Episode Transcript
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This episode of Revelizations is brought to you by Frank's Homie Structures.
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Frank's Homie Structures, not recommended as a human habitat.
Hi everyone, welcome to Revelizations.
I'm your host, Brian James.
For a while, I've been interested in how we as people end up the way we do.
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All the different circumstances, encounters, events, interactions that happen to us as
we age that impact who we become and continue to be.
There are so many different stimuli and so many more ways to respond to it.
Today we are going to be spending some time looking into one of those catalysts.
We'll be going to the beginning of most everyone's journey, exploring parenting.
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With the internet comes unlimited information, and on the internet's back comes social media,
which produces unlimited opinions.
Have you ever watched an old kung fu movie where two people who are about to enter into
combat, or at least they would if they could ever be done arguing about whose style of
martial arts is superior?
My crane style will defeat your mantis style, my tiger style will defeat your impenetrable
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panda style, and so on.
It's a bit ridiculous, because obviously no style is superior to the impenetrable panda.
I found that like in those old kung fu movies, people get sucked into these arguments a
lot about parenting styles or parenting approaches.
A lot of people think that how they raised their kids or are raising their kids is the
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best in only one true way.
It becomes almost like a religion, where you read a parenting style book, apply it, and
close your eyes and ears to anyone that would speak blasphemy against it.
Hyperbole aside, it usually isn't so brazen when people offer their unsolicited parenting
advice.
It's usually more subtle and innocuous.
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A friend sees an interaction between you and your kid and they say, when my Jeffrey
does that, this is what we do, and it's worked for us.
Or perhaps it's your parents, seeing how you're dealing with your kids in a certain
scenario and they say, when you guys would behave that way, this is how we handled it,
and you guys turned out just fine.
Even people who don't yet have kids, or may never want to have kids, have opinions about
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the right way to raise a kid.
Out in a public space, there's a kid misbehaving, and the parent is dealing with it, but not
in the same way that they would.
If they were in that situation, the temper tantrum would already be a distant memory.
It's in everyone.
And that's why I invited today's guest, to finally prove once and for all, why my impenetrable
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panda parenting style is superior.
That's not true.
But we do talk about the main styles of parenting, the impact of different parenting styles,
and a lot more.
Without further preamble, let me introduce today's guest.
My guest today is Sharyn Feldman.
She has over 20 years of experience in counseling and education, which she brings to her therapy
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and coaching practice.
Her work focuses on strengthening parent-child interactions, fostering secure attachment,
and promoting overall family wellness.
Using evidence-based approaches rooted in attachment theory, and with a compassionate
and trauma-informed approach, she integrates the core principles of cognitive behavioral
therapy with mindfulness, resilience building, and emotion regulation techniques.
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In addition to helping clients navigate stress and relationship challenges, Sharyn specializes
in supporting parents through their own mood challenges, anxieties, and the adjustments
of parenthood.
She provides both individual and group psychoeducation tailored to parents.
She is dedicated to supporting parents to find greater understanding, harmony, and emotional
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well-being.
Join me as I sit down and have a conversation with Sharyn Feldman.
Thanks for being here, Sharyn.
Thanks so much for having me, Brian.
I'm very excited for this conversation.
This is a topic that it's kind of weird how people will take a stance on it and not really
realize they're kind of like a hardline stance.
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And it's just, it's really interesting because there's just so many different styles of
parenting out there that I don't think there's necessarily a correct one.
Yeah, I think what's interesting to me is that whether people are parents or not, they
all have opinions about parenting.
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And you say styles, I might say approach.
And yeah, people have kind of strong feelings about right and wrong in terms of parenting,
which is unusual for me and the way I think about parenting is that it's a relationship.
And we don't analyze our other relationships that way.
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We don't talk about how I need to approach my friendship with this person and how am
I going to act with them and respond to them.
We don't talk about, we don't think about our neighbors and think, okay, how am I going
to approach being a neighbor with this neighbor?
What kind of style am I going to have?
What kind of approach?
Right?
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Like we don't talk about with my boss, how am I going to, what style of relationship
am I going to have with my coworkers?
But those are all relationships.
And ultimately, parenthood is about a relationship with someone that you are responsible for
and mentoring and coaching and supporting.
So we might say it's the most supportive relationship you're going to offer to another human being,
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but ultimately it's a relationship that comes with a lot of responsibility.
So I just think, you know, you're thought about people having this finite, like, no,
this is what it is and there are right ways and there are wrong ways and people kind of
assuming there's a universality to that is just an unfortunate piece of fiction that
people subscribe to, which makes it harder to transition into parenting for like most
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people.
I think that thing is what makes it the hardest.
Yeah, because I think and when I say like people are hardline for the most part, it's
when they're when their children are raised, they kind of look back and this is through
my own, like what I've noticed and what I've seen with people is even with some people
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in my life who have very contentious relationships with their with their parent.
And when the when the grandparent is there watching their kid parent, they have opinions
about it.
But it's like you like it's so funny to me because like you think that's the gold standard
is how you did it.
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You can't even talk with your kid for more than 30 minutes without getting in a pretty
heated conversation.
Yeah, but there's a lot of you know, that's a lot of self-protection for people.
Because listen, you know, I'll share a story like I have a friend who who only buys organic
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meat.
OK.
Her mom doesn't buy organic meat.
And you know, my friend has got her own family, her adult kids, and this is like a constant
like rift between them, like an unspoken thing that, you know, the mom will bring groceries
over to my friend and my friend's like, Mom, this this is not organic and I can't I can't
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we I only buy organic in the house.
And the mom keeps doing this.
She's been like my friend has been, you know, a married person for like 30 years.
Her mom will keep slipping that thing in.
Why does her mom do that?
So my friend's like, my mom is so disrespectful, like she knows that I only buy organic and
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she insists on doing this.
And it's not about her.
So she sees it as a judgment of her.
But if her mom, this is how her mom's framework works.
If she brings organic food to her daughter, then she has to own up to maybe when I fed
my family.
Oh, wow. Yeah, it is right.
If she has to do that, then she has to say maybe it was wrong.
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And what I did, right, because the science now is talking about organic and all the pesticides
and things are unhealthy and all this disease we have.
So for her mom to bring her organic food, she would have to also accept the fact that
she perhaps did some damage to her children by not eating them organic.
And she's not prepared to do that.
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And that's all subconscious.
Like she doesn't have, you know, there's no outward awareness of that.
But that's the system that's going on inside.
So, you know, your story about all these people with the parents, the in-laws, the grandparents
are saying, well, you know, what are you doing that?
We you all turned out OK the way that we did it.
It is that when you're a parent, you are ultimately responsible for the out.
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This is what's funny, right.
So the from the grandparents perspective.
So when you're looking back, right, you know, you feel that weight of I was the one
responsible for the outcome of that child.
Now, I don't believe that to be true.
I'm just saying, you know, you're not 100 percent.
There are all kinds of things that factor into how a human being develops.
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You're one of the key factors as a parent.
But the weight of that responsibility, there's nothing else like that.
So when you look back, you're like, well, I did the best I could.
And everything I did was fine because you all turned out OK.
But when you're in it as a parent, that weight turns into anxiety, overwhelm, right,
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because you're so worried about the outcome that sometimes it leads you to paralysis.
But all those, you know, grandparents out there, it's very hard to be a grandparent
today with this current generation of kids, with all the change between their time and
time, there were saturated with so much knowledge about, I mean, information out there about
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mental health and about, you know, health and wellness and child development and things
are so becoming more mainstream in those conversations.
They didn't have that.
And it's very hard to look at your own parenting, look at your kids and be able to have that
that believe both things at the same time, that everything you did was OK, perhaps OK,
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right?
Let's just talk about the most, you know, OK family and that all the ways your son or
daughter is doing it now might also be OK.
Like that can be really hard.
Yeah, it's very interesting if it's subconscious, like if it's that deep in there that you're
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like, I did the best I could.
I had hard, it seems like it would almost minimize the sacrifices that you went through
as a parent because it's to, you know, just assuming that everyone is trying to do the
best that they can.
You're doing the best that you can.
And then you, your kids have kids and then you see maybe a stark contrast to how you
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did it.
And maybe you see it almost as not an attack because that's like very harsh, but it's like,
oh, why aren't you continuing to do it the way that I did it?
Like, what's what's wrong with that?
And so I can get very convoluted and messy.
And yeah, if it's all just subconscious, like that's it's so fascinating.
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And for most, I would say, and this is just my opinion, I think it is most common that
parents and their adult kids who are now parents don't ever have that exchange.
They don't have that.
That takes a lot of self-awareness.
It takes a lot of ownership.
It takes a lot of curiosity.
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To be able to look at your adult kids as parents and say, huh, you know, you're doing it so
differently or, you know, I didn't do it that way or I didn't realize that, you know, there
might have been some issues with the way that we did things.
And because every, there's not a perfect parent.
There's no perfect relationships, right?
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So if parenting is just another relationship, there's no perfection.
But I think most parents in previous generations didn't really operate from a reflective place
where, you know, oh, I kind of see what happened there and I need to kind of go back and talk
about it.
So if that's what they used in their parenting, they're not going to be much different when
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they're now parents of adults, because you're still a parent.
Some people have a hard time with the changes that come with being a parent of adults.
Because you're not really parenting anymore, but you're still in relationship.
Yeah.
And now, right?
And now those adults have become parents.
And you're right, you know, that idea of it being whether you call it a slap in the face
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or kind of disrespect that discord between watching how your adult kids are parenting
their kids and reflecting on what you did.
on what you did.
And it really, it takes a lot of inner work to be able to be somebody who can own those
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things, like own, like be able to look back and reflect and realize where you might have,
you wished you would have done things differently.
But again, you have to have that self-compassion for what you knew at the time.
Like when I think about my parents, or I even think about myself, I have three kids.
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My parents had challenging history, which impacted me.
I have three kids.
And there's a bit of a span, like from the oldest to the youngest is eight years.
That's a long time for a human being like me, right?
So I was different when I parented my first child, my son, versus who I was as a parent
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with my youngest.
And I see that in our relationships, all three of them.
It's just a little different and they're all different.
And there's a relationship between that.
But I'm somebody who committed to self-development, you know, from the time I was probably 17, 18,
19 years old.
It became, you know, something that I was drawn to.
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Whereas my parents, you know, were not built that way.
And in order to be self-reflective, you have to be able to embrace vulnerability, humility.
You have to see yourself as a human who's fallible.
You know, you have to see relationships as about being about connection and repair,
just like with your friends and with your colleagues, right?
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That the days that you show up really well and there's days that you don't and there's
days that you, you know, mess up and you make amends, you make a repair and you move on.
But not everybody's built that way because people have this concept, as we said earlier,
right?
That that parenting is this one specific thing that's unique and in many ways it is,
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but in many ways it's not.
And people have these rigid ideas that they're still holding on to that have a lot to do with
control, the element of control, because the thing that you don't have in any other relationship
is that element of how much control is a part of being a parent,
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which is like another big conversation, right?
Yeah, and so we kind of talked about it in the opening.
We talked about how different styles, different approaches of parenting and
from what I could find, there's four pretty mainstream approaches to parenting that are,
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I guess, the big foundational terms to where there's a lot of different types of parenting
approaches that will offshoot from that, and they're authoritarian, authoritative,
permissive, and then the last one's uninvolved or neglectful parenting.
That one had a little bit of a rebrand because I don't think anyone wants to subscribe to
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neglectful parenting willingly or knowingly, like that's what it's called.
But is it, can you go into a little bit more detail to what those are?
What is authoritarian approach? What is authoritative?
Right. I think it's interesting because they have to do with elements of
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strictness, but also warmth and kind of a balance of the two.
So authoritarian parenting is really one where the parent sees themselves as the authority.
It's strict, it's rigid, it's a lot of that. Do as I say, not a lot of explanation.
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It's because I'm your parent, because I know better. So it's high control.
The focus in authoritarian is on compliance of the child. It's very behavioral.
And so parents really see themselves when they subscribe to that, they see themselves as
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in control. And I don't necessarily want to give control a bad rap because
you do have to have some amount of control. And I have parents kind of argue this with me,
the idea of control because they see control as related to safety, which I applaud parents for
because you do have to be responsible for the safety and the wellness of your child, right?
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They might misconstrue how to infuse their parenting, you know, their relationship with
that sense of responsibility, being responsible as a parent. But the authoritarian is, yeah,
it's very behavioral. It's about control. It's about compliance. And it's very much the hierarchy
model. Whereas authoritative is, you know, there's similar in terms of the expectations.
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So parents have expectations, meaning I use the word structure. There's a structure to your
how you're raising your child, but it's high responsiveness, meaning the parent is going to
give explanations. It's not going to be just do it because I told you, but there's some
learning involved. There's an understanding from those parents that part of the role is to teach
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a skill set to your child, right? Whether that's a tangible skill set of how to load the dishwasher,
how to manage your time, how to do your homework, or whether it's the emotional skill set of how to
understand your emotions, how to recognize them and manage them. So it has that high expectation,
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but also has that high responsiveness. And then permissive parenting, as the name kind of suggests,
is where there's not enough structure, right? So there's no curfews, there's no boundaries.
So parents who maybe get, you know, a bad rep for being too permissive are the ones who
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they struggle with their own ability to set boundaries and that probably shows up in other
places in their lives. They want their kids to be happy, right? Like that's something I hear parents
I work with say all the time. There's this striving that those parents have that's high
for their child to be happy. And so they feel that they don't have the confidence to impose
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boundaries and limits, which kids need. So permissive parenting is not the goal as well,
because it's not a balanced approach. Kids need a structure. They need to feel that they're being
held by something that gives them a sense of safety, gives them a sense that there's someone
in charge and they feel safe, right? It's a big deal. It is a big deal, right? You have to know
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that the people in charge are in charge, that they've got this. That's a huge part. You know,
everything about parenting, everything about being in relationship with your child is reflecting on
what's the message I'm sending. And that's a huge overarching message that when I work with parents,
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we talk a lot about, you know, this is the message that the child has. You want that child to feel
this sense of, so this internal sense of, my adults, they've got this. They've got me.
There's control, right? And that's okay. They're not, I'm not being controlled,
but I feel a sense of control, which means there's predictability and there's, you know,
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a sense of structure, which is really going back to the authoritative. So permissive is too loose.
And that seems like almost like we're diving into the unconscious again,
because I don't think a kid would necessarily know, like, oh, I don't, I think they would know
if they don't feel safe, but like, oh, I don't, it just seems like.
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Is the question like, how would they know or would they know?
Well, it just seems like it dives a little bit more into like that unconscious. Like if you,
if you don't have like structure, it's almost like, well, if I'm, if happiness is my compass,
I don't think you would really realize that as a kid, because I think you're a little bit more
instinctual. You're not really worried about the consequence of something. You're just like,
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how does this, what does this do for me now? Like if I eat a handfuls of candy while I'm happy now,
maybe later I'm up all night with a stomach ache, but I'm not really worried about that.
So just knowing like, oh, my parents going to let me after I eat dinner, like I'm going to have
a couple of pieces of candy. Like I, like, I know that like there's a, an expectation that you know.
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Right. I think it's so from, so if I think what you're, what I think you're talking about is kind
of the child's unconscious, like what, what happens to the child by virtue of that structure
or lack of structure. So I'll give you an example. And I think, you know, when you're talking about,
you know, the candy after dinner, we're talking about, you know, the five, six, seven year old
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child, right? When I think about this kind of permissiveness, let's say, and it's the parents
who really are striving for that happiness in their child, because they're both uncomfortable
with setting boundaries and they're also uncomfortable with their child's emotions.
So it's both of those things and they're probably not aware of either one. Yeah. Here's where I know
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that a child is being raised in that kind of potentially being raised in that kind of
environment and approach is when I'm working with a child and we talk about the home life.
Let's say they're nine, 10, 11, and they're talking about, yeah, well, you know, I'm really
tired today because I stayed up, you know, late gaming or watching TV or something.
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What time do you normally go to bed? I don't have a bedtime. What do you mean?
Yeah, I can just go to bed whenever I want. My parents don't really care.
So there's a red flag that goes up for me. The story the child is telling themselves is my parents
don't really care. Now, some people would hear that and say, wow, lucky kid, right? Or the kids
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like lucky me, you know, I get to stay up whenever. And that might be fine on that day. As you said,
they get the candy and they're like, oh, yummy candy. That's great. But over time, because
parenting is about consistency and pattern over time, that messaging, the risk of what that
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messaging does is that the messaging turns into a belief about the belief that the child carries.
My parents don't care about me. Right. It translates into that because they go to school,
they go out and they talk to their friends and the friends are all like, oh, I can't do that.
Like my parents, you know, make me go to bed at this time and complain about it. Or I have to do
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these things. And this kid looks at their life and they're like, yeah, nobody's actually asking
anything of me. So when we talked about the different kinds, we had, you know, authoritarian
where the parents are just like, do it because I told you to do it. So there's expectations,
but it's too strict and too rigid and authoritative, which is what we want because
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it's balanced. There's expectations and there's explanation, there's responsiveness.
So when we, when we give kids, when kids have expectations, that influences their sense of
self, it influences their self-esteem because if, if people are asking things of them,
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it means there's an expectation that they're capable. And when they feel capable, that
influences their sense of self, their sense of agency, their sense of rate and being cared for.
And being cared for because the messaging again is people are people. When I say people,
it's like my people, right? My parents, my caregivers. I matter to my people. They pay
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attention. They think about me. They think about me even when we're not interacting.
They think about plans for me. So that's the unconscious part that, you know, you kind of
brought up. There's like the, the under, underlying foundation that is set in motion for a child
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because your whole, you know, part of your approach with your child is helping that child
understand themselves, understand the world and understand their relationship with the world.
And if you think about it as an adult, when do we feel good about ourselves? When we are capable,
when we have contribution in the world, in our families, with our friends,
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that's when we feel good about ourselves. So all of those experiences start in childhood.
So start with those approaches of, you know, structure and warmth, which is really the two
pieces that are involved in what I call effective parenting. And then can you, can you wrap it up
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with uninvolved parenting and then slash neglectful parenting? Can you define that
one and kind of like in the same way, like the pros and cons of it?
I think the name says it all, right? I don't know that there's much. Yeah. So it's,
it's really parents who are, you know, again, I'm not going to try to write a story about parents,
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but for this conference, you know, purposes of our conversation,
parents who don't have a lot of emotional awareness on their own, they're distracted,
they perhaps have their own mental health struggles. I see this with parents who struggle
with depression or other, you know, other stresses in their lives, that they're just,
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they have this perception that their kid is just okay. And that they're not, they're not really
involved in the day-to-day needs of that child, be it tangible needs or emotional needs. And
it would be a combination of both. So let's just say you have two, you know, you have a two parent
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home and both parents have, they work, you know, maybe multiple jobs, they have high pressure
in their day-to-day life, maybe financial struggle. It doesn't matter. It can actually
be financial struggle. It can be high powered, you know, one's a judge, one's a surgeon.
They're just busy and they can't go on field trips because they're too busy. So that's,
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that's just a given. You can't go on field trips. That's not neglect.
But if at the same time, you completely miss the part about that being important to your child
ever, even if the child's never expressed it, just to have that awareness that
you would want to go on those field trips. So the emotional part would be talking about that
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with your child, right? So that wouldn't be like a unresponsive, neglectful, you know,
uninvolved parent because they would be tending to the emotional part of their relationship,
even if they can't do the things that are, you know, in the child's life.
Right? So the, the, the uninvolved is both on the, you know, external and on the internal,
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which really is, you know, like you said, we neglect would be a severe,
you know, it's hard. People hear the word neglect and whenever we hear the word
neglectful parenting, we have, I don't know, most people have this image of like a kid with,
you know, clothes that don't fit. They look like they haven't had a bath. They have an empty lunch
box, but that's, that's a severe, severe neglect, but there's actually a spectrum. I see everything
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as a spectrum actually, right? So there's a spectrum of neglect that involves mostly
those emotional components. A lot of the work that I do with parents is to kind of fill that gap
because if you're not somebody who is, you know, perhaps an early years teacher,
a kindergarten teacher, or somebody works in the daycare, you know, they get that training
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about child development. They get the training about, you know, what, what children need during
those vulnerable years, but the average parent doesn't. And so parents don't know what emotional
responsiveness truly is. And they don't understand the risks when there's not enough
for that child. And every child is different. We come into the world with temperaments,
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a series of temperaments, which are just traits, how sensitive people are, how kind of
regular our systems are. You know, I have a friend who, who needs to eat like breakfast. She could
never miss breakfast because it'll just ruin her entire day. I could eat like, I don't know,
it doesn't matter. I have no regulation. I'm actually a highly non-regulated temperament.
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I don't have to go to sleep at an hour. I don't have to wake up at the same hour. I can be so
random, spontaneous, but that's a temperament trait, right? So my friend is very, so when we
travel, everything's very planned because that's what she needs, right? And we, we learn about our
child's temperament. When we become a parent, you just, you know, I call it data collection.
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Like you just, you pay attention to who your child is, what's the, what's the template that
they came into this world with. It doesn't mean that it's rigid, but it means I need to know,
same way I need to know what my best friend is like so that when we travel together, I know how
to adapt or I know what to expect. So as a parent, like I raised three kids, one of them was
(34:05):
a morning person. I wasn't a morning person at the time that I had my son, but he was happy first
thing in the morning. And I'm not like that, but I had to adapt. I had to do that data collection
and pay attention to the kind of kid he is. And he's still like that. And I know that when I spend
time with him, he'll want to go on an early morning walk. You know, he'll want to do things that his
(34:28):
sisters might not want to do because they have different temperaments and I'll adapt myself to
him because that's what you do when you're in a parent-child relationship. So the hard thing
going back to neglect is that kids are not transparent and we can't see how they're being
impacted. So some kids who have high sensitivity to disconnection might respond in a more intense
(34:56):
way to their parents being uninvolved in their life. And because we just don't know
where people are, where our kids are on that spectrum, we need to always be trying to be
as responsive or repairing or tuning in as much as possible. Absolutely. It just seems like even
(35:20):
if you do subscribe to a certain like approach to parenting, like it might not work
like for your first kid. Yeah, that worked beautifully. But for the second one, maybe I
can't, let's just say the kid really responds well. Your first kid responds very well to being
direct and not using fluffy language, just being like, if they are a soccer player and they're
(35:43):
trying to get better at soccer, you say, oh, hey, I noticed like, this is where you made the mistake.
And there's like, Hey, thanks. Thank you. They just respond really well to being direct. And then
you have a next kid who like, that's literally going to cause them to quit the sport because
I can't do anything. Well, so you just have to kind of like you're saying be in tune. Yeah.
And so with this, how there are people who think that like their way is the right way,
(36:11):
it just seems really hard for me to believe that there'd be like really staunch proponents to like
that more uninvolved parenting, that more neglectful style. Again, like the taboo word
of neglectful taking out, like these parents are meeting the hierarchy of needs. They're meeting
some needs, not all the needs. Like they're more so biological needs. They have a safe place to eat,
(36:36):
to sleep. They have a place to call home, but your parent isn't necessarily going to come and see
like, Hey, I heard you were fighting with your best friend. How are you doing today with that?
Are you able to, so is there like a strong, like, no, this is the best way to raise your kid is like
kind of let them figure it out. Cause I can see what basically with all of them was authoritarian,
(37:00):
even though that sounds like pretty bad to say, Hey, it's my way or the highway. Like you can say,
Hey, in a, in a workplace, that's kind of what happens. You'll, you'll get to a certain task
with your job and you have to do it a certain way. So if you're used to so much flexibility,
maybe like permissive, then you can, you can not be set up for that, but it's, it seems to me,
(37:25):
it seems like it would be really hard to advocate for, yeah, uninvolved is the best. Like, is there
a school of thought that thinks like, yes, this is, this will give the best outcome of kids. This
will be the best for our society and moving forward is to have a generation of kids who are
raised with this approach. Right. I think that, I think I agree with you if what you're saying,
(37:50):
you know, nobody is going to subscribe to it and say, I'm going to, I'm becoming a parent and this
is the kind of parenting I'm going to be uninvolved. And that's going to, you know, make my kid tough
and it's going to make them, you know, be able to handle the world. I don't think anyone goes
into parenting that way. I think that a lot of people, so mostly what happens is we, we parent,
(38:12):
it's either by design or by default. We, we bring our, how we were parenting into our parenting
in one way or the other. We are either modeling the things that worked well in a conscious way,
or we're changing things up because we have that conscious awareness that what was, what happened
for us was not okay. And so we're going to go the other way. Or we have like unconscious parenting,
(38:37):
right? Which is kind of another variation on the theme of, you know, there's all these other kinds
of parenting that people talk about now, peaceful parenting, conscious parenting,
which is really just about being aware. So I don't, I personally don't believe that people
who are using an uninvolved approach to their parenting are doing that
(39:03):
consciously. I think that, I think that it's like I kind of said, it's a, it's a result of all kinds
of other issues. And that, like we said before about the grandparents, you know, there's this
justification to say, well, you know, my parents didn't go on field trips with me. And so, you know,
I'm sure, I'm sure they're going to be fine. And that's just a way of making yourself feel
(39:27):
better because, you know, you're doing the best you can. Somewhere subconsciously, you might know
you're falling short, but then you're going to kind of look at your kid and say, yeah, they're,
you know, I feed them well, they're going to a good school, you know, they seem to have friends.
So the emotional component, the emotional responsiveness, and what I would say the
mental wellness is not being tended to. And so one of the things we know now that we didn't know,
(39:55):
you know, when I was growing up is that children, like all other humans, have mental wellness.
We either are mentally well or we are mentally unwell, right? And even babies have like, there's
mental health for infants and babies. And people think about that and they're like, what do you
mean? Because our mental wellness has to do with our relationships. It has to do with how we feel
(40:24):
about ourselves and how we feel about ourselves is built on the foundation of what our interactions
were like with our caregivers. So it's not just that kids are being impacted as adults, they're
being impacted all the way through to adulthood and they're being impacted by the relationships.
(40:46):
So we know that now, we know that the caregiver child relationship builds the foundation. It
builds the architecture of the brain. Like brains are developed through relationship.
It develops our, through relationship, we develop our capacity to manage and understand our emotions,
our self-regulation, our limbic system. Like we're all in, all of our responsiveness as humans
(41:09):
happens all throughout our lives, not just as adults. So we know that now, right? Like as a
society, the science is out there that the foundations of all of our mental health and wellness
as adults starts in childhood and impacts children. Like that's the other thing people forget to say
sometimes. People will say, right? Like, oh, well I had a rough childhood and so that's why I have
(41:33):
anxiety. That's why I struggle with this. These are my trigger points because my childhood was,
but then, right, so which is why my area of focus is on that childhood, right? On the
parentals that can now change their mindset, tune in more, understand what reflective responsive
parenting is because we're looking to build mentally healthy adults. And it's a long game,
(42:01):
right? Yeah, I think you definitely touched on something that's really important is obviously
it's very important to care for your child's mental and physical needs growing up.
But as long as you're kind of trying your best and doing your best and doing what you think is
(42:24):
right, even the inevitable like, wow, I've really messed up my kid in this particular way.
Like that kid will grow up to be a person and then they have the choice on whether or not
to grow and adapt from that and learn better coping skills. Or they can kind of just, you know,
(42:48):
this is just who I am and have like a more, yeah, this is just what I am, more like a victim
mentality about it. Like, oh, I can't believe this happened to me. But I guess that would also be
reflective to in a parenting style. Like did you, does your child grow up and know that things can
be like changed? Or is this just the way, is this just the way that the world works?
(43:13):
Right, or that people can change or that they can change. And you know, you said your child's
going to grow up to be a person and your child is a person. I just wanted to make sure we knew that.
But that's just it. This is the language we use, right? Which is why another one of the pillars
of my work is that language is so powerful. And the way that we talk about our parenting,
(43:33):
the way that we talk about ourselves as parents, the way that we talk about our babies and infants
and children matters. It influences how we approach those relationships. And it influences every
interaction we have. Like all those pieces of, those small pieces of language, they really matter.
But I think what you said, you know, what's important about what you said to me is this idea
(43:55):
of, you know, the idea of growth. And, you know, I think, I don't think my parents ever had a concept
of growth, you know, as an adult. Like that they, that they are who they are. And that idea of like,
we can't teach an old dog new tricks or like some of those sayings where, you know, I'm too old to
learn. Well, also the science, if you're somebody who's aware and if you're somebody who's, you know,
(44:20):
reading some of the sciences out there, we know that we continue to change and our brains can
continue to change and we can continue to learn even later in life at all chapters of life.
Right? So the idea of what is my purpose as a human? What's part of my responsibility in terms
of how I human? Right? So I believe that it's about my own evolution, about me showing up as
(44:43):
a better version of myself. I signed up for as a human growth, right? I see my life that way. And
so when I came into parenthood, I guess I saw myself that way and I saw my family as an evolution.
Right? My parents didn't and I don't fault them for that. So kind of, you know, touching on what
you said before about, you know, the victim mindset or looking back, no, you know, knowing what I know
(45:11):
and what I believe to be true, which is, you know, we all have to grow up by design or by
default and usually it's a combination of the two. And we reach a point where we can look at
ourselves or we're always looking at ourselves, but we reach a point where we look and we say,
okay, in particular, if you're about to become a parent, you look, you take stock. You're like,
okay, what kind of person am I? What kinds of things do I need to perhaps work on?
(45:35):
Um, you know, character traits, values, virtues, like, you know, maybe I'm not,
I'm not as patient as I, as I wish I could be. You know, I look at my best friend, she's always
my model for everything. She's like, she does everything perfect. Like I just see her as doing
everything. No pressure. No, right. I'm always like, you know, I don't know. She brings the best,
(45:55):
you know, hostess gifts. She thinks of everything, everything she does has a bow on it. Like, it's
just, and I think, yeah, that's the better version of me. It's, you know, one of the things I love
so much about her is that she, she helps up my game. Right. I think like, what would she do?
And I'm like, okay, I know, I know. Yeah. So my parents didn't, weren't built that way. You know,
(46:21):
they, they were survivors. They were, the life they signed up for was survival. And the things
I learned from them, you know, one of the biggest things I learned from my parents was a work ethic.
They were hardworking people, but they didn't have that emotional, you know, connection
(46:46):
to their parenting. They didn't understand emotional responsiveness. They didn't understand,
you know, helping your child through emotional distress. And what I learned from that,
because we're always, as parents, we're always sending messages to our kids. Right. So the message
that I got from my parents was that they're not the people to turn to when I have problems.
(47:09):
Now, as a parent, when I became a parent and I reflected on that, I would never want
that to be something that my kids would ever say about me.
Right. So one of the messages that I always wanted to be sending
was that you can always come to me with everything. And in order for me to be that kind of person,
(47:32):
I had to grow those skills, like to be able to tolerate whatever they would say to me.
Right. Cause I, I honestly, I felt the messaging in my family was that my mom was very fragile
and that if I was struggling, that would upset her. So that sends a message that
(47:53):
my mother is not somebody who I turn to when I have problems, which is kind of heartbreaking.
Right. As a parent, when I think about that, so I need to learn, I needed to learn how to,
who I needed to be and how I was going to show up when my kids would come to me and tell me things
that were really hard to hear that they were going through, you know, having no friends,
(48:15):
you know, I don't know, getting dumped, getting ignored, being picked on, you know, or all kinds
of things that were really hard to listen to. But, but my, my relationship with them is,
was built on me being their person. And I wanted them to always feel that way,
which, which meant I'm not here to solve all their problems, but I need to be a destination.
(48:41):
And I always wanted to be a destination. And that's an intention you set. Right. So when
I work with parents, we talk about all these things. I always call it like the behind the
scenes stuff. Like, let's talk about the behind the scenes. What's going on for you.
How do you feel when your kid comes and tells you, like, I fully remember,
I remember saying to my mom, I must've been, I don't know, seven or eight. I remember coming home
(49:06):
and this was legit. I came home. I have no friends. And I probably was, you know,
maybe I was choked up. And what did my mom say? Of course you have friends.
That was the answer. Right. Like, what are you talking about? Of course you have friends.
So that was it. It was shut down. I probably never went to her with something again.
And she probably thought that was great. She nailed it. Yeah. Right. Because I never came
(49:33):
to her with that problem again. So she must've solved it. Not only do you not have friends,
but you also are unaware. Yeah. So again, you know, and I, so I guess kind of circling back
to what you said about, you know, feeling the victim, I don't blame my parents. I had to,
there were, there were a lot of things in my upbringing that,
(49:58):
I'm just checking. I think most of my upbringing, maybe outside of the work ethic,
didn't make it into my parenting consciously. So those were conscious decisions. And I had to do
a lot of work on myself and I had to develop self-compassion in order to have compassion for
(50:20):
my parents. So all compassion starts with self-compassion, all compassion. So my
capacity to have self-compassion, which is a practice for the kinds of things that
I lacked in my childhood allowed me then to cultivate compassion for my parents
(50:42):
who were doing the very best they could. Right. So even though I didn't get what I needed,
which is a truth, I don't blame them for that. And that's important. Like those are two,
that's an important journey. I think for everybody to take, but it is particularly if you plan on
becoming a parent so that you can understand where you came from. You could understand that
(51:08):
everybody's doing the best they can so that you can then have self-compassion so that you can
believe you're doing the best you can and sign up for something that is iterative,
that is reflective, that is about your own growth and development. And in tandem,
it's about your child's growth and development. I really like hearing that story about you coming
(51:34):
to your mom as a child saying, I don't have friends, because there's a path that opens up
right there. When you're having that conversation with your mom, you're saying, I don't have friends
and she meets you with, yes, you are, or yes, you do. And so it opens up a few different ways on how
(51:55):
you navigate your feelings because you can go, oh, I can be upfront and honest and people won't
meet it. So then that path opens up. Well, what do I do? Do I keep searching for that?
Or do I just say, oh, I just have to deal with this on my own? No one's going to solve it.
(52:18):
But ultimately, it came back to you and then that compassion, like, okay, this happened to me,
but this doesn't define me or how I want to continue to do this. I recognize that,
like you said, your mom may have been a little bit more emotionally fragile to where she couldn't
handle the stress of her life and her children's life. So maybe she's trying to do the, you know,
(52:43):
I'm creating a story here, but she's trying to do the best that she's doing.
And to hear that, like her kid, despite her trying, is still having a rough go of it. Well,
it's like, how do I figure that out? And I want to circle back to something that you said
about that. It's a little branch of, you wanted to be that person for your children.
(53:07):
You wanted to be like, you can come to me with like the heaviness of life and I'll be there for
it. I won't necessarily be able to remedy every problem that you're having, but I can, I'll be
there. I can hear you. And then, you know, we'll, we'll try to sail these waters together the best
we can. So that's one aspect. And I really liked that. I really liked that open communication, but
(53:31):
what I wonder, and this is more, I guess, a personal question because I have nieces or I
have a niece and several nephews who I would like to be that person as well. But I want to be that
person to, you know, they're, they're, they're young kids now, so they're nowhere near this,
(53:52):
but say they went to a party and they, they got in over their head. They, they did some sort of
drug or they did some sort of behavior that is just really bad. And this is a scenario that I'm
creating. It's like, they don't necessarily want to go to their parents. How do, how do,
let's actually, let's take it to the parents. Like, how do you, as a parent, navigate that
(54:14):
situation being, I do not want to ruin this open communication I have with my kid. If my kid messes
up, I want them to tell me. So how do you not react like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you did,
you know, let's say it's a drug. I can't believe you did that drug at this party. And so now
the kid's a little caught off guard. Maybe they're feeling a little shame for how they acted.
(54:37):
And now, now you're telling them, you did a bad thing. Now you're a bad thing. And so you,
to try and prevent your kid from doing that behavior again in the future, now maybe they
do it again in the future, but they just don't tell you about it. Right. So how do you keep that
line of communication open? Because I imagine that's very challenging to navigate.
(55:02):
It is, and it can be, especially if you haven't, depending on the road you've paved up until that
point, because I'm going to assume, let's just be, you know, liberal here, that that's maybe,
you know, a 13 year old, 13 and up, right, has, is going to put themselves or be in those kinds of
situations. So you've had 13 years to practice your parenting and practice that relationship
(55:23):
that you have. And everything you're doing with your child, again, the messaging and the ways that
I work with parents, everything is in service to their relationships with other people later.
And everything else, everything is also in service to your relationship with them later,
right? All of their relationships later. So everything you do now is paving the way for that.
(55:44):
So again, thinking that everything is messaging. So I'm going to go two ways with this. One is the
kind of paving the course and the other is what to do if perhaps you haven't paved a good course
to that moment, right? So all the little ways, because things will happen that are, you know,
lots of low-stakes things will happen along the way in those previous 13 years. Low-stakes things
(56:09):
like, I don't know, they carry the, you know, carry an egg and it falls on the floor. I mean,
it can be as mundane as that, right? Breaking a glass. Like all, you know, things that break,
kids always have at least one story of something they broke or something they lost, right? Lost
their parents something or they broke something that was of value. And so how people responded.
(56:32):
All the ways that you respond, and this is where, again, that temperament, which connects to the
parent's temperament and then just all the lived experience of how you do things, all kind of
culminate in those moments. So, you know, let's say it's something that broke and the parent is
there because you're both there and you witnessed it. So there's no hiding or lying about it, right?
(56:56):
Broke in front of you. And it was an accident, right? Because kids are still developing and so
accidents happen. But the way that that parent responds in that moment is going to make an
imprint on the child. And kids are collecting data all the time and they're forming their beliefs
(57:19):
about themselves, about their parentals and about the world all the time. So it's not just the one
time that that happened, it's their brains are relating all kinds of things. So kids will feel
kids like dogs, will feel your energy more than they actually take in the words that you say.
(57:39):
And if, you know, something breaks in the home and the parent has, you can do a whole that,
you know, it's very nuanced, but the parent can kind of dismiss the child, but deal with the
broken glass, which is fine. So again, that's the external, but you're not actually turning
(58:01):
to the child and making eye contact and saying, you know, it's okay. It was just us, right? So
we have structure, how we deal with broken glass in our household. And when we have warmth,
which is the relational component, and they need to be married to each other, they need to always
happen together, right? So that if a child sees efficiency, this is what I had, and this is what
(58:26):
my kids will say as well. Efficiency in the broken glass department, very efficient. Everyone gets
shoes on, somebody gets a, what do you call it? A dust pan. We deal with it, we throw it out,
it's all good, right? Growing up, that would have been what happened. My mom might've had body
language, voice inflection, something that sent a message to me about me and me having done
(58:58):
something bad. And there was no emotional component. Nobody turned to me and said,
it's okay. It doesn't matter, right? But I did that for my kids. So I took both the structure
and the warmth, and I made sure that we had both. So kids are collecting data all the time. So in
a family where things like that happen and there's not the emotional safety, then the next time
(59:25):
something breaks in the house, they're going to hide it. They're not going to tell you.
And the parent who realizes that they're in that place where the child is collecting data and the
child is now feeling as though they can't tell their parents that they failed a test, that they
(59:45):
didn't get invited to the party, that they broke something at home. When the parent starts to see
that that's the child's behavior, that's where reflective parenting and responsive parenting
means you're going to start to have conversations with your kid about that. You're going to say,
and I always say, you don't do it in the trenches. You do it when you're connected, bedtime,
(01:00:09):
bath time, taking a walk. And you're going to say, you know what I noticed? I noticed that when
that thing happened and you broke the thing, and also when you lost the other thing, that you
didn't really want to tell me about it. And then I tell parents, and then stop talking.
Just stop talking. Let that soak in for a minute. You've noticed something. What are the messages
(01:00:33):
you're sending? You're sending a message that says, my parents noticed things about me, so I must
matter. And that they're curious about something. They're not really asking me anything, but I feel
an openness to participate in this conversation. And you have opportunities there for what I call
(01:00:57):
repair. And sometimes repairs are specific about something that happened between the two of you
when a parent has been short tempered or has kind of missed a step somewhere. And sometimes a repair
is just first date on the relationship. And that's kind of what this is, where you're looking to
infuse a moment of connection with that child, and you're looking to send a different message.
(01:01:18):
Because your concern is that they believe that you're not a safe place for them to come to you
with the small things. And everything you're doing is so that when they are, like I tell parents,
you're giving a drug analogy, I give a driving the car. When they go drive the car at 16,
and they hit another car, or they hit a post, or they did something small, you want them to tell
(01:01:39):
you. So when parents start to see that it's a long game, and when they're able to see their
two-year-old, their five-year-old, their 10-year-old, as not just that age, but that
they are growing in adults, and that they have these goals in their parenting for what that
(01:02:05):
adult will be like, then they're able to piece together the puzzle of how they're responding now,
and how that might influence them, both now and later. So that's how you pave the road, right?
So you're saying it's so hard. You show up, and the kid comes home, and you find that they've
(01:02:27):
done drugs, and you're all upset about it. And maybe you're someone who never did that, and so
it was totally taboo, and you can't believe they'd done it. So all of your own stuff is coming up.
And maybe you're completely unaware in that moment, and you say some of the things, you know,
that you can't believe you did that. You know, what kind of kid are you of mine? This family,
(01:02:47):
we don't do that kind of stuff. You're gonna end up on the streets. You're never gonna get a job,
right? All the things come out of you, and all of a sudden, you know, you're saying things that
perhaps you heard as a child, or, you know, you're embodying a side of yourself that you
really never intended, okay? Because you're upset, you're reactive, and not responsive,
(01:03:10):
and so that child gets a whole, you know, a whole moment of that, and then you part ways.
So now, that parent has an opportunity, and most parents do this, and maybe the ones who
don't work with a coach, or, you know, or have a therapist, maybe they don't know where to go with
it. But I'm going to be the eternal optimist that I am, and I'm gonna see most parents,
(01:03:35):
after that moment, at some point, feel bad. Like, they might just have that bit of like,
oh, you know, maybe I yelled too much, maybe I, you know, and they don't really know what to do.
Most parents, a lot of parents, end up in that place where they're like, well, now I don't know
what to do. You know, I said I took away everything until they're married, and now I don't know, like,
how do I backtrack? So the beautiful thing about parenting is that repair is always available,
(01:04:00):
and repair is a tool, and it's a skill that you learn how to do. And again, everything you do with
your child, you are doing in service to who they will be, and how they show up in all their other
relationships, with their partners, with their friends, with their in-laws, with everybody.
(01:04:21):
Okay? So once you've had that moment, and you've done your work, and you've realized it, and you've,
you know, if you're working with me, you would have journaled about it, we would have journaled
back and forth about it, you would have really uncovered what happened to you in that moment,
you would do all the work behind the scenes. And then you'd be ready for a repair, and it doesn't
matter if it's, you know, an hour from now, or, you know, a day, or a few days. And when you're
(01:04:47):
actually feeling like those, that honesty, you know, that you have clarity about how you feel,
it's similar to what I said before. You know, you're in that moment, a connected moment,
whatever it is, dinnertime, a drive, a walk, wherever you feel most conducive, and you're
saying, you know, I was thinking a lot about that day that you came home from that party.
(01:05:09):
And you pause, you know, and you say what's truthful for you, and what's going to help
in the messaging that that child will internalize, right? I was thinking a lot
about that day. And I was thinking about how I reacted. And that I really, you know, I raised
my voice. And, you know, I said, you can say I said X, Y and Z, or I said some things that, you
(01:05:32):
know, were harsh. And I remember seeing your face, like whatever's true for you, right? The words
have to be yours. But I remember seeing your face. And I remember, you know, you looked kind of
startled by me. And I thought a lot about the fact that we didn't talk at all the rest of the
night. And I realized that I wished I would have been more patient. And I wished that maybe we
(01:05:55):
wouldn't have talked until the next day, because maybe it would have gone differently. And that's
enough. So right there, you have demonstrated so many things to your child. You've demonstrated
what it means to reflect on yourself, right? That I thought about this. The fact that you thought
about it sends the message that that child matters. Because maybe between then and now,
(01:06:18):
they've been wondering, you know, am I a worthy human being? Because, you know, everything my
parents said to me, I feel like a horrible person now because of what I did. So I matter. You sent
the message that you matter. You've modeled what it's like to do a repair. And the child will
feel that. Like the energy of you just showing up to say, I realized what went on the other night.
(01:06:41):
I saw how I reacted. I wished I would have done it differently. Parents struggle a lot. They get
stuck on this whole idea of like a repair means you have to apologize. And I don't think that's
always the way. And I think that I actually have a lot to say about apologies. I'm not sure if you
want to like- No, I am. Because I remember when we had our conversation, we were like, I wouldn't
(01:07:01):
necessarily say it that way because I gave it in like the structure of apology. And so I do want
to dive into that as well. The problem with apologies is that in general, kids are not being
taught what an apology actually is and what the components are and what the ingredients are and
what the purpose of an apology is. So what happens with younger kids and with a lot of, you know,
(01:07:23):
families is that there's this whole idea of, oh, you know, he did something. This person's upset.
Go say you're sorry. Sorry. Okay. And then it's like miraculously, it's supposed to be done.
And somehow the apology is almost like giving you permission to do it again, because apology
is what happens afterwards. And so people just think you're supposed to just wipe the slate clean
but the apology doesn't actually have anything built into it that says you're going to do
(01:07:46):
something different next time. And that's the missing piece, right? And for an apology to be
a true apology, it doesn't have to even necessarily always have the words, I'm sorry.
It needs to have that element of, I saw what happened. I realized that I overstepped. I
(01:08:08):
realized, you know, all that reflection and realization and what I should have done was this
and what I'm going to try to do moving forward is this. That's a repair.
It doesn't have to have the words, I'm sorry. Parents struggle with this idea. It's tied to
(01:08:29):
their concept of humility and it's tied to their concept of sometimes the hierarchy like parent-child
like I shouldn't have to apologize for things. And, you know, parents struggle with a lot of
the notions of what apologies are but that's why I just reframe them as a repair in the relationship
because every interaction with your child or really anybody, you're choosing connection or
(01:08:55):
you're choosing separation. And in parenting, you need to be paying attention to, am I choosing
connection? So when your child comes home and they've done something that is really
so offensive to you but really it's something kind of developmentally and behaviorally appropriate
for the child at that age because children are just developing and they don't have judgment.
(01:09:19):
You have to be able to check, is this just me having a reaction that is about me where I need
to take that behind the scenes and call my best friend and say, I can't believe you went to the
party and I can't believe he did this and I can't believe he did that and oh my god this is my kid
and you take care of you. Go take care of all your own stuff. Journal it. Call a friend. Like do all
(01:09:40):
the stuff you need to do. Save that reaction for those places. But with your child, you're called
on to be responsive, to remember that they are just developing, to remember that how you respond now
is going to influence what happens the next time something happens to them, for them, around them
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and do you want them to come to you or not come to you? Are you a safe place or are you not a
safe place? What's your role, right? So making a commitment and making that decision to be a safe
place for your child no matter what is something conscious parents do and then they also sign up
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to reflect, to look back and say what was what was how did that go and how do I feel about how
that went and how do I want what I want my child to know because I want to model what it is to be
in healthy relationship because they'll take that experience and it's going to show up somewhere
else in their life and you want them to be equipped with the tools for effective healthy
(01:10:55):
relationships. You mentioned I guess kind of throwing it back to earlier in the conversation
how there's different approaches different approaches and pros and cons to every different
type of parenting approach and so this is something I've kind of wondered you talked about how your
(01:11:17):
parents didn't have the language the the insight of mental health and definitely with our generation
and the generation after us there seems to be almost a like a hyper focus on it
and I'm wondering is this is just a something I'm wondering about this isn't pointed or anything
(01:11:43):
like that but is this leading to increased depression and anxiety like just being aware
of how we're feeling constantly and kind of checking in is that leading to like this
this closed loop of like just living in your head I think it's such an interesting question
because I do see that people talk like there is this people lead with their mental health issues
(01:12:09):
like in conversation right people kind of want to put a banner it's funny that in some facets of
society we're so like anti-label but we don't really know what to do with labels and then
kind of in the mental wellness area we're all like oh let's label it and then right so we've
gone from this kind of shame around mental illness to a movement towards conversations
(01:12:34):
around mental wellness and again language is powerful so how we're using language in society
I think is in transition because people say mental health health when people say physical health
they don't think physical illness but when people say mental health for some reason people think
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about illness that's fascinating I would never even have put that together right so language is
powerful and the way that we're using language is kind of in flux right now now I have a personal
philosophy that answers your question or your or addresses your concern about where we're headed
I feel that when we go through any kind of societal shift I think we go to saturation
(01:13:21):
and then back to balance and in what we have to go to saturation in order to get to balance
and I think I'm not even sure we're in saturation yet like I think it's going to get more saturated
where we're just like we're you know because the science is something like 10 to 15 years like
before we actually hear about anything mainstream science has already been working on whatever that
(01:13:45):
thing is right so by the time the average person finds out about you know infant mental health
which is new to some people in for clinicians and science we've been talking about that for
like 10 to 15 years it's not new right but then society gets ahold of it and they're like oh
infants have mental health we didn't know and now you know everybody's kind of taking it and
(01:14:05):
talking about things talking about ADHD autism you know and I just think we're not quite at
saturation and then we're going to find balance so I don't think it's going to that might just be
the eternal optimist in me I don't think it's going to lead to more mental illness I think that
(01:14:29):
right now people are from what I can see people are looking to find a way to to be to be okay with
who they are and I think that see I think everything is a spectrum like whether it's
(01:14:50):
clinical levels subclinical levels like everybody exists in some spectrum of something I
I see all the traits right like I might be diagnosed with ADHD which I am
and that exists on a spectrum you know there's high functioning low functioning but even all the
other traits like my capacity to manage you know my patience and my capacity to manage
(01:15:14):
I don't even know my you know my physical health like all those things exist on a spectrum but
we're so I think we're looking at the whole of people now and people are just grappling with
what's okay to say what's not okay to say what should I expect of people what do I lead with
in my relationships with people and coming back to parents I think that's also been a missing piece
(01:15:38):
because parents traditionally have not come to parenting with who am I what do I stand for
what matters to me what are my values how do I show up in the world where do I need to tweak
that because this little human is going to be collecting data from me so now I'm a role model
(01:15:59):
and I need to know what I want them to learn from me and what I perhaps need to shift about myself
in order for them to develop in a healthy way so I think it's a good thing the idea that we're all
kind of you know in this kind of robust conversation around our mental wellness
(01:16:22):
and looking to see what what applies and what doesn't apply but I think it's only a good thing
if we're also willing to subscribe to our growth and the iterative mindset
and that we're all a work in progress and so kind of being reflective and say you know yeah you know
(01:16:42):
this chapter of my life I really worked on this aspect of me and this chapter of my life you know
I took these other deficits and I kind of worked on them so I think it's all heading towards a more
positive than negative place generally I think so too I think that shift is really important
(01:17:06):
if you look let's just take the journey of PTSD like that kind of more so I think just through
the horrors of world war one became like kind of really apparent like to be in that kind of situation
I think that was kind of the first in history of warfare of really trench warfare and just being
(01:17:29):
in that environment over and over again rather than okay we have a battle and then a big chunk
of time goes by like a month or two month before I have another battle this is moment by moment
you're in this heightened sense so PTSD was originally diagnosed as cowardice and cowardice
was treated by being shot by your commander and then eventually that changed to shell shock
(01:17:54):
and then I believe that's where it landed it to PTSD is after shell shell shell shock we got there
and those conversations need to be had to like let's take autism for example I think
you probably grew up with someone who was like oh yeah that's not just to be very blunt like that's
(01:18:14):
like a weird kid like just a little socially just different than everyone and not in like
that's a horrible way to say it but you just notice there's something different
and then you look back at in time you're like oh that kid probably had autism that's probably
why it was hard for them so you you get this language and almost like sympathy and you're
like I can navigate this relationship better now oh my gosh yes and that happens that happens to
(01:18:41):
people all the time it's happening to me in relationships even now with people where that's
exactly it and that's such a commentary like that's just it people need to see it as a commentary
so that's like the extra step that you take so yes I have people in my life that I have recently
had those realizations and whether it's true or not this is kind of my point about like everything
(01:19:05):
is a spectrum of personality and you know character traits and there is no you know
there's typical there's atypical but we're all human and we all human in our own ways
but the minute I've had this conversation with people where they've said oh you know I realized
that person might actually be on the spectrum and that immediately made me more compassionate
(01:19:31):
for them and it made me more more more compassionate and more patient and all these
things and I sit there and think wow so I have a philosophy that my job as a human is to show up
in the best possible way that I want to show up so if I'm patient I'm going to be patient if I'm
(01:19:53):
if I'm working on being patient right if I'm working on having compassion then that's something
that I show up with and it really doesn't matter what the other person is doing right so some
people say oh they don't deserve my patience or they don't they don't deserve you know my
compassion because they're being really you know rigid and sticky and prickly and you know
(01:20:14):
that person isn't worthy of that from me or I see it a different way right because I own
my character traits and they're about me they're not about they're not in response to other people
they're actually traits that I'm working on cultivating regardless of the circumstance
so I think it's it's so interesting that people are saying things like that oh I think that that
(01:20:38):
person is is on the spectrum it's typically where I hear it and now I understand them and now I
understand that you know it's not their fault let's say right it's not their fault that they're
like that so that's you know I talked to parents a lot about their kids whether it's a can't or a
(01:21:00):
won't the idea of whether some behavior that you're struggling with is it a can't or a won't
and when they think it's a won't so that's a belief then that belief
makes them frustrated like leads to them being frustrated angry impatient controlling they might
(01:21:22):
feel like the child is doing it deliberately so they might feel resentment all these negative
feelings come up for them based on that thought the thought that that behavior they could do it
differently they're just not doing it differently and they're not doing it differently despite me
to spite me to piss me off right like all that stuff but you can apply that same thing to like
(01:21:47):
the adult the adult person in your life you know your friend your neighbor where you sit one day
you're like oh my god that neighbor they've driven me crazy for 25 years with blah blah blah and then
one day you go maybe they're on the spectrum oh now that behavior doesn't bother you anymore
like it does like if i stop and think about that it's a can't or a won't right and they're just
(01:22:11):
beliefs in your head like you're carrying those beliefs and it changes your entire way of being
whereas to me all roads have to lead back to me showing up as my best self what are the traits
and values and virtues that matter to me in spite of what somebody else is doing and if their
(01:22:32):
behavior bothers me that's still about me like why does it bother me so much and i need to deal
with that because it's not their job to change anything about themselves it's more my job to
decide that everything is a can't in a way right everything is just that's just who they are
they can't be any different yeah funny way i heard that is i don't like that about them about myself
(01:22:55):
it's like you see something in them and you that you don't like so you're critical of it but
yeah that's a really powerful reframing i became really interested in the idea of of narratives
the stories that we tell each other or that we tell ourselves so like if you're if you're driving
and someone cuts you off you immediately default to what is the story you're telling yourself oh
(01:23:18):
they don't care about you your time your safety they just they needed to be in front of you in
that moment in reality their their wife could be pregnant about to give labor they've never cut
anyone off in their life and they just they they have to do this because there's some sort of
intervention that needs to be taken that needs to take place as soon as possible and so even
(01:23:40):
that's just a story too but it's like oh there's compassion there now instead of that person living
in my head for a while yes yeah it's i just let it go so yeah that's a really powerful reframing
tool of can and won't and that that really struck a chord with me yeah that's really powerful
(01:24:01):
something that i like just thinking about how humans came to be and all the different
civilizations out there all the different cultures is you always kind of think like your way of doing
something is the right way when it could have just went so many different ways you can just see
from so many different civilizations so many different cultures and so i only know through
(01:24:24):
the lens of my culture through more western culture about parenting there's there seems to
be like a really hyper focus on different approaches different styles are other cultures
as concerned as western civilizations with how are they raising their kids or is there more like an
intrinsic collective culture yeah to like more than one parent is gonna help bring up my kid
(01:24:49):
or something like that yeah and there are those i mean i i it is very individualistic western right
we're very much uh focused on you know our children individually their success you know
there's there's a whole kind of track from a western mindset i spent um close to six months
(01:25:09):
in southeast asia um at the beginning of 2024 so just last year i was there from december till may
and i traveled all through southeast asia and i was just immersed in in cultures and families and i
i was just paying so much attention to what hmm like the question i asked myself was like what
(01:25:31):
what is the meaning of family and what is the meaning of how their time is spent it just looked
so different um cambodia and vietnam and thailand what are some examples of it looking different
though just that kids and families were together there were more families together with other
families right there was a lot of just spending time together and they didn't necessarily need
(01:25:57):
to be doing anything i feel like i don't know maybe it's just my my life and my arena that
there's always like an external driving force like a family's going to go skiing or they're
going to go skating or they're going to go like they're going to go do this thing and there's
kind of a a framework to it and there's a there's a reason why we're going to do something or you
(01:26:20):
know kids are in programming or so there's like all this timetabledness maybe it might have been
the sense of time that i also paid a lot of attention to so families would just be together
and they'd be with other families in community just out outside and they would there'd be so
(01:26:41):
much laughter and so much joy and so much just being together that the relationships were
natural they were authentic and they there was no striving i feel like
like there's a we're so stuck on striving like as much as as much as i say you know you're
(01:27:03):
raising an adult and you have to kind of be mindful of things you're still in this fluid
relationship where you're just living your life and doing the things that you externally have
to do go to work go to school go to programs do things but your interactions with each other
is the most important thing and and there's a kind of a rhythm and a cadence and a pace to that
(01:27:29):
and when i work with parents i bring that idea of that that i don't think comes naturally in a
western family system whereas in you know my experience in southeast asia was that that was
there there was a natural intrinsic pace and rhythm there were lots of people there would be
(01:27:51):
you know extended families together aunts uncles cousins everybody had this um sense of connection
without any striving that's that's the best way i can frame it and i saw that in in country after
country and city after city i saw so much of that that was just about being with and i think the
(01:28:16):
being with concept is something that in western culture we don't naturally have an ease about
where they just had an ease about that my my relationships with people are about being with
and i say it that way because you're not just being with the person you're being with their
(01:28:36):
emotions you're being with their joys you're being with their you know sorrows there's a being with
a sense of empathy that i felt came naturally in those in those places more naturally than here
and i just i think it has to do with kind of the striving and the sense of again coming back to the
beginning of our conversation this this rigidity in a way about you know this is parenting it's
(01:29:02):
hard you know i could fail really miserably um you know it's all on me the outcome of this
person or you know i don't know all that weight of it i didn't see any of that there and i was there
for you know babies being born and you know families like just all the spectrum of things and
and i think that to me was the biggest um the biggest energy energetic experience that was
(01:29:32):
different than being here yeah there's something i think very powerful about an individual culture
i think that's how western civilization has almost like seeped into every other culture it's just
like that individual individualism is very powerful but i think we we've missed the mark
(01:29:55):
and made some things more challenging like when i do when i think about raising kids and i think
i don't know it just seems like such a cruel thing that when a mother is pregnant
in the third trimester and so close to giving birth like sleep is almost it's a luxury no
(01:30:15):
longer afforded to them and if i think about it through the lens of evolution it doesn't make any
sense to me that that would kind of happen almost seem like you'd almost reach a natural state of
hibernation so like you can get prepared for this this being that's going to almost require
24 hour attention in the immediate future 24 hour attention and it just seems like that collective
(01:30:40):
culture of eastern cultures it's like oh mom can step out and this is you know mom and dad i'm
kind of tying them in together in this just a single a two family but this mom and dad is raising
their kid compared to a grandparent also lives in the house both grandparents live in the house
you live very close or maybe even the same house i think it's an indian culture where once you get
(01:31:06):
married the family moves in to the parents so you can have multiple multiple kids multiple
families all living in one house and my wife and i recently got really into sister wives have you
heard of that show i've heard of it but i've not watched it so all that to say about polygamy and
all that um and the negativity towards it it seems like the raising the kids aspect is one of the
(01:31:32):
shining lights like they had multiple parents and multiple families just the connectedness
of the families it just seemed like it almost is like a cheat code i'm in no way advocating for
like that kind of of lifestyle but it just really seemed like there's an easier way to raise kids
and and we're kind of doing it seems like we're doing it a more difficult way because like you
(01:31:58):
said you're you're raising your child who's going to be an adult one day you're raising
a person who's become an adult person one day and there's a lot of stress with that but if you can
because you're not always going to be the best person as much as you strive you're going to have
like your friend for whatever reason she missed breakfast and so she's not going to be the best
(01:32:21):
version of herself in a big interaction but if you can have someone that can step in it just seems
like that's the better way and almost no it's not even almost like the science supports that
mental health outcomes are better for everyone involved when you have three generations living
under one roof right yeah so there's there's science to support that and again yeah we don't
(01:32:44):
do it as western culture but you're right it you know it it's just like you said earlier you know
you're an uncle you want to be a destination for your niece niece's nephews and you want to be part
of that system of people that are going to ultimately help shape those kids to understand
(01:33:06):
themselves understand the world and their place in it and parents aren't always the right destination
right and it's important for kids to have other people so that they can experience other people
and see what because every human is different and so they're going to feel differently the energy
is going to be different and it's important for kids to have experiences with multiple caregivers
(01:33:33):
if possible because everyone is bringing a different ingredient to the mix and you know if
we all think about our own families and the players in our families and the aunts uncles
neighbors best friends you know there's always a couple that you kind of think about and go yeah
you know what i always felt really good around them you know they had a great energy they had
(01:33:56):
a good sense of humor they had a good we gleaned those things from people all through our developmental
years so when parents have that misguided notion that they have to be the be all and end all
destination for their child it's actually not true you're better off to you know recruit more
(01:34:17):
people into the circle you know have them for dinner bring them with on the trip to the zoo or
bring them with on so your child can have experience you in relationship with those people
that's another way that you're role modeling healthy relationships and and you're exposing them
to other people to build their relationships with those people so it's not impossible here
(01:34:38):
it's not the same um but you know what you're describing is something that yeah comes naturally
in other parts of the world where there are numerous adults who are on board to share
in in the raising of a child because every adult has something to offer and i think that's another
(01:35:03):
shift in the mindset in other cultures versus here i think parents don't naturally think that
way they don't naturally think like who else in in my you know personal board of directors my
friends my family who else has you know things to offer in a relationship with my child and that
(01:35:25):
if we even ask that question it might change something because asking that question naturally
assumes that you as the parent aren't shouldering you know the whole responsibility of
representing the entirety of the world and healthy relationships for you know to your child
(01:35:47):
yeah and they have multiple like parent figures there are just different role models oh my my
parent did it this way my my auntie my uncle they did it this way yeah it's just yeah it's just more
exposure and yeah it just seems the the better way to do it i think one of the best things
that we can do like with our lives is kind of remember that we're we're stewards here like
(01:36:13):
this isn't like we don't really claim stake to to where we are like the the earth and so kind of
heralding the next generation i think is is really important i think it's one of the most
important things that we can do and and not taxing our future selves which has made america one of
(01:36:34):
the like leading economies in the world the leading economy in the world but at the cost
of the future i think just remembering that this isn't ours we don't get to keep this
and it makes me think what what made you get involved there's so many different specialties
that you could have gotten involved in somebody like you could have gotten involved in healing
(01:36:58):
childhood traumas or abuse neglect like why specifically parenting what drew you to that
aspect of your career and it was such a calling for me i think i i i started off in in education
and specifically early years education i think that was because my i have an older sister
(01:37:20):
who was a kindergarten teacher and i just really loved kind of listening to her and you know
everything that she kind of talked about what she did and i went into education and
the more i learned about child development the more i questioned my own childhood and started
(01:37:41):
to really get curious about the the results of different interactions and you know outcomes for
kids and i started to really piece together some of the deficits maybe in my own upbringing
and my own family so i think that was a big guide so when i started to see that
(01:38:02):
there were things about my own family i didn't really understand and never really thought about
the more i learned about child development and about psychology the more curious i got and the
more i wanted to kind of insert myself and then i i was given a job as a as a resource
so on the resource team which is basically for kids in in a private school setting where they
(01:38:24):
have behaviors that are not conducive to them being in the classroom so maybe some places might
call it a shadow so i was hired to be like a shadow for a child with some behaviors that were
problematic and i really um the conversations with the parents were things that i really enjoyed
i mean i enjoyed the work with the child too but kind of translating that child's behavior for the
(01:38:45):
parents and i the more i did that and you know and then i got hired to do like programming for
uh regional programming and every time i would do some of the work that i was hired to do i
really started to see that parents mainstream parents right so parents who don't have a child
with any kind of exceptionality whether it was physical or or mental that those parents really
(01:39:10):
had no you know legitimately no education around child development or mental wellness or
you know understanding their child's behavior and understanding what attachment is and
right they just and i remember thinking like before i became a parent thinking this doesn't
make any sense like it's like you know when you go to to and i know it's probably a terrible
(01:39:31):
analogy but like i was gonna say when you go to get your license to drive a car like you've got
to read the book you've got to take the classes you've got to learn some things so that you
understand what the signs mean it's not just about learning how to drive the car you have to
understand like the signs on the road what does that thing mean what do you need to do how do you
respond to these situations and i just remember thinking like what is it up what's with these
(01:39:52):
parents they're they're given children they have children and then they have no idea what um
typically developing behavior is like like that these behaviors are appropriate to the child at
this point given how much brain development they have and and so that's why this so i started to
kind of adopt this mindset that every behavior makes sense because it does based up right every
(01:40:19):
every behavior every reaction everything that everybody does makes sense so if we go back to
my like the neighbor who i has driven driven me crazy for 25 years and then i say oh maybe he's
on the spectrum well his behavior always made sense whether he's on the spectrum or not on
the spectrum that's how he's built and he's behaving that way because it may you know it
(01:40:41):
makes sense given his entire history of his life everything he believes to about himself in the
world that all behavior makes sense so the more i had those conversations with with parents the
more interested those parents were in talking to me so i really felt called to fill that gap
(01:41:05):
for parents who just don't understand what teachers understand or what early years and
you know teachers or what pediatricians understand if they understand um and so it was really built on
the need i had to understand myself and my upbringing and to understand kind of what
(01:41:25):
happened to me um why my behaviors in my mindset make sense um and
how to repair some of those things for myself so there's you know an element of kind of what's
called reparenting yourself as an adult and i really you know wanted to understand that
(01:41:46):
and i saw that parents had this craving to make sense of what it means to be a parent and to make
sense of their children for them and when i when i started working with parents um they just they
all were they would have these aha moments and they would like the best thing that any parent
(01:42:10):
would ever say to me is i never thought of it that way that's my favorite thing to hear a parent say
i never thought of it that way and when i would watch parents have that look on their face
and that even one a one percent shift in how they saw themselves as a parent
and or how they saw their child that's enough to make such a difference in the whole trajectory
(01:42:36):
of that child's life and that's the most meaningful thing that i could do in this lifetime
right yeah that's so when a parent comes to you and they're like i just got back i got my clothes
from dry cleaning and my toddler took them all out and put them in the toilet how do you help
(01:42:56):
them navigate that one is a real story from somebody you know no i was just thinking about
just like you know kids like to undo things in a destructive way okay so that's not what they're
doing we can talk about the yeah it's actually like it's a it's a joke premise but yeah it is
totally but this is what parents do and they will come to me with those kinds of things of course
(01:43:18):
um but i mean what's funny about that is literally let's just go with that right the dry cleaning
has been picked up dry cleaning was left on the bed toddler loved toddlers there they have my
heart they are so misunderstood toddler grabbed the grabbed the all the dry cleaning and shoved
it in the toilet why did they do that because they wanted they're testing a hypothesis they
(01:43:39):
wanted to see if they could fit and you laugh they're little scientists that's what they're
doing all the time every single thing a toddler does is because a toddler walks around with i
wonder what will happen if that is their guiding statement i wonder what will happen if everything
they do and um so what happens after that in that household i could just imagine um you know parent
(01:44:09):
freaks out right even if they just energetically freaks out so that toddler is collecting data so
they're like oh and they're and they might even have we might even add to the story right so now
that that's like uh let's make let's make the stakes high right like that's the uh the suit
they need to go to the job interview right that day right so the stakes are high which
(01:44:31):
means the the freak out energetically or overtly is high and toddler is like hmm yesterday when
i put my toy car in the toilet they didn't act this way because that's what they're doing
they're collecting data they're like hmm when i take this clothing in the plastic thing and
(01:44:53):
stick it in the toilet this is what happens but when i take you know the cotton ball off the
counter and put it in the toilet they didn't act this way and when i put the car in the toilet
they acted that other way and then later they're going to be like i wonder what will happen if i
put this in the toilet because that's what they're doing because it's their first time in the world
they've never been on the planet before they've been around for two years and now they have
(01:45:16):
mobility and now they're able to like take things and move things from place to place and they love
putting things in other things toddlers are driven to put things in other things and again
they're collecting data i wonder what will happen if will it fit will it make a noise will it change
its texture now it's wet in the toilet will the plastic fit will it be like that's what they're
(01:45:39):
doing they are curiosity in overdrive and they're not trying to make their adults life hard they're
literally driven they're driven like a dog is driven like when people say oh my dog's got to
go out i can see like he's running around the house right like you know they don't question i
(01:45:59):
just took him out before but they're like oh my god the dog's got to go out right because energetically
they're running around or i know that if i don't take him out he's going to chew up something
well that's they're driven they have it they have a drive toddlers have a drive and the drive is
their their drive is curiosity and they are asking what will happen and they are collecting data on
the world and that's what they're supposed to do now they're collecting data on the world and
(01:46:22):
they're collecting data on their humans and that's what i mean about that so you know i give the same
example to parents when we talk about things like this where i'm like okay well your your baby is in
the high chair and you know you have a for whatever reason they have you have a couple of toys on the
on the tray and they take the ball and they they drop the ball and the ball bounces and the parents
(01:46:46):
like oh you dropped the ball and you pick up the ball and you put it back on the thing and he takes
the ball and he drops it no the ball and the parents all joyful right but then the net you
know then they're having dinner and they take their spoon and they throw it on the floor don't
throw your spoon on the floor well that's different they didn't do that with the ball right and then
they put the spoon back and now now the parent maybe the energy is more stern because why the
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energy the parent has a goal the child has to eat right we have that we are on a routine right
it's going to be bath time and dead time and this is taking too much time and i had calls to make
so the parents got their whole agenda that the child doesn't know about but what's the child
doing they're collecting data they're like hmm they seem a little you know this doesn't feel so
good this spoon then then it's spaghetti or rice the worst thing in the world right because who
(01:47:34):
wants to clean that up off the floor and they take the spaghetti and they drop it now the parents
like oh my god look what you did and now the child's like what is so there do you see what
i mean so parents don't see the whole picture that all this child is doing is trying to make
sense of the world yeah because the parent already knows what the spaghetti is going to do on the
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floor the child's like well i'm going to figure it out for myself and they're paying attention to all
the things like all the senses of something so when they when they put the it's the the dry
cleaning and going into the toilet like i have the plastic on it too right so it's like it's hard
to push in it feels wet this is slippery this is not slippery there's a hanger right when i drop
(01:48:20):
this thing cotton ball doesn't make a sound but when i drop the spaghetti doesn't make a sound
when i drop the ball it makes a sound they're doing all of that they have no idea their whole
life is curiosity their whole life is data collection and so your role as a parent again
this is the this is why toddlers get a bad rap because parents are they do i just feel my heart
is with the toddlers because um as soon as the toddlers and teenagers are the same in the sense
(01:48:48):
that once a toddler is mobile for some strange reason parents have expectations that are beyond
their brain development so they'll say things like they know not to touch that they know not to run
in the street no they don't they don't because they're toddlers just because they can
(01:49:10):
just because they can walk now doesn't mean you let them run amok and it doesn't mean they know
how to navigate things they still need you they need to hold your hand they need you to explain
it they need you to keep them away from the snow all the things because they don't have enough
brain development you don't like the whole part of their brain that's all that is not developed
yet it's all mush yeah it's all not there yet it's not online right so let's talk about the
(01:49:34):
operating system right and teenagers same thing they look like adults and so the expectation is
that they have judgment and they know better and they don't they don't have judgment they don't
have fully developed judgment nowhere near they can't assess they can't do risk assessment the
way an adult can so it's a can't it's not a won't and with the toddlers it's a can't it's
(01:50:00):
not a won't because they don't have any of that brain development online to be rational to be
reasonable to have judgment to manage they have no impulse control so a toilet is just a hole it's
a container they don't know anything about germs nothing it's a container so they're just gonna
(01:50:21):
it's no different than the bathtub or any dead pot they don't they don't see it any differently
right so people think toddlers because they are mobile they know better than they actually do and
teenagers are the same just because they look like they're full-grown people doesn't mean that
you know we can just let them run amok um but yeah that's the story of the the dry cleaning
(01:50:42):
the new one so once you reframe it to can't and won't there's a lot of grace there yeah
yeah how do you keep from that being enabling behavior
so first of all define for me what you mean by enabling behavior
let's just do the teenager the teenager needs to learn like hey you can't keep running red lights
(01:51:05):
like this is like we're getting tickets they just they're they're more i don't know little
boy like boys that want to drive cars will sometimes not necessarily drive the speed limit
and so this keeps happening and so you know like okay i i need this to stop
(01:51:27):
okay yeah yeah so you've got a kid with their driver's license they're driving on their own
and they keep getting tickets a little reckless yeah right and you know they're speeding tickets
so they've now had like a succession of speeding tickets so remember we talked about structure and
warmth right so those are the two components for effective healthy parenting and you would
(01:51:50):
have introduced prior to this right because there's always a road that you've paved before
you've reached any point in your parenting you would have talked about the concept of
so again we talk about you know values and virtues one that comes up for me in this example
is responsibility so if responsibility is something that you're like you now see your
teenager and you say oh i you start to see behind the scenes that okay responsibility is something
(01:52:15):
that now i'm going to focus on with my child because i'm seeing this behavior that's not
very responsible again probably age appropriate but i need to help them develop responsibility
so with responsibility like what i say to parents is that you have to give your children an
opportunity to demonstrate responsibility and when they demonstrate responsibility you offer
(01:52:41):
them privilege so you don't offer privilege first and then hope that they show up in a responsible
way so you responsibility first and then you will again because you've paved this communicative road
you would have been on your road to your kid having their driver's license right so again
you have to always be thinking when they're a toddler shoving the dry cleaning in the toilet
(01:53:02):
you're thinking one day they're going to want to drive the car and so i need to always be thinking
about some of these things so you would have already started to plant seeds along the way
towards responsibility with a car so you would if responsibility is something that's of value to
you as the parent you would be building and planting seeds around responsibility and privilege
(01:53:27):
prior to them taking the car out by themselves so let's just factor that in okay so now they've
they come and they have yeah i got a ticket whatever you know it was the police officer's
fault or blah blah wasn't my fault blah blah well now you're seeing that they're not really
showing up in a way that's responsible and the privilege they have is if they get the car
(01:53:50):
but they're only getting that privilege because they're demonstrating responsibility so the
conversation would be around that and again not in the trenches when you've had a time to be
reflective and calm and settle your nervous system so that the energy and the messaging you're sending
is is conducive to effective parenting and to a healthy relationship so you want to show up to
(01:54:10):
say listen i'm seeing that you're really struggling with this idea of responsible driving
and one of the things that responsible driving involves is staying under the limit and i get
that it's hard and i get that you love this car and i get that you love to drive fast you know as
a kid you loved roller coasters you know you always loved when i pushed you hard on the swing when
you were little like you like that you like that feeling and i get it i just need you to know that
(01:54:35):
you can't take the car out because you're struggling with this idea of responsibility
so we're just gonna you know you're not going to have the car for a bit and i'm going to give you
a chance to show how you can be responsible in all kinds of other ways and as soon as i see that
you've developed some of that you know we'll bring the car back now i'm not suggesting that
(01:54:57):
they're not going to have resistance to that and they're not going to yell and scream and you know
tell you all the reasons why they need the car and you promised me and now how am i going to get to
this like all that's going to happen the work that i do with parents is just helping them process
how to respond right because like you said it like how what do you do what do you because you
can't you're not driving with your kid every time and you don't have a brake pedal that you can
(01:55:20):
right push on your side you can't control them there is no control so what do you do as a parent
what's your role what's the point how do you establish and this is what parents come to me
all the time this is exactly the kind of thing i don't know what to say i don't know what to do
right i've taken away all their privileges until they're married i don't know you know
nothing's helping but that's why the road is paved with structure and warmth
(01:55:47):
and you have shown up in a consistent way where the child trusts you so even though they might
not like what you're saying and they're mad that you've taken you know you they no longer get the
keys to the car they're mad about all the things and they're you know blaming you for their whole
life and all of that there is still that sense in them that there is a structure
(01:56:11):
and somewhere subconsciously they get that you care about them they they won't know that they
won't feel that necessarily because they're so riddled with anger at the injustice of it all
right but yeah but as a parent your your responsibility is to their health and safety
so you have to decide what's your focal point and that's some of the work that i would do behind
(01:56:35):
the scenes with the parent right what's your focal point because and i'd need to know and that's why
it's not universal parenting is not universal it's individual for me what came up when you told that
story was responsibility so that would be my focal point but for the parent it might be health and
safety they might be concerned about you know the health and safety they're worried that the child's
(01:56:55):
going to have an accident so it falls under health and safety so then what does that look like and
what is that conversation going to look like with your child because you know what i mean
some of it is like the the financial part of it for some other parents they have six tickets
they're all a hundred bucks i don't know maybe that's the part that they're focusing on like
every parent's going to come at it from a different place but you have to have a foundation
(01:57:18):
like what happens to parents is they feel that natural sense of they're upset it's a problem
whatever it is and then we dive into like tell me why this is a problem tell me what's coming up
for you around this talk to me about what is happening inside you as you think about this issue
and what what is revealed from those exchanges is where the value is to the parent what the
(01:57:41):
concerns genuinely are and then from that place we can approach we can talk about how to approach
the situation how to approach the child this was such a fun conversation i could keep talking to
you for a very long time but i'm sure you have other things to do so if people want to get in
contact learn more get your services where can they go to find out more about Sharyn Feldman
(01:58:08):
and where can they go to get in contact with you so my website is parentwellness.ca so i encourage
people to sign up there i have group coaching i'm just actually working on the next launch which
will probably be in the spring so i encourage people if they are interested in finding more
about being part of the group which is really amazing and powerful i think every parent should
(01:58:32):
be in a group coaching program sign up on my website at parentwellness.ca thank you so much
Sharyn really this was truly a blast i appreciate you yeah super fun thanks
(01:59:09):
so
ever since i dropped out of middle school everyone was always telling me i was on the road to nowhere
even going so far to say that i would be living on the streets which doesn't really make sense
if i'm on the streets isn't that somewhere boy did i prove them wrong with not just one place
(01:59:33):
to call my own but two now when i get released from my government funded prison housing i have
my beautiful secondary dwelling waiting for me frank's structures are homey not homely and with
how affordable Franks Homie Structures are i may even be able to buy a vacation domicile from my
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(01:59:57):
later this week thanks Franks Homie Structures Franks Homie Structures not recommended as a
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