Bonus Conversation with Dr. Stuart Shanker on the Brain Science behind Self-Regulation & the Impact of Stress

Debbie Reber  

Our theme this month has been bolstering our resources. So we have been really exploring, how do we Yeah, how do we support ourselves? How can we proactively do that? How can we best show up in the moment? So your book was such a perfect fit for that. So let us. I think we should start. I know folks will be joining us, but first of all, let me just officially welcome everyone to this is our expert call for the month of September, September. Yeah, in the differently wired club, and I’m so pleased and honored to have Stuart Shanker here with us today, so I’m going to read your bio just as a way to kind of introduce you, and then we’ll get started. And if you’re new to the club this month, you can see we’re in a meeting format here. You’re welcome to show up however you need to. So if you need to turn your camera off, if you’re driving, like, do what you need to do to kind of take care of yourself, and the chat is open. So if you have questions that come up as we’re talking, use the chat, and we’ll try to get your questions addressed as well. So okay, so the formalities. Stuart Shanker is a distinguished research professor emeritus. Ember, I don’t know how to say that, Emeritus of philosophy and psychology, Emeritus, Emeritus. Thank you. Okay, thank you. The founder and visionary of the merit center, limited and self Reg, global, Incorporated. Self Reg, how to help your child and you break the stress cycle and successfully engage with life, which is the book we’re discussing today, and I’ve read this month, has garnered enthusiastic reviews and media attention throughout North America. It’s also been published in the UK, the United States, Poland, Germany, China, South Korea, Japan, the Netherlands, Georgia and the Czech Republic. His latest books are self ranked schools, a handbook for educators and reframed self rank for a just society, which we talked about in the podcast, actually a couple years ago. Over the past decade, Stewart has served as an advisor on early child development to government organizations across Canada and the US and in countries around the world. During this period, he became increasingly interested in the impact of excessive stress on child development and behavior. His five step self rank model, the Shanker method, is a powerful process for understanding and managing stress in children, youth and adults. He commits considerable time to bring the research and science of self rank to parents, early childhood educators, teachers, educational leaders, health practitioners and communities through presentations, master classes, online courses, webinars, publications, social media and blogs and also, apparently, generously sharing his expertise with communities like ours. So thank you, and welcome Stuart, Vanessa, or anything that your bio doesn’t cover, that you would want us to know before we dive in.

Stuart Shanker  

No, but I do have one request for you. Debbie, yes, some of your questions are a little, they’re a little demanding. And so there is science that can help clarify some of this. So I need you to tell me, as we go through this, a little more science. Too much science. 

Debbie Reber  

Okay, that sounds great. I actually wanted to start with a I’m not going to go in an order, but I was looking through the questions I sent you, and I wanted to start just kind of as a way to set the tone that the adolescent mental health crisis and mental health of kids in general has intensified according to, you know what we’re Yeah, since your book was written and so just would love to know your thoughts on the state of kids and teen mental health and how it has influenced your work.

Stuart Shanker  

Well, I thought, I thought I could retire a few years ago, but things have gotten sort of out of control. We are seeing an anxiety epidemic in teens around the world. It is filtering down now to children. It is causing medical health problems in young kids that we’ve never seen before, for example, things like ulcers or heart problems. And for me, myself and for this group, it’s been especially hard on neuro. Divergent kids, we have seen just a huge spike in internalizing and externalizing disorders in neurodivergent kids. So, yeah, this is pretty serious. Why is it happening? Do you want me to talk about why it’s happening?

Debbie Reber  

Yes, absolutely.

Stuart Shanker  

Okay, so essentially, there are three primary causes. The first one is the obvious one. So that’s a significantly heightened stress load and sorry, sweetheart, one of my dogs is barking. I’m just going to close my door. No problem. So we talked about, you know, the heightened stress load, and I don’t think I need to spend too much time on that, since covid There has been a dramatic increase in parental stress and societal stress, and of course, all this filters down onto our kids. We can talk more about that later if you want. I really want to get to points two and three. I think they’re the critical ones for this group, the second cause is an explosion of maladaptive modes of self regulation. So you guys have read the book and you know, we draw this distinction between self regulation and self control. Now you need to draw a distinction between maladaptive and healthy modes of self regulation. What that means is self regulation refers to how we manage stress in simplest terms, how we attempt to restore from the cost of stress. A little later today, I want to spend a couple of minutes on the definition of stress, because several of the questions show that we need to clarify that. 

But let’s just pause for a second on maladaptive what does that mean? So we’re living in a time when there has been just, you know, it’s anywhere you go. There are maladaptive modes. And what that means is that there are ways for the kid to suppress their sensations, suppress their anxiety, will say, but it does not address the causes of their heightened stress. So let me give you an example. A kid can deal with their anxiety by drinking or smoking marijuana, or they can spend hours on a video game or some screen thing. And the reason these are maladaptive is because they are not recruiting the neuro chemicals that turn off stress they are masking the effects of the stress, the stress itself, whatever was causing that, has remained untouched. So in technical terms, which we’re going to get to in one second, there is a specific neurochemical that turns off the stress response, that turns off stress neurons, and that chemical is oxytocin. So come back to that one sec. What these kids are, what are what kids are doing is, instead, they are recruiting dopamine and and and the problem with this is the dopamine gives them energy, psychic energy, you can keep going, but it doesn’t turn off the stress neurons. 

So. All of the activities that you can think of that are maladaptive modes of self regulation are basically ways of triggering the release of dopamine and so what happens is the kid is basically they keep they’re keeping themselves going by. You know, imagine pushing a button getting more and more dopamine. We have lots of studies on this showing us examples of animal behavior, animals getting hooked on dopamine to the detriment of their well being. So the third cause is an oxytocin deficit. And this is a little bit of science, but it’s interesting. So in the very center of the brain, in a tiny little nucleus within the hypothalamus, there are these neurons, which are the stress neurons. So the kid is under stress, these neurons get activated, and what they do is they set off a wave to give the kid energy. That’s what the stress response is, trying to recruit energy because you’re burning too much in this little, tiny part of the hypothalamus. It’s called The periventricular nucleus, a little tiny, tiny spot where there are a bunch of oxytocin neurons, and those oxytocin neurons turn off the adjacent stress neurons. It’s an amazing, amazing discovery. So what’s going on here? Well, in this anxiety epidemic, what we’re seeing is heightened stress, heightened maladaptive modes, meaning dopamine seeking and an oxytocin deficit. 

So now the question is, well, where do they get oxytocin from? And there’s lots of ways you can get oxytocin. You can get it from nature. You can get it from music. You can get it from cooking, but the primary way to get oxytocin is from another human being. Now we have little receptors in our skin, so when you cuddle your child and you hug your little kid, what you’re doing is activating oxytocin, and that oxytocin, the reason why the hug calms down the child is because you are triggering the release of oxytocin, which turns off The stress hormones, turns off the stress neurons. They’re called corticotropin hormones. Okay, here’s the key. What Debbie asked me is to address the problem primarily in teens. When the kid becomes a teen, they turn to their peers instead of their parents for CO regulation, but if all your peers are also over stress, which is the case today, what’s happening is that instead of getting that boost of oxytocin from your from your Friend, you’re getting more stress. They are co stressing instead of CO regulating. So what do they need? Well, in this situation, first and foremost, they need us. They need us. Their parents, teachers, self ranked adults to to trigger the oxytocin that is missing. So look, I can tell you case after case. We just dealt with one last week, a teen that was in huge trouble. A really good kid, no, sorry, about two or three weeks ago, a really good kid fell in with a group that was self medicating to deal with their stress. Things just totally fell apart. And the mom, single mom, in this case, who is well versed and self right? The way she dealt with it was soothing, giving the kid the oxytocin, and then actually moving to remove the child from this, you know, troubling environment. But the key is. The kid needed that parental hug. You know, the kid was about 1616, I think so you’d think old enough that they don’t need that parental hug. Well, there isn’t such an age. And the reason they need the hug is and constant hugs and constant soothing, soft eyes, all of these things, even a soft voice triggers oxytocin and receptors that line the middle ear. So that’s a sort of long answer to what you thought was an easy question, but it’s actually a tough one.

Debbie Reber  

No, it’s fascinating, and it has a couple things. First of all, someone just mentioned, are there ways to trigger oxytocin for kids that don’t like touch sensations so it sounds like you said, a soothing voice, so it doesn’t have to be the physical touch? Any other strategies?

Stuart Shanker  

That’s great. I don’t know what that is. That’s an absolutely great point. So if you’ve got a touch aversive kid, so first of all, I’ll just take my own older child, so he was very, very touch aversive, but not to all kinds of touches. So you want to experiment to see if there’s a kind of touch that the child who is touch sensitive likes. So in my older boy, who’s on the spectrum, what he liked was scratching. And he also liked, you know, the head thing. It’s like a whisk. He loved that. And basically, what that’s doing. The reason why it has that instantly calming effect is because of the release of oxytocin. Now sometimes with some kids, and here I’ll take my younger kid, three years younger, also neurodivergent. He was very touch aversive, but what he did like was a weighted blanket. And here he would. He was self regulating with the weighted blanket, but not by himself, that’s the key. So it wasn’t a case of, say, sending into his room so he could lie under the blanket. We had to be with Him and do exactly what Debbie just said, which was that low, soft voice, so that he was getting that calming, releasing the oxytocin, while he was getting the pressure from the blanket.

Debbie Reber  

Okay, thank you for that and your explanation of what’s happening and the maladaptive coping strategy and this oxytocin deficit. It just made me think that, you know, we’re hearing so much about young people, especially autistic young people, who are in burnout, and would that be a direct result? Of, yes,

Stuart Shanker  

it’s a direct result. Yes, it’s a direct result. Okay,

Debbie Reber  

wow. Okay, so there’s so many aha moments that I that I’m having and had as I’ve read your book as well. So one of the questions that came in is, how can parents better identify their neurodivergent child’s true stress, true stressors, especially when they may differ from what we think they are. So any ideas or strategies for reading those signals more effectively. Okay? So,

Stuart Shanker  

I mean, we’ve all gone through this, right? And some of the things that are stressors are, you know, like, unless, unless you were the parent of a neurodivergent kid, you would think they’re bizarre, but they’re not. I’m trying to think of I just had an example, like for my older boy, the one who’s on the spectrum, my wife, we have a bin of the food for the the dog, and she keeps on leaving the lid up, and that’s a huge stress for him, I mean, to the point of, and he’s 22 and kind of freaks out. So okay, so you learn right, trial and error, but I wanted to explain what exactly a stress is so that it helps us when we are becoming stress detectives, why would why would something like, I don’t know an odor or a particular sound? Why would they be so. Stressful for my kid, and how do I know So, what exactly is a stress? 

Well, the definition, the straight, the strict definition, is anything that triggers a physiological response that burns energy in order to maintain homeostasis. Okay, now let me explain that in English. Okay, so the example I think I gave in the book was cold weather. So cold weather is a stressor, and what it does is skin receptors send a message to the hypothalamus again. And what it does is it releases a form of adrenaline, which raises heart rate, raises breathing rate, raises blood pressure, and then it triggers a physical reaction, little micro vibrations, contractions in the muscles which generate Heat. The key here for all stress, whatever the stress is, is the kid’s heart rate goes up, the kid’s breathing goes up, the kids’s blood pressure goes up, arteries are stylated and so on. Why? Why is that? Why is a stimulus causing this? Well, a stress, any stress is a threat to homeostasis, a threat to the sort of smooth functioning of the Sun System. It’s an internal threat. And how do we respond to threats? Well, it doesn’t matter, Debbie, I need you to tell me. If this is clear enough, it doesn’t matter if it’s an internal threat or an external threat. What’s an internal threat? Well, not enough water in the bloodstream, not enough glucose in the bloodstream and so on. Those are internal threats. How do we respond? Well, we are Why does our heart go up? Why does my heart rate go up? Now, remember, hearts have muscles, so as soon as heart rate goes up. Our kid is burning energy. It goes up because they are now tensing muscles, tensing muscles in their stomach, testing muscles in their legs, their trunk, their arms. Maybe it’s to protect themselves. Maybe it’s to run away from the threat. Think about your kid, if you got a ND kid who is very sensitive to noise, and that Kate has to go to he’s sitting, you know, he’s forced to sit in the classroom. And because it’s stressful, his whole body is tensing up. He wants to run, but he’s not allowed to run. He’s gotta sit there. So it gets even worse. That triggers another system deep inside the brain. I won’t go into it now, he is burning a huge amount of energy sitting there knowing that he’s not allowed to leave, knowing that he’s not allowed to cry out for help. So if we could, if we could attach our child to all kinds of monitors. That we used in the science lab, we would see exactly what’s a stress. That’s how we could tell we because we were hooking, hooked it up to their brain, into their body, and we could see their heart go up. We could see their muscles getting tensed. How can you as a parent, okay, so that’s what a stress is. Now, how can you as a parent tell when they are clenching, when they are burning all this energy? Well, we have all kinds of signs. One of the signs is that the blood is going, it’s getting directed to the major muscles, away from things like the face. So their face becomes pale, their voice changes, their pupils dilate. Pupil dilation is one of the biggest signs of a stress. 

There are experiments going on where parents are synchronizing an iPhone to an eyewatch on the child to see when they’re to see when their heart rate spikes. I don’t like it because it turns into a huge stress on the parent who’s already extremely stressed. Having neurodivergent kids is a great deal of stress. Sorry, I just had a message come through and it it, there. The way they move changes because you become a little bit more jerky because of the muscles tensing their speech changes. It either speeds up or slows down. The pitch of their speech changes. It goes up. So there are lots of signs. What you’re looking for are the signs that they are, that they are burning more energy. Now there’s a very simple test we can do to see if we’re right, and that is, if I think something is a stressor, then if I remove it, will I see the signs of relaxation, the color coming back into their face, their body relaxing, and that’s so we can do these things as we’re going along. If they’re young, you can feel it. If they’re young, you can feel their body becoming stiff, and that tells you right away, this is a big stress. Just think of, you know, carrying your child when a stranger comes in, and how rigid their body feels. Does that explain it? Well enough? Debbie,

Debbie Reber  

yeah, I think so. I’m getting visual reinforcement from people as well that that is true. Yes, so thank you. I mean, again, I’m the way you describe that also makes so much sense. And one of the things you write about is this build up of all the things right above stress in these kids, and you’re burning energy to maintain. And then you think about kids, many neurodivergent kids have really crappy eating habits. They have really crapping, crappy sleeping habits and all those things. So they’re burning where they would need more energy, but they’re already in a deficit because of all of these other things. So really makes me understand

Stuart Shanker  

The biggest challenge that we faced as parents of two neurodivergent kids is exactly what you just said, getting them to eat healthy food, which meant not eating crap, which is again designed to trigger dopamine. But sleep was a real problem, and so we had to, we developed, you know, a very, I want to say, rigorous sleep routine. And one of the things I would say is, I am. I don’t know how to put this. I don’t like sleep training, okay, and I won’t go into it here, but there are a lot of reasons why I don’t like it. And the problem with a neuro divergent kid is that, you know, these chronic sleep problems. Somebody just asked, Do I like sleep medicine? No, no, I don’t. And so what’s happening is, you know, one of the things that’s useful here is an iWatch where you can track their sleep patterns and to see how much they are waking up? How much are they in deep sleep, etc. But for us, the real challenge was getting them to fall asleep and so, you know, you ask yourself a really simple question, why is it so hard for them? Why? You know they’re tired. I can see they’re exhausted. Why don’t you know, we’ve done everything according to the book, you know, so we’ve read. 

So why can’t they fall asleep? And that’s a fairly obvious question, right? And the reason is because they have, they are flooded with the half life effects of adrenaline, of epinephrine, and it tells us. When they had a bad night, it is telling us that the problem was during the day that they built up so much adrenaline that at bedtime, no matter how tired they were, they couldn’t fall asleep because of this. So we worked on sleep hygiene by looking at what was going on during the day and especially when they came home, and spotting the signs of you know how stressed they had become. School is very hard on these kids, no matter how you come and so we would work to solve the sleep problem. We had to work with the teacher. And the last thing I’ll say about this is that we found that teachers were remarkably uneducated about neurodivergent kids and and so we had to be very patient and explain to them the things that they had to do to help the child during the day so that we weren’t getting this this build up. So, you know, you look at what’s happening at 9pm when the real problem was, what happened? You know, from 8:30am to 3:30pm but, but sticking with it now, the one thing I’ll say is that both of our both of our kids, are great sleepers now, and they became, became really good sleepers at around the age of 678, but it took a lot of self right to get them to that point. It does happen quick.

Debbie Reber  

Yeah. There are no, there are no quick, quote, unquote fixes. This is all a long journey of a process. I did a question came in about specifically educators. But I want to, I’m going to come back to that. One of the questions we had sent in advance is you wrote in the book. Many kids don’t even know what the physical sensation of calm feels like. So what thoughts you have on how we can explicitly teach our complex kids, especially if they have sensory issues or interoception challenges, to recognize what it actually feels like in their bodies.

Stuart Shanker  

Okay, so you just grouped together two points. You group together two points, both of them important. Let’s see if we can tease them apart. First of all, let’s think about, we say calmness. Well, what exactly are we talking about? What exactly is calm? If, if you guys could come into the neural lab. What would you see when a child is calm? Well, you’d see a couple of things. First of all, we studied brain waves. So when a kid is aroused, the brain waves are like this, right? Really rapid, high spikes. When they go into a theta state, you get nice, slow waves. Okay, so that’s one side of the column park that for a second we hooked up these, what are called GSR monitors, and we can measure stress, we can measure heart rate. And so what happens is, when the kid is calm, heart rate comes down, the electrical activity in the skin comes down. 

So we’re seeing when the kid is calm, all of these physiological indicators, brain waves slow down, breathing slows down, heart rate comes down. Why? Why is all this happening? Well, it’s happening because they have another neurochemical. So you’ve read a lot about the opioid crisis. Well, the human brain produces its own opioids, called endogenous opioids. And what endogenous opioids do? Okay, so these are natural neuro chemicals, and we have receptors for them all through the brain and the body. What they do is they slow the brain down. They slow heart rate down. They slow so there’s an actual fizz. Theology of being calm. Now, one of the one of the side effects of endogenous opioids is, not only does it slow the brain down, does it not only does it lower heart rate, etc. It feels good. It releases pleasant sensations. 

This is an ancient mechanism, and so the idea was that a child will naturally calm in order to experience those pleasant sensations. Now Debbie introduced the second point. The second point is a neurodivergent kid typically has what’s called distortion, and that means they aren’t feeling their sensations. They don’t feel they so we have there are seven major circuits in the brain that produce these sensations. Some of them are pleasant. Some of them, I don’t think that was me. Some of them are pleasant, some of them are aversive. So, for example, anger produces an aversive sensation. What we see with neurodivergent kids is they don’t pick up these sensations. They don’t feel the sensation of for example, fear produces an aversive sensation, they don’t feel that sensation. Hence, we see our our neuro divergent kids doing things which are terrifying because they’re not picking up the interoceptive sensations telling them that are aversive, unpleasant, unpleasant sensations for fear, unpleasant sensations for for anger or pleasant sensations of being calm, pleasant sensations of of being with a loved one. 

So why are they in disreception? Because that’s what Debbie’s question was. How do we get them to register these sensations so that they know in an embodied sense what calmness feels like that means, so that they feel the effects of these opioids that only come with calmness. The answer is, when they are in, do I don’t know how familiar you guys are with the Thayer matrix that we used when they are in bottom right there, meaning low energy, high tension. They’re very aroused. It blocks interception. It causes disrespect. So what we have to do is we do South reg so that interception comes back online so that they feel these sensations. You don’t teach a child. This is what calmness feels like. You don’t need to do that. It feels good. If it doesn’t feel good, it’s because the sensations are being blocked, because they are still overstressed when we go through self Reg, and they experience these sensations, truly experience the sensations of calm, then they will come to you in one way or Another and ask for help to get to those sensations, this will happen, not just okay. So I’ll give you a great example. Uh, my older boy had a breakup with his girlfriend, a pretty serious breakup yesterday, and so he came home and my wife and I were downstairs watching the news, and he came downstairs. So that’s something that he never did. He never does, and he just sort of stood there. And what he was doing was he was asking for a hug, but not saying, But and so I said to him something like, Oh, this is another question that came up that was great, so just give me one second. Okay, so anyways, I stood up, and I just gave him a hug and you could feel that the endogenous, OH. Opioids, as well as oxytocin, were coming in. He was, he was starting to feel better. Now, his younger brother came home, so three years younger, and these two were always fighting when they were children, you know, fighting about, you know, one triggering the other. And the younger brother went up and gave his older brother a hug. It happens, and so I know how frustrating this is, but it will happen, especially when they get older and start to register these sensations, when these systems come back online, so you just keep on doing it and keep on doing it. I promise you the the point will come where they will know, in their own idiosyncratic way, when to come to you for help to get back to call.

Debbie Reber  

I’ll just share too that you know my kiddo. It’s been two and a half weeks since we dropped them off at university, and I haven’t heard much. My husband games with my kids, so they’ve been hanging out. But I got a text. I got one of those high mom texts, which I never like getting, because they usually mean something’s wrong. But my kid hadn’t eaten all day, like there was a lot of stuff going on. And so I was able to, from, you know, another country, just over text, we jumped great story. Yeah, I was able to, I ordered food. Let’s get some food in your system. And I just kind of reassured, but yeah, so I guess your son did. That’s what my kid was doing, reaching out for that.

Stuart Shanker  

I love it. I just love it. That’s a wonderful story.

Debbie Reber  

So one other question, and then let’s talk about siblings a little bit more, because that that’s a big issue for a lot of folks here. But if a child isn’t registering yet, we’re really identifying the pleasant sensations or that they are in calm Are they still like is their nervous system still getting the benefit of being in that state?

Stuart Shanker  

So yes, but Okay, so let me just decide how much I want to go into here. Okay, there are systems. There are ancient Survival Systems at the very bottom of the brain, in the midbrain, and what’s happened is our kids are pretty much in a constant state of survival. It’s pretty it’s pretty tough for them, lot of stresses. You can’t turn off these systems, like, you know, you do self Reagan, oh, you know, I now we’re back, and I triggered all these, all these opioids. It doesn’t work like that. So let’s just stick with the example of the heart. Let’s say that that Debbie’s Debbie’s son, who I’m guessing is like 21 Yeah, 2020 Okay, so let’s say that for a 20 year old male, we want to see his resting heart rate at around, I don’t know, 6264 somewhere in there, that heart was racing yesterday, and that’s why he couldn’t eat. So what mom did was she brought it down, but she didn’t bring it down to 64 she probably brought it down to 70. Now, that’s a huge gain, right? So, that’s a gain in energy that’s not being that’s not being expended, however, it’s still, you know, he’s a young man. He’s in a strange country, you know. And beginning of October in Scotland, it’s a bit cold already. They speak funny, you know. So, so eventually, what we want to do is get him down to 64 The key here is you can’t go from, you know, let’s say he was at 90 when he finally reached out to her. You can’t go from 90 down to 64 it doesn’t work like that, but you can go down from 90 down to 70. And eventually what’s going to happen is he’s now going to start to recover. He’s going to get in touch with these. These sensations, he’s going to know what produces those sensations on his own. Plus, you know, he’s 20 years old, so he’s had mom doing this for 19 years. So he has an embodied, I’ll promise you, he’s got an embodied awareness of what the sensations feel like. It’s there. It’s just sometimes when the stress gets really high, it blocks those sensations. It blocks the awareness, but the embodied awareness is there, and it’s just the case of helping him, you know? I mean, it’s a great example. You can co regulate with your kid. We used to use FaceTime with when they were in public school with magical effects.

Debbie Reber  

Okay? Thank you. Thanks for answering that. So because there are a lot of parents who have multiple kids mixing their own tight kids, that they’re raising one of the questions that you just touched upon, but maybe we can go in a little more. How can parents navigate sibling dynamics with younger kids? When one child’s heightened state sets off their neuro divergence sibling and this, you know, I think the inter brain was something a lot of people were talking about. What? What role does that play when there’s multiple kids involved.

Stuart Shanker  

Well, good and bad, right? So the kids have, they have an inter brain with you, but they also have an inter brain with each other. And so they said, I mean, look, you know, for us, I mean, we lived this for years and years where, you know, if one is hyper aroused, it would set off the other. The other goes hyper aroused. It only happens, by the way, when the kid is already in Thayer state for bottom right, that’s when they’re, that’s when you’re in for trouble. So we knew, we learned that there were times when you have to separate them, and that means physically separate them so that their limbic systems are not setting each other off. Now what I wanted to say here was one of the things we learned in our clinic was parents tend to privilege rationality. What that means is, you’ve got one kid now, either a neurotypical or another neurodivergent, who got set off by the other one, and we’re going to explain to them. So we’re going to tell them that, well, you know, your brother or your sister is very sensitive, or whatever, but you’ve got a problem. And the problem is that that kid is hyper aroused. That kid is in red brain. In the red brain, they are not processing anything you’re saying. In fact, trying to explain things to a kid who’s in red brain is a stress in itself. It heightens the stress load. So both kids need to be sued. So what we would do is, first of all, we would separate them and we were, you know, so we were husband and wife. If it’s a single parent, then hopefully there’s someone you can call on for help, a grandparent, cousin, whoever. But they both need to be soothed, and they need to, it’s very hard to soothe them together. They will, they will resonate limbic to limbic, they will resonate and keep each other in a heightened arousal state. Now, one of the problems for us was it meant that we couldn’t do certain activities that other parents, you know, just take for granted. 

So we tried several times going on trips, and that was a nightmare. Literally, it would end up with my wife having to sit in the back seat between the two of them. And so you, you know, we learned avoidance, what kinds of experiences were very difficult, especially when they were children. As they got older, by that, I mean teens, then it became then they were better able to separate themselves from what the other one was going through. Bear in mind, this is enormously stressful on you as a parent, and so you know, part of you know, part of my concern here was for my own well. My wife’s well being too. And so for many years, we would not take trips. We would not, you know, I remember one time I was getting an award for something, and, you know, we thought, how nice. You know, bring the kids to this and they can see dad up on the stage. Well, how stupid was I? Too many people, too much noise, too many strangers coming up to them, and they’re both freaking out, and so literally, it ended up where mom had to take them out and wait till the damn thing was over. 

So, you know, you learn through it. There is not a simple solution here, but the thing that I wanted to stress was our concern was that the children would become resources for each other when we weren’t around, that they would be that, that source of comfort, etc. So I told you that story of the younger one hugging his brother, last was it last night or the night before it happens? And if you said to me, you know, like 12 years ago, that I was going to say this, I’d say you’re crazy, but it does happen and and and provided that, provided that we don’t ignore the needs of the other. If it’s neurotypical, if it’s another neurodivergent, we don’t get angry. We don’t, you know. Can’t you see that? You know? So all what they really need is they’ve been triggered. They need to be sued in whatever way you can. And that way, one of those ancient Survival Systems comes back online, and they will feel empathy for their SIP they will feel but not when they are in Redburn. I don’t know if I explained that well enough, but yeah, I think you get the idea,

Debbie Reber  

And I think it’s just also so validating and comforting, frankly, to hear your experience because you’ve been through it, and it’s just, it’s, it’s just really helpful.

Stuart Shanker  

Oh, my heart goes, my heart goes out to all of you. I know what it’s like, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. And you know, I mean, the two of them now are the greatest. They’re 1922, now, and they are the biggest support system for each other, they go to each other now, not me and my wife.

Debbie Reber  

That’s so inspiring. Also, I appreciate you mentioning how hard this is for parents. One of the comments that came up in our discussion board about the book was, well, no, but nobody helped me self regulate as a child, and I really could have used help. I know this book is to help me parent my kids better, but it shed light on how much I was left to deal with really big, scary, hard feelings as a child, my parents would leave me behind or alone as punishment for being out of control when I was really just over stressed and overstimulated. This parent said she had a good cry and gave herself a deep hug. So I just wanted to share that with you.

Stuart Shanker  

Well, thank you. Yes, I read a statistic the other day that just shocked me. So do you guys know what aces are adverse childhood experiences? Yes. Okay, so I read that two thirds of the sort of extremists that you’re seeing in the US right now, like not not mega but like the extremists, like proud boys, that kind of thing, two thirds of them had four or more ACEs. One quarter of all American kids, 25 to 34 have had one or more ACEs. So, yeah, I know. So, you know, coming back to what you were asking me about the beginning, you know, these epidemics that we’re seeing, that mom, that you just described, she’s not alone. 

That mom is describing what you know, a generation lived through because the parents were, were, were, you know, they were immersed in behaviorist parenting theory, where you mustn’t, you know, don’t go to your child if they’re crying. Don’t go to your child if they’re waking up at night. And so part of what we’re doing now, as you know, what Susan’s doing in our in the merits. Enter is we’re going around the world now trying to get parents to, you know, break this damn cycle where you know, where you know, it just keeps on repeating itself. One of the messages that didn’t come through loud enough in the book is that self reg starts with self. Self reg starts with your needs. And your needs as a parent of a neurodivergent kid, are you like? It’s extraordinary, the amount of stress, it really is tough, and so we need, you know, we need self care. We need others in our life. And I don’t care who it is, but there has to be somebody that’s there to, you know, to give me support. That’s why things like your book club are so incredibly important, because the members will support each other. One of the things we learned at Mary, at our clinic was of all the things we did, so we did, you know, we did a lot of therapy, and we asked our parents at the end of one year, they had to write these questionnaires, what was the single best thing that we did for you? And every single year, we got the same answer. It was the groups that they joined, where they supported each other. You know, it was kind of depressing for us, because they ranked that ahead of the therapy we were giving. But it’s true.

Debbie Reber  

Oh gosh, this is, this is so powerful. First of all, we’re coming to the end of the hour and I’m one last question I want to ask you. But first of all, I just want to thank you for everything today. This is so powerful. I’ve taken a ton of notes. I know everyone’s getting so much out of this. And just thank you for the work that you do. It’s so it fills all of us with so much hope. So that’s, that’s

Stuart Shanker  

what I want you to feel. Yeah, that’s exactly what I want you to feel. Yeah,

Debbie Reber  

That’s wonderful. So let me just ask you this, this question. At the end of the book, you expect the unexpected. You share a variety of considerations about how self recommended methods might or might not work, or they might stop working, or they might start working after a while, and then a lot of experimentation might be necessary. So this is a two parter. How long might it take to discover that something that doesn’t seem to be working actually does? Like, how long do we stick with something? And then do you have any favorite resources, or, like, a list of things that we can try any place you can direct us. Okay, so

Stuart Shanker  

answer the second one. First, go on to our website. There’s lots of free stuff you can download, lots of stuff you can get. You can get sheets. You can get charts. So those are very valuable. Now, look, I let me leave you with one of the big lessons I learned. Our older son was a hockey phenom, and that happens, you know? I mean, stop and think about it. He’s autistic. Of course. He’s going to practice shooting a puck over and over and over, and he got really, really good. And so he got scouted When he was 12 years old. And so we got so excited, you know, we had an NHL Scout had come to see my 12 year old play hockey, and he says to us afterwards, he says, Well, your kid is one in 1000 Unfortunately for us, we started to project and and what had happened was they started putting, I don’t know when it happened, but it was too much pressure being put on him. You know, you got to go out there and win the game for us, win the championship. And he didn’t want to play hockey anymore, and we were devastated. Because, you know, you know, here you are. You could be this, you know, this autistic wunderkind. So what did he want to do? What he wanted to do was he wanted to clean cars detailing. I don’t know if you call it that in the US. 

Okay, so he has a job now, it’s a matter of fact he’s out. He’s detailing three big trucks you never seen as happy a kid as when he’s detailing. It makes sense, right? When he’s detailing, he gets to perseverate on the tiniest little speck of dirt. He’s all alone, so he’s only got the truck, but he’s happy he comes home from a day of detailing, in a way, he’s happy that he never was when he was. Playing hockey. So I had to ask myself, at what point am I actually thinking about what makes him happy, and at what point am I thinking about what makes me happy and so living with and by the way, I can just tell you that that the same thing happened with the younger one. The younger one has severe ADHD, and it turns out that it totally what he likes to do is he likes to clean motors. Okay, you know, I went to Oxford. I wanted two kids who want to go to Oxford. Neither government wants to go to Oxford. One wants to clean cars, the other one wants to fix them, but, but they’re happy, and so, you know that question? I want to flip it a little bit. You know, how long does it take? Well, how long did it take me to see them, to see their gifts, their joy, what brought them happiness. I think I’m at the point now where I actually see them, and not myself so but it took me a while. My wife, not so much, but I was worse.

Debbie Reber  

I just got chills when you said that. How long did it take me? Thank you. Thank you for sharing that story, and I just want to thank you again for taking the time to share with us today. You’ve gotten a lot of thanks to the chat, including for not retiring yet. So and just that, you’ve got our community here to support and champion your work in whatever way we can. So thank you.

Stuart Shanker  

Good luck everybody, and good luck to you. Debbie,