Welcome to No One Told Us, the podcast that tells the truth about parenting and talks about all the stuff you wish you knew before having kids.

I'm your host, Rachel Shepardota, and today I'm speaking with Dr. Amber Thornton.

Dr. Amber is a licensed clinical psychologist and a strong advocate for the mental health and well-being of parents.

Dr. Amber loves writing and creating

content online that will speak to the everyday struggles of parenthood, and she loves spending

time with her husband and two children as well. Her new book, A Parents Guide to Self-regulation,

a practical framework for breaking the cycle of dysregulation and mastering emotions for parents

and children, is available now. Dr. Amber,

thank you so much for joining. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. I think so

many parents right now are struggling with our own regulation and maybe doing things that we don't

want to be doing like yelling and things like that. And we are definitely going to dive into a lot of that

and talk more about the book. But before we get there, I kind of just want to hear a little bit about

your background and how you kind of got into this work and what kind of led you here.

Of course. Well, thank you first for having me. I'm so excited to be here talking to you and talking to your audience as well. It's a pleasure to talk about regulation and parenting. You know, I just think a lot of the time when we're talking about emotional regulation or self-regulation, we're often thinking about children or, you know, how do we help toddlers through tantrums,

how do we help teenagers in their emotions, but we just don't think about, you know, how much

parents need that help with regulating their own emotions and regulating themselves. So I just feel

like conversations like this are important because it helps to normalize what actually does happen for parents and adults. But for me, you know,

I've been a clinical psychologist for a little over 10 years now. And most of my training has

been with families and children. And honestly, I became a parent in 2019. and it really shifted things in terms of my work.

You know, I have always worked with families and children, but it was just something about me

becoming a parent and actually living that experience that really just, I can't even describe,

it just deepened the work for me and helped me to give my own clients so much more compassion and grace for what they're going through because I was now living it as well.

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