The Life Of Bryony - 45. Kate Silverton: The Secret to Raising Happy, Emotionally Strong Kids

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

MY GUEST THIS WEEK: KATE SILVERTON This week, I’m joined by Kate Silverton—journalist, broadcaster, and child therapist—who left the BBC newsroom to pursue her passion for children’s mental health. Now a qualified child counsellor, Kate is on a mission to help parents better understand their children’s emotional worlds. We talk about why there’s no such thing as a “naughty” child, how emotional regulation is the greatest gift we can give our kids, and why the perfect parent doesn’t exist (and never should). Kate explains how our brains are wired for connection, why our kids’ behaviour is often misunderstood, and how we can stop parenting from a place of guilt and shame. Kate also shares her fascinating analogy of the brain as a wise owl, a baboon, and a lizard, helping us see why children struggle with emotions and how we can lend them our own calm when they need it most. We explore why guilt can actually be useful, how parents can feel less overwhelmed, and why firm but fun is the best parenting approach of all. If you’ve ever worried about getting it wrong as a parent (or felt totally out of your depth), this episode will leave you feeling empowered, reassured, and maybe even a little less guilty. LET’S STAY IN TOUCH 🗣️ Got something to share? Text or send a voice note on 07796657512—just start your message with LOB. 💬 Use the WhatsApp shortcut: Click here. 📧 Prefer email? Drop me a line at [e-mail]. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with someone who might find Owen’s insights helpful—it really makes a difference! Bryony xx BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE 📚 There’s Still No Such Thing as Naughty by Kate Silverton A practical, science-backed guide to understanding your child’s behaviour and strengthening your bond with them. CREDITS 🎙️ Presenter: Bryony Gordon 🎙️ Guest: Kate Silverton 🎧 Content Producer: Jonathan O’Sullivan 🎥 Audio & Video Editor: Luke Shelley 📢 Executive Producer: Mike Wooller A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on The Life of Briony, are we punishing kids for having emotions that they just don't know how to handle? I'm joined by child therapist and bestselling author Kate Silverton to talk about tantrums, that's kids ones, not mine, resilience and why traditional discipline methods might be doing more harm than good. Because it's not anger we need to be afraid of, it's if our children grow up not able to express it safely. My chat with Kate Silverton coming up right after this. Hello, producer Jonathan.

Hello, presenter Bryony. Can I tell you what's happened today? What has happened today? I have let my baby girl go, not like just off into the world all by herself, but technically she's gone on PGL for three days. What is PGL? Okay, so it does not stand for Parents Get Lost, although that is what we all think it does.

Yeah. It's a kind of like it's where kids go away with their schools and they do activities. It's called like a residential. Is this like a team building away day? It is, but for children. For kids. Okay. Yeah.

And what are they meant to be getting out of it? What was the sell? I think they're supposed to like get emotional resilience or something, which is what we're talking about in this podcast episode. But I thought it was very timely that this morning I was trying to model emotional regulation to my daughter, who's been on one of these residentials before, because like most people listening who have kids, their kids will start to go on

residentials in sort of year five, year six. My daughter's in year seven. so she's been on one before, but it's still, oh my god, my baby's going away and I'm not going to have any contact with her for three days. Three full days? Yeah. Yeah. Like no check-in texts or anything like that? No, nothing like that.

Wow. No. The idea is kind of digital detox as well, but also that, you know, to let them know that they're independent. And this morning she was like, oh, I'm really excited, but I'm a bit nervous. And I was like, I also felt huge. I was having massive intrusive thoughts about like the worst things that could happen. Being eaten by a bear. And that kind of thing. And I was like, and I'm not going to let my child know this, because my job as a parent is to let her go off and just have the best time.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? And also let her know that it's all normal to be anxious, but I'm not going to like let her carry my feelings. So I was like, yay, you're going to go and you're going to have the best time. And it's okay to be nervous, but you're going to be, you know, you're not going to think about us and all of that stuff. So I was kind of trying to emotionally regulate, which is what we talk about

in this episode coming up. I met Kate properly for the first time last summer. I was asked to interview her at a festival and we got on really well and I was just really taken by how wholeheartedly committed to this job of raising resilient children in just such a nice non-judgy way that she was. Last week, I was reading yet another newspaper report about how parents are doing everything wrong. And I just thought, oh, here we go again. Like, why? Who will come out with a, the expert talking about how parents are kind of doing their best and actually kind of getting

and to get it right and cut them a bit of slack. And I thought, well, Kate's that expert, Kate's that expert. I've read her books, lots of people, you know, her books are bestsellers for a reason. No such thing as naughty and there's still no such thing as naughty. And I thought I want to get her on. You know, what I really feel about this podcast is I want to talk about all the things under the surface that have made me feel bad about myself and in the process I want to make people feel better about themselves for it the things people don't say out loud Yeah, that's what I want this podcast to be about and also I just feel this with life producer Jonathan is there so many of the things I learn in my recovery from alcoholism from OCD and You know so much so many of the wise things I learn, I just want to kind of, you know, from parenting experts as well, and from all the experts we get in

on the life of Briny, I just want to say, and I think Kate refers to this, like, I wish so many more world leaders just did a bit more work on themselves because the world would be a better place. What we'll do is we'll send a link out to every world leader today. I'll put it on my to-do list. I would think that if Kate Silverton was in the Oval Office with Trump and Vance and Zelensky the other day, we could have actually somehow brokered world peace.

Like through our therapy. Through our therapy. Draw the peace deal you want, Trump. No, but I do. Time and time again, time and time again when I sit in 12-step meetings or I read books by amazing people like Kate or Gable Marte or any of the other people that I'm so lucky to have been able to interview, you know, and meet. Time and time again, I just think all of the stuff to help the world is there. It's all out there. And for some reason,

the people in charge aren't reading it. Yeah. Yeah. We won't fix that one, but we will teach your kids how to regulate their emotions. Yeah, and grow up to be happy, healthy world leaders. Enjoying yourself? I thought so. So let's do this weekly. Please hit subscribe now and never miss an episode. Kate, thank you so much for coming. I wanted to get you on because last week I was reading, once again, there was a story in the news, Kate, about how today's parents doing a bad job.

That's essentially, we see these headlines all the time, you never get. Expert says, today's parents doing cracking job, well done parents. And I thought, I know who I want to speak to about this. I want to speak to Kate Silverton, news legend, turned, qualified qualified child therapist and an expert on child and parent mental health, really, who happens to have been on Strictly Come Dancing. And I thought, who better than to come in and talk about, because I loved, I've loved all your books. The one you've got there is There's Still No such thing as naughty. And your first book was, there's no such thing as naughty. You know, we say parenting doesn't come with a guidebook.

This is your attempt at it, isn't it? Yeah. This is my first question to you, Kate. Who's easier to work with, children or other news journalists? Oh, that's a very good starting question. I'm just gonna say that I find working with children magical. Magical. Okay so why the switch? The switch came because so my academic background is in psychology and then I

had been volunteering for many years with children's mental health charities like the Anna Freud Center, Place to, and I had this privilege of working with all these neuroscientists and psychiatrists and psychotherapists and how I saw them working and sharing this incredible science, all the latest research that we now have, with parents and families who were struggling and the difference it was making in their lives. That was phenomenal. Then Mike and I became parents. He's a former Royal Marines commando. I consider myself quite switched on. This is Mike. Six weeks in from having our first baby, 40, we turned to each other and went, Oh my god, this is really hard. And then it's why did nobody tell you it's this hard?

So you've got sort of like amazing, highly trained BBC news journalist, Royal Marine Commando thrown into parenthood and it's like none of that matters. No, and this is and none of us really. So I didn't feel, are we getting it wrong? Is there something, anyway, so obviously I had the wealth of experience at my disposal with all these incredible psychiatrists and neuroscientists and again, learning then from them about the importance of understanding brain development and child development, the importance of the brain development and child development, the importance of the early years,

suddenly everything about my children's behavior made sense. It made my parenting easier and more fun and happy. I understood my children, I felt more connected with them because obviously this was not just from the six-week stage but through those first few years, I'd also been doing quite deep therapy work myself and that was fundamental. So everything that I'd learned just fired me up and as we all do with the first book, it's like, I've got to share this, you know, as a journalist you think I've got to share this and in fact it was one mum that I was working with as a volunteer at the charity and she sort of wagged her finger and just said to me, you need to write a book to explain this stuff to parents because we didn't get it until we were helped. And she said that I used to think that that really strict disciplinarian approach was the way

to go. That was my culture. Now I know differently. So she sort of charged me along with lovely Professor Peter Fonagy with writing a book that shared the science, but in a way that made it accessible. So that was where I was able to use my journalism. That was the first book. Then there was the element, well, if I'm talking the talk, I better walk the walk. And I'd really wanted to come away from news for a little while. And I just felt this compulsion to then go and train. So I did with Place to Be in a wonderful centre under Dr Margot Sunderland, and I qualified as a child counsellor and have been working clinically with children ever since, and I bloody love it. And I work with parents and families as well, and it's magical work.

You kind of exude it as well, Like the magicalness really comes off you. And I have met your children. I met your children in the summer. They're the most magical, sweet, lovely children. Like your parenting really, it really shined through. I really got that impression. I wanted to talk to you about, so the thing that made me think, I've got to call Kate and get her on The Life of Briney was, last week there was an interview with the sort of self-styled strictest headmistress in Britain, this sort

of 21st century mistrunch bull whose name is Catherine Burblesang, I think. She's always being interviewed, you know, interesting. She's the headmistress of a school in North London, and it has very good results. So not, you know, it works, obviously works for a lot of people. Good academic results. Good academic results. We haven't got the results on children's mental health. Yeah. So the headline of Parents Messing Up was from this interview with her.

The parents have never, ever, ever been able to catch a break. So whatever style of parenting happens to be in fashion at the time, there's always someone ready to criticize it. So she's strict and she's saying gentle parenting, it's all well and good if you have money in your middle class, but if you are working class, it doesn't work and you end up with children starting school who aren't toilet trained, who can't, all of this kind of stuff. And I'm not really that interested per se in the kind of argument of gentle parenting versus strict parenting. The biggest sort of expert I subscribed to as a parent is my

own intuition, which is quite, you know, which is, but what I am interested in. Which is what? Well, I remember when my daughter was born being terrified, you know, like, you know, like you and Mike thinking, you know, what, what the hell? Like, I remember, like, are you sure you're gonna let me leave the hospital? Are you sure that you wanna do that? Because I'm a child myself. Bear in mind, Kate, I was 32.

So I was not a child, but I felt like a child. And looking back, you know, I had to get sober when my daughter was four, you know. I was, and I look back at my ability emotionally as a parent, and it didn't exist. It didn't exist. And, you know, I have a lot of shame about those first, not just the first four years of my daughter's life, but, you know, after, because, you know, obviously, you don't just get sober and suddenly you learn how to parent well and we're all doing our best. But I like to think that the kind of people listening or watching this, the

life of Brian, will be people like me who want to get it right, but don't always, you know, and that's and that's the truth, isn't it? And I, instead of shaming those people, it's like, I want to be able to provide them with some like, support and helpful advice. They can listen to this on their commute into work, or, you know, the return from the school run, or when they're going out for their walk or whatever, and just feel a little bit better about themselves. As opposed to listening to that sort of advice, which is like, you're getting this wrong and this is what you have to do

and you've mucked your parents up. Yeah. So that's what I wanted to create today, that conversation. You mentioned how you had done therapy and that sort of made you a better parent as well and led you down this whole thing. So the more work I do on myself, the better I am as a parent, I think. So I'm less interested in that sort of like, you should parent this way or that way. You know, it's always this kind of this world of binaries, isn't there? It's like one extreme or the other. How can I parent my child so that they are able to deal with life's inevitable ups and

downs in a resilient way? That is all I'm interested in. And that's success. That is success. Because we have, I've just written an academic essay for the Princess of Wales for the Royal Foundation that went out on it and I said, emotional regulation is the biggest gift we can give our children. Get that bit right and we are giving them the foundations for future mental health but also, as has been found, there was a London School of Economics paper that showed that the future success, happiness, wealth as well, didn't depend on socioeconomic status or even academic qualifications, but on having good emotional regulation.

Okay. So you kind of go, oh wow, okay. So as you say, get that bit right. Our children can fly in whichever direction they want to be, whether it's Oxford or whether it's the local business school, whatever it might be. But if they have emotional regulation, we've done business school, whatever it might be. But if they have emotional regulation, we've done our job, never mind anything else.

Okay. So let's talk about emotional regulation. What that is, how we can foster it in our children, and how can we foster it in ourselves, virtually? Because we can't be trying to emotionally regulate our children if we can't do that to ourselves. Yeah. So, we can combine the science with this and I'll explain it really, really simply because that's how my brain works. I'm very visual. So, my concept is sort of explaining the brain using three animals in a tree. So, bear with me.

But essentially, when we're born, so our children's brains are not fully developed until we're in our twentiess. So we cannot see children as the finished article. They're going to make mistakes with their behavior because their brains are essentially still learning how to sort of regulate. This is great news as well because I always hear this whole thing about how children's personalities are formed in the first seven years of their lives. And you've got to get it right before then. And I think, Oh my God, because my daughter's 11, going to be 12. It's great news.

I'm still able to parent well, even if I've messed up loads now. Well, let's dispel that thing. So just as I say, there's no such thing as naughty. There is no such thing as the perfect parent, not you, not me, certainly. But here's the headline, we do not need to be. And in fact, the perfect parent, if there is such a thing, is actually setting our children up for the impossible yardstick by which to measure themselves against. So we don't need to be perfect. That's the good news. Because when we mess up, and trust me,

I mess up, still mess up all the time every day to school day, I can apologize. I can say, sweet, I'm so sorry that I raised my voice. I'm tired today, daddy's away, whatever it might be. I'm sorry, I got that wrong. How can we do things differently? So we can always, obviously, we don't want to be blowing our top every day, but we will get things wrong. As you say, we want to work on our emotional regulation for ourselves. But the starting point is we do not have to be, nor should we be perfect, because actually the biggest ruptures can create the best and biggest repairs. So when we get things wrong, if we learn how to repair that, that's where resilience comes in. So it's an opportunity, it's messing up as an opportunity to model how to be resilient. Yeah and to say you know what

even adults get things wrong because if children can forgive themselves when they get things wrong which they inevitably will. So it's like gosh if mommy can get things wrong and she's saying do you know what I was a bit tired and a bit snappy and I should have done things differently when they're tired and snappy when they come home from school and if they, you know, Wilbur might still lose his rag on occasion and they would take a breath. Mommy I'm so sorry I got cross and spoke like that, da da da da da, and there you go. So he's learning that from me but he can only learn that when I model it so I

have to make mistakes. So let's think about emotions then. What are emotions? So emotions are our guide to life. They actually are, they come really from an evolutionary basis. So, if I walk into a room and I feel fear, I'm going to be on guard, for good reason. If I sit here experiencing joy, great, I want to dive right in. Love, I want to dive right in. That's based in trust. So all of our emotions and there are many, many. What emotion are you feeling right now, Kate? Happy. Oh, good. Glad you're not feeling fear. No, but so it's able to then read. They're just signals.

Our emotions are signals. So when, let's just say when I walk in here, I am probably quite nervous. I want to get this right. It's an important podcast to be on. I want to say things that people will understand. So there's going to be a bit of fizz inside and that's my stress response. So our brain has evolved to our thoughts and physical threats, you know, oh my gosh, am I going to get this right? That's a thought but it's still going to trigger a little stress response inside of me that says, be on your guard, get this right.

Now that is a sort of neurochemical hormonal response. And I luckily have a prefrontal cortex, which is what I visualized as a wise owl sitting in her beautiful tree. And she can swoop down to what I imagine as a lizard and baboon, the sort of more primitive parts of my brain and say, it's okay guys, Brian is lovely, look at her with her beautiful pink cardigan, how could you not love to be here and we're doing something. So I can really help myself to then calm down and think I'm in a safe place and now I've achieved that happy sweet spot.

Now that's all going on in the space of the time that we've sort of sat down together. Now I can regulate my emotions in that regard and sit here quite comfortably and then speak. Our children do not have the benefit of a fully formed prefrontal cortex. They have the equivalent of a little owl. So she's, if we imagine it, that she's got little wings. So when our children get a bit fizzy, if they come into school for the first day of school, they're gonna be feeling fizzy. They're gonna be feeling quite fearful.

That's gonna trigger a stress response and it's gonna create anxiety within. Now they have these, what I think of as a little owl, she can't swoop down and comfort the baboon and the lizard in the warmth of her wings. Yeah, the lizard's too busy doing backflips and the baboon. So the in the warmth of her wings. Because the lizard might eat the owl. Yeah, the lizard's too busy doing back flips and the baboon. So the lizard represents a really primitive part of our brain, the brain stem primarily and the nervous system.

So that represents that. And then you go up on a branch in our tree is the baboon, which represents the limbic system and the hippocampus and the amygdala. So all the parts of the brain really where emotions are sort of processed regular, we're not regulated but processed. So we can imagine that children are walking around in the world and every time they feel fear or something that feels threatening, whether that's a spelling test or whether they have a fallout with a friend, they get a bit what I think of as fizzy. And so it's our job to lend our wise owl to swoop in and soothe and regulate our children so that they can sit, their nervous system can then,

their parasympathetic nervous system can trigger and calm the body back down. So this is where we start to get emotional regulation. I can feel every emotion. I can feel frightened. I can feel excited. We want our children to feel every emotion because it's important. We don't want our children going through the world flatlining or having to drink, eat, smoke just to feel. Because this is what can happen if we suppress, if we come down hard on our children and tell them to stop being silly and to you know, oh just get to bed stop being you know if they're frightened at night if we just tell them don't be so silly.

They learn really to that their emotions are not valid that they're weak somehow so then they suppress them. But later on in life, those emotions are still going to be sticking around. And we want our children to be able to self-regulate, not use food or whatever other substance online, scrolling, you know, any other form of addiction, which is actually a form mainly for self-soothing, knowing this with a food, has been food addict myself. So you know, that's, so we want to be able to learn how to self-soothe. So every time we feel a little trigger of the stress response, we want to be able to learn how to bring that back down. But children aren't born with that capacity.

We have to teach it and we have to do that by modelling it. So it's interesting for parents listening or watching to know that actually when your child is scrolling their phone or screen time or playing Fortnite or whatever the whatever the mechanism is that is actually if you see that as them trying to kind of self-soothe it's instead of just saying you need to get up less screen time please we need to give them a viable option. Yep. And get curious about what it is. So I see, sweetheart, when you come home from school that you want to go straight on to a computer. So when we can do it without judgment, we're actually getting curious and being compassionate. Wow, okay. So I'm wondering right now what you're feeling and getting our children to start connecting. Actually, yeah, when I come

home from school, I do go straight to the computer and I'm doing that to feel better about how I feel inside. So then we can start having conversations for how are we feeling inside and it might be that something's happened during the day that's caused that fizz that hasn't been resolved because you can't resolve it at school because you know when that stress response gets triggered it's essentially putting us into fight-flight and kids can't you know, well some of them, they're the children that I might see in the therapy room, but you know they're either going to go into fight and I'm holding my fists up at this point because that's the stress response gets us ready to fight, or flee and or flop, which can often happen for children.

It's just like I just literally can't cope with it all, I'm just going to have to sort of, you know, opt, as it were, dissociate. So we want our children to start experiencing that. They're going to bring that stress home. And if they're using a screen to self-soothe, in a way, once we understand that, we go, oh, I get that. But maybe I can help you. And maybe that just comes from sitting side by side

and finding things that our children, as you say, find an alternative. My kids sometimes, I mean, it's bloody exhausting, I have to say, especially when I'm solo parenting, but they might each need an hour of me at night, of just, when you turn the light off and then suddenly it all comes out, and this happened today, and da-da-da-da-da. And actually just by being alongside and listening,

we don't have to be therapists to sort of be a therapeutic presence for our kids. We can listen and do what we call active listening, which is essentially, wow, that sounded really hard. What was it like when you found out that you were the only one that was not invited to that party? Gosh, that must have been really hard. And then maybe sharing some of our own experiences. Do you know what? I remember what that was like. I didn't, you know, I mean, I found myself making up stories before. It's like, you know, I mean, I found myself making up stories before.

It's like, you know, when my kids were younger and that happened with my daughter that she hadn't been invited. And it was like, wow, God, I can remember what that was like for me. And I might point to my chest and go, made me feel really, really bad in here. How was it for you today?

Really go into the pain of that sort of social rejection, which is really felt by our kids. It's a very painful feeling. And letting them know that it's normal, that we all feel like that sometimes, that we all might fall out with our best friend on occasion, or that we might not like getting shouted at, or whatever it is, is to sort of say, yeah, that's normal. Can I tell you, just listening to you, and I don't know if anyone at home listening is feeling this too, like I am like, does not everyone wish that Kate Silverson was their mommy? That's what I'm feeling so much better just listening to you. I feel like you just so clearly, concisely and articulately

have summed up in a very simple way how we can help our children, you know, in a way and it's accessible to all of us, you know. One of the things I hear, you hear a lot is we're only as happy as our unhappiest child, right? And I remember as a child, and I don't blame my mum for this at all, she would say to me, I just want you to be happy, you know? And I wasn't happy. I had chronic obsessive-compulsive disorder. I probably would have qualified for a diagnosis of ADHD, you know, those, you know, neuro-spicy. And obviously I don't blame her now. I've had to go through a lot of work to do that. But it was, you know, I just want you to be happy. Why is it? Tell me that actually, because I have this thing that wanting your child to be happy is actually incredibly unhelpful.

We don't want to teach our children how to be happy. We need to teach them how to be sad, angry, disappointed, that full range of emotions. Yeah, as you say, we don't want to think of our children as unhappy. And because obviously that would be devastating for us. But also there's an element of like, if my child's unhappy, have I done something wrong? So we want to be honest with ourselves. So we kind of go just, I just want you to be happy. But actually, that's sort of defending against unhappiness, which we all are at certain points, and there is no one that's going to be immune to adversity. And all children will go through

unhappy times. So I do explain very carefully, but saying how we can go into the pain, pushing into the pain, because when we can do that, if we don't do that, let's say if we don't do that, we can sort of end up with still leaving our children with that feeling of sense of sadness. Whereas when we're in it alongside, wow, that sounds really painful, sweetheart, I'm so sorry. And we don't have to say too much in that moment. It's just basically, I see you and I hear you and actually I feel it, sweetie. You can go into it and actually prompting sort of pushing into that pain is not being cruel when you're doing it alongside

You're helping your child to then what I think of as exorcise Through tears that's very cleansing. It's very healthy and to yes I really felt I was the only one that didn't get invited Oh darling, and you must have you must have felt really alone in that moment Oh, I mean, goodness. But actually what you're helping them cry. Yes. Don't say, don't cry. Because that's another one that we all default to. Don't cry. No,

do cry. Do. Well, bless my dad. He was wonderful. But yeah, if I ever, I still remember when I'd get tears welling up in my eyes over something and he'd say, oh, here she goes again, turning on the waterworks. And of course, what would I do? I'd get up off the table and go up to my room and sit there in silence. It's awful. It's so shitty. It's a wonder any of us are alive, frankly. You know, and but this is it. Our parents did their best. They made their mistakes. We'll make ours and hopefully our children will make fewer mistakes. And this is it. Our parents did their best, they made their mistakes, we'll make ours, and hopefully our children

will make fewer mistakes, and this is the cycle that we want to break. We cannot expect ourselves or our parents to have been perfect. I think that's why I come back to the science, because what we do have now, and whether it's Katharine Birbalsing or anybody else, that's your opinion.

I'm not interested in opinions, I'm interested in fact. And so the science supports what our ancestors and our intuition, you know, what we instinctively know. And so what the science now we have amazing sort of revolutionary advances now in understanding neuroscience and neurobiology. I'm a bit of a geek with that. I spent years, you know, sort of up at 3 a.m. reading academic papers. But actually what I've done is distill all that down into very, very simplistic form for any neuroscientist listening. But it works. You know, I work with all the neuroscientists and I go, does

this make sense? And they're like, yeah, it does. And if it's helpful for parents to think in that moment, if they're enraged, that they're in baboon. Not that they have to sort of shame themselves, but that my limbic system is up and out the gates because I'm tired, I'm stressed, I've got loads going on at work. And then I can say, ah, that's my baboon. Kids, I'm really, really sorry. Bring my wise owl in my prefrontal cortex to then take a breath, take a beat, not with a blame, shame,

guilt of being a bad mother, but just going, right now, I need to take a pause. And again, just doing a very simple thing, putting your hands, your palm over your face so you could talk, taking a lovely breath. Can be enough sometimes to then if your kids are throwing things at each other, whirling their pants over their head rather than going to bed, I can just take a beat, take a breath. That allows me to go back in but still be firm. I think, you know, I know you wanted to talk about that gentle parenting and I think that what I'd love for parents to take away from today is that not to put labels on parenting,

I think of myself as a firm but fun parent. I love that, firm but fun. That is very much what I subscribe to. Because children do need boundaries, they do need structure. They will call out for them. Yes, because otherwise the world can feel very unsafe. If there's no boundary, I might fall off the end of the earth. So they depend on us to be the adult in the room.

But when you've got that firm but fun approach, there's a lot of flexibility within that. So if my children know that no means no, it's not about not saying no to our children, absolutely. But the biggest sort of, I suppose, compliment I got from my kids was, they're like, you never say no, mommy. I'm thinking, I say no all the time. But they don't realise it.

But they don't realise it because I'm putting the boundaries in, but then within that we can have fun. So they don't have to, they're almost not even asking the question because they know that they're going to get a no. My mum, bless my mum, she often says to me, I can never say no to you, Bryony. And I'm like, no, but that was your job, mum. Yes. Oh, but you were just so persuasive, darling. Or I'm like, oh, hang on a second.

I'm getting very confused here. It's quite a scary place to be if you've got a parent who is not saying no. Because I could do anything then. But I know that anything could maybe be unsafe. Like, wow, you're then having to sort of be the parent to yourself and put your own and then well, there's no winners in that one. Yeah. Tell me about, you just said something earlier, which is feeling like a bad mother, because that's

something that lands and will land, I'm sure, so many listeners. I think that a lot of mothers spend a good 98% of their time experiencing sort of guilt or feeling bad. Can we talk about guilt very quickly then? Because I brought that to therapy as well in terms of the parental guilt and my beautiful therapist said to me, she said, guilt is one of our most effective and powerful emotions. Oh, okay. Here we go.

So, so guilt, let's do guilt and shame because shame is the pernicious one. But let's put that aside for a minute. So guilt is actually, if we can use it, it's very galvanizing. So if I feel guilty that I didn't do something with my daughter, if I parented in a way when she was very young that I now wish I hadn't, and there's certainly loads of aspects that I look back now and think, oh gosh, I wish I... So I can use that guilt and do something about it. So guilt can be galvanizing. We don't

have to sit in it. It's basically saying, I feel bad that I did that. If I, I don't know, if you and I were really, really close friends and I went off for a weekend and I hadn't invited you. I feel like that's what's happening. You've come in and told me that you went away for a weekend without me, Kate. I know. Next time. I know know very excited about our future weekend together. So I would feel guilty about that. Now I can then use that guilt to phone you and say, Brian, I'm feeling really bad.

I am so sorry. I didn't think and I'm really, really sorry because that must have been upsetting. Now I've still done something, but I can at least try to repair that with you. Now shame is very different. This is why we must never shame our children or feel ashamed ourselves and when we do feel ashamed it's because of parental stuff I have to say. Shame is how we feel about ourselves. A guilt I can do something about and for anybody listening if you do we all do feel guilty when we sort of think God I wish I'd done that differently. We can talk to our children about that. I really wish, darling, that I hadn't done that.

And I'm sorry, because I've now been learning about X or Y, and I realized that it wasn't great to put you on the naughty step or whatever it might have been. I'm sorry, but I didn't know any better then, darling. And I just want you to know how sorry I am. So that's a really interesting thing because there are lots of people who think as a parent, you can't lose your authority by apologizing or admitting you've got something wrong. Yeah, where does that come from? Well, that's interesting because I subscribe, I'm very much like I've messed up, soz. So talk a bit about that. So that is true because I think that there's that element, as you say, that I will lose my authority. Well, that shows us that we I think that there's that element, as you say, that

I will lose my authority. Well, that shows us that we've got a very fragile sense of authority. It's when we feel confident in our leadership. If you're feeling guilt, good, actually, I'm going to say good, think of as guilt as galvanizing. What can I do about that? Because then we don't have to sit in it. It's not ours. It's just an emotion that basically says, I wish I'd done that differently. Whether that's an argument with your partner or words with your child this morning, you can repair that and that repair is going to be bonding. It's a very very strong glue. Shame, we don't want to sit in shame. Shame says I'm a bad person. I'm a terrible person. I'm a terrible mother and there's nothing I can do about it

No, let's just get shame put it in a box and throw it burn it shame is more I guess what we're talking about here is that kind of perpetual feeling of being bad Yeah, bad mother not being good enough. Yeah, that is more shame. That's our stuff That comes from our parenting sadly Yeah, it's when we shame children, when we make them feel a sense of you are not enough, you are bad, you are naughty, all these things. When we're young, we're internalizing shame. I am the cause of all the wrongdoing. I am the reason why X or Y's happened. No, we must never let our children bear the responsibility

of thinking that there's something wrong with them or that they've done that they're so bad. You know, we hear this with parents divorcing that children will internalize the message that I must have done something. So we have to be really, really careful about the stories that our children are telling themselves. Again, all of this can be repaired, everything, you know, we can so it's never too late. and that's why it's really important what you're doing with your work is helping parents to sort of sit back and go, okay, gonna shove that shame out the window,

but I am gonna do something about the fact that maybe my child's been sitting with painful feelings that I need to help them with. I don't want them thinking it's on them, it's not. We are the adults in the room, and we bear responsibility for whatever is going on because our children are too young. So it's when I really want to empower parents that we want them to be not authoritarian but authoritative. So I'm the leader in the room, you know, what I say goes, but I'm also going to listen to you.

And then I can say when I get things wrong and I'm going to model because if we don't model that apology, guess what? Our children are never going to model it. So if I model and say, sorry, if I've got something wrong, guess what? My children are going to model that. Well, I feel like the world is in sort of baboon mode. Yes. At the moment, you know, and that that is a sort of I was thinking about this, there's a sort of politically, culturally, it's just a lot of shouting and screaming and no one actually sitting and breathing and saying... Using their wise owl. There's no wise owls.

The healthy development of your prefrontal cortex, that is the only part of the brain that sets us aside from many other animals. It allows us to think from somebody else's perspective. It allows us to problem solve. It allows us to say sorry. It allows us to think, hmm, I did that but maybe that wasn't the right course of action. It gives us empathy. All of these things come from a fully developed prefrontal cortex. If we are not modeling emotional regulation to our children, their prefrontal cortex is not going to get the exercise it needs that wise Al to soothe and to problem solve and to bring everybody back off their branch.

So do you think we're seeing a world more and more where our prefrontal cortexes are not being properly fully developed? We hear a lot about the mental health crisis in children in particular and I do think well, you know, of course there is, because the way we live our lives now is not how we're supposed to as humans. Yep. And if you think about, I talk a lot in the books about community and the value of community, that we would have, our children would have lived with

at least, I think the figure, I'm gonna have to remember now, but the sort of 19 other young people, other adults around them in communities. So if you and I were busy cooking over the pot or having a crisis or whatever we might be doing, there would be lots of other older children, adolescents and then the sort of matriarch patriarch, all the extended family supporting that child. We don't have that. You and I, we're wearing all the hats. The cook,

the secretary, the taxi driver, the teacher, everything. It's really important for parents actually for us all to stop and think, actually, do you know what? If it feels hard right now, it's because... It is. Yeah. It is. It is hard. And how much easier, I don't know if you've ever been camping, I do love getting a tent and sleeping under the stars, but how much easier is it when you're parenting in community? So when you get a few of your friends, all the kids are playing. The school camping trip. Yeah.

Yeah. It's so much easier. But children need that social enrichment and that's the desperate nature where our kids are not playing outside with other kids. We need to be encouraging so much more of that. We don't want our children all just sitting at home on their own bickering with their siblings. So there's a lot in society that we could do to support children and ourselves. And it is if we're feeling alone, it's because very often we are with we're doing it all

and it's bloody hard. It's even harder for parents who suspect they might have an unwell child to get help, right? We know that waiting lists for child and young adult mental health services, CAMHS are at breaking point. I wanted to talk to you about what advice you might give to any parent who is trying to navigate that

system and not having much luck with it. Yeah. You know? Like, what are the things if they feel they have a child in crisis, are there any sort of baseline things that one can do in the house, the home, that might help to just keep things together. Because I meet and speak all the time to parents who are in, they're utterly, they don't know what to do and they feel they are cut adrift. And I really feel that. And I just wondered if you had any advice or anything to say to them that might help. Yes.

Working clinically now with children and families, obviously I'm seeing the acute end where children are in great need. But as you've just said, there are a lot of parents in need. And that's why I wrote the book, because I thought I want to explain this in a way that takes them through. So these are the steps that I call them the Cs, the sort of columns that support our children's foundations. So the first step is if you're feeling desperate, know that there is help. If you feel overwhelmed and desperate, then do of course, your GP, your school, do not ever be afraid of being honest and open. It's I always sort of think

of it's when we reach rock bottom that we start to rock climb and so it's it's really important that you know and trust me I've had my own crisis both personally and and so much support professionally so never ever ever feel any sense of failure like we're all doing our best and if you are struggling then do seek help even if it's just speaking to a friend. You know, that sort of vulnerability shared is a very bonding process. But I would say, and again, I'm not hate sounding, I'm not trying to sell the book, it's just that I'm passionately,

I know how much it's helped parents, and whether your child does have different needs. I'm formally diagnosed ADHD, I've also experienced significant trauma and have had complex PTSD So I get it. I am living proof of having knowing what it's like to be at rock bottom and I'd probably would be the same in terms of probably having all sorts of diagnoses, but I've come through with support

So it's in community and with support that we can come through support. So it's in community and with support that we can come through. So that's the first thing. But there are so many ways of helping our children and we can get very scared when we see our children in distress and we go to that place of thinking I've done something wrong, it's on me and then everything, the world collapses. Trust me when I say you can work with your child. I'm going to always caveat to say if you're not coping, your child's not coping, then you must seek professional help. But as you've said, if people are in a holding pattern, dive into those books. I promise you I've written it as a mother to be a bloody quick read, because I also know we don't have much time.

There is no shaming or blaming in there. You are only going to find comfort. But I think, let me give you sort of two tips that I think, I mean there are plenty, but just two thoughts maybe to bear in mind. And coming back to that sort of the sort of that marshmallow parenting of not having boundaries. So first of all, you know, we do need to put the boundaries in, but within that we're going to be flexible. We do that by making sure that our bond with our children is as firm as it can So first of all, we do need to put the boundaries in, but within that we're gonna be flexible. We do that by making sure that our bond with our children

is as firm as it can be. So again, spending time with our children, there's lots of lovely exercises that I share in the book. But the biggest tip I can give, and I think this isn't talked about enough, is when our children feel that sense, that stress response that I was talking about, that sense of fizz, when the emotions are feeling really big and especially for

children in puberty those hormones kick in, you know, it's almost like the prefrontal cortex, the wise-o goes, I can't cope, I'm just gonna have to switch off for a while. So you get much more of the baboon lizard behavior. Now a lot of the time I think parents have veered away from that really excessive strict rigid parenting, which is a good thing. But I, you know, when I do sometimes see on social media sort of the TikTok generation of, Oh, darling, you look like you're upset. Now let's talk about tone and attunement, because I think that is doing parents a disservice and children a disservice because there is something called misattunement, which is probably

one of the biggest things that is triggering our children's rage and it doesn't help parents and it doesn't help the child. So we're going to think of like a bell curve of energy. So if I come in, my child comes in, whether they're three, whether they're 13, I've got a fizz going on and I'm in my limbic brain, my baboon is, you know, something's happened and I've got a detention or I've been shouted at. Now, if I meet my child with a, and I'm trying to be sort of like a really lovely passive, and I'm, you know, as I say, there's no criticism in this because parents are just looking at,

and this is the way, oh, darling, I can see you're upset. That is actually quite, can be quite enraging for the baboon because it's like, are you understanding how I'm feeling right now? Like, you know, you're just not getting it. So what we want to do, the biggest tip I can give parents is you think of it like the bell curve. So the energy comes in, it goes up, it goes up, it goes up for your child. Now they're up there, you do not want to be down there because you're not then aligned. So the biggest thing you can do is, you know, let's use a toddler example, wow, you are so cross right now, I can see you're stomping your feet, oh, look at your fist, yes, you are so cross. So you're up, you're not telling your child off, you're not shouting at them, but the energy's up, you're going cross. So you're up. You're not telling your child off. You're not shouting

at them, but the energy's up. You're going, I get it. You look really pissed off right now. If I raise my energy up, I'm saying to my child, I get it. That was, you know, whether it's over the the cereal packet that you've just said no to, or whether it's that, you know, something's happened at school, you know, I get it. I really get it. And then the bell curve is then we, and this is what I call SAS. So say what you sense. You seem really cross or whatever. And you might get it wrong, but your child will correct you. That's fine. No, I'm not cross. I'm, you know, whatever. Say what you sense. Acknowledge the upset. Well, that must have been really, really hard, you know, whatever happened, and then soothe.

So you've got to attune first, and then you go into the soothing and you bring them back down. I liken it in the book to a skydive. If you and I are doing a charity skydive and we're sat down and look at your face, we're like, yeah, no thanks. But if you think about how we would feel, we'd have butterflies in our tummy, we'd have sweaty palms, we might not be able to speak to each other,

you know, we'd just be- My legs are literally gone. Yes. Just even just imagining it. Well, there you go. That's a great example of your brain has thought about that. Yeah. It's felt it as the same threat as if you were on it and you're now in a flight response. You want to run. Do you see? So your physiological response.

My shoulders just kind of clenched up. Yeah. So we're up there, right? Now, if we have someone sort of sat with us going, oh, it's going to be fine. We'd probably turn around and want to go, you do not understand. Whereas you and me are going to be going, Oh my God, how are your feet feeling? Oh, look at my feet. So we're in, we're in the plane, right? So that's your sympathetic nervous system kicking in, right? What's just happened to you there is your sympathetic nervous system is kicked in. So S for skydiver, sympathetic nervous system. Okay. Now someone throws us out the plane. We're in flight. Yeah. So we are literally in flight then, right? We're a us out of the plane. Oh no. We're in flight. Yeah.

So we are literally in flight then, right? We're a bit out of control. So this is what it's like for our children. I just shut my eyes. So when our kids are in this stress response, it can be the equivalent of being out of the plane without a parachute. It can feel very scary when the stress response is triggered and our teenagers especially, if they haven't got that wise-ow soothing them, it can feel like, oh my god,

I'm out of the plane and I am just, I'm out of control. Now what type of parent do you want in that moment? The parent that's just sort of, I see you, I see you, you know, like from, you know, the wind's buffeting, I can't hear, I need someone. Or do you want the super cool parent stroke instructor that flies alongside, Briony, Kate, I've got you, watch me, I'm in it with you, I get it. Very few words, but we're flying alongside our children in that moment.

Now my job as the parent of you and me in the middle is to help us pull the parachute, P for parasympathetic nervous system, P for parasympathetic nervous system because that parasympathetic nervous system is the bit that brings us back down and says, Bryony, we don't have to do a skydive. We're safe, we're here, and we're relaxed. So it's that that we want to understand. If nothing else is that when our children are in distress, their sympathetic nervous

system is kicked in for whatever reason, even if it's just the thought of something frightening, a spelling test, a driving test, whatever it is, that's going to trigger a stress response. And our job is to be that soothing adult, the wise owl, but to connect with our children, we must first attune to them. And that's that SAS, say what you sense, acknowledge the upset, and then S for sooth. So it's a process and it takes time and practice, but the more you do it with your children, you'll see that you can talk them down off the branch in seconds. And I promise you, you know, it can be that quick because they start to learn to trust

as soon as they're out that plane and they're skydiving, as soon as they even see us, they're like, I know that my mum and dad have got this, they've got me. So I can trust them. But we have to build that trust to begin with for them to sort of, I'm in the middle of a stress response, but I know that they're going to say or do something that's going to make me feel okay. When I'm in the therapy room with children, I see some very big dysregulated behavior. And I want that. I want my children in the therapy room to bring every emotion.

And they'll turn to me and if one of the first things I do in the therapy room is I say, I talk about having a tea party for our emotions. and I say, oh, our emotions are welcome here. Now I will always boundary in that very first, there's no hitting or hurting in this room. So I'm boundering, I'm telling the child, but you can hit a pillow. So you don't hit me, but you can hit a pillow. So we want our children to start, because they'll turn to me and they'll say, what, even anger? And I'm like, yes, especially anger. I want the children in my therapy room to feel, to exorcise those feelings and then start to learn how to use their words, how to express, because it's not anger we need to be afraid of. It's if our children grow up not able to express it safely.

Kate Silverton, thank you so much for taking us on that incredible skydive. A huge thank you to Kate for helping us all emotionally regulate today. Her book, There's No Such Thing as Naughty, and There's Still No Such Thing as Naughty, that's two of her books, they are essential reads for any parent who wants to move beyond traditional discipline and focus on connection, confidence, and most of all, emotional wellbeing. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a friend. And even better, could you hit follow, subscribe so you never miss an episode? Even better, better.

And I don't want to ask too much from you, but if you left us a review, that would mean the world to me. Take care, be kind to yourself, and I'll see you next time.