Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children

Latest Episodes:

TPP 084a: Karen Young of Hey Sigmund Talks About Anxiety in Kids Mar 25, 2022

Show notes

In this week’s episode I’m talking with the founder of the popular psychology website Hey Sigmund, Karen Young about anxiety in kids. Karen created Hey Sigmund because she realized the power of solid information, and wanted to share brain science and the latest research and news about psychology with everyday people.

What attracted me to Karen’s website is that it frequently features fascinating, comprehensive, and easy-to-digest articles on issues surrounding kids’ emotional and mental well-being, with a special focus on anxiety in kids. And that’s what we’re talking about in-depth today—anxiety in children. Karen will tell us exactly what it looks like, how we can recognize it in our kids, what to do about it, and how to talk with our kids about it. Karen also tells us about her new book which she wrote specifically for children with anxiety, called Hey Warrior.

Karen Young has worked as a psychologist in private practice, in organizational settings, lectured and has extensive experience in the facilitation of personal growth groups. Her honors degree in psychology and masters in Gestalt Therapy have come in handy at times. She founded Hey Sigmund after realizing the power of solid information. Her articles have been translated into a number of languages and her work has been published on various international sites including The Good Men Project, The Huffington Post, The Mighty, and Yahoo Health.

She is also a regular contributor to Parenting Magazine in New Zealand. She can often be heard on Australian radio, and is and a sought-after speaker. Recently, she published Hey Warrior, a book for kids to help them understand anxiety and find their ‘brave’.

Things you’ll learn from this episode

The impetus for Karen’s popular website Hey Sigmund
What Karen hopes Hey Sigmund does in the world
Why Karen says: “Because sometimes the only diagnosis is human”
What’s happening in our kids’ bodies and minds when they’re experiencing anxiety
Useful strategies kids can use to cope with their anxious feelings
What parents can look out for if they suspect their child might be struggling with anxiety
How parents can support their children with anxiety, as well as explain to their children what’s going on
The importance of mindfulness as a way to manage anxiety

Resources mentioned about anxiety in kids

Hey Sigmund (Karen’s website)
Hey Warrior, a book for kids with anxiety to find their “brave” by Karen Young
The University of Washington Autism Center
Headspace mindfulness app
Smiling Mind mindfulness app
Hey Sigmund on Facebook
Anxiety in Kids: How to Turn it Around and Protect Them for Life (original viral article on Hey Sigmund)

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TPP 286: A Conversation with Twice-Exceptional Teen Jordan O'Kelley Mar 22, 2022

Show notes

16-year-old, autistic college student Jordan O'Kelley shares his personal story of growing up twice-exceptional, learning how to advocate for himself, and helping raise awareness and understanding for other 2e kids.

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TPP 008a: Simone Davies on How to Be a Calm Parent in Difficult Situations Mar 18, 2022

Show notes

For this episode, I sat down with Simone Davies, a Montessori educator who runs Jacaranda Tree Montessori in Amsterdam and founder of the online home The Montessori Notebook, which helps people apply Montessori principles in daily live through free articles, downloads, and e-courses. I love Simone’s perspective on education, parenting, and positive discipline, and I wanted to share her insight with listeners.

We talk about a number of different issues during our conversation, but the primary focus was on handling emotionally charged and difficult situations with our children, including when our child is having a tough time in public and all eyes are on us to respond “appropriately.” We talk about how difficult it is to stay emotionally detached and not let our own angry or frustrated energy add further fuel to the situation, and Simone shares some useful strategies for staying (mostly) calm and cool.

Simone Davies has over 10 years experience as an AMI-qualified Montessori teacher, working with both young children and their parents. Simone is a parent educator, runs Jacaranda Tree Montessori, a Montessori playground in Amsterdam for babies, toddies and preschoolers, and is the founder of The Montessori Notebook.

Things you’ll learn from this episode

What the Montessori philosophy entails
Specific strategies for not absorbing your child’s energy during difficult moments and diffusing the situation instead
An approach for handling public meltdowns
How to practice empathy with a child
The value in getting comfortable with big emotions
Why making amends and taking responsibility works better than punishments
How our thoughts about a child’s behavior can worsen a situation

Resources mentioned about how to be a calm parent

The Montessori Notebook
Simone’s e-course Setting Up Your Home Montessori Style
Jacaranda Tree Montessori
The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children, by Ross W. Greene
TiLT Parenting Podcast episode featuring Margaret Webb (Finding Peace in Parenting the Child You Didn’t Expect When You Were Expecting)

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TPP 285: Dr. Mona Delahooke on the Power of Brain-Body Parenting Mar 15, 2022

Show notes

Psychologist, speaker, and author Dr. Mona Delahooke talks about her new book Brain-Body Parenting, and the power in understanding and responding to children's complicated behavior as a symptom rather than a problem.

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TPP 111a: Katherine Reynolds Lewis Tells us the Good News About Bad Behavior Mar 11, 2022

Show notes

In week’s podcast episode, we’re talking about bad behavior. Specifically, The Good News About Bad Behavior. That’s the name of a new book by journalist, author, speaker, and parent educator, Katherine Lewis, and in this episode, Katherine and I talk about what our kids’ behavior is telling us and how we as parents, teachers, and other adults in kids’ lives can best respond to it while encouraging our kids to develop into healthy adults.

In researching and writing her book, Katherine connected with one of our favorite parenting thought leaders, Dr. Ross Greene, and reframed her own thinking about bad behavior as being a child’s way of demonstrating lagging skills. Katherine’s book aims to help parents navigate tricky behavioral situations and work with their children toward better solutions. I really enjoyed this conversation and hope it offers you some good food for thought.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis is an award-winning journalist and author of The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever – And What to Do About It. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Fortune, Money, Mother Jones, The New York Times, Parade, Slate, USA Today’s magazine group, the Washington Post Magazine and Working Mother. She holds a BA in physics from Harvard University and is a certified parent educator with the Parent Encouragement Program (PEP) in Kensington, Md.

Things you’ll learn from this episode

How parents can shift their mindset in the way they think about behavior
Why our kids’ need to experience failure, and why modeling it for them can be so powerful
How to let go of what others think of our approach to parenting and discipline
Ways parents can compassionate advocate for and educate others about our children
What Katherine hopes her book does in the world in terms of changing the conversation surrounding behavior
What the good news about bad behavior actually is

Resources on the good news about bad behavior

Katherine Lewis’ website
The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever, and What to Do About It by Katherine R. Lewis
Katherine Lewis on Facebook
Katherine Lewis on Twitter
Katherine Lewis on Instagram
The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children by Dr. Ross Greene
Lives in the Balance (Dr. Greene’s website)

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TPP 284: Maria Kennedy on What's Needed & What's Next in the Movement to Support 2e Students Mar 08, 2022

Show notes

Supporting 2e students continues to be one of the biggest challenges for those of us raising twice-exceptional children, and today we’re going to do a deep dive into how to do this. My guest is Maria Kennedy, director of the Bridges Educational Group at Bridges Academy, and host of Crucial Conversations on Cognitive Diversity, produced by the Bridges 2e Center for Research and Professional Development. Maria is also a speaker, author and advocate and has been featured on “Bright and Quirky” and has received several awards for her teaching and leadership. Maria is passionate about supporting 2e students and training teachers how to tap into the strengths of their gifted and challenged learners.

During this conversation, we’ll talk about how the definition of giftedness in some countries keeps gifted students from getting into gifted programs, the importance of appreciating every child’s unique strengths and value, and ways parents can advocate for their children’s unique learning profile, even within their existing school systems that may not be designed to support or understand neurodivergent learners.

Things you’ll learn from this episode

How the definition of giftedness in some countries prevents gifted students from getting into gifted programs
Why we should lean into widening the scope of what giftedness means so we can properly identify everyone’s gifts
What appreciating everyone’s unique value can bring to a child’s education and development
What the roadblocks are for our educational system to be more open to embracing the changes needed
How parents who are navigating a traditional educational system can advocate for their 2e children

Resources mentioned for supporting 2e students

Bridges Academy
Scott Barry Kaufman
Ungifted: Intelligence Redefinedby Scott Barry Kaufman
Bridges Symposium
Dr. Susan Baum
Stanford Neurodiversity Conference
2e News
Variations Magazine

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Connect with Tilt Parenting

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TPP 050a: Celi Trépanier on the Benefits of Homeschooling Gifted Children Mar 04, 2022

Show notes

Ever considered homeschooling your gifted children? My guest, educator, author, and blogger Celi Trepanier, became a passionate advocate for gifted children after tiring of her battles with schools and their misunderstanding of how to support gifted children. A teacher who has taught in both public and private schools, Celi is the author of the book Educating Your Gifted Child: How One Public School Teacher Embraced Homeschooling, a parent group facilitator for the organization SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted), and keeps a blog at Crushing Tall Poppies.

In our conversation, we talk about why many schools, even sometimes those designed specifically to cater to gifted children, aren’t able to support these unique learners, and Celi shares why she believes homeschooling gifted children is such a great option if it’s something that is possible for families, as well as gives us her advice for how to get started.

Celi Trépanier is the author of Educating Your Gifted Child: How One Public School Teacher Embraced Homeschooling, as well as a writer, passionate advocate for gifted children, an anti-bullying proponent, MEd, former public school teacher, and a homeschooling mom.

Things you’ll learn from this episode

What giftedness is, as well as why there are negative stigmas attached to the label
Why most public schools are failing our gifted kids
Why sometimes even programs for gifted kids don’t really “get” gifted kids (they teach to kids who are “high achieving” rather than than “gifted”)
Why homeschooling can be such a great fit for gifted children
How parents can determine if homeschooling is a doable option for their family

Resources mentioned for homeschooling gifted children

Crushing Tall Poppies (Celi Trepanier’s website)
Educating Your Gifted Child: How One Public School Teacher Embraced Homeschooling by Celi Trepanier
Parenting Horizons—Parenting Coach Julie Ross
Why Fostering Cultures of Respect in Our Schools is Absolutely Critical (podcast episode)
Gifted Homeschooler’s Forum

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Connect with Tilt Parenting

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TPP 283: Parent Coach Matt Barnes on Embracing a New, 21st Century Learning Model Mar 01, 2022

Show notes

Matt Barnes, Co-Founder and Parent Coach at The Education Game, inspires parents to embrace a new learning model that deemphasizes grades and academic compliance and emphasizes learning, problem-solving, and engagement.

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TPP 131a: Author and Lecturer Alfie Kohn On Practicing Unconditional Parenting Feb 25, 2022

Show notes

I was thrilled to have the chance to talk with Alfie Kohn about parenting and differently wired kids and dig into the concepts that many consider highly provocative and controversial because in many ways they are a radical departure from more traditional approaches to parenting, praise, rewards, punishments, discipline, and motivation.

If you haven’t been exposed to Alfie’s work before, I encourage you to listen with an open mind and curiosity. Some of the concepts he shares today may challenge your ideas about raising kids, but if you know me, I deeply believe there is value is reconsidering everything we thought we knew about parenting. After having this conversation with Alfie, I became even more aware of things I was doing that I wanted to tweak as a way to better support Asher’s growth, and I’ve already noticed a difference in what’s happening in my family dynamic. I hope you get out a lot out of our conversation.

Alfie Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education, and parenting. The author of fourteen books and scores of articles, he lectures at education conferences and universities as well as to parent groups and corporations. Kohn’s criticisms of competition and rewards have been widely discussed and debated, and he has been described in Time magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.”

Things you’ll learn from this episode

What “unconditional parenting” looks like
Why Alfie believes a goal of raising compliant kids is misguided
What the science says about rewards and punishments and why they tend to lead to the opposite result we’re going for
The potential downsides of positive reinforcement and “praise” in relation to supporting our children’s development and personal growth
The difference between love and unconditional love, and why the latter is what we want our children to feel
The importance of focusing on long-term versus short-term goals for our children
Alfie’s advice for where parents can start today when it comes to working toward a more unconditional parenting approach

Resources mentioned about unconditional parenting

Support the show

Connect with Tilt Parenting

Visit Tilt Parenting
Take the free 7-Day Challenge
Read a chapter of Differently Wired
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TPP 282: Dr. Melanie Hayes on Living Your Best Life for Twice Exceptional Adults Feb 22, 2022

Show notes

Author and founder of the Big Minds educational model Dr. Melanie Hayes talks about her new book for 2e and 2eA adults, Being Twice Exceptional, and what it will take for 2e and 2eA people to thrive.

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