Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Alyssa Campbell: Emotional Regulation, Resilience, and Proactive Behavior Support for Children

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Right About Now with Ryan Alford Join media personality and marketing expert Ryan Alford as he dives into dynamic conversations with top entrepreneurs, marketers, and influencers. "Right About Now" brings you actionable insights on business, marketing, and personal branding, helping you stay ahead in today's fast-paced digital world. Whether it's exploring how character and charisma can make millions or unveiling the strategies behind viral success, Ryan delivers a fresh perspective with every episode. Perfect for anyone looking to elevate their business game and unlock their full potential.   Resources: Right About Now Newsletter | Free Podcast Monetization Course | Join The Network |Follow Us On Instagram | Subscribe To Our Youtube Channel | Vibe Science Media SUMMARY In this episode of "Right About Now," host Ryan Alford interviews Alyssa Campbell, author of "Big Kids Bigger Feelings" and CEO of Seed and Sew Collaborative. Alyssa discusses her new book, which helps parents and educators understand and support the emotional and nervous system development of children aged 5 to 12. The conversation explores practical strategies for managing kids’ emotions, the importance of proactive support in schools, and the need to address the root causes of behavior. Alyssa emphasizes building resilience, not removing challenges, and offers actionable insights for families and teachers. TAKEAWAYS Emotional development in children aged 5 to 12 Strategies for parents and educators to support children's emotional management Overview of the books "Tiny Humans Big Emotions" and "Big Kids Bigger Feelings" The importance of understanding children's nervous system and sensory processing The role of schools and educators in addressing emotional challenges Proactive vs. reactive approaches to behavior management in educational settings The significance of creating calm and regulating environments for children Customizing behavior support plans based on individual children's needs Building resilience in children through emotional awareness and processing The impact of societal factors, such as poverty and trauma, on children's behavior and emotional health

On today's episode of Right About Now, a little bit of a different episode. So I talked to Alyssa Campbell. She's the author of Tiny Humans, Big Emotions. It's a New York Times bestseller. And she just released Big Kids, Bigger Emotions. We talked about releasing the book, everything that goes into raising kids today. And some of the insights that we can use to better train our kids to adapt and deal with today's challenges. And some of the triggers that happen, we're all different.

And this is important in today's society as we talk about raising good human beings, good people, good people that go on to be good business people. I also brought in perspective of my wife, who is a principal at a middle school. It's a fascinating discussion with Alyssa Campbell about all of these things. Enjoyed this talk and I know you will too right now. We're not saying that we're going to snowplow obstacles out of their way. We're saying how do we teach them what it really looks like to cultivate resilience, to know what it feels to be in a hard feeling, to experience something hard, and move through it and process it and come out on the other side instead of just bearing it down. or building resentment. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford,

a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cash in checks? Well, it starts right about now. Hey guys, what's up?

Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about what's right, what's now, what's here today. And it is here today, folks. I'm telling you, literally here today, a new release. We got Alyssa Campbell. She's author of Big Kids, Bigger Feelings, and the book just came out. So here we are. What's up, Alyssa?

Hey, I'm excited to get to hang with you today. Thanks for having me. I know. You're on the book tour. It just came out yesterday. I know we're recording. It'll be a few weeks from now, so it won't officially be one day. We'll ground this in a little bit of reality of your reality today.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's a whirlwind today. That's for sure. I started press and media yesterday at 5.30 in the morning and ended the day at 11 p.m. We're in it. CEO of Seed and So Collarative Emotion Processing Method. That's a mouthful, but it's an important one. That's right.

We call it the Step Method for short. Talk to me about Seed and So, and then we'll get into the book. Yeah, for sure. Seed is the company that I created, and we work with schools and chakra programs and teachers and then organizations on how to understand how to actually create spaces that are calm and regulating. And we use it. I mean, we're a team of 12 at this point and we use it in our workspace every day to know how do you work best? How do you function? How does it work within teams and the mismatches of teams and being able to navigate really just being a human on planet

earth is the work that we do. Ah, how to be a human. We need more of that sometimes. It sounds basic, But like sometimes I do worry that we've lost our humanity, especially with AI and everything else, a little worrisome and just overall development. I'm a father of four boys and it's not lost on me the role that I play in bringing them up. But as parents, it's, you don't feel like you always know every answer. And I don't know this about being perfect, but we do want to raise good human beings. That's it. And there's so much information out there right now.

It can be hard to know, like, what actually to pay attention to. So we're just here to distill, basically get nerdy with you. make it makes sense. Yeah. Talk to me. Is your second book? It's my second book. Tiny Humans was a New York Times bestseller and hoping to bring this one to the list as well. I know. Who's our target for the book? Obviously, I could go parents and all that, but something tells me it's a little deeper than that. Yeah. This one is for the five to 12 year old age range, those elementary school kids and its parents, it's teachers. The bulk of what we do at Seed as a business is working with schools. That's our biggest repner new driver. It's really coming in and

working with schools and through schools also working with families. So the book's designed to be able to serve families and schools and teachers. In fact, one of the coolest things we've seen so far in this pre-order season for books with schools doing like bulk orders for families to have access to it or for their teachers to have access to it to dive into work look like to do in tandem with each other. It's interesting you say that my wife is a principal at a middle school. Oh, we should chat. I know. She's a progressive. My wife's all the book. I was he talked with a lot of authors and we have them on the show. She's used to that, but maybe the topic per se.

The title of Big Kids, Bigger Feelings, Playing Into Your First Book, You can kind of work your way there, but let's set the stage. What are we talking about? And what are the big takeaways? Yeah. So what we do that's different than what's happening is that we look at your nervous system as a whole. And this is the part of being a human on planet Earth.

You know we have your five senses, sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. There are four other senses that we don't talk about a lot that really factor into how you show up in the world. And if you can be regulated, if you can access your whole brain, whether it's for things at work or it's for teaching or it's for learning for kids. And so we have our vestibular sense, which is located in your inner ear. It's responsible for your movement and balance. We have our properceptive sense that lets you know where your body ends and something else begins. If you are like walking by the table and you bump into it, your per perceptive senses. It's having a hard time letting you know, oh, there's a table there. You should move over a little bit. And

we have our interceptive sense that lets us know if we're hungry, if we're tired, if our heart's beaten fast, if we're like anxious, any of those internal cues. And then we have our neuroceptive sense, which is like the energy reader of the room, if you come into a room and two people have been arguing and they stop arguing, but you feel it in the room, you're like, oh, this is awkward. That's a neuroceptive sense at work. And so we look at all nine of these senses and help you understand where you fall or where a kid falls in terms of whether they're sensitive to it. It drains them or they're seeking it. It regulates them.

The things I'm sound sensitive. When my kids are like loud and annoying and like making all the noise and all the sound is happening in my house, it adds up for me. And I can lose my cool if I'm not mindful of it and paying attention to it and supporting myself through it. Just the other day, they were like bickering in the car on the way to school and driving each other nuts. And I'm going to pop in my AirPods and I'm going to listen to one song so that I can control the sound

and not lose my cool on them. And so we're looking at these nine senses. and helping you understand, like, how does your nervous system work? What's going to drain you? What's going to recharge you so that you know when you're getting drained, oh, here's what I have to do to recharge because it's not one size. It's all. You know, this is a dad of four.

And this is stuff that's so overlooked. When we have a school that we work with that's high needs. Most of their kids are high poverty. A lot of them have at least one incarcerated parent, a number of homelessness. Situation's going on. And we came into that school last year. And from Q1 to Q2, all. All we focused on was this nervous system understanding each kid, putting systems in place

for those needs to be met proactively throughout the day, not just the kid is losing it and is dysregulated and then they're pulled out of a classroom and there's disciplinary action, not that reactive cycle, but proactively supporting it. And we saw a 60% reduction in behavior support calls from Q1 to Q2 just by doing that. When we're looking at this, we're looking first and foremost at how do we really set you up for success throughout the day? That's interesting. I'm sitting here and thinking about my wife. She comes home and has the stories to tell. And she deals with a lot of that, poverty and other things. There's a lot of variables that play into maybe the misbehavior, but it doesn't change the fact that it's happening. And it blows my mind, Alyssa, along the same lines, I don't want to get the education system. There's so many advancements. There's smart people like you, companies like yours. We have so much information now that's changed and arming our teachers, arming our parents, and getting knowledge and turning knowledge. into action into change that then has an impact of our children. Is there anything more important?

It's huge. I don't either is. No, and it's so huge. We look at the mental health crisis today and I'm like, yeah, no one knows how their brain and body work. We're just like shooting in the dark pause and take deep breaths. I don't even know what it feels for these kids. They don't know what it feels when it's building.

My son calls this the volcano where it's like building inside before you explode. And then afterwards, these kids can tell us what they should do, what they shouldn't do. They might know the rules. but they can't put it into action because they don't know the precursors for what's coming before it. They don't know what that kind of volcano as it's building.