Curious Neuron Podcast

Nurturing A Secure Attachment with Reflective Skills: Insights with Dr. Nicole Letourneau

• Cindy Hovington, Ph.D. • Season 7 • Episode 17

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In this special 200th episode of the Curious Neuron podcast, we chat with renowned professor from the University of Calgary Dr. Nicole Letourneau. Her research focuses on enhancing parental reflective functioning (RF), the ability to understand and interpret one's own and a child's mental and emotional states.

Through the development of the ATTACH™ program, a 10-week intervention, she has demonstrated that improving RF leads to stronger parent-child interactions, secure attachment, and better child outcomes, including enhanced social-emotional skills, fewer behavioral issues, and improved cognitive abilities.

Her work highlights the role of RF in fostering healthy relationships, reducing child anxiety and aggression, and promoting emotional and psychological well-being. Parents can apply these insights by engaging in reflective practices and interventions like ATTACH™ to deepen their connection with their children and support their development.

You DON'T want to miss this episode!

To celebrate this special episode, if you send me a screenshot of your review AND a screenshot of you sharing the podcast on either a newsletter at work, a Facebook parent page etc, I will give you 3 FREE months for the Reflective Parent Club that Curious Neuron launched in September. That is a $79 value!

How to Contact Dr. Letourneau:
For more information about Dr. Nicole Letourneau and the Attach program visit attach.teachable.com for program details and links to research findings.

To learn more about Resolve SK, head to research-groups.usask.ca/resolve/

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/4/3078

Get your FREE 40-page workbook called Becoming a Reflective Parent:
 https://tremendous-hustler-7333.kit.com/reflectiveparentingworkbook

Join our membership, The Reflective Parent Club to learn how to manage your emotions and model this for your child.
https://curiousneuron.com/join-our-club/

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Speaker 1:

Hello, my dear friend, welcome to another episode of the Curious Neuron podcast. Today is not just any episode of the Curious Neuron podcast. Today is the 200th episode of the podcast and, if you could recall, 100 episodes ago we had Dr Bruce Perry in to chat about resilience in children. If you haven't heard that episode yet, you need to click the link in the show notes. Today we are bringing in somebody that to us here at Curious Neuron is just as important. Dr Nicole Letourneau is a researcher that we all need to know of, and all her research needs to be out there, and if you haven't heard of her research yet, you need to click the link in the show notes as well. We have written about her studies in two blog posts up on the website curiousneuroncom, and we also have reflection prompts that we are starting to integrate inside our blog posts, which are reflection prompts similar to what we think about and work on within the Reflective Club, which is our new membership here at Kirstenoron. And so click the link in the show notes and read about her research, and if you don't have time to do that, that's okay. I have the most amazing discussion with her here on the podcast. And if you don't have time to do that, that's okay. I have the most amazing discussion with her here on the podcast, and so get ready, you might want to take out a notepad for this one or listen to it twice.

Speaker 1:

It is one of my favorite episodes and her research revolves around reflection, which is what I've been doing now for at least a year, even up to two years with Curious Neuron, where I've been prompting you to take the time to pause, because I think, as parents, we get stuck on this autopilot function and we get stressed and overwhelmed and saying things like you know, nothing's ever going to change. It's always like this I just feel so stuck, or I don't want to do what I did, my parents did. I don't know how to regulate my emotions. We can continue saying these things, or we can start to practice, learn, and we do that by reflection. And so if we can take moments of pause as parents, we're going to start noticing things. We're going to notice patterns. We're going to notice places or spaces that we can make changes in how we react, how we respond, or spaces that we can make changes in how we react, how we respond, how we think, how we behave and act with our child, or how certain situations make us feel or how certain situations dysregulate us. If we can feel like scientists and start collecting this data through reflection, then we can make changes that are going to make a difference not only in our well-being but the well-being of our kids, because we're going to change the environment. We're going to make a difference not only in our well-being but the well-being of our kids, because we're going to change the environment. We're going to change how we help them feel, seen and heard and soothed. We're going to change our relationship with our kids.

Speaker 1:

So all of this is just fundamental to the work that we do here at Curious Neuron, and I'm so excited that we had Dr Letourneau come on the podcast for our 200th episode, because it is the essence of what Curious Neuron is and her research highlights just how important everything that we are doing here at Curious Neuron and inside our membership is Everything that you've been listening to on the podcast, if you've been following us on Instagram, if you've been listening to the podcast, reading our blog posts written by researchers and graduate students, where we also interview experts and specialists for the articles themselves. That is all the learning aspect and learning here at Curious Neuron. The education that we put out there for you is all grounded in research and science. It is so important to us, which is why we have, by the way, our two sponsors. I'd like to thank the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute as well as the McConnell Foundation for supporting this podcast. Without them, this would not be possible, without you listening to this podcast and sharing it and sharing episodes. You know there's a button somewhere, so I can't tell you where it is, but it is there. If you listen on Spotify or even Apple Podcasts or Audible, there are ways to share the podcast. So please do that as a gift to our 200th episode and guess what, to celebrate again.

Speaker 1:

Like I said last time by the way, we onboarded a new parent that got three months free of the membership I want to give another one. So, if you are listening to this podcast and you are ready to start practicing the skills you need in order to regulate your emotions, if you are saying to yourself my parents never taught me how to regulate and now, as an adult, I often suppress and I don't say what I'm thinking or try to suppress that emotion and make it seem like I'm okay, but I'm not, or maybe you're the opposite of that. Maybe you're just always losing control of your emotions and you have no idea why. You know you get triggered in certain situations, but you can't quite understand why it's happening. Maybe there's something unconsciously that's happening and you don't know. That is what the Reflective Parent Club was all built on helping you surface or understand all of these. I want to give out one more subscription, and so, if you leave a review and share it somewhere on a Facebook group, talk about the podcast. If you're part of a mom Facebook group or a parent Facebook group, share the podcast and let them know why it's important for them to listen. Send me the screenshots and I will give you three months free a $79 value of this podcast. I want to share it and let people come into the podcast. In fact, if there are lots of people that send me their screenshots, I will pick up to three people to give this for free, because I know of the impact that the Reflective Parent Club is having on parents, where they feel less stressed and more in control of their emotions and even more in control of their child's behavior, and so this is the time where you're like I want to see if this works for me. Get it for free, send me an email with screenshots one of your review, because the reviews help the algorithm notice that you care. And if you don't want to do this, just rate the podcast. Just take a moment to rate the podcast, because it makes a difference. And then, if you want to take extra time and post it somewhere, send me those two screenshots and I will give you three months for free.

Speaker 1:

In case you have never heard of Dr Nicole Le Tourneau's work, she is a professor at the University of Calgary, and not only is she a professor, she's a professor in the Faculty of Nursing and Cumming School of Medicine. Dr Le Tourneau holds the University of Calgary Research Excellence Chair in Parent and Child Health. Formerly she was the Chair in Parent Infant Mental Health, and so, as you can see, just with her titles and having the top titles that you can have in a university, she is very dedicated to both and, similarly to our vision here at Curious Neuron, if we can focus a lot more on the parent and support their well-being, we can proactively support and nurture their child's mental health and well-being, and so it's truly the mission that we have here and the vision that we have here at Curious Neuron and I'm clearly not the only one who thinks her research is important. She has attained $75 million Canadian in research funding just because of how important the work is that she is doing. She's the founder of the Attach program I will put the link in the show notes as well and as well as the VidKids parenting programs. They are designed to help stressed or depressed parents support their children's healthy development. Attach is currently scaling across the Canadian prairies, brazil and Denmark. All of these links will be in the show notes and you will learn more about these programs in our conversation.

Speaker 1:

I have talked in way too much. I am excited about this 200th episode. You need to hear this conversation with Dr Nicole Lautourneau and I will see you on the other side. Welcome back everyone and, like I said in the intro, we are here with a very special guest for a very special episode the 200th episode of the podcast. Dr Nicole Letourneau, welcome to the Curious Neuron podcast. Thank you for having me. It's terrific to be here. Cindy, we have been following your work now for a little while and are just fascinated by how relevant it is to the work that we do and the research we're trying to put out there for parents. I usually ask people that I have conversations with in terms of, like, what brought them to their journey. I'm interested in that for you, but I'm also interested in terms of the driving force for you, the why you've decided to kind of focus in on, you know, reflective function. So what led you to this? Yeah, such great questions.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know it's funny because I'm a nurse by background and I remember in my undergraduate degree it seems like a hundred years ago. But the light came on for me in my third year of the program of my bachelor of nursing degree and we talked to a public health nurses and their roles and their roles to help families. Help families in the early, particularly in the childbearing years. New mothers come home from hospital. Back in those days you'd have a public health nurse would go visit a mom and and it seemed like a just seemed like that's what I want to do and it aligned with some a lot. So much of my thinking, which is which has persisted this way over the years, is that so many new families, they don't have enough support to do the very challenging work of parenting. And you know, nursing is one of those disciplines, one of those professions that has been there at those important life transitions. You know, people become new mothers, families become you know, there's mom and dad and children become siblings. And nurses have been there. Other healthcare and social service workers have certainly been there too, but I've always been interested in supporting families, particularly when they become parents, in those key early moments where people are very receptive to learning and wanting to do the best by their children, no matter what troubles they might have had as children or adults themselves. It just seems like a, it's an option for renewal and it's in a key, like transition point. You can really make a big difference in a child's life and get them on a trajectory of success and health. And even going back like before.

Speaker 2:

I was in my undergraduate program in nursing, I used to work at parks and, honestly, I wrote about this in my first book actually, which is right there, but I wrote about this question in my very first book because why am I interested in parenting?

Speaker 2:

I always observed that parenting had such an important role to play in children's lives.

Speaker 2:

I mean, we say that it seems obvious, but given that I would see kids in school or I would see kids in my programs when I was like a camp counselor and so on, and you could really tell the ones that were thriving versus the ones that were struggling, often by the quality of relationships they have with their parents or the challenges that their own parents faced.

Speaker 2:

So all that together, you know, has led me, honestly, on my whole career, to focus on trying to provide families with the best start for their children and actually to help families have the best lives they can, because I think so often we forget about the important needs that parents have. You have to support parents to support their children. You need to support children through their parents. You can't separate the two, and so really I'm pretty much devoted my whole career to understanding how parenting influences children's health and development and to developing and testing and scaling and spreading programs that support families to provide the best starts for their children and that help the parents themselves, because I don't think those things can be disentangled.

Speaker 1:

And I don't think that we do that enough. In terms of supporting the parents, I think they're still missing a lot. I think back to my own prenatal classes and the support that they offered me. This was nine years ago. Now I have a.

Speaker 1:

Three kids now have five, seven and nine year old and I just feel that, knowing the research that I know now, I wish there was more in terms of supporting me in those moments, because it was, you know, they would tell us how to hold a child and nursing and all of that, which was important, but then they didn't tell me what to think or how to support myself in moments when you had a crying baby all night and you're like I'm at my wits end and I don't know, and I have, you know, a lot going on right now and I'm overwhelmed and stressed and tired, and so I really think that there's still room for that, and this is why we try to cover research like yours. That is, that parent first approach right, because, like you said, that will trickle down to the child. But so many parenting programs that I hear about now, like it's always focused on the tantrums and how do we change and fix that behavior? Right, there's still so much around that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's sort of yeah, I really recoil from the attitude of fix my kid. Yeah, exactly, I mean, kids need help too. I mean sometimes you have to fix the kid, but more often than not it's. We need to support the family. And if you look at the, you know the genesis of so many. You know mental health issues, cognitive issues, those sorts of things in children. It really comes down often to the circumstances that their families are in.

Speaker 2:

And one thing I've also learned over my career is, you know, I've done all kinds of interventions that I've developed over the years mothers for, mothers with depression or mothers, you know, trying to find out how to support mothers when there's been violence or addictions. I've developed all kinds of things to support teen moms. But what I have discovered is you can you know you can't just do a study and move on. You never can stop advocating. It seems like you constantly have to keep making the argument that you need to support parents. And that's why I have a research. I've always had a research chair of one sort or another over my whole career. I've been very fortunate that way. You know, I've been a career researcher, which has been unusual in nursing, but again, I feel so very fortunate, but I always, when I was asked to name my chair, I don't you know instead of saying you know, research chair in child health, health, because that's the focus in the end. But with research chair and parent and child health or parent infant health, like it's always been, you can't, you should not disentangle the two and for some reason in our society it persists in being that we are. We want to help children, but not their parents, like we blame the parents when I yes, it's such an unfortunate attitude. It's really I a societal obligation to support families, particularly in this new economy that we have now.

Speaker 2:

Things have changed a lot in the last 5,100 years. People, when they became parents, used to be able to rely on their extended families. Their parents were around, their siblings were around who had children of their own, and they could rely on these sort of expert parents around to give them support, guidance. In the middle of the night there'd be somebody to help. You just can't rely on that. Nowadays you have two parent families, Both parents are usually working and so much stress and, if you really ask me to dig into it, I think these sorts of stressors and strains are why we see so many children now in Canada having mental health problems.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if you're aware of this, but the latest UNICEF results show that Canada's children keep doing worse, physically and mentally, compared to the other developed nations, and I think right now we're 35th for mental health out of 38 developed nations. And I really think it's because we have not fully built out or think it's important to support parents in those early years. We just assume that those old supports, those traditional supports that parents have relied on forever for eons, are still there and they're just not, and you know. And then layer that on top of layer on top of that, you know economic challenges and COVID and everything else, and I think we've got a, you know, a real mix that puts children at risk. So, anyway, all that is to say, you seem to never be able to stop advocating for this to support families, and particularly the ones that are most vulnerable. In Canada. You know the low-income families, parents that have been struggling themselves because of mental health issues or whatever that, in my mind, come from. It's totally degeneration right, right.

Speaker 1:

And you know what's interesting is that over the summer I interviewed 100 parents just to kind of get a good idea of what's happening. You know a better idea of what's happening inside homes and the struggles that parents are having. And when I speak about parental well-being or mental health, they say I'm fine. I struggled to kind of get to the bottom of that right with a parent and what they wanted to know was how do I support my child? I want to be the best parent for my child. Just give me like the list of things that I need to do to make sure that I can be there for my child. And then, when we started digging a little bit deeper in the conversation and looking at the postpartum phase, then they would say well, in retrospect, yeah, I was struggling. Or in retrospect, I was very stressed, and actually I'm still very stressed right now. I'm overwhelmed and I'm always yelling at my child and I go to bed feeling guilty and I'm not getting the sleep that I want. And then they realized wait a second, I don't think I'm well Right through the conversation, but not seeing it as a priority.

Speaker 1:

Their priority is how do I make sure my child behaves a certain way and that I could support them without realizing that they're the sort of, you know, guiding light for that and that we need to support them. What has your research suggested? Right, because, in terms of maybe, they look at it as serious stuff you know, like you mentioned the depression and mental health and if they don't have a diagnosis or they haven't experienced an ACE however many have they just don't see it as something that they need to focus on. So what would you kind of share with a parent, given the work that you've done, that feel that you know, maybe I'm not the priority, it's my child. Yeah, holy gosh.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you've really pointed out some really important things that you know, I've observed in my research program over the years, and clinicians have certainly. New mothers in particular often don't recognize that they have postpartum depression, and postpartum depression it's considered to be toxic to children's neurodevelopment. I'll give you a little bit of background here, but the Harvard Center on the Developing Child created these metaphors to explain, you know, things that are important to early childhood development. And exposure to maternal depression, exposure to family violence and exposure to addictions in the parents are considered three toxic stressors to children's neurodevelopment. And it's interesting because the children don't have the depression, they don't have the addiction, they don't have the. They see the violence. They might not be exposed to it to themselves, but even just seeing it is enough to produce a neurotoxic impact on the kids.

Speaker 1:

So these are serious problems.

Speaker 2:

But going back to depression, many women don't recognize they have postpartum depression and we know that in Canada it's around 20% of women present postpartum depression. That's high. If they went to their clinician they would likely be diagnosed, which is really high. And also I think it explains the problems that we have with children's mental health right now. And if I there's so many tangents, I could go on here with you.

Speaker 2:

But going back to what we're just saying and about the value of society and supporting new parents, the number one thing you can do to prevent and treat postpartum depression is social support Number one thing Okay. So if so, 20% of moms are presenting around that now in Canada with postpartum depression is social support Number one thing, okay. So if so, 20% of moms are presenting around that now in Canada with postpartum depression, and if we provide them with adequate support, that number will be way less. So let me start with that. But the key thing about moms is, I mean, or becoming a new mom, even if you're a mom for the second or third time. Each time you've transitioned to become a mother, you're tired, you're having to reorganize your whole life, your relationships are changing, everything is changing, and so moms feel tired, irritable, anxious, all those things, and confused, maybe even have some mental confusion, have low mood, and they just attribute all of that to being on my new mom. Of course I'm tired I'm not sleeping as much.

Speaker 2:

Of course I'm anxious while I've got an extra child. Of course I am a little mentally uh, you know, not as as sharp as I usually am, because there's so much going on and I'm transitioning to, I'm changing. It's a new situation. So I this is not an illness, this is not something I need to reach out to people to get help about. This is just me transitioning.

Speaker 2:

So they are focused on their child, who's probably reacting to the fact that mom is not as attentive. Mom is really tired. Mom is not responding in a way that you would if you weren't tired and overwhelmed, like sometimes moms who are depressed. They will overreact or they're under react, exactly you know. And so babies start to adjust their behavior to those things. And so, for example, a mom who's underreacting very low mood, low energy because she's tired is more likely to have a baby who acts out a bit, cries a bit more, does things to get more attention right. This is one of the things that could happen, and so mom might go for help for her baby. I have a cry, I have a baby, that you know. I can't settle, a baby who needs me much, or you know more than I think might be, you know, typical. So moms are going to get help with their child and they want to be the best parents they can be and make sure that kids are the best start and ignoring completely and not it's not even that they ignoring it intentionally, it's just that they think it's typically, uh, just what happens when you become a new mother.

Speaker 2:

And so one of the things that my colleagues and I across Canada have been advocating for for years is screening mothers for depression in the postpartum period and even in the prenatal period, because, in addition to social support, one of the biggest things that predicts depression postnatally is depression prenatally, and actually the thing that prevents it as well is social support.

Speaker 2:

So if we were speaking there, getting making sure moms had the kind of support they need in their community if they can't find it in their friend and family group, getting them some care workers in there, getting them counseling, getting them respite, whatever it is, they need to actually have their symptoms be addressed and their relationship with their child be protected and their child's behavior and developmental trajectory being protected. So, anyway, that's a long, long answer to your question, but I think it's sort of, and you know, the layer on top of that is this is kind of bothersome to me as well. But the layer on top of that is, sometimes we don't care about families and society until what they're doing affects their children. You know what I mean. I think we should care about people for being people, but some, you know, it seems that in society often and not just Canada, but all around the world that we need that extra layer. Oh, this kid is needing help, and so, yeah, okay, we'll help the parent too.

Speaker 1:

Maybe that's why a lot of parents feel like fingers are being pointed at them, right, because maybe it's when the child is starting daycare or school. Then the teacher says your child can't sit down, you know? And then they talk about like was it my fault? Is it screen time? Is it versus if we can start from the beginning and truly offer the parent the support they need. What's interesting is you talk about social support, where we we took all the transcript from these conversations and what stood out. The first thing that stood out was emotion regulation skills, where parents said they just had no clue how to regulate their emotions. The second one was loneliness. Moms new moms specifically spoke about being very lonely or feeling very lonely, which means that that one essential item that you just mentioned, that social support is not there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's why they're lonely. They don't have social support. They're lonely, right. I mean there's four types of social support. There's instrumental it's like having someone help you with I don't know, childcare, dishes, letting you have a sleep. You know, look after instrumental stuff. And then there's information giving you information about your child, you know, or you know, and you being a new mom or whatever, like information about where to get resources. There's affirmational and emotional.

Speaker 2:

So people that are lonely are probably not getting affirmational and emotional. Like you know, you're a good mom, like gosh, that kind of thing that you need to hear once in a while. Things don't always go well. And emotional support just somebody to listen to you and hear you know what you're struggling with. And that opportunity as well, through reciprocity. It's really powerful when someone can take from their own experience and help another person with sharing their experience in a way that is informative and helpful for the person. Oh, I had that and I survived these ways. Why don't you try that? That makes everybody feel good. So, yeah, there's a lack of social support. Particularly emotional and affirmational, I think are really contributing to the kind of things you're observing.

Speaker 1:

Do you think that there's possibility, given what you've seen in research, in terms of changing that a little bit, or are there still too many barriers to say that this is something we can actually offer new parents?

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh. Well, you know, in Canada and it's better and worse in other parts of the world. But you know, but all I really can speak to is Canada and the way our healthcare system is developed. It's, you know, healthcare is the purview of the provinces and it depends we call it a postal code lottery sometimes like it depends where you are when you have a baby, the kind of resources that you have access to. So if you're in a city and a relatively richer province, you have more opportunities, more resources available to you than if you're in a rural, remote region in Canada. So you know the thing with I was saying, like my colleagues and I clinicians, researchers we've been advocating for years to promote screening women in the postnatal period particularly, but also prenatally, because without that information it's very hard to develop like national guidelines around what provinces should be considering delivering uniformly across the country to make sure that all women, all new childbearing people, have access to the resources they need, to have that support so they don't end up with mental health challenges. You know like, for example, the province of Alberta does screening, even though our Canadian Task Force for Preventive Health, healthcare keeps recommending against screening. Really, it's a long story about that, oh gosh. But the Canadian, I'm part of something called CANMAD it's the Canadian Mood and Anxiety Treatment Group, and we just are about to publish our own recommendations based on a huge review, really mammoth undertaking and recommending screening. And's a society of obstetricians and gynecologists of canada just recommended screening as well. So this public health agency of canada, canadian task force on preventative health care, they've got a very much more narrow lens about the evidence that they include in making recommendations about screening for all sorts things like breast cancer, whatever colorectal, perinatal, mental health disorders, and they have. They continue to recommend against. But other bodies that involve clinicians and people with lived experience and using a broader swath but still rigorously selected evidence, recommend for.

Speaker 2:

And I think this might help in Canada with these two reports coming out very close in time, I think that these two reports might actually help guide provinces a little bit more to allocate dollars to support families, and there's so many challenges we face in Canada, like with the aging population People. You know there's not a lot of money to go around for everything and so sometimes the money goes to. It seems like it's a competition, it's going to go here or there instead of to families. But I personally think and actually beyond think.

Speaker 2:

I really believe that prevention is really the key to population health. If we don't have a healthy population, we're not going to have a healthy economy, we're not going to have people that are able to work and contribute and I'm a professor at a university. I work with young people all the time and the mental health problems they are presenting with now compared to 20 years ago, there's not even a comparison. And I'll tell you, we used to have public health nurses. Most provinces would go in and visit families in the first days of life and, as needed, to make sure they have the resources that they need. But now women are kicked out of hospital super early and fast.

Speaker 1:

And it's just assumed. You'll figure it out. It's true, and I think parents feel that right. It's not enough support. And we have here I'm in Montreal, quebec, and we do have a nurse that comes, I think, three days after Well, they did before, I don't know if they still are, but I know that we had that but it's still not enough. And, honestly, she weighed the baby, she made sure that we were properly cleaning the umbilical cord and that I was nursing properly, and then she was gone. There was no question of my mental health.

Speaker 2:

It's such an underutilized like you know, we could have a whole conversation about nurse changes in Canada, but you know it's like nurses are prepared to do so much more than physical care, emotional care and connecting with resources and doing really good assessments like whole. You know biopsychosocial assessments and even spiritual. You know those sorts of things that were completely underutilized in this country and so, um, totally constrained in the kind of the things they're allowed to do. Unfortunately, now you go to other countries like Denmark, like I was just we're doing. We'll probably get to my attach intervention which is about reflective.

Speaker 2:

I'm really looking forward to talking to you about that. Our Denmark colleagues and nurses there are treated completely differently. They're the same education, honestly to say that. Same education. All right, there in Denmark, uh, every new family gets assigned a public health nurse, I think during the prenatal period, and that nurse is with them for six years, five or six years and that nurse is the one who checks in on them. Doesn't matter what socioeconomic strata you are either. Everyone gets a nurse. If you have problems with breastfeeding, speech, language concerns, food, like I don't know anything, like food bank and any issues you have, that is your go-to person and they have a. They have very good population health and very good GDP and a highly educated workforce and it's it's taken a lot of investments and so on, but I to get there, and part of that is public health, nursing, attention to families in the early stages of life, and I'm not saying it's all about nursing. I mean I'm biased, but the point is about having those resources early on.

Speaker 1:

I agree with you. I wish we could one day have that here. I want to bring it to your TATCH program and I think one thing that we've spoken about now that a parent might be questioning is you spoke about those early days and mental health, and many parents are struggling with, you know, postpartum depression and anxiety moms and dads, if they've heard this, and now you mentioned how this can impact their child. I know that there's a you know some, some worry in parents and saying, like what if I do have it? I have noticed the differences that you just mentioned now. So now what? What are the possibilities? Or perhaps I'm not noticing those differences. I need to be more mindful of that, but I know that that I experienced a NACE and so I'm worried that this will impact my child. Let's start off with talking about. You know what reflective function is and how that sort of came into your attached program and what results were you seeing with parents? Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm so glad we're talking about this.

Speaker 2:

I also wanted to just back up too, because I want to reassure parents about something you know it's not like you're not fated you could be depressed, and you're not fated to have your children struggle and have challenges. Thank you for saying that. Well, one of the things I didn't even talk about this, but one of the other metaphors that summarizes all the literature that the Harvard Center, the developing child, created was around a buffering of toxic stressors to become tolerable and even positive stressors. And I keep talking about social support as being so important to treat depression. But social support is also the buffer between the symptom and the poor outcome in the child.

Speaker 2:

So if you are, if your mother who has depression and we didn't even talk about dads, but dads are equally prone, we can touch on that later. But if you have a partner who's not depressed and is an excellent social support to you as a mother who is depressed, that can overcome that toxic stressor, it won't be toxic, it'll be tolerable. So it's not something that is going to put your child necessarily on that lifelong trajectory of challenge. So again, it goes back to it's about supportive relationships. So if you have, if the child who's affected by the. You know the situation where the parent has ACEs. If the child is has other nurturers around, if the mother has people that are nurturing them, it can regulate the symptoms of depression and also promote the health outcomes of the child.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you for saying that and that's why I wanted to bring that up, because I do know that sometimes even just you know that might create the fear of I shouldn't, I don't, I hope I don't have anything, or maybe I should just avoid the symptoms, right, and just kind of get through this. But it's not about that. It's about getting the support and speaking to people about it so that your child can get that, you know, support else, not elsewhere, but in a way that will nurture their development.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and we say fake it till you make it honestly, fake it till you make it get the supports you need around you and you will make it. Moms get through a depression. It's very seldom that you're depressed for the rest of your life. It's something that happens for many and then it goes away for most. And talking about dads for a second, those partners, those fathers, they really are super important to buffering the negative impacts of potentially of depression on children. And we've seen that in our own research looking at dads prenatally if a dad is there, if a mom's depressed and dad's there during pregnancy, the impacts on the child, the impacts on the relationship of mother with the child, are totally eliminated, reduced at least.

Speaker 2:

So huge impacts of dads I can't say you know we don't talk enough about dads. Dads are super important, super, super important. And and so you know one of the things we've talked about in other, you know other places. You know it's like when we screen moms for depression, we should also screen dads, because if both parents are depressed, we can't rely on that, offering social support. And you know there's a lot of suffering, like we can't ignore all the suffering and dad's suffering. So anyway, I just wanted to put a plug in for the you know really big importance of fathers and screening and supporting dads as well. But then you're asking me about.

Speaker 1:

How does reflective function? What is reflective function, I guess for people who haven't heard of this. And how did that tie into your Attach program? How did you bring all that in together?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, it's such a great question. Well, reflective functioning let's start with the definition of it. So it's about having insight into your own thoughts and feelings and insight into another person's thoughts and feelings and their mental states, intentions, that kind of stuff. So particularly we're interested in parental reflective function, so how a parent thinks about their own thoughts and feelings and how much insight they have into their child's thoughts, feelings, mental states, intentions, that sort of thing. And how did I get interested in it?

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm really interested in attachment. So I was initially, and I still am, interested in how stressors during parenting can undermine the quality of attachment between a parent and a child. So we want children to grow up securely attached. Okay, a secure attachment is linked to a lifelong health and development outcomes that are more positive. They have more healthy relationships. They even have they're less likely to have cardiovascular and inflammatory conditions at age 30. Like it's a whole trajectory you put children on of more positive relationships, better mental health and better physical health if you have a child who's securely attached. And you measure attachment security at one year of age, right. So for me, there are some really profound studies that show the impacts 30 years later from that first from that assessment at 12 months of age or so.

Speaker 1:

May I ask you how they would study that? Because I think that there are lots of misconceptions around what attachment is and I think a lot of parents might feel like, if your child is stuck to you at a year old, that you haven't built the strong attachment with them because they can't disconnect and go see the new daycare educator, whatever it is. I think that we need to just define that a little bit more. What does that look like?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, there is a lot of conceptual slippage around attachment and people think it is bonding too Bonding in the first. It's totally different than bonding. You bond with your baby when they're born and shortly, days and weeks after, Attachment really starts to be observed the nature of the attachment you have with your child around nine months of age. If I was going to boil it down, we put children in a room with a parent and a stranger and we separate the child from the parent and leave them with a stranger and then reunite them. We did this a couple of times and we'd love to see how the child is when the child is being reunited with their parent, not when they're being taken away.

Speaker 1:

No Right, oh got it, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, not when they, when they be. No, we don't measure that, we don't really mean that. You look at that, I'm sure you know it's interesting. But if you really want to know what the attachment pattern is, it's how the child reacts to the parent when they return to the room. Okay, so it's about returns and the key thing is a child who is securely attached to their parent.

Speaker 2:

When the parent leaves, you see the child. You know usually they're playing with some toys or whatever. You see the child playing and then they'll see their parent leave and they'll definitely notice it and their play might be a little subdued. But when the parent comes back and they haven't typically cried when their parent's gone it's almost like because they rely on their parent, they know that they're going to come back and their parent wouldn't leave them in an unsafe situation. So they're not really that stressed. They don't show a lot of stress cues. So when their parent comes back, they might go to their parent for comfort because like, oh yeah, they did miss them. They go to their parent for comfort, parent comforts the child and then the child goes back to play. That's a securely attached. You know, in a nutshell, kind of the parent-child diet. Now there's insecure attachment patterns. There's the avoidant, and then there's the ambivalent resistant and there's also disorganized right. So there's three other types which we consider to be insecure or disorganized types. Attachment I feel like I'm giving you a class lecture.

Speaker 1:

I love it. We need to cover this because I don't think I've ever gone into depth in terms of what it is and I just feel that there's so much out there that is just misinformation.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah yeah, and there's like pop culture conceptions of attachments, but this is what we mean and we measure this between like 12 and 20, 22 months of age, 24 months of age. We measure this and how the child reacts to the parent when they leave and come back relates to a whole host of other outcomes down the road. So the avoidant now this typically is understood to be behavior in the interaction with the parent or the child demonstrates because they've had a history with the parent, a parent is typically not very responsive to them and a parent who might be uncomfortable with crying ignores crying, that kind of stuff. So a child whose parent leaves the room and the child's avoidant when the parent leaves, you can't even tell the that kind of stuff. So a child whose parent leaves the room and the child's avoidant when the parent comes, when the parent leaves, you almost you can't even tell the child the notice. Sometimes, when the parent comes back, they might look up but they don't pay attention much to their parent. They don't go to their parent for comfort and they just keep playing. It's like they, it's like they're avoided, they avoid. You know it's, they're do it.

Speaker 2:

But the funny thing is when you do like a physiological assessment to those kids. They might not look stressed at all. They're very stressed because they can't rely on their caregiver to meet their needs under stress. And it is stressful even for the secure child, maybe a little less so because they've got a history of their parent has been, you know, reliably responsive and the insecure child doesn't have that. So that's what you see.

Speaker 2:

And then the C-ish child. Well, there's other columns, there's A's for avoidant, and then B for secure and C for inviolable and resistant. And just a little aside, by the way, when the original studies were done they originally thought that the A kids were the healthiest because they were so un-rape, not needing attention. That makes sense. But now they've discovered that, no, it's the bees. You have to be able to comfortably express emotion and expect others to comfortably express it in return and down-regulate and go on with your life. So the new kids, the avoided kids they can't comfortably express emotion, they can't down-regulate. They've got no one to help them down-regulate except themselves. They've got to figure that out. It's a challenge for a baby, we're talking babies here.

Speaker 2:

They've got to comfort themselves Because mom and dad are going to. And then we've got the other ones. So these ones, you kind of see them as a struggle. So the parent leaves, the child will freak out, sometimes throw toys, and when the parent comes back they'll go to the caregiver to be comforted. But they can't seem to be comforted by the caregiver often, so you often see it as a struggle, the caregiver often. So you often see it as a struggle. They want to be picked up, they want to be down. They want to be picked up, they want to be down, and the parent's kind of exasperated and that's kind of an ambivalent, resistant to down regulation kind of pattern.

Speaker 2:

And that comes from situations where the parent has been inconsistently responsive. So sometimes they respond and sometimes they don't. And so what do you do? It's just like gambling in a way. It's actually got some linkages to reward, frequency. That's sort of unexpected. Sure, I get that, yeah, you know you get when you gamble. But the idea is that if you don't reliably get the response, so what you do is you ramp up your display of emotion and need so that you know it really ramped up so maybe they will attend to you, Okay, yeah, and and then when the caregiver does respond, they just don't seem to be able to settle into it.

Speaker 2:

And then there's the disorganized type where and these kids are generally you know, they've been in foster care and they've had parents with serious mental health issues. There's been abuse. I mean not always, but there's always exceptions, but there's there's a disorganized children. They can't when we, when the parent, comes back, you can't even tell there's no organized pattern. They're not. They don't see any of those things. And sometimes, for example, I, you know, in my lab, you know the, I'll be the, I'll be the stranger in some of these strange situation procedures. That's what they're called when we assess this and the, instead of going to the parent for comfort, they'll go to the stranger, the parent, for comfort. They'll go to the stranger. They'd never met me before and they go up to me. I'm the stranger. And you can see how that could even relate to things like children being precociously. They're just too social. It can cause all kinds of risks for them in other ways.

Speaker 1:

So anyway, this is a task.

Speaker 2:

And when a pattern you have is thought to be pretty stable. If the environment is stable, it's pretty stable over your life and it affects the kind of relationships you have with your own intimate partners as you grow older and so on. So, anyway, so how did I get to reflective function? Well, I was really keen on developing some interventions that focused on attachment security, promoting attachment security. So I wanted to do that. I mean I had been doing intervention work with mothers with depression. I wanted to do that. I mean I had been doing intervention work with mothers with depression, teen mothers, mothers with addictions, mothers affected by violence. I was sort of trying to develop all these unique interventions for all these groups. But then I realized that what I really want to do is promote attachment security in these situations and what was common to them. And I was working with my community partners too and they were saying to me well, these mothers, you can't break them up. You might have a mother who's been in a violent situation and she's also depressed, or a teen mom who's also depressed. So it was artificial to break them up. I said what's the underlying component? And it was reflective function, what seemed to come out of some of the literature that we looked at and the experience that we had is that what was sort of common that we could maybe work on with all these families was the reflective function and in the past, like before, that we would do things like teach people about, you know, infant cues, child development, treats of attachment and all these sorts of things. We teach them to sing and make eye contact and do those sorts of things with their babies and we had some success with those interventions. But we thought we needed to have an intervention, a program that's going to work with families who have a variety of risk factors. It's going to promote attachment, security and community organizations would be interested in delivering it because it's for the clients that they see whole variety of them right. So we developed the ATTACH program and I have to give kudos to my postdoctoral fellow who's now the program manager for all the ATTACH studies and at last count, we have about seven studies going on through ATTACH. Wow, you know we're scaling and spreading it in Brazil, in Denmark, soon France, across Canada, and I had a conversation today with maybe in Massachusetts again. So anyway, we co-developed it and she was, you know, under my supervision and I was like we have to develop a program that addresses reflective function, and it's a very simple program.

Speaker 2:

The cool thing about reflective function is that what we discovered is, as soon as you help a parent think about thoughts and feelings of their own and how that might impact their child and vice versa, what their child is thinking and feeling, they become. They start doing all those things that we were teaching people to do. They become more sensitive and responsive. They sing to their baby more at the right time when their baby is receptive. They make eye contact, they play with them in ways that are more meaningful for the child. All those things just happen and we don't teach any of it. It almost happens naturally. It happens naturally and so changing how they think as opposed to how they behave, Got it.

Speaker 2:

But the thinking translates into behavior because our attached intervention has, you know, I can go down the long list. It improves parent-child interaction, quality, attachment, security. It improves children's behavior, internalizing, which is anxiety, depression, hyperactivity and attention, Improves their sleep. It improves the mother's executive function. So it improves you know how you were talking about earlier about mothers. Yes, yeah, yeah, it improves mother's ability to regulate their own emotions and displays of them. And we took some blood, believe it or not, from mothers and babies, Not a lot, but a little, A little blood, and we looked at something called the conserved transcriptional response to adversity, which is a, an mrna marker. So it's, you know, it's in the realm of genomics and we found that gene expression related to inflammation was down regulated in the children whose mothers got the program and in the mothers themselves. That is fascinating well, it's really cool right?

Speaker 2:

yes, so you know in understanding how attachment relates to all these health outcomes over the lifespan, and inflammation underpins cardiovascular conditions, mental health conditions, and so we think that we've tapped into a way to reduce that chronic inflammation that can have long-term impacts on mental health and physical health within the attached intervention, simply by helping people tune into their own and their child's thoughts and feelings. And that's what attached intervention does and that's why we have so much interest in it.

Speaker 1:

Right, congratulations on this and the work that you've been doing with your team. Honestly, it comes down to what we kind of tell parents, that self-awareness piece. A lot of parents say that they're on this autopilot, you know, day and night and just like continuing every day and week and month and year and and things don't change and they look for quick fixes. You know, when it comes to supporting their child or fixing right I don't like that word either, but that is the language that is still used and so if we can show them you know how to pause and reflect and truly look at the moment, the environment of that moment of that, and reflect on what happened before and so on. I think that's when you start making connections in terms of patterns that you might have, that you might not have even realized and really really tapping into that, and that's when we see changes in our behavior and our child. So I love the work that you guys do. It's fascinating.

Speaker 1:

You know you mentioned these cognitive skills. Can we touch on that a little bit, because I do know that you know some of the parents that we have. So we have 160,000 parents on social media. You know about 15,000 downloads a month and now we have a membership that we started this summer called the Reflective Parent Club and that's truly focused on we've summarized your research inside for our members, you know, just for them to see like what's out there. But we are trying to support parents in terms of pausing and truly understanding what's going on in their home and with their child, and what's interesting is that a lot of parents talk about executive functions. Many of the moms within our membership and our community have recent diagnosis of ADHD and realize only now that this might be contributing to them really struggling with emotion regulation skills. What is the research around that? And if a parent is listening to this, what's possible in terms of improving that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Honestly, that's such a great question and I don't, frankly, know of a relationship between an adult's ADHD and their own ability to reflect. I don't know any. I don't know of any research, but I bet there is a link. Yes, yeah, I bet. I also think like what's? What's cool about Attach is our intervention program is everybody. Everybody has the capacity to be reflective, everyone does.

Speaker 2:

And when you have stress or maybe a diagnosis like ADHD, it's less natural, it's less practiced. And when you're stressed we know that there's literature that suggests that when you are stressed you start to function from your amygdala. You're doing threat surveillance, you're reacting so that you can be safe and other people in your environment can be safe. And that's just how we've been programmed biologically and what we're taking people that we work with. They are stressed, so people that are in domestic violence, shelters or they've had it. Like you know, they've been living with low incomes and just can't manage all the stress and strains of everyday life, so they're functioning that way. What we're getting them to do is practice a skill they already have. We're getting them to be in their prefrontal cortex and sit down in a session with us for an hour and just talk about thoughts and feelings. And I would suspect that even if you had ADHD, even a serious diagnosis, I bet we could get you to a point where the practice is just bound to make it a little more natural to do that a bit more often. And in our intervention that's what we do for an hour with people every week, once a week for an hour.

Speaker 2:

And I'll tell you, one of the coolest things about this program is people not just does it work, people love it. They love being asked what they think and feel. We're never asked over. It's like, well, 10 sessions. We might say, okay, we'll give you another one or two, but they really, really benefit from it. And so all we're doing is giving people who are stressed or have, I guess, maybe ADHD could be a thing. I would have attested this, but you've given me a new hypothesis. I would hypothesize that the practice would translate into every day increased likelihood of just being able to pay attention a bit more to what they think and feel and what their child's thinking and feeling and how those two connect.

Speaker 2:

And, by the way, so we've been delivering this program with community organizations all across Canada and the world. We are about to start delivering it directly to parents. We have about we have at least 50 facilitators trained in this program now, just even in Alberta, and we're testing right now that online delivery of the program. You know, we've been very fortunate with getting funding from our Canadian Institutes for Health Research to test this program and we are testing it, the online version, right now, and we've done some preliminary analysis showing that, yes, online is as effective as in-person with improving parental reflective function. So with that knowledge, we are about to create a company. We're not for profit. We also for profit, but I don't, you know, I just I'll be talking of any sort, just whatever we need to do to get the word out.

Speaker 1:

We have never made any money, we just get grant money. You want to support the parents right, but we want to support parents, yeah, and we work with community organizations.

Speaker 2:

so far, I get that the idea would be that we would potentially be soon, in the new year, be able to deliver this program to parents directly through our um, our company. So this is that's a new, new territory for me, but it's um. As a professor, I've never, you know, I don't have experience right building um companies. This company, exactly, I get that. Yeah, it's a way to share this knowledge in a way that I think will be hopefully well received, because right now I don't know of any other program like it, right, exactly, that could be delivered.

Speaker 1:

this way, right, yeah, so please share that with our community. I will put in the show notes links to your book and your website. I want to make sure that people have access to everything that you're talking about. Like always, I put links to the research. Our audience is very interested in learning about the studies and reading up on them. One question that comes to mind you've mentioned a few things, so you've mentioned practice, and I think practice is one thing that I believe in, in the sense that you know it's not just parenting. There's no playbook, but there are skills that we can learn, and from what? What you know, the work, that you share this. You know parental reflective function is a skill and it's not going to happen overnight, same way that if we pick up a weight today, tomorrow the muscle won't be there. It'll take some time to build that, and so it's a skill that we have to practice. I'm thinking about parents perhaps questioning what the difference is between parental reflective function and mindfulness. Is it the same or are there differences?

Speaker 2:

Oh, they're quite similar. They are quite similar. Parental reflective function is like the we can't really observe what's in your mind, right so? But it's called mentalization, like. It comes from Peter Fonagy, who's a psychiatrist in the UK. He wrote a lot about mentalization and reflective function being how we are able to see it and how we measure reflective functions. We interview people about their thoughts and feelings and you can get a sense of their reflective function by that. But it's, I think it is. It is definitely similar in their own work.

Speaker 2:

When we publish it we do say, yes, like it can be a bit like mindfulness, but mindfulness is often more about oneself and reflective function and mentalization is more about yourself and others and how they interact. Yeah, and there's a little bit of cognitive flexibility built into how we get people to practice it too. So we'll get people to say, well, what do you think? You know your baby's thinking, you're feeling here and, and you know, will give us an idea. And then we go and kind of talk that through and say, well, what's another thing they could be thinking or feeling, and you get them to and then, with that change, that new emotion that they have attributed to what they just saw or that new thought they've attributed to their child, it changes everything they're learning just by practicing that how they think about something changes.

Speaker 2:

Everything Changes how the interaction happens, interpretation and the behaviors that come from that interpretation change. So I think that's a little bit different than mindfulness in that we're looking at this dyadic thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Got it Given what you've been learning. I'm just really curious right now in terms of how have you applied this research to your life? Is this something that you've kind of brought in and said, oh, I see the difference? Now, like I'm doing this, you know, with whatever relationship, and have noticed the changes?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely, I've definitely life experiences also contributed to me thinking this is really an important thing that is missed. You know, when you think of them, we often will talk about what we think in our interactions with their kids, and I have two sons, so I would always sort of go to that and now I often will think, okay, I need to ask them about what they, what they feel, got it Right? Yeah, so I'll try, I really make a concerted effort and I, you know, I, I know I know the challenges that all of the parents face in our program because I think about it myself a lot. Yeah, you got to remember to ask about feelings, but maybe it's the opposite in your family. You talk about feelings and don't talk about thoughts. So focus about that balance, right? I trick the situation. I try to emphasize how you feel about things a bit more and that makes for a better emotional connection. Someone knows that you understand how they feel about things a bit more and that makes for a better emotional connection. Someone knows that you understand how they feel. It makes for a better emotional connection. So, yeah, I think it's helped my and you know.

Speaker 2:

The other thing we've observed in the research and in our own lives is. I'm talking about all the facilitators. You know we've worked with facilitators who see so many. Dr Hartworth that calls them knock-on effects. We haven't even measured but people will say, oh, the clients in my care, you know, there'll be a social worker that became an attached facilitator. She's a case manager. So the clients in my care who've had this program and I am a facilitator, I can talk to them and it makes our relationship better. I can be a better caseworker with this person. Or I also hear that that mother who went to the program has a better relationship with the people in her social group her own mother, her friends because she's more in touch with her own thoughts and feelings than theirs. And so we haven't measured that yet, but we're looking at maybe measuring conflict. Does it reduce conflict in people's relationship relations?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because, as you're talking about what you're thinking and what you're feeling, that brings to mind the conflict resolution skills and when you think of the cognitive perception and emotional perception right there's we're going to experience the situation very differently. You have a point you're trying to put across, but you're also going to experience this conflict very differently in terms of emotional you know perspective. So I think it makes sense. It makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So yeah, there are things that we you know, that we've got our facilitators telling us and we'd like to measure, and I think we are in conflict now, but we haven't analyzed the data. We all considered conflict as like, okay, you know, you've got this ace in your life, but we didn't actually imagine that it might, the intervention might also reduce conflict. You know, we're seeing it.

Speaker 1:

I can't wait to see that. Right, I want to be mindful of your time, but I have one last question. I always try to kind of summarize the conversation a bit for parents who are listening in terms of takeaways, right? So, given what you know and what you've learned through your research, what are some simple takeaways that parents could kind of practice and apply in their own homes?

Speaker 2:

you know, tomorrow, yeah, takeaways that parents could kind of practice and apply in their own homes, you know tomorrow, yeah, well, you know. I always said, when you're becoming a parent or you are a parent, I think you should never be afraid to ask for help. I think it's a, it would be a terrible mark on a society if, when parents ask for help, it's not going to be offered in return. I mean it's you know. So we need to be asking for help, we need to be advocating as parents and feeling comfortable asking for the help that we need. And that can mean in, you know, your community, in public health services or, you know, talking to your family doctor or your nurse practitioner or your counselor about what might be available to help you. But it also means being comfortable asking your friends and family, and I think that might be the hardest thing for some people is to ask your friends and family.

Speaker 2:

But you know there'll be opportunity to give back, there'll be many opportunities to give back and I think you have to remind yourselves of that. And so you know, get all the support you can around you as a new parent because you need it. You need it. You don't have to do it alone, don't feel guilty for asking. You shouldn't have to do it alone.

Speaker 2:

And I think you know partners, dads if they're, hopefully they're there and and those dads also can be the advocates for themselves and their partners and their family unit. So all this responsibility of asking for help shouldn't just be, you know, follow them all, let's go, but the whole family should be comfortable asking for help and just trying to find all the resources you can. And that can mean, you know, if you're in a rural or remote community, like you know, it could be an online group you might not get that instrumental support something like picking the baby up at night when you're tired but you might get that emotional support that way. So you're really taking some time to figure out what you might need, which I guess takes a little reflection, but and then and then trying to find the resources to fill those gaps and never feel bad about it because you need it and the evidence shows, when you have those resources in place, things go so much better for parents and for children and society.

Speaker 1:

Right, exactly, and and you know, that's important with kids of all ages, because sometimes you do have the guilt of stepping away or taking time and we need to do that. It's that recharge, I know, it's, you know, but it makes sense. Yes, oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know it's interesting yeah, whatever you need, because some parent you know self-care for a parent might be, you know, taking some time away. Another parent would find that really stressful to be apart from their child. So it's also meeting your own needs. So if you want definitely self-care, figuring out what that is and making sure that you give it to yourself so your mental health is protected. Here's an analogy If you're in an airplane and the pressure of the cabin changes, you put your own mask on first, because you're no good to anyone if you pass out.

Speaker 2:

It's true, it's the same you need to put yeah, you tell it yourself at first, and that's challenging your moms too.

Speaker 1:

I hope that can change slowly in society where we realize we don't have to do it on our own, we don't have to be that super mom or super parent that does it all. We're not doing any justice to ourselves and to our child, it's okay. And if a parent is saying, okay, I don't have any of these skills that they just mentioned, and what does this reflect look like? Is it as simple as pausing, you know, at the end of your day? Is it having a notebook around? Or your app? You know an app on your phone where you can take notes? What does that look like? In a very small gesture that can make a difference in their life? I think the best way to.

Speaker 2:

You know, one little tip would be to in an interaction it. You know, one little tip would be to in an interaction it could be with your child or your partner but just take a moment, maybe every day, and just say, well, that was think of something that they did. You know, in the moment it's like, oh, that was interesting. And try to decide for yourself why they might've done that, what they might be feeling, what they might be thinking, and then ask them what were you thinking when you did that, what were you feeling when you did that? And I really think that little bit could help. Yeah, and that's what we practice in the intervention, right? So that would be my biggest tip, as opposed to creating an inventory of your emotions or something. It's about being curious about your own mental states and those of others around you.

Speaker 2:

So I would just make an effort to try and do that once a day in an interaction like you know, normal community, you know. Or breakfast, you're having coffee or something, and I'm just curious, why do you? What are you thinking right now? What are you feeling right now? You know penny for your thoughts, kind of thing. But just take it to the next level and I think and you know the person who would be doing this doesn't need to verbalize their own thoughts and feelings, but just inquiring about their partner child's thoughts and feelings. And I would try doing that once a day to see how it goes.

Speaker 1:

I think that's a good first step. Thank you Again. I will put everything in the show notes. I can't thank you enough for being a very special guest on this 200th episode. We will continue to summarize your research here for the community and we look forward to the next publications as well. Thank you, Thank you and.

Speaker 2:

I'll send you the links to the web page where parents can sign up as soon as it's ready. Fingers crossed, we'll get it ready for the new year. Got to get our ducks in a row.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you. I hope you enjoyed this conversation just as much as I did. Please take a moment to tap out of this episode, leave a rating or just review it out of five stars. Three seconds of your time in order for me to get more of these top researchers to come on board and experts that will help you learn how to regulate your emotions, how to lower your stress, how to support your wellbeing, and all of this with the hopes or the goal of supporting your child's mental health and well-being, which we know is important to all parents. And so take a moment to rate it and, if you have a few more seconds, review it. Thank you for listening and I hope you have a beautiful and wonderful week. There will be some replay episodes. Dr Bruce Perry will be replayed next week, in case you missed it, and I will see you in 2025. Happy New Year and happy holidays to all of you. Thank you for being here. See you next time. Bye.