The Stress Nanny with Lindsay Miller
Mindfulness and stress management for families raising kids with big goals, big feelings, and everything in between.
Hosted by mindfulness coach Lindsay Miller, The Stress Nanny is full of practical strategies for calming anxious kids, supporting high-achievers, and teaching emotional regulation in everyday moments. Each episode offers easy-to-use mindfulness practices, stress management tips, and confidence-building tools that empower kids (and parents!) to navigate challenges with ease. Whether you’re raising a child who struggles with big feelings, a high-performing student-athlete, or simply want a calmer home, The Stress Nanny will give you the resources and encouragement you need.
The Stress Nanny with Lindsay Miller
Ep 190 Why Your Family Communication Style Creates Stress (And How To Fix It)
Ever wish your teen would text more than “k,” while your paragraphs go unread? We dive into a simple framework that makes family communication clearer and calmer: six modes—sending, talking, meaning-making, tacit knowing, signaling, and advocacy—and how to switch between them without adding more stress. Our guest, Craig Matson, professor of communication and author of Digital Overwhelm, brings research from modern workplaces into everyday parenting, showing how the same pressures and patterns play out at the dinner table, in the car, and over text.
We unpack what each mode looks like at home: when to broadcast logistics, when to go one-on-one, how to explain the why behind rules, and why some skills are best learned by doing rather than explaining. We also decode the subtle stuff—tone, timing, punctuation—so your messages land the way you intend. Craig shares a memorable bookstore story where a plan fell apart and flexibility saved the day, modeling how small experiments (QR codes, short videos, quick chats) can reach different people with the right touch at the right time.
Mindfulness threads through the conversation. We talk about noticing your default mode, spotting the moment you’re “stuck,” and choosing a new approach on purpose. You’ll hear practical language shifts that create distance from big feelings, drawing on relational frame theory: “you’re having overwhelm” rather than “you are overwhelmed.” We close with simple ways to teach kids a wider range of modes—clear updates, compassionate talks, meaning checks, subtle signals, and brave advocacy—plus a reminder to lean on your village of coaches, teachers, and mentors so you don’t have to do it all yourself.
Listen for real-world examples, short scripts you can try today, and a calm path forward when life is loud. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a little more ease, and leave a quick review so more parents can find these tools.
For more on Craig's work click here.
Lindsay Miller is a distinguished kids mindfulness coach, mindfulness educator and host of The Stress Nanny Podcast. She is known for her suitcase tricks and playful laugh. When she's not cheering on her daughter or rollerblading on local trails with her husband, you can find her using her 20+ years of child development study and mindfulness certification to dream up new ways to get kids excited about deep breathing. Having been featured on numerous podcasts, platforms and publications, Lindsay’s words of wisdom are high impact and leave a lasting impression wherever she goes.
To sign up for Lindsay's "Calm & Collected" Newsletter click here.
To review the podcast click here.
Welcome to the Stress Nanny, the podcast where we take the overwhelm out of parenting and help kids and parents build calm, confidence, and connection. I'm your host, Lindsay Miller, kids' mindfulness coach and cheerleader for busy families everywhere. Each week we'll explore simple tools, uplifting stories, and practical strategies to help your child learn emotional regulation, resilience, and self-confidence, while giving you a little more peace of mind too. I'm so glad you're here. My guest today is Craig Matson. He's an organizational researcher who serves as a professor of communication at Calvin University. He's written several books and numerous essays, often exploring the communicational complexities of organizational life. When he's not writing and reading and podcasting, he's enjoying the natural world, hiking, running, and playing driveway pickleball. Craig lives with his right wife Rhoda in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and their four adult children live and study and work across the Midwest. Craig, thanks so much for joining me today. I'm looking forward to this conversation.
SPEAKER_00:Me too. I love the connection between our two projects, and I'm excited to see what overlap emerges and what I can learn too.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, and as we were talking offline before we hit record, we were exploring the different ways that like family life is complex because we rely heavily on digital tools to connect with our kids. If we've got adult kids, we are relying even more heavily on that. But if we have kids at home, you know, if we're traveling, if there are other things going on, there's changes in practice that we need to communicate, we are really utilizing a variety of modes of communication to stay connected throughout the day. Before we go deeper, Craig, can you help our audience get acquainted with the idea of a mode of communication?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I would be so happy to. So I think of a mode as an approach. We could use a couple of different words. We could talk about it as a posture. I use that in my book quite a bit. It's a posture towards something. But basically, it's a style or an approach to something. So if you're thinking about something that your adult child, like they've made a decision recently, I have four kids, they're all young adults, so I'm thinking about this a lot. If they've made a decision recently, yeah, your relationship with them, your approach to them is going to be quite a lot different than it was when they were 10. And so we're always thinking about modes and we're always having to like switch our modes, switch our approaches based on the ever-changing context of just being a person and being a parent.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Let's go even deeper into that and talk through the modes that you've come up with in your research. And again, for our listeners, we're we're translating this organizational and business research that Craig has done around communication, and we're translating it into family life. So initially, we're just going to go through what his research entails, and then we're going to make the connection into everyday family moments.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, let's do it. So as I talked with Gen Z and millennial working professionals about the intensities of the pressures of life and work in the early 2020s, they don't seem much less pressurized today, but let's just say in the early 2020s, we were feeling a lot of things. I noticed that they took six different approaches to these pressures. And I have a lens for the way I look at things because I study communication. I noticed that they often used communication as a way to approach just surviving and coping and dealing with all those pressures. So what are those modes or those ways of coping? The first was some people really like to send things. So if you have a lot of stuff coming at you and you're feeling a lot of pressure, maybe you should write a 950-word email and send it out, right? So that I'm making fun of, but a lot of people do use the mode of sending stuff as a way to deal with it. You do, apparently.
SPEAKER_01:I have like I'm the soccer team manager for my daughter's soccer team, and some of those emails I send, they are anyway. Yep, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00:I do not know how you could be a soccer team coordinator without sending a lot of stuff. So that's something we've got to explore further, Lindsay. But yeah, so another mode would be we need to talk. So let's have a face-to-face or screen-to-screen conversation, but it needs to be more or less a one-on-one. Like, let's get into this, you and me, let's figure this out. And so that might be with a manager in my research participants' case, or it might be with a coworker. But for us as parents, it might be like, I don't know what to do with, you know, my kid right now. I guess we need to take a walk and we need to talk this thing out, or take a drive and have some windshield time. A third mode would be meaning. So, meaning things is what I called it. And this is a little bit of a meta idea, but it has to do with like, what's the point? Why, why are we doing this? What's the purpose here? What are our goals? And what is the meaningfulness or lack of meaningfulness in this particular kind of work? I did have research participants who very this sort of surprised me, you know, despite all the pressures and intensities, or maybe because of them, they would sort of pull back and say, Yeah, why why am I doing this? It also happened to be in the middle of the great resignation when a lot of people were asking those very questions. I didn't notice that at first, but gradually it really came through. But I think as parents, too, sometimes we set up a rule, like, okay, no screens at the table, which sounds like a great rule, by the way, or, you know, no snacks in the back of the minivan or whatever. And at a certain point, your kids mature into the question of why is that a rule and how does that make sense? And so, in that, that's a good mode. It can be a little hard when you're the parent, but it's a good mode, and it helps you to sort of step back and ask some vital questions about, yeah, like what is happening here and what's all this about. All right, you still still good here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm loving this. Yeah, these are great examples.
SPEAKER_00:All right, cool. So the fourth mode would be this is this maybe the strangest one, but it's when you don't say anything. I just called it the uh the tacit mode, the unspoken mode. And this is when you know things, maybe as a professional or maybe as a parent, and you're not exactly sure how to talk about it, but you just know it's the case. Sometimes I noticed that people would retreat to that mode when the pressure became intense. They're like, I know this is true, or I know this is how you do this, or I know this is what's best in this situation, even if I can't defend it or I can't explain it. And I think this mode is super important as a parent, too. I mean, just down to simple things like how to ride a bike. Like, it is really hard to explain to a kid how to ride a bike. You just have to kind of do it and run along beside him and say, oh, pedal a little faster and that'll help. So that's like stuff you can't talk about exactly. You just have to kind of know it and do it. And then the fifth mode could be called signaling things. And this is sort of a less is more mode approach to stress. I saw a lot of people doing this where you don't say outright what's frustrating you, you kind of indicate it, you you signal it. So in the lives of working professionals, this might be something like quiet quitting, where you're sort of letting your boss know that you're not happy or you're not totally invested, but you're also not like sending them an email and saying that. And you know, kids, of course, have lots of ways of signaling this. And some of those come through in our digital interactions with our children, hence all the kerfluffles about punctuation, like, dad, don't use periods like that. That is you're yelling at me or something like that. So I'm like, oh, that's signaling something I wasn't intending to signal. And then the last mode, phew, we're finally there, is advocacy. So this is when you're trying to convince somebody of something or persuade them. Sometimes it's yourself that you're trying to persuade, but that's a super important mode in the workplace. And I think as far as parenting goes, I'll something I wish I had done better as a parent would be to be a little bit more intentional about helping my children to be advocates for something that they care about, might be just advocating for themselves. So those are the approaches and the postures that I noticed among people. And I'm super interested to hear what's resonating with you or where we should go next.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, I love that. Thank you for going through each of those. You know, as I'm sit listening, I'm thinking of it both from like a standpoint of family communication, like parent to child, but then also the effectual skills kids need in order to make their way in the world and having these be things we teach our children. So, like having the relational skill set that entails all of these, but then also being able to communicate about it in a way that allows our kids to cultivate this full range of modes of communication.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because one of the things you said that really struck me was the idea that like communication is a small but shareable zone of action where we have important choices to make. Am I quoting that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so in that way, like parenting is full of those, right? A small but shareable zone of action where we have important choices to make. And being able to switch, you know, around from all of these different modes and utilize them effectively or as effectively as we can, right? We're one of the things I love is that you're like, we're not gonna get it right most of the time. And also we're all overwhelmed. So, like we're just starting the baseline, that's a starting place. You've got it. But one of the things that like I'm curious about from your perspective as both a parent and a professional is like you talk a lot about how like knowing your default mode is important, right? So, how as we're kind of going through all of these, what are some of the signals like that a parent might be able to tune into if they're looking at parent-child conversation or parent-child interaction, what would they maybe use as bearings to figure out where their default is?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Oh, that's superb. Okay, so let me try this out with you and see if this works. So pay attention to what makes you mad. I think that might be a signal of a mode you care about, or that maybe you're a little stuck in. So I can give an example, and this time I'll start with the parenting rather than the professional situations. So I remember when our kids were young and things were chaotic at dinner. I never thought our son would ever sit in a chair. I just thought he was going to stand on his chair until late adulthood. It was very chaotic, and I would come out of the classroom where I had been teaching or whatever. My wife was coming from her job and we had things we wanted to talk about. We would usually set a time limit where we'd say, okay, mom and dad want to talk right now for about five minutes. Okay, so if you all just eat your food and we'll talk. But that just didn't work very often. It was a lovely idea that just wasn't really executable. And so I usually got pretty frustrated with this. I can still remember that sense of like, ugh, I have something I really want to say. And I can't say it right now because four other people are talking. And this feels like an important thing. And I was probably exaggerating how important it was, but it felt important in the moment, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And but the way I knew I was stuck, only in retrospect, but the way I know I was stuck was that I could not change my mode. It had to be a one-on-one conversation with my partner, or it wasn't gonna be. And that that was dumb, right? Like if I had been able to open up the mode and say, well, let's try this out and let's, you know, sort of fold into what other people are talking about or what other people experienced that day, wow, that would have been a lot happier dinner table. And we probably would have laughed a lot more. We did have some dinners like that. But so that's one example where I just knew or I just know I was stuck because it I felt squeezed in the moment. I felt mad or frustrated. And I was just being sort of inflexible.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's such a great example. Thank you for sharing that. And we're gonna get into the flexibility piece in just a minute because I love that about your work. One of the things as you were talking that was coming to mind for me was just like I am probably, I mean, in my soccer mom, when I'm wearing my soccer mom hat, I'm definitely the sending mode, right? But at home, I think I'm probably more of an advocacy person where I'm like trying to convince my child of my way of seeing things or why taking into account a different perspective on this could be supportive or those kind of things. And so I think that in moments when, you know, as we're texting a lot now that she's like a teenager, so a lot of our communication throughout the day, whether she's at school or at a practice or something, she's texting. And it's those are very short, right? Generally. And just to your point about the periods, I'm making a full sentence about stuff. And you know, I'm getting back a yeah, and I'm like, you know, it's kind of casual for me, but for her, it's a very strong positive response, right? Like she's, you know, she's really it's landing for her. So what you just suggested makes a lot of sense to me because I find that if I'm not feeling understood, or I don't feel like she fully grasped what I just communicated in a potentially very long text, uh, which is another one of my things I'm working on. But if I just get a short response from her, I'm not sure she's understood the full, you know, or like she's convinced of my perspective, or that I've advocated for this point of view in an effective way. So that's a good invitation for me to shift into a more, you know, like maybe she's like it's more tacit for her. Like there's some unspoken things and she's just like acknowledging, but not gonna write three sentences in a text about it, you know?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Yeah, I this these stories get all crowded together because we're having these kind of exchanges, it seems like in an accelerated fashion, we're just having more and more of these kinds of exchanges. We have them with work colleagues, we have them with children, we have them with spouses. When I first moved to Grand Rapids, where I teach now at Kelvin University, I had to come alone because we didn't yet have a house. And so I lived in somebody's apartment for a few months, and my spouse and I communicated almost solely electronically. And it it was it was pretty difficult for me. And I think a lot of it came down to what you just named, which is a sort of felt disparity in the investment in a particular mode of communication. So my wife hates to text and finds it just like an activity she does as briefly as possible. And I, like you, it sounds like, tend to be a little more verbose in my texting. So that was something we had to work through because that her sort of brief responses would signal one thing to me, which wasn't at all what she was thinking and feeling. And my long texts, I don't know if they were well received either, at least not in the sense that that I felt. So I feel like we're navigating this in six different ways from Sunday with colleagues, coworkers, clients, and with parents and children and spouses. And so, yeah, it's a whole thing. Flexibility super helps. Helps a lot.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Well, and maybe signaling, maybe that was the one I should have said was it like hers is signaling. So I love that you brought that in. Let's go to flexibility because I think one of the things that I am, I really like the way that you you talk about mode switching, right? Like being able to be agile within these. So I might have a primary preferred mode. One of the things you advocate for is like think about the mode of the person that you're talking to, as you just illustrated with the story with your wife, right? Like your mode is this and her mode is this. And so if your primary or default mode is not creating the communication that's supporting forward movement, then like how can there be some flexibility? How can we put some flexibility into the mix to make it a little more supportive of connection? So, what are some of the key things that you encourage people to do when they are choosing to get creative or choosing to stretch? And feel free to share that story about the bookstore that you've shared before because I think that's such a great example.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'll take your prompt then. I think before I tell that quick story, I I think your question is a challenging one because I know when I need to switch modes. I feel it. I'm stuck. But how do we actually do that is a thing that we're gonna need to explore just a little bit more. And I think that's where this kind of conversation begins to shade into a kind of therapeutic exchange, because I think how people figure out how to loosen their grip on a particular mode or a particular approach probably varies by the person significantly. So I don't know how easy it will be for me to generalize on that. But I will tell you about a time when I realized I had to switch modes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So let me can I just insert this real quick? I think this is where mindfulness is so key, right? So I'm just gonna make a shameless plug for mindfulness at this point, where like my basic definition of mindfulness is knowing what's going on inside of you, knowing what's going on outside of you, and making a choice on purpose. So being able to be really present, right? Like you described, like if there's some discomfort and you just know it's not working, like being present with awareness, in my opinion, is what can facilitate that creativity, right? Like we see that all the time with mindfulness, where there are different pieces of a situation all kind of combining, and mindfulness is what allows us to like say, okay, all these things can fit together. I'm not sure how, but I know I'll be able to figure it out instead of saying, these don't work, right? So, anyway, let's I feel like your approach to the bookstore is very mindful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's really helpful. So I want to take that just a little bit farther. So that that plug for mindfulness feels really basic to this whole conversation. I do think in some ways, like my whole book is just like pay attention.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:There's a lot going on. And it's frustrating and it's a lot and it's overwhelming. But if you can pay attention, if you can, like you said, be aware of what's going on inside you, what's going on around you, and make deliberate choices, I think that you're right. I I feel like that is a hugely important way to cope with overwhelm. It doesn't eliminate it, it doesn't get rid of the overwhelming conditions, but it does make them livable.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, or like I don't know if even manageable, but workable. Right? Like it gives you like a little ray of hope. And and that's one of the things I really appreciate about your work too, is that like you're not saying if you do these things, you're not gonna be overwhelmed anymore, right? You're just saying you're gonna be able to work with whatever is in front of you a little, you know, with a little more skill if you use this intentional approach. And I think that that's that's another piece of the mindfulness, because with mindfulness, we have this strong practice of self-compassion, right? And so I think inserting that into this conversation and recognizing, like you said, everybody's digitally overwhelmed, everybody's just trying to figure it out. Yeah, I'm there's nothing wrong with me, I'm not broken, I'm not an awful parent because I'm like really struggling with this. I'm not an awful parent because my kid is struggling with this. This is just like a condition of being human right now. And then if we can just have that as the baseline, the creativity is easier, right? Because we remove the judgment.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Oh man, I feel like I should be taking notes here. This is really great. I could, in a certain sense, say, I'm a terrible author because in this book on digital overwhelm, I did not address artificial intelligence much at all. And it was just really starting to burst out out of the scene as I was finishing the manuscript, right? But what I'm choosing to do is to say, nobody's got AI figured out right now. And it would be presumptuous for me to say I do. Maybe there's another book, you know, five years down the road or something. But yeah, I do think that just being patient with yourself in these conditions, or you, as you said, self-compassion, that's a beautiful phrase. Showing grace to yourself and to the people around you, it's a lot. It's just a terrific lot. So just recently, I uh reached out to a bookstore like authors do and said, Hey, could I come and do a little talk? I've got some friends who'd like to hear, and I'd like to do a talk at your fine bookstore. And it happened to be a really great bookstore, Schuler Books in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I encourage you to go there. It's great. And they said, sure, and you should come on this date. And so I invited a whole bunch of people just a day or so before. I was reading the fine print a little more closely, and I realized that they were putting me at the front of the store, right by the door, and it was not at all in their cute little, they had like an auditorium at the back where you could have a gathering. And I was like, oh no, this is completely different than I had invited people to. I can't do a talk here without a megaphone. I this just feels ridiculous. So I wrote to them and said, please, please, could I use that space even for 20 minutes? It would make a huge difference. And they said that it was booked otherwise and they just couldn't do it. So I went to my marketer, Andrea, and said, Oh my god, I'm I feel really stuck here. Like I feel most comfortable doing a talk with, you know, people who are moderately attentive in, you know, 10, 15, 20 people, that would be so easy for me. It would really be energizing. I think they would enjoy it, but I can't do that here. I'm stuck at a signing table right by the door. And so all these people are going to be, all these strangers basically are going to be walking by. And she said, Yeah, that sucks. That's right. We got to do something else. And so what we worked out was essentially, what I don't think we called it this in the moment, but essentially we just varied our modes. And we came up with a water bottle sticker, we came up with a bookmark with a QR code, we recorded a short video that gave a talk and put that on the QR code. And then yeah, I recruited my advertiser daughter to help. And we stood at the door and tried to gauge people's expressions as they came through. If they were really resistant to conversation, like I might feel sometimes coming to a bookstore, I'm just aft, I'm running an errand. Please leave me alone. We would just say, Here's a water bottle sticker. If they seemed a little more interested and they wanted to say, Yeah, what's this about? Then we would say, Well, here's a bookmark. There's a QR code on it. And use the bookmark for whatever you buy in the store today, but that QR code has a video attached. And then some people wanted to talk. And for them, we would reach over, grab a book, and say, Hey, well, you know, like here's what we're here's what we're talking about here, and maybe you should check this out. And so it took a decent amount of energy in those two hours to kind of switch, figure out which mode is right, but also to just have more than one mode on hand. I wanted to do a unilateral talk, and what I found myself in was a situation where that just was not appropriate. And I'm grateful to my marketer for helping me figure this out. And it turned out to be a really fun afternoon. So that's my cheerful story.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I love again, like the flexibility of it, right? And that's what you illustrate when you share the story is like the ability to adapt, right? To the mode that the person in front of you is preferring or that you're perceiving that they're preferring. But then you're also adapting your own ability to connect, right? And I think that's where a lot of times as parents, let's maybe shift gears a little bit here to teaching our kids how to communicate effectively in multiple ways. I think that that's where, as parents, a lot of times we might see our kid really great at certain modes of communication, and then really also see opportunities for them to kind of grow their range, right? And to adopt or lean into some of these modes that aren't as familiar to them or that aren't as like just their defaults.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Oh wow. That's just bringing back so many memories of like exchanges with my children, what I could have done, what I did do, and so forth. It is fun to remember the complexities of trying to communicate in so many different ways and so rapidly in the flow of life. You know, everybody's doing so much. It seems to me, I'm gonna have to ask for your help on this, Lindsay, but it seems to me that you'll be able to discern what your kids are good at. Like some of them just will be really talky, right? Some of them want, they maybe to an exhausting extent, they want to talk and they want to have that ongoing dialogue from the moment they hit the door after school until they hit their head hits the pillow. And then others are much less willing to talk, and in different phases of life, they're less willing to talk. We certainly had external processors and internal processors in our kids. So, yeah, figuring out what that is. And then it's also seems to me that almost no child is like instinctively good at sending things, like that's something we have to like coach every single child in the world on. When you get to the party, make sure you send me a text. And when you're ready to go, make sure you say, you know. So that's that's a whole other thing, right? So yeah, what how does that sound to you? It seems to me like we can figure that out, like what they're really good at, and then offer them some alternatives.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. And I think I I like the idea of knowing there are gonna be some that we kind of just naturally train on as parents, right? We are training the send mode, you know, like you're you're suggesting from a very early age. We're pretty consistently asking for that information. And then I think too, just honoring the feedback that we're getting from them helps them fine-tune, right? Like, and maybe this is this is pulling back to like the parent-child perspective. But the other day, my daughter was feeling some tension around an upcoming regatta. She had it had been quite a while since she had a race because she just does that at school. So she just does it for several months out of the year, hadn't had a race in a while. Their last race, they had had a really great race in the preliminaries and then in the finals, it hadn't gone the way they wanted it to. So she'd sat with that race for almost a year, right? So we're talking through like all this tension she's feeling, and we've been working through it for a while and trying to see like where and what and how. And it was interesting because I was dropping her off at the airport for this race that she was going to, and again, in my advocating, I'm like, just remember, and you, you know, I'm trying to convince her to be confident in herself, basically, right? And I'm like, here are all the reasons you can, and I stopped and because she just was like, Mom, stop. Like she was almost just at at her limit of hearing me. And so she was just like, please stop. And I was like, Okay, but I also sensed in that moment like a need for something, like you're suggesting, right? Like it was just a known sense that like I needed to provide something, but I wasn't sure what it was. And so I went to humor, which is one of the things that we I can usually lighten things up in our house if I can shift into humor. I don't know which mode that goes into. But I so I started using humor, and we'll tell funny stories or make up stories about something that's in front of us. That's one of our like ways we diffuse tension. And so I just started telling a story, and immediately she lightens up. There's this woman picking up this random boarding pass off the ground. So we started just in a kind way, but making a story about why she was picking up this boarding pass and all of this. What was telling in that moment was that exactly like you described, it was clear to me from her communication and her manner that what I was trying to Do and the way I was trying to get a message through that small but shareable zone where I have important choices to make, like I was not making the right choice there, right? But then when I shifted and I was not advocating as much anymore, but I was just explaining in a different way or just lightening the moment, that's when we could connect again. And so in my mind, I think that having those types of moments with our kids allows us to then present them as learning moments, right? Like, oh, if I had that to do over, I could have just started with the humor, right? But then being able to have a meta moment with her and say, okay, you remember the other day when we were doing that and I went straight to telling you how you should be confident and that wasn't working, and then we lightened it. Like if we can have self-awareness in those moments and admit that maybe there are moments we didn't handle things as well as we could have, I feel like those are the like little nuggets we can offer our kids as we're encouraging them to broaden their range in other situations. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah. Yeah, that's great. I think what you're doing in that beautiful story is you're also creating a little bit of distance between yourself and your feelings. And that's hard to do in the moment. Like sometimes if you're feeling so your daughter is feeling overwhelmed at the approach of this race, and you're feeling the pressure to be a good mom and to be a responsible parent, there's just a lot of feelings in the car. Maybe also some frustration, some disappointments, a sense of irritation. And it's so easy in those moments to just kind of become your feelings, like this is me. But when you do that sort of meta talk, you both help yourself to create a little daylight between, okay, I'm having a feeling like this right now, but it's not me. And I think also it's kind of amazing how it can help your daughter do that as well. And that is an emotional coping tool that will serve her lifelong because we just often do have to, you know, be the mountain and let the clouds of feeling circulate us like they're there, but I am not those clouds, you know. So I think that's a gift that you can give your daughter. I'm really interested in this theory called relational frame theory. And a lot of it is focused on how to help people through sort of small verbal cues. If your daughter says something like, I am so sick of this, or I'm so overwhelmed at this, or I'm so frustrated, even a small change of phrasing, as you say you're having some feelings of overwhelm right now, like even just slightly shifting it to you're not that, but you're feeling that or you're having that, like those are small cues I think we can give that make a gradual difference.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah, just like giving some daylight to, like you said, and I love the mountain with the clouds around it. Those are all great, great metaphors. And I think we'll circle back at some point to that conversation, right? Because she goes and does the race and she did really well. And so it was a successful time for her. And also from my mom's standpoint, like I've got to help her manage this. I can't send her off in this way. But really, what she just needed was to go connect with her friends and then like go do her race, and she was gonna be fine. Yeah. So I think too, again, like you're saying, there's some aspects of it that are maybe a little easier to separate from than others. So while I appreciate the compliment, I didn't do a full separation from all of the feelings. You know what I mean? As parents, sometimes that can be so tricky. But I love the idea of yeah, of just like helping them reframe because I think that with her afterwards, as I actually heard her talking to someone else who had had a really rough race after her. So she did her, she did her races, it was great. She was talking to someone else who was in a boat and they had a really rough race.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it was just fascinating and also beautiful for me to hear her talk to that person and have kind of a full circle moment with it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so great.
SPEAKER_01:I I think that like in the conversations we have with our kids, sometimes we have to wait for the different modes to kind of percolate, at least for me as a parent. I kind of want it to be right now. Like I want her to have all the skills right now. I want to know she's got what she needs, you know. But having a little bit of space and letting a situation kind of emerge or move into its own, that allows some of those things that the seeds we plant to come to fruition later.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But then I also think it creates a scenario where if we have the distance, we can have the conversations and say, if I had done this differently, I should have shifted the way I was communicating with you. I should have been more flexible based on your needs. Or like you've said in other uh content that I've listened to of yours where you're like, hey, this is actually a face-to-face conversation instead of a text. Giving kids experience with it and then being able to refer back to that experience.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yep.
SPEAKER_01:Seems like a good way to teach.
SPEAKER_00:I very much appreciate that. I think I want to try that out actually with one of my kids. Like thinking about exchanges I've had, like how good it would be to go back and say, well, here's what I think was going on there. The other thing that really strikes me in your story is that when we're having this kind of exchange between a manager and employee, or between a parent and a child, it sometimes feels like the whole thing is just you and me, kid. But really, what you're doing in that moment has a kind of potential to be for, in the case of an employee, like the whole organizational culture. Or in the case of your family, like it has the potential to be of help to other people's families. And so I think that's another frame shift for us is to just say, yeah, right now this feels like I'm just irritated with this particular child. It's just me and her in the universe. But no, we're always involved in these larger networks of relationship. And for good and ill, but if we can have that awareness, then the way that you sort of gave space to your daughter enabled her to kind of give space or maybe just compassion to somebody else later. And that somehow tracks back to you, which is kind of amazing and wonderful.
SPEAKER_01:And her coach, too. I mean, to be sure, she relied heavily. And I think that's where you're talking about community or like realizing it's not just you. One of the things coming to mind for me is the idea of like your village, right? So, like, maybe some of these modes are not modes that are like your strong suit as a parent. Maybe like if you have a co-parent, you're you know, if you're married and you're able to like kind of tag team some of the modes, maybe that works great. But also we have these villages of people that support our kids, right? And so they can find the the different connections like out of our space. And so that pressure you're saying, just you and me in this moment, and it has to get figured out. Sometimes, if we can ease off and add a little daylight, we recognize that maybe there is a support person in place for them who has the wisdom and experience to say, hey, it's been a long time, we're not gonna make a big deal out of this, you're gonna race again, it's gonna be fine. Don't worry about it. Like, I've got confidence in you, like my confidence in her rowing. I have confidence in her, but I don't have the experience to kind of back it up. Do you know what I'm saying? But if a coach says that, you know, if like you're at church, somebody at church says that, or if you're just in a different setting and someone else can kind of like shore up your kid, I feel like noticing and helping them appreciate those modes that they're able to engage with in other places and with other people is also like a key part of it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thanks. That there's a whole social vision there. That's really great. I sometimes feel frustrated by the work of writing in a book because I feel two things at the same time. I feel like I want to address the reader in an almost intimate fashion. There's something quite intimate about reading. But then there's also this sense of like, well, it's, I don't know who that person is. I don't know what their life is like. And so I'm also addressing communities, I'm addressing neighborhoods, I'm addressing whole gaggles of people. And so I think just similarly, when we're in a parental relationship, I think recognizing that this is participating in a larger set of conversations can actually take some pressure off you. Just like, yeah, my daughter has people besides me. I'm amazing, but she's got other people. And I'm gonna trust in them a bit.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, and then just to bring it full circle, I have so much gratitude for the work that you've done in compiling these ideas and presenting this research and offering all of us this vision of how digital flexibility can support us as individuals, in families, in community. And so thank you for your work and for sharing the conversation today.
SPEAKER_00:You're most welcome. You're most welcome. I've really enjoyed this talk. It's been a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_01:Talk to people about where they can find you, how they can connect with the book.
SPEAKER_00:The shortest distance between these people and the book, I'm afraid, would be something like Amazon.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Digital Overwhelm, Craig Mats, and you'll see it right away. If you'd like, if that feels like I want a little bit of a longer journey there, I'm not sure I want to buy this book, then stop by my website. It's just called themode switch.com. And you can see some, you know, I've got a bi-weekly newsletter and I podcast with a team of people who are trying to work through some of these issues in work culture. So stop by themodeswitch.com. That might be just like a good next step. But of course, I'd be delighted if people would engage the book as thoughtfully as you have, Lindsay. These kinds of conversations are really life-giving and they sort of extend the wisdom and insight that I was hoping for. So themoat switch.com.
SPEAKER_01:Great. And you'll like guaranteed to get a few laughs. I mean, I was, yeah, out of the gate just laughing when you were talking about like how texting certain phrases is like aggressive. I was like, oh yeah, I do that.
SPEAKER_02:Lots of wisdom there.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you again, Craig. This has been lovely, and I appreciate you coming on today. Thanks for listening to The Stress Nanny. If you found today's episode helpful, be sure to share it with a friend who could use a little extra calm in their week. And if you have a minute, I'd love for you to leave a review. It helps other parents find the show and join us on this journey. For more tools and support, head over to www.thestressnanny.com. Remember, you don't have to do stress alone. Together, we can raise kids who know how to navigate life with confidence and ease. Until next time, take a deep breath and give yourselves some grace.