Adding Heart to Parenting — Why It’s So Important Now

Topic: Adding Heart to Parenting — Why It’s So Important Now
Guest: Dr. Jorina Elbers

Our guest for this episode is Dr. Jorina Elbers, a pediatric neurologist with a special interest in trauma-informed medicine and the mother of two adventurous and energetic boys. Jorina joins Deborah Rozman, our Add Heart® Podcast host, to talk about one of the world’s biggest personal growth opportunities: parenting.

Today’s stressful world and all its unpredictable changes often create challenges in our home life. Many of today’s issues are adding mental and emotional strain on parents. Our children and grandchildren feel these stressors too, which can lead to an increase in undesirable behaviors, such as acting out, talking back, not listening, etc. As their patience is tested, many parents try to correct and control their kids’ attitudes and actions—without a lot of success.

Jorina, who is also the program director for the Trauma Recovery Project at the HeartMath Institute, shares with Deborah how she and her husband, Owen, have found that by focusing first on their own emotional self-regulation, then tuning in to their heart for intuitive direction, their communications with their boys have become much more effective.

Jorina shares with listeners a couple of powerful heart tools she uses to manage her personal energy and shift into a heart-coherent place, which enables her to reduce over-reacting to her children’s undesirable behavior.

She says many parents are told to just breathe to avoid reacting. However, if we don’t add heart coherence to a situation, we often end up lecturing a child, which shuts down communication. Learning how to shift into heart coherence is key for increasing a parent’s ability to respond in a way that empowers them in adverse situations—and kids do take notice.

Jorina and Deborah also discuss how we can allow children to experience intense emotions in a healthy way. Rather than scolding their behavior, using heart-directed practices can validate their emotions, which helps to defuse their energy and allows for a deeper heart connection and communication to unfold, uncovering what’s really going on.

Jorina says, “When we elevate our personal energy first, get into a heart-coherent space, we can then also help our kids to elevate their energy. When you have kids and parents working together in this way, the connection and communication can be very deep and rewarding.”

The episode closes with a guided heart meditation to help us energize our commitment to elevate our own energy first and better help our children.

About our guest:
Dr. Jorina Elbers is a pediatric neurologist with a special interest in trauma-informed medicine. She was recently an assistant professor at Stanford University and is currently the program director for the Trauma Recovery Project at the HeartMath Institute, a 501(c)3 nonprofit. She has published over 25 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters and created trauma-sensitive programs for health practitioners, first responders, refugees, and parents.