Raising Mentally Strong Kids: How Parents Can Build Resilience, Emotional Strength & Confidence

Foreign.

Welcome to the Where Parents Talk podcast.

We help grow better parents through science, evidence and the lived experience of other parents.

Learn how to better navigate the mental and physical health of your tween teen or young adult through proven expert advice.

Here's your host, Leanne Castellino.

Welcome to Where Parents Talk.

My name is Leanne Castellino.

Our guest today is a licensed psychotherapist.

Amy Mauren is also a speaker and a podcast host.

She is an international best selling author of seven books on mental strength, including 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don't do and 13 Things Mentally Strong Kids Do.

Amy was also a past foster parent.

She joins us today from Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Thank you so much for making the time.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

You know, it's such an interesting subject matter when we think about mental strength, especially in the world we live in today.

So in broad terms, is mental strength something that kids naturally develop, they're born with?

Do they develop it with age and experience or is it something that parents need to be intentionally teaching them?

It's something we need to intentionally teach.

It would be like saying, are kids born physically strong?

Obviously not.

They need to know how to do it and they need us to, to walk alongside them, to teach them, to coach them, to help them when they make a mistake, help them recover and to be like guides and somebody who gives them the practical information but then guides them.

How do you use this information in real life scenarios?

And kids get plenty of practice all day long, whether it's in the, with their homework, with their friends at school, with social media.

And those are all opportunities us to help them keep growing stronger and learning from their experiences.

So being able to teach it is one thing, but actually understanding what the broader objective is of teaching a child to be mentally strong is something else.

Many parents would, you know, align that to confidence in a child, resilience, the ability to handle anything.

What should mental strength look like in a tween, a teen, a young adult?

So there's three parts to mental strength.

It's about the way you think, the way you feel and the way that you behave.

So in terms of thoughts, it's about knowing that your brain isn't always going to be honest.

It will say, oh, you can't do that, or you've just embarrassed yourself.

And it might tell you, don't go do that thing like don't go to that new activity because you won't be good at it.

So don't try.

So as we're growing, we learn.

All right, maybe I can do these things as long as we have the support along the way.

So as a parent, that's our opportunity to teach kids.

I know this is scary, and I think you can do it way.

And here's why I think you can do it.

And overtime is knowing that you can manage your emotions so that, yes, when something feels scary, you have coping strategies to tolerate it.

Or when you're really sad, you don't have to stay stuck in a bad mood, that you can maybe work through it, but also at the same time, to know that you don't have to escape your emotions, that all emotions serve a purpose.

Sadness helps you honor something that you've lost, or anger might give you courage to stand up for somebody.

So part of teaching kids about mental strength is teaching them to recognize when is your emotion your friend and when is it your enemy?

When it's your enemy, we're going to learn how to shift that feeling, and we give them the skills to do that.

And then the third part about the actions that you take, well, you can have a kid that thinks positively, but if they don't get up off the couch, it's not going to do them any good.

So trying new things, pushing yourself to see what can you actually do?

If you try hard or even though you're tired, what might you still be able to do?

You can keep running a little longer than you think you can, and you can be kind even on a bad day.

And how do you act according to your values?

And as kids grow and we keep teaching them, they just become more adult, like in their ability to say, okay, this is uncomfortable and I can do it.

And you'll start to see it in the way that they speak out loud about themselves and the way that they are tolerating emotions and in the things that they're doing.

Your book was written for a certain segment of young kids.

When ideally, should this instruction begin by a parent to their child about mental strength?

So, you know, conversations about emotions can start as early as toddlers in preschool.

Right?

We see kids display their anger in a temper tantrum.

You see kids who are crying because they're very sad that it's bedtime.

And that's when we can start having those conversations to teach them.

What are those feeling words?

You look really sad today.

You look really angry.

Or something as simple as your child hits another kid on the playground, how did that make him feel when you hit him?

It hurt his body and it hurt his feelings.

Those kinds of Conversations can start really early on.

We want kids to know the difference between a feeling and a behavior.

You can feel sad, but screaming in the grocery store isn't okay, but feeling sad is okay.

What else can you do with those sad feelings?

So that's when we can start.

But it's really around the 8 to 12 year old ranges, which is when I wrote the book for that target audience, because that's when we really have the opportunity to teach kids concrete skills.

How do you keep working on your homework when it's really boring?

How do you do the right thing even when nobody's looking?

How do you talk to your friend about something that hurts your feelings, even though it's uncomfortable to do that?

And those are the times when we have all of those real life moments to keep teaching and guiding them.

What did that look like for you, Amy, when you know you were fostering kids who are coming into your life with their backgrounds and potentially their, you know, experiences and baggage?

In some cases, to be able to take all of the expertise you have as a psychotherapy therapist, as an author of these books on mental strength, to then apply it in your own home with your foster kids?

Well, you know, obviously knowing something and doing it are two different things.

So it's.

Even though I knew this information, it still took a fair amount of work.

And I was a therapeutic foster parent, meaning that I took the kids that had more serious behavior problems and a lot of them were at the cusp of the state deciding are they adoptable or not.

Some kids are just deemed unadoptable because of their seriousness of their behaviors, and they end up staying in group homes until they age out of the system.

My job was sort of to be the last stop to decide if we could get it so that they were adoptable.

And so many of these kids had been bounced around from home to home and they had gone through so much difficulties and they'd already gone, experienced so much adversity.

My natural instinct was to protect them from anything difficult if they were struggling with their homework.

I wanted to say, you don't have to do that.

You've been through so much.

Or I had a kid that wanted to go to summer camp and I thought, oh, if you go to summer camp, I know it's going to be tough for you because a lot of these other kids have families and amazing experiences in life that you've never had.

But if I protected them from any kind of ongoing pain, I would also have robbed them of opportunities to teach them, because when I was there And I knew, okay, if I let you struggle with this, if I let you experience some rejection, some disappointment, those are everyday opportunities to help me everyday opportunities for me to help you learn how to manage your emotions, how to make sure that you're reaching for healthy coping skills.

And that was tough.

And no parent wants to see their child in pain.

That's why when they get cut from the team, we want to take them out for an ice cream or we want to tell them that the coach was unfair and who they picked because we're trying to soothe them.

But ultimately we have to teach kids how to soothe themselves.

And so as a foster parent, I'll say that was difficult because it meant I had to work on managing my emotions in the moment too.

So that when it was painful for me to watch and when it was uncomfortable and when I just wanted to cry too, I had to figure out, okay, and how do I still help you experience this emotion in a healthy way and cope with it?

So that was one of the biggest difficulties.

Of course, another one is when it comes to, like, discipline.

I didn't want any of the kids in my house to experience consequences for, for their behavior because it was easy to excuse.

Like, hey, I know nobody's taught you this before, or I know that you had a bad day, so therefore I'd like to excuse your behavior.

But I also knew that letting them out of those consequences was exactly what they didn't need.

They needed to have some discipline to say, hey, that was a poor choice, here's a consequence, but we'll do better next time, and we could problem solve together.

How can we do better tomorrow?

And so a lot of it was, was just that knowing that letting kids experience real life problems, a little bit of pain, and a whole wide variety of emotions without me doing the soothing was certainly a challenge.

And I know it is for a lot of biological parents as well.

Absolutely.

Natural instinct, natural reflex, you know, default that we all tend to, to, to look to as parents.

And you add to that the fact that we live in a world where you've got, you know, record levels of anxiety among young adults as well.

You've got a lot of parents who helicopter parent, you know, adding that element.

So how do you make the case for building mentally strong kids using the tactics that you've outlined against that backdrop?

So it's about finding that balance because the world is tough today.

Nobody would, I think, argue that that kids are given their devices and they're struggling at school and you're battling against other helicopter parents.

So when your child forgets their homework, the tendency is, I'm going to run.

Run your PA to school really fast because all the other parents are doing it.

And to let kids face natural consequences is tough.

So I think it's really important for us to take a step back sometimes and say, like, what's best right now?

How am I going to make sure that I'm managing myself and my emotions?

How do I make sure that you're getting what you need?

And it's not about throwing kids to the wolves, because sometimes I see parents who will say, well, kids are resilient and they kind of let them be more free range than they can handle.

So we need to consider ourselves more like guides than.

Than helicopter parents or more like a guide than a.

Than a free range parent might be, so that kids are still gaining the skills and tools and resources.

I think our job isn't just to raise kids to be alive at the age of 18, but to be prepared for the real world at the age of 18.

And we know from the research, when they asked first year college students, were you prepared for college?

Like 90% of them say academically yes, and then 60% of them say emotionally no.

And I think that means we're doing kids a huge disservice.

If we're sending them out into the real world and they know how to do math, but they don't know how to tolerate the frustration that comes with doing their math paper, then they're not going to succeed.

So I think it's so important to focus more on those emotional skills so that kids can be ready and that when they do experience hard times, rather than try to cover it up or fix it for them, we just teach them like, yeah, that is sad.

How are we going to cope with it?

Or this is really difficult.

I know it is.

I believe you can do it.

But what could we do to help you get through this tough time rather than take it away from them or sue them for ourselves?

Amy, I wonder if you could take us through what led you to having this expertise in mental strength, writing all of these books that we talked about.

Take us through your lived experience that got you here.

Sure.

So I became a therapist when I was about 22, and a year into my work, my mom passed away.

Suddenly she had a brain aneurysm that ruptured.

And experiencing that grief was something that really taught me that maybe a lot of the things I had learned in college from my textbooks weren't as powerful as I thought I'd really been.

Taught to lean in on people's strengths, tell them what they're doing well and focus on that.

But one of the things I learned as a therapist was I'd be doing people a disservice.

Sometimes it was about what people didn't do.

People who didn't have certain bad habits seemed to get through life in better shape than others.

I had some people that would come in after a major loss and Maybe it was 10 years later, and they'd say, but my life's never been good, how come?

And these people often had a whole laundry list of really good habits.

But as long as they were practicing some unhealthy habits, they stayed stuck.

And I liken it to say physical strength.

If somebody went to the gym and you run on a treadmill, that will help improve your physical fitness.

But if you're eating six jelly donuts on the way to the gym, it kind of undoes your progress.

So as I was studying these people and thinking about my own life, I thought, yeah, sometimes it's just one or two bad habits that would keep me stuck.

And that's what launched my interest in mental strength the most.

And I was glad that it did.

Because on the three year anniversary of the day that my mom died, my 26 year old husband died of a heart attack.

And to lose two of my closest humans in such sudden and unexpected ways, especially on the three year anniversary, it seems surreal.

How do you get through that?

And to make matters worse is I had to keep going to work to function as a therapist.

How am I going to help other people deal with their problems when my own life is upside down?

And again, I just had this new interest in learning what makes people mentally strong.

I didn't want to just be resilient, which people talk about is bouncing back.

Because I thought, well, who wants to just bounce back from one tragedy to the next?

I wanted to know, how do you enjoy the good times in life too?

I didn't want to just be bracing myself for the next bad thing to happen.

And the more I studied about mental strength, the better I felt and the more I thought, oh, this would be great if I can incorporate this into my work.

And then years later, I had gotten remarried and life was looking good and my father in law was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

And unlike when I had lost my mom and my husband, this time I knew what was coming.

My father in law at this point was given a couple of weeks to live.

I just remember thinking like, oh, I can't go through this again.

But I Wrote myself a letter about what mentally strong people don't do.

And when I would read that letter of the okay, as long as I don't do these things, I can get through today.

And I found it helpful, so I thought maybe it would help somebody else.

So I published it on the Internet.

And 50 million people read the list, which was completely unexpected.

I thought like five people would read it, but 50 million people read it.

And that led to my first book, which was 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do.

But the number one thing that I kept getting from readers of that book was how do we teach this to kids?

Because if only I had learned this when I was younger, it might have changed the entire course of my life.

And I want my kids to have this sooner.

So that's what led me to write a parenting spin off.

I thought, okay, if I can then reach the parents and teach them, then they'll have the skills and the tools and the resources that they need.

And then it was a couple of books later that I decided to write a book specifically for kids so that they could have a tool with the words and the information in their own language and vocabulary that they could understand so that they could apply it to.

It is such an important subject matter for so many reasons.

I wonder if you could take us through a couple of examples of among the 13 things that mentally strong parents don't do.

Because I think oftentimes, in order to better understand what to do, you need to first understand what not to do.

So I wonder if you could take us through a couple of examples.

Sure.

So one is that they don't parent out of guilt.

This is a tough one, right when your child's all, but mom, everybody else has a cell phone, or I should be allowed to go to this event this weekend because all the other kids are going.

And it tugs at your heartstrings.

But if you have values and beliefs and a reason to say no to something, the last thing you then want to do is give in just because you feel guilty.

And when every time we do that, we're teaching kids that guilt is intolerable and they should give in too.

And that becomes a 10 year old who says no when a friend says, hey, can I copy your paper?

And a friend says, but if you're a good friend, you'd let me.

And they think, oh, now I feel guilty.

So, okay, you can copy my paper.

Because I see my mom or dad give in when I guilt them into something too.

So it's so important to say no.

Parenting out of guilt never makes us feel better.

In the moment we think, all right, fine, but down the road it makes us feel a lot worse because we think I can't stick to my boundaries.

I struggle to say no.

That doesn't mean that we can't change our mind.

Maybe you set a hard and fast rule and then rethink it, that's okay.

But as long as you rethink it on a logical level and you don't make that an emotional decision.

So that's one.

Don't parent out of guilt.

Another one is to not shield kids from pain.

Obviously kids are going to have painful life experiences and our tendency is to jump in front of it and to soothe it and to help them not feel so bad.

But the problem is, is we want them to have the skills that they can handle pain when they're 25, when they're 35 and life is going to hurt them and push them down again.

So when they don't make the basketball team, instead of immediately taking them out for an ice cream to cheer them up, maybe you talk about this is sad, right?

This is disappointing.

Maybe you're mad that the coach didn't pick you.

Maybe you're sad that your friends made the team and you didn't.

Maybe you're a little jealous having those conversations about their emotions.

And then how are you going to cope with this?

Maybe you read a book tonight, maybe you decide you're going to practice basketball a lot so you make the team next year.

Those are the kinds of conversations and the strategies that go so much further than just cheering them up as soon as we want to.

And there is, there's another whole section of the book about not being responsible for kids emotions because that's what I'm seeing today is a lot of parents feel like if my child's bored, it's my job to entertain them, or if they're sad, it's my job to cheer them up.

Or if they're really excited about something, then it means I've done a good job.

And when we take responsibility for being that emotional regulator, kids don't learn how to do it themselves.

So they think, oh, I'm anxious, I need mom to reassure me or I'm really sad, so I need dad to take me out and do something fun today.

And they don't learn how to do those things for themselves.

So that's why it's essential that we're giving them these skills so that when they get out there in the real world and whether it's college or life beyond high school that they know I can do this on my own.

And a confident kid who believes that they can handle difficult emotions can conquer so much out there in the world, far beyond whatever they'll get academically.

So much to pull out of what you just shared there.

But one of the key messages, I think, is what a lot of parents may be asking themselves.

And it's a very fine point between teaching a kid the difference between I failed at this versus I am a failure.

So how do you suggest a parent navigate that?

I think we should be talking about failure all the time to let kids know, like, what did you fail at this week?

And it might be something simple, like, you know, I was working on this task.

I thought I could get it done by 2pm I didn't, so I had to ask my boss for an extension.

But that's okay because it worked out.

And next time I know to start the project sooner if we just talk to kids about that.

It's so tempting, though, to want kids to think that we're perfect.

So we say, well, I don't really make that many mistakes, or, it's been six years since I failed at anything.

But when we send them that message, we're telling them basically that failure is like the big things.

Like, I applied for a job 10 years ago and I didn't get it.

I was a failure then, but look at me now.

But the truth is, we probably fail at little things all the time.

And if we gave them that message, actually, I mess up all the time.

And it's not to be something to be feared.

It's something to just accept.

And it's a learning opportunity.

I think we'd go a lot further.

And the families who can talk about failure, like, hey, what were you brave enough to fail at this week on a Friday night?

Maybe this becomes your dinnertime conversation.

And kids are like, you know, I tried a new sport at recess, and I was horrible at it.

I couldn't figure it out.

Oh, well, that's great that you were so brave you were willing to try, and then you move on to the next thing.

And when parents can talk about that too, like, you know, I tried this new thing, and it wasn't for me, but that's okay.

And I consider it a failure because it didn't work out, but that's okay.

Failure is not the end of the world.

Oh, those are the kids that do so much better than the ones who are raised to think that failure is embarrassing, that failure is something we shouldn't talk about or that it means something about who we are as a person, not just about what we do.

Because we should be failing at stuff all the time.

And if we aren't, it probably means we're not trying new things.

We're not putting ourselves out there.

We're not really pushing ourselves to see what the limits are.

And on that note, I mean, we talked a little while ago about all the different considerations that parents have to consider when thinking about teaching their kids mental strength in the current world that we live in.

Social media certainly high on that list.

You know, constant comparison is just a click away.

So are there certain mental strength skills, Amy, that you suggest children should develop before they enter the most intense years of social media exposure?

Oh, that's a good question, because you're right.

A lot of kids are getting social media way before they're ready.

So emotional regulation, I think, is just one of the best things that we can do before we hand kids phones.

And of course, this is an ongoing thing.

It's not that kids either have it or they don't.

It's something that they're going to learn and that we can keep practicing.

But we want them to be able to tolerate discomfort without reaching for their phones.

We want them to know, just because you're bored doesn't mean you have to scroll.

Or just because you're sad doesn't mean that you have to pick up your phone because you're lonely.

So I think teaching kids to label their emotions is one of the most powerful things we can do before we hand them a phone.

So a kid who can say, oh, I'm kind of sad today, and that makes me tempted to pick up my phone, but what could I do instead?

Because scrolling through social media might actually make me feel worse.

I'm going to see that my friends are having fun.

I'm going to see lots of people who look like they have an amazing life.

It probably isn't going to make me feel better.

So what could I do instead?

Maybe I actually call a friend.

Maybe I go outside and I play for a bit or I start to play a game for a while.

And when we can teach kids that, I think they'll go a lot further into being able to find activities outside of social media.

And we also want them to know that they're going to make mistakes and that that's okay.

As a therapist, I see so many kids who come into my office and they'll say something like, you know, I'm not supposed to tell people where I live.

But I accidentally posted a photo and it has my mailbox in the background.

I don't dare tell my parents because they'll be really mad.

And these are the kids I worry the most about.

We want kids who can say, gee, mom and Dad, I made a mistake.

What should I do about it?

I talked to this stranger on the Internet.

I looked at something I shouldn't have looked at.

And when parents talk more about mistakes and they teach kids that they can learn from their mistakes and that they aren't going to be harshly punished for making a mistake, instead, we can applaud them for being honest.

We can let them know that we're not going to judge them.

We're not going to yell and scream at them for.

For messing up.

But instead we can say, okay, you made a mistake.

What are we going to do from here?

Those are the kids that can talk about it.

And I think that they'll fare much better when they are given access to technology than the kids who are really worried that if they make a mistake, they have to cover it up rather than they can talk about it.

There's also a fine line when we talk about confidence and validation.

So what would you say to parents with respect to navigating, raising confident children versus kids who then will need constant external validation?

It's a nuance, but an important, important one.

What would you suggest there?

You're so right.

It is a nuance.

A couple of things.

Sometimes instead of praising kids for their achievement, praise them for their effort.

So rather than say, great job getting three goals in the soccer game, you might say, I could tell you hustled really hard today and it paid off.

And you're praising them for hustling, not for the achievement at the end.

Or if we only praise them for their grades, like, wow, you got an A on your paper.

That's amazing.

Then they think that that's the goal in life is to achieve and that they're only as good as their achievements.

And that's a scary place to be.

We don't want them to think that in order to gain your attention or your affection or your admiration, that it depends on the outcome, because a lot of times they can't control the outcome.

And unfortunately, those are the kids that maybe cheat to get an A just because they want the positive reinforcement from it, as opposed to the kid who says, you know, I studied really, really hard and I got a C, but I'm still proud that I studied hard.

So praise them for their effort rather than the outcome.

And then also instead of always telling them how you feel about them, ask them how they feel.

So rather than say, I'm so proud of you, you might say, you must be really proud of yourself for the work that you put in.

Or how proud are you that you were able to to run so, so long during the game today, even though you retired.

And asking them questions and pointing out how they might feel makes a big difference.

So that when you're not there to give them that validation, they can give it to themselves.

Building on that point, can you share a couple of examples from your book 13 Kids, 13 Things that Mentally Strong Kids do for Our Parent Audience?

Sure.

So one is that they persist.

Kids who can persist longer at difficult tasks tend to have better outcomes.

So they're not just going to give up at the first sign of frustration or they're going to throw in the towel because they're worried that they embarrass themselves at a new sport.

They're the ones who are going to say, you know what, this is difficult, but I'm going to keep going anyway.

Another one is that they stop feeling sorry for themselves.

Kids who are like, I can't because I'm the shortest kid in the class, there's other ones that give up.

We want kids to know, yep, maybe I'm the shortest kid in the class, but I can still try really hard.

Or when they're struggling with something, they don't think, well, there's nothing I can do about it.

They don't become helpless and hopeless.

Instead, we want kids that can empower themselves and who could say, this is difficult and maybe I'm sad, but I'm not going to tell myself that it's a hopeless situation or that I'm helpless.

Instead, I'm going to take some kind of action to deal with it.

I want to circle back to your lived experience again, Amy, and, and ask you, you know, what could you have used, what knowledge, what tips could you have used when you experienced two tragedies that you talked about that you at the time didn't know about, but later down the line with your father in law, as you mentioned, you learned, is there anything that could have helped you cope with those first two tragedies from a mental strength perspective?

Oh, so many things could have certainly have helped.

And I think one of the, the biggest lessons I, I learned throughout all of that was basically that it was, it was up to me to decide, like, what's next?

What's the story going to be.

I needed to empower myself and there were moments where I certainly gave away my power to other people.

And that's number two on my original list, is that mentally strong people don't give away their power.

Because I remember just thinking, like, all right, this is the.

The cards I'd been dealt.

But then just looking around at, like, the relationships that change, the things that happened to me, and thinking, like, this isn't my fault.

This.

Other people are, say, not saying the right words to me, getting frustrated by that, or frustrated by so many things in my life that I couldn't control, which was an accurate statement.

There was a lot I couldn't control, but I needed to focus more on what I could control.

And sometimes it felt like not much, but there was always something I could control.

And ultimately, I think in the end, that's what got me through a lot of it, was just saying, like, what is within my control today?

What can I do about it?

But it took a while to get there.

And I'm curious if.

If either of those experiences or all of those experiences, did they impact the way you think about what we should and shouldn't expect children to handle on their own in terms of building their own mental strength?

Absolutely.

There's so many misconceptions about strength and about toughness, and I think a lot of parents have internalized the wrong message.

So they'll say, like, don't cry.

Get up.

Act tough.

Or they'll tell kids, like, well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

But those things aren't true.

What we need to be doing is let kids know, like, no, it takes way more strength to be sad and let yourself be sad and maybe sometimes even show your sadness by shedding a few tears.

That's real mental strength.

It's not about pushing yourself to bounce back and look like you're doing okay and to put that mask on.

And I learned that.

I mean, it's hard to.

As a therapist, I knew this, but going through my own experience, it was difficult.

I had to remind myself.

But I also saw as a foster parent, how tempting that is for.

For kids who want to make sure that they look tough on.

On the playground, or for parents who want to make sure that their kid looks tough.

But that just because a kid can fall down and not cry doesn't mean that they have mental strength.

It might just mean that they're trying to suppress their emotions or they're afraid to talk about how they actually feel.

Is there anything from the research that you have looked at over all these years that really stands out and gives you pause when we talk about building mental strength skills, either in young people.

Or adults, you know, I think one of the ones that stands out in my head is something as simple as the way that we praise kids and how that affects them.

And so, for instance, when we look at the praise that we give little girls versus little boys.

So we often will tell little boys when they're coloring, when they're building something, our words are often like, you're so creative or that's genius.

You're so brave.

And then when they look at what do we tell the little girls, we often say things like, you're beautiful and you're perfect and how that affects their confidence over time.

So by the time little girls and little boys are like seven, the little girls tend to lack more.

Lack confidence.

They're less likely to show adults their creations because they're struggling, because they think, oh, what if this isn't perfect?

What if it's not beautiful?

So I think just being more aware of the language that we use, right down to the.

To the words that we give them, makes a huge difference so that we aren't putting undue pressure on them, even though we're not doing it on purpose.

Sometimes by saying, you're perfect, perfect or you're beautiful, puts pressure on kids to feel like they're performing or.

And with boys, too, it's certainly a factor there.

When we tell them that you had a perfect game, or when we tell them that we're proud of them for their achievements, it's putting the pressure on them to think that they have to continue to perform.

For those parents listening to or watching this interview today, if you were to suggest to them three practices that they could take away and to help raise mentally stronger kids, what would they be?

Oh, good question.

So if we're talking about emotions, I would say to label your feelings during the day, it's so somebody cuts you off in the parking lot.

You could say, oh, I'm really frustrated right now.

Or you're looking at the weather on Saturday and you have plans.

It's okay to say, I'm a little nervous about what the weather is going to be.

So talk about your own emotions and then help kids identify theirs.

Maybe before they go to bed every night, you say, how are you feeling today?

Have a chart if you want, so that kids can pick a face so they can say, you know, I feel like this one today.

Talk about feelings all the time.

It will do your kids a world of good.

And then when it comes to the thoughts that kids have to make sure that we're not just giving them constant reassurance, but to ask them, like, what do you think about that?

When your brain tells you you can't do something, what do you think after that?

Really teach them that they can manage their inner dialogue and that they don't always have to listen to everything that they think.

And then when it comes to what they do, I'd have plenty of conversations about how do you get through that when you don't want to do something?

Maybe your job was to clean your room today.

That's really boring after a while, but you did it.

How'd you do it?

Ask them those sorts of questions and they might say, you know, I pretended I was a superhero.

Well, it's an amazing opportunity then to talk about when else could you pretend you're a superhero to get through tough things?

Or maybe they say, you know, I sang a little song to entertain myself while I did it.

That's a great skill.

Kids often have a lot of skills and strategies that they're using, and our job is to help reinforce those.

So just asking them more questions, finding out what's working for them already, and then reinforcing it can go a long way.

Lots of valuable food for thought and advice.

Amy Morin, Podcast host, psychotherapist, international best selling author thank you so much for your time and your insight today.

Oh, thanks for having me.

To learn more about today's podcast guest and topic, as well as other parenting themes, visit whereparentstalk.com.