Cultivating Resilience + Managing Stress through Times of Uncertainty with Dr. Tovah Klein, PhD

… seems timely, right?

My guest today, Dr. Tovah P. Klein, Ph.D. is the author of Raising Resilience: How to Help Our Children Thrive in Times of Uncertainty. In her role as a researcher and professor and in direct care with parents and children for over thirty years, Klein has helped to define what every child needs to thrive, regardless of their life situations.

In our episode today, Dr. Tovah breaks down the 5 critical pillars that are the roots of resilience our kids need to be okay when things are not okay. She shares strategic ways to change how we react to our kids’ negative emotions and how to feel much more equipped to know what to focus on.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVERED...

• What Resilience is NOT and how our good intentions backfire
• The 5 Critical “Roots of Resilience” we can instill
• The recipe for our kids to love themselves for who they are

DON'T MISS-

• A pep talk if your child is rigid and/or loses it when things don’t go their way and you fear they’re on track to be entitled, spoiled or selfish!

// CONNECT WITH DR. TOVAH KLEIN //
Website: TovahKlein.com
USA Today Bestselling Book, RAISING RESILIENCE
Instagram- @tovahklein

I believe in you + I'm cheering you on.
Come say hi!  I'm @‌parent_wholeheartedly on Insta.
Apply to work together: parentingwholeheartedly.com/Apply

Transcript

Dr. Tovah Klein  0:00  
The myth is they're supposed to be happy all the time. That's not showing resilience. Resilience really is handling all the hard stuff that happens when things don't go your way, when bad things happen when unexpected things happen. It prepares them to face hurdles throughout life because the one guarantee about life is that there will be uncertainty and there will be bad stuff. That's a guarantee. You know, people don't like to think that or hear that or believe it, but I think our role as parents is really to prepare them to say, yeah, when bad things happen, you're going to still be okay. I'm gonna still be here for you, and I trust that you'll get through it.

Danielle Bettmann  0:49  
Ever feel like you suck at this job? Motherhood I mean. Have too much anxiety and not enough patience?  Too much yelling, not enough play? There's no manual, no village, no guarantees. The stakes are high. We want so badly to get it right, but this is survival mode. We're just trying to make it to bedtime. So if you're full of mom guilt, your temper scares you, you feel like you're screwing everything up, and you're afraid to admit any of those things out loud - this podcast is for you. This is Failing Motherhood. I'm Danielle Bettmann, and each week we'll chat with a mom ready to be real, showing her insecurities, her fears, her failures, and her wins. We do not have it all figured out. That's not the goal. The goal is to remind you, that you are the mom your kids need. They need what you have. You are good enough, and you're not alone. I hope you pop in earbuds, somehow sneak away, and get ready to hear some hope from the trenches. You belong here, friend, we're so glad you're here. 

Danielle Bettmann  2:03  
Hey, it's Danielle. So the topic of helping our kids thrive in times of uncertainty and making sure our stress doesn't screw up our kids, seems kind of relevant, am I right? So my guest today is Tovah Klein, PhD, the author of Raising Resilience, How to Help Our Kids Thrive in Times of Uncertainty, and her first book, How Toddlers Thrive, What Parents Can Do Today for Children Ages Two to Five, to Plant the Seeds of Lifelong Success. She's the director of the Barnard College Center for Toddler Development and a psychology professor at Barnard College and Columbia University, in her role as a researcher and professor and in direct care with parents and children for over 30 years, she has helped to define what every child needs to thrive, regardless of their life situations, working worldwide with programs addressing the needs of children, she is highly sought after as a developmental expert on a range of timely topics and an advisor to children's media and organizations, including National Geographic Kids, Apple TV and more. In our episode today, Dr Tovah breaks down the Five Critical Pillars that are the Roots of Resilience. Our kids need to be okay when things are not okay. She also speaks to our good intentions and fears as parents like our kids being entitled or spoiled when they have a hard time, when things don't go their way, and how to change the way we understand that situation and react in those situations. And if it is important to you that your child finds ways to love themselves for who they are and have self-confidence. Dr Tovah gives us a detailed recipe that makes that possible, so you can now feel much more equipped to know what to focus on. So tune in to hear your next steps and find her book to dive even deeper. Here is my conversation with Dr. Tovah Klein.

Danielle Bettmann  4:02  
Welcome to Failing Motherhood. My name is Danielle Bettmann, and on today's episode, I'm joined by Dr. Tovah Klein, PhD. Thank you so much for being here. Just real quick. I know we shared your bio, but that's all formal. Go ahead and give us a quick intro. Who are you? Who's in your family?

Dr. Tovah Klein  4:20  
I am Tovah. I am a Psychologist. I am the mother of three young men ages 20, 24, and 26 and I'm from New York City. I live in New York City. I raised my children there, and they are a little spread out, one in college, one local, and then one in the Philadelphia area, and I'm coming up on my 30th wedding anniversary.

Danielle Bettmann  4:46  
Congrats! That's exciting.

Dr. Tovah Klein  4:48  
It's a lot of work.

Danielle Bettmann  4:51  
That's a great way to sum up marriage. So we have a lot of your, like, actual expertise to dive into, and we will do that in a second, but I always like to get to know our guests a little bit on a personal level. So for you, early motherhood, what were a couple of the challenges that you faced?

Dr. Tovah Klein  5:09  
I faced several challenges getting pregnant. So that was hard. I was basically told my whole life it would be very difficult for me to get pregnant because I was one of those irregular cycle people, and then I got pregnant right away, miscarried, and had a molar pregnancy, which has all kinds of complications, and I was already in my 30s, so a lot of worry about whether I could ever have children. And then I had one at 34 one at 35 and one at 40. So overcame that. But I don't want to minimize how hard several miscarriages were, and I think one of the hardest things was how I understood motherhood.  I thought how hard could this really be? I've wanted to be a mother my whole life. I had a career going, and then I had this baby, and he and I had trouble nursing, and he was losing weight, and I was completely sleep-deprived and depressed, but I didn't know that. And so it was. It was a murky start to life, and then juggling a career, which was, you know, in the early stages, let's say, and trying to figure out how was I possibly gonna take care of this baby. And then two babies, they were kind of back to back my first two, and having a career was very, very stressful for me, so that was the beginning, but that sort of was like an overlay, and then there was an incredible joy and connection, and I just could never have possibly imagined. Even though I worked with young children, with infants, with toddlers, with children, for many years, it was like where my heart and soul were. I could never have imagined the kind of connection and joy that would come from it. So it was both.

Danielle Bettmann  6:49  
I totally feel you on that. I worked with kids a lot before becoming a parent, and you just don't understand how different the parent-child relationship truly is when it's your own. So special, absolutely, and I think, you know, so rewarding in the long run, but it doesn't make it any easier, not every day, not every moment. Still long days or long years. How close in age were your first two?

Dr. Tovah Klein  7:17  
My first two are exactly 23 months apart. 

Danielle Bettmann  7:20  
Okay, yeah, mine are 15 months. 

Dr. Tovah Klein  7:24  
Oh, that's really close.

Danielle Bettmann  7:25  
It was a blur. Yeah, we survived. I, of course, wouldn't change it now. They have each other, which I love, but yeah, it was a real touch, and go there for a little bit.

Dr. Tovah Klein 7:37  
Yeah, I always tell parents, I mean, I can use it now to help people, support people, you know, in my work and whatnot. But, you know, having two babies is really hard, in a way that I don't even see people in my field writing about or talking about. But two babies is hard. And then when we were going to have our third, and I was already 40, people were like, are you crazy? You're going to go back. I just kept saying it'll be one baby this time like I had, I guess, a four and a half-year-old and a six and a half-year-old when the third one was born. I don't want to say it was easy, because it was very hard that, you know, just the chaos of three, but it was just one in diapers, one fully dependent, somehow there was a freedom to that.

Danielle Bettmann  8:21  
I can totally see that, because I think for a while, it was more challenging to have essentially Irish twins, because it wasn't like they were twins that could be on the same schedule or the same level. It was like they were opposites. One would get up from the early nap, and then you have to put the other one down, and then vice versa, and they both be waking up and, like, need different things. And yeah, it is that you're right. Nobody really talks about that, like toddlers and babies, because they're still very, very little.

Dr. Tovah Klein  8:52  
And they're very dependent. You know, there's complete dependency, not infant dependency, but the exhaustion, the physical exhaustion of very little ones that starts to move forward as they get a little older, like all of that. So many of us, I think, particularly well, not only, but you know, say women having children older and having these two back to back,  I felt so fortunate, because after all this trouble getting pregnant, suddenly I was pregnant, like, surprise, surprise. And I thought, Oh, how great, you know, but it is when you're in the thick of it with a couple of little ones, it's really a lot. 

Danielle Bettmann  9:31  
It really is, yeah, so sending sanity to all those in that spot right now. 

Dr. Tovah Klein  9:36  
I promise you it will pass. It does pass. But it's hard when you're in it, yes.

Danielle Bettmann  9:42  
It doesn't get easier. It shifts. It goes from, you know, physical care routines to more of a mental, emotional, mental load. But yeah, no, I think it definitely does get better. You will survive. So take us through a little bit of the career path, and journey that you've been on.

Dr. Tovah Klein  9:59  
So my field of psychology, I studied Clinical Psychology in graduate school, but with a lot of focus on Developmental Psychology. And what that means is, I've always been interested in how that person develops, and what can we do to support them and the parent-child relationship, which I got interested in very early on. I write about it in my book Raising Resilience, which is that I actually got to videotape when I was in college the attachment paradigm. So a child with a mother, and in those days, we only thought about mothers. Now, we think about mothers and fathers, but in those days only mothers and I watched these dyads go back and forth and thought, wow, this relationship really, really, really matters, and I want to understand it. And then I worked within various situations with children who had been pretty severely traumatized, you know, including homeless children in New York City with their families, but they were living at homeless shelters where I worked. I was in graduate school during the crisis of Pediatric AIDS, and I got very interested again in how some children seem to be buffered by their parents, and what was going on there. And that led me to a career really studying the parent-child relationship on the science side, and running a wonderful center at Barnard College in New York City called The Center for Toddler Development, it's a community program like a pre-preschool for one-and-a-half to three-year-olds. I got to observe young children and parents every single day and caregivers. First of all, it's delightful and joyful, but it also gives me a deep dive into relationships, which, over time, became relationships of older and older children. And then I run parent groups as well, where I really focus on the parents and what's going on with the parents, or discussion groups. So my whole career has really been about people and more and more the older years, you know, the middle school, teenage age because, in a career, when it's long enough, people keep growing up, coming back. So that's really my interest. My interest, on the research side, scientifically, is really around social and emotional development. What is it about emotions that either propel us forward or hold us back? And then, what is it about parents that allows them to buffer children from stress so that stress is okay with support, heavy stress is scary, but parents still play a really important role in helping children through it, and so in time and working with families in various crises, including after 9/11 and also, I was in Japan after the big tsunami in their north and really thinking about what children need to be supported through these really rough times, and parents as well. Then here we are through a pandemic. 

Danielle Bettmann  13:03  
Yes, okay, so perfect segue. You started writing your book at the beginning of the pandemic and then started to be able to kind of apply everything that you had been learning through these other crises to the pandemic. What did you pick up on right away that families were experiencing in early 2020- 2021?

Dr. Tovah Klein  13:28  
Yeah, so it's really interesting because I had this idea for this book back in like 2016. I thought, well, all the work I do on everyday challenges and supporting families is about uncertainty. You know, how's my child going to be today? Are we going to get out the door? What's their math test going to be? Like, you name it. And then the work in trauma that I did was also about really responding to crises with so many unknowns and uncertainties. So I plan to write this book and then put it aside. Then the pandemic hit. I was like, oh, this seems like we don't know what we're going into. It's pretty uncertain. So early on, I did a study of just over 100 families nationally. We did them on Zoom, which was new at the time, right? It seemed like, wow, we could reach people on this platform. It was about a year into the pandemic, and we asked them to really describe their experiences in that first year. These are families with at least one child who is eight or younger. They might have also had older. It's a qualitative study, and then we started looking at that data. You know, one of the pieces that jumps out from that and my work with families through the pandemic, I also ran a program outside for children through the first year of the pandemic, and it was cold in New York City, was that the uncertainty really pulls for people to come up with routines. It sounds so basic, but it's true in our daily lives, every single day. But it becomes important in a crisis of some kind of change. If you remember, at the beginning of the pandemic, we didn't know what was going to happen or how long this would last, I was one of those people who thought, oh, a couple of weeks, and now I've had a couple of months, we'll be back to normal, even though people were saying to me, you're wrong and I was wrong. And so what we hear over and over from parents is first sort of the shutdown, and then the kind of the chaos, work from home, having a child online, or two or three for school, no childcare for younger children, and then coming up with reorganization, and people moved to it pretty quickly. It felt very chaotic, but there was like a rearranging of furniture, whether it was a house, a living room, or a small apartment. Like, how are we going to do this, multiple roles of our lives at once, and then coming up with routines that rigidly? I don't know if you remember, at the beginning, there was all this stuff online of, you know, here's how you do routine. They got very rigid.

Danielle Bettmann  16:08  
Perfect little homeschool, virtual.

Dr. Tovah Klein  16:11  
Yes, exactly, exactly. Then I was hearing from people like I'm losing my mind. I can't stick to that. I was saying, loosen it up, you know, organize it around meals. You know what time your child has to be online, they don't need to be online all day. Figure out and chunk it. Do the same thing with your work. You sort of chunk it. I can be available at these times, not those times if that is possible for somebody in their job. Then once people started to get routines, and they got back to like, oh, I can still do bedtime if I have younger children. I can still have rules for my older children, basic rules of the house, not rigid. Then there started to be a rhythm, and people adjusted and adapted, and that's really what we call resilience, right? This is adaptation. Can you take the stress or the crisis in and then figure out what's needed and be flexible enough to change? Even if you don't do it initially, because most of us were so charred, and that's what we see over and over again in times of crisis, but we also see it every day, like, think about, you go to you take your child to school, and they find out that the teacher is not going to be there, that there's a substitute, and they're so upset, and yet they go in and they adjust, you know, the substitutes, not their teacher. Maybe the substitute is funnier, or maybe they got to do extra music time since their teacher was out they adjust to these things, even if they don't like it. They adjust because we as parents help them. We help them do it. That's really flexing the muscle that says I can respond to stress and I can get through it, which is what we want our children to be able to do in life. 

Danielle Bettmann  17:59  
Absolutely, I hear that a lot from parents, when they talk about their long-term goals or their concerns for the behaviors that their child is experiencing, and they'll report that they seem so rigid when things don't go their way, they lose their mind. You know that really worries me, and what can I do? I think you're right, it just centers around this entire muscle and skill set around resilience that as parents, we didn't have a formal lesson plan on. So we're really shooting from the hip and hoping for the best, and that does not always give us enough peace of mind to keep going, especially right now, we're talking just after the US election. There's another big wave of uncertainty coming, and understandably, a lot of parents are worried, trying to prepare, but not knowing how to prepare. And so it's a very timely conversation. So speak again, kind of broadly, about resilience as a whole. And why is it so critical? Why do kids need it? 

Dr. Tovah Klein 19:04  
Yeah and particularly critical that we think about it in times of heightened stress. So you can think of post-election for some people, not for everyone, but for many people, it's a time of heightened stress and it's a time of unknown. So I think of resilience as this dynamic between the parent and child. You know, often people think, oh, resilience is a dough so my child has it, or they don't. I think probably for the better, that's not the case, right? We see resilience when something bad happens, you know, can my child get up again? Can I recover? That's sort of when we show it, but it's building all the time in this back-and-forth relationship between parent to child, even for your older children, like we forget, even our teenagers really need us, particularly when they're stressed or worried or have questions. So I think of it as that ability to adapt and adjust and be flexible that I mentioned. It's built over time in this relationship, and it's built because the parent is there saying, this is hard, I'm here for you. Or this is hard, we're going to get through it together. So it's both recognizing the stress of what's going on. It's not sweeping it under the carpet, which, by the way, it's almost impossible to do right, because we're tense when things go wrong, and then the child feels that, which in many ways, is scarier. Uh oh, my parents are saying everything's okay. It doesn't feel like everything's okay. So you can address it, you know, you put it out there. Yeah, this is hard right now. Or we're a little worried about something, or a lot worried about something, but we're going to be okay. And I think what's really pertinent right now, where we're facing new waves, new horizons post-election, is that we still have to stick with today. And what we tend to do as humans, what we tend to do as parents, for sure, is we worry about what's next and what's tomorrow, what's in three months, which, of course, we're planners, and you have to be right? You need to have food in the house for the week, where you're not only working out today, but what children need, and what teenagers need is for us to be thinking about right now, because the child who was upset in the morning, and you still need to get them out their door into school, is not necessarily upset at four o'clock when you pick them up or when you come back home to them. And so what children need is for us to move with them where they are, which can be hard. I think as parents, you know the listeners, the mommy's listening to this, is this pulling back and saying, what do I need right now? A lot of my book is on these reflective questions, right? How do I get to know myself? Because the work almost always is with ourselves before we can help our children and so really thinking about, what do I need right now to keep me grounded, to keep me not so stressed, because there are things I can change and there are things I can't change. So it's that whole issue of control. What uncertainty does is completely undermine our sense of control, and take us out of a balanced state. You know, we call it biology. It's called homeostasis. So if you think of it this way, it literally jars every cell in our body when we're certain. Then our arousal goes up. Our brains go into this kind of either true fight or flight mode, or some version of that, and what we have to do is bring ourselves back down and say, okay, things are shaky in the world right now, or in my personal life, or my community, I need to figure out a way to be steady and the more we look inward at ourselves, and you don't have to be overly even psychological on this, but to say, what can I do for myself right now? That might be a cup of tea. You know, in the pandemic, I was saying to parents, if you can get up five minutes before your first child wakes up just five minutes or 10 minutes and have a cup of tea by yourself, that will be your alone time because you're in a crowded house and a shutdown, it's literally taking care of yourself or saying, what friend can I reach out to, whether it's a text or FaceTime, even for five minutes. These don't have to be big, heavy lifting. You can do them from where you are, but we really have to do it, because we owe it to the children then to be able to turn to them and say, I've got this even when we're stressed. 

Danielle Bettmann  23:38  
Yes, so true, and I think we're so quick to ask ourselves the opposite question, which is, what does my kid need? And continue to go down that rabbit hole of troubleshooting, of, how do I fix their mindset? How do I get them to stop being so rigid, and how do I make them see bigger than this moment? And what can I do for them, and then burning ourselves out completely and not realizing that self-awareness piece? So I think it's valuable to also name what resilience is not or other myths or kinds of misconceptions that you often like to kind of debunk or address.

Dr. Tovah Klein 24:20  
Yeah, that's a great question. So often people will say to me, and usually about their child, my child's not resilient. I say, why? Well, you know, he got into this argument with his friend, and he never wanted to talk to the friend again. I say, actually, this is your opportunity. So often when we think, oh, my child's not resilient, it's actually an opportunity to interact with them in a way that's going to build more resilience in them over the long haul, which is that resilience builds over time. It's not a one-shot deal, fortunately. So when they're fed up with that friend and they've had this falling out, they say, I never want to speak to them again. It's a moment to say, I get it, sit with them in it. They're allowed to feel that way. Then sometimes it's five minutes later, sometimes it's the next day. They're like, you know when I go to school today, I'm going to see if I can play at recess with that friend. Say, great, try it. Let's see.  Then you reflect on it when they come home. I say how'd it go, if they want to, often, they're like, ah, leave me alone. I got this, but that is resilience, right? I went back. I got through it, but it's not always on our timeline, and so we're quick to say a child doesn't have what it takes to get back up. I think one of the myths about thinking about resilience is that there's this assumption that when something goes wrong, the child falters or falls or fails, they should get right back up and be like, hey, that was fine. I'm good now, when, in fact, it's a process. The process includes a lot of negative emotions on our part as a parent, and the child's part. So a big piece of helping children build what we call resilience, I see it really is, how do we help children become decent human beings? Because when you have the wherewithal to face hard moments, even if you don't do it well at the time - it's messy, you then become more trusting of yourself, but also more caring about others. Why? Because if I learned that I can handle things, I don't have to be so hard on other people. I don't have to go to knock somebody down just because they're down, you actually gain empathy. Oh yeah, I remember when that happened to me, and I didn't like it, right? So that's a process of saying to a child, yeah, that is a bummer. Yeah, you are mad. You have a right to be mad. You can be upset about this, rather than doing what we always want to do, which is to make our children happy. Because I'm a mother too, I'm the happiest when my children are doing great.

Danielle Bettmann  27:01  
Yes.

Dr. Tovah Klein 27:02  
You probably are too, right? We're like, yeah, everybody's good. So it's so much a part of sitting with these negative emotions, sitting with a child spiraling down and saying to ourselves, they're not going to do this forever. This is a moment in time. She's really angry. She won't be angry forever, and allowing them to be in that space. I don't want to talk to you. They go to their bedroom, shut the door, slam the door, I don't want to talk to you. Which teenagers and you know, those approaching teens do a lot, and then they come out and they say, I want to talk to you. You're like, what? So you know that the ability to allow them to have the negative is not that they're not resilient. That's the myth. The myth is they're supposed to be happy all the time. That's not showing resilience. Resilience really is handling all the hard stuff that happens when things don't go your way, when bad things happen when unexpected things happen, and it prepares them to face hurdles throughout life. Because the one guarantee about life is that there will be uncertainty and there will be bad stuff. That's a guarantee. You know, people don't like to think that or hear that or believe it, but I think our role as parents is really to prepare them to say, yeah, when bad things happen, you're going to still be okay. I'm going to still be here for you, and I trust that you'll get through it.

Danielle Bettmann  28:38  
So powerful.

Danielle Bettmann  28:46  
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Danielle Bettmann  30:40  
I think our best intentions as parents often send us into trying to explain away with logic and reasoning why it's a good thing for them to have a substitute that day, or why it's fine and why they need to call that friend up and play with them again right away and apologize or like, not only is it really uncomfortable for us to see them in pain or to watch and experience those negative emotions for ourselves, so we're almost doing it out of our discomfort, but we also just want to instill this, like 30 plus years of life experience and perspective that we have and shove it into their brain so that they can kind of catch up to us. They're not there yet. I think the other big trigger to a lot of parents is that they'll interpret that child's negative emotions about things not going their way, as they're so entitled, they're so spoiled, how they're so selfish, they can't see outside of their shoes, and then that makes the parent kind of spiral, because now they're raising a bad person. So what would you speak to in that?

Dr. Tovah Klein  31:50  
Yeah, that's one of the most common questions I get. I don't want my child to be spoiled. I don't want my child to be ungrateful, and I don't either. I don't want any child that I know - my own, or anybody that I work with, and care about, to be spoiled or entitled. You know, depending on how much privilege somebody has, we feel like, oh, we've given them everything. But giving children everything can backfire, because really giving a child everything means stepping back, particularly as as they get older, they get a little more and then much more independent, stepping back, but saying, I'm in the background, and I'm here when you need me. In the book, I talk about a string, that there's a string between the parent and the child, and we let that string out more and more, and then the child tugs on it when they need us, and teenagers tug on it. Young adults tug on it right. So it's kind of there for them. But at home, they're supposed to be their full self, happy, sad, angry, snarky, and even have limits around it, but their full self, because we're raising them to go out in the world and be decent. So I always ask parents, what are you hearing from school when they're, you know, worried about the child just being, you know, Brad or whatever. They say oh, I hear, you know, he's an angel. She's great with her grandparents. Every neighbor says, please let her come to our house. You know he's he's a gem. That's because they're learning I can be my full self at home, and I'm going to be accepted and not shamed or humiliated when I say I'm not eating that for dinner, and the parent says, that's fine, but that's what's for dinner, and you know if you're hungry or not, but not coming down on them so hard for their attitude, or not saying you're not grateful that you have food on the table, but recognizing that at that moment, if they can push back, and the parent can have a limit, well, that's what's for dinner, so you decide if you want to eat or not. Then the child really builds this ability to say, I can express my feelings, it doesn't mean I'm a spoiled rotten brat if the parent has reasonable limits, like, no, I'm not making a second dinner, or I'm not running out to buy you that game that you want, or not downloading that next thing. We have enough right now, and accepting that the child's gonna be mad at us. None of us like when our children are mad at us, nobody.

Danielle Bettmann  34:27  
Yep, it doesn't mean that they're not allowed to. They have permission to feel their emotions and be disappointed and frustrated and feel like it's not fair. That's not a direct reflection report card on how we're doing as a parent.

Dr. Tovah Klein  34:41  
Yeah, it's not a direct reflection on us, and it actually allows them again to build this strength. Oh, even when I'm really mad at Mommy, even when I say something not so nice, she's still going to take care of me. At the end of the day, we're still going to come back together and have dinner and laugh again, because that relationship that we have with our children, that container, as I call it, that space between us and them, is literally this space that says, I can handle your emotions. I'm not going to shame you for it. I'm going to put up some limits, like you really feel that way, take some time to yourself, depending on how old the child is, but I'm not going to take it personally, and that's the work we have to do in ourselves, because it's very hard not to take our children personally, particularly when they're mouthing off, saying nasty things, and they're throwing it at us, and it's usually the mom, not always, but it's usually to the mom. I said the good news is they trust you. If they feel like they can be their full selves, and you've built that trust over time in them, they're not afraid that you're gonna, you know, shame them or send them away. But we have to allow them to do it within whatever limits we've set. I used to say to one of my kids, you know what? You can say all that stuff out of my earshot right now, and I'll be here when you're ready, because at some point, it's like enough, but you can do it without being cruel, and that's a piece, and then they learned from us because we're the role model. Okay, Mommy's mad too, and she's being at least a reasonable person in it. We are the rule. They learn how to be decent in the world because they see us being decent to them in their worst moments, but also how we treat other people. They watch us all the time. 

Danielle Bettmann  36:35  
Yeah, whether we like it or not, yeah. So true. I feel like that was a really important tangent, because it's really, really current and relative to a lot of the conversations I have with with my clients. So I know that there are listeners out there who are super curious about that perspective. So thank you for speaking to that. One of the quotes that I loved from your book was just in, I think, the intro, where it said, When parents stay connected and attuned and provide children with emotional safety and security, they create a protective effect against lasting harm, even in the toughest situations. I think that that can be really reassuring to parents because that's our goal, is the protective effect, and we know that they're going to face hard days. We know that they're going to have things happen in their life that we can't protect them from. So it does give us a sense of control to have something to be able to do and focus on our idea that's going to help our kids. So talk more about what that looks like. I know, in your book, you break it down in a lot of different ways, so go ahead and speak to that.

Dr. Tovah Klein 37:38  
Yeah. I mean, if you think about your relationship with your child, and if you have more than one child, you have a loving but different relationship with each child. Why? Because each child is different. I say it at some point in the book. I'm like, this might sound obvious, but let me state this. A relationship is two individual people. So in this case, you know a mother and a child, a parent and a child, and each child is different, and so there's nuance to that relationship. So the first thing you're doing, I call them the Five Pillars, is you're building this very important thing that we call trust, right? I trust that in my worst moments, this parent is going to be there for me and when they're not because we're all human, mothers, parents, we're human. We bring ourselves, we bring our past, we bring today, is that we're going to go back and reconnect. I mean, reconnection is so important, and it says to the child, I'm going to own my mistakes and I'm going to be there for you, and we're going to come back together. That reconnection really matters. So that builds trust. The child feels like this person really is here for me. What's important about that is that the child then develops trust in themselves, because if you trust that relationship, that kind of very primary relationship, the child learns I can trust myself, I'm okay, even when bad things happen. Then they go out in the world, and this is all connected to emotions, right? So what are we doing all the time with our children? We're helping them with emotions. I mean, that is the work, particularly of mothers, and you know, we call it emotion regulation. That's the psychology term or the scientific term. It goes on in the brain. But I always say it's head and heart because the heart and soul of a person are emotional, and so as we help them through time, learn to handle these emotions, all of them, the positive ones, and the negative ones. And if you have a really reactive child, kind of volatile child, with intense emotions, the work of being tuned into them is harder. So we have to work that much harder at moments, most phases pass. That's the good news. Then you get to know your child. Oh, this one is going to be really upset about this, or this stress is going to really get them into some meltdown mode, and you get better at predicting it, so then you can take care of yourself, to go back to them. Then they start to move out in the world early on., but then all of our parenting is about helping them gain what I call the Freedom Trail, like the sense of agency, as I can go out there, I could take some risks and learn about the world, learn about myself, and then connect to others. So that's the social connection, you know, depending on the age of the child, of any listener, you know, around four and five children really start to move heavily into their peer group. They want friends. We say the good news is, when you move from toddler to those ages, they want friends. They want to win over people in a positive way, and so their behaviors start to shift, plus they're getting a little more control. Then through elementary school, middle school, teenagers, they're on this Freedom Trail. How can I be independent in the world? And the more they feel a sense of I can do this, the more capable they become. Again, this is feeding into I can do this even when bad things happen. Then, you know, you come full circle with what I call these The Five Pillars, but it's not like a stage model or steps, right? Five pieces go together. So I write about sort of as the final on, but in many ways, it's the most important, it's the core, is how do you help a child learn to love and accept themselves for who they are? That starts with us as the parent, learning who our child is, learning to accept them for who they are, because being attuned to your child means being attuned to that person, not to who we wish they were, not to who we imagined they might be one day, but really accepting, maybe my child is not that athletic person I thought they were going to be. Maybe they're not the intellectual that I was hoping they were. Maybe they really love computer games, and I need to learn about computer games because that's what they love. So it's really shifting and for some children, that's harder than others, because if they're really not like you, you've got that social butterfly, and you're really happy being at home in a quiet place, it can be hard to understand why they want to be with friends so much. We have to then say to ourselves because that's who they are.

Danielle Bettmann  40:14  
Or vice versa for an outgoing parent to have a really, really shy, introverted child.

Dr. Tovah Klein  42:45  
Yeah, a really reticent child, or that child who needs a lot of warm-up. You know, I call them the observers. You know that I work with parents so often who say, she just wants to stand on the edge, and I say, forever? No, no, you know, an hour in she'll go there. They're just slow to warm up. I say, then let her do that. And you know that doesn't mean you can't try to nudge them forward and be like, hey, let's do this together. I'll be right here with you. But for us to understand, it's going to take this child's time, and I need to respect that. Then they start to move forward, but then you start something new, you're back to what they need to observe a lot. They need to stand close to their parent a lot. They don't want to try a lot of new things. I just had a parent say to me, well, I have a seven-year-old that doesn't want to do anything ever. I said, well, does he sit on a couch all day? No, but he doesn't want to do any sports, he doesn't want to do any art classes. I was like, but what does he do? Right? And she feels like he should be doing all these things because they've, you know, given him the opportunity. I said, what if you just stood back a little bit and said, I know that in time, you're going to find things that interest you. It's hard to do. One of mine was like this, nothing new, nothing new, nothing new. And yet, he's my biggest adventurer, probably, as an adult. I joke this because I let him stick so close to me for so long, I had to exhale, like, okay, you're not going to participate in that, but maybe we could watch. Then he found Little League, which he loved, loved, like, couldn't play enough baseball, but didn't want to do the traveling team that his friends were doing, like, I just had to keep moving with him. Okay, so you want to do this league and that league, we'll do those leagues. To this day, he likes to do sports, but on his own, you know, he gets together with friends and does that. So it's really saying, what does my child need? And what can I expose them to a little bit at a time? Or I have a very active child, we need to be outside a lot. That's not where I want to be, okay, but that's where your child needs to be. So there's a lot of shifting and accepting children for who they are. I have examples of it in my writing because I think in many ways, this is what says to a child, you know, we, as the parent, accept you. We're going to work really hard to understand you. Then the child goes, I'm okay. Otherwise, they say, what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me? And none of us intentionally do that to our child, but we can unintentionally do that when we say, why don't you like this thing? Or why can't you be more like that sibling who loves to play an instrument and is always happy for new opportunities? You know that really digs deep into the child. It is hurtful, even though we're not needing to hurt them. It's hurtful.

Danielle Bettmann  45:50  
No, I'm so glad that you dialed down into that because it is so incredibly important and foundational, and we really do discount it on the surface, because it's like, yeah, yeah, I love my kid, of course. But what is that? What does acceptance of who they are right now actually look like? it's pretty radical, actually, on a foundation-like parenting level, and it's very uncomfortable.

Dr. Tovah Klein 46:16  
It's funny you said that, because initially, I was like, let me write about radical acceptance and radical love, because, you know, that term really does wake us up to this person is not me, and I have to accept that in my love for this person, my job is to figure out who they are, as best as I can. None of this is perfect by any means, right? It's messy. It's very messy. It's not perfect, nor should it be, but I'm going to communicate, I'm trying to understand you, and I'm going to shift to understand what you need. I'm going to shift to providing that as best I can. So if going to loud places isn't good for you. We don't have to go, except, you know, maybe a big family party, and I'm going to help find a place at that big family party that's a little quieter, but when there's a celebration of Grandma's birthday, we do have to go in, and I'm going to help you be there. So it's this back and forth of saying there's nothing wrong with you. I'm gonna help you in the situations that you need to be in, and we're gonna figure out other situations that feel more comfortable. 

Danielle Bettmann  47:27  
How powerful. Now, I think that that is the work we have to do as parents, and it relates to what you said about, you know, 30 years of marriage, it's a lot of work, you know, we come in with a lot of the same expectations of the other person fulfilling these needs for us. You know, being this person we thought they would be, and then having to reckon with seeing them for exactly who they are right now, knowing that that is our person, and that's it, and it is radical, I think that's the way to describe it so that we can fully kind of conceptualize that it's going to look not like we expected.

Dr. Tovah Klein  48:04  
Yeah. I think if we prepare for the expected, that's similar to preparing for uncertainty, which is: this baby's not what I imagined. I mean, I even worked in the field for a long time before I had children, I thought, how hard could it be to have a baby? Women have done this through the millennia. They did it without any help. I see women who are far less emotional, sort of sturdy, financial capabilities than I had, like they're doing it right outside. How hard could this be? Then I had this baby, I was like, this is really hard. This is really, really hard. Love this child, baby the time. So I think when we go into it if we can say, look, there's gonna be a lot of unexpected, let me say that I'm gonna face those unexpected with support from maybe a partner or a friend or family, but not be quite so jarred as we all tend to be. Like, whoa, I never expected my child to be like this, to want this, to do this, and it's especially true when our children do what I call and I put it in quotes, "bad things" because we're, like, insulted. How could my child possibly think that behavior? It doesn't mean we're terrible people, right? Or they are. They're figuring out life, and that wasn't one of their better moments, and now we have to face it with them. 

Danielle Bettmann  48:09  
That is what I love so much about working with the families I do really closely, is they have really realized that, and they're coming to embrace it. They tell me, I want to get to know my child better. I want to be able to make the accommodations they need, change the way I communicate with them, and be able to work on the skills that I am missing for my stress management, and my emotional coping skills, so that I can show up better for them and prove to them energetically and with that credibility and trust in our relationship that I do not think that they're a bad kid and, you know, repair for the times in the past that I may have given them that impression, and just sit down and do that work now, because it's never too late.

Dr. Tovah Klein  50:29  
It's never too late. That's the good news. I always tell my college students, I teach these amazing Barnard and Columbia students. I mean, they're thinkers, and they're vibrant. I say, look, I never would have gone into psychology as a career if I thought it was too late, because that would mean people couldn't change. People can change. The older we get, the harder it might be, but takes more time, but we really, I think owe it to ourselves, meaning, it frees us up to say, yeah, there's parts of myself that I'm not so keen on. There are parts of my past that I wish had been different. How do I change myself and you know, shed our vulnerabilities, shed our shame? It's hard to be a parent. It's particularly hard to be a mother. There's so much expectation on us, and to say this is going to be pretty darn hard sometimes and really great other times and in between most of the time. But really shed those layers that say we're supposed to be perfect, we're supposed to be good. We're supposed to know. How are you possibly supposed to know what to do with an 11-year-old who comes in and mouths off at you? You're not supposed to just necessarily know, but you're gonna learn. You're gonna learn. 

Danielle Bettmann  51:51  
That software did not come pre-programmed, right? That's exactly why I don't work with the one on one anymore, either, because they realize that they need to be proven with another parent saying in words that they didn't have yet exactly how they feel, exactly what they experience, and knowing they're not the only one. Their kid isn't the only one, and they can finally shed that last layer of shame and feel safe enough to actually take on the work and feel good about it without beating themselves up all over again. It's so powerful.

Dr. Tovah Klein  52:29  
We are so hard on ourselves. I wrote about perfection in the book, because I kind of did a deep dive. I mean, the pleasure of writing a book is one of the many pleasures, it's hard but one of the pleasures is that I can really take a deep dive into certain things, like, okay, what is the buffering effect that helps us keep stress from ruining our children? But I really was like, okay, what do we know about perfectionism, and why is this so bad for us and then, consequentially, not good for our children? And DW Winnicott, who was a pediatrician and psychoanalyst, is the one who coined the term 'good enough mother', which you know, you see now is like 'good enough parent'. What he really writes about is, first of all, that it would be impossible to be perfect, which I think is amazing that he was writing about this in the 1950s really speaking to moms, you don't need to be perfect. Then he says, but it's impossible, but let's say you could be perfect. Somehow, that was a scenario. What he writes about is that it would actually be harmful to the baby. It's in our imperfections that the baby, who then becomes a child grows up, and learns I have to adjust with this person who loves me because sometimes they don't meet my needs right away. That's what builds what we call a relationship, that's the texture or the fabric of it is in the imperfection, right? You're not actually building all of that texture when things are going smoothly. You're building trust and love and things like that, but it's the messiness that gets you back that says, I'm sorry I yelled like that, or I'm sorry I didn't really know what you needed. I made a mistake. That gets you back, and that actually strengthens the relationship. So the more we can shed our perfectionism and think we need to do it right and beat ourselves up when we don't, the better for the child, certainly the better for us. But the other piece I'll add to that is that relationships are long-term. They're every day, they're multiple hours, and so children are forgiving when the basic relationship is one of: you can trust me, I can trust you. They can let go of things in time, maybe not at the moment, maybe they stay mad for right now, but each incident is little or big, because sometimes they feel very big to us, not always to the child you know, your 11-year-old might be sulking and come out of it quickly, and we're feeling terrible for a day, but the child's like, no, I'm good now. So we have to remember that the relationship is this piece that goes over time, over days, over the good and bad, and it's that relationship that allows children to be forgiving, and they are when we own all that stuff.

Danielle Bettmann  55:20  
Yes, that is the work, so well said, I feel like we could keep finding tangents to talk about for the next couple of hours that I know you need to go soon. So share with us - name your book, where we can find it, and how listeners can connect with you.

Dr. Tovah Klein  55:33  
Yes. So my new book is called Raising Resilience, How to Help Our Children Thrive in Times of Uncertainty, and it goes across all ages, toddlers, teens, you name it. I'm at tovahklein.com - t, o, v, a, h, k, l, e, I, n .com I'm also on Instagram, at Tova Klein, and on Facebook, How Toddlers and Children Thrive. You can buy the book anywhere books are sold at your local bookstore or online.

Danielle Bettmann  56:02  
Perfect. I will have all those links in the show notes so they're easy to click from. And the last question I have to ask you that I ask every guest that I have is, how are you the mom your kids need?

Dr. Tovah Klein  56:12  
That's a big question. I think I'm the mom my kids need because I have honed my listening skills, and I had to work on listening, not telling, not trying to problem solve, but listening. And over time, I got a lot of humor, so with three very different shoulders, humor and listening, I think, and a lot of love. I mean, there's so much joy.

Danielle Bettmann  56:43  
Oh, that's awesome. They are lucky to have you.

Dr. Tovah Klein  56:45  
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Danielle Bettmann  56:47  
We're lucky to have you as well. 

Dr. Tovah Klein  56:49  
This was really fun. Thank you.

Danielle Bettmann  56:50  
 Thank you so much for your time, for all of your research, for compiling it for us in such an easy-to-understand way, and for getting that out into the world, we will want to just spread the word so that more parents can feel, hopefully, what our listeners feel right now, which is reassured that they are on the right path, they are the person for the job, and we have the tools to help them feel more confident along the way. So thanks for joining us.

Dr. Tovah Klein  56:51  
Yeah, I hope so. Thank you.

Danielle Bettmann  56:52  
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Failing Motherhood. Your kids are so lucky to have you. If you loved this episode, take a screenshot right now, share it in your Instagram stories, and tag me. If you love the podcast, be sure that you've subscribed and leave a review so we can help more moms know they are not alone if they feel like they're failing motherhood daily, and if you're ready to transform your relationship with your strong, willed child and invest in the support you need to make it happen, schedule your free consultation using the link in the show notes, I can't wait to meet you. Thanks for coming on this journey with me. I believe in you, and I'm cheering you on.