Jennie (00:00):

Very large. Part of the anxiety I mentioned was me having a hard time with the juggling to the point where I wasn’t being so clear. The juggling impacted me so much of her questions. Sometimes I would be like, I’m going to try, and the lack of clarity for her was worse because then she would keep asking because I wasn’t giving a clear, I’m not picking you up today, grandma is because I was impacted by the juggling. That was a huge part of it once. Now with putting my balls of guilt and my own anxiety balls down, we have thrived.

Dr. Sarah (00:45):

As parents, our first instinct is often to protect our kids from discomfort, but when we rush in to take away those hard feelings, we may actually be missing a powerful opportunity to help them build resilience, confidence, and emotional regulation. Joining me in this episode to dive into what it really looks like to support our children through fear, worry, and new experiences, not by fixing or rescuing, but by being present and attuned is Jennie Monness. Jennie spent years working in early childhood education. She’s the co-founder of Union Square Play and Charmspring, which we’ll talk about more in this episode. And she’s a mother of two adorable daughters. So whether your child is struggling with separation anxiety, resisting new experiences, or just feeling overwhelmed by the unknown, this episode will equip you with tools and strategies to help you better understand what’s going on beneath the surface to help you respond to your child’s discomfort with more effective support.

(01:43):

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.

(02:16):

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Securely Attached podcast. We have an OG guest on today. Jennie Monness is here. Hello.

Jennie (02:29):

Hi. Yes. I didn’t realize how OG I was until you told me.

Dr. Sarah (02:33):

You were in episode three.

Jennie (02:36):

It feels like an honor to be here that early on.

Dr. Sarah (02:39):

I know. So yeah, so Jenny’s been on before. She’s talked about play, she’s talked about travel strategies, but the reason why you know so much about this is because you have a pretty long history working with kids. Do you want to tell just refreshed listeners what you do and your background?

Jennie (02:59):

Yes, and it actually will touch on how we met, which maybe you already know or maybe I’ll remind you, but yes, I’ve been, so yes, I started really being interested in psychology and then specifically psychology around young children and early childhood education back in undergrad, and then wanted to take that further and so got my master’s in psychology and education and then just kind of blindly applied to jobs on Craigslist within a few years of that, when I figured out, okay, I want to specifically work in the classroom with kids and started working with infants and toddlers, actually toddlers at first and toddlers that didn’t speak or have the same native language as me. Their primary language was not English and I was there to expose them to that. And so both with the children and the parents, we had to connect in other ways, not just leaning on language.

(04:03):

And that’s really how I became so passionate around play and connection honestly, with both parents and kids and how I felt I was forming relationships with both, not just based on logistics and all the things that come with very clear communication, that there was other ways that we were able to kind of tackle that way of connecting. And then from there became a mom many years later, after years of working in infant, toddler, early childhood centers and then realized just how much I wanted to always bridge the gap between school and at home, but just how hard it was to actually implement all the things that I was doing in the classroom with my own kids. And so now I have an Instagram that just is real about that, my personal journey, and I co-founded Union Square Play where you can come play with your infants and toddlers in their earliest years and then charms springing a product to help families unlock a little bit more fun with products that will help you do that without getting into specifics. So yeah, that’s where I’m at right now. But we met early on in one of those early childhood centers. Sarah came.

Dr. Sarah (05:20):

Yes, you gave me the tour when I was looking. I was pregnant with my first son, my first my son, and you gave me the tour at Explore and Discover and I loved it, and that’s where I learned about rye from that daycare rye is the parenting philosophy resources for infant educators, which is a bit of a mouthful, but that’s also where we reconnected was in the trainings that we were doing in that space, which was really, really, it shaped a huge path for me in terms of pivoting my clinical work up until that which had been really focused on adults with childhood trauma to moving into working with parents, working with families and children. And yeah, I feel like that was such a pivotal time and I had just had my second at that point, so you were right around me when I was the most vulnerable postpartum or perinatal in both phases of that time for me.

Jennie (06:23):

Yeah, it’s so interesting. I wasn’t a mom yet then, and so I couldn’t really necessarily, first of all, it wasn’t obvious, weren’t on your face, but just then also meeting you once I became a mom at Union Square play when you were doing part of your foundations course and then being able to reconnect in that way. Both of us really engaged in the respectful parenting rye world as moms and so yeah. Makes sense that I keep weaving my way back onto your podcast because we connect in so many ways.

Dr. Sarah (06:57):

I know it’s such an awesome web. I love it. But today’s topic, today we’re going to be talking a little bit about anxiety and managing anxiety in kids. And I think it’s important when we talk about anxiety to there is different levels of anxiety. Most of the time when we’re talking about anxiety, we’re talking about anxiety that start to get in the way of functioning this sort of clinical level of anxiety. But the reality, and I think it’s so important to remind people of this, is that anxiety is a feeling and everybody has it. It is a normal and healthy feeling. It’s just a cue that something is not feeling kind of steady for us and that we need to, it usually prompts us in a very visceral way to return to our core attachment figures and reset. And so any parent knows you’re constantly receiving that reset request from your kids, and that can come up in separation anxiety and worrying about shifting onto the next thing and kind of getting stuck in things. And I think that’s really what we want to talk about today is this sort of normative but also sometimes kind of challenging emotion that comes up all the time when you’re parenting kids.

Jennie (08:24):

Yes. I think even for us too, which I think is important for us to think about when we’re trying to really relate to or connect or understand our kids that we’re all humans. It’s different shapes and forms obviously when we’re grownups versus kids, but that always helps reset me too. And I’m like, why is there so much anxiety around or why are they having such a hard time? And then I think about how I might feel both as a child and a grownup, and we all have some level of anxiety, different levels of that. But yes, I think that something that I’m thinking a lot about recently is how we meet our kids where they are instead of trying to convince them out of, I think that’s helped so much when it comes to things like anxiety or when they’re fearful of something. Our reflex always is to take away discomfort as we know from what we have studied and whatnot. And especially when it comes to anxiety or fear, things like that, that’s really not so helpful as we know, even as adults when we’re stressed about something, it kind of feels worse when someone’s trying to tell us why we shouldn’t be stressed about it and then we get more stress trying to convince why we actually should be stressed. And so that’s really helped me when it comes to navigating with young kids around those challenging feelings.

Dr. Sarah (10:04):

In your work at Union Square Play, I know you run play classes or have run lots of play classes with kids, and are those all with parent involved or sometimes it’s drop off, I can imagine. I know with my kids that crossing the threshold can be a big hesitation, can stir up anxiety, separating from a parent to go do something or try something new or mix in with a lot of other kids that are unpredictable and might take your stuff or get in your space.

Jennie (10:38):

So much there, right? We think it’s just about the separation when it’s dropping off, but it’s about also going into all of that too. Not just the reassurance of I always come back, but also there’s a lot that they’re going into now I’m sharing the attention with all these other kids, but to answer your question, we have a few drop off, fewer than when I worked at daycare centers when I first met you, that’s when I had my real everyday experience with separation all the time and really learned about that even before I became a parent and how to really support kids with that. And then once I became a parent, experiencing it myself with my own kids, and now, yes, over the summer we do some drop off stuff in the Hamptons and then at Union Square play a little bit, but that’s more children who are comfortable, who are already doing drop off activities at that age. So I actually have less in-person experience with it now besides supporting parents, but I think I always remember it.

(11:47):

How do we really help kids with that separation is the reassurance course. This isn’t permanent. Your mommy does come depending on their age. Sometimes it’s like, where am I going and how long is this? That’s something that is a roadblock for young kids. They don’t comprehend that, but something no matter what, that I think helps with all of separation and changes in environment and things like that is really preparation no matter how young they are. It might not be something that sticks in their mind depending on their age, but then when they’re in that setting, if you’ve had prior preparation or conversations about it, it triggers that memory. We’ve talked about this and it takes out that shock factor and it’s really one of the reasons why I felt strongly about creating the product of charm springing, which is my newest venture, which is a visual schedule to be able to show what’s coming next as kids thrive when they’re able to see and expect and know what’s coming next. It’s in every classroom in the universe, but we weren’t finding it at home. So I used to print photos to help my kids at home and then now we have this product. But I think even with young kids, being able to show what they can expect can help a lot first and foremost. So I always recommend that to parents before it’s off.

Dr. Sarah (13:22):

No, I think that’s so, I agree so much, and I say that to parents all the time, and I think parents, even older kids, like kids who can read do really well with a visual cue because I think there’s a couple reasons for it, but one is when we are anxious, we need things to get in faster because we’re not operating a fart with our full capacities and our prefrontal cortex. So sometimes just verbal cues, verbal reminders are kind of going in one ear and not the other, or they’re not being held as concretely the concretization of having something physical to look at and revisit. The other thing that I think is important is when it’s physically there, whether it’s a printout of the schedule or something like Charmspring where you can, I have full disclosure, Jennie sent me a Charmspring board and I love it.

(14:22):

My kids love it, but what it is is it’s this big kind of wooden peg board kind of thing, but instead of whole pegs, it’s like magnets. And so the different magnets have activities or symbols that represent things that happen throughout the day, but whatever, you’re using this idea of having this physical picture, and it could be words too if your kids are older, but I think the pictures are helpful because it concretizes it, but they can go back to it. If you just sit down and say, Hey, bud, tomorrow we’re going to be doing this, then this, this, which I think is a great thing to do and is very helpful, especially at nighttime before as you’re recapping the day and then kind of previewing the next day, that can really help anchor and orient kids, which also helps manage anxiety. But if you just do that once with them, which is helpful, that’s it. They have to kind of conjure it themselves. Whereas I think if anyone has been around kids, they might notice this habit that they have of revisiting things over and over and over and over and over again. And that actually is a management of a natural anxiety, like a self-soothing behavior.

(15:37):

You’ll see this in books. Kids will want to read the same book over and over and over again. That’s maybe touching on a theme that causes them a little bit of activation that they’re working through.

Jennie (15:49):

Yes, it actually, oh no, I was going to say it actually is how I noticed that my younger had a little bit more anxiety. I’ll never forget this. One time I dropped her off at a new school and she said, over and over, mommy’s picking me up. You’re picking me up. Mommy’s picking you up. But more until the doors were closing, and I had tears after because I was like, there’s so much anxiety. There’s a little bit more than I, we’ve worked with it. She’s having, she’s had ot. We’ve gone a good route with it. So now I can look back and know, but that was my first sign of this is more repetition. The repetition, yes, they all do that, but it was just pervasive and yeah, you’re right. If there was a place to have landed, mommy’s picking you up with maybe a picture, it probably would’ve really helped.

Dr. Sarah (16:48):

And it allows you, because you’ll see this in a lot in anxiety. So we are talking about kind of normative anxiety that every kid has, and then there’s this sort of level up sort ruminative preoccupation kind of getting stuck. This kind of more than typical…

Jennie (17:06):

Getting in the way.

Dr. Sarah (17:07):

Reassurance. Yeah, reassurance seeking. But are you picking me up? But I always sort of say to parents kind of a way to tell the difference. A lot of people are like, well, I don’t know. Are they seeking reassurance as a sign of anxiety or are they just trying to get information? And I’m like, the difference between reassurance seeking versus information gathering typically is that if you answer an information gathering question one or two times, they’re satisfied. They collected the information and they can let go. If a child keeps asking over and over and over, despite having all the information, chances are the information isn’t what they’re seeking. They’re you kind of hitting their anxiety snooze button by reassuring them of whatever it is, and so you’re kind of having a conversation with their worry brain, not them, and it kind keeps them stuck in the loop.

(18:02):

But when they can self soothe or self-regulate that anxious response by doing their own checking, there’s this, it’s funny. So I always say when kids have a lot of anxiety, it’s like they’re juggling all these balls and they will inevitably, because they’re so interconnected with their parents, start throwing parents the balls, each of these balls they’re juggling is like a worry or a worry. So you take that, are you picking me up? Are you picking me up? Who’s picking me up? And parents are always like, I’m picking you up. So now parents are just juggling balls with their kids all day long, and it can be kind of a maintaining and inadvertently maintaining this anxiety. So first I teach parents how to stop picking up the balls and setting them down or handing them back to their kid being like, you know what? You’re worried. That’s a tough feeling. I know you can handle that, so I’m not always going to answer these questions. You kind of handing them the balls, but they still are juggling the balls and we want to help them learn how to put the balls down, but first we have to put the balls down. Does that make sense?

Jennie (19:14):

Yeah, that’s really helpful actually. Something that in the example I just gave, I wish I had accessed earlier, we’ve worked through it, but a very large part of the anxiety I mentioned was me having a hard time with the juggling to the point where I wasn’t being so clear. The juggling impacted me so much of her questions. Sometimes I would be like, I’m going to try, and the lack of clarity for her was worse. Then she would keep asking because I wasn’t giving a clear, I’m not picking you up today, grandma is because I was impacted by the juggling.

Dr. Sarah (19:58):

Yes.

Jennie (19:59):

That was a huge part of it. Once now without putting my balls of guilt and my own anxiety balls down, we have thrived. I don’t ever pick her up now because I can’t, not because I’m just, but do you know what I mean? Instead of me trying and pretending or really struggling and juggling, we were both not setting each other up for six or I wasn’t helping her with that anxiety. I was actually perpetuating it. So that is just such a good tool. I want people to pause and listen to that. You just said the juggling, you don’t have to keep juggling. It actually doesn’t necessarily serve your child in the best way.

Dr. Sarah (20:44):

It doesn’t, and it’s very hard to stop juggling to not accept your child’s worry. Ball feels very scary for parents. It goes against, like you were saying at the beginning, of course, we have this really strong drive, this biologically wired drive to rescue our children from distress. That’s our attachment system getting activated and that’s healthy and normal, but when we have this chronic anxiety distorting the system and we have to stop picking up the balls to help them tolerate the distress.

(21:18):

Because when we’re dealing with anxiety, and this is true for psychologically significant anxiety or clinically significant anxiety or just human emotion anxiety, the goal is really not to make the anxiety go away. The goal is actually to increase our tolerance for discomfort and distress. That’s the goal. You don’t get rid of human feelings. They just don’t. You can’t access that. Yeah. So healthy development involves learning to notice when I feel anxious to regulate the distress that comes with that and when I can and to tolerate the parts of the distress, I can’t make go away knowing that this feeling will come and it will go because anxiety does not last for no feeling is sort of permanent.

Jennie (22:10):

And that something that I learned is that whatever’s provoking the anxiety or what we think is provoking it, in her case, the pickup, the only, it’s not that me picking her up was the only way for her to not have anxiety, and that’s what I was thinking, that she’s going to have anxiety unless I tell her I’m going to pick her up. And similar with ours, if we’re anxious around a certain event or something, we think we have to solve that in order to get rid or to manage anxiety. But that’s not it. Like you said, it’s about tolerating it and not just believing there’s the only way to tolerate it is to fix the origin. You know what I mean? There’s always going to be another origin of anxiety.

Dr. Sarah (22:56):

Just like there’s going to be more joy and more sadness and more anger because these are these primary feelings that they never stop coming and helping our kids recognize that feelings come and go is probably one of the most important life, valuable life lessons for mental wellness, I think because it allows for this core capacity to self-regulate. If I know something will come and go, I don’t get as panicked when it’s present.

Jennie (23:28):

Yes. I mean, that is just huge to know and really comprehend.

Dr. Sarah (23:35):

And it’s hard for kids to get. And so it’s funny because we’re talking about things that can make kids build up some anxiety and what can help with that. There’s this formula that I often kind of describe, which is, so the anxiety formula, so the picture like a fraction with a numerator and a denominator. So on the top is the unknown and lack of control, and the denominator is confidence that I can cope. And so that equation equals anxiety. If I have really high levels of unknowns and unpredictability and high levels of a feeling of lack of control and low confidence that I can cope, the anxiety is going to be high. If I have lower levels of the unknown, I know what’s going to happen. I know what’s coming. Or if I have a stronger sense of control, my anxiety is going to get lower, and if I have more confidence than I can cope, my anxiety will also get lower. But the thing is we don’t always have a lot of control over how much control we have. Kids definitely don’t.

Jennie (24:47):

Right.

Dr. Sarah (24:48):

And we also don’t have that much control over things like how much we can predict and what we can know. Sometimes we can, preparing kids for what is known is a huge variable changer. If we can increase that sense of predictability, it can very much decrease anxiety. But the confidence I can cope is the one spot we actually have some room to build strengthen. So that’s where I always say that’s where the interventions should go.

Jennie (25:16):

And it’s what parents need to also really know too that I learned from my, now no one told me this. And yeah, if I really dug back at maybe I had learned a little bit about that specifically, not with the visual you just gave, which is so helpful, but she showed me that there were times throughout even more recently where she’d be fixating and couldn’t get out of a feeling, and somehow she expressed I, how do I feel? Not sad about this. It was about I wouldn’t let her have dessert at 8:00 PM I’m like, it’s too late. And she was fixating on it and I was like, how can I help you know that even though you can’t have dessert now you’re going to be okay. And she’s like, I don’t know. She felt the only way was to get the dessert.

(26:16):

And so then it made me access. She feels that this is a permanent feeling right now. She feels that the only solution out of this disappointment is getting the dessert. And that’s often what parents feel when their kids are this strong-willed that I just need to give in because, and then we’re kind of wiring our kids to feel that the only way out of that feeling is to give in, right? We’re sort of perpetuating that without putting guilt blame. I mean, I am still growing with this. And so then me and Tess, my older daughter, I said, you know what, Nellie, you need to know that there’s a way out of this. You’re not going to just feel sad. This feeling will end. She’s like, how? And then I was like, well, you’re at the start of the tunnel. I actually posted about this, and then it triggered Tess to remember me using this visual with her. She’s like, yeah, Nel, you’re really, really, really, really sad, but soon you’ll be really, really sad then really, really sad, then really sad, and then just sad, and then you’ll go out the other side. She said that that’s amazing. And really maybe it was just diffusing with the talk and her visualizing it. People ask me, how did that help? I’m like, I can’t exactly tell you how it helped, but it did. Whether it was she forgot about the dessert or she actually was comprehending or having more confidence that you could get through this disappointment.

(27:42):

That confidence on the bottom of what you just said, that is what we can help manage. And often why kids have such hard times is they feel there’s no way out. They have such low confidence that they can get through a feeling, and often the parents mirror that because their kid is just thrashing, and we’re like, I don’t know how they’re going to.

Dr. Sarah (28:02):

I don’t think you could get through this feeling either. I don’t think I could get through you getting through this feeling, so let’s just give you the dessert already. I for sure have been there, but yes, first of all, I love because that says a couple things to me. It says that one, Nelly was able to receive this and build her confidence up, but also Tess had already internalized that, and so Tess was almost like proving to Nel is possible because she trust having a kid, especially a big sister who you trust, but also see as a kid, say like, Hey, kids can get through this. Versus grownups are always going to tell me that I can get through it, but they don’t know because they’re a grownup and everything’s easier for grownups. But oh my gosh, my big sister who is also a kid, but a kid I really look up to and trust is telling me I believe her. That’s like kid to kid. That’s super powerful.

Jennie (29:00):

Yes, I know. It really did. I think help her be more receptive to it. She looked at Tessie and was like, okay, yeah, it really is something, and maybe we’re getting to this, but I think there’s a really big component around fears with this, helping our kids feel confident that they could get through a fear. And often anxiety is attached to a fear, fears they’re anxious about an experience because they’re scared. But I think it’s really relevant in maybe a little bit of a different format. Just that often we think that the only way to help kids with fears is to take away the fear or to convince them out of the fear. But similar to anxiety, there’s always going to be something, especially kids that they’re fearful of, whether it be a movie that’s sticking in their head or swimming and having had whatever it is, and I’ll always remember this, and I love my parents, I’ll preface with that, but I once was in a ski group when I was younger ski school and got lost from the group.

(30:20):

But was so young that I think I couldn’t articulate or then I was found. And so I couldn’t articulate how that became ingrained in my body as I’m scared of ski school. And my parents would ask, what are you scared of? There’s nothing to be scared of. And so I just said, I’m scared of the chairlift. I wasn’t scared of the chairlift, but then they put a sticker on me, scared of chairlift, make sure she goes with an instructor, and I would be with the instructor and be like, this isn’t, it isn’t what I’m scared of, which also doesn’t make the feeling go away. And so I say it was more about lost child. That was what I was fearful of, but just how it’s so easy to miss when we just try to convince our kids out of a fear instead of just, I think visually saying, if my parents had said, and again, I don’t blame them, we drop you at ski school, when do you feel scared? What part of it feels scary? Is it write a drop off? We could have kind of explored hard for kids to articulate and access what they’re scared of, so they just sort of use umbrella statements. My younger was scared of swimming. We figured out she was scared because when the water would go up her nose, but when we visually brought her to that and she expressed that, then we started working with the instructor to help her with being able to blow out and whatever and get through it.

Dr. Sarah (31:47):

Yeah.

Jennie (31:47):

Instead of convincing out.

Dr. Sarah (31:49):

No, that’s so, that’s so interesting. It brings up some really good points that I think get lost because I think one is the kids’ language skills are not always going to be a fit for articulating what they’re experiencing yet, especially young kids. But even 7, 8, 9 times, I know teens that cannot articulate. I know grownups that can’t articulate it, so sometimes it’s almost like I’ve got to come up with an answer asking me a question, so I’m just going to be the first thing that pops into my head. And then so it’s not like, don’t you want to listen to your kid and trust them, but you also don’t need to take everything quite so literally, and I think it’s helpful to be what you described. Okay, if they had just walked me through it. I think sometimes the telling the story helps a kid get to what they’re feeling better than asking them to answer a question, because building and constructing the narrative kind of takes on its own momentum for the child rather than I have to sort of spontaneously reach in, grab the thing, the answer to your question and find the words for it, and express it. It’s pressure.

Jennie (33:12):

It’s overwhelming. Right, exactly. Similar to when we’re like, how was your day? And they’re like, wait, I’m tired, and that’s fine. Yeah, I had a long day of holding it together and why these more digestible ways and exercises with kids usually bring more out of them. And I think, again, the reflex when they’re like, I’m scared of swimming, is to take that at face value and just be not realizing that it might just be one element of it that we could really help our kids work through.

Dr. Sarah (33:46):

Yeah.

Jennie (33:47):

Instead of us just thinking about, I need to push them through because swimming is a life skill they need for safety. And so we think it’s kind of black and white, but it’s really this way of building confidence that they could get through what they’re scared of and also us exploring that.

Dr. Sarah (34:07):

Right, because when kids do have a fear and we know what the fear is, then we can use things like sort of progressive exposure with support to get them to learn to tolerate the fears that come, the anxiety that comes with doing the thing that makes them scared. But if we haven’t hit the correct target, you weren’t scared of the chairlift, so giving you exposure and support around the chairlift didn’t make you less scared of skiing. So if we get the wrong target and we try to give kids skills or exposure to that in titrated amounts, it’s like we’re scratching the wrong itch. And so it’s very important to really understand before we try to fix.

Jennie (34:57):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (34:58):

One thing, and I feel like you probably know a ton about this with your experience with play, but I feel like play is this very helpful. I mean, we use play in therapy all the time, play therapy, and parents can use play too with their kids to try to explore things that are hard to articulate or kids might want to avoid thinking and talking about in this sort of more higher level way because it’s anxiety producing, and so they want to just avoid talking about it. But play is an indirect way into the parts of the body that are holding that stress and fear and desire to avoid, and they’re more willing to talk inside of the play about things that are scary to them. So if you’re like know your kid’s got something is bugging them about something like going somewhere and you could tell they’re anxious about it, but you’re really not sure if you’ve landed on what is driving that fear or anxiety, playing with those themes in a more indirect way, if a kid is scared of swimming when they’re in the bathtub, like getting some toys in there. So we’re in the water, but we’re not at swimming, but we’re playing with some of the characters in the water and seeing what things come up. Are there other examples that you can think of for this? I feel like this is your wheelhouse.

Jennie (36:35):

Yeah, I was just going to say that my kids are five and seven, and when they were younger, I think using that example of swimming and putting some dolls in the bath could have brought something out of them and they wouldn’t be resistant. If I would say something like, oh, Ariel’s swimming. How do you think she feels about swimming? Or something like that. Or is she excited to swim? Let’s put it more simply because when they’re younger, however, if I were to do that now, my kids would be like, mom, stop. They kind of would know what I’m trying to get to. So just to call that out, that some kids won’t take the bait if they know what you’re doing, but there are organic ways of just presenting or inviting a play experience and that something might come out of that. And using play also to kind of help them feel brave. If we’re using, there’s a monster in my closet, let’s say that’s the fear.

(37:49):

It might be hard to explore what that comes from, but if we can say to our kids, let’s take our glitter. Obviously this would only be me. People won’t use glitter. We’ll use a spray bottle or something and spray those monsters out of the closet. I think that there’s a way to explore and discover more, explore and discover. Explore and discover more about what the fear is, but also to use play to of approach it and to help our kids feel brave. I think there’s a few ways that you can use play. And then I think also similarly with drawing, I was going to say visuals because that helps, but not everyone’s going to have visual schedules, but drawing things. Let’s draw a pool. And I think kids narrate when they’re drawing in their minds, but if you can sit with your kid, they might do it out loud too.

Dr. Sarah (38:51):

Yes. Yeah. The game of spraying the monsters that made me think of something. So I’m doing this training right now and somatic experiencing work with kids, specifically with Ale Duarte, who he was on the podcast, I’ll link his episode. It wasn’t about play, it was about screens, but he’s just a brilliant, I’m like, everything he teaches, I want to learn. He just gets it. And he translates a lot of somatic experiencing interventions, which are really designed for adults who can tolerate going into their body and reflecting on bodily sensations and talking about it, which kids really don’t do very well. And he translates a lot of that into play-based interventions that are indirect. And he was talking in our training last week about a kid who was feeling he was, had a lot of his separation anxiety, and he had a lot of, he was very constricted, and he did this play intervention where he was like, I we’re going to play a game.

(39:59):

He didn’t even talk. He was not directly discussing at all this kid’s anxiety or his separation distress, but he was in the session was like, let’s play a game called Don’t Wake the Monster. And he goes into a corner and he hides the therapist and he curls up in a ball and he hides. And the kid, there was other, it was like a training he had done. He was showing us the video of this, and these other facilitators were there and the child’s mom was there. And the child, what he was trying to show us was that in the video you could see the child, he was with his mom, and then he’d approach and retreat and approach and retreat and approach and retreat. And eventually with some support from some of the facilitators, he was able to touch the monster. And as soon as he touched ale, he ran back to his mom, and Ale would come and be like, Ooh, touch the monster.

(41:00):

Was it you? Whatever. And eventually they played it a couple times, and you could see in the video, the kid would, the reproach retreat would shorten and shorten and shorten until he could just go and touch him and sit back down. And it was so cool to watch how this child’s body was able to relax in his ability to touch the monster with more ease. And I think this is a very good example of how play actually is. It doesn’t need to then be translated like, oh, you were scared to leave your mom, but you practiced touching the monster. And then once you realized it was okay, you stopped being scared. You don’t have to explain any of it. It was just the body knew and felt it and it could relax.

(41:49):

And I just thought that was so powerful to watch and to realize what you are seeing. I think it just shows if you can play some of these games with your kids, for example, if they’re afraid of the monster in the closet and it’s like, we’re going to spray the monster and maybe you’re in the closet, you’re the monster. So then it’s real play, right? So it’s not like there could be a monster in the closet. It’s like, no, no, we’re pretending I’m going to, pretending to be the monster, and you come and spray me, and then I come out and maybe then we switch, and then you be the monster in the closet and I come and spray you. And so they’re practicing with this being afraid, feeling brave, approaching the fear, conquering then being the fear. There’s a lot of ways in which kids don’t need this higher level intellectual processing of it. Their bodies just take it and know what to do with it.

Jennie (42:48):

Yeah, and it’s exactly what you were talking about before. That whole experience that he did with the monster was building that child’s confidence that he could tolerate and face a fear. He was building confidence little by little with that sort of symbol of exposure, maybe however his body processed it, maybe he would take with him, oh, if I just slowly with my mom’s support face a fear, or just now I have more confidence that I could face fears. We don’t need to know exactly how a child exactly processes it, but something stayed with his body probably. And that’s what the power that was so powerful about what he did, he built that child’s confidence.

Dr. Sarah (43:38):

That he can withstand the experience. It’s just so cool.

Jennie (43:41):

We need his name.

Dr. Sarah (43:43):

Yeah.

Jennie (43:44):

Or episode.

Dr. Sarah (43:45):

Yes. I’ll link his episode on screen. He does this really amazing, has a sort of metaphor. He teaches about screen use and just go listen to the episode. I’ll link it. It’s really, really good. But I need him to come back on too and just talk about somatic experiencing work for kids specifically, because it’s really hard to, I’m learning more about it and it’s very hard to translate somatic stuff for kids, and I don’t know, he just speaks that language of play so intuitively, it’s so amazing.

Jennie (44:17):

And that is becoming more and more important. I think overall, just people are realizing. But even personally, I’ve thought a lot about that as we’ve talked a little bit about anxieties or fears and things like that. I know how powerful that is for me. I couldn’t cope with any of my difficult feelings without mindful exercises and things like that. And how we’re basically, I’ve read this programming kids in the first seven years with things like that, and if we are just accessing it in this day and age, we’re missing a prime time. And then also it’s like, okay, but where do I go in the first seven years? There’s not more and more things are coming out to help support kids with that. This guy, this mind body awareness piece. I have a close friend who started something called Beam, which is a program to help kids with it, but that is so important. These are tools that we are learning so late in life. Imagine if we were programmed, I don’t even say programmed, but if we were exposed…

Dr. Sarah (45:24):

To firing, right? The brain is getting really, really, really strongly wired in those early years. And so if we are, again, totally what you’re saying, if we are teaching kids and helping them wire network neural networks in their brain and allow them to go inward and notice and have a language for it and a schema for it, and be able to say, not only do I practice the skill of going inward, but I know what it means when I notice something inside my body and I can then translate that into a conscious experience for myself or that I can then communicate to someone. We didn’t learn that in preschool, kindergarten, first grade, but kids are doing that now, and it’s so powerful.

Jennie (46:06):

Yeah, even before bed the other night, we have this hatch light. They have one for adults now that I love so much, and Nell often will express, I want to go to bed. I just can’t, again, an anxiety that she can’t, feels she can’t go to bed.

(46:23):

And I, who is just learning about being somatic and mindful and things like that. I have different shapes and forms of how I used to do it, which is immersing and play or a classroom. But anyway, just being able to lay there and guide my kids with the tunnel, I said, let’s listen to the waves of the hatch machine and picture glitter in the wave again, glitter. Glitter in the waves, crashing down and going back and something that I thought would appeal to them. But anyway, I don’t know what I’m doing had I need help and tools with these types of exercises, I think it helped her. But again, I just think this is an important component of something that’s missing that we need to offer kids that then when she’s laying on her own, she can lean into my mind has tools, I can access visuals and all the things that we need in order to meditate or take a minute or just talk ourselves down from a feeling of anxiety. It just points out just why are we waiting until they’re anxious grownups to give them tools like that.

Dr. Sarah (47:32):

Yeah, it’s true. I feel like we’re getting better. And there so many, I mean, do think it can be sometimes overwhelming, so many resources that it’s almost like I don’t know what to even choose, but I do think beam sounds interesting. I want to learn more about that. But people are starting to design things for kids in mind, which is not, that’s a newer phenomenon that’s come out of this. I sometimes begrudgingly call it the parenting industrial complex, and I don’t love it. I love hate it. I think some good things have come out of it, like the democratization of a lot of knowledge about child development and people getting access to things that they didn’t know before. And I think it’s a lot of times being used somewhat nefariously to scare the crap out of parents, to get them to subscribe to things. But I think there’s also a ton of people in that space.

(48:42):

You for sure. And the things that you’ve been creating, the content that you create for parents, the content you create for parents to better understand their kids and the tools that you give them. And then obviously I loved Union Square Play of Loved Union Square play since it’s inception, but this idea that these are things that are curated sometimes for kids specifically or for parents on behalf of kids, to help people look at the world through a child’s eyes, that is so valuable that did not exist when you and I were growing up. I don’t think it was not.

Jennie (49:19):

Yes. Yeah, I know. And it’s definitely one of the things that I so passionately wanted when we created Union Square Play. However, I will say that there’s been times that we’ve tried to do a mindfulness class, I don’t even remember what it’s called now, and just you got to get the buy-in, right? And so it makes me believe, because if parents aren’t interested in it or feel like it’s not entertaining enough or helpful or whatever it is, so it just makes me realize just that there’s even more of a need for that too. But something like Beam is more like where we want this or they want this, I say we, because I love it to be in PE or wellness in kindergarten, not necessarily on the parents. I hope it infiltrates to the parent, but sometimes parents are like, I don’t even meditate. I don’t want to go to this class when it’s younger. But if this is part of a child’s education, which it really should be if they’re going to be in wellness class, what is good for wellness than mind exercises to help your body and self? So I think there’s, yeah, there is an over saturation of just tools and things that can be overwhelming, but then there’s also kind of what I feel is an obligation for our kids to learn something that is just paramount to a lot of other things.

Dr. Sarah (50:51):

Yeah, no, I think the idea of bringing it into this curriculum in schools is like, that’s so smart. Because we also need to sort of course correct the last, I don’t know, 30, 40 years of kids being more and more and more and more and more in desks and sitting still for hours and hours. Let’s get a movement, mindful meditation break in the day. Let’s get them off their Chromebooks in first grade and have them be doing something that’s a little bit more and self-oriented instead of that’s a whole nother episode. We could get on a soapbox there, but I’ll restrain myself.

Jennie (51:38):

And I will say that for anyone who does know Dion, who does music and movement, and this isn’t a plug, but she does it at Union Square Play, had we marketed that as meditation and movement, it wouldn’t be what it is, which is this. We’re forcing the caregiver to get up and move and honestly to do what we’re saying now and her class is waitlisted, but that’s just because there’s no phones allowed.

Dr. Sarah (52:11):

But that highlights the most important part, which is that you don’t have to sit and meditate in this quiet room in order to get the benefits, and we can intersperse and fold in these mindful awareness and body regulation skills in fun, engaging, active, entertaining play. You’re right. The best way to teach a kid mindfulness skills is not to sit them down in a dark room with a candle and have them meditate for 20 minutes. It needs to be developmentally appropriate, and it needs to be tucked into these fun, playful, bigger things. So yeah, it makes sense that Dion’s classes are amazing and they’re just getting it as a byproduct, right? Just tuck it in.

Jennie (53:03):

Yeah, totally. Right. It’s like chop up the broccoli and stick it in the meatballs. Exactly. And the grownups leave feeling like refreshed. She doesn’t allow phones, which they might go in begrudgingly the first time I have to move and get up and not have my phone, but then they always leave feeling like they got that 40 minutes of kind of just mindful movement. Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (53:30):

I love that.

Jennie (53:30):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (53:32):

So people want to know more about you, about the amazing things you are creating for parents and kids. Where can they find you?

Jennie (53:41):

You can find me @jenniemonness on Instagram. It’s a lot of personal journey anecdotes and stories that I hope guide people along the way in a way that feels real and accessible. And then you can find us at Union Square Play for our classes and at charmsspringing.com for our visual schedules that will help our kids face fears and hopefully make them feel braver and less anxious about all the things that they need to do day to day.

Dr. Sarah (54:18):

Right? It definitely increases the confidence they can cope, but I also think the idea of the visual routine, it increases their sense of predictability, so it reduces that unknown factor that does make anxiety kind of more loud. So whether it’s with the Charmspring board or a PDF that you print out on your computer absolutely. Or something that you just draw and post-its and stick ’em up on the wall. I really think that visual schedule is so smart to help kids prepare for things

Jennie (54:53):

Yes, however it is that you do it yourself or with Springboard, just everyone needs that in their life, including us. We need a place to land the steps involved in our routines, and so do kids.

Dr. Sarah (55:08):

I love that. Thank you so much for coming on.

Jennie (55:10):

Thank you so much for having me. I will probably call you in a few weeks to be back because I love talking to you so much. Well, you can always come back. I love talking to you. So thank you so much for having me back .

Dr. Sarah (55:26):

Anytime.

(55:26):

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