350. Raising girls who know their worth: Practical tools for building assertiveness, autonomy, and resilience with Kate Rope

Kate (00:00):

Of course we want our kids to have friendships, but we have to be careful when we combine that with the message that the world sends girls that they need to be nice to everybody and take care of everybody else, that we don’t ignore their own internal sense of what feels good to them.

Dr. Sarah (00:20):

Raising girls today can feel overwhelming between the pressure to achieve the tricky dynamics of friendships and the nonstop messages society sends them about who they should be. And if you’ve ever wondered how to help your daughter truly trust herself, speak up for what she needs and navigate the ups and downs of growing up with confidence, you are definitely not alone. That’s exactly what we’re diving into with this week’s guest, Kate Rope. Kate is an award-winning freelance journalist, an author whose work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post Times and More. She’s the author of the book, Strong as a Mother and her latest book,ng as a Girl: Your Guide to Raising Girls Who Know, Stand Up for, and Take Care of Themselves is out. Today in our conversation we’ll talk about what it means to parent from our hopes rather than our fears. How identifying your family’s North Star values can guide really tough decisions. And while listening without rushing to react is one of the most powerful parenting moves we can make. Plus Kate shares really practical strategies for supporting girls in building assertiveness, navigating friendships, and learning to trust their own voices. This is such a validating and empowering episode, not just for parents of daughters, but for anyone who wants to raise emotionally secure kids and take better care of themselves in the process.

(01:48):

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.

(02:17):

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. I am super excited we have Kate Rope here with us today. I thank you for being here.

Kate (02:29):

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me. I’m excited.

Dr. Sarah (02:33):

I’m really excited. You have written two really incredible books. One is brand new. Can you tell us a little bit about your work as a journalist and how you decided that this is the story and these are the stories that I are missing that I need to tell?

Kate (02:51):

Yeah, so I’ve been a journalist all my career and I knew very early on I wasn’t really a gotcha journalist. I started at Mother Jones Magazine where that’s kind of, I mean, it’s important investigative work, it just doesn’t vibe with me. And I got into journalism because I actually wanted to be an attorney and I wanted to be a women’s advocacy attorney, but I realized I’m not really comfortable, comfortable being on one side of an issue. I really like to sort of bring all sides to the table and then have people reach their own conclusions. So that became my focus and I would write sort of narrative features. But then after I had my first daughter, I had a very challenging pregnancy, had a medically challenging pregnancy and postpartum anxiety, and that’s when I really found my voice. That’s when I knew I felt alone.

(03:48):

I felt alone in having a challenging pregnancy. I felt alone in having postpartum anxiety. Back then we were really only talking about depression, so I didn’t recognize it for a long time, and I just wanted to write a book that just said, these are all things that can happen. Making people or bringing a person into your life is not supposed to be easy, but we act like it is. And I wanted to write a book that said, here are all the things that may happen will happen, and here’s some supports and here are other people who’ve been through it and came out the other side. So that was the beginning of strong as a mother, and it started in pregnancy, but someone can also start it with bringing a child home if your child comes into your home another way.

(04:37):

And it just was really about all the things from sleep to sex to perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and when you should seek professional help and how fast it can help you if you get what you need and that you deserve it and that you should be taking care of yourself is just as important as taking care of the person you’re raising. So that was the beginning of that. And from there, my journalism kind of morphed into focusing a little more explicitly on mental health. And I started writing about child and teen mental health, and I always knew I wanted to write a book to support raising strong girls. I embarked on my own kind of campaign to instill some very specific things I wanted my girls to have. That was just what I was doing as a parent. And luckily I am a parenting journalist, so I get to interview experts like you and others. So I got all this great input into how to do it, and then I started to feel like it’s working and I thought, let’s write a book about it because it’s not rocket science, but there’s so much expertise out there coming at you from every direction you can believe it is. And I wanted to kind of cut through that.

Dr. Sarah (05:53):

I love that. And I have to say, I get to interview some really people on this show and I get to interview a lot of researchers, which is really cool for me because I’m a super big nerd and I love to learn about the research and the science, and I get to interview some people who are just in the field doing the work. I love when I interviewed journalists who’ve written books, because you guys have your training is in reading all the stuff. You have so many great stories about the different research articles. You’re like a metadata, the human being. It’s so much fun because you’ve spent the hours and hours and hours reading all the different articles and research and synthesizing it. So I just like journalist books on topics. I’m interested because I feel like you do all the work and I’m so appreciative of that.

Kate (06:47):

And I love that work. I love talking to experts. I love talking to people who are at the top of their field and love what they do, which is most people who are involved in researching stuff to do with kids and families and mental health. And so I love talking to ’em, but then also talking with people who are implementing this in their lives. So my book has voices from caregivers who are actively trying to do some of the things we’re talking about in the book. So you’ve got the study, but how does it actually look in your home? I mean, I get the concept that I should listen more than I talk, but I don’t actually know how to do that. I’m not really trained. We’re trained to be parents who have answers and to give answers, and we’re not trained to listen as much. So talking to people who are actually in the field, parents and caregivers in the field, doing the casework as it were.

(07:38):

And then for this book and for my last book, I talked to moms for this book. It was very important that I talked to girls and find out from them what has been helpful, what is not helpful, what do they wish parents knew or caregivers knew. I basically would say I did focus groups and I would say at the beginning of every focus group, pretend that you have a microphone and you’re in a school gymnasium and it’s all caregivers in the audience, and you get to tell them everything you think they ought to know about how to raise you well.

Dr. Sarah (08:10):

That’s so cool. How empowering, right?

Kate (08:12):

Yes, yes. And they were off to the races. They had the ideas already.

Dr. Sarah (08:18):

Yeah, they know we were talking about this before we hit record, but I’m a mom, I have a boy and a girl. I get to be a boy mom and a girl mom, which means I have to learn double. It sucks. But also, so I know some of it from just being a mom, but it’s so different as a therapist. When I sit with some of the kids that I work with, they tell me things that they don’t tell their parents or that’s hard for them to tell their parents. And some of our work is how do we help you find a way to tell your parents this? But kind of similar to what you’re describing, I get kind of the inside scoop sometimes the raw real thing. And I love that you realized how important it was to go get the raw real thing from these kids because they do know. They know they do. They know what makes them feel good and strong and cared for and empowered, and they know when they’re not getting it. And they’re actually usually really good at recognizing a lot of the times. Not always, but a lot of the times that if they’re not getting it, it’s not because people are mean and don’t want to give it to them, but it’s hard to give. A lot of kids I talk to are conflicted about asking for what they need. They think it would be a burden on the person they’re asking. So that’s a lot of insight, that’s a lot of awareness. It’s not just entitlement. Why won’t everyone give me what I want? It’s like, well, I don’t know if it would be possible to receive it.

Kate (09:43):

And I think the reason they give you the real deal, you are a non-reactive, open, safe space. And parents, we’ve got so much swirling in our brains about how we’ve got these false narratives about how we’re responsible for the people. Our kids become entirely and there’s a lot of danger out there and we have to keep them safe. We just have all this narrative in our heads. So when our child comes to us with something a little bit scary or a lot scary, we’ve got all that back there and they’re our child. So it makes total sense that we just kind of jump in and react in a way that makes it harder for them to say the difficult things. You’re trained to sit there and accept the difficult things in a nonjudgmental manner and make them okay. And part of my book is just helping, a big part of my book is helping parents and caregivers take down their own reactions, kind of take a break from the stories in their head so they can do what you do. They can sit there in non-reaction, in non-judgment and hear what their children have to say. And then in this book, obviously girls have to say and then calmly engage with them working towards solutions and being that safe space. So I think that’s a big part of the picture too.

Dr. Sarah (11:03):

So cool. I think that’s such a helpful resource for parents, especially written from not a therapist, you know what I mean? It’s someone who’s like, I am a mom and also I struggle with this daily, I work on this daily just for the record. I could do this in therapy with my clients. It is so much harder to do it with my kids because what you’re saying, it’s like when I’m in the room with a patient, I understand it’s just so much more easy for me myself to see myself as separate from them and what they’re telling me when I’m sitting with my child and they’re telling me maybe even the exact same thing.

Kate (11:46):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (11:46):

It’s so much harder for me to disentangle myself from my kids what my kid is saying to me and their experience in the moment because we are intertwined. I am not a neutral party when my kid is telling me that someone was being really inappropriate to them at school or mean and was making them feel really bad. I to, I don’t just see that as my child’s experience. I also simultaneously see it as my experience, my experience as a little kid, my experience as a mom in this moment, my experience as a mom of my kid in 10 years who’s got totally traumatized by this bullying incident. All the things, right, the train has left the station. Yes. So I stop listening. I mean, I’m listening, but I’m not listening and I feel like you talk a lot about, can you dig into that a little bit with us? What did you find? How did you articulate the core challenge and task for parents and how do we do it better?

Kate (12:48):

Yeah, so I start the book with a couple of key things. I think one of them is an exercise I help parents and caregivers do in the book, which is trying to figure out what are your values for your kid? What is the most important thing to you about your child learns from you, how your child enters the world, the resources they have, whatever it is. So an example would be, for me, emotional wellbeing. That’s my highest goal for my kids. So in eighth grade, my older daughter really liked her free time. Actually, both of my kids have really liked their free time. Probably all kids like their free time anyway, maybe there’s something there. And all her friends were starting to add on these extracurriculars and joining this team and that team. And I started to feel like even though I’m pretty chill about thoughts about success in college and not college and what it takes, I started to get that tension of like, well, what if I’m not doing enough to set her up for success?

(13:52):

Does she need to join a team? Does she need to do this extracurricular? I felt that pressure and I sat down with my husband. I was like, I need you to just talk this through with me. I was like, okay, do we agree that you can have a fulfilling successful life without going to a particular college? He said, yes. I said, do we agree that you could potentially have a successfully fulfilling life without even going to college? He said, yes. And I said, okay. And we agree that mental health is our number one goal for our kids. He said yes. And so we were like, okay, so it doesn’t make sense to pile on, get her to try out for that team or this club or whatever. Let’s let her lead with her interests and let’s not let this outside pressure change that approach. So I think if ultimately in moments where the pressure comes from your parents, from society, from the parents on the playground, it is so tempting to want to keep up.

(14:53):

But if you know, well wait, this is my most important thing, it can help you back down. And one of the things, I have a whole exercise about how to figure those out, but one of the ones I like the best is if you were talking to your best or a long friend you hadn’t talked to in forever, when your kid is out of the house, they’re 22, they’re 26, they’re 32, what would be the update you’d want to give that friend? What would you be so happy to share about them? Like, oh, she’s loving it. She’s always been super into nature and she’s a ranger at this park and whatever it is, what are the things that you, she’s happy or she’s comfortable, or whatever your goals are, if you figure those out, then when you get to those moments where the world wants to steer you in a different direction, I call these your north star values, you go back to your north star and you follow that. So that’s one thing. Another thing that I think is really important, and just stop me because I’m a chatter, but…

Dr. Sarah (15:56):

No, go please.

Kate (15:57):

Okay. Another thing I think is really important is parenting from your hopes. And I learned this from this awesome sex educator, Al Acko, who talks to huge auditoriums of parents and caregivers, and they’re freaked out about the topic, talking to ’em about sex. And he says to them, I want you to lead from your hopes. What do you hope for your child versus leading from your fears? If you lead from your fear, first of all, you’ve got an unimagined foe, you’ve got a made up foe, this fear doesn’t actually exist. It’s this idea of what could happen and you can’t really counter it. So an example I give in the book is your second grader gets diagnosed with a learning difference. And as parents, with all the fears and all the things we’ve heard, you could immediately go to, oh my gosh, she’s always going to struggle in school.

(16:47):

And if that’s your story, how the heck do you counter that? That’s a huge thing to counter. And frankly, all kids struggle in school at some point. But what if you were like, once you’ve processed, once you’ve done everything you do to calm yourself down, of course learning things about your kids that are different than you expected, deserve all the support you need. It’s hard. You deserve support. But then, okay, maybe the goal is I want us to figure out a solution together. I want her to grow from this. I want her to have an understanding of what she’s capable of within this context. So let’s get her the right supports in school. Let’s get the books that talk about kids going through this similar thing. Let’s have the conversations that say like, okay, so this thing is happening for you and we’re going to learn together and move through it. So figuring out in any stressful parenting situation, what do you hope will happen? And then you can plan for that versus what are you afraid will happen? And then you’re on defense.

Dr. Sarah (17:47):

I know in two examples you’ve given, now you’ve just described something that I think is kind of important, which is taking an outcome, which is usually an outcome or a feeling or experience that we know in our gut is what we want when we’re in our most centered, calm, safe, connected spot. When you’re talking to your husband in a calm, connected moment after really sort of checking in and grounding yourself, I know I want my child to grow up to the north Star for us is like wellness, being a well whole happy kid, happy adult. One, you’re identifying what you want when you are in a place of, not fear, but connection, safety, positive goodness, the opposite of stress, whatever that.

(18:43):

But two, you’re reverse engineering it from there. I think sometimes we are always like, I want this and I want that, and there are good things to want, but then we don’t know what to do. We don’t make a plan to get there. We just kind of move away from what we don’t want. And I think being able to say, okay, what does wellness, how do we get wellness? We have to reverse engineer that a bit, right? That’s how you make the, and then you filter decisions that you have to make in parenting through that filtration system. Well, does this help her develop a sense of self and does this help her develop her interests? And does this help her build confidence and competency and resilience? If yes, great, if, oh, she might not, but we really were supposed to do this thing. Everyone says it’s this really important thing to put on the resume for college, but it’s counter. It’s like, Ooh, this might not be good for her wellness now, but it might be good for her wellness. If she gets into the perfect school, it’s like, Ooh, we’re going the wrong direction. If we have to push these questions, these decisions that we have to make in parenthood that we don’t necessarily know the outcome and we don’t know the answer, we push it through this filter.

(20:07):

And that’s a really helpful guide when it comes time to make tough decisions that either are counter to what everyone else is doing or we’re not exactly sure if it will help or hurt.

Kate (20:20):

Yeah. And in that moment, in my example of my daughter having articulated she wanted free time, that was a top priority for her. That was one of her north stars respecting that and letting her guide that, letting her say, I want this and me saying, and I see that this is an important value for you and therefore I will support you in protecting it.

(20:46):

And that is, I would say the next step and the biggest sort of overarching theme of my book is pausing and listening and really getting to know the girl in front of you and doing your best. And it’s hard, and none of this is easy, but it is doable to clear away the stories that come from an older version of you or that come from your mother-in-law or that come from maybe one teacher they had in first grade about what it means to be successful. You get a lot of those messages. And I think being able to say, I don’t necessarily know those are true for me or what I believe in, and I’m going to tune into this kid in front of me and see what is she telling me about who she is. And that is a deceptively simple, but hugely powerful parenting move is to slow down, pause and listen before you react.

Dr. Sarah (21:45):

It’s interesting. It makes me think about the fact, so your first book, strong as a Mother, I feel like one of the big kind of things that book really sat upon was this idea of we’re going to redefine what strength is. It is not what we have been taught as women to be, which is stoic, superheroes, martyrs, do it all need no help, hyper independent, hyper capable, but actually strength is being attuned to what you need, knowing your experience, trusting your experience, seeking out support, asking for what you need, asking for help, creating a network, creating a community, creating a support that helps you achieve what you need because you know what you need because listening and you’re believing and you’re trusting. And then you have this next kind of iteration of this book, and it’s about helping girls do this, but who’s reading this book, right? I’m sure there are girls reading this book, but I also think probably most people who are going to read strong as a girl are moms raising girls.

(22:57):

And it’s like you’ve got to do, you’re not your kid’s therapist, you’re not a journalist studying your child. You are your child’s mom. There are two of you in this relationship. And so you can’t just support your daughter’s strength in this way of this being able to have a knowing of the inner self and a trust in it, and then empowerment to go and engage in the world in a way that says, I have needs and I’m going to pursue them and I’m going to ask for help to pursue them. And they don’t have to look like anything other than what I need them to be. You’ve got to do that work as the mother, because can’t just tell your kid to do that. And if you’re not doing it yourself, you don’t know how to do it yourself.

Kate (23:39):

Yes. Yeah. I mean that’s exactly right. And I want to sure we talk about that, not in a way that’s like you need to do these things so that your kid learns to do these things. Yeah, that’s on awesome benefit, and it’s an awesome sort of Trojan horse to get, particularly women who have been taught to care for everybody else before themselves to get them buy-in to start taking care of themselves, but also because you’re a human being on this planet deserving of all the goodness and the support, and it will make your life so much. It’ll add ease to your life, it’ll help you in the places you struggle. And there’s definitely a part of me and my husband kind of connected these dots for me, which I think I didn’t even consciously realize I was doing, which was that I did feel like it was very hard at times to even get moms to recognize that my book could be helpful to them strong as a mother. I would go to these big, they have these conferences with babies products, and you can go and you can try out the fancy new stroller and you can see the breast pump and all those things.

Dr. Sarah (24:49):

Oh yes, those new mom expos.

Kate (24:51):

Yeah. And those are all big corporate. They’ve got the whole table. And there’s me with a little table with, I actually have this poster that’s still in my office here. Hold on. It says, babies are so exciting, but they get all the presents, all the gear. Have you gotten anything for yourself?

Dr. Sarah (25:10):

Oh wow, that’s good marketing. Nicely done.

Kate (25:13):

Thank you. But still, I would get people coming up to my table and I would explain what the book is, and they would go, huh? And then they’d go look at the stroller. And part of it is you don’t know what you don’t know. So part of it is they’re not thinking about the challenges they may face, but a bigger part of it is we just don’t teach women to take care of themselves first. We just don’t.

Dr. Sarah (25:37):

I know, it’s funny because I have parenting courses that are on my website, and the first one I ever made was called the Authentic Parent, and it was zero to one supporting your child and yourself through the first year of your kids’ life. And it’s a great course, and it has so much stuff in it, but nobody, people who end up getting that course nine times out of 10 are people who are having their second kid. They actually, they know, oh, I need support with this time around because they didn’t have any support with this the first time. And it was hard. And it was like, I think a lot of times the struggle, and I see this even in my group practice, we specialize in working with parents and children and families and moms, and we want so much to, we have so many resources. A lot of our clinicians are specialized in perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and maternal mental health specifically, but it’s really hard to get postpartum moms to come to therapy unless they’re in crisis. It’s hard, but I can handle it.

(26:46):

It’s just very difficult, I think for women to really understand how hard it can be and that it is really okay to seek support or to get more info and not just scroll Instagram, but get something more comprehensive. But it’s like when I sell courses on tantrums or parenting, a challenging child with sensitive nervous system and big behaviors, they’re like, sign me up for that one, please. Because I definitely know that that’s what I need. It’s so interesting how when our kids are struggling or when we’re struggling in the context of parenting with our kids, it’s so much easier for parents to say, okay, I have a right to seek help for this. Okay, and this is worth my time. But when it’s just for me, it’s like, oh, that I should, I know I should, but I’m going to go look at the stroller or I’m going to go, you know…

Kate (27:42):

It’s an indulgence.

Dr. Sarah (27:42):

It’s an indulgence.

Kate (27:45):

Time and money are tight when you’re a new mom. So it’s totally understandable. We have a dearth of affordable mental health care in our country, and so it makes sense. But to sort of get the word out that there are ways to find support, that there’s my books, there’s groups. Yeah, there’s your books. There’s lots of ways to get support that aren’t super time consuming or cost prohibitive, prohibitive. But it’s interesting because there were just so many areas in my book where I would Google a topic in order to start that. So in my book, I have a section on how to teach girls assertive speech because we don’t value assertive speech in girls. We let boys do it, and boys do it more naturally. But then when girls try to do it, we’re like, raise your hand, or we don’t sort of being able to state your needs confidently and without the mishigas, which I think is what can kind of lead to drama and girl friendships. You have a need, but the way you express it isn’t direct or comes with it turns aggressive or passive or comes aggressive, passive aggressive instead of just being like, this is my need.

(29:00):

I would like you to work with me to help me meet it, whatever. But when I Googled learning assertive speech or something, it’s all for women. I mean, there’s maybe one YouTube about teaching assertive speech to girls, but it’s women in their cubicles at work learning this stuff. And I was like, let’s lock this down early so that you don’t have to be searching for this when you’re in your first job at 23 and you’re going in to talk to your boss and you have no idea how to do it. So there was that. And then also toxic friendships. We all see the memes about you reach a certain, you hit perimenopause and you don’t care, and you’re like, I get that friendship isn’t serving me well, let’s teach girls about how to recognize when a friendship isn’t serving them and they can say, this is not for me, or this is not the season for this friendship. And I have conversations like how to actually structure, scaffold those conversations for your girl to teach her to try these things out in way lower stakes environments. They feel big to them, but in the grand scheme of life, they’re lower stakes and so that it becomes a more natural skill for ’em. So they’re not seeking these things out when they are 32, 52.

Dr. Sarah (30:16):

I’m curious, when you were talking with girls as you’re writing this book, what did they say about that? I’m really curious about the assertiveness and the social dynamics. What would they say? What were some of the stories that you remember girls talking with you about that felt like, oh, you have this unique understanding of what it’s like? Because sometimes I find that kids as adults, sometimes we can see these patterns playing out and we know it’s happening, and it seems like the kids are not aware or they’re so entrenched in it, they can’t see it. I do think that a lot of the times, especially teens or tweens, they are aware of the patterns. They just don’t know how to do it another way. It’s not like they’re oblivious.

Kate (31:05):

Yes. Yep. Yeah. Well, thinking about friendship in particular, I do remember some conversations and just in general, these focus groups with girls were amazing. They were the best part of writing this book. I’d get in a room with three to seven girls and I was just like, this is a safe space. I have no agenda. You say anything you want to say to me, I will listen. This is about you and for you. And they were just immediately thoughtful. They immediately had answers. They were so thoughtful with each other, but they challenged each other. I mean, they just made me feel like it’s all going to be okay. The girls have what they need, but not everybody does. So with friendship, a number of them, and actually this was particularly girls of color who were hearing from their parents, that person is probably not your friend based on them doing that or not everybody’s going to be your friend, and that’s okay.

(32:06):

And they took that to heart or that friendships come and go. And that was something Katie Hurley, who’s one of my favorite clinicians to talk to and who has written a number of great books on raising girls, including no more Mean girls, she talks about how we don’t share with kids the fact that friendships come and go. We don’t talk about the hard parts of friendships until they’re experiencing it. And then we’re like, oh, you know what? That happened to me. But they’re like, but tell her before some friends, this was a friend of mine and we were really close, but we went through this hard thing and we took a break and now we message each other online or whatever. But showing the range of friendship and normalizing the range of friendship, I think they get the message that you have to be nice to everyone and you have to be friends with everyone.

(32:58):

And of course, we want our kids to have friendships, but we have to be careful when we combine that with the message that the world sends girls that they need to be nice to everybody and take care of everybody else, that we don’t ignore their own internal sense of what feels good to them, which obviously gets into a whole other area. But in the case of friendship, there was that. And then another thing that really stands out to me from, I mean, there’s so many, so we don’t have time for it, but another one that really stands out to me is get the book. I know, I know, get the book. They’re in the book just this amazingly insightful participant. And she said, from the time I was six, I felt very deeply about the world and I felt the injustices of the world. And I would talk about them and everyone would say, you’re too young to worry about that. Don’t worry about that. It’s all going to be fine. And she’s like, and I wanted to be validated, and I could see things weren’t correct in certain situations. I could see things were wrong in the home, on the global stage, and I wanted to be acknowledged for, I wanted to be allowed to have those feelings.

Dr. Sarah (34:11):

That goes back, I think, to the parenting from fear or parenting from a place of pressure to fix. And as parents, this comes up a lot with my kids. My kids go to a school that puts a lot of thought into environmentalism. And so they’re in kinder, they’re going into first and second grade, but last year in kindergarten and first grade, they spent a lot of time talking about global warming and environmental stuff that’s happening, and they’d come home and talk to me about things that were sort of terrifying. The polar existential are going to die. The polar bears are dying. They don’t have any ice. Everything’s falling apart. And then they would ask me, is there a way to fix that? Is someone going to fix that? And I was like, oh God, you hopefully when you’re older, it’s like, but no, I have to sit there and say, part of me wants to be like, everything’s okay. It’s going to be fine. This isn’t going to be an issue for your lifetime, but one, I actually genuinely don’t know if that’s a true statement anymore. But also it’s not, and it’s okay that it’s not, and there are real things happening in the world that you’re aware of, and I don’t want you to feel like there’s a discrepancy between what you are experiencing and then feeling, and then what I’m telling you is happening because that I think makes kids anxious and also makes kids shut it down, push it down.

Kate (35:46):

And they don’t trust you because you’re not being realistic.

Dr. Sarah (35:48):

They don’t trust you or they stop trusting themselves. Right? They will say, especially little kids, they’re like, okay, mom says it’s not so this feeling, this worry that I have that’s not right, but it’s still there in their body. You can’t just like, this is the thing. Feelings are not just in our mind, they’re in our body. Every time you felt anxious, I’m sure you felt like a sensation, like a tightness in your chest or a lump in your throat or your stomach clips. We feel things in our body. And so then when we tell a kid, no, that’s not real. You don’t have to worry about that. The problem is what most human beings do with that is they, okay, I just turn that switch off. It doesn’t release that stress that’s being held in their body that’s just getting kind of stuck in there.

(36:39):

And they might have thoughts that say like, okay, no, mom says it’s not. Mom says it’s fine, but this worry is still there. They’re feeling it. We have to help them kind of make sense of it, make sense of the feeling, go a little bit deeper. Sometimes the content we’re not going to have answers for. I do not have an answer to global warming for my 7-year-old. I just don’t. You don’t not one that feels good to anybody. And so what I say is it’s hard to sit with that not knowing and that not knowing can make you feel a little nervous. I bet you feel that, right? And sometimes my kids will roll their eyes at me and be like, mom, stop being a psychologist. Oh my God, yes. And sometimes they’ll stay with me though, and I’ll say, we should shake it out a bit. Let’s go play outside and do some, let’s run around. Or maybe I don’t say it so directly, but then I will find ways to get them to move or do something to release that stress that just got built up in their body because these things are real and these kids do have legit worries, and they do understand, especially the older kids, they know what’s going on. They don’t know all of it, and they don’t have the capacity we do to have the same degree of nuance or compartmentalization that we do. So a lot of times they just don’t have a place to put the worry, and so they just push it down and it can be a problem that’s worth thinking about.

Kate (38:11):

Yeah, and I think with worry, I feel like a little action is always so helpful. So I don’t know why, I don’t know what’s going to happen to the polar bears, but I bet there’s scientists who spend every day thinking about it. If you’re interested, once you totally legit that you feel sad and discouraged and we can have those feelings, and then when you’re interested, we could go look on YouTube, we could go find an organization that’s supporting polar bears. You could give a dollar of your allowance to it every week or whatever. It’s similar to, I have one daughter who has a fair amount of anxiety like me. I relate to her, she and I, I’m like, well, I may have given that to you, but I gave you a lot of other really good things. But we do purposeful worry time at the end of the night because where we identify three levels of worries, we take five minutes. She has a little notebook and we say like…

Dr. Sarah (39:10):

Share her age too, so people can get us and see where this…

Kate (39:13):

Oh, sorry. We’ve been doing it since she was probably eight and she’s now 13 and she does it on her own now. That’s amazing. Yeah. But what we would do is we’d sit down and be like, okay, is there anything I’m worried about right now that I can solve right now? I’m worried I didn’t put my math homework in my backpack or whatever. Okay, why don’t you go do that and make sure you did it then Is there something you’re worried about that you could take action on tomorrow? Well, I am worried about that one question I didn’t get right that the teacher asked, okay, so could you talk to them tomorrow and find out if you got it right or if it matters, if you got it right, you could talk through whatever the issue is. And then big picture ones are the polar bears going to die. We try to come up with one small solution. Let’s look into it later. And then also, let’s remember that nighttimes nighttime isn’t the time to think about the big things. Our brain just gets stuck in them, but we can, let’s set aside a time on the weekend and often that time never comes often. It’s just her brain wants to worry at night and just getting her to sort of get them out and take some actions, gives her the release to then say, okay, I’m going to go to sleep now instead of spiral.

Dr. Sarah (40:27):

I love that. First of all, that is phenomenal. I’m stealing that. I’m going to be using that in my practice. It’s so good. It’s myself, it’s so good. But I think what’s really important that it does just from a clinical perspective, one is it normalizes worry. It says, of course there’s worry. Let’s think about it. Let’s give space for it. It exists. We’re not denying it’s presence and we’re really clearly creating a safe space for it, which really emphasizes shows a child that this is safe. If we sit down and create time to be and worry, well worry must be safe versus trying to turn it off.

Kate (41:10):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (41:10):

One, you are normalizing and also kind of encapsulating worry in a place of safety. Two, you are teaching how to differentiate between what can I do in a problem solving capacity to address worries, which gives me a sense of agency and capacity and confidence, but also we can’t problem solve away every worry. And so the other piece is what can I understand won’t go away no matter how much I problem solve and how do I practice distress tolerance or anxiety tolerance? How do I say some of this worry won’t go away and I can make sense of it. I can know it’s here. Mom’s showing me it’s totally safe, so I’m starting to believe her and like, oh, it comes and it goes. It doesn’t last forever. Nothing really bad happens to me when I feel the feeling of worry. We’re also differentiating it from the content of the worry. If I’m worried about the polar bears and I’m stuck on the idea that, well, I can’t keep the polar bears from dying, therefore the worry will never go away. This isn’t going to go away versus no, the feeling, the sensation, the experience of being worried comes and goes.

Kate (42:34):

Yes, yes.

Dr. Sarah (42:35):

The problem may stay there all the time, but the feeling comes and goes.

Kate (42:39):

And recognizing that there are things that make your brain more likely to worry being tired or being hungry or an, and she hates that one the most. She hates it when I’m like, okay, we know that you haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in a couple days and it’s late. And she’s like, yeah, but it’s still, she fights me on it. But then every once in a while she’ll say she listens and then now she’ll be like, I know that I’m really tired and now it’s not the time to think about it, so I’m going to think about it tomorrow. I’m going to go read. She likes to read dystopian stuff, but not before bed. So she’s like, I’m going to go read Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I’m going to go read Mrs. Pickle wiggle or whatever is just like distraction techniques comforting and distracts me to fall asleep.

Dr. Sarah (43:27):

Those things I would put in the two different categories. There’s problem solving skills and they’re good to a degree for anxiety. It’s okay to have problem solving skills for anxiety, but the problem with anxiety is sometimes you can get stuck in a problem solving loop that doesn’t do anything, right? Oh, it’s tricky. Anxiety is that’s the reassurance, seeking or checking, so we can problem solve to a degree, but then we have to recognize that the rest of our coping strategies live in distress tolerance. How do I just get through this moment without making it worse and know that I will feel better eventually? It is not about fixing the thought or the thing, it’s just feeling okay that I’m going to feel worried now. I’m going to feel the sensation now and I could still fall asleep and I have distraction techniques, or I have relaxation techniques, or I have other types of distress tolerance techniques that I practiced probably in less anxious moments because that’s when I build the skills and yeah, I love that. That’s so nice that you do that with her.

Kate (44:36):

Yeah, we used to do purposeful. We used to do sad time too. She went through a period when she was really little, when I think it was when she had to lose her pacifier at night. And so we did sad time at night, but it could only be five minutes because this kid could go for three hours.

Dr. Sarah (44:52):

Yeah, but hat’s the containing part, right?

Kate (44:54):

Right. There will be time to address it and it won’t go on forever.

Dr. Sarah (44:58):

But part of having a girl be in touch with their own strength again goes to this idea of we’re redefining strength as being, knowing of, and accepting of our experiences, including the ones that are vulnerable, not weak, because I think that’s the messaging is vulnerable. Emotions are often made. Women are made to feel that that is, well actually men too, all our society tends to put those in a category designated as weak.

(45:32):

But what you are describing in strong mothers and strong girls are being very aware of, attuned to accepting of and communicative about these vulnerable feelings too. Because guess what? They’re there. And if we don’t have a way to navigate them and we think that they’re making us weak and we shut them off as a way of preserving our sense of self as strong, we’re actually creating really not strong systems that’re going to, it’s like, don’t scale a broken system. Let’s create some really foundational strength that’s in the service of mental wellness and in mental strength.

(46:21):

That’s so important. And I just really love that. I love that you convey that parenthood is complicated, but you don’t have to navigate it alone. I hope this podcast could be a helpful resource offering you support and guidance to parent with attunement trust and a little more ease. However, sometimes it’s helpful to get a little extra support. At Upshire Psychology Group, we offer therapy and coaching services that are grounded in attachment science and tailored to your family’s unique needs, whether it’s navigating your child’s anxiety, managing the pressures of parenting in today’s overwhelming climate, or just wanting a safe space to sort through the challenges you’re facing. Our team specializes in supporting parents, individuals, and kids with offices in Pelham, New York. We offer in-person and virtual therapy for families as well as coaching support nationwide. To learn more, visit ups sure bren.com or click the link in the episode description to schedule a free 30 minute consultation, call at up brand psychology group. You’ll get guidance, validation, and actionable tools so you and your child can thrive, not just get by. Okay, now let’s get back to the show.

Kate (47:45):

And I think that’s what’s really important for girls is giving them lots of space to connect with the truth inside themselves and not giving them the answers, just really listening and asking questions before you provide answers. What do you think about that? That’s interesting. Tell me more about what you’re thinking. Ways to support their own internal reflection.

Dr. Sarah (48:14):

Yes.

Kate (48:15):

And then letting their information change your caregiving. Letting, if you’re talking about a topic, not something personal, but a topic about the dress code at school or whatever it is, letting their ideas change you hearing them instead of just because I think we are primed to feel like we have to have answers, but we really want to just as gently and as often as we can put it back on a girl to think about her own sense of fairness, her own sense of what feels good to her, what doesn’t feel good to her, and then when she shares that with us saying, I’m so glad you told me that. And one of the main things I talk about is consent parenting, really teaching girls that they are in charge of their bodies, they’re the boss of their bodies, and that they get a say in every way someone interacts with their body.

(49:11):

And so not taking things personally. So if you go, you want to give your kid a goodnight kiss and they’re like, oh, mom, your smell’s bad. I’m totally hypothetical. My kids never said that to me. I don’t want to kiss. I’d say, oh, thanks for letting me know. I better brush my teeth. And also, I love it when you tell me whether or not it’s okay for me to touch you because this is your body and you decide, or grandma and granddad are coming, how do you want to say hello to them? Do you want to give them a fist bump? Do you want to hug them? Do you want to say, yo, what’s up, granddad? Do you want to tell ’em that joke from your riddle book, whatever, you know your kid, you know how they feel about interacting with someone and giving them a couple options so that when granddad arrives or the uncle or the grandma and goes in for the unrequested kiss, the kid can be like, Hey, fist bump.

(50:05):

Or you can advocate for them and be like, Hey, you know what, dad? She’s really into fist bump pillows right now, so just wherever, I have a lot of parts of the book that talk about one, just in everyday moments, you give back control to your girl to think and respond, and then you validate that response and give her control over what she does with her body, who is allowed to interact with her body and how, so that you’re really like, I try to come at it from as many angles as I can that you’re showing her that she’s the expert of her life, she’s the expert of herself, and even an introverted girl. The world runs on extroverts and it is human. It is parenting nature to want to extrovert your girl because that is how people interact. Say hello. Oh, why didn’t you say good morning to grandma?

(51:08):

Why didn’t you? And if you can respect that she’s introverted and that’s how she wants to interact with the world. And then you can say, what’s it like when we go to someone’s house for dinner and you don’t want to talk right away? And how could we first, if they’re really little, you can just model it for them. Like, Hey, Sarah’s going to read her book super into reading and quiet time right now, or whatever. You can model communicating what her needs are so that then she can, you do have to do a little scaffolding for kids with their introversion because they’re going to go into a world that expects them to extrovert, but you can figure out what are the ways that are most comfortable? Where do you feel like being shy or whatever she calls it, where do you feel like your quiet side gets in the way of something you want to do? Is it in the classroom? Is it on the playground? Find out the areas where she would like to have some skills and then operate in those areas and then start in low stake situations.

Dr. Sarah (52:11):

I really love that because I think it helps parents who can sometimes get stuck by that fact, that advice, right? Oh, we want to respect our kids’ autonomy. We want to know who they are and their temperament and what their limits are, and so therefore, how do we stretch them? You’re not supposed to. I think some people get too stuck in that corner of like, okay, well, if I am respecting, they think it’s like an all or nothing or one or the other. If I’m going to respect my kids for who they are, then I am not allowed to push them or stretch them.

Kate (52:46):

Then I just let them be in that space without, yes.

Dr. Sarah (52:49):

Right. And that can feel really, that doesn’t fit sit well. And I actually think that that’s really important. It doesn’t equip them too for the world. No, and it’s not an all or nothing to your point. It’s about recognizing who your child is and what their sensitivities are and what their preferences are, but also inviting them to be the person who drives the map for the stretching of the skills.

(53:15):

And then we scaffold and help them build those skills in places where they would like them to be practiced. You’re still stretching, assertiveness, communication, stepping out of your comfort zone, being in a louder place, but in places where a kid wants to versus where we’re just randomly assigning, well, you’re supposed to be doing it at the playground, so we’re going to practice at the playground. Versus it’s like, no, I really want to practice this at, I want to try a dance class, but I’ve just been scared to do it. So now we try that. So it’s like you can help them build the skills anywhere. Let’s have them co-create…

Kate (53:54):

And it will be more effective. They want to, they’re bought in. And I think then there’s the other extreme where we feel like we have to, in the case of extroversion or whatever, or the kid who’s hesitant to try new things or we feel like we have to push them to always do the thing, and that is our cultural narrative that the strong thing, the brave thing, the right thing is to do the thing that’s scares you. And that message without nuance sends kids the message that they don’t need to listen to their body’s own warning signs about when things don’t feel right for them. And for girls that obviously, I mean for any child that can really tip into making them vulnerable to sexual abuse or other harms or assault as they get older. And I have a section on the book on letting your kid quit, and I got the idea from this podcast with Annie Duke, who wrote a book on quitting, the name of which I don’t know, but she’s a poker, she was a professional poker player. Now she’s a cognitive psychologist. She’d be really cool to have on your show. Knowing when to quit is the essence of a good poker player. And so she talks about how all our stories are just about perseverance, perseverance, perseverance, and through. She’s like, we’d rather someone push themselves to the edge and perish than not try.

Dr. Sarah (55:19):

That’s not so great all the time.

Kate (55:20):

One of my kids didn’t want to go to summer camp and all her friends were going, and even I felt like her therapist kind of had this bias toward pushing her past her fear of it. I knew she could go to summer camp and be fine. She might be homesick. Yeah, she might miss me, but I also knew that she felt like, that’s not comfortable for me. I don’t want to do it. And so I was like, as much as there is power in challenging yourself and stretching yourself, there’s power in knowing your limits, knowing your boundaries, expressing them and being heard. And so I think that’s also the other side. It’s like either we completely don’t challenge them and let them be in a space that maybe is going to be difficult for them down the road if they don’t learn some ways to stretch themselves, or we just push, push, push, and we don’t, and we override their internal sense of what is right for them. And so there’s kind of like a sweet spot there. And with quitting something, you may have a rule in your family. You can’t quit the soccer team. It’s a team and they’re counting on you, but at the end of the season, you’re no more soccer or We paid, we’ve paid for three lessons. Need to go. Ways to do it. Yeah, there’s lots of ways to do it. But to hear the child who says, I hate playing the piano. I do not like it. I don’t want to do it anymore. Why are we forcing them to do it? Because there’s some narrative in our head that we probably don’t even understand fully. It got etched in there by the water we swim in.

Dr. Sarah (56:48):

Yes.

Kate (56:49):

If water can etch things.

Dr. Sarah (56:50):

I cannot. I’m so excited that this book has been written, and thank you for writing it and everyone who has a girl, frankly, if you are a girl, if live in this world, go get this book. Please. If people want to connect with you, if they want to follow along on what you are doing and writing, where can we send them?

Kate (57:15):

Okay, so my website is simple. It’s katerope.com. I am on Instagram as at @kateropewriter, and my substack is Strong as a Human, and my book can be found anywhere books are sold.

Dr. Sarah (57:29):

Go get it. Go get both. Yeah, they’re package deal. I think.

Kate (57:36):

Yeah, you guys, I mean, it is like you are both learning on the job.

Dr. Sarah (57:40):

Right? Yeah. I think it’s like, let’s equip the team.

Kate (57:44):

Yeah.

Dr. Sarah (57:45):

Yeah.

Kate (57:46):

Everybody needs a help.

Dr. Sarah (57:47):

Yeah. Oh, thank you so much. Congrats. Thank you so much. I love talking with you about this.

Kate (57:52):

I love talking with you. This was great and I love your podcast, and I love all the things you’re bringing out to the world.

Dr. Sarah (57:59):

I appreciate that.

(58:00):

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