s good. We will share all the information for the summit as well.

Tracy (01:02:38):

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, you can register for free and you can watch it free for those five days, 12th to the 16th.

Dr. Sarah (01:02:47):

Oh, what a fantastic resource. Thank you so much.

Tracy (01:02:50):

Pleasure.

Dr. Sarah (01:02:51):

Oh, I loved this conversation. This was great.

Tracy (01:02:54):

Oh, good. Good. Me too, me too. Absolutely. Love chatting with you.

Dr. Sarah (01:03:04):We talked a bit about discipline in this episode and how timeouts can be a confusing topic for parents. So what are the best ways to discipline your child to foster overall wellbeing and mental health? With so much often contradictory information out there, knowing what exactly to do and how to do it can be confusing for parents, and that’s why I created a guide that simplifies the research on timeouts and offers three additional effective discipline strategies parents can add into their toolbox that prioritize mental health and wellbeing and still work to increase cooperation listening, and more appropriate behaviors. To download my free guide, 3 Psychologist-Approved Discipline Strategies to Use Instead of Timeouts, just go to the episode description wherever you’re streaming this podcast, or you can head to drsarahbren.com/timeout. That’s drsarahbren.com/timeout to download the guide for free. Thanks for tuning in and don’t be a stranger.