Andrea McTague: Hello, and welcome to The Shift Show again. In today's episode, we'll be plunging into the subject of parenting little ones. And whether you're a parent looking for some insight or some info, or if you're someone who was parented, and hint, that is all of you, and want to understand the successes and the oopsies in your own experience, this one's for you. I'm Andrea McTague. I'm the founder of ShiftGrit and its unique psychology-based therapy program. And I'm joined today by one of our talented brain benders and registered psychologist, Sherilyn Theriault. Hi, Sherilyn. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Can we start off by having you tell us a little bit about your experience working with children and why parenting is such a passion area of yours?

Sherilyn Theriault: I entered into the world of working with children and youth back in 2003, after I earned my undergraduate degree in psychology. I started working in a frontline residential position with an organization called Woods Homes. And at that time, I worked with some complex families, youth, children, concurrent mental health diagnoses, behavioral issues, medical problems, just complexities. And so, yeah, I entered in early and it was a real learning opportunity, rewarding experience. And then after that, I worked my way and my completion of my master's counseling. And I did an internship working with the youth, children and families with Alberta Health Services and went over to do my provisional with them as well as a registered psychologist. So, I've been working with kids and youth and families for a long time.

Andrea McTague: Nice. And when did parenting specifically become a passion area of yours?

Sherilyn Theriault: Well, I think it's always been in the background, a passion of mine, but it came to the forefront when I became a parent myself in 2019. I have a five, almost six-year-old daughter. And, yeah, this has brought more experience and understanding to the parent and some of the struggles they may have. Yeah, understanding that sometimes it really is just about surviving.

Andrea McTague: I like that, very empathetic approach. So, you've seen some stuff in a really clinical setting with really, really high needs. And then now you're parenting your own daughter. And so, how did this experience kind of like change your lens? What did you learn from your experiences working as a psychologist and previous to that? And, yeah, what are you seeing now? Like, what were your big takeaways from that?

Sherilyn Theriault: I think I've learned that kids do well when parents are doing well. So, when a parent is taking care of their mental health and physical health, generally their kids do better. From my experience, I also learned that it's important to take difficult moments and turn them into natural learning opportunities for connection to your kids, for teaching, attachment. Yeah, and so, I think that's been a part of it. Yeah, the other thing that I've learned about is that parenting is an important job. It's often unrecognized as an important job, but it is important. We need parents to be stable, connected, attuned to their kids. But we also need them to be structured, sort of routine, structured, and disciplinary where need be. So, both of those things. And I think it's a difficult balance to master for most people.

Andrea McTague: Definitely, especially considering, and I like that you used the job word, because it's a job in which it's super, super important. And you also have no job experience in that one when you're doing it, right?

Sherilyn Theriault: You're learning as you go. You're learning as you go.

Andrea McTague: And hopefully, this podcast and other pieces of information that will kind of cite some stuff in the show description will help you have some information and maybe, like, borrow from some other people's experiences so that even though you've got none necessarily in your own parenting journey, that you can borrow those experiences and be a little bit more informed before you get too far down that runway. Anyway, we've had a lot of interesting conversations about parenting because, well, I think it goes in and is foundational to a lot of the work we do, right? Like, a lot of the things that we see in our clinical populations, you know, have to do with some, like, parenting oopsies in our client's early life. But also because I have an eight-month-old daughter, so I had a really interesting runway to parenthood in that I've worked predominantly in the space of childhood non-nurturing elements and their impact on people as adults. So I gained a very deep insight into what works and what doesn't via this, like, decade-plus experience and all of the research informing that. Before I had my little one, who I said is, like, eight months now. So she's my favorite psychological experiment, for sure. And I favor an attachment, neuropsych, and evolutionary lens, evolutionary psychology lens. And that really lent a sort of level of intentionality to our parenting approach. And parenting is this massive, massive topic, and we could spend eons on it. But let's get started with some basic reminders that I always throw down with any of my parent clients. I'm kind of speaking to, you know, it's hard, who are often, they often come in really, really worried about messing up their children, which is, like, a super common concern. And a couple things that I want to say about it is almost all early environments contain some non-nurturing elements. So these are things that are disruptive to the early developing mind-brain attachment, all of that. And we don't have control over everything that happens to our children, right? So sometimes it's outside of the home, sometimes it's in our own psyches, and it's subconscious, we're not aware of it, maybe we'll get aware of it. Sometimes it's in our extended family or in our partners. So we can't control all of the pieces. I mean, it would be really, really beautiful and nice if we could, and we're often asked to deliver that. And we reset those goals a little bit. The other thing about it is a little bit and a reasonable amount of challenge or difficulty builds some resilience so that a child who has never struggled at all is also at a disadvantage. And we're kind of seeing a lot of that with, like, helicopter parenting and coddling and so on and so on. So when there are some of the non-nurturing elements introduced, and maybe you've got a hand in that, which often in our therapy with individuals, they kind of realize, I also like to loop back to this point of, like, a little bit, a little bit helps to build success in later life. So the last one being, like, don't be too hard on yourself and aim for perfection because it's just not an available thing in this complex space. So we want to do our best and we want to be as informed as humanly possible, but also not too hard on ourselves. So that's our nice little disclaimer that we use with our parent clients, right? We've got to do it a little bit.

Sherilyn Theriault: Hard try, not perfection.

Andrea McTague: Hard try, not perfection. Exactly. And they're pretty resilient little creatures, high levels of neuroplasticity and so on. So if you do kind of have, like, you can course correct it with a bit of information and a little bit of work to share Lynn's point on yourself. But when we're working with patterns of things that we see really, really commonly as struggles, we kind of identify that a few of them are things like behavioral issues. They can go from, like, anxious kids to tantruming kids, et cetera. And some of the basics, like the sleep portion. So we're going to cover a few things on that. But when you've got a parent, Sherilyn, who is facing a kid who's doing a lot of the tantruming kind of stuff. And a lot of those, I'm not going to put my shoes on. I'm going to have a meltdown in the middle of the store or whatever. What are some of the kind of limiting beliefs or negative identity statements that are coming up in those parents?

Sherilyn Theriault: Again, I'm glad you asked. I would say that that. As one of the main things I've seen throughout my career and personally, where, you know, you have a child who's sort of the typical piece as a child's in a grocery store, they're standing next to the belt of the till and they're looking at the candy bar saying, Mom, I want this candy bar. Give it to me now. I want it. I want it. I want it. I want it. And usually most parents fall into limiting, negative limiting beliefs around, I'm judged is a big one. I'm embarrassed is another one. And, you know, sort of the urge to quickly fix or hide. And, you know, a huge tantrum right there in the middle of the store and everybody's looking you as a parent as to how is she going to handle that, he or she. And people tend to fall into, parents can fall into sort of giving in to the tantrum and getting them the candy bar.

Andrea McTague: Well, a hundred percent, especially if you're worried about being judged in that moment and you're just like, please stop doing this. Like, I want you to go away. Yeah. We're like, get the behavior now. And like you said, a quick fix. And we're going to talk about some things you can do later on in this podcast instead of the quick fix. You bet. I also see things, and you'd mentioned this one when we were speaking earlier, of just feeling like I'm not good enough. Like I'm incapable. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm messing this up. I'm a failure. Like all of that stuff that gets into like this negative self-talk about, about your parenting skills or lack thereof.

Sherilyn Theriault: I think a lot of parents fall into the not enough, not good enough pieces. And I need to do harder. I need to do more, try harder, be better, be perfect. And that can really send a parent spinning as well in those cycles. Another avenue that it could take in the grocery store is a limiting belief around, I am disrespected. Again, child is demanding a candy bar. Parent is like, I am disrespected. You will respect me. And then they fall into sort of anger and militance over firmness, let's say. And when that happens, that can go awry too.

Andrea McTague: I think one of the limiting beliefs that I see coming up also in that type of a scenario is the limiting belief in the parent of I'm powerless being activated. And we know that one has a dysfunctional need related to it of I need to be powerful. So you actually will entice this beautiful power struggle. And then you often say, do not negotiate with terrorists. And you get this like little terrorist negotiation thing. And they really feel like that kid is taking their power and they want it back. And I think that those power struggles are really at the epicenter of that terrible grocery store type of scenario.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah. And one of the other things that you reminded me of is that sometimes when I look at my own daughter, I'm very aware of when she's actually in her walnut tantruming. And when she has a pre-planned cognitive tantrum. Tell me a little bit about the difference.

Andrea McTague: What's the difference between kind of like a walnut tantrum and a pre-meditated first degree tantrum?

Sherilyn Theriault: So when she was younger, like two, three, maybe four, I would be more likely to see that walnut tantrum of instinct that was fight flying off in her walnut where she's like around this candy bar upset, that, you know, doesn't necessarily understand sort of A plus B equals C or consequences and outcomes. It's very instinctual, very emotional, very dysregulated. And then now that she's a little bit older, she has more, not full, but more capacity to handle the stress. And so I see a little bit more like, hmm, I'm going to go to the grocery store and make a big scene to get that candy bar.

Andrea McTague: And they get a little manipulative because they're smart, I think. And so I agree with you because with the little baby person I have right now, I really can see like a strong tie to that human animal. And so a lot of controlling those types of tantrums, I think really, really early starts with like preemptively meeting their physiological needs, right? So, you know, you're going to get that meltdown if they are tired, if they are hungry, if they are really bored, if they feel like they haven't had your attention and they need some comfort or they need some attachment to be happening there. Whereas like as the brain develops into your five or six-year-old, you've got some more of that capacity for logic and a greater capacity for manipulation then, right?

Sherilyn Theriault: Absolutely good points around the tiredness, hunger, pieces that are biological, influencing walnut responses and developmental age. Again, I could talk with you about this all day.

Andrea McTague: 100%. And I think like one of the things that I think is kind of interesting, we talk a lot with our adult clients about the cognitive mind. So our developed evolved brain, which of course, you know, evolves through childhood and the walnut brain or reptilian brain, threat brain, whatever you want to call it. And I like to use this little analogy of like when you go, if you're taking a toddler to Disneyland, what do you need to make sure that you've taken care of in order to reduce the chance that you're going to have one of those like epic meltdowns, right? And we talk about making sure they're hydrated, making sure they're fed, making sure they've got some distraction or toy or making sure that they have slept well or have time for a nap if they need one. So all of those things like preemptively will create more capacity in the adult as well, but also, and so to your earlier point, making sure that you are regulated and you've got those things under control, because then it's much easier to do them for other people.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah, again, co-regulation is a big thing when it comes to kids and we can talk about that further as we go into this segment, but remaining collected and calmer self is one of the key points to parenting.

Andrea McTague: Do you want to expand on that? Like what is co-regulation?

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah. So, um, I take, I take a sort of my, my background like yours is in brain development, neurobiology, evolution, attachment. I love those areas of psychology. And so when we talk about co-regulation, I very much think about mirror neurons in the brain and how we mirror what is around us. So again, if someone's in their walnut, anxious with limiting beliefs of I am judged or I'm criticized or whatever, then the person that is around them might also fall into anxiety. Anxiety begets anxiety, anger begets anger. And again, we mirror off of each other and easily fall into walnut if we're not sort of regulated and aware.

Andrea McTague: A hundred percent. I think there's some interesting research on that as well in multiple arenas about our, even if you are around somebody anxious, emotions are contagious and negative emotions are even more contagious. So they did some studies on even performance. If you're sitting next to a high performer, that's calm and regulated, you know, your productivity goes up, same sort of thing. But what they found, which was very interesting in that piece of research was that it is more impactful when there's a negative emotion or there's a negative attitude going on. It's like almost like we can catch the negatives more easily. And there is an attachment reason for that, right, in terms of co-regulation. And one of the kind of analogy things that I use with clients often is, or like education pieces, is that your really, really small little child does not know whether the environment is safe or not. And safety and security, we know, are like in the scope of the basic needs for children. So instead of like going to their limited, you know, maybe they've got eight months of experience on the planet, they're like, I don't know what's a tiger or what's like, you know, what's going to hurt me, right? So in order to figure out whether something is safe or whether something is dangerous and whether they're safe or they're in danger, they look to their attachment figure. And there's a couple of things that can happen with that, right, is if they look to their attachment figure and their attachment figure is dysregulated, what occurs in the child then?

Sherilyn Theriault: Well, they look to their attachment figure, seeing the dysregulation probably feels lack of safety, risk those pieces and mimics or falls into also the dysregulation. So, yes, it's very important to be as regulated as we can, not aiming for perfection, but a hard try.

Andrea McTague: A hundred percent. And in that grocery store sort of scenario, we see like the non-optimal behaviors. The parent gets frustrated, the parent gets mad, and then the kid like amps it up even more. And now you're into this like big spiraling tornado of emotions on both sides that are like feeding via those mirror neurons, like back and forth and back and forth. The other thing that we often talk about is if that child is looking to their attachment figure and the attachment figure is not available, so they can still be physically there, but pieced out. Maybe they're like scrolling on their phone or maybe they're having an argument with the spouse or whatever. They're not available. Then that child is going to stay at this like hyper aroused state. And if they're not attended to, what we see with little ones is they're very equipped to get your attention.

Sherilyn Theriault: Hmm. Right? Yeah, I know that when I'm on the phone with somebody, that's the first thing that my daughter does is come to me to get my attention. Even oh, I've been attending to her all day. The moment I'm on the phone, she's right there.

Andrea McTague: Yeah. Well, and because it doesn't matter if like, she's been like getting feedback loops that she's safe all day. But in that one moment, the minute you pick up that phone and your attention goes elsewhere, she's like, well, now I don't know. So I'm going to go get a check-in. I'm going to, I'm going to go test this and see. So what does she do to get your attention?

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah. So again, she's mommy, mommy, mommy. And she wants sort of the attention for me to shift away from who I'm speaking to on the phone. Again, I common sort of based in attachment, based in neurology pieces around and evolution around meeting the needs of the child and where they're at and their safety and security.

Andrea McTague: Well, and I think it's a great lens to look at it through too, right? So if you've got that moment where you're on the phone, maybe it's an important phone call and you've got mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy happening. It is very easy in that moment to go through our own lens and be like, oh, just be quiet. I'm on the phone. I'm talking to your auntie, whatever. And bringing that, like that negative emotion onto it versus if you've got a lens to, oh, Hey, she's just checking to see whether she's still good. So that's a very different approach. Then it's a turning around and just being like, Hey, you're fine. I'll be with you in a minute. I'm on this phone call. Neutral sort of stance, just informing them. You're like, you're good. Eye contact to regulate. Right. And then you've deescalated what is going to expand otherwise. Because of course, if you don't answer that mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, they have some other tricks up their sleeve.

Sherilyn Theriault: Again, they'll get dysregulated and up the ante around that.

Andrea McTague: And I think this is an important thing is that the child's motivation is to get your attention. So it's not that they are doing a good behavior or bad behavior. That lens doesn't exist in their mind. They're like, well, she's not paying attention to me. So I'm going to go over to this piece of glassware over here, because I know that whenever I approach this very breakable object, what does mom do? She turns her attention to me. Right. And so we'll often get people saying like the kids doing this, they're being bad, and they're giving this judgment to the behavior, not realizing that the underlying motivation for the behavior is I just need your attention. Right. And that can be a thing. And if when we see that upcycle, and that can be in whatever it can be, you know, that cat like behavior of like, this is breakable, you're going to look at me now. Or it can be testing in other ways, right? Like I'm going to climb on the couch and look like I'm going to fall over, or I'm going to start getting louder, or I'm going to interrupt or whatever. But the interesting thing that you saw in the research is if that child keeps going for somebody's attention and keeps going for someone's attention, and they never get it, what then happens is a complete extinction of those seeking behaviors. So we get a learned helplessness. And you probably saw a little bit of that in the client population you were working with in Woods Homes.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah, again, learned helplessness off of sort of an emotional, sometimes physical neglect. And that is a, that's a concern as well. Learned helplessness and lack of confidence, self-esteem pieces that come out with kids. So as parents, again, we're her we're working towards the hard try of fostering connective attachment and being to our kids.

Andrea McTague: I think it's a little bit of a positive lens. So then when you get that mommy, mommy, mommy kind of thing, which might be very irritating in the moment, it's knowing that you've actually done a really nice job of fostering attachment, because your little one is going to you to check that security, meaning that you are her consistent source of security and safety. So it's an interesting lens to put on it.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah, for sure. Again, they're, they're looking to you. And the idea is, you want to help your kids to explore the world, a good healthy attachment. Take this from the circle security, where they are able to step out and explore the world and then come back when they need to, and then go back out into the world to explore.

Andrea McTague: 100%. And this she's referencing a book, Circle of Security, which we can put in the show notes as well, which is really great on foundations for attachment and insecure attachment, secure attachment, and all of that sort of thing. Because we want securely attached children, but of course, they're going to seek our attention a little bit more. And that's not a bad thing. But I think we have to move out of our own mind and maybe educate a little bit of the lens, like why they're doing that. And I think that that's one thing that we've talked about. Often adults are seeing, we're seeing things through our, what's convenient for us, what's interesting for us, what are our goals are. And, you know, the more we ask, like, why is the child doing this? Like what's happening there? It gives us a little bit more humility. And then also like a little bit of an ability to educate ourselves in a way that then we can move them to the behavior outcome that we want without eclipsing their own autonomy and their needs. Yeah, for sure. So one of these needs that I think parent, both parents and children have is for sleep, right? And this is one thing that we hit really, really, really hard on, like out the gate, the minute she was three months old, I'm like, okay, we're going to get on this, because I have had the experience of seeing in a lot of parents' minds, and it might be really, really cute when they're cuddly, and they wake up a whole bunch in the night, you have those moments, it's very sweet. But it becomes quickly not cute when you are very sleep deprived, or when they're four years old, and then keep coming to your room and waking the whole family up or whatever the thing is. So let's talk a little bit about effective bedtime routines and getting kids to sleep effectively early.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah, so again, learned this the hard way from my own sort of experience. Initially, when I developed my daughter's bedtime routine, it was the longest bedtime routine known to man. Again, developed a routine that was snack, pajamas, brush teeth, potty, reading, singing, tickles, cuddles. All the things. All the things. Long routine. And night after night, I was pretty consistent with it. But night after night, it became just exhausting.

Andrea McTague: Yeah. How long did that take you initially to do?

Sherilyn Theriault: Well, because I'm pretty persistent, and I stick to routines fairly well. I stick it out. It took me probably longer than I probably should have. And so we ended up breaking this down into more doable segments. And again, we still hit snack, pajamas, brush teeth, potty. It's a short, quick bedtime story. And then I introduced a wind up musical clock that I turn on after we read the story that allows me to give her a cuddle, a goodnight kiss and a hug. She knows that I'm exiting at the end of that music. And then I turn the clock on again, wind up musical clock. And she listens to it while I exit the room. So I found out using a cue helps with my exit.

Andrea McTague: Yes. And if we're going to reference the psychologist from way, way, way back when, it is Pavlov and his dog training that taught us that. And the theory is a classical condition, right? 100%. And that means that you're basically like tying a cue, in this case, the wind up musical clock, to an intended outcome, my leave. Exactly. And then to sleep. I remember when we were talking about this off camera, I laughed because we also use a wind up musical thing. We use a wind up music box. And I approached kind of bedtime a little bit differently because I got to hear all of these stories beforehand. So I had like kind of a cheat code. Lucky you. But you can know it. Well, this is the benefit of being an old mom, I think. You get to hear all of the other stories first. And then we'll pay it forward. We'll pay it forward. We'll share these sorts of things, though, so people can learn from our experiences. And I think that that's an interesting point, right? So it's making it work for you, right? So a length of routine that's going to still cue them, but it doesn't have to be a long, elaborate one.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah.

Andrea McTague: And then that becomes more sustainable, right?

Sherilyn Theriault: Hit the main points and foster connection and attachment. And again, it need not be lengthy, which I learned the hard way.

Andrea McTague: Yes. And there's a couple reasons. As I was saying before, we really, really want to focus on sleep, particularly because it is much easier to deal with all other behaviors when you have a well-rested child and when you are well-rested and those things go together. In my research on sleep, and there is like a ton of stuff on sleep, definitely the cueing. We liked that, kept it. But when I was looking at it and I'm looking at it through the lens of somebody that deals a lot with attachment and attachment injuries and attachment trauma. So we're looking at these different sleep training guides and, you know, there's like the cry it out and all of that. And I was like, I've done a few too many float backs, which are an activity that we go through to get through original trauma and see where these encoding pieces come from, where there's a kid that's lying in a crib and feels very ignored. And now it's causing some dysfunctions. So I was like, not about, we went deeper into the, like, why do children struggle to sleep through the night? And I'm talking about really, really, really young kids. And we looked at, arrived at a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful book. And it is called 12 hours by 12 weeks. And then differentiator between that one and every single other sleep thing that I had come across was that they looked at the reason why kids get up. If you look at it from an evolutionary human animal kind of perspective, it doesn't make sense to disrupt something that is so important to us, right? A millions, it's a huge, big investment to sleep. We're in a danger, vulnerable thing, but it's very, very important to our beings. And basically it was landed on the theory that the reason they wake up is because they're hungry, right? So when they're really, really little. So the book was through basically determining a feeding schedule and creating this capacity to take in a larger amount of calories right before bed so that there is not so much of the waking up out of hunger. And then when you pair that with other things like queuing and classical conditioning, you get quite quickly a child that will maintain a healthy level of sleep, barring a disruption, like maybe they're teething, maybe they're sick, whatever, whatever, right? Because they're still going to have some variety. So none of this is going to produce like a hundred percent consistency, but it did get us to a four month old that slept 10 to 11 hours a night solid right off the bat, which was a win. I appreciate that.

Sherilyn Theriault: Again, that's great. Wonderful that you were able to take those pieces of knowledge and implement them. I'm sure that impacted your wellbeing as a mom.

Andrea McTague: Percent. There's a big turn around with the attachment level when you're like, okay, you're well-rested, I'm well-rested. Not to mention like babies particularly are encoding so much information and sleep is a major piece for our memory, right? That's when we're like locking things down. But I love the idea of queuing and having it be consistent. It was a cute one with our music box because my daughter was born via surrogacy. So there was a particular classical piece that was played by the surrogate while she was in utero. And my bestie, who is amazing, she had that piece of music made into a windup music box. And that's what we use for queuing.

Sherilyn Theriault: Again, I can tell that that was well thought out. And one of the things that sort of stands out is that you thought about what you wanted your baby or child to do very early on. You broke down what needed to be put into play to make that happen. And then I'm hearing that you're pretty consistent with its use as best as you can be.

Andrea McTague: As you are.

Sherilyn Theriault: I think those are some, yeah, those are some, some techniques around sleep. Yeah. And so again, those around sleep, but if you even take things like, I don't know, teaching your child to put on their shoes, their boots, tying shoes or using a zipper. Sometimes I break the task down and I scaffold it to sort of like teach, challenge them a little bit beyond what they can do or what I think they can do and reinforce them for approximations of behavior. So that's another technique that we use, I suppose, in parenting among many others.

Andrea McTague: Well, and I think that like that you, you hit on two really key points there is like one, an intentionality, like know what you want the outcome to be. Sometimes it's really concrete. Like I want you to know how to put your own shoes on, or I want you to sleep through the night, sometimes it's a little bit like more amorphous, but if we get that defined in our mind, then when she's talking about scaffolding, meaning go back and like bridge it into little steps. And I was like the reference point of food, right? Like, so we all know with feeding a child, you can't take your newborn and give them a lamb chop. Like that's not going to work. Right. So we have the scaffolding, right? So you go from the purees to the thicker purees, to the little cooked pieces, to the like, you cut their food for them, blah, blah, blah. And it's that, that's a scaffold of like approximating behavior outcomes where you want them to be able to eat on their own one day. And so we can take these things that are done in the sleep examples that we just gave you. And you can do that for anything, right? There can be queuing for bath time, queuing for it's time to leave.

Sherilyn Theriault: You've got a nice little morning routine and like, I think it's about modeling as well. So showing it's about giving choices where they need be. So when we try to give choices, you know, have our daughter pick out the pajamas that she wants to wear, give her some power and control over her life. Other things we do because my daughter particularly, she's hardheaded, a bit stubborn, persistent. I don't know where she gets it from.

Andrea McTague: No idea.

Sherilyn Theriault: No idea.

Andrea McTague: Monkeys see, monkeys do. That's the thing.

Sherilyn Theriault: Right. And so she, she sort of has to have her mind set out about something before she does it. One example is that we know that she can put on her boot, on her boots, but when she gets to school, she's slower to take them off. And, you know, people around her try to offer assistance. They try to help her. And we're just like, look, have her compete. If she competes, she'll get those boots off. And she does. I like that because it's a sort of competition.

Andrea McTague: Well, and you're looking at that particular child's motivation, right? So your little one is clearly competitive and wants to be like keeping up with the group. Right. And you had a beautiful example of that in terms of potty training, right? And they often do want to fit in. And they want to keep up with the group. And if that's a motivation for your child, and it isn't for every child, but you can kind of draw upon that a little bit as well. And I think it's that like when you've got that routine and when we're talking about routines, it's building in those scaffolds, but looking for the motivation in their minds. So you're like, okay, I want you to take off your shoes, but how can I get the same behavioral outcome, but change the motivation, right? So the motivation being like, I want to keep up.

Sherilyn Theriault: Has to match with her intention, right? So competitiveness and keeping up with sort of older peers. Again, I know we're at a little bit of a disadvantage, I guess, in the sense that we both only have one child each. So in that aspect, they don't get the modeling from other children sometimes, and we have to arrange for it.

Andrea McTague: 100%. Or you have to step in and do that. And I think that that's something that's important for if you've got a firstborn or if you've got an only, they aren't having that natural thing. We would be like kind of tribal, raised in a village, and they would have those other children that scaffold things naturally for them because it's hard to run a business that you just opened and you're like taking business advice from Jeff Bezos, right? Like it's a bit too big. You need some in-between steps. And usually little children and different ages will provide that scaffolding. So I think it's like getting down on their level and doing it with them. We definitely did this with my daughter and brushing teeth. Like much easier to show than tell. And I think that that's one thing we want to kind of keep in mind with children is that they are going to do two things really, really well. One is they're going to copy. Like they're going to be what you are. And that can be a really daunting statement. It can be like, oh my God. Or it can be a really exciting one. So if they know that you hate broccoli, Cesare, you're going to get a little one that also hates broccoli. Or if you want to show them how to put boots on instead of tell them because their language skills aren't as strong as ours. And so I think talking a lot, asking a lot of questions without demonstrations is probably not world's best way to communicate with a little guy or girl for that one.

Sherilyn Theriault: Again, I like your, your piece of they will, they will, they're listening to us. They're going to mimic what we do and what we say. And that has become more evident, more clear since our, our daughter has become almost six. So, and it's exciting, but it's also like, oh man, now I need to watch every little thing I say and do.

Andrea McTague: I've just, I've just given it up, but we're going to have a little child that runs around swearing like a sailor because can't get that in the bag, but it is an interesting one, right? Like, so I work with somebody who's a very, very talented mother and I am constantly like asking her a million questions about how do you do this? How do you do that? In the toothbrushing example, she's like, grab her toothbrush, put it in her hand for her and then get down on her level and brush your teeth in front of her. And two days she's on it. She can do that because there was no words. She's going to copy me. And so if you demonstrate that in a way that scaffolds them a little bit, right? So she can't pick it up and do it from start to finish. But if I kind of position it and then like less and less and less, then they're going to pick it up quite quickly because they're quite talented at their copying abilities. They're built for it. That's how they learn everything, like literally everything about themselves, about the world, and how to manipulate and move things in the world as well.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah. And then repetition and consistency, right?

Andrea McTague: Yeah. And giving them a little bit of autonomy or a lot bit of autonomy. Like you said, you let her pick her pajamas, right? So she can't necessarily pick anything because she might be going to sleep in a princess dress or something, which maybe doesn't work so well, but giving them a little bit of autonomy to mess things up, to choose things because they are separate beings. And the more you do that with them, the more they create their own sense of self. Self and sense of self-efficacy. So I remember one of the things I wanted her to do is drink out of a water glass. So you put the water in front of her, get the water glass, position the hands a little bit, and then drink a glass of water right beside her. Now, is she going to nail it? Is half of that water going to end up on her, on the floor? The glass might fall, break, whatever. Yeah, that's 100% going to happen. But when you give them that autonomy, there's this beautiful moment that happens the minute they do approximate the behavior or they get the behavior. And I'm sure you've seen this one. I have.

Sherilyn Theriault: And again, it's usually a, I did that. You know, I think that's how true form, true confidence is built. It's by overcoming obstacles, obstacles and doing it. And isn't it wonderful that you get that sort of shock, that excitement from your daughter when she's able to sort of lift the cup up and drink out of it?

Andrea McTague: 100%. And I think what that looks like later is you're building that confidence, you're building self-efficacy. So you're going to build a kid that is not afraid to try and to fail because all learning requires approximation and failure, right? Like you're going to hit it, you're not going to hit it, etc. What we're seeing now is, I think, in some of our parenting populations that they want to jump in, they want to interrupt, they want to get to the conclusion faster than the kid can do that. So they kind of jump in and take over. And that creates some interesting scenarios in adulthood or teenagehood.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah, again, we are in a world that is about instant gratification. A lot of the time, just with tech and, you know, you want a pizza, you order it, it gets delivered, you know, skip the dishes, whatever. We're in that instant sort of gratification. And so I think parents sometimes fall into wanting that with their kids and their development and kids do things on their own time.

Andrea McTague: We do our best to sort of set it up and approximate it.

Sherilyn Theriault: You know, we give a plastic cup instead of a glass cup to start out. We do things to sort of support their development in safe ways, but they tend to kind of mature and develop when they're ready at the same time. So, again, back to the piece of we can't be too hard on ourselves either.

Andrea McTague: Well, I think it's that thing of intentionality as well and understanding that if you're going to teach someone how to do something, you need to give them the space to try. And the minute you jump in, you are now sending the signal to that child that I don't believe you can do this. I can do this better than you. And I'm also removing all of your opportunities to try to succeed at this. So there you're actually like putting a nice like brick wall in front of the ability to ever do that task. So if we have that lens, it's going to change the way we interact with them when they are attempting something. And because it's generally inconvenient that they can't do it right away, it would be more convenient if they could just like drink out of the water glass nicely and not spill it all over the place.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah, again, but it fosters dependency and helplessness when we do it for them.

Andrea McTague: A hundred percent. And we're using a water glass kind of drinking example, but it could be anything. It could be the school project. I don't know how many clients I've talked about that with as adults where they're like, yeah. And then there was like whatever that paper mache volcano or whatever it is. And, you know, dad spent all night doing it for me and I never got to put my hand on it. And then you're also removing that opportunity for a sense of accomplishment and pride. So when any human finishes a task, whether it's like we reorganize the sock drawer or we, you know, did this beautiful presentation at work or whatever, or guested on a podcast, we get this nice little dump of dopamine and it makes us happier. And from an evolutionary perspective, the theory is that that's the thing that motivates us to like not just sit around and starve, right? It's like, go pick the berries. Oh, yay, pick berries and a little dopamine reward in our brain. And so if you want to really regulate a kid, you give them opportunities to learn how to succeed at small tasks, big tasks and everything in between without getting too involved minus like, you know, safety and like reasonable coaching and what.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah. I mean, which means they may fail. They may not exactly get it the first time and that's okay. And then you want to sort of set it up as best as possible for their success and their developmental level, but recognizing that they need to try and do it for themselves.

Andrea McTague: I find one thing that's handy for me in working with parents is often pulling them into like a relevance scape that is like there now. So I'm like, if you had took on a new job, for instance, and you're learning this new task, learning how to do the thing, you're excited about it. You're like, okay, I can do this. I got to learn a bit of a learning curve and your new boss just like jumps in and like takes your projects away and like jumps in, gives you like a lot of feedback. Oh, you spilt it. You didn't do this. Oh, this is missing. While you're still in the trying phase, right? This isn't like critical feedback. It's like not coaching feedback while you're trying and they just keep jumping in. And I'm like, what is that going to message to you about your abilities to ever get good or do the thing?

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah. I'm not believed in. I can't. I'm powerless, helpless, all of those things. Exactly.

Andrea McTague: Yeah. And I think, I think there's an interesting thing too. Like if you have that intentionality for what your outcome is, then understanding that you need to kind of like stay a little bit ahead of that loop. So one of the things is like, we're super huge foodies and this gets into the feeding part of it. We're super, super huge foodies. We like to go to nice restaurants. We like to like cook a lot, et cetera. So I wanted a good eater. Like a nightmare for me would be a picky eater or somebody that can't sit in a restaurant. Like that would be bad. So that's like the concrete goal. I'm like, okay, let's go back from that. So when she was a newborn, we used to like hold different foods under her nose to kind of like, okay, this is what food smells like. She's sitting at the dinner table with us. There's no like high chair off in the corner. She's like participating in each meal. And now this like little gremlin person that will yank food out of your hand. Or if you're eating something, God forbid, in front of her and you're not sharing, there's going to be some opinions about that. But she sits nicely in restaurants and eats in anything.

Sherilyn Theriault: You introduced her early to food and eating in public spaces. That's fantastic.

Andrea McTague: 100%. And it's not to say you couldn't do that later, right? Like often are we working with a parent who wants to course correct something, right? So maybe you accidentally didn't nail that stuff. And maybe you've got a picky eater or whatnot on your hands. Now, there are ways to like introduce it in a way that's going to make it fun or pleasant, right? So again, that mirroring, if you're excited to have the salad or whatever, probably you're going to get your little one to be a bit more excited as well. But if you're messaging something like, oh, well, you have to eat your broccoli because you can't have dessert otherwise, that doesn't, that's not going to land well because you're giving them a negative attitude towards the veggies. You're not modeling it and joining in. And broccoli does look like little trees. So it's hilarious. And you can make that fun. And you're also like elevating the dessert foods. So you're going to create some interesting dialogues on that front.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah, for sure. When you mention, just stepping back a moment, when you mention pieces around helplessness, powerless, sort of some of those pieces and not building self-efficacy, confidence in kids by helicoptering or doing things for them. Oftentimes, I see parents, they come in, usually they're anxious themselves. They're anxious themselves. You know, they worry about their kids failing or not doing well. And their own anxiety gets in the way. And so I take the example of a parent who wants to teach their kid how to swim. Again, you walk your kid to the swimming pool. They're anxious about teaching them this. And they either sort of fall into limiting beliefs around, I'm powerless, helpless, and I need to, I need my kid to get this. I need to fix. I need them to get it. And so they, yeah, an urgency. And so then they, they sort of push their kids into the swimming pool and, you know, make them do the thing that is fearful for the child or fearful anxiety for them. And so they, they push them into the swimming pool or they do the opposite, which is I need to avoid. And so then they don't make their kid go to the swimming pool. And so we see the two pieces and what we want to do is recognize what is the child's, what is the child's emotion, what is theirs and what is ours as a parent and help them to meet the goal to get into the swimming pool without pushing them in and without avoiding it.

Andrea McTague: Yeah, because you're talking about these two ends of the spectrum, like the one is the avoidance, like this makes me feel uncomfortable. So I'm not going to have you do it. And on the other side, it's like, okay, you need to get this done really quickly because I couldn't swim until I was 12. So you just need to jump in and get it over with, with no scaffolding. So it's like setting out that middle line and that midline is that being intentional and scaffolding it. Like, how do we get it into like little bite-sized pieces of steak before we're eating like the whole ribeye? I think it's interesting because I think about like one, one of her grandparents is very worried. He's got some stuff he wants her to be very safe. So the idea of her eating things that are not chopped up into tiny little purees or whatnot, it makes them very anxious. I am of the mindset to like hand her something like fairly large and just like watch carefully, right? So that she has the chance to attempt it and get that self-efficacy piece. So there's a fine line sometimes between controlling for safety and controlling for your own nervousness or anxiety or even pain. Because sometimes we just don't like to see our children struggle with something. You're like, oh, just let me tie that shoelace for you, right? Because, and this gets into one of your other points that we'd spoken about before, is it's not only the consistency of routine or the intentionality or the scaffolding. Even if you put all of that stuff in place, you still need to allow the space for repetition.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah, you still need to allow for that consistency and repetition and give the space for your kids to try. Again, like, I think it's really important to figure out what is your child's sort of thoughts and emotions around what it is they're trying and what is yours. And it gets into this sort of piece that I use with my clients called the three C's of parenting. I call it, it's based actually off of. two particular books. I developed it, but it's based off of this lovely book, which is The Whole Brain Leading Child by Dan Siegel. Then I've used this too, The Opposite of Worry, Lawrence Cohen. And I've formulated kind of these three Cs of parenting. That's happening. Yeah. So the idea of this, I'm just going to tie into a little bit of the developing brain and the neurobiology to this. Again, the idea is when we're a fetus and we're in mom's tummy, the first part of the brain that develops is the brainstem. It regulates autonomous functions. So heartbeat, blood pressure, breathing, blinking, stuff that you don't think about. And it comes in first because evolutionarily wise, in terms of evolution, we needed the brainstem to be there to regulate our body before the brain develops. Then the second little piece that comes in is what you and I call the walnut. In science terms, it's called the amygdala or limbic system. And again, this is where our instinctual reactions, our fight, flight, freeze, and fawn reactions come from. A lot of our limiting beliefs surface in here. And then there's the final sort of, so this comes in second because we needed our instinct to avoid our predators, give the attention of our caregivers. So we needed this piece instinctually to survive. And then there's the prefrontal cortex that doesn't develop until we're 25 or 26 years old. And it sort of regulates planning, organization, executive functions, complex movements, higher order thinking. Fancy. And so I use this with my clients to help them understand the brain. And so one of the things that example I give is when my daughter was really young, she would get upset when I asked her to turn off the TV and go to bed at night. She would fall into this walnut part of her brain and she would be like, I don't want to go to bed. It's not time. You can't turn it off. And she would really, really, really rage out of here. As a parent, I did my very best to recognize that this part of the brain isn't near well developed.

Andrea McTague: She's pointing to the executive function part.

Sherilyn Theriault: Yeah. She's only, you know, three, four years old. And this develops at 25, 26 years of age. She's working from here. And so as a parent in co-regulation, I remind myself that I need to use my prefrontal cortex to help her get into her routines and go to bed. Meaning I can't mirror her and get upset and yell at her back or try not to because then we'll both be stuck in our walnuts, dysregulated. And so I remind myself of that and I try to remain out of here and the first C, which is calm. This isn't always easy. Again, it's bringing in my husband or grandma, somebody in there to sort of maybe do a switch and bait and me stepping out to go regulate myself. It's putting on a timer saying, you got a few more minutes before we got to turn that TV off and walking away to regulate myself, or it's allowing her to take a picture on her tablet so she can remember the show that she's watching, give her some power in it. Again, so kind of using strategies to calm. Yeah. So again, it's usually sort of walking away, leaving her with the timer, sort of, I don't know, taking, taking a few breaths for myself, wrapping up in a blanket, having some tea, whatever I can do to sort of regulate my own emotions and then come back if I'm wrapping into the walnut with her.

Andrea McTague: And so when you come back, what do you get into next?

Sherilyn Theriault: Usually I use this part of my brain and I get her into her routines. I get her settled. I get her through those routines of, you know, pajamas, brushing teeth, potty. And then it's story time. If I can tell that she's not in her walnut and she's back up here, then I'll move into the other C, which is connection. So we've done the calm, then we have the connection. And in the connection part, I'm attuning to her and I'm saying things like, I can see it was really difficult for you to turn off, to turn off the TV. It was disappointing. Maybe you felt rushed. I'm connecting to her. I'm validating her feelings and experience. And so I'm meeting her right brain to right brain. Then I'll say to her, why do you think mommy asked you to do that? And I get her to think, which makes her switch to her left brain. She starts thinking about possible reasons as to why it's important to go to bed on time. And so I'm getting her to think through the importance of it over to the more logical part of her brain. Once we got that in place, if it's necessary, and oftentimes it isn't, but sometimes it is, I move to the third C, which is correction. So I'll move to kind of the idea of like, okay, especially if it's, if it's sort of a recurring pattern around bedtime. So now we got to come up with a correction around it. Maybe we go to bed a little bit earlier. Maybe we need to find bedtime, make it a little bit more fun. We, we correct in and around it. So there is a disciplinary piece around, around this. It's not all common connection. There is a place for correction. But one of the things I highlight to my parents is that if you hit, if you go direct from, from straight to correction and you're not calm and connected, often your kids are left wondering, well, well, mom doesn't get me. I'm not understood. I'm ordered around. There's a lack of connection and it just feels disciplinary and sort of cold. Yeah. So you hit the, the calm, the connection, the correction, sort of in that, that hierarchical order for the most part, unless there's a safety concern. If there's a safety concern, you're going to go direct, you're going to skip forward the first two and you're going to go right to correction.

Andrea McTague: Obviously if they're running out in traffic. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to grab your arm and you're getting, you're getting back here. Right.

Sherilyn Theriault: You're not, you're going to go directly to the correction part and keep their safety. But again, it's hard. It's, it's hard to be connected if you're not calm yourself. And it's hard for the child to understand their correction. If there's no connection and calm from the parent.

Andrea McTague: I love this because it breaks it down so clearly. You're like, okay, here are the stages. This is what we want to do, barring safety kind of things. And I think then that transitions us into what we often work with parents on is if you have difficulty calming in yourself, we're often going to do some work with that. And that can be stuff like that. You go ahead and Google, like your strategies for calming yourself. Like you said, maybe it's a deep breathing thing. Maybe it's just taking a few moments. Maybe it's switching out with a partner. Maybe it's doing some therapy to get some of those old maladaptive parents, parenting patterns from your own childhood out of there. And I think that that one also feeds into the ability to do correction with the tone that's required, which is neutral, right? You're just like, Hey, I'm just informing you, or we're setting up the environment differently. Maybe we don't watch TV right before bed. Maybe we watch it a little bit right after dinner instead, like moving some things around. So you can have that correction go best as possible without negatively impacting that child's identity, which can be done really well. I think when you've nailed number two, because we're okay to take, it's kind of, when you think about having a correction or some, you know, constructive feedback coming from somebody that you trust and you love, and you know, has your back and has your best interest, you're going to take that way better than somebody that's just like straight into like, you need, I need you to do this. You need to do it like this. This is wrong with that judgment. Humans clam up and that correction is not going to land. Like it's not going to go in there. And it might go in there where there's like a fear governance structure, but the minute you go away, that fear, and then we see this with like the negative effects of corporal punishment works well to shape behavior while you're doing it. But if you're not leading from that connection piece, there's no inbuilt structure internalized to continue.

Sherilyn Theriault: Absolutely. Again, I see this with parents that come in and say, well, my militant sort of pieces are working fine with my child. Everything's good. Like it's fine. They listen to me. They use fear-based tactics. They go directly to the correction and they would say it's working fine. And I would always come back and say, well, if you constantly use fear-based tactics and militant type tactics, how is that impacting your relationship with your child over the long term?

Andrea McTague: Because there's multiple points of it parenting, right? To your point, you're like, you want to shape the behavior and make a nice member of society and all of that. But you also probably want to have a long-term lasting relationship with your child because it's beneficial to you and to the child, but also because they're going to use you as a template for relationships that they have later on in life. Exactly.

Sherilyn Theriault: Again, their own limiting beliefs are being formed. Their limiting beliefs and cycles are being formed within the context of their family, which will influence how they relate with their partners and their children.

Andrea McTague: And I think that's one of the reasons why we want to look at like parenting is a big job. It's a hard job, but it can be made easier. And I think that there's such beautiful things. That can come out of that for a child, for your own learning, for like future relationships, and of course, like for the world. So I appreciate the three C's. That is very, very handy. And I think the strategies to it. We're definitely going to have you back on the podcast so we can expand on that because we could go on and on to both of our points on that one. I think that there's, so there's just a ton of resources, a ton of things that we can do to create these harmonious and effective dynamics in working with parents. And things that will reduce stress and increase the positive behaviors, whether that's, you know, anxiety behaviors or tantruming or some of the common concerns. I think I want to give an accolade to all of you listeners for taking in this information, but also all of our clients that come in, because it is a hard thing to say, hey, I'm struggling with parenting. I'm struggling with keeping my cool with my kid. I'm struggling with not showing them a bad behavior that I do. So it definitely is a little bit of ownership, lead with humility. And then I think the gains can be really, really, really, really exceptional. And it's not difficult stuff for us to undo as well, particularly when it's steeped in those original patterns. We're pretty clutch at identifying them and removing them. So not to feel hopeless. If you feel like you're trapped in a parenting loop or a power struggle loop or something's just not sticking, definitely reach out. We will leave the resources in the show notes as well, if you want to check that out a little bit and get you to be the most common, the most effective parents that you can possibly be through kind of removing some of those patterns, launching some of those strategies like the three C's. And I think that that'll get the hurdles standing in the way of enjoying and succeeding in parenting had gone for you. So if you'd like to alleviate a little or a lot of your parenting stress or to connect to Sherilyn, you can just pop over to shiftgrit.com. We've got some additional information and resources on there or shoot us a message on our socials. And if you found value in this episode, please do us a solid and like, review, share or subscribe. Your time to do so is so very appreciated and it ensures more psychological goodies will be coming your way. Sherilyn, we'll definitely have you back. It's been an absolute treat. And I thank you for visiting with us. Thank you for having me.