TILT Parenting: Raising Differently Wired Kids Debbie Reber

As I’m sure I’ve said on the show before, there’s no amount of money that could convince me to go back and relive my teenage years. But I do genuinely love and have so much empathy for kids in this phase of life and all that it entails, which is why I’m so happy to share today’s conversation on the show.
I had a chance to sit down with renowned parenting and childhood development expert Ellen Gallinsky, who has just published a phenomenal book called The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens. Ellen spent nearly ten years talking with teenagers about what they think about, what they would like to know, how they feel, and perhaps most interestingly, what they would like adults to understand about them. She shares her discoveries in The Breakthrough Years, and through it, offers a paradigm-shifting comprehensive understanding of adolescence.
So in this conversation, we explore some what Ellen shares in her book, including why this phase of life is clouded by so many negative stereotypes and misconceptions, the pivotal brain development and skill acquisition happening during the teen years, the power of "shared solutions" problem-solving in fostering life and executive function skills, and what Ellen learned about teens' need for belonging and how we can support this essential aspect of their development.
 
About Ellen Galinsky
Ellen Galinsky is President of Families and Work Institute, President of the Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN), and senior advisor at ACF at HHS. Previous jobs include Chief Science Officer at the Bezos Family Foundation and faculty at Bank Street College. Her life’s work revolves around identifying important societal questions, conducting research to seek answers, and turning the findings into action. Her research is focused on work-life, children’s development, youth voice, child-care, parent-professional relationship, and parental development. She’s the author of Mind in the Making and The Breakthrough Years. She’s also authored 90 books/reports and 360 articles.
Career highlights include serving as President of NAEYC, a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, a parent expert on the Mister Rogers Talks with Parents TV series, receiving a Distinguished Achievement Award from Vassar College and the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award from WFRN.
 
Get Exclusive NordVPN deal here → https://nordvpn.com/tilt - It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee!
 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our “Kid’s POV” special podcast episodes featuring conversations with my son Asher are particularly popular, especially among members of the community who like to co-listen with their own differently-wired children. And from time to time, we get emails from listeners who want to know more about Asher and how he deals with certain situations.
A few months ago, we did a special episode where Asher tackled listener’s questions specifically related to his social life, and in today’s episode, we’re going to go through some other listener questions, covering everything from how Asher handles big emotions and thinks about his diagnoses to how he stays positive when he gets in trouble just for being who he is. And because many listeners are just curious to know more about who Asher is and what he’s interested in, I threw in a couple of personal questions at the end about his favorite books, games, movies, hobbies, and more.
Pro tip: This is a good episode for co-listening! When Asher and I listen to podcasts, we dump a puzzle out on the dining room table and listen while building the puzzle. It makes for a nice combination!
  
Things You'll Learn From This Episode:

How Asher identifies and/or fits in with other kids his age

Whether his diagnosis is an important part of how he sees himself

How Asher self-soothes when feeling sad or scared or other big emotions

Whether his deep areas of interest are ever an issue in relationships with others

Whether Asher ever feels down about himself because of challenges that crop up related to his neurodivergence



Get Exclusive NordVPN deal here → https://nordvpn.com/tilt - It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As parents, we want more than anything to help our kids thrive, to protect them from pain and harm, and avoid some, or maybe all, of the mistakes we made in our own lives. But what happens when our kids are struggling with really big, difficult, and scary, maybe even life-threatening, stuff? And none of our efforts to “fix” things are making a difference?
That’s the focus of today’s show and I am absolutely thrilled to be in conversation about it with Kristina Kuzmic, a mental health advocate, author, comedien and self-described “cheerleader for her fellow humans.” Kristina has just come out with a powerful new book I Can Fix This! (And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself while Parenting My Struggling Child), in which she writes about her complex journey of parenting a child struggling with mental health and substance abuse. She wrote it to help other struggling parents reject ideas that keep families stuck and, with her trademark authenticity and wisdom, dispel the lies we believe as parents.
This is SUCH a deep, raw, and generous conversation and it is exactly the conversation a parent feeling hopeless and overwhelmed in figuring out how to help their child needs to hear. Truly balm for the soul.
 
About Kristina Kuzmic
After immigrating to America from Croatia during the war in her homeland, and later facing more challenges (divorce, single parenting, poverty, mental health challenges), Kristina’s goal became clear: to be for others what she needed when she was at her lowest.
In 2011, when Oprah crowned Kristina the winner of Mark Burnett’s reality TV competition “Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star,” Oprah said, “What is that THING…that’s so charming and charismatic and connected to the audience that makes you feel like, ‘I know her, I want to be her, I’m like her’… Kristina has all of that. She is an ‘IT PLUS’ girl… I wanna watch her!”
Since working with Oprah, Kristina has branched out on her own, creating videos about juggling all of life’s challenges, and encouraging her audience to prioritize their mental health. She has quickly become a viral sensation with 2.9 million Facebook followers, over 670,000 Instagram followers, and more than a billion video views.
Kristina’s first book, Hold On But Don’t Hold Still has been translated to seven languages. Her second book, I Can Fix This! (And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself while Parenting My Struggling Child) was released in May 2024.
 
Get Exclusive NordVPN deal here → https://nordvpn.com/tilt - It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When I launched the Tilt Parenting website in April 2016, I was excited to share with the world the Tilt Manifesto, a document outlining my vision for a more positive, more inclusive, and more all-around awesome experience for parents raising differently-wired kids, as well as my ideas for how we can get there together.
Because it’s important to us that the ideas behind the Tilt Manifesto are consumed and shared as broadly as possible, and because I know that the Manifesto is a kind of a long read and one thing we parents of atypical kids don’t necessarily have a lot of lying around is spare time, I decided to dedicate an entire episode of the podcast to the Manifesto. In it, I not only share my personal story of how I shifted my experience raising Asher from one where I felt overwhelmingly frustrated, stressed, and isolated to one full of acceptance, optimism, and possibility, but I lay out 10 ideas for things we can start doing today to shift the parenting paradigm to one that embraces our kids and our experience raising them.
So, if you haven’t had a chance to read the Manifesto yet, or you have read it but could use a fresh burst of inspiration, I invite you to sit back and have a listen, and join me in imagining what could be when we join together to shift the experience for families with differently-wired kids.
  
Things You'll Learn From This Episode:

Debbie Reber’s personal story of raising her twice-exceptional son

Why the current parenting paradigm is broken and outdated, especially for parents with atypical kids

How though our journey raising our differently-wired children is unique to us and who our children are, we are tied together through shared experiences of parenting outside the lines

The 10 things parents everywhere can start doing right now to take a lead in shifting the parenting paradigm

 
Resources Mentioned:


The TiLT Manifesto (download link for PDF)


Neurodiversity: What Does it Mean for 2015? by John Elder Robinson (Psychology Today)

Margaret Webb Life Coach



Get Exclusive NordVPN deal here → https://nordvpn.com/tilt - It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Debbie and Seth discuss how parents can balance the concepts from the book ‘The Self-Driven Child’ with the challenges of supporting a child with ADHD and executive functioning issues. They emphasize the importance of scaffolding and giving children control over their lives while still providing support. They also discuss the need for parents to do their own inner work and manage their own anxiety in order to effectively support their children. The episode concludes with a discussion on the importance of planning and setting goals for children’s development.

Get Exclusive NordVPN deal here → https://nordvpn.com/tilt - It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m SOOO excited to share this conversation with you, as it’s been a few months in the making and it’s on a topic I’m personally very interested in and I feel like not enough people are talking about — and that topic is, the intersection of traditional therapeutic modalities and neurodivergence.
Specifically, I wanted to examine how some therapies may not meet the unique needs of neurodivergent individuals and what it means for a therapist to be truly neurodivergent-affirming. 
And I have two wonderful guests to get into it with me — author, parent of neurodivergent children and neurodivergent clinical psychologist Dr. Megan Anna Neff, who’s been on this show twice before, and Dr. Debra Brause, the parent of an autistic ADHDer, and a licensed psychologist and therapist who works from a neurodivergent-affirming stance.
And get into it we do. In this conversation, Megan Anna, Debra, and I explore what some limitations and challenges are for neurodivergent clients working with therapists who don’t understand their neurotypes, how therapeutic approaches can be adapted to provide sensory safety and center the client's experience and agency, why cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) may not be as effective for differently wired people, as well as the potential limitations of standard strategies like mindfulness and visualization as. Most importantly, we'll discuss the qualities to look for in a therapist who is truly neurodivergent affirming —what that means, and how it can make all the difference in a child's therapeutic journey. Megan Anna and Debra shared a lot of resources as well that you can go back to if you are a parent looking to get your child therapy. 
Dr. Megan Anna Neff is the founder of Neurodivergent Insights where she creates education and wellness resources for neurodivergent adults, the co-host of the Divergent Conversations podcast, and the author of Self-Care For Autistic People, which is the book we talked about last time she was on the show. As a late-diagnosed AuDHDer , Dr. Neff applies their lived experiences to their professional focus. They are committed to broadening the mental health field's understanding of autism and ADHD beyond traditional stereotypes. 
Dr. Debra Brause helps couples embrace who their children are, and provides support and guidance through this unique journey. Her professional training includes diagnostic assessment for learning disabilities at the UCLA Office for Students with Disabilities, and clinical work in community mental health settings including The Southern California Counseling Center and the Maple Counseling Center. 
 
Get Exclusive NordVPN deal here → https://nordvpn.com/tilt - It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices