Eps 584: Post Traumatic Parenting with Dr. Robyn Koslowitz

“To love after loss is a supreme act of courage… When you’ve experienced trauma and loss and know just how scary the world can be, to choose to parent intentionally—that takes courage. And there’s a joy in that. To me, joyful courage is the courage to be an attachment figure.”

Resources Mentioned

• Dr. Robyn Koslowitz’s Book: Post-Traumatic Parenting

• Dr. Robyn’s Podcast: Post-Traumatic Parenting

• Dr. Robyn on Instagram: @drkoslowitzpsychology

• Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore – “When emotions don’t feel heard, they get louder.”

Transcription

JC Ep 584 (6.23.25) - Final
[00:00:00] Casey O'Roarty: Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Joyful Courage Podcast. This is a place where parents of tweens and teens come to find inspiration, information, and encouragement in the messy terrain of adolescents this season of parenting. Is no joke. And while the details of what we're all moving through might be slightly different, we are indeed having a very collective experience.
[00:00:30] This is a space where we center building, relationship, nurturing life skills, and leaning into our own personal growth. And man, the opportunities abound. Right. My name is Casey O'Roarty. I am a parent coach, positive discipline, lead trainer, and captain of the. Adolescent ship over at Sproutable. I'm also a speaker and a published author.
[00:00:53] I've been working with parents and families for over 20 years and continue to navigate my own experience of being a mom with my two young adult kids. I'm so honored that you're here and listening. Please give back to the podcast by sharing it with friends or on social media rate and review us on Apple or Spotify.
[00:01:13] Word of mouth is how we grow. Thank you so, so much. Enjoy the show.
[00:01:22] Hi listeners, welcome back to the show today. I'm excited to be bringing you an interview. My guest is Dr. Robin Kasowitz. Dr. Kasowitz is a clinical child psychologist, trauma and parenting expert and author of Post-Traumatic Parenting, break the Cycle, become the Parent you always wanted to be. She's the founder of the Post-Traumatic Parenting Model created for anyone who's ever thought I don't want my damage to damage my kids.
[00:01:51] Through her Post-Traumatic Parenting podcast, YouTube channel and her Instagram, which is at Dr. Kasowitz Psychology. Dr. Kitz offers research back tools to help parents. Turn triggering moments into healing ones for themselves and for their children. I know this is gonna be a very useful conversation. I'm so excited.
[00:02:11] Welcome Dr. Kasowitz to the podcast. Thanks so much for having
[00:02:14] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: me. I'm so excited. I saw some of the questions you wanted to ask and I'm super excited to talk about them.
[00:02:19] Casey O'Roarty: Yay. Good. I think they're all really relevant to the experience of. Parenting through adolescence. Mm-hmm. So I would love to start with your story.
[00:02:28] What led you to specialize in trauma and parenting and what inspired. The post-traumatic parenting model. So when I was a
[00:02:36] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: kid, my father was really sick, so I grew up with a very ill parent. And then when I was a teenager, trigger warning, this is a difficult story to hear. My father died of a sudden heart attack and I actually performed CPR unsuccessfully on him.
[00:02:52] At that time. We're going back to the nineties. There was no knowledge of PTSD and trauma the way it was. The way it is now. There was also no Google yet, right? So. I thought that I was mentally ill because I was having what I now know are flashbacks, where I was seeing things that weren't there. I was hearing things that weren't there, and I was also having like tactile flashbacks of performing CPR, like the taste of it, the feel of it, but I didn't have any model for understanding what that was other than like schizophrenia, right?
[00:03:22] Like. Only crazy people see things that aren't there. And when you're 16, that's how you think of it. I had a lot of shame, so I used to hide it and really like, you know, not tell anyone about my, about my episodes and I would have a lot of panic attacks. So on the one hand I was a kid who was. You know, an honor student wanting to go to school, become a psychologist.
[00:03:44] I wanted to, you know, I was a very self-directed student, but then on the other hand, there was this huge secret that I was holding where I was having these flashbacks and panic attacks, but I didn't want anyone to know, because teenagers don't like being different than their friends. Mm-hmm. Just parenthetically, I remember reading in Harry Potter, there's like a line where Harry Potter, you know, he's in a magical school and he, and he's hearing voices, which are actually, there's actually a magical, there's an animal in the walls and he can hear that animal, that animal speaking to him.
[00:04:12] It's a snake. He can speak to snakes. He hears the snake and he says to his, he tells his friend about it, and his friend is like, Harry. Hearing voices no one else can hear is a really bad sign, even in the magical world. Yeah. And I was like. So that when I read that line, I was like, that's what that felt like.
[00:04:27] Right? Yeah. Like, you don't wanna hear things other people can't hear when you're a teenager. Um, so I didn't really go for help or, or, or get any help, but when I was in college, I had this professor who was talking about PTSD as like, you know, sort of like. Soldiers coming back from war, like the old sort of, um, shell shock model of what PTSD is.
[00:04:49] And I remember like sort of looking at the professor and thinking and asking him like. Could this be from other really scary experiences or only being in war? And he said, well, you know, anywhere where you could have died. I said, what about witnessing someone you love die? Would that do it? He's like, yeah, that, that probably would do it.
[00:05:09] Um, and I realized that's what I had, but I didn't know how to access help. Um, when I got a little bit older and I was a grad student, I was pregnant, and my initial question was. What will like, like it's so unpleasant for me to be inside my body. What's it like to be a baby, like a, an infant, a fetus inside my body.
[00:05:32] Right. I can't handle it. Mm-hmm. So what is that gonna do to the baby? And I went to the stacks at NYU and looked for research and there was nothing, there was just no research on the impact of trauma on. Parenting. Yeah. So first it became just being pregnant, but then it became like, how do I explain flashbacks to my toddlers?
[00:05:51] Um, how do I explain panic attacks to my kids? And then it was like, Hey, I was raised in a home where one parent was chronically ill, and my mom was very busy with caregiving. My mom was an incredible person, but she was trying to keep a very ill husband alive. I don't know how to do normal, like. Family dinner.
[00:06:08] I don't know how to do like normative, like how do you raise little kids in a home where there's two healthy parents and like on the surface things should be fine. I dunno how to do that. I.
[00:06:18] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[00:06:19] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: And that's what really sparked my interest. It took me time to realize what I was trying to figure out. But then when I was on my internship, on my doctoral internship, a mo I was giving a court ordered parenting class.
[00:06:31] It was a, it was a diversion program where if kids got in trouble with the law before really coming down hard on the kids, the kids had to do some community service. The parents had to attend a parenting class. It was very forward thinking for the time. 'cause we're going back like a long time. We're going back to like, what, 2000.
[00:06:47] 10, 2012 was a long time ago. It's so weird
[00:06:49] Casey O'Roarty: that 2010 is a long time ago, right? Yeah.
[00:06:52] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah. Pre COVID is prehistoric. Right. But um, and I was teaching this class and. One of the slides was talking about normative parenting practice, and this one mom raised her hand and she said, I do not know what is normal.
[00:07:07] My childhood was so abnormal. Like she was on a boat from Guatemala, and then she was basically like enslaved by her uncle when she came to this country, like working in his business for hours and hours and hours. She's like, I don't know what's normal. Like I, I didn't have the kind of childhood you see on tv.
[00:07:25] And I just, that question just crystallized things. And I asked the attendees in the class, I said, you know, the class is almost over. If anybody wants to stick around and talk about this, I can stay another hour. Everybody stayed. And the nice thing about urban settings is you end up with a cross section of like the world.
[00:07:41] You get people who are, you know. High socioeconomic status, like, you know, people who are working as, you know, lawyers or CEOs, and then you get people who are middle class and then you get people who are struggling to make ends meet from all cultures. And so many of us had post-traumatic parenting as our sort of our, our essential question, how do I keep my damage from damaging my kids?
[00:08:03] Casey O'Roarty: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:04] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: And that just became the tradition. Like I would give the class and then we would hang around and do this and sort of do this discussion group. That's amazing. Um, and it really crystallized my question. And, and now we have the book.
[00:08:15] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. So as you were moving through. College and grad school and then those early years of parenting, did you seek out support?
[00:08:23] Like what did seeking out support look like for you?
[00:08:26] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: So it's interesting, when IW an undergrad, I actually went to the college counseling center for therapy, and that was the first time I did therapy and the counselor gave me, it was what? Is now EMDR, but it was before. It was before they had the R quite figured out.
[00:08:42] So it was just, she called it EMD and it was eye movement desensitization. 'cause the reprocessing phase wasn't yet as well known as it is now. And of course, reprocessing is actually the essential healing part of EMDR. Mm-hmm. But even with that experience, I remember seeing to the counselor, like, do I have PTSD?
[00:08:59] And the counselor was like, you're so functional. Like you're, you're a. You're an honor student, you're working, you're engaged, you have a life. Like people with PTSD don't really present like you, so I wouldn't say you have PTSD. You just had a really bad experience that you need to get over. And of course, now we know that HYPERFUNCTIONAL and PTSD go hand in hand.
[00:09:19] Mm-hmm. And honestly, if an experience is too big for your brain to metabolize. Congratulations. You have trauma, whether it, it's PTSD for insurance, billing purposes or not. If you have trauma, it might impact how you parent. Yeah. And, and there might be something you can do about it, right?
[00:09:35] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. And I love the title of your book.
[00:09:37] I it's, it's such a hook, right? Post you traumatic parenting, break the cycle, become the parent you always wanted to be. So when you talk about breaking the cycle, what does that mean to you? How does it show up in everyday parenting? So I think for many people there are
[00:09:53] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: cycles, right? Where we, we don't even realize what we are passing down to our children, but we pass them down to our children, you know?
[00:10:03] And sometimes it's about like, you know, what constitutes food, right? What constitutes a meal? Like where do we sit when we eat? Do we sit in front of a tv? Do we sit at a table with like. Table. We are in a starch, you know, tablecloth do we, um, eat in the car, right? These are the kinds of things where we make assumptions about parenting and the world and we don't even realize.
[00:10:23] And sometimes we perpetuate a cycle and we don't even know that it's a cycle. We don't even know that there's any other way of handling anger other than lashing out or giving someone the silent treatment. Like what if there's a third option we don't know about? We know about. Kept saying yes to a child, we know about saying no to a child.
[00:10:43] Do we know about giving in fantasy what we can't give in reality? Do we know about negotiating with a child? Do we know about saying not yet to a child? Sometimes we just assume there's only two choices, right? So cycles to me is about the assumptions we make about the world and parenting that we just unconsciously keep reenacting.
[00:11:02] And sometimes when someone points out to us, like, I wonder if there's another way of doing that.
[00:11:06] Casey O'Roarty: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:07] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: And then we interrupt it then. And it's not that difficult sometimes to break a cycle simply by first becoming aware of the cycle and then choosing to do something different so we can break cycles.
[00:11:21] And sometimes it's not about cycles of abuse, sometimes it's just about cycles of assumptions.
[00:11:25] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[00:11:25] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Right. Behavior can't be changed. Mm-hmm. And beliefs. Right? Like, we don't talk about Bruno. Right. Like that kind of thing, like, you know. Yeah.
[00:11:32] Casey O'Roarty: And I've talked about this on the pod before. Mm-hmm. My, my daughter who's 22, she's been on the show and we've done a lot of sharing.
[00:11:39] She's been so generous with sharing about her experience. And when she was in 11th grade, she dropped out of high school. She was really struggling with mm-hmm. Anxiety and depression and. It was so interesting to observe myself. I mean, it was such a strong, I mean, I, I, I'm part of it. Like even right now, I'm like, well, obviously Right.
[00:12:00] I did not want that to happen, obviously. Right. That was, you know, not the road that I wanted to be walking down with her. But I realized too, my strong response also came from. Growing up in a household where your level of education indicated your value as a human being? Yes. And I, I mean, if you would've asked me, if you would've asked me, if I, if that was what I believed, I would've said no until I was confronted by this experience.
[00:12:30] Yes. And it was lodged so deep inside of me, this belief that I didn't even realize that's what was really being activated. And it, so it's really interesting and. Do you think that is, um, it's cycle kind of the same thing as like looking at our conditioning, it's just kind of semantics, would you say? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:12:48] It is what we take on, I think like
[00:12:49] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: sometimes. Yeah. 'cause I think sometimes people look at cycle and think, oh, it's only about abusive cycles. Right. Sometimes it's just about the cycle of assumptions that we make. Yeah. Right. It's sort of the difference between a value and a goal. You know, in the book I have, um, parents who are grappling with that, where like, if the goal is.
[00:13:05] My kid gets into Harvard, then getting into Yale is failing, right? Yeah. But if you have a value around, my kid gets into a career that is the best career for them, and that leaves them with a fulfilling, meaningful life, then there's a lot of opportunities that suddenly open up. Right? Yeah. Love, love that.
[00:13:22] So if you're making an assumption, you don't even know that you're making the assumption until it's like, oh, my kid's not going to Harvard. Right? And that becomes, we call that, I call that that kids are the map, the mirror, and the motivation, right? Mm-hmm. Because they're the ones that hold up the mirror and they're like.
[00:13:35] Wait a minute, this is what you're actually, you, you claim that you don't care about these things, but guess what? You're act, what you're actually doing and what you're actually getting stressed out about. Tells me that you do value this or you do, or this is your goal, right?
[00:13:48] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[00:13:48] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: And then they're the only ones that can get us to look at that and be like, Hey.
[00:13:52] That's true. And then they, they're the only ones usually that motivate us because it's only my love for my kid that's gonna make me really cha, at least for me, the only thing that ever got me to challenge some deeply held coping skills that were so ingrained in me was my love for my kids. Mm-hmm. Right?
[00:14:08] Like my boss wasn't gonna do it. My friends weren't gonna do it. Like, but my kids, for my children, I will do it. Yeah. I will change my coping.
[00:14:16] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. That's comes up a lot with clients that I work with when I invite them to think about. The relationship that they wanna have once their kids get to choose whether or not they come home to see them.
[00:14:28] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yes.
[00:14:28] Casey O'Roarty: And is the relationship right now and how you're showing up for them right now going to move things closer to them wanting to spend time or farther away? Yeah. Right. Which isn't about being permissive and saying yes all the time by any means, but it is who am I? Am I critical? Am I judgmental? Am I telling them what to do all the time?
[00:14:47] Do I think I know best, which. Sometimes I do think I know best, but I really work with,
[00:14:52] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: that's sometimes you do, right? Like sometimes it's like I've lived many more years so I kind of sure do know the end of this story. Yes. Having done that made that mistake myself. But yes,
[00:15:03] Casey O'Roarty: and you know, you get to live your life and you get, you know, so many of our teenagers, especially our.
[00:15:08] Well, something I'll say is they're experiential learners and we can have the most beautifully wrapped piece of knowledge and wisdom. And really what's gonna land is the experience, right? Yeah. And so that's, that's the other thing that we get to kind of not take that personally as well. Why do you think the adolescent years are such, they feel like such a pressure point for post-traumatic parents in particular, and, and I wonder too.
[00:15:34] And something that I will say in workshops, like if you haven't realized that parenting is the personal growth and development workshop that you didn't sign up for. Oh yeah. By the time they're teenagers, you know it's a crash course by the time you get to adolescence. Yeah. But what are some of the dynamics that show up during adolescence that parents might not expect and might be kind of the catalyst for.
[00:15:58] Realizing, oh, I'm in some post-traumatic parenting right now. Yeah.
[00:16:02] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: So first of all, I think there's this misnomer that, like, what do you do when your kids trigger you? People ask me that all the time. Yeah. And the truth is, our kids don't trigger us. Our kids reveal our triggers. I love that. Yes, it's, it's such an important distinction because.
[00:16:17] If you wanna heal it, you gotta reveal it, right? Yeah. So your kids are the people who are going to sort of let you know what your triggers are. And when they're teenagers, they're old enough to think about the world and to think about thinking they live with you. They're little scientists. They're like figuring out what works, right?
[00:16:35] Mm-hmm. So they're the ones who are gonna hold up that mirror because. Because they're honest enough and they can, seven year olds, don't think a 7-year-old. I remember, let's go even younger. I remember working, um, I was working with a post-traumatic parent and her kid was, was about three or four. Um, and this was a mom.
[00:16:54] Her husband died when she, when this child was in utero. Um, and a lot of the parenting was about setting boundaries with her family of origin. 'cause she sort of moved back home and then, but she's an adult, but she sort of, they're treating her like a teenager 'cause she's living in their house with her kid.
[00:17:08] Mm-hmm. There was a lot of boundaries stuff and then there was a lot of grief. He died very suddenly and very traumatic. And there was a lot of, I wanna parent my daughter differently, but I'm living in my parents' home. How do I do that? The kid came home from preschool, her first experience in preschool with this dramatic discovery that some people have two parents.
[00:17:24] They don't just have a grandma and a grandpa and a mom. Some people have a mom and a dad, and they live in a house with just mom and dad. Of course, of course. She was shocked by that. How would she know? Yeah. Until she went to preschool, it didn't occur to her. Right. So three-year-olds just sort of take the world as they come.
[00:17:40] Seven year olds take the world as it is. It's like, you know, this is the world, but when you're 11 and 15, you can be like, wait, mom, my friend's parents do things so differently. You know, my friend's mother never yells at her. Mm-hmm. You know, or like in that house they talk about things or they sit down to dinner together or, you know, whatever.
[00:17:59] Whatever the the situation is, they can think critically about it and they can ask you questions. Right. I have this very powerful story in the book that like people resonate with a lot. That was, to this day, when I tell the story, I get a little choked up. My son was about 10 or 11 and he, one of my older sons, and he was, um, he said to me, mommy, where do you go when you go away behind your eyes?
[00:18:24] Sometimes you're talking to me, but it's like, you're not veer and it's re, I really don't like it. And it's like, I need you to stop. Or some words to that effect. And he started to cry. Mm. And one of my best trauma coping tools was dissociation. Mm-hmm. I am really good at hyper focusing and getting into flow.
[00:18:43] I can, like everybody else, has a hard time getting into flow. I have a hard time getting outta flow. I can literally sit it, it's been a superpower for me. I can literally sit on like the New Jersey Transit train from my house to my office in NYU and code research the entire way there, and not even notice that there's a drunk guy like singing on top of his lungs across the aisle.
[00:19:02] Like I am dialed in. I am like, whatever. It's not always safe, but that's me, right? Yeah. I can dissociate and it can be a superpower. There are times that's fabulous. Like when I have a, when I have a deadline, that's great, but. You can't be a present parent if you're dissociated. Right. And my kid hated it.
[00:19:19] Right. And he was the first person, 'cause I had friends tell me this, like, I remember a friend telling me this, like, you know, when I, we were probably like older teens, like 18, 19, and a friend was like, sometimes you space out in middle of a conversation and it's really creepy and I don't like it. And I was like, yeah, that's me.
[00:19:34] Sorry. Like I'm spacey. Like I, I just, I kept out. Right. Okay. Kind of left it off, be my friend, or don't be my friend. Like I kind of fluff it off like, sorry I do that, but that's me. Like yeah, that's my brain. Sorry. You know, I wasn't like mean about it, but it was like, yeah, that's me. I sometimes space out.
[00:19:46] I've always been that way. When my son said it though, it was like, I've gotta get a handle on this dissociation thing 'cause it's clearly harming my kid. But I remember looking at him and being like. Imagine he had said to me, you know, ma, you're five feet tall and it would be so much more convenient if you were six feet tall.
[00:20:02] 'cause then you could reach things from the upper cabinet and like now you have to get a step stool, grow a foot. Like, wait, you want me to not dissociate? But that would mean I would feel my feelings and then I would yell at you. And yellings really bad for moms to do, so I can't do that. So what do I do?
[00:20:16] But that really sparked me going back into therapy and saying, okay, I've, I've sort of gotten my flashbacks under control. I've, I know how to sort of dissociate my stress away, but what do I do with this? How do I deal with stress and stay present?
[00:20:30] Casey O'Roarty: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:30] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: So the kid is the one person who cares about you enough, who loves you enough, and who you care about enough that when they reveal your trigger, it actually matters.
[00:20:40] Casey O'Roarty: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:41] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah. And then you do something about it.
[00:20:52] Casey O'Roarty: So I work a lot with parents around not taking things personally. Mm-hmm. And I wonder just as I'm listening to you, 'cause I know some people are really good at that, at recognizing this isn't about me. And then some of us, it's harder to tease that out. And I wonder if there's something there just around our own feeling of being seen and appreciated and understood in our family of origin growing up.
[00:21:21] And then to be confronted by a teenager who's like the la like we are not the center of their universe. And yet they do things that feel. Like an attack on us and, and it's such a big response. Do you think that there is a connection there? Yeah,
[00:21:37] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: I think what you were saying before, you know about parenting in a way that they won't wanna vote with their feet when they're adults.
[00:21:42] You know what I mean? The idea is when you look at feedback as feedback, right? And I really try to model this and teach this to my patients and do this myself. Feedback is really the recipe for how to be my friend. So Sure. Love that. When you get feedback sometimes it's like, ouch. Yeah. I have gotten feedback.
[00:22:01] I have a, I have a Brooklyn accent and I talk fast. I've gotten that feedback. I work on it. I'm, I'm probably never gonna master talking as slowly as some people would like. Mm-hmm. But at the same token, it's helpful information to have if I keep hearing you talk fast. Then Okay. It sounds like enough attendees at my webinar, thought I talked fast.
[00:22:21] I should slow it down.
[00:22:22] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[00:22:23] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: You know? Right. It's feedback, it's helpful. Right. I want you to come back to the next class, so I should follow that advice. Right. However, of course it feels personal and I think that goes to like, I, I, I, sorry. That's okay. I, I think that goes to the difference between shame and guilt.
[00:22:41] Casey O'Roarty: Okay.
[00:22:41] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Right. Where guilt is. I know Freud made it sound like guilt is the worst thing ever, but guilt is not really our enemy when it comes to relationships. Guilt is just a signal that says. I did something wrong. I need to fix it. Mm-hmm. You know, if I accidentally was tactless, I need to call that person up and say, well, I made that joke.
[00:22:58] It was too soon. It wasn't the right joke. I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. How do I fix that? Shame is that global sense of like, I am bad. I mean, I'm quoting Brene Brown here. Totally. But there's a lot of people who say this, right? Like, or that other old adage of like, shame stands for should have already mastered everything.
[00:23:17] Right? Like. I didn't master managing my stress without dissociating yet. Mm-hmm. But the kids got a point. So yeah, of course I went through a shame spiral when it happened, and a fear spiral and a just sense of like global, like, oh, I'm the worst mother in the world. I knew my damage would damage my kids.
[00:23:33] See, it's exactly what I was afraid of. Of course, I went through those, like I'm telling the story now, but. That son is in college now, so we're talking, it's, it's 10 years later. Right. I've had a lot of therapy and thinking and working on that and writing since.
[00:23:49] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[00:23:49] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: But that, but that mirror that he held up and that motivation of it's hurting him, I better figure it out.
[00:23:55] 'cause I love him and he loves me and I don't wanna harm this relationship.
[00:23:59] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. Well, and I love that you've already said this, there's like, there's the awareness piece, right? Feedback offers us awareness. Then we realized there is a choice point here, and are we willing, or do we want to get some help, get some healing, get some processing, you know, do some, some reflection.
[00:24:16] Are we willing to try something different? I was speaking to a group of parents just last night with my business partner. We had a, a workshop. And it was very interesting. It was a room full of highly accomplished women, very wealthy. And what I heard a lot of was there was a lot of conversation around worry about entitlement.
[00:24:41] I. There was a lot of conversation around, well, how do you know if they're not just trying to get what they want? Which I thought was so interesting because I, you know that they're trying to get what they want. Right? That's what they're doing. We're all trying to get what we want, first of all, but it was, I've never been in a room, and I've been in many rooms with all different demographics around the world where this theme just kept coming up, kept coming up, and then inside conversations, hearing from a lot of the parents.
[00:25:09] My kids don't understand how good they have it. My kids, you know this. Yes. That's a posttraumatic parent with this. Yes. I, my kids don't understand. And, and what, and I'd love your feedback on my response 'cause it's, you know, these women, I had another client who, you know, lives off the grid and home schools and her kids don't have to go to public school.
[00:25:28] And she's like, they don't know how good they have it. They don't have to sit there. And I always come back to Yeah, they don't have a contrast. Yeah. So why would they, why would they, how would they know? Right. How would they know? And I wonder what, what is your take on that?
[00:25:44] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: I. So I think there's so many takes.
[00:25:46] First of all, it's so true. Sometimes we're victims of our own success, right? Like my kid had the childhood that I was trying to provide them, and now they think that's normal. Yeah. How dare they? We should be celebrating that. But how dare they? But your inner child sometimes gets jealous of your real world child.
[00:26:02] And I know inner child sounds a little woo back. No, I love it. Bring it. But you know, inner child's a great metaphor for just. Versions of ourself that are still in our neurology. Right. Your inner child might look at your real world child and be like, when, but when I was 16, I, I was in public school being stultified.
[00:26:18] Right. Or whatever the, whatever the thing is. And in the book we actually talk about there are meditations we can use to like. Allow our inner child to experience what we're giving our real world child, and also we can sit down and mourn with our inner child. To this day, my most, um, I think my most clicked on video on my YouTube channel is about a ritual that people can do to like mourn.
[00:26:44] A, a, a terrible childhood, like to mourn an experience in childhood. Like maybe, you know, the mom who had asked me that question, you know, was talking about the sadness as her daughter reaches the age she was when a relative started molesting her. All the grief about her lost innocence as she looks at her daughter's actual innocence.
[00:27:03] It is, her grief is just coming up. Let's have a funeral for that version of you, for that innocent little 5-year-old that wasn't an innocent little 6-year-old, right? Like you have to have a funeral for her. You have to actually bury something and mourn, have a eulogy. Everything you do at a funeral in your culture, you need to go do that.
[00:27:21] Um, and. That video has just gotten such response because we do need to do that. So you can look at your inner child and say, yeah, I was lucky, you know, like that mom from Guatemala that I spoke about. Like I was lucky if my uncle fed me and now my kid is complaining 'cause I'm asking her to put her dish from her delicious nutritionally balanced meal in the dishwasher.
[00:27:42] And she's complaining and you're getting furious. You can look at that inner child and say, yeah, that wasn't okay. Mm-hmm. Right? Like what happened to us wasn't okay. But as an adult now I can tune you into the satisfaction it feels to feed my child actual food. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And heal in that way, you know?
[00:28:02] So there are, there are ways of handling that, but I think also. There's another, there's another whole side. 'cause once you're not angry anymore, right? Once you're, once, once your inner 10-year-old is not trying to parent your current real world, 16-year-old, then you suddenly become much more logical. And then it becomes about, oh, you know what?
[00:28:21] My kid is getting a little entitled. How do I teach my child? How to navigate the concept of needs versus wants. Mm-hmm. I actually, literally today wrote a Psychology Today blog post based on something that a patient of mine brought in, which is that, um, her kid is begging for those la booboo dolls. Right.
[00:28:39] Which, I don't know if you know that trend. I know. Super. Okay. I, I literally entitled the, the Post. Yes. La Booboo dolls are creepy. Your kid's gonna want one anyway. And that's not a bad thing. They're the most creepy looking dolls. I mean, you know, like the garbage pail kids? Yes. Or like, there, there've been, there've been, there have been fads before that were creepy.
[00:28:56] They're creepy. Cute. Dolls. They have like these jagged teeth and like they're furry and big anime eyes. Yeah, yeah. But like, they're just creepy. Sure. And they're a fortune and they're being sold in blind bags. And there's all these timed releases and like, like there was just an auction and one sold for like $170,000, you know?
[00:29:13] Yeah. Yeah. And the mom was like, I don't know what to do. Um, and then of course, the kid trying to. To push or to, to, like you said, the kid just wants what they want. Well, Ashley's mom buys her whatever she asks for because Ashley's mom wants to show her that she loves her. 'cause Ash, there's always an Ashley's mom.
[00:29:28] She mm-hmm. She exists in agriculture every, yep, yep, yep. Right. Ashley's mom buys her great, you know, golden Goose sneakers and Ashley, you know? Yeah, sure. Great. Thanks. Ashley's mom. Okay, but
[00:29:38] Casey O'Roarty: knock it off. Ashley's mom, right?
[00:29:39] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah, but you know what? Saying to the child sounds like you really want a labu doll.
[00:29:43] I get it. It's not in the budget right now. I can help you troubleshoot ways to earn the money to get it yourself. Or you want Golden Glue sneakers for $750. 'cause that's a thing for a brand new iPhone. Yeah. Whatever you want. Yeah, no problem. In my budget to buy you sneakers this summer was $150. Here's the $150.
[00:30:03] I can help you troubleshoot how to earn the other $600 and then figure out how to get those Golden Goose sneakers. Mm-hmm. Right. And I'm not gonna get, I'm not getting pulled in 'cause my kid's just experimenting and trying to figure out what works. And if I have a sense of like, because of my trauma, maybe I'm not a loving enough mother.
[00:30:21] Maybe Ashley's mother does know how to parent better than me. That argument's gonna work on me. Yeah. Your kid's trying to manipulate you. All social interaction is manipulation. We're always in, right? Like we're always, if I smile at you, I'm trying to get you to
[00:30:33] Casey O'Roarty: like me. Sure, of course. I love that you said that.
[00:30:35] I love that you said that. 'cause I feel like manipulate, manipulation, they're like these bad words that come up and a lot of the work that I do and, and I'm like, well, wait a minute. These human beings have been studying you since day one. Right. And they figured probably more out about you than you're even aware of about yourself or that you're ready to process about yourself or that you're ready to process.
[00:31:00] You probably know it on some level. Right, right, right. And so, of course, and I feel like, and something that I brought up with the parents last night was like, how about we just. Lighten up. How are we Just like give a, like a knowing smile and say, man, yeah, that would be amazing if we could go to Sephora and spend a fortune on makeup and, right.
[00:31:21] Today's not the day, but I'd love to go get a smoothie. I'd love to go take a walk around the lake or whatever. Right? Like, yes and yes, validation sounds fun. And I love yes and right. Yeah. I love, yes. And it's,
[00:31:36] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: it's such an expansive way of thinking, yes, this child is trying to manipulate me. Part of social skills is being able to manipulate people, right?
[00:31:43] Yeah. Like in other words, in the sense of like, how do I make this request when I go to schools and I teach kids like interpersonal effectiveness skills. I'll say to them in this class, there's probably one or two kids that you would ask to go to the teacher if like there's a test that's scheduled at a really bad time or you know, you don't like having a double period of whatever before, whatever.
[00:32:02] There's probably two or three kids in your class who. Would be the people you'd pick to go to the principal and advocate for you. Who are those people? And then it's so interesting, the kids will be like her and her or her and him. Mm-hmm I'm like, okay, pretend you're those two people. How would you ask?
[00:32:19] And the kids will like ask in a whole different way than the way they were asking. Let's say I walked into the classroom, they're like, it's not fair. We have two finals scheduled. And I'm like, alright. And how would like, you know. Those two ask, and they're like, you know, I understand that the final schedule is difficult to construct.
[00:32:36] However, it's really difficult to have a term paper and a final do the same day. Mm-hmm. Is there any way that there's some flex on that schedule? That's a skill that those two kids have you, you know how to imitate them. Why? But when I walked in, you started yelling at me, right? Yeah.
[00:32:50] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. Right. Yeah. Isn't
[00:32:51] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: there a, so you know that there's a more effective way to ask, isn't that I once had a teacher say, Dr.
[00:32:55] K, aren't you teaching them how to be manipulative? I'm like, I'm teaching them social skills. You're teaching them how to be
[00:33:00] Casey O'Roarty: effective. Right? Right. You're teaching them social skills and how to be effective. And so what about those parents though that maybe haven't landed in the awareness place and. And the things that they're the Lulu, blah, blah, blah, whatever you just said, doll.
[00:33:16] The
[00:33:16] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Lululemons or the Labu dolls or the, yeah, it could be Lulus Cru or the, or the Golden Blue speakers, which to me is just like,
[00:33:21] Casey O'Roarty: wow, the iPhone, the
[00:33:23] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: next iPhone that you
[00:33:24] Casey O'Roarty: just got an
[00:33:24] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: iPhone like,
[00:33:25] Casey O'Roarty: yeah, and, and it slides parents into that reactive state and they realize, oh my gosh, I am being this parent that I promised myself I wouldn't be.
[00:33:36] How do you support parents in those first steps once that awareness has landed?
[00:33:42] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: So the first, I think thing, you know how we were talking before about guilt versus shame? Yeah. Is really understanding your emotions and really looking at your emotions and being like high anger, you're here. You're here to tell me about a problem.
[00:33:55] 'cause that's what anger does. It identifies a problem. This is indeed a problem or high fear. You are here, you are, you are coming with anger to tell me that it's a problem. And what if, what if, what if? What if my kid becomes so entitled that they're, they can't live in the normal world, right? Thank you anger and fear.
[00:34:11] You've given me some valuable information that is indeed a concern. I don't wanna raise an entitled snowflake who doesn't understand the value of working to earn the things that they want. Thanks, and I've got it from here, so thanks for your information. You know the line that humans, I, I I, I quote Dr.
[00:34:27] Eileen Kennedy more with this, she always says, humans get, when humans don't feel heard, they get louder.
[00:34:32] Casey O'Roarty: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:33] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: When emotions don't get heard, they get louder. But when they get heard, you can be like, but anger and fear, thank you. I am gonna handle this the way I want to. And then I might go to the kid and be like, totally get it.
[00:34:43] Those golden goose sneakers sound like fun. It sounds like you're, everyone in your class has them and everyone's probably three people, but fine. It sounds like you really want them totally willing to troubleshoot with you how you got them. Nowhere in there is me whipping out my checkbook whether I can afford it or not.
[00:34:59] Maybe, or like I said, maybe I'll say I had budgeted $150 for your sneakers. You can have that 150 that leaves you with another 600 to earn. I actually did that with one of my children when she was, she really wanted an extremely ex, we were shopping for her like summer wardrobe. She wanted an extremely expensive designer dress.
[00:35:17] She was in a class with a lot of very entitled kids, shall we say? Very well resourced kids, let's say that. I don't know how entitled they were, but they were well resourced. Sure. And she wanted that dress. So I said to her, this is my entire budget. For your summer clothes. That means you're like living in the stress.
[00:35:32] Like this is what you're getting, this is your, like, she wanted it for like party wear, like, you know. And I said, fine, but this is like your dress. Any event you go to, you're wearing the dress. Like, so she said that. Yeah, that's fine. That's what I want. You know what? By Decem, by, by whatever it was. It was the summer, let's say.
[00:35:50] So let's say by, I don't remember what month it was, but she was like, I'm bored of the stress. I'm like, great, let's worry out a plan for how you can earn some money. Now that stuff is going on sale in middle of the season. The next year, I remember we went shopping and she wanted something that was also designer and I said to her and and she's like, this is so cute.
[00:36:08] She's like, but it's not $400. Cute. And she put it back on the shelf herself. Lesson learned. I didn't lecture, I didn't say anything. I just said, sure, spend your budget. You wanna blow your entire budget on one outfit. Yeah, sure. Go ahead.
[00:36:21] Casey O'Roarty: I love that. And there was no shame or humiliation on your part and there wasn't any waffling on your part.
[00:36:28] I think that's something that. You know, fine, we'll do it this way, and then later on, okay. Yeah, you're right. You know, there's some waffling that happens later on in the follow through, but I heard compassion and I heard empathy, and I heard support, like, I'm here to problem solve with you. I bet there's loads of ways that we can figure this out, and I, I really, really appreciate that.
[00:36:49] 'cause I think that, like you said at the start, we, we get in this mindset that it's yes or no. And there's so much in between and there's so much in between. And it's actually, to me, it's that in-between place where life skills are developed.
[00:37:06] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah.
[00:37:06] Casey O'Roarty: Right. Like that everything's figureoutable and let's problem solve and let's get creative with ideas.
[00:37:11] And all of that are growing life skills and awareness in our kids too. And I just, I love that.
[00:37:18] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: And isn't it better to make that mistake when you're 14 Yes. Than to make that mistake when you're 27, you've maxed out credit cards, right? Yes. Like I have to, and for me, again, with my perfectionism, it's hard for me to let my kids make mistakes.
[00:37:31] Right. It would be so much easier for me to just go in and like, not let that happen. 'cause my, another thought, another concept in my book that I wanted to, that, you know, you had mentioned at, um, wanting to talk about the trauma app in my brain is just like, don't let her like lecture her about the value of money and.
[00:37:46] Like, but it was so much more valuable for me to just be like, sure. Yeah. Like I'm not even arguing with you that it's social suicide to show up with it without a designer dress. You know what, you may be right. Right. Something. There's something, by the way, about wanting items. Because that's how social groups identify themselves, right?
[00:38:04] When a child says, I need this brand of sneakers, or this brand of t-shirt or whatever, isn't that how you signal similarity in a group? You go to high school and you're wearing a band T-shirt and another kid is wearing a t-shirt for the same band and you're like, Hey, we might have something in common.
[00:38:19] That's how you make friends. Mm-hmm. You signal social similarity that my kid understands that and is, is. Understanding how friendships are formed by signaling, similarity means she's typically developing. That's not a bad thing.
[00:38:31] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. I get
[00:38:32] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: it. Right. Yeah. That's, that's, that's great. You know, much later we can talk about like, is that the crowd you necessarily wanna signal similarity to?
[00:38:39] Like, people who think they're special because they're daddies have more money than since, I don't know. Mm-hmm. Maybe you wanna find a different crowd of kids, but again, you're gonna figure that out as you grow up. Yeah. Yeah. If I don't lecture you about it.
[00:38:49] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah.
[00:38:58] And you mentioned that trigger app, and I appreciate too that that baby step of just Oh, anger's in the room or fear is in the room. Yeah. And, and identifying it and giving some space like I see you and I hear you. And thank you for the information. So is there. A place. 'cause I know, and I've worked with people who are like, Casey, I just go from zero to a hundred.
[00:39:22] Like there is no pause, there's no room for a pause. And so how do you support parents in, in slowing down enough to say, okay, anger is here and fear is here and I see you. Thank you for the feedback and now I'm gonna do, I'm gonna show up differently. I'm gonna respond, I'm gonna be even in response versus reactivity.
[00:39:44] Is there even a, a way to slice it even thinner for when that zero to 50, zero to a hundred happens and it feels like there's no place to acknowledge. What's happening before we're, you know? Yeah.
[00:39:56] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: So a lot of what I'll say is with so many parents with that shame and self blame of like I go from zero to 60, is I'll say, it's not you, it's your trauma.
[00:40:06] Like, what's wrong with me? It's not you. You, at some point your trauma taught you that. The minute you feel a certain intensity of emotion, you need to lash out. Maybe you had a, you know, really bullying, mean stepdad, and the only way to deal with him was to yell back, like, to like assert yourself and to explode.
[00:40:30] Maybe you had the O, maybe you did the opposite. You held onto all this anger with him, but you ruminated and you were so mad. And then in adulthood you learned if I hold onto the anger. It. It makes me feel yucky inside, so I'm getting it out the instant I can. Right. Your trauma app is the part of your brain that says, I'm feeling this.
[00:40:47] Here's how I react. It's like an algorithm.
[00:40:49] Casey O'Roarty: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:49] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Right. So when you know that that's your trauma app, you can sort of go into your brain and be like, I need to deselect permissions from my trauma app. If I'm stressed out, I don't have to yell. If I'm stressed out, I have other options and sometimes there are mindfulness practices we could do.
[00:41:04] I start feeling stressed instead of talking to people, I sing, let's say, or I start feeling stressed. I write down, I am feeling stressed right now. Like there are things we can do to interrupt it. When we take away that shame of like, I'm the worst parent in the world, forget it. This is awful. Poor her. I guess she'll go to therapy one day and heal from me, and we go down the path of.
[00:41:24] Perhaps I can reprogram this. And when we do that, we reclaim our psychological energy from the trauma app. Like it's draining the battery of our system. Right? It's just really expensive on our battery power. So we wanna be like, and the other problem is, of course your inner child's gonna keep turning the trauma app back on.
[00:41:42] Yeah. Right. So the faster you tell your inner child, wait a minute, I've got this, I get it. I get how mad I feel right now and I really want to yell at her. I so get that. And you know what? You're right. She is acting wrongly, like it is not okay for her to make that demand right now in that snarky tone.
[00:41:58] Casey O'Roarty: Mm-hmm.
[00:41:58] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: And it doesn't mean I have to yell.
[00:42:00] Casey O'Roarty: Right,
[00:42:01] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: right. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it's a lot of trauma therapy first. Sometimes it's journaling, sometimes it's like, you know, reading a book like mine, I'm being like, oh, that's why I do that. Because anything that's learned can be unlearned. Trauma is just an instance of learning.
[00:42:18] Yeah. Right. So unlearn it.
[00:42:19] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:42:20] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: And we can,
[00:42:22] Casey O'Roarty: I'm all for it. I fully believe in it as well. Like there is, yeah. I, and I think it it, but it is, it does require that willingness to do the work. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I think that's where it's curious, and that was a little something that I saw last night was just, and I see with some parents where it's like I, the, the, the, the, the attachment to staying focused on the kid's behavior and the kid being mm-hmm.
[00:42:49] A problem. Mm-hmm. Versus, or ins, I mean, versus I'm gonna make it an either or. I think it be, it's a both and, right? Like right. There can be problematic behavior and there can be ways that we are, I absolutely believe that we're always influencing the dynamic that we're in with our kiddo. Right. And it's that curiosity question of like,
[00:43:10] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: I need to teach her.
[00:43:11] Right. That's a very, like the anger in you is like, versus. Do you need to teach her or does she need to learn? Because there's such a big difference, right? There's a part of me, the kid who wasn't gonna ask my parents for a lot of things 'cause I had a dying dad. Right. Who is like that? That inner child is just like looking at my kid and being like, how dare you ask for such expensive clothing?
[00:43:33] Like how, like Right. That that part of me versus she needs to learn. Mm-hmm. Right. And the only way she's gonna learn this. Is by making this mistake and I have to let her make this mistake isn't that much more powerful than I need to teach her. Yeah. There's very little we can teach people, but we can facilitate learning.
[00:43:51] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. And experience is such a good teacher.
[00:43:54] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah.
[00:43:55] Casey O'Roarty: How do you help parents balance this work their own healing, while also showing up consistently for the teens that are in their house? It can feel like,
[00:44:04] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: yeah.
[00:44:04] Casey O'Roarty: How lovely it would be to just go on retreat and do all your work and then show up at home and be like, all right, you got a new mom.
[00:44:11] Right. I'm ready to handle things, but it's not like that we're in the day to day right in the thick of it with them. How do you support them with that?
[00:44:18] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: But sometimes, I guess, and sometimes a little bit of this kind of work makes everything else go so much more smoothly and effectively. And sometimes it's like a book like mine.
[00:44:31] You read a couple of minutes a day, you listen to the audio, a couple of minutes a day, you're not gonna do it all. Perfectly. You're not like suddenly turning into some hybrid of like, I don't know, Mr. Rogers, Mary Poppins, and Lo like Gilmore, like all in one tomorrow. Like that's not gonna happen, right?
[00:44:47] Yeah. But as you're working on yourself, you'll have moments like, Hey, I handled that really well, or like, it's been a few weeks since I yelled, or whatever that was, we're. You'll just get a moment and then you'll get another moment, and then you'll get another moment. So sometimes starting that work, the reason we don't is again, it goes back to that shame of should have already mastered everything.
[00:45:08] Right? Like, I should have, like I'm, I'm the worst person, so if I read a parenting book, it's gonna make me feel even worse. Mm-hmm. But if it first explains to me why I am this way and trauma's not your fault, 'cause by definition trauma's not something you consented to. Right? Yeah. It was an overwhelming experience.
[00:45:24] So it's, so it can't possibly be your fault. So then already it's just a matter of, oh, during a moment of trauma, I learned this coping skill. Okay. But my brain was young then. So it was the coping skill that my brain was able to use at that young time. Even if it's just like, maybe the trauma's very recent, maybe it's like everything was fine till CO, but then we lost our business.
[00:45:46] Mm-hmm. But then during trauma. The world felt uncertain. We lost our business. I had kids being homeschooled. I couldn't figure out where like the next dollar was coming from, right? Like that was a huge trauma. So it's not about my childhood, but now that trauma app in my brain just like really developed itself and now I'm really panicky and I'm really depleted all the time.
[00:46:06] Okay. But you learn that somewhere and what can be learned can be unlearned.
[00:46:10] Casey O'Roarty: Mm-hmm.
[00:46:11] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: And sometimes that's so much faster.
[00:46:13] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. Well, and I appreciate what you said when you said that it, sometimes it, it can be really small shifts that make a really big difference. Do you encourage parents? Because the way that I see it is any kind of self development work that we're doing, when we're doing it out loud, we're modeling such an important thing to our kiddos, which is.
[00:46:34] Humans are flawed at like human, we're, yeah. We, there is so much in this life that we get to grow through and develop con constantly. Yeah. And I think it's such a gift and I encourage parents that I work with to, to be, you know, transparent with their kiddos and I especially because especially if they have teens.
[00:46:54] Teens can be really good accountability partners.
[00:46:57] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah.
[00:46:57] Casey O'Roarty: Right. Yeah. How do you do? Yeah. Do you encourage that with your clients?
[00:47:02] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Exactly that, right. The idea that if I do something wrong, I'm gonna take responsibility for it. Right. Not that old school parents don't apologize. 'cause that's gonna make kids feel insecure.
[00:47:11] That parents can make mistakes. Yeah. Parents are, human. Humans make mistakes. It's more insecure. It's
[00:47:16] Casey O'Roarty: more insecure of like. I should be perfect by the time I'm an adult. Like that scary to me is more scary. Unsettling.
[00:47:23] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah. So like, yeah. Take responsibility. And if your kid, you know, calls you on something to do that.
[00:47:29] Yeah, I did do that thing where I, I got louder than I wanted to. You're right. Yeah. Without doing the thing where it's like, but if you wouldn't have been so snarky, I wouldn't have needed to yell, right? Yes. Without the defensive side of it, because I don't need my kids. I, the interesting thing about taking responsibility is I don't need my kids to say the magic words of, I forgive you.
[00:47:47] I need to
[00:47:48] Casey O'Roarty: forgive me. I mean, I don't, I'm always like, don't ask them. Do you forgive me?
[00:47:52] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah.
[00:47:52] Casey O'Roarty: Like, let them, or don't let, like, it doesn't, that's not what
[00:47:55] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: it's about. Right? Like, how can we work on this? What have we learned from this? Where do we go with this? Here's what I'm gonna do differently next time.
[00:48:03] Here's I'll, I'm practicing. Yes,
[00:48:05] Casey O'Roarty: thank you. Oh yeah, the doctor said it so.
[00:48:08] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah, I mean like that's true. I mean to and yeah, there kids are that like humility, like exercise and humility. Right. More so than anything else. Yeah. Kids are gonna make us struggle sometimes and they're gonna hold up that mirror and sometimes it's not in the most flattering way.
[00:48:23] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah, definitely.
[00:48:23] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: That doesn't mean that two weeks later you can't say to your kid or five minutes. Like it depends when you can't say to your kid, you know? Wasn't the most effective way to tell me that. For sure.
[00:48:33] Casey O'Roarty: For sure, for sure. How about we try it this time next time.
[00:48:36] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah.
[00:48:36] Casey O'Roarty: Yeah. I love that. Well, as we wrap up, what's one takeaway or mindset shift that you hope that, that any post-traumatic parent that's listening right now will walk away with, especially, you know, considering that most of the people listening are in the teen years.
[00:48:51] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: Yeah, I think the teen make us doubt ourselves the most in a way, you know, toddler, it's like toddlers and teenagers are both very triggering because they sort of have all the physical capacity but not so much of the frontal lobe capacity to like, they can do it. Do they know if they should do it? Mm-hmm.
[00:49:06] Right. It's very often, so it really is scary and when it's scary that trauma app really wakes up again. But I think the most important thing to to think about is parenting's a skill. Skills can be learned. Right. Anything that can be learned can be learned better. Mm-hmm. So if, if you know that, then a parenting book becomes not like a shaming thing, it becomes something that I can learn from and, yeah.
[00:49:30] Didn't master it yet. I will master it and I'm gonna successfully get better at it. And I think also it's never too late. Even if you do look at your child and they're 17 now and you're thinking, I'm really not happy with the way I parent did. We can repair. Mm-hmm.
[00:49:44] Casey O'Roarty: Right
[00:49:44] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: now
[00:49:44] Casey O'Roarty: you can repair. Absolutely.
[00:49:45] Yeah. You know? Absolutely. What does joyful courage mean to you?
[00:49:50] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: So, I love that question and I love that name. For me, you know, the, you know, the line is better to have loved than lost, than never to have loved. Mm-hmm. I always say for post-traumatic parents. To love after loss is a supreme act of courage because it's one thing to become a parent when like the world's been pretty predictable and safe and like, you know, you're gonna parent exactly like your parents parented 'cause they were great and you're gonna do great.
[00:50:13] And it's very easy sometimes to become a parent in those circumstances. But when you've experienced trauma and loss and you know, just how scary the world can be to choose to parent after that and to choose to parent intentionally after that, that takes. Courage. And I think there's a joy in that, right?
[00:50:33] There's a real joy, and I think attachment is really all about shared joy, right? Yeah. So I think to me, joyful courage is like the courage to be an attachment figure.
[00:50:41] Casey O'Roarty: Hmm. Thank you for that. Where can people find you and follow your work?
[00:50:46] Dr. Robyn Koslowitz: So my Instagram is really where the post-traumatic parenting community hang out the most.
[00:50:51] It's at Dr. Kasowitz Psychology. I also am the host of the Post-Traumatic Parenting YouTube channel and podcast. And the book is, uh, is out. It's um, Post-Traumatic Parenting. You can find it wherever you get books. Awesome. Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, your local independent bookstore.
[00:51:07] Casey O'Roarty: Great. Well, thank you so much and I'll make sure all those links are in the show notes for you listeners, I really appreciate you spending time with me today.
[00:51:15] Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation.
[00:51:22] Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to my  Sproutable partners, Julietta and Alanna. Thank you Danielle, for supporting with the show notes as well as Chris Mann and the team at PodShaper for all the support with getting the show out there and making it sound good. As I mentioned, sharing is caring. If you're willing to pass on this episode to others or take a few minutes to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it helps other parents find this useful content.
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