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Convo Experts in mental health, relationships, families, and child development.

07/26/2026

Your nervous system is not working solo. It’s in constant conversation with all the parts of the brain making sense of what’s happening. Trying to tell it just quiet down works for a moment, but it will elevate again because it’s trying to do its job… help you make sense of what is happening.

If you skip straight to “calm” without processing what you actually feel, you’re not regulated, you’re suppressed. And kids can tell the difference. They don’t learn from a parent who looks calm. They learn from a parent who works through something and lands on calm — out loud, in real time.

The nervous system isn’t some separate system you’re managing from the outside. It’s wired into the same circuits handling perception, meaning-making, and problem-solving. You can’t calm the body while bypassing the mind that’s trying to understand what just happened. Feel it, understand it, decide from there…that’s the process to model.





07/26/2026

Children don’t learn emotional intelligence because we explain it well.

Or from a book.

Or worksheets.

They learn it because they live with it.

They watch how we handle disappointment. They notice how we repair after conflict. They absorb what we do with joy, grief, frustration, pride, embarrassment, and love.

If we hide every feeling, rush to “I’m fine,” or only show polished emotions, we’re unintentionally teaching that feelings are something to conceal.

Your child doesn’t need a perfectly regulated parent.
They need a real one.

That means saying things like:
✨ “I’m feeling overwhelmed. I need to pause.”
✨ “I’m disappointed. This is hard to hear.
✨ “That hurt my feelings. Here’s what I need now.”

Not because your child is responsible for your emotions… in fact, the more they see you expressing what you feel and following through on honoring those feelings and making wise choices based on them, the more they can trust your process.

And they will build on that awareness and trust with their own process that will develop over time.

Children don’t just listen to what we say.
They become fluent in the emotional language we live.

The greatest lessons in social and emotional development are happening in real time within their most important relationships.

07/24/2026

This is one of the MOST common questions I get asked by parents of kids across ages…how do I get my kid to talk to me? To tell me about their day? To bring me the big stuff, and the little stuff too? It has less to do with what the magical question may be that gets kids talking and so much more about the context of the relationship you are building.

What are ways you put your energy into this?

07/24/2026

This is my point: maybe it’s not rocket science. It’s still hard as hell. But maybe what makes it challenging and also amazing has nothing to do with the amount of strategies we amass.

Maybe the thing is to dig deep and remember that this is a RELATIONSHIP. And we all have role models for that. What does someone else do for you to build connection, trust, empowerment, and inspiration? Maybe do that and see what grows.

Strategies are for projects. Relating is for humans*.

*Gentle reminder: children (yes even toddlers and teens) are human just like you and me.

onlyhuman

07/22/2026

Emotions are wonderfully, beautifully, meaningfully human. And I don’t just mean as a lovely byproduct of trying to exist. Feeling and expressing what we feel is perhaps the most evolved thing about us. We do everything great by connecting with others and increasing the meaning we make out of life through conversation. A single person’s own thoughts are way more limited.

So why do we keep thinking we have to have everything sorted out in our heads before we express and connect?

(And extra credit question: why are we fostering this in our kids?)

07/21/2026

When a child is overwhelmed, emotional validation shouldn’t be just a strategy to get them to cooperate. Its purpose is to create connection and understanding.

If the validation is only there to make the child do what you want, that’s not validation. That’s manipulation.

A tantrum is a horse-out-of-the-gate phenomenon. The horse has broken out of the gate. Very little intervention works at this point to teach or change behavior.

Instead of asking, “How do I get this to stop?” try asking:

“How can I help you right now?”

Being responsive doesn’t necessarily mean giving in. It means, being present and offering what IS possible to give. Once they know you actually get what they feel…and that you mean it.

Sometimes they’ll want a hug. Sometimes it’s a slower pace that does it. Sometimes they’ll take an alternative to the thing that they wanted or needed. Sometimes they won’t know, and it may take a little figuring out.

Validation must involve authentically communicating: “I see what you’re experiencing, and you don’t have to go through it alone. What you feel makes sense to me, too.”

That communicates safety more than any feelings vocab ever could.

07/19/2026

It’s hard to watch and be expressionless around this ongoing distorted conversation about emotional intelligence 🫠

I’ll stand tall on this hill every day of the week.

07/18/2026

Your nervous system is not trying to mislead you. That’s not its job.

It is trying to communicate with you.

We know scientifically that the nervous system develops through communication: with our own internal voice, with our environment, and with other people.

Its job is not simply to “calm down.”

It is constantly taking in information, making meaning, and helping us understand what is happening around us and within us.

So when your nervous system sends you a signal, the first question doesn’t always have to be:

“How do I make this stop?”

Sometimes the question is:

“What are you trying to tell me?”

You don’t have to obey every feeling.
You don’t have to act on every impulse.
And listening to yourself doesn’t mean believing every thought.

But there is a difference between responding thoughtfully to a message and immediately trying to silence it.

Especially when you’ve spent years being told you’re too sensitive, too emotional, too intense, too much.

Sometimes a nervous system that has been ignored for a long time starts shouting.

Not because it is broken.

Because it is trying to be heard.

The more you listen, the more you can build communication with yourself.

And the more you trust that you can listen to yourself without automatically abandoning yourself, the less you may need to silence, override, or fear every signal.

Your nervous system is communicating with you.

Start by listening.

07/16/2026

Do YOU know the answer?

I’ve spent 20 years studying child development and I still can’t give you a clean answer. I think this is probably honestly why so many of the parenting books on all of our shelves are written by people who HAVEN’T been trying to study this. Sometimes it’s easier to be sure of what you think you know, when you don’t know what you don’t know. You know? 😝

But I can tell you what I measure myself against, because I’ve had to find something — and it can’t be “did I raise good humans,” because I won’t know that for 20 years. It’s not a metric I can use today, at 5pm, when I’m losing my patience for the third time.

So here’s mine: how much am I actually getting to know my kids. Not just loving them — knowing them. Asking curious questions. Noticing their strengths as much as their struggles. Reminding myself, even mid-conflict, that we’re on the same team.

That’s the thing that actually gives me confidence — not whether I got it “right” today. Impatience is my Achilles heel, and some days I lose it. But when I know them deeply, I trust that my choices are connected to who they actually are, right now — not who they were a year ago, not who I wish they were. And it’s what lets me recalibrate as they grow, because I’m not playing catch-up. I already know who I’m parenting.

I’m not saying this is the answer. I’m saying it’s mine, and it had to be simple enough to hold onto, and small enough to be in my control today.

What’s yours?

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