Episode 227: Why Wonder & Awe Matter for Kids and Parents with Deborah Farmer Kris
/Welcome to another episode of The Balanced Parent Podcast! I’m joined by educator, parenting expert, and author of Raising Awe Seekers, Deborah Farmer Kris, for a meaningful conversation about awe—a powerful and often overlooked emotion that supports thriving in both kids and adults.
Here’s a summary of what we discussed:
How the emotion and shared experience of awe supports resilience, emotional growth, and connection in children and parents
How different experiences, like nature, art, music, and big ideas, evoke awe and connection
How to help children access awe through everyday experiences like art, music, and nature
Importance of parents embracing passions, sharing with kids, and fostering awe within themselves
Resources:
If you want to connect with Deborah, visit her website parenthood365.com and follow her on Facebook @parenthood365 and Instagram @parenthood365. You can check out her podcast, Raising Awe Seekers.
Remember to take a moment to think about how you can invite awe into your family's life, creating moments of wonder and connection that will help everyone thrive.
TRANSCRIPT
Parenting is often lived in the extremes. It's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment, you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle, to a place of balance. You see balance is a verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do. Not a thing you are. It is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing.
Hello, I'm Dr. Laura Froyen and this is The Balanced Parent Podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion. Join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go!
Laura: Hello, everybody. This is Dr. Laura Froyen, and on this week's episode of the Balanced Parent Podcast, we are going to be diving into the world of awe and how important that feeling of wonder is, not just to us as humans, but, to our kiddos and to our role as parents. So to help me with this conversation, I have an awe expert, Deborah Farmer Kris. She is an author, some one of the minds behind some of our favorite PBS television shows. I'm so excited, Deborah, to have you on the show. Will you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do, and then we will jump right into awe.
Deborah: Sure. So my name's Deborah Farmer Kris and I spent 20 years as a teacher and school administrator, just about every age. 7th grade is my favorite. And then I got more into parent education. So, I have my master's in counseling psychology. I began to work for PBS Kids. If you've not seen Carl the Collector, that's our new show, and it's my favorite. I'm so happy. But I've been writing for lots of different outlets. I've written lots of picture books and board books, but I had my first parenting book coming out, and it's called Raising Awe Seekers: How the Science of Wonder Helps Our Kids Thrive. And this is the topic I am so passionate about, so I'm really excited that you had me on to talk about it.
Laura: Oh, I'm so happy, you know, so I, I get lots of emails from lots of authors asking to be on the show. And when I saw your email come through, it, it wasn't too far after. I heard, another author who had been talking about Wonder on NPR and I was like, oh my God, wonderful. Now I get to talk to someone who like looks at this through the lens of parenting and kids. And so I was just so excited to have you on the show. Why don't we just start by telling the, you know, the listener like why we are so fired up about this idea of awe and wonder. What is it? Why does it? Like, why is it so good for us? Can you just start us there?
Deborah: Let me start with why I'm so fired up, because a huge part of my work as a parent educator is about emotions. So I'm giving a talk tomorrow night called, you know, feelings 101 for a parenting group for a local school. But when I have audiences I like list emotions, right? Human emotions. We get happy, sad, mad, scared, surprised, jealous. Up to 60, right? I can do in a sitting, and not once have I had somebody say, ah, even though it is a human emotion, and it's not even one that I was tuned into other than craving it, but not having a name for it until 2021, when, a school reached out asking for a stress and resilience talk. And I was, I think something inside me kind of broke because there was the pandemic, and I was so tired of exercising my own resilience.
Laura: Asking these kids to be resilient.
Deborah: And I wanted something like inherently more hopeful because, that's, I'm a very hopeful person. And I came across this white paper by Doctor Keltner, at UC Berkeley, who's the preeminent awe researcher. And it was all about this emotion. And so, you know, long story short, it's an emotion that we feel when we come across something that's kind of beyond our normal frame of reference. It evokes that feeling of, of mystery and wonder. And he says, you know, you're feeling it when you get goosebumps or your tears spring to your eyes, or you just say kind of wow or whoa. And for kids, I think it's also when their eyes get really wide, they're feeling it. And so I read this, and as I was reading it, I literally got goosebumps for reading this. And it was like, I just knew I was traveling down a rabbit hole that I needed to travel down. So I interviewed him for the Washington Post. And at the end of our conversation, I said something about, you know, I'd love to get this more into the hands of parents. Is there any good parenting book about this? And he said, no, maybe that's your book. And I burst into tears. And then I reached out to my publisher a year later, because, you know, and I said, I think I want to write this book.
And so that's what I've been doing. I've been looking at kind of the 7 sources of awe, from a child development perspective. But to go back to your question about like, why is this good for us? So this is an emotion. All emotions are functions, right? So fear keeps us safe. It's not a bad thing unless it overwhelms us. And anger reminds us that, you know, the world isn't functioning in a just manner the way we think it should. Loneliness reminds us that we need connection. So what does awe do for us? So they've discovered that when you feel awe, does a few things for us and for kids. One, it puts us in touch with our humility in a good way. It's kind of like, you know, you got into a fight with your partner and you go out and look at the stars. And it helps put it in perspective, right, because it's like, wow. This bigger thing helps to put it in perspective. It makes people more generous, and I have some great stories about that, if you want to talk about that later. But, you know, when we feel wonder and awe, we feel more connected to our community and to the people around us. And it also is absolutely great for our cognitive development, because awe makes us curious. We see a rainbow and we wonder why is that up there? We hear a beautiful piece of music and we get curious about the artist.
And it leads us to kind of expand our understanding of the world because we see something and we don't understand it, and it's beautiful and it delights us, and we have this visceral reaction, and then we can take that, those next steps to say why. And curiosity, as we know, is the best way to get kids to learn. If they are curious about something, your 3 year old can memorize every dinosaur, right? Like every single one, because they want to know. And so this is really powerful for our teens and tweens too, to kind of tap into their to their curiosity. And then finally, awe and wonder reduce stress and anxiety. And they, they are good for mental health. And so, you know, people who, even kids who experienced traumatic, moments, having experiences out in nature. Researchers have found that their levels of cortisol, their stress hormone, decrease when they have these moments of awe. Again, these are all things that push us outside of ourselves and put us in touch with kind of a, the bigger, more. Puts us in touch with the universe.
Laura: And our place in it and our. I don't know, our human experiences being very important to us and at the same time, part of a greater whole.
Deborah: Yes. And that for kids, right, to recognize that they're part of something bigger when they don't have that perspective, right? I'm the only one who's ever had this pimple or by somebody or, you know, said something stupid in front of a class, right? You can feel as a kid, like you're the only one who's ever felt this way. And so these things that remind us that you're just so interconnected, like, it's just good for our psyche.
Laura: Yeah, and not just good for kids. I think it's really good for parents too. I think. When we are in the midst of a hard phase in our parenting, for example, actively seeking that can again broaden our perspective and put us in this place of, you know, and I'm a huge self-compassion junkie, and the aspect of self-compassion I love the most is common humanity. And I feel like awe is a way into common humanity, right? Like that we are having this common experience.
Deborah: Yeah. Because sometimes it's a collective experience, and one of the sources of Oz called collective effervescence, which is just a really fancy word.
Laura: I love that.
Deborah: Isn't it great? It describes the feeling of being part of a group. That is like working together towards something beautiful or good, right? So think about being part of a choir. And you're all singing together and you get the goosebumps because everybody hits the harmony. It's like, that's collective effervescence. Or even, you know, we're big Celtics fans around here in Boston and you know, I took my son to banner night cause we won our 18th banner last year, and playoff tickets were really expensive, so we did not go to the playoffs, but they raised the banner on the 1st game for the new year. And I was like, okay, it's a school night, he's 11, but I thought, you know, this is one of those moments. And I literally, this is my a researcher saying, this is a moment of collective effervescence, right, where he's gonna go and he's going to watch everybody standing in kind of awe at watching Banner 18 go up, and he's gonna remember that. So we got our balcony seats, and we went and I watched his face, right, as they're lifting it and everyone starts to silent and then starts to cheer, and his eyes get big. And I thought, I'm gonna guess he could be 40 years old, come back to the garden and see that and say, I was there with my mom. And so for me, that was like the calculus in weighing out like the cost and the late night, was that I know that these moments where we have that common humanity, or where it's the eclipse and the neighborhood turns out to watch it together. Those are the things that remind us that, you know, we're, we're not alone. Like we, we all are craving these feelings.
Laura: Oh, that was lovely. You brought tears to my eyes. My audience is used to me crying during these interviews. Well, what I, what I really appreciate too is the intentionality there, and that, I mean, when we think about becoming more conscious and intentional as parents, like that's an aspect of it, of really thinking about how can I craft some of these experiences for our kids. And we are not saying that every single day needs to be filled with awe and wonder for our kids, right? But thinking about like how can we hold these moments that are part of life to the light and allow our kids and ourselves to really simmer in them. Again, not all the time, because I think we, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do with this perfectly and all the time, but that's not what you're saying, right?
Deborah: No, actually, that's what I love about actually. Awe is a lower barrier than gratitude, even though I love the gratitude research, because gratitude requires some cognition, right? Like, I've got to recognize and feel where I is, it's an, it's an emotion that can hit us when we don't expect it. And, it doesn't require. It doesn't need to make things better. It doesn't require that the date turns around. Let me give you a couple of examples of this, so,. I read about how when my, my dad died, in my early 30s before I had children, and it was just a really rough fall for lots of reasons. And I, you know, I end up having a miscarriage and then I broke my ankle and like all of this in my time, right? And it was December. I was teaching middle school at the time. It was a very cold day in New Jersey and I walk outside and outside of our apartment, there's a rose bush and a single bud has like emerged. And I was, I just stood and stared at it and I took pictures and I started to cry. And, it's like, it didn't make the grief go away.
It just was like the reminder that I could hold two things at once. Like I could see beauty, I could hold that. And so, I really do look for a moment of awe every day because it's low barrier, right? Like it can be the song of a bird. It can be a beautiful picture on Instagram. It can be a song that I love that I know is gonna give me the chills. And I think actually kids are really good at this. Like, like the teens will be like, I'm feeling this way. I'm gonna put on this song because I want to feel something, right? I'm gonna watch this episode again because I want that feeling. So, in a minute we'll go back to like the sources, cause this is kind of my framework now like these sources of all, but I was having this my second child just recovered from the flu, was back to school finally and but my first child was home for like. 2 weeks earlier in February.
Laura: My second child just went back to school after like 2.5 weeks of flu too. It's awful.
Deborah: Yeah. So, it was like mid-February. It was a monday morning, one child's homesick. It's like 12 degrees out. Side, and I'm driving to pick up the other, and I'm like, you know, I keep this like daily little a diary, very small. And it's like, I don't have anything for today. Like I'm not feeling it. And I thought, okay, so I'm just gonna run through the sources, be like, maybe I'll see something pretty on the way, just something small. And just that I get behind a bus. Which I know is going to be making like 6 stops, right, the school buses. And I'm feeling like the burn. And while I'm stopped, I look over to my left and I see this really beautiful dog, some type of retriever, I think, sitting like at attention, the top of the driveway. And wait, like this teenager came off the bus, like it bolted, right? And like jumps up and you can see this teenager with the hoodie on being like, yeah, I'm kind of smiling. And I thought that's it, right? It doesn't make my son better. It doesn't mean it's gonna fix my dinner tonight or do the laundry, but like for those 15 seconds, like, I felt something and I'll take it.
And I feel like, you said simmer. I use the word savor a lot. It's like, how do we, in the midst of this, the news and everything bombarding us, just find 15 seconds a day. To remind us to and cause if we're looking for it, we can help our kids look for it, right? Like, so my kids are used to me now, like sharing that one tiny story. So my daughter gets in the car and I'm like, I saw this dog, so she hears the story. And so, like that's me kind of modeling. But really, like, it's for me too, right? It's maybe even for me mostly, like, this is, I know I want to pass this on to my kids, but I also need it for my own mental health and for my own perspective, so that I don't become jaded or cynical,with what I'm seeing.
Laura: Oh my gosh, I really love that too. I think so often as parents, we're told to do things that are good for us because it's good to model it for our kids. And I just love that you just said that like it's actually just okay to do it because it's good for us. Like, can we just have permission to be caring and loving towards ourselves? Yeah. I also really love this invitation to to try to find it every day. And I agree with you so much on the gratitude, because the gratitude does take a little bit more work to get into, but at this low barrier of entry, I like thinking about it that way. I find awe to be very accessible and easy for me. I would love to get into. I mean, I will probably start crying, but like the way the light like comes through. A room, I mean, that I would have bought if I saw the dog and the teenager, you know, I find it everywhere, and I grew up with a, a parent who really modeled that for me, like he, so. I grew up in a beautiful setting on a 300 acre farm that my dad, put back into natural prairie. And so, I mean, I, every day, I was out on the prairie, and he would just have tears down his face, how beautiful it was. Which was beautiful in its own right, cause I never saw him cry in other contexts, you know, really only in the context of wonder.
So it's super accessible for me and I know people who don't cry, like when they have strong feelings don't understand like these are happy tears, you know, but they are, they just, everything comes out of my body and tears. It, and like just the beauty of life. Sometimes the beauty of life is really tragic too, you know, and it's still beautiful. So, but I don't think that's true for everybody. Like for me, like, it's a very low barrier and my like threshold for seems very low. For my husband, he did not grow up that way. And he says that that's something that he's learned from me. And I find that interesting, and I don't really understand it. You know, I don't understand how we can all have different thresholds and and how can we like increase our ability to find it, so to lower that barrier to entry. Do you know what I mean? Like, because if that's something that isn't coming easily in the stage of life for our listener, how can we make it come a little bit easier?
Deborah: So this is where I think actually being a little concrete about what researchers have found out about what brings people off, because it may not be the same for you as for your husband or for your child. And, you know, like my, my father-in-law used to love the opera. I used to say, you know, well, when my son. Turns 50, he'll love the opera. After I die, he'll love the opera. Assuming that like this was, you would only be a full adult. My husband's never gonna love opera. But like, he will tear up to a little house on the Prairie episode because he was speaking of Prairie lands, and he loves music, just not, that's not his thing. And that's fine, right? Like, so. The people, basically, the researchers went to multiple countries, highly authoritarian governments, more permissive, religious people, different religion, races, backgrounds, ethnicities, and have them kind of like share a moment when they felt this feeling. And then, you know, grad students went back and coded them all. And so, like, what were the most common umbrellas when people felt this? And I think the first one is the most obvious, which is, which is nature. Right, the way that light's coming in. And I feel like that's one that people get. It's readily accessible.
They have really beautiful sunrise as like sunrise or sunset, you know, you will, I love it when there's a gorgeous sunset in town, and then I notice that like my friends in town on Facebook are all those pictures are all you're feeling it, right? So like that's and kids, there's so many benefits to getting outside. You know, that could be a whole podcast, just nature and kids. The next one is art, and that art is making art, seeing art, but it's also design, like, could be like the cityscape. It could be going in and seeing like the, a cathedral or a rotunda somewhere, right? And so you have the, you might have somebody super fascinated with architecture, and they're feeling all there. When they go in and they see that building. And then you have music, which I think is such a universal language. And I love the research as I was, doing it on the book. I talked to some music therapists. I talked to one woman who is a professional music educator who said, you know, music's our first language. And they find that the babies are more soothed by a mother singing than by talking. And so, you know, you don't, and she's like, you're your baby's favorite rock star.
You don't have to sing on key. They love like that sound, that's, we're coded to sing a song for a reason with babies. And, you know, then you think of the Alzheimer's patients who's like one of the last things that's coded in their memory is music from when they're young, right? They'll forget other things, but you put on the music. The 4th 1, and this is where I feel like you were talking about your dad. So my dad really found wonder and big ideas. So I realized later in my life that, you know, my dad was absolutely neurodivergent and with 5 kids and a bunch of, he was overwhelmed all the time and liked to hang out in his lab. But he was fascinated by all things. The stars, the fruit flies, genetics, anything. It was just, he, he loved it all. And like, I would go to his office and he would take fruit flies and put them under ether. He wouldn't kill them, and I would like look at them under the microscope and he taught me how to tell a male versus female fruit fly. And he thought I, he was teaching me the coolest thing in the world.
Laura: My dad was a science teacher too, by the way, yeah, I had the same experiences.
Deborah: Yeah, like they said, you know, I wanted to, I told him at 9 I wanted to be a geologist and my dad had gone to Caltech, first person in his family to even graduate from high school, right? So, and he takes me to introduce me to like somebody in the geology department at the right age of 9. You know, it's, which is so atypical, but that was the one I was like, oh, and then when I switched to something else, he just switched along with me. It was no big deal. It was like, your interest is my interest. But then you mentioned that even in like the hard things in life, because one of the others is the beginnings and endings, like the life cycle. People find wonder on the deathbed. They find wonder with babies' toes.
They find wonder in the rituals of saying goodbye. And then, of course, we talked about collective effervescence, that feeling of belonging. And then this is like the most hopeful piece of research, I think I've, I've found, you know, with awe. The number one source of, of awe for most people is not nature or music. It's noticing goodness in other people. We are wired to feel awe when we notice people's kindness and notice people's courage and integrity. Like that, you know, that's why when CNN does like their heroes of the year, right? Like that makes us feel something. You know, when somebody does something unexpectedly kind for us, we feel that. And, you know, that feeling. It strikes me when I think about all the, like, the outrage algorithms on social media, because they know people engage for that. But people don't just engage for that. They also engage for this feeling. And, you know, so you will also find, like, you know, when you tell a good human story that makes people feel good, that's, that bridges common ground. But the algorithm doesn't always, like, it's, it's priming us for the outrage, even though emotionally, we are built and wired for loving moral goodness in people. Like, that's, that's part of the red.
Laura: I feel like that's so interesting. I follow this page: Humans of New York.
Deborah: Oh, I love that.
Laura: Yeah, I mean, for that exact reason, because it just tells these raw stories of humanity, you know, it's interesting to think too about like what the world would be like if our algorithms were driven by joy and wonder, as opposed to however they work. I wouldn't pretend to know how they work, but yeah, I feel like perhaps I wouldn't feel so drained by being on social media, you know, that was the case. Okay so I feel really, really curious about how apparent then, so kind of knowing these, these seven sources of wonder, how can we go about finding them for ourselves and finding them, helping our kids find them on a on a regular basis. Like maybe the community effervescence one is out of reach on a daily basis, right? But maybe the other ones aren't. And so I feel curious about, you know, what does that look like in practice? And I will preface this by saying that a lot of the folks listening have neurodivergent kids who can be a little resistant to being told to do things or feel a certain way, right? And so how can we be sneaky with this?
Deborah: And I'll search for it because, you know, this isn't my other pitch for Carl the collector, right, which has, which is, you know, everybody there is neuro spicy on that show, right? Carl, Lana, and just like I think my dad. Often I find that the neurodivergent kids I have taught are prime for wonder in ways that some of my neurotypical students were not, they just weren't always the typical things, right?
Laura: They or expressed in maybe the way that you would to see. Yeah, for sure
Deborah: But their desire to know or to be kind of hyper fixated on something that we did inspire their wonder. And so I think it's not, it's, it's never about saying like, you know, we are going to go outside to feel the wonder now. I feel it's more like if I have this kind of framework myself, it helps me think a little more intentionally about the types of experiences with my kids and I'm gonna to take collective effervescence.
Laura: I'm pushing on that.
Deborah: I was chatting with somebody named Natalie Bunner, who I love. She's a, she's a, she lives in, Louisiana. She's a family therapist. Most of the kids she works with is family systems. A lot of them are neurodivergent, and, and I said, okay, so Natalie, I'm working on this. Chapter on belonging and collective effervescence, but what about the kid who feels like they're not connected, right? They don't feel like they belong. And she said, one of the things that she often so often discovers is that we have a narrow set of what our kids should be involved with, right? We want them in town sports, or we want them in this. And she said, when we start to get super curious and, and explore, it might be the DND Club. It might be, you know, it might be going and, going to the dog park and getting to know people there. She says like fiinding, it's not a matter of fitting the kid into the mold. It's helping them find a community where they can feel that, even if it's not something that's on your radar screen. And that can take some exploring.
I worked with a kid in, in high school who just never felt like she fit in. And, you know, she was kind of an old soul and quirky in the best of ways. And I kept saying, you know, you're gonna go to college and you're gonna, you're gonna find your people, right? Like, it's not in the small high school, maybe, you know. And she emailed me 3 months in, and she said, I got a job at the library and I joined the bird watching club, and I've never had more friends. And I thought, you, you found them, right? But it's like that sense of, like, it, it wasn't on the hockey team. And it wasn't in Glee Club and it wasn't a sorority. It was something different.
Laura: Yeah, Deborah, I know exactly what you mean. My oldest daughter is autistic and I mean, passionate about animals in general, but in specifically making sure that every animal has a loving home. So, we recently started volunteering at our local humane society and she feels so good when she's there, and I think that that must be it. Yeah. I mean, I knew that she felt good because she was doing something to help animals, but I think that there is a, she loves, so there's this area in it where she's washing dishes, and she will just wash dishes for dogs for literally 4 hours. She'll just stand there and wash dishes. But she's listening all the time while she's doing that to this care staff and the staff that are working there. And she's just so happy listening to these adults who are like, deeply passionate about all the animals that they're caring for. It's beautiful, right?
Deborah: She's found a place where it fits, right? Her passions align with their passions. And, I mean, and that's it, right? That's that sense of, I'm not alone and this is beautiful. I'm doing something that matters, and I'm with people and we're doing it together, you know, and that's collective effervescence. We're doing something good together.
Laura: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for, I don't know, broadening my definition of that. I really appreciate that so much. I feel like I'm gonna be looking for that everywhere now.
Deborah: Yeah. And I thought about that a lot, like when, you know, during the pandemic, right? Because that's something adolescents crave so much. And, you know, when we, and I have kind of a difference, I'm not as reactionary as some parenting experts are on the screen issue because I actually think they can, it can be a gateway to awe. You can discover really cool things. Some kids use it. The one that makes me just kind of say is like, just make sure they're getting and having face to face time with people. Because there's a face to face time with people that allows some of these things to happen when you feel. And, and this is where even on something like art, right? Sure, you can take your kids to a museum. But not all the museums are kid-friendly. Like, let's face it, right? There's, you know, for sure. They're, they're not. And, you know, I interviewed a woman who's actually head of a museum in New York, Brooklyn, that that is a touch friendly museum, right? And so we talked about that for kids. But I thought, but there's public art, which is so fun that sometimes you can crawl on it and see it or going to the flea market and seeing what people are making. And I thought, okay, so if you want to access art, but you know, you're nervous that your kid's gonna go to the museum and climb up the walls or touch something and have a guard get mad at you. That's not the only place to find it. So, you know, and I think with music, right?
Like, I love, it's the music in the car, it's awesome, but like, live music is super cool. But if it's like you know, going to a big concert is price prohibitive or overwhelming for sure. Absolutely. And I talk actually in the music chapter. I had this great section with Dan and Claudia Zans who are my favorite children singers, because they all their performances are sensory friendly. But you know, that's why, like, sometimes, you know, there'll be a concert in the park where your kid can be playing in the back, but they can hear the music. And so it's kind of like knowing that music can do this, what are some of those options that may be a little outside the box, I can just kind of experiment with. Because it's not about a formula. It's just, I almost feel like it's just about opening yourself up and putting yourself in places where it might happen. And it might not. And it's no big deal if it doesn't, right? I go to the zoo, my kids are tired. It's terrible. I go to this the next time, and my daughter puts her hand up and a gorilla comes over and touches her hand, and it's a moment of absolute like. Mind blowing wonder for my kid. I couldn't script it, it happened, but it also happened because. We tried it.
Laura: You were there, yeah.
Deborah: We, we were there. And so again, that's why I say it's like low pressure. It's not like, oh, I have to feel grateful, or I have to feel blank. It's kind of like, I'm just gonna put myself in the position. I'm gonna go on a walk, and I'm just gonna open my eyes up. And I'm just gonna look around and see if I notice something beautiful.
Laura: Yeah, I think that I really like that because I think, again, I think parents are under a lot of pressure to be doing everything, right? To be doing it all right, especially, I don't know about you, but the parents that I work with are are very aware and very conscious of the impact of their parenting. They really, really want to get it right, and it can be a lot to put on a person. I feel curious too if you have something to say for those parents who feel like God, is this just another thing I have to be good at, you know, is this just another thing? And it feels to me like it's the opposite of that, but I can see how it could feel, feel heavy, you know, gratitude, right?
Deborah: Like, oh, I have to do this checklist. Yeah, and I see in the actually the introduction of my Awe of Raising All Seekers, the parenting book. Like this is, there's nothing prescriptive about this book. You're not going to see now, you know, now say that send use this language. You know, it can be helpful to have language to use. I'm all for it. Like, but it was, it's more for me, it was more about like, can I, can I get the right you know, my eyes are a little fuzzy. I'm a little overwhelmed. Can I get a prescription glasses where I can see things a little more crisply? Right? It's more about just like the lenses on my own parenting and my own well-being, my own self. Like if I know. That wonder and awe are just so innately part of what it means to be human. And that these, there's no downside to feeling it, right? Like there's just, you know, anger has its uses and its upsides and its downsides. There's no downside. And so even if once a week, right? Like, I take myself on a walk without my kids and I turn off my phone and I just take a deep breath and listen for bird songs and, or whatever it is. Like I just allow myself to be in touch with my senses. Then I'm doing something good for me that, because I care about my kids, is maybe gonna make me a little more patient when I, when I go in the house. You know, because I've taken care of feeling something beyond the minutia. And so that's really where I think about these as a framework that, you know, but there's so many sources of awe, it's kind of like, pick. I say pick your poison, but like, you know, pick your candy bar.
Laura: Yeah, right? The the world's your oyster, kind of, you know.
Deborah: And, and part of it is like, if you are fascinated by something, just like, I look at my dad who never read a parenting book and did a lot of it, not the way they say to do it, right? As I said, like, he, it did not come naturally to him. And yet I look back with such tremendous gratitude. Because if he was interested in it, he would share it with me. And if I was interested in something, he reflected it. It was like I went across the world to visit my cousins in Japan. First time on an airplane. I was 12. And I came home and it was like, it was a mind expanding trip. And my dad went to the library and bought a book on Japanese cooking, and he tried to like figure out how to make a couple of recipes because he knew I was interested in Japan. Like, he didn't communicate any of that. Like, he was just like, here's some Japanese curry. But I see it now. I see that, like he took those steps because he wanted me to stay connected with this kind of bigger world out of experience. And it was like, it was so innate in his, in his parenting without him having any language for it. And like, and this is where I feel like that the person doesn't feel like I'm a natural parent, which I think is a lot of us, right? So what does make you tick? What makes you excited?
Like if you really, really love Marvel Comics, like. Don't worry about this friend. Go binge Loki with your kid, right? You'll get. We just did that with my son the other night, like during a vacation week because he's fascinated by Marvel. What did he do? He went to his room. He's like creating his theory of time and the universe. So like this Marvel TV show is now him up in a way. He has questions, right? About the theory of time and universe and how it all works. And so I think it's okay just to be like, you know, I'm, I'm someone who loves punk rock, and I want to introduce my kid to that, right? They may love it, they may not, but like, they're gonna see your jazz by it. And we don't have to suppress what we love when we become parents, right? We don't want to pretend you love the. Like our kids may love it. That's great. We don't have to pretend that we do.
Laura: Right, and we get to, and you know, just even thinking about like the invitation to share what you love with your kids, and if they don't like it, fine, but you still get to like it. You still like to get to be nerdy about it, or geeky about it, or excited about it. I like that a lot too. I think. We are asked a lot to put ourselves on the back burner, and I don't, it's not good for us. It's not good for our kids. And I really like that a lot. And I like even framing it in this, in this way of awe. I really liked the idea of it being a lens that you look through the world with, and you don't have to be have that that pair of glasses on all the time, but you can intentionally take out that pair of glasses and put it on from time to time, you know. I mean, and that's, that's a skill that conscious parents are already building anyway, right? So conscious parents are becoming aware of the lenses that they are wearing and learning how to to shift them up and down so that they can see their child more clearly. So we're, we already have that skill of noticing the lens, taking it off, trying on a new one, and this is just a new lens to try on. I like that.
Deborah: To think about that just put you in touch with things. Because when you discover what makes you have the goosebumps, you're learning something about yourself. Because it's kind of like, you know, no, no two fingerprints are quite the same. Like, it's not the kind of the awe and wonder. Yeah, we, most the world may go, wow at the eclipse. But you may be like, Oh my gosh, like the varieties of cactus are so cool, where somebody else is like, That's the ugliest plant, right? Like it's what brings, but when you discover like, oh, you know, like I picked up boxing this year. And I never, I don't like the Rocky movies. My husband does. I don't like it as a sport, and a friend of mine really pushed me to go to a class. I really resisted it. I finally went to one and I was hooked. And it's about all women in the class, and we're just a punching bag. We're not punching each other.
And it's so empowering. It's a bit of that collective effervescence, right? We're all in there, and we're punching the bag, and I feel strong. And I was like, What? And then I'm like, so why do I like this? And I thought, like, I like that feeling of strength. I think I often feel like maybe mentally strong, but like, I was never really an athlete. I never found a sport that I loved. You know, I just never did. And this at age 47 is the first sport I've fallen in love with. And I'm fascinated by that. Like me and and my kids laugh at me, right? Because I'm like, I'm off to boxing class with my gloves. And and while they have yet to see anything nice about their mother kind of boxing because they're a teenager and a teenager. I can imagine them being older and being like, yeah, my mom picked up boxing in her midlife, you know? How cool is that? I think it's cool. I will always think it's cool, even if they never do.
Laura: I mean, Deborah, I think just even the idea that we get to be multifaceted beings who are always learning and growing and evolving over the course of our lifespan, like that in and of itself is a like phenomenal thing to just embrace, like that we are not stagnant, that just because we are grown up doesn't mean we're done growing. I love that. I mean, that's the recipe too for a life that is full and vibrant and textured, where you and your partner, you know, if your partner's doing that too, and you and your partner can be newly interesting to each other. Like there's just a variety of ways where that is super, super healthy. Yeah, I love that. Okay. So, Deborah, you know, the listeners have heard you mention your book. Can you tell us a little bit more about when it's going to be out, where they'll be able to find it, and how they can connect with you and keep learning from you?
Deborah: Sure. So it's called Raising Awe Seekers: How the Science of Wonder Helps Our Kids Thrive comes out May 27th, so super excited. It's available everywhere, but if you go to my website, it links you to Amazon, indie bookstores, all kinds of places. I also have like a podcast and a substack and social media. So however however you like it, I'm @parenthood365.com.
Laura: Awesome. Oh my gosh. Deborah, thank you so much. It was so fun connecting with you.
Deborah: This was a great conversation. I really like this. Thank you, Laura.
Laura: Me too. Oh gosh I feel like we could just talk for ages.
Deborah: Yeah, I like that flew, right?
Laura: Well, thank you so much for being here.
Deborah: My pleasure.
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All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just to remember, balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this!