Calming Anxious Children

Lukas: We are back for another season of Play It Forward. Our guest today is a popular household name, especially when it comes to parents and boys. She's written a bunch of books, graced the stage worldwide, and changed the lives of many parents and children. Today we are talking about valuing children for where they are at, the rise of anxiety in our kids, and returning to school. Welcome back to Play It Forward, the wicked, the wonderful Maggie Dent.

So yeah, as an overview, we sent those questions through. It's about that — school starting, boys, and what I've... like the journey I'm going on at the moment is with the Australian Institute of Play. We're doing a lot of children's voice last year, and it's kind of like where our mission is to support the childhood and for children to get a childhood because the data says they're not — it's under threat.

However, it's like what does the modern childhood experience look like? We can only go so far with nostalgia and then pile in on our own priorities at the moment with work and COVID and stress. So where's the margin to understand what a childhood looks like at the moment? So I'd love to understand that and then give us tools to maybe get into the being instead of the doing, and a bit of the pausing. Also that boys stuff because it's so close to home at the moment.

Maggie: The first book I wrote was "Saving Our Children from Our Chaotic World" in 2003 because I was already seeing that the childhood that had been considered normal for me was disappearing. And that was before the world wide web and the digital planet landed.

So, you know, we can be nostalgic but we also have to recognize in context historically the reason kids spent so much time outside was because lots of people didn't even have TVs, right? You didn't have something that kept you inside. One of the big ones too is that we had a much stronger sense of neighborhood.

And you know, that's one of the things that I've spoken about and shared a lot with the good Queenslanders up there at your play conferences — how do we get neighborhoods happening? And if there's been a gift from a pandemic in some areas, that's exactly what has happened. Getting locked down, getting kept away from school, closing our playgrounds — kids had to do something and not all of them spent their whole time in that digital landscape.

So, but we know it doesn't matter how many times we bang up and down, Lucas — children being children is allowed moments of exquisite freedom and autonomy to be filthy, noisy, unpredictable explorers and adventurers. That is exactly what every child kind of needs because they've got to use all of their senses to make sense of a world that grown-ups have created, right?

And I feel there's a couple of things that are making that harder in an organic way now. The first one is that parents today have been raised by the punitive parenting kind of behaviorism which says to get kids to obey and do what we want, we need to either punish them or bribe them or reward them. And what the science of child development shows very clearly is that's not terribly effective, and what it does is damage relationships.

And the big message is that relationship with our key caregivers — but our neighborhood, our early childhood educators, our teaching staff — that has become harder because everyone is twice as busy. They're distracted with phones, they're distracted with digital devices.

There's like just one example. So for the average mum or dad who has a couple of kids in primary school, one mum said to me one day that she gets on average on her WhatsApp app messages from anywhere up to 20 to 30 different people from the school, the soccer club, the swim club, her friends who've got kids in the same classroom asking questions about library books and whatever. So in other words, we're doing that digitally rather than in a real context and not meeting and spending more time at the gate or going for coffee.

So does that make a sense of one of those things? Like we're kind of trying to be ultra organized and children aren't good at that.

So I think the other thing is the displacement effect of technology is another big layer. So you've got neighborhood, you've got technology that — it's not just our kids, it's parents, it's everyone, right? So that displaces a few things that are about not just how we develop as a social being, how we learn language and communication, how we learn to take risks, how we learn to grip things and push things and eat things because you can't do that with a screen.

Yeah, I guess if you bundle all that together, Lucas, you get an idea that childhood is different. However, we shouldn't throw our arms in the air and just go, "Well, this is just how it is," because we know that can have really long-term potential harmful effects on our children in a nutshell.

Lukas: Absolutely. I've seen it sway in the realm of designing play. We've come out of the era of surplus safety — we're coming out of the era of surplus safety and embracing nature play. But there is those people when I go in, we're talking about logs and rocks and stuff, and they're saying, "Well, you know what's the point? Because they told us before when we had rocks and logs that we just had to rubber and now you're telling me I need rocks and logs again. What's the point? I'm just gonna — I should just leave it until next time you tell me."

Maggie: Yep, it is exactly that. One of the other things is that when I ask parents, "What were some of the risky things that you kind of did when you were a kid?" And they often talk about scooting down big hills on pieces of wood or cardboard or go-karts with no brakes or building tree houses or rafts, you know, by themselves without a grown-up.

And then I say, "Okay, they're great. Now are you letting your kids do that now?" And there's that just epiphany right there. They go, "No, no way, that is way not safe enough." Just rest my case.

Lukas: Yeah, and why? What's changed? It's still a piece of cardboard and it's still a grass hill.

Maggie: There's two things — fear that they're going to get hurt on my watch and I'm going to look like a lousy parent. The second thing is the judgment.

And I think, and then I think also we've got to factor in the Insta world a little where, you know, if you're marinated in images of families that have exquisitely well-dressed children who are neat and tidy with no Vegemite up their mouth or no dirt on their shirt, or you know, that have got all their safety gear on as they scooter around a neat little track, you get conditioned that that is how play is done by those who've got their stuff together, right?

So we kind of get conditioned, don't we, that this is how others are like. And we're social beings, so we don't want to kind of be an outlier. We're a bit like sheep. However, what the work that kind of you and I have been doing is that we've got so many more now in a mob going the other way so that parents now have a bit more of a choice.

And I love it that when you did, I think it was a news article or something or that you did a video about one of the play settings you put up and the parents were going, "I love it." Because that's where we bring the conversation into around our tea tables and our dining tables saying, "Wow, let's see how it goes, right? Let our kids have a go."

And it is — I mean, you know, I'm ferociously passionate about our kids actually having opportunities for genuine autonomy. No matter how much parents love them, that there are times that our kids need to do stuff and learn stuff by themselves. And that slipping out of that tree and grazing a knee isn't a sign that you're a lousy parent or that your child's wrong.

And I'm not sure how we keep putting that lens on top because I'm sure we've all had a moment as a child where we went, "God, that hurt." But you know what? I go back and do it again because the joy of the moment is bigger than that kind of angst at the end.

And we've got a massive increase — and it's not just the last couple of years of a pandemic — of increasing in anxiety, mental health issues with our children and our teens. And a part of me thinks, when you steal childhood which has those unbelievably exquisite moments of pure joy where no grown-up is there, I think it affects our heart and our soul. It's that the head realizes what the heart's always known to be true in those moments. That makes sense.

Lukas: And within our critical mass of messaging and parents, you see that when they actually see these things in action and that their children having that sense of accomplishment and joy, they can, through their senses, they're actually learning the same way as a child in the way that they're going, "Oh, that makes sense now. I've kind of known that, but now that I see it, we're off down that track."

Maggie: And I read some research once about the brain and childhood that — so it gets wired to have an ability to... what we store all our positive memories and our painful memories in slightly different ways. And they've got research that those children who didn't get those exquisite moments enough — and you don't... it's not a big, you know, going to a big fairground or something, it's actually like blocking up that river and floating down with it or floating boats, or it's just simple stuff that you do over and over with a bunch of kids so you just fall on the ground in exquisite laughter or you just get into that transcendent state where you pause into the moment.

If you don't have enough of those as a grown-up, the tendency of our brain to actually turn joyful moments into more painful moments — like we see it through a more painful lens — so we actually turn beautiful things into something negative or we just don't believe that it exists and it's real.

So that's the whole notion of authentic childhood is the capacity to store memories that actually trigger our later journeys and experiences as a grown-up. And there's this beautiful photograph that I took of a five-year-old boy in a wild space in a school in the southwest in Western Australia because they have a wild space right near an estuary. And these five-year-olds go down for three hours, three times a week just to explore and be.

And he was standing, honest, against... like standing with his hat on and these little welly boots in the water, really still and looking out. And I thought, "I'm going to just watch." And I timed him — it was eight and a half minutes before his shoulders kind of dropped in his side and he turned and he came back in.

And I knelt down next to him and I said, "You looked like you were looking for something." And he said, "Yes, I was." And I said, "So what were you looking for?" He said, "Whales." Now the water's not even 30 centimeters deep. And I said, "Did you see?" And he said, "Not today."

Now that eight and a half minutes is a state we call natural transcendence. And that's what little toddlers do when they dawdle or they want to pick up a dead leaf in awe. And what do we grown-ups do, Lucas? "Come on, hurry up, I've got to go and get them."

So that's the simplicity sometimes of why children need not to have a hurried childhood — the over-scheduled childhood which, you know, research shows that extracurricular activities can actually be beneficial for children. However, too much does the opposite. Being forced to do things that Mum wished she had done when she was a girl without any autonomy of choosing.

And also factoring in that sometimes in winter, who wants to be out in the dark coming home from — it doesn't matter what it is. Does it put pressure on a family so much that everyone gets shouty and yelly because we're trying to orchestrate all these amazing extracurricular things?

So at the end of the day, we just hurry up to fill in these spaces that I believe children should have the right to create and fill. And that's that space. I find, you know, when they sit on a rock — you can't ponder without a rock or a log, you know? It just can't.

So I think sometimes in that earnestness to create opportunities to help our children grow to be the best version of themselves, we steal something that's already doing that. And that's the child's choices and the child's opportunity to do it in their own time.

Lukas: Yeah. And the child's more aware of their needs than we are. We don't give them credit for that. They're the ones that are living in their body. They're the ones that know their physical competence for that minute, even that minute of that day, opposed to us.

And watch how much they grow in — like a four-year-old's not twice the two-year-old. The growth between that period is astonishing. Yet we're trying to be the ones that dictate when we're not keeping up with them. And it comes down to that individual — there's one size supposed to fit all children's development.

Maggie: You know how passionate I am about the fact that my two oldest sons, who have between them four degrees — they are, I can't remember now, you know, I've got lawyers and doctors and radiographers, kind of really well-educated humans in my family — did four half days as five-year-olds in a bush kindy. And they — I think they, I don't know if they ever sat in the mat, but their kindy teacher often read them a story while they were outside.

So they weren't doing... yeah. And I look at that now and I'm seeing suspensions and expulsions of four and five-year-old children in environments that are like foreign to them developmentally with a system that, you know, has been dreamed up by people who've never read the research.

And that worries me because I think what happens then is the formation of those mindsets and belief systems about themselves. And Carol Dweck — that work she did, one of the glimpses in her book was that she did research around three-and-a-half to four-year-olds, around 2,000 of them. And by that age, almost 70 percent had worked out that they're either smart or dumb or good or bad.

So what's happening to those beautiful children? Neurodivergent children? Boys who need a little bit more time? What's happening to them in their mindsets?

Lukas: I can relate to that wholeheartedly. I've got a little boy doing the year five and... he's sorry, he's five going into prep. And I think what you summed up beautifully then is when the process goes before the person.

I've recently felt the guilt of being called to the school because it's his like second week and he's done restore room, which is detention — it's not detention, "we're just having a discussion at lunchtime." And then the surprise to say when we went back after the storm, he was really unsettled for the whole afternoon.

How do you — what's your tips for parents, myself? Because once I start to have these conversations, because it can be hard for being a male and then talking about the challenges you're having with your children when your perception is everyone else has got it together except me. And Vanessa, my wife, is the same — "Everyone's got it together, look at their kids, they're going to school fine. What's wrong? What have we done wrong?" And all of these things.

What's your tips for parents that are having this challenging start to the year? Because so many are having that.

Maggie: Yeah, all right. The very first thing is put that stick down you're beating yourself up with. Seriously.

Do you know, it's not the child that's wrong, it's a system that's wrong. And even early childhood educators say the same thing, especially the ones that were teaching for quite some time who have just their hearts breaking because of the expectations that are now being put on our young children.

Now one of the things I want to touch on here too is that for five-year-old children — and it can be some of our girls, it's just statistically more likely to be our boys and also our neurodivergent children whose prefrontals, you know, are working in a very different way — is that we know when children are really stressed, you know, there's the fight-flight response where they act out. They say things, throw things, run. That's — and boys particularly tend to need movement to express that.

So then what we're doing in those moments — we know that child, you know, they look like... and this is one of the biggest things that we've all got to reframe — is that no child consciously chooses to display distress from a stress place, all right? They don't go, "Right, now I think it's a good time for me to flip out," right?

So what it is is that that brain is perceiving a threat to survival and it just automatically... and it takes years for us to get better at that. So five-year-old children are still really young. And boys are at least 18 months, often to two years behind girls at that age of emotional development.

So what we're doing is punishing a child for being distressed and upset and overly unable to cope with their world.

Then there's another layer. And this is kind of to do with a few messages I was getting from parents of five-year-olds, particularly boys, being called up to the school because their child's not listening and not concentrating and not even trying. And I just got really cross again, as though there's an intentionality and there's something your child is doing naughty.

And that was when I just had to leap in and explain the second level to distress and overly flooded with cortisol is shutting down. And shutting down means that everything has to — for my survival, I just have to kind of freeze right here. And it looks like you're daydreaming, you're not there, and you're not trying.

So again, they are both signs of heightened stress. And you know what was happening to some of those boys, Lucas? Keep them in at recess and punish them. What are you going to do to their stress levels? What would have happened if they'd been able to go out and play?

And so I just had to do it one day. And one of the things that's happened interestingly is that I've had educators as well saying the school demands I use the reward-punishment system where we put their names in red or the traffic light system. And I said, "Well, there's your problem."

So a child struggling to cope with their environment is not feeling totally safe. So we work on firstly the safety with the key caregiver, which is a grown-up teacher or an aide. Secondly, if there's a safe friend that can sometimes feel a little safer. But once again, if you've got an environment where a teacher talks too fast and too quick and the boy can't keep up, that panics him. If he's sitting next to the child who's forever talking in his head and upset, you can't even think, right? You sit — you put the... you know, there are so many things that contribute to the stress level. There's not enough fun, there's not enough singing, and there's not enough movement.

They're the things that were always there before they were removed to fit more learning in. But the brain can't learn when it's stressed.

So my message is advocate loudly. Look, there's truckloads of stuff on my website where I write all these things in deep depth because allied health professionals tell me all the time just how stressed out children are that go to them.

And the reason sometimes some of these children are getting punished for not concentrating — in actual fact, they can't hear. They've been diagnosed with blocked ears and things. So we need to look underneath. Is this because they're not feeling safe? Is this because they have a hearing issue? Is this because their sensory processing is something that they don't like things hanging too close to them?

In other words, we need to get really curious as to what needs are not being met rather than how can we punish this naughty child so that they will start to behave differently. And I think we're in a paradigm shift. And anyone who wants to know more about it, just check out Dr. Mona Delahooke's work because she's just written so beautifully and eloquently because she's a pediatric psychologist. And she has a beautiful book coming out this year which is for parents, and it's just full of gold. And it will show you how to advocate for your child.

What really worries me though, Lucas, and it's the same with you and your little lad, is they'll say, "He'll come good, give me more time." And I have worked with some of these boys, as you know, in Year 3 and Year 4 who are sure they are dumb and they are bad because that's all they've heard. They've had nowhere in the school system where they've been able to show joy and delight. They haven't been able to show there is something they can do, you know? That's the whole point.

And I mean, I throw one more curly one in here — that last year during the lockdowns, I'm in New South Wales and I actually helped with home, the home journey of schooling. And my five-year-old granddaughter was required — now just remember, they have a book that they do their letters in, yeah? Well, she hadn't even got all the way through the book with how to form her letters, right? So that was a clue.

And the request was to write a story with the beginning, middle, and end with adjectives. I'm a former high school teacher — I struggled sometimes to teach 14-year-olds to do that, right? She hasn't formed the letters.

So what sort of system is pushing that down? And she is sharp. She's got educated parents, a speechy for a mom. She's a very confident little girl. So she's one of the ones who could do it. So what the heck is that doing to the rest?

Lukas: Yeah, and it seems to be like this is a very common theme now, but it's also a common theme in years gone by. Like I can relate from my story. And that's my motivation to support my son.

I remember being in primary school and thinking, "Well, why can't they see me just as something else?" You know? Because I had my learning difficulties, I didn't want to pay attention. But it was just the default was like... I was really intrigued by learning German. And this is a beautiful illustration of — I don't know why, but I thought German sounds cool. I'd love to learn. I'd like to do a language.

And I remember coming home from school telling my brothers, "I learned German!" They're like, "What are you doing?" I'll be, "That's your mana maba." They're like, "That's not German for sure."

But then it was like the teacher said, "Why is he doing German when his English isn't even good?" So I got taken out of German and put back into doing extra English classes, which was just so deflating. And was like, "Oh, I thought I found something."

Maggie: There are three things that drive motivation. And one of them is competence, right? You were being, feeling confident, and German — which would float across into your other learning. But if you've got children who academics isn't their thing, where else do they show competency? They show it by conquering monkey bars. They show it by helping other children out. There's like, you know what I mean? We just go testing, testing, testing.

And the two other things that are motivation is connection to someone else in that environment who cares about me. So you must have gone on pretty well with your German teacher.

And that third one, again, is I have some control about it, which means I have some choices of which... and for so many boys, the underlying thing in the classroom — having taught them for a number of years — is "What's in it for me? Why should I bother to invest my energy in their skills? Just explain it to me now."

We don't always do that in primary school. We tend to do it — it's part of the way we set up lessons in secondary. But you know, they just want to know. "So why do I need to do this again? Just give me a bit of a reason so I've got a bit of motivation from within." Because the fact that "you should" and "I demand you do it" isn't always going to float.

Lukas: Yeah, and that comes back to play on how integral that play is to be robust and challenging. So when those boys aren't having the victories — and girls having the victories — they can go do it in a physical way that gives them this physical, chemical response. It courses through their body. And it's not dictated to. It's not like, "Hey, reach for that branch, reach. You do the monkey bars now." You're setting your own goals, your own targets. So therefore your dopamine and all those reward agents are super heightened. And then you go, "I guess I can manage to trace an 'A.'"

Maggie: Yeah, yeah, that's it. I can still remember there was a bush area in the school that my boys went to, right? Quite a significant bush area. They are now kind of the main ones now, about 36. Imagine how many years ago.

And so this is when you weren't allowed into the bush area until Year 3. So Year 3s to Year 7s went in the bush area, and no teacher would go in there on duty because they wanted that experience. And I remember there were times that my sons would get out of bed like with almost pneumonia because they just didn't want to miss what's going on because there was some thing going on in the base, you know, that required their attendance.

So the motivation was to play, to get out of bed. And I kept saying to them — so by the time I had my second, you know, third and fourth boys — my job went around the school saying, "Now you've got to go to school because there's playtime at lunchtime. You just got to suck up all this other stuff in the class, but that's why you're going."

And it's funny, one of my sons said to me when he was at university, he said, "Mum, you remember telling me that?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "You know, I've built my life around that. I always plan my holidays before I actually turn up — whether it's uni or whatever." He says, "I'm always planning for playtime and lunchtime." And I thought, "What a beautiful philosophy of life," you know? Because there are some — particularly boys, but there are some — coming home right now who are going, "I don't want to go back. I don't..." You sit — it's just boring.

And of course, sometimes to make the dopamine which makes the brain learn, you need to have either fun or movement or engagement. And I love those teachers out there who are able to still do that.

I still remember an early childhood educator who was teaching five and six-year-olds who always turned up in a fairy outfit. The whole damn year she was in a fairy outfit. And just the fact she, you know... just did see her filling up fuel with a fairy outfit on. It just made everybody feel good, right?

And she said the reason she did it was because as soon as they saw a fairy, they all wanted to be there right now. I'm not saying that you can imagine everyone thinking that's a great idea. But I just loved her passion. And she also said to me, "I tend to sing a lot more. I often sing my commands rather than demand."

And there's science out there that shows that when there's singing, we often follow it because it's not pushing our autonomy. We can actually sing along, or the song makes us feel better. It doesn't trigger the stress responses of shutting down or acting out.

And I thought, "She's a jet." So when they started to once again increase all the testing and things, she said that, you know, at the end of the day, it was implied to her that the fairy outfit wasn't in alignment with the new direction of education. And she said, "Well, when the kids tell me it's not okay, I might consider it."

Lukas: That is a testimony right there. Absolutely.

We're also seeing in current times, and through my community, and going out and working with educators and centers across the board, the level of anxiety that you're coming across in children at the moment — it's really, it's just upsetting. That's all it comes down to. It is quite upsetting to see young people in this time of joy — what's meant to be joy and wonderment and excitement and possibilities — not a care. Like I'm just feeling like your cup's full, your cup's full now. Like, "I've stressed now, what about those teen years?" And even like friends in my community with teens, like they get into overflow now.

So what can we do as people in the sector supporting our children and parents?

Maggie: Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, that was the premise behind that very first book I wrote back in 2003. I was noticing it rising in my own classrooms in high school. And so I took it upon myself — you know, that was before we had brain science — that I felt if I could put some pockets of calmness and relaxation in my classrooms, I think the brain would work more effectively. And so I started those sorts of small things. This is so far ahead of time.

But also, I think we need to recognize one thing. And that anxiety is a normal human response to a possible threat. Now sometimes what's happening is our kids are getting threatened by endless testing, by developmentally inappropriate curriculums, by parents who are so busy there's no downtime.

And it is one of the gifts — there's no question it's one of the gifts of COVID — that they're going to be a lot of kids who can remember sitting on a couch eating popcorn watching a movie instead of doing their schoolwork. Or Mum and Dad doing their work because it just got too much. There was more connection around cooking and growing things and reading books together because they were forced. All the stuff that distracted them was shut down.

And I'm hoping that we don't have to necessarily race back to thinking that's the best way we need to be.

So the things that create anxiety is a fear of being out of control. And I think any parent, the sooner you work out that you're never in control as a parent — seriously, there's a poo-nami going to happen with your toddler, you know? There's going to be them doing things because they're meant to be stretching and testing boundaries. That's all the way through. If we don't see that as a problem...

I think my challenge around anxiety is that normal anxiety needs to be honored. And I want parents to actually talk to their kids about when they're stressed. Because we keep thinking you need to stop me — no, hang on, your voice is just telling your kids that you're the one.

So my challenge is when you're starting to get yourself really wound up about stuff, what I'd probably suggest is it's probably more about you as a child than it is about your child in that situation. But that's another whole story.

I want you to model, you know what? "I can hear I'm a bit stressed right now. I'm going to take myself off to my bedroom to calm myself out. I'll be back in a few minutes, okay?" I want you to model.

And so for me, I just go out in the garden. And when I got really stressed with my four boys, I'd go for a walk around the block. And they were really — they're used to that. When Mum is, "Oh man, she's not happy." If I went for 10 minutes, it wasn't too bad. If I went for 20, they usually started to look around, picking up a few toys. But if I was gone for more than half an hour, look, they'd pack the dishwasher, wipe the bench, make their beds because they realized that I was really not happy, okay?

So it's an interesting thing that it was great because a couple of them just go for a walk when they're really crabby.

So what are we modeling to our children about coping? And that's why the simplest things — and I have a whole lot of these little videos on my YouTube channel under "Maggie Soothers" — where sometimes that three really big breaths just... I've actually got one of those little monitors that monitors your oxygen level and your pulse. And I've done this now a few times when I've either come back from a walk up a hill or something, and I would check my pulse. I want to see how I can lower it with three big breaths.

And if you can get the outward breath longer than the inward breath, that's good. And I can lower — if my heart rate's high — by up to 15. But if my heart rate is fairly low, I can lower it by at least six beats with just three breaths.

So I think we model those things simplistically about being a part of life because that's exactly what life is about. You know, we're always going to have some stress. However, anxiety on starting school, anxiety around a test — we need to talk to our kids about we feel anxious before a new job, a deadline. So that it's not just this awful bad thing, it's actually something that we can identify. And then we talk about how can I become braver.

And that's, you know, the sooner we can go — I think we know sometimes parents do this thing, and I've done it — we think what I need to do with them feeling a little bit anxious and struggling right now is instead of just acknowledging, "I can see you're finding it a little bit hard for you right now," instead of that — "I see, so don't be silly, it's all going to be fine. You've got nothing to worry about."

Well, that is really not helpful because we're not acknowledging that that's exactly where they are regardless of what you feel. So we need to acknowledge it and see if we can take some breaths together or work out a way of helping them understand whatever that possible threat may be.

And then the other one that's a big one underneath it is avoidance. Try to avoid avoidance. That doesn't sound very sensible, does it? But what we know is, you know, the child who's really anxious at turning up to the birthday party or didn't want to play soccer but now can't run out in the field — "Oh well, I'll just take you home. Let's just — you're not ready for it."

No, we urge them to have just two minutes of bravery. "So I know you're feeling anxious right now. We're going to go into the birthday party for just two minutes. And then you look at me, and as soon as you want to go, I'm going to bring you home." Then we're actually encouraging the search for bravery within us.

And so often, of course, they'll forget it once they're in there. So can you say — they're just some simple things. But we do know that children can learn anxiety from their parents. It can sometimes be genetic. It's sometimes triggered by a major life event like a health crisis or a trip to hospital or someone's sick or someone dies. And we know it can exist beside other things.

So again, when we get really worried, obviously go and talk to someone. But you'll tend to find the pressure for kids to manage their emotions before many of them are able to was one of the other big triggers. We're not allowing them to be really upset and discharge it. We still feel we need to shut it down and stop them and soothe them in the middle of it instead of what we now know — it's emotional energy that needs to leave the body. The cortisol has got to be discharged.

And if we can create that safe space for it without beating ourselves up or trying to fix it, we're actually helping them learn to regulate themselves, which means they can manage with big feelings. So that also will lower anxiety later in life.

Lukas: I see a default a lot of the time is, okay, well, the child's uncertain, I'm going to create certainty now. And that's my job to create certainty for the child. Which then the pressure of feeling creating that certainty, fix it, is just more anxiety for the parents.

When we talk about dispersing cortisol...

Maggie: Yeah, so the cortisol is the stress hormone that, you know, is supposed to turn up to give us more energy to run away from saber-toothed tigers.

Now when we have it around a test or an exam, we need to explain to our kids there is a gift that comes with cortisol. And that is it makes you actually hyper-focus. It gives you an intensity of energy. So you're not chasing, running away from a saber-tooth — you can get ultra focused in your task.

And so you can actually utilize it as an energy because it's quite a hot, strong energy rather than always seeing it as a debilitating energy. It's incredibly important.

And I — one of the things I want to just throw — I was terrified of speaking on stage, which, you know, after the last 15 years, nobody'd probably believe. And one of the ways that I counteracted it, whenever I was heading off to a presentation or something, I used to — because the physiological effects of excitement and fear are the same, anxiety and excitement is exactly the same in the body — so I just used to tell Steve, my good, like, "God, I'm so excited. I'm just so excited."

And you know, after a period of time, I didn't have the debilitating side of that because my brain had decided, "I'm just so excited." And excitement gives you energy.

So again, anytime say that to your kids as they're going up to do that oral presentation, or you're just really — "There's a mixture of excitement and fear. I choose excitement" — as you race off into this new adventure or this new thing or this new tree you want to climb.

Lukas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I also just want to encourage the listeners to consider your language around excitement and positivity going the other way with your children. They might be in a state of excitement, positivity, accomplishment, and then we swoop in and we're like, "Be careful, look out, what about this, don't do this." And it pushes it into that fear response. So we've hijacked them from excitement, accomplishment to negative cortisol, which was a positive experience individually.

Maggie: And I want to throw one thing out because I've been doing a lot of research around little girls. And I want to challenge us all to really have a really big think about the conditioning we're still giving our girls around being brave and fearless in their play opportunities.

Because, you know, it's the same as we thought all boys were tough and that girls kind of aren't. It's rubbish. They're all equally as competent, especially in the early years, if we stop putting our conditioning on top of it.

And my oldest granddaughter now, but when she was about 18 months of age, she could climb really well. Like threw herself out of a cot with a sleeping bag at 14 months. So her upper body strength is probably a bit like a nanny's.

And we're at one of the local playgrounds with a great big climbing frame, and she was nearly at the top of the climbing frame. And there were these two elderly couples on either side doing the same as us, grandparenting, going, "Someone needs to get that little girl down from there. She shouldn't be up there."

And I just basically told them to back off. But there were two things going on there. She was smaller than some of the other children, so therefore she shouldn't be up there. And but the big one — she's a girl. She should not be up there.

So again, it's the messages we sometimes unintentionally give that can curb our kids from stretching. And we know that play is where they take themselves to the edge of their own fear and then stretch it next time without any coaching from us grown-ups.

And I know at times I have to bite my lip because I want to say, "Oh, be careful." But when we do that, we interrupt the way that their body is already tuning into their body sensations. It's going, "No, I think that I'm okay here. I'm okay here." And I can't — you know, I get it, and it all comes from love. You know, all of this intensity of us, of parents, comes from love.

But my big message about resilience is the more that they're able to do for themselves, the healthier they're going to grow as an adult. And we just sometimes have to hold our knuckles tight, do some deep breathing, and then celebrate the power of the pause. Just pause for a moment.

Lukas: I've heard the word pop up time and time again from both of us in this conversation. It's the "should." The "should." How do we move beyond our "should" for childhood?

Maggie: I just think there's a lovely saying that we need to basically call each other out and say we really need to stop "shoulding" on ourselves. Yeah, I really do.

Because, you know, there is this place that — where do I see the rules for being a parent of my child? And I keep saying that to parents who ask me. Really, come up, say, "You know what? You are the best people to make the decision about your child because your child is a one-off unique, never been on this planet before, doesn't know about milestones, doesn't know about anything."

There's this unique blueprint inside them that has got all sorts of things. Your job is to create the environment around them and the loving support for them to be able to grow to be who they came to be. Not the child that you've got in the playgroup who is already running laps around — yours is a blob. Not the one whose child who sleeps all night and you're just seriously, you know, can't wait to see you every hour.

You know what I mean? Is that that's where "shoulding" comes from — is I see some sort of guide, recommendation, whatever, and if I don't meet it, then I'm "shoulding." I'm not doing what I should be doing.

And I keep saying there is no — humans, we're wired to be social beings and we are wired to take care of the ones we love the most and support them. But there is no fixed way of doing it. And that every single time we have to tune into who our child is with what their core needs are right now, regardless of what someone else is telling us.

But of course, that makes it difficult, doesn't it, Lucas, when you've got your five-year-old in a school system that's "shoulding" all over you?

Lukas: Yes, yes. And then you need to have that kind of removal and exhale, the bigger pause, to say... and so it's — I found myself, I was like, okay, I know what this is in theory, but I still find myself going in for that meeting and then all these feelings are coming up around, "Oh, I've got to do what they're saying, and we should be... he should be here actually. And the other children..." And I'm like, "Oh, hang on." It's an easy — it's a slippery slope.

Maggie: Yeah. One of the things I found as a teacher is when I needed to bring a child in who was struggling in some way in my classroom, and I would — you know, my job was for both of us to be on the same side of the fence. Yeah. Because it feels like teachers and educators one side, parents — say no, we're on the same side with the same goal.

And one of the things that — even if it was a child who had been put in my classroom because they had worn out three other teachers — the first thing I did was call their parents in so I could meet them. And I would say that, "We both want the same for your son. We want them to do well. We want them to grow. And so I'm on the same side as you. So can we work together, you know, to bring out the best in your boy?"

And that, "When I'm concerned, I'm going to contact you, but I want you to see if you can help me if you're concerned." So that together we're able to meet their core needs and help them be, you know, whoever they need to be.

Immediately the parent doesn't feel like there's that fence, right? They feel like they're being heard. And sometimes we start with really small things. Like quite often with those boys who always forgot their stuff, they didn't have their books, they didn't have — so, you know, they created a chart with their son that night that they put in their bedroom so that they could help them get organized. And the difference that simple strategy did — amazing.

Lukas: Yep. Set him up. It's — what does my wife say? "It's our job to set our children up for success, not create their success."

Maggie: She is wise. Wise. Wiser than me. Just saying. That's why I hang out with her. Remember, it's a team. It's a team thing.

Lukas: Yeah, absolutely. There's strengths and there's the handball. Like, "This one's you."

When it comes to more of your amazing books, come on, share. What's happening? Can you share about any books that are coming out? What's your next plans?

Maggie: So, I thought I was done after I wrote "Mothering Our Boys" because I thought that was why I was on the earth. But I'd written at the back of the book then — I was sorry it was such a big book, and I wish I'd spent more time talking about boys as teenagers. So publisher came and found me and made sure I wrote that book.

And then I thought I was done. But then with, particularly 2021, with so much coming up about our girls being silenced in the world, and our domestic violence numbers going through the roof, and Chanel Contos's petition and things about horrible sexual behavior from, you know, influence from porn... I thought — and the numbers that were really struggling in those teen years is just blowing out.

And I thought, "Gosh, I've got four granddaughters who are now aged up to seven." I said, "I wanted to really explore how we can build a really solid foundation for little girls." Because all our mindsets, all our beliefs, a lot of our conditioning is all in place by the time we go to school.

So I dived into that, Lucas. And it kind of became another big book because it was so fascinating for me to work out the things that I was told as a little girl that took me years as a woman to undo. Because I was the rooster girl who would stand up and speak for others. So I was told I was too big for my boots and I needed to learn to be quiet and I needed to learn to be less visible.

And so it's great. There are nearly 5,000 people who responded to me about the things that they are amazed about with little girls and the things that challenge them the most and how we can unravel that.

So I'm extremely excited about my — it is my final research-based book, baby. I'm not doing any more. I'm going to write fiction. Yeah, I'm going to write fiction. It's much easier. Research takes a lot of time.

So "Girlhood" — it's coming your way soon.

Lukas: Excellent. And when it comes to that little tip, how do we support our young girls? Well, we could go the other way — what is it that we need to instill in our young girls? Okay.

Maggie: Really, the big one is they need to be heard as little girls. So sometimes we get busy and they do most — this is once again not all girls and some boys and all the — but we know that they develop the capacity to make sense of the world emotionally and linguistically much earlier than boys. So they actually are capable earlier.

That we've got to really sit with them and really hear them. Even when we're in a hurry, we need to engage their amazing memory more often so they feel valued. Because they've got amazing memories.

As soon as one of my sons started checking in with his four-year-old daughter and reminding her to remind him that he needed to get fuel or can get these four things at the supermarket, the amount of tantrums and meltdowns in their home decreased because she just felt much more valued and respected.

And this is one of the things we don't realize — that they don't miss a trick. And they make sense of our adult behavior probably pretty good. So sometimes asking for them to help to solve problems is setting them up to be problem solvers for life as well.

We just need to know we've just got to respect the intelligence of our little girls so much earlier and be very careful about some of the words you use around them because they do not forget. There's some hilarious little messages and anecdotes that I've included in the book that just will have you crying with laughter.

And so once again, it was really a celebration that — because we don't need them to be well-behaved and quiet all the time. We need them to have a voice. But they need to have a voice that isn't using relational aggression. So their voice needs to be something we can coach.

And I talk a lot about friendship coaching and emotional coaching because they're the two big areas that we can have problems. Because, you know, early childhood educators have been saying we're getting a lot more mean girl behavior as three and four-year-olds. And we need to unravel what is that about and how do we make sure we have our girls to stay strong without necessarily needing to follow that pathway.

Lukas: And why are friendship stuff so complicated? Our biggest challenge with our seven-year-old last year was all down to girl relationships. And that was number one across the board.

Maggie: One of the gifts that came in the research was saying that we use that as opportunities for exploring and growing rather than opportunities for us to step in and fix and stop. It's each time one new one comes up, we work through it together with our daughter. And then they're going to — it's going to be easy when we're growing up because trust me, it still keeps happening.

Lukas: Yes, it does. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you again. Keep up the fabulous work. I love your podcast, even if you didn't invite me. I'd still love it.

Maggie: Thank you so much. Thank you for all you do and thank you for inspiring me as always. You're amazing.