Transcript: Helping Toddlers Respect Their Bodies: Moving Past Shame-Based Parenting

This is a text transcript from The First Time Mum’s Chat podcast. The episode is called Helping Toddlers Respect Their Bodies: Moving Past Shame-Based Parenting and you can click on the link to view the full episode page, listen to the episode and view the show notes.

Helen Thompson: Hi, I’m Helen Thompson, host of First Time Mum’s Chat, where I support new mums as they embark on their incredible parenting journey. Each episode, we dive into the real life topics mums face daily, offering practical advice to help you connect with your little ones confidently and joyfully.

Today, I’m speaking with Dr. Tina Sellers, a therapist specializing in raising shame free confident kids. Have you ever wondered how to answer your child’s curious questions like how are babies made, without over explaining or creating discomfort or how to encourage body autonomy without fear. Dr. Tina shares powerful insights that every mum will want to hear. So join us for a chat that will empower you to approach these tricky conversations with confidence.

Hi, Dr. Tina, and welcome to First Time Mum’s Chat. I’m thrilled to have you here today to share your incredible expertise with our listeners. You’ve been a trailblazer in helping parents raise shame free, confident kids, and your work is transforming the way we approach conversations around bodies, autonomy, and self respect. Can you start by telling us more about your journey and what inspired you to help parents foster openness and connection with their children.

Tina Schermer Sellers: Thanks. I’m so glad to be here. Thanks so much for having me. So let’s see, I’ve been on this earth for a bit, so I’ve been traveling about. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist, I’m a medical family therapist, certified sex therapist and certified psychedelic assisted therapist. I have run a couple of organizations. I ran the Northwest Institute on Intimacy, which was a post graduate training program for therapists and clergy and doctors and teachers who wanted training in sexual health and understanding their sexual biases. I recently sold that and now have InannaRising.Org that is an organization to help support physicians and therapists that are moving into the psychedelic assisted therapy space.

So, doing some work around that, trying to heal people with trauma and it’s just kind of crazy here in the States and so I just wanted to create an organization that helped provide them with training and access to really high quality clinicians to coordinate and refer care with, and, yeah, just get a lot of support for each other and from each other.

So, my career has led me down couple of different paths, but one of the primary paths was really coming to understand the impact of sexual shame on people’s health and wellness and ability to do attachment well. That really kind of morphed into doing a lot of work for people who are wanting to heal from having had sexual experiences and just growing up in a culture that didn’t provide them adequate information but instead provided them a lot of entertainment information, which wasn’t necessarily accurate for them. So I’ve done a lot of training of professionals and of parents and people wanting to heal that part of themselves. A lot of stuff on sex education and how to get yourself that and how to provide that for the little ones that you love. That’s what probably gets me working with young parents the most.

Helen Thompson: Mm, you’ve had a very wide, wonderful experience of everything with sexuality I think that’s brilliant. Talking to somebody like you, I think is great for moms. You mentioned something about, psychedelic health.

Tina Schermer Sellers: Psychedelic assisted therapy. So there’s been quite a bit of research in the last probably 35 years, since the mid-eighties, and there was some before then too, but then everything kind of got shut down in the United States around psychedelics but since about the mid 80s, there’s been a lot of research that’s happened at universities around the world, really looking at the role that psychedelics when they’re used very carefully and responsibly and in the context of good preparation for what the medicine will be and then good integration work. So talking about what you’ve experienced afterwards. What we’re finding is that people who have had varied treatment resistant anxiety, depression, substance use, trauma, post traumatic stress disorder, complex post traumatic stress, just really many things that are weighing down a lot of people. What they found is that when in a very controlled and careful kind of way, these medicines are used, people are showing, when they have had an assessment of PTSD at very high levels, for over 20 years, they’re doing this kind of treatment and coming out of it. Up to a year later, at least that’s as far as our studies have gone so far, they’re showing no signs of post dramatic stress disorder. People are walking away from substances when they haven’t been able to prior. Eating disorder problems, depression and anxiety and suicidal ideation, getting kind of rid of that for themselves.

So really liberating and freeing people to live a life that had never been available to them to live, since they were teeny tiny and trauma started to happen for them. So, it’s the most hopeful, treatment options we have right now. The problem is trying to get them approved by our FDA (Food and Drug Administration). Australia approved Psilocybin, I think, last year. So it’s being used in places and really to an incredible effect for people who have found that talk therapy and the medicines we do have, were just not relieving them of the pain that they were in.

Helen Thompson: What you’ve done there has probably helped parents who have gone through trauma as children and how to then help their child so that they don’t go through that trauma. So it doesn’t flow on if somebody’s been sexually abused.

Tina Schermer Sellers: Yeah.

Helen Thompson: With all the work that you’ve been doing it’s given them, as a parent, the opportunity to think, oh, okay, I can make myself better, so therefore, I can teach my child better.

Tina Schermer Sellers: That’s right. Yeah. It frees them to not be caught up in so much of that pain and reactivity that they have inside of them. The fear that something will happen that happened to them or the reaction inside of them because of what had happened for them that hadn’t been healed yet. It really is supporting the parents that are trying to heal from the pain that they’ve been through so that they can pass on a different legacy, a freer legacy, a healthier, happier legacy to their child than what they had.

They’re really doing a lot of work. When you’re the one changing the legacy in your family, it’s a lot of work. So having these kinds of medicines available, even if they’re in the underground, is helping people. It just needs to be done very carefully and responsibly and really people need to be trained in how you use these medicines.

So, that’s what I did. I got myself trained and now I’m wanting to support those people who also have gotten themselves trained and their heart is about healing the pain and trauma that there is around us. So that people can live better lives.

Helen Thompson: Are they more of a natural approach or are they actual drugs?

Tina Schermer Sellers: It’s really both. Like Psilocybin is grown in a particular mushroom, a particular mycelium and there are many different kinds of them. The chemicals inside are, like the psilocin, in the Psilocybin, is the medicine that causes the sort of psychedelic experience where your heart and soul and mind become open to wisdoms and awareness and places for you to become aware of things you didn’t know before.

What they’re finding is the brain really opens, it has hemispheric symmetry. It opens up and moves in freeways versus once we’re an adult our brain moves in predictable ways. We see a car, we go car, it’s very predictable but birth to five, our brains are very open, they’re an open system. When people use these medicines, that’s what happens. Their brain moves into a really open system so that they are free to have brand new thoughts and they feel it in their body. They feel love, they feel connected to all things. They can see maybe somebody that hurt them, a parent or whatever. They can also see how that parent wanted to love them but their own pain was getting in the way. So a way in which the heart and mind kind of opens up to new possibilities that just aren’t available to people elsewhere.

So there are different plants, if you will, different organisms that have these psychedelic properties within them and then there also are some, chemicals that are more made in a lab kind of a thing. DMA (Dimethoxyamphetamine) is one of those and it’s called an empathogen because it opens the heart up and allows people to face and see traumatic events in a way that doesn’t frighten them. It kind of quiets the amygdala and the brain, and so they’re able to see and look at it and process it and deal with it in ways they just can’t when they don’t have the medicine or find it too hard.

So some are more chemical and manufactured or made in a lab, and then some are very natural and the natural ones have been used by indigenous communities for thousands and thousands of years in their own healing ceremonies, so, we know more from them about how these medicines have been used to help their own peoples.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, the indigenous community have wonderful stuff that I think we don’t take into account. I was going to bring it back to the young children because if a parent’s gone through that trauma, we all know that young children are curious about things and as parents, we’re often teaching them about safety, including being cautious around strangers. So, when a toddler, for example, asks their parents why they have to be careful around people that they don’t know, how would you recommend responding to help them understand without creating that fear that the parent may have had when they were growing up?

Tina Schermer Sellers: Yeah, it does and I’m glad that you gave me a timeframe. You said toddler, right? So toddlers aren’t left unsupervised, unless you’re like running from the living room or they’re playing on the floor to the kitchen to grab something to grab back, they’re not left unsupervised. So toddlers aren’t ones that are likely to get abducted, or to go talk to somebody without that parent being right there, you know, right there. So the things you wanna be teaching children that help with that process of learning protection is like teaching them about body autonomy.

Like your body belongs to you and my body belongs to me and we ask each other if we want to give each other a hug or we ask our friends and it’s okay to say no. You get to be in charge. So teaching them about body autonomy is a great first step along many steps of teaching children about safety.

It’s you have choice and autonomy over your body and that’s a really appropriate thing to be teaching a little one. They’re learning about sharing and they’re learning about, there might be a grandparent that just goes and gives them a hug and maybe they don’t want one. So the parent can be like, it’s okay to say that you don’t want one, that’s okay and I’ll help grandma and grandpa understand that you’re practicing owning your own body and that we think that’s a good thing. So, when they’re little, you’ve got these little things.

As they get older, you know, 5, 6, 7, 8, then you can have a little bit more complex conversations about not everybody’s like our family and we just don’t always know, so we always want to ask someone we trust and that kind of thing. So lots of practicing around asking for help when you need it and being listened to and listening to others and that kind of thing.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, in today’s world, there’s so much available online with conversations about sensitive topics like sex and some parents feel overwhelmed and they don’t know how to respond to their child. So if a child, any age, I’m not particularly saying a toddler, from a toddler maybe to six or something, if they say to their parents how are babies made, how would you encourage parents to respond to that, making it simple for them to understand?

Tina Schermer Sellers: Yeah, so the book that I wrote, “Shameless Parenting, Everything You Need to Raise Shame Free Confident Kids and Heal Your Shame Too”, was put together because I had so many parents asking me that question. Can you just help me, I don’t know what to do and I don’t want to do to my kids what was done to me. I just want to do it better and I’m like, I can so help you. There is something little that kids need to learn, birth to two, something else, two to four, something else, four to six, something else, six to eight, all the way up to 18 and there are very particular curiosities that they have at each of these different ages, right?

So there’s behavioral tasks, emotional tasks, they’re all trying to accomplish. There are also body curiosities that they have, right? So they might find their genitals In the tub or getting a diaper changed when they’re about a year old because their hands are just beginning to reach and grab things.

This hand now belongs to them, it’s not hitting them randomly anymore. At that point, all we’re doing at that age, and when they’re about one or two, we’re labeling the world for them. That’s a doggie, that’s a tree, that’s a nose, that’s an ear. So when they find their genitals, we’re like, that’s your penis, it’s a wonderful part of you, that’s your vulva, it’s a wonderful part of you, let’s finish diapering you, or let’s finish washing you, or whatever the deal is. We’re just labeling, that’s all we’re doing. So, usually they want to know about other people. Playing doctor, that happens around five or six, because now they’ve figured themselves out they want to know about others.

That’s real normal. If we walk in and kids have their clothes off, we’re like, well, we should keep our clothes on. It looks like you were really curious about each other. Well, good for you, being curious is good, but let’s keep our clothes on and let’s go play out in the living room or whatever.

We just give them what they need, a little bit of information, and we go forward. So that book really says, here’s what they’re going to want to know, and here’s kind of how you do it. It also recognizes that some people are going to feel uncomfortable when their kids do really natural, normal things like that.

That uncomfortableness that we feel is because someone shamed us when we were little. When we were growing up, somebody went, Oh, gross, yuck, dirty, or snapped their hand away, or something like that. So inside of us, we have this like feeling, like, Oh my gosh, and yet it’s important to know that kids have developmental things they’re going to do all along.

So I always say, if a kid comes home and they’re saying, how are babies made and they’re five or six or seven, you can’t possibly know exactly what they’re asking because you don’t know where that question came from. Could just come from their very bright little mind. So I always say, ask them, well, tell me more about what you’re really wanting to know. Are you wanting to know like, where in the body or you’re wanting to know, if they come from the air, tell me more what you’re wanting to know. Usually they’ll tell you because they kind of have an idea. You know, well, Johnny said that they came from a stork and I don’t know that doesn’t make sense because I remember when Aunt Sarah was pregnant and the baby was inside of her, so I’m confused. Great, well, let me just tell you. So you give them a little bit of stuff.

At the end of every one of these little chapters, that’s just two or three years of a child’s life. I give you the list of the current best children’s books to have and the best parent books to have, and you can get them at your library. You don’t have to buy them if you don’t want to and you just leave them around. You read your books, but you leave the kid books around and you just pick them up and read them every once in a while. They have wonderful books. I have probably 30 seconds of my three and a half year old granddaughter reading a book called, where do babies come from I think it’s called and it’s by Cory Silverberg. It’s just this wonderful book that is non specific enough, but specific enough that it will include anybody’s story. It’ll include an adopted child’s story, it’ll include a child that was from IVF, a child that was born in a family with two mommies or two daddies. It includes everybody’s story, but it explains things like eggs and sperms and uteruses and that kind of thing in such a way that kids are like, oh, and so my three and a half year old, who’s heard the book read out loud by me or her sister just picked it up one day and just started reading it with, from memory, what she remembered that it said, like, here’s an egg and an egg comes from a person whose body has an egg.

They have a uterus and the egg has all the stories from their life inside of it and that has this cute pictures. So, you’re just going to answer just what they’re wanting to know. So I would say, ask another follow up question and then after you give them that little bit, you can say, was that enough or do you want more? They’ll tell you, so that way you don’t run the risk of saying too much because half of it’s going to go over their head and this is where the idea of the talk comes from. You can’t do a talk without talking over a child’s head, if you’re doing it young enough, or you catch them too late, and they’ve already heard it from all their friends. So you want to start early and give them just the little bits that they’re wanting to know. Then for them, the conversation of bodies and sexuality will feel as normal as talking about spaghetti and brushing your teeth or what you’re having for breakfast, because they know that you’ve just always talked about little pieces of it and it’s been no big deal.

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I think that’s a good idea because I think a lot of parents find it hard when a child says that. I know from my experience as a child care educator, because it wasn’t my child, I tended to be a lot more cautious of what I said because I didn’t want that child to go back to their mom and say, Oh, Helen said this, or Helen said that.

You know I was a little bit cautious, but if I’m working as a nanny or whatever, I’ll be honest with them and I’ll tell the mom, Oh, little Johnny asked me this question and this is what I said, so that they know exactly where I’m coming from as well. Also from my childcare experience, I had a lot of parents who used to call their child’s body parts different names, and they never used to say, vagina or penis, they always used to make up names and I thought that I didn’t like that, but I didn’t do anything about it because it wasn’t my child. I just wondered what your thoughts were on this approach and how would you recommend parents to discuss those topics with their child in a healthy way?

Tina Schermer Sellers: Yeah, I am a believer that all parts of your body are wonderful, have great purposes, and no part is more special than another part. They’re all special. And that’s why we want to take care of ourselves. So when we give a part of the body a goofy name, or some other kind of name, but we don’t give the elbow a different name, or the shoulder a different name, or the nose a different name, then what are we saying and do we mean to be saying that? Do we need mean to be saying that word, the real word, the clinical word or whatever is to something that that part of the body is to something, you know, and that’s what we run into when we give some things a goofy name or a weird name and then something else, the actual name, we set them apart somehow.

I’m just a real believer that you just talk about all parts of the body and they’re all parts of the body. Now, we do have parts of our body that in our particular cultures, some particular cultures, we cover them up. That’s because that’s what our culture has decided to do. That’s what our society has decided to do, but you could go to other societies and they don’t cover up those parts of the body. It’s just a different society, but I’m going to raise you so that you understand the rules, if you will, or the norms of our culture. So if in our culture, we wear clothes or something that covers our bottoms when we go outside, then that’s what we’re all going to do. I’m going to do it, this person’s going to do it, this person’s going to, we’re all going to do it, but if being naked inside the house is fine, then that’s fine. We try to help them understand that in certain societies, there’s going to be certain norms and we’re going to follow those because that’s where we are.

We don’t want anybody to be teased or made fun of or whatever, but it also is just what our culture has decided. I remember when my daughter, who’s now 33, when she went to France, when she was 10, and we did a swap with a family who had another 10 year old and the girl from France came to the United States first for three weeks, and then my daughter and she were going to fly back over there.

So I remember having lots of conversations with her about, now when you get there, we can talk with Dorianna about this, but when you get there, you might find that a lot of the kids that are your age, aren’t wearing swimsuits yet, or are just wearing bottoms and that might be what’s normal there because it’s common and I want you to do whatever you’re comfortable with. If you’re comfortable going how they are, fine. If you’re not, then just let people know that you’re not, and that’s fine too, they won’t care. So I think it stays consistent. with culture and helping kids know that all cultures aren’t the same and that’s a good thing.

Helen Thompson: I agree with you on that. I was brought up that way too. You know, calling the vagina a different name, when they actually do get older and they are talking about sex with their peers, whether they’re 14 or 16 or however old they do that, they’re not going to know what their friend is talking about. They’re going to go , I didn’t know it was called a vagina. My mom always used to say it was called something else. I would have thought that isn’t a good start for a child. Does that make sense?

Tina Schermer Sellers: Oh, absolutely, yeah and it also poses some problems and I think especially for girls, because for boys or, people that have been assigned male at birth and the penis is out front, there are things that can be seen a lot better. We also talk about those parts a little bit easier in lots of cultures, but the vulva is filled with many parts and you’ve got a clitoris, you’ve got a vagina, you’ve got inner and outer lips, you’ve got a whole area and it’s not well seen, right? You can feel it, kids can feel it and that’s wonderful but they don’t really know what they’re feeling unless they hold a mirror up.

So I’m really big on girls in particular, understanding all the parts because If they’re ever touched in a way that they don’t want to be, I want them to be able to name what was touched and how it was touched and I want them to know there’s a difference between your vaginal canal, your vagina, and your vulva, the whole area.

Then when they’re discovering their parts, they’re three years old, they haven’t yet figured out to go use the bedroom or their bathroom. They’re sitting on the couch, they’ve got a blanket over and they’re touching themselves. You can be that is such a wonderful part of your body and I’m so glad that you have noticed it and that you like touching it. However, I’m going to tell you something that you may not remember for a little while, but I’m going to tell you lots of times, that that part of our body, which is wonderful to touch, when we want to touch it, we go to our room or we go to the bathroom and that’s what everyone in our family does.

We all think that’s a wonderful part of our own bodies, but it’s ours and we tend to do it in private. So I’m going to remind you every once in a while to just go into your bedroom or go into the bathroom when you feel like touching that part of you. Again, we’re not making it a really big deal at two and three because they’re not going to remember. We’re just beginning that process of teaching so that by the time they’re four and they have the cognitive capacity to remember things better, then they can start making that decision to go to their room or whatever.

That’s really why I put that book together in that way, so that if you’re not sure what you need to be kind of practicing and working on when they’re toddlers or when they’re preschool or when they’re getting ready for kindergarten or whatever, it’s all right there.

I’m always saying to parents, you don’t have to be an expert. You can just get these books and read the books and reading the books is going to teach you and then it’s going to teach your child too. These books are fun. They’re age appropriate, they’re colorful, they have great characters, you know, and so you’re going to find that you can just be reading and playing along and you’re going to learn and it’s going to help soothe that part of you that’s afraid, because you’re equipping your child to be prepared and that’s awesome.

Helen Thompson: So before we go, tell me a little bit more about your book and how somebody can find it. Cause it sounds like an amazing book for a first time parent.

Tina Schermer Sellers: Yeah, I love it. I made it kind of big format and it’s got like 160 pictures of kids in there and it’s got some of my grandchildren hiding inside of it, different places. It’s a wonderful book and there’s a place for parents to keep notes on their children at those different ages right in it. So you could be like, this happened at this day or whatever. So you can find the book on Amazon and you want to look for the new edition so that you’ll see a big circle in the corner of it that says new edition because every 2 years I try to update the resources at the end of every chapter so that we’re getting the latest stuff that’s out there.

If there’s anything really good that’s been written, I want to put that in there. So, if any of your listeners, can’t afford to get it, I think the paperback is US$24. If you can’t afford to get it, they can DM me through Instagram. I’m at @DrTinaShameless, and I’ll send them a code for getting an audio version of the book, at least, that they can listen to . I want people to be able to get it and that’s true with the other book that I wrote, “Sex, God, and the Conservative Church, Erasing Shame From Sexual Intimacy” and it’s really for people who grew up in a shame based home around bodies and sexuality, and they don’t know how to celebrate their own bodies and their own sexuality and they’re not really even sure how they got ahold of it. It could be because they do know that they were involved with people that had religious backgrounds, or it could be that it was just inside their culture. I mean, it certainly has been true inside the U S culture in the last 50 years.

So, that book too is available on Amazon and I’m happy to send a link if somebody can’t afford it for any reason, but they want to understand how do we get so sex negative and how are these ideas ever propagated and how do they support capitalism as opposed to supporting health and wellness and how do you heal from sexual shame? All that stuff’s in there.

Helen Thompson: Thank you, that sounds good. So if anybody wanted to get in touch with you, how could they go about doing that?

Tina Schermer Sellers: Yeah, they can dm me on Instagram is fine. That’s probably the easiest way to get ahold of me, @DrTinaShameless and then I can just help them from there, point them in directions and, yeah, just happy to be of whatever support I can. I’m always so proud of people. So kind of in awe of people that are trying to change the legacy and give their kids something better and give themselves something better along the way as they’re healing too. You’ll just never regret having done that work for yourself or for the other people that you love in your life. it’s well worth the hard work and emotional work is hard work.

Helen Thompson: Well, thank you for sharing all this on the podcast. I really appreciate your time. So Tina, thank you so much for being here and I’ll put all that information in the show notes as well.

Tina Schermer Sellers: Thank you so much Helen.

Helen Thompson: Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode. I hope you find Dr. Sellers’ insights on raising confident, shame free children as fascinating and empowering as I did. Remember, a little openness and the right language go a long way in supporting our kids healthy development. To dive deeper, check out the episode show notes where you’ll find links to resources we discussed today.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify and share it with a friend and be sure to join us next time when I’ll explore new ways to help you connect with your little one.