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Amy Julia Becker: 00:06
How can my child with a disability learn and grow? What does it look like to cultivate capability while honoring limitations? When am I wrongly making life easier for my child, and when should I let them struggle? And what if I feel incapable as a parent? I’m Amy Julia Becker, and this is Take the Next Step, a podcast for families experiencing disability. We’re part of the Hope Heals Network, bringing you weekly encouragement and practical next steps to help our families thrive. Your family matters, your child matters, and we need you among us. So today I’m talking with therapist David Thomas. We are discussing parenting in an anxious age. We’re talking about building resilience and helping all our children develop coping skills and confidence. I came away from this conversation so grateful for David’s insights into why our kids, and especially our kids with disabilities, don’t feel capable and also why we sometimes feel incapable as parents and what we shouldn’t do about it. I love David’s generosity and warmth and understanding that comes alongside very practical advice about how to name and navigate our emotions in a way that brings more calm and more competence to everyone within our families. David Thomas is a best-selling author, therapist, and executive director of Daystar Counseling in Nashville, Tennessee. For more than 30 years, he has helped children, teens, and families build confidence, resilience, and hope. He is the author of 15 books, including his newest, Capable, and the co-host of the Raising Boys and Girls podcast, which has been downloaded more than 15 million times. So here’s my conversation with David Thomas. I am delighted to be sitting here with my friend Dave Thomas. Dave, thank you for being with us today.
David Thomas: 02:05
Thank you for having me. I’m so honored to be in conversation with you. I hope you hear me say over and over how much respect and gratitude I have for the work you do and how thankful I am for your voice in the world. So glad anytime our paths intersect.
Amy Julia Becker: 02:22
Well, one of the really cool things about getting to do this work, as I’m sure is true for you too, is those intersections, right? That sense of even though we are each alone behind a microphone in an office, many states and time zones even away from each other, there’s still this ability to connect. And I’m really grateful for that. And I hope that that’s something that our listeners actually start to have as well, whether, you know, with people they listen to on podcasts or um people who they get to know in real life, but just that sense of being supported and connected all over the place. I’m I’m grateful for that. And in part, that is the work that you and your uh co-director of Daystar Counseling, Sissy Goff, you all together, I think provide a tremendous amount of support and connection for many of us as parents, um, myself included. And today we’re going to talk about your new book that you co-wrote. It’s called Capable: How to Teach Your Kids the
Amy Julia Becker: 03:13
Strengths, Skills, and Strategies to Build Resilience. And I know it came out right now because of a particular moment that you all are seeing among your clients and some of the needs that we as parents and as our kids are facing. So could you just talk for a minute to set the stage about what prompted you to write this book right now?
David Thomas: 03:33
I’d love to. And you’re correct. Really, every offering in writing and speaking and podcasting for Sissy and I both has been a desire to speak to what we’re seeing in the work we do day in and day out and have done for the last three decades. And seeing this concerning trend within our practice that aligns with a lot of the statistics that are floating around out there in the world, we were just seeing growing evidence of anxiety early on with adolescents, but trending down to the youngest kids and youngest parents we had had opportunity to intersect with. It’s the language that he used. And so our desire always is what can we do to help? And part two of that being really, how can we make this information as practical and user-friendly as possible? I think there are a lot of voices in the world who are talking about the problem, but not really speaking to the solution. And then when they are sometimes accusatory in how they even speak into that. And our the posture we want to maintain consistently in the work we do is just coming alongside parents because I don’t think it’s ever been a harder time to be an adolescent in this world. It’s never been a harder time to be a parent in this world. And so we really want to lock arms with parents and saying, let’s understand what’s in play and then how can we support you in stewarding these incredible gifts we’ve been given.
Amy Julia Becker: 05:33
One of the things I love about the work you do is exactly that the sense of not shaming or being accusatory towards parents and also setting our individual experiences in a context of our cultural experience, which is bigger than we are. And uh I think it helps us know we’re not alone in what we’re struggling with, but also you also do a lot of work to try to empower us as individuals within this context that feels sometimes really overwhelming and impossible. And I think for the parents we’re talking to right now, parents of kids with disabilities, um, that can actually go, I think, even farther as far as feeling overwhelming or impossible. And I’m thinking about the title of your book, Capable, and the idea of building resilience and uh the ways in which disability often is almost associated with being incapable. Um, and so sometimes kids with disabilities are seen by our culture as incapable. And so I just wonder whether there’s anything that you think parents of kids with disabilities need to consider that’s different from parents of typically developing kids, or whether it’s an extension of what you’re already talking about when it comes to what it means to build, and we’ll talk more about what this looks like, uh, capable kids.
David Thomas: 06:50
I’m so grateful you’d asked that question. And and I would want to first just say how thankful I am again for the work you do that is reminding parents that capability is possible. And so that’s that’s exactly where I would have wanted to camp out first and what I believe is so true. And I think it is for us really just thinking about what does it look like to modify the support to honor this unique kid’s journey and pacing. You know, I had two conversations just yesterday uh with a parent. One was about a parent whose child was born six weeks premature, and they were talking about the beautiful wisdom they were bringing to the equation of knowing he’ll be doing different things at two weeks than his peers who were born at full term and how that will look potentially all throughout early development, maybe all throughout development, and the wisdom they were bringing and awareness and understanding to pacing this young man’s journey. And then I had a another conversation with a wise mom who had a delightful daughter with ADHD. And we talk a lot in the ADHD space at times about applying what we call the three-year rule to the equation of how could I pay attention to where this amazing kid is chronologically and knowing that’ll be different in terms of where they are emotionally and socially. And so, how could I be honoring their unique pacing and modifying along the way both the expectations and the support, but moving toward the same objectives of the things we’re wanting, of building capability, of building resilience, of developing independence. And so I hope I love the way the language you use of just I hope it is an extension, is my hope. That modification, that pacing is just an extension, and that parents would feel a sense of this book was written for us as well.
Amy Julia Becker: 08:46
Yeah, I love that. And I certainly found it being written for me. And actually, as I mentioned to you when we first got on before we were recording, most of the parents we’re talking about here are parents like me who have a child with a disability and other typical kids. And obviously, all of us are going to need in different ways some of the messages when we talk about capability and competence and resilience. And
Amy Julia Becker: 09:09
uh, one of the definitions kind of early on you give about capable kids is that capable kids have practiced coping and learned competence for life’s challenges. So I wanted to just break that down a little bit to think about what coping is and how we practice it, and then also what competence is and how we learn it. Like, can you just speak to both of those ideas for a minute?
David Thomas: 09:31
I’d love to. We really like the definition. We call it the three Cs and thinking about dissecting all of those to really be looking at the nuts and bolts of what it could mean to allow our kids to develop in that direction. So with the first one, I think healthy coping is essential to all interpersonal relationships, whether that’s spouse to spouse or sibling to sibling, friend to friend, coworker to coworker, that we develop skills of learning what do I do in the world when I feel overwhelmed by life in some way. And we invite parents and kids often under the roof of our house to talk about a super simple definition of healthy coping just being that it brings relief and it does no harm. So a concrete example we’ll sometimes give young kids is, you know, if I scream into a pillow, that could bring some relief, maybe to scream for a moment and the pillow’s not hurt. It doesn’t do any harm. But if I scream at a family member, I might experience the relief, the first part of that equation, but I’ve harmed the relationship. So what does it look like for me to find my way to practices and skills that check both of those boxes? It brings relief and it does no harm. And how foundational I think it is to us revisiting our list of healthy coping skills all throughout development. Part of having a resilient mindset is just figuring out, okay, if I made a top five list of things and I’m really not using number four and number five, let’s scratch those off the list and come up with two new ideas that check both boxes as well. So that’s a foundational part, we think, to the equation of or the definition, because unless I can do some good, healthy coping on the front side, it’s really hard to build confidence to the second C, and it’s incredibly difficult to move through the challenges of life. That third C. And the thing I’d say to your kind of question about confidence is that in our experience, we have observed a trend with parents placing a lot of emphasis on confidence and happiness. I think those are two targets we’re moving toward in a lot of moments of parenting, sometimes unknowingly. And then I think feeling like we’re failing, I’ll talk about happiness first and confidence and confidence second, with happiness, feeling like we’re failing if our kids don’t seem happy a big percentage of the time. And we talk a lot about how happiness is temporary and transient. It’s going to come and go. And, you know, I often will challenge parents, think about your past week. You know, if I were to think about my week last week, I can remember a Thursday in the morning where I had a really great breakfast. I felt really happy that morning for about 30 minutes. And later that night I was sitting on the floor petting our new puppy and talking with my wife, and I had a great 45 minutes of happiness. Then the rest of the day I was not unhappy, but I was doing the normal stuff of life of running errands, returning emails, putting gas in the car. And that’s a pretty normal average day, I think, for a lot of folks, and will be the journey for the kids we love in their adult life of not experiencing 18 hours of happiness and then sleeping for the other six hours. And so let’s think about the target we’re moving toward. And I don’t necessarily feel confident in all moments of life as I move throughout my day, but I have built a lot of confidence in the things that I do, in the everyday things that I do and the way I hope I show up in this world with the people who are really important to me. And so I want us to think about first the targets that we’re moving toward. And I believe, we talk a lot about this in the book, that confidence is built in the everyday hard things. And I think we can mistakenly believe sometimes I can just praise my kids enough and they’ll feel really confident. And praise and affirmation are good and important, but I think real confidence comes from confidence, which is more substantive. And it’s in the everyday hard things that kids have to move through where they build that in a way that they experience the confidence that we desire.
Amy Julia Becker: 13:36
I really appreciated
Amy Julia Becker: 13:37
in the book there was an anecdote you shared about a child on an airplane. And so the child was agitated and started crying and kicking. And one of the things you wrote about was how his mom was really great at naming his feelings and being attuned to him. And that’s a great thing, like saying, I can see that you’re very agitated right now. Um, but you also were observing this child like causing harm around him in terms not intentionally, but in terms of just like the older woman who spilled her water because he was kicking her chair, and you know, the just the disruptions, disruptions he caused. And you said, you know, his mom never moved from naming the feelings to helping him navigate those feelings. And I just found that so helpful um in terms of thinking about okay, there’s uh a difference, it’s a starting point of naming, but then there’s navigating. And I guess I’d love for you to talk about both because the naming is important as well. But like, how do we as parents, because I think this is part of what you’re um saying as far as the coping and competence, right? Is like naming feelings and navigating feelings. So can you just explain what those are and what tools we might give our kids in those areas?
David Thomas: 14:47
I’d love to. And I really do think as I, you know, consider the progression of my work in three decades and watching kids and adolescents of families in terms of skill development in the emotional space, would argue I’d give a pretty high grade to the naming part of where we are in the world right now. I think we have more emotional literacy than really any other time in history. And I sit with a lot of families who I think are well-versed and skilled in that space, but I think it’s equal parts of both that are necessary to emotional development, naming and navigating. And I’d I’d say culturally, we might be a little more of a C minus when it comes to the navigating part. And I will say this before I jump to navigating. I do want us to be careful because I do worry that we’ve focused in on the naming so much that on occasion, not always, but on occasion, we are overutilizing some language or wrongly applying terminology in places that it’s not helpful. By that I mean this. I rarely sit with teenagers anymore who would even use the word sad. They often jump straight to depressed. I feel depressed. Now, statistically, more adolescents are experiencing what we understand to be true depression. But a lot of the young people who I would hear report those words wouldn’t meet the criteria for what we understand a depressive disorder to be. So I want us to have a clear understanding of experiencing the normal sadness of living this side of heaven, and that that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m depressed. And so, you know, I this is kind of a funny example, but when kids first come for their first appointment at Daystar, we take them on a tour of the house and they get to meet the therapy dogs and we get them a snack and then we sit down and talk about why they’re there. And I was touring this delightful little six-year-old girl around our office, and when we sat down to talk about why she’d come to Daystar, her first declaration was, I have a lot of toxic relationships. And I had to fight laughing at that declaration. But I also felt really sad. I thought, you shouldn’t even know that word.
Amy Julia Becker: 16:51
Right.
David Thomas: 16:51
I know you’ve heard that word spoken a lot around you, and you’ve decided to apply that word to any conflict you may experience within the context of relationship. And after sitting with her and her parents, I’m here to report she didn’t have any toxic relationships, but she did have a lot of frustrating relationships, as we’ll have. So let’s do be careful. We call it language inflation. Let’s not overlabel in the naming part, but the navigating part to that story is essential because what I think happens when kids don’t develop enough skills, even back to our conversation about healthy coping, is they live a lot of life feeling like my emotions are more in charge of me than I am in charge of my emotions. And that doesn’t feel great for any of us. And so I hurt for that young man on the airport in on the airplane because I think he was desperate to feel like I could stop this process in some way. And I just found myself wondering, I wish that I had had maybe a tin of thinking putty in my or a stress ball in my backpack that I could have handed over to him and his mom as an offering, just to say, try this and see if it helps to squeeze out some of that intensity right now, or do some sculpting with the clay as a sensory experience that might start to regulate the body. That we talk with kids about how there are two pilots flying the plane of our brains, a thinking pilot and an emotional pilot. And when we get really emotionally charged, the thinking pilot exits the cockpit. And we have to figure out how do we get the thinking pilot back in the cockpit of the plane. And those practices of breathing, of a sensory experience, of movement. Movement is a foundational tool for regulation that allow us to do the navigating part of the equation that I think even connecting back to naming can help us more accurately articulate our experience at times.
Amy Julia Becker: 18:44
Yeah, I loved that too, because you were able to suggest that the fact that he needed something in his body was really evident by the kicking. Um, not that he was a bad kid or that his mom was doing a bad job, right? But that there was a physical need that was getting expressed in a way that was harming people around him and not actually helping him either. But maybe there was a way to do that. And I I just um think that can be really helpful for us as parents, even when we have kids who aren’t able to express themselves with words, whether that’s because they’re dysregulated or because they don’t have words in the disability space, especially. Yes. And yet we can still be paying attention to some of those cues and responding to them again, not just by the naming but the navigating. I’m also
Amy Julia Becker: 19:28
wondering about um parents who feel like they are incapable. Because certainly what you just described in terms of the emotions, sometimes feeling like they’re taking over the thinking and um either not knowing what to do with my kids, or uh I, you know, there are various places in the book where you kind of talk about this problem of parents also feeling like I’m I don’t think I’m a competent parent. I’ve got all this parenting advice, I’m not an expert. I’ve been given these amazing humans and I’m supposed to be responsible for them. Like, you know what a mess I am, you know? So, like, what are some characteristics of a capable parent? And if I feel incapable of being one of those, like, what do I do?
David Thomas: 20:06
Yeah. I think because there is so much noise in our world right now and so much fear, and so many quote unquote experts who are not just offering information to parents, I think shouting information at parents sometimes. The combination of all those things could easily be leave any parent feeling overwhelmed. And so I think to your question, the first thing I would want to say is I think a capable parent develop the skills and the practices to quiet the noise so that they can be reflective and show up in the world as more of who they want to be, not just as a parent, but as a person too. So I think that’s necessary. And I’m including myself. Like I set limits on how much news I can read in the morning, how much I can take in before I can start to feel dysregulation happening in my body. And then to the navigating, I’m figuring out what practice do I want to embody next, whether it’s going for a walk, it may be putting on some worship music where I’m just gonna let that truth wash over me so that I can settle myself. And here’s what I’d love to say to every parent as encouragement. We talk a lot about how anxiety is contagious. It spills on to the people around us. The good news is calm is contagious too. So if I’m imbiding those practices, I get to bring calm to the equation, even when my kids are dysregulated, that allows me to employ my thinking pilot in the cockpit so that I can really move through the words I want to speak, the actions I want to model, because the other word I’d love to throw in our equation of naming and navigating is narrating. I want to challenge parents to narrate your experience in an age appropriate way as often as possible and applying that even to the modifying and pacing conversation we had early. How could we talk with the kids we love about the things we’re doing in the everyday? You know, when we’re Riding in the car and we’re stuck in traffic and we’re late to an appointment to just say, I feel overwhelmed in my body right now. I didn’t know there was going to be this much traffic. I’m going to turn on some music right now and practice breathing. What if I set the timer on my watch or my phone and let’s practice it together so that we’re narrating our experience of when we feel overwhelmed and modeling for kids the things we’re trying and when those feel helpful to us because kids are experiential learners. They’re going to make the best connections by watching us go through the motions.
Amy Julia Becker: 22:33
I love that. Um thank you. So naming, navigating, and narrating. I have
Amy Julia Becker: 22:38
one other question, which of course is, you know, I could talk for many, many hours about all these things, but um in light of our time, I wanted to ask about rituals between parents and kids. I just was struck in the book, you told a story of a dad who has this kind of um call and response of affirmation with his, I think, teenage daughters when dropping them off at school. And we have a actually a ritual that I that developed kind of um without intending for it to, between our daughter Penny and my husband Peter. They say goodnight by doing this like complicated handshake and then cheering, like naming each of the sports teams, both on the professional level and on the local, like school level, um, whenever they say goodnight. And it just made me think about the rituals of affirmation and why those might matter with our kids. Could you just like tell me a little bit about that? Because it struck me as something really important, but I don’t necessarily know why, or even like if I don’t have those types of rituals, is that something as a parent I should maybe like consider?
David Thomas: 23:40
First off, I would love to get to watch your husband and Penny execute that beautiful ritual together. And I love that they have that. And I think to the story you mentioned and the story you just shared, that creates so much security and consistency for kids. And I think we’re all craving security and consistency. I think it’s a part of why we saw a rise in so many concerning things during the pandemic because we didn’t have the consistency and the security of so many of the rhythms and routines and rituals that were part of all our lives. And so I would want to invite families to be thinking about how we could fold in more of those into the everyday. And, you know, I think you and I were talking before we hit record about our dear friends Jay and Catherine Wolf. And I think so often about that prayer, they pray over the boys of just God made you to do the hard things and the good story He is writing for your life. And speaking that truth consistently, and even to your beautiful story, having kids say part of that back to you, that I think is a call and response that really allows that truth to take root inside of kids. And I’m always fascinated to sit with parents who would say, in fact, we talk about it in this book of how often we’ll have parents say, My mom always said, my dad always said, and as adults, how we carry those things with us and they take root. And so, what are the affirmations we would want our kids to be living through when they’re parents themselves, when they’re grown-ups in the world themselves, when they’re coming up against the life challenges piece that we were talking about a few minutes ago. So I’m I’m so grateful you would share that story and ask that question because I think it does just invite us into thinking more about that.
Amy Julia Becker: 25:27
Well, I always,
Amy Julia Becker: 25:28
when I come to the end of the podcast, try to like name a few things that I’ve heard that might come under the category of taking the next step. Um, just like what we really want to give parents here are meaningful but manageable ways to move forward as parents, not the 1700 things you should have done yesterday, but the one thing that would take a few minutes today that you can do. And so some of the things that I wrote down are just, I don’t know, for me that was really helpful. Coping brings relief but does not harm. And so that’s just like a framing change for me that’s really helpful. Um, and also that quieting the noise as a parent, that sense of like some reflective practices, but then also narrating when that is happening. How great is it for our kids to actually um they probably feel when we are feeling agitated in our body. So if we can name that out loud, it actually starts to calm everything down, right? Just by saying this is what’s happening right now, but then especially that next step of like, and here’s what I’m gonna do about it, maybe you can too. And then lastly, just that rituals of security and consistency I wrote down. Um, and I’m sure that looks different from family to family as well as it should. And yet I think that’s just a beautiful um invitation for people to consider whether those might be something to implement within families. I’m curious if you have any other kind of here’s a next step you can take if you are just seeking either to become a more confident, competent, capable parent, or to give that to your kids.
David Thomas: 26:59
You know, I would say, and thinking back on the definition and the three C’s, and and let me say as I offer this challenge or consideration to the conversation that I don’t at all think this is intuitive. So I think this is a counterintuitive practice, but a good practice. For parents to imagine with each of the kids you love, for those parents listening who have multiple kids, what is one context that would invite the three C’s? What’s one context in the everyday that would allow the kids I love to practice some coping? So I think we’re intuitively thinking, how can I alleviate discomfort as opposed to how can I invite a little healthy discomfort in that gives a practice context for coping? Build some competence and is a challenge they’re capable of facing. Right. Sissy and I talk a lot about the challenge with parents of pick two things you’re currently doing that your kids could do for themselves or could almost do, and how could you back away? And so think on that kind of challenge as you imagine a context, whether it’s folding in one extra household chore that allows kids to be a contributor to the family and develop some independence and practice skill development that they might not be, back to our conversation about happiness, very happy about, but could be a beautiful practice context. What’s one friend I could help them reach out to? What’s one new healthy risk that we could explore for that particular kid that is, again, a context to practice the three C’s?
Amy Julia Becker: 28:31
I love that and um need that word for myself in terms of uh just continuing to actually seek out those everyday challenges that do grow in those ways for myself and for my children. So I appreciate everything you’ve had to say and especially those final words. So thank you again for being here with us. Um, it’s really a gift.
David Thomas: 28:49
It’s a joy to spend time with you. Thank you for having me.
Amy Julia Becker: 28:55
Thank you for listening. If this episode was helpful to you, please do share it with another parent or caregiver who might be encouraged by these words. Take the Next Step is a resource from the Hope Heals Network, a collective of thought leaders offering honest and hopeful wisdom to help people flourish in the good and hard parts of their stories. To learn more about the work of Hope Heals, visit Hopeheels.com. I want to end by thanking Jake Hansen for editing this episode and Amber Beery, my director of content, for producing the show, and to thank you for being here and supporting the work that we do. I hope you leave this time with great encouragement to start with delight, connect to community, and take the next small step toward a good future for your family.
