Show notes
Somewhere in your day today there was a moment that looked like nothing. You said "oh, you really wanted the blue one" while the blue cup stayed in the dishwasher. You waited the extra ninety seconds at the car seat. You walked back in after a sharp morning and said, "I was too sharp about the shoes. That wasn't about you."
Inside your child's nervous system, each of those was a deposit.
The Trust Fund is the idea at the center of Wide Awake Parenting: our child's current and future sense of security, their ability to trust in themselves, in the world, and in other people. We build it daily, in the moments where we notice what matters to them and help them feel seen. In this episode, child psychologist Dr. Kirsten Kuzirian walks through the five deposits that build it, one at a time, with the research underneath each one and what it sounds like with a toddler, a ten-year-old, and a teenager. So you can see the deposits you're already making, and enjoy being with your child as they are, right now.
In this episode:
• Attunement, the soil the deposits grow from, and what the still-face studies show about the reunion carrying more weight than the miss
• Validation: why naming a feeling does biological work, and the 2024 study where validated preschoolers kept going longer on hard tasks
• Regulation: you don't need to feel calm to make this deposit, you need to feel recoverable
• Pace: the extra ninety seconds at the car seat, and what self-determination research says a child's rhythm is teaching them
• Repair: the seventy percent figure as it actually reads (seventy percent of small misses are repaired within seconds), and three ways to walk back in, by age
• Delight: the gleam in the parent's eye, and the difference between being loved and being enjoyed
• What the five deposits build, and why the bar is presence, pattern, and return
Mentioned in this episode:
• Building Your Child's Trust Fund: A Parent's Field Guide (free): wideawakeparenting.com/links
• The developmental courses, for what each deposit looks like at your child's specific stage: wideawakeparenting.com/courses
• The AWAKE Method, five questions for the moments that feel tricky: Attachment, Wiring, Alignment, Knowledge, Empowerment. The Trust Fund is what we're building, and the AWAKE Method is how we build it. The full walk-through is in the first episode, "The Science of Wide Awake Parenting"
• Learn more about the AWAKE Method: wideawakeparenting.com/courses
Wide Awake Parenting is educational content distributed by Wide Awake Media, LLC. It is not therapy, not assessment, and does not establish a therapeutic relationship.
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