Psychologist Dr. Dan Peters on Parenting with Intention and Purpose

Dan Peters  00:00

We all come into parenting with this template that can range from, oh, I have the best childhood and I just want to provide my kids the same thing to, you know, there are things I liked. And there are some things I didn’t like. So I want to do the good things and not do the other things. Or the, Okay, I had an awful childhood, I am so angry at what happened to me or just I don’t even want to go back there. And I’m going to do the opposite. But what happens is most of us just do whatever version of what I just said, without really consciously exploring what is driving our behavior.

Debbie Reber  00:42

Welcome to the Tilt Parenting Podcast, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, informing and supporting parents raising differently wired kids. I’m your host, Debbie Reber. And this week, I’m excited to have as my guest, Dr. Dan Peters, a licensed psychologist, author, co-founder and executive director of The Summit Center, and the co-founder of the Parent Footprint Awareness Training. Dan’s mission is to support parents and raising children with purpose and intention. So in today’s conversation, we are going to explore just what that means, what it looks like, and how we can do the work on ourselves that can benefit our children and the family dynamic. We’ll also take a deep look at Dan’s Parent Footprint Awareness Training, which is a unique new virtual online experience that supports parents in guiding our child’s future by becoming aware of our own parenting beliefs. I had a chance to go through the program already and it was really powerful. And for me very quickly resulted in some game changing aha moments, and it’s kind of like getting a chance to sit down one on one with Dr. Dan. It’s very customized, so it’s very cool. So I’m really excited to share it with you today. And as you’ll hear from our chat, there is a really close synergy and alignment with Dr. Dan’s philosophy and approach with my mission here at Tilt Parenting, so I have a hunch you will find him just as inspiring as I do. And before I get to our episode, I have one short announcement. This summer, I’m participating in a special book club with one of my favorite go to Resources understood.org alongside two other authors have important books for parents raising differently wired kids, Katherine Reynold Lewis, author of The Good News About Bad Behavior, who I actually had on this show as a guest a few weeks ago, and Nicole Eradics, author of the book Inclusion in Action. So the virtual book club includes exclusive interviews with the authors, a weekend wisdom chat and a continued conversation about the book with fellow parents over on the understood community. So Katherine’s book, The Good News About Bad Behavior is up first, and that is from July 13, through the 20th. And she’ll be doing a weekend wisdom chat on Sunday, July 15. And then comes my book Differently Wired from July 27 through August 3, and I will be participating in a weekend wisdom chat on Sunday, July 29. And then Nicole and her book Inclusion in Action are set for August 10, through the 17th. So to find out more about that visit understood inside track under the community events tab, or you can look for a link on the show notes page for this episode at tiltparenting.com/session116 Thank you so much. And now here is my conversation with Dan. 

Debbie Reber  03:40

Hey, Dan, welcome to the podcast.

Dan Peters  03:42

Thank you very much, Debbie. I’m happy to be here with you.

Debbie Reber  03:45

Well, I’m looking forward to this. We were kind of swapping podcasts here. I had the pleasure of guesting on your podcast, and we had such a fantastic conversation. I got off that call, just feeling really motivated and inspired. And so I’m just thrilled to bring you back and share you with my audience in the same way.

Dan Peters  04:04

I felt the same way. And I have been looking forward to this conversation.

Debbie Reber  04:09

Excellent. Well, you know, we’re going to be talking about mostly your parent footprints training program and what you’re doing through that. But I want to make sure that our guests are familiar with your work in the world and get a better sense of your personal why. So would you just take a few minutes to introduce yourself and who you are?

Dan Peters  04:30

Sure. My name is Dan Peters and I am professionally a licensed psychologist in Northern California. And I co founded along with Dr. Susan Daniels Summit Center, which is a multidisciplinary place organization where our focus is on helping people realize their full potential and understanding their Complex Profiles. And when I might When I think about my why is, I have just always been driven to see the best in people and help people become their best. And with our population of differently wired people, as you know, well, there’s so many complexities and our world seems to be filled with focusing on what’s wrong and pathology. And so what, what I do, personally, with my consultation, and with our multidisciplinary evaluations and our counseling at some centers, really try to understand the whole totality of a person of all ages, children, adolescents, parents, and individual adults and help them through that understanding find their passion, their potential, and be their best selves.

Debbie Reber  05:49

And how long has…Summit Center has been around for a while, correct?

Dan Peters  05:53

Summit Center has been around about 10 years now. 

Debbie Reber  05:56

Okay, yeah, I mean, I think for a while for me, certainly, I’m new to this world, and I’m still discovering, you know, even though Asher is now 13, I’m still kind of discovering the resources that are out there and your resource, and also Dr. Devon MacEachron, who I think may have been the one to introduce us, you know, it’s just such a valuable, important work that you’re doing in the world. And I’m just grateful that people like you are doing what you’re doing, because it can feel so overwhelming when we have these kids who are so, you know, they don’t fit into any clear diagnostic buckets a lot of the time. And so anyway, I’ve just, I was excited to discover you a couple years ago and love that you’ve been doing this work for so long.

Dan Peters  06:43

Thank you. It’s just so rewarding.

Debbie Reber  06:46

I bet it is. These kids are so misunderstood, you know. And so giving, giving them the opportunity to really grow into their potential and to be seen for who they are. And then also letting parents know that, that this isn’t a bad thing. This is actually a gift. And there’s so much good here. So I love that. So I want to talk about parent footprints. So that’s the name of your podcast. It’s the name of a website and training program that you’re now doing, which I actually had the chance to go through. But can you tell us, before we get into the nitty gritty of how parents can interact with that, I want to understand your big picture vision when you started developing Parent Footprints. So could you tell us that and explain broadly what it is?

Dan Peters  07:33

Yes, so the whole idea of Parent Footprint, and I need to give credit to my business partner, Payman Fazly, who came up and shared this concept with me that we are all leaving footprints on our children? And how can we consciously and intentionally choose the footprint that we want to leave on our children and our grandchildren. And when he told me about this concept, and his book that he was writing and his completion stage, it just impacted me so much with that symbolism and that image with the work that I do day in and day out. And my own life with co-raising three kids with my wife is like, wow, like we everything we do impacts our kids, and we can choose how we parent, and how we interact and what energy we bring into the room. However, what is so key about this is, it is about us being mindful of who we are, what we are in our lives, how we are living our lives, how we are impacted by our parents, our caretakers, how we were raised, our experiences. And these days there are so many good books like yours. There’s lots of great podcasts out there. There’s lots of great webinars and parents. It seems more and more we’re worried about our kids, things are getting more complex and we’re especially with our high need, high intensity, special needs kids, even more so with the stress and worry that we have for them in their future. Everyone’s often looking for a tool. And the biggest tool is who we are and how we interact with them on a daily basis, which is what you and I also talked about on our podcast that we had together recently.

Debbie Reber  09:36

Yes, absolutely. I mean, my mind is in many places right now because I’m trying to think of the most logical way to unfold this conversation because it’s such a big concept. And it’s so you know, personally it feels so connected to the really everything that I’m trying to share through tilt in terms of how we as parents are experiencing this has to do with the work we need to do on ourselves. And then when we take the time to do that work, it changes everything, not just for us, but for our kids, for our family, and then ultimately, for society. You know, it’s big, it’s a big idea. And I think that’s what I loved so much when I started to dive into this, is that you are taking a huge step back, and you’re saying, you know, the mission statement is to make the world a more compassionate and loving place, one parent and one child at a time. I mean, that is a big idea.

Dan Peters  10:31

Oh, you just gave me the chills when you said that? Yeah, it’s, it’s huge. Because it goes all the way to all of the really sad and awful stuff that happens to children who become adults, right? It happens to people who can be loved. And people can be mistreated and abused. And people can be raised in households where there’s calm, and there’s relative calm, at least, and people problem solving and managing their anger. And people can be raised in households where people are screaming and yelling, and hitting, and those stick with us and inform us. And this is where we need to be not only in our own homes as parents, but thinking about our world, and how we can create a more loving and compassionate world because it starts in the home.

Debbie Reber  11:28

Absolutely. And it starts at such a young age to you know, I think so often we it’s when things start getting really challenging that we started getting more diving into this work, but the earlier that we can set this as our goal for our family, and that this is a value for our family, then that’s just how our kids grow up, you know, knowing and feeling that sense of belonging. And that sense of compassion is just part of their, I guess, core values.

Dan Peters  11:56

Absolutely. And it’s we could infiltrate and influence these positive family values of love, compassion, problem solving, meaning, and just as much when we are bringing in our stress from our lives in the home and out out of the homes, and whether we are off balance, and aren’t fulfilled ourselves, all of this stuff impacts our kids.

Debbie Reber  12:24

Yeah, yeah, that’s actually, you know, a chapter that I have in my book is to recognize how your energy affects your child. And, you know, for me personally, when I had that aha moment, I wrote about a time when I just was in the right space, and was able to respond to a difficult situation in a completely different way. And what I saw happen as a result, almost instantaneously, I was like, Oh, my, this is powerful stuff, you know? And yeah, I was like, Oh, my gosh, you know, I actually had that moment of like, I can control what happens in here, if I can just stay in this place all the time, which obviously isn’t realistic. But it was just a powerful reminder that the energy piece is really huge in terms of what’s happening and how our kids then feel in their everyday life.

Dan Peters  13:18

Absolutely. And I’m even thinking of a lot of your community, our community members who have really sensitive kids. So we want to believe that we can control what we show our kids. And if we don’t show them that we’re mad or worried or scared. They won’t know if we’re not really explicit about it. But all kids but particularly the more sensitive kids, they pick up on how we feel when we walk into the room and walk in the door. And I’ll never forget with our oldest and I know, Asher does, you know the same thing with you is sort of like, Dad, what’s wrong? And I don’t even, it’s like, they were able to say that to me when I wasn’t even consciously processing that I was dealing with something that was wrong. Right? I was trying to compartmentalize it, or I was transitioning, and oh, no, nothing’s wrong, no, what’s wrong? And then first of all, so they pick up on it? And secondly, if we say, no, no, everything’s fine. When they know it’s not, that has implications as well, because they trust us to help them interpret what’s the reality and what’s real, right, to give them that sense of safety and trust. And so I think our kids really propel us and compel us to be in touch with ourselves and be honest and authentic with them in an age appropriate way. Of course.

Debbie Reber  14:46

Yeah. And that is not necessarily something that a lot of parents want to embrace, right. You know, sometimes they’re not dealing with their own emotions, and now they’ve got this child who’s forced in their hand, and now suddenly they have to or, you know, they’re being guided to examine things that they’d rather not deal with. So it’s kind of interesting. I mean, I guess it’s that idea that our kids are best teachers, we say that all the time, but it is so true, because we can’t really get anything past these differently wired kids, they’re pretty, highly attuned to what’s going on. 

Dan Peters  15:23

Right, and some of them can have high emotional and social intelligence and can express it in a really empathic, compassionate way. And we know, other kids just get overwhelmed and melt down because of the energy and we sit there like, I don’t know what triggered this, what’s happening. But these kids are just overwhelmed with the energy that they are absorbing from us.

Debbie Reber  15:46

Yeah, yeah, it’s so interesting, you know, I homeschool my child. So we spend a lot of time together. And sometimes we just have days that go off the rails, and my husband would come home, and I’d be like, Oh, my God, you know, today was really tough. This happened and everything was difficult or a battle or whatever. And then Darrin will say, Well, remember, you’ve got this, this and this going on? I’ll be like, oh, yeah, you know, invariably. And then of course, for me, then I tend to, I go through a little beating myself up phase, because I, I feel like it’s my fault in some ways. Like, I’m the one who’s, who steered us off track here. And yeah, I know that the self blame isn’t worth spending much time on, but it is, it can be complicated to feel like your energetic state can have so much influence over what’s happening.

Dan Peters  16:38

Yes, yeah, a lot of pressure. 

Debbie Reber  16:40

And a lot of pressure. So one of the things I was really intrigued by in your program was this idea of really exploring what happens in our lives when we were children and how we were parented. That, to me, is just something that people don’t talk about, or they make me think about it in passing, like, oh, yeah, well, you know, I grew up in a really strict house. So we’re doing this, you know, it’s on this very cursory level. And the questions that you ask people to think about are, I guess, designed to, and they do bring up things, because you need to explore these things. Can you talk more about why that is such an important thing for us to examine.

Dan Peters  17:25

We are unconsciously, semi consciously and consciously acting and informed by our past. There’s no way around it. And even when we don’t want it to be true. That’s just how us human beings are wired. So first of all, what is normal to us is what we’ve experienced. And it could be a good normal or not so good, normal, and our body and mind and energy and visceral reactions are conditioned, based on how we were raised and experiences we’ve had in the home and out in the world. And so we all come into parenting with this template that can range from, oh, I have the best childhood and I just want to provide my kids the same thing. You know, there are things I liked. And there are some things I didn’t like. So I want to do the good things and not do the other things. Or Okay, I had an awful childhood, I am so angry at what happened to me or just, I don’t even want to go back there. And I’m going to do the opposite. But what happens is most of us just do that, whichever version of what I just said, without really consciously exploring what is driving our behavior. And the other thing that we do often is we come up with different reasons, than maybe the real reasons for why we do something. You know, for example, everything has to be really neat, because I grew up in a chaotic household. So everything is going to be neat and orderly. But maybe it’s because I’m also anxious, and I get anxious when I don’t have everything in order. So therefore, I need to impose that on my kids for me, but I’m saying it’s actually for them, just as an example. So looking at where we came from, which again, is not easy to do for many people. And it’s, it’s how can we go within and even when it’s hard to go within the number one reason we do difficult things and look at ourselves in a hard way is because the love we have for our kids and what we want for our kids, you know, so even if we can’t, and as a parent, it’s hard for us to do it for ourselves. You know, the motivation is we can look at ourselves for them because we’re trying to do the best job for them and leave the footprint that we want to leave, to consciously choose for them. 

Debbie Reber  20:04

And so doing this deep exploration and really examining our you know, our experience and just where our thoughts and ideas and beliefs and behaviors, all those things really stem from, would you say that that is necessary in order to intentionally or consciously parent our kids?

Dan Peters  20:25

I believe it’s necessary. What I would say is to look back in at least a semi deeper dive, I think is necessary to inform what we want for our kids. I will say, it’s hard, it can be really hard to do depending on one’s upbringing. And I don’t want to say like, you have to spend a ton of time and take a really deep dive on this, and turn yourself inside out. It’s really about just being mindful, aware and insightful, and pulling back the curtain enough so you can understand why you do things you do with your kids. And be honest with yourself, so you can decide if you are parenting in the way that you think you are. And with the goals that you have for your kids, or, or is there something going on back there that you realize, whoa, I need to do this a little differently, I have an example of someone that I know really well. So this person with her kids would get really jittery, like react when one of the children were melting down really quickly, like jumping quickly to try to stop a meltdown, avoid a meltdown, help with a meltdown, it just brought a lot of emotion in this person. And it turned out through this work, that she realized the reason that she would jump so quickly when her child was melting down was because her father had such a quick temper, that she never knew when he was going to go off. And through this work, she realized, oh my gosh, I always just thought I was trying to help them sue them. And I didn’t realize how anxious I would get in the moment. But it was really because growing up, she’d never knew when her dad was going to go off. And there was that connection, like whoa. And then that allowed her to think about the difference between her past and her present, and how she would work to handle those situations differently based on her parenting goals for herself and her kids.

Debbie Reber  22:40

Oh, that’s a great example. And now I feel like I’m entering a therapy session. But you know, one of the things that came up for me in that example, is that when Asher used to get really upset, his anger was really, really hard for me to deal with. And I realized I’m really uncomfortable with big anger as an emotion, full stop. And I also believe and know that there’s no such thing as a bad emotion and he gets to be angry, you know, like, I don’t want to stifle him. And so I have known for a while that I’m uncomfortable with big anger. But I guess what you’re saying is then take it one step further and try to uncover where might that stem from? So I have a better understanding of the roots of that. So it will be easier for me to address if I know where it comes from.

Dan Peters  23:33

Exactly. Okay.

Debbie Reber  23:36

Interesting. All right, I guess I have some journaling to do. And, you know, you talked about, in some ways, this is really also about getting off autopilot, right. And that word intention comes up a lot. And I know that that’s part of your big vision is this parenting with purpose and intention. Intention is something I talk a lot about on the podcast on tilt in the book, and I do believe it’s one of the most important values that we can bring into our parenting world. Can you talk a little bit more about that role and intention, just from your perspective, what it means to parent with purpose and intention?

Dan Peters  24:18

So easy to say, so hard to do? Okay, so I just want to say because also what I love about your approach, Debbie, with your with your, with your people and your listeners is this, how authentic you are. And so I totally relate to that, which is, you know, as someone who talks about doing this all day long in my work and then gets to go home and practice like this is so hard to do. So I just want to say for everyone listening, to be kind to yourself. So this is our aspiration, our aspiration is to be purposeful and intentional, as much as we can. Now the first thing that we always talk about as you do is presence, right? How do we stay present with our kids and being The moment and this can range from leaving our emotions at the door from what happened out in the world at work or in the community. What are we doing with our cell phones and our computers when our kids are talking to us? Or do we have family dinners? Do you know how people interact? We give people attention. And it’s especially what do I want to cultivate? For my kids in our home and in life? So, you know, later in this model, and in the training, we talked about, you know, what are your parenting beliefs, see, all this stuff ties together. So if a parenting belief is I want my child to not be stressed out? Well, if we want to do that intentionally, we have to be careful about what we talk about with grades, school, with college, their future, with what programs they may or may not get into what other people are doing or not doing and how we’re comparing to them. So often, we say like God, I just don’t want my kid to be so stressed. And then they have four activities. And they’re going out for the A team on the traveling soccer team, and then they’re in their performance, and we got to get them in Advanced Math. Well, you know those things are not consistent with having a child who grows up with not too much stress. So I when we think about intention, and purpose, what are our parenting goals are our goals to have children who are resilient and regulate our goals, to have children who take risks, try new things, or our goals for children to have meaningful relationships are our goals for our kids to get into an Ivy League school. And we’re kidding ourselves. If we don’t think about these goals, which again, we talked about making them externalizing them and making them intentional and out there. So we know, what is our model? You know, what is our model, and you know, so here’s where I have to make a quick transition. So Payman, my business partner, comes from the technology world, and product development. And so he, in his career, has done all this consulting on businesses and developing products in technology, which is how we ended up with a technology product. However, the idea was he came to in his life, because we share this passion for parenting, that’s how we came together is, wait a second, he realized with his kids, he’s like, I spent all this time helping big companies carry out a business plan, a strategic plan to meet their goals. And yet we’d go into parenting, and just kind of wing it. Right. And so just backing into your great question is being purposeful, intentional, we have to know, what do we want for our kids? And based on that, how do we break down how we are about that on a daily basis on a moment basis.

Debbie Reber  27:53

And I think that’s something that so many of us just don’t talk about, or we assume, you know, we might be on the same page with our partner, it might be more generic, like, we just want our kids to be fulfilled and have whatever option they want available to them, you know, but many of us don’t take the time to regularly kind of zoom out and look at the big picture and really think, what are our values? You know, what are our values around who we are as a family and, and what we hope to instill in our child so that they can be successful, self actualized? Adults, we don’t really often take the time to do that.

Dan Peters  28:31

No, and I am taking a personal example where I blew it. And then I had to go think about my goals. And I had to loop back around. And so this is when one of our high schoolers was having a difficult time in the math and chemistry sciences classes. And we’re in the kitchen having this conversation. And this child said, the gender will remain nameless here. This child said, You don’t expect me to get B’s do you? And my initial response was, yes, I do. And this child looked at me with this look on his face that was confused. And I realized it was confusing because it was not consistent with the messaging that my wife and I do. And I walked away. And I thought about, wait a second, I just talked explicitly about a grade when the grade is not what we focus on. And what I really meant was, I think you could get a B if you apply yourself and work hard, and I really want you to work hard, but I don’t care what the end result is. If you’re trying that that was in the back of my head when I said yeah, I expect you to get these. And as I think about it, my wife looked at me. They were both on the other side of the room and looked at me. I was like What are you talking about? So I went back into the bedroom and said Hey, I just want to clarify what I really meant. I didn’t mean it that way. And so that was just an example of when it was an oops. But I thought back on what my goal is, our goal for our kids is that they work hard and apply themselves. It’s not about the grade.

Debbie Reber  30:15

And I imagine once you start being more intentional and purposeful, and examining what you’re saying, and doing the work of being in alignment with your actions, and with our kids, that when you have a moment like that, and by the way, it’s good to know that you can have make those mistakes, if Dr. Dan can make those mistakes that makes the rest of us feel better. Oh, yes. I imagine that you kind of get a hit like an inner voice pop in, say, say what, you know, what are you talking about? So you probably knew, even before you saw the look on your wife’s face that, you know, wait a minute, what did I just say?

Dan Peters  30:54

Yeah, and like you, I’m really good at beating myself up when I make a mistake. So that is just to echo something you said earlier is like just to how to be kind to ourselves when we blow it because we’re going to

Debbie Reber  31:06

Yes, daily, many Yes, multiple times daily. Yes. Well, I want to hear before we jump off this call, I would love if you could just take a few minutes to just talk about the actual training program that you guys have designed the parent footprint awareness training that I got to try out, just explain to listeners how it works, because I found it to be really unique to any sort of online learning experience that I’ve engaged in the past.

Dan Peters  31:36

I’m glad that you have that experience. So this training, we It seems to be different than most and when we describe it to people is, remember in our generation, when you could choose your own mystery. And you could read it, you read a chapter and then at the end of the chapter, it says, If you want to step into the submarine, go to you know, page 22. If you decide to miss the submarine and go take the boat, and then you could create your journey. So the whole idea of parent footprint awareness training is what we believe in what I’ve found in my work. And using lots of resources of leading parenting experts is that awareness, our awareness of who we are, what we’re about. And what we want for our kids is key to raising a, quote, successful child, a healthy child, a happy child, however we define that. So we talk about our goal is to have our own vision of successful parenting, whatever that is for us, which is based on what we want. Now. We broke it down into different modules. And the idea is how do we digitize and automate with still an authentic experience. So for people who don’t have the time, don’t have the money, don’t have logistically have the ability to sit down with someone and have a conversation that is targeted towards parenting, which so many people are, you know, working on their parenting, we wanted to create something using modern technology, where we could emulate sitting down with me doing the work that I do, where I asked some key questions as part of a training module, which I’ll talk about in a second. And then based on a key question, you push A, B or C based on which answer resonates with you. Based on that answer, you get an individualized video. Like I feel great all the time, I feel great. Most of the time, I rarely feel good. That’s just an example.

Dan Peters  33:41

I felt loved most of the time, I felt loved some of the time I rarely felt loved. These are just some examples of questions, you press a button and then there’ll be a video that loads from me responding to your response. And so different than a webinar is different than listening to a training. It’s designed to be interactive, so you feel that someone is responding to you. And the other thing about this training is that you can go back as many times as you want and change your response just to see what the other responses are. And or as you are evolving, growing, working on yourself, you will have different responses to the questions over time. So this is an evolving program for you to grow. The modules are designed, many of them we’ve talked about the first one is called you and it’s really looking about who you are, how you feel in the world, your connections, taking an inventory of yourself. The second one is about love. How are we loved? What’s our experience of love? How do we show love? How do we get love for ourselves and for our kids? Then acceptance is module number three Do we accept where we came from? Do we accept who we are? You know, how do we accept our kids? Then we get into energy, which you’ve talked about as well, you know, what energy do we bring into the room? Are we aware of our energy? Where does it come from? How can we trans? How do we transmit it? How do we want to transmit it? Then there is the module called connection, which is how we feel connected to ourselves, connected to our partners, connected to our kids, to our community, a huge part of our well being. And then we move into beliefs or parenting beliefs, which I alluded to before, which is what are your parenting beliefs? What do you want for your kids? What drives them? And now you’re thinking about your strategic plan, which takes you to the last module, which is action, how do we move into action. So now we’re trying to create a plan based on the insights and awareness you’ve had, how do we move into action. So that’s the main bulk of the training. And then in the middle, the middle part of the training, I asked questions for you to type down different AHA that you’ve had different awarenesses that you’ve had, and then some goals that you want to have for yourself and for your kids. And then the final part of the training are videos that we call parenting with purpose with Dr. Dan, where I give my personal examples of how I use some of these things with some tough situations, with my kids trying to put this into practice. And then also Dr. Dan’s favorite tools, where there’s videos based on a lot of the tools that I use from parenting experts in my work, and the short videos as well. And the last thing, I’ll say, I’m talking a lot here, the last thing I’ll say, it is designed for the modern parent. So the videos are short, these aren’t 30 minute videos, these videos are like three to five, sometimes seven minutes, but often they’re three to five minutes. So you can do it anytime, anywhere, and start and stop it because we’re unfortunately all too busy.

Debbie Reber  37:00

Mm hmm. I do love that it’s super accessible. And it is, you know, it’s bite size. But even if the video is only three to five minutes, the videos are so provocative in a way and that they really just one short video can already cause a little shift, you know, it’s just a little tweak in your awareness, even to just suggest some of these things, which again, so many of us, were just not taking the time to consider a lot of the questions that you are raising in this. And I think that’s, again, what I really just love and admire about the work that you’re doing is, I believe that this is, this is the kind of work that can have the biggest influence, you know, we’re so busy finding therapies and modifications and accommodations, and all these different support systems. You know, so few of us even get support for ourselves, even in terms of parent coaching, but then even fewer of us are doing this kind of work. And I do think it has the potential to outweigh anything else when it comes to the impact it can have on our families.

Dan Peters  38:12

I couldn’t agree with you more and yeah, yeah. And I will say it does take a lot of courage. And it’s the courage. Again, if we don’t want to look at some things, or we don’t want to open some things, it’s the love for our kids knowing how positively impactful it could be for us to do this sort of work on ourselves.

Debbie Reber  38:36

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to make sure everyone knows how to find a parent footprint and connect with you. But before we do, just for listeners who are already feeling kind of sparked by this conversation, and is there one piece of advice or thought that you would encourage them to play with to get this work started today?

Dan Peters  38:59

Yes, I would say the one piece is to realize and embrace the idea that who you are in the world and how you are living your life is what matters most for your kids. And what we often say is just try to focus on being the person you want your child to become.

Debbie Reber  39:24

That’s good. I like that. Awesome. Okay, so what’s the best way for listeners to to connect with you where your favorite spots,

Dan Peters  39:34

Okay favorite spots. So if you want to learn more about Parent Footprint, the training and the podcast that said www.parentfootprint.com. And if you want to learn more about our center and consultation and evaluation and all the stuff we do at Summit center, that is www.summitcenter.us.

Debbie Reber  39:54

Excellent. And listeners I will have all of that in the show notes pages so you can go there With one click be right where you want to be. So, Dan, thank you so much. I enjoyed this conversation as much as our first conversation and two very interesting ones. There’s so much we could talk about, but I just really, again appreciate the work you’re doing in the world. It’s so in alignment with my personal belief system, but also what I’m trying to spread through Tilt. So thank you so much for coming by today.

Dan Peters  40:27

My pleasure and you are making a huge spreading impact. So thank you.

Debbie Reber  40:34

You’ve been listening to the Tilt Parenting Podcast for the show notes for this episode, including links to Dr. Dan’s website, his Parent Footprint awareness training, and the other resources we discussed, visit tiltparenting.com/session116. If you like what we’re doing at the Tilt Parenting podcast, and you’d like to support us, there are a few easy and meaningful ways you can do this. One is to join my patreon campaign, just like listeners, Dawn Bellus and Nicola Sharette. Thank you so much Dawn and Nicola. Patreon is an online platform that allows people to make a small monthly contribution to support the work of an artist or a musician or podcaster. It’s super easy to sign up and even a small donation helps so if you’d like to support the show, helped me pay for my production help and all the assistance that I have in making this show happen weekly, you visit patreon.com/tiltparenting, Patreon is spelled pa t ar e o n, or you can find a link on the Tilt Parenting website. The other way you can help is to head over to iTunes. And if you haven’t done so already, leave a rating or a review or both. There are a lot of parenting podcasts out there and those ratings and reviews help keep our podcasts highly visible, which in turn makes it easier for me to land those bigger guests and get more attention for Tilt Parenting, so thank you so much. And thanks again for listening. For more information on Tilt Parenting, visit www.tiltparenting.com