Adventure Nannies On Air

Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children: Insights and Strategies with Tina Lemon

Adventure Nannies

Unlock secrets to nurturing emotionally intelligent children with insights from Tina Lemon, an early childhood education authority. In our latest episode, Tina shares expert strategies for teaching self-regulation and emotional literacy, essential skills like writing or potty training. Gain practical tools to manage public speaking nerves with box breathing and self-assurance, while uncovering unnoticed anxieties.  

Join us to unravel emotional regulation for children and adults. We discuss the adults' role in modeling respectful communication and empathy, helping children manage emotions in stressful situations. We highlight unrealistic expectations for children to handle emotions alone, stressing the importance of integrating emotional awareness into everyday life.  

Explore scenarios like a child's refusal to eat by understanding causes like hunger or fatigue. Learn how offering choices can empower children and reduce conflict. Tina shares heartwarming anecdotes, including a TikTok video of mature communication between a mother and son. In a fun Q&A, she reveals her life, from completing mini triathlons to her kayaking passion, and hints at her new consulting venture. This episode equips you with skills to foster a compassionate, emotionally aware environment for the next generation.


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Speaker 2:

you're listening to adventure nannies on air in each episode we'll dive into a topic from the wide world of nannying from what to pack for your next adventure, professional development opportunities, industry standards, legal pay and anything else we see crossing our desks at adventure nannies, the nationwide agency for families, nannies, private educators and newborn care specialists. I'm Danielle, I'm Shenandoah and this is Adventure Nannies On Air. The policies and views expressed in this episode are those of the individuals and do not necessarily represent the views of Adventure Nannies.

Speaker 1:

Also, this episode has a little salty language in it and may not be appropriate for kids. Welcome, Tina Lemon. It's so great to have you here on the podcast.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 2:

Tina, I got to see you speak at the International Nanny Training Day event in Nashville, I guess about six weeks ago, and you were one of the most captivating speakers I've ever seen. Everyone in the room was just kind of hanging on your every word and and writing down furiously. I had talked right before you and just watching your presentation I really was like, oh, like this is, this is really good. I think I texted Danielle that night of please, please, see if you know Tina Lemon is available or if she's now getting booked on Conan O'Brien or whatever.

Speaker 3:

Oh, thank you. It was great being there and I was actually really nervous. So it's nice to hear that everything came through good, because I was really nervous about speaking in public again. It's been a long time since I've spoken public, so thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Do you mind just getting started out for folks who are listening, who might not be as familiar with some of the terms we'll be talking about today, and just telling us what regulation is and why it matters?

Speaker 3:

Sure. So regulation, especially when we're talking about children, because that's my passion. But regulation is being able to regulate your emotions and calm your body during different scenarios. And along with that, we seem to forget that children have only been here a short time, and so we actually have to teach them these skills. So we have to teach them what it means to regulate.

Speaker 3:

And so a couple things that that really stick out to me when I think about self regulation and social emotional literacy is you know, we hear a lot of teachers say, and parents say stop doing that. Um, stop crying, you're fine, calm yourself down, use your words. But all of those things have to be taught. So in order to learn self-regulation, we first have to learn what our body feels like when it feels out of control, and then, second, we have to learn how to label those emotions, and then there's a whole nother process that comes along with that. So that's what I've become really passionate about helping teachers and families learn those skills that we have to teach children that, just like we teach them how to write their name, just like we teach them how to write their names, just like we teach them how to potty train the emotion and self-regulation is also a taught skill.

Speaker 1:

That's incredible.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to just fly off script. I'm curious because I also always get nervous before public speaking, and so I know that you are not a child. But so you mentioned you got so nervous before that event that we met at. What do you? What of this teaching do you implement for yourself when you start to get nervous about something Like what's your, what's your sneaky secret in those moments to?

Speaker 3:

practice and I did talk about that this day a lot of the strategy. So a lot of deep breathing, a lot of I like box breathing. Are you familiar with that?

Speaker 1:

But we should share, because I bet some people aren't? I love box breathing.

Speaker 3:

Okay. So box breathing and I've seen it a lot of different ways, but recently I've been using it, breathing in for four seconds, breathing out for four seconds in and then out as you trace the shape of a box. I like for kids, actually them using their fingers to do it. As an adult, that probably would not be appropriate when I'm standing in a crowd of people. So I visually trace that box myself. That's a big one that I use. That really helps to self-regulate, bring my emotions back down and then get me to where I need to be. Another thing that I use is I always say because I taught students, adult students for a long time and I always say the crowd doesn't know what I'm supposed to say, so if I mess up, they have no idea that I've messed up. So I try to assure myself with that. And then actually one of the speakers that went after me that one day I shared that with her and she said oh, that's amazing. Yeah, nobody knows you're gonna mess up because they don't know what you're supposed to say.

Speaker 1:

So that is such a good point and, I think, an incredible reminder to all adults, because I think we've all been in that situation where we're really anxious about how we're going to appear or the perception that others have of us in a public setting and reminding ourselves, kind of, that some of the things that we're anxious about are really not visible to other people and even some of the mistakes that we may make about are really not visible to other people. And even some of the mistakes that we may make in public speaking literally has no impact on anyone else unless it's just this egregious like fly off the handle, I think, more than anything, you can just riff and kind of cover it, which is awesome. So I'm really curious this is my first time getting to meet you, tina, and I'm so excited to be here, but I'd really love to know kind of when did self-regulation and co-regulation and this passion of working with children in this way, when did this kind of become your passion? When was your like light bulb moment?

Speaker 3:

So I have been in the early childhood field for I think it's been around 27 years now. I definitely have evolved over that time. I taught preschool for 17 years and what I noticed towards the end of my teaching is the children were much different than they were in the beginning. And I'm a lifelong learner, I love education, and so the more classes and training I took, the more I realized that these kids did not really need so much to be getting ready for kindergarten per se with writing their names and ABCs and all of those things are important. But I noticed there was definitely a lack of that social emotional support. And what did that mean?

Speaker 3:

So the agency that I worked at in Ohio so I'm from Ohio they asked me to write a training for the state using an organization called CCEFL, so it's the Center for Emotional and Social Foundations of Early learning, and once I started to dive into that and dive into all of the particulars about children needing to learn about emotional literacy and needing to learn about self-regulation, it just became my passion then.

Speaker 3:

And then I had a grandson who is six and a half and has a lot of big emotions, and so I thought I'm going to use this information with him and it was amazing how it works. So I'm able to say that I've used these things firsthand and I've used them with my other grandchildren as well, and any other littles that I come in contact with, and it really does work. And so I want to empower you know nannies, teachers, families, anybody who comes in contact with littles that that we can do this. We can help these children, teach them this most important skill before they get into a school setting. And if you talk to teachers, they will say this is one of the most important skill before they get into a school setting. And if you talk to teachers, they will say this is one of the most important things that they want their kiddos to learn before they go into an elementary school.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I can imagine the impact it would have in a setting at school with so many young people. If you've got a bunch of littles that are not particularly empowered to know how to self-regulate, that can be a pretty wild learning environment. So you mentioned co-regulation. I wonder if some of our listeners might not know what that means. I'd love to hear if you could help us understand what that means.

Speaker 3:

Sure. So in a nutshell, really, co-regulation is you're regulated as the adult to help the child regulate. Because I know from being a mom, I have three children that are all adults and I know that when they were dysregulated and I was dysregulated, that everything went downhill rather quickly. So again, a learning process, rather quickly. So again a learning process. And I learned that me being in tune with myself, or the adult being in tune with themselves, their body, how they're feeling, and even going as deep as why is this triggering me so much?

Speaker 3:

Because, you know, we bring a lot of stuff from our childhood into when we parent or care for little ones, being very intentional and very mindful about that. Once we are regulated, then we can regulate somebody else with a child. And I think about if we come upon a situation where somebody is crying, an adult is crying, and I walk in and I start crying and I start having a meltdown. We're a mess, right? So why do we think that we can walk into those things with children and then children can navigate through that?

Speaker 3:

So when I walk into situations or when I'm talking to teachers about different situations, I try to do a lot of examples of what we do with adults. So, for example, if I walk into a room and you're crying and I say to you, you're fine, you're fine, it can't be that bad, you're going to say to me that's rude, please leave my house. But why do we do that to children? And so it's the same thing with regulation. If I walk in and I'm upset and I can feel myself at the top of my anger level or whatever it is, and then I'm asking you to calm yourself, that makes no sense at all, especially with a little person who doesn't even have that skill. So that's where my passion comes from. I want people to think about it like that, and I've had a lot of teachers have aha moments or parents when I talk about it like that, like oh, that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

I love what you said about basically looking at the way that we would treat little ones the same way that we as adults would engage with other adults. I think it's so interesting how you know it's pretty common to sort of treat children as you know, sort of half adults, where, like they just aren't going to get it or they deserve or can only understand a sort of like minimized version of communication or even, you know, self-regulation. But I think what you're saying is so powerful, because all of us know what we want to be treated like and how we want to be spoken to, and when we're in an upset situation, we know what we would really like to receive from people that care about us. So I think that really demystifies a lot of the process for folks to kind of remember that. Hey, this isn't super complicated. Just think about if you were crying and like throwing things off of your chair. What would you want someone to say to you? Right, right.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we just have this huge expectation of what children should be able to do. And if we understand child development and we know developmentally that they've only been here for three, two, three or four years, how could they possibly even be able to name their emotions, let alone understand how their bodies feel? We have many adults who cannot even name emotions other than happy, sad or mad.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 3:

So I, you know, I really think it's so important that we introduce all of these words and then connect. How does our body feel when we are having these emotions?

Speaker 2:

And how. So I completely agree with you and I'm just I'm thinking about a few meltdowns that that I've witnessed recently, and it's always in the grocery store. But I also live in a small town and the grocery store is just kind of the only place that people go to hang out to hear it through that perspective, I think, gives me such a different perception. Understanding, you know, when a parent is, or a caregiver is, combating a meltdown by saying, you know, stop crying or be quiet or stop yelling, but it's really in that moment, like that, all of those words are just coming from the adult out of shame or fear of being embarrassed or you know these kind of normal adult social constructs that we're all used to like.

Speaker 2:

People should not scream in a grocery store. People should not throw a can of tomato soup on the ground right right um, so that the idea, you know, the idea of an adult kind of needing to take a minute to regulate themselves in that moment, because it sounds like if they're not regulated and they're acting out of fear or shame or embarrassment or frustration, you know, then they're not going to be able to be like shut up, do like, do box breathing, make your box right now right now.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so the key is education and teaching before, not in the moment. We're not teaching box breathing in the moment. We're not taking teaching belly breaths. We're not teaching that, we're doing it ahead of time, we're putting it in our everyday things, that we're doing with our children. And again, I taught in a classroom, so it was a little different setting, you know, where we could introduce a lot of things in the classroom that for the whole group but definitely can be done, and one-on-one in the home, reading a lot of books about feelings and talking about those feelings and as adults.

Speaker 3:

Saying, you know, right now mommy is feeling really stressed out and I know that I'm feeling stressed out because my belly hurts or I have a headache, and so what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to take some breaths.

Speaker 3:

Would you like to take some breaths with mommy to practice or whoever the caregiver is so really doing that every day.

Speaker 3:

And it's an everyday thing, just like it is when we're teaching a four and a five year old to write their name.

Speaker 3:

We don't just do it once, and so then when you get in those meltdown situations, you can say to the child how can I help you, what can I do to help you?

Speaker 3:

And what's going to happen is they're going to scream at you and say nothing, I hate you, and throw things at you in the grocery store, and then you can just say you have this space. You have this space to feel the way you want to feel. I'm here when you need me to help you. And if one of those things is to take you out of the store, we can leave all of our groceries and we can go out of the store. Leave all of our groceries and we can go out of the store. So it's really being ready before it happens and having the education and introducing it to the child. So it's not just in that moment and I know that's really difficult because you're embarrassed and people are thinking you're a terrible parent. Actually, you're like the best parent ever because you're letting your child feel their feels Right and the impact of that into adulthood is so huge.

Speaker 1:

You know, as an adult we know when we're encountering other adults who do not know how to appropriately manage their feelings because they were never taught or it was never modeled for them and nobody ever created space for them when they were younger to learn those parameters and to understand their feelings, and so then, as an adult, in meetings, you know, at whatever sort of you know family barbecues. You're having these interactions going. Wow, you probably should have had a minute to cry and throw a tantrum so that you could learn how to manage this and that someone could support you because it's not cool in your forties.

Speaker 3:

I'll tell you that to manage this and that someone could support you because it's not cool. In your 40s I'll tell you that, right, it's not. And then people think you're crazy, but I look at it with empathy.

Speaker 3:

I look at it like how sad that you've never been given the opportunity to show how you feel and to learn how to calm yourself. And even when I've taught teachers this content, there's a lot of aha moments from the adult teachers that, oh gosh, I never thought about that. I never thought that I need to learn how to regulate myself. I think that's just the way I am. Well, no, there are strategies to help you regulate yourself and your feelings.

Speaker 1:

I think that's so incredible and your feelings.

Speaker 2:

I think that's so incredible. So, tina, what I know, you know, something that we talk about a lot on the podcast with other guests is you know the concept of respectful care and some of these alternative learning philosophies and the idea of treating children with respect, and you know and a lot of times I hear the phrase treating them like adults or treating them like tiny versions of adults, and I'm really interested in this approach because it still has so much respect attached to it, but it's also saying, hey, let's get real, a three-year-old is not an adult. So, with that in mind, what are the kind of fair baseline expectations for us to have regarding children and their socio-emotional literacy?

Speaker 3:

Well, I think the most important thing when we talk about that is really understanding what's developmentally appropriate, and I feel like anybody who works with children, anybody who births a child, anybody who cares for a child, really should understand what's developmentally appropriate. It's not developmentally appropriate to expect a one-year-old to regulate their emotions. It's not really appropriate to expect them all the way up to age four and five, because those things are taught. So I think that if we can understand what children are capable of and what they can do and of course there's a lot of resources out there for milestones and developmental milestones socially, emotionally but every child's an individual and I've come across a lot of children who can just freely speak verbally.

Speaker 3:

I'm feeling very frustrated right now with you and it would be helpful if you would walk away, you know, or you can come upon a child where they're just growling at you and trying to bite you. So really understanding where the child is at and what to expect, I really think is the base of everything, and there's so many resources out there. I personally like the CDC website just because it gives some great developmental milestones for every age, but then it also talks about that every child develops individually and then it talks about if there are red flags as well. So really just having people educate themselves so they understand what's appropriate, and you know what we can expect from a child.

Speaker 1:

That's so helpful. So, if you wouldn't mind, I know that you teach probably so many different scenarios, so if there would be a way for you to provide like a specific example, it would be so helpful. Imagining, for example, that we have a child who is maybe in the like four to five range and they're refusing to eat. You're in the kitchen, they're in their chair throwing things and a tantrum sort of erupts. Can you give us just like a general sense of course there are so many facets that would be kind of weighing into this but a general sense of how a caregiver should approach or might approach the situation to try to tend to the child's emotional needs but also not wreck the house.

Speaker 3:

Right, right, the first thing would be to ask yourself is the child overly tired? Is the child overly hungry? Because you know, we use the term hangry as adults. Well, children definitely have that, but they don't have the words to say I'm feeling hangry, so they, hence they throw things and things like that. So, kind of, looking at that environment, maybe they're really not hungry. So, thinking about all of those things, and then you get to the point where do they just not like the food.

Speaker 3:

So really going through a lot of different scenarios in your mind before you even engage with a child, and then asking the child you know, do you, is there something else that you would like to eat, or did I give them a choice?

Speaker 3:

I believe people should have choices, even little people.

Speaker 3:

If I come and I meet you for lunch and I tell you what you have to eat, you're not going to eat it.

Speaker 3:

But if you're four, four and five and your caregiver is giving you the food, you don't really have many choices.

Speaker 3:

So that would be a great time to give choices before, so that doesn't start um, and then I would even go as far as just ignoring the behavior and saying, very, this is where you have to be very self-regulated and say I see that you're upset, I see that you don't like the food that I'm giving you, and I can tell that you don't like the food because you're throwing it and you're screaming and you're yelling. If you choose not to eat it, that's fine and you can leave the table. But I need you to know that when we all calm down, that we're going to have to come back and clean this up, and this is much easier said than done. It's much easier to do when it's not your child. When it's your child, you have an emotional investment and emotional attachment. But really disconnecting yourself from the behavior and just stepping back and just being very matter of fact about it and then just ignoring it, Wow, that would be challenging, but I can see the benefit to the child, which I think is everybody's goal, of course.

Speaker 3:

Right, because once you start to engage, then it escalates, and it escalates. And guess who the winner is? The four or five year old is always the winner, unless the parent then takes it another level and then corporal punishment becomes something which we definitely don't want that to happen, and then it's a terrible situation for everybody.

Speaker 1:

Then yeah, oh, absolutely. I love that example and I think that's really helpful. And one of the things you keep mentioning that is kind of a light bulb in my mind is this idea of adults regulating themselves and understanding that your previous you know childhood and the things that you've experienced throughout your life are absolutely sort of the pavement that you're standing on when you're approaching the situations. And being so cognizant of that and kind of facing that not just in the moment when things are flying in the air, but prior to that, really being able to sit with you know why is this so like upsetting to me on like a guttural level that they're not wanting their spaghetti, you know and kind of thinking through the impact of your own childhood experiences and then kind of working through that so you're able to kind of provide your best self who's regulated and really able to support the child in that moment where they're having feelings that they don't know how to express and that would be terrifying as an adult.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes, and that's where the hard work comes in. That's where a lot of adults don't want to go and would rather stay with. I'm the adult, and because I said so, because they don't want to examine the fact that it's really hard for them to watch their child throw the food, when maybe they were disciplined and forced to eat food or maybe they were hungry at some point and didn't have food. That's really hard work to do, but in the long run, we're going to end up having healthier adults, and that's really what we want, right? We want our children to grow up and be healthy, with their social, emotional literacy, and be able to express how they feel. It'll just make such a better world Really.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. I saw a Tik TOK recently, which you know. I basically get all my news from TikTok, so take that with a grain of salt, but I was watching this TikTok about.

Speaker 1:

It was this really sweet little six-year-old buddy with his mother and they were just sitting side by side and she was just very, not talking to him at all in a baby voice, but in a very respectful voice, just saying you know what's going on with you today. I can tell that you seem upset, your face is making an expression, your body looks like it's really anxious. And then this little boy, with more emotional maturity than 90% of the adults I know, was like yes, mama, I was feeling very angry and I said things that were not nice to you because I was very upset in my body and I could feel it in my chest and in my stomach. But now I went to my corner and I looked at my wheel and then they show he had like a wheel of different emotions and he was like I was feeling like this. And then points at the wheel and then the mother is just like okay, yeah, I understand you, that makes sense, I hear you.

Speaker 1:

And then he went through the whole cycle of I was feeling this, I was feeling this and that's why I said this mean thing to you. And then he was like that might've hurt your feelings. Mama, I'm so sorry. I said that when I was very upset. I'm feeling much better now. Can we lay down together? And I just started crying. I was like what's going on? Yeah, yeah, that means that like kind of the result of the sort of work you're talking about.

Speaker 3:

Yes, and those types of things make me so excited because it does work. Now you see something like that on TikTok and you're like, oh, that's so amazing, that happened overnight. No, that was a lot of work that that mother has put into, probably since he was a baby all the way up until that time, and being very consistent and naming her own emotions and coming back and apologizing to your child. That's a big one. You know, as caregivers we make mistakes and so we can come back and we can apologize for those mistakes, which then helps our children be able to do that as well. But it's a lot of work, it's a lot of consistency, and so sometimes with adults it's easier just to approach it in a different way. That's not as helpful.

Speaker 2:

Well, tina, with your permission, we would love to ask you a few questions that we just like to ask our guests here on this podcast. Sure, they're yeah, they're pretty tough questions coming out of left field. Danielle, do you want to kick us off?

Speaker 1:

We are very excited to ask you these questions. They're super hard hitting investigative questions. So, Tina, when you were four years old, who would your dream nanny have been?

Speaker 3:

My dream nanny, if you could pick anyone. If I could pick anyone, what are my choices? I need choices.

Speaker 2:

Anyone, dead or alive, past, present, future, your four your parents. We're going to Singapore for two years. Someone's going to come hang out with you all the time.

Speaker 3:

When I was four years old. It would be the adult version of me now. Yes, With all of the knowledge that I have. Yes, that's awesome.

Speaker 1:

I mean honestly, now that you mention it. Previously I said Pippi Longstocking, but I actually want to change my answer to you as well. Oh, you'd be my ideal nanny. So we also ask all of the candidates at Adventure Nannies to list out 10 fun facts about themselves so that we can kind of get to know them better, but also so that hiring families can get a better sense of who they are. Would you be able to name anywhere from one to three fun facts about yourself? These can be anything from I ride a unicycle to I love zucchini, like whatever the fun facts are.

Speaker 3:

Okay, the first one is I've completed 10 mini triathlons. I think that's a fun fact. Mini triathlon I think that's a fun fact. Yeah, I did that in my forties. The second fun fact is wow, I'm an adoptive mother. I adopted a baby right from the hospital, picked her up and she was in her little incubator.

Speaker 1:

So that's a fun fact that's so cool incubator.

Speaker 3:

So that's so cool, yeah. And then probably the third one I just learned how to kayak last summer when we moved here to Tennessee and my husband and I actually watched a YouTube video before we got in the kayak and had to keep watching it while we were trying to get in the kayak because we had no idea what we were doing, and then we did not finish the video and did not know how to get out of the kayak. So that's a fun fact.

Speaker 1:

That would have been very fun to watch, for sure. It was definitely fun. Yeah, it's so funny that you mentioned kayaking in Tennessee. I went to college in Chattanooga and almost everybody I knew was really into kayaking. It's such a cool sport but very hard to get in and out of those boats.

Speaker 2:

I just did that same thing, Cause I moved to North Carolina from Seattle last summer and I did that exact same thing with paddle boarding last summer, like got up early and I put my phone in the waterproof bag and it was just like step one, here's how you get on the paddle board, Like okay, I can do it.

Speaker 3:

That's exactly what we did, and I'm sure there were people watching us.

Speaker 1:

Honestly, I think that's so admirable and cool to be just constantly seeking new challenges. I love that yeah it was fun.

Speaker 2:

Well, tina, if folks have questions for you or they want to get in touch and pick your brain or do some consulting or just bother you and ask you for advice, share their life story. Where is the best place for people to find you?

Speaker 3:

So I do have a consulting business. That's just brand new, really haven't done anything with it, but I'm in the process of getting that started. So that's Tina Lemon, consultconsulting at gmailcom. And then I also run a Facebook group called Kids Corner that people can join and I only post things that are developmentally appropriate on there, so they can be anything from activities all the way up to social emotional information. So those are probably the two best ways to get a hold of me, and I love sharing information with people and I love when I was presenting at the Nanny Conference. I had a lot of the ladies join immediately when I told them about that, about the Facebook group. So I love sharing that information.

Speaker 1:

That's so wonderful and I've learned so much from you today already, tina, so I think anybody listening it would be such a great addition to your, your skill set and your toolbox to go and check out Tina's Facebook and you know the email address for her consulting, which is kicking off, and be sure to check the show notes. We'll have all of that information in there for you, tina. Thank you so much for your time today and for all of the great information that you shared with us.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for having me. This was great. I appreciate your time.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening. You can find all of our episodes on Apple Music, spotify and wherever podcasts are streamed.

Speaker 2:

And you can find Adventure Nannies off air on our website AdventureNanniescom, or you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram to stay up to date on our latest opportunities.

Speaker 1:

If you love this episode, please give us a review if you're feeling so inclined.

Speaker 2:

And if you hated this episode, well, sorry. Thanks for listening.

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