Sigh, See, Start with Alison Escalante
Jethro D. Jones: Welcome to the Authority Podcast on the BE Podcast Network. I'm your host today, Jethro Jones. You can follow me on all the socials at Jethro Jones. I'm excited to have today Alison Escalante on the program. She's a pediatrician, speaker and author of the book sigh see start. How to Be the Parent Your Child Needs In a World That Won't Stop Pushing.
In a perfectionistic parenting culture that tells you are never enough, no matter how much you do for your kids. This unique approach empowers you with a simple parenting technique to gain confidence, remain grounded, and connect positively with your children. Allison, thanks so much for being part of the Authority podcast today.
I appreciate it.
Alison Escalante: Thanks so much for having me [00:01:00] on.
Jethro D. Jones: My pleasure. And if you're listening to this on the Transformative Principal Podcast feed, sometimes I like to bring these guests over to the Transformative Principal podcast as well, because I think that this will be beneficial to school leaders and anybody else as well. So I think that it's worthwhile.
So if you think you're in the wrong place, you're actually not. This is the right podcast that you wanted to listen to, trust me. So before we get too deep into what your book is about, let's start by talking about should storm, what is that and how do we get here with that?
Alison Escalante: So the should storm is a term I coined for our culture of perfectionism and criticism. It pushes us constantly, you could think of it as another name for the hustle culture we talk about, or the toxic culture of achievement that is driving anxiety in our kids and adolescents which I think educators and parents are all very familiar with.
[00:02:00] But basically it's an experience of our culture where we as parents want to do the best for our kids. We love them, we wanna give them the best. And yet we are bombarded. By opinions, messages, advice, social media that tells us what we should and should not do. So you should do this, you should do that.
You should never do that other thing. If you make the slightest false step, you're gonna mess up your kid for life.
Jethro D. Jones: And that's a very real thing that anybody who's been a parent has experienced. And part of the challenge with that is that there's so much evidence, quote unquote, that says, this is what you need to do. And if you're not careful you can be just constantly whiplash by different pieces of advice that are going.
From one direction to another, telling you almost exact opposite and often very close to exact opposite pieces of advice for whatever it is that you're trying to figure out. I.
Alison Escalante: Yeah you're [00:03:00] hitting the nail on the head there. You know, one mother told me years ago that she felt like because the evidence was out there, because the research is out there, she should be able to find the right answer to any question. And it was her job as a parent to do that. And then she would feel like she was driving herself crazy.
And so as a pediatrician one of the things that is part of my job is in complex medical or social mental health situations, cutting through all the available science to get to the bottom line so that we can take actionable steps. So in a should storm where a lot of the advice is not good, a lot of it is good, but is presented in a way that makes you feel anxious or stressed.
Teasing out where the real bottom line is that makes a difference between parents and kids in that crucial relationship [00:04:00] that's what I'm after.
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Jethro D. Jones: You wrote a post about Paris Hilton and being the expert on her on her own child. And I wanna take a second and talk about that definition of being an expert because I think that it's, I. It's just so freeing to think about it like that. And I wanna set it up just a little bit because you shared something from her reality TV show, which I personally have never see n.
But it is something about her not ever changing her kid's diaper for the first month of her child's life, and how she was a little bit nervous and apprehensive to do it, and the nanny was there helping her and showing her what to do and how to talk to the baby, and all that kind of stuff. She talks to her therapist and the therapist says, well, you're the expert of your child.
And I think that this, the way that we set up experts in our culture is different than how you define it. So can you tell us the difference there between how we see experts and how experts are actually, how you define expert?[00:05:00]
Alison Escalante: So it's really interesting because my 12-year-old brought this up to me just last week. He said mom. You call yourself a parenting expert, but nobody's really an expert because nobody can actually know everything about a subject. And I was like, well, that's really interesting that you say that buddy.
First off, I actually feel very awkward calling myself a parenting expert. My advisors told me to market myself that way. But I said I think of an expert very differently. You know, you're talking about when you say an expert would know everything, well, you're talking about a God, right?
And like nobody's a God, right? Nobody knows everything. I think of an expert, like a medical expert, so there's someone who. Knows a lot more about a subject than someone else has who's kind of like really devoted their life to really learning that subject and working with that subject and keeping track of, and being aware of the available learning that's going [00:06:00] on about it.
And they also have experience medical experts they work with patients, they have experience. Using their expertise to see what works and what doesn't. And a metal ethical expert will tell you that they are always learning and growing and frankly, they will be typically be the first one to tell them.
Tell people that they know very little because the more you learn about a subject, the more you understand how much there is to know. So true experts tend to be pretty humble about their knowledge. In my opinion. I.
Jethro D. Jones: Yeah. Well, and I think that there's a difference between someone who's a true expert and somebody who is self-aware enough to know, that, that they can't have all the information. Like some people act like they do, and those people are exceptionally frustrating to deal with because you and I both know that they probably don't, but because they have more information or more schooling or more exposure to [00:07:00] certain things they think that they do.
So for example, when it comes to school leadership. I could define myself as an expert because I've interviewed 600 people about it and have lived that life. But at the same time, if I were to say, this is the only right way to do something I know that that's not right. And so you have to have context and understanding of different people in the situation and what's going on.
So how does this should storm impact our kids specifically?
Alison Escalante: Yeah, so kids are really caught in their own version of the should storm, and it starts very. Young for them. And you know, many parents and educators will think of it as the culture of achievement, right? So, when they're young there's certain behavioral expectations you should always share with your friends.
You should be friends with everybody. You should manage your emotions. But then very quickly by elementary school, we're getting into [00:08:00] achievement culture. So you should get on a travel team. If you don't get on a travel team, you'll never play in high school. If you don't play in high school, you won't go to the right college and your life will be one of misery and poverty and sorrow the rest of your life.
Right? I mean, and that's the track. And a lot of that's with the parents. But the kids pick up on this or my son will come home from messages that. You know, he'll tell me like what the teacher said often, it wasn't the teacher that said this, it was the other kids. But this idea that if you get a B on this test, then you'll be put in the wrong class next year.
Like that pressure's there in middle school, you know? So the kids know that they're being evaluated and judged from a very young age.
Jethro D. Jones: And not just that, but they're also determining the whole rest of their life based on a decision here in middle school or high school or elementary school. And that is just not a. How it works, but that's [00:09:00] how we make it see m that it works. A real quick side story we lived in Alaska for several years, then we moved to Spokane, Washington.
And where we happen to live in Spokane, Washington is where there are a lot of doctors and people in the medical field. And like you, you can't run into somebody without them being a doctor. It see ms like there's a lot of hospitals here and they all live in this one area. Well, they all don't, but a lot of them do.
So when we got here, I was talking to kids my kids' age and my nieces and nephew's age, and almost everybody was like, I'm going into pre-med, or I'm gonna be a doctor, or a dentist, or whatever. And there was so much pressure on everyone to follow in this path because that's what this small community has determined is valuable and.
What's interesting is as those kids grow and they go to different colleges and go down different paths, they start going away from that [00:10:00] idea because they see that that's not really right for them. But in this small microcosm of a community, the pressure is huge. And if you don't say I'm going to be a doctor or a lawyer, then there's obviously something wrong with you.
And so even if kids don't want that, they still feel the need to say that. Because that's what everybody else is saying. And so that pressure is very real, even though nobody says you have to be a doctor or you know, you, it just, that's how people feel. That's how kids communicate what they're experiencing.
And I think that's a really real issue that people are facing, that sometimes we don't even talk about and don't even recognize that it's happening.
Alison Escalante: It's all very real and it can come from so many different places. And you know, I think in the press. Everyone likes to blame social media, but social media is really just transmitting what we're talking about in our communities. So, and you know, in my community, the pressure, [00:11:00] a lot of it comes from the parents or the kids transmitted among themselves, but as the parent of a new high schooler I think it's astonishing to me how, even though I know how bad this kind of pressure is for kids.
Knowing recently, doing a little like learning about what colleges actually look for now. Right. I mean, holy moly, no wonder the kids are stressed out. You know, they have to start planning their resume freshman year. And you know, the truth is they don't have to. There are other colleges, you don't have to go to the Ivys or the Para Ivys.
But the truth is that our aspirational. Places are always going to be the standard. Everyone holds up, right? And so when I was young I got the chance to go to Princeton, right? And me and my friends, we didn't deliberately that I the people I met at Princeton, we didn't deliberately curate our resumes.
We just. Acted like kids did stuff we were interested [00:12:00] in and the schools at that time were looking for, well-rounded. So it was great. You could try a lot of different things and if you'd done a whole bunch of different things like then the school's like, oh good, you're well-rounded. Yay. Right now they are specifically looking for kids who like know their passion.
Have started a nonprofit, have done research around their passion. Like the kid has to have a singular focus. And in order to get this resume built, you really need to find that focus. Like at 14 and developmentally, this is horrendous. And it's not real. It's horrendous. It disadvantages kids who are doing appropriate developmental exploration.
I, I think the colleges are crazy, but it's influencing the whole culture and it's powerful.
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Jethro D. Jones: The other part of that is also that it. You have this dream to go to this specific school, and I bristle every time. Somebody says, [00:13:00] well, if I do this, then it'll look better on my college application. And every time I hear that, to me that is a red flag saying, you are listening to rumors and you have no idea what you're talking about because no, 13, 14, 15-year-old really knows what colleges are looking for.
They're simply regurgitating what they're hearing other people say. And whether or not those people are right, we have no idea. But the fact of the matter is, yes, colleges are looking for something, but just because colleges are looking for it doesn't mean that everybody has to fit that mold to get into that college.
Alison Escalante: That's right. That's absolutely right.
Jethro D. Jones: And here's the kicker, Allison, is if you are confident in yourself and understand what your purpose is even if it is just to go to school to the next level, that's it. Like you are still. Going to have something that not everybody else has. If you're playing somebody else's game, you always lose. If [00:14:00] you're playing your own game, you have a chance to win.
And I would say you always win. That might be too harsh of a juxtaposition for most people, but that's what I think. If you're playing somebody else's game, it's impossible to win. If you're playing your own game, it's impossible to lose.
Alison Escalante: Well, I have two thoughts when you say that. One is the research supports that what matters is not the college but the student. So they looked at the same, a group of kids. Who, and it was the sort of the students who had similar statistics, but some of them went to an Ivy League school and another one went, then the others went to like their state school or whatever, and they found that the success in life was the same for this cohort.
So it wasn't the Ivy League or going to the right school that created the success. It was the student that was curious and motivated and wanted to talk to professors. And I think as a parent, that is deeply comforting. The second thing is, this is exactly it. How do we as parents [00:15:00] create a world where we are playing our own game as parents instead of the should storms game?
How do we create the space for our kids to play their own game and create you know, parents cannot be held responsible for all the impact of this culture. It's everywhere, right? Yet we can create a relationship that fosters resilience in our kids against that culture. And that's what sigh see Start is all about.
Jethro D. Jones: Yeah, great segue. Let's talk about sigh Sea Start. What does it mean? I, and I apologize, like we could have. Dove right in, but this was a good conversation. I think it's worth it. So I'm glad we had this. So let's talk about sigh see start. What does it mean? How do we implement it in our lives as parents?
Alison Escalante: So. As a pediatrician, I'm always looking for what works in people's real lives that is not too complicated, right? And there's so much [00:16:00] wonderful parenting advice out there that is just too complicated and then we can't use it because we can't remember it or keep it straight. So sigh see start is a very simple.
Science-based method that transitions you from the anxiety and the fight or flight mode of the should storm to confidence and connection with your kids. So I say, Hey, like in kindergarten, we all learn that if our clothes are on fire, you stop, drop and roll, right? So if you are on fire from the should storm, sigh see and start.
Jethro D. Jones: Okay, so tell me what the sign means. Because I think of my mom sighing, and it's usually sighing and disappointment in me. So what does that really mean?
Alison Escalante: That is absolutely right. And so many parents say, oh my gosh, doc, I sigh at my kids all the time. Anyway, that is perfect. I can remember that. So we're gonna try to shift that sigh into more of a sigh of relief. The [00:17:00] sigh is a built in mechanism in our bodies. And when we sigh, we take a deep breath in, but more importantly, we breathe out long and slow and it's that long slow out breath that sends a message to our nervous system that we are safe, we are okay.
It's okay to think things through. It's okay to connect and. It's different because when we're in fight or flight mode, which is frankly what the should Storm puts us in we are breathing fast and shallow, or we're holding our breaths because we're anticipating something negative.
Right? But when we sigh, it's like back hacking your own nervous system and saying, whoa, dude, it's actually okay. You know? And when we do that, we stimulate the vagus nerve and that turns on the prefrontal cortex. So that's the front part of our brain that lets us do our [00:18:00] thinking, our critical decision making.
And when we're too stressed out, when we're in fight or flight, that actually turns off. Because our body is designed to be ready to run away from a lion, right? And you don't need to be thinking at great length about anything or connecting socially if you're running away from a lion. So you sigh you back half your nervous system.
When I'm really worked up, I like to sigh three times and you start to feel that calming. You feel your shoulders come down, your brain starts to wake up. You feel more open. And you come into your own body so that you're actually like showing up for your kids with presence instead of like distraction.
Jethro D. Jones: I really like that. So what is the see and the start part? Of the sis C. Start.
Alison Escalante: So see is your moment of mindfulness. And a lot of parents like to skip sigh, so I really encourage them not to skip the sigh, because that's your nervous system [00:19:00] regulation. But then as you're becoming present, as you're calming down, you're gonna see what's going on. So you see your child, you see the situation, see their body language.
C is about noticing, and this is important because I really don't want to live out, leave out anyone who's visually impaired, right? see is not about vision, it's about observing, noticing. I just picked an S word so it was an alliteration, right? You know, a lot of people teach mindfulness and you know, they encourage like meditating for an hour or doing yoga for an hour, but.
Busy parents rarely have that kind of time. And if you do, that's great. But the research shows us that moments of mindfulness are actually incredibly powerful and can be as effective as meditating. So you know, the other thing about mindfulness that's really important is we're noticing we're not doing yet, right?
We're [00:20:00] not jumping to how do I fix it? We're gathering information.
Jethro D. Jones: Well, and I appreciate you saying that because the coaching that I do is through positive intelligence, which is she sha program. And what I really like about it is that it is intentionally designed for you to be able to have that moment of mindfulness. In whatever situation you're in, so that it's not about you saying, okay, let me get everything perfect and like be in my special place and with my special music and my special temperature and my special blanket to be able to do meditation.
It's let me get in control of myself no matter where I'm at. And I think this is really important because it doesn't matter how calm you can be. When you're not under stress, it matters how calm you can be when you are experiencing these things and you're feeling this anxiety of, oh, my kid just did X, Y, or Z, and now their life is over, that's the perfect time [00:21:00] to be able to be good at this because you don't have to freak out.
Alison Escalante: Yeah. And you know, the more you practice it, the more second nature it becomes. But we, if you just have sigh and see so far we're not that different from other parenting techniques because there's a lot of parenting techniques that mention a pause and a deep breath and some mindfulness. So it's when you get to start that, I think this method becomes unique.
Because start is when we take that presence, that self-regulation. We take the information we've just gathered. Now we're gonna, we're gonna become scientists. We're gonna run an experiment. So you start. Maybe you start thinking about how to do things differently than you normally would. Maybe you start thinking about what's appropriate.
Maybe you start by instantly jumping in and separating your two boys that are currently fighting physically, right? Maybe you start with a pause. You start nothing [00:22:00] because you're not sure what to do. This is one of my favorites 'cause I. I am a naturally reactive person. And so, starting nothing has been super helpful for my kids because I've given them then space often to work things out for themselves, to come up for a solution for themselves instead of me jumping in and fixing it for them.
Right.
Jethro D. Jones: Yeah. Yep.
Alison Escalante: give them a moment to think a bit. And I've had moments where they actually. Catch themselves and apologize because I wasn't sure what to say, so I just did nothing for a moment, but I was present. Right? And then the key is what you do with your success or failure. So let's say you start something and it works fantastic.
You've gained information. This worked with this kid on this day, in this situation, you file that away. Great. Maybe you start something and it backfires. That might trigger the should storm. Oh, I should have done it differently. I failed. I'm a loser as a mother. I can't even use this [00:23:00] technique. Right. But we know what to do if we feel a should we sigh, see and start again.
And by constantly, I. Sighing into ourselves, gathering the information by see ing and then starting. We are learning so much about ourselves and our kids, and it shifts our relationship with mistakes. So instead of where we were anxious, distracted by the shoulds trying to get it right, versus now we're like, I'm learning bout'cha kiddo
I'm learning about me as a parent. We're developing together. Let's keep trying stuff and see what works and what doesn't. Oh, that doesn't work. Let's try again. Oh my goodness. It changes your relationship to yourself and as you give yourself space like that, you kid gets space. Because our kids' relationship with their mistakes, they really learn it from us, you know?
And they learn it from other [00:24:00] people around us, and they don't learn it by what we say, right? They don't learn it when we say, oh, that's fine buddy. Don't worry about it. No. They learn it by how we treat ourselves.
Jethro D. Jones: Yeah.
Alison Escalante: And if we show them like, Hey, mistakes are this is, we're just, we're figuring it out and that's great, and we're learning and growing.
Well, what a gift that is to give them.
Jethro D. Jones: It really is a gift and this is something that my wife and I have been more intentional with our kids over the past. Past few months, and we've really see n how they pick up on it a lot more than any lecture we could have given before. And there are many times where where my kids have said or done something and I have just, as much as I wanted to lose my mind about it, I just have said nothing.
And it's been amazing how. That recently, that experiment is working pretty well, and I really love how you called it run an experiment [00:25:00] because we. Even though we are the experts of our own children, we don't have all the answers and we don't know how to do everything perfectly. But we can treat things like an experiment and say, Hey, let's try this and see what happens.
And as we do that we, I. We can find success in our own way. And some experiments will work on one kid, but they won't work on the other kid. And some experiments will work on us, but they won't work on the kids. And sometimes they'll work on the kids, but we'll still be frustrated. And all those things, like you said, is that's just data to help us improve and continue to get better and make different kinds of choices in the future.
And that's one of the things that I think is really fun that. This approach takes away the pressure, takes away the, you have to get it right and get it perfect, and it really lets you focus on doing the best you can in the moment.
Alison Escalante: And this is built on a faith. That's scientifically grounded, which is that your kids are more [00:26:00] capable than you think they are. And as a parent, you are more capable than you think you are. 'cause why do we yell and lecture? We yell and lecture because we feel powerless and we're trying to like, get our kids to comply.
Right? And this method comes from a place of saying, Hey, my kid. Even if, you know they're developmentally delayed or something else. They have natural abilities and they have the ability to figure out a lot of problems for themselves if I give them that space. But if I'm always hovering to fix or correct they have no space.
Right. And I'm capable of better parenting than I realized If I stop. Worrying about whether I'm getting it perfect and just engage with my kid and practice, then you know, something really great happens. But I have to go back to one thing you said. What if you do lose it and go off on your kid? Because I can [00:27:00] tell you sissy start is not the magic.
Fix it. That will mean you will never lose it with your kid again.
Jethro D. Jones: That is true.
Alison Escalante: You know, I mean, we all get overwhelmed and dysregulated. Right. So. That's where we emphasize repair, and there's a whole chapter in the book about that. And it's really important because I think this idea that if we make one mistake, we mess up our kids for life it makes us then panic when we do fail.
Right? And it makes it hard to restore that relationship. Right. Whereas every parent loses it at some point, right? And so what's really important is to say, hey. Buddy, I'm messed up there and I feel bad because I spoke to you. I yelled at you and I said some really disrespectful things to you.
Right? And I just wanna tell you, I'm really sorry about that. You know, I imagine it caused a lot of feelings for you. I would guess it made you feel this way or that way, but I'd love to hear what you think. And I just wanna tell you, I'm really sorry for that [00:28:00] and I wanna make it right with you.
Jethro D. Jones: And here's the amazing thing when you do that, you're also modeling to your kids how to do that as well. So that helps a lot, for sure. Alison, this has been fantastic. H how do people get their hands on the books? sigh see , start and connect further with you.
Alison Escalante: Well, it's available wherever books are sold. But you can also find me and the book at my website, sighsee start.com.
Jethro D. Jones: Excellent. Very good. This has been awesome talking with you, Allison. Thank you so much for your time and thanks for being part of the Authority Podcast.
Alison Escalante: Thanks so much, Jethro
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