Episode 159: This Kind of Fear is Learned with Dinalynn Rosenbush

Imperfect Heroes Podcast is a production of Little Hearts Academy, USA.

You're listening to Imperfect Heroes insights into parenting. The perfect podcast for imperfect parents looking to find joy in their experience of raising children in an imperfect world. And I'm your host, DJ Stutz, you

Hey everyone. I'm so excited to have you here and joining us with all the other imperfect heroes and heroines looking to provide a better life and a better relationship with their families, and so we're gonna be on a great topic today with a great guest. But before we get started, I just want to remind you that you have an opportunity to get in on some coaching for yourself. So whether it's one on one coaching, or you want to do some group coaching, all that's available to you through the website. The link's going to be in the show notes, but you can always find us at www.LittleHeartsAcademyusa.com, and you'll find all kinds of stuff there. So take a chance, and you always get a one-hour free getting to know you. Let's figure things out, kind of a session where we can talk about some of the things that excite you and some of the concerns that you have, and maybe some questions.  Is this normal? I get that question so often. That's kind of the question that started my coaching career, was having so many parents coming and asking me, Is this normal? That's where we are. So let's get started on today. So my guest today is Dinalynn, Rosenbush.  Dinalynn, why don't you go ahead and talk to us. I know you've got some exciting things going. You just had a great workshop that happened, and so let us know what you've got going on.

Thank you. Yes, I am Dinalynn Rosenbush, and I am the creator and host of the podcast The Language of Play. I'm a speech pathologist that decided that it was time to start a podcast because I too had been approached by parents with so many questions. One of the common questions that I got was, why don't my kids listen? And there's a difference when kids have a language and speech delay in their capability of listening. And in that context, we can always be sure that disobedience might not actually be disobedience, and that is what I just had my very first webinar on. So I'm learning the tech, and that's so great, and it went really well, and so well that I'm thinking I'm going to need to be doing it again. So I'm excited about that. I do not have a date yet because I just did it this week, but I'm already getting requests to do it again, so that's really fun.

Well, congratulations. That's so exciting. Thank you. Today, we are actually talking a lot about letting our kids take risks and move out there. And sometimes, I think when you have a child too, we're going to connect these a little bit where you have a child that maybe doesn't hear or you have to tell them something, or they don't turn around the minute you call them for whatever reason, you tend to maybe not allow them to take some of those risks. And then we've got parents who are just overly protective or scared to death their child's gonna get hurt, get a boo, boo, whatever. But all of these are growing experiences in life, and it gives our kids more to communicate about,

Absolutely. And in addition, when we're talking about risk taking, there's more than one kind of risk that we would be taking. So physical risk is what we typically think about, which should be that jumping, tumbling, climbing on the rocks, oh no, don't get an injury, yep. But if we rewind back to the conversation we just had, we could talk about emotional risk. And for a kid to ask the question, can you repeat for the 15th time? You know that is an emotional risk? We don't. The child doesn't know. How are they going to respond if I say I don't get it? And the other thing is that sometimes the kids don't even know that. They don't understand. So when they nod yes, then they go forward, and then there's this threat inside of them, Oh, am I doing it right? But they don't know for sure, and so they can hold back. And that too is an emotional risk. So I think that there's the physical risks that we'll talk about today, which, of course, was the main focus. But that isn't to be minimized by the importance of emotional risk. And when our children are posed with that physical risk, they will respond to our emotions, which makes it an emotional risk for them. So there are these really two big components, and emotions. Intentionally. Of course, we really want to develop the confidence and the competence and the feeling in our children that they are capable and they can but there are ways that we do that with them, and there are ways we undo that unintentionally.

You're so so right.  And actually, what goes on inside our bodies and inside our minds when we're taking risks is very similar, whether their physical risk climbing that tree or that emotional risk of speaking up when I don't understand or asking to join play with some kids that may be a little unfamiliar to me, or putting myself out there in a new situation. And so, not the last year I taught, but the year before that, I had a little boy that joined us in, I think it was October, late October of the school year. But he had just come up from Chile. They lived in Chile, and his dad always spoke English to him. His mom always spoke Spanish to him. So he was doing kind of both, but with covid, and this is another thing with taking risks and our kids kind of not being willing to do so much anymore, but with covid in Chile, he had gone for almost two years without leaving his apartment, and then they moved over to the greater Denver area, just south of Denver And Highlands Ranch, so his gross motor skills were lacking, and his ability to connect with other kids was significantly lacking. So even though our kids, the other students, they'd been kind of locked down, but not to that point, not to where you couldn't leave your apartment for almost two years. Yeah, can you imagine? And so you'd see him like, kind of standing, and he'd bounce a little bit, he'd stand at the edge of play, and he'd kind of bounce a little bit because he was trying to get the courage up. And he wasn't confident with the language. I mean, he understood, he did well with it, but he didn't feel confident. So those are huge risks for our kids to take, and if they think that you don't believe that they're capable, right? Oh no, no, no, don't do that. Or oh, let me jump in and solve this argument you're having over the swing or whatever, instead of letting them do it themselves, putting that risk out there, then they start understanding, oh, they don't think I can do this. Maybe I can't, maybe I'm not capable.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. That brings us to, like, another kind of risk altogether that I wasn't even thinking about at first, which is a mental risk. You know, there are fears, and the mental is connected to our emotions, but it's a belief. So this child that you just described came to you with a belief that the world is a dangerous place. He had a belief that his health was in danger. He had a belief that he couldn't and that would be like challenging his belief system, which is what I'm calling a mental risk, to challenge what it is that you're thinking and go against everything that I know to be true, because he's young and he's only experienced so much of life, and he's going to put himself out there against what he has experienced in his short life, and risk language, which is, do I mentally know enough of this language to interact, and can I find the courage so now we leak into emotional risk, and it's against what I understand to be true, which is, I could get sick from this person. There's a lot of risk there, and we don't think about that. The child jumping up and down is a very, very good coping mechanism for them to let go of some of their anxiety, which we know that when they're jumping up and down and shaking like this or or they're sometimes even tantruming all kinds of things, breathing heavy, those things are ways that we settle our limbic brain, our emotional system, in our brain. He's trying to settle himself. It's a fabulous coping strategy, and I would guess that sometimes people are even saying to him to stop that behavior. But really the behavior, in and of itself, is communicating behavior is always communicating to us. So his behavior is communicating how much anxiety he has over this mental and emotional risk position that he is put in. And I think personally, that the mental, emotional risk as we dress it up for our kids unintentionally. We don't mean to put that in their face all the time, but that part of it, I think, is what stops our kids much more than any physical risk. It's that fear that they learn to have. 

I totally agree. And so one of the strategies that we found that really helped with this little guy, and he had a great family. He had an American born dad, very educated, and his mom also was very educated, but in Chile. And so once they got to the United States, back to the United States and so many more, things were open and. As options for him. And so they got him into things like hockey and good they went to a basketball game the nuggets go nuggets. And then, you know, they were doing those things with him now that they were in the United States, and they had options that were available to them that were not available to them back when they were in Chile. But another strategy that really helped with us too, was being able to talk to him and say, What is your goal? Like, I see you're standing here, what is it you want to do? And so he'd kind of whisper to me, you know. And I want to play, especially during center time. Kindergarten, we still had different center times, and we'd incorporate math into cars, you know, and dolls and all these things. But he wanted to play cars with these boys. And I said, Okay, so how are you going to do that? Instead of just saying, well, here's how you do it. When you ask them that, how do you think you're going to accomplish that then? And at first you'd be like, I don't know, like, Well, do you think you should stand here? Or, which is fine, you can do that and just watch them while you're getting used to how they play, seeing how those dynamics work, all of that is going on in their little brain. Or when you're ready, maybe you could ask them, What would you say to ask them. Oh, so at first you would say, I don't know. And I would be like, well, think about it, and let me know when you're ready. Good. I'll stand by you while you do it, but I want you to come up with, what should you say? So now you're giving them more opportunities to problem solve, to come up with those ideas on their own, and then they can validate them with you, and then we can talk about how we would put that into action. 

I like that you did that, and that is one very effective way, especially when a child has some command of language, and it sounds like this little boy did, because obviously it worked well for you when we're talking about kiddos that shrug their shoulders and they don't then move forward and they don't have ideas, the thing that I think is really helpful for our kiddos to take those emotional and mental risks is to give them the actual options. So when, when I have kiddos and parents, when I coach parents on how to help their language or speech delayed child, and dual language is one of the types of delays that I deal with. I say to the parents, have him listen to the actual thing that he might say, and then let him choose if he's going to say it. So we get down on the floor, and then you can say, Do you want to say, may I have a truck. Is that what you want to say? And then he'll nod or something, and you say, Okay, let's practice once. And he looks at me or the parent, may I have a truck, and he practices it once, and then he goes over to the child, may I have a truck? And at that point, hopefully somebody will have already been able to help the other child share so that it works. Sometimes for our children that have, yeah, but with our children that have some kind of language delay or learning issue, where it's just fear, maybe it's that they don't have the language. If it doesn't work, like you said it at the beginning, which is absolutely great to do. Then here's a step deeper to do with those kiddos having further trouble.

Yeah, and I think too sometimes, especially when they're not really verbal with things, but having pictures of the options and don't overwhelm them with 50 options. Two or three are good. And then you have to make sure that the options that you're offering are honestly okay with you. You know, sometimes I'll see parents, will I call it stacking, but this is the option I want you to do, or there's this terrible, horrible thing that you can choose. The truth is, though, they may just choose the terrible, horrible thing, and then you've got to either talk them out of it or realize, yeah, I said they could. 

Oh, well, okay, yeah, so don't give them that option in the first place. But one of the things if we take that very thing and we think about today's topic of risk taking, if we set our children up with a choice of two, and one of them's a bad choice, their risk is huge, and they're learning not to take the risk. But if we give them a choice of two, fantastic, fine, no competition, type of things, like you can play with the blocks, the balls or the dolls, or you can have a blue cup or red cup, whatever the simple choices are to give them continuous and regular choices where there's no wrong answer and there's no better answer, and continuous choices like that helps to build their emotional strength so that they're ready to take more risks in the future.

Yeah, absolutely. So back in May, I'm watching my grandkids while my daughter was off on a fun trip, and my granddaughter Ingrid was big personality. She's in kindergarten. You know, my perfect spot of age. They have a thing where, when they get ready or while they're eating their breakfast, they can watch bluey on the TV or on their screen. And so she was watching, but then she was getting done, and we're getting closer to time to go. And so I told her, Okay, here's the deal, you can hurry up and get your teeth brushed. Let's brush your hair. We can do it quickly, and then you have more time to finish watching Bluey, or you can take your time, but then you are not going to have the time to watch bluey. So, yeah, that's a really good example. Choice wasn't, we'll be late to school.

Right. What that does is it brings our children into where we think, that they can rationalize the world beyond where we are right now, that they can understand the logic. And one of the things that we know about our children is that if we go into that logic center and try to reason with younger children with logic, they don't have the regular capability of doing that, they may have a few logical things that surprise you and wow, you. And that's true, because obviously that part of the brain is there, but it's not well wired, and you can't count on it. So their motivation has nothing to do right? It's not consistent, and their motivation has nothing to do with lateness. Their motivation has to do with this moment. And so that's a perfect example of how to give the choice right now, in this moment, to your child so that they can choose. But like you said earlier, make sure that you are fine with either side of the choice.

Exactly. And then the funny thing was, I left her to go help her brother with something, and then when I came back, she's just dancing and playing around and doing her thing, because that's what she does. And I was like, Oh, you chose not to watch bluey. You chose to take your time. And she said, No, I want to watch bluey. I'm like, but you were dancing. So now we don't have five minutes available. You can go and hurry up. We can get it done. And you'll have two minutes to watch Bluey if we hurry now. But I well, I want that. Okay. So then we went up and did her hair real quick, and she got to watch a couple minutes before we headed out the door. So when you acknowledge and say, Oh, this is the choice you made, and help them see how that works, then you're going to help them to start learning about persevering, sticking with it, making that choice, and understanding consequences. There's things that come into the learning realm with that kind of a thing.

Of course, absolutely one of the interesting things about risk taking is that if you use a different area, you can bolster the other areas. For example, if you go into the physical risk taking and kids have choices everywhere. You know, emotional, physical, all of that in as many choices as you can give to kids, teaches them that they have some power in the world, and it's great. But if you are dealing with risk taking as a topic, and you decide to give your child some physical risk opportunities, and emotionally, they're a little weak, the successes that they have in the physical realm will strengthen their emotional risk taking capability. So we want to give them all kinds of experiences where they can do those physical risk taking things too, because we know that that builds their strength physically, it builds their ability to be resilient and persevere, and all of these things too. And so those skills are not made in a vacuum. It's not made in just one spot. It's made and then it spreads. So for example, I've often seen people that are sensitive to spinning, like if you are motion sick and you see somebody spinning, you could almost work yourself up into feeling nauseous, but the child is vigorously spinning on a swing or something, and they are loving it. But if you yourself as a parent get motion sick, it's very probable that you would want to stop your child from doing it. And the other thing that's amazingly probable is that if you stop them and say that they could get sick, it can become a Mind over Matter thing, and they will get sick. But if we teach them, and that's one example, but, many things are like that. If you're scared of heights, whatever it is you're afraid of, if you tell your child you're afraid of it, they will just learn, oh, I'm supposed to be afraid of this. And then, because. the fear isn't always there first. Sometimes it is, but it's not always there first. We want to allow them to do balancing and tumbling and all the things, even if they get a little bit of scratches and bumps, we want them to be able to do those things in order to strengthen all of their risk taking systems, emotionally, physically, mentally, yeah.

And it is interesting how interconnected all of that is, and with things like going out and letting them climb on top of the Playhouse, and if you are more nervous, Oh, be careful. Be careful. You might just quietly walk toward that area and be there in case there's a tumble, and maybe you can grab them, but you're not scaring them by it. You're just kind of, Oh, let's see what you're doing. How you coming up there, and how does that feel when you're up there?

And I love that phrase, how does that feel when you're there? That's fabulous,

Yeah, and giving them that chance to feel that exhilaration. And what happens then is, you know, a couple of months ago, we were talking about on the podcast, perseverance and sticking to it and not giving up. But if they have these opportunities of climbing, that tree of climbing is a big thing for these little guys, but doing some of these things and succeeding in it, that's going to increase their opportunities and the likelihood that they're going to persevere when things become challenging. Oh, you've got this, and so even when it's you're outside, but maybe you're at a park and they're getting into a bit of an argument with another child. Whether you know that child or not, are you going to rush in, no, no, no, but maybe step back and say, wow, it's going to be interesting to see how you work this out. And again, it can be you're not rushing over. You might be calmly and quietly, like you're meandering in the general area if you think it's going to become something like a physical altercation or whatever, but giving them the opportunities when they come to you and they're upset, well, so and so won't play with me or but they come to you and they're like about something, one of my favorite sentences is, I'm going to be really interested in how you work that out. Yeah.

So what I hear you say is something that I am as a speech pathologist so sensitive to, and that is that our language matters, our body language and our tone and our words matter Absolutely, and what we say in all of those areas, tone, body and words really dig into teaching our children whether or not they're capable, whether or not they're competent. And so when I think about this, I think about myself as a young mom versus who I am now, and what I learned in my teacher years and my early mother years. And so when I think about language that stops children, it is very different than the language that is courage giving. And so if I can, I will talk about some of the stopping language, which I didn't used to think was necessarily stopping language, and the language that is go forward language. And so if you're okay with that, I'll just say some of those things that I teased apart. So obviously no is a stop language. And for all of the stop language, there are times that we want to stop our kids, but if the fear is within us as parents, that's not the reason to stop the kids. It's a reason for you to take a look at what's going on inside of you. If they're in danger, that's the time to stop the kids. But not because I'm fearful. I'm fearful if they fall is not the same thing as they are definitely going to Okay, so, right? Stop is obviously stop language you shouldn't do, and then maybe finish it with something that's nearby, like you shouldn't jump off that rock that you're climbing on, because you're going to get hurt when you hit the ground. That's too much you shouldn't is a stop language. You can't do this, even if you have the caveat, but you can do that, you start off with you you can't do. Those are stoppers. You're too small, you're too young, you're too weak, you're not strong enough. You might get hurt if that won't work, or the behavior of eye rolling, or if your face has this skull on it, that's where your eyebrows are together and you've got that fear face going on, those are speaking very loudly, because our children feel actually in their core. They feel your emotion of fear. In fact, that is, it's fascinating that it is actually measurable by science. If you have the little pads on the child to measure respiration, heart rate, skin, whatever it's called, on the skin, they can feel your fear by. Looking at your face, and it's measurable. So even when we say to our kids, be safe, be careful, watch out, those things are stop words. They are not the helpful words. Now that would be where I made the error. I would say nowadays that if I look back at the younger me, those were things that I should not have said to my kids, be careful, be safe. That doesn't do anything to be helpful, right? And watch out, those are all stopping things. Don't and watch where you put your feet depending on the tone. That's also a stopper. So if we take those words and we just change those kinds of words, which are very common things we say to our kids that I'm going to give you some other Go ahead. Language that is courage, giving, it's empowering, it's forward momentum. And that would be like, yes. So when the child climbs on the rock, you say, Yay, and they look at you. There's that referencing. When a child is about to do something and they look back at you to train yourself to say, go ahead. Just go ahead. Keep going. And then if you see something that might be dangerous to have a curiosity. Now, in the language of play, as my coaching program and my stuff, I always think about what is play, actually. And when I think of play, I think of curiosity, discover, experiments, exploration. We need to stay in that play language, which means, let's see what happens if I wonder, what happens when I wonder and I wonder, is super powerful? Not I wonder what happens if you get hurt, but rather, I wonder what happens if we drop this ball down, you know, so the child can just do other things. I wonder if you'll feel more secure if I hold your hand. It gives them that choice that you talked about earlier, yeah. And it also gives them the opportunity to say no, because they're already feeling confident enough, right?

And so kids have that good gage. They kind of know they do. 

They do not always, obviously, but they do, and that's so true, and I think we should harness that. Let's try it. Is a great forward momentum when a child sees something and they want to say, let's try it. And that can mean that they are walking on a very tall wall, and you are holding their wrist or their hand while they're doing it, because you never gave them an option to not, you didn't discuss that you would. You only had the language of, yes, let's do it. And you put them up there. But you know, you're holding on to one hand pretty tight. They don't even think about anything other than they're doing it because that's the only language you actually use, and your body language and tone was, go ahead. This is what builds that confidence and resilience in our kids.

Yeah, I just love what you're saying. You're so exactly right on with that. And I think too, when you talk about back when you were a kid, or, well, a kid, young mom, young mom, yeah, when I had kids, yes, I look back as I wish that I had the experience and the understanding and that I have now, and to be able to look back and say, Oh, that's okay for them to do that, this other thing that you're not concerned is a big deal.

Sometimes it's like that, yeah, yeah. And then when the children do feel hesitant because they've gotten hurt. Some of the forward momentum language we can add to it is, let's do it again together, or oops, to minimize it when they fall down, let's just try it again. Or, darn Do you want help? Or do you want to do it yourself? Or do you want me to hold your hand? These again are forward momentum to keep them going, and if they really shut down on you, Hmm, how will we do it next time, to get their mind in the idea that there's going to be a next time. And I will add also, I just love your words. How does it feel when you're up there? So if a child is dancing on the rocks, in fact, I just put out a podcast episode that was a story about a family where my daughter was actually babysitting, and there were some kids on a rock, and that the father came up at the time that some of these kids were on this rock, and as soon as the dad walked up, one of the children got all of a sudden scared and frozen, like he was needing somebody, and then he needed his dad to hold his hand in order. In order to get down. The kids were about two or three years old, so they were small, but the rocks weren't any bigger than basketballs. So if he had fallen, it wouldn't have been super far, but he may have gotten some skin and knees or something like that, but he was very trained that he's not capable, and so as soon as he saw his parent, he suddenly became not capable. And these are those internal messages we never intend to send but our own fears as parents, where we really want the best for our kids. We really want them to do well, sometimes that can bubble over and teach them fear instead of actually. Like the dad was saying, watch where you put your feet. The dad meant well. He totally meant well, but what he said wasn't helpful, and he didn't know that it wasn't helpful well. And it

kind of feeds back into we've all seen the phenomenon where a little kid will fall down on the playground or wherever, and the first thing they do is look up to see if mom or dad is rushing? Oh no, are you okay? Or Wow, are you all right there? And depending on the parent's reaction, will depend on whether the child's gonna cry and be upset or not.

Exactly because that kind of fear is trained. It's culturally learned, not all fear. If you hear a dog bark or something like that, and you're startled. Startle is gonna make a child fearful, you know? I mean, some fear is not absolutely normal. My grandson was at a nature center, and there was a place on the floor where it was just glass, and you could look into a hole where you have these snakes and all these other things that were not alive. But it was something that when he stepped on it, he could see through it, so he was scared. That is a legitimate good fear for a child of his age at that time, I think it was about one and a half, so he was walking, but he wasn't, you know, so he came right up to that, and he just froze. Now, I was there with him just a couple months ago. So he had been, at that point, two and a half little more than that, and he went over to it, and he put one foot on it first and stomped with the extra foot while he was standing firm on the foot on the floor. And then he tested it, and then he walked on it, and he says, Look at me. And he jumps on it. Now that is the building of courage. His fear was overcome, and he noticed that we were not afraid. He saw us standing on it, and then pretty soon, he decided to try fear control us. We sure saw a lot of that with covid and we fear people's judgment. We can fear getting sick, we can fear getting hurt, but fear is not our friend, and we really don't teach our children as well as we could if we allow fear to be their boss, right?

Right? It's that thing. Well, what if something might happen, but what if it doesn't? You know, what? 

Or vice versa, if we live in the what if we won't be living our life. You are so right.

Dinalynn, thank you so much. I want you to talk to me a little bit about how my listeners can find your podcast and maybe find out more about upcoming workshops and stuff like that that you've got going on.

Oh, thank you so much for asking. So my podcast is The Language of Play, and you can google it on any player, and you will find my podcast. And so that is the main place to find me. Email is Hello@thelanguageofplay.com  So, it's pretty easy, Thelanguageofplay.com, and at this point, my website is not quite launched, so all information is in my show notes, as webinars will happen. But yeah, it's been really fun.  And through taking risks, it is. And so I feel like I have maxed out some of my risk taking and doing an awful lot of things and coaching. I have absolutely enjoyed that, that one has been fun, both online and, of course, in person, is what I've been familiar with for many, many, many years. But online has been really fun and rewarding for parents and for kids too. So that's been just super so yeah, all email can go to Hello at the language of play.com, and then my podcast has, oh, at this recording, I think we've got almost 150 episodes, so there's a lot of information. Nice, yes, yeah, okay, good, good,

Yeah, this is fun. Before we go, though, I always ask my guests the same question, and so you're going to be in on that. So of course, we know there are no perfect heroes. There are no perfect heroes either, but there are no perfect parents as well. But some parents do seem to be a little more successful than others. So how would you describe a successful parent?

I always lean towards communication and connection. I lean towards the title of my work, which is the language of play. And when I think of play, I think of curiosity, and we don't want to assume that our children are thinking the way we're thinking, because they're not. Their brains don't work that way, so to be curious and get in there and model what it is that you want them to do with the assumption that they need that modeling and to learn how to find out what they're communicating through their behavior when their words don't work well enough because they are communicating, so be curious. And sometimes curiosity means questions, but sometimes curiosity means observing well. Learn how to observe well. And then you can go in with those like, Oh, do you want to try this or that to ask those questions in ways that are really. Really trying to support our kids to get from where they're at to the next thing that it seems like they want. So that successful parent I would describe as being a curious observer of their child and to relate deeply in that communication. Yeah, to

Curiosity is so key to so much of what we do as parents, what we do as teachers, and what we do as children, that's all just so so important to be curious Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Well, Dinalynn, thank you so much for spending this time with us. I really appreciate it. I know my listeners have definitely gained some wonderful insight because of you. And so listeners, if you loved what you heard and you'd like some more, go ahead and give us a five star rating and a review, and you can do that wherever you listen to the podcast, or you can do it on the web page for the podcast, which is www.imperfectheroespodcast.com, you can hit reviews. It's up at the top, and it's all self explanatory. So thank you so much, and we'll continue our conversation next week on helping our children take risks. So until then, let's find joy in parenting. See, you guys.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai