Producer: Welcome back to Full PreFrontal where we are exposing the mysteries of executive function. I am here with our host, Sucheta Kamath.
Good morning, Sucheta, always good to be with you. Looking forward to today's conversation. We're going to lead off by talking about gin, ginger, and ice, and parenting.
Sucheta Kamath: Well, thank you, Todd, great to be with you. So let me start off with this: have you ever met a depressed baby?
Producer: Actually, I have not, I have not.
Sucheta: Exactly, so by nature, babies have a happy disposition. Many cry when they are hungry, wet, or when they're tired, but baseline, all babies are happy and pleasant, and all that goes away when the baby starts growing up and enters childhood, so to speak, and even though it's extremely rewarding, raising children into well-adjusted adults is a monumental task and the journey is quite arduous. Only a few know the tricks or secrets to produce the most well-adjusted human beings, and today, that's what we're going to talk about.
So let me tell you about this gin, ginger, and ice story. I heard celebrated comedian and Mr. Showman himself Martin Short, he just came out with his biography, I guess, very funny title, and talked about his childhood and specifically about his father. His father was Irish, originally from Ireland. He was a very successful executive in steel industry. They all grew up in - I mean, rather Martin Short grew up in Canada and he talks about his dad having a bar in his office but he was so disciplined that he didn't even ever touch it at work, but as soon as he got home, the dad would make himself a glass of gin, ginger, and ice, and that was just the beginning. Another tradition of the dad had coming from Ireland was he ate a very large lunch and almost never dinner, and particularly, never sat down at the dinner table with all his five children but watched them eat and of course, Martin Short goes on describing the funny ways the dad would watch them eat and critique them and comment on their eating, comment on their behaviors, and I know Martin Short is making fun of this but it sounds to me quite stressful if your dad sits then kind of is critical of the going-ons of the household. It can be weird. So he says that “My dad was sarcastic, critical, but right,” and he said that the interactions with his dad or dad's interactions with the kids often bordered darkness.
This is just kind of how I want to weave this into our conversation today, that just because you're talented, successful, and a good person, doesn't mean that you will become a good parent. Parenting is more about teaching, mentoring, and redirecting rather than just loving your children. On this podcast, Full PreFrontal, I'm talking all about executive function and as everyone knows who listen to my podcast that my interest is in gaining understanding and sharing knowledge about executive function in the developing brain and the factors that influence it, and the interactions with parents and the parents’ interactions with their children is a very critical factor in my opinion that shapes children's behavior; it helps instill habits that eventually lead and promote to self-regulatory skills in the children, and that's in fact what the immature brain becomes expert at, but if the parents don't make it their business to instill these self-regulatory skills, it may not be part of the child's repertoire. So the brain's prefrontal system helps with focus, delaying gratification, organizing, planning, problem solving, and emotional regulation, and this is what, if not well-developed, interferes with child's capacity to adjust and adapt to everyday expectations. So parents are actually very critical in promoting these skills but they are the ones who are left to handle with these children who have underdeveloped self-redirection capacity, and these children become quite difficult or stuck, inflexible, or sometimes even unruly.
So today, our guest is going to talk about that and kind of help parents expand their parental tool box and we're going to examine the fast forward, rewind, and the pause button on the parenting remote control. So that brings me to the introduction to our wonderful speaker, her name is Christine Carter. She is the author of the best-selling books The Sweet Spot: How to Achieve More by Doing Less, and Raising Happiness, and in this particular podcast, we're going to talk about her work that she, or rather her advice on parenting in the book, Raising Happiness. She is a sought-after keynote speaker and a coach. Dr. Carter writes an award-winning blog called Brave Over Perfect. She's a sociologist and a senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center where she draws on scientific research to help people lead their most meaningful, joyful, and authentic life. Her work is indicated on Greater Good and Huffington Post, and also psychology.com. Her work has earned her two nominations for American Psychological Association for Public Sociology and an award from the Council on Contemporary Families.
So it's my great pleasure to introduce Dr. Christine Carter and this conversation is going to be extremely valuable to those who are keenly interested in raising those happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults.
Producer: Well, we all feel that way, and so yeah, I'm looking for forward to this conversation. It promises to be very, very important. So let's get right to it, here is Sucheta's conversation with Dr. Christine Carter.
Sucheta: Welcome to the show, Christine. I'm so honored to have you.
Christine Carter. Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Sucheta: So let me start right away by telling you how impactful your book was for me when my children entered high school. So your first book, Raising Happiness: Ten Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents came right at the time when my son was in 10th grade, and so it was immensely helpful and I love the way you have translated the research into bite-sized power-packed nuggets of information that anyone can relate to, and most importantly, inculcate into their lives. So I want to center this conversation today about parenting and particularly with the lens of executive function, that of the children as well as parents.
So my first question is, when I think about executive function proficiency, I believe it's all about child's ability to self-regulate and that the key ingredient for child's success is that self-regulation, and we know parents are thought to be the primarily influence information of these skills. Do you mind reviewing the concept of self-regulation as you see it with respect to happiness or raising a happy and independent child and what are some of the direct as well as indirect benefits of becoming a self-regulated young mind?
Dr. Carter: Yeah, well, the first thing that comes to mind is emotional intelligence - social and emotional intelligence, right? So the more that you're able to regulate yourself, I think with children, a lot of the time, we're looking in particular at their emotions, right? Can they first of all know what it is that they are feeling in response to something that's happening in their environment and then can they choose to respond appropriately to those emotions? With kids and also sometimes with adults, we always say all emotions are okay but the key is to know what it is that you're feeling so that the behavior that follows it is appropriate for the situation. All emotions are okay, all behaviors are not, actually, and so that regulation piece of things comes in being able to respond to our own emotions, and for kids, their own emotions instead of just reacting in a way that may or may not be effective, may or may not - I help them out in that situation. Anyway, that's what comes to mind for me as the crux of it when I think about leading a meaningful and fulfilling, and a happy life, right? Having those skills that but I don't know, were you thinking of something different?
Sucheta: So yes, I was also thinking, which is, I think you nailed it from the development of that self-aware child is the one who is attuned with his emotionality as well as his goals and demands, so the second part that goes with the self-regulation is, am I goal-directed? Am I achieving the goals that I have set for myself? And what happens most often as you know that they start off with maybe clarity or semi clarity with the goals, but when they run into a roadblock, then there is emotional dysregulation, and they not only lose themselves in that emotionality, but they have now lost sight of that big picture or the goal, and that I often see also derails of them from staying or achieving happiness.
Dr. Carter: Absolutely, absolutely, and before they even know why they're so unhappy or what's really going on and it comes back to that goal direction is a really unimportant one when you think about how a response to a particular situation or a circumstance, or emotion, is whether or not it's effective, right? Whether or not it helps you stay on track. If there's anything we know, we know that we will all face difficult things and challenge, that things will not go as planned, and so -
Sucheta: You do talk a lot about that modern environment itself is pseudo a multitasking, demanding multitasking as well as their stressors that cause this dysregulation as well which kind of creates a sense of imbalance as well.
So my next question is then, how do we discipline our children and eventually help them become more self-disciplined is one of the greatest challenges of parenting the way I see it in 21st century. In my practice, I often work with distracted, impulsive, unmotivated, and poorly self-regulated kids, as well as adolescents and adults. The story is as much about these kids as the parents the way I see it. Many parents are often inconsistent, unsure, and loose with their discipline tactics with their children and I feel there is a cultural shift in parenting where many struggle to know how to instill these operative behaviors in their children, become guides and mentors rather than dictators, and some on the other hand are afraid to lose respect or friendship from their children, so they just don't know what the fine balance is. So could you tell us a little bit about how you have understood this through your research?
Dr. Carter: Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's really a lot here to talk about because you've hit on some things that I totally agree with. Culturally, we're seeing that there's both helicopter parenting but then an unwillingness to provide sort of the structure, I would say maybe as another way of looking at discipline, and that's the sort of willingness say no and upset your children, like not give them what they want, let them deal with pain and difficulty, and disappointment, so all these things that we as parents don't like to do. I think that the cultural thing - I mean, I can speak about this personally, I am a rather bossy person as a professional advice giver and it's a real challenge when we are dealing with our children to not just do everything for them, right? That it will be so much easier if I just did this for you, right? But basically, what that does is it creates a total lack of autonomy and an inability to handle things themselves, right? So the end goal is that they will be self-disciplined, they will be able to motivate themselves towards their end goals, that they will be able to follow their own rules, basically, and the rules of the cultures and society that they are living in, and the real challenge as I see as a parent are to let kids really fail and make mistakes, and let them be uncomfortable when we say no or because they've made a mistake so that they can learn the skills themselves so that we're not always doing it for them. There's this big balance, right? There's this big balance between providing so much structure that you're basically doing everything for them, and then they're just lost, they don't learn the skills of themselves. They wait for other people to do things for them and to be nagged and all those kinds of fun parenting experiences, and doing too little for them so that then they just start out, they're flailing.
Sucheta: You're going to get a kick out of this, I began to reread the book as I was preparing for this interview and my older son who just graduated last year from Columbia and now he's working for McKenzie, and I sent him an apology texting that, “I am so sorry, I must've been really hard on you in the name of guiding you or dictating how you should take decisions. I really told myself that I was teaching you but I was really being bossy and you're so right,” that our personal tendencies and what the child needs, that sweet balance is sometimes lost on parents including myself, a professional.
Dr. Carter: Right. Yeah, well, me too, right? I've written a lot about this. You've thought about this a lot. If that doesn't mean that we are able to do it perfectly. That in and of itself is an opportunity too to model mistake making, right? We do our best, right? That's a part of self-discipline, you do your best, you're really engaged, you do what you think is right, and then when you realize that it might not have been – you might have made some different decisions once you learned something else, then you can self-correct, right? You develop self-awareness so that you know what you would do differently. It's hard with parenting because we don't really get a second shot but we can at least model for our kids the way this goes. Writing your son that letter, how great for him to get because first of all, I'm sure you weren't that bad, right? But then he gets that and says like, "Oh, that's so interesting. My mother is –” you're modeling self-reflection, self-awareness, and the willingness to not always be right. That's the difference between a dictator and an authoritative parent, right? A dictator is always right and never makes any mistakes and doesn't allow for any mistakes on anybody else's place. It's a completely unrealistic and very unhealthy position to be taking in your world but you can be authoritative, right? You can be engaged and knowledgeable and do your best.
Sucheta: I love it because in your book, you have talked about this as a form in-kind, that being involved exhibiting warmth while you're also giving a very direct and in-focus feedback, you're also not reacting to misbehavior as a child and you're not fake praising. I mean, I just love the way you have described it. Since your book came out, I'm not sure if you're familiar with my two other guests on the show, Stephanie Carlson and Phil Zelazo from University of Minnesota have done some work in very, very young children and their parents in the area called autonomy supportive parenting and you must be familiar with that, and so one slight difference that I see that's even one step further from this authoritarian parenting which is really focusing on that how to help children adopt the students’ perspective and welcoming students’ thoughts, feelings, and actions, and commenting, like you talk about in your book about that self talk, and then parents are doing that parallel talk in my speech and language pathology 101, but I love that it's just a continuity as you are mentioning about really being modest as a parent.
Dr. Carter: Right, right, and I think it's also – yeah, part of that modesty or that humility is recognizing – being aware of your own shortcomings to the extent that you can be, right? And recognizing what they are, and then I'm a big advocate of having sort of a go-to alternate response, right? So my instinct is always going to be, well, I hope I've gotten better but it has tended to control, right? To direct, to give directions, and to be like, "I need you to do this right now," right? And that's not the best way to do it. I know this about myself, I know that my major reaction is going to be to dictate a little bit, and so my backup plan, my sort of alternate go-to is, when I notice that I'm doing is that I say, “What's your plan?” Right? So I just have a very simple question that gets me out of the dictating mode, so instead of saying, "I need you to do X, Y and Z right now," I say, "What is your plan for doing X, Y and Z?" So it gets back into that sort of autonomy supportive parenting to the extent that you're asking about their internal experience and what they are thinking. It also, one of my kids had a pretty significant executive function delay.
Sucheta: Oh, really?
Dr. Carter: Yeah, and she's a ninth grader now and we are not seeing any real signs of it anymore, but one of the things that I learned about her when she was much younger was that when I would say, "What's your plan?" She had no plan. She could not envision the future. She was very happy and delighted to be totally present all the time, right? But that actually was a super hard question, right? So it made it agood question as well because it identified the problem, right? So I could just tell her what to do, go, "I need you to get your box for piano and I need you to get in the car." I could tell her really, really specifically what I needed but because she had no vision of arriving at the piano lesson on time with everything that she needed, for example, there was a big gap there, and so sometimes, I could say, "So what is your plan for getting to piano on time," it was a very honest answer : "I have no plan," right? So then I would have to paint the picture: "Okay, you're arriving at the piano. The lesson starts at four. It takes 15 minutes to get there," and we’d go through the whole thing, like "What do you have?" At one point, we actually took pictures of what her backpack looked like for each different occasion. You know what I mean? Like I really had to help her paint that vision and sometimes with actual photographs so that she could sort of see what it was supposed to look like, like this is a kid who would walk out the door barefoot all the time, right? She just didn't have that.
Sucheta: It's amazing how you have really nailed it. In my work. This concept of time traveling, like your capacity to envision the future and you in it is a real skill and it's on a developmental trajectory. It's something that emerges for those who are natural and intuitive in executive function, but for many, it eludes them, and in my work, I do something called Letter to The Future Self, so getting people, when I work in sessions with them, the cognitive training, we do this "I'm doing this for you.” “Oh, wait a minute, that's me? So my current me and my future me are two different people?” [20:40] kid’s head, like Jerry Seinfeld talks about this, that “My late-night me completely screwed over the morning me.”
Dr. Carter: Totally. Oh, so good.
Sucheta: So I think this idea of – you're absolutely right, that painting the picture and some parents like you, and all your examples are so candid and amazingly honest that you sound like you have a great balance in providing the support without really invading that – you're not crafting success; you're just eating scaffolding and that's the real challenge that a lot of parents don't know, but you describe it and people can learn it.
Dr. Carter: Yeah, and you know, what I will say too is that these interventions work with kids. An executive function delay is not fate in terms of the whole of your life. You will not struggle necessarily the whole rest of your life. These things are skills that can be taught even if they don't come naturally. It was much harder for my youngest to learn these things but she learned them. She's doing great in high school - big public high school and she's managing herself totally, and I know that that is because she worked so hard to overcome the issues that she did have earlier in her schoolwork.
Sucheta: Amazing, so let's talk about this issue of self-doubt. So feeling insecure or having self-doubt is a natural human tendency, you agree? In a child's self that may stem from ongoing failures or awareness of poorly mastered skills or even negative feedback that the child gets from the environment. Parenting can be very tricky as instead of focusing on those issues, a parent may be drawn into fixing the problem or bolstering the child's sense of self, and a lot of poor parenting choice, at least I have witnessed in my practice get made that way so my question to you is, you do talk about raising materialistic children or children who are accidentally product of that environment which they become materialistic or self-centered, and not rooted in the right way when thinking about self and the needs. What suggestions do you have about supporting the self-doubt in a child but not making it all about them and showcasing them as the main act?
Dr. Carter: Well, maybe you could give me a specific example because what's coming to mind here is what we've already talked about a little bit, and that, like helping kids see where they have control, over their learning and over their growth, right? So I think kids and people in general start to doubt themselves the most when they feel like they've been handed a label or just sort of like, "Oh, you have a learning disability," or "You have an executive function delay.” These things that make them feel like, "Oh, I'm less than,” and instead of saying, "Okay, well, you have this problem and we're going to go see the specialist and we're going to fix it for you," or "We're going to figure out how to compensate in this," it's more like, "Oh, okay, well, your brain works in a really interesting way,and these are the skills that are going to make you more effective, right? That are going to get you closer to your goals.” So helping them understand what it is that they want and what their goals are so that they can be intrinsically motivated towards them, and then helping show them how they are in control of their own learning, their own growth, and basically, what we're after is skill development. So if they're given a label, like something isn't going right, right? Like something isn't – that they have a weakness, that feels very out of their control and can be very demoralizing, and that self-doubt can spiral downward, can be a real self-fulfilling prophecy, but if you say, "Alright, so here are the three things that we can work on,” and then you use your praise, you use that growth mindset praise to reinforce where they have control, so when my daughter would remember to put shoes on before walking out the door or whatever the case is, right? So we could say, "Oh, it worked to have your shoes by the door, right? That's something you chose to do, right? You put your shoes by the door, you saw them, that visual cue, that worked. Good job, right? Like this is working out,” and as they get older, obviously, the examples get much more complex and seem much more within their control, it's much more about like, "Okay, well, you did really well on the first segment of your math test and that is because that is where you did the extra practice problems, so fantastic, right?" Versus saying, "Okay, you got a D, what happened to you?” Are you like, looking for what went well and why it went well, and how that piece of things was within their control? And then the rest of it as well, right? Like, "Okay, so you decided not to do the practice problems in these different units. How did that work out for you?"
Sucheta: Beautiful, yeah, you're giving parents these ideas how to break the process of giving feedback into smaller chunks, and then also, I love what you said that reinforcing that aspect where they have control, they have exhibited control, they have succeeded with that control, and that can be a great, great tool.
So my last question, I can't believe we are coming to the end of this discussion already, so this is a little weird question. I serve in a very affluent part of my city so as you can imagine, my clients and parents and children come from well-to-do families, they go to private schools and they have access to a lot of things, and so the question I have for you is, do grades matter and how can parents create a culture at home that fosters hard work and effort without being too concerned with the results? How can parents calm themselves down in a competitive environment where they feel they have to stage their child's life by crafting scenarios or showcasing their talent? Many parents often tell me that, "I don't mind taking it easy, Sucheta, but it's the other parents at my school who are tiger parents and I can’t keep – if I slip away, my child won't have an opportunity to go to whatever school they want to go.”
Dr. Carter: Right, right, right, well, I'll tell you what, no, grades do not matter. What matters is learning. What matters is mastery. What matters is motivation, and if you keep your eye on what your child is learning, how motivated they are, how engaged – engagement matters more than anything, right? So grades can be an indicator of mastery and learning, and engagement, they can be. They are not always in the trick or the mistake, I think, that affluent parents can make is by confusing the two things and pushing for grades and in so doing, breaking the motivational piece of things, breaking the engagement, breaking the learning. The more a kid is pressured to achieve to get good grades by their parents, the more likely it is that they will cheat. Cheating robs them of the learning component of it, right? So grades are fine, whatever. They can be an indicator of success when it comes to motivation and learning, and mastery and all those kinds of things. So I'm not saying don't look at your kid’s grades. I'm saying that is by far not the important thing, right? What we want is – why do even want them to go to good schools? Well, because we want them to fulfill their potential as students and as learners so that during adolescence, their brains develop. I mean, it's such a rich and very, very important time for brain development, adolescence is, and so we want them engaged and soaking up knowledge like a sponge, and learning to think and learning how to think creatively, how to think analytically, how to trust their own intuition. If they leave high school or college with no intrinsic motivation, right, because they're used to be just ridden hard by their parents, right? And no sense of integrity in terms of their own learning, right? They are willing to cheat in order to just get the grade, and they don't know – they're not going to know who they are and what they want because if you're not in touch with your own motivation, you don't know who you are, you don't know what you want. You know what your parents want for you, you know who your parents want you to be, but you can't possibly fulfill –
Sucheta: And that won't last.
Dr. Carter: It's a totally broken system and you can go to the most competitive college that is out there that will give you – if you graduate, will give you, sort of brand you as intelligent, but what good is that if you haven't learned how to think, if you haven't learned how to learn. If you don't know who you are and what you want. If you don't know how to motivate yourself, right? It is no surprise that slightly more than quarter of kids who are going to lead colleges now and take medication for depression and anxiety, right? These are not kids that are thriving. Going to a good school does not mean that you will lead a good life, but learning how to think, learning how to be engaged, learning how to tap into your own intrinsic motivation, well, those are really good bets on leading that good happy life. Those are great things for parents to be concerned about and be involved in.
Sucheta: Beautiful. So as I end this interview, let me ask you a corny question. What's the best parenting advice you ever received?
Dr. Carter: The best parenting advice that I ever received… Oh, boy.
Sucheta: Sorry, you don't have to answer at all.
Dr. Carter: [30:52] It's such a fun one to – you know what immediately came to mind is a lot of bad advice that I've gotten.
Sucheta: And I read a lot of that.
Dr. Carter: I know, right? I have – my poor parents. I actually had really great parents who lead by example and I think the sort of best parenting advice that I got was really indirect and it was from my father, actually. He was a very engaged dad and he's a very engaged grandfather but he never lost himself to his job or his parenting, right? So as I was growing up and really starting to notice him, like when I was 10 or 12 and certainly as a teenager, I could see, he had a job he loved. He worked with his father and his grandfather. He loved his work. He was very engaged in it and he was home for dinner every night, right? Engaged, we would sit around the table talking, and then he would go and he would volunteer after dinner. He loved to play the guitar so he would practice his guitar and he would go play the guitar for a group of developmentally disabled adults that went to our church, right? So he just had this really full life and I never felt shortchanged by it, and I think that as a woman, it was a really great model for me to have in my life because I've never felt guilty about working, right? I've never felt like I couldn't have my own life and be a good mom, and have a job.
Sucheta: Oh, my God, that is so beautiful. I get it, so your best parenting advice you ever got was to see how to be the best parent. Actually, you got to see it.
Dr. Carter: I got it indirectly, right? He didn't ever say “What you need to do is make sure you have your own life and that you have a good work life, and you're really engaged and involved with your kids.” He just did it. So I always knew it was possible.
Sucheta: Incredible. Well, it is a true joy speaking with you, Christine, today. You are not only an amazing speaker, you are compassionate and you're kind, and you're so generous with your time, and I am going to plug this book on our website so people have access to it. They must make a point to immediately start reading even if they don't have children because they can eventually become very good mentors to all the young children were growing up in this world.
So thank you for coming on the show and giving us your time and shedding light on these very difficult concepts that are much easily understood if an expert is doing it. Thank you so much.
Dr. Carter: Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Producer: Alright, well, that was Sucheta and Dr. Christine Carter.
Wow, Sucheta, what an impactful conversation. Lots to think here. Lead us off with some initial thoughts please.
Sucheta: Sure, thank you so much, Todd. So let's start with the big picture. In my conversation with Dr. Carter, we really focused on defining and finding ways to meet the end goal in parenting, and I kind of lead us off by saying that happy, well-adjusted individuals is what we are hoping for. So what is the end goal? It is to raise self-sufficient, independent, and happy children, and if we dissect that further, here's what we get: so self-sufficient means kids who know how to set goals for themselves, prioritize steps, make plans, and put those plans into motion all by themselves. So let's look at the second component which is independent. What does independent mean? Free from outside support, guidance, or interference, without any help from others, and do it not just once but always. So it's not once that you do something independently but always, you continue to do independently, and what you are pursuing independently constantly changes, and finally, every parent wants their child to be happy. So if you ask me, in fact, I have said quite often in my talks that happiness is a myth. Rather than focusing on happy children, we need to really understand that happy children means children who have a hold on their emotions, children who have strong emotional life, but they have developed the skill set that allows them to shift their mood, attitude, and mindset from negative state into the positive state, and not just once but always. So all these three things that I just described is what the parenting end goal is, and that's why parenting is so tricky. That's what I got out of this, that it's easy to get drawn into fixing the problem of the child or problem raising children that parents encounter as an adult, just do it and take care of it, and it's very tempting to do everything to bolster the child's sense of self-worth, but to do it differently, it really is a hard matter, isn't it?
Producer: Yeah, that's so true. The world's a tricky place, right? We're going to have setbacks, we're going to have failures, and you just have to learn how to emotionally deal with that. I mean, you just can't fix everything. Well, that's such a profound statement about how we are parenting today. Fascinating.
Alright, so do this for us event, so how should parents rework their thinking about raising happy and well-adjusted, independent kids?
Sucheta: Well, thank you for that question. I think that's my second takeaway, that I like to, in my practice, often refer to something called golden standard. So to me, I think there needs to be rework done by parents externalizing their golden standard to their children. Having a golden standard is one thing but explicitly making it available to the children and making it a priority that children understand and have a buy in to that golden standard. So for starters, parents can do a quick self-check and see if they have created a household where the children know that having emotions is okay but not all behaviors that emerge because of those emotions are okay, and this is such a distinct thing that our discussions kind of focused on, that being emotional or being frustrated, angry, upset, peeved, annoyed is fine. That's just what being a human looks like, but just because you're angry, you throw a remote control at your brother, just because you're frustrated, you tear the homework page. Those behaviors are not acceptable, and I think often, parents kind of get carried away in focusing on the behaviors that are not appropriate rather than the emotions that cause these behaviors.
Another way to think about this is to help children respond rather than react, and children do well if they have a role model and if the parents themselves have consistently modeled this way of behaving, and it's one thing that parents say, "Calm down, don't throw a tantrum," but then the child watches the parent in the car honking very impatiently or slamming doors when somebody says, “No, we have run out of something,” or yelling at the waiter when the waiter brings the wrong order. So you really can't demand something from your children or expect that if you yourself haven't regulated your own emotions and your behaviors that emerge because of your emotions yourself, you haven't understood the disconnect there. Also, if a child grows up watching parents slamming doors and having a fight and becoming upset and screaming, and using over-the-top gestures and disagreeing in every possible way, that child picks up on that as if that's the golden standard, and you, as I earlier mentioned, that your verbal guidance, but if it contradicts with your behaviors, then the child is going to follow the behaviors, not the verbal guidance.
So what in fact needs to happen is parents need to focus on raising emotional acumen of their children and this can be done in two distinct ways: one is to help the child identify and label those feelings, and second is to teach the child the difference between reacting versus responding, and then of course, out walking the child through the process of responding appropriately.
Now, as I end with the second takeaway, busy lives and digitally wired modern environment can pose a challenge for all families, parents and children alike, so because of that, it takes time and requires uninterrupted attention. This can be a hard monumental task and monumental goal to achieve, but this is what I feel, like I always give this analogy to parents, that if you have a flat tire, you pull over and you put a replacement tire, and then you take a road trip to Florida, let's say, which takes 800 miles. No, what's the advice? That you do not ride a long distance with a replacement tire. It's a temporary tire. So taking time during this crisis, during crisis, just handle the crisis, but then pull away and set aside certain time to address more underlying behaviors that are consistently appearing in child-parent interactions and that can lead to greater success.
Producer: Thinking about what you just said, I imagine there's a lot of people out there operating with spare tires. That's such a great analogy.
Alright, well, I heard Dr. Carter talked about rethinking one's own approach with your children, right?
Sucheta: Yeah, so that again, so there is a belief about what child does and then theres a belief about what I do as a parent, so I believe that reinventing parenting is reprogramming one's own belief, and what is this belief? What needs great attention is accepting things, so the secret lies in how the parents come to accept that he or she may not be right all the time or right most of the time. That can be very painful to accept that you may not be right, and I've seen that with my own children, even simple things as math. Parents often talk about that you know, "I do it this way," and then your third-grader, he's arguing, "No, no, but Mrs. Smith doesn't want me to carry over. She wants me to use this technique," and so this is easy to deal with because you're saying my approach and teacher's approach, but what if you were wrong in the way you helped your child? There is no book to refer to. It's basically, your child points out that you did this and that was wrong, and a lot of parents have difficulty accepting that.
Secondly is that parents withstand, can you as a parent withstand the pain of witnessing the child going through difficulties? And to bear witness to this discomfort the child feels in fact provokes anxiety, creates stress, and can be a nerve-racking obstacle in thinking clearly about solutions. So watching your own emotions and watching your emotions as the child is having an emotional breakdown can be really hard.
The parenting golden rule is I was talking about then ultimately comes down to the balancing act, guiding appropriately while holding back when it comes to preventing failures is the true success. That's the secret sauce. So you must guide and your children now are going to come to you for guidance. So you need to say, "This is my time to guide you," and there are certain failures that are essential but as you watch them fail, you don't need to make it an epic fail, that's another important thing to think about.
So most important thing here, last component about this third takeaway is that you don't need to give a vibe of complete abandonment as you witness the discomfort of a child having an unbelievable failure, but what you need to say, "I am right here. I'm right here as I watch you." It's like your child is in gymnastics and she's on this bar, and then she's doing the balancing act, and she falls and she hurts her leg. You can't suddenly say, "Now, let me instead of you get on that bar and do it." First of all, you can't do it but secondly, that's not what being in gymnastics means. It actually means you need to learn to patiently watch her fall and that can be a painful process, but when done well, you can always say, "I love the way you got up. I love the way you kind of found out how to take away the pressure on your left leg." You're pointing out the resiliency to the child.
Producer: Well, lots to think about there. Great stuff. Sucheta, any final thoughts before we wrap this conversation?
ucheta: Sure, Todd. So this whole discussion about parenting made me think about this question: can we elevate the lives of our children? Can we be responsible for their greatness? I'll share something Dr. Carter has talked about in her book, Raising Happiness which did not come up in our discussion because of the short time that I had with her, but she talked about people who rise to greatness have five things in common. The first thing, they practice hard. Second thing, they practice consistently. Third is they gain experience over a long haul, that means they put in the time that goes into getting that practice. Fourth is that they have passion, they possess the passion to stick with things and they are quite consistent with that, whether good, bad, or ugly, that their effort leads to results or not, and the last one is they have an experience of epic failure, and exactly what parents try to avoid, right? Parents find it really difficult to allow their children’s habit of doing something again and again, particularly if it's hard, and take example of making bed. When my kids were younger, they may not remember this, but I used to supervise making bed. I mean, I grew up in India, making bed to my family was symbolic of your entire commitment to taking care of self, and so that kind of carried over with me and I would watch them and I would watch them first put the pillow, then pull the sheet and pull the covers, and it doesn't need to be perfect. There are some points you can think about that, edges of the comforter can be hanging equally or whatever. I'd sound ridiculous and most people have said that to me, like, "Why put so much effort in making bed?" But I found that once you kind of make it your business that this is important to us as a family, then the same effort went into packing the bag for school, same effort went into packing the soccer bag for soccer, and then musical instrument, and then eventually, when it came to traveling abroad for – my son went to France and he packed all his bags by himself which was by eighth-grade, end of eighth-grade. So these are the steps that lead to this kind of greatness, but it comes from managing expectations and drawing out a child's potential by a parent exercising leadership and mentorship, and that's what the parenting balancing looks like.
So in closing, I want to say that parents need to steer clear from the pitfalls of high and erroneous expectations or expectations of performance, or lack of support and consistent supervision and guidance. Just because you have great expectations and you tell your child about the expectations, doesn't mean that will translate into a behavior and being. Executive function or self-regulation emerge and these skills kind of lie in between these set of abilities and inabilities, and they don't need to become a diagnosable entity, but all the beginning is rough. It's riddled with inattention, lack of motivation, lack of cooperation with the parents, not wanting to work harder than needed. Those kinds of things are inherent to being a child and parents need to create a culture and instill a value in hard work, and make it a mental habit to always face failure first and give that negative feedback which is an inevitable building block of successful mindset, and so all that when done well ultimately leads to this happy, well-adjusted, and responsible and independent child.
So there is a lot of parents can do and I hope parents take that seriously which I think they do, but just by taking it seriously, doesn't mean they will become the doer of this mentorship, so I hope parents become mentors.
Producer: What a great way to close that. Such important stuff and I will have to be honest, Sucheta. I'm in my upper 40s and I still don't do a very good job making my bed. You would've not liked raising me as a child, I will assure you of that.
Alright, well, what a great conversation. That's all the time we have for today. On behalf of our host, Sucheta Kamath and all of us at Cerebral Matters, thank you for tuning in and listening and we look forward to seeing you again next week for Sucheta's second conversation with Dr. Christine Carter. We’ll see you then.