Dori Durbin: Welcome to That's Good Parenting, the podcast where, we search for simple steps to reduce your parenting stress. I'm your host, Dorrie Durbin, children's book author, illustrator, and book coach who helps experts kid-size their messages into children's books that families can use long after this podcast is over.

Today, we're talking about something that I don't think that we talk about nearly enough as parents, the power of play. And we're seeing play not just as something fun, but play as a way to communicate, regulate emotions, and even discipline our kids. My guest today is Adrienne Thompson. She's a certified parent coach and the founder of Raising Kids with Purpose.

Adrienne works with families, including many raising neurodivergent, highly emotional, strong-willed, or even deeply sensitive kids, and she combines the application of brain development, emotional regulation, nervous system awareness, attachment and boundaries, and play as well. So when Adrienne and I [00:01:00] first talked, she told me that play can almost become a language between parents and kids, and I knew that we really needed to explore that.

So Adrienne, welcome to That's Good Parenting. 

Adrienne: I'm so excited, and I love the name of your podcast. So fun. That's Good Parenting. So let's talk about that. 

Dori: Awesome. Awesome. Well, one of the things that I always ask my guests is just behind the scenes for you, what keeps you excited about your work and serving the families that you serve?

Adrienne: What keeps me excited? Serving the families that I do, and being able to do that work and see such huge transformation is definitely very rewarding, not just for me, but for the families as well. And honestly, I have been very interested in human biology, human behavior. I read a genome book when I was 13 and 14, was so excited to share it with my friends, and they thought I was a little [00:02:00] crazy because what 13, 14-year-old girl wants to learn about genomes?

And then I wanted to do these behavioral studies where I always wanted to do this, and I've never done this before, but is to stand in a ba- a public restroom and look at all the stalls and decide how, which of the stalls do people go into the most. So, like, human psychology, like, and why are they picking that stall?

This is, these are the things that I think about at night. So that's what keeps me going, is just, I guess, my love for learning, curiosity, my love for people. And then in the work that I do, being able to see these generational patterns of trauma and abuse, even though we don't typically call it that, but seeing those getting shattered and how we can shift that for the generations to come.

Dori: That's amazing. And honestly, like, the bathroom thing is very interesting. I would be very curious about that. 

Adrienne: Isn't that interesting? I don't know. I think about these [00:03:00] things all the time. Or even when I'm driving and certain lanes that people pick, I'm always just really fascinated by why people do what they do.

Dori: I love it. And that curiosity really lends well to the families that you're really helping because of the fact that these families have tried things over and over again, and it's just not working, and their kids aren't listening, their words are falling short. So when a parent actually tells you, "My child just is not listening to me-

What do you want parents to understand about their kids before you even start to help them? 

Adriane Well, I wanna point something out that you just said, is the, "It's not working." I'm putting that in quotes for people that are listening, because that is the biggest shift. We go from what is or isn't working, or bad behavior or good behavior, to behavior is communication.

Mm. The child is behaving in a way 'cause they're communicating something. If you struggle with yelling, screaming, running away, I don't [00:04:00] necessarily yell at my kids, but I run away. I'll plug my ears. That's not helpful for kids either, just so you know. Uh, not helpful for their development. Uh, and so if you struggle with some of these behaviors, that means that you are communicating something as well.

So the, I think this is the biggest thing is shifting from figuring out this one tool or one thing that we can do that's going to, quote, unquote, work, to this is a relationship. If you've been in any relationship, which I'm sure you've probably had lots, with bosses, with your parents, with your siblings, um, I mean, with any person in your life, we have relationships.

And relationships take work. There's not just one thing that's going to make it so that you never have conflict, 'cause that's not how the human experience works. 

Dori: So true. Oh, and I think they as parents we have these rules in our heads as far as, like, how things are supposed to happen, and you forget the [00:05:00] whole piece of your kid has to understand you.

You have to understand them. So- ... it's really, yeah, this is key. We'll dig into this, I think, a little bit more, but- 

Adriane: Yeah, and one more thing, too, as you said that- Yeah ... is Dr. Becky of Good Inside, I've heard her say this a couple times, is that kids are born with all of the emotions and none of the skills.

Kids don't come out of the womb knowing how to listen to you. They don't know how to speak well instead of, quote, unquote, talking back. They don't know how to make good choices when you are around or not around. Uh, and so a lot of the behavior issues that we have with kids, it's simply because they just don't have the skills yet.

And the number one way to learn those skills is through them watching you, and but like you said, if the, the, so many parents are doing what they think they should or they're [00:06:00] just wondering, "Why is this not helping?" And that's because of the model that they were given. 

Dori: And do you feel like language gets passed on generationally too?

Like what we say, we kind of just have heard for years from our parents, and then we do the same thing. Yeah, you're nodding your head. 

Adriane: Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about that. Do you mean the use of language? 

Dori: Like what we might say to our kids in response 

Adriane: to- Oh, yeah. Have you ever said something and then you're like, "W- I promised myself I would never say this 'cause this, I didn't like it when my mom or dad said this to me."

It comes out because we are literal mirrors. And diving into the neuroscience a little bit, there are things called mirror neurons, where we are, we are created and wired to do what we see. And we as humans when we're born are wired to connect and to attach to our caregivers, and we are to do [00:07:00] what they're doing.

And so I think that's a really big piece of it too is you can just think of your kids as little mirrors of you. And for some people, that's hard because they don't like the mirror being shown back to them, and that's where we start to get really, really frustrated as well is it's hard to see what we already have insecurities about or things that we struggle with reflected back to us and our kids, and then that causes us to want to control and to yell and scream and do whatever it takes to get it to stop.

So there's some, some deep things that are happening in parenting. 

Dori: When we talked, we talked before this podcast started, but I, you missed a little piece of this. But you said something that really kind of stopped me because I'd never thought of the two together, and you talked about how play and discipline can live together, like one can feed the other.

And I thought, "What?" Because most of [00:08:00] us think of discipline as words, actions, behaviors consequences, more punishment, more punitive forcing a child to comply in some way. So when you talk about using play as discipline, can you talk a little bit about what you mean and what that might look like?

Adriane: Yeah. In the parenting world, for some reason discipline has turned into punishment because back in, I believe it was the early 1910s, 1920s, that's what the parenting experts were sharing with the parents. And, B.F. Skinner and Pavlov's dogs and all of... If you give a reward or a punishment to a rat or to a dog, then they'll do what you want.

And then they tried it with kids, and guess what? It was working, but not, again, there goes back the working, the quote unquote "working," is from the outside it looked like it was working. But now we [00:09:00] have functional MRIs, we have so much research and longitudinal studies over a very, very long period of time that we can now see what it's actually doing.

When it looks like it's working from the outside with punishments and consequences, what it looks like from the outside is that you're getting compliance, but it comes with a cost. The cost is the connection to you, which they are wired to attach to you. Uh, a lot of times that's when you'll see behaviors, too, uh, is because they're real- it's just bids for attention.

It also can cost their cortisol levels, their baseline of stress hormones. I was reading about a study with the cry it out method, which we totally did with our oldest, 'cause that's what we were told was a good parent. That, my oldest is 16, so 16 years ago we didn't have what we have now on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, and everyone's a parenting expert.

Which is, I'm so thankful for all this information now, and that, I [00:10:00] mean, obviously that's what I do and help parents. I take all this information and just give you what you're needing. I, like, kind of, I always have a friend that said, "You read all the things and then just tell me what I need to know," and that's what I try to do for parents.

That's- And so I was just looking at a study about the cry it out method and how, yes, from the outside, the baby stopped crying. The baby would fall asleep To the parent, that's working. However, they measured the cortisol, and the cortisol was higher than when the baby was crying. Wow. And so what you're doing is wiring a brain for stress.

And the, the longer that you're in this chronic state of stress, it causes so many issues, and it's really hard to live a fulfilling life. And so that's what I, you know, I feel like I look look at. So that was what we think discipline is, and that's why we think that's what discipline is. But really, if you look at what discipline's supposed to be, it's to [00:11:00] teach. Going back to kids are born with all the emotions, none of the skills, we need to teach the skills.

This is super fascinating. A child's brain needs 400 repetitions to form a new neural connection. The stronger those neural connections are, the better we're gonna see, like whatever that might be, but they might have a stronger neural connection to scream at you. Mm-hmm. And so we need to rewire that, pause, and ask ourselves what skill are they lagging here?

Adriane: They don't have emotional regulation. A lot of the skills that we want kids to have, or we expect them to have by just telling them to do something one time and telling them versus, embodying that and j- and modeling that, and so anyways, with 400 repetitions form a new neural connections, and the more, like, we wanna strengthen neur- neural connections for the behavior we're wanting to see.

Adriane: Most, this is where I started to lose it. Most kids' behaviors [00:12:00] are from lagging skills that are very, very advanced. Emotional regulation, impulse control, futi- like being able to feel futility

Adriane: inhibition. We think that we just tell our kids to do something one time and they'll do it, but those are extremely advanced cognitive skills that don't really fully develop until they're in their t- mid-20s. And so a child's brain needs 400 repetitions to form a new neural connection. Now, if they're playing, and then doing it through play, research shows, that it only takes 10 to 20 repetitions.

Dori: Wow. That's a huge difference. 

Adriane: Huge difference. And how many parents are completely burnt out because they're sick and tired of repeating themselves? And they're repeating themselves because they think, and we're taught, that the way a child learns is by commanding, demanding, telling them what to do, making sure we're correcting them.

Adriane: And now we know [00:13:00] that actually what the brain needs in order to do what you're asking is connection first, attachment first, relationship first, and then patience and grace and understanding that their brains are majorly under construction. 

Dori: So really what you're saying is by us telling them the same thing over and over again, it's gonna take 400 times, whereas if we made it more of a playful type of situation, which maybe you can elaborate on it would be 10 times, maybe 20 at the most.

Adriane: Yes. The brain learns way faster through play. So can you- And again, I would love to see, like, the actual research of what they did to know that it was 10 to 20, but still, I can see it in my own kids how they have learned certain skills, like simple as putting their cereal bowl into the sink after, when I did it through play instead of telling them, "Put your bowl in the sink, put your bowl in the [00:14:00] sink," or, "Get your shoes on."

Adriane: I can say when I use play, I usually don't have to repeat myself as much, either. Uh, even in the moment. So maybe it's not necessarily the repetition over a course of time, but even, like, in the moment, if I pretend to be an alien that needs to get into my spaceship in the driveway, AKA my car the shoes go on the first time I say it.

Dori: Wow. 

Adriane: Now, do I have to be an alien a couple times over the month? Probably. So there's nuance to this. 

Dori: So okay, verbalize for me, if I was your child and I had not put my dishes away, what would that look like in a playful way? 

Adriane: I go to animals a lot and I go to robots a lot. But a lot of people don't like that, and it makes them feel like their skin's gonna crawl having to do imagination.

Adriane: I love imagination. I was really into theater, so this kind of goes into the play languages. There's 12 different play languages. So for whoever's listening, you have to remember, what are you [00:15:00] interested in already? I might say something that you're like, "Heck no, I am not going to act like a monkey to get my kids to bowl into the sink," but I would act like a monkey.

Adriane: I've even gone to the lengths of jumping up onto my counter and pretending to be a monkey. Uh, and then, and they even either do the task just to get me to stop being a monkey or they start becoming animals too, and they find it to be playful. So there is a caveat to this. And so maybe that feels too far-fetched for you.

Adriane: Or may- for some people, if they have a go-to animal, that's easier than, like, in the moment I have to think of what to be. I go, I use robots a lot, especially if the need is That my kid needs autonomy. So again, behavior is communication. So it's either an unmet need and/or a lagging skill. And with a unmet [00:16:00] need, usually the needs are autonomy, feeling competent, or relatedness, which comes from the self-determination theory.

Adriane: So if it's autonomy, I am a robot and I have them control me as the robot and tell me what to do. And we like both basically flip roles but in a playful way. So you could do that. Another idea is simply to throw music on and start dancing. Uh, that's usually a light lift, easy. Uh, you can sing your instructions.

Adriane: I worked with a mama who it was just explosive all around. She has, you know, young children, six or seven and four, and her daughter really had a high need for connection and a super high need for autonomy, which is usually those kids are the ones that have big, big, big emotions and feelings. And those kids are the, uh, ones who have parents that are like, "Oh my gosh, no traditional method works.

Adriane: I really need [00:17:00] help." And with them, all she started doing was turning what she was already saying, so this is not taking extra time. I think parents think, "I don't have time to play." That's a lie because you're already saying it, and honestly, you're probably taking a lot more of your time saying it in this stern tone and repeating yourself 400 times.

Adriane: And so she just simply switched from saying the instructions to singing them. Then her daughter started singing them, and she's like, "Oh my gosh. She goes right and brushes her teeth." I had a dad, this was super awesome, he made an assembly line in the bathroom and I don't know if, like, they, if he really got into the imagination part of it, but here was all the different things that she had to do in the bathroom at night to get herself ready, and it was like an assembly line.

Adriane: It was like, "Shoo, shoo, shoo, we're g- we're gonna grab this," and whenever a race car gets off the track. And it was five straight [00:18:00] days of having no battles over getting ready for bed, whereas it was a battle every single night before that. 

Dori: Well, and to reiterate, these are parents who have tried just saying the things.

Dori: They have, they've tried all the, what I'll call, quote unquote, "normal stuff." And this is kind of like the next- There 

Adriane: is no normal, Dorri ... the 

Dori: next step. I know, I know. I was like, quote unquote, "normal". But they've taken the, they've gotten to the point where they're like, just nothing works. And so this is actually giving them responses where it's not painful anymore.

Dori: It's 

Adriane: not working. Yes, there's more compliance. Mm. And to be honest, it lowers your own cortisol. We are all wired to play. Along the way, we develop a belief that play is no longer productive. The research would say the opposite. The research strongly supports that play is the most productive any hum- productive thing any [00:19:00] human can do.

Adriane: I look at Google, they have ways to play, you know, in their offices. And the company that I worked for was a ed tech company. When we would have our conferences, we would spend a whole day and go do scavenger hunts, some pickleball, and people would look at that and be like, "That's such a waste of time."

Adriane: Actually, it was the opposite, because what it was doing was bonding us as a team. It was, uh, lowering our stress. And then when we got to work in the conference room, we had enough reserves of, you know, dopamine and serotonin and all the good things in our brains that we need to get to work. And just allowing your brain to just rest is one of the best things we can do, and it's the hardest thing ever in today's world 

Dori: I was just thinking, okay, so you've got, you've got executives playing pickleball who are having probably the best results that they could possibly have versus working straight through frustration and stress and all the things.

Dori: Right. But then when you have the parent take on a [00:20:00] role, do you ever have parents who are like, "You know, my kid's not really gonna take me seriously if I do that. If I start singing and jumping around like a monkey, there's no way they're gonna respect me as a parent." Ooh. You ever have 

Adriane: that 

Dori: kind 

Adriane: of... Yes.

Adriane: Yeah. Yes. I would say it's the opposite, that they'll respect you more because play is our first language as humans. Mm. Whenever you're using all this other language, you're using a d- adult language, that you're not speaking their language. Once you start speaking their language, it's like, ooh, it connects us.

Adriane: It bonds us. It actually produces, I keep talking about neurotransmitters and hormones, but it produces oxytocin, Mm-hmm ... it, which is the bonding hormone. So it actually, I would push back and say it actually did different. Now, if you've never been playful before, and you jump on your counter like a monkey, your kids may literally look at you like you [00:21:00] have five heads, right?

Adriane: Or resist. But I don't know. I would say just try it, and this is not just for littles. Yes, littles up until age seven are in the most playful state that they'll ever be in, and it has to do with even the brainwaves. There's, like, more theta or something. I, I need to brush up on exactly the neuroscience about that.

Adriane: But it, that's the way a child learns and makes sense of this big, scary world. They don't have the advanced cognitive skills that we as adults do. However, we think that as soon as a child can start talking well, three, four, five, that all of a sudden they're little humans. Psychologists call this an expectation gap.

Adriane: We expect them to be able to respond to, to act like the, the way we would. And a lot of times, to be honest, adults can't do what we ask of kids either. [00:22:00] Uh , and there's lots of reasons for that. Uh, and so, yeah, super... I, I, I see where the pushback can be. And to your point, too, just this week I am working with a little girl.

Adriane: So I just started the Purpose Learning program where I take my Purpose Parent transformation program where I coach one-on-one with parents, and then I'm adding teaching these skills to kids in a play-based way. W- all we do is play, and we play super, like, robot games. We play make-up-your-own game. Whatever the need that that child has, which again, usually is autonomy and needing to feel competent and that connection, and then I l- look at the skills that they're lagging, and then we find different ways to play.

Adriane: I'm not sitting there saying, "Okay, we are working on impulse control" ... because that would do nothing. We're, then, I'm playing games. I just played a game with a six-year-old with her mom. This comes from, I don't know what her name is. She has a [00:23:00] big Instagram account. I'll try to send it to you after and you can put it in the show notes.

Adriane: And it's, you just go back and forth and say one word at a time. And so I made all these story prompts based on her interests. She loves the little squishy things, and she loves unicorns. And so we made a bunch of story prompts, started reading that, and then she would say a word. She's six years old. Her mom would say a word.

Adriane: I would say a word. And she was able to track this story. She's learning so much, right? Turn-taking, impulse control, focus, all these executive function skills, and I'm not telling her we're working on all, any of those. And then the point I was gonna say about another little girl that I am, am coaching, she has been homeschooled, and she's going to a micro school this year.

Adriane: Way more flexible environment, really great environment for her, but it's hard for her to follow the rules. She does start to get pretty physical with other kids, and the teachers there are just like, "Well, [00:24:00] this can't happen." Yes, it can't happen, but it is a can't for her, not just she's just choosing to hurt others, right?

Adriane: Everything is from a nervous system lens. And she's six years old. She does not have all the skills, and compared to other kids, she's really lagging in, you know, the social skills, executive function skills. And so I formed a plan, and on there was using play. So she had a rake, and she hit a little boy with it, and that can't, that's not okay, right?

Adriane: That behavior's not okay. But what's underneath the surface? What was the need and what was the lagging skill why she hit the kid? Then what it, and they couldn't get her out of that. She was so frustrated, she so upset. They had to get all the other kids into the thing, you know, and they got stern with her, like, "You can't do this."

Adriane: And then I said, "I wonder what would have happened if you would have, let's be witches on the broom," you know, like the broomstick or the, the rake. And her [00:25:00] mom was like, "I bet she would've got out of that right away." Because we're just speaking her language. But I get this. The teacher's like, "Yeah, but then the other kids are gonna think we're gonna just letting her get away with it," or, "We feel like we're just letting her get away with it."

Adriane: And in the moment, that's not the time to teach and talk about how we don't hit. She's flooded with stress. She's being very impulsive. If we can use play to switch the neural networks, we're building the stairways up to the part of the brain we need to be in control, which is the thinker part of the brain, that prefrontal cortex.

Adriane: Then outside the moment, we read stories about how we don't hit kids. We, 'cause you can still use other forms of play outside, which is reading stories. Uh, we learn, I mean, we learn so much through stories, right? That's why I'm telling these stories, um, to the listeners, so that they can apply it to their life.

Adriane: Other ways is through imagination, through watching TV. My kids never [00:26:00] had Bluey, but it looks like Bluey is a really great way to, to learn some of these things. So you can teach outside of that moment. In the moment, we needed to connect her back up to her prefrontal cortex, get her out of her emotional state so that she could get her thinker brain back on to make better choices.

Adriane: So we're not just letting her get away with it, or it's not about respect at all if you look at the neuroscience behind it. 

Dori: I love the fact that you just mentioned some of the other areas of play, because I think another thing that I wondered about was how many parents feel like, like you said earlier, like, this is another thing to add onto the list, when in all actuality they might already be doing it, and they just don't use it in the way that it could really f- function for them.

Adriane: Correct. 

Dori: Is that pretty common? 

Adriane: Yes. Movement, movement is the best way. Like, I mentioned dance, jumping, exercising together. Uh, that's really, really great play language to use for teenagers. Go [00:27:00] for a run with them, go shoot hoops, go kick a soccer ball. Anything where it's, you know, reciprocated and that's still able to connect the two of you.

Adriane: Touch and coziness, being cozy in blankets or building forts, uh, that's a way that you can use play to connect. Action and leadership teaching. Uh, I do a play language speed dating when I talk on this, and it's super fun. I usually talk to mom groups with The Mom Co., and they sit at tables of usually anywhere between five and 10 moms, and so we do a bunch of these types of things.

Adriane: Uh, silliness. For that, I have them speak in giborous- gibberish. They're not allowed to use real words, and they have to have an actual conversation with each other. I have them take stuffed animals, and a lot of times, 'cause it's a group that I'm speaking to tomorrow, they are concerned that they have to bring stuffed animals.

Adriane: "What are we gonna do?" And so I [00:28:00] have them build a character with the stuffed animal, and they have to have a conversation with each other through their stuffed animal, and some people you can tell if that's a strong play language for them or not but a lot of times, maybe when they were little that was totally what they loved, but they got in trouble for playing that way.

Adriane: Or I have a four-week class where we really dive into the barriers of play, we dive into your play languages, and I had a mom share that it wasn't until she took the class that, and did some digging, that she remembers when she was about 10 that her parents threw all of her Barbies away and told her she's too old to play with Barbies.

Adriane: She hates playing Barbies with her girls. Mm-hmm. E- or it would f- feel stressful, and it's because it was connected to that, and she had no idea it was connected to that. Again, all behavior is communicating something. 

Dori: Wow. And that's definitely, again, back to [00:29:00] the, um, generational views of things and getting passed on and, wow, that's crazy.

Dori: That would be really hard to wanna play if you've had that kind of experience. 

Adriane: Exactly. And so it's good to look at that- Pay attention to it, be aware of it, and then go, "Okay, what can I do instead?" So with her, she loved theater and acting. So I said, "Okay, what part of playing with dolls or Barbies do you not like?"

Adriane: "Oh, having to come up with their dialogue. It just feels like chalk, you know, nails on a chalkboard." And so then I told her, "Why don't you pull a kids book and use dialogue from the kids book that's not coming from your own brain. You can just read it as if you're reading a script." Now with ChatGPT, Claude, you can put it in there.

Adriane: At least to bridge the gap to make it feel a little safer in your body. And then the more you do that, then the brain will remember, 'cause you loved playing with Barbies when you were little, and your brain will f- will come back to that being a safe thing for you to do [00:30:00] versus it being dangerous 

Dori: Love that.

Dori: My goodness. You know We're talking about ways to connect with the kids. All of us make a mistake at some point. Like, a- again, That's Good Parenting is that name specifically because we know that there are mistakes that we're gonna make and we're not perfect. So even the most brilliant, well-informed parents are still gonna lose their patience at some time.

Dori: Mm-hmm. So is there a way, Adrian, to use play to kind of bring things back, to kind of repair, um... K- okay, you're shaking your head. Tell me about 

Adriane: that. Yes. Yes. I, and I like that you use the word repair. I call this rupture and repair. We have ruptures all the time, and the research is very clear on this, that if we can come to repair 95% of the time.

Adriane: The problem is that's not the model that a lot of us adults were given. Most of the parents I work with, when we get to this section on rupture and repair, did your [00:31:00] caregiver, your parents ask for forgiveness or say sorry? No, because that meant they weren't a good parent if they said sorry to their child.

Adriane: You know, and so that's something that we work through and, and then we realize, okay, well, when we grew up, our ki- our parents demanded respect, but that, is that respectful to not ever apologize? To... It wasn't reciprocated, right? And so now we have the opportunity to be able to do that and reciprocate that.

Adriane: So coming back to repair, and I teach a meaningful, a recipe for a meaningful repair, but you absolutely can put play into this. I, at night sometimes, you know, being a human myself, will get frustrated that bath time, bedtime is taking so long. I'm tired. I'm ready for the day to end. And sometimes I get a little spicy.

Adriane: You know, I'm not as [00:32:00] playful as I teach and preach and know that is better. And then I have... It's like a trigger n- now that, or it triggers me to do this, is- My son has a Murphy bed because where I am in my office, I'm technically in his bedroom too, and we have a bed that we put up into the wall. So when we bring the bed down, there's pillows on the edge of the bed that need to go back up to the top.

Adriane: And so every night, even if I've been spicy, even if, you know, like I am not being the kindest, not connecting before I correct, we have that opportunity every night. I take the pillows and just start beating him with them, and he loves it. Not beating, that's the wrong word. But you know, just take the pillows and I...

Adriane: And it was a- on accident about a year ago, because I just throw the pillows up and he happened to be s- laying on the bed, and he just thought it was so awesome. And then he's throwing it back, and we're totally repairing without having to say, "Hey, I wasn't very nice earlier." And, um, and then [00:33:00] we're just able to come back to connection through laughing.

Adriane: Laughing together is so big. I... If with your teenagers, you can listen to comedy or a podcast together and laugh together, share similar experiences, all of those things are very helpful. 

Dori: That's awesome. I love the playfulness piece of that, because I do think there's an awkwardness for a while, and you know, trying to figure out what you're gonna say, "How do I fix this?

Dori: What..." But what you did was you took all that away and just let him know that you still, even though you're feeling spicy, you still loved him and still found him worthy of your energy and your affection. So I 

Adriane: think that's- Absolutely. And there's four ways that I teach on how to use play to teach, is the first is connection play, like I just talked about with the pillows.

Adriane: And it takes a minute, but what it does is it brings us back together, truly is repairing any rupture we had. And then the second one is body play for [00:34:00] regulation, so that's a lot of movement. My middle son is profoundly gifted, autistic, anxiety, OCD, probably has Tourette syndrome, lots of things, very neuro spicy, and he really struggled with emotional regulation when he was younger.

Adriane: And then whenever he hit puberty, we're finally on the other end, and which is w- lovely. But we did a lot of things to get to this place, and we use a lot of body play for regulation. We did this thing called pushies, where he would push me down the hallway. It's meeting his need for autonomy and control.

Adriane: It was meeting his proprioceptive need, which is our body's like- our body's awareness in space and that pressure that our bodies need, and he needed a lot. Uh, we would do wheelbarrows. Uh, that was also meeting all those needs and, and to get him into the bath. "Put your hands down." I would, we would, I would do wheelbarrows and then he would do it to me, too.[00:35:00]

Adriane: And I would do wheel- wheelbarrows across the house. So there's a lot of things that you can do with body play. Airplane is really great. You can pull that back out. If you don't know what that is, you lay on your back, your legs are up, and your kids go on your feet and you lift them up into the air. We like doing that, and my kids love doing airplane with me as well, now that they're bigger.

Adriane: Uh, and then the third one is healing play. You could use story to heal. If they had a hard time at school or a kid was mean to them or they lost something or broke something that they... it was really important to them. As parents, our tendency, which is well intended, is to say things like, "It's okay," or, "I'll go get you a new one," or we wanna solve it for them instead of allowing t- them to feel their feelings and then help them heal and recover from that.

Adriane: That's how we build resilience. And so the, there's a whole story method that I teach, uh, the types of stories you can [00:36:00] create, and then you can take that, throw it into an AI LLM and and then have it create a story for you. And then the fourth is the playful discipline. So as we talked about, the robot, the monkey.

Adriane: The race car driver's a really easy, good one. Making it into a challenge or a race. Again, if you have kids that are really competitive, that's probably not the best way to play with them. .

Dori: That's awesome. I love those. And again, they're all things that we can do. It's not a lot of work. It might require a little bit of thinking, a little planning or awareness, but it's not so hard that you can't do it. 

Adriane: Yeah, and I make it easy for you. I have two printables one is Playful Parenting Scripts. You can print that bad boy out, put it on the fridge, and go and read it, and then do it. That way you don't have to think about it on the spot. Uh, then the other one is Playful Parenting as well, and there's, like, more ideas on how to incorporate play. 

Dori: Love it. I love it.

Dori: Those are [00:37:00] the things that, again, in the, in the moment when you're just feeling yourself getting spicy, that's a good opportunity to find something that's already done. 

Adriane: Yes, and, and the whole time thing, I think it's a very valid objection when it comes to this, but it's just because it's what you're not used to, and maybe that wasn't modeled for you either.

Adriane: And what I've noticed, the more playful I've become, the more time I'm saving. For example, I remember one time I was... I used to have a podcast for the company I worked for, and we had an interviewer on. It was the day before this had happened when we were talking about play, and my son did not wanna get dressed for school.

Adriane: He's running around the island, and what do I do? I start getting frustrated, right? It's like, we're... And the clock is ticking. We gotta get out of the house. So then I could feel my blood pressure rising, the heat in my body ri- rising, and I'm like, "We gotta get dressed. We gotta get dressed." And [00:38:00] I'm cha- literally chasing him around the island, I don't know for how long.

Adriane: Then I got the brilliant idea, "Adrian, play." And I had his shirt in my hands, and he ran and he dropped down to the ground, was hiding in the corner. I grabbed his shirt- I looked at it and pretended to put it on. He was five at the time, and I'm a full-grown woman. His shirt is not going to fit me. "Is this how I put it on?

Adriane: Oh, is this how I put it on?" "No. That's not how you put it on." What did he do? He grabbed it from me, and he put it on. That took 15 seconds versus running around the island. And then I did it with his pants, and then I put his socks on my hands. "Is this where socks go?" But then sometimes, and this is the question I get from parents, "Yeah, but what if they don't wanna stop playing, and I need them to stop?"

Adriane: So then there are, I think in one of the guides I have on there, are playful ways to transition out of play, and a lot of it is consistency, routine. Like, with the playful [00:39:00] thing at night on the bed, I, we do it for a few minutes. He would, at the beginning, wanted to do it longer. Now he knows this is just, like, a minute thing, and then we, the next thing that we do is get our book.

Adriane: We read our book together. We cuddle and then go to bed. So he knows that transition or the, you know, there's a routine there. 

Dori: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Adrienne, for our listeners who are out there who are saying, "Okay, I have more questions. I need all of her resources. I need to talk to this woman right away," what is the easiest way for them to find all this information and contact you?

Adriane: Yeah. They can go to raisingkidswithpurpose.com. I have been blogging since 2018. I have a ton of free resources. And then if they go to raisingkidswithpurpose.com/chat, you can grab a time on my calendar. I would love to talk to you. One of my favorite things ever is to meet new people. Uh, my favorite pastime is to fly on a plane and get the people next to me talking the whole time.

Adriane: Uh, and so I would love to [00:40:00] chat and see if there's any ways that I can support you. I also have Instagram and Facebook that I've been creating a lot more content for, and so it's Raising Kids With Purpose everywhere that you can go for those types of things. 

Dori: Perfectly. Perfect. So we've got one last question.

Dori: So the parent who's listening right now who really wants to do this, they're also thinking about the time element. Like, I barely have enough time. I barely have enough energy to get out the door. What's one small, simple way that a parent could begin to use play differently with their child today? 

Adriane: Change your voice.

Adriane: Mm. I do this with some of the parents that resist play, is, and maybe we can do it here- ... if you're open to it. 

Dori: Sure. 

Adriane: Is pretend that you have a balloon- Mm-hmm ... and it's filled with helium. Okay, you ready? We're gonna suck our helium.

Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Dori, for having me on the podcast today. Nina, thank you for being on the podcast and [00:41:00] helping us see how play can be a part of our family 

Adriane: lives. Okay, now how can you be mad? How can you be frustrated if you're- It helps me slow down. And it helps you slow down. Yes. 

Speaker 3: Yes. 

Adriane: And the more you play, the more your kids will use that as the go-to.

Adriane: If I start getting frustrated, my nine-year-old will turn it into play. "Mom, where's the balloon?" Or, "Let's blow up our balloon together." He leads the play. I posted a really short video on Instagram where he had just cleaned our back door, which is a huge window, and then he slammed his body onto the window.

Adriane: And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we just cleaned this." I could have been frustrated. Instead, join him. He's already leading. I slam my body on the window, then he slams his body on the window. We did this for I don't know, a couple of minutes, and all it did was connect us, and then I handed him the cleaning product, and then he cleaned it again.

Adriane: You know? And that [00:42:00] connection and depositing into my son's bank account of connection, these kids need us, and they need us off our phones and looking at them in the eyes and having excited looks on our faces instead of the constant... I got in trouble one time from a therapist. She told me that I'm really intense in between my eyes.

Adriane: I really had to work on this. I'm just intense in general. Uh, so the more we make those connection deposits, and play is a number way, one way to do it, we are bonding our kids to us, which then will make them want to behave 

Dori: And what great memories you're creating. I mean, just even the window memory. Remember when we slammed ourselves against the window and cleaned it and did it again?

Dori: I mean, so what? You, you get more spray. 

Adriane: Yes, those core building memories. I love that. Yes. 

Dori: Yes. Yes. Well, I truly love this conversation. I, I love that play can become such a powerful piece in families' [00:43:00] lives and that it, like you said, it just gives us more opportunities to connect and for our kids to really feel like we see them and understand them.

Dori: Mm-hmm. So I think this is amazing. Thank you, Adrienne, for the, just all the ideas that you just gave us. It's amazing. 

Adriane: Yes. I love it, and again, my go-to has always been play because honestly, play saved me as a kid. I had a lot of childhood trauma, and I was super imaginative, and it really helped me survive childhood.

Adriane: And so for me, it's my go-to. So I have all the ideas, but I'm noticing that for a lot of parents, it's the opposite. And so if I can help you in any way, I'd love to do so. 

Dori: That's amazing. Thank you again so much for being here and being a part of That's Good Parenting, Adrienne. Thank you.