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Hello and welcome to the Questions and Answers edition of Thriving Kids, a podcast from the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of children with mental health and learning disorders. I'm Dr. Dave Anderson, clinical psychologist and your host. Last week I was joined by Dr. Dylan G. A professor of psychology at Yale University, for a discussion about why avoidance can make stress worse over time, how kids can learn to tolerate discomfort, and and why your own stress response as a parent matters so much in helping your child feel safe and supported. That conversation sparked a lot of thoughtful follow up questions from our listeners, which I'll be tackling for the next 20 minutes or so. So let's get into it. Our first question on our Thriving Kids Q and A episode this week is I often come home and complain about my boss or my workload right in front of my 10 year old. Lately I've noticed him using the exact same tone and language to complain about his teachers and his homework. It feels like I've passed my own stress onto him. Is it too late to walk this back? And how do I change my venting habit without acting like everything is perfect? This is a great question. So work stress is normal. We will want to validate parents the world over for the fact that if you come home from your job and you might want to unload a little bit, talk about some of the difficulties of your day, talk about some of the challenges you confronted, that is completely normal and it is okay for kids to hear that. Now what this parent is seeing is the incredible effect of modeling on child development, which is that our kids take on the way we process emotion, the way we talk about it, sometimes our cadence, sometimes our phrases, and the reality is like we want to think about what that is conveying, what you're probably conveying to your kid. Parent who wrote with this question is that you know, it can be a safe space at home to process and vent about your emotions. That's a good lesson. I would love for most kids to learn that and then give their partners, roommates, relatives, you in the future some space to process their emotions. What I think we can get a little bit concerned with is setting up a kind of expectation through that kind of social support and that talking about our feelings and that the home is a space where the first 15 or 20 minutes of your home is always a complaining about the bad things about your day space. This is where all I would say to this parent if they were in my office is look, let's seek to balance the discussion a little bit. We can validate that we are a family who talks about our feelings, but we also might want to validate a little balance in the way that we talk about certain things. So we might say to a kid, hey, you know, like, I was thinking about work today and, you know, I could talk about some of my frustrations with Carol or, you know, you've heard this little bit. But what I really wanna talk about is actually this moment that I felt really great about today at work. Or you might ask your kid, hey, what is like one plus and one minus of your day? Or a rose or a thorn, or what's one thing that was really funny that happened today? So you set that up as still a talking space when you get home and where you can kind of process the events of the day. So. But at the same time, it's a talking space that makes room for all kinds of different moments, not just the idea that your job is to unload on your friends and loved ones the moment that you get home what you also want to think about. And this goes back to some of our behavioral episodes earlier in our Thriving Kids podcast history is reinforcing your kid when they do express themselves differently. So if they come home and they tell you about a big victory or something they did really well, what you want to do is reinforce that explicitly. You know what, it is so great to but the moments when you feel successful in school, I love sharing that moment with you. And we can over time see how that kind of reinforcement can shape our kids toward a little bit different talk to us and then hopefully also self talk about their day in the future where it isn't just the processing of the down moments. Our second question for this thriving kids Q&A my 8 year old gets morning stomach aches almost every Monday. The pediatrician says he's physically fine, but so I think it's his worry about going to school. But when he's crying and holding his stomach, I feel like a monster forcing him onto the bus. I know avoidance makes anxiety grow, but how do I push him to go to school when he's in actual physical pain? This is such a great anxiety question and one that relates to kind of stress and coping and how we kind of coach kids through it. What's so common when we talk about kids and anxiety, and it's actually a symptom we ask about in the office, is that young kids commonly report aches, headaches, stomach aches, nausea and pains when they feel anxiety. It's one of the reasons why therapy often involves us doing exercises with Kids, we ask them where in their body they feel certain feelings. And so I'll end up coloring in like a, you know, little kind of outline of a human being where I'll say, like, where do I feel anger? Like right behind my brow. Where do you feel anger? And they'll say, a tightness in my fists or something like that. And we'll say, where do you feel sadness? And they'll say, in my heart. And I'll say, me too, like, same. And then, you know, we'll get into where you feel fear or where you feel nervous. And a lot of kids will say, that's my tummy. Like I feel it there or I feel it because my heart speeds up, or I feel it because, you know, my hands get clammy or I start sweating. And we want to normalize for a lot of kids that sometimes you can be in physical pain and sometimes your feelings can actually, you know, because they're linked to your body, be felt in your body. And that is a really common thing. So we'll kind of normalize it and say, honey, we know that the doctor has said that, you know, your tummy is okay. This could be because of some of the big feelings you're having. And that's perfectly normal sometimes for your body to feel that way. The key aspect of this question that is so thoughtful about anxiety is that, and we talked about this actually Last Week with Dr. Dylan G about stress and coping with is that there are situations obviously when a kid is so nervous or so distressed, we might not want to push them in that situation. Like when kids are at like an 8 out of 10 or above and where we might just need to say, hey, why don't you take a moment with me? Look, I'm not going to push you harder into this situation. I know it's like really overwhelming for you. But then there's also the notion of good challenge, moderate stress. Moderate challenges are good for kids. They build up resilience. So in this instance, the this is not a kid having a very severe anxiety reaction. This is a kid having a fairly run of the mill anxiety reaction. And so so much of our coaching for parents is on decreasing accommodation, which is kind of the central piece, for example, of a number of evidence based practices like Space, which was created by Eli Liebowitz at Yale, where we focus on parental accommodation as the main mechanism for helping kids confront anxiety. Where we say to parents, you're not going to accommodate, you're not gonna drive your kid to school this day, you're not going to tell them they can stay home. You're not gonna tell them they can stay home. And we're gonna take tell the school they're sick. What we're gonna do is we're gonna give them the armor they need to confront some of these big feelings until those big feelings fade. And sometimes that armor is taking deep breaths. Sometimes that armor is thoughts where you're telling yourself, you know, I've done this before. Each Monday when I return to school, that like nervousness that I get about returning to the school week happens. And I can just kind of ride this wave. Sometimes it's just distress tolerance. Hey, look, we may not be able to change the fact that your stomach hurts, but what song can we sing on the way to the bus stop? What can we think about that we're gonna do that's fun after school? What can we talk about that might be a little bit distracting from your tummy? And it's those types of coping strategies where as we practice with them, we're saying, honey, what I'm helping you to be is brave. Because I know that you've got these big feelings. I felt them too. Lots of kids do. And I wanna be your ally right here. And it help you confront those things and confront the things you might be afraid of without backing away from them, avoiding them, or having parental accommodation be a piece. And you do that over and over. And you raise kids who can be appreciative of the feelings they have and self compassionate about them, and at the same time willing to kind of confront them and cope with them in really helpful ways. Our next question for this episode. My daughter is a high school junior and she's completely overscheduled. Classes, soccer, part time job, all the things. She's clearly hitting a wall. But whenever I suggest dropping one thing to lower her stress, she has a total meltdown. She says she has to do it all for college or her life is over. How do I help her? She's choosing her own stress, but is clearly buckling under the weight of it. So first of all, I want to say this is not only relevant to the episode that we just had with Dr. Dylan Gee about stress and coping. It's also related to the episode before that with Jennifer Wallace about achievement culture and the pressures that so many teenagers feel in today's society to do all the things for college. And this is where we really want to move against this toxic achievement culture. We want to remind kids that the objective is to balance, you know, creating whatever resume they're trying to create for College and also experiencing life, finding things they enjoy, finding balance, being able to maintain daily wellness practices. Because at the end of the day, if they get to college and they have spent all this time and absolutely burning themselves out just to get to that place, they may hit a huge wall as they get to that stage of development where there's no energy left to engage with the environment they finally arrived at as a reward. So what we'll often go with when kids are in the, they're trapped in these big thoughts about this notion that like, they can't stop anything or else it's going to have this outsize effect on their college admission. You know, frequently what I think about are a few things. One is how can I get them good information from experts on this? So if the high school has a counselor or somebody who helps kids to think about these processes and the pressures they're facing, is there a way I can get them to speak to that person maybe about the ways that kids create their kind of portfolio for college and what balance looks like in doing that? Then beyond that, if I can't get them good evidence to perhaps combat some of these cognitions, then what I want to do is take an incremental approach. I want to say, look, is there really that huge of a difference between all the things and all the things minus one? Can we list out all these things and just think about maybe one that we can step away from even for a brief time to decrease your stress, to give you a little bit of downtime, to let you focus on your sleep and your mental health? And look, let's just see how that feels. Let's do an experiment around it. It can be really hard for kids with a high achievement orientation who are putting a lot of this pressure on themselves. But I've done this exerc so many times in the office where we subtract one thing. And some parents who also are supporting this achievement may say, but I'm worried then that that means they're going to quit everything and they won't want to do anything and they will burn out. And my answer is if you keep them going that way, they absolutely will. And there may be a moment where you find them completely unable to do things, completely burned out, anhedonic and possibly at risk for depression if they keep going this way. So often a teenager's schedule is, is about how their mental health interacts with it. Some teenagers can only really handle a couple activities, and then they feel really unhappy if they don't have downtime, creative time, deep Thinking time, a little bit of extra time to kind of spend on homework. Some teenagers want to do all the activities, and they find that fantastic, and they really love having that kind of schedule, and they seem to be able to juggle all those things without putting too much pressure on themselves. We're always watching for that intersection of the schedule and their mental health and their wellness. So in situations like this, all we're asking someone to do in the midst of anxiety is let us make small nudges. We're not asking them to quit everything. We're not asking them to fully overhaul their resume. But can we take a single thing, something that would take a little bit of time, and give it back to you and then just see how that feels and whether or not we really are still adhering to the same cognition after a few weeks that we. We had to have all those things. At the end of the day, we can help kids get to colleges where they'll have great experiences while also teaching them the skills they're going to need to maintain their wellness for a lifetime. The next question actually referenced previous podcasts, and I love this from our listeners. It is. You mentioned in a previous podcast that we should validate feelings instead of just giving reassurance. But when my son says, I'm going to fail this test and everyone will think I'm stupid, and. And I say, it sounds like you're really worried about the test, he just says, yeah, exactly. And it feels like I'm just agreeing with his drama. So this is a very important question because we as mental health professionals often lead with this notion of validation, because the reality is most humans don't get enough of it, where you share your feelings and someone else just says, wow, like, thanks for sharing that with me. That sounds like you're having a really tough time. Or it does sound like you're really afraid, or it sounds like, you know, something's really got you distressed, or, I hear you. That validation can feel really good. What's important, as a secondary rule to that is we want to think about how much these emotions are proportional to the situation that is at hand, and also how much venting can also have a sort of point of diminishing returns where you can be venting about it, but at some point, that venting might just be causing you to reinforce a particular viewpoint that wasn't as strong when you first started processing this. But now you're like, Deborah, like, we can't talk to Deborah. Or, you know, our issue right now is trying to think of a Name of a more militant name, a Jeff. Like, we can't deal with Deborah or Jeff. And it's like at first, venting about Deborah or Jeff might be helpful in feeling like someone is reflecting or kind of hearing your emotions, but after a little while it might become self reinforcing where all you're doing is kind of like, you know, really going back and forth over and over your anger for this and feeling more justified in it without actually coping with it in an effective way. So what I would say to this parent is when you hear a kid say these things about emotions, what we're listening for as therapists, a couple things, emotions that are really disproportionate. Like if a kid says, I am super angry at my parent for doing this very run of the mill thing a parent did, we might say, I hear that you're angry. And. And then we might try to kind of offer like a couple different ways that we could process this a little bit differently or maybe put things a little bit in perspective. So we're still validating, but we're also moving into this kind of like, let's put in perspective given how disproportionate this might be, or there's the fact that you can be validating and also be helping them to restructure. So a kid who says, I'm going to fail this test and everyone will think I'm stupid, that's a thinking trap right there. And we might say to the kid, you know, I hear you, I hear that you're distressed. I do worry, or I am concerned, or I worry for you that you might be taking a little bit more of a negative outlook on this than maybe the situation indicates. You know, you find your way to say it. But the way that I'd say that to a patient is I'd say, like, I hear this, I also hear you predicting the future in a really negative way. And so I want to go back to like facts on this. Like, how much have you prepared for this test? How much have you studied? How have you done in the assessments leading up to this test? And I'm trying to help them build a world in which I can listen to their thoughts and feelings and also take a moment to tinker as a learning experience with those thoughts and say, okay, if we play with them for a little while and then we come back and reassess them, are we really so sure that it's going to turn out this way and that can help your kid to feel really supported and at the same time help Teach them new thinking and coping patterns that can help them deal better with stress. Our second to last question for this episode. My son spent the last three months in a total pressure cooker, balancing early college applications, varsity playoffs, and a heavy course load. He was an absolute soldier through the whole thing. But the second he hit submit on those apps, he hit a wall, he's sleeping through his alarms, he's irritable, and he seems to have lost his motivation for everything. How do we help a teen navigate the hangover that comes after a long period of high stakes pressure? So this question actually relates a lot to the person that asked the question about their daughter being kind of over scheduled. This is a really common thing in that teenagers are testing out a lot of different high pressure situations. And this is oftentimes the first time they're really encountering these kinds of pressures, this level of balance in their life. And there can really be these moments where burnout is real. And we've got to think about what burnout rehabilitation means. So for a lot of teens, when we see this, and this is also, you know, we see senior spring effects after college applications. We see this after a teen's gone through really high pressure zone, where what we want to think about is what are the major principles of emotional coping with burnout that we want to model, talk to our teens about and then help them to be able to recover. So there may be high pressure situations in their life. There may be moments where they really push themselves to the brink of what they're capable of, and then they have to think about their recovery and what that looks like. So first we might say to a teen, I get that you're coming out of this really intense period of your life. I also want to make sure that you're thinking about how you're recovering from this and how I can support your wellness in doing that. And we just build this from the ground up like a set of blocks that that helps to restore their wellness in the midst of burnout. First is sleep, diet, exercise. We might say to them, like, I get this is a really hard time. You know, I can see the fact that, like, you know, you're withdrawing, it's really difficult, you are sleeping. But I also see that there generally seems to be some difficulty, like kind of regulating that sleep. And I might be able to help you with that. At the same time, I'm seeing there's a lot of big feelings, and I want to figure out with you what things can help to restore a little bit more of your emotional Balance. So we're having that conversation with them. We're saying, let's start with your bedrock wellness and how can I support you in doing those things? Then let's build on your routines. Even though your post college applications and post college acceptance or something like that, or post sports season, there are still routines. There are still things that can help us to keep a regular schedule in our life that helps us to structure our wellness around that. And then lastly, we're often talking to teens in the recovery from burnout about behavioral activation. You've got kind of like your basic wellness habits. You have your routines, you have the things that are kind of required responsibilities for you. And then beyond that, what are you doing that does boost your mood? Are there friends you want to see? Are there activities you want to engage in? Are there things you want to re engage with? Are there hobbies that you've been neglecting during this time of high pressure? How can I support you in kind of reengaging with those aspects of your life? Because at the end of the day, we're teaching a teen that, you know, in these periods of emotional up and down, how do you construct all of your wellness habits, all the ways you seek social support, seek connection, re engage with your hobbies and activities and responsibilities? But we're doing this in kind of a gradual way with a little bit of compassion that they've just, you know, finished a big period of achievement. We want to congratulate ourselves on that, but we also don't want to completely overcorrect by going to complete sloth. And that's actually what's on my socks today. But complete sloth and, you know, not really have any way of re engaging with the world. Our last question for this thriving kids podcast. Q and A. If I only have 60 seconds to help my kid reset their nervous system before a big game or a test, what is the most effective hack I can teach them? And I'll give you two breathing and mantras. So if we go to some of our cognitive behavioral strategies, best thing that you can help reset a nervous system is by resetting the nervous system. It is breathing. That is one of those things where by giving our body more oxygen, by centering ourselves on our breath, by centering ourselves on just the bodily sensations we're having, reflecting on kind of being present, being with the this particular moment, that is what can slow down the train of kind of anxiety that might be running through our brain. It is an opportunity for us to feel more grounded and present in that moment, to perhaps give ourselves some distance from the thoughts that just keep running through us, the stomach aches we're feeling, the nerves we're feeling, the feelings we might be feeling, and help us to ground ourselves in that present moment through the breath. Secondly, we'll talk about for folks who may not find the breath as soothing or or is easy to slow down with is I will often talk with people in sessions about what they want their mantras to be, preparing what that mantra is before they go into the situation. I have on many occasions sent patients Training montages from 80s and 90s Movies like Rocky where we think about like is it a song that helps me to reset myself and get myself on the right mindset for a test? Is it remembering a particular mantra that helps me to like, kind of center myself and see what I can do in this particular situation? Or that reminds me of my past successes? How do we kind of get around that so that in the moment we can connect and I can help you stay grounded with that mantra and with that thing that you find encouraging, something that works for you. And with that, let me just say thank you for listening to this Q and A episode. We have fantastic tips on stress and coping as well in the previous Week's episode with Dr. Dylan Gee, and for more tools and support, I encourage you to visit childmind.org resources or if you can only remember childmind.org, i promise you the resources are right there, front and center. This is home to our Family Resource Center. You can find expert guidance and hundreds of articles for supporting children with mental health, behavior or learning challenges alongside curricula like our Positive Parenting Thriving Kids Hub, which features videos on all kinds of topics relative to 21st century parenting and in particular, videos and a curated resource library on helping kids cope with stress. Again, thanks so much for listening to Thriving Kids Podcast and we will see you next time.