How to help Clean Up Your Kids’ Mental Mess with Dr. Caroline Leaf [Episode #801]

This week’s topic is: How to help Clean Up Your Kids’ Mental Mess with Dr. Caroline Leaf

I am so excited to have my very special guest, Dr. Caroline Leaf, who is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and PhD in Communication Pathology and a BSc Logopaedics. Listen in as Caroline shares tips for parents on how to manage the guilt that comes with parenting, how to approach the behaviors your children exhibit, building resilience in our children, and so much more.

[BULLETS]

• Research as a scientist and running a household…
• Caroline’s thoughts on how parents can manage the guilt that comes with parenting…
• How to approach the behaviors our children exhibit…
• Trauma and the analogy of the tree branch…
• When your child is closed off and ways to approach them…
• Building resilience in our children…

[FEATURED GUESTS]

About Dr. Caroline Leaf

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and PhD in Communication Pathology and a BSc Logopaedics, specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. Since the early 1980s she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input and has helped hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain to succeed in every area of their lives, including school, university, and the workplace.

I LOVE HEARING FROM YOU!

There are lots of ways to share your responses or questions about the podcast:

• Comment below
• Connect on Twitter: @_kimberlysnyder
• Follow the conversation on my Instagram
• Comment on my Facebook Page
• Ask a question: mysolluna.com/askkimberly

Be sure to Subscribe to the Podcast and follow me on Soundcloud, so you never miss an episode!

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE

You may be really intrigued by podcasts, but you may just know how to listen or subscribe. It’s very easy, I promise! To listen to more than one episode, and to have it all in a handier way, on your phone or tablet, it’s way better to subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Want to know what to expect from other episodes of the “Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder”? My passion is to inspire and empower you to be your most authentic and beautiful self. We offer interviews with top experts, my personal philosophies and experiences, as well as answers to community-based questions around topics such as health, beauty, nutrition, yoga, spirituality and personal growth.

The intention of the Feel Good Podcast is to well…help you really Feel Good in your body, mind and spirit! Feeling Good means feeling peaceful, energized, whole, uniquely beautiful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of your perfectly imperfect life. This podcast is as informative and full of practical tips and take-aways as it is inspirational. I am here to support you in being your very best! I have so much love and gratitude for you. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the community :).

LEAVE A REVIEW ON ITUNES

Listeners really respect the views of other listeners, so your response helps people find good material they are interested in! If you enjoyed the podcast, please tell your friends and give us a rating or review. Many thanks in advance.

[RESOURCES] 

• SBO Probiotics
• Detoxy
• Digestive Enzymes  
• Feel Good Starter Kit
• FREE Gift: 7-Day Meditation Series (DIGITAL COURSE)
• YOU ARE MORE
• Beauty Detox Solutions
• Beauty Detox Foods
• Beauty Detox Power
• Radical Beauty
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• Be a part of the community Join the Feel Good Circle
• Four Cornerstone FREE Guide: Text the word GUIDE to +1-855-741-0602
• Additional resources in transcript

[❤️ FAN OF THE WEEK]

Dr. Caroline Leaf Interview

• Caroline’s Website
• Caroline’s Children’s Book

Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• How to Heal Your Mind by Changing Toxic Thoughts with Dr. Caroline Leaf
• Meditation for Kids: The Benefits and How To Incorporate In Your Child’s Day
• How to Start Your Kids on a Healthy Wellness Routine
• How to Help Our Kids Thrive Through Meditation with Emily Fletcher

​Sponsored by:

• LMNT: Right now LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase, That’s 8 single serving packets FREE with any LMNT order. This is a great way to try all 8 flavors or share LMNT with a salty friend. Get yours at DrinkLMNT.com/FEELGOOD.
• Feel Good Detoxy: Use code: boosthealth for 20% off

Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: 00:01 Hi, loves and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to share a conversation with Dr. Carolyn Leaf with you today who is back on the show for her new book, how to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess. Dr. Carolyn is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist. She is an incredible mother. I have been able to be with her and one of her daughters. She is full of light and love and brilliance and she really has created this wonderful program for helping to break through communication issues, challenges with your child. And I have to say that after we did this podcast together, I tried some of the techniques from the new book with Bubby with my older son who was working through some um, things, a little bit of bullying with our younger son and just some, you know, some things he was, um, feeling, uh, scared of, you know, Ima images and ideas, you know, things like monsters and things.

Fan of the Week

Kimberly: 01:17 And it was so effective, it was so wonderful. So I’m very excited to share this conversation with you today with the wonderful Dr. Carolyn Leaf. Before we get into it though, I wanted to give a shout out to our fan of the week. Her name is ZHanna K, NYC and she writes the best podcast, Kimberly, you have become an anchor when my anxiety feels crippling, your voice has become a soothing reminder that no matter what each day brings, ultimately everything will be okay. Everything is okay. And most importantly, I am okay. Thank you for your guidance. You are a light zana. Kay. Thank you so much for your amazing words. If you could see me now, both of my hands are on my heart. I really took that in. I heard it the first time I read it. So it really has an impact on me right here in real time and I just feel so much love and so much, um, so honored that we get to walk together, you and I sister and it feels very intimate and it feels powerful and all of us together in this community, if you’re listening to this right now, this deep connection that we share is amazing and I am truly grateful for it.

Kimberly:02:40 So thank you so much ZHanna K, NYC and thank you for you listening to this as well. I send you so much love and for your chance to also be shouted out as the fan of the week.

Leave a Review on iTunes

Kimberly: 02:58 Please also just take a moment to please leave us a review. It is, feels very nourishing and it feels wonderful to have this energy exchange and it doesn’t have to be long. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. Please also be sure to subscribe to so you stay in the flow of these wonderful conversations with these incredible humans that are really using their energy to move society forward in different ways. And also for our q and a Thursday shows. Please also share the show with anyone that you think could benefit as an act of um, care and giving and abundance.

You Are More

And remember that our own book, baby, You Are More Than You Think You Are, is out in paperback now. So if you haven’t checked out this practical guide, I encourage you to pick it up for yourself or gift it out. It’s full of a lot of practical tools to ground yourself and your potential in your vitality, in your creativity and abundance right here, right now. So you can check it out wherever books are sold. Alright, all that being said, let’s get into our show today with the incredible brilliant Dr. Carolyn Leaf.

Interview with Dr. Caroline Leaf

Kimberly: 00:00:01 I can’t believe we’re in person. I’ve been waiting for this moment for so long.

Dr. Leaf: 00:00:05 Oh. So I, Kimberly, this is like the highlight of today. I mean, it’s just like <laugh>, we’ve been your fan for years. We’ve spoken over Zoom, but to actually be able to reach out and touch each other and just connect and, I mean, this is just amazing. Thank you. Oh, thank

Kimberly: 00:00:18 You for coming. And there’s so many reasons that I admire you so much. I admire your work. I read your entire book, how to Help your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess, covered to cover, and which we’ll talk about in a moment. But one of the things that has always, you know, we have these, these women and these people that we really admire and you have this incredible family and you have three daughters. You have a son, your hubby, and a lot of the family works together on your neuropsych app and with your research. Yep. I mean, that says so much.

Dr. Leaf: 00:00:52 The whole family’s involved. My husband’s a ceo, my eldest daughter runs Edmond and backend and customer support and all this app support on the backend. And Dominique, who you’ve met, and she’s, she runs production and business development and pr And then my youngest daughter runs, works in the research team with me in content development. And then even our son, he’s a part-time contract. He writes children’s stories with me Wow. While he writing children’s stories on mental health. And so the whole family’s involved

Kimberly: 00:01:17 <laugh>. Wow. And can you share with us a little bit what it was like having four kids doing all this incredible research on the brain and all this, these groundbreaking work? And we’ll link in the show notes to our first podcast together where you were, you know, really highlighting the fact that the mind isn’t just in the brain, right? So you’re doing all this research and when is scientist and then one hand you’re running this household <laugh>.

Research as a scientist and running a household

Dr. Leaf: 00:01:41 Oh, Kimberly. I think it kept me grounded. It keeps children keep you grounded. And they grew up in this, they grew up with these, cause I haven’t ever stopped, I’ve worked my entire life. Like you with your children doing the research all the time. So constantly. And because I’m so excited and passionate and I can see it works. I taught my kids stuff. I brought my kids up with these principles and yes. Taught them this, how to manage their own minds. And so that’s been, and, and it, it’s, it hasn’t been difficult. It has, there’s been times where maybe I’ve been on a conference and I haven’t been able to attend maybe a basketball game or something like that. But the majority of the time I have been there in the moments that are needed. Wow. And it’s quality, not quantity. And you know, my kids often turn around to me and say that they, they’re so happy that I worked because I’m so satisfied. And I’ve been, that’s led them to find their own paths and, and that kind of thing. So I think it’s, you know, when you satisfied in yourself, you can, your children see that so.

Kimberly: 00:02:33 Well, it’s amazing that now your children are in their twenties, they’re more grown. And now you’re writing a children’s book because it seems so fitting in the time we’re in and what’s going on and all the stresses. And it’s on, you know, 24 7 online and there’s so much happening. So is that why you felt called to write this book now?

What has called in Dr. Leaf to write a children’s book

Dr. Leaf: 00:02:52 Definitely the timing is, is right. I’ve been, you know, it’s been in the works in for a few years, but it always kind of went on the back cuz there were so many other projects in front of it. And I just decided last year this has to come out now because of the, the way that mental health has been handled. You know, we constantly told daily more suicides, worse mental health situation that children have ever been in and adolescences. And you know, and I look at the situation, I’ve been in the field for nearly 40 years now doing research and I practiced clinically for 25 and a lot of my patients were two and three years. And you know, from two years was, was when I was, um, my youngest patients all the way through to 85 year olds. And all the principles of what I applied in my practice and my research and um, with my own kids, the time is now to put that out there because we do have a, a, a crisis in mental health.

00:03:41 But it’s not in terms of actually that there’s something that’s now happening that’s different. Mm. Every generation faces the challenges and we have to learn how to deal with those challenges. So the issue that I see is that we are not managing our minds in the challenge. So it’s not the mental health, um, that’s the challenge. It’s the management of the mental health that’s making it worse. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, because, so if look at mental health as always been you humans, we battle with our mind. We are exposed to different circumstances at different stages of our, of mankind’s history. And each, each generation fills a third generation is more unique than the previous world. Yes. Facing more challenge, which is not really true. It’s just different. And, but what we have done differently, this generation is the way that we look at our hum at humanities changed. And, you know, you being such a deeply spiritual person will get this because it’s, and, and I know your your listeners will as well is that we’ve gone from looking at the whole human mm-hmm. <affirmative> and the human story and the context and the fact that it’s not about you. It’s about you in the world. And we’ve gone from that to very, um, very sort of de decentral what taking the mind out of the equation and becoming very neuro centric. And it’s all become around, you know, your symptoms of your weight.

Kimberly: 00:04:52 Right.

Dr. Leaf: 00:04:52 And it’s become brain driven, neuro centric. And, and that worries me. And when you have that approach and you lose the humanity, then you then all the parts of being human crying, the sadness, the happiness, the joy, the anxiety, the depression, which are all normal parts of humanity are suddenly reduced down to something that’s a medical disease.

Kimberly: 00:05:10 That’s right. The labels and saying, oh, you have an issue. You have X, Y, z, the hd, you know, all these conditions that children are placed under. And then it’s sort of like your problem.

Dr. Leaf: 00:05:21 That’s the thing you’ve said the key word. The the child becomes the problem, the brain becomes the problem meanwhile, and you’ve individualized it to something that’s broken inside of them. So you’ve, you’ve devalued the child, you’ve actually with. So it doesn’t to label and diag to diagnose and label, whether it’s a child or an adult, isn’t the way to help someone who’s got a mind issue. It works when it comes to things like me, like your brain or your body in terms of heart disease or, um, a brain tumor or cancer or diabetes, yes. That model works. That medical model, biomedical model works cuz you can take a symptom, you can test it with various different ways, all different types of, you know, other tests, different tests and and so on. And you can diagnose and track it to some sort of biological underlying cause that works for the physical brain and body, but it doesn’t work for the mind.

00:06:08 And what we are doing is dishonoring and reducing mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the, the enormity of someone who is battling with extreme depression or battling with extreme anxiety or a child who’s, you know, showing up with, with symptoms where they’re battling to learn or not sleeping and whatever. If you just label that, you just, you’re missing, you’re missing the whole picture Yes. Of what is going on and dishonoring what the child’s going through. So you kind of reduce it as opposed to making it better. Mm. You know, and Kim, it’s almost like a, like a contradiction because we, we talking more about mental health, which is a good thing. And more and more people are coming out talking about their struggles and, and their children’s struggles and children are talking and that kind of thing. But then the treatment is always, oh, it’s a mental illness. Right?

00:06:49 It’s like diabetes or cancer. And if we talk about that, we take the stigma away. Now the research sees the opposite. The research shows and the research is always 20 years ahead of what’s going on in the public sphere. And the research shows what our gut actually knows. And that’s that, hey, as soon as you label someone who’s going through a huge thing, you reduce the hugeness of the complexity down to something little and to, to get some kind of acknowledgement and validation of what you’re going through. They’re requiring the, the biomedical model is, is saying you have to have a disease label and the stigma’s actually increased. Yes. I mean, just, just think if

Kimberly: 00:07:24 A child, no compassion,

Dr. Leaf: 00:07:25 No compassion. If a child has been fostered and abused and parents have, have abandoned them for whatever their own traumatic reasons are and they’ve gone and they’ve been been abused and you know, the typical sort of kind of pattern that can happen, those children will have learning problems, behavior problems, emotional problems. They’ll have all of those problems. Is it fair to take the symptoms on a surface and then just say, okay, this is a child with bipolar, yeah. Adhd, let’s medicate Maybe there’s a little bit of C B T, which is just a typical, it’s just a technique. It’s not really gonna get to the core issue. Cause that’s not its philosophy. Not that it’s isn’t helpful. You in the right place. CBT can help in the right level of intervention, but you’ve taken a child’s massive story and you’ve stuck it all into one tiny little box and you’ve said that’s it and you’re treat it with medication. Now those medications that they’re treating with aren’t even medications. They’re drugs. And a drug has got a different, different definition to a medication. Right. Me, medication treats a problem, a drug is psychoactive, it just numbs the brain. So therefore it’s not treating the problem, it’s making it worse. And that’s, that’s not honoring the child. That child has got a story to say that they now have that story. Plus they’re broken. You, you’re destroying a person. So that’s not decreasing stigma that’s making the situation worse.

Kimberly: 00:08:39 And you, in hearing you talk, Dr. Carolyn, I think about some of those children, they grow up to be, you know, these labels for adults. We have Oh, you’re a narcissist. Yeah. You think about yourself and then we kind of cast people. There’s all these books about watch out for the narcissist. Yeah. But then we think, well why is that person focused on themselves? Maybe they were neglected, maybe they didn’t have the support. Right, exactly. Instead of just putting any sort of human in this box, like you are an issue seeing the wholeness. Exactly. And and what I love about your work too, it’s very empowering. We talk about trees and the branches, which I’d like to get back into a in a moment. Absolutely. So if, so if a parent’s listening to this and they think, oh my gosh, my, my child is having some issues right now.

00:09:19 You know, lots of kids have different things. No one’s a perfect parent. We don’t. Exactly. It’s not just oh, physical abuse or anything. But, you know, we may say things or we’re not perfect. So the guilt comes in Dr. Karen. Exactly. And we think, oh my gosh, my child’s tantruming a lot. Or I can say for my now seven year old, sometimes he’s a little bit of a bully to his little brother. And I don’t know where it comes from. He just, you know, when there’s a break in the conversation will say, na na poo. Like he taunts. Yeah. And I always say like, that’s not kind. Yeah. Where does that behavior come from? Right. So then as parents, we think, oh my gosh, did I mess up? Is there guilt? How do we reset this? What are the tools? What do we do? Help us? Dr. Caroline <laugh>.

Caroline shares her thoughts on how parents can manage the guilt that comes with parenting

Dr. Leaf: 00:09:59 No, that’s such a great question. And parent guilt is huge. And in fact I’ve got, um, an app called the neuropsych app that I’ve told you about before. We’ve done a whole add-on for parents. And one of one of the neuro cycles is how to deal with parent guilt <laugh>.

Kimberly: 00:10:12 Wow.

Dr. Leaf: 00:10:12 And we can talk, you know, the neuro cycles basically the system I’ve developed that helps you to, uh, get your mind under, under control. It’s

Kimberly: 00:10:19 Very practical.

Dr. Leaf: 00:10:20 Very practical. Yeah. So it’s basically diving right into your mind, you using your wise mind to dr. Use your messy to help you manage your messy mind and change the wiring in the brain. So it’s a very scientific process, but very simple and easy to apply. So in the case of what you’re talking about in terms of parent guilt, and you know why our children do what they do. Well, first of all, they are unique and individual. So we, you know, we can do everything we can as parents, but as we already said, we, we, each of us comes with our own baggage. No matter how our

Kimberly: 00:10:46 Souls have their own imprint. <laugh>. Exactly.

Dr. Leaf: 00:10:49 And you know, you, you think of it, you someone’s daughter and someone’s, you know, you, you’ve, you’ve got your own parents. They, they were, they were one’s parents. So every generation’s bringing down baggage. And we may not realize how much of our unconscious manifests in our parenting. And I say this not to, to, um, to have any guilt on a parent. It’s more for a parent to recognize that you need to honor your own story and work on yourself and recognize that you will, regardless of what you do, you are going to make an impact on your child good and bad.

Kimberly: 00:11:19 When you work on yourself,

Dr. Leaf: 00:11:20 If you don’t, working on yourself or not working on yourself, still

Kimberly: 00:11:23 Don’t have impact.

Dr. Leaf: 00:11:24 Yes. So we impact our children. Yes. So you can try to not do every single parents did and you can try and do all the good things that they did cuz they did good. You know, everyone, most people hopefully have had good and, you know, good and bad, mostly good parenting. And we want to have good parenting with our children, but we’ve got our baggage. Yes. And that comes through in non-conscious ways that our children read. And so we impact our children. So what we have to do is look at the impact on our child and look at our own story and work on ourselves, which then creates an authenticity for the child. So we model for our children. So we are having a bad day, for example, and we frustrated or upset about something that’s happened. We should be able to tell our children, obviously according to the age level and language level and so on, that, hey, I’m, I’m, I’m really feeling sad today.

00:12:07 Yeah. Because this and this happened and this is what I’m gonna do about it and here’s what I’m doing. Sharing, sharing, but sharing in a very organized way where you acknowledge, or you, you, you become aware of your, you know, you, you make them aware and yourself aware of their emotions and feelings and behaviors and what your body feels. Just very, a couple of statements. We can go through this in a little bit more depth, but I’m giving you sort of big, big picture of you. Yes. First to get to answering your question directly. Then you would reflect on that with your child and then you would write it down or do a little action or play a game or something. Something like that visualization type thing. And then you would say, okay, this is what’s happened. This is what I’m gonna do about it.

00:12:42 And then you’d do it. And it could be as simple as, I had a bad day. I’m feeling sad, my tummy saw, um, I I I really didn’t like my day today. And I was very, and I’m sorry I shouted you when I walked in the door and, but this, I did this because this and this and this happened. And, um, let me draw some pictures to show you what I mean. And let me write some of the words down, depending on the age. Wow. All of this is changing the neurochemistry that the neuro neural networks, it’s bringing them up, it’s making them malleable, it’s making them changeable. You actually rewiring your brain through this process I’m describing. Wow. It’s simple, but it’s so profound. Then you would go into saying, okay, well look, this is what all happened. What can I do about it?

00:13:19 Oh, well I can forgive that person. I can maybe think they had a bad day and what I can do now certain and, and play a game with you or go for a walk in the garden to, um, calm myself down. Now that’s quick. It took me under a minute to explain it. I went through five steps. I gathered awareness, I reflected, I did some kind of right act, draw kind of third step process where you bring all out of chaos and you bring things from the spiritual level to the conscious level. Then you can see what you’ve focused on. Um, you can see that what’s what’s come up from the spiritual non-conscious level. And then you can have a little action which closes the activity. Now when you talk about your son, the oldest son willing, the little son, you can teach that child, you can go through the same process.

00:14:03 So two parts. I built up that whole foundation to answer this question like this. First of all, as parents, we need to recognize we impact our children. We need to deal with our own stuff and model for them. We need to recognize that we can honor, um, honor our own story, but at the same time recognize our impact on our children. Mm-hmm. So there’s unintentional impact on our children. Now, I’m not saying that he’s bullying because of anything you’ve done, we just don’t know Yeah. What your child’s being exposed to because they’re exposed to all kinds of things that you don’t even know about. Even though they’re young still. Also, they have their own person. They see things in their own way. So you gotta kind of separate out yourself from, and your story and your, the impact on your child as your child grows, they have the right to honor and respect and, and understand that you are one someone’s child and also you’re a human and own right.

00:14:51 Experiencing life and deal with the impact of parenting on them. Yes. And at the same time, you’re teaching your ch your seven year old. Yes. You have your own reasons for acting like this and there’s something, and we are gonna help you understand why. But at the same time, you need to honor the impact on your brother. Can you see what I’m saying? It’s always two things. So you wanna validate and honor mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we are not validating a bad behavior. We are validating that that’s not who you are. I know that’s not who you are, but you’re showing up with us bullying. Um, and I’ve seen it happen quite often. And let’s talk about this. I’m not crosses you. Um, let’s do a little neuro cycle. And then you, so you, then what you do is you create a, you give a child a technique that is going to do all this fancy science and we can do a simple explanation of the science.

00:15:34 But you would literally tell what is your, what was that son’s name? Emerson. Emerson. So you say, okay, Emerson, let’s do a little neuro cycle together. And they love this. And so let’s talk about you, you, you, you, you were bullying your brother. You said these things. So that’s the behaviors. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, how do you feel when you do this? Mm-hmm. Just tell me what this I’m not crosses you dad’s not crosses you. We, we, we just wanna help you understand because how do you, you know, how do you feel Then that’ll stimulate a quiz. Something like, I I feel a bit sad. I I wasn’t kind or something. Maybe not yet, but initially then, so you wanna find the behaviors, then you want, you get the emotions. Uh, maybe he’s, I’m irritated, I’m frustrated, I’m, I’m sad, whatever. They’ll let them come up constantly stressing.

00:16:15 No judgment. We just, this is not who you are. I can see you doing this. You gotta keep reinforcing that so that they don’t. Cuz a child who’s young up until the age of, between sort of up to the age of 10, they will think as soon as we discipline them or say something’s wrong. And you’ve gotta discipline them. You’ve gotta teach them what’s right and wrong. But they think it’s you. They, they think it’s them as a person that you as a self-esteem, they should. Yes. Yes. So you they think, oh, mommy thinks I’m a bad person. Right. So you wanna stress, Hey, you’re not a bad person, I know that, but I you are bullying and it is hurting your brother. See I validate your story, but it’s impacting. See? Wow. Validating. Impacting. So let’s talk first of all about you and why you think you’re bullying.

00:16:55 So when you’re bullying, this is what I’m seeing, what are you see? You know, so you can give the behavior and what that you seeing as a parent. And then let him describe behavior. These are the emotions I see. What do you see or he can say at first, then you wanna say, how does that feel in your body? Oh, um, my, maybe they’ll say something like, my tummy used to, or I feel tight or I wanna jump or something. Whatever. Something. So they understand that the behavior in the emotion and the physical are attached, which is cuz mind is embodied. It’s all around and in us. And then perspective, how are they, that’s a hard word, but you just say to the child, how do you feel in this? How you, how you do? You see this in the moment? You can take two pairs of sunglasses.

00:17:31 Mm. A broken pair and a shin pen. You can say, you know, put you, I think you’re wearing these broken ones because when you bullying, you’re being unkind and it’s, um, it’s, it’s like something that you’re looking at is, you know, you’re looking at this thing in a different way still no judgment. So all we’ve done is gathered awareness of emotions, perspective and bodily sensations. Simple kind of statements, nonjudgmental. Now we say, okay, now let’s think about why, why do you think you feel those emotions? Why do you think you’re bullying? Why do you think you feel this in your body? Why do you think you are looking at then? And they, and you help them. You may have to help prompt, they can play with the toy. Very good with the children to, um, let them enacted if they, if they can’t say it, you could even model and say, especially your younger one, um, the younger children.

00:18:15 Oh, I see. Brainy is bullying and brainy is my little toy. Oh. That I’ve created. And we can take it. We are gonna have, we’ve got this little toy that’s got a, it’s made that looks like a brain and it’s this little character. And um, we are gonna have it in all different, um, in different forms. But at the moment it’s a general one with a smiley face. But it’s a contact point for children that when they go and get brainy, they wanna talk about something that’s deep. This is my point of contact with, with my, with my parent. So it’s a great way of them. So they can, they don’t wanna talk about bullying, which is okay, say, okay, well brainy was bullying. Emerson Bray was bullying. What’s your little son’s name again? Moses. Moses was bullying Moses. And that’s, and there’s another toy.

00:18:51 So now you take them away from them. You let them Yes. Multiple perspective advantage, you distance it. Which is excellent because now they’re go into a much kinder mode. When we go into that mode of, of um, not transferring onto a Tori or something else, you can analyze it more effectively. So you could go through that same process if they don’t wanna do it with you. Okay, I see Emerson, or you can change the name. You could say Bray’s bullying Bray’s brother and Bray got mad and Bray said this and Bray said that and Bray fills this and Bray’s got us all tummy. You can model that. And then they jump into the game and they may take over and describe it. And then, so you see there’s two ways of approaching it. But all the time it’s validation, acknowledgement. That’s not you. But what you’re doing is not right.

00:19:30 But it’s impacting. So you’re going to get awareness of the four different signals, behaviors, emotions, body sensations, perspective. You’re going to then go into the next step, which is why the, why are we doing this? To start finding some more detail with the toy or just connect. It might swap between the two. As you’re conversing with a child, then you say, okay, can we wanna draw this or should we act this out? Or, so the third step, some kind of transference externally when they can write, it’s great. You, I’ve got a system where you can, it’s called bubble cogs, where you can get children that are very young to learn how to put things on paper and a way that draws the spiritual and unconscious, unconscious art. It’s phenomenal. Um, but otherwise you can act it, you can visualize it, you can draw pictures, you can have a box of pictures that children could take out of a box and stick on a piece of paper to describe the situation.

00:20:17 The important thing is you’re bringing, putting your mind and brain on onto paper on or in some kind of enactment. And that brings all out of chaos and starts, it’s bringing things from unconscious and bringing things up. And that’s how you’ll find the cause behind the bullying. And, and that’s how the shift happens. That’s how the shift happens. And then you see, and you look at all of this and say, oh wow. So look at this brain you, this brain that, oh, I see that, that that little person at school has actually been doing that to you. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, or brainy is someone at school scaring, brainy and you didn’t know how to talk about it. So you brainy was teasing his brother. Um, what can we do about it? And then they say, yes, they’ve been, and you found out maybe they’ve been bullied at school or Right.

00:20:56 The teachers yelled at them or a cousin something or a friend or who knows, you know, we or they saw something on TV that they didn’t know how to process. But this, these three steps will bring that out. Wow. So the fourth step then is to say, okay, we see what’s happened now what do you think we can do about this? Mm. Can can we see the impact on, on um, Moses, can we see that it’s made him sad and made him feel can. And that’s where he’ll start saying, yeah, it makes me feel kind of bad. It’s not kind, it’s whatever. So you can say, well what could we do instead? What do you think you need it to? And then with a child that’s bullying, it’s pent up energy that they haven’t processed. It’s some kind of big or small trauma depending on how severe the bullying is and how ongoing and the, what the pattern is.

00:21:35 It’s in energy inside that comes out. Yeah. In this negative way. So you’ve got this energy. What do you think you should do when you feel sad? What, what do you think you can do? Can you come and talk to me? Can you pick up brainy? Can we do a neuro cycle together? Can, if you’re at school and that person bullies you, can you talk to the teacher? Can you go away? Can you say a little prayer to protect yourself? Can you, um, so you will, yes. And then you first step practice it and then give them, maybe they take Brandi to school. Maybe they take a little crystal to school. Maybe they take a favorite picture to school. And when the child does tease them or something, they can then fill the little picture in the pocket or feel them little crystal so they, they’ve got that anchors them. That little thing anchors them back in that moment. I’ve taken quite long to you unpack, oh

Kimberly: 00:22:18 No, this is so powerful. Please

Dr. Leaf: 00:22:19 Ask me any questions if anything didn’t make sense. Cause I say it a lot, <laugh>.

Kimberly: 00:22:23 Oh no, it’s so powerful. And you know what Dr. Carolyn, what I love about it, like you said, is this validation. Cuz I think children really need to be seen. And you know, there’s other research I’ve read about how high neglect is across Oh yeah. The country in the world. So this seen this of not just saying, oh, look at your bad behavior. This is terrible what you’ve done, go to your room or you are grounded, you know, whatever it is. Instead of, those big feelings are inside the child that we’re never seen. So I think that’s really powerful. And I also love how there’s science, which I love to delve into in just a moment about, you know, um, per mahana talks a lot about introspection being one of the greatest agents of change. Absolutely. If we don’t reflect, if we don’t, you know, introspect about why or what happened, then we just continue that pattern.

00:23:10 Exactly. And we continue to feel unfulfilled or, you know, chaotic or unhappy or whatever it is. So teaching this first to ourselves. Yes. Which is why I love, you know, you have books and programs and your app, the neuropsych for us, but then also giving these tools to children is really powerful. So before we get into the science, um, Carolyn, uh, you know, again going back to if our child is exhibiting behaviors that we’re like, oh gosh, you know, we really want this to change in your work, can you, have you seen at any point, and you’ve had some incredible stories in, in this book as well about, you know, child, a son, a little boy that had been adopted from foster care, incredible trauma, but we can turn it around. Yes. Sometimes it takes time, very lengths of time. But for any parents listening out there saying, oh wow, my kid has crazy tantrums. One of my mom’s friends said, her daughter’s screams all day. Whatever it is, we have to come into this moment and bring these tools for change to start happening.

How to approach the behaviors our children exhibit

Dr. Leaf: 00:24:10 You’ve really got the, you That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. So we can, we can teach a child from as young as two how to manage their mind, which is phenomenal. So the mind, as you and I both have had this conversation before, and I know your listeners are very open to sort of deeper spiritual things. The mind is not the brain. The brain is a physical organ that when you die, just disintegrates. Yes. The fact that the brain can do anything, which you know, is, is because you’re alive. So you are conversation now, us being alive, us being able to process the listeners this ability to think, feel, and choose in response to life experiences. That is, that is the mind in action. And the mind is all around us. Inside us makes our heart pump, makes the blood flow, makes the lungs work, makes a genetic expression.

00:24:50 Everything is run. So when you die, that stops. And so when a child understands, and you can teach a child of two this, and in the book I give you the language and description. You saw that when you, when you read through it on how to, um, an idea of how you can adapt it down to a child. But essentially when a child understands, and that’s why I created brainy to the tour. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I’ve got images through of brainy throughout the book in different forms. And we have a coloring book now coming out as well, which has got all the different brainy doing different things. And we’ve got a story book. The first one’s about bullying. Mm. Um, and how, and a whole story creating universe of brain. What you’re doing is you’re giving a child, um, a point of contact as I’ve mentioned before, where they can say, see, okay, the brain, this brain knee, I can change what’s inside the brain.

00:25:31 That’s why we made the money head of brain. But I’m doing that. So that helps them to realize that the the mind is external to the brain. Mm. But uses the brain as a substrate, you know, to use scientific language for us adults. The mind is using the brain as a substrate. Wow. And the mind puts all of our experiences at bullying at school, the conversation that we having now, the, your child playing outside with, with the, your, your, your carer, your caregiver, et cetera. All of that experience is being built into the brain. But we can control how it’s built in. But sometimes we, you know, laugh, 95% of what’s going on around us is going into the non-conscious level, which is our deeper spiritual level. Mm-hmm. And so a lot of stuff is going in that is not conscious. So we consciously putting, building stuff into our brain, consciously aware of experiences, but about 95% is just what’s going on around us.

00:26:20 And most of that is okay, but it depends on what kind of environment you’re immersed in. So most of the time, a good large percentage is okay, it’s the trees outside, it’s the conversations going around you, but sometimes it’s not. And things go in that your child overhears something that they don’t understand and they try to better hit them in a way because of the way the tone or something like that. And it’s gone into the brain. Now, the non-conscious, which is your deep scientific word for this deep spiritual level, which is highly most intelligent or wisdom, it’s connected to the universe, it’s connected to God, whatever you, whatever term you want to say. And we have all the physics, well we, we are developing the physics to actually explain even using things like Einstein’s um, laws of relativity and Sir Roger Penrose’s mathematical, uh, what I’m saying is these physics, this is not just the, this science and spirituality are one.

00:27:09 Yes. I love that. They all one, they’re two sides of the same queens. I can speak all the spiritual language and at the same time I can give you the science equivalent. Incredible. And that’s what we need to start seeing. It’ll open our minds to so much more. So when, when we do this neuro cycle, we tapping into that incredible wise level and we drawing on the wisdom of the universe and we processing that in our own unique way and what we can. So that’s all of this mind stuff. So mind has these different levels, the conscious mind that we very much operating in now. Cause you’re awake and connecting and focused on unconscious mind. However, he is also working at the moment. And it works 24 7. The conscious mind doesn’t, the conscious mind sleeps when you sleep. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the subconscious is a bridge between the two.

00:27:51 So it’s awake when you’re awake. So, and it’s sort of sleepy when you’re asleep, but it’s just a bridge. So what our unconscious is doing, what our spiritual level is doing is checking out everything that the 95% was absorbed and it’s on our sides, got our back. It’s our wisdom. And it’s looking for things that are potentially problematic to our functioning as a human. And that disrupt love. And what that, what it does is, and a lot of that’s happening all day, but most of it happens at nighttime. And then when we are awake, all of it’s kind of primed and we get, uh, it gets, uh, the most, um, IM imminent or the most prominent or the most dominant or important, whatever word you want to use that are disrupting function, are pushed through the subconscious, into the conscious mind. And they come up as signals.

00:28:34 And those signals, wow. Are what you’re say and do. Your behaviors, your emotions, your feelings in your body sensations and your perspective. So those four categories, the signals, the, so the experience is packaged as the, as these four signals. So if we can train ourselves, if we can train ourselves to tune into the signals and teach our children to tune into the signals that are, that are how we show up. So the bullying, the not in the stomach, the um, the anger or frustration and the, uh, I don’t like what’s happening at this moment. I’m, I’m unhappy with what happened at school. So I’m transferring this to my brother. Yes, they don’t have that language, but it’s in the non conscious mind if, if we can teach our children to tune into those signals, the minute you tune into them through the gather awareness step, which is that first step, you are pulling the non-conscious into the conscious.

00:29:27 You are paying attention to what’s been popping through the sub. So it pops up through the subconscious, your subconscious saying, Hey, pay attention through the signals. Pay attention through the signals. A lot of the times we just ignore the signals. All, like you said, that’s bad behavior. Don’t do that. Go to your room. So what you’ve told the child at that stage is, it could be bad behavior. You don’t wanna hurt your brother. But putting, sending them to their own room or is saying, um, is basically saying, well, you’re so bad. There’s no point in even trying to help you manage this process. You, you’re not even worth trying to help. It’s better to say, Hey, come here. Let’s work through this. Let’s, first of all, we don’t hurt. There’s some basic protection you put in place. You don’t hurt, you don’t bully, you don’t make someone else cry.

00:30:05 But let’s talk about call names. Yes, call names. But let’s sit together and talk about the separate the children and then work with the one. Obviously it’s someone comforting, the upset one and then the other one who’s been the perpetrator to sit with them and to work through, um, the process as I’ve described. So as you gather, when as you are pulling the con consciousness, the conscious in your brain, the network starts shifting. It goes from being very tight. These neural trees that look like trees, the branches are all connected. If I go into your beautiful garden, I’m not gonna find trees, branches floating. Every branch is connected to another branch. It’s pretty difficult to pull a branch off the, I have to use quite a lot of force. Yes. So if you think of it like that, when the tree is in the unconscious now the tree being the thought and the thought, and if you think of a tree’s got roots, it’s got branches.

00:30:55 So the experience that that that we have goes into the roots. Cause that’s the source. Then it grows into the branches, which is our interpretation of that experience. So our brain is filled with trees of experiences that, and each tree has got roots, which is the source. And there’s lots of roots, lots of memories, all the details and lots of branches. Yes. And that combination is a thought tree. And it looks like a, it’s a protein structure in the brain and chemical structure in the brain. And if so, in the mind, that’s what it looks like. A tree in the brain, in the mind. It looks like a wave, a gravitational wave. It’s like a for want of trying to give people if, um, an understanding. Think of when you’re watching a podcast or something and you see the little lines jumping up and down.

00:31:37 Yes. <laugh>, it’s maybe a visual. Yeah. That’s, that’s kind of like a visual for um, what the mind, how the mind stores the memory, if it’s a good experience, says, um, memories group together to form thoughts. If it’s a good experience, it’s going to be a beautiful, colorful, nice wave. If it’s a toxic experience like bullying or something, it’s gonna be a jiggly wave or ugly wave, whatever inside the mind, in the brain, it’s going to be either beautiful green tree or it’s gonna be an ugly, very much alive, scary looking tree just to give you something to hang onto in your body. That made me also store slightly different. So this is all trauma. It’s all exactly every good, good and bad. The good stuff stored like this. Right. And the trauma. So the good stuff’s all the green trees and the nice green vibrations. And they’re not green. I’m just saying green for nice. So they’re feeling the Yes. And then in the body, we also store it because the mine’s embodied and it’s stored in what we call microtubules in the brain and the body. It literally is in your body. It’s in every cells experience 37 to a hundred trillion cells and restoring it as a vibration inside a protein inside your cells.

Kimberly: 00:32:39 What, you know, it’s like sometimes we hear these spiritual things like, oh, it’s, it’s in you we’re embodied, but there’s science to it, which

Dr. Leaf: 00:32:46 Is so’s behind

Kimberly: 00:32:46 It. But but tell us Dr. Caroline, if people have had trauma, we’ve all had trauma, we’ve all had these memories. Your work is saying we can change the trees. We can we reco. Contextualize. Exactly. We can help our children who maybe they were bullied or something happened and that, you know, it just, it makes us so sad as parents. Yeah. Because we don’t get to control everything. Or maybe we did, you know, have a not great experience. They witnessed something on, you know, I don’t know, a movie. Yeah. Or someone raise their voice or whatever and tools to reset

Trauma and the analogy of the tree branch

Dr. Leaf: 00:33:15 We can,

Kimberly: 00:33:16 We contextualize

Dr. Leaf: 00:33:17 You can help them with that. Yes. So the

Kimberly: 00:33:19 Tree branch, back to your analogy, how do you make it healthy? You talk about this in the book, and I loved this part about, um, making the trees healthy again, <laugh>. I know. It’s the analogy we can really exactly understand.

Dr. Leaf: 00:33:30 So simplify this whole thing. I’ve given us a lot of co let, let’s go really simple. So the, the child has an experience as the experience starts like a seed in the ground. Yes. And then it grows as, as the detail of the experience of people saying the different words of things happening. Those are all the little roots growing in the ground. And that’s the source then that’s being immediately being processed through the tree trunk and then into the branches. The branches are then the child’s interpretation of that situation. And then that then is how they show up in the behaviors and emotions and so on. Does that make sense? Yes.

Kimberly: 00:33:57 So yes, it’s coming up now.

Dr. Leaf: 00:33:58 There you go. So now that’s build a toxic tree. So let’s say that, let’s say that Emerson was being teased persistently by someone at school. So that’s the experience that’s in the roots. It’s an ugly, toxic tree. And his interpretation is, I’m, I’m a bad person. I dunno how to deal with this and I’m going to take it out on my brother. I’m gonna do to my brother what’s done to me subconsciously and unconsciously, he’s trying to say, Hey mom, something’s going on in my life. Yeah. I need to catch your attention. I dunno how to say what’s happened to me. So I’m gonna do it. See, and I’m not saying that that’s what happened. Sure. But that’s an example of what could have happened. Or he saw something on tv. But there’s some kind of root there that’s resulted in that type of behavior. So that tree, you can, and, and this is a simple thing. We’ll take a complex one in a moment. So that little tree, by you going through those five steps, as you gather awareness, you pull the tree into the conscious mind, plus you weaken the branches. So now instead of them being stuck hard, they’re all weak, you can just touch them and they start falling off. In other words, you can rewire the tree

Kimberly: 00:34:55 Because the process is bringing it up. So there’s a sense of separation, not identifying with it.

Dr. Leaf: 00:35:00 Exactly. And it’s, the awareness is actually changing the neural network. Wow. Because otherwise the neural network is, is um, it’s, it’s stuck. It’s driven. It’s, it’s, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s fixed. But by being aware of it and going to these five steps, you weaken the neural network and you eat, rebuild. So essentially what we tell children is that, cause you, you, your story will never go away. That child teasing, you will never go away. I mean, the child will the

Kimberly: 00:35:22 Experience, experience,

Dr. Leaf: 00:35:23 Sorry, the story that’s happened, it’s the past, but you can change what it looks like. So you’re changing your tree because if you keep that tree, you’re gonna keep having these bad behaviors and emotions and things that make everyone upset and impact you and, and, and your family or whatever. But you can actually go and feed the roots. So you can go and look at the roots and you see they’re kind of all rotten. And you can take plant food and you can put plant food on and you can heal. Amazing. And as you heal the roots that ugly tree shrinks and becomes small. And in its same tree starts, most of it becomes green and healthy. So eventually that, that horrible experience has shrunk down to a teeny little single branch on this beautiful green tree. So you know what happened, but this is how you now function. Wow. And that’s what I mean, you can recon,

Kimberly: 00:36:08 Oh, this is <laugh>. This is so amazing. Um, and I tell me if

Dr. Leaf: 00:36:11 It’s too much science.

Kimberly: 00:36:12 No, no. I love the imagery in the book as well. Um, with brainy and also with the Trees. Trees to really understand this because I love working with analogies too. Particularly water waterfalls and things. So my question, doctor, is let’s say, you know, I bring this to Emerson, or you’ve had children and they don’t really wanna talk about things. At first, let’s say they kind of shut down. They’re like, because sometimes I ask them, how was your day at school? We’re driving back from school. And he’s like, because almost in the past for him, he’s like, eh, I don’t wanna talk about school anymore. Yeah. So my questions are what do we do if the child is a little bit more close at first? And number two, let’s say this inci incidents in in our family where he’s teasing a bit. Is it me poking around like what happened? Or is it more like, you know, like there’s a, a way for an actual incident where he’s, you know, I know something happened and then it’s sort of then we can go into something more tangible. You know, because sometimes I feel like it’s hard for him to kind of go in the past he’s like, I don’t wanna talk about it. It’s boring or whatever. Maybe it’s just a defense mechanism.

When your child is closed off and ways to approach them

Dr. Leaf: 00:37:14 Oh, absolutely. So you’ve gotta judge your child. Yeah. So first of all, and you lay out a very valid issue. A child when they come home from school, generally don’t wanna talk about the things unless it’s really a big thing. And then you can say, Hey, I can understand you. I can see you’re not just that you, you’re not happy. And when you’re ready, we can talk about brain and do a neuro cycle. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And that’s why I’m saying give, give a child a tool. Children respond to a tool. If they know, okay, when I’m ready, there’s a safe space and there’s like something I can do. I’m not gonna get into trouble. I’m not gonna me feel bad about me. Yes. They’re not gonna consciously say those things. But so what I’ve tried to do is give you a system that creates that space for when you’re ready.

00:37:50 So sometimes it’ll all come pouring out when they get in the car. Sometimes it takes a while with boys. I can give you some advice with boys is when they’re moving they’ll talk. Yes. So very, so if you take them for a walk through your garden or go and, you know, do, do like walking is an excellent way of, that’s what I used to do with my son. And if I want my husband to talk about stuff, we’ll go for work. That movement, it’s not, it’s also not just males, it’s also females, it’s any gender, um, can respond. But I have found, um, just my experience in my family. My boys respond better too than my girls. Now my son is gay that he identifies as as male. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And he’s still like when he, when he, to get him going, we go for a little walk, then it stop some physical

Kimberly: 00:38:29 Movement.

Dr. Leaf: 00:38:29 Yes. And then we can, but that may not be, but I would definitely do something that is something that they enjoy. You know, it’s really important for them to unwind, to judge the timing and to mm-hmm. <affirmative> and to invite them into the process. And if you don’t get your five steps today and they don’t wanna do it, and if you just maybe sometimes model and say, Hey, like I know something happened and I know this is not, you know, how you feel and you know, and who you, I mean who you are, that’s the stressful you wanna stress. This is not who you are. You sh you’re doing these things because something’s happen. I understand that. I love you. I for you what you’re doing what hurting someone’s not good. But I know that that’s not you. Yes. So I wanna help you make sense of what’s going on. You know, that’s, you find the right language for your child, but that’s what you wanna do. And find that the right time in the space. Would

Kimberly: 00:39:11 You say bad time is not the right time because he’s settled at bad time? But I don’t know if bringing up issues at bad time. It’s,

Dr. Leaf: 00:39:17 It’s a not a bad place. It’s good because you don’t want them to go to sleep with this unresolved issue cuz it can affect their sleep and can come out in, cause your brain does housekeeping at night with the mind. So the mind goes in and cleans up the brain. And that’s why we have dreams and nightmares. And so it’s a good time to, even if you don’t resolve the whole issue, but is to, if they feel they wanna talk about it. But what you need to do is to sort of judge it. The room is a sacred space. So you want to make sure that if, if they’re talking about something scary and they start getting upset, you don’t want that impinge on the bedtime experience. So you maybe wanna say, you know, should we move to, if they, if it seems like they wanna talk, should we go sit in my bed or should we go sit in the lounge or should we go sit on your favorite chair or Yes. Something or look at the moon or something. So you can maybe remove them from the bed unless they’re comfortable but you don’t want to associate, um, scary stuff or traumatic stuff with somewhere that they sleep.

Kimberly: 00:40:07 Right. Right.

Dr. Leaf: 00:40:09 So you maybe want allocate. So I always advise parents to have a space in the house if it’s, and make it accessible. So if you need to get to it at night Yeah. You can get to it. So maybe there’s a special chair or a bench or something that you, that you buy. Go buy a little cushion or something. That’s and brain is there. And your box of, because I’ll give lots of ideas in the book. Four

Kimberly: 00:40:26 Yes. Up, yes. Shoebox shoe boxes. I love it.

Dr. Leaf: 00:40:29 No, maybe create an area in your house. That’s what I would do in school.

Kimberly: 00:40:31 I’m gonna do that with Moses, by the way. Cuz he loves little trash. Tangible Yes. And little pictures and just giving him some language even at, you know, two going on three. Yes.

Dr. Leaf: 00:40:42 You give him and giving him the language. So that’s where the pictures are. Great. So for those of you that are listening in, what, what, what I recommend in the book and what Kimberly’s talking about is cut out lots and lots of pictures, even if they have pictures you’ve colored in. Keep them in shoe boxes in the four categories. So emotion pictures, behavior pictures, perspective pictures, which is how you look at life. And then bodily sensation. And then when you do this kind of work, you can, you can get the children to pull out the pictures and, and they can draw and whatever. So you’ve got the, so have a corner in your house where there’s a chair, where the boxes are there where you’ve got brainy or other toys. If you don’t use brainy, where you’ve got this book,

Kimberly: 00:41:19 I’m so excited. They

Dr. Leaf: 00:41:20 Associate It’s your place to be

Kimberly: 00:41:22 So practical. Yeah.

Dr. Leaf: 00:41:23 It’s practical. We, we need to think of, think of what you’ve done, you’ve created where we are now doing this podcast. You’ve created a haven for yourself. This is where you pray, where you write your books or you do, it’s very, very, it’s your precious. We don’t, we we honor the space. Do we, you get that? That’s, a lot of people have that when someone goes to the gym, it’s their, it’s their space where they go and do something specific. Do you see what I’m saying? Yes. We wa we also need to create spaces for mind work because our mind is, is 19 is pretty much driving everything about who we are. Messy mind, messy brain, messy body, messy life. So we should be allocating the same kind of thinking patterns to our mind as we do to having a, a workout in a gym. Having a haven like you have here. Do you see what I’m saying? Create, yes. A space, a dedicated space. A dedicated safe space that when you sit on that bench, there’s a concept called bench therapy that started in Zimbabwe, which is where I was born. And it became one of the most effective mental health programs at Harvard and Kings University that a study on so effective, it hasn’t been used because no one can make money out of it. You know, it’s

Kimberly: 00:42:24 Go to a space, but

Dr. Leaf: 00:42:25 It’s good. Go to a space. It was this granny who sat on a bench and people, it was a safe place. You could say anything there. No judgment, no just love. Wow. Just listen and love and help people work through. So I adopted that kind of concept. Wow. And I ran family therapy in South Africa and I tested this research science. I tested the scientifically. And that’s where this advice is coming from. It’s a scientific concept. Science is spiritual. It’s a very wise concept. And

Kimberly: 00:42:49 But it’s coming from your experience.

Dr. Leaf: 00:42:50 It’s coming too experience. It’s

Kimberly: 00:42:51 Coming from working with

Dr. Leaf: 00:42:53 Thousands, these people

Kimberly: 00:42:54 And and also with, with your daughters Dr. Carolyn. You know, you imagine like, oh wow, three girls, there’s a lot of hormones. They’re starting to get their one boy

Dr. Leaf: 00:43:01 <laugh>.

Kimberly: 00:43:02 So is this, was this process and you know, as we mentioned this book is, is new, but your, you know, with your daughters, with your son.

Dr. Leaf: 00:43:10 Oh, this all my life experience is, is

Kimberly: 00:43:12 This is how you kept this. How the house,

Dr. Leaf: 00:43:15 This is how I, I kept. Yes. And you know, one of my my kids, if you ask them, one of the things that, and, and I know they’ll say this, you can, you can, you can even check this with them, is they’ll say, you taught us to think and that’s

Kimberly: 00:43:26 And feel.

Dr. Leaf: 00:43:27 Yes. So with the thinking, when you think you are feeling, so if you think of the word, think thinking incorporates thinking. Thinking leads to feeling, feeling leads to choosing. So you can’t just, when you’re thinking, you are feeling and you are choosing and you’re thinking, feeling and choosing about those four signals. Sorry, I bashed my ring. Oh

Kimberly: 00:43:43 No, that’s okay. <laugh>, well edit that.

Dr. Leaf: 00:43:46 Um, so you’re thinking, feeling and choosing, that’s the mind in action thinking,

Kimberly: 00:43:50 Feeling.

Dr. Leaf: 00:43:50 And you think, you feel, you choose, you can’t do those separately. They, they flow together. You’re thinking, feeling, choosing, thinking, feeling, choosing, thinking, feeling, choosing. Wait,

Kimberly: 00:43:58 Dr. Calan take, take me through, let’s say my my friend’s daughter who’s just screaming all the time, right? Because then we’re saying, oh look at this ba like, run us through the steps again. Cuz it’s so like when you talk about the messiness, cuz sometimes we, we show a behavior to a child, we bring it up and they feel guilty. They shut down, they keep doing it. Let’s run it through. Yeah. How would

What to do when a child is screaming all day

Dr. Leaf: 00:44:18 You show a behavior

Kimberly: 00:44:19 This seven year old, she’s screaming all day,

Dr. Leaf: 00:44:21 Screaming and driving. Is it every day, all day? Is it periodically? Are there times where like, she eats and goes to school and that kind of thing where she’s not screaming?

Kimberly: 00:44:28 I’m, I’m not sure if it’s happening at school, but the mom told me that at home

Dr. Leaf: 00:44:32 A lot of the day, there is

Kimberly: 00:44:33 Tempera, lot of screaming.

Dr. Leaf: 00:44:35 So there’s, so that is, how old is she?

Kimberly: 00:44:38 She’s seven now. Okay. We were in the same mom’s group.

Dr. Leaf: 00:44:40 Okay. So there’s definitely, that’s, as we, we all recognize that’s not a normal behavior. Right.

Kimberly: 00:44:45 Like high-pitched screaming.

Dr. Leaf: 00:44:46 Yeah. So there’s something definitely going on there. So, um, I don’t know if they’ve been for any kind of interventional therapy or anything like that, but if what they, what I would do if it was my situation was actually I had a friend who child used to do this too. Right. And, um, she, in desperation, she said, can you just help me with this? Actually reminded me of that situation. So we took that, I didn’t have brain at that stage, so we just took the child’s toys and we just sat down and start and, and, um, she kept quiet cause I was a stranger. So that did help have an external person. And she stopped at that moment. And we just initially, um, I, I did the five steps. Gather awareness, let me say them first. Gather, yes. Awareness, reflect

Kimberly: 00:45:23 Zel. Let’s do it in real time. Gather awareness means we noticed you’re screaming.

Dr. Leaf: 00:45:27 Yes. We noticed you’re screaming. Okay. We, I see that you’re screaming.

Kimberly: 00:45:30 So calling attention to the behavior. Yes.

Dr. Leaf: 00:45:32 Okay. And no judgments. It’s okay. It’s safe. It’s a first. So just set the scene by doing brain preparation. So let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s reverse engineer that. Yes. Let’s start again. First thing is sit down and create a safe space. So they, to choose like her favorite place in the house or get something that’s beautiful, like some, something that’s environment, that’s safe and peaceful and beautiful that, you know, she likes. Maybe there’s a toy she likes or something like that. So you do that first, then you, so the environment and then some, maybe some breathing. If you can get a child to breathe with you just in an out, you know, we know what that does to the brain. Yes. I mean, that’s one of your levels of expertise. Children respond very well to three, seven breathing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So in for three, you put the hand on the stomach and let’s make a stomach pull up. And then let’s blow up the balloon. Yes. For seven counts. And if you do that six to nine times, you push so much oxygen into the front of your brain and you that you will actually calm down your neurophysiology and get a lot of balance in the brain that will make them a bit more open to calming down. Oh wow. So it’s a great <laugh>.

Kimberly: 00:46:32 And they love making noise, my son.

Dr. Leaf: 00:46:35 Yeah, they will. And you know, you can, you can do it, but you know, you can bring in a lot of activities. So that is a very, and it makes you feel calm. I mean, just doing it once makes me feel calm. Oh. So yeah, that’s something. And there’s others, but that’s just a quick, easy one that kids learn very fast and that when you’re doing that, you don’t scream. So that is, so it’s what do you like, or tell me, take me to your favorite place. Where do you wanna sit and play? So instead of, oh, I’m gonna get disciplined. Oh, mommy wants to play with me, mommy wants to see what I like, and we are gonna breathe together. And then you can say, you know what? I see that you have been screaming and I, I understand. I wanna scream sometimes. So model, you will gather awareness. And the other day I did feel like screaming, but I didn’t scream, but I did this or whatever. It’s,

Kimberly: 00:47:16 That’s, that’s

Dr. Leaf: 00:47:17 Awareness. No, it’s still good. Oh,

Kimberly: 00:47:18 It’s still all, all this is gather awareness. Wow.

Dr. Leaf: 00:47:20 So, so I’m sorry if I’m confusing you. So let’s re just edit that out and start it again. So, oh,

Kimberly: 00:47:26 That’s

Dr. Leaf: 00:47:26 Good. Okay. So step one, uh, step one is gather awareness. Yeah. But prior to step one is brain preparation. Okay. So we need to prepare the brain. Yes. And that’s where the preparing of the brain is to get the neurophysiology calm enough that they’ll do something with you. Mm-hmm. So that’s decompression, meditation, breathing, whatever. There’s a, I’ll give a few times Beautiful in the book, you know, on this podcast, they can learn a million of those things from you. Um, and so that’s very important to do that. But I recommend to add to that with a child is let them choose a space that they have. Yes. Or a toy that they love, or an area that they love. Or start playing a game even mm-hmm. <affirmative> that they love or pick up a toy that they love. So in other words, brain preparation is environment that they choose that they love.

00:48:08 And some breathing meditation, something like that to decompress. Okay. Beautiful. So that’s preparing the brain. Okay. Then we go into the five steps, gather, awareness, reflect, reach, at, right. Which is right. Act, play, recheck, active reach. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. And these are very clearly spelled out in the book. And we’ve got Love it. And there’s a chapter on each one. Each one. Yes. And then there’s also in the app, I’ve got the audio of the, you know, of, of practical ones. How to, um, use neuropsych And what’s the app again called? Neuropsych. Neuropsych. Neuro cycle. Amazing. So, yeah. So, um, so then brain preparation is done. Child sitting down, they’ve done their breathing. There’s a level of calmness. Maybe, maybe not. Then you’re going to gather awareness. Each step, you model your version, you model yourself. And then you, you try and get them to do it with you.

00:48:53 If they don’t wanna do it with you, then you make a toy. Do it. Okay. So you keep going on those two levels. So you do five steps, but you model your, the other day I felt like screaming. And when I felt like screaming, my tummy was so sore, my shoulders got so sore. Wow. And I was so, so angry. And, um, and so I’ve, I’ve covered emotions, I’ve covered body sensations, I’ve covered behavior and I’ve covered perspective in that statement. The other day I was screaming behavior. I was so angry. Emotion. I was, my tummy was sore, whatever I said shoulders were sore. My tummy was so sore. And the, the last, that body, um, I, I, I was very, what was the last perspective? I said it was angry. Okay. Yes. Did I that Okay. So I’ve modeled that in one sentence. I’ll say awful things.

00:49:40 So just, you just gotta practice cuz we say, we say our feelings very quickly. I screamed. And action. Think of action, behavior. What did I do? What did I say? Yes, I screamed and I said ugly words or something. My tummy was, so how do I feel in my body? I was my emotions. I was very frustrated. My perspective, how did I look at life? Everything was awful in that moment. See? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you say that for yourself. Have you had that experience? Lost the child. Now you give them the opportunity to share. So you share. They share. I love it. So then you can, and they’ll probably say, I was mad. Then you can say, well how did that feel in your body? Um, what do, what are you doing? Um, and you know, how did you, how did you look at things in that moment?

00:50:18 Show me with the sunglasses. And have the sunglasses. The two pairs. Yes. Available. Cause perspective is a very hard thing to explain. Yes. So you show them visually. And I’ll give examples in the book too. Um, so then you’ve gathered, okay, both on, now you reflect mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then you say, you know, when I screamed like that and I was angry and I said those angry words and my tummy was sore. And you can repeat to you repeat your little signals. Yes. I realized that it was because someone had been so unkind to me, or my mother had said something to me. Um, even though I’m begging my mom’s old, she said something that really made me sad or my sister said something. Or my best friend, I watched this thing on the news that upset me so much.

Kimberly: 00:50:55 So the, so the reflecting is, oh, this is the root. When you say

Dr. Leaf: 00:50:59 No, not the yet, it’s starting to say why. Okay. You haven’t got to think. Yes. You, you’re starting to look at why, why did I do that? Is this potentially, so you may get to the roots straight away, but I very much

Kimberly: 00:51:08 Started it. Okay. So we just reflecting.

Dr. Leaf: 00:51:10 It’s reflecting. So think of a prism. When you shine a white light through, it comes out in a full color of rainbows on the other side. Yes. So you’re going through the levels. Wow. So reflect is starting to think, it’s starting to ask why. Why did I scream? Why did I get like this? My mom did say that thing to me. I think that’s why I screamed. Mm. My sister said whatever. So I think it’s that. Cause I, in other words, I’m associating that happened and then I did that. So maybe there’s some link there.

Kimberly: 00:51:37 I love this.

Dr. Leaf: 00:51:38 You see what I’ve said? It’s very sequenced. It’s not all bunched together. It’s, no,

Kimberly: 00:51:41 No. This is powerful. Okay. So then we reflect,

Dr. Leaf: 00:51:45 Which is the why. Think of why you’re not finding, you don’t have all the solutions yet, but you’re starting to see why do I have these behaviors? Right. Why do I have these emotions? And I

Kimberly: 00:51:53 Love that because it’s again, separating the behavior from the child.

Dr. Leaf: 00:51:57 Exactly. All of this is separating. Yes. And that’s why the child is still not wanting to do it with you. You model and you use the toy or toys.

Kimberly: 00:52:04 And then step

Dr. Leaf: 00:52:04 Three is now we going to, if they’re old enough to write, you can write or you can write. Every kid draws even when they draw. Yes. So you could have big pieces of paper available, crayons, pencil, crayons, whatever, in a sharp piece. Whatever you want. We’ve got the coloring book too. You can use the coloring book there cause it’s filled with different scenarios and they could use that anything. So they, um, and then, um, they would basically, you could start drawing. So you yourself, you, you, you write, so you could say, you could maybe draw a little circle in the middle and you could draw yourself maybe shouting or something. Or you could just draw your

Kimberly: 00:52:35 Oh, the scene.

Dr. Leaf: 00:52:36 Yes. The scene. So you’re basically capturing what you’ve gathered and reflected on.

Kimberly: 00:52:40 Okay.

Dr. Leaf: 00:52:40 And, um, so there’s different ways of doing it. The, I have what I call a system called bubble cogs and metacog none because we don’t have the visuals here. I can’t really show you. But what you can do is you can literally take big pieces of chalk even on the ground and or crayon on a piece of paper and draw a big circle in the middle of the paper. And then like a spokes of a wheel. Draw a line and then draw connecting bubbles outside the line. Wow. So could draw four of them. So one big bubble in the middle and then four bubbles around. Can you visualize that? Yes. With lines attached like spokes. Yes. But you’ve got one bubble in the middle, not too big. And then four around there. Now you can have that pre-drawn for a young child. And so they recognize that order, that sequence. Mm. And then into each of those. And you can then, number now, even if they can’t read numbers, you can still start teaching that number visual. So you can draw 1, 2, 3, and four. And that captures the four signals. See? So this you sometimes the middle part, I’m gonna cough. Sorry.

Kimberly: 00:53:35 Take your time.

Dr. Leaf: 00:53:39 So the center is the name of the thought. You can initially put down a stab at that. So you could say something like screaming or, um, bullying or teasing. Or you could just draw to a little basic picture of, or you could leave it blank. Cuz sometimes you need it analyzed to get a, a name. But you’ve got, that’s gonna be the name of th tree. And you go to number one and you could, you know, you could be doing it. The child can be doing it with you. You can write words depending on the age. The words would come outside the bubble. It

Kimberly: 00:54:10 Seems so fun for them.

Dr. Leaf: 00:54:11 It’s a lot of fun. Kids love this. Trust me, I’ve done this for many years now. So, you know, started the 30 kids. I

Kimberly: 00:54:15 Wanna do it. I know. It’s,

Dr. Leaf: 00:54:18 It’s amazing. And as you put grace through the different stages, cuz you can eventually grow bubbles outta the bubbles and you can start getting done. Cause that’s what will happen as you, when you draw the first little bubble, it’s going to be the basic, maybe just a mouth with a big circle coming out and scream the words. It’s

Kimberly: 00:54:31 Helping them express in visuals

Dr. Leaf: 00:54:34 You bring. Yes.

Kimberly: 00:54:35 Yes. Like a different part of

Dr. Leaf: 00:54:37 It’s that drawing. It’s that coming out. Yes. It’s that. And, and you can, and as you go through each signal, you draw and then when you go to the recheck step, step four, cuz you’re talking all the way through this and you’re doing a bit of drawing. They doing a bit of drawing. You doing a bit of writing. They doing a bit of writing. The older they are, the more words you write, the words always lines like think of the leafs aren’t always attached to a branch. Don’t have things floating. Everything’s connected. Think of life is connected. So you’re creating this, this visual that’s all connected, loaded. It is, it’s amazing. That’s, this is quite a bubble cold when I’ve just described. Works brilliantly with children. And then you, as you go to the, as you’re creating it, you might see, oh, I, I need another bubble to come out of this bubble.

00:55:15 You need another bubble to come out of this bubble. And, and so you start growing and then you stand back and you say, okay, let’s look at what we’ve, what we’ve drawn here and what we’ve written in all these bubbles. And you know, what do they mean? And that’s where you look for patterns, for triggers for when did this happen? The who, the what, the when, the way, the why, the how. So we going deeper? Yes, we did Why in the reflect. But now we, now we are digging up. When you’ve done this, you’re pulling stuff from the unconscious, which is your spiritual levels come up. Things you’ll, that won’t come up when you just ask a child. A question will come up if you do the sequence. And you’ll be amazed at what comes up at step three. Sometimes it seems completely unrelated. And that’s where the recheck comes in. Where you go and look at what you’ve written. You still write at that stage. You can add, draw more pictures.

Kimberly: 00:55:57 So that step four is step four. Rechecking

Dr. Leaf: 00:56:00 Is rechecking the patterns, the antidotes, what’s, you know, it’s rechecking to look for patterns for triggers.

Kimberly: 00:56:06 And you talk about it with um, yes. Why did you draw that or

Dr. Leaf: 00:56:09 Yes, yes. So why, oh, I see you drew next to that screening face. You drew someone pulling someone’s hair. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what did that mean? And you know, and um, and how often did that happen? Can you draw for me how often that happened? And they draw that and they do it and they go, ah. And they scribble hard and they, oh they do lots and lots and lots of bubbles. It’s amazing. That’s what I had with one child. They just do ask them a question. How often does this happen? And it was a sexual abuse and this child just do bubbles. This entire page just became this bubble page. And then the next month they just scratched in black all over it, you know, and they told us, and as we get goosebumps when I talk about these things, but as we work through the process, things started coming up that they did not have the language and we allowed them a chance to get it out.

00:56:50 So we allowing that energy that has been poured into the bullying or the fighting or self-harm or whatever, severe depression. Screaming. Screaming, yeah. It starts coming out. And in the recheck is, is the acknowledgement of that. And, and adding these, you know, maybe the extra bubbles that’s giving you more, more sort of information. But it’s also moving towards a solution. So it’s not just getting it out. Now what do we wanna do? Is we wanna start landing the plane. We’ve let the planes take off. We’ve started flying the plane, now we need to land the plane. Okay.

Kimberly: 00:57:18 Dr. Carolyn, can I ask you a question? Yes. So if I’m doing this with my son, should I say something like, oh, mommy’s friend who’s a neuroscientist or like, yes. What can I say? He’s like, well what, why are we doing this? Like, where does this come from?

Dr. Leaf: 00:57:30 Children respond to authority. So you can, and I can tell you now, I’ve turned two when I a three year older brain. They go, they love it. Get going. Find a buy brain in a shop and you show them. And that’s why I’ve got brain.

Kimberly: 00:57:41 Oh, I’m gonna do that. And, and brainy. Can we buy Bray?

Dr. Leaf: 00:57:44 Yes. Bray is brainy is available.

Kimberly: 00:57:46 Bray is on your website.

Dr. Leaf: 00:57:47 Yes. Yes. We’ll send you one, we’ll send you a brainy and a coloring book and everything. But

Kimberly: 00:57:50 Anyone wanting your website, what is your website?

Dr. Leaf: 00:57:52 Dr leaf.com? You can Great.

Kimberly: 00:57:54 Because I’m holding brainy in my hand right now and it’s so nice to have a tool. Yes. I just know with my sons, showing them something tangible is really powerful.

Dr. Leaf: 00:58:04 It is. It

Kimberly: 00:58:04 Is. And the brain is huge. And just, you know,

Dr. Leaf: 00:58:07 And it’s so appealing and it’s, kids love this. Even animals loved us. It’s just something about the especially designer that even a two year old can hold it. It’s all safe as well. Yes. It’s all organic, it’s all safe.

Kimberly: 00:58:16 It’s not Oh wonderful.

Dr. Leaf: 00:58:17 It doesn’t have anything poisonous in it so they can <laugh> chew it and it won’t hurt things. So <laugh>, you know, these are things you have to consider. You know, these Well

Kimberly: 00:58:24 I can imagine myself doing this with my son and I can’t wait to, to really do this process. Dr. Lee, I think you’ve created something so amazing here. And I can just imagine his little face looking at me being like, ma like, you know, where does this come from? Like

Dr. Leaf: 00:58:36 Why are we doing

Kimberly: 00:58:37 This? Yes. Cuz I’ll explain the meditations. We do come from Yoga Naja Guruci and we go to the meditation center. He sees pictures of him. Like he connects it. Right. So you

Dr. Leaf: 00:58:45 Can do the same thing. Yes. You can show them the

Kimberly: 00:58:47 Book. I’m gonna show him picture of you. <laugh>. There you

Dr. Leaf: 00:58:49 Go. There’s there’s a picture on the back of the book.

Kimberly: 00:58:51 Oh yes. Your beautiful face

Dr. Leaf: 00:58:52 <laugh>. And there’s um, so there’s the pictures in the book so that you can tell them, this is doc, this is whatever Dr. Caroline, I’m gonna see

Kimberly: 00:58:59 Your brain doctor. Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Leaf: 00:59:00 And they, they, they’ll go, kids love that. They, they like authority that it helps them under, it also then gives you a layer of protection. It gives you a layer, another layer of authority. And not that you need to be protected from

Kimberly: 00:59:09 No, but it’s child. But it’s,

Dr. Leaf: 00:59:10 It’s, it’s like, okay, well I will listen to you because it’s not actually you, it’s someone else telling you what to do. I mean, I know that it sounds facetious, but kids do operate like that.

Kimberly: 00:59:18 A hundred percent.

Dr. Leaf: 00:59:19 That’s what they are. Oh, my teacher said it. That’s, you know, you didn’t say it. My teacher said it. So it’ss True.

Kimberly: 00:59:23 Cause we’re so, they’re so over familiar with us. Yes. In a way we’re so close.

Dr. Leaf: 00:59:27 Yes, exactly. It’s

Kimberly: 00:59:28 Nice to have that.

Dr. Leaf: 00:59:29 It is, it is. Wow. And it, and it also gives you that, mommy, I’m still mommy. It’s not me making you do this. It’s Dr. Leif making you do this.

Kimberly: 00:59:36 And part of this power is doing it with, um, because they’ve all seen us in grumpy moods or Exactly. Raise our voice or whatever just

Dr. Leaf: 00:59:44 Or have an argument with your husband. Yes. It’s normal. This is life to

Kimberly: 00:59:48 Just to show mommy isn’t pretending she’s perfect.

Dr. Leaf: 00:59:51 Exactly. Which gives them the validation. Wow. And this is a great tool. If you’ve had an argument, which we all do, we know that it’s totally normal neuro cycling in front of your kids. That’s what we would do. You would say, Hey listen, dad and I got mad at each other. We did the wrong thing. We did this, this is why and this is how we resolved it. And we are friends. All five steps

Kimberly: 01:00:07 Mean show, show the kids the process with your partner. We

Dr. Leaf: 01:00:10 So, so, so, so you know, have the arguments happen. You’re not gonna think about doing it in the moment, but make sure you find a time, make an always matter resolution. We’ve married 35 years now. It’s so beautiful. We’ve always, thank you. We’ve always made a resolution. We never go to bed without resolving anger. But we also never went to bed without explaining an argument to children, to our children and giving them the apology they needed. The recognizing the impact on them, recognizing that we had to resolve it. And it’s normal for two people to have a fight is normal as long as you resolve it. Wow. And we always show a resolution. So we would do a neuro cycle and even now, if we get irritated, we’ll do, the kids will say, I just do a neuro cycle. <laugh>.

Kimberly: 01:00:44 So you’ve been doing neuropsych for over like 30 years? Yes.

Dr. Leaf: 01:00:47 It used to be called. I, I had had different names. We, you know, I had used to be called Long, big name. Um, the Five Step Learning Pro was this whole long name. But the five steps, basically my kids would turn on just say do the five steps.

Kimberly: 01:01:00 I could talk to you forever. Dr. Caen, we only have a few minutes here. I know you have to run out. I just wanna run through a couple things. Sure. That I, I love this quote in the book. I wrote it down, I cannot emphasize enough how much a child needs to feel emotionally safe and validated when processing their reactions to life. So it’s really what we’ve talked about. But it really struck me because we’re taught so much about oh, discipline and this is bad and you know, oh, you know, behaving just so, and Yeah. Yeah. Being in school and sitting. But to actually see, you know, it’s, I think it’s gonna change a whole generation and going forward when we learn this. Yes. Oh, I’m not bad. I’m not messed up, I’m not effed up. Like there’s reasons. Yeah. And now I’m starting to broken brain Understand the compassion, the love. Right. The, the, the true self. Like the love really coming and then teaching that to the child. And the other part that, you know, I love in the book is when we can teach them this, we can feel safe that we’re building resilience in our children. We don’t have to be the helicopter mom. No. Because part of a fear is like, oh my gosh, the world, there’s so much going out there. There’s

Building resilience in our children

Dr. Leaf: 01:02:05 AIing.

Kimberly: 01:02:06 Yes, exactly. Oh, online. Like there’s just so much that we can drive ourselves crazy as parents. Absolutely. But when they have tools, it’s really armoring them for any situation.

Dr. Leaf: 01:02:18 Absolutely. It really

Kimberly: 01:02:19 Is. And, and this is when you talk about the messy mind mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it’s, it’s giving them a path of organizing, of self-validation. Really Self-love. Yes. Self-esteem. Yes.

Dr. Leaf: 01:02:30 All of those things. It’s doing, it’s, it’s telling a child it’s okay to be a mess. It’s normal, but here’s how we manage the mess. Cuz if we don’t manage the mess, you know, that goes to the, we’ve spoken about sort of the little things, but these in the book, as you now refer to a story of a real true story of a child who was very traumatized from sexual and physical abuse as a baby. Yes. And that child, that parents did everything, every therapy, they even desperation tried medication and polypharmacy and it wrecked the child and they took it off. They, the mother just by by per chance happened to be on the research supporting someone on my research team doing an extra she was hired to do, to do an extra activity. And she was listening to the neuropsych, started doing it next minute she was, her child was doing it within eight year old. Within, within four days this child slept through the night. And since then, that child through the neuro cycle has actually healed.

Kimberly: 01:03:19 Wow.

Dr. Leaf: 01:03:19 And that child, they, they’d use a neuro cycle. I mean there’s whole stories in the book, but that’s severe extreme trauma. This child was physically and sexually abused from the age of three months. And they think even younger how that child survived. We just don’t know. And this child, you would never tell, you’d never know. And the parents never. So, you know, I’ve seen the most extreme situations working in Africa, working in Gowana, working and seeing this kind of situations. I wanna encourage parents that this is something we can teach our kids to manage their mind. We can help them. Wow. Not let early childhood experiences wreck them. The rest of their laugh. This

Kimberly: 01:03:52 Is so powerful, Dr. Carolyn and all the sci, so there’s the science, which I think we, you know, really appreciate. It helps us to understand and trust. But then the love is coming through so strongly, the validation, the seeing. And then third, just the practicality, the accessibility. It’s very clearly laid out in the book. And we can do it cuz sometimes, you know, all vo adult books and parenting books can get a little bit so overwhelming. Heady. Yeah. And then I think, oh, I’m not a, a psychotherapist and Exactly. This is, I don’t know what to do with this. It’s so hard. Yeah. But this is fun and pictures and doable and I mean, I just get goosebumps how much I love the neuro cycle for adults and children. So thank you so much for writing this book. Once again. It’s called How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess.

01:04:38 A Guide to Building Resilience and Managing Mental Health. And I could not recommend this book enough, Dr. Carolyn. Not just for parents, but we all have children in our lives. Yeah. You know. Exactly. And also your other amazing book, which I interviewed you for last year. Yeah. Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess for Adults. And You, the stories in it, it’s just so powerfully illustrated. Thank you. But we need tools that are doable. <laugh>, we, we talk about mental health and like in our community we talk a lot about emotional wellbeing, but sometimes it’s like, how, what do we do? What do we do as parents? What do we do for ourselves? So these five steps very satisfying, very clear. Very. You feel the difference from start to finish. Oh you do. And I know some of your research has shown like these like 92% of these big numbers of people feeling just more empowered. Yeah. Stronger, more clear in their day and their life.

Dr. Leaf: 01:05:34 Exactly. It’s, it’s really, well we’ve got, I’ve just pub, we’ve got five papers I’m publishing this year, scientific papers and we just published one a month ago, the first of five. And it’s just the scientific evidence behind the fact when you manage your mind, you do change your brain. You do change your body, you do change your life. You know people from, I can give you so many stories and it’s just so heartening to know you don’t have to have one-on-one therapy with me. You can actually just learn. Yes. You can be empowered to do it yourself. That’s for me is so key is we put so much in us that we can empower ourselves and we can empower children to empower themselves. Big Phil choose. Exactly. You go

Kimberly: 01:06:08 Too. Well. Thank you so much Dr. Carolyn. I love you so much. I love your love. You too. Books. Your work is just amazing. Thank you so much.

Dr. Leaf: 01:06:15 Thank you. I love you too. I thank you. Phenomenal.

Kimberly:04:10 I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Dr. Leaf today. As much as I thoroughly enjoyed conversing with her, remember that her new book is out now, how to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess. We will link to it directly in our show notes over@mysoluna.com, as well as other information on Dr. Leaf other podcasts. I think you would enjoy other articles, blogs, and so on. I am also on social media at underscore Kimberly Snyder, so I’ll see you on there as well as Thursday, which is when our next q and a show will air. Thank you for being in our community. Thank you for just adding your energy in. I look forward to communicating with you more, connecting more, sending you so much love, so much appreciation. See you soon. Love Kimberly.