362. A simple parenting strategy with a big impact on kids’ self-regulation, attention, and creativity, with somatic therapist Alé Duarte

Alè (00:00:00):

Moments of, or conflict of the agenda. For example, get the kids out of the door. These are moments that triggers a lot of fear into the parents. Afraid of the child would not comply because my reaction would be stronger. I’m going to push, I am feeling embarrassed because I need to yell to put it out the door. So this fear makes parents double stress in the morning.

Dr. Sarah (00:00:37):

When your child melts down after being interrupted or seems to lose it over small things, it’s easy to assume that it’s about behavior. But what if it’s really about biology? This could radically shift the types of strategies that parents use in order to be most effective in increasing cooperation and truly supporting their child’s emotional growth and development.

(00:00:59):

Hi, welcome to Securely Attached. 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. And I am so excited that joining me this week is one of my personal mentors, a somatic therapist educator and the creator of KidSoma, Aleè Duate. Aleè, trained directly under Dr. Peter Levine, the developer of Somatic Experiencing, and he has spent decades translating those principles for kids, blending neuroscience education and child development into work that’s both deeply healing and refreshingly practical for clinicians and for parents.

(00:01:58):

In our conversation, we unpack how to read what your child’s body is telling you and how meeting them there can ease so much of the push-pull of daily parenting. We explore why play is a biological need that helps kids process stress, and how even tiny adjustments in the way we move through routines and transitions can make a big impact on their capacity to stay regulated. By the end of this episode, you’ll start to see your child’s big feelings, their play, and even those tough transitions in a whole new way and have concrete tools to support both their nervous system and your own. Okay, let’s dive in.

(00:02:41):

Hello Aleè Duate, thank you so much for coming back on the show. It’s such a pleasure to have you.

Alè (00:02:54):

It’s an honor and glad to be back here.

Dr. Sarah (00:02:59):

Yes. Okay, so in getting ready for this episode, I went back and listened to the episode that we did about screens and I was like, oh my God. I kept remembering all of the moments in that episode that made me feel so inspired to do things differently with myself and my kids. So I just can’t wait for all the things that we are going to get into today. I’m going to link that episode though, so all of you who are listening, the episode that Ale did before on screen time has been one of probably our most listened to episodes that we’ve ever done. It’s been so good. So definitely go back and listen to that, but you don’t need to have listened to that one to make sense of what we’re going to talk about today because we’re going to talk a little bit. We’re going to talk about a different topic.

(00:03:49):

Welcome. So glad you’re here. So I mean, I want to start off just by giving you a chance to explain a little bit about the work that you do because it’s very unique. It’s based off of a therapeutic modality. It’s very well known, very well studied called Somatic Experiencing that was developed by Peter Levine who’s one of your mentors. But you’ve taken it and translated a lot of it to working specifically with kids through your work with kids Soma and that new treatment modality that you’re developing. So just before we get into all the valuable things parents can take from this approach and put it into their daily lives, can you talk a little bit about somatic experiencing and how to translate that for kids and how that all kind of works?

Alè (00:04:46):

Yes, yes, for sure. Well, somatic experience first was developed by Peter Levine and he developed, he also bring this idea of the importance of working with trauma for adults and for us human beings. And when I met Peter, I met Peter, it was in 1987 in Brazil when he was there to teach this workshop. So my background is from Rolfing and before that from the education. So in education I work a lot with kids in many, many directions. But when I saw the work of Peter Levine and I saw his working in a way that he didn’t use touch in that moment, but he was accessing some of the sensations that was probably trapped in the body of this client, I thought, wow, this is really, really important. We are really talking about this non completed experiences. So it comes from the orientation of the body, not necessarily the cognitive, the rationale.

(00:06:11):

We are really working with what is it that the body wants to say? What is it that the body is telling us in the moment? And especially working with kids, I realize that kids doesn’t have so much words to define their own sensations. So working directly with the body, they’re breathing, how they are their posture, how they’re showing themselves into a situation, it’s valuable because we can meet them into places that they feel alone, so to speak, with the body. Because when we adults start to talk so much with kids and they don’t know where to put those words, but the body are showing so much what’s happening, somatic experiencing taught me this, how to get in this energetic aspect of the body and now bringing to the kids Soma, like I said, I came from the education and then the body oriented therapy, which using touch. So I use things that I play with kids plus the work of the autonomic nervous system. That somatic experience works plus the touch and then I blend it together because most of the language, the kids are from the games, from the activities, from doing things and somatic experiences is really self-awareness based. So awareness plus activity, we find a way to communicate with children. So I don’t know if I could explain well, but kids, so is I want to say it’s branch out from somatic experience, but also has some roots in education and other activities.

Dr. Sarah (00:08:16):

And I mean I’ve been training with you for a number of years now and I am not a somatic experiencing practitioner. That’s not my background necessarily. I have tried to incorporate somatic and mindfulness-based practices like awareness stuff into my work, but for way before I found out about the work you do, but coming into training in this way without the background from somatic experiencing specifically has been really interesting for me because I am like, oh, there is so much that’s overlaps with what I already did, but I didn’t have a way to take those interventions that I was doing with kids that were really, that’s where I come from talk and play therapy. And we were, I’m always trying to get, I had this erroneous idea that the goal of play was to get kids to verbalize. And in doing this work, being able to do all of it through play without necessarily taking it to that cognitive level and having to make the kid go from, we are doing this healing thing here with the play and now I’m going to pull you out of it so we can talk about it feeling like that’s my job as a therapist and if I don’t do that, I didn’t kind of check the box yet to be able to say, oh no, I’m going to stay in the play.

(00:09:46):

I’m not going to interrupt this. I’m not going to pull them out of it to reflect and talk about it, but just to stay in the play, finish it all the way, let the body reorganize itself inside of the play that I’m directing to some degree, but the kid doesn’t necessarily feel that. And then there is this, we are done. And so I don’t know, I know there’s a lot of therapists who listen to this podcast too. So if you are listening and you’re not sure about how this works, I can’t tell you how many therapists, I’ve talked to ale who do play therapy with kids that are like, I just feel like I’m supposed to play. I know the kids want to play it. I want to do incorporate play into my therapy, but I always feel a little guilty. I feel like, Ooh, this is a very expensive game of Jenga that I’m charging these parents for. It’s like, no. And they feel like they have to use play as a carrot. If we do this worksheet, we can play. If we talk about the problem at school, then we can play if we talk about whatever we can play versus thinking about play as the actual full therapeutic intervention from start to finish and that it has actual incredibly important utility in organizing the nervous system. So I learned all that from you. So maybe you can explain that even better?

Alè (00:11:17):

Yes, I think, okay, I don’t want to be too geek here, but maybe I need to.

Dr. Sarah (00:11:23):

We love geeking out here on this podcast.

Alè (00:11:27):

Here’s the thing, I do understand that sometimes play when the kids are playing, it’s just for them to have fun, but also there’s other times they’re playing just to tell us things, how to differentiate one thing from another. That’s another conversation. But let’s say what I understood was when I was studying with Peter and then in his class he was showing all the time, not all the time, but he was showing his videos from a cheetah and the savanna tried to catch the Impala and he want to illustrate the fight or flight response and how this was important. So for me, I wanted to understand better what happened in this sequence. So I started to look into the video over and over again from the beginning to the end and not make sense of things until I realize that wait a minute, they’re doing this every time, every day they need to eat something.

(00:12:46):

So they’re going to repeat the same pattern, being calm, being hungry, and then orient around, prepare, run to catch it or to flee, to go away and having that struggle eat and then rest. And I thought this is a repetitive pattern for their whole life. This sequence is going to happen with us the whole life. Now, I remember when I was playing with kids that to play, they would do this same sequence. They will be calm and then they will say, I want to play something. So it’s like being hungry, but they say, I want to play something. Then they talk to friends and say, okay, let’s start it. And then they start to catch each other, finish, wow, let’s have water. So this sequence is in the structure way is the same as the hunting pattern is absolutely the same. So now playing is not necessarily having fun, but why they would repeat the same pattern over and over again as if we are hungry, as if we want to have thirsty or when we want something else. So that’s why I start to think that the structure for me of the sequence is most important of what they’re doing because the same structure will happen over and over again. But why play?

(00:14:35):

Because they couldn’t analyze just in a task. Like say the teacher says say, okay, you have homework today. Oops. Oh my God, I have homework again. I have this first arousal, get into readiness, do the homework, finish. Now I can go away. But now play is something that attracted the child to be there in that structure for longer time, and this is for working a therapeutic set or education set. If you have a child that is so interested in being the pattern for a long time, they’ll be able to start to tell the story that happened inside that pattern. For example, some kids might say, I love say through their body, I love just to wait. Others might say and plan. Others might say, I love just to run a route, I don’t like to wait. Others might say, ah, I’m so happy when things finish because I was so stressed before.

(00:15:40):

So these are representing pieces of this whole pattern of the fight flight response. So when the child comes to my office, the parents look and I’m playing Jenga and the parents, I think, oh my God, this is a very expensive Jenga. And I say, wait, look how he is preparing to get the piece of the Jenga. It’s so fast. So he probably does the same thing in the beginning of things. They do so fast that he is not aware and maybe he’s bump into things, he very impulsive to do something and the parents might say, yeah, that’s right. So we can extrapolate from one round of Jenga, many things, many ways of looking them into their house, what they’re doing, the house or their behavior. So that’s why I think plays is absolutely important because that’s going to make our work easy. We don’t need to go to, that’s what kids want.

(00:16:53):

Now, putting this together with the somatic, experiencing that bring the depth of the game means we understand the structure means we are not like make a joke here, we are not aware of the, we’re not interested in the sardines, we are interested in the can. So we work in the structure in not necessarily the content, the substance that’s in there. If it’s a Jenga or if it’s a homework, it’s anything. You have the same structure. So with the somatic experience, I realized that if I pause in moments of this structure and say, huh, what happened in your body right now?

(00:17:43):

The kid will immediately just such a relief. So it’s like how you open those gates into the experience that allow the body to regulate themselves. So that’s why sometimes when you look into a session, we see something is so simple, I like to do sessions that’s so ordinary, so simple, but it’s so on the spot for getting to what the kids need. Yeah, so that’s why I’m fascinated by this structure. Once you understand this structure, what I call the five phases, when you find those phases, it’s easier to access the depth of their experience and that’s where kids come to ground comes to the moment.

Dr. Sarah (00:18:36):

Yeah, it is so helpful. I mean this idea of both, there’s a couple things that you said that I feel like are really important. One is being able to look for these structures that repeat themselves over and over and over again, not just inside of one type of activity, but in many different activities where an arousal, there’s some sort of seeking system being activated, I’m hungry or I want to play or I want to connect or I want to build something. These are all things that kids experience all the time, but being able to say the structure is the same no matter what. Let’s join them in the structure that matches their interests, where they want to be, what feels fun and good to them. Instead of my structure over here where I want to do a worksheet on emotion regulation, it’s like let’s do emotion regulation in a game because that’s the structure.

(00:19:37):

The structure is the same either way. So let’s go to, let’s invite them into this structure that aligns with their interests and where they are comfortable and where their drives are to your point. So I think that’s so important, but also being able as a parent, as a therapist, this is super helpful, but as a parent, this is also still really usable. This doesn’t have to live inside the realm of therapy, which is exactly what I wanted to talk about with you today too. Most of the people listening are parents. They’re not doing this with their kids to process trauma or heal things or fix challenging issues, but they have tons of challenging issues because getting through the day with kids is hard. And so can we talk too about how to translate some of these ideas of, okay, I’m going to notice what the structure is of my child’s idea. I want to do this, I’m hungry or I want to play this game. And like you said, the sort of five phases that they go through and where if parents understand how to see that helping support their movement all the way through, noticing if there’s a particular phase they tend to get stuck in or get frustrated in or want to exit prematurely so they don’t get that whole completed experience. I think that that could be really useful.

(00:21:07):

Hey, I wanted to take a quick pause here because if what we’re talking about today is resonating with you, I have a free resource I think you’ll really love in this conversation. We’ve been talking a lot about helping kids regulate their nervous systems through play, but that can feel overwhelming for some parents who aren’t quite sure where to start or who want to make the most of the time they do have by fostering connection while also building real skills. And that’s why I created a free guide filled with simple connection based games that do exactly that. These activities help children strengthen their emotion regulation skills, not through lectures or lessons, but through everyday moments of play and connection. And the activities are organized by age. So whether you have a toddler or an older kiddo, you’ll find games that meet your child right where they are developmentally. And I also explain why each activity works so you can confidently make the games your own while still getting all the benefits. You can find the link to download the free guide right in the episode description or head to drsarahbren.com/games to get it sent straight to your inbox. That’s drsarahbren.com/games. Okay, let’s get back to the episode.

(00:22:28):

There’s this offhanded comment you once made to me and I cannot stop thinking about it. And we were talking about your son. We were at lunch in Vienna when I came to do a training with you and we were at lunch and I was saying like, okay, so you do all this work with parents, you have a little kid, do you feel like it’s made parenting super easy for you? And you said, oh, not definitely not, but I am the guardian of the cycles. And I was just like, oh, oh. So it, can you just explain what that even means and how that fits into this whole idea of knowing these five phases as a parent?

Alè (00:23:12):

Yes, this is beautiful. I feel here again that remember the whole thing and also remember Levi today that was playing with him and I was thinking, I just need to be guarding of his cycles guard from whom for myself, my anxiety or my fears and then say, okay, it is time to go. Please, please wait, wait, wait. He’s still in the middle of his cycle, his beginning or from others, from spouse, parents or someone that is around teachers. Because I think in some ways what parents lost is the ability to see their kids’ cycle. And this I’m bringing cycle, it’s something very complex to follow, but let’s go back to the structure. So when the child says, I am hungry, he’s starting a new cycle. So a cycle of what I need to now wait for the food or go walk to the refrigerator, get the food, eat, and then okay, I’m satisfied the rest and the new cycle will come later. So this is the cycle that’s basically on the survival. So if my son comes and say, I’m hungry, I know that I need to do something for that. I cannot say, okay, wait, wait. Because when they feel hungry, don’t wait. So I know I need to do something about he’s five years old, so I need to do something.

Dr. Sarah (00:24:52):

Basic need.

Alè (00:24:52):

The basic need.

Dr. Sarah (00:24:54):

So it’s play for a kid. Play is just as foundational, critical, biological driven as I’m hungry.

Alè (00:25:06):

Yes, but let’s suppose I say, wait, well get something there. Just go to the frigid, get something, it could work, but I don’t know how he would do it. He’s going to eat, get crazy eating or whatever. He eats something that’s not healthy, I don’t know. So I need to look into this cycle. But also there is other moments in the day that I think is crucial for him. I think this is good for most of the parents is in the morning, early morning when they wake up. So the day starting, the cycle is starting. He came from this very uni experience of sleeping and dreaming or having nightmares and now he wakes. So the psycho is starting. So if I don’t want tune with the child and I don’t see the rhythm or don’t learn the rhythm, I start to be just bossing around.

(00:26:09):

And then the kid is start to get from inside from themselves and start to just do things that is not their interest. You need to go to the school. Come on, come on, come on. So when I see that we got into this space here at home, I say, wait, wait, wait, let’s look at his eye. He’s just looking around. Looks going to take forever. So let me follow his climbing this energy of the day by inviting him to do something, join him in an activity that has nothing to do with going to the school. Remind him of something the day before that we did. And then he start just Henry start pick up and he start to go and say, okay, let’s do it. Say let’s play some Lego. And I look at the clock, I say, oh my God, he wants to do Lego.

(00:27:04):

Now it’s half an hour before. Okay, follow the cycle. And I start to do just a little bit 10 minutes, and then he’s already organizing and then he goes, get the things for the school. Okay, let’s go. Yeah, let’s go. And then we move on. So this is again looking at this very early pattern that happened in the morning without rushing, without pushing. And here’s, I want to say something Sarah, that also for parents, I realize by working with a therapist and also work with parents and seeing myself that those moments is the moment, moments of conflict of the agenda. For example, get the kids out of the door. These are moments that triggers a lot of fear into the parents. Parents get afraid of things in that moment. And I would say, is it afraid of the child? Not necessarily usually afraid of the child would not comply because my reaction would be stronger. I’m going to push, I am feeling embarrassed because I need to yell to put it out the door. So this fear makes parents double stress in the morning and overriding cycles, estimate the time they need to have a connection. That might be too long. For example, oh my God, he wants to play Lego, he wants two hours. Now this is a super estimation. Sometimes he wants just two minutes. We need to pay perview to say, okay, let’s go. So that’s another cycle that I like to follow.

(00:29:03):

The other cycle that I like to follow is another important one is cycle of creativity. Creativity and construction. Kids are hungry to construct. If they have food in the belly, now they’re going to move into create something and they’re going to create and construct what they think. So if they’re in the middle of that construction and I interrupt that and say, okay, stop there, stop watching your movie or whatever, it’s just I’m asking to have fight. I’m asking to have conflict. So I am aware of how he got into what they are in the moment. If they’re middle of the Lego middle of construction or drawing or even watching the Netflix or pep pig or whatever, I look in the bar and see, oh, it’s almost to the end. I say, okay, after finish, let’s do it. Let’s come. It’s really important that we look into the bar where it is and oh, because they are in this art of construction, it’s stopping there. It’s painful for children. It’s painful.

Dr. Sarah (00:30:22):

Yeah, we feel it. It’s funny that you say that. I actually do that all the time and I didn’t really realize I was being a guardian of my kids’ cycles, but I think I was just projecting. I do not like being interrupted. It’s something that makes me actually really agitated and irritable. And whenever I, ever since I was a little kid, and still to this day, the TV is on somewhere, I just get so entranced by it. I can’t go to restaurants that have TVs up, just it’s like a fly to the light. I can’t not get zapped in and then the whole world goes away. I can’t go into a trance. And so when people would interrupt a show, when I was watching it when I was younger, it would physically irritate me. I didn’t like that feeling. And so whenever my kids are watching something, I’m always, they know it.

(00:31:16):

They’re like, I know, I know mom. How much time is left on the thing I know because I’ll come and I’ll be like, how much time is left on that? And I make them show me on the remote and I’m like, okay. And then it’s like, let’s say it’s seven minutes left. I put out an alarm on my watch for five minutes and then I go do whatever the heck else I need to do. But I come back when my timer goes off, which is before the show ends, so then I can catch ’em before they start the next one. I don’t like interrupting their shows. I didn’t like that myself. But yeah, I was guarding their cycles.

Alè (00:31:49):

Yes, exactly that. Exactly that. And it’s very common when we are in a rush to go and say stop it, and then we close as if we are putting some limits to the kid. I think it’s okay to put a limit, but also we need to honor how far they got the construction of what they’re watching or what they’re building there. So I don’t think we need to think twice before interrupting. So I rarely interrupt my son when he’s in the middle, but if I have to, I negotiate. If I have to, I negotiate. I can say and say, okay Olivia, we definitely need to go right now. Let’s make a deal. We go there and when I go back, we’re going to start exactly where you finish. I can see your Lego is here. No one can touch your Lego now. And I even say I never do think that it needs to be clear.

(00:33:03):

For example, I got a paper or a mark and I put, okay, let’s put it here. This is levee, let’s close. Nobody touch. This is levee area. Okay, levy deal. Deal. Okay, let’s go. So I really take the time to really show that I care for his construction, not necessarily his time. I care for the process of construction. And what I see over these years is he immediately go back to where he stop it, we pause, he resume is so precise. If at night, bedtime we pause, I make a deal in the morning, the first thing he do is come out of the bed and pick up where he left and I join them. So I really need to track the beginning, middle, and end of their mind construction because those things are physically, like you said, painful if we stop and disorganizing for the nervous system is very disorganizing.

Dr. Sarah (00:34:16):

Yeah. Which is why I think we can see those meltdowns sometimes if it happens too quickly for them, they can really not just give us resistance, but they could totally lose it. They go into this full on meltdown. But you said something though when you were describing how Levy goes back, it’s like his body knows where he left off and he knows exactly how to go back and he almost has to because he needs to finish. Do you think that’s something that Levy has developed because of this space you’ve given to help him really orient to and be comfortable with? On some level? I don’t doubt consciously. He’s sitting there being like, I’m in readiness and now I am in flow and then I am in integration. But because you’ve facilitated his ability to do that full completion of the cycle so many times that he’s more attuned to that need to complete it. Whereas a kid who maybe has been so chronically interrupted and not just because maybe it’s parents not knowing that that’s important and doing their best, maybe they have a little sibling who’s always interrupted. There’s a million ways kids can get interrupted. Do you think that that’s something that kids can kind of lose and need to get better at getting back to And that could be facilitated or is it innate always. They always know.

Alè (00:35:50):

Yeah, I think working with kids, everything can return it. A lot of things can return easily. But first of all, there is one point kids they don’t know, they’re not conscious about, they need to finish their own cycles.

(00:36:09):

What they think is, oh, I don’t don’t want to disappoint my mother. I don’t want to disappoint my father or anything. So they make sacrifices with their own things in order to keep the peace around or get this love. But if they’re chronically interrupted, they start to lose trust either on the person outside or in themselves. So imagine get the scene, we go through this all the time as adult, we say, okay, I’ll have an idea. Let me open my laptop, let me do something. And I would think, actually, I just have 10 minutes. I don’t want to even start it. Okay. We start to not trust or the time or people who interrupt. And for some kids they feel disoriented. They feel disoriented. They don’t know their orientation system. They’re always searching for something because they’re stuck into the readiness, stuck of beginning of things beginning.

(00:37:21):

That hasn’t started yet. So that’s one part of this. Another part is I think talking about my son, I was very mindful from the day one. If for example, he was a baby, he was with me and then he was walking with him and then he look to flower or something, a brunch or a tree, and I would see the orientation and then I will pause and then we start to walk towards what he was looking at until I assume that could be the flower. And then he touched the flower, and then I would see that and then he look at something else and then I would go around and start to explore with him. So that was very daily based situation that I was just joined with him in the world to be together and getting out of my mind just to be with him. And I could see that he developed this sharp sense of orientation and is so confident in how he puts ideas together. For example, sometimes he got the Lego, he stay one hour piece by piece, organizing, put it together because he trusts that we would not interrupt him. And that trust is very implicit. Now, sometime thing doesn’t go well because the days are not falling by levy. There’s other things. So that’s why negotiation coming into play, not necessarily use of force. This would be a third, fourth. Fourth ways of put some boundaries.

Dr. Sarah (00:39:21):

Yeah, because I mean, listen, I think one, a parent could hear this and be like, oh, I didn’t do this since they were a baby and we live these busy lives and they’re seven now what do I do? But what I’m also hearing you say is this is very intrinsic. We can get back to this, this, it’s like a rubber band. If we can find out where it’s gotten stuck and we pull it off the hook, it will snap back. These kids, their bodies are very resilient. What are some things that we can do to help a child who maybe gets stuck in readiness or skips readiness and wants to just do all the time? How do we help them get that sense of orientation and organization back?

Alè (00:40:22):

Okay, always we have hope for change. Oh, I believe sometimes we might not be able to do it or we think, no, I interrupted for the whole life and now how can I do it? But there is something that is about working with kid that is magical, which is appreciation. If we are genuinely appreciate one of his ideas or something that he plan to do, I’m thinking to go there to use this. And then I come and say, this is such a great idea. So when kids feel that appreciation, it seems like this road for the whole cycle just opens. And then he wants to show more. He wants to do it. He stays on a task for a long time. For example, I was with one client and she was very insecure to do things. And then she said, yeah, but I like a slime play with slime.

(00:41:38):

And I said, is slime, that thing is so magical. Do you do your slime? And she was like, A balloon of light comes into the moment and then she stays in this loop of talking about slime and then we play something. And then she did. And at the end she said, when can I come back here? So we use one structure, the beginning, middle, end to play with slime. That could be so ordinary. But like I said, it doesn’t matter, the substance, the structure is already organizing the whole nervous system for other tasks, for tasks that’s more noble, let’s say. And that’s where I think we need to add to that is it’s a genuine interest. Genuine interest for one task. One idea. This is a door opening for the connection with children. Not much technique. Not much technique. It’s really like that’s great. Show me that.

Dr. Sarah (00:42:51):

And in doing it, this was something I took from what I’ve learned from you and applied it to my clinical practice and my parenting. And I found it to be very helpful, which is we have these big tricky moments, these repeated challenges we have with a kid or a kid that we’re working with is having at home, whatever that we were trying to help them with. But the nervous system doesn’t really know or care if the cycle that we’re moving it through is the problem or slime. If you can help stretch a child that wants to go go into readiness a little longer, and again, you taught me this, I was like, I do this a lot with families, with a kid, kids who are on the go, maybe they have a DHD, maybe they have a lot of energy, Ferrari motor tricycle breaks. And I’m trying to help a parent build a skill for that kid to slow down, think, orient notice, because that’s where they’re having all the issues in their home, their day-to-day life or at school.

(00:44:05):

But I’m like, okay, they want to help. It’s time for dinner. Let’s set the table. They were like, okay. So they run to go do it, be like, oh wait, hold on. How many plates do we need? What should we’re having soup? Do we need spoons? So you’re just stretching them in readiness, you’re practicing that stretch. Or after you do something, let’s say you’re playing a game or brushing your teeth, brushing your teeth, they put the toothbrush down, you go, that probably tastes like mint or whatever, but you’re stretching them in integration or rest reflect before they want to run to the next thing. So if you have a kid who doesn’t necessarily go through these cycles evenly or easily on their own out of that rhythm, it’s like an exercise, like physical therapy. It’s just like practice stretching the readiness or practice stretching the rest at the end. Or for a kid who’s really tentative when you can move them from thinking about and planning to do something and they actually take the first step, just protecting that a little bit, really inhibiting, interrupting it and then letting, so you’re almost like creating a more space for them to stay in that stretch. That has been so helpful because in doing something kind of benign or relevant or like you said, it’s, it’s a small simple task, you’re still resetting that nervous system. You’re still offering an opportunity to organize and that carries over into all the rest of their life. The nervous system doesn’t really care which sardine to your metaphor gets put in the can.

Alè (00:46:10):

Exactly that. Exactly, yes. So we can also add something that is working with the beginnings are the gold work at the beginnings are gold. I will keep saying this my whole life because practically I leave this every day in my office. I leave this every day with the kids. If for example, those examples you gave are fantastic. For example, if you have those kids that is so fast, they say, let’s play Jenga. They’re already pulling the things and put it together, and then we see this whole pile of piece of wood all disorganized, and then they say, oh no, I don’t want play this anymore. I want to give up. They give up easily. And then in this moment I can really say like, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, I think this is a good idea. So let’s do it again. Let’s do it again. Let’s start over again. But this time I help you or I put it together, the pieces, and then you watch it. Is that okay? Okay. And then I start to model how to do it. So in the beginning and I say, come now, let’s start now. Tell me when it’s time to start. Oh, right now say, wait, wait, wait. I think we need to count until 10. Let’s put in the clock you first or me first.

(00:47:47):

Me, me, me. Okay, this time is you. Next time is me. Okay, okay. And then they start all those moments we take in the beginning to model, to pace it, to help them to think through. It’s so, it’s so important because we don’t want them to give up that easily. But now there is another side of the story. If I am the parents that I am more into the ADHD, I’m very fast. What happen is I might not have so much patience to wait. So what I do, I start to start things for them. And this is also problematic because we are cutting the power of their own initiative. We’re not cutting their initiative. We’re cutting the power of their initiative. And then they learn how to resign the first impulses. And I think this is a problem, the resignation of their first impulses, especially for kids that’s more shy. It’s trouble. It’s trouble.

Dr. Sarah (00:49:02):

Oh man, yes. I had to click some little aha when you were talking that when you distinguished cutting off the power to their idea or their, what was the word?

Alè (00:49:16):

Initiatives.

Dr. Sarah (00:49:17):

Initiatives. Cutting off the power to their initiative is not the same thing as turning off the initiative. So then where does the initiative go? Because now you have this kinetic energy that was created as a result of this idea and the initiative, but then you snip it, the initiative doesn’t get expressed. But now the body’s holding that kinetic energy and if it builds up all the time that kid’s going, and then you wonder why we have a kid who at school is knocking off people’s things or being too impulsive with, in other people’s space, their body has too much kinetic energy, can’t get released through completing the idea, the cycle. And then it’s like too much stuff is stored up in them and it’s popping out in weird places.

Alè (00:50:11):

Yes, yes. And you mentioned something important, which is the delay of the reaction. The delay of the reaction for that initiative that stayed there inside because it would in frustration probably. So later, five minutes later, and then suddenly you see they broken something or you see they are just writing down in a wall or they say, I don’t like you, whatever. But if we don’t connect the beginning, the chronic anticipation of what you’re doing with them with these aggressive behavior later from the child will never change because you don’t make a connection. But I’m here to say, look, there’s a connection and kids will not tell you immediately. Most of them will tell you later with a delay. So sometimes the delay is the next day, but will come.

(00:51:19):

This part I love to see, I really see this delays happening and that’s where sometimes I come and say, okay, this is it. For example, let me give this example. I remember Levi came and he’s very mellow, and then he started just throw things and then I start to go back and say, what did I do? What was the interruption? It looks like I’m obsessed by that. But anyway, what’s the interruption? What’s happening? And said, no, I don’t remember. I don’t remember. And then I said maybe or something in the school from yesterday. Okay, let me try that. And I say, call Levy. He said, levy, I can see that you did something happen in school yesterday. And oh, I say, I tried to talk to Linda, but she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. And I said, okay, now I understand. Okay, what if you want to go to the school? I talked to the teacher that was not your fault or whatever. And then he’s great, let’s go to the school. And then he put his shoes and let’s go to the school. So if you find this, I dunno how to checkbox or I don’t know, how do you hit the right spot?

(00:52:55):

Three lemons took three lemons. If you got three lemons, wow. It has a profound change in the aggression in everything and in the trust. They say, huh, lives move on. Let’s go. So that’s why I think it’s important that we understand those sequences and how to combine with our lives. I don’t know how to say that, but I will say three lemons comes when we quite often when we follow those threats.

Dr. Sarah (00:53:38):

And yes, I think I hear always when I talk about things like this in the back of my mind, I’m always hearing the internal counter that parents will say, but I cannot do all this stuff. I don’t have time to do this stuff. Or we just sometimes have to go or I just have to interrupt them, or I have a plan A and I can’t always go with their plan A and I so get that. And you are not wrong and you are not crazy that this doesn’t always fit in life. But I also know that you can find these little moments for it and they have a massive payoff. So it’s worth it to start to integrate these ideas into your daily life because I promise you, it doesn’t feel as intrusive and burdensome to do this as it might sound like to slow down in the mornings and play a little bit before we get dressed and have breakfast.

(00:54:44):

If I have 25 minutes to get my kids up and out the door, that’s not going to work. But if I can get 35 minutes, find 10 extra minutes, and I find a couple minutes here and there, it can be found. These moments can be found without it becoming a burden on the parents. It’s just really, it’s about kind of if you start to shift your orientation as a parent to like, okay, I’m going to start looking for these cycles. And once I start to understand that, then I’m going to start to notice where the interruptions might be happening, where I could connect one.to a delayed expression of frustration. You can do this in little bits and pieces and it has a massive impact. Do you find that parents have that same like, Ugh, I can’t just do all this stuff.

Alè (00:55:40):

Yes, this conflicting agendas plan A from the child, plan A from the adult. And we always need to remember we cut also to say that we just need to be good enough. We don’t need to be all the perfect parents, or we’ll make mistake. Where’s the moment that we are going to say, come on, let’s go out of the door. No, no, no, no, this is enough. Okay, if that happens, it’s totally okay. But the problem is when you start to feel bad about that because you need to do this often that’s where the communication is not happen. There is a battle plan, A against plan A, and then we stay in this tug of war. If you notice you are in the tug of war, I would say that because we are adults, we are the ones that need to initiate that. Say, okay, okay, I think let’s pause here.

(00:56:41):

I need to regroup and find a way to listen to the child. But if it’s once in a while, that’s fine. But if we’re not aware, this is happening. As soon as you start to get aware of that and start to say to the child, come on, let’s take a little bit more time. They might look like, oh, what’s happening? This is strange. Never happened before. But those are moments of reparation. Moments of reparation is not like snap finger has this, oh, something change here. So we need stay in this transition of reparation because I believe that kids needs a lot of reparation from as adults, not parents, for as adults. Kids are, we are not seeing our kids as they deserve or how they are. I see in general, with the rise of this medication, the rise of punishment, the rise for many of this organization that’s happening, we are not seeing kids as they deserve.

Dr. Sarah (00:57:57):

Yeah, I mean I’d throw into that mix the change in education and how much we expect of kids to sit and not play. There’s so much that the world is moving so fast and we’re evolving, and whether that’s we want to consider that good or bad, it’s irrelevant. It’s we are forgetting that the kids have a different pace and we’re going, the whole world is getting constructed to be so much faster than they can go. And so yeah, going back and being like, where can I slow down? Where can I look at this through not just their perspective but their pace and how can I help them organize themselves inside of this fast moving world, but can I create a little bit of a buffer for them to figure out their next steps? And ideally with play as part of the vehicle for that, I think it can be insanely valuable. The dividends pay exponential returns.

Alè (00:59:09):

B. Yes. So I was even thinking today also here in the podcast and the lecture that I’m preparing is to say less is more. And then I thought less of what, and I put it here, less pressure, less big plans to the child think there they need to be ready in the college and then we lose moment here. Less of asking them to do things without us. We need to participate more and putting more here and more togetherness, more company, more attention like physical attention and more, I would even say the word that a lot of psychologists don’t like more friendship, but not a friendship. Like a parents need to be friends of their child. But also I believe that there is a friendship connection in a human level that make us, you know…

Dr. Sarah (01:00:27):

Like companionship.

Alè (01:00:28):

Yeah, this companionship. I think it’s better when we have more than more with kids. They feel AC company, they feel together, they’re able to follow their ideas and we start to know them much more every time. Say, wow, I didn’t know you think this way. Wow, I live with you here for 10 years now. I can’t believe we were able to say that.

Dr. Sarah (01:01:01):

Yeah. Then you get to just find awe in them and delight in them more, which just to bring it all back to attachment that a parent’s ability to delight in their child is one of the biggest predictors of secure attachment. Sometimes we have to be with them and accompany them to find time to get that delight. And that deepens the attachment relationship too.

Alè (01:01:27):

Yes. And I’ll say it doesn’t need to be all the time, but you need to open the door at least a little bit per day.

Dr. Sarah (01:01:40):

Ale, thank you. This is the best. I love talking with you. It always makes me feel like of sense of peace and orientation to, okay, I can do this. I have ideas about how I can bring this into my life with my kids and my work with kids. If parents are listening or clinicians are listening and they want to know more about you, the work that you do, the kids Soma, whether it’s how to get trained in it as a clinician or how as a parent to go find a practitioner who is trained in this, how can we connect them with you?

Alè (01:02:17):

So you can look into my website, aleduarte.com, A-L-E. Alè from Alexandria, Alexander, aleduarte.com, or even you can Google KidSoma, and then probably going to take to the website. I do trainings for, most of the trainings are for professionals that work with children, and I do have a portion of this connection or trainings for parents that probably will do the end of the year in December, something online. And also you’re going to find me in YouTube for a few videos. I’m not too present in the social media, but I think that’s a good way to start through the trainings.

Dr. Sarah (01:03:08):

Yeah, okay. Well, we’ll link all that for sure so people can easily find that. But thank you so much.

Alè (01:03:17):

Thank you.

Dr. Sarah (01:03:17):

I’ve learned so much today. I always learned from you.

(01:03:26):

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