What Were You Thinking?! How You Can Help Kids Shift from Dino Brain to 'Team Brain' with Tara Gratto

Listen to today's episode, "What Were You Thinking?! How You Can Help Kids Shift from Dino Brain to 'Team Brain' with Tara Gratto" as Parent Educator & Consultant,  Tara Grotto  joins Dori Durbin. Tara shares:

• Her own journey
• The age to build SEL skills
• Using breathing to calm
• What is "Dino Brain" science?
• The "other" brains
• Benefits of a graphic novel
• "Team Brain" reading by Tara
• How parents can best use "Team Brain"
• About the Epic Battle scene
• Emotional regulation
• Tara's "Building Resilience Through Kindness" Program
• Where to find Tara and her book

Thinking of  writing a kids' book?  Book a Chat with Dori:
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More about Tara :
Tara Gratto M.S.Ed, MA, OCT is the Founder of Raising Resilient Children. A long time educator, former preschool owner and social emotional expert, I help parents and caring adults learn tools and skills for social emotional development and emotional regulation in a way that supports their unique family needs. 

Find Tara's Book:
https://www.taragratto.ca/teambrain

Follow Tara:
https://www.taragratto.ca
https://www.instagram.com/raisingresilientchildren/
https://taragratto.buzzsprout.com/

Did you love this episode? Discover more here:
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More about Dori Durbin:
Dori Durbin is a Christian wife, mom, author, illustrator, and a kids’ book coach who after experiencing a life-changing illness, quickly switched gears to follow her dream. She creates kids’ books to provide a fun and safe passageway for kids and parents to dig deeper and experience empowered lives. Dori also coaches non-fiction authors and aspiring authors to “kid-size” their content into informational and engaging kids’ books!
 
Buy Dori's Kids' Books:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Dori-Durbin/author/B087BFC2KZ

Follow Dori
http://instagram.com/dori_durbin
http://www.doridurbin.com
http://www.facebook.com/dori_durbin

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:00 Meet Tara Grotto
• 3:00 When to build SEL skills
• 4:56 Breathing to Calm
• 7:35 What is Dino Brain Science?
• 13:45 The "Other" Brains
• 17:47 Why Write a Graphic Novel?
• 20:17 "Team Brain" a Read by Tara
• 22:00 How Parents Can Use Her Books
• 25:42 The Epic Battle Scene
• 27:00 Emotional Regulation
• 33:29 Building Resilience Through Kindness Program
• 35:00 Where to find Tara and Book

Transcript

[00:00:02.250] - Dori Durbin

Hello and welcome to The Power of Kids Books, where we believe books are a catalyst to inspire and empower change. I'm your host, Dori Durbin. Have you ever asked your kids, what in the world were you thinking? And you really meant it? Because you really don't know. The thing is, they may not either because they may not understand how their brain is reacting. That's we're tara Grotto comes in. She's a longtime educator, now parent educator and consultant. She's also the founder of Raising Resilient Children, and she was once a former preschooler and social emotional expert. So let me just say she knows your kids from pre k to 25. So welcome, Tara Grotto.

[00:00:46.370] - Tara Grotto

Hello. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:48.750] - Dori Durbin

We are so lucky to have you. I cannot wait to talk about the brain SEL and your book. So maybe start us off with maybe a tiny bit about yourself and how you even got into this.

[00:01:01.730] - Tara Grotto

Sure. So my name is Tara. As you said, I am a parent educator and consultant. I have been working with children and families for over two decades in all kinds of roles guidance counselor, administration teacher, outdoor educator. And they owned a preschool for seven and a half years. My master's work was in social emotional intelligence. It wasn't called that at the time. It was called experiential education or experiential learning because SEL as sort of a mainstream topic, is really new. It's really more modern, maybe the last eight ish or so years, the fact that people are talking about it. So when I first did my work, which was on how to use picture books to build tools and skills for feelings and empathy, how can we address helping kids understand each other? And my goal at that time was to address bullying. And it's really evolved over the years, especially when I had my preschool, I really started to learn. We've shifted the way we parent. And along with that shift, we have maybe not the kinds of tools in our toolbox that we need to parent the way we want to because we never learned this stuff that we're trying to implement with our kids.

[00:02:13.500] - Tara Grotto

And that's really hard. That's a really hard space to find yourself, trying to be a parent, show up as a parent without the tools, because emotional suppression used to be the way we did things, and now it's not. So I think in some ways feelings have kind of taken over. So we've gone from one extreme to the other. And my goal is to find the middle, the balance. So, yeah, that's me in a nutshell. Maybe more than a nutshell.

[00:02:35.810] - Dori Durbin

Your background really leads to the fact that you've been an observer and a participant at the same time, because I know you have your own kids as well. But it's interesting that preschool was kind of it sounds like a keystone part to making some of this shift. So do you feel like there can be instruction given as early as preschool to start to help them build their SEL skills.

[00:03:00.660] - Tara Grotto

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The foundations can start right, from little little people like 18 months. It's all about building up feelings, vocabulary, which for a lot of adults is really uncomfortable and difficult. So that's a space where I teach how to use picture books effectively. We often teach these skills in tricky moments, which is one of the things I talk about, sort of related to my book, is we're often trying to teach children how to navigate their feelings in difficult moments. Unfortunately, that timing is not the best timing because when you're in a difficult moment, your brain is not working properly, so you're not in a really great headspace to learn and grow and develop. So one of the things I use picture books for extensively is skill building outside of tricky moments in calm and connection, because that's where you're going to get your best learning and that will really support your SEL journey. But, yeah, you can start with very young, even pre sort of vocabulary years and then build it through. The sooner you start, the easier it is because brains are flexible and adaptable. They're neuroplastic. But the longer you've been on the planet, the harder that is to reprogram.

[00:04:10.980] - Tara Grotto

Right? So you as an adult doing this work are going to find it way harder than your little child, your little person, because they are learning and it's their first pathway or second pathway for you. You've been doing it for however long you've been on the planet. So I often joke, your children will probably get better at this faster than you. And that's okay. That's a great thing. But it's hard. It's hard to swallow that when you're a parent. You're like, trying to show up and do your best, and you're like, Wait a second, you're telling me to breathe? It's like, don't take that moment offensively. It's okay.

[00:04:43.290] - Dori Durbin

Well, this brings up an interesting part. You said, tell me, take a moment to breathe. Is that how we find that calm and that quiet in a moment? That is pretty stressful and intense as it's happening?

[00:04:56.370] - Tara Grotto

Yeah. So breathing is an amazing and effective tool. It's actually one of the reasons I wrote the book. It's an amazing and effective tool that a lot of people don't like doing and don't like practicing. Right. There are some people who really get into it's part of their lifestyle. It's kind of their way of doing it. But there's a whole other sphere of people who have zero interest in practicing breathing. It's not fun. And kids will tell me it's boring. This is pointless. Right. So that's even very young three year olds. Right? So part of what I used to do in my preschool is a make breathing fun. So butterfly breathing, dino breath breathing, like, different kinds of ways of breathing. But the other thing I discovered working with kids. And my kids are in middle school now, so been parenting for a while. But one of the things I discovered is when you help kids understand a little bit about the brain science, about what's happening in their brain, that they need to learn tools for their feelings. And breathing is only one of those tools. There's lots of different tools. It's the one that's fast, free and effective.

[00:05:55.410] - Tara Grotto

But sometimes you need other tools, too. Some of those bigger body reactions need bigger body tools as well. So breathing is not the only tool, but it is one of the best for regulating our system. But kids don't love doing it. And again, quite often when we reflect on our parenting, we ask our kids to breathe in difficult moments and no other time. That's not the best association with breathing. Oh, I'm being told to breathe. That must mean things are really bad right now. Right? So we want to make breathing fun and effective. The other thing we want to do is just do it, not always ask permission for it. If you say to a child who's in Dino Brain, which is something I teach in my book, really playful take on brain science. But this idea that when you have flipped into the stress cycle, you can't make great choices. And if you're really young and inexperienced in handling stress and difficult moments, you're going to have less ability to make choices. So even the choice about breathing isn't going to be a choice you're probably capable of making. So we got to be that confident adult guide and just do it.

[00:07:00.700] - Tara Grotto

So one of the things I teach in my book is we got to stop, we got to breathe, we got to think, we got to act. So breathing is built into the book. So those kids that are like, I don't do this, I have no interest in it, you now have a tool to make it fun and give them a why. Why do you need to do this? Well, when we're in Dino brain or headed to Dino brain, it's the thing that's going to bring us a few steps back. It's going to deevolve us from full on Tyrannosaurus Rex.

[00:07:29.890] - Dori Durbin

Okay, explain to us what Dino Brain is, because I think I'm.

[00:07:35.170] - Tara Grotto

Absolutely my book is a very playful take on brain science. Brain science is extremely layered, pretty hard to comprehend. Different sort of experts have broken it down in different ways. I broken it down to the idea of, like, thinking brain, body, brain, emotions, brain. So thinking brain is your skills based brain, reading, writing, learning a new sport, playing a musical instrument. Right? The things that we think about and build skills for, then body brain is that involuntary stuff, right? So circulation, breathing while you're sleeping, walking. Once you've learned how to walk, you don't really think about it. You don't think, I got to do this steps, right? The kinds of things that your body does digestion, right? Going to the washroom, that kind of stuff. And then Emotions Brains with you for everything, right? It's part of the ride because feelings are neither good nor bad. They're meant to inform us. Now, I'm not naive in believing and understanding that there are some feelings we appreciate more than others. But the idea is that we don't have to say that any feeling is good or bad, that they're informing us. Now, what happens is these three brains in my story work really well together, and we go through a couple examples of how they work together.

[00:08:55.690] - Tara Grotto

But sometimes things happen that Emotions Brain doesn't want to be part of the team anymore. So emotions. Brain will take over. And that's typically when we encounter some kind of a problem. Now, a problem doesn't have to be something massive. It could be simply choosing a flavor of ice cream, being told to put your shoes on, to go outside, right? It could be something what we think might be trivial, but to a kid is a really big deal. So we encounter some kind of problem, and for an adult, it could be financial stress. There's all kinds of things that could be categorized as a problem. When we encounter that problem, that's when Emotions Brain takes over. So it kicks thinking brain and body brain out of the way and says, I'm in charge now. And part of that in our story is it evolves from this cute little pet to a tyrannosaurus rex, and we call it Dino Brain, which is based on the idea of the amygdala and the reptilian brain. That's where the idea came from. When I was working with kids, they just loved the idea of like, Dino brain taking over, right?

[00:09:56.030] - Tara Grotto

And this idea that tyrannosaurus rexes maybe aren't super intelligent and wise. They kind of just go for it, right? So kids really gravitate to that. So Dino Brain is that idea that when Emotions Brain takes over, it kicks into gear. Dino Brain. And what does that mean? That's the stress response. That's our flight, booah, flight, fight freeze. And then there's a fourth one called Fawn. That's not my area of expertise. It's a trauma informed one. My book focuses on the three because those are the ones that most impact children. So the fight response, kicking, hitting, yelling, or the desire to do that even if you don't do it, the desire to do it flight is that like, run away, hide. I don't want to be here, get me out. And we all know situations where we don't want to be present or kids that do, in fact, take off and then freeze is when your brain turns into a bit of an ice block. The idea of, like, I can't make a decision, I can't find the words of what to say. And parents talk about this all the time. They'll be in a difficult moment.

[00:10:55.720] - Tara Grotto

They're like it's like my brain stopped working. And when you talk to kids about, like, I always use the ice cream parlor as a great example because when you go to the ice cream store, there's so many choices. So your brain goes into a bit of choice overwhelm. And that can be an example of freeze Brain, where you're like, I can't pick one. There's too many decisions to make right now, so I'm going to have a bit of a meltdown about this. So that's sort of what Dino Brain is. It's this idea that emotions brain takes over and one of the responses is triggered fight, flight or freeze. And how do we stop that? Right? We have to stop it by regulating ourselves. And how do we teach children to be aware of trying to keep the team working together? And that's what my book is about. My book is about how do we keep team brain, the three components working as a team. And you in charge of the control center, so you're in charge of these things, but when they run away, you're going to do things that maybe you regret or feel guilty about.

[00:11:53.400] - Tara Grotto

And it's part of you needing to build some skills and you needing to build your awareness over a very long period of time. So hold on to your seats for a second. Brain science is a 25 year trajectory. Actually, I read a book recently, I said maybe even 30. That doesn't mean your kids won't be able to regulate by the time until they're 25. That's not what that means. But it does mean that your five year old won't have it mastered. It's a much bigger, longer trajectory. And there's a bit of sort of regression that happens in the teen years, right? So when we're practicing and building tools, we have to realize that this is a much bigger, longer but by starting with younger children, my dream is to help them understand the process. It also builds in a layer of patience for you where you're like, oh, this isn't them being defiant. This is them in Dino brain. Oh, this isn't them say, I don't know, this is freeze brain, right? So it really helps parents be like, oh, there's another layer here. There's a brain science layer to these challenges I'm facing. Hey there.

[00:13:03.070] - Dori Durbin

Sorry for the interruption, but I heard your brain rumbling with book ideas. And I know that book ideas just tend to grow bigger. Let's take your idea, stop the rumbling and allow it to become real. Click the link below and schedule a quick chat. Now back to the show.

[00:13:22.270] - Dori Durbin

I love all of it. I love the fact that you can split that up. So simply too, because I've heard brain science in the past and I had to take notes. I was going along and be able to relate it to something that parents and kids can comprehend and understand without really thinking is super important. You have Dino brain. Tell me about do you have two other characters for your two other brains, then, or how does that work?

[00:13:48.640] - Tara Grotto

So there's emotions brain which becomes Dino brain. And then there's thinking brain and body brain. And they are all characters. So the illustrator that I worked with, Jerome Cabanatan, when we met, one of the things we talked about is that we wanted it to be a book that's accessible to a wide range of kids. So we wanted to make sure that it had no specific sort of look, no specific maybe characteristics, so that it would speak to a child anywhere in the world. Right? Because brain science, I think one of the things that's interesting about SEL, so social, emotional intelligence is that it's one of the things that links us all together. No matter where you are in the world, you have feelings. You react to your feelings. There's this idea, right? So it doesn't matter culturally. Now, how those play out does differ by culture, for sure, but it's kind of this universal language for all of us that we have feelings within us and we react to those feelings, and what we do with those feelings matters, and how we sort of react to our feelings matters. So each of the characters doesn't have any sort of characteristics outside of like, one has a brain as a head, and it has, like, a little athletic gear, and the other has their brain as a head.

[00:15:00.710] - Tara Grotto

And it's kind of like more of like the scholarly look and then the little emotions brain looks like kind of like a dogish little pet, if you will. So they don't have personal characteristics. It's brain personified. I think that's how you say it. Yeah. And that was super intentional. And it's actually a question that kids have asked me, right? They're like, it's a bit weird that they have brains as heads. Why'd you do that when I say this piece? Right, well, look around your class. Does anybody look like anybody else? Right? But you all have brains, and you all have feelings, and you all face problems, and you all have Dino Brain you got to deal with. So that was really intentional. So when they hear that, they're like, oh, cool. And then other kids just think it's cool because Jerome is comic book, so he's awesome, and he has a background in that space, which was really intentional. I wanted a book that spoke to a totally different audience of kids. So creating a comic book illustrated version of this story was extremely important to me. I really wanted it to have that superhero sort of element.

[00:16:16.420] - Tara Grotto

I learned a lot about graphic and comic novels through this process because I come from traditional literacy more standard, and I had no idea that there's a whole world in how things are written, the types of bubbles that are like, I had no idea. And I learned really cool stuff. But that graphic element really speaks to a lot of kids, and it speaks to a large range of kids. I did a middle school presentation. I know my book is being used in high schools because it doesn't have that little kid feeling, but it has that sort of like, hey, there's something cool here. I want to be the superhero in my emotional regulation story. So that was super intentional and a process.

[00:17:00.550] - Dori Durbin

I love that you are able to hit that big of an audience because you think about trying to get a hold of teenagers. You said you have teens.

[00:17:08.660] - Tara Grotto

I've lived through teens.

[00:17:10.270] - Dori Durbin

It's a different experience.

[00:17:14.570] - Tara Grotto

I call a toddler take two. That's pretty accurate. Bedtime goes out the window, following general rules, goes out the window, right.

[00:17:26.860] - Dori Durbin

Crying without really any reason. All this, you, maybe them, who knows? But to be able to take that again, that simplicity that we were talking about earlier, and be able to apply it and still keep that interest for older kids, that's brilliant on your part to be able to adapt that concept to a comic. And graphic novels, we know are just a big age range now.

[00:17:47.520] - Tara Grotto

Yes.

[00:17:47.940] - Dori Durbin

So it's not a trend. It's just how people are responding to literature.

[00:17:54.150] - Tara Grotto

Interesting. I actually have a podcast with Jarrett Lerner, who's an amazing author illustrator about the importance of graphic novels. And so if you're the kind of person who's thinking, I don't see the value of graphic novels, or I see them as lesser books or whatever, we really delve into that topic because it is tricky for some parents. And I share in that podcast episode. I share how I 20 years ago, when I first started teaching, I thought that way, sure, you can read comic books during this time, but not dear sure, as long as you were working towards a quote unquote real book. And now I'm realizing that that perspective is misguided and there is so much value to be gained from this format. And the images and the way the images are used really speak to kids in a way that words can't always do. That.

[00:18:46.550] - Dori Durbin

I think, from an illustrator writer perspective. Also, I think that having something that is going to reach a child, no matter what their reading level is, allows them to interpret through the character's expressions and through some of the physical adaptations to the pages. Maybe they're turned one way, turned a different way. It gives them the flexibility to be able to envision themselves in those positions also. And picture books usually are so beautiful and just with like a scene or a image or just a few where I think the graphic novels tend to have a different kind of feel and a different kind of pace to them as well.

[00:19:27.560] - Tara Grotto

Yeah. And it's a whole thing. That's what I learned, that I had no clue, I really had no idea what that all was and how the pacing works. And that was a big learning curve for me because I was just like, I just want graphic novel illustration. I know it'll speak to kids that really need to have this conversation. I didn't realize the other piece of it was going to be, oh, wow, there's a whole subculture here. And I'm grateful to my illustrator. We got to work hand in hand, which was amazing. So I'm really grateful for his patience, and we got to problem solve together and stuff. But I learned a lot about a whole world I had no idea existed, because I didn't realize the value of that process.

[00:20:10.950] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, well, you've got me super curious. Would you mind reading?

[00:20:15.270] - Tara Grotto

Yeah, sure.

[00:20:16.220] - Dori Durbin

Team Brain.

[00:20:17.260] - Tara Grotto

Yeah, I'm trying to think of what's the best section to read because it is graphic, right? So there's not that many words. It's mostly picture driven. All right, well, I'll just start at the beginning. It's easier. Okay. So welcome to your brain control center. Inside live three very powerful heroes. Thinking, brain, body, brain, emotions, brain. We are team Brain. So then the next page is like a picture of Thinking Brain. My job is helping you learn skills. And then there's a picture of, like, a soccer player, a taekwondo, a basketball, someone doing some writing, someone working on a computer, a little violin. And then Body Brains on the next page, wearing as, like, a little tracksuit. My job is to take care of the things your body does without you thinking about them. There's, like, a little digestive system and a heart and some lungs. And then I'm the one who reacts to your feelings. And there's a picture of a dog type character that has a happy face, a sad face, a thinking face, a worried face, like a bunch of emojis. And then the next page is about how they work together. So the team works together to do everyday things.

[00:21:24.800] - Tara Grotto

And there's an example of an everyday thing and how it sort of transforms throughout the day.

[00:21:30.220] - Dori Durbin

That's awesome. I can totally see it in my mind's eye because you described them earlier. But I love the setup and how we're introduced, and then probably the story is going to expand from there.

[00:21:41.760] - Tara Grotto

Yeah, well, emotions. Brain runs away. Perfect.

[00:21:48.290] - Dori Durbin

And then as you're reading, I know that we had talked about this before a little bit, but you said that there's some tools that parents can implement with their kids. So as they read this book, do you suggest that there are tools to read with it?

[00:22:03.530] - Tara Grotto

No, it's actually built in. So I designed this book for caring adults to read with children, which is how high school teachers have done this. But this idea that when you read it with the children, there's a process. So first I teach you the brain science, then I teach you about dino brain. So what's happening to you? Right. And so you can start to reflect a little bit there on. When do I take light? When do I fight? When do I freeze? Because you never do all or nothing. It's a combination. And then we take you through the steps. So the brain control center needs skills. It says that to prevent dino brain from evolving too much. So it's this idea that not all stress is bad stress. I think I need to make that really clear. And the psychologist I worked with who vetted my book was like, can you please make sure this is said? Because some stress is really important, right? We kind of put stress in the bad bucket. But professional athletes talk about how important stress is. And surgeons and even right now, this conversation, I use this example all the time, showing up to have an interview with somebody, that's good stress, right?

[00:23:08.750] - Tara Grotto

It helps me be brave. It helps me put my thoughts together, right? So not all stress is bad stress. But, yeah, what it does is it actually goes through the steps. So step one is to stop, right? And then it says step two is to breathe. And there's box breathing that's in the book. So you can practice box breathing right here while you're reading. And then I have a resource center on my website that you can join. It's like a membership community and resource center. Inside that, I have a whole bunch of different ways you can teach kids how to breathe. So this doesn't have to be the only way. And I talk about how you do that and things like that. And then step three is thinking. So it actually says step three, and you got to think. So what do we think about? Right? Think about a different choice. Think about a different action. Think about what we may have done with our dino brain. And then step four is act. So the goal is to stop, to breathe, to think, to act so that you make a different choice. The ultimate goal is to never let dino brain hit trex level, right?

[00:24:10.480] - Tara Grotto

To never hit someone, to never yell, to not run away when we're overwhelmed, instead to tackle it. That's the ultimate goal. But we all know that's not how it goes. Always. Sometimes we get all the way to dino brain. So we talk in the book about how sometimes you have to go back to step two a couple of times. One breath isn't going to be enough. Always, we got to do it a couple of times. And so in the book, the characters are fighting the dino brain together to bring it down, to devolve it. So thinking brain and body brain are working together, and they have, like, superhero suits. They sort of are breathing and whatever, which the kids love that part. It's the scene. It's funny. That's the part of the illustrator who's like, there has to be a scene where we bring dino brain back down because that was all science when I met him. I'm like, So here's all the science. Here's how it works. He's like, and where's the story, Tara? I was like, oh, right. This is a book. So it goes through that sequence a couple of times, and then it says, when you stop, breathe, think, and act, you can handle any problem or stress storm right.

[00:25:10.900] - Tara Grotto

And it's because you made Team Brain work together, right? So you made the control. It's all it's very much a book that speaks to you, the reader. It's designed to talk to you. It's designed to have you sort of see yourself imagine Team Brain and then start to realize the importance of breathing and dino Brain. And again, in tricky moments, it becomes a nice little segue, too, of like, oh, this is a Dino Brain moment. This is what's happening right now. We need to do a tool we can't problem solve until we calm down a bit.

[00:25:44.830] - Dori Durbin

I love that. And I'm envisioning this epic battle to bring the dino brain down.

[00:25:52.230] - Tara Grotto

Yeah, there's laser beam looking things that are representative of breathing. Yeah, they have, like, little breathing jet packs. So stop is a shield. Breathing is like these balls of breathing balls that they throw. And thinking is a thinking helmet with an antenna. And then act is obviously what do you do? And they have, like, little jetpacks where they can act together. So, yeah, each thing was thought about in terms of both its comic book representation and age appropriate developmental. And how does it speak to the different audiences?

[00:26:34.590] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, very cool. I love it. So when parents are trying to figure out how to handle their kids, I'm just kind of thinking through the SEL piece of it. Are there things that maybe they say that they need to maybe I don't want to say don't do, but maybe watch for in their own language when they're deescalating or teaching their kids these skills? Or maybe there are things that you've noticed is common that parents maybe make as a mistake and don't even realize that they're doing it, right.

[00:27:08.220] - Tara Grotto

Well, I think a couple of things happen pretty regularly. One is we only problem solve challenges in challenging moments, which is why I wrote the book. Right. It's a lot easier to have an action plan. And when you talk to your child about how you're going to handle their big feelings, we can pretend tantrums aren't going to happen or big reactions aren't going to happen, but that's not reality. We all have big feelings whether we're eight months old or 80. Right. Nobody doesn't have feelings. We all react to our feelings differently. I've seen adults have temper tantrums, right. Emotional dysregulation is the sciency word for it. But one of the things you have to do is you have to build your tools in calm and connection if you want them to work well. You can't use a tool in dynobrain that. You haven't practiced, because it has to be second nature to you to use it. So if you're trying to use tools in the moment and you're finding they don't work, that's one of the reasons. The other thing that I found, and sort of there's a really big theory called name it to Tame It, which is a really important theory.

[00:28:14.550] - Tara Grotto

One of the things I discovered when I was working with young children is around three to five, kids don't really like it when you label their feelings for them. So under three, it works really well. Around three to five, they kind of actually makes things worse, a lot worse. And when you talk to adults and you say, hey, when somebody says to you, you need to calm down, or wow, you're really angry, generally doesn't make the other adult feel validated either. And the interesting thing about the theory, when you dig into it, is the theory sort of talks about this idea that in order for labeling your identifying your feeling to work, you, the person having the feeling needs to resonate with the feeling. So if somebody's telling you that you're angry and that's not how you're feeling, it's not going to work. So that's another piece where I found sort of Team Brain really helpful. It's like, wow, you're having big feelings. And again, the name entertainment is really important, but we got to do that work outside of the tricky moments, because one of the things we do is we top heavy. They're not great feelings.

[00:29:16.620] - Tara Grotto

So we're really great at level you're angry, you're crying, you're sad, but we don't talk about any of the other feelings. So again, outside of those tricky moments, how are you building that vocabulary so that in a tricky moment, your child can actually figure out what the feeling is? To be able to use the skill of, I'm angry, I need to breathe, I need to go squeeze a pillow, I need to walk away, I need to get a glass of water. In order to have that state of you have to have thought about it. So it's that sort of action plan kind of idea. So those are two really big things that I see. Emotional regulation. Again, this is something I teach in my program and I do in my one on one work. It's a skill building process. It's something you didn't learn growing up. Emotional suppression was the way to go. You were considered stronger, wiser, more powerful, the greater you could suppress your feelings. The research is showing that hasn't panned out super well. So if we're going to do things differently, we also need to realize that, hey, I need to build some tools and some skills.

[00:30:24.470] - Tara Grotto

I think the other thing that's really interesting about the parenting relationship is you are a unique individual. Your child's a unique individual. And just because you see elements of yourself in your child doesn't mean they're you. And the tools that work for you may or may not work for them. That's a hard pill to swallow. And often we see not our best features in our children, and we focus on those. We kind of hyper focus on those. So one of the things that's helpful is to step back and say, okay, I need to build my parenting toolbox because my child's a totally unique person who has different social emotional needs than maybe I have. And so I need to build my toolbox, and I need to support building their toolbox with things that maybe I don't know, which is I know that's tricky when you're a parent, you're like, I'm supposed to know all the things. And that's why parenting is not really common sense as it maybe once was. We've shifted. We know so much about development and about brain science, and we know so much more than we ever did. So it's quite like, you shouldn't know it all unless you've been studying it and working with kids for a really long time.

[00:31:26.000] - Tara Grotto

Right? That's kind of the space. That's why I do this. My preschool clients actually were like, tara, you need to take your approach, your concepts, your ideas beyond the preschool. You need to take it to the greater world because you have this way of understanding kids in a really unique perspective, and you avoid me from going down. Google rabbit holes is my favorite quote. But it's fair. I mean, I've been there too. The research is overwhelming. The data is overwhelming. As you said earlier, you can try and learn from all the big sort of thinkers, but can be a little technical, which is not always helpful because you get lost in the technicalities. And that's where my educated brain takes over. I'm like, no, we have to teach this as a skill. We have to think about this. How do we think about learning? How do we think about development? How do we think about and taking that assumption out that parents can do that. And even some of the parenting books, it's like very cookie cutter. And you can't cookie cutter kids. Every family is unique. All the dynamics are unique. Their individual goals and skills are unique.

[00:32:40.540] - Tara Grotto

So you can't just do what the book says. You got to be able to take pieces of a bunch of different things, and who has time for that? So I do that for you.

[00:32:50.790] - Dori Durbin

Well, I'll say two things. I think what you said about parents feeling like their kids have the exact same emotions or even, like, thoughts, I think that is so common and such a natural I don't want to say mistake, but sort of it's our go to, right? And then the second piece of that, trying to comprehend what's going on while you're in the moment is tricky and pretty impossible to do unless you practice it. Like you said earlier in The Call, can you talk a little bit about the actual coaching that you do, the one on ones and your programs.

[00:33:29.480] - Tara Grotto

Oh, sure. So I do one on one support with a sort of limited number of people. It's sort of a 90 day program that we work through together. And then I also have a resource community and my signature program, Building Resilience Through Kindness, which is a parenting program that sort of teaches you about brain science. It teaches you the basics of child development. So those are questions like, is this age appropriate? What should I do? I don't know how to handle what do I do in these tricky moments? How do I handle these tricky moments? How do I know how to make space or not make space? All those kinds of questions are answered there. And then I also do, like, weekly Q and A where you can come and ask me. I have different formats for that. And then, because I'm a big advocate for using books, I have a whole resource library where I come on and I describe a book, I describe how to read it because I think that's a really important and maybe missing piece. A lot of people know they need books. They're like, yeah, we need books. But there are approaches to reading books that can be helpful overusing a book can sort of create a relationship with children where you're teaching too much.

[00:34:38.890] - Tara Grotto

Right. Assuming the book will do all the work also. So I have a whole resource library in there, so I'm very passionate about what I do. It's really important that I know all my people. So my community is not massive. It's what is manageable for me. So those are kind of the two ways people work with me. My one on one work. I do some consulting for schools. I do book talks and workshops. And yes, on my website there's, like, all the things that I do, we're.

[00:35:06.860] - Dori Durbin

Actually at that point. So do you want to share your website with them for me?

[00:35:10.370] - Tara Grotto

Yeah, sure. It's just targrotto CA. So T-A-R-A-G-R-A-T-T-O CA. That's it.

[00:35:17.440] - Dori Durbin

Are you open to people emailing you, or is it better to contact you on your website?

[00:35:21.850] - Tara Grotto

Yeah, you're welcome to email me. There's also a contact form, so if you're like, I can't remember info at Targado CA is my email, but there's a whole contact form on my website. I have a podcast called Tara's Take can follow me there.

[00:35:37.640] - Dori Durbin

And they also need to know where to find your book.

[00:35:40.260] - Tara Grotto

Yeah, so my book's available worldwide on Amazon, and it's under Team Brain. It's the adventures of Team Brain and it's by Tara Grato and Jerome Cabanatan.

[00:35:50.290] - Dori Durbin

Well, you have given us just a plethora of really functional skills and information. And honestly, I want to go get your book and read it.

[00:35:59.250] - Tara Grotto

Awesome.

[00:36:00.070] - Dori Durbin

I do. I want to see that epic battle scene.

[00:36:03.080] - Tara Grotto

I'm dying to see that oh, nice.

[00:36:05.400] - Dori Durbin

Well, Tara, thank you so much for your time today. I can't wait for people to find you to get your book and to just give you that info back and how well it's working for them.

[00:36:14.610] - Tara Grotto

Amazing. I love it. Thank you for having me. Thank you.