Fiona on Dr Sophie Brock's podcast chatting about parent-child relationships, getting to know our children and why behavioural parenting strategies aren't ideal
Dr Sophie interviewed me on her podcast, The Good Enough Mother - this is a re-broadcast because I truly loved this conversation so much. We chat about the parent-child relationship and what gets in the way of seeing our children for who they really are; and how this impacts on our relationship with them. We chat about the goodness of fit with our children, how their temperaments and sensory preferences play a part in our relationship with them, and how we can use play to work with challenging behaviour and build connection. Dr Sophie is an absolute wisdom-machine and I encourage you all to check out her podcast for more thought-provoking conversations.
Hey Mama, I have a Sleep Guide for you! For birth to 18 months, this guide is steeped in evidence and laced with compassion. And you can download the first chapter absolutely free HERE.
Are we Insta pals? If not, why not? Come and hang out at @mamamatters.au!
As always, thanks for being here- if you enjoy this poddy I would LOVE if you could give a rating and a review. It means the world to me.
xx
TRANSCRIPT
Fiona Weaver 00:09
Hello love and welcome to the Manage chatters podcast. If you're keen to ditch all of the parenting shoulds and want to uncomplicate sleep and parenting, you are in the right place, through honest conversations with experts and each other, we will help you to cut through all of the noise and to love the heck out of your imperfect and authentic parenting. I'm Fiona, a social worker by trade. Now supporting families with sleep and parenting through my business mama matters. I'm passionate about parenting psychology, biologically normal infants sleep and infant mental health and attachment. I'm also a parent, and I am on a mission to normalize the shitshow that can be parenthood. I know that right now you might be trapped under a sleeping baby. Or maybe you've got your headphones in to soften the blue of the afternoon witching hour, wherever and whoever you are, I want you to know that you belong here. Now, let's have a chat. Hello, my love's I hope you're well, we have had a bout of sickness in the weaver household. So I didn't have a new potty for this week. But I had a chat with Dr. Sophie Brock a few weeks ago, not only for my podcast, but for hers. And the chat I had on her podcast was one of my favorite ever conversations. We went deep and reflective about getting to know our children for who they are understanding their temperament, thinking about the goodness of fit with us how the imagined child we would you know, the child that we might have imagined that we would have influences the way that we parent the child before us. We talked about how behavioral parenting strategies can potentially get in the way of the parent child relationship. And what we can do. Instead, we talked about some really, really good stuff in this conversation. And I loved it so much, I want to publish it twice. So I hope you enjoy this chat. If you have any reflections, let me know because I can go deep about this stuff. And I love to talk with you about it. If you want to take a deeper dive into your child's temperament and sensory preferences after this conversation, I also have my temperament and sensory workshop on my website as well. It's a 40 to $40.60 minute workshop that runs you through all of your child's temperament traits, highly sensitive kids sensory preferences, and how we can support all of this stuff around sleep. So have a look if you are interested in going a little bit deeper. And I also have my new workshop nap society that is on this Friday, the 22nd of July, we are working through all of these unhelpful thoughts and feelings that we have around sleep if you're feeling consumed about sleep, obsessed with sleep, feeling tied to the nap schedules and things like that, this is going to be for you. I'm hoping to equip you with lots of psychological strategies, lots of bullshit busting, and getting you to feel confident and relaxed around sleep. So it doesn't have to be such a thing. Sleep does not have to be this complicated. And I really hope that I can show you the way to freedom. So I hope you enjoy this chat. Please, as always connect with me over on Instagram. I'm on matters.au and enjoy the show.
Dr Sophie Brock 03:17
Welcome to the podcast. Fiona I'm so thrilled to have you here either. I'd love to just give you the opportunity to share with listeners a little bit about yourself and who you are and what it is that you do. Sure, thank you. So my name is Fiona, I'm the founder of mama matters. And I provide early parenting and sleep support to responsive parents and their renegade kiddos. So I work from a very holistic attachment centered perspective where I draw on my knowledge and wisdom as a social worker and experience in attachment and infant mental health and circular security. And my training with Isla Grace's baby lead sleep and wellbeing certification. So my goal is to work with parents around sleep as being only a piece of the puzzle. So really focusing on their relationship, their attachment relationship, helping parents to feel empowered to really truly understand their child and what's going on for them. And working creatively as a family to best meet meet all of their needs as best as we can, if that makes sense. So I found that when I had my kids, so I've got Knox, who's six years old at the moment, and Sally is three. So when I had knocks I had all these preconceived ideas about how I would parent
Fiona Weaver 04:37
and how that would look in relation to how my baby would be. I had all of these messages that you know, a relaxed mother equals a relaxed baby and I was like well, I'm pretty chill. So I I'm not sure anymore, but I was back then. And then I thought I would just have this chill baby and I thought all you need to do is be consistent have a bit of a route Take and have a nice wind down routine and do a massage and get the lights down low and do it the same time every day and everything will fall into place. And all of these messages about, you know, hold your baby, lovey baby, breastfeed your baby on demand. And you know, all of that in the fourth trimester, and then it got to about three months, four months, and then all of a sudden, all of that stuff that I thought that we were allowed to do, was suddenly bad habits. And I just thought, you know, getting to know my baby who wasn't chilled. He was highly sensitive. I know that now. I didn't know that back then. He was very reactive. He was there at 100. He was intense. He was jolly, like he was such a bundle of of laughs and smiles and his eyes were always wide. So he could light up a room, but he could just as quickly bring the whole room down if anything went wrong. And so as he grew older, I started to recognize some of these quirks or temperamental tendencies as temperament traits is of sensitivity traits. So I remember when he was about 11 months old, I took him to a Play School concert, because it was just you know, what the moms were doing. And he cried the entire time. And I was just sort of taking pictures and laughing like, oh, yeah, this is a great time. And I finally took him out. And he just like, you know, recalibrated once he was outside, and now realizing that he was just completely overwhelmed. He had this sensory overwhelmed, overstimulated, scared, he was scared. But I didn't know that about him back then. So that's why I'm so passionate about helping parents to understand who their children are, with all of their temperament traits and sensory preferences. And, you know, we'll speak to all of that later. But the way that you that you see your child and understand your child really impacts the way that you can parent them, and every kid requires a little bit of different parenting. Wow, thank you for sharing that. And I think particularly the story about that experience that you've had, because it can really ground some of the theoretical stuff that we can be trained in and talk about. And, you know, even throw around lines around. Well, how you perceive your children really matters in how you parent them. But you know, what does that actually mean? And so providing examples like you've just done, I think, is really useful. And I want to talk a little bit first about this idea of a relaxed mom equals a relaxed baby. And I'd be really curious for you to wait in here some of your training and understanding of the importance of attachment theory. And and the importance actually, if that relational dynamic between primary caregiver and their infant and the mother baby died, and what that looks like, and the importance of that, and the importance, therefore, of holding the mother and holding space for the mother and supporting her and centering her when we're talking about how a baby or her child is doing. But can we talk about that? And then move into? How is it also problematic and a glossing over of the realities that many of us face when actually I am feeling pretty centered and calm and supported and confident yet, things are not going how I thought they would with my child, I'm still experiencing this challenge. So what would you make of that? Well, we are relational beings. So when we are born into the world, we are hardwired to connect with someone. And that will usually hopefully be a reliable, reliable, safe, warm, nurturing adult, caregiver. So whether we like it or not, our kids are attaching, whether that's a secure, you know, attaching securely, or with a little bit of context along the road. So our kids look to a primary caregiver. And they only need a secure attachment with at least one caregiver in their lives. They don't need to be securely attached with everybody they meet, but as long as they have that one person who was safe and reliable enough, that they can depend upon them, that seems to give them all of the good outcomes of having a secure attachment relationship, which is having better relationships with their peers, having better relationships with their parents as they grow, knowing that problems have an answer being better at problem solving, better navigating friendships, better relationships with their siblings, building their own resilience. So all of that stuff comes with having a secure attachment, excuse me. So all of their growth and development and learning and resilience building happens within the context of relationship. So we can't look at a baby or a child in isolation. We have to look at them as part of this dyad this or triad or whatever it is that there's you know, you're recently a fan of Donald Winnicott because your podcast is called the good enough mother which is a Donald Winnicott ism. But he talks about there is never a baby there is only a baby and someone so all of the magic happens in this in the end. The mother And baby or baby and someone. So that's where we need to focus a lot of our energy. So you can be a super relaxed and confident mom and feel like you've got a handle on things, but your baby is still someone outside of that relationship. And then there's someone, they are someone within the context of the relationship as well. So we need to focus holistically on the bigger picture. A lot of our society is very much independent minded, were all about separation based techniques, were about separate rooms, and separate sleeping and separate everything and getting the babies as independent as possible, as early as possible. And a lot of that stuff misses the context of relationship. So you think that you can follow these sets of strategies? If This Then That? If you follow this formula, then this will happen over there. And it doesn't work like that.
Dr Sophie Brock 10:51
Yeah, yeah. And do you think this, I mean, I see this plane out in all different parenting paradigms. And so there's this If This Then That, in the pressure to schedule and the pressure to create independence? And what I mean, what does that even mean? This idea, I remember feeling this pressure with my daughter that she needed to have her naps in her cot, and but your any, any sleep outside of that wasn't restorative enough. And
Fiona Weaver 11:20
gunk sleep? Yeah. Right.
Dr Sophie Brock 11:23
And she should be feeding at these intervals. And there's all of the shoulds around scheduling and structure. And so there's that twin pack and, and work through and talk about how problematic that can be. And it doesn't necessarily equate with these routine eyes, babies. And on the other hand, though, in spaces of gentle and responsive parenting, there can be this sense to I think, and I later experienced this as well of, well, if I feed responsively, if I let my baby fall asleep on me, or I hold them for sleeps, or I feed asleep, or if I am calm and centered, and if if if then my baby will be happy and relaxed and contented. And a reflection of how centered I now feel I am. Yes. How do you see that playing out?
Fiona Weaver 12:14
Well, I can, I can personally relate to that story as well, because I remember thinking that it's quite a vulnerable thing to share. But I remember thinking that if I was responsive enough over those first few months, that I would be rewarded in some way or my ego would be rewarded. And I would achieve this baby who sleeps through the night on their own. And I was as responsive as anything. And that would be like a good story to tell, like, see, you can just be responsive and, and do all these things. And they'll get there on their own. And then realizing the reality of there's no end game. When it comes to sleep. There is no there's nothing to achieve. It is fluid, it is always changing. And it's, again, exists in the context of your relationship. But for me, that was like, Yeah, I felt like this innate, this, this feeling like I should be rewarded for being so responsive and just doing beautiful caregiving.
Dr Sophie Brock 13:13
Yeah, I feel that and, you know, I still feel that in some senses, you know, I still feel this sense that sometimes it's a reminder, like, sometimes I have to remind myself that actually, this way of parenting in an attuned and connected way, both with myself and with my daughter, it's for a purpose long term, like it's not going to see these kind of immediate rewards, whatever they may look like. But holding that bigger vision in mind that macro, and coming back to the micro of what's the moment here and now. But I think that what you've articulated there is important to point out because it's rupturing that connection that we may make, which inadvertently sets our kids up to owe us. So in other words, well, I'll parent like this, and then you'll give me this in some way. And that will fill me with a sense of achievement, and this marker around sleep. And it could be anything else. It could be behavior, it could be how good of an eater they are. It could be how polite and well mannered, they turn out, like whatever, but we'd sleep I think it's particularly potent, because there's that sleeping through the night title. And I remember counting down when is it and a new would love you to speak to this, but I'm pretty sure that in the literature, it's the five five hour stretches of sleeping through but what is sleeping through actually mean and when will I have a night where I've had a full night where she's let me have a full night's sleep. And that is a lot of pressure on us and on our kids. Yeah, there's
Fiona Weaver 14:46
so much to that isn't there? So sleeping through the night in the literature is sort of a five to six hour stretch, but it depends on what research you read. Everybody has their own little definitions of sleeping through the night but let's just land on five to six hours straight. Ah, but the thing about sleeping through the night is it's like I said before, it's not an end game. It is not as if you try really hard and do everything right to get to this point where your child is sleeping through the night, and then it's all finished. Because it's fluid, it, it changes all of the time. And the more we put focus on sleeping through the night, the more we strive for this finish line that doesn't exist, the more we just on, necessarily put pressure on ourselves, and put pressure on our children to perform to that standard as well. So I think instead of looking at, you know, just getting the child's sleeping through the night, let's look at how we, as a family can wake up feeling more rested, how can we, you know, get creative in in our sleep, since and bedtimes and things like that. So that when we wake up in the morning, we're not, we're not even clocking how many times your child woke up last night. And in my work, I say, you know, give me a little bit of a sleep diary. But do not be tracking every night when your child wakes up and getting out your little pen and paper and checking the time. And because it makes you feel like shit. Like it makes you feel more tired and more stressed about sleep. So why don't we just in the morning, was that a good night or a bad night? are we feeling rested? Or was everyone a bit restless what was happening for you. And that's all we need to go on.
Dr Sophie Brock 16:19
There's an interesting dynamic to hear, but I want to name that connects with the work I do around master motherhood. And I've experienced this again, this sense that actually, when I track it, I have proof to justify how exhausted and depleted I'm feeling. I can say look, see. And whether I'm saying look, see to myself, or to other people, it can be a way for us to try and claw back a sense of value and purpose in the work that we are doing as mothers. That is, you know, not only unpaid, but it's also invisible. Everyone else is asleep. That's what it feels like everyone else in the world is asleep were the ones who are constantly getting up. And you wake up in the morning and no one else sees everything that you've been through in that in that evening. But you are carrying the repercussions of that in a sense, right? You're feeling this sense of sometimes it can even be a sense of injustice, right? If you have a partner who isn't responsible for helping and doing what is their responsibility you may deem I know, there's a lot of conflict around that with partnerships or as a single mum, the sense of, I shouldn't be doing all this on my own. And it takes a village, where is that village. And this sense of going well, actually, I want to feel some sense of justification in this. But what it felt it ended up being for me is that it then sends you down a story making pathway in your own head. And that can flavor the rest of your day. And not just the rest of your day. But the week, the month, that season of mothering and it can become completely engulfed with sleep as a topic. And it's not just on us as mothers is it? It's about what we're being asked to how's your baby sleep? Are they good sleeper? Do they sleep through the night? I mean, this is a big cultural conversation and narrative that comes up for new moms.
Fiona Weaver 18:16
Absolutely. And it actually is funny, as you're saying that I'm having a memory of when my son was 10 910 months. And for one night I tracked how many times he woke up. And then I sent it to my friends. And I said this is why I'm tired exactly what you're talking about. But then brought the comments off Jana make the call. Because then use the sleep consultant, make the call that's no good. Or you know, and then you get that story. And then it just becomes like you cannot complain about it. And this is why some people don't speak up about it is because it's I don't want to sleep train. So I can't talk about it. Because most people, not most people, a lot of people are not validating in I hear you you're tired, that is hard. What can I do for you? Can I bring you a coffee? Let's get out for a walk and you know, go to the beach or whatever it is rather, okay, this is a problem. You're coming to me with a problem and I'm going to fix it. So let's book a sleep consultant, or let's you know, yeah, talk about a different program or something that kind of takes again, takes you away from that relationship with your child.
Dr Sophie Brock 19:22
Yeah, and it's a way I think, to have silencing and self silencing in the sense of well have I set myself up for this? Or if I just did this and I think that the dangling of sleep training, whatever we wanted to find that as because we can like, I know this is your thing. It's like, I'll pass it over to you Fiona. But it can be put out there as like a dangling carrot of well, it doesn't have to be this hard. If you just did this, then maybe your child would sleep through for 12 hours.
Fiona Weaver 19:57
And this is so dismissive of a real life experience, isn't it? Because it also says, Well, you're not doing it properly, you're missing something. Because if you just did this, then that. And that's not always the case. Most of the time, it's not the case. Yeah. And they're just doing it wrong.
Dr Sophie Brock 20:13
He's just doing it wrong. It's your fault. You're not good. Enough. Yeah, yeah. And connected to that, which I think is still very much taboo and not spoken about. And I understand why. But there can be a building up of resentment towards your child or your baby, because they're not complying. And you know what, I've given everything up for you. And I have been through think about the rates of trauma that so many women experiencing birth, right, I've been through this, and you're not doing or being who I expected you to be, man a painful thought.
Fiona Weaver 20:48
Yes. And it can take a real level of insight and reflection and adjustment to get to a point where you see your child for who they are, rather than who you imagined that they would be. You can my dog, she's at my door growling and talking.
Dr Sophie Brock 21:04
Does she want to come in? Can I get it? Show?
Fiona Weaver 21:13
Me Up? She's talking, can I sit down quietly please? My Plate? I know. Sorry, she was just gonna be standing there talking. Fine, that's fine. Um, so don't you dare
Dr Sophie Brock 21:45
I, I want to pick up on. This has been part of a theme in our conversation that If This Then That. And so I want you to talk a little bit about temperament and different sensory profiles and kind of circling back to where we started in saying, Well, if I mother in this particular way, then my child will be like this. And, you know, taking them to the Play School concert and expecting them all, they should love it. But actually, they screamed the whole time. And how this can play out in all different parts of our parenting, not just in infancy. But describe to us a little bit about temperament, and then sensory stuff. What does that mean? And why is it relevant to this conversation?
Fiona Weaver 22:25
Yeah, sure. So I think that this idea that we can mold our kids to be a certain way, if we follow this, then they'll be resilient. If we do this, then they'll be adaptable. If we do this, then there'll be polite, and behave well, and sleep well and eat well and all this stuff. So of course, we have some influence over our kids, but they also have influence over us. And accepting that our kids can influence us and impact upon us and change us is part of being in a really healthy attachment relationship with them, we influence them and they influence us. And that's the way it's supposed to be. It's this dance this to and fro. So the whole idea that we can Yeah, molded out melted, molded our kids is very much this behavioral approach to parenting, you see a behavior you like you reward it, if you see a behavior you don't like you punish it, or give consequences or ignore it, and just nip it in the bud. But actually, our kids are so much more complicated and beautifully complex than, than that we don't just do to our kids we be with. And so when we recognize their own innate temperament, born with our own innate temperaments, and that can be shaped and influenced by our environment and our relationships. But we do have these genetic dispositions to different temperament traits. So in really simple terms, there's three like most of us will fall into three categories, which would be easy going slow to warm, or difficult in inverted commas. Nobody likes to call their child difficult. But they're slow to warm might be, you know, exactly that slow to warm new environments, a little bit cautious, but once they warm up, they're pretty cruisy. easygoing, or flexible or quite adaptable, might be a little bit predictable, seem to kind of go with the flow and seemingly quite resilient in nature. And then the difficult or the challenging or spirited or intense babies are a little bit more reactive, I guess, and intense. So within those three categories, there's also as Thomas and chest talk about these nine temperament traits, and they are things like activity level, predictability, distractibility, intensity, regularity, sensitivity, approachability, adaptability, persistence, and their default mood. So all of these things exist on a spectrum. So we're either you know, you might have a kid with high intensity so they're reactive, they're zero to 100 they're always on, they're always wide eyed and ready to go and ready react ready to react. So that can work in both ways, like I was saying about my son who could light up a room and then just as quickly bring it back down, that's intensity and reactivity. They might be, you know, on the higher end of persistence, or, and activity levels. So, in the way that they impact sleep, for example, is if they are learning a new skill, they're going to practice it in the night time a lot until they get it because they are persistent, they are just, you know, on it until they master this skill. If they are quite regular, then they might respond better to a routine or flexible, you know, rhythm to your day, they might do peruse, at the same time every day, eat at the same time every day sleep at the same time every day. And that might be just the way that their body clock is ticking. So all of these things make up who our babies are. And then they also impact sleep as well. And so, as well as temperament, then there's also sleep totals, like our babies need a certain level of sleep over a 24 hour period. And that can be so different between two babies. So particularly in the newborn days, the research shows that some babies can take nine hours over a 24 hour period. And some babies can take 1819 20 hours over a 24 hour period. And all of that is in the realm of normal. So when we are comparing our baby's sleep to the baby's next door, we are comparing apples and oranges essentially.
Dr Sophie Brock 26:29
Wow. So can I put their sensory? Yeah, because I think that that this information can be so permission giving I feel because it allows us to be able to meet our children, not only where they're at, but with who they are. And to know that it is not on us to shape and mold a blank slate of who they are, because that's not how they're born. They're born with these different temperaments. And I think that that can also be really helpful for those who may be listening, for example, who have implemented routines or structures or, and that's worked really well for their baby in their family. So it's about tailoring our approach isn't it and, and our family's needs. And going that there's no, there's actually no kind of hard rules or lines here. It's about adapting to who our child is, and what their personality traits are. And as you were saying some of those things I now know, in hindsight, because I have access to this information, I can look back at my daughter as a newborn. And I can see all of the ways that she's always been highly reactive and lean wide eyed, and she'd be on the carrier on me and I think she's surely asleep now and look in the mirror and your eyes are just popping up looking, looking at everything. And, you know, a little leg was always kicking, it's just been part of her personality since the beginning. But if we leave that to mean something about us as their mothers that we were not doing correctly, or that we need to be doing differently, and it puts such pressure on us and it we lose out on this opportunity to actually see the the gifts that our children have for us in coming to know ourselves in a new way and, and getting to know them as these new little human beings. So I really appreciate this conversation around temperaments and the level of flexibility that that can provide us in how we attune to our children and what sort of structures or not we create in our families in response.
Fiona Weaver 28:27
And speaking of attuning to our kids, like from an attachment perspective, what we really love to see is parents, attuning to their babies by seeing the world through their eyes. And that is like real attunement, flexibly responding to their cues, hypothesizing what they might be feeling or needing and experimenting with your response. And that's the dance of attachment. No book can tell you. This is the cue and this is how you respond. And then this will happen. So this getting to know your baby is and you're saying that you know seeing your daughter for what she was at the time. And if you had had that information back then it would have made sense. But also you've got four years of getting to know her. So now you know her so much better because it takes time to get to know someone and now all those things about her in babyhood. Makes sense. And I only say I wish I had known I wish I'd had a magic thing to see what my son would be like at five and then I could probably parent him a lot more sensitively when he was an infant because I would have understood why he was the way he was.
Dr Sophie Brock 29:41
Yeah, I find this all of this really fascinating to to have these conversations with mothers of lots of children. So mothers who have you know, five or six or seven children because they have so much experience and expertise actually in being able to pull apart these differences and and look at all the ways And the things that they do with the different babies and the ways their babies responded differently. And I wanted before moving on to talking about sensory stuff. What has been your experience with working with clients? Or that you have observed in how? How we navigate different temperaments between different children and siblings? Like how do you think that kind of typically plays out if you have an easy to warm baby, and then you have a difficult or highly sensitive baby or vice versa? What is that?
Fiona Weaver 30:32
Yeah. So I'm thinking of a real identity. I just occurred when I had, you know, my first baby, and I was like, yeah, he's so relaxed, I guess. It's just like a reflection of our, you know, gentle parenting. And then you have the second one who's nuts and you're like, Yeah, you can't, you can't tell, can you just born with it. And it's a similar like, it's such a validating experience to have more than one child in recognizing that there's only so much you can do as a parent, and the rest is on them. So also, having a second like, I remember bringing Sally home from the hospital, and I instinctively went to respond to her in the same way that I responded to Knox quickly get the boob out, bounce vigorously, like that is just what he needed straight up. And then she was more like, take the time to be with me, give me a little sway and then I'll hop on my boob and I'm ready. And it was just such a reminder that, oh, this is another person this is not, this is not going to look the same as it did with the first subsequent children are always a reminder that you can only do so much as a parent, that they are innately different in their temperaments. But yes, it is different. It's it is interesting, it's fascinating, like you said, in speaking to people with more than one child who might have had a really easygoing, adaptable, regular baby to start with, and they, they might have been quite what's the word smug? You know, like, this is just because we stick to the routine, you just have to stick to the routine, everything will follow. And then they have the second one. And you know, it's a shit show. Or it might be the other way around. But yeah, it is. It is fascinating.
Dr Sophie Brock 32:18
Yeah, you kind of want the shit show first. Yeah, I
Fiona Weaver 32:22
was I always say that, like, I was happy to have a shit show first, because it humbled me, that's for sure. Yeah. And that's something we
Dr Sophie Brock 32:29
were talking about before we started recording actually, the ways in which these challenges and when you're in them, it doesn't necessarily feel like this. But knowing that everything that we're going through is a process of learning and adaptation for us as parents and as people as well. So in all the same ways that we're getting to know our babies, and they're getting to experience being in the world in this way for the first time. Like, that's the same thing that's happening for us. And I think when we do move through more challenging periods, and I've been through one of these, in the last six months or so with my daughter, when you're in the thick of it, so to speak, knowing that there will be something that comes from this that you will take with you. And that will be of value and you are learning stuff here and expanding and growing, but it doesn't feel good at the time. And it's quite hard and challenging. And that's not just put that label on it of everything happens for a reason or minimizing it but it's just almost hold on to that as a sense of even just comfort and opportunity for self compassion.
Fiona Weaver 33:31
Yes, self compassion and self reflection and growth. And I think I was having a we were having a hard time with our son recently, like just not just behavior stuff like it was I there are periods of time where I'm like, fuck, I am out of my depths. I've never had a six year old boy, but boy before I need help and and then I go to the books and my ward Maggie didn't say and then I think maybe I should just go talk to a psychologist and get some other insight and advice and I'm googling things. And then just as quickly as I go through all that and think it's something that needs to be seen to or supported quickly, then it comes out and sunshine, you know, so I think that even when their times are really hard there's always sunshine on the other side of it and whether it's their developmental growth or it's you just having to recalibrate as a parent and you know, maybe your parenting approaches or style was working in one way before they were at this developmental stage and now you need a bit of a tweak and a bit of a reset because it we are always growing as parents as well. So I think these these particular kids who are highly sensitive or intense they call for a different type of parenting often. So if you have a you know, we talk about orchids and dandelions. So orchids are the or the dandelions or you know 80% of humans they are naturally quite resilient. and they don't need if you think of dandelions, they grow in pavement cracks, they don't need necessarily a lot of sunshine or a lot of rain, they just grow. And then orchids need just the right amount of sunshine, just the right soil, just the right amount of rain, and they need really particular conditions, and then they really thrive beautifully. So there are more sensitive kids, that's the 20% of the population, that who have this sensitivity trait. And it's actually a genetic trait, you know, they've done research with a lot of animal species and about 20% of these animal species are also also have this hypersensitivity. This is the if we're thinking evolutionarily, these are the kids are the people who would hear the saber toothed Tiger coming, or they'd smell the smoke before anybody else had woken up. So there's a role for these hyper sensitivity. So when we have a kid who might be a little bit more sensitive, it calls for us to be a little bit more sensitive in our parenting and to really attuned to how they perceive you know, discipline and relationship. And they might be a little bit more prone to shame, that's something we've found with our son as well, like, you cannot discipline him and discipline means to teach not to punish or, you know, it's just about pulling them up and letting them know that that something's not in line with your values, or whatever it is. But sensitive kids, you often have to do the disciplining outside of the event you say you might have, and you might have to really make sure solid before you get into the discipline, because if you pull them up in the event, they can go really quickly to shame or defense or meltdown, and you've got nowhere all that spot, bother, then is the relationship. So you have to uplevel your parenting really tune into what your kid needs, and be able to adapt to what style they are calling for. Does that make sense?
Dr Sophie Brock 36:55
It does. It does make sense. And I'm thinking of lots of examples with my daughter, she would definitely be the one who is attuned to the saber toothed Tiger. She's so and I've, you know, I've been concerned about it too, in terms of hyper vigilance of going, how can I support you and create an environment where you're able to just relax a bit more, you know, you're able to chill like she's, you know, when you see, I used to laugh at, you know, the reals and the the videos of when babies or toddlers would fall asleep in their high chairs or fall. That never happened.
Fiona Weaver 37:30
Oh, my Lord, like, what are you doing to them? Yes, I'm
Dr Sophie Brock 37:34
like, I would be concerned. And whenever she would go to sleep even easily, I knew she was getting sick. Like that was my son is not normal for her like she's actually fighting something. And so I love that you've highlighted there actually, the the gifts of this of our children as well being this way that actually, there are lots of really, as you said, with your son as a baby, like lighting up the room and bringing the room down, but also going you have incredible capacity to connect with other human beings. And you have a level of, of memory and insight and achievement of curiosity and of learning and of, of wanting to fully live and absorb everything that the world has to offer. And that can be hard if our temperament as parents is almost a mismatch with our children, right? Like,
Fiona Weaver 38:24
isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
Dr Sophie Brock 38:26
Yeah, what is the goodness of fit? Can you talk a little about
Fiona Weaver 38:28
the goodness of fit is our temperament in alignment with our kids temperament. So if we are, if we have low activity levels, and we are really predictable and regular in our routine, we like to relax and take it slow. And we might have this easygoing kind of mood of, you know, mellow. And then we have the psycho kid who is very intense and very active and very unpredictable. And it's, that's essentially not a, I don't want to say not a good goodness of fit, because, of course, we are constantly adapting. But it might feel a little bit harder work because you as the grown up, it's your role to adapt to them. And so you're not going to try to make them more predictable and regular, because that's not in their temperament traits. But you will have to adapt your parenting and your environment to kind of work with them a little bit, but it might be, you know, finding activities that allow you to be, you know, low activity, and then high activity, it might be getting them in classes when they're a bit older, where you can sit on the sidelines, and they can run themselves ragged. It might be you having if you have the support of a partner that you have your routine of going to bed and then partner steps up or get them up in the morning. If they have you know, higher activity levels were there up earlier. So it's about attuning to recognizing our kids temperaments and attuning to theirs whilst also acknowledging our own temperaments and thinking about how I'll fit in together.
Dr Sophie Brock 40:01
Yeah, I hope that I hope that everyone listening in whatever way this is landing for you that it can, it can feel affirming and validating. Because I think that's that's very often. Yeah, the sense that actually, you know, if you're finding this hard, you're not alone in the heart, and that it may actually be harder for you than for whoever you're comparing yourself to. And why can I do this? And why can I do that, and I should be able to do this. And you know, not even. And I've talked about this in other episodes, but just kind of Asterix in layering on top of this, the social and structural differences that we experience, and whether you do have a partner or don't or what your paperwork looks like, or you know, all of the other factors kind of in the fish tank, right, that we're swimming around within that it impacting our experience, temperament and how we are in relationship with our children is a big one, I want us to talk about those sensory profiles and sensory processing. And I know we're, we've covered so much here, but I think that is a really important part of the conversation to add on to when we're talking about temperament.
Fiona Weaver 41:09
Yes, so as well as our own as, as well as their innate temperament traits, they also have this sort of sensory profile. And I want to preface this with this is not my expertise, I would say this is more of an occupational therapist, but we dip our toes in work because it impacts on the way that kids wind up and one down. So incense is like taste, touch, sight, smell all of those. But then there's also a couple of other. And I think there's a lot of other ones, but the main two that impact daily life and sleep is the vestibular input and the proprioceptive input. So vestibular is the inner ear stuff, it's about the way your body moves in space, going upside down round and round ways your head moves and things like that. And then proprioceptive as the deep pressure, touch the input that's coming through the muscles and your joints. So we all have these sensory profiles where we seek or avoid all of these inputs. So for me, I avoid auditory input. I find it overstimulating, it's overwhelming. I also avoid visual input. I don't like clutter and things that makes me feel stressed. But I seek vestibular I did gymnastics as a kid, I loved bounce, your trampoline, all of that stuff. I was a real vestibular seeker. So we all have these sensory profiles. And when our kids are, this is another kind of goodness of fit. Like, I find it so annoying. When my daughter is just constantly hanging off me she has to hang. I don't even know what that is. But it's frustrating for me. But that's one of her sensory sort of things that she loves to just be all over me and probably proprioceptive I guess I'm not sure. But yes, it can definitely impact sleep. So if you have a baby who needs to be rocked cuddled, bounced vigorously to sleep, that's probably a little bit of proprioceptive and vestibular seeking. So if you don't want to rock your kid to sleep anymore, that's okay, we can make changes with that. But where else can we put it? Because if that's part of their sensory needs, and they're getting that at sleep time, how can we meet those needs outside of sleep, so that they are not relying on it for sleep time. So one of my favorite recommendations is like a sensory swing inside your house if you are in your house, or you can get it on like a hammock, you know, like a thing. But that provides beautiful vestibular and proprioceptive input because that's a material that wraps around their body. It's it kind of, you know, cocoons around their head so they can't see or hear much. And they're swinging around. And obviously not for sleep, but for winding down or regulating when they're emotionally dysregulated as well. So there's lots of Yeah, lots of sensory stuff to consider, as well, which I find super fascinating. That's a whole other world.
Dr Sophie Brock 44:04
It's a whole other world. But I'm so glad that you've been able to just touch on it because I think that this is not spoken about nearly enough in parenting it.
Fiona Weaver 44:11
I feel like it's a missing piece of the puzzle. Like I say this to OT friends all the time, like, you know, stuff that everybody should know.
Dr Sophie Brock 44:19
Yeah, agreed, yeah, I've been on this journey too, with with working with an OT over the last few months and it helps just give us more tools in our toolkit. And it gives us options where we may not have previously had any particularly when it's hard to know what to do sometimes right and I had this thing with with my daughter and this is from very much informed from gentle parenting and definitely will work with some kids. But when she is wound up, so to speak, like when she's dysregulated in that way. Me being you know, there's that saying I used to tell myself this and I know I'm not I'm critiquing it because I know it's really helpful for lots of people but that same of what is it? You share in your calm? Nice, what
Fiona Weaver 45:10
is your you need to share your calm not join their chaos? Yes. Okay.
Dr Sophie Brock 45:17
Okay, so that used to be in my head when I was in chaos, yeah, calm sharing the cut, regulating myself and again this, like I imagined works beautifully for lots of parents and children does not work with my daughter, Kate, it doesn't work with her. Sometimes the more sharing of my calm and I actually am calm, it's not performative like I actually am. It can escalate her,
Fiona Weaver 45:47
it will infuriate her. Meet me where I'm at.
Dr Sophie Brock 45:51
Exactly. And so what I need to do with her, is actually join her in her chaos. Yeah. And then bring it back down and then bring her back down. That's right. And so that that though feels more performative for me, which is interesting. I actually, when she starts going there, I might, and out his name, her name is Caitlin, and my channel, my inner Calum channel, my inner Caitlin. And I start doing the big movements, I have to move my arm and big facial expressions and, and that is a way that she can connect, she connects with me when I meet her up there where her energy is, and then we can come back down together. And that's been such a transformative tool. For me as a parent that I knew nothing about prior to the last
Fiona Weaver 46:40
year. Yeah, and I think it's a trap that we can get in if we are passionate about responsive parenting. And you know, we we have had a few chats about this, but putting yourself in boxes of parenting styles and things, because you can associate that with always being calm and inviting and warm. And that's actually not necessarily what they need or what we need, either the other night, Knox was just, you know, he was just trying to play with Sally, she was saying no, we were saying respect to you know, she doesn't want to play anymore. So we just like hit her with something. And then she cry. And instinctively, you want to come down harder, like knocks, she said, No stop. And that's just going to send him off and I and to be honest, I started going there. I was like Knox, she said, Stop. And then I was obviously feeling resilient that day, like my cup was full, and I was just ready to you know, ice my parenting. And I was like, Let's go have a pillow fight. Because that is something that always gets gives him what he needs is that heavy work proprioceptive it's a bit of a power reversal game as well, where he has a super magic pillow that every time he touches me, I just fall to the floor. And then I try to beat him up really, really hard with the pillow and he just stands there tall. So it's like this real power reversal game where he can feel empowered in a really safe way. And there's lots of giggling and there's lots of sensory input. And from there, he will often he'll often have a meltdown at the end of that, because that's just his release. And then he will be so calm and regulated. Or he'll just if he's not too bad, he'll just carry on from that and be like, that was really fun game. Cheers.
Dr Sophie Brock 48:18
Yeah. Isn't that fascinating? Same with my daughter is she loves the physical stuff rolling her arm like acting like she's a burrito when tightly and then you know at the same thing with her or her having her magic wand and she freezes me. Yeah, that funny. Right. So Halloween. Yeah, that's right. Have
Fiona Weaver 48:35
you ever been laughing?
Dr Sophie Brock 48:36
I had that I shared this reel on Instagram. And she had this game with a swing of like, go away, come back, go back. And I said, you know, this is a great metaphor for ambivalence. And I didn't know it was from fluey and I posted it. And this is your employee?
Fiona Weaver 48:50
Yeah, I remember I commented on that one, as well as like, when you sit ambivalence, and you push her on a swing all I could think of how boring that is sometimes just like, yeah, so let's go to the park for you. And then you just stand there. Yeah, watching them on a swing. And yeah,
Dr Sophie Brock 49:03
but also recognizing that play plays. So purposeful, isn't it? So you know, everything we're talking about here is related to attachment, play sensory needs, being mindful of temperament and coming back to us? What are our sensory needs? And I mean, it's a huge topic that could be, you know, a whole series of podcasts. But I hope that in this conversation, we've been able to point to these different areas for those who are listening to just kind of explore and dive a little bit deeper. Maybe if your curiosity is leading you there. I wonder, Fiona? Do you have resources for people? Or how can people reach out and connect with you and work with you or learn more about this if they're interested?
Fiona Weaver 49:42
Yeah, well, I love talking about this stuff. So if this has piqued your curiosity, curiosity at all, reach out on Instagram on my matters to AU but I have a number of workshops on I'm running one on temperament, temperament and sensory preferences next week, but probably not at the time of this podcast, but that will be up there. Yeah, that will just give you a bit of a deep dive into temperament traits and sensory preferences and goodness of fit and things like that. And then I have one to one support available as well for anybody who is seeking support around sleep and well being so yeah, and my mother's Academy as well, which was really where you can connect with other like minded mums and learn more about this stuff, too.
Dr Sophie Brock 50:23
Yeah, it's amazing. And I'll put all the details in the show notes, I would highly recommend everyone check it out Fiona's work and you have amazing content that you produce through social media and blog posts and things that are so valuable. So thank you for the work that you're doing and for showing up as well in in conversations like this, I really appreciate how we try to integrate your own personal lived experience and examples of what it's like being in the thick of mothering and drawing on some of these tools and talking about as well as professionals who work in this space. Hey, here are some challenges that I'm going through to and, and kind of shattering I think the illusion that can sometimes be held up of, oh, well, you've trained in this area, you have it all together, you know exactly what you're doing. You don't experience anything like me. No and no easy.
Fiona Weaver 51:06
Knowing what you're struggling with. I find easy. Yeah.
Dr Sophie Brock 51:11
Yeah. So I think it's important to have these conversations and I really appreciate your time and being here.
Fiona Weaver 51:18
I thank you, Sophie. It's been an absolute honor to be here. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to mama chatters if you enjoyed this episode, let's continue the conversation on Instagram at MAMA matters.au. Be sure to share this app with your family and friends. And don't forget if you liked it, please leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you again and I will see you next time.
