Episode 42- Sensory Regulation in Children with Christine Robenalt

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the kids sleep show, where we help tired parents from around the world to get their children to fall asleep independently, sleep through the night and build healthy sleep habits for life. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz. Now let’s sleep together.
So let’s see. So, a little bit about me. My name is Christine Robbo, I am a physical therapist, I work predominantly with children of all ages for pediatric home care company here in Denver, Colorado. I also do telehealth and so I provide live video visits for families and the children that I work with. And my main focus over the past like 10 years has been trying to make sure that the children I work with can achieve the best quality outcome. And I realized pretty early into my pediatric experiences that this was often being blocked by things that just didn’t make sense to the kids. And I refer to them as like hard stops. And so when I know that the child has enough strength has enough ability to do all these things, I thought, there’s something else missing. And that brought me to sensory. So as a physical therapist, we don’t get that in school that’s usually belongs to the occupational therapist. So I did a lot of self study and continue to educate myself in that realm and has have had a lot more success. Adding that piece in, and just in general lifestyle medicine, I have additional training and nutrition, and taking a course currently about acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I’m a certified infant massage instructor. And I’m also in a yoga teacher training class now too. So just trying to gather as many pieces to help the families that I work with.
That’s wonderful. And I know you had mentioned that you take kind of the whole child approach when you’re working with families, you obviously have some background, and if you want to talk to the listeners about, you know, your own experience from dyslexia standpoint, from add, because I think there are certain things that that children from a sensory standpoint, from a medical diagnosis, and frankly, from things that are undiagnosed, that when a parent knows to recognize or understand what is happening, you know, it obviously is going to change the balance of the way in which you know, providers support teachers, parents, you know, enrich and work with their children on a, you know, on a daily basis, especially now, since a lot of parents are taking on the responsibility of teacher, you know, given the current situation, what’s going on. So I’d love you to chat a little bit more about that as well.
Absolutely. So my I’m also a mom of three children, very different children, two of them are diagnosed with dyslexia. As I was working with my oldest in the preschool and kindergarten years, and trying to figure out why he couldn’t learn the way all the other children were learning, I also discovered that I was dyslexic. And that made a lot of sense for me about the struggles I had in school. But this kind of goes back to that personal experience of it. As a child, my parents didn’t know I was dyslexic, or had any issues with learning. In fact, I was at the top of my class, I graduated third of my high school class. I was always in the honors courses. So it didn’t make sense that you would have a learning disability, but also be able to excel in school. And I think I developed resources on my own coping strategies on my own. And using other senses. Later on, we’re going to talk about a sense intuition. I use my intuitive sense to choose answers on tests. I didn’t read the material or I read the material, but I don’t recall the material. So I tell a story in maybe it was the third grade we had right then that was when computer labs were coming up. And we got to read all these books and earn points to get prizes in school. And I didn’t read any of those books, because it was so hard for me to read. I just took the test and I won like the grand prize. So for me that coping strategy of just not guessing but like intuitively, thinking of what the answer was served me for a long time until I got into physical therapy school and then it kind of my system kind of fell apart. And I had to re evaluate how do I learn and even in physical therapy school, I’ve been getting my master’s degree I did not know I was dyslexic. quick learner, I just thought I was a kinesthetic learner, I just thought I just had a feel in my body to learn. But the funny thing about that is I’m a complete klutz, and I don’t have very good body awareness. So it’s. But now knowing what I know, now, it makes a lot of sense, because all of these things are rooted in our sensory system. So when I work with families, I have a very unique connection with their children, because I have gone through this disjointed sensory process from a young age. And I’ve learned some coping strategies, but also have learned now to adjust right balance, the important of the just right balanced to be successful to move forward. And so you know, all we all have windows of tolerance, how much we can handle before we go over the edge. And some of us do a better job keeping it together, some of us completely ignore those signals and just push through it anyway. And then some of us experience things so deeply that you are just paralyzed, or you feel like you need to get out of there. Well, this sounds like you or your child. There are evolutionary reasons for this.
Yeah. And I think it’s fascinating, I’d love for you to talk a little bit more about, you know, I think the word sensory processing, right, what, you know, one of my best friends is a psychologist at a school, where she’s dealing with mainly children that are on the spectrum, but she brings a wealth of knowledge and information. And we talk a lot about like sensory processing. And I’ll have some questions, sometimes even with clients that, you know, I’ll bounce off of her, and I actually, I’m gonna have her on as a guest as well. And it’s just such a word, I think that, you know, you don’t realize there’s that tolerance difference, right? Like, so to me, somebody could do nails on a chalkboard doesn’t bother me, I don’t care. Other people, they, you know, you hear a second of a nail on a chalkboard and you want to crawl out of your skin, right. And I think that’s part of the way I process that noise is different than the way someone else does. And I’m curious, like, from your perspective, as you’re continuing to talk chat a little bit more about this, what age do you start to see the
processing
difference, right like that this loud noise may bother an infant, right, like a white noise machine, perhaps it’s too loud, or they shouldn’t use it at all, because they find it agitated, or, you know, when you’re in school, you know, something as simple as the zipper on, you know, the zipper on a book bag or something like I would love to learn just a little bit more about your experience in that side of it. And again, kind of based on your education and just personal development in the sensory side, I would love to kind of dive into that a little more.
Yes. So that that that’s a great question in insight, because we all do experience the world differently. And as parents, as teachers, as educators, whatever your role is, as a person, we have a construct of what it’s supposed to be like. And when somebody else comes against that and it doesn’t match, we our first instinct perhaps might be to judge them. Or to say that that’s wrong or bad or different. And obviously, if someone is hurting themselves, some selves or what what the person is doing is, is hurting others, we do need to work on that for sure. But my desire to not only eat white foods, right now, like that’s where I’m at today, or, as a child, I personally could not smell playdough and then go and eat. like the smell of Plato was so upsetting to me that I could not move back. Now I’m going to eat. So now as a kid, I’m telling my mom, I don’t want to eat that food. But it wasn’t because of the food it was because I didn’t like the way that playdough smelled on my hands while I was eating it. So until we kind of look at all of these issues with our kids like it may not be what we think it is. And that this requires us as parents to be in tune with our own sensory system. And this is this is truly as a mom of three what I started to notice that I was not handling things well, that I was going from zero to 60 with the slightest little disturbance of somebody spilling some milk, and I would you know, reflexively gal, and then I was able to at some point, realize that that didn’t serve me. So I had to have enough self reflection to realize that what I’m doing to try to change my child’s behavior is actually bad behavior on my part. And that took a lot of time to try to figure out what that is with me first before I can help Help my child because if I’m not in common alert, my child can’t be in common alert, or it’s going to be very difficult. So if we back up all the way up to what I’m talking about with calm and alert, it doesn’t matter whether you’re two or 102. In order for new learning to take place for positive learning to take place, our systems need to be in calm and alert, my body, my brain, calm, I feel calm right now. I hope I’m alert to you right now. Now, you may or may not be alert to me, as you’re sitting here listening to me talking, if you’re thinking about tomorrow, or what you’re doing 10 minutes in now you’re not hearing the words I’m saying. And so there’s a difference between being home and alert. And we need to have both to really process the information. Now we have 10 senses. The five we all learn about in school, we’re going to call those our external senses, taste, touch, sight, sound, smell. And then we have five internal senses. And what are these senses for before I talk about what those other five are there to alert us if we are safe, or we are in danger?
So it’s almost like that fight or flight sort of sense that you say, like, from an internal standpoint, like I can feel an external,
right, either way. So we have the five external senses and five internal senses. But yes, that it’s a messaging system to tell us, Are we safe? Or do we need to do something to protect or survive, and I’ll separate those out, because those are important that what we see in our kids are going is going to look different, or what we see in ourselves will look different, whether our bodies thinking that we need to protect for survival. So the five internal senses interoception, how I know what’s going on inside my body at a chemical or hormonal level. And this is where food comes into play, but also sleep, we’re talking about the hormones and what are neurotransmitters that we need to be able to come into a calm state to prepare our bodies to sleep? How our body responds to melatonin? Are we making the melatonin but then are we paying attention to it? How? What’s going on in the pineal gland? And how are we How is our body interpreting this? So that’s, you know, there could be everything could be working correctly, but it’s our body interpreting it in that interpersonal and interoceptive sense, an interpersonal sense, how I feel when I’m talking with you, or if I’m in the presence of another person, you get that gut feeling? And sometimes that feelings correct. Sometimes that feeling is not correct. So I want to highlight this because we know this innately that sometimes our senses do not give us the correct information. As adults, we just kind of life laugh it off is like, Oh, whoops, miss that one, no big deal. But what if that was happening all of the time to you? What if every single piece of information coming in from your five internal senses and five external senses was
not accurate?
You will not be able to manage your world very well. And that is what’s happening in our children with sensory processing. So we have our interoceptive sense and our interpersonal sense, we also have proprioception, which is how we know where we are in space based off of the position of our joints. Now, that’s a very basic understanding of it. Stretch on our muscles and skin. Safety in this position, if I don’t feel safe in my body to sit up tall and straight, like if my body is telling me this isn’t safe, I’m going to come here. And it’s not a choice of mine. I’m not being lazy. I’m not trying to get out of something. My body is telling me this doesn’t feel safe. And I need to look for something to find some safety. vestibular sense? How do I know where I am in space based off of the movement or position of my head? But again, it also tells us stuff about velocity, how fast am I moving? And does that feel okay to me or not? Or is my sensory system kind of under responding where I have to keep spinning before it even registers? So again, what you like and what somebody else may like, is different. But what about when the information is coming in is completely not even in the same like realm of it’s not even giving us the right information. And so that’s where we start to move into hate to use the word pathological, but
Such a
large difference where it’s no longer serving the child to keep them safe, because it’s actually giving them the wrong message. That’s where we fall into that sensory processing disorder. But I will tell you, we are all sensory beings, we all learn about safety, or danger from our senses, then we have the intuitive sense and the interpersonal sense. So those five, internal five, external, they all work together, they all work in concert. And so if I’m somebody who has difficult to use with multiple senses, obviously, that’s going to have a greater impact on my life, than if it’s just, I don’t like the smell, well, then I can move away from that smell. But if that sense of smell is so off putting to me that I cannot think that’s a problem. Or even I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, where you’re driving in the car, and you’re looking for a new address, and you have to turn off the radio because you can’t find the location. So that’s a sensory processing problem. Interesting, yeah. Why would the sound of the radio impede your ability to use your eyes, or to use your brain to figure out where you are? So this is something that we as adults kind of laugh, or we just do automatically? Well, stop talking, I can’t concentrate, sensory processing. So we, as adults, don’t even give it a second thought. We just move through that we figure out what coping mechanisms we need to be okay. But we’re not giving our kids the same benefit of the doubt. We’re trying to put them into a box of this is how it’s supposed to be now. Yes, that is where we want to move them toward. But we cannot start there. Yeah,
I think that’s interesting. Because, you know, I think as adults, your point, we sort of brush off like I did, you know, I do it. When I pick my kids up from school, they’re always singing on the way home and they’re yelling, and I’m like, you guys put like, I’m trying to concentrate. I’m driving two miles home, like, but I’m just like, Guys, it’s too much right now. Like I, you know, I need a bit of a minute here, you know. So, as you’re saying that example, like I did that the other day, you know. And I’m curious how in children, as parents, like we kind of identify that they’re actually calling out, I don’t want to say for help, but kind of right, like they’re looking for a coping mechanism. Because whatever the situation is, is too much for them to process. And I feel like that would be helpful to understand as a parent, especially right now, like things are very different for our world. And I think children are spun into it, we as adults know what’s going on, they don’t write. So their whole world has been sort of shaken in a variety of different ways. And I would love to understand like as a parent, what is something we could do to identify the perhaps it’s not just, they don’t want to brush their teeth, but that brushing their teeth or using the toothpaste that’s minty or whatever, it might be agitates them, or they can’t cope with the sound of the sound machine on. And as a parent, like, we don’t know that, like, what are ways that you, you know, start to identify, like, almost gonna call it a behavior versus a sense, if you will, if that’s like a way to categorize it?
Well, I will argue that all behaviors are rooted first in a sensory experience. So even if the sensory experience is not currently happening, can you still get a sense in your body of happiness, sadness, I don’t like that. You don’t have to experience at the moment to think about something to then trigger an emotion in your body of thought in your body, and therefore an action of yelling, angry. So it works both ways. But first, there was some sort of sensory experience or a pathway that isn’t connecting well, and I won’t get into all of that today. But this is where we kind of, if this is your child, and things are not making sense to you, you don’t have a you feel like they’re not making sense to your child. There’s this disconnect. This is where we do actually need some professional support to help work through that because I’ll tell you, I’m a physical therapist, but when I was approached with what was going on with my children, as dyslexia, I didn’t have the tools. And I needed to reach out to the speech language pathologists, I needed to reach out to the reading specialists to help me understand what was going on because it made no sense to me. Everything that I knew to help support reading And language development I was doing already and it still wasn’t working. So is it my child? Or is it how I’m presenting the information, I need to define that key to unlock what I knew he knew. But I wasn’t getting there on my own. And so as a parent, I had to stay calm and alert to be able to use my thinking brain to figure out what I needed to do. If I would have stayed stuck in this feeling of overwhelm, I wouldn’t have been able to access the help that I needed for my child. And I think, again, this is what our children are going through, right? They go into this stuck ness, and they can’t figure a way out. And then we call that behaviors. So look within your own self, if you don’t have the capacity today, for whatever reason, you you just have never had this experience before. How are you supposed to know they don’t come with manuals, I’ve been asking for one for the past 12 years, and yet no one has produced me.
Amen to that, I say you I always joke, you leave the hospital, and they check to make sure your child is strapped in the car seat. And they’re so diligent about doing it, like the nurse walks you out. And they make sure and then they’re like peace, the baby and like, how is this helpful?
Yeah, well, of course the answer, and we know is there is no manual, there is no manual, um, but to to know and trust ourselves that As parents, we have the capacity to help our children, if we truly don’t, we can find the person who can give us some guidance. But really, I think, and I’m happy for your podcast to be here talking to parents to know that we have it within ourselves, to help our own bodies and to help our children. And it isn’t always a pill or isn’t always that next great thing we need to get. Yes, those things can help us. But without us really slowing down and observing what’s going on within our own selves and observing what’s going on in our children. That’s going to make the change. It isn’t just finding that greatest newest thing weighted blankets. A weighted blanket can be a very helpful tool, but I’ll tell you, it’s a band aid. It’s not going to change anything, it isn’t going to help your child make a change in their nervous system to be able to handle a difficulty in sleep, or calming down, if that’s all we do.
So it’s a
good starting. In addition to that, you know, like if somebody says, Hey, today, I you know, I do find that my toddler seems to do good, like I have a lot of clients where the children will come sensory with gentle pressure. And I tell parents, I’m like, you know, put a little gentle pressure on their head, or on their chest, obviously appropriate based on the age but like, do that if it’s going to help them to calm and to unwind, like I do a lot with mindfulness and mindset. I use a product called zoo animals every night in my family to do pediatric meditations. You know, stuff like that. So I’m curious, like, if somebody has that situation right now, and they’re listening, like, what is something you would do as a first step? Like I know, as a parent, I’d be like, I don’t know what to do. I mean, the weighted blankets kind of working, but there’s obviously something else going on that I haven’t thought up.
Yeah, exactly. So this is where it is that kind of this will help us and this gets us to calmer alert. Okay, so if that hand on the chest, if the massage if the meditation gets us to common alert, that’s where we want to stay to you. We want to help support our child to find that common alert and to start to notice, especially as they start to get older and older, I’ll say three, four, to start to pay attention to their own body and their own sensations, and to be able to as they’re able to verbalize or show what’s going on. In I don’t, I don’t feel good right now. Okay, well, what’s wrong? I don’t know. I’ve got this tingling in my belly. All right. Well, that could tell us we have some gas that could tell us we or could tell us that they’re nervous or apprehensive about something. And sometimes we don’t need to like give necessarily like makeup things but I’m wondering about that. That’s curious. Can you tell me more about that or let’s let’s play with some dolls or animals you know, often in play, they’ll they’ll start a show, naturally What’s going on? So if one is having a hard time calming their own system that then Okay, then the weighted blanket is a way to help us come back to calm or But what is that actual root cause of why they’re not feeling calm? Hmm. So that if we can kind of go there, then we will need the way to blanket. So if I can identify that, okay, my child is starting to get anxious about school tomorrow, and they know if they go to sleep, they’re gonna wake up and then they have to go to school. The problem the weighted blanket is just covering that up, I need to actually help my child be okay, that school tomorrow, what’s going on? They’re
going to be okay, and what’s going on? And?
Yeah,
yeah. I’m curious with your you know, that your experience in the past couple of months, obviously, with everything going on, but also sleep, right. Like, I focus with a lot of children on sleep, who frankly, don’t get the right amount of it for a variety of reasons. I think one band aids parents are trying to figure out like, if I get them in my bed, they’ll at least sleep a bit more than they would if they were alone band aid. Right now, nobody’s sleeping well, but you’re sleeping better than you were right. Or, you know, my child seems to be waking up agitated by something. And maybe they’re at the age where still even as babies like they don’t like the noise machine, but you don’t recognize it as like an issue and they can’t communicate with you, you know, but I’m curious. Like, from a sleep standpoint, I always say sleeps the foundation for which the house is built. Right. And so when you’re sleeping? Well, I think as a parent, you’re more balanced, that regulates the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, right? balance regulation, emotional control, and such. Right. So I’m curious in, in children who may have sensory processing, oh, I call it like challenges. I mean, for lack of a better word challenges, right? in identifying processing through whatever it may be just century in general, how to sleep and a lack of sleep in your practice? Have you seen it, impact children, because I don’t think sometimes parents realize that sleep is also an important factor in it, you know, on your experience, just with the realm of background that you bring, which is amazing. You know, what, what that kind of looks like? Sure, well,
I’d like to use a lot of analogies, right? Because, again, as a dyslexic learner, if something doesn’t have a meaning for me, I don’t really get it. So I use analogies from my own understanding. And then therefore I teach with a lot of analogies. So hold on here, we’re going to try and analogy. So if I have my cell phone, and it’s battery’s low, I know that I need to charge it, I can charge it all night long. And I wake up in the morning, and it still has, like 30%, it didn’t charge. So the kid went to sleep. But if the sleep wasn’t productive, or were not in the right stages of sleep at the right time, for a variety of reasons, you know, we’re trying to work through that, or there’s a lot of disruption in sleep, or maybe they have some central sleep apnea that’s not being diagnosed, maybe we have some blockages and some airways that are not being diagnosed, that quality of sleep, left me still at 30%.
Yeah, that’s a great analogy to think through it.
But that charging is essential, we have to charge so then I’ve got other families who kids don’t go to sleep till 1130 because they’re so amped up and, and, and there’s so many stress hormones going on in their body that they can’t come back to calm to say it’s now time to sleep. So now they’re sleeping like 1am to 1pm or something. And now we’re we’ve shifted our cycle, you know, so we have to work toward getting our phone charge at the right time for the right duration and the right quality, so that we can use our phone. Well, tomorrow.
Yeah, that makes sense. And I think to your point, it gives children when they’re balanced in that side, the ability to verbalize a bit better. their emotions, whether it’s through acting out of, you know, playing with toys, and showing or communicating with parents when they’re, you know, of age to be able to do so.
Well, and I think a lot of times our kids do tell us I don’t feel good, My stomach hurts. Oh, you’re fine. Yeah. And I get it, I like I said, I’ve got three kids in my home, so I get it, but then if that’s kind of a common theme, um, they’re really not fine. They may look fine, but some they’re telling you something. Um, so in my yoga teacher training, we’re talking about, you know, more than just the physical body like the the subtle body. And in this, I think our children have so much more connection to because their prefrontal cortex is not developed. So they are listening to the best of their ability to that subtle body into those senses much more than we as adults do, because guess what we override that with brain power. And so if there’s a book by David Eagle, Then called a incognito. And it’s not about pediatrics or children at all. But if it’s about the rival parties in our brain, that prefrontal cortex is where we house our conscious awareness. And do you know how much of our total brain capacity is given to that conscious awareness, if we had a percentage give a percentage of it 20% only 20% of our brain power is going to the area of our brain, that is for conscious awareness. Wow. So what the heck is going on in our brain, all that subconscious stuff. Guess where those reflexes that help us drive sensory awareness are housed in the subconscious. So as our children are developing, predominantly zero to three, because this is when those primary reflexes are developing and integrating, but then all the way through 10, as we are heavily reliant on our sensory input for information our child is going to be so children are going to be so much more connected to their sensory beings than we currently are as adults, unless we start to use some mindfulness and some awareness. Otherwise, we’re going to try to override all that and say, we just got to get it done. We just got to go do it. And then we wonder why we’re so stressed out, because all of the cues that our body was giving us, we weren’t listening to. Yeah. So as adults, we have to do a real check. because like you said, Our children are telling us what they need. But we’re saying no, you don’t, you’re fine. Happy, let’s go, we’ve got things to do. And and we do, we do have things to do. And we do have schedule, which is why a schedule is important. Because if we have this randomness in our life, I feel very disjointed. And this is what is going on now with this Menagerie have been school out of school, no school, no works. rasca daycare is like we are in a blender all of the time. No wonder why we’re seeing an uptick in sensory challenges. No wonder why we are seeing a regression of sleep, why our children are going zero to 60 in a heartbeat where they didn’t used to do that before what’s going on. We are all feeling this. Now. The thing is that children who have autism have been showing us for years, now we are all in that space of dysregulation. So again, if if, if you’re not okay with how you’re feeling right now, as an adult in this COVID crisis, this is how a child with some sensory differences feels all of the time.
Yeah. And they don’t have the words or the cognitive ability to make it different for themselves other than looking for their own coping strategy. So I guess what I’m saying is to show some kindness and to show some kindness yourselves and absolutely, you are doing the best thing that you can do today with the knowledge you have 100% all of your listeners out there, just by listening to this podcast and wanting to hear something different, or find some other thing to think about. Thank you for listening. And by no means am I saying you should be doing it this way or that way. There are no shoulds there is no judgment. But if what is what you’re doing with your family, or your child right now is not working. Let’s sit back and and look at these options. And really have an open mind about one your own sensory system and how are you staying calm and alert? And then to how do we keep our children calm and alert? Not happy? But how do we keep them in calm and alert to be able to be paying attention to these subtle signs of dysregulation. And we can use things like weighted blankets, vibration, supplements, nutrition. Yes, we use those things as tools to help us stay in calm and alert. Because any one of those 10 senses can throw us over the edge. Yeah, and the more we can stay in this regulated state, then when we are faced with a challenge, we’re easier to pull back. That’s what mindfulness meditation can do for us. And it drew it does increases the size of our hippocampus increases the connections helps shrink shrink our activity in the amygdala. So we’re not going to that automatic fight or flight so much. As soon as I started meditating. I noticed that I was not as reactionary to somebody serving in front of me. I didn’t work on that. individual skill of being calm in the moment. It just happened. Because my nervous system was calmer.
Yeah, I think that’s that’s an important, certainly an important
cause and
effect. You know, like I see it in my own house. we meditate every night and I feel better. My son was running through the yard the other day, and he was upset because I wouldn’t let him play kickball, but it was bedtime. And I’m you know, but even outside for five hours, like, I’m sorry, but it’s bedtime, you know? And he was running across the front yard going to use my breath. Just take this take a breath. So it’s like it’s he’s starting to understand that he has the ability to calm himself without melting down by just using his breath, you know, and he’s six. And so it’s fascinating that your breath can do that you know, and can heal can heal you in that capacity, which I think is
again, in our yoga training, they talk about you know, prana is this lifeforce energy, what changes you to a cadaver this energy? Well, what is it energy, we don’t really know exactly what it is, but it can be manipulated with our breath. So we can use breathe, breathing practices as a way to harness and direct this energy for us for positivity to call. Yes, breathing is essential. If we can’t breathe, nothing else matters,
you know,
a good tool to have as like that first step towards Okay, if you’re going to start somewhere, you know, start there with your children. And what I would like to do is I feel like I could talk to you, Christine forever, is have you take a few minutes to tell folks like where can they find you? Where can they learn more, if they’re interested in understanding the work you do. I know you do some stuff through telemedicine as well, you know, talk a little bit about your practice and where folks can go out and and kind of reach out and connect with you as well, because this has been hugely beneficial for me. And for our listeners, I’m sure of it. So I would love the chance for you to kind of chat a bit more about that as well. Sure. So
I’m in the process of developing a, like a self study, massage program touches so important for regulating our sensory system, it’s the first sense of touch and proprioception is fully developed at birth, our skin is our largest organ. So let’s use it to our advantage. And for especially for children who are a little bit adverse to touch, I really want to support those parents with an online learning module. So you can reach me at sweet pea pediatric wellness online. And I do do private consults with the parent, like educating the parent to help with the child. So my online concerts are not directly with the child, unless you live in the state of Colorado. Um, but I also do, I would be happy to do some online yoga activities, or bringing in that kind of nutrition piece, yoga, meditation, mindfulness in the realm of movement for you or your child, because again, if we can’t be in a common alert state, we’re not helping our kids. And I think, again, I really want to encourage parents to have that self reflection to be like, Are you okay with what’s happening right now inside your own body, if you’re not find some support from other friends, from your church from find support and connection, because that is our unique capacity as human beings is that connectivity, that I feel like right now, in COVID, especially, that is our first that were broken apart from. And so please, please, please reach out and get some, even just someone to listen to you, you don’t have to be given the answers, but we just need to get that fear or doubt or concern out of our brains and out into space. And then we can start that’s where that healing begins and building connections and, and that that would be my biggest takeaway for your families here is, is reach out and connect, especially in a time when we’re told not to. And that is really detrimental to our psyche, as human beings.
Well, I appreciate it. And I am certainly going to put all of your information as well. In the notes for those of you listening, you’ll be able to find everything to reach Christine, I so appreciate you coming on today Christina and and chatting through this. I think it was very educational for me. But I think more so obviously for the listeners, just around like being in tune with your senses and and making sure that you’re listening to your body listening to their body and doing your best to support our children in this crazy time. And I’m certainly going to follow up because I would love to stay connected and continue these conversations. So I appreciate it. And I’ll share everything over when I have it ready to go. And I thank you so much for jumping on and I look forward to continuing these conversations in the future. Likewise, thank you, Courtney. Awesome. All right. Take care. Thanks so much. Bye. Alright, bye bye. Hold on one more thing before you go. As a valued listener of the kids sleep show, I want to help you build a great sleeper not just in the times you’re listening to the show, but all day every day. Every week of the year. I have a new Facebook group called slumber Made Simple. It’s a place to gather with other parents looking for sleep support,
laughs and the latest in sleep research, to build a family that is rested and at their best
day in and day
out. If you want to be part of the community where you can get free sleep support, weekly training sessions, unbelievable fun tips and so much more. Head on over to tiny transitions.com forward slash community. That’s tiny transitions.com forward slash community or head over to Facebook and search lumber Made Simple. drop me a note and let me know when you join. I can’t wait to see you there.