Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Welcome back, everybody, to another conversation in the Parenting with Impact podcast. Diane and I are gonna riff today. 

Diane Dempster: So, we even know what we're gonna talk about. I think we do kind of do.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We kind of have an idea. I just left an event and got on with Diane. I was like, you know what I really want to talk about today? I want to talk about how amazing these kids are and how incredible they can be and how much capacity they really have and how we kind of sometimes get so focused on the challenges and the deficits and the struggles that we forget to see how amazing and gifted and talented and brilliant and beautiful they are.

Diane Dempster:  Well, and before we get too deep into the celebration, like a word to those of you who are in the muck and the frustration of the thing, we're gonna challenge you to stick with this episode and just, we're gonna give you a couple of challenges through the process of the episode and just know that we're not trying to Pollyanna the real challenges and struggles that you all are going through and our heart is with you and we also know that part of this work is noticing, and this is where we'll get by the end. Noticing what works as much as you're noticing what you're frustrated about is actually gonna help you to help your child in a very different way, for sure.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I don't mean in any way to dismiss the very real challenges we've all got, but if we only ever focus on the challenges that we've got or the kids got, the philosophy in the ADD world is what you pay attention to grows. If you pay attention to what's not working, you're just gonna get more and more and see more and more of what's not working well.

Diane Dempster: And that's not just in the ADHD world. That is brain science, right? That's the way that our brains are wired, is what you focus on grows? So if I'm looking for all the broken things or all the things that I don't like about my living room or whatever else, I'm gonna see all those things. And if I'm looking for the things that I love, I'm gonna see more of those things. And that's just the way, literally, our brains are wired to work, and so.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And what jumps at me is that some of us are like, we're human, so we are wired, some of us, many of us, to be analytical, right? So we're wired to see what's broken, to see what's not working, to see where the gaps are; that's what affects us.

Diane Dempster: Continuous improvement. Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Planners and problem solvers and even creators right? even in that realm.

Diane Dempster: And so it serves us well in many instances. And it also exhausts us because the reality is, if that's all we're focused on, it creates stress, right or wrong, and tension. And so often in this instance, if we're looking at how do I fix this situation with my kid or how do I help my kid, and this is wrong and that is wrong and this needs to be improved.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I'm worried about this.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. Here are the 17 lagging executive function skills that my kid has. Then literally your body is gonna get exhausted and more importantly, for most of us, it's gonna have an impact on your relationship with your kids. Because if all they hear coming out of our mouth is that it's like this sort of, they're gonna hear, even if you're well-meaning folks and we all are well-meaning. If I'm trying to help somebody from a well-meaning place and I do it too much, they're gonna start hearing that as judgment and not as well-meaning ideas.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I have an example. Today I was coaching a couple and he was talking about he was trying to acknowledge his wife for something she had done, but it was one of these backward compliments. And so he was trying to say, it was really great that you did that instead of this thing that you do all the time. Right?

Diane Dempster: Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:  And so it ended up being kind of a bit of a backward compliment. But what was great about it was that I watched a smile on her face and she's kind of smirking and so she and I kind of. It was like, okay, so what did you hear? And she heard it, but she wasn't taking it personally because she was able to give him the benefit of the doubt and knew that he was actually intending to be positive. But that tendency to go to the problem, it's so present for so many of us all the time. It's really hard to let it go.

Diane Dempster: Well, and what you just described is a really conscious human who's done an enormous amount of work to figure out how do I, even if my partner or co-parent says something that's not quite kind, that I look for the good in it and not the backward slap that kind of was in the midst of the whole thing. Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, and that ended up being the nature of what we were coaching about, and seeing the celebration in it. Exactly.

Diane Dempster: Right. Our kids don't have that most of them don't have that gift. They don't even have the self-awareness all they see is, Mom's unhappy with me, Dad's unhappy, and again, I'm unhappy. Our kids often end up in that shame cycle or embarrassment cycle. And just a reminder, the shame and embarrassment cycle might actually sound like a shame or embarrassment cycle. It also may be avoidance. I don't care. You're losers. Whatever it is, there's some sort of reactivity that happens when our kids get into that cycle that may or may not look like shame. So that's just that reminder there.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. Yes. There are challenges associated with dealing with all the complex issues we're talking about. And they're real and we're not dismissing them and many of us, as the parents or the professionals, have a tendency to look for, to see and identify those challenges or gaps because we see them as opportunities for improvement.

Diane Dempster: Well, and that's even the medical model. If you think about the psyched evaluations, which I'm not dissing. Right. Dismissing them, I think they're important and valuable and, what comes out is here are the things that need support. I think that there's some great psyched evaluators who say, here are the kid's strengths, but a lot of times they don't because their job is to identify the gaps and identify where the supports are needed. And so we tend to focus in on that again instead of going, okay, so what are the things that are amazing about these kids? and how do I help them to see those? I think that a lot of times parents will say, I don't know if you heard this, Elaine, but I can't even give my kid a compliment.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yes.

Diane Dempster: It's like this sort of, I can't give them a compliment because they're so hard on themselves or they're so hard on they can't even hear it. And I think that the question is, is it because they don't believe it or is it that they don't believe it from us? There's all these different features, and reasons. And the more we do it, the easier it's gonna be for them to do it, for them to hear it. And my message back to anybody who says I can't because my kid won't let me give them a compliment, give it to them anyway. So what if they roll their eyes? So what if they. Yes. Find ways to do it and if you can find ways to do it in a way that they can hear it, but don't just say, well, they don't want me to, so I'm gonna stop. Right? That's maybe overreacting is what I would say. You were gonna jump over calibrating. Over calibrating.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. What I would say is that the key, I had a major kid. It was like, you couldn't do anything positive. I think the key is to be really matter-of-fact and low-key about it. We have a tendency to go to over celebrate. They don't really want you to jump up and down and throw a party because they turned in a homework assignment.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. They feel bad about it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. But they don't mind a nice job with that and move on. Right? Little acknowledgments can go a really long way because they're not out of proportion with what they think.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think the other piece of it is, Elaine, even if the little acknowledgments. I mean, I'm thinking about one client in particular who's like, literally, I cannot say anything positive. This kid just doesn't want to hear it or do anything with it sometimes you're not doing it for them. Explicitly we also pay attention to what works also helps us. Right? Yes. Eventually, maybe they'll start to hear it and believe it if we say it enough times. And it does help us and to relieve the stress. Because if we're sitting there going, oh wait, that's really cool, oh wait, that was really cool, oh wait, they're doing this. And I'm thinking about my own kids and times that they've been in kind of stuck spots. Right. It's sort of either between jobs or what am I gonna do next? Or where do I go to college? or some of that other stuff. And it's like, if I can move to watching them move through the process and going, wow, that's really fascinating to watch how they're figuring this out. Even if it takes longer than other people, even if it's really stinking messy in the middle of it, it's noticing, oh wait, there was this moment where they kind of got. It keeps me in the game in a different way than if all I see is, this kid is stuck. They've been sitting here for six months doing nothing besides playing video games. And, yes, I've been there. It helps you to navigate through those difficult moments because you're not just paying attention to what's not working.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right. I'm hearing you and what I'm realizing is, I want to go back a little bit.

Diane Dempster:  Okay.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Because your story brought out my memory of when my eldest kid was. So that's about 13 and this was a kid with a lot of complex issues. And so what I want to go back to is, before we get to, it's really great to pay attention. It works for us to pay attention to what works. What we're really talking about here is not even playing to their strengths, but identifying strengths, because oftentimes, what they're gifted at and really magical with may not be what we would classically expect. So it may be that they are really empathetic or really compassionate, and they love animals or have great attention to detail or really creative. So at my kid's Bat Mitzvah, there was this moment, and I've told parents this a lot since then, because all of a sudden, I'm, like, watching this kid now keep in mind, months and months of work coming up to this. I'm sure it's not gonna go off. I'm sure it's gonna be a disaster. I'm afraid it's gonna be a fiasco because we did it on our own. We did it at a camp. We did all these alternative things to make it work for this kid. But I cannot say that this kid was sitting down every day and studying their Torah portion like they're supposed to, or writing their speech like they're supposed to. It did not happen the way that you would typically expect it to happen and we actually even left one synagogue because their expectations for the kids were unreasonable for a kid with my kind of neurodivergence, I didn't know what to expect when I got there, to be honest. But what was amazing when I got there was watching this kid rise to the occasion in ways I never could have imagined even possible. Watching their grace and composure in front of a room of hundreds of people and how they navigated themselves through it. This was a kid. I didn't even know they had it in them. So it was this brilliant moment in time for us to see. Okay, let's look at gifts differently than performance.

Diane Dempster: Well, and you probably could have sat there, and if you stretch, you could probably go back and notice the things that were not the way that had been planned or that, according to the book or whatever else,

Elaine Taylor-Klaus:  We forgot their speech, and we had to open up a computer on the Sabbath.

Diane Dempster: Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Didn't have the speech.

Diane Dempster: Right. And so, again, it's just sort of, if you're focusing on one versus the other, and it's like looking for. Let me look for that thing that my kid is amazing at.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Yeah. In this case, it was a kind of holding presence. This kid was amazing at being present and kind of gravitating energy and focus to them, which is hysterical because they turned out to be an actor. It turned out to be exactly what they do for a living. But I never would have known that before this experience. It wouldn't have even crossed my mind because they were kind of shy and quiet, and I wouldn't have seen it.

Diane Dempster: Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: So there's something about looking underneath the surface or looking beyond the performance or the achievements or the accomplishments to what else is going on for this kid that might be true. I mean, you might have a kid who may be appearing to be lazy on the surface, and it turns out they're really efficient.

Diane Dempster: Well, and it's funny as you're saying that, Elena, my brain always goes to the how and part of what I am aware of as a parent and just as a human is if you get somebody in a conversation about something that they really love, that's the place to look for the gems. Right. I tell the story in one of our tips, online tips, about sitting down with my kid and talking about Destiny is the video game that my kiddo was playing back when he was a teenager. He probably still plays Destiny, just so you know. He's 25, but it's talking to him about what he loves about the game. What were the tools that he was using? What was it that made him feel like he was really good at the game? When did he find that he was really most successful? And it's like we're uncovering in the context of something he loves, whether it's a nine-year-old who loves dinosaurs or a kid who loves video games or somebody who's really into fashion and Instagram and whatever else, it's a sort of. If you start asking questions about the thing that they love, and I know this is hard parents because a lot of times, the things that they love are not things that we love or that we secretly wish they didn't love or whatever it is. And that's where one of the opportunities lives is. Okay. They're already there. They're loving this.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: What is it about that?

Diane Dempster: Right? Yeah.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: All right, so let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back. Okay. So welcome back, everybody. We are talking about. What are we talking about? We're talking about finding our kids strength.

Diane Dempster: Finding. Yeah. Like uncovering their gems. Uncovering the gems for your kids. And I don't know, there's so many places to go back to and to go forward to. We talked a little bit about how to find them. We talked a little bit about the advantage to them and to you. What haven't we talked about?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Let's go back to first, we want to identify where there's some gifts or gems or opportunities.

Diane Dempster: Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And then why is that important? It's important because it's motivating for them. It's inspiring for them. It facilitates buy in and ownership and engagement. And most of us just want our kids to be happy and fulfilled and to engage in their lives. And when there's something they light up about, they're more likely to engage in their lives. I was listening to a workshop from the international conference on ADHD on trauma and ADHD. It was really great presentation by Catherine McConnell. We're gonna have her on the show, and she was talking about, when you're dealing with difficult issues, don't start with the hardest stuff.

Diane Dempster: Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Start with something where you can get a win. Start with something where you can get a success. And the beauty of finding and identifying our kid's strengths and even the nuanced strengths is that it's an access point to get some wins under their belt and to help them feel good about themselves because those successes will breed more success. Right?

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think that part of this is just the reminder because I'm like channeling the parents out there who are like, again, my kid won't let me talk about what they're good at because they feel so crappy about themselves. Sometimes this is just about experimenting and trying a bunch of different things and being willing to say, okay, you know what? I'm committed to trying to find ways to uncover my kid's gems for me and by the way, if I can uncover them for them, all the bonus. Right? It's a sort of do it for you because it does help you as a parent to stay in a more relaxed, less stressed parenting realm. And nice bonus side effect because you might feed your kid in a different piece. Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: You never know what breadcrumbs you drop today that they're gonna be picking up eight years from now that you had no idea they were even listening.

Diane Dempster: My gosh, my kids, my gosh, they say stuff all the time and I'm like, wait, you were listening when you were 14.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Me, too. All the time. It blows me away. And so sometimes it's just dropping of breadcrumb of, I really didn't realize that you were so interested in efficiency. I'm using that example because one of my kids, my youngest kid, he's like, yeah, I am, mom. You guys all work so hard. I like to make it easy. I like to find the easy path, Google hires people to do that. Like, there are jobs out there for that. And I'm not saying that's what he's gonna do, but when I called it out, he could hear it and decide whether it makes sense for him or not. And if it did, he could own it and maybe pull it forward later.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think that's the piece of it, is that sort of a lot of times, our kids aren't ready in the moment. And part of that may be developmental and self-awareness, and part of that might be dysregulation, which we talk a lot about, which is this sort of, again, if I'm in a stress cycle, if I'm in a shame cycle, if I'm, like, in a trauma cycle, which a lot of times these kids are often in a trauma cycle as well. Their ability to hear the good stuff is not gonna be online. And so it doesn't mean you don't keep saying it but just know that if they're not recognizing it yet, it may just be they're not in a space right now to recognize it.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, one of my favorite concepts in this world is that it's our job as parents and providers sometimes to hold the vision for these kids until they're ready to hold it for themselves, that we get to see what their capacity is, we get to see what they're capable of, even if they don't know it yet, see it yet, believe it.

Diane Dempster: Right.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: We get to be the ones that believe in them. And I'm not saying, again, it's not Pollyanna, but, man, if we don't see what they're capable of and what their capacity is, it's gonna be a lot harder for them to find it.

Diane Dempster: Well, and I think that's the thing. So take it from some sage parents with older kids, all of our kids are in at least 23, right? The youngest in our group is 23 now. Right?. And I'm just watching the light bulbs go off at 23, 24, 25. And it's like, okay, so if we go back to that 30% delay, so all the things I wish they knew when they were 16, it's like they're starting to get it all of a sudden, it's starting to happen. And I know that I don't mean that to scare you guys that your kids are gonna be living under a roof until they're 23 or 24. Some of them might be, but not all of them have to be. And they'll learn when they're ready to learn. But don't wait until they're ready to learn with something like this, which is building confidence and helping them to identify their strengths and find this gem.

ElaineTaylor-Klaus: Little things, right? That's like little things. The ability to rise to the occasion when you're tired and people out and there's something that needs to be done. That's a skill set, right? That can be really useful for acknowledging our kids. You all have heard me tell the superheroes to the grocery store story about. That's about using playing creativity to get motivated. It's also a story of resilience. I'll put the link in the show notes. I needed my kids to go to the grocery store while we were planning a funeral, basically. And they got themselves there and they got themselves with humor and with positivity, but with resilience, it was lots of little things that got them to kind of get up and go and all those little things together become what enables us to be effective as humans, to stay as adults when things get hard.

Diane Dempster: Right. Well, and I think the other thing that does, focusing on the strengths is an important piece of it, but it also helps us to see the subtle places where our kids are not yet. And I'm thinking about you, listening to you talk about resilience, and it's like resilience is one of those strengths that does develop over time. And I have a client this morning, and we're talking about a 19-year-old who's just not there yet and it's the sort of, do we push the lesson and try to help them to learn the resilience, or is the experiment gonna blow up if we try it? Right. Navigating through those difficult, sticky moments becomes easier if you do see the things that your kids can do and the successes that your kids have, because this couple could see, oh wait, this kid is resilient for about five or seven minutes. Get in there and do the thing for five or seven minutes, and then it's like, no, I can't do this anymore. And so they know that this is where they're at. They've got a resilience level of five to seven minutes, and that's where they're at. So how do we develop that? How do we get to 15 minutes? How do we get to 30 minutes and not, let's start with a month long thing. Right? It's just sort of.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: That's so true. That's what I used to do with my son when he would come to me and say, I'm done with school. It's January. I'm done. I'm like, you made it past December last year. You were done in December. And so I love what you just said. Navigating the difficult moments is easier for us and for them.

Diane Dempster: Yes. 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Right? and that's the key, is that we're not talking about eliminating all the challenges and the struggles and the stripes and all of that. We're talking about reducing the frequency and the intensity and improving the capacity to navigate it, period. Yeah.

Diane Dempster: Well, and so, the bottom line for us, if we are not beleaguered and stressed and we have success breeds success. We say that all the time. Right? And so if we know that and believe that for our kids and we trust that it keeps us in the game in a different way as a parent, instead of being frustrated and overwhelmed and, my gosh, this is never gonna change and my kid's never gonna launch, and I'm overwhelmed and in fear. It's just sort of noticing, here are four things that my kids are good at, or one thing that my kid is good at for is a stretch that will help your nervous system to regulate just a little bit, which will help you to stay more creative, stay more in problem solving mode, really help your kid in a very different way than you were if you were completely overwhelmed by all the things that are hard for your kid.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And building on that, because I love everything you just said, building on that, I would invite you to step out outside of the box when you look at what your kids are, quote, good at and look for the unusual things. Look for the things you might not notice. Look for the little pieces and celebrate those in a subtle way, but to celebrate it, call it out so that they begin to see themselves in a reflection from you. Go, what?

Diane Dempster: Well, no, the funniest thing I just think about, I always tell this story, and I don't know whether even if it's true or not, but it's like I’ve been driving in the car with my kiddo and they would say, mom, did you notice that bird had one blue eye? And I'm like, I didn't even know that there was a bird. And I like, wait, this person is really good at attention to detail, right? They see the nuance in everything. And so I can remember that moment and go, wait. Because this kid is now in the process figuring out what job I want to do and where do I want to be. And it's like, you know what? You're amazing at attention to detail. What would it be like to be in a job where you had to do that sort of thing all day long? Would that feel good or would it not? It's a very different conversation than focusing on what they're not great at.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Well, I'm thinking about another one of my kids where there was some, you might call it food sensitivities, not in the diet sense, but in the aversions. Like, I don't like the taste of that. I don't like the smell of that. And as a parent, that can get really annoying because you're trying to make food for everybody and you don't want.

Diane Dempster:  And expand their taste buds and all the other things. Right?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And you can look at that as an annoyance, or you can say, wow, you have a really sensitive palate. What was the game we used to play? We would call it growing taste buds. So let's see if you've grown a taste bud for this yet or look, you've grown a taste bud for that. But so to take the challenge and find the playfulness around it, and it turned out that kid, well, had a very sensory way of being. That sensory was a challenge, but also became a great gift. Like, this is the kid who went on to go to med school and now can hear things very nuanced, will be able to pick things up in a really nuanced way that other people may not notice because she's so attentive to sensory kinds of. That is the challenge becomes the so we've got. 

Diane Dempster:  We've got the strengths in the little teeny, tiny observations, and then we got the challenges becoming strengths. We've got all these different things. We've got how it helps you, how it helps them. How do we wrap this up, Elaine?

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: I don't know. I think that's pretty good.

Diane Dempster: Yeah. Well, we talked about a, like, so maybe.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Want to go back to where I started, which, know, what did I use to say to my kids all the time? You're gonna be an amazing adult. We just got to get you there. And if you don't know that for sure, find one of us or one of our coaches or get into our community and get some support in seeing how amazing your kid has the capacity to be because these complex kids are learning to overcome obstacles that's gonna set them up for success in life. And if you don't feel that and get that and see that, and I can see why it's hard. Then my invitation is for you to step in with us and really let us and our coaches and our community help you find that path because it lightens the load and it's so much more joyful. 

Diane Dempster: It is. Just one more thing is just pretend that it's true.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: This is the Elaine's. It's joyful. And then there's Diane's practical. Or you can pretend it's true.

Diane Dempster: No, it's like, this is the challenge and I give to my clients. It's like, for the next 48 hours, like,  imagine your kid is gonna be fine when they're 25.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: Just like.

Diane Dempster: Imagine. Believe that it's true for 24 hours, 48 hours, whatever you can muster, and say that stuff to yourself over and over again for the next 24, 48 hours and see what you notice is different at the end of the 48 hours. Great exercise. So that's my challenge to you. And as we do at the end of all of our episodes, take a minute and capture some of the insights you've had from our conversation today about the gems and helping our kids find the gems and finding our kids or gems for our kids.

Elaine Taylor-Klaus: And as always, thanks for what you're doing for yourself, for your kids. Thanks for tuning in for being part of our world. Share this with others if you are inspired. Go. Whatever you're supposed to do to like or thumbs up on the podcast, follow. Let people know that you like these conversations we're having, and we'll see you on the next conversation.

Diane Dempster: Thanks, everybody.