TILT Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children

I’m extremely interested in Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal theory and the context it offers for understanding the nervous system experience of our kids. So I was especially interested when my guest’s book, Staying Connected With Your Teen: Polyvagal Parenting Strategies To Reduce Reactivity, Set Limits, and Build Authentic Connection, came onto my radar. Yshai Boussi is the founder of Portland Family Counseling, a therapy practice that specializes in helping children, adolescents, families, and parents. His focus is mentoring at-risk youth, working in residential treatment facilities, and leading intensive experiential workshops for at-risk youth, and he’s adept at applying polyvagal theory to helping parents foster deeper connection and reduce conflict.

In this conversation, we discussed how to build and maintain supportive relationships with teens, the crucial difference between "acceptance" and "agreement" when validating a teen's emotional experience, the power of co-regulation, and how a child's state of regulation affects their "story" and meaning-making about themselves and their experiences. A lot of great takeaways in this one, and I will admit to sending the rough cut to my husband Derin to listen to because I found so much of what we discussed highly relevant — I didn’t want to wait!

About Yshai Boussi

Yshai Boussi is a Licensed Professional Counselor and has been working with youth and families for over 20 years. He is the founder of Portland Family Counseling, a therapy practice that specializes in helping children, adolescents, families and parents. His experience includes mentoring at risk youth, working in residential treatment facilities and leading intensive experiential workshops for at risk youth. As a systems trained family therapist since 2003, Yshai has worked extensively in community mental health settings as well as private practice. In addition to working professionally, he and his wife Mariah (also a therapist) are proud parents of a 15 year-old daughter, 12 year-old son, and adult foster son. Yshai is the author of the newly released book, Staying Connected With Your Teen: Polyvagal Parenting Strategies To Reduce Reactivity, Set Limits, and Build Authentic Connection.

Things you'll learn from this episode

• Why today’s teens feel so disconnected and lonely
• How P.A.C.E. (Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity, Empathy) is the “attitude of connection” when it comes to engaging with teenagers
• What the difference between “acceptance” and “agreement” is when it comes to validating a teen’s emotional experience
• What the Polyvagal Theory is and awareness of its role can help us understand and better support struggling adolescents
• Why a child's state of regulation in any given moment affects their “story” and meaning-making about themselves and their experiences
• Why one of the most powerful things an adult can do for a teenager is to co-regulate

Resources mentioned for:

• Yshai Boussi’s website
• Staying Connected With Your Teen: Polyvagal Parenting Strategies To Reduce Reactivity, Set Limits, and Build Authentic Connection by Yshai Boussi
• Yshai Boussi on Instagram
• Deb Dana’s website, Rhythm of Regulation
• Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory by Deb Dana
• Deb Dana on Befriending Our Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory (podcast episode)
• Dr. John Duffy’s website
• Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety: A Complete Guide to Your Child’s Stressed, Depressed, Expanded, Amazing Adolescence by Dr. John Duffy
• Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety, with Dr. John Duffy (podcast episode)
• Dr. Daniel Hughes and PACE
• Revelations in Education, Dr. Lori Desautel’s website
• Intentional Neuroplasticity: Our Educational Journey Towards Post Traumatic Growth by Dr. Lori Desautels

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As parents, we want more than anything to help our kids thrive, to protect them from pain and harm, and avoid some, or maybe all, of the mistakes we made in our own lives. But what happens when our kids are struggling with really big, difficult, and scary, maybe even life-threatening, stuff? And none of our efforts to “fix” things are making a difference?

That’s the focus of today’s show and I am absolutely thrilled to be in conversation about it with Kristina Kuzmic, a mental health advocate, author, comedien and self-described “cheerleader for her fellow humans.” Kristina has just come out with a powerful new book I Can Fix This! (And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself while Parenting My Struggling Child), in which she writes about her complex journey of parenting a child struggling with mental health and substance abuse. She wrote it to help other struggling parents reject ideas that keep families stuck and, with her trademark authenticity and wisdom, dispel the lies we believe as parents.

This is SUCH a deep, raw, and generous conversation and it is exactly the conversation a parent feeling hopeless and overwhelmed in figuring out how to help their child needs to hear. Truly balm for the soul.

About Kristina Kuzmic

After immigrating to America from Croatia during the war in her homeland, and later facing more challenges (divorce, single parenting, poverty, mental health challenges), Kristina’s goal became clear: to be for others what she needed when she was at her lowest.

In 2011, when Oprah crowned Kristina the winner of Mark Burnett’s reality TV competition “Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star,” Oprah said, “What is that THING...that’s so charming and charismatic and connected to the audience that makes you feel like, ‘I know her, I want to be her, I’m like her’... Kristina has all of that. She is an ‘IT PLUS’ girl... I wanna watch her!”

Since working with Oprah, Kristina has branched out on her own, creating videos about juggling all of life’s challenges, and encouraging her audience to prioritize their mental health. She has quickly become a viral sensation with 2.9 million Facebook followers, over 670,000 Instagram followers, and more than a billion video views.

Kristina’s first book, Hold On But Don’t Hold Still has been translated to seven languages. Her second book, I Can Fix This! (And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself while Parenting My Struggling Child) was released in May 2024.

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In this episode of the TiLT Parenting Podcast, I’m bringing back a previous guest, executive functioning coach Seth Perler, for a two-part series in which Seth shares with us the exact approach he uses with students he works with when helping them foster their fledgling executive functioning skills.

I first had Seth on the show last fall, where he gave us an introduction to executive functioning, but we didn’t get to the more practical strategies that I know so many of us are looking for. So I asked Seth to come back on, and that conversation turned into an hour-and-a-half long sharing by Seth of truly valuable tips and strategies and insights. Because Seth shares so very much over the course of these ninety or so minutes, I wanted to split our conversation into two parts. So this episode is part one of what I’m now referring to as a “Masterclass in Executive Functioning.” In this episode, Seth shares with us his protocol for setting up a child for success in their developing executive functioning skills. In part 2 next week, Seth will go in-depth into his specific strategies surrounding building these skills in school and in life.

Seth Perler is a renegade teacher turned Executive Function Coach/Education Coach who is based in Santa Monica, CA and Boulder, CO. He helps struggling students navigate a crazy educational landscape and does his part to “disrupt” and improve education. Seth specializes in Executive Function and 2e. Find out more at sethperler.com.

THINGS YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

• Seth’s definition of executive functioning framed so it helps people apply the principles to help kids
• A step-by-step breakdown of exactly how Seth works with families
• Why our relationship with our child is the number one thing to be preserved when doing this work
• The importance of parents doing their own personal work / self-care during this process
• Why kids “can’t do what we’re asking them to do because they can’t, not because they won’t,” so we need to back up and scaffold from where they’re at
• The role of mindfulness, mindset, and motivation
• Why symptoms are more important than labels
• Why it’s critical to understand the role of emotional regulation in executive functioning
• How we as parents can co-regulate our emotions with our child
• Why we want to focus on 3 positives for every 1 negative

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Seth Perler’s website
• A Conversation with Executive Functioning Coach Seth Perler (original podcast episode)
• Seth’s Executive Functioning Assessment
• Dr. Gail Saltz Talks About the Power of Different (podcast episode)
• Carol Dweck and Mindset

Connect with Tilt Parenting

• Visit Tilt Parenting
• Take the free 7-Day Challenge
• Read a chapter of Differently Wired
• Follow Tilt on Twitter & Instagram

I refer to Dr. Ross Greene’s Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) model in just about every talk I give to a parent community. Dr. Greene’s quote “Kids do well when they can” changed my life when I first read it about 15 years ago, and it remains as powerful today. So I was especially excited to welcome back to the show child psychologist and author Dr. Ross Greene to talk about how his problem solving model can be effectively used with very young children, even infants.

If you are new to CPS, I highly encourage you to go back and listen to our first conversation for the show, where we explored this approach in detail. But in the meantime, in this conversation we delved into why it’s crucial to shift from a compliance-focused approach to one of collaboration and understanding, even starting as early as age two. We also talked about how what we often label as a "difficult baby" is actually an infant struggling to meet our expectations, how using CPS can significantly enhance their well-being, and why we want to question the underlying reasons behind adult concerns — all of these are concept explored in the powerful new documentary, It's Never Too Early: CPS with Very Young Kids.

Ross W. Greene, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and the originator of the innovative, evidence-based approach called Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS), as described in his influential books The Explosive Child, Lost at School, Lost & Found, and Raising Human Beings. He also developed and executive produced the award-winning documentary film The Kids We Lose, released in 2018. Dr. Greene was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for over 20 years, and is now founding director of the non-profit Lives in the Balance. He is also currently adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech and adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. Dr. Greene has worked with several thousand kids with concerning behaviors and their caregivers, and he and his colleagues have overseen implementation and evaluation of the CPS model in countless schools, inpatient psychiatric units, and residential and juvenile detention facilities, with dramatic effect: significant reductions in recidivism, discipline referrals, detentions, suspensions, and use of restraint and seclusion.

• Never Too Early: CPS with Young Kids (documentary)
• The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children by Dr. Ross Greene
• Lives in the Balance (Dr. Greene’s website)

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This week is a continuation of last week’s episode with executive functioning coach Seth Perler, which was so packed full of information (and also so long) that I had to break it up into two separate episodes, which I’m now referring to as a “masterclass” in executive functioning.

In last week’s episode, Seth shared his protocol for setting up a child for success in their developing executive functioning skills. In today’s episode, Seth is going to get into the nitty gritty about specific strategies he uses to address different executive functioning challenges that show up in school and in life.

Seth Perler is a renegade teacher turned Executive Function Coach/Education Coach who is based in Santa Monica, CA and Boulder, CO. He helps struggling students navigate a crazy educational landscape and does his part to “disrupt” and improve education. Seth specializes in Executive Function and 2e. Find out more at sethperler.com.

THINGS YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:

• What “Frankenstudy” is, and how to know where to focus your energies so you can create a “domino effect” with your child’s fledgling executive functioning skills
• How to best use “learning planners” to learn how to think / talk through their plan (and what we’re doing wrong)
• The benefits of monthly planners versus daily or weekly planners
• Helping kids identify the “MIT” – most important thing – each day
• The importance of creating a sacred study space for a child
• How to optimize an internet browser to make it easy with bookmark bars (and have tabs automatically open, including calendar, grade tab, email)
• Why it’s important to get kids to start checking grades weekly (Seth recommends Sunday nights)
• The importance of helping a child create clearly identified routines (for leaving house, doing daily plan, doing homework, etc.)
• How getting visual with kids benefits them in developing their executive functioning skills
• Why separate digital timers need to be a part of a child’s life so they can learn to calibrate time, as well as get started and do short bursts of work
• Creating a weekly overhaul of systems
• The important of kids “getting into the mode” for studying, etc: organize their space, make their plan, and executive

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• Seth Perler’s website and blog
• A “Masterclass” in Executive Functioning with Seth Perler, Part 1 (podcast episode)
• A Conversation with Executive Functioning Coach Seth Perler (original podcast episode)
• Seth’s Executive Functioning Assessment
• Seth Perler’s YouTube Channel

Connect with Tilt Parenting

• Visit Tilt Parenting
• Take the free 7-Day Challenge
• Read a chapter of Differently Wired
• Follow Tilt on Twitter & Instagram