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The 3 Rs of Emotional Regulation
Episode 8721st September 2023 • Become A Calm Mama • Darlynn Childress
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This is the podcast where you learn how to become a calm parent and raise emotionally healthy kids, but what do emotional health and emotional regulation actually mean? Today I’m sharing a framework from the book, “What Happened To You?” and outlining the 3 Rs of emotional regulation. 

You can start using these simple concepts right away to help calm yourself and coach your kid when they’re having big feelings.  

 

What Is Emotional Health?

When I talk about emotional health (which is the goal of all my programs), I'm really talking about emotional literacy. 

Emotional literacy is made up of three parts: 

I know what I'm feeling

I know how to talk about what I'm feeling

I know what to do with my feelings

We all have an emotional life, with lots of messy stuff inside. We're constantly responding to experiences and stimulation from the outside world. As things happen around us, we have thoughts and feelings about it. And those feelings show up as behavior. 

When we are overwhelmed by a circumstance or it feels like we're in danger or something bad is about to happen, we get flooded with a lot of big feelings. When our kids act out these feelings, it often looks like temper tantrums or meltdowns. I call it a Big Feeling Cycle. When an adult gets overwhelmed, it looks like them freaking out, losing their shit and being a hot mess. 

In these times, we are dysregulated. Our brain is flooded with hormones and chemicals that are meant to help us deal with a stressful situation and keep us safe. The brain wants us to respond FAST. But it ends up looking like someone who is out of control, wild or raging. 

I want to help you see that that behavior is really just somebody who's struggling to manage their emotions. They're doing their best to move through their big feelings. They're in a dysregulated state, and they're doing things to regulate themselves.

Knowing what to do with feelings is the biggest thing I help parents learn - for themselves and for their kids. 

 

Three Rs of Emotional Regulation

When you find yourself yelling at your kids, lecturing or grabbing their bodies, you are dysregulated. Your stress response is activated and you are seeking regulation. 

In kids, dysregulation often looks like crying, kicking, punching, threatening or yelling. It is helpful to remember in those moments that your child is using those behaviors as tools to cope with the overwhelm. 

They are trying to regulate themselves, but they don't really know how to do it in an acceptable way yet. 

These 3 Rs come from the book "What Happened To You" by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey. 

Rhythm

Rhythm involves moving your body in some kind of rhythmic way. It is what we do during a Pause Break. You take a break to move your body and your mind. Stomping your feet, jumping up and down, going for a walk or doing a shimmy shake are all ways that we use rhythm and movement to calm ourselves. 

Relationship

This can mean your relationship with yourself or with others. In your relationship with yourself, this looks like self-compassion. Being able to put your hand on your heart and say, "Geez, this is hard. I'm very overwhelmed. These kids are a lot. I'm having a hard day." In relationship with others, it might look like calling a friend or talking to your partner for support.

Reward

Rewards are the things we do to distract ourselves and get a little dopamine kick. We might have a treat, scroll Instagram for a few minutes or get something checked off our to-do list. 

All of these things are good and healthy. The key is to start having more awareness around yourself in the process. Notice when you are doing something because you are dysregulated. When you can identify it and intentionally calm yourself, it happens more quickly. 

 

Emotional Regulation in Kids

When kids are dysregulated, they need support from the adults around them. And in order to help your kid through their big feelings, you have to be calm and regulated yourself. 

Once you're calm, your child needs you to validate their emotion. Help them figure out what the heck they're feeling and let them know it's okay for them to feel that way. You may not think that whatever they're going through is a big deal, but compassion requires us to get out of criticism and judgment and get into the heart and mind of the other person. 

You can validate their emotion and understand that they're mad/disappointed/sad, listen to their complaints and offer them other ways to deal with their big feelings. I call this the "Now What?" and it's where the 3Rs are really helpful.  

What does your kid need? 

Do they need rhythm (movement, looking at a fountain or fish tank, rocking)? What do they naturally do with their body when they're dysregulated? This can be a clue to the type of movement that will be helpful. 

Do they need relationship (kindness and compassion from you)? This can be a bit confusing when you're the one who upset them by saying no, giving a consequence, etc. You can be both the adult who is helping them regulate and the adult who is helping them become responsible.

Do they need a reward? Reward in this context is a little different from how we usually think about it. Picture the reward as the feeling of relief we all feel when our Big Feeling Cycle ends. There’s a little bit of pleasure that is created from being regulated after being distressed. 

Relationship and the feeling of being soothed can be a reward in and of itself. 

We’re also seeking a little dopamine kick. Screens give us this, but they don’t allow us to release the built up stress hormones that are pumping through the nervous system. I love little tasks as a reward tactic. A tiny, simple task can give a little distraction and pleasure or satisfaction when it is complete.

You don’t want to always distract your kid from negative emotions (or they won’t learn to self-soothe), but these rewards or tasks can be a helpful tool at times, especially when they also involve rhythm or relationship elements. 

 

I want to invite you to see their behavior as a strategy that they are using to cope with overwhelm or discomfort, to see their behavior and think, I think they might be dysregulated. What do they need? Rhythm, relationship or reward? 

When you use the framework of seeing the behavior as an expression of unmet emotional needs or struggle, you will shift into compassion faster, and you will co regulate faster, which is amazing!

 

You'll Learn:

  • The 3 Rs of emotional regulation, and my signature Calm Mama Process that helps you regulate your own feelings and help your kids with theirs
  • How to show compassion, even while following through with consequences
  • Why distractions and screens might help end a Big Feeling Cycle, but they don’t have the long-term reward we’re looking for 
  • The basic reward strategies I teach in my programs

 

Additional Resources:

  • My 3-part podcast series on Parenting Stress Cycles: 
  • Part 1 - What a stress cycle is and how it shows up in parenting
  • Part 2 - How to get out of a parenting stress cycle
  • Part 3 - Reframing your child’s behavior (so you don’t get as stressed in the first place)
  • What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

Transcripts

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Hello. Hello. Welcome to become a kamama.

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I am your host, Erlyn Childress, and this is the podcast

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where you learn how to become a calm parent and raise

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emotionally healthy kids. And I want to talk

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today about emotional health and also talk a little bit

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about the process of self

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regulation. I wanna talk for a few minutes about

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emotional health, what I mean by that. And then the process

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that you will take your children through so that they can become

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emotionally healthy adults. I teach these classes

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called, you know, it's like the emotionally healthy series. Right? So we've got emotionally

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healthy kids, emotionally healthy middle schoolers, and emotionally healthy teen.

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And when I define emotional health, I

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really talk about it in terms of emotional

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literacy. Emotional literacy

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is really the ability to manage our

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emotions. And when we can do that, when we know what to do

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with our feelings, then we can activate

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emotional health. We can move towards greater and greater experiences of

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emotional health. Emotional health is not always feeling

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happy. It's actually more about

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how to know that you're feeling happy. How

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to know that you're, feeling sad, how

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to be aware. Emotional literacy is I know

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what I'm feeling. I know how to talk about what I'm

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feeling. I know what to do with my feelings.

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And then compassion or empathy is the ability to help someone else

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Manage their emotions. So when we break down emotional

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literacy, I know what I'm feeling. I know how to talk about

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it, and I know what to do with it. The

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knowing what to do with it is really

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the biggest thing that I help

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moms do with themselves and then helping

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moms and dads parent their children. So their children

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learn What to do with all this messy stuff

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that's inside? We all have

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in emotional life. We all have you know, experiences

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and stimulation in the external world that we are responding

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to all of the time. So, you know, if you're a little

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kid and your mommy is on the phone talking to

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someone or looking at their phone or working

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and you look at your mommy and you want her to pay attention to you,

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which is a valid desire, and she's not able to is

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also valid. You might feel sad.

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You might feel a little bit uncomfortable. That

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feeling, you might feel unsafe. And when

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you don't know what to do with that feeling, it shows up in

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behavior. Why I always say feelings drive behavior.

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Now there are times where our feelings,

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kinda get ahead of us. Like, they become so intense, so

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overwhelming, or are our

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external stimulus, whatever's happening or circumstance,

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it feels like we're in danger, or it

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feels like Something bad is going to happen to us.

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When our brain interprets that situation

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as dangerous, or we experience it as

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dangerous, we can be flooded with a lot

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of big feelings. So what does that look like when you're a little kid?

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We call it a temper tantrum. We call it a meltdown. I call it a

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big feeling cycle. When a an adult gets

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overwhelmed, we say they're losing their shit. They're in freak out mode.

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They're a hot mess. Whatever. So we have these words

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describe this overwhelmed state.

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And in psychology, I'm not a psychologist

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or a therapist, but I do do a lot of studying about it. And what

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is what that is called is dysregulation.

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So our brain has these, you know,

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chemicals that we get flooded

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with when our stress response is activated. And

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the purpose of those neural chemicals, like

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adrenaline epinephrine, cortisol,

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dopamine, all of those different neurochemicals that you've heard of,

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what the purpose of it is that there there

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to cut off thinking so that we can respond to our environment with

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and do it fast. That's the idea that

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our our dysregulated state is there so that we can

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respond. And that's per the purpose of

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of of stress and dysregulation is to move us to action.

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But in that process

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of action, It looks

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like off track behavior. It looks like misbehavior. It

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looks like a kid who's wild. It looks like a kid who's out of control.

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It looks like a parent who's raging. And I want to

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help you see that that behavior is really just

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somebody who's struggling to manage their emotions. They're

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doing their best to move through their big feelings. They're in a

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dysregulated state, and they're doing things to

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regulate themselves. So that process

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of self regulation is what

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I wanna talk about. I wanna go into depth a little bit more

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on how we regulate ourselves, how we

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go from a dysregulated state to a regulated

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state. I recently read this

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book called what happened to you. We'll link it in the show

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notes, and it's by Bruce Perry, who's a

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PhD and a doctor. So Doctor Bruce Perry and Oprah

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Winfrey. And she sort of interviews him, and that's the structure of the

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book. And the purpose of the book is

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to really help people understand

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how trauma and, you know, adverse

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Childhood experiences affect us in our

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regulation, in the way that we process our

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emotions. And it's it's an incredible book. I highly recommend

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it. And what he talks about is the

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3 r's of regulation. And

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I think it's really helpful for you as parents to understand

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that when your child is dysregulated, their

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behavior are those are tools that they're

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using to cope with the overwhelm. So

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sometimes we see kids, you know, screaming, crying, kicking,

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punching, threatening, yelling. Some kids run away, slam the

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door. Some kids go into internal shame spirals. Some kids do all of

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those things. Right? So their behavior is

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there really their, their attempt

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to regulate themselves?

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Now a cool thing that I'm not gonna talk about too much in this episode

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is the concept of co regulation, and it really is the

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process that children, especially use. They

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use someone else's nervous system. They borrow an

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adult's nervous system or an adult calm

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calm emotional state, and they,

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you can help regulate someone who's in a dysregulated state if

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you're calm. It's kind of a cool process, and I'll talk about it in another

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episode. But what I wanna talk about really specifically is

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this idea of regulation. And the 3

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r's of regulation. So the first r is rhythm.

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The second r is relationship, and the 3rd

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r is reward. So I often teach

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when you are in the pause break as a parent,

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right, that You need to move your body and move your

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mind. Right? That's what I talk about a lot is that you

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probably need your in an activated stress response You're

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dysregulated as the parent. When you're yelling at your kids or you're,

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you know, lecturing them or grabbing their bodies, you get

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dysregulated as the adult. And you are seeking

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regulation. And one of the things I teach is how to

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move your body. To go jump up and down, to

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go wash your hands, to drink some water, to fluff some pillows, to fold some

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towels, to you know, do the shimmy shake where you put your hands in the

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air and, you know, you shake all the way down. Stomp your

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feet. Like, all sorts of things that you can do to

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regulate yourself. The other thing I teach you

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is how to offer self compassion.

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That is really the second r is really about

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relationship and how self compassion being able to

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put your hand on your heart and say, jeez, this is really hard. I'm very

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overwhelmed. These kids are a lot. It's I'm having a hard day.

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You your self compassion is really you being in relationship

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with yourself. It's you calming you, which is

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super cool. So when you're moving your body, you're doing

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rhythm. When you are re

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self coaching and offering yourself self compassion, You're in

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relationship. That's second r. And then reward

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is kind of the things that we do to distract ourselves

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And, typically, we distract ourselves with something that's gonna give us a

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little dopamine kick. Right? Maybe we go eat some sugar

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or We go, you know, scroll on our phone for a minute and

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trying to kind of get something from Instagram

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or TikTok or whatever. We're we're gonna learn something. We're gonna pop

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our brain into a a

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reward based system. Or we go to tasks

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as parents. I think sometimes we regulate ourselves by getting

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something done on our checklist and making that really important Like, oh, I

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can't play with you because I really need to send this email right now, or

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I really need to, you know, get dinner prepped or, you know, I'm I'm doing

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the laundry. I can't play with you. And I want you to see that when

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you are doing those small tasks that, yes, they're

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necessary and all of that, but they might be actually what you're doing to calm

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yourself, to calm your nervous system. To to regulate yourself.

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So I I'm sharing how adults regulate

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when they're dysregulated using the 3 r's do using

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rhythm, which I always think of as movement,

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using relationship. So, you know, either

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self compassion or you call a friend or sometimes we go to the

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internet. We go to those Instagram. We go somewhere. Because we're seeking

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relationship or reward. We do small tasks to make ourselves

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feel better, and then we move on. None

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of those things are wrong. They are all

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good and healthy and great. I want you to

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have a lot of awareness about yourself in

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that process. I want you to notice, I am doing this because

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I'm dysregulated. I am, you know, shaking

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my hands or moving my body, or pacing

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or stroking my arm or putting my hand on my

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heart. Any of those behaviors that you're

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doing with your body, I want you to build awareness and

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think, oh, look. Oh, look. Hello, dysregulation. Look

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at how well you're doing at calming yourself. And when you bring that

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little awareness to the moment and

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you see what you're doing and you go with an intention to

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calm yourself, to regulate, then you

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will have it go faster. That awareness

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brings intention and then intention makes the result

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happen quicker, which is really, really amazing.

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That's when I when, you know, emotional literacy, I know what I'm feeling.

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I know how to talk about it, and I know what to do with it.

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When you are aware of what you're doing and why you're doing

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it, Then you actually calm yourself much

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faster. Isn't that great? So that is

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how it works for adults. Now for

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kids, they also get in dysregulated states.

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And what they need is support from the

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adults around them. They need someone to help them learn to

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self regulate. So what does that mean for you as the

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parent? It means being calm, being in a regulated state

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yourself. That's why calm comes before connect in my program.

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You cannot help your child through their big feelings if you

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are struggling with yours. So it's okay to always take a pause

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break. And then what your children need is they need

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you to validate their emotion. And this is something

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that's very difficult in the moment is to figure out what the

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heck they're feeling and then to validate it because

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you're probably thinking you shouldn't be feeling this

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way. It's not that big of a deal. You're getting this a consequence

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because of your own behavior or you should know better.

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And we look at their behavior. We're judging their behavior.

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And then the feeling that's driving the behavior, we're judging that too.

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That's why, you know, compassion requires us to get out of

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criticism and to get into the mind of and the heart of the

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other person. So it's hard to do. But

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just saying, you know, you're doing this with your body. This

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is the connection tool. I see you screaming. I wonder if you're really overwhelmed.

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Or are are you overwhelmed? Right? You

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can, you know, say you have to leave the birthday party because

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your kid, you told your kid. You can stay at this birthday party long as

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you don't, you know, keep going to the snack table. And then they go to

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the snack table again. They've got like a giant cupcake in their mouth. And you're

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like, looks like we have to leave. So you turn to them and you say,

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hey, we're leaving because I don't wanna have to worry about you continuing to

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get, you know, snacks from the snack table. And then they're gonna

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start crying. Right? They're gonna start getting dysregulated.

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That's why we avoid consequences is because we don't want to go

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through is dysregulated state.

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But going through the whole process with compassion and then

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coming on the other side, and having your kid say,

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I understand. I really shouldn't have, you know, gotten

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snacks. Like, I wanna stay at parties, so I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not

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gonna take too many snacks. That's how they learn. You can say it

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fourteen times. Don't don't eat the snacks. Don't eat the snacks. Don't eat the

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snacks. But learn happens through experience. But when

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your child is experiencing the negative

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thing, the bummer, the result of their behavior, the

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impact of their behavior, they are

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going to be upset. And they might get dysregulated. So

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we're gonna validate their emotion. Of course, you're

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upset, honey. It's hard to leave a party. Of course,

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you're sad. You love being at football practice.

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Of course. Yeah. It's okay to be mad. It's okay to

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be mad at mommy. It's okay to be or older

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kids. It's okay to be angry with me. It makes sense. It's

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okay. So we're gonna validate that emotion, and then we're gonna

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listen to their complaints. And then we're gonna offer

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ways to help them manage their big feelings. So what

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can they do with their big feelings? That's always such a big

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question. The now what?

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So if you wanna think about the now what? Being those 3

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hours, that will be really, really helpful for you when your

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kid is dysregulated to think, what do they need? Do they need to

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move? Do they need rhythm? Another way you can bring rhythm in

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is bouncing a ball back and forth,

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or you know, tossing some pillows around, turning

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on some music, looking at a fountain, looking at fish,

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Right? Anything that you're kind of watching rhythmically can help.

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Listening rhythmically can help moving your body rhythmically can

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help. Having that feeling of, like, that's why little kids

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rock or just think about a baby, like, how we sued them. We shush them,

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and we shake them up and down, and we rock them side to side. We

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contain them in that little bit of a compression, and that is soothing

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to their nervous system. That's the same thing

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for older kids and for adults. They need soothing to their nervous

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system. So that just means offering them

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a way to cert to sue themselves. I like to

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look at a kid and see what their what

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their natural intuition is to sue themselves. Is it

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hitting? Is it eating candy? Is it running away? Is

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it, you know, throwing things? Is it kicking? Like,

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whatever their body is naturally doing to

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If you could see that behavior as a form of regulation,

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then you can say, oh, you wanna hit hit this. Of course, you

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wanna hit We're validating and we're offering an

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alternative. Of course, you wanna hit. Hit this. Hit. Hit hard.

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I'm gonna hold this pillow. You're gonna hit it really hard. You

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wanna spit. You wanna kick. Right? So we're gonna

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continue to offer our kids alternative

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ways for them to do what they're already doing.

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Your child has so much internal wisdom around self soothing

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and self regulation. Sometimes the strategy they're

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using doesn't work. It's not good for the doesn't work

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for the community. Works for them. Doesn't work for the others. It might feel

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really good to take, you know, a sippy cup and hit

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my little her on her knee over and over and over while I'm in the

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car. That might feel really, really good. Think about how

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rhythmic that is. Like, taking a sippy cup and going,

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or poking or whatever, like, oh, you feel like hitting

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something here? You can bounce that on your knee. You

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can bounce that here. You can take these 2, you know, straws. Let me give

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you two pins. Click them together. So we're gonna see what our kid

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is doing, recognize it as a form of regulation,

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and offer another alternative.

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So the the 3 r's rhythm, relationship,

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or reward. So what are those other ones? How

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are those available for us? Thinking about relationship is really just having this person who

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is

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Kind and compassionate. It's so confusing as the parent

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because we're, like, the person who said, no. You can't

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have a candy. And then we're also the person

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soothing the child when they're upset that they can't have the

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candy. And it could It can feel like you

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are two different people in that moment. And

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you are your child's regulating

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adult, and you are also your child's responsibility

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builder adult. Right? Like, you're both. And you

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can hold both together. You can say, I'm

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saying no, and I have compassion for you that you're upset with my

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no. This might sound easy, but I

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know for those of you who are in my programs and and have or been

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listening to the podcast and you're like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. It is

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really hard, isn't it, to

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sit in your child's discomfort, especially

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if you are the reason for it. It's like

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your brain breaks because you want to comfort your

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child by solving their problem. You wanna just okay.

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Fine. Have the candy. And then tomorrow, though, I'm not giving it to you. We,

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like, add that little threat for tomorrow. So we give in, we rescue, and then

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we kind of you know, kind of threaten them. And all of

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that is to soothe our discomfort because

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we don't like to see our kids be sad. We don't like how

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they how how they feel when they're upset, how they act.

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Also, it's very disregulating to be around a person

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who's losing their shit. When your kid is

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freaking out, it's really hard to stay calm because amygdala's talked to amygdala's.

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And so that's why you have to go back and reset your stress response so

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that you can come back and connect. So we're in this calm connect

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kind of in Yang, right, this dynamic

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of I'm gonna call myself and I'm gonna connect and then I'm gonna get dysregulated

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and I'm gonna call myself actually what's cool is while you are self

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regulating through that process, you're teaching your child

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how to co regulate. I wish you could see my hands because I'm, like,

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doing this little dance with them pushing, you know, kind of a a figure 8

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together. And that is a little bit what it is like

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when you're in that process of co regulation

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and helping your cat child self regulate.

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Parenthetically, You don't always have to do it.

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Your kid can, as long as everyone

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stays safe, can go find their way to regulate

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themselves. You don't always have to be the regulating adult. You

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can't Do it. Remember when I said a couple episodes

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back about therapeutic parenting and how you really, it's very difficult to be in the

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state all the time, to be the regulated regulating

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adult all the time. It's why co mama breaks are so important. It's why

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taking really good care of yourself is so important. Because this type of

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parenting requires a high level of, regulation within

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yourself. Really learning to self soothe.

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To cope in healthy ways, to be very

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aware of your emotions, and and

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knowing, oh, I'm not really feeling so great today. What do I

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need? How can I bring more delight into my life? How can I

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you know, can maybe I should make a cup of tea? Maybe I should make

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myself you know, maybe I should set the table nicely today,

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or maybe I should candle, or you know what? I really haven't been outside in

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a while. Whatever it is that you need to calm

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yourself, inviting you to do that as often as you

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can. And I promise you'll be able to show up as the regulated

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adult that you want to be. Now the

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3rd r is reward. And I think

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this one can be a little bit confusing. One very simple way

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to think about reward is the feeling that we

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all feel when our emotional,

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you know, big feeling cycle ends. Like,

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it's really intense And your child is crying, and

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they're really upset. And I call them big feeling cycles because I want you to

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always remember that it's a cycle, which means it has an ending.

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And so that big intensity, and then it ends,

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there's a reward in the ending, actually. There's a little bit of

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pleasure that is created from

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becoming regulated after being distressed.

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So that feeling of, is

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regulation. So we get that through movement. We get that through relationship.

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And then we feel a little bit of pop. Like, oh, you

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know, and you watch this with your kids. They're like, I'm fine now. And then

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they just move on. And you're like, What? How it you were just crying

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so hard. Like, were you just manipulating me? Were you,

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you know, trying to, like, you know, get what you want or whatever?

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We think that they were faking it in some ways, but

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actually getting soothed feels fantastic.

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So that in itself is a reward. We can also be

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intentional about how we create reward. And what

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we're seeking is, like, a little dopamine kick, but not too much.

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And, I mean, that's why honestly we go to our phones and

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things like that because our brain is looking for a distraction. It's looking for a

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little way to, like, get some ease and some movement out of

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it. And Again, nothing wrong with it. But with

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kids, we don't really wanna, like, just shove a, you know, a

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phone in front of them. Like, that's not it's soothing short term, but it

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it actually it doesn't feel great long term because you're not getting the rhythm. You're

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not actually getting the release of all of the pent

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up like, cortisol and all the pump from your nervous

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system. So what can we bring in? I

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love to honestly bring in little tasks.

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Like, oh, honey, you're crying so so much, and I'm gonna help you.

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Can you take this to the your room real quick and come back?

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Like, a little teeny distraction, a

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little teeny task can be really helpful.

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Or if you start to see your kid dysregulating, you can kinda

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watch the pattern. You can give them a job

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small job, you know, oh, will you carry this to that

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room, or can you bring me a cup or some little

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task? Then your kid will get a little pop of like,

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oh, I did it, and they can actually shift and not have to dysregulate.

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It's a little test. It's like, Let me just test to see if

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the, how stressed they are, how their nervous

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system, how activated it is, and you can give a little task.

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Or you can give a little bit of pleasure, and that's why,

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you know, you know, let's have snack or let's go outside or

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let's play Legos. The now what strategies

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that I teach in my classes are sort of move your

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body, talk about it, show me, do

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something else. So the do something else, sometimes it can feel like,

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oh, we're bypassing and we're avoiding and we're letting our kid

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disassociated check out, not deal with their feelings. I

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don't want you to constantly distract your children from their negative emotion.

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Absolutely not because they don't learn -- these self soothing

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tools. But I want you to also feel a little bit

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free to offer a distraction,

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especially if it's movement, if there's rhythm involved, and

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relationship. Honey, honey, honey, let's go outside through the

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ball. Honey, honey, honey, let's let's come over here,

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and I wanna show you, how to fold this towel.

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Right? So we're bringing a little task. We're bringing a little pleasure. You

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know, can you help me real quick? Because I'm trying to figure out how to

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put this Lego on this Lego, and I can't. Or I'm trying to figure out

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how to button this Barbie's, you know, little dress.

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Or I can't get these shoes on. Can you come help me get these shoes

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on, especially if it's a dollar stuffed animal or something? Or

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I'm arranging your stuffed animals to prepare for a stuffed animal party do you

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wanna put this stuffed animal here or there? So

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we're kind of pulling their brain out that dysregulated

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state and into some sort of task, into some sort of thinking, which

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is cool. But you your kid, they'll know if

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you're trying to distract them. And not truly being compassionate. So

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we always wanna connect first and

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then kind of offer some now wet strategies. We wanna

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connect by validating their emotion and making sure that

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they feel really seen and felt and heard. So

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we give that a beat We validate, and then we

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try all these different, regulation strategies. Alright.

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So that Those are the 3 hours of regulation, and I really

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wanted to share those with you on the podcast. If you are interested, I

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think the book What happened to you by Doctor Bruce Perry and

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Oprah Winfrey is an incredible resource. It's really it's an easy

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read. It's not written very academic. It's kinda storytelling.

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So I loved it, and I I recommend it. And the 3 hours of

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regulation, I got the that concept from that

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book. And I

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hope for your takeaway this week that

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while you're watching your child and they're

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freaking out and they're acting badly, like, quote unquote, badly,

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I want to invite you to see

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their behavior as a strategy that

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they are using to cope with overwhelm,

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to cope with discomfort, to see their behavior, and think,

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I think they might be dysregulated. What do they

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need? Rhythm relationship

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reward. So that framework if you

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work within that framework of seeing the behavior as a

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as an expression of unmet emotional needs

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or struggle, You will shift into compassion

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faster, and you will co regulate faster, which is amazing. This concept of

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regulation is just one thing that I teach in the emotionally healthy

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kids class. And I am that next

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fall session starts I think on October 12th.

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And so I really want to invite you. Yeah. We're gonna meet on October 12th

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for 6 weeks. It's gonna be a 9 AM session, 12 PM

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Eastern. So 9 AM pacific. We're gonna meet for 6 weeks

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and a class is $500, and I'm gonna teach you how to calm

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yourself, how to connect better with your kids, how to help your

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kids regulate, how to set limits in my limit setting

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formula and then how to do consequences without

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pain and shame. So it's really the the class is

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com comprehensive. It's everything you learn on the podcast, but con you you

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know, in one very 6 week course. So

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you kind of really master the things. If you love this podcast and you

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listen to it all the time, And you haven't taken that class yet, get

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in there, because I think you will love learning from

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me. I teach it live. So it's you know, just us on

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Zoom. The classes haven't been very large, and so it's not like

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you, you know, you have to talk or anything, but You do

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get to ask questions. You do get to talk to me, which is nice. And

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you can, you know, we can work through what's going on with your family.

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And then you get to be in the club for the next 6 months after

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that. So there's a lot then that's when you get to talk to me privately

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because in the club, you get 15 minute private sessions with me.

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You have access to those every week, which is cool. Highly

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recommend that that, I I don't know if we've

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opened up enrollment yet, but it's coming. So go to kamamacoaching.com.

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Go to that programs page, and you'll see the parenting classes.

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And you can sign up for either the wait list or join if the drawers

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are open. Alright. I wish you this week

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the most regulated humans for yourself

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and for your children. And when you are when you are dysregulated,

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you have permission to pause, you have permission to take excellent care of

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yourself. And when your kids are dysregulated,

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Think about the 3 r's. Alright. I

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will see you. Well, I won't see you. This podcast. I will talk to

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you next week. Have a great week.

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