Dr. Becky Kennedy: Protocols for Excellent Parenting & Improving Relationships of All Kinds

Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Becky Kennedy. Dr. Becky Kennedy is a clinical psychologist specializing in parent-child relationships. She received her degrees and did her training at Duke University and Columbia University in New York. She is the author of the best-selling book Good Inside,

a guide to becoming the parent you want to be. She is also the founder and creator of an online learning platform, also called Good Inside, at which parents and parents to be can learn the best possible parenting skills that are grounded in the fields of clinical psychology that have been proven to work in the real world and that can allow people to navigate common sticking points in parent-child relationships. During today's discussion, you will learn a tremendous amount

of actionable knowledge about what it is to be a good parent. This is a conversation that pertains not just to parents and parents to be, but also uncles, aunts, grandparents, and also, those of you not planning to or who do not want children. I say that because while everything we discussed today is grounded in the discussion around parent-child relationships, it indeed pertains to all of us and relationships of all kinds, including romantic relationships,

friendships, workplace relationships, and a relationship to self. Dr. Kennedy defines for us and makes clear and actionable what the exact job of good parenting is and how that relates to other relationships that we might have. She explains how to set healthy boundaries and in fact, defines exactly what healthy boundaries are. There's a lot of misconception about that. We also talk a lot about empathy and the need to make children and ourselves feel safe in all kinds of

relating. We discuss how to navigate disagreements and arguments, apologies and punishments, reward, and on and on all framed within a real world real-time context. What I mean by that and what I think really sets apart Dr. Becky Kennedy's work from so much else that you'll see out there on parent-child and other types of relationships is that she makes what to do and say and what not to do and say in a variety of real-world contexts very clear such that you can access that knowledge

and do those specific things and avoid those specific things even when things get tense. In fact, especially when things get difficult or tense. By the end of today's episode, you will have learned a dozen or more very potent clinically-backed tools to navigate parent-child relating, including your relationship to your own parents, alive or dead, and your relationship to self. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Matina. Matina makes loose leaf and ready to drink yerbamate. I often discuss yerbamate's benefits, such as regulating blood sugar, its high antioxidant content, the ways that it can improve digestion,

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yerbamate. Again, that's drinkmatina.com slash huberman to get the free bag of yerbamate, loose leaf tea, and free shipping. Today's episode is also brought to us by Juve. Juve makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing I've consistently emphasized on this

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ago, and I've been using one ever since. Aeropress was developed by Alan Adler, who was an engineer at Stanford, and I knew of Alan because he had also built the so-called aerobie frisbee. So he was sort of famous in our community for developing these different feats of engineering that turned into commercial products. Now, I love coffee. I'm somebody that drinks coffee nearly every day,

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of brewing that coffee, even the traditional French press. The Aeropress is extremely easy to use, and it's extremely compact. In fact, I take it with me whenever I travel, and I use it on the road in hotels, even on planes. I'll just ask for some hot water and I'll brew my coffee or tea right there on the plane. With over 55,000 five-star reviews, Aeropress is the best-reviewed coffee press in the world. If you would like to try Aeropress, you can go to Aeropress.com slash huberman. That's

A-E-R-O-P-R-E-S-S dot com slash huberman to get 20% off any Aeropress coffee maker. Aeropress ships in the USA, Canada, and over 60 other countries in the world. Again, that's Aeropress dot com slash huberman to get 20% off. And now for my discussion with Dr. Becky Kennedy. Dr. Becky Kennedy, welcome. Thank you. So excited to be here. I have a lot of questions for you. And as I mentioned in my introduction, much of what we are going to discuss today relates to parent-child relating,

but pertains to relationships generally. So people with children, without children who don't want children, hopefully there aren't people that hate children. But for all people out there, with children or not, planning them or not, relationships are really just fundamental to who we are. And I actually place relationships, including relationship to self, in what we now think of as the six pillars of mental health, physical health, and performance. Sleep nutrition, exercise,

relationships clearly vital to all aspects of life. So I'd like to start off by just asking for all of us, are there some simple or perhaps not so simple questions that we can reflect on? They give us a sense of how good a parent we are or would be based on our previous parent-child relationships, our relationship to self. What kind of things come to bear when we think about really healthy relationships? I can start rattling off a list of what I imagine they could be,

but what are your thoughts? What's the parameter space, as we say? How should we think about relationships besides just, oh, you know, I either like this person or don't or I feel good around them or I don't or separating how I feel about them versus how they make me feel? We can drill a little deeper below the kind of more superficial stuff that we often see out there. The first thing that comes to mind when you say that is this word sturdiness. And to me, when someone

says, what is good inside as an approach? That's always the first word that comes to mind. And I know that's like an odd word. It's not a word we use a lot. Although I do think most people, when you say that person's like a really sturdy person, I think we all have some connotation or feeling at least of what that means. And I use it a lot being a sturdy parent, being a sturdy leader. I talk a lot about the similarities to parenting and kind of being a pilot of a plane.

And that word sturdiness comes up. And so I remember a little while ago, someone pushed me though, like, what's your definition of what that means? And at that point, I thought, wow, I should probably have a definition given I use it a lot. But what I think it really means is inability to be connected to yourself and to someone else at the same time. And I think that is really the definition of sturdy leadership. And that is the key thing that's present in a healthy

relationship that at once, I kind of know my values, what I want, what I need. I feel like I can be true to that. And at the same time, I can kind of connect to someone else who probably has different wants and needs and maybe even slightly different values at the same time. And the thing

that leads me to next is what I think about is like family jobs and a parent job. So in almost any other place, you could assume if I'm getting a new job at this company, like there's just no way I could do my job well if I don't know what my job is. If you go to your desk and your boss like, have a good day, do a good job. And there's no job description. You'd be like, I think that's impossible. But over and over with parents, if I say

to them, well, what is your job with your kid? Or when your kid is having a tantrum or they hear their root or they lie to your face or anything like, what is your job in that moment? Most people, very well intentioned educated people who would never, ever take a job if they didn't have a job description. They look at me like, I have no idea. So how can we do it well? How can we then perform it to a place to get to the outcomes we want if you don't have the foundation of what your

job is? And to me, I thought a lot about it. I think parents actually have two jobs and it relates to sturdiness. So you'll connect it where one of our jobs is boundaries. And to me, boundaries are things we tell people we will do. And they require the other person to do nothing. And that's like really important. Because a lot of times we think we're setting a boundary when actually we're making a request. And boundaries keep us connected to ourselves. They represent our values and our

wants and our needs. And in a parent-child relationship, they also keep our kids safe. If I just know in a simple way, like, my kids watch enough TV today and they really have to get to bed. And I know that. Like, I don't want them to stay up late. I kind of know what my family needs. I have to set a boundary. But the other part of my job is empathy and validation, which is a way of connecting to someone else, where you see someone else's feelings and experience as real.

You don't agree with it, probably. You don't necessarily condone the behavior. That's the representation of the feelings. But the feelings themselves, you need to connect to. And I feel like those are our two jobs as parents. And that's really the way to be a sturdy leader and to be in a sturdy, healthy relationship with your kids. Wow. So much there. And I love it. And here's one of the reasons I love it. This notion of sturdiness, something that I don't think we hear enough about.

We hear about resilience grit, also important terms. But sturdiness, as you've described it, and the job of parenting really seems to include a lot of verbs, not just nouns and adjectives. And I'm a huge fan of verbs because biology, and to some extent psychology, yes, also psychology, is all about verbs. And so the labels often are mysterious. But sturdiness, it, you know,

just sends a clear message of something that doesn't budge easily. But then as you describe the job of being a parent, having boundaries, and I'd like to drill into that a little bit more what how you view boundaries. But also empathy, it's not a walled off picture. It's one that that is semi-permeable. Also, and I confess I'm a bit obsessed with old school psychoanalytic theory, not as the the the B all-end all of psychology, but but it also suggests like this other other

relationship. Like I'm a person, I have a self-euro person, you have a self. This is the opposite of codependency where obviously dependency and two people being quote unquote codependent can be healthy in the context of relying on one another. But as I understand it, when one person has a self and another person doesn't have a self or this notion of merging, not just in romantic relationships, but child parent relationships, you know, I'm best friends with my mom or dad.

Is that a good thing? I don't know. But this notion of other other relationships is like I'm a self, you're a self, and we each see each other as another. Anyway, I think there's so much to explore here, so valuable. You mentioned that boundaries are something that we do and that the requires that the other do nothing. Could we go a little bit further into that because it's a beautiful concept and this notion of boundaries, but like gaslighting narcissism and all the other

things that we hear about nowadays, I think is often badly misunderstood. So tell us more about boundaries and how that looks in the action sense of it. And this is also connected to what you're saying, that other other relationship, I'm a person, you're a person, and so many times that's actually is what gets merged. And so my kid gets upset that I say they can't watch another show.

And a parent really in that moment, it's like, who's feelings are who's like, they were upset, was I was upset a second ago, I thought I should set the boundary and now all of a sudden I'm changing my mind, there is this complete role kind of confusion and merger, which is one of the main reasons that kids get actually really scared and escalate their behavior because they don't have a sturdy leader when they really need one, right? So boundaries are what we tell someone we will do

and they require the other person to do nothing. I like this definition for a lot of reasons, I'm just very practical. So it allows me after I set a boundary to like assess, was that a boundary or not, right? Because let's take the TV example. It's whatever time at night my kid has just watched a show and they know they're supposed to watch one show and then you know turn off the TV. I hear from parents a lot, my kid doesn't listen or my kid doesn't respect my boundaries. And I'll say

okay, that sounds hard, let's get into that. So then I'll say so I told my kid to shut off the TV. They just kept watching, they just kept on, I told my kid to stop jumping on the couch and they kept jumping, they don't respect my boundaries, they don't listen. I mean this is like a beautiful example of like this is a problem, I agree, but this is not a boundary problem. You made a request of your child. And frankly, if you have here, I'm making this up seven year old watching TV,

I'm not so good at putting away TV and a phone at night, like it's just hard for me to do. So your seven year old probably is just addicted to what's ever happening. And we're kind of asking our kid to do our job for us because we don't want our kid to be mad at us or whatever it is. A boundary in that situation would be saying, oh, you didn't put off the TV. Look, by the time I get over there, if you haven't turned off the TV, I don't want to do this, but I will, I will take the remote

out of your hand and shut it off. A boundary is saying, oh, after my request doesn't work, can you get off the couch? You can jump on the floor. Look, if by the time I get over there, you haven't gotten off the couch, I will pick you up. That is, I was, I'm not going to put the success of my intervention in my like seven year old's hand. I care too much about my own needs and my own role as a leader

in my home to do that, right? Same thing with, let's say in laws, my mother-in-law doesn't respect my boundary show. She shows up without calling. Now, I don't want to get to this point. There's a lot of things in a relationship we can do before we get to this point, but that's really a boundary.

And I have a very kind of intrusive mother-in-law. A boundary would be saying, look, this is going to be awkward, and I know you mean well, but the next time you come unannounced, I will come to your car and say, oh, this time doesn't work for us. You cannot come in, and I will go back into my house and close the door. Like, now, there's going to be lots of feelings around that, but you are now

setting a true boundary. And when we say our kids don't listen, those are often situations, not all of them, but there's a big percentage where I'm actually not setting a boundary early enough and in a sturdy enough way, which is what my kid needs because at that point, they simply don't have the skills to inhibit and urge, and they need me to be the boundary for them. We hear sometimes that kids are craving rules. They're craving boundaries. I don't know, I was kind

of a wild adolescent in teenager, maybe a little more than wild. I don't recall ever craving rules, but I do recall paying attention to their lack of presence. So what of that? Is this notion that kids really want and crave rules and boundaries? Is that sort of a projection

that we put on to them? And I'm not exploring this just for fun. I'm exploring it because I think that one thing that's very helpful in setting boundaries, especially with kids, is the idea that gosh, even if it's a bit painful to see them in discomfort, there's that empathy piece that you talk about before that empathic attunement can get in the way of boundaries. They're not mutually

exclusive, but these are somewhat competing forces set at times. So if we know or if we can acknowledge or at least explore this idea that rules are deep down what they really want, not just what they need, maybe it would help. Yes. And I think by the way, in my taking the remote away or taking my kid off the couch is to be clear. If I do that to my kid, like they are not going to say, oh, mom, you are the best mom in the world. Thank you. They are going to cry and scream. And that's where

boundaries and empathy, those two parts of our job actually do always go together. I think they're actually partners. They're not actually at odds because as soon as my kid is upset, what I would say to them is, oh, you wanted to jump on the couch. It's not as much fun on the floor. Oh, you really wanted to watch another show. You didn't even want it this big. You wanted to watch it this big. It sounds crazy because you're like, wait, why am I empathizing with that feeling? They just kind

of disobeyed. No, they're two different things. I'm doing my job in setting a boundary. They're actually doing their job in feeling their feelings. That's actually their job. The only way you can ever learn to regulate a feeling is through feeling the feeling. So they're doing their job. Now I'm going to validate. And this is how kids learn emotion regulation boundaries. They feel I validate I hold the boundary over and over and over. So do kids crave rules? And I think one of the issues is that

most parenting approaches have one or the other. And I think they're both very incomplete strategies. If you just lead with rules, right? I don't know who said it. Definitely wasn't me. Like, what is it? Rules without relationship lead to rebellion. Yeah, that's what happens. Right? So that's not good. But I see the stage we've swung the other direction. It is also not a complete parenting strategy when you're kids jumping on the couch to do nothing. If you think that's dangerous and to say,

oh, you really want to jump, jump, jump, and such big feelings. Like that's not what kids need. I think kids crave boundaries and they crave feeling seen and understood. Because as kids are growing up, like I think the questions they're always asking parents, even though of course they never say this is just, am I real and am I safe? Every interaction. That's what they're asking us.

The reason we've devaluedate their feelings when they're upset, even though they're so upset, just that they're string cheese, bro, whatever it is, is feelings don't have markers like blood or like they don't know. And so when we say, oh, you wanted your string cheese to be together, what we're really saying is the things you experience inside of you are real. But kids are also desperate to know like how far do things go? No one likes to feel boundary

less as a kid. That's terrifying, right? And so when we set a boundary, we actually say to a kid, like I will always protect you. Like I won't let things get so far out of control. So I do think, I don't know if it's rules, but kids crave connection. And I think boundaries and kind of validation and empathy, they are the two forms of connection that kids, yeah, are really desperate for. What about rewarding kids? And here rather than start off by asking, you know, what are the best

ways to reward kids and healthy ways? I will ask that in a moment, how can we evaluate the notion of rewards or incentives through this lens of sturdiness, boundaries and empathy? Yeah. Because I could imagine a reward that's outsized in comparison to what a kid did. Okay, great. You took your plate to the kitchen sink after dinner. You get $10,000, obviously, out of scale, extreme example, but just by way of example, you can scrub their reward mechanisms

for life. If you ask me, everything I know about reward in Neuroplasticy says, that would occur. But this idea that you can incentivize kids, if you turn off the TV now, then you definitely can watch tomorrow night. Whereas if you don't, you can't. So you're sort of merging reward and potential punishment. How do we bound rewards and how do we take into account that when we start adding rewards to scenarios that were mixing and matching life experience for them? Okay, so now doing what

I'm told, do I always expect a reward? If the reward doesn't come next time, we know based on reward prediction error, we tend to be worse off emotionally than had we never received a reward on the first place. Again, pretty vast parameter space, but what are your thoughts on best ways to reward kids for standard good behavior versus achievement versus elimination of bad behavior? Yeah. So I think you're asking a much bigger question, or I'm going to, I think you are,

which is like, why do parents think we need to reward kids? I think that's, why do we think we

need to punish kids? And this is actually where everything I work on started from, because the way I was trained to work with parents, I went to the best gold standard evidence based program, and it was all about timeouts and punishments and rewards and stickers and ignoring and praise, and honestly, during the training for the years after I kind of practiced this way, I feel like that, you know, this better than I am, so I shouldn't even say this, but like that

left part of my brain like logic and linearity. I was just like, this is amazing. Oh my goodness, we're going to get more of the good behavior and we're going to not get the bad behavior, and I'd start teaching this to parents my private practice. And there was this little thing, I don't even know, I was like, I don't know about this.

I don't know, and it get louder and louder. To the point that in a session, I literally said to parent in front of me, I was just like telling them how to do a timeout and I said, I'm sorry, I don't believe anything I've been telling you, that's literally what I said, because it was so loud and it was obviously super awkward, but it led me to, I feel like from this first principles way, be like, there are a million assumptions that we have about raising kids and I think about

relationships. And if I just stripped them back, what do I be left with and what would be a new building from there? And rewards and like punishments to me are these assumptions that we have somehow converted from like the fiction shelf of the library and my mind to like the nonfiction shelf as like truths and I kind of rail against all of them. So I think, I think the question, if that's okay to go in that direction to me is like, why do we think we need to reward kids? And is there

actually a better system? Both short term and long term. I'm incredibly long term greedy in my parenting approach because at the end of the day, 18 and up is where things really matter, not really matter. I mean, they all matter, but I'd rather, you know, I want to help my kids become a sturdy, resilient adults. But I'm short term greedy too, because I'm a realist, like I just can't deal with like all these difficult moments. You get both for sure without rewards and punishments. So

I don't know what might someone tell me they give a reward for? Do you want to use the like clearing the table or example? Let's start that there. It kind of goes back to like believing kids are inherently good inside. I really think it goes back to that. If you really believe kids are inherently good inside, which by the way when I strip back every assumption,

the only thing I was left was that literally the only thing. And then I started to think, okay, so if they're good inside, why do they do so many annoying things like all the time? But that gave me a gap. And I feel like that is very exciting to have a gap. Like, why do people who are good inside do such bad things, right? Adults or kids? And to me, right, kids are born with all the feelings and none of the skills to manage those feelings, like period. And we've often

thought, therefore, when feelings, feelings without skills come out in behaviors. I think that's what bad behaviors are. Feelings or urges or something without a skill to manage them, or without access to the skill, maybe in that moment, either way. And then we end up punishing behavior, but the behavior was just a sign of the lack of skill. So I can't imagine anyone thinking I could teach my kid to swim by punishing them for not swimming. Like, I think someone would say that was

crazy. And but that's kind of how we raise kids. And then we think rewarding them is going to be effective, but it actually leads over and over to what you said. I've seen these parents over and over my private practice. My 14 year old literally won't pick up their clothes from the floor unless I give them $5. Like, how did I get here? And I'm like, yeah, that's that's a problem. But I

saw how they got there. So let's take clearing, you know, their plate. I know this is going to sound cheesy, but kids do have something in them where they want to feel like a purposeful, meaningful part of society. They do impact drives adults and it drives kids. It's not the same type of rewarding as playing Fortnite. It's a totally different system. But I think the question is like, why do we think we have to bribe kids or, you know, kind of trick them into doing things that are kind of like

basic parts of human life? And so if we take that and my kid chronically isn't clearing their plate, I could say them, look, every time you clear a plate, I'm going to give you a sticker. After five stickers, you're going to get, I don't know, whatever it is. To me, like, a much more just effective way is I'd say to my kid, hey, I know you know, like clearing a plate is just one way of being part of this family and taking care of stuff. I know you know that we're on the same team. I say

that phrase, we're on the same team, right? We are. Something's getting in your way of remembering. I'm going to assume I like the like the most generous interpretation that to me allows you to separate someone's bad behavior from their good identity. Then I say, what would help you remember? We literally did this with my son who always had his towel on the floor. And I was just like, I bet he just doesn't remember. He literally doesn't see it. We talked about it and he's like,

we talked about him putting a post it literally. Something simple, like a post it on my door that just says, pick up my towel. He wrote it in his own handwriting, right? Trying to facilitate him, like, solving his own problems. And now he has a much higher rate of picking up his towel. Like, I guess I could have said every time you pick up your towel, you'll, I don't know, get a dollar whatever it is. But again, it makes me think, I'm not building the generalizable skill that way.

I'm just kind of offering something at the end, which sets me on this kind of awful cycle that I think kind of misses the point. I'd like to take a brief moment and thank one of our sponsors. And that's AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains adaptogens. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012. The reason I started taking it and the reason I still take it every day is that it ensures that I meet all of my quotas for vitamins and minerals. And it

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involved in mental health, physical health, and performance. To try AG1, go to drinkag1.com-huberman. And you'll get a year supply of vitamin D3K2 and five free travel packs of AG1. Again, that's drinkag1.com-huberman. I love the idea that kids want purpose. And am I correct in wondering if that goes back to this am I real component of the am I real am I safe? Yes. Like one way that we know we are real is our

ability to impart change on the world around us. I don't want to get too abstract here, but you know, as a neuroscientist, I've often sat back and reflected like all the emotions we feel, like no one sees that or knows that. Unless we say something, we write something, we sing something, we shout something, you know, all the forms of expression. Just like none of our dreams are creative insights or wishes exist except inside us unless we transmute them into something in the real world. So there

does seem to be something about having this nervous system from a time we're really on. Like it's seeing our effect on the world that that really makes us real and on others. And I love the idea that well, and I must say I absolutely believe in my heart and I just feel it as a feeling that kids are inherently good inside. Like I just I can't imagine any other version of that, but does that mean that there are people out there who believe that kids are inherently bad or at least not good?

I mean, I mean, like how could that be? But then again, maybe I'm just naive. I don't know if anyone consciously believes that, but when I go back to that system, I was first trained in rewards and punishments. Like it feels like a system of behavioral control. And to me, like I've always thought about control and trust as opposites. So I only control what I don't trust. So nobody said to me in that program, by the way, back you, everything you're learning

here, we believe kids are bad inside. And so we do this thing. But well, if I don't trust my kid, and if I don't trust they inherently have the things in them to do good, by the way, that's not going to happen naturally. That's why we have a big job as a parent to coach our kids, to bring that out, to set boundaries when they can't do it and so many other things. But I don't believe anyone would say, yeah, it's because they're bad inside. But there is a nature where you're constantly interacting

with your kid from that other system looking at them. Like I don't trust you. I don't trust you. And when you do bad things, I cannot hold on to the fact that you have a good identity. That's why I'm giving you a punishment. That's why I'm sending you away to your room. And so if I'm reflecting back to you constantly, that you are just your latest behavior, that I don't trust you, that I kind of have to bribe you to do very basic human things. Well, our kids form their identity

from our reflection of them. And so then this is what really compelled all of this. I'm like, we're raising generation after generation of kid, kind of saying to them, like you're kind of a bad untrustworthy kid. And then we wonder why we have such high rates of like massive mental health problems. Well, like I, I, there's some linearity there. I'm curious about this notion of impingement.

I've heard about this, you know, this idea that, you know, when we're young, we're forging life, deciding, you know, do I like the way this tastes or not taste, you know, by the way, I still hate anchovies. I don't need to be asked again to know the answer. But when you're young, you know, we're encouraged to do things like eat your broccoli, taste the anchovies. And some parents, it seems, are very comfortable with the idea of allowing their children to have their feelings and

their wishes. They're, they're, as I always say, the nervous system seems to be divided into yum yucks and meth. Mez, I guess the plural will be mezz. Yum yucks and mezz. I mean, it's more complicated than that. But like with people where you're like, yeah, I really like them or now, something's off there. Like, you know, so it's not that much more nuanced than that. And the brain's got to make decisions after work, after all, excuse me. So, you know, kids have their

young yucks and mezz. And then we've got our, our ideas about what they need to do in order to progress through life, often inherited from our parents and hopefully modified by the wonderful work that you're doing and writing about and in your, your program. Um, then we're talking about here. But, you know, how much space should we allow for kids to be unimp hinged? Like, like, you don't want to eat, you don't want to eat what we're eating for dinner? Like, okay, I'm not going to

cook you an entire new dinner. But then I guess like, you might go to bed hungry. Sounds harsh, right? Um, but the other version is, okay, what would you like for dinner? Well, I prefer, let's say they pick a healthy option. They prefer pasta, not chicken. Okay, we won't do the ice cream chicken, you know, uh, thing. Um, do we do it? Right? Like, how much impingement? I don't want to watch my movie with the family. I want to play in my room. You know, at some level, you know,

I've heard it both ways that impingement is needed for safety and life progression. But there's times when it's, uh, it's more subtle than that. It's not about safety and life progress. It's not about going to school or not going to school homework or no homework. It's about like, do you want to come with us to the park? You want to play at home in your room? How often should we impinge? How do we know? Um, this is kind of the tricky, the tricky areas of parenting that I think, um,

um, because it doesn't fall into the extremes. Yeah. I love this question. That's a word I don't often hear actually what impingement, like, can you act like what? Like impinging on, like, impinging on the child's, um, inherent natural desires or aversion to things. Got it. Right? Okay. Like, like, like, you say, hey, we're going over so and so's house and they say, you know, I don't like their kids. You go, listen, you got to learn to play with other kids and go, no,

I don't like their kids. You say something happened. And so we're not talking about a dangerous situation. Yeah. No, I don't like that. I just really want to just stay home. Yeah. This is a great thing. Yeah. So are we going to impinge on there? I mean, because we're teaching them either way, we're teaching them something. Yeah. You got to do stuff you don't want to do, even if you don't like it. Yeah. And we're here again. We're ruling out the possibility that there's something

unsafe about the environment. Yeah. Psychologically or physically unsafe. Or, but at the same time, we're teaching them, um, hey, you're, I see you, I hear you, but you know, your desires might not be right. There, there's actually a kind of, like a tacit message of the way you feel might not be the best gauge of what's best for you, which sends a complicated message to a kid.

Totally. So this is again, where I think I could inside like family jobs are so useful. Family jobs to me, when I used to meet with parents and like they describe a situation, I feel like 90% of the time. That's where I'd start because then that flows from there. It's like a framework. So, Ray, what is my job? I'm the one who sets boundaries. Like I am the one who makes key family decisions. Obviously, as our kids get older, they should be making some decisions too. No

one likes to feel controlled, but key decisions. And my job is to validate my kids experience. This is actually complicated because again, over and over, we think that validating my kids' experience means they're going to dictate a decision. My boundaries don't dictate my kids' feelings. And my kids' feelings should not dictate my boundaries. They're just two equal things. So this is a great example. My kids are like, you know, I don't like playing with those kids. And

I can I just stay home with, let's just say grandma was home. Can I just stay home? And I'm like, I just think it's important to go as a family, but my kid doesn't want to go. There's nothing dangerous. Okay. To me, this is that exact way of putting family jobs into action. Sweetie, like, and to me, this phrase, I wish every parent could say this to their kid. I believe you. Do you want to make a kid feel real and confident for life? Confidence comes from the experience

of being believed because that's how you, I, for me, confidence is self trust. It's not feeling good about yourself. It's self trust. I really do know the way I feel. So let's say I say to my son in that situation, it's, I believe you, I'd start to believe you. Look, I, I know you want to play football all day. And the kid around your age hates football like that would probably lowest on your list of types of kids you'd want to hang out with for the afternoon. I totally believe

you. And in this family, we know that sometimes we have to do things we don't love to do. We do that for a family experience. I say this to my kid all the time. You know, also just to end up being a good adult, you just have to end up practicing as a kid doing things you don't want to do. Things that are boring, things that aren't your preference. So, you know, you notch in your belt for that. So you don't have to thank me. And also, I know you have it in you to do your best to be polite and

engage. Like I just, I know you're a good kid. And this isn't what you want. And I know we're going to get through it. Now, if it's really hard, maybe young, hey, let's create a sign. Like, can you look at me and go make a, when you feel like you're kind of at this and then me and you, we're going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to give you a hug and, right, I'm going to say, I know this isn't what you want. And when we get home, we can watch that football game, whatever it was,

right? Because what we often do is we leave ourselves with two choices with kids. We either say find stay home. Their feelings actually just dictated the decision. That's not helpful for them. I don't want my kid to learn in life. When I don't want to do something, people twist and turn to make that thing not happen. Like that's disturbing for adult expectations. But then we do the other thing, which is like, you are so selfish. Just because you're a friend, your age doesn't mean that

you can't come with us. So we either let their feelings dictate or we think our boundaries kind of give us the right to be mad at our kid, right? Like to do both is so important. And so that's what I think to me when I hear impingement, like I actually think that's that is the exact space where you have the most bang for your book as a parent. Like it's not enjoyable. And again, if I have my beautiful intervention with my son, do not think my kid will look at me and say, I love how you

explain that. That was so beautiful. No, he's going to roll his eyes. My job is not to take the bait because I'm an adult. And to also hold hope, I think that's really important. This concept of I'm validating my kid's feelings where they are today. But I need to be the one to hold hope that they can cope with it. If I can't name to my kid, I know you're going to get through it. They're not going to be able to see that kind of next more mature version of themselves.

And I actually think it's the same as your best boss. You know, it's like, I know you don't want to go on this trip. I don't know whatever it is. I know this presentation topic isn't the one you would have chosen. And there were 10 things. And this was literally number 10. I totally get that. And it stinks. And I'm not taking anything away from that. And this is the thing I need to do. And I know something about you. Like when you put your mind to something, you always do a great job.

And like it's probably not going to be enjoyable. But I do know you're going to do a great job in this. Like that's like the boss you want. Amazing. Are you adopting children, by the way? Because I'm I actually finished college. Actually, I actually, I can sit or Andrew. Okay. Adult children. What I'm hearing is don't dictate their behavior. And I'm going to underline and bold dictate. Don't dictate their behavior. You're going to do this

because I said so. That's dictatorship. But at the same time, don't quash the emotion behind the resistance. Can acknowledge it? Make them feel real. I believe you. I love this phrase. Amazing. And I love your definition of confidence. If people didn't hear that, we're definitely going to repeat it again. And we're going to we're going to etch it into your neural circuitry. Because I love that. It's it's it's a self trust. Yes. And this notion of giving hope.

You're giving them an incentive that's based on a reward that's actually good for them. That they can translate to other situations as well. Wow. Can I double check on reward? Please. You know what it made me think? I didn't think until you said that. Like I think in a situation where you'd be tempted to say like, and if you go in your polite,

I'll give you 20 extra minutes of row blocks, right? That's like. And like, first of all, let me just say something like whatever I say to you like for listeners, like it's not like I do this stuff all the time with my actual kids. I'm the first one sometimes to be like, here's your thing. I have to dangle. I had a little section in the comment section on YouTube or your kids can. No, I'm just kidding. Exactly. Your kids are forbidden. No,

oh, wait, that's wait. That's dictating. Understand why I believe that you would want to comment. But we're going to trust. We're going to let you know why it's it's good for you if you don't. Exactly. I'll practice this on someone else's kids. But the reward like the rule, when your kid ends up seeing themself capable of doing something they didn't previously think they

could do. You know better than me. Like I feel like that is like one of the best rewards. Even if it's getting through a social situation or I think about this a lot with, you know, my little kid is I don't know, like struggling with a puzzle or something. And I could just do it for them. Or if I help them kind of regulate, oh, this is a hard puzzle. And you can take a break. I just know you're going to figure it out today. I just know it. And then because of that, they get there,

that feels in your body. Like that is the best kind of reward. And it's the type of reward that works for kids in a doughnut. When they're in a job, we want them to be motivated by the feeling they're going to have a ride. Not be saying, hey, I finished my thing early. Do I get a bonus to their boss? Like that's not going to play out as well. I love it. I, um, I'm just pausing and shaking my head only because I love it so much. Um, and I just want to make sure that I don't quickly move to

the next question without drilling down even deeper into some of these concepts. Um, I believe you as the feedback, uh, or response that can instill real confidence over time. Um, not to get too nuanced here, but how is it different? Because I, I sense it is different than I hear you. I hear you, but you're going to do this anyway. Yes. Or I hear you, but listen in this family,

uh, I believe you that there were believe is powerful. And I believe there's real power in specific words, as is, you know, like, for instance, sturdiness, again, such a such a powerful and underused word. I believe you. Um, what do you, your psychologist? What, what do you think we're hearing when somebody says, I believe you, that's different than I hear you. I haven't listed these out, but I think we

all have these like core needs as humans. And I think being believed is one of them because it's, it's someone else kind of saying, you're real. That's what I might not feel what you're feeling, but that thing that feels strong to you that nobody can see or measure is real. And when I think about the most confident people, like I think about this girl who I went to Duke with and she was just brilliant, like so smart. We were in the seminar. It was one of these small classes with this

professor was like talking about stuff. And like I for ones, I was like, I have no idea what this person is talking about. But like I was like, no one else was stopping. And this girl raised her hand. And she said, I'm sorry if everyone else is annoying. Like I have no idea what you're talking about. Like, is there any, cause I usually do and like, is there any way you could say that in a different way?

That is like to me the utmost version of confidence that she believed her own experience of confusion was real confusion. She didn't think it was a sign. She was stupid. She, she believed it. She believed herself. That is so confident. And I think when someone says, I hear you, they're, they, it's like a version of listening. There's many worse phrases. No damage is done. When we follow anything but we tend to invalidate. So that's not good anyway. I believe you but is also not going to, but

there's a million examples of this to me that build confidence. And I actually think there's so many situations with kids where they say situations and we were, they have low confidence. And then we intervene to quote make them feel better, which actually is the thing that lowers their confidence. Cause it's like we say to them, I don't believe you. You're not really feeling the way you feel where I believe you is the exact opposite. So like, I like to give examples just because

it makes it concrete. Like my kid will come home and say, um, I don't know. Um, I was picked last for, you know, for dodgeball today. I was picked last and something and, and they're, they're clearly very, very sad, right? And we want to say to them, like, it's no big deal or everyone's picked last sometimes or, remember yesterday you told me you were picked first for basketball and we think like I need to build up my kids confidence. Those are confidence. I won't say

destroying us to reducing interventions. Cause a kid is kind of coming to a parent basically saying, I'm up very, very upset that I was picked last and we're saying to a kid, no, you weren't. And they're like, but I am and what they learn is, and this is really terrifying to me, is other people are better feelers of my feelings than I am. And that's like a million really scary interpersonal, I think, relationship, you know, kind of consequences later down, later down in

life. But when a kid says, you know, I was picked last and nobody even wants me and they all think I'm the worst athlete, whatever it could say to sit and say some version of like, I'm so God, we're talking about this and I tell that was a really hard gym class and sweetie. Like, I, I believe you. You will watch your kid. It is crazy to me what parents tell me happen when they say those words to their kids. They're like, it also just like literally defused everything and they

were like ready to move on. Like they are just trying to tell you probably like, I was feeling something. It was a lot. It was confusing. Right. Our feelings were always hardest when we're alone in them. So I was alone in it and I bring it to you and someone says, I believe you. Not only are they giving you that core need, they're also just like, they're like sitting down

with you in it. And that's that makes everything better. And then meanwhile, what a kid feels like when we say, I believe you to a hard experience or hard feelings, they're like the feelings that overwhelm me don't overwhelm my parents. They can tolerate it. They're not scared of me kind of being a loser in gym class one day. And if my parent likes me when I have that feeling, oh my god, I can start to like myself when I have that feeling. It's so great because it sounds like

it accomplishes both things. It makes kids feel real and safe. Yes. Real and safe. And you know, I can't help but ask, say, because you know, how we started off today was that this isn't just about parent-child relationships. But in friendships, in romantic relationships, in coworker relationships, that the words I believe you, I have to presume based on everything I'm hearing now and feeling inside about it, that it's equally effective.

Huge. You know, years ago I was on like a podcast early on and to me there's these three lines, I kind of all go together. When kids are anyone's upset and it's kind of like you start and to me, it's like a beautiful invitation to have that conversation just to say to someone, I'm so glad you're talking to me about this. Right? And then kind of I believe you tell me more. My husband, I think when you heard it was like, you could like say those words to me sometimes. I was like,

I would like that because and I think about the workplace too. Like you have someone come in there upset about, I don't know, I got staffed on this or I'm not getting a promotion and I thought I was like just to fuse it with just I'm so glad you're talking to me about this. Yeah, I've been working nonstop for and just if you say to them like, I believe you because we usually don't say to someone I don't believe you, but what we'll say is we defend ourselves in that moment

and the way the other person receives it is as if we're saying I don't believe the intensity of the experience you're having and when you do lead with I believe you say I'm thinking in a partnership, you know, like every time I ask you to do something you get really hot and bothered.

Like it doesn't even mean you agree or kind of just believing I like I believe you like tell me more or I believe you that that really upset you and like I'm obviously I have a whole other story in my head but like I hear what you're saying and and I know there's something there and I believe it enough to like be open to hearing more about it. I don't know. That's like what's best, that's what

that's what we all want in our in our partnerships. I mean I'm wide eyed. I mean what a beautiful acknowledgement that as you pointed out is not agreeing to accept someone else's reality to the extent that you're going to dismantle the you know the order of the world is whatever it is but it's such an opening as opposed to a closing and as you said it's non-defended but it's also boundaries. I mean there's just so many things about it that feel good, seem good and clearly are good.

You know I don't want to go down the the tragic rabbit hole of trauma but previous guest on this podcast you know it's defined we should probably define trauma just because it gets thrown around a lot. Trauma an event or set of circumstances that fundamentally change the way that the brain and the system work so that

there's a maladaptive response going forward. It's not every bad thing that happens but there are micro traumas sometimes called small T's more macro traumas big T again could be multi-event or single-event but years ago a different psychologist psychiatrist is an adolescent psychiatrist at Stanford said something in a seminar that just really struck me which was that at at its core

trauma is really about confusion over whose responsible. And here we're not just talking about the more salient examples of sexual assault those two of course but you know like if we get screamed at or we observe something like third person trauma like the logical stance is

well okay that was them not me but when this happens especially when we're young the nervous system the brain somehow interprets this as like I was there I had a role in it just by being there so like what was my role and somehow the emotional response becomes one of responsibility even if we

know like they're clearly the one that initiated this and so the reason I'm bringing this up in this context is that it's almost like that lack of belief in self somehow gets rooted in and then that it all feels confusing and then we don't feel safe because it's a confusion about responsibility

again going back to this we go down that rabbit hole for a second please please that's why I raised it I think that I want your thoughts I always think trauma is actually not events it's the way an event gets processed and I love good born mte is definition of trauma it's not what happens

to you it's what happens inside of you right so to me there's an inherent relationality there where events that get process not any event events with high emotionality let's say that get processed in a loneliness become traumatic and I think that's where it gets linked to responsibility so this

is actually what my Ted talk was about and why repair is so important who said this Ronald Fairburn years ago that for kids it is better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the devil I think it explains almost everything about child development right there

going back to goodness also your parent just screamed at you and by the way your parent I scream my kids everyone's gonna scream with their kids it's gonna happen okay that's just the event the events not gonna have the impact what is happening for a kid well we know kids are oriented by attachment

they literally need us to survive like they could not survive on their own and so what do you do when the person you're dependent on for safety becomes the source of danger and threat that's very confusing for a child in that moment so they're super hyper aroused they're in the state of you know

terror and then usually after in my house to I just yell at my kid they're kind of alone in their room I'm alone in the kitchen or wherever meanwhile spinning because my come such a bad parent like I'm probably you know but meanwhile because I'm so lost in my own guilt I might not be going to my

kid and so what happens for my kid if I don't repair after I scream at them or one of these events right well a kid cannot say to themselves my parent just had a bad day then the badness is in my parent my leader I'm some young now right like I don't understand nuance my leader can't be bad

so I must take on the badness at least then I have control so kids after they're kind of yelled at in the absence of repair they would they really only have two options for how to regularly and feel safe again they can self blame it's all my fault which is why I feel like most adults when they

have a hard time they tell themselves like it's my fault I'm not good enough it's like the legacy of that story from childhood or they use self doubt maybe that didn't happen maybe I overreacted maybe I can't trust myself again it leads to adults who basically say like did I overreact or

let me call five friends let me see if they think what my boyfriend did was a big deal because they can't trust themselves and so trauma what I want every parent to know is I'll say I left my kid alone and I didn't pick them up at the soccer field is that gonna traumatize them and I'll

say well that's just the event like did you say to them hey that probably felt scary what was that like oh you're right like you were alone now all of a sudden next to the event that was scary is my story and my connection it got processed in a safe connection it didn't get processed in

a loneliness and that's that's a massive massive difference the scenario you are describing the parent who yelled goes to the child having been that child and perhaps also having been that parent how do we deal with the fact that sometimes you know we don't want to be around the person

that yelled at us it hurts to receive the care there's a there's a there's a like a textured landscape as opposed to a smooth landscape there like like okay now you're ready for everything to be peaceful I'm still with my feelings I guess that's where the I believe you comes in

and that's where the sorting it through process begins is I think it's like what version of a parent comes back to me the the first thing we have to do in a repair process is actually repair with ourselves as a parent really because if you haven't repaired with yourself which to me is

kind of separating your identity again from your behavior like okay Becky I'll use myself for example I'm a good parent who just screamed at her son like I did not mess up forever and you see when you try to repair yourself those two things get collapsed I'm like I messed him up forever

I'm a monster wait like I'm a good parent who did something I'm not proud of you can't repair with someone until you've repaired with yourself they feel it from you they actually it usually is like then you're asking for them I'll be like it's okay right like you forgive me right

it's not a repair that's like using your child to try to do something we just have to do on our own or with other adults but if I've repaired with myself I'm gonna show up in a different way might I have a feisty kid I might say I don't care it's not better that's okay I'm not repairing to get

something from my child I'm repairing to give an experience to them so we can also get creative you know your kid is older you text them you slip a door under the note you say okay I just have to say this one thing to me this line really matters to like snatch that self blame out of a kid's

body is just like I'm sorry I yelled it is it's never your fault when I yell and it's not and people who argue like our ability to regulate our emotions predated our child's existence like that you know like they had a they had something they did something and we felt frustrated but that's

very different than yelling right and saying that to your kid is so important I mean while the next day you might say by the way let's really figure out how to get out the door in a smoother way you know you could work on whatever they need to work on but the reason I think most kids end

up rejecting parents apologies is it's not really repair we're asking our kid for permission to be okay again or our repair sounds like hey I'm sorry I yelled but you know like if you just got ready in time that one have happened or we say I'm sorry you felt that way I'm sorry you felt that way

those are not like none of those are actually repairs and if that's what a kid's been used to they're gonna keep a parent more at bay so is it safe to say that we can always come back to making the kid feel real and safe I believe you is a great place to start and the reason I keep

coming back to these these simple things is that simple but very very potent by the way um is that in the real world landscape of parenting family and life things are happening really fast and it's very dynamic and it's multifaceted I mean we haven't even talked yet about how

when there's two parents like the one that didn't yell um when there's multiple siblings when I mean there's the human dynamics on one in the other other landscape is hard enough and then when you start introducing the real world landscape um things happen fast so having something that people can

reach to really quickly what I call in the landscape of stress modulation which is something that I'm more familiar with from my labs work is you know real time tools yeah real time tools like we're all at our best after meditation vacation massage and a good night's sleep but what about real time

tools when everything's yeah everything's hectic um so what does a really good apology look like in the real world yeah um because a really good apology in the ideal world of uh Instagram um is yeah I believe you um so sorry with no butts no this and that but a real apology sometimes is

as you're boarding a plane or when there's a bunch of other things that are going on and you haven't even dealt with those yet or when you're on your way to an event or you yeah okay so you get it uh what does a really good internal landscape for apology look like like how can we touch

into where we need to be and then what are the words that even if we have to try again later and again and again later with that person in this case kid but person more generally um what's the like go to solid apology right so yeah I think you are never gonna go wrong saying I believe you

to your kid like obviously not if you say it randomly but if they're really upset you yelled at me I believe you like if that's all you can remember you're crushing it I think a realistic repair you have to do something for yourself and like to me it can be a very simple mantra like to me I'm

a good parent who is having a hard time is the one I use honestly over and over just and after I yell at my kid before I'll like go to the bathroom sometimes and I'll say that to myself Becky like I'm a good parent having a hard time and I'll kind of say it as many times as I need until I really

do feel something like shift a little in my body it's just because again I think that phrase separates what I did from who I am right and then to me realistic apology it could be super simple if you remember nothing else could just be like I'm sorry I yelled that's that's great if you

want to if you're like I'm feeling it Becky give me that next step I'm you know I'm sorry I yelled just like you I'm working on managing my emotions and you know next time even when I'm frustrated I'm gonna try to stay calm something about the next time you know if you want to throw in that

it's not your fault kids it seems an odd thing because parents like why do kids assume it's their fault it is their default position and so it's never a bad thing to throw in but honestly just simply hey I'm sorry I yelled that actually gives them that realness because without saying anything

more you're saying that thing you think happened did happen so that's powerful I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor inside tracker inside tracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body

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into the ranges that are optimal for you if you'd like to try inside tracker you can go to inside tracker.com slash huberman to get 20% off any of inside tracker's plans again that's inside tracker.com slash huberman how do you suggest parents deal with um retorts and rudeness and again let's

extend this to all relationships so you get in your best mindset and by the way I love this I am thing um two of the most important words in any language um when translating to other languages I am blank I am a good this or I am whatever role identity is key to the brain um we know this um

you go in and you say I'm really sorry I struggle to regulate my emotions yeah I believe that you're really upset yeah and the kid says I hate you now earlier you said that good boundaries are about not expecting a change in behavior from someone else they're about our own boundaries so

um or maybe the I hate you comes from you know listen we're not gonna go to someone's house for a play date today great example I hate you yeah yeah yeah um so is there ever a case for no response I mean to me the most underutilized parenting strategy is doing nothing literally it's one of my

most used strategies because and there's there's there's like really good reason for especially in this situation so I always to me like I would say we have to understand before we intervene so I know every parent's like what do you do in that situation but it's like trying like it's like

trying to fix someone's tennis swing before you like look at their tennis swing right like what there could be a lot of problems so then why is a kid saying I hate you and I would ask every parent to just keep this in mind it's a tool and you can't use it in real time eventually you can

but we have to say it at like the end of a night when my kid said I hate you what is my most generous interpretation of why he would say that to me and if you're like any human me included by the way like your least generous interpretation is immediate you're like because he's a sociopath like

that's what we say all the time we're like wow or because he's like a horrible kid because he's spoiled because he's nasty it comes easily so that's fine but what is my most generous interpretation and when I don't know I'll push myself to say okay well like I was in a situation with my husband

what would lead me to say that and what would lead you to say that to someone that I hate them yeah like they like say something to you like hey Andrew we're not gonna be able to you know do this dinner it would have to be some sort of deep betrayal of trust and and when I and I have

to acknowledge that if I said that to somebody that I really care about or love as I'm saying I hate you what I'm really saying is I love you so much and that hurts unbelievably such an unbelievable intensity that what's coming out of my mouth is I hate you because if you

because if you didn't love them that's right it would have null effect I think it would be a meh it would be it would be a it would be a meh but instead it's a it hurts so we somehow there's a neural circuit in there that goes you know I whatever insert explain I hate you that's right

but what you're really saying is I love you so much yeah and as a consequence that thing you did or said hurts so much that's right and so I think that's like exactly what's going on for a kid or like to me my most generous interpretation a simple way is my kid when I said we couldn't go

to this friend's house that he thought we were going to his friend he was gonna sleep over he had like so built it up in his mind he'd like probably like kids do like they have this whole image oh and then we're gonna do this and this and like they'll let down was so intense and

again I go back to kids have all the feelings we have and they're born with none of the skills so it takes a lot of it takes like a pretty well developed skill to be really disappointed by the way and surprised right in the moment and like manage it in like a mature way I'm sure we both know

adults who aren't really capable of doing that right so the fact that my seven year old is doing that so if I think about it that way we latch on to our kids words as if they're the truth they're not the truth it's not to say they don't matter but they're not the truth the truth is whatever

world is under the words like I'm disappointed and I don't know how to manage that so if I think about the outcome like what would what do I want to be what I would love in that situation because the truth is when I say to my kid sorry we can't go to Bobby's house I wouldn't even want

it's not normal for my kid to be like oh no problem because like I'm just picture my 25-year-old like trying to get a job and being like mom oh I didn't get it and then he's like no problem I'm like that's kind of weird like really like that's weird like I'd want you to be disappointed

and so what I want my kid to be able to do is to be like I don't know what's the best it gets like oh man I was really looking forward to that that's like ultimate maturity so how do I get for my heat you to oh man I was really like you know looking forward to that the whole all the things we

want to do just like don't even make sense like sending my kid to their room saying like you're such a nasty kid I've never seen any of your friends say that to their parents and I'm good at acting things out because of course I say these things too but all I'm doing is basically telling

my kid the version of themselves I don't want them to be so now I'm further away from that outcome just not effective my kid obviously literally needs to learn some of those skills and practice them we don't think about simulations with kids nearly enough we know that in sports people practice

all the time we don't do that with emotion regulation so what do I do in the moment I think the best question here is what do I do outside the moment to help my kid build the skills so they actually have more of a skill the next time that moment comes still I'm a pragmatist what do I

do in the moment I hate you I probably would do nothing first when someone is rude to you and they say something nasty I don't know I just like this is one this is my son this is me my son just hurled I hate you it's like sitting between us when we say back to them like you know I hate you

or like go to your room we take all the energy from what they said and we just like throw it and then like we have this ping pong match when you do nothing I always picture if this is like that I hate you it just sits between us my kid has a much higher chance of kind of re-owning

what they just said because I'm just kind of sturdy in that moment because I didn't just take it from them and say something to them which just gives them the opportunity to like take what I said and have no responsibility for the first thing they said it's always true in adults when someone

says to you like something nasty if you actually just stay there they're kind of like oh shoot I shouldn't have said that because like it's it's right there so I'd probably say nothing now a couple I don't know if I'd really do that but I'd want to do that let me be clear

something else you can say in that moment she takes a lot of presence so it's not going to happen right away is just something like whoa like clearly or disappointed I get that I believe you and I know there's another way you can say that to me that's actually right back to family jobs I'm

validating and I'm setting kind of a boundary in some way it's like I know maybe there's all hope there too like I know there's another way if my kid keeps saying I hate you I hate you you're the worst of the worst I'm gonna say listen I love you you're a good kid you're having a

hard time I I really won't stay in your room while you keep saying this to me and part of that is because it's not good for you either like this isn't a good dynamic I'm gonna step outside I'm gonna come back and we can talk about it when we're both in a place where we can be a little more

respectful or something like that right you don't have to be a punching bag but at least now I'm helping my kid see that he is having a feeling under these words if I can't differentiate the feeling from the behavior how can I expect my kid to ever learn to differentiate those two which

is how my kid can actually get to a more regulated place I've sometimes wondered whether or not parents are either afraid of or not afraid enough of their kids I've known some parents that are afraid of their kids because it and perhaps as a consequence who knows what the chicken egg is there all we

know is the parent was alive first the kids learn to control their parents through not necessarily emotional outbursts but the threat of emotional outbursts I've seen this again and again and it's it's a pretty wild thing to observe and of course as an observer it's far easier than when you're

in it but this idea like well like they're like a pop rate or boil over you know like they're going to pop and I've seen this in teachers in the classroom I've seen this in so many venues where whether or not the child understands that they're somehow controlling the situation or not

that there's just an inherent fear of what could happen and then I think kids feel a certain power but they don't feel safe right I mean how could they my third children yes so for the parents out there that are afraid of their kids potential responses and or how bad their

kid quote unquote might turn out if they were to really lay down the law I'm using how to old school language but I listen I grew up you know I'm 48 years old so you know I yeah I mean my parents you know didn't physically abuse but you know there might have been a spanking and everyone's

in a while or I don't know what the rule is nowadays or the or the the standard out there you know I think I won't say which but I might have taken a smack here or there but not many and it there was also a lot of love but clearly and here I'm not not supporting the use of corporal punishment

I want to be very clear but you know yeah kids can be tough and then also you know it wasn't long into my high school years when I was physically larger than both my parents I never used that to intimidate them but I have to imagine when your kid is larger than you if you were already

psychologically afraid of them now you it's clear to both of you that the the tables have turned that's right right I'm talking about that that unconscious semi-conscious aspects of this I'm not talking about who can you know obviously physical fights there's not something I ever want to see

or participate in a household so this this is an amazing topic like walking on eggshells this is right and this is terrifying to a kid because again if a kid is trying to figure out like am I real and am I safe kids do experience feelings in such an intense way because they don't have any of those

skills and they're so surprising and they're so visceral that it is scary to them and there are kind of especially these groups of kids I call them deeply feeling kids that do feel things more intensely and they do have more of these big massive tantrums they even look animalistic often

during they try to scratch you they'll history them they'll growl this really yes there was a I grew up with some biteers yeah kids that bite yes that's because again those are just feelings literally uncontained that are exploding out and where do they explode out through your extremities

so they that's really what it is and so what will happen and this is this really unfortunate dance and one of the my favorite things to help people turn around is then kids kind of sense from a parent like I really am as toxic as I worried I was right and again if we go back to that pilot

thing like I think about a pilot it's like um we've to make an emergency landing we're not going to be able to go to LA and we're all gonna land and Cleveland whatever it is I picture the passenger who's like you are going to take us to LA and the pilot's like okay okay like can you imagine

you're like it doesn't matter that this person is pissed like you're the pilot you don't have to keep us happy please keep us safe and if you're in the plane and you're terrified because you're like we have to make an emergency landing I promise you you're way more terrified when you hear this person change the decision because of the threat that a passenger is going to be very very upset and that is actually what we do when we're walking around on eggshells now the alternative to this

again we live in this world on parenting where there's a binary where we say and you said to yourself so I'm gonna lay down the law like I don't recommend that either like especially with a kid like that that's not gonna be the best solution these kids have to be seen as good kids they are good

kids and when I wait meet with parents of these kids I hear about them and like I always say I hear about them and I have a kid like this so I get it I'm just like I really like your kid and they're like what I was like I do and they're like and then they usually start crying and they

go you're literally the first person in 11 years who's ever said that including like the parents like you like our kid why I'm like they're tenacious they're they know what they want they seem like they have 0% people pleasing in them these kids will change the world but not if they're

boundary lists then they'll become tyrants and that's that's really terrifying and I'm gonna teach you how to be the sturdy leader which is equally firm as it is warm and that's gonna start today and so like here's an example of these deeply feeling kids I think he says they like watching

like a TV show where these kids it feels like they hold the family emotionally hostage right and because if you don't pick the family the movie that they want to watch and family movie night they will scream they will cry and they will do that for three hours they will other kids after

you're like they're they don't peter out these kids these kids interestingly enough get an awful cycle with their parents because they have such intense emotions more often which more escalations which tend to get met with invalidation you're so dramatic you ruin everything they are that much

more desperate to be believed they escalate further you can understand how that will lead to more distance and invalidation and we're off to the races in a bad direction and I would say the parents you're in a during family movie night tomorrow night this is what you're gonna do and you're

gonna by the way I would say this is how concrete I get you're gonna write this down and you're gonna say it to a voice recorder with your own voice and I want you to play it back and see how sturdy you sound and they'll often do it and they'll be like wow I didn't even believe myself

when I said that I'm so scared of my child right you're gonna do it again and then you're gonna do it again and this is this is just like any other skill we practice and you're gonna say to your kid look I know in this family you know Bobby usually we let him pick the movie gets really upset if

not we all tonight's gonna be different Bobby it is your sister's turn to pick the movie and I know you're gonna be upset and I just want to tell you exactly what's gonna happen and I'm gonna I'm in this example I'm saying there's a two-family household which is an assumption but even if

there's one if you're super upset and screaming I'm going to bring you to your room and this is important I'm gonna sit with you and I'm gonna stay there and this is a line that I know if I'm our deeply failing kid workshop has really and you have to believe it to say it I am not scared

of your feelings and I know parents will say to me I'm scared of their feelings my yeah you're gonna fake it do you make it they they need to hear that because if you think about the image of these kids their feelings feel so overpowering to

them they feel more but they're actually more poorest to the world so they both have more coming in and they're actually always terrified of how much of them can flow out and so they feel their feelings that way it's almost like my tantrum in the house takes up the entire living room that's

why you actually have to bring them to a smaller room and you actually have to contain them in that way as a way of kind of saying like it only goes this far like literally I will not let you dictate family movie and always sitting in the front sea and your favorite chair at dinner it only goes

this far and that is truly an act of love and protection and safety for those kids how often do you observe that these deep deeply feeling kids is that how they refer to yeah I made up the terms of but yeah great deeply feeling your you are qualified to qualify to so deeply feeling kids

also express these deep feelings in the positive sense I mean because I can think of some kids I grew up with and I can look at my own experience of like it's hard to know we don't have a calibration point it's not like body temperature of like how much I feel versus how much you feel we look at

the external expression of these things like did the the lacrimal glands to create some tears or not like you know as you were talking about this this thing before I noticed I like weld up a little bit and I'm thinking yeah like I can remember seeing things and feeling things and like whoa it's

a really big inside I don't remember screaming at my parents telling them I hate them I probably did at some point but but I have observed other other kids peers that grew up that clearly fell into this category and have gone on to do remarkable things yes remarkable like extraordinary

things because it's it's a capacity it that doesn't always skew towards a negative expression it can also it like immense expressions of love and and you know I think these days that there's a tendency to for unqualified or like truly unqualified people because they're not trained to do so to

slap labels like borderline right splitting like good object bad object splitting and indeed that that exists in the as a diagnosis and symptoms of borderline but that we punish rather than believe and observe that these things exist there's range and nervous system tuning and affect and

so put simply do deeply feeling kids also tend to express love and joy and and positive emotions with the with the same intensity or near same intensity I would say depends on the fun like it depends on kind of kind of their stage of development and the nature of the interactions

they've kind of received back I think deeply feeling kids I always say are super sensors like if you have one these kids and I have one these kids we live in New York City she will not go into New York City garage okay like where we park our car and she's like the smell and I'm the best

of us are like what are you talking about meanwhile I have another friend who lives in totally different area of Manhattan and she's a deeply feeling kids she's when I was just like my daughter the same thing like I actually believe that my daughter smells something that I don't smell like they

are super sensors in that way right and she notices the little detail of something now in terms of the intense love I think for these kids their vulnerability sits so close to their shame this is why they get so explosive they almost experience their feelings as attackers which is

again why parents can get scared of them and they do because again they feel that feeling so intensely that they have this deep fear of abandonment of being too much and so they that shame tries to shut it down although it obviously doesn't work and it explodes what I've noticed with

deeply feeling kids and this to me is actually like truly my proudest body of work and you mentioned borderline so we'll go there people have said like these sound almost like kids who are like have some predilection to borderline and obviously having gone to a PhD program we're told a lot about

invalidating environments and things like that I'm not really one for labels either but I just got so much insight from my honestly my own kid where I was like well like she is so different and how she processes things and what she needs and how she responds to my very same interactions

as my other kids like they're very different and that fear of abandonment and being too much it was like it was like they're from the start it really feels like it was like they're what's so interesting as I feel like through working with her by the way in a very different way because these

kids reject almost every typical parenting strategy you go to validate these kids feelings it's like you're trying to intrude on them and steal their heart because if you think about their porousness they're so terrified of being taken over that when you're like seeing a feeling they feel like

you're like seeing into them and so they reject you I would say you can't go in the front door with these kids you've got to like find these side door approaches but now of all my kids she is by far the cuddliest the most loving the most emphatic about our relationship up this

trick now I'm gonna miss you so much like the idea when she was for that any of that I would say to someone like you are crazy you are talking about a different kid so I think that yes that deep love is there and it we just have to kind of make it a little safer for those kids to access it

is there any kind of general statements that one can still make accurately about differences in the expression or perhaps even the experience of deeply feeling kids in boys versus girls hmm great question um I actually haven't noticed a ton but there might be I'd love to look

more into that but in terms of I want to be accurate I haven't noticed that yet I think one of the things you know you have one of these kids is if you know the moments when you're a parent where your kid like needs you like there and in those moments your kids push you away they push

you away when they need you the most if that's like I think a really common quality for the for those kids and how how common is this I sound like such a like a biologist this deeply feeling kid phenotype I don't I don't I don't want to you know I don't want to um lessen the the importance of

of what you're saying by saying it that way because I actually what I think you're saying is incredibly important resonates with me on a lot of different levels in fact so um but as far as I know it's not a DSM diagnosis and thank goodness it's not because that would pathologize it

right yeah so but you know of the you know in a classroom let's say I get a big classroom 100 kids yeah um how many of those kids prop and I'm guessing it's a continuum but would fall into this category of of deeply feeling I think you're right it's a continuum and connecting topics I know

you've spoken about I've been doing a lot of looking into this overlap with deeply feeling kids and neurodivergence and ADHD and what I think's interesting about that is we we have these workshops these deeply feeling kid workshops and a lot of them we do live and there's this whole chat

right and I'll say these things you're like that you know and they're definitely ideas they haven't heard but what I think is more healing is thousands of people in the chat and saying I thought when I say the hissing thing the chat is like a waterfall I thought I was the only one I thought so like

there are so many of these kids why I think there's more and more or something I need to look more into but I think it does right if you think about these kids is more porous and you think about how insanely stimulating the world is that we bring up kids what comes into them it would make sense

that I think this is like a growing type I'm guessing it's similar with ADHD too I have so many more kids diagnosed in the past the world we bring up kids in the sensory overload if you're kind of that much more porous that's going to overload your system and you know it's and I think that I think

that's also why more and more kids are so what's the percentage I don't I don't know like maybe 20 but that that's a fairly high percentage I think it's a fairly high percentage that feels right that it just sort of feels right based on my observation of adults also yeah feels right might

also explain a lot of the apparent conflicts and misunderstandings and adult relationships ah that's and we I mean so many people like they'll say I mean I was oh my goodness like that was like that was like years of therapy for me watching that I thought I would took that for my

kid like this was me and I finally talk about I believe you that's what I mean deeply feeling kids are desperate to be believed and they're desperate for our attempts to connect with them because their deep fear is their unlovable ability and so they do reject typical you know it's

a stance get out of my room fine you're so difficult and then see I really am as unlovable and bad as I worried I was right and unless we kind of reverse that cycle I'd be willing to bet my life that most of the ultra successful performing artists that we observe you know I'm not going to

name names but just think of ultra successful that the people whose words music poetry writing acting presence evokes immense emotion in other people so much that people will pay money to see these people express their emotions and what's inside them fall into this deeply feeling

category I mean it just can't be any other way right yeah the muted performer unless that's the the stick so to speak is is just not compelling yeah yeah and a lot of what we're talking today is about the kind of tuning fork nature of emotions it's a wow what a tricky balance speaking

of that I'd like to just return just something I raised earlier and then I made the mistake it was my fault of shutting the hatch on it and I'd like to reopen that hatch which is wouldn't there's two parents maybe they're under the same roof maybe they're not or there's just a two caretakers

so kids are pretty darn good at figuring out who to go to for what and how to balance out negative experiences by seeking out the positive reinforcement of the other sometimes even pitting parents and caretakers against one another I mean makes children sound diabolical but adults do

it too it's called gossip what can co-parents co caretakers do to try and align strategies or if necessary to offset some like bad stuff that the other parent might be doing in today's landscape where it's about 50% of marriages ended divorce at least in the US you also have the the situation

where then there are new significant others come in and now you've extended the landscape to you know sometimes five or six different parents you know my family my biological family starting to look like the UN we've got so many countries and religions and like this thing it's kind of

nice on the one hand but lots of divergence of opinion and emotional stance and background so how in the world do we do we wrap our efforts around this yeah so I one of the most common questions I get from a parent at good inside is like can you convince my partner why the way

they do things is wrong and you know do things more like good inside and so essentially I always say like yeah I'm not for a million reasons I'm not like too interested in taking that phone call um you know but yeah I don't get involved in a couple of disputes either you know but but again

assuming and you've said this a couple times which I love like I'm assuming the way your a kind of partner or you know the co-parent does things is not like really like damaging your child obviously that's like sure really time for an intervention no hitting no emotional abuse exactly

but you know even like I'm not a believer of saying for a timeout right like I don't believe in timeouts and punishments I don't think they feel good to kids or parents and I also don't think they're effective no timeouts not effective I don't think so okay and I and we probably should

close the hatch on I have to imagine that the going word in the profession of psychology and raising kids properly is you never spank them you never hit them yeah no okay all right for the record so maybe we'll get back there but just do go on the record and I think you can sense from my

style not punishing or timeouts like doesn't mean you're permissive at all there's 0% permissive or even softness I think you know and no there's softness there's 0% permissive in those moments but we can get back there but let's say your partner does do that or the co-parent right like I

would be the first to say to someone like do I think that that's like messing up your kid I I don't I really don't especially if for example in that situation let's say I'm divorced and my now ex you know I just know that they do timeouts or this and I've tried to talk to them but you

know whatever they're not getting on board with the style and to me what happens is like you have a kid they come back to you and they're like you know Papa gave me a timeout and we don't do that in my house and my first thing is I call my ex that's usually what I do or the school did this and I

called school I called the ex and I'm like why did you do that we don't do that what I think is really important and I actually find it very like relieving as a parent like what's actually most important is helping my kid understand their experience like we center the other person and

what they're doing wrong wrong instead of centering our kid we might need to call a parent the other parent and say like hey we'd be really great together on the same page could we could we do this course together that would just be great you don't have to agree with anything I think that would

be great but in that moment what my kid needs actually is like wait that's kind of hard confusing so like in our house when you do something like you scream I hate you you know I intervene in one way and when you go to your dad's house he intervenes in a very different way it's a lot of like

it's a lot of switching to make sense of you know or maybe my kid says um mom never apologizes to me after she yells and I would call you know or maybe it's my own wife and I'm like hey know the importance of repair haven't you listened to all this literature you know I would like to have

some influence on that but what I feel like my kid needs in the moment is more like tell me what happened oh oh she yelled at you and yeah look something I know like I know mom was I know she had a really stressful day at work and look this isn't your responsibility but you can just know this mom

has a really hard time apologizing to her has a really hard time apologizing and actually when people hard time apologizing they seem cold and like they don't care they actually usually just feel so ashamed of what they did and the reason I'm telling you that is not because you have

to take care of her but just so you know this so wasn't you and anytime something happens with mom that doesn't feel good and you feel like you can't resolve it like you can talk to me and I'm going to get out of roleplay for a sec but I think you can see I'm not throwing my wife under the bus

like I at all um but I'm centering what my kid needs what my kid needs going back is they need to process that experience with an adult they feel safe with rather than being aloneness and I I often picture like this kid on the couch who tells me a problem at their dad's house or at school

and I like go off to make a call and I picture them alone being like oh like now I'm alone like I wears like I didn't really want you to go do that I just want you to like listen to me you know there might then be a step to you know to kind of get on the same page or when parents say get

on the same page I think the problem is that we're not like looking at the same page forget getting on the same page we're not even speaking the same language like people say to me my partner won't even watch a video with me that I just want to even even if they disagree that is a problem and

frankly that's not a parenting problem that's also what I'll say to someone if you say to your partner look I've been a member of good inside and it's been really helpful and it resonates and you don't have to agree with it but like I would love to watch this four minute video if your partner

says no that is nothing to do with parenting that is a core relationship problem that they just don't care to do something that you say is important to you that's a that's a marriage problem that's all right so and I think it's really important and we talk about this a lot like that was

someone I'd coach them to say hey and you don't have to agree but if you don't commit to watching a four minute video with me and just talking about it a little bit and I promise I'll try not to be judgey or provey I'll just listen I don't really think we're talking about parenting I think

you're telling me you don't really respect me enough to do the things I'm asking you to do and that'll stick with me like that that's a add handle it yeah this is very helpful I'm curious about these ADHD diagnoses slash kids because there's a lot of you know

loose hand diagnosis this day these days a year ago I was a camp counselor took kids backpacking and I learned an important concept of when working with adolescent and teenage boys which is be a channel not a damn you know when they're super energetic like they're not sitting still

where it's not nap time yeah there's just no way so there's no ocean of getting it out like allowing some place for physical or emotional catharsis that's safe obviously and that kids have a lot of energy I mean dammit the adult population seems to be trying to regress themselves to have

that energy so how can we blame them for having so much energy and of course there are children who and adults with clinically diagnosed ADHD that really struggle but you know for the kid that's more energetic maybe even has a hard time sitting still to the point of discomfort and when the

rest of the world that we can't control is telling them like hey like your kid is like needs to be regulated on the subway on the bus in the classroom you know what are some things that we can do in terms of communication with those kids and probably some of those kids are listening as well

and to just be a channel not a damn to allow their best expression to come forward yeah I mean I love this idea in general like we it's much more effective to tell anyone what they can do rather than telling them what they can't do right across the board with kids because there's usually

a can that is possible and then like you can work with the urge instead of I don't even know I'm trying to suppress it or have it not act itself out it's like our urges and feelings are forces like they're gonna they're gonna come out and so yes I think this idea of like me and my kid are

on the same team here I think that's so important to start with any kid definitely you know if you have a kid with some attention all you know struggles like we're on the same team you can so easily get into me against you and then you look to shut down anything everything about them but yeah we're

on the same team so let's say like it's hard to do homework right now I see you okay like let's let's take an amount of time and it seems like you have a lot of energy like let's do some heavy work or let's run outside and maybe homework always has to start after a period like that maybe

they need a break but this idea of yes I'm working with my kid as opposed to against my kid is always gonna be more successful do you think that some of the new emerging tools some of which you know I've talked a lot about but many many people have talked a lot about things like

meditation kids doing some long exhale breathing you know in addition to the you know the way I grew up it was like p time or recess time like run around like crazy and um do you think that these tools are helping kids get some self-regulation or is whatever self-regulation they're gaining

offset by the fact that um you know there's just so much more input you know we hear so much about the challenges of social media for adults but certainly for kids um you know bullying obviously being one of the more salient ones but also just the fact that when they go home at night and

they're in bed they're potentially still in interactions with their friends we used to have a phone landline that we'd sometimes call one another on but I wasn't really much of a phone kid uh with my friends so when you're home you're home you were separated from all of that I mean how bad

is it and um what are some things that parents and kids might consider yeah to me meditation things like that like always like icing on the cake like that's always helpful and certainly like teaching kids real tools like those are like literally something I can do I've learned this meditation I have

a mantra something like that like huge fan right you have to be able like touch in some way but to me I think what's coming up is you bring up this larger point and it actually goes back to where he started it is like the cost to children of parents not being able to set boundaries has never

been higher and at the same time it's never been harder for parents to set boundaries right and I think this stuff starts way before social media like to me when I think about the earliest years of a kid's life like you get so much bang for your buck in life from helping kids just learn to

tolerate frustration and so much of kids early life right now in the world we live in is all about the immediate escape from frustration and not only escape from frustration but from frustration to gratification and like an instant it's like so fast like how did that

just happen like it didn't used to be like that there wasn't even an option like me and you like I know you wanted a movie like I don't know maybe your parent could drive you to blockbuster if you had an account and then like maybe I don't think I remember going like are they gonna have it

are they gonna have it and then you see the thing and there's nothing behind and you're like they don't have it that whole thing blockbuster by the way was a video store just kid I'm just totally kidding I'm totally kidding but somehow they're like I sometimes do this to myself you know yeah

absolutely I used to love going to pick out movies at the VHS store but if you think about that is one tiny thing it's obviously tiny and you think about like I remember that my childhood anything about that tiny moment compared to some parallel in a kid the there's no frustration

the want and the gratification there's zero space there is zero space and and also I have to say our generation of parents and me too 100% me too our tolerance for frustration has gone way down because of the gratification world we live in which means our tolerance of our kids

tantrums is at all time low because we're like hey my life is like pretty easy in a lot of ways this is like a massive inconvenience so kids have more gratification than ever we have lower tolerances for frustration everyone does which means the way we interact with kids over and

over and over plus just the natural things they're so they're exposed to or not like Netflix versus blockbuster just means like their circuitry around expectations and what feels good like to me that's what really it scares me it does and like figuring out how to tolerate or even

insert like insert frustration into your kids life as early as possible to me as like is critical importance I could not agree more and and I say that with the understanding that I have also shortened the latency in my reward prediction errors which is nerd speak for when I want to

watch a movie I go into Netflix and they're like it's near infinite and I can get right then the internet's a little slow then I start barking about how slow internet is worse than no internet and that you know you start observing yourself you just go like what's going on yeah I mean there's

it the ability to tolerate different weight times between anticipation reward is so critical and that's what getting a degree is about that's what doing anything challenging is about I've I've gone on record saying that too much dopamine without effort exerted in order to get

that dopamine is very detrimental well that to me in all the screen time kind of discussion there's so much screen time and social media and like all the things that screen time do to for kids and again like my kids watch TV and they're young they have iPads like I'm so not a purist I'm a

pragmatist and whoever's listening to this no one messed up their kids forever right so we can just like we were talking about before use this information to make slightly different decisions on the margin that's the best I guess but I think what are kids are especially young and they're building

this circuitry around like what does it mean to get success like what what are my expectations there how much effort do I have to put in and I think about like a young kid you know playing some mindless just dopamine giving game the circuit they learn is like mindlessness zero effort dopamine

and then I think and I find this really interesting like how many people say like their kid is sex now having a really hard time learning how to read and they're you know these learning assessments and the learning assessments are coming back like no dyslexia right and I know some of you families

I say this with love is I say I literally think this is the first time this kid's life that they kind of have to put like concerted effort without in the moment success and so yeah that like that looks like a lot of things it can it can even present

like ADHD right because you know it can present like that it might be but it might also just be that these dopamine circuits have developed in a way that's so that's not conducive with something like learning how to read right and so when parents ask me now like I know reading and academic

skills like what can I do when my kids are younger I got them flashcards no flashcards like I mean you can get flashcards that's fine it's not like detrimental but to me it's like well what is my kids relationship with frustration because I think about this thing called like the learning space

right again I'm visual like there's not knowing how to do something and then there's successfully doing something and the space in between is like the learning space that's what learning is and learning the learning space inherently is frustrating that's like the right feeling to be feeling

and when kids have learned to collapse those two things then like they don't have a lot of space to learn versus I don't know even like I'm thinking about my kid who wants to like draw a rainbow or sun when they're young and they're like that doesn't look like a sun it would be

easy for me to be like let me just do that for you and by the way yes I give myself permission to do that sometimes like sometimes like I can't deal with this I've got other things to do but sometimes I think like long and that long term greedy like this is going to be the same circuit for learning

how to read it is and for learning how to do that project and what if my only goal forget them drawing a sun and I've got to tolerate the winding my only goal was just to lengthen the amount of time they let themselves be in that learning space that's it because I think we know

as adults it's not about getting to success that comes when it comes the longer amount of time you let yourself be in that learning space the more successful you can be with hard things because like it just is right you just got to traverse the route and so to me that's like honestly one

of the things I'm most passionate about teaching parents is like literally like what do you do during that time then how do I change what my goal is if my goal is to stop my kids tantrum I'm going to collapse it but if my goal is just to lengthen that I might do something very different oh

drawing a certain that's not your right you didn't want to draw that oh drawing a circle is so hard and my kids can you do it for me can you do it like of course sometimes I will but I might say like I'm not gonna do it sweetie I'm not you know why because I know you can do this a little more

I have faith in you and I think this is so powerful to say to kids this is so frustrating and that's the exact way you should be feeling you don't want our kids to be you should that's the right feeling I'll even draw that learning space visual this is where you're in this is where

you are you're doing an amazing job and it is actually interesting when kids are young like they actually do adopt that like someone said to me like I've been doing this stuff for a while my kid literally says to me I like to do hard things mom like they believe it like that's an amazing self

belief to develop it again right so yes I think this stuff especially compared to how easy it is to get that gratification it's just it's like more important than ever to have an offset yeah I'm doing my best to get the word out into the world that the only reason the brain changes

at all is if there is these neuromodulators like epinephrine adrenaline in the body and brain because that's what signals that the nervous system needs to change if something can be accomplished there's no reason for the nervous system to change by definition there's also I don't want to

spin off into a neuroscience of resilience and willpower less in here but there's some amazing literature that shows that there's this area of the brain the anterior mid-singulate cortex which is activated when people do things they don't want to do and it generalizes to other things but

this is not the I love to work out so I'm gonna work out this is the I hate to work out and I do it anyway and it translates to success in academic endeavors success in all sorts of environments and so I think the beauty of it is that this brain structure is highly plastic and can be built up

through one thing and that translates to others so doing hard things experiencing what I call limbic friction just as a gateway to learning just understanding that it always feels hard yeah that's what learning is in fact I can remember in graduate school even as a young adult

my mid-twenties I was struggling with an analysis and my graduate advisor she was wonderful this way and I said she clearly knew how to do it and I said can you explain how to do this and she goes no you know what I was like just we had done and she's like no it's called learning and she just

walked out she was also a great parent to her children and I also tried to get adopted by her and that failed so you know I'm yeah exactly my poor parents like they did their best and I'm grateful to them for many things but I think that I'm including the the encouragement to do hard

things do things that suck that are beneficial for us so it's it's a knife edge right now I'm reflecting it's like do things that suck I believe you it sucks and then what what did my mom used to say a lot you know hate me now love me later you know I loved her then and I love her now

but yeah there were moments where I was like I hate that you're making me do this um I don't know about the hate me now love me later old school um but I think what she was trying to say is I have your best interest in mind definitely that's it right definitely yeah no definitely um can I say one

thing just because I'm in my head it's like one of the things and this like I think it's easy and I'm hearing myself like we hear this and I think it's easy to listen to like oh man I never thought about it that way or I didn't know that or again we just spiral as a parent so fast like I messed up my kid forever like nobody messed up their kid forever it doesn't matter how that is just not true and this is where I think we can spiral into like yeah what's wrong with me and like I kind of

asked parents in this situation to like come with me to a different location which is kind of like anger and I have started to feel angry and I think angry anger like tells us what we need so I'm like well what is that anger telling me like it is it is messed up the system is stacked against us

that when you become a parent it is literally the hardest post-confusing most triggering most important job we have and we are given zero resources right like nobody I know would tell a surgeon who never went to med school and was struggling at surgery that they were a bad surgeon they'd be

like wow like you probably like you probably deserve to go to med school and residency by the way like that's an important job you have and so I think it's easy to listen to all this and spiral into like oh no but I'd ask you to almost like feel a little like protective helpful

anger next to it which is like oh like yes like this is an important job I have this is complicated and maybe there are resources out there that like I deserve and I think that like that's the perspective I would ask parents to listen from earlier you described the job of parenting as

boundaries right in partying boundaries as well as empathy and validation I just want to remind people that you're like very basic but very practical job description for parenting is something that I think we can return to over and over again it also makes me wonder

in thinking about the generalizability of these concepts to other forms of relationship what about the relationship to self right is something we don't often talk about yes relationship to self we want to have boundaries and we also want to be able to empathize and validate ourselves yeah

and I think great like I don't know my friend invite me I don't know I found she out she had five friends for dinner and I was like oh you know I'm so her I would I would say I believe myself like I'm allowed to feel that way I think our feelings love when we tell them they make sense I

just think they're so magical about that phrase it makes sense I'm upset I mean my friends were all there and I wasn't that that makes sense and and there's a boundary because when my feeling tells me well I'm about to plan a dinner party for 200 people and if I everyone I know but her I feel like there's important you know what feeling like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna let you go that far and the image I always think about is like I'm the driver of my car and all the different feelings

and urges like their passengers and we can't get them out of the car you just can't they're in your body but you don't want to let them take over the driver seat that's really what it is and as long as they're a passenger they actually won't cause you that many problems they'll be annoying

and to me that's like hey I see you like I see you and I will often say hi to my feelings for that reason like high anxiety that woke me up at 4 in the morning you know like yes there's a lot of my mind high and then there's like a boundary like you're not like you're a part of me and not all

of me so I think that phrase for regulating your own feelings you're a part of me and not all of me is the essence of validating and having a boundary what about our need I think healthy need to know whether or not the lesson stuck so I've observed this before a kid is catastrophizing about

an upcoming event maybe a concert or a test or a homework thing or a social thing and like we're using all our best tools to try and help them and I believe you I hear you then and they go through the experience and they do pretty well they be even great and then we say like did you

notice you were so concerned before and you you did it yeah you really did it is there something that we can or should do to try and stamp down that that recognition because one thing that's so beautiful about childhood is the um short term horizon nature of childhood which kind of like

not trying not I mean we talk about you know adults trying to get one day at a time or even half a day at a time and kids are navigating on the basis of like first period class yeah second barrier class I mean um they're they're they're horizon is often very close in and I do wonder if

they're internalizing these these more global lessons on their own or whether or not we should try and help them internalize what they just did like do you get it you were super concerned you were like almost dissolving into a puddle of your own tears and I believe you that was the

appropriate response then and now you did it like think about that yeah is it good that we reinforce those those um those wins yeah I mean I think that I think our kids do internalize kind of the patterns right but but I hear you there these moments it's almost like we want to like encapsulate

it for them like hey that was a thing right I think kids pick up on whether our interactions were doing something for them or for us so if it's from a like hey that thing I thought it was really helpful right like it would just be like if my husband was like hey your presentation went well

because I like told you to do that thing and I'd be like stop talking to me right but if he said to me hey like what was it that led to that it's probably like that's helpful to talk out you know I'd be much more open so I love the phrase going back to like just real tools I'm noticing I think

actually often we want to praise our kids or tell something just saying I'm noticing it's again we want to be seen we don't want to feel controlled I'm noticing does that like hey I'm noticing you are so worried about this test we kind of talked about this way of like talking to your anxiety and

and then I'm just noticing you like felt really good about how it went like even that I think because that's like the biggest thing now and they're like crazy fast world relive and it's just pausing to notice that's already like encapsulating or saying to your kid and and I think like a

question is only a question when you don't know the answer right like sometimes we ask questions that they're just they have question marks but it's like a statement or criticism so if we say to our kid that thing I taught you was really helpful right do you think that that was helpful that's

not really a question we already have an answer but I say hey like I just thought it would be good for us to talk through for a second like what was it you think that like led you to really feel good that day in the test then like if I really don't know what my kid could say I think they'll

receive it and then they might say like oh is that thing we talked about like that's so great to know I'm even thinking about Spanish coming up and like I wondered do you think that would I wonder is also a great phrase for parents just wondering I wonder if that would be helpful there again they

just like lower defensiveness because there's maybe there's like movement with wondering it doesn't feel controlling um so yeah I think I think there is like those are nice moments if it comes from a place of like connection not from control that makes sense um we had a guest on this podcast Lisa

Feldman Barrett who's a world expert in emotions and she explained that in cultures where there's more nuanced language for different emotions um rather than the what I call the emojification of emotions um there's better emotion tolerance um so understanding that it's not just sad happy

depressed uh thrilled but there's a lot of nuance it's very context dependent um can be very useful um do you think there's something to be gained for from letting kids um explore the range of emotions not just you know how do you feel good or bad yeah most adults need to learn that good

or bad are valuations that's not actually an emotion yeah it's not actually an expression of how you feel but that's what we do for shorthand um you know do you think that let's just say in the United States um but elsewhere perhaps as well that there's some value to like teaching kids to

pay attention like what is going on inside yeah like what is this feeling of what I call anxiety is it excitement and anxiety or what like being able to better pinpoint what one is um coping with but also the positive aspects of emotion yes I mean I it's funny I even the clinical psychologist

a question how do you feel I always find like a very like a lot of pressure I don't know like I think that's I tend not to ask my kid that but I tend also never to have asked like patients that like so you know I think what we're getting at is we want and I think it's really it's resilience like

resilience is our ability in my mind to tolerate the widest range of emotions as possible because like as humans we're gonna feel that whole range so the more of them you've learned to tolerate like the better off you'll be and so that's what I want for my kids I don't know if that

has to explicitly come from naming although I think that point is definitely true the more things we can name the more things we can understand to me just showing up for your kid in a way that's like with believing maybe with boundaries um is probably the best way to help your kid tolerate the

widest range of emotions because they learn that every emotion like can be held in connection with someone else right versus held in aloneness and is bad um so I guess that's why I think through it maybe we could talk about adolescents and teenagers specifically um teenagers are wild I would say

that the single most traumatic aging event and the most rapid rate of aging that we ever experience is puberty I mean just fundamentally brain circuits that were for one thing or that were dormant change and come alive in ways that the world forever will look different to us feel different to us

and our self perception changes period it's something that biologists still understand at a level of hormones and hypothelamic circuitry but that um has really not been matched to the psychological understanding of vice versa so um like nothing is quite like the music you listen to when you're a

teenager it like brings you back the memories you form positive and negative stamp down boom now and forever the emotional salience can change but those are wild years what are some of the more critical needs of late adolescence and teens that you know are actionable um yeah you know and

yeah I mean I'm just around I mean my teen years were were crazy but um even if they're less crazy they're always crazy yes yes so and one of the reasons I think at least in America that adolescents has seen as such a huge shift like my kid is at a control they're always out they're like always

rejecting me I actually don't think is unrelated to the behavioral control approaches that are inherent in American parenting because like you referred to your kid becomes 14 and they kind of realize like wait I'm bigger than one of my parents like I literally don't care about their

sticker charts anymore and we might have missed 14 years of building a relationship and so what that kids adolescents is going to look like is markedly different than if for those past 14 years you weren't giving in to everything no but you were leading in a sturdier and more connected

way so I really think this whole idea that American adolescents like reject everything I actually think not all of it a part of it is completely developmentally normal but a big part of it relates to this tradition of behavioral control that kids cannot reject until they're at the age that

they kind of could survive on their own which is adolescents so I think that's really important the things I would tell parents to really keep in mind that are critical number one is related to that like a teen's job is to separate and to start to form their own identity and I think there's

a couple things about that parents need to know number one like I don't think we prepare parents enough for the true sense of loss they feel when their kids are adolescents because that's very real like you just spent all these years and like you driven them to every soccer and they kind of talk

to in the back seat and maybe you have family movie nights and then all of a sudden they don't want any of that and it's just so important parents are like I'm going to feel sad I'm going to feel lost and if we don't know to expect it we often kind of infuse that into a lot of anger

toward our kid and so I just think that's normal and we should talk about that more parents about the lessons need to be talking about that with each other of course you miss that that's totally normal number two related to that separation if you think about identity formation like here's

a kid and us and we're kind of close and they now are at the stage where developmentally their job at that stage is to figure who they are they have to over correct like you have to kind of over correct in the amount of space you take because it's really the only way you can figure out like wait

maybe I do want to take parts of that that parts okay and so I think that's like a powerful image to think about like they are moving far away that distance they take from you is not their final point they will move closer now going back to loss not as close as they used to be and that

is different but that's not that's it this is their way of trying to figure out who they are my than the last thing I'd say that kind of relates that image it's like even as they move away I think parents massively underestimate how much they still need us they're making efforts to connect

and I always think like the difference in like an explorer and a nomad is whether or not you have a home base and like if our teens feel like nomads it's not a good situation they're explorers they try a million different things but like they they really do need us they need to know that they

have a home and I'll never forget my private practice I used to work with teens not the long go just the teens sometimes the parents too and this team came to me and this was extreme she'd been really in a in a in a bad place with her parents like intense intense conflict and they got in

this huge fight and she was really really upset she was describing this me she's like and then I was like get out of my room get out I hate you get out you know and I was just like sitting there listening and and then she like kind of like I push him out I slam the door

and I just a couple minutes later open the door my heart's racing can you believe they weren't there can you believe they weren't there and to me it was just this like and again it's not about being a punching bag but I like under like her seeming anger and her like intense pain were so close

together in her own story it's just over and over the same thing like they're gonna reject you they're gonna say get out of my room and yes it sucks but they want you to slip a note under their door after you've taken a couple minutes it says that was really tough or like wow that out of control

you're a good kid and I love you and I want to just tell parents of teens you're gonna do that there's gonna be a pause and then you will hear them rip up the note you will and like I swear to any parent that that's still resonated and your kid is again trying to figure out

how do I stay close with my parents and I'm figuring out my own who I am so like they rip up the note because like they almost like have to do it to like take in how much they're still desperate for those bids for a connection sounds a lot like the dynamics of adult relationships although

hopefully hopefully with a little bit less dramatic accentuation but you know even if it does I mean it's like these circuits that are laid down in childhood early childhood they persist right I mean I think if anything has become clear to me and understanding brain development and brain

function it's that you know we don't discard circuitry for attachment and go oh you know that was for mom and this one was for dad and that was for the dog and and then the romantic relationship is different we repurpose the circuits hence all the beautiful work on childhood attachment that's

now being translated to adult attachment I mean I realized there's nuance to it but you know I was reflecting a bit on this again incredibly potent phrase or mention of explorers versus nomads of having a home base and thinking about these psychology experiments where children are

observed in the presence of their caretakers sometimes the strange situation to ask where people are separate kids are separated from their moms and mom and child typically mom nowadays they're all it's also been done with other caretakers and dads reunite but one doesn't even have to know

about those experiments all you have to do is go to a park or be out in public and see a little toddler venturing away from parent and then what do they do every once in a while they look back they're just trying to check to make sure they're there even the kids that are taking off

on the tricycle like crazy will eventually stop and look back it's like this fundamental circuit we're looking back you know and how far they feel they can go is in direct relationship to presumably the number of times that they recharge that they recharge and we're able to see that

that verification that the parent was still there I think this notion of explorers versus nomads and being an explorer obviously being a good thing a healthy thing within reason and nomads just feeling a drift untethered yes you know one of the one of the

scariest words at least to me in the in the English language so the note under the door yeah it included the words I love you I don't want to get too detailed here but those words sometimes are never spoken in a home sadly sometimes are spoken so often and under so many

circumstances that one wonders like do they lose their potency but I know in that note they're it finished I love you it's sort of like stating at the end of the day no matter what you say probably even what you do I mean I've I've gone I've been in the presence of parents of

kids that were criminals that did horrible things they still love their kids so reminding kids that under any and all circumstances yeah and again and I think what's so critical because our brain collapses is that doesn't mean you think their behavior is okay and I get the fear like I would

never want to send my kid the message that it's okay to quote do certain things right like that that's okay to discrepan your parents of course it's not okay it's just I think we miss like that happened like that happened it already like if I drop my phone and it broke and I was trying to

understand why broke trying to understand that doesn't mean it's okay that I dropped it like it just it doesn't it just dropped like it already happened now what you know and yeah our kids need to know they need to know that they're loved and that again there's kind of like in that message

I think like I still see you're a good kid under that moment and I actually think it's a powerful strategy for every parent to kind of conjure up a good kid image like what is it was that that last time we were playing this game and it was just so fun or is it a memory of my kid when they were

three and like I don't know they did this really cute thing and it kind of like really crystallizes that and like even under you know this bad behavior that kid like that kid's still there and the kids the kids who behave the worst are in the deepest pain I mean the adults too and that's not to say

it's okay but again we're talking about relationships we want to be in like if you're in a relationship with your teen it's not one you're like this is toxic like this is my kid I'm going to be in a relationship with them so you know remembering that they're in pain teens are in a lot of pain they're exploring a new world frankly right now like teens have a world we don't understand it that's so helpful for parents to approach your teen just as a tangible tool and say you know there's so

many things in your world that I don't understand and frankly probably I might like criticize or judge like can you take out your phone this you know whatever it is this app you're on this video game like can we just even time box this five minutes like I just want to end this conversation saying I

understand it better like I promise you that's probably going to do more for your relationship with your kid than anything else because yes they do and they might reject you and if you do again don't take the bait but ask again next week like again they do they need us to return

yeah one thing's for sure none of us except those that are teens know what it's like to be a teenager in 2024 just like they didn't know what it was like to be a teenager for me in the late 80s early 90s right how could they right so what are your thoughts on like family meetings like once a

week we sit down we check in you know I hear that people do this may participate in these before do you feel like those can be useful or is it more window dressing I mean I guess it depends what's happening in there I mean the idea of like hey there's a lot going on in our life and we

have a ritual of coming together and talking things through working through problems like if that's whether that's a beautiful thing like I hear that my first thought is I should do that you know um but you're right like life gets messy so but if it's done in a way where it feels we end and

everyone feels a little bit more understood and a little bit more purpose and you know making things move forward in a positive direction that's amazing I think family meetings it's funny the way I think about them often which is just different is it's actually a great strategy especially

when your kids are older and there's like somewhat of an ongoing conflict so maybe there's like an ongoing conflict about how much video game time or you know how much you know they how late they can stay out and to say to a kid and again this just comes from again so important for teens

we have to approach our kid like we're on the same team I was hit me and my kid against a problem not me against my kid where they are the problem like and so to say hey you've been late you know or we have to figure out your curfew and like look you're a smart kid you're a good kid my number one

job is to keep you safe but you're old now and if I just tell you a time it's gonna the same thing that happened last year we're getting fights all year why don't we sit down and we will do what I do in my office there's two people they each have ideas I'm gonna bring a pad of paper and

that's actually super important and I'm gonna write down all of your ideas and my ideas and then we're just gonna kind of go through and cross out the ones that you know feel completely unreasonable and I have a feeling when we do that we're gonna come to a good place so again you can see there's

that like hope I'm giving like I hold the positive outcome same team I'm giving my kid credit in advance there's actually like really it's usually the opposite of what teens feel which is just my parents don't even listen to me or care and think they have all the answers I've heard

this notion of you know um couple parents come first and kids come second that's uh and some people are probably like what you know well clearly never parent it oh well no actually um it's an interesting idea perhaps not correct or incorrect but maybe dynamic across time where

the real question is if kids know that they are running the family in terms of what they do or their inability to not be attended to etc um is driving the whole relationship that the parents are in yeah versus you know recognizing and you're imagining two parent home but we can talk about

dwarves toward people with significant others or single parent homes um and then all of those um you kind of wonder like are kids really paying attention to how much they are being prioritized to the point where if they observe their parents tending to their own needs that they feel deprivation

or is it make them feel safer like hey mom and or dad are taking care of themselves and can show up better yes I think that is critically important and it kind of goes again to boundaries like of a parent like my relationship with my kid is so important and I'm not going to let that

take over me like that is not all of me I am not only a caregiver to my to my kid like I would stand by that all day long like is that an important part of me and it's still a part of me and I think this is really important to own as a parent because again we tend to get a

like we get apologists for it or we look for our kids permission we'll say look I need to go out with dad without you okay like we have a relationship to like and we again there's that job confusion and my kid feels that and again it's that kind of giving them too much power I've said this to my

kids a lot so say why do you go out with dad without me it's a great question you know first of all dad and I were married before we had kids our relationship is really important to us and we love being with you and being with you is different than just being the two of us and

that really really matters to us and so you don't have to be happy about it you can you and let's say have a babysitter I know they're safe with you can cry when I leave and the babysitter will hold you and we're gonna go to dinner and we're gonna come back and you know we'll see you in the morning

yeah I think that is so important I actually think this is a topic like this topic of like rage and parenthood is like a big topic like the way why why do I get to these moments of rage so often that my screaming is not just screaming at my kids it's really rageful and I think the parents often who are the most vulnerable to that are the ones where they're not make they're not meeting like any of their non-caregiving needs which makes sense that a part of them is like screaming out like

what about me I used to go to dance class I used to see friends I used to go out with my partner and talk about things other than you know our kids and so again if I think a kids need a sturdy leader right more than anything else and sturdiness is not allowing yourself to be taken over by

any one thing including your relationship with your kid is it truly better for there to be two sturdy leaders than one sturdy leader I realize this is a controversial question yeah I mean I know and I know there's research to back this up that like having one kind of sturdy leader in your life

is massively protective I really believe that and so when parents also say my partner isn't like we we have research this is true is too better than one I don't know their research like probably I don't know you know but what I think is important in their too is what's not great for

kids is having like all the caregivers be some like perfectly attuned caregiver right like that actually does not set up your kid for life at all right because I don't know anyone who thinks the partner I'm gonna be with one day is gonna be perfectly attuned to all my needs let

me go find that person so you know you have one sturdy leader you have two but like being sturdy part of that is you're gonna you're gonna rupture you're gonna rupture you're gonna mess up you're gonna hopefully repair you know after um but sturdiness I just want to make clear is so not the same

it's like perfection perfection is creepy it's not a thing no one needs that I love that um so for some I've laughed out loud on this podcast about a statement like that um yeah for the notion of perfection is is kind of creepy um but sturdiness is anything but creepy that's it there's it's

just such a beautiful word for all the right reasons um what about behavioral examples in parents so for instance if children observe parents um being affectionate to one another in appropriate ways right you know um you know attending to one another in in boundary but empathically attuned

ways um do you think that projects forward into their notion of what adult relationships are like and should be like conversely if parents are yelling at one another um do you think that projects forward into it's okay to yell in adult relationships yeah I mean I yeah I think kids are

they're expert notices they notice everything right it's part of how they've learned to survive is such helpless you know humans so they definitely notice they definitely act like sponges um so yes if you're you know kind of privileged enough in that way to go up in a home or you've parents who

in general are fairly affectionate they take responsibility for their stuff they communicate in a healthy way I think that is like a true privilege you go into adulthood with yes the other extreme right you grow up with parents who you know they yell or they can even yell

and scary voices again what I think is really important is the witnessing of that isn't going to be as impactful to a kid as the witnessing of it and nobody naming it and talking to them about it so this is by so often like kids will be in different stages intense tantrums major issues at

school and someone's like what do I do like what do I do with this well I gave you all the strategies in the world but if that is just your kids way of kind of manifesting all of their struggles with this like huge marital conflict that's happening it's not gonna work so it's all part of the same

system and so saying to your kid after you fight with your partner hey I think you are daddy and ice-creaming and I'm sure that felt scary because it does feel scary because they know you're their base so if they're bases of a house is like you know it feels like an earthquake it feels scary like

and you know another line I like it's like you were right to notice that we were using a lot of voices again I think that's massively confidence you know building um maybe what was that like for you or if you have a little kid just that's enough you know and they might look at you and say like

can I my snack now but it's still really sunk in so if there is a lot of conflict again I think it's really important we talk about that with our kids don't leave them alone what about teams that are really wayward and this could be behavioral outbursts there's also the whole

underside of this thing where it's also about withdrawal like the kids are withdrawn I mean we would talk about outbursts and yelling there's also the example in parents or the incenses of the kids that there's like really withdrawn yes that they're just like disengaged depressed depressed

um maybe even dissociative who knows but not good yeah and this can show up on one end is violence on the other end is isolation it can show up as eating disorders it can show up as all sorts of things um you know intervention before age 18 is quote unquote easier in the sense that one has

legal control but oftentimes it's hard for parents to know like how bad is this yeah and you know I didn't entire episode about cannabis and I spoke to some of the medical benefits of cannabis for adults who are non addicts but I also talked a lot about some of the risks but let's take an

example that I think is pretty common like kids 15 16 starts smoking some THC with their friends and you go okay well everyone does that quote unquote not bad alcohol which I think is a lame argument this is lame doesn't make sense again you get hit by a you know cars and bads again

hit by a train but okay um but the point is you know most all parents like okay you know clearly they're self-medicating you know can't they think they can't stop them but you can't stop them you know at what point do you then take you know you put them into a residential treatment

program if you could even afford that I mean it's really tough for people to know how much to intervene in what is clearly not good behavior and sometimes can be bad behavior and yet the kids are using it to self-medicate and there's a pure system that sometimes reinforces that

yes I mean this is a huge landscape yeah maybe we have you back to talk just about this but but um maybe we can press into that discussion but by like what do you tell people in your in your practice like get in there now pull the emergency cord and get this handled or do you say

listen you just got to work with the you know work with the sister and it's a tough problem on throwing at you but yeah I think the first thing is like how do I as a parent like kind of even assess is like this like is this normal is it not more is it a problem is it not so I think

there's a couple like things we could think about there number one just seeing like impact on overall functioning is always like a one barometer right so okay can my child perform the kind of tasks of their developmental stage okay so this is not the only thing but like are they still going

to school wow I noticed since they smoking they're smoking a lot of weeds their grades went from bees to bees like okay they don't care about school anymore they used to actually go out with friends now unless they're with this one crew where they smoke in the park like they're not even

seeing these kids they used to be friends with they don't want to go to family functions anymore they used to play soccer like if I'm answering this I'd be like wow I'm not really talking just about a marijuana problem I'm talking about my kid not engaging in kind of like the developmental tasks

that I would say is just like it's time to seek additional support right another sign is just kind of how how limited their world has become because of this right so again is this kind of taken over everything they do my kid is depressed let's say or you know and all of a sudden their

world has gotten really really small and it's not just that that's the way they've always lived like there's a big there's a big change the amount of conflict in the home again like is there conflict when you've teens of course there is but like wow like is it really hard to talk to my

teen for more than four minutes walking on eggshells to me is also a sign that we need additional help am I scared to intervene in a way that would actually be in line with my values that's not a good sign right then the other thing I just want to make sure everyone knows is I mean like seeking

additional help is a sign of every single thing that's right with a family and I think we think it's a sign of something that's wrong and it's like also a sign of what's right to your in terms of messaging that to your kid again I think about a kid who I used to saw seeing my practice she was

probably 16 when she came to me she was cutting serious right a lot right and I remember saying just intake how long have been doing this she was two years oh like did you see another therapist before you saw me she's like no she was like very like kind of you know kind of quippy and quick and I was

just like why and she's like well I told my parents that if they took me to a therapist I would go and I would just waste all their money I'd be quiet and then when they left me there I would leave and who's gonna stop a 14 year old from walking away and they might as well save their money because

they can't meet me okay and again I just kind of sensed to stay quiet and she's seriously one of the next thing she said is can you believe they let me make that decision literally said that wow validates everything you set up until now and it is this is why this is where like I feel like I

get my best ideas like that's right like a 14 year old can convince her parent that she won't go to therapy when she's cutting like that that is not okay and again then we go to okay so I'm gonna say to make it you are going I'm like no there's so much between that we're in these binary

states your kids feelings about therapy cannot dictate your boundary right but we can't just then come down harshly and so I coach parents and this all the time what do you say to a kid I love you hear me I love you we're in a tough stage I see this problem and I do think even when our kids get

older we can say this my number one job is to keep you safe it is not to keep you happy with me and I actually love you so much that I'm willing to do things that make you unhappy with me that is actually how much I care about you and so I am gonna be driving you and if you want to like curse

at me the whole time I will sit in that waiting room and you know I'm gonna do the next week I'm gonna tell you I love you I'm gonna do the same thing and I think adults hearing that on some level there's some internal truth like I probably needed that like that feels oddly good because there's

like you know I'm not messing around but there's this way whereas parents we've said like the way to show my kid I'm not messing around is to be mean to them like there was nothing mean about what I said I think it was more loving than saying to a kid okay let me know when you want to go

that is not loving and so I think like our teens sometimes in those moments they need us to do our job and like be the pilot like they it is this small amount of time where they're still a passenger when they're 18 they are the pilot and so we have this window there's nothing I want to probe more

into that I think you captured it beautifully and it gets back to this issue of safety like yes in letting them make their own decision when they're clearly in trouble like if anything could make a kid feel unsafe a teen or younger or adult it's that yes yes it's like laying the

passenger on the plane be like hey instead of rerouting how about you just come up here and fly that's like that's exactly that's literally what it is and they're like I can't believe you believe my little protest now I'm in the cockpit like this they don't they don't want that

that's why their words teens words it's not that we don't believe them like as I just can't begin believing their words often are a representation of their fears all of us in our worst moments get out like I feel like sometimes like that's their fear or like they're kind of talking to their

emotion they're so like they're not really talking to you in that moment they're so dysregulated and like just learning to like not take it so literally and be like what am I really believing my kid isn't paying their cutting my kid isn't paying their smoking weed 30 times a day and don't

go to class like I'm the like I know that they that they need help and again any parent who can say that like to me is like the strongest parent and that is such a sign of health I don't think I'd still be alive today if it wasn't for non-parent mentors and it just examples in the world

these aren't always people that were like hey I'm gonna take you under my wing and be your mentor actually that was a rarely the case but people in my real life were in my you know reading or you know there wasn't YouTube back then but I'm sometimes now you know people I'm a huge fan

for instance of that these youngy and psychologist James Hollis who has these beautiful lectures on making a life and I'm learning so much like I consider them a mentor sorry James you didn't have a choice you're your mentor but these people that we can internalize certain healthy aspects that

our parents just just apparently can't seem to arrange for themselves and that we wish they had but I think that we as children of all ages like we want perfect parents we don't get them um but it seems appropriate to me I love your thoughts it seems appropriate to me to have

you know kind of a foraging for examples of where we can get certain things that we can internalize for ourselves so that we can benefit that maybe our parents just aren't interested in capable of or even alive to provide us anymore yeah yeah I mean that like being everything to someone like

I don't want my kids to ever say that about me my mom was everything she fulfilled my every need again I do find that creepy whenever I don't know and like and just setting them up for so much relationship disappointment um my mom gave some things and you know we know that I also work a

lot of money with my kids like there is this mom like when kids have a sleepover at her house I mean it is the best sleepover experience like I see pictures and I'm like wow that was so thoughtful that was amazing she's like she puts it out she's creative like and me and my kids joke like

they're like yeah mom you you're like bottom of the list and that stuff and I am I am and like I know I'm toward the top of the list and other things I don't I don't want to be toward the first I don't want to hold myself to that standard that's like a great way to implode so yeah being able

to say to my kid oh you guys want to have a sleepover you'd rather go to her house because that's okay that's not an indictment of me and so maybe this is some quote mentor like figure for someone who can like put these details and make people feel really taken care of in that way that's great

and I think yes giving your kid permission and encouragement again I think it's such a gift to them later on like yeah our relationship with our kids becomes not only the foundation their expectations for their relationship with other ultimate I also think it's literally what they're

attracted to I think when they're attracted to someone later on it's just the activation of that like earliest attachment and so if they can get activated around someone who seems to be pretty attuned and respectful and validating and boundary because they also have other things in their life

and not everything like that's a privilege to say that's what I'm expecting so I think those other relationships and as a parent to hear your kids say my coach taught me this thing and sometimes say they say it in a caddy way so much better than what you said to do it lacrosse just to like

take a deep breath and again this is where you can say like I'm still a good parent even outside this moment that's I'm so glad you're talking to me about this I believe you tell me more about this like such a beautiful example for your kid so being able to validate and embrace the fact that

there are other sources of healthy upbringing is yeah not just perhaps is clearly a good thing do I have that right I think that's right and I think if that's hard for a parent what I'd say is like it's a question without an exact answer but like where did I learn that I'm supposed to be

everything to someone like and is that and I think a lot of women we learn that in our families of origin to be good girls which really just means I have no wants and needs my own and I just kind of gaze out and see how I can do things for you and I can be everything for

you and then we have kids we don't realize we put that on to them but like you said those patterns travel with us and I find it like very believing maybe like if I don't wow it just gave me like a good percentage of energy back like I can I can do like so many other things now

you know it's very it's like empowering I love it something that it it's an unpleasant topic just by as soon as people hear the word but it's something that I think it comes up on the child side the teen side and the parenting side and in adult relationships of all kind which is

the dreaded entitlement oh dirty word and parenting entitlement maybe we could put some definition on entitlement and talk about when it's bad is it always bad when it's neutral and when it's I don't know is it ever good I don't mean title it doesn't sound like it's ever good but yeah

health there is a healthy entitlement right and I think that is kind of the entitlement to like I'm allowed to want things and I'm only allowed to at moments in my life even act on that to turn that want into a fulfillment of my want I think that actually goes back to what we're just saying like

versus how can I please you like maybe I want to do something so I think that healthy entitlement that's a good thing but when I think when I hear parents say like please I just don't want an entitled kid they're not talking about that right and they're talking about and to me the story

from my practice is just the key thing that makes us parents cringe was this family of singing New York City and they they were they were very wealthy and they had the 16 year old son and they're flying back from Hawaii or to Hawaii and they were just getting ready to board and first class was

boarding and the son goes up and they're like oh so we were not like in first class we've to wait and he had a basically a full tantrum in the airport like every parents first nightmare literally and they came to me after it's being like how did we like how did we get here right now

this is a family in general too they flew first class they'd private planes had a lot of you know money but entitlement to me doesn't always have to be about buddy I'm gonna give you my definition of entitlement I think it's very different but to me the definition like boundaries is useful

because it gives you a pathway of what to do I think entitlement is the fear of frustration beautiful because if we go back okay that thing didn't start at 16 and if we we started you know I started kind of collecting stories and right this is a kid who they had and again like they had

a driver there's nothing wrong with having a driver but I'm just thinking about like waiting for a subway it's frustrating just miss the subway we're gonna be late like no right this was a kid who didn't make instead of seeing it all don't remember like they make the soccer team don't worry

we have someone who's gonna take you to the nearby town in New Jersey and get on that soccer team right um and I think about what this kid started to learn about being frustrated and it was kind of like frustration comes up and what gets layered next to it is someone else bringing you

an exit frustration exit from frustration maybe even exit to success right and then I started to think like well what would it be like if there was 16 years of kind of a guy because it's a time of that pattern and that circuit reinforcing because what you're really learning as a kid

I'm frustrated and that's very overwhelming for me but like the adults around me must be scared of my frustration because they won't let me sit in it they won't let me feel it they will actually kind of run in circles to to not have me feel so I actually encode my frustration

next to fear now I'm 16 and I'm expecting first class and I get you know lowly coach you know it's not people are like oh what a spoiled kid like I actually I feel like this kid was like insanely vulnerable in that moment this kid was like I'm frustrated and what I expect to happen

and what I know to happen isn't here and so it is explosive it appears as entitlement on the surface but it is a deep intolerance and almost fear of frustration which is in your body so you're terrified of a feeling that is living in your body and it looks demanding because it kind

of is desperate like you can't let this happen wow fear of frustration as the definition of entitlement lands like square in the bullseye for me and yet yes I think we all default to the kind of stereotypical example of the ultra wealthy family kid there was that movie The Toy in the 80s

was really dreadful concept actually you know a kid that was just given everything and then wanted a person who is really like talk about foul I mean it's just you know just bad at every level and then they tried to create this narrative where then you know there's a deeper understanding

about humans and stuff that evolves from it but but the starting point was you know and I I've observed this and certainly not my family but other families where kids are given everything they want it never feels like enough big surprise dopamine it's a real thing the circuits recalibrate

to a higher threshold they want more and more and more it's like that movie Wall Street what's your number more okay all right nothing wrong with wanting things but with without a ceiling on any of that and without a ceiling on on pleasure or bounds on experience it crushes everybody

that's also what that movie was about it just crushes people so to build that into a child's neurology just seems like the worst possible thing because it's not about the world being a place of immense possibility it's about the world being a place of of like snakes and broken glass

everywhere except this narrow knife edge path that you follow that is all about infinite resources and ease that's right and I when I think it's fear is because if you're in fear you're in like a threat state which is why it when kids are in that state or adults it seems like nasty like and it's

mean when you're you know and there's this like narrowing of your eyes right so I think that's really you know what's happening and it's not it's not always tied to money but the truth is and like money can easily buy a kid's way out of frustration and by the way it buys the parent

out of having to tolerate their frustration while the kid is frustrated and so it's tricky I think I've I've now like you know talked to a bunch of parents who grew up in a very different way we're very successful and I get it they're like I feel like I've I've I've literally have earned

the right to have certain parts of my life feel a lot easier right and like how do I though not how do I raise a kid who isn't entitled right and it is a conundrum right and I think I think like you know we raise our raise our kids in a candy store it's hard to expect them to appreciate candy

right and so like how do we how do we bounce that gratitude the entitlement and I do think though that idea is like we just have to and sometimes like other people hearing this would be like yeah like my life is frustrating all the time and some peoples are right they won't end up with entitlement

but for other families they don't have to be like I I have to like dose it I have to make sure my kids literally have experiences and I probably have to go through it too where we are almost like purposefully making sure they get enough of that you know so they can build different circuits

yeah so much shown back there I think it's clear that some of this is tied to financial means I think it's a it's a pretty scary thing when someone looks out on the landscape of the world as infinite possibility without any frustration as we talked about earlier the ability to lean

into hard things as a skill that can extend to other things is so valuable do you think that some of the smaller practices that any kid any parent any family regardless of means can lean into can really help they're like like like you know some people say grace or prayer before a meal others

simply express gratitude but you know stopping thinking about you know I mean being breathing bring being ambulatory being any number of good things that allow us agency in life about to eat food I mean those those moments I think I think I think I know that our nervous system reflects

on those yeah how could they not and just recognizing that at least something went into the creation of the meal I think for like the entitlements up in the frustration like there's all these small moments that we can start to make a difference and I think it's saying to yourself just

because I can doesn't mean I will so like my kids young and I pick them up from a play date and I let's say I have a babysitter at home or my husband at home and I'm like I have to go to a store and some errands I think it's like can you drop me off first maybe I'm like you know what

like no like you're gonna come with me and I'm not gonna say this way I'm boring errands because you just have to tolerate that like sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do and like you're not gonna learn that by me telling you that you're gonna learn that by experiencing that

you know something with my kids you know the other day we were at an airport and like there were you know in the airport like it kind of winds around like to get and there was like no one there so they started to like duck under all the like things and it just made me think like as a small

moment like entitlement also was like the rules don't apply to me in some ways and I was like and I just remember that you guys when we're in airports oh that the the lines that leading up to security yeah and you know what I was gonna see like mess them up and it wasn't like forever but

I was like you guys like these things someone put these here for a reason and we're just gonna it's like like I think these things are have to be small it's a small amount of frustration but it's just like I don't always get to duck the line sometimes I have to like walk a little longer

or I remember my kids saying and I'm not immune to this like I am in a financial position where I have someone come sometimes help me be my housekeeper right and she'll fold the laundry and I remember on a Sunday my son said to me he was younger like why do we have to fold the laundry

kind of like I don't think he said it but he was kind of like don't we have someone you know who could do that and I remember being like this is a moment where we're gonna fold the laundry on Sundays you know who loves folding laundry maybe some people like I don't I don't love

undoing the dishwasher it is inherently not that enjoyable but like and so frustrating it's just like not great and like I know I need to make my kids do that like they just have to go through that mundane thing um and so I think there's all of these moments taking your kid with you on errands

you know doing the laundry right before you say to your kid let's go to try out on another soccer team just like oh you don't make the team maybe maybe let it go two days that's at least two more days of feeling upset and frustrated right they don't have to be these big grand things but all of

those little moments can add up in a really positive way what's your stance on household chores and should kids be paid for household chores um yes I have a whole guide to chores and allowance and I actually you know I think there's a lot of salt like should they be separate I don't know

I think it could be on either way but to me the question for a parent is like what is the point for me like what is my goal for chores what is my goal for allowance right and I think that has to then structure how we do it so my guess is for chores part of it is I want my kid to

number one maybe like help around the house want them to have that purpose also like I know for me for chores like sometimes your life involves doing boring things that is just true and like I want my kids to know that which means I have to experience it that's one of the reasons we do chores

so for me if that's one of the reasons I'm not going to pay my kid because for me in my family what I think my kids need to get out of it it's just like knowing that sometimes you do boring things as part of being a good human for someone else that might be totally different so I think we're

just ask ourselves as parents like what am I trying to accomplish and then let me structure it around that across the course of today's discussion I've been feeling both immense gratitude uh and relief for certain uh quote unquote hardships that I experienced um and things that my

parents made me do or ways that they were negligent and I was forced to figure things out also um you know something so I was like how like wish they had done this I think everyone listening to this will feel that way um and if you're lucky enough to still be in the parenting child

burden or being a child process then there's still time so I guess there's always still time um my introduction in this episode I touched on a few of these but um tell us what you're doing these days to help parents and kids um indirectly or directly to be more effective in their

relationships and um and you know I know you you've written about this in books and you have a wonderful social media account on Instagram and elsewhere I follow it um and it's there's oh so much learning there but um you know how are you translating this knowledge into um actionable

programs yeah that is my like that is what gets me out of bed every morning is translating I always like deep thoughts actionable practical can do with today's strategies yes that's the that's the only way I can work I'm like tell me what to do to put that idea into action love it so uh

well you know a couple years ago one of the things that really struck me was just like I really did feel like really this is so messed up we parents have the hardest job and it's the one that impacts the world the most and I don't think any of us think the world is in like a great place right now

right yeah that's not right and this is and I remember someone coming up to me and saying parenting is also the only job you care about on your deathbed and I think that's probably true if you have kids so like for every reason this should be the place that they're like that we invest the most

or that the system is like set up to help us right and most people I know they don't want a parent the exact same way as they were parent and maybe take parts and that is the way well parents just kind of the language we use and learning a new language we know is totally possible like

dualingo has showed us that you can learn a new language it's hard sometimes you revert to your language of origin especially in stressful moments same thing parenting and then you go back and so I remember saying to some people around me like I want to create that like kind of dualingo

for parents it is learning a new language and we should have a product where we have resources in one place we should be able to connect to other parents are on the globe we're kind of doing this with us we should have access to experts we trust not because they always know better

but they might just help us have a different mindset and some ideas to help us again and me my mind is just act more in line with your own values that's what it's about and so that's what we created and that's what I'm working on and that's our good inside membership and so excited about

all the ways you know that's already impacting tens and tens of thousands of parents and that's where the resources are it's bite size it's actionable we're really known for our scripts it's like what do I say to my kid when like literally a joke like we have a script for that

um and I think in a small way people like they like I come for the scripts and then I stay for the revolution like this is actually a journey of my own sturdiness and honestly becoming a sturdier more confident leader is the only way we can raise sturdy more confident kids

well I've said this again and again throughout today's discussion but I love it I love the gathering of information the organizing it and dispersing it in actual ways and you've done all of that and you're continuing to do that and you also have the clinical background and you're

apparent so you're speaking from professional and immediate experience and um you put oh so much work into it I can tell that by this the directness and simplicity of the actionable that you've taught us today and also how much resides underneath those direct simple actionable just

beautiful I've had many conversations on this podcast with many brilliant people including yourself but this is among the ones that I really say has really me thinking and I don't think I've ever said wow so many times during the discussion here and there's just so much knowledge to be gleaned from

from today's discussion thanks to you and I just on behalf of myself and everyone listening um parents and kids and those who want to be parents and um and those who don't um and who have made the choice not to and are certainly engaged in other forms of relationship and this is

just absolute gold that you've provided us so thank you ever so much um your generosity your clarity of communication and and your and the heart behind it really comes through so thank you thank you so much thank you for joining me for today's discussion about parent child and other types of

relationships with dr becky kennedy to learn more about dr kennedy's work please see the links in the show note captions including the links to her bestselling book good inside and to the online learning platform for better parenting you can also find links to our social media accounts as I

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