Welcome to the mindful mama podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable more joyful parent at mindful mama we know that you can not give what you do not have and when you have calm and peace within then you can give it to your children. I'm your host hunter Clark fields, I help smart thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 20 years on the creator of mindful parenting and on the author of the bestselling book raising good humans a mindful guide to breaking the cycle of reactive parenting and raising kind, confident kids. Hey, welcome back to the mindful mama podcast, or if you're new, a big welcome because this is such a cool special episode. So we have in the last couple of years put together my best of episode and is simply the best episodes from 2021. This podcast has been going a while, so we want to give you a little sampler appetizer plate of the 5 best episodes, the most downloaded episodes from 2021. And we're gonna do them in reverse order from last to first. So I'm so excited for you to have this episode. And this is really a great episode to share with your friends who may want to check out this podcast and see if it is something for them and that you can learn from. So if you're that friend, hey, welcome. So glad you are here. So this is our end of the year episode. I just want to let you know before we dive in in case you have time in case there's a couple spots left. The 2022 enrollment for that mindful printing teacher certification program ends on December 31st, 2021. So if you are interested in bringing the mindful parenting curriculum to your area and it is before the end of the year go to mindful parenting course dot com slash teach, that's mindful parenting course dot com slash teach. And now we get to dive into this awesome list of the 5 best episodes from 2021 and we are going to start with number 5. Drum roll, please. Number 5 is episode 282 help kids with self regulation with the awesome guest win kinder. And her 30 years of teaching includes 16 years of mindfulness and trauma informed strategies through wellness works in schools, she's authored curricula, go noodle content, the reset process, calm, and I am. I can't, as well as graduate courses for educators and she is a master at helping your kids regulate their feelings. And what you're going to hear about is a piece of a larger conversation. And hearing about matching kids emotions to make them feel seen and hurt and that power of that so, so cool. So join me at the table as I talk to when kinder. Regulation is really a big thing, because if we can regulate our emotions, if we can regulate our nervous systems based on what's going on around us, we are going to feel safer feel more comfortable and be able to heal. And I love now doing opposites. So I just play with opposites because part of regulation is fast is bad, loud is bad. Big is bad. You know, we label them. Busy is bad. Scattered is, you know, but if we can actually just play with opposites and get comfortable with busy and get comfortable with calm. And shift between the two. Then, you know, it's not terribly popular in a kindergarten classroom. Let's be loud. And we do loud stuff. We stomp, you know. And then we tap. Really? Quiet. And then we move really, really fast, we shake our hands shake our hands, take your hands, and we feel what that's like. And then we slow down, because the opposite of fast is slow. And so we have all these opposites. And I find that I'm doing that with adults as well, because when you get comfortable with calm and busy and you get comfortable with loud and quiet, you can actually then start to work with emotions, regulating emotions. And one of my favorites is just up and down. Because if you reach up, there's energy, so your energy is up and you're using your breath to reach and your breath is fuel and you reach reach, reach, reach reach. I'm reaching with wind here. Okay, reaching. And fill with air. And then knowing that you can bring that down and you breathe out and you fold down in your fingers go toward the floor and your body is rounded and you're breathing out all the way, you know that you can go from up and maybe excited maybe too excited to bring it down that you get to be in control and you can regulate all the way down and then what's interesting is that kids will say, well, down emotions would be sad, tired alone. Yeah, and that's okay. All of those are okay. It's just like when you're folded down, you know that you're going to get up again. When you're done with down, and I often will leave a class. Okay, just stay there until you're done. What's interesting is how many want to just stay there. But everybody, within a couple of moments, we'll start. Oh, okay, now I'm done with down and now I'm gonna go up again. And you do you start to help them embody these opposites. And I play with opposites and I'm working with there's a new thing called a Tony box, have you heard of that? No. Okay, you're gonna want to look that up. And I'm not product advertising a not at all. But it's an audio system. It's a little speaker. It's a smart speaker for kids. And it's just audio. But we're actually helping working through scripts and things that help kids go up, go down, be busy, be calm, be loud, be quiet. And that comfort with the lack of judgment. It's not always good to be quiet. It's not always good to become. It doesn't always fit who we are and what we need in the moment. And so I love this normalizing of and accepting of the regulating. You know, so that's been fun to actually work with those. That might be something you want to look into. They're big. They're big in Europe and they're coming to the United States. We'll have to tell my sponsor. People don't find these people for this episode. No. I love the what you're saying about opposites because we have such an emphasis what you're inviting is this non judgment, this acceptance, and becoming more of a master of what's going on in your body. Like developing that strength and the ability to self regulate, but also like as parents, I know a lot of us are really interested in like, let's down regulate these kids. Let's calm them down and we may be inadvertently giving the message that there's something wrong with you for your for being up, right? Like kids with ADHD, I'm certain certain get that message that there's something wrong with you for that's pretty clear that getting a message is something wrong with you for having all this energy. And I think maybe hidden in here is also an invitation to parents to get comfortable with up as well as get comfortable with down. Get comfortable with busy as well as a slow get comfortable with loud as well as quiet, although I know is there some people in the mindful parenting membership who wear little ear plugs is quietly sometimes while their kids are in the house. But maybe they help them get.