Exploring Low Demand Parenting: Shifting Power Dynamics and Nurturing Trust {EP 142}

Robyn: Today I’m absolutely thrilled to introduce you to my guest Amanda Diekman. I only just met Amanda but we clicked immediately. Her first book Low Demand Parenting is coming out the week this episode airs and it’s excellent! Amanda beautifully tackles a topic almost no one is willing to talk about. How do we parent the child who is highly dysregulated by seemingly any demand or expectation? Those of you who resonate with Amanda’s experience are going to breathe a HUGE sigh of relief. Finally, permission to parent your child in the way they need without fear-mongering that you are being permissive or ruining their future. 

Robyn: This episode is so good, let’s just dive right in. 

Robyn: Amanda! I am so happy to be meeting with you this morning. Welcome to the show.

Amanda Diekman: Thank you, I am super thrilled to be with you and with your audience, this is a great honor.

Robyn: I have to tell the audience that I feel like our meeting has been quite serendipitous that I knew we had the same publisher, and reached out to my publisher and was like, “Hey, anyway, you can get me a little sneak peek of this book. I'm thinking about inviting her on the show.” And then like not even a week later, you contacted me. So I feel like this was just meant to be.

Amanda: Yes, I am really, really thrilled to join you and you had to find ways for our voices to mingle and the time to come. So this is really exciting.

Robyn: Me too, me too. So tell everybody just about the work that you do, and how we have kind of come to have this similarity and how we are with our families in the world.

Amanda: Yes, I live in Durham, North Carolina with three neurodivergent kids and a spouse. And I work online as @lowdemandamanda and I have through learning from my children and listening deeply to my own nervous system and my own brain wiring, learned so many ways of radically aligning with my children, while caring deeply for myself. And the process that we developed together became just the way we do things as a family. And eventually, I realized that this was a thing and it deserved a name. And that also that there was a process that we had developed together. And you're– we'll talk about this, but I'm autistic and one of the great gifts of having my particular autistic brain is that pattern recognition comes really naturally and easily to me. So I began to see this six-step pattern that we were working through every meltdown, every challenge, every difficulty, we were moving through the same steps. And so about a year and a half ago, I came out online as autistic and as a parent of children with severely dysregulated difficult behaviors. And I began talking about what we were doing, and I called it low demand parenting. And the journey since then has really been bringing parents out of these silent silos where they're suffering and ashamed and alone and feeling like nobody will get it because what I'm seeing is so dramatic and so scary and so difficult. And everybody around me tells me it's my fault. And also people who are actively practicing low demand parenting without knowing it's a thing. And without any support, and often with a lot of shame that they're somehow messing up because this flies in the face of so much of our modern parenting culture. So I consider myself like a gatherer I'm finding the people who are alone, and bringing them together under attend and a guide to help people begin to walk through these steps and to bring more of their own self-awareness and self-compassion in the process.

Robyn: I love the term low-demand parenting, because I'm a big fan of just labeling– like just giving words to reality. And there are so often I would say, so often, like, let's just make the implicit explicit, let's just make that– like it's happening anyway. Let's just give words to it. And especially with my background in attachment theory, that it is so damaging, to kind of exist in a world where there's a lot of stuff happening that we kind of always know is happening, but nobody's talking about the reality of it happening. And so when I first heard the words, low demand parenting, I think I probably had like this, this, you know, two-pronged sensation in my nervous system and one was just like, relief, like, “oh my gosh, there's the words finally for what we're looking for.” But then there is that little like, twinge right of like, “Uh oh, is this okay?” So I'd love for you to talk about that, like maybe even talk about in– go wherever you want to, you know, like what low-demand parenting looks like for you, you know how you really describe that? And then maybe we can get into that piece of like, how do we be okay with parenting in a way that's so counterculture. And in a way, like, does kind of feel like this big grand experiment. I know. I feel like that a lot in my own parenting. Like, I think this is right. It makes me– whatever right even means. But you know, like, I think this is okay. But what if it's not?

Amanda: Yeah. Oh, my gosh, yes. Okay, let's start with what low demand parenting is. So low-demand parenting is a practice, kind of like where yoga is a practice or training for a marathon is a practice. It is a practice of reducing expectations and dropping demands to align with your suffering child, right where they are. So if you think about traditional parenting, and probably the way most of us were raised, we were raised with the belief that expectations need to stay high. And that it's up to us to rise up to the expectations of the adults in our life. And that part of that process teaches us that we can do hard things and that we are strong. And we probably heard things like I didn't raise a quitter, and it's important for your coach for you to show up for the game. We are very much trained, that the expectations of others are the most important thing. And that our own work is pushing harder in order to meet those expectations. And then there were some people that couldn't do it, they couldn't push harder. And those people, often internalize beliefs, “like I'm bad, I'm not good enough, I will never be good enough.” And it leads to a total release, but in a very negative way. It's like opting out of the system out of believing that you could never participate anyway. And leads to all kinds of mental health concerns. And typically– often neurodivergent people are the ones who simply can't play the game the way that we were taught to play it. Either way, it leads to significant mental health concerns, honestly. And so in so many adults that I work with, it's important to go back to those early narratives and think about well, what did high-demand parenting really do for you? How did you cope? What did you believe about yourself in the process? And I think that that process of coming to terms with the way we were parented, and dominant parenting culture today is really important if we're going to begin to address that, like, the voice that you mentioned, of like, Is this okay? You know, a lot of people say like, “Well, I did it and I'm okay.” And I want to ask, Are you? Are you okay? Because I am not sure we are. Yeah. So that's, that's point one. So let's– thinking about coming to this point. Now, as parents of children, who are melting down and melting down regularly, what are they telling us? They're saying, This is too hard. And I love to define two categories. There's hard, and there's too hard. And the essential teaching that I want to offer my kids is the wisdom to know the difference inside themselves, not because I tell them what's hard and too hard. Not that I define it for them, because I can't, I'm not living in their nervous system. I don't know what their brain is doing. And so I define a demand as anything that is too hard in the present moment. So it may be a demand one day and not the next day because the moment has changed and the situation is different. Putting on shoes may be totally doable when they're doing it by themselves. And it may be totally not doable when a sibling is trying to do it next to them and bumping them with their elbow, like the particularities of what is too hard is so specific. And so part of what we are doing is training ourselves and training our children to simply ask the question, Is this hard, or is this too hard? And when it's hard, we do our best, we ask for help, we show up, we are resilient and strong. And when it's too hard, we let it go. Because dropping demands is actually an essential accommodation for ourselves and an essential part of feeling safe in the world. And that teaching our kids that we can let things go is like magic. Really, people are always asking me like, “What's the magic pixie dust that makes this better?” And I'm like, I'll tell you what it is. It's dropping demands. That's the magic pixie dust.

Robyn: Well, I love so much about what you just said, and especially that, you know, one of our ultimate goals is to help our kids or our humans that we're in a relationship with and ourselves get to know our own selves. Like what is hard, and what is too hard. And I love how you distinguish between the two and, yeah, when it's hard, let's figure out what we need to do, to kind of meet this challenge. And when it's too hard, let's just be honest, just say, “It's too hard.” And I also love how you said it varies. You know, one of the things I say a lot, and I write about this in my book is when our kids tell us, like what they need. It's our job to believe them and believe them fiercely and sometimes they don't tell us like, “Hey, Mom.” “Hey, Dad.” “Hey, Grandma.” “Hey, Uncle Joe”. They might not say it in the most like, beautifully articulate language. But if we can get past that, it's actually being very, very clear with us about what is okay and what's not. And it's our job to believe them.

Amanda:  love believe them fiercely. I'm gonna say that again, and tell people that you said it. [laughter] So I mentioned that there are like six steps that we move through. And I'm happy to overview what those are. The third one is listening to our children. And I think it's really important to listen to them in the way that they are able to speak. It's another demand that we drop, we don't demand that they speak to us in back and forth question and answer adult conversation. For one thing, some of our kids don't use mouth words to speak. So we can recognize that even those kids are communicating beautifully and vibrantly. And we want to allow that communication to flow. We can also recognize that behaviors are communication, and also that rude or disrespectful language is communication. And we can just let go of all of that judgment of our kids that we can only hear if they speak to us in the way we want to be spoken to. I think it's the complete opposite, that they can only speak when we listen to them and the way that they can communicate. And there are children, especially if you have teenagers. And you're thinking like why don't my kids talk to me? I think it's important to ask, is there a way that they are communicating, that I could listen to, and if by hearing them speak in the way that they are able to speak, if I do that over and over and over again, they may actually be more able to communicate, that we can heal what's been broken by this radical listening posture?

Robyn: Absolutely. Okay, so I want to hear about the six steps, right, six steps? But before that, I do want– especially for my longtime listeners, is I’m just going to just pull a couple of things together for people who have been listening to the show for a long time, that you're really talking about, like radical attunement with our children's stress response system, that some– that in order for our kids to be themselves and grow this resilience in our nervous system, which is good for our biology, it's good for our physiology. So it's not that we don't want our kids to have nice, strong, healthy, resilient nervous systems. But in order for that to happen, we have to work with them to kind of find the sweet spot of stress. And that when this stress that they're experiencing is too much. It becomes toxic for the development of their healthy stress response system. And we've got to like really open up our kind of definition of stress. And, again, like fiercely pay attention to what our kids are telling us about, this is too much. And simply because it's not too much for your other kid or for the neighbor's kid, or for the kids who kind of live in the middle of that bell-shaped curve means nothing. I mean, it's too much for them. And when it's too much, we are hurting the development of a really, you know, resilient nervous system. And so especially for my longtime listeners, we talk a lot about the stress response system. And so that's what I hear you talking about is just how in tune we have to be with, I think, especially our more vulnerable kids of how they're letting us know, like, this is the right amount of stress, this is too much stress.

Amanda: Yeah, this system is very much built on the groundbreaking work of Ross Greene in developing the plan A, plan B, and plan C. I consider low-demand parenting to be a very robust plan C, so people have come out of that, you might hear some similar language and that approach was the first thing that ever worked for me and my kids. Although I didn't find the collaborative problem-solving to be very effective, plan C was magic, so we just live there. Also, Mona Delahooke’s work and drawing on yours coming out drawing on the cutting-edge research in neuroscience, and what we're really discovering about the relationship between adults and children and the way that their brains are co-regulating. Stuart Shanker's work and Self-Reg, all of these methods have been telling us what we need to hear. And I really consider low-demand parenting putting it into some clear actionable steps that parents can take to say, “Okay, if this is true, then what do I do?” And that's where I want to step in and offer a path for forward. That is simple and clear. And it also comes out of parenting, a PDA, or pathological demand avoidance, we're coming to recognize is just an extremely sensitive nervous system and nervous system disability. And that the expression of the disability is this incredible attunement to the demands of the adults in their life. And that if there's a kind of a bell curve of sensitivity than our PDA-ers are at the very edge, and so if it works for a PDA-er it's going to work for other kids, too, and in a way, I think of those kids as like the canary in the coal mine of childhood, yes, saying, hey, something's wrong here. And we're going to be– and we are so sensitive, and also so self-protective, that we're going to raise the alarm for– on behalf of all children. And I'm so grateful for my PDA child because their refusal of the classic parenting paradigm is what enabled me to wake up and listen and create something new that really worked for them.

Robyn: I feel exactly the same way about like my area of expertise is these kids with serious, you know, significant complex trauma development on attachment trauma… same. Like they're the canaries in the coal mine. And their parents are, I think, leading the way and changing the world. And I've had some parents say that that feels like, you know, just another burden. And I'm like, well, you're doing it anyway. So let's look at the impact that it's having. Because when we can see this heavy burden we're carrying, we can see the benefits of it. I think that has the potential to kind of lower the impact of that heavy burden, but yet they're doing it anyway. I mean, they are at the forefront, I think of huge, important cultural shifts.

Amanda: Yeah, I agree. Yes. And it's so hard. It is just so hard. And so one of the things I really like to say is, this is my one life. There is not another life waiting in the wings. There is not another reality that's about to swoop in. This is all I've got. And I want to be here for this one. I want to show up to this child, to myself, to this parenting reality. And it doesn't look like anybody else around me. And most people can't even understand what I'm doing in my real life. And yet, through the kind of miracle of online connection, I'm finding the other parents who feel the same way as me in these other circles. And so I want to offer that to your community too. That yes, like we are parenting in a radical way that that maybe the whole world needs to see. But also, even if it's just for your one life and your child, I think it's enough.

Robyn: Absolutely. Absolutely. I really liked how you said, you know, with Ross Greene's approach that the collaborative problem-solving piece didn't feel like it was super helpful in your specific situation. And I loved then that, at least at this point, it seems like your reflection on that is kind of like, well, and that was okay. Like, that doesn't mean it's not a valid model, but that it didn't work. That wasn't super helpful in my family, we really focused on all of those things that were, you know, those plan C pieces. So I would love to hear your journey of how that became okay, like getting over the hump of like, “Is this okay? Is it okay to drop these demands? In a way that is so counterculture to the world that we live in right now.”

Amanda: Yeah. There's one point that has been getting stronger and stronger in me, as I reflect on this, I spent a lot of time in the early days differentiating between low-demand parenting and permissive parenting. And lately, I'm doing less of that. And instead, I want to ask is permissive parenting the horror that we've been fed? The belief that it is– most of us modern parents are very afraid of being permissive. But why are we still afraid of that? What is it that's so bad? So I dug back into the theory on permissive parenting, and without going into it too much it originates in a school of thought that believes that the kind of way I described, of like high expectations, and using every tool possible to get kids to achieve it is the best way, and very much a built on physical punishment for kids that cannot achieve. So that whole mode is thinking, “Well, if they can't do it, you hit them.” So we just need to know that people who believed that also believed that to let things go, would challenge parental power and control, which was the utmost. That was the thing they wanted to hold on to more than anything, was maintaining their parental power and control and that if you lose parental power and control, you lose everything, was the belief system. And I'll just say that does not check out with modern neuroscience, or with parenting experience, what does check out is that creating relationships of trust and connection requires us to let go of parental power and control. We need to submit all of those old beliefs that we have. That we have to stay in control for our kids to feel safe, and ask instead, what does this child need in order to feel safe? And some kids may need to know that their parents are in control in order to feel safe. That is not– I'm not questioning that that is true for some kids. But there are many kids who do not feel safe when their parents are enacting controlling paradigms over them, telling them what to do, holding rigid expectations, following through on these cause and effect, like if you do this, I will do this. Those things make our kids feel unsafe and lead to more stress behaviors. And then it feeds the parents fear like oh, I just need to be more consistent and more rigid and I need more cause and effect like I need more punishments and consequences, even natural consequences. And this whole system is built on this deep fear of letting things go. And I think radical attunement is an act of releasing power and instead saying who you are and what you need is the most important thing, not how it makes me feel. So yes, it's vulnerable and yes, it's scary, but it is also an act of trust in our child and in ourselves. So we can handle it, whatever comes. So it's okay. Because there's really nothing to be afraid of here, there is not a cliff that we're going to fall over by aligning and attuning with our kids. Instead, it is just more connection, more nurture, more trust for their nervous system to realize this person is safe for me. And I can be all the parts of myself with them. And in the long run, it actually leads our kids to being able to meet those expectations, but without us holding them over them. But by coming alongside them, and then saying, “Where do you want to go, I'm going to wherever you want to go, I'm gonna go there with you.” And that maybe those are the original expectations that we believed, and maybe they're not, maybe our kid wants to go in a different direction than we originally thought. But wherever they want to go, we walk side by side with them. I do think there is one piece of permissive parenting that I want to hold on to as being unhelpful, and that is something more like dissociative parenting. It's this swinging back and forth between holding the expectation, and then just letting it go because it's all too hard and you can't figure out what else to do. And you just want to break. I think that saying like, put your shoes on, put your shoes on, put your shoes on. Oh, God, alright, fine, I'll do it for you. I don't think that that's very helpful. I think that that creates a real dissonance in our kid's understanding of what's okay, and what's not okay, are we really on their team? Or are we not? And I also think that when our kids are melting down so much, and it's triggering so much distress in our systems, sometimes we just go away, we just drift off, and we're no longer present. And then all kinds of things can happen because we're not really attuned or connected to the present moment. And, and that is a kind of permissiveness, that's really unhelpful for us, because we're associating, which isn't really very good for our emerging sense of self. And it's really not great for our kids, because they're like, where did my adult go? This is scary. So, I think that there are a few things to be watchful for. But I don't think that they have to do with dropping demands.

Robyn: No, I completely agree. And I love that we're kind of meandering into this topic, because it comes up a lot like in the community, in my community in the club. And even recently, someone asked me, sometimes I just get so confused about the difference between, you know, offering my child care regulation and, you know, this attunement and meeting them where they are, and all that kind of good stuff. And, essentially, you know, moving into this relationship that feels a lot more codependent. Like, I'm relinquishing myself, you know, at the demand of their dysregulation. And because I come from such an attachment theory background that I think about this aspect of co-regulation. It's not really co-regulation if what's happening is I'm personally getting to dysregulated. And because of that, I swing one way or another, right, that that's not what we're talking about, which is I think, similar to what you're saying, and what a lot of folks would label, you know, quote-unquote, permissive parenting that it just gets too uncomfortable internally for me to, you know, be with this child in this way. And so I just say, fine, forget it, whatever, do whatever you want, or what I mean, that's just one very narrow example. And I think kind of goes back to the heart of all of this, which is in order for us to be super attuned to our kids, we must be super attuned to ourselves. And sometimes that feels like a lot of work and really scary.

Amanda: Yes, yes, it really does. And one other piece of just a voice for you and for the community is that in the process. Before we developed the low-demand process, I was diagnosed with PTSD from my parenting experiences, and I went through an extensive healing process using all of the modalities that I could. EMDR, trauma-informed yoga, somatic experiencing, the safe and sound protocol, all of these ways of supporting my brain and nervous system, in making sense of the parenting journey that I had because ultimately, I couldn't show up for my child anymore. I got to my own breaking point where I couldn't do it another day, and the physical sensations that I was experiencing were just so painful and dramatic. And I don't think we talk about that often enough that it can be real capital T trauma, what you're going through. And an hour away or a lunch date with a friend or a date night does not heal it. It requires all the professionals, doing all the things, so that you can show up for your child and you deserve that level of care. And no, our system is not currently built to offer that to parents. We're right on the very, very start of even noticing and naming that PTSD is a thing for parents, much less a system of support for it. But those of us who've experienced it, we need to name it for what it is.

Robyn: Oh, absolutely. And in the same– again, so many of the folks that I've worked with are caring for kids who themselves are impacted by trauma. And so for a long time, we used to say that parenting these kids had all this secondary trauma. And it's like, oh, no, I mean, there's that too. [laughter] But, like, just straight up traumatic, it is traumatic to be in a relationship with somebody who's highly unpredictable, highly dysregulated. And that isn't blaming or shaming our kids, that's just speaking to what's real. And then you add in the systemic pieces that just exacerbate that trauma, right that like nobody's believing us, or they say ridiculous things like “I don't know, just make them go.” Okay, well, you just make them go! [laughter] I’m telling you! Without bungee cords, how is that plan is gonna be enacted? And then you know that there is no support. And like, these parents are literally faced with professionals, well, wonderful professionals, saying, I'm sorry, like what you need, actually truly, really doesn't even exist. Good luck. 

Amanda: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it can be so disheartening. And it's so challenging. And I also, I also believe that the act of naming, and that, like all the professionals that I worked with, in my process, I was the first parent that they had worked with in this capacity. And yet now, I'm referring parents to them all the time, and no one else has to be the first with those professionals. And so we are laying a pathway for others to follow behind. And that I really feel honored in a way that I took on that role, and that no one else has to do that, at least with those people, you know, every piece of the system that we enter honestly, and that we transform will never be the same again. And I feel that way about pathological demand avoidance, I'm sure it's that way for you with complex trauma that people who disbelieve you and are willing to listen and learn. Those are the ones to invest in. The ones that make you feel ashamed, or judge you, just like move on as quickly as possible. Because it's okay if they've never heard of it before. But they have to be like, “You know what, I trust you and I want to learn more.”

Robyn: Oh, my gosh, I mean, you just like articulated what makes a good therapist, essentially. And folks talk a lot about like, well, nobody gets complex trauma. Nobody gets pathological demand avoidance. And I'm like, well, I understand that that's true. But a great professional doesn't have to get it. They have to, like be completely committed to showing up for your truth in your reality. They don't have to have ever heard of it ever before. And also, I know a lot of professionals listen to this, and I want you to hear that. But like, that's what we that's what our clients need. They need us to say I believe you, and I trust you to kind of show me where we need to go.

Amanda: Yes. And then for every person after that, say I've seen this before, yes, because my goodness there is nothing like I remember when we walked into an OT clinic for the first time with my four-year-old who wasn't able to wear clothes and the OT looked at him and said, “You're one of ours.” And it was the first professional that had ever looked at the two of us and been like, “Yep, I know what this is.” And it brought tears to my eyes, then it still does. And it really matters for those of us who have had such vulnerable experiences, to feel seen. And so if it's your truth to say, I've never seen this before, but I trust you then start there, and then start saying, I've seen this before. And I will walk with you because those words are so powerful.

Robyn: And I've seen this before. And I'm totally delighted, delighted and enamored by you! That's kind of what I heard in the story you just said was like– that like, oh, this child is one of ours that isn't just, oh, I've seen this before. This is that's like a claiming, like, I adore you, in a way. And that. I mean, that is, that's it? That's the magic. I love that you’ve had that experience! I am going to jump topics because you have this brilliant thing that I watched you say on social media the other day, and I wanted to just give my audience a little snippet of it, because I thought it was so profound, just this little like, you know– I had like, four or five images in this carousel. And it was about making a plan for ourselves. After our kids have had, you know, whatever want to call it significant meltdown, major episode of dysregulation, huge, like attack watchdog moments, whatever we want to call it. And there is this, like nervous system phenomenon that happens, where sometimes it feels like our kids are just like, in a moment, in moments, they're just moving on with life, like everything's normal, no problem. And we're just like, whiplash! And it can feel like it takes a long time to recover. And in those moments, which are very valid, our bodies deserve our care and attention, can be hard on our kid. So I loved how you even just gave words to it and talked about like, let's make a plan. Because you deserve it. Could you talk just a little bit about that?

Amanda: Yes. I started creating a post-meltdown plan for myself because I knew that I could maybe carve out 60 to 90 seconds for me before. It's like, now let's play stuffies or Uno come on! Come on, Mom!

Robyn: Oh, my gosh. So first of all, that's just so real, what you just said, like, who's even willing to admit that they've got to figure out how to take care of themselves and their nervous systems in 60 seconds? Yeah, and that's just real. So thank you for just naming that.

Amanda: Yeah. And people's advice is like, go on a walk, go on a hike, call a friend. Like, that's not doable for me, that's too hard for me and too hard for my kid. Because also anything that requires rational thought is out the window for you at that moment, your brain is not online. That's the whole point of making a plan that depends on yourself to know what to do when you're in that 60-second window is too much, it's too hard. So we're going to drop the demand that you know what to do. And instead, we're going to support you with a plan so that you can automate it and use that incredible ability of our brains to do things outside of our rational decision-making capacity that when something is like, it's just what I do, then you can actually flow into it kind of bypassing that “Okay, what do I do?” process. So I have four different elements of a good post-meltdown plan. The first one is alerting it brings you back into your body in some capacity. And so it could be like cold, I find cold really alerting and so you could hold an ice cube in your hand. You could drink ice cold water, you could stick your head in the freezer, you could eat a popsicle, anything that is going to tell your brain I've got a body attached to me and that body is experiencing something then you want to choose something that is regulating and some form lemme make sure I get my order right. Are you looking at the slides right now? 

Robyn: I was looking at the time just because I'm wanting to honor yours.[laughter]

Amanda: Ah, okay! [chuckles] Something that's regulating I find chewing really regulating, might pop in some gum, could be a squeeze and release. Oh, that's right, the second one is not regulating it's releasing. So you want to release the tension in some form. So sometimes I'll raise my arms up high, and then slap myself down. So nothing jumps up and down. And it's something that I want to do when things are really going wrong, I want to jump up and down, and so I do it! Then something that's regulating, so something like chewing is often regulating; deep breathing, tapping, rubbing things that are like slightly nurturing and repetitive for your body. And then something that is a kind of a close, like, I close my eyes and take a deep breath, or I'll say something to myself like, “I can do this.” Something that's like refueling, and just having that four-step. So my four-step ritual is I grab ice water, I drink it through a straw, then I find a crunchy snack. I love Doritos or something with like a big flavor, I crunch it, then I close my eyes, I take a deep breath, and I [strong exhale] and then I go back into parenting. And just knowing that that is there, for me that all it requires is a cup and a straw and if I can't find a straw, it's okay. And some people use essential oils. And if you need something like that, like put them in the place where the meltdown usually happens or keep them– one of my greatest tips is to wear a fanny pack on hard days, and put the things in there that you need so they're with you all the time, whatever your kid needs and you need are unique and n the case of one of these panic attack moments or whatever you want to call it. So I put my earplugs in there and gum in there. I put like my kid's chewy in there. And it's just right on my body. And it's just a way that I kind of say like, this is today, so Im gonna wear this and keep this on, so that I'm ready, no matter what happens, I let go of the expectation that I will be able to find the things that I want in the moment. And instead, I kind of do it over my breakfast, like, Okay, I'm ready. And just like knowing my plan, having my things, those things make a huge difference. It's noticeable the difference of that 60 seconds when I do it over not doing it, I don't always do it, I'm definitely not perfect. But when I do, it helps. And that is so much better than going into stuffies thinking, “You darn kid, you just put me through the most excruciating hour, I'm still bruised from what you did. And I do not want to be told what to do as we play stuffies now.” [laughter] And they will feel that energy and it will probably lead to more difficulty down the road. So this one little step helps to interrupt that cycle that we can get caught in with just a tiny bit of nurture.

Robyn: Oh, yeah, I love that you're honoring, like, that's a reasonable reaction to have, like, I don't want to connect to somebody who just hurt me or left me feeling afraid. Like, that makes perfect sense. And we also need to, you know, find these ways that we can honor our own truth and be available to connect with our kids next for all sorts of reasons. So you said and I'll make sure that this gets written down somewhere like the show notes or the summary, but something alerting something releasing something regulating, and then something that brings a little closure to yourself, and that that literally can be done in like 60 seconds.

Amanda: Ideally, yeah. Like the shorter the better. Right?

Robyn: Right. I wouldn't think I mean, it takes some practice I think to develop these rituals that eventually become more implicit and then just beginning the ritual starts to bring on that experience, you know, of, of getting more connected to ourselves and more regulated. And I love your tip for a fanny pack. I often suggest that parents put fanny packs on their kids, but I've honestly– for the similar reasons, like so it's all right there. But I've really never thought about that for ourselves. I don't know why. But all these little tiny things that we do that bring some sense of like connection to ourselves and regulation to ourselves like I'm imagining already, like, what am I going to put in mine? You know, and there's some things that definitely come right to mind. So, I love the pre-planning involves the very deliberateness of like, I deserve to be taken care of in this way. And also again, just what we've been talking about the whole time is like this fierce radical acceptance of like, I wish I didn't have to carry around a fanny pack to get me through my kids, you know, nervous system states throughout the day. But this is my reality. And so just being connected to that truth, bring safety to something that is, you know, otherwise really unsafe.

Amanda: Yes. And, I wouldn't be doing justice to this whole approach, if I don't also say that a core piece of low-demand living is dropping demands for yourself. So if you are like, I know, I'm doing this for my kid, and I want to be more intentional about it. But you know, it's just not really doable right now. It's kind of too hard to do that in our work, then start by letting things go for you. Asking what is hard and what is too hard. If it is too hard to do the dishes tonight, can we break out paper plates, and you can do it in a way that's still aligned with your deep why, like if what really matters to you is respecting environmental needs then find compostable ones and pre-plan having those compostable ones right next to your regular dishes so that you feel just as good about grabbing those as you do about like setting the table or invest in some earplugs that really properly work and support you have them with you. And when things are too loud for you don't wait to like dissociate, like pop those earplugs in, and give yourself that buffer. So that it– maybe their kids are just playing happily. But because of the reality of how often they yell out a dysregulation that the happy loud sounds are also triggering your nervous system. So it's okay to block out happy loud sounds like it's okay not to be able to delight in the sounds of your kids playing because it makes you feel unsafe. So letting go of what's too hard for yourself is really the best place to start with this whole urge. 

Robyn: And letting go of what we learned was how we were supposed to parent what good parents are, and the kinds of you know what the kinds of kids good parents raise, and I like my husband and I have, you know, pretty regularly tried to, you know, sort through, you know, these, in many ways, like really patriarchal colonial ideas about what it means to be a good person and to work hard and to have grit, and how do we untangle that and our own, like, desperate need for perfectionism, while also, you know, creating an environment of enough demand, that it still honors– again, honors the personhood, which is really this common theme to just keep coming back to but my point is, is it's just a lot of continual unpacking.

Amanda: Yes, that's right. And there’s– like saying that these events are morally neutral. Eating together at the table is morally neutral. Like if your child eats in their room under a blanket with a screen, that is okay, and not just okay, it's good. It's the right thing for them. It is the way that your family is feeding yourselves in ways that are nurturing, and right on for you, and you can still create a family ritual. If what matters about the table is a family connection, then find a kind of family connection that works for your family. Or if you completely let go of screentime boundaries, because you just decide that battling over turning on and turning off is not working for you. You can choose radical trust in that space and live with what that means for your family. And if you need to let your child go barefoot everywhere because they simply cannot tolerate the feel of socks and shoes on their feet and strangers are less personal. Example: Strangers are always saying, “Hey, where are your shoes!” and I say, “We're good.” And that what they say doesn't matter. I really feel like we become shame-proof when we align with ourselves. And when we are aligned with ourselves, then we can extend that to our children. And then we show that we model for them what it looks like to choose ourselves first. And yes, it's countercultural, and no one will understand and also what a great gift.

Robyn: Hugely amazing gifts. I only can fantasize about what my life would be like if I'd gotten that gift when I was small. And in some ways I was like, well, I probably wouldn't be doing this work and I really like it! [laughter] But there are so there's moments of grief of how you know how we've come to this, this place and how hard it has been.

Amanda: Every time I love my kids and radical acceptance, I think about my inner child, and that it comes right back to them that when I say out loud, you're okay, just the way you are, that the little me inside hears those words. And it's like, yes, like I become the parent that I always wanted, and that I'm healing right alongside my kids.

Robyn: This has been the best way to start Saturday morning. So thank you for carving out this time and for, you know, connecting with me and then allowing, you know us to connect with all of the folks who listen to this show. It's just been so delightful. I hope this is the first of many, many conversations and connections that we have. 

Amanda: I hope so too! 

Robyn: Tell everybody about your upcoming book, because when this episode airs, your books about to come out

Amanda: Yes! Yeah, July 21. I'm celebrating my 40th birthday with a new book in the world. It's called Low-Demand Parenting, it is readable by parents whose nervous systems are shots, and life is chaotic. It is short on purpose and includes worksheets and affirmations and all kinds of actionable steps that you can take to begin dropping demands and practicing this radical acceptance of your child, and I'm really, really proud of it. And like my deep hope, is, if I could leave a lasting legacy on parenthood, it would be to elevate dropping demands and put it on the pedestal that it deserves to be on so that we can all feel so proud of ourselves when we do it.

Robyn: Y'all, I've had the opportunity to read this book, and I don't recommend things lightly and I know y’all know that, and this book is worth it! Like everyone listening, go check out this book. It was easy. It was approachable. It was short, it was practical. It was of course based on science, which, you know, I really like, [laughter] Everybody go get this book is it I mean, it was just such a breath of fresh air of this constant like this is okay. This is you're not screwing up your kids by dropping demands and being in attunement with yourself and your kid just like page after page after page. So everybody go get it. And on Instagram, it's @lowdemandamanda, right?

Amanda: Yes, yes. And I would genuinely love it. If one of your listeners reached out to me and like DMed me on Instagram and said, “Hey, I heard your podcast and this is what I thought!” I always write back and that's one of the places that I get my needs met for community. So you would be it would be a delight to hear from you.

Robyn: Wonderful, everybody. I'll make sure all these are links in the show notes and over on the summary on my website, so you can just click right to all of this goodness, thank you so much!

Amanda: Thank you!