Free to Fly: Hard Truths, Hopeful Parenting, and Why Strong Kids Need Strong Parents with nicole runyon

Dec 1

🎧 Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

To close out Season 2, Julianne welcomes licensed psychotherapist and parent coach Nicole Runyon to discuss her powerful new book, Free to Fly. This isn’t just another parenting book—it’s a manifesto calling out the powerful forces that are sabotaging childhood. Nicole shares how big tech, big food, and big pharma prey on kids and parents, and what we can do to reclaim our families' health, rhythms, and relationships.

Together they explore:

Why movement scaffolds brain development
The crisis of overstimulated toddlers, screen-dependent teens, and stressed-out parents
How our tech-saturated, diagnosis-happy culture is failing kids
Why boredom, basic chores, and outdoor play are crucial for childhood resilience
What it means to parent with strength, vision, and boundaries

Whether you're raising toddlers or teenagers, questioning the systems shaping your family, or simply needing to feel less alone in your parenting convictions—this episode will challenge and equip you.

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you decide to make a purchase. I only share products and brands I genuinely love and use with my own family. Thanks for supporting My Outdoorsy Mom!

Julianne Nienberg (00:00)

Hi friend, and welcome to the Season 2 finale of The My Outdoorsy Mom Podcast.
I can’t believe I’m saying that—Season TWO finale. What started as a nudge on my heart to share stories, spark conversations, and build a braver, more intentional parenting community has grown into something far more meaningful than I ever imagined. And it feels fitting to end this season with an episode that pushed me to grow not only as a podcast host, but as a parent and a person.
Nicole Runyon is a licensed psychotherapist, parent coach, speaker, and the author of the powerful new book Free to Fly. If you’re raising kids in this digital age and constantly wondering, am I doing enough?, why is this so hard?, or how do I protect my child’s childhood? — this episode is for you. Nicole doesn’t shy away from the hard truths. In fact, she goes straight for them — calling out how big tech, big pharma, and big food have their sights set on our children.
In our conversation, we talk about why movement is important for the brain, why kids are emotionally dysregulated, how our overstimulated schedules are hurting us more than helping us, and why bored kids are actually the lucky ones.
But there’s something I want you to know upfront.
After we wrapped the official interview, I felt this stirring in my spirit. There were two chapters in Nicole’s book I hadn’t asked her about. Not because I forgot, but because—I’ll be honest—I was nervous to go there. One was on gender dysphoria. The other was on pornography. Both are topics that stir up a lot of fear, emotion, and potential controversy. But the truth is… they’re affecting our kids whether we talk about them or not.
So I asked her — “Has anyone asked you about these chapters yet?”
She said no.
And I said — “If you’re willing to go there, I’m willing to go there.”
She said yes. So we hit record again.
And what followed was one of the most honest, courageous conversations I’ve ever had on this podcast.
This is not an episode of hot takes or political posturing. It’s an episode about listening to our kids, asking hard questions, and about being brave enough to go there—because our kids need us to. Because our kids need strong parents.
And whether you agree, disagree, or wrestle with what you hear, I hope you’ll listen with curiosity and compassion.
So thank you for being here. Thank you for sticking with me through two full seasons of this show. And thank you for being the kind of parent who leans in, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Let’s dive in.
Today's guest is someone whose insight and authenticity have been such a gift to so many parents. Nicole Runyon, a psychotherapist, parent coach, keynote speaker, and now author of the newly released book, Free to Fly. Nicole helps families navigate the overwhelm, distraction, and pressure of parenting in the digital age, especially when it comes to raising kids who are connected, confident, and free. In her work, she dives into how our parenting and our children's lives

often mirror one another and how stepping into our own healing and growth creates space for our kids to soar. And our conversation today will talk about how being outside and outdoors and unplugged isn't just a nice to have in childhood, it's a necessity. Whether you have young kids still learning to leave the blanket fort or teens who seem glued to their screens, I promise you'll walk away with something useful and hopeful. Nicole, welcome to the podcast.

Nicole Runyon (00:52)
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Julianne Nienberg (00:55)
I'm just going to go ahead and say it. I was blown away by your book. Numerous people in my life had recommended it to me. And I know that you've been speaking locally in my community. Parents, Nicole's book, Free to Fly, is one that you absolutely need to read. And I want to share one of the many praises of your book that's actually on the back cover. The author of Free Range Kids, another fantastic book, says, Free to Fly comes out swinging at a culture overflowing with diagnoses.

Its surprises will open many minds and many childhoods. That's exactly what your book was, Nicole. It was a surprise in the best way to see you addressing not just parents roles and the alarming trends, diagnoses and statistics that we see in today's children. But what I found really eye opening was that you went for it and addressed hard hitting truths with the roles that big corporations play. I can't wait to dive into this. I want to ask you to fill us all in on your background.

and what ultimately led you to make the shift from a child psychotherapist to a parenting coach to an author.

Nicole Runyon (02:02)
So that happened quite some time ago, right around 2014, 2015. I was seeing kids, I had seen kids since 2003, since I started working in this field. And what I noticed was a trend that was quite disturbing. And it was kids who were exhibiting and presenting with major mental health issues. I was getting at the time an influx of adolescent girls who were coming out of the hospital after their first suicide attempt.

Many of them were self-harming, eating disordered behavior, panic disorder so severe that they couldn't go to school. And in my training prior to this, if I saw a kid with that severity of issues, then there would be something connected to it. There would be some kind of trauma, abuse, neglect, something that we could really understand from their environment as to what was creating these symptoms. But that wasn't the case with these kids that I was seeing in those years.

And I was really baffled by it for about a year or two. And then in 2016, I started to really open my eyes to this idea that kids were ⁓ changing because of the use of smart devices. And at least in my community at that time, it had gone from, don't bring your smart device to school. If you do bring it, we're going to take it away and you're not going to get it back until the end of the day.

to, ⁓ please do bring your devices. We want you to bring them. We want to use them for your education. And I saw the correlation almost immediately in my practice. This is when I started to see more and more mental health decline. And meanwhile, ⁓ everybody was celebrating the technology. So I started talking about it in my community actually that long ago. And people were interested. They were fascinated. They showed up to the talks, but they weren't particularly interested in doing anything about it.

And then we had the lockdowns of 2020, more kids on more tech for longer. And then what did we see? An increase in mental illness symptoms. And so I thought, I need to do something about this, something drastic, a major paradigm shift, because what I was doing wasn't working. I had been full with kid therapy clients for years, had a long wait list, and everyone in my community who sees kids were also in that same spot.

and I couldn't bear turning away desperate parents anymore. And so I started to look at what is at the root cause for why we're seeing what we're seeing. And I also thought, this is unethical. It's unethical to pathologize the child, to put a diagnosis on them, medicate them for simply a problem they're reacting to in their environment that the adults are responsible for. And so I thought, well, I need to start talking to the parents. I need to start talking to educators, teachers, administrators.

And so that's when I decided to make the major change. I don't see kids anymore. I coach parents and I speak in schools and I speak anywhere really where there's parents, because I think this message needs to be heard far and wide that we have more power as adults than we think we do. This throwing our hands up and saying, this is just the way it is. This is what kids do now. That's unacceptable to me. And this is a hill that I am willing to die on because it is so important.

We have to regain our children's childhoods and protect them.

Julianne Nienberg (05:29)
I hear you talk about how you were attending schools and talking to parents and really anybody that would listen. And one of the things that I took away from your book is how early this has started. And as a mom who has three kids, who had three kids under three during those post 2020 years, I remember just the struggle and the...

I almost want to say just how easy it was right to turn on a screen or to to sit my kids in front of something. And one of the things you talked about in your book is that movement is inconvenient. Right. And so the automatic go to for a parent when you are stressed, when you're coming home from work, you need to get food on the table. You need to change a diaper. And then you have little ones just running around is to plop them in front of a device, a tablet, even a TV. And they just veg out. And so one of the things that you talked about

when you said that movement is inconvenient, right? Because it causes our kids to go everywhere. They're running around the house and you're trying to keep them all contained. And we'll talk about that too in a little bit. But one of the things you said, and it was a quote from Dr. Mancini in her book, The Family Nervous System, you talked about how movement scaffolds the brain for growth. And it's not just movement in toddler age children, but this movement starts at infancy. Can you unpack that as you walk through the stages of childhood development and

we took something that was intended for older children, for adults, and we started giving it to little babies. We started giving screens and tablets and things like that to

in the sake of education, right? early on, we thought, ⁓ this is an educational program or an app or something that they can learn from, but there's so much more behind that. Can you kind of unpack that beginning chapter of your book?

Nicole Runyon (07:14)
Yeah. So from the very beginning of a child's life, they have what's called primitive reflexes. And they're the startle reflex, the rooting reflex where you touch the side of the face and then they start looking for something to eat. These are all necessary movements for their survival because they can't communicate. They can't tell you what they want except through their cries. But the primitive reflexes are a way for them to give you more details.

into how to meet their needs. And meeting baby's needs from zero to 18 months is the stage of development. That is what we have to do in order for them to get that foundational attachment and build that trust in their caregivers, which ultimately builds trust in relationships in the outside world later on. So it's very foundational and very important. And so what we need to be doing is allowing them to have those primitive reflexes early on.

but instead we're using smart devices to restrict even their primitive reflexes. So in the book, I use the example of the smart bassinet and how it is convenient for parents, again, because movement is inconvenient. And so what it does is when it senses that the baby might be waking up or crying or not settled, it will rock or it will try to soothe the baby so that the parent doesn't have to.

But what that prevents from is literally the baby moving because of the way they're like in the bassinet. They have to be kind of strapped in. And so we don't realize that out of convenience, we're preventing them from doing what they need to do, even just physically. So on some level, we understand, okay, when they cry, we have to feed them. You know, maybe they need a diaper change. Maybe they're tired. They need to be rocked to sleep.

but what we don't understand like foundationally is about their movement. then, so what's happening is they're holding their primitive reflexes. And so what that means is that if we allow them to have those primitive reflexes, usually in that first year, there's one reflex, I forgot which one it is, that takes three years to integrate. Then what that does is,

that goes into the nervous system, it doesn't go away, but it goes into the central nervous system and kind of just, you know, naturally the child moves forward and doesn't need to use those reflexes anymore because they start crawling and they start walking and they start being able to use their gross motor skills to get what they need. So they no longer need those primitive reflex movements. But what's happening is because they're not allowed to do that, they're doing what's called.

holding their reflexes or experiencing held reflexes, which have massive consequences. Learning disability, ⁓ bed wetting, ⁓ allergies. There's a whole list actually in the book, there's a table of which reflexes might be held in your child and what the symptoms are with those held reflexes. And so things like sensory motor integration, OT, these are things that can help ⁓ integrate those reflexes into the nervous system.

We have no understanding of that in our culture. And we know that we can say all day long, take the kids outside. That's so good for them. And yes, it is. But we really need to know why, because then we're going to be more motivated to inconvenience ourselves to allow for that. And then as they age into the toddler years, they need different kinds of movement. They need, obviously, those gross motor things like running, jumping, climbing.

But then they also need those fine motor skills. They need to be learning at three and four how to tie their shoes, how to zip up their coats. And these are going to be frustrating tasks because their hands aren't really even ready for it physically. The bones in the hands don't fuse together until they're six. But from an emotional standpoint, from three to five, they need that something to contend with, something to work through that challenge that is... ⁓

reasonable enough for them to do it, but challenging enough for them to work through something hard and feel autonomous and good about themselves afterwards.

Julianne Nienberg (11:33)
Yes, you talk about these ⁓ primitive reflexes. And I think the term that I've heard is these retained reflexes, right? And you talk about it, yes, in page 48 of your book. And again, as a mom who, like you said earlier, movement is inconvenient. I had my middle child walking at 10 months old. That child only spent one month crawling. And I talk about this all day long. I had no clue how critical crawling was.

Nicole Runyon (11:40)
Yes, thank you, Rita.

Julianne Nienberg (12:02)
for brain development. And it wasn't until this past year when we were having issues with emotional regulation and discovering sensory processing challenges with my child that someone that our OT had mentioned these retained reflexes. So I wanna say that phrase because if parents, if you are listening, these are the things that you might be looking out for or you might be asking questions about because again, you don't know what you don't know. And it wasn't until I was seeing

emotional explosions that I started to say, what is really going on here? You know, there was an inability to communicate feelings and emotions, but there was also something that was, there was a root cause to this. And I, as a mom, I was committed to finding out and we worked with a wonderful OT. But to your point, and you talk a lot about it in the book too, how important crawling is and what the medical societies have done with the milestone of

Can you talk about that so listeners know and understand how important something as simple as crawling is to childhood development, to brain development?

Nicole Runyon (13:07)
Yes, so there's this umbrella term sensory motor integration. And under that are three different ways that children can move through ⁓ their physical movement to have ⁓ healthy sensory systems. And those three things are both eyes have to work together to process information of the brain. Both ears have to work together to process auditory information of the brain.

and the body physically needs to be able to cross the midline. So what that means is the right side of the body needs to be able to cross the left and the left needs to be able to cross the right. And that is how we get both hemispheres of the brain to work together. Now, with children early on, how they develop that is literally through crawling because their opposite hand is moving with their opposite leg.

And if they don't do that, if they don't do it long enough, like in your child's case, then both sides of the brain cannot work together to process information. So you're going to see, you might see later on learning disabilities, you're going to immediately see a lack of ability to process ⁓ emotional information and have emotional regulation and self-control and impulsivity, because those are all parts of the brain that are going to be still developing anyway in a child. They don't fully develop till 25.

So there's already going to be a little deficit, but they need to be able to move so that the brain processing can happen. And foundationally, crawling is where it's at. And so what's happened in our medical community, because they locked down families for so long and they put parents to work in their homes, parents had to survive that and give their young children and babies devices to stay quiet or calm while they work.

because they needed to work and make ends meet. So what that did was prevent babies from moving, prevented babies from crawling. And instead of saying this is like medical emergency, which is what they should have said, they said, oh, we're going to take crawling off of the list of milestones. Babies don't need to crawl anymore. And so now we're going to have, and this is why I put this in the book and it's really important because we're to have younger generations of parents who are told this from day one.

and don't know any different. So you and I know this, right? Because for you, that was your second child and you knew that your first child needed to crawl, but younger parents aren't going to know that. So important.

Julianne Nienberg (15:44)
It is so important and it goes back to one of the phrases or one of the things you said in the book is that movement scaffolds the brain for growth. And it's only until the brain has developed some level of mastery of a certain set of

skills that it can then continue to go on and grow and develop all these other skills, you know, that we talked about, whether it's emotional regulation and things like that. And that was such as the picture of scaffolding or like a ladder, like rings on a ladder. And that was visually for me, that was such a helpful picture to consider childhood development. You know, moving on to the chapter further on about childhood development, you begin to talk about big tech.

And we often think, just, you the average parent often thinks about big tech and its role on mental health, but what about physical health?

Nicole Runyon (16:36)
Yeah, physical health ⁓ in relation to big tech is that the kids are in front of a screen. ⁓ the idea here is like, what's the content that they're being exposed to? How is that affecting their brain? How is that affecting their emotional health? Because the content they're exposed to is garbage, frankly. ⁓ But then it's also, what are they not doing in the real world because they're on the tech?

So yes, we addressed movement, but also they're not socializing. They're not learning conflict resolution. They're not learning how to be in like close connected intimate relationships. We know that there's a loneliness epidemic. And we also know that loneliness causes health issues, like physical health issues when we're isolated and we don't feel connected to people in community. So families are getting disconnected. Community is being eroded.

And children are more and more isolated in a screen with, you know, again, the content that they're being exposed to, but also what they're not doing. So their eyes, ⁓ know, eyesight is being affected, their nervous systems. the blue light and the constant stimulation, the pictures are very fast now.

you know, faster than they were when you and I were watching TV or in front of a video game or something. So even that overstimulates the nervous system. It puts the child in fight, flight or freeze mode. So we wonder why there's so much anxiety. We wonder why there's so much lack of ability to make decisions, ⁓ lack of critical thinking. These are all ⁓ stress responses. And we also wonder why there's so much ADD, ADHD. So if that...

child is in fight, flight or freeze, then that's a part of their brain that's activated, where other parts of the brain are not. What's activated is the amygdala, the limbic system, that's the reactionary center, the emotional center. What's shut down is executive functioning, because when our bodies are under stress and we're under actual real threat, then our brain needs to be able to say, what am I going to do in this situation to survive? So all other areas of the brain shut down because we don't need them. And so

Instead of diagnosing kids, pathologizing them, saying they have all these disorders, let's look at what this tech is doing to them physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. And talk about sleep too. mean, they're on their devices all night. They're allowed to have their phones in their room. Parents feel like, well, I don't want them to miss out on anything social. And that's when the kids are talking because they're all busy during the day and after school with activities. But yet their sleep cycles are off.

I can tell you the number one symptom I heard over the years when I was seeing kids is, I'm tired. That was the first thing they would say and almost every kid that would come in, that's what they would report.

Julianne Nienberg (19:35)
I'm so glad you mentioned pathologizing all of these just symptoms that we're seeing. And as I was reading your book, I asked myself, are we as a culture obsessed with diagnoses?

Nicole Runyon (19:48)
I think we are, absolutely.

Julianne Nienberg (19:50)
Because

I, you know, having I have a girl and two boys and we know that there is a war on boys. We know that there is a war on boys to diagnose them with.

the entire alphabet and as a mom of little boys who love to move who love to run around and climb trees and Engage in risky play which is now like something that we have to term You know before it was just play before it used to be just how kids played and now we have to call it risky play I think people would be very quick to want to diagnose

Nicole Runyon (20:08)
Yeah.

Julianne Nienberg (20:27)
and put a name and a label on what my boys are. And I believe they are just created that way. Their brains are created differently. And this is way for their brains to process information is through movement. And so when I hear you talk about the impact of big tech on not just our mental health and the mental health of our kids, but also their physical health, how can parents create

family habits or rhythms that are less chaotic, more simple so that their kids can get this rest that you're talking about, but also just begin to implement ⁓ non-screen, non-tech habits into their life, into their family life.

Nicole Runyon (21:13)
I think that's going to require a paradigm shift. So, you know, I talked about convenience and how we're using this tech out of convenience because us parents are overloaded. So it's not just the kids that are in overstimulation, fight flight, freeze mode.

stress response, stress response. It's the parents too. And the parents are the leaders of the family. We can think of it like we're the containers and our kids take the shape of whatever container we're in. So when we're over scheduled, falling all over ourselves to please our kids, putting them in every activity under the sun, thinking that that's going to enrich them, but killing ourselves to do it, ⁓ reducing our ability in time to even just have family dinner.

because that is the first thing I recommend, is carving out time to sit and have a meal together. It doesn't have to be dinner. mean, that's generally speaking, most people's schedules, it is dinner, but any meal together can actually help the family's nervous system calm. Because when we're looking at a screen, our eyes are into that screen. And that is what triggers that fight or flight, because we're not connected. And there's no sense of,

⁓ safety or support, as opposed to when our eyes are looking at someone else's. That cues the body for safety. And so if we could sit at the dinner table, distracted free, tech free, and we can look at each other and we can talk about our day, then that helps everybody's nervous system calm. And that can set the foundation for other ways for families to be connected. I think today's parents feel like being with your kids or spending time with your kids or connecting with them,

is taking them to the amusement park or going on a big family vacation and doing these really big grandiose things, which aren't really available to everyone all the time. It's maybe a few times a year type of thing. And those things are great and fun and wonderful. And I wouldn't discourage families from doing that. But I'm talking about an everyday kind of a ritual of how we can simplify to your point and just be together. And so, you know,

Parents are busy, they're working all day, they're coming home to chores, they're coming home to trying to make dinner, they're coming home to driving kids here and there and everywhere. And so what I would recommend is look at your schedule, look at your lifestyle, and look at your priorities. If an activity needs to be taken off of your list of priorities so that you can have time to come home, and if you have chores, great, kids should be involved in that too, and that's a way to connect. So it's not like you have to...

busy yourself with chores and then spend time with your kids. You do all of that at once. Making dinner together could be huge for kids, especially as they get into those middle childhood years like we talked about earlier. It's such a great way to give them some independence and teach them how to cook. These are life skills that are really important for them to learn and that feels good. It helps them feel capable and strong. And when we give our kids what we need, we're connected to them and they're connected to us. And many parents today tell me,

Well, I feel like they don't respect me. do all these things and I pay for all this stuff and they have no respect and they don't listen. Well, that's because they're not getting filled up. Their needs aren't being met. And so in that lack of respect, they're telling you something and we have to listen to that. We have to give them the connection they need because then they'll respect us and then they'll do what we ask. And maybe they'll belly ache a little bit, fair enough, but they won't resist and fight it so much.

Julianne Nienberg (24:48)
You know, since reading your book, I have been trying to make more opportunities for my kids to learn a new skill, to get involved in the day-to-day of getting backpacks ready for school. A lot of times, like my husband and I, we'll get the backpacks ready, we'll load it in the car, and that's just something simple that they can take ownership of ⁓ that is a very age-appropriate task that they can be in charge of that sets them up, hopefully, for...

Nicole Runyon (25:08)
Yes.

Julianne Nienberg (25:15)
just increase confidence and competence in the future. And then lately I've been having my sons come out with me. We live on a busier road, but Thursdays after school, they come out and get the garbage bins with me. My son's four and a half. My other son is six years old. And the pride that I can see in their faces, it is, they don't say it, but I can tell in their faces, they feel like they are contributing.

to the family unit. They don't say like, mom, thanks so much for giving me this opportunity to get the garbage bins with you. But I can tell they feel really proud that this is something, because it's something usually they see mom or dad do. And this is something that I've shown them, hey, we wanna look both ways. We wanna make sure there's no cars coming down the road. Then you go ahead and grab that bin. You go ahead and grab that bin and we'll walk it back and I'll show you how to put them in the right spot. And it's just been these little things that I've started to implement since reading your book that have really...

I've seen a personal shift in the way that my kids, step up to the plate. And even last night, my kids, I was, I'll be honest, I was tired. I didn't want to make dinner. So my kids started making sandwiches and my husband walked into the kitchen and he has eyes went wide. And I said, it's okay. They're getting the bread. They're making their own sandwiches. They're hungry. And I've set the expectation with them that if you make your own meal, you are accepted to clean up after yourself.

And so was it perfect where there's some crumbs on the ground? Absolutely. But I just love that you encourage parents to give their kids these opportunities. And many times that means slowing down your routine and slowing down your life to give them the time, the freedom in the space to learn a new skill. And one of the things that I heard you say earlier is that, you know, just these family rhythms of having

dinner at the table. We strive to have dinner as a family about three nights a week. And we go around the table, we talk about the peak of our day and the pit of our day and something that we're grateful to God for. And it's been so sweet to see what they come up with. But I can tell you for my husband and myself, our peak is always we share with our kids, the peak of our day is this right here, is sitting around the table and getting to talk to every one of you and just hearing about your day.

And many times too, they'll say the peak is having mom and dad here at the table. Someone will share like, my best friend like hugged me today. But that has been such an encouraging

to be intentional about sitting around the table and hearing about my kids days and sharing, what's the peak, what's the pit with something that kind of went south. We wish it would have gone differently. And just to engage in that dialogue with them has been.

So powerful for our family. So thank you for building that into your book because it's been an encouragement to my family and I know to many of the families who are reading this book. One of the things that I wanted to ask you because, as we talk about maybe pulling back on activities and giving our kids the space to play, I know a lot of parents and I experienced it myself earlier on and I still do to this day, but what can parents do to push past the discomfort

of the phrase that every parent hears from their kids and it's, I'm bored. I'm bored. Or sometimes if the kids aren't old enough to articulate, I'm bored, it's just whining. What can parents do?

Nicole Runyon (28:36)
Yes, the I'm bored. It's my favorite. Jokingly, my favorite. So it's good to be bored. And how parents can push past that discomfort is know that you're actually doing your child a favor by allowing them to be bored. Because in the boredom is when those other parts of the brain can open up. So and develop, right? Because before six, 90 % of the brain develops.

And then between six and 25, it's the executive functioning or the prefrontal cortex. And so at any age, whether that's before six or after six, we need to give them opportunities for the brain to grow and develop the way that it needs to. And boredom is a huge part of that because it gives kids the space and the calm in the space to think about creative things, to imagine, find...

ways to entertain themselves and fill themselves up. Because there's this concept of self-soothing and how we want to teach them early, like when they're babies. And I actually think it's quite the opposite, that we want to give babies everything they need. Like we want to answer their cries every time and meet their needs, because that's that foundational trust for attachment. Because then what we can do after we've set up their nervous systems and cued them for safety, ⁓

then we can tell them as they get older that it's okay to be uncomfortable. It's okay to have painful feelings. It's okay to give yourself that quiet downtime and not enjoy it very much and not like it because you will get to the other side of it. You will learn that you've sued yourself and that you've solved your own problem because you found something to do. And so, ⁓ and even in that boredom, like if you have siblings of similar ages, they're going to fight. There's going to be conflict.

And that's good too, because that allows them to learn how to resolve conflict, how to work through it, how to communicate. And these are skills they can take into their other relationships with friends and with significant others later on. And so all of these things really need to be given space to breathe. And so that's how parents can know that it's a good thing. Now, it doesn't mean that you're going to feel good about it or that it's going to be comfortable. It just means you know it's the right thing.

to do and so that makes it a little bit easier to make that decision.

Julianne Nienberg (31:02)
One thing I hear you talking about as you're talking about the discomfort of kids and you talk a lot about it in your later chapters when you're talking about teenagers. And I want to tell you, actually heard the term, I read it in your book, the term screenager. And then I actually heard a child, a teenager call themselves a screenager out in the wild, like out at the school. And I said, that's a new phrase. I haven't heard that one yet. You know, I know about Gen Z, you know, all these, all the lingo. just can't keep up with it. I can imagine how our parents felt when we were growing up.

I heard screen age for the first time out in the wild and I read about them in your book. And so you talk about this discomfort. Can you help unpack how that discomfort is showing up in children past the age of nine and the issues and the problems and the challenges that we're facing as parents and that those kids of that age and generation are also facing?

Nicole Runyon (31:52)
Yeah, there are three critical periods of time when kids develop a sense of themselves or an individuation or a need for independence. And those times are at two, at nine, and at 16. And so nine is a really big one because it's the first time a child is developing a consciousness around themselves as an individual outside of their family or their environment. And they start to see themselves as like these little people

in a big world. They start to compare themselves to friends, to other kids. They start to want to please teachers and they get really almost anxious about that. They engage more in organized activities and organized sports and want to do well and win and just have more of an understanding about the outside world. And this can be exciting and it can also be very anxiety producing.

because there becomes this inner chaos of I've one foot in early childhood and one foot in adolescence. Like adolescence is looming. And I don't, I'm not sure I want to grow up. That's the crisis inside. A little bit of fear about growing up. And so what can happen is those anxiety symptoms can start to be magnified if we treat it like it's a problem or like it's an actual pathology.

because it's actually quite normal. So what we wanna do is tell them, yeah, it's totally understandable that you have these feelings. This is gonna be a really kind of rocky time. I'm here for you, let's talk about it. Give them ways to communicate how they feel, even just the vocabulary, because they likely don't know how they feel. And then give them a space to talk about it. And then also give them a space to find a solution. So this is where independence can be really helpful.

Nine is a great age to ⁓ introducing more concepts of independence, like we said, like cooking a meal, or if it's available, if there's a store nearby, like riding their bike and running an errand for the family on their own, completely ⁓ unsupervised. And, ⁓ you know, talk about Lenore, who endorsed my book, her organization called Let Grow, goes state to state and advocates for legislation to allow

for kids to have independence out in the world without there being legal consequences to parents, right? Because I know probably when I said that some parents went right into, but somebody will call the police if my kid is out and about by themselves. And that is true in some cases. And so there is advocacy to change that because it's really important to give our kids this. It is the antidote for the nine year change and the anxiety that comes with it because we want this to be really foundational.

This is middle childhood from nine to 12. We want them to feel capable. We want them to feel strong. We want them to feel resilient going into those teen years. Because as we know, the teen years are quite tumultuous, especially now in the age of social media. So we really want to give them this sense of it's OK to grow up. It's OK to struggle with growing up. And we don't want to introduce smart devices during this time. I hear more and more families giving their third and fourth and fifth graders smart devices.

mainly out of logistics to keep in touch with them. And this really disrupts that whole emotional developmental process because it gives them an opportunity to have dopamine, to be happy, to not have to work through that pain. And then they never get to the other side of it and they go into the teen years with all this angst still. And so we wonder why we have all these teenagers that are unmotivated, not responsible, not driving, not ready to drive. Well, that's because something

along the way in middle childhood didn't go so well. We didn't give them those opportunities to get to the other side of it. And so I understand that we don't have pay phones anymore. And if we're going to send our kids out in the world, we want to stay in touch. There are lots of devices that are not smart devices that we can give our kids to stay in touch. There are these watches made by Gab or Gizmo where you control the contacts. So it doesn't have to be for them to keep in touch with friends. It can just be for them to keep in touch with their caregivers.

you, babysitters, nannies. And so they can go out in the world and they can call you or text you and check in with you. And that's a good way for you to feel like you're staying connected. Now, all these devices do track kids. And this is a little controversial, but I don't agree with tracking kids. I think that's too much monitoring, too much hovering. we can prepare them, we should prepare them. We should teach them how to cross the road. We should teach them how to be safe.

wear a helmet if you're riding your bike, all of these things, but then we need to let go and give them that trust to grow and mature. And they're gonna make mistakes. They're gonna say, yeah, I'll be home at five o'clock and then at six o'clock and they're not home. And you're gonna worry and there's gonna be all of this angst about it, but they need to learn how to be accountable to you. And there's that where that connection is. If you're giving them what they need, then they're going to understand that being accountable to you is respect and love.

and they're more likely than to stay in touch. And if they forget, they forget, but it's not out of disrespect. And we need to give them the opportunity to do that. And if we track them, that skill is lost.

Julianne Nienberg (37:18)
you talk about this nine year change and we talked about it earlier, but I have a daughter who is eight and I'm so grateful that you talk about this and I really hadn't read any other parenting books that that talk about the nine year change because already I'm beginning to see it in my daughter who is looking for more independence, looking for more responsibility and something that you talked about too is kind of helping them come up with solutions.

We've had a couple of, situations come up where the homework was forgotten for a couple of days. And I said to my daughter, said, you know, don't just come to me with problems, like start coming to me with some solutions. And I said, I guarantee you, you'll never get in trouble with your teacher if you come to them with solutions as well as your problems. And if you can't figure out a solution,

say, you know what, can I have a day to think about this and I'm going to come up with a way to make this right or I'm going to come up with a solution. And it's been really, I think, empowering for them because a lot of times they just come, well, I forgot my homework. I forgot this and that. I said, OK, what's your plan? Let's come up with a solution. Don't just come to your teacher with the problems. Help them help you. And so I think all these things that you're talking about, about individuation and having one foot in childhood and having one foot into adolescence.

So it's such a beautiful time, but there is this tension of still being a kid and then also stepping into these earlier teen years. And I think that for any parent that

approaching those years, this is such a great book to help you feel prepared for that, because that's how that's what I walked away with. said, wow, I would have never thought about those things. And they are on the horizon. They are right around the corner for me. So thank you for for writing this book, not just for parents of young children, but also for those middle years as well as teenagers. And I heard you talk about, these smart devices and we have the brand Cosmo for our kids. But what I love about it is just like you said, having

having control as a parent, but also giving them a little bit of freedom. My kids, my oldest is eight. We give it to her when we know we're gonna be in a situation where, like for example, we were out at a moonlight hayride at a farm in the dark. And I thought, okay, this is a really great instance or an example of where I wanted to go out and play. Like there's a haystack, there's this and that, but she wore her watch just in case we got separated. She knew how to call me and she can only call like three other people on the watch. There's no internet, things like that.

there's no social media, and they know that those things don't live in their rooms. I think what I'm hearing you talk about in your book, as well as just hearing from other parents, is that they're handing over these tablets and devices, which is basically like giving your kid the entire internet in their hand, into their pocket, and they're letting those things live in the kids' rooms. You you talked about kids being tired because they're up all night gaming, or they're up all night texting with friends. My kids know that those watches,

stay in our pantry and I I lock the pantry doors because I kept kids who will just go in there all day. But I lock the watches in the pantry and they only use it when I say, hey, I know we're going to be going out and doing something, you know, put on your watch just in case you need to call me. ⁓ So I think that that idea of handing over devices to our kids, a lot of parents do it. But now we're seeing there's just so much research to point to the harmful effects.

that it's having on kids' brains, on their sleep habits. You know, the closing of your book, you talk about kids need strong parents. If parents take away one thing from your book, what do you want it to be?

Nicole Runyon (40:54)
that you have so much more power and influence over your kid than you think you do. And that, yes, there are some really, really strong forces that want their influence ⁓ more powerful than ours as parents. And those are those big industries, right? Big tech. I talk about big food in the book.

and how the ultra processed food that's high in sugar is affecting their development and affecting so much of how they function in the world. And Big Pharma and how they want our kids and they want them young to make more and more money. It's the age old marketing ploy. It's get them young, get them hooked on your product so they're forever users. And we can't.

We can't abdicate our responsibility as parents to big industry just because it's so powerful. And I understand the exhaustion. I'm a parent myself. I've been parenting for 17 years. My oldest has turned 17 last week. And it's hard. It's very hard being a parent this day and age. And I look at my own childhood and...

my mother's challenges in comparison to mine. And I think we have some really intense challenges as parents today, but we can't give up. And it's all the more reason to keep fighting, to have our influence be stronger than big industry. And what that means is that we have to say no more. We have to step into our authority. We have to set limits. We have to make them uncomfortable. We have to make them feel that

Like we're not here to be their friend. We're not here to make them happy all the time. We're here to protect them, keep them safe so that they grow and mature the way that they need to. And that requires saying no. And as hard as that is, it's our job. It's our duty. It's our responsibility. And they deserve that from us.

Julianne Nienberg (42:51)
One of the things that I really appreciated that you spend a lot of time talking about in your book is challenging parents to look at the way they grew up. And it was kind of like, I have to be honest, it was kind of like therapy for me to read your book because you talk about how, one of the quotes, I'm just gonna read it. says, what you see in your children that you don't like is exactly what you don't like about yourself. ⁓ Our children are many versions of us and not just in the way they look like us.

Nicole Runyon (43:03)
Thank

Julianne Nienberg (43:21)
And this whole, mean, boy, I have to say, like, there were just so many things that humbled me, that really challenged me to look at my expectations when I was a kid versus the expectations that I'm putting on my children or lack of expectations and thinking, you know, because I had a, you know, I was expected to grow up really, really fast. was an only child, raised by a single mom for most of my life. So I was doing laundry at eight years old.

and now I find joy in doing those things for my kids and taking care of those things for my kids. But in doing that, I'm realizing I'm robbing them of an opportunity to come alongside them, not just say, hey, you you got to figure this out on your own, but coming alongside them to say.

You know, this is a task that I know that you can do at eight or nine years old. And so now my kids, actually my kids are starting, my eight year old is starting to do laundry, but my younger kids are folding and they all, dump the laundry out onto the living room floor. They all make their piles. My six year old is surprisingly so good at folding and he helps the younger one. But there was so much in your book about really challenging parents to examine the way that they grew up and to.

Nicole Runyon (44:24)
That's so great.

Julianne Nienberg (44:35)
examine the challenges and just like the sticking points that we had about the way that we grew up. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Nicole Runyon (44:42)
Yeah. So I call that the mirror. And chances are that if you're struggling in your parenting with a child at whatever age they're at, that it's something in your childhood that is unresolved at that age. you're doing laundry at eight. And to some extent, there's a lot of good in that, right? Like you learned how to be independent and have that skill.

But on another level, maybe you felt lonely or like that was maybe too much to put on you. And so then you transferred that onto your kids until you recognize that consciously. These are subconscious things. And so I think just that self-reflection piece is super important. And that's where I start with parents because I think we can't really be talking about what to do. We can't talk about

setting limits and boundaries and rules until we examine how uncomfortable that makes us and why, right? So what was it in our childhood and in particular, what did we go through that is making it hard for us and then work through that and get to the other side of it so we can see our kids in a different light and not like we're looking in the mirror at ourselves. And so I talk about in the book when I was nine.

a lot changed in my life. My mom had her fifth child. We moved from my childhood home to another home I had to switch schools and I didn't adjust very well. And because my mom was so busy with so many kids, she didn't see it and she didn't know how to help me. And so most of my adolescent years were pretty rocky and rough from that. And then when my kids, each of them were nine, I struggled with my parenting.

And it wasn't until my second kid, didn't figure it out with my first one. I had to, you know, wake up a little bit with my second kid and ask myself, why am I struggling with this issue again? And I realized just because that was unresolved in me. And so then I was able to give them what they needed more in those years.

Julianne Nienberg (46:45)
So that's 11 years old for me. So I better buckle up for when my kids at that age. You know, one thing that you talked about too is another key role for parents. I, know, as the, outdoorsy mom, love this one, helping your children connect to nature. I mean, I talk about that all day long. I have seen such fruit from, making my kids go outside in the freezing cold in Michigan winters when they were 18 months old.

Nicole Runyon (46:49)
No, you're up for 11.

Julianne Nienberg (47:13)
babies to less than three years old, we would trudge out there. I tell everyone I was working full time and I really caught on to this idea after reading a couple books of getting my kids outside no matter the weather, right? And spending whatever pockets of time that we could. And we would just go out in 15 minute increments. And out of that became a habit. And now my kids are the kids when they come home, they bust through the door and they go outside.

How do you and your family connect? it outside? What are some things that you guys like to do that get you outside or just connecting together as a family?

Nicole Runyon (47:49)
Yeah, absolutely. I think the thing about being in Michigan is that it's seasonal. And so we think, well, it's the winter, we can't go outside. And one of the things we've done in our family, and I credit my husband for this because I didn't grow up doing this and he did, is in the winter, he has encouraged all of us to ice skate and ski and really just enjoy what winter has to offer and not completely shut down and say,

it's cold, it's snowing, I'm not going outside. And so doing these things, these activities outside can really be helpful to get people out in those really dark, cold, dreary months. Or if you live in a warm state.

⁓ You know, maybe it's more along the lines of you're in the water or you're out earlier in the morning or later at night when it's not so hot in the summer, but just getting creative about how to roll with what you've been given and what you have. And one of the other things that has been really great in my family is ⁓ we gather every Sunday with my family in the summer because my parents have a pool. And so the kids swim and they play volleyball and they play basketball and the

entire afternoon and evening is done outside. There are no screens ⁓ and they're just having a blast together with their cousins and it's just a really beautiful experience. So we've been very fortunate and blessed to have that and I know a lot of families don't but that's really helped us to connect in nature as well.

Julianne Nienberg (49:20)
I know one of the things I tell a lot of followers who aren't from the Midwest is, know, I have come to learn that our family has rhythms and right now we're in a season of slowing down. But then when summer, when spring and summer come, people in Michigan go hard for the Michigan summers because we know that it's such a short season. I think that's such a beautiful thing too, is that we get to experience all the seasons, but similar to your kids, my kids are out swimming. They're running around just

barefoot and getting so filthy dirty and we're spending time outside and it feels like TV isn't even a thing. My family room doesn't even barely get touched in the summertime because we're just spending every available minute that we have outside. So one of the things that we do, Nicole, here on the podcast is I always ask my guests to share an outdoorsy challenge and it's something simple that they can do to get outside to connect with their family this week. Nicole, what's an outdoorsy challenge you would task listeners with this week?

Nicole Runyon (49:58)
Yeah.

⁓ Well, I think autumn is upon us. so I love the idea of ⁓ collecting different color leaves, maybe even doing a crafty project with it, you know, with the sort of the coloring over the leaf, ⁓ and just maybe learning about the different kinds of trees looking at the change in color just experiencing.

what nature can do because if we stop and we look at it, it's quite beautiful.

Julianne Nienberg (50:44)
Thank you. Yes, I definitely agree. We have been enjoying all these fall colors and just like I said earlier, the changing of the seasons. It's such a beautiful time to be living in Michigan as I know you are too. Nicole, thank you so much for your time, your wisdom and congratulations on your new book. I have to say parents, this is a must read no matter what age your kids are, whether you have babies, infants, toddlers, preteens, teenagers, this book covers

Nicole Runyon (50:54)
Yes.

Julianne Nienberg (51:10)
all of it and I promise you will walk away with something useful. Nicole, thank you so much for your time today.

Nicole Runyon (51:15)
Thank you, it was my

Julianne Nienberg (51:17)
I'm curious if you have dove into the things on like gender dysphoria and pornography on other podcasts and how that's been received.

Nicole Runyon (51:25)
Interestingly enough, no one has asked me about it.

Julianne Nienberg (51:28)
I'm willing to go there if you're willing to go there, if you're willing. Okay.

Nicole Runyon (51:30)
I'm willing if you are

Julianne Nienberg (51:31)
I don't wanna just highlight like the pretty things in your book. there are some hard hitting things in your book that a lot of parents don't wanna wrestle with. You know, have chapters on gender dysphoria. You have chapters on pornography. Let's get into it. Talk to me about why you included those.

Nicole Runyon (51:42)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Julianne Nienberg (51:53)
those two chapters in your book.

Nicole Runyon (51:55)
Well, let's take pornography to start. I think that parents aren't aware of the exposure. think most parents are thinking, not my kid. They wouldn't do that. And they're not recognizing two things. One is that many kids are being exposed to pornography unintentionally. So the algorithm feeds them what other kids their age are curious about and searching for.

The algorithm doesn't care. It's not ethical. It doesn't care about kid safety. It doesn't care about anything. All it's doing is making you stay on whatever platform or device you're on for as long as possible. That's its job. And so what's happening is kids are creating kid accounts or Instagram now has what's considered teen accounts, which are not safe because what they're doing is feeding kids as pornographic material. And it starts very innocently, well not

innocently, sort of innocently compared to what pornography is showing them. But in these hyper sexualized ways, especially for young girls, crop tops and duck lips and all the things that ⁓ they're being influenced by. And then it turns into ⁓ grooming essentially and showing them sex images, sex acts ⁓ and kids are unintentionally.

seeing this and feel a lot of shame when they see it so they're not reporting it. They're not talking to their parents about it. And then that brings me to my second point of what parents don't understand is that parents have to be talking to their kids about it. So just like when you and I were kids and it was the conversation around drugs and alcohol and our parents had those conversations with us and explained, you know, I know my parents when I went off to college explained about roofies and don't leave your drink unattended and all of this.

us parents today need to address pornography actually earlier on than we would like to, and we're not. And so that's why the kids aren't coming to their parents because they don't think it's a safe space to talk about it. And in my opinion, think, and here's where it comes in where like us parents really need to have that influence over them before big industry does. We want to get to them before they see it, right? It's inevitable they're going to see it.

So we have to stop being naive about that. But what we wanna do is tell them first that these are actors. A lot of times they're not paid. And many of the women have been sexually assaulted, sexually abused. And so they're doing this out of a wounding and a trauma. And it's not real. It's not how people have intimate close connected relationships.

And while those conversations are going to be uncomfortable, I can tell you when I had it with my oldest, he was squirming, he was annoyed, he didn't want to be talking about it. It's very important that we push through that, all of us do, us parents and the kids, because we need for them to come to us when these things come up.

Julianne Nienberg (55:00)
Absolutely. I know there is a book that I have read to my kids as young as five is the good pictures, bad pictures. There's good pictures and bad pictures, junior. And it just talks to them about one. have a rule in our family that they really shouldn't be looking at people's cell phones without permission from mom and dad. You know, and it's easy to do when you're at sporting events, you're peering over someone's shoulder and things like that. But I usually try to catch my kids and say, hey, you know,

Nicole Runyon (55:20)
Yeah.

Julianne Nienberg (55:29)
you shouldn't be looking at someone else's cell phone without asking the Kate mom, is this okay? ⁓ Because we don't know what other people are looking at on their cell phones. And with one swipe or one wrong click or one wrong search query, bad pictures can come up. So I love that book for them because it talks about what kids should do if they see a bad picture and what is a bad picture, In terms that they can understand that are age appropriate. And so I thank you for.

for touching on that because it is, it is an uncomfortable and an ugly and a dark thing to talk about. But to your point, we as parents need to be proactive about getting out in front and talking to our kids about it first before they hear it from someone else. I said this to my husband the other day. said, wouldn't you rather they hear this first from us than hearing it from someone out in the community and that be their first experience with hearing anything about pornography or just.

bad pictures or things like that. So that is a challenge. think parents that read this book, be prepared because Nicole talks about all of it. Nicole goes into it and it is so important because these are the very real things that are plaguing our kids today and that they have so much access to everything through the internet. And this is something that we can do as parents. We can get out ahead in front of it and be the confident source for our kids.

that they can turn to when they have questions.

Nicole Runyon (56:53)
And they need our guidance because what's happening is they're watching this, the boys and sometimes the girls, and they're thinking that this is how it is, that this is how sexual relationships are. And then they're engaging in these very extreme intense sex acts that they're watching online, which are horrific and not at all rooted in close connected intimacy. ⁓

And they think that that's normal and they think that that's what they have to do. And so in my practice, when I was seeing adolescents, mainly I would see the girls and their experience of sexual encounters with boys where they didn't say no, but they also felt violated because these things were not comfortable for them and they didn't feel good and they weren't enjoyable. And so then afterwards, it was this processing of, that consensual? Did I really want that?

it became very blurred and it was heartbreaking because this is actually quite traumatic for both boys and girls. And it's very typical for girls in that age range to want to please boys. And if the boys think that this is what the girls want and they ask for these sex acts, then the girls do it and then they feel betrayed by it. And I think

They need our guidance, they need our influence and they need us to tell them, hey, this is really how it is. And sex and sex acts are really more, should be emotional and connected and you should feel love for the person and not just have it be about a physical thing. In fact, a lot of the kids use the terminology bodies when they talk about how many people they've had sex with, how many bodies have you had?

That's the question. Yeah.

Julianne Nienberg (58:49)
I know when I read these pages and it feels like it feels like I'm so far away from these discussions, but actually we've been having these discussions with our eight year old for the last couple of years and describing, giving her a framework for what we believe ⁓ sex should be and naming it correctly, right? And helping her to understand for us and our faith that it's designed for

a man and a woman in marriage to engage in. that's, you know, as a family and, know, with our faith, that's what we want to instill in her and just helping her to understand that there are many things out in the world that will show you what this should look like that are just rooted in darkness and evil and not at all within the safe boundaries of what, a consensual

partnership and engaging in something like that should be. And so it is tough. have to tell you, I was squirming. It came to a point where it was like we're going down another path here, but she was asking about where babies come from, you know, the age old question, where do babies come from? And I was like, ⁓ man, what do I got? What am I going to say to this? And so I had taken some other advice and courses about how to get through this conversation. the point being to be frank and to be frequent and starting with some foundational things,

having now gone through that uncomfortable conversation, I feel so much more confident in being able to say it to her over and over, right? And having them frequently and frankly and just telling her and the more that I say and the more that we talk about it, the more comfortable I am with the verbiage and the words that I'm using and the more comfortable she is in talking with me about it. So I have to say parents, if you're struggling with that,

Nicole's book is a great way to just have a foundation of why you need to be having these conversations and not waiting for the school to have these conversations, not waiting for someone else to fill your child's brain with these conversations. But you as a parent need to get out in front and begin talking to your kids about it.

And then another chapter in your book, you talk about a very controversial, very, to be honest, it's a tough chapter to read through as a parent, but I know that it is important and I know that your chapter is filled with not only things that you've observed as a clinician, but also statistics in the topic of gender dysphoria.

the gender affirming care that you see or the lack of care for the most vulnerable, our kids. Can you unpack that chapter? I know there's a lot going on in there, but give us kind of a glimpse into what you've seen in practice and encouragement and words and advice for parents.

Nicole Runyon (1:01:31)
I thought it was important as a therapist who doesn't agree with gender affirming care to speak about it because those in my field, ⁓ the majority of them do think that this is the correct way to go. And especially the younger therapists, because that's what they're learning in school. And frankly, I think that they're being indoctrinated. I don't think that it's rooted in what real therapy is. Real therapy is not affirming.

I'm not here to affirm anyone. I'm not here to make anyone comfortable. I'm not here to make you feel better. And I think culturally, that's what we think therapy is. We think that we're just go and we dump our feelings and the person nods their head and says, ⁓ they're there. Everything will be fine. And then you leave and then you come back the next week with the same feelings because you didn't resolve them or work through them. And this is one of the reasons, a huge reason why I shifted the paradigm.

from focusing on kids' feelings to focusing on more solutions of what parents can do. Because people have therapy all wrong in our culture right now. We're in a therapy culture, which means that we think that every feeling is pathological. Every feeling is supposed to drive us. And so here you have a large group of kids right now who are going through some stuff, right? Many of these kids that are gender dysphoric

have been sexually abused. They obviously feel that their body has betrayed them. They obviously don't feel comfortable in their body. There's a ton of underlying depression, trauma, anxiety that is simply not getting treated or addressed. Now I say that kids who don't need therapy shouldn't get therapy and parents should get the help. But these are kids who actually need therapy. They don't need to be affirmed and then referred to medicine.

and immediately put on puberty blockers and then cross sex hormones and then start having surgeries. Because what we're not doing is listening to the detransitioners who are now in their twenties, who were the first cohort of kids who were allowed to be driven by their feelings and have the adults just do what they say. They are screaming, Chloe Cole is one of them. At the top of their lungs, stop doing this to the children. Chloe Cole is a detransitioner.

She went from being a girl to a boy and now she is back to being a female, but her body is permanently altered. There are many things that she struggles with health-wise. And the parents are being told lies. They're being told that their child will die by suicide if they don't transition them, which is simply not true. Because again, what I believe in is exploratory care. Let's look at the underlying causes of why you're feeling this way in your body.

Let's look at the influence. So these kids who have been sexually abused, they're depressed, they have trauma, they're not talking to anybody about it. They go online and then they're told by influencers or online forums that if you just transition, everything will be better. But we're finding that those kids are not feeling better after they transition because none of that stuff was being addressed. And so I think parents are confused. Parents don't know what to do and they're listening to these governing bodies and they're making

decisions for their children that are permanent and the children aren't able with a not fully developed brain to be making these choices. I've heard many times people compare it to if your kid came to you and said I don't like my right arm, can I cut off my right arm? You would never do that. And so why are we allowing them to make these permanent physical body changes when we don't really know what's happening? We also know a lot of these kids are on the autism spectrum.

So they don't feel connected. They don't know how to socialize. They're feeling uncomfortable and they're being told again, they're more comfortable online. So they're going into online forums and they're being told, ⁓ you're just, you know, you're just trans. And if you transition, then everything will be better. And I find that to be very wrong that the adults are allowing this because I think we should have more wisdom and understanding around this.

and we need to make sure that we protect them and we guide them. And listen, if they find that when they're older and their brain is more fully developed, that yes, transitioning is absolutely what they need, great. Like I think that's very rare. I don't think it's as common as we're seeing it. And it's not just because we have more of a cultural acceptance or we're better at diagnosing like many people think. It's simply because this

was never really a big issue. I was told in my training that I would probably never see this clinically. And now here we are with thousands and thousands of kids thinking that they're a different gender. And so I think my voice is really important here. I also think ⁓ what I've noticed about this chapter, you asked me if ⁓ I've been asked this in a podcast. I haven't been asked this in a podcast, but I have been confronted from other professionals.

And interestingly enough, many of them say that they agree with me, but they don't have the courage to say what I'm saying. And that breaks my heart because I think if we know, then it's our duty and it's our responsibility. And yes, it's scary. Have I been attacked? Oh yeah. And I'm sure I'll be even more attacked, but it's my responsibility because I know better. And as a therapist, I have a code of ethics that I follow.

And it's so unethical. It's so wrong to be treating gender dysphoria this way. It's not treatment.

Julianne Nienberg (1:07:25)
Thank you, Nicole. so glad that you included these chapters in your book and that to be honest, you encouraged me to go right into it and to talk about it here on the podcast. It had been looming on my brain and parents need to hear your voice. They need to hear the other side. They need to read the pages in your book that talk about testimonials and statistics of D transitioners. And I think that is so powerful and even your own experience with other clinicians.

about how they're feeling and this gut feeling that this is wrong. think that speaks volumes, but we're just too scared to speak out because largely in part, I think what you talk about early on in your book is this hold that all of the big corporations and companies have over the world, the United States, the culture. And you said it earlier, but parents need to know that these big corporations, they do not have.

family interests at the core. They are not interested in what's good for the family. They are interested in shareholders. They are interested in profits and revenue. And they want your kids to be as sick as possible. So like you said earlier, so that they can be lifelong users of their products, of their drugs, of their technology. And so I think that your book compared to

a lot of other books out there, really, really just, it amplifies this so that parents can take a hard look at how those corporations are playing into family life. And I remember when I read the book, I turned to my husband and I said, she went for it. She went right for it. She wasn't scared to do it. She went right for it. And I said, I am so glad that she did. first of all, congratulations on your book.

And also thank you for talking about the hard, ugly, scary stuff that

parents need to be concerning themselves with, quite frankly.

Nicole Runyon (1:09:32)
Thank you for honoring and respecting that and giving me an opportunity to talk about it. I really appreciate