Healing Through Connection: How Everyday Moments Build Resilient Kids with Karen Green
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You have everything you need to be your child's primary healer—you just need the right tools.
In this episode, mental health expert and tenured professor Karen Green shares how overwhelmed parents can build deep emotional connection with their kids in just 5 minutes a day—no therapy degree required. Karen reveals the research-backed strategies behind her newly launched Conscious Care Cards, a screen-free toolkit that's helping families transform daily moments into rituals of resilience.
What You'll Discover:
The 40-second window: Research from Finland shows just 40 seconds of attuned presence can heal a child's brain
The "transitional object" technique: A simple string activity that helps kids understand connection exists even when you're apart (perfect for separation anxiety at any age)
Why "I'm not a therapist" is actually holding you back: Karen explains why parents feel disempowered and how to reclaim your role as your child's emotional guide
The reparenting component: How healing your own childhood wounds makes you more present and effective with your kids
Six pillars of resilience: The research-based categories (empowerment, emotional regulation, connection, happiness habits, resiliency, and caregiver kindness) that predict lifelong happiness
DOSE chemicals explained: How dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins create bonding and why simple rituals (like lighting a candle before conversations) flood your child's brain with these connection chemicals
The isolation epidemic: Why the Surgeon General identified parent loneliness as the #1 threat to mental health—and how community solves it
Special Offer for Listeners: Visit consciouscarecards.com/podcast for a FREE starter kit and join the movement to heal a million kids together.
Perfect for: Parents feeling overwhelmed by their child's big emotions, educators looking for classroom connection tools, caregivers wanting to break generational patterns, anyone who feels "I'm not doing enough" for the kids in their life
The Bottom Line: You don't need hours, perfection, or a therapy degree. You need presence, simple rituals, and the courage to heal yourself while healing your child. This episode shows you exactly how.
Guest Bio
Karen A. Green, MSW, LSSW, is a tenured professor, mental health expert, and the creator of Conscious Care Cards — a science-backed parenting tool that helps families build connection, resilience, and emotional intelligence through simple, mindful rituals. With over twenty-five years in mental health and sixteen years working directly with children and families, Karen has become a trusted voice in bridging research and real-life parenting. She blends her expertise in neuroscience, attachment theory, and mindfulness to remind parents that healing doesn’t just happen in therapy; it happens in the loving, everyday moments of family life. She believes that parents are on a Hero's journey and with the proper guidance, they can become their child's primary healer.
Recognized with the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Unsung Hero Award — honors that reflect her lifelong commitment to compassion and her unwavering belief that sharing mental health wisdom and prioritizing children's emotional wellness can truly change the world.
Thank you!
Thank you for listening to the Raising Resilient Kids Podcast! We are siblings on a mission to help kids become their strongest selves by sharing proven strategies with parents, teachers, and all who work with kids to build resilient, confident kids who can tackle life's challenges and thrive.
For more information on the podcast, or if you have a question you would like answered by one of our expert guests, please visit us at – https://www.smarthwp.com/raisingresilientkidspodcast.
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Episode Transcript
Jeannie: [00:00:00] Tom, I am very excited for this week's guest because I actually have a connection with them and we actually both have a little bit of a connection. So a very good friend of mine who I worked with, for many, many years at the Ellen DeGeneres Show, his name is Ross Williams.
He reached out to me, he heard about the things that we're doing, and he told me about his very good friend named Karen, who's doing things that are in the realm of what we do. Ross is from the suburbs of Chicago, where we're from. And so is Karen. So I'm like, okay, not only is she doing these amazing things, but she's also a good old Midwesterner. So I'm like, we have to have her on the podcast.
So let me tell you a little bit about Karen. She is a tenured professor, a mental health expert, and the creator of Conscious Care Cards, which come out today, November 1st. It's a science backed parenting tool that helps families build connection, resilience, and emotional intelligence through simple mindful rituals.
With over 25 years in mental health and 16 years working [00:01:00] directly with children and families, Karen has become a trusted voice in bridging research and real-life parenting. She blends her expertise in neuroscience, attachment theory, and mindfulness to remind parents that healing doesn't just happen in therapy. It happens in the loving everyday moments of family life. She believes that parents are on a hero's journey. I agree with that, and with the proper guidance, they can become their child's primary healer.
She was recognized with the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Unsung Hero Award. Honors that reflect her lifelong commitment to compassion and her unwavering belief that sharing mental health wisdom and prioritizing children's emotional wellness can truly change the world. Karen has this incredible inspiring and moving mission that I'm so excited to share with all of you, and you're gonna learn about it later in our interview.
Hi Karen. Hi fellow, Midwesterner.
Karen: I love Raising Resilient Kids! Thank you so much.
Jeannie: Well, you have, [00:02:00] you have been doing that for 25 years. I just can't, you just feel the Midwestern energy between all of us. To do
Karen: I do. It has nothing to do with our Twang and our A’s.
Tom: Yeah.
Jeannie: Nothing at all. So, Karen, do me, so tell us a little bit about yourself. What led you to your career as a specialist in mental health?
Karen: So, I would say that my journey happened long before I earned the degrees when I was 15 my mother died. She had struggled with cancer for three years. And I remember going back to school that first week and most of the teachers, adults, and kids just basically acted like nothing had happened. And I was like, unmoored as you'd believe, as you'd imagine. And I was in English class and a friendly looking woman asked me over and took me into her office.
I had never been to therapy before. I had never even really known what counseling was. She sat down and she gave me her [00:03:00] presence and I felt it immediately and she, I thought of her as like one of the bravest people and one of the bravest adults because she not only asked how I was feeling, but she very much leaned in and wanted to understand and it was 50 minutes, and I'm sure there were, you know, theories she used and therapeutic skills she used. But I walked away from that meeting just feeling like a sense of a taproot. Like she really heard me, she sees me, and she wasn't scared to, to really lean into this terrible feelings I'm having right now.
And it gave me like this sense of courage. That like initiated this spark inside of me. If Donna Gottsman is watching, thank you Donna, for changing my life, but she's also a midwesterner, right? Um, but the connection heals the brain, we know that. And so I just wanted to dedicate my life to connecting in, [00:04:00] connecting in like an authentic way before the neuroscience, before any of the mindfulness research, it was like, I sensed it and then, then I decided that I was gonna make space for children's hearts because we wanna keep children's hearts open and resilient and connected, and all that they need is an attuned adult.
They're, they have research in Finland that says it's just 40 seconds can be healing for the brain. 40 seconds. So that's why it's like minutes, truly just minutes being authentic and connected and truly wanting to know about your child's emotional world is brave and so yeah, that's why I decided to become a Master's in Social Work and work in schools, and then now be the director of an associate's program teaching my students how to be therapists and counselors.
Jeannie: How incredible for you to take a tragedy that could have gone one direction and just that one person [00:05:00] changed not only that moment in your life, but your life, the trajectory of your life.
Karen: My whole life and you know, so many students that I ask, why did you join this Associates program? Why do you wanna become a counselor? I would say 90% of them. It's because of one person showing kindness, one person showing like mindful presence, and really sitting with them in a moment of, you know, crisis and being brave enough to just sit there with an open heart.
Jeannie: So you're the creator of Conscious Care Cards, which I just learned. Launch today, November 1st. How exciting. So, conscious Care Cards, congratulations. Show 'em off to everybody who's watching. Gosh, those are so beautiful. I know that they're simple research-based activities designed to boost your child's happiness and emotional wellbeing. Tell us about them.
Karen: So this came from years of talking with parents and parents feeling extremely disempowered with how to hold feelings for their child. [00:06:00] I would, you know, do good work with my, with children in my office. But then when I would, the parent would come to pick them up, I would ask like, do you talk to them about how, what we're doing? And so many of them felt so disempowered. They were like, no, I don't wanna screw it up. Or, no, I don't, I'm not a therapist. the intention behind this is like an emotional enrichment toolkit. Let's create rituals of resilience, every parent, no matter what their circumstance, wants the best for their child, they want their child to be happy and they want their child to grow up a successful adult, but so many parents don't know how or where to even start.
It's intentionally screen free because we know the growing research about what the screens are doing to our children's brains. And so this is kind of like a guidebook where you have five minutes, pull a card. The research behind it is impeccable, but the testimonies are life changing. this is [00:07:00] like pouring the resources into your child but also the parent is getting the benefit. 'cause there are pieces of really encouraging parents to reparent themselves.
Tom: The combination of not knowing what to do, you're not an expert, so you don't know what's, what's the right or wrong thing to do. Plus everybody's so busy that you're, you're kind of hitting both of those, you're helping us with both of those as parents.
Karen: Well, right, and, and it's like you don't have time to get onto a, you know, even log onto a parenting support group. You don't have time to read a book. You know, you wanna do it differently, you know, you don't wanna do it like your parents did it, but. how do you take that leap? You know, how do you change the patterns and the behaviors?
Well, we know that just little bits of change in the long run will create healing.
Jeannie: Karen, tell us, you know, what makes Conscious Care Cards different from what is already out there?
Karen: So Conscious Care Cards are based in research, and so they are in, they're on [00:08:00] six different categories, those are the pillars of resilience. So I really kind of went backwards knowing that every parent wants a happy child, they want a skilled child, but they also wanna some sort of guarantee that their, their child will be a successful adult.
So I, I went from backwards, and chose every single category to kind of cover all of those. But also what is different is this is a caring community. I invite parents to join a membership to really talk about how am I reparenting in myself? What are my triggers? What is particularly difficult for me? How was I parented and how are those wounds showing up and how can I not improve print those wounds onto my child? Right? So how do we do it differently? Well, what we know is community does it, you know. Working and healing and community feeling like you really belong. And [00:09:00] so, that's an aspect that's not out there as well. But also in every card, I ask the parent to lean in into their own emotional authenticity. Tell a time that you felt similarly, tell a time that you struggled with that and having the child see the parents' internal landscape, their emotional narrative, that's where the connection is that strengthens bond.
It's like you're not a superhero in emotions just because you're an adult. You struggle too, and, and you're sharing that struggle not in a, like putting it on the child's shoulders, but in a, this is what I did and this is how I gained confidence in this area, and let's gain confidence in emotional intelligence together.
Tom: Karen, what were the six topics? Can you list those off?
Karen: Yeah, so they, they're empowerment. So a lot about empowering yourself as a parent, but also empowerment of the child.
And [00:10:00] then resiliency. So really we know a lot about resiliency and what creates resiliency. And so those are the predicting factors for lifelong happiness.
Emotional regulation is a, is another category. So really let's get down in dirty with the skills. Let's teach the skills, but also let your parent tell you what skill did you use today?
And then connection. So really that was mostly the neuroscience around how do you feel connected? How do you flood your child with oxytocin? What are you doing, how are you doing it?
And then the happiness habits. So. Because we know so much about, you know, positive psychology now and like what actually makes you happy and how to like, steer your brain off of the negative bias. How to, how to focus on the positive. And those are fun. Like all of these activities, there's not a lecture of component. It's all fun. It's like get down on the floor, crawl around, all these things are fun and somatic.
And then the last category is caregiver [00:11:00] kindness. So those are some journal entries that parents can do to really, evaluate their parenting style, see what they're proud of, see, really focus on what they're doing well. And then what are parenting struggles that are showing up? And how do they, how do they look at those without shame.
Jeannie: You kindly sent over some of the cards to us and talking about the fun of it. They really are so, they're so much fun., Like there was one called Joy Walk, a Wish Mirror Work. Those were three that I was like, this would be so fun to do with the kid. Do you mind maybe talking us through one of the cards?
Karen: Oh, I would love to. I'm gonna actually pull a card from the connection category and it's called the Transitional Object card. I did this often because kindergarten separation anxiety was a real thing, right?
Jeannie: Yes. I had, I have a girlfriend who I, I saw the first two weeks of her daughter in kindergarten. She, she was weeping [00:12:00] every morning. So that is, I literally just experienced that through my girlfriend, but, sorry go ahead.
Tom: I have, I have a freshman in college who has separation anxiety
Karen: Yes. I would guess that you also had separation anxiety.
Tom: I sure do. Yep.
Karen: So this is called the Transitional Object, and every single card really encourages you to first set a setting, like make a cozy environment, so that's kind of the nest, like light a candle, make cocoa. Really take a moment to create like a comforting area. You know, all of those rituals are communicating to your child, you're worthy of my love. You're worthy of my time. You're worthy of me taking a minute to finding a lighter to light the candle so we can sit down and talk about this. This is important enough and you are important enough.
So the transitional object is going is helping kids remember that even though their parent, you can't see your parent, you are [00:13:00] still connected to your parent. The script asks you to take a piece of twine, if you don't have twine in the, and that's also like if you don't have twine, use dental floss, use whatever you have in the house. Put the, put the twine to your heart and talk to the twine and blow in how much you love your child. What do you love about them? What do you miss when they're gone? What is it that really makes your heart feel full? What is a really warm memory? And put that to your heart. Then have them take the twine and do the same thing. Say one reason that you really love your Dad. Say, say one reason you really love your grandma and then I want to encourage you to walk six feet. And can you still feel that warmth? Can you still feel it in your heart?
Yes. Okay. Go around the corner so we can't see one another and tug on the string. Can you feel it in your heart? Yes. Okay. So even though we're not, we cannot see one another we still love one another and our connection is real.
And so they come back and then you clip a piece of the twine and you're, [00:14:00] you decide, you show your child, I'm gonna put it in this pocket today. And so anytime I miss you, I'm gonna touch the string and they're gonna do the same. And I cannot tell you how many kindergarten kindergartners showed me their string love. It was like magic, like it changed drastically.
Because so many parents, it's like I would deal with the, the crying kindergartner, but then the parent would come in like, I don't think I was ready for my child to go to kindergarten, you know? And they need to deal with that grief too, you know? So this is, is reparenting them as, as well, right?
Jeannie: You just mentioned reparenting, the parent. Why did you choose that to be such a significant focus on, on each card?
Karen: What we know is that if you are healed enough to be present in your own self, you're going to be able to authentically show up. for anyone else, right? Not only your your [00:15:00] child, but your, your friends, your partner, your relationships. And so the more access you have to a healed part of you, the more available you will be for your child,
There are no perfect parents, but if you can investigate and heal yourself, then you're gonna start building confidence. And again, that confidence, you're gonna show up more fully. And so it's a really important piece because presence is, is the healing factor, right? We know that we heal in relationship, and so you have to be here, in the relationship in order for the relationship to be strong.
Jeannie: You talked a little bit, you touched on the membership part a little bit, but tell us about that membership as part of your mission.
Karen: So the membership came from,the parents that are conscious, the parents that are really trying to work hard on, um, being more aware, they're feeling really alone. We know that the Surgeon General in [00:16:00] 2024 has stated that they're very scared about the mental health of parents.
And the number one reason that they're scared is the feeling of isolation. And so getting them together to really talk together about using the cards and how it's been and how hard it is, right? And, seeing each other's struggle is really gonna flood their brain with the, with the chemicals that they need, right? The DOSE chemicals is what we want in DOSE chemicals, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. Those are the chemicals that create bonding and belonging. And so the membership is, do is using that, using the research to really bring that to the forefront.
Jeannie: So Kareb on your website, there are two things that that I wanted to talk about. One is your mission, the other is the give back program. So you have a mission to help heal a million kids by empowering parents to own their impact. Tell us about it
Karen: Let's do [00:17:00] it.
Tom: Yeah.
Jeannie: Yes.
Karen: I, I mean, I feel like you guys are doing it right?
Jeannie: We're all trying. We're all trying.
Tom: Yep.
Karen: I mean, the, the thing that is so just breaks my heart is the, the statistics about emotional health and wellbeing for our kids.
I really do believe that if we raise emotionally intelligent parents re-raise, right? Reparent. Um, these parents, they will be able to be present and hold space for their child's emotions and that can and will be a predictor for a whole generation. Being able to be resilient, hold feelings, know what to do about overwhelming feelings, not turn to numbing feelings. And if we could change that, we can heal a million kids. Like if we can just get people to, you know, put away their devices and be here now [00:18:00] for five minutes, the healing impact of that is huge.
Jeannie: That mission is so powerful. You also, though, have the Give Back Program. So tell us a, you know, give us some more details about that and why was it important for you to, to have that
Karen: So this is a huge piece of, um, my mission as a social worker. I know, you know that there are so many parents, no matter where they are in the poverty line or no matter where they are in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they all want the best for their child, but they might not have the resources or access to what's needed in order to show up for their child. And so I don't want cost to be a barrier.
As a, um, the director of the Associates program, we have 40 partnerships with all of the mental health and treatment facilities out in the Portland metro area. And so I can. I have access [00:19:00] to giving a free box every 10 or 20 I sell to parents that might not be able to access it, but that they really want to change, their impact. And so they wanna own their impact, but they might not be able to afford it.
Jeannie: That is so, so cool. So cool. Okay, now I wanna sort of take a, a little bit of, a little bit of a turn because when, again, when Ross sent me the website, I was like, I love like just the energy that comes from you, the, the, the artwork that's there. And then you sent us some of the cards and the artwork on the cards reminds me of like a favorite childhood book. Like it just, it all of a sudden, just like I'm thrown back into like being kid, being warm, being cozy, reading a book with my mom and dad. Tell us about this beautiful artwork.
Karen: I was so fortunate to have found, um, Jordan Kim. We started meeting at a coffee shop here in the Gorge and just started, we really connected and, and her. [00:20:00] She, her collage work is so beautiful, but she has a history in like natural resources and conservation.
And her art is just so, such a beautiful nod to the natural world around us, you know. Kind of going with that same theme, like the taproot theme, like just the resource, we can be resourced. It comes across in the tones. She's an amazing woman for sure.
I really wanted it to speak to the, the child in the adult, because with the re-parenting theme, right? Like, can you connect back to that child in you.
Because that's the purity, right? Like, let's go bring back that purity. And if you can show up in that pure, authentic way, that's the beginning of creating this bond that's gonna be the healing factor.
Jeannie: It definitely is. It definitely is. Well, Karen, can you share with our audience how they can connect with you and how they can get more information or purchase the Conscious Care Cards.
Karen: Absolutely. So my website's just consciouscarecards.com, but we did set up [00:21:00] a consciouscarecards/podcast. So if you are listening to this and you want a free, we have it like a free starter kit for just your listeners.
Jeannie: Oh cool!
Karen: Yes. So if you wanna own your impact because you are your child's most primary healer, um, come join us in conscious care cards.
Jeannie: We're gonna have that link down below. Karen, I mean Ross connected you with us and I feel Thank you Ross. 'cause I'm sure Ross is listening. So thank you Ross. And this is just so cool. We really encourage all of our listeners to go and check out her website. I, I really think that this is such an incredible thing for parents.
Tom: With the holidays coming up, this is a great gift for your parent friends.
Karen: Absolutely. Grandparents, parents, caregivers. Yes, for sure. Let's heal a million kids together. Let's do it.
Jeannie: Let's do it. Thank you so much!
Tom: Thank you, Karen!