Managing Sensory Overwhelm in Parenthood
Episode 13: Managing Sensory Overwhelm in Parenthood with Larissa Geleris of @steadyparents
Disclaimer: This episode is for entertainment and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please seek immediate care from your physician if you have any concerns about your health.
Picture this, you’re cooking dinner, the oven fan is blasting, your baby is crying, your toddler is playing with a noisy toy, and your partner is trying to talk to you? You are filled with overwhelm and overstimulation. If this sounds like you, you are NOT alone. In fact, this is such a normal response to what is happening around you! This week join Rachael and Larissa to talk all about the over-stimulation, overwhelm, and dysregulation parents experience all the time! They dive deep on how to truly empower parents and help them feel confident and steady in their parenting journey.
In this episode we discuss:
Understanding sensory overwhelm
The effects of the intense sensory demands of parenthood
Practical sensory strategies for times of dysregulation
Being touched out
Self compassion as it relates to self regulation
How to set yourself up for success and have less times of overwhelm
How to coregulate when you’re barely holding it together
Larissa is an occupational therapist specializing in identifying and treating sensory processing dysfunction. She began her career in pediatrics, but after suffering a major concussion, she had to take some time off work due to her own sensory dysfunction. As she recovered, she shifted focus to parents, realizing just how much she was using her OT knowledge and skills on herself as an overstimulated parent.
Founder of Steady Parents, Larissa is passionate about supporting parents who are experiencing overstimulation, overwhelm, and dysregulation to help them feel confident and steady in their parenting journey. Larissa offers 1:1 coaching to help parents tune in to themselves, feel empowered to do the things that are meaningful to them, and explore practical and sustainable ways to care for themselves, while caring for their family. You can find her online program: Sensing Your Needs in Parenthood, a self-paced online program that you can turn to for practical, effective strategies to employ in daily life, participate in your role as a parent, and experience the joys of parenthood the way they’re meant to be experienced.
Rachael is a mom of 3, founder of Hey, Sleepy Baby, and the host of this podcast.
Listen to the full episode:
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Rachael: Welcome to No One Told Us, the podcast that tells the truth about parenting and talks about all the stuff you wish you knew before having kids. I'm your host, Rachel Shepard -Ohta, and today I am so excited to welcome Larissa. Larissa is an occupational therapist specializing in identifying and treating sensory processing dysfunction. She began her career in pediatrics, and then I would really love to hear about how you kind of made this shift. And you're the founder of Study Parents, where you provide lots of regulation strategies for parents who are experiencing over -stimulation, overwhelm, and dysregulation. And you really empower parents and help them feel confident and steady in their parenting journey. And I absolutely love that. So Larissa, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the show.
Larissa: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited about this podcast. I know all of the episodes are going to be great, and it's an honor to be one of them.
Rachael: Oh my gosh. Well, thank you. I think this one is going to be something that all parents need to hear. So I'm really, really excited to kind of dive in. I would love to hear, so I know you're an OT, but I would love to hear how you kind of arrived at this specialty, we'll call it, or how you arrived at talking about the overwhelm and the sensory side of things, because OT covers a pretty broad. I'm familiar with OT just because I was a special ed teacher and I have a child who is in OT, so I'm familiar with it. And you guys work on such a broad spectrum of things. So how did you kind of niche into the sensory side of things?
Larissa: So that is quite the story. So I originally, when I went to OT school, so for those of you who don't know, an occupational therapist is somebody who we support people with a disability or some sort of dysfunction or some barrier that makes it so that they can't do the things that they need to do. So school, so for pediatrics, for example, we would support kids with sensory processing disorder or other developmental disabilities to be able to do the things that are meaningful to them. So for kids at school, that's play, that's really creating a relationship within the family and creating the sense of self. And then when you move into adulthood, again, it's this sense of self. So what are the things that you need to do to make you feel like a person? And what is meaningful to you? And that's where OTs come in. That's what we do. I was in pediatrics for a long time. I funnily enough didn't even want to be a sensory based OT. I was sure that I wouldn't be one. And then I shadowed one while I was waiting for my license to come in and fell in love with it. So I started out in pediatrics in a sensory based clinic. Then a about four years ago, I was hiking, I hit my head and I suffered a pretty bad concussion from it. And so I then had to stop working because I was then experiencing all the things that I was used to treating. So I was having balance issues. I was having severe overwhelm with noise and touch. And I remember this one moment when my husband was behind me and he sneezed and I started crying, just straight up crying. And I just realized then that I had to OT myself and I had to figure out how to use my skills as a sensory based OT. Turn them inwards towards myself because otherwise I couldn't function. I was a parent of an 18 month old at the time and I now have two kids and I just I realized then how much I was using my skills on myself. And then as I started to improve, I realized that this was not something I could keep to myself. And so I started in March of 2020 when the world fell apart and nobody knew what to do. I started an Instagram page and every day I would post a little bit about parent overwhelm and overstimulation. That's what people were drawn to. And I realized sometimes, I was telling somebody the other day that sometimes when I post something, it's like this collective sense, like this collective sigh in my comments, you know, everybody's like, Oh, okay, that's, it's not just me. It's not just me. And, that is the biggest, my biggest goal in this space is to let parents know it's not just you. And, like the name of your podcast, no one told us no one talks about this. And then you start to experience this feeling touched out, this overwhelm with its noise, the shuffling of all of the things, all the open tabs in your brain. It's so much. Yeah. It's so much. And it doesn't have to be like this. There are things you can do. You don't have to just like be like, Oh, well, I'm just going to push through until my kid goes to college. Right.
Rachael: I think it's so interesting that you started in March of 2020. That's when I started too. And yeah, I mean, I bet for so many parents having their kids home with them for the first time all the time, having no childcare and no support, you can't bring them outside to get their energy out. I bet that that was kind of a big time for talking about overwhelm and you probably hit it on such a nerve with so many people who are dealing with parenting little kids during that time.
Larissa: Yeah. It was a really, really challenging time for so many reasons.
Rachael: Yeah. And so, you know, even outside of a pandemic, maybe you're just, you're listening right now and you're just expecting your first baby or you just have, you know, you didn't go through the parenting during 2020 the way some of us did, but overwhelm is still such an issue for new parents. And I would love if you could just help us first understand what we mean by sensory overwhelm and maybe why it becomes so apparent in early parenthood, even if you never really noticed before that you might have some sensory sensitivities or things like that.
Larissa: Yeah. So everybody has a sensory system. So that is, we hear all the time about our five sensory systems, you know, sight, touch, Every time I do this, I panic that I'm not going to remember. I know. I have to do it on my fingers.
Rachael: You have to like look at your face while you're doing it. Make sure you cover all the bases.
Larissa: So sight, touch, smell, taste, sound are the five that everybody hears about. Then there are also three other ones. There's the proprioceptive system, which is input into our muscles and joints. So it allows us to know where our body is in space. So right now my hand is slightly over to the right. And I know that without looking at it. And then there's the vestibular system, which is your sense of balance. So that has receptors in your inner ear. And it helps you know where your head is in relationship to gravity. So right now my head is slightly tilted to the right. And I know that even though I'm not looking at it. And then it also helps you know how quickly you're going, if you're falling, if you're upside down, all of those things. So it helps you really write yourself against gravity. And then interoception, which is your internal sensation. So heartbeat, hunger, bowel and bladder pressure, all of that that happens on the inside that tells you what's going on in there. So they all work together and separately, all of those systems to help you essentially know where you are in your environment and how to respond. Everybody's is a little bit different. Some people have a system that needs less sound to get to a regulated response, which is that space where you can meaningfully engage in the moment and do what is needed of you in that moment. So some people need less, which means that a soundscape of a household, which is very loud, can be overwhelming because they've hit their threshold earlier. And then some people need more. So those are the type of people that tend to do well working in a coffee shop versus a quiet library. So they like that kind of background sounds. It kind of, it helps bring their system up into a regulated space so they can focus.
Rachael: Right. So even like people who need to listen to music or podcasts or watch a show to fall asleep or something, they, is that part of it? Like they just kind of need that background sound, okay?
Larissa: Yeah, yeah. And there's nothing wrong with either of those things, either of those ways of processing input. They're both an appropriate response to whatever your body needs. And there's sound, but then there's also touch. So some people like really, really deep touch. Some people will like a little bit of just kind of like a light stroke. Some people need a lot of movement in the day. Some people don't like a lot of movement in the day. So again, it's all of this. When we get to early parenthood, there's a lot of sound. There's a lot of touch. There's not a lot of movement, except then there's the bouncing up and down what the baby needs, but it's not really parent led. It's responding to the baby. And so you're getting a mix of input that is not necessarily what your body needs. It's just what's happening and what the demands are of the moment. That can be really, really challenging. And then you add in the sleep deprivation, which I mean, everybody talks about it being so hard. But I think something that is so important to recognize is that sleep can actually heighten your sensory sensitivity. Or sleep deprivation can. So when you have a poor night's sleep, which you do when you have young children, you're going to be more sensitive to pain, to sound, to touch. So all of that kind of feeds into it. Usually you're not eating well or on a great schedule. So there's so many factors involved, but the most important thing to recognize is that all of this is happening and it makes sense that you might be feeling overwhelmed because your body is getting too much input, not in ways that are what your particular body needs.
Rachael: Right. And so how do most people exhibit that like when they are feeling overwhelmed? Maybe they don't even realize that it's because they're touched out or they don't even realize because there's, you know, so much noise all the time or there's people talking to them all the time. Maybe they don't realize that it's sensory overload and they just think, Oh, I'm just an angry mom, like, Oh, I just snap all the time. Oh, I just have postpartum rage or like whatever term they want to use for it. So how do you know it's, it's more of a, and I know you're not like a therapist and I'll talk about this in other episodes, postpartum anxiety and rage and all that stuff. But how might you be able to differentiate between like a mood disorder and sensory overwhelm or sensory overload or do they go hand in hand? Do you find?
Larissa: Yeah, that is such a great question. They often coincide, but that doesn't mean that you, if you are having sensory overload, send overstimulated moments, it doesn't mean that the root of it is a mental health disorder. However, when you're in an over overwhelmed overstimulated state, that's a fight or flight response. So you are going to be more anxious. You are going to be quick to rage. You are likely going to be crying a lot or dissociating. That's a big one that kind of like feeling like I'm not in the moment or needing to zone out and scroll your phone all the time. Everything you hear about what the fight flight responses that do happen in postpartum mental health disorders can also happen when you are, when it's simply sensory overload. And I say simply because it's not a simple thing When you know that they can be two separate things, it feels a little bit more like I can control this. And I think that's a really important piece to understand.
Rachael: Yeah, and so how can you control it? Like we can't stop our babies from crying or whining or needing us or, you know, if we breastfeed, we can't necessarily control how much our baby is gonna need to feed or want to feed. So how can we like control that overwhelm or manage it at least?
Larissa: So you can't control the baby. What can you control? It's yourself. And one of the most important factors here is self -compassion and awareness. And so if you can even just say to yourself like, "Whoa, it makes sense that I'm feeling like this." I remember there was one time when my, I have two kids, they are now five and two, but when my daughter, the younger one, was a couple of weeks old, I remember this one time I was nursing her and I just got filled with rage. And I honestly terrified myself. And so I, you know, unlatched her, I put her on the bed and I just like, hands up, just stared at her 'cause I was frozen and so scared of what was happening in my body because I was, I was so touched out.
Rachael: It's like your skin is crawling. I've been there too.
Larissa: And then I stared at her sweet little face who had, I mean, she didn't know what the heck was going on. And then I was able to take a pause there and think like, what is happening right now? And not like what is happening to me, what is wrong with me? But like, critically, what is going on in my world right now? My son is three years old. So he is a toddler who also needs a lot of support. We've been watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse constantly and I'm not sleeping. And so, and I haven't eaten. There's all these factors involved in this one moment. So it's all building up to lead to this moment. And when you can pause and step back and zoom out, you can see there's nothing wrong here. It's just an appropriate response to what's happening around me and within me. And that awareness can bring so much self compassion, because then you're not saying like, I should be able to handle this. There's something wrong with me. It's oh, okay. It makes sense that I'm feeling like this. And that's okay. It's okay. You don't have to critique it. There's just like, okay, okay, even simply just the like, okay, this is a struggle- can be so regulating and so
Rachael: I love that. Yeah, just validating yourself and being like, okay, it makes sense. But I am losing it right now because of x, y and z that's going on around me. Like this makes sense. There's nothing wrong with me. I am not broken. I'm not a terrible mom. It's not that I'm not cut out for this. It's just for all of these reasons, this reaction makes sense. I love that. Yeah, exactly. So when you're in a moment like that, what are some things that you can do? Maybe it's already too late. I would love to talk about some strategies for kind of like preempting those feelings and maybe getting ahead of things. But first say that that moment's already passed. You're already, you're through your morning, you haven't eaten breakfast, your toddler is going insane, your baby is cluster feeding, whatever it is. What are some things that you can do in those moments where you feel that like rage or like you're just gonna, you're tipping over that cliff of becoming completely overwhelmed? How can you kind of bring yourself back down aside from the self compassion piece?
Larissa: Yeah. So there's a couple, a lot of different things actually that you can do. One of the most effective things is leaning against a wall. And if you follow me on Instagram, you know, like, I put this all the time and because it's such an accessible strategy. And what it does is it helps ground you into your body because you're giving yourself that deep proprioceptive input like I talked about earlier, that deep input into your body, letting it know like here, this is where you are. So when I said proprioceptive input is where your body is in space, sometimes you lose sight of that. You can't tell where you are. If you lean against a wall, half of you has input into it to know where it is. Another thing that it does is it helps block out sound from behind until you're only getting sound from in front. You have less filtering to do. And it gives input then also into your ribcage so it can help support your breathing patterns. And so for that reason, I say that strategy all the time because it's one of the most effective things to do and there's always a wall around, not always, but most of the time there's a wall around you. And then it doesn't, you're not running to the bathroom crying and closing the door and then your kids are banging against it, mom, mom, and then you're the worst mom ever. Oh yeah. And it just, like I, I mean, I end up in those spaces too. But when I'm hiding in a bathroom, my kids are screaming for me. It makes it worse. And it's so hard to not bring on the guilt in those moments, even though again, we shouldn't, but that's really hard. So if you're in the room with your children, taking care of yourself in that very discreet way, it can be really supportive. And then another thing that you can do is drink water out of a straw. And because again, that's proprioceptive input, the sucking in through the straw. It's really, really supportive of helping regulate you, helping you come back into the moment. I really like ice water. It gives them like an extra hit of sensory input. And again, you're, you're probably thirsty, especially if you're breastfeeding.
Rachael: Yeah. Oh my gosh, I call my water bottle like my emotional support water bottle. Like you get around with me everywhere and it's always filled with with ice water. And yeah, and feeding yourself to is such a like having just handy snacks, especially if they have protein just around so that you can not forget to to feed yourself. And yeah, like the chewing and yes, kind of taking like a mindful minute. Yeah, even if you can do harass you for a bite. It's it's worth it because maybe they're hungry too. And that's why they're screaming.
Larissa: Exactly. Exactly. And if you a couple of things about feeding. So if you have a chewy snack, again, back to that sensory proprioceptive input. So dried mango, beef jerky, a bagel, anything like that. Then and then if you can bring in the awareness, the mindful awareness of like, I can feel the input going into my jaw and I can literally feel the stress melting away in that moment. It works if you're overstimulated. It works if you're under stimulated. So it's a great strategy for when you don't know what the heck is going on, but you know, you need something and inevitably, your kids will come in and share that snack with you. And that gives you guys a moment to connect and being in relationship with somebody is another key factor in regulation. So those simple moments of eating a snack together where you can just sit, you don't have to talk to each other. You can just look at each other. Just reset together. And it can be a really magical moment. I know those all seem like very simple strategies, but that's what you need. You need a simple.
Rachael: Exactly. Exactly. Something that you can remember to do. What do you think about? I know I see a lot of parenting people or influencers or whatever talk about like those loop headphones or some kind of like noise canceling earplug. Do you find that those are helpful to kind of like drown out some of the noise or not really?
Larissa: So I have a lot of feelings about earplugs. I do, I have loops and I do really like them. And it's not the only strategy available to you. So what I don't want is for a parent to put them in and continue on with the stressful thing. Because then you're blocking out one demand, but your mind is still reeling. You're still doing everything that you need to do. You still have that urgency. And sometimes you need that. Like sometimes you need to get dinner on the table right now. You need to get through a bath time right now without totally losing your mind. You do. And that's when they can be really helpful. But if you're depending on them as your only strategy, then you're not supporting yourself from other areas. So you're not supporting the other sensory systems. You're also, if you continue to use them when we remove sensation, we end up making ourselves more sensitive to it. And so if you're continuing to remove noise, you're never supporting your ability to process the noise.
Rachael: So what are some things then that we can maybe incorporate into our day so that we maybe avoid becoming completely overwhelmed? And I know it'll happen sometimes. Like we have little kids, it's bound to happen sometimes. And that's why I'm so glad you brought out those super simple tools and that idea of self -compassion 'cause like it's gonna happen. How could we maybe set ourselves up for success in our day to maybe have it happen less or less frequently?
Larissa: Yeah, a couple of things. So this is what I call your sensory armor. So you're putting on your sensory armor so that you are ready to greet the chaos of parenting. And one of the things is sleep. And I know that one is so tricky. For so many reasons and you can't control it. There are times when your kid is asleep and you're not. And I mean at nighttime, like the whole sleep and the baby sleeps thing is bull. like you also are allowed to do the dishes if you need to. But when you find yourself doom scrolling at 11, o 'clock and your babies are sleeping, go to bed, like go to bed. And I love, I love screen time before bed. Like I'm not going to be here and say, like, of course, away an hour before. Yeah, I love it too. It's also a time for social connection. It's also a time for like, drowning out everything else. But like I said earlier, sleep is a huge sleep deprivation is so intimately related to sensory processing and sensory sensitivity. And so you have to sleep, you have to. And if you can't get yourself to fall asleep, at least you're laying there and resting and trying to calm your brain down, go under a weighted blanket that is a very effective strategy to just help support your brain's ability to transition from wakefulness to sleep.
Rachael: Yeah, I tell parents about like adult sleep hygiene all the time, because I do, for Hey Sleepy Baby, do work with wakeful babies and kids and parents obviously struggle when they're going through a rough patch with their kiddos sleep. But then I also talked to so many parents who have babies that sleep through the night and they still have trouble sleeping. Or maybe they're just going through a rough patch and I'm like, well, bring in your partner, like bring in your support system, like you also deserve to get sleep. There are creative solutions that can help you achieve that. And so yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.
Larissa: Yeah, yeah, it's it's a tough one. I actually did an entire workshop on on supporting parent sleep from a sense. Outside of kids sleep, just yes. Yes. So that's a really big one. Another thing that you can do is identify what your triggers are. So for me, it's noise, especially post concussion. The dueling noises for me, it'll send me into overdrive so quickly. But if I know that that's what's happening, then I can set a boundary around that. And so for example, if my son is playing with a toy, and it's really, really loud, and I have the stove vent going, and I because I'm trying to cook dinner, and my daughter is crying, like that's, that's a recipe for overstimulation for pretty much everybody. Yeah. But then I can say like, Hey, bud, I'm going to give you, you get one more minute with that toy. And then you can either turn it off and find something else, or you can go play with it in your room. So he doesn't have to stop. But he, there is a boundary there, because I need to take care of myself before I get to that, you know what Joe, you know. Yeah. And, and that takes practice, like the first time I did that, you know, there was the no, no, I'm going to stay here. Of course, which totally makes sense. Yeah. But that's one, that's why setting those boundaries before you get to your overstimulated state is so essential, because you also have to be there for your child when they say no, and they say I don't want to, and they're going to have their meltdown, and then you have to be there through supporting them in their meltdown. But over time, as you continue to set that same boundary, and also always come back to them, and you know, you're, I'm not banning to your room forever, like you are helping them understand so much about your attachment with each other, helping them understand how to take care of themselves, because you're modeling it for yourself. There's so many benefits to setting a boundary just around noise.
Rachael: Yep. For sure. My son loves listening to like the little audio players like we have a Yoto and a Toni. And they're really cute. And most of the time, I don't mind them. But sometimes it's like, I've heard the same story 40 million times. And like you said, like with the fan going at dinner time, something about that fan, I just, when that's going and the story is going and they're all talking to me, I just cannot. So I started to kind of like set a boundary with him, like you can either take that in another room, or you can leave it here and hang out with me, but you have to put headphones on. Yeah. And yeah, just like giving them those choices so that you don't absolutely lose your mind is very helpful. And you actually also just touched on something that I wanted to talk about. And maybe we can end on this before we share more about what you do over on your page, co -regulation. You just touched on it where our child is having a meltdown because we've set a boundary or because they're hungry or they're tired or whatever it is, like they, you know, they're little people with sensory systems that get tripped up all the time too. How do we kind of navigate co -regulating when we are barely able to regulate ourselves? Do you have any pointers or tips for that? Because I think that is such a hard one in the early years when we're trying so hard to be the calm for our child, because we hear that all the time, right? You have to be the calm, you have to co -regulate, but how can you help regulate another person when you're barely holding it together?
Larissa: I could talk for hours about co -regulation and co -regulation. Whoa, there's two different ways to look at it. So if we look at it through everything we learn on social media lens, it is, it appears to be this magical strategy that you can use when your kid is melting down and will calm them down. That's what it looks like from a what you are absorbing on social media lens. But that's not exactly it. It's one piece of it. But really, co -regulation from a more holistic viewpoint is one nervous system talking to another nervous system and taking in cues from each other to know, is this a safe space? Is this not a safe space? Do I need to rev up my regulation status and run get or cry or fight or, you know, get into the fight, fight mode? Or can I stay calm and steady? Or can I downshift into a safe space? Or again, can I rev up just a tiny bit and do something brave? Like, is it safe? Is this a safe space for me to try something new? So there's so many layers involved in co -regulation and our nervous systems talking to each other. How do our nervous systems talk to each other? They do it through a couple different ways. They do it through facial expression. So a smiling face, a kind eyes, kind of like those gentle eyes versus big open and wide eyes. And then tone of voice has a lot to do with it. So a gentle tone of voice helps convey that everything is safe versus like a monotonous or a stern voice like this. So that's a couple different ways that our nervous systems can talk to each other. So something that is key to understand is that it's a bi -directional relationship and our children melting down, are sending is sending our nervous system as the parents cues of danger because our child is hitting us. Our child is yelling at us. Our child is in distress. They're telling us that we're the worst moms ever. And lately my son has been saying, you're not a fun mom. And I don't know why that hits me.
Rachael: So that cuts deep.
Larissa: Yeah, I'm really fun. It's a burn. It's a burn. It's a burn. For sure. So we're receiving all of these cues of danger. And like you said, we're barely hanging in on ourselves. So we're on the edge. And then we're pulling in all this information that's that's telling us the situation's not safe. We got to get out of here. So in a moment like that, again, validation. Like it makes sense that my body is ramping up because my kid's nervous system is ramping up. That makes sense. And this is going to be bringing awareness to the struggle in that moment that can actually then help shift you back down. So when you're in a self criticism phase of like, I should be able to handle this, I should be able to stay calm, everything on Instagram says I need to be calm and I'm not being calm. Then you're actually attacking yourself from the inside out, you're sending one more danger cue to yourself. But if you then say like, Oh, it makes sense that I'm starting to ramp up, you're increasing self compassion, which then can shift you down into a regulated state. Yeah, so there's so many directions in it. And again, it sounds so simple, like, Oh, just tell yourself it makes sense. But really, like that is a very, very powerful strategy is just validation and awareness. I mean, I do it all the time. And the awareness that this is going to be a struggle actually makes it less of a struggle. Because you're not fighting against yourself.
Rachael: Yeah, you're not fighting against yourself. I love that. And then we also don't need to fight against our kid. I think sometimes it's so activating at least for me. This is something I've had to really work on in my parenting is that their meltdowns are so activating to me because I just want to fix it. I just want to stop the crying. I just want them to be happy. I just want to end it as soon as possible. And the more I've been able to practice just kind of like sitting with it and saying to myself like, they don't have to be happy right now. They don't have to love that I'm setting this boundary or whatever it is that they're crying about or screaming at me about, like, it's okay. and it will pass. It's passed a million times before. And like, we will eventually be on the other side of this and just like doing this one of those strategies that we talked about earlier to kind of just help myself stay grounded. But then also, like you said, like not beating myself up for feeling that activation, that yeah, that's such a helpful tip, that self -compassion and that and that compassion for the child that's sitting in front of you having that deep distress or that really tough moment, right?
Larissa: Yeah, it's hard to do this in the moment. But outside of the moment, thinking then putting your mind in the mind of your child, like, they're having a meltdown. And we've had meltdowns as adults, we know it feels awful.
Rachael: Yeah. And we probably wish that we could get on the ground and scream and cry and throw things and hit people too. Yeah. Wait, what if we could?
Larissa: I absolutely would. Yeah. So when you can do that, put your mind in the mind of your child, then again, it's, you know, bringing in that compassion piece. And it doesn't mean that you have to be okay with the fact that like, you don't have to, you don't have to be okay with their behavior in order to have compassion for it.
Rachael: Right. Right. Yeah, two separate things. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I feel like we could talk for hours about this topic. But I would love for you to end with just kind of sharing about more of what you do on your page and how you work with clients. Are you working now with mostly just parents or are you still doing pediatrics at all?
Larissa: I am exclusively working virtually with parents and I absolutely love it. Absolutely love it. So I do offer one on one coaching where we will go through individual needs, your individual sensory sensory needs, routine needs, what's going on in your, in your life. So we can look at it from a compassionate critical lens. I have to clarify that, but really kind of see like what's going on on and where can we insert strategies to support you so that you can support your children, support your family and be that steadiness that co-regulator that your children need because you set the tone for the family and it's a lot of responsibility and you don't have to do it alone. And so that's why I love one -on -one coaching because I get to hold your hand as you walk through it and then you come back and say, this really worked or this didn't really feel like it supported me that much. And then we figure out how to strengthen you and how it builds you from that insight out. And I also have an online program that's self -paced and you get lifetime access to it and it goes through all of the sensory pieces of parenthood and understanding your triggers and then you can kind of work through how to support yourself in that way. And that has been really successful as well and I've heard such great feedback from parents just finding such intense validation from that and I'm feeling empowered to move forward and make changes.
Rachael: I love that and I love that. Yeah, like working with kids is so fun but also when you treat the parents, it's like treating the whole family because the kids are gonna directly benefit from their parents being well, right? You also provide so much amazing content on your Instagram page as well. Can you let people know where to find you on Instagram?
Larissa: Yes, so on Instagram I am @steadyparents and I am there all the time and I love it and I love hearing from you. So if you have a question or just wanna say like, "Hey, I really resonated with that, I love that too." Because if one of you resonates with it, then I know that it's gonna hit the nail on the head with a lot of other parents, too. So because you're not alone in your experience and so please reach out, I really, really love it.
Rachael: Absolutely. Well, I'll put all of that information in the show notes for you. Thank you so much for joining us. This was such a helpful conversation, and I think it'll really help a lot of people and resonate with so many of our listeners, so I really appreciate you.
Larissa: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Rachael: Have a great day.
Larissa: You too.
