27. Powerful Parenting with Aron and Kristin

Kristin Areglado Hurley: https://www.karegladohurley.com/

Aron Carlson: https://childandfamilymentalhealth.com/aron-carlson/

Parenting Workshop: https://www.international-crucible-education-center.org/parenting-workshop

Transcript:

James: My guests today are Aron Carlson and Kristen Alado Hurley, and they're here to talk about a parenting workshop that they have been developing.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: So just a bit about my background. I am a therapist in Portland, Maine. I have had a private practice for the last 20 years or so. And I had the privilege of first and foremost working as a family therapist. I did home-based family preservation and I used to teach family therapy. I trained with Dr. Sn, starting in 2011 and really have dedicated the latter part of my personal and professional life to really learning about interpersonal neurobiology and better understanding how we as parents and the ways in which we function and manage ourselves, impacts our children. And so as a mom of a 22-year-old, this topic that Aron and I have been working together to develop a really high end, meaningful experiential training, is very near and dear to my heart. Aron, what would you like to share?

James: Thank you. And what about you?

Aron Carlson: Hello everybody. It's great to be with both of you. I'm looking forward to the discussion we're gonna have. My name is Aron Carlson. I am a licensed clinical social worker. I work in the Washington DC metro area. I've worked here for about 12 years, mostly with parents and their kids, and also couples. And I trained with David Snar from 2018 to 2020, and that's where I met Kristen. And I'm really looking forward to going through some material that Kristen and I put together to illustrate our thinking and approach to the workshop that we're going to be doing in the fall. And James has so graciously agreed to go along for the ride and discuss all this stuff with us.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: I guess just as a broad statement, I think one of the most extraordinary things, but also incredibly difficult things is parenting. And we wanted to start with a little vignette. We call it an interaction that has a lot of material to it. And we wanted to start with the vignette because it's a more of a visual way to engage with our, the material that we're going to be presenting at our training. and so Aron, would you be willing to read the vignette so we can all just start to take in what we're to think about?

Aron Carlson: You bet. Okay, so there's a family of three. Eliza and John have a daughter, Sophie, who's five years of age. Sophie attends a Montessori preschool and the headmistress of the school. Ms. Beth sent Eliza Sophie's mom an email to report that there was a rug pulling incident at school. Upon receiving an email from Ms. Beth Eliza learned that the students were informed by one of the teachers that there was a pole in the rug and were explicitly asked not to pull on it, lest they create a hole in the carpet. Sophie was found by her teacher pulling on the carpet, and when the teacher asked Sophie to stop, she continued doing so and made a small hole in the carpet which was discovered. And Eliza found herself surprised by the degree of reactivity and from her point of view intolerance, which the headmistress of the school, Ms. Beth demonstrated in her email, describing her daughter's behavior. To Eliza's mind, what five-year-old wouldn't be curious about what might happen if she pulled on the carpet? Sophie's dad, John learns about this whole incident from his wife Eliza, who relays the email that she received from Ms. Beth and John becomes incensed upon learning of Sophie's behavior. He responds to Eliza by telling her what consequences he believes are appropriate for Sophie's disrespectful behavior. The couple's bedroom conversation turns conflictual as Eliza disagrees with John. And when Sophie comes into the room, John explodes. He tells Sophie, mom and I got into a fight because of the email received from that we received from Miss Beth about your decision to pull on the rug today. And now apparently there's a big hole in the carpet.

Sophie bursts into tears. Eliza rushes over to comfort her. And John leaves the room.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: Just take a moment to really visualize, take into your mind's eye this series of events. Maybe you close your eyes for a moment and just allow the scenes to unfold in your mind's eye. How do you see five-year-old Sophie as she's sitting in a circle with her classmates in her small Montessori classroom? Consider her thoughts and feelings and her responses as she listens to her teacher's instruction. The teacher points to the pole in the rug and explains that no one should touch it it could make a hole on the carpet. Next, visualize what Eliza Sophie's mom's thinking and feeling and considArong when she reads the email as well as what's happening for her as she informs John about Ms. Beth's email. Allow yourself to visualize Eliza and John in their bedroom might be happening for each of them as they have their argument. What might their facial expressions and tone of voice convey? Let's visualize Sophie as she's entArong her parents' bedroom, might her facial expression look like? How close or far might she be standing to her parents, particularly when her father explodes, visualize the way Eliza might engage with Sophie when she's in tears? How does John decide to leave the room? So it's pretty impactful for me when I really start to take in this interaction and really visualize the scene of what's unfolding. So if we think about this, and James, we, you know, certainly let's let's all have a conversation about this. What beliefs or anxieties could be impacting Eliza in the way she thinks about Sophie's behavior and anticipates interacting with John? How do you think she's feeling both emotionally and in her body and thinking when she's talking with her husband? And I'm curious how you see her functioning overall at that time.

James: How Eliza was functioning.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: What do you think was affecting Eliza, given the way she's thinking about her

James: So just my mind had gone straight to thinking about John and Sophie and not Eliza. So, I would suspect that she would anticipate this kind of response from John, because it probably wouldn't be the first time would be my guess. And so she, so let's see if I can place myself in her shoes. There, she would've been anticipating that this might cause trouble, but maybe fully anticipating the degree to which it's about to go off the rails. I'm not sure.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: So perhaps she has some anticipatory anxiety is maybe what you're, you're, you're hypothesizing, given that it's likely this is not a one-off and it's likely that this, she's seen her husband get really reactive in the past.

James: Yeah, I mean the, the pattern behavior describing from John here is just not the kind of thing that happens only once. So I would expect that this is probably a pattern, especially John being willing to kind of take this out on Sophie. So.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: What's your sense how she's feeling, how she's emotionally feeling, but then also physiologically, like in her body.

James: Oh yeah. So in her body, I would expect her to be, I mean, scared, shaky, If it were me, I would have a tightness in my chest at kind of anticipating the potential intensity that's about to come into the family system and just probably not knowing how to handle it very well.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: Any thoughts about what she's thinking about her daughter's behavior and how she's impacted she learns about what happened at the Montessori preschool?

James: Yeah, she seems to be worried about how the school is treating her daughter. So, mean, 'cause she, she's worried about the tone of the email. You always said the intolerance, which would Ms. Best and maybe the teacher had. So I think the way Eliza's looking at this is this is normal behavior for her daughter. It's not really that much to be concerned about, you know, it's just the kind of thing that happens and you correct it and that she's worried about how the school is handling it, and then obviously concerned about how John handles it. I imagine

Kristin Areglado Hurley: Aron, did you wanna move into the second about John,

Aron Carlson: I'm happy to. I had the thought while James was talking that, one of the things that I'm picturing is. The concern that Eliza may have about a consistent message or a kind of alliance between the perspective of the head mistress and her husband, Sophie's dad, that this is punishable behavior and it needs to be punished. I'll segue to John.

How do you think John is feeling emotionally and in his body and thinking when talking with Eliza, how do you see him functioning overall then?

James: He's not functioning well at all and it's so interesting that this doesn't have any, this seems to be mostly about the conflict between him and Eliza, and so like when he complains about, when he, when he says to Sophie is about, he's holding Sophie responsible for starting the fight between him and Eliza, which is obviously not true, but that seems to be his primary concern is what's going on between him and Eliza. And he seems to be using the situation with Sophie as a way to get back at Eliza.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: I think a lot about the disrespectful behavior and it's clear that this parent has the notion that if his daughter doesn't comply misbehaves it warrants a pretty strict intervention. and I think that's an interesting thing for parents to really think about When our children are. behaving in ways that are disrespectful or in a way where perhaps part of his ups, his reactivity is maybe, you know, about what the school thinks about his daughter and thus about him, that that's a really, it's really quite clear in the way that he is so punitive with his daughter. And I agree. I think there's a lot happening between the couple.

Aron Carlson: So, James, did I get it right that you see John is reacting mostly to his wife when getting the news about the email from her? Did I get that right?

James: so what I kind of see happening here is Eliza is basically. Eliza is taking Sophie's side in this where she feels like Sophie has been, you know, mistreated by the school and she's concerned about it. And John enters the battle on the other side. And so John seems pretty eager to take whatever side Eliza is not taking. I mean, my suspicion is that a lot of his treatment of Sophie is driven by his desire to kind of make a move on Eliza.

Aron Carlson: Do you have an idea of what he wants to make a move? What he might wanna make a move on Eliza for?

James: I really don't know what his motivation for that might be, but it's kind of common things that happen in marriage where people are kind of out to get each other.

Aron Carlson: Okay. Yeah, I think it's a good thing to consider, if John looks like he's trying to get, make a move on Eliza for some reason, how his mind might do that. And, I hadn't thought about it the way that you thought about it, so I'm not sure either. But I can think of a possibility at the moment, which is, I mean, I don't know if this would be accurate, but possibility that John wants to kind of. make sure he prevails with how decisions get made, particularly in parenting. And if he's going to, if he doesn't like what he hears, he's immediately going to mobilize to try to get that position. I don't know how well supported it is, but it's a way of hypothesizing and about the way that you see John.

James: The thing that stands out the most to me is just how he's willing to blame Sophie for the altercation between him and Eliza.

Aron Carlson: Mm-hmm.

James: Sophie is obviously innocent and, and he is just ready to just jump, jump in there and say, it's your fault. You know, not only did you, this point is not even about the rug anymore. It's like, you know, my behavior and mom's behavior is all your fault as the child, which is, it's just turning everything upside down because Sophia is whether or not she's innocent of pulling the rug or whether or not that's a big deal or not. She's obviously not responsible for the way her parents are behaving, and that's what he presents. And so he moves it away from the rug entirely and says, now, you know, what's happening in our family is your fault.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: You, you another point, and we're gonna be getting into some of the teaching points later, but the idea that, you know, you're, there's a lot of looking at the, the couple, and to the extent that, you know, you've spoken about having, you know, Eliza having some anticipatory anxiety. She probably has a good sense about how her husband will respond to to misbehavior. And so to the extent that she's anxious and she's concerned about her daughter, to what degree then does he know this about his wife? And he doubles down and he is extremely punitive in the way that he respond. He reacts to his daughter most, most certainly. Um, did you have any other thoughts about, uh, about John Aron or, or James before he mm-hmm.

Aron Carlson: I thought of the possibility that John is a kind of easily reactive, and news of his daughter behaving in the way described by the headmistress. Is it kind of an easy trigger for him and he starts regressing in his functioning and when he gets like that, he is starting to pound on his wife and his daughter's an even easier target for him. And more than having any kind of ongoing agenda, he is just falling apart and trying to make it look like he's kind of in charge and knows what he's doing. And. Ends up in that process of pinning the whole thing on his daughter and his, I, it doesn't say in the vignette explicitly, but I gotta think that he's combative with his wife and that's why their interaction is escalating to the point that in all likelihood, their daughter hears it. And then related to that, makes a decision to enter.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: Which, which brings us to think about Sophie and what's happening for her as she's overhearing her parents' conflict. How might her father's interaction impact her thinking and her sense of herself? How do you think she's feeling emotionally and also in her body, and how do you think she's, what do you think she's thinking when she decides to enter her parents' bedroom? What are people's thoughts about how this is, is functioning here?

James: I think the tension between her parents is gonna drive her into a survival response because, you know, she as a five-year-old cannot survive alone. She needs her parents and she needs her parents to be okay with each other. At least that's, you know, kind of the way her brain sees it. And so I think she's going into the bedroom to try to calm things down. So she's taking on herself, the regulation of emotionality in the family instead of it being the parent's responsibility.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: What are your thoughts about how the way that her dad engages with her impacts how she thinks about herself and her sense of herself? I.

James: Yeah. I mean, he presents himself as innocent and her as the problem. And so he, he's reinforcing in her brain this idea that. I think children kind of already have a predilection towards this idea that my parents are basically innocent and I'm the one who's the problem and her dad is obviously reinforcing this in her brain right now, and he's very comfortable painting himself as innocent and her as the problem.

Aron Carlson: Yeah, I would add to that, it looks like John is presenting himself innocent as an innocent victim of his daughter for causing this fight that's been hard on him.

James: Mm-hmm.

Aron Carlson: And and I think that that. Presentation impacts his Sophie's mind and that all of this power is being attributed to her by her dad when her dad is pretty unstable.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: I also think the idea about what's happening for her how it is that she goes in to manage her parents is if, if we think about that, it's, it is upside down, isn't it? But that's what happens when children are experiencing, when they're witnessing interactions that would be potentially. Traumatizing and anxiety provoking, so we can surmise that that's a lot of, as you say, James, that she was, she's going in to regulate the anxiety of the whole family system and she's the child, likely what she's doing when she enters into the bedroom.

James: And children feel compelled to do that. You know, for the parents, this is much less a survive of a survival problem than it is for Sophie. But for Zoey, this is survival. And she feels like she needs her family to be okay. For her to be okay. And, and she legitimately is in that position of dependency. And so it's pretty normal for children to take this, you know, the idea of mom and dad are fighting and the kid is trying to get them to stop. It happens all the time.

Aron Carlson: So a possibility occurred to me about Sophie, where she may be feel like there's motivated to defend herself if she thinks that she's being unfairly talked about. because I think there's a lot of ways that Sophie could play out entArong the room. and since it's not a real person that we've interviewed, we don't have more specific things to to base our speculation on. But I think that there could be some variety about what it means to her to hear her parents fight and she's an only kid and she's gotta think that it's about her to some degree, and so I wonder how she sees. herself reflected back to her and how she handles that along with the points that both of you have made about she's gonna start feeling unstable to some degree. The more she hears her parents reacting to each other and that is likely to produce a response in her where she goes toward them.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: and we can see based on the way that the mother engages with Sophie. Then you know, James, you're really tracking the, the likelihood that there's a lot of, there's somewhat of a, maybe more of a combative kind of a relationship between the couple. so to the extent then that that mother is going to comfort and reassure daughter, how does that impact the way that the husband engages with the daughter? so we see a bit of a triangle with the parents and the child. so there's a lot of dynamics at play in this

James: Mm-hmm.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: and we can all really think about this five-year-old. And the degree of anxiety that and also just that survival instinct as you speak about, because it is very much something that young brains are very susceptible to safety, but we all are actually, but particularly younger children, such as this five yearold.

James: The way I think about it is, is when there's, there's tension between the parents. It's like a, a live wire being run through the children. 'cause the tension almost always gets routed through the children when parents aren't handling themselves well. And the children have a much lower capacity for anxiety tolerance than the adults do. And so it affects them even more. It's really, really hard on kids when mom and dad aren't doing well.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: I wanna just knit back to something that was addressed before about this father, and that is. clearly has the belief that children are just expected to follow rules, and he does take it personally by virtue of the fact that he gets as reactive as he does, when he finds out that she was doing something she wasn't supposed to. we can also think about how that impacts this child knowing that her father, if she's doing something likely this was, she was curious. This is an interesting thing. We haven't really talked a lot yet about the, that what's happening in the classroom, but, but if we visualize a group of five year olds who are being told, whatever you do don't touch this, of course they're going to be curious about touch. What is the this, right? It's not really behavior that we wouldn't expect from five-year-olds and yet. We can see of this father's mind that it is somewhat of a personal affront to him. And he has a lot of, he invokes a lot of, I call it parental privilege. The privilege that he gets to teach her a lesson. but again, not handling himself well at all.

Aron Carlson: Yeah, he's, he's very, very focused on his daughter as the the problem and is very deliberate in the state of mind. He's in to characterize her that way, and wants her to know, I think that all of those features support that. He's pretty reactive.

Okay. So, we kind of covered the next one. There's some questions about how the couple's relationship works. So how do you picture Eliza and John interacting around making decisions about how to engage with their daughter about these events and also responding to Ms. Beth's email? And then there's kind of a, an epilogue question of that. Do you need to, or do you see a general picture of how Eli and John May make decisions together, or don't you?

James: I, it gives me a pretty clear picture of John. I don't see, I don't see Eliza very clearly. I don't know how Eliza would, all I can see from Eliza is that she doesn't think her daughter is being treated justly, you know, by John or by the school and, but as as far as otherwise, don't, I don't see much about her. But it does seem that John would be a very difficult person to deal with, in any disagreement.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: And we get a flavor for the difficulty that these two people likely have in, in interacting with each other. can see that Eliza was, quite, you know, concerned when she read the email. Her mind goes to how is her husband going to respond? So again, not, this is not a one-off. Right. and we can see my, you know, she has a, she's surprised by the response to the school. She also clearly is anticipating that her hu there will be a conflict. And it really does unfold in a pretty tumultuous way. So, and we can also see, given the, the position that John takes, he really isn't collaborating with anyone. He's so reactive. It doesn't demonstrate a lot of capacity to have real flexibility in the way that he's thinking. or a real openness either to his wife, given that he just gets so reactive and very punitive. Even invo. It really kind of implants this crazy picture, this big hole in the carpet, doesn't demonstrate a lot of capacity for there to be real collaboration happening between this couple. Aron, what would you, do you have thoughts you'd like to add?

Aron Carlson: When I picture the couple having their talk in their bedroom and there's not a lot of specific detail in the vignette about that. I'm imagining what it means to Eliza to inform. John about what happened at school with the anticipation of his response that she has. And I wonder what it means to John, to that his daughter was doing something she was told not to do at the school. And from that point, I, I would, I wonder how they respond to each other, but my guess is they get more reactive. What their kind of meanings are that internally that contribute to their reactivity is something we don't know. That would be something to unpack in a therapy session or several. And, but I think it's pretty clear they don't agree on how to handle talking to their daughter about this. And it looks well supported that. Eliza wants to treat, the me some of the meaning she makes out of this is that her daughter's kind of being normal and it's the school that's outta hand. And some of the meaning that her husband is making out of this is that her daughter's the problem. The school's probably, you know, doing a good job to inform them and shouldn't be inconvenienced or, you know, the school has a right to have their daughter's behavior corrected, with the help of the parents in the environment of the school. And the couple does not agree about this, and it's pretty unclear as to how they play that out, in their interaction. But they don't get anywhere constructive and it escalates. But I, I wonder about how, how they experience interacting with each other and, you know, what leads them to, in the. Kind of recursive loop escalate together.

So I don't, I don't see them being able to do any kind of collaborative talking with Sophie about this until, uh, either of them can find a way to get ahold of themselves enough while interacting with the other one. And if they don't do that, which wouldn't be uncommon, my guess is that they may not be able to talk to Sophie together. And she may get different messages from her parents in passing about what this means and what's gonna happen. Or maybe not in passing. Maybe, one or both of them would sit down and talk with her. but what they'll say, I gotta think is likely to be kind of uncoordinated and unsupported and running a risk of having contradiction in it. And I don't think that would be unusual in, you know, in any of our family systems for that to happen. But I think playing out that way would increase the kind of confusion and anxiety that Sophie's likely to live with around this series of events and kind of in general.

James: I definitely see it increasing Sophie's anxiety, especially, you know, her seeing that mom and dad can't handle themselves and her capacity to handle herself well is obviously much lower. And so think this would lead to quite a bit of a problem for for Sophie.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: I think we've, the last piece we wanted to just reflect on, with respect to the vignette was, kind of what we're already talking about. Just, you know, what, If we, as we think, as we continue to look at the way the parents are interacting, how this affects Sophie and the way she thinks about herself and about each of her parents, and also what she's gleaning about her sense of safety connection and relationship based on how these parents relate with each other and with her. So we've already started to speak into this, that obviously this creates a lot of anxiety for this young, young person and a lot of anticipatory anxiety well as the way she thinks about herself and her behavior, knowing that she has a really reactive, punitive father. Um, those are, just to summarize some of the things that each of you has spoken into, do, does either of you have any other thoughts that you'd like to share on this last. reflection question.

Aron Carlson: What I'm thinking about is how Sophie sees her mom. And I think that it's not a a, a real clear, it's at least not for me, it's not a real clear picture. And, and I think there's a lot of information that, in a actual case, would want to get before being able to have a more precise view of it. But how her, how Eliza responds to John's kind of pretty acute, regressive pressure on their daughter. And how she handles herself when he's upset. Like that I gotta think, is informing her daughter's picture of her. And that could go a lot of ways. And so I don't think it's clear here, but some of the issues would be about, is what's it like in this marriage for Eliza to talk with John about if, if she's concerned, any concerns that she has about his reactivity that, that she can, well, it's not clear, but there's a, there's a chance that she can see that her husband's aiming that at her daughter. And what's it like for her to consider putting that on the table in a conversation with him and how would she do it? Um, I think those are all important things to consider. In terms of thinking about how Sophie's impacted by how uh, this family system works and how she sees her parents, um, there may be ways where, um, Sophie is supported by her dad that we don't see in this vignette, but we can certainly see where she's gonna be at risk for, to getting throttled by 'em. And then her mom takes a role of protecting her, which I think is pretty understandable. But then also how do the parents, do the parents acknowledge this in any way in their relationship thinking? My thinking is they'd have to, as a kind of prerequisite for them to be able to do something different with how they care for their daughter.

James: Well, this puts Eliza in a really tough place where she, realistically, Eliza is going to have to. something to protect Sophie from this, and it's just, it's a really hard thing to do. But this is when you end up as a parent, you know, I have a huge responsibility to my children. I also love and care about the person I'm married to, or I that I had children with. And now what do I do when I'm faced with this, this thing where I need to talk to you about how you treated our child. incredibly difficult conversation. Takes a lot of courage.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: It does. And I think we can have a lot of empathy for this, this mother and this father and this daughter. moving into some of the key points that we've spoken around, one of the big things that we'll be teaching, and talking about in the workshop that Aron and I are offArong in November is is about differentiation as it re relates to the way that each of the, we as parents are able to So we can see certainly, particularly with John, that he really doesn't have, he doesn't demonstrate. Good capacity to quiet his mind down and calm his heart. He doesn't respond to his daughter or his, we don't see as much with how he responds to Eliza, but he certainly doesn't respond a grounded way to Sophie. But he's really reactive and he doesn't have a lot of flexibility in himself, given that way or the highway. Right. He, he really is pretty brittle in terms of the way that he about his daughter's behavior and the way that he engages with his daughter. So, the differentiation involves the ability to be solid in ourselves, but also flexible to be able to where another person's coming from, being able to self-soothe and self-regulate. So that's one of the key points that we certainly think is critical for us as parents. So that's a really important piece that we'll be getting into in our workshop.

Aron Carlson: I would add to that, on Eliza's side, what happens to her when her husband doesn't see things the way that she sees them. And when she anticipates he's going to become kind of explosive, what happens for her then That would be, I think, a test of her level of resilience as a parent, which is differentiation based. And, that's when all of us run into our limits of resilience and differentiation and our important relationships. But those are the areas that these parents would, I think do well to consider their own process internally and what they know about their partner's mind and how they interact with each other as a focal point, particularly when their minds are likely to identify their daughter as the main problem or intervention point. Not that there isn. reason for considArong intervention or the daughter to be an intervention point, but that it's difficult but possible to hold at the same time. How is the parent seen what's happening in the interaction with the child? And separate that from how they're feeling and what's going on with them so that there's a possibility that they can make at some point, maybe not in the interaction, but a best or better judgment decision that has to do with the child's needs separate from the parents' felt experience. That's, that's part of the, I think, developmental challenge that everybody goes, or everybody runs into. And the vignette that we described is meant to illustrate that. Without knowing the particulars of the minds of each parent, but knowing enough about them and their situation to have a a kind of working conversation like we are.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: We've been talking about what each person is mapping of each other, and that is, you know, the brain's innate ability to to create a mental picture of another person's mind, including how they think and feel, what they know and what they want. So mind mapping is a really key skill that allows people to predict what another person is going to do, so we can see of young Sophie. She's likely experienced traumatic mind mapping given that she sees her dad so reactive and she hears the parents in conflict. Likely our hypotheses were that that's why she's entArong into the room. And you can imagine that, we all kind of visualize what her face looked like. She probably had a look of fear, and anxiety because of the way that she was impacted. so it's a, it's an important thing to consider when we're interacting both with each other and with our children. I hear a lot of parents say, well, I don't think she knows what's going on, because we didn't have the conversation in front of her. But there's so much that our children are mapping of us, and the things that they're mapping of us can really be impactful. So this is another piece that we wanna talk more, we will be talking much more about in our workshop, but I think the vignette gives us a real flavor for thinking about what this child is, what prompts her to enter into the bedroom. And as you said, James, it's likely because she's going in to manage her parents' anxiety. She knows there's conflict happening.

Aron Carlson: And I'd add in turn her own anxiety.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: We spoke about a term earlier. I introduced the term of co-construction to the extent in this vignette that John is punitive in the way that he responds to Sophie, Eliza rushes and to protect. And it's really interesting to think about the way that, to the extent that this is happening here, it impacts this other person here. And also in family systems it's pretty, pretty endemic. We co-construct each other. Um, and so again, the more that we are able to be settled, the managing ourselves, the more resilient we are as parents and the more our children will develop to, uh, resilience.

James: I call that, I call that relational wealth. It's like if I want, you know, if I passed a million dollars onto my kids, that would be one thing, but if I pass onto them the ability to love and be loved, that's even more valuable.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: I think, um, one of the most loving things we can do is to really get a handle on ourselves as, uh, individuals, uh, and certainly as parents. But boy, it's really hard when there's so many things that are pressuring us, right? We have so many agendas going on. The idea that we need to try to impart things with our children or to keep them safe, or,

James: Okay.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: certainly so many other factors going on. We'll be talking a lot about issues of self as it affects us and our parenting at the training that we'll be doing in November. We also will, interesting to think a lot, think about self-soothing and, and what actually is involved, because I think you can see how, you know, I bet if we were able to hook these three family members up to heart rate variability, machine monitors, everybody would be having stress responses. So the idea of how do we self-soothe, how do we monitor our physiology? How do we get out of our heads when we're getting overwhelmed and we can't think very clearly because we're so affected by our emotions. able to learn how to really self-soothe and calm ourselves and quiet ourselves is a really, really key thing for us to know how to do. I think it's not necessarily intuitive, particularly when we're interacting in situations that create a lot of stress.

Aron Carlson: That's where I think the, the, the kind of most common challenge with this phenomenon is, you're going to be in the worst shape to know what, what's happening to you and to work with yourself when, if you. Can do that, it would have the maximum amount of benefit for you and your kids. But the way that it comes to us is you're going to, you're gonna be in bad shape first.

James: So we find if I were in this kind of conflict with my wife. would, I, I think about it in two different ways. It's like self-soothing, where like, I have some time, so maybe I go out and I go for a run or I go for a walk. That's like one type of self-soothing. But the other type is just self-soothing in the moment. So can I handle myself and calm myself down without interrupting the conversation? And one thing, I'm always learning new things, but the thing that I've been really working with this month is I try to feel two different things at the same time. So like two different textures with my hands. Like one hand on my shirt, another hand on my hair, or something like that. And there's connecting with physical reality that helps me calm myself down because in the physical world, I actually am okay. And it's in this world of ideas where all my anxiety lies because my wife isn't really a threat to me. Like she's okay. I mean, she disagrees and she disapproves, but physically I'm still okay. And so by making contact with the physical world, even like touching the desk or touching my pants or something, there's something really calming about that for me.

Aron Carlson: One of the things that I think is useful to consider is the, the difficulty of questioning the picture of reality your mind is putting together when you're reactionary and to consider that how you're feeling and what you're seeing. May not be reliable for making accurate sense out of what's happening around you or even inside, but, but to be able to go, wait a minute. maybe what I'm feeling right now and what I'm seeing isn't as reliable as I think. I think that's a very difficult thing to be able to do, and kind of the beginning of the approach that Kristen and I are, are, are offArong, um, in terms of to be able to function differently in situations where you have somewhat of a predictable response pattern as a parent, the internal process that you're experiencing has gotta be unpacked and identified more specifically to the point where you can see somewhat of what's happening and question it yourself. Um, and after that point, I think is when the more. Kind of straightforward, uh, self-soothing, self-soothing practices are most helpful. Breathing, movement, texture, touch, that kind of stuff because you, a lot of the times we don't know how far off we are and it's not gonna occur to us that we've lost our mind temporarily. And if, if we don't do something, we're probably not gonna get it back before we say or do something that makes things kind of unworkable at the.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: Yes, I think you're talking about the ability to take a third view. Um, you know, we talk a lot about being a fly on the wall, but it is a very difficult thing if you don't recognize you're underwater and your thinking is terrible and you're so susceptible to your emotion. So we'll certainly be talking about this term regression, um, in the workshop that we'll be offArong, uh, in the fall. And also just the importance of being able to confront ourselves, really being able to have a resilient collaborative relationship as parents. It begins and ends with self confrontation. being able to do it in a meaningful way so that, know, uh, it's, it's, it's, it, parenting can be really demanding, but being able to have flexibility so that we can come back do really meaningful repair, uh, is, uh, one of the biggest gifts more than that million dollars that we might have to give our children, I think. For sure. So, so do you have any other thoughts about what we have or haven't covered James questions for us?

James: No, I think it's fantastic. Um, has been a journey for me. I have four children and I have, I've been on a journey the last few years of repairing relationships with my adult children who kind of suffered under my lack of understanding of these things that I've been learning recently. So, I'm a firm believer, you know, the things we want in the world are, are to love and be loved, and we want our children to thrive. And so what you two are offering is, is a ticket to, to that third part is what can I do as a parent that will make it much more likely that my children will thrive? And there's few things that are more important to most parents than that.

Aron Carlson: It's, it's a, it's a ticket by way of whatever you need to go through in your own process. So that's one of the things that I think is important to consider that I. You, you don't know what it's going to require, and you don't know how long it's going to take to be able to function better in the same situations where you're having difficulty usually for understandable reasons. And that's part of the anxiety tolerance demand that's on a parent. But what I've learned from working with parents and kids is that kids do don't need their parents to be perfect. And it really means a lot to the most of the time to see the parent effort to try to get themselves together when it's clear to both of them that the parent isn't together. And that really seems to impact child functioning a lot. And so we all kind of have to make messes and run into the closed doors of our limitations. To be able to open them and thrive, but it's not a clean, kind of easy thing. It's, it's tough and it's uncomfortable and not for the faint of heart.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: It's very hopeful. I think about a statement that Dr. Schnarch made. We were at a workshop and he said, I bet you'd love to hear this, the secret about parenting. So we all had our pens. We were ready to write. not that you won't mess it up. your capacity to see it, to step back, to see it, and to do meaningful repair. not that we won't mess it up, but it is, uh, certainly we're, we're ahead of the game when we recognize you're probably in worse shape than you, right, than you think you are. That's a great way to approach parenting. and again, I think we bring a lot of heart and compassion, to, to the, the training. It's a, it's a privilege to to be able to do this work. we really appreciate you inviting us to join you today, James.

James: Tell me a little bit more about the format of the training. You said it's gonna be a two day online event, and there's gonna be interaction and I mean, what, what is it gonna look like?

Aron Carlson: It's broken down into four or five topics. Kristen has mentioned the names of the topics, differentiation, mind mapping, also called theory of Mind, regression, traumatic Mind Mapping and Repair. That's basically the topics and there is some background information about what those things are and where they come from. intertwined with vignettes, interactive exercises, questions posed to the group. Getting feedback from group members about their experiences with some of these, some of these topics in their own lives. And also videos that illustrate the kind of interactions that we've described in our vignettes. So we'll be able to play into interactions between parents and kids, and then see sort of similar to what we did tonight, what those viewing put together. And unpack that a little bit and note some of the variety of interpretation and meaning and also physiological and emotional response to them. And then help connect that with concerns that the parent participants have in their own parenting lives. So we do the topics in kind of a developmental order, starting on day one. And by the end of the second day we're mostly focused on what have you learned about what happens for you and how do, what are your thoughts about how to operationalize this at this point? So we try to make it very experiential, with some groundedness in the research that's been done in the field that supports this. And also to support the parent participants in being able to construct a a third view or a new point of view of their own parenting.

James: Sounds amazing. I love the idea that, I love the idea of having the interaction and being able to do the vignettes together.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: So it will be very, very experiential and also interactional, much like we've been able to do here this evening. It's really been a lot of fun to share ideas and reflect together and look a bit more deeply at this one little vignette that we've put together.

James: So I will put a link to this to this workshop in the show notes, and anyone is welcome to attend. It's gonna be over two days in early November, and I also will add links to Kristen, your website and Aron's website. And then people can reach out to you if you have any questions. Is there anything else you'd like to leave people with?

Aron Carlson: I hope what we discussed is meaningful to you all and struck a chord and let us know if so, and thanks for putting this together and and having us on.

James: It's fun talking with you about it.

Yeah, such a pleasure to talk to both of you. And I am so grateful for the work you're doing. It's so important. So it's so important.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: We're happy to answer questions that you might have just based on anything we have or haven't covered this evening. So I just wanna put that out there as well. Happy to be a resource if we've still stimulated some food for thought and we'd be happy to respond to those questions if you have any.

James: Excellent. Yeah, I will include links to your websites where I'm sure people can contact you if they need to, I look forward to seeing you both again soon.

Kristin Areglado Hurley: you so much.

Aron Carlson: Thank you, James.

James: All right. Bye.