Sonya Renee Taylor
Appearances
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And part of the reasons our bodies were made to experience pleasure is because it ensures that humans continue because if something's pleasurable to do, you're likely to do it. And since sex is one of the things that makes humans, it usually feeling good in, you know, motivates us to decide to do that. And so part of it is just the biology of how humans continue. But part of it is about our,
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
right to pleasure in our bodies and our right to connection with pleasure in our bodies and to experience pleasure with each other.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And that how we decide to experience pleasure with each other and inside of our bodies is a function of how we know ourselves, how we know each other, where we want to be vulnerable with ourselves, where we want to be vulnerable with other people, where we are trustworthy with ourselves, where we want to be trustworthy with other people who have established themselves as trustworthy and
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
All of those things go into sex. So there's the physiological part, which is about our anatomy and about our genitalia and putting genitalia together in the ways in which that feels pleasurable and also can do procreation. And then there's this other part. what I think is actually the juicier, bigger piece, probably because I didn't decide to procreate.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And so all the sex I've had has been for pleasure. It's been because it feels good and it's connecting and it's deep and it's beautiful when I know myself and I know my body and I trust the other person, those things. And so I think that's part of the place where I'd start the conversation.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Well, here's the deal. In the world of social media and mass information dissemination all the time, you want to say it before the internet says it. And so as soon as your young person has access to externalized information, I believe that's when you should start having these conversations at age-appropriate levels. So, you know, five-year-olds are like, where do babies come from?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
That's the time to start having a conversation about sex, right? Right. And in a way that is age appropriate, that does it. And here's the thing. Sometimes I think we adults get in our heads and then we overcomplicate stuff when folks really need super simple answers, right? The five-year-old's just like, where do babies come? There's a penis and there's a vagina.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
When a penis is inserted into a vagina, it has the potential to make a baby. And then a baby will grow inside of a body. And eventually, nine months later, it'll come out. That's where babies come from. OK, boom, bye. I'm certain this kid's done. And that was already maybe more than they needed to know.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And so keep it simple, keep it concrete and leave the space for them to explore more if they want to explore more. But we don't have to like start dumping out the, you know. Encyclopedia Britannica. I'm dating myself of information. Yeah, just answer simply what they ask and like, don't get into our panic. Oh my gosh, what does this mean? Stuff that I think we can do sometimes.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
So, you know, I think, and I may or may not be, because I haven't read my book in a minute and I'm in another country, so I haven't even seen it, but I'll tell you what's present right now.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
But, you know, I think one of the things to talk about is how sex and so many things in our society get used for money, right? Get commercialized, right? And so
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
One of the ways in which sex, which is about, like I said, pleasure and trust and vulnerability and connection gets used for money in our society is through pornography, where people are paid to have sex with each other, whether or not they trust or know each other, whether or not they have relationship. And then it gives us a distorted view about what sex really is, right?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Because the job is to make money from this experience, not to connect, not to feel loving, not to even necessarily experience pleasure. And so what we're seeing in porn is not a realistic experience of sexuality. It's an experience to sell a thing. And sometimes, like many of the other systems in our society, when we're trying to sell a thing, it can involve exploitation.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
It can involve oppression. Oftentimes the exploitation and oppression of women happens a lot through pornography. Also the like reaffirming of messages of men about women's bodies as objects, about only being allowed to feel if it's about feeling something sexual. All of those messages can get reinforced through pornography because it's trying to sell you something.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And generally when something's trying to sell you something, it doesn't care so much about the deeper issues of human connection, of love, of trust, of vulnerability. And so porn can give us a distorted vision and there are way better, more nuanced, exciting ways to learn about sex that are going to give you more of what's really happening than pornography will.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Your kids are going straight. Your kid is on the porn site right now.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
As soon as they got done talking to you. Absolutely. They are logging in immediately. Yes. So I just appreciate how you're saying. Because the fear makes a thing enticing, right? It's like, oh, they said I shouldn't do it. So I should totes do it. As opposed to, yes, it exists. And here's actually what it is. Not from a place of fear, just from here's what it is. But again, we go back to
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
What we have not tended to in ourselves shows up in the conversation. So all of our anxiety, our stuff around sex, our stuff around pornography, if we haven't sat with that, and this, it is useful and helpful to say, when a kid comes and asks you a question that feels like it's activating all your stuff, to say, thank you so much for that question.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
I'm going to sit for a minute because I want to really be able to give you a good, honest answer that I thought about. Can I come back to you in an hour? Or can we talk about this tonight at dinner? Or can I talk about it to you tomorrow when you get home from school? Buy yourself some time to go sit with yourself, to go get yourself in order, to touch into the places where it is
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Let's not be extreme.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
leaning up against your stuff and get quiet, get centered, get aligned so that you get to come to this young person from your most grounded, aligned self and not your reactionary, fear-based self. It's going to help all the like tricky conversations go so much easier. Absolutely.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And so chill out on the urgency energy and buy yourself enough time to come back to yourself so that, again, you can find your own reliable narrator and then bring that version of yourself to the young person.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Yeah. Well, you know, if we're organized to these subjects through the lens of shame, then of course we don't want to talk about them. I'm ashamed of this. I'm ashamed of sex. I'm ashamed of money. I'm ashamed of what we've done to the climate. I'd rather ignore it or pretend like we didn't do it. So whatever it is that we are bringing our shame to, we know that it's inevitable.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And so, yes, we're going to Grant and Barrett suck it up and have the conversation, but we prefer to never have to have that conversation again because every time we talk about it, it touches our stuff. And this is why we keep saying that the work we don't do on ourselves impacts our young people. It becomes their template for how it is they move through the world.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And so if you find yourself with deep shame in these subject areas, then you're right. You're not going to want to weave it into light. Every time it shows up, you're going to be like, turn the TV off. You know, I remember when I was a kid, I think we were watching like Purple Rain or something. And I remember my mother putting her hands over my eyes over the sex scenes or something like that.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And I was like, I'm so confused because whatever we're watching, what's happened there, right? Because I was allowed to see all the rest of it, but now something has come into the screen that I'm not allowed to see. What is that? And I think that there is this invitation to say, what are the subjects?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Like I would love if all parents, as soon as you just were like, oh, I'm about to bring a young person into my life. Where are my edges? Where are my pain points? Where are my shame still? And I'm going to say that I'm going to intentionally work on tending to and healing these aspects of myself so that I can show up not from my fear, not from my shame,
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
But as a legitimate, like, intentional guide to this person I've decided I'm going to be an intentional guide for.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
When we said yes, in whatever ways we said yes, we said, yes, I'm going to guide you. That means I got to actually do the work to clear the things in my path so that I can lead you.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Just a couple steps ahead.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
That would have been great to know, mom. That's what she said.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Absolutely. I'm thinking about it like software, right? Like every once and again, my phone is like, hey, you need a software update. And if I don't do the software update, then things stop working, my apps don't open, all kinds of wild stuff happens. And that's very much what these conversations are.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Where you were, the model of you when you had the first conversation will not be the same model in five years. Certainly maybe not in 10 years, might not be in five months. And so as your information, as your system, your software gets updated, All the things connected to your software need to be updated to, including your young people. Oh, my ideas have changed.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
We haven't talked about that in a while. You know what? I'm thinking differently about that. What are you thinking about that? You know, one of the things that I do in the book of Radical Answers is I really try to instill in young people that they have the ability to be critical thinkers and to ask questions and to be curious and to actually dissect the world they're living in.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Every time we as adults come and say, hey, I've changed my mind. We give young people permission to change their minds about things. Every time I'm like, you know what? I used to think this, but I don't think that anymore. Then all of a sudden there is a softening of the edges of possibility for young people. And they're like, oh, things shift. Things change. They shifted in my parent.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
They shifted in my mom. Oh, that means they might shift in me. Oh, that's okay. So there's a permission giving in our own transformations for young people to transform, for young people to have thought a thing at one point and then think a new thing. Every time we demonstrate that, we say, it's totally all right, which means we cultivate the evolution of our young people.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And ultimately that's what we're here to do is evolve. All of us, all of us.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
That's called obsolescence. That thing will no longer work. And then it will, like, this is the thing I think is fascinating is like, even inside of the, you know, imagination of the market, The things that we do with humans don't transcribe. You have to update the thing or else it becomes non-viable and then it goes off the market. Guess what? That might be true for humans too.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
If you don't update the thing, it becomes non-viable and then it goes off market. So what does it look like to just create the space where change is inevitable? Because guess what? Change is inevitable. And the more that we try to create a world that pretends like that isn't the truth, the more we create suffering for ourselves and for young people.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Yeah. Yes, they are. We are not going to, you know, inoculate our young people from the realities of life. It's everywhere. That is what we've made in the world of social media is a world where everything is accessible all the time. So if everything is accessible all the time, right. And everything is vying for your attention in the economy of attention,
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
The adults in young people's lives have to figure out what their currency is. We've got to figure out how we are and what we want our young people to understand and experience is as valuable as all the other millions of things trying to get our young people's attention. And the more that we are honest, transparent, curious, engaging, want to know their thoughts, right?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
That's why kids like the internet. That's why they like social media platforms because somebody wants to watch them all the time and look at them do something somewhere out there. If we get to be those people, then we have not shuffled them off to the digital space to get that need met.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
which means that they're going to come to us with that place of curiosity, with that thing they're uncertain about, with that thing they want us to see, because we've become the exciting audience, the audience that's actually interested and invested.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
That piece of work is how you get young people to listen to what it is you're offering in guidance rather than to be guided by these billions of other locations that usually just want to use them for profit.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Yeah, and our kids are naturally, you know, like they're inquisitive and naturally relatively compassionate. People are always like, kids are mean. And like, yes, absolutely, some of that. But actually, the thing we notice first is like young people, they're like, oh, I hit that person. And then the baby cries and they're like, I'm so sorry. They feel terrible, right?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
There's a lot of natural compassion. But if we don't point out the ways in which the world is incompassionate, then we normalize lack of compassion. We tell them that that's okay, right? That you shouldn't question it and you shouldn't think about it. And actually what we want are young people who question and think. Yes.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Those are the young people that actually, that's how you know you can have a young person who makes it safely into adulthood is because they question and think.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
That's right. That's right. Or they become the sharks. Or they become the sharks, which to me is still the sharks got them.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Of course you think that way.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
It's for all of us. Yes. It's for the kids and all of us.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Well, you know, I'm most likely always to turn the question back to the kid first, certainly in that place. What do you think God is? What do you know about this already? Where are you? Right? Which says, I actually am curious about you. I, again, become the interested audience, right? Immediately. Right. And then, you know, Sonia Renee Taylor says, there are so many ideas about what God is.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And I can tell you what mine is. And I want you to find what's true for you. Here's what's true for me, is that God, as I describe God, is a manifestation of the divine. It is Whatever the energy is that thought that there should be oceans and bumblebees and Gerber daisies and farts and rainbows that also thought that there should be a Sonia. Whatever that energy is, that's God to me.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
God creates and creates and creates everything. And then means for creation to grow and evolve and learn and to be deeply connected to how amazing and magical it is. And part of the challenge of creation is that sometimes we forget we're amazing and magical and then we rely on other stuff. But God is the energy of love that decided that all of life should exist. That's what God is to me.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And I want you, I want you to think about it a little bit. And maybe, like, let's check in next week. Like, just be out in the world. And then let's check in next week and tell me sort of what you're thinking about God now. Yeah.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Yeah. There's an inner dialogue already happening. It's just now being expressed. And so... Again, affirming that that inner dialogue is allowed to exist, that you want to know what it is, that they should dig into it, that it is a fertile second ground that they should get into. That's what we want to do.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
We want them to get connected to these things that are in here so that they don't just stay in here. And then they believe that no one really wants to know. And then they squash them down and then it gets tamped down and tamped down. And then they no longer hear what's in here. Then the only guidance is what's out there. right? We want to keep cultivating that.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
I'm not going to sleep no time soon.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Yeah. And I love this idea that your husband found the thing that resonates for him. And it's like, oh, this is the place where I actually have some juice and some access. Let me share this. Let me share this. So it doesn't have, you know, I do feel bad for the people who aren't word people because, you know, we're word people.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And I recognize that there are infinite ways in which we convey messages and communicate with each other. And so whatever that is for you, Do that, right? Like art, movement, songs, a walk in nature, watching how the natural world operates. There are endless ways. There's no one right way to be in this exchange with young people.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Finding the methodology of communication that works for you and then inviting young people into that by asking them what the methodology of communication that works for them is and finding the meeting point. That's really, I think, the sweet spot. There's no one right way to do it.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Yeah. You know, well, first of all, I'm just delighted to be back with you all. It's really warming my heart and remembering just like, yeah, what a kinship I feel in this space. And so thank you for having me.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Absolutely. It creates a literal and physical, like a physical container to hold the conversation. Right. And there's a way in which the attention is all in one location. Right. And that, again, the economy of attention, where is and how do we find that? the time to be the sort of central focus for young people, right? So that these questions can arise because there's so many distractions.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
There's so many other places they'd rather be. There's so many other folks they want to text. All this is happening. And so finding the location where it's like, oh, here's the little, the sanctuary that we can create. And I love the idea that the sanctuary is the car where it's like, oh, this is where we get to meet and be in intimate connection and dialogue with one another.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
That's sweet and beautiful. I love it.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
What's your take? Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing I do is just be like, oh, honey, I know. I understand. I'm sorry. Because I do know because I was a kid who was bullied, who was left out, who was teased. Right. And so. there's a place in me that absolutely understands that. And so the first location is just deep empathy and witnessing. I'm really sorry. That's really gotta not feel good.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
It's truth telling time is really what it is that I'm experiencing is like, there's a way in which we have based on our own traumas, based on our own fears, based on our own conditioning, have thought that we were doing young people a service by lying to them. And we haven't. And what that actually has done and what we've seen it do throughout history is it
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Or tell me more about how that felt for you. Tell me more about what it brought up for you. Because one of the things that I think we get to do in that moment, those experiences are the germination of the seeds of stories that we then keep for the rest of our lives. I don't belong. So, you know, it's,
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Folks may know I've been deep in my astrology bag for the last however many years at this point now, and I've been doing readings for people. And so right before I came on here, I just did a reading for someone. And her entire chart was this manifestation of being of service to others, being of service to others, being of service to others.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And it was so clear that she had neglected being of service to herself. And the reason she had neglected being of service to herself is because she felt so ostracized and outcasted as a young person, as a teased, disliked young person, that so much of the labor of her life is about trying to earn favor with the collective again, trying to figure out how to work hard enough to be liked.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
She's 40 something. She's a whole adult now. That's how those stories start. And so what we want to do when young people bring us those moments is we want to hear them and we want to witness and we want to notice where the seed of a story is starting and we want to interrupt it. That's what we want to do first. Oh, that's got a really big heart. Tell me how that made you feel.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
It made me feel like I don't belong. Tell me more about not belonging. What does that mean for you? It means I'll always be left out. I hear you saying always. You know, always means forever. And this was just a moment. So I hear you that it hurt, but we don't have to think that what happened right now has to be the rest of your life because that's what always means, right?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
So let's acknowledge where we are right now in the present, but it doesn't have to be forever. I promise it actually won't be unless we decide that it is right now. So can we make a different decision? How would you tell this story if it wasn't always, right? And then we give them the opportunity to start reframing the story for themselves and
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
So that that seed doesn't keep growing and building on itself and building on itself until it becomes their identity as an adult. So that to me is one of the key moments that we have to intercept what becomes a lifelong pattern by acknowledging, witnessing, and then reframing the experience so that their most empowered self, can actually be activated in it. Well, what's true?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Who are those people? Are they actually people you want to hang with? Let's talk more about it, right? We get to sort of dig into it. But for me, the most important moment is catching where that story wants to like dig itself in the soil and start growing and saying, uh-uh, we don't have to do that though. We can absolutely 100% feel what we felt.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And we don't have to say that it's forever or it's always or I'm never or I'm or make a story about who we are. We get to interrupt that part. So that to me feels like one of the most key pieces.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
It's them. Exactly. Exactly. It's me. I'm the failure. Something's wrong with me. And then when you try to tell them otherwise, you're not believable.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And this is the world towards me.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
makes them ill-prepared for the world it is that actually exists. And it is possible to say to young people, here's what we have been doing and here is what it's created. Here is where we got it wrong. We have overvalued consumption. We've overvalued stuff. We've decided stuff was more important than the actual physical world we live on.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Yeah, absolutely. If we say here's reality, when young people encounter reality, they understand the context they're in. This is reality. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It just means, you know, my mom told me sometimes this is how stuff goes. All right. I understand that. But if we have not presented the world in its reality, then when young people get confronted with reality,
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
The only place they have to look is themselves. It must be me. It must be something I did. That's what young people are trained to do, right? Like it's part of the developmental orientation of life is that we are first self-reflexive. It's about me. It's about something that's going on here.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
If we haven't said there are other things happening that are going to be outside of your control, that are going to be unfair, that you're not going to actually understand. If you don't prepare them for that, then the natural instinct to be self-reflexive will kick in. It must be me. It's the reason kids blame themselves for their parents' divorces.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
It's the reason that they blame themselves for when they've been abused. It's the reason that they blame themselves for when harm happens in the family. Because we haven't presented the rest of the world as independent players who also are moving through things, which just means I did it. I created it. That's right.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
What, Abby, you're pointing out I think is so important is that there's a difference between a reliable narrator and a perfect narrator. Your job is not to be a perfect narrator. Your job is not to have all the answers, to have the perfect, most eloquent description or response to your young person. Your job is to be as authentic as you can be.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
inside of the connection, which means if authentic is fumbling, sort of trying to figure out the words, What you do is then you say, oh, if that's their experience too, they get to have modeled to them that it's okay. They get to have modeled to them that it gets to be fumbly and messy and I don't have to be the most eloquent to still be allowed to be in connection with others.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
That is so important, so invaluable. So reliable narrator does not mean perfect narrator, does not mean most eloquent narrator. It means honest, authentic narrator And connected and trustworthy with the young person you're talking to.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Thank you. I appreciate you supporting the book, supporting my work. And I just appreciate the light you all are in the world. Thank you. Keep shining. Right back at you.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
We've decided that new phones and new iPads and new skyscrapers and new companies are more important than healthy soil and a lot of trees and good water. And our decisions have impacts. And we are living in the impact of our decisions. But the other thing that we get to remember is that we get to make new decisions. Just because we didn't make a great decision before
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
doesn't mean that we are forever stuck inside of the cycle of bad decisions. We get to say, oh, we can change and pivot. Now, does that mean that we don't have to live in the consequences of our decisions? No, we do. And we're looking at that right now. We're looking at the consequences of some really poor decisions that we made.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And we also, from this point, can say we want to do something different What would that look like? And the power of young people is that this is where we get to elicit the brilliance that is their imagination. Guess what? You haven't spent as much time living in the idea that these other things were the right things, which means that you are so much closer to what the right things might be.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Like you're so much closer to actually what earth might really want. So let's imagine together. What do we think we could create together? And then we become partners with young people in envisioning a new world rather than just saying, sorry, we saddled you with absolute devastation. Go figure it out, kid. Right?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
You can't. And here's the thing. If we don't tell the truth, we become unreliable narrators of the world. Yes. And then kids rely on themselves and each other to narrate with the level of information and skill that they have at that time. Right. Which is limited.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And so our job as adults are to be reliable narrators such that we are trustworthy so that when we tell them, hey, we together can imagine something new. They believe us. Because if we don't say that, then they don't believe us, which means they don't trust their own imagination, which means they won't lean into the natural skill set that they have.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
So our job is to be solid enough narrators of the experience that they're living, that they feel their own self-trustworthiness through the trustworthiness that's the foundation that they're interacting with through adults.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Is absolutely. Because why would they? Like, you're not telling me the truth about life. So how could you be telling me the truth about me? So if you're saying I have the ability to do all this, but you're lying about everything else, then you're probably lying about that, too.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Yeah. All of it's not true now. All of it's not true. That's what happens when we lie to kids. And so our job is to tell them the truth so that when we tell them the truth about themselves, they believe us.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
I think the first thing that comes up for me is like, the truth is it taps into a bit of anger in me. I'm like, there are kids handling it right now. And the idea that your kid can't handle it is a position of deep privilege because there are children all over the world right now figuring out the most atrocious of situations and at many times doing it without any support or infrastructure.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And so your job as the adult in that young person's life is to create the conditions for them to be able to handle it, which means that you're loving, you're compassionate, you're present, you're willing to hear, and that you have checked enough of your own stuff because the thing we're really saddling them with is our stuff. That's right.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
That's really when we say, like, I don't want to saddle them with it. It's like, I don't want to saddle them with my terror, my fear, my disbelief about what's possible. Well, then guess what, grown person? Go tend to that. Go tend to that so that you can be a loving steward of the young person who who will inevitably have to handle it. Because guess what? The fire already burned their house down.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
They don't have a choice about whether or not they're going to handle it. It is what life is. So pretending that we don't have the capacity to handle what life is, it's just the story we're actually making up because the truth is you're handling it. Now, could you be handling it better? Do we want to feel more powerful, more sovereign, more connected inside of our handling it? Absolutely.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
But one way or another, you're going to have to handle it because life delivered it. And so the question becomes, how do I say life is going to deliver my young person's circumstances that are going to be difficult? What is my role in equipping them with the most powerful manifestation of themselves so that they can deal with life on life's terms without being dramatically affected?
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
impacted in really negative and traumatic ways later on. That's by dealing in the now, dealing in the present.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Yeah. And not only an idea, like, here's the thing. I think we do know. We just don't like the answer.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
I know that I have been really afraid of money. I know that I've been really stuck in scarcity for a long time. And I don't like that answer. I feel like it makes me not look good. I feel like it makes me unworthy. It activates all my own childhood wounds. And so, no, I don't want to say that to my kid, except that then you become an unreliable narrator.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And so the job is to say, I know that I've been afraid and I know that I don't want you to be. And so here's, I may not know how to fix it, but we can go research that together. Let's go on a journey together. And then you become a companion in exploration of with this young person in your life. So the answer isn't that we don't know. There are things we don't know.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And I think it is fair to say, I don't know. And then to say like, but let's be curious together. Let's imagine, let's read, let's explore. Right. But there are things that we do know and we just don't like the answer. And I think our job in that place is to still be real honest. Right.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Exactly. And this is the thing. Every question from a young person is an opportunity for the older person. to step into a new possibility for themselves. Basically, every time a young person says, what about this? We get to assess for ourselves where we are on that journey and pivot should we so choose. But we get stuck and contracted and in our own fear
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
And then we do a disservice to young people by avoiding ourselves and our own level of work. People often ask me why I didn't write a book for young people before I wrote The Body's Not an Apology for Grown People. And I was like, because we got to change first and foremost.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
Actually, if we don't transform, then we beget all of our trauma and disconnection and fear and shame onto the young people who we are the shepherds of, the stewards of. So actually it's our job to transform first such that we demonstrate the transformation is possible for young people.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
I had the word, Sonia. Reliable or an unreliable narrator. Yes. Really is the theme of this conversation.
We Can Do Hard Things
How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor
You know, I mean, my immediate thought was like, oh, it's this awesome thing that sometimes makes humans and then sometimes not. You know, it's like sometimes, sometimes, sometimes not depending on how we're having it. But I think, you know, for me, the first conversation is like, oh, our bodies were made to experience pleasure.