Ep68: Exploring the Power of Play: Transforming Routine into Learning Opportunities

Ever found yourself feeling lost when it comes to engaging your child through play? Perhaps you're wondering how to create a dynamic that nurtures learning while keeping the atmosphere light and fun. As your host, I am thrilled to invite (another) Beth to the show! She is from Days with Gray to share her expertise on transforming everyday routines into playful learning opportunities.

Join us on a journey of discovery as we discuss the powerhouse that is play in early childhood and its impact on brain development. We'll also reveal how simple activities like color sorting, sticker circles, and water play can vastly improve your child's vocabulary and motor skills. Find out about the game-changing concept of breakfast invitations - an innovative approach that promises a lively start to your child's day and a shift in your family dynamics.

Parenting is not just about fostering your child's growth; it's about your growth too. As Beth and I share our personal experiences and struggles, we hope to inspire you to carve out intentional time for self-care amidst the hustle of parenthood. Hear about Beth's transition from selling beaded wine glasses on Etsy to launching a successful business that aligns with her passion. It's a conversation filled with practical parenting tips, creative play ideas, and entrepreneurial inspiration. Tune in and let's explore the power of play together!

This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast

Feel free to share your thoughts at www.makewordsmatterforgood.com or email me at Beth@makewordsmatterforgood.com

If you are a therapist or psychologist and want to be a guest on the show, please complete this form to apply: https://forms.gle/ooy8QirpgL2JSLhP6

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

All right, welcome back, listener. Thank you for joining today. I am your host, dr Beth Tramal, and I'm a licensed psychologist and an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University East, where I'm also the director of the master's mental health counseling program, and I love all things kids, adolescents, really, you know, grown-ups who are around kids and trying to build connection and getting kids to listen, helping parents and teachers to kind of increase our effective communication, and I am thrilled to have my guest with us today. And I'll tell you y'all this is summertime for us and we're kind of two really busy moms who also have really ambitious careers, and this episode has been a couple of times on and off the calendar for various reasons, and so I'm just really thrilled to be here today and to share my guest with you all today. So, beth, you're with us today. We got Beth squared today. It's going to be a good day today. So, beth, can you introduce yourself and tell us one fun thing about you?

Speaker 2: 1:25

Yeah, hi, so my name is Beth and I am the creator of Days with Gray. And one fun thing about me, okay, that's, that's like the question that you're not prepared to answer because you're like, well, I am fun, but wait, what makes me fun? I don't know. I'm a parent now, you know. No, I'm just kidding. I think you know I like to, I like to have fun. I just recently started playing tennis to kind of challenge myself with a, with a new sport, and that's been a great way to, you know, improve the growth mindset.

Speaker 1: 1:58

And I can do it eventually. I love this so much because I I literally just posted on social yesterday that about 18 months ago I started playing tennis also oh fun. And just like you know, I just somebody was doing this tennis class at the Y and I was like huh, never really played tennis besides with my family, where we hit it, you know, over the fence most of the time. And now we're, we're playing in this 2.5 women's league together and it's, it's so fun.

Speaker 2: 2:31

Yeah, it really is fun. Very similar story over here. I had a friend who was looking to start a group and just kind of said, yes, it went from there. And yes, absolutely, as a softball player I don't know if you played softball yeah, as softball players, it's like we hit it and it goes over the fence because that's how we're used to swinging. And so now you know it's like, oh, actually, you know, swing up, not over, you know swing, it really is.

Speaker 1: 2:56

And there's a lot more finesse to have, and finesse is not usually what you associate with Beth Tramiel, it's just not really. I mean, anyway, we already have done a similar. It's just this episode is going to be funny. So, beth, you have some really amazing resources out there on your social media Pinterest, I know, on your website. So how did you kind of get into this business of providing activities for parents? I mean, that's kind of your bread and butter right, like giving parents a toolbox or ideas for connecting with their kids.

Speaker 2: 3:36

My heart is absolutely in low prep, easy ideas that you can pull from, like items you already own. And I was a teacher for about 13 and a half years and when I was pregnant with my second, that's when we decided to stay at home and I felt like it was the right decision. I was excited to stay home, but at the same time, you know you're actually home and you're like, oh, okay, now, well, I have. I had a almost one year old when we decided to make the change and you know the days are really long, right, and you don't really know what that means or how to fill it in. And, and I'll say, coming from a classroom teacher, I understood all of the where kindergarteners were going to enter in. So I understand it like the curriculum part of it. But one thing that I really worked hard to better understand is all of the play based learning that gets you into that kindergarten space.

Speaker 2: 4:29

As a public school teacher, I was very focused on what we are told to be focused on in terms of, like, what standards you need to meet and how you need to get there. But it wasn't until I became a parent that I truly wanted to dive even deeper into understanding, like how hands on play really shapes the brain for more learning. And so then I just spent the last seven years really studying it and understanding it and then implementing it with my kids and realizing you know what. There are so many low cost, easy ways to spend the day with your kids that can also take a little edge off of feeling like you need to be the camp director or the play counselor, right Like our children. Well, learn how to play, even when you're staring at your 18 month old and you're like why, why aren't you playing? You're supposed to be playing, but understanding that really their attention span is just twice their age. For you know, as a, as a general guide, you start to just build more habits that really implement more play into your everyday.

Speaker 1: 5:27

You know I love your educator background right, that really brings your expertise into like the living room really yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:37

So you know kind of recognizing play matters a lot, right, and we're starting to hear more and more about this kind of in the mainstream. I think most folks who have kind of studied or really specialized in child development we've kind of always known that play matters a lot, but we're starting to see more presence in the research that obviously play in early childhood especially matters a ton. And so I'm thinking about the mom who's listening and she's like, okay, how do I have energy to play or I don't really know how to play, right, it's been 25 years, it's been 35 years since I was a kid playing and now I'm a grown up and I have all these things I've got to do and I've got laundry and I've got dishes and this kid has to eat again for the fifth time today. How do you help folks kind of see that taking time to play in these? I love this low prep, easy idea, kind of grab something that's in the kitchen already. How do you help them see that it isn't as overwhelming as it might feel initially? I?

Speaker 2: 6:49

think the first, most important part is that when we are from a general parent perspective, when we hear play, we're all of a sudden thinking we're playing dress up and we're in the middle of, like, pretend play and imaginary play, and we need to remember that play is so much more right. Play can be art, play can be a sensory bend, play can be just like squeezing a sponge with dish soap. Play can be playing a board game, playing a puzzle. Play is just. There are just so many ways to play, and I think that before we realize that, we're like, oh my gosh, but I don't like playing dolls. You don't have to play dolls, right? And so I think there's two parts to this that I have discovered over the years. My oldest is nine, and there's two things that have really, really helped pave the path. In the early years, my frustration was that I'm not a morning person.

Speaker 2: 7:37

I have never been, even as a teacher. You have to be there at seven and I would have friends that, like, read the paper, you know because I started teaching in 2001. So there was a paper, there was a paper and I would want to be that person, but I never was. So when the children, when kids, would wake up so early, it's just like, oh my gosh, I don't want to be on. And so then it'd be like, okay, well, let's just turn the screen. Time gives me a few more minutes. But what happened was that turning it off was extremely exhausting and then, even if it went off easily, no one really knew what to do. It was kind of like, okay, and now go. So I thought, well, what if? Instead, what if?

Speaker 2: 8:15

I create like a very simple play prompt and I put it on the table the night before I'm not gluing, I'm not cutting, I'm not pasting, I'm not printing anything. I'm just making something really quick, put it on the breakfast table with manipulatives that they can touch and put together, and then go to bed. And then the next morning, when we all come down and I want to I drink tea. So when I make my tea, or when they needed to have help with breakfast, as I'm doing that they are already getting started with play. I called these a breakfast invitations and actually it was just kind of like a play on words. You know, an invitation to play is like here's an invitation to see what you're going to do. I'm like, well, here's a breakfast invitation, it's breakfast and here's your invitation. What I noticed is that one it set the intention for the day and this is weekdays. It set the attention that, like play is important and there are other things that you can do when you're waking up slowly. And then I realized it also created connection, because I'm not necessarily this is not a workbook that's open that I'm sitting next to them, but instead I'm on the other side of the table. They're manipulating the parts and the pieces and I might make casual conversation like huh, looks like you have a lot of red toys in the red section, so I'm making these like connections to the learning concept, but very casually and if you're a parent listening, don't worry, I give you all of the quick little things that you can say with each activity. I take all this away, for it's like a cookbook. So it was intention, it was connection.

Speaker 2: 9:51

And then what I realized is that when we were done with the breakfast and the breakfast invitation, they were kind of over me if that makes sense, right Like they didn't need me as much because they already had me. So then I could go off and that's when I could like empty the dishwasher or check an email. But putting that time in the front end really helped me on the back end, because then they went off and played and now remember, it's not like this magical, like you know, you start this and then the next day there's no problems with play. We have to remember that over the years kids and us develop better habits and time gets longer. But we want to celebrate the simple wins. So if you're used to using the iPad in the morning which I have nothing against screen time, I actually just bump it for later in the afternoon If you're using screens in the morning and you're just kind of tired of it, you know let's celebrate those little wins, because our kid is going from a quick attention span to touching buttons and the screen quickly flashing to now wait a second.

Speaker 2: 10:50

They just went and did something for five minutes on their own. You know that's a huge win because before they're coming from a different space headspace. So these simple breakfast invitations truly transformed our days, and by three o'clock was, for me, the time that felt I needed to take a step back right. I'm like, okay, we've played, we've eaten snacks, we went for a walk, you had a nap or whatever. Three o'clock, you know I need to take a break. So that's when they were able to watch a show. This really worked well in our house and then I put it out online and on Instagram and it really just caught on and so many families will still say how it just transforms moods and cooperation.

Speaker 1: 11:33

I love this and I love that it. You know, the message I'm hearing is it doesn't have to be complicated. I love that you kind of started with helping us redefine play, that I think we do have sort of this perception that I don't like playing, you know, or it's like, oh, I don't want to throw in the backyard or I don't want to do this, and so I think what I'm hearing you say is focus not on play being only those things, because it's always going to be hard to approach play with excitement If you're only focused on just those perceptions of those few, tiny, small pieces of play, but that kids will find play in the pots and pans under the, you know, under the kitchen sink, and they'll find play in, you know, dropping the spoon on the floor and picking it up, and you know. So I love this. So can you give us an example of, you know, one of the breakfast invitations that families that you have kind of worked with or heard from are maybe one of their favorites?

Speaker 2: 12:41

Yeah, well, and I will absolutely share. I have so many favorites. But I think the key thing is also to lean into your child. So we're not necessarily in charge of being the activity coordinator. We don't necessarily need to tell the child how to play. We want it to be very child led. Yeah, this is probably the time of the day that you are starting them off, maybe because this is where they need that little help getting started. So you really want to lean into, like what your child enjoys doing.

Speaker 2: 13:12

I find many children enjoy color sorting. Yeah, there's something satisfying to it. So you know, the easiest thing is to you know you can even introduce primary colors. So you can just gather a collection of toys red, blue and yellow and you could just put them out with three circles, like get your white paper, draw a red circle, yellow circle and a blue circle. That's probably one of the easiest ways to invite play, because not only will your child sort the objects, then you can make conversations about like how many red did you see?

Speaker 2: 13:40

Or, as parents, you can make a mistake. The kids love to correct us. So you could be like how about you have, you know, 20 blue and then they'd be like 20, you know, maybe they'd count it or and so simple things about like sorting, or even if you have these random stickers in a drawer, you know how we just kind of like shove those half sticker sheets in. Oh yeah, you just take them out and put them all over a piece of white paper and ask your child to circle what they like, right? So that's going to like increase vocabulary, because there might be some things on the stickers they've never seen.

Speaker 2: 14:18

If they circle the entire paper, that is a huge win for fine motor development. Okay, that hand-eye coordination and the ability to make a circle, that's a big deal for toddlers and preschoolers. So we're just kind of like sneaking in these little skills as your child thinks. Right, you're creating conversation. Your child is able to decide. You know, make decisions. How do I feel about this? So I like this. If they don't, they can exit out. So we can take just simple things that we have already lying around the house and put it on a sheet of white paper and allowing our child to go from there.

Speaker 1: 14:51

I love how simple this is, and you know it's like I'm reminded of, you know, my youngest.

Speaker 1: 14:59

He is out of the preschool age now, but he went to nature preschool where they were outside all day, every day, in this, like prairie or something I mean. There was like there was no jungle gym, there was no play, like kind of formal play structures, and they just were in the woods all day and I remember his teacher would kind of every day share all of these like really fancy terms. They've learned cooperation and they learned critical decision making when they had to choose to go left or right. They learned, you know, group decision skills where they had to work as a team. You know it was like she wasn't making anything up, like that's the truth of what was happening, and so I love all these little skills you're talking about that we are just so simply able to facilitate by just providing the materials for them to do what they're naturally curious to do anyway.

Speaker 2: 16:04

Yeah, and that's the thing right. So if you're someone who feels like you're on a really good pattern, I always say don't change anything, that's working right. So for me, mornings we're not working. I needed a solution breakfast invitations. But some of you might be like, well, wait, I work in the morning, I just need to use screens because we need to get out the door. If it's working, then it's working. You can. You can implement a breakfast invitation where it's not working. Maybe that's dinner prep, maybe that's after school. You know, the key is to find what's not working and try, try something that might help with the transition.

Speaker 2: 16:36

And another alternative is just, you know, I feel like water play. It is becoming more popular because it is one of the easiest ways to introducing, like transporting and capacity, and you know, a fine motor, gross motor, because you're like moving the bucket and you're putting it over here. And so you know, if you, if you think that one of the easiest ways to support sensory learning at home is a bucket of water, even you know, first start the bucket of water, then keep your tricks for later, right. So first you have just the bucket of water, then can add, like, maybe some dish soap bubbles, then keep. Your next trick. Maybe you can add, like some food coloring, you know, to change up the colors. But there's just so much that you can do is just with a simple water sensory bin to your point of like the nature school, right, if you don't have one in your neighborhood or you just don't have the ability to go to something like that, you can still invite this problem solving at home through items you are on.

Speaker 1: 17:34

I love it. And if you're listening and you're thinking, oh Beth, what a mess.

Speaker 2: 17:40

I love that.

Speaker 1: 17:42

When my kids were little, you know, I'd have them with a stool at the sink in the kitchen and we'd get those like floaty water things that were at the Dollar Tree or whatever, and actually my. So I have two bigs and two littles, right. So I have two teenagers now and two little guys that we like a four a four year gap in between, where actually my husband was trying to convince me to have more kids and I was like, really too, it's great, you know, we have a girl and a boy, we just and anyway, I love Adrienne and Ari and they're my little guys. They would take like two baths a day. The first bath was like water play. They were like, can we get in the bath and can we use those? You know, we had those like drawing on the bathtub crown, crayons and, and I'm like, yeah, go ahead, you know, get in the bathtub and play with water. And I can, you know, put two inches of water in the bathtub and their best lives.

Speaker 2: 18:38

Yeah, that's the thing. So, yeah, so for the mess, of course you can always go to the bathtub, but if you're like, well, I need to save my baths, the trick is, if you have just an under the bed storage bin, they're shallow, they're shallow, they're wide that I just put together this post about five of my favorite water toys and I wanted to make sure I include just an under the bed storage bin because you can use it for everything. And then what I like to do is I like to go to the dollar store and you get like a collection of funnels and you get like some you know, measuring cups and some, like you know, turkey basters and you can toss those in. Now, if you have a back deck, obviously you know some sort of outdoor space is great for water play, but we can't always go outside, especially in the winter, right? So the alternative to that, I have two tips. One is it's funny if you have the under the bed storage bin, you fill that with water. If you take painter's tape and you create like maybe a foot away from the bin and you create this border, sometimes visual borders just help keep everything aligned. It just tells children like where their boundaries are, so you can do something like that.

Speaker 2: 19:46

We also have an exercise mat that we don't use for, like that would a bike, would go on or something, so my kids would sit on the exercise mat. That also created the boundary. You can use a plastic liner from a shower curtain, you can use a bed sheet and then, like in the winter, when you're like, okay, I don't really want to fill the bucket of water, now you can use the muffin tin and you can freeze little toys in the muffin tin, so like the water will slowly go into the bin as it melts and your child tries to get out the toy. But you don't necessarily. You know, when we think water bin, we either think two things. We think one, I have to buy this like $100, fancy, colorful one on Amazon, or you think filling this bucket with tons of water. You don't need tons of water. Especially we always have to supervise kids with water and any depth, but still we don't need a lot. You just need enough to kind of start the play.

Speaker 1: 20:43

Yeah, they don't need. I mean literally you know, an inch or two of water and it's fine. I love the physical structure or the visual structure you're talking about. I definitely recommend that, preschool teachers especially. You know I'm constantly like, hey, well, what if we move this chair over here? What if we put this over here so that kids can see this is my boundary, like, literally, this is the boundary.

Speaker 2: 21:11

Yeah, I love that. That's such an interesting point that, even with a breakfast invitation, I like to tell parents and teachers to remove all of the distractions, right? So, like when you are setting up an invitation, we don't want you want the table to be pretty clear yeah, except for the supplies you have and we don't want to just like throw it all together. You know you don't have to spend a lot of time putting it together, but you want to make sure that your parts and your pieces are organized. So I like to say, move them to the left, because then it starts the eye tracking moving left to right.

Speaker 2: 21:44

Or, like you said, if you're working on, you know, let's say, someone's creating a play space in their home. Well, we don't need a ton of toys. What we need are we need pathways, right? So we need to think, like we have zones in our house or in the room if you're creating a play space, right. So one zone would be maybe where your building toys are, and then another zone would be transportation, another zone would be our, and so we don't all have the ability to do that, but if you were setting something up, you really want to think in terms of different zones and pathways.

Speaker 1: 22:17

I love that. I mean that's the teacher brain in. You also right that it's like, yeah, in a classroom it's organized in a way that makes sense to the child's brain and so I love that you're sharing that tip. So let's talk kind of age wise. You know, obviously, if you're a listener and your kids are little, preschool, this is I mean all the time, as often as we can. Certainly we don't have the energy to be doing this literally all day, every day, but maybe just like little bits at a time. What's kind of the age range that you're talking with parents about for these kinds of things?

Speaker 2: 22:54

I feel like 18 months is the age that they start to do more independently. They still need us so much, so it's just this weird push and pull right. They're like get away, no, I need you, right, but up until. Like you know, I have a nine year old. So what a way to manage your day is to break it up into like four different sections is how I, how it worked for me. And so I would think like what are the morning, what's the mid morning, what's the early afternoon and what's the late afternoon? And that helped me. You know. Know that, okay, morning was breakfast invitation and play. Mid morning we would try to get outside and go for a walk. Early afternoon, that was their screen time. Late afternoon, you know, maybe that's a sensory bin, and then we're getting ready for a bath and bed and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 23:35

So I think taking your day and dividing it up is really important and I also think, no matter what age you want to think about, what can I do with kids and what I cannot do with kids, right? So, being a stay at home working parent, I know that I can't necessarily do spreadsheets or I can't really look at data with my kids around. It's super frustrating and it makes me feel defeated. But I know I can unload the dishwasher. I know I can take a trip to the grocery store whether or not, you know not that for everybody, so I'm not telling everybody to take the kids to the grocery store, but I know I can like put laundry away. I know I can include them on this stuff and I think not saving everything for nap time or saving everything for the time you get to yourself is extremely important, because your time should be something that you enjoy, from scrolling Instagram to taking a tennis lesson right Like. You can do whatever you want. But you want to make sure when you have time to step back, even when your kids are watching screen, you want to make sure that you're actually doing something for yourself and I think that deciding that upfront what you can and cannot do, and being okay with your child tagging along I you know we used to always say I used to say play is one of the most important things you can do.

Speaker 2: 24:53

I'd say you're welcome to help me with the dishwasher or you can go play. You can choose what you'd like to do, but these are the options that you can, that you can pick from and being okay. I so hard to let kids be bored. I get that because it's harder for us parents than it is right on the kids, but that space that we allow to have our kids feel uncomfortable is a really powerful thing. I can see it now, in my eight and nine year old especially, that they can fill their time a little bit better than they could when they were early, but only because we developed these habits.

Speaker 2: 25:25

So, and that's the thing too, when you come to Days with Gray, there are plenty of play prompt opportunities, right, and you can send me a DM or you can send me an email. I respond to everything, so you can say hey, you know, beth, can you just help guide me? I really I'm not sure if I'm into the water play, but what are their sensory play activities do you have? And then I can talk to you a little bit, tell me a little bit about your child and then I can direct you exactly where it would be, because play can mean so many different things.

Speaker 1: 25:55

I love the breaking of the day. Breaking the day up, I think it keeps us from feeling overwhelmed. And I love the reminder that you do have to really decide and prioritize, like, really be intentional about what time when you get an hour away from the kids or when you get an hour where they're taking a nap or whatever don't do something that you could do when they're with you Really prioritize that time for yourself to get and maybe that is getting some stuff done on your to-do list if that's what makes you feel better today. And maybe what feels better today is not going to be what feels better tomorrow.

Speaker 2: 26:33

Yeah, I like to tell parents to like take a piece of paper out and just think about all the things that they're frustrated with, right, and then we start, can like move things over and see, like what can we do? Even working out, now, it's not the same workout, so we also have to just kind of take away that like expectation. Right, it's not going to be the same, but there are. You know, like I use this little app called 12 minute workout and you can pick 12 or 16. But, like 16 minutes was enough for me to move my body and mentally, like be ready to be back into the space. And they can also handle 16 minutes, right, sometimes when they were young, they would join along next to me, or, but by the time they've exhausted, waiting for a mom, it's kind of it's over.

Speaker 2: 27:20

I know this is not what most people are going to do, but I really need to walk, right, like for me, moving my body is the only way I can function. And so I bought this giant quad stroller and the faces people would make as we would walk. But I had three boys and I just put them in the quad stroller. It was this giant like daycare thing. Yeah, it's like 100 pounds, you know, and I'm five feet right, so it looks completely ridiculous, but I'm like you know, I don't care. I don't care because this is helping all of us. We're getting out of the house and I would just push it all around the neighborhood. We would go anywhere, anywhere we could think of. You know, we saved that fourth seat for any gear we needed to bring, but you know that that we're looking back. That was the key to enjoying. For me, that was the key to enjoying. Motherhood is taking things that I need and just having them kind of come along with me.

Speaker 1: 28:14

And making sure that every day you're intentional about including those things.

Speaker 2: 28:20

Yeah, because if you don't, you just feel, you just feel drained and you feel exhausted and you feel overwhelmed and parenting is really, really difficult, it is overstimulating and you have to really be able to acknowledge like wait a second, I'm overstimulated. I also need to get my needs met as well and you know, still with older kids, I still have these conversations with myself because I mean, in a way, they're bigger and they're louder, so a lot of their hands on. I have three boys and they're very hands on. So, like the physical, the sound level, it goes from zero to 100. I always say they're reading a wrestling, right? You have to acknowledge, okay, where are my own personal boundaries? And how can I include the kids and some of them, because we can't just tell them to go away. That's not fair to them, right? So we have to find these ways to be intentional that we can get everybody's needs met.

Speaker 1: 29:14

Okay, I love this. So your expertise is in giving these like low prep, easy ideas. Give lots and lots of ideas. I'm sure your advice is not get overwhelmed and do a hundred of all of these ideas all at once. It's like, hey, pick an idea that really resonates with you and fuse it into a time of day, make it easy. I'm hearing all of this should feel like a natural part of like kind of what your family is doing. But now you have also developed some activity cards around soft skills, right, so let's talk about that for a minute.

Speaker 2: 29:52

Yeah. So I am a huge believer that if we don't have the soft skills, these are the social, emotional learning or maybe the executive functioning. These are the making life work for us skills right and building confidence. If we don't have that, we don't have much space for the hard skills, which is like what we think of as like a checklist, like learn knows the letters can sound out, the vowels right. So I created this these soft skill activity cards to give parents a focus.

Speaker 2: 30:20

Now, when we say here's this collection of soft skills, we don't want to do one a day. We want to think about okay, is my child having a little trouble with independence? I think they are. Let me find the independence activity that I can read and I can start to implement, because soft skills are life skills and these are things that we want to get really good at before we go to the next one. So we're not going to do like a skill to you know, let's say, our child is really having a tough time getting ready for school in the morning. It is your biggest battle. So I have an idea for that on these activity cards for soft skills, so you can go to that activity card and you can read the strategy that I have for that and then we can and I can share what that one is.

Speaker 2: 31:05

What I did is I created, with magnetic tiles, five different boxes and on each magnetic tile I put a post-it note with what you might want to do and I labeled it one, two, three, four, five. So one activity card might be a. One magnetic tile might say brush your teeth. One magnetic tile might say comb your hair. One magnetic tile might say put your shirt on and in the morning your child can decide the order and it's kinesthetic, right. So they're picking it together which really makes a connection in the brain and they can put the order of like how they want to do those simple self-help skills. But having a little bit of control really helps children, helps motivate children, right. So I would suggest for toddlers, you're just sticking to three, which one do you? Or even two, which one do you want to do first? You want to brush your teeth? You want to eat your breakfast? Click it together, put the order.

Speaker 2: 31:56

As they grow older, those older preschoolers hear your five things, which order do you want to do it in? And it puts it back on them. They can do that and I suggest get really good at that before you move into the. You know a way I really want to help with growth mindset. My child gives up easily. I need some tips on growth mindset. Let's get the independent skills, let's get really good at it. Then you can go to the growth mindset card and you can think about okay, what's a way that we can really improve growth mindset. So some of the topics are confidence and calming strategies, communication, conflict resolution, critical thinking, decision making, gratitude, independence, preparing for new things, listening skills, self-awareness, self-help, team building. You know all these things that we really need in order to function in life.

Speaker 1: 32:47

And that every child could use extra practice on.

Speaker 2: 32:51

And every adult, as I'm making these cards. Do you have cards for me, beth? Absolutely. As I'm making these cards, I'm like, yes, we need to do this more. You know, because life is so busy and we put so much expectation on ourself and we put so much expectation on our children that we are supposed to just move like this, and it's not fair. But until we're like, wait a second, you know nothing's working. Then you can take a step back and realize, okay, let's just kind of like tweak one thing at a time and even just tweaking one thing, you realize, wow, okay, I can breathe. It's just taking a second to press pause, and that's so much easier said than done. I'm telling you this on the podcast, but as I'm making these cards, there's so many light bulbs that are happening in my head of like things that we can use as a family as well.

Speaker 1: 33:37

So let's say, let's say that it's one parent's listening and they're like I love this idea, but it's going to be hard for me to get my partner, my spouse, on board with this idea. Any thoughts on that?

Speaker 2: 33:54

Yeah, you know that is communication and working together is a big thing, I believe, like sharing what you have with your partner and maybe also, you know, sitting down and talking about. You know I really feel like it's hard for your child's name to get ready in the morning. I have an idea. I'm curious what you think, and then again, this is easier said than done. You know asking, you know what, do you think what would work? You know, if we use the magnetic tiles, how do you see this working for you know will, and maybe allowing your partner to have some input too.

Speaker 2: 34:27

And I think relationships work in a couple of different ways. I think sometimes there's just this like primary parent that takes it on and just implements the activity, and then there are some that like to be more involved and so if they, if you do like to work better as a team, absolutely bring the activity and idea to your partner's attention and see what they think and see if they have any little changes that they're like, yeah, that's a good idea. But I wonder if you know it would work better for Will if we did this.

Speaker 1: 34:54

I often also recommend try it on your own, you know, and then let your partner see that it's working and then get them bought in. And so if you're sort of like, yeah, these sound great and I'm not sure my partner will do this, but go for it. You know, try one tomorrow, try one the next day, but let the proof be in seeing that it works, and then try to get your partner on board.

Speaker 2: 35:19

Yeah, and I think the most important thing is that you're practicing in a calm space. You're not like so, even for you know the calming strategies and the breathing strategies. You're not all of a sudden, in the hot moment and you're like okay, here's what we need to do. Everyone put your. You know let's, let's try my card out. Yeah, let me get my card out, but like no, you've already talked about them and maybe you practice them. You know, as you're driving, you're like oh, I have this idea, it's interesting. Or modeling. Modeling is huge and I'd say as a parent, that's my biggest fault is like I need to also be more intentional about modeling how I'm doing things, because that's like paving the path. You know we can have the activity cards, but if we're not reading them with them and thinking that we can all grow at the same time, then really I don't know if anything's going to help. So I think of being intentional myself is huge.

Speaker 1: 36:09

I love that. I couldn't agree more. I talk about modeling almost all the time and and I talk about like talking out loud about my processes I resolve conflict in my mind or through, you know, conversation with somebody that they don't get to see it. My kids don't get to see it unless I'm like talking out loud about it or, you know, having a conversation with them about it. Okay, so we could keep talking all day, I know.

Speaker 2: 36:33

We set this time in the beginning and here we are and I feel like we're just getting started.

Speaker 1: 36:37

Okay. So, beth, tell folks how they can follow you, because what I love is that, yeah, I mean you have all of these great things that people can find on your website and have in their homes, but you also have just great stuff already out there, so tell folks how they can find this stuff and then maybe purchase something from you.

Speaker 2: 36:57

Yeah, so dayswithgreycom is EY and then so it's dayswithgrey on everything else Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and if you subscribe on Monday and Wednesday every morning at 7am, you'll have a new activity in your inbox. I'd try to keep it very straightforward, so it's just like you wake up and you're like, ah, what are we going to do? Or, you know, if you're not home during the weekdays, you're like what can we do this weekend? It's in your inbox. So those two ways are whatever works for you. If you're someone who prefers Instagram, or if you like getting a newsletter, you don't have to do it all. You can just choose your best way to follow.

Speaker 1: 37:33

I love it. I'm so grateful for you. What amazing stuff. I mean your brain is clearly just so creative and coming up with all of these different ideas that you know. Maybe a listener can pick one out of three, one out of five, maybe it's everyone that you want to do, but I love that. You just have kind of endless knowledge, it seems.

Speaker 2: 37:56

Thank you, I appreciate it. It's funny. Before this I sold these decorated beaded wine glasses on Etsy and that was a complete fail. The only person that bought it was my mom. So I'm glad that. I'm glad that this just kind of shows that you really got to find your niche.

Speaker 1: 38:13

Find the thing that works. Find the thing that people want, exactly. I love it. It's so good. All right, listener, thanks for joining and check out all of the amazing stuff that Beth has and, as always, make work matter for good.