371 – Jen Lumanian of Berkeley, CA Researcher, Parenting Coach, Author, Host: Your Parenting Mojo Podcast

Transcript:

Tom Couch: Special thanks to Amgen for sponsoring the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. Committed to unlocking the potential of biology for patients suffering from serious illnesses by discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative human therapeutics. Discover more about Amgen’s mission at Amgen.com.

Jen Lumanlan: I think we’ve covered a lot of ground so if there was one thing to leave you with, it’s needs. Right? Needs underpins everything. It underpins your kids difficult behavior, it underpins your, mental inflexibility and why you can’t say yes to something. When we understand needs, we can find strategies that meet both of our needs the vast, majority of the time.

Tom Couch: That’s our guest this week, Jen Lumanlan, a parent authority, curator of the Your Parenting Mojo website and host of the popular podcast Your Parenting Mojo. We’ll hear Jen’s thoughts on life and parenting in this special Father’s Network Dad to Dad Podcast. Now say hello to the founder of the Special Fathers Network and host of the Dad to Dad Podcast, David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: Hi, I’m David Hirsch, host of the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. Two short messages First, I’d like to invite you to attend the 6th Annual SFN Dads Virtual Conference taking place via Zoom on Saturday, May 10th at 8:00am Central Time. We have a great roster of speakers and there will be plenty of time for breakouts to meet like-minded dads who are committed to their children and self improvement. Secondly, the Special Fathers Network Mastermind Group Experience is the most comprehensive program the 21st Century Dads foundation offers. Dads raising children with special needs, meet virtually on a weekly basis and form meaningful relationships while sharing weekly wins, discussing books and sharing heartfelt challenges. One of the highlights of the year is attending an in person weekend retreat scheduled this year from September 5th to the 7th. As you think about the year ahead, I invite you to join one of the existing or soon to be formed SFN Mastermind Groups and join a group of like minded dads to become the best version of yourself. It might just transform your life like it’s done for so many others. For more information please go to the Show Notes or Simply go to 21stCenturydads.Org

Tom Couch: Now let’s listen into this conversation between Jen Lumanlan and David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: I’m thrilled to be talking today with Jen Lumanlan of Berkeley, California. Wife, mother, researcher, parenting coach, author, curator of the Your Parenting Mojo website and authority, host of the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Jen, thank you for taking the time to do a podcast interview for the Special Fathers Network.

Jen Lumanlan: Thanks for having me, David. Pleasure to be here.

David Hirsch: You and your husband Alvin have been married for 15 years and are the proud parents of daughter Carys, who is 10 years old. Let’s start with some background. Where did you grow up? Tell me something about your family.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, I grew up in England. I, moved here when I was 18. I spent a year traveling cross country on the Greyhound. Had liked the country, so I ended up staying after a brief return home. So, yeah, all of my childhood was spent in England, even though I don’t really sound like it anymore. So, yeah, I grew up with my mom and dad and my younger sister. She’s 18 months younger than I am. Yeah, it was a fairly typical childhood, I guess, up until I was about 10 when my mom died. And that sort of shifted the trajectory of what followed after that.

David Hirsch: Yeah, well, very sorry to hear that. your mom died at, such an early age. Her age as well as yours. And, how would you, describe the relationship with your dad? I guess from that point going forward.

Jen Lumanlan: Not amazing. He continues to not be amazing today. I can look back now and recognize that he was doing the best that he could with all of the unresolved trauma that he had and with a number of health challenges and with the societal constraints that were in place. You know, I can see that and also hold the idea that my needs were not seen and met in that relationship, which profoundly, you know, affected the way that I show up in the world today as well.

David Hirsch: Yeah, well, childhood tragedy like that, has an impact, some more devastatingly so than others. And maybe looking back on it, you know, it looks a little bit different than what it did, like when you were growing up. out of curiosity, what. What did your dad do for a living?

Jen Lumanlan: He was a teacher for kids with special needs and a deputy head at a school for kids with special needs.

David Hirsch: So you were informed about the, world of disability and special needs at a much earlier age than most?

Jen Lumanlan: To some extent, yeah. Although there were two deputy heads, and one focused on the misbehavior and the other focused on the scheduling, and he was the scheduling one. So my exposure to it was more when a teacher calls

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Jen Lumanlan: at 7:30, they’re sick, I have to go into lunch making mode because he’s going to be finding a substitute for the next hour. So it was, it was more that perspective of it rather than the exposure to kids. The school was 45 minutes away from our house, which in England is a really long way. So we didn’t have a lot of interaction with the school or the kids who were there.

David Hirsch: I do remember you telling me in a prior conversation that he also led a camp for kids with special needs. What was that about?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, he took them camping through the school every summer and my sister and I went with them. I think. I assume it was the year my mom died and there wasn’t anyone available to be with us for the week that he would be gone. And so he took us with him. I don’t remember a ton about it, but I do remember sort of a general positive experience in that the kids, the kids were a lot older than we were. You know, we were 10 and 9 and they were 15, 16, and they sort of took care of us and looked out for us. And it was a fond memory to look, back on.

David Hirsch: Thanks for sharing. So I’m thinking about lessons learned from your dad or the relationship with your dad and what comes to mind.

Jen Lumanlan: To think about the ways that we have been affected by things that are going on in our broader society and to use that information to understand our experience, to try to be really conscious about the ways that we’re interacting with our kids, to know that the ways that we were parented has an impact on the way that we can show up for our kids. And if we are not making a conscious decision to do something differently, then we’re going to end up repeating, right. The same, the same things that we grew up with. Especially when we’re in moments when we’re stressed, our parents. Words are going to come right out of our mouths. And if those are not the words that we necessarily want to come out of our mouths, right. If they created difficulties for us, if we realize that we have developed unhealthy coping patterns as a result of those words, then we have to, work to heal ourselves so that we can show up differently for our kids.

David Hirsch: Yeah, well articulated. what comes to mind is that we want to emulate what our parents got right, and, and maybe live vicariously through the things that, you know, with the benefit of hindsight, we would want to do differently. And another thought that comes to mind, it was the topic of the TEDX talk, that I gave the first book that I wrote, which is, not passing down, in my case, the baggage of father absence. Right. Because I think, like you were saying, there’s things that get passed down generationally. Right. And if you’re not conscious or you don’t think about it, you’re just going to be the custodian of these actions, these thoughts, without really reflecting on the impact that they’re having. So thank you for sharing. A couple other questions about father influencers before we move on. Any other men that played an influential role in your life as a young person, or maybe as a young adult, for that matter.

Jen Lumanlan: As a young person, a young adult. Maybe not the most influential person since then was a boss that I had. I paid my way through school, working full time at an advertising agency, and I would go to community college in the evenings before I transferred into Berkeley and sort of went on from there. So my boss knew this when he hired me and knew that I was looking for a job that I could do well at. You know, I was his executive assistant, and I would be there 40 hours a week, and I do my 40 hours and then I was done because I was in school at nights. He was very flexible. And once I got into Berkeley, he allowed me to work, three days a week. And I would jam all of my classes back to back from 9:30 to 5:30 in two days a week so that I could work the rest of the time. And finally, when I did a study abroad in New Zealand, we concluded that that was no longer going to be workable. But he made it work for as long as possible, and he was very supportive in that.

David Hirsch: Yeah, well, thanks for sharing. Has anybody told you that you’re an overachiever, Jen?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, to some extent. I used to think it was imposter syndrome, and then. I’m sure we’re going to talk about this. I learned through the course of researching a podcast episode a couple of years ago that I’m autistic. And I’ve since learned that what autistic people often do when they’re interested in something is go and get a master’s degree in it. And so it’s kind of funny to look back on having three master’s degrees and realize that that’s exactly what I’ve done.

David Hirsch: I love it. Well, let’s talk about education just a bit. My recollection was you went to, UC Berkeley. You have bachelor’s degrees in English and forestry, and then, you have a master’s degree in environmental management from Yale. And I’m wondering, where did you see your career taking you early on?

Jen Lumanlan: I wanted to be a park ranger. I wanted to sit out in the middle of nowhere in a national park and yell at people for not having permits. As an introvert. Right. As somebody who was autistic but didn’t know it and who found socialization really hard. Sitting out in a national park was like,

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Jen Lumanlan: there is no better job for that. And the park service employees are massively over educated. The proportion that have PhDs is huge. And so I thought, well, I’m going to go and get a PhD and do that and then life will be perfect. And then I met my husband who at the time worked in advertising. And there are not so many national parks that are close to advertising agencies. There are some, but not that many. And around the same time I also realized that many of the challenges, that parks face originate outside their boundaries. So hiking at Sequoia national park, where I had gone a couple years ago, went back again and looking out across the valley and not being able to see anything on the other side and remembering there are other mountains over there. Why can I not see them because of the air pollution that’s blowing up from la. So just realizing I could work on that with companies. And so I ended up going into sustainability consulting with a Big 5 consulting company for a number of years.

David Hirsch: And where was it that your career took the turning point that it has?

Jen Lumanlan: At said big five consulting company? I was still working there when I had my daughter and just kind of assumed I would have her and then go back to what I was doing already and sort of was looking for resources in terms of parenting support because I recognized that my parenting role models were not super amazing and I didn’t know what else to do. I knew I was really good at reading and understanding research. And I would get emails from places like Baby center saying five ways to tell if your child has a developmental delay. And I’m like, this is just bait. And even if you are looking at one study, you’re not giving me the context of how this fits in with the last 30 years of research on this topic. So I was like, I can do better than this. And so that sparked the first master’s degree because I figured I needed a framework to put around my learning to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. So that was the psychology focused on child development and then after that another one in education and created the podcast basically because it seemed silly to do all that learning and not share it with anyone. So, so the Your Parenting Mojo podcast was conceived as a way of sharing what I was learning in the, master’s degrees.

David Hirsch: We’re going to get to that in a minute. I’d like first to talk about this, self diagnosed autism that you, made reference to. And I’m wondering, how did that come about.

Jen Lumanlan: So I was getting ready to do a series of episodes on neurodivergence, I want to say about three years ago now. And I was going to interview a researcher who is autistic. And I had no exposure to it basically up to that point. And I thought, you know, I better take the test just to see what the test is like. Oh, so you know, there’s a threshold, like if you score above X, the chances of you being autistic are pretty high. And I was like X + 50% to get a decent number of the way to a maximum score. And it was sort of like this, wow, this world expanding moment. And I had been working with a therapist, a coach who had been contributing to this series. Right. Not working with her personally, but working with her professionally. And she actually told me afterwards, she said, the first time I interacted with you, I knew based on your email that you were autistic and that we were going to end up working on this, I guess because I’m really thorough and I provide all the details that somebody will need in one place, which I’ve heard autistic people tend to really appreciate. And you know, there was no point in going through the whole process of formally diagnosing because I don’t need enough support. I’m fortunate enough that I don’t need that much support. But she kind of went through and validated my what we’re calling a self diagnosis and said, yeah, based on your scores on some second level screeners, there’s something there. So yeah. And then I actually did a podcast episode, if you want to search for it on my site at yourparentingmojo.com forward slash episodes. It’s called I’ll be me, can you be you? And basically, I interviewed some of my childhood friends, some of my friends now and sort of shared the information and said, what do you see based on what I am telling you, about, you know, our interactions when we were growing up. So that was sort of a fun way for me to understand it. But basically I explained why high school was so freaking miserable because I didn’t understand the social cues. Right. I had no idea why I couldn’t read somebody else’s, you know, what their experience was. And so that, that made high school really, really hard.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing. I appreciate your transparency and it sounds like it might have been almost like a liberating experience to come to that realization.

Jen Lumanlan: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s not just some collection of quirks that are kind of annoying to a lot of other people. Right. And that, are unrelated to each other. It’s almost like seeing it as a package of, oh, yes, this explains a whole bunch of things about me

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Jen Lumanlan: in my work. I work a lot with parents who are trying to understand their children’s needs. And I believe that ultimately it would be amazing if we could just see each person’s needs as an individual and say, okay, yeah, you’re a person who has really big auditory sensitivities. Let’s make a plan for that. And instead, when we have this diagnosis, even if it’s a self diagnosis that validates our experience, it says to another person, yeah, this is legit. And then all of a sudden, they start listening to us and they’re willing to meet our needs. Right. So now my husband is willing to turn down the air purifiers, but the noise I just find, like, drills into my head. Whereas before he. I would go and turn him down, and he would walk around behind me and turn him back up again. So that validation, I think, is. Is really important. And I hope we can move towards a world where we don’t need that. We can just see and accept people for who they are with all of their limitations and their strengths and, instead of having to diagnose aspects of our experience.

David Hirsch: Yeah, well, the world of autism has changed rather dramatically over the last whatever number of decades or maybe generations, the incidence of autism has increased dramatically, maybe partly because of the, diagnoses are becoming more thorough. And, I think, at least historically, there’s been a stigma associated with autism. I don’t want to say entirely negative, but, you know, there’s some people that are in denial about the diagnosis. Right. They don’t want to be labeled. They think that, that’s a disadvantage. And as I’ve gotten to know dozens and dozens and dozens of adults with autism like yourself, you know, it’s just part of who you are. It’s not like a disease or a disorder or something I’m looking to get rid of. It’s just, you know, part of the human condition. And I think that, like you said, you know, if we could just embrace people for, you know, who they are, meet them where they’re at, understand that we each have different strengths and weaknesses and try to apply to those strengths and compensate for the weaknesses, you know, the world’s a better place.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah. Yeah. I got a nice email from somebody not long after I published the episode who said, you know, I always conceptually knew that all lives have value. But it wasn’t until I heard how your autism enables you to digest thousands and thousands of peer reviewed papers and summarize it and regurgitate it to us in a way we can understand that it actually clicks. And I got how this is valuable. And I do want to be clear. You know, I mentioned I have relatively few support needs. And I don’t want to imply that my life has value because I have few support needs. Right. Even people who have a lot of support needs, they have needs. They have a right to have those needs met. They have value as a human being even though they have more support needs than I do.

David Hirsch: So I’m sort of curious to know what insights or advice can you share with parents about raising a child with autism or other behavioral differences?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, well, that’s an interesting question given that I didn’t know I was autistic when I was a kid. I do work a lot with other parents who are self diagnosing in midlife. Right. Because we have traditionally looked for signs of it in boys. For so many years we have been diagnosing boys and girls tend to fly under the radar. Because I did well in school, right. I made eye contact with people, I didn’t line up the toys and rows. I didn’t do any of the things that people might have been looking for. My social difficulties were not seen as, as autism. And so I work with a lot of newly diagnosed parents and of course some of them also have kids as well who have neurodivergences. And I think the cross cutting thing that I will say across everything is that at its core, we are all people with needs. You’re a person with needs, your listener is a person with needs. I’m a person with needs. And the needs that we have might be different because of the neurodivergence that we have. And thus the strategies that help us to meet our needs might be different because of the constraints that that neurodivergence might impose on our life. But when we understand it from that perspective of needs, then we start looking for strategies to meet needs. Right. So if we have a child who has a really strong need for consistency, we can know that anytime our routine is off that they’re going to have a hard time. And we can see what are the strategies we use that support that child in meeting their need for consistency so that they can feel more comfortable. And when they’re feeling more comfortable, they’re feeling more regulated. So if you’re kind of hearing about this needs, what are needs. There is a needs list, yourparentingmojo.com needs. It’s freely available. We’re trying to bring it online in more languages as well. There’s a picture based version for kids who don’t speak, who can’t speak. And so you can print that, stick it on your fridge and kind of use that as a way of understanding. Oh, do you have a need for, you know, comfort right now? Are you feeling uncomfortable? Do you have a need for autonomy? Do you want to be the one who decides, you know, what, what’s happening in this moment that we’re, that we’re experiencing right now in the struggle that we’re having. So that when you can do that, we can then start to find multiple strategies to meet those needs. So, when,

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Jen Lumanlan: when I, when I’m in autistic groups for autistic adults who are supporting parents with newly diagnosed kids, sometimes a parent will come. A parent of a newly diagnosed kid will come in and say, you know, what’s, what do you wish that your parents had done for you? So that I can do my kids? And almost universally the response will be, I wish that my parents had seen me for who I really was. I wish that my parents had understood my needs and tried to meet those needs rather than parenting the child they wish they had or, you know, not seeing the struggles that I was having, being in denial about the struggles I was having and so on and so forth.

David Hirsch: Yeah, brilliant insight. And that doesn’t just apply to autism, but it applies to all different types of conditions, whether it’s down syndrome or cerebral palsy or rare disease is meeting kids where they’re at. Like you said, every life, every soul has a value. And, sometimes it’s more challenging to identify what those needs are, particularly if, kids aren’t able to communicate in a more traditional way. So thanks again.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, let me offer a thought on that then, since so many folks in your audience might be dealing with that. What we’re looking for, and this is another area where autism helps me, is pattern recognition. So we can look for patterns in our child’s behavior to indicate what their underlying need might be. And so an example I often give is if your kid is resisting getting in the car seat, when is that coming up? Does it only come up on days when you’re going to school? Does it also come up on the weekends? If it’s only coming up on days when you’re going to school? Maybe they’re resisting getting in the car seat because they don’t Want to, you know, whatever. all the troubles that, that neurodivergent kids often happen at school because they are not fully seen, because they can’t be fully accommodated. Maybe that’s what they’re resisting. If they’re resisting the car seat on the weekend as well. When you’re going to the park, you’re going to go out and do something together. It’s probably not about school. It might be the car seat’s uncomfortable. So when we look for patterns in our children’s resistance, we can use that as a signpost to their underlying needs. And once we have that, then we start to identify strategies that actually work right. There’s no point making the car seat more comfortable if the reason that they’re resisting the car seat is because they don’t want to go to school.

David Hirsch: Great insight. Thank you. So I’d like to talk about the podcast. You made reference to it a number of times. It’s the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. My understanding, it started back in 2016. You’ve recorded more than 200 plus episodes.

Adrian (Clip from Your Parenting Mojo podcast): Hi, I’m Adrian in suburban Chicagoland and this is Your Parenting Mojo with Jen Lumanlan.

Jen Lumanlan: Have you ever wondered where our emotions come from? Do you think that if you look at a person’s face, you can have a pretty good idea of…

David Hirsch: How would you describe your primary listening audience? And how has your podcast evolved since you started it?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, when I started the podcast, I mean, this, the, the slogan is still sort of research based ideas to help kids thrive. I guess I would append that to research based ideas to help kids and parents thrive at this point. And I started by basically looking at the academic research on parenting and child development. And it was kind of surprising, actually how many of the episodes I would go into thinking, okay, yeah, this is going to be pretty straightforward. I’m going to look at the research on, for example, self esteem, and why it’s good for kids to have self esteem. And here are five ways we can increase their self esteem. And it turns out actually self esteem isn’t such a great thing because self esteem relies on you comparing yourself with somebody else favorably, which means you have to put them down. And so it turns out the state of California had a massive self esteem push. I want to say it was in like the 90s before I was here. And then they realized, oh, actually maybe this is not so great after all. And self compassion is a much more useful skill. So, yeah, I’m basically exploring what does research say about parenting and child development? And there was A period in like 2019, 2020 when I was starting to explore bigger social ideas on the show. Things like white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism. And for a while it was this, these weird two parallel paths. Because on the podcast I’m exploring how these ideas impact our relations, relationship with our kids. And then in my membership community, I was getting the same questions right. How do I get my kid to brush their teeth, to put their shoes on, to get out the door on time in the morning, to stay in bed? All the things parents struggle with, you know, these two parallel paths. And eventually I realized these are not parallel paths. These are completely interconnected. And that the ways we interact with our kids on a daily basis shapes how they will go out into the world and how they will be in relationship with others. And that the systems, the social systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism are ultimately power over systems. And so when we’re using our power over our children in their daily lives, in our daily lives together, even though it seems like we don’t have another choice because they don’t listen to us, because they don’t do what we ask, when we use that power, we are replicating those systems that, in my view, have

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Jen Lumanlan: caused us a lot of pain in our lives. And so that was sort of what drew the podcast along in the journey that culminated in the book Parenting Beyond Power that I think you have really.

Jen Lumanlan: Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. We have a really fun topic to dive into today because I’m going to share some valuable parenting lessons from the world of dog training. I’ve decided we’ve been a bit too focused on children’s needs here on the show for a while. So we’re going to forget about all that respectful and gentle parenting crap and we’re going to go gung ho into rewards and punishments. We’re going to learn how to effectively we can shape behavior by giving food treats.

David Hirsch: I’ve listened to a number of episodes. The one that was about yourself and your self diagnosis, the one on dog training I think it was, which I thought was very interesting. I’m not necessarily a dog person, but I can certainly relate.

Jen Lumanlan: What could you. Would you be willing to share an idea that surprised you maybe in that episode?

David Hirsch: Well, I think the way that we train dogs and we, we have raised, two yellow labs, one of them was a field trial dog which is, is very, very highly strictly trained dog whistles, hand signals. It’s super disciplined, right? With reward, and punishment. And I, think that that’s the way you get animals to, you know, conform very strictly to conform. Right. With very little leeway. Right. It’s my way or the highway. And it’s just a matter of time, you know, if you can stick with it, not just weeks or months, but sometimes months and longer until you can get the animal to perform, you know, to its highest ability. But the downside or the unintended consequence is that the, dog is very high strung and can’t deal, with the, broader world. It’s very highly trained to do what it’s been trained to do, but that, you know, it’s not going to be. Yellow Lab is typically a very friendly breed. And if you breed the friendliness out of it, then it looks like Yellow Lab. It looks like Yellow Lab. It acts like Yellow Lab.

Jen Lumanlan: It doesn’t act like one. Right, yeah. I’m seeing some analogies to parenting.

David Hirsch: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, I thought that episode for a number of different reasons was, was very enlightening. And you know, it’s a reminder that there’s a lot of different styles of parenting. There’s a lot of different, relationships that we have with animals. we’re talking about dogs, but other animals in our lives. You could apply that to a number of different aspects. But I’m, wondering if you were to capsulize in just a sentence or two the essence of that episode for our listeners benefit. That would be great.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, I was going to do that. So, yeah, so the episode came about because my daughter loves animals. As soon as she turned 10, we’re calling all the, shelters around our neighborhood, around our cities, looking for who will let her volunteer. The SPCA, in Oakland allows volunteers at the age of 10. And so we starting that process and we had to go through an orientation and I’m sitting next to her on the couch while she’s doing this orientation online videos, and they start talking about a consent based framework with dogs. And my stepmom bred dogs and we had like 25 dogs at any one time, not including puppies. And there was no consent in that relationship. And you know, I practice a version of respectful parenting where consent is really important. I’ve done podcast episodes on creating a consent based culture in our families. To hear that consent based framework in dog training, it was like, whoa. And so I ended up doing a deep dive into that. I read an awesome book called the Other End of The Leash by Dr. Patricia McConnell. And she talks about things like dog owners will often think, oh, my dog just bites me out of nowhere, just zero to 60, there’s nothing. And I’m like, parents tell me that all the time. And so Patricia McConnell is saying she, can be in the room with the owner and the dog and see the dog giving these super clear signals. I don’t like that. I don’t like that. I’m going to bite you if you keep doing that. And the dog owner doesn’t see it. And I’m thinking, yes. And that is the same with many parents as well. We do things that we think we are supposed to do that good parents do. For example, our kids come home from school and we say, how was your day? How? And they don’t answer, how was your day? Tell me about your day. And they need some time to decompress and they’re not ready to answer our questions yet. And we keep poking them and eventually they bite, whether that’s a literal or a metaphorical bite. And so if you can learn your child’s signals to say, I’m not ready to talk about that yet, you’re going to get bitten literally or metaphorically less often. So, yeah, so that was a really fun episode to dig into.

Tom Couch: We’ll be back with more of the conversation on the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast in just a few moments. But first, this quick message. Please help 21st Century Dads gather research on

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Tom Couch: families raising children with special needs by having them complete the Special Fathers Network Early Intervention Parents survey. A link to the survey can be found in the show notes. As a token of our appreciation, each person, mom or dad, who completes the survey will receive a great dad call. Thank you. Now back to the conversation.

David Hirsch: I also want to make reference to this, website of yours, Your Parenting Mojo website, rich with content. I love the format. It’s easy to navigate. My understanding is the primary audience, for your work is families raising kids, like 0 to 10. Is that accurate?

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, yeah, pretty much, yeah. I have a course for parents who are expecting a kid up to age one called Right from the Start. But yeah, my core audience is about age 2 to 10 and that that keeps, as my daughter gets older, that keeps expanding outwards.

David Hirsch: So there’s online courses, there’s workshop, there’s memberships, and you do one on one coaching as well. And much of the content is free. As much as you’d like to make it all free. Yeah, we all need to, pay the bills, right? Like, we each know maintaining a website with meaningful content, hosting a podcast, not just the, time, but the hard Dollar costs of editing and production. Right. These things, you know, are real. And as much as we’d like to just be volunteers, you know, I think it’s important, if something’s always free, the perception is that the value might not be very high. And I think what you’re doing is very valuable. And you know, you’re not charging an arm and a leg, but you’re, you know, trying to meet people where they’re at. And I think that people show up, they invest more when they’ve got some skin in the game. That’s the way I think about, charging for some of the content.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, I do have sliding scale pricing on pretty much everything I do, in acknowledgement that we come to where we are today with different degrees of privilege based on the experiences that we’ve had in our lives. So, asking folks who have access to more resources to help me support folks who have less access to resources.

David Hirsch: Absolutely. Anything else you want to say about the website before we move on to the book?

Jen Lumanlan: Just that there is a bunch of free stuff there. There’s also a quiz that you can use at yourparentingmojo.com/quiz if you answer just 10 super short questions, I can start to help you understand what is your child’s most important need that’s showing up over and over and over again. Because when you look at a needs list, there can, there’s like 50 things on the list and you’ll be like, how am I supposed to know? But actually very often with kids especially and with us, the same needs come up over and over again. And for kids that’s often things like autonomy, connection. With us, for a kid with special needs, it might be sensory issues. For an autistic kid, it might be consistency. So once you start to see what is that need that’s showing up in multiple situations, you’ll also get coming out of that a, list of ways that you can help the child to meet that need more of the time and then your needs for peace, for ease, for harmony, for collaboration. All the things that you want to, you know, just make your day flow a little bit easier that comes along for the ride. So that’s a resource to help folks there as well.

David Hirsch: I’ll make sure to include that in the show notes as well. So I’d like to talk about the book, the title of which is Parenting beyond how to use connection and collaboration to transform your family and the world. Published in 2023 by Sasquatch Books. Your book is dedicated to Carys, daughter, who, quote, quote, got you into this whole mess in the first place. That is a direct quote from the, first page of the book. I love your sense of humor and, the attribution that you’ve given your daughter. So in the, introduction, I think the most important thing that you mention is the purpose, of letting go of what you know. Right. Somehow freeing yourself, taking the shackles off of things that we might have been taught or learned. Learned. And just assume it’s just that way. And I think that that’s a great setup. And I’m wondering, how is it that you came to that realization yourself?

Jen Lumanlan: I think it’s sort of related to what I mentioned already about what I learned from my dad. If you see that the way that you were raised has hurt you in some way, acknowledging again, your parents were doing the best they could with the tools and skills they had and the trauma that they were carrying with them. But with all of that, if the ways that they raised you has left you with hurt, has left you with feelings of unworthiness, maybe. Right. I can’t tell you how many parents I work with tell me that they don’t believe they’re lovable as they are and they don’t believe they’re worthy. They don’t even know that they have needs. Because we have spent our whole lives being told, you don’t deserve to have needs. We are told, particularly right. Female identifying folks are told, we’re too big, we’re too loud, we’re too much.

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Jen Lumanlan: Male identifying folks are told, it’s not okay to express all of your feelings to have close relationships with other men. Because if you do that, then you might be gay. Right? And being gay is just one step above being a woman. In this, power based framework, which I am obviously advocating for the opposite of that. I’m advocating for healing these wounds that have been created in us. So we can see, see potentially the hurts that have resulted from the choices that our parents made in raising us. But if we don’t make that conscious decision, we will replicate that with our kids because we don’t know what else to do. And so what the book aims to do is to say, okay, it’s not enough to just know you don’t want to do that. You have to know what to do in that moment when your kid is refusing to brush their teeth, put on their shoes, stay in bed, when everything in you says, use your power m, just make your kid do it. And your kid is pushing back against that. And so that’s really about, you know, letting go of what, you know, is letting go of all of the systems that have harmed you. That it just seems like that’s how parenting is done, because there is another potential way.

David Hirsch: Yeah. In addition to that, the thought that came to mind is that, we want to do things for our kids. Right. We’re in a hurry. It’s a lot more expeditious just to tie their shoes, put their coat on, blah, blah, blah, just get going. And one of the disciplines that I’ve picked up on, you know, now with my 28 to 35 years of parenting experience with our five kids, is, you know, try not to do things for your kids that they can do for themselves. And it does take a certain discipline, Right. To let go of the, I’m in control, we’re doing things my way. And, you know, empower them. Right. To take responsibility for their own situation. And I think when you do that or you practice that at a young age, hopefully it’s, you know, they’re growing and accepting that responsibility as they get older. that’s just my theory.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah. I see it a little bit differently in that I always want to understand what need is the child trying to meet by doing this thing. Right. So if the child wants autonomy, has a need for autonomy. Absolutely. You know, tie your own laces. Sometimes kids will refuse, even even though they are physically capable of tying their own shoelaces, of getting them dressed in the. They have a deep need for connection. And so there’s the long story that kind of opens up the book with Maria and Isabel, where they’re in this fight every single day. Maria, the parent, is like, get dressed. No. Get dressed. No. With increasing volume over multiple days. And I said to Maria, did you ever ask why she doesn’t want to get dressed? Oh, no, I didn’t. Okay, so go and ask that. And the response is, I like knowing that you were the last person to touch my clothes in the morning before I go to school. Right. The kid has a need for connection. And of course, course, Maria is willing to meet that need. And so is Isabel physically capable of putting her clothes on? Of course. She’s like six at the time. She’s, you know, neurotypical, and she is capable of getting herself dressed. And when Maria is able to hug the clothes, the two of them can, you know, help her get dressed. And. And there’s no struggle anymore. Maria’s needs for a piece, for ease, for collaboration, for harmony, are all met. They get out the door on Time, the struggle goes away. So I would say yes. When kids are ready for independence, absolutely. We have to be there to meet them. And if they are wanting more support than we think they should be able to manage with, then if we can find a way to offer that and get past an idea of what a kid should be able to do. Right. And parents of neurodivergent kids are well practiced at that. Right. My kids should be able to do X, but they can’t. And so am I going to insist that they could. Maybe they could yesterday. Maybe they had more capacity yesterday. Maybe today is a different more difficult day and they don’t have the capacity today. Can I find it in myself to come towards them so I can meet my needs for ease? Right. For responsibility to my co workers, for all the other things that help me get out the door in the morning. So, so that, that’s how I sort of address that. That autonomy connection, you know, is, is trying to see the real need behind the child’s behavior. Behavior. And that’s at the heart of my book, right? Is I’m not just interested in meeting your kids needs. I also want you to meet your needs.

David Hirsch: Absolutely.

Jen Lumanlan: And a lot of the time when our kids are resisting because their needs aren’t met, when we can come toward them and meet their needs, then our needs just get met as well.

David Hirsch: The first chapter I found rather difficult and you tackled some of society’s heaviest issues including like, you made reference to white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism. And I’m sort of curious to know at what point in time did you become more aware of these societal issues and how that interrelates to the work that you’re doing.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah, it was really, around 2019 when I did a podcast episode on the impacts of intergenerational trauma. And

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Jen Lumanlan: for the first time I realized my own trigger right when somebody interrupted me, not in a conversation like this, but particularly when my husband interrupted me, particularly when I was trying to explain something that he’s asking me the question about the thing I’m explaining right now, I would just explode and I didn’t know why. And through the course of that you can actually hear it happen in the conversation. I have the realization that, oh, when I was a kid my dad, would speak to me as if I was a kid at his school, right. I was a 16 year old who had a mental capacity of a 16 year old and he would speak to me like a kid who had a mental capacity of a 10 year old and he would Just lecture me about my various failings. And I was not permitted to speak, as kids in school are not permitted to speak when the head, deputy head is telling them, you know, what’s going to be what? so when my husband interrupts me, it’s like this massive explosion. And so I’m realizing this for myself. And I also was starting to think about race racism. I was thinking, oh, my goodness, the legacy of slavery must be, you know, really there for black families. And I reached out to a black friend of mine who’s a fellow podcaster and said, you know, what if I did an episode on this? And she, way more kindly than I deserved, wrote back to me and said, don’t do that instead. Have you ever examined the role of whiteness in your life? And I said, what? Because until that point, no, no, it had never crossed my mind. And I consider myself, you know, I know what racism is. I know what structural racism is. I consider myself fairly politically liberal. And still I had never crossed my mind. And so the examples that she gave in her podcast episode, her podcast is, is, I think, not available anymore. but she gave an example of a black parent would think more than twice about walking into a grocery store with their kid, holding their own food because they might be accused of stealing, feeling that a black parent might feel terrified that their black son has a meltdown in a public place because there is nothing scarier to white people on, looking than an out of control black boy. And so in that moment, I realized I have white privilege. Right? I remember being in CVS. I picked my daughter up having an ear infection. She is in full on, pain meltdown. I’m in the painkiller aisle, ripping open a box of ibuprofen, dosing her right there in the aisle. I haven’t paid for it. Zero fear for my safety. Safety, right. That is my white privilege. That is privilege I have because I have white skin. And so that was sort of the thing that kick started it. And then I started looking at issues related to gender and then issues related to money and kind of saw how other people. Right. I’m not the first person to make these connections. Bell hooks talks about this. This is one of her core ideas, is how these systems are interconnected and really hurt us. You know, you and I have a fair amount of privilege in these systems. There are other people who have much less privilege than we do. And yet we are all hurt by these system.

David Hirsch: Well, one of the things that we do very intentionally within the Special Fathers Network is Our mastermind groups, where groups of 6, 8, 10 dads, meet on a weekly basis virtually and take a deep dive. yeah, for 75 minutes a week. And we’ve created this safe place for dads to be vulnerable. You know, it doesn’t happen like the first week, the first month, but after a number of months, you know, guys sort of like start to take the mask down or off. And you know, it’s, it’s a unique experience. Right. Particularly for dads who, you know, are raising kids with special needs. Right. Society is judging us as parents, how we’re doing things. And it’s difficult for a lot of families to be out in public with a child with special needs who, who you know is disruptive or distracting and they don’t leave the house as often. They don’t go out into public. They’re not having the same shared experiences as typical families. And that’s unfortunate. And you know, it’s the rare parent who doesn’t care what people say, think or do.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah. And that’s on us. Right? That’s on us to understand this is this child’s need. This is this parent doing the absolute best they can to meet this child’s need.

David Hirsch: Absolutely.

Jen Lumanlan: That’s on us. Us to see that judgment and own that judgment and transform that into a non judgmental observation.

David Hirsch: Absolutely. So, a lot of, A lot of learning. A lot of learning.

Jen Lumanlan: Yeah. Yeah. And so the dad in your community is the one who’s left holding the bag because we are not able to do that.

David Hirsch: Absolutely.

Jen Lumanlan: And I’m so glad that, yeah, we’ve seen, I’ve seen as well in my communities that, you know, that consistent showing up every single week to a space where you get to say, I yelled at my kids today and it wasn’t pretty and I’m, I’m feeling ashamed of it. And to get that message back from other dads. Yeah, I’ve done that too. I’ve been there. You’re not a shitty parent. You are doing the absolute best you can in the situation that you’re in. that is such a validating message to receive.

David Hirsch: Absolutely.

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David Hirsch: I’m sort of curious to know if there’s anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up.

Jen Lumanlan: I think we’ve covered a lot of ground. So if there was one thing to leave you with, it’s needs. Right. Needs underpins everything. It underpins your kids difficult behavior. It underpins your mental, inflexibility and why you can’t say yes to something. When we understand needs, needs, we can find strategies that meet both of our needs the vast majority of the time.

David Hirsch: That might be the title of your next book, Jen. Needs, needs and more needs.

Jen Lumanlan: It might be.

David Hirsch: So just a thought. So if somebody wants to learn about your work or to contact you, what’s the best way to do so?

Jen Lumanlan: Everything flows through yourparentingmojo.com I am on social media, but as you may have guessed, I’m probably not very good at it. I don’t enjoy it very much. the quiz is a great entry point to start getting access to the tools that are going to help at yourparentingmojo.com/quiz. And yeah, I’ve got 250 research based podcast episodes hanging out waiting for you. And I’m starting to create some, sort of summary episodes that draw on multiple episodes because I’ve done so many. I just did one on the topic of, you know, if you’re feeling overwhelmed and burnt out, how can you tell first of all that you’re in burnout? What does that look like? how can you navigate that effectively, get the support that you need? So yeah, so there’s more of those episodes coming over the following months to connect you to resources that I’ve covered over the week last six, seven, eight years.

David Hirsch: Now I’ll be sure to include the information in the, show notes that’ll make it as easy as possible for somebody to follow up with you. Jen, thank you for your time and many insights. As a reminder, Jen is just one of the individuals who’s part of the Special Fathers Network mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. If you’d like to be a mentor father or are seeking advice from a mentor father with a similar situation to your own, Please go to 21stCenturyDads.org. Thank you for listening to the latest episode of the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. As you probably know, the 21st Century Dads foundation is a 501c3 not for profit organization, which means we need your help to keep our content free to all concern. Would you please consider making a taxactable contribution? I would really appreciate your support, Jen. thanks again.

Jen Lumanlan: Thank you so much, David.

Tom Couch: And thank you for listening to the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. The Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Through our personalized matching process, new fathers with special needs children match up with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for dads to support other dads. To find out more, go to 21stCenturyDads.org.

David Hirsch: And if you’re a dad looking for help or would like to offer help, we would be honored to have you join our closed Facebook group. Please go to facebook.com groups and search dad to dad. Lastly, we’re always looking to share interesting stories. If you’d like to share your story or know of a compelling story, please send an email to david@21stcenturydads.org

Tom Couch: The Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast was produced by me, Tom Couch. Thanks again to Amgen. Committed to unlocking the potential of biology for patients suffering from serious illnesses by discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative human therapeutics. Discover more about Amgen’s mission at Amgen.com.

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