On this episode of the Bespoke Parenting Podcast, host Julie Gunlock talks to Vanessa Elias, founder of Thrive with a Guide. Vanessa, a mental health activist, certified parent coach, speaker, and writer, works with parents and caregivers to help them shift their lens, translate their children’s behaviors, and take actionable steps to change life in their homes — for the better!
TRANSCRIPT
Julie Gunlock:
Hey everyone, I’m Julie Gunlock. I’m host of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. For those new to the program, this podcast is focused on how parents should custom tailor their parenting style to fit what’s best for their families, themselves, and most importantly their kids. I’m excited to have Vanessa Elias, founder of Thrive With A Guide. She’s a mental health activist, certified parenting coach, speaker and writer, specializing in whole family synergy and wellbeing. I love that. Elias has the coolest job. She works with parents to find ways to improve the life of their children, their lives, and the lives of their families as a whole. That sounds pretty perfect for this podcast. She helps parents shift their lens, translate their children’s behaviors, and take actionable steps to change life in their homes.
Vanessa and her husband have three daughters currently in college, high school and middle school. That’s a nice stretch. She was born in Germany. This is really interesting. She was born in Germany, grew up in the U.S. and raised her children in Utah, London and Zurich. This is very exciting. Before moving to Connecticut in 2013, having experienced very different parenting environments, Vanessa is acutely aware of how a region’s parenting culture affects children’s emotional wellbeing. Vanessa, I am so excited to talk to you. Thanks for coming on and welcome.
Vanessa Elias:
Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me here and I love that you think I have a cool job because I think so too. I feel really fortunate to do what I do, so thank you.
Julie Gunlock:
So I always ask my guest, if you were to describe your parenting style, just give me a quick answer. There’s so many styles, right? There’s free range, there’s hovering, there’s helicopter. How do you define your parenting style?
Vanessa Elias:
I would guess I would say adaptive. That would be the easiest way to describe it. Our kids all have different needs. Different situations have different needs. And also through my experience of living in different cultures, your culture has different impacts on you. So just flexible and adaptable.
Julie Gunlock:
I really love that. I love that that’s actually, like I said in when I was introducing you, that is a perfect fit for this podcast and what I really urge parents to do. And I feel very uncomfortable with our culture that tells us there is a right way to parent and a wrong way to parent. So I love this word adaptive. I feel that I too am an adaptive parent and I’ve never been able to find the word, so I appreciate that because I will steal that. I will now call myself an adaptive parent.
I want to talk about what you do. You help parents transform their lives, really do that, look at each child, look at the needs of each child, their own needs, their family’s needs. Tell us exactly what that involves.
Vanessa Elias:
Oh, it’s personalized parent education is what I call it. And there are some things that are the same in all families because we’re humans and our biggest need is to feel seen and love for who we are so that we feel lovable as we are. And parents have that tremendous impact or potential opportunity with their children to see them and hear them and love them as they are. And we all want that. That’s something we all want. And so I love my work. The parents that I work with, their kids are anywhere between the ages of three and 44.
Julie Gunlock:
Oh wow.
Vanessa Elias:
Yeah, so I’ve worked with some parents who are also grandparents. But it’s all about relationships, connection, and communication. That’s what it boils down to. And every situation is different, every house is different. The dynamics of the family, though, are all connected. I always liken it to a mobile hanging above a crib. You move one of those pieces and the whole thing moves. So we are all connected. There is just no way to avoid that. So a lot of times, parents feel powerless. But if they know that they make changes and they respond differently, that makes changes in the mobile.
Julie Gunlock:
So what type of parent do you find seeks out your help the most? Is there a type? Do you find that parents seek out your help because they have trouble letting go, for instance, they have trouble adapting to their children getting older? Maybe there isn’t, but what is that thing?
Vanessa Elias:
I think it’s just anyone that’s struggling. Or I like to say if I’m a parent, I can help you because everybody is in a different situation. So it’s someone that’s actually … what I think the people that reach out to me are the ones that are really ready to be vulnerable and make change. Because there are a lot of people who are struggling, but they don’t take that extra step to make change. And so people that I work with know that what they’re doing isn’t working, basically. I guess that would be the short way to put it.
Julie Gunlock:
Sometimes feel like these questions are a little over generalized, but I do want to know what would you say, you have this incredible experience of working with probably all sorts of different people and different parenting styles, different kids, but if there was one thing that you think parents are doing wrong, and I suspect you kind of avoid that word.
Vanessa Elias:
I do.
Julie Gunlock:
But I feel like, and again, maybe that’s a bad question because the whole point of this is that we should be appreciating different styles of parenting. But if there’s one thing that you wish parents would sort of, I mean is it relax? Is it sort of trust your instincts? I think just in this culture, what are you seeing as more of maybe a consistent problem?
Vanessa Elias:
Like is there life and joy in your life outside of your children? I think the pendulum has swung so far. I think a lot of kids, I think of it in sports as an example, a lot of kids participated in sports and their parents didn’t come to games and they felt hurt and neglected. Well, the pendulum has swung, and we go to every game, rain or thunder. It’s sacrificing everything else. Sacrificing our own lives, our own social engagements. And so I think that’s all-pervasive thing is that feeling. And that also puts extra pressure on the kids. If your child is your whole life, that’s extra pressure on the children to perform and to be okay. So I think that would be the…. Have your own life, would be for short.
Julie Gunlock:
I just want to warn you that someone came to my door and rang the doorbell, and my dog is going a little nuts. So if you hear that, everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.
This is really interesting. It’s funny that I’m sitting here asking you, what is the best way to parent? And it’s very interesting to me that your answer was parents need to do a better job of taking care of themselves. That is something we don’t hear a lot of. And you’re absolutely right. We fetishize motherhood now and parenting in general. And we’ve made it that if you don’t do everything for your child or attend every event or this or that, it’s the end of the world. And so there is that. But I’d like to get your thoughts on the role of fear in parenting. And I think that is one of the most powerful elements that parents have to deal with, is not only fear that your child will be hurt, but fear is very, very lucrative. We see this in food marketing, we see this in sort the safety world out there. Tell us about the role of fear and if that’s something you sometimes deal with when you’re consulting with these parents.
Vanessa Elias:
Oh, all the time. All the time. Fear is present for a number of different reasons. Not only as Lenore Skenazy always talks about the faces on the milk carton in terms of physical safety, but fear for the future, fear for what may be, and also fear of judgment. That somehow, it’s going to come back to you, that you are the one because your kids didn’t do X, Y, or Z. It’s fear of judgment and that’s a general problem that we have. The whole being canceled and fear of judgment is huge.
Julie Gunlock:
It’s the old keeping up with the Joneses too. Oh, she’s got Timmy in soccer, baseball, and he plays the cello, and he does…. It’s like that fear that I’m not doing enough for my kids so they’re not going to have a productive life.
Vanessa Elias:
Exactly. And so stepping back from our culture, that’s where I feel like I’m so lucky to have lived in different cultures, of different ways of raising children, and living in the world is that you can see that this is not the way this is everywhere, and you can see the impacts on our kids. And also, it’s just not good for us to be fearful all the time. I always say don’t live it twice. I just had a session yesterday where I was saying that too. They were worried about their 20-something-year-old never be able to have a job and won’t succeed in life. And it’s like whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s just stay in the moment here. That may never even come true, never mind the fact that you’re living it twice.
Julie Gunlock:
So let’s talk, you mentioned this culture isn’t the same in other countries and your experience. Let’s talk a little bit about your background. You personally were raised, is that right? Did I read that off? I think you-
Vanessa Elias:
I was born in the U.S.
Julie Gunlock:
Yes.
Vanessa Elias:
Sorry, born in Germany.
Julie Gunlock:
Right.
Vanessa Elias:
Moved to the U.S. when I was two. My mom’s German, my dad’s American.
Julie Gunlock:
Okay. Well it’s funny. The president of IWF actually lives in Germany on and off. And it’s interesting: in Germany, there’s much more of an embrace of the free-range movement. And then she comes back to the U.S., and suddenly her kids don’t have that freedom. And I hear a lot from her about that, which is really fascinating. But tell us your experience and how living abroad and living in more free-range-friendly areas have shaped your philosophy of parenting.
Vanessa Elias:
Absolutely. I’ve lived in London three times, and two of them with the kids, and I think it’s very similar to the U.S. in a lot of its ways. But the difference that I saw was regarding mothering and being a mother, and they looked at me in horror that I was going to manage three kids all on my own without anyone helping to do anything, help take a kid to an activity. This whole idea of running myself ragged, which I think so many moms do, we run ourselves to the ground doing everything. And going out and having coffees and getting together with friends was a whole new world to me that was the norm. So that was really good for me as a mom. And then Switzerland was a whole different reality. I remember when I first moved there, being in shock when I saw a kid with a broken arm because my first thought was, “Oh, I didn’t know they had those anymore.”
Julie Gunlock:
Right. Right.
Vanessa Elias:
You just don’t see it. And then there’d be a broken leg and a kid with a concussion falling out of a tree and it was just part of life. There was no crisis. It was just —
Julie Gunlock:
It’s so funny and I don’t mean to interrupt you, but it’s funny. One of my favorite stories was the president of IWF, Carrie, she was living over in Germany, and they have these beer gardens that have playgrounds. And can you imagine in the U.S? And they have these insane tall structures and her son fell off and I think he broke his arm, if I’m remembering right. And it was so fascinating because she said they brought him over or when they went to pick him up, his arm had been wrapped and they’re like, “Yeah, sorry. He might have broken his arm.” And the expectation was like her going, “Okay thanks,” and then walking away.
Vanessa Elias:
Exactly.
Julie Gunlock:
And then it was broken and there was no follow up. Can you imagine the lawsuits?
Vanessa Elias:
Totally.
Julie Gunlock:
Can you imagine the hysteria, right?
Vanessa Elias:
Liability is a huge factor in our culture, and it’s really shaped us in so many ways that we don’t realize. When I tell this story of when we moved back, we experience a big culture shock coming back to the U.S. after six years abroad. And I had told my daughter to, I don’t remember, I still use the “be careful” — “be mindful,” I should say — “when you’re on the monkey bar.” She was in preschool. It might be slippery with your mittens on. And the teacher said, “Oh no, no, no, we don’t wear mittens on monkey bars” and “Oh no, we’re not allowed to go on that if it’s cold outside. You can’t go on that.” I’m like, what the heck? How was she going to have any fun?
Julie Gunlock:
Right, right. It’s funny too, the nurses who call you for everything, that’s another thing that I’ve heard. Carrie’s like literally, it had to be spurting blood for the German schools to call you. Where here in the United States they’re like, “He skinned his knee.” And you’re like, “I don’t care. I’m in a meeting.” Right?
Vanessa Elias:
Yep. And that goes back to that’s how the liability culture has shaped us. That’s a real challenge.
Julie Gunlock:
And there’s also, I think in the food world, too, this idea … I remember having a conversation with a friend, and she was very worked up that her daughter would not eat vegetables and very concerned. And she said that she’d read you have to present a food 20 times before a child. And I remember just thinking, “Okay, I’m way too poor for that,” because the guidance is don’t ever push them. Just keep presenting it, and if they don’t touch it, it’s fine. I’m like, wait, first of all, my mother would kill me if I had ever left something. And so of course I was joking, but I was like, “Did you try yelling at her?” Right? And my friend was like, “Oh, you’re not supposed to yell.” Right. And so it’s interesting too, I think, because my instincts, when that happened with my kids, I was like, “You’re not going to up from the table until you have at least one bite” or “You’re not going to play with your Legos tonight if you don’t.” I kind of parent like my mom parented.
And so it’s interesting to me that she didn’t even, because she admitted that, “Oh yeah, I guess I should be a little bit more firm with her,” or something. And it’s interesting because she’s like, “And my mother would’ve been.” And she totally denied her instincts and instead read a million things on how to get a kid to eat a carrot. Tell me a little bit about, along with fear, along with litigation, along with our culture, how parents are increasingly denying their own instincts and rejecting maybe what their own parents did.
Vanessa Elias:
Yeah, that’s a challenging one. And there’s always a fine line between is it instincts or is it habits? Is it what you’ve seen and know, so it seems familiar or don’t know another way how to go about doing this? I know that every family is different, and we all have rules. I know what works for my family. I know our rule was that you had to have something, and you had to try it. You had to chew it, but you didn’t have to swallow it. You could spit it out if you didn’t like it. But I’m really sensitive also; there has been a huge uptick in eating disorders in both boys and girls. And so I’m really sensitive to issues of control with food and using it as a punishment and valuing one food is good food and bad food. All foods fit and so sometimes foods and always foods. So the food is especially a challenge and that’s a whole other area of judgment as well.
Julie Gunlock:
I know you’ll have to come back. I always say it’s a whole other Oprah show.
Vanessa Elias:
Exactly. So I think there’s approaching it with curiosity. Why do I feel this way? Why do I feel that’s not okay? And you don’t need to spend a lot of time on, it’s not a whole dissertation that you need to work on trying a carrot. But also role modeling is key. If you’re eating carrots and you’re eating vegetables and it’s part of your family meal, that’s what’s powerful. That’s what you’re showing. And also, it’s like tiny little things. Big deal, so they don’t care. I don’t know.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah, exactly.
Vanessa Elias:
You got bigger fish to fry.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah, I remember when my son still had his paci at, I think he was two and a half, and someone was very worried. And I was like, “He’s not going to go to prom with his paci.” And I actually was very laid back about a lot of that stuff because I just didn’t think it was true. And I just always thought kids will grow out of it. And I am a firm believer in doing what’s easiest in many ways. And my other children weren’t reliant on their pacis as much as my middle child and I was very zen about things. Not that I wasn’t worried about a million other things, but on some things, I just didn’t make it a big deal.
And that’s my goal with this podcast. And when I talk about parenting, I hate the phrase give grace, but there is so little grace given to parents these days. I feel like there is definitely this sense of right and wrong and I know we can talk more on that, but I want to pivot a little bit and ask, you help parents, you help parents figure out the best way to deal with individual children. And also that word synergy was in your bio, right? Was it synergy?
Vanessa Elias:
Mm-hmm.
Julie Gunlock:
I think was such a great word because, yes, you have different kids, but ultimately you all live in the same house and so figuring that out. But I’d like to touch on that, but also if we can, what has your business been like post-COVID? I’m sure you’ve noticed an uptick. But I’d love your thoughts on, we don’t have to get into school closures, masking, we don’t have to talk about that. And learning loss, these are all things that we are all concerned about. But how did your business change and how did your perspective change post-COVID?
Vanessa Elias:
Well honestly, I felt like people were finally talking about what I had already been seeing and dealing with for years. So I mean, COVID really put the kids’ mental health and family struggles and some of these issues that we were having on the forefront. COVID put gasoline on a crisis. I mean it just inflamed it. So a lot of us were already feeling really concerned about the number of kids who were struggling and the younger age of the kids who were struggling and so COVID really added to that.
And I think one of the things, we always talk about this lost learning. The entire world had this, okay? It’s not just one state or one thing, the entire world did. We all suffered this. And what we never, or not never, what we rarely talk about is the lost social and emotional learning they had. The lost learning how to navigate friendships. And to be able to be in real life where you don’t have to script what you’re saying in a text or in a, well, Snapchat; they don’t really write. But all these things of being able to have face to face interactions, those are a lot of things that these kids have lost and they’re struggling because of it in all sorts of ways.
Julie Gunlock:
Yes. And it’s interesting. I take my kids to school. I drive my kids to school because their school is a little bit further away. But we pass a bus stop every morning filled with kids who don’t speak to each other. It’s probably 15 kids, and their hair is all on their faces and they’re all looking at their phones.
Vanessa Elias:
Yeah.
Julie Gunlock:
I would love to get your thoughts on technology. I am very strict with my kids. It’s funny because I always identify myself as a free-range mom. I’m a devotee of Lenore Skenazy. I know you had mentioned her, and you’re friends with Lenore as well and we both appreciate what she does. But I am super authoritarian when it comes to tech, and I love your thoughts.
Vanessa Elias:
Bingo. First of all, that is like they’re blanky, right? Anytime anyone’s uncomfortable, they go right to it, right?
Julie Gunlock:
Yes.
Vanessa Elias:
It gives them comfort. It’s a distraction, number one. And the other thing, when you ask me a thing about all parents in general, what would be the one thing besides not taking them care of themselves, they’re controlling the wrong things. That is the biggest thing. They’re controlling the grades. They’re controlling the carrots on the plate. They’re controlling this and controlling that. But they need to control bedtime.
Julie Gunlock:
Yes.
Vanessa Elias:
They need to control technology. That’s basically how I feel is that we’re not controlling … I have a middle schooler. We had the wait-until-eighth plan going and then COVID hit and so she had a phone earlier. And she’s my third and we had a phone earlier. So I allow her now to have, she’s 13, almost 14, she has Snapchat. She has TikTok. But she has a 20-minute limit daily on each of those things.
Julie Gunlock:
Nice.
Vanessa Elias:
So she’s still connected. She still knows what’s going on, but it’s not sucking the life out of her. Not even just what happens on there, it’s what she’s not doing if she’s on there. Right? We’re so focused on, I mean definitely I have a whole thought on what they’re doing on there and what happens on there. But it’s also the rest of their life, the rest of the day they’re missing out because, yeah. Anyway. And that happens for older kids too. My daughter, I have to say, my senior in high school, they did something in statistics class. They looked at their sleep and their screen time. One kid had 13 hours of screen time and three hours of sleep. So right there, those are the two things as well as the opportunities for free play.
Julie Gunlock:
Yeah.
Vanessa Elias:
I mean the big one, that’s how to work upstream, right? Let these kids have free play.
Julie Gunlock:
I’d like you to close on a little bit of talk about free play. Why is it important?
Vanessa Elias:
Free play is so important for this. It’s back to this control in many ways. It’s this internal locus of control that our kids don’t have. And when you don’t have that, when you feel powerless, of course you’re depressed. Right? The world is happening to you and around you. So they get shuttled to soccer practice or the coach tells you something and from one thing to another. I’m not just picking on sports, but also happens in other things. But it’s so important for them to learn how to get their needs met with another person without losing a playmate, without having the pressure. Sports used to be, here I go back to sports, used to be a relief of pressure. Now it’s an added pressure. So having free play also helps us work upstream — to paraphrase Desmond Tutu is we keep trying to save these kids from the river, pulling them out, what’s happening upstream? So play is something that’s missing. So the more play we can put in, make opportunities for that, make it a priority, the better off our kids are going to be from falling in stream and not falling in stream, I should say.
Julie Gunlock:
Wow. Listen, I could go on and on and on and I’d really like for you to come back and talk to me. I’d love to talk to you further about tech. I’d love to talk to you further about free play. I think each of those topics deserve their own separate podcast. This was a great introduction to you though and your work.
Vanessa Elias:
Thank you.
Julie Gunlock:
Tell the listeners where they can find you and hire you. Gosh, I want you to come over right now. But tell us where you’re sort of out there writing [inaudible 00:25:26].
Vanessa Elias:
My business name is Thrive With A Guide. So I’m on all the various social medias, except not yet TikTok.
Julie Gunlock:
Are you on Twitter? Are you on Twitter?
Vanessa Elias:
I’m on Twitter, yeah.
Julie Gunlock:
What’s your handheld? Do you know?
Vanessa Elias:
Thrive With A Guide.
Julie Gunlock:
Oh, great.
Vanessa Elias:
It doesn’t all fit, so W underscore.
Julie Gunlock:
Ah.
Vanessa Elias:
Yeah, that doesn’t fit. But yeah, follow me on each of those social media platforms and connect. And thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. I’m very passionate about this.
Julie Gunlock:
Well, I can tell. It is a subject that I care about as well. And honestly, your Thrive with A Guide, the guidance that you are giving parents is exactly the mission of this podcast to really encourage parents to craft a parenting style that works for them. So I really look forward to talking to you further. This was great. Thanks for coming on.
Vanessa Elias:
Thanks so much.
Vanessa Elias:
All right.
Julie Gunlock:
You’re so great.
