Denise Dryden on moving past our story to be a more conscious parent

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Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Joy, joyful courage. Parenting podcast episode 23

you Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I planned on being back with you last week, but you know what? The flu showed up at my house, and, oh my gosh, it took me down. It was crazy. My daughter and I both. I'm just now recovering, so thank you for your patience, and now I'm back, and I'm really excited about today's show. I'm excited about the guest, Denise Dryden, who is from Whitefish, Montana, and she's a integrational coach, working with people around parenting and relationship, lifestyle changes and metaphysical exploration. So I'm really excited, because we had such a great conversation. You know, when you meet someone, and it's like, oh yeah, there you are. Now we get to talk to each other, but I've known you my whole life. That's kind of how it felt when we started talking. So our conversation kind of weaves in and out, and I'm just, I'm really excited to share it with you, and I hope you enjoy it. And yeah, also exciting things and changes happening at the podcast. I am thinking about doing two shows a week so that the Tuesday shows continue to be parent educators and parenting experts interviewed by me, and then doing releasing a second show later in the week that is either a live parent coaching that you get to listen in on, or an interview with a organization that is doing something amazing for families around the world. So I want to continue to grow the podcast and my offer and my reach and what I can create and teach and educate people about. So that's my goal. That's what you have to look forward to. Um, yeah, so I hope your New Year's was fantastic. I hope that you're dreaming big for 2016 and I know I'm really excited to get back to the podcasting. So how about we talk to Denise? All right.

Hi there, Denise. Welcome to the joyful courage parenting podcast.

Denise Dryden 2:58
Oh, Hi, Casey. I'm so excited to talk to you about this today. Me too. So

Casey O'Roarty 3:03
let's just start right off with you sharing with the listeners a little bit about yourself, your family and the special offer that you are to the world.

Denise Dryden 3:15
I like that and learning to embrace the special offer that I am to the world. This is really the biggest part, yes, yes.

Casey O'Roarty 3:21
Tell us all about it. Well, I

Denise Dryden 3:24
guess I would start with the fact that I have three kids. I have three kids that are 2825 and 23 and I'm at the end, and I'm kind of wiping my forehead and going, I can't believe I got there. And, you know, the role of parent is never completely finished. It will continue on in various forms. But I have to say that Parenthood was in and probably still is the most fabulous and painful lesson that I have struggled to master. Oh, yeah. And the piece is that I know what mastery looks like and feels like, because at different times, in different careers, I've in different passions, I've found where I get into that zone and everything is exactly as it should be. And I met peace, and I look at parenting, and I think that is the most elusive part of parenting, is really knowing when I'm in the zone and and when everything's working. So I that's a good start. Is I'm a survivor of I have young adult children. You made it? Oh yeah. I really like who they became. You know, they're, they're now these cool adults. And I like hanging out with them, and I like watching them interact in the world and and I've let them go. They're on their own. They get to do what they want to do. They get to be who they want to be. And that part's been that's been a big journey for me. I love that pry them out of my hands and let them go.

Casey O'Roarty 4:53
I love that because I often will hear parents say things like, Oh, they're growing so fast, or being really upset that the youngest has started kindergarten. And I just shake my head, and I think to myself, like, you know what? They're growing at the perfect speed, because I'm really looking forward to one day having this adult relationship with my kids, and I'm loving right now too

Denise Dryden 5:15
Exactly. And you know, I missed especially at holiday season, or, you know when I'm out on the lake and watching water ski boats go by, and I'm like, I remember all of those great family activities we used to do together. And sometimes I miss it a lot, and other times I am just so thankful that that I was able to give that to

Casey O'Roarty 5:36
them. Yeah. Well, tell us about tell us about what you do for parents, because you work with all sorts of people, one group in particular, parents, right? Am I right there?

Denise Dryden 5:47
Yep, I work. I work with those who parent, which means that when you're an adult and when you take on the parenting, there's an entire new level of awareness and work that you have to put in, in addition to running your own life, running your job, running the things that we would do ordinarily as adults, and so I really make that differentiation, that if you are going to parent, you're going to need a little bit more support than the traditional non parent, I think, right? Well, because life comes at you and and the clients that I work with are parents who have either lifelong struggles with their children, either understanding their learning differences, or some of the psychiatric psychological diagnoses that that just require Some additional attention, or children that are highly anxious, children that are introverted and shy, when you're an extroverted parent and you're just sort of out of sync, or you're constantly worrying about this little kiddo, and you're watching them struggle at school and and they're not holding benchmarks. And this may start at three years old. It may start at five years old seven. Sometimes it comes to a head in middle school, and then it starts in high school, and as they get closer to that young adulthood of self imploding when we have kids that don't, don't really feel connected to the community of learning and sports and try to get ahead kind of stuff, and they don't relate to their parents. Agenda for them, they start acting out whether they self medicate, whether we're talking drugs and alcohol, whether we're talking risky behavior. And so, you know, I sort of found this nice little niche after spending the last 20 years in in therapeutic care for adolescents and young adults. Now I just coach parents into understanding what is it their child wants. Who are they? What do they need? And how do I help you let go of the agenda you have and come into alignment with this kiddo and really see them and hear them and witness them growing into themselves.

Casey O'Roarty 8:05
Yeah. Oh, that's so good. Denise, I'm so glad that you're out in the world and you're bringing to mind for me something so I'm a positive discipline trainer, and it's based on Alfred Adler's theory of human behavior, really being about movement towards belonging and significance. And so when you're talking about what happens when kids feel separate from or misunderstood, or, you know, just that feeling of being outside the circle of community, whether it's family, school or larger, it doesn't, you know, they look for all sorts of ways to get that feeling of connection back, and it can take on some pretty risky disguises, right? Because they're not necessarily skilled in how to find that sense of belonging and find that sense of significance. But these kids in particular, right, that are kind of on that fringe of anxious and on the fringe of really not feeling connected. I'm so excited to talk about them. I have a little sensitive guy at my house, and I'm really interested to see where our conversation goes today and hear more about what you do for these kids and how you help their parents. And I love that. And so in your background, I was on your website, and I love that your background, in your bio, it says quote, that your background is both eclectic and intentional. You gotta speak into that. I need to know. I need to know about the eclectic

Denise Dryden 9:43
Well, let's see if we can put some pieces to a small liberal arts college in in McMinnville, Oregon. I went to Linfield and I majored in Medieval and Renaissance history.

Casey O'Roarty 9:57
Oh, nice figure.

Denise Dryden 9:59
Sure. You know, I found out that I'm a passionate historian. I love storytelling, and I love watching how communities and people come together around their perspective or experiences. So you can, you can study a historical event and then come at it from different angles and see all sorts of comparison and perspectives that are not what we read in traditional books, right? And of course, this happens to be the transition in Medieval and Renaissance history where we actually kind of came out of the dark ages and started waking up and and accessing creativity and in an inspiration and changing dynamics of leadership, and so that part has always been there, but you don't what do you do with that? Unless you go live up in up in the ivory tower of a college for the rest of your life? And I didn't want to do that, but I'm also an athlete, and I'm also a phenomenal Cook, and so, you know, to me, life is about getting out playing, yeah, and I kind of tabled all of this historical perspective and and then went into education and taught high school in in Oregon, uh, coached. I've been coaching girls teams for 20 plus years. And then, what's your sport?

Casey O'Roarty 11:19
What sports?

Denise Dryden 11:20
Oh, God, do we have to talk?

Casey O'Roarty 11:21
Come on. Well, I have a I have a 12 I have a seventh grader who plays volleyball. Was that one of your sports?

Denise Dryden 11:27
No, I played field hockey. Oh, sweet, all right? Or field hockey, left? And then, of course, you know, the main sport for me was softball. Oh, nice. I could really hit the ball, amazing. I was the one of the top batters forever, and so they stuck me in a position where I could do no harm. You know, I played first base really well. I could cover a center field because I wasn't afraid of big balls. But you know, the bottom line is that, you know, I played a sport for a really long time, and then I got into parenting. It's like, let's start, let's start sports. And my kids are soccer players. I have three. I had three traveling soccer players.

Casey O'Roarty 12:04
Oh my gosh, in Montana. I know. How were you in Montana at that point? No,

Denise Dryden 12:09
I was in Bend, Oregon.

Casey O'Roarty 12:10
Okay, well, that's probably some serious travel too, if you're out there.

Denise Dryden 12:14
Oh yeah, three hours over to, my gosh, Portland. Two hours to Eugene. You know, six hours admitted, and I have it. I have my oldest is was a division one soccer player for St Mary's. So, you know, we put a lot of time into what I'm going to call the traditional parenting stuff. I have over, over zealous children really wanted to do a lot, so I had a DI Destination Imagination Master, you know, in my youngest one and, and we were just traveling, studying, juggling all the time, and, and, and on top of that, I don't know if you've experienced this, or some of our listeners have, but as your kids grow and they become more independent, I started looking for things to do, and so I started a k8 magnet school in Bend based on non gradedness, based on the fact that kids learn better when they're out of succinct classrooms and and they and they can group together by skill sets or by projects. And it's a democratic school, and it, you know, used a lot of conflict resolution. So everything in the school was based on building community and learning together and honoring the way that each child learns. And so, you know, these are little tiny pieces in the background. And I'm like, where did that come from? Yeah, that's

Casey O'Roarty 13:44
awesome. And then, you know,

Denise Dryden 13:46
I in when I first moved to band in the in the mid 90s, I taught voluntary simplicity and sort of started working with the family that family issues around understanding what's going on in the world. What is your real choice as a family member, and what do you really want to do? And does it build connection, or does it destroy connection? And talked about that for years and and then got into therapeutic placement with young adults, and it's to this day one of my favorite, passionate things to do with my time. Yeah, yeah. So, so it's, I'm all over the place, and I think I'm on my fifth career at this point. But now I'm starting to pull together. You know, what do you do when you have education, therapeutic care, a historical perspective, and now this metaphysical sort of juice that pulls it all together and it you know, at the end of my 50s, I get to step into some really fun, playful work for the first time in a long time, yay.

Casey O'Roarty 14:50
Well, and we're gonna get into that metaphysical stuff too. I'm excited, but I do want to quote your website one more time, and I have it in bold because. It just spoke so deeply to me around the support that you give to parents, and it says that you support parents in discovering the deep courage love that the deep courage it takes to discover what your child needs in their learning so that they can grow and flourish, and learning how to let go and step into trust with a child who may have needed additional attention from you, learning to partner in parenting, build maturity skills and adolescents, launching young adults, young adults into independence and moving into your own life after children leave. And I love this, because it totally speaks my language, especially around the building skills. I mean, I think that ultimately, you know, we were talking before I hit record, that regardless of who your kid is and where they fall on this but and the spectrum of, quote, easy going versus quote, highly spirited, whatever kid you have in front of you, and I'd say if you have more than one, it's, you know, definitely the one that's the toughest for you to come to alignment with is absolutely the one that showed up to teach and grow and evolve you the parent as a human being. And that's so I just I love that, I love sharing, that I love talking into that. And I love what you say here, because it assumes, which is a good assumption, that kids aren't all made the same. They don't all require the same type of relationship with their parent, you know, and I think we're really good at that. Well, actually, I think that there's rhetoric around this in the classroom. As far as learning styles go goes, I think that there's a long way to go as far as really walking the learning styles talk, um, a long way and but I, but I also see often parents are surprised that one tool or strategy will work well with one child and not The other. Yeah, wow, they're so different. It's like, yes, it's well, and you're not in nature, like we Yes, we are all different, extremely different well.

Denise Dryden 17:11
And we're not herders, you know? We don't just kind of, like, move around behind him and say, Okay, everybody go over this way now and now, everybody go over that way. And I don't know. I thought, I always thought parenting was a lot like juggling. You know, you can, you can sort of play with one ball in the air for a while and get a handle on it, but you have to be really you have to have a lot of trust and mindfulness to pick up that second one and third one. And it's about being completely confident in yourself, fully present, and knowing that you can see where the balls are going, and you have to catch them and move them, and you also have to walk and talk at the same time and watch the surrounding environment,

Casey O'Roarty 17:52
yeah, well, and I don't think that we necessarily, you know, just like a kid who's gonna say, Oh, that's easy. I can do that. And they pick up all three balls or two, you know? And then it's like, oh, I don't really know what I'm doing here. I think that's the same, same thing that happens off to happen to me. Have like, Oh, yay, one baby's really fun. Let's have another one. Oh, my God. I don't know anything, you know. Like, what the fuck.

Denise Dryden 18:19
Totally. And you know, when you put third one, oh my gosh, two was easy when you're when you're in a in a partnership, because, you know, each of you get one and the third one comes along. That mean mom, means mom gets two.

Casey O'Roarty 18:32
Yeah, I don't know how that happens. Three. I'm not, I am not a part of that. We are two done. But I am in awe of families with more than two kids, for sure. So let's talk a little bit about like, because I know that you were speaking about, you know, our kids coming to us to grow us and to teach us, and the metaphysical piece, you know. And you talk also about this concept about parenting forward, can we kind of, let's, let's weave that into this conversation. What do you mean when you talk about parenting forward?

Denise Dryden 19:04
Well, it's such a it's such a beautiful concept, which is, how do we approach our parenting skill set with curiosity about, why is our children? Why is our child here? What do they have? What do they have to offer the world. What is their purpose? And how can I begin to understand them, empower them, and give them the skills and tools that they need in order to flourish? Not what does our culture think that they need? What does the traditional school environment think that they need? But what is it that I see that's unique and different about my child, and how do I let them lead me into the future, instead of harnessing all of their youth and energy and dragging them backwards into this is your grandmother wants. Thank you. Letters after every Christmas present. You know we only go to family scenarios during the holidays. We only. Honor the history of these pieces of furniture and this, this old paradigm energy that we that's so secure to us, because as parents and adults, this is what we know. This is what's safe for us. Kind of let go and go into something with a completely different perspective. Go into parenting saying I have to let go of everything I know about myself to be true and allow this child to teach me something new.

Casey O'Roarty 20:27
So how do you support parents in making that shift? Because, you know, we've had, most of us have had, the one thing we all go into parenting with is the 18 or so years of modeling that we lived through. And I know I can speak for myself when I say I had a very clear idea of who I would be as a parent, and then in walks, you know, stress and overwhelm, and here I am the model that I was not planning on on being because it, it's so it lives so deeply inside of me because of the modeling that I had growing up so and I'm, you know, doing my own work around that. And what are some of the things, what are some of the practices that you support parents with in, you know? And I talk a lot about, you know, meditation and finding what calm feels like in the body and practicing it throughout the day, so that when that stress and overwhelm triggers that kind of like you're calling the old paradigm, I have something that I have practiced that I can sink into to at least get my bearings and recognize whoa, I'm about to fly off the handle, which is not actually going to be helpful in this moment. So taking a moment to calm down so that I can show up differently and ultimately affect the outcome of the situation with my child. What are Does that make sense? What are so yeah,

Denise Dryden 21:58
it's it's so clear that we think we know what we're doing until stress or pressure kicks in. Yeah. And so, you know, last night, I was writing some notes down, and I'm listening to coffee house and brandy Carlisle's song, you can dance in a hurricane comes on, and she says, You can dance in a hurricane, but only if you stand within the eye, which means you have to consciously have the courage to go right straight to the center of it all and say, This is where I belong. This is what I know how to do. How do I deepen my skills so that I can stay here and not be affected by the swirl around me? I

Casey O'Roarty 22:47
I'm gonna find that song, and I want to put a link. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes everyone, so we can all make that our anthem.

Denise Dryden 22:56
Soon a hurricane you stand within the eye, and I think that that's what we're really talking about with parenting, is that we have all of these conditions and all of these hot buttons and triggers on us, and if we aren't aware that they exist, if we don't consciously go after them and say, Where did this come from and what? What is it that happens in my outer world that pushes a button that this, this memory comes up and I start acting like this, right? So first and foremost, I think parents, the parenting responsibility is huge, because we impress every cellular memory of our own onto our children,

Casey O'Roarty 23:39
not to mention the generations that came before us, right,

Denise Dryden 23:43
exactly. And so I started, I wrote this module on parenting the New Earth children. And the entire first module is about identifying personal history in your family and then looking at generational pain. You know, do is there this deep belief system that when things are hard, you reach for a glass of wine or you have a cocktail or two or three at night? Right? Do

Unknown Speaker 24:09
you blame right?

Denise Dryden 24:11
You know, do you eat sugar constantly? Not that any of these are I'm not judging any of these. I'm saying if this is the way that you disconnect and cope. Then what's the disconnect and coping about and if you understand it, how do you not pass that particular skill slash tool of when you're overwhelmed, you pour yourself a glass of wine and you laugh about it with your kids,

Casey O'Roarty 24:36
right? Or when you're overwhelmed, you fall apart, blame, shame, humiliate, right?

Denise Dryden 24:42
Or you start spouting like a volcano in angry words and out of control behavior comes out. We're human. That's going to happen totally but find out. Where does that come from, and in the really interesting thing that I've been discovered. With my last year and a half worth of parents is what happens when you come from a family background where there's fear, or there's there's that gripping like, oh God, when mom gets like this, I just want to crawl into the table. Or when dad comes home and he's had a really bad day, you know? And I'm using traditional family personalities. You know what happens when one person has has a propensity towards anger and you have a highly sensitive, intuitive child who feels it in their body? Yeah. And so what we find out is that they don't, on any way, shape or form, know how to deal with conflict in the house. That means that they're going to be avoidant and and and do anything to avoid conflict, and that affects their parenting style. Yeah. So, so go back and do your work, find out, find out where your triggers are, because I can guarantee you that if you have one to 100 triggers. They're beautiful little targets all over your body. And as your kids go into 13 to 16, they're gonna find every single one of them, and they're gonna push them all day long, yeah? So you have to, you have to know that. Oh, good. Try that one. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, so you can keep pushing on it. I'm not gonna react

Casey O'Roarty 26:21
well, even Yeah, and even it also, so do your work, listeners, that's the message. But also, I think that for me, I know that once I became more familiar with my reaction, body, my reaction, thought process. Um, now I can recognize when I'm there, because I think it's really important too, when we, when we start doing this and deciding Yes, I'm gonna I want to be I want to show up differently in the world, and then those old patterns keep showing up, we can really easily just get really defeated, yes. So I, you know, another piece is also, you know, it's not about eliminating, it's about growing awareness. And I can say like, oh, wow, look where I am right now. I am ready to really give it. My body is tense, my legs are hot, my shoulders are up, and I just am looking for somebody to blame right now because I am po and I get to say, Wow, now that I'm aware, I have a choice. I have a choice between following the emotional overload that's happening and feeling crummy about it later, or doing something different,

Denise Dryden 27:43
exactly. So I'm let's just talk about two really beautiful tools. Yeah, let's first, I work with Alan Seale, and he's a he teaches coaches, and he does transformational coaching, which is like, if energy exists in you, and you just nailed it. You know, you can feel it in your hand, in your legs, you can feel it in your shoulders. You can feel it in your hands, catch it. And if you know, if you, if you become aware, and you can see it, feel it in your body, what are your real choices at that point? And so he uses this, well, I use it now all the time. It's called the four levels of engagement, which is, you know, first is, am I in drama? Where does it? Can I feel it in my body?

Casey O'Roarty 28:29
I love that question. Am I in drama? Yes, I

Denise Dryden 28:34
can feel the drama. And that's when the emotions are hot and your your head's throwing out 100 things at once, just looking around for someone to grab and shake like this is what's going on. And lots of times it's a kid who dropped their backpack on the floor,

Casey O'Roarty 28:50
or, right? Poor kid. Bad timing. You

Denise Dryden 28:53
don't want to be in the path when I'm in drama. The second level is, is situation where you where we go into this robotic, you know, problem solving mastery, and we pat ourselves in the back. I I took a breath. I calmed myself down, I picked it up, I did it, and I got the kid from point A to point B. Everything is in the in the house is calm right now, and I temporarily fixed it. I didn't address what happened to cause the drama, but I'm really good at making the problem go away. Ah, so there's where our codependent personalities, there's where we get our kudos for problem solving. And you know, for a lot of men and women, we build careers around our ability to step into situation in fixed problems? Yeah, we're not really looking at where did those problems start from. And so the third level is choice, which is, wait a minute, pause, I'm at a choice point, what kind of person, what kind of role do I? Wanted to take on right now to help guide me through this. And you go, Wait a minute. And so for me, I go, you know the calm wise woman, Yeah, where's the calm wise woman? You are hiding in the closet. Would you get out here and help me out please? Yeah, bring in the calm wise woman. Take a couple of deep breaths. Practice those self soothing tools. Put your hand up and say, give me a minute. I'm a little overwhelmed. It's going to take me, you know, maybe an entire song. Go find it, put it on, or just dance

Casey O'Roarty 30:33
in a hurricane for any Carlisle

Denise Dryden 30:36
you know. And you teach your children, and you teach your partner and you teach though your community. Wait a minute. I just caught myself, and I know I don't want to go there. So this is what I'm going to do, and I'm going to model it for you while I show you how I take care of myself. Love it.

Casey O'Roarty 30:53
Okay, what's number four? I'm really excited for number four. Number three is fabulous, which

Denise Dryden 30:59
is my favorite is opportunity. So you go drama, situation, choice, and then when you get to opportunity, the question is, what wants to happen here? And you never get to see the behind the scenes, sort of bigger picture, until you're in a calm, really cool place, yeah. And then when you realize that the opportunity is bigger, when the drama is bigger, that they're related, and they go, what wants to happen here? Oh, I'm getting that. My tools used to work, but now that that we have a higher stress level in the house, I'm going to have to deepen my tools, I'm going to have to establish a choice point earlier. So

Casey O'Roarty 31:48
the drama and the opportunity so because where my mind went with that was the drama, like, it's big, right? Does that also correlate to like, wow, there's going to be an earth shattering lesson here, if I can, so I'm going to drop in and really, because for me, you're the calm, wise woman. For me, the intention that I go back to is, what is it? Centered, connected, available and non judgmental and love, loving, connected, available, non judgmental. Like, that's my mantra for my family. Like, that's who I want to be, especially when the drama is at its biggest. It's not the easiest person to be in that moment, but no,

Denise Dryden 32:35
and it takes, it takes some of the hot, biggest concentration, highest skills we've ever learned to master this is not easy stuff. And you add one kid, then you add two kids, then you add four kids, and it becomes even more difficult to find your center in the middle of that but, but this is the question that I really want to go to, is if we hold our own stories within ourselves, and we keep playing them out. This is what we're teaching our children. Yes, so how do we change that story and become a conscious parent who's aware of the ebb and flow of our emotions and then turn around and model that kind of management to our children, you know they're gonna, they're gonna scan record right and play back, for sure, that's all they know. How, why wouldn't they right? So teach them to scan and record and play back positive, yeah, changes,

Casey O'Roarty 33:40
or even, like, did you see me? Did you see how I handled that? Kudos. Can everybody give mom a high five right now for not freaking out? You know, I try, yeah, I try to do that really, yeah, oh yeah. I definitely,

Denise Dryden 33:54
instead of saying I'm proud of you, or, Oh, you're such a good girl because you did that, go up and say, I saw you, take a pause, take a deep breath, and you absolutely turned it around, and it was beautiful to watch, yeah. And then they they know that you saw them. They know that it mattered, and you're not taking credit, or, you know, filling yourself up with what you taught them. You're actually acknowledging them. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 34:23
my son recently got into a little mischief on the school bus. And had, we're not big on on on imposed consequences in our house, but, you know, school bus, he has to sit in the front of the bus for a couple weeks, and he's he came home really upset about it, and talked about it and talked about, you know, he made a mistake. And you know, that's the bus driver who wants to be a bus driver that is a tough job. And when we're overwhelmed with 25 kids that were or more that we're trying to keep safe on the road, you know, they're gonna have tools that they fall back on. And one of them is you have to sit in the front of the bus for a certain amount of time. And this morning, my son decided to write him a note, kind of an apology letter. It was very sweet. I really wanted to take a picture of it, but I thought, no, I can just let this be his. I don't need to social media it.

Denise Dryden 35:16
Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 35:19
what I know, it was so cute. What I did say to him, though, was, you know, I'm really glad this happened. I'm sorry that you have to sit at the front of the bus. I know that that's really, you know, making you not excited, but I am so excited that you get to navigate this and come out of the other side of it and realize that you're okay and you can handle it, and you can learn from it, like that's exciting to me. And so whenever he has that, whenever either of my kids have those situations where they're tough situations and they're uncomfortable, you know, I always try to make a point of saying, Wow, I'm so glad that you get to have this experience where you have, you're being forced to use some tools to navigate it. I think it's so cool. And, you know, they kind of, they're not like, Oh, thanks, mom. But, but I say it. I say it every time, because I think, you know, yes, our practice, our model, but also record, you know, helping them to see, like, wow, you're in the practice too, and it's happening right now, and how great, and sometimes we're really graceful with it, and sometimes we're not. And either, either direction we go, either direction they go, I want to acknowledge, like, wow, there was opportunity here. And isn't that so exciting? When

Denise Dryden 36:34
we acknowledge the opportunity, it takes us out of the victim stance, and that's just so key, especially with this clientele that I work with, where they've removed their child from the home, put them in a wilderness backpack scenario for six to eight weeks, and then sent them to a residential treatment center, a therapeutic boarding school, a young Adult Independent Living skill program. You know, they've they're literally signing up and living without their child for anywhere from 12 to 15 months, and it's hard and it's painful, yet at the same time, the entire family system gets to learn new tools. And they're so they're in such a much better place. Yeah, yeah, the completion of this, and they all will just turn around and say that was the hardest thing I've ever done. And I learned who I am, I learned what matters, and I learned what doesn't work and what works for me. Yeah. As a parent, yes.

Casey O'Roarty 37:36
So great. And you have an offer that's around parenting the new Earth's children. And I really, I'm looking at the clock, and I really want to get into that as well. And I'm wondering if some of these kids that are, you know, paths are taking them to the family dynamic, the child's path is taking them to this place. Are they? You know, I did a little bit of research, not a lot, but I did a little bit of research about, you know, and I've heard these terms like indigo child or rainbow child. And I'm curious, I'm curious, and I really want to, I really want to dig deeper into that, because, you know, there's so much labeling going on of kids that just don't fit in the structure, like you were talking about before, that just don't fit in the traditional mold, well, like every boy in the traditional school classroom. But beyond that, you know, they're just, they're, you know, they're not on, they're on, I want to say spectrum, but not the spectrum, but like as they're on the other outliers, of course, perceived outliers. So what is up with these kids?

Denise Dryden 38:51
Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just lay a foundation. Do it quick. I believe something really magical happened on our earth into in 2012 everyone calls it in the metaphysical, you know, New Age, the shift. And to me, what it was is that we actually just crossed over from going down down down deeper to having hope and starting to shift up. And part of I love that

Casey O'Roarty 39:18
I love I love that I can accept that, yeah,

Denise Dryden 39:21
it's almost like, you know, once you once you get to that tipping point and you can get one more person to cross over, everything starts to slowly start domin domino falling the other direction. So part of the beauty of this happening is, is the concept that children have been seeded onto this planet with a purpose. So an Indigo is a child who started arriving in mass in the early 1970s so they're going to be 45 years or younger. There were definitely, I'm just an old Indigo. I've been hitting my head against the wall. All

Casey O'Roarty 40:00
so long, waiting for the rest of us to get here,

Denise Dryden 40:03
laying the groundwork, finding out the tools pissed off that no one's helping me out.

Casey O'Roarty 40:09
I got your back, girl.

Denise Dryden 40:12
And you know now we're awake and we're old and we're just not, you know, in the same place. But the bottom line is, we have wisdom that is so valuable, so let's the Indigo energy. I'm just going to define it really quickly as it's the warrior energy. It's the person who is here to fight for truth and justice. And in this module, I wrote, you know, I said the perfect example is, you know, Bender out of the Breakfast Club. You know, this guy can see the truth. He can tell who's lying who's out of integrity and he's pissed off, because every time he gets caught in sense of detention because somebody doesn't like the fact that he called him out on it. So we have 45 years of history on our planet of kids who've been oppositionally defiant, who, you know cannot sit still in a classroom that that doesn't matter to them. The teachers are not reaching them, the employees are not reach employers are not reaching them. Their parents are not reaching them. They can tell that you're phoning it in and not actually even present. And they're angry. And when they get angry, when they start to disassemble, they fall apart into just shattered pieces, and alcohol and drugs take over, and codependence and dependent in relationship, hopping from one to the other, and they're just lost because the truth is so out of their grasp. And then when they start to put the pieces together, they rebuild into this awesome, softer warrior.

Casey O'Roarty 41:46
So when you talk about them being angry, is that really about, like, why I can see the bullshit, and why do you keep dishing it out to me?

Denise Dryden 41:56
Okay, I'll give you an example. Yeah, you have a teacher who's bored, who doesn't like the class that she's teaching, and has a lot of personal stuff going on at home, and starts giving handouts. Okay, in a middle school, or, let's say freshman High School, freshman or sophomore in high school, gives busy work handouts. You the kid goes up to turn it in, she says, You didn't do it the way I wanted you to do it. He looks at her, crumples it up and drops it on her desk. Because he's like, You're kidding me. You want me to do worksheets. It's insulting, because you don't want to do your job right now, that's a really good example, and then that kid gets picked up and taken to the principal's office because he's being oppositionally defiant.

Casey O'Roarty 42:47
So let's, let's, let's stick with this kid. Okay, let's, let's, let's stick with this kid. That's the 15 year old kid. What if we go back to the 10 or eight year old version of that kid?

Denise Dryden 43:00
They're still going to hit the wall when the adults in their world are out of integrity with themselves. They're either going to withdraw and refuse to participate, put their head down, you know, draw in their notebooks, talk to their friends, refuse be completely disrespectful, or they're going to turn in stuff and challenge and challenge and challenge and ask for more, and the person's the person is going to either see them and give them something to do and encourage them, or feel completely over inundated by this child's behavior. Yeah, I mean, and so what, what I'm what I want to make sure that we, that we talk about, is that over the 45 year period of time that Indigos have been really a predominant force on this planet, they're softening, and we're starting to see the truth showing up in the political environments, in our corporate, you know, in In in how we live it. You know, every day on Facebook and our social media, Huffington anywhere, they're talking about, oh, this person just finally came clean on this, or we're starting to see the reality of what's underneath it. So again, the tides turned, and it's starting to shift. So

Casey O'Roarty 44:18
some so I work with classroom teachers as well, which is an honor, um, and something that we talk about specifically with classroom teachers is that we often get into, and I think it happens with parenting too, a dignity Double Bind,

Denise Dryden 44:36
yes, where

Casey O'Roarty 44:37
it's either Okay, so you've ticked me off. Now I'm gonna, now we're in a place where I'm gonna level up and say that you have to, you know, let me think we're good. So like the kid that drops the paper on the so now the teacher gets to get up in his face and say, You need to say you're sorry, or. You're going to the principal's office. Basically, what she's saying is you need to let go of your dignity and follow directions, because if you hold on to your dignity right now, you're heading to the principal's office so that kid gets to decide. And it's an impossible decision, you know, it's not, it's not a decision. We should be forcing our kids into making any of our kids, regardless of what their energy is, right,

Denise Dryden 45:28
of course, but we have an entire industry built around oppositional kids, kids who who screw up, yeah, kids who, who who sabotage High School, who who cannot make it in middle school, who turn into bullies, who turn into problems. Our entire therapeutic industry is been about trying to trying to figure out what to do with this kind of kid in our in the teachers and the caregivers and the parents aren't understanding that underneath all of it is vulnerability in honesty and truth

Casey O'Roarty 46:04
and a desire, would you say a desire to connect? Always,

Denise Dryden 46:07
a desire Connect. Yeah, but, but if we have this kid, this Indigo kid, I want to talk about the crystal kid, okay, in, in I, I'm not, I want to be really clear. I'm not comfortable with the labeling, or the idea that that this is the only way to call them. It's just that it works right now as I'm developing material on it. Okay, so a crystal kid started arriving 25 years ago. So they're, they're, they're 25 and under. Sometimes there's a few early seatings that are 25 to 30 maybe 30 to 35 but the main core of them started arriving 25 years ago. These are kids that are vibrationally based.

So they feel they're empathic, they're sensitive. They can feel energy in the room. They can feel dissent between the parents. They can feel dishonesty in the teacher. They can feel the material doesn't resonate with them, so they why bother? I don't like English. I'm not doing English. And these kids turtle and by turtling, what they did, they literally pulled their head in and their legs in, and they waited out and they refused to participate. They disconnect from anything that doesn't matter to them, because vibrationally, they can't find the match. So you you put a you put a 12 year old crystal kid into a middle school classroom where everybody's playing dignity power struggles between the teacher and the class and the kids going, I can't even think in this place.

Casey O'Roarty 47:53
Yeah, they don't even have to be involved in the drama. No.

Denise Dryden 47:56
So then he's got his phone out and he's playing a video game, because to him, he cannot participate in the drama that's happening in that classroom. Yeah? And then he's being singled out and taken out of the classroom for having his video game on, yeah. And yet, that's his self soothing tool. That's where he goes to in trance, to to calm down and to let everything reintegrate and find a rhythm. And so these kids are they're slowed for language. They're slow for movement. When they're younger, they're not going to talk until they talk in full sentences around two or three, they're not exactly coordinated, because they're still learning how their body works. They're constantly seeking a way to connect with other human beings, and they're little community builders, and when there's no connection, they are quite capable of taking care of themselves and ignoring the entire world. Does this sound familiar to you? It does. Yeah, and they're in in the school systems are kind of calling them pre spectrum. You know, they're kind of aspergery, but they don't really test out. They have a really high intelligence. They're brilliant. They they can, they can do things in their head, but they don't really want to talk and share it with others. Yeah, they're not showy, no, and whatever. And a lot of them are introverts, so they're so they're not really going to get out there and be showy, but the level of their hyper focus, whether it's on horses or model building or cooking or computer games or baseball, it, you know, it's so diverse, there's no pigeonhole at all, right? It's just that they hyper focus on the things that vibrate and provide solace to them. And so when you have Indigo parents, or you have a culture that lives in drama and situation where you're always either stir. Up the drama or fixing it with problem solving. That's just chaotic energy. Yeah? And you've got this entire new population of children and young adults now who are looking at that and going, not my circus. And I'm not going there, you guys, I'm not participating in that. They don't want to, they don't want to

Casey O'Roarty 50:20
work. They don't so interesting. Yeah, the millennials, right? The millennials,

Denise Dryden 50:23
they don't want they're not on the promotion scale, they they're not motivated by money. They're they're motivated by love. They're motivated no motivated by connection. They're motivated by what inspires them. And everything else falls to the wayside. So we have parents and grandparents and and administrators of systems who are looking at them and going, how do we get these kids to do something? And it was like, how do you quiet yourself down to allow them to talk? Right?

Casey O'Roarty 50:52
And that's my question to you. So, yes, always strengthening our awareness, our perspective, our understanding of the child that's in front of us. I know that you're not suggesting that, oh, we just let this kid, you know, self soothe on the video game in the classroom, or we just let this kid be defiant and disrespectful in the classroom. I know that that's not the gist of where you're going. So where do we how can we as the adults in these kids lives? How do we support them in a way that helps them to fit in the environments that they find themselves in? Because it would be a beautiful world. I mean, I remember years ago, looking into an amazing educational possibility for my kids that financially we could not pull off. And so both of mine are in public schools, and they are both thriving, and it's going and I've been a huge advocate for them, and they are advocates for themselves, and that's our situation, and I'm okay with it, you know. So how do we continue to support our kids so that regardless of, you know, temperament, energy, you know, vibrational level, how do we help them recognize like, yeah, and this is a situation, and this is a situation, and we're gonna love you no matter what here. How do we help them to develop tools, yes, to manage.

Denise Dryden 52:28
So I started in the therapeutic care industry in 1995 and that's at the peak of the oppositional defiant knucklehead who got themselves kicked out of everything. Now they just wanted to flail against anybody. And I made an observation, and it was a life changing observation for me, because I still had little kids at that time that these late stage adolescents and young adults gravitated towards authentic adults. So when you're an authentic adult, when you know who you are, you know why you're here, you're doing something that matters to you, and you have clear boundaries about what works for you and what doesn't work for you. That's all children really want. They don't want to be yelled at because you're mad at something that happened at work, right? They don't want to have meals given to them, because that's the only thing you know how to do, because it makes you feel good, because you feel shitty about yourself. You know what they want is they want an adult who's awake and aware, who's curious and who's always looking for the direction that their life is going to go in and going there. So it's, you know, the tools become always, as you mentioned earlier, about self soothing, about understanding you know, where your center is and what makes you work, and being able to identify when there's a distance between me and the outer me that I'm really out of sync with myself, and my children can't relate to me, because whether the child is driven by vibration or they're driven by truth, right now are the two examples that we've been sort of focusing on, or they're just a kid who wants to be loved and held and accepted, being an authentic an adult makes it so much easier, because then when you can say, yeah, it doesn't work for me. I'm not going to go pick you up at 1030 tonight. The movies, yeah, they know that you're not mad at them and you're not just being lazy or that you don't you're just trying to get into a pissing war with them about power. You're saying I have to get up early tomorrow, and that's not going to work. How can we solve this problem together? Yeah, yes, yes, that's parenting forward. You'd give me some ideas, and let's see if we can make this work. Yes,

Casey O'Roarty 54:51
love it. Yes. Denise, I'm so glad you found me. We're talking about this,

Denise Dryden 54:58
right? Do you. Smiling faces on this big postcard, on the on the coffee Oh, and I was like, You found me from the postcard. Somebody stuck it up in Montana, coffee traders in Whitefish, Montana, and I have no idea, other than it stopped too many of my tracks. I took it off the wall, and it's now mine.

Casey O'Roarty 55:16
Oh my gosh, that was my friend, Sarah Harding.

Denise Dryden 55:20
Sarah's awesome.

Casey O'Roarty 55:24
OMG, you're the first person that said I saw your postcard, so that makes me really excited. Well, and

Denise Dryden 55:30
then I checked you out, and it was like, Yeah, I want to talk to this woman. We could talk for days. You know this, we can, we

Casey O'Roarty 55:36
are. This is going to be the longest podcast ever, um, and that's okay. So yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, what I am hearing you say is, like, even more important than what's the parenting tool I need to use in this moment is I need to get my shit together.

Denise Dryden 55:55
Well, we can go through every historical, religious, anything you know, know thyself. Yes, if you don't know who you are, how are you supposed to guide children forward? And if you don't, you're just teaching them all your coping skills.

Casey O'Roarty 56:09
Yes, absolutely. And the really exciting news listeners that you should all know is Denise has an E course all around the stuff that we have been talking about. Yes, yes, you tell us a little bit about that.

Denise Dryden 56:27
Yeah, I work with Molly McCord on spirituality, university.com, so you can go there and and we'll and I'll send you the link so that you can put it with this as well. I've got it. Okay, good. And it's called parenting, how to parent the New Earth children. And it's five modules, and it's it's 120 pages. It's a book, one chapter at a time, that sort of walks you through what these children are holding for us on the planet, why they're here and and it comes from as a context of of really deepening some spiritual awareness, or some metaphysical and and and interplanetary awareness. And if you're not into that, it's only at the very beginning of each module. The rest of the module is like deep hands on. How do you honor the four elements, the emotional, mental, physical and spiritual components of of child rearing for each of these kinds of kids. And who are you and what do we need to guide you through to be ready to be the kind of parent that we want to be for the new earth? You know, that's just where I go. I'm such I'm so inspired with the direction we're going. And I want to keep talking about this. Everywhere I go,

Casey O'Roarty 57:42
I love it. I am so down with talking about it. Something keeps nagging at me, and I want to, I want to bring it up, because it's really it makes my heart so light to think of a shift, and I can't stop thinking about what went down yesterday in California and what went down a week ago in Colorado, and what happened in Paris a few weeks ago. And so my question to you is, how, how can we maintain this feeling of hope and possibility, with the with the craziness that's that's showing up more often. It feels like more often. And that could be perspective. There could be an argument there around perspective, but it feels like every time you know a week will go by and something awful, something

Denise Dryden 58:39
whether it's Paris, then it's another shooting, right this, then it's that, you know,

Casey O'Roarty 58:48
it's, how can there be a both? And here, I guess that's what I'm learning. I'm learning for the both. And think about

Denise Dryden 58:53
the eye of the hurricane. You know, if we are truly being asked to step into a new way of being. We have skills we have to learn, which means we have to feel our feelings. We have to allow our emotions, emotions to flow through us. We have to access the intelligence in our heart. And heart, Math Institute is doing a phenomenal job of talking about how important the heart intelligence is compared to the brain, if we are dropping out of thinking, thinking, thinking and reacting into feeling and being. To me, the outer world is very similar to that hurricane, whether it's, you know, I have five kids at the house and they're running around screaming, or there's chaos, literally terroristic chaos, going on in our planet. How do I see that as chaos and go in to myself and figure out what matters to me and not let that impact me? Yes, I can be sad. I can let those emotions come up and go through me. But if I see. Stop doing what I'm doing and grab a hold of those and go where they're taking me. I'm lost again, right? So I guess for me, the way that I've been able to handle it is I look at it as, here's another challenge. I you know, I immediately take a moment and pause and pray for the souls that were involved, and then I say it's not mine to solve right how I ground myself and turn around and be a partner, be a parent, be a move in partnership with myself is how I will step into the mastery of this and those events. I hope, as each one of us does this, more will become less significant, less often. You know, it's the only way we can turn the tide right. I turn the television off, yes, I do not go into the drama because I get lost in it. Yeah, I have to go into my quiet, self soothing spot. I light the candles, I sit down, I do my prayers for those souls involved, and I say, What can I do to keep my feet on the ground and feel, you know, feel is that four letter F word. Now we're really going to have to get those feelings up and out and get used to that being just sort of a ongoing like working language system, like breathing, yeah, I feel there it is. I feel because we're not used to that as a culture, nope. We're all about the head, so they're giving us a lot to feel about right now, and our job is to decide what we're going to do with it. Thank

Unknown Speaker 1:01:39
you.

Denise Dryden 1:01:41
Thanks for that. That's key.

Casey O'Roarty 1:01:43
Yeah, well, and, you know, I was talking I a couple episodes ago, I actually interviewed a colleague whose daughter goes to the French American School in Chicago and so, and she's a psychotherapist. And so we talked about, how do we, you know, how do we engage in conversation around terrorism and war and violence with our kids? And, yeah, and it was a really powerful conversation, and I reposted it today, unfortunately, because of, you know, the recent events, it continues to be a relevant conversation for parents to listen in on. But, you know, I all of

Denise Dryden 1:02:25
these will be reveling, yeah, stations, because what we're talking about is the world is showing us how angry it is right now, and we can either participate and join in in that anger, or we can deepen our own self knowledge skills and and become and pull together and do something different well.

Casey O'Roarty 1:02:47
And I think that, as a parent today, we have a really amazing opportunity for raising a generation that when shit like this happens, the first thought is, wow, what must the life of that person been like for them to be willing to cause so much pain on other people? Like, that's, you know, that's something. When I talked to my kid, my daughter, she was, she's 12, and she wanted to talk about what happened in Paris, and she said, there were they, were they strapped bombs on them? Like, why would they do that? And I said, I don't, I don't have an answer for that. All I can think about is how awful their life must have been that they would be willing to do that. And it's, you know, and just having those kinds of conversations, and I think that that's very authentic, right? And talking about we can do, yeah, but to raise a generation of kids who, you know, instead of moving into fear and anger, are moving into curiosity and empathy, are moving into compassion, are looking for perspective. You know, that's gonna, you know, talk about a shift

Denise Dryden 1:03:54
well, and there's two other kinds of kiddos that were seated after the crystals, the rainbows and the diamonds and the vibrational, unconditional love that they hold in their body will help us. They're just so young right now that they're still in in homes with parents. Are

Casey O'Roarty 1:04:13
they will you tell me about this. Rainbows are. Rainbows

Denise Dryden 1:04:17
are 12 to five. So they came for it. Or, excuse me, 12 to seven, they came for a five year period, and and they came to and they were, they were strategically placed in big cities and in amazing places where their kind of Gandhi ish, you know, you know, here's justice and here's and here's love combined is making a significant difference in their communities, and then the diamonds are like these little Buddhas. Have you ever seen a kid in the grocery store who's sitting in one of the carts, and you look at them and you just sink into their eyes and you go, Oh my God, who are you? Yes, that's the new arrival. So they couldn't be here if we hadn't turned the tide. In other words, these precious, new, unconditional love beings are here because we showed them that our world is possible to have them here that, to me, is my inspiration.

Casey O'Roarty 1:05:19
You are bringing I have tears in my eyes right now. It's big stuff. It's such big stuff. And this is so exciting. And I'm again, just so grateful that we got to be in conversation about this. Let's keep getting in conversation.

Denise Dryden 1:05:41
I would love that. And you know, for those of of you who are listening, this is something that is ongoing. Start having these conversations at your dinner table. Start having with your co workers, start having them with your partner and and start looking at what can we do to step onto a world that has hope and peace and love and possibility, yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 1:06:04
And you know, for some of you, this might be like, completely out there, and not something that you've considered before. And I would just invite you to notice what comes up when you listen into this conversation and and get curious about it. And so Denise, what are some resources for people that are listening and are thinking like, Hmm, I want to know more about this. So there's your, your E course, which I am going to post a link to in the show notes. What are some other way like, if you know this is, this is 2015 so if I was going to Google, I was going to Google some information.

Denise Dryden 1:06:40
Yeah, the really interesting thing is that the E course was completely written without any outside resources, really, okay. It's completely channeled, oh, to be quite frank. And so, you know, you can it, there's pieces, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 1:06:59
100 of like indigo children. And I've heard these terms before,

Denise Dryden 1:07:03
yeah, but nothing's been written before the shift. Okay? Or, excuse me, after the shift. It's all before the shift getting ready. So for the last five, four years, three, three and a half, wait, let me do my math. I'm so sorry. Well, it's almost 2016 so I was getting at him, there's been nothing outside of a few articles here and there and and so what I'm hoping to do is start to build a foundation piece where we can start to build more information and and, you know, through coaching and through dialog and through presentations and social gatherings where we all start sharing. That's how this start. This stuff starts growing.

Casey O'Roarty 1:07:44
Do you have any sort of online forum, or I have

Denise Dryden 1:07:48
a Facebook page? Okay, I always put very poignant information on this topic on and it's Denny striden integrational coaching. And then I also have a website that links to my Facebook and and sort of ties it all together. And that's Denise striden coaching, and those links will be on the podcast as well. So it was awesome, you know, and, and I, you know, outside of that, there it's, it's so bizarre. The places that information come comes to me. That comes to me in movies, it comes to me in conversation. It comes in some in in random, middle of the night writings. So it's just there aren't a lot of resources out there outside of those of us who want to talk about this well.

Casey O'Roarty 1:08:32
And you know what's funny is my guess that those of my guess is that those of you that are listening now that you have sat through this podcast, you're going to be out in your world, and it's going to be incredible. The way that this conversation will come back to you, right? The

Denise Dryden 1:08:49
synchronicity. Pay attention. How many people kind of cross your path and remind you of either a part of this conversation or talk about this, this podcast or something? Just pay attention. It'll be really beautiful. Yes,

Casey O'Roarty 1:09:02
pay attention. Love that. Well, thank you so much. Denise, I'm so glad that you spent time with me today. This has been great.

Denise Dryden 1:09:11
Yes, thank you, Casey, for having me on and to be continued. To be continued.

Casey O'Roarty 1:09:14
All right, my friend, have a great day to see wow, wow, wow. That's all I can really say about that interview. What an exciting and hopeful and moving conversation. I'm so grateful for Denise and her work and her willingness to come on and talk about it in the podcast. If you have any questions or any musings or any wonderings about anything that we touched on in this last interview, please don't forget that you can always get a hold of me at Casey, at joyful courage.com. You. You can join if you haven't already, join the live in love with joyful courage Facebook group where we're having lots of conversations about all sorts of things and supporting each other in in community, parenting is a collective journey, my friends, and that's why I'm I'm publicly sharing these conversations is because what's happening in the individual is happening in the collective. And my guess is that there were pieces of that interview that really resonated with you. There may have been some things that you will not hang on to, but there also was probably something that really resonated with you. So let's talk about it. Join me in the Facebook group discussing some of the things that Denise and I talked about. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to the joyful courage podcast through iTunes. You do that, and the shows come to you automatically as soon as I post them right to your device, your phone, your iPad, and it's a really easy way to keep up with the podcast. Big, huge love to all of you. And again, the resources mentioned will be in the show notes, and I will see you next time. Thank you for being here. Bye, bye.

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