How to Beat Parenting Anxiety (with Dr. Alison Escalante)

[Dana] (00:03)
Welcome to Phoenix in Flame. I’m Dana, and this is my podcast on pushing through and transforming even when you feel like a pile of ash. As I’ve said before, I absolutely adore podcasting because it gives me the ability to connect with some of the most amazing people, with some of the most amazing backgrounds and stories, and to be able to bring those stories to you so that we as a collective can feel like we are together in this, that we are not alone. That’s one of the reasons why I originally started my podcast, because as a psychotherapist I was hearing so many people lament about their struggles and they would say, “Dana, I just feel like it’s just me,” and I would know it was absolutely not, but I didn’t really have a platform at the time to put that out there so they would be able to hear other people’s stories so they would know they’re absolutely not alone. So today we have the privilege of talking with Dr. Alison Escalante. Dr. Escalante is a pediatrician, author of the book “Sigh, See, Start: How to Be the Parent Your Child Needs in a World That Won’t Stop Pushing.” She’s also a TEDx speaker, a writer, and a woman on a mission to ease the epidemic of anxiety that has convinced us that we are always failing and is stealing our joy. Dr. Escalante, welcome to Phoenix in Flame.

[Alison] (01:36)
Thank you so much for having me on today.

[Dana] (01:40)
I’m excited, I’m excited. So start wherever you would like. I’ve got all kinds of information about you, but I’m going to kind of back up and let you take the forefront here and just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you have going on.

[Alison] (01:56)
Well, okay then. I mean, I think that could get, I’m originally from New Jersey, and we have a saying in New Jersey, “to make a long story short.” So asking a question like that is just very dangerous with someone from New Jersey. We are naturally wordy and we can just go on.

[Dana] (02:01)
Ha ha! Well, let me kind of narrow it down a little bit. You talked about your three-step method to help parents raise their kids mindfully, skillfully, and also enjoy doing it. Let’s just kind of start with that, and then I’ve got other questions and comments about everything you’re doing, because I think it’s so important. I hear this all the time and it is such a struggle for parents, because they do feel like they’re not gonna be able to do it right. What were your, why did you come up with this? Tell us about your book, Sigh, See, Start, your three-step method, and why in the world did you even decide to put your time that you don’t have and your energy that you don’t have into developing this? Because you’re already a pediatrician, you’re already a mother of your own, you’re running around like crazy, and then you decide to allocate time and effort to create this method for parents. So to me that says you saw something that you thought would really be helpful and it was totally worth it, and the application, the ROI would be amazing. So fill us in on your motivation behind that.

[Alison] (03:37)
In pediatrics, depending on where you work, you get 10 to 15 minutes to see each patient, and those visits are problem-focused by necessity. Even checkups, which are supposed to be thorough, and mine were, which is why I often ran behind, are also focused on very specific areas, right? Preventive medicine, how is the child developing, etc. And so what we didn’t have time for was to talk about the bigger areas of growth, development, relationship between a parent and a child, all the things that make the most impact in how a child grows up. And early on I noticed that parents were really anxious, and over time I realized that it was anxiety, but it was more anxiety driven by a sense that they had to get it right. There was a precise way to get it right, if they just kept listening and looking and reading art blogs and listening to their Facebook group, they would find that precise way to get it right. But everyone came in to me with different ideas of what right looked like, and it was crazy. So I called that the ShouldStorm, the storm of shoulds that really just bombards parents with confusing, contradictory messages. “You should do this, you should do that, you should never do that other thing. If you make the slightest false step, you’re going to mess up your kid for life.” And that had to be addressed.

[Dana] (05:02)
Yes. I’m listening to you talking, and that is so prevalent, it happens so much, and the anxiety that’s created. I’m also wondering what role you feel like social media has played in that, because I’m a slightly older generation, I’m not raising my kids, my kids are older now, and we didn’t have access to all the information that the parents raising young children now have. Do you have any thoughts on the impact of social media on parenting?

[Alison] (05:55)
I think social media intensifies trends that were already there. The first chapter of my book looks at some key historical moments in the ’80s that set the stage for this approach to parenting that we take now. So it was already there before the internet, before social media, it’s just that social media supercharged it. And I’m a big fan of social media myself, it’s how I connect with people, my Facebook groups are places where I’ve just met the most wonderful people. But as we all know, there are also plenty of places, you have to be very selective about where you spend your time on social media, because it’s very easy, and most of the time social media is actually a vehicle for the ShouldStorm.

[Dana] (06:55)
When you say the should storm, I read that in your bio information and that instantly attracted me, because I remember back in the day we called it the tyranny of the shoulds, and it’s so easy to get caught up in that. What are some of these shoulds that you hear parents being attacked by when they come in to see you? What do you hear from them?

[Alison] (07:06)
Everything. It starts as soon as you contemplate getting pregnant. Then there’s all kinds of pregnancy shoulds that women are exposed to now. “You should eat this, you should eat that.” Some of that, by the way, is medical advice about proper diet during pregnancy, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Or, “you should have natural childbirth without an epidural. You should give a bathtub birth.” Look, if you want to do that, that’s fine, it’s just, I don’t want it to be because you were forced or driven by a culture that’s telling you that. Or as soon as the baby comes, “you should breastfeed at all costs.” But then I’ve had parents where they’re actually getting people shaming them for using formula, or people commenting about using car seats or not using car seats. So the shoulds often go against common sense or against good medical advice. And because we love our children, women in particular, men are feeling it too, the dads are, but dads in general are a little more resilient to this pressure, although I know some dads I interviewed in the book are feeling it just as hard as the moms, but we moms will push ourselves to the breaking point in order to meet these shoulds. I did, when my first son was born, I was getting emails on my brand new iPhone every day from the breastfeeding movement touting research that said my son would have a lower IQ if I didn’t breastfeed. So even though he had a severe medical condition that led him to have colitis and eight different protein allergies and bleeding, I went on a highly restrictive diet, basically, and that was before anyone knew about quinoa, so I was on an extremely low-protein vegan diet, and I started fainting, but I was still trying to breastfeed because I had to. And later, by the way, I just have to be very clear about this for parents: all of those studies were found to be biased by people who were promoting breastfeeding. Breastfeeding really doesn’t make a big difference in your IQ.

[Dana] (09:43)
Oh wow.

[Alison] (09:59)
It’s okay, mamas. And I never would have put a parent in my office through that kind of pressure, ever. I would have said, “oh my gosh, your health matters, your wellbeing is critically important to your child, don’t put yourself through this, I can offer you this hypoallergenic formula from a really great company.” And that’s what I eventually did, once it became clear that I was killing myself, but the guilt was extreme. And that’s just the beginning. The pressures now that I have a high schooler, all the things we’re hearing you have to do to get into a good college or his life will be ruined forever, and of course that’s not what the data shows, the data shows that it matters less than we think which college your kids go to, but you feel it, it’s powerful.

[Dana] (10:33)
Oh wow.

[Alison] (10:56)
It’s everywhere.

[Dana] (10:58)
Yeah, gosh, I’m having so many thoughts as you’re talking and I’m trying to write them down, if you see me looking down periodically I’m trying to jot down my thoughts, because I’m so riveted on what you’re saying, I’m afraid I’m going to forget what to say. So one of the things that comes to mind is, psychologically I’m listening through those ears clearly, because I’m a psychotherapist, so something I said, because I’m also the Queen of Boundaries, that’s what I’ve been touted as, and so I will say to somebody, there’s one person on this planet who has been given the responsibility of keeping you together, just one. And so if you are allowing your wheels to fall off, because I’m listening to you describe these situations, I remember being there as a mother, and if we as moms allow our own wheels to fall off because we’re just giving into the should storm, we’re just ass over elbows in this should storm, then we’re not going to be good to our children. We have to self-care, and I think that gets lost. We’ve got to keep ourselves together, I think, as mothers. That’s one of the things I’m hearing you say.

[Alison] (12:11)
And yet, the way this culture works is that advice right there gets turned into another should. Not only should you be doing everything and making sure your child gets every single opportunity and still look good and energetic while you’re doing it, but you also have to have those boundaries and you also have to make time for self-care. There was a wonderful article in the New York Times several years ago about how self-care

[Alison] (12:41)
is one of the first things parents need to say no to, because they’re getting so overwhelmed by all of this advice. I’m not picking on your advice, it’s good advice, it’s just that as long as we are in the should storm and we’re looking for the right shoulds to follow, we are not going to process them in a way that is wise and effective. And that’s why you need the Sigh, See, Start method, or something akin to that, in order to step out of the should storm, so that good advice or bad advice becomes something that you can pick and choose from. It becomes a tool that you can pick up as appropriate, put down as appropriate, rather than an anxiety-producing should that drives you.

[Dana] (13:29)
Got you. So go ahead and take some time here, because I’m very interested in hearing you describe your, the sigh, when, and we say sigh, it’s like S-I-G-H, see, and then start. And it reminds me of being mindful, just kind of pausing and creating that moment, just almost like you feel it as an exhale, but I really would like to hear your description of what this is and how it’s effective for the mothers that you see.

[Alison] (14:01)
So mindful presence is precisely what this is all about. So we start with sigh. Actually I should back up, do you remember in elementary school when the teacher taught you what to do if your clothes caught on fire? Stop, drop, and roll, right? What do you do if your emotions are on fire from the should storm? You sigh, see, and start. So when you feel a should, sigh. Take a deep breath into your body,

[Dana] (14:15)
Ha, stop, drop, and roll.

[Alison] (14:31)
and let it out long and slow. Now there’s a lot of breathing methods out there that are great, but sigh is the only one that’s built in, natural to our system. And the key to sighing is not the deep breath, it’s the long, slow out-breath. This is the one that sends a message to the nervous system that you are safe and it’s okay to think and connect socially. When you’re in anxiety you’re in the fight-or-flight mode, and our bodies are designed to, when we’re under threat, shut off anything that we don’t need, so we divert our energy to where we need it, which is either fighting or fleeing. And so two of the key areas in your brain that get shut down are the prefrontal cortex, where you do all your critical thinking, where you can behave as a wise parent. And the other place that gets shut down is your centers that connect socially to others and experience sympathy and empathy. So showing up to your kids without your critical thinking or your ability to be a sympathetic human, that’s a problem, and that’s what the should storm does to us. So when we sigh, that long, slow out-breath

[Dana] (15:51)
That’s a problem.

[Alison] (16:00)
sends a message to the nervous system, and if you try it right now, listeners, you will notice just a feeling in the center of your body, your shoulders go down, you start to feel really present with yourself. When I’m worked up, I sigh three times in a row because I find that three is the magic number to really get me calmed down. So now we’re becoming present, and our presence, research shows, is one of the key factors in whether our parenting is really meeting our kids’ needs or not. And kids want us to be present with them so much, a lot of their “naughty” behavior is about getting us to pay attention and really be present with them. Unfortunately we tend to react with fight or flight, but we sigh into that presence.

[Dana] (16:49)
Ha ha, I like that. So you’re sighing, and then the seeing, so you’re actually, you can see what’s in front of you. Once you’ve sighed and you’ve calmed your nervous system down, you’re no longer in fight or flight, now you have access to your critical thinking, you have access to your empathy, your sympathy, then you’re settled down, you’re kind of like widened your stance so to say, you’re relaxed. And then take us into the C part.

[Alison] (17:20)
So C is your micro-moment of mindfulness. You’re going to see your child, see the situation, see what’s going on in the environment, see their body language. Notice, does your child have a sensory problem that you’re aware of, and there’s loud construction equipment going on right outside the house, maybe that’s what’s going on. I use the word “see” because it’s an alliteration, so it’s easier to remember, sigh, see, start. But I mean, notice, observe, I don’t want to leave out anyone who is visually impaired. Now, mindful noticing, and I like the word “notice” better than “observe,” because I think so many of us as Westerners have such a hard time with mindfulness, because what mindfulness means is that we’re going to fully notice the present with acceptance without immediately judging it. What that actually means is that you say, “hey, this is what’s really happening right now.” That sounds obvious, but as parents, how often do we actually give that kind of attention to our child? Don’t we so often jump in with our interpretation of what’s going on, “oh they’re doing it because of that, and this is what I need to do about it”? No, no, no, we’re going to sigh, and then we’re

[Dana] (18:39)
Mm-hmm.

[Alison] (18:47)
going to see. So many mindfulness teachers have given us the impression that we need to meditate an hour a day or do yoga for an hour a day, and listen, if you have time, fantastic, but most parents I know don’t. And what’s been really great about the research is that it turns out even a few seconds of mindfulness, so these micro-moments of mindfulness, are incredibly powerful, and can be as effective as a full hour of meditating. So you’re not missing out by doing it quickly. And then after we see, we actually start to move into that doing mode that most parents jump right to.

[Dana] (19:38)
So what I’m hearing you say is basically just slow things down. And also from watching other people and from experiencing parenthood myself, it’s very easy to get caught up in the emotions, to get sucked into this riptide, because usually if we’re honest about it, we’re short on sleep, we’re sleep deprived, we’re trying to stuff 10 pounds of potatoes in a five pound bag, we’re running around like crazy, feeling like the whole should storm that’s going on, and then trying to do these things. And I think the emotions are so high it’s hard to pull out of that, and the emotions sometimes impact what we’re seeing, we jump to conclusions, like you said, about what’s actually going on, the causality of it. And I think that’s why I really like your, the sighing, just taking those three deep breaths of just sighing it all out.

[Dana] (20:38)
And that’s going to take what, 30 seconds? Who doesn’t have 30 seconds or a minute to just bring yourself down so we can actually see it? Because I think the emotions of it get out of hand, and then once that gets higher, the higher the emotions go, the lower our critical thinking goes, they’re like inversely connected at times. So what do you see the role of emotions being in your parents that come in, in trying to do this?

[Alison] (21:09)
Yeah, I think we’re talking about the same thing, but I think of it in the framework of these autonomic nervous system responses. So your fight-or-flight response or your faint-or-freeze response, which is where you feel so overwhelmed by your kid in the should storm that you just feel heavy and shut down, like “oh my gosh.” And that’s another defensive response. But in either of these cases, as long as we’re operating under threat we cannot see our child as they are, because those areas of our brain are shut down. And yeah, I think it’s interesting what you said, especially when you’re first doing Sigh, See, Start, it does make sense to deliberately do each step and maybe give a little time, but the more you do it it becomes second nature. Many parents who’ve been doing it for a while tell me it becomes a mindset rather than, so they don’t even have to think the steps, they just do them. And I found in my own life that it can become very fast, right? So for instance, if your child is climbing up and hanging from the chandelier, the appropriate response is to jump in there and catch your child, you know?

[Dana] (22:23)
Yeah.

[Alison] (22:32)
And it can become very fast once you’re used to doing it.

[Dana] (22:40)
That is amazing.

[Alison] (22:40)
It can also become a deliberate planning tool. I talk about scenarios in the book of using the Sigh, See, Start method when your kids aren’t even there. Let’s say you have a really tricky problem or conundrum about your child, you can really just sit down and use it as a mindful way of working out the thoughts and the feelings and then your plan without your child there. I remember one time I hid in the bathroom at the Kennedy Space Center and did it there because I was too worked up. So it’s a tool to enhance your approach wherever you are. And I don’t mean to suggest it’s perfect or it fixes everything, because it doesn’t, but in this life we’re living where we’re should-ing all over ourselves all the time, we need something, and this tool seems to work really well. Parents tell me they start to feel pretty quickly a transition from anxiety to confidence, confidence in their own skill, confidence in their ability to figure it out, which is, some of my friends and mentors of older generations, it’s been interesting

[Dana] (23:44)
Absolutely.

[Alison] (24:04)
to realize, and I’m actually the tail end of Gen X, and I grew up with that analog childhood, and we had that confidence in our ability to figure it out. And that’s what I feel like we’ve started to lose, because in many ways this should storm culture has the sense of, “no, you’ve got to get it right.” So Sigh, See, Start begins to bring us back to that place where we can say, “oh, I can figure it out. Okay.”

[Dana] (24:26)
Mm-hmm. I love this, and what I’m hearing in your words as well along with confidence is acceptance. Just accepting the fact that we are humans and we are not perfect, we are fallible humans who were raised by fallible humans who were also raised by fallible humans, and just getting to the point where we can accept that, and that seems like that goes along with the confidence. What would have been your exposure or your experience with the parents and their ability to just accept the situation?

[Alison] (25:12)
I don’t think that’s easy, and I think that’s something that is a work in progress every day as a parent. But I think telling people to accept doesn’t help, we need action steps that teach us how that works, and that’s where the start step comes in, because this is where we really start building that confidence and building that different relationship with our own perfectionism. So after you sigh and see, and only after you sigh and see, because I know plenty of parents who want to skip right to start, and then guess what, you missed it. But start is where you get to run your own scientific experiment, you’re going to try things out

[Dana] (25:59)
That’s it, that’s it. Ew.

[Alison] (26:09)
and you’re going to see what works, and you’re going to gather information, and then you’re going to grow in your skill by doing that. So maybe you start thinking differently, “how could I do things differently here than I haven’t done before?” Maybe you start applying that piece of advice you got that does seem relevant to this situation. Maybe you start nothing, this is one of my favorites, when I’m not sure what to do with my kids, I start with nothing, because I’m a naturally reactive person, and as a doctor you fix things on short timeframes for people for a living, so you’ve got to get out of doctor mode with your kids. And when I start nothing, it’s amazing how often my kids, even from very young ages, people underestimate what young children are capable of, will find their own solution.

[Dana] (26:48)
Yes, yes.

[Alison] (27:08)
Maybe they’re arguing with each other, but it’s not violent, it’s amazing how often they work it out for each of themselves. If it is violent, by the way, your start is to jump in and separate them. My favorite, oh my gosh, my favorite review of the book on Goodreads, I love this lady, she wrote the most thorough review, she shared so much about herself, I loved it. But she gave the book four stars because she couldn’t figure out how to use Sigh, See, Start when her kids were

[Dana] (27:20)
Ha ha ha!

[Alison] (27:37)
fighting or picking at each other, because what she was trying to do was meet their genuine needs in that moment, and I use the term “genuine needs” in the book to refer to what they really need rather than what the should storm tells us. But currently what’s in vogue is that we need to make our kids feel better and regulated right away. And so she was trying to discern and meet their emotional needs while they’re picking on each other. It never occurred to me as a Gen Xer to state that explicitly in the book, because it’s second nature if you grew up around my time or earlier that the first step is you separate the kids, or you cut down on the chaos. But I thought that was great because it really just helped me see where parents are right now, and realize that just saying, “yeah, no, you can get in there and separate them and let things cool down before you try to figure out their emotions,” is something parents maybe need to hear right now. So anyway.

[Dana] (28:50)
Dr. Escalante, you’re saying so many wonderful things that are so practical and applicable. Being a Gen Xer myself as well, I’m latching on to something you said a few moments ago that I think is amazing. When Gen X, when we were growing up, we had opportunities to figure things out because we had to, quite frankly, it’s just the way things were, there wasn’t somebody else that was gonna do it for us, we had to just kind of figure it out on our own, and because of that

[Alison] (29:10)
Mm-hmm.

[Dana] (29:18)
we ended up developing a lot of confidence because we saw that we could do that. I’m wondering if you’re seeing an inverse thing going on now, where potentially the parents are trying to meet the needs of their children and in so doing maybe they’re depriving them of the opportunity to figure it out on their own, and thus depriving them of an opportunity to become confident in their own skills, or not. I’m just wondering about your observations as a pediatrician.

[Alison] (29:45)
Yeah, what you’re describing is the negative outcome of helicopter parenting, or what it has evolved into right now. The latest version is gentle parenting, which is about coaching your kids through their emotions with typically a lot of words. And it’s funny, I’ve been called a gentle parenting expert because I advocate for respectful, compassionate parenting, but what’s different is we have this way right now in our parenting of swamping our kids, “you’ve got to feel better or I’m a bad parent,” “you’ve got to figure out how to regulate your emotions or I’m a failure as a parent.” No, no, we can leave space for the mess. So when we’re using start, sometimes we start something and we learn something new and we say, great, that worked, I’m filing that away, that worked with this child in this moment on this day. Because remember, things don’t always work the same way, if the situation’s different or the mood is different, something that worked before might not work next time, but that’s okay, because we can keep figuring it out. Sometimes we start the wrong thing and then we go right into that loop, “oh, I should have done it differently, I’m messing up,”

[Dana] (31:01)
Right.

[Alison] (31:11)
but we know what to do if we feel a should: we sigh, see, and start again. So it’s an additive behavioral loop that changes not only what you do, but how you think, and over time it changes our relationship with mistakes. So instead, in the should storm, we’re saying, “I’ve gotta get it right or I’m messing up my kid for life,” so if I make a mistake, it’s a crisis.

[Alison] (31:42)
And guess what we’re teaching our kids, our kids do what we do, not what we say. So we’re modeling that for our children. There’s a whole chapter in the book about the should storm the kids are in, they have their own should storm too. So when we shift that with Sigh, See, Start, now we’re saying, “okay, I’m learning, that worked, that didn’t work, this is all about growing and learning myself,” and we can come to our child with that energy, “hey buddy, we’re growing and developing together, and you know what, that didn’t work, let’s try something different.” We even have room for what’s critical as a parent, which is taking genuine responsibility for the mistakes that are not just mistakes, but let’s say we’ve been unkind or hurtful to our child, now we need to seek repair, that’s very important. And this approach allows us to say, “yeah, my feelings got a little hot there and I’m going to apologize to my child.” There’s another area of the book where we talk about how to give a really good apology that really meets the child’s needs with Sigh, See, Start. So what we’re doing now is not only making our life easier as parents, but we’re now creating a space in the parent-child relationship for resilience for the child against a culture that’s constantly telling them, “you should do this, you should do that, you’re messing up, stop messing up, your life will be ruined if you don’t get it right.” And by the way, they start getting these messages in elementary school, they parrot them to me. So I think it becomes a gift to our kids to not only stop picking on ourselves, but to show them what it looks like, and then allow space for them to actually be kids who are exploring, like they should be, rather than worrying about whether they should get it right or not.

[Dana] (33:52)
That’s, oh, I love this, I love, love this. So Dr. Escalante, I want to make sure my listeners know how to get access to you. I’m gonna put the link to your book in the show notes and everything like that. Is there a website, is there a place you would like for them to go so that if they want to know more about you, more about what you have to offer, where do you want them to go?

[Alison] (34:18)
Well, the book is available wherever books are sold, and it can also be found through my website, sighseestart.com. And I have lots of other resources for parents at that site.

[Dana] (34:33)
Fabulous, fabulous. Dr. Escalante, I know you’re a very busy working mom, and I appreciate so much, I am so full of gratitude for your wisdom and your experience and your willingness to take some of your precious time to be here with me and to share it with my listeners. Thank you, thank you.

[Alison] (34:53)
Well, thank you, and for the record, I’m not working right now, I’ve been disabled by long COVID for two years. So for those parents who are out there who are struggling or sick or working three jobs and don’t have extra energy for their kids, Sigh, See, Start was meant for you. And I share some of my own story of using it while sick and even bedridden in the book as well. But yes, thank you so much for having me on.

[Dana] (35:19)
Oh, that’s wonderful, awesome, fantastic. So listeners, I know unequivocally that you have heard numerous things today that you’re thinking, “oh my gosh, I know the exact person that needs to hear this.” You might have a friend or a coworker or a relative that you’re thinking, “they have got to hear about what Dr. Escalante has to say.” So take the podcast episode and post it on your favorite social media sites. Take the link and copy and paste it in text, copy and paste it in email, whatever is your favorite method of communicating, just get it out there. Let’s grow our Phoenix and Flame community so that we know that we’re all in this together. I’m Dana, and this is Phoenix and Flame.