Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
There are as many
ways to parent as there are
parents in this world, but thereis one way to parent that wins
every time, and that's doing itintentionally.
This show is about helpingthings go right before they can
go wrong.
Each episode is chosen to helpparents like you who may be
overwhelmed or uninspired, andthe ideas and motivation to give
(00:27):
their best efforts to thepeople and place that matters
the most.
I'm Dr Tim Thane, author of thebook and host of the podcast.
Not by Chance.
I believe that a family'ssuccess and happiness is not by
chance, so welcome to thepodcast.
Built especially forintentional families.
Let's jump in.
(00:47):
Thank you for joining me todayon this podcast.
I am really excited about thetopic.
I'm going to go into why it isI'm so excited about it, but
essentially it is something youcan visualize.
What I'm going to talk abouttoday is the interpersonal
cycles between parents as theytry and deal with the challenges
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they face as parents.
We get into these patterns, sowe're going to go deep into that
today and I'm going to take youway back to when I was a
graduate student at BrighamYoung University.
I started to learn about familysystems theory and models in my
undergraduate work at BYU andthen, of course, when I got into
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the marriage and family therapyprogram there at BYU, it kicked
up a notch and my observationskills at noticing patterns
between people and especiallybetween me and other people,
because I was now not justliving my life ignorantly.
I was starting to learn abouthow my perspective, my thoughts,
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feelings and actions wereinfluencing the thoughts,
feelings and actions of otherpeople around me, and
particularly my new marriage.
My wife and she probablythought I was a freak because I
was so worried about patternsthat we might begin in the very
beginning of our marriage thatultimately would hurt our
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relationship.
But one example of that is Itold myself I never wanted to
get into a pattern of when wehad a conflict or argued about
something and were mad at eachother.
I didn't want to sleep on thecouch, for example, or her to do
that.
I wanted to create a differentpattern than that.
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So the first time that happenedshe was really angry at me.
I don't remember exactly whatshe was mad at, but she said she
was going to sleep on the couch.
Well, we were newlyweds, we hadalmost no money, we had
hand-me-down furniture and therewas a.
Our couch was actually morelike a love seat very small, not
a lot of room.
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She went and made her bed onthe couch and I remember trying
to think through this and thinkI don't want this to happen, how
am I going to prevent this?
And so, without making her mad,so I very quietly tipped out
into the front room, sat on achair close by.
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She knew I was there, I didn'tsay anything and very slowly I
made my way to the one littlesection of the couch where I
could actually sit on, and overthe course of probably 20
minutes I slowly worked my wayonto the couch with her and
there really wasn't room, so itwould have been quite the sight
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to see me squeezing in.
And by the end of this she justkind of slapped me in humor and
laughed and that was the end ofthe argument.
And I can say we never startedthat pattern because I was ultra
sensitive to whatever patternwe were going to start.
It could lead somewhere wedon't want.
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So the great thing about thistopic is that as you develop
skills to notice your thoughts,feelings and behaviors and
recognize that you'reinfluencing everybody around you
, you can begin to changeyourself, because in changing
yourself you are inviting thosearound you to see you
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differently, to experience youdifferently and therefore have a
completely different dynamicbetween the two of you.
Now I admit, even though I haveall this knowledge I've watched
it hundreds, thousands of timeswith different people we've
worked with I admit that even inmy own life, sometimes I will
tune out to these internalthings going on, the emotions,
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the thoughts and find myselfstuck in a vicious cycle that is
definitely not moving me closerto my vision in that
relationship.
It's taking me away from it.
So I've got work to do as well,but I'm going to give you some
tools that I think areincredibly helpful.
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Before we dive into all thedetails, you may not like this,
but I want to give you a littlebit of the philosophical
underpinnings of understandinghow a dyad two people in a
repetitive sort of cycle.
They have a relationship thatis existing and continuous.
What are the philosophicalunderpinnings of this
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interpersonal cycle dynamic?
Well, there's quite a fewunderpinnings to this.
One is attachment theory, andessentially that states in a
really basic way that the kindof relationship or the
attachment that we have with ourmothers, our father, our
caregivers will have a lot to dowith how we parent later on.
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Whether we have a secure,anxious or avoidant style of
parenting can be affected by theway we were parented ourselves,
and so one of the things wemight watch in ourselves is if
we have an anxious attachment,for example, it's really common
for the anxious parent to to beanxious about that child and
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what's going on in their lifeand they end up having more of
an enmeshed relationship wheretheir emotions are attached to
the emotions and experiences ofthe child, therefore making them
less effective at being able tobe the leader and support their
child in a healthy way.
Another one is social learning,and essentially we learn from
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the example of other people.
We're watching how things aredone as we grow up.
We watch our parents, we watchhow they parent and, based on
what we learn and what we see,we find ourselves doing it, most
of us as kids, or maybe when wewere young adults and got
married and started a family, wesaid I'm not going to parent
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that way.
I've seen it and I don't wantto do that.
Then we find ourselves,unintentionally a lot of times,
sounding just like, in my case,my dad.
Most of the time, that's okay,but sometimes there's some
things that I would like tochange, but it is something I
have learned and something heprobably learned from his dad
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and so on, so we carry that withus and until we become aware of
those things, we really can'tchange it.
Another one is the cognitivebehavioral therapy or theory,
which is essentially that ourthoughts and our emotions and
our actions can be changed ifwe're aware of them, and
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essentially we can start tochange the way we think about
the world and ultimately have aneffect on this dynamic going on
between us and our spouse orour co-parent.
Family.
Systems theory basically meansthat we grow up in a system, we
grow up in a group, a familythat has got its own culture,
dynamics, the way they handleemotions etc.
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And that influences us, andthen we become a part of that
system and we influence the rest.
Now let's dive into that alittle bit, because that's a
pretty powerful idea and itbasically is that one person in
the system can affect the wholeand so, where there's awareness
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and skill and caring, that oneperson can actually change the
dynamic of the entire family.
Not that it should be put onone person's shoulders to change
it, but isn't it empowering toknow that that person can.
So those are some of thephilosophical underpinnings of
the interpersonal cycle.
Now let's get into some of thespecifics of what are some of
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the negative interpersonalcycles that commonly happen
between parents.
All right, so we're going totalk about interpersonal cycles
that are negative, and Iremember back in my college days
the term was used vicious orvirtuous cycles.
We can have positive ones, justlike we can have negative ones,
but let's talk about some ofthe vicious cycles and keep in
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mind that when we get into anegative interpersonal cycle
loop with somebody, the trustbetween us is hurt, and that's
at the core of all relationshipsis this idea of trust.
I'm going to do another podcastvery soon on how we can build
back trust throughout the entirefamily system.
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In fact, I'm starting a pilotgroup right now with just 10
sets of families, their parents.
The title is six weeks to boosteveryone's trust in the home.
Who wouldn't want that right?
And what I've learned over theyears is that if I can intervene
in these differentinterpersonal cycles by helping
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at least one member of the cyclemake a change, then
trustworthiness emerges out ofthat.
Now you can't force trust onanybody, but you certainly can
produce more trustworthybehaviors and, as that happens
within the family system, youget this rising of trust inside
the family system and it's awonderful thing when that
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happens.
You've definitely heard of someof these cycles.
We've all heard of the good copbad cop cycle that happens and
usually how that starts is oneof the parents will assume the
good cop role.
Who doesn't want the good coprole?
Right?
So somebody takes that on and,as a result, the other parent
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feels obligated to take theother role and they feel like
they need to balance out thegood cop and essentially what
that is.
The good cop is the one thatseems to be more in tune with
the wants, the emotions of thechild, less likely to be strict
in their consequences and muchmore flexible and in tune with
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the emotion side.
So this parent is definitelythe permissive one.
On the other side, the bad copis the one that is seen as maybe
more authoritarian than theother parent and of course it's
not fun to play the bad cop role, but this person feels like
they need to institute rules andhold boundaries and
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consequences and structure andall of those things, those
expectations.
So you can see that theconflict can be pretty intense
in a vicious cycle like this.
Think about a teeter totter, forexample.
Let's say you've got the twoparents kind of more in the
middle, but one is on the morelenient side, the other one's on
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a little bit more strict sideand something happens inside the
family with that child and thegood cop parent will feel that
emotion, maybe they're even alittle bit amashed with that
child and they will step alittle further that direction on
the teeter totter and it feelslike it's out of balance to the
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other parent.
The natural thing to do is takea step the other direction,
just like you would on theelementary playground, to offset
the weight on the other side.
To keep that balance in themiddle.
You step out a little bit onthe teeter totter this way and
over time, if it's not checkedbecause they're reacting to each
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other in this negative loop,this negative cycle, they end up
on either end of the teetertotter, the continuum between
this permissive andauthoritarian style where
missing that sweet golden meanin the middle.
So that's one of the mostcommon negative cycles that we
see parents have.
Another one is the underminingof authority by one parent to
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the other and of course this isreally confusing for the child
because if you've setexpectations and maybe you have
rules that you've set yet theother parents giving permission
to do things that are outsidethose rules, for example, then
that creates a lot of confusionfor the child.
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It again places one of theparents in more of a favored
position in the eyes of the teenor the child and the other
one's kind of seen in morenegative light, and so those two
can kind of go hand in handwith each other at times.
Another cycle is the avoidanceof conflict.
Now, most of us don't love toaddress conflict and especially
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if it's really an intenseconflict that we don't have the
skills or the tools to managethe emotions.
So every time we get into thattopic it goes bad and it spirals
down further.
And so there's this avoidanceof that topic, of our
differences between us and ourparenting styles, and this might
delay the conflict and we getto keep somewhat some peace
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during that time.
But inevitably it won't taketoo long before that avoidance
ends up creating lots of reallydifficult situations.
You'll be very inconsistent asparents because you haven't
addressed this underlying issue.
Now there are a lot of otherpatterns that we can get into
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within the family and it's agood study.
It's actually an amazing thingto understand the many different
cycles and then notice how manyof those cycles you actually
fall into unaware.
During my PhD program atVirginia Tech, I started a
leadership development program Icalled Solution-Focused
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Leadership, and what it did isit took some of the same
philosophical underpinnings thatI've just shared with you, and
it looked into the role of aperson in a business
organization, and so it wasbasically realizing that every
human system that we're in,especially if it's a consistent
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relationship that we have toengage in, there are these
patterns that emerge, and theseinterpersonal cycles can also
exist in a business relationship, and so I created this program,
solution-focused Leadership,and one of the things I love to
do the most is to learn how tocommunicate with the community.
Was I love to invite or ask forvolunteer in the group, and we
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usually had about 12 to 18people in the group and, by the
way, I did this inside a largehealthcare system and so they
had existing relationships.
They were peers in theworkplace, and so it was an
incredibly vulnerable thing forthem to do to come to this
workshop, which was five dayslong, a couple months of
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coaching them in their workplaceand in their families and then
bringing them back for anotherthree-day training, teach them
how they could take the skillsthat we'd been working on into
the workplace and help thepeople that they managed.
One of the things I'd do isinvite them to come forward.
The volunteer come forward andI would diagram these
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interpersonal cycles.
It's a lot of fun to actuallysee it and keep in mind there
would be somebody that would benot present in our group.
That would actually be theother side of the interpersonal
cycle, so we tried to be veryhonoring of the one who was
absent.
My job often was not just todiagram it and, by the way, if
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you could imagine it, it's likea circle A person A influences
person B, which influencesperson A.
It's not a linear line from onecause and effect, from person A
causing person B to dosomething.
It's a circular experience andthat's the first really
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important principle to breakinga cycle.
So, if you can imagine me upthere with the flip chart, we're
, you know, have the volunteerup there, alice volunteers and I
say who do you want to havehere and she might choose her
husband, her boyfriend, acolleague in the workplace, and
so we had this strict rule ofconfidentiality and to honor
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those who were not present.
One of the big theories andbeliefs I have is that
everybody's doing the best theycan and I think that really
works in most cases is to assumethe very best and that these
cycles make perfect sense toboth people.
That's why they keep doing it.
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The emotions, the thoughts, thefeelings all of that connects
in a way and goes hand in glovewith each other, which is why
these cycles are perpetual andthey just get more difficult to
change over time.
So we diagram this up on theflip chart.
So let's take this exampleAlice comes forward, she
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volunteers.
I ask her what the issue is andshe'll come up with a short
summary of what the issue is andthen we will begin to diagram
it.
And I always start with theother person's actions, because
that, from Alice's perspective,there's this action being done
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or this behavior that's beingdone that is causing her to have
certain emotions and feelings,and she can identify those
behaviors very, very easily.
So we get the other person'sbehaviors or actions.
The next thing is I'll ask herhow does that make her feel?
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She can easily identify theemotions with my help, and then
I will ask her what were thethoughts that preceded the
emotions, what were theautomatic thoughts that you
might not have even noticed ortaken the time to examine, and
so we take that chance to writedown some of the automatic
thoughts that she has.
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The next step is really acrucial one, and I'm going
through this with you because Ihope that you'll get a piece of
paper out and try to do this onyour kitchen table here, where
you can diagram an interpersonalcycle that's not going well.
So this next step is difficult.
I will say then, with yourthoughts and your feelings, what
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is the actions that you tend totake?
So, to demonstrate theseinterpersonal cycles, I would
demonstrate my own, I'd write itup there on the flip chart and
I would show one that I had withmy wife, and we get to the
point where I would have to putmy behaviors in there.
Now it's really easy to labelmy own behaviors in virtuous
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ways and altruistic ways.
It's much harder to do to haveit labeled in a way that rock
sand would agree with, and so wehad to get really good in these
groups of putting ourselves inthe role of someone who's not
there and we would identify.
You know, alice, for example,in this example would say I
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would do X, y and Z when I feltthese feelings and as a group,
out of love and out of thetheory and the belief that
everybody's doing the best theycan, we would then challenge her
a little bit on what thosebehaviors were that she was
doing, how they could be seen bythe other person in a negative
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light.
That would produce somenegative emotions, negative
thoughts and ultimately, thesebehaviors that are so troubling
to Alice.
What was so fun about thisexercise is that it was in a
setting where they didn't haveto protect themselves.
They didn't have to.
They could be vulnerable.
There was safety there.
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We produced a feeling of trustand support inside the groups so
they'd be able to really bevulnerable and listen and open
up.
And so as we diagram this andthe beautiful thing about a
cycle is that it takes twopeople to maintain the cycle so
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if one bows out and says I'm notgoing to keep doing my half of
the cycle, the cycle will change.
Now you can't do that tomanipulate someone and try to
get them to change the way youwant them to change, but and we
definitely had coached peoplearound that and help them know
that you need to change becauseit's the right thing for you to
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do.
It matches your values.
You want to do your part better, regardless of whatever anybody
else is going to do.
But in the act of actualauthentic change by the one
person, most of the time theother person would be invited to
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change themselves and theywould.
They would change.
I saw many examples of aperson's heart changing for that
other party that's not presentin the group during that little
exercise and then at lunchtimewhen we had a break, they would
go make a phone call and thephone call was always disruptive
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of the old cycle.
The phone call was open-hearted, it was with great awareness of
how they may have beencontributing.
It was often a I'm sorry forthis kind of comment and so many
times they'd come backafterwards with this huge smile
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on their face.
Oftentimes they'd been cryingand they'd come back and share
how they had done something thathad changed the old dynamic and
they weren't doing it tomanipulate or change anybody
else.
They just simply wanted to doit differently themselves.
So that's the invitation to youis that any of these cycles that
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you can identify, andespecially identify your part in
the cycle, you have some powerto design that cycle differently
.
Certainly, you're half of thecycle.
You're half of the circle iscompletely in your hands.
Don't try to think your way outof the cycle, though.
Only yes, you can modify theway you think and that can
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affect the way you feel.
That's cognitive behavioraltherapy.
My suggestion is that youidentify some actions that you
would take if you had theemotions that would be
supportive of it, that wouldchange the old cycle, and then
do those actions.
Whether you feel that way or not, the other party, your
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co-parent, whoever that might bethat you're going to practice
breaking these cycles on.
They might be very skeptical atfirst, and they probably should
be, because all of a suddenthere's a change, and wouldn't
you be skeptical if they made achange?
But this is really not aboutthem or what might happen.
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This is about you feeling good,taking action, making a change
and something that you know youshould do on your end and watch
what happens.
It's an amazing thing.
You can use this same thingwith your children, people at
work, anybody where there's akey relationship you want to
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preserve that, you want to buildthe trust back with.
This is what you can do.
It's one of the mostaction-oriented things I could
teach you to do.
I hope you will take the timeto diagram a cycle, a real one
that's going on, and get reallyhonest with yourself, be
vulnerable, look at it throughthe eyes of the other person and
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ultimately make some changes onyour side and just watch what
happens.
I think you'll be amazed at thedifference in feelings that you
have for that other person, andout of that will come some very
genuine, authentic actions youcan take.
I can't help but want to giveyou a quick example of a
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parent-child cycle, and becauseI think it's pretty common and
I'd like you to try somethinghere too we get into these
vicious cycles with our kids allthe time.
Adolescence is a time ofdifferentiation, it is a time to
push back on boundaries, it's atime for them to find
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themselves and their identity,and all of that At the same time
.
Parents still need to playtheir role and be a leader and
support that child in the verybest way they can.
It makes me think of anexperience we had a long time
ago at Homeward Bound, where Iwas working with a family.
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The father regularly would getreally, really upset, and so
there was a lot of anger, a lotof shouting and losing control
emotionally going on.
Well, as we talked to him aboutchanging his part of that
communication cycle, he reallytook hold of it.
He decided that he was notgoing to lose his cool, that he
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was going to really practicethis hard and it was amazing to
watch and he did.
I'm always so amazed andhonored when people will take
coaching and they'll actuallyimplement those principles that
we teach and they end up havingpositive results.
This father did that and hestarted consistently managing
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his emotions during thesetopical things that they had to
discuss between them.
Later on he asked his son andit was pretty interesting
dialogue between the two of themhe said hey, do you like it
more when I'm calm and incontrol emotionally, or do you
like it more when I'm angry?
His son said to be honest withyou, dad, when you're calm like
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this, it makes me think that mymanipulation skills are slipping
.
So there was definitely thispower dynamic going on that when
the dad lost his cool, the sonknew that he was in charge, that
he was in control because hisdad was not.
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And pretty interesting dynamicwhen his dad stopped that part
of it, things shifted.
This interpersonal dynamicbetween them changed and,
ultimately, the manipulationthat was going on just couldn't
happen anymore.
Better things came out of thatgoing forward.
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So how does all this apply totrustee, the app that we're
building?
And, by the way, it's gettingvery, very close to beta testing
.
I mentioned earlier that we'vegot this group of 10 families
that's going to do this pilotgroup with us.
They're also going to be betatesters of the trustee app and,
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as I mentioned, it really is allabout trust, and so, if you
think about what trustee will do, it's essentially helping
people inside the family dothings that are trustworthy.
If you think about theinterpersonal cycle, the
thoughts, feelings and then theactions If we do actions that
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are trustworthy and we can getmultiple people in the family to
do this at the same time, thatlevel of trust goes up across
the board, and so that really isthe magic behind trustee is
that it will create trustworthyactions and behaviors that can
be tracked over time, that canultimately almost be data points
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for parents, for example, tolook at that and say you know, I
haven't been trusting my teamvery well, but this data, this
streak that's going on, thiscommunication that's happening
through the app and the othertools in the app is showing me
that I really probably shouldtrust him more.
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One of the real problems thattrustee will solve is that when
two parents are in any of thesenegative interpersonal cycles,
inconsistency is usuallyundermined, and what trustee
will do is it will help the twoparents break some of those
cycles between the two of them,help them become more united
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together, create expectationsthat are clear, that don't
change, that are on the app, andthen there'll be check-ins
where the team can check in andreport on how they're doing with
these particular issues thathave been identified.
Now, as that's tracked overtime, it's going to give real
data as to the trustworthinessof the team.
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So one of the things we'reworking on right now is how to,
first of all, measure trust, butalso how the behaviors of the
team map to trustworthiness andultimately affects the trust.
So stay tuned.
It's coming soon.
I can't wait to get it into yourhands, get your feedback and
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see how this is actually in thereal world, helping you either
develop trust for the first timein a long time or enhance trust
, both between you and yourco-parent, you and your
teenagers, and ultimately helpus achieve the mission we have,
which is to strengthen Hill andfortify families.
Thank you for listening to thispodcast today and I hope you'll
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share it with other people thatyou think might find it helpful
, and I really do hope thatyou'll take the challenge and
diagram out a interpersonalvicious cycle that you have and
identify what you can do tochange that cycle.
Thanks again for listening.
Parents, your time is valuableand I'm grateful you spent some
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of it with us.
What you're intentionally doingin your home life is inspiring
and unmatched in its importanceand long-term effects.
Ask yourself what am I going todo because of what I've learned
today?