Season 02 Episode 10
💬 Show Notes
In this episode of Connected Parenting Minute, Will and CarrieAnn Standfest return for the much-anticipated part two of their brain science series. They continue to unravel the mysteries of the brain, focusing on the powerful concept of ‘flipping one’s lid.’ With their signature blend of warmth and wisdom, the Standfests explain how the brain’s processing systems—from the survival-oriented brainstem to the emotional limbic system and the logical cortex—can sometimes go offline during moments of stress, leading children (and adults) to react in survival mode, unable to access reasoning or language. They introduce the hand model of the brain, a simple yet profound tool to visualize these brain systems and their responses.
Will and CarrieAnn also provide practical, real-world strategies for parents to catch early signs of distress in their children, engage their thinking brains, and help them (and themselves) regulate before a full-blown lid flip occurs. They emphasize the importance of practicing these techniques outside the moment of crisis, ensuring that both parents and children are equipped to handle stress with grace and understanding. Whether it’s using proprioceptive inputs like deep breathing and oral stimuli or modeling self-regulation by taking a step back during heated moments, this episode is filled with actionable advice.
Tune in to learn how to foster a sense of safety and resilience in your family, and remember, it’s not about being perfect—it’s about getting better one connected parenting minute at a time.
🗣️ Quotes from Will And Carrie Ann Standfest
“Understanding the basics of the brain can help us be better parents.”
“When your kids are flipping their lids, they aren’t functioning at all cylinders.”
“Nobody is winning as we escalate that fight.”
Season 2 Episode 10 of the Connected Parenting Minute Podcast
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🔑 Episode Keywords
Connected Parenting, Trauma-Informed Principles, Felt Safety, Brain Science, Dr. Dan Siegel, The Whole-Brain Child, Dr. Tina Payne Bryson, Prefrontal Cortex, Limbic System, Brainstem, Flipping The Lid, Fight, Flight, Or Freeze, Child Development, Emotional Regulation, Parenting Strategies, Trauma Response, Parent-Child Connection, Self-Regulation, Behavior Management, Child Psychology
connectedparenting #brainscience #flippinglid #prefrontalcortex #emotionalregulation #traumainformed #copingstrategies #familydynamics #childbehavior #neuroscience #parentingminute #podcast #parentingtips
Show notes created by https://headliner.app
Music by https://lesfm.net/
Show Transcript:
Will: If they don’t have that feeling of. Felt safety, they will. Very quickly, their lid will flip, and their survival brain will take over and will do whatever it has to to get them out of that situation until. They feel safe again.
Intro/Outro: You’re listening to the connected parenting minute with Will and CarrieAnn Ann Standfest. this podcast is a conversation about parenting using connection first, trauma informed principles. Because when you lead with connection, everyone feels seen, which is the foundation to a more peaceful home. this podcast reminds you that you don’t have to be a perfect parent, but we can all get a little better one connected parenting minute at a time.
Will: Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. This is the connected parenting minute. My name is Will Standfest, and with me this evening is the lovely Carrie Ann standfest.
CarrieAnn: That’s me.
This is part two of our brain science episode. We geeked out last time
Will: Well, we are glad that you are back for part two of our fabulous brain science episode. We kind of geeked out last time, and I won’t lie, it was fun.
CarrieAnn: It was so fun. And I think I’m just still really energized by the different topics we’re talking about with the brain and how much I just love learning about it and talking about it. I think it’s fundamentally changed a lot of our parenting, but also just seeing people in general, understanding that people function and process things while everyone has different experiences and everyone has, you know, everyone’s so different, but they fundamentally process things the same way. And just to be able to see that when you understand it a little bit, it’s.
Will: It’s really cool.
Will: It does. It changes your perspective and your empathy and your kind of point of view.
Will: Of different people and how they react in certain situations. We did mention this is a part two of our brain science episode. Don’t worry.
Will: You can just keep listening and get.
Will: Hopefully get a lot out of this episode that’ll help you.
Will: If not, if you want to back up and go through part one first, no problem.
Will: I’ll be waiting for you right here.
Will: Just.
Will: It should be the previous episode on your podcast feed.
CarrieAnn: Yeah, go listen to the first one if you. You didn’t hear it because we geeked out.
Will: Otherwise, buckle in where you’re.
Will: You’re learning about brain science during your drive to work.
Will: You can tell your boss you need a raise. It’s awesome.
CarrieAnn: You know, oh, my gosh, I could go so many different ways with that, but it’s fun.
Last week, we talked about three simple systems within our brain
Will: All that to say we had, huh?
Will: Last week, we talked about the kind.
Will: Of three simple systems within our. With our brain, with the brainstem and the limbic system.
Will: And the cortex, and then what those.
Will: Different systems do and how they process information, how they process inputs from the.
Will: World around us and what that means for how we kind of interpret and process experiences we’re having in our life.
CarrieAnn: That’s right. And I believe that we promised that point number three from last time was going to be on this episode, but it ended up being point number one. So I don’t know. I think we just lost a point in there. But that’s okay.
Will: That’s okay.
Will: They still like us.
CarrieAnn: I hope so. I still like us.
Hand model of the brain can help us understand complex brain systems
Will: So.
CarrieAnn: All right, so point number one is going to be how the hand model, a hand model of the brain can help us understand these systems very, very simply. And so I’m going to explain that.
Will: Hand model of your brain.
Will: The hand model of the brain.
CarrieAnn: Model of the brain. This comes from Doctor Dan Siegel. He’s author of the whole Brain and Child.
Will: Co author.
CarrieAnn: Co author. Because doctor Tina Bryson.
Will: Doctor Tina Payne Bryson.
CarrieAnn: There we go.
Will: And Doctor Dan Siegel worked together on.
Will: The whole brain child, which is where.
Will: A lot of this information came from. Not all of it.
Will: Not all of it.
Will: a lot of this is covered in that book.
Will: It is a fantastic book about parenting.
Will: And children and brain development and how this all weaves its all together. Lucky for you, weve read that book multiple times.
CarrieAnn: We have. Im actually thinking about it. I should go read it again.
Will: I kind of want to now.
CarrieAnn: I know after weve been talking about it, im like, hey, lets go read this book again.
Will: But thats what we do on this podcast.
Will: We take these things, these big, bright.
Will: Brain science books, and try to break them down and give you practical tools.
Will: To help you with your kiddos.
CarrieAnn: Yeah, just little itty bitty things. I consider it a win if you go, huh?
Will: Huh?
Hand model the brain is a very simple way to understand the brain
I want to know more about, all right.
CarrieAnn: Hand model the brain. I’m going to go through this very systematically. Pay attention. Now, if you’re listening and you’re just sitting in the car, not driving, or if you’re walking on the treadmill or out walking the dog, you, you can do this alongside me. But if you’re driving, I give you a pass. Unless if you stopped at a really long red light.
Will: A really long red light. I’m sorry.
CarrieAnn: All right, so you can raise your hand up. It can be either hand, your left or your right. Kind of like you’re swearing into office maybe.
Will: I don’t know.
Will: Okay, cool.
Will: Okay. All right.
CarrieAnn: The first thing you’re gonna do is take your thumb and fold it across your hand.
Will: All right?
Will: Kind of across the front of your palm like that?
CarrieAnn: Exactly. If you, if you know sign language, it would be the letter b in sign language. So hand up, thumb the thumb across the palm of your hand.
Will: Yep.
CarrieAnn: And then you’re going to take your four fingers and wrap them down around the thumb. Okay, so this is a hand model of the brain.
Will: You’re making a fist that I can.
Will: Break my thumb with?
Will: Yes.
CarrieAnn: Do not hit anyone with this, this hand. It would be very unfortunate. All right, now we’re going to explain this. All right, so you can back open your hand, back up if you want to.
Will: Hands all the way open.
CarrieAnn: All right, the very, very base of your palm, right where your wrist and your hand meet.
Will: Okay?
CarrieAnn: That is going to be our brainstem. So, like we talked about last, last time, that is the part of your brain where your body controls your functions. It controls your breathing, controls your heart rate, your digestion, blinking, all those things that are really important to keep you safe. Also down there in the brainstem is that fight, flight, or freeze reaction.
Will: Yes.
Will: So this is, could be called your survival brain, your lizard brain, your primal brain, all the different things.
Will: All right?
CarrieAnn: Now, when we fold that thumb over, that is going to be our limbic system. Those are the thing. That’s the part of the brain that processes information through our experiences. We’re very, very simplistically putting it, but that for this purpose, that’s what we’re going to be using the limbic system for. Then when we fold those four fingers over our thumb, that top part of your hand is the cortex. Now, you can think of your four fingers that are folded over as the.
Will: Prefrontal cortex, kind of the knuckles on the front of the fingers there.
CarrieAnn: Exactly.
Will: Prefrontal cortex, which is logic and reasoning and critical thought and language. It’s where your words are.
CarrieAnn: Where your words are. When we think about the brain, if we want to just think of a very, very simple model of it, we think of a hand model of the brain.
Will: And that goes back to what we were saying last week, is that our.
Will: Brain processes our information systematically. Any new information, experiences that come in.
CarrieAnn: Goes through the wrist.
Will: It kind of, you can kind of picture it.
Will: Almost all the sensory inputs.
Will: I mean, you could almost picture like.
Will: Your forearm is kind of like your.
Will: Spinal cord or kind of like the.
Will: Brain’S interface to the rest of the body, where all the inputs and sensory stimulations are coming in and the brain is trying to filter and process the.
Will: Hundreds of millions of, to billions of points of data per second.
CarrieAnn: It’s a lot.
Will: It’s an overwhelming amount.
CarrieAnn: I think we mentioned this last week, but I want to bring it up again. That is also the way, you know, as we’re processing that information is going through the reptilian brain or the. Oh, my gosh, the brains. Dumb. There we go. Words.
Will: And then.
CarrieAnn: So our brains process this information this way it goes, a brainstem, limbic system cortex. But that’s also because that’s how our brains develop.
Will: Oh, that’s right.
CarrieAnn: Yeah, they start. I mean, when you think of an infant, you know that that brain stem. There we go.
Will: Is there to help regulate your infant’s breathing and digestion.
CarrieAnn: Exactly. And then we start the limbic system. And then we get to the cortex.
Will: They learn to smile, all the emotions.
CarrieAnn: So we think about it. That’s how they develop, but that’s also how the information is processed. So those are two really important pieces to remember.
We have a special bonus episode to help you with your biggest connected parenting struggles
So we’ve got the hand model of the brain, which then is an important thing to remember.
Will: So the hand model of the brain, what does that mean? How does that apply to us?
Will: Right after this break, to remind you of our end of the season special episode.
CarrieAnn: Woo.
Will: Hey, you, our favorite listener. We want to answer your questions.
CarrieAnn: we have a special bonus episode we’re going to do at the end of season two to help you with your biggest connected parenting struggles. We see you sitting in your car or riding your bike or walking your dog. So spend that time thinking about the things that you’ve been struggling with.
Will: We want to help you be the most connected parent that you can be. So contact us using connectedparentingminutemail.com or message.
CarrieAnn: Us on Facebook or Instagram.
Will: Remember, it only takes a minute.
When our kids flip their lids, it takes our thinking brain offline
Will: And now back to the show.
CarrieAnn: We have the hand model of the brain.
Will: Now that you’ve been sitting at your stoplight for five minutes, I hope not.
CarrieAnn: We’re going to go on to point number two. What does it mean, will? When our kids flip their lids.
Will: They flip their lids. When our kids flip their lids, I.
Will: Feel like I know what it might.
Will: Mean, but why don’t you explain it to me?
CarrieAnn: All right, so we have our hand all the rain again. You can pull that out unless you’re driving. When our kids flip their lids, our kids are actually taking those four top fingers and pulling them up.
Will: You’re saying. I start with my fingers wrapped around.
Will: My thumb, around my limbic system there. And then my fingers just kind of pop straight up and they’re sticking up there. And all that’s left is my little limbic system flapping in the breeze.
Will: Yes.
CarrieAnn: Your b hand for sign language.
Will: Sorry.
CarrieAnn: Our kids are in sign, so asl.
Will: Yes. But what do you think happens when.
CarrieAnn: Those four fingers pop back up like that, will?
Will: it kind of takes your prefrontal cortex offline.
CarrieAnn: Yeah, it does. It takes our thinking brain offline. So when we talk about our kids or us flipping our lids, we’re talking about taking that cortex, that thinking part of our brain. It doesn’t work anymore.
Will: Ooh, there’s so many.
Will: There’s so many.
Will: There’s so many things that this means.
CarrieAnn: It does. So there’s a really good.
Will: We.
CarrieAnn: And, we’ve talked about this example before with that cortex having those language skills and those critical thinking skills. Think of it this way as an adult.
Will: Okay?
CarrieAnn: We’re gonna be back to driving in your car, because if you’re not, I’m sorry for all the car references. This is just where I listen to podcasts. You’re driving in your car, and all of a sudden, some guy holes in front of you and cuts you off, slam on the brakes, and you just don’t even know what to do. Like, maybe make contact. Maybe you didn’t make contact, but all of a sudden, you just, don’t even have the words.
Will: Yes.
CarrieAnn: What happens?
Will: You just flipped your lid.
Will: What?
Will: Your prefrontal cortex is now offline.
Will: Your brain is in stuck in survival brain.
Will: You were in fight, flight, or freeze.
Will: Mm
Will: And you can’t get the words out.
Will: Like, I know.
Will: I’ve had those experiences where something happened like that.
Will: Like, especially if something unsafe, right? Like, somebody cut you off in traffic, or it was like a near miss or something like that, where triggers were like, boom, you have been triggered into.
Will: Fight, flight, or freeze.
Will: You can feel it.
Will: Like, you feel your heart accelerate. You feel the adrenaline just dump into.
Will: Your system, and your brain is like.
Will: I need to prioritize survival.
Will: I don’t care about words right now.
CarrieAnn: Exactly. It was interesting because even explaining that I was feeling myself getting a little tingly, like, okay, like, calm down. It’s not actually happening.
Will: The whole thing we’re doing here is talking.
Will: We’re just talking. I know.
CarrieAnn: I need the words.
Will: I need the gore.
CarrieAnn: I need the words. But that is a practical example of how something that we perceive as a danger, as something scary, as something unexpected, can cause us to flip our lids. And then recognizing that same thing happens with our kids, but they may not have as many experiences with those things to know.
Will: Safe. Unsafe.
CarrieAnn: It may just feel unsafe and they don’t understand why. And whereas the parents going, of course, this is totally safe. I just told you to do this. And I mean that, man. Every time we talk about the brain, I just want to talk about all the things. But it’s an important part to remember that when your kids are flipping their lids, that they aren’t functioning at all cylinders.
Will: Yeah.
Will: They don’t have the logical reasoning skills.
Will: The critical thinking skills, the language skills.
Will: That you would want them to have in those situations that we don’t as adults. And these are kids that haven’t had.
Will: The 20 years of experience, 40 years.
Will: Of experience we’ve had.
Will: Right, right.
Will: And so they’re not as good at.
Will: Things because you get good at what you practice.
Will: Yeah.
Tune down some of your survival instincts when facing stressful situations
Will: so you gotta practice to get through these situations, to understand when your life really is in danger and when.
Will: It’S just a stressful situation.
Will: And your brain can kind of help.
Will: Tune down some of those survival instincts.
Will: So that you can still react in an appropriate way.
CarrieAnn: Right. here’s an example with some of our kids, too. We’ll get into a situation where something happens and you’re, you know, maybe you’re not angry or maybe you’re not frustrated. Maybe you’re completely calm and regulated and you asked your kid, well, what happened? And they go, I don’t know.
Will: And you’re like, you were there.
Will: Come on.
Will: What? I don’t know. What did you do?
Will: What did they say?
Will: I don’t know.
Will: What happened?
Will: I don’t know.
CarrieAnn: Oh, we might have some feelings about that one.
Will: I have feelings about that repeated phrase.
CarrieAnn: But when we’re thinking in a trauma informed, brain science way, we can understand that those communication skills may not be online.
Will: Yes.
CarrieAnn: So it may not be. I don’t want to talk about it.
Will: Or I’m just not going to tell you. I’m being rude.
CarrieAnn: I’m being difficult on purpose. It might just be that. That is the phrase that comes to mind because they don’t know what else.
Will: To say because they can’t think through.
CarrieAnn: It, they can’t process it, you know? Or sometimes even when our kids lie.
Will: Ooh, that’s a hard one. That’s gonna hit some m. That that.
Will: Pushes some people’s buttons. I mean, it pushes my buttons, if we’re being honest.
CarrieAnn: well, mine too.
Will: That’s.
CarrieAnn: To me, one of the hardest things about parenting is when you have the suspicion that your kid’s lying to you. And, I mean, you can dig into all kinds of things with that, and there’s all kinds of reasonings behind that. But sometimes this might be part of it is that that brain is flipped. They flip their lid and they’re just not thinking about anything other than feeling safe. And to them, feeling safe might doing whatever they can to protect themselves, saying.
Will: Whatever they think they need to say to get out of the situation.
Will: Yes.
Will: Ah, they’re not that.
Will: And that’s the. And that’s the piece if you understand.
Will: Your child the best. And as parents, it is our job to be the world’s best detective for our children.
Will: Yeah.
Will: We need to be the ones that know our child the best. And so this is where we need to understand. If my child is feeling stressed and my child is feeling. Is feeling unsafe, regardless of whether or not they are actually are unsafe, it’s the feeling. This is going back to felt safety that we’ve talked about before.
Will: If they don’t have that feeling of.
Will: Felt safety, they will very quickly that.
Will: Survive, their lid will flip and their survival brain will take over and will do whatever it has to to get them out of that situation until they feel safe again.
Will: This is a brain science thing.
Will: This isn’t them actively choosing it.
Will: This is their brain taking over, trying to help them survive. And yes, they are safe with you. Yes, they don’t need to survive in this moment. They are not actually under threat, but their brain doesn’t know that. Especially when we’re talking about our adopted.
Will: Kids, our foster kids, our kids not.
Will: Born to us, especially when we’re talking about kids who have had experiences outside of the home. Oh, wait, that’s all of our children.
Will: Well, right.
CarrieAnn: And we’ve talked about in previous episodes, you know, your kids are in school, they have friends. They’re doing this, they’re doing that. We can’t be there 100% of the time knowing exactly what’s happening to our kids. And as such, we need to consider the possibility that they’ve experienced things that we don’t understand. And so these big behaviors are these reactions and stuff like that. We have to be curious. We have to be asking, I wonder what’s behind that.
Will: I like that. Be curious about what’s going on.
Will: Exactly.
Practice outside the moment to regulate yourself and your kids
CarrieAnn: All right, we should move into some practical tips because we’re talking like, we’re.
Will: Talking about geeking out about brain science.
CarrieAnn: All right, we have. So we come to point number three. Practice outside the moment, things you can do to regulate yourself and your practice.
Will: Outside the moment, things we can do to regulate ourselves and regulate our kids. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Will: I just want to regulate my kids? I’m clearly not the problem here, am I?
CarrieAnn: You know, we have to be an example, right? Model good behavior.
Will: What more is caught than taught?
Will: Yeah.
Will: All right, so let’s go through some practical steps. What are some practical things that we can. That we’ve used, that we know other people have used that can help regulate our kids in these stressful situations?
When we are curious about our kids, sometimes we can catch it low
CarrieAnn: All right, so we’ve talked about flipping our kids, flipping their lids, right. One thing that we have noticed is that when we are being curious about our kids, when we’re paying attention, what’s happening with our kids, sometimes we can catch it low.
CarrieAnn: So we’ll call it like a half blip. I don’t know if that’s a thing, but we’re making it up right now.
Will: It’s a thing now.
CarrieAnn: It’s a thing now. But when we catch it low, we’re able to start looking at our kids. We can see things are starting to happen. They’re starting to get agitated or they’re starting to kind of lose their stuff. There’s ways that we can catch it. And some of those things are questions. We can ask them a question that is not a yes or no question, because the interesting part about that is that that almost forces sometimes that prefrontal cortex, those language skills to come back online, you have to catch at the right time. Right. This isn’t, something you can just pull out.
Will: This is knowing your kid.
CarrieAnn: Exactly. But when you’re asking more than a yes or no question, you’re causing their brains to start thinking about an actual logical sentence, reasoning. It is a tool to think about.
Will: It’s a tool that will work in certain situations.
Will: Exactly.
Will: Asking a non yes or no question.
Will: Is a good one. To bring your.
Will: To bring that prefrontal cortex online. If they have not completely flipped already. This is when you’re low.
Will: Right.
CarrieAnn: Another way we can do that is by having some good proprioceptive, especially oral proprioceptive, stimuli. So think suckers. Gum, mints. There’s several of those things that I always carry in my purse. So when we are out and about and we know that some. Some stuff is starting to go down, I would like. Hey, do you want a mint? Hey, do you want some gum?
Will: Hey, do you want a sucker?
CarrieAnn: Those things all cause it’s self regulating.
Will: Yes.
Will: The sucking motion is very regulating.
Will: For example, when a baby is drinking a bottle or nursing, that is very.
Will: Self regulating for a baby.
Will: That’s.
CarrieAnn: That’s a really good way to put it. I hadn’t thought about that.
Will: Yeah, but that’s where the lot of that comes from. That’s, that’s. There’s all these kind of,
Will: Nerve endings and proprioceptive inputs on your.
Will: Upper lip and in your mouth and things like that. That’s.
Will: It’s part of why certain foods are so comforting.
Will: Another thing is magic mustache, they call.
Will: It where you take a finger and put it across your upper lip where your mustache would be, and just kind.
Will: Of putting some pressure there that can be very regulating.
CarrieAnn: You think about it also, if you’re ever stressed, you’re like, really, really stressed and you start rubbing across your eyebrows or under your, And you’re like, where your sinuses are in your face, you kind of put.
Will: Your head in your hands and stuff like that. Like, all that’s putting.
Will: Again, pressure points improprise inputs on your, on your face.
Will: Right.
CarrieAnn: And that’s too. Where we can.
We can talk about breathing. A kid regulate it. They’re trying to control and regulate their breath
We can talk about breathing. Like, oh, let’s take, oh, what is it? Five finger breathing. Oh, there’s a couple of different ones. Blowing out candles, taking, like, especially with young kids of like, let’s blow out the candles, take a big deep breath in, and you blow out one. One finger as a candle.
Will: You kind of fold your finger down as they’re blowing them out one at a time.
Will: give them a visual input.
Will: You’re giving them something to focus on. You’re causing them to try to. They’re trying to control and regulate their breath. Like all, like all these thinking things. All these regulating things.
Will: Again, you’re using your mouth or your deep breathing.
Will: The diaphragm can pull some things in there. There’s a lot of good things there.
Will: Yep.
CarrieAnn: And then water and snacks.
Will: Body movement.
CarrieAnn: Yeah, that’s true. Let’s take a walk and get some water.
Will: I mean, that’s so good because let’s not miss that. Not only did you like, this is.
Will: An example we actually gave to our.
Will: High school youth group.
Will: Is when you’ve got a teen who.
Will: Is dysregulated at youth group, because a lot of these youth group volunteers deal with situations with kiddos that they do not know all the complexities going on.
CarrieAnn: Exactly.
Will: And you have to have a practical.
Will: On hand tip to try to help.
Will: A kid regulate it.
Will: Who’s out of line. And one of the easiest ones, as dumb as this sounds, this works, is.
Will: Hey, buddy, I’m really thirsty. Why don’t you come get a drink.
Will: Of water with me?
Will: Because you are a inviting them into.
Will: A relationship b, they are walking away from the situation. C, they’re going for a physical walk.
Will: Which is movement and body regulation.
Will: D, they are going to get a drink of water sucking motion, cool water temperature regulation. And then I. What?
Will: I don’t know what letter I’m on.
Will: The next one. You’re modeling an awareness of self.
Will: M. Yeah, I’m aware that I need water right now.
Will: I’m feeling a little out of it.
Will: And I’m going to go get myself some. I’m recognizing my need and I’m going to go care for it. Like so many layers in such a simple little interaction with a child who’s dysregulated.
Will: Yep.
CarrieAnn: And I mean, you used the example of teens and there’s some other things we can do for teens we’ll touch on real quick is we talked about scripts, but we are also talking about sometimes we’re not just, we’re not going to win.
Will: Oh, yeah.
CarrieAnn: We need to have something for ourselves to be able to say, you know what? I need to step out of this situation and we can come back to it. You recognize. But before we say stuff that we regret, we’re letting ourselves, you know, our kid has flipped their lid and then we’re starting to flip our lid because we’re getting upset. We can model regulation, self regulation by being like, hey, I love you right now. I, I don’t want to say something I’m going to regret and genuinely be compassionate with that because they can tell when you’re like, I don’t want to say anything I’m going to regret. But when we can do that and we can tell ourselves, you know what, it’s probably not about me in that moment. It can be calming to ourselves, but coming up with situations outside of the moment that you can handle and navigate that and look back on, say, I, handled that well, you know what? The situation could have gone really badly, but I did okay, because that’s good.
Will: In the middle of a situation when it’s getting heated with your teenager and you’re having a disagreement and you’re going back and forth, maybe you’re retreading a conversation you’ve had a hundred times Or whatever you tell yourself, being able to, to disconnect from that and just Say, hey, let’s come back to this in five minutes, I need a glass of water. Or you can just say, I need. To go to the bathroom, I’ll be right back.
CarrieAnn: Right.
Will: Like, seriously, whatever it takes for you to just step yourself out of that situation. Nobody is winning as we escalate that fight.
CarrieAnn: Right?
Will: And I’m saying this to myself, oh. Yeah, this is something I struggle with. Cause I have some of my teens in the right moment, that my teenagers know my buttons better than my eight year old does. Cause they’ve been around longer.
CarrieAnn: That’s a good point.
Will: And so being able to recognize those. Moments and telling myself, nobody is winning as I escalate this fight. You know, we can talk about this later if, both of our lids. Are fliped, neither of our prefrontal cortexes are online. We’re not thinking logically. It’s all these things are good things to remember.
Will: Right.
CarrieAnn: And we’re modeling the behavior we want to see in our kids, because how great will it be if we’re in a disagreement?
And then they’re like, you know what? I’m trying. That seems like a good skill to me
And then they’re like, you know what?
Will: I’m trying.
CarrieAnn: Not trying to be disrespectful, but I recognize I’m not the calmest right now. Can we come back to this in a little while?
CarrieAnn: I, too, man. That seems like a good skill to me.
Will: It does seem like a good skill.
Things you can do to regulate both yourself and your children
All right, well, I think that’s about.
Will: It for this episode. We are.
Will: We’re going a little bit longer than.
Will: Our 18 to 22 minutes goal here.
CarrieAnn: Point number one is, remember the hand model of the brain, that it can help us remember how the brain processes information and what happens when we flip our lid, which is point number two.
Will: Point number two is that our kids.
Will: Flip our lids, remembering that when your kid flips their lid, and when we, as the parents, flip our lids, our.
Will: Prefrontal cortex is not online.
Will: Our logic, our reasoning, our words are not online.
Will: And that is not the time for a lecture.
Will: That is not the time that we.
Will: Are making our best arguments. That’s not the time when our kids.
Will: Or us are thinking clearly, understanding that.
Will: That’S a brain science thing, that’s not a defiance thing.
Will: Right.
CarrieAnn: And point number three is to practice outside the moment. Things you can do to regulate both yourself and your children.
Will: Yeah, because all those tips that we talked about, things you can do, are things you can practice.
Will: You know, give your kid. When you’re both regulated, calm, connected in a good place. Give your kid, hey, the next time we’re getting into that argument over homework.
Will: Or over video games, over whatever, I’m going to give us both permission to.
Will: Say, I need a glass of water or I need to step away for.
Will: Five minutes, and we are both going.
Will: To choose not to get personally offended by that and kind of talk through.
Will: That ahead of time, like unpacking that.
Will: Which might even give you a chance.
Will: To discuss the issue outside the moment.
Will: When you’re both calm, which might avoid the fight in the first place.
CarrieAnn: It might.
Will: Either way, I thank you so much. Each one of our listeners, we value you. We are grateful that you’re here.
CarrieAnn: Remember, we have a question and answer episode coming up as a special bonus episode for our amazing listeners. And we want to answer your question.
Will: So send them in. Use connectedparentingminutemail.com or send us a direct message on Instagram or Facebook.
We want to read another one of the super encouraging reviews we’ve had
And before we go, we want to read another one of the super encouraging reviews. We’ve gotten a couple of them and I just, they make me smile and so I just want to share with you guys and reviews we’ve had. This one is from Mary. Thanks for going to the effort to produce a helpful podcast for other parents. Recapping your three takeaway points at the end of the episode is really helpful. I’m off to talk horses with my daughter. Thanks for the encouragement to enter in.
Will: Awesome.
Will: well, Mary, I hope you and your daughter had a great time talking about horses, and I hope that each one of you learned a little bit about brain science and can help you look at situations and reactions from your children differently. And before we go, we’d like to.
Will: Remind you, you don’t have to be.
CarrieAnn: A perfect parent, but we can all.
Will: Get a little bit better.
Will: One connected parenting minute at a time.
CarrieAnn: Thank you so much for listening to my mom and dad’s podcast. It means a lot to me. Make sure to like and subscribe on the way out.
Intro/Outro: For more parenting tips or to connect with us, check out the connected parenting minute on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Or you can send us an email using connectedparentingminute@gmail.com.
The Connected Parenting Minute 