Tina Bryson and Georgie Wisen-Vincent are co-authors of "The Way of Play", in which they demonstrate how short, daily, playful interactions with your kids can help them face their fears, handle big emotions, and bolster their social skills.
528: How to Play for Connection
Tina Bryson & Georgie Wisen-Vincent
Hunter Clarke-Fields speaks with Tina Bryson and Georgie Wisen-Vincent about their book, "The Way of Play," which emphasizes the importance of play in child development and mental health. They talk about various strategies for play, the significance of presence and timing, the role of attachment, and specific techniques like 'thinking out loud' and 'mirroring' to foster connection and emotional intelligence in children. They discuss how play fosters connection, emotional regulation, and cooperation between parents and children.
Ep 528- Bryson & Wisen-Vincent
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*This is an auto-generated transcript*
[00:00:00] Tina Bryson: I don't want to do an effing puppet show to get my kids to put their shoes on and get out the door. I'm so tired. I don't want to do it But the amount of energy and time we put into the battle is actually far harder. Yeah.
[00:00:15] Hunter: You're listening to The Mindful Mama Podcast, episode number 528. Today we're talking to Dr. Tina Bryson and Georgie Wisen- Vincent about how to play for connection.
Welcome to The Mindful Mama Podcast. Just here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have, and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training, and I'm the author of the international bestseller, “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and the “Raising Good Humans Guided Journal”.
Hello and welcome back, I'm so glad you're here. We have such an awesome episode for you today. Today I'm talking to the great Tina Payne Bryson, author of 20 of your favorite parenting books, and Georgie Wisen-Vincent, who have come together for a new book called “The Way of Play”, in which they demonstrate how short, daily, playful interactions with your kids can help them face their fears, handle big emotions, and bolster their social skills. So in this episode, we're going to be talking about play and how important it is, and actually how important it is for us to be playing with our kids. And yes, it can be cringey and it can be hard, but we're going to talk about how to do it. We'll talk about, timing, strategies, specific techniques, and how all of this can really foster an incredible connection with you and your kid, as well as emotional intelligence in your child. Play really helps to foster emotional regulation and cooperation, all of the things that we want.
So I know you're going to love this episode. Before we dive in, I want to remind you that you can bring me to your workplace or school as a speaker. In the last few years, I've done talks all around the world for groups, and we have a lot of fun. I'm known for offering evidence based learning in a way that's clear, realistic, humorous.
And now, join me at the table as I talk to Tina Payne Bryson and Georgie Wisen-Vincent:
A quick heads up, right now enrollment for the Mindful Parenting Teacher Certification Program is open. Why do parents and professionals join this certification program? Some want to deepen their own understanding of mindful parenting. Others are ready to give back, supporting families while earning income in a deeply fulfilling way.
Some are adding it to their current offerings. And just so you know, being a perfect parent isn't a requirement, just a desire to grow and to make a difference. Here's the best part. Cohorts are intentionally kept super small, just six participants, to ensure personalized attention and meaningful connections.
The enrollment window closes soon, so don't wait. Learn more and apply today at MindfulParentingCourse.com/teach. That's MindfulParentingCourse.com/teach. Tina and Georgie, I'm so happy you're here.
[00:03:38] Georgie Wisen-Vincent: So thrilled to be here. Thanks, Hunter.
[00:03:40] Hunter: So you guys collaborated on this book, The Way of Play.
I'm curious about, I have my own thoughts about what's going on in terms of play. It seems like kids aren't getting enough free play. There seems like there's a lot of, too much structure, where kids aren't having like the hours of free time that they need. They've said that kids, there's some study that said that kids in England have less time outside than, convicted felons are required to have by law, which is incredibly sad.
So there's outdoor play, there's some free play, there's a lack of that. You guys chose to write this book, “The Way of Play”. Why right now? What,
[00:04:23] Tina Bryson: I think, it's, it was, it's, there are a lot of books out there about free unstructured play and the need for it and all the incredible benefits that come from it. It's children's first language, all of these things. But there was really only one book that we knew of that really told parents how to play, what to do.
And so here's the thing, the way we talked about this book from the very beginning was particularly post COVID. Mental health although mental health challenges were rising before COVID hit, they've gotten worse since COVID. And so we have, we're talking about mental health challenges for grown ups and for kids.
And life is completely overstimulating for most kids. Too much screen time, not enough play time higher academic demands. So basically you think about like risk factors and protective factors, a lot of risk factors. One of the best protective factors is play. The thing is, though, so kids aren't getting enough of it, but kids really want to play with their parents, and even educated, intentional parents will often say to us Okay, so I'll sit on the floor, but then what?
What do I do with them? Or, I find it, and this was true for me at times, too, with my three boys, I find it so mind numbingly boring, I can't stand doing it. I don't like doing it. Or my kid tells me I'm doing it wrong, so it's not pleasant. I don't, it's not fun for me and my kid can tell it's not fun for me.
So I don't, and I feel like I have to do it for hours and hours. And so this book was really, Georgie had talked about like, how do we create some curriculum for parents around teaching them these things and the importance and benefits of. us playing with our kids and just some basic strategies and how it helps them not only process stress, process what's happening internally, what they're working through, what they're trying on.
But it's also so protective in terms of building skills for the future, all the things we want for our kids, like social and emotional intelligence and emotional regulation and impulse control and all of these things. But they don't know how to do it, so let's write a curriculum. I was like, alright, send me what you are thinking about, and when she sent it to me, I was like, this is a book we have to get this to more people.
The book is really seven strategies for how to play with our kids, child led in ways that are, can even be in small chunks even a minute. Some of these strategies can be done in less than a minute and build the relationship with our child, help us know our child at a much deeper level.
Help them build skills. And then help them process some of the stuff that's challenging for them. So that's why. That's the why.
[00:06:50] Georgie Wisen-Vincent: Yeah, that, you said that so beautifully, Tina. The number one thing that I've heard, and I know Tina has heard from parents as well, especially in the last couple of years, is how do I do this?
I know the benefits of play. I've read all the articles. I've read all the books, they're telling me that play is one of the most important things that I can do from the time that my kid is little all the way through like adolescence and, moving into college age or getting your first job and all of those things.
It's really important that we continue to play. It becomes our best form of self care, especially when we're parenting our kids and we just feel like there's never enough time for us as well. So parents are like, I know I need to do it. I don't have any resource for break it down in simple steps that I can just learn really quickly.
And I think I love the way the book has turned out because you can open it to any page and you're not only going to get information that's broken down, just really simple, easy to. Just grok and make sense of really quick and start using you can even have the book like open next to you as your kid is just bringing you stuff endlessly and saying, Hey, mom, dad, will you play with me?
And the pictures like the illustrations that have been put into this book are just Really bring it all to life in a way that really inspires parents and parents will tell me you know Not they have nobody's seen the book yet, but parents will tell me when they've learned some of the seven strategies they go Oh gosh I wish I would have known this when my kid was younger or You know Is it too late for me to start using this and it's literally never too late like you can use this with Your little you're two year old that's toddling around all the way up through your teenager making little moments together that they're going to remember forever.
And the skills that you can build are just like tremendously useful, whether we're talking about building emotional skills for life, or whether we're talking about, being a harried parent, trying to, respond to your kid in the moment and stay calm and do all the things that you're supposed to do and not flip out on them as they're flipping out on you.
But just being able to respond more creatively and flexibly than maybe you ever thought you could before, I think that comes out of the pages, too. So just excited for people to have this as a resource.
[00:09:07] Hunter: Yeah, I agree. It's like a kind of a manual in some ways on playfulness, like a way to be very playful and connecting and all of those benefits of connecting.
Like my worry is that parents are like, Oh my God, I'm working full time. I'm like getting all the things done now. Maybe we should just address that question right away you were saying, a minute, but, like, how much time, if you have a kid you're wanting to connect with, you want to do some play with, but yeah, you don't, you, you hate playing.
I hated Candyland. God, you could just shoot me if someone put me in front of Candyland, is the one I hated the most. And Can we give parents an amount of time that is an acceptable amount of time for playing with your kid when it really is not comfortable at all?
[00:09:55] Georgie Wisen-Vincent: Yes I think I can jump in with both feet and say that we're really not advocating for parents to put everything else away and just spend hours and hours playing with your kid because what happens is you start to feel drained really quickly and what we want to teach, what we want to impart.
to kids as we're playing with them. As it jumps out of the pages of the book it really only takes a couple of seconds. Say your five year old comes over to you and says, I want to build with blocks, or you have a 10 year old that really likes, building like car tracks around the living room or something.
These are opportunities. We just want parents to be able to see more coming out of what their kids are. Learning and how they're developing and get into their world. And so sometimes it's just about Understanding what your child is getting out of it in a new way that really enlivens your position to come alongside Just for it could be 10 seconds.
It could be two minutes it could be that your child is the type of player that really wants you to be with them and hang out with them for 15 20 minutes and then You've got other things to do with the rest of the afternoon and you find the afternoon goes so much smoother for some reason like it's they've gotten their cup filled or they feel like I've got my dose of connection for the day or I can't even tell why I just feel better and I feel more like cooperating and doing all the rest of the things like we can't promise perfect kids or perfect results or anything, but We have noticed families say, wow, it feels compared to the time that I put in to what we're getting back, it's just making such a difference for us.
Speaking from the Play Strong Institute, I could say it is making a difference and it doesn't have to take hours and hours.
[00:11:37] Tina Bryson: The timing of when we do it can matter a lot too. So anytime we're, we have a separation from our child and separations are obviously when they are at school or daycare and we're at work.
But separations are also, if we go out with a friend and then we come back home. Sleeping is, going to sleep and then waking up being, that's a separation. If we can have in mind, like just as a general kind of starting point, 15 minutes, 15 minutes on your timer, on your phone, 10, 15, 20 minutes especially if we can do it before or after separations, it has a lot of power and the strategies that we're really going to be advocating, and of course we can get into them require us to really be present.
And so those 15 minutes really count because we're fully present. They feel like I am, I'm, my parent really sees me. They're really with me. And I would even argue that when we're really present, even for very brief periods of time what's happening is a right brain to right brain synchrony and resonance that's happening.
And the other thing too, I would think about with the timing, like obviously, it depends if you have more time and you're enjoying it. Great. Stick with it. If you're noticing that you're really not enjoying it, our children pick that up. And so I don't want to be like, okay it's been, it's not been 15 minutes, but I'm miserable.
So I'm going to sit here. I think, related to that, one of the things I've been talking a lot about the book is, my, one of my areas of passion and expertise is in attachment science is that, when we talk about attachment and having a child, having a secure attachment with at least one caregiver, we're often thinking about like when your child is in distress.
That's when this attachment system is most activated, and that's when they really need us to help them feel connected and protected. And that is absolutely true. But there's a whole other side of attachment that sometimes gets left out of the conversation, and that is the phrase that comes from the research of mutual delight.
And I think this is a tool oftentimes people are asking me, like, how does this book fit in with your other books? How does it fit in with Whole Brain and No Drama and The Power of Showing Up and The Gas Brain and all these things. And I'm like, this is, this book is a vehicle or a tool to integrate the brain to have fewer discipline problems, to build attachment, to help the brain build in the most optimal ways.
Because what happens is if we're playing with them and we're enjoying it and they sense that, and of course they do. It, that's that feeling of mutual delight fills our cups as well as theirs. And it's such an important piece of attachment as well.
[00:14:10] Hunter: Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
[00:14:46] Hunter: Yeah, it's like you're putting those deposits in that emotional bank account, right? Like too often we're trying to, we're trying to You know withdraw, and we gotta put those deposits in, and this book is like a great way to, to put those deposits in, and you're right, like, all of the strategies you talk about are really strategies of mindfulness they're paying attention.
It's like your child is the object of your mindfulness, right? Noticing when you're distracted and you're bringing this attitude of curiosity and non judgment into the situation, trying to wonder why, all of these things. Yeah, I really love it. Okay, so it's making parents, it's making our kids more cooperative to play with them.
This is amazing. This is good stuff. Alright, so let's get into some of the strategies. You talk about the first strategy is so interesting because it's a strategy that we talk about a lot here, right? You talk about what Dr. Dan Siegel said name it to tame it, right? This is a, in the kind of negative sort of context when something's challenging, we name it, we acknowledge it to give it some give us some relief.
And you talk about this as a strategy of thinking out loud. So can you tell us about that and what that does for kids?
[00:16:02] Georgie Wisen-Vincent: Yeah I can start off by saying this first strategy, Think Out Loud, is 100 percent inspired by everything that I've learned with Tina over the last 10, 10 years. The concept of how do you get a parent to become more attuned with their child?
For parents who want to do that, they're trying to find ways to really tune in to what kids are talking about, what they're explaining from school, what they're Why they're annoyed with their brother or sister, all of these things, we're trying to attune to our kids and figure out what's really going on inside their minds so that I can best meet them with what they're struggling with.
And so there's this idea in, at least I'm a play therapist. So in the play therapy world, if you want to begin to get to know what's going on in a child's mind, you play with them by reflecting out loud on what they're playing. And the early childhood community already knows this is parallel talk or, sportscasting, you probably heard those terms. It's amazing how every, all the science is infused together. So everybody knows this is where you start with kids, but nobody really knows why. And I would love to hear from Tina in just a second, explain to us a little bit more about what's going on at the brain mind level and between your two minds, between parent and child, as we're Thinking out loud with our kids, but the step is basically first you start out by observing and attuning So that goes back to the attunement that we're talking about That even in brain scans, you can see the same parts of the brain lighting up You know the adult and the kid at the same time.
It's oh my gosh We're really starting to mirror each other and truly have a felt connection with one another When we just speak to what we think That your child might be doing and the reason they might be doing it. So it's really speaking to your child's intention. And so let's say they decide to pile some blocks up and it looks like there's a bit of a decline and there's a car on top.
You're just going to say it looks like you're building a ramp. I wonder if that's right? So Kids start to look at their parent and they go how did you know that? How do you now know what's going on with me? It's not just about saying what you think they're doing. It's about guessing at what the Content of their mind might be in that moment and you can get it wrong Plenty of times and your kid will probably just correct you they love doing that anyway But if you get it right a few times, kids start to go, Ooh, it's like you're reading my mind.
You're good at this now. And it builds up a parent's sense of, competence with their kid. And it can also help, set them up for more success when things start to get a little bit, things start to get a little bit real. It, when you're just trying to get other things done and it's a family situation where you've got to respond and your kid needs you to show up in a particular way it's a set of preventative steps so that we're building your child's skill of reflection.
But I really want to hear what Tina says about
[00:19:00] Hunter: this. I just want to, for the listener, the parent, I what you were saying is this strategy is state the obvious, right? Like just state what's going on. Okay, so that, that seems pretty simple. Yes. Yeah. So it is happening in the brain.
[00:19:14] Tina Bryson: Yeah, it's like sportscasting, but it's beyond sportscasting. Sportscasters are describing exactly what's going on and we're doing that. We're like, oh, it looks like you're building a ramper. Wow, that car's going really high up in a, at a big angle. But what we're doing in addition to just naming exactly what we're seeing.
is we're also narrating our thinking out loud about their intentions or what they could be doing, their planning. So we're really tuning into not just the behavior we're seeing, but the mind that we're seeing behind the behavior. So that's what we're doing. Now here's what's really interesting. I learned this piece from Dan Siegel, my co author on my first four books.
Is that what, when you really peel back the layers of what emotional connection truly is it's shared attention. And so if your kid is building a ramp with blocks and you bring your attention to what they're doing and what they're thinking about as they're doing That is really the heart of emotional connection and intimacy.
So that's really what's happening in that moment. And then there's so much implicit information that's getting communicated, including Georgie was saying, like, how did you know that? What the child then experiences implicitly, and especially as it gets repeated over time, is, my parents sees me, they know me, they know my mind.
They can see that there's something predictable happening, and that's a cue, anything predictable in the brain is a cue of safety. So this kind of tuning in and resonance that's happening is right brain to right brain synchrony, just we see between therapist and client or between lovers or between a parent child dyad that's close is that we're really joining with them and our brains really are mirroring each other.
But what this does too is it gives our children, and this is true for many of the strategies. It gives them vocabulary and words and ways to communicate that are matching with their mind, their motor activity their motor planning, all of these things. So we're really scaffolding in a lot of language and a lot of skill building about understanding their own mind as well.
[00:21:23] Hunter: That's so cool. And that whole, it's so interesting because now, I'm, as I'm listening to this, you guys know I have a 14 year old and a 17 year old and now it's like like I'm understanding, especially the converse of that, like this shared attention piece, that is why then the phone becomes especially insidious because you can't, It's such a solitary withdrawing thing, it's not anything that you can share attention with.
There's no there's no mirroring or anything that's happening there. Ah, okay.
[00:21:55] Tina Bryson: I told a parent yesterday on a live parent community thing I was doing yesterday I had a mom who said, my kid only is really interested in his screen. I don't know how to do that. And I said if first of all, we want to scaffold beyond that we want to help him find some other things to light up.
And if we're talking about preteens and teens, this is true for them as much as it is for little kids is they often do love to surprise people or prank people like be like, Oh, let's surprise so and so let's make them some muffins tonight. Will you help me make or you do, Hey, I need your help with something.
And then you're working on something together, not with eye contact, better with teenagers to be side by side. If your kid is really lit up about their device, be like, show me the funniest meme or video you've seen this week. Or you go look up like, what are the, what's a hilarious goat screaming video, right?
Goat screaming videos are hilarious. And you're like, I just saw this. Have you seen this? And you join with them. Obviously, you don't want your kids on screens. You want them off screens as much as possible. But it is something we can lean into, in small moments as well.
[00:22:54] Hunter: Yeah. Yeah. Not to demonize it, but to like join them in their world.
Because that's what you're saying here with the thinking out loud, the play, all the play strategies is joining them in their world anyway. And so as you were saying in the beginning, like we can do this at be playful at many different ages and that is like joining, sharing attention.
That's so cool. I love that. And then you also talk about mirroring, which is very similar. And this is goes in, in this, you go into the difference between top down versus bottom up strategies. And I was wondering if you'd explain, what mirroring is and then what are the difference between these top down versus bottom up?
[00:23:31] Tina Bryson: Go for it, Georgie.
[00:23:32] Georgie Wisen-Vincent: Yeah. So I was actually just rereading something Dan wrote years ago now, his book Mindsight. Yeah. Yeah. Where he talks about like that there are neurons that are stacked up in the brain and they're six neurons deep kind of thing. And when we are gathering, this is what our kids do in play.
They really initiate play from the bottom up. So they're You know, they're at the park and it rained the night before and the sand in the sandbox has gotten all muddy and murky and stuff like that. And for some reason they run to it when we want to run away from that. We know that we're going to have to hose them all down when it's all done and stuff.
But kids, when they see that, that mud, when they see that wet sand, what's happening is, the stuff is lighting up from the, the body to the brainstem to the, all those lower parts of the limbic system that are really like flooding their system with information that's coming in from the outside.
So they're gathering all of this primarily sensory information. And it's, imagine those six neurons deep kind of lighting up in the brain one by one until they get to those like top level sort of thinking about, okay how do I want to keep this play going? And who do I want to invite in? And What do I want to tell my parent about and all of this stuff, which is a little bit more top down how they're thinking and reflecting about their play or how they want to communicate about it or what they're learning and what problems that they're solving in it.
And especially if something goes wrong in play, they're going to need the top down, the ability to stay calm when they're under pressure, when that big block tower looks like it might teeter over. They're going to need to be able to decide what do I do when my sibling comes over and it looks like they're going to knock it over, but it's already teetering anyway, like play is not always fun.
A lot of times it looks like really hard work and it looks like they have to think really hard in order to solve these, figure out these difficulties and these challenges that come up in it.
[00:25:27] Tina Bryson: Just to be really clear about top, down and bottom up. So top down is we're using the top part of our brain, which is our prefrontal cortex.
And what it looks like is problem solving, a lot of language, a lot of narrating decision making. So the make your, so the think out loud strategy is pretty much a top down strategy. Now we're having to tune in and use other kinds of things. But in general, we're naming what we're seeing, and it's, we're really using problem solving language, decision making, et cetera, top down.
When we say bottom up, I love how Dr. Mona Delahook talks, just really calls it body up. So when we're talking about just how Georgie went through body, brainstem, limbic, so we're really talking about the subcortical structures, everything below the cortex, which is the outer bark of our brain and our prefrontal cortex, is really the bottom up part.
So when we're talking about movement and breath, like the way that we're breathing and instincts and they see the muddy sand and they would want to go straight to it. And then there, there's all these sensory pieces that go with it. That's what we really mean when we're talking about bottom up.
So Georgie, will you explain, make yourself a mirror is a bottom up strategy because we really are using our body and our face on all the nonverbal stuff, which is also very right hemisphere.
[00:26:42] Georgie Wisen-Vincent: Yes. Thank you, Tina. And I feel like I'm always learning from Tina I really want you to jump in and tell me like, wait, Georgie, don't forget this part because we like, we spent a lot of time making sure that the book like comes across as if it's one beautiful flow of conversation me and Tina having.
wrestled with all this stuff and come up with a really easy way to simplify it and make it palatable and practical for everybody. So when your kid is playing something, there's a whole lot of stuff going on below the surface. Let's just put it that way. The bottom up stuff is all below the surface of their awareness, but it's most of what We use in our person to person relationships to really communicate what's important to each other, like the nonverbal stuff, the stuff that we're not even really aware that we're communicating, if I am sitting with you and I, hunch my shoulder in a certain way, or I cross my legs over, I sometimes do that really without thinking about it because that might be how you're sitting in the chair.
And our mirror neurons, these really specialized neurons in the brain, are firing when we're not even thinking about it, but we are wired to feel connected, to feel like a felt sense of the other person that we're with. And so what we want to do when we use something like make yourself a mirror, which is the second strategy in the book, is to harness the power of what's going on below the surface, to be a little bit more intentional about it.
So you might pick up on, while you're sitting with your kid, while you see them, in the sandbox, while you're trying to get them off the screen, whatever it is, you can use this anytime really. There's all this nonverbal stuff happening between the two of you and what you're sharing between your body, your facial expressions, and your vocal tone, or how you're using your voice.
And we just want parents to know you can use that stuff. You can pay attention to something that your kid is doing. So let's say it's the way that's the pace that they're hopping. It's like the way that they're hopping on the trampoline or something, or they're hopping like a bunny across the living room, something like that.
And if you can capture some element in the way that you're, they're going to look at you and they're going to want to show it to you because they want to be mirrored. It's like a big part of their biology is hey, that's why they're constantly asking us to look at stuff. I'm ready to be mirrored.
I want you to be there. I want you to be a participant in this. And so sometimes it's just as simple as matching. You don't even have to, we don't want you to copy them exactly. It's just matching maybe the pace or the tenor or the. The look or even the sound that they're using at that moment.
And we're communicating so much in terms of our attunement with our kids. They're getting so much out of the nonverbal communication that's happening.
[00:29:27] Tina Bryson: So if my son's Mom, the guy's coming, he's coming down the rope. He's coming to find you. Then I might be like, okay, I'm waiting for you. I've got you.
And I would just match with my voice to join in that. Or one of my sons was, one of my sons was obsessed with the Dodgers by age three. And he would love to play baseball in the backyard. He had a little bolt, like a little juggling pin that was looked like a bat. Cause he couldn't hold a big bat. He was so tiny.
But every time he would go to bat, he probably saw a baseball player do this. He would tap the bat three times and pretend like he was spitting. And so he wanted me to pitch to him all the time, right? So it's not like we're sitting on the floor. We're necessarily like playing. It's playtime in the playroom.
We're just throwing the baseball in the backyard. Or it might be that we're in the car and I'll come back to that in a minute. But so he would tap the bat three times, pretend he would spit. So I'm about to pitch the ball. So I would pretend like I tapped three times and I would pretend to spit. And I'd be like, ready batter, whatever.
We're just joining with them either with body face or voice, probably like Georgie said, not doing all three and mimicking because copying can be really annoying. But even if you're in the car, again, this is back to yes, it's what we do when we play when we're playing with our kids, but it's also we call it the way of play because it's a way of being with our kids.
It also means when we're in the car and our kid makes a silly noise or a silly face we make a silly noise or we make a silly face. Or if our kid does something in the bathtub, you just, you have the guy dive in under the bathtub too. So we're really following along. And mirroring what they're doing.
So these two strategies that we've talked about, thinking out loud, narrating what we're seeing and what we think they're happening mirroring with our body, face, and voice. Like you can see how this can be done. Whether we're pretending that we are, hot dog vendors at the baseball stadium, or we've got super guys saving people on a pirate ship, or if we're just riding in the car.
And and they make a silly, they use a silly voice when they're singing. And then we join in with the silly voice too.
[00:31:16] Hunter: Also, it's interesting because this is like the, like all the best stuff. This is universal to any relationship, like this is what you would do with your partner.
If your partner started to make silly faces at you, you might make silly faces back and play together and play in. And this is definitely a play strategy that I use with my teenagers who are, about to turn 18, we're still, doing some of these things. But also I was thinking of, as you were speaking, this kind of synchronization and how being in tune with people just feels so good.
So one of the things I do that I love is Scottish country dancing. I'm obsessed with it at this point. But that's one of the things we do is we are, setting to each other, or we're turning at the same time, or two parts of the dance are turning at the same time, and we're all in sync in this rhythm, And that attunement and that feels so good so we can just harness this universal thing that feels really good and is so connecting when we want to connect with our kids just to I guess it's just takes a shifted mindset, right?
Like it must take like a shift from, there's got to be a space, maybe, I don't know, maybe there's like a minute where you sit in the car and you just breathe and you don't do anything. Maybe sit in quiet for a minute. To release what was going before to get yourself into a mindset of connecting and play.
That's probably even especially key for all of these strategies.
[00:32:40] Tina Bryson: Yeah, and we have to keep in mind too, we haven't yet gone here, is that this is based on Jock Pinksepp's work, who did a lot of, known as the rat tickler who measured how much rats play and actually laugh. I know it's really strange, but and many other pieces of research that really show.
That the state of being the, when we are playing or in playful states, it is neurophysiologically incompatible with threat states. So when we are in a threat state where we're reactive, right? We flipped our lids, we're dysregulated we're angry, we're fearful, full of anxiety, panic. Those states, if you're in that state, you cannot play and you cannot be playful.
So that's one thing we can put a pin in and come back to, which is because sometimes as parents, we are feeling that way. That's we can't get to playfulness in those moments. So we could talk about what we do and how forced herself there. Yeah. But what's important about this too, is that everything that we're talking about here, our kids enjoy it.
They're building tons of skills. It builds the relationships, but you know what else it's doing. Is it is creating some Teflon against threat state. It is a protective factor against threat states because play itself and playfulness. are huge cues of safety. And so it's such a powerful way to help move a kid from a reactive state into a receptive regulated safe, safe cues of safety state.
But it's also a way to prevent that from happening. So especially if you have a kid. who might be feeling nervous about something or anxious about something. That is really a key time to bring in some laughter and playfulness and silliness. Sometimes that means you playing the boob and tripping all over the shoes to get out the door.
It might mean bringing some playfulness in terms of telling a story. I use this a lot because I have parents that tell me this and I get this I don't want to do an effing puppet show to get my kids to put their shoes on and get out the door. I'm so tired. I don't want to do it. But the amount of energy and time we put into the battle is actually far harder to and the more we practice being playful, our brains are plastic to it, become, becomes more natural and automatic for us.
But one of the best ways I ever got cooperation in the car, but also to Get the kids to transition to something was, and I was so bad at it, but I would be like, okay, I haven't even told you guys the story. There were these three squirrels and they did something they were not supposed to do and they got in so much trouble.
You're not even going to believe it now. I don't even know what the heck's going to happen next. I don't know what squirrels did. I don't know what that getting in trouble means. Maybe I'm not even gonna be giving a good moral message. I don't know yet, but but if I start that way and then I'm like, get your shoes on, grab your bag and let's get in the car and then I'm gonna tell you what happened next.
They can't wait to get into the car. Yeah, they can't wait to get into the car and you have to, you're gonna make it up the story, but suck, who knows. And if they're like, mom, this story is stupid, you're like, okay what you think should happen next, right? So it doesn't, it can be clunky. And at night I would often make up stories and they'd be like, Can you make the story more interesting?
This is really boring. But I was like I'm trying to help you go to sleep. So I'm trying to make it boring on purpose. The sea otters can only float for so long. You can only describe floating sea otters for so long before they're like, Can you just get a little action going here? But that is a, so it's not, again, it's not just being in a playroom with a board game out.
This is a way of being playful around eliciting cooperation. There's whimsy there. There's something unpredictable happening. We don't know, and and what happens is it activates curiosity, which is a huge piece of play. And when kids are curious, that also is a protective state against reactivity and flipping their lids.
These are, these are the kinds of things we're doing and you know that what happens then is your kid has also just gotten a rep, just like when you lift weights and you do reps, you build muscles. Your kid has also just gotten a rep of getting out the door quickly and efficiently without a battle.
Okay that's nice. Let's keep practicing that. Yeah, so that becomes. the regular normal. I think when you're talking about anything and if parents are like, I'm really dinner times are so stressful. Bedtimes are so stressful. Or we're having problem with this particular behavior. I really always want to bring it back to, okay, what are the repeated experiences we want to provide that help build that skill?
So it's automatic, right? So your kid is toilet training and you, there's a special basket of just bathroom toys that makes them excited to go into the bathroom, or maybe you give them an M and M every time they use the toilet or whatever you do, eventually you don't have to do those things because it becomes.
a natural
[00:37:10] Hunter: rhythm of what they do, right? I'll take some effort, but then it pays off because it gets easier and easier as time goes on.
[00:37:17] Tina Bryson: The more joy we have in our interactions with our kids and the fewer battles we have, the fewer discipline problems we're going to have as well. They're going to be more cooperative.
And then we're going to enjoy them and we're not going to flip our lids as much. It's so good for the relationship too. So I will say that if you as a parent are feeling like I can't get to playfulness because I'm so anxious or I'm so stressed out, what I want to say to you is I get you. I feel that.
I felt like I was, especially when my kids were younger, I was so overstimulated all the time. I was just like a walking, flipping my lid person. I yelled a lot at bedtimes. And I think what I would say to you is more than ever, you need play. That's a cue if you're feeling like you can't access that.
It means you need time probably away from your kids. You need to go have dinner with your friends or you need to go for a walk with a friend or you might need to go to the bathroom by yourself for once. There are just some basic things that you need. But the more we join with our kids in the silliness of play and let go and just practice it, even if it's clunky, it's stress relieving for us, too. It really is.
[00:38:27] Hunter: Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
[00:39:04] Hunter: Love that. I love it. I'm aware. that we only have so much time. You guys have seven strategies which are amazing. I really would love to just touch on.
The one, the strategy number four, which is dial the intensity up or down. So I can understand parents, wanting to dial things down and really wanting those strategies. But you also have dial things up too. So can you tell us a little bit about this strategy too? Go ahead, Georgie.
[00:39:30] Georgie Wisen-Vincent: Yeah, no, what I would share about dialing intensity. It may be different than what Tina shares because we, each of us have our own. Stories about what the work that we've done with families, but also how it came out for us with our own kids. So I have a 10 year old son and when he was little, he had a speech delay.
So I have a neurodivergent child and his play didn't look like what I was expecting. He was the kid that everywhere we would go, he would find the biggest stick, like just 10 times bigger than him. And he would hit everything with the stick. And I was like, Oh my gosh, my kid's going to be the most aggressive guy as he gets older.
But it turns out he had some tactile defensiveness, like he was defensive in his tactile system, so he didn't want to go touch everything. His stick was like his way of I'll touch it, but I don't have to get, I can be 10 feet away from it. So he literally would touch it with a 10 foot pole. And so he was like, he was inspiring what has now become dial intensity up and down.
Because we would go to occupational therapy and the OT would say, Jack is it okay if you maybe try that medium instead of really hard? And so she I was learning how to help him. Instead of saying, stop, put that down. I don't want you to use that stick. Sometimes we have a tendency, I think for me as a mom and other parents as well, of I just need to stop that.
And put a pin in it because I don't want my kids to keep going in that direction. But really, there might be an underlying need that they have or a way that they're experiencing their sensory world that we don't fully understand yet and that we're still discovering with them. And if we put a pin on that behavior, we may not ever really understand.
Where that's coming from and Atina has taught me, more than anybody else You have to chase the why behind the behavior as well So dialing intensity is really about how can I help them gradually adjust the intensity whether that be? They're way too loud rough, angry You know hitting things whatever We don't want to let anybody get very hurt, but if the intensity is too high and there's some way that I can help them learn to adjust gradually instead of just put a pin in it, adjust their level of sensory, maybe upregulation or I'm way too high emotionally or something, and it's not matching the situation.
let's imagine that there's like a big thermostat of their regulation and we can just you can't see my hands right now on this little screen, but if you could just turn it a little bit in the direction that you want to see. So you're matching them and then dialing it down. But Hunter, you asked what are situations where we might need to dial it up too?
And I think about getting my kid to do any kind of homework is where he completely becomes like a ball of jelly. Have you seen kids who are just They'll melt down the chair like under the table and parents just think they're being defiant or resistant and they're trying to hide and they're trying to get out of it or whatever, but he actually does lose muscle tension and we see his intensity go way too low.
So he's like on the low road almost like when we talk about fight, flight, or freeze, he's gone into kind of a freeze state where it's I literally can't do this. I saw a problem that I don't know how to do, and now I'm too low in my intensity, and we need to You know, start dialing it back up again so that we can increase his engagement and help him feel more confident in what he's about, the math problem he's about to do.
Or maybe your kid just lost at a game. They were playing a board game with their siblings. Hunter, you mentioned Candyland earlier. Maybe the family's playing Candyland and they landed on the, the licorice swamp or whatever, and they're being kicked back Ten squares and they're mad about it and they go off and hide by themselves and nobody can find them for a minute And then you discover like they've hidden under the covers in their bed and they don't want to come out and they won't talk to you And how often do we see that so often not just in play situations, but like everyday family situations as well.
That, that kind of strategy can be really useful, whether we're talking about we're playing together and everything seemed fine, and then all of a sudden something went wrong and they're not regulated enough in their body to be able to handle that. And then how do we get them to warm back up to that situation?
How do you get them to warm back up?
[00:43:51] Georgie Wisen-Vincent: Yeah, we offer so many ideas about this, But one thing is to start low and go slow. So we don't want to come in at them and yeah, you don't want to come in at them and overwhelm them or be angry with them. Your really high intensity is going to overwhelm their really low intensity.
And it's not going to facilitate the kind of safety and the moment that they're going to need in order to warm their systems back up and be able to re engage. Sometimes just trying to get a handle on how much of me can they tolerate right now. I want to come in and help you. I want to know the right thing to say.
I want to say the perfect thing to get you right back into what you were supposed to do. But sometimes gauging like, Can they handle just my quiet voice talking to them while they've got the covers over their head? Or is it that I need to sit down at the end of the bed and then slowly creep a little bit and maybe have a little bit of a playful tone in my voice?
Something like that. We just don't want to give them too much of that playfulness. We don't want them to feel like I'm making fun of you now. Oh, come on, this is just silly times. Yeah. Or just distracting them when we're not really mirroring them enough to give them the sense that we're really there and that we really understand and get that this is hard right now.
Or it might be like when my kid was little, I couldn't even go in the room. I would have to sit like right in the doorway and be like, I'm here. I'm just letting you know, you might need some space and then inch a little bit closer and closer. And for us, the way that I dialed up intensity. was sometimes I would walk my fingers over like this and he could see it coming and then if he like put the covers over tighter than he wasn't ready.
But then I'd walk my fingers back a little bit and I'd be like, okay, give me a little bit more, you know We're really embodying the spirit of we can handle this Because I'm flexible and creative enough to know how much of this you can take so you can almost imagine that dial moving Okay, we're gonna click it up a little bit and dial the intensity up a little bit maybe down a little bit When they're not ready and give them a little bit more space, a little bit more time, but we're going to get there together.
We're going, we're going to find that just right click where now they can come out from underneath the covers. They can hear you a little bit more. You can see that they're coming back in that sort of green zone of being able to be receptive to you again.
[00:46:13] Tina Bryson: I think my, I think this is such an important strategy because what it is it's basically coaching regulation.
So just like When you're on the phone with a customer service person and you start to notice that you're getting a little too activated and you need to rein it back a little bit, or you're feeling really shut down, like we can think about it like you just mentioned, the green zone, we can think about this whole strategies around practicing regulation, that sometimes we need to move into higher states of activation of our nervous system.
And sometimes we need to dial it back and have lower states. So if you think about the green zone is regulated, the red zone would be hyper aroused. This is where we see acting out behaviors. Disrespectful tones of voices or words, slamming doors, physical and verbal aggression behavioral stuff that we wouldn't want to see this inappropriate acting out.
The blue zone would be the opposite of that, which would be more of a shutdown. And what we see here is is more withdrawn. Quieter, pulling away refusal maybe tears and sadness. So we could talk about these sort of different states. And I want to just people throw out the term regulation and co regulation a lot.
And I want to just take one second to talk about this and define this. Dan Siegel has my favorite definition of what regulation is, and it is the ability, and it fits in so much, Hunter, with your life's work and the mindful parenting approach. It's the ability to monitor and modify your state. For me, when I need to regulate myself, I monitor, I'm noticing, oh gosh, I'm feeling really anxious right now, or I'm noticing I'm feeling really defensive, and I'm being too verbally aggressive in this conversation with my husband or whatever.
It's the ability to monitor, so notice. And then modify and be like, I need to take a minute, or I need to take a breath, or I need to move my body, or I need to go outside for a minute, or whatever it is. So co regulation is the ability to monitor what your child's state is and help them modify it. So what this strategy is doing is if your kid is withdrawn, shut down, pulling away, because they're sad or they're disappointed or they're feeling flooded in some way, it really is about how we provide our presence, low and slow, maybe rolling a ball, toward them and hoping they roll it back or these little things that, or putting music on these kinds of things.
that help them dial up their nervous system intensity to a place where they can re engage and get back into relationship and joining. Or it might be that we need to provide more comfort and and quieter to get them to get more, less intense. I think this is exactly how our children start, begin to practice, just like every other skill.
The ability to monitor and modify their states in order to do what they need to do and be connected and engaged in relationships and with the world.
[00:48:54] Hunter: Yeah, these are all these strategies are so incredible for that emotional regulation, emotional knowledge, self knowledge, self awareness. And, all, I wish, of course, I had this when my kids were little.
I love you too so much. There's so much we could talk about here. There's seven great strategies. You should definitely get it, dear listener, the way of play. There, obviously, there's so much we could talk about. We can't, we have run out of time. Is there anything else that, that you miss that you especially want to share with the listener before we go?
[00:49:27] Georgie Wisen-Vincent: Yeah, I was thinking about this concept of practicing before the big events, like this idea that you wouldn't. Send your kid into a big soccer game, like the championship game, without doing a lot of practicing beforehand, right? I constantly talk with parents and colleagues like, play gives us the practice, play gives us the reps, when your kid is already in the green zone for the most part, although we know that challenges are gonna come up, and we even have strategies in the book about How to scaffold and stretch kids skills when they need to build resilience or they have big anxieties about things and they're afraid of something that's coming up or maybe they just struggle with their motor skills a little bit or something like that.
And you really want them to be able to tolerate more frustration and things like that. We can do all that in play. Play means that they're getting a little bit more of a dose, like a regulated dose. Of practicing before they have to do it when the pressure is really on when they have to. Get out the door and go to school and face all that anxiety walking through the front gate of their big school with all those kids and everything.
So if we can practice those things and play offers us the opportunities to do it, why wouldn't we, why wouldn't we use that? And the book gives such like straightforward guidance and how to see those things and then how to make the most of these opportunities for more practice with play as a neural exercise.
[00:50:56] Tina Bryson: My final thought, beautifully said, Georgie, is that kids need a lot more free time free play, where they're just doing something on their own. They need a lot more time playing with their peers and their cousins and friends and neighbors and all of that. And they need more time playing with us, even in small doses.
And what's incredibly powerful about it, I could say a million things about that. Is that it really Georgie, I think this quote came from you. It's so beautiful that when what children won't say they will play if they won't say, even if they don't say it, they will play it. And it's an incredible opportunity to dive into a whole world of our child, who they are.
I think about the ways that I played when I was a kid are 100 percent who I am now. I'll give you an example. I loved playing like teacher and I had lesson plans and I had seating charts. And I was, I loved playing Julie McCoy, like the cruise director. And I'm a hundred percent a cruise director.
Like I, I love organized and being on top of things. And when I played Barbies, I didn't play out the relational drama stuff. I designed Barbie's rooms. I would find washcloths and pieces of Fabric and design. And that's like my favorite thing to do. So I think, it really helps us know who our kid is.
And it's an incredible opportunity to build skills, even while we're doing that.
[00:52:10] Hunter: Now I wish I would have played with you as a kid. Never too late. Yeah. Time for y'all to go to a Ren fest together. Exactly. Exactly. Play
[00:52:19] Tina Bryson: dress up. And let me say this too, I think, Play seems extra, but it's not.
Your child, be militant about sleep. That's the one thing I would say. Be militant about sleep as a parent. Your child needs a lot more sleep than they're probably getting. Your child needs good nutrition. They need time in nature. They need, engaged relationships. They need positive, supportive, predictable relationships.
These are needs. Play is a basic need. It is crucial. In fact, and this is gross, But if you remove the cortex of a rat, and I'm not advocating anybody does that, the rats will continue to play. And what that tells us is that it's a subcortical part of our survival drive for life. It is a need and it's something we should absolutely be protective of.
Our children need more of it.
[00:53:05] Hunter: Amen. Thank you guys so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having us.
[00:53:12] Tina Bryson: Thank you. It's been great.
[00:53:22] Hunter: Thank you so much for listening. I love this episode and talking to Tina and Georgie. They have so much to offer. Of course, I wish I'd had this book when my kids were little. It's so great. I definitely recommend you go out and get it. You can find more of Tina on this podcast on episode #238. It's called “Discipline Explained”.
And you can learn more about play with Episodes #380 with “The Power of Play” with Anna Yudina and Episode #329 with “Resolve to be Playful” with Lawrence Cohen. And then, if you like this, if this is good for you, text it to a friend.
Tell someone about it who could use this episode. I think it's so useful, right? Can help create more cooperation, all these good things. Super useful. And then, if you do, let me know. Let me know. I'm @MindfulMamaMentor. Let me know if you liked it and how it's going. And if it's helpful. It really helps me to know that this is helping you. All righty, I have got to go and say hello to my kiddos who just came home from school. So I'm gonna sign off. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate your presence and support. The Mindful Parenting Podcast and I wish you all the good things in the world. And I will be back again real soon. I'll be back next week. Make sure you're subscribed. We got an awesome episode again for you next week. So check in on Tuesday. And I'll see you then. Okay, take care. Namaste.
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