This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI AM six forty the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio App.
Welcome back to the.
Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio App. I always say that live everywhere on the iHeartRadio App because you know, AM radio is great for many people, but most people nowadays are app based, and if you download the iHeartRadio App, you can listen a live at any time to me or anybody else who you love on KFI. But also everything gets stored in there, so if you miss part of a show or a past show, you can always find
it on the iHeartRadio App. All right, I am back to answering your social media questions. If you have a question, you can send it by a direct message to me on Instagram. Producer Kayla goes through them. She picks them.
I do keep your identity anonymous. You send it to at doctor Wendy Walsh.
All right.
This listener says, dear Doctor Wendy, I know you proposed to your boyfriend. I've been dating a guy for four months and I'm ready to make it exclusive. Is it okay to ask him to be my boyfriend? Or should I wait for him to ask me? All right, there are a couple of things I need to say here right off the top. First of all, like a lawyer in a court room, never ask a question you don't know the answer to.
And so when I proposed to my sweet.
Julio, we had already had discussions about getting married, not necessarily the when or the where or the exact, but you know, I knew that what his answer was going to be, even though he paused. I mean, you can see it. It's on my YouTube channel, and it's really freaky when he pauses. But his explanation is that we had practiced a little script for the segment, the KFI segment, and then I asked a question that was off script,
so we had to think, okay. But your next question is you're ready to make it exclusive and you've been together four months, So my curiosity is are you already in bed together? Are you knocking boots? Are you having a great old time? Is it delicious? Then you missed your moment. Here's the thing you need to ask for. So there's two things here. There's sexual exclusivity, And then there's also the you know, public title of what are
we right? And sexual exclusivity the question about it should happen before onset of first sex in a relationship, right, that's when you say, hey, loving getting to knowing, getting to know you. I think you're great. Clearly I can tell you're into me. It'd be fun to take this to the next step. But as long as we're getting to know each other, I'd like to know that if we're sleeping together, I'm the only person you're sleeping with. Right, So it's not like saying, let's post on Instagram that
we're a couple. No, it's just saying it's asking for sexual exclusivity. So that's the first step. But it sounds like you miss that. I don't know, maybe you haven't even had sex. Then that's the time to do it. But then you don't ask somebody will you be my boyfriend until you've had trust and intimacy and talked about sweet things and have that thing. You know, so at a certain point you might say, hey.
Are we a thing? Are we like a public thing?
Are we?
I mean, you don't have to say is it okay? If I'm your boyfriend, your girlfriend, or you know what, I make it so official you just kind of say yoma one and only. Is that the what's working for you?
Get the information you need, but again, ask for sexual exclusivity first, then the identifying thing later. All right, Dear doctor Wendy says this listener, my girlfriend's brother hates me. Hmm, I'm so good to her, And she says he's like this with every boyfriend she's ever had. He's rude to me, and I think it's childish. I also don't tolerate that treatment, but I want to be respectful of her.
What can I do?
Okay, So clearly he has an anxious attachment to his sister, maybe an enmeshed family, and he's worried about abandonment, right because I know, okay, I'm not gonna be stereotypical, but I'm gonna be stereotypical whenever I met a guy who was raised by a single mother and he was the only child. She had a husband and he had a wife, and that mom always hated me, right or did things to kind of break us up in some way. And again, not logical, not rational, doesn't make sense. Our emotional mind
is very different. From our intellectual mind. So the brother may not even realize that he's doing this, or if he does, maybe he's like, I.
Don't trust guys around you. It was to be super protective. Whatever. So you got a couple choices here.
If you plan on this to be a long term, long term thing with her, you're gonna have a relationship with him for the rest of your life. So you might want to do something with him alone, invite him out to do something whatever it is guys do together, I don't know, think play game, go to a bar or whatever, and then just say, hey, I just want you to know I really feel grateful to be a part of your family, and I want you to know that I really respect your sister, and I hope we can be cool.
That's all you do.
You just try to establish a secondary relationship. If that's not gonna work, they just avoid him as much as you can, like literally, if you have to go to family things, sit in a different place. If he tries to trigger you by saying stuff, just you know, move on, just just yeah, let it go right, Just let him do his own thing. Okay, moving along here, Hi, doctor Wendy, I'm dating a new guy. Who ignores my text Sometimes I find it very rude. We've been dating a month.
Is this a deal breaker or a conversation? It's a conversation like anything else. You tell me more your.
Needs are Also, how often are you texting? Are you bombarding him?
Because if you're bombarding him, of course he's going to cause space And if you want him to text more text less just saying, but you know, stop texting and get on the phone see each other's say. The text thing it doesn't work. I know, it's how everybody starts. But then it's got to move relationship to move to something. Dear doctor Wendy, a woman I am dating always showers after intimacy. It offends me because I feel like she doesn't want to cuddle or have my scent on her.
How do I bring this up with her?
Sir?
Must I give you a lesson in female anatomy? And I guess I mean I got the lecture from a doctor at a hospital when I was in there with a bladder infection and another kind of infection when I was like a teenager.
So I'm gonna give you the lecture.
The worst thing a woman can do immediately after sexual intercourse is lay around and can I say in all the juices, Kayla, I don't know, but you know what I mean. She can't. She makes herself more vulnerable to a whole bunch of infections. It is very important that she hop up get herself cleaned.
Now.
If she doesn't come back from the shower for the cuddle, that's a whole other thing.
Right, So why do you talk to her about it?
Right?
Why don't you take a shower with her? Why don't you help her clean herself? Be together?
That's what I'm saying, really, Dear doctor Wendy, my boyfriend just started a medication to help his mood swings, but it takes away all his personality and care for me. We've been together three years. How do I deal with this? You talk to him, and you tell him to talk to his doctor. This is not for me to weigh in. This is a medical question. I'm not a medical doctor. And seriously, if it's really changed his personality, he might need his meds adjusted. So tell him about it and
talk to his doctor. Alrighty, when we come back, I have a very special guest who's going to talk about how we build a model for love in our early lives. You're listening to The Doctor Wendy Wall Show and KFI AM six forty would Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty, Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You hear me talk about it all the time. Love begins in childhood.
Parents and the relationship between babies and toddlers create a kind of blueprint for loves. When people call me and they have questions about dating advice, I always say, talk to your therapist about what happened early in life if you want to be able to change your patterns as an adult looking for love or trying to maintain a healthy relationship. So I thought I would bring on a therapist, a psychologist, a child and family psychologist who's been practicing
for forty years. I'd like to welcome doctor Paul SUNSERI. Welcome to The Doctor Wendy Wall Show.
Well, thank you, Wendy. I appreciate it. It's a pleasure being on.
And your new book is called Gentle Parenting reimagine how to make it work with oppositional and defiant kids, and it just came out this month. Congratulations on your new book. Let's first of all, talk a little bit. Because you work with children, you work with families, you, I'm sure know a lot about attachment theory. Tell me what explain to people who are listening how this important relationship early in life with our primary caregivers is so important to our adult romantic lives.
Well, it's a great question. So the thing of it is that obviously the relationship that parents have with their kids, the stronger that is, the more securely attached it is, that becomes a template for the relationships that kids will then seek out in the future as adults. So kids are well loved and they have a strong connection to their parents, then very likely those are the adults that they are going to seek out in the future. So, you know, we all want our kids to grow up
and to be in happy, healthy relationships. And I think sometimes when there are problems or issues in the family of origin, maybe the connection the child has to their parents, maybe there's some dysfunction within the family. The problem with that is that in future relationships, often people seek out other people who mirror their experiences in childhood.
Right, I always say, we go back to the scene of the crime, and we will pick partners who actually bring our.
Worst nightmares because they're familiar to us.
Like love isn't about finding happiness, it's about finding the familiar. So what do you say to parents who say, Oh, my baby or my toddler's so independent. I'm so proud of them. They're already holding the baby bottle at four months and they don't need me or miss me. They don't cry when I leave. This is so wonderful. They're so independent. What's your response to that?
Well, I think a kid being independent is a really good thing, right. I think we all want our kids to be able to do things on their own and make independent decisions that are found and reasonable. But you know, any quality too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing. And so the parent that you just describe worries me a little bit. I love the fact that they're proud of their kids for being independent, obviously, but to say they don't miss me when when I
leave the room, I don't know. I start to worry a little bit. Most kids do miss their parents. When they leave the room, and when they return, they're excited to see them. So, you know, independence is great, but I want kids to, in addition to being independent, to have a strong connection to their parents, a strong attachment exactly.
I mean emotional independence is something that a baby shouldn't have yet, right, It's like they're an emotional umbilical cord to a parent's heart for a very long period of time. You know, you work with families and you're in the trenches every day. When you see parents who have an insecure attachment with their children, I'm sure you immediately think to yourself, well, what happened in that parent's childhood? Are you able to heal families through working with parents' attachment injuries?
Well, another really good question. So let me see if I can explain it in a way that will make sense to your listeners. So, the families that I work with, they're a mess. Right. So kid presents her treatment in our clinic, and usually they're there because they have some sort of a serious mental health condition. So they might have what's called oppositional defining disorder, and that's just kids who have a very hard time following directions and doing
what's asked to them. That may be, say a teenager who engages in some kind of regular self harming behavior. They might cut themselves. They could be a teenager who's suicidal. That could be possibly a kid who is so anxious that either they have great difficulty going to school or
maybe they stop going to school altogether. So in those situations, everybody's attachments are afraid right because it is so stressful, and life at home is often so chaotic, it's difficult for parents to be close to their kids in situations like that, and for kids to be close to their parents. So a large part of my work is figuring out what is getting in the way of this family being
close to one another. And often then what's required is to really address the behavior problems that the child is exhibiting and intervene in such a way that those problems either go away completely or vastly reduced. And then what happens magically if parents then start to have a far better relationship with their kids, and kids have a far better relationship with their parents. There's a natural inclination among humans, I think, to want to be close right, especially among
family members. But when a kid is struggling, particularly in some sort of a serious way. It's hard for their to be closeness in the family in terms of family of origin. So sometimes the parents that they work with, you know, they're all very well intentioned, with the vast majority of them are. But sometimes I work with parents who themselves can be very highly reactive. Right, so their kid is doing or saying something that they don't like. You know, it's very difficult for that parent to stay
emotionally regulated. And that's sort of any parent of a more difficult to parent kid, a harder kid. But there's some parents who struggle with at the.
Moment, you know.
I remember when my kids were little, my therapist said something to me that was so helpful.
She said, in.
Order for kids to truly love their parents, they have to be allowed to hate them sometimes.
Well, I mean, I think every parent I know, myself included, at one point their kids say to them I hate Yeah.
I remember saying it to my parents.
Yeah, And I do.
Believe in those moments probably they did me. But that passes all right, But it's our.
Job to not be reactive to just say, you know what, they're just using the language they have to express their frustration, right, I want to talk more about your book, and I want to talk more about Gentle parenting and how you have reimagined it, because I know that some people have misgivings and think it's about spoiling the kid, and I really want to get into it more when we return. My guest is doctor Paul Sunseri. He's in San Francisco. He is a forty year clinician in the trenches working
with children and families. If you do have kids, if you have a kid who just had kids, you might want to get them this book, Gentle Parenting Reimagined How to Make It Work with Oppositional and Defiant Kids.
We'll be right back.
You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on kf I AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Doctor b Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Well, that's a doculating well show on KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. My guest clinical psychologist doctor Paul Sunseri. His book Gentle Parenting Reimagined How to Make It Work with Oppositional and Defiant Kids. It
just came out this month. Let's talk about we're talking about in early childhood creating a healthy model for love so that these kids can grow up and have healthy relationships themselves, Doctor Paul, What do parents get wrong most often when it comes to gentle parenting.
Well, let me just define gentle country really fast.
Yeah.
What it doesically is that focuses on parents having a close, loving relationship with their kids, really the best relationship they possibly can. And in the parenting style, parents try to lean into their kids emotionally or at least as much as they possibly can. And it argues that when kids misbehave, that if they do something their parents don't want them to do, parents should focus less on punishment and more
on trying to empathize and understand the child. Previous generations focused a lot more on punishment than what gentle parenting does. It's again less about that and more just trying to collaborate and empathize with the child.
I always say there are no bad kids, just misunderstood kids.
Yeah. Yes, I've never met a bad kid. I've met challenging kids, lots of them, but never a bad one.
Right, So, how do parents? And I'm guilty this. So I had two very extremes of children. One I literally never ever said to her, is your homework done? And she rushed home from school and did it and the extra credit and literally walked herself alone from kindergarten into Harvard. The next kid, five years later, filled with learning differences a little bit on the spectrum you would call maybe
oppositionally defiant. She owned her no, that's for sure, and trying to get that one through school was very, very, very difficult. I made so many mistakes behaviorally at the beginning with this kid before I went up to UCLA neuropsych and.
Took some parenting classes.
Good, but how do parents unintentionally reinforce their children's negative behavior? And I know what you're going to say, because I probably did it for six years.
Okay, Well, there's a lot of unintentional reinforcement. I think the easiest example to explain to people is kids who are explosive, Kids who maybe yell and you know, scream at their parents, maybe even curse at their parents. And usually that's in response to being told no to something, not getting permission to do something that they want. And so if a kid puts up a big enough fight, you know, gets loud enough and harsh enough with their parents.
It's really common and understandable that those parents sometimes back down, like I get yeah, it's not worth it. And so when a kid learns that they can change their parents' behavior, sometimes by turning a no into a yes, by acting out, that kid is just going to act out. It teaches them to be persistent, and sometimes it teaches them to be mean. So that's the most common reinforcement pattern that I see in family that I work very hard to change.
In the book describes many many ways of changing that.
So my daughter loved to have the most screaming, embarrassing meltdown tantrums in the most inappropriate places airplanes, museums, stores, et cetera. And I fed her tantrums with ice cream.
It was a bad story. Kids can sometimes remind me of they're a little extortions, sometimes aware when they're going to act out. That's why I get backed out in public so much, because they know their parents are embarrass and they go no, no, no, no, no worry about I'll get you what you want. It's very common for kids to.
Be you know, when I finally went up to UCLA, there was this wonderful licensed clinical social worker named doctor Cynthia Whittam, and she taught me to catch them being good, give lots of attention when they're being good, and when they're being bad literally ignore, literally give no response, like you're just a robot parent walking around. And it was so hard, but it did extinguish the behavior.
Took some time, but it worked well.
Go ahead.
It's great advice, and that's kind of the opposite of what gentle parenting advises. They lean into their kids when they're tanswering, and that's partially what's wrong with gentle parenting is that approach backfires and it's not consistent with the evidence with the kid who's misbehaving in some way.
And why doesn't punishment work well with some kids?
Well, it's kind of a complicated question. Punishment, in its strictest definition is a kid misbehaves and there's a penalty for that. So for example, a kid who doesn't do their homework maybe then over the weekend doesn't get to see their friends. So if the penalty that is imposed that can't be undone. There's an alternative to that, which I call pause, earn in return reinforcement, and it's kind
of a reverse that it works a lot better. So the way pausitive and return works is if you want to see your friends this weekend, then you're going to have to get all your homework done by then. Or an alternative explanation would be a cad that's disrespectful to their parents. So look, if you keep talking to me like that, your phone's going to go up on the kitchen counter until you can be nice for a while. Those are both alternatives to punishment that I said are far more effective.
I like to call them logical consequences.
And you know, one of the things I loved about tech is that it's so addictive for kids.
It is a really great way to parent.
By withdrawing tech and having them earn back, I mean basically, what you're saying is instead of creating a punishment, what I'm hearing is you turn the beloved thing into a reward that they work for.
Right, they worked very hard for their tech, yes.
Oh yeah, they work to get back on that phone. So how can parents really get children to cooperate without punishment? We mentioned one reward system, which is tech. Are there other reward systems that you recommend?
Well? I think with harder to parent kids, there do need to be consequences. Consequences play a really important role in changing that behavior. Positive reinforcement is great. The positive reinforcement alone, I don't think works very well with difficult kids, so you're always going to have to do some version
of that. And in the book, I walk parents from agency how to get their kids to do exactly what they want them to do, to listen, to follow the directions, to be kind, to do the things they like that they're supposed to be doing, like homework and chores, and it just outlines a strategy and a map to get those things done and at the same time being gentle with your kids. You can get kids to do whatever you want them to do and be gentle with them at the same time.
Yeah, you know, you don't have to yell parents exactly, you don't have to hit. You can say it in a calm way. I almost feel like, well, I was her before I went to therapy and learned. But it's the parents who are most ambivalent about the rules that have the hardest time setting the boundaries, and when they do, they become this crazy bricked wall authoritari. It's like the permissive parent becomes the authoritarian parent. There's no in between.
But when you learn to just calmly say oh, I'm sorry, no we don't have cookies before dinner.
I know you're disappointed.
You empathy. This is just how it is.
That's just how it is. Is the Hopey way.
We had a preschool owner who used to say that think of your family as the Hopey way.
This is our way, this is the way we do it.
Well, it's been a pleasure to meet you, my guest, doctor Paul Sunsei. Please get his book Gentle Parenting Reimagined How to Make it Work with oppositional and defiant kids. Have a wonderful holiday season, Doctor Paul nice.
Thank you, appreciate on, Thank you much.
And that brings the Dodtor Wendy Wall Show to a close. I hope you and your family do have a very, very merry Christmas. You've been listening to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show in KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to Doctor d Walsh. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app,