Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Parenting with Impact podcast. Today, we’re starting a series of conversations about some things Diane and I are beginning to realize are incredibly important—though it’s not that we’ve never realized it before.

Diane Dempster: Everything always feels super important, but something really compelling happened at an event we had last week. 

A few things blew up in our faces, and we thought, "Wow, this is such an Aha! moment." How have we not been talking about this?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: How did we not see this before? How have we not been talking about it?

Diane Dempster: Well, today we’re starting with the topic of trust.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Before you dive into trust, can I just add one more thing as a preamble? Part of what we’re now seeing more clearly are these disconnects—gaps between expectations, executive function, preparedness, and trust. 

These gaps exist between where our kids are, where we are, where we want them to be, and where they want us to be. So, today, we’re focusing on trust. 

I’ll let you take it from here, but I just wanted to acknowledge that this is all interconnected, right?

Diane Dempster: Right. And the reason the gap piece is so important—and we’ve talked about this before, especially in our episodes on triggers—is that irritation starts in the gap. 

So, if there’s a gap between where you are and where your child is, or where you think they should be and where they are, or where you want them to be and where they are, all of these are examples of gaps. 

And they’re a hotspot for frustration, for both you and your child, for overwhelm, and all sorts of emotions that can show up and affect the conversation.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right, so back to trust.

Diane Dempster: Back to trust.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We've been talking a lot lately about trust—about falling out of trust with our kids, or our kids falling out of trust with us, or just not being in trust at all. So, what’s the context?

Diane Dempster: Yeah, it actually came up in a small group a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about how, "I can’t trust my kid" or "My kid broke my trust." We were really digging into what we mean by trust. 

And I went back to the great Brené Brown for some insight. I thought, let’s use one solid definition of trust and really unpack it. And from there, let’s explore why trust is more challenging when you have complex kids. 

I guess that’s the way I want to frame it: Why is trust more challenging when you have complex kids? That’s the thesis statement.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. Well, I love that. And what I heard as you were talking is, we all love Brené Brown. 

But when you take typical parenting advice and try to apply it to neurodiverse kids, it doesn’t always fit, it doesn’t always translate. 

So, part of the challenge as parents of complex kids is that we have to reinterpret that advice to meet our kids where they are, and understand what it means for them.

Diane Dempster: Well, and let’s be really clear—we’re not saying that Brené Brown isn’t amazing, or that her model isn’t great, because it really is a fantastic model.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It’s a great model, but you have to apply it differently when you’re dealing with neurodivergent kids. Right, so let’s dive in. You wanted to talk about the model a bit.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, so I just wanted to briefly mention that there are these key elements in Brené Brown's model, which she summarizes with the acronym BRAVING—Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Non-judgment, and Generosity. 

As I was going through all of these, it became clear that most of them require executive function. And we know that many of our kids have delays in executive function. So, take reliability as an example. Reliability means you do what you say you’ll do. 

And how often are we in conversations where it’s like, "Well, he said he was going to get off the computer in time for dinner, and he didn’t"?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or he said he was going to pick up the milk on the way home. It could go in so many directions, right?

Diane Dempster: Right. And I think the challenge here is that if we’re relying on these qualities—like reliability—to build trust, but our kids naturally struggle with these tasks, it’s going to create a gap.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, and another thing that really stands out to me is that there are so many factors at play—expectations, communication, and all of that, right? But at the end of the day, we each have our own personal understanding of what it means to be honest, to have integrity, or to have moral fiber.

As parents, I think we often equate trustworthiness with morality. We think that if we can trust our kids, they’ll grow up to be morally healthy human beings. And if we can’t trust them, we worry about what might happen to them. 

So, we start with these assumptions, and then when our kids behave in certain ways, like saying they turned in their homework when they didn’t, we think, "I can’t trust them." But we have this great webinar on our website by Ari Tuckman called The Truth About Lying. 

There are so many reasons why a child might say they’ve turned in the homework—they might think they did, or they may truly believe they’re going to. 

That doesn’t mean they’re morally depraved or dishonest. It just means that task is an area of executive function that’s still a stretch for them, and they haven’t yet made the leap across that gap.

Diane Dempster: Right. And I think about even social situations. For example, if you have a young child who’s impulsive and in a relationship, they might say something they shouldn’t have said, or something they promised not to say, or something that harms a friendship. 

So, from a normative perspective, they might be difficult to trust because of their impulsivity.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, and to some extent, there’s a human element to that. I was just thinking about agreements I’ve had with my spouse, where one of us got upset, and we broke an agreement—not because we weren’t trustworthy, but because we were angry, upset, or hurt. 

And in those moments, we might say something we didn’t want to say or shouldn’t have said. That’s part of being human. 

It breaks trust, but we need to recognize that it’s not always about a lack of trustworthiness. And we need to explore all the different ways we can build trust so that it’s not only reliant on executive function. We need other ways to measure when we can trust someone.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I absolutely agree with what you said. There’s this other aspect, though, when we talk about teaching our kids to be trustworthy. 

Even if I say something in the heat of the moment, being trustworthy in the relationship means I can step back and say, "Wait a second, I totally lost my cool yesterday. I’m really sorry, and I’m intending not to do it again." And I know that, because of the way my temper works, it might happen again. What we’re going to talk about in a minute is what our kids need from us. 

It’s the other side of the equation. It’s not just about teaching our kids to be reliable, to be in integrity, or to follow the "vault" model—these aspects of trustworthiness. 

It may not be realistic for them to do all of those things, especially if they don’t have the executive function to manage them, or if they’re dysregulated or struggling with these challenges. 

So, trustworthiness sometimes becomes about acknowledging, "I know I have this problem, and I can be honest about it in this relationship."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Or I know that my kid has this problem, so I can set expectations that are appropriate to what they’re able to do, not to what I wish they could do right now.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, I think about that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I used to say to my kid all the time, "It’s not that I don’t trust you, honey, it’s that I trust you to do what you’re able to do." I think the other thing I’d say was, "It’s really cute that you think you’re going to remember that." 

And then I’d follow up with, "What else might you do to set yourself up for success in remembering that?" We were playful about it back then, but he really did struggle with working memory. He needed to come up with other strategies to remember. 

And I had to adjust my expectations, understanding that it was going to be challenging for him to remember. I needed to support him in that, rather than holding him accountable for remembering and then getting angry when he didn’t.

Diane Dempster: Right. Which brings us back to setting realistic expectations and doing so consciously, with them as much as we can.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. Based on where they are developmentally, this is something we always come back to: Where is their capacity at this moment? We want to meet them where they are, stretch them, and invite them to grow from there, rather than setting the bar so high that they eventually give up because they don’t know how to reach it.

Diane Dempster: And what’s coming up for me, in addition, Elaine, is what we were talking about in the training we did last week. 

When you look at their behaviors—like, "My kid is lying," or "My kid is not trustworthy," or "My kid is not in integrity"—the thing is, my kid has broken my trust. 

But if we don’t see that as a moral failing or a screw-up or whatever label we want to put on it, and instead see it as a kid having a hard time…

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, my kid’s having a hard time being honest, or being forthright, or following through.

Diane Dempster: Right. We need to put ourselves in a position where we’re helping them, rather than getting frustrated and saying, "You’ve broken my trust, and now you can never use your computer again." Right? Which is something we tend to do sometimes—some of us, anyway.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Let’s take a break and come back to that. So, we’ve talked a fair amount about what they need from us, or what we need from them. Let’s come back and focus on what they need from us. Cool?

Diane Dempster: Yes.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Awesome.

[After Break]

Diane Dempster: So, we’re talking about trust, and trust goes both ways. Actually, it goes in multiple directions. We haven’t mentioned this yet, Elaine, but when I think about trust in a relationship, it’s like, "Do I trust you? Do you trust me? Do I trust myself?" 

That’s another big piece of it, because a lot of times, these kids struggle with trusting themselves. We were talking earlier about executive function challenges, and often these kids fall out of trust with themselves because they can’t figure out how to get themselves to do the things they said they were going to do, or the things they’re supposed to do, or all that other stuff. It’s another layer in this whole mix.

They might not understand, "Wow, I have an executive function challenge," and instead, they might think, "I’m just messed up," or whatever it is they tell themselves.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, they might think, "I’m stupid," or "I’m lazy," or "I’m the laziest and stupidest." And that’s going to trigger a whole reactivity that has nothing to do with the other person.

Diane Dempster: Right. And I think one of the things we can do to help our kids trust us and help them trust themselves are the other two pieces of Brené Brown's model, which are non-judgment and generosity. 

In our language, generosity means assuming best intentions. I’m not sure if we got that directly from Brené Brown, but thank you, Brené, because it’s amazing. I just know that I had a post-it note on my desk for like ten years.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We’ve been using that as long as I’ve known you.

Diane Dempster: Thank you. So, assuming best intentions and non-judgment—if we want them to trust us, they need those things, right? 

And if we’re constantly judging them or being… What’s the opposite of generous? What’s the word when you’re not generous?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Let’s just go with “judgy.”

Diane Dempster: Judgy, right. And if we’re not assuming their best intentions, then we’re going to become untrustworthy, and we won’t be seen as an ally, an advocate, or a partner in solving a problem. We’ll be seen as the enemy. 

And, of course, their defenses are going to go up. They’ll be in a different space with us than if we approach them with, "Okay, let me help you."

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, and we haven’t said this yet, but part of the reason trust is so important is that trust is foundational to learning and growth.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. Say that more intentionally.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: A kid is not available to learn if they don’t feel safe. And an adult is not available to learn if they don’t feel safe and don’t feel trust. 

So trust is absolutely foundational to our capacity to grow, learn, change, and improve, and to become more of who we want to be, whether that's us as parents or our kids as growing young people. 

Trust is an essential component because it creates an environment where people can learn, grow, and feel safe. Our kids often...

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Hang on one sec. Because our kids often feel unsafe. And here’s what I can tell you: As a neurodivergent person living in a neurodivergent brain, there’s sometimes this feeling of just being out of control. 

When I feel out of control, overwhelmed, or unclear, it makes me feel off-kilter, unsafe, like I’m on the edge. I think our kids feel that way a lot, and they don’t always know how to communicate it. So part of what we need to do is start with the assumption that they’re going to feel that way sometimes.

And, as Diane said a little bit ago, it’s our job to help them navigate that instead of judging them for feeling that way.

Diane Dempster: There are so many different layers of judgment, right? It’s not just judging their untrustworthy behavior, but also judging the fact that they don’t feel safe.

I think one of the hardest things is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and realizing, "I don’t get to decide whether you feel safe or not." And, honestly, I probably don’t know whether you feel safe or not. 

I think that happens a lot, especially in the teenage years. The behaviors we see—the defensiveness, the avoidance, all of that—are signals. This is what we were talking about the other day: It’s a signal of stress and overwhelm. Stress and overwhelm are side effects of not feeling safe. 

It’s that gap we were talking about. It’s like, "I thought I was going to get acceptance and support, but I’m getting judgment instead," and it creates a gap for us. We don’t want to guilt-trip any of you parents because I know a lot of you out there are thinking, "Oh my gosh, I’m such a terrible parent." 

But there’s an opportunity here to ask: "Where am I judging? How can I really help my kid? How can I shift out of judgment and move into helping my kid with whatever they’re going through?"

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, I’m just thinking about—we did a podcast episode on success with Diane and Andy, and one of the things Andy shared was when his kid said, "Do you think I want to be doing this?" And his response was, "Wow, yeah, I did think you wanted to be doing that. I’m now realizing you didn’t." 

And that’s where assuming best intentions can come in and being really generous. There are so many layers here, right? Trust is foundational for a relationship. It’s foundational for learning and growth. 

And it’s very easy, in the realm of neurodiversity, to struggle with being trustful, building trust, and holding trust—both for us as adults with complex kids and for our kids with us. And I think this is the piece that we parents can forget: how important it is for our kids to actually trust us. 

Not to demand their trust, not to assume that they’ll trust us just because we’re their parents, but to realize that every day we are rebuilding, reacquainting, and reestablishing a place where we are safety and trust for our kids. That’s not something we can just assume they know or feel.

Diane Dempster: Well, if our kids are in a space where they don’t trust us, if they feel judgment, if they don’t feel the generosity coming from us, they’re more likely to be dysregulated. 

And when they’re dysregulated, they’re more likely to do things that will continue to erode our trust in them, right? So we’re creating this cycle. And I’m like, okay, guys, this is the moment where we’ve got to pull up our big kid pants and be the grown-ups here, right? It’s just sort of, "Okay, wait a second. 

My kid’s having a hard time. Can I move into a place of generosity and non-judgment so that I can create trust, so that my kid will let down their defenses, and we can have a real conversation about what some of the challenges are and get into problem-solving mode instead of pointing fingers?"

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Reacting.

Diane Dempster: Reacting.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. There’s credit hoarding and blame throwing.

Diane Dempster: Wait, say that again. Blame throwing?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: A credit hoarder means I want all the credit for doing all the good stuff.

Diane Dempster: Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We’re a blame thrower.

Diane Dempster: Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: It’s all you. And our kids do have a tendency to be blame-throwers.

Diane Dempster: And that’s a dysregulated response. When you get overwhelmed and stressed, you’re going to be like, "Wait, no, that’s not me. That’s everybody else," right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Especially if you’ve spent a lot of years feeling like you’re wrong all the time. I think a lot of our kids start making themselves "right" because they’re just tired of feeling wrong all the time.

Diane Dempster: Or they make themselves wrong all the time. Right. You see both ends of the spectrum. It’s either, "I’m a total loser" or "I’m infallible." And both of those are reactive responses to feeling out of control in your life.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. And so that’s really the key—there’s so much we’ve been talking about more and more in the last couple of years regarding control and the role it plays. 

It’s not just about controlling power struggles, but it’s about the feeling of self-control and how hard it is when I don’t feel like I have a sense of self-control. And that’s really difficult for our kids. There are a lot of gaps here—between where they are, where we are, and where we want to be.

Diane Dempster: There's a story I haven't told yet that I want to share, if that's okay. I remember a client really distinctly. Her 13-year-old daughter would go into her room to do her homework, and, without fail, mom would come in and see that the homework wasn’t getting done.

And of course, mom would expect, you can imagine—mom would get to the door and think, Holy cow, I can’t believe you’re not doing your homework again. You told me you were going to do your homework!

So, the shift was this: Mom decided to expect that when she went into her kid's room, the homework wasn’t going to be done, and instead of getting frustrated, she would get curious.

We always say, Get curious, not furious. She chose to get curious about what creative, fun, imaginative thing her child was doing instead of their homework that day. 

She acknowledged how creative her kid was, and instead of getting angry, she went up to redirect them so they could get their homework done.

She realized that the reason they weren’t doing the homework wasn’t because they didn’t want to, but because it was hard for them to do it on their own.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah, and at the end of the day, that’s a great example. There are a million ways you can apply that. But if we start by assuming the best intention, we begin with the assumption that they’re not being mistrustful on purpose, that they’re not being little jerks or trying to be untrustworthy. 

Instead, we assume that they would like to be trustworthy but are struggling in some way. And we also need to remember that earning their trust is just as important as them earning ours.

Diane Dempster: Yes, well, and I think the other thing, and I don’t know if we’ve talked about this in a podcast episode, but I know we’ve talked about it before, is that if we go into this thinking that trust is something you have until you don’t, like a test—you’ve lost it forever, and you have to build it back—then we’re missing the point. 

We’re humans, and we’re in relationships, and we’re going to do things that impede our trust in each other and things that build our trust in each other. It’s more like the marble jar analogy, rather than an all-or-nothing kind of view.

If you’re working hard to maintain the relationship, focusing on how you build trust and balancing the relationship, you’re going to handle these moments much differently than if you think, “I can never trust you again.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, and as I heard you say that, and I know we need to wrap this episode, but as I heard you say that, here's what came up. Some people are more black and white than others. 

Some people really are more, either you have my trust or you don’t. And I’m not judging anybody for that. That’s the reality of how some people are wired or motivated. And so I guess the invitation there for those who do have that tendency is to really go underneath. 

We often say go underneath, what’s the layer underneath? And ask yourself what’s really most important about this right now? And this is where leaning into relationship and connection may help dance around some of those areas. Because just because a kid didn’t do what they said they were gonna do doesn’t make them a bad kid or even necessarily wrong. 

But if we have a tendency to see them that way, then we may need to be working on our own interpretation of what else is also true. What else is going on there?

Diane Dempster: Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Because we tell ourselves a story that can make it really hard to be generous and non-judgmental.

Diane Dempster: Yeah, awesome.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Anything else?

Diane Dempster: No. So much. So many things.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Good deep episode. Nice conversation.

Diane Dempster: Not hopefully we know you got something out of this. Write down for yourself, take some notes. Or what insight do you have? Capture for yourself. What insights did you have from our conversation about trust today?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: What do you take away that you might want to apply in some way to your life? Maybe you have a particular relationship in mind. Maybe it's a kid, maybe it's a partner, maybe it's a parent. 

Where does this apply for you and your life most right now? That you want to really pay attention to this conversation about trust.

Diane Dempster: Thank you for everything you do for yourself and for your kids. At the end of the day, you make the difference.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Take care, everybody.