The Power of Resilience in Extraordinary Circumstances; Your ordinary is extraordinary with Special Guest Dr Kate Lund

Jackie Finneman is a 30-year family counselor turned parenting coach with more than 40,000 hours of working with children and families. She is thrilled to share behavioral strategies, supportive resources, and parenting stories from her own real-life personal and professional experiences. Parenting is a roller coaster, not a merry-go-round. We can deal with and overcome the behavior challenges within our home and set ourselves and our kids up for a successful ride. Has your roller coaster derailed? No problem. Listen in to get you and your family back on track. Hey, welcome back. No problem. Parents in today's episode, we are going to talk about how to turn your ordinary into extraordinary with my special guest, Dr. Kate Lund. Let me introduce you to Dr. Kate. Growing up with hydrocephalus took the ordinary out of Kate's childhood. Numerous surgeries, countless doctor visits, and relentless recovery periods had become her norm. But through it all, one thing kept her thriving, the power of resilience in extraordinary circumstances. Building her life around finding incredible possibility on the other side of challenge has kept her driven and ultimately helped her find her true calling. Dr. Lund is a licensed clinical psychologist of 15 years, a peak performance coach, best-selling author, and TEDx speaker. Her specialized training in medical psychology includes world-renowned Shriners

Hospital for Children, Boston, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, all of which are affiliated with Harvard Medical School. She uses a strengths-based approach to help her clients improve their confidence in school, sports, and life while helping them to become more resilient and reach their full potential at all levels. Welcome to the show, Dr. Kate. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

You're very accomplished, very skilled, and you have this passion, which really started out because of your own experience with hydrocephalus as a child, right? So why don't we just kind of start there? Give us a little bit of background on that. And then I do want to jump right into your definition or how you define resilience. Sure, absolutely. Yeah. So you mentioned the hydrocephalus and that was definitely a significant thing, you know, sort of defined my childhood in a way. But the cool thing is, you know, my parents, the parents of my friends, my teachers, my friends themselves, they didn't define me for the condition I happened to have. They rather defined me as the person I was. And that was really, really key because the hydrocephalus was hard, you know, in and out of the hospital for shunt revisions. A shunt is something that actually manages the hydrocephalus by circulating the cerebral spinal fluid that isn't circulating on its own. So lots of time in the hospital, lots of missed school, lots of having to catch up,

lots of looking different, strange haircuts, you know, because half my head would be shaved, I'd come back. And, you know, it was hard early on and as an adolescent particularly, because as you know, that's, you know, it's not always easy for others to kind of understand what's happening or what have you. So that was sort of, you know, the hydrocephalus experience in a nutshell. But, you know, there were a lot of, you know, positives in it as well. I had a lot of support. I was able to learn early what was kind of, what were the ways in which I could define my own unique context and how could I kind of work to build on my strengths within that context?

because there were a lot of things I couldn't do. But again, my support system around me encouraged me to focus on the things I could do. And so that was really, really key within that whole timeline. And it was a long timeline.

It was essentially my entire childhood. And I love your TEDx talk. I'll have the link in the show notes for that, but it's called Finding Ordinary Within the Extraordinary, The Superpower Children Need. And I love how you talk about that ordinary is good.

Yes, absolutely. It really, really is. Because what I'm kind of talking about there with that concept of ordinary is defining our own unique context and helping our kids to build on their strengths and build towards their potential within that context. You know, not trying to be something or someone that they're not inherently. Right. And where I think a lot of times as kids, we're trying to fit in and we're trying to be like everybody else. And then we're really kind of dishonoring ourselves for our, who we are and the gifts or the strengths or the skills that we have. And you really talk about that in your TEDx. I don't want to give it all away, but how ordinary is a good thing. And your ordinary is not somebody else's ordinary.

Precisely. Exactly. And really sort of living your ordinary or a child living their ordinary helps them to ultimately be extraordinary, you know, move towards their potential. I love TEDx because they're short and sweet and to the point.

Right. But you have a lot of information in there and it's just absolutely brilliant. And I appreciated, appreciated listening to it. I've actually watched it a couple of times.

Let's get into, yeah, you're welcome. What does it mean to be resilient for you? Right. So at a foundational level, resilience is this ability to move through and beyond challenge, you know, to pick yourself up when something doesn't go right the first time out of the gate, when you hit an obstacle, to, you know, be able to employ those problem solving skills to sort of circumvent the challenge, the obstacle to still move forward.

And really doing that within our own context is super important. Having the awareness of that context to help you to navigate the challenge. Absolutely. So why is it important to teach our kids about resilience?

And maybe some of those big lessons that came out of your experience with hydrocephalus as a child that really taught you about resilience. Right. Absolutely. And, you know, it's really this idea that, you know, things aren't going to go right the first time out of the gate most of the time.

And that's okay. And sort of enabling our kids to see that early on and not be afraid of not succeeding, right? Not be afraid of having to try again, of having to figure out that different angle. And, you know, that was my experience early on as a result of the challenges related to hydrocephalus.

I had to work really, really hard to keep up with my peers academically and otherwise. And that was a real actual lesson for me. But it was also real positive moving forward because, you know, when the academic challenges started increasing, I already knew what hard work was. Right. So I knew how to overcompensate. I had kind of had to do that.

I had no choice. And it really, really stood me in good stead later on. And I think that, you know, teaching our kids early to believe in their own unique context, not compare themselves to others and worry so much about what they don't have or what's challenging, but rather to embrace what they do have and figure out how to make the most of that and move forward, you know, in the way, in the best way possible for them.

And the self-awareness piece, helping our kids to develop that within this context early on is so important as well. What are some of the things that you do to help them develop that self-awareness? And I think a lot of times as parents, we are anxious or we're worried or we're scared for our kids. And so when they're anxious or worried or scared or low self-esteem, we're maybe coddling or maybe being too, I call it being too nice sometimes.

You know, because we're just, we want things to be easier for them, but then we're actually robbing them of the opportunity to build that self-confidence and that esteem that they need. Right. Exactly. Absolutely. And as parents, right? I mean, I have 15-year-old twin boys and I mean, the tendency or the want to jump in and fix when something is hard or isn't going right, it's absolutely there.

And oftentimes my husband and I have to remind ourselves, no, no, no, they need to grapple with this. They need to sort of figure this out or sit with the problem for a bit as opposed to having one of us jump in and fix it. You know, that's a really, really key point. You know, but it's on a developmental continuum, right?

So at 15, my boys are certainly able to do that. Um, for a much younger child, you know, perhaps not so much, they might need more scaffolding or they definitely will need more kind of scaffolding or kind of input from us as parents or, you know, teachers or friends or what have you. Um, but you know, the really important piece all the way through is to in some way connect with our children, to listen to them, to try to understand what that experience is that they're having, how are they feeling?

And that'll happen in different ways across that developmental continuum, but, you know, really connecting to understand their experience without fixing is really important. modeling for our kids, modeling how we might be grappling with our own issues, you know, problems, challenges that come up again in a developmentally appropriate way is another important thing that we can be doing. And I really believe in being transparent with our kids, again, in a developmentally, you know, appropriate way, but transparent with them in, you know, what are our challenges? What have some of our challenges been in the past? You know, I, as I mentioned before we got on, you know, the recording, we took our then almost 11-year-old twins to my TEDx talk, and they sat through an entire day, which at moments they were a bit bored, but they were there, of talks on this concept of resilience. And they heard, you know, my full story, they had heard me practicing for three months before, so very aware of, you know, what that story was or is. And so I think that's important to, you know, share with our kids on a human level in an authentic way. What have our,

what have some of our challenges been and how have we moved through and beyond those? I absolutely love that in step three of no problem parenting it's all about changing the conversation and I say that I believe that we are giving our kids way too much unconditional praise so much so that they don't even believe it themselves. right right so when we're saying things like oh you're awesome of course you have lots of friends oh you're super good at this that or the other you know and it's like where's the factual evidence for them to hang on to or to buy into to be like oh yeah you're right that's true so i teach a lot about conditional praise you know we wouldn't conditionally love our children but we can can get conditionally praise them with specific things that we've noticed because we've been like you say curious and, and really listening and connecting with them that we can say, this is what I've seen.

And therefore that makes me believe that you are smart or you are a good friend or you're whatever, but precisely that is so huge pointing out those specific things that we've noticed that reinforce the praise. That's huge. Exactly. And then I also love what you say about being transparent.

You know, like a lot of times we try to keep our kids from knowing the challenges we've been through, the times when we were mean to someone, the times when we were scared about something, the time, you know, like the real life stuff that we've went through. And again, you have to be age appropriate. You know, it can be Cliff Notes version. Precisely.

I do think that sharing those and being transparent about that without teaching a lesson in it. You know, I think sometimes we share as if to say, hey, this I've already been through this. So I'm just going to tell you about what I went through. So then you don't have to go through it.

You know, I don't want to do that. Right. Yeah. So what's your experience with that? What have you.

Well, because that would be sort of akin to fixing it or wiping out the struggle. Right. And so we don't want to do that. We want our kids to have to work through the challenge or the problem without us jumping in to erase the problem.

But, you know, sharing our own experiences in a way that's real and authentic without minimizing their experience is really important. I love that you say that without minimizing their experience, without trying to make it better for them. And it can be so hard as a parent, because I think sometimes our mama bear or daddy bear comes out and we know our child's been hurt, been wrong, they're suffering, you know, something's going on. And we really want to take care of that problem for them. But I, I coach on this all the time. I'm here to say I've lived it myself.

Right. It's okay to have your mama bear. It's okay to fly off the handle sometimes at the other adults that are treating your child wrong or poor, the teachers or the coaches or the other kids. Right. But ultimately you got to pull yourself together and realize this is not your problem to solve.

This is your child and you can be there to support them through it, but not take care of it for them. Even when it's a medical issue, you know, your parents couldn't make your hydrocephalus go away. You had to endure your treatments. How did they, how did they respond to that?

Or how did they help you through that? Yeah. You know, the thing that they did that was really great. So obviously, you know, through the surgeries and the medical interventions and the appointments and all of that stuff, you know, they were right there and they made sure everything happened and I was where I needed to be, that sort of thing.

But when things were good, when, you know, I was in a point where the shunt was working well and, you know, I wasn't in the hospital, I didn't have a lot of appointments, that sort of thing, they treated me like, you know, I was expected to do everything that my brother was expected to do, you know. Obviously, there were things I couldn't do, like contact sports. I really wanted to play ice hockey. We talked about ice hockey before too.

And, you know, I was allowed to skate around a little bit, but the cool thing is, you know, and not to, you know, minimize that because it was hard, you know, and of course I wanted to be playing and I see pictures from back in the day of all my friends who are playing and I was like, oh yeah, I was supposed to be on that team. But I, you know, they helped me to kind of refocus and to sort of hone in on something that I really actually love to do.

So I became a pretty solid tennis player and played, you know, competitive tennis in a sense. You know, I played tournaments and, you know, not anything super high level, but I loved it. And that actually is a really important point because I loved it. And even in adolescence, I never stopped loving it, you know, where and but nobody pushed me to play.

I did it for the love of it. And that's a really important piece to mention in terms of appreciating my own unique context. I was out there playing. I was happy to be playing because there were moments when I couldn't play. I was literally like in the hospital and not playing. So when I could play, I was ecstatic. Right. And I didn't, you know, I looked at what I could do as opposed to what I couldn't do.

And that really came from the way my parents kind of handled things. You know, they didn't reinforce, well, there's something, you know, you've got something wrong, you know, you're, you know, they didn't, they didn't do that. And that was really, I think, pivotal in my early years. I was the kid that I was.

I was not my illness and they did not define me by that. And that was, I think, really, really vital. Super cool. So what are some strategies that we can use to help our kids believe in themselves and in their possibility?

Right. Yeah. And that's such a great question. Right.

And so, you know, we want kids to so on a foundational level to have some strategy, some way of managing their stress response such that when a challenge does hit, they're better able to grapple with it. Because if they're doing that on a foundational level, they'll be better positioned to see the things that are going right. They're going to be better positioned to see those small wins as they come up, right? And we can reinforce those small wins as parents, as teachers, as coaches, such that they start to internalize those as, wow, I'm really, you know, kind of good at art or I'm pretty good on the soccer field or, you know, that kind of a thing.

So that's a really, really important, important step. Earlier on, and actually all the way through, sort of encouraging our kids to move outside of their comfort zone, to take a step outside of that comfort zone so that they prove to themselves what they're capable of. because if they're always standing on the edge of the pool without jumping in, you know, that's not going to help them take those steps forward towards their potential.

So, you know, within the context of who that kid is, their aptitudes, their passions, their strengths, we want to help them to take steps outside of their comfort zone. And that's really important in helping them sort of develop that belief in self that we really want to become intrinsic. We don't want to be putting this sort of like, oh, well, you're good at this. You're good at this. We want kids to really over time internalize what they're truly good at, what they're truly passionate about and do that from the inside out. Yeah. I love this.

As hard as it is when your kid struggles with whatever their interest is in their extracurricular, whether it's sports, arts, theater, when they're struggling, it's hard to watch because you see other kids who are maybe excelling and it can be so hard when your child is not. However, oftentimes those kids, the kids that don't make it easily, right. Actually excel later in life and in their, uh, in their young adulthood as well, because they've had that struggle and they've experienced what it means to have to persevere and or shift gears and try a different sport or thing. And then ironically, a lot of times kids that do really excel don't try other things that they're not good at, or if they do, they get really frustrated and they quit right away because it doesn't come easy. Exactly. Spot on. That's kind of what you're drumming up in my mind as you're, as you're sharing all this, that yes, sometimes it's,

If we're not, even if our kid is super good at one sport or one thing, make sure, especially if they're super good and it comes easy, make sure you're giving them opportunities to try something that they're not so great at. Exactly. Yeah. Spot on.

Yeah, absolutely. So important. So, so important. And that's really going to help them to, you know, believe in themselves from the inside out and also believe in their ability to overcome challenges when they come up because challenge is real, right?

It's inevitably going to hit us daily. You know, we all face challenges every single day. Yeah, unfortunately, but it does help when we do get to that point where we can overcome them. We learn from that.

We do build some, boost our self-esteem, our self-regard, our confidence, everything kind of, kind of goes better. I know that you've shifted your work a little bit now. Tell us a little bit about your focus in your work with kids and families these days. Right. So these days I'm working with a company called Parallel Learning, doing consultations with parents when a child has mostly a language-based learning disability, designing some testing protocols and then sort of, you know, getting the data back, writing up a report, and then consulting with the family again to find ways to help that child move forward despite the challenges such that they can maximize their potential within, again, their own unique context. So language-based learning disabilities such as dyslexia um or you know uh there are a myriad of other reading uh disabilities in terms of or differences in you know writing ability that sort of thing um auditory visual processing that sort of thing we're learning so much more about dyslexia um language speech you know um verbal memory you know there's like all of us yes apps that is such an important point because right There are lots of kids out there who just simply learn differently.

And that is okay. You know, it's a question of finding that path that's going to help them maximize their potential within the context of how they learn. Believe in the possibility for yourself as well as for your kids. Challenge will come up, but believe in the possibility on the other side of the challenge.

absolutely because your ordinary is actually something extraordinary extraordinary to somebody else so exactly all right well i am definitely going to have the link in the show notes for the tedx talk and then your website is kate lund speaks.com you do a lot of speaking engagements and things so we can they can hire you for that thank you so much for being on the show and being with me today i really appreciate your time well thank you so much for having me really enjoyed it Thank you for tuning in to the No Problem Parenting Podcast.

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