The Words That Shape Your Child - Cara Tyrell

0:00Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hi, it's Hunter Clarke-Fields, author of Raising Good Humans. If you've ever thought, I wish I could help other parents the way I've been helped, this is for you. The Mindful Parenting Teacher Certification Program is now open for enrollment. You'll deepen your mindfulness, learn to lead powerful parenting groups, and join a supportive, heart-centered community. Are you ready to make a difference? I only take a very limited number of people into this program, so apply now. Visit mindfulparentingcourse.com slash teach. You're listening to the Mindful Mama podcast. Today we're talking about the words that shape your child with Cara Turrell.

0:39Hunter Clarke-Fields:Welcome to the Mindful Mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have, and when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clark-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting course and teacher training, and I'm the author of the international bestseller, Raising Good Humans, Raising Good Humans Every Day, and the Raising Good Humans Guided Journal.

1:18Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hi, and welcome back to the Mindful Mama podcast. I am so glad you are here. And if you like the podcast, please do share it with a friend. And I know you're going to want to share today's because we are talking to Cara Terrell, a linguist and early childhood educator. She helps parents use mindful, intentional language to support regulation, connection, and confidence in young children. And this episode is for you if you've ever wondered whether you are saying the right things to shape your kids' identity and to give them confidence and all of those things. Yeah, we're going to talk about how to say what matters.

2:03Hunter Clarke-Fields:It's really important. Really good stuff. I know you're going to get so much out of this episode. So join me at the table as I talk to Cara Terrell.

2:18Hunter Clarke-Fields:Welcome back to the Mindful Mama podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you so much for having me, Hunter. It is good to be back. Yay. All right. So, so many parents, they hear, talk to your baby, and they immediately start to worry that they're doing it wrong. They're not doing it enough, right? So what do we need to understand about communication with little ones that we don't understand? Well, first of all, you just nailed it, right? The word communication is very different than the word language. They are not the same thing. And so for all of you out there with little people, I want you to understand that who you are and how you communicate is exactly right.

3:05For the extroverts like me who are big and chatty and like super talkers, that's what your kiddo needs to hear. That's awesome. For people who are a little more reserved, you weigh your words, you speak a little less, that's okay too. Language development and directed language are different things. So while you have an infant, a tiny human, a pre-lorable, just learning how to toddle around kiddo, all they really are doing is using how you talk and what you say to build the linguistic center of their brain. You're building their dictionary. You're building their lexicon. They start to understand what sentences sound like, the timbre of your voice.

3:54So please don't overstress it. Just talk. to them and use words like you would use them with other people around you. So talk to them in full sentences.

4:07Hunter Clarke-Fields:Well, I love that. That's like a relief to hear. And it's so interesting, actually. I know this is not your expertise is like the linguistic sounds and things like that, but that's so fascinating how in different languages, people develop different sounds and they just, they can sound like the language, even though the babies can sound like the language, even though they're not saying the language, and that all the sounds and the cadences and, you know, those matter more. And I just learned that English has more vowel sounds than many other languages. I don't know. It's just so interesting. And the way we pick that up as babies.

4:48Hunter Clarke-Fields:So, okay. So, we're not doing it wrong. No. We don't have to do it more. Okay. We just have to talk to our base and talk to them kind of like they're adults, you're saying? Like talk to them like in complete sentences? Yeah. So I recently had the privilege of working with a preemie. So she was just this teeny tiny little human at three and a half pounds at the time. And she was crying because she didn't like her diaper changed. And I was speaking to her like I would have spoken to a two and a half year old. this does not feel good to you you are not a fan of diaper changes you don't like the way it feels on your body when the air touches your skin i was singing it because i wanted her to feel my energy and be soothed so i used calm vocal tones and you could just see i have a video of it like her body immediately started to stop spasming as much and calm right down.

5:51So when you use vocal tone, when you use melody, and you add that real concrete permission-based language, no matter what age they are, they're going to respond.

6:02Hunter Clarke-Fields:You said permission-based languages, but it sounds like what you're modeling was like reflective listening. Even though she can't speak, you're saying, oh, you don't like this. Like I see you and I hear you. I can see what's going on. Is that what you mean by permission-based language? Absolutely. So I keep telling people I want a t-shirt. I better just go make the dang thing myself because I really want it. And I would like it to have a big picture of a toddler on it and say permission to feel granted. because all of our language ultimately begins with the connection part in relationship. And when we're in a relationship with someone, we want to feel permission to be allowed to be who we are in that moment and experience what we're experiencing.

6:54So it's the same with our little people, except that they're usually expressing their frustration, discomfort, overwhelm in a way that makes us subconsciously not really want to come out with permission-based empathy-based narrative-based statements.

7:15Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah, we want it to stop. Yes. We're just like, I'm feeling uncomfortable because you're upset and we want it to stop. So yeah, so you're saying it's kind of counterintuitive? Yeah, it really, well, it is very counterintuitive for us. But in the book, I talk about the states of being, both mentally and physically. I put them on like a speedometer, right? A state-o-meter. And when kids are panicking, when they are melting down, when they are tantruming, and their brain is literally just flooded with cortisol in that moment, it is intrinsically seeking two things. Am I safe? Am I loved? And so if we can speak to it by literally saying those words, you are safe.

8:06I love you. It gives them permission to continue expressing that big emotion, but it ultimately reconnects us faster. And as soon as that reconnection can happen, then we are able to speak to them in those longer, more complete sentences, and we can process it on the other side. But we just need to give them permission to feel.

8:33Hunter Clarke-Fields:And I think the paradoxical thing about that is that as soon as they feel this permission to feel this acceptance, a large number of the situations will help kids calm down because they're like, oh, it's, you know, there's not, there's not so much, I'm not feeling this sort of resistance and, and challenge. And I think if we said words like that, even if, so even if I've had a bad night's sleep, and I'm kind of resenting the fact that I'm in this situation, and I'm just like, what have I gotten myself into? And here I am with this child again, after, you know, X number of weeks and months with this child again and and those are all things i can't say out loud i don't even want to admit to myself but i'm feeling this resentment and then i get in a situation where i have this fussy baby and if i say the words you just said like you are safe it's okay for you to feel these things like we're almost saying it to ourselves too and it's like we can we can it to say like Like you are safe.

9:46Hunter Clarke-Fields:It really just kind of really puts you back in touch with what's most important and what your higher intention is for this being, right, in your arms, right? And, you know, what's really amazing about all this, Hunter, because, you know, in the book, like, I'm a linguistic nerd, right? I pull language apart and I come up with its root meaning and we put it all back together so that we're meaning what we say. And you, the pronoun you, is processed in the linguistic center of the brain as I. So it's kind of this cool double whammy when you are in a moment. So when I say you are safe, you feel internally and hear I am safe.

10:44Okay. Now, in the moment where you are not actually able to be the invert energy, because the energy enters the conversation before you do. We explore that in the talking triangle. Their energy is through the roof. They are frustrated. They're overwhelmed. They're melting, whatever it might be. There are moments that you can come in and be the invert to their energy, the yin to their yang. and draw them back to their natural state of being, which is peace, joy, calm. But there are moments where you are going to be right up there.

11:20Hunter Clarke-Fields:Hallelujah for those moments. Right? Yeah, we're all like, yes, praise me. I was able to actually be the calm. Okay. But in the more everyday moments where we're meeting them up there in that frenetic energy, except. And usually in that moment, we're trying to like fake the calm. Right. We're trying to be like, right. We're gritting our teeth and we're just like, you're okay. And they are superhero language sleuths, your little ones, right? You're gritting through it. Like my teenager does this all the time. I am fine. I am fine. It is fine. It is fine. It is all going to be fine, right? But what do we know she's really feeling within that, behind it?

12:07It comes through the gritted teeth. It comes through the facial expressions. It comes through that angsty energy. She's not even close to fine. And just saying it isn't enough. So when we come there and we're able to remember we have this back pocket sentence just for this moment. You, even if we have to like, you know that when you write it out in sentences and there's like a period after every word of the sentence. You. If it's that moment and we're like, you are safe. We've said it to ourselves because our brain turns the you into the I. So now we've got two human beings that are having an emotional moment who have both been semi-soothed by this statement.

13:06And it gives us a place to start.

13:13Hunter Clarke-Fields:Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.

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13:39Hunter Clarke-Fields:Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. I love that. And this is like a lot of your book. You talk about the idea of quality and intention over quantity of speaking. I think that a lot of us got confused by, I don't know, research back then. And we just would talk too much maybe to our children. they could start to tune us out. Like we want to just give them a barrage of vocabulary and words. But that's not what we need to do. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because we equate that all the time with the teacher from Charlie Brown, right?

14:22Like the more we say, the more we say, the more we explain, the more we over explain. And it comes from a place of really wanting to be inclusive and give our kids the opportunity to be part of all of it. But here's the thing about the pre-verbal, not talking yet, developing brain, is that it is working incredibly hard with limited resources that it's developed yet to process everything you're saying. Think about an operating system in a computer. And it's been well-programmed. It has like all the files and the files have files. There's all the information for it to go grab from. And in a millisecond, it can sort through all that and find you an answer.

15:15That's us. We're the adults that have 40 or in my case, nearly 50 years of lived experience and cause and effect outcomes. And if you hit me with something, my brain knows what to do. It knows what language to go look for. It knows what outcomes I would like. It knows how to respond to you. Theirs is just starting to build. And you are the architect. You're the builder. So if you give them three consecutive directions in a row, or if you hit them with a question followed by a whole bunch of confusion about why they made that decision, it's really hard for them to process. They don't have enough information.

16:05So really what we want to do is keep our sentences very short. Then give them time to process what we just said. So what you were referring to a minute ago, and I just, I love this so much, is that And silence, intentional moments of silence, are actually a language strategy. Tell me more. Ooh, that's one of the ones from the book. Well done. Tell me more. In silence is where brains search. it's why we talk with older kids about boredom being essential right that the creation begins within a brain as opposed to always consuming so if we sit if we're sitting with a kiddo and let's say this is like a cool moment a fun moment a play-based moment right and we're on the floor and they've got their toys and we're stacking some blocks.

17:16Instead of talking through the entire thing, simply being next to them, moving our hands, playing with, playing next to, making eye contact, smiling. Not being on our phone. Not being on our phone. No, this is engaged, watched silent play. There's a viral video of a mom who's eating her lunch. I don't know if you've seen it. And her toddler is like, her baby is sitting next to her. And the two of them do nonverbal language play for like 90 seconds. And it is so gorgeous. They make eye contact. They smile, they look away. One raises an eyebrow. One opens her mouth big like a surprise. There's shrugging of shoulders.

18:10It's like a full conversation, but there's no words. The power of relationship building, which is the primary function of language, is so powerful that sometimes we don't need words.

18:26Hunter Clarke-Fields:yeah yeah we don't need words i'm i love that and i kind of what i'm taking from what you're saying too is that sometimes i imagine i mean i feel like one of the biggest mistakes we make with like the first years of life first second year of life is that we and even and after is that we feel like we have to kind of be constantly entertaining or stimulating in this case when we think about babies, we think we need to stimulate them all the time. And I'm imagining if we feel like we have to talk at them all the time, that could kind of be overstimulating, right? Because they're just taking it all in.

19:08Hunter Clarke-Fields:It's a lot to take in. They're really just working hard to develop these little brains. Am I right? Oh, absolutely. In fact, when you study the research and you watch the video playbacks, which was definitely part of my favorite doing all this, the calmer, more self-regulated, self-aware, self-directed, confident kids that we watched evolve over time were the ones who had very connected relational caregivers, but they were given lots of space to engage with their environment independently. Yeah, so they could explore, they had silence, they had space, they didn't have necessarily things kind of moving quickly in their faces or even, you know, things like videos moving quickly, quick movement videos and things like that.

20:12So if we're looking to have kids who can have some calm, they got to start from the beginning maybe with some calm.

20:21Hunter Clarke-Fields:That's maybe if you are at the beginning with your kid, that might be a good idea. Yeah. Well, and the other piece is, so I see this a lot when I go out in public. And it's really cool sometimes at museums, right, where there's all this stuff. There's all these toys that these kids can go play with. and it's this big open space, if you have a connected, safe relationship, right? If the relatability between you and the toddler is always speaking to them without words, they just know it. I am safe. I am loved. Then it unlocks their ability to feel safe enough to go explore. And that's what we're looking for.

21:08We want to be raising little explorers because the love of learning and the ability to learn how we learn is a key to the long-term success in life. So what I see a lot is that parents are constantly inputting, like you're talking about, because they want to give their kids a solid start, right? But the way that they measure that success is, can this child show me that they've mastered it? And unfortunately, that is a long, long game. So measuring a child's success by can they name that color for you is a limited and repeatable measure. If you can shift your mindset to, I'm raising successful kids when I know that they can separate from me, join that little group of people at the library who they've never interacted with before, look back and check in, make sure I'm still there, come back when they need a quick hit of a hug and some comfort, invite me to come over with them, introduce me to someone new.

22:24That is the sign that you are raising a strong kid who has these characteristics and these values they're building within themselves. They will be intrinsically motivated to want to seek out new people and seek learning opportunities. You know you're winning. Yeah.

22:44Hunter Clarke-Fields:Yeah. It's not about whether they can name their colors. It's like, if they can feel secure and confident enough to explore the world, they are learning to learn, which is so cool. Yeah, that's absolutely what we want. So can you share an example, though, kind of in the opposite direction about how everyday words can undermine a child's sense of self? Like, are there things we're saying that we're not even conscious of that we don't even realize that could undermine that sense of self. Oh, so, so, so many things that we're saying. So I love this question because I want to be very clear with all of you out there that your words have weight and they don't just build a brain.

23:32They build your child's little spirit and they build their identity and their belief system. So out in the world, I see, I hear actually a lot of this. A child starts to get a little loud for the public space. And immediately the adult says, shh, and they shush them. And then they say to them, you are being too loud. Okay. So at its core, they're really just reflecting what they're seeing and hearing. But remember those pronouns and how valuable and essential they are to our identity. When we tell a child that they're being loud or you are loud, they turn that into, I am a loud person. You are bothering the table next to us.

24:31You need to quiet down. They turn that into, I am a bother. So they take our reflective language about the sensory environment and they turn it into an identity-building sentence. And so we have to be really, really careful about the way we point out to them. Okay, so let me give you an example from my real life recently. Okay, so my goddaughter and I went out to lunch after church and it was Easter. And so church had been a little bit long, and we had to wait a little while for our food. And she's two and a half, okay? And she was doing great. And then all of a sudden, she wasn't. And her voice got very loud.

25:21She started yelling, but not real words, just kind of like, well, she just couldn't hold it together anymore. And I took a deep breath, because I always start there. and I started with a wow statement. And I do this intentionally. I start with, in the book, I talk about the different sentences, the sentence structures in the English language and how if we start with an exclamatory sentence, it gives us like a pattern interrupt and also space and time to think about what we want to say next. I like this. So I was like, wow, your voice, is really loud. Notice the difference between you are loud, your voice is really loud.

26:15Hunter Clarke-Fields:It's a nonjudgmental description rather than assessment of her character or who she is, identity. Yes, it is that. And the linguist in me says her voice is the subject of the sentence, not her okay your voice is really loud and it's like that she just kept going and kept going so i repeated myself except that second time i did it i had my head really close to her face and her ear and her chin and i and i came down in the way like my voice timbre came down with it almost like music. I went, your voice is really loud. Like right in her ear. And her voice came down. And I said, show me softer. And it came down softer.

27:13Now, she was not okay though. Like I could tell she was reaching the end of her limit. Because when I got her voice to come down, her body lost control yeah she had been holding it together and now she just couldn't anymore so now we have like flailing arms and flailing legs going against the booth and goodness we were in the corner and so continuing with my soft voice continue i i you know grabbed her body and a beautiful little hug on my, and so it's her back to my chest and her head's flopping. And then I said, wow, your body is not in control. Your body is not in control because you are so hungry.