Robin Goble (0:00)

I finally get to share with you something that I've been working on for a while. Making Sense of Baffling Behaviors is a free audio training for professionals who work with the families of kids with big baffling behaviors. This four part free training is delivered to you again for free right in your podcast app, the one that you're using right now to listen to the Baffling Behavior show. If you work with high intensity families with a lot of dysregulation and baffling behaviors, you might occasionally, or yeah, maybe even a lot of the time, feel overwhelmed or even burned out. Making sense of those baffling behaviors, the kids, the parents, and yes, your own, is the first and most non negotiable step in decreasing burnout, being more effective at your job, and yes, even loving your work again. If you join this training, you'll also get access to a discussion forum that I'm holding over on Facebook and 2 live Q& A sessions with me. This is a pop up audio training, meaning it's time limited. It will start May 5, runs throughout the week and will be available to listen to you until May 12th. That's one week total. I mean, there's really no reason not to sign up. It's free, it's offered in a podcast app so you can listen whenever you want. There's no live commitment, just those bonus live Q&As. The link to register is down in the show. Notes robingobel.com bafflingbehaviors Y'all, this is one of my most favorite weeks of the year and I cannot wait to share it with you. Now let's get to that episode that you pressed. Play on. So when your kids behavior is baffling and yours is too, sometimes. Yeah, I know. Let's take a break from all the man boozle here on the Baffling Behavior Show. Hey hey, hey everybody. Welcome or welcome back to this episode of the Baffling Behavior Show. I'm your host Robin Goble, and we are in the middle of our holiday replay season. Every holiday holiday season, my team and I take a small break from the podcast and from about mid December to about mid January, we play replays that I strategically pick in hopes that they feel particularly helpful during what so many folks experience as a pretty stressful time of year. Today's replay is an episode called you're not doing it wrong and the intention of this episode will be really clear once the replay actually starts playing. But I picked it as a replay because I know as our kids dysregulation increases. Our dysregulation increases. And oftentimes a little shame voice accompanies increased dysregulation. Like, oh, my gosh, this must be my fault. I'm doing this all wrong. And I just want to remind you, you're not doing it wrong. Here's today's replay. A question I've been watching folks ask a lot lately. And I see this question come up a lot in the club is folks will talk about some challenges that's happening in their family, and then they'll sort of end it, like, summarize it with, what am I doing wrong? We've been talking about this so much in the club, and since it's something that is kind of like right at the tip of my tongue, I wanted to just bring it to all of y'all as well. Let me just be really clear. You're not doing anything wrong. Well, I mean, like, no more wrong than anyone else is doing. Okay. I've probably been asked this question, like, what am I doing wrong? Approximately 5 trillion bajillion, 967,999 times. That's not a real number, but you get it right. I've been asked that question a lot. And frankly, I ask myself that question a lot. I ask that question in my parenting. I ask that question in my marriage. I ask that question in my, like, self perceived, quote, unquote, lack of progress. In my own personal therapy. I ask that question when something kind of goes awry, which it does sometimes inside my programs, inside the club, or inside being with. You know, I'm so quick to say, what am I doing wrong? And I'm getting quicker at reminding myself that that is a question from my watchdog brain. That is a question that comes from a nervous system in protection mode. It's a question that makes the assumption that if I was, quote, unquote, doing it right, we wouldn't have this problem, whatever this problem is. My child wouldn't be acting this way. My life wouldn't have unfolded this way. My own therapeutic progress would be faster, right? Because all I have to do is just get it right. So a few things to kind of deconstruct here. And one is for me, and this is maybe not true for everyone, I don't know. But for me, I learned when I was very small how things changed when you got it right versus when you got it wrong. And frankly, I got very, very good at getting things right. I got so, so good at it that my very young, magical thinking brain believed Then that I had like the power to make life easier, to regulate other people better, and then myself if I could just get it right. And because I was just little. The brain makes connections out of things that don't really belong to each other. And the truth is, is that I was just a little kid. I didn't have the kind of power that I thought I did by getting things right. And now I'm a grown up who knows that I do not have that kind of power. But if I get dysregulated enough, I fall back into old, well worn neural pathways. That's true for all of us, that the more dysregulated they get, the more stressed we are, the narrower our window of tolerance. We are much more likely to default to kind of old neural pathways, which is why changing things or healing or whatever language you want to use is super nuanced. That in addition to having new experiences and having new thoughts and essentially forming new neural pathways, we also want to widen our window of stress tolerance. Because the wider our window of stress tolerance is, the more, let's just say kind of like the more choice we have in which pathway our brain is going to change when which pathway our brain is going to go down. Sorry. When our window of tolerance is very narrow, when we have a significant amount of stress happening, our brains, because they're so smart and wanting to be very energy efficient, our brains decide that the most energy efficient, the smartest thing to do is to use those very well exercised neural pathways. So the more stressed I get, the more I'm likely to feel like it's true, that if I could just get things right, other people's behavior would change or get better. Now, in last week's episode, we talked a long time about this belief that a lot of us have that we have the power to control other people's behaviors. So I'm not going to rehash all that. You can go back and check out that episode if you missed that last week. But these are old beliefs that we learned a long, long, long time ago. And we have very deeply embedded neural pathways of these beliefs. And so when we get stressed, we kind of go down that pathway again. And a brain in protection mode. So the watchdog or the possum pathway. A brain in protection mode believes in the dichotomy of right versus wrong. The owl brain feels okay with uncertainty. Now, sometimes we confuse the owl brain with like the smart brain, who is logical and linear and knows how to do math essentially right. Major oversimplification. That's not a full picture of the owl brain. The owl brain is able to use, like, its highest cortical skills, like its most thinking brain. But the owl brain is also connected and relational and feeling safe. And when we feel safe, we feel okay with uncertainty. So the owl brain feels okay with uncertainty. Whereas the watchdog or the possum believe that there is a right and a wrong, it's one or the other. The owl brain knows that the brain is taking in 11 million pieces of data per moment and using all of that data to decide am I safe or am I not safe? And from there, behaviors of connection or protection emerge. The owl brain knows that there are only so many of those 11 million pieces of data that are possible for me to impact for someone else, right? Like if how the nervous system is determining if it's safe or not, and therefore behaviors of connection or protection emerge, Then when I'm thinking about someone else and their behavior and I'm thinking about the 11 million bits of data that their brain is processing, I think it gets a little bit more clear that there's only so many of those 11 million pieces of data that I could possibly be in charge of that I could impact for someone else is a very small amount. I am mostly out of control of someone else's experience of felt safety. They are their own human with their own way of being in the world. The owl brain knows that my rightness or wrongness isn't what determines someone else's experience of felt safety and therefore someone else's behavior. Now, I know that this concept can feel a little, I think, kind of cloudy or fuzzy, like, here we are 148 or something like that. Episodes into a podcast all about helping parents right. I have a big community that offers education for parents. I teach professionals how to support parents. And I think it would be easy to make an assumption that that means it's because parents could do something right or could do something wrong. That would then be what changes their child's behavior. And that's just simply not true. Remember, we have a lot of influence over someone else's experience of safety. We do not have control. And that means we have a lot of influence over the way other people are in the world. But we do not have control, and we don't have any right to try to be in control. And my owl brain is okay with that. Again, my owl brain knows that my rightness or wrongness. So again, we're thinking about that question of what am I doing wrong? The owl brain knows that it's not my rightness or wrongness. That's what's determining somebody else's safety or behavior. The watchdog brain is afraid and wants to believe it's that binary. It wants to believe it's that simple. If it's that simple, then we have so much more hope, or it feels like we have so much hope that things will change because there's this implication that things are more likely to change if I can be in charge of them. It is far less vulnerable to believe that things change because I'm in charge of them. It is far more vulnerable to realize things are happening all the time that I have absolutely no control over whatsoever. Here's something, though, about the watchdog brain, right? The watchdog brain believes that if things are binary, things are simple. There's more control over change. What the watchdog doesn't know is that the owl feels hope, too. Even when the owl wisely acknowledges it's totally out of control of someone else's behavior, there is still so much hope. Humans are complex systems. Complex systems. We're going to move a little bit out of, like, the mental health field or the psychology field or even the behavior field. Complex systems in the field of, like, math and y'all. I'm a social worker, so that's all I'm going to say. Complex systems are always moving toward coherence. Complex systems are always wanting to move towards organization. Now pause for a second and ask yourself, the baffling behaviors in your child or in yourself or in your partner, do those behaviors feel like the words coherence and organization match those behaviors? Even if you don't really understand what that means? Like, what does it mean to be coherent? Even if you don't really know what that means? Just pause for a second and say, well, this behavior in my child or in myself, that's feeling so baffling, is it coherent? And the answer is, no, it's not. It's not coherent. It's not organized, it's not integrated, it's not flexible, it's not adaptive. All these words that I could come up with from the field of ipnb, interpersonal neurobiology, that helps us understand humans as complex systems. The kinds of behaviors that are prompting you to listen to a podcast like this aren't coherent. Okay? And we know that humans are complex systems and that complex systems are always moving towards coherence. Apparently, that's sort of like mathematical kind of constant. So how do we make sense of that? How do we make sense of these behaviors that are so baffling so confusing. And also make sense of the fact that humans are complex theory systems that are always moving towards coherence. Let's just kind of hold that thought for a little bit. Okay, so simply because I said you probably aren't doing anything more quote unquote wrong than anyone else than I am than any other parent. I mean, none of us are doing everything quote unquote right. Like if we could have a right or a wrong binary, it would be impossible to do everything right. And we've talked before that that actually wouldn't even be good for our kids. But even if we just acknowledge that it's not about being right or wrong, that doesn't mean that there aren't ways that we are probably contributing to our kids struggles. And if we could shift those things a little, they might shift as well. I definitely contribute to some of the way my kid struggles. Some of those ways that I contribute are really obvious. They're obvious to me, they're obvious to anyone who really knows me. But also a lot of the ways that I contribute to my kids struggles are a lot less obvious. Right? In the ways that my own implicit world, my own implicit memory shows up. And then kind of by definition, our implicit remains outside our conscious awareness. And so there are so many ways that I know I am not even aware of how I kind of show up in my parent child relationship in ways that are not ideal for my kid. Just a real quick interruption. If you're loving the podcast, you should go right now to my website. Check out all my free resources. There's webinars, downloadable ebooks, and a huge amount of infographic cheat sheets on so many different topics. Felt, safety and boundaries, how to handle lying. What. What to do if you have a child who seems always dysregulated. How to not flip your lid when your kid is flipping theirs. Steps you can take when your nervous system is fried. What CO regulation really looks like. And y'all, that's not even all. There's more. And my team and I add at this point about one new free resource a month. So you're going to want to check in regularly, see all those free resources, and download exactly what you want@robingobel.com freeresources. Let's go back to the show. Parents have a lot of influence over their kids in great ways and in hard ways. I mean, research is super, super clear about that. That's why this podcast exists. I mean, if parents didn't have any influence over their kids, why would I podcast about parenting? So let's go back to that original question, right? That question of what am I doing wrong? Can we together take a step back from what am I doing wrong? And instead ask, are there ways I could offer my child more co regulation, more connection, or more felt safety? The very act of taking a step back. The very act of seeing all of our options. The very act of having a curiosity instead of a demand, right? Like, what am I doing wrong? There's urgency in there, there's demand in there. And y'all, there's no judgment in me towards asking that question. I ask that question a lot as well, okay? So there's no judgment here. It's just, we're just defining it, right? There's a lot of. There's a lot of urgency, right? There's a demand in that question. Whereas taking a step back and saying, I wonder what I could do, right? There's a question of curiosity. I wonder what I could do to offer my child more co regulation, more connection, and more felt safety. The goal of this way of parenting, regardless of how vulnerable your child's nervous system is, how baffling their behaviors are, if they have a history of trauma or not, the goal of this way of parenting isn't for our kids to never be dysregulated or never have baffling behaviors. In fact, our kids must bring us the dysregulation in the nervous system so that their dysregulation can be touched by our regulation. That is quite literally how change happens. Scientists call it the disconfirming experience, and it changes memory networks. It is the agent of change always receiving what's unexpected. Dysregulation expects dysregulation. So when our kids can bring us their dysregulation and we connect with them with regulation, not necessarily with calm, but with regulation, that's how the nervous system changes. That doesn't necessarily mean that in that moment their behavior is going to change, but it does open up the possibility for the nervous system to kind of metaphorically unlock and shift and change. And now we're thinking about long term, real change in the nervous system, which is much more exciting to me than short term behavior change. Here's another tricky thought that maybe you're going to feel like, what? Nobody ever told me this, but sometimes the truth is that the more co regulation we offer our kids, the more they bring us their dysregulation. And over time, they are weaving into their own neurobiology. Our regulation, our regulations will start to live inside of them. Then that's when their dysregulation might start to decrease. So here is my invitation to you. Remember, I am always no shame, no blame. Well, when I'm in my owl brain, I am no shame, no blame. And I mostly bring my owl brain to work, right? I bring my owl brain to the microphone. I don't always bring it all the places in my personal life because I'm just as human as you, but. But my work is grounded in no shame, no blame, right? That doesn't mean we don't have compassionate boundaries. It just means we don't shame and blame to get to boundaries. Okay? So when I invite you to get curious when you ask that question, what am I doing wrong? I'm not asking you to get judgmental at yourself for asking that question. Just notice it. Just notice that you've asked it. Like when you hear that those words inside your head or come out your mouth, what am I doing wrong? See if you can go, oh, that's information that's telling me my nervous system is in protection mode. That's hard. It's hard to be in protection mode. Take a breath. See if your owl brain can come back. Invite your owl brain back by asking the question, what could I do differently that would be offering co regulation, connection and felt safety to this child? The owl brain is okay with the answer that maybe in that moment, the answer is nothing. Because what we offer, we are not in control of being received. Okay? I can't control if my child, my partner, my friends, whoever are able to receive my offerings of safety. I'm only in control of my offerings of them. Okay? So when I pause to ask the question, what could I be doing differently that would be offering connection, co regulation and felt safety. It's very possible the answer is nothing. Now, if I was in protection mode and asking the question, what am I doing wrong? Then chances are there probably is something I could be doing differently. And it could be just as simple as taking that breath and allowing your nervous system to shift back into connection mode, right? And yeah, it could be way more complicated than that, too. Like, there could be so many more ways we could explore that question of what could I be doing differently? But that's the curiosity that we want to bring. That's the curiosity that owl brings because it's not about what we're doing right or wrong. It's not about living in that binary. It's not about believing that we have the power to be in control of somebody else's behavior. That's a question from the watchdog Brain, that's a question that says, hey, I'm hanging out in protection mode right now and I'm not judging myself for that, but it's hard to live there. So can I do anything to invite my owl brain back so that I can continue to offer without any expectations of how it's received, can I continue to offer connection, co regulation and felt safety to my kid, to my partner, to myself, to whoever and y'all? I know that those of you listening to this show have kids with really extreme behaviors, really out of control behaviors, right? So in no way, shape or form, especially if this is your first time tuning in, please hear me that I am not suggesting that all we're going to do is like shift our own nervous system and shift our own thoughts and beliefs. It's a crucial piece of it. It's not the totality of it. So there are so many practical tools and things that we can do not to change our kids behavior but to offer connection, co regulation and felt safety to strengthen their owl brain, to help bring regulation and safety to their watchdog and their past on brains. So if you are hoping for those tools, know that they absolutely exist. Keep listening to the podcast. Scroll back in the podcast you I think it's kind of easy to tell based on the title, like if it's an episode that's like really about concrete tools or if it's an episode more like this where we're kind of talking a little bit more philosophically. Right? So there's plenty of episodes about tools. You are going to get oodles of tools in the club. If you want to come join us in the club. Robingobel.com the club. The club isn't always open. We're in a pattern right now of opening probably about every 2ish months or so. So you can come join us there. And without question, raising kids with big baffling behaviors. Brain, body, sensory strategies that really work. That's my book that's coming out in September, also full of tools. I also am training more folks so that they have the skills to work with families of the most vulnerable kids. So I have a whole year long program where I train professionals and you can see a list of those professionals over on my website. You can see a list of professionals who have earned the licensing rights to use my materials and their work and you can also see a list of professionals who are teaching the parent course that I've created. So all of that is over on robingobel.com we are working tirelessly, my team and I and the professionals who bravely and vulnerably train with me, we are working tirelessly to make this world a safer place for you and your family. To be the ones with the privilege of safety who are doing the hard, hard, hard work so that we can offer safety to your family. Okay? So just head to robingovle.com, explore all these resources and then just keep coming back. Keep pressing Play on the Podcast. All right, y'all, you're definitely gonna wanna press Play on the Podcast next week because something really exciting is happening next week on the podcast. Staying in line with our mission to support as many kids and families around the world as possible, we have a big, fun, important change on the podcast that we're going to be celebrating next week. So if you haven't already hit subscribe to the podcast, be sure to do that. And if you have a moment, I'd be so grateful if you would go and either rate or review the podcast in whatever way your podcast app invites you to do that. Rating and reviews are by far the most impactful way to help other families find this podcast. And y'all know that there are so many families and so many professionals that we want to find this podcast. The more people who find this podcast, the more grownups in the world are seeing kids in this way and that's good for you and your kids. Okay? So rate and review the podcast. It's super helpful. And I'm gonna see you here next week with a really big fun announcement. Bye. Bye. I hope that you loved that episode of the Baffling Behavior Show. If you did and you're wondering where can I go to learn more or get more support? Or maybe you're a professional and you want to be able to bring this work to your overwhelmed clients. I have got three places for you to go next. Number one, my USA Today best selling book, Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors. A year and a half after publication, Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors continues to exceed our wildest dreams, breaking sales goals and getting feedback that it is changing people's lives. Raising Kids with Big Baffling Behaviors is available in paperback, ebook and audiobook, which I read wherever you buy books online. The second way to get more support is to come and join us over in the club. It's an online community of connection, co regulation, and yes, even a little education. We have over 500 members and you'll gain support from the wisest, most compassionate, most in the trenches with you parents in the world. You'll be able to pick my brain, watch over a hundred different videos and Download the over 50 resources that are uniquely developed just for the club and just for you to bring owls, watchdogs and possums into your family. And if you're a professional like a therapist or a coach, a teacher, an educator, maybe an occupational therapist, a daycare owner, anyone who supports the parents of kids with big baffling behaviors, hop onto my waiting list for the 2026 cohort of being with. It'll be our fifth cohort of our year long immersion into the neurobiology of of big baffling behaviors and the science of connection, safety and co regulation. You'll grow your capacity so that you can hang in the hardest places with families of kids with vulnerable nervous systems. And you'll finally get the professional support that you need and deserve to work with the families who keep being told by other professionals that they can't help them anymore. One of my goals is that families never hear that again. We'll be opening applications in the late spring or early summer, and we'll be opening those applications only to folks who are on the waiting list. So be sure to add your name to the waiting list over@robingobel.com beingwith y'all. I'm so grateful to support you and be with you on this journey. Till next week.