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The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria
Helping Complex Kids Thrive Through Practical Behavioral Parenting Strategies: Jenny Demark, Linda Reinstein and Conrad Leung | Session 332
01:09:31
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- [00:00]
Conrad Leung
Hey everyone.
- [00:00]
Matt Sicoria
Welcome to session 332 of the Behavioral Observations Podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Jenny Demarck, Conrad Leung, and Dr. Linda Reinstein to talk about their new book, Complex simple how to Raise Resilient, Confident, Likable Kids. These are clinicians who spent years working directly with families dealing with everything from emotion regulation challenges to school refusal to severe behavioral issues. What I liked about this conversation is that it stayed extremely practical throughout it. I spent a lot of time talking about their Prepare Teach Motivate framework and how parents and professionals can think more systematically about helping kids build resilience and coping skills rather than just reacting to challenging behavior in the moment. We also got into topics like screen time, parental accommodation, the limits of traditional talk therapy for younger children, and why relationship building and skill building really have to go hand in hand. I think this episode will be especially valuable for behavior analysts, school professionals, clinicians, and of course, parents trying to support kids with more complex behavioral and emotional needs. We'll get right into the interview shortly, but first I just want to say this episode is brought to you by the Behavioral Toolbox. If you are a school based professional, go to thebehavioraltoolbox.com and check out some of the online on demand courses that myself and my colleagues, doctors Anika Costa, Polly Gavoni and Matt Linder have put together. You We've also got some fun stuff in the works that can't talk about right now, but I'm excited to share when the time is right. We're also brought to you by CEUS from Behavioral Observations. That's right, earn your continuing education while listening to your favorite podcast guests, go to behavioralobservations.com getce and last but not least, if you're just tired of listening to these opening remarks and you just want to get the conversation itself and you want to get it ahead of everyone else, go to patreon.com behavioralobservations and learn how you can subscribe to the show for a small monthly fee and get an ad free behavioral observations experience. I think that covers just about everything. If you want to check out the resources we mentioned in this episode, including the link to the book itself, you can go to behavioralobservations.com and look up the show notes there. You can also sign up for the email list and get the show notes delivered directly to your email inbox. All right, having said all that, I'm really excited to share this fun conversation with Conrad Leung and doctors Jenny DeMarc and Linda Reinstein,
- [02:44]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Welcome to the Behavioral Observations podcast. Stimulating talk for today's behavior analysts. Now here's your host, Matt Sikoria, Dr.
- [02:55]
Matt Sicoria
Jenny Demarc, Conrad Leung, and Dr. Linda Reinste. Thank you for joining me on the Behavioral Observations podcast. How's everyone doing today?
- [03:04]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Great.
- [03:05]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
So much for having us.
- [03:06]
Matt Sicoria
Pleasure is mine is. So we've got. One of my favorite topics to talk about is. And it's the, you know, it's, it's how to parent better. A parent of three kids. My youngest is about to graduate from high school in a few weeks, so I feel like I'm going to be looking at this retrospectively, say, oh, I should have done that. But anyway, but nonetheless, it's still a very, very keen interest of mine just because, you know, as a consultant, I interact with parents all the time. I know many of the listeners, whether they work in clinic or school settings or elsewhere, are either parents themselves or are interacting with parents on some level or another. And so I think this is a very timely topic. And the three of you just published a book that's out right now. It's called Complex Kids, Simple Solutions. How to Raise Resilient, Confident, Likable Kids. And we're going to get into the book why you wrote it, you know, what maybe distinguishes the book from other works out there and so forth. Before we do that, though, I'd like the audience to get to know you guys a little bit better. I was wondering if you guys could spend a couple of minutes just telling us a little bit about your background, how you came to this work, and bring us up to speed with what you're doing today.
- [04:20]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Sure. So I am a clinical psychologist and I've been working with children and parents and, yeah, children and parents for over 20 years, doing lots of consultation around challenging behavior and how to teach new skills. The three of us, I will say the three of us have worked together for many years. We used to work at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario. We worked there together, I don't know, five, six, seven years. And then we've been in private practice now together for about going on 15 years. So. Well, maybe I'll stop there and I'll let you guys introduce yourselves.
- [05:03]
Conrad Leung
Yeah, thanks, Jenny. Yes, I'm Conrad and I work as a behavior analyst and have the fortune to work with Dr. Demarc and Dr. Reinstein in Ottawa along with a few of our colleagues at Child Solutions. I provide support for families in home as well as out in the community. I tend to work a lot with individuals with severe problem behavior and provide consultation as well too to a variety of agencies and groups. I've worked in group homes and schools as well and one of my additional hats is I also am a lead consultant at ft.
- [05:42]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
So I'm Linda. I'm also a clinical psychologist, a child clinical and school psychologist, similarly to Jenny. Been in the field for about 25 years. Started with hospital work, worked in community mental health, worked as a school psychologist and then met Jenny and Conrad at CHEO and have stories written since then. And then we started private practice together. Yeah. So it's been. And the thread throughout has been very practical. Behavioral focus on working with families, kids. My practice now has primarily a focus on assessment, diagnosis and then follow up consultation to parents, families and kids, consultation to school, other people involved, other service providers involved.
- [06:35]
Matt Sicoria
Mm, I see. And the the name of the company is Child Solutions.
- [06:40]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yes.
- [06:41]
Matt Sicoria
All right. And I will make sure that we have a link to your site in the show notes of this episode as well as again a link to the book.
- [06:50]
Conrad Leung
So.
- [06:51]
Matt Sicoria
So let's talk about the book. And I'm always curious like why people take on these big projects, you know, having I co authored a book a long time ago and I have a little bit of a perspective on how much work it can be and so the motivation to take on all that stuff. I'm always curious about that. So there's no shortage of parenting books out there in general. If you go on Amazon, there's a gazillion hits. If you plug in parenting, even in the behavior analytic literature or the behavioral psych literature, there's a lot as well. I'm thinking of things like Glen Latham's, Glenn Latham's books, you know, parenting the Strong Willed Child is another one that comes to mind. And I could go on. So having said that, why did you guys feel the need to put new work out there? Was there a hole in the, you know, so called marketplace that you were trying to fill? Give me some insight into why you
- [07:51]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
took all this on for sure. I think, you know, if we think about the, the parenting books space that's out there when we did a survey of the sort of landscape out there and from our experience of sort of collecting up our own huge library of parenting books and kid books, you know, there are two distinct things that we noticed. One, there are a lot of books written from a very an anecdotal what worked for me perspective from either parents or clinicians and you know, and parents, rightly so becoming having to become experts in parenting their complex kids wanted to share some of their experiences and strategies that work for them. So on the side of that, while I think that's super valuable and relatable and connectable, it lacks the idiosyncratic things that might be about their child. So it might not work for other kids. It lacks the generalizability. The other distinct thing we noticed is that many of the parenting books written by professionals are very theory specific, so driven by either one particular approach to parenting, attachment parenting, gentle parenting, conscious parenting that provides a framework or an overview of how they think parenting should generally go. But those tend to fall apart a little bit in their practicalities. The other thing I, we noticed about the professional books is that, so we've set up this sort of tripartite approach that I think that we will get into. When we started looking at again, the professional parenting books that had been written by professionals is they tended to hit one, maybe one or two, but not sort of all three, and providing that framework. And it's our strong belief that you kind of all three work really well together and as soon as you drop one of them, the other two can fall apart. So for instance, like 1, 2, 3, magic. I mean, Thomas Phelan, huge, you know, hugely established in the field, is very discipline focused. So he works on that sort of motivation, you know, how are you going to stop problematic behavior? And kind of falls down a little bit on the antecedent and the teaching strategies. Gentle parenting, very heavy on the antecedent strategies and connecting with your kid and being relatable, but kind of falls down on the exactly what to do about it in a way that consistently a parent can modify according to the situation and their child and their experience of their child. So I think we notice those two, you know, kind of trends in the professional literature.
- [10:40]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
I would also just add that in terms of what motivated us to write the book is that it was an amazing experience for the three of us to take our years of expertise and come up with kind of a consistent language. I mean, we've been do the, the ideas in the book, we've been doing our entire careers. But it was a really fun process of kind of nailing down specific terminology. What we think really does work, what's going to resonate with parents, how to explain things in a parent friendly way with, you know, in the book we do have little sidebars and we call them science sidebars where we do say, you know, we give terminology and we often refer to it as geeky behavioral speak. So for parents who are interested in that, it's there, but we've really tried to make it user friendly so that parents understand.
- [11:35]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yeah. And I think to take off on that, you know, from the behavior analytics space, we really tried to drill down to how to explain each concept, each idea and each strategy in the most relatable, usable way that I think can sometimes even without intent. Because we use that language all the time, we think it's inherently understandable. But we really took our time to really break it down, which can sometimes be maybe less. Less of a focus in the behavior analytic field of writing. The other thing I think that unique, because we had the combination of psychology and, and behavior analysis, is that we really combined that developmental and temperamental perspectives in applying all of these behavior. How would it look different? How do you modify, how do you apply it as your child goes through different developmental stages?
- [12:43]
Conrad Leung
And the other thing that we were finding within our clinical practices, that there were certain themes that would regularly come up. Right. There's cooperation's a big one. You know, more recently, screen time has been a big one. And media, there's just everyone's, you know, walking around with these devices that are constantly feeding us information. Sleep is something that commonly comes up. How do we, how do we deal with hearing the words no denial tolerance. So we wanted to provide a free framework for families, caregivers, other professionals of how do we address some of these things in everyday language? So it's based in science, it's evidence based, but, you know, you're not going to hear the words like concurrent schedules of reinforcement in there.
- [13:29]
Matt Sicoria
Right. Like, thank goodness.
- [13:31]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yeah.
- [13:32]
Conrad Leung
Yes.
- [13:32]
Matt Sicoria
Yeah.
- [13:33]
Conrad Leung
But we've got, you know, Jenny mentioned that we have that geeky science sidebar if people want to learn a little bit of some, you know, let's scratch the surface. And if you want to take a deeper dive, you can go into that if you want.
- [13:46]
Matt Sicoria
Yeah, got it, Got it. So, Linda, you just, you used the term complex kids. Obviously it's the title of the book. So is there a. What is a complex kid in terms of. I. I mean, all kids are complex in their own, you know, individuality and things like that. But in the specific context of, of the way in which the three of you are using this term. What, what exactly does that mean?
- [14:08]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
For sure, I think it speaks to those kids. Sorry. Lots of kids give parents a lot of leeway in terms of there's a broad scope of things that will work, things that won't work. They bounce back quickly. If a parent wants to try this and it doesn't work, you can switch tax and whatnot. And there's a wide girth of sort of flexibility on the kids part from their temperament, from who they are, from how they're. There's a set of kids who are a bit more complex, who maybe don't give you as much leeway that you sort of get it right the first time or the second time, have a consistent approach, don't tolerate as much inconsistency in parenting and whatnot. So providing a framework that parents can work from consistently without being prescriptive, without saying when this happens, you have to do this when you this will work when this happens. And but it's providing a framework or a way of thinking for parents that is consistent, that is very skills focused, that is to help move those more complex, maybe less forgiving in terms of flexibility to make those changes.
- [15:23]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
I would just add that some of the kids who would fit that profile may have a diagnosis of ADHD or autism spectrum disorder, but it's not. We've kind of approached it as a like this is going to work for kind of any challenging kid. And frankly, these skills work for the typically developed easier kids as well. But like you said, they the strategies need to be a little bit more precise when your kid is maybe a little bit more complex.
- [15:54]
Matt Sicoria
Everyone, as a bcba meeting your continuing ed needs can be challenging at times. That's why I've made selected episodes of the Behavioral Observations Podcast available for type 2 continuing education credits. That's right, you can meet a portion of your professional development requirements on the go. Currently, we have CES for topics including functional assessment, ethics and supervision. Come learn from podcast favorites such as Greg Hanley, Pat Fryman, Mark Dixon, as well as many other amazing guests. For more information, head on over to behavioralobservations.com getce thank you for providing that bit of foundational knowledge. So let's get into the, I guess this model that you propose here, the Prepare, Teach and motivate what so can you give us an overview of what those three things mean? And certainly we can get into examples that are more specific. And it also sounds like from what the three of you have been saying thus far, that this is something that you guys have kind of pulled together after kind of a lot of just a lot of years of practice and things like that. So I'm just curious about the development of it as well as certainly the nuts and bolts of what these three concepts or practices are.
- [17:11]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Yeah, well, yes. So I think because we have spent our careers working with kids who tend to have challenging behaviors of one kind or another. We've come to realize that as soon as a parent comes into our office, any challenging situation that they present to us, we. We start thinking about it in terms of these three different areas of. Of how to approach. Of how to approach it. So, and again, like, we've used different language over. Over time, but we kind of landed on these. These three parts. Prepare, teach, and motivate. Because again, we feel like it's a clear. It's clear language, it's recognizable. Prepare. The prepare strategies are all the things that people do ahead of time to try to reduce problem behavior before it even starts. So we talk in the book about things like, you know, picking your battles, having realistic expectations, trying to catch the good stuff when it happens. And most importantly, we have an entire chapter on quality time. What it actually is, how to actually do it, why it actually works. Teach is exactly as it sounds. It's about teaching kids the skills that they need. And sometimes parents don't realize that things like emotion regulation is actually a skill, or, you know, giving up your screen time when the time's over, that's actually a skill. And it can be taught. And it will take a little bit of time, but those things can be taught and then motivate is the consequences. And, you know, we heavily recommend using positives, you know, reinforcement and rewards to increase the good behavior that kids express. We do have an entire chapter devoted to punishment as well, because parents, you know, and, you know, I think parents often come in and they are looking to us to tell them how to punish a behavior out of their child, right? So we do want to speak to it in the book, but clinically, I don't think any of us have ever recommended a punishment strategy for a kid. Like, we can almost always get what we want by using reinforcement. And I will say, like the Prepare, teach, motivate, an analogy that we present in the book and I use all the time with parents, because parents actually do these things regularly and maybe not realizing what they're doing. So I often remind parents that when they have taught their kids how to ride a bicycle, they have used prepare, teach, and motivate strategies. They prepare their child by, you know, putting the helmet on, putting the elbow pads on, putting the training wheels on. They teach their child very specifically how to use the bike, right? Like how to use the brakes, how to steer, how to pedal. And as the child becomes more and more successful, the parent uses all kinds of positive reinforcement, right, to cheer them on. They're running down the street, you know, chasing after their kid yelling and hooting and hollering and encouraging them. And when the child falls off the bike, you know, I've never heard of a parent who would punish a child for that mistake. Right. You kind of pick them up, brush them off, and when they're ready to go again, you start over. And you might need to backstep a little bit by putting the training wheels back on for a little while. But I. Yeah, we love that analogy because I think it speaks to the fact that parents already know how to prepare, teach, and motivate.
- [20:49]
Conrad Leung
Yeah, yeah. It's really about putting that information again in their forefront and realizing that they have some of those tools, too. Right. And just sharpening some of the existing tools and also putting some additional tools into their toolkit.
- [21:04]
Matt Sicoria
Great. I was wondering if you guys could maybe share some real examples of families that you've helped using this process. Excuse me. You know, is there if a specific case or a specific repertoire problem behavior that comes to mind? And so if you can give us a flavor of how this maps onto reality, I'm sure there's lots of people in their cars right now driving around, listening to this. Like, this sounds really interesting. You know, what does this look like in a more concrete sense?
- [21:31]
Conrad Leung
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, thinking about a young learner who was presenting with a lot of really dangerous problem behavior involving safety, heights, aggression, elopement, and there were a lot of challenges around that, you know, helping the family understand. And we talk. We talk about it as being a skills detective, right? Like, think about what are some of the skills that are missing in the repertoire? Why are some of the challenges happening? What are the skills that are missing? And then afterwards, what we talk about, or what we call positive opposites, what would you like to see? You know, so it gives you those skills that you can teach. So, you know, I go back to when the family would walk into the room. I could see. I could see the learner just freeze up and tense up right away. Right. The family was a signal for a worsening of things or a worsening of conditions. Right. Like, oh, man, this means my games are going to be done. Or this means that I'm going to have to take a break or I've got to go do my homework, I've got to go do some other things, which is like. I mean, this happens commonly in a lot of our homes. Mine as well, too, you know, So I think working with a family, empowering them to go back to basics, build up some of that quality time, like build up that context of happiness, that context of joy where there are no expectations. And it really is led by the child just to take some of that edge off initially. Right. That can be so powerful. To be able to enter the room and to be able to sit there, hang out, get more of those bids of. For attention and get more of that interaction, that genuine interaction, that shared experience.
- [23:29]
Matt Sicoria
Okay, so in this case, what is this taking place like in your office? Are you doing a home visit? What are the things that the child, you know, what are the specific problem behaviors that the child were doing and what were some of the, the, the, I guess, bonding activities, as it were? Whatever you want to. That you ask the parents to engage in.
- [23:50]
Conrad Leung
Yeah. So this, this was in the home. Okay. Some of the challenges were related to. Well, I mean, even just getting off the screens, like I mentioned. And then afterwards there was a. Other challenges also somewhat related. But you know, they, they were seeing a lot of hitting, a lot of running away from various environments, hanging off ledges.
- [24:14]
Matt Sicoria
Okay.
- [24:15]
Conrad Leung
Yeah.
- [24:15]
Matt Sicoria
Okay. You mentioned some of those earlier. I just was curious to what it. You know, like the, what, you know, the breakdown of, you know, so would. Was it more hitting or more eloping or. You know, I'm just kind of, again, I'm trying to get a form, a picture in my mind of what this
- [24:31]
Conrad Leung
looks like a little bit from each of those three columns.
- [24:35]
Matt Sicoria
Okay. All right, got it. And so what were some of the activities that you asked the family to do to, you know, to. Again, I'm using the term bond or, or pair.
- [24:45]
Conrad Leung
What.
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Matt Sicoria
You know, we could probably think of a number of different verbs to build that space.
- [24:49]
Conrad Leung
Yeah, yeah. It really is about just getting into what they already. Like what they're already doing. Right. Oftentimes in thinking about this learner, they're already doing something that they really enjoy. They're already involved with the screens. Right. So I'm just going to be there. I'm just going to hang out.
- [25:06]
Matt Sicoria
Okay.
- [25:06]
Conrad Leung
And, you know, maybe I'm just commenting on some of those activities and things and then eventually inserting yourself in there as well, too, and creating more of that shared experience that we sometimes talk about.
- [25:18]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Yeah, I was just gonna say that's. That's what we, we really mean by quality time is that it is the child's lead and you do what they want to do. And I remember a family who said, yeah, but my, my child wants to build a roller coaster in the backyard. Like, we cannot actually do that. But, but the idea is, well, you can, you can pretend that you can draw it out, you can talk about it, you can research roller coasters on the Internet. Like there are all kinds of things that you can do to follow the child's lead, even if it is a little bit unreasonable. I mean, and I, in most cases to build a roller coaster.
- [25:57]
Matt Sicoria
I think, I think there's a YouTube, I think there are you, there are YouTube videos of people who have actually done that. So I think it gives like, it gives the element of plausibility to the viewer in the video. It's like, see, they did this, you know.
- [26:11]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
And I think one thing like when Conrad said sort of if he enters the room and the kid tenses up, but kids do that with their parents all the time, right? As soon as they hear their parents voice, it's like, oh gosh, they're going to ask me to do something. So oftentimes it's even stepping back and saying, having this quality time so that your kid gets used to good things happening when you're around and you're doing things with them. I mean, yeah, the, you know, very personal experience. When my kid was about 8, I think I called his name and he was like, mom, you're the ruiner of fun. I was like, okay, I need to step back and change things here because I don't want to be the, known to him as the ruiner of fun. I want him to enjoy my presence. So we started pairing a lot more. We started quality time a lot more just from a super personal.
- [26:59]
Matt Sicoria
Yeah, you know, I had a similar. So thinking again, particularly more so about my youngest who, you know, if I called his name while he was watching YouTube or something like that, he would get this, you know, like for the listeners, this kind of like this eye roll inside, you know, that, that, that, that occurs simultaneously. And upon noticing this, I used, I would start to say something, I would, you know, interrupt him or try to get his attention and say something like, you know, I bet you thought I was going to ask you to do something, you know, or whatever, you know. So I, I, I, I, I tried to upon noticing this, vary whether or not it was a demand or, or just a comment or something like that. But I'm not sure how ultimately successful that was, but it was, it was kind of fun to mess with him. But that's, yes, that's neither. Here. Yeah, buy those CEUs people so I can pay for my kids therapy. Anyway, I, so where were we?
- [27:58]
Dr. Pauli
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- [29:00]
Matt Sicoria
All right, so you instructed this family to start, you know, engaging that quality time commenting, trying to, you know, become part of the activity and things like that. Yeah. So take us from there. Before I. Yeah.
- [29:15]
Conrad Leung
So slowly, bit by bit, we, we. We just started seeing that everyone's just much more at ease, and there was a lot more interaction. There was a lot more laughs and things too. But, you know, there's. There's still. What do I do with times away from the screens? Like, it's so difficult to transition away from the screens. So looking at, well, how do we build some language, a language repertoire of building up those FCRs being okay with hearing the words no, and then afterwards working on some of those transitions. And for some of these people like it, it's when they're oftentimes glued on the screens, we don't have a repertoire of those other skills. So we worked a lot on building up leisure skills, independent leisure skills, and empowering the family to teach these things was. Was, I think, a very rewarding experience for all of us. It was rewarding for the. For the child. It was rewarding for the family. It was rewarding for me, too, to be able to see those changes, being able to tolerate a difference of opinions for other. From other people, too. And it, you know, it made a significant change to their. To their life in terms of being able to do some of these activities together as a family, being able to know that I'm not just glued to the screens, that, you know, I'm engaging in other things and I'm doing other things. And yeah, I think they. I think it was. It was great to.
- [30:45]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
And did the problem behavior go away entirely?
- [30:48]
Conrad Leung
Did the problem behavior go away entirely? Definitely. Those severe problem behaviors have significantly diminished. Like, there's still, you know, there was still work to be done. And it's getting to the, you know, it gets to the point where let's provide the families the tools and they have the tools in the repertoire and, you know, just continue teaching these skills and continue motivating. So the severe problem behavior, yes, that was, you know, gone. But that's not to say that they're not so upset about things like you and I will get upset about things. Right. It's just to the, to, to what degree? So turning that down a little bit.
- [31:29]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
And what I love also about what you were saying is not only were you working on the skill of transitioning away from screens, you were also building a repertoire of alternative alternatives. So it's not always about bang on addressing the problem behavior as much as it is, well, what else can they do? Because like you were saying, lacking a repertoire of other things to do, it necessarily balances. Starts to balance out the screen time because now the family is experimenting with learning and doing other things together. So you're not necessarily always having to say you need to learn how to limit your screen time. It's like, let's experiment with other things we might like to do together. And it's a whole different frame of sort of teaching and family style.
- [32:16]
Matt Sicoria
So in this particular case, I'm not sure what the developmental age of the, of the client is, but. So I assume that like they play with toys or board games or some other types of like, you know, kind of physical items as opposed to something that you can, that requires a battery or a screen or something along those lines. Okay, got it, got it.
- [32:38]
Conrad Leung
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
- [32:39]
Matt Sicoria
You know, I wanted to get into this a little bit later, but we're on the subject of screens, and I guess I'm wondering if you guys have thought, you know, beyond this particular example, you know, what your thoughts are on screen based activities and recommendations for families and things like that. Because, you know, it's something that, boy, I, I'm, I'm gonna put my hand up and announce membership in this group too. It's so easy to pick up your phone and just next thing you know, you've watched, you know, an embarrassingly large number of reels and you know, the dishwasher didn't get unloaded or whatever, you
- [33:16]
Conrad Leung
know, and so it's. Yeah.
- [33:18]
Matt Sicoria
And so, you know, I, I'm a, you know, chronologically an adult and I, you know, I should have a little bit more impulse control than, you know, than my 17 year old or my other older kids and whatnot. But you know, these devices are, you know, just these huge, huge reinforcement machines.
- [33:39]
Conrad Leung
Yeah.
- [33:39]
Matt Sicoria
I'm just curious what, you know, if you guys have a point of view on this in terms of where this is going and things along those lines.
- [33:48]
Conrad Leung
Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah, it's, it's so tough because you know, neck Netflix or whatever streaming service will go to the next episode automatically. YouTube will do that. You might doom scroll and just.
- [34:00]
Matt Sicoria
Oh yeah.
- [34:01]
Conrad Leung
And the information is never ending. And so for, you know, some, some of the families that we see in practice, like I mentioned earlier, it's, it's very much about. There's, there's a little bit of a skill deficit of what are some of those other things that I could be doing. So working with families to see, like what are some of those positive opposites Having a conversation with the child, like what do you want to be doing? You know, the pandemic really didn't help with screens and yeah. People being more isolated and some, some people just don't know and provide them the exposure, I think to some of these activities and a variety of activities. You don't have to like them. All right. But maybe you want to go outside and see, see if you want to kick the ball around. You know, maybe you want to go bake some cookies. Maybe there's some other things that we can do. Or go hang out with your friends, play board game as a family. What are some other things that we can do? So, you know, I think just having the ideas of what are some of those other things that we could be doing. And then also, you know, on the prepare side, working with the child and the family to see what are some healthier limits that we can initially set. What are some reasonable expectations? You know, if my, if my son is watching screens for eight hours a day, like am I going to go to zero? Probably not. Right? So setting those expectations and also finding time to, to build in other things, how can we put in some choice for our learners as well too?
- [35:36]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
It is, I do think that screen time management is one of the biggest parenting concerns of our, of this era. I think most parents have questions about it. I think most parents feel a bit guilty about how much time their kids are spending on screens. So we do have an entire chapter in the book about screen time management because it is, it is such a pervasive issue these days. Another prepare strategy is that I think is extremely important is being a good model of screen use yourself which as you mentioned, like, we are chronologically adults, but we also get trapped into the pitfalls of screen use. So I think really becoming aware as a parent, like how often you're checking your phone, are you jumping up from the dinner table because you heard a ping, you know, on your phone? Are you, are you sitting around, you know, or like, do you have a screen on while you're doing other things, like while you're folding laundry, are you also watching screens? So just starting to become aware of your own screen use, I think really is a very, it's very powerful. Kids learn from their parents all the time. And the other thing I'd say that we, we often recommend is a, is a written contract with kids about what the rules are around screen use. And so every family will have different, you know, expectations and different rules. But I think when you write it out and you work with your child about what's reasonable, you know, when they're allowed to have screens, you know, and is it going to be different during the week than it is on the weekends, et cetera. We have, we have a sample contract in the book that helps helps parents get started on that.
- [37:20]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
And going through that process will often bring up the things that catch you off guard, like the, the child who will say, well, I finished my screen time, but my sister hasn't, so am I allowed to watch while she has her screen time? Or if we're watching as a family, does that count as my screen time? And so it really allows you to troubleshoot ahead of time. Like, I don't know, how will we deal with that as a family? Right, because creative ways of extending.
- [37:54]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Yes.
- [37:55]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Extending screen time.
- [37:57]
Matt Sicoria
So that's, that's funny. Yeah. I'm sure children have all sorts of ways of, of, you know, pressure testing the system with those types of questions that you can think about ahead of time. So it's good that the book has some of those things already thought through. So we talked about getting off screen time. Is there another example, like another repertoire that you've helped families with that you, you, you'd like to provide as an examp of how this, you know, prepare, teach, motivate process works?
- [38:29]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Go ahead.
- [38:30]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Well, I, I think in my work, so I don't do home visits, parents come to see me in the office and I, I think screen time is a big one. The other one I get a lot of questions around is emotion regulation. Kids are having big tantrums over what, you know, we might perceive as small issues. And so helping parents set the stage for success there. I Think again. A lot of parents will go to things like a timeout strategy, right? Their kid has a meltdown over something and then they go, they're in timeout, which isn't very effective when the child doesn't have the skill of emotion regulation. And that's a hard skill to learn. So that's something that parents, you know, I, I try to explain to parents that this is going to be a bit of a process to, to teach the emotion regulation skills. But if I have, if I think of one particular example of a, of I guess he was probably 10 or 11 year old boy and with a, in a single mom kind of situation, which is, you know, that's, that's hard too because it's all on. But in terms of prepare strategies, we worked a lot on quality time obviously, but also helping mom kind of understand and have reasonable expectations about what her child could and could not do. And when it comes to emotion regulation and I think just her appreciating that he wasn't doing this on purpose, he wasn't trying to manipulate her, he just really didn't know how to recover from a setback. So then directly, you know, what I do in the office often is I work on emotion regulation skill development in the office with just, you know, trying to provide a toolkit of a variety of different strategies that might help. No one strategy is going to work in every situation. Reminding kids that it's, it's okay to have emotions, that's, you know, what makes us human. But it's, it's how we manage those emotions and how we get back to a happy, relaxed and engaged kind of mindset. And then helping, yeah, and then helping the mom realize that she didn't actually need to punish, you know, the, these explosive outbursts. Catch the good stuff. You know, when the child does cope well or when the child has an explosion, but then uses a strategy that we've been working on to get back, to get back to a regulated state and really praising and acknowledging and celebrating those successes. So again, over time, over the course of probably three or four months, that child went from having, you know, five to 10 outbursts a day to having, you know, maybe two or three a month. So that was a real, that was a real success story.
- [41:31]
Matt Sicoria
Hey everyone, this is the last ad of the podcast. And speaking of ads, if you want to get the podcast without any ads, consider signing up for a Patreon subscription. Go to patreon.com behavioralobservations and learn how for a small monthly fee, you can support the show and at the same time, get an ad free podcast delivered directly on a unique feed. It's really easy to do. And again, just go to patreon.com behavioralobservations to learn a lot more because when you sign up for it, you'll get again an ad free podcast. Sometimes you get it minutes, sometimes hours before everyone else. So just imagine the bragging rights that you can lord over your friends and colleagues. That alone is well worth the subscription price. So Again, go to patreon.com behavioralobservations to learn more. All right, let's get back to the rest of this episode. A lot of times as a school consultant, I'm working with kids or working with teams who support kids with emotional and behavioral challenges. And I oftentimes there's a lot of push for these, these students to get individual counseling. I'm curious what your points of view are on one to one, I guess, you know, kind of talk therapy with young children. I going to put my cards on the table. I haven't seen that to be particularly effective for a variety of reasons that I think we could probably easily guess or the listener could probably easily guess. But it's out there and people are doing it all the time. And I, I discouraged, you know, like these are, you know, these clinical, I don't know what it's like in, in Canada, but, you know, here in, you know, rural New Hampshire, these resources are pretty finite. And, and so there's a part of me that's, that's, you know, again, very discouraged that, yeah, there's an investment in, you know, time, money, resources, energy for these kids who are going into these sessions and doing, you know, play therapy or other sorts of things. I'm not trying to denigrate play therapy as a, as a, as a discipline. I'm just the first example that comes to my head. And, and there's not much in the way of behavior change as a result of these interventions. I know that's a pretty long windup for a question, but I'm just curious what you, you know, do you like, what are, you know, what are reasonable, what are reasonable expectations for, you know, you know, someone to either engage in therapy directly or it being kind of like a parent or family systems type of strategies such that you guys have outlined already. And, and, and maybe also what might be some signs that someone perhaps might be ready to engage in some individual counseling? You know, where's the developmental range where that might be something that's a little bit more appropriate?
- [44:14]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yeah, and I Think like for the younger set, it's a lot to expect that six year old will in a one hour session with will learn about a strategy and then be able to implement it out in the world where all these other factors are involved and it changes. I mean we often talk to parents about that, that paradigm shift of thinking, I know my kid can do this. I've seen them, you know, be able to use deep breathing or remove themselves from a situation or whatnot. But not recognizing that those skills or to be able to implement those skills in a more difficult situation, in the moment, in the heat of it, without maybe adult support is a completely different skill. And so the generalizability from in office, in a clinician's office to the real world can often break down. And often the best place to learn it is in the real world with adults around to support that. So I think that's where involving, you know, if you know, like Jenny was saying, she, she, she, you know, we do in office sessions but with the really younger kids it's the in home, you know, teaching skills if the, the skill is really difficult to learn but then bringing parents on board and generalizing it to them so they see how you were able to help this child develop a skill and then the next step is well, how are you going to be able to elicit that? And then it's about maybe showing up at their house at a time when it's particularly chaotic and then how is a parent going to manage that situation? So I think it's a lot to expect a younger child to be able to do all of that on their own and even for some teenagers for sure. And I think the, the tipping point is when child I think develops one, some insight into their behavior. Two, when I think there's a place for, you know, that talk therapy aspect when it's about trying to either develop that insight or understand that insight, but it doesn't always replace that need for that behavioral support. Like I don't think that leap always happens. So you know, particular situations would be a big family crisis and trying to deal with that and helping a child sort of process through that or, or a big traumatic event and helping kids develop through that doesn't mean that the ensuing behaviors will necessarily go away. But providing a little bit of the support around that emotion and understanding of those events can help take the edge off some of it while the parent is also working on. Because oftentimes in those situations parents feel guilty working on the behaviors because they're kind of know where it comes from like my kid's been through so much, I don't want to discipline them about that. I like, I need to give them the leeway. So if, you know, you're helping that particular aspect of that understanding and the insight and the person related connectedness, then it's a little easier then for parents to say, okay, but we can still run our house in a more respectful, systematic, calm way and not be at the mercy of maybe, you know, trauma based responses, if that makes sense.
- [47:40]
Conrad Leung
So would you say there's also a role in language like in terms of that tipping point? Right, yeah. Like having some pretty language acquisition and having that insight.
- [47:48]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [47:50]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Well. And good, good psychological treatment is ultimately often very behavioral. You know, Linda and I joke often that, you know, when we grew up, want to be behavior analysts because, because I, when you look at the research on beh, like on change and on psychological change, whether you're dealing with anxiety or managing trauma or depression, it, it really is the behavioral strategies that make the difference. And yeah, as psychologists, we always involve parents to, to help make that happen. Young kids don't necessarily want to change their behavior.
- [48:31]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Right.
- [48:31]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
So like it's working for them in some way. So they're not coming in. Like we're not getting six year olds knocking on the door saying, I need therapy.
- [48:39]
Matt Sicoria
Yeah, please take my screens away.
- [48:41]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yeah, I'm not dealing very well.
- [48:45]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
It's. Yeah. So like I, I think good psychological work involves the parents heavily.
- [48:52]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yeah.
- [48:53]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
To general.
- [48:54]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yes. And I think we've touched on this before and you were saying this about emotion regulation. So many of these skills are long game skills. Yes, they're things that again, giving a parent a way of thinking about approaching situations as their child changes developmentally. But maybe the issue stays the same. They will carry that on beyond the office, beyond your set of sessions, beyond. But so I think that's an important piece too where it comes down to.
- [49:23]
Matt Sicoria
Yeah, so this is a great segue because I want to shift to another topic, related topic of, you know, the, the, you know, the interaction of parent and child. And so this is a term called parental accommodation that was brought to my attention by a previous podcast guest, Kristen McNeely. And she's a, not only a BCBA, but also a therapist in California. And she came on the show to talk about chronic absenteeism and school refusal and how that interacts with, you know, childhood anxiety and oftentimes how that's attributed to, and not always, but in many cases to, you know, this, this whole concept of parental accommodation and so I'm wondering if, and just, you know, I'm, I'll put the link to that show in the show notes. I, if you have any interest in, in this chat, in this sort of thing, I highly recommend going back and listening to it. But, you know, for the listener's sake, you know, if you're not familiar with that term, parental accommodation, it kind of sounds like what it is in terms of. It's a, you know, there's some sort of negative reinforcement cycle where the parents act to alleviate the, the observable distress in their, in their child. And you guys, you know, being the, the real experts here, you can correct me if I mischaracterize that, but assuming I, I'm in the ballpark somewhere. Is that, is this something you're seeing more and more in your practice?
- [50:44]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Yes, I would say yes. And it's, it's unintentional, right? Like it's, it's. Well, it's well meaning parents,
- [50:53]
Matt Sicoria
I should say. I, I don't like the term. I mean, like, I get it. It's, it's, it's the term parental accommodation sounds like to me it has a bit of a pejorative, an unintentional pejorative bent to it. And I'm not, I want to be very, very clear. I'm not trying to impute any of that into that, using that term. It's just a term that's out there that uses, that describes this phenomenon. So I'm sorry, I just had to blurt that out because I didn't want to leave anyone with the wrong impression that I think you were probably about to make anyway. So please, please continue.
- [51:25]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
No, and it is we. Your comment about school refusal and anxiety, I think we, we see it a lot. You know, school refusal has increased tremendously since the start of the pandemic anxiety. Social anxiety among young children has really increased. So yeah, it's this, it's this, yeah, this very genuine desire to alleviate the distress that your child is experiencing. And what I would say is that we might start there. You know, we might start by saying, you know, you're, the child's so nervous that let's not ask them to give a presentation at school right now. Like they, they cannot do it. We might start there, but I think what people then forget is that. So that's a nice kind of prepare moment and you get the child's distress levels to a manageable level. But then you have to teach them the skills to, to give the presentation, to attend to school, to face Their fears. Right. Like good anxiety treatment involves some level of systematic desensitization or some way to cope with distress. And yeah, like that's getting, that's getting lost in, in some approaches.
- [52:44]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Like I think people get sort of stuck at that prepare strategy. Recognizing that it's like my kids nervous system is off the charts right now. Like I couldn't ask them to do anything. I should accommodate to them so that their distress comes down. But I think for them to grow into independent individuals and adults, they need to start to learn how to manage their nervous system in ways that they can in order to live in the world. Because there's only a certain amount of accommodation that the rest of the world. And I think you hear it a lot with, you know, until through the school age because it's, it's easier I think for a parent to accommodate all of that. But then when you start thinking toward the high school or is this child going to want to go to college or university and become more independent by the time they get there? Again, long term skill development, if you only start learning how to manage your nervous system at 18, at 20, at 26, you're going to spend a lot of time and probably a lot of time on your own doing it when you have this built in support system as a child to learn how to do that. So I think yeah, bringing that distress down and then starting to stretch and teach and stretch and teach especially in
- [54:10]
Conrad Leung
these more extreme examples. Right. You just really want to bring things, take that heat right out and then afterwards. And you want families, we want families to have to feel okay with doing that. Right. But now let's look at, let's. What's one specific thing you would like to start to build on? You can't teach it all and that's totally fine. We can't do. We'll get to those other things. But how do we start to very gradually build some of those skills?
- [54:36]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
And what we know from the anxiety research is that taking away that distress is so reinforcing to the child and to the parent. Like you were saying that negative reinforcement and the ensuing stress levels actually increased when faced with that situation again. So where it may have started out as the child being distressed to you know, a 6 out of 10 or a 7 out of 10, you hold them tight and take all that away. Then it becomes even harder for them. Their anxiety about anticipating going into that situation now is an 8 or a 10 and you're sort of systematically increasing their anxiety about Facing that instead of building competence in those situations and resilience to those situations.
- [55:25]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Yeah.
- [55:26]
Conrad Leung
So if the goal is school attendance, you know, there's, there's a lot of other smaller skills and lower hanging fruit. They might still be quite challenging though, in that moment. Right. And, and Jenny mentioned about the presentation. Like what are some, maybe some presentation skills that we can work on. Even just present something to your family. Right. So it doesn't have to be in that full blown, very anxiety provoking situation or very challenging situation. That's how we start to build some of that resilience to get towards more of that, you know, towards those goals that the family's looking to move towards.
- [55:59]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yeah. And I think with older kids with school refusal, sometimes the first step is go to school, but don't go to class. Like find a place where you can be on the school campus and not have the other pressures. Like maybe that's the first step. At the end of the day or in the middle of the day, you show up to sit in the resource room for 15 minutes and tolerate that, tolerate the school environment before any other demands are placed on you. Pick a class that is very low demand that you enjoy. Is it an art class? Is it gym, is it whatever. Go for that one period and again, build it slowly.
- [56:39]
Conrad Leung
Get your foot in the door, get
- [56:40]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
your foot in the door, you know, and then you're, they're learning again. Okay, I can be anxious, but I can also be at school and not have any demands.
- [56:51]
Matt Sicoria
I, I would have, I have to imagine by the time someone is in your office for this issue or a similar issue, the repertoire is pretty well developed and I have to imagine that. So, so I guess my question is relative to this is that do you have practices or strategies for getting the parent to take that first step? Because obviously it's meeting, you know, these cycles, these, you know, for lack of a better term, are, you know, kind of mutually reinforcing in many ways. And so there's arguably resistance on the parents part to start to set some limits because I'm sure that they have a history of, of trying to do that and having that those efforts, you know, get punished and you know, with big reactions from their kids or other sorts of things. So I'm wondering, I'm willing to bet that a lot of parents are quite scared to, to try to intervene on, on some of these things. Are, are there ways in which you, you able to kind of put parents at ease or, or maybe take baby steps or something like that? Like you've already Described.
- [57:59]
Conrad Leung
Yeah, I think it's very much about having that conversation with them and letting them lead some of that conversation and seeing what, where, what do they think is reasonable to start? Where is a reasonable place to start a lot of these kids? If you, you know, if you look at like an onion, there's so many layers to the onion and we're not going to be able to peel them all back right now. But what is the first part that we can start to address and is this going to be a reasonable set? It might not be about setting full on limitations or boundaries, but, you know, maybe it's, some of it might even be easing up on some of their boundaries and some of their limitations. What are some of their current expectations that maybe we can loosen up a little bit or where in their day can they have a little bit of extra leeway or, you know, commit some. I mean, we're all busy and it's difficult to find that time. So where, what is a reasonable amount of time that they can dedicate towards whatever that goal is in that moment?
- [59:01]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
And, and as you were speaking, when you're saying, you know, again, going back to that, sometimes you don't have to hit it right on the head at first. Are there other skills the teen, the child is missing, that you can work on as a lead up to maybe introducing stepping foot at school? Is cooperation a big issue at home? Is that a place to start with just building up that parent connection and then cooperation skills? So when I ask you to do something, you easily, you know, can do it and building it up that way. And I think with older kids, particularly around school, refusal is including them in the conversation with the parent about where to start. What is the least thing that you think you could start with in terms of heading back to school? And then it gives the parent permission to say, okay, we've kind of talked about this, we've agreed with it. You know, we've got everybody on board. I can support you in doing this, even if it's hard, even if, you know, it's the, even if I tell you to, you know, if I, if I'm begging for that piece of chocolate cake, don't give it to me, you know, ahead of time. And having that agreement and helping teens stick to that in, in a particular way and giving parents permission to sort of try and follow through on those kinds of agreements and small, small steps.
- [60:22]
Conrad Leung
And Linda brings, you know, up a good point. We're, we're looking at adjacent goals or goals that are going to support those skills. Right. Like oftentimes when we're talking about sleep with families, one of the first questions we ask is how's their general listening? How's their general cooperation? Right. I'm not even going to target at 3am when everyone's super tired, hasn't slept for a few weeks or for months, you know, and it's at the end of their day, we're not even going to look at sleep. Maybe, maybe there's opportunities to work on some of the cooperation first and develop that repertoire of skills before, you know, addressing sleep, for example.
- [60:57]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
And just to go back to your kind of the context of your question about how you get buy in from the parents, I, I try to remind parents that they're good parents. Right. Like they're doing the best that they can and in fact what makes them really good parents is that they're asking for help. Because I think it takes like quite a bit of bravery for parents to come see a psychologist or a behavior analyst. They have to admit that things are not going well, that they're not the parent that they thought they were going to be, that parenting is harder than they thought it was. So yeah, so I think we all try to remind parents that they're, they're. We get it. We're parents too. We've been there, we've messed up and,
- [61:42]
Conrad Leung
and continue to mess up sometimes.
- [61:43]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Yeah. And. Yeah. And that, that they're brave to be coming in and asking for help.
- [61:50]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
And like I think you started the conversation with. And pointing out where they're already using these strategies. And then how do you apply it to this situation? You're already preparing and teaching and motivating your kids for all sorts of things. So how do we apply it to this particular problem that you're coming into
- [62:06]
Conrad Leung
our office for and do it a little bit more consistently?
- [62:09]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Yeah, exactly.
- [62:10]
Matt Sicoria
Got it, Got it. All right, we're getting close to the time I've asked you guys to set aside for this and I'm, I'm grateful that you guys are taking part of your, your Friday to, to chat with me. Just a more questions before we wrap up here. Getting just back to the book. What sort of feedback have you gotten on it? I'm sure you've had colleagues take a look at it and things like that.
- [62:30]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
So her parents love it.
- [62:36]
Matt Sicoria
There you go.
- [62:38]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
I mean, I think we've consistently heard from both parents and professionals that the language is accessible, the examples are relatable and the strategies are actionable and doable. So I think it sort of, it strikes a Chord on all those, on all those levels. It's very approachable, accessible, relatable and also doesn't. We haven't got the feedback that it was overwhelming. Like I can't remember all these things that you've told me to say in these particular situations and then when that doesn't work, I'm not quite sure what to do and. Which is some feedback you get on some of the more prescriptive parenting strategies that, that are out there.
- [63:20]
Conrad Leung
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We. I've had some feedback from colleagues who have very much appreciated the framework and have started to implement some of that within their own practices with families and just helping them understand some of the challenges within that. Prepare, teach and motivate.
- [63:38]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Organizes.
- [63:39]
Conrad Leung
Yeah, it organizes things. It makes things much more doable. And the language is very user friendly. Right, right. All right.
- [63:48]
Matt Sicoria
The, the book is Complex Kids Simple Solutions, how to Raise Resilient, Confident, Likable Kids. I like the likable part. I'm glad because that certainly goes, you know, that's, that's a big piece of that. So as, as far as I guess a final question here, I usually ask people, you know, what's, what's their advice for newly minted bcba, but I'm going to change it here. You know, so what are some advice either from like a newly minted parent? Because a lot of us BCBAs are also parents. Almost all BCBAs are younger than I am and probably more likely have smaller children where perhaps some of these parenting strategies would be most appropriate. Alternatively, you guys could take this either way. What advice do you have for a BCBA who's trying to work with parents and trying to do so, particularly in the way BCBAs are typically trained because we don't really get a lot of. We're, you know, basically the BCBAs are trained to implement autism intervention. A little facetious there, but it's, you know, so we don't often get taught these types of skills. So again, you guys can take the question in either direction you'd like.
- [64:59]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
I mean, my first piece of advice is, you know, in building your relationship with newly minted parents or newly minted coming into your office with a big problem behavior are those prepare strategies. Spend some parent led quality time in terms of letting them sort of discuss broad, you know, open ended questions about their life and who they are and how their family works. Validating, finding things to validate that they're already doing and helping them realize that you can apply those. Talking about the costs of if everything stayed the same as it Was as it is right now. Like, without changing, what are the costs to your own well being, your family's well being, siblings well being? So are you ready, like, getting them sort of set up to make those changes? Because some of the changes are really hard. The parenting, that the paradigm shift is a new way of thinking, but sort of having that conversation of is what's going on right now working for you and where do you see it going? If it continues this way, are you willing to sort of experiment with me in new ways of doing it? It's not a forever thing. It's time limited. It's a smart goal. You know, there's that time limited piece. Let's try it for a while and see if it works and really have them on board as partners in the whole process.
- [66:22]
Conrad Leung
For the new parent who also happens to be a bcba, I mean, I've been there. You can and will make mistakes, and that's okay. You know, I've definitely made my share of mistakes and continue to do so, but I just. I learned from my children and adjust along the way. Right. So we've got our BCBA hat and we've got our parent hat, and sometimes those two things are separate hats, and sometimes taking a step back will help. So I guess that would be the suggestion for a parent. My suggestion for BCBAs that are working with families, I think the most important thing is to listen to, and that goes in with what Linda was talking about. And we have a set of tools and a skill set, but I think parents ultimately are the experts in their children. So how do we bring both things to the table? You might have the best recommendations, I think, providing choices to families and seeing what actually fits with the culture of their home and their values, and let them lead the way with some of those options that you provide them.
- [67:33]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
And I'll just add, for new parents, you know, I would just encourage them as a prepare strategy to really continue to take care of themselves. You know, making sure that parents get sleep and exercise and time away out of the house. Maybe not, you know, as much as they would like, but making sure to prioritize those things. It's super important. That's. That's a really important prepare strategy that I don't think we actually talk about in the book. That'll be in volume two, because, yeah, parenting's hard and we have to take care of ourselves, too.
- [68:13]
Matt Sicoria
All right, well, guys, thank you so much for joining me for this very enlightening conversation about parenting. Congrats on the book. And again, to the listeners. I'll have the links in the show notes of where you can buy it. I assume it's probably everywhere you get books, but I'll get the particulars and make sure that those links are there over in the show notes@ behavioralobservations.com if you want to visit their website, you can go to ChildSolutions CA. Do I have that right?
- [68:40]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
All right. Yes.
- [68:40]
Matt Sicoria
Okay. Yeah. Where they spell behavior with a U for some correctly, it's the right way anyway.
- [68:50]
Conrad Leung
So, yeah.
- [68:51]
Matt Sicoria
Thanks again, guys. Congrats on all the success of the book.
- [68:55]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
- [69:01]
Dr. Jenny Demarck
Thank you for listening to the Behavioral
- [69:03]
Dr. Linda Reinstein
Observations Podcast with Matt Sicoria. You can find Matt's notes on this episode@www. Behavioralobservations.com. we also invite you to stay connected with us on facebook@facebook.com behavioral observations and on Twitter at Behavior Podcast.