The Power of Delight in Parenting Kids with BBBs {EP 226}

Robyn: I know that sometimes tackling topics like delight, I run the risk of kind of evoking some shame in folks. If you're a parent who is really feeling like finding delight in your child feels impossible, and then feels maybe some anger or some shame about that. I get it, and I don't talk about these topics because I want to poke, poke at those uncomfortable feelings for sure. And if what your nervous system needs today. What would be best for you in this moment is to pause this episode and listen to something else, or find a different episode on the podcast to listen to? Then I totally get it. Please take care of yourself. But I also, like I said, I want to, like, shy away from topics that I know are hard for y'all. Delight is one of them. Playfulness is one of them. I know that sometimes, when I talk about playfulness, a whole lot of feelings can can arise, and sometimes it can be anger, and sometimes it can be shame, and sometimes it can be this felt sense of like, great. Here's one more person telling me that I'm doing something wrong, or here's one more person who's telling me something is really important that I don't feel like I can do. And if those are the feelings that are coming alive for you in this moment, just know that those feelings are totally welcome. They make perfect sense. And in this moment you can decide, can you kind of hold those feelings and keep listening, or is it too much? And do you want to pause and come back later? Or go listen to something else, or go just do something else? The science shows us that delight is good. It's not just good, but many ways, it's crucial for our kids, and they're developing and healing brains. But also it's it's crucial for us. Number one, just as humans on the planet, like we, need to be delighted in as much as anyone else, and delighting, if we can, in our kids, is good for us.      

Robyn: It's good for us to experience that sensation of delight towards our child, especially a child who otherwise spends a lot of time in protection mode, and therefore we're just not having as many moments of shared connection and delight as we would really like to have in a relationship. Delight is a core ingredient of secure attachment. So I talk about it because it's that important. And again, it's not, I don't say that to evoke lots of guilt. I say that to just help us kind of get grounded in the science that if we looked back to the beginning of attachment research. We looked back at John Bowlby's work. We look back at Mary Ainsworth's work and all other significant contributors to attachment we learn about delight. Attachment research tells us that we come to know who we are through the eyes of the other. It's this very interesting contradiction, because I believe, based on the neuroscience, that we are born delightful, right? We are born perfectly imperfect. We burst into the world in that way. But we only know that's true. We only know we're good and delightful, and that we bring folks joy and a sense of pleasure, because we are looked at with eyes of delight and joy and pleasure. So there's, it's, there's this thing that's true. It's always true no matter what. So even even if we grow up not getting eyes that tell us that we're delightful and good and wonderful, we still are, but we only come to know that we are delightful and good and wonderful because somebody reflects that to us through their eyes and through their facial expressions, right like through all these nonverbal cues.      

Robyn: And now I know it's not true of all of your kids, but I know a lot of you listening have kids who had early life experiences where they weren't looked at with delight as often as they needed to. And that could be true in your little family. It could be true that because of what was going on for you, it was hard to be with your developing child in that way. And if that feels true to you, I send you only compassion and zero judgment. And some of you are parenting kids who spent their earliest days, months, maybe even years, in the care of somebody else who was struggling so significantly that they too could not show their child how perfectly delightful they are, the child that is now your child that you are now caring for. And there's so many good things about knowing that we're good and delightful and wonderful, but one of them is that we tend to behave in good and delightful and wonderful ways when we know that we are good and delightful and wonderful. We have talked on this podcast before, particularly there was that hope versus expectation episode that wasn't too long ago, I think, during this calendar year, and then way back at the beginning of the podcast, in my attachment series, we also talked a lot about hope versus expectation, but we behave in ways that evoke reactions from others that we're anticipating. So if we think that we're bad and disgusting, we tend to behave in ways that evoke folks to react to us as though we are bad and disgusting. This is completely unconscious. It's not manipulative. It's completely unconscious, and it is simply the way the brain works. This isn't unique to struggling kids. Now, if we believe that we are good and delightful and certainly not perfect, and occasionally do things we shouldn't do, and occasionally do things that other people find frustrating or angering or respond to with irritation, but that overall we are good and delightful. We tend to behave overall in ways that evoke feelings of goodness and delight from others. So we can see how important it is to learn about our own goodness, our own delightfulness when we are teeny, tiny, and that if we didn't get that opportunity to learn, that, if our kids didn't get that opportunity to learn, that for whatever reason.     

Robyn: That's going to impact them now that we want to look for ways to help them learn, now that they're good and delightful and that that is really, really tricky, because kids who didn't learn when they were teeny tiny, how good and delightful that they are. Now they're older, and frankly, again, we behave in ways that evoke the reaction that we expect from other people, and so if you're parenting a child who did not learn how good and delightful they were, they are going to behave in ways that evoke the reactions to them that they did learn. So I don't know what that is, that they're irritating, that they're frustrating, that nobody understands them, that they're confusing, that they're gross, that they're disgusting. I mean, that's really quite a wide range here, and when our kids believe those things about themselves, and therefore their implicit memory, in a way, propels them to do things that get confirmation of their beliefs. It is just so very hard to break that cycle and find ways to offer delight to our kids. Yet it remains so so important. Delight tells kids things like you're not just tolerated. Here, but you are deeply enjoyed. Delight creates these like shared moments together where you and I, or you and your kid come together in some resonance, and that resonance is good for both of you. It lights up both of your Owl brains, and the more the Owl brain lights up, the more that it grows right, the stronger that it can become. Delight sends messages of things like, you really matter. You're not too much. I like you and I love you even when you're not being very likable, and theoretically delight is regulating.      

Robyn: Now I say theoretically delight is regulating because delight is regulating in the way that connection is regulating, that when we have experienced connection as safe and regulating, when we have experienced delight as safe and regulating. We experience it that way, and a lot of us are parenting kids or caring for kids who haven't experienced connection as safe and regulating and haven't experienced delight. And if they haven't experienced delight, that means they've experienced the opposite. And so being delighted in can actually this thing that they're longing for, truly, truly longing for, but because they haven't gotten it, and because maybe instead, they've gotten quite a bit of the opposite. And the truth is, is that kids with sensitive nervous systems often do get a lot of looks of irritation and frustration and annoyance. Even the best, most attuned, not abusive parents are frustrated and annoyed and irritated with their kid with a sensitive nervous system, probably more than most kids get from adults. That's not criticism of the adults. That's just true. And I do think we want to work to be less irritated and frustrated, annoyed with our kids with vulnerable nervous systems, of course, of course, of course, of course. But it's also true that maybe before you found the show, or even since you've found this show, that it's hard to be human, and it's hard to be with somebody with a vulnerable nervous system, and that person with a vulnerable nervous system, maybe your child therefore gets more looks of annoyance or frustration or irritation than folks with a heartier, more resilient nervous system, but generally speaking, in folks with more resilient nervous systems who have had more experiences of secure attachment in their earliest months and years of life, delight is regulating. Delight helps to bring safety to the Watchdog and the Possum. The light helps to grow the Owl brain, or bring the Owl brain back.      

Robyn: But yes, it is so so so hard. Being in protection mode means one you're not going to behave in a very delightful way, generally speaking. So if you're parenting a kid who's in pretty chronic protection protection mode, they're probably not behaving in very delightful ways. But also parenting a child in chronic protection mode leaves us in chronic protection mode, and therefore it is hard to have Owl brained experiences like delight, like compassion, like connection. This is just being human. This is why it's hard to give delight, and you may be really grieving that truth about your relationship with this child, that the ease of serve and return, that maybe you didn't even realize you were expecting to be in, you know, this relationship with your child, you didn't even know you were expecting it to be there. But now that it's not there, there's a lot of grief about it. There's a lot of sadness about the kind of serve and return that is so pleasurable in delight in relationships and of course, many of us didn't get the delight that we needed and deserved when we were young and growing up, that we maybe had our own vulnerable nervous systems, or we had caregivers with really vulnerable nervous systems that we spent more time in protection mode, or our caregivers, other folks who were taking care of us, spent time in protection mode, and therefore we didn't receive the delight that we deserved, which is gonna, of course, make it really hard for us to give delight to other people. That's just kind of the nature of how things work.      

Robyn: Some of our kids are absolutely terrified to risk inviting delight. They are terrified to be delightful, right? They're terrified to be delightful because, well, maybe number one, what if nobody notices, and then they're proved right that they aren't good or delightful or bring delight to other people. Or what if someone does notice, sends, you know, a moment of delight in their direction. Then what they have to decide if they're going to risk receiving what they have been longing for, hoping for, and if they do risk it, then they may have to risk facing everything that they've lost, all of the moments of delight that haven't been reflected back to them in their lives, all of the moments of delight that they deserved to see, because it would have been an accurate reflection of who they are. And there's a lot of grief there, and this can create a really big internal crisis. It's this kind of unspoken question of, do I face everything I've lost in order to receive now what I've always deserved, what I've longed for, what I've needed, and for a lot of folks that it's just too hard, it's just too painful, it's too much of a risk. So instead of risking receiving delight by being delightful, right? They're more likely to make sure that they don't get a lot of looks of delight, because then they don't have to decide what to do with it, and then they don't have to decide if they can risk it so they behave in ways that are intentionally off-putting again. This is not manipulative. This is not intentional. This is just biological. This is just how brains work. When we look at kids who are behaving in very non-delightful ways, we can also consider that they're showing us a little picture of what lives inside of them. Kids with a history of trauma and chronic misattunement carry so much shame, they have such a sense of self-disgust. So they show us their shame and their disgust by evoking feelings of rage and disgust in us. And again, this is not unique to kids with a history of trauma. They're not manipulative. They're not purposefully, like pushing our buttons. Not any more than any other human does we all evoke in others what we are feeling. It's just that folks with a history of trauma feel really big things and then, therefore it's really easy for us to get really tangled up in it.     

Robyn: So all of this means that it's important for us to think about delight, be intentional about delight. Practice delight. Do it with a lot of intentionality and not just sort of passively experienced, which, if we're in a secure relationship, and both folks are, have a lot of security in their own histories, the light comes easier, we're in connection mode, we're in our Owl brains more, delight just emerges, and we can be relatively passive about it. But when we are in relationship with somebody who doesn't evoke a lot of feelings of delight from other people, we have to be on the lookout for it. We have to be intentional about it, and we also have to titrate it. I have an older podcast episode about titrating connection and the same ideas apply here that if we are parenting a child who's really, really actively rejecting delights, flooding them with delight is not the is not the next choice here, right? We have to incrementally give teeny, tiny, little doses, doses that could be received because they're not too much. I'll make sure that titrating connection episode gets linked too, because I think there's a lot in that episode that's directly applicable here. So here's a couple things to think about. Can you be on the lookout for moments of delight, small, tiny, little glimmery moments, a little sparkle in their eye, a silly, goofy thing that they do, right, some kind of, you know, creation, Legos or paints or or something, right? Be really on the lookout for little moments of Owl brain, little moments of connection mode, little moments where your child is feeling who they really are, and they're risking showing it.      

Robyn: We have to really keep a keen eye out for these and our kids who live so much in protection mode, and when you do notice it, see if you can pause. Now, you don't have to mention it to your kid or anything like that, but see if you can just pause. And it can be for just a moment or two, we don't need to pause and like spend 10 minutes journaling about that moment of delight we had with our kid. No, no, no, just pausing a moment or two to really notice what it feels like to delight in them, what it feels like to you, to delight in this child, just pause for one or two more seconds really notice it yourself, and also maybe see if it's possible. If you hang on to it for another minute or two, is your child willing to receive it for another Oh, I didn't mean to say minute or two. I meant to say moment or two. If you hold on to it for another moment or two, is your child able to receive it for another moment or two, and also remember that they might not show that they're receiving it, but mirror neurons, they matter. Mirror Neurons have an important job to do. And if you're having a moment of delight in resonance with your child, their brain is making a neural network out of your delight in them. And that matters. And that really, really, really matters, even if they give no indication that they're noticing your delighting in them or that they even like it. And maybe your child could tolerate you giving words to it. Maybe your child could tolerate you putting language to oh my gosh, that was so silly. You really crack me up. Oh my gosh. That really made me laugh. That put a huge smile on my face. Maybe your child could tolerate that? Maybe they can't. This is where the titration comes in. What can they tolerate and oftentimes we can scaffold it by starting, you know, smaller, slower, not for very long, and over time, you know, they can be bigger moments. We can pull them out a little bit longer, and I'm talking like five seconds instead of one, right? And then maybe we can bring explicit Owl brain Awareness to it too, and that's a way that we're titrating these shared moments of delight.      

Robyn: Now, if you're in a place with your child right now that risking giving them delight feels like too much of a risk for you, because you're feeling way too vulnerable to the rejection that very likely will come next from them. Then a way to scaffold yourself, a way to kind of titrate it yourself, is to find ways to have delightful memories of your child. So if you have photographs, or you have artwork, or you have, you know, a memory, some memorabilia. You have something that you could look at. You have something that could very intentionally bring up, a memory of your child when they were delightful.   

Robyn: And you could practice having a moment of delight, and kind of energetically sending a moment of delight out into the universe, really, because of this memory, this thought that you're having about your child. And this helps to scaffold you. This helps to titrate you. So if your child just cannot handle it, and they're gonna reject you no matter what, and that you're feeling too vulnerable to navigate that rejection, you can practice these moments without them even being around. This is good for your child, but this is actually really, really, really good for you. It is really good for your brain. It's really good for your neurochemistry. It's really good for your hormones, and it's good not just for your relationship with your child. It actually is good for you overall. It's good for your overall stress resilience. It's good for your overall nervous system. It's good for your overall health, if you can find more moments of delight in particularly some of these relational moments. And here's my final thought about delight. Ask yourself, who delights in you, and how much contact are you in with that person? Is this a relationship that you could maybe give a little bit more energy to so that you could get more looks of delight from someone? Is this a relationship that is really lacking in your life right now and and as you think about, huh, who delights in me? You're like, I'm not so sure about that. Well, number one, feel some of the grief and sadness about that, and then let's make a plan together. Let's make a plan for how can you find folks who can reflect back to you who you really are, which is delightful and good and wonderful and and all those kinds of things. Because in order for us to give delight, and particularly give delight to someone who's hard to give delight to, we have to be delighted in. We have to be delighted in. So find those people prioritize those relationships. They're really matter.      

Robyn: Now, if you're listening and you're a member of the club, I'm reminding you that in the resource library, we have a few things that can be helpful. Here we've got the small moments of connection resource that has, I just counted like 70 little moments of ideas for little moments of connection that could bring some delight. And then there's that new infographic that we just put in that Rose Lapierre made about small ways to repair a relationship when things are hard. I think that really fits into this category as well. So check those out. They're in the resource library. If you're looking for more, just come to the forum or, of course, just use the search bar. See if there's other things that can kind of fit into this delight connection category.      

Robyn: Y'all here's what I want you to take away from this. You definitely don't need to delight in your child all the time. We just want to see if there's ways that we can access moments of delight that are happening anyway, that maybe we're overlooking. So delight doesn't have to be about doing anything different or more. It can just be about noticing more. And then if you do notice, see if you can spend just one or two more moments inside that moment of delight, if you are still really in the trenches of being so overwhelmed, so baffled by your kids behaviors, and you haven't picked up a copy of Raising Kids With Big, Baffling Behaviors. I highly encourage you to do that. It's paperback, ebook, audio. I read the audio. You can get it really anywhere books are sold online. And of course, keep coming back to the podcast. Hit subscribe in your podcast player, so you get notified every time a new episode releases. Subscribe to my email lists, because I send lots of connection and goodness and delight out by email, consider coming to join us over in the club. I think the club is such a wonderful space for parents who one are looking for like more support and more resources and just more encouragement and being able to parent their child in this way and find more ways to delight in them, but also the club's a place to get delighted in. We delight in one another so beautifully. It is. It is one of my favorite parts of the club, and it is one of the things that the club members just do, so naturally and so spectacularly, is just delight in one another. And that matters. It matters for us and it matters for our kids. So I think I have a lot of different ways you could explore these concepts and in whatever ways work for you. Don't forget, I have a huge free resources section over on my website, so go check that out as well. And y'all, I will see you back here next week with our next episode. Bye!