Transcription
[00:00:00] Casey O'Roarty: Hey, welcome to the Joyful Courage Podcast, a place for inspiration and transformation as we try and keep it together while parenting our tweens and teens. This is real work people, and when we can focus on our own growth and nurturing the connection with our kids, we can move through the turbulence in a way that allows for relationships to remain intact.
[00:00:27] My name is Casey O'Roarty. I am your fearless host. I'm a positive discipline trainer, space holder, coach, and the adolescent lead at Sproutable. I am also the mama to a 20-year-old daughter and 17-year-old son walking right beside you on this path of raising our kids with positive discipline and conscious parenting.
[00:00:47] This show is meant to be a resource to you, and I work really hard to keep it real, transparent and authentic so that you feel seen and supported. Today is an interview and I have no doubt. That what you hear will be useful to you. Please don't forget sharing truly is caring. If you love today's show, please pass the link around, snap a screenshot, post it on your socials or text it to your friends.
[00:01:13] Together we can make an even bigger impact on families all around the globe. I'm so glad that you're here. Enjoy the show.
[00:01:26] Hey, everybody. Hi. Welcome to today's episode. Today is a celebration. It's a celebration extravaganza because the Joyful Courage Podcast is 10 years old. We have been doing this for a decade. Isn't that just so crazy? Feels kind of crazy to me. It feels really crazy to me. So this show, what I've done is I've pulled 10 episodes from the last 10 years to highlight the journey that we've been on together.
[00:02:04] I'm really excited about it and, um, it was a pretty big project. My hope is that the clips that I share are useful and meaningful to you. Maybe spark your interest in a show that you haven't listened to yet. But really I just wanna mark the experience of being a podcast host and walking this path together.
[00:02:28] So I was trained to do positive discipline in 2007 and a few years into it. I remember having a participant in one of my classes when, I don't remember what the context of the conversation was, but they kind of said, yeah, but what is it really like at your house? You know, you're, you're facilitating us through all these activities, but what's it really like for you?
[00:02:55] So I started blogging. I started writing about my experience of integrating positive discipline into my family life and sharing my journey. And from the get, one thing that was always just natural and true for me was that I had to tell an authentic story. I had to be real about it. I had to talk about the messiness of parenting.
[00:03:27] And so yeah, I started blogging, I started sharing, and then I found myself in this Facebook group with all of these like really important in my mind, important people, important meaning published authors, like names that I recognized, really people that were inspiring to me in the parenting world. And you know, I've always kind of joked that I wanted my own radio show that I would be a really good dj, like talk show style.
[00:04:00] And so this idea started to form around, what about a podcast? And again, I'm looking around and I'm like, man, I have access to some pretty cool people. I wanna have conversations about the messiness of parenting. I wanna have a conversation just about positive discipline. I found this incredible support system, the show, the support system around the show called She Podcasts.
[00:04:27] It's no longer, they're not creating new episodes anymore, but they did for a long time. The two hosts, Jessica Kupperman and Elsie Escobar were just such an inspiration to me and they ran this really small mastermind for people who wanted to start podcasting. And I went for it. I jumped in, I did their program, and by the end of it I had published a few episodes and that was again, back in 2015.
[00:04:56] And um, it's just been an amazing journey all along the way. And things have evolved over time. I mean, 20, 15, 10 years ago, I had. A 9-year-old and a 12-year-old. Right. Whereas we were still very much in the elementary years, venturing into adolescence, but it still kind of felt like we weren't quite there yet.
[00:05:20] I was still running classes for parents of younger kids. It was a different era for sure. And you know, a few years away from things getting really wild on the teenage front. Right. So yeah, I started podcasting and I started reaching out to people and inviting people to be in conversation with me and it was beautiful, magical.
[00:05:45] And I really loved being a host. I really loved being in conversation with people. So this show is gonna highlight some of those conversations, not only with my guests, but also some of the solo shows that I've done over the years because. Something that began to happen over time is I started getting a lot of feedback around the solo shows and around the shows where it was just me talking about what I believe about parenting and listening to the community and bringing challenges to the podcast that I was seeing in the community or with my clients.
[00:06:24] And that's really what is going to be inspiring and informing the next 10 years of the podcast. So I'm excited to be on this journey with you and to take you along for the ride. I hope that this is entertaining and informative. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Yeah. Yeah. So let's start with the first show that I wanna highlight, which.
[00:06:50] Is episode 17 from my first year of podcasting, and it was with a woman named Bonnie Harris, and her program is called Connected Parenting. I just felt that we had so much overlap between connected parenting and positive discipline, and I knew I wanted to have her on the show. She was, you know, definitely somebody who I admired, appreciated.
[00:07:17] And here's a little clip from our conversation again, episode 17, about being responsible with our emotions.
[00:07:30] Okay. Uh, say off little more off script here, a little more about the stickiness. Yeah, that's okay.
[00:07:35] Casey O'Roarty: Well, I mean, it's not, I, it's not so much an argument as it is, it's just another layer, right. I really want my kids to be aware that, um. Every decision that they make affects other people. Affects other people.
[00:07:51] Right. Affects the outcome, how, how other people are going to treat them. And
[00:07:54] those are the consequences of their behavior. Right. Right. Not, not us taking away their iPhone. Right, right, right. Their favorite toy. Yes, yes. Right. Yeah. So those are the consequences yet, so, but I do think you're, you're going down to a deeper level, but it's really the same thing.
[00:08:14] Mm-hmm. Because you're also saying you are responsible for that. That's your choice to behave that way. And it's your choice whether you're going to let the people that you affect and who are giving you feedback for what you've done. I like whether you're going to allow that to. Change your behavior or not.
[00:08:41] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[00:08:42] Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Esoteric here.
[00:08:45] Casey O'Roarty: And I get, and, and you know, I think that I often will say to my kids, you know, I am continuously working on taking care of myself and of managing the flood of emotion that happens for me. And sometimes I show up really well and centered and connected, and sometimes I don't.
[00:09:03] And that's my work. But that's also part of the consequence, right? That's also part of the world that we influence, is how the people around us interact with us. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah.
[00:09:16] And let me just say, Casey, that I think this is a really important piece to talk about because, um, for instance, what connective parenting puts a lot of focus on is that that parent-child relationship mm-hmm.
[00:09:34] Not so much. I mean, it certainly, there's a lot of the how tos and what do I say to my kid when and all of that, but Right. It's really, it really focuses on the relationship and the responsibility. And if you, if you want to have, you know, if you wanna have a good relationship with your kids, you need to feel good about yourself.
[00:09:56] Yeah. And part, also part of that, I mean, the balance that I talk about, 'cause I, I, you know, I, I say that it's, it's all about the balance between the parent and the child. Mm-hmm. So it's not just about the child. And in the balance piece, that means you have just as much right to your anger and frustration and.
[00:10:26] Everything that you feel as your children do. Mm-hmm. And I think we get into a trap as parents, especially very conscientious parents who really wanna do the best job they possibly can. Right. I think the trap is, I must be calm all the time. I have to just be this perfect person so that my child will be that too.
[00:10:54] And so that I'm doing the best for my child. But I think we are, um, we're, we're disserving our, our ourselves. Mm-hmm. Because you see, I think that we are, we can get as angry as we want with our children as long as we own it. Mm-hmm. So the problem is that what comes trippingly off the tongue is things like, you make me so mad.
[00:11:27] You do this and you this and you that. Right? And you're dumping it. So you're dumping that anger on your child and that's irresponsible because that anger belongs to you. It doesn't belong to your child. And so starting with I just as simple as that is, is where you can go with that and you can hit the ceiling with, I feel so angry when I see clothes all over the floor.
[00:11:59] You know, there's nothing wrong with that. So much better than you are such a slob. How many times do I have to tell you to pick up your clothes? Right?
[00:12:12] Casey O'Roarty: So, yeah, I really loved being in conversation with Bonnie. She was such a delight. I hope you listen to that whole episode. Fast forward now into the second year of the podcast.
[00:12:25] Not only has it given me a chance to be in conversation with people I didn't know yet, but admired from afar, it was becoming a place where I could have my friends on. And in the second year of the show, my friend and mentor, Dina Emer came on to talk about encouragement. Dina was one of my trainers. As I've moved through the ranks of positive discipline.
[00:12:51] She's an OG PD person and has been practicing positive discipline in her family, in schools, in the workplace for, I mean, I don't even know how many years, over 30 years, 40 years so long. And she's just somebody that I love and admire so much. Encouragement is a pillar of positive discipline and really the essence of who I want to be.
[00:13:15] As a parent, I don't get it right all the time, but I'm always trying to look for ways to be encouraging to the people that I love and to myself. Dean and I had a powerful conversation about this. Here's a piece of it.
[00:13:34] I think that a lot of parents get trapped into that sense of urgency.
[00:13:40] Yeah.
[00:13:40] Casey O'Roarty: Right. And I've gotta do something right now. I've gotta fix this, I've gotta stop this, I've gotta respond to this. I have to react to this. Mm-hmm. And then that fear and projecting into the future creeps in and it just is a disaster inside the head.
[00:13:56] Right. Right. It's a disaster inside the head. Yeah. I remember a, a huge moment for me when our first was just an infant, when we went in to see the minister of our church and we were getting ready to do the, um, sort of the presentation service when she was about six weeks old. And then the minister said to me, now, Tina, remember, this child does not belong to you.
[00:14:20] Hmm. And I remember looking at him and the voice in my head was like, buddy, I'm pretty sure she does. You know, I had just given birth to this person. But the idea that as a parent, we really do consider that our children are people of this planet and they don't belong to us. They aren't here to relive our lives a second time.
[00:14:39] They're here to be put on their own paths for their own learning. So I think if we can, as parents kind of unhook ourselves from that fear, that agenda of making sure our kids do or be X, Y, Z when they grow up, it really helps us be encouraging of the people that they actually are. Ugh. That I know. That makes me kind of weepy.
[00:15:01] I know. It's really, it made me cry buckets. Yeah.
[00:15:04] Casey O'Roarty: I mean that, and I was, and I've been thinking about that, you know, lately my kids are getting older and my daughter's gonna be 13 next week. And, and I'm excited for them and, and their whole life ahead of them and, you know, recognizing that we're just, we're just caregivers
[00:15:22] Right.
[00:15:22] Casey O'Roarty: For a while. And doing our best and helping them build skills and ultimately Yeah. It's their life.
[00:15:30] It's their life. And we're here to certainly help be a guide, but, you know, it's a really relatively short period of time. Yeah,
[00:15:37] Casey O'Roarty: yeah, yeah.
[00:15:38] So us keeping the faith in them mm-hmm. That they are capable, lovely people.
[00:15:44] Mm-hmm. Put on the planet to do something that we don't even really know yet what it is. But just to assume that it's gonna be loving. Mm-hmm. And it may not be great by anybody else's standards, but guess what? It doesn't even matter. Yeah.
[00:16:00] Casey O'Roarty: And I love how all of those tools, you know, especially as we start playing with them in those early years, all of those tools of, you know, validating their feelings and giving limited choices and taking time to train them and inviting them into cooperation and chores, all of those things are basically sending that message that you can do it, you are capable.
[00:16:21] And all of that falls underneath this beautiful umbrella of encouragement. Not only that, but it's also, you know, building relationship with the adult, because who doesn't wanna be around somebody who believes in them.
[00:16:35] Absolutely.
[00:16:36] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. And it's, it's interesting too, because I run into a lot of parents who want a quick fix.
[00:16:41] Like they want it fixed now. They wanna tell their child to listen one time and have them be, you know. Fantastic listeners forever. And um, and I have to remind them, especially again, back to these early years, it's really building foundation and you are a broken record. And, and that's okay. It's no fault of the child or of you, it's just the way that it is during that period of time.
[00:17:06] And even as they get older, just because you've apparently maybe just at my house, but just 'cause you tell them to do something one time doesn't mean, you know, they're gonna jump up and do it. And I noticed especially, um, with my kids, the more discouraged they feel, the more discouraging my way of being is.
[00:17:28] Meaning my facial expression, my body posture, my voice tone. Yeah. You know, it falls apart. Yeah. And it's so funny that we feel like, well now I'm just getting mad, so you better just hustle to it. Like that somehow should create a situation where they are moving it along. And, and I think that in some cases, on the short term it can look like that, but in the long term it's so not helpful.
[00:17:54] And not to mention the the mom guilt that shows up after you've treated somebody else like that. Yes, I love Dina. She's so awesome. And so now we're moving into 2017 and I'm looking through all the shows from that year and I have to highlight episode 100 because this one was a huge milestone, just that I'm at episode 100 of this thing that I've been doing that I love.
[00:18:27] I just fell in love with podcasting right away. And my guest on episode 100 just felt like a really big deal. It was Dr. Tina Bryson and you know, she co-author books with Dan Siegel and. She's just this incredible human being and I was so floored when I was able to reach out to her and she agreed to be on the show.
[00:18:51] And I just remember making this big deal about episode 100 and Tina Bryson, and it felt so good. And when the show came out, it was late spring of 2017, and 2017 was an interesting year. You know, this is the year that Rowan started high school. It was the end of eighth grade, the beginning, first half of ninth grade, end of eighth grade.
[00:19:17] Definitely saw some shifts for her. Um, it was eighth grade, was that time? Seventh and eighth grade? Both. But eighth grade really became this time where, you know, for my daughter, she went from being kind of a quiet, studious student school girl. To, you know, being noticed for how pretty she is and her kind of low grade feelings of anxiety, you know, start to peak out as she navigates the attention that she's getting.
[00:19:58] And come to find out, you know, she also was navigating some not great behavior from other kids. As happens in seventh and eighth grade. Shouldn't happen. Is happening. Oh my gosh. Side note, is anybody watching the show Adolescence on Netflix? It is really heartbreaking and I think, I mean hopefully is an extreme version of what's happening in schools with adolescents right now, but.
[00:20:27] Sorry. Side note, as I think about my kids being in seventh and eighth grade, that show, 'cause I'm on episode three just came to mind. I highly recommend it. And if your heart is tender right now, don't watch it 'cause it's a lot. But yeah, this was, this big, felt like a really big transitional year. So end of eighth grade into ninth grade.
[00:20:47] And I mean, that's really when I found myself looking for conversations about the messiness of adolescents and not finding it really feeling like, why is everybody writing and talking as if there's this magical formula for not having the hard things show up because I'm doing a pretty decent job and really trying to follow the pillars, the guidelines of positive discipline and things are going sideways, like risky behaviors going on.
[00:21:24] And it was really that fall of 2017, a lot of things went down. Anyway, back to the clip that I'm gonna share. So I've got Tina right on. And you know, we talk about this conversation. She definitely spends more of her time at that point talking about younger kids and, and self-regulation for young kids.
[00:21:44] But as you listen to the following clip, I want you to really hear all the things that she's saying that can be applied to our teenagers, because there is very much a wave of autonomy seeking that happens in the toddler and younger years that shows up again in adolescence. And it's, it's, it's messy, it's slippery, it's a struggle.
[00:22:08] So I'm really excited to share this clip from Tina with you. Check it out and um, yeah. Create value by listening for what she shares that's applicable to you right now in the relationship that you are in with your kiddo.
[00:22:29] Tina Payne Bryson: 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 right, 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.
[00:22:44] I mean, the family was sort of at the, the mercy of his. He, he would went red zone all the time, just constant tantruming. He would get aggressive and violent. Mm-hmm. And when we chased the Y and peeled back the layers to what this was about and why his nervous system was so reactive, he, this was a boy who actually in fact had some sensory challenges that had not yet been identified.
[00:23:04] Mm-hmm. 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 can't for him. That he, he couldn't help it. Right. That his nervous system was in the state of threat. And that when the dad would cont would fight with him, he would actually send him further into the red zone.
[00:23:23] Right. When the dad would yell at him and wag his finger in his face and mm-hmm. 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 what I was saying at this, this lady.
[00:23:40] Yeah. He's like, oh gosh. You know? So I looked at him and I said, I didn't wanna send him into the red zone. So I was really careful to be playful 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.
[00:24:01] Why don't you argue with me? Mm-hmm. And he said, I just don't buy this camp thing. I mean, he can handle himself. I, 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.
[00:24:19] 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 gonna be the answer. So I said to the dad, let me ask you something against being really soft in my approach. Mm-hmm. 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.
[00:24:44] I said, I, that's how I am. I'm assuming that's how you are too. Mm-hmm. 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.
[00:25:03] And I said, so you're saying you can be patient and loving you just decide not to. And he kind of like, was like, aha. And he kinda laughed. And you know, I, the joke I like to tell is I did eventually get paid for that session, so that was good. 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,
[00:25:24] Casey O'Roarty: right?
[00:25:24] Tina Payne Bryson: A 5-year-old cannot be consistent. And you know, if you have a kid who is predictably unpredictable in a really, you know, in 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.
[00:25:41] Right?
[00:25:41] Tina Payne Bryson: 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 an, like a DHD or a sensory challenge or a learning disability that hasn't been found or those kinds of things.
[00:25:53] Casey O'Roarty: Well, and I think it's really important what you were able to point out to that dad and something that I mentioned, um, working with parents as well. 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's happening in my world gets filtered through all of this.
[00:26:15] 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 filter, there's no filter, there's nothing for them to put what's happening for them against Right to make. More rational, for lack of a better word, rational is probably not a great word to make sense of what's happening for them.
[00:26:38] Yeah.
[00:26:39] Tina Payne Bryson: 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.
[00:26:52] 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.
[00:27:11] Right. 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, an a reptile under attack at times, right? Yes. 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.
[00:27:35] Casey O'Roarty: So Good. I just love everything that Tina shared on that show, as well as the other times that she's been on the pod. 'cause she has come on since that time. A few times. Yeah. So I'm moving into, like I mentioned. High school with Rowan, and now we're in 2018, and as I went through the shows from 2018, oh man, there were so many that I wanted to highlight.
[00:28:10] So many great guests, powerful solo shows. It was a huge powerful year. Some of my friends were on and people that became friends. There were conversations around my experience of being a white woman and privilege Dan Siegel came on. I mean, I'm kind of dying that I'm not highlighting that show from 2018, from August of 2018.
[00:28:40] But I'll tell you what I. Chose a solo show to highlight right now because part of this 10 year celebration is the journey of this podcast. And in the fall of 2018, we had my daughter at the end of her freshman year. So the early 2018, she completed ninth grade and she wanted to do online school. She did not wanna go back to the high school, and things were just really, really hard with her.
[00:29:15] And as I continued to scroll through the shows of this year, I remembered how much feedback I got from people about the solo show I did in. October, the beginning of October, 2018. It was a show about navigating depression and anxiety, and it was hard for me to watch Rowan identify with anxiety and depression.
[00:29:44] I was scared and overwhelmed and really felt out of my depths. And this show was a very real share from the trenches. And I got Rowan's permission, um, to share my experience of this time. But I really was you guys, I was really out of my depth. I didn't know what to do or how to be there for her. So I just rolled into the unknown and did the best that I could and we've recently had some conversations.
[00:30:25] Rowan is now 22. She was um, 15 when the solo show came out. She's now 22. And we had some conversations looking back at this time. And you know, she's talked to me about really not feeling like she belonged in our little family unit, which is so wild to me and brings up a lot of emotions because, you know, here I am a positive discipline parent educator, and all of our work is based on the idea that humans thrive, need, move towards a sense of belonging and significance.
[00:31:09] And to think that. That was prevalent for her, that feeling of not belonging and that I somehow unknowingly contributed to that. Woo. It's a dagger to the heart. Right? And we talked recently just about how people show up to parenting, not realizing where their gaps are, where their wounds are, where their healing is, until confronted by that child who then ignites and sparks the inner child of the parent and the experiences of being parented.
[00:31:44] We had a really powerful conversation about that recently. So I wanna share this show, this solo show, about navigating depression and anxiety because it made an impact on the people that listened. And maybe you are someone with a child who's struggling with mental health and you're struggling to know how to help them.
[00:32:04] And so my, my hope is that this little clip is useful to you, and if it is, feel free to listen to the whole show 'cause it's a good one. All right. Here it is. Plus, you know, I, I am a positive discipline trainer. Positive discipline is all about belonging and significance. It's moving away from feeling less than and towards a feeling of connection and knowing that we matter, and remembering that it's all about perception, right?
[00:32:36] It's all about perception. I remember. Last year, um, a particular conversation that I had with my daughter and she just was so angry all the time. She was so angry and, and didn't want anything to do with the family and spent all of her time in her room and was in tears and wouldn't share. And it was really awful.
[00:32:59] And I can remember sitting in the car with her and just watching her silent tears, right? And saying, what, what's, what is this? What's going on? And she said, you and daddy and Ian, you're just so perfect and I don't feel like I fit. And, and that broke my heart, right? That broke my heart. And um, I was like, oh my gosh, I pretty much told you to F off last week.
[00:33:28] I don't know how That's perfect. You know? I wanted to bring up evidence of how we were not, in fact perfect, but it didn't matter because it was her perception. Right. It was her perception and you know, we want what? And, and, and so I'm really grateful that I have this positive discipline background and I'm still feeling like, oh my gosh, what have I done?
[00:33:54] What am I doing? What do I do? Right? What do we do when we know something is wrong without giving the message that they need to be fixed or that they're wrong or that they're not good enough. This is really what I'm struggling with. Right? And that challenge of meeting them where they're at. So Rowan did go to a counselor last year, a lovely woman, and, um.
[00:34:22] You know, and I was able to text back and forth with her a little bit and, and I kept hearing her say, you, you need to meet her where she's at. And then we went to a naturopath, uh, earlier this week. And again, we had this whole conversation about her anxiety and depression and, you know, I was really like, you know, Rowan, are you hearing what she's saying?
[00:34:43] Like you have to be an active member of the team. And the naturopath turns her whole body towards me and said, you don't understand depression and anxiety. And totally called me out. And was really basically was like, you don't understand that what works for you around goal setting is not right now. What is actually gonna work for her?
[00:35:09] And you offering that is actually adding to the stress and adding to the weight that she's already feeling. So meeting them when they're where they're at. Right. And recognizing for myself that I thought I knew what that meant. And you know, here I am in this relationship with my daughter who's really teaching me where my faults are.
[00:35:33] Right. And, and, and what that means. And it's a dance, right? It's a dance between like being in action and fixing versus validating and just being with her.
[00:35:56] Mm. Yep. Solo shows. I really started to lean in to the solo shows, especially once we got into 2019. Man, it got real. It continued to be real. We moved, we. We're in a new community that shook Ian, but also showed him what he was capable of. And the hope was relocating was gonna support Rowan. And it turned out that even when you relocate, um, mental health comes with you.
[00:36:37] So the show that I wanna highlight from 2019 is episode 2 0 6. It's a solo show called The Path to Radical Acceptance. I had begun Therapy and my therapist was a DBT trained therapist. He is awesome. Shout out to Mark. Love him. And. You know, he would kind of pepper into my therapy, little bits and pieces of DBT.
[00:37:09] And one of the modules for DBT is radical acceptance. And when I recorded this episode, it was just maybe a week or two after my oldest completely dropped out of school. So we moved up to Bellingham and that thought was, she would bypass the high school experience. And in Washington state there's something called Running Start where kids can do high school.
[00:37:35] At the college, she'd go to the community college. She was excited about that. And you know, by early October it was really, the quarter started in late September, so she was really only three weeks in. It became clear. That her mental health was rapidly declining and she just made the definitive declaration that she was going to drop out of school.
[00:38:04] And I was like, oh, what do you mean? Well, that's not a thing. That's not a thing. But now looking back, I recognize that that was her stepping into her own self-preservation. Things were not good in her mental space, in her emotional space. So I got to really practice recognizing that I was holding a narrative that was not gonna be the narrative for my child, and trying to figure out how to be there for her in a way that was supportive forwarding I I just how to be who she needed.
[00:38:47] I didn't know. And one of the tools that I got from therapy was this idea of radical acceptance. And this show is about what I was learning at the time about radical acceptance and how it applies to parenting. Our teenagers, especially those teenagers that you know, take those side roads are the experiential learners, right?
[00:39:12] The ones that are doing all the things that we hope that they wouldn't do, and how to be with it. So enjoy this clip, episode 2 0 6, the Path to Radical Acceptance.
[00:39:29] We can't know how the narrative will go, right? We can't. We can convince ourselves that we can control it and only to be shown time and time again that we cannot control. The narrative, right? We can influence it. Um, we can, we can hope and pray and meditate and journal and, and do the things. Uh, but we can't control the narrative.
[00:40:03] We can't control who our kids are. And I am, again, in a new place of being shown that I have no control of the narrative when it comes to my kids. And something that has been top of mind for me, especially this last week, which I think will continue to be a theme of my life for the foreseeable future, is this concept of radical acceptance.
[00:40:29] Have you heard of this radical acceptance? Um, I know in. Uh, DBT therapy, dialectic Behavioral Therapy, which I have never done and I really know nothing about. Um, but it's about, um, and I I, but it keeps showing up. Like I keep having people talk to me about DBT, so I'm guessing I'm probably gonna head in that direction at some point and hopefully invite my kids there.
[00:40:59] But what radical acceptance is about in that context is that, um, it's about accepting something with all of your soul and opening yourself to fully experience the reality of the moment, right? Being in the acceptance and allowing the moment, radically accepting that you want something that you don't have and it's not a catastrophe.
[00:41:26] Right? That's from Marsha Lineman, who is kind of the, the mother of, of, uh, DBT and Radical Acceptance. Um. Radically accepting that you want something you don't have and it's not a catastrophe. Right? Thinking about how that concept can inspire and inform us on the parenting journey is really powerful, right?
[00:41:54] Focusing on the moment that you're in and, and accepting the moment that you're in accepting the past, and then knowing that you change can come from that place of acceptance. Um, reality is what it is. And, um, letting go of resistance, right? Letting go of resistance and being in this place of acceptance, right?
[00:42:22] Because the past, like getting really. Obsessed with the past and the future can really fuck us up, right? How many of us feel guilty and rack our brains looking for where we screwed up when things go sideways with our kids? Maybe if we'd done it differently, we wouldn't be in the situation we were in, right?
[00:42:40] Maybe if I had done more consequences, maybe if I had pushed them harder, maybe if I had not pushed them so hard, maybe if I was less controlling. Maybe if I was more controlling, right? Like we can just spin out on that conversation, right? And what comes with that conversation? Guilt and shame and blame, right?
[00:43:04] Are we accepting of the moment? No. 'cause we're too caught up in blaming ourselves or life or the world for where we're at. It doesn't create space for us to simply accept that we are where we are. And I mean, you know, it's, it's like I also am in this question of what shouldn't I, shouldn't we think about the future?
[00:43:28] Isn't it important to think about the future? How can we not think about the future? I, I have hopes and dreams for my kids, of course. Right. But again, becoming obsessed with a future, while resisting the present moment creates suffering. It's just not useful. Right. It's just not useful. And when I think about that, and I try to again, come into this place of radical acceptance and being with what is.
[00:44:03] You know, and then I think about what's so important to me when, when I'm considering my kids and what I want most for them is I want them to know that they are the designers of their life, right? They are the designers of their life. How can I get out of the way? How can I create an environment that allows them to feel the call and the tension and the celebration and the experience of being the designers of their life, right?
[00:44:32] How can I create a space that is pure enough for them to be able to trust themselves and to trust their own capacity to dream and take action and live and love so fully? I mean, I don't have any answers here, but, but I have a lot of questions, right? And then, you know what happens is. You know, we start to listen.
[00:45:00] I start to listen to, you know, what's the popular conversation, right? The popular conversation would have us believe that there's five steps. It's a five step process for getting to the outcome we want with our kids, right? Popular conversation would have us believe that success is, you know, the captain of the football team, valedictorian, accolades, and prizes, you know, college, top of class, you know, popular conversations would have us believe that parenting is about them and not us.
[00:45:33] It would have us believe that if things go sideways, it's about something we're doing wrong and that there's something to fix. Popular conversation today blames the world and technology and teens themselves for what we are seeing, and I just. I mean, what if the popular conversation is wrong? What if parenting is about us, but not about us in what we're doing right or wrong?
[00:46:02] But what if it's about us experiencing, experiencing the internal, uh, landscape of being in relationship with a teenager or being in relationship with a school age kid? What if it's about us growing and evolving and being on this course and this path that really has no end point? What if no matter what we do, our kids are gonna experience the path they're meant to experience?
[00:46:37] What if the path that they're on right now is exactly where they're meant to be and that nothing we could have done would have prevented maybe some of the challenges they're facing? What if right here, right now is exactly as it should be. Right? Radical acceptance.
[00:46:59] Yeah. Radical acceptance. Little did I know right at the time of that recording. Little did I know just how important radical acceptance was gonna become as a practice for me, because guess where we're headed now? 20. 20. What? A year for all of us, right? What a year for all of us. We all had the collective experience of COVID-19.
[00:47:32] Weird. What a weird, I remember at some point, at one point we were watching the news, which we don't really watch the news. Maybe we were actually listening, but I looked over at Ben and I was like. Is this how it felt in like the early days of the Walking Dead? You know, like the early days of the zombie apocalypse.
[00:47:56] Just that feeling of this is weird, what's going on This, this doesn't make sense, my brain can't make sense of this. Right. So there was that. There was that and, and I put on some really great shows at the start of 2020. I had my friend Alyssa Bla Campbell on early in January. I loved her. She, we talked about it, collaborative emotion processing, which is kind of her jam.
[00:48:25] I had my friend Sarah Dean on my friend Yolanda Williams, whose podcast is called Decolonizing Parenting. She's been on since and is just. It's such a resource for me in being the best version of myself for all the people. Including the people of color. Yeah. And then Covid hit, and then my husband was diagnosed with multiple myeloma blood cancer in April, April 4th.
[00:48:55] We're really close to the five-year anniversary. He went in for surgery 'cause he had a massive tumor on his spine and when they checked it out, they found that he actually had multiple, has multiple myeloma, plus his spine was nearly severed and had to be rebuilt. It was intense. You guys like, whoa. It was intense.
[00:49:19] There's a show that I did right after just called. Living with uncertainty. Plus we had, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement happening. I did a solo show around being better for people of color. I had my friend Vivek Patel on talking about nurturing an anti-racist home. That was all in June. And then I took a break 'cause whoa, cancer treatment in September of 2020.
[00:49:49] I had Ned Campbell on, and Ned co-authored a book called The Self-Driven Child. And I loved being in conversation with him. Sometimes I have guests on and it's so easy, it feels like we're already friends. And that's what I remember about talking to Ned. And Ned and I really talked a lot about intrinsic motivation, nurturing, intrinsic motivation, nurturing, distress tolerance, and really keeping in mind that adolescence is absolutely that place for our kids.
[00:50:23] To cultivate a brain that is ready and resilient enough to be with life's challenges. 'cause you don't know what's gonna come up and how great that this was in 2020 because nobody saw the pandemic coming. I certainly didn't see cancer treatment coming, you know, we were still in the throes of my daughter's mental health breakdown and man, yeah, self-drive.
[00:50:53] How do we do that? How do we nurture that? So here's a little clip from that conversation that I think is, is useful and I would definitely encourage you to go back and check out this episode. It's episode 2 42. I also wanna say what I'm not highlighting in 2020, which I kind of want to but is my conversation with Rowan.
[00:51:16] Rowan actually came on. The podcast in 2020, episode 2 52, and she talks about her experience of just her mental health and she's so candid and so generous, and so sweet and so articulate that I would also encourage you to check that out. She's been on the show four times, five. If you count the episode I did with her and her brother in the closet talking about screen time.
[00:51:46] But yeah, she's been super generous with her, um, experience and sharing it with all of you. And I know because I've gotten feedback how much you appreciate that. But what I'm gonna highlight here is a piece of my conversation with Ned Johnson.
[00:52:03] So stress tolerance. I think we all really get what stress tolerance is, right? The intrinsic motivation. I love thinking about intrinsic motivation and when we couple it with the micromanaging, I mean, I, I'm raising my hand right now, people, you all know I am, this is my life's work is to let go of the inner micromanager and let everyone, you know, allow the people around me to actually feel some sense of responsibility of their life.
[00:52:35] To feel that freedom that comes with, hey, I get to decide. How this is gonna play out. I'm currently, so just to fill you in a little bit, Ned, and to remind the listeners, my husband is in cancer treatment and we, he and I are spending weeks at a time in Seattle and the kids are home managing themselves.
[00:52:57] It's like divine intervention for them to get rid of the micromanager in their life and to really have, like, we were forced into this space of like, okay, I have to trust that you are gonna follow through. Because meanwhile, our district is all online. My son is starting high school, you know, it's all new and I get to trust.
[00:53:19] He can problem solve, he can get it done, he can stay off his phone and pay attention. And we had a conversation before I left just saying like, you know, and I said to him, so this is the beginning of high school. It's super weird. Um. And you get to kind of decide the bricks, you're gonna lay at the beginning of this, of this path, you know?
[00:53:45] And, and I love you and I trust you. And you know, basically like good luck. And I, like I said, it's, it is, it's, it's both like, oh, this is the worst timing, but it's also the best timing 'cause it's really forcing me to not hover. I'm not that bad of a hoverer, but I have hovering tendencies. So talk a little bit about that.
[00:54:10] Like you talk about healthy sense of control. You told the story of, I love you too much to talk, to argue about your homework. And yet. Parents are so terrified to, for, well, I mean, we connected through Jessica Lehe, who is the queen of the gift of failure. Right? We are still, even how we now, she is a human being.
[00:54:30] Yes. She is an amazing human being. And we know, we know mistakes are opportunities to learn. We know how important it is for our kids to fail and learn and get up, and yet God, we keep getting in the way. And so connect that with why it's impossible to develop intrinsic motivation if everyone else is holding responsibility for your schooling, et cetera.
[00:54:54] Well, and let me, I'll make, I'll make a really quick word about, um, one more quick word about, about stress tolerance. And it's this Yes. That we, we all, you know, we all understand this. You know, through stories, you know, through anecdotes, through our own experience. But it's important to recognize that this is scientifically true, right down to the, to the, the level, you know, neurons.
[00:55:15] Okay. But the, the one of the most helpful things for people to know, I mean, one of the most helpful, the sort of two key things that, that we think are the most important things to know about brain. Here's the first one, the single best predictor of mental health is how robust are the connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala?
[00:55:35] Okay? How robust are those connections? And so this is what we talk about, that the outcome that we want. For adolescents is they've sculpted and they've fostered as much connectivity between those two parts of the brain as possible, because that's what stress tolerance looks like. When the Amy Okay, wait, lemme stop
[00:55:52] Casey O'Roarty: you, lemme stop you really quick just to kind of talk about it in like regular terms.
[00:55:56] Yep, yep. So you mean the amount of, of uh, the relationship between like the amygdala is that safety radar? It's that high stress. Yeah. So we get freaky and then we're able to calm down and come back to the prefrontal cortex. So when we move in that direction, when we practice that over and over and over, is that creating that robust connection?
[00:56:18] Right. It's the experience of, it's a, it's the experience of a, of a, of a tolerable stressor, not something that's overwhelming, right. That's toxic. It's the experience of, of having something stressful that you deal with. Right. And you kind of go into the, the, the, the problem solving part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex activates.
[00:56:36] Mm-hmm. And when it does, it dampens down the stress response kind of hashtag I've got this. Okay. And the experience of doing that over and over increases those connections. So what's going on with your son and your daughter right now with, with with mom and dad off? Taking care of dad's health is giving them.
[00:56:53] You know, daily doses. Oh, wow. This is really intense. I've never actually, you know, done this. I, I mean, how are we, what are we, how are we gonna figure this out? Well, mom's not here. She's at the hospital. And so your son and your daughter put their heads together. Well, well, maybe you should try this. Maybe you should try that.
[00:57:07] Mm-hmm. And so, so often when, when kids are in difficult situations, they forgot their homework, whatever it is, right? We wanna, as parents, we don't wanna see our kids suffer. And so we have this tendency to wanna jump in and save them for which they're grateful for, which we feel like, you know, we've got a cape.
[00:57:23] Woo hoo. I'm a super parent. Yeah. Yeah. But the problem is that saving our kids doesn't wire their brains. It actually can make the anxiety more because it creates in them this sense that someone other than them. Is at the core of their lives. Someone other than them is responsible for their safety.
[00:57:43] Someone other than them is responsible for their success. And we do this out of love, but it's a terrible, it's a terrible thing that we do to, to kids because we want an, I mean, if I got hit by a truck tomorrow and that was the end of me, everyone in my life would, for at least a short time be, be upset, I'd hope, you know?
[00:58:01] But then I'd want my kids to be able to dust themselves off after, you know, grieving for whatever, you know, hours or days or weeks seem appropriate, and then say, well, life has to go on. You know? And in a perfect world, it's already within them.
[00:58:16] Casey O'Roarty: Oh man, there's so much that continues to unfold that invites us into stress tolerance, right? And distress tolerance. I really appreciate the work of. Ned Johnson and now moving into 2021, looking again at so many shows that I could share here. So many solo shows that got really powerful feedback as I continued to work with parents and my own family and move through the world and life.
[00:58:55] The show that I wanna highlight is one with my friend Dr. Tracy Baxley, and there's just been a lot of shit that's gone down. You guys, as I've mentioned before, you know I'm growing and evolving inside of my little micro life, right? And I share here and invite you into your own growth and invite you into looking at.
[00:59:18] Whatever challenges are coming up for you and your family to really lean into them as what is here for me to grow or identify, learn from question. But there's also this macro community, global space that we live inside of and something that came out of 2020 and continued to percolate in 2021 and continues to this day and didn't start in 2020, but really the light for the white people, the light shined bright on just the social injustices that were happening and and conversations around privilege and the messiness of that conversation.
[01:00:04] So I had this interview with Dr. Tracy Baxley and she wrote a book called Social Justice Parenting and she's amazing. I love her. She's so smart. And compassionate, she really leans into a willingness to help the white people understand better. The places where we don't see the impact that we're making, the negative impact that we're making, the microaggressions, we don't see the privilege that we have because the, the, you know, at least for us in the states, the systems, the institutions are really designed for the white people.
[01:00:51] And if you are feeling like, oh God, here she goes, talking about privilege and white supremacy, blah, blah, blah. Listen, check yourself. Okay. There's no agenda here other than how can we all grow and be better for each other? That is it. That is my only agenda. My only agenda on this platform is to share information, to highlight guests and voices and conversations that support us in not only being better for our kids, being better for all kids, being better for all humans.
[01:01:32] Right. And Tracy's work really supports us with that. So enjoy the next little clip.
[01:01:41] When people are using the word privilege in particular, right now, I'm gonna talk about white privilege. Mm-hmm. It sets people off, right? Yeah. It divides us. It makes people angry, it makes people feel guilty, it makes people feel all kinds of feels. And I think the way that I like to present this idea of privilege is looking at privilege from multiple identities.
[01:02:04] So I'm a black woman, and in those identities, I am generally marginalized in our country. Mm-hmm. Right? So this idea of privilege is socially constructed so that it just depends on where you live, but mm-hmm. But in the United States mm-hmm. Being a black woman is, are both marginalized identities. Mm-hmm.
[01:02:23] That I don't have privilege in.
[01:02:25] Casey O'Roarty: Right.
[01:02:25] But I'm also. Middle class right in, in terms of socioeconomic. Mm-hmm. I'm also heterosexual. Mm-hmm. I'm cisgendered. Mm-hmm. Right. I am a Christian. Mm-hmm. So in all of those spaces, I occupy privilege just in the fact that I identify in those ways, nothing that I've done.
[01:02:43] Mm-hmm. Just because of that's who I am. So instead of looking at those privileges as something negative or using as a weapon against people, I want to use that as a tool for change. So how. My role as a straight woman, how can I use that role to be an ally for people in the L-G-B-T-Q community? Mm-hmm.
[01:03:07] Right? So I'm choosing to use that not as a weapon saying negative things, or I'm not gonna feel guilty because the world sees me being straight as quote unquote normal.
[01:03:17] Casey O'Roarty: Right.
[01:03:17] Instead, I'm gonna say, okay, I have inherited this identity. Mm-hmm. This privilege. So how do I use that privilege in a way that I'm serving others so that there's equity and that my place of power can be used?
[01:03:34] To uplift those who don't have it. Mm. So we have to talk to our children about the privileges that we hold as a family. Mm-hmm. So I talk to my kids, we have more money than a lot of people. Mm-hmm. And with that privilege comes some responsibility. Mm-hmm. How are we giving back? What are we doing? How are we not spending money wastefully?
[01:03:57] How do we support families, especially now in Covid, right? Mm-hmm. Who have lost their jobs and they need more support. What do we need to do to be able to support them? And so I think people are afraid to talk about privilege, but I think as a family, we all have some privileges. Mm-hmm. And how do we use that?
[01:04:15] And how do we show up in the world with those can be powerful lessons to our children that they can then go out into the real world and see and use those in ways that they can make powerful changes.
[01:04:29] Casey O'Roarty: So now. We're in 2022, feels like yesterday. And again, some really good shows. In 2022, I had my friend Kristen Kba on, I talked about Zen Parenting with Kathy Adams.
[01:04:45] Her book was so great. There was some really good solo shows. I did the whole Alternatives to Punishment miniseries. That was awesome too. The beginning of 2022 is when we did the Becoming Sprout miniseries. So that was with my colleagues. So I had just merged, right? So Joyful Courage lived on its own, and my good friend Juliet Scoog and her business partner, Alana Bebe, were doing their work over at Sprout, and we would send people to each other.
[01:05:20] Jules would send the parents of teens to me. I'd send the parents of Littles. To her, and they came to me in early 2021 and said, Hey, case, we have an idea. What do you think? And they invited me to consider merging our companies, and we did. And it's been the best move ever. I'm so glad to be under the S Spreadable umbrella and that the Joyful Courage brand lives on as the adolescent brand of s Spreadable.
[01:05:51] So in March I did another mini series called Alternatives to Punishment. It was a six part series that was cool. Rachel Macy Stafford was on. Also, Julie Lithgo Hames came on and she's brilliant. She wrote a book called. What was her, how to be an adult and it's actually written for our young adults. So if you have older teens like that are getting ready to go out into the world post high school, it's a great resource for them.
[01:06:29] I definitely encourage you to check that out. So good. Yeah, so I had amazing guests. I had really great solo shows. The one that I chose to share a clip from is from September of 2022, and it's called Helping our Teens Feel Seen. I just listened to, we Can Do Hard Things, the podcast, and they had had Dr.
[01:06:55] Becky on and she talked about how powerful it is when we make sure that the message of I believe you, shows up for our kids. And even though a lot of her conversation. Centers, younger kids. I just think that whole concept is so important for the teen years. So I took that and ran with it. So here's a little bit of that show I hope you enjoy.
[01:07:26] And when we think about the teen years and, um, how teens are talked about and referenced by mainstream media in conversa, I mean, you see it all over the place. You know, teens are hard, right? And. When we start thinking about saying, I believe you, to our teens around their experiences, we're contradicting so much of how we have been holding teenagers, right.
[01:07:59] And what we have been saying to them. So we say things like, you don't know what you want. You don't really feel that way. It's not true. Or You're being irrational. You're being so dramatic. Everyone feels like that when they're a teen. It's not that big of a deal. You're fine. You're fine. Right? I mean, I have for sure said some of these things to my kids and I grew up being told and believing that I was a little dramatic, that I was kind of extra and often had experiences of my parents trying to talk me out of what I was going through or how I was feeling.
[01:08:43] And. When you think about how might life have been different for us, for me, for you? If we had parents that said, I believe you. When we told them about our troubles and our feelings, how might my, your worthiness, our worthiness, have developed our intrinsic value? What would've opened up in our relationship with our parents had they met us with, I believe you.
[01:09:16] I didn't talk about things with my parents, not hard things, not my internal struggles or the crazy ass choices I was making. My beliefs about the world and my role in it. I kept inside. I knew the line not to cross, to protect myself from being criticized and ridiculed. 'cause criticism and ridicule was deeply, deeply painful for me growing up.
[01:09:44] And so I learned how to avoid it. And that was by not really sharing my opinion, my developing opinion about different things with my parents. And this created a gap in the relationship that I had with them when I was a teen, when I was a young adult. And even sometimes now. You know, there's still a line that I don't cross, and in a lot of ways I could and can feel their love and support and we have and have had good banter.
[01:10:14] We can connect on a lot of things, but the big stuff, the things that my heart is really attached to, no, I believed that I was on my own for that, and that really has impacted my experience of personal value and worthiness. What might have happened if our parents had said, yeah, I believe you. Friendship is hard.
[01:10:45] You are stressed. It isn't easy to fit in. You don't feel like you can be yourself. I believe you. You really want a boyfriend or a girlfriend. You're curious about all these risky things that are showing up. You want to belong. I believe you, that you feel sad. I believe that what you're going through is tough.
[01:11:10] I believe you. What if we heard, what if I had heard that from my parents as a teen? How might that have changed the way I thought about myself and how I looked for belonging? What if you had heard that from your parents? As a teen, and I'm not here to bash on our parents, our parents did the best they could with the tools they had.
[01:11:29] I'm not blaming them for anything, right? Because we are meaning making machines and regardless of what happens to us, we're interpreting it with the brain that we have in that moment, right? And I'm seeing places where I can reparent myself when those old messages. Of You're too much. You're too extra.
[01:11:50] Calm down. This isn't that big of a deal when those messages come up.
[01:12:03] Yeah. Yep, yep. Feeling seen and heard is such a powerful experience. Right? Doesn't that feel good to you? Why wouldn't it feel amazing to our kiddos? I talk a lot about that with our teens and how really connecting with them and seeing them in their experience can be an a really special opening and softening into relationship and connection.
[01:12:33] All right. Moving on. Moving into 2023. 2023 was a sweet year. 2023. My oldest moved into her first apartment with her childhood friend and got to navigate all the things, all the things that come with living on your own responsibilities, dealing with another person, managing your business. It was a big year, um, for her and continues to be.
[01:13:09] There was some great solo shows in 2023. Again, leaned in and felt like, oh my God, there's so many great conversations that I could highlight. Including, I think I had two interviews with Brenda Zane from Hope Stream. Hope Dream Community is a space for parents with kids who are inactive, substance abuse, misuse, or recovery.
[01:13:38] I remember how useful it was to interview Dr. Emily Klein. She also works with kids who are. Really living on the edge. A lot of good solo shows making room for our older teens to practice independence. Three myths of tough love and what teens actually need limiting beliefs in our two selves. Super highlight from 2023 was that I had Dr.
[01:14:06] Ian two times. I had met her the year before at the Parenting Unconference in the UAE in Abu Dhabi, which was what an Epic world tour I got to have in 2022. So she, I met her there and she was really generous to come on the show. The first time she came on the show was to share about her book the Parenting Map.
[01:14:31] I just love who she is in the world and how she holds our role and our growth and our learning and our way of being. She's humble and funny and brilliant, and yeah. I'm excited to share this clip from our interview that we did from, when was it? From February of 2023. So. For this year of the podcast, I'm sharing with you my first of two interviews with Dr.
[01:15:05] She.
[01:15:08] Yes. And it's not about, you know, trying to have this clean slate and track record and never mess it up with your kids. Here's the thing. We are not raising these fragile little feathers who are going to fall apart. We are raising human beings who are going to meet other imperfect human beings, and they need to learn to deal with it.
[01:15:27] Mm-hmm. You know? So I tell my daughter, yeah, I'm so sorry. You know, I was who I was, but that's who you got. You know?
[01:15:34] Casey O'Roarty: You're welcome.
[01:15:35] You're welcome. Exactly. That's the best I could do. I'm so sorry. And please, you know, we are not here to create the illusion that we are meant to be perfect, or they should expect perfection from themselves or from others.
[01:15:48] We are all messed up. Welcome to the world. I'm so sorry. You know?
[01:15:52] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. Well, I think there's another illusion going on too, is this striving to be a parent who isn't making any mistakes equals children, teenagers who also aren't gonna make mistakes. And you know, one of the things that I try to say a lot to my clients too is like, what your kids are going through is not an indication that you're doing something wrong, right?
[01:16:15] Yeah. Like they're on their track, they're on their journey, and you get to show up and be there and love them and be curious and be a soft landing when shit goes sideways because it will
[01:16:27] see, you said something so important. We have this very big delusion. That they are representations of who we are and their successes mean we are successful and their failures mean we are failures.
[01:16:42] Their happiness means we are good parents. Their unhappiness means we're shitty parents. This is a very big problem. Your children have nothing really to do with you at the end of the day, except you have a lot of power in helping them develop into themselves. But you don't get to be who they are. You don't get to write off your, you know, negative traits because they're positive or vice versa.
[01:17:08] Mm-hmm. You know, write off your positive traits because they're being in a negative space. How they show up or what their outcome is has nothing to do with you. You know, people always ask me, okay, I'll do conscious parenting. Okay, I'll read your books, but does that mean then my kid will be more motivated?
[01:17:23] And I always say, you're not doing this for an outcome. Your kid will be who your kid is.
[01:17:28] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[01:17:29] You are just here to support who they are.
[01:17:31] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[01:17:32] But not to make them who they are so that you feel better about yourself or worse about yourself, you know?
[01:17:38] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. That's such a huge reframe. That's such a big mindset shift.
[01:17:43] And I am here for it. Yeah, right. I was dragged through it. Right. I got to feed to the fire with my kiddo. It's like, wow, shit. I didn't even realize I was holding a narrative until you took this massive U-turn. I talk about it a lot, especially a few years ago. So those of you that are new to the pod, go back a couple hundred episodes and you'll be hearing me talk a lot about, whoa.
[01:18:04] Turns out I'm not in charge of the narrative and I didn't even realize I had one.
[01:18:08] Well, that's the thing. See, we all think we don't have a narrative because we all think we are so evolved and we are so free. We are all heavily conditioned by a narrative, including me today, right now. I can tell you my narratives, I don't want to, you know, out my daughter, but I have 100 in my mind that keep showing up.
[01:18:29] Oh, she's not this, oh, she's that. I hear my tape and that's okay. It's okay to have a narrative. What's not okay is to A, think You don't have a narrative, and B, to let that narrative narrate its dictates to you, uh, because you don't even know you have a narrative.
[01:18:46] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[01:18:47] So I watch my narrative and I'm constantly deconstructing the narrative.
[01:18:52] I'm constantly challenging myself to say, and who said that's true, and how do you know it's true? And what's another way to look at it? I'm constantly challenging myself with my own narrative, right? I'm never fully just running away with my narrative and just allowing it to be in the driver's seat. I'm always challenging my own belief systems that come up in my own mind, and that's what awareness is.
[01:19:22] Casey O'Roarty: I love Dr. She, I love that she came on the pod and spent time with me. Yeah, that was pretty big fan girl moment and I feel like I kept it together. I kept it together. So you guys now we've moved into 2024 this last year of the podcast. And again, so many friends and colleagues and solo shows. It was a great powerful year for podcasting.
[01:20:00] I loved every second of it. And actually, I'm realizing this was the year 2024 is when Alana and Julietta and I did a series together. So Julietta and I did the Becoming s Spreadable mini series, and then Julietta, Alana and I did the Art of Connected Parenting series where we really drilled down into.
[01:20:27] What we're all about at S Spreadable, what we're standing on, what we're bringing to the world, and that was really fun. We filmed it and it's all on YouTube in case you wanna watch us talk to each other. But yeah, that was really cool. There were some throwback shows, positive discipline concepts for the adolescent years.
[01:20:46] There was some solo shows around centering relationship and curiosity. What I'm really proud of from the last year is, you know, sometimes I really wish that I could stay on theme as far as Women's History Month, black History Month Pride. Well, in 2024 I did for Pride. Anyway, I really looked ahead and planned it out, and I had some really powerful conversations in June, that Centered Pride.
[01:21:20] The first one was with my colleague. Alana Bebe, the managing director at S Spreadable, and her story of being with her child's gender journey, she's got a non-binary child and she just lets me ask all the questions that I have about that. A child who came out really young as being in the question of their gender and Alana is such a model for all of us of what it looks like to let our kids take the lead and trust them.
[01:21:49] I love it. I had Ed's center on, so Ed's center was on, I think three different times in 2024. I love that guy. And twice in the month of June, one time. It was he and his friend, fellow podcast host, Jamie Kelton. He and Jamie and I had a really beautiful conversation about how to, so to show up and support our lgbtqia a plus kids, and there's a lot of information and there's a lot of laughter.
[01:22:26] I took questions from the Joyful Courage community from parents around how to support our queer kids, and this is the episode that I've decided to share for the 2024 for year nine, I guess. I don't know. Now the numbers seem a little bit weird, but this is what I'm sharing. I know that it'll be useful to you.
[01:22:52] I also have shows about teenagers and lying later in the year in 2024. Inviting our kiddos into their higher self. And something I'd started doing in late 2024 is taking posts that were showing up in the Joyful Courage for Parents of Teens Facebook group and breaking 'em down and really teasing 'em apart.
[01:23:19] And that's been something, that's something that I'm gonna continue to do because I think it's so useful, right? For you to hear actual parent questions and support around what is the reframe? What is the personal growth, what are the tools? What are the routines? So I'm gonna keep doing that. But first, let's drop in with my conversation with Ed Center and Jamie Kelton.
[01:23:47] But I mean, if the goal, and I think to me, and on this podcast we talk all about relationship. And so I think this also holds true for parents that are kind of in the wobble of being with, you know, a child who's coming out. Your ongoing relationship over time and through your life with your child has everything to do with how accepted and seen and loved and connected they feel with you.
[01:24:11] So get your shit together and, uh, yeah, if you wanna be in relationship with this kiddo, you know, figure it out. Figure it out. Yeah. And if you have a moment that's less than stellar, go back and own it. I mean, would you
[01:24:24] both agree? I was just gonna add that, like I was just gonna say, and also any reaction can be healed if you handle it.
[01:24:33] If you come at it with open heart and handle it and really do accept your child and figure, you know, work through it, it'll say it so much more eloquently and therapy wise as me. But yes, like you can end it, but you gotta do the work. Yeah.
[01:24:47] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[01:24:47] All relationships are about screwing up, recognizing it, taking accountability and changing.
[01:24:55] Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And we ask our kids to do that. We do that as parents. We do that for friendships. And so this is just one example of that. Yeah. If you screw up something and you will then figure that out and go repair it. Yeah. We do that all the time in other contexts. And it doesn't have to be a big deal.
[01:25:12] And I think it's the same here.
[01:25:14] Casey O'Roarty: I love the language of repair too. How do the queer kids know who to flirt with and who not to flirt with? Or is it just like, I'm gonna flirt with all the people that I'm attracted to and just kind of see how it plays out like that depending on where you are. Like that could be risky.
[01:25:31] How do we talk about that with our kids that are queer?
[01:25:35] Yeah. You gotta learn how to flirt. Crushes are intense and you don't know who is. Allied with you or not? You don't, especially, yeah. If you're coming out at a young age, although the youth today, it's different as well. Yeah. You know, like, as we were saying, I also think that, and this is something I feel really strongly about and how we're raising our kids.
[01:25:57] First of all, we've been really open about how babies are made since. Mm-hmm. Good. Were able to be read to right, like so newborns, because we're gonna have to explain it. Eventually. They're gonna figure it out, something's not adding up, right. So we have to be really open and honest about their origin story.
[01:26:15] And they have to know that my kids are donor conceived and Ed has to explain about birth parents and you know, my children know how babies are made. And that right there already leads to other questions that come up. Well, my 6-year-old has already asked, well, how does the sperm get to the, uh, embryo to make the baby?
[01:26:36] And then. If you're open and honest and you keep it when it comes to the sex act, you keep it scientific. It's really explain it. Right? And then as years unfold, then you start talking about when they understand what it is. Mm-hmm. What actually happens. And you know, you don't just let you know. There's a lot that goes into that.
[01:26:56] You have to feel a certain type of way. There's more than just the act of sex. I don't know if you start from a really open and honest place where your children can ask you literally anything. It's my belief and it's my hope that they will continue to ask you anything and everything. Yeah. And also have backups for when they don't wanna ask you.
[01:27:19] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. Yeah. Community for sure.
[01:27:25] All right. Now we're really at the last clip. We're at the last clip, the last clip comes from just a few months ago. And you know, as I look back at all of these shows and I make choices about what to share here today, I feel really proud of the consistency that I've brought to publishing this podcast. I feel proud of the content.
[01:27:52] I feel proud of the guests that I've had on and you know, just really feeling like I am taking a stand for Gen Z and teens in my work with helping their parents to be what they need. And so this final episode really to me captures that it's from January 30th of this year, 2025. And the title of it is Energetic Encouragement for Emotional Tweens and Teens, and it's really just such an invitation to see just this grand, bigger picture of what it means to be human, right?
[01:28:48] I mean, our teenagers are as human as we are, and I think a lot of times their experience gets dismissed, or we only focus in on what's challenging about them in the moment. And we forget that when our kids struggle, what they need most is encouragement, believing in them, showing up as a supporter, remembering to see their total essence.
[01:29:22] I am really proud of this show. I'm gonna share a little clip of it. I'm really glad that you are here and you've made it to the end. I'll be back after the clip for a final wrap up, but yeah, enjoy this. Here we go. We wanna protect our kids from pain and suffering. Well, it's gonna find its way in life is all the things.
[01:29:45] It is constantly unfolding and offering up opportunities to learn who we are and to move in the direction of what we want most. We get to find our strength, access our purpose, and our passion. We get to feel the pain and suffering of disappointment and loss while also embracing and expressing joy and creativity and love and kindness.
[01:30:10] We get to learn that there are shitty, shitty days. And that we don't have to define our whole life by those days. We get to discover our personal power when we decide to take control of our story and even see it through a different lens. And all of this happens through experience, moving through experience.
[01:30:32] My personal growth right now is to live in expansion and abundance and receptivity. I am reading a book called The Power of Intention by Dr. Wayne Dyer, and it's totally rocking my world. It reiterates that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. This is what I want for my kids, even as I know that they're gonna have to forge their own path for getting there.
[01:30:58] What I want for my kids realizing I want them to realize they are spiritual beings, having a human experience. And, and that's the important thing, remembering that our kids are forging their own path. They're living through their experiences. They're making meaning, yes, they are being influenced by the people and the voices that they're surrounded by.
[01:31:20] And that's theirs to muddle through. You get to be one of those voices, but yours, like the others, is an offering. And the influence of your voice really has to do with how you make your kids feel. And when your kids feel safe and seen, validated, held, loved, even if they are different than you, and think differently if you're showing up, trusting that they're on their journey, trusting that they are on their individual path towards their understanding of themselves and the bigger picture, trusting that they can handle what life is currently throwing at them, you are gonna get a better seat at the table.
[01:32:05] This is how we encourage them. And to me, this is the spiritual side of parenting. Not to get too woo woo, but I believe we are so much bigger than this time and space. We are here for the experience to feel joy and to feel love, and to feel possibility, and it takes contrast to really appreciate those things and the biology of the human experience gives us that contrast, right?
[01:32:38] Anxiety, worry, depression, perfectionism, all of these things arrive and get in the way, especially during the teen years. And it's all real. It matters. Your kiddo is having a real and valid experience of life. I think what happens to them and to us. Right. Perhaps even starting with us is that we forget that the present moment is temporary, so we're gonna deep dive into encouragement for when things are hard.
[01:33:14] Wow. Ra you guys, I mean a decade of podcasting with you for you side by sidewalking, the journey of parenting with so many of you who started with me in that very first year, way back in 2015, and you're still walking next to me with your young adult kids maybe, or your older teenagers. I am so, so honored and humbled to get to bring you.
[01:33:44] All of this every week, and I look back at the guests and the shows that I've shared just in this celebration episode, and I think about all the guests that didn't make it to this recap, Dr. Dan Siegel, Dr. Ross Green, um, Dr. Ann Louise Lockhart. There are lots of people that I would love. I mean, this could be seriously like a hundred hours long, but I'm not gonna do that to you.
[01:34:19] I made my choices. I'm standing by them. Thank you. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for listening. Thank you for writing reviews. Thank you for your emails and your private messages. Thank you for all the ways that you let me know that this podcast has made a difference in your life. Thank you for sharing it.
[01:34:40] With your friends and family passing it on. Thank you for coming up to me at the airport when you've recognized me, or I even had a woman who's now a friend, come to me at a music show that I was at in town in Bellingham and introduce herself. Thank you so much for all the ways that you have encouraged me to keep at this work.
[01:35:03] I am here for it. I'm planning on another decade, so let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. I love each and every one of you. I am here for you. Don't ever forget that. You can always reach out to me atCasey@joyfulcourage.com. You can send me private messages on social media. I am here for you, my friends, as I have been for the last 10 plus years through the podcast and beyond.
[01:35:32] Thank you. Thank you for witnessing my journey as a parent and a parent coach, and all the things that I've moved through. Check the show notes. I'll make sure that each of the clips episodes are in the show notes. I'm also gonna put, I have a couple little playlists from Spotify, the Becoming SPR Audible series, the Art of Connected Parenting Alternatives to Punishment, belief Behind Behavior, and Rowan's Episodes, all of those little miniseries.
[01:36:01] Have their own playlist on Spotify, so I'll put that in the show notes as well. That's it. This was a big project. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for listening. I will see you real soon. Bye.
[01:36:20] Thank you so much for listening in today. Thank you so much to my Sprout partners, Julietta and Alana, as well as Danielle and Chris Mann and the team at Pods Shaper for all the support with getting this show out there and helping it to sound so good. Check out our offers for parents with kids of all ages and sign up for our newsletter to stay better connected@besproutable.com.
[01:36:46] Tune back in on Monday for a brand new interview and I will be back solo with you next Thursday. Have a great day.
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