Episode 2: Transcript

Episode 2: “Parenting is the most triggering work you can do.”

Doug French (00:00):

All right, so this is Episode Two of When The Flames Go Up, the podcast brought to you by the ex-wife and the ex-husband who used to raise the ex-kids who are now adults.

Magda Pecsenye (00:11):

I know! They're adults. It's strange, isn't it? Yeah. So this is the second episode. It just made me feel heart-warmed how happy people were that we were back.

Doug (00:24):

Heartworm?

Magda (00:24):

Heart-warmed.

Doug (00:25):

Oh, okay.

Magda (00:25):

It made my Midwestern heart warm. It made me think a lot about the initial days of blogging and how it felt like we were kind of parenting collectively back then.

Magda (00:25):

It made my Midwestern heart warm. It made me think a lot about the initial days of blogging and how it felt like we were kind of parenting collectively back then.

Doug (00:39):

Yeah. But more importantly, how does your Midwestern heart feel now that it's about to go back to the East Coast?

Magda (00:45):

Oh, we have to stop talking about that. One of these times I'll just, you know. I like the Midwest. I like the Midwest. I like everything here. 

Doug (00:56):

Okay. So I know this is a, this is supposedly a temporary thing and you're going to bring the man back here eventually. 

Magda (01:02):

We're hoping. 

Doug (01:03):

Right. The real challenge for me was just seeing how the two of us worked as an interviewing duo. ‘Cause whenever there's three people in a conversation, you never know how the rhythm is going to work out. You know? I thought it worked okay.

Magda (01:16):

It worked okay. We'll get there. You know, I mean I think we're better at it now than we would've been if we had done it while we were still married. In sync together.

Doug (01:24):

Oh, but think of the tension, though. Chaos is compelling.

Magda (01:27):

We're talking today to Dawn Friedman who has been blogging since 2001, I think. Back from those early days before people were called “mom bloggers” or “parent bloggers,” back when we were all just bloggers. And Dawn is not currently blogging now. Instead, she's a therapist. And she started out working with kids with anxiety, but has really transitioned into working with parents of kids who have anxiety, and she'll tell us why she made that transition. 

But I think it's really interesting to note that, you know, back when our kids were little, I wasn't really thinking a whole lot about kids having anxiety. I didn't start thinking about it until our kids got to be teenagers and it seemed like suddenly everybody was anxious--parents, kids, everyone.

Doug (02:16):

Well, that's why she's a great first guest because she's very emblematic of this feeling we all have now about stuff we never even learned to consider back in the day, that's now become a very prevalent part of a lot of family dynamics. 

Magda (02:29):

You know, her own kids are adults also. And so she's sort of seen this in the same real time. There's the part when she talks about, sort of, typical ages for anxiety to flare in kids. And some of those ages are younger than I think I would've guessed. 

Doug (02:44):

When she talks about coping with an anxious child, regardless of how old your kids are, the advice is universal. Trying to look at the whole dynamic and recognize, in many cases it's the parents who need to take on what the therapist says because the parents have more power to change the dynamic, especially among parent and child.

Magda (03:04):

She's really great at explaining why that's the case. I think it would be very easy for parents to hear…she's got this great way of letting parents know that she's absolutely on their side and on their team and has been there herself. 

Doug (03:19):

Well this is Episode Two and I, I gotta say thank you very much for all your feedback about Episode One, which was just the intro. The two of us, you know, introducing ourselves to you and to everybody else who might not have seen the blog way back in the day. But our Substack is WhenTheFlamesGo Up.substack.com. We've got a great group of first adopters here and thank you so much for signing on and hopefully this next episode will keep the same momentum. I really can't tell. 

Magda (03:50):

<laugh> I think this second episode is going to be better than the first one because we're going to be talking to somebody who actually knows what she's talking about instead of just you and me.

Doug (03:58):

Yes. That's really much better salesmanship than I exhibited, so, well done.

Magda (04:05):

Here we are talking to Dawn.

Our opening funky synthesizer music fades in, plays for 20 seconds, and then fades out into us talking again.

Magda (04:26):

I don't think we knew we were anxious when we were teenagers, like kids now do. We were in the process of getting our younger kid diagnosed with ADHD, you know, one of his symptoms of ADHD was having problems turning in homework. And I thought--and heard the words coming out of my mouth in a conference with a professional at the school and another professional at the school that I really didn't want to reveal anything about myself to--I heard myself saying, “Well why don't you just do everything perfectly and turn it all in ahead of time so then you won't have to be anxious about it?” And then it was like, “Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! This is why you were valedictorian of your high school class because you were managing your anxiety!”

Doug (05:16):

‘Cause you were too scared not to be.

Magda (05:17):

<Laugh>. Right! And I had not realized until that second that I had anxiety. I knew that I had had depression, you know. I mean, I grew up in a house--My dad has had very, very life-altering depression my entire life and was hospitalized for 10 days, two weeks, I think, when I was 10 years old for that. And that hospitalization was the best thing that ever happened to our family because then it was sort of out in the open, like, what was going on with dad and you know, that kind of stuff. But I remember recognizing when I was 11, “oh, this is depression,” this feeling that I was feeling. But there had always been the anxiety, too, and I just didn't know that's what it was. I didn't know that was not how everyone felt. So I think now kids know that they have anxiety because the people our age talk about it. Okay. Dawn, can you tell us, sort of, what your background is and why you ended up specializing in anxiety? 

Dawn Friedman (06:15):

Yeah, sure. So, I have been a clinical counselor for about 10 years now and every single kid that I saw-- almost without exception--was either anxious or angry, and all the angry kids were anxious. So people were calling me about their kids because they either were reporting symptoms of anxiety or they were reporting behavior issues that often tied back to anxiety. And I just realized it's a huge problem for kids and teens and that it is a family problem. So, the same goes with my adult clients. Depression and anxiety are two sides of the same coin. So if you have depression you likely have anxiety as well. And so it's just a really common issue and I just realized that we needed to focus on that more. And then, plus, it's really hard to get kids into therapy these days for a million and one reasons, starting with we don't have enough child therapists, and so I wanted to find a way to serve families and get them help more easily, that was also evidence-based, and that's why I set up Child Anxiety Support.

Magda (07:20):

You're really treating the parents, you're working with the parents instead of specifically with the kids and sort of leaving the parents to just have to kind of wonder what was going on in the sessions.

Dawn (07:34):

Yeah, so all the research that we have about child anxiety shows that it's a family systems issue and when we intervene in family systems it makes the most sense to intervene with parents because they actually control the family system. The research shows over and over again, working with parents is just as--if not more effective than--working directly with kids. And I feel like our practices as mental health providers hasn't really caught up with that research yet. And so it's still tough to explain that to parents. They still want their kids to get therapy first and I'm all for kids getting therapy, but parents also need their own education and support in order to really change up that family culture around anxiety.

Doug (08:20):

Well, how different is it to treat an adult than it is to treat a child? And I ask that imagining the answer is legion. But the older we get, the more we realize that adults in many ways are just kids whose bodies have aged horribly in many ways. And so, is there a particular delineation or specific strategy that you apply to a child rather than an adult? And when do those lines meet?

Dawn (08:45):

Well, what I think it's really important to know is that when someone is calling to get their child treatment, it is usually not the child saying, “I would really like to learn how to function differently.” Some kids are saying that, but often it's the parent saying, “I want my child to function differently.” So the parent is the one with the motivation to create change, not the child. When we talk to children about anxiety, they will say “It doesn't really help when my mom or dad does this thing, I still feel anxious.” But they also don't want their parent to stop doing the thing. They're not really motivated to figure out how to face their anxiety, how to learn to manage the emotions that go along with being anxious. But parents are motivated, parents want things to be different and that's what is really different about treating them. So with kids, first of all you have to build that rapport. They maybe don't even want to be there. How do they talk, how do they communicate, what are they into? And so much of it though, I tell you, parents will go, “Why am I paying you all this money to play with my kid?” I'm like, “It's the same reason why adults pay me a lot of money to do a lot of small talk before they finally tell me the big thing.” Right?

Doug (09:57):

Do you feel like the parent has you under the microscope in terms of demanding results that might take more time than they're prepared to commit to?

Dawn (10:05):

Not so much that. I think they--you know, before I became a therapist I thought therapists were magic. I thought they were doing some crazy thing behind closed doors and then I became a therapist and went, oh, they haven't taught me any magic spells. So parents will say--this is, you know, kind of a really simplistic thing—"My child won't clean their room, so I told them to talk to you about it. So you can make them clean the room.” Like, I'm not magic, I can't make your child clean their room. What I can do is help you figure out how to better communicate, how to figure out why your child isn't cleaning the room. Maybe you have to accept your kid is messy, maybe that's actually what's going on. Maybe your child does need some specific tools, maybe they need a diagnosis ‘cause they're going to need some meds in order to, maybe they have ADHD that's untreated. That's why the room is a mess a million different things. But it probably isn't that I know the magic words you don't to get your kid to go, “You know what, I need to learn how to clean my room.”

Doug (11:02):

Does that also contribute to a contested dynamic between the parent and the child and that child arrives at your office and says, “I'm here ‘cause my mom wants me to be.”? Does that put undue pressure on that child to achieve what the parent wants? I mean, how do you teach a child to kind of progress at their own pace and on their own merit and not feel beholden to anyone else and recognize that their own timeline is an individual effort?

Dawn (11:31):

It so depends on the child's age, why they're there, what's going on for the family altogether. So I can't say it's just like this or just like that, but I have found that sometimes as a therapist I end up getting stuck between a power struggle between parent and child. And that is one of my other concerns is one of my goals is for the parent and child to function better as a unit. And that's not always possible when I'm in there trying to get buy-in from the child and maybe the child's pulling me one way, the parent is pulling me in another. And often when the child has two different households, too, then that's a whole nother dynamic. As much as I love working with kids--and I really love working with kids--I feel like I can be more effective, especially around anxiety, when I am working with parents.

Magda (12:26):

That makes so much sense to me because otherwise you'd have to be there all the time. I mean, if you end up having to mediate between the parents and the kids, what happens when they go home? They're only with you for 45 minutes a week, or every other week, or whatever it is. And if they can't navigate the dynamics of just being in the same room with each other…

Dawn (12:50):

What really convinced me I need to go this other way, was a fantastic family, lovely family, terrific parents, super involved, really doing a good job with a teen with high anxiety. And we got a ton of progress with that teen and then what would happen is they would go home and all our work would get undone. Because I could not get the parents' buy-in. I needed to spend more time with them. And, and that was really what convinced me I needed to change up the way I was doing things because we got so far with this kid, they were sitting together in my room, we were navigating and negotiating what was going to happen and I just realized: I've been setting this kid up, I've been setting this family up because they—we--were all looking at the child to change, and I hadn't really done that work with the parent to get their buy-in.

Doug (13:41):

Yeah. And just to clarify a bit, what is the age range of kids you work with and where are those ages concentrated? What would you say the median age of people you work with is?

Dawn (13:50):

Okay, so I work with all ages, but the calls I get most often are five year-olds, eight year-old boys, nine year-old girls. I get so many calls about five year olds in September after school has started, or right before school has started with kindergarten.

Magda (14:07):

You know, it's really interesting, ‘cause I think we--meaning parents, culture, society, whatever--tend to think of anxiety as a problem that's inside the kid and somehow we need to be able to help them control that. But to me it's very much this idea of, like, change the external, the stuff around the kid, which is what you're really doing with the parents. One of my kids had a teacher, and I don't even remember who it was, who had a quote under his/her signature that said something about, “if a plant isn't growing well you wouldn't yell at the plant, you would change the soil around it.” And that was this teacher's teaching philosophy. And that is what it seems like to me. And now that you say it's right before or right after school starts. Kindergarten is brutal. And I think kindergarten is worse for parents than it is for kids even, because it's like everybody thinks, “Oh, the kid's finally in school full-time.” And teachers are fine with managing that, you know, like sort of leading the kids out to try to get the kids to be a little bit challenged and stuff like that. But at home we're expecting them--and I see this all the time with parents who have kids going to kindergarten, even with like the second or third kid, and I knew I did it with our second kid, I was just surprised, like, “Why can't he do all this stuff?” And that seems like a big, big recipe for anxiety, because the kid’s right in the middle of it. They want to be more independent than they can be and all the adults around them are expecting them to be more independent than they can be, too.

Dawn (15:42):

Well, and that's part of it, too. It's so--again, I love therapy and I love therapy for children and people and all kinds of folks, obviously. Right. But, I get concerned when we start diagnosing kids in a way that it becomes part of their identity, in themselves and in a family. So when a child goes to therapy, that child, especially if you're using insurance, is going to get a diagnosis. But lots of kids struggle. And a diagnosis makes perfect sense, if it accesses resources to help them, then I'm all for it. However, a number of families start thinking “my child has anxiety” and anxiety with a capital A becomes sort of the feature around which the family revolves, and there's not then room to grow. There's not then room to be different. There's not then room to say “I may have anxiety but I am not my anxiety.” And that's another reason why I think it's really great to work with parents, because often parents just--and why would we--don't have a realistic idea about what parenting looks like, what growing looks like, what a typical child looks like. And again, why would we? We're not taught that. 

Magda (16:58):

Right. And most of us don't have experience with any kids other than our own. I realized that when I was a playground mom in New York City and I was out at the playground with my kids all the time, so I had these realistic expectations of what kids at different ages were able to do. And then I'd be at the playground and it would be the same kids but it would be the parents there who had been working all week who never spent any time seeing these other kids. And they only had those two precious days with their kids. So when they were at the playground they were really only paying attention to their kids--as you would expect and hope--and so they genuinely didn't have any idea to how to put their kid’s behavior in context or the behavior of the other kids in context.

Magda (17:43):

You know, I mean, kids fight. That kind of stuff, and the parents who didn't have experience seeing that fighting were really upset by it. Whereas the people who were seeing all of these kids all the time were sort of like, oh yeah, you know, this happens. Just take the stick away, you know, move on. But yeah, I think we just don't culturally have a lot of experience like that, whereas previous generations might have because we would've been babysitting younger kids or roaming the neighborhood in packs of 15 kids of different ages, that kind of stuff.

Dawn (18:18):

Well and also I think, ‘cause I'm just thinking about Erma Bombeck. Right? So Erma Bombeck, it used to be common knowledge that parenting was not always fun.

Magda (18:28):

Yes!

Dawn (18:29):

That parenting is often drudgery. Your good parenting doesn't mean that you're going to have a child who always cleans up after themselves and says please and thank you. And I think now there's this kind of expectation that if you're a good parent then your child will be good. So again, I have a lot of parents who come to me and are like, “Why is my child difficult? Why am I unhappy in this parenting?” And I say, “Because kids this age are kind of jerks. They're just going to be jerks until they grow out of it. And you're not doing anything wrong and you're allowed to be unhappy.”

Doug (19:00):

Besides too many parents, I think just are so invested in the behavior of their children, especially the way social medias worked out. It's a, it's a failing on their part, not least because a lot of parents are judging each other. Is that fair to say?

Dawn (19:17):

Yes. And also I think that a lot of people then want a diagnosis ‘cause then there's a reason. But sometimes children don't meet criteria for a diagnosis. They're just hard kids. It's my favorite person to work with is an unhappy mother because I'm well--

Doug (19:30):

There’s no market for that. I mean this is only like what a handful of them in the entire country. So you gotta really work hard to get them as part of your clientele.

Dawn (19:37):

And I love them because I appreciate their struggle. I appreciate how painful it is to love somebody this much and for it to be so difficult and for them to be so annoying. And I tell moms this all the time, all of the moms I talk to--and they are wonderful parents, committed parents, they are doing a great job--ALL secretly sometimes go, “I wish I could run away from home, maybe I shouldn't have had children.” And that's okay because it's really, it's not always a rewarding job. Sometimes it you are just slave labor to your kids.

Magda (20:11):

I remember when my kids were little, right. I think for me the most difficult part of parenting was always the fact that I couldn't think my own thoughts, like two of them strung together. It was just very hard for me to have to pay attention to everything that they needed me to pay attention to all the time. And I remember just wishing that I could come down with something that was not life-threatening and wouldn't have any lasting health repercussions, but that I had to be checked into a hospital for for three days. I could just lie there in a gown, not wearing underwear, watching TV. And people would bring me chocolate pudding.

Dawn (20:50):

Yeah! There are lots of stories of women who, back when you got to be in the hospital after you had kids, said that the week after they had a baby was the best week ‘cause they didn't have to be home. 

Magda (21:00):

Do you know that my grandmother, my mother's mother, when she was born, my grandmother was kept in the hospital, regular vaginal birth, was kept in the hospital for TWO FULL WEEKS. And the nurses took care of her and of my mother, and they taught my grandmother how to breastfeed. My grandmother said they taught her to nurse lying down because they wanted her to take a nap every time she had to feed my mom. And she said my mother was like six months old before she realized that you could sit up and nurse, that you didn't have to lie down and nurse. But just think about that level of care. You know, two weeks.

Doug (21:42):

Yeah. 

Magda (21:43):

In the hospital with somebody else helping you take care of your baby and bringing you all your food and I mean--

Doug (21:50):

I know the hospital had like a trebuchet in front of it and <laugh> within six hours of having our son, we were launched out.

Magda (21:57):

We were gone at 13, 14 hours. 

I wish that people could come to get help from you, and instead of saying “my kid has anxiety” or “my kid is anxious,” they could say “we're all feeling anxious about the changes that are happening and our expectations. Can you help us with these feelings?”

Dawn (22:22):

I would love to see that shift. It's interesting too ‘cause when people call me or reach out to me, they'll say “I am worried about my child.” And I'm like “So this is your anxiety about your child's anxiety.” 

Doug (22:35):

It's about trickle down. Exactly.

Dawn (22:37):

Well, and your anxiety deserves care and your anxiety may be getting in the way of you actually doing what you need to do for your child's anxiety. A lot of the times the parents are not really enjoying parenting this anxious kid and they feel guilty about it. And that also clouds their ability to set limits. ‘Cause ultimately managing anxiety in a family is about boundaries. And a lot of these families are struggling with boundaries.

Doug (23:05):

And speaking of that, I wanted to ask, when you're raising a small child and you want to start building some semblance of coping skills, ‘cause some someday they have to find out how to survive a full day in kindergarten. And as a therapist you must be thinking along the same lines in terms of I want to scaffold this but at some point they can't come to rely on me if, if I have a child who's been in my care since they were five, they need to experience life without that crutch, at least. Or in some way to build up their own coping skills, strengthening skills. So as their therapist trying to walk this fine line, I imagine it's different for every kid, but what do you consider when you're thinking, you know how long I want to treat this five-year-old kid?

Magda (23:53):

Well, but she doesn't want to treat the five-year-old, she wants to treat the five-year-old's parents.

Doug (23:57):

Right. But as we know, as you've said, the child and the parent dynamic is such that you could do great work with the kid and then the kid goes home and the parents nullify everything because they feel they know more.

Dawn (24:09):

It's not that the parents feel they know more. It's that--and I won't work with a five year old anymore. As much as I love five-year-olds, I will only work with the parent. It is not that the parents think they know more, it's that they don't understand the dynamics. I've got one kid with anxiety, one kid who doesn't, I raised them pretty similar. I mean they're very different people but pretty much, you know, I held hands with them about the same amount of time. They're just different kids and they've had different experiences. But my son grew out of the need for my help, my daughter did not. And that's where it gets sticky. So with my son, that was easy. I helped him until he said, “Please stop helping me.” My daughter didn't say it. And it wasn't until I looked around and went, “Oh my gosh, we're stuck here. I need to push this one a little harder.”

Dawn (24:57):

So parenting an anxious child sometimes defies common sense because what you do for a non-anxious child, it works. You do it for an anxious child but they’ve got a stickier and anxious brain. And that's why it's so confusing to parents because it's not like they're doing something wrong. It's that they end up getting stuck in a dynamic where they go, “How did I get here?” Like when your kids are little, you order for them in a restaurant, the non-anxious kid will grow out of it and want to order themselves or at least will let you push 'em towards it. The anxious kid with social anxiety won't order and all of a sudden you're like “Why am I still ordering for my 12 year old? But I have to do it because otherwise they're not going to eat dinner.” And that's where parents need help.

Magda (25:40):

Also, a lot of it is that we weren't parented through our own anxiety and now we're carrying that with us. It's like subconsciously we feel like we have to make up for the fact that we weren't parented through our anxiety also. 

Dawn (25:56):

If we felt abandoned by our parents, we struggle to recognize what is abandonment. So we forget that our children have us, these lovely--I may say every once in a while my in-laws will go, “Don't you guys think you overparent?” And I go, “No, I think we parent great.” I love it. I would rather see overparenting than underparenting. Because if you have quote unquote overparented, if you have parented more intensely, you get to pull on that bank of good parenting you've done. That's why it's not the same as the way you were abandoned. Your kid has never been abandoned. You're just asking them to step out on their own a little bit. 

Magda (26:34):

I really hate the term “helicopter parent,” but I love the term “intensive parenting” because I have been an intensive parent since before I got pregnant because I have thought this was the most important thing. And I think if I have overparented, the way it's coming back to me is that my adult child is out in the world with a lot of people who have been radically underparented and he taps into me as a resource for how to manage/deal with/help put up boundaries with all of these people that have been underparented. 

Doug (27:12):

So that's interesting though ‘cause I always thought that the problems he had were with kids that were overparented because the kids were kind of conditioned to expect everything the way they wanted it all the time.

Magda (27:21):

Oh, you mean like, well, okay, if we're talking about conflicts. I'm not talking about conflicts, I'm talking about: he keeps running into these people who just, kids he has talked to that were really needy that just didn't have any ability to self-regulate, didn't have the ability to find home in themselves, didn't have an adult even if they were 17 or 19 or 25, they didn't have an adult that they could trust to help them out. These kids and young adults who are just utterly lost in the world and they're a lot more of them than I thought there were.

Doug (27:55):

So what do you think, do you think a lack of self-regulation, and again we've established that generalizations don't exist, but do you think it that a lack of self-regulation comes from too much parenting or too little? Assuming that's even quantifiable.

Dawn (28:11):

Yeah. I don't think it I, I don't think it is. I mean I think self-regulation is a skill that there's many reasons why a child with excellent parents might still struggle with that. Basically, I don't think you can look at any kid and say “I know how you were parented by that behavior.” And that's part of it, too, is because some people who have more difficult children, they are thinking “it's my parenting.” Some kids are just harder. Some kids just have brains that are harder to parent. That's all there is to it. As parents it's about us trying to manage the balance of helping and pushing and supporting and pulling back on supports. So yeah, there are some kids who are going to take a long time to figure out self-regulation and I know that because I see adults who are struggling to self-regulate for 1,000,001 reasons. But we can always learn if we want to learn. And that's again as parents, how do we hold our children responsible to learn, like saying to them, “I need you to grow” while at the same time understanding that kids are going to grow differently?

Doug (29:14):

And that ties into the whole idea of how parents are coached not to turn their children into what they wanted to be, but to acknowledge that their children are who they are and encourage that. 

Dawn (29:27):

Yeah. And it's--and I I think about how often the kids I would see, the calls I get--they're either anxious or angry and those angry kids with the big behaviors I do see sometimes where parents swing too far of saying, “Well, they can't help it.” Which may or may not be true. There is the Ross Greene “kids do well if they can,” yet maybe they don't have the skills but maybe we need to expect them to get those skills. And that's a whole conversation. I do see sometimes parents allow children to continue to behave in ways that do not serve that child well and do not serve the family well.

Magda (30:14):

There was a point at which my kids had these big, big emotions and you know, it was sort of became physical and it was like they needed to get that out of their body somehow. And it was always this line of, “If you need to punch the pillow it's fine, but we don't hurt people or animals.” And then it sort of, as they get older it's like, “Well do you care about your property? Right? Because maybe you don't care about your property in this moment, but you need to develop these long-term thinking of, just ‘cause I'm angry right now, I can't throw down my phone or my Switch or whatever because I will be unhappy with that later.” And it seems like just holding these very basic boundaries and then helping kids level up bit by bit to be able to regulate. 

Dawn (30:58):

Yeah. And the big thing is, for children, now is everything. And they are creating their identities and a lot of these kids who are melting down think of themselves as, “I'm somebody whose anger is too big to manage. I am never gonna be better.” Of course they think that, they don't know. And so we as parents need to believe they're going to grow. If we don't believe they're going to grow, if we're scared, and that is a real fear. And I have talked to parents and they finally say, “My secret fear is my kid is a sociopath.” And I think you need to have a place where you can say that with somebody who can tell you your kid is not a sociopath, this child is just really struggling with these big emotions. 

Magda (31:37):

I also think that there's some ages of totally normal development that replicate being a sociopath. Like I think a lot of 14-year-olds are sociopaths, sort of.

Dawn (31:49):

Which is why we're not supposed to be able to diagnose the personality disorder when they're that little, that selfish? But parents do need help if they can't believe it. If they're really afraid, and that's okay, then they need to lean on somebody like me or another therapist or another parent educator who can say this is typical, it's not okay. But it's typical. 

Doug (32:12):

We could do a whole other podcast about that, about gender dynamics, you know, and the whole idea of like maybe a boy's hurt, “boys will be boys” one time too many. You know, that's, that's a whole other issue.

Dawn (32:21):

Right. I sometimes sit down with kids with the child development books and say, look, here you are in black and white. You are behaving exactly the way you're supposed to behave and you're going to grow out of it. And this is why your parents are holding you accountable ‘cause they're helping you. And I remember my son was really annoyed when I did this ‘cause he was like, “You have books about? I don't really care for that.” He was like, he didn't like that. But sometimes kids are incredibly relieved when I say, of course you're lying. Kids lie at this age. We're going to hold you accountable when you do it. But you're not a terrible human. You were someone who was experimenting with lying.

Magda (32:56):

So if there's somebody out there right now listening and thinking “Oh, I need to get these books,” what books would you recommend? Because my recommendation for this is what kids do at different stages has always been the Ames and Ilg. 

Dawn (33:09):

Ames and Ilg. Yeah. And I always tell parents they're super sexist. They do not cover screens ‘cause they're incredibly dated. But they are still a really good, this is generally what kids this age do.

Magda (33:21):

And I think like one of the things that's so encouraging about those books--and the books I'm talking about we’ll put them in the show notes. But there were two child researchers, Ames and Ilg, and they worked at the Gessel Research Center and their job was to watch and observe children of various ages and then just document what kids did, when they were in groups and when they were by themselves. And so you read these books and, yes, they are very dated ‘cause they were doing this in the seventies. But it's so hopeful that three year olds is just the nadir of human existence, I think. Like, they just can't be in their own bodies without wanting something that they can't have. And such hopeful, hopeful. My favorite one is the one for three year olds, Your Three-year-old: Friend or Enemy. And there's a line in the book that basically says if you're the mother, you're never going to be able to make your three-and-a-half-year-old happy, so just get a babysitter.

Dawn (34:18):

Yes! I can't remember if it's the three-year old or two-year-old book.

Magda (34:21):

It's Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy. And I always describe that phase to people. People are like, “What do you mean?” And I'm like, well, because they'll scream, they'll just freak out. They won't be able to stand themselves or their existence because you didn't give them ice cream. So then you give in and you give them ice cream and then they cannot deal with themselves and they freak out because you gave them ice cream. And I think that's, like, the essence of that age. But just reading them say, “You cannot make your child happy or calm at this point. Get a babysitter.”

Dawn (34:52):

I tell parents all the time, the secret to happiness is judicious giving up. Just give up. They are again with the rooms of course the rooms are messy. They're going to be messy. Shut the door. Yeah.

Magda (35:05):

<Laugh> My question as somebody who's done a lot of coaching, right, of just people and business owners and stuff like that is ‘What is your actual need?” If you need the kids' room to be clean, why do you need that? Is there something else that would be easier and less conflict-laden to obtain that would make you just as happy to put some sort of moral value on it? 

Dawn (35:31):

And one of the things we do in the program, there's a main course about anxiety and then there's other things they can do, is a values course so that people can say, “Well, what is the value that is being violated here? Do you really care about the clean room? And if you do, you might have to clean it.” Is the issue the room, is the issue that your kid doesn't listen to you? Is the issue that your mother comes over and says, “I can't believe you let your kid live like that.”

Doug

Oh, that’s a biggie.

Dawn

Like what is really going on here? That's, yeah. And that's the thing is, I think, that I'm all about growth and personal growth, ‘cause obviously, therapists, we're into that. And so I believe that parenting, you could go on a spiritual retreat, you could spend thousands of dollars or you could just parent and really pay attention to what's happening for you because that is your experience that you are having. And if you can focus on your experience of it, you'll find your way.

Magda (36:28):

Well, I mean when I used to write a parenting advice blog, my tagline was “You're the best parent for your child.”

Dawn (36:38):

Yeah, I loved your blog. 

Magda

Thank you!

Dawn

I loved that.

Magda (36:41):

What I meant by that was, you have everything inside you already that you need to parent your specific child. You do not need somebody else to tell you what to do. You may need somebody else to tell you how to access your skills, or to help you think of something in a different way, or to give you permission to try things that you hadn't thought you could try. But you know how to solve these problems with your kid.

Doug (37:21):

So essentially we've all got the car that works but you're here to help us learn how to change the oil. How to just bring it in the dude's perspective here. Actually I do have a question about that, too, just because we've talked a lot about moms and as a dad and as someone who's worked with a lot of dads, just in terms of how they're feeling about parenting and wanting to be the best parents they can be. When you talk to parents of anxious children, how many of your conversations involve both parents and what if anything, would you say differently to a father than you would perhaps to a mother?

Dawn (37:44):

I do hear from the moms more, unsurprisingly. I am very happy though that I'd say about a third of those families, the dad is either the person who initiated contact or is at least very involved. I would love to see more dads, and I don't think that the messaging is any different. What I see happen though is that there is one parent who will have more anxiety, and the other parent will often blame that parent for their kid's anxiety. And it's so much more complicated than that. Like they'll say, “I think that my kid is anxious ‘cause their other parent is anxious.” 

Doug (38:22):

“You’re just like your mother.” Exactly. It's just not.

Dawn (38:24):

Yeah.

Magda (38:24):

Well, what if it's the non-anxious parent making the parent and the kid anxious?

Dawn (38:29):

Well and again it's a family systems issue. You can't point to any one person and go, yeah, you're the problem. It's your fault. It's a family system issue.

Doug (38:38):

Alright, so to sum up, families are doomed. And with that <laugh> 

Dawn (38:44):

<laugh> Just the opposite, Doug, you know we're saying just the opposite.

Doug (38:48):

No, I, that's the point though. I think that's what's amazing about your job is you have to assess so many variables ‘cause there is no one formula. I mean you're trained in certain ways how to react to certain stimuli and so forth. But in terms of who the dad is, who the mom is, if there are two dads or two moms, if there's only one parent ,what the gender dynamics are, what the wealth of the family, is where they are, there's so many different things that can contribute to how a child is figuring out the world. Especially given the way the, the parents are processing it. And you've shed a lot of light so much in terms of, like, how you're not magic, but you are skilled in a way to just kind of tap dance as fast as you can, synthesize as much as you can right away, and come up with something that an individual kid can use.

Dawn (39:33):

I love that ‘cause it makes me sound like I'm really amazing and spinning a lot of plates. So when I'm talking to parents who are anxious about their kids, I start feeling anxious ‘cause I catch it. Oh yeah, <laugh> and I can always tell ‘cause I start to get sweaty like, “Oh, oh my gosh, I need to do something for these people. They're really struggling.” And then I have to remember that I don't have to do anything. Nothing. I don't do. And I used to picture, when I was in training, a sign, I would visualize a sign behind the person that said, don't just sit there, do nothing <laugh>. 

So actually what I need to do often is model that it's fine. I have to bring the calm down in me and ask a lot of questions because the questions give them a chance to kind of talk their way through it, to feel really heard. ‘Cause I'm tuning into what scares them. But also to model that this is okay, we can sit here for a while, we don't have to take any immediate action. So in some ways that makes my job easier because I don't have to be doing so much. They're doing plenty for me. I mean the people are coming to me are already 17 different directions.

Magda (40:48):

Well, nobody wakes up and says, “Ooh, I think my kid's feeling a little weird and I'm feeling a little weird about it. Let me call up a therapist and get an appointment for tomorrow.”

Dawn (40:59):

Yeah, no. Right.

Magda (41:00):

Parents have already done a lot of problem solving around it. It's not like they're coming to you and saying, “I haven't thought about this.” Right? Like they have thought about it and just haven't been able to come to something that is useful.

Dawn (41:17):

And it's what you were saying, that they have the answer. So usually in asking them questions we can get to, “Oh, okay, so you tried this and it didn't work. I bet there is some really good information there that we can build on.”

Doug (41:29):

Many of my favorite couples and intact couples have really bought into the idea of well visits, right? I mean if you're going to take your car in for a checkup or go in for your own physical checkup, why not do a checkup on your marriage? When you have kids, do most parents contact you when kids are in full-blown crisis? Or to what extent would you recommend, assuming the means are there, that you can kind of cultivate some kind of a well-visit plan where you can just kind of check in and, and see how things are evolving and how the child is achieving, you know, the coping skills they need?

Dawn (42:07):

I do have a lot of clients actually who maybe, maybe they came to me for their own depression or anxiety, maybe they came to me at the parenting issue, but who continue to check in with me. Some of them once a month, some of them will come every six months, but they'll just check in and say, “So my kid is doing this thing. Thoughts?” I love that because I don't think, I don't think we get enough people to tell us what a good job we're doing. And so sometimes what I'm doing is just saying, “Yeah, you're doing an amazing job. The way you handle that is beautiful. And here's the research that explains why it's beautiful.” Because again, kids are hard to parent and people can be doing a great job and still be having a terrible time. And then they just need to know, I just need to get out my Ames and Ilg and go, “Yep. Terrible time.” And you're handling it exactly the way you should.

Magda (42:59):

Well, and the other thing about kids that wow, nobody tells you and you don't even think that it could possibly be a problem, is that they keep changing. So like, you know, you master the infant stage and then they move onto something else and you're like, whoa. I always kind of felt like I was doing really well if I was about three weeks behind . You know, like if I was like six weeks behind, I was behind. Yep.

Dawn (43:27):

And with kids, something is always changing. Because we're growing and changing and the family system is changing. Like everything is beautiful and soccer season starts, you start a new job, your kid hits puberty and all of a sudden you're like, everything is terrible again. What the heck happened? And with anxiety, there are times where kids are going to backslide, which is another reason to train parents.

Doug (43:49):

That would've been a great podcast name. Everything is terrible again.

Magda (43:53):

<Laugh> Everything is terrible. It might not, it might end up being the best thing we could have named it.

Magda (43:58):

So another thing that I took out of the Ames and Ilg books was the naming of Equilibrium and Disequilibrium. And I use that framework all the time in all kinds of concepts and you know, when I'm not doing well myself and it feels like, you know, when you just have that run of like, it feels like a bad couple of weeks, I'm like, “Oh, I must be in disequilibrium.” And I, I don't know, it may be just myth, but I very much believe in that, sort of, regressions every three-and-a-half and every seven years. 

Doug (44:35):

You look kinda like a cicada in that way. <Laugh>

Dawn (44:38):

<Laugh>.

Magda (44:39):

Right. I emerge from the ground, start screaming <laugh>. But I mean it has felt to me like when I look back on these years when I was having problems as an adult, they do all seem to cycle around. To me it very much feels like I've lost skills more than anything else. Right. Like I'm just not in balance and I just for whatever reason, can't do things as well as I could before.

Dawn (45:05):

Hmm. You know what I, I love about that ‘cause I tell clients all the time that balance is a verb. So it takes effort and you'll be in balance until you're not. Right. And what I like about this is whether it's every seven years or whether your, your child is following the Ames and Ilg, ‘cause my kids didn't, but they, they have their own patterns. But it is this idea that if you are struggling, it doesn't mean you're a failure who sucks. It means, “Oh, I need to do something different. Perhaps I need new skills. Perhaps I need a different way of functioning. Perhaps I have forgotten to eat breakfast and I need to be doing that.” But building in this idea that struggle is part of being a person, it's okay. It's an opportunity to grow.

Magda (45:53):

Yeah. When I was actively much more depressed than I am, I used to actually keep a written record every time I'd get myself out of a depressed episode because then when I was really depressed, I would go back and I would look at my written record and be like, “I did this, I did this, I did this. This time it only took me three weeks, this time it only took me five days this time.” You know? 

Dawn (46:15):

Amazing. That's amazing.

Magda (46:17):

Just knowing that I could every time. I mean I didn't care so much about what had put me in the depression, although, you know, I mean obviously if there were things I noticed I would try to avoid them. Right.? But no, it just became important to me to see that I had gotten out of it. And if what I had tried before didn't work, I was going come up with something that did like I could, I started seeing myself not as a person who was depressed, but a person who consistently beat depressive episodes. 

Doug (46:49):

And that's the coping skill you want your kids to have. And, and so that eventually, just like a parent, a therapist is like, one day you won't need me.

Dawn (46:57):

Yes. The research on resiliency, for children, it's three things. One is emotional regulation. I can handle my emotions. Kids are working on that. That's, that's a growing edge for every kid. There's self-efficacy or self initiative. I can change things. I can do things. I am capable of changing my environment or responding to things. And then it's relationships. And then the fourth thing is when they develop in their teen years and we develop as adults and it's exactly what you were talking about, which is “I am that person that can do those three things.” That building that identity. 

So one of the things I think when I'm working with parents whose kids have anxiety is, if we focus too much on the anxiety--“oh honey, you're so broken, you're so anxious, so terrible. The whole family needs to scurry around you. Your anxiety is the biggest thing on the family”--we are giving them an identity of “you do not function well.” And instead we need to shift it to, “Hey, you are learning to function. How many times have you been able to overcome your anxiety?” Let's stop looking at the failures and let's build whatever tiny successes we can and then make a big old fuss about it. That's building resiliency.

Doug (48:12):

And how do you find, ‘cause I would imagine at some point you're working with people and you recognize traits of kind of learned helplessness in a way. 

Dawn (48:18):

<Affirmative>

Doug (48:19):

When you see that coming, how might you change tack in terms of recognizing, wait a minute, now I can already tell this child is starting to depend on this process a bit too much. Or it's, we're veering away from the goal.

Dawn (48:33):

That goes exactly to why you’ve got to work with parents, because they're the ones who are going to shift that. And so very often it is the parent who does not believe the child is capable. So you say, I'm going to make something up: “You can go to the bathroom with the door shut” and they go, “No, I can't ‘cause my kid will lose it.” And I go, they're not going to die from it. They're not going to die from you peeing with the door shut. They may kick and scream and wail and it will be terrible, but they will survive it. And then you can come out and go, “Wow, you survived it. You're amazing.” Right. But the parents are like, that's going to traumatize them. They're going to feel abandoned that I shut the door on them, that I turned my back on them, that I peed alone when they needed me. And I go, well see that's your issue. You are afraid. It's your anxiety. You are sending your message to your child that they can't handle it, but objectively they can. Nobody died for mom getting to pee alone.

Magda (49:28):

If you're afraid of your child's anxiety and if you're afraid that your child really, really needs you, like just the separation it takes to be able to go pee!

Dawn (49:39):

Yeah. And again, I am not blaming those parents who are unable to do it, that deserves care and attention. That's where the intervention needs to happen. Often parents are really worried their children will hate them ‘cause their kids say, “I hate you.” Or that their children will hurt themselves. ‘Cause the often anxious kids will say, “I'm terrible, I deserve to die.” And other scary things like that. Like, I'm not saying this is easy, but I'm saying that's where we have to do the work.

Doug (50:07):

So when you talk about recognizing symptoms, what sort of crises or behaviors should parents look for that immediately suggests they deserve some time on the couch to talk some stuff through and assess a dynamic that affects both the child and the parents?

Dawn (50:26):

Well, the biggest thing I tell people is, “If you are unhappy, that's reason enough. If you're unhappy, that's it.” There doesn't have to be any specific thing going on. You don't have to wait until something terrible happens. If you are an unhappy parent, that deserves attention, period. Something has to change, because you're allowed to be happy. Maybe you go into therapy and this happens that sometimes people say, “I'd like to get my kid in for therapy.” And then it turns out actually what needs to happen is your marriage is unhappy, and that deserves attention and care. Parents, God bless them, will very often get help for their kids when they're the ones who need the help because they love their kids. But you know, the best thing you can do for your child is be well-functioning yourself. It doesn't have to be a therapist. There are so many different ways to get help. New moms, moms with young children, they can reach out to Postpartum Support International, try some other things. Maybe you'll find your way to a therapist, but maybe peer support can make a big difference, too. 

Doug (51:26):

But either way, we're all putting our oxygen masks on first.

Magda (51:29):

I think there is going to be somebody who listens to this who says or is thinking to themself, “Well, it's unrealistic to think that I'm going to be happy all the time or that I'm going to be happy as a parent. Parenting is hard work. It's sacrifice, it's kind of miserable.” And I think my answer to that is, you will not be happy all the time as a parent. And there are a lot of really kind of horrifying moments as a parent, but if the unhappiness is not something that is passing through, then you need to get help with it. And if as it's passing through it feels too big for you to handle on your own or just to roll your eyes at, then you need to get help with it.

Dawn (52:19):

I also always say that parenting is the most triggering work you can do. If you, for example, had a rough, maybe when you were six things were rough, I would expect you to have a rough time when your kid hits that age.

Magda (52:32):

Seventh grade. Seventh grade was absolutely miserable for me, and I was unable for whatever reason to tell my parents about it. I don't even remember why I didn't feel like I couldn't tell my parents about it. I was so miserable as a seventh grader, and our older child had this kind of, I don't know, like relative to other years of school, his seventh grade was kind of enchanted. He had found all of his nerd friends, and then my younger one hit seventh grade and it was really miserable for him. And I could feel myself, I mean it was almost like, well, it was almost like perimenopause! What it felt like was, you know, in the Elmer Fudd cartoons when Elmer would get really angry at something and he would steam up? And it was a feeling like having a hot flash, of where the red would just go up and then it would just steam out the top of his head. But it was emotional for me, and it felt prickly, and it felt hot, and it was trauma.

Doug (53:27):

There seems to be something, any kind of latent issue you have with your folks that you've been able to kind of paper over, all of that breaks loose when a child comes into your family dynamic. I think it's just as soon as you start acting the parent role, you start remembering what your own parents were like. And I think a lot of stuff that never got addressed and was maybe scabbed over for a while  comes right out again and--

Dawn (53:50):

Absolutely. And what an opportunity for growth if we're open to growth.

Magda (53:54):

I know there are a lot of people who are really conflicted about the whole relationship, too. And I think that's got to be a difficult place to start from.

Dawn (54:01):

Yeah. And I do sometimes meet parents and they feel guilty ‘cause they love their kid and they hate the job. That's, it's okay. 

Magda (54:08):

I think that's totally fine. You know, <laugh>

Doug (54:11):

Remember that when we first started blogging, remember when Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman were talking about their parenting? And Ayelet Waldman had a very strong motherly presence online and she wrote a very famous piece that said, “I love my husband more than I love my kids.” 

Dawn (54:25):

Ooh, yeah. I remember that when that blew up the internet.

Doug (54:28):

Especially as the mom, moms aren't allowed to feel that way about something they've made in their bodies.

Magda (54:35):

Okay. So, I mean, I don't know how you have felt since we've been divorced, but since we've been divorced, I've always kind of felt like I had the easiest path with regard to dating and what any kind of future relationship would be like because I already had my kids. They were just a given. Right. And I was allowed to love my kids more than anything. But if somebody else came into my life as a love object, they weren't, they wouldn't be contemporaneous. Does that make sense? They wouldn't have been contemporaneous in a sense--

Doug (55:09):

What a weird turn! Well, Mike, if you’re listening, you're apparently an object. <Laugh> <laugh>,

Dawn (55:14):

But a love object. 

Doug (55:17):

Okay. We got, I guess those can cancel each other out, I suppose.

Magda (55:20):

Lover.

Doug (55:21):

Like a talisman, you know, like a lover. 

Magda (55:24):

Gentleman caller.

Doug (55:26):

As far as I'm concerned, I think dating is a single dad, that actually was a great asset for me because I think there is something to be said for a man who has committed once and who is committed to his children. And that's an asset that not a lot of men have that a lot enough single men anyway. So

Magda (55:44):

<Laugh> Not a lot of men with kids have that either. (I shouldn't say that.)

Doug (55:49):

Okay, well <laugh> and the badminton continues

Dawn (55:52):

<Laugh>.

Magda (55:54):

I know. So if there are people listening to this who have been feeling their anxiety in the house, whether it's their kids or them, how would you tell them to start thinking about it? Right? Like, should they immediately go out and get a therapist? Should they--

Doug (56:11):

Should they think of their kids as love objects.

Dawn (56:14):

<Laugh>

Magda (56:15):

How to wrangle it, like how to start managing it before it gets to be too big?

Dawn (56:22):

Okay, so on my site, ChildAnxietySupport.com is a quiz. And the quiz is, “Aare you stuck in the parenting pitfalls?” And it is based on the research around family accommodations for anxiety. And basically if you take that quiz, it's going to tell you, “Is anxiety setting up shop in your home?” It's going to say that you're accommodating because it's, that's just how the quiz is. If it's light, I wouldn't worry about it. If it's more than light, I think there's three levels. So it's light, medium, and heavy. If it's medium or heavy, it's an issue. If it's light, I would just notice that. But basically if you are parenting around anxiety, if it is impacting your parenting, if you are trying to manage the anxiety through your behavior as a parent, that's a problem. Period.

Magda (57:12):

Okay. So tell our listeners where they can find you online.

Dawn (57:16):

So if you go to my site, ChildAnxietySupport.com, you can learn about my program, you can follow me on Instagram at @DawnFriedmanMSEd, and on Facebook at Child Anxiety Support.

Doug (57:28):

Great to meet you, Dawn. Thank you so much for chatting with us. I hope this is a resource for parents who are recognizing anxiety, depression, anger, all sorts of things in their children. And as you say, it's gotten to the point where they're unhappy about it and they know treatment's necessary, but they're not quite sure where to find it. So I really appreciate your help in providing some couples that really important first step,

Dawn (57:49):

Which again, does not mean you're screwing up. Your parenting is your superpower. Your good parenting is your superpower for change.

Doug (57:56):

So thanks again for listening to Episode Two of the When the Flames Go Up Podcast with Magda Pecsenye and Doug French, available at WhenTheFlamesGoUp.substack.com and soon to be available wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll see you next week. Thanks so much. 

Dawn (58:16):

This is so fun. You guys. You're ridiculous. Both of you.

Magda (58:21):

Thank you very much. We are a little bit ridiculous.

Doug (58:23):

That’s the best compliment any guest could give us. That's going to warm me up the rest of the day.