274: ENCORE: S.U.N.: Lisa’s Three Keys to a Happy Summer

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Tell me a parenting issue everyone struggles with with tweens and teens, but no

Dr. Lisa Damore

one talks about Rena. I think a lot of people feel like they just don't know how to connect to their kid anymore.

Rena Neinen

I'm Rena Neinen and welcome to Ask

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Lisa the Psychology of Raising Tweens and teens.

Dr. Lisa Damore

And I'm Dr. Lisa Damore. We bring you science backed strategies for managing anxiety, discipline, intense emotions and more.

Rena Neinen

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Today just Google Ask Lisa podcast.

Dr. Lisa Damore

We're here to help you untangle family life. Encore episode 274s u n Lisa's three

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keys to a Happy Summer

Co-host or Guest

Friends.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Happy summer. I am so excited to share with you one of my very, very favorite episodes as an encore about how to really recharge this summer.

Co-host or Guest

For this one I came up with a pretty corny but I think actually useful acronym, S U N Sleep Unplug

Dr. Lisa Damore

nature that is grounded in research and I think it will help us all to feel recharged when faster than we ever expect it to, the school year rolls around again. Here's to you and yours and to a wonderful summer ahead.

Co-host or Guest

Oh, we are almost here. I can taste it. But summer should have started three weeks ago.

Oh, man, is that the truth? We are so close on our end.

Dr. Lisa Damore

And as much as I love making my kid breakfast before school, I also love it when she sleeps in and

Co-host or Guest

I get to enjoy my coffee a little longer.

Tell me about it. The school rush in the morning is really something. But I wanted to get a take from from you, Lisa. Your hot take on how you want us to think about the summer and what should parents focus on? I know I'm struggling right now. Like, I feel like my kids are middle school. They need to be focusing on a little bit of academics, more so than they normally have in the past. But what's really important when it comes to the summer?

Dr. Lisa Damore

Okay, first of all, I love summer. I've always loved summer. And for me, I think it's a time of restoration. It's a giant rest, reset and Reena. I've been thinking about this. Like, if we're going to get serious about restoration, we probably need a corny acronym to help us.

Co-host or Guest

I love a good acronym. That's how I got through school.

Okay, so I came up with this corny one and I actually googled it because I was like, somebody else has thought of this, but weirdly somebody else hadn't.

Dr. Lisa Damore

And the acronym is S U N sun. And there's three things that I think if we focus on them this summer for. For ourselves and our kids, they apply to everyone. I think everyone's going to come out of the summer feeling fabulously restored.

Co-host or Guest

That's so great. So tell me what they are.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Okay, so s. No surprise here. Sleep.

Co-host or Guest

This is the hardest one also, by the way, for some parents like myself, too, I'm struggling with sleep.

Everybody struggles from time to time with sleep. You know how I feel about sleep. I am, like, obsessed with sleep.

Dr. Lisa Damore

And this is not just because I'm looking for something to be obsessed with. It is because the research is so, so clear, Rena, about the impact of sleep. We had that fabulous episode with Lisa Lewis not long ago where we did a deep dive. The research, I want to add, and this is really research that changed my life, is that we can study sleep so easily because all we do is we bring you into a lab, give you a great night's sleep, give you a bunch of measures, bring you back in the lab, keep you up all night, give you the same measures. So we really know what we're looking at. When we have slept well, we, needless to say, have more energy, better focus, better attention, better mood, less likely to injure ourselves, less likely to have any kind of accident. We like ourselves better. We like everybody else better. That finding cracks me up. We're more creative. It's unbelievable what sleep does for us. And so if we think about restoration, we. There's no conversation to be had about restoration that doesn't involve starting with sleep. Another way to put it, you could do all the restorative things in the world, and if you haven't slept well, none of them are going to count.

Co-host or Guest

But can I say this is the first to go in summer, sleep is always the first to go. And I want to have a little less structure, you know? Okay, stay up a little bit later. It's the summer, for goodness sakes. Your cousins are over, you're out on vacation. How do you. But it's also a fine line from completely losing the plot and going the other way.

Exactly.

Right.

Like, just when we need it the most or could theoretically get it the

Dr. Lisa Damore

most, it can start to fall apart. And I'll just add, it's really hard when it's daylight at 9pm in some areas to convince everybody that they should start getting ready for bed. Right. That. That is hard. So one thing that we know is it's okay for kids to Stay up a little later in the summer, especially if they can sleep in a little later. And. And, you know, all we want is enough Runway before the school year starts to get their schedules back on track. So I would say probably it's less about keeping rigid bedtimes and more about just making time for sleep and then making sure that it's good sleep, that there's. It's cold enough for sleeping. Sometimes that keeps people awake is that it's too warm. So if it can be cold enough for sleeping, if there's no tech in the bedroom, you know that that is something that I believe in really strongly. It also can interrupt sleep if you're exercising too late in the. So I think there's. However the schedule shifts. If there's still enough time for wind down and, you know, letting the body sort of start to settle, those things can matter. On the flip. We know that people sleep better when they're active during the day and when they get plenty of light. And so the summer helps us in that way. But what I would say is prioritize sleep. Prioritize sleep. The schedule can shift a little bit, but make sure it's good sleep and take advantage of the fact that we do ask less of ourselves and our kids often in the summer.

Co-host or Guest

So temperature matters. Tech in the bedroom matters. Having time to wind down and making sure you're moving. There's some sort of exertion throughout the day to naturally get you to want to go to bed.

Dr. Lisa Damore

It's true. Exercise not only helps people fall asleep faster, it helps them sleep more soundly through the night. So if somebody's struggling with sleep, I will always start with the recommendation that they bump up their exercise. And then, of course, this seems obvious, but it gets lost sometimes with kids. Watch when caffeine is happening. Sometimes kids.

Co-host or Guest

That's a problem for me personally, too.

Exactly.

Trying to cut down from four to two cups of coffee a day. It's crazy.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Or maybe just bump them all before noon.

Co-host or Guest

Right.

Okay.

You know, just cut yourself off at a certain point.

Dr. Lisa Damore

And kids sometimes late in the day, will end up drinking something that, you know, a soda that then keeps them kind of wired through the night. So we should keep an eye on that.

Co-host or Guest

So what do you have for us? For you?

Dr. Lisa Damore

Okay, I think this one's gonna be pretty obvious. Unplug.

Co-host or Guest

Okay. It's a hard one, but. Okay.

Dr. Lisa Damore

It is a hard one. But here's how I think about it, Rena. If we take advantage of the fact that routines shift in the summer, demands can sometimes Shift a bit in the summer. It lets us sort of play with routines around how connected we are and our kids are to digital technology. Okay. So if you think about your summer ahead and what your work life looks like and what your kids life looks like, where are some pockets if you think through, and I'm thinking this through too, where new routines, at least just for the summer, could be established around where the tech is and how much we interact with it.

Co-host or Guest

Maybe in the morning, because I feel like the later in the day. Also, as parents who are maybe working from home, it's impossible. I need the time. So I'm giving them their phone, their iPad, the video games, because I need the time to work.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Okay? So let's be realistic about where it makes sense to stay plugged in, right? It can work for your kid, it can work for you. What if, and I've been sort of noodling with this idea, what if over the summer we said to our kids, everybody's going to check, you know, can look at their tech first thing Saturday morning, later, Saturday afternoon. But most of the day Saturday we're going to take off, or most of the day Sunday we're going to take off. What about that idea of instituting one day a week in the summer where the whole family says, let's step away from our phones?

Co-host or Guest

Okay. We did this in Maine, and I was shocked at how much they stopped using the iPads and didn't even ask for them once we started doing it. But what do you do if you've got kids sort of in the high school age where, like, texting is their lifeline, like, it's like taking oxygen away from a child.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Well, exactly. So it may be one of those things with an older kid that's hard with an older kid. And, you know, I feel very strongly about this. If you have not established that their phone and computer never goes in their bedroom or certainly not overnight, maybe the summer is a great place to do that, right? That they unplug at least through the night. My dream is that if this gets established in the summer, it then rolls into the school year and the kid doesn't go back to having tech in their bedroom overnight. So maybe that's the rule, right? If the rule has been, you know,

Co-host or Guest

no rule around having tech in the

Dr. Lisa Damore

bedroom, maybe for the summer, you say, you know what, for the summer, if you're going to sleep well, the S

Co-host or Guest

and sun, we're going to unplug through the night.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Let's get it out. Okay, so you could institute like a Day that everybody takes off with an older teenager. It may be that you just institute that the nights are off from tech, which a lot of kids are still engaged late into the night, which isn't helping them. What about family vacations? What do you think? Like, the whole family goes on vacation together, so there's no socializing to be set up. What do you think is possible under those conditions?

Co-host or Guest

You know, it's a different summer because both. This is the first time I feel both of my kids have cell phones. So they're. They're pretty good about their phones not being on, but when they go somewhere, they want to snap a photo and they want to text it to their group of friends.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Okay. Isn't that interesting? Right. And that's. I think we forget about that. Like, the phone is also the camera, and it's how I stay connected to what's happening, even if I can't be part of it. Yes. So we're going to take a couple of short vacations this summer as a family. And one of the things I'm thinking about is that we come to agreement about sort of points in the day when everybody can check and that we all observe those points in the day. So maybe once over breakfast, once around lunchtime, once at dinner time, but then it goes away. So that in the actual vacation itself, we're together. What do you think about that? Would your kids go for that?

Co-host or Guest

Totally. I think they would absolutely go for that. And maybe if it's something that we're going out to see that they want to take pictures of, that's historic, Maybe we make a exception for that and put it back in the bag or

Dr. Lisa Damore

something like that, I think these tiny things make a huge difference. Because, Rena, what I've been finding is that on the weekends now, you know, before the school year has quite ended, I am trying to step away from my phone, at least for some chunk of the weekend. Four hours away from my phone feels like a vacation.

Co-host or Guest

You know, it's funny you say that. I have been consciously doing the same because I started to feel like I am chain smoking because I'm so attached to my phone and I don't feel good. And when I isolated, why am I. And so I'll turn my phone on. Like, if some. If there's some emergency at school, I'll get the phone call from the school nurse or whoever, But I don't. I just am finding that I personally need that now. Okay, but let me ask you for a friend who. A friend, a very good friend of yours, who maybe might be doing a podcast with you on a regular basis,

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Dr. Lisa Damore

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Dr. Lisa Damore

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Dr. Lisa Damore

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Dr. Lisa Damore

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Dr. Lisa Damore

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Co-host or Guest

How do you stop yourself from from being on your phone at night? Because it's like the after 9 o' clock that kills me. I can shut off during the day but then I realize oh I need to buy that swimsuit for for my son or I need to get this and I need to and so I'm then doom scrolling and it I find that hard to do. So how can I accept, expect my children to shut down when I'm sitting there scrolling through and knocking out stuff online.

Dr. Lisa Damore

And also, I'll add to this. It's fun, right? That often at the end of the day, I will sit there with my computer in my lap, like, looking at clothes, right? Because it's just.

Co-host or Guest

That's exactly.

Dr. Lisa Damore

It's fun. It's not like I'm just. It's kind of mindless and I need something mindless. Okay. So I think the issue, and this gets us back to the first one, is it's going to keep us up. Reina, if I'm looking at clothes at 9:30 and you're looking at whatever you're looking at at 9:30, it will delay sleep onset. Like, we know that. Like the combination of stimulation, light, all of it, not good. So I think we really work backward from the first letter S. How much sleep do we want? And I have had to make a very rigid rule. I shut it down at least 45 minutes before I go to bed so that I can fall asleep quickly. So rather than being. And you know, I love thinking this way against the tech before sleep. What time do you want to fall asleep? Walk yourself back 45 minutes. Hold yourself to it.

Co-host or Guest

That's great, Lisa. I want to get to the end, and I actually think the end is the most fascinating for me. But we're going to pause, take a quick break, and we'll be right back. You're listening to Ask Lisa the Psychology of Parenting. Welcome back to Ask Lisa the Psychology of Parenting. Lisa is giving us her sense of what we should look forward to and what we should maybe implement this summer. And you came up with this, an acronym, SUN S U N for sleep unplugged. And now, drumroll. You're going to tell us what the N is Nature. Oh, yeah. I will say that that did catch me by surprise, but I'm fascinated by this.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Okay, Bina. The research on nature and its restorative power is so interesting. So interesting. And I want to break down the research, but what I love is summer is a great time for nature. Right? We have more time to be in nature. Often kids get to go to camp. Sometimes in nature we can take more bike rides as a family. Nature and summer are good friends. The research on what? Certainly I have the experience. I don't know if you do. Like, when I am out in nature, I just feel better.

Co-host or Guest

Totally.

Right.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Can you describe what it feels like for you when you get out into the woods or out by the lake or out by your by the coast.

Co-host or Guest

Meditative. It's something meditative, like when I'm walking and I'm in nature and there's no. It's meditative, you know. You know, my parents are from India, and somebody was explaining to me that they're like different stages of life as you're working and building. And one of the last stages is you're no longer sort of in public life all the time, but you withdraw into nature and there is a more spiritual. I'm not doing it justice. But the way this person explained to me is just naturally your life moves to that stage and you feel closeness more with nature in a way that you wouldn't when you were maybe 20 or 30 or building your career or 40 with three kids and a dog and a mortgage.

Dr. Lisa Damore

It's probably because you get smarter and

Co-host or Guest

you realize I need more time in nature, I think.

So.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Right.

Co-host or Guest

There is something renewal, renewing about it.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Right. Okay. Yes. Let me then take the less beautiful, less spiritual, less philosophical line on this and just give you the straight up science as it has been looked at. So there are two things that there's broad agreement about, about the impact of being in nature. One is that it reduces stress, and the other is that it improves our ability to pay attention when we come back inside.

Co-host or Guest

How so?

Dr. Lisa Damore

Okay. Right. So these are the key things, like what's the finding? And then the why. Okay, so let's start with the attention one, because it's what you're describing a little bit about that restored and ready to be back at something. Here are the study findings, and then I'll tell you. We always get the findings, and then we make guesses about why we found what we found. The way these studies work, I think they're really cool. I like the details of the methods. There's a way that we can measure attention, and it's basically digit span. And it's a subset of the IQ test, which, when I was a graduate student, I gave tons and tons of IQ tests because I could make extra money as a graduate student by giving

Co-host or Guest

IQ tests for a school in our community.

Dr. Lisa Damore

And one of the ways that we measure attention is we have a digit backward test. So basically, Reena, I would read you a series of digits, but they're not in order. Like, I just read you a bunch of digits, and then your job would be to say them to me backwards. Okay. So it's a quick and dirty, but actually quick and actually very accurate measure.

Co-host or Guest

So you're gonna give me a live IQ test. This is just.

No, no, I'm not doing it.

I'm not doing it. You know better than to give me a live IQ test?

I wouldn't put you on the spot like that. You would crush it, but I'm not gonna put you on the spot. You're a good friend, but.

Dr. Lisa Damore

So we can use digit backward as a way to see, like, how strong is a person's attention capacity.

Co-host or Guest

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Damore

So for these research studies, we give everybody a bunch of digit backward measures and we see how strong their attention is. We give them a score on attention, we then stress them out, we ask them to do mentally fatiguing things, give them challenging problems. Then half of the research subjects go for a walk in the woods, and half of the research subjects go for a walk through a city. Then we bring them back and we give them the digit backwards test again. The people who went through a walk in the woods do really well on digit backwards. Their ability to pay attention has been restored. The people who go through a walk in the city don't do very well on digit backward. Their attentional strength is weakened.

Co-host or Guest

Isn't that something? Because there are probably senses and mental capacity taxed in every sort of direction. Right?

Dr. Lisa Damore

That's a busy place. That's exactly it. So that's the finding. Okay, then the theory is, well, what is it about being in nature that restores the ability to focus your attention? And there's a couple ideas. One is, when we're in nature, it takes us away, right? That sense of just a departure from the business of our houses or the busynesses of our offices or the busyness of what our phones even. Right. This is. So you want to add unplug to this, that being away allows for a reset so that when you come back to the things you need to pay attention to, you have more force to do it. The other way we think about it in terms of why it supports being able to pay attention is that nature often is inherently fascinating. Right. I think about you living by the water, right? Like if you just stand on a beach, you can watch the water and the sky, the things you're paying attention to, take no effort. That nature gives you lots to attend to, that's easy to attend to. And the ease of that refills your attentional power and lets you pay attention when you come back to whatever you were doing before you went out in nature. Isn't that amazing?

Co-host or Guest

That is so fascinating. I'm also thinking about a girlfriend of mine who's been trying to get me to meditate every day and swears to me, you'll see a difference. You'll feel a difference. And I think maybe it's the same concept of walking in nature that you're shutting down and really, for a few minutes.

Dr. Lisa Damore

The other findings about stress and the way we do these research studies, again,

Co-host or Guest

I just love the wonky details.

Dr. Lisa Damore

We bring people into a lab and we show them a stressful film for about 10 minutes. Just something that really gets them wound up. And then we show them one of six different sets of images. At one end, the set is all nature images of nature. Let's say that's set one. Set six is all images of cities.

Co-host or Guest

And then sets two, three, four, and five are sort of, you know, an array between them. So two has more nature. Some cities.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Set three has, you know, you could picture it, right? So extremes of lots of nature, lots of cities and everything in between. While they are looking at these images, we have them hooked up to physiological measures of arousal. So we're not asking their opinion about whether they're getting less stressed. We're using objective measures so we can look at heart rate, skin conductance, which is the electrical activity of the skin, which is a proxy for arousal. And what we find is we stress people out with movies. If we show them nature pictures very quickly, their stress levels come down.

Co-host or Guest

Wow.

Dr. Lisa Damore

If we show them city pictures, their stress recovers much more slow. More slow.

Co-host or Guest

It's so telling. It's so telling. It's like, I can understand why, but hearing you say it and spell it out is something else.

Dr. Lisa Damore

It's pretty incredible, right? I mean, that's why I love the science of this. Okay, here's the theory on this. And again, theories like, we don't really know. And there's always some disagreement or some questioning. The theory on this is that fundamentally we are biological animals and we have an evolutionary preference for nature. We come from nature, and when we are in nature, it actually activates something ancient, familiar, easy on us. We did not. There's no evolutionary history of living in buildings and cities.

Co-host or Guest

Right.

Dr. Lisa Damore

And so there's something in the theory about why does it reduce the stress? It's like it takes us to some ancient, familiar, centered place. And I think this is maybe what you were describing about as people age and become wiser, they just go back to where we began. So, Reena, that is my recipe for summer happiness. Sleep. Unplug. Nature.

Co-host or Guest

All right.

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Co-host or Guest

I think this is wonderful. I think it's so good, Lisa. But how do I implement this in the summer? Like I love this on paper but my practical mom side is like what I like. They're gonna fight me on the sleep. They're not gonna wanna unplug. And taking them into nature is like asking for it. This is so boring, Mom. I can hear it. When are we Going back.

Dr. Lisa Damore

I'm with you. I tried to get a bike ride going this weekend. No one would take it with me. I was like, come on, it's gorgeous. Right? This is easy. Okay, so, arena, if you want something to happen in your life, you gotta plan it. You've gotta put it on the calendar. And I think that if I were to go home and say to my family, next weekend we are taking a bike ride, I would get buy in or I would get giving them a

Co-host or Guest

heads up saying, this is what we're going to be doing, this is what's going to happen. Yep.

Dr. Lisa Damore

That just getting out in front of it. So to the degree that we want to bring S U N into our summers, I think everybody should look at the family calendar and make some plans and maybe get everybody on board with, okay, what are we going to do to make sure that everybody's sleeping better? Is there one improvement everyone in the family could make? Let's write it down, let's commit to it. When are we going to unplug as a family? Is it always going to be an hour before bed? Is it always going to be most of the day on Sunday? Is it always going to be most of the day when we're on vacation? Like, what are we coming to agreement about? And we need to be in nature at least every week, weekend, if not several points in the week, if that's available. Where can we book it in?

Co-host or Guest

You know, I love this because this goes back to so much of this podcast of what you say, which I was not aware of as a parent before, is you've got to have these conversations. You've got to set them up. You can't expect them telepathically to fall in line and be like, okay, we're going to go. So. So setting them up and kind of being like, this is what I want to do. Start with once a week, let's see how we can do it. But. But having that conversation with these are.

I love what you said. You can't expect them telepathically to fall in line. Like, we have this great idea and like, I do.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Okay, everybody, we're going on a bike ride.

Co-host or Guest

And they're like, no, we're not.

Yeah, I telepathically expect them all the time to do things. And then I got angry.

Dr. Lisa Damore

So what did you say? All right, here comes the summer, here comes the sun. We're going to make this happen.

Co-host or Guest

I love this. This is really helpful, Lisa. I love an acronyms. Because I love acronyms. See, I'm already Losing my brain is already shut down.

I prescribe nature.

Feel it. I feel it, Lisa. Oh, sun, sleep, unplug. Nature. That is just so good. You know what else I'm excited about? This new resource that you have on your website, Rosalie the Robot at your fingertips for any parenting issue. Tell me more about this because I'm going to be on the site.

I love it, Reena.

Dr. Lisa Damore

I'm so excited.

Co-host or Guest

Okay.

Dr. Lisa Damore

I have just launched Rosalie. Rosalie is an AI powered librarian who goes through all of my work. Three book manuscripts, 170 plus podcast transcripts, hundreds of articles, newsletters to answer questions for parents and to help people find resources. So when people go to my website now, they can find. You'll quickly find Rosalie. You can ask her questions, you can ask her all sorts of things and she will give you a short answer and then she'll list a bunch of resources for a deeper dive. Go listen to this podcast. Go read this article. Go watch this video.

Co-host or Guest

Reena, I have to tell you where

Dr. Lisa Damore

her name came from.

Co-host or Guest

Tell me.

This is so fun.

Dr. Lisa Damore

So I've been working on this AI robot for a while with this incredible company to help make this happen. And I was talking with a friend about the fact that this robot was coming to my website and my 13 year old daughter was sitting there and she was like, well, does it have a name? And I was like, not yet. What should it be named?

Co-host or Guest

She said, Rosalie. So it's Rosalie. It was obvious to her that it should be Rosalie.

Dr. Lisa Damore

So I'm so excited about her because I know that people want answers and want help and she's got good common sense and it's all grounded in my work. And then she will point you to where in my work. And so often it's one of our podcasts. You can take a deeper dive.

Co-host or Guest

I love that you've got the podcast audio so you can listen right there. You've got video from your special 10 to 20 site. You've also got, you know, if you want to read a chapter from your book. That was so cool to me because, you know, I've earmarked and got sticky tape, like many people on your books, on, you know, chapters and things. But it automatically tells you what chapter in the book to go to, which is fabulous. So this is great. And it reminds me of Rosie from the Jetsons. That's who I think of it as when I'm using it.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Me too. It's so funny because I think, you

Co-host or Guest

know, for us, Rosie the Robot on the Jetsons is so such like, of

Dr. Lisa Damore

course that's not who my kid doesn't even know about her. So I sort of thought like this is perfect.

Co-host or Guest

Like Rosalie like is like the modern Rosie the robot from the Jetsons.

Dr. Lisa Damore

And she now lives on my website, drlisademore.com well this is fantastic.

Co-host or Guest

Lisa and everyone go check out Rosalie and where can we find it, Lisa

Dr. Lisa Damore

drlisademore.com I'm excited about this one.

Co-host or Guest

Something else I'm excited about is a secret project you haven't been working on that we are going to do an entire episode on the movie Inside Out 2 is coming out and you have been one of the psychologists on the film.

It's true, Sabrina. I was under a non disclosure agreement and I did a really good job of keeping it to myself but I almost exploded.

Dr. Lisa Damore

But here's what happened in 2020. In May 2020, I got a call from Pixar and they asked me to have a meeting with them to start thinking about the follow up to the most wonderful movie ever, Inside Out 1. Right.

Co-host or Guest

Which was, which is called Inside out

Dr. Lisa Damore

at the time, came out in 2015. So I get on a call with Kelsey Mann the director and Meg Lefe the writer and they're holding untangled and under pressure. Amazing because Riley's 13. The main character is a teenage girl.

Co-host or Guest

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Damore

And we have been in a four year conversation about this film and I am so excited about it. And I have joined Dacher Keltner who is this brilliant psychologist on the faculty at Berkeley who was the psychologist on the first film. So Dacher and I have been consulting all along the way on this film and he's going to join us next week to unpack it all.

Co-host or Guest

It's going to be awesome. We're going to have an inside look in the making of Inside out two from a psychologist standpoint, exactly what this mom wants to hear. Well, congratulations to Lisa. You have just been working hard at this and congratulations for keeping the secret too.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Thank you.

Co-host or Guest

It's not easy.

Dr. Lisa Damore

Thank you.

Co-host or Guest

I'm a secret keeper. Next week we talk about how to support a child who opens up about being gay. Thanks so much, Lisa. See you next week.

Dr. Lisa Damore

I'll see you next week.

Rena Neinen

Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to the Ask Lisa podcast so you get the episodes just as soon as they drop. And send us your questions to ask Lisa at Dr. And now a word from our lawyers. The advice provided on this podcast does not constitute or serve as a substitute for professional psychological treatment, therapy or other types of professional advice or intervention. If you have concerns about your child's well being, consult a physician or mental health professional. If you're looking for additional resources, check out Lisa's website at drlisadamore.com sa.