Tracy Gillett: Rethinking Sleep, Attachment & Parenting Through Every Stage (Episode 189)

I know early on, when our kids were small, one of the biggest conflicts we had in our marriage and in our parenting, I'm sure you can relate, was sleep and the lack of it. And I really feel like there was so many arguments that were happening about, are we doing it correctly? Why is our kid not sleeping? Why are other people telling us that their kids are sleeping and our kids should be sleeping better? And everybody had thoughts on it. But a big thing that we wanted to eventually lean into was kind of trusting ourselves, trusting our instincts. And I think too often in our culture, we're taught not to trust ourselves. Yeah, that. It's great to listen to experts. It's great to read books. We want to get more knowledge, but inevitably we want to be able to also listen to ourselves and know how to instinctually kind of raise our kids. And sleep is just such a great starting point when they're little. And so we wanted to bring Tracy from Raised Good. She's just killing it over on Instagram right now. Is one of the biggest voices when it comes to sleep, but also learning how to parent more instead trusting yourself, learning how to lead your kids and guide them and trusting that they want to follow you. And so I know you're going to enjoy this conversation. It's going to fill you up with more hope that you are exactly the parent your kids need. And so if you haven't already, please take a moment to pause to rate review to comment on the podcast that's really helpful to us to reach more families. Definitely share this podcast as well. And then sit back and get ready to enjoy this conversation with Tracy from Raised Good.

Welcome to the Art of Raising Humans.

The Art of Raising Humans is a podcast designed to support, equip, and encourage parents on how to create long lasting, deeply connected relationships with their kids. That's free from fear and shame. Come join us on the journey. Hello and welcome to the Art of Raising Humans. I'm Kyle.

Hi there. I'm Sarah.

And Sarah, today we have a special guest that we're gonna get the opportunity to talk about a subject we haven't really hit a lot upon. Right. I mean, she's definitely going to talk about many things that we do touch upon, and I wanted her voice to kind of share her thoughts on it. But. But something that we haven't talked a lot about is sleep.

Right, Right, right.

No, and it's actually. It was a really big deal for us and. And when our kids were little. So, yeah, this was a really big topic for us. And it's not something we've really come back and talked about.

Well. And it caused a lot of conflict between us, a lot of arguments about sleep and how little we were getting and what needs to be done to those kids to make them sleep. Right. So without further ado, I want to welcome Tracy from Raised Good. And if you've never heard about her, you got to go on Instagram and see the fantastic work she's doing it. She's killing it there. Helping parents be able to raise their kids in a way that's going to make connected relationships with their kids for a lifetime. And that's something we're really passionate about. And Traci as well. So thank you for coming, Tracy.

Oh, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

And real quick, we want to clear something up. You've got an Australian accent, but you're actually in Canada.

Yes, yeah, that's right, yeah. Aussie accent. I'm married to a Kiwi.

Yes.

And yeah, we live in Canada now. On the West Coast.

Yes.

Yeah, we love to travel.

Well. And something interesting about you is when we were talking before the show, you told us you used to be a veterinarian. So how did you go from being a veterinarian into being this Instagram influencer? And how did that impact the way in which you raised your kid?

Yeah, sure. So I was. Yeah, I was a veterinarian for many, many years. And when my son was born, I'd. I remember just being. Well, we were actually trying to get pregnant for about three years. And so we were on a fertility journey. And for anyone who's been on that, they'll know that it's just this roller coaster of like, you live your life in two week increments, wondering, are you going to get pregnant? Are you pregnant? And we went through so much on that journey. And I always thought that I would actually start a blog related to fertility. I was like, I got to share all this, what I'm learning about natural fertility and all that stuff. But then when I became pregnant, my lens kind of shifted relatively quickly. And it was actually on the topic of sleep that the biggest shift initially happened. And I was with my midwife. I was about 30 weeks pregnant, like, massive belly in there. And I just got the crib. I'd like researched the crib. I think I'd actually ordered it from New York or something. I was like, oh, this is so posh. Here we go. And you know, because you gotta get the non toxic mattress.

Of course, of course, Tracy.

All the little Things, Yeah, you don't want toxic paints. And so I ordered this taken ages to come, and I got it all set up and then I was with my midwife and she said, no, no, he's gonna sleep with you. And I said, what do you mean? I've got this. Like, the guy came around, he set it up like, we've got it ready to go. You want to feel prepared as a new mother, right? Oh, yeah, all that nesting that goes on. And so I had this ready to go and she was like, no, no, he's going to sleep with you. And I said, what do you mean, we've got the crib ready? And she said, no, no, I can tell he's going to be in your bed for sure.

Wow.

And so I remember leaving that appointment and just thinking that she was a bit odd, you know, not sure what she was talking about. But then I started reading and I'd already kind of. I'd had so many things that had shifted for me over the previous few years on fertility. What we'd been told by doctors, we'd been told we had a 2% chance of ever falling pregnant and things like this. And so I was used to kind of trying to bust those myths or really dig deeper and find what was true for myself, not just trust professionals. And, yeah, so I started looking into this and reading, and I was finding the work of Dr. James McKenna and Professor Helen Ball and these amazing people who dedicate their lives to researching sleep and mothers. So when our son was born, we put him in the little, like that clear plastic container bassinet that they have at the hospital. I put him in there because there was a big sign on the wall that was like, this is the safest place. Do not bring them into the bed. And granted, the hospital bed was not a safe co sleeping surface. Looking back now, but I put him in there and he went to sleep, but I couldn't sleep. I was like, I'd waited three years of fertility journey. I'd had 42 weeks of pregnancy. It was this anticlimax of this baby now separated from me, and I just couldn't stand it. I picked him up and brought him into bed and then that's where he stayed. And so I found that I was. I'm not like a naturally, like, crazy, you know, positive.

Yeah, yeah.

Kind of happy. Go, lucky person all the time. But I was so happy as a new mum and I had other mums saying to me, what are you doing differently? Why are you so happy? How are you not so Tired. And I was still tired. There's no getting out of that. But so I wanted to start writing about what I was experiencing. So I started writing about co sleeping and breastfeeding. Yeah, different things like that. The blog started, I had a few viral posts and it really took off and I discovered that I really enjoyed the creativity that came with that. I'd never paid much attention in English class at school because I just wanted to be a vet. So I was just interested in chemistry and science, all that stuff. And it was this creative outlet as a mother that I was like, oh, wow, I really love this and I'm quite good at it. And a few people are reading it and it really took off from there. So it's a passion project.

And yeah, that's so cool to hear, Traci. And I know like we were mentioning to you before we got on the podcast, it was such a point of contention for Sarah and I. I really had this idea that any kind of co sleeping, or even to be honest with you, even sleeping with a bassinet next to the bed was just not what we were going to do. And unfortunately I was very headstrong and stubborn about that. And I think Sarah saw that I was not going to change my mind on this. And so unfortunately our oldest slept kind of like you're saying in the classic. We did do the room. We got the. It took forever to paint that room with the non lead paints or whatever.

Not.

Not lead, but non toxic. Obviously. Non leads, great. But like the non toxic. But we were painting that room and. And she was in there. There was so many nights, Tracy, where Sarah or I were just laying on the floor.

It turned into. I spent most the night in her room.

Yes. It was so crazy. I saw her just like laying on the floor, falling asleep on the ground, trying to help.

We did a lot of growth between her and. And also just. Yeah, yeah, that's a whole other story. Yeah, that journey.

But what I wanted to say is that really changed not only our marriage and our parenting, but I think us as individuals. Me particularly, because when our second came, I was like, Sarah, listen, that was ridiculous. What do you want to do? And going back to like your whole theme is, I wanted what. What is. What are you instinctually feeling should be done here? And she was like, I want him in the bed with me. I want. I want him to be close to me, you know? And so then I was like, you. You do you, honey, that's what you think is best. Let's go that direction. And that really shifted to where instead of sleep being something we fought or we tried to make the kids do, it was like we just started accepting how these kids are growing and changing, and that. That was a big shift for us.

So I want to. I want to kind of on that. You. I want to hear with all the things you looked at and all the things, you know, I've. I've been on your page a million times and stuff, but I want you to share. What did you find out about sleeping and babies and parents.

Yeah. And crying it out.

Yes.

All of that. Yeah.

I mean, I know.

We could do a whole podcast. Yeah.

Download everything. Tracy, right now.

Yeah. What are some key points if you were to say, these are some really important things parents should know?

Well, I think important things parents should know. I often try to come back to the idea, and you touched on it there. What are we instinctually designed to do? And we live our whole lives in culture, and we don't realize we're like the fish in the fishbowl that doesn't see the water. We can't see the culture around us. And whatever we're brought up with to believe is normal or what is. We believe that what is common is what's normal. And so that's a big thing that I talk about. What is common doesn't necessarily mean biologically normal and what we're designed to do. And, you know, we grow up and we get grades at school and we get gold stars and we get external validation our whole lives, and we become parents. And same thing. We want other people to say we're good mothers. And a good mother has got a good sleeper. And a good sleeper is one that is quiet through the night and doesn't wake the parents up, sleeps in a separate crib, is happy to go to sleep, is happy to wake up seven to seven. All these myths that we're told about what sleep should be. So what I try to do in my parenting is just to strip it back to basics and say, if I was dropped on a deserted island, how would I parent. How would I parent through the night if nobody was watching, if there was no baby books, if there was no experts test telling us what to do? And the last thing that we would do is go and try to find another little cave on the other side of the island to put our baby in? We'd be holding it close because there could be danger. Right. And so although we know that our houses are safe, that the windows can close and the doors can lock, our babies don't understand that idea of safety. The only way that they feel safe is to be in physical proximity to their parents, to their caregivers. And Gordon Neufeld talks about this when he talks about how the six stages of attachment unfold in that first six years of life. And in that first year, it's through the senses. And typically, if it's a breastfeeding mother, it's through smelling mom, touching mum, seeing mum, hearing mum. And that can also be really hard in a marriage. I think that first couple of years of life when the baby and the little toddler is just obsessed with mum, then it's like dad can feel like, hey, like, what's going on here? But as you guys well know, like, I remember when my son turned three, I think it was around three, suddenly dad was like, center stage.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, all play fun. And now he's 12, he's like, you know, dad stays up late watching movies with him. Like, Mum's like more of the kind of handbrake sometimes. It's not always even every day. Right. And so I think that's important to acknowledge. So with sleep, our babies are born believing that they're going to be sleeping next to us. And then we put them into a separate room, and now we've got a problem because now the baby doesn't want to be there and the baby's going to cry. To bring the mother close or to bring the father close, that's the only way that they can communicate. And then we're told to just ignore those cries. As long as they're safe, as long as they're warm and dry and fed, then they should be okay. But there is so much suffering in that resistance of what that communication is trying to tell us, both for the mum. I mean, people go to the extent of hiring sleep trainers to come into their house to physically stop the mother from going into that room. That should tell us something. So when we stop fighting, we've got to choose our fight, right? And it doesn't have to be a fight, but we've got to choose who we're going to go with. We either go with our baby and give them what they need and what they're telling us, or we go with society and get told that we're a good girl and a good mom and get the gold star. When we go with our baby and bring our baby into bed, we sleep more, breastfeeding, so much easier. James McKenna calls it breast sleeping for good reason, because breastfeeding and sleep go hand in hand. We do get more sleep Sleep will be more broken. But mothers and babies synchronize their sleep so they come out of a light stage of sleep, and then they're more able to easily fall back into sleep. So you're not having those periods of long wakefulness during the night. There's so much connection in that you would know with bringing your babies into it. Waking up and seeing their smiling faces just playing. Playing games under the covers, like, just there. If I think about those moments that would have been robbed from me if I had have gone in the other direction, that makes me feel so sad. And so just being able to be that person for our babies night and day. Parenting shouldn't change between daytime and nighttime. And we were talking before we started recording. One of the reasons why I keep talking about this, even though my son's now 12, I do really feel that it's activism, that it's a human rights issue, that it's. We got off track a couple of hundred years ago with, you know, when sleep training started to come about with people who weren't ne, who were probably trying their best but didn't really understand what babies needed. And it's time to get back on track. And if we can be with our babies and connect with our babies and see what they need and have realistic expectations of what they can actually do, then they become toddlers who want to say no and want to individuate and want to do their own thing. And that can be really triggering to us as parents. And then we want to start with timeouts and punishments, and they should learn manners and all this stuff that is. Or they should share. Well, they're not going to share when they're three or four. We can start to have realistic expectations. And so if we start out that way, it's so much easier to continue that way. And we don't think about putting them in timeouts or punishing them or threatening them. So, yeah, there's some of the things I'd want parents to know.

And I think going with that, as you're talking, I'm thinking about how I grew through all three of our kids. The first one was like, I need to teach you how to sleep. You know, I need to make you sleep. And then by the second, it was like, I was more curious as to like, how does he sleep? How do we help him sleep? And then by the third, I felt Tracy, the power of our third kid. I remember being on a rocking chair and kind of like rocking her as she was trying to fall back to sleep. And I Remember, it had been a frustrating night. It had taken quite some time to help her go back to sleep. And when Abby did that when she was young, I'd be like, go. I'd be like, thinking, go to sleep. Why are you awake? I've got things to do tomorrow. But with Ellie, my youngest, I. I'm holding it. I'm looking at her face, and the thought hit me. How would I know I really love you unless we went through this together? How would you know I really love you unless we did these kind of nights together? And then that led into what you were saying as they grew up, having that mentality that these moments together, these things that are kind of conflictual. Right. These are conflicts that they're actually moments for us to grow closer. Not for me to control you or for you to control me, but it's about us getting to know one another and understand each other.

Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest pieces of parenting, isn't it? Is we go into this thinking that we're just. We can control these little humans. We can't. And when you surrender to that and you start to think, should I even. That's an ethical, moral question. Like, we don't have the right to control another person. We're here to inspire them to follow us. And if we're going to inspire them to follow us, we need to be good leaders, and we need to focus on ourselves. And I know that's what so much of your work is about. Like, parenting is all about us. It's not about them. And, yeah, so. And our. And our kids don't internalize our intentions. Like, well, they've read a sleep book that says that I should be doing this. They're just following that. They experience and internalize our actions. And from a very young age. You know, you've spoken with Dan Siegel. He talks a lot about implicit memory. They're not going to necessarily. And this is what a lot of sleep training talks about. Well, they're not going to remember. I'm like, well, hang on. That's a red flag to start with. If you're doing something to your kid that you don't want them to remember, like, pause. But their bodies do remember. There's so many books written about this, isn't there? Gabor Mate talks about it. Bessel, Van der Kolk, the Body keeps the Score. We do internalize that. And then years down the track, I mean, why do we have so many people with insomnia? Why is there so many sleep problems with adults? We Want them to believe that nighttime sleep is a safe state and it's not something we can teach. Just like we can't teach our kids to walk. We can't make them walk faster than what they're designed to do. We can't make them grow taller than what they're designed to do. Sleep's a developmental milestone that they get to it when their brain development's caught up and we can't rush it. And the more that we try to, the more suffering we create for ourselves and for our kids. That's well said. Yeah. And so that surrender, we can often think of surrender as like giving out like a white flag. But surrender, I think, is one of the most active and courageous processes to be like, I'm going to surrender to the as is of what it is now. And I know that I'm strong enough to be able to carry that. And I believe in myself. And I don't know exactly what comes next, but I know I'm going to figure it out. And that's what I've carried so much in my parenting. You know, as my kid grows up, like you would know better than anyone as my kid goes into teenagehood, I'm like, I don't exactly know how to be a 14 year old, but I know I'll figure it out.

There's so much what I love about what you're saying. I remember feeling that when, as a parent, when you move into that space, there's so much peace in that space when you're leaning into you and what's going on inside of you and you're listening to that and you're listening to your child, your baby, your two year old, your six year old, whatever that age is. And you know, that connection, that attunement that's there, there's so much peace in that. When we can kind of trust it and not trusting that everything's all figured out and everything's all perfect and easy, but trusting the moment that you're in, that acceptance that you're talking about. I want to hear you talk a little bit about connection and what that is between a child and a parent and what, what disrupts the it, how you build it. Because I've seen you kind of share some stuff about that and I love your voice on that connection. And I think it's something that, what we're talking about with sleep, it's so you start day one. I mean, you start when you're pregnant, but you know, it's something that carries on and it keeps giving Back to you as a parent. That thing that worry we invest in the connection and that attunement with our child, that's something that carries you through all the unknowns. But I would love to just hear you share a little bit about that.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Connection. It's one of my favorite topics to talk about in parenting. Because it's parenting, right? We're either working with or against connection. Our babies. Like, it's an irreducible need of children is to feel connected to their parents. Like attachment. We can talk about words like secure attachment that get thrown around. That is a child's number one need, is to feel attached to their parents. And children will choose attachment over anything else. So if we're threatening them, threatening their connection or threatening their attachment by like, you're at the playground and we're like, we need to go. And he's still going down the slide and I gotta go. I've got an appointment to get to. Like, how am I gonna get there? Okay, I'm gonna count to three and then I'm leaving. And so immediately we're threatening connection. We're threatening the connection to that child. And a young child will do anything to maintain that connection. So of course they're gonna come. Okay.

Yep.

Let's go. And you see the other parent, the playground, doing it. And gosh, it works fast. Like, just do that. Just three with 1, 2, 3. They're going to come. But what you've done is you've threatened connection, you've threatened attachment. And the other need that our child has is authenticity, is to be themselves, like, to be who they are. And that's what we talk about, is that we want our kids to be who they are. But if they've got to choose between who they are and connection, then they're going to choose connection every time. And they're going to bury who they are. I'm just going to please mom. I'm just going to look after mom, Just go look after her needs. If I'm too much to handle, I hit my brother if I did the wrong thing. And then we start raising people pleasers and all those kinds of things, and they bury their needs and are always choosing attachment. We want to make it so that our kids, that they just take attachment, connection for granted. And so we want to work with connection with our kids rather than against it. So in those kind of moments, it's like getting on the slide with your kids, going down, enjoying it with them, looking them straight in the eyes and like, bud, I know you're having so much fun and it's time to go. We've got to rock and roll, but let's skip and sing to the car.

Yeah, I love that.

Because what they're trying to keep going is the fun and the play and the connection and whatever they're feeling in that moment. So it's like, let's keep that going. And so. And they still might be like, I'm still not going. And then you're going to hold a boundary. It's not about, like, not having boundaries. It's still time to go. I'm going to hold the space for those feelings and all that stuff. But we're still rocking and rolling. So it's connection. I feel like it's like this invisible string between parents and children. And when you feel it, when you're connected with your kid, they are inspired to want to follow you because you're leading. Like, we have a lot of Canada geese on. On the island.

Oh, cool.

And when the little goslings are. Yeah, it's like they're following that mother around. Like, they're not in the lead. Like, one of the little goslings is in the lead. And the mother following, that's like permissive parenting. That's not what we're after, like, but she's inspiring them to follow. And we. We are here to inspire our kids to follow. And we do that with connection with not threatening it. Things that threaten it are like traditional discipline. Timeout is saying, I know how important connection is to you, and when you do something that doesn't please me, I'm going to take it away from you. And you're not welcome in my presence now until you behave how I want you to, then you'll get it back. Connection is like air to a child. Like, they need it to breathe. They know that their survival depends on being connected to us.

I love everything you're saying.

And we totally. Once we bought into that idea that our kids want that they want us to be that inspirational leader. They want us.

Where are we going?

Head that way.

Right.

I think, though, that what do you do when you're talking to parents who just doubt that they don't believe their kids will want. I mean, like, I'll have parents I'm coaching who they think my kids would actually rather go hang out with their friends that hang out with me, you know, that they don't really want to. What I'm saying, somehow they even buy into some of the culture stuff of kids by the time they're teenagers, that that's just something you got to expect. Teenagers actually don't like spending time with you. They don't want to be with you. So how do you take in that same kind of thinking that we totally believe too? How do you deal with that? When a parent is saying, you kind of get feel at this ear, I don't think they will work.

Yeah, and I think that's, that's a great question. And, and, and I think what it comes down to is that we are creatures of attachment and of connection. Humans are always wanting to be connected to other humans. And when our kids come into our lives, they're looking to us for that connection. If they don't get it, then they're gonna look somewhere else for it and they go to their peers. If they're spending a lot of time with their peers, then they're gonna be oriented in that direction. And that's when kids can get really hard to lead. If they're like, but I'm connected to my friend over here and my friend's doing that thing, so I'm gonna behave that way and I'm gonna do that. They're more concerned if, if their friends have become their primary points of connection, then it's going to be really hard to parent those kids and really hard to lead them. But given a choice, the child will always want to be connected to the parents. And so I think if kids have gone in that direction, then it's going to be a bit of a course correct for a while and you're not going to just get them back straight away. Particularly if you have been using traditional discipline techniques and stuff. The kid's got to start to learn to trust. Like, huh, they're not going to threaten me right now. They're not going to do that thing. I mean, I get this with my son. Like, all of us do it. I'm sure you guys do it too, because it's like these tapes are in our heads. Like, it's what we grew up with. But I've raised my son in a way that he knows how to expect to be treated in relationship. And I think that's one of the most important things we can do as parents, is to give them that blueprint for, like, you deserve to be treated with respect. You don't deserve to be yelled at. You deserve to have your boundaries respected, all those sorts of things. So then when they come into relationships with other people and someone's not treating them well, then they're like, hang on, no, I don't deserve to be Treated like that. But in my relationship with my son, if I am like having a bad day and I pull out a well, if you don't do such and such, then whatever. Whenever there's an if and a then there's a threat coming and he'll say to me, mom, that sounds like a threat. We don't do threats in our family. I'm like, oh, done. But I need you to just get ready for.

That's right.

Yes. Like, this is not the day. I'm having a rough time. So, like, we all fall into those things. This is not about being on some pedestal or being some perfect parent. And one of the, one of my favorite things about parenting through connection is rupture and repair. We get to repair in relationship. We get to learn to apologize. That's one of the biggest things that you should get really good at as a parent. Because we're going to mess it up every single day. Because we're human. And so much connection is strengthened when we repair with our kids, when we can show up and truly apologize. Like, bud, I am so sorry that I yelled like that. I'm working on it. You didn't deserve to be treated like that. That's on my shoulders and I really apologize. And that can be really hard for a lot of us to do because we weren't raised to believe that owning a problem or owning a mistake was safe. And so we'll try to avoid it. We'll go into a shame spiral. We can't apologize. We can't shut it down.

I know, yeah.

So we might say something like, hey, I'm really sorry I yelled, but it's just because you didn't clean up your toys, like, that's not an apology. That's like, that's just like reverting the blame. So there is so much. When we mess up with our kids and when we repair, what our kids also get to learn is that relationships can hold mistakes. I'm safe to make mistakes. I'm safe to be imperfect. I'm safe to problem solve and figure things out. And when I see my parents fighting or when I'm safe to disagree with my mum, because we can come back and repair. So I think coming back to your original question of, like, teenagers will clearly, you know that peers do become a lot more important to them and that's the way it's going to go. And sometimes I'm sure you guys look back to them like, oh, my four year old thought that I was everything. He just thought I was the best and would Just follow me around and, like, I could do no wrong. And now he's 12 and going into. And he's like five foot.

Oh, my gosh, 11 men's shoes. Wow.

And I'm like, oh, my God, he's the giants. And he. And they are, you know, peers are important to them.

Yeah.

And they're going to continue to be. And that's part of growing up.

Yeah.

Part of the. The. The fruit of attachment is independence and separation that they will separate from us. We are trying to raise them into humans that will be able to be confident and independent and go and do life on their own. But if we create that foundation of attachment and connection, they will know that it's always safe to come back to us.

That's good.

And so we have to build that in children so that they're safe to break something or. Or have a meltdown over something so tiny so that, like, you would know when something big happens, when a girl breaks their heart or when they messed up or when they took the car or whatever happened, that they're still gonna come to us. Right?

Yes.

That it was safe to do that. So I think the more that we can turn into connection, the more we're making it, our relationship, a safe harbor, particularly in this world of, like, growing up with phones and social media and all the craziness that we didn't need to grow up with. We need to be that safe harbour that they come back to. And so if parents haven't been parenting in that way, it's gonna take some time. It's gonna take some time for the kids to go, hang on. Are you trustworthy? What's going on here? Is this how we're doing it now? Like, this is new almost to harken.

Back to what you said, too, is if they've been using those traditional means of discipline, like timeouts, like spanking, like, you know, threatening, those kind of things. You. You have them for quite some time been using the attachment as a leverage tool to get them to do stuff. Right. And you got to realize that's. That's broken some trust, you know? And then what you see is teenagers then, who just won't tell you what they care about. They just won't tell you what, because they're afraid you'll use it against them.

Well, and then. And then, yeah, I think when they're little, you can get this false sense of control and that you can manipulate the attack the relationship to get them to cooperate or get. But when they're teenagers, that all shifts and you don't have that leverage or control you thought you had. And I think what you're saying is so valuable where it's hard sometimes to just look in the mirror and go, okay, I did some things now that I want to change. I need to shift this. But to feel empowered that you can shift it, you can shift back any points and always be focused on that connection, it just go, you, you know, you hear it, and yet we need to hear it over and over and over. We've got to prioritize the connection. And that isn't, like you said, throwing out any boundaries, but we too often will. Will. The connection will suffer between a parent and child. And we've got to just keep orient. Go back to that. Go back to that.

And yeah, I love that connection. And I think, you know, Tracy, we saw one time on a TED Talk too, where they were. Talk about if your parents wrote you a letter today and they did some of the stuff you just said and they talked about, I made these mistakes. I want to do a different. Any of us now, even as adults, we would be moved by that letter. Right. So it was a just, it was just a whole comment about how it's never too late, you know, so even now, if you've used the attachment and the connection from the time they were little to now as a tool to get them to do what you want, you can change that now. And it doesn't need you. You don't need to feel like it's damage is way too beyond repair. It can be repaired. Yeah, it will be hard. So, Tracy, absolutely. I want to end with this overall, just kind of, I want to hear where they can find more out about you, but just kind of summarize what you've been saying. A lot of what you've been telling our audience is to kind of trust their instincts, to, yes, listen, we want to be educated. We want to read the books. But there is something about trusting that you are enough, that you are the parent your kid needs and that your kid wants. And that your kid wants to be inspired by you. They want to follow you. And I think it kind of sums up your. Your message of raised Good.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love that. I love that summary. And it's. And there's so much healing in that. Right. I don't think anyone listening can kind of hear those words like, you're enough and not be, not feel it. Like, am I enough? Am I enough? Do I need to, like, you know, farm out my choices? Yeah. And no parent ever goes into a situation and thinks I'm going to use my. My, you know, connection against. This is all unconscious. This is what we're told to do. So feel no shame over it and just move forward from this point.

And I think it's humbling. Even as you say, I feel humbled to say I'm enough. You know, it's some. It almost sounds like you're being arrogant. No, you're not. It's like it's humbling that my kids think I am enough, you know, and we get the luxury of. We've helped kids for a long time, and how many of them so desperately just wanted their parents to. To go back to that connection, to go back to trusting them, to being with them, you know, and even them trusting themselves, they. They get. It's sad for them to watch their parents constantly doubt themselves or beat themselves up, you know, and it's like they want their parents to know they love them and that they think they're great, you know, and then they start to get like, what have I done to cause my parents to feel that way about themselves? It's kind of. It's kind of a sad cycle that starts to happen, you know? So, hey, for our audience that wants to know more about your work, Tracy, how can they find you? Where would you point them towards?

Best place to go is my website, which is raised good dot com. So I started this journey by blogging, and I was blogging every week for many years, so there are a ton of articles on there on all of the topics that we've been talking about. So that would be a great place to go. Instagram is the other place where I turn up most on social media. Aysgood. And yeah, everything.

Is there an upcoming summit you have going on?

We just did one in. I host it every September. So it was just this September. And yeah, so that was number six. Okay, so, yeah, so we'll see for next year. And yeah, the other exciting thing, this is why we were meant to record last week, but I was like, I'm writing a book at the moment. So I went away last week. I was writing a book. I was like, had some time out to just get some. Some words down. So, yeah, one day. Well, next year the plan would be that. That the book will launch late summer, maybe.

We'll have you. We'd love to have you on again at that time. Yeah.

Yeah, that'll be awesome.

That'd be great. Well, thank you so much for taking the time and really appreciate you advocating for those little babies more and more and that that way, then it changes the whole relationship into adulthood.

So, Dan, thank you for doing that.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for having me.

The Art of Raising Humans podcast should not be considered or used as counseling, but for educational purposes only.