Hey y'all, welcome back and it's a beautiful day to bust some cognitive distortions. My name is Suzanne M. Swain, educational specialist and licensed master social worker. And I am a kid therapist and I'm currently working in schools. And I also used to teach middle school for a very, very long time. I loved my eighth graders, seventh graders, fifth graders, all y'all graders. But I've been working in schools a very long time and I want to thank you all for the opportunity to talk to you today. And this show is meant to be for kids and families and everybody that works with kids. So we can all develop a better dialogue and learn to talk to each other and maybe come to a better understanding of how our mind works. And maybe if we can explain it in a way that kids can understand, we can help each other to be a little bit better about our communication between kids and adults. Right? And since kids live in a world where they go to school and they're at home and they have two kind of different worlds, we have to create kind of a triad or a triangle between the kiddo, us, the school and the family. And so that way everybody works together and so we can provide the safest and best opportunities for you. That's what we're here for. So that's why we're here for this podcast. So this season we're working on some different issues and today I want to talk to you about one of my favorite things, favorite topics. And this is one that my actual clients have been asking me to make a podcast about, although I don't tell them where the podcast is and I don't think they've ever listened to it. But ridiculous joy. OK, so the definition of ridiculous is not necessarily a good one. Right? It's also a spell in Harry Potter, which I'd like you to think about that first. OK, if you've seen Harry Potter, if you're a Harry Potter nerd like me, I really think I'm Ravenclaw, but I'm way Gryffindor Ravenclaw somewhere divergent in between. But in any case, I love some Harry Potter, but in Harry Potter, they talk about fear. And during the fear section, they have a really great teacher. And so the teacher brings out a boggart, which is this creature that can turn into anything that you're scared of. So the spell that he tells the kids to cast is called ridiculous. And so when you do that, it makes it funny. It makes it goofy. So it's like somebody really scary wearing a hat, for example. So I don't want to totally give it all away, you know, total spoilers. But in any case, the different kids deal with, you know, it's a pretty, you know, reality therapy kind of thing for kids to do, not something that we do in an actual school. But it's really cool because it shows things that you're scared of. If you can one, learn about them and two, find them to be kind of funny and ridiculous. Then we don't have to worry about stuff so much. And we can lower that anxiety level that we're all trying to lower. The adults, kids, everybody in between. So the word ridiculous technically means causing or worthy of ridicule or derision, absurd, preposterous or laughable, okay, such as a ridiculous plan has a negative connotation, which means has a negative feeling. But I'm going with the slang version, which is absurdly or unbelievably good, bad, crazy, et cetera. For example, a concert was ridiculous, the best performance ever. Now the origin of the word actually comes from Latin, of course, ridiculousus, meaning laughable. It's equivalent to Latin, ridiculous and adjective and kind of a, the word ridicule ended up coming from it, which is not a good thing. You don't want to be ridiculed. That means, you know, bashed and things like that so verbally. But ridiculous joy is the idea that I am totally embracing with everyone I know and to say that if you think about our lives in the sense of inside out, right, and we have these bookcases, and I've talked about this before, but we have these bookcases full of little colored ball memories in our long term memory. And if you think of it visually, sometimes it makes it a little bit clearer. But if you think about your childhood, and there are a lot of us who had some things happening, I mean, everybody had some stuff in our childhood. To my young friends, folks, the adults that are sitting there with you right now, maybe listening right along with you in the car, they had stuff happen when they were a kid too. Everybody had stuff. But it's the thing that, you know, when sometimes we have to go into the darkness a little bit, so we appreciate the light, right? So sometimes things have to be not so great, not because we're meant to be punished or anything, it's just we just have to see it as a learning ability for us to get up and keep going and push forward and try to still be happy, even though sometimes bad things happen. So to do that, you know, we have our bookcase of long term memories filled with, you know, balls of emotions. Sometimes they're mixed emotions, so they're like two colors. It could be anger and it could be disgust. It could be fear and anger. It could be a lot of things. Remember, anger, of course, comes from love. You don't get angry about things you don't love. And when kids tend to get angry at somebody and lash out, it's because they feel safe with that person. I got into a little bit of a Facebook debate today because of Stranger Things. You know, I was gonna bring that up. Okay, Susie, come on, man. I'm Susie. So I even look like her. It's kind of cool, but in any case, I digress. But online, I was seeing on Facebook, they were talking about Dustin in Stranger Things. And no spoiler alert really here, but, you know, Dustin has a rough go with things. He's been through a lot. And so this particular season that just started, which crashed Netflix twice, apparently, gracious. Well, he's a little, what's called, cantankerous. Word of the week, meaning kind of cranky and upset. Well, I got into it with somebody because they were like, oh, I wish he would just be happier. And I miss old Dustin, da, da, da, da. And I was like, you know what, if this were a real kid, would you say such a thing? You know, he's been through all these things. And if you watch the show, you would know. But basically, if you don't, this kid has been through the loss of some really important people in his life and people that are helping to mentor him. He doesn't have a lot of male role models. So, you know, the guys in his life have been a lot, you know, really meaningful to him. So he lost a really good person in his life that really was teaching him some how to, so he could come out of his shell and have more confidence. So he started experiencing ridiculous joy. But unfortunately, ended up now in a state of grief where he's angry and he lashes out a lot to people. But when young people lash out, and a lot of adults do this too, when they're really upset, they'll lash out to the people that feel the most safe around. So, in a way, like people freak out because I'm like, thank you for doing that. And they're like, what? And not to mention it stops them in their tracks because they're like, they don't expect that kind of reaction. And I'm like, you know what, I really appreciate you saying that. I mean, what you said wasn't very nice, granted, but I appreciate you just getting it out. So, do you feel better a little bit? And they're usually just like, say what? But that ridiculous joy, okay, counteracts negative emotions, like anger. Anger gets you off the couch to do something. Anger is the most active emotion we have. So sometimes we need anger to help us find our job in life or a purpose, a sense of destiny, so to speak. Things that are like, this is not okay, I can fix this. That anger is sort of a good thing. Anger is a fuel, but you just can't live on it. You know, it just works in spurts. Anger likes to take a break and watch the game from time to time, right? So, but joy, joy is a character and inside out. Joy is one of the first things we experience. So it is innately in us. And so when our first senses were developing, our sense of smell, we couldn't really see when we were first born, but we knew we were happy and safe. So safety and joy were the first things we experienced. Now, ridiculous joy is almost like in Harry Potter when they turn all the scary stuff into something silly. So silly is important. And if you think about Mary Poppins, she believed in silly. Okay, Mary Poppins believed in dancing penguins and all kinds of fun and silly stuff because she wanted to change the mindset of the kids because she knew that ridiculous joy was something that heals. It creates new pathways in the brain, right? So your brain actually learns and creates new little neurons and synapses, lots and lots of synapses all over your brain that start to say that, hey, you know what, I can get through things and I'm going to be okay because there's going to be good stuff coming. There's bad stuff, yeah, but good stuff comes too. And sometimes we forget that, especially when things are going really not so great and it seems to be happening for a really long time. We all been there, okay? Adult kid alike. Sometimes we go through, it seems like a whole lot of bad luck for a little while. And it's okay. It's okay. It's a learning experience. The bad stuff is a learning experience. So you can be positive and have a happier mindset, a growth mindset by saying, okay, life is really hard right now, but what is a lesson that I can learn from this? What is something that I need to know so I can move on and this won't happen again? That's to anybody. Whether it's you had an argument with your friend at recess and you were like, you know, you were being mean to me. I, you know, maybe for example, let's just say, oh, yeah, well, I had these two friends and this other friend didn't want this other friend to sit with me because she wanted me all to herself. And what's that about? Well, what's that's about is that person is being possessive because they feel like they're going to lose you. What? Yeah. You know, bullies, it's like bullies, you know, bullies are cowards, folks, hint, hint. Bullies have to get attention from other people because they have and don't have enough self-esteem in themselves to just be cool with themselves. They're very dysregulated people. And so they push people around to try to have control and power because sometimes they don't understand that as a, they think power is a love language and it's not. So just understand that it's all in how you talk to somebody, you know, and sometimes you can kind of change the way that they're thinking. If you go with kind of this Carol Dweck, I, you know what? I can't do this right now. I can't do this yet. Right? So ridiculous joy. You may not be able to get there yet, Carol Dweck, but you will get there. So what are some examples of ridiculous joy? How can you do this? Okay. So if you're, you know, if your bookcase is filled with colors such as green, blue, remember blue means empathy too. You know, I want to see the Baymax version of sadness because, you know, if you know what I'm saying, like super, like the, you know, I want to hear like fallout boy with immortals playing where I see sadness like this awesome superhero just once with like a really cool, you know, sweater cape thing. But empathy is a big deal. But sadness is different from empathy. Okay. Her real name was empathy, but it's just sort of unusual so they get went with sadness and blue. So, but being sad is a valid, of course, but sad, a difficult emotion. So joy being the yellow motion and anxiety being the orange emotion. Anxiety can also be a good thing and be kind of fun because it's like riding a roller coaster. It's like fun anxiety. So joy and anxiety can hang out. That's like roller coasters and doing scary stuff that puts you in a little tiny bit of peril. Like, oh my gosh, that's so scary or like you go out to eat a food and you're like, I don't know. You know, you get a little of the two of them mixed together. But ridiculous joy to me is when you have this bright, shining, sparkling, like glowing ball of yellow, doing something just completely silly, ridiculous, fun, you know, in our world. You don't have to live in Mary Poppins world. You don't have to live in Harry Potter world, although I love to escape there with my imagination every chance I get. And that's what helps to calm me. But in the real world, we can find ridiculous joy by doing real things. And remember that, you know, magic is just technology we don't really get yet. So you can learn how to do cool stuff. And ridiculous joy may be that you've learned to invent something or that you built your own roller coaster online or like, you know, it's not, it doesn't even have to be a screen time thing. Remember that, you know, read a wrinkle in time. Watch a new show, which is still screen time, but watch something where you learn something, you know, go on YouTube and watch exotic animals of Australia or Madagascar or, you know, take a trip to the, to Egypt and look at the pyramids. But do something that is like very bucket listy, which to those of you who don't know what that means, that means like stuff you want to do before the end of your life is like on your list. Like I have to do this. Like I have to go, I personally have to go to Germany and find where they have all the sets of the never ending story, which they do. And you can go and sit on Falcor. I know I've talked about this probably way too much, but at some point in my life, I will have my dream of sitting on Falcor and being like, yay. So ridiculous joy. That will be a sense of ridiculous joy. Another sense of ridiculous joy that I could think of just as an example is like going to my Fox town that I talked about, you know, having a whole town full of little foxes running all over the place that play with you and just make cute little sounds. Playing with sea otters or watching them penguins, pretty much any animal. Like all animals are fun, but ridiculous joy can be, you know, creating a new food, like cooking something you've never cooked before. It can be growing a garden for the first time. It's doing something you haven't done before that's a little bit scary, but then you're like, oh, wow, cool. And the more you learn about it, the more interesting it becomes. So, and that can be learned to build furniture. It can be all kinds of neat stuff. But if you don't have a sense of ridiculous joy in your life, then maybe you really lack some. I mean, no offense or anything, but you know, it's your life. Check it out. How much ridiculous joy have you had in the past week, month, year, six years, five years, however long you've been alive? Do you have a lot of those like shining balls of awesomeness that are in your bookcase of long-term memories? Are they there that are so bright it lights up the whole hallway of bookcases? I think we all need some more of those. Y'all, if time. So for example, with the littles, what we did is we had a glow party and I brought in a bubble machine and filled the room with bubbles. And of course, you know, protected their eyes and all the safety stuff. But anyway, filled the room with bubbles and we played fun fifties dance music and we danced it out and popped bubbles of different colors. And I used a little laser machine and the joy on their faces. They were just like, oh, this is so cool. And these are kids that haven't had moments where they say things like that. It's not like these kids can afford to go to some really cool scene park and ride those roller coasters without using something like virtual reality. You know, they can't afford that. That's not even in the realm of possibility for these folks. So you have to bring it to them. And so just the bubble party, you know, who does that? I, you know, I saw movie ones where someone filled a room with a whole bunch of like balloons and flowers and things. And even though I'm scared of latex balloons, the sound. But it was a cool idea, you know, and I love in. What is that movie? I'll think of it anyway. But that they, you know, filled the mailbox with tic-tacs. So there was that. I know you can think of the movie name right now and you want to tell me, but it'll come to me in any case, we need ridiculous joy. So adult ridiculous joy. This could be something that is, you know, make some food. You'd have no idea how to make, make like a souffle or, you know, go check out Julia Child's, you know, book on French cooking and, you know, mastering the art of French cooking. Go do that. You know, that's really interesting. You know, watch a totally different genre of movie, perhaps, or go pick out a book. Go over to the latest, you know, a nice used bookstore and be like, what's a really awesome book? Read a classic, like I said, the wrinkle in time. Read it with your kids. That's a great, great story. Really interesting. And especially now, if they're Stranger Things fans, they now have been a little bit introduced to that book this season. Spoiler. Not so much. So find a sense of how to have ridiculous joy and be utterly silly. You know, make little costumes out of construction paper and headbands and be little animals for the night. You know, paint faces and, you know, do something like that after dinner and be like, I'm going to paint a face and tonight I'm going to be a, you know, dog for the rest of the night with a painted face. So what? Who cares? Sounds like fun, you know, take a little bit of food coloring and, you know, put it in toothpaste and, well, it does show plaque. So, you know, but anyway, but you can try it. It'd be like, I have no purple teeth. Wow. And then just brush your teeth again. There's lots of different ways to be silly and have fun. And these are the things that make long term memories and lots and lots of long term memories of just ridiculous joy. Tell us that it's worth getting up every day. It's worth getting up and seeing what exciting things are going to happen to us and what we're going to learn and what kind of teachable moments we're going to come across. So this week, folks, oh, y'all, think about ridiculous joy. Do at least maybe one thing that's just ridiculous joy. Maybe have a type of ice cream you haven't had in forever. Remember that our sense of smell and sense of taste are our two strongest senses. Our sense of smell is our strongest. It's right next to our long term memory and our brain, right? But sense of taste is pretty darn important because remember, as a child, when you were first born, you were given milk and milk is sweet. So you learned kind of sweet right away. So food and smells, they all go together. So cooking can be a great way to have ridiculous joy. Make a fun dessert that's just really silly. You know, make a dirt, you know, dirt cups or something like that. As adults, make kid food. Kids make adult food. You know, teach a kid how to make a proper roast chicken. They would appreciate that. You know, you never know. Kids love to cook. It's really fun and they learn science and chemistry and all kinds of other amazing, teachable things. And you spend a lot of quality time together. And that is what the season is all about. Is spending as much quality time with those you love as possible. So create some ridiculous joy. Let's be creative, folks. OK. That superior dry wrist, the place that has all those cool ideas in your brain. Let's use it. Think about ridiculous joy. Think about what you can do to bring just a little bit more ridiculous joy into your life safely, of course. But silly, definitely. Being a little silly is always a good thing. And it keeps us creative and uses our imagination. And the more we use our imagination and a happy state of mind, the more anxiety stays away. Because remember, she's in, you know, anxiety is a lot of imagination, but she runs down a lot of rabbit holes and has a lot of friends that join up to help her. So. Anxiety, we got you. And there's good anxiety. Remember, ridiculous joy can ride a roller coaster with anxiety and have a blast. So learn to be friends. Think about the emotions and like what the emotions would even look like in your own head from inside out, not to promote the movie even more, which I constantly do. But think about it. What would your little emotions look like? Draw them out, especially anxiety. She's a good one. And, you know, or, you know, create whatever genderized version of whatever them, you know, of them that you want. But, you know, anger and anxiety and joy and sadness would be really good ones to try. Just see, you know, and do a little doodle activity, maybe get some paper and everybody sits around and draws it for, you know, just to play it and check it out. Always a way to have some more ridiculous joy in your lives or maybe come up with a list with your family of how can you have some ridiculous joy? Teachers challenge all ridiculous joy week. OK, pick five things that each day you're going to do something to bring, you know, five minutes of ridiculous joy. You know, play Tiffany from the 80s. Play, you know, play something silly. Do a dance party, you know, hop up and everybody, you know, do a conga line or something. Just get up, do some, you know, get up, get up, get silly. Do it. I want to see you party. Have a good time. So everybody stay clever, little foxes. Bring more ridiculous joy into your lives. I challenge you. I double dog dare you. I triple dog dare you to go find some ridiculous joy that definitely does not involve sticking your tongue to a pole. All right, happy holidays, everybody. I will see you soon. Thank you so much for your time. And if you'd like to go visit our website, it's msmarrypoppins.com. And I want to thank all of our Spotify download people and for all the reviews, little five star reviews I've been getting. I am so blessed. I, you know, this is like the little free podcast that could. So thank you so much for all the support and for listening and sharing this with as many people as possible. We want to help as many kids as we can. And when I say we actually just mean me because this is me with a little app recording this, so simple as that. But I say we because we are all now a family and we are in 82 different countries. Did you know that? So hi, everybody. We're going all over the world and spreading joy about kids. So if you don't mind, share your podcast or with a friend, you know, if you find one of these to be particularly helpful or maybe that, you know, someone with a kid going through something, share the podcast. That's what it's here for. So I appreciate it. Come visit us at msmarrypoppins.com and have a wonderful holiday season. Take care.
