205: Suzanne Tucker (Generation Mindful)

Suzanne Tucker on Innovation City

“The solution comes in the way we raise children without shame.” -Suzanne Tucker

Welcome to Season 7 of Innovation City (The St. Louis Edition), a podcast featuring innovators, creators, and disruptors to discover how business is changing in the modern world.

Created and produced by SLAM! Agency and Aīre Ventures, Innovation City gives you an inside look at how rapidly business and culture are changing thanks to increasing diversity and inclusion, heightened creativity, and a stronger and better-connected business community.

Today’s guest is Suzanne Tucker, founder and CEO of Generation Mindful, a global brand that’s on a mission to raise an emotionally healthy world. In this episode, Suzanne sits down with the team to discuss the importance of teaching children about emotional health, advice for parents, and her own journey that led to focusing on mindfulness for families.

 

They discuss:

• Suzanne’s Superpower
  • Positivity
  • She was one of seven and her mom and dad were really good at creating little moments and modeling gratitude. 
  • “Happiness is a big lie, we’re all chasing it.” 

• What in your life led you to focus your efforts on mindfulness?
  • Suzanne is a mother of four and has been a physical therapist for over thirty years. Six years ago she got frustrated at all the BS being thrown at parents.
  • She was witnessing parents feeling disempowered and overwhelmed, and that is what led her to found Generation Mindful. 
  • The secret sauce  is connection, it’s relational, it’s play-based, fun, and tangible.
  • What Suzanne is teaching is intrinsically motivating for children. There’s huge science behind letting kids play a part.

• How do you go in the heat of the moment to get your kids to take a deep breath?
  • Sometimes when we’re talking to our children, we need to imagine that we’re talking to our partner. It’s about power. Telling a child to “just breathe,” can sound condescending.
  • At Generation Mindful, they’re wiring the adults’ brain, not just the child’s brain.
  • The key is to introduce these strategies to children during moments of calm and play. 
  • In 90 countries around the world Generation Mindful is selling these “time in” kits, and they are working for families.
• Advice for Parents & Teachers to Navigate Mental Health During a Pandemic
  • 3 in 10 have anxiety and depression. Only 80% will get treatment. We are in a crisis. COVID put a magnifying glass on an issue we already had. 
  • Institutionally we’re saying, “Wow, how are we addressing mental health In our schools?”
  • The answer is empowerment and education. The solution is the normalization of mental health as part of our health. 
  • “Name it, feel it, and heal it.” 11:13
  • It’s not about doing it right or perfect.
  • We are barely taught about our feelings. Happy and angry are high energy, sad and calm are low energy. Pleasant feelings and unpleasant feeling are the two indicators for every feeling you’ve ever felt. 
  • Give your feelings a name.

• What does that look like in your own life? 
  • Suzanne lives this. She recognizes, understands, labels, and regulates. It’s about self compassion. It’s really not about getting it right.
  • She always used to set the bar too high and it always felt like never enough.
  • If she has a large goal, she starts with smaller goals. 

 

Lightning Round:

• For me money means…
  • Power and influence
• The last time I felt like an imposter…
  • Suzanne has imposter syndrome all the time.
• A time I unintentionally hurt someone…
  • Telling her six-year-old to go to her room 
• I hope to be remembered for…
  • Replacing spanking and time out around the world with “time in”

 

Get in Touch

 

Visit the Generation Mindful website.

Follow Generation Mindful on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook

Follow Positive Parenting: Toddler’s and Beyond on Facebook