A daily routine that has improved my child's "bad days"

I am a mom of three from Montreal , canada , and I have a PhD in neuroscience , and I believe that every single parent should have access to science that matters to them and their child's development .

I'm saying to them and their child , because you matter to , you matter the most in your child's life , and I think that it's important that we remember all of this , especially , you know , as a new parent or even as a seasoned parent .

Actually , our mental health matters , our emotional health matters , our well-being matters , and all that is clumped into one thing that we often forget as parents . I give advice about your child's development and the research that I read and I try to share that with you .

I reach out to experts as well when I have questions myself , and sometimes I do what I'm doing today and I show up as a solo and I'm on my own and I want to talk about something that I've been doing in my house . This is how I apply the science in my home and I want to share that with you as well .

I think it's important that you see how I'm applying the science and that you figure out how you could , you know , do this in your own home . So , before I begin to talk about this nightly ritual that I began months ago now , at the beginning of this year , in 2023 , I just want to thank the Tenenbaum Open Science Institute for supporting the CuresNone podcast .

This is part of the neuro here in Montreal , which is part of McGill University , and they believe in open science , as we do here at CuresNuron , and I think it's important to share the science and make it accessible to you , not only in like here's the research article , but in understanding it .

So I try to translate it in a way that makes sense to you , the parent or caregiver of any kind , or clinician I know there are clinicians that listen or a grandparent , or whoever you are out there .

I think it's important for you to understand the science and figure out how to make it work in your own home , if it matters to you and if it's something that is applicable . I don't want this to be a parenting platform that says , like , here's how you should parent . No , figure it out , you've got this . I know you've got this .

I just want to give you the resources . That is what we are all about , and thank you to the Tenenbaum Open Science Institute for supporting that passion that I have and that mission that I have in my life . I also want to thank you , the listener , for taking the time to rate the podcast and review it , because without that I don't get funding .

So if you haven't done so yet and you've been listening to some episodes and you're like , hey , cindy , you know , as what she says makes it a little difference here in my life and I've noticed a change , then please take a moment to rate the podcast and review it on Apple podcast or on Spotify . Send me an email at infoicurisneuroncom .

All of that is in the show notes and I will send you a free PDF . It's 10 bucks on our website . At the Academy .

It's called Meltdown Mountain and if you have a child that doesn't know how to regulate their emotions and you're looking for a visual , I will send it to you so that you can print it , put it on your wall or your fridge and use it as a tool so that your child can learn how to say hey , I'm starting to feel this regulated Whoa .

Every parent wants to hear that and we also struggle to know when we're dysregulated . But I want to start with your child and help them , you know , figure out when their emotions are getting a little bit bigger .

So send me an email when you rate and review the podcast and if you're not doing so yet , you can follow us on Instagram at curious underscore neuron . You can do so on Facebook as well and you can follow our YouTube channel where I post the interviews that I have with people or guests on the podcast . I put that up on the YouTube channel .

I wish I had a little bit more time to spend on that YouTube YouTube channel , but right now I'm focusing on the podcast and Instagram and our blog at curious neuroncom . I say blog , but it's articles . There . You can find some PDFs . If you want to buy some PDFs at the academy , you can search for an old podcast episode . It's much easier there , I think .

And you can read some blog , some articles that where you know we have graduate students that are summarizing the articles there and writing these articles for the website that will help you know how to apply the research in your own home . That's it . That's all I've got to say . All right , so let's move on to today's podcast episode .

What is Cindy's nighttime ritual with her kids ? Well , since you asked , I have been doing something for a few months now . That has been , I'm not going to say game changer , but has really made a difference in one of my kids' lives and I'm hoping the other two , you know this has become .

I can't say that it changed their life , but I've noticed that it's become part of their language and that's enough for me . So what I started doing right after the holidays around January is every time it's the bedtime routine . When we're taking showers , the kids are getting ready , getting washed up , brushing their teeth , getting ready for bed .

I always ask each one of them in a single and a different moment , one at a time when I have , you know , if I'm brushing my four-year-olds' teeth , if I'm tucking in my you know seven-year-old in bed , if I'm , you know , helping my other six-year old kid . I ask them what was your favorite part of your day ?

And there's a reason that I did this , so as if you've been listening to this podcast for a while . There's an episode about my gratitude journal not gratitude journal , but my journaling and gratitude . Gratitude really stood out to me , so I started journaling this year and it's on and off right now .

I have to admit like it's been a little bit busy with work . I'm the founder of Kirsten Neuron , but also the co-founder of WonderGrade , which is an app that helps kids regulate , learn how to regulate emotions , while also helping parents learn how to regulate their own .

So I've been really busy with that and Kirsten Neuron has been put to the side just a little bit .

But all of this to say the self-care and the journaling has also been put to the side and what I but I've still been journaling and once in a while and what I learned is that when I started , you know , putting an effort into thinking about what I was grateful for , at first I was like , well , what kind ? What was I grateful for ? Today , I don't know .

I cooked three meals for three kids and cleaned up and then gave them baths and they didn't want and put them to bed and they didn't want to go to bed and it was very easy for me to finish my day feeling frustrated and overwhelmed and not feeling really grateful for anything .

But as I started journaling and writing it down and taking the time to think about what I was grateful for , I started noticing the really little things , like , well , my four year old , or three year old at the time , you know he , he gave me this really great hug and or he said sorry to his sister or his brother , or one of my kids said , hey , mom , the

supper is really good . And I was starting to notice the little things more . So I wanted to do the same thing with my kids , but make it developmentally appropriate . So obviously they can't journal , but what I wanted them to do was take a moment to talk every day about what they enjoyed .

So the question I started asking my kids is what was your favorite part of your day ? What was the favorite part of your day today ? What did you enjoy ? And you know , sometimes they'd say like TV or Nintendo , when they played . You know that moment and had that .

And even if we had like the best day ever and went out to the park and spent like 30 minutes playing Nintendo in the morning , they would mention , oh , nintendo , well fine . But I just kept asking and I would say , sure , if that's the moment that you had fun with , I wouldn't judge what they thought was fun , their kids .

But I was trying to see , like , how do I get them to talk about the little things like I did . So I just kept mentioning it every single night . We've been doing this for months now and there was a change . There was a change in how they're speaking about their day .

My four year old is able to articulate things that made him happy that day and what he enjoyed that day . My seven , almost eight year old is going into details as well about like connections she had with people , people she saw . So I saw that change . But I'm leaving one child out because he was the reason why I kept pushing to do this .

This one , one of my three kids . He kind of struggles with seeing the good stuff sometimes in that day not always , but sometimes he gets stuck in . He calls them bad moments . So , for example , at the beginning , when I would ask him like hey , how was your day today ? What was your favorite part of your day , he would say things like what was a bad day ?

Because so and so , whichever sibling didn't let me play my with that toy , or I wanted to do watch this TV show and they didn't let me because they wanted to watch their TV show . Or we went outside and it rained and we came back in and my day wasn't as fun as I thought it would be .

So I knew I had to be more intentional with him , and that was a sign that I needed to be more intentional and mindful of how I was going to model what I wanted him to do , and when I talk about modeling , this is exactly it . So I saw that he struggled with seeing the good parts of his day .

Instead of getting mad at him or getting frustrated or saying like , oh , why is he like this ? I realized that I needed to , like , externalize my own days . So I started having conversations with him about , like , sometimes a bad part of your day doesn't necessarily mean that your day is bad .

But then , as I was saying this out loud , I realized , like I said a few minutes ago , that I was kind of modeling , that sometimes days are feeling like bad days . I was putting them to bed , feeling frustrated because maybe something happened that afternoon . I still hadn't let it go .

It was a huge eye-opener for me of like , holy crap , I'm doing exactly what he's doing and he's modeling . I'm modeling something that I don't want him to do . But I was having trouble getting rid of those emotions . So I had to become more intentional on how I was talking about my day .

I started highlighting what he was calling bad moments , right of like something not going your way , and saying it out loud . So if we I can't think of any example right now , but let's just say we oh , yeah , okay , once we went out for ice cream , but that particular place was closed during the day .

So I would say it out loud oh man , I was really looking forward to like coming out for ice cream here and we , we love this place , or you know , I was excited for it . And then I would say it feels like it's a bad moment right now in my day . How do I make this bad moment turn into a not so bad moment ?

And then I would ask the three kids for advice and they'd say , like , well , what if we go to the park instead ? Or what if we go home and we have popsicles ? What if we eat a popsicle outside or in the bath ? Or what if we go for a walk and or do an activity , something ?

I would get them to kind of brainstorm in terms of like , how can we change this moment that feels bad because it's disappointing , and that feeling of disappointment is new to them . Right it's , it's something that just makes them feel like mad , kind of sad sort of , but they don't know how to explain it .

So we have to show them what that feels like , and not just show them what it feels like to feel disappointed . But also , what do you do when you're disappointed , right ? So we might be disappointed that they wanted to tie their shoe and we're late for work now , or we're late for a doctor's appointment .

But we also have to model how that moment it's a moment of disappointment changes into a moment that's no longer feeling , that you're not feeling that way anymore . How do you get past that feeling of disappointment ? It's when you change something that feels bad . Right , I'm using his language .

I don't like saying a bad moment , but he was saying it that way and he was five at the time and that was the language that made sense to him . So how do you change a bad moment into a not so bad moment ?

As I started modeling it more and more , and also when he would mention his bad moments while he was showering and I would say how was your day today ? What was your favorite part of your day ? So well , this happened , and you know that's .

Or I fell down and I scraped my knee when I was rollerblading or bike riding and I would say , yeah , that's not fun , I get it , that hurts , I could see your scratch here , you know . I said , were you able to continue bike riding after that happened ?

And he would say , well , yeah , I , you know , you know , got up and wasn't bleeding as much as I thought , but it burned . And I'd say , yeah , that burning part , oh , I hate it when that happens . So then you got back on your bike . He's like , yeah , I got back on my bike . Oh , and then did you bike ride with your friends ?

He'd say like , yeah , yeah , I rode my bike with my friends and I had a really good afternoon with them . Cool , hey , you know what I just noticed ? He's like what I said , you turned a bad moment into a not so bad moment . And that's when his eyes would light up and be like yeah , you're right . So I would repeat the question how was your day ?

What was your favorite part of your day today ? It's like well , I had a lot of fun with my friends today , and that's where the learning is happening . That's where , to me , as a parent , I'm actually doing a lot of learning and I'm actually taking something called cognitive reappraisal or reappraisal in emotion regulation skills .

I'm taking the science and I'm making it applicable to my child . I'm helping him see that bad moments happen . I don't want to take away the idea that they can't happen or that , or I try to make sure that bad moments never happen . I can't do that , I don't have the power to do that . I want him to have those bad moments that are natural in his life .

For example , falling and scraping your knee Not fun , I don't want my kid to have that , but he's gonna have them . But then how do I have the discussion around them ? I let him have that bad moment . I nurture him in that moment . I don't tell him like , brush it off , you're fine , get up , you're good .

No , if I were to fall , I'd be like , hey , this sucks , somebody hold me . But then how do I help him move past that and how do I help him reappraise or , in other words , see that situation from a different light and that bad moment becomes a not so bad moment .

So that is what I have been doing with my kids for the past couple of months and , honestly , with my child , who struggles really to kind of get out of those bad moments . We've been noticing that it's getting better and he's so excited to talk to me about his day at the end of the night and of the day and tell me the fun parts of his day .

And it's not that everything goes away . It's not like he's never mentioning having a bad moment , but he's able to articulate what he did to get out of it . And if he doesn't , because there are still moments where he gets stuck in those moments , I bring up the language , I remind him .

It's been months of us doing this and there's a big change in what he's saying and doing and how he's responding to these bad moments . But it's a reminder that we can't change a child overnight and that it takes time and it takes modeling on our part and that we have to , you know , apply the sign sometimes , like I did with the reappraisal piece .

That is an emotion regulation skill . We don't want our kids to ruminate , to get stuck on those bad moments , to go to bed , not have an outlet to speak to us about it .

We want them to be able to look at that moment in a different light and say like well , I lost my soccer game today , but I had a lot of fun playing with my friends or after the soccer game . You know I did this with my friends we went to the park and in the end , that bad moment was a not so bad moment .

Whatever language works best for your child , just go with that , be attuned to , like what they need in that moment and that's it . I hope that this story and my example of my nighttime ritual or routine with my three kids is helpful .

You know , I hope that this is also a reminder that you know it's sometimes they need our assistance and our help and it's very easy to get frustrated when their kids do things . But sometimes we also have to think about , like , what we're doing in those moments and how are we modeling certain things .

So , if you are also struggling with reappraising certain , certain situations , take a moment to think about how you are modeling struggling moments or bad moments , as kids would say , and moments that , like your kids , get you to feel frustrated or angry or overwhelmed . How are you moving past those moments ? That's all I want you to do this week .

Thank you for listening to the Cures Now on podcast and I will see you next week . And please don't forget to subscribe to the podcast , rate it and review it . Send me an email at info at curesnuroncom . Visit our website , curesnuroncom and come follow us on Instagram . Curious underscore neuron . Have a lovely week , everyone . Bye .