TONTS. - The Best Parenting Advice I Have Ever Received with Carley McGauran

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Carley McGauran has been a psychologist for 15 years. In her work she has spent time with kids, young adults and their families assisting them with her sage advice about everything from how to process emotions, practice self-soothing and manage trauma to what the bloody hell we should all do about iPhones and screen time. She is the other half of the company Inform and Empower run with her brother Marty who I spoke to in a previous episode about Cyber Safety and TikTok. This episode is an extension of my chat with Marty but also includes just some of the best life and parenting advice I think I have ever heard. Carley puts things in a straight forward, warm and compassionate way and makes big parenting milestones feel manageable and achievable. At this time in 2021 when the world feels increasingly difficult and confronting, I found her advice so comforting and I hope you do too.Inform and Empower: Cyber Safety Education helps schools and parents navigate the incredibly difficult task of protecting and educating our kids through the online space, social media and technology.Vanessa Hamilton resource for sexuality education and supporting parents and schools www.talkingthetalksexed.com.auSubscribe here for – tontsnewsletterYou can find me on instagram @clairetonti or at www.clairetonti.comYou can email me with suggestions for episode topics and guests to [e-mail]. Feel free to leave me a voice memo to be included in the show.A big thank you to this wonderful team:Editing - RAWCollingsTheme Music - Avocado JunkieGraphic Design - Emma HackettPhotography - Anna RobinsonStyling - Hilary Holmes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just a warning, this episode does talk about some sexual themes and things that probably aren't appropriate for little ears. So if you've got little ones around, maybe pop some headphones in. Okay, on with the show. Hello, Tons here. Welcome to the podcast. This is a show about feeling all of it. And today my guest is Carly McGoran, who is going to help us really genuinely feel all

the feelings and get them out and get them moving. And I found this chat so insightful and helpful. If you hadn't already noticed, she's the sister of my friend, Marty McGorin, who I interviewed from a few weeks ago about the underbelly of TikTok and cyber safety and parenting in this new digital world that we're living in. They run a company together called Inform and Empower. And I just felt Carly was so wise about all of that digital stuff, but because she's been a psychologist for 15 years and she's also a parent too, and her husband is a cop and she's worked in child protection, I just found her so insightful. Her words, I think, around emotions and how to deal with the big

stuff of life are kind of down to earth and realistic and achievable. And she gives really practical advice about what the bloody hell we can do with all these big feelings that we have and that it's okay to have them. And in fact, it's normal. And also the flip side of that, what happens when we don't do all that stuff, which I think sometimes people think it doesn't matter if we don't talk about all this stuff with ourselves and with our kids. And so she talks about the fallout of that. So I found this podcast really inspiring and also really practical. She gives lots of tools for parents who are heading into the teens with their kids and also for what to do with little

ones now so that we can make that passage into teenagehood a bit smoother and easier. Though it still seems very daunting and scary, that whole thing. The last thing I'll say is that she has an idea about emotions, that they are energy in motion, and that instead of holding onto them, we need to let them move through us. And by doing that, we can name and tame them and develop mechanisms that aren't about damaging ourselves or the people around us or numbing our feelings, but kind of metabolizing them and moving through them and developing really healthy habits with them and coexisting with them and acknowledging that it's okay if you, like me, hid in the

bathroom and had a cry when you found out playgrounds were closing because we're in lockdown and we're getting a curfew now in Melbourne. So that's it, I think, the secret to it all, right? Just accepting that we're human and nobody's perfect and we're going to feel feelings when we feel them and have a toolkit on hand to help us when we do maybe drink some water. That's also helpful. All right, here she is, Carly McGoran. So I suppose in my work life, I used to work a lot with kids and then it got to a point where I thought I've got enough kid stuff happening at home. I don't want to work a lot with kids. And then it got to a point where I thought, I've got enough kid stuff happening at home. I don't want to do any more kid stuff.

And then I kind of leaned into doing the work with teenagers, adolescents, and was really loving that. And then as my kids were heading into those years, it's kind of, I think it's really been helpful. Often when I'm working, I'm like, mental note, when they're sharing things about parents and things that they appreciate or don't appreciate, trying to collect up some of that wisdom that they share with me to then use in my own family. My husband's a policeman and I'm a psychologist and worked in child protection. So our sense of worst case scenarios, we're both pretty aware and sensitive to that. So finding that balance with allowing them their independence and making their own choices, knowing and having heard and been privy to people's worst case scenarios in life.

That would be a really hard thing to do, actually, to just wrap them all in cotton wool and say, you can't do anything, you can't have anything. That's a little bit where my husband would go. You know, he'd be like, never, no, no, they're not going anywhere, doing anything. So he has at times been knowing that that's where he comes from, especially police work, literally being at the worst of the worst

of tragic stuff, he will say you're going to have to make that decision. I can't, because I'll just say no. Yeah. I can't tolerate it. What are some of the things that you get asked that you have to, like the kind of things that are the scenarios that come up and you both have to go, what are we going to do? Yep. Out and about on their own. When is that okay with who, where, sleepovers, but all those independent things. Because there's that transition from little kids where you literally know every single thing they're doing, if you're not actually physically present, to then they're out and about and you don't have that influence even, let alone control over what's going on.

Yeah. That's on. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I wanted to ask you from your perspective because I've spoken to Marty and I loved that conversation and his insight as a teacher. But as a psychologist, could you just walk us through for lay people the transition from a brain perspective, what happens with little kids and then that transition into adolescence?

Yeah. In those early years, really early years, their kids are establishing that attachment with their main caregiver. And through that, they collect up all sorts of ideas and views about themselves and their place in the world. And depending on those experiences and the quality of that relationship and other experiences that they have, they'll literally collect up stories about whether they're safe in the world, whether the world's a safe place and their value, all those sorts of things get collected up really early on, along with developing and collecting up all the skills in relation to motor skills and cognitive skills and working out that idea that they're separate from other people. There's so much that

happens in those early years. And we're literally emotionally wise, I guess the bit that's often relevant talking to my clients about is they're relying a lot on us, like as a baby, for example, to help them regulate their emotions. And you're literally part of that process of settling them, soothing them, patting them, walking them. And bit by bit, you know, that becomes an independent skill in an ideal healthy world where they learn to sort of settle themselves and soothe themselves. But lots of the clients I work with for lots of reasons haven't had opportunities to grow those skills. So they're still catching up with that, whether it's in their teens or their adulthood. So what do you mean by that? So their ability to

regulate their emotions? Is that what you mean? Yeah, to manage distress. Yeah. So if they have a big feeling like a fright or any big intense feeling, how do they actually manage that? Do they just dismiss it? Do they just push it away? Are they given messages that that's what you should do? You know, thinking of a client the other day, she was told, you know, suck it up, stop being a sook, stop being dramatic, all these messages whenever she showed any feelings and emotions. So what she took from that was is my feelings don't matter. There's something wrong with me for even showing such strong, intense feelings. So she learned from really young how to kind of just swallow them up and repress them and just ignore her feelings and disconnect from her feelings.

But because, as I said to her, you're not an alien creature or a robot, you still have feelings. So what you've done with them and how you've managed that has had sort of fall out for her. Wow. And so if we've got a kid, well, we all have, we all get big feelings all the time. What do you suggest we should say when a kid is that pillar of rage or really upset or

in that moment? Yeah. Okay. So there's layers and layers to what's helpful and just a culture for starters in the family of all feelings matter and that there's not good and bad feelings. It's not like there's a set of feelings. Sometimes people think the negative feelings, the bad feelings, all feelings are actually healthy and part of a normal human experience. How we express them, you know, slamming doors or throwing things or hitting people or obviously there's how you express

them can be not so positive, but actually having the feelings is okay. So, and part of that to start with is through role modelling, like kids from day dot are absorbing from us, their caregivers and parents and carers, how to manage feelings or what we do with the feeling when we get upset or do we shame ourselves for a feeling or something else I'd probably talk a lot about is kids having the capacity and often I see young people and adults that don't haven't worked this out how to become aware of a feeling and then name it articulate articulate it, to literally put a name. And we know for so many reasons being able to name a feeling means you can better tame a feeling. Wow.

I love this so much. I just think this is so important. And you know those people when you meet them as grown-ups who still can't do that and you see them wrestling with it and it comes out in all kinds of ways, I guess, in adult life. I can think of a client from years ago that I still work with now. And she literally, if a very intelligent, intellectually intelligent, competent person in a job that required lots of her. But when I asked the question, how do you feel about, I can't remember what it was, she had no words.

She had no capacity to answer that question of how did she feel? Because in her upbringing, there was no room or space for her feelings about anything. And she had direct messages that her feelings didn't matter. Wow. And what is the impact then of that in a real way? Like some people I'm sure listening will go, oh, well, we'll just suck it up, get on with it. Why does that even matter? Why do we need to do that? Yeah. So there's fallout, there's a cost of not sort of being tuned into your feelings at the time and being able to express them in a healthy way. And that can look really, really different for different people. So there's a lot of people that will find mechanisms because they are human beings

and not an alien robot creature. They've still got feelings. How do they numb them? So they'll numb them using drugs, alcohol, all sorts of different addictions, shopping addictions, porn addictions, they will numb them or avoid them or turn to self-harm as a way of managing overwhelming big feelings or lots of lots of different ways that it manifests. Or they'll just be, I can think of one particular client who's re-engaged recently who he just literally had a backlog of feelings and responses to things that he just sort of pushed down big time. And then it all tipped out. There was the final straw and he was so full up. You know, I often talk to people about when you get, if you're not tipping out at the time and being able to articulate them, they just build up, build up.

And literally it becomes full and spills out and overflows at some point in an often really unexpected way. Is that almost like a nervous breakdown or taking it out on someone or taking it out on yourself? Yeah, people, and that nervous breakdown language is a word that people often use, I think, to describe when everything just falls apart or they're so full up, their capacity just to keep going fails. So because those strategies are ultimately not sustainable.

So they'll get you so far. So all the behaviours and habits we all do as human beings are meeting a need. They're helping us, in inverted commas, meaning they're serving a really important purpose to help us survive. And at the time, it's our best strategy of what to do. But then at some point or other, the drug addiction or the repressing of feelings, which one of the common things I'll say that repressing of feelings will then manifest with lots of physical health problems. Wow, that's so interesting. Big time. Huge, yeah. What do you mean by that? So lots of people will really commonly have gut issues, for example, and the gut being central to lots

of things in our body, our immune system and our wellbeing in general. Yeah, gut issues. So because of the stress, the tension and that holding of feelings, I don't even know where I read it a long time ago, but emotions being energy in motion. So often talking to clients about how you can move feelings through you rather than holding them or getting stuck in them. So yes, all feelings matter, but that doesn't mean you have to stay stuck in any particular feeling. Right. So how do you then express that? So if we're saying move those feelings through in that energetic way, when we're talking to kids or grownups, adults, we're all just humans, aren't we? Middle or big. What do we do? How do we get it moving and how do we express it in a healthy way that isn't

numbing and isn't hitting, yelling, punching the wall, throwing something? Different things will appeal definitely more to different people. So often I always say to clients, if something I'm suggesting is just, that's not me, let me know, because sometimes I'll encourage you why I'd really love you to try it. But other times it might just be something really different will be helpful. So it could be physically going for a run, boxing, hitting a pillow, physically tipping that energy, those feelings, energy, emotion, tipping it out. It could be writing it. It could be saying it, talking it, drawing it, using music.

Music's amazing in relation to shifting feelings and mood. And we kind of naturally know that, like you can almost not be not moved by music. If you listen to music that's really upbeat, how that shifts your mood instantaneously. So definitely using music is a massive one. And I've often talked and shared with families about how I'll use music, especially in the mornings in our household. So lots of, you know, kids, busy, stuff happening. And if the mood's tense, irritable because of me and where I'm at or because of where they're at, music. Put on songs.

Who wants to be the DJ? Who wants to put something on? And even if you don't like the song, it creates a discussion around why someone doesn't like someone's music choice. But music's remarkable, yeah. I wonder why that is. Activates so many areas of our brain all at once in a way that lots of other things don't. I think for kids and for human beings in general, big adults, I'll often talk about sort of parts of the brain and not an area of specialty. I'm not a neurologist

or anything, but just the basics of it, which empowers people to understand what's actually going on for them. And that seems to be something that really empowers people then. If you know what's going on and what explains why you're reacting a particular way, why are you so angry. Number one, it normalises it, that it's a normal response. Do you mean from like a scientific perspective? Yeah. Wow. So when we're angry, what does our brain do? What part of our brain? So all the basic brain stuff that I'll talk to people about, whether they're young kids, whether they're adolescents or adults, is sort of breaking it down into there's three main parts of the brain.

There's our very primitive part of the brain, which the amygdala, and that part of the brain is almost like our protective warrior part. So if it perceives a threat, then it will activate that stress response, flight, fight, freeze. So flight is running away or fleeing. Fight is where that irritability, anger, attacking comes out when someone feels threatened on any level. Or freeze and less commonly submit, which is where you might just like an animal, if you think of an animal, rolls over and just submits

to the situation as a way of protecting itself. So there's that part of the brain designed to protect us. Then there's the limbic system, the emotional part of the brain, and that's really well developed in kids and teenagers. But what they don't have well developed is the thinking brain, which is the prefrontal cortex. And that's behind our forehead, essentially. And that's what, it's sort of not a coincidence that if we're thinking or trying to, we'll touch or put our hands to our forehead or thinking, that part of the brain that's responsible for that executive thinking and decision-making

and impulse control and longer-term consequences of things and bigger picture, not so well developed. So hence you get these big feelings and intensity of feelings, whereas as an adult our thinking brain might chime in and say, look, it's not a catastrophe. It's okay. We can problem solve this. It's not the end of the world.

This has happened before so I can probably manage it. That's not the end of the world. This has happened before, so I can probably manage it. That's not happening. It's just hence why little people and teenagers, tiny things can be, you can't relate as an adult thinking, how could they be so upset about that? Yeah. Yes. What? Yeah. Yeah. Why is it? And I guess that's why when they fall in love with someone even, or they're obsessed with a boy band or a sporting team, it's like do or die. That's it.

They're just so invested. Often I'm explaining this brain stuff to parents so that it normalises these reactions as opposed to parents thinking they're wrong or bad or she's being dramatic or she's attention seeking or he's being dramatic, or she's attention seeking, or he's not coping, or no, actually brain-wise, they experience an enormous intensity of emotions in a way that the adult developed brain doesn't without that sort of filtering and moderation of the prefrontal cortex, the thinking brain. Yeah, wow.

So gosh, who wants to be a teenager? It is a minefield. My God. Enter technology into this. Yep. Can you explain to me how you got into this whole cyber safety stuff? Because I say cyber safety, I think people switch off. They're just like, I can't deal with that too hard or boring or something. But now in that parameter, put technology in place and what do you see happening at the moment? So how I got into it was really my personal journey where my kids were heading into this digital space because of their ages and the world. And also my brother Martin, who was working as a teacher in that IT space, he was presenting to schools and we were having conversations and he was realising that he had all the intel and the information,

but he didn't really have anything to add to how do parents actually manage this stuff though? Or if we know all this stuff, that's great, but how do we actually manage what the kids are doing and negotiate these things and manage the conflict and what are all the risks? So we came together to start presenting to parent communities and schools about this topic. So literally, as I say at the start of each session, living and breathing this stuff personally in my family and then hearing from the young people that I work with their experiences online and then working in schools and hearing from families and school communities about the impacts, which are many and varied, so many different impacts. And the research hasn't even really caught up with the impacts, I suppose, of our kids being online in a way we just never were at all. And for parents, it's just an enormous challenge because we've got nothing to go by.

Yeah, there's no blueprint, right? There's nothing. I know with Marty we talked about a lot of this is actually now around pornography, right, and the explicit content that kids are exposed to and also social media, I guess, as well, and then the merging almost of the two, would you say, in some ways? Yeah, one of the things, I even used the word with Marty the other day, I feel like certain things are almost at a crisis level where we as parents and communities, it's a whole community response to help support young people in managing pornography, absolutely, but also just all the sexualized content that's not actually pornography, but highly sexualized content and younger and younger and younger

children being exposed to that because the implications of that are big on their growing sense of who they are and their sexuality. And firsthand hearing and seeing that with clients that I work with and then having all the conversations with my kids, it's just big. And us not, we can't afford as parents just to leave it. Right. So what is this? Can you think of a story in particular of a client you work with that would be an example of that? Yep. Of the fallout? Yeah, of the fallout. So many. Okay. One of them would be,

for example, a 15-year-old girl, her boyfriend videotaping them when they were having sex without her consent and then when they've broken up on her birthday sharing that video and then the fallout from that. A young client, he would have been about 21, came in and was devastated because his girlfriend had, his partner at the time, had accused him really of being aggressive and violent in the context of their sexual relationship. And he had collected up all these ideas from pornography about what he thought was a normal, usual way to engage with someone sexually. And his partner was calling him out and saying, that's aggressive and violent and I don't like it.

And he was sort of getting his head around what a distorted view he had of sexuality. From watching pornography from when he was about eight or nine. Unbeknownst to his parents, they didn't know he was on a device though, in a bedroom and through curiosity, that's the thing. Kids, of course, are all forever, you know, sexual development, that's a normal part of it. But what's not usual back then compared to now is now where kids,

without even meaning to, will go down these rabbit holes of seeing and of being exposed to things that they didn't particularly even seek out, they don't mean to, they don't even know what they're getting themselves in for. And is that through things like, Marty and I talked about TikTok, is that, or YouTube or what? Yeah. Where does that begin? Yeah, so it can be literally them seeking it out, like Googling boobs, bums and something.

Yeah, which is we all did, right? At the library, look at the books, everyone talks about it, you know. As I said to a parent the other day, he was reflecting back when he was a kid and curious about all this stuff, He said, the most that I could do was find, it was an uncle's porn magazine that would have a still photo that showed, you know, boobs and bums and this and that. And that was about as much. Occasionally, maybe there's an actual still photo of a sex scene per se, but that was about it. And to access that was really tricky. Whereas now it's almost the opposite of, it's hard not to stumble on it, whether it's through a friend saying,

look at this. And I remember my, one of my kids, he was eight, came home from school swimming and said, mum, guess what? So-and-so had said, told me to look up this website and this website and Pornhub being one of them. And you can see this and this and this and had told my son all about the things he'd been watching. Oh my God. So good thing was that he came home and talked about it. So then we could have a conversation. And if we open up those conversations with kids, then when it comes to these exposures, which will happen, they're more likely to check in with us. And then we can weigh in and give some other input as to, you know, what they've actually seen, what it actually means, how do they actually feel about it, et cetera. God. So how do you do that? Tell me, what do you

want to do? What do I do? I'm looking at my little kids and I'm thinking, what do you mean, Carly? I can't just go, so guys, there's this thing called Pornhub. Jesus. Yes, I know. I know. And that's what I often say in the sessions when I talk to schools. You know, I say why we need to be having these conversations and then I, you know, parents will say, great that you've said I need to do it. How? Carly, you understand that no one ever spoke to me about anything. Yeah, not even the bees and the birds or whatever it is.

Often not. Occasionally people will have been dropped a book, maybe if they're lucky, that had some sexuality information when they were growing up. This is us as parents when we were growing up. Often parents, and thinking of a client yesterday who's, how old is he now? 28. He was really collected up a lot of shame and bad feelings to do with sex. His mum's way of educating him about sex was terrifying him about it

so that he didn't do it and, you know, you could get AIDS and you could get this sexually transmitted disease and there was a lot of fear around it as her way of keeping him safe from not, she didn't want him doing it. But that's about it. So parents would then say to me, well, I don't, what on earth would you say? So I think number one, it's not about a conversation because sometimes parents, the pressure of how do I have the perfect good right conversation about this stuff? It's about literally thousands of conversations from

when they're little two-year-olds being able to name body parts all the way through to more explicit conversations where you might be checking in with a 15-year-old you know and you might start the conversation with a 15-year-old like oh I saw on Facebook about this boy you know he was being pressured into sending a nude pic and he did how would you manage that or you know has that ever happened to any of your friends or sort of opening up those conversations? And then there's all the hundreds of conversations in between. So it's not like you go from nothing to all of a sudden, now let's have this.

It's that slow build-up of opening the door, having imperfect conversations a lot. Wouldn't that be right? And there is this idea, and parents put so much pressure on themselves, and I often spend my time encouraging parents to take the pressure off, that kids, they don't need perfect conversations. There's no such thing even. But what they do need is you to be Vanessa Hamilton, who does a lot of good sexuality work, and I'll share her resource

because that's awesome. But she says you want to be the askable, tellable parent. Okay. So many kids that I work with will say to me, you know, I can't talk to mum and dad because they just lecture me or they're so judgmental or they're so embarrassed and uncomfortable or they don't go there with that stuff. You know, they'll turn the TV off if there's sex stuff

or if something comes on the radio, they'll turn it off. And it's about, yes, you probably are uncomfortable about this stuff, but be transparent with your kid about it. Like say, I am uncomfortable about this. No one ever talked to me about this stuff. But be transparent with your kid about it. Like say, I am uncomfortable about this. No one ever talked to me about this stuff. But I heard that song on the radio that mentioned that word and I heard you laughing. Do you actually know what that means? And sometimes their meaning that they've collected up is completely off track or, you know, so there'll be an opportunity, those teachable moments to have conversations. Yeah. And do you know, so there'll be an opportunity, those teachable moments to have conversations.

Yeah. And do you know what, as you're talking, it struck me that that's kind of actually beautiful in a way. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but because you're getting to know your kid in a real way and it's all layers of relationship, right? Yeah. And being able to build that trust and friendship. so when they do have the big crisis, hopefully, God forbid, they don't, but if they have a big thing, which we all do in life, you've got that not a friendship but a relationship where you can guide them through it. Yeah, yeah.

And my thing is often a word that I use a lot and remind myself of as a parent because as I remind all the parents that I use a lot and remind myself of as a parent, because as I remind all the parents that I work with, and I don't have all the answers, I'm not doing this perfectly in inverted comment. There's no such thing. I'm stumbling through this. And I'll often share with parents, you know, things where I've, you know, lost it or looked back and thought, oh, that wasn't the best plan or, you know, apologising to my kids about something, you know, decision that I've made or something I've said or done, just as a way of, yeah, there's not sort of these expert people that know it all. There's no such parent. There's zero parents like that. But curious, not furious. If you can anchor yourself to just in the first place, curious, not furious.

Because if they open their mouth to tell you something and you jump in with furiousness and anger and upset and worry and concern and jump on it, you'll never, ever, ever hear the whole rest of the story of what's gone on. You just shut it down. All right. But curious. And even if on the inside you're panicking or absolutely horrified by something they've said, just pretend. Play it cool is what I say. Because they need to get a sense that you've got this, that you can manage. They've already got a big reaction and big feelings. They may already be feeling really overwhelmed and out of their depth.

They then do not want to manage your big reaction. They can't. They don't feel like they even can. Okay. So they won't come to you then. Because they're worried about you then and upsetting you. Yeah. Or dealing with your anger or dealing with your worry or then it's another whole thing. They're already struggling. Okay, so you have to be the one and so by curious you mean you're like, oh, how did that happen? Yeah, can you tell me more?

Tell me more. That phrase, if you can utter nothing out of your mouth because you're so stunned by whatever the heck they've just shared, just say the words, okay, tell me more about what happened or start at the start. Because I wasn't there, I don't know what happened. Start at the start and tell me what happened. I love that. I'm writing that down. Start at the start. Start at the start. Start at the start and tell me what happened. Tell me more about what happened.

Tell me more. Yeah. Okay, that's good. and tell me more about what happened. Tell me more. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Because as kids say, that overreacting thing just shuts stuff down. And as I tell parents when I talk to them, have I ever overreacted? Um, yes. Am I likely to do it again with my kids?

Yep. Could be tomorrow morning. Who knows? But then it's about revisiting that and the healing that goes on by saying, sorry that I lost it over that. Sorry I got so angry. Sorry I jumped in before you could finish the end of the story. But what you told me was really important. And can you tell me that story again? Okay. I want to hear it. Go back. Go back. All right. It strikes me. And I heard, I think it was Glennon Doyle who I love a lot of her writing. And she says that you don't have to, and Brene Brown too, you don't have to be a perfect human as a parent. They need

to see you be human and express it. And I think that, I love that. Take the pressure off then, right? Because you're not trying to be this like exemplar human being. They want to see you being real, you know. That's the role modelling of what happens when you muck up, what happens when you don't meet someone's need. And there's neurological, you know, evidence in that, and I don't know the statistics anymore, but even in really healthy

relationships between a parent and a child, you often, maybe it's even like 60% of the time, don't meet up, meet their need exactly where they need it to be, for example. And that's okay, because then it's about the repair and the healing that happens after that that's critical as opposed to you're supposed to get it right all the time. That just doesn't happen. That's not it. But it's just about whether you can come back to that and do the repair and the healing.

And articulate it. Yeah. All right. And when I was teaching, I used to do that a lot with the kids when I was really angry. I'd just say, Fives, I felt really stressed today. That made me really angry. I'm taking some deep breaths. I need you guys to sit here. Do your silent reading. I'll be with you in five minutes. Yep. Miss Tonsi needs to take some deep breaths.

Awesome. That is like ideal. That transparency around the learnings that they get out of that is just unbelievable. And one of the things I've been working on recently is creating a feelings poster. And there's already some out there, but just one that I just wanted with a few little different things for people to have at home so that you can literally that building that transparency around feelings and pointing to it. and where are you at now? I think I'm feeling a bit cranky at the moment. I just heard my voice get very loud. Okay, I'm just going to go put some music on to relax or I'm just going to head outside, pat the dog for a bit or whatever. Just role modelling that regulation stuff for them and

normalising it and taking away the layer of shame around losing it being, you know, a bad thing or, you know, I remember a dad came up to me after one of the sessions last year and said, you know, no, Carly, you said about not losing it because that's, I lost it so bad yesterday with the kids. I was so angry at them and, oh, you know, he's really beating himself up about it. And that was the bit where that layer is not helpful because you're human. We make mistakes and we need to let our kids know that they will make mistakes. So, but then it's about what you do next, which is, I said to him, you just go back and have a chat to them tonight after school and say, I lost it.

I got so angry. I'm really sorry. Are you okay? How are you feeling about it? Because I got a bit scary. And that's completely different to a kid that just experiences that anger and aggression and then nothing, no messages of that that wasn't okay. Maybe it was me, kids being egocentric and all about them walk away with I somehow responsible for that.

I've got all of that feeling. My fault. Maybe if I could just better behave next time. Okay. Yeah. Gosh, this is all so valuable. We spoke on the phone briefly and I know you said a phrase to me which was, okay, Carly, I've got to hold the line.

What did you mean by that around technology when you said hold the line? Yes. So, which is about, as a parent, making those really unpopular decisions which are in line with what you know your kid needs and not what they want. So with the family yesterday, I was literally reminding the mum of that exact thing where she's under so much pressure from her daughter to just allow her to have her phone in her room at night, overnight. And her daughter doesn't want any restrictions on her phone. She's 14. And mum's got in place some really healthy boundaries around the phone coming out of the bedroom at night, some limitations on how much access to social media and for how long and all those sorts of

things. And she's just getting a lot of pressure and hold the line was what I said, just about she can't make those decisions at this point because what she wants is just to be on her phone 24-7 like some of her friends are. But we know and we understand all the implications, health and risk-wise, why that's not ideal. It's like kids and food. If I let my kids eat whatever they wanted, they'd potentially just eat junk food all day, every day. We know that they're going to make decisions in line with what they want. So they're not going to be popular decisions, but withstanding that pressure and them hating us. And that's not comfortable. No, it's really not. But so what do you mean by hating us? Because we don't want them to completely like write us off, right? Well, Claire, maybe for patches of

time, you might be the least, you know, the least popular person in the world. Look, and the privilege of my work is, you know, seeing people at all different points along these journeys. And as I often share to parents, and as I remind myself, so often I see young people, maybe they're 18, 19, 20, looking back and saying to me, oh my goodness, I thought my mum, my dad was the meanest, awfulest, terrible parent in the world. I hated them. I showed them I hated them by saying this and doing this. But actually, they were just doing good parenting. And actually, imagine if they just let me do what I wanted. I just wanted to go out partying during the week nights, you know, school nights. Yeah, during year 12 or something.

And they wouldn't let me and I thought that was outrageous. But now I'm like, thank you because I needed those boundaries. So, yeah, sitting in that space where your decisions, you know, were not there to be liked. But that can be hard for a few reasons. One, because when they're littleies and we're their everything and we're their everything and we're their most amazing people and they love us and then that shifts or can shift big time.

Yeah. Yeah. And the other reason is some parents particularly find it tricky if you don't feel so good about yourself, if you're struggling with feeling good enough in general, and then you've got a kid that hates you and is really pushing those buttons that you're mean and unfair and you're ruining my life, then that's really hard to hold that. And it's that mirror, isn't it? That kids have this wonderful ability to hold a mirror up to all your stuff, your emotional stuff and baggage and all the triggers in your own childhood, you almost start to feel like you're reliving through your kids.

Yep, absolutely. Parenting, yeah, stirs up so many things and it's such a space for such personal learning and growing and evolution if you're open to that, I suppose, for sure. Yeah. What are some of the things that kids in their 20s share about parents that have, like, what are the good stuff? What's the good stuff that they say, thank God, so it's like keeping an eye on my devices, putting in boundaries. Are there other pearls of wisdom? Yeah. Look, information. So for example, back to the sexuality topic of kids, and there's so many good funny memes out there about kids think they know everything. But then they realise they didn't and whoops, I'm glad mum told me this or talked about this or the very, very rare clients that I see where parents have talked about this or the very, very rare, you know, clients that I see where parents

have talked about sexuality has equipped those kids and empowered them. And all the evidence is clear that the more kids are empowered to articulate and talk about all things sexuality, they're actually safer. So that idea of I'm not talking about it because I, to protect them from it, I want to protect their innocence and I don't want to bring that into their world too young and that's not actually how it works out. If our kids sort of know things and have information and have language, they're safer and more able to stand up and assert themselves and their needs and their wants. Around sex, you mean?

Yeah, everything, basically. Yeah, so conversations. So probably one of my biggest things, especially in relation to cyber safety, is opening up conversations with young people to give them permission. And I was actually just giving a bit of supervision to a colleague the other day who's more new to working with kids and teenagers. And she was asking for some ideas. And I said, one of the things I do really early on with kids that I'm working with is open up all sorts of conversations in relation to suicide or self-harm or eating

disorders or sex and drugs and alcohol and all sorts of things, just so it says, I know this stuff's out there. I'm okay to talk about it is kind of the message that it gives them. Because the odds of a kid just without anything saying, oh, by the way, can we talk about this is not such a common thing. But if I've already said, you know, sometimes suicide is something that, you know, people's minds think about or wander down. It just opens up conversations and makes it easier maybe often for them to go there. Right. Okay. And that's the kind of imperfect conversations that you do along the way from what age? Or is that a loaded question because kids are all different?

Yeah, in relation to sexuality. Or just all of that, like the addiction or the suicide, all of those massive scary topics. Yeah, it is definitely specific to each kid and some kids are naturally so much more curious and will ask so many more questions so much earlier. So you'll have those opportunities so much earlier to give bits of information as you go. Some kids don't and it gets to a point where even if they're not asking, you need to be opening up the conversations and saying, you know, I had a mum say to me after a session, well, Carly,

how do I talk about pornography if I haven't talked about sex with a 10, nearly 11-year-old? So it's about you need to have those conversations and go backwards and go back to, you know, other kids by five might know all to do with sex because they've asked all sorts of conversations or something's come on TV that's prompted a conversation or something on the radio or someone in the family's had a baby and that's prompted a conversation around sex. Can you do that too early? Like can you do it too early?

Not really in the sense, I think, Claire, because kids are, and I've watched this happen a billion, million times, they will shut it down if they're not ready to hear something. Literally. Like I'm talking hands over ears, that's enough, using that language. Or can we talk about something else? Or you tend to get a sense when they've heard enough. So my kind of thing is

trust your instinct to give, give, and then you'll know when it's too much. And the way our clever brains work as well, if we're really genuinely not ready to hear something, we just chuck it away. We don't even hold onto it. We just don't absorb it really. Okay. That's good to know. Again, there's not a perfect thing. So if you think, oh my gosh, did I say too much? It's okay. They'll manage it. Or if they did feel like it was too much and it stirred up some feeling, you have another conversation about it. Okay. So it's just talking and keep on talking. That did happen with one. I think I was talking about something with my son and he was like, I wish I didn't know that. No more. Thanks.

I was like, okay, cool. We'll just, we'll reign that in a bit and we'll bring it up again another day. Yeah. But back to, I did mention earlier, Vanessa Hamilton. She is a Melbourne based sexuality educator and she's a mum and background as a nurse and presents to schools and communities. But she's got some awesome podcasts that literally talk you through kind of scaffolding what you might talk to a two-year-old, three-year-old, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, all the way along conversations, information that empowers kids to be safer and more informed. That sounds great. I might link that in the show notes at the end of the episode as well.

That would be great because I know this is a subject that some of the parents that I know are talking about because kids ask questions and you want to get it right and I love that whole notion that you're not going to get it right. You're just going to give it a go, but you're just going to keep talking. You're going to have a lifelong conversation with them. Yep. And the other thing is, and I've had to do this many, many times myself, is if they ask a question and you think, I have no idea how to answer it, literally, clueless, what on earth do I say? Buy yourself some time. You don't have to answer it. Literally, clueless, what on earth do I say? Buy yourself some time. You

don't have to answer it right that second. So rather than just making up something, just say to them, wow, that is such a good question. I need to think about that, or I need to look that up, or no one's ever asked me that question, or no one's ever explained that to me, or leave it with me and let's have a chat later tonight when your little brother or sister's not around or because sometimes the timing's not ideal. Just take the pressure off. You don't have to have all the answers just because they ask a question at any given moment. So lots of times I've thought, that's a good question. Let me think about it. I'm like, oh, my goodness,

what am I going to say? Okay, that's really good. I love that. This has been so valuable. I've got two kind of doozy questions. So the first one is can you tell us some stories because I know there are parents who I've talked about this and I get it, switch off, because they're like too hard, too big, don't want to think about it. Also, we're tired, we're stressed, the pandemic,

we're working from home, kids are on devices, can't handle this too much, don't want to know. Do you have a story that has broken your heart that has made you really passionate about this area about technology and kids? I mean, I know we've already talked about some of them. Yeah, gosh, there's a lot. There's so many. And what's sad about them is kids being, as you said, left in an environment that they just don't have the skills and development and brain capacity to manage. So it'd be like literally dropping them into Melbourne city centre, like a primary school age kid and leaving them for half a day on their own. And most parents understand I would not do that because there's so many different risks out

there. Kids don't even have the proper peripheral eye vision to cross roads until sort of eight or nine years of age, let alone manage all the other risks. They don't even know the risks exist, let alone have the skills to kind of manage them. And it's that same scenario in the online world. So things where kids get themselves in situations with predators online is probably the most shocking. And often parents, again, don't want to be confronted in here. And the reports, you know, the amount of it happening in Australia, sometimes parents think, you know, it's not in Australia and they think it's not my kid. There is no kids that are immune to those risks online because perpetrators that are there wanting to abuse children go to extraordinary lengths to manipulate and the layers of deceit and that process of grooming

is sort of remarkable, not in a positive way, but remarkable in the depths of it that you can't imagine what they'll do to enable themselves to be able to access children in that way for the purposes online, for example, of often eliciting from a kid a nude photo or some compromising photo, which then they use as leverage for more and more and more and more. So those scenarios happen to kids, not just any kids potentially. So that supervision, that idea of not my kid or he wouldn't do it or there's no sort of, it's not like there's a category of kids that this happens to. It's not just kids maybe that you classify as at risk or kids

where your parents aren't home all the time or something can happen, right? Marty was saying while they're playing in the backyard and their family's around. Yes, some kids are more vulnerable for all sorts of reasons, of course, but all kids are vulnerable to predators and most kids don't think they are as well. Most teenagers think, not me. And I know Brett Lee, who's a fellow cyber safety educator, but with a very different background to Martin and I, because he's ex-police, ex-detective working undercover. So his knowledge of predators is phenomenal. He often, when he's talking to high school, teenage, secondary school-aged children, they don't think,

they all think they're immune from those risks. They don't think they would ever fall for that sort of thing. But kids do. And predators know things to target kids in relation to saying, don't tell anyone and how to keep it secret because no one will believe you or you'll be in trouble because of this or your parents this or I'll show it to everyone or they'll use extraordinary lengths to make it hard for kids to kind of speak up.

So kids, back to the question of, yeah, parents needing to step up and do that supervision and know what your kids are doing online. There's a platform, well, it's a website as opposed to an app, Omegle, which, you know, it's like a roulette of watching strangers with a webcam. And the horror stories of often girls in primary school will go on this thing where you just sign in, you don't have to have a username or do anything, and then they're being exposed to men at the other end, predators at times, performing sexual acts.

So that's happening in Melbourne, Australia, in primary schools, where kids, because they're not being supervised and getting themselves into situations that they didn't foresee. Yep. And it strikes me right that in listening to this, it's not that it's like parents' fault or kids' fault. It's that we're living in this world with this stuff that's moving so quickly that no one's had a blueprint for how to deal with all of this.

But it's like I love the name of your and Marty's company, like the Inform and Empower because that's how it feels. Once you find this out, you're like, okay, it's not my fault. And, of course, you give kids an iPad and think you'll be fine because why would you think otherwise until you know? Yep. You know, what's that saying? When you know better, you can do better, but you don't know until you know.

Yep. Yeah, well, that's what Maddie and I say. You only know what you know when you know it. And you don't often know what you don't know, meaning parents often aren't aware of those gaps in knowledge. But back to conversations with kids, one of the strongest messages that I give parents and my kids is we know that a lot of kids will not go to parents or trusted adults of any description when there's a problem online. Okay. And there's three main reasons why they won't come to us.

Number one, they think we can't help them. We're clueless. We don't know. We don't know. So all my kids know I'm not tech savvy, but they know because I've said to them, we've got Uncle Marty on speed dial to help, but also Office of eSafety. There's websites. There is not a problem online that

I couldn't help them, support them in getting sorted. So giving them that confidence that you can get stuff sorted if there's a problem online. The second reason is probably the biggest one, where kids love us and they're not wanting to disappoint us. So if they've made a mistake and done something or gone on a website or given out information or sent a nude picture or that's then been shared or whatever it is, not wanting to disappoint us and the shame and embarrassment around it. So that's where us saying to them, I know you're going to make mistakes. Making mistakes is normal. That's okay. I expect that, in fact. But come to me and nothing, literally nothing you do will stop me loving you or supporting you. And my kids, particularly one

of them, plays around with, what about if I, and he goes through the worst case scenarios, what about if I did this though, would you still love me? Just pushing those boundaries of really, truly, I think he's asking, like literally nothing, I'm like literally nothing, and reinforcing that a billion times over. And then the last one is kids are terrified of us as parents responding by taking away devices or banning them off, which limiter parents who really restrict and ban and very anxious about it all often will just, as soon as there's a problem, that's it, off. I told you Snapchat was bad. I told you phones are ridiculous, iPads this bad, and they'll just punish by removing. Whereas the idea would be that

mentoring and taking up that teachable moment with the problem that's gone on so that they can take and collect up those learnings to take with them through the rest of their life. So reassuring your kids that if they come to you with a problem online, you will not respond by taking away their device or their access to the internet, et cetera. Okay. That was so valuable. Thank you so much for coming, Carly. And it's freezing in this room as well. So you've managed to do it so well. I really, really appreciate it. My last question is what gives you hope? What gives me hope is I think our kids and young people have a bigger and bigger, bigger voice, bit by bit, by bit, by bit. And there's so much good about that, which is probably where I get a

lot of energy from working with young people is hearing their voice. And if we listen and we're curious, not furious, you hear they've got amazing ideas. They've got solutions to family conflict, like last night when I had a conversation with someone. So the more we can listen to what they've got to say, which bit by bit, I think as a culture, society, family, community, we're hearing more from our young people so that I think I enjoy hearing their voices. Okay. That's it, right? The more we can listen, the more we build empathy. Nobody's perfect. We're all trying, right? Yep. Yep. And it's all normal. It's a part of human experience. Yep. I love it. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Claire. No worries.

Isn't she wonderful? I just wanted to bottle Carly's energy up and have her on hand for when things get a bit hair-raising while we're homeschooling our little ones at the moment. All right. So for more from Carly McGowan, you can head to informandempower.com.au where her program with Marty is there. She does school talks with Marty often, and they also do online resources as well. And there's a beautiful blog there with lots of resources and helpful tips for parents. So I'd head on over there. And she also works at Calm Psychology. So you can find her online as well there. I have been Claire Tonti and you can find

me on Instagram at Claire Tonti where I occasionally tell stories and today made mac and cheese from Dolly Alderton, one of my favourite writers to make myself feel better. So there's a little video there if you like a cooking video, I recommend that one. I also have a newsletter that is on hold temporarily while we are homeschooling, but it will be back soon. And there's over 19 episodes, I think, to read through if you haven't already. So you can subscribe in the link in my bio, or you can go to claretunty.com where all the interviews I've done and my writing is all up in one spot. Right. I also do a podcast, Suggestible, that comes out on a Thursday with my husband, man, James, where we recommend you stuff to watch, read, and listen to.

And don't we bloody all need some of that? We also just spend a lot of time making fun of each other. So it's one of my most favorite times of the week. Thank you as always to Raw Collings for editing this episode. I really appreciate it. And if you felt this interview was helpful to you and had some tips in it for parenting or life advice or what have you, please share it. Just share it with a mate. Text it to them. Message them over Facebook. That is the best way that I can keep getting this show made. And I just also

think there was some really valuable stuff that Carly said. It's kind of like a free psychology episode, really, isn't it? Some interesting insights into how to parent, but also just how to look after ourselves through this really, really challenging time. Yeah, so share it and rate and review if you liked it, just in app, in iTunes. I'd really appreciate it. Okay, that is it for me this week. I'm sending you bucket loads of love, some advice, drink some water, some deep breaths, and hopefully talk to you soon. Bye.