Show Notes:
Discover how the BELLYFLIES Method can help your child talk about emotions and develop strong coping skills.

Are you struggling to understand how to help your child talk about emotions? Does your neurodivergent child experience really BIG emotions? Discover the revolutionary BELLYFLIES Method, a powerful tool designed to help children, especially those with neurodiversity, express their feelings and navigate emotional challenges.

In this insightful podcast episode, join Tonya Wollum as she interviews Cathy Gagliardi, the creator of the BELLYFLIES Method. Learn how this innovative approach can:

• Improve communication: Teach your child effective ways to express their emotions.
• Build emotional resilience: Equip your child with coping strategies for handling stress and anxiety.
• Foster self-awareness: Help your child understand their feelings and needs.
• Strengthen parent-child bonds: Create a supportive and understanding environment.

Whether your child has a neurodivergent condition or simply experiences big emotions, the BELLYFLIES Method offers valuable insights and practical tools to empower them and foster emotional well-being. Don’t miss this enlightening episode!

Connect with Cathy:

• 💻Website: Bellyfliesmethod.com
• 📬Email: cathy@bellyfliesmethod.com

🌟View the BELLYFLIES book on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3ZkPZCU

• ** As an Amazon Associate, I may earn on qualifying purchases. **

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Music Used:

“LazyDay” by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Artist: http://audionautix.com/

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Episode #108: How to Help Your Child Talk About Emotions

Discover how the BELLYFLIES Method can help your child talk about emotions and develop strong coping skills.

(Recorded April 24, 2024)

Full Transcript of Interview:

108 final

Tonya: Have you ever felt butterflies in your stomach when you were feeling nervous? Do you think you could explain what that feeling means to a young child? Well, today’s guest, Cathy Gagliardi, a children’s book author from Ontario, knows how important it is to help children learn to communicate their feelings, and has come up with a way to do just that.

Welcome to the Water Prairie Chronicles, a podcast for special needs parents. I’m your host, Tonya Wollum, and I’m glad you’re here.

Cathy and I have been talking together for, I, I thought it had been close to a year. You were saying that you think it was fall of ’23. Um, it seems like we’ve been going back and forth for a while and we met on, through social media, I believe is how we first ran into each other.

I think so. And I saw BELLYFLIES and that caught my attention. And then, um, then we exchanged some emails and I wanted to know more. So before we go any further, can you tell us what BELLYFLIES is all about?

Cathy: Yes, I can. It’s so nice to be here with you. Thank you for having me. Um, BELLYFLIES is butterflies in your stomach.

Many years ago, I had a situation where, um, I was working with an amazing woman, Karen. And, um, we spent the whole day laughing about our kids, talking about them. The next day, I found out that her son had taken his life. And it was devastating. It just blew my mind and I didn’t know how to help her. I didn’t know what to do and how could this happen.

And, um, I went through, uh, so many different emotions as everybody else did. That was in at work there. And I, I went home to my kids and I felt. That there should have been something I could do for her, but I had to be my mom, a mom and you know, take care of my kids and everything. And then when they went to bed and then when I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep.

So I came downstairs and I started, um, putting a pen to paper and writing, which I did often when I couldn’t sleep. So I started writing and I thought, how can I help children when they’re very little? To have tips and techniques as they get older and just keep using them so that, so they’re like ingrained in their brain of what to do when they have emotions and feelings that they can’t control, that they can’t get through.

It just debilitates them. So I wrote a book called BELLYFLIES, and it was with an alligator, who’s a stuffed animal that comes to life, and his friend Billy. And they talk about butterflies in your stomach, and they call them BELLYFLIES. And so there’s tips and techniques for the children to do to overcome and end up with BELLYFLIES.

Mommy, look, I have no more BELLYFLIES and therapists and teachers and schools bought my books and a lot of parents, but I found that there was a missing section. There was something missing and I really needed to get my techniques across or my ideas or my, uh, support across to the parents so that they could help their children.

So from there, I created the BELLYFLIES Method. which has the tips and techniques for the parents to Communicate with their children, the neurodiverse children.

And there’s such a need for that today.

I know.

It, um, it just seems like more and more a lot, a lot of our kids, especially our older kids came through the COVID time and it has affected them in a lot of ways.

But even with social media, there’s just, there’s so many triggers out there with, um, not always some positive environments that our kids can land in.

Right. And they know so much. They have so much information that it’s scary for them.

So you mentioned that you’re focusing on neurodivergent children. And I saw, I saw a note, I don’t know if it was an email that we had with each other or if it was on your website that I saw that you were, um, giving a voice to your neurodivergent children.

Am I remembering that correct?

Yes. It’s, it’s, um, give it, giving children a voice is, um, my main goal, my, a goal that will help to, for them to discuss their emotions and their feelings and their needs. Okay. without, um, confusion, you know, so basically if they’re in school and something happens and they come home and their parents say, how was your day?

And they say, yeah, it was good. Yeah. Or I don’t know, whatever, because it’s so much, it’s such a big thing. Right. And, um, but they don’t, they’re not acting right. They’re not acting as they normally do. And in this case, a child could say, Well, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, something, but I had BELLYFLIES.

So the, that’s cause start a conversation and it could bring them, you know, like, uh, what made you happy today? What made you sad today? And it could bring the answer to them. So yeah, I, I was picked on at school. Eventually that information will get out. And there’s a child’s voice that originally, you it wouldn’t be there.

It just is too much for them to pinpoint. And maybe they don’t even know, because I know sometimes I have feelings that I don’t know what it is. And so that’s what I say, I have BELLYFLIES. And, um, you have to just think about, okay, what brought this out? But a child would not know that they wouldn’t be able to, um, pinpoint.

They may not be able to pinpoint what it is, or they may not be able to communicate it. So when they say, I have BELLYFLIES, you know, okay, this is a great time for a conversation or, uh, let’s sit down and draw or, you know, somehow get the information out of them.

I like your idea of giving them just, even if the child doesn’t say it, maybe a parent being able to ask, would you have some BELLYFLIES?

Yes. Yeah.

Because now you’ve talked about it beforehand. You know what that is.

Yeah. I found that children, um, They were, they were adopting this, I have BELLYFLIES, into their families. And sometimes, um, one boy came up to me and he said, You know, my dad had BELLYFLIES the other day. And I said, Oh, did he tell you that? He says, No, I told him that.

That’s a huge emotional comprehension too, to be able to transfer that to, to what, you know, that not just kids have this feeling, adults can too. We, we gave one example already as far as how, how they can, you can ask on that or, or, you know, being able to talk a little bit. What are some other things that parents can do to kind of help their kids start to talk about these things?

Well, I have the BELLYFLIES method and it’s an acronym, BELLYFLIES is an acronym. I’ll go through that quickly, B is for BELLYFLIES, E is for ENGAGE EMOTIONS, L is for LISTENING, the next L is LOVE, the Y is for YES AND, the F is for FOCUS, LEAD, I is for IMAGINATION, E is for ENCOURAGE, and S is for SENSITIVE.

That’s my BELLYFLIES method in a little nutshell there.

From what you shared, even though we said that we were looking at neurodivergent children, there’s no child that would not benefit from using this method. So, so it’s a tool that parents could use no matter who their child may be and um, could help maybe ease some tension in some families by going, by going through this.

Well, I, I want to go into our advice section, but I want to ask you another question before we get there. And we didn’t talk about this ahead of time, but you have. You have other books too, and one of them, Gonna Build a Boat, and I love the name of that, of that story. I haven’t read it, but I did want to ask you, that book is looking at compassion and inclusion, is that correct?

Am I remembering correctly? Um, how can parents use that book to, um, to teach their children about neurodiversity or embracing differences?

Well, that, that book I dedicated to my father, uh, who passed away, um, after I wrote my BELLYFLIES book. He, thankfully he got to see it and he was so proud, but, um, he, he had a business and he had, Everybody, every kind of person in that business working together.

And I always thought that that was pretty special how he included everybody. And he, um, he, he thought of you as you could do anything you never thought, Oh yeah, you can’t do it. So nevermind you. No, no, no, no. He just built you right up to that. You could do anything. And he built boats. He built catamarans and trimarans.

And I, so I put that in the story and in the story, it shows how people can come together. It shows how to love yourself and how to love each other and how to understand and listen. So there’s a little girl in there that has depression and they understand and they listen and they include her. And then there’s a, uh, a little boy who’s in a wheelchair, doesn’t matter.

You get on the beach and let’s build that boat anyway, and you’re going on it. You know, like everybody, everybody’s included and everybody can do the job, do a job, anything. They could do the job and they can participate together and, um, have the reward of accomplishing something together as a team. And it just, uh, it’s just, it’s a way for everybody to realize that there, the differences are all really, um, stars.

They’re all shiny stars. When you find, I’ve always found when I was growing up that if I found someone who was different in a certain way, it was just like a star shining in my face. I needed to be with them. So, um, I find that, that, that book. Teachers really like that because it includes everybody and it teaches them to work together and, and listen and love and love themselves as well.

Be proud of what they’re doing. And, um, parents too. So I think that, um, that book came out to be more than I ever expected it to be.

I, I like the fact that it has the physical, um, differences represented, because a lot of our kids have a hard time finding themselves in children’s stories. And, um, and so it is nice that you have that.

Just the, the inclusion part of everyone. I speak a lot on inclusion when I go on other podcasts, even, and it, it’s something that we can’t say it enough that, that everyone should be part of. And I liked the way that you’ve done this. They’re not just being. Included on the edges, they’re being brought in and they’re part of building that boat.

Whatever their part is, they’re part of it and um, and that’s, that’s what inclusion is to me.

Yeah. And that it, it truly represents my dad also.

Nice. Nice. What a great role model for you. Oh, so good. Yeah. Thank you. All right. So we’re going to run out of time. So I want to jump into this. Um, we, this listeners, if this is your first time listening, you’re, you’re not aware of this, but I’ve been asking my guests this, this season to leave you with some bits of advice by completing some open ended statements that I’m going to give them.

And Cathy has agreed to do this with me. So I have four of them for her and I’m going to read it and I’m going to have you repeat it and finish it for me. Right. So the first one that I have for you is the most important thing I’ve learned about empowering children with neurodiversity is.

The most important thing I’ve learned about empowering children with neurodiversity is that they have a voice and they want to speak and they need to, and they need to know that they’re, uh, that they can express their feelings and their needs.

And we’re here to listen to them. Um, I think they have to feel like they can move ahead things as well. So, um, not that they’re different, but that they’re special and they’re not alone. So, I, I’ve learned that these people are so special. I mean, everybody I have met is so unique and so special. Um, that I could just see sparks, you know, they’re just growing and blossoming all the time.

Yeah. I want them to know that.

So the second, um, statement that I have for you is, I wish every parent of a special needs child knew that…

Uh, I wish every parent of a I have a special needs child, knew that, that there was help and that they’re not alone and that they are champions. I, I wish that they had the BELLYFLIES Method, um, to guide them and help them and, and, um, uh, but I could mentor them and, and their children.

And, um, just to know that there’s. That they don’t have to be frustrated, like alone, that they, there’s help out there. I know that if I had this BELLYFLIES Method when my children were growing up, man, it would have been very helpful to me.

And it’s true because, you know, parents are just surviving sometimes.

And to have, you know, we, we, we always joke and generations have joked about how there’s, there’s no playbook for being a parent. No one knows how to do this. And if you have more than one child, you know that. It changes from every child anyway. They all need their own little user’s manual to come, to come with them, but we don’t have that.

But to have a guideline like, like you’ve described with the BELLYFLIES Method, it gives you a mental process that you can think through to help yourself calm and to be able to approach things and to help your child be able to respond to communicate too.

Yeah. I think that, um, the parents, um, are needed to calm, be calm because at that same time, the child needs them the most.

So when they’re trying to deal with everything, the child also needs that. So.

And it’s usually just before dinner when everyone’s hungry, everyone’s stressed, everyone’s tired.

Yeah. Everyone wants it right now. Whatever everything is. Yes, anything is. They want it right now. Yes. I know.

All right. So number three.

One thing that surprised me about the impact of my books has been…

Oh, one thing that surprised me about the impact of my books is how, uh, uh, effective the words “I have bellyflies” is. I can’t, I couldn’t believe how it just took off and children were using that and the teachers and parents and therapists and, um, the, the schools, they, they was becoming a saying that, um, they could grasp onto and use that.

And, and my other books, they all have children, um, learning to love themselves most importantly, but everything else as well, um, compassion and, and, um, Growing together and, um, do accomplishing things together and having a little adventure. So yeah, that, that having, being able to say I have BELLYFLIES and then being able to say no more BELLYFLIES, that really surprised me because even though I wrote it for everybody, I didn’t, didn’t really think about my book getting out to everybody.

At that time it was a therapy for myself. And so when it started doing. What it needed to do, get out there. It really surprised me. It made me happy.

All right, so last one. My hope for the future of neurodivergent children is…

My hope for the future for neurodivergent children is that they know that they’re special, that they can live an emotionally healthy life, and they can take techniques that they learn into the future as they grow, and um, that there be less to zero suicides of anybody like that.

Um, hopefully that the neurodivergent children aren’t, aren’t considered, Um, special because we’re all special, but that they’re considered right on the track of a shining star.

Great advice on all of those. Thank you for sharing all of that. Before we go, I want you to, um, tell us, tell our listeners how they can get in touch with you, how they can find out more about the BELLYFLIES Method.

Um, And if you want to tell us about, about the books too, as far as how they can get copies of that.

Okay. Um, firstly, the BELLYFLIES Method. If you go to, um, bellyfliesmethod.com and put in your email address, I will send you three free episodes of the BELLYFLIES Method. and um, that to get you started on helping you out a bit.

And then if you choose to, um, be mentored or have, or have a coaching session through that, through my landing page, you can book an appointment with me. Also, um, if you want to contact me and talk, talk to me, you can reach me at cathy@bellyfliesmethod.com If you, if you just want to see where things are going or, or, uh, how I can help you, please let me know.

And also if you’re, here’s my BELLYFLIES book. Um, yeah, and this is, um, my brother illustrated this one. I illustrated the other ones because he was too busy. But, um, if you are interested in any of my books, um, I would, it would be best if you went to cathy@BellyFliesMethod.Com and I can send you a book with a special message in it.

So we could talk about that even. And I would have to know the names of the children that you want to address it to. So um, so far we’re, we’re looking at having, uh, a newsletter coming out with little tips and, and information. And on the, in the back of my books also, I have, um, little coloring pages. So we’re going to have coloring pages on the newsletters also.

So how many books do you have? I have five and two in Spanish. So there’s seven books.

So if they look up your, your name on Amazon, they can see all of your books there?

Yes. Yes.

So I just want to clarify for our listeners. So what Cathy had shared earlier is, um, price wise, it might be better for you. If you contact her directly, um, you can see the books on Amazon and you can purchase them that way, but send her an email and compare it that way too.

And what she’s offering for you is that she will, um, autograph those books and write them to your child’s name. So, by purchasing them through her through the email you can, you can get it that way. If you buy it on Amazon, you won’t be able to do that. So, um, so you do have the choices, but, but that’s, that’s why she was, um, suggesting that, that you email her about it.

But, um, so they could either email you and ask for the, the list of the books, or they could go in and look at what they have on Amazon. And we’ll link all of that for you so that you can, I’ll at least find one of the books and link it so you can find her author page on Amazon. And then, um, and then we’ll put her email and the BELLYFLIES Method link as well so that you can, can get through with all of that.

So Kathy, thank you. This is, this has been really helpful information. I’m excited about what you’re doing with, with the BELLYFLIES Method. It’ll be, um, it’ll be a household, household. Phrase that, that we’re going to be hearing soon. Oh, I hope so. That would be so great. Thank you for having me. Oh, sure.

I’ve, I’ve enjoyed this. I, I appreciate you, you coming and spending the time and sharing with, with my listeners too.

Oh, me too.

Thanks for joining me today. I wonder how many of us will be using the term BELLYFLIES to describe emotions to kids now. Be sure to check out Cathy’s books. You can find the link to her book, BELLYFLIES, on Amazon in the show notes.

In our next episode, Mary Ann Hughes from Special Family Transitions will join me to talk about some of the complexities involved with divorce when children with disabilities are involved. She has some great tips on how to protect the children and make sure they don’t get lost in the shuffle of adult conflict.

I’ll see you next time.