Healing & Strengthening Your Family Dynamics

Are you looking for practical ways to build your child's resilience and sense of safety, and to strengthen your family's connectedness? Listen to this conversation with Ginger Healy, MSW, LCSW, director of programs for the Attachment & Trauma Network and host of the podcast “Regulated and Relational.” Ginger speaks across the nation on trauma-informed schools, therapeutic parenting, and community engagement.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What made you decide to write a book for educators?
• What were you observing about children’s needs around emotional language, self-regulation, and connection?
• Knowing that at home we often deal with a different rhythm, different dynamics (for example, one caregiver rather than teacher + many students), what initial advice do you have for parents and caregivers to translate this book’s classroom tools into a home context? 
• Why is it essential that children learn social/emotional language — not just “feelings words” but the capacity to talk about self, other, relationships, safety?
• How does having more social/emotional language help a child feel “seen, safe, valued” in a family environment?
• What are the risks when children don’t have that language or opportunity to practice it?
• We often hear culture around us say, “Kids are resilient.” Why is that a misconception, especially in our community of adopted, foster, or relative children?
• Why does a child who has experienced trauma need specific, intentional scaffolding to develop their social/emotional language and build their capacity for emotional strength?
• What are the themes of the workbook that parents or caregivers can bring into their everyday conversations at home?
  • Understanding my story within my family structure
  • Reframing my narrative: navigating family challenges and conflict
  • Building confidence, hope, and a positive future
• Can you suggest a few strategies to get families started with the conversations?
• What if we are struggling with or lacking these skills ourselves? How do we learn them so we can teach and model them?
• What practical strategies can we use to integrate these skills into our daily rhythms?
• How do we know our kids are ready for adjustments in how we practice these skills, or to “level up”?
• How will they know if these strategies are effective? 
• Do you have practical tips for families that want to strengthen their family dynamics but already feel overwhelmed by the long list of To-Dos? 

Chapters

• 1:30 What made you decide to write a book for educators?
• 2:37 What were you observing about children’s needs around emotional language, self-regulation, and connection?
• 3:43 Knowing that at home we often deal with a different rhythm, different dynamics, what initial advice do you have for parents and caregivers to translate this book’s classroom tools into a home context?
• 5:51 Why is it essential that children learn social/emotional language — not just “feelings words” but the capacity to talk about self, other, relationships, safety?
• 8:11 What are the risks when children don’t have that language or opportunity to practice it?
• 13:19 We often hear culture around us say, “Kids are resilient.” Why is that a misconception, especially in our community of adopted, foster, or relative children?
• 15:56 Why does a child who has experienced trauma need specific, intentional scaffolding to develop their social/emotional language and build their capacity for emotional strength?
• 21:17 What are the themes of the workbook that parents or caregivers can bring into their everyday conversations at home?
• 25:15 Can you suggest a few strategies to get families started with the conversations?
• 30:50 What if we are struggling with or lacking these skills ourselves? How do we learn them so we can teach and model them?
• 36:21 What practical strategies can we use to integrate these skills into our daily rhythms?
• 44:45 How do we know our kids are ready for adjustments in how we practice these skills, or to “level up”?
• 47:20 How will they know if these strategies are effective?
• 48:29 Do you have practical tips for families that want to strengthen their family dynamics but already feel overwhelmed by the long list of To-Dos?

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

schools and small groups. Ginger, thank you for coming to creating a family and for
joining the podcast. I'm so excited to share this book with our listeners. Thank you
for having me. It's really an honor to be here. I loved looking through the book
while I was doing the research for today's conversation because I recognize right
away that it's intended for a school setting or a small group learning settings, but
I also recognized as soon as I saw it, that it's something that would be easily
tweakable and relatable to families who are interested in healing and strengthening
and kind of forging up those family dynamics. I'd like to talk to you a little bit
about why you even went about writing this book and kind of where it came from and
what need you saw that it would be filling. Yeah. Well, I'm a school therapist and
I'm a mom, an adoptive mom. And so I saw the need, but I have to give a shout
out to the publisher, National Center for Youth Issues, because they have believed
and known for a long time that we need to get this information to the schools.
And my publisher saw this great need of getting the schools and the parents together
to collaborate, right? Because
the behaviors are more and they're bigger and we're seeing a lot of anxiety in
students. Obviously, this lack of emotional regulation leading to these behaviors,
right? Processing challenges. There's just this desperate need from educators saying
help. We have help. And so I also know as a parent that that's the same in the
home too.
we families who are raising children impacted by trauma or prenatal exposure or
adoption and foster care and things like that often have a different rhythm than say
a school day has or different dynamics between parent -child than say between teacher
and child. So what is some of the initial advice that you would give a parent
who's looking at this book to kind of translate these tools into a home context?
Yeah. This is such a good question.
It is just full of like conversation starters that you might not have known to
discuss or might not have known where to begin or might not have felt brave enough
to do. But sometimes with a book in your hand, you can, especially if you think of
it like each chapter has a story. Well, a story is like an easy way to tell
something without any pressure. It's about someone else. But then inevitably it leads
to this conversation of what did you think about that? What would you do if that
were you? So just modify it and be brave to like try one thing out of the
chapter. You don't have to get through every single item in the chapter. And I tell
that to the school counselors too. Sometimes you only have 10 minutes. Well, there's
a lot that can be done in 10 minutes. And I love, actually, that parents have a
different rhythm because there's never a bad time. And situations and behaviors and
emotions, they come up when they come up. There's not a timetable for that.
So it's not like we're waiting until 4 p .m. on Thursday to talk about that. It's
like, we've got to do it right now. And let's talk about it, you know. So it's so
easily adoptable. So many children in our community have experienced trauma or
prenatal substance exposure or multiple caregivers or separations before they come to
join our homes. And they come to us with varying abilities to trust,
to feel safe, to regulate or co -regulate or self -regulate. And some of our kids
don't even really know how to be part of a family. So why is it essential that we
kind of take a step.
this sense of safety, not just physical safety, but like emotional safety.
The body recognizes safety. We call it felt safety. And that is like intuitive for
some people, but for kids that have had loss, for kids that have had adversity.
It's not intuitive at all. So we have to be able to give children words,
right? And so that they can tell their story rather than just relying on behaviors
or letting behaviors tell the story. Because when we do that and it happens a lot,
like we only see the behavior, then we don't recognize what's going on underneath.
Behaviors get really misunderstood. They get misdiagnosed.
and we don't heal. We just try to like fix or stop.
And so it is an intentional practice that is needed, especially for kids that have
early loss, early adversity. So what are some of the risks for a child that doesn't
have that language beyond the vocabulary, doesn't have that language for being able
to talk about themselves and their internal state? Yeah. I mean,
I'm sad so that they can be understood and be heard and learn to not avoid those
feelings. Because the other thing that happens when we don't want to feel those
feelings is we numb, we avoid, right? It's scary to feel those feelings,
especially if you have been punished for having those
then you don't, you don't want to express them for fear. We have to welcome those
feelings so that they feel safe enough to express those feelings because they're
human feelings and there's a reason for those feelings. So avoiding feelings doesn't
work. Numbing feelings doesn't work because when you numb pain, you also numb joy.
And you can't appreciate joy and hunt the joy and find the joy if you haven't
Thank you.
trafficking and exploitation because they don't have a true understanding of what
truly being valued and treasured feels like. Oh, that is,
I'm so glad you said that because it is so, the risks can become life threatening
when we don't understand our worth, when we don't feel safe because this biological
need to feel seen and to have perfection, well,
there's a lot of, there are safe places to get it and there's a lot of unsafe
places to get it. But when you're a child, if you don't know the difference, you
just want to feel better, right? That's the numbing too, right? The drugs, the
alcohol, the sex, the whatever feels good for just a second. Yeah, the phone
addictions. So many, so many addiction. Yeah. Yeah.
I'd like to interrupt this conversation for just a second. I am excited to tell you
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need the credits or not. They're excellent tools for strengthening and supporting your
family. And speaking of strengthening and supporting your family, let's go back to
our interview with Ginger.
So one of the messages that we hear culture say a lot, which I personally cannot
stand to hear, is that kids are resilient. There is an element of it that is true,
but it's also a huge misconception, particularly when we're talking about our
community of kids impacted by trauma, loss, abuse, neglect, any of those things.
Can you talk a little bit about why a child who has experienced those things needs
very specific intentional scaffolding to develop that social emotional language and to
build their resilience intentionally? Yeah. I mean, you said it perfectly. We're not
born resilient. It's a skill that is developed and scaffolded and modeled.
And if we jump to this, we say it Because it gives hope, right? And it eases
discomfort. But what it does is it minimizes that pain and the hard work that it
takes. And it overlooks the need for us as adults. It lets us off the hook from
really getting in there and doing that therapeutic parenting work. It just reinforces
all this shame. You should be able to get over this kind of a thing. So The truth
is resilience really is only built through consistent presence,
attuned caregiving. It's all about relational healing. And so especially for foster
and adopted children, because resilience, it's not the absence of the impact.
It's this ongoing process of healing within connection. And so when it comes to
building resilience, what trauma does.
and prioritizing survival over connection,
over reflection, over, you know, they're just trying to survive. And so that part of
the brain that's responsible for regulation, for reasoning, for language,
it's likely underdeveloped. It's less accessible. And so the only way to really learn
it is through having it be modeled, right? Or explicit teaching.
But really how we build resilience is through co -regulation. And that's what
scaffolding is. That's the magic is these repeated positive experiences of safe
relationship with someone else where we can share our nervous system.
Like a dysregulated child can lean on my calm regulated state,
I can share that with them. I can also, if I'm disregulated,
share that with them and make it worse. And as a mom, I have certainly been there,
done that. I have gasoline on the fire because I have a lecture that needs to be
heard. And all it did was make it worse and decrease the trust, put a wedge in
our relationship. So, okay, getting back to this question of scaffolding, how do we
do that? Well, safety first, right? Redictable routines, predictability feels so safe
to the nervous system. So schedules and routines, if I notice a need and meet that
need and respond to it in this home soothing way that just feels safe and that
scaffolds how we handle stress right and if I make a mistake which I will I
apologize I make it better I call it out and say oh I blew it right let me fix
it and that is a great model of what do we do when we make a mistake right so
and then talking about our emotions out loud I made a mistake I need a break I'm
not okay right now I
here physically, but sometimes not physically, but emotionally. Like, I got you.
You don't have to do this alone, right? That neural growth in our brain, it happens
through repeated experiences of connection and safety. So that's how we scaffold,
just that repetition of trust, repetition of making a mistake,
but fixing the mistake. And us having this like compassion, yes, but like empathy.
If I look at this kid and see the behavior and it's not a great behavior,
if I just look at the behavior, I want to stop the behavior. I want to punish the
behavior. But if I look at this kid and recognize they're struggling, they're having
a hard time, that just changes something in me that I want to help them.
So it's not only easy. I'll tell you that, right? Well, for sure. And especially
when the behaviors are big and, you know, overwhelming and you're feeling overwhelmed.
And if it's a, you know, no one likes to feel like they're in the hot seat. And
when your kid is acting in these very big, baffling ways, you feel like you're in
the hot seat and you're trying to figure it out, which can be dysregulated in and
of itself. So you might right now.
and say, he's not giving me a hard time. He's having a hard time.
The first time I ever heard that was Dr. Ross Green years ago when my kids were
little. And I just thought, that is such a great reframe. He's not giving me a
hard time because that feels so personal. Yes. Having a hard time.
And then that summons that empathy and that compassion. What can I do to come
alongside of him while he's struggling? So good. this whole idea of
teammates when you reframe it that way. That's good. So true. So true. I think my
kids are probably sick of that teammate metaphor, but I'm like, I'm on your team.
We are all on the same team here. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody wins in a power struggle.
How can we fight the behavior, fight the trauma together,
not fight each other. Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. So what are some of the themes
of this work.
story understanding their family structure so you can talk about like everybody's
different right different is not less different isn't broken each family is unique
and i i love the word unique so learning to appreciate the differences right some
families have two parents some families have one parents some families have a
grandparent like we could go on i was
be long what what's my role and i just there's no right or wrong answer right it's
just what do you think about that so those kind of things there's another section
that talks about reframing like rewriting your story navigating challenges because the
truth is i didn't want this book to be just kind of surface like right some people
have problems well let's get it out there well everybody has
your outcome is set, right? You aren't the argument. You're not the chaos.
You aren't the pain. No matter who's having the pain,
that separation of you aren't the pain. There is going to be pain,
but you can learn to handle it and to manage it with help with research support.
And so that's when we start to dive into like your worth and and your inner
working model your beliefs about yourself so that's i that's a heavy can be heavy
section but it doesn't have to be right it depends on the kid what they can deal
with and and how you can dose like hard subjects we know watch them like we can
really dive here or we can skim the surface and then come back to it later so all
of that. And then I, the book kind of starts,
Well, one of the things that I love in the book is that every chapter has a game
called Would You Rather? And in a Would You Rather game, there's not a right or a
wrong answer. It's kind of like sometimes hard to know, would I rather do this or
do this? And it depends on the day and time. So, you know, even like when you're
driving in a car, some of my very best conversations with my kids driving in a car
because it totally takes
as questions. So you can print it out or you can have some of them in your mind.
And it really leads to interesting conversations like, interesting, tell me more about
that. You're not saying, well, that's a dumb answer or that's wrong. You're saying,
tell me more, right? So games, I really, with parents, because I know you're busy
and overwhelmed and all of that, games are the best way to build trust in families,
especially low.
positive connections. So if you can do these fun conversations, the stories are a
great way to just talk about it and the games. I just, I just can't say that
enough because I think sometimes we feel like we can't sit down and play a game.
But, you know, my kids, they love just, I'm thinking of an animal. I'm thinking of
a character. And it's, you know, the 20 questions. But it sues the nervous system
because there's no expectation. It increases trust.
on a path that you may not have been able to get prior to that. Yeah, I think
games like, would you rather or I'm thinking of or 20 questions or things like that
are games that they're already familiar with. Yes. You know, they play them in
school as ice breakers and they play them in Sunday school and I'll, you know, Girl
Scouts and all those places. So they're familiar with it. But then you can kind of
mix it up and do some serious questions and some fun questions and some just off
the wall, ridiculous questions that will light in the mood.
I didn't recognize at first that my daughter was trying to tell me something.
I was kind of tired and overwhelmed and I wanted to basically like,
oh, I missed you. I'm glad we're all back together. Great conversation. That was
kind of my capacity. Yeah. But I just kind of sat there because I was tired and
it kind of got quiet. And then all the sudden she started talking. And immediately
I went, oh, Oh.
So if you have a parent or a caregiver that is struggling with their own skill set
in these ways, where can they go to learn or practice or kind of build that
ability in themselves so that they can start doing it in their homes? Yeah,
I wish I would have known. We adopted our son,
let's see he's 27 so you know 23 years ago okay and oh boy I didn't know what I
didn't know right so yeah grace for that and I love that now there are a lot more
resources and support and other parents that we can because not everybody gets it
right so we have to have our safe place to fall our safe place to vent where
So I have book lists that I'm happy to share. I'm sure you do too, but, you know,
there's great resources out there now that weren't. There's classes. There is support
groups and podcasts, right? I mean, this works so well in bite -sized doses because
the other thing I want to share with parents is you're going to get overwhelmed if
you try to read that book. Right. But if you take a chapter or some books are
good at just doing like the TLDR at the end, just here's the bullet points. Yeah.
Or a podcast you can listen to for 10 minutes or 45 minutes. But like, bite,
size it down. Don't get overwhelmed. Just kind of keep going and adding to your
toolbox. And then give yourself lots of grace. you know,
we are so good at giving ourselves a lot of guilt and a lot of shame about what
we should have done different and how we made it worse and we're failing and all
that. And so we can't go down that road because it's it's not the truth and it
doesn't help. It makes things worse. So lots of self -compassion. I have recently
been diving into the work of Dr. Kristen Neff. She focuses on self -compassion,
and what I like about her, for a long time, I don't think self -compassion is bad,
but I couldn't internalize it. I could tell other people, but I couldn't really put
it into play. And anyway, I finally was kind of diving into her stuff. And she,
she's a PhD doctor of, you know, psychology and neuroscience, and she,
she comes out from this neuroscience lens. Well, at least for me, if you start
telling me, this is science -backed, this has been researched, we've looked at MRI
scans, and here's what changes the brain and soothes the nervous system and heals,
then we tend to listen harder. And she really talks about the neuroscience behind
self -compassion and how it increases our ability to problem
care for myself and better set boundaries and I don't know,
I just am a better mom, right, once I'm a better person and put this into place.
So that's been a more recent thing this last year that I have really had like bold
moments on. Yeah.
Are you finding this information as helpful for building your family's emotional
connections and sense of safety between you as I am. I'm loving the practical nature
of Ginger's suggestions and I'm going to be trying them around my own dinner table
or on a car ride or in everyday conversation with my kids for sure. If you
appreciate this or any other of the Creating a Family episodes like this,
please leave us, a rating or a review. And then tell a friend what you learned.
These are great ways to help us improve what we do. There are also great ways to
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bring you the best content we can possibly bring you. Thank you so much for
considering a rating rating or review or telling a friend. And now let's go back to
the podcast. So let's explore a few practical strategies for integrating some of
these skills into our daily rhythms and how these strategies could or should change
and grow is our kids change and grow. You talked a little bit about the skill of
kind of understanding my story and where I fit in my family structure. So what
would be, you know, maybe a practical game or a practical interaction that we would
have with our children to exemplify that? Yeah, that's a really good question.
Where my mind went to first before getting specific about that chapter was that
there are a lot of things that you can do on a daily basis that just creates It's
this safe environment.
How are you doing? But there are different ways to do it and teach it that feel
less intrusive. Like if we just ask our kids, how are you doing? Oftentimes, they'll
just say, fine. How is your day at school?
And you're like, oh, great. The conversation just stopped. Right. So getting creative,
like one of the books, the daily check -in talks about weather. And it looks at
like, did you have a rainy day? Did you have a sunny day? Where is there any
lightning or thunder? And so that sparks imagination and creativity.
And when speaking of creativity, anxiety shuts down creativity.
And creativity can shut down anxiety. so it's tricky right but any way that we can
like get those hemispheres talking to each other where we can create you know so i
always for little kids it makes a lot of sense to do something like coloring all
the time but it can look like so much more the middle school and high school kids
love to doodle draw sketch on sneakers, things like that. So getting creative and
how you allow that doodling and coloring, it really does shift the brain.
So coloring is one way that tactile sensory regulation tools of like Plato or clay
or fidgets and all of that. Those are all like ways where there's no pressure to
answer a question, but it starts to help you feel better and that it shifts your
mind and shifts your nervous system. So things like that. But the daily check -in,
one of the daily check -ins that I like to do with my kids is teaching them about
their brains and asking them where they're at in their brain. Like, this is a calm,
soothed brain, but this is when your lid is flipped. And so it's just a hand
signal. I'm not okay. I'm okay because sometimes, sometimes I love to talk,
obviously,
but a lot of our kids don't or aren't there yet. So that's why things like the
doodling or the hand signals or not using words, other ways to communicate,
you know, work really well, adding in music and just ways to be creative or just
things that, again, soothe the nervous system and make them feel safe, but they
don't have to sit and answer a long -winded question or give you a long -winded
answer. It's just so that you know they need extra help right now or they're doing
okay and that they know she wants to listen to me right now.
And so creating that, you know, safe environment. But remind me which one that you
had asked about the understanding Thank you.
their role is or where they fit in, how they're related, and, you know,
how they can be a support. So it's, there are worksheets that map that out because
kids oftentimes are very visual and are very concrete. And I think we take for
granted that they know it and see what you said was so perfect about how that all
of a sudden leads to family stories. yeah right so that they can start to build
their story too this whole idea of family and fitting in we have this biological
need to belong right and that gets really tenuous if we have had more than one
family or different placements or things have changed right so reinforcing this you
belong and this is what it looks like and
Yeah. Sometimes that takes scaffolding ourselves because we could have some, you know,
unresolved trauma of our own, especially if it's a family caregiver situation. How do
you suggest that we pay attention to when it's time to kind of shift up to the
next like age or level of understanding? Yeah, that really is good.
And it really is, There's no like playbook, right? Because one size fits one.
And especially with our kids with neurodivergence, right? It depends on so many
things. And typically with kids who have been adopted and have had early loss and
all of that, they are younger than their chronological age. This was something that
I really had to learn as a mom. And I didn't understand it, like how trauma can
come.
talking to kids or doing activities with kids, it's like their window of tolerance,
how much they can handle before they start to shut down. And we have to recognize
when they do so that, like you said, we back off. We make it lighter. And then
when we're going back in, seeing how far we can nudge. And so I think it's just
like this constant ongoing, watching and attunement. and you start to see when they
handle things, when they achieve something, when they're, you know, meeting these
milestones and growing and having longer conversations or leaning into certain topics
and want to know more. What are their questions really asking? Do they want to know
more or do you need to back off? So I don't have like a pride and true.
this is what it looks like because it is so different. But I love the idea that
you're asking what to look out for because we do and that we do need to shift and
we do need to. That's how we meet the needs is understanding where they're at and
how to do it. So I think especially when kids are in that upstairs part of the
brain and they are open to these conversations, that's where we can really explore
how much more do we need to talk. How many more questions do we need to ask? What
is really, what do they really need and how we get there? So being aware of all
of that. And it strikes me as you're answering that question that some of those
signs that it's time to maybe level up a little bit are also some of the signs
that our strategies are being effective. Yes, exactly. We're increasing their tolerance
for that. Yeah. And typically we know that it's being effective when we see
behaviors decrease, right? Because the need that the behavior was trying to feel is
being met in a different way. And they are learning how to manage those emotions
rather than just react, right? And so I love seeing that,
that we're doing better and we're having less fun.
tired.
And I was like, okay, you're right. I get it, right. So first and foremost,
you're doing more than you think you are, right? We have to, we have to be
compassionate to ourselves and give ourselves grace and know that the mistakes we are
making can help, like if we recognize them and apologize for them and model how to
redo them. Right. Now, I learned this best thing from Dr. Perry and it was there.
you are just this creating this safe place where a kid feels like I can talk to
mom he will listen that that's how we heal so therapeutic dosing right just small
moments of positive let everything else kind of there is a lot that you would be
doing but there's a lot you're doing okay and then the glimmers find the good look
for the good if we're always scanning for the other shoe to drop because we've been
living that and that's kind of how it feels sometimes that'll be the truth but if
we just focus on the good focus on this drink we'll notice it more like joy grows
when it's recognized and repeated so we got to lean in that way now we say that
but i i i'll tell you this is like the hardest thing for me. Yeah. Because I'm
like, yeah, but what about now? And so for me to like set things aside and just
go, you know what, we're just going to focus on the good, celebrate the wins, all
of that. It's hard, but it works. It really does. It just creates more positive
moments. So focus on those things, right? Because we just tend to focus on the
behaviors. We want the behaviors to stop. But if we focus on that relationship and
the good and just those positive moments, it does catch the behaviors.
It does feel the need that the behavior is trying to feel. So connection, safe
relationship, right? Just shifting our expectations. I was so wanting my son to catch
up because he was delayed behind. Yeah.
Yeah, we need the relief.
So, Ginger, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for the book. I'm
very excited. I hope people check it out. It's fun and engaging. I look through,
you know, several of the different exercises and they're not hard to tweak for, you
know, bring into your family dinner table or to a long car ride or, you know,
hanging out, you know, watching a movie together. There's good questions you can ask
each other in the middle of a movie that, you know, might be bringing up stuff for
your family. So thank you for all the time and effort that you put into creating
this book and for bringing it here to us today to kind of help us figure out how
to tweak it for our families, not just the school setting. Oh, you're so welcome.
Thank you for having me.