Raising Kids for a Lifelong Parent/Child Bond

Do you want to raise kids who you will like and want to hang out with as adults? Listen to this interview with Dr. Ginsburg, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and professor of pediatrics at U Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. He is the author of Lighthouse Parenting: Raising Your Child With Loving Guidance for a Lifelong Bond, and the founder of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Definition of Lighthouse Parenting (7 key elements):
  1. Stability
  2. Modeling & Knowing
  3. Communicating
  4. Protecting
  5. Resilience & Thriving
  6. Preparation
  7. Reliability
• Benefits of Lighthouse/Balanced Parenting
• Misunderstanding of attachment/trauma-sensitive parenting as permissive parenting.
• Self-care as the foundation of Lighthouse Parenting, “Stability: Finding Your Footing.” Why start there? Why is self-care critical to being a balanced parent?
• 6 key elements of self-care and examples of how each might look for parents and caregivers who feel they cannot prioritize self-care:
  • Love and friendships
  • Sleep
  • Exercise/Movement
  • Relaxation strategies
  • Express emotions
  • Recognize and reach for support
• Offer 1 or 2 practical tips for parenting with this lifelong bond in mind for parents with: 
  • Elementary-aged kids
  • Tweens and teens
  • Young adults (college or early career age)

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.
Dawn Davenport  0:00  
Welcome everybody to Creating a Family. Talk about foster, adoptive and kinship care. Welcome back to the people who have been with us for a long time, and you are Legion. We love you, and especially welcome to the newbies. We love having new people join us. So welcome. I'm Dawn Davenport. I am the host of the show and the director of the nonprofit creating a family.org. And I'm also joined today by Tracy Whitney, and there's a reason that Tracy is joining me today. I am retiring. Some of you may have heard that, but for those of you who haven't, I am retiring after almost 18 years here at creating a family. It is bittersweet, because I absolutely love creating a family. I love what I do, but I especially love hosting this podcast. On the other hand, I am so excited about the future for both creating a family as well as the podcast, and I'm especially thankful that Tracy Whitney is going to become the new host of this podcast. She has been with creating a family for nine years, she is, in many ways, the heart and soul of creating a family. I'm going to let her introduce herself. Tracy, thank

Speaker 1  1:08  
you very much, Dawn, thank you for the kind words. I'm really excited about stepping into this new role, and I'd love to tell our listeners a little bit about myself. I am a mom by both birth and adoption, and I recently added the title Mimi to now two precious little grandsons. And I've been a user of creating a family's resources since 2007 when we were waiting for our first adoption. And I came on board as a staff person in 2016 so as a content manager, I write all the weekly articles that people read on our website. I create tip sheets and other content for our online learning education programs. And for some of you who are active in our online Facebook group, you might know me from there, because I'm also one of the admins over there. And if you don't know about our Facebook group, you can join us at www.facebook.com/group facebook.com/groups/creating, a family, and we hope to see you over there. So going to jump right into things now. We're very excited to talk with Dr Ken Ginsburg today about building secure relationships with our kids that last into adulthood. Dr Ginsburg practices Adolescent Medicine at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and is a Professor of Pediatrics at upenn's Perlman School of Medicine. He's also the founder of the Center for parent and teen communication. It's a resource that I use very frequently while I'm raising my last two teenagers. Welcome Dr Ginsburg, and let's jump right into it so we can talk about this thing that you call Lighthouse parenting and what also could be referred to as balanced parenting. I wonder if you could start us with just that elemental definition of Lighthouse parenting. Thank

Speaker 2  2:56  
you so much, Tracy, it's a particular honor to be on this show during this momentous announcement, and to be part of your family. So the idea behind Lighthouse parenting is about striking that balance the metaphor itself, right? So there's a ginormous amount of research that actually says that when we balance two forces, the loving and warmth and flexibility that we need to have towards our children with the need to protect them and set rules and boundaries, that when we set that balance, families are stronger. Relationships are stronger. There are so many good things that happen that is called balanced parenting. There's not just science, there's like millennia of common sense and experience, right? If you ask your great grandma, hey, what works? She would have said, you know, kids need to know they're loved and you care about them, and you got to set rules. But when you set rules, they got to know it's not because you're trying to control them, it's because you love them. That's it, right? So what is Lighthouse parenting? Lighthouse parenting is about how to do this. It is balanced parenting, but it's the applied model and the metaphor itself, I think, begins to tell you what it is we're trying to achieve. And I even wrote, I don't know if you call it a poem, but a few lines to explain this balance. May I say it out loud Absolutely, and then you'll, I think you'll really kind of get this metaphor. So the first thing is, I choose to be a lighthouse parent. In other words, it's intentional. It's something I'm really thinking about, a stable force on the shoreline from which my child can measure themselves against. I'll send my signals in a way they can choose to trust. I'll look down at the rocks to make sure they don't crash against them. I'll look into the waves and trust that they're going to learn to ride them. But I'm. Committed to prepare them to do so, I'll remain a source of light they can seek whenever they need a safe and secure return balance, balance between protection, between trust, between preparing and protecting.

Speaker 3  5:16  
That's beautiful. We love that. You too. What

Speaker 1  5:19  
then do you perceive to be the benefits of Lighthouse parenting for the parents or the caregivers?

Speaker 2  5:26  
So there are a lot of benefits, and it's hard for me to separate the benefits between what young people experience and what parents experience, because parents care about what young people experience. So I don't know how to separate that, but I'll tell you what we know. We know that families that apply balanced parenting are more likely to raise young people who are academically and socially successful, who have fewer emotional problems and more emotional health, fewer behavioral risks, right? In so many different categories, we know that and that matters to families, but I'll tell you what else matters to families. What matters to families is that they also have the closest relationships. They have the most communicative relationships. They talk parents know what is going on in their children's lives, and I believe so. Now this is an I believe statement. I believe that the reason we know that they have more enduring relationships is because when we prepare children and guide children, rather than control children, they want us in their lives for a really long time, maybe forever. And when we are overly controlling, like, you know, all of those parenting styles named after, like farm implements right, or things that fly right, when we control kids, they want to get away from us. And when we don't engage enough with kids, then they're like, why bother being staying engaged? But when we guide because we love and because we're committed to protection, who doesn't want that in their life when they're I mean, I'm 63 i I miss my mom. I wish I could still call her for this same kind of support I always got

Dawn Davenport  7:21  
That's awesome. Yeah, I agree with you too. Yes, yeah. You know, one of the things that would be helpful is if you could talk to us about in the book, you talk about the seven key elements that really your poem outlined them in a in a lyrical way. But could you talk to us about the elements specifically, and we could just start with the first one, stability. What do you mean by that? And how do we parents do that? First

Speaker 2  7:48  
of all, thanks for giving me the word lyrical, because I've been looking for that word. I'm saying. It's not a poem, but that's the word I would have used from now on. That's what it is. So you know, one of the things that I'm actually super duper proud of is that when most people write books or an article or anything about parenting, you say, Do this, not that, do this, not that, and then you end with, oh yeah, and take care of yourself, right? That's always the ending. It's always the afterthought. And in the case of Lighthouse parenting, it's the first thought. It's the first thought to be a stable force on the shoreline. You can't be stable if the ground isn't solid under your own feet. When we take care of ourselves and we are a force that is, you know, emotionally healthy, and doing the work to do it right, you don't just be emotionally healthy. It takes the work, but when we are that kind of a stable force, we are demonstrating bandwidth. We are demonstrating to our children. I can be available to you. My Plate might look full, but there's always room for you, because I have ways of creating room when you need me more. So I begin there. And stability also, besides being a mentally and emotionally healthy and having the bandwidth to manage stress in healthy ways, besides that, it also implies there were role models all the time from which our children can measure themselves against. But now let's go to the end, because I've book ended the concept of parental stability. When we talk about I'll remain a source of light that they can seek whenever they need a safe and secure return. That's about restoring relationships maintaining relationships, about knowing who a child always is. But it also says, I am never running out of room for you. I will be here when you need me. When you're 60 and I'm 95 I'll be here and so we both begin and end with the power of stability. And let me make one other point, because modern parenting. Has been so child focused as it should. I'm not against that. I am a pediatrician, right? But, but it's been so child focused that parents feel almost selfish for investing in themselves. And the lie do I always use is self care. Taking care of yourself is not a selfish act. It is a strategic act of good parenting.

Dawn Davenport  10:25  
Amen,

Speaker 1  10:28  
you're speaking our language. I knew that. Yeah,

Dawn Davenport  10:31  
I do feel like we have no one wants to say that we shouldn't be child focused. On the other hand, it feels like we have swung way in the direction of becoming exclusively child focused, and that cannot be healthy. Yeah,

Speaker 2  10:48  
I emphatically agree. And it also drives anxiety. Can we be honest on it drives anxiety? Oh, amen. When you look at Tommy coming down the sliding board and you're like, look at you, Tommy. You're so brave and so smart and so wise and so handsome, look at you. You're doing it without telling Tommy. Gravity is helping you, right? Then Tommy learns two things. He learns that you're paying attention, and that's terrific, but he also learns that he's always on display, and that drives anxiety. I want our kids to know how much we love them again. I'm a pediatrician. My whole life is kids, right? I want them to know how much they're loved and how much we're paying attention, but I don't want them to feel like they are objects of display and their purpose for existence is to please us, right?

Dawn Davenport  11:39  
And it drives anxiety for parents as well. Yes, I

Speaker 1  11:42  
was just going to say the same thing. It drives the anxiety. Am I doing enough? Am I doing right? What do they need? Do they need more? Do they need less? It's yeah. It's fraught,

Dawn Davenport  11:52  
yeah. And everything we read on everything on social media or the articles we're reading, tells us that we're not doing enough, that that we have to constantly be involved with our children, and, you know, much less sit down and have a cup of tea, you know, at the end of the day, having to know, we've got to be, you know, playing Legos or whatever.

Speaker 2  12:12  
So if you're struggling with that, remember this voice, I want to be there when my child needs me the most. For me to be there when my child needs me the most, they have to be willing to come with me, to me and not feel like they always need to spare me. What we don't want is children who are afraid of falling down and getting back up, who are uncomfortable with realities of life, who are overly anxious. We want them to come to us, and they're going to come to us when they don't live in constant fear of disappointing us, right? That's what it means to be a stable force from which they can measure themselves against. That's what it means to look down at the rocks. You're going to protect them. We also trust that they're going to learn to ride them, right? So again, you know my book, which just came out, it's all about the details of how to do this right and in the beginning and in the end, and hopefully as many times in the middle as I could, I said, I say things like, I don't know your family. I can't tell you exactly what to do or say, but I can tell you how to think and how to make things work for your family by achieving this beautiful balance.

Dawn Davenport  13:27  
Let me pause here for a moment to ask a favor of you. We need your ratings. We have just thrilled found out that we are now ranked as the number 11 on the top 100 parenting podcast, but when I went back and looked at the other parenting podcast, the podcasts that were ranked, we did not have as many rankings, and that is a problem. We really would appreciate we will take a star ranking. We will take a review. We're not picky. We would just really appreciate it. If you're on Spotify, you can select the highlighted rating on the podcast page, and it pops up and gives you star ratings to leave a comment, which we also read all of our comments, and would love to get comments too, but or a review, it's below the show notes. So go to the show notes and there's a link for you to leave a comment or a review. On Apple to leave a rating and a review, you go to the creating a family podcast page where you're going to see a list of the episodes. That's where you find all of our episodes, which, by the way, go through our episodes and listen to some of the past ones. There's some real treasures in there. Anyway, you scroll to the bottom of the page for the review, and you can tap the stars, they're just right there, to leave a rating. And then you scroll below to click on write a review. And if you're listening on YouTube, you can give us a thumbs up or leave a comment. You can also subscribe to our channel, which we would really like for you to do. So thank you. And now back to this great interview.

Speaker 1  14:52  
So bringing up your book is a great segue to let's talk about the you know, all seven of the elements. And just a little bit of explanation of each kind of whet the appetite for people to get a hold of that book. So we did stability. Don talked about stability. Let's talk about modeling and knowing, yeah,

Speaker 2  15:12  
so modeling is about recognizing that children are always imagining what it means to be an adult. And if you don't believe me, put two three year olds in a room with a lot of makeup clothes and see how much they try to imagine what it means to be an adult. So they are always watching us. We are role models, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that's a reality that actually shouldn't put pressure on you. It should take pressure off of you, because real role models are imperfect, right? Real role models struggle to be human. We are not always those ducks that glide smoothly on the water. We're the ducks that are on the top flapping like crazy to stay afloat. And when we role model how we do that, being real humans, that's the way to raise a human, right? So this is pressure off, not pressure on. It is pressure again, to take care of yourself. You're going to mess up because you're alive, right? And it's how you recover that is a big part of role modeling. So there's that, and then there's knowing. You have to know who your child is. All of your power, actually throughout life, is knowing who your child really is. That's what makes you different than every other person along their journey, right? They're going to be going through adolescence, and in adolescence, they're gonna be trying on a lot of different hats. They're gonna try on different hats to fit in here, to fit in there, right? Then they're gonna go to the work world, where they're gonna try on hats. You know that all of this like experimenting with our identity and the most protective force in in the world is to know that you're worthy of being loved, right? That's where you're going to carry through when you're 90, when you're 90 and you're sitting around with your friends, you either feel like you're worthy of being loved or you're always fearing being rejected. What makes you know you're worthy of being loved? It's it's that the person who knows you the best, everything that's amazing, and the things that could use some improvement, right? That the person who knows you the best chooses to love you. So that's part of what knowing means. And I'm going to give one other point. How do you know your child by creating the kind of relationship where they don't fear showing you who they are, right? So they're not worried about always being judged, they don't fear being rejected. Because that love is unconditional. It's very different than liking. Liking is about conditions. You like what your kid does. You don't like what a kid does, but you never stop loving them, because you know them in their totality, and think they're amazing, the most protective force in a life.

Speaker 1  18:12  
So that leads really well into communicating and how we say all that and do all that with our kids, yeah.

Speaker 2  18:18  
Except Tracy, it's not about saying as much. It is about listening, right? Communication is about someone feeling safe coming to you, and someone feels safe coming to you when you listen first to what they already know, what they already think, what they already value, what they care about and what their current plans are, that's being a sounding board, right? And you're doing that without judgment. Again, judgment of who they are as a person, you're allowed to not like a behavior. You're allowed to guide them, right? But you understand that they are the expert in their own life, even if they're four years old. Take a breath, because parents hear that they're like, What is he saying? Thinking that someone is the expert in their own life doesn't mean they know more than you. Doesn't mean they have better ideas than you. Doesn't mean they have wisdom more than you. It means that you trust that only they understand their journey. And when I as a doctor, when a counselor or a teacher or a parent gives advice without understanding the reality that the child has to navigate. It's going to fall flat. But when we partner with our kids, where we got the Wisdom, we got the experience, but they know, I'm going to use that metaphor, the waves they have to ride, right, then we can come up with a plan that works for them. And all of that is about not only knowing but communicating, how we communicate, right? We help them think things through, we help them develop their values. We help them plan, but we don't say or do for them, right?

Speaker 1  19:58  
Yeah, that we. Weakens them, and it weakens our relationship with them. Long term, too. Simplest

Speaker 2  20:05  
metaphor I used to teach University School, if you have a four year old and you say, let me do that for you, darling, what are you actually communicating? Helplessness? Yeah, you're saying, I don't think you can do it. Yep, right? Yep. When you say, tell me what you can do. Show me how can I support you. Then you get them to stretch into new territory, which is your goal as a parent,

Speaker 1  20:29  
about protecting. Talk to us a little bit about protecting. Yeah,

Speaker 2  20:33  
let me be clear. I have two daughters, if I could bubble wrap them, right, and really create. Like, if someone came to me, you know, an angel came down and said, check this box, and your kids will never have pain. They'll know nothing but pleasure. I would check the box. I would

Dawn Davenport  20:51  
Yep. So would I Right? Who wouldn't

Speaker 2  20:54  
Yep? But actually, that's not an option. Yeah, it's actually not an option. What is an option is to understand that moving into the next point that preparation is protection, preparing them for the real world, but you want to set boundaries first, right? So let's do like we're not gonna let them crash against the rocks. Don't be scared of what you know Ken is about to tell you, because there are guardrails right, there's bumpers right, there's boundaries. You didn't let your kid put their hand on the stove and he did whatever it took, including swatting their hand if that's the only thing that could prevent them from touching you didn't let them run into the road, even if you were inappropriate and screaming or tackle them, and you're not going to let your 16 year old get in a car with someone who's drinking. You're not. And so there's these guardrails that are absolutely there where we do nothing but demand. We basically say these are never rules. You will not do it, and when we demand, we do it in a framing that they can understand and listen to you. If you say to a young person, no, they say, why not? If you say to a person, no, they feel controlled. That is the kiss of death of a relationship between adolescents and adults. If they feel controlled, they will rebel. When they feel cared about, they are grateful. So when we set these very clear guardrails, we make them minimal, minimal, like they're about safety or about really heavy moral issues, right? We are very, very clear, and then we frame it because I love you, because I care about you. So all you have to say, because kids are desperate to hear that and to be protected. By the way, let me say one other thing. I'm sorry when we set these guard rails, it is actually not restrictive, because within the guardrails, there's so much play. There's so much room to mess up and experiment. When we don't set the guardrails, then kids have to set them themselves, and they're like, how far can I go? I don't know if I feel safe. I'm scared, but if you're like, I know my mom's keeping me safe. I know my dad would never let me into dangerous territories, so I have a lot of room in the middle. That actually gives them more freedom.

Dawn Davenport  23:28  
You've already touched on the sixth step, and that is preparation, because that's part of actually, I skipped the fifth step. I just realized that. But let me hit preparation that right now, because it's part of protecting, as you mentioned, that part of protecting you're not going to always be around to protect them, so what we have to do as parents is prepare them.

Speaker 2  23:48  
Yeah, you want to prepare them done while they're under your watchful eye. You want to let them fall down and learn how to recover while they're under your watchful eye. If you do, you know those those words, they're not really parenting styles. They're just words like helicopter, Snowplow, all that stuff. Those are words, if you over protect your child, will mess up. They will they will fail, but they're going to fail in their 20s, when you're not watching, when the consequences are far, far more serious, right? So we want to allow them to fail and recover, but we also want to prepare them with the skill sets to navigate the real world, right? So the real world is full of people trying to manipulate you and take advantage of you. It is full of social media, which is sometimes incredibly beautiful and sometimes filled with hate and misinformation. And you have to know this, and because if you don't know this, you are not prepared to navigate a difficult world. And we. Want to teach them while we can still be watching them. We want them to make mistakes while we can watch them, because then we teach them how to recover and and again, the good news is this, you're going to be making a lot of mistakes while they're growing up too. So this is not always about sitting down the end of the day and say, how'd you screw up kid? Right? A lot of it is really, again, modeling how you are floating on top of the water. What are your little feet doing battle? Right?

Dawn Davenport  25:27  
Right? Yeah. And that's the best preparation, in many ways, is showing our kids that it's not that we have it all figured out, but that we're willing to going with your metaphor, Wade in and continue to paddle. And that leads us to the fifth one that I forgot. Sorry, because it's actually one of my favorites. So it's surprising that I forgot it, and that is resilience. It's almost become a buzzword now, and I hate that it's become a buzzword because that seems to diminish it. But I think if you were to ask anyone as any parent, what we really want is our kids to be able to, you know, fail and get up, to recover from the blows that we all know that life's gonna throw at them, and continue to thrive. So how do we as parents up the odds that our kids will be yes, the overused word, resilient,

Speaker 2  26:18  
yeah. So you know the lyrical part of that statement is, I'll look into the ways and trust that they're going to learn to ride them, which is more than just resilience. It's about thriving. And let's talk about the word resilience. So as a person who wrote one of the earlier books on resilience in 2006 now in its fourth edition, right building resilience in children and teens. I love the word Yeah, but it's not just that it's overused. It's that it was overused in ways that, in some way, became offensive. Let's put this out there. Sometimes people are not given enough resources. They suffer. Systems are not designed to support them adequately, and then what we say is, well, gosh, you're suffering, but at least you're going to be resilient. So it's been given almost as a runner up prize. So we have to be clear, our goal is for every single human being to have the internal and external resources, meaning who they know they are, and enough opportunities to thrive in the world that they will succeed. That is our goal. With that said, there are so many different ways to help a person become resilient, and there are many that are given on parent and teen.com from the center on parent and teen communication. There's many in my books to draw from. But to make it super duper simple, stress is not a bad thing. Stress is part of being alive and part of what has Ray created. Anxiety for this generation is this feeling like we have to feel good all the time. That's not what living is right. Life throws you curveballs, and what makes you happy is not being curveball free, because it's not an option. What makes you happy is having a sense of meaning and purpose in the world and knowing that you belong to each other, that we belong to each other, that we're connected to each other, that during difficult times, we can draw strength from one another. But there's more. Having emotions is a strength. We don't want people to be numb or to be flat. We don't want people to be stress free, because it's not possible. What makes the difference in whether you are healthy or not mentally and physically, is how you cope with stress, right? Yeah, stress is happening. Yeah, absolutely stress is happening, right? The question is, how do you deal with it? Are you turning to the easy, quick fixes, like alcohol and drugs, like cutting, like all the things we fear in adolescence and adulthood for that matter. Are we turning to the easy, quick fixes, in which case, stress is a serious problem because it's going to drive you down, or are we turning to those things that are healthy, human connection, and all the different ways that we know to cope, which I have 100 pages on, and I could go over as much as you want now, but, but do we have healthy ways to cope when life becomes inevitably difficult? And if we do, then we will be healthy and we will be resilient, and at least the two I want to mention is drawing near to other people when life gets tougher, and knowing the matter, knowing the matter right, like if times are tough, but you have a purpose, and you stick to that purpose, you can get through most things.

Speaker 1  29:55  
And I would add to that also a third thing is the the. Fact that stress can drive us to repair and when there is a break in relationship, or when there is, you know, unhealthy ways of managing that stress, the stress that we feel as parents when we see our kids handling stress badly can prompt that need to go back and say, Let's remediate that. Let's, let's work that out between us. Let's help you learn new strategies for the next time. Amen,

Speaker 2  30:26  
amen. And if you go back two census to where you said, let's, let's, like, repair our relationship, because when life gets tough, what we do is we remind ourselves what matters the most, and it's our connection. And we can grow, and we can be stronger when we recover from challenges, right?

Dawn Davenport  30:46  
Yeah, yeah, you're giving me goosebumps. I just want you to know, and I mean that literally, so I probably need to be hearing some of this. Yeah,

Speaker 2  30:53  
I'm definitely speaking the truth. If you're getting goosebumps, it's not just that you move, but sometimes when you just hear what's real and what's obvious and what you already know. Don you know this in your heart of hearts and and this is really the last element which remember who I am. I'm a pediatrician. I used to teach nursery school, right? But I also work with the young people who've had the hardest lives you can imagine, right? Most of my clinical work is at Covenant House with young people experiencing homelessness, whose families have gone beyond repair. In many cases, we

Dawn Davenport  31:29  
work with those same kids exactly, not homeless, our families beyond who are struggling significantly. Yeah, go ahead, yeah. Well, that's

Speaker 2  31:37  
most of my clinical work. I think that's part of the reason that we're so connected here, right? So really, the work is in helping families that are struggling know that there never needs to be a break. Life is challenging. Life is challenging, and how we get through it, it defines our strength and our resolve and what we have to help our children know is that I may not like what you are doing, but I will never stop loving you. I will hold as a beacon who I know you really are. What could be more protected? Right? Let's keep going with the metaphor you're out in the waves. Life is hard as heck, and all these people are calling you a failure in this way or that way, but your parent, or the person who raised you in whatever context, family looks like, knows you saw you, right? I mean, I take care of when I work with youth experiencing homelessness. Many of them have been through foster care, resource families, kinship care. And for those of you who are listening, who might say, but I only have a small dip into their life, I may have them for a year, for six months, I will tell you I work with these young people, and your love for them, your regard for them, you're allowing them to be seen and heard, remains a protective force always. Things may not be smooth, but they're better off because they have these memories of these people in their life who actually saw them.

Unknown Speaker  33:21  
Yeah, and now I've got goosebumps.

Dawn Davenport  33:22  
Yeah. No, you're fantastic. You are spot on. And we see that all the time. And foster families sometimes feel that way, where they all think, I'm just short I'm short term. Adoptive families often feel like, especially I mean, adoption and fostering covers a full range of experiences in kids, but often feel like they're not enough. Dr Ginsberg, something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, partly because we at creating a family, have been a part of of stressing the attachment parenting, trauma informed parenting that has been the heart of what we do, and I have become worried, just from, as Tracy said, we kind of keep the finger on the pulse, because they have a very large online support group on Facebook. And then just talking with parents, I have become concerned that there is confusion between whether we call it trauma informed parenting or attachment parenting and permissive parenting. And I go back to thinking a lot in our community revere Dr Karen Purvis. She was the founder of tbri, trust based relational intervention, and we were fortunate to be able to interview her quite a few times on this podcast. And there's a misperception that tbri, which is often thought of as a foundation for trauma informed parenting, that it means being permissive, not having boundaries. And what you are talking about is having firm, clear boundaries. And I think there, I think parents need to understand that is the essence of being trauma informed, I would say. But you. I would want you to actually weigh in on that. But how do we increase attachment? Focus on Attachment, recognize and work to heal trauma and still be a balanced parent with boundaries and firm expectations.

Speaker 2  35:17  
First off, in one line, it is your attachment, and you're seeing someone as they deserve to be seen, not based on the behaviors that they are displaying in the moment that positions you to give the boundaries right? So what you may not know is that I also have this extensive toolkit, 300 films, on how to integrate building resilience, trauma sensitive practices for professionals. And we are about to release a lot of information for foster resource and kinship families and for

Dawn Davenport  35:53  
those who are listening, let me just say he's holding up a book titled reaching teens. Go ahead. Yeah,

Speaker 2  35:59  
so this is not a book I want you to buy. This is a book your agencies might buy, right? The parenting books are affordable. This may not be. So I am not suggesting this for you as individuals. We are going to figure out a way to get it to you. My problem, not yours. The reason I am holding it up is that Karen Purvis says ideas are in some of the chapters in the book, because some of the people she worked with closely in Texas are authors in the book. I just want to put that out there, wonderful. So I use the word trauma sensitive instead of trauma informed. I personally like trauma sensitive or trauma responsive better than informed, because, as you know, words matter to me, and I don't care so much what you know I care what you do, but you know I can't speak to Attachment Parenting as a whole philosophy as as you know, when it's about what you do with your baby, what I can speak to you is that it is human connection and attachment that gives you the permission to set The boundaries. These are completely linked and trying to separate them as a serious mistake. Let me tell you what permissive parenting is. Permissive parenting is I love you so much. I love spending time with you. I didn't have a good relationship with my dad. Think of me as a friend. Call me Ken now, do what you want. That backfires because it creates anxiety and it brings a ginormous amount of judgment into the relationship. Listen to me, think of me as your friend. Adolescents are always thinking, who am I? Am I Normal? Do I fit in? They're always saying to the parents, why couldn't you be more like my friends? They're so cool, and they don't judge me. Yes, they do. That is why adolescents are always living in absolute fear of losing their friends. We are better than friends. We are people who love unconditionally. That's what attachment is. That's what attachment is. Attachment is unconditional love, not friendship. Permissive parenting is trying to be a friend, and it backfires. Deep attachment says, I know who you are. I know all that is good and right about you. I'm not going anywhere. You can trust me. Now, let's go to trauma sensitive practices. This is my life. On the professional side is integrating these models. That's why I just held up that. You know, 800 page book for you, the tone it is my life. But what does it mean to be trauma sensitive? So I have a model. Actually. I don't think you expected me to go here, but I'm going to go there. I have a model on what it means to be trauma sensitive. Number one, knowing what's a value and what's not about you, because if you bring someone into your life who's deeply traumatized, there's going to be traumatic reenactments. Sometimes daggers are going to come towards you. And if you believe that that is actually about you, then you're going to become defensive, and that's going to make you offensive, and you're gonna drive the young person away when you understand. And then now you draw from the second principle, by changing your lens from what's wrong with you to something happened to you. When you know that something happened to you which is driving your behavior, even when you're receiving that behavior, you can remain stable and firm in your loving kindness. Now let's go to the third principle. The third principle is seeing people as they deserve to be seen as they really are, not based on a behavior they might be displaying in a moment, and not based on a label they may have ever received. If you're if you're taking someone in at 12, and you get that file of all of these labels, I beg you to throw them away, and I beg you to actually give the child an opportunity to be authentically seen in all of their complexity. To understand that the behaviors that they're displaying do not represent them you want to see and hear them, all of which we discussed before, by the way, that's how I define love. See someone as they deserve to be seen as they really are not based on a behavior they're displaying in the moment. The fourth which we've also talked to, I see all this stuff goes together. Whether you're talking about parenting or professionals. The fourth is giving control to people from whom control has been taken away. And if you've been traumatized, your experience is not being able to have control over your life. So you put all of this together, you're going to have a firmer attachment, you're going to be trauma sensitive. And if we put that, if we laid all of these principles on top of the stuff, I say when parenting, it all matches,

Dawn Davenport  40:51  
yeah, right balance, parenting lighthouse. Parenting is trauma and trauma sensitive. Trauma deeply

Speaker 2  40:59  
trauma sensitive. And when I train professional development for organizations, I just, I just came back late last night from doing a two day training in Maryland. And when I do that, I use the term adulting.

Dawn Davenport  41:14  
So do our teens, right? Right? What do we

Speaker 2  41:16  
know from the parent literature that really teaches us how to adult, how to be the kind of adults that young people deserve in their lives. That's all I'm really trying to do. All I'm trying to do, whether it's the professional side or the parenting side, is to prepare adults to be the kind of people young people deserve in their lives, right? That's what love is. Yeah. Deserve to be loved

Dawn Davenport  41:42  
before we continue. Did you know that we have a weekend wisdom podcast? Well, yes, we do. It is where we answer your questions. So we need you to send us your questions. It's fairly short, almost always less than 10 minutes. We take your question and we answer it. It can be done anonymously. Our we can just use your first name. We don't care. Send us your questions to info at creating a family.org

Speaker 1  42:10  
so we're gonna move right into the self care conversation that helps us be the reliable parents and caregivers our kids need us to be. Would you talk a little bit about some practical examples of how to implement that self care on the daily and the weekly and the monthly for our parents and caregivers, things like the love and friendships? Let's start there.

Speaker 2  42:38  
Yeah. Can we with your permission. Tracy, take it up one level. Yeah, what it means to be reliable and what it means to be that light. The first is, I just want to underscore you are reliable. You are that light when you know who your child really is. Because when your child is going through some really turbulent times, they're going to be looking back, you're their north star or the lighthouse beacon, and you're like, I want to go back there. But what else makes you reliable? What else makes you reliable is that you have bandwidth, right? Yeah, kids are not coming to you if you don't have bandwidth, they're going to be sparing you, which means you're not going to know when they need you the most, right? Then you're going to find out when things are going badly and you're going to be hurt, and that's going to damage your relationship. So so there's a rationale behind this. Now let's go to the details. How do we show that we are creating bandwidth. Part of how we're showing we have bandwidth is that you give me more information. I'm going to be okay, because I'm going to draw support from friends, from family, maybe from a higher power God, but I am going to draw support. I can make room on my plate for you. That is how much you can rely on me so you communicate that you don't have to always be talking this stuff to your kid. You don't have a sit down dinner and go. I choose to create bandwidth for you by having friendships

Dawn Davenport  44:22  
or tell your kids, by the way, I've got bandwidth. Come right, come to me, I've got room for you. Yeah? And

Unknown Speaker  44:28  
they run the other direction, yeah.

Speaker 2  44:30  
Trust me. They're watching. Yeah. They're watching. They know. And when they know that you have a bad day, they know that you do more than take a bubble bath. Not very pro bubble bath. Nothing wrong with bubble bath, but it's more than that, that you go for human support, right? They know that that means like, Well, I really need my mom right now, and she's really overwhelmed. I really need my dad, but I know that my dad's gonna call his brother, and that's our. Right, yep, right. So they're watching so

Speaker 1  45:03  
love and friendships. Is that human support prioritizing sleep? Yes,

Dawn Davenport  45:13  
I am such a believer in that, but I have to admit, when my kids were young, that was what I chose to give up because I need a time alone. Yeah,

Speaker 2  45:21  
unfortunately, when we don't sleep adequately, we don't think properly. When we don't sleep adequately, we can't regulate our emotions, literally, for sleep restores the part of our brain that modifies the lower part of the brain. The lower part of the brain is the emotional part, the volatility. The higher part of our brain is our thinking, our planning and our mellowing out our emotions, which is a good thing. I want to feel everything, but I want to feel on good terms. Sleep gives you that ability, and if you're not sleeping, you're not restoring and if you're raising your kids, it's important to know that they need sleep as well. So you might have a kid who believes that they should study into the middle of the night, but you can explain to them actually, you can't solidify memories with a tired brain, and you can't draw from knowledge with an exhausted brain. So sleep is what allows you to learn, and sleep is what allows you to perform at your best. So it is never a good idea to do all nighters, or any of that never a good idea.

Dawn Davenport  46:37  
Now you tell me,

Speaker 1  46:40  
as you say, the only all nighters I ever did were for fun. That

Unknown Speaker  46:45  
might be for another conversation, yes,

Speaker 1  46:47  
right? And then you talk a little bit about Exercise and Movement, please. Oh

Speaker 2  46:53  
my gosh. So you know, the bottom line is that when we are stressed, our biology is informing us that we are stressed, right? So very ever so briefly. Why do you give butterflies when you're stressed? You get butterflies because stress is the signal that you should run get out of here. So why do you get butterflies? You get butterflies because that is the blood leaving your belly to go to your jumping muscle, which we call our butt and our legs, which are our running muscles. That's literally what butterflies are. You get stressed and goes, then the blood goes so you can run. That's the single coolest medical fact, I know. And so we are designed to be able to adapt our bodies to stress. Now, what else happens during stress? You can't think clearly, because if it's a tiger that's about to attack you, you're not supposed to say the tiger, like, hey, let's work it out. And you also can't feel fully because you're not supposed to say the tiger. Help me understand why you want to eat me. Hear me clearly. You can't think and you can't feel when you're optimally stressed because you are being driven by the hormone adrenaline, right? And therefore you cannot draw from the two most important things of human resilience, being able to deal with our emotions and to think so. Why does exercise matter so much? You are listening to your body. If your body is going run, when you exercise, you're using up your hormones. You're communicating your body. I've outrun the wolf back. I've outrun the tiger. I'm cool. I can think, I can feel right. So exercise really has a very, very biological role.

Dawn Davenport  48:44  
Let me pause here to thank the jockey. Being Family Foundation, we could not do what we do without their support. But specifically for this podcast, they have been with us for a very long time, and we are truly appreciative of their support. And it's through their support that we bring you 15 free courses if you need CE, you can get CE with these courses if you don't need CE and just want to be a better parent or caregiver, they are terrific. They're really geared more for those of you who are actively parenting, you can find them at Bitly slash, j, b, f, support, that's B, i, t, dot, l, y, slash, j, b, f, support. And now back to the show. Well, Dr Ginsberg, we always try to end on some practical tips. Now let me, let me be honest, your book is full of practical tips. So lighthouse, but so our first recommendation is to go out and buy the book, lighthouse, parenting. And I would also throw it out there that we have interviewed Dr Ginsberg on a number of occasions. We love his books. I would also send you to the Center for parent and teen communication. They have lots and lots of tips there, and I can attest to the fact that Tracy and I have both utilized. Is that website, personally and our parenting. So I we strongly recommend. What we're going to do here is just going to be a tip of the iceberg, continuing the metaphor that you're going with, with waves and lighthouse, or whatever. This is a cold Lighthouse out in the Arctic. Now, if we could hit on just a few tips, and I think we do need to divide by age, because we all know that it's different. So we're talking about Lighthouse parenting, our balanced parenting, authoritative parenting. There's so many different things, but I really like the analogy of Lighthouse parenting. So for elementary aged kids, our toddlers up to elementary age, if you could just throw out one or two practical things that parents can do and then move into our elementary age, practical things you would want parents to know if they want to adjust their parenting to be more of a lighthouse parent.

Speaker 2  50:54  
So we're all setting the stage for raising a good person, strengthening a family and having an enduring bond. That's the subtitle of the book. The secret to knowing what books are about, sometimes and with mine, is always looking at the subtitle. I agree, actually. So let's think about that. During the toddler years, our children need to know that they are protected, that we are watching out for them. We are setting the stage for them to see that we protect them. We are also paying a tremendous amount of attention when they're three, four and five years old, to really seeing the core elements of their character, right? I'm telling you, I knew that my daughters were like, essentially healers and protectors when they were three years old, when they were like, walking bugs outside to be with their bug grandmas, right? Their generosity, their sense of fairness. You really get to know your child very, very early during the elementary school years. You're continuing to get to know them, but you are setting the stage for them to see you as someone who will give them protective boundaries and stretch those boundaries. These are the years where they're so excited about potentially growing up, but they don't have any battles with you over control. So you set the stage where they understand your goal is for them to stretch into new territory, for them to have new boundaries, when they can handle them. Toxic word in human communication, no good sentence, not yet. Show me what you can handle. Will get there. You set that stage during the elementary school years. So they think, how cool that my parents want me to grow up, but that they're protecting me while I'm doing it, and all that I have to do is demonstrate responsibility, and then I get to stretch. Do that during the elementary years, during the teen years, you have this natural give and take between them, thinking, I really don't need you at all, right, but what they really mean is I love you so much it hurts. I can't imagine being independent without you, right? So I'm going to pretend for this period of time that I don't need you. So during this period of time, you are largely a sounding board and always available. You've set the stage during the early years. That's what Lighthouse parenting is, by the way, Lighthouse parenting is designed for no Lighthouse parenting is for your entire life. The book Lighthouse parenting is designed for the parent of maybe the seven to 12 year old. And the book, congrats, you're having a teen, which is a book that came out a couple years ago, is designed to take Lighthouse parenting through the teen years, but you begin changing. You are more of someone who's a sounding board when they need a sounding board and ready to cuddle when they need a hug, right? But you're taking the cues from them during the adolescent years. During the young adult years is when they should be standing on their own someone. But I beg you, I beg every parent out there to understand there is nothing magic about the age of 18, right? It is not biologic. It is not neurologic. Brain Science does not say that the age 18 is magic. It is that some people decided that that would be the legal age of adulthood, right? So our relationship continues forever, God willing, right? But during the adult years is young adult years is when you give them certainly more freedom to make decisions. Gosh, they're probably not living with you, right? And if they are, then you should still give them more freedoms, but you remind them you don't have to be done cooking, right? Life is a journey and and this, this horrible thing happens to you in junior year of high school where you think you have to write an essay and put it all together in order to apply for college. Do? Just unfair to human beings. Life is a journey. Life is a journey. And by reinforcing for our young adults that we can remake ourselves, we can rethink you don't have to be done. And by the way, I'm always here as a sounding board for you, because closing thought the book ends, lighthouse. Parenting ends, I think all my books, and actually, with the concept of interdependence as the goal, right? This is what we want, families that belong together across the generations. That's the way in which humans thrive. And the way to get there, the way to get to inter dependence, where we rely and belong on each other, is to honor independence. During adolescence, when we are the wind behind their sails, they get them to understand they can stand on their own feet. You're not going to interfere with that. You're always going to support them. And once they are constantly standing on their own feet, they choose interdependence. That is a choice. And how you play adolescence and childhood determines, or largely determines, what choice they're going to make.

Speaker 1  56:16  
That's fantastic, and how each of them I've got six kids, so I'm watching how each of them are coming back to that level of in of interdependence, and it's playing out so differently in each of the adult children. And it's it just reminds me how true it is to how they were at two and three years old. It's kind of like a boomerang. It goes out and it comes back. And how they're interdependent with us now is quite similar to how they behaved and tried to gain that independence at two and three. A

Speaker 2  56:50  
lot of wisdom. There is what I mean by knowing your kid. Yeah, yeah. Well,

Speaker 1  56:54  
thank you so much. We are so appreciative of your time and your expertise and your very practical wisdom, and we hope that we get to work together again in the future,

Speaker 2  57:06  
I will genuinely look forward to it and Dawn. Thank you for everything you've done, not just for this podcast and for the organization, but for humanity by focusing on families.

Dawn Davenport  57:18  
Thank you so much for your kind words. I It means a lot, especially coming from you. Thank you. You.