Beautifully Complex 362
The Science and Soul Behind Raising Joyful Kids, with Kira Willey

[00:00:12]
Penny Williams: Welcome back everyone to Beautifully Complex. I'm really excited to be having a conversation with Kira Willey, and we're going to talk about raising joyful kids. How do we do that? That's the goal, right? So how do we get there, and what can we do in our day-to-day lives to help foster that?
[00:00:34]
Penny Williams: Kira, will you start by letting everyone know who you are and what you do?
[00:00:39]
Kira Willey: Yes, I am an author, a musician, children's recording artist, and a kids' mindfulness and yoga expert. I've been working for more than two decades with kids all over the globe and the grown-ups who love them to bring mindful practices to them through movement and music and school programs and performances and trainings and teachings and all kinds of good stuff.
[00:00:59]
Kira Willey: I believe strongly that when we empower kids to live in their bodies and connect with them where they live, which is in this world of imagination and play and singing and wiggling and dancing, we fully engage them. That's how they get empowered to be their best selves.
[00:01:17]
Penny Williams: Love it. Let's start with just describing what a joyful child looks like in your mind.
[00:01:24]
Kira Willey: In my mind, a joyful child is one who is regulated most of the time, not all of the time. And by regulated, it's really important, I don't mean calm. Calm is great sometimes, but what I mean is having an appropriate response to a stimulus as opposed to an outsized response to a stimulus.
[00:01:46]
Kira Willey: Being able to feel safe enough in their bodies and in their surroundings and with the grown-ups around them that they have appropriate levels of response and are mostly regulated. Doesn't mean happy all the time. Nobody's happy all the time. Doesn't mean they get whatever they want or anything like that.
[00:02:04]
Kira Willey: But it means they're mostly able to regulate themselves, to manage their bodies and their emotions.
[00:02:09]
Penny Williams: We talk so much about regulation here, and I'm really glad that you've made that connection with finding joy and really accepting what our bodies are telling us. But we have to teach that to kids, right? How do we do that? How do we get them more aware and connected to that?
[00:02:35]
Kira Willey: The root of mindfulness is self-awareness. And if we think of regulation as a house we want to build, the foundation of that house is self-awareness. All the rooms we want to build out, when I train teachers, we talk about the rooms being those character strengths we want children to have.
[00:02:53]
Kira Willey: Resilience, compassion, empathy, all those outward-facing skills. But it's an inside job at first. The foundation of that house of regulation is self-awareness. Mindfulness simply means being fully present, being fully aware of what's happening in any given moment. I like to add with kids, with kindness and curiosity. Mindful practices help teach children self-awareness. But mindfulness doesn't need to mean sitting still on a cushion and closing your eyes and breathing for 20 minutes. It can, and that's fabulous, but it does not need to, especially for young children.
[00:03:38]
Kira Willey: It can mean inhabiting your body, being aware of your body in space and what your body is doing. Wiggling your body and being aware of the sensations that creates. Creating a pattern of rhythm with your hands or with body percussion, being aware of the sensations that creates. It can be taking long, deep breaths in and out, pretending you're a bear hibernating for the winter, and paying attention to the sensation that creates inside your body.
[00:04:02]
Kira Willey: Mindful practices are self-awareness practices, but they can be kid-friendly and fun and short. They engage kids where they live. That's what all my work is about, engaging them where they are, connecting with them in a way that makes sense to children.
[00:04:19]
Penny Williams: It sounds like there's a lot of play and imaginative play especially. Talk to us a little bit more about that.
[00:04:29]
Kira Willey: The magic formula for any mindful activity with kids is short, kid-friendly, and consistent. But it's that kid-friendly piece that's critical. I do assemblies or school performances for 400 kindergartners, and in about a minute I can get them to be quiet and still by doing bear breath.
[00:04:46]
Penny Williams: Fun.
[00:04:53]
Kira Willey: We literally pretend we're bears hibernating for the winter. We get really cozy in our bear cave and take long, slow, deep breaths in and out through our noses. We keep breathing like that because we're bears. This is how we hibernate, and we imagine how warm and safe and relaxed we are in our bear cave.
[00:05:14]
Kira Willey: The long version is only 30 to 60 seconds. It works like a charm. But it didn't work because I talked to kids about stimulating their vagus nerve and bringing their nervous system back online. It worked because we used a fun, child-friendly concept. Children love to pretend they're cozy bears finding their cave and hibernating for the winter.
[00:05:35]
Kira Willey: So it's connecting with them on their level and using concepts like the weather and birthday candles and hibernating bears and hopping crickets to engage with them in a way that makes sense to them. Not with our adult world of words and explanations and justifications. We have schedules. We have an agenda. But that's not where young children live.
[00:06:11]
Penny Williams: So as you were talking, I was thinking, can you talk to us about what it might look like if you are trying to get out the door and it's a struggle, and we're not going to use our words? What are we going to do instead?
[00:06:26]
Kira Willey: It's about connecting with them first. I have a mama mantra throughout my book that is good for any grown-up who loves children, and one of them is connect, then direct.
[00:06:40]
Kira Willey: I did this all the time when my kids were little. I would holler from the kitchen, "It's time to go. We gotta go. Did you get your backpack?" No response. I can still hear the blocks clickety-clacking in the other room. But if I walk into the other room, slow my roll a minute, get down on their level, make eye contact, maybe a hand on the shoulder, and ask for 30 seconds, "What are you doing? What is this that you're building?"
[00:07:09]
Kira Willey: You have to be patient for those 30 to 60 seconds. Connect. I would do this with my son: "Tell me about this tower that you're building." "Oh my gosh, it's gonna be the tallest tower in the whole country, and the policeman's gonna live here..." "Great. Can we work on this more after school?" "Okay." Then eye contact. "It's time to go."
[00:07:35]
Kira Willey: It's so much more effective because now he feels that connection to me. A lot of times, what I'll call lack of cooperation is because of lack of connection with a trusted and loved grown-up. When we establish that connection, that cooperation is so much more likely to follow. He feels seen and understood and heard. Now he's like, "What do you want to do? Okay, I'll go. Let's go. I'll get my shoes on."
[00:08:05]
Penny Williams: They feel seen and heard and understood. You have seen them, you've seen that this is important to them, this is of high interest. You've acknowledged what they're doing, and then you're asking them to make a shift. I interviewed Mr. Chas a couple years ago, and I remember him saying that we want kids to come on the journey with us willingly. We don't want to force them to get out the door. We want them to be on the journey with us willingly, and this is part of how we do that.
[00:08:58]
Kira Willey: And we have to recognize that for young children especially, transitions can feel like a loss. They're absorbed in something they really want to do. They don't have the sense of time that we need to be at an event at a particular time. All they really have awareness of is that you're taking them out of something they're really enjoying. So you have to find a way to bridge that. It's very jarring. The way to do that is by connecting with them on their level.
[00:09:28]
Penny Williams: I know that movement and music is a big piece of what you teach kids and the grown-ups in their lives. Can you talk to us about why that's important, what it helps with, and what it looks like to incorporate it day to day?
[00:09:50]
Kira Willey: Let's start with rhythm. Rhythm is the most basic building block of music. You can have rhythm without music, but you can't have music without rhythm. And rhythm is very regulating in our bodies. Rhythm is structure. If you think of a beat, it's very symmetrical and structured and steady, and that feels good.
[00:10:10]
Kira Willey: There's a reason that when you hear a great song come on the radio, you probably start to move. Your shoulders go, or your head bops, or your foot taps. It's because you're syncing with that rhythm in a way that really feels good. It's grounding. For children, rhythm is an incredible tool, and there are fascinating studies around rhythm and music in the brain as opposed to listening to speech.
[00:10:35]
Kira Willey: When a child hears us talking about what we need to do and how we need to leave the house, it lights up a certain part of their brain. When they're hearing rhythm and music, more parts of their brain are actually lighting up. More blood flow is going to the brain, putting it in a more focused state. You're literally making them more alert and focused and engaged, even if all you do is play a steady beat and put your words to the beat and make it more fun.
[00:10:53]
Kira Willey: That's it. You don't need to be a singer or a musician. Just start by using a beat, using rhythm. It's more engaging. Plus it's novel, so it triggers that pattern interruption. "Wait, what?" And gets attention that way too.
[00:11:33]
Kira Willey: If you think of life with a young child, especially teachers or parents with daily routines where they say the same things over and over, you're likely giving the same instructions at the same time of day, probably repeatedly. That needs to be a song. Put it to a melody you know already. Save yourself the trouble. Put it to the ABC song melody or You Are My Sunshine, or make it up. When we put information to a melody, it's not only more engaging, it's way more memorable.
[00:12:12]
Kira Willey: It sticks better. Musical memories are more durable in the brain. There's a fascinating study about people with dementia who can't remember their families or what they did that day, but can sing their wedding song, because those musical memories are so durable.
[00:12:33]
Kira Willey: So put your instructions about jammies on and teeth brushing to a song. They'll learn it quickly, pick it up, it'll be more fun and engaging, and they'll remember. Pretty soon they'll be able to sing it themselves because it sticks in their brain.
[00:12:51]
Kira Willey: And it's not about being a musician or a singer. No one's going to file a complaint about your pitch. Most parents sang to their infants when they were little. You've got it in you.
[00:13:14]
Penny Williams: And I'm thinking about our neurodivergent kids and how they sometimes struggle with executive function, so working memory. If I give you a three-step process and you walk away from me, you're probably not going to be able to complete it without some sort of structure, like a written list. But now I'm thinking we could put it to music. If we had these routines and made them a song, they're going to stick better in memory, and it can really help offset some of that deficit.
[00:13:48]
Kira Willey: Exactly. And you're keeping it in a place of joy and play too, as opposed to instruction and command and directive, which changes the vibe. It brings more joy into the daily routine, which is sometimes where it's hardest to find.
[00:14:22]
Penny Williams: My son's first grade teacher would play a particular song for transition time, and the kids came to automatically know that if they heard that particular song, it was time to go sit in their seat and get out their math notebook. It was magical. I spent a good bit of time observing in that classroom, and she had such a command of the room without ever being commanding, because she really leaned into being playful, using music and movement.
[00:15:12]
Penny Williams: I started doing that at home. "Let's put on a minute and a half for brushing teeth. Let's find a song that means this is brushing teeth time." It was so helpful.
[00:15:28]
Kira Willey: And that's another great thing about music: it can change your emotional state. It can shift the energy. So you are the DJ of the vibe in your house. You can decide what you want it to be. Music that has a strong beat and heavy bass is really empowering and grounding. Music that is lighter and higher up in the range and really melodic is calming and soothing. Music with a tempo of about 60 to 80 beats per minute, which mirrors a resting heartbeat, is very calming. So you can decide, at cleanup time, what's the vibe going to be? Put on the banging song to get it done in five minutes, and the soothing song in the car when you're hoping for a quiet ride. You have a lot of power at your disposal because music has an incredible way of changing emotional state.
[00:16:28]
Penny Williams: For my kid, who's neurodivergent, it's actually the really fast, heavy music that soothes him, which is so counterintuitive. And I've talked to so many parents whose kids are the same.
[00:16:47]
Kira Willey: That's the regulation of that beat. It's what it is. That beat feels really good in their bodies. It's predictable and strong. Some children need that heavy work. They need that joint pressure and all that good stuff. I have one of those. It seems a little counterintuitive on the surface, but if you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
[00:17:13]
Penny Williams: It really does. And it helped me open my mind to people being different. We have different nervous systems. For me, that's too much. But for him, it's just the most soothing thing in the world. Heavy metal with double bass helps him chill out. And it is that rhythm. He used to, in high school, make beats with an app on his iPad in the middle of class. He had headphones. We came to realize that was his way of getting regulated again. He'd do it for a minute and then get back to what he was doing. It was magical to learn that about him through the instincts he was having to create rhythm, to create beats, to soothe himself.
[00:18:42]
Kira Willey: What great self-awareness by him to realize that's what he needed and to do it. I wish we could use rhythm more with neurodivergent kids, because I think it can be really effective in a lot of situations.
[00:19:02]
Penny Williams: For everyone. I've been listening to podcasts when I get ready in the morning for years, and just a couple months ago I said, "I'm going to start listening to music." Music makes me so happy, and just the rhythm has made such a difference in how I feel in the morning.
[00:19:38]
Kira Willey: It also releases oxytocin, and we get endorphins from it. There's all kinds of science around the benefits of music, particularly in a group creating music together. The unifying effect, the bonding effect is incredible. Collective music-making syncs our heart rates. It lowers our breathing rate. It lowers cortisol. And even just listening to music on your own releases those endorphins, dopamine, that feel-good rush. It's really, really powerful.
[00:20:29]
Penny Williams: Talk to us about ideas for older kids, middle schoolers, teens, young adults. How can they use rhythm, movement, music to create that joyful environment?
[00:20:53]
Kira Willey: Sometimes when children get older, we think they're grown up pretty quickly and we go right to the cognitive. We sort of forget that they still love to be in their bodies. The studies on movement in kids when you move from elementary to middle school, and how much movement drops because recesses go away, and the effect that has, are astonishing.
[00:21:20]
Kira Willey: Children, all of us by the way, need to move a lot, but children up until their twenties have to move a lot every day. We forget they like to be silly. They like to play. They like to be in their bodies. We go more to explanations and stuff in the brain, and I think that's a mistake.
[00:21:56]
Kira Willey: When I work with older ages, I bring them play and balance challenges and movement. I keep it age-appropriate by making it challenging. We'll do a tongue twister, put it to a beat, and once we get good at that, we get a little faster. Once we get good at that, we do it while standing on one leg. I'm adding layers of challenge and they love it. They're being challenged. They get a little healthily competitive. But it requires complete and total focus on what's going on in their body.
[00:22:41]
Kira Willey: I do affirmations with older kids with big power poses. I have them come up with their own affirmation, and when we say it, we're standing in a warrior two pose, making muscles, and we holler it out. Then I ask them to create their own. Make another one. Try a different pose. Take up space. They eat it up. They absolutely love it.
[00:23:17]
Kira Willey: It's really about remembering that kids of all ages need to be in their bodies. That's where self-awareness is developed, from paying attention to what's going on in their bodies. Don't go too early to "let's talk about it, talk about it, talk about it." At that age they can certainly handle explanations of what's happening in their brain, but not to live there. They still need to live in their bodies.
[00:23:28]
Penny Williams: I love that. And I don't know why we decided that there's a certain age at which we stop playing, stop being silly, stop having fun. Adults need it too. It's helpful at every age for every human, but at some point we just decided it's too juvenile.
[00:24:02]
Kira Willey: Joy and laughter and play shouldn't be the reward after we get X, Y, and Z done. It should be part of the daily routine. There's a whole chapter in my new book called Let's Play, and a lot of it has exercises for the grown-up, for the child, and for the grown-up and child together. The grown-up exercises help you reconnect to your own sense of play. Just pause. What did you love to get absorbed in when you were little? Is there a way you could bring a little bit of that back? What used to crack you up to the point of tears?
[00:24:51]
Kira Willey: My grandmother used to call it the church giggles, like when you'd get the giggles in church and you couldn't stop. Maybe you could just stop what you're doing when nobody's home and put on a great song and dance for two minutes. Why did we decide we're too grown-up to do these things? That makes no sense. It brings so much joy. I guarantee you put on a song you love and dance for two minutes, you are going to feel better.
[00:25:17]
Penny Williams: Totally. And we need to teach our kids by modeling that, to keep doing it as they get older.
[00:25:26]
Kira Willey: Joy is a worthy goal in itself. Just fun, just play.
[00:25:32]
Penny Williams: I knew a family that did a dance party every morning, and everybody did it, the grown-ups and the kids, every single morning before school. They never skipped it. It just created a totally different vibe for the day. Totally different energy leaving the house, going to work, going to school. And it's like two to five minutes. We're not asking you to get up an hour earlier.
[00:26:11]
Penny Williams: Or if you drive your kids to school, play music, sing in the car, dance around in your seat. School is stressful. They need that break in the mood.
[00:26:31]
Kira Willey: One thing that's really important around raising joyful kids is they need to feel safe in their bodies and in their environment. A big part of that is feeling safe with the grown-ups around them. So the grown-ups need to regulate themselves. I have a framework in the book called Calm, Connect, Create. A lot of people think at the outset that calm means calm your child. It doesn't. It means calm yourself. Calm yourself, calm your environment, calm your schedule as much as you're able. The biggest thing is check yourself. How are you showing up?
[00:27:25]
Kira Willey: The truth is, we want the best for our children. We want the best resources, the best schools, the best teacher, the best food. But by far the most important resource we can give our child is the most calm, grounded, centered version of ourselves. By far. Nothing else even comes close. When we think about it that way, we realize how important it is. It's just getting your own emotional house in order so that you can show up as the best version of you, as the most fully present version of you.
[00:27:49]
Kira Willey: I tell a story in the book about my daughter who had lots of challenges growing up. Getting dressed was one of them. Every morning, tears, negotiations, the whole thing. We were in the middle of one such battle, and I was getting more and more frustrated. Then I had to take a phone call. I stepped out of the room and completely shifted my whole mood. A minute and a half later I come back in and she's calmly putting on her tights. The only thing that shifted was my energy. That's it. That's the only thing that changed.
[00:28:52]
Kira Willey: Your energy, how you're showing up, makes a huge difference. There are lots of very small, baby-step practices we can do to help ourselves show up better even when things are not great. It doesn't mean perfect. It doesn't mean fixing all the problems. It means finding enough presence and equanimity to deal with something a little more gracefully. When you practice just enough self-care and presence, you have more clarity to deal with what's going on.
[00:29:08]
Penny Williams: And we're able to be the parent we actually want to be. That is how we're able to show up the way we want to show up, not just the way our kids need us to, but for us too. It makes all the difference.
[00:29:28]
Penny Williams: Kira, tell us where everyone can find your book and your website so they can grab the book and connect.
[00:29:42]
Kira Willey: The book is available at thejoyfulchildbook.com, and you can learn all about me and my resources at kirawilley.com.
[00:29:51]
Penny Williams: Love it. I'm going to link all of that in the show notes at parentingadhdandautism.com so it's easy for everyone to find you, connect, and grab the book. It has been delightful to talk to you, and I'm going to take some of this energy with me for the rest of my day. A reminder to breathe and let things be lighter. Everything doesn't have to be as serious as it feels like it has to be.
[00:30:24]
Kira Willey: I grew up with my grandmother and she had a saying: "It doesn't have to be so hard." That's really the heart of the message. We can bring more joy and laughter and play into the daily routines, and we'll all be better for it. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:30:40]
Penny Williams: Thank you. I'll see everybody next time. Take good care.