SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hello everyone, welcome back to Beyond the Stories. I'm Rita. If you've just listened to today's Once Upon a Feeling Story, this episode is where we slow things down and unpack together with an expert. These conversations are here to support parents, caregivers, and educators, to explore the emotional themes beneath the story, what children might be picking up on developmentally and relationally, and how storytelling can become a tool for connection rather than correction. I'm so glad you're here, and let's get into it. Hi everyone, thank you so much for joining us for today's Beyond the Stories episode. If you have not heard the previous story episode, Big Orange Sky, I highly suggest you pause this right now, go back to listen to that, and then come back because you're going to gain so much more. But if you already have, you already know what we're going to be talking about today. Guiding children and family and everybody around our community when something big like a wildfire happens. And today I have a dear friend with us, Miss Kara Bender. Hi, Kara. Hi, Rita. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for sparing an hour of your time in this busy, busy schedule to spend with us and to um answer all the questions that I have for all the parents out there listening. For those who don't know you, you are an occupational therapist here in Pasadena and you work with both neural typical and neurodivergent children. And with all the guests that we have on the podcast, I always start with the origin story. So can you tell us why occupational therapy?

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, it's a really good question. So I'm a parent and I work with parents and I work with children. What I think is interesting in the origin story is I was an OT and I worked with children for a few years before I became a parent myself. And it's really going through that experience has put added a new layer and added a new perspective to my practice in working with children and with families. And like you mentioned, I do work with primarily neurodivergent children, so children with diagnoses or identities of as autistic or ADHD mainly, but I also work with children with sensory processing challenges, developmental disabilities, and lots of other challenges as well. I have always been interested in how the brain works and how the body works. In way back in high school, I took anatomy and physiology because I wasn't interested in physics. And it's just so interesting to me the way all of the different systems in the body work together, hopefully seamlessly. And when they're not working together so optimally, that is where therapies and supports and accommodations can come into play. So what I love about being an OT is that it can be something different every day. And my practice has really evolved over time. I've worked in schools, I've worked in an outpatient setting, and most recently I've been able to work more and more in a consultative fashion. So, in some of the work that I've been able to do with you and your organization, Rita, some of the other projects I've been able to work on throughout the city of LA, throughout different areas in applying my knowledge as an occupational therapist, specifically with neurodivergent children, in order to improve accessibility and inclusion in general. So that's kind of very, very broadly what I do. All kinds of different things, but I love to use my knowledge as an OT creatively to help children and help parents in lots of different ways.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Now, for those of us who have never really grown up in the world that you're describing, where children are taught, or ourselves, yeah, I think I still need to teach myself like how to link my bodily feelings to my brain. How does it look like in little kids in terms of how they communicate through behavior and sensation and movement and you know, to our topic today, especially in those really overwhelming situations? Can you give us like a list or like a kind of like a broad picture of what it may look like? So at least this is on the parents' radar, what to look out for, type of a thing.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Yeah. So what you're saying, I think it's really important for parents to know what to expect in different developmental stages. Because so, for those of us who have children that are already past that sort of toddler preschooler age at this point, we know that some of the stages they go through uh can be surprising and startling and overwhelming. And you, in your parenting journey, you're hit very quickly with the idea that in order for a parent to do their job, they have to be prepared for their job description to change every day, basically, especially in those early years because children are developing so quickly. And sometimes I have parents come to me and they use the word regression to describe their child skill. They might say, I used to be able to drop my child off at daycare or at preschool and they had no problem, but now we've had a regression in behavior and they're crying and they're sobbing and they can't be separated from me. Or my child's teacher told me that they were previously able to get along with other children, but now they've had a regression in their behavior. And I I really feel like there's no such thing as a regression, that children's skills are evolving, and as their brains are evolving, as they understand more about the world, about relationships with between people, they're responding to it with a new frame of reference, really sometimes day-to-day. Um, so we do see patterns of something like separation anxiety emerging at a particular age, and that is normal and expected, and it's not a sign of your poor parenting or your child's poor behavior. It's simply something to expect, and it's simply a hurdle to get past as a parent, which is not to say that there are not tools or strategies that a parent would be able to utilize in order to make that stage easier for everyone, but it's something that most children are gonna per experience at one point in time. So yeah, I really feel like same as with kids, is that parents' education is their really their best tool, knowing what to expect and when to expect it, and having the sort of zoomed out perspective that this is a part of development, and we're gonna get through this together.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

One thing that I realized, especially during the fire or anything catastrophic like that, those kind of events, as we're I feel like we're probably experiencing more and more of these natural disasters that is just uncontrollable and you're really just put in place and you just gotta deal with it. I think a lot of the times as an adult, what I find is like I am in it myself. I'm like, I'm freaking out and trying to be present and triage whatever is going on, and at the same time taking care of little brains, little bodies. I think and I don't know whether this something to do with how we were brought up or whatnot. I think immediately we a lot of times we decide not to talk about it, right? Like we we basically sometimes feel like, okay, I'm barely holding on. I don't want my kid to see me freaking out. I don't want my kid to think like there is something really bad, and if they freak out and then everything just comes apart. What is your strategy on dealing with that when we have big emotions and the kids are having big emotions? Is honesty the way to go? Or is there something like in the middle? Like, what is your suggestion? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

First of all, I know that this is something that a lot of parents had to deal with last year, and it's something that is so incredibly challenging, and that there really is no right answer from the start. Something that I observed at the time through the families that I was working with here in the Pasadena area is that the families were coming in having experienced something so traumatic, whether it was families who had lost their home or families who were displaced from their home, hopefully temporarily, children who had lost their schools, their entire school campuses, families that were experiencing large disruptions, is that I would check in with the parents and they would say something like, Oh, we're a lot luckier than others, or we're doing okay and we're doing the best, and our situation is nothing compared to what some other people have experienced. And you're right, I think it's partially a result of the way that we were raised in a different generation, and some of us in different places with different cultures, where perhaps it there's an element of not being able to face those big emotions ourselves. Self-protection, right, is not wanting to be word-vomiting out our entire traumatic existence in any given conversation. But it really the pattern persisted so for so many over and over in my experience that I really began to wonder whether the results of these conversations was potentially invalidating to the children's experience who were hearing their parents describe something that for them was a huge change to say, oh, it's no big deal. And of course, that's not what they were saying, but we have to think about what children are hearing at their given developmental time. So, from a child's perspective, again, lots of families experienced being evacuated from their homes or having to leave their homes temporarily for a few weeks or even a few months for smoke remediation and things like that. That's a huge change for a young child. Some families kept their homes, but they had to get rid of all of their belongings. So everything a child has collected. I think about my I have a young child, and I think about what he would do if he lost his stuffed animal collection or if he lost his toy cars. So these children were experiencing loss to them that was greater than they ever could have imagined. And what was the way that the parents were telling the story? How was that affecting them? And it's really still a question mark in my mind. I don't think we have a way of knowing. But I do think that there needs to be a balance in terms of parenting and parenting a child through a big thing like that. There's no way that we're going to be able to completely close off our emotional state from our children because they children are very wise, they're very smart, they're very intuitive. And even if we are saying things, they're gonna know what our feelings are underneath. But making sure that we are creating a space that they feel that they can share every part of their story, every part of their experience, even if they might think logically, intellectually at their third, fourth, fifth grade level, that this is maybe a little bit my losses maybe a little bit silly compared to somebody else's. But yeah, I think you I think parents have to find the in-between between sharing their personal feelings and emotions and holding space for their children as well, making sure that they're there is space for both.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

And for those of us who may have downplayed the severity and of the experience, a year out now we're a year later, what can we do? Or is there anything to do to to co correct it, if you will, to to address this? Because I think the last thing that we all want is having a traumatic fire and then have some sort of a traumatic effect on these children's lives going forward. So for those of us now finally like getting regulated ourselves and things like that a year later, maybe two years later, what can we do? What can we do now with our children to move forward to a better place?

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Just like with so many of the things I work with families on in terms of social emotional awareness and social emotional development, modeling, I honestly think is the most effective strategy. Sometimes as parents, we come to our kids asking things of them that we would never do ourselves, right? We're asking them to let us into their emotions and their thoughts and their fears and their worries. And we are not necessarily able to do that ourselves. So similar to when I work with a family with a child with um, let's say executive functioning challenges, I'm gonna ask the parents to say out loud their thoughts in their process of um figuring out how to do something. We're making macaroni and cheese. I'm gonna look on the side of the box to see, let's see, how much water do I need to put into the pan? Modeling out loud the experience that we are hoping that the child will be able to do on their own. So, same thing for processing, for being able to tell our story through something traumatic that might have happened is sharing your own story, sharing your own thoughts. Saying the other day I was driving and I drove past where your school used to be, and it made me feel sad. And I thought about all the good memories we had there, and modeling that experience for them so that they're able to know that there is space for that in the family. And again, I think it's best that we model without expectations. Sometimes our child might follow that up with something that they were feeling or thinking that day, and sometimes they might say, Hey mom, do I have soccer practice later? Or redirecting to something else. And that's okay. I think just continuing to make the space modeling is probably the best way to offer space for them to be able to share.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

That is so interesting because I think I'm trying to think about all of the conversation like me and my girls have in the car, right? And then sometimes it is frustrating, like I'm trying to say something really important, and I'm like pouring my heart out, and then the answer with what is in the snack bag or or something along that line. And it is for me, it is so triggering, right? And then sometimes I'm like, Did you hear what I just said? I'm having a moment here and it's not coming back to me. And I'll just felt, I don't know, I'll just like it sometimes with a snap, which is horrible. And so I think for a lot of us parents, when we do practice that, and when it's not met with the same equal kind of gravito from our children, I think if we all know that, okay, they have hurt us and it's fine, they're gonna be fine. I think we can all probably let loose a little bit and just let the moment be the moment. Are they little signs or something? Like we can what should we look out for? Is it through their behavior or like their movement? What are we seeing? What are the cues that we can get from our children that were that's not words or like a hug that is nothing physical that's not as tangible, that we're like, okay, like I think they're good. Or maybe there's some signs that telling us, okay, we really should start looking for OT like you and work through some of the things, even if they're not verbalizing it, and especially for younger children who doesn't have the vocabulary.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

So the thing about going through a traumatic experience is that it can change the nervous system, it can change the way your nervous system physically reacts to stimuli in your environment. So I'll give you my fourth grader explanation that I used earlier this week, where we were talking about the amygdala, which is a very important part of your brain. So the job of the amygdala is to be the alarm system of your nervous system. Your amygdala senses safety and danger. And some people have an extra sensitive amygdala that might sense danger even when danger's not there. So this for us is this feeling of like a racing heart or a hot face or like shakiness when something startles you, when you think you see something out of the corner of your eye, when a siren whizzes past your head, and you get that sort of like alert feeling in your body. For kids with extrasensitive nervous systems, they're feeling that alert all the time. And you can kind of imagine like how that must feel if you're feeling that over and over. Sometimes this happens after a traumatic event, like I mentioned. Sometimes this happens because a child has an underlying sensory processing difference that affects the way that the nervous system is interpreting information in their environment. But often it affects the child's overall ability to self-regulate throughout their day. So these are those kids that are quick to anger, going from zero to 10, or these kids that like can't seem to deal with a small frustration and just melt down. These big feelers, these big emotional sensors. Sometimes they're kids that can be labeled as school as a kid that's hard to get along with, or a kid that doesn't have a whole lot of friends because to other children they can appear really unpredictable. And these are signs of that sort of nervous system overactivation. And this is one of the signs that can show up after a child experiences a traumatic event. So I can speak from my own experience in working with some children. So some of my clients I have had previous relationships with, and I was able to support them through the events of the fires last year. And some of them are clients who are new to me that I have seen that have been sort of new referrals, new families reaching out for services after the fires because their children are seeming different to them. They have different behaviors, they have different reactions. And again, I think education is the most important thing and just understanding that this these sort of events and these big life changes, especially if you have a child with underlying neurodivergence, can change the nervous system and supportive services like occupational therapy or play therapy, which is mental health-based therapy for young children, can be really helpful for children that have experienced sort of a big shift in their nervous system.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

So many things. Yeah. Tell me about stories. I love to create, collaborate with authors, illustrators on creating stories like these, which most people don't really go to Romans or and grab a copy because for a birthday party, stories that talk about not so great things, icky things. But you know, I always believe in like if you know how it's gonna go down, then when, if it happens, you already know what's gonna happen. There's a way out. Tell me your take and how you use storytelling in your practice, working with families or in your own home, and how parents can really like using that either write their own or go to the bookstore or the library. Like, how did they use things like storytelling, storybooks, and things like that to help their parenting game?

SPEAKER_00 21:43

Well, stories were the first way that you and I connected. And when I learned about your organization and your mission, it made so much sense to me because I use stories all the time with my clients. I use storytelling as a medium and One of the questions I probably get asked most by parents I work with is Do you have a book that talks about fill in the blank? Um I really think they're so powerful for a number of different reasons. One I think is that recognition and representation, not just of the identity of the characters, but the experience of characters in a story. I think there is something so powerful for a child to see a character in a story going through something similar to what they've experienced because it makes them feel not alone, right? This must be something that has happened to other people because somebody wrote a whole book about it, right? There's something so powerful and so connecting when a child can see their experience reflected in a book or a story. I think that parents love to reach for books and for stories as tools because of what you were saying earlier, where a parent is also likely experiencing some challenges, right? We could be talking about something huge, the fire or the loss of a home, where this is something that a parent never could have imagined. But even if we're talking about smaller challenges, going to preschool for the first time or going to kindergarten for the first time, still a really emotional moment for a parent to experience. And they are likely afraid to say the wrong thing. They are likely not quite sure what to say. They might be in that activated state themselves. And being able to reach for a whole book with all these words and simply just read it and feel like they can connect with their child in that way, I think it is really powerful. So I love books. I I share books all of the time, and I think they're such a powerful medium.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

I love that. And it's so interesting too, because I I think we were just talking to some of my other colleagues and friends, is that our home was fine from the fire. We had to evacuate, it was more of an inconvenience than anything else. But our community was heavily impacted. We know friends who have lost their homes, and we know friends who's you know who had to throw everything away from the house because of the smoke damage. And it was really hard for me to explain that to my children, what these people are going through. And they obviously don't have the time or the capacity to tell us how they're feeling at that point. And trying to explain to a bunch of kids as to why it's probably not a good time to ask for a play date. It's probably not a good time to think about all the fun things because what their friends are going through, storytelling became a way for me to show them this is what they're feeling and this is what they're they're going through. And for some reason, laying it out in a storyboard where they were able to follow the experience of different perspectives, like they figure out what is the right thing to say without me telling them what the right thing would be. And that was like one of the best things I would have done. So, like when we wrote Big Orange Sky, I felt like it's not only writing for all of those people who have lost everything, it was writing into the rest of us as well, just to be able to hold space and then teach our children like this is what happens. And yeah, we're not heavily affected this time, but no, it happened.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Yeah, and it's that idea of they talk about windows and mirrors, right? In children's literature. A mirror is a story that you see your own experience reflected in, and a window is one that gives you a window into somebody else's perspective. So it's something that that this story is something that is able to be shared with children of all different perspectives, and each one is able to take something different from it.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Windows and mirrors. We gotta remember that. And that's what the stories are. I mean, this that windows and mirrors, like saying it's coming up in all different places during my this past week. I don't think you're the first person who said windows and mirrors to me today, like this week. So I'm just like, yes, windows and mirrors. I think if there is one thing that you wish parents understood about children's responses to big things, big changes. Like there was a couple of things you wanted to kind of like that the key takeaway from our conversation today, what would that be?

SPEAKER_00 26:26

What I wish parents could take away is it takes time. We our society is so fast paced. We're moving to the next thing. When you have a child in kindergarten, you're getting ready for first grade. When you have a child in fifth grade, you're getting ready for middle school. We're always thinking about the next thing, and we're fearing that our children are falling behind or being left behind when they're going through hard things. But it really is important to um give them space, give them time, and support them in the moment that they are in right now. We don't always have to think about the next moment. Let's be concerned with this moment and supporting my child, the child that's right in front of me, the child that has needs, having confidence in yourself that I know how I'm the expert at my own child. I know what they need from me, and I know what they need in order to work through a hard thing. It might be a thing that is harder than anything that your family has experienced before, but you know how to be there for your child. And if you need support, there's lots of professional experts in the field that know how to support many different types of families in many different types of ways.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

That is so good. Presence. Presence is what is demanded of us in not only in caregiving and raising children, but in everything else. Oh my goodness, that's all I got for you. Thank you so much for coming. Do this with me. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of people who want to find you now and say, yes, we need support. So what is the best way? Where can we find you, Kara? And come to get in contact with you, work with you, and I will also link everything in the podcast description.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

I would love to get in touch. You can reach me online. My Instagram and my website are exactly the same. It's herewegrow.co. And yeah, we talk about all things sensory, child development, accessibility, and inclusion. And I would love for some of your followers to follow along with me.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Thank you so much, Kira. This is not going to be our only episode. I'm going to have you on for many more. But thank you so much. That's good. I would love to. Hooky duck. And that will be all for today. Until next time. Thank you so much for spending this time with us on Beyond the Stories. If this conversation was helpful, we'd love for you to share with a friend, a fellow parent, or anyone who might benefit from it. And if you feel moved to, please leave us a five-star review wherever you get your podcast. It truly helps more people find these conversations. You can also find more stories and resources by downloading the Gucci app in Apple App Store. All the links and resources, as well as ways to connect with us, are in the podcast description. And if you have any questions, episode requests, or topics you'd love for us to explore, would truly love to hear from you. Thank you so much again for listening, and we will see you next time.