Alyssa (00:00):

We have a perception of control in those earlier years of like, oh, I can pick you up and put you in your car seat if you’re not getting in there. I can put you into bed. I can physically do a lot. That makes us feel like we are in control in these younger years, that then when they get older, we’re like, what do we do now? How do we continue to feel like we’re in control when things feel out of control or when a kid is pushing a boundary and they’re not listening and you’re not sure what else to do, often at that point, we’ll resort to punishment threats, sometimes reward systems where, how do we just get this to happen?

Dr. Sarah (00:47):

Most parents know the toddler years are full of big feelings, but what happens when those toddlers grow into big kids with even bigger feelings? The truth is ages five through 12 bring a whole new set of emotional and social challenges, shifts in identity, new pressures around belonging, and a growing need for regulation skills that match their rapidly changing world. And yet the stage often gets overlooked in parenting conversations. So I am so excited to welcome back Alyssa Blask Campbell to the podcast. Alyssa has a master’s degree in early childhood education. She’s the CEO of Seed and Sew, and her first book, Tiny Humans, Big Emotions, just became a New York Times bestseller. Today she’s here to talk about her new book that comes out today, Big Kids, Bigger Feelings, which is a guide to understanding middle childhood through the lens of the nervous system sensory processing and connection. Together, we’ll talk about why curiosity matters much more than control how to support kids with their unique regulation needs and insights and strategies that can make this sometimes tricky stage feel less overwhelming and a lot more connected.

(02:04):

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.

Dr. Sarah (02:33):

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(03:24):

One of the best parts of being a parent is getting to share the things that we loved as kids with our own children, and what better way to do that than through Disney songs. That’s where Disney Baby Playlist comes in. It’s the perfect soundtrack for your little one’s day, whether it’s tummy time, playtime, car rides, or those sweet everyday moments. You’ll find yourself humming along and transported back to your own childhood with these cheerful singalongs, gentle, instrumental, renditions and timeless Disney classics. One of the things I love most about music is how it can instantly shift the energy in a room. So whether you need something playful to get your baby moving or a calming tune to help everyone wind down this playlist has something for every moment. These songs don’t just entertain, they create opportunities for connection, for play, and for building treasured memories together. And as parents, it’s such a joy to hear those familiar tunes again while watching our little ones light up as they discover them for the very first time because every magical moment with your baby deserves the perfect soundtrack. So wherever you stream music, search for Disney Baby Playlist and press play.

(03:52):

Hello, welcome back. We have Alyssa Blask Campbell here for the second time. I’m so thrilled you are back.

Alyssa (04:05):

I’m so jazzed to be here with you. What a fun way to start my day.

Dr. Sarah (04:08):

Yes, me too. So for those of you who have not already listened to the previous episode we had with Alyssa on, she has written another incredible book, but her first book, tiny Humans, big Emotions, which is what we were talking about in our first episode together. I’ll link that episode in the show notes. It was episode 140, but you made kind of like a reboot, big kids, bigger feelings to really talk about middle childhood and before we even get into this new book, which I think is so important that people are talking about this time period, you have some exciting updates on Tiny Humans, Big Emotions.

Alyssa (04:54):

Crazy Town. Literally right before this just found out that tiny humans hit the New York Times bestseller list, which is insane.

Dr. Sarah (05:01):

Ah, and you were telling me an important anecdote about that. Can you share Because it’s not, it’s that book came out a while ago.

Alyssa (05:11):

Almost two years ago, almost two years ago, 22 months. I was 32 weeks pregnant. It’s like seared into my brain. What’s so cool about it is that typically if you’re going to hit the bestsellers list, it’s really they look at a number of factors, but one of the biggest ones is how many books you sold in a week and with the first week of pub is where you get the most publicity. It’s where a lot of the podcast episodes are. If you’re going to be on news, it usually happens then, and you also get to count all of the pre-orders into the total sales with that first week, which is why pre-orders are so important. We didn’t hit that first week. In fact, a lot of our news got derailed because our book published October 10th and the war started in Gaza on October 7th happened, and so then the war started and a lot of our media got pushed.

(06:03):

We were like, okay, this book is not going to hit the bestsellers list. That is what it is. It is still going to serve humans. And then almost two years later, what has happened is that folks have done this in a grassroots manner where they’ve gotten the book, it has been serving them, they’ve been utilizing it, they’ve been loving it, and they’ve been sharing it with their communities. This spread truly from our readers, loving it and sharing it, which for me just it gives me chills. I am so jazzed that that is how we got to hit the bestsellers list was that people are finding this book useful and helpful and that it’s serving them.

Dr. Sarah (06:48):

Yeah, it’s not a marketing phenomenon, it’s a content phenomenon, right? Yes. People read it and they say, oh, you need to read this, and it just builds from there, which is like, oh, it makes me so happy because I’m happy for you because I absolutely love you and your work and what you do for families. But I’m also super selfishly happy because I’m like, we are in deep alignment in the way that we think about how parents can best support their kids by understanding their nervous system and understanding their relationship with them and their own nervous system and their relationship with themselves. We’re in super alignment there and I’m like, thank God someone is busting through a lot of the noise and getting this so much more accessible to parents because I’m like, great. The more people who understand who read your book are going to appreciate what we do on this podcast and what we do in the world of, I don’t even know, is there a buzz name? It’s not gentle parenting. It’s not, I call it responsive parenting. I think it’s about being responsive to your own physiological cues and their physiological cues, but what would you call it?

Alyssa (07:59):

I mean it’s pretty classically authoritative parenting, but respectful is what has hit home for me the most. It’s respect for yourself. It’s respect for the individual in front of you. If I was talking recently to my friend Ash Brandon, the gamer educator, they’re incredible. They have a book coming out called Power On, all about screen time and management and relationship to screens, and we were chatting and I was just struck by a couple things they said. I was like, oh, you just respect children so much. You’re willing to have this conversation with a child because you believe they can handle this conversation, or you’re willing to pull back and say, oh man, I said this earlier. I set this boundary earlier. I was just cooking dinner and moving through things. I didn’t really think about it. And you’re right, it was kind of arbitrary, and they are willing to have those conversations admit where they have mistepped and things like that because they have respect for the child in front of them, and that hits for me that so much of this is just about self-respect and respect for the humans we’re raising.

Dr. Sarah (09:07):

Yeah, I love that. I think that’s always why I’ve liked your work because I think it is so respectful of the whole person that you are working with. Thanks. Can you talk a little bit, so if people are brand new to the work you’re doing, what sets these two books apart from some of the more typical also authoritative parenting approaches, also respectful and responsive and all that stuff? I hate these names because they all, everybody’s everything. It’s an umbrella, but I feel like you take a very specific lens through the sensory system and the whole body, the brain body. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Alyssa (10:01):

Mostly I’m a big nerd. I love nerdiness and neuroscience and I did research in building emotional intelligence in kids and in the method that Lauren, my co-author of Tiny Humans and I co-created and we partnered with Brandeis University to research, it is five components. One is about the kids, the other four are about us and understanding how the nervous system works and that it’s not a one size fits all, that we each have a unique nervous system, and that is what I consistently found was missing. In fact, it doesn’t fire me up to do something somebody has already done writing a book that already exists in the world would bring me zero joy. I only want to add value, not noise. And so when we were writing tiny humans and then big kids, really we look at this through the lens of nervous system regulation first of how do we understand how your unique brain and body works so that I can respond to you with intention that my son and daughter are totally different humans, my husband and I are totally different humans, and if I tried to use the same approach and script and strategy with both of them, it would only hit for one of them.

(11:20):

And even that is maybe sometimes it really involves us understanding who is this person and who am I? One thing that’s so cool, we worked with a group of occupational therapists to put together a free regulation questionnaire so you can understand, we talk about the nine sensory systems a lot and we dive into you’re sensitive to some of these things. You’re seeking regulation from others, and we kept getting questions around, I know how mine works or my kids works, and so we worked with a group of OTs. We put together this free questionnaire@seedquiz.com. It’s a QR code in big kids for it. What it does is help you understand your unique blueprint or your child’s unique blueprint because when we go to engage with or interact with another human, if we don’t know how their nervous system works or we don’t know how our nervous system works, it’s like shooting in the dark where I’m like, oh, I go over and my son’s having a hard time and I offer him a hug, or I’m validating his experience. And for him, he’s like, stop talking to me. Stop touching me, leave me alone. And my daughter’s like, oh my God, yes. Keep talking to me. Can I climb inside the womb? There’s not enough touch that’s going to be helpful for her. And so really understanding this, what’s so cool about the questionnaire is it’s been out into the world for a little bit now. The overwhelming majority of questionnaires that have been taken have been for adults taking it for themselves to understand how’s interesting. Their nervous system works. So cool. So cool.

Dr. Sarah (12:56):

Yeah, I think that that’s so important. I am very informed by polyvagal theory, for example, and I think we’ve talked about that on this podcast before. Dr. Porch is actually, we just recorded an interview together. He’s brilliant, but I think a lot of you just said something that I want to go back to, which is you said the nine senses and the ninth. We’ve talked a lot on this podcast about the eight senses we add in to the normal five. You also have interoception our ability to know what sensations are happening from the inside proprioceptive input, which is a sense of pressure on our joints and muscles. That’s that tight hug that you talk about that a lot heavy work and things like that from occupational therapy can help regulate that.

Alyssa (13:52):

Really lets you know where your body is in space. I have low per perceptive awareness, so I always have bruises on my legs, bump bumped into the bed or the couch or the table or whatever. Yeah, your proprioceptive sense.

Dr. Sarah (14:03):

But, I also prefer it because I love…

Alyssa (14:04):

Correct.

Dr. Sarah (14:04):

I have low. Yeah, I bump into stuff all the time.

Alyssa (14:08):

People with low proprioceptive awareness, seek out more proprioceptive input our body saying I need to know where I am when something else begins.

Dr. Sarah (14:16):

Yeah, I need to push harder to know. And then vestibular input, which is our movement about, yeah, that’s the awareness of where our body is in relation to space. So kids who like to swing a lot or roll down the hill or…

Alyssa (14:37):

My husband sits in a swivel chair so they can move back and forth during work. I would throw up at the end of the day if I sat in that chair.

Dr. Sarah (14:44):

Oh my god, yes. You and I might have very similar sensory.

Alyssa (14:47):

Yeah, I think so.

Dr. Sarah (14:48):

I can never do a roller coaster.

Alyssa (14:54):

I used to when I was young. Your vestibular system shifts as you get older. It also shifts in pregnancy and there are only two sensory systems that typically shift and change. One is your vestibular system, which is why as you get older, your balance can be off, et cetera. You can get a lower vestibular tolerance. The other is the ninth that we added in for big kids that wasn’t featured in tiny humans, but the newer research is really adding this one in as a ninth sense – neuroception.

Dr. Sarah (15:25):

Yeah, which Dr. Porges I think coined the term neuroception, which is why I was tying it back to polyvagal. He talks a lot about that sort of awareness of your fight or flight response.

Alyssa (15:40):

We call it our spidey sense of that feeling of I entered into the room and people had been in conflict, but they’re not arguing right now, but I can feel it. And I’m like, Ooh, this feels off. This energy’s tough to be around. That’s your neuro receptive sense. Or recently we were at a rest stop and I had my daughter on my hip and in a checkout line, and I just had this feeling of somebody’s looking at me, right? And I looked around and there was this guy that I was just getting weird vibes from that was really close to us and just staring at us and I was like, yeah, I’m out of here. This is not for me. And it’s that neuro perceptive sense though. Nope, I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t see anything. It’s like a felt sense of safety or danger. And that neuro acceptive sense is another one that can shift and change because it changes specifically with trauma that if we’ve experienced anything traumatic that then your spidey senses will heighten. We work with, the bulk of our work at Seed is actually in school systems. So we work in elementary, middle school systems and childcare programs, daycares, family childcare providers. And we’re working with this elementary school program that has a high needs population, a large population of homelessness, a number of kids who have at least one incarcerated parent, a lot of living with grandparents.

(17:02):

And we have this little guy who’s experienced a lot of trauma. High ACEs and his Spidey senses are so good, and he will run out of the classroom, he’ll rip stuff off the walls, he’ll find a safe place to be in this school and just hunker down. And the first time that I met him, I watched him do this. He was running through the halls and I write about him in big kids. He was running through the halls. He’s ripping stuff off the walls. He’s set off the fire alarm before the whole she bag. And when he got to his cozy space, I was following behind him just making sure he didn’t hurt himself, anybody else or leave the building. And he got to his cozy spot. And when we were sitting down, I dropped my body against the wall and he’s still heightened, right? He’s looking around, but he’s in a corner. And I just said, Hey buddy, my name’s Alyssa. I’m here to help you. You’re not in trouble and I’m not mad at you. And really trying to support his neuro perceptive sense.

(18:00):

And what I told him was, you know what I noticed about you buddy? I noticed that you’re so good at keeping your body safe that when you didn’t feel safe, you left and found a place to feel safe. And when we’re looking at that neuro perceptive sense, so often what we’ll see is a big reaction from a kid because it’s felt in the body. It’s not, oh, somebody touched me or I heard a sound and it set me off, or I need to move my body. It’s not dramatic. It’s not defiance, it’s not an overreaction. It’s their body saying, I don’t feel safe. And our tone and our body language and our nonverbal communication is so key here.

Dr. Sarah (18:50):

Right? Because the really important part that you’re describing is that perceptive sense is preverbal. It is not part of the prefrontal cortex. It’s not part of the language centers of the brain. This is why when you have a kid who’s super sensitive and is 10 out of 10 dysregulated where all their language centers are offline and you’re trying to in a very appropriate and following the rules kind of way, validating their feelings, giving them options, telling them you’re not really saying all the things to communicate some safety. If you’re saying safety and their body has no way of getting that verbal language info into, it’s got so many more stops on the train before they can process that, right? They have to actually take in the language, they have to process the language, they have to make sense of the encode the language in some type of meaning and then have a response to that language that is logical and meaningful. That’s a really significantly high level cognitive process. And you probably didn’t the words you said to that kid in the moment, may or may not, he might not remember him ever, that his neuro perceptive sense read. It was the tone, the back against the wall that prone open, non-threatening position. My body said, I’m not here to fight you. Your head to the side when you spoke and ity, cadence, facial expressions, those nonverbal cues are far quicker. They get into the system quicker and when your kid is lost it, we are working with the wrong part of the brain half the time and then we’re frustrated.

Alyssa (20:39):

Exactly. And then we’re actually just further dysregulating them a lot of the time and adding noise when what they often need is silence and support. But we’ll do this where we’ll say something but our tone and body language say something else where I’ll come in and I’ll be like in this voice or with this body language where I’m standing over and I’m here to keep you safe. It’s my job to keep you safe and my kid’s like, I don’t feel safe right now, mom. And really looking at what am I communicating with my tone? What am I communicating with My body language is so much more important than what are the words I say in the same way that if you were like, Hey Alyssa, how are you doing? I’m like, I’m fine. Like, you know I’m not fine.

Dr. Sarah (21:22):

Right.

Alyssa (21:22):

And so for kids, it’s really hard to read through those lines. They’re like, wait, you’re saying these words, but your tone and body language are saying something else. It’s like when they’re really little and they’re hitting and they’re kicking and they’re biting, and if we’re playful back with them as we’re saying like, oh, we can’t hit hitting hurts, yada, yada, they’re like, oh, this game, fun game. It’s a fun game. They’re not listening to the words. They’re listening to what our body’s saying. And so as they get older, same thing. If I say, you’re not in trouble, but my voice says I’m pissed at you, guess what? They feel like they feel like they’re in trouble. If I come in and I say, man, I’m feeling scared right now. I’m scared that I found this substance in your backpack or that I just got a call from the teacher that you haven’t been doing your homework and I want to figure this out together. I’m feeling nervous that if you don’t do your homework, here’s how this will play out and I love you and I want to help you figure this out. I’m not mad at you, you’re not in trouble. And you might notice for me that I’m feeling nervous about this.

Dr. Sarah (22:34):

Yeah, you’re helping them contextualize the fact. That’s another thing I think is so important. You’re not trying to change your feelings. It’s not like, oh, be calm, be zen because then hate, they’ll feel, felt safety, hate. It’s like, no, no. You’re allowed to be not calm, not safe in your own body, not feeling safe. I’m feeling really nervous.

Alyssa (22:56):

I just like am not calm.

Dr. Sarah (22:57):

Right.

Alyssa (22:57):

I am not feeling safe and I can’t talk my way out of that.

Dr. Sarah (23:00):

It’s about the congruence. It’s about naming what they are experiencing coming from you to them. Right, totally. You probably can hear in my tone of voice that I’m not super, I haven’t figured out how I feel about this right now. I’m not really okay with what’s going on, but I also know I want to work with you on this. Right, so now there’s congruence.

Alyssa (23:23):

I’m not mad at you. Now it’s congruence. Yes. I’m not mad at, my husband will even say when I’m off and I’m sarcastic and snippy and rude and whatever, he’ll be like, is this a me thing? And I’m like, oh, no, I’m carrying something from work. And he’s like, okay, great.

(23:36):

You’re not mad at me. You can have your hard feelings. It’s so nice to know you’re not mad at me and I’m not waiting for the kids to go down to then unleash. I don’t Exactly. Then I feel safe. And same with our kids. When we can say, I’m not mad at you and I am feeling nervous about this or this thing is frustrating because I feel like we’ve put all these things in place and it’s still not working and I’m feeling frustrated. I’m not mad at you. I’m frustrated about this thing. If we don’t name what’s coming up for us, to them, they internalize it as shame. I’m bad. She’s mad at me. I am doing something wrong. I never get this right. And instead we have the opportunity to say, no, this situation is frustrating or I’m overwhelmed with this. This is not a you problem, this is a man. We’re still trying to figure this out. And sometimes when they’re in the middle of something and trying to figure it out, it’s really frustrating and hard and overwhelming and that’s an okay thing to feel.

Dr. Sarah (24:37):

Yeah. Have you found in writing this book and kind of consolidating your work with these older kids, five to 12, let’s say, how different, what stays the same between tiny humans and the big kids and what do we have to start to shift? What as parents do we need to know is big key changes?

Alyssa (25:09):

We have a perception of control in those earlier years of like, oh, I can pick you up and put you in your car seat if you’re not getting in there, I can put you into bed. I can physically do a lot. That makes us feel like we are in control in these younger years that then when they get older, we’re like, what do we do now? How do we continue to feel like we’re in control when things feel out of control or when a kid is pushing a boundary and they’re not listening and you’re not sure what else to do often at that point, we’ll resort to punishment threats, sometimes reward systems. We’re like, how do we just get this to happen?

(25:53):

The through line is we’re often looking for control and when we can pull back and in these middle childhood years, start to get curious instead of try to control, it’s a game changer for our relationship. Beautiful. If you can do it in the tiny human years, but in these middle childhood years, we can ask them a lot of questions and get curious and walk alongside them rather than, man, I grew up in a household, I have four brothers where we were expected to have straight A’s. We were expected to be involved in at least one sport. We were expected to be involved in clubs and I grew up in a Catholic household. We went to church every Sunday. We were expected to be involved in a certain level of church service stuff. There were these expectations of here’s how you’ll show up in the world, and I have incredible parents who didn’t have the skillset to say, what are you interested in?

(26:51):

What fires you up? Or, oh, I wonder why she really cares about the brand of shoes she’s wearing or why it really mattered to her that when her uniform wasn’t clean and I brought her this other shirt that she was real fired up about that what’s really going on there when we can enter into curiosity rather than control, here’s how you will show up. Here’s what matters, here’s what doesn’t matter, and instead stepping into, ah, I wonder what was happening for them when I brought that shirt in that jersey, we used to share this story in big kids of this little girl at soccer and it’s in the morning of and she can’t find her jersey or uniform and mom’s like, I’ll bring it later. Let’s get out the door for school. I’ll bring it later and still can’t find it, and ends up bringing a different shirt and the coach was like, yep, as long as it’s the right color, that’s fine.

(27:41):

And her daughter loses it and then is embarrassed that she lost it in front of her friends. And when we can enter into curiosity of like why does it matter if she has the right shirt? Why does it matter if she yells in front of her friends or cries in front of her friends? We can get curious around that. It’s huge for our relationship with our kids. Then we can see things like, oh yeah, she doesn’t want to feel left out. She doesn’t want to feel embarrassed. That what we start to see a huge shift of in these middle childhood years is really looking at who am I outside the home. It’s an identity focus where up until Brene Brown has research that shows us that until about the age of seven, we are reliant on an adult to keep us alive. You pop a baby down and they can’t get their own food, they can’t find shelter, they can’t get water, they can’t take care of themselves.

(28:33):

Not to say that you pop a 7-year-old in the wild and they’re going to be thriving, but they can ask somebody for directions or help or they can find food in some capacity. What this means is that around the age of seven, we see this developmental shift where they’re saying, Ooh, how do I belong in community as a social being who’s going to be reliant on people outside of my household, outside of my family to survive to thrive in this world? It involves inclusion and belonging. And so when we’re looking at that as a developmental shift that we can expect that inclusion and belonging is going to play a new role in their life, then things like having the right uniform really makes sense or not being invited to go do this. TikTok dance with your friends really makes sense as to why we’re seeing the reaction. We’re seeing if you’re not included, if you don’t belong here, where do you belong and what does that mean for your survival?

Dr. Sarah (29:33):

So it’s activating their perceptive sense of danger and dysregulating them. And so what looks to us, it’s the equivalent of, I feel like we always make this example of the toddlers. It’s like when you peel the banana the wrong way a hundred percent and make wreak the F out, you’re like, what did I do? It feels so irrational to us, but the toddlers sort of developmental challenge task at that time is agency and mastery and control. So if you peeled the banana in a way that was different from what they wanted, you’re activating their threat response about this lack of control and lack of power and lack of agency and this discrepancy between what I was expecting and what came to be, which is activating a threat response. It’s not that there’s nothing dangerous going on objectively. It’s subjective perception that’s personal to my developmental stage and what’s going to activate for me.

Alyssa (30:46):

Yeah, it’s social danger. When we’re looking at this for kids, this just came up for me where recently I had a TV interview that was going to happen while we were on a trip and I had packed up all the kids stuff, all our stuff we’re going on this trip and I was like, oh, shoot. My husband was the last one that was going to be leaving the house that day. And I was like, Hey, Zach, can you snag? I have this shirt. It’s up on the chair. I fully forgot to pack it. I laid it out. I know exactly where it is. I tell him where it is. He’s like, yep, I’ll grab it. Awesome. We get there and it’s like time for TV interview. I go to get ready, he grabbed the wrong shirt and it’s literal. They were next to each other.

(31:31):

Fair, but I thought I was clear, whatever. I’m like, what in my, it does not matter. There’s not a single human watching the news. It’s like, oh God, I can’t believe she chose that shirt. Not a single human, but in that moment, for me it’s a threat socially. It’s a social threat of belonging of, no, I was going to wear this one for this reason. It’s going to make me feel like I am going to be included and I belong. And people are going to be like, yes, love that shirt on. You can relate. Sweet target snack. I intentionally chose it for that reason, and so when it shifts, it feels like a threat to me. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. In that moment though, when I am looking for it, I’m like, what? No, not this one full reaction like tantrum, meltdown to Zach who’s like, do you want me to go get you another shit? What’s the plan here?

Dr. Sarah (32:30):

I don’t know what to do.

Alyssa (32:32):

We flew to where we are right now, so we are states away. This is not something I can and ultimately work through. It came down, wore the shirt. No one knows. No one cares. And it really just comes back to, oh, this is a threat to my social belonging and social belonging as primates, as social creatures is crucial for survival.

Dr. Sarah (32:57):

And it buds right on to the circuit board right around this period of time. Right, elementary school. Exactly. Which is interesting, right? Because is it a developmental feeds society? Society feeds, developmental, all that. But this is also a time when kids are spending, our social structures are built that kids are spending way more time outside the home. They’re spending more time outside of the bubble of parental supervision too. Even they might not be leaving for any longer periods of time than they did when they were in preschool, but they’re not being hovered over in the same way. Even if you stay at a play date, you are not watching them. Every parent knows that one moment when they had that first play date, they’re like, oh my God, I didn’t have to do anything. It’s the best. I literally hung out with my friend the entire time and they just did their own thing. And that magical moment of like, oh my God, I’ve walked into a whole new stage of parenthood. This is nice.

Alyssa (34:05):

100%. “Sitter-vising” as my friend Suzy calls it, yes.

Dr. Sarah (34:09):

But it’s like they get more time alone with their peers and as a result, or maybe it’s that chicken egg thing, they’re orienting to those peers and they are orienting less to us. They’re still very oriented to us, a hundred percent. It’s just still need us. It went from a hundred percent to maybe 60%.

Alyssa (34:30):

They also weren’t primed for play in that way. Our play starts to really shift developmentally around the age of five, where we go into cooperative play and not just associative play, where in the preschool years they might start to play together, but they still often have their own plan for play and they might try and figure out how to weave them together. Cooperative play starts to really shift around the age of five, where we see kids coming into say in the same way that we do what’s called summer Wednesdays at my house where every Wednesday we basically say Anyone in the neighborhood’s welcome people just bring food, and we all kind of hodgepodge dinner together. My backyard’s open, there’s a cooler you can drop drinks in, and it’s just this shared experience where we all really cooperate. Last night I popped in from parenting and Emily was in my kitchen doing dishes from the night, and Monica from next door had brought over whipped cream because somebody else had brought strawberries. It is just this communal cooperative space.

Dr. Sarah (35:38):

I want to be living in your neighborhood. That sounds awesome.

Alyssa (35:41):

Come on over for summer Wednesdays, and this is something that really doesn’t come online and start until about five, where they can say, okay, what do I bring to the table? What does this person bring to the table? And not just like, oh, can I deviate from the plan that I had? But how do we co-create a plan? And so the play starts to shift where they really do start to rely on each other and lean on each other in new ways than they’ve ever done before. And so their interactions start to shift and change.

Dr. Sarah (36:14):

And their sense of what’s like social currency starts to change and becomes so much more primary. So I work with a lot of kids in my practice who are entering into middle school or entering high school, and this idea of social currency starts to come online where it’s like you were saying, why does my kid care about what sneakers they have? And it’s like, well, there’s actually a legit hierarchy happening…

Alyssa (36:44):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (36:45):

In these systems and our kids are figuring it out and trying to play inside of this space. And there is, I’m not saying like, oh, so we must buy them the sneakers so that they can rise to the top of the hierarchy, but we actually want to help them make sense of this hierarchy and be able to say, yes, there are things, objects, status, symbols. A lot of times it’s tech related or clothing related or something, but also it’s grades. It’s bad grades. It’s like, oh, it depends on, each system will have its own unique evolution of what is valuable and what is undesirable. And it’s kind of like its own little ecosystem.

(37:30):

But it’s real. It’s happening. And kids are incredibly wired to be perceptive to that and to try. It’s not necessarily the goal to get to the top. The goal for health, in fact, the top is usually one of the least healthy places to land to be perfectly honest, is to understand that it is happening and to understand how to figure out where you are in it and to also understand there’s fluidity. You move up and you move down. Because that’s another thing is I feel like kids get really, if you’re wondering why your kid is having a lot of stress around school, you talk about school avoidance in this book or there’s a lot of things that they’re not going to be able to articulate because they’re too complicated.

Alyssa (38:13):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (38:13):

But, if we can help them build some sort of framework for understanding social dynamics, they can start to make sense of why some things feel so scary for them or so overwhelming, I just want to avoid it. Or so depressing or hopeless or defeating or so super attractive and compelling. The, there’s a ton happening in these years. It’s like an explosion of navigating a completely new ecosystem.

Alyssa (38:44):

And we often talk about them instead of to them. So we’ll talk about what’s going on for them. We’ll share like, oh my gosh, this kid won’t go to school. And all the challenges we’re having without saying to them like, Hey, I’m really curious about what’s going on. I want to figure out how to help you here. Or they come in and they are so devastated that they did not get invited to go to this birthday party or to go to the movies with their friends or to play this game that everyone’s playing. And we have an opportunity there to be like, oh, yeah, but you will often walk into problem solving where we want to take it away from them.

(39:25):

Like, oh yeah, that person’s not very kind anyway. Or You know what I heard that movie’s trash. We can try and make it feel better for them in the moment, which is often what we’ll lean into because being with someone who’s experiencing discomfort is really hard. And so we’re like, can we make this go away? We have an opportunity here though to stand in the discomfort with them and be like, oh, yes, man. Gosh, I know that it feels like it sucks to not be invited or to be like, everybody’s hanging out without me or everyone has crocs and I don’t have them. That makes total sense. It makes sense to feel this way and to talk to them and ask them, what do you think is going to happen if everyone is going to the movies and you’re not a part of it, or everyone has the crocs and you don’t? What do you think might happen? And really listening to listen, to hear what they’re afraid of, what’s coming up for them and allowing them to share and not just have a counter argument about how their thing doesn’t actually matter, which is often what we tell them is that this thing actually doesn’t matter. And right now to them it matters so much.

Dr. Sarah (40:40):

And it doesn’t need to, for it to matter doesn’t mean it needs to be resolved.

Alyssa (40:46):

No, it doesn’t need to be resolved. It doesn’t need to be blown up in the moment when I didn’t have the right shirt that mattered to me. If Zach’s like, listen, it doesn’t matter what shirt you’re wearing, great, never talking to you about this again, get out of my face. That’s not helpful. I feel disconnected from you also. You don’t have to go out and get me the shirt. You don’t have to solve this problem. I need someone who can be in this feeling with me who understands that this sucks that I had this outfit planned and was jazzed about it and it’s not going to happen.

Dr. Sarah (41:19):

Yeah.

Alyssa (41:20):

That’s what I need. That’s what our kids need. And so often we feel like their thing isn’t a big deal and we let them know that in a bunch of different ways.

Dr. Sarah (41:28):

Yeah. Hey, I want to take a quick pause here because if what we’re talking about today is resonating with you, I’ve got a free resource I think that you will love. I created a guide filled with simple connection based games designed to help kids strengthen their emotion regulation skills all through play. And the best part is these games are broken down by age. So whether you have a tiny human or a big kid, you’ll find strategies that are just right for your child’s developmental stage. These activities aren’t just fun though. They definitely are. They’re grounded in neuroscience and designed to support your child’s developing brain and nervous system. They’ll help your child learn strategies to calm their body, name their feelings, and build resilience over time. You can grab the link to download the guide right in the episode description or head to dr sarah bren.com/games to get it sent straight to your inbox. Okay, now let’s get back to the episode. Another thing I see parents do, and I’m curious what your thoughts are on this, where again, I go back to this, I think there’s this whole spectrum of, on the one hand, we have the parents who our challenge in this moment is to figure out how to just understand through my child’s eyes what’s going on.

(42:51):

And I’m either too mad or too stuck in my perception to be able to do that. And so in expanding that and saying, I can calm myself down, I can decrease my own sense of threat in this moment and just try to get through the eyes of my child. We’re in sync here. But then I think there’s this other kind of spectrum where it’s like, it’s almost like anxiety. It’s not anger or frustration or intolerance of, it’s more like identifying with, it’s like, okay, this is your panic. This is my panic too. And now I’m just talking, talking, talking, talking, talking. I can’t tolerate just being in this.

Alyssa (43:30):

And I’m going to call your friend’s mom and we’re going to fix it. We’re going to like, yeah, this is not okay. We are not because you want to make your kids thing go away, but now you need to make your thing go away.

Dr. Sarah (43:41):

Which is understandable. And if you run anxious, their distress can become very contagious for you.

Alyssa (43:53):

100%.

Dr. Sarah (43:53):

So on the one spectrum, it’s little ends up being if we’re going to get really black and white, it’s like on the one hand, it’s just too much dismissiveness, right? This doesn’t matter. I’m just trying to help you understand you can handle this because it’s not a big deal. On the other end of the spectrum, it’s over identifying with the problem and amplifying the problem and saying, this is a huge deal and I’m really saying I can’t handle this. You can’t handle this. We must turn this thing off and make it go away and resolve it. That also communicates to the child one, this must be you can’t handle these things and you must be rescued by somebody else in order for them for this to happen. And it doesn’t build that. We can’t handle these things.

Alyssa (44:42):

So then when they have other things that come up down the road, what they end up doing is saying like, ah, my mom can’t handle this, or My parent or my adult or whatever, can’t handle this hard thing. It’s going to be too anxiety producing, too overwhelming. So I’m not going to share it with them.

Dr. Sarah (44:58):

Or I’m going to immediately go to them and say, rescue me. Rescue me, rescue me, rescue me, rescue me. I see this a lot of kids who have anxiety where…

Alyssa (45:07):

They want to be rescued out.

Dr. Sarah (45:08):

And the parents, if there’s this loop happening where every time the child feels that panic, and usually it starts with very little, totally, if kid feels threat, they seek out their parent to make that feeling go away. And if the parent always does that, talk about this a lot with anxiety and accommodation loops where you feel panic, you seek out your parents’ help, the parent helps you, the feeling decreases. There’s relief. And so I’m wiring myself into this loop where, okay, the next time it’s the help is a snooze button. It’s not turning off the alarm. And so the next time I have that feeling of anxiety, I panic again. I seek out the parent, they rescue, a relief. And then it just keeps me stuck in the cycle.

Alyssa (45:57):

We have a whole chapter on anxiety for this. It’s so common, and our adult role plays a huge role in how our kids navigate anxiety, what we want to help kids do. So often what we want from kids is self-control. We want them to control their words, control their actions, have access to their whole brain to be able to make these decisions. And what we need for self-control is to be in a regulated state, which means we need tools, we need tools for regulation. We can’t regulate what we’re not aware of. So what we start with is how do we help you as the adult and your child understand what different things feel like in your body before you explode? And I have this, my husband had high anxiety when we first started dating and we were on vacation one night and we were in a bunch of transition and woke up in the middle of the night and he wakes me up and he’s like, hi, I think I’m having an asthma attack. I can’t breathe very well. My mom’s going to take me. We were on vacation with his family. My mom’s going to take me to the er. Do you want to come? And I’m like, well, I mean, of course I’m coming. But also I was sitting in the backseat and I’m just watching this play out in front of me and I’m like, ah, he’s having a panic attack. She is anxious about it. She thinks he can’t breathe and they’re just spiraling each other back and forth.

(47:30):

And no one outside. I felt like I was outsider looking in. I was like, neither of them yet have the tools to notice what’s happening inside for me. What’s happening in my heart? How do I slow my heart down? How do I access deep breath so that I can see, am I having a panic attack or is this asthmatic? And it was, I made a million chairs, the ER docs, they ended up coming in and saying, have you ever had a panic attack before? And I was like, yes, thank you. This is the conversation he needs right now. It’s like, I’m really glad I didn’t have to come from me. Yeah, exactly. And what it was though is when you step back and you look at this, he didn’t yet have the tools to notice what happens for me inside when I’m experiencing anxiety? How does it show up? Is it a stomach ache? Is it a racing heart? Is it that I can’t breathe? Is it that everything feels like it needs to happen right now that I need to have this conversation, I need to send this text. I need to continue to process this thing with this person or navigate this conflict and it has to happen right now.

(48:41):

And that expediency that urgency. What does it look like for you as an individual? And when you can notice that what calms your unique nervous system, this is where we pull in the sensory systems, pull in those nine senses because it’s not one size fits all. When I’m responding to anxiety in a human, if I know how their nervous system works, it’s customized to them. I’m not just saying take deep breaths to them, which can be really cool if that’s accessible and helpful for you and for humans who, if I said to Zach in that moment in the car, take a deep breath, he’s like, I have asthma.

Dr. Sarah (49:26):

But my husband sometimes will have, or my daughter actually too, she gets really riled up more rage than anxiety. But if I found that one of the only things that I can do that she can tolerate when she’s having a massive episode of dysregulation is push on her feet, push her into her body by holding her feet. So one of the only things she will tolerate me doing, but I tried 400 things before I landed on that one, but I know she is her sensory profile. She has a preference for proprioceptive pressure and input. She likes that it’s regulating for her.

Alyssa (50:12):

She seeks it.

Dr. Sarah (50:15):

If I can find in a window where I can safely get in there and do something that gives her that sensory input, she will allow me to do it. If I speak to her, if I try to caress her or do anything that not that touches a different system, she will flip out at me. It’s not safe for me that, so it’s like you’ve got to know their sensory preferences. And a lot of this work happens outside of these moments. It’s not in it.

Alyssa (50:50):

It sure does. Yeah. You don’t build a toolbox in the moment. You pull from the tools you have in your toolbox in the moment. And so when it comes to kids, it’s why it’s so key. We talk so much about this in big kids, of talking to them outside the moment, teaching them how their brain and body work so that they can then access these tools in the moment or have a greater chance of accessing some tools in the moment. For my husband, he’s sound sensitive. And so for him, being in control of sound is regulating. If he is experiencing anxiety, if he can pop on a pair of AirPods and listen to a song that he likes, it calms his nervous system. It drowns out the noise of the rest of the world and his thoughts, and he is in control of the sound.

(51:35):

He’s choosing the sound. It regulates his nervous system. My son’s the same way that if he can choose the sound. So if we’re in an overwhelming space, I mean, we were at a beach house with a whole bunch of people and his nervous system probably got overwhelmed and overstimulated on top of, we were in transition and things were changing. And so when he was able to access just nervous system regulation, he can manage the feeling of anxiety. The goal isn’t that we access nervous system regulation and our feelings go away. It’s that we access nervous system regulation so that we can be with our feelings without being consumed by our feelings so that I can be with sadness, so I can be with fear so that I can be with loneliness without feeling overwhelmed by it.

Dr. Sarah (52:21):

We don’t need to go into fight or flight. We just need to be able to have the feeling by itself, right?

Alyssa (52:29):

Experience it without being overwhelmed by it. That’s our goal here, and that’s what we’re working to empower families, teachers, kids, to ultimately do.

Dr. Sarah (52:38):

You’re doing a great job. If people want to connect with you, if they want to read any of your books or learn more about your work, take the quiz that you mentioned, where can we send them to? We’ll put links.

Alyssa (52:50):

Totally. So our mothership is seedandsew.org, like I said, the bulk of the work that we do is in schools. And when we work with a school system, we also work with all the families that are involved in that school system really looking for greatest impact. And if you want to bring any of this work to your child’s school, you can find information about that at seed. And so.org, we have a podcast weekly Voices of your Village that’s free social media. I hang out on a lot @seed.and.sew And then our books are wherever books are sold, we have Tiny Humans, Big Emotions, and then Big Kids. Bigger Feelings is really that 5 to 12-year-old range. And I read the audio book for both as well and stoked to just get ’em out into the world. And the quiz is seedquiz.com for that regulation questionnaire. It’s also linked in Big Kids.

Dr. Sarah (53:43):

Amazing. Well, I hope Big Kids Bigger Feelings hits the best Times New York Times bestselling list too.

Alyssa (53:47):

Thank you.

Dr. Sarah (53:48):

And thank you for coming on.

Alyssa (53:49):

Maybe 22 months later we’ll take it.

Dr. Sarah (53:50):

I know, right? Hey, slow, grow. Good. Congrats and thank you, and we’ll talk soon.

Alyssa (53:56):

Thank you. Take care.

Dr. Sarah (53:58):

If you enjoyed listening to this conversation, I want to hear from you, share your thoughts and your feedback with me by scrolling down to the ratings and review section on your Apple Podcasts app or whatever app you’re listening on. And let me know what you think of this episode or the show in general. Your support means the absolute world to me, and just a simple tap of five stars can make a real impact in how the show gets reached by parents everywhere. So thank you so much for listening and don’t be a stranger.