A Whole Child Approach With Bank Street Professor Deb Vilas

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Teach your Kids podcast. I am so excited to have here today a brilliant woman, my friend, one of my most important mentors, Deb Vylas. She is a professor of education at Bank Street College of Education. She also has an Ms. CCLS and an lmsw. Those are a lot of letters. And is a child life specialist and has been working for years training teachers and preparing child life specialists for a very unique field that we're going to talk about today, which is supporting children in hospitals and their families. Thank you so much for being here today, Deb.

It's my pleasure. It's good to see you, Manisha.

It's so good to see you. I thought that maybe to kick things off, not everybody has actually heard of child life as a field. And I really wanted to talk about it today because child life is a field that I think originated to support children in hospitals. But there's a lot of implications beyond child life. And we've always hired child life specialists to teach at Modulo really, because they have this incredible whole child approach to learning and interacting with families. So could you maybe tell us a little bit about the field of child life and perhaps how you got into it?

Sure. Well, child life has its roots in what you may remember in history as play ladies in hospitals, that's what they used to call them. But at a certain point, the profession grew from a volunteer position or a position that nurses would do for kids in hospitals, to its own unique role where folks are trained in child development, in family systems, in actually anatomy. They learn about medical terminology, and their role is to work in hospital settings, settings mostly. I'll speak about that in a bit. But they help children and parents through any hospitalization. And it could be something as simple as a trip to the emergency room for sutures when a kid falls down and bangs their chin or something, to more long term hospitalizations, chronic illness and end of life care. And child life specialists work in all different departments of hospitals. They work in emergency rooms, they run playrooms, they work in inpatient clinics, outpatient clinics, screening departments such as radiology. And they use play as their language to interact with children, to prepare children for what they're encountering, help children understand both what's happening with their bodies, their disease process, and any tests or procedures that they need to have. And child life specialists teach kids and parents how to cope because these are not easy things for kids or parents to go through. And they're kind of like coaches. They're right there in the procedure rooms, just Focusing on the child's emotional well being. And they're the ones when you talk about the whole child approach. When a child comes to the hospital, the child life specialist knows that that child is eventually going to leave and they want to send that child off with great coping skills and ways to be in the world after having been hospitalized. So that is in a nutshell, what we do. But we have been growing outside of hospital walls to many other things like foster care agencies. So any, if you think about any place in a child's life where there's change or loss, Child Life specialists can be incredible supports for both the children and their families. And there a growing number of them in private practice around the country.

I was so impressed when we were going through the pandemic. Obviously these skills really came in handy. And you were so kind to refer some of your students, your master's students to us who are working with children online. And of course, there was so much trauma and difficulty associated with just the conditions you were all going through. And many, most children, I would say, are still working through some of that. And one of the things I did notice that they were particularly great at was helping children tap into their own intrinsic motivation. So we took an approach rather than trying to tell students they had to do a certain thing or not, but try to help figure out where's the fire in you and what might be blocking that fire to learn. I think a specific example was a teen who just seemed kind of. He only wanted to sit at home and play video games and his energy was just kind of low and. And he wasn't diagnosed with an illness or depression in particular. But through working with a child Life specialist, he was really able to get passionate about writing and some other academic subjects that hadn't interested him before. Yes.

And I would say that if people come to Child Life from many different places, there is both an undergraduate pathway, but there's a master's degree pathway that is much more in depth. And that's where I teach at the Bank Street College of Education and their Child Life master's program. And one of the things, one of the subject matters that's taught there is child centered play. And it is all about children being able to be empowered to explore freely their play environment, to solve problems on their own. I think people. I don't like this term helicopter parenting because it feels judgy. Right, right. But we teach our Child Life students that when a child is learning in the company of a supportive adult who's there as a support, but not Solving the problem for the child. The child keeps growing in their, in their ability to think critically and solve problems. And so that intrinsic motivation piece is encouraged. Actually, when parents take a step back from doing for children what they can do for themselves, but stay close by as a supportive person so that the child can, if they have frustration, they can have some empathy there when they don't get something at the first try. So that, and also choice is something that speaks to internal.

Can we step back? Can we go back to this? Because there's so much richness. Just, I mean, you know me well and you know that this helicopter parenting, I mean, we really need a new word for it, but it has a, It's a special trigger point for me. And I so often see with my students that, for example, I'll ask them a question and we're often working online so the parent will step in and before the student has even had 10 seconds to respond and say, oh honey, you know this, or repeat the question that I just add them, ask them ad infinitum or, you know, and I'm always trying to encourage parents, just wait a day maybe, you know, it gets.

Hard and this is the thing of trying. If we're, if we're going to be whole child, we have to be whole parent too.

Exactly.

And we have to understand how stressed parents feel about their child's success in life. And when you're stressed and anxious, you try to be the one in the driver's seat because you feel that maybe you can control and fix and make things better and help your child along. And it's hard to realize that in order for a child to be successful in life, they have to have some practice with trying and failing and figuring things out. And, and if the parent is always so wonderful and responsive and caring, they can actually slow down the child's ability to develop those problem solving skills. But it's not that they mean to. All any parent wants is for their child to be happy and to succeed. So that's a point where we can all come together when we're all working to support families.

I couldn't agree with you more. I think that when a parent is feeling that kind of, I almost call it a forward energy towards their children and stressed about them not answering a question right away or not developing a skill that they would expect them to have learned by that point or. One thing I see a lot is that parents get frustrated when they know that a child knows a certain concept but isn't willing to demonstrate their knowledge or can't retrieve it at that specific moment.

Yes. And retrieval. And it happens with my graduate students too. When any of us are under stress and people are watching us, it's not that we're holding back and not giving it, it's that we can't access it. The brain gets a little triggered sometimes and you know, the freeze, fight or flight, well, they freeze and they can't access what they know. Anybody who's had test anxiety can realize that you can have studied all night, know everything, and then you get to that test and your mind is a blank for sure.

And also, learning is not necessarily linear, I think we expect. For example, I mean, I studied French and then I went to France and I noticed that there would be these periods where my French would get better and better and better and then it would get worse for a month and then it would slowly get better and then quickly get better and get worse. And I think not a lot of people realize that sometimes learning progression happens that way. And back to the point about self directed learning, I really appreciate your comment about parents wanting the best for their children. Some of our most popular blogs have been about ways to nurture self directed learning in children. So I think it's something parents want, but it's hard and I wonder. I think about a specific parent who I'm working with now and her child has learned how to read. And when she's with her tutor, she reads aloud. No problem. She's very happy to read. But when her mother is reading her a bedtime story at night and asks her, hey, would you want to read this word? The daughter. Thank you. I am not in it. And I feel like this parent is just such a lovely human being and she has such good intentions and she doesn't want to put that pressure on her child. But for some reason there's something kind of below the surface that's rubbing her child the wrong way. And I wonder what, what kind of. I mean, it's easy to say, yes, I'm too stressed and my child is picking up on that. But it's a little bit harder to just switch off that button. Do you have any thoughts for.

Well, I'm thinking about again, back to the child centered approach is that children have very little agency in their lives. They are, they're told when they're going to go to school, when they're going to eat, when they're going to go to sleep, who they can play with, where and when they can play. And sometimes the child just wants to be and to relax and to not have to perform or be agreeable or follow rules, but just relax. And I think that bedtime is such a wonderful time to connect with parents and to feel that love coming to you. And if a child at bedtime feels the pressure to perform, that tension causes distress. And it is so nice to have a time when you can just be a child and have your parents read to you. And, you know, the thing is, is that children who are read to are children whose vocabulary increases profoundly. And I remember happily having my father read to me when I was 14 years old. My parents read to me throughout my childhood, and the only thing that stopped it was that he was reading to me the Lord of the Rings. And I got to a point where I couldn't wait for the next chapter the next night, and I started reading.

It on my own.

But it was a wonderful time for me and my dad to be read to. And so I think that maybe the thing that would help a parent most is to know that your child is learning all day long. Whether it looks like they're doing formal learning, like reading aloud, learning vocabulary, doing math problems. The truth is, is they are learning from every social interaction. They're learning from every decision they have to make during the day or how they deal with authority when the decisions are made for them. They're learning socially how to interact with friends. And it's been very hard since the pandemic because online socializing is very different than socializing in real time. I think that if parents can understand that learning takes place in every single venue, they may feel less pressure to make sure they get the most out of every second at that time of night for their child to have to read.

I think that is such a great point. First of all, even though it's difficult just being able to trust that there's this process of learning that's unfolding in a child that's biological. That's part of how we grow as humans. You don't have to push that to happen. It happens organically. And the ABCs and the 1, 2, 3s are just a tiny, tiny part of all of that learning. And I think it can be. I mean, parents have so much pressure on themselves that it. I think a parent will say, like, okay, that's all well and good, but I don't want my child to start kindergarten and not know how to read and to kind of devalue some of the other critical thinking skills that they're developing through having more time to explore on their own and finding some sort of balance. Because I think there's definitely a field where says, just let them learn whatever they want to learn, free for all. And that has problems, which isn't a sole episode.

There's a pendulum there, isn't there? And not every child needs the same thing. Some kids thrive under structure and some kids thrive under the freer places. But I'm thinking that in America specifically, there's an extraordinary pressure and academics being pushed down to lower and lower ages, expecting children to do more at a certain age than they're actually capable of doing. There are a couple of points. One is a child's biological physical development. Their hands are not developed enough to really hold and coordinate a pencil and hold it in a pincer grasp fully until they're seven years old. They can practice. But to be forced to do something can actually be really, really difficult. The other thing is, I don't know how many people have heard of how they do things in Finland. I think we could look there because it's very interesting. Their children in kindergarten, preschool, first grade, up until they're 7 years old, learning is very informal. And they spend a great amount of time outdoors learning in nature. And they only begin to teach reading and math and all those things formally when the child is seven. And what the studies have shown is that they're a little lagging at first behind Americans, and then they zoom past us and hold on for longevity, that kids learn longer, do better, and love school. In order to learn, you have to love school. And if kids are forced away from their natural disposition, which is actually to learn through play at an early age, by the time they're in third or fourth grade, they're so done.

So done. Especially if there's that extra pressure, it can really give a distaste for learning. I think, in terms of coming to a kind of balance, the point you made about being read to and how much you loved being read to, and how you were able to develop as a person who has very strong linguistic skills and learned how to read very well and is now a teacher. I think that if parents are excited to help their children learn, one of the things that they can do is model that learning to their child. And I think that in the US we have all kinds of challenges that Finland doesn't have. It's a more complicated language and it's. The quality of life is much higher in Finland, Whereas in the US there's a huge gap between those who have and those who have not. So it's parents, but it's also communities coming together to mentor children. But there's a way that you can model before the age of seven without formally sitting down and doing formal reading or formal writing and trust that your child is going to develop those skills because you've exposed them to language from an early age. Wow. Such a good. I feel like everything you said could have been the topic for a whole other podcast showing socialization. I mean, there's just so much to talk about. And we were. I remember before we came to this, we were talking about the skills that child life specialists have in terms of whole child development. And I think we talked about self destructive learning. We have already kind of gone into choice a little bit. Was there anything else that you wanted to highlight?

I guess when I say choice, I'm thinking really specifically about real choice. Being able to give children choices that options that really make sense. And so if a child is about to get a vaccination and they don't want it and they're crying and they're upset, you really can't say, well, it's okay if you don't want it, we won't do it. We'll walk out of the doctor's office. Because what that teaches is that if the child gets upset, they can avoid something and it actually makes the anxiety grow. But you can say, this vaccination is going to happen today and I'm here to help you and to make it as easy as possible. Do you want to sit up on your mom's lap or do you want to lie down? Do you want to look at an I Spy book? Or I've got an iPad and we can do balloon animals together? So those are choices that a child, a very young child, can make if they haven't reached the point where they're so triggered that they're in full, full blown meltdown. So I think that we can help parents can help children learn how to make choices by giving very simple, concrete choices to kids. It's not a choice that you eat your dinner, but maybe you can choose which vegetable you're going to eat or I don't actually.

I realize, yes, I think you've actually taught this concept to me. So I think that there's something about. It's almost. Maybe I'm saying this wrong, but what I found effective is two simple choices. There's a mom who we worked with, her child had pretty severe ADHD and she would say, what would you like for lunch? And it was such a stressful time for them. It was too many choices. But you can say, all right, you're Going to have dinner and we can have broccoli tonight or we can have asparagus, which would you like? And then give the child that space to think because then immediately the temptation is to jump in and say make a choice. But it's really surprising when you, when you say that choice, let it sit with them. And you might be surprised they actually have an opinion about what they want. And there's a kind of safety in knowing these are the, these are the parameters. It's this or that. It's not anything, it's not nothing. This is, this is the area you have to play. If you haven't tried that as a parent, that is a great, a great shift you can make from what do you want to eat to you need to eat. It can be this or that is, it's a great one. You know, you're talking about child life and that kind of integrates into your course. I do want to talk about play because there's become a lot more interest in play based learning. We see parents who are joining forest schools which are wonderful environments for early learners. Yay. And there were I think some pretty famous studies at Harvard where they compared classes of children who had early academics versus play based learning. And I think the ones who did play based learning did as well or better than the ones who had started with academic learning. And, and yet I know that some people still have that fear of well, it's just play, you know. And now we still have 30 minutes of recess at school, which is just insane. So perhaps one way I was thinking we could frame it is what are the consequences of not giving children that time to play? What skills will they not develop if they're not given that time to play?

Critical thinking. Anybody can memorize rotely and tell you back your multiplication tables, but can you think through a problem and solve it by yourself? One of the ways we can think about this is that open ended play versus close ended play. So we develop critical thinking by interacting with our environment and having many, many, many feedback loops of which we have to discern and figure out and make decisions. When you give a two year old or three year old an iPad and they're swiping, they get instant response, close ended and one feedback loop. They don't expand to where they can problem solve in three dimensions. So what you get is rigid mechanical thinking rather than creative thought. And the other thing is that playing alone is great because you can. You're doing physics, you're experimenting with things, you're figuring out where your body and Space is when you're climbing a tree, you are thinking about hand, eye coordination, when you're coloring. And there are all these things that are intrinsic to playing alone. But then when you add socializing to it, when kids are playing with other children at school, in the neighborhood, siblings, so important friends, what they are learning is how to get along in life. They are learning how to grow perspective for somebody else's thoughts and feelings. Right? They can't just be egocentric all their life. And kids are naturally egocentric, but they, they grow out of it as they begin to develop what we call theory of mind, which is the way the ability to understand that somebody might see something differently than us and somebody might actually feel different or similar to how we feel. And if we can't make room for other people, we have a bifurcated society. And that's what we've got right now. So we are trying to plant seeds very early on for children to be with one another and adults. And sometimes my education students ask me, well, won't a child get confused if we treat them differently in the classroom and give them a lot of freedom if they come from a strict family? And I'm saying no. Kids get exposed to all different kinds of families, all different kinds of parenting and teaching, and they learn to code switch. And that's another thing that they. We all learn that we act differently in school than we might in a religious institution or in our own living.

Room, in our own family. In our families, there's plenty of kids who parents are just having so much trouble with, and then the teacher says, oh, that they're an angel at school or vice versa. I think this is such a great, great segue into socialization. As you know, I work a lot with homeschooling families and especially a particular subset of homeschooling families that I call modular learners who are. Tend to be in very inclusive, diverse groups who have a mixture of play dates and group meetups and outdoor and in person classes. And I found this type of socializing to be very healthy and compared to when I see 30 kids the same age sitting at a desk all day. And one thing I did kind of want to dig into is this emergence, I guess, of what we would call a peer culture and where it feels like the idea is if I just send my kid into this big group, they're going to learn how to socialize. But there isn't a lot of adult supervision in terms of what's going on with the socializing. One of the things we're seeing in schools is a lot of bullying and cliques. I was reading about how there's this network ecology where if a school is very big and not so focused on academics, it tends to be more clicks and more bullying. But a smaller environment that's more focused on education and learning, such as a homeschooling group, there tends to be less of that. So I was just wondering, kind of where. What does healthy socializing look like? Where does the family come into the equation? I mean, you gave some wonderful workshops on socialization during the pandemic. And one thing you talked about is how just having a relationship with one other family was so great for socializing. It didn't have to be a big group. And that actually what I learned from you, and you can correct me if I am wrong, is that the ability to have good social skills starts with a healthy relationship with your own parent or primary caregiver. And then I guess the last thing is that one thing that really concerns me. I've been seeing this more and more, especially in kind of like the men's rights movement, you know, that's the whole thing, but just this idea that if I let my kid get bullied and fend for themselves, they'll learn to be strong. And I wanted to hear your thoughts on kind of all those dimensions of the socialization question.

Well, I want to say that they really are just my thoughts. I don't feel incredibly informed as far as quoting studies or what have you, but I believe that if we go back to that first relationship between parent and child and attachment. What children learn when parents are responsive to their cries for hunger, for changes, for change, being tired, for needing cuddling, is that when children have parents that respond to their cries, they form a foundation of feeling confident and safe and attached. But there is a whole other school of thought you might have heard about ferberizing your baby where you do not respond, you don't pick them up, you don't respond to their cries, because the belief is that if you take care of them, they won't learn to be independent. And I'm sorry, that's just not what I've seen borne out in this world. That children who are confident and able to succeed in life are often those who are who have had secure attachments with their parents. And remember I talked about the parent who kind of dives in and fixes everything. You can actually be over responsive if you meet your child's need before they cry. Because some parents want to do that. They're like, I don't even Want my baby to cry. I'm right there with the food. I'm right there with the change. Before the child even realizes that they have a need.

I can't tolerate that pain. It's wrong, right?

The child has to learn that people are responsive and care for you and that you will survive if it doesn't happen in five minutes. It's called frustration tolerance and resilience. And studies in resilience show that kids actually need a little bit of stress. Adults need it, we all need it as we grow in order to survive it and learn from it and become resilient. And I think that when you mention that parent who says, you know, if my kid survives that bullying, they'll be fine. The problem is, is that there, there's a range, right, of what is overwhelming to us and traumatic as opposed to getting through it and being fine. And you have to have all those building blocks of secure attachment in order to withstand something like bullying.

I feel like there's some people out there who almost kind of want their boys to get in a fist fight on the playground. That that's kind of a symbol of being a man. And where does this come from?

A gendered society where there are stereotypes. And a lot of people also say, well, it was good enough for me. So I'm a huge believer in empathy. And I will say that if we're going back to the topic of teachers and classrooms is that if you have a democratic classroom where kids feel that they have some choice in the matter of developing the class norms, like first day of school, everybody sits in meeting and says, what kind of environment do we want here? Is it okay for people to call names? Is it okay to hit, you know what, what do we want? And kids usually will be able to name it. And then when the teacher models deep empathy, their kids learn how to empathize. Bullies are usually kids who have had very little empathy in their lives. They're usually kids who are suffering themselves. So they're just working out. They're trying to master their self esteem through making another child feel horrible. And I think that you want to scaffold your child through these things. And if your child doesn't feel safe coming to you to tell you that they're being bullied because they're going to feel ashamed. That's one thing. And you also can't solve your child's problems. That's with the bullying thing. You can't go beat up the bully for your kid. You need to sit with your child and say, that must have been really hard. That must have been so painful. And what do you want to do? What feels right to you? And I do think one way that parents can protect their kids is not to overexpose, expose them to social media before they're ready. One of the healthiest young adults I know is somebody who wasn't allowed to have a cell phone until she was 16 or go on Facebook or anything. This was years before Instagram and TikTok and everything. But all the studies are coming out now showing that that is a huge source of both anxiety, low self esteem and bullying.

It's very problematic and I think a lot of parents are trying to learn how to navigate that and hopefully we'll be able to talk about it more on the show. I mean, it's new. And so I think when new things happen and we're just starting to see these massive consequences both in our kids and ourselves, and hopefully will be able to step back and mitigate some of that because it's causing a lot of mental health problems.

It's causing suicide. It is, it's serious. It's not just schoolyard bullying. Somebody getting a little bloody lip or something.

Yeah, yeah. Really, really awful stuff. I wanted to circle back and see if you could. You mentioned the word scaffold and I'm not sure everybody's familiar with that term, which is used quite a bit in education.

So I think of it as well. When you think about scaffolding around a building that's undergoing construction allows for people to do the work on the building. And by scaffolding, maybe I need support. Whether it's just through being a friendly face, they're smiling as at a child as they're trying something new. I think of it as somebody who lets the child know I'm here supporting you. But I have faith that you can figure this out too. And I also think that we scaffold by modeling hugely. So you want your kid to read. How much do you read as a family? Whether it's out loud or just. I mean, I remember when we used to go away in August for two weeks, we packed the car full of books and what are you modeling for social connection, for responsiveness? What does the child overhear when you're having a conversation with your friends on the phone? Or how does the child watch you and your partner deal with conflict? Because there's going to be conflict in every partnership. And how do you deal with it? How are you modeling problem solving for your child? So that's what I think of when I think of scaffolding.

It's such a great word, and I hear it used a lot in terms of a skill that teachers have that good, really skilled teachers have that parents might not have developed yet. I think that sometimes we forget when we want a child to learn something like how to read or how to get along well with others, that they're so. So many other things that play into that. And I'm not even sure if this is an example of scaffolding, but we were talking about children learning to write before their hand muscles have developed. And for some children, writing is actually physically painful. And you can't teach them how to make letters until you've dealt with that first.

And so scaffolding is a couple of things. It's allowing a child to take a finger and draw an A in the sky or in a tray of sand, Right? Like, there are ways that you can use your body to do things and. And be playful about it or make a letter out of some play. D'oh. So. And I also. I don't. I'm very curious about the studies because I haven't read anything about this yet. But. But what if a child really does have dysgraphia and it hurts and it's hard for them to write? Why can't they have a keyboard? If you're trying to get a child to express themselves and show learning how they show it should be, there should be some choice involved. And I actually tried something very new in my play course this summer. And usually I have students read something and watch a video and then answer guiding questions in a post on the computer and then answer each other. And I just wasn't really happy with the results. And so I changed the assignment so that students would read and watch the video and then pair up on a zoom call that they recorded with what we call play partners. So we just paired people up in the classroom with students and discuss the guiding questions with a partner. And oh, my goodness, the results, the conversations were so much deeper than you would ever get in three paragraphs in writing. And what I realized was the writing wasn't important. Now, these are adults, and I know kids have to learn how to write and everything, but I think that those are some of the choices that parents and teachers can think about. Is that, is there another way that my child can express what they know besides one way?

100%. And I know there's a wonderful example of a program, Keyboarding Without Tears, that children with sensory processing disorder have used. And also some autistic children who have difficulty with Handwriting and it's really wonderful. And I've also seen kids using voice to text and I think all of those are great tools to experiment with. And you know, if a child isn't ready to learn handwriting yet, where they can get their ideas out there and learn about the power of communication. I want to make sure that we get a chance to talk about you as a parent coach because the work you do is so extraordinary. And I feel like when a lot of parents have issues with their child, they respond by going, you know, and getting a diagnosis, which you should do if you're concerned about your child or figuring out how to fix their child or support their child, whatever verb comes to their mind. But it can be so extraordinarily, miraculously revolutionary to your child's well being if you get support yourself. And I just, I've seen just amazing, amazing. I don't like to use the word results when talking about parenting because I feel like there's so much like lingo that's treating a child like a product or something. But, but I will say, I mean, for parents who have children with ADHD or behavioral issues or anxiety, parent coaching can be much more effective than child coaching. Could you just tell me a little bit about the work you're doing with parents and what issues you come up and the process in general?

Well, I can speak to it with regards to some of the work I've done as a child life specialist, very specifically around a parent calling me and saying my 4 year old is so Dr. Phobic that she jumped off of the examination table, ran out of the doctor's office into traffic, what do I do? And what I needed to do was walk through with that parent how she could prepare her child through play, through taking pictures and making a book, through telling her exactly what would happen at the doctor's office and giving her choices there and giving her child an avenue to express her fear and pain. A lot of us, when we see a child upset, all we want is to contain it. And containing is important because no, you do not want your child to run into traffic. It's horribly dangerous. However, when a child is struggling with something, they often need a place to play it out and play it through where their feelings are accepted rather than most adults, not just parents, we would want to reason with that four year old and say, but this is going to make you feel better. It's going to keep you from getting sick. When a child is frightened, rationalizing and explanations don't help. They actually escalate anxiety. So These are the kinds of things that I love helping parents with. I love being able to tell them what to expect if their child has elective surgery. I love using all the wonderful things I've learned. I'm a student of bank street myself. I have a degree in early childhood special education and I learned so much in school about what is typical for kids of certain ages and stages. So that sometimes a parent is struggling because they're trying to have a child do something they're not ready to do yet, or they're treating them a little bit younger than they are. You know, babying them a little bit and just helping them know what is typical can help normalize the parent's situation and help make them make choices where they see calmer results for them and their child. But I often think, you know what? Parents need empathy. I don't think there's a harder job than parenting. I mean teaching is right up there. But I think parenting, when most parents didn't grow up with TikTok, Instagram, all these things. Our society has changed a lot since we were kids and we're trying to figure it out. And I think often parents just need a trusted person to witness them and say, I hear you, I see you, this is hard. And then give some concrete advice.

Parents have so much pressure put on them all the time and they're expected to be these people who just love and appreciate and listen to their children all the time. And the reality is sometimes you're mad at your child, sometimes you resent your child and you just feel so, so guilty that you could never possibly even utter that like what a horrible person am I, that I, you know, hate my child in this moment when they're struggling and just to be able to have someone that you can talk to who can say I hear you and this is normal. And here are some approaches you can take to find time for yourself. Even when you think that there's no time to be found or help reduce your own anxiety so you can be a little more patient in the face of a child who's perhaps even acting violently or just not letting you sleep, whatever, how do you cope? And if you're able to find that calm in yourself as a parent, it's really amazing what kind of changes you might make start to observe in your child.

I agree it takes a lot of self care. And I also, one of the things that I teach that I also enjoy is it's a very specific technique in child centered work, which is three point limit setting. And it's that when you set limits and we have to do it with kids all the time, all the time, whether you're a teacher or a parent, it's leading with empathy, stating very clearly without personalizing or moralizing what the limit is and then offering some choice. And it sounds really easy, but it's really hard to learn because most of us are so like, no, stop, don't. Because we're reactive. And when we learn this skill and we're less reactive and we sit with back and we're breathing a little calmer, it gives the kid less to push up against and the child can start making some good decisions for themselves with your support rather than you being the person just to say, no, stop, don't. What were you thinking? Why are you doing this? So I love teaching this because I get to see my students come back and say, oh my goodness, I tried this at home with my kid or I tried it in my classroom and I can't believe how quickly the situation de escalated.

And every skill takes practice and a lot of practice. If parents are interested in learning more about three point limit setting. Deb and I did a workshop together a couple of years ago. I'll be sure to post it in the notes for the show and also some other resources to get started. So we're almost out of time. I feel like I barely scratched the surface. So I was hoping I really did want to get to something which is close to my heart and your heart. Maybe we could just touch upon it and at least the work you're doing in the field is helping families through grief. And perhaps you could talk a little bit about the projects you're involved with and, and what kind of support offering to parents.

So I teach a course on loss in children's lives as part of the Child Life Master's program. And I don't think of myself as a grief expert. But again, just the way knowing something about child development can be very helpful. Being able to normalize different grief processes. And again, not linear. Oh boy. If learning isn't linear, grief sure as heck isn't. But I offer support to parents who are facing loss or have had loss in their families. I am doing less private practice now and more teaching, but I love opportunities to do this because working with families in this situation is such an honor. But I, but I also when it comes to doing child life hands on grief work with families where you're meeting with the children and the families in their homes, I have not been doing that for some time and I actually tend to refer out to somebody else who is, who is going from home to home doing this might be my age, but what I do enjoy and am very happy to do is one to one consultation with parents around what they're experiencing with grief. And a lot of times it's because there's been a death in the family, a grandparent, a parent, a relative, a close relative, a child. And they don't know where to begin in how to support their surviving child. And that is something that I can be very helpful with.

What are some resources, of course, talking to you and getting a referral from you, you that you would recommend to a parent who has experienced a loss like this. Where can they start to get help?

I think they should look for a bereavement center close to home, like in New York, on Long island we have the Dougie center because these are places where families and children come together and they're run by folks with great training as well as volunteers. I think that any parent facing loss and grief should be thinking about their spiritual beliefs. Are they part of a congregation, a synagogue, a mosque, a church? Because a lot of people seek comfort there. And they're also incredible books, really good books to help you talk to your child about these things. And one of my favorites, it's actually the title is a little silly, but it's called Death is Stupid by Anastasia Higginbotham. And it's a book, I would say, for kids 8 years old, maybe 7 and above. And it's a beautiful collage book about a child who loses his grandmother. And it's about all the things that adults tend to say when they use euphemisms for death and how confusing that can be to children. The book guides adults and how to be a little bit more concrete and direct in talking about these things so that it gives a child an environment to explore things that they don't understand. The one thing that's really important is that if your child is under seven, they're still figuring out what death is. They don't know. And therefore they ask questions over and over and over again even though you've answered them. And it takes time and development for them to understand the permanence of death. So just knowing that can help you if you've got a preschooler coping with death. And very young children, even though they don't understand the permanence of it, they feel pain from the separation, they feel sadness. They grieve. It's not that. It just goes over their head. So parents can do a lot to support Even very young children who are going through this.

Yeah. I'm just so glad that there's a resource. There are so many resources out there for families. I feel like often in grief, you can feel so alone and just. Just it's important that we talk about it and know that it's going on. And as you said, having a community to support you through grief is so important. Even if you're an atheist, there are places such as bereavement centers, meditation centers, where you can get support from people who have been through it or, you know, they're looking to help others at this time. And it really does take a whole community.

It does.

It's not something you can just do on your own. And the same for divorce. Divorce can be just as painful as. As anything. So, Deb, I just am so grateful to you for coming and having yet another such rich and wonderful conversation with me. I just feel so good about the work that you're doing and being able to collaborate, and some of it has been amazing for me, and I just love you so much.

Thank you so much for an opportunity to speak with you. Yeah.

So I guess as we finish, I think we're going to have to have another episode because there was so much I wanted to talk about. But could you just tell people where to find you if they want to get in touch for parent coaching or grief counseling or join any of the other projects or follow you on social media?

Debviles.com D B V I L A S Email debvialconsultmail. I guess LinkedIn. Those are all always to find me, and I have some resources on that website there, too.

Wonderful. Well, you are a treasure and thank you so much. And we'll be sure to include all these resources in the notes. And people can also reach out to me directly. They want to connect with Deb and have any questions. If you have any questions about any of the topics we've discussed today, post them in the comments and we will be sure to respond to every single person. So thank you so much again, Deb, and have a lovely day.

You too. Bye, everybody.