Be a Penguin: Mantu Joshi and the Resilient Parent

Kendra: Figuring out a kid with challenges is hard to describe. 

Devon: It was like a Rubik’s cube, but I couldn’t move my hands. 

Kendra: This is life with a child who has ADHD. 

Devon: You know how you just keep turning it and you can eventually match all the colors? So I’m, I’m holding it like he’s a Rubik’s cube and I’m just holding it, and I can’t even twist it to figure the solution out, because I’m like,where do I even start at? 

Kendra: Where to start? It can be demoralizing. For Mantu Joshi, a different metaphor comes to mind. 

Mantu Joshi: I was drowning and then I’ll be honest, I was drowning as a parent. I was overwhelmed. 

Kendra: Today, we’re gonna hang out with Mantu. I really wanted to take the time to let you hear his story more fully because it’s worth it. And because it’s a story about resilience, which is a core idea of this podcast. Mantu has a master’s in divinity and he is a pastor and a chaplain. And he’s the father of three girls. 

Mantu Joshi: This winds back a bit for me, about six or seven years ago. At the time we were caring for two kids with special needs. And we also then ended up having a third child who we didn’t know at the time, but she ended up being dyslexic. But at the time, my, our oldest daughter was about one and a half. She was a real handful and we just decided, you know what? Uh, my spouse was starting to feel pretty frayed.

Kendra: One thing you should know about Mantu’s wife, Heidi. She’s blind. 

Mantu Joshi: And so having a child with the kind of neuro-behavioral issues that was, were going on, while my spouse handled it great it was just harder because now this child was mobile, right, moving around and running. And we just decided, you know, this might be the time for us to change hands. You know, past the baton. And so my spouse became the primary wage earner, and I left, you know, what was my dream job at the time, like so many parents do. And then I became the stay-at-home dad to see what we could do. And I, at the time I had thought that it would be, you know, a year, maybe two years just to kind of help her get her grounding, but I didn’t really understand just the needs that she would have. And then we ended up having another, you know, uh, fostering another child. And in the midst of that, it just became overwhelming. I couldn’t even shower every day, you know. Just, just having five minutes to quick run into the shower was the best that I could do. Like, this is way harder than I could have ever believe.

And I realized that I was way in over my head. 

Kendra: Wow. But this story isn’t going the way you expect. It’s actually the story of how Mantu became a writer. 

Mantu Joshi: My spouse, you know, said to me, you know what? You need to do something. Um, cuz like I can see that you are not making it, you know? And and I had to agree with her. And my spouse turned to me and just said, you know, I think you should write. Uh, you don’t know this about yourself, but you are a writer. And she said, we, I don’t know how we’re gonna do this, but we’re gonna find a way that you can write. And so what we did was we carved out. an hour and a half a week, where I could just go to a coffee shop and write. And we found somebody who could actually watch the kids, which was really difficult to get the respite. And I went to a coffee shop. I ran to a coffee shop so that I would have enough time. And I sat down and wrote for, you know, hour and 15 minutes or whatever I had, and then ran back home to pick up the kids. And I did that every week for, uh, nearly two years.

Kendra: This is A Little Easier. I’m Kendra Wilde. What Mantu Joshi ended up writing, became his book called The Resilient Parent.

Mantu Joshi: And after a couple months, I started to realize that it was becoming something. That the writing was becoming something, and it started to become more of a realization that I was writing for myself, but I was also writing for other parents. Um, And it sounds cheesy, but it was just an act of love. Um, I just, uh, started to imagine other parents and eventually that became a reality in that the kids were able to, uh, go to a nursery school. And I was with other parents of kids with special needs and we met in a Portland coffee shop. So when I started writing from that point on, I just imagined the, that group of parents. And I wrote to them, I wrote things that I couldn’t have said to them directly. You know, cuz we can’t really give each other advice. You know, that’s not really a great way of being empathic. But so many of the questions that I began to ponder with the book were, were real questions that were coming up in our coffee conversations. 

Kendra: And so he wrote about resilience. But what is a resilient parent to Mantu? And what does it have to do with penguins, which is the cover image on Mantu’s book? We’ll get to the penguins in a little bit, but to answer the question about resilience, he again goes back to what he’s learned from his wife. 

Mantu Joshi: Heidi is, you know, just kind of remarkable in her own journey. And she was someone who was, who’s been blind since birth. And because of that, she already had this well of resilience, kind of this, um, mental discipline of knowing when to, to invite voices in and when to shut voices out. She has been a, you know, a teacher professor in, in a medical school and in residencies as a person who’s blind. And when we have this kiddo with special needs, it wasn’t her first rodeo. You know. And so she kind of knew and kind of helped me and we began to kind of process with each other. She kind of knew, um, What it takes to have this kind of framing. I call it a disability frame. 

Kendra: “A disability frame.” What does Mantu mean?

Mantu Joshi: Where we’re able to kind of see the disability and rather than to think of that as abnormal. But to begin to say, no, this is our normal, this is normal for us and everybody else who’s saying that this is abnormal, that we’re weirdos, you know, or that we’re just not doing it right, that we don’t have to listen to those people. We can find the people who get it. You know, like for instance, she has people who are blind, who get it. Sometimes those of us who are sighted, we don’t understand that they can do whatever the heck they wanna do. They’re just gonna do it completely differently. That, that same thing that we can do this parenting thing, but we’re gonna have to do it differently.

Kendra: Mantu says he began his life as a stay-at-home parent with completely the wrong idea about resilience. 

Mantu Joshi: So it’s basically, you’re gonna be able to figure this thing out, despite the fact that you have all these stressors coming at you all, all the while. And most of us, you know, I think, uh, at least I was thinking of resilience in those terms.

Right. This is something I can muscle through. I can power through. I can be the super parent, you know, I, I can put on the Cape, here we go. 

Kendra: Burn me out. Burn me out. Yes. 

Mantu Joshi: Yes. I’m gonna, I’m gonna do everything I can to fix this child or these children. Uh, I’m gonna do it. And one of the aha’s that I, for me was that I began to realize that that was killing me. And, uh, research kind of shift has shifted since that time to really say that resilience is, is not so much something that you just work through. And the way that I say it is resilience is a process of growth and development through adversity. It’s it’s adaptation. It’s a way that we, that we change and we allow ourselves to change.

Kendra: Okay. So that brings us finally to the penguins. What’s the penguin thing?

Mantu Joshi: When we were doing the resilient parent, our, my publisher, um, sent me a copy of the, the cover. And originally the copy of the cover that they gave me was, a rubber band ball. Because the idea was that resilience would be that we’d snap back, that we would bounce back.

And I came back to him. I said, absolutely not. Because that is the opposite of what we are teaching here. You know, what we are sharing is that we can’t bounce back. That’s the point, you know, that we are going to become different people than we were before. And we’ll never go back. 

So the cover has a penguin on it. And that was because I had asked and my sister actually came up with this. When I said the rubber bouncing ball is not gonna work, I need another image. And my sister came up with this penguin, and it was because she was thinking, you know, penguins are kind of famous for often having the male who stays with the egg and keeps the egg warm. And since I was a stay-at-home dad, she thought that would be a great, uh, image. But for me, it was even more so that penguins are birds that have learned to fly underwater. And so for me, this idea that an animal could, instead of flying through the air could fly through frigid cold Arctic water. And when you see them underwater, you can see they are flying. They’re not just swimming. They are flying underwater, and it’s one of the most beautiful things to watch. And they’re just as beautiful as the birds in the air, but they’re in this place where every other creature could not possibly survive, but they’ve adapted. And for me, it was Kendra, it was such a beautiful image of what I think parents and parenting kids with special needs can be, you know, that we can still fly. We just have to learn how to do it sometimes underwater.

Kendra: So what Mantu is teaching us is that resilience isn’t about returning to the same normal as before. It’s about accepting our new normal. Here’s another way to think about it. 

Mantu Joshi: I was standing by a traffic circle, uh, not too long ago. And I was watching the cars kind of go around in circles and it, uh, some, you know, some people call round them roundabouts. Most of us who are Americans are completely confused when we get into a traffic circle, cause we’re like, why is this in our country? What happened? You know? And we get into the traffic circle and we’re trying to figure it out and our instinct when we get into a traffic circle is to go around and come back out the way we came in. And so that’s why it’s so difficult, um, for, in a traffic circle. But most of us know that the whole point of a traffic circle is to come in one way and then to go out a different way. But most of us, and I think, especially those of us who are parents, um, with, with kids, with, you know, any kind of neuro-behavioral issues or any kind of differences, most of us are trying to go into our situation as parents and come out as the same person. You know?

And so we’re like the person going around the roundabout and we’re going around and around and round and around. And we’re driving ourselves crazy, cuz we’re like, I have to go out the same way I came in. But if we would just accept that we are going to need to adapt. We’re gonna have to become a different person. That there is a letting go of where we came in and there’s a new place that we’re gonna be coming out. If we could just get to that point of acceptance so much would fall into place. 

Kendra: Yeah, I love that, that metaphor, because it’s true. I think a lot of people think of a bouncing ball as the, as the resilience metaphor. Right. Just bounce right back to where you were as soon as you get everything back in order. 

Mantu Joshi: And yeah, we’ll, we’ll bounce back. And for many people that’s, you know, that realization is a grief process. That we are not going to have the same careers necessarily. Um, or at least they may take a different shape. Um, they may, there may be some pause buttons that we weren’t expecting. Um, you know, the literature I’m sure, but there’s so many people whose partnerships and marriages sometimes do not survive. And so there’s, there’s pieces of grief. Um, And ironically, just, just the fact that we share that with each other, as parents, um, can be so healing. To say, yeah, you know, I’m, I am, this pain is real. And amazingly it doesn’t leave us in that pain place. It leads us to another place in the traffic circle. And we’re willing when we’re willing to enter into that grief. 

Kendra: So I’m really intrigued by your training as a chaplain. How did some of that experience impact your perspective?

Mantu Joshi: You know, so much of what I learned as a chaplain was not how to kind of, you know, you think that you’re gonna come in, you’re gonna fix people’s grief, you’re gonna fix people’s pain. That’s that’s what we think of when we go into the training. And when I actually was trained, I began to realize that so much of the training is fixing ourselves, as practitioners. Because coming into a room where people are having the worst day of their lives and being calm. Being centered, being ready to help those people to engage with whatever they’re dealing with. Um, something that’s incredibly dysregulating. Their whole world’s been turned upside down. And to have those skills, to be your best self and to walk into that room. To be that moment of calm. I went – within an hour – I met with a family that had literally their house had been hit by a tornado. Went from that to another room where someone had, had just, um, lost a child. Went from that to somebody, um, who had permanent burns. I worked in the burn unit as well. And was dealing with excruciating pain. Right. And as somebody who’s coming in to help with people, all of those traumas begin to kind of just come right into your body. There’s just no way around it. And so some of our training was how do you manage, you know, within an hour, this much stress at once?

I began to realize that that training was actually helping me as a parent. 

Kendra: Oh, I can see, I can imagine in so many ways. Wow.

Mantu Joshi: Well, it began to realize that it was so much more about presence. You know, being, being present with them. Um, in the book, I talked about a time where my daughter just couldn’t couldn’t sleep very well. And I, we kept trying to fix things. And I began to realize that at some point that I, that she just needed me to be present with her. And our big breakthrough was when I just got her, um, you know, just kind of got her bean bag and, and crawled up on the floor and just said, I will be here with you. And you know, that was straight out of the chaplaincy training, of being able to just be with people, because sometimes that’s all people need to begin to find themselves to regulate and to begin to find their own resilience. In the midst of things. 

Kendra: Yeah. That’s how do you stay calm in the heat of the moment? What are your sort of go-to in the moment, I’ll call it self-care strategies, but coping strategies for, for regulating yourself? 

Mantu Joshi: Well, I have some pretty good, you know, cheats for lack of better word, you know, things, ways to kind of quickly deal. Um, some of those things I learned as a chaplain actually, Where I had – and the things that we did are, are quite simple. Really. Um, very often we would have something, some of us would have something that was symbolic in our pockets. Of wholeness and wellness. Um, for me, I had the image of the penguin. I actually had a penguin key chain in my pocket at times, or just something that would remind me of wholeness. And what that does for our bodies is that when we kind of hold or, touch and we’re kind of aware of sensory-wise of, of that object, it snaps us into the present. And so we’re not sort of living into the trauma of where we just were. For the chaplain is literally the room where I just was. I’m no longer there, I am here. And I’m not yet at the next room yet.I’m walking in between, and I’m taking a moment. You, you know, I’m breathing. And sensory-wise, I’m aware of my body, or I’m aware of something that I’m holding and what it feels like. And parents can do this too. You know, just having, having an object, a key chain, something in their pockets that you just kind of hold onto and just say, okay, that feels smooth. That feels shiny. That feels good in my hand. It feels cold today. Whatever it is you just that little observation snaps us into the present and we’re not forecasting all the bad things that are happening in the future.

How we’re gonna problem solve, how we’re gonna fix this. Right? Cause we’re fixers as parents, uh, right. We’re fixers. We think that we’re gonna come in and save the day again and again. And by having something that tears us away from solving the problem and snaps us into the present. And just that little act of doing that takes us out of the trauma.

Sarah: So my name is Sarah and, um, I have two children, I think for us, our parenting journey started as many parenting journeys do. Our daughter hit all the milestones she needed to. You assume that a second pregnancy’s gonna go the same. The second child’s gonna be similar. And that’s just not what happened.

Kendra: Sarah’s son was initially diagnosed at the age of three with what was then called “PDD-NOS” – pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified. It was a catchall diagnosis that’s not used anymore, but it describes someone who’s on the autism spectrum. 

Sarah: So I, I, yeah, he, he, he’s always been a little bit trickier, some breathing instances when he was very young, um, one very severe, um, which we attribute to some of the delay, um, But, but just a totally, totally different experience. I think at the initial diagnosis there was that, that sadness. We weren’t shocked. I can’t claim that, you know, we expected, we expected it. Um, but I think, yeah, there’s that sadness that goes along with it. I think there’s that changing and sounds cliche, but you have these expectations for your child and, and maybe what they’re gonna become and what their life is gonna be like. And then all of a sudden, you think that’s all out the window. I mean, it’s gonna be okay. But it’s gonna be different than what you thought it was gonna be. 

Kendra: The diagnosis pushed her family into unknown territory. 

Sarah: There’s no guidebook. I, I think people say, oh, you know when asked, oh, would you like a boy or a girl? Well, it doesn’t matter as long as the baby’s healthy. But no one tells you what to do if the baby is not healthy. It’s always hard to hear. Even now at 12 to hear all the things that he has trouble with. All the things that are hard for him. all the things that are gonna make his life more difficult, I think is crushing to a parent because you don’t want your child to have to go through any of that.

Kendra: Even navigating low stakes, everyday things can be unpredictable and challenging. 

Sarah: And so I think there is that fear of judgment, you know, will my child be judged unfairly because of their invisible disability? Will I be judged and, and you know, or even is the situation just not gonna work? I mean, you know, can I take my son to a playground and it’s just sensory overload and is it even worth it? You know, is it even worth it to put us through this? Will I have to drag him kicking and screaming. I mean, you know, there’s all of those sort of anxieties and and fears that run through your head. And I think sometimes, especially earlier on, it was easier to say like, oh, we’re just not gonna go. Like, we’re gonna, we’re gonna sit this one out or we’re just not up for it today. And I think there are some times when that’s okay. And I think there’s other times where you have to push. And I think you have to push for yourself and I think you have to push for your child. 

Kendra: And so they had to adapt. As Mantu would say, they had to learn to fly underwater. 

Sarah: You know, I think we’ve just learned so so much, through him and because of, because of his diagnosis. I think, you know, yes. Would, I love things to be easier for him? Of course, I would love for the world to be an easier place for him to be. Um, but at the same time I wouldn’t change his personality. I love his truthfulness. I love his openness. Um, he’s very, very curious and very kind. And of course, like any child he’ll drive me absolutely crazy. Um, But at the end of the day, he’s a lot of, you know, just so many good qualities. And I think for us, he’s made us sort of a stronger family, because we’ve had to sort of look at these adversities and, and figure things out. 

Kendra: And that’s not to say that process was easy. 

Sarah: I was the more emotional one. And my husband is very pragmatic and he would just say to me, he’s gonna be whatever his version of fine is, because we’re gonna make that so. So whatever fine looks like for him, that’s our goal. Um, and that was early on. And I think that’s kind of been our mantra all along. Like we’re capable, we’ll learn and, and we’ll figure it out, but whatever his version of fine is, has to be what’s right for him. There’s gonna be some, you know, normalcy that we create out of all of this. It’s just gonna be different than what we thought.

Kendra: You might still feel like reframing in this way in your own life, accepting your new normal is far off. So I wanted to explore some tools you can use, particularly if your kid’s behavior is really challenging. 

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart: So, uh, I’m Dr. Ann,-Louise Lockhart. I’m a child and pediatric psychologist and parent coach. 

Kendra: Dr. Lockhart has a different term for reframing. She calls it the parent mindset. 

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart: So if your parent mindset is “well, I just want my kids to just be quiet, be quiet and be obedient. And that’s all I wanna do,” then you’re going to see that any behavior that deviates from that is going to be colored by that lens. Because, oh, then I must be a bad parent or I must have bad kids, cuz they’re not doing X. They’re not being quiet. 

Kendra: Here’s how she coaches parents in her practice who are struggling with serious behavioral issues.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart: It’s not about finding new, fresh ways to punish your kid. It’s about you identifying what is your mindset about your child. So if you view your child as rude and manipulative and trying to, you know, work one over on you and destroy your home and steal your looks. Like if you’re looking at them from that perspective, then yeah, everything they do is gonna be annoying to you. That’s your parent mindset. This kid is annoying. But if you can see them from a different perspective, like, oh, my kid wants to connect with me. Or my kid wants attention. My kid needs recognition. They need to feel important. Then we can see that quote, “annoying behavior” as a plea for connection. A plea for being known or seen or understood.

Kendra: And she says in her experience, that shift really works. 

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart: I found that when parents can then shift their mindset, they’ll literally come back the next week and say, oh, I think we’re good. I think we’re good. And I said, oh, things got better. They’re like, no, I got better. That’s the key. It’s it’s, you know, your kid isn’t gonna automatically get better because you shift your mindset, but it’s you seeing them differently. That’s what changes. And then things do become more peaceful. Cuz then you’re not nagging them and bickering all the time and correcting them all the time. It makes it peaceful. The home becomes more harmonious.

One of the keys to changing your mindset is paying attention to your own needs, as well as those of your kids.

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart: I have so many, especially moms, who come in and they feel bad because they don’t wanna, like, play with their kids. Or they don’t wanna hang out with their kids or, um, that they yell at their child and they, and then they feel like a bad parent now because they were impatient. But then another day the child will do the same behavior and they’re super sweet and they think it’s hilarious. And I’m like, well, it’s not that your kid is bad or that you’re a bad parent. It’s just that it sounds like you had different needs that were met or not met on different days, which is what happens. So on days when you were rested and ate well, and maybe had some fun time to yourself, maybe when your kid was making farting noises you thought that was hilarious. But when you were working hard, didn’t get any rest, and the house is a wreck, and they made the farting noises, now you’re yelling at them and telling them to be mature.The behavior didn’t change. It’s just your perspective changed. 

Kendra: Yeah. And now they’re confused.  

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart: Right now they’re confused. They’re like, wait, mom, you just thought that was hilarious last week. What’s your problem today? 

Kendra: But is she telling us that our kids never need to be corrected? We should just let them behave however they want?

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart: I think it all comes down to the same thing, is that we have to be able to accept our kid where they’re at. Because if you don’t, you run the risk of then destroying a relationship with them because then everything becomes contingent on good behavior. If you stop sassing me, then I will connect with you. If you don’t speak out of the house, then I will spend time with you. If you don’t… it’s like we have all these, if this, then I will be the parent you need me to be. And we make all these things contingent on having a positive relationship with them. Because a lot of times parents think, well, I’m rewarding them if I spend time with them, if I play with them, if I hang out with them. And I’m saying their behavior’s okay. I’m like, no, you’re not. You’re saying that I still accept you and I still adore you as a person, although I don’t really like your choices right now. 

Kendra: She says parental love and acceptance is crucial. Even for kids whose behavior has reached an extreme, maybe even more so, right? 

Dr. Ann-Louise Lockhart: I’ve met with those kids and what they tell – The kids with oppositional defiant disorder, the kids who were juvie, the kids who were on drugs, and then they’re trying to get their life together. The thing that they’re always saying is this need for wanting to just be loved and accepted by their parent. They know they’re messing up. They know that they’re not being the best kid. They know this already. Like they beat themselves up enough already. They know that. But when they get that additional insult of a rejection from their parent, after all that stuff that they’ve done, it’s heartbreaking for them. And so the thing that’s healing is that connection. That’s the major thing that’s healing for them. kKnowing that my family has my back. Even through all of my decisions, all throughout my struggles. That’s what kids ultimately need from their parent. 

Kendra: This dovetails so well with what Mantu Joshi’s been telling us about our need to pay more attention to ourselves and our mindset.

Mantu Joshi: So often we try to do everything we can to fix our child, fix our child. And we totally miss that the best thing we can do to fix our child is is ourselves not be depressed and overwhelmed, and, uh, being in these unhealthy places that we find ourselves in. If we can be in a healthy place, that changes outcome. That changes the whole ball game. But it, we don’t think of it because we’re in the midst of it. And it just, you know, all we can think about is, “I just need to fix my kids so that they can be livable,” but I … If we’re honest and real. I just wanna be able to live with this child and not feel like I’m pulling my hair out all the time.

You know, the paradox is, is, is really that when we begin to kind of understand ourselves, when we begin to kind of pull ourselves out of depression, when we begin to kind of find our own wholeness, our wellness, that takes care of so many things. 

Kendra: I just have to react to that. I love how he talks about paying attention to our own wellness. Mantu’s really emphasizing this theme that we’ve heard over and over about how connected we are to our whole family. So next time on A Little Easier, we’re going to talk even more about the family system. Having a child struggle affects everyone. It can impact the parenting partnership and it can impact brothers and sisters too. And that’s what we’re gonna dig into

Family Matters in our next episode. But first of course, we’ll take a break for a micro action moment. Who better to give us a moment of mindfulness than Mantu Joshi?

Mantu Joshi: The biggest thing that I might say to people is, um, if, if there be any hope in all of this, is that we don’t have to solve the puzzle. Um, so much of our energy goes into seeing if we can just fix our kids in time, before they become adults. Or if we can just fix them in time before we have to do this next, um, event, you know, the next family get together. Um, we don’t have to solve the puzzle. It’s, it’s not a Rubik’s cube, where we have to get all the colors on the right side. Our Rubik’s cube is gonna be colorful. It’s gonna be mixed full of colors. And rather than trying to solve it and try to get our life back to the way it was, um, it’s okay for the colors to be mixed up. You’re going to be okay. Um, this doesn’t feel like it could ever be normal, but it will be. You’re gonna be okay. This new normal will come. Um, and the solving, the solving does not have to happen. At least not today.