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Conversation is the Cure: 
Children Can Get Through Anything That Can Be Talked About – Ep. 24

[00:00:00]

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Have you had that feeling in your stomach that you’re worried about something, but you can’t quite figure out what? Young children get that feeling all the time. They feel all the same big emotions grownups feel, anger, fear, frustration, but they don’t have the experience to name the feeling or figure out where it came from, much less manage it on their own.

So they tell us how they feel through the way they behave. In other words, behavior is the way young children communicate. Our job as grownups is to figure out what their behavior is saying and help them learn to handle the difficult moments that are just a part of life. Welcome to The Hidden Language of Children, a podcast devoted to helping grownups decode the meaning behind children’s behavior.

I’m your host, Dr. Kimberly Bell, Chief of Clinical Practice, Training, and Innovation at Hanna Perkins Center for Child Development in Shaker Heights, Ohio. At Hanna Perkins, we understand a child’s behavior as communication. We work with adults to [00:01:00] understand it too so they can enjoy parenting more while helping their children grow into resilient, caring, and confident people.

I’m here with our producer, Bob Rosenbaum. What are we talking about today, Bob?

Navigating Uncomfortable Moments

Bob Rosenbaum: Thanks, Kim. Today’s episode is based on your favorite Hanna Perkins saying, “Children can get through anything that can be talked about.” It sounds simple, but for many parents, it’s just not standard operating procedure. So let’s say you’re at the supermarket. Your 6-year-old is in the seat of the shopping cart when a seriously disfigured person in a wheelchair passes by. You might suddenly become very interested in the different varieties of spaghetti sauce on the shelf in front of you. You might engage your child, “Do you like the sauce with meat or without? Do you like it on straight noodles or curly noodles?” You pretend you didn’t see the person who is so hard to look at and hope your child didn’t notice either. Worst case, you tell yourself, “It’ll all be forgotten by the time [00:02:00] we get home.” But children, they no- they notice everything. That’s their job, and while they may forget to pick up their toys or wash their hands before dinner, they never forget anything that you actually hope they’re going to forget. What’s going on in that dynamic, Kim, and what’s the significance of it?

Dr. Kimberly Bell: OK. So first of all, there are two little things that it’s important to understand. What’s going on with you as an adult, and then what’s going on in the child’s mind, and where the discomfort comes from is the misperception of those two things.

So all our lives, we have been taught to be polite, don’t do that, don’t say that. Oh, that’s not nice. And all of those feelings rally the defenses inside us so that we attempt not to notice differences, not to comment on differences, you know, don’t stare, [00:03:00] all of these things that we’ve been taught.

That’s what’s happening inside the parent. So the parent is looking for distraction. Maybe the child has said something out loud like, “Why is that person in a wheelchair?”

And the parent’s initial response is one of internal embarrassment, as if they did something that was socially inappropriate. They take that on as if it was their embarrassment.

But children are just asking a question. Children are curious about differences because they are learning to categorize. They don’t have a good-bad conversation going on. They are asking a question, why is that the case?

You never know what’s going on in a child’s mind. And so to have some canned responses with you could be really helpful. So for example, if you have a child who’s very curious or is in that three, four, five-year-old range of [00:04:00] real intense curiosity, what you can say is, “Some people just need wheelchairs to move.”

“Well, why?” “Well, that’s a longer conversation. Let’s have that in the car when we’re done shopping.” That’s it.

Bob Rosenbaum: That’s simple enough.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Simple.

Bob Rosenbaum: I do think there’s something else maybe going on in that dynamic, and the very first thing is the parent’s own discomfort,

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Mm-hmm

Bob Rosenbaum: at seeing this disfigured person. Not only hoping their child doesn’t notice because it’s uncomfortable to notice, but hoping their child doesn’t notice because, boy, they don’t want to have to talk about it.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Well, and why, so again, I’ll, you and I will ask the question, why don’t they want to talk about it? And I don’t think there’s one specific answer. It depends on how you were raised. It depends on all of your own inside feelings about differences, your own, the way you were, your curiosity was responded to. And it can be uncomfortable because you don’t know what the right answer [00:05:00] is.

But if you, you don’t have to have a scientific understanding of why people get into car accidents, or why some people have to be in wheelchairs, or why some people are taller or shorter or, or bigger or smaller, uh, or different colors. You don’t have to have all those. The only tools you need in your pocket are the ones that encourage the child’s curiosity in a way that’s socially appropriate.

So an appreciation for privacy, right? So you can say to the child, “Well, some people need a wheelchair. That’s just some things that, that happen in life,” or something along those lines. Something very simple. And if the child is like, “But why?” “Well, that’s a longer conversation, and we can have that when we’re in the car, but we don’t like to comment in public on what we’re seeing in people because that’s their private information.”

You need to remove the [00:06:00] judgment and know that the reason you want to avoid the conversation is because of whatever judgment you have going on in your own mind.

Bob Rosenbaum: and this is an example that we’re talking about where it just happens. Somebody passed by who didn’t look the same, and the child had some legitimate and reasonable questions. There are other situations where you get uncomfortable talking about it because it’s a reflection on you. Things like divorce. Why are you getting a divorce?

Talking About Divorce

Dr. Kimberly Bell: So we started off easy, Bob.

Bob Rosenbaum: Yeah…

Dr. Kimberly Bell: started off easy doing the, the sort of naturally occurring everyday moments. But if you can get clear on the fact that it is better to have a conversation than to not have a conversation, then all of these other much more difficult conversations are easier to handle. So let’s talk about divorce.

[00:07:00] Children always know. Parents will say, “Well, we never fight in front of our kids, so they don’t know that we’re not getting along,” or, “I haven’t told them directly, no.” And my question is always, “OK, but where were they when you were on the phone? Have they heard you crying? Did they hear arguing?”

They know. They always know. So just start with that. If you’re sick, they know. If your family life is not going well, they know. If something’s wrong with Grandma, they know. They may not be able to tell you what it is they know, but they know something’s not right.

And so what I always tell people is, it is the things that we can’t talk about that persist as trauma. That’s why the phrase is, children can get through anything that can be talked about, ’cause when I say anything, I mean anything. It is better to be talked [00:08:00] about, not to be distracted from. It’s better to be talked about.

The other reason we don’t like talking to kids about something like divorce is because we don’t want to have to answer the questions that are coming. Is it my fault? Why? Do you hate him now? Do you hate her now? All of those other questions. Who am I going to live with? These are things that make us feel sad, and so we think that if we don’t talk about them, the sad feelings will go away

And that’s not true

Bob Rosenbaum: And not necessarily just sad, but also bad.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Angry

Bob Rosenbaum: Like a failure perhaps?

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And sometimes when you’re really mad at your spouse, right? You’re separating. If you, if you were getting along, right, you wouldn’t be separating. So you’re very mad at your spouse, and sometimes parents will say, you know, “Well, I can’t tell them the truth.” Let’s say one spouse cheated on another spouse.

No, you don’t have to tell them the grown-up details. You have to think about what does [00:09:00] your child need to know, and what they need to know is that sometimes grown-ups can care about each other and still not live together well, and that everyone will eventually be happier if we get a divorce and we live apart.

And the kids will be like, “Well, I won’t be happier.” Nope, not right away, and I won’t be happier right away. But we’re going to talk about it, and we’re going to work through it, and then it’s going to be better. So you acknowledge the feeling and understanding that it’s going to change over time, but that difficult questions might come up.

If you really don’t have an answer to a question, the next step is to simply say, “Well, what do you think?” Because children don’t need a download of information. They need their questions answered. So, y- you, you can answer questions like, “Well, do you still love me?”

But if there’s a question that comes up that is [00:10:00] harder for you to answer in the moment, you can always punt, and you can always say, “Well, what do you think?”

Because then you’re not searching for an answer. It’s like the difference between an essay exam and a multiple choice exam, right? When you do an essay test , you have to come up with all the information. When you’re doing multiple choice, you have things to choose from. So when you say to a child, “Well, what do you think?”

They will give you some multiple choice answers, and then you just correct, right? You say, “Oh, no, no, no. I don’t, I don’t want you to feel that way. I understand it, but we’re both going to love you,” or, “We’re both going to see you,” or, “Yes, the dog can go with you.” I mean, sometimes their questions are so simple, and we’re overthinking them.

Bob Rosenbaum: You just hit a really central point. As a parent our first reaction is often to want to fix it, make the child feel better, stop that bad feeling from being there altogether. But that’s not the point here. The point is to [00:11:00] hear what it is the child’s thinking about, and they can’t always express that without you working in a gentle and yet relentless way to pull it out of them.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: So let’s take an example, Bob, where there is no fixing it right now, right?

Bob Rosenbaum: Yeah

Talking About Illness

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Let’s take a parent’s illness. OK? You’ve been diagnosed with cancer.

Bob Rosenbaum: OK.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Nightmare scenario, right?

When you talk to your kids, you know, to say, “Well, I have cancer,” that’s not terribly helpful because …

I mean, it could be, depending on the age of the kid. The younger the child, the less scientific detail, OK? But don’t assume that you can fake it, because your children are so attuned to you that when you are not feeling well, they feel it.

They feel the emotional disconnection. They feel your fatigue. They feel your anxiety. They feel your fear. They feel it. They may not be able to name it, but something’s wrong. Their initial response is, “What did I do?” In their [00:12:00] mind, “What did I do? Why is mom or dad behaving this way?

Why am I not allowed to go see grandma?” Depending on who’s got the illness, right? ‘Cause we try to protect children from it, but when you’re in an intimate relationship in a family, you really can’t do that. And so what you’re doing is you’re leaving them to their own devices, which is not at all protective.

So it’s the opposite. So to be able to sit down and say, “Well, I… You probably have noticed I haven’t been feeling well. I’ve been to the doctor, and I am quite sick. I have something called cancer,” you know, something like that, “and the doctors are going to do everything they can to help me get better, but there’s going to be some difficult times.”

I mean, honestly, when it’s something like that, feel free to contact a, a therapist to help you talk to your child, because I’m giving you words to say, but you have to be super regulated emotionally to say the things I’m saying, and I know that. And so [00:13:00] I’m not saying when something difficult like this happens, tell your children right away.

You can take a minute or days or whatever to process and get to a place where you feel regulated. Just don’t wait too, too long, and if you’re having a hard time with it, reach out and get some help

Bob Rosenbaum: if the child asks the question directly, you can’t say, “Oh, let’s wait a few days. I’m trying to figure that out.” You have to address it. If a child asks a question, you have to address it in that moment in some way that provides some level of comfort and satisfaction that their concerns are heard, and that the answer will be coming, right?

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Absolutely. Period.

When a child asks a very direct question, it is not helpful to give them a runaround answer. So … throw me one, Bob. Throw me, throw me a question.

Bob Rosenbaum: Are you going to die?

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Mm-hmm, that is a really, really scary thought, and what I can tell [00:14:00] you is that mom and the doctors are going to do everything we can to make sure that that does not happen.

That’s it. It doesn’t feel good, does it? Because you’re not fixing anything.

Bob Rosenbaum: So what happens? You’ve answered the question in one way that’s very direct and forthright, and from another perspective, you’ve just dumped a pile of “wow” on the child.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Yeah

Bob Rosenbaum: How are they going to process that?

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Well, the point is that it’s not going to happen all in one go. Right? You’re not going to have this one clean conversation. You’re going to have messy answers. You’re going to have I don’t knows, or you’re going to have, you know, we’re working on that. You can reassure them you know, you are going to be safe.

It’s not just that they’re worried about losing you, but you are going to be safe through all of this, and that goes for divorce, that goes for school shooting, that goes for any of the difficult conversations. A reassurance that they themselves will be OK, right? That they themselves will be OK and that you as the [00:15:00] adult can handle what’s going on.

That’s the messaging in any of these conversations is we’re the adults here, which is why it’s important to be regulated. Now, if they cry and you cry because the information is sad, that’s fine, too, because by you having an emotion, you’re allowing them to have an emotion, right? You can’t shut down their emotions.

And it’s OK to have negative emotions when negative things happen because their whole life they’re going to experience negative things happening, whether it’s, uh, something like a breakup or the loss of a pet or a friend is mean to them, and we want them to have their feelings and know that feelings have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

And so it’s important that they see you cry or be upset and then regulate. You can have your feelings, and you can manage your feelings. So if you’re having a hard time managing your feelings, go get some help because you being able to manage your feelings [00:16:00] will help them. So many times when I’ve worked with adults, they’ll remember a time in their lives where maybe their parent was very gravely ill, and they’ll say things like, “I never saw my father cry.”

And I’m like, “Wow, that’s kind of amazing. How did all of that happen and you never saw an emotional reaction?” And it’s because they were being strong for the children. It’s not about being strong and not having emotions. It’s about having them and showing your kids how to manage them.

Bob Rosenbaum: we’ve covered a couple scenarios.

We’ve covered an uncomfortable thing happens, and the child asks for an explanation. We’ve covered the divorce, where the parent is deeply involved in something that is uncomfortable for the child and we’ve addressed that question.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Mm-hmm.

Bob Rosenbaum: We’ve now covered th- the illness. There’s something there, there are no good answers for this question, and we just have to keep talking about it. And then there’s [00:17:00] other one that, that applies to the child the why question. And the topics that come to my mind for that are, like,

Alcohol, Marijuana & Sex

Dr. Kimberly Bell: alcohol, legal marijuana. Those are hard conversations for parents to have because the child may have seen mom and dad drinking on occasion. The child may have seen mom and dad partaking in legal marijuana on occasion. And now the child is of such an age that they’re starting to experiment, hopefully not five or six. Hopefully more s- 15 to 17. They’re going to get there eventually, and that’s a nother kind of a conversation to have that, that parents struggle with. How do you do that?

When it comes to kids wanting to do things that are beyond their current age, to be able to say, “Yes, it’s true, adults use alcohol or adults use marijuana,” ’cause even though there is a leg- I mean, marijuana’s legal, but it’s legal over the age of 18, right?

[00:18:00] So when you’re talking to a kid, you can still say, “Yes, these things are things that adults do.” This includes sex, by the way.

Bob Rosenbaum: Good one. Yeah.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: These are things that adults do, and I know right now you feel very much like you’re becoming an adult, but your brain is not fully developed, and it’s hard for you to understand the emotions that go into these different experiences.

But it’s my job to protect your body and to protect your heart, and so you don’t get to go out in this unsupervised environment. If parents could just think that kids’ job as they get older and they become more independent is to push the envelope. Your job is to create boundaries within that that make it safe. So are children going to push your boundaries?

Of course they are. Does that mean you should tighten [00:19:00] down more? No. Does it mean you shouldn’t have boundaries because they’re going to do it anyway? Nope. It’s because they feel safer when there is a certain set of boundaries in place that they are trying to breach. That conflict is necessary.

Believe it or not, it creates safety. And so it’s not, “Well, do as I say, not as I do.” It’s that you are not yet the adult you think you are. Do they want to hear that? No. Are they going to be mad? Yes. It’s not your job to make them happy. It’s your job to keep them safe. And then what are your questions or why do you want to try it?

And that includes sex, right? I think sex is actually harder for people to talk about than any of those other things. Budding sexuality makes everybody very, very nervous. You know, one of the things that I said to a kid years and years and years and years ago is that I wanted him to think very carefully about the choice he made about the first person he was going to be intimate with [00:20:00] because he will remember that person for the rest of his life, and he just needs to make sure that that experience is worth remembering for the rest of his life.

And funny story, he’s like, “Could I just have you record that so I can play that for all my friends at school?” He was, like, a freshman in high school. And because that’s, that’s not saying no. It’s saying, in a very real way, there is a long-term consequence to the choice that you’re making. You might not see it right now, but to trust me, this is not an experience you are ever going to forget, and so do you want to throw it away on this current situation?

It’s a question because the truth is, is if they’re going to go out and do it, they’re going to go out and do it. So make them think and help them think rather than try to control them.

Bob Rosenbaum: That quote that you just provided starts in the same place that every conversation needs to start. It starts by [00:21:00] validating the questions and the feelings and the thoughts of the child. It doesn’t start from what you should or shouldn’t do. It starts with understanding what the child is wondering about.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Mm-hmm.

Bob Rosenbaum: That’s, that’s– it can be a hard thing to get to, especially for the younger children. Let’s go back to our very first example. The person may be cerebral palsy in a powered wheelchair,

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Mm-hmm

Bob Rosenbaum: going by in the grocery store, and when you’re in the car, maybe it’s an appropriate time to say, “Did you see that person in the wheelchair?”

If it hasn’t already come up. ” And how did that make you feel?” might be a starting point.

Maybe I sound like the

therapist all of a sudden. I’m

not.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: I, yeah, sure it’s a place to start. So I, I’ll tell you a story about me, Bob. I don’t think it’s any surprise that I became a therapist in the end, because when I was younger, I used to go to a, a church service, and I will assume that what was going on now in my adult brain was that there was like a group home [00:22:00] or a nursing home nearby, and there were folks with developmental disabilities that would come to the service, and they would sit right in the front.

And I would always get elbowed because I was staring, right? But if I had been asked the question, ” What’s going on?” You know, “Do you have questions?” Because I will tell you what I was thinking. I remember to this day, I was probably 6, I was thinking, “I wonder if those people see the world the same way I do,” – quite concretely.

Do they see the world, do they hear things the way that I do? But my parents didn’t know that’s what I was thinking because they never asked. And how might they have responded differently had they asked?

Bob Rosenbaum: Also noteworthy about that story is they didn’t ask and you didn’t offer.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: No. Mm-mm.

Bob Rosenbaum: That’s typical of children.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: That’s very typical. Very typical.

Bob Rosenbaum: They think that because the question hasn’t been put forth, it shouldn’t be asked.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Yes. Yes. That’s a really fair way to [00:23:00] put it. And, and you have to sometimes elicit.

Like, you… I say it all the time to kids, “You look like you have a question. I think you have a question about your body. It seems to me, based on your behavior,” right? “It seems to me based on what you’re doing that you have some kind of question you need to ask.

I wonder what that’s about.” I try not to lead them, but I do recognize when, you know, if behavior, as we say, is communication, sometimes the communication isn’t just a feeling. Sometimes it’s a question.

Bob Rosenbaum: This reminds me that a couple months ago, episode 21 of this podcast for anybody who wants to check it out, we had an entire conversation about magical thinking, which is a young– it’s a, as you explained it, it’s a lifelong phenomenon, but it’s a phase for young children where magical thinking is connecting all of the unknown questions in their world. And this conversation today relates to that because in the absence of [00:24:00] being fed the question, in an absence of their question being validated, they’re going to come up with some answers that are so far from real that can give them much, much worse feelings than your answers are going to provide if you tell them the truth to the degree that they can handle it.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Yes. So first of all, fantastic bridge, Bob. Well done. Second of all, let’s make some of those bridges. So if I don’t get my questions answered, I may think that if my parent has cancer and I get mad, I will kill them. And so I struggle with all of my angry feelings. The divorce is my fault is such a classic, right?

It’s such a classic because kids are egocentric. Everything’s their fault. And so maybe think about it that way, that when something like that comes up and you can’t talk about it, the first thing you can know that the child is thinking is that some aspect of it is their fault.

Or [00:25:00] it’s going to happen to them.

Bob Rosenbaum: Yeah.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Like a school shooting or something.

Bob Rosenbaum: Which is another topic is the news. I mean, young children who watch the news are going to have all sorts of questions that they don’t know how to ask.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: And sometimes, because we process things with more complexity than children do, that is when I punt always, especially with the news for some reason. Like, the best place to start is, “Well, what do you think happened?”

Or, “What do you think?” Because sometimes if you say, “Well, what are your questions?”

Kids are like, “I don’t know.” “Well, what do you think is happening?” And then you find the misinterpretations, and those are the questions, right? Those are the things you want to, you know, correct,

If you will. But you know what we haven’t yet talked about, Bob? Well, some big changes that kids have questions about and are hard to talk about are happy things.

We’ve talked about all the negative things.

Bob Rosenbaum: Yeah.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: But there’s happy things like having a new baby or moving to a new house.

Bob Rosenbaum: Happy for some people.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: That’s right. And I think the, the [00:26:00] key to these conversations is you are telling somebody something that you think is going to elicit a very happy response, and what you get is not that.

And that becomes a hard conversation

Bob Rosenbaum: What do you want to play forward? The new house or the new baby?

Dr. Kimberly Bell: You know, let’s do new baby because sometimes everybody’s a little anxious about a new house, but the new baby, everybody’s really disappointed when that doesn’t go the way that they think it might go.

Bob Rosenbaum: Maybe this is so common that everybody knows the answer, but what are children thinking when you let them know you’re going to have a new baby brother or sister?

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Well, some children will think, “Ooh, a new doll for me to play with,” and so there’s an initial excitement, right?

But also some children, very unexpectedly, will say things like, “No, send it back,” and go running out of the room.

And where that comes from is this idea that you must be replacing [00:27:00] me. That’s one of the most common things we hear from kids.

You’re not happy with me, so you have to have another one, right? Or maybe it doesn’t come right when you’re talking about the baby, but after the baby’s born, the child, in their mind, was picturing a kid their age that they were going to be able to play with, and what they got was a baby who keeps everybody up all night and cries and poops, and this is not fun, right?

OK, so what do they need to know? You don’t need to correct their behavior. You don’t need to say, “Oh, but your little brother or sister loves you,” and no, that’s not going to help. What you have to say is, ” Parents have so much love to go around that the more children you have to love, the more love you have, and that’s hard to understand, but that’s just the way it is for parents.”

And that’s a reassurance, and then there are a lot of doingness things you can do. Make sure you spend time with your child and give some [00:28:00] alone time to the older child and all that kind of stuff. But in terms of having the conversation, just don’t be shocked if you are telling them something exciting, you know, moving away.

This may be an exciting time for you, or it’s a bigger house, you’re going to have a bigger room. Kids are more invested in safety. We’re going to take your bed with us. We’re going to take this with us. Something that they can hang onto to create a thread.

So it’s, I guess the reason these two things fit into our conversation today is because we’re talking about a child’s reaction to big news. And the fact that whatever feeling they come to you with needs to be validated, and then questions need to be answered – even if it was nothing like you predicted it might be.

Bob Rosenbaum: I’m going to throw out one more kind of conversation or topic, and that’s the one that just comes out of left field. I heard a story many years ago, [00:29:00] but from actually one of the Hanna Perkins teachers … It, it was a story of parents that told them about in another school, young child going on a field trip. They were preparing the children for the field trip by telling them, “OK, there’s going to be an orange school bus, and we’re all going to get on the bus, and we’re all going to go down to the museum together, and we’re all going to stay together.” And they went through all the plans. They never talked about, “And when we’re done, we’re going to get back on the bus and your parents will be in the parking lot where they always are to pick you up.” And one of the children was having a real problem getting on the bus, and it turns out their question was, “Will I ever come home?” Now, th- this is a young child. I you know, obviously this is, like, kindergarten-level. That’s another one of those situations where you don’t even see it coming, but the child’s question is there, and there was a behavior, and you had to figure out what was driving that behavior in order to even figure out how to ask the [00:30:00] question.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Mm-hmm.

Bob Rosenbaum: but in the end, a really simple answer.

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Yeah. Yeah. After, after the question comes out.

Bob Rosenbaum: yeah

Dr. Kimberly Bell: So here’s the other thing. We do a lot of talking, and I think people are like, “Yeah, but what do I do?” It, talking is a doing, first of all, just know that.

But then secondary to that, the younger the child, the more a social story helps. What’s going to happen when you go through the divorce? Sounds silly to make a book about it, but make a book about it. You know, this is where dad’s going to be living. This is where you’re going to be living. Uh, making calendars so children can see the days they’re going to be with one person, the other person, something that’s predictable.

There’s, a- and as you get older, for older kids, you make the assumption that they can hold all of that in their mind. But having a calendar where you create bridges for kids through things, you know, understanding with kids what are the chemo dates… Those are things you can do to [00:31:00] keep them informed so they feel connected to you.

So it can start younger with a social story, and then the older you get, it’s more about maybe charts and graphs and things that are helpful.

Bob Rosenbaum: And you just provided a good transition too, because

Book Recommendation

Bob Rosenbaum: I want to talk about a book that Hanna Perkins has. It’s called “Timeless Advice for Parents of Young Children.” It was written by a group of Hanna Perkins early child development experts, and it’s relevant to this conversation because it deals with one situation after another and helps you understand what might be going through the child’s mind that you’re not thinking about, and how might you draw that out, how might you answer the questions that they have. It’s called ” Timeless Advice for Parents of Young Children.”

It’s available on Amazon, costs just less than 20 bucks, and it covers everything from tantrums to preschool jitters, and as we like to say, it unlocks the mystery of your child’s behavior. [00:32:00] It’s easy to read. The chapters are short. They describe common situations, and it offers gentle, loving strategies for all of these kinds of challenges that parents face. And if you buy it, every purchase supports the nonprofit Hanna Perkins Center. You can find it on Amazon. Search for “Timeless Advice for Parents of Young Children.” it makes a great gift for new parents, for grandparents, for parents who have questions, Mother’s Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever gift-giving situation you may have. So Kim, with that

said, you want to take it out?

Dr. Kimberly Bell: Sure. If you have any questions at all about parenting or child development, as always, we are happy to answer them. You can send questions by email to us at hiddenlanguageofchildren@gmail.com. Thank you for joining us today. We hope you enjoyed this conversation and found something to take away from [00:33:00] it.

Hidden Language of Children podcast is a production of the nonprofit Hanna Perkins Center for Child Development in beautiful Shaker Heights, Ohio. Our producer is Bob Rosenbaum, who’s with us today, and Dan Ratner is our consulting producer. If you like this podcast, please subscribe to hear future episodes and share it with all of your friends and your family.

We welcome your comments and all of your questions. Again, you can contact us by email at hiddenlanguageofchildren@gmail.com. For more links and information about our approach to healthy child development, visit hiddenlanguageofchildren.org. I am Dr. Kimberly Bell, and we look forward to seeing you next time.