Practical Tools for Navigating Big Behaviors with Tosha Schore

continuously shame somebody eventually they're going to become immune to shame which is actually a much worse problem than whatever it is that you think you're solving by shaming people so that's another observation that I think is true well I think I I'll just say that I think shame as a tool is horrible yeah shame is not a parenting tool that's probably a principle that is probably well established I agree it is probably well established I agree hello and welcome to raising men

I'm Shawn Dawson and today we're tackling one of the hardest parts about raising boys in my opinion which is aggression when our sons they hit or they kick or scream at least my gut reaction is often fear I'm afraid about his future I I draw this line into the future that oh my gosh this is the way he's gonna be when he's an adult I feel I fear that I'm failing and and often I I react or my gut reaction is to react with harshness or shaming but our guest today Tasha Shore

points out that aggression

it's not a sign of a bad kid so to speak but a signal of a frightened one Tasha is the founder of Parenting Boys Peacefully and the out with aggression program and she's the author of listen 5 Simple Tools to meet your Everyday Parenting challenges she's here to show us how we can cultivate peace in and out of the home with our sons Tasha thank you so much for joining us on raising thank you so much for inviting me on

I'm excited for this conversation me too me too so you talk about something that I it just absolutely struck me when I encountered it and that is the bad guy myth and the way that I would describe that and please correct me if I'm wrong is that the I we it's this idea that we mislabel boys as troublemakers when actually they're just struggling they're trying to make it work and so for example data from the center for Social Justice shows that boys are twice as likely to get in trouble

at school as girls and I think this is a symptom of that how much of that lost boy trajectory starts with misinterpreting their reactivity as a character flaw rather than an emotional signal I think a lot of it starts with that and I think you touched on something which is equally important which is the fear that we feel as a result because our fear is then driving our response so we're in a fear cycle they're scared and acting out and then we're scared and acting out

and then we spiral down together and so in order to get us out of this um

sort of world world pool somebody's got to change and if there's one thing we know is that we can't change anybody else

so we gotta start with ourselves yeah and we're the ones with the the fully developed prefrontal cortex we're the ones who you know can control what we're doing and by the way we're the ones who are supposed to be training our sons to to be effective in the world right absolutely and and it's possible I think people feel like you know I've got so much baggage I'm I'm 30 I'm 40 I'm 50 I've I've you know my parents parented me in a certain way yeah I want to stop yelling

I want to do things differently but I just can't and I I wanna say that you absolutely can it I see people change all the time but just before we got on this recording

I was working with a couple uh from Ireland I have been working with this couple on and off for the last few years and she got on and told me like I just want to tell you like I scheduled this not because there's a crisis everything is going really really well but I just wanted to have you in my world and be able to bounce ideas and I asked how her husband was doing and she said one of the biggest things that's shifted in their family and that has helped to stop the aggression

is that they used to have this cycle where and they also have three boys like I did or do and they're now men that's why I said did right and and and one of the boys would get aggressive about something or the two you know two of them would go at each other and dad would just get all fired up and get scared do that you know forward fear thinking that you were just talking about oh my God what is gonna happen they're gonna kill each other they're gonna hate each other blah blah

blah and he would start yelling and and and and being harsh and shaming and all of those things and they would spiral and she said he doesn't lose it anymore

and that has completely shifted the dynamics in the family what a powerful statement I mean just think about what that's like from his experience and I I I feel this because I was kind of that way early on I found that my son could push buttons in me that I didn't know I have ordinarily my whole life I've been this real level headed guy I don't I'm not quick to anger anything like that but then I found that my son could trigger rage in me in a way that no one has ever been able to do

yeah surprise surprise yeah this is what our kids do to us yeah it it's it's it's absolutely amazing and um it was a real unlock for me

when I finally realized that I was screaming at him to calm down I was like wait a minute that's insane like he's not gonna calm down because I'm screaming at him it's gonna it's only gonna make things worse and I realized we were in the toilet bowl absolutely and and the thing is we feel so badly when we do that we don't want to do that you didn't want to do that that's right it's just

it's just the fallback when our toolboxes are empty when we're running on empty it's just what comes out automatically it's what was done to us it's what we see in the movies we we have to retrain our brains we have to retrain ourselves in order to respond differently and like you said earlier like one of the things that's really gonna help is to reframe aggression as not the sign of

oh my God this kid is totally screwed up and he's a psychopath and he's a horrible person but this is some form of communication like he is struggling he is hurting inside he is likely scared his his his radar right his limbic system in his brain is sensing a lack of safety even if you don't see that and he's responding accordingly so if we can get curious there's lots that we can do

yeah I I I love that term about getting curious or or reacting with compassion instead of as a way I have to tamp down this activity this this reactivity that he's having otherwise he's going to grow up into be a man and beat people up right right so what once we have that recognition and once we sort of have this intellectual understanding okay this is a fear response from him now what do we do

well I think we always start with ourselves so I always when I'm working with a family that's struggling with aggression the first place we're gonna start well the first place we're gonna start is like safety but part of that is how we respond so I like to start off with parents and talk about how do we get you into good enough parenting shape notice not perfect parenting shape not I'm never gonna make a mistake not I'm never gonna wish I said or did something differently but good enough

that's all all I gotta do is good enough yeah and so

that could be different things for different people it might be getting uh support in in terms of like having the physical presence of another person it might be having somebody on the other end of a phone line in case you need to call them for support it it could look a lot of different ways it might be simply telling your partner or whoever is living with you in your house that you're gonna do some experiments um in terms of responding to aggression differently than you have in the past and

and communicating with them what their role could be or what you want them or don't want them to do how they can be involved or how could they they can be helpful or maybe the helpful is that they just stay stay back and let you do this for a while and you assure them that you'll let them know if you need help but there's a piece about

how do we get ourselves into good enough parenting shape and I just want to be clear like as we talk about the different aspects of dealing with aggression it's not linear right it's not like okay you're gonna do this and then you're gonna check that off I mean we're all working on ourselves for the rest of our lives yeah we're not gonna you know we're just we just want to be moving in the right direction so everything that we talk about is like it's it's a puzzle all the pieces fit together

but I would start there

and then we're gonna move into really strengthening our connection with our sweet boys because is the is the difference is the difference in is there a difference in the appropriate response when the aggression is two boys getting at it

versus when it's a boy and a girl I think so I think for me I mean for okay it depends on the context and what's going on obviously I think for me the reason that I focus on boys is not it is not about sort of physiological differences it's more about how we as adults respond differently to a boy's behavior versus a girl's behavior and that I think if if we can't admit that I think we're lying to ourselves because teachers like you said right teachers respond differently

administrators respond differently coaches respond differently um we respond differently there are studies that show that we respond differently to even a young baby boy's cry than we do to a baby girl's cry from a very early age in our child's life the world is treating them differently simply because they've been labeled a boy right that's a tremendous insight and it really affects it it I I I I once had my

my boy got sent home from school a couple of weeks ago and it was because he got into a fight with a girl a friend of his that I mean they're great friends and they got in a fight and he ended up holding her physically up against a fence and I you know I got called into the principal's office he got called in in into the principal's office and it was this huge thing and yet if he had done that to a boy and he has done that to boys before and boys have done that to him

it didn't turn into this enormous thing but because it was a girl it really did right

well so can I say so that's what I meant by like I do think there's context and so I think we can if you know if we're honest we can understand that yeah because there's yeah I'm not saying it's in it's inappropriate necessarily but it's definitely different right so there's there's a power differential differential in in genders and so um I think we as adults and all of this and you know I don't want you to fill in this information publicly but you know depending on the age

and the history of the relationship and and what not like it would make sense to respond in different ways um but I think there's always in the background this knowledge that we have to carry of of of men and boys using their power over girls so in this case there could have been something like that or there could not have been something like that and I think the default is like oh my God he's doing this to her right um and and and what I would say is that we need to put safety first okay

for sure so we want to make sure everybody's safe but then the part that we lose it at and I think this is true of schools it's true of us as parents is that we don't take the time to mend the relationship

right people will go to this place of oh but it's you know it's it's it's trauma inducing to you know retraumatizing for you know the the child who was pushed up against the fence for example to to relive it but that's how we build resilience is by expressing ourselves what did it feel like what you know what what happened what LED up to it what could we do differently what do we expect do we need an apology um you know what sort of mentoring does he need

to be able to show up differently next time like otherwise we're just kind of writing him off as a bad kid and we're basically throwing her into sort of a victim bucket right and neither one of those things is helpful right it would be so amazing and revolutionary

if we could help them repair and that doesn't mean that they're gonna be great friends forever and and sometimes there might be a rift that destroys a relationship that happens it happens in adult relationships as well sure but most often especially when kids are young if we take the time to help kids repair then they can go back to being friends yeah in this in this particular case um I ended up reaching out to the father of the girl who who is you know an acquaintance of mine you know

our friends are our our our kids are friends and so he's we have we you know we have a texting relationship and asking him what her experience was and all of that and it and it turned out that she was she felt she was really really upset about the incident but not because she was held up against the fence but because my boy got in trouble

and she felt like it was her fault that he got in trouble right I mean and those are the nuances and again that doesn't mean that what your boy did was okay nobody's saying that yeah but it's nuance there's more to it like what happens to that relationship what happens to her okay she feels in this case she says she she feels bad well that's that's not useful to their relationship either like like they could we we could facilitate a conversation about that or a repair around that as well

so anyway yes everything is is quite nuanced but yeah it it's sure does play a role but if if two people if two kids are boy girl or boy boy yes there's some differences but ultimately first of all we gotta keep everybody safe and then can we please focus in on that relationship I always say to my kids relationship first relationships first yeah you know social emotional peace first everything else you can learn later and make up later but like we have to nurture relationships yeah we do

that's a really fundamental thing isn't it we're herd animals and if you don't have a way of establishing and maintaining relationships with other humans you're broken in

in a way that the culture is gonna push you to the edge right and real relationships are relationships where you can mess up yeah and then repair yeah and then grow from that and move forward yeah so the the bringing it back to the steps the first step is about healing yourself and by fixing yourself so to speak um what happens after that so then I have parents really focus in on reconnecting with their sweet boys so you know some parents will come and they'll feel really they'll say you know

oh we're really connected like we have we have good times together other parents come and they're feeling like I hate this kid I can't stand him other parents are feeling like I'm terrified of him I don't wanna be alone with him I'm afraid he's gonna hurt me I mean there are all sorts of feelings that we're coming to this work with yeah but we have to take the time regardless to spend um some one on one time to really nurture those relationships so that not just so that the child

has some reserves of love to go on as he's moving through his world but also so that we can remember that we actually like the kid and we can feel inspired to want to help him do better and help things go better oftentimes when we I teach a practice called special time

and oftentimes there's sort of resistance on the part of the parents knowing ah don't feel like doing this it takes time um and then they'll come back to me and say like you know I thought this was for my kid but actually I'm really liking it yeah because there's amazing side effects like for example so many parents come to me and they're complaining that their boy never talks to them you know he doesn't tell me anything especially moms because a lot of moms are much more

sort of verbal in their processing and we wanna talk to our friends about our feelings and how things are going and we want our boys to do the same with us and some do and some don't and so they're wanting to get their kid to talk to them and he's just not and often times when they start this practice of special time one of the beautiful side effects is he starts sharing yeah so tell me more about special time what what is special time and and and how do we practice it

yeah special time is just a simple one on one time that you spend with your child where they get to lead so it's it's um it turns upside down kind of their daily experience as young children of adults running their lives right cause if you think about it if you have a young child if you have a young boy it's like you know brush your teeth get your clothes on go to school did you do your homework time for practice it's it's just we're constantly kind of pulling and tugging

and pulling and pushing and and and dictating what to do and then also what not to do you know stop yelling at your sister don't push your brother all all the things so so what special hand does is it gives him this timed little um bubble where he gets to be in charge and it's quite empowering and it's also enlightening for us because we get insights into his world I often call it a window into his world

yeah that's where he might share something that he wouldn't otherwise share because maybe when he usually comes home and he wants he has something on his mind and we start drilling him like a drill sergeant he kind of clams up and shuts down sure but if we're quiet and we're just following his lead in special time he gets to share what he wants when he wants on his own terms so it's it's nice and you also get to see like what he's interested in yeah

when you're not sort of dictating what's coming next yeah so special time is a great way to do it's not the only way to build connection but it's one 1 tool that I love parents to have in their toolbox and it has to be with no other kids around so it's really like showing them I am putting everything else aside

my email my work my partner if I have one your siblings if those exist right I am all in just for you and that's an amazing feeling and it's just one kid at a time right and even the other sibling is gone we're just doing this one kid one kid this this tool is one a one kid tool yeah I love this and how often would you recommend people do this you know it's there's there's no one size fits all I'll say to parent you know if you if you're coming to me for coaching and and you've got a kid who is

you know aggressive very aggressive on on the daily and multiple times a day

and there's sibling stuff or he's hurting you as a parent um you know we gotta we gotta do more if things are copacetic everybody's you know kind of moving along in life and everything's or most things are are going well and there's little blips here and there it's like whenever you can fit it in if you can do special time on the weekend for 10 15 minutes every weekend that would be great yeah but if it's every day you know I'm gonna say like we we're gonna do this every day every day yeah

cause he's screaming for help if he's acting like that yeah and we need to answer that call yeah one of the big unlocks for me in in in a way to that I that allowed me to keep in what I call my Sherlock brain as opposed to my Conan the barbarian brain right one of the big unlocks for me was to realize that

there's a tension and and both of my kids and all kids I think have live in this tension of they want connection and they want independence and sometimes they're feeling not independent enough and so they're trying to assert their independence by saying no all the time for example and sometimes they they're not getting enough connection and so they're spending more time trying to get connection and often times the way that their reflex to get connection is to act in ways

that make it harder to connect to scream and yell or throw tantrums and those sorts of things

and when I was able to take a step back and look at the 50,000 foot view and realize oh okay they're often seeking one of those two things then now all I need are tools to to enhance the connection or the independence in a way that's consistent with our values so I'm not going to respond in a favorable way to throwing the tantrum but I am still going to go try and establish additional connection right well one one of the things that's really cool another side effect of of special time

which is really cool is that our kids begin to ask for it and that's always how I know with clients that they're they're doing what they need to be doing and things are shifting because you're right like kids will ask for attention and call for attention and because they need it yeah I'll say um but often in ways that are really hard for us to respond to calmly or positively as parents but when you start the practice of special time and they start to realize on a subconscious level wow

when we're doing this like I feel better uh huh yeah and they're not like cognitively going over wow

I feel more connected to my dad or you know anything like that but like it's a somatic experience that they're having yeah they and and you call it something and it doesn't have to be special time but you call it something they then have a vocabulary word that they can use and they will start asking for it like I'll just say when one of my kids was really young he used to have such a hard time when I would go out for the evening like if it wasn't friends work whatever yeah um

and he would do that thing where he'd cling to my leg right the thing you can't get him off and crying and screaming and hitting and all the things and and it was like by the time I peeled him off and got myself you know out the door I felt horrible I mean how much fun was I gonna have how great was that evening gonna go I was just thinking about him and then I had this idea that I could start doing special time before I left and give him that sort of extra um sort of uh

you know inject a shot of connection yeah of connection before I left and things started to go better and then I don't know wasn't maybe a couple weeks later and I said hey

you know I'm going out tonight and he said well can we do special time before you leave wow right and so he then had the vocabulary to ask for the thing that he knew helped him with that transition yeah that is such a powerful skill or a powerful tool I love that okay so we've cared for ourselves we've connected deeply now so then if we're going through like aggression steps and and mind you I just wanna say everybody's different absolutely but if I were gonna go sort of a step by step

the next thing that I would probably have you do is pay attention to when the aggression happens because 99% of the parents who come to me will say things like it happens out of the blue or it's all the time and I've been doing this for a long time couple decades

I've never found that to be the case not ever yeah it's just not out of the blue there are always signs and when we can identify those patterns we empower ourselves to be able to take leadership roles and make plans for how we're gonna respond differently yeah I I love that yeah and then so OK so now I'm identifying the patterns and I realized that you know this happens I I I I experienced this very thing um if my boy's been spending too much time on his iPad watching YouTube videos um

he'll start to get aggressive yeah and so now what do I do yeah I mean I think that that's a big can of worms you just tossed out there yeah um I just wrote an email to my uh you know a newsletter to my to my uh followers this this last week about this I cannot tell you how many clients are coming to me in the last few months with their kids playing Roblox and are so addicted

that when the parents are asking them to get off they're getting punched in the stomach yeah they're getting like physically hurt things are getting broken like that's what this addiction is doing so I mean depending on where you're at with that like where parents are at I mean there's a lot of different things that we're gonna do yeah um but the big picture whether it be for tech or other you know other triggers for for the um aggression we're basically gonna be looking at

how do we set loving limits yeah for this child so and by a loving limit I I just mean the tone that we use is gonna be loving we're gonna give it to them as my mentor taught me like we're giving them a gift it's not a punishment a limit isn't a a punishment it's not like a consequence like if you do this then I'm gonna do that kind of a thing not that tone not that attitude at all it's more of the

the the tone of hey you know I noticed that when you play Roblox for an hour after school um when I ask you to turn it off we thought and you thought and I thought that it would just be an easy transition but what's happening is I'm actually getting hurt or things are getting broken so I thought this was gonna work and that was okay but it's not and so I'm gonna start holding limits around this and you can tell them ahead of time but then you're actually gonna learn how to bring a

limit like not just yell at but actually make the thing happen so a lot of limit setting with aggression a lot a lot and you to what extent do you should we give them input into what those limits ought to be um you know that depends on their maturity level it also depends on your values and your relationship yeah I would also say a litmus test that I like to use with parents is

are you confused about your limits or are you questioning this limit because you're afraid of how he's going to react to it or how he's gonna respond because if that's the case we need to revisit that yeah if you're just thinking to yourself well you know he likes to have a say in in in what happens and I'm I'm okay with sort of co creating this next plan with him and seeing how it goes as long as it you know X doesn't happen or why doesn't happen or it's within certain boundaries

then you could absolutely start there like I just worked with a couple um and and we had this exact conversation and they decided um because of who their boy is

and what they know about him he tends to be sort of a PDA kind of a profile and he he pushes back and and he does better when he gets to say and so there was a red line right they can't have the aggression after the test goes off but there are a few ways that we could go about doing that we could do we could go cold Turkey and do like a tech fast for two weeks or we could go back to um kind of a a time limit strategy that we had been doing a few months ago when and the aggression wasn't

you know wasn't present then so they decided that even though they knew which one he would likely choose they wanted to present him the option of hey

this isn't working yeah um so we're gonna try something different would you like this or this what do you think what would you like to try as the as the next experiment and so that would be an example of of parents who decided but a different set of parents could have decided something completely different and that would have been fine you get you're the expert on your family right you get to decide yeah I think you know my my instinct on that you know based on how I was raised right

which is one of the one of my fundamental things is that the way that I was raised is maladaptive for our modern society and in a lot of ways and the way that I was raised is my and my my gut reaction is okay I'm gonna bring the hammer if you're gonna have interact if you're gonna have that kind of aggression after you play Roblox well then no freaking Roblox right and then it it it turns into this absolute nightmare because the the aggression finds another outlet and it isn't it's

it ends up getting enhanced by that solution

rather than suppressed by it right and so what I would do in working with parents is say like you know what actually Sean I think you have a reasonable ask or a reasonable experiment to try which is to go cold Turkey and do a tech fast like I think that's reasonable like let's talk about if that aligns with your values of you know how and then we can play out like how we think your kids gonna react we can set you up for success in those situations and we can prepare you so that you can show up

still with that limit but in a loving way like I get I see this is hard we're gonna get through this yeah I know you can do it and I'm here to help because that's also empowering to them to know that they can actually do alright without it they don't want to be aggressive right like they they love that reassurance of I know you can do this and we're gonna get through this I'm gonna help you yeah they don't they actually don't wanna feel that way either no they feel like they do but they don't

they feel horrible yeah I I find another one of my uh reflexes that doesn't really work all that well is to like

try and stop and give him a lecture oh I love that one yeah and and it's almost like I feel like I can reason him out of the tantrum or or reason him out of the the like OK I've taken the the iPad away and now I'm gonna sit him down and make him listen to me drone on for 10 minutes about the importance of balance in life and all this BS and I mean you've you've done a lot of you you speak very negatively uh to that and it was it was eye opening to me tell me more about that yeah yeah I I'm

I'm a big like zip your mouth shut coach yeah I'm not a let's name the feelings coach because what I've seen over 20 years of doing this is that 99.9% of the time when we try to like name the feeling or if we are moving in with like you said this lecture about life and balance and all the things that are you know important to us and rightly so it doesn't land yeah right it doesn't land in that moment but it often also doesn't land outside the moment right and and I'm just very pragmatic

if you're coming to me like there's aggression going on or your boy is struggling like I want things to go better and I know that they can and that's just not gonna help it I just say to parents straight up like okay

I would just say to you like how's that going for you Sean is that working yeah is that working yeah and it doesn't work and it doesn't work I mean one of the one of the things that I realized and and it goes back to that metaphor of the Sherlock Holmes brain versus the cone on the barbarian brain

the the kids in cone on the barbarian bro and if you try and use Sherlock tools to to get to him in in Conan mode it's not gonna happen it's exactly the same thing if I'm you know having a yelling screaming fight with my wife it's not gonna it's not gonna happen it doesn't work with adults either it sure as heck isn't gonna work with a with a with a 5 year old kid yeah no I agree I I I I really agree and I think there's just like a fundamental misunderstanding also

just about why they're acting out in this way and there's I talk about the the can versus the won't and I think when we're responding in that way with the lectures and whatnot we're in the mindset of my kid you know won't do what he knows is right or won't do what he should do um and and that's a really disempowering place to be like I don't even care if it's true or not it just is disempowering for us I would much rather have you in that mindset of he's doing the best he can always like yeah

he just can't do better right now which isn't to say we're gonna excuse the behavior but what it does is it makes us refocus back on ourselves yeah and think about how can we modify what we're doing whether that be with limits or connection or you know play which we haven't stepped into but which is another thing that I really talk about in terms of um aggression like how do we use play strategically like how can we use these things

to help make the situation better because he doesn't want to be acting this way he just can't do differently in this moment yeah and we react as I love that framing oh he won't behave in this way it's almost like saying oh he won't lift this 200 pound box right like you wouldn't say that but you do say it about behaviors well he doesn't have it's the same exact thing in the 200 pound box situation he doesn't have the strength or the skill or the muscles and it's exactly the same thing

with the intellectual skills the intellectual muscles the intellectual strength he doesn't have to be able to adjust his behavior it's the exact same thing and yet we treat it differently I agree I I often use a broken arm example because I think parents really get it as I'll say to them look if he broke his arm and he had um you know a something that he had to write for school for homework and his he was right handed and his right arm was in a cast and he couldn't hold a pencil right

you wouldn't be yelling and screaming him screaming at him about you know like get that pencil in your hand you need to write this homework out you know you wouldn't you would get creative you'd you'd be like alright well do you want to dictate and all write it or you know maybe there's some AI tool that you could use to do it

right you'd help them get creative yeah and and we gotta do the same thing when it's just an emotional hurt rather than a physical hurt so let me ask you a provocative question of something that I've been thinking a lot about because what this brings to mind is that when you sit down and lecture them or or you know treat them as if they're not doing their best uh or they're doing it intentionally essentially what you're doing is shaming them you're you're kind of trying to make them feel shame

for not doing the right thing and I have a hypothesis and I want your feedback on it is and the hypothesis is that there's never actually a valid use for shame as a parent what is your reaction to that I love that you're asking me that question right now because I've been thinking about it a lot um I've been thinking about it a lot because I recently did a training I'm now trained in the space program it's a program that Eli Lebowitz at Yale

put together to help kids with anxiety and OCD okay and during that training um there was a section around aggression and a lot of what he does and what he teaches is very similar to what I do but one thing really struck me and I'm trying to play around with it right now and he said um that if we think about like domestic violence right if there's a if there's aggression in the home let's just say one parent is being um violent towards another secrecy is a problem right

we need to go public with it to protect the person and to move forward on the healing you know on the healing journey yeah absolutely and he said it's the same thing with this aggression and he said something to the effect of I'm totally paraphrasing that that like a little bit of shame is okay is useful for the child in terms of being able to stop the aggression I'm not saying I agree or I disagree I'm simply playing with this right now with clients um in a way that I haven't before

so part we talked earlier about setting up for success and setting ourselves up for success right when we're first starting to address aggression and one of the things there is is like I said are there people that we need to tell um how do we use the resources in our life and he introduced an idea that I hadn't I thought about which is to use what he calls supporters in a in a really specific way where the child knows that each time they're aggressive we are going to tell that adult

that supporter and then that supporter reaches out to the child now what's interesting here is that yes right there's a little bit of shame there because any of us

when we do something you know mean or hurtful to somebody we love and and and we know other people we care about know about it we feel shame yeah but we also wanna do better yeah and the way that the that supporter comes in and talks to the child is very aligned with everything that we've been talking about here it's supportive it's loving it's like you know I I love you you're a great kid like I know you don't want to hurt your mom um you know I heard from her that

after she asked you to turn off your Roblox yesterday that you punched her um you know we know that's not okay so next time you feel that um how about you shoot me a text or how about you call me or I don't know like I'm just making this up on the spot or or or or what what do you think we should do next time what do you think we should exactly what's our plan so there's yeah something I love that you just asked me about shame because two weeks ago I would have said there's no place for shame

no shame never we don't want to shame a child yeah and I'm always open to learning because like I said I'm very pragmatic I want the aggression to stop I mean I have great success with families but if we can do it faster um

and and and more efficiently and stop the aggression sooner in a way that's still supportive of the child you bet I'm in on that so I'm playing around with this so I don't know I I and I've been thinking a lot about it too and what but what one of the things so I've got I've got a couple of thoughts on it that I'd love to share and get your feedback on one of them is that I feel like shame is a tool that our society and our culture uses to communicate this favor and it is really powerful our

our feeling our need to be part of the herd is so strong that when we start to feel that shame that societal shame it becomes such a powerful force we almost want we can't we feel like we can't live without getting rid of it and that's one thing another thing is so it's really really powerful but as with many powerful things it loses its effectiveness if it's overused and so if you continuously shame somebody eventually they're gonna become immune to shame which is actually a much worse problem

than whatever it is that you think you're solving by shaming people so that's another observation that I think is true yeah what do you think about those two things well I think I I'll just say that I think shame as a tool is horrible

yeah shame is not a parenting tool let's just there is OK that that that's that's probably a principle that that we can that is probably well established I agree yeah I I I I don't think our goal is ever to use shame to transform behavior yeah um I'm just getting curious with this new thing if there's a way to bring something that you know Brene Brown talks about shame some kind of to paraphrase sloppily um you know grows in in darkness yes and so we don't want to keep that aggression locked up

in a dark room right because that child is feeling ashamed and ashamed because of what he has done and is doing continually with the aggression hurting somebody that he loves yeah so that shame is growing anyway so I'm going like well can we how do we compare that shame with the tinge of shame that he might feel if I tell grandma but grandma comes back lovingly saying I know this is hard but I'm 100% sure that you can do it yeah I heard this happened right and I know it's hard to do differently

but let's make up another plan I know it's hard but I know you can do it yeah so shame is not a parenting tool but maybe there's a way when it happens naturally we can we can use it to our advantage it's tough it's a it's a tough thing but I I I will say one other thing on that which is that there's always attention and so anytime anytime I find myself thinking a is always the right way to go there's almost always a B that is diametrically opposed to that

and the real answer is somewhere between a and B and so never I think we get go ahead well I just say I think we get stuck on sort of like the the little details of how we're gonna respond yeah and and I think we can just be broader like what if we paint it with a broader brush and say OK if our child is struggling they are they are needing us in some way they are needing connection with us right um and so what's a way that we can offer them connection

right now and that way might be different than it was five minutes ago and it might be different than it looks in an hour and it might be different than it looks tomorrow but yeah we're always asking ourselves like I'm always wanting us to be asking ourselves how can I help that child like in Dan Seagals word how can I help him feel felt uh huh feel my love just because your parents well I do love him okay it's like great I love my kids too sometimes they feel that and sometimes they don't

depending on how I'm showing up and what state they're in right so if we just put connection at the forefront I think the details kind of fall into place yeah I think that's a beautiful way to to cut the knot I you mentioned something about a play and I wanted I wanted to let you riff on that for a moment talk to me about the the need for boys to play yeah I mean I think human beings in general need to play and I think boys often times not always but often times play rougher than um

a lot of people are comfortable with and so I think that we have to work on ourselves so that we can get a little bit more comfortable with that rough and tumble kind of play if that's something that our boy really thrives on and so for example like often times I'll have a mom come to me and caught two boys and and they're going at each other hard like they wrestle and they're rolling and they're jumping and they're doing all the things and often someone will end up getting hurt at the end

and she's going she's like they're killing each other they're hurting she's trying to stop them and and I would suggest let's let's start by asking them like do y'all want some help here are you doing OK because our perception of what's going on is often very different from what's going on for them and so I just think we wanna be sensitive there's no again there's no one one thing that's always gonna be true every child is different but in general rough and tumble play is a great way to connect

yeah sweating together laughing together whether you're adults or children or adults at with children like it it it it breeds connection which is what we want right we laugh together we feel closer we sweat we feel closer we we get bonked we get to support each other when we're hurt it builds connection it builds closeness and those are all things that are like the the foundation for the sort of whole house that we need to build around the aggression falling away

I think that's not a good metaphor but essentially like we need we need that we need that rough and tumble yeah and and and often times parents that I work with have to work through some discomfort around that or they go too hard yeah right there are some parents who are just like yeah let's get in there and play but they're like pummeling the kid right with the pillow and he's like wow this is too hard yeah we need to be aware like the idea isn't like as the parent that we're gonna like

you know play the crap out of our kid no it's like let them win if they're little and if they're bigger you still kind of wanna give them a chance you gotta play harder right cause it's not fun for them if you're gonna 10 year old and you're playing as if he's three it's not fun you have to up the resistance but you're gonna play with that to to the level where there's laughter happening and the last thing I'll just say about this is when we have aggression um parents often feel like

if they're playful in their response that it's condoning the behavior yeah and I just really want to say out loud that that is not the case our goal is to connect our goal is to help our child sense that we see his goodness underneath the behaviors and that we're gonna help him through and play is a great way to do that it's not sending the message okay your behavior is okay it's sending the message okay I see you're struggling I'm not gonna take those behaviors seriously

I'm gonna try to get at you from another angle I'm being strategic in my parenting yeah you're almost modeling okay look this is an appropriate way to get the thing that you're after over in this inappropriate behavior yeah yeah I like that a lot if there are people out there right now who are dealing with aggressive kids what should they do if they want help right away what should they do yeah I have a few ways that I help parents so if aggression is the No. 1 issue

um I have a course called out with aggression a step by step practice to stop your voice aggressive behavior and lift your parenting confidence and I can give you the link to that and it's a course that brings you through all the steps that I just mentioned but with live support so I will be there and there's a community of people who will be there to answer your questions and to cheer you on and all of that so it's not just you know here go figure it out um so if aggression is top of mind

and that is something that you're ready to commit to nipping in the bud and you're ready to start that would be the best place to start if a group experience is something that you've discovered doesn't work well for you you tend to not show up and you need you know the personal trainer I do have one on one coaching as well that could be because you're struggling with aggression in your family it could also be for you know anxiety it could be for sleep issues or sibling issues

or whatever I do do one on one coaching and then lastly if you feel like you know things are a little bit rocky not horrible but a little bit rocky or you know they're okay but you just want to be in a community of parents who are committed to parenting their boys peacefully and protecting that their boys right to to feel and process emotions and grow into emotionally intelligent men and just want to be in a community of people who are actively committed to that and thinking about that regularly

I have um a membership community called Parenting Boys Peacefully and we would be happy to welcome you into that as well I love all of those resources and those links are in the show notes Tasha thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today and sharing your wisdom I uh it is so much in line with the mission of raising men and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it I really appreciate the opportunity to share my thinking with you thank you for trusting me with your audience

I I don't take it lightly so thank you thank you Tasha Shore is the founder of Parenting Voice Peacefully and the out with aggression program and also the author of listen 5 Simple Tools to meet your Everyday Parenting challenges check her out in the show notes and remember you are a great parent raising men is produced by Phil Hernandez this episode was edited by Ralph Tolentino