"My Mighty Quinn" - From Tics, Turbulence, Distraction and Disconnection to Calm, Confident and Connected"

S2 EP05 Awakened Parenting for Toddlers to Teens: Insights into Conscious Connection, Anxiety and Trauma with Tammy Schamuhn

• Lucia Silver / Tammy Schamuhn • Season 2 • Episode 5

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I’m Lucia Silver, thrilled to have you back for another episode of the Brain Health Movement’s podcast series. Today, we dive deep into parenting with Tammy Schamuhn, a registered psychologist, play therapist supervisor, and best-selling author. Tammy shares her wealth of knowledge from personal and professional experience in children's mental health. Trust me—this conversation will leave you inspired and equipped with practical insights to transform your parenting journey.

Episode Summary:

In this episode, we explore what it means to be an "awakened parent" and how essential it is for parents to understand the science of connection. Tammy delves into the rising levels of anxiety in children, the importance of co-regulation, and how trauma can impact both kids and adults. Her approach balances warmth, compassion, and cutting-edge neurobiological research, offering profound guidance for parents navigating the complexities of modern parenting.

Whether you're dealing with your child's screen addiction, navigating trauma, or just trying to understand how to better connect with your children, this episode provides actionable tips to foster a healthier family dynamic.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Awakened Parenting: Begin with self-awareness. Parenting starts with your own emotional regulation and understanding.
  2. Co-Regulation: Learn how you and your child can mirror each other's nervous systems, and why it’s vital to create a calm, safe space for emotional regulation.
  3. The Anxiety Avalanche: Children today face unprecedented levels of anxiety, partly driven by screens and overstimulation. Discover how to address this at its roots.
  4. Parenting without Perfection: Helicopter parenting and permissiveness are extremes. Tammy encourages finding a balance through intentional and informed parenting choices.
  5. The Power of Play: For younger children, play is their language. Through toys, they can express complex emotions, including trauma.
  6. Teenage Connection: It’s never too late to reconnect with your teenager. Focus on regaining influence by building trust and showing genuine interest in their world.
  7. The Role of Trauma: Trauma isn’t always about major events—how a child perceives and processes an event is key. Understanding trauma can help you better support your child’s emotional journey.

Thank you so much for tuning in. This conversation with Tammy Schamuhn truly brings light to the importance of connection and mindfulness in parenting. Be sure to download the top tips from this episode in our guide and stay tuned for more enriching disc

Resource Links:

[00:00:00] Lucia Silver: Welcome everyone to another insightful episode of the Brain Health Movement's podcast series and Mothers Conversations with World Leading Experts. Today, I am thrilled to have a truly remarkable guest with us. Her name is Tammy Schamuhn. Tammy is a registered psychologist and play therapist supervisor, as well as being a best selling author of the fantastic The Parenting Handbook, Your Guide to Raising Resilient Children.

[00:00:28] Lucia Silver: She's also the co founder of the Institute of Child Psychology. And the founder of the Child Centered Animal Assisted Therapy Association. Her background in education as a former elementary teacher, paired with her expertise in psychology, gives her a unique and profound perspective on children's mental health.

[00:00:49] Lucia Silver: Beyond her obviously impressive credentials, Tammy's personal journey of overcoming childhood trauma, gives her work a depth. that resonates with parents and professionals alike. She's passionate, compassionate, and refreshingly down to earth. Through her animal assisted therapy program and her emphasis on the science of connection, Tammy's approach blends warmth with the latest in neurobiological research.

[00:01:16] Lucia Silver: Today she'll be guiding us through what it means to be an awakened parent. The importance of co regulation and much more. So get ready for a conversation that could transform the way parenting and how we can connect more deeply with our children. Welcome, Tammy. It's a pleasure to have you here all the way from Canada.

[00:01:36] Tammy Schamuhn: It's nice to see you again. We had such a lovely conversation last time, so I was really looking forward to this. 

[00:01:41] Lucia Silver: Likewise, Tammy, likewise. I've been thinking so much about what we Actually, I had a little giggle to myself when I wrote the sort of theme of what we might be talking about today, and I wrote down the concept of awakened parenting, and then I wrote versus an awakened parent.

[00:02:00] Lucia Silver: And there was a comedy sketch that came on, on, on the TV that really made me laugh about mother with her grandmother and correcting everything that her grandmother was saying. No don't tell my son you're proud of him. Tell him to be proud of himself. No, Don't say this, say that.

[00:02:19] Lucia Silver: And and was thinking it, it's no one in my family appreciates I stayed up all night overthinking for them we're we've. So many things that have become, very thought through, very sensationalized, very critiqued, very much thrown into the let's be the perfect parent camp and perfect person camp.

[00:02:41] Lucia Silver: I think we're slightly losing the plot. So I wrote Awakened Parenting very deliberately because I think we've got to start with ourselves. So that's a little bit of a sort of context for our conversation, really, starting with ourselves, and particularly for you, for us to begin with, perhaps, what are the most common problems brought to you for support?

[00:03:08] Lucia Silver: And how might this perhaps differ to where we were, say,

[00:03:12] Tammy Schamuhn: I think one of the big things that comes up now, I, it was starting, but I think there's been an avalanche of anxiety, which has been interesting and lots of research coming out about that. And we're so much further in the neuroscience now as to know where this is coming from. And we can fairly much pinpoint it now.

[00:03:29] Tammy Schamuhn: It's not just some crisis that we don't know where this came from. Like we saw it coming and we can see the avalanche of kind of factors that have played into this. So I think anxiety is a huge one. I think. Society's becoming very trauma informed, and I think we're talking about neuroception of safety, which is a huge trauma concept, but it applies to dealing with any human being in any capacity when you're in relationship with them.

[00:03:52] Tammy Schamuhn: So I think that is a huge one, trauma informed care. I think parents want to know how to discipline their children. In such a way that they are not doing what their parents did by smacking their kids around we're trying to get rid of that mantra, which was, I grew up even with in the 80s, was spare the rod, spoil the child.

[00:04:10] Tammy Schamuhn: And parents don't want to parent that way. However, I think we go the opposite extreme where we're seeing all this permissive parenting and then helicopter parenting and We've lost our internal kind of guidance system when it comes to parenting, and there's a kind of a middle ground I think parents need to find.

[00:04:28] Tammy Schamuhn: And part of that is awakened parenting, understanding what's going on with us and the, within the dynamic of parent and child, and also understanding having some minor insight into child psychology and their brain and making those adaptations. But I would say those are the, and then screens are a huge one right now.

[00:04:47] Tammy Schamuhn: I think there's so much going on in our education system in Canada anyway, with screens being removed. In, in schools, kids can't have a phone in a school anymore in Canada. So thank goodness. So I think we're starting to catch on that these things are quite damaging to kids. And it's not the only reason, but definitely part of the reason we're seeing so much anxiety in kids is since the release of the iPhone.

[00:05:09] Tammy Schamuhn: And I know Jonathan Haidt's done a lot of research on that especially for our teens. Our girls, social media, those kinds of things. So I think it's complex. We're in a really exciting time in psychology. When it comes to if you're a parent right now, there's so much information out there.

[00:05:24] Tammy Schamuhn: It can be difficult to sift through, though, what to pay attention to. I think that's hard when there's so much information coming at you. 

[00:05:30] Lucia Silver: Absolutely. And when you talk about phones and anxiety, I'm always very interested for us to look at the whole family unit in that relation because we tend to look at what's happening with our kids, look at their anxiety, look at their phone usage.

[00:05:44] Lucia Silver: For each child I see on their phone, I see their mother and father on a phone as well. And for each dysregulated child, there is a parent who's flipping their lid in the background and cannot co regulate anymore. Co regulation being something we will come on to. Shortly, but isn't that also part of the problem?

[00:06:02] Lucia Silver: We've got to keep looking to see where we are at in ourselves. 

[00:06:07] Tammy Schamuhn: Yeah, it's a system. Like I always think of families as this this living, breathing, interactive system. We like to look at kids in a vacuum and say, fix my kid. What's wrong with my kid? But. We are relational beings. So there are dynamic interactions at interplay here between the, and especially between whoever the attachment figure is and the child.

[00:06:30] Tammy Schamuhn: And the each unique nervous system that exists within the home that sets behavior into motion. And we have to think of that, like I said, we just, we put blinders on and we're like, fix this, what's wrong, how to, what's the right thing to say, and I'm like, you can say all the right things and do all the techniques, but if our nervous systems are frayed, we're in, not in the right attachment dance with our child, we don't have the village is missing, like there's all these complex pieces that those strategies won't work.

[00:07:02] Tammy Schamuhn: They don't execute well until we create some harmony within the system. And so I just think of it like you're talking about, we have to look at for every dysregulated parent we see dysregulated child and parents. are looking at screen time and how much screen time. And I'm like how much are you on your screen?

[00:07:22] Tammy Schamuhn: When your child's asking for their eyes, their connection, their attention, are you scrolling on Instagram? So I think what you're talking about, awaken, being conscious, is looking at ourselves and saying Am I healthy right now in navigating this complexity of parenting? And honestly, we're all screwing up.

[00:07:44] Tammy Schamuhn: Every parent on the planet is in this constant state of rupture, repair, I made that mistake, I learned from it, I do something different. But you're the key, I think, is awareness and knowing our stuff that we bring into that. Relationship with our child and what's going on in our nervous system.

[00:08:01] Tammy Schamuhn: And then how that's at interplay with our kiddo is really, is so key. to creating 

[00:08:08] Lucia Silver: harmony. Absolutely. And you know how much we love the nerdy stuff that the brain helps with, really understanding where science is informing the way forward. And I think it's super important to understand the central nervous system piece here.

[00:08:24] Lucia Silver: There's something that was, Hugely revelatory for me was that a child in, fact, right up until, the brain is fully developed, this idea of regulation that the prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until we're about 26, truth be told. But certainly with youngsters and, for sure with a baby, there is no way that child can find its way back to what we call homeostasis, find its way back to a balanced center without the.

[00:08:56] Lucia Silver: assistance and the safe place and the attunement through the carer, normally the mother, but the carer. Or in the case of, as you say it takes a village to raise a child, the collective consciousness that's around the child. But for the sake of our normal way we raise children now, the primary carer, if you as the primary carer cannot offer that place of regulation.

[00:09:23] Lucia Silver: Where is your child going to store, let go of, move past, and be free of the accumulated stresses or fight or flights of the day if that place isn't provided for them? That was huge for me because I don't know that I was very often able to provide that as a single mom in a quite a stressful situation with my little, guy.

[00:09:51] Tammy Schamuhn: Yeah and I, know I come from a very privileged place where I had a village raising my kids. Like I have grandparents and extended family that helped and you can see it in their nervous systems. Like how laid back they are and they just roll with things and you can see it.

[00:10:08] Tammy Schamuhn: But a lot of intentionality goes into that and Again, privileged place where I had help and so many parents don't have that help and we weren't raised, meant to raise kids this way. So it's hard and that will it will, it doesn't mean kids won't turn out okay. It just means that there is going to be struggle and strife around.

[00:10:30] Tammy Schamuhn: Being able to handle sometimes adversity, flexibility eventually self regulation, because we can see it to see self regulation as young as five, that kids can bring down their feelings. It takes a little bit, does, they do better with co regulation of course, but if we do this the first four years, five years, that brain has those patterns, they have that internal working model of my feelings are okay, and my feelings come and go, and then we have this person.

[00:10:55] Tammy Schamuhn: I think what parents put a lot of pressure on themselves is it has to be them, but it can be a family friend too. It can be an auntie or an uncle or anyone can help with that co regulation process. I just feel like so much pressure is put on parents to be the only person. Indeed. And so I was like, I think we have to make these artificial villages, like with these, kind of step systems that, that come in.

[00:11:18] Tammy Schamuhn: And if it's neighbors or friends, they call, kids call auntie and uncle, whatever it is. It's, really difficult because we need people, and this is the issue. Parents are like, I have to co regulate my child. I need to calm their nervous system with my nervous system. That is very true. But who's calming your nervous system?

[00:11:35] Tammy Schamuhn: This does not stop. When we have, like, when we're a child and it's like all of a sudden we don't need co regulation. Oh my goodness, we need co regulation till, we leave this earth. Yeah. Adults are meant to co regulate with other adults. 

[00:11:49] Lucia Silver: Absolutely. This is, why I'll, particularly with women.

[00:11:53] Lucia Silver: This congruence through female time and again, attunement that you let go of those stresses when you feel seen, heard, and understood. And that's what we're providing for our parents. But I need that. I got that from my chat with you last week. We, we, need that on a constant basis, right? 

[00:12:09] Tammy Schamuhn: Yeah.

[00:12:09] Tammy Schamuhn: Those even on the phone or like you're doing virtual, just someone to hear that and just to say I'm valid. I'm a human. I'm doing the best I can. And just getting even five to ten minutes of that will allow you the space to hear your child, see your child, sit through a meltdown, not react in that moment.

[00:12:30] Tammy Schamuhn: I think feeling seen allows you to see your child. It's a mirroring process. You've had, it's, you're building neural pathways. Of being like, emotions are okay, I'm fine the way I am, there's nothing wrong with me. So then when we see our child have a big feeling, they're not upset about something, like how something goes, that resonates with us being like part of us unconsciously is that's okay because I had someone there who said it was okay when I felt that way.

[00:12:55] Tammy Schamuhn: But if you never have anybody make that space for you to develop that neural network, when your child loses it, or they make a poor choice. We get so dysregulated, we see it as danger. It's a dangerous thing. And then we're in a state of guardedness and protection. With a small child, like the small child's now the threat, or our teenager's the threat.

[00:13:16] Tammy Schamuhn: They're no longer looked at as someone we're in care for, it's someone we're actually protecting ourselves against. Because what they're showing us is we're not familiar with it. It's novel. No one's walked us through this yet. 

[00:13:28] Lucia Silver: That's a highly, that's a highly triggered situation and doesn't belong to this, the reality of what is present.

[00:13:35] Lucia Silver: It's the body responding to a lot of stored. Stress, right? I'd love you to talk to us a little bit about the neuroception of safety. You mentioned it earlier, and that may be quite foreign to our listeners. What, what does that what is it and why is it so important? 

[00:13:50] Tammy Schamuhn: Yeah. And I think neuroception of safety, think of our, so we'll start again.

[00:13:55] Tammy Schamuhn: Our brain's number one job is to keep us safe. Okay, we do that before everything else and that is emotional safety, it's physiological safety lots of different, and there's different parts of the brain I think each have safe gating for safety. We need safety in, inside of our body, we need safety within the environment, we need safety in relationships.

[00:14:16] Tammy Schamuhn: And we need to feel safe in order to learn. So those are actually different areas of the brain. They all have to have the safety permeating. And we want these yeses in parts of the nervous system. Where it's saying am I safe to be with myself? So neuroception will take cues from inside the body, for instance.

[00:14:32] Tammy Schamuhn: So if a kiddo is feeling like yucky, Like they're tired. Like I'm exhausted today. I was out too late with my kiddo. We went to a rodeo last night. Like I'm tired right now. So actually right now in my nervous system, if I actually check in, I can feel my head's a little bit fuzzy right now. I can feel a headache coming on.

[00:14:48] Tammy Schamuhn: I can feel tension in my shoulder. So actually right now, if I were to check in with my body, I don't feel a hundred percent safe. Like I'm a little frazzled. So that's like noticing what's going on in our bodies. If we're having a reaction, like we're having our tummies have butterflies in them. If we haven't had enough sleep, enough movement, enough play, if kids are overwhelmed because it's been so loud, there's this, like lots of sensory stimulation.

[00:15:11] Tammy Schamuhn: Our nervous system inside doesn't feel okay. It's yetsy. We feel overwhelmed. We just feel irritable. And that comes from cues within the body. So I think first and foremost parents go to feelings right away and negative thoughts and all that behavior and I'm like first of all The question is what goes on inside your inside of your child's body that has to do what you're putting They're putting in their mouth down into their gut so that's gut health because that produces neurotransmitters that are in charge of emotion regulation and motivation, so gut health That's your sleep systems, your circadian rhythms, like if those are off, we're going to see huge problems sensory overwhelm, if we can't integrate sensory experiences because there's been so much light or there's so much sound, like too many transitions, the child inside does not feel, does not have a baseline to be engaged, what's called the parasympathetic nervous system, they're sympathetic, which is like the gas pedal of their brain, is on overdrive inside, so we're looking at those cues for what goes on in the body.

[00:16:13] Tammy Schamuhn: Neuroception of safety also gauges what goes on in terms of interrelationships with other people, your attachment relationships. So we gain our cues from what's going on with a child, and us, our spouse, even our kids, is what is going on in the mind of someone else? What is going on in the body of someone else?

[00:16:31] Tammy Schamuhn: What is the emotional tone of the interaction that I'm in right now? Children, of course, look to adults for neuroception of safety, saying I feel scared right now. How does mom look right now? She says she's not scared but she can't make eye contact with me. She's breathing very rapidly. She's looking around, looks like she's looking around for the nearest exit, right?

[00:16:51] Tammy Schamuhn: So everything about her body would, or she's yelling or she's she's breathing and she's really, her her speed is very, the porosity of her speech is very fast. The parent might be saying the right things but if everything about their being is saying danger, No matter what that parent does, that child's like neuroception of safety and my caregiver's not okay, so I mustn't be okay.

[00:17:13] Tammy Schamuhn: I'm not safe right now. My village doesn't all mammals get their cues from you could say, from the pack or from the herd or from the tribe. We look to our elders, to our seniors, to those that are in a position above us, meaning they just maybe are more sensitive or they have the knowledge, they've been on the world.

[00:17:31] Tammy Schamuhn: I don't like the hierarchy. Analogy necessarily, but I think the seniority and if the village isn't okay, the kid's not okay And so I think there was those cues that happen interpersonally that parents forget. That's why it's not their behavior in a vacuum It's dynamically what is going on within that interaction that child is receiving messages about Because they're going to start to mirror the parent's nervous system is what happens.

[00:17:56] Tammy Schamuhn: So there is, especially there, what's, whatever's going on in that parent's right hemisphere, which is all involved in movement and creativity and empathy and what's going on somatically. So whatever's happening in that parent's right hemisphere starts to happen in the child's right hemisphere.

[00:18:10] Tammy Schamuhn: So they're looking for neuroception cues of safety within the parent or the grandparent, whoever it is. So they may not be receiving it there. That's an alarm going off. And then we also receive cues from our environment. That's where our bodies get overwhelmed is that there's really bright lights, lots of sound, transitions going on.

[00:18:29] Tammy Schamuhn: People are even at Christmas, kids are opening presents everywhere. And there's all these smells and sounds and lights and kids have meltdowns at birthday parties and Christmas. It's so much environmental novelty that the brain can't process this and they don't process in the same way.

[00:18:44] Tammy Schamuhn: Adults can tune out information much better than children can. Children have a very underdeveloped hippocampus and hypothalamus that is involved in that sensory gating piece. It's, I think that's three pathways we look at is what goes on inside, what happens interpersonally between the child and the adult, and also environmentally, like how chaotic is the environment the child is in that moment?

[00:19:10] Tammy Schamuhn: Can that child even feel safe? I think of the time my son, it was Easter this year, we're sitting at the dinner table, he had way too much caffeine because he ate a bunch of chocolate because it was Easter, he's not used to that much sugar. You can see behaviorally he's starting to act out, which is not like him, he is pretty regulated.

[00:19:29] Tammy Schamuhn: And at that moment, even though I can do everything right, he is in front of a group of 15 people, some of whom he does not know at all. There's so much going on with all these people. Even if I say and do everything right, that environment will not allow his brain to lean into me. Because he's there's people watching me.

[00:19:47] Tammy Schamuhn: There's this chaos, I'm in this new environment, this isn't the house I've ever been to. And he's not attuned to other people's nervous systems within that dinner spaces. I want him to attune to mine, so I can't do what I need to do as a parent by keeping him at that table, right? And then I also need to leave because I'm feeling like I'm being watched and judged by other parents, so I have to leave so I can find my center too, right?

[00:20:10] Tammy Schamuhn: So I'm not worried about everyone else in the room. Yeah. So that's, and but we have to also consider before I deliver a consequence in that moment. What was going on in his body was caffeine and sugar. Yes. He couldn't help himself. There's also too many transitions and all these things that you think, it's hard in the moment to think about these things.

[00:20:30] Tammy Schamuhn: But if we can think about those three cues, what's going on with connections with people, what's going on inside his little body, and what's going on environmentally right now that could be sending a signal to his brain that he doesn't feel safe. That could be causing the misbehavior in that moment.

[00:20:48] Lucia Silver: So there's a lot of pieces there, Tammy. There's things that are outside of our control, as you say, what they might've eaten or what the environment might be how overstimulating it is down to simply the natural processes and responses that they need to have, and they need to be held to go through, but in simple terms, with all of that awareness.

[00:21:08] Lucia Silver: If I can just bring it back to something really simple and it's again makes me laugh with all the different theories thrown at it. So parents are all very aware that when their child as a toddler particularly falls over, I always remember this in the playground when Quinn was about three or four, a child falls over and all the parents look at one another to go, Don't react!

[00:21:30] Lucia Silver: Don't react because they're gonna look at me and I'm gonna look back and say you're fine and another parent goes Oh my god And another parent and the kids like trying to work out if they hurt themself or not when they fell Different theories on what they should be doing in that moment. So they're looking like you've got one mom who's just Like a bunny in a headlight, you've got another mom who's gone, UGH!

[00:21:54] Lucia Silver: And another mom who's just trying to be really cool, cause she knows she just needs to see her through, her kid through this safe space. I'm like, so in the moment, what do you do? What in your clinical and incredible experience, kid falls flat on their face, looks up, what should we be doing in that moment?

[00:22:12] Tammy Schamuhn: Oh, right away. Ouch! Back to that hurt. Ouch! It's just acknowledging yeah, that probably hurt. You don't have to make a big deal. Honey, are you okay? Oh my God. That is going to cause the child to go over. But we can have this neutrality to the situation where we come in with this calm, reflective, Ouch!

[00:22:32] Tammy Schamuhn: That hurt. And then, and just and there might be tears and that's okay. But the fact is that sometimes kids find their tears because they're like you understand me. It's okay. And the fact is they might not be fine. So when we say you're fine, what if they're not fine? So I think it's just acknowledging that probably hurt.

[00:22:52] Tammy Schamuhn: And I've had my kids be like, I'm okay. I'm like I did acknowledge that probably hurt a little bit. But when we say that with that neutrality, just be like, ouch, that hurts. Like it's. The tone's there of concern, but I keep an even keel with my energy. To allow that neutrality for that child to decide, how big is that hurt?

[00:23:12] Lucia Silver: Might be a one, might be a 10. I don't know. But there again this is, this was my point on reflecting before we spoke. You need to be in touch enough with yourself. To be able to hold that space of calm in order for your child to be able to respond to what is really going on in that moment. Do I hurt or do I not hurt?

[00:23:35] Lucia Silver: But if someone else is doing the acting out, i. e. the parent, there isn't any Elasticity, expansiveness, space for that to find itself. So I it's it's, a, it's an ask of the parent 

[00:23:49] Tammy Schamuhn: ultimately, isn't it? And it's in that moment too. There's a bit of a narrative and honestly, it's a lot of work at the beginning, but once you get good at it, like it it'll come naturally, just anything we have to practice is arduous in the beginning and then we work it out, but it's also what is the parent saying to themselves?

[00:24:05] Tammy Schamuhn: What's the narrative? And I'm huge with any clinicians I train and I. And so whenever I do clinical supervision, I always say you need to find out what the parent's narrative is about that child. Like in that moment, are they saying something like, everybody's watching me. I need to do the right thing.

[00:24:20] Tammy Schamuhn: Or my child's going to end up in the ER. Like they just keep doing this or, Oh God, not again. Another meltdown. What is the story? If it's something as neutral as, you know what, my kid gets hurt, kids get hurt, they fall down, this is the only way they learn to pick themselves up again. To me after practice and practice because I have a very busy boy at home who gets injured a lot, that has to be my narrative or I would be freaking out 24 7 because he runs too fast, he constantly skins his knees, he's been in the ER multiple times, but I just remember This is how he develops competency, this is how he develops bravery, and he's courageous, and this is how he develops grit, and he'll feel confident in his body.

[00:25:03] Tammy Schamuhn: So that's where I'm coming in, being like, this isn't a bad thing he got hurt. This is, how he learns to pick himself up. So again what's our narrative? And that's where parents, and you might not be able to do it in the moment, but for parents just to be aware of what are the stories they tell themselves about these triggering moments.

[00:25:20] Tammy Schamuhn: How do they evaluate what happens with their kiddo? Like your your siblings are fighting over a leg their Lego or something. We can look at that as Oh no, here they go again. And they're going to fight and it's going to ruin our family night. So we get really angsty versus you know what?

[00:25:37] Tammy Schamuhn: They've had a really hard day today. This is, sibling conflict is normal. This might be an opportunity. I can see one of my kiddos, my son maybe, is in need of some connection right now. That's why they're fighting. So I'm gonna, this is an opportunity for me to sit with him because I can see his cup is really empty.

[00:25:51] Tammy Schamuhn: Again, it's like, how do you evaluate what is going on? Like, how do we, and I think it's a curiosity that 

[00:25:58] Lucia Silver: it's the best way to describe it. That's a lovely, that's a lovely word to use because it gives, it puts a little bit of lightness of touch back into the picture just Just ask what's going on here in this moment and understand what's the truth of now, not the story.

[00:26:15] Lucia Silver: And this is so true of our relationships, mum with dad, siblings with one another, your relationships across the board what's really true in this moment versus the story. The story is such a big part, of that, isn't it? And at the other extreme of what we're talking about, from a tumble in the playground to a grazed knee, is trauma.

[00:26:39] Lucia Silver: And I would love to talk a little bit more because I know it's a huge, it's a huge, it's a huge area in life, it's a huge area for you, types of trauma and their impact, I was very struck by Marte Gabor's A trauma doesn't have to be, a genocide or a rape or a death or a trauma is defined by the way that we respond to and feel about the thing that has happened rather than the thing itself.

[00:27:08] Lucia Silver: And that was quite powerful for me because I think sometimes in society, we awfulize there's so many dreadful stories on television that when people have really been deeply impacted by an experience, they maybe think it's not enough to justify the way that they're feeling. So in relation to children specifically, Tammy, Trauma awareness is a big, we're, understanding more about it.

[00:27:35] Lucia Silver: As you said at the beginning, trauma awareness, what does it mean for our children and, what are you seeing in clinic with parents that would help our listeners around this area? 

[00:27:48] Tammy Schamuhn: Trauma is, the best way to describe it, is an experience where in that moment that child felt a relationship was completely at risk, or that child faced a very Darkened outcome, like there was a time where that child thought I could die or something bad could happen to mom.

[00:28:11] Tammy Schamuhn: Like they were going to lose something. So there's that feeling of feeling very unsafe. And they, in that moment felt a really alone with that feeling in that moment, it was scary. No one understood them. No one was paying attention. Like something had happened. It's quite interesting what goes on in the brain that, would constitute trauma.

[00:28:33] Tammy Schamuhn: And it also depends on a child's. State of resiliency. So what happens for instance, some parents, so if you look at ACEs, Adverse Childhood Experiences, which are considered trauma for kids, divorce is one of those. And I find it very interesting because I know I've treated hundreds of kids who have gone through divorce, and I wouldn't say that All those are traumatic at all.

[00:28:53] Tammy Schamuhn: Some parents handle it very well. There's grief. But for some kids, it's traumatic. And that involves the sense of, what did the child feel alone? Did they feel very they had to choose between parents so their, what was happened was their, relationship was jeopardized. That neuroception of safety I can't have my safe person anymore.

[00:29:13] Tammy Schamuhn: And I think that comes down to they're alone in that. They're alone in their stress. They don't have their co regulator there. They're I think it has to do with how much cortisol is in their system too. Because really what trauma does, and this is where it just, this is, there's so many environmental factors to determine whether it's trauma or not trauma, but at the core of it is how much cortisol is in that child's nervous system.

[00:29:38] Tammy Schamuhn: Because if cortisol stays elevated for too long, which is actually not very, it's like 20, 30 minutes. It's not very long. Elevated levels of cortisol. The brain starts to signal something called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is, it makes you dissociate. It says there's too much pain.

[00:30:00] Tammy Schamuhn: This isn't good for us. I'm going to start checking out of what's happening right now. If a child's in this huge state of cortisol release and there's no parent there, or adult it be a parent, it can be anybody, there to check in and are you okay and your reception is safety and to say like you're safe now and that was really scary da If there isn't that intervention, that child stays there, they stop timestamping the memory. What happens is we get this, this core, this fragmentation of memory and so basically the brain stops telling that we have different types of memory. There's autobiographical, which is explicit memory, which is a story of something that happened.

[00:30:41] Tammy Schamuhn: Think of that as in trauma, that the memory fragments into a hundred pieces. And you imagine this experience, so there's this, so if it was, for instance, my son had a, he was telling me how hard it was, a fire. He had never done like a fire drill where it went off and they had to practice. But had a teacher not co regulated him in that moment maybe it's the sound of the fire drill and the kids having to run, so the sound of feet all over the floor.

[00:31:05] Tammy Schamuhn: It's that sensation of his heart racing. He actually threw up at school, so maybe it's like that, the sensation of getting sick from it. And if we don't debrief and we don't go through what happened and he didn't experience connection, his mind is going to take all of those sensations and sounds and smells, and it's not going to be a coherent story.

[00:31:24] Tammy Schamuhn: It's just going to be these sensations that exist, these triggers, and they stuff them in our right hemisphere because we're supposed to review them later. And if we don't go back with a safe person and go through what happened and resolve those feelings in our body and we go through it's in the past, it's, you're safe now, and our brain has to learn from what happened.

[00:31:45] Tammy Schamuhn: What comes up later is these triggers will happen and then we get set back to when the fire drill happened, even though maybe it's three years later. And it's a sound that's maybe similar, like maybe it's an ambulance sound, sounds like a fire alarm. And that kid's back in that state, and you're like, why are they upset about an ambulance?

[00:32:03] Tammy Schamuhn: They've never been in an ambulance before, but there's something about that sound that takes them back to that other place. And what cortisol and those elevated levels does, so it fragments the memory. And it also starts, it's oh, carcinogenic to the brain, where it inhibits, it damages the pre, the cortical brain parts of the prefrontal cortex is part of it, involved in executive functioning and impulse control and emotion regulation, as well as memory retention.

[00:32:31] Tammy Schamuhn: You've got this kid who gets triggered all the time. And on top of that, it impairs the ability of the brain to do what it naturally does as they get older, which is to calm the nervous system down. Those parts of the brain are very damaged. So kids stay stuck in that state.

[00:32:46] Tammy Schamuhn: Sympathetic energy, that, that gas pedal, all the time. So it doesn't take much to set people like that over the edge because their brain can't calm down naturally. So their cortisol levels will just stay elevated. And it's the best way to describe it. So you can have one kiddo who can go through something traumatic.

[00:33:04] Tammy Schamuhn: The parent catches it. Walks them through what happened. So like for my son, I'll give you an example. That could have been traumatic for some kids, but we went home, we talked about what happened. What did he know? What was going on before? What happened during what happened after how he was feeling in his body?

[00:33:20] Lucia Silver: we stop you a little bit? Cause that's so important, what you're saying, because I wanted to ask what is the language? So something does happen of a traumatic nature. You're saying this, take your kiddo home, talk him through it. What are the to do's and not to dos don'ts, rather, when you're talking to your child and going through that.

[00:33:39] Lucia Silver: Is there a way the reflective language, the safe space, because they may not be able to talk about it straight away. No, and now my, 

[00:33:46] Tammy Schamuhn: I have an eight year old, so that's different, right? Yeah. But let's say he's four. Okay? I'm probably going to draw a picture of school that day. We might get some toys on the floor and he's going to play out his stressed feelings with toys.

[00:34:00] Tammy Schamuhn: That's what kids do. I'm a play therapist. So he's, he can explicate what happened at school. He can say he has the language to say, maybe not in that moment, but we can review that. But I have done these memory reviews with kids as young as two. Which is interesting, because I was in a car accident when my son was two, and we actually did this work with him.

[00:34:19] Tammy Schamuhn: We got some cars, and we did a very simple narrative being like we talked about oh, mommy ate, so this is exactly what I would have said to him. Mommy and Aiden in car crashed. Mom scared. Aiden scared. Mom drove out of ditch, went to grandma's house. Safe now. This simple narrative of this then this.

[00:34:40] Tammy Schamuhn: And then we brought some cars for him to play with. And there was a semi truck, so we got a semi truck for him. And he played it and played it Then he told grandma the story. Mom hit ditch. I scared. Mamokenu. He's two. He can say that, where we reviewed it. Very simple. I gave him a very simple narrative.

[00:34:57] Tammy Schamuhn: I didn't go into, honey, what were you thinking? I know he was scared. He's scared. Mom's scared, too. And we just do that, and then the toys, the trucks to play. I think my mom actually had him draw it. I, cause I told her to, cause I was at the RCMP filing police report. And I said, just have him draw it.

[00:35:15] Tammy Schamuhn: And again, it's just something really simple, that symbolic language. Like I gave him the language a little bit, but then he expressed it using the toys. Yeah toys are such a big piece, aren't they, for little ones? Because language for kids is stored symbolically, and it's not super language based until mid, primary school.

[00:35:34] Tammy Schamuhn: Like I would say about my son's age now, 8, 9, they can start doing that. But the young ones, 7 and under, often need art, or music, or movement, or that play. Yes, to go through that, to work through what's going on. So just having some toys around a doctor's kit. 'cause often kids feel damaged even if they weren't physically hurt.

[00:35:53] Tammy Schamuhn: The doctor's kit will help them under they, they will sh it's a way to symbolize that they felt hurt emotionally. So I'm like, every parent needs to own a kid's doctor's kit. They every parent on this planet go get a doctor's kit. 'cause they will play out. They'll put bandaids on themselves. Like even again, it has nothing to do with the physical injury.

[00:36:12] Tammy Schamuhn: They will just. Show you this is not okay for me. Like I feel something's not good in my body. 

[00:36:19] Lucia Silver: It works well. It really works well through play. It's there. It is their language of emotion play, isn't it? So I think that's something that's really helpful to know. At the other end, Tammy. So you've got children who can express through play.

[00:36:32] Lucia Silver: There is trauma at the other end when children or teenagers are older and it gets a little bit trickier. Then I'm going to be oversimplistic here, but in some cases there can be complete shutdown immobilization and, and there can also be, and I relate this to the trauma that I went through as a teenager.

[00:36:51] Lucia Silver: I was extremely articulate in the face of trauma. So I could have described to you everything that was going on for me emotionally. But I wasn't really connecting with it in my body. I know this is very close to adult therapy, but we with some of our teens, they're getting very good at the kind of language of therapy, which doesn't necessarily mean we're really hitting the true heartbeat, visceral, somatic trauma.

[00:37:24] Lucia Silver: How do you move past either no expression or the apparent expression of the trauma? 

[00:37:31] Tammy Schamuhn: Yeah. With our when treating trauma in teens, it's similar to adults actually, where we need a type of therapy that really focuses somatically on what happens during these core experiences. And the issue is we often have multiple memories.

[00:37:49] Tammy Schamuhn: If you think of it like a file folder. Imagine your brain, it's in your hippocampus, stores certain emotions and memories within it. So each emotion is like a file folder. Usually trauma is involved with the feeling of shame or fear. So usually it's one of those two file folders. Honestly, there's exceptions, but usually those two.

[00:38:08] Tammy Schamuhn: Because it's a threat, right? Something is a big threat and we feel kids internalize it is my fault. That is naturally how kids process experiences. It's part of their brain development. So that's shame. Something's wrong with me. It's my fault this happened. So if you think of there's this file folder, there's going to be all of these memories stored around that feeling.

[00:38:27] Tammy Schamuhn: And the problem is, you can talk an experience, but until we start to Dive into multiple memory systems involved with that core emotional experience. We often can't resolve it because there are and so it's funny when people do trauma work, we rarely, no you wouldn't, I would never process the trauma memory the client brings into session.

[00:38:52] Tammy Schamuhn: Unless it, because you do a float back in therapy where we go to the first time they ever felt that way. We actually start clearing that stuff out first. Because often there's a history of feeling that way. Of feeling powerless. Of feeling shame. Of feeling scared. Immobilized. And so that's part of the problem.

[00:39:11] Tammy Schamuhn: We take people there gently. Also talk at their trauma and get dissociative when talking about it. They start being like, they know the language, but then what's happening in inside is they're actually checking out. Physically, from what's happening. And it's really subtle, and this is why trauma therapists look for dissociation when we're telling the narrative.

[00:39:34] Tammy Schamuhn: And you also have to have these containment, this is, we call it containment. Clients need to practice skills of regulation before you start telling your narrative. And often people with trauma have no regulation skills. So it treatment for this for teens and adults, kids too, it's just very different treatment involves a lot of float backs and containment exercises and how do I bring myself, how do I know I'm escalating?

[00:40:01] Tammy Schamuhn: How do I notice that in my body? Until we're ready to safely actually process that big, we call it a big T trauma. Like the rape or the parent's divorce or domestic violence, like whatever it was, domestic violence in the home. We want to jump to that, but the brain can't handle that yet. It's not equipped.

[00:40:19] Tammy Schamuhn: It doesn't have the skills yet to do that. And there might be unresolved stuff from before that predated that trauma narrative that we have to work through and resolve first. So it's like getting under the the bottom of the iceberg. Is there anything else there we need to, we would say clear out first.

[00:40:35] Tammy Schamuhn: Because otherwise we're going to be spinning our wheels. So I do, I always look at trauma as like a web, and I need to see what other memories are associated with that file folder of fear or shame or powerlessness, like whatever that is, like futility. So it's, and this is why it's so important that people see a trauma therapist who has that training.

[00:40:56] Tammy Schamuhn: You ask someone, yeah, coming to therapy first day, I want to talk about my rape, I'd be like, Oh my, no, we're not going to do that. Like you, we don't have the skills to do that yet. You don't have the safety with me to do that yet. But someone not trained is Oh great. They're opening up to me. This is wonderful.

[00:41:12] Tammy Schamuhn: They're going to get better. And I'm like, you're going to make them worse. They are not prepared to do that work yet. Little ones are a little different. If you're debriefing right after something has happened, small things, like that, but we're talking teens who have had this huge thing happen, they're, so again it's almost like a whole podcast in itself to talk about what treatment looks like.

[00:41:33] Lucia Silver: It's a different area. I appreciate that. And it's also it's aggregated and aggravated with teens because it's often accumulated. And. I, raise it only because when we're talking about the subjects of trauma or emotional dysregulation or making a safe space, I find that our parents will come back and it's, In some ways easier with toddlers because you're at a sort of preventative, you can start to see where things are impacting them.

[00:41:58] Lucia Silver: But for the work that we do at the Brain Health Movement across central nervous system, gut health, screen and sleep, hygiene, and all of those things that we're trying to put together so parents start to understand the healthy development of the brain. We're handing out all these ideas, but the parent is coming back to us and saying, I can't even get in the bedroom door with my teenager, let alone get them to do some movement or get off the screen or stop eating crap and eat let's try getting you off gluten and sugar, or let's try they can't even get in there because of the level of any of the above trauma, emotional dysregulation, and so on.

[00:42:36] Lucia Silver: So these conversations and how to access it and how to begin to The process of reconnection is so important, right? Because otherwise there's no starting point. 

[00:42:48] Tammy Schamuhn: Yeah, I think parents try to do everything at once, too, and that's, it's just like when you're trying to lose weight. Everyone's I'm gonna cut out this, and I'm gonna exercise five days a week, and I'm gonna da And then they, can't because it's not reasonable, so they give up. They're like, I'm just not gonna do this. And it's what is that small change we can make? Honestly, with teens it's, you have, if you're not connected with your teen, you have no influence. You're not going to change anything in that environment until you can get your baby back and get them in the position where they will open up to you and talk to you.

[00:43:19] Tammy Schamuhn: Let alone make changes to their world, like their their screen and their diet. Oh my God. No, like with your teen, it's like, where did we fall out of relationship? Like what? How did that happen? When we can get our babies back a little bit, where they're, that they're, we can influence them, we can think of what is one small change I can make.

[00:43:41] Tammy Schamuhn: And maybe that's just like reducing the amount of time they spend on their phone isolated in their bedroom. Or even just getting them playing on the phone in the living room with the other family. Like just one small shift. But I think parents, We'll jump to this and this, that teen feels so attacked, they don't feel connected and we're not meant to follow people we don't feel connected to.

[00:44:02] Tammy Schamuhn: So I would say if you're like, if a listener here has got a teen one of the biggest things I'm going to say is how do we get our footing in our relationship with our teen? How do we get to know our teen again? And I just, the best thing I can say as a therapist who has worked with hundreds of teens, what are they interested in?

[00:44:18] Tammy Schamuhn: Get to know them again, get their opinions on things, get something's happening, what do you think about that? Put them in the expert position sometimes. They want some authority, they want autonomy. Show them you respect them, show that they have a voice, that you want their opinion on things, you care about what they're interested in.

[00:44:36] Tammy Schamuhn: You need influence. And that is the biggest problem I see with parents of teens, is they've lost their influence and they almost forget who their kid is. They just see all these Oh my gosh, they're hiding in their room all the time, and the music is so horrible, and blah blah blah. You forget what it was like to be a teenager.

[00:44:52] Tammy Schamuhn: There's this autonomy seeking and they're exploring and trying new hats on. But you forget that little boy or little girl you love so much is still in there. They just are, they're individuating. They're moving and becoming your own person. We just have to get back and getting to know them all over again.

[00:45:11] Tammy Schamuhn: And that takes time. And I think we put the cart before the horse. With teenagers, we want to change everything without relationship. And that is our biggest mistake with teens. They see right through it and they don't like coercion. I'm not saying you should let them walk all over you, but there is a getting to know.

[00:45:27] Tammy Schamuhn: It's just like when they say to date your spouse, it's like dating your teenager again. You've got to spend time together. You've got to listen to them hear them out, get their opinions. And then we can talk about what needs to change in the home, but good luck trying to change a teenager who's not in that receptive position from the parent.

[00:45:46] Tammy Schamuhn: They're just not going to do it. 

[00:45:48] Lucia Silver: I 

[00:45:49] Lucia Silver: love, listening to you. I don't have a teen yet, but I hear so much from parents wanting to. Implement everything that we're saying. And as you say, the the relationship is broken in the first instance, they need to get back and reconnect. And I don't know if it's Brené Brown or it could be in the area of we only ever do anything for power or love.

[00:46:13] Lucia Silver: And teens often need to feel back in the power seat. And that they are loving as opposed to what's happening is teens are just seen for their bad behavior. The only conversations going on in the house are, don't do that. It's all reactive. It's reactive to the, what they're eating, where they're going, what they're drinking, who they're seeing, how they're speaking, their relationship with their phones, their screens.

[00:46:37] Lucia Silver: It's literally there's no relationship with them. There's only a relationship through the behavior that's playing out. And I think that is not connection. As you're saying it's, broken, right? 

[00:46:50] Tammy Schamuhn: Yeah, but that's like any, think about your, spouse wanting you to unload the dishwasher or wanting, they're saying, I need this to change in our relationship.

[00:46:59] Tammy Schamuhn: If you had been fighting that morning and then they asked you to do that would you? Probably not. You have a boss who yells at you versus saying can we have a meeting? I really value You I love that you're part of this team. I just think we need to make this subtle change.

[00:47:14] Tammy Schamuhn: Tell me your thoughts on that. Think about how you want to follow someone. If you want feedback, how do you receive that feedback? And this is why I always say the best time to do marriage counseling is when you're in a good place, actually, not when you're in crisis. The best time to go is In the honeymoon phase, or as you're about to enter marriage, or you're like, you're actually communicating well, you're actually receptive to hearing one another, and you'll make actual changes very quickly in couples I used to be a couples therapist.

[00:47:43] Tammy Schamuhn: Versus like, when you're in the middle of conflict, it's really arduous. It's actually really hard to make progress in couples therapy if you're in this combative. And you're not able to influence each other. So I think it, it just permeates all relationships. Like we don't want to follow people whom we don't feel attached to.

[00:48:00] Tammy Schamuhn: We don't, it's we call that counter will people call it oppositional. I was like, yeah, it's designed to actually keep kids safe. Cause you're not supposed to go home with a stranger. You're not supposed to be influenced by the border tribe. You're supposed to be influenced by your tribe. So if we're not in our, that tribe mindset, our brain naturally does this.

[00:48:19] Tammy Schamuhn: It's no you're, a stranger to me. I'm not supposed to listen to you. This does not feel good to me. . 

[00:48:25] Lucia Silver: So this is so, wonderful. Tammy, it's really important because we often neglect the. The teenage end of what we're doing, cause we're looking so much into development, but what is true for the older is often true for the younger. And I think it's, ultimately, it's about connection in in this moment.

[00:48:44] Lucia Silver: So what, an incredible conversation today with Tammy Schamuhn. I'm sure you're all leaving with as much inspiration as I am. We've covered so many crucial aspects of parenting, how understanding the brain can guide us, the importance of co regulation, How to help both ourselves and our children heal from trauma.

[00:49:02] Lucia Silver: Tammy's insight into the modern challenges parents face, from burnout to disconnection in our kids, reminds us of the importance of being mindful, present and connected. As we sign off, I encourage each of you to reflect on how you can apply these valuable takeaways to your own parenting journey and your own self care.

[00:49:21] Lucia Silver: Parenting is a constant evolution and Tammy's words today remind us that it's never too late to awaken to new possibilities, appealing connection growth. So thank you, Tammy, for sharing your expertise and your heart with us today. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye bye. So 

[00:49:40] Lucia Silver: Until next time, keep striving for deeper connections and more meaningful moments with your children. We will, as always, create the top tips and a guide for you to download with the highlights of this episode. But we'll see you in the next episode. Bye bye for now!