Scaffolding Relational Skills as Brain Skills with Eileen Devine {EP 199}

Robyn: Eileen's area of expertise is kids with brain based differences. I remember, while I was doing the interview with her, I kept thinking, I want to make sure that everyone listening knows that Eileen also has special expertise in kids with medical brain based differences. So for example, kids with neuro immune disorders, PANS and PANDAS and Lyme. Eileen is an expert and understanding the needs of the relational needs, the behavioral support needs, the brain based differences for kids with those kinds of diagnoses. I know she also does work with families of kids with epilepsy. So I really just wanted to highlight that Eileen is doing amazing work with families, and not a lot of other professionals are out there committed to Eileen and I have complimentary work in so many ways, and we talk about that, but we also have some pretty unique differences. Eileen, new podcast, brain first parenting, launched yesterday. So on the airing of this episode, Tuesday, November 12, her new podcast launched yesterday, and I am seriously just thrilled that there is another resource for families who are supporting kids with brain based differences and behavioral symptoms. Y'all are going to adore. Eileen. So without any further ado, I am so happy to introduce you to my dear friend and colleague, Eileen Devine.  

Robyn: Hey, Eileen, thank you so much for joining me here today!  

Eileen Devine: Of course, I'm so happy to be here.  

Robyn: This is sort of normal for us. We just get on Zoom and we talk and connect.  

Eileen: I know I'm gonna have to remember we're recording.  

Robyn: Exactly, exactly. We can always edit things out if we need to. Well, on the off chance anybody listening is meeting you for the first time, tell everybody listening just a little bit about yourself and the work that you're doing.  

Eileen: Yeah. So I am a licensed clinical social worker. I live in Portland, Oregon, and I work with parents, and only parents, I work with parents who have kids with brain based differences and really challenging behavioral symptoms. So all the diagnoses that their kids have point back to the brain. Sometimes they come to me knowing that, and other times they don't know that. They just know that their child is really tricky, really exhausting, really challenging, and they have tried everything that they thought they knew to do, and it typically has made things worse. So I help them understand their child's unique brain so that then eventually, over time, that leads to less challenging behaviors. The other piece that is a big part of my story is that I'm also a parent, and my two kids are teenagers. Connell's 17. He's what you'd consider neurotypical. My daughter, Maya, is almost 16. They're 15 months apart, and she has a diagnosis of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. And so about a dozen years ago, I found myself in a very similar position to most of the parents that I work with, going, what is going on and what can I do here to make things better? So that's a that's a longer story. The short version is that it led me to change the focus of my clinical work, because once I found information that I was missing, and it was so transformative to our family's life, I wanted to be able to support parents in a similar position, so they didn't have to look so hard and to suffer unnecessarily just because They were missing information, so that, in as a nutshell, who I am and what I do!  

Robyn: And you and I had the great privilege of being introduced by our mutual friend, Kendra, yes, and shout out to Kendra, yes. I'm sure she's listening. I'm positive she will listen. And I do just want to maybe speak to that just really briefly, that it's been, you know, just like the families that we serve, this can be super lonely work, and a lot of our colleagues don't really understand what we're doing or why we're doing why we're doing it. And I know we can often be the place where people are sending families, where they're like, I don't know what to do. Go see Robyn. Go see Eileen. And to know some folks in the field who are, you know, so committed to doing this work and doing good work. And work that we can trust like I know you and I just trust each other so much, where it's like, go listen to Eileen or go listen to Robyn. And so I just want to say I'm so grateful for that, like I'm just so grateful we that Kendra introduced us all those years ago, but also that, you know, our professional relationship has really kind of moved into a personal relationship, and super grateful for your friendship, too.  

Eileen: Thank you for saying that I feel exactly the same. Yeah, it's been a really special friendship to me, and I also am grateful for how much you've taught me. I think, I think you and I have both heard from parents about how complimentary our work is, and there's definitely a lot of what you talk about that compliments what I talk about, and I've appreciated learning that piece so that I can then share it with families and refer them back to you, so that they can have This fuller picture of what's happening with their child.  

Robyn: I do think it's remarkable that we both have businesses that pay our bills and support our families and have absolutely zero sense of anything but support for one another. Like, I just what, you know, what you offer families, what I offer families is just, I'm just so grateful. We're both, yeah, we're both grateful. It's so important to have a, like, a shared part. It feels like, almost like a little partnership, almost like, yeah, you do your part. I do my part. We do together. It's lovely. So thank you. Let's look at that a little bit, because we do do similar work. Yeah, there are some pretty distinct differences that I think really lends itself to how complimentary our work is. So would you speak on that for just a moment? Like, yeah, how does it seem the similar? How does it seem different?  

Eileen: Yeah. So from my perspective, we both talk about kids and their unique neurobiology and how that matters in terms of understanding their behaviors, their experience of the world. From my perspective, you focus on the nervous system, and have so much valuable information to share about the nervous system specifically, and I tend to focus more on the Brain and Cognitive skills and brain function. So anyone who dives into both of those deeply starts to see really quickly that there is a ton of overlap, and you can't really separate the two, but I do think that it's helpful for parents to separate the two and talk about them separately, and then they can start to make this their own connections, in their own mind about their unique child. So I don't know. Is that how you would see the differences?  

Robyn: Yeah, 100% and that, although I think we both do exactly what I'm about to say, I think there can almost be this perception or this experience that I do some more work in like the relational realm, and you do some more work in the cognitive realm, while the reality is is they're completely overlapped. It's just that some of our kids behaviors or skills, or what we might call challenges or deficits, tend to look at it through that lens, but other people do you know can use that language. They both involve both, right? That even the kinds of behaviors we're talking about that seem relational are based in the brain.  

Eileen: That's right? They're skills, just like the other skills. That's where I see a lot of the parents that I work with. I mean that being another similarity that you and I both spend a lot of our time and energy supporting parents of these kids, but when I'm teaching parents about the brain and what our brain does for us every day and how it's always connected to behaviors most of them understand, or maybe even already knew. Oh yeah. The brain does things like language and communication, executive functioning, learning and memory processing pace. They may not know what it looks like for their child to struggle in those skills, and so that's then the next step. But they get that. It's like, oh yeah, I know that. That's what my brain does for me. It's when we get to those other skills, the relational, cognitive skills that people it's almost like this switch, like I was with you up until this point, right? But these skills, well, they don't even see them as skills, right? They see them as part of their child's character. All of the sudden, then it switches to no, no, this is something they're doing on purpose. To me, it's not about skills anymore, and I get that because the behaviors that go with those skills that are reflection of those lagging skills feel so personal. Really, really hard to be in relationship with someone who lags behind in those skills. So I totally get it, but that is oftentimes where the steak learning curve is for a lot of the parents that I work with.  

Robyn: Let's start with something that feels really clear is skill based, and kind of deconstruct it for how that challenge in a child's world is so clearly skill based. And then maybe let's shift to something that does feel like we would describe as more relational, and look at how we would apply, like, the exact same lens to that skill. How does that sound?  

Eileen: Yeah, that sounds great.  

Robyn: Does a cognitive skill come to mind for you? Tell me what comes to mind.  

Eileen: Yeah. So a really common lagging cognitive skill is processing pace. Yes, the way that a child processes, especially auditory language, basically. And you know, my, one of my one of my mentors, Diane Malvin, she always talks about these kids as a 10-second child in a one-second world. And parents are like, Oh, that makes sense. I can see it. I now can think of instances in my life with my child where that was showing up. I didn't know it was that, but now I do, and so I'm going to shift my lens and I see it as slower processing. So what is the accommodation? Oh, I need to give them more time, right? Or I need to be able to check for understanding, or I need to be able to re-teach, knowing that they might not get it the first time. I'm not saying that even that cognitive skill, the parent then, like, easily goes into the accommodations. But there isn't, there isn't personal kind of, you know, hurt and relationship pieces associated with that. Essentially, another one is learning and memory. So a child being able to do one step at a time. So for example, my daughter, almost 16, if I give her one step at a time for the morning routine, for example, She's great. She does it. She wants to do well. She wants to get ready on time. She really doesn't want to be late for school, but if I give her three steps at a time, she'll do the first step, and then she's kind of off on her own, doing whatever caught her attention in that moment, right? She's easily distracted. So that is another one that parents say, Oh, okay. Okay, I get it learning and memory, or poor memory, I'm going to give them one step at a time. That's the accommodation, and that isn't a difficult shift for them to make, right? So those would be just a few examples of cognitive skills that I think parents get that shift seeing them through this brain first lens is pretty easy for them once they're practiced at it.  

Robyn: Yeah that makes a lot of sense. And also, just for everybody listening, like, when we say easy, we don't mean like, oh yeah. And instantly everything changes. And now you have an infinite amount, infinite amount of patience. But there is a felt difference. When you you have this felt sense that somebody's struggling, not on purpose, but because they need more support, or they need scaffolding for it, and they're doing the very best that they can. Like that seems to be this piece that gets kind of easily moved into it, right? They're doing the very best they can. They just need some more support or some more accommodations versus some of these other behavioral challenges that you know, it can, we can really be pausing and asking ourselves, like, really, are they doing the best they can? That's right, that's right, yeah. Where do you see a difference? Like, does a behavior come to mind for you, that you notice starts to feel a little more tricky for families to see through that lens. Yeah, yeah.  

Eileen: For me, I think of these cognitive skills sort of in big buckets and the three buckets, and then I can talk about maybe one or two specific skills. The three buckets are social and emotional development. So does your child behave in the way that society expects a child of their age to behave? And so I hear parents saying things like, you need to act your age. You're being such a baby. There's some embarrassment, sometimes some shame on how immaturely their child is acting. Right? That's the first big bucket. The second bucket is emotional regulation, which I think, for me, this is where it's it's the most resonant with the nervous system, the window of tolerance. How well can they manage frustration? It's where parents start to really put those pieces together. So emotional regulation. The third bucket, which I do think is probably just from my working with parents and my conversations and observations with them. The most difficult is cognitive rigidity, being able to be flexible in the way that you think about other people situations in the world. So being able to go with the flow, being able to put somebody else's needs above before your own, even momentarily being able to adjust to a plan that can no longer happen because something happened out of everyone's control, like the weather. There was a winter storm that came in, so we can't go to the place we were excited to go to, and all the other kids are disappointed, and they're kind of managing their disappointment, emotionally regulating that sort of thing. The other child, who is very cognitively rigid, can not shift. They cannot adjust.    

Eileen: But it also dives into things like being able to see other people's perspectives and to know that somebody else actually has a different perspective than yours, right? Understanding that your words and your actions impact others outside of yourself, right? So I have a lot of parents who have said to me over the years, my child's not capable of empathy, and it's this really terrible thought to have to have as a parent, really scary, too. But if we take a step back and we say, well, what cognitive skills are involved in being able to be empathetic? It is perspective taking. It is being able to be flexible in the way you think about things, right? Being able to be more cognitively flexible, right? The other piece under cognitive flexibility that I think gets really, really difficult for parents is being very black and white, not seeing any gray in the world, right? And also having these generalizations that are highly personalized and generalized, like everybody's out to get me. I'm always in trouble. Bad things always happen to me. Some parents talk about it as self-sabotage, right? Like nothing good can ever go happen for them. They won't allow it. Yeah, right. So all of that feels really hard, understandably, because it is getting in the way of being in connection with another person. It's really hard for the parent to continuously reach for connection when their child's behaving in a way that is driving disconnection, right? But when we can take a step back and look at the skills involved, it depersonalizes. It also gives another focus, instead of just trying to make them be a better friend. You desperately want friends. Why are you ruining every friendship you have? It's like, well, what skill is getting in the way of them having that friend? Right? Of course, they want to have friends. What are the skills getting in their way? And let's focus our energy there on building those skills, versus just putting all of our energy and attention on the behavior.  

Robyn: So many of the clients that you and I both have, in addition to some of the background that you're describing, also have attachment trauma. So this- not all, of course, but some, and so this additional layer comes in of the attachment piece. And I the some of the disorganized attachment piece that that brain development and that nervous system development can be what's driving some pretty confusing relational skills. And it makes a lot of sense to me that because of the complexity of what it feels like to be in relationship with a kid who's got such challenging relationship ways of being, how easy it is to lose sight of the fact that there is still a brain-based reason why this child may be doing exactly what the parent is saying like it is very- when parents tell me like their kids are manipulative or they're setting me up, or nothing I do could ever be good enough. Or, you know, these things that can, or they're, they're very, very controlling. I say to them, Well, yeah, like, I believe, totally believe you you know, like, I'm not interested in telling a parent. Well, no, they're not being manipulative. What they're really being is, like, no, no. Really being is like, no, no, they actually are being manipulative. But let's look at why, and as we break down the skills that are needed, like when I think about what do we need to not be manipulative? Well, we need some trust that if we just ask for what we want, people will help us. We need frustration tolerance so that if we don't get what we want, we can tolerate it, instead of trying to, like, force or connive people into doing what we want. But those are still skills that can still be scaffolded.  

Eileen: That's right, yes, yeah, yeah. And, I mean, you mentioned the parent experience and how hard it is. I think the parents that you and I work with rarely is their experience acknowledged, so the full intensity that it is, I mean, you and I have the privilege of sitting with them and hearing their stories, but they've been discounted so many times in the search for answers, right? And what I've seen happens over time then, understandably, no fault of their own, is they are increasingly burnt out. Their nervous system becomes more fragile. They become more hopeless because they don't have this information. They don't know what's going to help their child. They get more and more entrenched in this. My kid's just a bad kid. That's the messages they're getting from everybody else, right? And so taking that step back that we're talking about, that's why it feels so hard sometimes, right is that there's a lot of work that has to be done in terms of their own I don't want to say self care, because that then we get into popular culture, self care, that's not what we're talking about, but resilience, building nervous system stability so that they can do exactly What we're talking about. Because it is hard work.  

Robyn: Yes, and then also kind of move into some of the same skills we're talking about for their kids, right? Some emotional regulation and some cognitive flexibility to be able to see, you know, this behavior through a different lens than the way they were initially seeing the behavior, and again, that takes some mental flexibility. And not only is that a cognitive skill, but it also has to do with felt safety and regulation. Because the more safe we feel, the more regulated we are, the more we're going to have some ability to have some mental flexibility,  

Eileen: That's right. And also highlighting, like for the parents listening that when I talk about accommodating your child's lagging skill, the skill that they still need some development in that they're still not where you would expect them to be at their age, everything we've been talking about so far, the accommodation. Many of them are internal shifts within us as parents. Yes, so they can be external, more external and concrete, like giving more time, accepting the need to reteach, giving one step instead of three, for example. But there is a lot of internal shifts that happen, not meeting your child's rigidity with your own rigidity. Doing your work to remain flexible, which is really, really difficult in the moment, adjusting expectations that you have held on to so tightly for so long because it's what you thought it meant to be a really good parent, and now you're seeing that, oh, maybe my child, who's 12, they're actually much more like a six year old in this particular area and this skill set, so I need to adjust my expectations of them drastically. Yeah, and that takes a lot of work easing into the acceptance of that, but that is a beautiful and generous accommodation. That's why, that's why we work with parents, because so much of this is internal shifts, but you need support in being able to do that. It's hard work.  

Robyn: One of the things that's arising for me as you're talking is the parent who comes to me, and I'm sure this happens to you too, who says, But why is my kid like this, right? So if we can have a diagnosis like FASD, or we've had a neuropsychological report that shows us, you know, processing differences, things like that, that it can feel a little easier to say, Oh, this is a very clear brain based difference. Let's make some accommodations. My child's not being defiant. They need, you know, directions given in a different kind of way. They need more time. They need, you know, whatever the accommodation is, and I'm a big believer, like, even if we don't know what's underneath, what's driving our kids behavior, our kids are showing us exactly what the problem is by what their behavior is. And so I'm wondering if you could speak to that a little bit about let's say we have a kid who is is struggling with multi-step instructions or seems to need more time, but we don't have a diagnosis. Yes, we don't have any reason to know or believe that these things are going on. So how can, how can we help those parents see that, well, even if we don't have a diagnosis, this is still all about the brain.  

Eileen: It totally is. It always comes back to the brain, even if you have, even if you have a diagnosis, and you thought that was going to give you all the answers, and then you get it, and you read all the strategies that you do ideally for that diagnosis, and things don't get better like you thought they would, because it's not maybe specific to your unique child. So the same idea applies. It all points back to the brain. That's the organizing principle for all of this, and what does that mean for your unique child? So in the day to day relationship with your child, I actually think diagnosis isn't as important, right as it is for other things, like medication, benefits, that sort of thing. But to answer your question, if there isn't a diagnosis, and the parent is saying, Man, I've really tried everything, but my child's just super challenging, like they just are, and I don't know what to do about it. It can feel like even, even more of a leap of faith, to assume that it's brain when you get a diagnosis. It's almost like you're given at least a little bit of permission to consider something different. I'm not saying the shift is then easy, but at least you have that to feel a bit more confidence in taking the leap, right?    

Eileen: But if you have a child who's challenging and you don't know why, nobody can tell you why. What I say to the parent is you may never know why, and I understand how hard that is, but at the end of the day, if everything you've tried so far has not worked, I wonder if we can give this a shot. I wonder what it would be like for you to take a step back from trying to control and use your power all of those very behavioral lens traditional parenting techniques, and join me on this other path and see what happens, right? So sometimes it literally is for we, I'll be talking with the parent, I'll say, for the next week. Whenever you're met with a challenging behavior, if you can assume that it has something to do with their brain and it is a symptom of something else, and see what happens. How does that feel inside of you. What does it cause you to do next that's maybe different than when you assumed the opposite, and let's just see what happens, right? You will not lose your parental authority. You will not end up in a worse place than you are right now, right? So, yeah, I mean, I think. That is, the hard truth is, it does feel like a leap of faith. It's not what society is encouraging parents to do. It's society is so deeply entrenched in a behavioral lens that it will feel like a leap of faith. It's new.  

Robyn: We have to really, I think, lean into, you know, when I first heard from like, how Ross Greene put it so succinctly, right? Kids do well when they can, that's right. And then when I dove further and further into the neuroscience, what struck me was like, Okay, so when people are regulated and when they're connected to themselves and other people, and they're experiencing health safety, like, their behaviors aren't making us mad, and so if we can- but that, in and of itself, is like a wild act of almost like resistance against humanity, right? Because that's not what we've been taught to think about humans.  

Eileen: Yes, it isn't. And you know, the other thing that I encourage parents to do when they do take that leap of faith and they begin to look through this lens that you and I are talking about, and then they come back and they say, Well, I noticed this. They notice what you and I are talking about. They can see that then in relationship and behavior as I say, Let's collect the evidence, because then that helps you understand, like, okay, no, this is the truth. This is science. This is what happens, right? And then the really beautiful thing is that if you can stay on that path and you continue to collect the evidence, you will see it like night and day comparison. I mean, I know I have examples from my own parenting, where school, for example, having my daughter in a wonderful, loving community where she is understood, she feels safe, she's accepted, she's celebrated. Like she is, this calm, regulated, joyful child, literally all the time, except for you, know what you would expect from a typical child? We've had instances where she spent time, extended time, in environments that were exactly the opposite, and we have had the opposite experience of her during that time. Luckily, that was far into this journey, and I was able to say, Oh, this has nothing to do with her. I was so clear on that, and having that confidence allowed me to then advocate for her and be step into that situation in a way I don't know that I would have if I didn't have this information right, I would have been questioning that. Well, is this intentional misbehavior? Does she hold some responsibility in this? Do I have, do I have the right to ask for this level of accommodations that I'm asking for, none of that was present, right? Because I had been collecting the evidence for years on what happens when you prioritize that and think about our kids from this perspective, right?  

Robyn: It is that powerful, and that is so hard, right? Like, I know it's hard for me in my own life, too, to, like, have this really core trust in the idea that when people have what they need, we're really not having problems beyond just like normal life kind of stuff, and so to anchor into that trust and that certainty when our kids are struggling so significantly that something's not right that is so hard, because that is not the message that we're getting anywhere else right? Like we're getting that it's our fault our parenting is wrong, or that your kid just needs to figure it out. We're not the system. It's not our fault. We're not going to do anything to help you and your child are doing something wrong and need to change.  

Eileen: That's right. I think the other piece that's really, really hard about that is that even when, for example, when I say that my daughter is doing really well and we have, like, more typical challenges, that doesn't mean I'm not doing anything. The amount of support and accommodations and the intensity of that is huge, right? And so to have the endurance to keep up the accommodations and to stay in this lens and stay there as often as possible. We're not going to be there 100% of time, because we're human, but be there as much as possible. That is hard, that takes work. That's why you need community. That's why you need support. Because the endurance is it's- the endurance that it takes is no joke, right? So I just again highlighting what your comment of it is hard, and these are all the layers of why, why it is right.  

Robyn: You're saying something that I think is super important, which is that most of the time, I'm sure it's not true. All the time, because you're as human as the rest of us, but most of the time, the way that your family approaches accommodations for your daughter isn't with the intention that if you give her these accommodations, she's going to change and one day not need those accommodations anymore, right? There's this sense of we're giving her these accommodations because she's shown us that that's what she needs in order to feel her best in the world, and if maybe that helps something be different in the future, great, but we're not doing it. So she will change in the future. We're doing it so she is successful now. Am I getting that right?  

Eileen: Oh you're right on. And I can remember, you know, I want folks to remember that I learned about this parenting a decade ago. I've been in it for a long time, but I can still remember, yeah, the period in my life where that hit me like, oh, wow, no, her disability is permanent and it's serious, and for the rest of my life, I will be deepening my understanding of her brain, what she needs at this stage of her life, because it does shift and change, and I will be developing new, more meaningful accommodations for her as she goes through life. Yeah, now I feel relief in that, because I'm like, Oh, I don't have to get it right today, right? It's there's not this pressure or this rush to get to this outcome that actually isn't there. If that makes sense? The outcome I'm going for is, in this moment, does she have what she needs, but easing into the acceptance of that it's not that is not an easy process, right? And it's not a one and done, like you come out of it and you get back into it. So I just want to recognize that. But the other piece that you bring up is what I know to be true about her, about kids like her, is that if she's not accommodated constantly and throughout the rest of her lifetime, she will be in this dysregulated state, chronically, and her thinking brain will be offline chronically, and she won't grow in the skills that are getting in her way, her capacity to grow in those skills that we desperately want to build, because that's the source of the challenging behavior we will I'm not saying they don't mature and grow at all, but the progress isn't what it could be, right, right? So it's this. It's all connected. It's all connected.  

Robyn: Yep, yeah, I think that's a really important part to highlight here, that there is so much fear, and I have it too, that if you know, we don't get these skills taught, you know, XYZ terrible outcome is going to happen. And taking a breath and remembering that, well, we don't teach skills that are going to be useful or change your brain in a positive way, in any way, if we're doing it from a state of dysregulation, our own or theirs. And that is, I mean, there's just so many pressures and challenges and barriers that, you know, absolutely create a very real sense of urgency for us.  

Eileen: All of those external pressures, but also our deeply held beliefs and values about what it means to be an independent adult, what it means to be, you know, live a meaningful life, what it means to take responsibility, to show respect, to, quote-unquote, do well, right? I remember when my daughter was really little, three or four, and a family member said to me, do you think she'll ever live on our own. And I was like, oh, how dare you ask me that. Some part of me had this deeply held belief that that is what happens to your children. They move out, they launch, they live on their own. And if they don't, something is wrong with you as a parent, right? I didn't realize that I had that deeply held belief, until someone said something that that brought it alive. And now, I mean, the reality is that we will probably have the company of my daughter in our home for a very long time, and so that easing into the acceptance of that, like, Why do I believe that? Why did I have such a reaction, right? Why was that so important to me and so offensive that I'd be asked that, right? I can look back at it now and say, Well, that was kind of silly, but in the in the moment, it was very real.  

Robyn: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, again, you touched on all the things, and the least of which is, I. But there's this, you know, unspoken and spoken way that parenting is supposed to go. And when you're a good parent, it goes like this and it looks like this, and when you're when it doesn't go like that, oh, man, it's got to be the parents fault. And there's hardly anything more, I think, personal and connected to our core identity than our families, right? Like our parent, you know, our parenting identity.  

Eileen: So I want to be clear for folks listening, you know, it obviously is part of being, I think, a good parent, to have those values you want to instill in your kids, it just looks different, right? So like the responsibility value, like, I want them to take responsibility, and if we consider like, again, their social emotional age, what if they are a child of half their age in this area? What would responsibility look like for that child? And then again, adjusting expectations to be more in alignment with that, right? When you can start to settle into the acceptance of that and embrace that, there's so much relief. There is so much freedom that comes from that, right? But, but getting to that point can be a process, right? So if it feels hard for parents listening, you're exactly probably where you where you should be in this point in the process, but it can get easier.  

Robyn: So let's go back to something we talked about quite a bit ago, which was some of these skills are so much easier to kind of deconstruct as due to a lagging cognitive skill, where some of them seem so personal, and maybe let's look at an example of something like that, something that feels really personal, but actually, if we kind of step back, use our own mental flexibility, see what's really happening inside the brain. We can see that even if it's a relational skill, it's still a lagging skill that we could build and scaffold or and or accommodate for.  

Eileen: Let's go with a common scenario of sibling relationships, or it could be a peer if your child doesn't have a sibling, and let's say you have a 12 year old who will not compromise with their eight year old sibling. They will not share what they have. They will not play the game ever that the eight year old wants to play with them. They have to have it their way. They cannot disengage in an argument, and it seems as though they enjoy repetitive behaviors towards their sibling that they're told to stop, and when they're told to stop, they just get worse. They just do it more.   

Eileen: So when a parent comes to me with that hypothetical situation, it's really, really easy to think my 12-year-old is just selfish. He doesn't care about anyone else but himself. His eight-year-old sibling is more generous. His eight-year-old sibling is more flexible. And even when the eight-year-old says nine times out of 10, we can do what you want. The 12 year old, he can't even do it once, not even once, right? Understandably, the parent is incredibly frustrated because it looks so willful, it feels so personal, and they see a younger child doing better in these skills, they don't think of them as skills, but doing better in this situation than their 12-year-old. So all of that is swirling around, yes, so if we are able to take a leap of faith and take a step back and assume that the 12-year-old would be doing better in that relationship with their eight-year-old sibling if they could, if they had the skills, then what's getting in the way of them doing that? Right?    

Eileen: So I picked this example specifically because a lot of those are cognitive flexibility things right, getting stuck in behavioral loops or verbal loops. Right? Literally being stuck and being unable to disengage without help. Not being able to let go in an argument, they can not do it. They're too rigid, not being able to go with the flow. Oh, you want to play that today? Okay? Yeah, I guess we can do that. We played by game last time, right? Not being able to do that, not being able to perspective take like. What they see, what they believe, what is their reality is, all there is. And they're not refusing to shift. They don't have the skills yet to shift. So we again, we think about all of that. It is all cognitive flexibility skills. The other added layer of that that I'm always asking parents is and what age does this remind you of, this type of rigidity, this type of behavior? What age does that remind you of? The reason for that is that gap is usually present, almost always present, and it can help us shift and soften and say, Okay, what would I do with, say, a four-year-old who is rigid in the same ways. I'm not saying Oh, you're four, so do whatever you want. I'm saying, oh, man, four is a really tough age, because they lag behind in these skills. How do I support this four year old in in in growing these skills? Much of that can apply to a 12-year-old, just adjusted for a 12-year-old, right? So once we've taken a step back and we understand the skill set that's involved and where that child is lagging behind, it makes so much more sense why they can't do better and what they need to be able to do better.  

Robyn: Well, let's go there next, so we deconstruct it. We see it. I love the question, what age does this remind you of? Yeah, and because I do think so often that gives us so many insights, including the fact that we don't just let four year olds do whatever they want. And that's such a fear that parents hold understandably so, that if we are understanding the behavior, we're just saying, well, free for all, I guess there's nothing we can do about it. And so I really, I not really thought about it the way you just said it, this, this way of of looking at it through the lens of a younger child, but then using that piece to remind ourselves, like, we give younger kids more scaffolding, more structure, more boundaries.  

Eileen: Exactly. And so I want to acknowledge for the parent of the 12-year-old who's listening, or 13 or 14-year-old, whatever it may be, I know that you did not expect to be giving this level of scaffolding, this level of intentionality, to this skill set. There's other things you thought you'd be focused on, and all of the accommodations that take more of your time and energy. It can be a real bummer when you come to that realization. And also, I promise you, you will not feel like you're working harder. It feels that way in the beginning, right? You're on this learning curve, but you're already working so hard to just get your eight-year-old and your 12-year-old to get along. So these accommodations, the scaffolding, everything that you would do at the intensity you would do for a four-year-old. Yes, it likely applies to your 12-year-old, and it may for some time, but I promise you, you won't be working harder. Things will feel better, right?    

Eileen: So taking a step back, the first thing to acknowledge is that in the moment when things have been escalated and your child has grown more and more and more rigid, because they're getting more and more dysregulated, more frustrated, not to try to address all the things then. It's just a waste of your precious energy, right? If they have trouble being flexible, logical, reasonable at baseline because of those cognitive skills that are involved in that I promise you, it's not going to happen in that moment, no matter how much wisdom and logic you have to share with them. So taking a step back, taking a break, separating the two, getting them going with different activities, whatever it might need to happen in order to just calm the chaos and the tension a bit, right? And then at a moment, and I say a moment, because it truly is something that you need to be looking for. It's not oh and then an hour later, or the next day, or whatever it might be, then you are looking for a moment where you can circle back with your 12-year-old and have this conversation with them about what the perspective of their eight-year-old is, connecting the dots, how it must feel for the eight-year-old when you say this or you do his game, he does your game nine times out of 10. He just wants it this one time. How might that feel to him? What does that sound like? The conversations a version of what we do with little kids, right? It may mean that you need to have more supervision from the onset with the eight and the 12-year-old, so that when you start to see the rigidity getting the best of your 12-year-old, very small hints of that, then you intervene and you accommodate and you support from a place of empathy, instead of waiting for the rigidity. You to build right? But that circling back piece, you've got to look for the opportunity, and it's going to be dependent on your child, and you you don't go into it when you're still worked up. Nothing good will happen from that.   

Robyn: I think what I also want to take a moment to just highlight and point out here is I know so many, not all, but so many my folks who listen, have kids again, who have histories of attachment trauma, and there's this reality to some of the relational behaviors, whether they feel like controlling, you know, refusing to let the other person take a turn, that are rooted possibly in some of those attachment skills or relational skills, and those are still lagging skills, developing relational skills, developing attachment skills, feeling safe enough in relationship that you can have a relational experience of cooperation instead of control. While they can feel so character-driven, because they feel yucky, they just feel yucky. It feels yucky to be controlled. It feels yucky to watch your kid control their younger brother, and in some ways even feel like they're delighting in it, right? That even those skills, right? Because I hear you saying so much like this 12-year-old really wants to be able to have a good relationship with her eight-year-old brother. And I know there's a there's some folks listening who have the felt sense from their 12-year-olds. The metaphorical 12-year-olds is like, no, they don't know. And that makes sense. And I totally get that, and I know what that kid feels like too, like. I know what that kid feels like. And we kind of come back to that leap of faith, piece of, you know, really believing that kids do all when they can, like Ross Greene says, or that when kids are regulated and when they're connected to others and to themselves, which means connection feels safe, and they're feeling safe, right, that they have the kinds of behaviors that we would think and although we don't normally- or that we would want, and I know we don't normally think about those more attachment driven behaviors as things we can scaffold. We can.   

Eileen: But the main piece of that, and then I'll stop talking about it, because we could talk for another hour about circling back, in and of itself, is the first step is most important, and it's leading with empathy. And it's really beginning from the standpoint that you're communicating to your child. I know you would be doing better if you could, right, and I understand that there's something else going on here. I know that you want to have a good relationship with your brother, and I can see it's not going as well as you'd like. And I want to help you. I want to help you build those skills. You're not going to say that to them, but that's the mindset. Instead of what are you doing? You're selfish. Your brother always gives in to you, right? We've all been in that cycle before, because we are all human. It doesn't lead to anything, anything productive. So that is in a brief nutshell, the steps.  

Robyn: We can still break down. What is the lagging skill of a child who is being controlling and rigid because of attachment trauma. Well, the lagging skill is safety and connection, safety and relationship, trust that they can have, like a mutually cooperative relationship, and they won't, you know, be totally disregarded or totally, you know, hurt, right? So that trust, even, you know, all these things we could look at through the lens of lagging skill. And again, we could talk for hours and hours and hours and break this all down. But I wanted to just kind of bring that back, kind of all together, that even when it feels like, No, this isn't a lagging skill, this is my child's, you know, attachment trauma or their attachment disorder. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And we actually still could break all of that down into what's missing. And even if we can't fix it, it still changes completely, yes, how we see and interpret what's happening.  

Eileen: That is, I mean, that actually is a really full- coming, a full circle, because we started talking about their unique neurobiology, and the pieces that you and I tend to emphasis more, put more of an emphasis on right? We just articulated that. And the overlap is there it all, it's all connected.  

Robyn: But that's a piece you've really helped me see, is that these behaviors that feel again, feel so personal, feel so grounded in the relational piece. Or what I would say, like, maybe the, you know, a pocket of the disorganized attachment, or, you know, they're still, we can still use the word skill yes to conceptualize what's happening. We just have to maybe shift how we think of the word skill, but being able to trust that a relationship can be safe, that it's okay to allow for some cooperation, and not always be in control of a relationship, that that's a skill, and having the regulatory circuits to be able to regulate through not always. You know, getting what you want, for example, is still a skill, and it's still about the brain, as opposed to being a good or a bad human or a good or a bad kid or good or bad parent, yeah.    

Robyn: Well, this has been wonderful, perfectly delightful. As you were talking, when we hang up, when I press stop, or whatever it is that I press to make this end, I have an idea of either a podcast I want you to come back for, or a podcast I want you to do on your new podcast. So tell us about your new endeavor and how people can go and hear more about all the awesome ways that you're breaking down their kids' behaviors. 

Eileen: I have decided to follow in Robyn's footsteps, a lot of encouragement and moral support. I've decided to start a brain first parenting podcast, yes, and the first three episodes dropped on November 11, and so it is officially out into the world, yes, and it is for parents who have kids whose brains work differently and they tend to have some really challenging behavioral symptoms. And it really is for those parents what I hope it's going to do. My hope in doing it, and the whole reason I did it is because I wanted to be able to provide an added layer of support for those parents. And I enjoy podcasts so much. It's so time efficient to be able to listen while I drive or walk or whatever it is. And so I thought, you know, that is what I need to do. So I'm super excited about it, and I would love to have you as my first guest. So let's talk.  

Robyn: That would be so fun. That would be really fun, because you- I'm not positive you might have been mine.   

Eileen: I was.   

Robyn: You were my first? Yes, okay!  

Eileen: It was your official podcast. It was when you were doing recordings, but it wasn't a podcast.  

Robyn: So happy. I know, fullcircle again, 100%, oh my gosh, yeah. Okay, so Brain First Parenting, which is what your work is really known as, and that's the name of your podcast, we're gonna, of course, be able to find it in any podcast app.  

Eileen: Yes, absolutely. You can also find it on my website. EileenDevine.com/podcast, it's all there as well. So yeah, I look forward to folks listening and letting me know how they like it and what topics would be helpful for them to hear more about.  

Robyn: Well, I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled, thrilled. I mean, the amount of communication that I get from folks about what it means to have the format of a podcast specifically right, just like you said, you like listen to podcasts. I like to listen to them too, but to just hit play, listen to that person. I mean, I really start to feel like the people that I listen to regularly, they're like my friends, like I know them too, right? They don't know me. And I know that the folks who listen to this podcast really regularly, you know, really feel a deep connection to me and that that helps them, rather that matters to them, and the day to day moments with their kids or with their clients. And a lot of professionals are listening to and so the idea that more parents are going to get even more of this from you is just, I'm so, I'm just so grateful.  

Eileen: Thank you. I appreciate your. Support and your encouragement along the way.  

Robyn: Yes, all right, everybody, I will make sure everything about how you can find more of Eileen is very easily to click through in the show notes, and Eileen and I, sounds like we've got some more chatting to do about how we can do this again soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

Eileen: Thank you for having me as always!