Tania Johnson
It’s been an interesting path. It’s actually been such a beautiful, wonderful, fulfilling journey. Tammy and I both started off in private practice; we’re both registered psychologists and registered play therapists. While we found that the work we were doing with children primarily was wonderful, we really wanted to be talking to the caregivers in a child’s world—the parents, the teachers, the daycare providers. Both of us felt like the people who were truly making an impact in a child’s life were not the therapists. We saw a child maybe four hours a month—if we were lucky, sometimes two hours a month; they’re coming every other week. The people we actually wanted to be speaking to are the people who make an impact in a child’s world. We very much see ourselves as guides instead of as the change-makers, and so we wanted to get to the change-makers. We started small—we started throwing workshops on anxiety.

Our main topic—and why kids were coming to see us. We started off doing workshops locally, and it grew and it grew and it grew. We had a number of different workshops, and then we actually went online before COVID. Then things changed over COVID, as it did for everybody, and we started having more experts come in, so it wasn’t just me and Tammy doing workshops. Basically, what the institute became was a hub for some of the top minds. We’ve had all sorts of amazing people whom I never thought I would get to speak to in my entire life—like Dr. Maté, Dr. Nebel—just incredible people talking on our platform. That’s where we found ourselves. Tammy and I are still creating new courses and new workshops. We also have our own podcast, but we are primarily there to connect people with some of the greatest minds when it comes to child psychology.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Beautiful. And I love the way you think about it—the greatest minds when it comes to child psychology, that notion of the thought leaders. There’s a lot of information out there, and some people spend their time trying to figure out how to communicate what we know in a way that parents can really access it and receive it, and use it. It’s not enough to know it. We actually want it to make it in—to help them integrate it and make it usable.

Tania Johnson
Yeah, and that’s where we started, too in our journey. We know how lost parents can get when they go down the Google rabbit hole, and that’s what Tam and I wanted to do: take a lot of the research and put it into concrete chunks for parents where they could go, “OK, I’ve got this.” That’s what we based all of our workshops on. Then, when we brought these people in—there are so many who are such a gift to the world—we wanted people to hear more and more from them. It’s been such a beautiful journey.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
It really is. I share that love for getting to the core of what’s really going on with kids by getting to the people who are spending so much time with them.

Tania Johnson
Yeah… When I finished my master’s degree, I think I had a very different idea about what I’d do than what I actually ended up doing. Recognizing that change comes from mobilizing and empowering people in a child’s world—because it doesn’t come from the one hour in clinic—has changed everything about the way I practice. I also realized I’m just one of those people in a child’s village. So, really repositioning how I saw myself and my role has been huge as well.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Let’s talk about mobilizing and empowering the people in a child’s world. I love that language. I think Diane and I would say that’s very much what we’re about as well—it’s an empowerment approach. Talk a little bit about how parents respond to that.

Tania Johnson
That varies. I’ve learned that a lot of it has to do with setting expectations from the very beginning—from the very, very first session—so a parent can decide if they want to work with me or not. I still do some clinical work, and like everything in life, sometimes it’s a fit, sometimes it’s not. For some families, we have an identified patient—“This child needs help; this teen needs help. Work with them.” It can be very hard for families to expand and go, “OK, maybe Mom needs some work here. Maybe Dad needs some work. Perhaps a teacher needs to finesse what she’s doing over here, too.” That understanding can be quite challenging for some families. I’ve got kids too—if someone said, “Well, Tania, let’s look at your stuff too,” it’s kind of like you take a step back and go, “Oh no, no, no, no, no.”

I was bringing my kid in to see you—so work with her; don’t look at my stuff. For some families, I think it’s a little more challenging, but honestly, for a lot of families and teachers, I find people are very receptive: if we’re actually gonna create long-term change outside of the clinic, let’s get moving. Let’s do this. Let’s make use of your time and resources and actually create change. I spend a lot of time now talking to teachers and daycare providers. I don’t believe it’s about just talking to the parents. I don’t believe it’s about just talking to the teen. It’s about talking to as many people as I possibly can and asking, how do we create change? What do we actually need to see in terms of shift?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So, tell us a little bit about your philosophy of how you create change. We’re coaches—we come from a coach-approach. You come from a therapeutic lens. What do you tell daycare providers, teachers, and parents about what it takes to create change?

Tania Johnson
Yeah, so there’s some stuff from my—so I work primarily from an attachment lens. There are some things that may be classified as a little bit more behavioral, but I like to work with a kid or a teen first. For example, the most recent call I had was with school, but I’ve been working with—I've seen her probably 7 or 8 times now. So we’ve got a deep understanding of where her feelings of competency are, what drives her, what gives her hope. My favorite way to work is to do a deep dive into that—Who are you? What drives you? What worries you?—really looking deeper and then going, OK, so what has she told me now, and how do I relay this to school?
For example, with school: what I said to the school is, “These are the areas where she feels competent. This is where she’s really struggling. How do we increase her sense of competency? What can we give her at school? How can we help her really show her school where she’s competent—where her sense of purpose is?” We’re gonna, for example, pair her with a younger student in a younger grade.
Then I spoke about belonging. She feels like she doesn’t belong anywhere at school. She doesn’t feel like she has a person. How do we increase her sense of “This is my person; this is my adult I can speak to”? How do we get her more connected to peers? While those steps become concrete, initially it’s really coming from this deep dive about what she’s struggling with and where she feels like she’s really shining—and then exploring all of those areas for her.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Beautiful. So when you’re talking to parents generally—one of the questions we sometimes ask here is: from your lens (and I hear you saying you come from an attachment lens), what’s the message you want parents of complex kids to understand overall? Not just this one kid, but overall—what’s the message?

Tania Johnson
Give your child time. I think a big one is that often we just need to shift our perspective of where we’re standing to see where they shine and how they shine. To all of my parents, I always say: let’s take off the glasses that we’re currently using, take a deep breath, and then let’s start to look at this from a really creative perspective. Who is this child? What do they need? What are they capable of—and how do we help with that? That’s always my message.

All of those preconceived notions—diagnoses, reports—are fine. You can tell me that in the first session. But after that, put that aside, and let’s really start to get creative here. That’s one of my favorite parts of the work: How do we understand this child in a really different way? I don’t want to be another therapist who comes in and focuses on behavioral strategies, reports, diagnoses. I want to be somebody who sees your child differently—and together, when we see your child differently, there are so many possibilities.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
You’re really looking at the whole picture of who is this human being in front of you—who’s evolving and growing—and coming together creatively to support that.

Tania Johnson
Yeah. And whether it’s sleep or movement or nutrition or fewer screens or finding something that they can advocate for—where does this child shine? That is my work. That is my work. And I find in my role, I’m careful about pre-existing narratives about my clients, and that’s also why I like to work with kids and teens first before I really start to work with the parents, because very often the referral reason for a child is very different from what I actually end up working on in therapy.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
The way we talk about it is that iceberg concept, right? What you think is the issue is on the surface, and then as you start getting underneath, you start discovering there’s something else and something else and something else going on.

Tania Johnson
Absolutely. And I find in my work, if I work just with the child or just with the parents, it’s very hard to actually get underneath.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Beautiful. OK. We’re gonna take a quick break, and then we’re gonna come back. I’ve got a couple of questions to follow up.

Tania Johnson
Thank you.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
My guest is Tania Johnson from the Institute of Child Psychology. We’ve been talking about an attachment-lens approach and really understanding what’s going on with a kid before you start engaging with the adults in that kid’s life—to help them really take what, in our lens, we would call a strength-based approach, right? To really see what is it that makes this kid tick. What are some strengths that you can play into? How can you help them find motivation and engagement? Two things jumped at me with what you said. I remember one of them, and I wrote down one and forgot the other—so we’ll start with the one. The last thing you were talking about was the importance of the strength-based approach, and you tapped in for a moment before that about the importance of belonging, and I really wanted to take us into a conversation about belonging—the importance of belonging both for what we call complex kids, and also for the families, the parents, the teachers. Belonging is something that the outside world doesn’t talk about a lot, and yet it’s fundamental to the work we’re talking about in terms of supporting these families. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Tania Johnson
Yeah. We all know what it feels like when we’re sitting with a friend or somebody we love and we feel completely safe. Within that safety, it allows all of our defenses to melt a little bit, and we can start to think in creative ways and go, “OK, what needs to change? How am I doing right now?” But when we don’t have that sense of shared connection—when I’m sitting with someone and I go, “Oh, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this person”—now think about a child in school when they’re sitting with a teacher where they just feel that discomfort. They don’t feel as if they’re deeply seen or valued or heard. For those kids, all of their resources are going to: Am I OK? Am I safe? What’s this person thinking right now? Whereas when children—and when teens—and when we feel seen, valued, heard—deeply heard—and when we can feel that somebody’s attuned and listening…

What it does is allow all of those stress systems of “Am I OK right now? Am I safe?” to relax. As that relaxes, our ability to think creatively, think deeply, think in new ways sparks—because now that energy is no longer going to creating a sense of safety and belonging. It’s going to “I’m OK. I’m exactly where I need to be right now. I don’t need to pretend to be anything. I don’t need to say something specific. I don’t need to act a specific way. I’m OK.” So when our children feel as if they have that at school—with their teacher or with their peers—that’s when we start to see their greatest learning happen. Not only about themselves, but about the world and about what they’re learning at school, too. That’s really what we’re looking for: places where children can be exactly who they are, without pretending to be something else or somebody else—because that’s when we see them shine the most.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. As I’m hearing you describe this—and we talk about this a lot with parents—there’s the language of relationship and trust, right? The foundation of that pyramid of their independence is your relationship with them and their ability to feel safe and trusting. I hear you describing that in a school environment. A kid is not gonna be available for learning if they don’t feel safe. The same is also true in the home environment, right? If we think we’re creating an environment of safety because our kids have their needs met and they are clothed and fed and we’re doing all these things for them, then there sometimes is a disconnect between what parents think is creating an environment of trust and safety and what kids experience that way. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Tania Johnson
Yeah, absolutely. So, Elaine, let me ask you: when you are with somebody who you can feel is listening not to speak—listening because they want to see you and understand you deeply—what happens for you?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
It feels like a warm hug. I’m present, I’m held, I’m safe. There’s a sense that someone else cares. Really, it feels like it communicates caring.

Tania Johnson
Oh, beautiful—I love that it communicates caring. Absolutely agree. And I think so often, as parents (it happens to me too), we get caught up in the “Now we have to go to ninja and soccer, and your spelling, and where’s your laundry?” It happens. But so often we get caught up in, “I need to provide as much as possible for this child. We need lots of limits. We need lots of structure. This is what it means to raise a child.” Yes, those things matter. But what’s fundamental is this child going, “Mom, Dad, Grandma—they get me. They see me. They listen to listen, not to speak, not to lecture.” Then what’s happening there is what we call the serve-and-return process, which is fundamental to connection and secure attachment.

If I, as a child, say, “Mom, I had such a hard day. Johnny wouldn’t play with me today,” that’s the serve. And the return is Mom going, “Come tell me about it.” That’s it. So when that serve-and-return happens, that’s where we build a really close relationship. But so often, because we have our own lecture, our own stories to tell our kid, we’re trying to get them out the door, we’re distracted by our phone—whatever it is—we wanna make sure they learn something. Yes, that’s a big one.

So the serve happens—it’s like a tennis ball: it’s served over the net—and then it just drops. We’re not always gonna get that serve-and-return right. But we really wanna work toward it: this child is telling me what they need—how do I keep quiet, and how do I actually listen? That’s the warm hug you’re talking about.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. And as parents, I think we get caught up in that, as you say—in the doing of life—and we don’t even realize we’re not returning the serve, right?

Tania Johnson
So much so.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Or here’s the other thing: our kids are struggling with these complex issues and we don’t want them to—and we feel bad that they’re struggling. So then we want to help them reframe the thinking: “Don’t feel that way; feel this way instead.”

Tania Johnson
Yeah. Absolutely. Or when our kid says, “I was so lonely at school—nobody wants to play with me,” we say, “Oh, you’re just amazing! I’m sure kids wanna play with you.” We don’t hear them at all. They need to be seen and to hear, “Oh, that’s tough.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah. So that acknowledgment piece is enormous—acknowledging from a place of compassion, whatever their experience is, and making sure we’re validating that their experience is real for them. Huge, huge. And yet it’s so easy to get into trying to fix it.

Tania Johnson
Yes. Because that’s what we do as parents, right? We want to just rush in there. But I often say it’s exactly what we need when we sit with a friend over a coffee—we don’t need them to rush to candy-coat it, because then it’s like they’re fixing their own fears. We need them to hear us. And that’s exactly what our children need too.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what I want to acknowledge, for those of you listening—and I’ll put it in the show notes—is that we teach a tool, a conversation technique that kind of describes what you’re talking about called ACE, which is Acknowledgment with compassion before you Explore your options. Right? So instead of jumping to problem solving, we slow down and we really allow ourselves to be present to our kid. What I want to acknowledge for the parents listening is that sometimes that’s hard. Sometimes we’re not feeling heard, we’re not feeling safe, we’re not sure how to handle this situation.

Tania Johnson
Right. Hundred percent. Absolutely. And I think, too, when we do mess up—and we are gonna mess up—if we are messy and imperfect, it gives our kids permission to be messy and imperfect too. We’re not looking for perfect parenting, but we are really helping parents to try and be aware of reflective parenting, where it’s like, “Oh, I totally missed the ball on—literally—I totally missed the ball on that one.” Then we come back and say, “I’m really sorry. You were trying to tell me something earlier and I wasn’t able to hear you.”

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Is that what you mean by reflective parenting, or is there something else?

Tania Johnson
Nope. That’s what I mean. We want to be able to reflect on what happened: how exactly did that conversation end? Let’s come back and actually go, “What else needed to happen?” And, you know, one thing I so often hear parents do is say something like, “I’m really sorry, but today’s just been crazy,” or—that’s what this is about. Our children cannot learn how to be authentic and brave and courageous unless we’re authentic, brave, and courageous.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Well, this is lovely, Tania, and I think you and I could wax poetic about this for hours and really enjoy it. And it’s time to start wrapping up the conversation. Folks, if you want to find out more about Tania and her organization, The Institute of Child Psychology, you can go to instituteofchildpsychology.com. They do workshops, presentations, all kinds of resources. You’ll find all kinds of amazing experts who have been involved with them. They’ve done summits. I think we’ve been on your summit. You said you have a podcast too—what’s the podcast?

Tania Johnson
The Child Psych Podcast.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
The Child Psych Podcast. So, lots of resources. Lots of great stuff. And as you said, I think a lot of your focus is particularly on kids with anxiety.

Tania Johnson
No—we started off with that.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Got it.

Tania Johnson
Now we have a bit of everything. And our podcast—I’m sure you feel the same way—our podcast is probably one of our favorite parts of our work too. We have a number of really incredible experts on our podcast, too.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I feel it as well. And yet when we started off as Impact ADHD and then expanded to Impact Parents, we really wanted to reflect the full range of issues that parents were dealing with, and that it was never really—it’s never just about whatever the diagnosis is or isn’t. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks for what you’re doing. Thank you for being here with us. Before we wrap, do you have a favorite quote or motto that you want to share with our community?

Tania Johnson
So, probably my favorite one is by Marianne Williamson. She says, “Our deepest fear is not that we’re inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we’re powerful beyond measure.” And that’s something that I always, always talk to my kids and my teens about. What is it about your light?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I love that. I used to have that up in my office back in the day, a long time ago. Again, thank you for being here, and thank you for the work that you’re doing. To those of you listening, tune in with yourself. Take a moment and ask yourself, what are you taking away from this conversation? What are you aware of now that you might not have been aware of half an hour ago? What insight do you have, and maybe how do you want to bring it forward with you into your life? And as always, friends, thank you for what you’re doing for yourself, for your kids—as Tania pointed out so well—your presence, your engagement, your conscious parenting, and your being with kids in a conscious way. It makes all the difference. Take care, everybody. See you in the next one.