Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:00:03]: How do I work maybe doubly or triply hard to understand this child in front of me, not the one that I thought I was having or wish I was having or expected, but how do I understand this child? Because being understood is what helps children accept themselves. And that's a piece of being able to handle life and be resilient.

Penny Williams [00:00:30]: Welcome to the Beautifully Complex podcast, where I share insights and strategies on parenting neurodivergent kids straight from the trenches. I'm your host, Penny Williams. I'm a parenting coach, author, and mindset mama, honored to guide you on the journey of raising your atypical kid. Let's get started. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Beautifully Complex. I am really excited today to have doctor Tova Klein with me, author of Raising Resilience. And we are gonna talk about how to help kids in the age of uncertainty, how to help them to build resilience so that they can thrive.

Penny Williams [00:01:13]: I'm really excited to have your insights, doctor Klein, but will you start by letting everyone listening know who you are and what you do?

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:01:21]: Sure. I'm Tova Klein. I am a professor at Barnard College in New York City, and I run a center there called the Center for Toddler Development, which is a center for young children and families. And I also work with children, families, teens, all the way up. And I'm the author of 2 books, my newest one, Raising Resilience, and my earlier book, which is still relevant, How Toddlers Thrive. And I've spent my career and spend my days devoted to children and families who are facing other daily life stress or challenges and major stressors and traumatic events.

Penny Williams [00:02:02]: Such good work. It's so needed, and things just have been changing so much in our world. Right? And I think, for me, I am very aware of how different it is to be a kid now than when I was, how different it is to be a young adult, like my kids are, than when I was, and I think we find it really overwhelming. We don't know how to help them navigate a lot, and so just helping them build that resilience seems like a foundational aspect of helping them thrive.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:02:32]: Exactly. And that's when I think about resilience, I really do think about this is not something that's static or a trait or, say, it's not one dose, which some people,

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:02:44]: sort of wish it was. How do I get them resilient? It's actually this ability to adapt and adjust and be flexible no matter what life is gonna sort of give that child who becomes a teenager, young adult, and then full adult. And so it's much more of a dynamic piece of our relationship with our children, and it's built in the everyday interactions that we have with our children. And that's always a positive message I want parents to hear. Whatever your challenges are, regardless of who your child is, and because of who your child is, it's the back and forth of the relationship with them and the love and nurturing and trying our best to understand them as best we can that actually builds what we call resilience or the ability to handle life. And that's true for every child everywhere.

Penny Williams [00:03:37]: Mhmm. I noticed that you used the word flexibility, and that can be a real struggle for neurodivergent kids. And I find too, you know, in raising my own neurodivergent kid, it was really difficult to have him be willing to sit with hard things, to do things that are uncomfortable. Right? And we really had to work at that. Do you have any advice or strategies for parents to be able to build that flexibility too?

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:04:07]: Yeah. So one of the things I really think about is, you know, flexibility for children, you know, children who are neurodivergent, children who are anywhere on a spectrum. Flexibility is hard. It's hard even for children who don't fall into some kind of neurodivergent pattern. Mhmm. Flexibility comes much later, and it's why parents for a long time are the ones helping children regulate. And then if you have a child who's neurodivergent, that becomes an even bigger challenge. Right?

Penny Williams [00:04:39]: Yeah. Yeah.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:04:40]: So I think of flexibility as a long term project, kind of like helping children become independent is a long term project. Flexibility is too. And so one of the pieces of advice I have for parents is to be a little lighter on yourself. Mhmm. Like, yeah, your child's maybe inborn abilities are not so flexible. Part of that is age or stage of development. Part of that is how their brain is wired. Part of that is what we call temperament.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:05:09]: But to not be hard on yourself when your child's having trouble being flexible. It's setting up those routines and schedules and reminders. Children love consistency. Some children really need consistency with a lot of reminders and a lot of sort of helping them move through their day. All of that is setting a foundation for one day, I will be even a little bit more flexible, and over time, it will grow. But parents have to really say to themselves, I can exhale and recognize that it's not that I'm doing something wrong or my child's doing something wrong. They're doing what they can right now.

Penny Williams [00:05:50]: Yeah. Yeah. So important to remind ourselves for us as parents and for our kids. We're doing the best we can in the moment. Yes. Sometimes it isn't great, but we always show up trying to do our very best, and I think that's really important. I love that you said to be lighter to ourselves because we have a lot of conversations here about giving yourself grace as a parent because it's hard. It's hard, and we want the best for our kids, but we're also human beings.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:06:19]: Exactly. And that's a big part of my new book is something that I call the you factor, you know, y o u factor. Mhmm. Meaning, looking at ourselves as parents and thinking about, okay. So what do I bring from my own past and my own history? We're all human. We all come from somewhere. And so what am I bringing into being a parent? What are my expectations? And importantly, where are they coming from? And, also, what are the good things from my childhood that I wanna keep? What are the hard things or the bad things that I really don't wanna keep, I wanna change? Or what was missing from my child? What did I wish my parents were able to provide me that they weren't? And I would like to provide for my child. So all of that reflection, and in each chapter, I actually have reflective questions.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:07:09]: Because when we get to know our children, and then you find out, oh, this child actually is neurodivergent or they have a diagnosis, there's still that little girl, little boy, or person that you love. Yeah. Right? The diagnosis doesn't change that piece. But the question becomes, how do I work maybe doubly or triply hard to understand this child in front of me, not the one that I thought I was having or wish I was having or expected.

Penny Williams [00:07:40]: Yeah.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:07:40]: But how do I understand this child? Because being understood this is what I call my 5th pillar in the book. Mhmm. Being understood is what helps children accept themselves. Yeah. And that's a piece of being able to handle life and be resilient. I'm good as who I am even in a world that messages you otherwise.

Penny Williams [00:08:03]: Yeah. That acceptance piece of it for parents and for kids. Right. Yeah. I think, you know, I talk a lot about the fact that I think everybody needs to feel seen, heard, and understood, that that's just at the core of being able to be a good human, to be able to go to school and learn, to make things doable. Yeah. Feels really foundational to me, to success and thriving.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:08:29]: Absolutely. It's it's really if you think about, you know, what is it that every child needs, it's this feeling of I'm not alone in the world. Mhmm. When bad things happen, I'm gonna be okay. Why? Because there's someone there who's gonna help me. My parent loves me for who I am, and they're gonna help me through this. And when we have really bad moments, my parents and I, my parent and I, we're gonna come back together. We're gonna somehow the parents can apologize, or you're gonna go over and say, wow.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:08:58]: That was a really rough time, and we're back together. We still love each other. That allows the child to say, I may have challenges. I may be a 14 year old or an 18 year old or a 6 year old with challenges, but I'm okay because of this love from my parents, what we call security.

Penny Williams [00:09:19]: Yeah. I love that. That relationship is so important, and being human in front of our kids, I think, is so important. Like, we have to model these things. Right? We have to model that sometimes things are hard and how you manage through that, and that, you know, what resilience looks like on the other side. Right? Right.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:09:37]: And it's I think you you just called it what it is. When you get to the other side, whether it's where you thought you were gonna land that day or not, it's the reminders to the child we got through that Yeah. And to ourselves as parents. Mhmm. This was a moment in time. It was a tough one. Exhale. Here we are.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:09:59]: And then helping children over time see that too. You've gotten through rough moments before. I'm gonna help you through it again.

Penny Williams [00:10:07]: Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about hard things, like, really hard things, this age of uncertainty, as you've called it? A lot of things happen, and our kids hear about all of it. We can't shield them, right, from the news and things like that anymore, and I see so much more anxiety these days in kids, as I'm sure you do. How do we help them? What conversations should we be having around those feelings of uncertainty with our kids?

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:10:37]: Right. This is really where my idea for this book came from back in about 2016 when I was thinking of, like, okay, what's my next book? I came to this idea from kind of two lines of work that I do. 1 is on sort of a large scale trauma. So 911, wildfires, you know, the disaster in Japan in 2011. So thinking about what is it that children need to be buffered in these horrific situations and my everyday work with children and families. And I came to what may seem obvious now, but, oh, you know what? Life is always uncertain. Every single day is uncertain. So we can actually learn from the stress and trauma literature what it is parents are doing every single day to help children.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:11:26]: And then the world shifted in 2020, as we all know. I thought, oh, I better write this book because uncertainty is here to stay. That's like a given.

Penny Williams [00:11:34]: Mhmm.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:11:35]: And with social media, with world events, with US events, it feels that much more destabilizing.

Penny Williams [00:11:42]: Yeah.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:11:43]: I think the way to think about what do children need is some protection, you know, particularly for younger children. You know, we always have to say what is their age and their developmental context because knowing a child is 8 is only one piece of information. Where are they developmentally? Right. And then how do I explain? How do I give a narrative that helps them both understand that things are happening around them and helps them feel safe? And some of the examples I have in my book are exactly that. Parents explaining a situation to to a child either in the moment of crisis or following the crisis. And at the same time messaging, we're safe, we got out of there, or that gunman has been caught. He can't hurt anybody else. Children always need some truth depending on their age level, how much detail, and then a safety message.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:12:42]: Because the piece that we know from years of research and experience is that children need to feel safe.

Penny Williams [00:12:50]: Yeah. 100%.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:12:52]: And so whether that's in your home or in the larger world, we have to give them that sense of safety. I remember after 911, people saying to me, I can't tell my child to be home tonight because look at all those parents who perished in the towers. I was like, yeah. But your child needs to know that there's a 99.9% probability that you're coming home after work, and that's what they live by. The message of that was a bad thing that happened. That was scary. We were worried, and we're all safe now. And it's those pieces that I call the narrative that hold children together.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:13:31]: So not glossing over it or not pretending something didn't happen. As children get older, we can check-in. So what is it that you know about what happened today? And hear from them what their knowledge is, but also what their worries are, what they're thinking about. The great thing about children and teenagers is they come back to us with questions. Yeah. Right? They come back and say, you know, I know this happened, but and then they come up with their next question, and then you can answer that question.

Penny Williams [00:14:06]: I'm always looking for ways to make drinking more water easier for myself so I don't even have to think about it. That's why you've got to check out AquaTru. AquaTru purifiers use a 4 stage reverse osmosis purification process, and their countertop purifiers work with no installation or plumbing. It removes 15 times more contaminants than ordinary pitcher filters, and it's specifically designed to combat chemicals like PFAs in your water supply. PFAs are found in almost 45% of tap water and I'm glad AquaChoo is certified to remove these contaminants. And they have water purifiers to fit every type of home. From installation free countertop purifiers, to high capacity under sink options. They even have a wifi connected purifier and mineral boost options.

Penny Williams [00:14:58]: Just one set of filters from their classic purifier makes the equivalent of 4,500 bottles of water. That's less than 3¢ a bottle. Plus you'll save the environment from tons of plastic waste. It got delivered straight to my door and it was so easy to set up. AquaTru comes with a 30 day money back guarantee and even makes a great gift. Today, my listeners receive 20% off any AquaTru purifier. Just go to aquatru.com, that's aquatru.com, and enter code complex at checkout. That's 20% off any AquaTru water purifier when you go to aquatrue.com and use promo code complex, complex.

Penny Williams [00:15:52]: I wanna pose a scenario because I remember in the last year, in some of the communities that I host on social media, we had, of course, school shootings, unfortunately, and parents, you know, were advised to let your kid know that they're safe. And a lot of parents got really upset and said, but they're not really safe. Right. You know? And I I can sort of I feel that because I was a mess sending my kids to school, but, also, I realized just from that outside perspective that that's their fear.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:16:29]: Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:16:30]: And I'm guilty of this too. I have anxiety myself, so I'm very guilty of putting some of my anxiety on my kids as they were growing up because I didn't know better. I didn't recognize what was happening. And so how do we sort of bridge that divide where we don't really feel like they're safe, but we can't put that on them either?

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:16:50]: Yeah. I I'm glad you asked that because this is where you get into the parent being aware of our own stuff, whatever our stuff is Mhmm. And saying, how do I both become aware? Awareness is always the first piece. Sometimes a parent says to me, alright. Well, I just named it, but that's not a big deal. It is a big deal. I have anxiety. How do I keep this from my child? I think the second piece is thinking about, okay.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:17:18]: What are the facts here? And if the truth is, if you really didn't think your child was safe yet, you wouldn't send them back to school. So do I have enough trust in this process that there's been enough, you know, awareness in the school's part or the community's part of the neighborhood's part that I can trust them to have my child there even if I'm terrified. Because what we know is that parents buffer children, and what I mean by that is we have stress. There's stress in the world. The child has stress. And it's the parent that kinda brings them down, that says, this is a little scary or it was a lot scary. The teachers and the principal, the police in our neighborhood, the firefighters, you know, whoever their sort of protective agents are are working very hard to keep us safe. And I know you're worried, but I know all these pieces of people who are working to keep us safe.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:18:17]: And even if you don't fully believe it yourself, it's doing that self work so that you can impart on the child. I'm sending you back to school because pieces are in place to keep you safe, and I'm gonna see you after school. It's a lot of self work. A lot.

Penny Williams [00:18:35]: Yeah. Yeah. You really have to be mindful as a parent, and nobody teaches you that.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:18:40]: No. And even when you think about bringing home your first child, right, or being handed your first child, you know, and say whether you you gave birth or you witnessed the birth or you adopted, you know, that child is yours, anxiety just begins because that's a very dependent little person

Penny Williams [00:18:59]: Yeah.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:19:00]: Who's very dependent on us. And I'm not sure what could prepare us for. We do a lot of reading. We talk to our friends, our family. But it's from the moment the child enters our life, it really is about, can I manage these feelings of mine? Can I be aware of them? Can I bring down my own anxiety?

Penny Williams [00:19:18]: Mhmm. And what if you can't in the moment? What if you just can't have, say, that conversation that you just outlined for us yet? What do we do? How do we manage that? Question.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:19:32]: You know, if you're in crisis, the first thing is gonna always be get to safety. You know, you're gonna get out of the burning house. You're gonna get your child out of a situation in the best of your abilities. And so it's not even about talking. It's about doing. And then there may be moments that you say to a child, we're safe now. I need a few minutes. I need a few minutes.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:19:53]: You know, you put them wherever you're gonna have them. This is where screens are great as much as everybody worries about screens. Maybe you sit them in front of the TV or a screen or you get them a snack. After 911, a lot of the parents talked about when they got to safety making a snack, which makes sense. It's nourishing the soul that's been frightened. And then you say, I need a minute or I need some time. Maybe you're hysterical and you need to calm down. But it's, again, being aware of I need to first center myself somehow, whatever that's gonna take, and then I'm gonna come back to to you.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:20:31]: Because grounding yourself is always the first step before we can possibly help a child either calm down or feel safe enough in the moment.

Penny Williams [00:20:40]: Yeah. That's so true. That's so true that we need to feel grounded. And and, again, it's something that we don't teach people. We're not talking about it enough. Like, I remember having my first kid, and they were like, you have to watch this video before you can leave the hospital with her. Right? You have to what? Have you watched the video yet? And I'm like, you know, half asleep and Yeah. Not functioning.

Penny Williams [00:21:02]: And I'm like, okay. Whatever. And it was about car seats, and that was it. That was all they told me.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:21:07]: Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:21:08]: They made me watch a video on car seats, and then they sent me into the world with this tiny little human Yeah. That I had no idea what to do with. Right? And so it's like, yeah, like, we're we're learning. And now that, you know, my kids are in their early twenties, I have a lot of knowledge about parenting, especially, you know, getting into this into this work. But starting out, like, I didn't know that we had to work on resilience. I didn't know that I was co escalating instead of co regulating and all of these things. Right? And so, you know, that's just more of an illustration of how much parents have to give themselves grace. Like, you don't know what you don't know, and you're here learning it.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:21:49]: Exactly. And, also, you don't know what you don't know, and you can be kind to yourself and say children are forgiving when there's love.

Penny Williams [00:21:59]: Mhmm.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:22:00]: I understand. When there's a loving relationship, children are very forgiving. Meaning, you can say, I'm sorry I handled that that way, and I'm gonna try to do it differently next time. I still love you. It's not your fault that I got upset.

Penny Williams [00:22:14]: Mhmm.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:22:14]: I'm gonna work on that. Love is the most important piece of a relationship. Right? So you can, like, look at every parenting book, every meme that's out there, every Instagram post, but, really, the question is, is there a back and forth that says to the child, you are loved, and I'm gonna work harder to understand you if I don't really know what you need right now? Because we don't always know.

Penny Williams [00:22:38]: No. We don't.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:22:39]: We're human.

Penny Williams [00:22:40]: They're not always good at communicating how they're feeling or what's really going on, and and we often fill in that blank for them. Yes. You know? If if they're not able to tell us, we make assumptions. And when we get it wrong, then they feel less understood and less seen and heard. Right? And so we really have to be more open. But I wanted to talk a little bit about when our kids are not willing to talk about something hard, whether it's something big like 911 or a school shooting or even something, you know, that just happened to them that day. How do we help them but also honor what they're kind of telling us they need? Yeah.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:23:21]: So it's a really important question because we as adults are verbal.

Penny Williams [00:23:27]: Mhmm.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:23:27]: And our assumption and I think this assumption even in helping fields, my own included, is that we're gonna talk through situations.

Penny Williams [00:23:35]: Yeah.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:23:36]: But, really, what children respond to, what other humans respond to is a connection. And so it's not always words. Sometimes it's a hand on a shoulder. Sometimes it's a nod. You know? And sometimes it's as simple as that seems rough today. I'm here. If I can be of help, I'm here. You know, one of the things I work very hard to do in this book in raising resilience is to what I call unpack that parent child relationship.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:24:05]: What is it that parents do to queue in? And often it you know, for some children, it's a hug. For some children, it's like, stay far away from me, but don't go away.

Penny Williams [00:24:16]: Yeah.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:24:17]: You know, I'm gonna be in the kitchen getting ready for dinner, and I'm here if you need me. And then maybe going in and checking. It's this feeling of I'm not alone. They're here for me when I need them. And it's sometimes hard to figure out, you know, if you have more than one child. Different children need different things.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:24:37]: Different ways of relating. Mhmm. And and and an individual child needs different things at different times. So one of the things I write in there is, you know, don't be hard on yourself if you've tried several different methods and they don't work. Some of it is trial and error.

Penny Williams [00:24:54]: Oh, yeah.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:24:54]: Right? Yeah. And so being accepting of ourself, you know, that worked last time she had this massive meltdown. It didn't work this time. Let me try something else or let me back off a bit.

Penny Williams [00:25:08]: Mhmm. Yeah. And I like that you reminded us that it might change over time with the same kid. My kid, when he was young, it was having big emotions. If I left, it got bigger. Yes. That was really bad. He felt abandoned.

Penny Williams [00:25:23]: Right? And he didn't feel any connection. And, you know, I had to be in the room, but not trying to help, which is really hard for me because I'm a helper. And then, you know, later on, he didn't want me around. He wanted to go into a room that was quiet by himself and deal with it. And so, yeah, like, we just have to really, really dig deep to understand our kids and to be able to honor what they need, which can be really hard when it's the opposite of what we need. Right? Right.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:25:54]: Like Right.

Penny Williams [00:25:55]: I am a very organized type a, get it done, check the box, I must help you right now, we must get through this right now kind of person. And I have a kid who's the exact opposite, And it was a lot of work for me. Right? And I think we have to recognize that.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:26:11]: And here's, I think, a piece that you're talking about, which is not to take it personally, which is very difficult and particularly difficult with our firstborns, could be difficult with any of them to not take their behavior, their needs, their emotions personally.

Penny Williams [00:26:28]: Yeah.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:26:29]: Is, again, a lot of self work on what do I need to do to say I'm the parent. This child may be hard to understand. The best I can do is try to understand them even if I don't get it right. That piece of sort of separateness can be a real challenge for any parent.

Penny Williams [00:26:49]: Yeah.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:26:49]: But we keep doing it, and then we keep going back to our child to repair those tough moments.

Penny Williams [00:26:54]: Mhmm.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:26:54]: You know, I realized that you needed a little more time with me, and I wish I had given that to you. Next time, I'm gonna do this differently. Says to them, I'm human. My connection to you really matters.

Penny Williams [00:27:08]: Yeah. Such good advice. So many great nuggets here, and I'm sure that everyone will get so much out of the book as well, Raising Resilience. Anything else that you want to add? Anything we haven't talked about yet as we wrap up?

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:27:25]: No. I I think the main point that I would say is that I'm like an eternal optimist because as challenging as children are, as challenging as our sort of what we bring to being a parent is, and as challenging as the world can be, There is a lot of back and forth in that relationship. And so if parents can give themself grace, as you say, have some humor and turn to people who support them, it actually makes us better parents.

Penny Williams [00:27:54]: Oh, I love that. Self care is so important. Yeah. We don't value it enough in our culture, and we need to really make sure that we can show up as our best selves in order to help our kids.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:28:04]: Yeah.

Penny Williams [00:28:05]: Thank you so much, doctor Klein, for being here. I want everyone to be able to connect with you. So if you go to parentingADHDandautism.com/280 for episode 280, We have links to Dr. Klein's book, Raising Resilience, her other book as well, website, all of that good stuff so that you can follow and connect and learn more and, you know, keep on that journey of becoming the parent that you wanna be and the parent that your kid needs you to be. Thank you so much again for being here and sharing some of your time and wisdom. I know that it's helped so many of our listeners to be able to show up a little bit differently and help our kids through some really challenging times.

Tovah Klein, Ph.D. [00:28:51]: Thank you for having me.

Penny Williams [00:28:53]: I will see everybody on the next episode. Take good care. Thanks for joining me on the Beautifully Complex podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share. And don't forget to check out my online courses and parent coaching at parentingADHDandautism.com and thebehaviorrevolution.com.