I think there are people for whom navigating many environments that are kind of expected
in society, whether that's school for little kids or the workplace for adults, social situations.
There is just a little bit more intensity in how they experience it.
And I like to think of the parents of these kids as kind of being engaged in an extreme
sport.
I say that we're like the wingsuit flyers of parenting because everything's just a little
bit more intense for us.
Let's talk about kids who are more.
You might be thinking more what?
I'm just going to say it again because you're one of these kids like I do.
I know you get it.
Kids who are more emotional, more reactivity, more resistance, more tears, more meltdowns,
more defiance, more.
And if you're nodding along, this episode is definitely for you and I can promise you
you are one of millions of parents who are nodding and cannot wait for the rest of this.
I often think about these kids as deeply feeling kids.
I love these kids.
I understand these kids.
I have one of these kids.
I worked with so many adults who were these kids and I'm so proud of my approach to help
these kids and their families.
I'm also very aware that other people think about kind of kids who are more in a different
way.
And to me, it's just all about parents having some framework that makes sense to them
and help them feel empowered, which is why I'm so excited to have Debbie Reiber.
I'm the podcast today.
Debbie is a parenting activist, a best-selling author, a podcast host, a speaker, and a founder
and CEO of Tilt Parenting.
She focuses on helping parents of differently wired kids and she's full of frameworks and
strategies that are so important for parents to hear.
I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside.
We'll be back right after this.
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Hi, Debbie.
So good to have you here.
I have so many questions for you.
I would love to hear about why you use this term differently wired as opposed to neurodivergent.
Are they the same?
Are they different?
Let's just kind of jump in there and I know we'll go to lots of places after that.
Yeah, sure.
So I see them as being synonymous with each other.
But when I first started tilt parenting, which was now eight years ago, and was early
on in my journey, I have a 19 year old, but was realizing my kid was differently wired.
I really struggled with all of the deficit-based language surrounding neurodivergence.
And neurodiversity as a term was really not commonly used in the vernacular.
So I started talking about differently wired as a way to have a positive reframe for really
any way of moving through the world, whether that's with the diagnosis of autism or ADHD
or learning disabilities, or just someone who is maybe a little extra sensitive and isn't
really thriving in their environments.
And understanding it that way differently wired.
How do you feel like you've seen that help so many parents and kids?
Yeah, I mean, I will say when I came up with the term, I got my child's approval, which
was a big deal, because he was very connected to the stigma and the negative connotations
associated with so many things.
So when I put it out into the world, the response was really immediate.
People were so happy to have a term that felt positive that wasn't focused on deficits,
that didn't make them feel like they were like a member of a club they did not want to
be in.
And it just kind of made sense in a way that he had just created more common piece.
So it was really well received.
Sounds like there's something internally that just felt right to people.
Yeah.
And how would you describe it?
How are these kids, these adults, even like, how are they different from maybe neurotypical
or maybe they typically wired kid?
I mean, I think of them as kind of the more kids.
And I know you have your deeply feeling kids.
I think they're similar in a lot of ways.
I think most neurodivergent people are deeply feeling people.
I think they're people for whom navigating many environments that are kind of expected
in society, whether that's school for little kids or the workplace for adults, social
situations.
There is just a little bit more intensity and how they experience it.
And I like to think of the parents of these kids as kind of being engaged in an extreme
sport.
I say that we're like the wing suit flyers of parenting because everything's just a
little bit more intense for us.
I really love that.
It's really resonated.
It's everything's more.
Like, okay, so I see that kid is having a hard time starting basketball.
Like, the hard time my kids having is more.
Like, I see it more.
It comes out more there.
It comes out more.
There's a lot more.
And so one of the things I often say to parents of deeply feeling kids is if it feels
like your kid is having, let's say it's, you know, their moments are bigger and more
difficult than other kids.
Like, I don't think you're crazy.
Like, I believe you.
And that's actually a helpful starting point.
Is that, you feel the same?
Yeah, absolutely because I think so many of us feel like failures from the get go because
you know, I mean, again, when, when my child was young, they're just weren't the same
resources and even conversations around this.
And so I constantly feel like I'm doing this wrong.
I'm doing everything.
My friends are doing, I'm getting much different results.
And so it's really hard to not make that mean I'm bad at this.
100%.
So, you know, one of my ways in here, right?
So I'm clinical psychologist.
I'm in private practice.
I'm seeing so many families.
I have my first kid, right, before I have any kids, I'm like, I know exactly what to
do.
Then you have your own kid.
So like, wait a second.
But I had my first kid and it's definitely not perfect.
Definitely had some struggles.
And I would say like, when I would do things that I would think would be helpful, like,
in general, and not like magic, but like, they kind of were helpful.
Like there was a little bit of a not perfect linearity, but if I zoomed out a little bit
of linearity.
And I remember parents, my practice at the time, not all of them.
Some of them saying, Dr. Becky, I'm doing exactly what you told me to do.
But my kid is escalating.
My kid covers their ears.
My kid just yells, stop talking, stop talking, stop talking.
My kid hisses.
My kid is growling and trying to scratch me.
And in the back of my head, Debbie, I feel awful saying this, but I want to be honest,
in the back of my head, I think like, I don't think you're doing it right.
I would.
And I think on the surface, I'd say to them, okay, let's roll with that.
We'll try some other things, right?
And I started to get a little creative, but I did have that thought.
And then I had my second kid.
And I was like, wait a second.
Like, I'm watching myself do the things that like I know in my body I did with my first
kid. And I really kind of even hear the tone the same.
And holy moly and all of those people, their stories, like it was like I heard echoes of
them.
And I was like, there's, there's something here.
And I don't know if you feel like that, but maybe for me, I have to be honest.
Like it was like, I had to experience it to like feel it and believe it in the real
us play.
And it is, it was so different.
Well, I will say that I rolled the dice once and I got lucky the first time.
So I have one child.
And I really went into my parenting journey feeling so intentional and equipped.
And I'm a researcher and I'm problem solver.
My husband and I are like, you know, a great team.
You know, he's a project manager like we've got this.
And so I didn't have this experience of feeling competent once things started to really
deteriorate.
And I just felt like I was always behind and not able to figure out what to do to support
this kid.
Yeah, that feeling of feeling behind.
Yeah.
Like I'm trying all the things and like nothing's working and, you know, and then I see the
kids around me and I feel like they're parents are doing the things I'm doing.
But this comparison, can you talk about that a little bit?
I feel like that's so common.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, I talk about the compare and despair, which is just a reality of life when you're
raising a kid who's moving through the world differently.
I think early on, you know, for me personally, it was so challenging again because I do think
of myself as a pretty competent person and a problem solver.
And so to just be continually feeling like a failure and then seeing judgment from other
parents or seeing other kids kind of moving on in their education or making choices or
doing things that I always envisioned would be what our family looked like was so painful.
And you know, and I'll just say it doesn't really, that's always something that I personally
and many families in my community have to always be aware of, especially as like graduation
season rolls around or prom season or, you know, there are always these reminders that
our path is a little different.
And so a lot of the work we have to do is on coming to peace with that.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
That compare and despair because I think the one of the reasons we despair is on some
of what we think something's wrong with us or we feel like our kid has something wrong
with them.
Right. And I think that's also one of the first messages.
I know we've right, like there's so many frameworks, maybe for understanding the same thing,
maybe understand something differently to me.
It's just about having any framework that actually feels like it makes sense to you and
helps you move things forward.
And I know for people, I see as parents of deeply feeling kids, it's one of the first things
I say and so relieving.
It's just there's nothing wrong with you.
There's nothing wrong with your kid in a different way of understanding them.
That's the start of probably a set of slightly different interventions.
And like you're going to feel better as soon as you even have that new understanding and
know that there's a path.
We think we are all going to feel better when something changes.
But I think we all feel better when we have some like aha moment that feels new and useful
and that resonates and then we have hope.
And I know that's what you give so, so many parents.
Yeah.
That sense of feeling seen is it's just, it's so incredibly powerful because I think so
many parents do isolate initially because of fear, not only fear of the unknown, but
fear of their children being stigmatized or having this label associated and what is
that going to mean?
And we can really just get so caught up in that.
So to be seen and understood and realize, okay, I've got this.
There's nothing wrong with me.
There's nothing wrong with my kid to take that anxiety away can be really powerful.
So in your book, you talk about these dents, right, these kind of tangible, doable shifts,
parents have differently wired kids can make in their lives for kind of everyone's, the
whole family's benefit.
And they're 18 of them.
I don't know if I'll get to all of them.
We probably won't.
But, so I love to like name one, you know, name a few and I'd love to jump into them.
So starting with the first question, everything you knew about parenting.
Tell me more.
Yeah, I think we have to start there because again, we go into this with this vision for
the parent we're going to be, the educational philosophy, you know, whether it's Montessori
or Waldorf or, you know, what's going to work for my family, public school, private
school, all of these ideas and who are kids going to be.
And we can cling to that vision so tightly and it really has nothing to do with the human
that comes into the world, this human that we're actually raising.
And so to start by dis questioning everything and really examining, you know, what is true
about this child and maybe I need to be more flexible about what might actually work.
But a lot of this stuff is, it's really ground deep into us from our own childhoods, from,
you know, our family culture.
And so it can feel really disruptive to just kind of throw all the rules out.
Yeah.
So what that reminds me of Andrew Solomon's book, Far From the Tree, to me, I think every
parent should read the prologue and it always strikes me.
His first line is, there's no such thing as reproduction.
And what he says is the word reproduction is a wish.
It's a fantasy.
It's our desire on some level to live forever.
We do not reproduce.
We produce.
Your child is not a reproduction of anything.
And I think what you and I kind of probably would want to many things, I think we agree
on is so many of our struggles with these kids come from that difference of reproduction versus
production.
And I know I'm not immune to it.
Like we all have this fantasy, right?
And someone who's going to live forever, our best qualities are going to be in our kids.
They're not going to have our worst and nothing's going to be that different.
And instead, what he says about parenting is parenting is being forever cast into our relationship
with a stranger.
So good.
So boring.
So good.
And maybe we don't say that because people would have fewer children.
You're like, what?
I don't know if I'm going to do that.
But you have this stranger that is produced.
And you're like, who is this kid?
And how do I get to know them?
And, you know, just curiosity.
And I think maybe one of the things you're saying with throw out everything about parenting
is like kind of these ideas about who our kid is going to be as some reflection of the
best version of us.
And we have to really question that.
That can really get in our way.
And it's so hard.
It's so hard, right?
It is so hard because our ego is really involved in our just how we're perceived in the
world.
It's so tricky.
I love that quote.
I read that book very many years ago.
Right.
Yeah.
It's great.
It's so good.
I would actually take a picture on my Kindle of the Prologue.
And I would read it to a lot of parents because obviously he's a gibberian writer and
that idea of like, I just think it does.
It always hits me hard.
Like, why is my kid doing this?
I would never.
Right, right, because my kids, like to some degree, it's helpful.
Like, my kid's a stranger.
Like, why are I can ask the same question, but in a very different tone, like, why are
they having such a hard time?
They must be a reason.
I'm going to assume that.
I'm going to do what I always like to use.
What is my most generous interpretation?
The why is actually a helpful question if it comes from curiosity, but when it comes
from these preconceived ideas and our wishes and our fantasies, then I know for me at
least it's like an angry why it's kind of like, why are you not being the version of
the kid I always thought you would be.
And when I articulate that, I'm like, wow, that's offensive.
Like, I don't think that's useful, but that that comes through.
I know for me sometimes too.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think it's good to say that because I think we can then have shame if we don't
share that out loud.
I mean, I hear from parents all the time, especially around sports, right?
Like, if, you know, I was an athlete and my husband was a soccer player, like, of course,
I assumed I was going to be standing on the sidelines of all kinds of sporting events
and cheering and all of that stuff.
And my kid is not an athlete, like, you know, going for a walk is a big effort at this
point.
And so that's something there's sadness around that too, you know, because we associate
so much meaning to those experiences and how important we think they are.
And so then we perceive our kids going to miss out on this.
And so we really have to do this, this deep work to understand where our pain points are.
I think that's exactly right.
And I think that idea of like the thing that actually helps us see our kid a little more
clearly from who they are versus who we'd wanted is actually allowing for that very real
loss.
Like, that is lost for me.
Like, I would have loved if it's true.
Like, I would have loved to stand on the sidelines.
Like, not only do I think maybe my kid would have liked it, but if I kind of like, wait,
my kid isn't me.
So it's almost irrelevant.
It's okay to say I would have liked that.
Like, I would have loved if my kid was an amazing soccer player.
Like, I would have actually loved that.
And that is not my experience as a parent.
And I'm actually really allowed to have feelings about that.
I can give myself permission.
And the more I do that, probably the less I'll act them out on my kid.
But I think that's really important.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Hey, good inside listeners.
So sometimes with parenting, a podcast does the trick.
And sometimes with parenting, we need a bit more.
And I wanted to be sure you knew that we're set up to help you in those trickier times.
The good inside membership platform is your parenting and psychopedia, coupled with a
community of parents and experts you trust, which means that no matter what you're going
through, we've got you covered.
And then we take it a step further.
Because I know that we're people who don't just want to solve a problem and return to
baseline.
We want to raise our baselines, right?
And this is what we really do together.
Reduce triggers, learn to set boundaries, and access that sturdy leader that I know
is inside all of us.
It's all there when you're looking for that next step.
And until then, please do check out goodinside.com slash podcast.
Scroll down to the Ask Dr. Becky section at the bottom and let me know what you want to
talk about in future podcast episodes.
Okay, here's another tilt.
Parent from a place of possibility instead of fear.
I'd love to hear about this with differently wired kids.
Yeah, I mean, there's just a lot of fear.
I think there's so much fear in all parenting, right?
So we don't own this as parents of neurodivergent kids, but I think our path is so less clear
at so many steps along the way.
Like even from a safety perspective, there's a whole there's fear for a lot of parents
because we might have kids who will hope or don't have good street smarts.
And so like building independence can be really scary.
But just the fact that there's so many unknowns about what's going to happen next year, what's
going to happen next week in this school?
What is this mean if my kid is on screens all the time and I read the research and, you
know, and we know that these kids have really long, you know, launch pads, I guess, or runways,
you know, and statistically these kids have a harder time as adults with mental health
challenges, was staying employed, all of those things.
And so as a parent, you know, we don't want those outcomes, but it's really hard to not
pivot to that place of fear.
And so when I talk about pivoting from fear to possibility, it's like a daily practice.
It's something we have to always be checking in on ourselves and checking in on our motivation
behind our interactions with our kids, the things that we're prioritizing for them, the
pressure we're putting on our kids, is that coming from fear?
And if it is, how can we kind of shift it and think from a place of curiosity, you know,
which you mentioned earlier, I think is such a great word, curiosity and possibility.
And when we can show up from that place, it's just going to feel so much better for everybody.
You know, I was just talking about this the other day and, you know, in a workshop because
I was saying, our kids really do feel the place we're at when we intervene because sometimes
the intervention, if someone described it simply concretely, it would be the same.
But for example, I was talking about the difference of punishing and protecting our kids, especially
old or kids punishment.
I think it's something you do to your kid, protection is something you do for your kid on
the surface.
It might look like taking away their phone for a week based on something that happened,
right?
We're punishing what sound like, I can't believe you did something so stupid.
You know, we don't do that in our family.
I'm taking away your phone for a week, you know, we're protection to be, hey, I'm kind
of concerned about this text message I saw and I feel like we have to like figure some
stuff out together.
I am going to be taking away your phone for a week and look, I know that stinks.
I know it's a big deal.
I don't take out lightly.
I also don't take lightly your kind of safety, your digital safety and it's my responsibility
to teach you some things.
So on the surface, it's interesting.
It's not like people like you don't believe in punishment.
Like it's kind of silly.
Like so anything goes like I never said that.
Actually, the intervention might concretely be the same.
But our kids will know whether we're doing something to them from by the way, just our
own frustration or fear or whether I'm doing something for them because I actually
believe in their capability.
I believe they're a good kid and I believe part of my job is setting up a structure to
help bring that out because I believe in their possibility and I have hope.
And I just really want to give that example to parents because I think when people say,
oh, instead of like punishing, which is often from fear, right?
Like an immediate punishment, I always say like in the real world, we punish our kids
because we just don't know what to do in the moment and we randomly say something that
by the way, we later take back and always undermine our own authority.
It's like you can't watch TV for a week.
And then I'm like, wait, did I say a week?
I don't really know, I don't think I said a week.
I think I said a night, you know?
And my kids like, oh my goodness, you know?
And the idea of sink possibility to me is kind of the same thing as best coaches do to
their athletes.
They're like, wow, my basketball players really missing a lot of free throws.
Like, oh, like I can be like, I'm worried you're going to miss every shot for the best
of the season.
Or I'm like, wait, their shot looks a lot off.
Like what's going on there?
Are they nervous?
Is it actually their form?
Is it, I don't know, their muscles?
Like if I see them as being capable of developing some new skill, then there's a lot of possibility
and hope.
And I think we all feel that difference.
Yeah.
It changes everything and our kids are so attuned to us, you know?
They know what our intention is, even if the words coming out of our mouth are saying
something different.
It's exactly right.
What differently wire kids?
Where do you see a lot of fear?
Where's like, where are parents very fearful?
I really think it is about the future unknown.
I think that if a lot of, you know, I just was on a call with families in my community
last night and there's so much school refusal right now and the anxiety and mental health
challenges and just not thriving really.
Socially, all of these things and we see the potential in our kids and we know how incredibly
bright they are and how they have so much to contribute to the world.
And I think the fear is around them not thriving long term and then worrying, am I going
to make a mistake?
Am I making the wrong choice?
Like parents get paralyzed at every juncture because there's still this idea that if I make
the right choice or if I can control this, then I can guarantee this outcome and that can
be paralyzed.
There's no right choice to make.
We're feeling our way through this at every stage.
But I think it is that fear that our kids ultimately aren't going to make it.
Yeah.
Can I ask you a question?
One of the kind of ultimate, I feel like thought errors parents in general make, I don't
love to do an error.
It feels so harsh, but kind of the thought pattern that ends up being not so useful to us
is something I call the fast forward error.
So I see my kid today struggling with something and I fast forward, usually not even like three
months.
I don't know, I see my kid isn't listening to the music teachers, like hitting their
sibling and I'm like, stop that hurts and they look at me and they do it again.
And I'm like, I see them as like a sociopath as a 30 year old.
And then I respond to my four year old or my eight year old River as as if they are
that sociopathic 30 year old, not say that even be useful, but like it's like I fast forward
to the future.
I have an idea I'm worried about.
But then I accumulate all the things that would have led to that.
And I feel all that today and all of that is infused to this small moment in front of
me.
Yeah, totally, totally relate to that.
Even, you know, having this idea when my kid was three or four and I was having a really
rough day, very emotional and my child was like, oh, can I, how can I be so bred?
Like completely didn't track that I was upset.
I'm like, who is this kid?
Like what is wrong with this kid?
Of course, now I know my child is incredibly deeply empathetic.
But yeah, I think that is very true.
And one of the things I talk to my families about all the time is to just remember that
our kids are always, always, always changing.
And sometimes they're changing, you know, it's zigzag.
It's not all full steam ahead.
Yes.
I think that is one of the hardest things.
I actually remember that very viscerally for when I had a baby where I remember there
were like, you know, three days in a row where they didn't eat or they had sucked
through the night for a while and then they didn't and the way I always described it, is it
felt like whatever was happening today, like was the forever reality?
Like I have a kid who doesn't eat.
But then like someone who knew me well would be like, I was with you like four days ago.
Like I'm not trying to invalidate this is hard.
That's just like, that's not what I saw.
Right.
And I think that's why these stages feel so hard.
A stage would never feel hard if you were grounded in the fact that it was just a stage.
Like it wouldn't.
And apparently the trick it does in our brain is it makes us think this is the forever,
which of course is a desperate, awful place to be in.
And I love that you're saying like you actually have enough years of experience now as a
parent, right?
To say like, I've kind of experienced enough stages where my body kind of like trusts
that maybe more than it used to love that.
So my kid is 19 as I mentioned earlier and is on the SCAP semester program in Ireland.
And honestly, like even a year ago, even three months ago, I wouldn't have been able to
say that this was going to happen.
And that's just such a reminder of how our kids are always changing.
And as part of that, I've just been over the past few years really realizing that I keep
waiting to get to some stage where things are going to be just easy.
And oh, we've made it work.
We're there.
And so I've spent a lot of time trying to hurry through what I'm in right now.
So I've been really working on intentionally just being present for this because this is,
you know, this is life.
This is what we're doing right now.
I'm parenting this kid right now.
Yeah.
And I think what's really beautiful about that is like, I just know when we all have, I
don't know, 30, 40 year old children, let's say, I feel like we're going to want to say,
I had a relationship with my 10 year old.
How do I set my 11 year old with my 12 year old and my 13 year old?
Not.
Oh my goodness.
I'm going to be born until 40, here we are at 40 and I kind of missed out like, who were
they?
Like what, what could we have done?
Not to say, not to be polyanna.
It's not easy, you know, but just this is where my kid is today.
And what's a version of connecting to my kid today and the irony I always say is to me
with the fast forward error we all do is the best thing for our kids down the line is to
see what's going on with them today and try to meet their needs and build the skills
they need today.
So you're actually kind of in some ways like killing two birds is one stone.
Anyway, Debbie, here's my question.
Like we want to keep our kids safe, right?
But safe doesn't mean always comfortable.
And so what is this line between secure, safe, but on the other hand, something that I
can't imagine is good for any kids, kind of some version of like over catered to or
coddled.
How do you see that?
It's such a good question and it's something we talk a lot about.
You know, I think of scaffolding when you ask this question, I think it is so important
for us as parents to I talk about becoming fluent in who your child is.
And that means really understanding them on such a deep level that you read their nonverbal
cues, you get your attuned to their nervous system, you can kind of see where their threshold
is, which might change for a minute to minute hour to hour day to day.
And always be trying to find that just right challenge, right?
So we want to be of course stretching our kids and part of the job is looking for those
windows of opportunity.
And so like I personally have gotten so good at noticing when there's an opening, I'm
like, okay, like what am I going to squeeze into this opening and how can I connect some
dots or help my child, you know, feel pushed a little bit further outside their comfort zone.
And we want to do those things at the right time.
If I do that when my kid has come home and they're already activated and they're kind of in
shut down mode, there's no learning that's going to happen.
So we want to stay really attuned and always be looking for those opportunities.
They might not happen that often, but we're always playing the long game here, right?
So I always try to zoom out and remember the bigger goal and looking for opportunities
to whether it's executive function or emotional regulation to kind of stretch those skills.
Yeah, and to me, I just want to emphasize, I think this is so important because I think
too often in my private practice, I sell parents who come in and talk with their kids.
And they have various terms, they've ADHD, they're definitely wired, they're, you know,
they're deeply feeling and so they can't do xyz.
And I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Like I'm not even debate the nuance of whether they can or can, but if this is the framework,
then we're constantly reflecting to these kids.
You are not capable of learning.
Now maybe your learning is going to be different, maybe your outcomes are going to be different,
but we definitely don't want to limit any kids sense of their competence based on any,
you know, one specific term or, you know, any trait.
And so to me, there's this nuance where we need a framework to understand our kids.
Some kids are different.
Like I said, I have these kids in my private practice.
I have one of these kids myself.
Their pathway is going to be very different.
Like just like some kids take longer to learn how to swim.
Like some kids take longer to regulate their emotion or take on challenges.
And then I'm going to be able to understand 100% to me side by side with a nuanced understanding
of our kid.
It's just holding on to the idea of like my kid is going to be able to overcome obstacles
and I'm going to both understand them and kind of reflect back that I see them as a kid
who's capable of kind of growth in that way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And looking for those opportunities when, when our child does something that was really
brave or resilient saying, oh my gosh, how did you do that?
I noticed you just did that.
That is so cool.
You're really developing that that trait and it's really exciting to see.
So we can be making those connections in real time so that they can really start internalizing
those messages.
Awesome.
Well, thank you for all of the stepies or anything today.
We haven't covered that.
I like, oh, I'd hate to end without saying this to parents.
I mean, the thing that I always like to share with parents, especially parents who are
with younger kiddos on this journey and maybe feeling overwhelmed is just to remember
that your child is not broken.
They do not need to be fixed.
And I personally feel like having these more complex kids, they demand so much from us
as parents, but that presents this opportunity to have even a deeper connection with them
and to also grow more ourselves as parents.
So if you can lean into it, it's an incredible journey.
Oh, thank you so much.
I appreciate everything you're doing, all of your guidance, so helpful, and so important.
Thank you so much, Becky, it was such an honor to chat with you today and say it back
to you.
Thank you.
I have one final thought I want to share.
There's really this nuance in my mind.
In approaching are differently wired kids or kids, I often think are deeply feeling kids.
These kids go zero to 60.
They tend to push away help when they need it the most.
They tend to become very overwhelmed by emotion or even talking about emotion.
And to me, this nuance is we have to understand these kids and who they are.
That is so important.
They have to be understood and they're tricky.
And at the same time, we cannot walk on eggshells around these kids because when we walk
on eggshells and we kind of let these kids are deeply feeling kids' emotionality essentially
be the pilot of the plane.
But our kids actually feel from us is, oh my goodness, my feelings are so overwhelming
to me and holy moly.
They are overwhelming to my parent.
They are so overwhelming to the adults around me that the adults around me won't even
be the authority I need.
They won't even set boundaries.
They're not even really fully in charge of decisions.
They're kind of putting me in their privacy and that is so not where I'm supposed to be.
And I am so scared.
I'm even more scared of myself.
My feelings might actually be as overwhelming and toxic as I worry they are.
And for all of you here who want a little more guidance on that, I just want to make sure
you know where to get it.
My deeply feeling kid workshop without a doubt addresses this, but I just added actually
a new short video to our member library because I wanted to get it this specifically and it's
all about how to not walk on eggshells around your kid, whether you have a deeply feeling
kid and not deeply feeling kid and differently wired kid.
But you think is a neuro typical kid.
There are moments when we walk on eggshells and having an understanding of why we don't
want to do this and what to do instead to me is game changing in the family.
So how not to walk on eggshells is now there in the library.
I'm so excited that you know where to access it.
Also if you want to learn more about Debbie, definitely check out her most recent book differently
wired a parent's guide to raising an atypical child with confidence and hope and her tilt
parenting podcast.
Thanks to Airbnb.
Remember your home could be worth more than you think.
Find out more at airbnb.com slash host.
Thank you for listening to share a story or ask me a question go to good inside dot com
slash podcast or you could write me at podcast at good inside dot com.
Learning is the hardest and most important job in the world and you deserve resources
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Good inside with doctor Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom at magnificent
noise.
Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Julianna and Kristen Mueller.
I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Brooke Zant and the rest of the good
inside team and one last thing before I let you go.
Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves.
And as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside.
