Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlene

Childress. I'm a life and parenting coach, and I help parents

stay calm, get calm, stay calm, and connect with their kids better.

And that way, they have more compliance, and they can think

clearer, set better limits with their kids, and just all

around sort of enjoy parenting from that calm, peaceful state, right, that we all crave

so much. So that's what we do. Podcast as you all know. If

you've been a long time listener and if you're new, welcome to the podcast. Now,

I'm gonna talk today about a part of the brain

called the task positive network and the

default mode network. So that's gonna sound a little confusing

and already you're like, wait, what? I'm gonna

be in a neuroscience class. Kinda, but not really.

I wanna talk about the kind of the yin

yang or the seesaw between

task attention, like paying attention to a task and doing

tasks. And then when you are on task, your brain's

kind of focused. And then we switch into sort of a default

mode where we're in an active rest state.

I wanna talk about this because I think it's really helpful for you to understand

what's going on with your kids when we give them

a task and we want them to focus their attention,

what is required to get them to focus,

and then kind of how hard it is to stay in that focus

state, and then how, like,

how to create quality rest in your brain. Because I

know as a parent, you probably as a mom, especially,

you spend a lot of time focused on all sorts of tasks, like

time, you know, time crunch and scheduling and figuring out who's gotta be where and

when are you gonna cook dinner and how does everyone get their homework

done. And, you know, there's calendaring and then there's, like, emails and you're

like, okay. I gotta get this kid to this practice and they need these 5

things. And then if you have more than 1 kid, you're like, oh, and they

need this, you know, pumpkins for the pumpkin party or

whatever. Right? So there's just a lot going on all the time as a

parent, and you're in you're in task positive network kind of a

lot if you're a parent. And then your brain goes into

overload, you can't think straight, and you're overwhelmed. You're, like, you know, you kind of,

like, burn out, and you are going into active

rest mode. And sometimes the

things we choose to do or the things we default to in order

to rest our brains aren't high quality. And

so even though you might be taking a break from doing all your thinking and

all your tasks, you don't actually feel rejuvenated by that. So I'm

gonna explain why that's happening and how to create

better quality downtime for you and how to help your

kids and you get back on task when it's time. Wouldn't that be

nice? Right? Now, the reason why this came up for me

is because I a couple weeks ago, I did an episode on rethinking

ADHD, and I talked about, this book that I had

I've read it a few times now. I got it a couple years ago, but

it's called ADHD 2.0. And

this that book is the first time I was introduced to this concept

of the brain, the neural network that

see seesaws or teeter totters between on

task, off task. Right? On inattention,

default attention. So, like, intentional attention and non

intentional attention. And I really liked it

and I wanted to talk about it on that episode a couple weeks ago. But

like I said, it had got very dense and, you know, I had a lot

to talk about. So I wanted to come back and talk about it with you

all. The other reason why I brought I wanna bring this up is because

it came up in the CallMama Club during one of our sessions.

We were in a meeting and I was talking about this concept. And then somebody

brought up the fact that, like, their partner

may be on their phone a lot and, like, what is that about? And so

we started kinda talking about what the phone does and how it

creates sort of artificial rest for us, artificial

downtime, but then how it's really not quality and

it's not great to model that and, you know, but it becomes a pattern and

a habit. So I started talking about this TPN and d DMN

and, you know, talking about it with my, with my mamas.

And they were, like, so fascinated. They're, like, please send us articles about it. We

wanna read about it. And I was, like, well, let's just do a podcast episode.

So that's how how we got here. So on this episode, here's what

you can expect. I'm going to go deeper into

teaching you about the the attention

the task focused attention network. K.

So it's called task positive network.

Your brain is positively attuned paying

attention to the task, and it's kind of focused. So I'm gonna

talk to you about the task positive network and the

default mode network, what your brain does when it's not

on task. What is it doing? I'm gonna give you some understanding

about that, and then I wanna give you some strategies about how to

create how to shift into tasks if you

need to be shifting into getting stuff done. What can you do? And

then also how to create better active rest

for yourself. So isn't that cool? I really think you're gonna love this episode.

So let's get into it. Okay. So, first, I'm actually gonna talk about the default

mode because it is our default. It's like this is what

happens to our brains when we are not

thinking about anything. When we're not on

task, our mind is just,

like, not thinking. Right? That's it. It's in its

default mode. Within this period of time, we think of this as

wakeful rest or active rest. Like your

brain is at rest, but it's not asleep. It's just not thinking

about anything. So that's kind of nice. Right? It's like

you can end up being lost in thought. You can,

you know, mind wander. Sometimes they call this, like, in meditation,

the monkey mind where your mind is just flitting from one thing to another.

That's an okay place to be. We actually do need

our default mode network to be lit up

at certain times. It's where we daydream and let our

imaginations go free. We can go down a little bit rabbit

holes. It's actually the part of your brain that helps

integrate what you've learned or an experience and take it from short

term memory into long term memory. It's the thing that helps you

relive the past, maybe reflect on some things that

happened, and then also it helps you imagine the future. So it's not

present minded. It's very much in the past and very much in the

future. And it helps us kind of, we start to reflect

on other people and like kind of bigger picture thinking.

So it's pretty great if you

have some mastery or some, like,

you've trained your brain to think about positive things. This

part of our brain, like a toddler let loose

in a toy store, you know, it's gonna go

everywhere, like scattered all over the place. If you said to your toddler, like, you

can play with any toy in this toy store, you know, it'd be like, oh

my god. You know, like, they're flitting around and playing with this and playing with

that and be so exciting. And that's kinda what your brain can do. So we

wanna harness it a little bit and give our brain a

focus, not necessarily a task, but a positive

way to ruminate. Now,

unchecked, the bad news is that

because of our default sometimes is negative as a

person or our perspective is to, like, you know, fear based

and anxious and overthinking and over ruminating and

over processing the past and, you know, anticipating the

future. And we can end up in a negative mindset when we

are in the DMN. Some of the daydreaming can go

too far and in creative instead of creating a happy relaxed

state, it can create a negative anguish state.

And that's what we see if you are prone to anxiety or depression. You

can kind of get stuck in these negative thought spirals,

and that means that you're sort of stuck in your default

mode network. Sometimes some of us

will scroll on our phone or, you know,

watch short videos or whatever because we want to be

released from the task part. We don't wanna be thinking so hard,

but we don't really trust our brain to help

us go into a positive free thinking

state. So that's one of the powers of life coaching actually is we kind of

change your default mindset to reflect on the

positive, like changing your actual cognitive bias and

your presets to look at what could be going right. What was

great about the past? What is great about the future? It's

why I talk a lot about, you know, rethink we you

know, positive parenting vision and, you know, worst case

scenarioing, but then solving for our worst case scenario so we have more agency.

The DMN, it can be a very positive place to

be if we don't let it be the demon. Right? The DMN.

We don't We want it to be able to be a place that feels

really yummy and safe and fun. And I'm gonna talk about how to get to

that state of mind at the end of the podcast. So now let's talk

about task focused attention state. This task

positive network. It's pretty obvious what it

is in the name. Right? It's where your brain is

very active when you are doing tasks that

require your attention. Your conscious attention,

it's towards what's you're doing in in your

actual task and kinda tune out what's on the outside and

what's going on. You just are, like, focused on what is

happening. This is a pretty cool state of mind. A lot of times

it's called flow, and it's where you're doing, like, a

task oriented or processing sensory input, your short term

memories there, thinking abstractly about something in order to solve

a problem. It's like I said, a lot of parents are in

task positive network a lot of the day, and

it's really can be very exhausting. It can

be very difficult. When you look at a kid or a child

with ADHD or a parent with any ADHD or someone with anxiety or

someone with depression and you maybe it's you and you have heard

yourself say or someone say, I can't even think straight. I can't even get anything

done. I start this and then I'm over there and I do this and I'm

flitting around all day and I don't really ever achieve anything.

Like what's happening? And that is probably

because you aren't able to stay

in task positive network in TPN

long enough to achieve something.

The brain, it does it does like being in

flow. It does like being in this state of consciousness

and, like, you know, attention, really focused attention. But

it is also very easy to get distracted

out of TPN because there's a lot of work. So

we see this with, you know, with any with kids, a lot of

kids, especially kids with ADHD. It's very hard to get them into that

focused place. We're also noticing as a society, and

this is a quote from that book ADHD 2.0,

where it says, you know, the authors, they say, you know, the reason

that many people are starting to look and act distracted as if they

had ADHD is because fewer and

fewer people are spending time in the task positive network.

They're not spending enough time focusing on a single task.

They're not sitting there long enough to get something done

before they get distracted. So the

TPN is like a muscle and you need to teach it to stay

on that track. But it's hard. It's hard as a parent because

here here are some things that can pull you out of your

task positive network. It can be boredom.

Right? You just get bored and, like, you're like, this is boring. I don't wanna

do this anymore. And your brain starts to, you know, kind of wander into

another direction. Or you can get inputs from the

environment that force your brain to shift

out of the task. This is what happens when you have

notifications on your phone. If your phone is dinging

at you all day long, you are being

told, like by the external environment, that your task

needs to stop because something else is supposed to get your attention.

I have friends that I'm with and their phone is dinging all the time.

All their group chats are dinging. All the noise, news

notifications are coming on. They have red bubbles on their phone like

little red notification dots with a circle with the number and their

numbers just going up ding ding ding ding. And it is very very

difficult to stay focused if you have external input.

That's why one of the first things I do I mean, I don't have any

notifications. My phone doesn't ding the whole day,

especially when I'm working. Just it's on do not disturb,

and I actually have turned all my notifications off for every app. I don't I

barely even get phone notifications because I want

to control my downtime. I wanna

control my task positive network. I wanna be in charge of

my mind, and I wanna go use my phone when I'm ready

and being intentional. I know that sounds extreme

and, maybe it is, but it also creates a lot of

productivity. Right? Sometimes you're like, how do you do everything you do in a week?

And it's like, well, I'm pretty focused when I'm focused. And when I'm not

focused, I am in charge of how I spend my active

wakeful rest time. And I'd love to invite you to do that. You can do

it too. Start with turning off your notifications and seeing how it

feels. Now, not only as a parent do you get information

from your earphone, like you're dinging in your email and all the things that come

through, But you also have children, and they really

are terrible for task positive network. They are

interrupting your flow all the time. Yeah. You would know this. Right? You're

reading a recipe, or you're trying to order

something online or you're, like, looking up airplane flights

or like who knows? You're registering someone for soccer. You're doing

some tasks that's required of you. And mommy, mommy,

mommy, mommy, mommy, can you do this? Can we do this? Can I have a

snack? Can I go over here? Can you open the door? Can you button this?

Can you button this? No. I don't wanna I want these different clothes for my

adult. Can you change the clothes? The amount of input that children bring in, that's

very frustrating and the brain kind of gives up. It's like forget

it. Now, of course, we wanna pay attention to our kids and all of those

things. So we have to decide when we're not with our kids to create

task positive network time, attention to task

time. Now, of course, if you're fatigued, mentally

overloaded, mentally fatigued, you're stressed, you

will will have trouble going into the TPN. So that's

why we need to be have quality rest, like,

quality rest with our brain and then quality task

time. So I'm a big fan of blocking my calendar, knowing when

I'm supposed to be focused in on task. And sometimes I just call

that flow time where I want to be in, like, one thing

learning and or doing something. And then other times where it's

like rest time. And I actually block my calendar, so it looks

like that. Now with kids, I'm mostly gonna be in DMN

when they're around. I'm just in their world and,

distracted. But hopefully I can do task positive network by choosing that

my child's story is my task and I pay attention as much as

I can. Now how toggling works is

that our brain is designed to have while while

rest is on, like, active rest, the DMN is

on task positive network is off. So they are a seesaw.

As one is on, the other is off. And you switch

back and forth. We wanna be able to hold each state

for a a longer period of time. And also we want just

we don't wanna be in control. We wanna be able to self regulate

what our brain is doing and what we're thinking about or whether we're not

doing any thinking. That's just kind of,

keeping yourself self regulated. We talk about that a lot. It's not just

your nervous system. It's not just your parasympathetic

sympathetic nervous system and your adrenals. It's also

where your brain is what your brain is thinking about.

That's also part of self regulation is being intentional in your

thinking and your doing. Is this thinking time? Is this doing

time? What am I doing? One interesting thing to note is

that, like I said, with a typical neurotypical

brain, the DMN is lit up. I'm

resting my brain, and my task positive network is

down, and then it switches. And I'm task positive is up, and

my default mode network is down. Now with the ADHD

brain, when their brain goes into task positive network, they've

shown with fmris that the default mode

network also lights up. That's one of the challenges

for an ADHD brain itself is that

the default mode is so powerful

and strong that it sort of shouts louder than the task

positive network. It's very difficult for an

ADHD brain to switch, to toggle and

stay there. But you'll notice if an ADHD

brain is able to get into task focus, like they're

focused on chess or building Lego or playing guitar or

drawing the picture or whatever it is that their brain loves to do

and they're not bored and they're in the present moment, they're in

task positive network. Good luck getting them out. A little bit

like a little kid, hard to get him in the bathtub and then hard hard

to get him out of the bathtub. That's how it is a little bit with

ADHD brain, hard to get him in to task positive network

and then hard to get them out. So I just want you to have compassion

and work with your kids when they are struggling and just kind

of be like, yeah. No. It makes sense. This is hard for you. It's hard

to stay focused and it's hard to shift

into task. You can even say task positive network or

attention focused task. How do you toggle back

and forth? How can you get a little bit more,

I wanna use the word control. I mean, intentional control, you

know, having ability to get your brain to do what you want it

to do. Of course, you can train your

brain. It's a muscle. So we wanna work on it. Here's the first part

of any change, any change at all in your

life is noticing, paying attention, being

aware. So, the next time that you feel

stuck in your default mode, you're ruminating, you're

anxious, you can't think straight, you want to get

some stuff done and you are overwhelmed, you're

not able to get back onto task after

you're on your phone, you're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Just notice

that. Notice that you're in default mode

network, and then focus on anything outside

of your brain. Look out the window, find a

bird. Look at the colors in the room, start

counting them. Get your body involved,

stand up, move your legs, move your

hands. One cool thing is to create a small

doable task. If you can't get focused, this is why if you

ever sit down to do something at your desk and you don't really start doing

anything until you, like, clean your desk off, and then you're like, oh, I need

to go get tea and I gotta You do all this stuff. That's because your

brain needs these little tiny tasks to kinda get it into Okay.

We're shifting into task positive network. We're gonna be getting stuff

done. It needs a little win, like, couple little wins, and then it's

able to stay in those wins. So that's good to know for your ADHD

kid or a little kid. Just like, hey, all you have to do is start

by getting your piece of paper out. That's it. Let's just see how far you

get and then put your name on the paper. That's all. That's all you got

to do so far. You know, so we're kind of breaking it down. Getting your

body involved is super helpful when you're stuck in that

rumination, when you're stuck and overthinking. Go for a walk, jump up and

down, sense your breath, call a friend, walk

around, yell, dance, play the piano, feed your

dog, sing row, row, row your boat while you're standing on one leg,

kind of anything where you kind of shift out of that negative

thought spiral. That's what I do when I teach you the

pause break. Right? Reset your body, reset your mind. It's all you're

doing. You're just kinda intentionally harnessing

the lost thoughts and pushing them into a specific direction.

You're taking that default and you're giving it a little task.

That's how you gotta find your lost little brain. Give it

a task. You don't need to like negative

mindset, positive your mindset out of all your negative mindsets. Like,

that's a lot of effort. All you need to do is activate

your thinking brain and you will

naturally shift from those ruminating thoughts. You might

have to do it over and over and over again because, like I said, the

brain is a muscle. It might be weak. This network might be weak.

Your default network might be too high. Now,

sometimes, I've noticed some people are, like, task, task, task, task, task. They burn

out. They wanna go on their phone. The phone is basically

become our default mode

network, and it has there's some bummers

about using your phone to to soothe or calm yourself

or to be in default mode to quote unquote rest,

active rest or wakeful rest. The problem is that

it's not coming from inside of you. Yes.

You're focused on something external, but it's being

fed to you. So it's not really

your man wandering mind. It's more like

someone's telling you now focus on this. Let's think about

this. If you go to Instagram, right, and you scroll through

the feed, and it's just like new thought, new thought, new thought, new thought, new

thought, new thought, new thought. I like to

think my own thoughts. I wanna think about what I wanna think about.

I don't spend much time scrolling on the

platforms because I actually find it extremely boring

and tedious, But it's because I don't let my brain really engage. It's not

interesting enough to me. I, like, scroll for a second. I'm like, ugh, this is

gross. And I just get off of it. It's not the place that I seek

information and it doesn't rest my brain and it doesn't it's not my default and

I don't really use it. But it can feel

like the easy way to reset.

It is easy. It's just low quality

active rest. It's not high quality active

rest. So when you are able to

shift into DMN to do default mode network

without the Internet, without a device,

you start to daydream and mind wander

in a little more free flowy way. Now, of course, some of

those mind wandering you, some of your thoughts might be negative. That

might be okay now I need to switch to some small task and try

again. But when you are able to

have active rest without going

into a negative thought spiral or without

going into your phone, you will learn a lot about

yourself, which is super cool. So it increases

self awareness about you. What do you think

about? What do you pay attention to? Sure. You have a

monkey mind. It's scattered thoughts all over the place. What are they?

Sometimes it's really helpful to just write out all your thoughts.

What does your brain think about? Get to know yourself.

Another thing about when you're in that mind wandering free flow

time where you're not really thinking about anything and you're just allowing thoughts to come

through, it actually can help you figure out what you've learned. Like I

said, learn from prior events or integrate learning,

kind of synthesize information, reflect on experiences.

I actually really one of the my mind wandering things is to look at

photos. I find it kind of relaxing and

truly reset. And they're my photos of my family, not other

people's photos that they posted on Instagram. They're my they're my

vacations. And I like to daydream about them and think about future vacations.

Also, then you usually reflect positively on your experiences.

And that's a kind of a fun little thing. When

you are inside your own brain, it

helps you become more creative. Highly creative people

tend to have great greater functional connectivity

in their default mode. Their default mode is

fun, is creative, is like it's a fun place to

be. I always think of my mind as a playground. I

love to be in it, almost too much. But

sometimes I like to be in task and sometimes I like to be in free

flow thinking. It's one of the reasons why I love reading fiction so

much because it gets me into a different world that's

it's not task positive network. I'm not really thinking about what I'm reading

when I'm reading fiction. When I'm reading nonfiction, I'm task

positive. Like, I'm reading Sapolsky's book called Behave,

and it is like a college textbook. It's so intense. And so

I'm really focused. And then I'm like, oh my gosh. My brain's so tired. I

might put it down, go for a walk, look outside,

maybe, you know, read read, look at some photos,

you know, something like that. Now I wanna give you some

strategies as we wrap up of how to activate

your DMN a little bit more often.

The idea here is to just notice when you have

gaps in your day, such as in the checkout line

or waiting for your kids to get out of school, like in the pickup

line, maybe while you're there in the bath

or, there's a lot of waiting around, I think, with kids.

And when you would typically reach for your phone,

that's a good gap. Yeah. I want want you to be thinking

about that. So make some time to do nothing every

day. That's another thing. So when you are

in a period of time where you don't have any plans or you don't have

to be on duty, take a break

every couple hours from your job to unfocus your brain and give it a

chance to rest. Take a few minutes when you're in the grocery store line

to daydream rather than scrolling your phone. Sort of be

intentional about, like, you're like, this is my non thinking time, and I'm just

gonna see what comes up. I'm just gonna, like, daydream. You can give yourself

a little prompt. Like, let's think about the last time we

felt we laughed really hard or the last funny thing our

kids said, something like that. Also, another

strategy is to combine, like, when you go for a

walk or you do some sort of exercise, like you go on a

hike or a walk or you go, you know, do a little workout or

whatever. Instead of getting your headphones in and

listening to music or listening to a podcast, although I want you to be listening

to my podcast. But try out listening to

nothing for the first 10 minutes of a walk. I recently

learned about this from the actress Laura Linney to

commit to listening to 10 minutes of Bach a day, the composer.

And so I've been doing that. And, I find that I wanna go

longer than 10 minutes. And while I'm listening to that music, my

mind is just kind of wandering all around. And it's it's

been really, really rejuvenating. I'm not listening to someone teach me

something. I'm just allowing my brain to find out what it wants to think

about. So I try to do without music. Sometimes don't bring

my headphones at all or bring my phone at all and just go for a

walk and, like, look around. I also really intentionally do

spend time in my yard looking at nature. Like, I don't have

a big old woodsy yard. I just have a regular Southern California backyard.

But there's some birds and, you know, some flowers that change colors and

things like that. So I do try to connect to nature.

Look at what like, today's a cloudy day. Yesterday was blue. Yes.

There was big cloud, you know, like, little wispy clouds or the greet color of

the greens, things like that. Now I do want you to think

about, like, setting aside your digital devices and

giving yourself that mind wandering mode. So turning off your notifications,

kind of putting your phone one of my friends, she puts her phone in her

drawer when she's in her house. I find it very hard to do that.

I do check my phone a lot. It's a little annoying. I'd like to check

it less. But she does and, like, you don't hear from

her. You know? She doesn't she doesn't answer you. She checks her phone a couple

times a day and that's it. And the rest of her day is just very

focused on what she wants to do. I think it's really admirable. Just picking

if you have a partner and you guys decide as a team, you know, that

your values are aligned where you wanna have more wandering mind

wandering time or unfocused default mode

time, you can make a decision, like, hey, let's put our phones away for an

hour. Let's not let's not look at our phones during the bedtime routine.

Let's not use our phones in the mornings for the first like, you know, check

your phone and things like that. But then let's put it away for 30 minutes

while we're getting the kids ready. You'll notice that you will get

more done if you put your phone away. You'll actually be more

present. You'll be a calmer. You'll be better better at setting

limits, better at connection because your mind is focused

on caregiving at that time. And then don't

worry about not doing anything. Sometimes we think we should be busy

all the time. And it's okay for you

to not be busy and to

have windows of time. When my kids were little, I always

noticed that I would, like, kinda stop work or whatever

activities I had going on and, like, maybe 30 minutes before pickup.

Like, I wasn't, like, not enough time to start something and then

not enough time to, like, yeah, get into anything.

So I would just spend that time reading or,

yeah, just looking outside zoning out a little bit. Sometimes I'd

watch TV, actually. But it would just be like a free

mind period of time because I knew once my kids got in my

presence, I was gonna be on task again, like super high

brain. And then by the end of the night, my brain was mush. So you

know that. And so you can just do nothing. You don't have to

fill every minute of your day. You can create natural

windows where there's downtime. And then figure out how you wanna

fill that. That doesn't involve scrolling on

Instagram. Alright. I hope this was interesting. I hope it

was good for you to get some strategies for the values of

why you want to shift from task to quality

default mode, some strategies for how to do that,

and then some compassion for your kids understanding that they

are in default mode all the time and it's challenging for them to get on

task. And so you wanna give them little tiny tasks to get them

motivated, and then they'll usually shift into the

gear. You know? You don't have to clean up your whole room. Just clean

these 5 pieces these 5 items of clothing, put them in your

drawer. Okay. Great. Now do these 7 things. And now do these 10 things. Okay.

Now you'd finish cleaning up and I'm gonna come back in 5 minutes.

So you kind of give that brain a little bit of task to chew on

and break it down into some steps. Super, super helpful for

kids and for us to be honest.

Okay. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful

week. And if you have any questions about this, please

reach out. You can book a complimentary consult, a consultation with

me at the Calm Mama Coaching website,

or you can just join the club. The Calm Mama Club is open enrollment at

all times. It's $30 a month, and you get

coaching with me once a week. We have a group program, and we ans

answer all sorts of questions about kids and child raising and the brain

and moms and how to calm ourselves, all the things.

Or you can work with me privately if groups aren't your thing. So reach out

and let me know what you you know, tell me what's going on with your

family. I'd love to hear from you. I hope you have a week

filled with quality default

mode network time with quality active and

wakeful rest. Okay. I'll talk to you next

time.