Episode 441: Self Regulation for Children
In this Whiny Palooza podcast episode, host Rebecca Greene interviews Dr. Khalila Robinson, a clinical psychologist and co‑author of the Self‑Regulation Workbook, and Sarah Gerstenzang, LCSW, about their new resource for children ages 5‑8. The conversation begins with the authors explaining why they created the workbook: a gap in practical, parent‑friendly tools for teaching self‑regulation. They define co‑regulation as the early, bi‑directional soothing process between parent and child, emphasizing that effective child regulation depends on the parent’s own emotional regulation. The hosts discuss foundational concepts (attunement, parental history, limits, repair) and then move to concrete strategies: grounding techniques (e.g., feeling your feet), playfulness, brief daily play, peer modeling, and handling technology use. They address common misconceptions about the 5‑8 age group, the importance of acknowledging big emotions, and methods for repairing moments of conflict. Throughout, they stress that parents will make mistakes, that self‑compassion and reflective practice are essential, and that the workbook offers separate sections for parents, children, and joint activities. The episode concludes with practical details on where to purchase the workbook and how to contact the authors.
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Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Green for the Whiny Palooza podcast, and I am really excited today because I have two wonderful ladies with us today. Number one is Dr. Khalila Robinson, and Dr. Khalila, thank you so much for being here with us.
My pleasure, thanks for having us.
And number two is Sarah Gerstenzang. How did I do, Sarah?
That's perfect. Thank you.
Sarah, thank you so much for being here with us today.
It's my pleasure. Thank you for inviting us.
I want to tell you about these fantastic ladies. Dr. Khalila Robinson is a clinical psychologist and co-author of the Self-Regulation Workbook. With years of experience working with children and families, Dr. Robinson specializes in emotional regulation and child development. She collaborated with Sarah Gerstenzang, LCSW, to create this practical resource that combines their professional expertise with personal experiences as parents. Dr. Robinson is passionate about helping families build stronger connections and giving children the tools they need to understand and manage their emotions during these formative years. And as I told these wonderful women This topic comes up so often when I talk to moms and is so needed, which may be the answer to my first question. What inspired you two to write this workbook?
Yeah, so there's background between Sarah and I. We met at a group private practice that had a focus on working with children and families. And I think at this practice, both of us started to find our home base for how we like working with families and children, right? There's all these different approaches, all these theories, all these different practices that are promoted in terms of how do you help kids with self-regulation. And at this particular group practice, we found an alignment with how we like to work with kids, and that has so much to do with working with parents. So with that in mind, in seeking out resources for ourselves as therapists, for the kids and the families that we're working with, we both found that there wasn't one resource that was a go-to resource that we felt really was really helpful and effective for families to use. A lot of the resources and workbooks that we would use bits and pieces from for families that parents wouldn't end up necessarily using or applying. And so we felt like there was a gap in the literature when it came to our perspective on how to help kids with self-regulation. And we felt like we were sitting on a lot of really great information and experience that we wanted to share that, again, we didn't find was readily available to parents. And we really wanted to make it digestible and approaches that people could really just use right away. So that was most of it, really wanting to fill a gap that we found.
Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I couldn't agree more. It sounds like a tool that any parents can use with their children. I'm assuming that it's for parents and kids to use together. Am I assuming correctly?
You are assuming correctly, Sarah, I don't know if you wanna speak to that.
Yes, definitely. Because children 5 to 8, they're pretty young still and they really need their parents. And certainly in this area, it's very important that the parents have a, a certain comfort and mindset around helping their children regulate. So yeah, so it's, we were initially asked really to write it for the children and we said, actually, we can't help the kids without helping their parents.
Yes, yes. Oh my gosh, I hope everybody just heard that. You talk about co-regulation between parents and children, and I don't think people know what that is, and I don't think they know why that's important. Can you two help us with that?
Right. So co-regulation is something that happens between parents and children from the very beginning, very start of life, right? It's part of our survival, right? We learn to be comforted and soothed through that early, early infant-parent bond and connection, right? So babies cry when they need to be changed or fed or they're sleepy, and parents pretty naturally, for the most part, find ways to go ahead and soothe and regulate their children. And for a lot of parents, it becomes a pretty natural experience, and they learn how to look out for their children's cues of tension and emotional— starts out really from the infancy stage, right? So co-regulation is about soothing and comforting a child who's in some level of distress and tension and learning again how to pick up on those cues and how to be responsive to them. Over time.
It's— go ahead.
Um, Khalila's talking about this as these very early times, and I've just started volunteering at my local hospital in the NICU and holding this—
my dream!
Yeah, super fun. Holding this teeny tiny little baby last week, and he was dysregulated for that small a baby. And Khalila's saying, look for the cues. He was pushing out the pacifier. And as I was very calmly holding him and talking to him, he just really relaxed. I could really feel him almost settle into my body and calm down. And then he went nicely to sleep. Like, I could really feel how he was relaxing as he was being held. Of course, in the NICU, it's very hard. All those babies can't be held all the time. But that is, I think, like, really, if we think about the seed, the beginning of being present for your child and being calm yourself and then receiving that and being able to calm themselves.
I don't want to take this away from children. I'm going to get right back to children, but I find that it works with other adults too, right? If I'm calm, other people are calm.
Absolutely.
It's contagious. Yeah, calm is— being calm is contagious. So that's really one of the basic ways to support others is to learn how to regulate yourself. And therein lies the complexity and the problem, because in order to be a co-regulator, you have to learn how to regulate your own emotions. And oftentimes with 5 through 8-year-old children they can be very dysregulating for adults. They can do things that they're not supposed to do at the wrong time, the wrong place, and create a lot of frustration and dysregulation for the parent. So that is the whole complexity there that we get into and talk about in the book. How do you co-regulate your child if you yourself are having a tough time at that moment?
Right. Especially with these days when people are so busy and a 5-year-old, a 6, 7, 8-year-old, they seem so capable. Get your shoes on, get ready for school, get out the door. And you realize they're not an infant anymore and they seem capable, but yet how do you incorporate their need for attention from their parents into the busy life that, you know, that we all have?
100%.
You nailed it.
And in the busyness. As we're running around and our children are possibly having what I would like to call a meltdown, maybe, maybe they're not being so easy in the moment. How do we stay calm and regulate ourselves during hard moments like that?
We fortunately in our book, there's the first whole section are concepts that are really important basic concepts. To understand about parent-child relationships, attunement, co-regulation, thinking about also the parent's own history, how they were parented. So lots of concepts in the beginning that give you a really good foundation for how to stay connected to your child and how to build emotion regulation in yourself and in your child. And the second half of the workbook is all strategies. All different strategies that we recommend to support parents in regulating themselves and calming their child. So how do you do it? There's in-the-moment ways that we think about, but those in-the-moment ways are only actually effective if you have this really set foundation and consistent approach to supporting your child's emotional development and functioning overall, right? So it's not this thing that like, all of a sudden you can just out of nowhere spring up and all of a sudden you're this master emotion regulator for your child. It's something that you build up over time. It takes time, takes effort, it takes a lot of attention. And there are some reliable ways of doing it over time as you've gotten to know your child, what supports them. Like this NICU baby, Sarah learned the shh, shh, shh works really well for this NICU baby. So she'll probably use that again going forward. Right? For my 8-year-old daughter, shh, I've learned that letting her ride the wave of emotion that she's having and not really interrupting her, keeping it contained, keeping her safe, not having it be this completely disruptive thing, but allowing her to really fully express the depth of her emotion helps her the most. So it's also about learning what works for your child. And we can certainly discuss specific strategies as we continue our conversation.
Yeah.
Yeah. I'm just— go ahead, Sarah. I'm sorry. Yeah.
No, I just wanted to make one point. Khalila had said how the book is set up. And I think the first thing that we said to each other when talking about whether to write this book or not was we really wanted it to be practical. We wanted— and Khalila alluded to this in her introduction— is that We have had the time. We're passionate about, as it seems you are, Rebecca, healthy human development. And we've spent hours reading, studying all of the literature out there. And, but not every parent is going to do that. Their passion might be police work or making sure the stuff in the grocery store is fresh or whatever their jobs are. But for us, we wanted to make this really practical and easy and direct for parents. And just one other point, I, I was just listening to your podcast, Rebecca, about you and your husband and how does he do it all. And he was saying, focus where your feet are, like in terms of, so it's, am I, you know, how do I get all these things done? If I'm at work, I'm just going to focus on my work. If I'm home, I'm focusing on my kids. And that reminds me of one of my favorite ways to calm myself, which is just to make this connection. Is I think about where my feet are on the floor, how my feet feel in my shoes, just as the most simple, because it can be chaotic. As we, I think Khalila mentioned something like when you're out with your children and how do you manage their emotions in these more complex situations? You're at a, Khalila has a really great story in the book about a birthday party. And so how do you manage your children when you're in these social situations? So for me, it's not— I try not to get too crazy about it. I just think to myself, do my feet feel firm on the floor? And that helps me calm right down, and then I'm able to think about what's going on with my child.
Yeah, I'm gonna do that next time. Think about my feet.
Oh my gosh. I want to get back to the age group that you talk about. My 12-year-old is really good at pushing my buttons. And even like alone in the car with her all the time, driving her to all the things and the things that she says, I just find that I'm constantly taking a deep breath and telling myself that she's a normal, almost teenager.
That's such— yeah, that's a really important strategy to really keep development in mind. As Sarah was saying, when our children get to be 5, 6, 7, We want to say, oh, I can kick my feet back. They can do more of their— be more independent. They don't need me as much. And we start to believe that, OK, like, they can handle more than they could, which is true. They can handle certain things more, but they still need us. They still need us to be containers for them sometimes, emotionally speaking. But yeah, so keeping that development in mind, this is normal, right? And we're talking about what strategies do we use to calm ourselves in the moment. And a lot of this, and what Sarah said too, is self-compassion, self-talk, coaching ourselves through certain moments, talking to ourselves. This is a moment, right? A lot of the times that we're in those really in the thick of it with our kids, it feels like it's going to last forever. It feels, oh, this is the worst thing that's happening in the world right now. And it takes over your whole system. And so that deep breath that you take, Rebecca, sounds like a great strategy, but also this is a moment, this too shall pass. My ability to stay calm in this moment is something that will support myself and my child. This is temporary, right? I can get through this. Things like that are really useful in calming yourself as a parent.
Those are amazing things for us to practice telling ourselves. And I want full disclosure when, you know, we've all done it wrong. And I want to tell everyone that we're professionals who have studied this and we do it wrong. And I will be sitting there thinking, How could she talk to me like that with what I did for her today? And if I start doing that rant in my head, I'm ramping myself up to yell at her. So I have identified patterns with myself of when do I do it right and when do I do it wrong?
Yeah. Yeah. I think we make a really good point in the book, Sarah. I don't know if you wanna speak to it that you don't always have to do it right then and there if you're wanting to. Model something or like almost set an expectation with your child, if you try to do it in that moment when you're really heated, you might come out in the way that you don't end up liking. Your child probably doesn't necessarily get the message because there's so much emotion in the air. So a strategy that you could use, Rebecca, is we could talk about this later, right? I'm heated right now. This is important enough to bring up. Maybe this evening when we're calmer and when we're connected, or even tomorrow, right? But that's a strategy in and of itself, is like the timing of when you address the concern or the issue.
Absolutely. And even I think it is so important for us, for this point that you've made, Rebecca, that we've all done it wrong. We've done it wrong so many times. One of the things I say in my acknowledgments is my appreciation for the parents I've worked with because I've learned so much from them and how compassionate they are. But I'd love to further Khalila's point about you can, if you can have the presence of mind to say, let's talk about this later. That's just an amazing strategy. And if you mess that up, it's totally okay because you can then come back to something. I, what I tell the parents I work with, Saturday morning is the best time. There's no school pressure. Everybody's hopefully slept in a little bit. Hey, on Thursday when we were driving home and Mommy got so mad, I want to talk to you about that. Do you remember what happened? And then you can go through it, walk it back. As I say, you're thinking, what happened? What happened before? Why were we so upset? Maybe we were really hungry and I'm really sorry. About the way I snapped at you and that just being reflective, that's another way of actually co-regulating with the child.
Oh, I love that.
That is such good advice because we all mess up and we all can repair it and change.
Right. Yes, exactly. We have a whole section in our book on repairing, repairing as a parent. And we actually have a little section on repairing for the child too. Oh.
Right.
So a little guidance for the child. There's a section there, hey, if you've done something with a peer or sibling or something you don't feel good about, you know, there's something you can do that's called a repair, which means that you acknowledge the way that you upset somebody. There's these different options for how kids themselves can feel more empowered to repair with somebody if they feel like something has gone wrong in the relationship.
That's wonderful. I think that you picked a certain age probably for a certain reason, and I'm curious— this, I think the workbook is for 5 to 8-year-olds specifically, correct? I'm curious not only why you picked that age group, but also some things that parents might have misconceptions about that age group.
Sure. Yeah, so I think the age group is a, it's a really rich age. There's so much development going on. A lot of kids are entering school for the first time, right, at 5 years old. Yeah, they are engaging in these more mature activities. They're being asked to do more, they're being expected to do more, and they're managing more, they're navigating a lot more. So there's a lot more emotion that can come up for kids at this particular age because their cognitive development and their emotional development may be a little— there might be a little bit more of a gap in there at this particular stage than at later developmental stages, right? So that's a fascinating age to work with, that kids can be really imaginative at this age, really funny, really wise, really insightful. A lot of kids are also at this age start to become more curious about their own emotions. About emotions and other people. They start to develop language skills to help them express themselves, start to become more interested and motivated in relationships, period.
Right?
So there's a lot that goes on at this age. And I think the misperception, and we spoke about it a little bit already, is that they could be more— they're pretty capable. They can do their own thing. There's a lot more that they can do than they when they were 3 and 4.
Yeah.
And they still need us. And they still need us as parents to support them emotionally and model healthy regulation skills for them and play with them as adults and connect with them. So yeah, as much independent function as they can do, they also need us, including as playmates.
Leila hit on the word I've been thinking as I was listening to her talk and reflect so well on some of our thinking is the playfulness. I think Leila and I, we both love I love children and as parents being playful with your kids is such an amazing quality. It's sometimes parents think, oh, they have to do the things and actually feed the child. Yes, absolutely. Get them to school on time and all those things. But one of the most amazing parts of being a parent is being playful with your child and having a good time being silly together. And there's so much rich opportunity for that in the, these ages, 5 to 8.
Absolutely.
And I'm having a flashback of doing the dishes. I, I tend to be a caretaker and I'm doing all the caretaking things and I'm standing there doing the dishes and I'm listening to my husband playing with the kids and I'm frustrated. So put the dishes down. So I had said to him one night, like, how about you do the dishes and I have some fun, but I could have just put the dishes down and join in the fun. Just go play.
You can make the dishes fun somehow.
I love that. You're making an important point. We have so much on our plates, right? We have so much to deal with between taking care of kids, those that work, those that work outside the home. We have lots of different things that we have going on that to play with your child feels like a chore sometimes. It feels like a burden. Oh, this one other thing that I have to do. Yeah, there's so much that you can gain from even 5 minutes of play. We just, we have a section in our book on ideas to play with your just 5 minutes out of the day of playing with your child. You can gain so much, and it's actually our main strategy that we promote for emotion regulation in children because it builds connection. And when kids feel connected and loved and appreciated in their relationship with their parent, they're actually more motivated to maintain that state and to return to that state when they become emotionally dysregulated. So it's a huge foundation for emotion regulation in kids when they feel like, I'm somebody who's delightful, that my parent loves to play with, that my parent takes the time to connect with. That builds so much self-worth and self-esteem in children. That is a major baseline for self-regulation.
That's amazing.
And I'm actually, you guys are making me think of a good friend of mine who has 5 children and the way she cleaned the kitchen every night was one child had the special job of helping the mom and she and that child worked together to clean the whole kitchen. And so that there was time to talk, time to connect.
Right.
And that basis of feeling important and seen by your parents, which, right, helps you feel important in life, not overly important, but capable and competent. Absolutely valuable as a person.
Yeah. Yeah.
You both said such important points. I wish I had learned this 10 years ago that it doesn't take all day to spend time with our kids. We're so busy, and taking the 10 minutes with them is so special. Doesn't have to be long. And I love what you're saying, that we can make anything fun and play. We can make the laundry fun. I need to remember that.
Yeah, yeah. Creativity, imagination, and playfulness are huge factors in creating emotion regulation, supporting self-regulation in kids. Yeah, amazing. You asked about this age group, Rebecca, and why it stands out. There's one other I just want to point out. There's a section in our book— I think kids this age, actually, they're really absorbing a lot, they're learning a lot. And I think that what we found in our practices, one of the most powerful ways kids can learn self-regulation skills is actually from other kids and seeing it modeled for them. And they find it really fascinating and exciting to see, oh, somebody else my age can do something that helps them calm down. We have a section in our book called Amazing Kids where we interviewed, I think, 6 or 7 5 through 8-year-old kids about times that they were upset. And they explained to us the situation that bothered them and what happened and how they were feeling and how they calmed themselves down. And we have such a beautiful range of examples there and how kids were able to find ways to support themselves. We even have a kid that said, "I didn't calm myself down. I went right to my mom and she helped me." It's a really nice way that we've seen kids learn themselves from other kids, so that's a nice section of the book that we have included.
Love it. Yeah, I needed it then and I need it now. That's what I'm—
yeah, yeah, yeah.
Our kids can have such a big emotions. How can we even start to talk to them about their emotions?
You want to take that, Sarah?
I was just— the first thing that popped into my head was not while they're having that emotion. So it gets back to thinking about that later. And I think this is one of the things that I think we really did try and do in the book was normalize And how, yeah, so some of the exercises, as Khalila mentioned, talking about kids that actual kids we knew and how they experienced these big emotions. So we, when we were interviewing them, we would say, how big was that emotion? So just normalizing it. There's a great letter from your feelings about just this idea that we all have emotions and that they have to serve a very important purpose. But that we also, we're teaching kids that age. And as I'm sure they see in school and amongst their cousins and other kids that they get together with, some kids can manage their emotions more at least easily than others. And a lot of that is just little tips and tricks that we figure out for ourselves that parents can offer some options. And then what's really just trying and figuring out what works for you.
Yeah. Yeah. I think I totally agree with everything you said, Sarah. And I feel like part of what we talk about in our book, and I also mentioned it's also okay to have big emotions sometimes. Big emotions make a lot of sense sometimes. And at 5 through 8 year old, you don't have the perspective about, right? Oh, you drop your ice cream cone, feels like the end of the world, right? As opposed to if you did that when you're an adult, say, okay, I'll figure this out. You don't know, you don't have problem solving skills. Skills, right? The feelings that you have in your body, they're bigger. They feel bigger. You're a little body with these big feelings. So I think it's also okay, and that's part of what we promote in our book, to have big emotions. Sometimes they can be normal, as Sarah said, and sometimes the parent's job is to allow the emotions to unfold while staying calm and containing the child and knowing that sometimes that is really the best course of action.
Really good advice. I said to my daughter one day recently, I was like, anyone in your shoes would feel the same way. And I saw her whole body relax, and I was like, oh, she didn't know that.
That's such a good point because it, it's so helpful to know that. It's so helpful to know that. And that's such a supportive way to help a child. You're not alone. I felt this before. If that happened to me, I'd feel the same way. Like, all of those validating statements can be incredibly regulating for kids.
Oh yeah. And I think that's a, you know what, we have so many underlying themes in the book, but one of them is how to help kids from getting stuck in a shame state. So letting them know that's normal, that others would feel that way, just like you said to your daughter, Rebecca. Also Khalila mentioned how to repair situations. And so that you can again, come back and think of yourself as a good, a good person. We all want to feel good about ourselves.
Yes. And we don't realize how sometimes we say things that they might take to give them some shame, which makes me feel terrible when I find out about that. But we can fix it.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And sometimes, see, I don't want us to cause any shame when we're setting limits with our kids. So how can we be effective? Because sometimes we need to set limits around what's going on with the big emotions.
For sure. I think we're big proponents, proponents of limits and routine and consistency and hierarchy in, in parenting. So in terms of setting limits, one of the things that we have to keep in mind is kids sometimes need practice with that. That's a skill that they're learning. They're learning how to do it in school or learning how to do it at home. I found when my kids started to go to school and were in settings where they had to transition and there were limits, it was easier for them to do it at home. So you get some support with that. I think if your child is in an outside setting somewhere where those expectations are there, that can actually help you with that limited expectations in the home. So we like to think of it as a skill that they're building and developing and that you should be giving lots of praise along the way is even when they're not getting it quite right. I really like the way you listened to me the second time I said it. Oh, you followed part of what I said. That's great, right? Like you're giving some guidance and support and praise along the way as they're learning how to be responsive to limits. And we know as human beings, even as adults, sometimes we just don't wanna do what the person's asking us to do. Like it's a natural thing. If there's something like a chronic issue that's happening where this, the child is chronically not responsive to something, You want to give that a little bit more thought and work and consideration and collaborate with your child on what might be going on, especially if the child's a little bit 6, 7, 8, right? Having a conversation, hey, we've been having a tough time with bedtime. I'm at bath time, bedtime, whatever it is with this part of the routine. What's going on? What can we do differently? How can we work together to make it run more smoothly? So there's always that collaborative element that you can engage in with kids too, with setting limits.
I think we forget that part. I think they're a lot smarter than we give them credit for.
Absolutely.
They might have insight. And I think that doesn't mean, as Khalila said, that, as she said, we set a lot of talk about limits and sometimes consequences for behavior. So while we may be having that conversation collaboratively with a child about bedtime, it might be, look, hey, when you get to bed so late and then You get up late and we're late for school. We don't really have time to do something that maybe the child would make. My best friend growing up, her mom would make her hot chocolate in the morning, which I thought was so sweet. We might not have time to make a hot chocolate or something. And so you're not giving the child all the control, but you're helping them understand the bigger picture. And what, again, what do you want to do? You know, would you like to have a happier morning or a morning with hot chocolate in it? Okay. What do you think you could do to get yourself to bed a little bit quicker?
Love it.
Yeah. So true. All of it's such good advice. And I think that something that they want to do is they want to sit on their iPad, phone, our phone, whatever technology-wise. How are you seeing that affect the regulation of a child and any sort of recommendations around technology?
It's, it is so enticing and just stimulating for kids to see these flashing things and press these buttons. And I think there's some of these apps that are developed to really hold kids' attention and get them to not want to shift away. So I think I think having predetermined limits on the use of iPads and TV and all that stuff is really important, and staying consistent with those things is really important. I think it's also a skill for a child to learn how to transition off one of those things, to learn to remove themselves from that. Sometimes it helps for a parent to engage in the actual activity with the child and offer some kind of connection and engagement as the parent to help them transition off of it, right? And again, with this whole picture idea, right, if we're noticing that child's having a really poor response to transitioning off an iPad or a device, or it's causing a lot of tension in the household, you'd rethink that as a family, right? Hey, this is a thing that's bringing up a lot of tension. How do we work together around this? What are some ideas that you have? Concern that it's X, Y, and Z, right? What are your concerns? What are your ideas? So those are some of the approaches that I would consider.
Yeah, I'd like to just add to that is that if you think about it, this technology is really the earliest addictive thing that we are exposing our children to. There's nothing else that is, actually has the power of these games and, and so forth that, and so it's really a new time in humankind, largely at these ages. This is an adult issue. What you allow your child to have. If it's way too much, the kids really are not going to— with this, these devices are built to hold your attention and keep you captivated. And it's just incredibly important that the parents have a position and, uh, having thought through it, talking with peers or looking at, there's Common Sense Media, some other really great resources. We talk a bit about this in the book. And so just having a clear perspective of what you think is healthy for your child and then to set those limits.
Really good advice. Definitely, definitely an issue. Definitely an issue. I hear so many complaints about technology.
I can't find it. I don't know what happened with it. I think we lost it. Yes.
And I worked with a mom who locked the devices in the trunk of her car. It's the only way she could do it out of the house. And it's really challenging. Obviously parents are busy. It's so helpful sometimes to have your child be occupied and be safe, honestly, be safe. Or if you're not worried about them running out the door, 5-year-old, you're maybe talking on the phone or trying to finish something on for work on your computer. It's very tricky.
Yeah. And I think that the thing that makes me so sad is that I get to talk to so many moms and they're so down on themselves. So to the mom who feels like she just keeps failing in this area, can you give her some words of encouragement?
Failing in the area of limits with technology?
Failing in the area of helping their children through emotional regulation moments.
Okay. Yeah, I love what you said, Sarah. I don't know what— we had a conversation a few weeks ago and I need to maybe correct my words, but you said something like any parent is capable of this, right? This is not out of reach for any parent. I think if you have a concern that you're failing at this, you're already showing an ability to think about this and reflect on it and that you have a motivation to support your child. So that is an amazing baseline. If you're already struggling and you're saying, huh, I'm worried about this or concerned about that, you're already in a good place because that means you're thinking about this, you care about this, you want to support yourself, right? So that's the most important thing really, is to have a sense of wanting to do something about this and motivating yourself to do this. And that it's not easy. This is not an easy thing to do. It's, it can be complex. Like we've all said, we've gotten it wrong plenty of times, and that's how you learn. That's how everyone learns. So through doing it wrong, you learn, you learn. So as long as you have that openness to learning, I think that's also really important. And you are not alone. So I don't know, right, if I had this mom in my practice, I would say, I wonder how much you're thinking about the times that you got it wrong versus the times that you got it. We tend to focus more on the moments where, oh, I wish I didn't say that, I wish I had done that differently. And we pay so little attention to the times where the day went really smoothly, my kids are happy and healthy, they're connected, we had a great time. We don't necessarily focus on those. So if I was working with a mom like that, I'd really ask her to broaden her perspective on what this failure term is and consider all the times that she feels good about herself in her parenting, right? And then offer more support and resources with regards to whatever the stuck places are, right? And help her figure out new ways of supporting herself and her child in those moments.
Yeah, those are all such great points, Khalilah. I think I would also just say to people that the parent-child relationship is a natural system, right? So no matter how badly you, or how poorly you think you're functioning as the parent, your child wants to be in connection with you. They want to get along. It's a biologically driven desire to actually be in a healthy system together. So it can always be repaired. Your child wants to be close to you. And so even if you've had a bad day, oh, it's been a terrible year, or you think maybe even a few years, right? You're still coming to terms with maybe the way you were parented yourself and you're realizing, oh my goodness, now I'm recreating this in my relationship with my child. But what could be better than having that aha moment and thinking, now what do I want to do about that? Kids really are resilient in their relationship with their parents. And so, yeah, it's think about the future, not yesterday, but tomorrow.
So true. And I've asked you ladies so many questions. Anything else that you want to share before I let you move on with your day?
Yeah, I think that this workbook is really fun for kids. I think there's— and parents. I think there's some that's what's part of the point of it, is to make reading it and using it an actual way to connect and have fun with your child. So there's some sections in this book that I think parents and kids will really enjoy using and returning to. So it's not your typical workbook in that sense. I feel like there's a section for parents, a section for kids and parents to use together, and a section for kids. And I think they all offer some unique perspectives and some new ways of thinking about self-regulation in kids that are actually fun and connecting.
Yeah, I think, yeah, in addition to that, I think we'd love to hear from folks if they, there's certain areas of the book that really resonate for them. We would love to hear that. Obviously we're always learning ourselves and we'd just really be excited to hear how folks made use of the material that we've shared.
Tell everybody where to find the amazing workbook and where to find you.
I have a copy of it here, so I'll just show it real quick. Yeah, the Self-Regulation Workbook for Children Ages 5 through 8. It is available on Goodreads, Amazon. I think we'll have it in some select bookstores as well. Amazon is probably the easiest way to get it. It's on presale right now and will be available on April 15th.
Awesome. And anywhere specific you want them to contact you?
I would say, let's see, I think those details will probably— we'll provide those details to you, Rebecca, so you can have them available to you easily. I just started my own professional Instagram page, so that might be a good way to reach me. How about you, Sarah?
Yeah, I have a website, sarahgerstenzang.com. So same, I think those are good ways to find us or through the publisher as well. They'll always forward messages to us.
Ulysses Press is the publisher and yeah, they have done a beautiful job in supporting us with this book.
Yeah.
Awesome. I love your workbook and I loved talking to the two of you and I just want to say thank you so much for your time and your expertise.
Thank you, Rebecca. So nice to meet you.
You too. It sure was. Thanks for the great questions.
Oh, of course. This is Rebecca Green, and I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Whiny Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.
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