What Boys Need Now: A Mindful Parenting Framework with Hunter Clarke-Fields

it's parents themselves like we have to have a lot of compassion for ourselves and we have to take a good look at ourselves and to be able to take care of ourselves because this is an incredibly incredibly hard job and I think just the raising good humans comes from a place of deep compassion for parents cause it's so hard to be a parent we're so we have so little you know in the United States we have very few resources directed at parents and very little support and we're all on our own

hi welcome back to raising Men today

on the podcast we're joined by Hunter Clark Fields she is the best selling author of Raising Good Humans and Raising Good Humans every day and she's a creator of the Mindful Mama podcast and Mindful Parenting training Hunter's books bring clarity wisdom and real tactical tools that we can use right away so let's jump right in hunter welcome to raising men thank you I'm so glad to be here Shawn

I think it's it's an honor to have you I I really really appreciate you taking the time so tell me what is a good human to you that's a good question I mean when I think about that what I want for my kids and what I want for other kids is I want them to be um to feel comfortable in their own skin I want them to feel you know secure and comfortable in their own skin so that and so they can process their emotions and they can go you know make choices

and go out into the world and do what they wanna do you know kind confident kids who are

you know a a a little aware of themselves aware of themselves aware of others but I want that feeling of just comfort in their own skin that's kind of really what I'm what I'm going for for when I think about a good human cause then from that secure base of solidity and security then they can just make all kinds of decisions about the world and how to be yeah you need a secure base to thrive and you know that's that's really what you want for your kids right

you want them to thrive maybe even more than you did yeah yeah yeah I mean yeah you do want it kind of more than than you did but I think that one of the interesting things about

you know parenting is that it always sort of points back to ourselves you know like we have um enormous influence on the the sort of emotional weather in our household um in our kids you know as far as like feelings and a sense of security and ease go that's those are things that um you know we humans we inter are like we feel each other's feelings yeah very palpably even through zoom you and I are talking you can you you'll be you know without knowing whether I'm tense or whether I'm not tense

or all of those different things and I can see the same about you and so when you're in the same room in the same household with your kids they can feel that so much so we have you know we want that for them we want them to thrive so much and and but it's important to realize that like the best parenting that we're ever doing is in modeling so if we're show you know we can't just tell them how to be and hope for it for them we have to we have to live what we want our kids to learn

we have to show them how to how to do those different things right we have to model right I think that's the most important thing is that you know

you know we all want our kids to be able to stop crying and calm down and regulate emotions and things like that but they need to watch us do it so we need to so for a lot of us we need to sort of learn how to do it ourselves cause I mean at least for me I was taught like just don't cry and go to your room basically don't have those feelings or whatever it is right and and and really we have to recognize that um you know there's nature and there's nurture and nature is really really strong

and kids come in all kinds of genetic flavors et cetera but we do have enormous influence and not so much in like what we're saying or doing but like who and in who we are and how we are being yeah I have been uh blessed or cursed depending on how you want to look at it with a son who feels everything so deeply that I became aware at a pretty early age for him that at how much my unregulation impacts him I so for example we'll be I I take him to school in the mornings

and it's it's a seven minute walk but for me it feels very important that we make absolute sure that we're not late that was a triggering thing for me as a child

my mom was always dropping me off at school late and then the kid gets punished when the parent is completely out of their control it's it's horrible and and so I feel a great deal of anxiety in the mornings if we're not on time and there will be times where I will be like come on man let's go we gotta go we gotta go and I'll kind of get on him about that because of the anxiety that I'm feeling and it completely spins him off the rants and we've had situations where in fact and and one of

kind of my central principles about sending him to school is I don't I will not send him to school when he's in a frenzy when he's unregulated because I'm gonna get a phone call from the principal it happens 90% of the time

and it's a negative experience for him it's a negative experience for the school for the other kids everything so what we'll do instead is just take a walk around the block so it turns out that if I get all stressed out and unregulated and start pushing him to move faster and all that stuff number one he's gonna move slower number two he's gonna be unregulated and then we're we're not even gonna be able to go to school on time we're gonna have to walk around the block for 10 minutes

yeah it takes so much longer yeah I mean that's the interesting you know there's all the communication skills and and raising good humans and and people push back against them like oh but that takes so much time but it has it takes so much longer when everyone gets totally disregulated and your kid is losing it and you're losing it it takes way longer yeah yeah it's like you're you're you're driving a train and the train you know if you if you push the train too fast it'll go off the rails

and then you gotta get the train back on the rails somehow it takes way longer than if you just slow down by 10% and took the corner at a nice leisurely pace you'd be fine and you'd be on your way well I'm glad you're seeing that about yourself I mean I was like that I was totally like that too like when my kid was 3 and 2 and we we walked to a school too actually like a five minute walk away and um and yeah and time pressure was such a thing for me and

and I think someone asked me yesterday in an interview someone said like you know what would you you know what advice would you give your younger self and I would say tell my younger self to kind of slow down yeah slow down man because because yeah it

it it always makes everything worse when we get disregulated and that's not to say that like we're gonna like we're gonna not be perfect we're gonna yell we're gonna lose our cool that's definitely gonna happen for everyone even for people who are listening to parenting podcast right like it's definitely gonna happen right for you and that's okay like it's good like our kids don't need perfect parents they don't need you to be perfect in fact it would be terrible for them

if you were always perfect and regulated and like they never saw a human losing it yeah they wouldn't know how to deal with anything right so you know we need to be ourselves we need to be imperfect but yeah like getting ourselves getting so anxious ourselves you know when we get when we get anxious when we get um

frustrated when when we yell none of those things do help a situation they they they generally don't like yelling you know makes it so our kids go into fight flight or freeze there you know that cuts off you know then their their nervous system cuts off access to the slower parts of their brain the prefrontal cortex area um they they literally can't learn then anything you want them to learn in that moment about what to do better so it's it's not a skillful tactic but it's something that um

one thing that was important for me to understand cause I I would feel that late pressure and I felt a lot of anxiety when my kids were little and I felt a it was a lot of frustration it was really difficult and that brought out my temper and I have this I have a bad temper yeah and I what I had to learn about my own yelling was that um was that a it it's not it's not my fault like it's not something I'm choosing it's something that that my own nervous system

my own fight flight or freeze system is activated

and it sees my child as a threat I never woke up in the morning and said oh I think I'm gonna like yell at Maggie at 7:30 on the way to school like no like I never ever once did that I never made and you never feel good about it after it was done no you never feel good about it you're no one's making a conscious decision if you're listening to a parenting podcast you have never once made a conscious decision to yell at your kid right right this is something that is a a reaction and

and it's unconscious reaction that's just happening without conscious thought so it doesn't make sense to berate ourselves for it cause you never consciously chose to do that but it is your responsibility so we can train our nervous system

our body minds to more skillful means bit by bit over time not that we will ever be perfect but we can train towards more more skillful means and and it does help enormously cause we gotta live what we want our kids to learn we gotta show them how to do it right you have this great story early in Raising Good Humans where you talk about the absurdity of yelling at your kids to be quiet yes and it's that that illustrates it perfectly I I have almost never read I mean there's like 10 words that

where you where you convey that story and it's like wow that hit me straight in the eyes and it was so concisely and so well put the the metaphor that I like to use for that is you know we have the two brains we have the cone in the barbarian brain and we have the Sherlock Holmes brain and the cone in the barbarian brain is that fighter flight or freeze thing and you need you actually do need that brain if oh yeah the oncoming car is coming it's it's a good thing the parent arm come out

yeah the parent arm yeah that's what controls the parent arm but the vast majority of the time when you're when you wanna drop into that brain

it's not the right thing you want to stay in Sherlock Holmes brain because that's where you have access to the learning the additional context all of all of the other stuff and and if you're in um if you if you drop down to Conan the barbarian brain then it it's it's just pure potentially it's pure chaos and the same true this might be explaining why me and my dad who I got my temper from had a like an obsession with Conan the barbarian when we were little is that right how funny yeah

that you know that was a surprisingly great movie Red Sonia it was a surprisingly great and in fact Arnold Schwarzenegger has has um he's written a book um called and now I'm drawing a blank on what it's called uh uh be useful and it's spectacular it talks it I mean it it it it points out one of those absurdities like yelling at your kids to be quiet it it's he's

you know grew up in rural Austria and decided that he was gonna become a leading man in movies in the US and then set about to make that happen and you think about the absurdity of that goal I mean imagine being 16 with him and he tells you this goal you would make fun of him for and yet look what he did he he did it and it it the book is the book is really really good go Conan yeah um yeah there's there are a zillion parenting books out there why what makes raising good humans special

you know it's funny cause when I wrote it I didn't I was like I'll be so happy if like I sell 3,000 copies yeah like

and here we are 750,000 copies later it's crazy it was really it really surprised me um and I think I've thought about that and I think of course I've had like some amazing luck as far as that goes cause nobody who's made it really done some big things doesn't have a good dose of luck so I do want to acknowledge that but like I think it's because this is something I felt like I was really bad at I was struggling in I was I you know I share very honestly my my struggles and my failures

and then I was like and this is and I was in a place of desperately wanting to know like people would all these parenting coaches would say well you have to like pause before you respond I'd be like but how how do you pause you know and I really really wanted to know how to how to do these things and I really I guess I you know what I bring to the table is that like at the time there was a lot of advice great advice about how to be skillful with your kids and

but I couldn't implement any of it when I was activated when I was disregulated you know and I was anxious trying to do my best for this kid and I had a temper and I'm all I'm highly sensitive like your son right so I had all these things and I it would all go out the window as soon as my stress response was activated so I think this it's to me it's like you know some of the best ideas are the ones where you're like oh duh of course right like of course we can't

make a choice about how to respond until we can regulate ourselves you know of course we can't do those things and we we and and there are ways to do it and I had you know started to study Buddhism and mindfulness as a teenager

and so I realized like oh this this tradition you know this and all this research backs it up has all these ways to regulate ourselves to be more peaceful to be more steady to be like the calm mountain that our kids need us to be right they need that really desperately and um and I I really wasn't that and I and and I I you know had bits of that but like I I was able to sort of cultivate that a real steady uh steadiness in me without changing who I am will becoming more of who I am but but um

but yeah to to recognize that you know it's parents themselves like we have to have a lot of compassion for ourselves and we have to take a good look at ourselves and to be able to take care of ourselves because this is an incredibly incredibly hard job and I think just the raising good humans comes from a place of deep compassion for parents cause it's so hard to be a parent we're so we have so little you know in the United States we have very few resources directed at parents

and very little support and we're all on our own yeah and um yeah yeah

we've lost a lot of the institutions there's not as the families aren't as big and the grandparents aren't around anymore and the cousins aren't there and mm hmm yeah yeah no no aunties to tag off with if you're a single parent like if you have two parents in the household like you're like oh gosh thank goodness I have another person there some of the hours of the day to tag off for but you know that it really humans should be we should have like 10 other people that we could tag off for

absolutely because think how regulated we would be think how steady you know

the the kids could have this such a steady influence and I think that would be really really healthy for us to have that you know for kids to have lots of different attachment figures that and then parents could have space to breathe cause it's so intensive when kids are little humans take a lot of intensive care I mean a giraffe baby plops down 4 feet falls is born falls out of the sky 4 feet to the ground and then stands up and walks around that's like a what like a

the equivalent of like a seven year old maybe right human like it's just like we're we're we're you know it's very intensive for us yeah no that is so true part of what strikes me about raising good humans is and what makes it unique for me is how authentic it is it comes from your own personal journey and how tactical it is and like these are the specific tactics that I'm using for my I get really mad all the time and I know needed to kill that monster and here's how I did

it is basically the story of the book as far as I can tame the monster I mean it's still there but yeah right

okay that's fair yeah tame the monster but it's amazing like with practice I think that's the thing that's really important and key is that like these are things that we can practice and train like we have this neuroplasticity we can train our brains we can you know bushwhack a new uh path through the the woods of our brain um but uh but yeah like it and we can train our brain so then even like at some point when my second daughter was like 9 years old

so this is like 10 years after I had started to to practice all these things and started to learn and and at one point she we had while watched a movie and we had movie night and then she was supposed to go to bed she was 9 so she could go put herself to bed and get ready and and I was like she was being nudgey so I was like I'm gonna just read my book and ignore her and she's gonna just go to bed oh she's being nudgey and then from the stairwell she said something and she like laughed at me

and it was like

like it was like this I was this whole new trigger that came out like I was just like from zero to you know 100 in like a second right you know I was so angry all of a sudden cause she had been nudging and nudging and I stood up and I was so actually in in retrospect I was quite proud of myself because I stood up and I yelled but I yelled I am so angry right now and then I open the door and I threw my poor library book down onto the carport and I walked up and down the street for 10 minutes

until I calm down but I was so proud of myself for yelling something skillful yeah rather than like you what's wrong with you et cetera no blaming and shaming language I yelled an imessage haha I'm so angry and I was really proud of that moment

that is yeah I I think that encapsulates that encapsulates the skill right now it's I mean you're gonna feel angry that's fine the the the skill is in handling it in a way that enhances your relationship with your kid and as opposed to ruins it yeah ruins it it damages it damage yeah yeah yeah I could feel the damage happening with my oldest child when she was little and I could I was really scared you know it really scared and you kind of have to give yourself the Grace

of understanding that okay mistakes were made that's okay and then you move on yeah exactly and also I think it's so important to understand that you can always always begin a new

you can always always start and practice and heal things it's so fascinating um you know uh yeah I taught mindful parenting to um a low income community in Wilmington Delaware and a grandmother was there cause she was taking care of her 6 year old grandchild and at the end she shared yes things are going better with the 6 year old but she shared with me that she healed her relationship with her adult daughter which was so exciting I I mean it just made me feel amazing

but for like in my own circumstances I remember thinking I can see in my daughter you know my oldest daughter got the worst of me and she I could see these you know I saw her like bark orders at her younger sister and I was like oh God that's what I sound like oh no and I I used I used to think you know

oh you know they say the first three years are so vital for your development and maybe I just I would just worry that maybe I really screwed up my kid even though I've I've done a lot of changing and growing and I've I've really really Learned and practiced some skillful means and but anyway I I would worry that from time to time over the years when I would just she's just um she's kind of an intense kid and seeing her kind of intense reactions and snappy reactions sometime with other people

but then and I worried that like she was a little not compassionate with others because I was snappy because I was stressed and not so compassionate I got think with her sometimes when she was little yeah and I would worry about that but then there was this time when she was maybe 14 or 15 and we had a a dog then and I had had the a scary incident where the dog met another dog out on our street and there was barking and there's growling and it really scared me and I was really upset and I

came inside and I was like talking about the dog and I was really upset my younger daughter who's normally she's like very sort of intuitively compassionate and she's she was kind of like getting upset at me and and defending the dogs and I was just like and really upset and my older daughter said to my younger daughter you know can't you see that mom is upset right now and she said to me mom do you need a hug and I was like yes yes I do need a hug and she came over and gave me a hug

and I was like oh I didn't ruin my child too oh my gosh I was like I'm not only I'm getting a hug but I also didn't ruin my child

yeah yeah I I you know children are very resilient if if you if you allow them to be and you don't want to rely on it too much but it you can give yourself the Grace that there is no specific incident pretty much that ruined them for life and that it really is a Marathon not a sprint yes and you know there are I mean I could think of a handful of things in my childhood that that really impacted the way that I look at the world but they were examples of a trend right you know

they were just kind of emblematic situations that I that the touchstones about a more generalized trend and um and so you know without that generalized trend those those specific events would not have had the significance that they do yeah there's a pattern yeah and I think that we can also you know you know we know that yeah we're gonna be human we're gonna mess up we're gonna there's gonna be damage and conflict that's that will happen that's that happens conflict happens in families every day

all the time and that's normal and of course but we can um you know that repair is so so important and it it really goes a long way and you know just of course us saying I'm sorry to our kids and and I I had a you know I had a couple I had a you know moments when I when I apologized to young Maggie when she was like 6 years old for my yelling in the past and I you know cried and cried and just I apologized to her and it was for me impactful um of course to do that but but yeah it's um

and then someone asked me actually a little while ago um you know thinking about you know

I have my temper because my father has an intense temper he's an highly sensitive person raised in a a generation that of course you know where things that we would call abuse are were normal then you know and um and so I used to be very scared of him at times he was also very like affectionate as well he was like I could definitely rely on him to be very affectionate and cheerleader but also he scared me sometimes and I remember someone asked me recently like oh you know what if your father

you know like apologize to you and I was like oh my God wow I mean it was such a shocking idea like I I it was so hard to imagine yeah yeah it was so hard to imagine but I could see that it would make such a profound impact on him too even probably yeah and you know as a grown adult woman like with almost grown children now like it would it would make a real profound impact even now so I think it's just to say it's never never too late to to practice skillful means

and to heal those relationships you know you you almost I mean certainly unintentionally did a natural experiment with your two kids where the first one got the full brunt of of of the old hunter and then the second one got the a a lot more of the new improved mindful hunter

more relaxed yeah what differences have you noticed about the way that they are or the way that your experience was raised them what were the different outcomes that you've gotten as a result of that experiment I mean well they're very different people so you know who's right and so yeah the variables are isolated you can't you can't assign causation yeah yeah I mean I think though my younger daughter I mean she is more um she has been kind of naturally a little bit more emotionally aware

a little bit more relaxed a little bit more in tune with things um she was also just like an easier baby and I'm not sure if like my first child probably got more anxiety hormones in the womb you know because yeah I was more anxious with the first one

so there's so there's so there's no way to sort of tease apart anything but yes she did get and and you know she was more open to um me talking to her about all kinds of things like all those awkward conversations you have to have about sexuality and all those kind of things she was more open to those conversations and is a little more open to some of those things you know she we can talk and actually she and I um yeah I don't know we we get along very well I mean

I love both my daughters enormously but yeah the youngest one uh is you know I travel well with her like we take care of each other well I don't know she's a she's a very cool um balanced person and I think she she benefited from a a more relaxed parent for sure yeah interesting you know I I in keeping with the the the the sense about the tactical nature of your book I I wanna talk about I'll tell you a story of something that that happened with me and my son and I would love to get

your feedback on how I handled it and and what I should have done how I should have thought about this and and what I should have done differently um my son when he was three and a/2 was terrified of escalators he he spent his entire life not being terrified of anything he used to jump in the deep end of the pool even though he couldn't swim and and then he he developed this this fear of escalators for no reason just all of a sudden was terrified to go down escalators

we would have to use elevators anywhere we went and this irritated me it felt like it actually frankly it it was a trigger for me because I felt like I was a failure as a father because he wasn't tough enough to go down the escalator he's three and a/2 years old and it felt like he was just being a weak it felt like he was being weak and I wanted to teach him that no we we overcome our fears and we do this and I felt like it was it was an opportunity to do that um now and I was pretty you know

I didn't I didn't ever force him to go down an escalator I I I I didn't I didn't mess with him in that way but I felt this urge to to want to impart this lesson to him and we went to target one day and we were he had allowance he had $11 and we he wanted to spend it on toys at target the toy section of target in the target that we went to is is upstairs and there's an escalator he could go up the escalator just fine but he just couldn't go down so we went to the target and we grabbed his

we got we grabbed so he wanted to buy um a set of Hot Wheels cars and they were you get five Hot Wheels cars for $6 so he could afford since he had $11 he could afford one pack of Hot Wheels cars but they were running a special and the special was if you buy two packs of Hot Wheels cars you get a third one for free oh my gosh and he was so close he was so close $1 away and so I told him I said listen if you're willing to go down the escalator I'll make you a deal I'll give you the extra dollar

and you'd be able to buy three packs instead of just one do you want the deal and he goes yeah yeah yeah I want the deal I want the deal so we got the three packs of Hot Wheels cars and we approached the escalator and I said listen we were approaching the escalator I said listen I'm here for you whatever you need to succeed on going down the escalator I will do for you you need me to pick you up you want me to blindfold you you want me to just carry you down you want me to force you down

you want me to stay away whatever you need he goes okay okay just hold my hand so I held his hand and we approached the escalator and we got one step away I stepped on the escalator and he says pause pause and he whipped his hand up from under mine and I start going down the escalator and he freaks out and so I run run back up and he has a total meltdown it lasts 45 minutes he's screaming he's crying he's like freaked out and at some point 30 minutes into it I'm like

I'm the worst parent in the world I I can't believe I've done this I'm so sorry like let's just forget the deal man let's forget the deal and he goes no I want the deal I want the deal and he we finally got him regulated again we finally we came up with an approach we decided we were you know okay we're gonna hold I'm gonna hold his hand and we're just gonna walk really really fast he's gonna close his eyes and um same exact thing happened we got to the top of the escalator and he goes pause

pause but it was too late by then he was stepping on the escalator and I just pulled him on and I held him tight and he started like freaking out a little bit and then about a third of the way down the escalator he relaxed and he started getting happy he started realizing okay I'm gonna get my thing and this isn't so bad and he felt this elation at the end of it he was thrilled and he's that he succeeded he went home and he told his mom and he got you know his extra 10 cars and he was really

really happy but the whole point was to get him not to be scared of going down escalators and it didn't work yeah what happened the next escalator he was

terrified of escalators for another year and a half um it made the fear worse and then it just went away all by itself huh huh and I don't know I you know I can see a lot of things I did right in that situation I feel like my mind my my my heart was in the right place I feel like I feel like I shouldn't have impuned this sense of like weakness about this thing on him but okay I feel like I was right to try and teach him the lesson but I I feel like overall it was a mistake

and I feel like I should have done something different and in fact I think if I just would have left it alone two months later he would have not been as scared of escalators and it would have been fine oh I feel for you because yeah I that's such an understandable impulse right you want him to be I would have wanted my daughters to be strong and to get over the escalator thing absolutely yes I would have I can completely relate to that feeling of wanting to have your kid get over this thing

and it's so hard like to accept that we don't have any control over their stuff right like it's not on our timetable like we're not gonna make them read

when we want them to read we're not gonna make them you know what I mean there's like all these things that we can't that it's it's doesn't it it really like us interfering with doesn't really do a lot with um so I can I can relate to that that wanting to do that yeah I think um when we start to use things like um when we try to manipulate our kids with things like bribery or honestly like a punishment and reward are two sides of the same coin right um that um

that then kids do feel coerced right like they they can they feel that and it's kind of like um it's kind of like you know when you slow down when you're speeding on the highway and you notice there's a cop ahead and you slow down when there's a cop there but then you're back up to 65 or 70 what after you know a minute or two right like it's doesn't there's no intrinsic you have no intrinsic motivation to not speed you're just speed not speeding not to get caught and um

and similar with like reward so you know when you're working with things that are extrinsic motivators like rewards you know or or bribes or things like that there's no there's no intrinsic that the child has no intrinsic reason to wanna change this thing they're just trying to to get this extrinsic reward and that's not like the most quality change if you manipulate the behavior in some way it's not really coming from the inside out right it's coming from the outside in

and so it's not a great way to learn a lesson or to make change honestly you know um you know if you don't don't hit your brother or I'm gonna take this thing away from you you really want your kid to learn like don't hit your brother because hitting hurts people

yeah we don't we don't hurt people in our family right yeah that's not who we are yeah yeah exactly and you really wanted him to learn to do the escalator so that he could just do it and it's fun and it's easier than getting on the elevator or sometimes it's really hard to find the whatever you know yeah I really I didn't want him to be limited by fears right yeah like like it's an irrational fear recognize it as such and you know push through it yeah yeah but he wasn't ready to do that

that's a skill I wanted to impart to him but you know he's three and a/2 yeah

three and a/2 it's it's um you know I guess I would have invited you kind of at that time to say like you know um why do you feel so like to turn the attention back to yourself you know why does why do you feel so strongly about this you know what is this um you know to explore like what is your own fear and to kind of carry your own baggage right in a little in a way you were you have some baggage and you were like here son take my baggage take my bags yeah you hold the baggage right

um rather than carrying it yourself right you had some stuff going on around that but you projected it all onto your kid and rather than wait for him and his timetable um yeah I love that analysis I think that's exactly right it's something that overall I think it was successful and I mean he really did have a feeling of elation but I felt this vague sense that I've done some things wrong there and it's really really good lesson it's funny cause we have to walk a middle path

you know like there's some people who you know like there's some people who you know we have to use our power sometimes right as parents like yeah all in all like as you get to the ends of raising good humans which you haven't gotten to yet but like that that part like there's a whole part about the use of power and the more we use power there's an inverse relationship between power and influence and I believe that one of the reasons why we have this trope of like the rebellious teenager

and the teenager that hates you is because teenagers are not rebelling against their parents they're rebelling against the unskillful use of power that parents have used for many many many years and they've disciplined in a way that builds resentment to to um teenagers by using power using that's exactly right using punishments and things like that so using the power of you can't have the iPad or you can't have the car or

you know I was grounded different things like that and so teenagers will resent parents at that point and then also teenagers then have a lot of their own power so they can call a friend to pick them up and then they're out of there right you so but if we can use less power and use our influence more use more of that intrinsic motivation then we have a beautiful bunch of influence left when our kids are teenagers and this is so so this is a really important conversation

because it is very true that when you have bigger kids they have bigger problems right yeah it's less intensive hour to hour but bigger kids have bigger problems so you do want to be there and be an influence in their life um so but it's also it's not like it's it's a the messy middle like it's not like you're never gonna use power like I remember holding my daughter down so that I could put that car seat on her you know what and or take the medicine or yeah I'm sorry I have to hold you down

like you're screaming and your body is bucking but we can't drive this car unless you're in the car seat and I I remember reading a story of a parent who was so dedicated to gentle parenting that they said okay you don't have to walk in the car seat and the kid walked along on the like side of the road with one parent while one parent drove along slowly like I'm sorry I just don't have the patience for that like

and that's a little crazy if you ask me like it's just a little crazy totally agree to say that and I mean I it's not sustainable so that's not sustainable that you they they they don't have you know they shouldn't necessarily really have that much power right like we want to of course respect our kids bodily autonomy and we want to teach them all those lessons and things like that but at the same time like when your son came on the escalator that second time and and you just held him there

like that was probably the right choice like help him get over it it's like kind of like like helping them get in the pool right like you're using some of your your power and your you know to to kind of make the like let's get through this situation yeah and so it's not like that's one of the I think the things about that we have to recognize is that we can use more and more skillful means and we should should learn like more and more skillful means and like we gotta cut ourselves some slack

it's gonna be messy and it's gonna be like there's gonna be some awkward uncertain moments and you're gonna be like oh I should have done this differently and you might even go you know say to your son hey buddy you know what that time where I I did this thing with the Hot Wheels in the eye you know I'm sorry yeah

we talked about it a lot you know yeah you can do that right so it it's gonna be messy and it's not completely you know I think it's dangerous to go to the extremes and say it's it's I you know it should always be you know of course like the do as I say because I say it that that doesn't make any sense and that's unskillful and that isn't doesn't teach your kids good lessons right but also the complete opposite is is also unskillful right so but there are

there's a path there's a middle path and it it is a little messy but but but that's where we wanna walk yeah there's one thing that I've Learned through this entire journey is that there is always a tension so if you ever find yourself thinking oh no it's always X you're 100% wrong yeah you will you you you need to find the tension and you need to figure out where that where that middle is yeah absolutely yeah so I always like to finish up these conversations by asking

more or less the same question of everybody and the question is what is one guiding principle that you believe that parents should hold on to as as they raise their children in in our culture today hmm that's a that's a this is sort of a weighty question one day

it is it is and and there's again there's attention you yeah there's there's a real value in like OK what comes to mind right then but then there's also you all you also want to be deep and meaningful and and all of that to I guess take however much time you need I think I would say to that you know my invitation for a principal would be to invite people to slow down and to give yourself some space to make to make choices and and give your kids space to to you know I think we get so sped up

like we fill every second with like glance you know seeing if we've gotten a text message or whatever it is and you know we got all our activities and our schedules and we're going so fast and we're on all the teams and things like that I guess I would invite people to slow down and and um protect childhood protect kids you know ability to be bored and to play freely without adults guiding them and um and to just serve slow it down and protect childhood and slow yourself down

so that you can appreciate where you are big time I I love that sentiment hunter thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today this is Hunter Clark Fields again she's the best selling author of Raising Good Humans and Raising Good Humans Everyday the mindful Mama podcast and the Mindful Parent Training um all of the links for those things are in the show notes this has been raising men and you are a great parent

raising men is produced by Phil Hernandez this episode was edited by Ralph Tolentino