As children grow, our role as caregivers shifts, often in ways we don't expect. In this episode Rebecca and Meredith move into age twelve, exploring what it means to stay connected with a pre-teen, what it looks like when kids can still come to you with anything, and how the foundation you've been building since they were small starts to show up in your relationship now.

Whether you're parenting a twelve-year-old, long past it, or just thinking about what twelve was like for you, there's something here for you.

Be curious. Be kind. Start with yourself.

Thriving Humans is hosted by Rebecca Thompson Hitt and Meredith Alvarado. Follow and subscribe wherever you listen.

Radical Rest Retreats, both online and in person, are coming soon!

Podcast artwork: Visual Medicine paintings by Rebecca Thompson Hitt

Theme music composed and performed by Chris Peña · chrispenamusic.com

What's actually our job as our kids grow? And what does it bring up in us when we look at our own lives at the same ages?

In this 45-minute episode, Meredith and Rebecca pick up where cycle breaking left off-- looking at the four-year-old and the eight-year-old through the lens of the Circle of Security. What does it mean to encourage our children to go out, and being there when they come back in?

Along the way: why the age you struggled with as a child might be the age that's hardest to parent. Bruce Perry's research on the regression that usually comes before a developmental leap. The difference between extrinsic memory and implicit somatic memory. Why an eight-year-old who seems advanced still cannot, generally, clean their own room. And why play doesn't have an expiration date for them, or for us as adults.

And the quiet truth underneath all of it: if you had a childhood, you came from a family. The patterns you inherited live in you whether you have kids or not. Looking at these ages is also an invitation to look back at your own experiences.

In the next episode, we go deeper into the inner landscape of the twelve-year-old.

"We get to start over each time. There will always be a new opportunity to make a different choice." — Meredith

Resource mentioned in this episode

Circle of Security can be found here: https://www.circleofsecurityinternational.com/pages/what-is-the-circle-of-security

Be curious. Be kind. Start with yourself.

Thriving Humans is hosted by Rebecca Thompson Hitt and Meredith Alvarado. Follow and subscribe wherever you listen.

Radical Rest Retreats, both online and in person, are coming soon!

Podcast artwork: Visual Medicine paintings by Rebecca Thompson Hitt

Theme music composed and performed by Chris Peña · chrispenamusic.com

Most of us enter parenthood, or really any significant relationship, with a plan for how we think it is going to go. The sitcom version, the book version, the "I will never do that" version. And then reality hits.

In this episode, Rebecca and Meredith get honest about the gap between what they imagined and what actually happened. They explored the patterns they broke, the ones they kept, and the long, messy, beautiful process of figuring it out as they went. Whether you're parenting right now, long past it, or just making sense of the family you came from, this conversation is for you.

Be curious. Be kind. Start with yourself.

Thriving Humans is hosted by Rebecca Thompson Hitt and Meredith Alvarado. Follow and subscribe wherever you listen.

Radical Rest Retreats, both online and in person, are coming soon!

Podcast artwork: Visual Medicine paintings by Rebecca Thompson Hitt

Theme music composed and performed by Chris Peña · chrispenamusic.com