Helping parents “quit the chaos” through mindfulness
In this episode we talk to Nikki Wilson, Founding Mother Zen at 10 of Zen, with some top tips to help parents ‘quit the chaos’ through
About our hosts:
Sophia
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiagiblin/
A creative entrepreneur who focuses on ways to tackle the root of children’s mental health through play and secure relationships. Due to her own challenging experiences in childhood, Sophia went on to establish a thriving Play & Creative Arts Therapy charity to support other children who have experienced trauma. Her focus is on helping therapists, businesses and charities have more of an impact for children and families that they work with through coaching, strategy, fundraising and mentoring.
Nicole
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcdonnellnicole/
Nicole is a mum to two young boys, who also has over 20 years of brand marketing experience. She is a previous Chair Trustee at Clear Sky Charity and has past experience on the Ella’s Kitchen board. Her roles have included Marketing Director, Head of Ella’s-ness, Global Brand Director with responsibility of creating and building one brand inside and out – including the wellbeing and culture of the team. Nicole was instrumental in growing Ella’s into a multi-million pound international business, driven by the mission of creating healthy children.
About Treasure Time
Our vision is to drive connected, happy parent-child relationships, for the benefit of the whole family. Our mission and passion is to educate parents in how to become happy, mindful and confident in connecting with their own children through play.
About our guest
Nikki Wilson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikki-wilson-9571086/
Nikki is the founder of 10 of zen – a new social business providing mindfulness tools and training to help mums to stress less and love more. Nikki focuses on soundbite sessions lasting 10 minutes or less, covering hots topics like how to slow down and manage big emotions. I run a zen squad, train professionals working with women and deliver regular workshops UK-wide. Did you know that Nikki is also leading the growth of Make Birth Better – a unique collective of parents and professionals dedicated to ending suffering from birth trauma, who focus on campaigning, education and research.
Resources
Treasure Time digital course for parents
Free meditation tools from 10 of Zen
Value bombs and tweetables:
– The way I like to describe mindfulness is that mindfulness is the art or the practice of becoming more aware of our present moment experience and learning to welcome what we find with a kind and open heart – Nikki
– What I thought was super fascinating when I was doing my master’s research was that parenting mindfulness can break that transmission of trauma and insecure attachments. So the studies show that parents who practice mindfulness and presence can give, give it to them that sense of security, which impact down the generations which is so incredible – Sophia
– It was during those treasure time play sessions that I recognized that I didn’t ever give myself time to just be – Nicole
– I started to build in 10 minutes meditation a day… And it’s exactly what you were saying Nikki it’s the one thing that seems to be perfect in the toolkit, it just resets me and something just works – Nicole
– So the only way to create lasting change in healthy habits is to start really, really small. So I’m talking about rather than saying I’m going to meditate every day for the next 20 days, start with setting an intention to take three deep breaths when you wake up in the morning so ideally piggybacking something, so maybe my commitment is going to be to savour the flavour of my cup of coffee every day. My commitment is going to be to walk a bit more slowly between the moment or I get off the train into my office. To start with small realistic take that piggyback on something they are already doing. That is the best quick fire way to put a mark in the ground around a behavioural habit – Nikki
– We’re always saying, “Let your child be your play teacher”. So now we can let our children be our mindfulness teachers, too. We can learn so much from them – Sophia
Keywords
Mindfulness meditation parents habit day zen sit feel brain podcast life mum help fall
Shownotes
Sophia
Hey, it’s Sophia,
and Nicole.
Sophia
Welcome to the Treasure Time Podcast Growing Up Happy, today we have a very special guest. We’re so happy to introduce the wonderful Nikki Wilson. Nikki is a mindfulness coach and founder of the social business 10 of Zen 10 of Zen provides mindfulness training to mums so that they can stress less and love more. Hi, Nikki, so nice to see you.
Nikki
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Nicole
On Nikki, we’re so happy to have you here. And there are some really beautiful links between treasure time play and mindfulness for mums. But the both of them ask you to kind of tune into the moment and be present. So can you tell us Nicky a little bit about your journey to start up 10 of zen, and what actually is mindfulness?
Nikki
Yeah okay, brilliant. Of course I can. It would be a pleasure. So I’ll answer the second question first, if that’s okay, so generally speaking, most mindfulness teachers will give a similar interpretation. But the way I like to describe mindfulness is that mindfulness is the art or the practice of becoming more aware of our present moment experience and learning to welcome what we find with a kind and open heart. And that second part is really such a fundamental part of the practice, in my humble opinion, and you know, it can be split in two ways. Either it can be that the actual seated meditation practice or, or and or integrating mindfulness activities into your everyday life, ideally, both. And you’ll certainly find it easier to integrate into your life if you’re doing the sitting down stuff as well. So in terms of my journey, in a nutshell it’s a hard one. I do like to take people all the way back, you know, a small number of 36 years because it is relevant to the journey but in summary, I come from a long line of anxious souls. So that’s the kind of the nature part of things. And then from a nurture perspective, I grew up in a home where there was a lot of difficulty. My parents were in a very unhappy marriage. We lost my brother when he was just four. So there was a lot of turmoil in my early years. And throughout my teens, I basically developed this kind of relationship with stress, which I was kind of familiar with although at that stage didn’t really know what stress was. And I kind of developed this almost kind of addiction to doing what some writers on stress call this kind of challenger response. So I was always the first to put my hand up was always a joiner in-er kind of quickly fell into that overachiever kind of category. So in many ways, my relationship with stress and trauma actually didn’t hold me back in so much as you know, I never fell apart into 55 million pieces and age 28 became the kind of young CEO of an organization called Wings for Life, grew that into a very successful charity. And then I became a mum. And like so many of us something crazy happens where you’re like past world and your present well just collide, like some cataclysmic collision, at least for some of us anyway. And I had a very difficult birth experience like so many people do. And in that process, had a moment or a few hours where I definitely thought it was my time to tap out, so to pass away and to leave my very new family. And what that triggered in me was, though I didn’t know at the time was postnatal PTSD. So basically, I went from you know, that kind of young, capable in inverted commas, whatever that means CEO to leave my own bedroom without having a panic attack, in fact, not even be able to look out the window, because everything was too stimulating and everything was highly sensitized. So basically, I would say my life hit an all time low. And I definitely, you know, those two missions around stressing less than loving more are really born for me out of that stage in my life where my stress response was off the roof I’ve never experienced anything like it. And my kind of love stuff as I talked about, it was totally rock bottom. So in the process of putting my life back together, I leant on lots of different tools. And they often talk about makeup, medication, meditation as being the three things I went on especially hard especially in my return to work a number of months later, and basically the meditation out of everything that I’ve sat with over the last six years the meditation has stuck as a habit because it is and continues to be one of the most reliable things in my wellness toolkit that helps me to essentially often talk about kind of shifting gears to take my mind and offer my body from fifth, at least on into third occasion to second anyways, never into first. I’m not sure I can do first. But really, that’s really where it came about. So we started to take this regular 10 minutes of mindfulness. My son and my husband started saying, oh, Mum, mommy’s gone for that 10 of zen again, and then a couple of years ago, I thought, you know what, I love this stuff so much that I want to found this as a business and start sharing 10 of zen with others. So that’s how I’ve got to where I am today.
Sophia
Thank you, Nikki. Gosh, what an incredible journey. You’ve had and you know, we’re I think we really speak the same language when we’re talking about trauma and coming out the other end of it as an adult, if you’ve got unprocessed stuff out, well, how also you can turn something really difficult into something so positive for other people. I really relate to your story. And something that I think is really fascinating and you know, I’ve become a little bit obsessed with the finding out what it is in childhood that makes a real difference. What is it that makes children grow up healthy and happy. And what I kept coming back to was this parent child relationship, and the security of attachment between parents and children that has such positive outcomes later in life. What I thought was super fascinating when I was doing my master’s research was that parenting mindfulness can break that transmission of trauma and insecure attachments. So the studies show that parents who practice mindfulness and presence can give, give it to them that sense of security, which impact down the generations which is so incredible. You If we think about an intervention that’s really early an early intervention and will make a difference mindfulness is exactly that. And that we talked on this podcast before about kind of parenting from your own parenting blueprint and doing things automatically. We don’t even know where it’s coming from sometimes. And, you know, we might hear our own parents, words coming out of our mouth. And, you know, that tends to be the default, but it’s entirely possible to change that when we reflect and become aware of our behaviour. So what I think’s amazing about that is even if you’ve had a rocky start yourself, you don’t have to give that experience to children. But I’d be really interested to know, have you found that practicing mindfulness has changed your relationships at home?
Nikki
Hmm, really interesting. Yeah. Thank you. And I probably feel like I need to pay dues to my mum at this point. And I would say that I basically, you know, strongly believe that the reason that I’ve never totally lost my I don’t know what a polite way of saying would be but you know what I mean because she was it continues to be an incredibly natural parent and you know, she was such a strong source of security for me growing up. So I have to say that that helps in terms of how I feel in my kind of comfort zone with parenting. Really interesting in terms of those relationships at home. The first thing that comes to mind is the banter actually, the banter that my husband gives me around all things mindfulness, because he is by no means a Zen geek. But in terms of our relationship, although I’ve never actually said this to him what it prompted in me there was really realising that often I’m not really listening to what he’s saying. And you know, understanding that the more you show interest in deep listening and your partner, the more that they will do the same to you and I’ve made a very deliberate shift in in our conversations to realize or Nikki you’re doing that thing where you’re still thinking about something else and try and draw myself back in and ask him really meaningful questions. And so it’s really helped me that way. And then with the kids, I mean, so many different things I would say it’s helped me to recognize in similar way to my husband that there’s a theme here where my mind is very distracted. And to note that and to actively try and shift it where I can it’s definitely helped me to sit with the more challenging emotions that tough stuff you know, the natural emotions that come up, be it tiredness be it anger, be it that, that sense of letting go and needing to live with change. And then one of my favourite things actually is what I often call this, this idea of banking the best bits. So when I’m in a more mindful state with my kids I feel able to hone in on the smaller details. And notice the small things that that that that matter the most, you know, little things like the colour of their eyebrows and the little hairs above the top of their lips or the different shades of colour in their hair or whatever that might be but those little things are the things I tried actively notice as much as I can.
Sophia
So lovely actually that’s something we talked about in treasure time and you know, that sort of that that really noticing and then reflecting it back to them as well. Really lets children feel like “I am seen.” Which is so lovely. Thank you for sharing that.
Nicole
Yeah, no, thank you so much, Nikki. There’s so much of what you’ve said is really resonated with me definitely that you know, operating at that gear five and meditation bringing me back down to probably a three or two I’m very similar to you don’t think I operate or can operate not yet anyway in first gear, but I actually started doing the treasure time course and everything Sophia taught me before I got into the meditation, which is really interesting because it was when I was able to be present with my boys, Callum and Harrison in those play sessions during those treasure time play sessions that I recognized that I didn’t ever give myself time to just be. And there was a few moments where I dropped him off at school and I sat on my sofa in the lounge and I thought gosh, we’ve been in this house for a few years and I don’t recall a time I’ve sat on the sofa during the day ever and actually paused and had any time for reflection because I know Just operating on 100 so I definitely struggled to kind of sit on my hands and I was in the habit of, you know, long lists achieving lots during etcetera and so that transition to treasure time play at first I found it really hard to sit on my hands and just observe. Then I started that I built in 10 minutes meditation a day. And I’m now actually on just over 220 days straight doing it every day. And it is my it’s exactly what you were saying that Nikki is the one thing that seems to be perfect in the toolkit that gives me it just resets me and something just works. I don’t really understand enough about the science behind why it works, but it does really work for me and the bit that you said that really, really put a sparkle in my eye, was noticing all those little things about your kids. And I said to Sophia that treasure time and meditation for me as a combo I feel like I’ve, I almost missed that early years, to be honest. And I really see them now, for them, not just for these two boys that live in my life, but I know see who Callum and Harrison are. And I’m not trying to change or control what I see I’m trying to enjoy that relationship and make the most out of that relationship. And that’s definitely a gear shift. That I don’t think without treasure time and meditation, I would have been able to have achieved, so it has been a journey. What advice which you know that would you specific to my experience there. But look, looking at everything you’ve gone through in your journey. What advice would you give to parents about practically fitting this team into say that the working day you know the reality when they’re juggling so many different priorities? It’s certainly taken me along quite a long time to make it work for me, do you have any specific advice that would help because we do get a lot of, I’m already I’m already so frazzled I can’t fit another thing and what do you mean? You know, and it’s how do you had you tap into that?
Nikki
Yeah, really good question. And you hear that a lot around, you know, it just another thing to do. And obviously, the likes of headspace and others will say something like I know one of the pop ups I had on there once or something along the lines of rather than thinking of it is something else to do consider it as the one time of day where you don’t have to do anything at all. Although I have to say that the way I relate to it more is that it is something I have to do. Its that kind of thing for me a lot. I could talk for hours on that topic, but there’s a few little nuggets, I would say is, first of all, we all fall into quite clear categories around how we as personalities will relate to habits. So it sounds to me, Nicole, I know I’m what an author called Gretchen Rubin would call an upholder. And I think you’re probably the same Nicole. But that’s one of four types. Okay, there. There are many others in there too. So I think it’s questioner, rebel, I can’t remember what the other one is.
Sophia
I’m a rebel!
Nicole
Yeah okay
Nicole
Sophia’s identified straightaway!
Sophia
Yeah I did the quiz!
Nikki
Yeah, you did the quiz. Okay, so “they’ve told me do it. I’m not gonna bloody do it.” That’s that kind of rebel you know, you’re less likely to do something the more someone tells you to do. And I think it’s so important that we open up to that knowledge about ourselves because it’s very easy for us to fall quickly into that comparison trap around this work think oh but you know, Nicole has done 220 days and I can’t do one, oh lordy me you know. So understand a little bit more about how you relate to your habits and start with a really really, really realistic goal. My best advice to parents is a ‘catch it when you can’ philosophy most of us don’t have a life which affords the ability to perhaps sign off try I’ve actually tried this you know, setting the alarm getting up extra early try and fit that in. That doesn’t work for me sleep is actually more important than meditation in that in that rank.
Nicole
Yes totally agree.
Nikki
Yeah. So look for your window. I take my ten of zen and in the car before I’ll, you know if ever arrive early for school pickup or pick up from the child minder, I’ll take it in between meetings if there’s a little slot, I used to always take it on my commute when I was going into London. And I will look for the first free window. So interesting on a Monday, it nearly always falls at the beginning of my work day, because I’m in, you know, week one of the week, by the end of the week. I’m literally like, Oh, you know, it’s Friday afternoon. I still haven’t taken it. Sometimes I’ll sit down on my cushion in the middle of the lounge with the kids around me. Because it’s more important that they see me doing it and that it gets done than it is me waiting for that tranquil moment where all everything is in place. Okay, so that’s always my best advice to people.
Nicole
It is so true that good enough moment, it doesn’t have to be perfect.
Nikki
Yes! It doesn’t have to be perfect, that is really fascinating. Actually, just as an experiment just sitting on the floor in the middle of your kids. They do start ignoring you after a little while after they climb to top your head. But the other thing, which is science based the case of this is from the work of a behavioural scientist called BJ Fogg and he talks about this idea of starting stupid small. So the only way to create lasting change in healthy habits is to start really, really small. So I’m talking about rather than saying I’m going to meditate every day for the next 20 days, start with setting an intention to take three deep breaths when you wake up in the morning so ideally piggybacking something, so maybe it’s my commitment is going to be to savour the flavour of my cup of coffee every day. My commitment is going to be to walk a bit more slowly between the moment or I get off the train into my office. To start with small realistic take that piggyback on something they are already doing. That is the best quick fire way to put a mark in the ground around a behavioural habit.
Nicole
Ah that’s excellent Nikki, that sort of how it definitely happened for me because it’s taken me it took me probably, you know a good 12 months before it became a habit and it was I’m going to try doing it when I brush my teeth, no it’s not happening in the morning I’m going to try to do here for me ended up being when I dropped the kids at school and I could drive home. So a 10 minute drive. It’s not perfect to do it when you’re driving, but actually, it was better than not doing it at all. And then eventually I found a space where it was helping me enough to carve out time but it you know it was it was not an overnight thing these habits
Nikki
That’s the science the call and also you know to drop a bombshell. You’re gonna fall off the Zen train love it’s gonna happen. 220 days I don’t know what it’ll do to you when you fall off? We all do!
Nicole
Do you think I’ll be stressing about it, that’s sort of my irony
Nikki
yes you will be you will be. That’s I guess sometimes the things that I don’t like about the apps is they’ve made it a very kind of westernized, individualized kind of style. You know that holding you to account on the number of days it’s kind of it works because they’re trying to tap into to that sense of, of accountability to an app. But ultimately, you know, we need to talk about the fact that it is hard, it is hard to maintain a habit.
Nicole
I’ll be phoning you when I fall off the wagon!
Nikki
You can! That’s what I like to do is help people back on the zen train
Nicole
That’s brilliant. Absolutely love it.
Sophia
So we touched a little bit there on the science of meditation and mindfulness but what Is the science, does meditation actually change the brain in any way?
Nikki
Yes, I think the best way to this, there’s a couple of important things. First of all, we have to be very cautious of what I call zen wash. So everyone loves a headline about how you know it’s transformed the neurology of their brain so on, there is no getting away from the fact that the more hours you sit and meditate, the greater the change within your brain. And we know that now from science so the monks and the Yogi’s the people living a spiritual way of life will have fundamentally changed the structures in their brain. In a way, that’s someone that taps in to, let’s even say my Zen squad, like once a week that brain change won’t necessarily have occurred yet. However, what we know is there’s a number of processes that occur both in the brain and throughout the body. So the best way is to just do an actual little demo. So let’s start with A, which is awareness. And what I’d like you to do, just as you’re listening, is to just make your awareness kind of wide and receptive. And I’d like you to just do a 180 with your head, okay? And what you’re trying to do is just notice this room or this space around you. And in particular, it’s always really helpful to look for the light and the shade and look for spaces where you perhaps see some shadows being cast or the light falling in an interesting way. So what happens when we purposefully direct our attention in this way, is what we’re doing is we’re shifting ourselves out of our limbic brain where your amygdala sits, yeah, the fear centre and you’re moving yourself more into your prefrontal cortex, the space which is essentially like the conductor for our brains. It’s the clever bit is the wise bit Is the rational bit. It really is the reason or one of the reasons new from the kind of neurological perspective that you feel that gearshift Nicole, because you’ve taken yourself out of the stress centre and into your frontal brain. Okay. So the next thing to do is to take a really good couple of purposeful breaths for me. And if you can see if you can make your out breath long and smooth and try and just breathe out for a bit longer than you breathe in, almost until you can feel those tummy muscles contract. What’s happening as we take a few of those purposeful breaths and this time, we’re talking more about the nervous system. So when we regulate our breathing, and especially when we deliberately elongate that out breath, we’re tapping into our parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system. So that’s opposite to the stress centre. And the sympathetic nervous system is where your rest and digest system sits and your Vegas nerve that runs from the base of the head down to the down through the spine, into the diaphragm. Basically, as you slow your breath, you are sending messages, particularly to your heart to slow down. That’s one of the reasons that you get a greater sense of calm often. And then the last thing because you know, I love the love stuff. So just rub your hands together for a moment creates a bit of warmth in the hand, and then just place one hand or two over that heart centre. And all I want you to do just for a moment is just to notice and feel that connection. Between the hand and the heart, just feel one or two rise, falls at the chest.
And then if it’s not too weird, you can almost just add a tiny bit of soothing touch, just kind of move your hand around the heart centre a little. So this part of mindfulness meditation and at least the way that I teach it, this is about your caregiving system, the innate system that lives in all of us that we’re born with that responds to soothing tones, to touch, and quite helpfully, our brains, our bodies are not really clever enough to know that much of a difference between you placing your hand on your heart like that and somebody else doing it. So it’s a really gentle way of just tapping into your caregiving system. And that sense of kind of nurture that lives within. And just to inject a little bit of that kindness back into you. Because more often than not, especially when you’re engaging in this type of, you know, proactive conscious parenting, you’re giving and you’re giving and you’re giving, and it’s as if not more important that you’re offering something back to yourself as well. So there you go, that’s a bit on the science-y stuff.
Sophia
That was absolutely lovely. Thank you so much. Really enjoyed that.
Nicole
That was really great. Me too. Me too. Nikki, these are such important skills for us all to learn. I actually feel really good after that, really calm and be really content. And it’s amazing to just know how it actually changes the brain like that’s, that’s incredible. And I love the way you’ve explained how, because that is the biggest difference, I think becoming a parent the amount of, you know, give, give, give, give, give, give. And it is really common for parents to forget about nurturing themselves. So that’s a really fantastic quick little activity that we can all fit in. I really hope lots of our listeners will try that and pepper it throughout that we can and see how it benefits them. Do you have any other like activities like that, that that we’ve just done that could that we could do with our children to help them and teach them sort of mindfulness skills really young so that it becomes they’re not learning it in their 40s like me, but it’s part of their lives.
Nikki
I always like to be really honest about this in terms of how I have chosen to integrate it with my kids. So I don’t really do anything deliberate in this space. And first and foremost because us modelling it to them is the single most important thing in terms of them knowing it’s something that mummy does kind of sitting down. The way I tend to include this is, in some ways it’s more selfish. So for example, let’s say I know that for some reason, when I’m driving from Thomas’s school or to Matty’s child minder, I can feel their anxiety start to rise in me. Not sure what that’s about haven’t gone there yet. But it’s pretty reliable. So what I do as a as a kind of mindful grounding technique is on that drive, I will start looking purposefully looking at the windows of the car and noting things to Thomas such as “Thomas Have you noticed that that building up there, it’s got bits on the roof, or can you look all the different types of colours in the trees as we go past is that really interesting” and what it allows me to do is to a spark a conversation and it allows me to ground myself in the moment and bring him with me too. So I do that and then on the occasions where I do try to be a bit more proactive and deliberate about it, I simply just sow it in to whenever we are out and about so even if I’m not feeling anxious often if you know your mind is often wandering it can be really helpful just to pick out different things and remember these three things, see, hear and feel. So what can you see, what exactly is catching your eye and the space around you? Is it the light the trees? Is it the snail that’s down there on the bottom? What can you hear, kids are amazing at this. And I actually did do did this a little thing with the kids a few days ago, and it will make you laugh because as we’re in the midst of COVID-19 I went out the back gate and I said “Matty what can you hear?” and he said, “I can hear a man coughing.” I was like, Really!? I know seriously, like a practical joke. I was like, that’s not gonna make me feel more mindful. See, hear and feel. So that’s, you know, touch What can you feel? You know what does sand feel like between your toes? What does it feel like to on a cosy sofa? What does that you know, what does that ground feel like? So, see, hear and feel always really, really good thing just to keep in the back of your mind and really just to sow it in. But first and foremost, perhaps more than anything I’ve said so far. Your children are your best mindfulness teachers. Because as children they are within every moment by and large. And so letting them lead you in your practice is beautiful and is so effective and allowing yourself permission to enter into those conversations when they do say, oh, wow, there’s an ant inside the house or
wow, look, there’s a bird up on that tree or whatever that is.
Sophia
That’s awesome. Thank you. And you know, that’s so in line with the treasure time principles. We’re always saying, Let your child be your play teacher. So now we get let our children be our mindfulness teachers, too. We can learn so much from them.
Nicole
Every day’s a school day!
Nikki
It really is.
Sophia
Nikki, thank you so much for coming on the treasure time podcast. This has been fascinating and really, really helpful. And I think there’s so much that everybody can learn from being still, as you’ve said, and you know, I think your tips and advice would be really helpful for the parents out there listening to this podcast. So thank you very much. Now everybody listening can you hear more from Nikki inside the treasure time course she actually runs a meditation for us in One of the modules, you can also go to her website, ten of zen calm to access free meditations and check out the monthly mindfulness membership for mums, which is the Zen squad. Is that right Nikki?
Nicole
That’s right. Yes.
Sophia
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Nicole
Thank you so much, Nikki. It’s been an absolute pleasure and a brilliant finale. So what is our last episode of the treasure time podcast in season one. So thank you for being a super guest and teaching us so much we’ve had a blast creating all these episodes for you listeners, and exploring what the children need together to grow up healthy and happy and it really is as simple as our presence and being with them and letting them leads in the family and enjoying all the little wonders that are of our little explorers. It may be very difficult times right now but the times that I’m certainly happiest at the moment is getting into the zone of the kids and going on those journeys that you’ve just described, Nikki, it’s where we’ve, you know, we’ve sat in the garden and looked at the sky and listen to the birds. And I don’t know if anybody else has noticed, but you can really hear the birds song at the moment is, it’s beautiful. So I hope everyone has a really good time, taking on board all this great advice we’ve had today. Thanks, Nikki.
Nikki
Thank you so much for having me, ladies. It’s been a total pleasure. And I love meeting kind of kindred spirits that just kind of get this stuff. So yeah, thank you so much.
Sophia
Thanks, Nikki. Now this is a really incredible time for myself and Nicole as we launch treasured time out into the world. This has been a 10 year journey for me of self discovery, studying and learning and practicing what works when it comes to Using play to help children to grow up happy, and treasure time started off as an idea around Nicole’s kitchen table as I helped her with her boys. And then it became a primary research master study of mine for my play therapy studies, two years of learning and evaluating before being born into the innovative digital course that it is today.
Nicole
That gives me tingles hearing that. We know that treasure tame has the potential to change countless lives over the globe using the power of play. So as a real welcome into our treasure time family, we’d love to invite all have our lovely listeners to join our Facebook community where you get live weekly q&a with Sophia. They’ve probably been a number of questions that have come up for you for the course of the podcast as you’ve maybe thought about your own family yourself your situation. And now you get the opportunity to ask the expert as it were or play expert Sophia are closed online community. So really nice safe space of kindred spirits, as Nicky said. So to join, you just need to go on the treasuretime.co.uk/resources and click the link to join in.
Sophia
And I really look forward to seeing you all inside the inside the group and answering your questions and also sharing lots of tips and ideas and play opportunities a real nice place to support each other. And Nicole and I can’t wait to help more parents and children treasure their time together through childhood play. So make sure you head over to the website as Nicole said, find the link to join and we look forward to seeing you there.
Nicole
Thank you so much for joining us in this podcast series treasure turns very first, it’s by no means the last of the treasure time podcasts. We hope we’ll be back with you more content coming soon. So do hop over to iTunes or Spotify and click to subscribe so that you’ll be notified when we’re back. In the meantime, take really good care of you and yours
Sophia
Thank you Bye for now. See you next series.
Nicole
Bye!