Eps 100: Dr. Tina Bryson Supports Us With Brain Informed Parenting→

Subscribe to the Podcast

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Hello, joyful courage community. Oh my goodness, I am so, so excited to welcome you to this week's show. It's a big deal. This episode is episode 100 100 we've made it. Over the last two years, I've had some incredible guests on the show, people like Dr Laura Markham and Amy McCready, Ross green and Rosalyn Wiseman. I had people who I look up to, like Bonnie Harris, Rebecca Eins, Patty whipler And Rachel Macy Stafford Rafi was on the podcast, and today, my guest is another name that you've heard me talk about. I've referenced her work, and I am deeply, deeply honored to get to be in conversation with her. So sit back and enjoy and really join me in celebration of what we have created here at the podcast. Thank you so much. I am so in love with this community, and that includes every single one of you listeners. Hey everybody, welcome back to the joyful courage podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the parenting journey. I am your host, Casey o'rourdy, positive discipline trainer and parent coach, and I am thrilled that you are listening in be sure to listen after the interview. I have some really special offers and calls to action that I do not want you to miss out on. If you find yourself laughing, taking notes and or excited about what you hear on the show today, and I'm sure that you will do me a favor and pay it forward. Share this episode with your friends, family, neighbors, strangers at the gas station, your sharing is the reason I'm able to show up for you each week, and I am deeply honored to do so. My guest today is Dr Tina Payne Bryson, co author with Dan Siegel of two New York Times bestsellers, the whole brain child and no drama discipline, each of which has been translated in over 20 languages, both of which I mentioned pretty regularly on the show and in my work with parents. Tina is a psychotherapist and the Executive Director of the Center for connection in Pasadena, California, where she offers parenting consultation and provides therapy to children and adolescents. Dr Bryson keynotes conferences and conducts workshops for parents, educators and clinicians all over the world. She has written for numerous publications. She earned her license and social work and PhD from the University of Southern California, where her research explored attachment science, child rearing theory and the emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology, Tina emphasizes that before she's a parenting educator or a researcher, she's a mom, she limits her clinical practice and speaking engagements so that she can spend time with her family alongside her husband, parenting her three boys is what makes her happiest. Hi, Dr Bryson, welcome to the podcast. Hi

Dr. Tina Bryson 3:03
Casey, thanks for having me. I'm so excited to talk to you. I love your work and all the awesome stuff you're doing out there to help support parents and so it's really fun to get to join with you today.

Casey O'Roarty 3:14
Oh, thank you. Yes. I'm so glad that you were a yes. Will you please share a little bit more about your journey of doing what you do? Yeah,

Dr. Tina Bryson 3:24
you know, my my plan was to be a high school English teacher. So I got a degree in education and in English and and while my husband was working on a PhD and was in grad school, and we had no money, and he was studying all the time, I thought, well, I might as well get a master's degree. And so I got a master's in social work, and then planned to be a stay at home mom. And that was my plan. Since the time I was, you know, a little girl, all I wanted to do was be a mommy. That was my career goal, a good one. And I had my first son, and I was so happy to stay home with him, and at that time, we moved to California. We were living in Texas at the time, and I was so happy to move back to California, where all my family was, and my plan was to be his mommy full time, and my husband said, we need you to work at some point, because we live in Southern California, and so I had done some victim advocacy work and a lot of education kinds of things, teaching about domestic violence and that kind of thing. And so I decided, well, maybe I'll be a social work Professor then, so I'll get a PhD so I can teach and then still be really with my boys. And in the process, I met Dan Siegel, who's my co author, and fell in love with attachment science and child rearing theory and all of that, and started doing more of what I love, educating people and doing some parenting classes and all of that. And in the meantime, I kept having babies, and I kept studying with Dan. Because I followed him and started learning about this field of interpersonal neurobiology, which is really foundationally about how relationships influence and build the mind and the brain and So, long story short, as I was learning, I basically started finding that the science had so much to help guide us as parents and understand our children's minds and brains and behaviors and our own in really kind of profound ways. And so I went to Dan one day and I said, Hey, I've been using this Interpersonal Neurobiology stuff as a parent, and and here's what I'm doing. And so that's kind of how the whole brain child was born. My boys now are 1714, and 10, and what I still feel most passionate about is teaching. And so that original kind of goal to be a teacher is still what really drives me. I don't do as much clinical work or parent consultations. I still do some, but mostly I'm educating parents and educators and mental health people. And now I do actually a lot of work in the camp world as well, like the youth camp. How awesome kind of world the, you know, child development stuff, and totally helping them understand that behavior may not be what you think it is, and that behavior is communicating some things, and that your instincts for how to respond to that behavior might not be the best, most effective response, and that there are better ways that actually make behavior get better, more quickly and help build the brain at the same time. So it's just really exciting work. I feel honored every day to get to do this work, because I I believe in it. I live it. It takes constant practice, and for me, and I think because I get to do what I do, it's constantly kind of on the forefront and reminding me so that it guides my own continues to guide my own parenting. Because it is hard work. It is

Casey O'Roarty 7:08
hard, yeah, and I love that you're working in the camper world, because even in my community, yeah, I Well, I went to Catalina Island camps. Oh, you did. I was a career camper, and then right into being a counselor. And there was no training around, like, how you, you know, the teenagers that were running the show. And I also work, you know, I used to work at the YMCA, and I've done, I was, I do some training with them, and, and it's shown up in my parent community, just the you know, these parents that are using the tools, many of which come straight from your work, others from positive discipline. They're using these tools, their tools, with their kids, and they're shifting their lens around behavior, and then their kids go to camp again. Typically, the typical camp counselor is what, like 19, yep. And that's right. And the training is, you know, they're much more concerned with physical safety, right? Important, which is absolutely important, but it's like, there's this disconnect around, you know, you're misreading this behavior, and because of that, you're reacting in a way that's actually not helpful, and so it can be hurtful. It's

Dr. Tina Bryson 8:21
pretty exciting. You know, over a million kids go to some type of camp in the summer. Some of those are day camps. Some of them are overnight camps. And so I've actually been partnering with a colleague of mine who started a company called lantern camps, which kind of lights the way to really good quality camps. And lantern camps, my colleague Michael Thompson, and I started doing some little videos and podcasts for camps and all of that, and then I've been able to keynote at some of the major camp conferences to get this message out to directors, and I do training. In fact, the Catalina Island camps asked me to come and do training for their staff this summer. I wasn't able to make the dates work, but I'm there. I think more and more the camp community is eager to bring some of that child development stuff. I just got back from Minnesota, where I was there. This is my sixth year to spend three days at camp with these 1920 year old camp counselors to prepare them for the campers to come at a camp called Camp Chippewa for boys in Cass Lake, Minnesota, where my boys go. But you know what I tell these 1920 year old guys or girls the counselors is pretty much the same message that I tell parents, yeah, and that I tell educators, because it's based on what we know about the brain. And you know the the main ideas you don't have to be part and one of the main ideas is you don't have to be perfect. You don't know what you don't have to know what to say. You don't have to know what to do. What you need most to do is to show up and help them feel safe and to say, I'm here with you. And even if that's in the middle of some really challenging behavior, the challenging behavior may be communicating that their nervous system is acting like they're under threat and they're freaking out, or they're having anxiety or anger. That they don't yet know how to regulate in that moment, and they need us to really just show up and say, I'm here with you, that that's one of the most important things we can do, and it builds the brain too in really incredible ways.

Casey O'Roarty 10:12
So in your work with parents and teachers and camp counselors, that the people that you speak to, what do you find are some of the common assumptions. Because I think, you know, I think that that's our biggest problem as the adults in the relationship, is that we are making assumptions left and right about the why.

Dr. Tina Bryson 10:31
Yep, yeah. So, you know, that's why. Dan in the no drama discipline book, Dan and I use the phrase chase the why, and I, one of the things I say a lot when I speak to audiences is that one of the most important things we can bring to discipline or to the whole idea of changing behavior, is actually curiosity. Because, yeah, right, yeah. So you people,

Casey O'Roarty 10:53
I know what I'm talking about when I say drop into curiosity. Thank you. Tina, yes,

Dr. Tina Bryson 10:57
okay, good. Well, we're saying the same thing, and that means we're, you know, that's confirmation on truth. There's a colleague of mine who is up in Oregon who specializes it with autistic populations. He has a great phrase. She says, Turn frustration into fascination. And it's this idea that the behaviors that our kids have that drive us crazy, that frustrate us, that worry us the most, that if we can move into or use, as you said, drop into curiosity or become fascinated with that behavior, it allows us to override the assumptions. And the assumptions are often that the child is doing this behavior to to us like it's personal. They're doing it to make us mad or to bother us. Another assumption that's really common is that the child actually could choose differently if they wanted to that, if they if they tried harder, or if they did better, or if they wanted to do better, they care to have more motivation exactly that they could do better. And of course, sometimes kids do stuff to get to us on purpose, of course, and of course, they sometimes with effort and trying better, or whatever they can do better, but not all the time. And the other main one that I see that is so pervasive among both educators and parents is that when we try and explain a behavior, or we're kind of giving an explanation or an attribution about what the behavior is about. We assume that it's about the child's character. So, for instance, we might say, you know, he's not doing well in school because he's just, he's just lazy, or he just doesn't care, or, you know, he's just trying to get attention. You know, we do these things that often the word just is in there somewhere, but we assume it's about the child's character. And even as a trained child development specialist and a licensed clinical mental health professional, I don't know what the intervention is for a character flaw, but what I know is that if we become curious, and we go, now wait a minute, what was this behavior about what was the child's intention, or what was happening in their internal landscape? What we often will get to is that their nervous system was in threat mode, or their nervous system was moved them to a place where it wasn't a choice. It was, it was a reactive kind of choice. And, you know, Casey, one of the, one of the kind of frameworks that I use, that I think is so helpful, is to talk about when you're in a good state of mind. And, you know, Dan and I would use the phrase integrated, when you're in a state of integration, where you're calm and you're flexible and you can use your full problem solving abilities. That's when your nervous system is actually pretty well balanced in that state, and we call that the green zone. When you're in the green zone, you can think clearly. You can make good decisions. You know your your behaviors are really choices. You really can choose to do better, or, you know, whatever. But if your nervous system starts getting too revved up, you get really angry or really anxious, or you feel really embarrassed, or something kind of sends you into this is not going so well for me. If that gets intense enough, your nervous system goes into this dialed up response where your heart's beating faster and your, you know, your your whole nervous system gets into this reactive mode where fight, flight, freeze can come on. We call that the red zone, and then the there's also another kind of opposite of that, where your nervous system shuts down and you kind of go into what we call the blue zone, and that's where your heart rate actually drops, and you get really floppy, and you can move into this state. And the idea is that the brain is either in a receptive state, where it's open and flexible, or what Dan and I would call a yes brain, or the brain is in a reactive state, or in a no brain state, where you're defensive and fighting and shut down and rigid and all of these things. So the red and blue would be a reactive state, and the green. Would be a receptive state.

We often assume that a child's bad behavior is the child's choice, and that's true if they're in the green zone, but if they're in the red zone or in the blue zone, it is actually not a choice to do better, their nervous system has taken over, and the fight, flight, freeze stuff comes on, and they actually can't learn or think, they can't even access their frontal lobe. And we know that the nervous system actually does this weird thing where it actually changes the the ability and the inner ear to even hear human voices very well. So you kind of just world, and you just go into this reactive state. So I think what's really interesting about this is that we assume that behavior is always a choice, and that's not true. It's often our nervous system that takes over, and my whole framework around discipline, and I'm sure this is, this is your framework too. Is that behavior communicates what skills haven't yet been built. Behavior communicate like, if you what I often do with parents in a workshop is I'll have them say, I want you to make a list, title your list problem behaviors or discipline problems, and make a list of the two or three things that are the biggest issues around discipline, and then they I let them do it, and then I asked them to cross out the title discipline problems and retitle the list skills my child needs to learn or what my child needs to be taught. So, you know, for me, and I can't do it in the moment, oftentimes with my kids, you know, like, let me give an example. So my eighth grader comes to me on Sunday night at 6pm and says, Mom, can you take me to Michael's craft store? And he's asking me because he has a project due the next morning, right? And, you know, in that moment, I'm not at all like thinking, Oh, he's really communicating, like, in that moment, he's

Casey O'Roarty 17:00
lacking skills right now?

Dr. Tina Bryson 17:01
Yeah, no, I'm not thinking. And the moment, I'm like, I'm so mad at him, and I'm even cussing inside my head, you know? But a few days later, I thought, You know what? He told me something. He told me he doesn't yet have the ability to delay gratification and say, Hey, I'm going to work on my project instead of going and playing football with my buddies, right? He showed me he doesn't yet have the executive skills consistently right, to plan ahead and think about what materials he needs and what what his mom's schedule might be like. He doesn't have that yet. So for me, I'm like, okay, he doesn't yet have those skills. So I I can't be mad at him for what I have not yet taught him, or what development hasn't yet unfolded. So my job now is to ask myself, what is it I need him to learn? Here? Is he developmentally capable of learning that? Yes. And then how can I intentionally work to build those skills? So what that meant was that Friday night or Saturday morning, before he went off to do fun things for the weekend, we looked at what he had coming up, and we made plans together until he could do that on his own. And, you know, sometimes it's not specific skills like that. It's just that we have an unrealistic expectation about development. You know,

Casey O'Roarty 18:09
well, I really appreciate what you said, that it's not, it might not be that they don't have the skills. It's that they are not, they don't have this the skills in a way that allows them to tap into it consistently. I consistently. We adults, like, that's one of the places where I think we kind of stir up the mischief. Is when it's like, What do you mean? You haven't mastered that, right? What do you mean? I just told you you should, or you handled the bedtime was easy last night. Why? What is your problem? Right?

Dr. Tina Bryson 18:40
No, that's that. That actually brings up another sort of assumption we make, which is that if they can do it some one time, they can always do it, or that they can do it consistently. And, you know, I actually had this, this moment in my office one time I was working with a couple and they had a five year old son who was really dysregulated. I mean, the family was sort of at the the mercy of his. He went red zone all the time, just constant tantruming. He would get aggressive and violent. And when we chased the Y and peeled back the layers to what this was about and why his nervous system was so reactive, this was a boy who actually, in fact, had some sensory challenges that had not yet been identified, and so that kind of guided our intervention. But when I was having a conversation with the dad, I was explaining to him that his child's reactivity, a lot of time, was a cant for him, that he couldn't help it, that his nervous system was in the state of threat, and that when the dad would would fight with him, he would actually send him further into the red zone, right when the dad would yell at him and wag his finger in his face. And I said, you're just communicating more to the nervous system threat, and so he can't move into the green zone. And so I the dad was just sitting there, and I, you know, I his body language was just brutal. I could tell he was not buying. But I would say this lady, yeah, he's like, oh gosh, you know. So I looked at him, and I said, I didn't want to send him into the red zone, so I was really careful to be played. And soft in my approach. I didn't want him to move to reactivity. But I said to him, I'm I'm wondering. I said I'm getting the sense from you, which is, like, such a therapist thing to say I'm getting the sense from you that you what I'm saying isn't really resonating. Why don't you argue with me? And he said, I just don't buy this camp thing. I mean, he can handle himself. You know, just last week, I told him, Hey, you can't go to the Dodgers game like I promised. And he handled himself really well. So when I tell him, you can't have the blue cup, and he loses his mind and starts kicking and screaming and throwing things across the room like he could do better. He just needs stricter discipline. And I said to the dad, well, what have you been trying? And he paused, and he said, stricter discipline. And like he realized in that moment that was not going to be the answer. So I said to the Dad, let me ask you something against being really soft in my approach. I said, I assume that you are patient and loving with your children most of the time, but that there are times that you're not. There are times you're reactive and you yell and you're impatient. I said, that's how I am. I'm assuming that's how you are, too. And he said, Yeah, that's right. And I said, What is it that gets in the way for you? What is it that moves you into places where you're impatient or reactive or, you know, whatever? And he said, Well, if I'm tired, or if I, you know, if I've got stress at work, or if my wife and I are fighting. And I said, So you're saying you can be patient loving you just decide not to. And he kind of, like, was like, Aha, and he kind of laughed. And, you know, I the joke I like to tell is I did eventually get paid for that session, so that was good. I turned the corner, but he said, he said, Okay, I see what you're saying. And I said, just like, your behavior isn't consistent all the time, right? A five year old cannot be consistent. And, you know, if you have a kid who is predictably unpredictable in a really, you know, in a huge ways, where the kid is all over the place, sometimes that's developmentally appropriate. But as our kids get older, there should be less of that, right? And if it continues, then that's a time where we all might, you know, seek out a professional to kind of look to see if there's something like and like ADHD, or a sensory challenge or a learning disability that hasn't been found, or those kinds of things well. And I think it's really

Casey O'Roarty 22:08
important what you were able to point out to that dad and something that I mentioned working with parents as well. You know? You know, I am 43 years old, and I have 43 years of life, experience and lessons and and learning and relationships to get to filter whatever is happening in my world gets filtered through all of this experience. You know, when I look at my 14 year old or my 11 year old, or, you know, if our kids are five or eight or what or two even, how they have so their filters, no filter. There's nothing for them to put what's happening for them against to make more rational, for lack of a better word, rational is probably not a great word to make sense of what's happening.

Dr. Tina Bryson 22:53
Yeah, and not to mention that they don't even have a fully developed frontal lobe yet, right? That is the part of our brain. You know, we have this thing called the middle prefrontal cortex, and it's right behind your eyebrows and the orbits of your eyes. It's the very last part of the brain to develop, and this is the part of the brain that allows us to feel empathy for other people and be flexible and regulate our own emotions and pause before we react and do all of these, you know, pretty sophisticated things. And so, you know, we have fully developed prefrontal cortices, but our kids do not. Our adolescents, for sure, don't. And so they're much more likely for that reactive reptilian brain to kind of hijack that part of the brain so that they do act kind of like a reptile under attack at times, right? They don't have that perspective and all of that memory and those experiences, and it's that prefrontal cortex that provides that filter, and they don't even have the architecture to support that fully all the time well, and

Casey O'Roarty 23:49
it's not even just then. This is what I love about your work and about what I get to bring to parents, that it's not just our kids' brains that we need to understand, that it's also a deeper awareness about how our adult brains work for

Dr. Tina Bryson 24:05
sure, right? I mean, the red zones are contagious, so our kids go these reactive places, and then we do too, right? Yeah. So

Casey O'Roarty 24:12
what are some tools that you share with parents, that you can share with the listeners that help us in our rewiring of our brains so that we can be be with our children and do better, right? Not perfection, progress, not perfection, people, exactly. But how can because, like you just said, red zone is contagious. So what can we do to help ourselves when our kids, typical, like, typical development or not, are going into the red zone so that we can show up well for them.

Dr. Tina Bryson 24:43
Yeah, well, the first thing I would say is to be gentle with ourselves, because the more the harder we are on ourselves about the ruptures that come up inevitably in parenting, and if we move into these kind of shame spirals about those kinds of things, that actually makes us more reactive over time. Shame actually causes our brains to be less integrated. And so I think the first thing is being kind to ourselves, forgiving ourselves, being gentle with ourselves. And you know, I really love Kristin neff's work. And EFF, she does the self compassion work where she basically, you know, teaches you to be as kind to yourself in your internal voice as you would be to a friend, so to tell yourself, Oh, sweetie, you've been having a hard day, like, let's just take a breath, and then we'll sort of see what we can do next. And, you know, let's just move on. You're having a hard day, it's okay go do something to take care of yourself. You know, if you can just kind of give yourself some self compassion, that's the first thing. The second thing is to remember that our brains are plastic, still, even in our old, old ages here so that it takes a lot of practice. Just like the first time you heard seven times seven is 49 you didn't know that it took repetition, repetition, repetition, before you knew that it takes a long time. And you know, just like you said earlier, you know, we say to our kids, like I've already told you that, why aren't you doing it? I always want to coach a six year old to say, Well, according to neuroplasticity, it's going to probably take multiple repetition over multiple months before I know that. You know, I think any time we start trying new parenting kinds of things, just being no knowing that it's going to take a long time of practice to do this differently than we've been doing it. So what I want to share with you now is sort of a, probably the tip, or the strategy, for when our kids are in these reactive states that has been the most successful for the most amount of people. It's something that the most people have come back to me and said, I cannot believe how well that works. How magic it is great so, and it's something we can do even when we feel like we want to scream, even when we feel like because to me, like the counting to 10 thing never works, right? We all have different, different ways that we, you know, handle ourselves. But Okay, so let me take you back to the same dad and mom that I was talking to, where the dad was like, you know. So I said to the dad, you know what happens? So he's demanding, I want the blue cup, and he's screaming and yelling. And, you know how, what is your response? Typically? Like, we said, well, I usually scream and yell too, and and I end up, you know, it ends up going to not very good places, you know. And I said, like, and he, you know, after I've already told him my duty to report if he tells me,

Casey O'Roarty 27:22
right?

Dr. Tina Bryson 27:25
But he says, you know, ultimately I end up screaming at him. I ultimately end up telling him, go to your room. He won't go to his room. So I carry him to his room. I put him in his room. He won't stay in his room. I hold the door. He's screaming and destroying his room on the other side, and he's like, this happens over and over and over. So I said, Now I assume when you're in this moment with your kid, like kid's red zone, you're going red zone. I assume when you're yelling at him, you have a really angry look on your face and an aggressive tone of voice and an aggressive posture. And he said, Yeah, I'm sure I do. And I said, Now let's think about this. Your child is a mammal. Let's think about a different mammal. Let's think about a dog for a moment. And if you were to approach a dog that was in a red zone, state, agitated Fight, Flight free. State, would you use an aggressive tone of voice and an aggressive body posture with the dog? And he said, No, that'd be really stupid. The dog would bite me. And I said, Yeah, that would be dumb. What would you do? What would you do if you had an agitated dog that you were wanting to kind of interact with, like help get them in the house or get them into a car or something. He said, I guess I'd bend over and I'd put out the back of my hand and I'd say, It's okay come here. I said, yeah. So why would you be doing that? And he's like, Well, I would want the dog to know that I wasn't a threat. And I said, right. So what happens is, if you have an aggressive posture, an aggressive tone of voice you're yelling at your kid, their brain is only hearing threat, threat, threat, and they have no other option except to go into reactive mode, whether that's shut down Blue Zone or reactive fight, flight, freeze, red zone. And so I said, You know what I want to do is I want to try an experiment. And it truly in this moment, Casey was an experiment. I didn't know what was going to happen, but the first time I tried this, and I thought about my dog who has a high aces score, you know, Adversity is traumatized. Yeah, he was a rescue dog. And anytime my kids would fight, or even my kids would be, you know, cheering for a game on TV or whatever, he would go hide in the closet. And when we would be aggregate, like, when we would be like, get outside, Jasper, he would put his head down on the ground. And I thought about Jasper, and so I thought, what is the quickest way we could communicate to that lower, the lower structures of the brain, no threat. What's the quickest way we could do that? So I said to this, Dad, let's try and experiment. Next time your child rages, starts to have a tantrum, is yelling and whatever you're gonna feel really mad, but I want you to instead of yelling, I want you to do something different. I want you to sit below eye level, not at eye level, but I want you to get below eye level to your child and sit in a really relaxed posture. So if he's standing, sit on the couch, sit in a chair. You. Even better, sit on the floor, crisscross applesauce, in a really relaxed posture, and I want you to stop talking and yelling and and lecturing, and I want you to only say two things. So first is get below eye level. Second thing is to say something empathetic about the feelings like, Oh buddy, I can tell you're so angry or you're so frustrated, so something empathetic, acknowledging his internal feeling. And the third thing is to say, I'm right here with you. And the dad said, You want me to sit in a submissive posture to my child.

And I said, I thank goodness for a quick wit in certain moments. I said, No, I want you to to strategically posture your body, to down regulate his nervousness. Well done. Little science there, right? So they left. I didn't think I'd ever see them again. A few weeks later, they come back, and the dad said, I thought that was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard. I wasn't going to do it. And I said, but you're back. And he said, I'm back because I have never seen my child calm down like that. I've never felt more effective as a parent, he said. And I stayed calmer than I've ever been able to. And so I started sharing it with everybody, and it's the thing. I got a I got an email from a mom a few weeks ago with a picture of her three year old, who was frustrated because the magnets on those little trains. He couldn't figure out which direction to make them work, and so he started tantruming and threw them across the room. And she said we had watched one of your videos. And she said, My husband, who is six foot seven, laid down on the floor to get below eye level, and it calmed him immediately. But what's interesting about this is, when you get below eye level, it tells a mammal, I am not a threat to you. I'm I'm just here to interact with you. And when this dad was able to sit on the floor, it was funny, because the dad came back, he said, I don't think I did it right. I said, I sat on the floor, and I was like, I can tell you're really mad, but I'll sit here, and I said, Well, that's progress, right, right? Totally. But what's interesting, and here's a little bit of the science behind that, is the brain is an association machine. So if you are standing up and wagging your finger at someone using an aggressive posture and an aggressive voice, there's like a call for a neural response in your brain. It's like anything related to this posture and this tone of voice, please get activated. So it basically turns on your fight centers, right? It activates the parts of your brain that are more aggressive. If you sit below eye level and you say something empathetic, it activates the neural networks of things related to being in a relaxed posture and saying something empathetic. And so this is something that even if you feel like screaming at your kids, even if you're so frustrated, to force yourself to sit below eye level and to say something nurturing, and to say, I'm here with you, is so powerful. And this is actually a strategy that we can actually teach our kids to which is that if they're anxious, if we can have them sit in a floppy noodle posture, it will actually tell their nervous system. It'll activate the neural networks of being in a really relaxed state. It will turn it'll turn their anxiety off if they are, you know, really, my husband's use this on the My husband coaches a lot of sport, youth sports, and on a little league field, they're down and they're Moby and their shoulders are down. He gets them to start jumping and clapping and moving their bodies. It shifts emotions your body the way Austria body can shift emotions. So I think what I so back to your original question, after my really long story good is that one of the best ways we can I think one of the tools we can use for our own work is to be gentle with ourselves, to practice this work, and then to find a tool where, you know, we can interact with our children in ways that keep our nervous systems green and keep our kids nervous systems green. Because the bottom line Casey, is that the whole point of discipline is to teach and to build skills so that they become self disciplined. Yes. So if you're being an effective disciplinarian, and by that, I mean teacher, then you should be disciplining less over time, because you're you're instead of taking things away, like I'm taking away your toys, what we're thinking about is, what can I give my child? What can I build in them? Yeah, and so if we're building them the skills they should be start to handle themselves better and and the elevator speech of my whole discipline approach is that, if the whole point of discipline is to teach and to build skills, your child has to be in a receptive state of mind in order to learn, they have to be in a state of mind to learn, they have to be the green zone. And you have to be in a good state of mind to teach, you have to be in the green zone. So in the name of discipline and in the in the name of making my children able to learn, I have to get them into the green zone first. And what that usually means. Is that instead of yelling, spanking, sending them away from me, humiliating them, throwing a random consequence at them, which all send our kids further away from the Green Zone, making it less likely they can learn, my goal is to get them into the green so that I can be an effective teacher and hold them accountable and address the behavior which I have high expectations for, but often the way I get them into the grain is through connection, through soothing, yeah, saying I'm right here. Love it, so Mike, say I hate you. You're so stupid, so disrespectful, right? Right? My ins is to say you can't talk to me like that, right?

Casey O'Roarty 35:40
Or we don't tell we don't say that in our house, which are both really

Dr. Tina Bryson 35:45
dumb things to say, right? Because you do say it, it just was said. They can say it. They just said

Unknown Speaker 35:49
it, right?

Dr. Tina Bryson 35:53
And I don't want my child to speak disrespectfully to me. That is absolutely a behavior I want to address. But if in that moment I say, you can't talk to me like that, I'm totally sending them. I'm basically communicating more threat, making it less likely they can teach instead, if I can say, Wow, I can tell that you're so mad at me right now, what's going on? I will listen, or I'm here if you want to talk. Or do you want to sit down with me, or something soothing. And if I can do that, I'm much more quickly going to get them into the green. Because the truth is, for most kids, once they're back in the green, back in their right minds, they often will say sorry about that. They will often get to that, you know, apology. And what's great is if we can get them to extend with some reflection, like, what was going on for you? I know you don't, and this is a phrase I use all the time. I know you know that's not okay. I know you know that's not typically how we would talk to each other. What was going on for you? What was happening? Where did you feel it in your body? How can you do it differently next time? And after this whole reflective dialog, if the whole point of discipline is to teach, have I taught? Yes. Have I built skills? Yes, have I asked them to make things right that might mean an apology to me or a sibling, and how can you do it differently next time at the end of that, I'm done, I've done the discipline. And I'm not universally against consequences. I'm universally against reactive consequences, right? But I think actually consequences make more sense as kids get older, so much when they're younger, but I think the whole point is to ask, what is it I want my kid to teach? Because I often think that when I throw a consequence out there, well now I'm taking away your playdate or something like that, the kids attention then goes to how mean I am to do that to them, and it pulls their attention away from reflecting about what happened and how they can make it right. And I think it also pulls their attention away from that inner feeling of some healthy guilt and conscience that actually changes behavior more than anything we can do to our kids

Casey O'Roarty 37:55
well. And I think like talking we were talking about assumptions, I think too, that parents have this assumption that if I make it hurt, quote, hurt, then the next time they're presented with this situation, they will think to themselves, Oh, should I do this? Because last time, but in reality, they're not. They're in the red zone. And they're in the red zone. They're not reflecting back to the last time they were in that situation. Exactly right?

Dr. Tina Bryson 38:22
Yeah, we think the common approach to discipline is, typically, what can I do to the child that will be so unpleasant they will make the decision to not do it again that it won't be worth it to them? But that's not how the brain and the nervous system works. You know, I had a client who was telling me that they told their kid, if you splash your sister one more time, I'm going to take away your dessert tonight. So at dinner table, they're all sitting around having sitting around having dessert. He's not having dessert because he did splash his sister. And you know, the joke I make is, as they were all eating dessert, and he looked around at all of them, he thought to himself, I really wish I had handled myself better. You know, he was like, You guys are mean to eat this in front of me, and she was splashing me too. And there's no, you know, it just creates more disconnection, which leads to more behavioral problems. And then you think about how the next day, when he's an impulsive, typical four year old, right? He's not pausing and saying, you know, I'm gonna, let's see what decision do I want to make? It doesn't work that way, right? At least not until they're older, you know. And when we have this negative feeling inside of us like, oh, I shouldn't have done that, which emerges naturally when a child is soothed and back into the green zone, and you create space for that, like you really hurt your brother, and you pause, and you let them feel that. That feeling of guilt is really unpleasant and more than anything, that will motivate them, or, you know, influence how they make decisions when they're able to make decisions the next time,

Casey O'Roarty 39:42
oh man, I love to listen to you talk about your work. Thank you so much.

Dr. Tina Bryson 39:48
Well, it's, it's such a shift. I mean, it really there you and me and lots of others are more and more talking about new ways of thinking about this job, this really important job, is. Disciplinarians, and, of course, I mean teachers, but it is such a cultural shift, isn't it? Casey. I mean, when we talk about not just reacting to kids or using fear or using, you know, that whole idea of, you know, just kind of reactive discipline, but instead saying behaviors, communication, children learn best when they are in regulated nervous system states, which, you know, and so it's really cool. When I went and talked to these camp counselors just last week, what I said to them is, look, your number one job is to get kids into the green zone when they're out. And here are some strategies you can use to do that. I taught them below the eye level. I taught them connect and redirect from the whole brain child, and I taught them name it, to tame it, which is where we tell stories about what happens. And I taught them those strategies. And then I said your number two job this summer is to expand their green zone, make them, you know, make them more resilient, more tolerant, more able to handle adversity, right? And the truth is, if you have a kid who has a really narrow green zone. They kind of live in the red zone reactive, or live in the blue zone, where they're shut down and in collapse. You know that. You know if they're two and they lose their mind every time there's a transition, we're not worried. That's typically what a two year old does. But if you have a six year old or a 10 year old who you know is still having a tantrum every time they have to get into their car seat. Then we know that, wow, you know. So when I have families who are wondering like, is what my kids doing developmentally appropriate or not, the Green Zone actually really guides me. So I say to myself, is this kid kind of in toxic stress, you know? So I ask, How frequently does this kid go outside of the Green Zone. How long do they stay outside of the Green Zone? When a kid goes into a reactive tantrum state, or a grown up does it shouldn't take more than 15 to 20 minutes for them to kind of return to calm state. If it takes longer than that, we really want to be curious about if there's something else going on, what does it take to get them out of there? You know, if you have a three year old, you cut their muffin in half, and they lose their mind. They're like, put it back together. We're not worried. That's what a three year old does. But if you have a 10 year old who's doing that all the time, that you know, they go outside of the Green Zone too frequently, too over small things. So I kind of want to know, what is the duration of outside the Green Zone? What is the intensity? How far do they go out? How frequently does this happen? And that kind of guides me in knowing whether or not you know some intervention is is required, or whether it's just about letting development unfold and coaching the caregivers to be the bumpers to kind of keep kids in the green zone through soothing and through connection and through problem solving and through playfulness and being proactive. At times, parents absolutely have the capacity to dial down their children's reactivity if we use some of our strategies and keep our own green zones Hardy and healthy, yeah, which means we need sleep, and we need friends, and we need, you know, and when we find ourselves as parents getting to in really reactive States a lot, I think that's really an opportunity to ask or to become curious about that ourselves, and to say, what's that about? For me, if we have trauma histories that can, you know, cause us to go outside of our green zones more easily, if life is really stressful. But I think, you know, just sort of becoming curious and say, what is it that I need to stay in that state? And that might require professional intervention. It might require just having a girls night out, or going having some time by yourself, or or those, you know, some simple things, getting to go potty

Casey O'Roarty 43:42
alone.

Unknown Speaker 43:43
Yes, well,

Casey O'Roarty 43:45
so just to wrap up, my last question that I always end with my guests is in the context of all that we've spoken about today. Tina, what does joyful courage mean to you?

Dr. Tina Bryson 43:57
That's beautiful joyful courage, to me, means having the courage to reflect on our own areas of growth, and also having the courage to trust development to unfold. And I think that oftentimes, with our first children, we live in fear. We live in fear states. A lot. We say to ourselves things like, and the media and the culture Stokes those fears. But we say to ourselves things like, Oh, well, if I let this slide, or if I let the kid climb into bed with me tonight, you know, then they'll never learn. And eventually, if we chase down those fear patterns, you know, our kid is living in a van down by the river with no friends, you know, with like 50 cats. So I think you know, joyful courage is about trusting that our child's development will unfold, trusting that we're doing a good enough job, and trusting that having the courage to really reflect on. What, what we would like to change, and getting the support that requires to do that. And the thing Casey that I that, I think that we need to remember a lot as parents, is that we don't have to be perfect, right? And we don't have to, you know, the research shows that even if we are providing our kids with that attuned, secure attachment parenting, even like 30% of the time, that they'll do really well, that their brains will develop optimally, and all of that. And so I guess the thing I always like to say at the end is that the most important thing so, you know, Dan and I have a book coming out in January called the yes brain, and it's about how we promote, yeah, we're so excited about it. It's about, how do we promote this receptive state, and all this green zone stuff is in there. And we'll be talking about resilience, balance, insight and empathy, and how to promote those in ourselves and in our kids. And then we just, I mean, this is like breaking news. Dan and I signed a contract to write a fourth book called showing up, and that book is about the four S's. And the four S's are basically based on this idea that one of the most important things that we can do to help our children, really in virtually every area that children are measured in terms of leadership and academic abilities and social and emotional intelligence, and all of these areas that we measure, one of the most important things that contributes to that is that kids have had secure attachment with at least one person. And the best way, I think, to talk about secure attachment is that we provide the four S's not perfectly, but as consistently as we can. And the four S's are that we help the child feel safe, seen, soothed and secure. And secure is really about predictably, knowing that if I have a need, someone's going to see it and respond to it is like safe to fall apart. I don't have to worry about my safety. Like I feel safe in my home, and I feel safe emotionally and physically. Right scene is about someone understands me and sees my heart and my feelings and my wishes and sees my internal landscape, and that when they respond to me, I know that they see me. I feel seen, soothed, is I fall apart and someone helps me pull it back together, and it's gonna be it's it's gonna be okay. I'm here with you. And then, like I said, that secure is about being that predictably, those things will happen. And again, the research shows, if we can just do the four S's, about 30% of the time our kids get what they need. And so I guess, to wrap things up, I think joyful courage is about saying I can respond to my child with moments where, again, I don't have to know what to say or what to do, but if I help them feel safe, seen, soothed and secure, and if I make sure I'm feeling that from somebody, we need that too. We need those four S's so that we have the capacity to do it for our children.

Casey O'Roarty 48:10
I am so excited about those books. Yeah, where, if the listeners want to find you and follow your work, where's the best place to go? I'm

Dr. Tina Bryson 48:18
so easy to find. My website is tinabryson.com and that's b, r, y, s, O, N, and for those who are in the Southern California area, we I also have an interdisciplinary clinical practice where I have occupational therapists and educational therapists and mental health and neuropsychological evaluations. And we all work as a team, where we wrestle with chasing the Y and dropping into curiosity together. And that place is called the Center for connection, and it's a really unique approach to helping families. So that website is the centerfoconnection.org.

Casey O'Roarty 48:53
Great. Thank you so much for spending time with me.

Dr. Tina Bryson 48:56
I'm so glad to join with you in sort of this really meaningful work to help support parents who want to be intentional and want to do the best job they can. And I'm, I'm honored to get to talk with you and support your work, because you're, you're doing that, that good work in the world as well.

Casey O'Roarty 49:22
You Woo, how was that? Oh, my gosh, I was basking in the glory that is the knowledge of Tina Bryson, just like you were listeners. I mean, what I appreciate I think the most about Tina and Dr Siegel's work is the way that they have created language around describing what happens to the brain as it's happening. Right the red zone, the green zone. How to expand the green zone? I loved what Tina talked about as. Far as getting below eye level, and that that picture she painted of what we do when we see a dog that's in the red zone. Oh, man, so much to take away and put into practice from that interview. Thank you again. Huge. Thanks to Tina. It was my honor to have you on the show. I am so excited that she is out in the world doing what she does. Yes, be sure to bookmark this show so you can come back to it again and again. I know that I will, and I would love to hear what your takeaways are, your takeaways. So the best place to go to share what you're taking away is live in love with joyful courage. Come on over to the Facebook group. It's a great place for discussion. It's safe, it's a celebration, it's supportive. It's a huge group of like minded parents who want nothing more than to be in the work of showing up better for their kids, and to be in the work of being a part of a community where that is the vision. So if you haven't joined us over there, please do and let me know what your takeaways are from this amazing conversation. Also other places to go to get in touch with me, head over to Facebook, Instagram or Twitter and or right you can find me in all three places, at joyful courage. I post in all of those social media platforms regularly. I would love for you to find me, or you can shoot me an email straight to Casey. At joyful courage.com. If you find yourself listening to the show and really being committed and excited about the practice and you're feeling like there's some tension there. There's barriers to really putting what I talk about on the podcast into action. Consider doing some one on one, coaching with me. If you're feeling uncomfortable with how things are currently and you intuitively know that there's a better way to be showing up for your kids if you value personal development, if you embrace the whole positive discipline, positive parenting approach, if you appreciate what feedback and coaching looks like, consider reaching out to me. Let's see if we're a good fit. I would love to work one on one with you. All right. So huge love to each and every one of you here we are nearly the middle of July, so crazy. Take care of yourself. Make time for special time with each of your kids, but also special time with yourself. All right, mamas and dads, get out there. Get some self care on. Get some soul care on, and I will see you again next week with a solo show Bye

See more