Music therapist Vered Benhorin is teaching parents how they can use play and music as powerful tools to strengthen connection, foster attachment, and make parenting feel a little easier.
In this episode, we explore:
- Why play is so important for emotional regulation, attachment, and connection—and how parents who don’t naturally enjoy play can redefine what it looks like.
- What are “Bubble Moments,” and how can parents tap into these times throughout the day to deepen their relationship with their child?
- How music impacts the brain, reinforcing neural networks that support routines, emotional regulation, and even executive functioning skills.
- The science behind a “sing-song” voice and why it feels so regulating for both you and your child.
- How to expand your definition of play to find activities that feel fun and authentic for you as a parent.
Whether you’re looking to strengthen your bond with your child, better understand attachment theory, or discover simple ways to use music and play to make parenting more joyful, this episode is packed with insights and practical advice you won’t want to miss!
LEARN MORE ABOUT VERED:
READ VERED’S NEW BOOK:
📚 What Do I Do with My Baby All Day?!: Simple Ways to Have the Best First Year Together
LISTEN TO VERED’S MUSIC:
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES AND RESOURCES:
👉🏻 Download my free guide, Strengthen Your Child’s Emotion Regulation Skills Through Play, to help your child learn to calm their brains and bodies.
CHECK OUT ADDITIONAL PODCAST EPISODES YOU MAY LIKE:
🎧 How parents can use music as an emotion regulator with Vered Benhorin
Click here to read the full transcript
Vered (00:00):
I think about it as like an emotional transitional object, a song, so like a lullaby. Because now that you’ve created this association with your baby, singing your lullaby every single night, now when the nanny sings it or the daycare person sings it, they’re kind of holding, it’s like a capsule holding within it all the feeling that you had when you sang it with your babies, feeling that warmth, feeling the connection, feeling them out, feeling this sort of bubble that’s created with music. And so that’s why I think of it as an emotional transitional object. It’s not a pacifier, no, but it holds the emotion, the song.
Dr. Sarah (00:43):
There is so much learning that can be done through play. That’s what this episode is all about. When children are playing, their nervous system is in a state of rest/digest, aka, the opposite of fight or flight. And in this state, the prefrontal cortex or the thinking part of their brain is firing, giving your child the ability to reason, problem, solve, and acquire new information. So what does that mean? It means that we know from research and science that one of the best ways to teach our children is not in the heat of the moment, not through a lecture, but through calm, connected moments during play. And that’s exactly why I’ve created a free guide that teaches you how to incorporate emotion regulation, building games into your child’s play. In it, I teach you fun and simple games that help children of all ages develop regulation skills like learning to breathe, inhibit impulses and calm their bodies. To download this free guide, to strengthen your child’s emotion regulation skills when their brain is most susceptible to learning, just go to the episode description wherever you’re streaming to get the link or go to drsarahbren.com/games. That’s drsarahbren.com/games.
(01:57):
Play is so much more than just a way to pass the time with our kids. It’s a powerful tool for connection, emotional regulation, and fostering secure attachment. But if you’re a parent who doesn’t naturally love playing and you’re not sure how to join your child in their world, you’re not alone. Joining me today is musician and music therapist Vered Benhorin. Her new book, What Do I Do With My Baby All Day? Simple Ways to Have the Best First Year Together is out today, and you are definitely going to want to pick up a copy. In this episode, we’ll explore what it means to follow your child’s lead, the difference between mindfulness and reflective functioning and how tuning into your child’s flow state can create moments of deep connection. Verad will also share really practical strategies for using music as a grounding and regulating tool for both parents and kids while expanding what play can look like in your home. And don’t worry, even if you aren’t particularly musical, you can still use a lot of these strategies I do, and I am not musical at all. So whether it’s a song that makes your morning routine easier or simply sitting with your child and observing them with curiosity and wonder, this episode is packed with ideas to help you connect with your child in ways that feel meaningful and accessible. So let’s dive in.
(03:30):
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.
(04:00):
Hello, welcome back to the Securely Attached podcast. We have a very, very dear friend of mine and an incredible musician and now author Vered Benhorin. Thank you for being here.
Vered (04:17):
Oh my God, you just gave me the chills when you said all that your very dear friend. I love being here and talking to you.
Dr. Sarah (04:24):
I’m so glad and it’s been a while and seeing your face, it makes me very happy.
Vered (04:29):
Same.
Dr. Sarah (04:30):
So for those of you listening who might not remember, VED was on the podcast at the very, very beginning of it all. And so I’m going to put one of the really early episodes. I’m going to put the link to the episode in the show description below, wherever you’re listening. So you should go back and listen. It was such a good episode. It was all about using music to help your child build emotion regulation skills. It was so good, and now you tell us what you’ve been up to since then.
Vered (04:59):
So I wrote a book and it is out today. Yay. I’m so excited about that. Writing a book and getting it out takes so long and I can’t believe that it’s actually happening. The book is called What Do I Do With My Baby All Day? And it’s practical tips for parents to connect with their baby. It’s very much aligned with the work you do. It’s all about building that attachment, especially in the first year.
Dr. Sarah (05:31):
And obviously you’re very well known for your incredible music programming. It’s not like a music class for baby. These are deeply, I did this with my kids during COD, we did on Zoom with you and my son, by the way, who’s now seven, still asks, can we do more music with Barod? He asks about it. He wants to, and I actually need to offline, we should talk about him. There’s still classes he can take. Wow. He loves it. But they were great for the kids, but they were also really for the mom or the parent. It was about using music as a tool for attunement building and relationship building. So we should talk about that, but also you’re very well known for the music that you do, but you bring a lot of sort of child development and psychology experience to your work. Can you talk a little bit about your background and how that informs your approach to using music and these relationships?
Vered (06:36):
Yes. So I’m a music therapist and I have been working for many years as a music therapist. I also have a master in clinical psychology. And so I’ve worked in a lot of different settings in a psychiatric setting with children in addiction. And then once I had babies, I kind of landed. It really changed everything as it does. I didn’t think that I would even write music for kids or babies and parents. I thought I was a singer songwriter at the time.
Dr. Sarah (07:10):
Your albums are amazing. I love, we sing a lot of the Good Morning. My Love is Still something I sing to my kids when I wake them up in the morning.
Vered (07:20):
I do too. I still sing it to my 10-year-old every single morning.
Dr. Sarah (07:24):
It’s so good.
Vered (07:25):
It’s the best. So he inspired me to start writing music about being a mom and about how I imagined it felt to be a baby and our connection between us. And then I took all of what I had learned, all my studies, all of the music therapy, the psychology, and put it into classes. And those classes at the time were the other moms with babies the same age as my baby. I kind of tried it out with them. And then eventually I built this program called Baby in Tune, which was really the merging of music therapy and psychology and music and the mom and the rockstar and everything all in one. And so that’s how it developed. Side note, that same baby who inspired the album, good Morning, my Love is now producing my next album.
Dr. Sarah (08:18):
No way.
Vered (08:19):
Shut up. Yes.
Dr. Sarah (08:20):
How old is he now?
Vered (08:21):
He’s 16. I know, I know. And so we’re working on a new album that’s probably going to be out in May. And of course there’s a song about this, about how he is now producing and he was the one who inspired. It’s great.
Dr. Sarah (08:37):
Oh my God, I love it. I love it. I think I talked about this on the last episode, but there are some songs now. It’s been a while because my kids are older now and we don’t listen to it in the Kitchen. We used to, but there was a song, and I’m trying to remember what it was now that literally when it was about when you have a second baby, and I cried so hard when I listened to it because it made me feel so seen about how Little Bird Is it Little? Yes, little bird. I’m just even thinking about it, it makes me so emotional because that was a huge part. Oh my God.
Vered (09:12):
Aww.
Dr. Sarah (09:13):
It was such a huge part of my own postpartum depression when I had my second because I felt so guilty and I felt so guilty in every direction. I wasn’t giving my son what he was used to having and I wasn’t giving her what I had given him. And then I heard that song and it was like, oh, she’s going to be fine. She’s going to be this bird that can fly because she’s so independent. And I so neat at that.
Vered (09:41):
Oh my goodness.
Dr. Sarah (09:42):
I didn’t expect to have so much.
Vered (09:44):
Yes.
Dr. Sarah (09:45):
See, music taps into such deep emotions.
Vered (09:48):
Yeah, thank you. I still feel that. I still feel all the guilt about that. I know that to be true, that for instance, I have three, my second is a little bird, but I still feel guilty. I don’t think we ever fully get rid of that.
Dr. Sarah (10:07):
We just earned to find our little pocket for it.
Vered (10:09):
Yes, for the girls.
Dr. Sarah (10:11):
Be gentle with it.
Vered (10:12):
Yes. And then also watching the bird, the Bird and being like, wow. Well, I guess he didn’t need me to do every single thing all the time I did with my first.
Dr. Sarah (10:24):
Yeah. But the reason why I think that mean personally, obviously it was meaningful to me, but the reason why I love your music so much is because there’s great music for kids that really helps them feel empowered and understand their feelings and all wonderful, but when the music can both serve that function. But the mom is listening to it too, and it’s very, very healing to hear the lyrics of your music. I think you really are able, you were saying to write from the perspective of the child, but also from this perspective of this budding mother and to kind of narrate that experience and all the things that come with it. And that’s very magical to be able to do and you do it so well. I just think listening to your music can honestly be a therapeutic experience for a mom, just from the quality of the capacity to feel seen in such a, it’s just so on the nose kind of way that music has a unique ability to do so evocative.
Vered (11:27):
Right. And it kind of cuts through all the intellectualization and goes straight to this vulnerable part. So recently, because working on the album now recently in one of my classes, someone in my group said, you know what we really need? We need a cheer for parents, something in the morning that’s going to cheer us on for the day. And I was like, oh my God. So true. And that’s the song I’m working on, right?
Dr. Sarah (11:53):
Oh my God, I love it.
Vered (11:54):
It’s like a cheer, like this is going to be a great day. You got this.
Dr. Sarah (11:59):
Yeah. And I love that you win your classes. You teach parents how to write songs with their kids to narrate their day and help them. So I still sometimes use the songs that we made a song about going up the stairs and to bed…
Vered (12:18):
I remember that.
Dr. Sarah (12:21):
With my kids. I think my daughter was a little too little. My son helped me write it in the class that we took.
Vered (12:27):
I remember.
Dr. Sarah (12:28):
Yeah, it really sticks. And because I go to therapy and I have great insights, and I remember that I had the insight and I can generally carry it with me, but I don’t remember the words, the conversation. But when you do it through music, look, I know every word to that song because just like I know the preamble to the Constitution because in fifth grade we had to learn the Schoolhouse Rock song about it. And I still know every word because it was in a song. You just remember it.
Vered (12:58):
Exactly. So that ties into our last episode actually, which was using the power of using it with your routine. That’s one of the huge powers of music because it repeats the same way. So I can say, good morning, baby, I love you so much. Good morning. And every day it’s going to be different. But if every morning I say Good morning, my love, good morning, my love, we’re all going to feel the feels instantly because we know this repeating melody. It’s sort of like when we read books to our babies and we kind of read it in a melodic way, like Brown bear, brown bear, what do you say? It’s the same thing. That’s how the baby’s learning it and how we’re kind of singing it together in this union.
Dr. Sarah (13:47):
And from a neurological standpoint, when you can repeat this thing with your child, you’re wiring so many different parts of their brain to create an association with that routine that is connected to, oh my God, so many things. It’s connected to sequencing. It’s helping them learn the actual rhythm of the routine because it’s so rote and familiar. You’re helping, which is executive functioning skills like organizing, sequencing, planning, remembering all that stuff.
Vered (14:18):
Yeah.
Dr. Sarah (14:19):
But you’re also helping them linking those networks, those neural networks up to playfulness, connection, comfort. And then on a very primitive level, you’re linking it up to a physiological regulation of the nervous system because that song is regulating, it activates the parasympathetic nervous system to sing, activates the parasympathetic nervous system. And I would imagine to hear a familiar soothing voice like your parents singing to you in a sing-song way would probably also activate the parasympathetic nervous system.
Vered (14:54):
Yes, more than speaking, there are studies showing that it calms babies more than speaking, which is always amazing to me. And it’s not just singing a song they know. It’s just the singing
Dr. Sarah (15:04):
Itself, which it just shows how we are far more intuitive than we realize because most parents very just instinctively speak to their babies in a sing-song voice.
Vered (15:15):
Yes.
Dr. Sarah (15:16):
We call it Mother Ease or something. But because, and I don’t think anyone is like, I’m going to sing to my baby in this talk. I’m going to talk to my baby in this sing-song voice. We just do it and it’s regulating.
Vered (15:30):
Right, exactly. It’s the sort of bell curve. It’s the descending when we’re saying, come here, baby, we descend. It’s very singsong, which is why when I do write songs with parents, I say, you’re already just a tiny step away. Just have to kind of repeat what you’re already doing. But also with what you were saying with the association, I tell parents this, I wish I had a better word for it, but I think about it as an emotional transitional object. A song, so like a lullaby. Because now that you’ve created this association with your baby, singing your lullaby every single night, now when the nanny sings it or the daycare person sings it, they’re kind of holding, it’s like a capsule holding within it all the feeling that you had when you sang it with your babies, feeling that warmth, feeling the connection, feeling them out, feeling the sort of bubble that’s created with music. And so that’s why I think of it as an emotional transitional object. It’s not a pacifier. No. But it holds the emotion, the song.
Dr. Sarah (16:31):
Yes. I mean, I know that there are so many people who listen to this podcast who are pregnant maybe with their second because they already have another kid or they have a little baby. But I also know we have a lot of people who listen to this podcast who have older kids. And I think the beauty of this is, and the beauty of your work in general is that yes, there’s a big focus on helping this early attachment relationship with your baby be to use music as a tool to strengthen that and deepen that. But my kids are seven and five and I use early transitional musical objects to reactivate certain things for them that I’ve planted in child in babyhood, and I can use them. I very rarely sing the The Stairs We Go song that we wrote to get my kids prepped for bedtime. It was a tricky transition for us. I rarely sing that, but when I do now, they know what it means. It’s a very different communication and activation of certain things than what I usually do, which is like go upstairs. How many times do I have to ask you to brush your teeth? Because it’s still a tricky transition for us. And I fall into that rhythm a lot where I’m just irritated and it’s the end of the night and I’m just like, please go upstairs. Brush your teeth. We need to move on to bedtime now.
(18:05):
But when I can go to that place of that playfulness and I could pull that old file from their early years and use it, never once have they been like, mom, we’re too old for that song. They just shift. It’s like it wakes up a younger part of them, and that part just kind of knows what to do. And I’m like, why am I using that tool more often? I’m glad I remembered this. I’m going to pull this out a lot more.
Vered (18:33):
Yeah, yeah. I actually used it recently. So same. I am not maybe singing You are with my daughter. I sang You Are My Sunshine. Every time we were in the shower together, I held her and sang it, but it became our close happy song. We Are Together just the two of us hugging song. And then now I use it in our toughest moments if she’s feeling very dysregulated about something.
Dr. Sarah (19:04):
And how old is she right now for context? She’s 10. She’s 10. Right.
Vered (19:07):
I will still be able to hug her now and sort of will rock back and forth and we’ll sing it. And it’s like a magic wand because it holds within it. This all, it’s like a, it’s been infused with magic of the two of us and feeling good and feeling calm. It’s a reset, it’s a shift, it’s a distraction. It’s so many things.
Dr. Sarah (19:33):
And even I’m just thinking from, because I’m really interested in Internal Family Systems therapy or IFS and just thinking about it from a parts perspective, I would imagine when we pull those songs that were wired into this earlier part, we’re pulling forward that part in a way that is supportive of the child’s whole system. So if you’re not familiar with, if you’ve seen the movie Inside Out, think about you’ve got all these parts inside of her, these emotions at the control panel in the mind, but instead of thinking of them only as emotions, think about them as different ages of this child. And so when you can pull forward a younger part that is feeling safe and connected, that part can kind of help assist in this moment a little bit.
Vered (20:33):
Yes. The older part, absolutely. And now to tie it into the book for a second, what I talk about there is this concept of bubble moments and this singing in the shower or doing the singing, the song up the stairs, that’s kind of what I would call a bubble moment, which is these very connected, engaged moments with your child, with your baby. And these are the moments, I think of them as sort of an attachment gym because we’re attaching all the time. We’re activating our attachment systems all the time. We’re mirroring our children, especially our babies, without even realizing it all the time. But these moments are kind of intentional connection moments where we’re sort of exercising the muscle of attuning, of being present. And so then we create these bubble moments that are these moments that we draw on. I always think of it, we go to sleep sometimes. I remember so many times when I was home with the babies, even going to sleep, I would be home with them all day. But I would think to myself, wow, I was with my baby all day. I wasn’t actually with though I was somewhere else. I was doing a lot of things. And we can’t be with all the time. That’s impossible. Especially the modern parent. We’ve got so much to do. We have to take care of ourselves. We need to talk to a friend to parent, we need to go outside, we need to scroll on our phone. We need to do all these things.
(22:16):
So that’s why if we can have these kind of bubble moments, these pointed moments, then we’ll go to sleep thinking about those.
Dr. Sarah (22:26):
And just to ease, to add to the reasons why we can’t do it. And it’s okay. We also, our kids don’t need it. Can you imagine? I think this is a common guilt point for parents where they’re like, I’m not present enough with my kids. And I think the goal is sort of permanent connection and permanent attunement and permanent presence. But think about it from the child’s perspective. If moving or just for your own perspective, if you’re moving through the world and someone who you love and want attention from was constantly attending to you, that wouldn’t necessarily match your needs. We’re all sort of a self-contained little unit too. And so we need some space. Our babies need some space.
Vered (23:17):
It’s not even beneficial.
Dr. Sarah (23:18):
Optimal attunement is an ebbing and flowing of our coming in and out from one another and being able to know when to come in and when to come out because we got to read the cues of the other also. So, I just feel like that’s a point that gets lost sometimes when we think about what’s the best way to create a secure attachment relationship. The bar is like, I’m always getting it right. And anything below that is of a failure. It’s like, no, your baby doesn’t want or need you to be attending to them constantly. They do need you to attend to them. And ideally, when it’s a moment that is requiring that or a moment when you are seeking it out, that you’re able to fully do that, a little bit of a hundred percent is way, way, way, way, way better than a lot of 50%.
Vered (24:13):
Right? Yeah. It reminds me of this story that happened to me. It’s how I came up with this, the concept of bubble moons. I was in school and my professor, who actually was the one who introduced me to attachment theory, Arietta Slade, she’s amazing.
Dr. Sarah (24:31):
That’s quite the introduction to attachment theory. Arietta Slade is like a major, major, major player in that world.
Vered (24:37):
She’s amazing. She remains a mentor. She wrote a blurb for the book that gave me the chills and made me feel so happy and excited. Anyway, I was in the class. I had a six month old at home, my first, and I went to school. I’ll be able to do this, be a student. And sure, I remember on the first day she drew a smiley face of a mama, a smiley face of a baby, and this circle around them. And she said in the first year that the mother and the baby are merged in this bubble. And they were both smiling. And I remember sitting there and rolling my eyes and being like, what? I don’t feel like I’m in this bubble. I don’t feel like I’m a smiley face. I don’t know if my baby’s always a smiley face. He cries a lot. And I just remember feeling like I went against that hole. At first it was so hard for me. And then years later, after I learned more about attachment theory and understood more with my babies and had gone through it as a parent years later, I realized I understood it as a constant.
(25:50):
When she did this bubble, to me, it looked like, oh God, I’m supposed to be in this bubble all the time. That’s not happening. It’s not a constant, it’s these bubble moments. And that’s why I called it bubble moments because that first bubble freaked me out.
Dr. Sarah (26:04):
Totally. And to be fair, I feel like that’s an analog version of that got exploded infinitely when social media came along with this concept because you got it on a chalkboard in a class with a ton of other context, and it still felt like, whoa, that’s not how it feels. What’s wrong with me? And then we go on Instagram and we see a single little frame square of basically some iteration of that message in a different kind of picture or sentence or whatever where you are distilling down. And I understand for the purposes of education, sometimes we do that, but when you are distilling down a supremely complex and nuanced idea of attachment and distilling it into this little tiny snapshot and you lose a lot of the nuance. So yes, two smiley faced mom and baby inside of a bubble circle could easily be interpreted to mean that that circle represents every moment of the first year. And if it’s not feeling that way, someone’s failing and know that we’re moving in and out of that bubble constantly. But it’s hard to get that nuance in this one little picture.
Vered (27:33):
And the other part is that in some ways the bubble is intuitive. It comes naturally. I remember pooping when my baby pooped. I remember having almost the same physical. That bubble is intuitive, but we also need to work on that bubble. And that’s also not the sense that I got necessarily. They’re just there. It just happens.
Dr. Sarah (27:55):
Right.
Vered (27:55):
No. We actually have to work on it to create bubble moments. They might come easily, some might come easily, but some might not. And we still have to be intentional about it.
Dr. Sarah (28:10):
So when you are helping parents understand this concept of a bubble moment, how can they, if someone’s listening, they’re like, okay, well, I get the idea, but how do I do it? What would you tell them?
Vered (28:22):
So I think about three avenues toward a bubble moment. One is music. We talked about that. I can talk about that forever, different ways to do it. But the highlights are that, like we said, it takes us out of thinking and into feeling. And once the parent joins the baby in feeling, then it’s much easier to create this bubble mode. So one is music, the other is mindfulness, which makes sense. It’s just the more we’re present, then we can join our babies. And what I do in my classes all throughout, I’m trying to help the parent be more mindful and be with their baby. But a lot of it is like, let’s look at our babies. They are little Buddhists constantly and children, not just babies, but such presence taking in the world through their senses, through their sight and sound and hearing and taste and just always looking around and excited about the new things. So it’s really joining them there. They’re already there.
(29:27):
But it’s us joining them in this mindful place. And one of the bubble moments in the book, I call the Explorer State, and it’s joining the baby in the explorer state. And I talk about it and it’s so simple and yet so difficult for us modern parents who are usually multitasking, doing a million things. But really what it is is lying down in the position your baby or a kid is in, if they’re, they’re playing with Lego sitting down next to them. If they’re the baby looking at the ceiling or the leaves and the trees lying down next to ’em and not just looking at your child, but you’re looking at your child to see where they’re looking. So it’s this constant almost trying to embody their experience. I remember I was sitting with my baby, she was just crinkling a leaf and then she was a baby at the time, so she tried to put it in her mouth and it’s like feeling like, oh, what does that leaf feel like to her?
(30:32):
I’m going to imagine it now. I want to imagine what it feels like to get that toy. Why is my baby turning this and putting in just that place? Why is my kid, so this is how it would look with an older kid, A 4-year-old might be like, Hey, mama, can you come and draw next to me? So I’ll come and sit down and my instinct might be like, okay, here’s a house. Here’s a tree. But instead to be in that explorer state with my kid, I might say, oh look, you just did that line right there, or you just took that look at that red you did. Being with them in what they’re doing. I’m not leading it. That’s a big piece of this is that I’m not leading it. I’m letting my kid lead it and I’m just there exploring with them. So each one of these bubble moments, we’re not there all the time. Again, we’ve been saying this already. I’m not saying every time you sit down to draw with your kid, do the thing. But every now and then to go, okay, now I want to be in the explorer state, I’m going to sit down and see how they put the Lego together and not just watch. There’s a difference between watching as an observer and really being in the explorer state with them. It takes a lot of mindfulness and exercise in the brain.
Dr. Sarah (31:53):
I would even take it a step further than mindfulness. It’s actually, and I talk about this a lot on the podcast, but it’s what I would describe as reflective functioning, which is kind of a step above mindfulness. Mindfulness is noticing my internal state and my environment around me or noticing including what my child is showing me in this moment, reflective functioning, is that being mindful and aware of that and being curious about it.
Vered (32:23):
Yes.
Dr. Sarah (32:24):
So, why am I feeling this way? I noticed I just felt this flood of warmth toward my child. Why did this thing hit that note for me? Or my kid is crinkling this leaf. Just so I noticed their clinking. The leaf would be a mindful observation. A reflective observation would be, I wonder what it feels like in their fingers right now. And they wonder, oh, I bet that sound feels satisfying to them. And we actually know that reflective functioning is one of the biggest predictors of the ability to help a child create a secure, like that’s secure attachment.
Vered (33:10):
Apropos Arietta Slade.
Dr. Sarah (33:11):
Yeah. Oh yeah. She’s like knows all about this. This is from her work.
Vered (33:15):
Yeah.
Dr. Sarah (33:16):
Miriam Steele was on the podcast a while back, and she did a ton of research on this and reflective functioning, and that’s another good episode. I should link that. I’ll link that in the show notes too, because it gets in. I think the how to is, I don’t think we talk about that enough frankly. But I find, and maybe it’s, I’m just a nerd about this, but when I understand the science behind what I’m doing, I am more interested in trying to make time to do it. I’m like, ah, I get why. Okay, that makes sense. And so building my own reflective functioning as a parent is going to make my life easier, a really important muscle to have, and it’s going to help my child. And eventually your reflective functioning is going to be a big predictor of your child’s reflective functioning. And reflective functioning is just very important variable.
Vered (34:06):
Yeah. But it’s also interesting to me that you went to, I love reflective functioning and I talk about it a lot in my book as well, but I wonder, we’re really talking about ways to be present and you’re sort of bringing in a meta way.
Dr. Sarah (34:28):
That’s true. It is a way to go back into your head and intellectualize a bit.
Vered (34:31):
Exactly. And what I want, at least in the explorer state, is to join the kid in more of a state of flow, kind of more of this non observer. But it is so hard to do it, and it’s really hard to explain, but we do it in the class. So here’s how I’ll lead it in the class just so that it will give parents a sense of how to actually do it. So we’ll lie down, I will always either sing or put on music because again, music is taking us out of thinking. Music is bringing less, more into this feeling flowing state. And then I’m kind of talking the parent through it. Maybe what is your baby looking at right now and how are they turning a thing? What did they just see? What did they just hear? And how does it feel to hear that? So it’s not as much noticing them as a parent. And I mean, it’s interesting you’re saying, but it’s really trying to be in their experience. They’re touching a leaf. I want to feel that leaf in my imagination.
Dr. Sarah (35:52):
And I think reflective function can be an intellectual exercise, but I also think it can be an unconscious, it’s almost more of a subtle thing that’s playing in the background. It’s almost like a state that we can enter into where we’re like, you’re not thinking about thinking about it, but you may be doing it. It might be the product of what is occurring. So if I’m imagining what it’s like for my kid to crinkle the leaf, I could take that to a really cognitive thinky place, but I could just be feeling the leaf with them. But I think we’re we’re reflective functioning, and maybe I’m, it’s semantics, but I can see reflective functioning skills being developed not in this intentional, conscious, cognitive way, but in a felt sense kind of way.
Vered (36:44):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Maybe I’ll give another example too, of another bubble moment. We can kind of break it down in the same way. This is one that I call the tickle monster method. If you think, and I always say to parents, this is the only game you’re going to need. I know that sounds crazy, and I actually think that it goes, it’s not just for babies, it’s for toddlers, and it’s even for kids. This is the game in different variations. So what happens when we go like this with a kid to a kid.
Dr. Sarah (37:21):
You can’t see. She’s got her little tickle fingers up.
Vered (37:24):
I got my fingers wiggling, wiggling, and I’m making, and I’m smiling and I’m making this anticipation face. And the kids going to run away laughing because they’re like, oh my God, it’s the tickle monster. It’s sort of the universal. I’m going to get you. The tickle monster is coming. And what’s so exciting about that for kids is the anticipation of it, right? Oh my God, I know what that means. And the actual tickling is not that great. Sometimes even painful, sometimes uncomfortable. But it’s the anticipation that’s so great. And so in this bubble moment, which is really developing the parents’ language of play with the baby, it’s about creating this tickle monster method thing. And parents are already doing some version of this. So I’ll talk about it first with babies. Then we can see how it looks for toddlers and beyond. But maybe with a baby, you’re doing some kind of a sound. You’re going and you’re bringing your face down to their belly, and then you’re stopping and then you’re doing it again. Baby’s giggling and you’re stopping. And so parents do this intuitively by the way. It brings in a lot of rhythm, this rhythm of doing something and stopping. But what I want parents to think about is the pause. Because the actual gesture and the sound, those are important because you’re tuning into what your baby likes. But the pause, I think of it as like a goldmine because in this pause, you’re learning so much about your baby’s personality.
(38:52):
How do they react in this anticipation moment? How do they react? Are their legs kicking? Are they giggling? Are they so still and staring at you? My son did. He was a very intense baby. My oldest. What’s their personality and how are they handling this moment of excitement? And the same thing happens with toddlers. It just involves more movements. And kids, maybe now I’m running and stopping, it’s the freeze dance or it’s anything that’s like something, nothing, something nothing. And this game, it really works. I could do it with my 10-year-old right now, and it would still work. It would be like, I got you and then I stop, or whatever it is. Maybe it becomes more sophisticated, but it’s really this rhythm of the something nothing and the anticipation in between. And it can be so short. I want to just go back for a second and remind parents, we are not doing this all the time. These are like three minute things.
Dr. Sarah (39:58):
Yeah.
Vered (39:59):
But if you have this three minutes of doing this kind of tickle monster thing and stopping and having these moments of what’s next, that’s the connection right there. That’s the attachment, Jim, of learning about your kid, learning about your baby, how do they react? How are they looking at me? We’re engaging. We’re looking in each other’s eyes. We’re excited together. We feel the joy together.
Dr. Sarah (40:22):
We’re delighting in them, which is another variable that’s very predictive of a secure attachment relationship, like delight. And oh my God, I have so many parents that I work with that are like, they’re burnt out, they’re exhausted. I also tend to work with parents who have pretty demanding parent jobs. Their kids require a significant amount of parental bandwidth. So they’re burnt out and it’s overwhelming and they don’t have a lot of left to give. And they’re also busy. Most parents are incredibly, and when you don’t have a lot of bandwidth, when you’re feeling burnt out play and playfulness and delight, it’s really hard. I find that when you do it, you realize, okay, that wasn’t actually that hard. But the idea of doing it feel like the initiation of moving into that playful state feels very difficult. And I’ve parents just all the time who just even who aren’t burnout out are like, I don’t like to play with my kids. It’s not my thing. And I think we have a very specific type of play we’re talking about when we say that. I think we’re thinking, I don’t want to get on the floor and play Barbies with my kid, or I don’t want to do, pretend we’re driving a car together. I don’t want to do that pretend play with my kid because I’m not a kid anymore and it doesn’t feel playful and fun to me.
(41:49):
But what you are talking about and I think is so important is that we are expanding our definition of what play is and what play is not just for our kids, but for us as adults. One thing that is a constant about play throughout the lifespan is about creative, generative output and oftentimes connection. And so when we feel like we’re doing something like a tickle monster or any version of that where you’ve got that something, pause, build that anticipation, take a break, that’s that gift serve and return kind of thing that’s playful and fun. That’s not just playing with our kid because that’s good to play with your kid. It’s playing. We are playing. We are in a playful state. And actually truly, we are not performing play for our child. We are authentically in a state of play with our child. And it literally is one, it does not require a tremendous amount of band in our minds. It can feel that way. I don’t want to downplay that. But when we are actually doing it, it’s almost like an exposure exercise. Once you do it, you’re like, oh, wait. Ah, data. It was not as hard and taxing, but it can actually be really refueling, which is a very important thing in burnout because most of the time when we’re really burnt out, the only way we can sort of imagine downtime or rest is a hundred percent off.
(43:30):
But a hundred percent off is very rarely refueling. It’s just the absence of demand. So it’s like this paradox we get stuck in of like, I’m either a hundred percent on or I’m a hundred percent off and I’m never em refueling, which is why the burnout becomes so self perpetuating. And so I always help parents who are burnt out, try to think about ways that they can engage in rest is not a hundred percent off. That still does something to refuel. And so two minutes of a tickle monster game with your kid might actually be great for your relationship with your kid, but super, really sort of therapeutic for you.
Vered (44:13):
Yeah. Yeah. I think about the toddler, let’s say the toddler who doesn’t want to put on their shoes and socks to go outside. And now you’re confronting this moment of like, oh, Mike, I cannot, I’m so tired. We just have to get to this thing right now. The morning has already been a disaster. No eating all the things, all the things we have every day. And now my toddler doesn’t want to put on socks, I can’t handle it, and I just want you to put on the socks. Let’s just go. And the instinct is like, I’m just going to push ahead. And the thing is that if we just actually used play, it’ll be a shorter route. That’s what we forget. It’ll be a much shorter route. If for a second we put a sock on our hand and we go, hello, I’m ready to go do, and then you hide it. I go, where’d sock go? Oh, here. It can be so short. And that one minute of play will be like a shortcut to getting out the door. But I know it’s so hard to get there. I was that mom too that I was like, oh God. And you know what changed me completely? It was actually my son when he was eight, he wrote, he started to write, I wish he had finished it, but he started to write a book. He called Parenting Mistakes Through the Eyes of an 8-year-old.
Dr. Sarah (45:35):
Oh my God, that please.
Vered (45:38):
The main point of that book was a life lesson for me, both in my professional life and motherhood, which was just do it through play. Play is what he wanted. And he would actually, as he was writing this, I would read his little paragraphs and I’d say, so what do you mean by this? And he would say, let’s role play, mama. Tell me to go to the bath right now. And I would be like, okay, you got to go. It’s time to go to the bath. No. And then I would be like, but can you and I’d do my regular thing, right? Please, let’s just come on and then we’ll go up and no. Or he wouldn’t ignore me. And then he’d go, alright, now do it in a fun way.
Dr. Sarah (46:25):
Oh my God. It’s like the wisdom of an hero.
Vered (46:27):
I know. And I was like, okay, I’m going to get you if you don’t get up now and run to the bath. And then he got up giggling.
Dr. Sarah (46:36):
Yeah, it’s just a helpful reminder. Sometimes kids can give us such an important wake up call, like that defibrillator moment where they’re like clear boom. And then you’re like, oh, oh, right. Oh, you just want me to be fun.
Vered (46:55):
Right? Still. Even at 16.
Dr. Sarah (46:59):
Yeah.
Vered (47:00):
Why are you so serious? Why does everything turn into a lecture, Mama?
Dr. Sarah (47:03):
I love that. I love that. Okay, so these are such great strategies. I am so confident that this book is going to just give parents so many useful things. I cannot wait to read it. I have already pre-ordered it. Today is the launch day. So where can people get your book? How can they connect with you?
Vered (47:24):
Okay, so the book today is on all places. It’s on Amazon, Barnes Noble, whatever, wherever you go. And hopefully in your local bookstore too, if you want to support your local bookstore, you can also find it on my website. So that’s baby intune.com, like to tune into your baby, baby Intune. And there you can also check out my music. The music is also on Spotify, Amazon, iTunes, everywhere. There’s three albums. Good morning, my Love. Hello My Baby. And then the third one, we were talking about songs for sisters and brothers, and soon, a fourth one, which I believe will be called Adorable You.
Dr. Sarah (48:06):
I love it. And honestly, if you have a baby, get this book. If you have a big kid, get this book because I promise you this is a lifelong tool that your kids are going to benefit from. Music in parenthood is so underrated, and it’s good for the parents too. I spend far more time talking with parents about their own mental health than I do about their kids’ mental health. It’s not easy. And anything that’s going to make it a little bit easier for us, for our nervous systems, for our confidence and our ability to move through feelings like guilt and worry and rage, it’s worth it. So please and go support this book. So please get this book. I’m excited. I’m so excited for you. I’m so happy you wrote this.
Vered (49:01):
Me too. I can’t believe it actually happened.
Dr. Sarah (49:04):
I know. Congrats. And so you have to come back when the album drops and we’ll do a follow up.
Vered (49:11):
I know, yeah. I’m going to want to hear your favorite songs on that one.
Dr. Sarah (49:15):
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. And then you need your son to publish his 8-year-old manifesto.
Vered (49:21):
He should join me on the next. Oh my God.
Dr. Sarah (49:25):
She wanted to come on the show. We’ve did one episode with a kid with Rebecca Hirshberg, who does our q and a episodes. Her son came on and did an episode where he talked about going back to school and from his perspective and what he thought parents might need to know, I would love to have your son on.
Vered (49:42):
Oh my God, he’s so insightful and thoughtful, and that would be amazing.
Dr. Sarah (49:46):
Clearly.
Vered (49:47):
Yeah. He should join us for sure.
Dr. Sarah (49:49):
Alright, stay tuned guys. We’re going to get some wise, wise guests on this show soon. Well, congratulations. Go get this book, everybody. Go support this and we’ll talk soon.
Vered (50:02):
Thank you for having me. It was so fun.
Dr. Sarah (50:04):
So fun. Thanks so much for listening. I hope you’re feeling inspired to play. If you want a good place to start, don’t forget to go to the episode description to get a link to download my free guide with emotion regulating games to play with your kids. And while you’re there, it would mean so much to me if you could go ahead and rate review the podcast. It really makes a big impact and helps us get this podcast out to more parents just like you. I’ll see you back here Thursday for another episode. And until then, don’t be a stranger.