How Do We Talk About What's Happening in Minnesota? (with Erin Cox)

16:58Heidi Ruetten:Like whatever it is, do the things, right? Get yourself regulated and then your kiddo can co-regulate to you. So your children co-regulate to their parents, just like children in a classroom will co-regulate to a teacher. So if you are regulated and you are telling them like, these are difficult times, I'm not trying to gaslight you and say that they're not. I'm trying to say, don't see what's behind the curtain, right? I'm saying, yep, this is hard. but also I'm saying you got this I'm here for you let's do some slow deep breathing together let's take a walk and talk about our feelings let's safety plan like we were talking about before like whatever it is we're going to do those things but we're going to do it in a way that says I'm safe in here and you're safe I think you guys were talking about in a recent episode your skull palace or like you know like what's between your ears is that a safe place to be so to make it so that you are safe and your children can look at you and go, OK, I'm also safe.

17:53Heidi Ruetten:I think that's really tough to do in times of crisis, but it's non-negotiable. It has to happen.

17:58Margaret Ables:And one of the things that I think can dysregulate ourselves is the way that news or upsetting events is reflected back to us, especially in young children. So young children express themselves through play. And I've shared before that a child was murdered in our school district. when my kids were young. And it was shocking and horrifying. It was, again, so beyond, like Amy was saying, our reality is this. And then this incident happened that was so outside of what we considered like, oh, I'm ready to talk to you about being kind. I'm ready to talk to you about racism. I was not ready at all to talk about a young child being killed.

18:47Margaret Ables:It just was not in my ability field. And I think that this can feel a little bit the same. Like, I don't even know where to begin this conversation. And one of the things that the counselors who came to our school really underscored was the role of play, but that that play can often be very upsetting because the kids on the playground at school ended up playing. I am the murderer and I'm chasing you around and I'm going to try to kill you. Can you run fast enough to escape? But the kids were actually processing what was going on. They were asking incredibly upsetting questions of us, the parents, like, would you murder me?

19:32Margaret Ables:Really letting kids express what we don't want to hear or think ourselves, I think, can often be a challenge when things get this fraught. And I think that this ties back to the way that some kids are processing this, the way that they're talking. They may be saying things that feel racially charged. You know, ICE isn't going to get me. They're going to get you. I think when we try to attack these things through like things that our kids are not allowed to say, we are well-intentioned, but off course.

20:08Heidi Ruetten:I have two different kind of schools of thought on this. One is that kids don't have the ability to say, actually, you know, I'm feeling quite dysregulated due to the current reality. They won't be able to verbalize it probably at all. The way that kids communicate those things is through play, right? We have like a rule in working with children that I use in my child and adolescent class that I teach is for future counselors that all children, the way that they communicate to us is through their behavior. All their behaviors are communications to us. So we have to be on the translating end because it doesn't come as a clear-cut message.

20:46Heidi Ruetten:We have to sort of put on our detective hat and go, what is this kiddo communicating through this behavior that they're showing me? It requires us to be a little more attuned to kids, right? Which is a good thing. It's a really good thing for us to be attuned to our children. But it can't be just sort of why did you think that? That's a horrible thing to say. It's got to be like, okay, they're communicating something here. Can I get to that need? Do they have a lack of understanding? What are they trying to tell me through their behaviors? They're not just going to come out and verbalize it. They're going to show me something.

21:18Heidi Ruetten:If you have a kid that an increase in behaviors at school all of a sudden, right? Instead of just, I'm going to punish this kid. It's like, what's going on with this kiddo? They're telling us something. Can we hear their message, right? And I think that's going to be part of it. That's part one. Then the other school of thought I was thinking while you said that, Margaret, was just the idea of empathy. Like, what an amazing teachable time to work with kids in empathy, especially those kiddos that struggle with it, of saying there's children, and Inu is mentioning, you know, in Texas, we can empathize with them.

21:51Heidi Ruetten:Can we put ourselves in their shoes? Can we see that that would be a really difficult situation? And kids learn empathy. It's kind of a learned behavior. We kind of have to point it out when we see it, call attention to it, name it. It's empathy. And here's what it is. So hard for kids, right? They're intentionally the center of the universe, right? They're supposed to feel that way. But then to have them just practice in those non-threatening ways that when the big stuff comes up, that hopefully they can feel, okay, I can put myself in someone else's shoes.

22:21Erin Cox:I saw a TikTok this week. It was a guy wrote a very funny song and somebody was like, when did you get angry? And he's like, well, when Spider-Man taught me that with great power comes great responsibility. And when Harry Potter told me that you have to take care of people. And he just went through how every TV show, every book, Arthur on PBS or Bluey, like that these things have taught me a set of lessons. Everything in me is supposed to apply these lessons. It made me think about how unsettling this must be for kids who they do internalize those lessons, right? And you do see the police are our friends.

22:55Erin Cox:Now, the police are our friends, but there are people wearing uniforms that say police on them in Minnesota and doing terrible things. They're on police, right? And then the police are like, wait a minute, what am I supposed to do? And it's very unclear. It's unclear. Yes. Who's the good guy? Who's the bad guy? Who can you trust in these adults? Who can you not trust? There's this unmooring for the kids, too. How do you get at? I mean, I don't think you can sit down with your kids at night. I think it must be very confusing to be told that good guys behave this way and bad guys behave this way.

23:24Erin Cox:And now sometimes that's not true. But do you keep reading them those books? Do you keep putting those things in front of them? How do you address that?

23:31Heidi Ruetten:So that's always the human in us. We want in every story, we want like a hero and a victim and we want a villain, right? Like we kind of always want those dynamics. And when that gets messy, we're very uncertain. Down is up and up is down. For kids, it's going to be really complicated to say, you know, life is more, there's way more nuanced than, you know, the hero and the victim and the villain. There's a lot more going on. But I think that that's the idea of I'm going to go gut check. Sometimes we've got to develop this like internal system of I got to go with my gut. If something feels unsafe, if you feel like you want to call me in the middle of a sleepover, you call me.

24:13Heidi Ruetten:Develop that sense of I'm going to gut check this. Does this feel like a good idea? Does this feel like a safe person? Does this feel like a safe situation? I think I would start working on that because there rarely is it clear cut that there's a hero and a victim and a villain, right? It's not. Life is messy. Life is messy. So to develop working on that self-trust in the kiddo, not good decision-making in the kiddo, about gut-checking things, checking you on the inside, I think sometimes is a good place to start, but there's no easy answers.

24:45Margaret Ables:But I think that going back to young kids, that idea of play really helps with a lot of this. How did it feel when you said that to that kid and you saw their face? One of the things we've talked about is kids being too much on phone. So they need that in-person interaction where I say something and I see Amy's face and I get a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach because I hurt my friend with the thing I said. Kids need a lot of practice. And I think we need to step back a little bit and let them practice and make mistakes, allowing that space for them to figure out how it feels and who they want to be.

25:30Heidi Ruetten:I think that's really important. I think that if you can have a kid be able to develop a feelings vocabulary, right, to talk about feelings, to name their feelings. You know, in my field, we say, you know, name it to tame it and feel it to heal it. We got to name these feelings. So in a kid's play, if they're saying something, you might say, OK, right, let's talk about this so that you're adding a little context, context, right, to the situation. but you're right that sometimes they just need to bump into things to figure it out like isn't that how all of us learned right life is messy right we got to bump into things we've got to hurt our friends feelings to go wow that made me not feel good on the inside too what was that and then to name that feeling do i feel guilty for that do i feel sad about that like to name it i say this to the counselors i train but to all of us were these ducks on the surface and we looks it looks so nice but underneath, you know, you're a problem like hell.

26:25Heidi Ruetten:I think that's parenting. You're like, oh yeah, and just sitting here watching them play, you know, but really there's a lot going on under the surface.

26:32Margaret Ables:We're talking to Erin Cox. We'll be right back. I want to click on something that Amy talked about.

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27:47Margaret Ables:You know, every parent can relate to being out of some crucial item and facing the horrible prospect of getting all the kids into the car to the grocery store to pick up more. And it's like, how badly, Amy, do I actually really need or want that milk?

28:07Erin Cox:That's when it's time to think DoorDash, which I've always thought of as just for takeout, which takeout is also the savior of many a night for parents. But DoorDash can also save you when your kid has a school project due tomorrow that they haven't started yet and you're out of glue sticks.

28:22Margaret Ables:Ah, a familiar scenario, to say the least. Or here's another one. Toddler's got a cough and you realize you're out of Motrin. Or maybe you had a diaper blowout. Uh-oh, used the last one this morning. I mean, I'm not saying it's happened to me, Amy, but DoorDash.

28:39Erin Cox:Or maybe everybody's rushing off to their after-school activities and there's no point in making a nice sit-down dinner. So DoorDash, order a pizza, take meal prep stress out of the equation.

28:48Margaret Ables:Whatever fresh hell parenting happens to be throwing your way today, friends, DoorDash can make it just a little less hellish. And that's all we can really ask for, right?

28:59Erin Cox:Right. Real life needs real relief. That's why DoorDash is there for whatever you need, whenever you need it.

29:04Margaret Ables:Order now. Amy was talking about police are our friends. Now we see people with the word police. I was recently talking to a friend of mine who is married to a police officer about how hard this time is for them. We do not want police officers to become the bad guys for our own safety, for the safety of our children. I think for people serving in all sorts of different roles, it is also hard for those people to feel like, wait a minute, my kid is hearing at school that I'm the bad guy. Like the police are snatching children and figuring out how to have conversations where we do have to get at some of this nuance that we're now a culture of good guys and bad guys and we can identify them by what they're wearing.

29:56Erin Cox:That's what I wanted to underline is that the confusion is the point. Wearing a police thing, even though you're not the police or the National Guard going into Minnesota to try to help and having to wear crossing guard vests over their military uniform, because military uniform does not necessarily indicate somebody safe in Minneapolis right now. Quite the contrary. They had to wear crossing guard vests like we're just here for hot cocoa and to try to help somebody who needs help. The uniforms are confusing, but the confusion is the point and how to help our kids feel less confused. That's a tough one.

30:26Margaret Ables:And we've gone a lot to like look for the helpers and all the people helping and the helpers are there. But it's like, wait a minute. How do we help our kids suss out what's going on when it seemed before like, well, the good guys will always come help. Boy, I wish I could answer. Come on, Erin. Solve it for us. We need the answer right now.

30:45Heidi Ruetten:This is it. Holy buckets, right? Whoa. I think that's the million dollar question, right? What can we do to recognize, to look at all of this and see the reality of it and go, this is actually happening while informing our kids, helping them learn right from wrong, good from bad and all these lessons that we've always been trying to teach our kids in the middle of world events and who is safe and who is not. But I just think that's such a difficult question that never has an easy answer. Not to throw a whole other issue in, but just like thinking of Jeffrey Epstein and all of that that's going on, like who is they?

31:19Heidi Ruetten:I don't know. There's not a good guy and a bad guy. They're not presenting themselves as such. It's very confusing. So I think kind of developing, like we were saying earlier, that self-trusting kiddos, that gut-checking kiddos, that like I can't give you a clear-cut answer as to who is safe and who is not. I need you to sort of develop your own inner check. I need you to make good decisions. I need you to listen to your body because your body listens to you and follow that lead. But I think that in the short term, the answer is going to be maybe if you have an image of what the uniforms are looking like in your area to say, this is what I'm talking about, you know, and then maybe an image of this is what the police uniforms look like in our area.

32:03Heidi Ruetten:and this is how they will present themselves. And this is what, if you see this person, they are with the fire department. And if you see, you know, just to give like a basic, these are the uniforms in our community, like a picture guide so that they feel like, okay, well then I can visibly maybe recognize uniforms at least.

32:20Margaret Ables:And it reminds me of something that Amy has said a lot on the podcast too, to teens and stuff about phone companies. They're trying to trick you. They're trying to keep you on the phone all day. They're trying to make it so that you never turn it off. And if you can see that, you get a little bit more into the bigger picture of there are tricky people trying to trick you. And there is a way to look for those clues, not just like, who the heck knows? We're all confused about here. I think there's some ways to say to kids, like, listen, this is about trying to make us feel afraid. And the bravest thing that we can do is show up for our community without fear.

33:04Margaret Ables:I think that that gives agency to kids as opposed to just like, yeah, it's crazy out there.

33:11Erin Cox:I just watched, and I wanted to suggest this to everyone, Ken Burns' The American Revolution. It's a new, I think it's probably 12 hours of a documentary about the American Revolution, and basically everything you thought you knew is not how you knew it. really interesting. If you have kids that I would say 10 years old or older, it's really worth watching the first episode. It's available on PBS, Amazon, and Apple TV. The first episode shows the Boston Tea Party, which was citizens in nonviolent protest rising up against what they were feeling like was an overreach and oppressive government. And when they did that, I don't know, I thought it was just kind of like a fun afternoon kind of thing.

33:53Erin Cox:Well, the response from the British government was really, really retribution towards Boston in particular. They really punished them, really tried to squeeze them out during the winter, like smoke them out. And the other colonies responded to the British government surprise by siding with Massachusetts and trying to help them get through being singled out in this way. It didn't have to draw the obvious parallels. It didn't have to say, does this sound familiar? Yeah. But if you have a kid who is, Yeah, I would say like elementary age or older, watch this and let them draw those connections, if any.

34:26Erin Cox:But it really opened my eyes in a way that's somewhat reassuring that history rhymes, as Ken Burns says. And this is something that we have seen before.

34:34Heidi Ruetten:And unfortunately, maybe we will see again, right? I think that that's kind of a key piece to all of this is to sometimes zoom out and look at the big picture. You know, when I was talking with my kids about everything that's going on, we kind of landed on this two-shell past. That's where we kind of came around to in our family discussion. And that phrase became popular in America because Abraham Lincoln included it in a letter when he lost his Senate seat. He wrote in a letter, you know, about how this too shall pass. And then shortly after that, he gave this speech and then he did this, this too shall pass.

35:10Heidi Ruetten:It's not a biblical statement like we might think. It's actually, I think, from like Persia or something from long, long ago. But then Abraham Lincoln was like, yo, this too shall pass. I don't want to minimize it and I don't want to pretend like things are not happening. This is happening. We are here. This is the moment. And to know when our brain goes, it's always, because this is what we do, we extend it both directions. It's always been like this. It's always going to be like this. Nothing. We start to like pile on, right? And get to that despair point to go, okay, this too shall pass. This is a moment in time and we can build resilience and we can move through this.

35:45Heidi Ruetten:The example that we used in my family, we're talking about how COVID, we're in a different spot with COVID this year than we were in 2021, right? Things feel like this always going to be this way, but it does change as time goes on. So to understand that temporary piece or that change piece, whatever phrase that works for you can help with building that resilience. And then after we talked about this too shall pass, we were talking about the band OK Go has this crazy music videos with like things flying and paint going everywhere. The treadmill. The treadmill. And they have one of their songs, This Too Shall Pass.

36:20Heidi Ruetten:So we're like watching videos of the This Too Shall Pass music video. And then in the mental health world, you know, Stan Taktan, I think, kind of started it. But it's like, you got to set people up right again. When you have these conversations that knock them down, you got to set them up right before you send them out the door. So we were talking about these really heavy things. And then we kind of did this, okay, This Too Shall Pass. Okay, we're watching this music video. Okay, we're laughing about looking at other stuff. That was cool. How did they do that? You know, we said we set them up, right?

36:48Heidi Ruetten:And then we send them out the door.

36:49Margaret Ables:That's really smart. You don't end on, well, life is hell. You say, like, here's a path forward. Let's talk for a moment, because I think one of the things about our time, and I know we'll hear in comments on this episode, that it's political, that what we're talking about is political. We're being divisive by talking against the ICE operations in Minnesota. But I think that it is important to focus on the fact that this is affecting all children. Children are feeling frightened by what they're seeing. It's really not about who you voted for. There are lots of debates to be had around how immigration in the United States should be handled.

37:30Margaret Ables:I think what we're trying to get at is that this way of handling it is frightening children. and that has to be dealt with no matter how you feel. And polls are showing that most people are like, okay, this is getting too crazy and scary. I actually don't like it.

37:50Heidi Ruetten:We have an obligation, right, to keep our children safe. That's what we do. And so when something comes along, it makes that difficult. That's where the mom in all of us, right? I don't care what age my children are now or will be, there's still this mom in me that's going to go, okay, how do I meet this moment with that in mind? And I think that that's kind of what you're talking about. How do you meet this moment?

38:11Margaret Ables:Yeah. And keeping apart from the people who are telling us, like, if you believe this, you're totally different than these moms who believe this. And saying, like, as moms, we can look at this problem as a problem that is currently affecting children in the United States of America. And that's where we can attack it from as people trying to care for children in the United States of America.

38:35Erin Cox:And the policy is affecting kids, too. Not just the kids are watching on TV, but the kids who are being taken to Texas and sleeping on the floor for months that don't have to be there. This is a choice that we're making and it's being made in all of our names. And hard to argue it's making us safer. No.

38:52Margaret Ables:And we 100 percent, to be clear, think the policy is terrible. Right. And the consequences of the policy is our children are feeling frightened.

39:02Erin Cox:Not good. Let's stand ourselves up, though, because sometimes I think when it's like, well, we're just going to make cookies and not think about it. I think of that as like, you can't do that. You have to watch as much Twitter as possible and, you know, and dwell in the terribleness. Glow Atonmo says, micro joys is how we survive macro grief. And I thought that was kind of another version of what you were saying, Erin. Like, it's okay to dwell in this as tough and then watch the OK Go video and talk about how they did that and set ourselves up right again.

39:31Heidi Ruetten:Yeah, I think that that's the Zen saying of life is 10 ,000 joys and 10 ,000 sorrows. It's not one or the other. It's all the above and it's all the time. We've got a lot of opportunities to find joy where there is. Like the other day I was letting my dogs out and it was literally zero degrees. Like the temperature said zero. They're freezing and I'm like, you know, opening the door, letting the dogs out. And I thought I heard something and I was like, what? And I stepped a little further out and there was birdsong out in the, you know, 6 a.m., zero degrees outside in the dead of winter. And I was like, birdsong, you know?

40:09Heidi Ruetten:And I just felt so happy to have heard that and lucky to have heard that. I think that that keeps me grounded. In the book Awakening Joy, they talk about leaving a little space to let the joy in, right? Even when times are tough, especially when times are tough, can you leave a little space to let the joy in? And can you let your kids see you leaving a little space to let the joy in? And can you encourage your kids to have a little space to let the joy in? And again, they're going to be kind of co-regulating to you, right? And if they see you still practicing gratitude or still practicing joy, even in difficult times, that gives them permission to sort of do the same.

40:45Heidi Ruetten:With parenting, you know, let me give you the example of a funeral. If a kid is going to a funeral, the people will always ask, should the kids go or not? Do we take them to the funeral or do we not take them to the funeral? And the answer is always like, if you're going to be right by their side and you're going to be, you know, we call it a grief work. Like you're going to be their Sherpa up the mountain, then take him to the funeral. If you're going to be right there telling them what's happening, explaining the ritual of it, commenting on how other people are processing their grief, then bring them.

41:13Heidi Ruetten:That is really helpful for them to see. But if you're not going to be their Sherpa up the mountain, maybe this is not the funeral for them to attend. And I think that in this case, you know, even though we aren't sure what's going on, we're still their Sherpa up the mountain. We've still got to be kind of coaching them and guiding them through this. So we've got to keep ourselves healthy and regulated, and then we've got to help them up the mountain, too.

41:35Margaret Ables:And so many people in Minnesota have been that for us. Ooh, good point. People who are just like bringing food, being community. We can look to those people. And that's one thing I've emphasized a lot with my kids is that a million people throughout history have tried to pull this play, scare people to death to make them stay home. And what I see is people coming out and protecting their neighbors and taking care of their neighbors and bringing food and doctors. We really can be frightened by this, but we can also be so inspired by the humans who are coming out and saying, this is not okay. And I, like 80-year-old Lutheran lady, am out here in the zero degree freezing cold to make a difference.

42:27Margaret Ables:And that just is beyond inspiring.

42:30Heidi Ruetten:There you go.

42:31Erin Cox:We're going to put links in the show notes to many resources. where you can find out more about what's going on on the ground in Minnesota and how you might be able to help and clear links to information and facts you can trust. Erin, please tell us about your new Instagram account.

42:45Heidi Ruetten:So I started your new Instagram account just recently when all of this happened to just help people sort of every day build that resilience, keep that regulation to get through this difficult time. And so it's at loveyouwitherin. So L-O-V-E, the letter U, with W-I-T-H, Erin, E-R-I-N. So love you with Erin. Just putting something every day up, like simple thing that you can do, low to no cost. They can keep you regulated. And again, as a parent, that regulation, I promise you, kids will pick up on that. So in anything in life, I know, Margaret, you were touching on this earlier. It's the kids that pick up the tab for whatever the adults are doing.

43:26Heidi Ruetten:Kids are always the ones that pick up the tab. So let's explore. What's the tab we're leaving with these kids? And then just as far as doing the show in general, I don't know if you guys have read the book, Everything is Tuberculosis. No, that is a book. Everything is tied to tuberculosis, just PSN, by the way. John Green wrote it, and he talks about in that book at some point, him being an author, at some point, he's yelling out, Marco, Marco. And every once in a while, he'll get this reader that reads it in their polo. They answer back polo to his Marco. And I just feel like you guys addressing this today, your listeners were sending out a Marco and you sent back a polo.

44:02Heidi Ruetten:So I'm really happy to be part of it.

44:04Erin Cox:Oh, thank you. Thanks.

44:06Margaret Ables:I'm so glad we had this conversation, too. And we will link to that Instagram all of Amy's facts. Thanks so much for listening to this episode. Erin, thanks for being with us.

44:17Heidi Ruetten:You're welcome. Thank you.

44:26Thank you.