keywordsparenting, child development, neuroscience, self-awareness, communication, stress management, parent engagement, education, emotional regulation, family dynamics

summary In this conversation, Lisa A Riegel discusses the challenges parents face in supporting their children, the importance of understanding the biology of stress and perception, and effective communication strategies. She emphasizes the need for self-awareness in both parents and children, the significance of creating a supportive home environment, and the value of allowing children to explore and learn from their experiences. The discussion also touches on the importance of finding joy and self-control in parenting, and the necessity of gratitude in fostering positive relationships.

takeaways

1. Parents often feel unprepared and overwhelmed in their roles.
2. Understanding the biology of stress can help parents manage their reactions.
3. Effective communication involves recognizing and naming emotions.
4. Self-awareness is crucial for both parents and children.
5. Creating a supportive home environment fosters children's growth.
6. Allowing children to explore helps them develop resilience.
7. Mindfulness practices can enhance emotional regulation.
8. Gratitude can improve family dynamics and relationships.
9. Parents should model self-care and emotional awareness.
10. Building a strong parent-child connection is essential for development.

titles

1. Navigating Parenting Challenges
2. The Neuroscience of Parenting

Sound Bites

1. "Parents are left behind."
2. "Name my face now."
3. "Gratitude can never go wrong."

Chapters

00:00Introduction and Background of Lisa A Riegel

01:08Understanding Parental Engagement and Neuroscience

02:58The Impact of Stress on Learning and Behavior

04:42Navigating Teenage Emotions and Communication

08:45Self-Awareness and Emotional Regulation

14:16Practical Strategies for Parents and Children

16:10The Role of Self-Awareness in Parenting

20:38Building Family Connections Through Communication

21:41The Importance of Family Dinners

22:55Cultivating Positive Mindsets in Children

23:43Navigating Parenting Challenges

25:21The Pressure of Modern Childhood

26:06Finding Personal Fulfillment

27:39Understanding Happiness and Self-Awareness

29:07Developing Self-Care Routines

31:15Managing Anxiety and Control

32:34Influence of Peers and Social Media

35:11Choosing Happiness and Life Changes

37:04Final Thoughts for Parents and Educators

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Hi. Good morning. I'm

Hey, good morning.

Lisa Regal, thank you so much for being on the show today. Welcome.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I was excited. You're no parent left behind. That was the title of my first book a hundred years ago. So yeah, I wrote it. It was a book for parents on how to help their kids at home. so that was like way back in like 2008. And that was what moved me. I started doing parent trainings and working with schools on parent engagement and stuff.

Yeah.

Really?

Right, okay.

wow.

Yeah, that was kind of like the twist on the No Child Left Behind, obviously, and I thought I was being clever, but obviously it's pretty out there, Yeah, we're all being clever in our own homes, right? But the thing is that it's the truth, though.

because parents are left behind. And when I left the classroom and went into the homes, I realized how little prepared parents really truly are and equipped they really truly are. And to the foundation of your work, how much fear plays into it, stress and fear plays into that and really puts them behind the eight ball. And so I'm excited to have you want to talk about, mean, neuroscience of actually managing the relationships between school and families and.

Yeah.

and making changes within schools. So why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and then the premise of what your work is, and we can dive into that.

Sure, sure. So I was a teacher for nine years and then I was an administrator for two years at a career center. And then I had the opportunity to do my doctoral work at Ohio State and I focused on leadership but I was really more interested in the human system. And I have always been really interested in happiness and success and just the idea that it shouldn't be this hard.

Like we can help our kids be happier and healthier. I'm a mom, I have two kids. Thankfully they're 20 and 23 now, so I'm over the tumultuous years, but it was rough. And you're never happier than your saddest child. And it's really difficult to watch them struggle and you wanna fix things. So I started going, and I also taught at-risk kids. So my heart's always been with the kids who have struggles, have trauma in their background, have trouble with executive function.

Yeah.

emotional regulation. So about five years ago, I really started getting into more research on the brain. Prior to that, I was involved with special education. I wrote the procedural safeguards manual for the state of Ohio, which was really about like, how do we partner with parents? Because they're really important in that equation. And so many schools are so focused on the process and meeting timelines, but the quality of what's going on, things don't work, but they could if we partnered better.

So I started really getting into that realm and understanding a lot more about the actual biology of learning. And so then about in May, my book came out, it's called NeuroWell. And basically the first part of the book kind of talks about why are kids so messed up? Why are they struggling so much? What is going on that's making it so difficult to grow up right now? And they are different and their brains are different. And so I kind of go through some of the different contextual factors that have led to that. Then I go into a

conversation about the actual biology of stress and perceptions and how that impacts the way that we see our reality and the way that we respond to it. So I talk about all behavior, academic behavior or social behavior is really the intersection between our biology and our context. So when we understand our biology, we can be more self-aware and self-regulating and have more self-control. And then when we control our context, we have a lot of power to shape the way that our brain perceives our reality.

And then the third part of the book is lots of suggestions for teachers that parents can also use at home to help their children understand their brain better and become more self-aware and in self-control. And then the fourth section is tips for how to influence that change in the home. How do we help parents understand how to create a context that will help their kids flourish?

Mm-hmm.

That's amazing. Does it also address how parents perceive their brain and how their brain functions too? Right?

Yeah. Yeah. And I'll tell you,

a dysregulated parent will dysregulate a child. trying to figure out, and it's hard to do that because as a parent, you're constantly worried. And, you know, that's one thing, this is sort of a side note. When I was doing some research, when kids enter puberty, they, our brain goes through kind of a cleaning. And so it's like we've made lots of neural connections that haven't been used. So it just takes a lot of energy. So it, it goes through and kind of cleans those out.

Absolutely.

sure.

But one of the byproducts is kids lose the ability to read facial expressions. So when you think about the teenage years, which most parents are worried most of the time during the teenage years, and kids only recognize happiness, anger, sadness, like real basic emotions. And so when you have a face that's concerned or worried, they oftentimes read that as anger and they respond as if you're angry with them. So you start having headbutts.

Sure, sure.

And so one of the things I've trained parents and I've had parents come up to me and say this was the single most valuable thing I ever learned is I name my face now. I'll say to my child, I'm not angry with you. I'm just really worried and place that because that lowers the temperature of the conversation.

Wow.

Thank you.

What a wonderful adjustment. That's incredible. I've never heard that before, we were wiped out and basically rebooting at that point.

And it's simple.

Yeah,

brain does that twice in our life. It does it at the beginning of puberty and then it does it when you're in your early 20s. It kind of says, okay, we've had so many experiences, but some of these don't, they're not going to stick. So let's just clean house a little bit. And that's actually where a lot of times that's one of the things they talk about with schizophrenia is that there's something that's going on in that early 20s where the brain is sloughing off these things that can be one of the reasons that you launch schizophrenia in your brain.

So there has to be, because we're human, there has to be situations where that doesn't happen so well. Right? And so it already seems to cause some havoc in confusing signals. So I would imagine it's even worse. Have you explored that part? Or you have some?

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, yeah, and

it goes back to how we how we have perception, how perception is made in the brain. So 80 percent of the conversation and thinking in our brain is done below our nose, which is unconscious. And it's the limbic system. It doesn't know time and it can't tell a story. And that's really important because the limbic system runs on sensory associations.

So for example, with the face example, if I see an angry face, then my brain's going to say, okay, I recognize that type of expression. It's going to go in and look for associations of like right now is similar to this in my past or this in my past. And then your body responds the exact same way as it would have then, which is why like combat veterans, you know, they hear a sound.

and that your body dysregulates. They're not up here going, that sounds like a gunshot. I used to be nervous when I was in combat, so maybe I should tell my body to be nervous. It's all happening before we ever get any of that information in the conscious thinking part of our brain. So the way I usually describe it to people is it's like, if you have a banana that represents reality and you have like a spaghetti strainer, that represents some of those filters and those sensory associations. If I take that banana and shove it through a colander, it comes out smooshed on the other side.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So it's still a banana, but it doesn't look like a banana. And every one of us has different sensory associations that our brain makes, and some of them are faulty. And so we end up reading a situation through a lens that's inappropriate, and then we react. Our body is already dysregulating, and that's shutting down our reasoning ability, and then we're reacting to these associations. So like, for example, I get very dysregulated when I'm late, which like running late to come to this, was like,

Right.

You

⁓

But you know, I know where that comes from. Okay, yeah, well, and see, for some people, it's not a big deal. But for me, the association in my brain, when I was growing up, my parents were divorced and my dad was always late. And so I spent a great deal of my childhood sitting on the front steps waiting for him. So my brain associated those negative emotions of like a lack of love or a lack of worth with time, which is a faulty association. People run late for all kinds of reasons.

I'm late a lot, so I was fine.

Because I'm aware, because that self-awareness is there, I understand why my body's feeling that way, now I have power. So if I'm running, first of all, proactively, I don't generally run late. If I have to go somewhere, I give myself plenty of time because I don't want to be anxious for no reason.

But then also reactively, if someone else is running late, I have enough self-awareness to say from the part of my brain that thinks to tell the departments in my brain that are making all this, these associations and thoughts. have the ability to say, Hey, this is not that this has nothing to do with that. So calm your jets. You're fine. And it helps to relax. So a lot of kids are just, they're just emotional beings that are being batted around by their limbic brain and they don't have the self-awareness of how their brain works to

You

be able to have that sense of self-control and that sense of self-control gives you confidence and it calms you down and it makes you feel like I can do this.

And also from the perspective of it really just makes the job almost impossible because there's just not enough time to really try to understand what a child is experiencing, right? So it goes back to the training of the teachers and the training of the parents and having much more awareness of how we're not doing it.

Right.

Correctly, right how yeah when we're stuck with the process and we're stuck with the deadlines and all these things and the procedures and so we get Lost and caught up in all that and meeting deadlines that we're missing the person in front of us and we're not recognized in taking the time Because there isn't a lot of time in many cases to be able to say to that child Okay, this is the child I have before me. This is how they process things. This is what I'm experiencing How do I communicate it to them? It's just

Right.

Right.

it makes total sense, this is what we really need, So how do we break through that?

have you looked into that? What do we do to be able to kind of connect in a more efficient way?

Yeah.

one thing I would say is teaching your kid about the banana. Teach them about how perceptions are formed. And also as a parent, recognize that just like my perception between time and love was somehow connected, that's a faulty perception. And so I think as parents, I know myself, like you get defensive because you're like, I didn't do that. Like, that's not who I am. Why are you acting like I'm so mean to you or whatever? So we get defensive about the way that our children perceive us and then we escalate.

situations. So if a parent understands, okay, my child has not thought about this, but their body for whatever reason is upset. So I need to first cool them down. We need to first have that conversation and I'll hear parents say things like, what's wrong with you?

That's not the way to ask it. Instead, can say, your brain seems to be telling you that you're in danger right now or that something's really wrong. Help me understand what your brain's telling you. Because what happens in the stress system, and I always teach this, it's like our brain's like a giant corporation. So just like a big corporation, it has different departments. We're the CEO up here is who we are, right? That's our conscious, that's our morals, our character, everything else. All the other departments work to keep us alive.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

The stress system you have a little I call it our data manager and it's your thalamus and that's the part of your brain responsible for looking at all the sensory data and the environment making those associations and Writing up a report that he can send to the security center Which is in our amygdala still in the can't tell time doesn't know a story phase So he sends it to the the security monitor and that person or that thing decides are we in danger if it just taps the danger button a message immediately goes up to

Mm-hmm.

the CEO and says, hey, I don't know how we should feel about this, so we need you to weigh in. And then you can reason your way through it. If it wails on that button, then basically the message to the CEO says, hey, go get a cup of coffee because we're in danger, body's gonna take over, we'll call you back to the office once we're safe. And I see people trying to process with kids, they're talking to the limbic brain, they're not talking to the part of the brain that is that child. it doesn't work.

Mm-hmm.

it doesn't deescalate the child. Oftentimes it just escalates it further until they completely shut down or walk out or yell back, fight or whatever. So I think having parents understand that basic biology changes the way that we approach that. And I encourage parents to have that conversation and talk about those places in your brain. So is your data manager giving you the full story or is the data manager only looking for negative things in the environment? So that's what they're noticing. And so it's kind of

like you've ever seen that video, it's a basketball game and then there's like a Bigfoot that walks through and it's like half the people don't even see the Bigfoot because they're prompted to count how many baskets the guy gets. So their focus is on the baskets and here's this giant ape that walks through the screen and people don't even register it. So it's the same kind of thing. If you're looking for negative things, that's what you see. So one thing parents can do is really help their children understand how their brain works. And then if they're upset,

no.

they could sit like I call my data manager Harold and my security monitors Bob and so you know if I'm having a rough day emotionally you know my husband or my friend could say to me hey Bob seems really agitated today what's going on and then I can say I know I don't understand why I'm so out of control today right so it takes away the shame and guilt of there's something wrong with me and then it becomes you're my ally now well how can we work together to calm Bob down and to have him stop doing this so it turns a parent into

Right.

an ally instead of an adversary. The other thing is, yeah, no, no,

Right. And it's not about, I'm sorry, I just wanna say it's

not about necessarily having a solution to that that's gonna make that feeling or that reaction change. It's just about understanding it through communication, Being able to talk about it and express it.

Yeah.

Yeah, and helping your child to learn how to regulate their system so that they can have a conversation. Because it's just like, you if you get in a fight and you say stuff and then you calm down and you're like, why did I say that? That's not even who I am. It's because you didn't. It's because Bob and Harold hijacked the brain and you didn't get a chance to weigh in. So it's a really important life skill for relationships and work and everything else to gain that self-awareness. And then I think the other thing that I've learned as a parent and as a professional is sometimes

Mm-hmm.

Sometimes people just need to vent. And so my daughter was very, very anxious child. And I'm a fixer. So I was always trying to say, we'll do this, we'll do this. I was always trying to give her a solution because I thought that's what I should be doing.

I

And I'm laughing because I'm the same way.

Yeah,

and then what would happen is she would get more and more escalated and stressed out because now she's already overwhelmed and I'm throwing 15 things at her. So what I started to do was I would say, do you need me to listen? Do you need to vent or do you want me to help you solve something? And I was amazed that 90 % of the time she's like, I just need to vent. And so what I realized is my role as a parent for her was to just be a sounding board in a safe place to let it out versus being the person she needs to come to for a solution.

And oftentimes when I let her vent and just ask some questions, she'd figure her own problem out.

And then she builds a sense of power and agency because she's solving the problem versus feeling powerless where I don't know what to do and now my mom's telling me to do 15 things that I don't have the energy or will to do. And then it becomes a new problem that she can't do what I'm asking to do. So that's another thing that can really change, you know, the facial expressions, how you give your child a chance to vent and how you can teach them about their brain. Those are three really powerful home practices that you can do.

Yeah

What prepares parents to put them in the position to be able to do that for their child?

Well, I think the first thing is they have to do their own self-awareness to think about, you know, and I know for, it's kind of like I say this to teachers, there is no such thing as a good teacher. There's teachers who are really good with certain kinds of kids or really good at certain grade levels or really good at certain content areas. You're not, and same with a leader. You know, one leader isn't a great leader for everybody. So when you think about yourself as a parent, you know, we often rely on our historical models of what a parent

should be or would be and sometimes we do things because we feel like we should you know I should push them because that's what a good parent would do. I think right right and I think sometimes it's a matter of taking a step back and saying okay what is the parent my kid needs right now and and so instead of making it about me it's more about I want the outcome of my kid to flourish and excel so what do they need for me to make that happen and you know and that

Right, right, because I was pushed. Right.

mean you don't have expectations or that you don't have rules or you don't have things like that, but it's just thinking of the style of parenting. You know, every kid's different. I have two kids, same dad, same mom, wildly different needs. So it's a matter of figuring out how do I align what my kids need with who I can be for them.

Mm-hmm.

And it's challenging because you have to find that within yourself too as the parent. You have to be able to step away from yourself. And that takes a lot of self-awareness, confidence and trust in the process of it, And it almost sounds too like, I mean, you and I, apart from like the science, we're pretty much cut from the same cloth in how we approach things and how we care about the person we want to look at the development and nurture that.

So, with my practice, we talk a lot about mindfulness, mindful parenting, kind of being present and stepping away and giving space for your child to be who they are. And it sounds like some of that kind of goes with what you're talking about. practical strategies for making a child be more self-aware, do you promote practical strategies for that so parents have

Yeah, yeah.

something you have to work with.

Yeah, the first thing I do is I say make a list of things that stress you out. So like for me, it's lateness. Maybe somebody else, they get stressed when somebody gives them feedback or criticism, or if they feel like they've disappointed somebody, or maybe big spaces or loud spaces stress them out. And so make a list of those and then ask what is the fear underneath that? So like, just like with the example with being late, it's not about lateness. It's about the association my brain is making

between time and love or worth. And so when you have that conversation about why do you think that this makes you so stressed and then getting them to understand the fear beneath because that's what your brain is looking for fear and danger. It's wired to do that. So that can help the child develop some self-awareness. The second thing I do is I say, okay, now we know kind of what it is that's stressing you out. You can see patterns so that you can control that, right? You can talk down to the brain and tell it how to feel.

Mm-hmm.

or you can avoid those situations, or you can put proactive things in place so you're not running late or you're not whatever it is.

Then you say, okay, so now you're stressed. Your body is stressed. I do something called name it, own it, control it. So the first is naming it. So what does your body feel like when it's stressed? Because a lot of times, and even as adults, have you ever gone home and you're like, God, I am so tight and I didn't even know that I was this stressed today. Like we don't pay attention to our body. So what does your body feel like? Do you get hot? Do you get fidgety? Does your chest get heavy? And so then they can start to recognize those physical symptoms

Mm-hmm.

even if they're in a situation where they don't cognitively understand why they're stressed. Yeah. The second is what does your body look like when it's stressed? And that's really helpful to parents because you can start to look at your kid and say, okay, this isn't a behavior problem right now that they're choosing. This is that they are feeling a lot of stress. And so I need to help them regulate and then discuss what's going on as opposed to just try to get right into it while they're still elevated. Yeah.

But, yeah, consciously aware of it.

Sure, no, that doesn't get you anywhere, right? That's

a dead end, right?

And then

the third question is, what is your brain telling you? And again, it's what's your brain telling you because the below your nose brain is sending the messages up and it's done a lot of thinking that you're not conscious of. So separating out what are you thinking versus what's your brain telling you? And then once you've named it and you've kind of owned it, then you say, okay, what do I do about it? So what can I do to calm myself down? What can you do to help me? And what should you not do? Because a lot of times we escalate situations by accident.

because you know our kid wants five minutes just to be quiet and left alone to regulate their thinking and we're just hammering them because we're not done talking about what we want to talk about or they want to talk to us and we don't talk to them we just shut them down and say we can't talk about this right now I'm too angry and walk away

Right.

Mm-hmm.

And so

that name it, own it, control it becomes kind of a social contract within your house. And you do one for yourself too, so that your kid recognizes, hey, you're a human and you get stressed out too. So we're gonna support each other.

The other practice that is so simple and it is so powerful is when you, it has to do with having dinner, right? Or spending time together. Put your phones down. Put the phones down and be present with your child. I watch this all the time and the problem that happens is when we don't have, like I had family dinners that were boring. You had to sit there till everybody was finished.

for sure.

You learned the rhythm of conversation. You learned eye contact. You learned to read facial expressions and nonverbal. You learned to be curious. You learn a lot of things and your family is supposed to be the safe space. So you're learning those things in a safe space. Well, if everybody's doing their own thing and just focused on what's interesting to them, then they don't get that practice. The other thing you can do at dinner is you start something where you say, tell me two good things that happened today. It's devastating as a parent. I did this with my kids and they

Right.

Mm-hmm.

couldn't do it because again they weren't looking for the gorilla right they weren't looking for the good stuff so if you say tell me two good things you're priming that data manager in the brain to say you have to notice the good things because you're word them out

All right. That's

awesome.

And so, you know, in the beginning, my kids would say, nothing good. I mean, I don't know, I didn't get in a fight. And I'm like, that's not good. That's the absence of bad. So like, that's different. So I had to help train their brains. And then you can, you know, ask questions like, what's one thing you're really proud of today? Or what's one thing that you love about yourself that other people don't know? You know, just positive things to start help building because the solution to pollution is dilution. And kids today have a lot of negative filters. And even when you think about the media they watch,

gosh, it's...

I watched Little

House on the Prairie and wholesome shows about like being good to your family. And they watch shows now that are like, hey, Mark, you and I are going to get together and manipulate that person so we can vote them off. And that creates a worldview. And I'm not blaming everything on media, but it's one contextual factor that's having a very bad effect on kids. And then you add social media and they are living in a very different environment and context than we did growing up. They have no structured time. You you think about

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

tremendously.

structured time is when you have a whole bunch of little tiny failures and you learn how to get through them. You know, you have disagreements with friends. Kids are so over managed by their parents. Like I remember even taking my daughter to a play date and thinking this is great. I'm going to go to the grocery store and get things done. And then I was expected to sit and watch these kids play for two hours and I was like, well, this isn't helpful at all. Like I play with my kid at home and then the parents are over managing all of the. those were not nice words you used. You need to say this. You need to say that.

And I'm a big believer that parents need to let their kids scrape their knees. They need let their kids because when they're little, in 10 minutes it's all fine and we're friends again. But when you're 16, it's not. And so if they don't learn how to manage conflict and overcome that, then it causes real problems for them down the line.

I

Yeah, it's really a balancing act for parents. How far to step back and how much to really invade in a sense their child's life. But understanding the fact that you're, like she said earlier, and it's my perspective as well, it's like, you're a human being unto yourself, So we need to allow you to be able to develop and

experience life in your way and not my way, not through my eyes and that controlling part that parents often have gets confused with the responsibility of raising your child to protect them and to teach them and help them develop into good adults. But I think it gets a little bit confused with the ownership aspect of it and it's like you will do what I tell you to do and I think that is also

a matter of the stress and the overwhelm in parents' lives. There's just so much going on that, for a lot of them, not every, I mean, there's parents that have time to be able to their children, right? But in a more general sense, we can say that parents often get overwhelmed, right? mean, especially if you have several children. so finding that balancing act is really, really difficult.

Yeah.

Well, I think it's also like, I know when I talk to my friends, I'm in my 50s now, so when I talk to my friends, we talk about all the stupid stuff we did when we were kids, right? And the things we wanted to be and the things, and I think that kids today live in such a pressure cooker of you have to decide now and you have to always be on your path to your career in fifth grade, you know? And it's like giving kids a chance to try different hats on and determine for themselves that that's really dumb or I don't like that. And you know, in today's world, kids

Yeah, great.

Yeah. Right.

are over monitored, I mean, to the point where people know where their kids are every second of the day. My parents had no idea where I was. And the world is not less safe than it once was. When you look at the actual stats, it's just we think it is because we're constantly told that it is.

all the time. It's horrible.

Yeah, because we feel

in control, but we're not.

Right, right. But I think

I see a lot of parents where it's like every decision, every everything is is just life altering for their kids. And the reality is when you're older and more wise, you look back fondly at all the stupid stuff you did. And you think those things actually shaped my character as an adult. And a lot of times figuring out where you want to go is partly due to figuring out where you don't want to be. And if you've never had a chance to just try something and go, that doesn't feel right to me, then you kind of follow

For sure.

someone else's path. ⁓ it's interesting, when I was 25, so right out of college, I got a job selling automatic greasing systems for semis and off-road construction equipment. I was an English literature major, so it was a natural fit. Yeah, from a suburban area, never seen a tractor.

Mm-hmm.

So it's a common, it's a natural thing,

And I was good at it because it was a challenge and I would go and sell things. But after about six or eight months of it, I was like, I don't care about this. And on paper, through my parents' eyes, I was a huge success. I was making a lot of money. I had a company car. had a house. I was doing all the things I was supposed to do. And I was miserable. And I had what I call my quarter life crisis. And I was like, I'm on the wrong road. And so I quit my job. I was engaged. I called off the wedding. I put a backpack on. And I just went on a walkabout. And I walked around and I came back.

Mm-hmm.

Holy cow!

and I said, you know what, I want to work with kids. I want to help people be happy. And I went back and got my education degree and started on that pathway. And it was interesting because during that time, I was super depressed because I was not fulfilled. So I looked around and projected that on everybody. How can anybody be happy? And I

my

dad saying, you know, I grew up in a steel town and he's like, people went to work 40 hours a week, 30 years, got their gold watch, came home and they were happy. They played softball on the weekends. They had families, they went to church, they did their things. He's like, that would not make you happy, but don't take that away from them. And it was this like epiphany for me to realize that I get to choose my own happiness. And so one of the things I talk about with parents too is helping your kids know what happy feels like.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

think we don't. And so one of the things that I do is in the mornings, and it's not every morning, but most mornings, I stay in bed for about five minutes after I wake up with my eyes closed and I visualize the beach because that's my happy place. But first I focus on the sounds and the sights and the smells that bring me to the beach. And then I focus on how does my body feel right now? And it's like, I can feel myself relaxed. I can feel my skin kind of buzzing and then I,

say okay that's what joy feels like to me and when I have that mind-body awareness then when I'm in other settings I can be like wow my body's feeling that way this is something I really find joyful and I'm gonna do more of it so instead of just being driven on automatic pilot doing whatever I'm told to do I'm starting to make connections between what fulfills me and that helps me drive my path forward and it helps me understand that I have some self-control in my destiny

Yeah.

I almost look at those type of moments where you're feeling your body as almost like kind of like steps.

in a process of like you're at one level and then when you start to recognize that you're needing to relax and you come to a vision of something like the beach or something like that and then your body just, it's just like this letdown, there's deflation of the balloon or it's like steps, levels down and you literally feel your body relax in a way that you realize, oh my gosh, I am operating up here most of my time and no wonder my body feels the way it feels and my brain feels the way it feels.

Yes. Yep.

Yeah.

Well, and that's what I really promote having like a self-care routine because you can't just will this to happen after one time. have to, it's like Pavlov's dogs. You got to condition your body. So, you know, one of the things that when my daughter who had a lot of anxiety and this was the other thing that was hard as a parent was that I knew how to fix this. I knew what she could do to learn how to be more mindful about her body and control some of the stress, but she wasn't ready. And that was very difficult to watch because I had no control. And I kept telling

course.

I'm like when you finally decide that the current state isn't where you want to be anymore and you're ready I can help but I'm not gonna push you because you have to decide it's like you don't go on a diet until your pants don't fit right you have to be uncomfortable so she finally came and said I'm sick of feeling this way and I said great let's fix it so we set her alarm on her phone for every 45 minutes and every 45 minutes she would take one minute and she would do this with her wrists and her ankles and then put her feet in her hands down and just

Mm-hmm.

notice where her hands and feet are. We have feet attached to us all the time, but we're not paying attention to them. So having that kind mind-body connection, and what that actually does is it's called proprioceptive input, and it relaxes your vagus nerve. And your vagus nerve is like a systems manager, making sure you're okay, making sure that your body's safe in space, you're not at the edge of a cliff. And we have really poor proprioceptive input because we're not physically active and developing the types of activities that we need to do to develop it.

So she would just do this, she'd take a couple deep breaths and then she'd get back to work. And she did it every 45 minutes for a couple weeks. And then what she noticed is she didn't need the alarm anymore.

When she got here, her body was automatically going, okay, let's stand up. She's like, I would start to yearn for a deep breath or yearn for like a stretching of my neck or humming for a couple minutes and massaging that vagus nerve. And so all of a sudden it became automatic. So having this self-care routine huge benefit for the kids.

So that became like,

Yeah, teaches self-regulation because then it became a natural thing for her. she responded to herself. She didn't need an outside stimulus.

Right, and you

anxiety is the product of not knowing or not being in control. So the more you can help your kid learn about their brain, learn how to control the way their body is responding to their environment, the more self-control they feel, and when they feel more in control, they have less anxiety. And so it becomes this thing that just pops the balloon and helps them navigate their world more effectively.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's that whole idea of responding to the stimulus, right, and how we respond to it, and supposed to reacting to it. So in a sense, you know, we can help to inform ourselves, which then gives us the benefit and the advantage to be able to make the changes. Sometimes you can't control in the moment, what you want it to change, right, but you also have to give yourself that space and that freedom to go through that process without fighting it, I think, And I found with the anxiety, it's like, the less you fight it, the more you invite it in.

the less power it has and then you can move forward. So that's the brain consciously being aware of what's happening to you. And I think that also is something that where the fear of even wanting to understand what's going on for yourself keeps you from understanding what's going on yourself because you don't want to, a lot of people don't want to know. And that's understandable too, because it might raise the fear, but actually in the long run, I think it's actually gonna, be the thing that puts us over the top and being able to relax.

Yeah.

and help them understand our bodies,

Well, and I think kids also are so, they're very influenced by their peers. You think of social media. Most kids don't feel good on social media, but they continue to do it because everybody else is doing it, right?

Yeah, there's pressure.

And so one of the things that I've talked about with Kids Forever is that when you're a teenager, the most attractive person is the person who seems in control, right? Because everybody else feels out of control. Their bodies are changing, their brains are changing, they're confused, they don't know who they are. And so the more you can start to have this sense of calm about you, that you are in control of how you respond to situations, you're actually gonna make more friends. Because people are gonna wanna be around you because you represent what they want.

Mm hmm. They're drawn to you. Yeah.

And so if that means

that you say, I'm not gonna be on social media 20 hours a day. I'm gonna check it for five minutes and that's it. And if I miss a post, it's not the end of the world. All of a sudden you'll be the trendsetter for five minutes. Yeah.

gonna say exactly, right?

Yeah. I remember very distinctly, this was kind of a revelation in my life in college when I must have hit a point where I was just feeling good, right? And all of a sudden, I was absorbing and attracting people to me in a way that I knew I hadn't before. It was this very conscious thing and I was able to put those two things together. And that's kind of guided me through my life too. And.

not always successfully because your life goes up, your ups and downs and your stress levels change. And I had an anxiety disorder at one point when everything just kind of came to a head. And that was a remarkable experience in and of itself to be able to understand and then really be able to have the wherewithal to say, this is not how I want to live my life. And what can I do then to move forward? And I think like your daughter came to that place of self-awareness where she said, I've had enough of this.

Right.

Yeah, and she's joyful.

She's getting married. She's happy. She's working. She's a joyful human, and she was not for a long time. But I tell her all the time, you get to choose how you live your life, and you chose happy, and happy came.

Yeah. And it's doable. And sometimes, we talk about, and I'm sure you talk about it too, the whole risk of change, And what goes along with that. And when we risk the change we allow ourselves the opportunity to be happy because like when I left my job after 30 years, sorry to keep bringing it back to me, but I can relate to this stuff. after, you know, I, I 23, I started a job and I was there for 30 years. wasn't until I got out of that job, but I was like, my gosh, I have.

I can make my own choices. Like I always could, right? And I did make a choice back then and I was there, it was fine, but I'm like, my God, the world has opened up. can do anything I want,

Yeah.

Well, that's your quarter life crisis. I had mine in my 20s and you had yours. And I see a lot of people that have midlife crises. And the reason is because they've lived their life for somebody else. You know, they went on their parents path, then they got married, then they were busy with that, then they have kids. You know, I always say the 30s, you're just wiping people. You're wiping hands, you're wiping tushes, you're wiping countertops. You you don't have time. And then you get in where your kids start to like be more independent and then leave. And then you've got people who are sitting there going, what's my purpose?

you

sort of floating along the road and then it comes crashing down around them.

Yeah, and that's how I can relate. I'm not a parent, but as far as work to post teaching, that kind of thing.

Yeah, there's statistics

a lot of people retire and die within 18 months. So it's like finding that joy and yeah, and there's some...

Yeah. Made that. Survived that.

Support like you were saying once you started being happy you were attracting more things I have a friend who's a physicist and he was talking about how you know every cell in our body vibrates and We vibrate like a tuning fork if you hit a tuning fork that's tuned to 500 Hertz the other one that's 500 Hertz vibrates So when we are more joyful and we're vibrating at a certain level We actually notice other joyful things and so it feels like all of a sudden they came to us But they were there all along we just weren't leveraged

Yeah,

genome. Yeah. Yeah.

yeah, that's a good point. We weren't looking for it, right? Yeah. This is so deep. want to have, can we do a part two of this? Because I know you only have a few minutes left. Can do part two? Because there's so much more to talk about.

Yeah, I would love to.

if there's a final message that you could give to parents and even teachers too, because we haven't talked about the teacher so much, but maybe we could do that the next time we could focus a little bit more on the teachers as well. like if there's a final message for how parents can understand their own brain and help self-regulate themselves in order to be able to recognize it in their child,

I mean, I think that

the first step is gaining your own self-awareness. So all the things that we've talked about, you know, do them with your child, learn together, have conversations together, show your child that you also aren't always sure. You know, it's OK to let them know that you have doubts about yourself or that sometimes you feel out of control, that you have empathy for what they're going through. Because, the parenting is really hard and it's harder today than I think it's ever been. And so parents need to

take care of themselves. if you are married, talk to your spouse about this. Work together as a team about how you can be regulated and you can be the parent your child needs, not the parent you think a good parent should be, because that might be a good parent for one kid, but it's not going to work for yours.

Mm-hmm.

And if parents are interested,

Yeah.

I'm actually on Valentine's Day, I'm hosting a webinar through a program called the Human Program. They'll be advertising it on Facebook, but it's an hour long webinar. And if they attend the webinar, they get my book for free. And we'll be talking about lots of techniques that they can do in the home. So we'll be going even more into detail on some of that. yeah. As soon as they start running,

great.

Okay, can you give me the link for that and I'll put it in the show notes? You're going to put it on your website?

Yeah, so it's just if they look up on Facebook human program That's the name of it and then they can get the advertisements will start rolling in in Facebook But as soon as I have a link to the registration page, I think they're putting that together now I can send it to you and you can put it in the show notes

Great, yeah, that'd be wonderful. What we didn't get into is the idea of inclusion in school and how the brain helps, right, and connection. Yeah, and I absolutely wanna do that because that, for me, as I've been doing this program, that's the thing that has come more to the fore,

Yeah, we can talk about that for a long time. So maybe we can have another session and go into that.

it always comes down to inclusion for me. so I really would love to explore how brain science, neuroscience impacts that.

Okay,

I'll send you links to my book and links to my website and stuff so you can put it in the show notes.

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, I think there's more apparent stuff to talk about too, but I feel like, I want to help teachers as well understand and, and administrators I'm, I'm a witness to it and how poorly it can be done and, the idea of just connecting to the human being, right? And just trying to understand where that human being comes from and literally just like a pat on the back and an encouraging sign every day or just like good job, you know.

kids, parents, they're all going to respond to that as far as I'm concerned. If you tell somebody you're doing a good job, they're going to work even harder for you. And I just don't understand. Yeah. Yeah. So I just don't understand why that's it needs to go the other way, you know, and the whole social media aspect with the kids and the negativity and how they're forced to grow up lot sooner. They're not allowed to be kids. And yeah, so we could have a five part series on this.

You can never go wrong with gratitude and appreciation. Yep.

Right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. Give me a topic

and a time limit. I'll talk to you.

Okay. And could you just give your website so people could connect with you there? What is that? And then I'll put it in the show notes.

Absolutely. Sure,

it's EP like Edward Paul, epinstitute.net or you can just go to lisarego.com. Sorry, two, yeah. Thank you. Yep. Thanks. Okay, bye.

Okay, wonderful. Lisa, thank you so much for your time. I know you gotta run, really appreciate it. Have a great rest of the day, and I'll talk to you soon. Okay.