Ep. 294: You Can’t Teach Calm If You Can’t Be Calm: The Power of Self-Regulation
Parenting Great Kids with Dr. Meg Meeker
Dr. Meg Meeker
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In You Can’t Teach Calm If You Can’t Be Calm, Dr. Meg Meeker welcomes guests Kahlila Robinson and Sarah Gerstenzang, co-authors of The Self-Regulation Workbook for Children Ages 5 to 8. Together, they unpack how parental self-regulation plays a crucial role in helping children build emotional resilience and develop lifelong emotional skills.
This episode dives into why your own calm sets the tone for your child’s behavior, especially when dealing with post-COVID stress, emotional outbursts, or peer conflicts. Kahlila and Sarah share practical, science-backed tools to help parents recognize emotional contagion, model regulation, and foster secure attachments.
Whether you're managing meltdowns or building daily routines with intention, this conversation reminds us: you can’t teach calm if you can’t be calm yourself.
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If you're struggling to stay calm in the chaos of parenting—or just want expert advice tailored to your family's needs—Dr. Meg offers one-on-one coaching for parents who are ready to grow, heal, and lead with confidence. Learn more here.
🧷Links
The Self-Regulation Workbook for Children Ages 5 to 8 by Kahlila Robinson and Sarah Gerstenzang
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📌 Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction to Parenting Challenges
00:33 – Launch of the Self-Regulation Workbook
01:26 – Why Parental Self-Regulation is Key
02:40 – Staying Calm in Heated Moments
05:29 – How Emotions Transfer Between Parent & Child
08:31 – Addressing Post-COVID Anxiety in Kids
11:08 – Helping Kids Develop Emotional Awareness
12:34 – Simple De-Escalation Tools for Parents
17:44 – Matching Strategies to Different Child Personalities
18:37 – Connection-Based Discipline
21:28 – Children’s Core Emotional Needs
23:31 – Teaching Kids to Cope with Stress
25:15 – Managing Peer Conflict and Social Stress
28:30 – Healing Emotional Wounds in Childhood
30:50 – Balancing Work, Stress & Parenting
36:14 – Final Thoughts & Resources
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Parenting can feel like a pressure cooker, especially when your child is struggling and you don't know how to help. |
| 0:09.0 | It really is about parents actually working on themselves. How do you regulate as a parent to therefore be a model and be in a place of being able to co-regulate your children. |
| 0:22.8 | Welcome to Parenting Great Kids. |
| 0:25.0 | Here's your host, Dr. Meg Meeker. |
| 0:29.6 | Welcome, Kalila and Sarah. |
| 0:31.9 | Thanks for joining me on the show today. |
| 0:33.8 | You have a brand new workbook. |
| 0:36.2 | So tell us about the workbook. Yeah. So Sarah and I have worked |
| 0:41.0 | with kids and families for years and years and have worked with hundreds of kids and families at this |
| 0:47.0 | point. And we found that we could not find a go-to source that we felt really good about |
| 0:53.9 | that really reflected our |
| 0:56.0 | kind of values as therapists. What we found has been most helpful for parents and families. |
| 1:01.8 | So we decided to put together our own resource. It's called the Self-regulation Workbook for |
| 1:07.1 | Children Ages 5 through 8. It's published through Ulysses Press, and it contains all of the |
| 1:13.6 | useful concepts, strategies, tips that we've used both in our own families and with the families |
| 1:22.3 | that we've worked with through the years. And really, the title of the book is not misleading, but it really is |
| 1:31.8 | about parents actually working on themselves. How do you regulate as a parent to therefore be a |
| 1:39.2 | model and be in a place of being able to co-regulate your children. So although it's titled for children, |
| 1:48.0 | it's actually meant to address a lot of parents and the struggles that parents have. And it's |
| 1:54.9 | fun. It's actually got, there's a lot of activities in there that you can do with your child. |
| 1:59.2 | And there's a couple of activities in there |
| 2:01.4 | for kids to be able to do themselves to learn more about their own emotions. I'm so glad that you |
... |
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