#1811 The Perfect Parent - Dr. Sam Casey

developmental point of view, it makes complete sense. You know, kids don't use words to express how they feel they play, So I am, you know, really passionate about creating more awareness around that therapeutic value of play and just the different ways that we can use that obviously, which is very, you know, very different to how people see therapy for kids.

You know, I'm not sure about Kinder. I mean, I'm heading off to Kinder and John I looked at me and poked my sandwich yesterday, you know, I mean they don't do that, right of course, So how do we know that we're interpreting their behavior? Because their behavior I mean other than play, but the way that they behave and act is a pretty good insight into at least how they're feeling. How do we become better at reading that?

how it is. So for example, a child seeking connection can do so and really, you know, kind of the opposite ways. They could be pushing people away. They could be you know, the behavior kind of issues, and a lot of parents will be like, well, no, they don't really want my connection, just pushing me away. And I offered that and they said, no, go away, I don't

like you. But for a lot of kids, they just you know, in those moments, they don't feel likable, and so they do push people away to kind of almost get that connection in any attention is good attention in a child's mind when they're struggling with that. So, yeah, it is really difficult to decode it. I think when parents are struggling to decode their own emotions, and I think it's really trying to understand that behind every behavior there's an unmet need and a lot of the time's

behavior is really a stress response for a child. So really understanding what actually stresses out a child and what really depletes their carp and actually what fills up their cup. And I think gaining more understanding of that really comes down to actually connecting with ourselves and understanding our own needs, unmet needs behind our behavior and our inner child kind of stuff as well.

I've got a kid. So I always look at everything through the Craig window, because that's, you know, the Craig filter is the world that I have, you know, and you look through, you know, and all your education and information and awareness and knowledge, you're still looking through the sam lens, right, And so which can be I guess a positive and a negative? But you know, I think there are times when there's probably a question coming stand by who the fuck knows? It's me? But all right,

here's what I want to say. This is what I've seen a fair bit of because over the years, as you may or may not know, I had multiple personal training centers. So we used to work with I would start working with a mum, and then five or ten years later, I'm working with the daughter, and then maybe another ten years later, I'm working with a granddaughter. I would work with multiple generations, and sometimes I need to

be careful how I word this. But I've seen issues handed down, you know, and liviting beliefs and like even to the point with some things like with eating issues and eating disorders that almost well didn't almost they become intergenerational because one of the parents just handed down their own body dysmorphia stuff or eating issues stuff. It got obviously unintentionally but inadvertently past a lung.

I know I struggle with this, and my child's struggling with that, what they're going to do is they're going to again ignore it. They're going to try and act like it's not there. They're going to try and band aid fix it because they see a child's anxiety as a failure on their part, and so they'll continue to kind of mask their own in order to you know, project I mean, they'll project it on their child as

well so that everyone's okay. And what I say is that there's obviously biological stuff that comes into this two nature essusn't iture. There's always going to be different elements. But when we try and put a mask on and hide the fact that we're struggling with something, kids actually struggle more because they also feel that, and then they

don't really know how to put words to it. I think the best thing in those circumstance is seeing it as a bit of a superpower and going actually, I struggle with anxiety, and if my child struggles with anxiety, I'm going to have that empathy. But also I actually need to really roll model that my anxiety is really my responsibility and I'm going to get to know myself and my triggers. And so then you're role modeling that to your child. You're not trying to fix it for them.

You're not trying to act like they can't be anxious or express how they feel because you keep seeing it as a reflection if you. But rather it's like, Okay, this is something I struggle with. They're going to potentially be struggling with this. But yeah, how can I kind of role model how we manage in a really healthy way. And that's really hard because ye parents see their children as reflections of themselves.

he's a three year old boy. I mean, what do you think he's three? It's like sit down, Nah, fuck off? I'm not sitting down. Look at that thing over there, or look at that dinosaur on the wall, or I'm going to climb up. I mean, do we have do we have silly expectations of like is it some three year olds will sit there with their legs and arms crossed and have a little nap and do a little quiet time and close their eyes, and I'm sure they'll

be you know, dream students. But we can't expect the same thing from different children, can we exactly?

labeled as the naughty kid at school. It's just and I think for parents to really separate that and going this environment it's just really not bringing out the best of my child or this environment is it really suited to my child, and so being able to work around that rather than see that as a reflection of their child's limitations or you know, getting too caught up in that because you're right, like a three year old's is not going to want to sit down. I mean, like

I don't want to sit down for a song. And they make kids sit down in class. It's just it's a bit unrealistic.

do a lot of outdoor stuff. And the schools are set up on these properties, like with animals and trees and nature, and so they do very little traditional sitting on a sitting at a desk, you know, like it's all And I mean, I'm sure for some people that that model would be a nightmare. But if I reckon, I would have actually been quite a good student if I grew up in that, because for me, the tradition, the traditional model for me. And you know, I'm not

saying school was the problem. I was equally the problem. Don't worry about that. But I reckon if I had been in a different model and a different environment with a different style of teaching, where you know, I wasn't forced to sit for six or eight hours a day at a desk, you know, and behave a certain way and focus on shit that didn't interest me. Yeah maybe, I mean, you know, I wasn't a terrible student, but I definitely wasn't a good student, you know.

but then outside that, what are you interested in? Like, let's point in on this, let's find different ways to actually support their way of learning and their interests and their curiosity. So I think that you know, when we do that for our sales, right, we get to know our own brain and we can support children to do the same.

You're meant to be the high water mark. It's like when I go out, When I go out and I'm at a restaurant and somebody that knows who I am, Not that I'm anyone, but so many people are fascinated with, Oh, what's Craig Harper eating? Right? Yeah, well you know whatever, But yeah, people are really interested in what I eat. Some people send me messages and go, can you tell me what you eat in a typical day. You know,

I'm like, that is definitely not exciting. But I imagine for you you would be being observed your parenting style and your skills and your approach more than.

And it was early until I became a parent that I was like, oh, I don't want to be like this. I don't want to feel like my child needs to be perfect so that I feel like a perfect parent, Like it's actually not working out for either one of us. And that really set me in my own personal, you know, development kind of journey because I realized actually a lot of what is preached as perfect parenting really doesn't say as a child or the parent, And I think being

able to mute out that noise is really difficult. But often when you do what's right for you and your child, everyone's got something to say. And I do say this to parents. Often there is no parenting decision that is free of scrutiny. Everyone's going to be like you're too soft, you're too hard, you're too strict, you're not strict enough.

Like there's always going to be those judgments out there, and so how do you start trusting your own intuition or your own judgment around those things that you are figuring it out? I mean you've never lived this life before. I neither has your child. And so I think when I've taken that approach of like that experimentation, I'm still learning about my children as they're learning about themselves, as

I'm learning about myself. Like it takes the pressure of them to be kids, and also for me, like it's way more enjoyable to live life without that, you know, pressure to be perfect. But definitely, I definitely have felt those situations constantly in my parenting. Genie and I have to actively have strategies to actually block out and mute out that the noise and the judgment.

need to be good. So that their parents can feel okay, often is a child that feels like they need to be mature beyond their years, because again, a parent seeds their child's reflections of them. So I completely did a one eighty with that and going, you know, that's not a bed and I want my child to bear like they're their own person and they're on their own journey.

And I'm also on my own journey. So I think I was trying to do everything righted it's almost like that good kill condition and coming out and yeah, I completely did it one eighty and going, Actually, I want to be the opposite. I want children to know that I'm still trying to figure this out and I'm not perfect, and I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm trying to be true to myself and I'm sure learning about myself, and I want them to have the freedom to do

that too. So that's really what prompted me in going on my own journey, like I can't. I can't put all my hopes and dreams onto them. I have to live my own life and that takes a lot of contention to be like, Okay, that's something I want to do, not necessarily maybe what they want to do and that's okay. I can go with my own goals and they can have their own.

would have gone. No next, you know, to be able to be well, what if your kids dream is your fucking nightmare. I mean that's and you've still got to be or you think and you think you're smarter than them, and you think, you know, you've got the wisdom. They don't have the wisdom. And they're like, yeah, but I just want to go to I want to go to Nider or whatever it's called, or Nada or Wada, whatever it's called. And I want to be and I want to in an oscar one day. I want to act

in and they like, yeah, statistically fucking no chance. But I mean those things, I would imagine that's challenging when your kid wants something that you don't think is a good idea.

of experience. No matter how much someone told me something, I actually have to go through my own experiences and figure it out for myself. And so I see that as that goal. Like, for example, when I wanted to leave school at fifteen, you know my parents, I mean they said yes to that, and they signed off on it. But if I did if they said no, I would have been resentful. I would have pepsley, probably continued to do about it school. I would have acted out all

of that stuff. But because they said yes, I was able to actually try out hairdressing, which I realized wasn't my thing, and then I was able to kind of figure out a way right where this led me to, you know, my really fulfilling career in play therapy. So I realized that no one could have told me that or tried to steam me away from that. I really

wanted to go through my own experiences. And so I think when I have, you know, my children reached out stage, it's going to have to be this balance of being really authentic and honest about maybe how I feel about it, but then also going ultimately this is your life, like Noah, like You're going to have to make these decisions and not be there to say I told you so, but rather help them navigate that. When inevitably things don't really

work out how you know we've planned out. But it's that that's part of human nature.

an expert in if it's like, oh, she just ended up in the right place anyway, And if, like you said, if mom and dad had to or try to suppress that, it might have you might not have ended up where you ended up. It would have been a terrible outcome, but.

else telling me I had to do this right. No one else was telling me this is signing STUW and you're going to like I had to figure this out for myself. So I feel like we're so scared to kind of let the penny drop or to let things fall into place by natural fact, children will never develop their own resources and their own strengths and their own

internal compass if we don't do that. So it is this really tricky balance, right, And a lot of our fears and a lot of our projections are coming out because all we see from our own conditioning, our own childhood conditioning, is what could go wrong. We really don't see what could go right, and that's the problem. We're waiting for things to go wrong and be like I

told you, so, I saw this kind of thing. I knew this was going to happen, and then the child starts to feel really crap about themselves because they didn't see that rather than going this is actually just part of the process. Cool, that didn't work, all right, what are we going to do now? Like, let's keep going? And so the issue never really is sometimes that first decision.

It's the fact that children will a decision against their parents maybe you know, decision or whatever they think, and then it won't go right, and then the parents are like, see, I told you now, I should be the one making decisions, and this is what then kind of chips them away. So I feel like the more that we can normalize this journey of life of just figuring it out, the more kids will be able to get back on track quicker.

all of us, nobody wants weak kids. Nobody wants kids who can't cope, Nobody wants kids who can't deal with life of course, of course, so in an ideal world, we'd go, wou do you want your kids to be mentally and emotionally sound and resilient and able to deal with hard stuff and the messiness and unfairness of life because it's coming right And then they most people would go, yeah,

I want them to be resilient and capable. But then in order to build resilience and capability and adaptability and competence and confidence, we can't put them in fucking cotton wool for twenty years.

how do we manage that? And I think the more that we can see ourselves as we're actually really fully only responsible for our steps. I mean, of course we're responsible for our child, but in that moment, we don't control their responses. And so for us to really get clear and are we doing great things with our life, so we, you know, are being able to practice that resilience.

And I think the more that we realize again we can internally kind of like cultivate this, the more I think it will give them the examples to be able to do that for themselves.

her mind. She says what she thinks. And when I look back at how I was at seven, it was definitely a part of me where I was like that, but I wasn't like that as often. I very much had that good girl conditioning where my parents were out at that time. You know, they were in that too, you know, my dad was trying to be the perfect dad, so you know, I was again being that perfect child.

So yeah, there's definitely similarities if I feel like that that power that you know, that her knowing who she is and what she wants and not afraid to say it, and that perseverance and the determination. But the difference is is the parenting too, because I didn't have you know, the Yeah, I guse my parents weren't really aware of that at that time, right, Oh, this is something we want to foster, and it was about back then.

i'll just say a parent. The other parent was out of the picture quite early, and the one parent that raised him was quite mentally unwell, and so by the time he was twelve, it was like he was the parent, right, he was protective of his parent, but he was he was like the man of the house and you know, doing everything from shopping and washing and dishes to getting his parent their medication and some days the parent would be flying and amazing, and then they wouldn't get out

of bed for three days. And so like a very difficult situation, a genuinely difficult situation. But like, tell me about that, Tell me about kids who shouldn't have to but I mean, situationally, it seems like they have to be older than their years. Sometimes.

of a load than they normally would. And I think what's really more common and probably harder to see is taking on the emotional load more than they should around parents that you know, again see their children's reflection of them, or really rely on their children emotionally because they feel like they're giving everything and they don't really have other

sources to get that back. So for example, they a child picks up on when their parents falls apart, when they when the child has a bad day or they're struggling, or they're anxious. And so children then learn to be like, Okay, well I'll be good and I'll be easy and I will be you know, still with the flow and I'm okay,

I'm okay because they want you to be okay. And so that I feel like is actually more common and happens a lot more undetected because you know, parents praise that my child's so easy going, like literally like they're so chill and it's great, Like they're so mature, and they expect children at a young age to not be you know, immature, and to be able to follow instructions and to do all the things and to have really appropriate emotional responses to things, and they don't really realize

that children, I mean, their brains are still forming. But children are very good at doing what they need to do to survive. And when I say to survive, it's to get the love and the praise and the exceptions that they need. And so a lot of the time children will play that role of being responsible and mature and all of that in order to get that praise

and that love and exceptions for their parents. But once it ends up happening is that they've actually missed some really crucial developmental stages being a child right and having that load, and that does impact them.

it was like, hey, is there food good? I love food. Let's eat that in school and let's kick a footy and let's ride my bike. Yeah, and let's be home by dark the end. Right, It seemed like and maybe this is an old fuck with reflecting, but it seemed like a really a much simpler time. And it seems like to me and I could be wrong, but there was just a lot less things to worry about. Do you think kids are more fifful now than they were a generation or two go or it's just me.

still studying? I don't mean formally, but you must. You must need to kind of keep up with what is happening in the space so you can do exactly what you're doing right now rightly.

in such an easier way? And so for me, I really challenge you rights to continue to be up to date with research, but also to be like, how can this info get out? Because a lot of the time, right university is are pumping out research, but it never really you know, everything kind of looks really good on paper, but I feel like we kind of missed that gap between research and the practical application of it. And that's

what I really try and do with paprescription. It's like, how do we take research and actually put it into practice and make this really easy to access because yeah, a lot of the time we just don't have that in the in the middle there one.

the coal face with humans. You know, my job has been for decades working with humans one on one in a three D kind of space, not a virtual space where you're looking at you're looking at someone's face and body and body language and movement and biomechanics, and you're feeling their emotions in their mind and you're it's like, it doesn't it doesn't always cross over like the research and the outcomes in inverted commas, and the alleged science

doesn't or isn't always supported in the real world, especially with psychology.

Can we actually be honest about how this is not translating into practice and what our own barriers are around that, and then how do we readjust to reassess and keep tweaking it to be able to continue right, to make propriss on that track. And I feel like it's missing a lot because we kind of think, oh, no, this is research based, and you know, this has got all the things that should and then it should work, but it doesn't.

the discussion. I want to see you know what they did, right, there was fourteen people in the study. I'm like, this is not science, this is not indicative. This is and it went for eight weeks, eight weeks, fourteen people. I'm like, this is ridiculous, you know, and then they're so then they're taking this very small, very limited, very high risk

of bias. The highest risk, right, generally risk of bias is even anything under one hundred is like, a's no good right, Well, it's not regarded right, So this is fourteen people, and I'm like, oh, well, and then people get on and go this research was done with women, no, not concerned nevatively four million women at billion women in the world, give all take, and you did something with fourteen and then you're trying to generalize that two billions

of people. It's so fucking misleading and untrue and uh, you know, what's the word inappropriate? What's the word unethical? Yeah?

and go do some exercise. So I feel like we also then when we catch onto things, but it's research base, we don't actually look at our own kind of like what's our own feedback kind of loop around this and how do we see if it works for us? Because a lot of the time you can find conflicting research too you know, this is how you should parent, but also this is how you can pare it. And so when you get caught up on that, it's like, ultimately

you still have to make the decision. We can try and understand what the research says about it, but we need to figure out all works for us too.

we don't understand it, you know. And I think it's like when people talk to me about food or exercise or sleeper that I go, what's your body telling you? And they're like what, I go, what's your body saying? And then I asked them and they're like, oh, I go. Like, all the information or a lot of the information you need, you already have. And it's not because you heard it

or read it. It's because your body's telling you that you're dehydrated or you're under slept or you don't need enough fiber, or you don't move enough, or you sit too much, or you know that that kiphosis, that chaithhotic posture, that you've got, that hunchy back, those rolling forward shoulders, that those chronic headaches. It's like, yeah, there's lots of signs that lots of stuff could be going on.