Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E108: Parenting That Heals w/ Erica Komisar

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E108: Parenting That Heals w/ Erica Komisar · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  You know, most people do not go into therapy, Lila, when they're
• 0:03
  adults because they didn't feel loved.
• 0:05
  Most people come into therapy because they feel their parents
• 0:08
  didn't understand them. Somewhere along the way, we got
• 0:10
  confused that the way to create successful children was to force
• 0:15
  cognitive learning into them at a young age.
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  And then when they get older, we infantilize them.
• 0:20
  We treat them like they're babies and we baby them.
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  We have to reverse that back. I think what most parents think
• 0:25
  is I'm going to be there when I want to be there and my child
• 0:30
  has to be there on my terms. The way that you get close to
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  your children is by being around enough.
• 0:35
  You catch the wave. Hello everybody.
• 0:41
  Welcome back to the Lila Rose Podcast.
• 0:44
  Today we have a major treat. We're going to have Erica
• 0:47
  Komissar back on the podcast. You may remember Erica Komissar
• 0:51
  as our special guest a few months ago.
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  Her episode went very viral online and we got thousands and
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  thousands of messages and feedback from many of you
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  talking about how her words truly touched your life and for
• 1:01
  some of you even changed your life.
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  Our conversation was about the power and the importance of
• 1:06
  mothers, especially mothers, being there for their very young
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  children and how in the crazy modern world it is valuable, so
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  valuable for mothers, fathers and families to make sacrifices
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  or hard choices to ensure that mothers can maximize the time
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  that they are there with their young children.
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  Today we're going to have her back on the show to take
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  questions. I've received hundreds and
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  hundreds of questions from many of you that you would like to
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  ask Erica. So we're going to actually be
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  asking her more detailed questions about her perspective
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  on this. As a psychoanalyst.
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  We're also going to talk about how to heal wounds that we may
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  have with our children or how to.
• 1:46
  Overcome difficulties we may have in parenting our young
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  children. What to do if you are a working
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  mom or you were a mom that worked when your kids were young
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  and you're concerned it might have in some way damage them or
• 1:56
  hurt them as they're getting older?
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  Ways to repair relationships, Strengthen relationships,
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  including with older children. There's a lot to unpack in this
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  episode. I hope you enjoy it.
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  And as always, don't forget to subscribe to the show if you
• 2:07
  aren't already on podcast apps like Apple and Spotify.
• 2:11
  And don't forget to subscribe if you're listening over here on
• 2:13
  YouTube. First of all, Erica, thanks so
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  much for joining the podcast again.
• 2:17
  Thank you for having me. So the Chicken Little The Sky
• 2:21
  Isn't Falling. It The whole book is for parents
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  of now slightly older kids. How to repair maybe mistakes
• 2:28
  they feel they made, How to Deal with the New Age of Anxiety.
• 2:31
  You said there's another title though, that you had thought of
• 2:34
  for your book or wanted for your book.
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  What was that? It was meant to be called Second
• 2:39
  Chances, and the concept was that if you missed the first
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  critical window of brain development in terms of being
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  present for your children, that you had another opportunity to
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  help them with things like learning to regulate their
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  emotions and dealing with adversity.
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  And so, yeah, it was originally called Second Chances.
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  I like second chances. He's a parent of young kids
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  myself. I hope for that.
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  So the first, let's let's just do a quick reminder for folks.
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  A lot of people have watched our first episode and already have
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  read your first book. But what is this first critical
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  window of development as you I think speak about it and then
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  what's the next critical window of development?
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  Give us that that over the overview.
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  So the first critical window of brain development is zero to
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  three, and at the end of three years of age, children's right
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  brain, 85% of their right brain or their social emotional brain
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  is developed. And that part of the brain is
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  responsible for things like the ability to regulate your
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  emotions, keeping your emotions from going too high or too low,
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  the ability to cope with stress and adversity, the ability to
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  form deep and meaningful relationships and read other
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  people's social cues. These are all formed in the
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  first three years through the relationship with the mother or
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  the primary attachment figure. The second critical window of
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  brain development is 9 to 25, or what we call adolescence.
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  So we know that adolescence starts a lot earlier than we
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  thought and it ends a lot later. And we were able to understand
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  this now because of the technology since the 1990s that
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  helped us to actually see the brain functioning and to see
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  that actually the adolescent brain doesn't, doesn't stop its
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  development until about 25 years of age.
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  And so, you know, in the first critical window of development,
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  we call it the period of neurogenesis, which is cell
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  growth. And if it goes well and if
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  mothers are really present emotionally and physically,
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  there's a lot of cell growth. The the right brain grows very
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  active, very big and then it, it needs pruning.
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  Think about a garden that you grow but you overgrow.
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  And then in the second critical period of brain development,
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  it's a period of pruning the garden and in both of these
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  windows of of critical development mothers and and and
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  parents are really critically important to children.
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  And it you know, if you miss the first window, you have a second
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  opportunity in the second window to do very many of the same
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  things you you should have done in the first window, because the
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  two periods of brain development are quite similar in many ways.
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  So I told folks who listen to the podcast and on social media
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  just yesterday that I would be talking to you today and do they
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  have questions for you. And I've gotten hundreds upon
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  hundreds maybe past 1000 now, questions, comments and direct
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  messages. And I told them we'd be talking
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  about this book and this idea of repair.
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  And you know the one of the the common questions I've got and
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  I'll just share one, and it has to do with this idea of having a
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  second chance. And there this.
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  I've got multiple variations of this question, but one of them
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  was how do you heal attachment issues with a child over three
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  years old? Another question similarly, if
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  my child is 6 years old and if I'm trying to repair the
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  relationship now with them, how do I know if it's working?
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  How will I know if my child has forgiven me?
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  What are the signs? So we're not even an adolescence
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  yet. And there's already the
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  questions How do we we feel we made mistakes in those first
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  three years? Child's 4567.
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  What do we do? Well, first let me say that 3:00
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  to 9:00 is also a very important period of development because I
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  don't include it in one of those two books.
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  Doesn't mean it's not important, it's very important.
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  It's it's a period of development with less emotional
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  volatility generally. So Freud called that period, the
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  latency period, but we know that it's not late in terms of sexual
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  development as he thought, but it is, it is a quieter period
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  because it's a period of self esteem, building competence
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  building for children. So they're very focused on
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  learning, learning in school, cognitive learning, learning
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  what their strengths are, learning what their limitations
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  and vulnerabilities and weaknesses are.
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  And so it tends to be a less volatile period.
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  But if you had a child who where you missed that first critical
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  window, then that period can be quite volatile meaning that
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  child will express the sadness, the mourning, the loss that they
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  that they that they didn't get to experience in the first three
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  years with you, right. And so you know, it's.
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  I'll use an analogy for you, or metaphor, which is if you get a
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  hole in your socks in the old days, you used to darn them, and
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  if you darn that sock pretty quickly while the hole is still
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  pretty small, then that that hole becomes stronger than the
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  rest of the sock, that darn spot.
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  If you let the hole get too big, it becomes too big to darn and
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  it and and and you can't repair it.
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  So the concept is the sooner you get to repair the better.
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  So if you know at three years old that you weren't around
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  enough and you see that your child is having behavioral
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  problems or showing signs of ADHD, which is, you know fight
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  or flight or very aggressive in school, you know, and you take
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  the time to pull back and say right, I'm going to repair this.
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  I'm going to be there for my child.
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  I'm going to be there emotionally, physically, and you
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  will see, as I do in my practice, that the effects are
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  almost immediate. I mean, it's quite amazing.
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  There's nothing magical in my work, meaning there's nothing
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  fast or quick or magical. It takes hard work therapy.
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  But there is something that has always been shockingly magical
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  to me about when mothers who have been absent are home with
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  their children more, their children's behavior and their
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  emotional volatility calms down like putting a salve on a burn.
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  And So what I would say is, the sooner you can get to the
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  repair, the better. And and just wait and watch how
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  your child will respond to you in a different way.
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  How their aggressive behavior calms down.
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  How how their distractibility may calm down.
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  How they seem to lean into you more instead of leaning away
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  from you. So The thing is, children are
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  for the most part incredibly forgiving if you don't over tax
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  their their capability of being forgiving, but they can be
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  incredibly forgiving. That is so hopeful, I know for
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  many people listening and do you think that advice that you're
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  sharing, We know we're talking about ages, maybe 3:00 to 9:00,
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  but it seems also to be part of the advice when they're in
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  adolescence too, that that returning physically and
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  emotionally, not just quality time but quantity time, it seems
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  to be the solution across the board.
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  Yes, so not just physically being around, but really
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  learning how to be an emotionally present parent.
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  Meaning how to really reflect your child's emotions.
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  How to be non critical and non judgmental.
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  How to really see life from their perspective and be a
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  sensitive empathic nurture. It doesn't mean that you don't
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  discipline them. It doesn't mean you don't set
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  limits. You know people get confused
• 10:12
  when I talk that I'm talking about you know a a life with no
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  limits. But you know, sensitive and
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  pathic parenting means understanding your child and all
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  of their emotions, the whole spectrum of emotions for your
• 10:26
  child. You know, most people do not go
• 10:28
  into therapy Lila when they're adults because they didn't feel
• 10:32
  loved. Most people will come into my
• 10:34
  office and say, I mean there are some people will say my parents
• 10:37
  didn't love me. Most people come into therapy
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  saying, cuz there was another question that I pulled that I
• 11:53
  thought was a really good one. And there were other similars,
• 11:55
  other ones similar to it, but about boundaries.
• 11:58
  Because what you're describing in terms of really understanding
• 12:01
  the child's emotion, meeting them where they're at, that
• 12:04
  empathy, this was the question, how to help a child learn to
• 12:08
  respect authority, mind, don't care about any consequences.
• 12:12
  And though they're usually sweet and loving, I feel they don't
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  respect me and walk all over me. Well, I mean discipline.
• 12:21
  Actually, the word discipline comes from the word disciple and
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  disciple, I guess you could say. You know, if you think about
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  Christ's disciples, it meant to lead by example.
• 12:30
  That's actually what the word discipline means.
• 12:32
  Doesn't mean to punish, doesn't even mean to set limits.
• 12:35
  It means to lead by example and to help provide some structure
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  for your child. So they feel loved, so they feel
• 12:43
  safe. You know, if we don't have any
• 12:45
  structure for children at all, they don't feel safe and they
• 12:49
  don't feel loved. So a child who's raised in an
• 12:52
  incredibly permissive environment with no intention on
• 12:57
  the part of the parent to set limits, a child often feels
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  unloved, even ignored. Right.
• 13:04
  So. So the idea is that discipline
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  is first, first and foremost, is not punishment, but it requires
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  intention on the part of the parent.
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  So a parent may say stop that, stop that Johnny, but if they
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  don't have what I call a seriousness of intention behind
• 13:23
  their words and tone of voice and body language, often parents
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  will be charmed by their children's bad behavior and
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  they'll kind of giggle and laugh and say it in a not very serious
• 13:33
  way, not change the tone of their voice.
• 13:36
  And So what that does is the child gets very confusing
• 13:39
  messages. So what I would say is if you
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  want your children to take you seriously, first set consistent
• 13:44
  limits with them, not rigid ones.
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  Because the the best limits are those that are consistent but
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  also flexible and and individually take into
• 13:53
  consideration, right, but but it's seriousness of intention on
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  the part of the parent. So when it comes to, you know,
• 14:04
  example temper tantrums or it comes to, and I'm not talking
• 14:08
  about in the first three years, let's say there's tantrums or
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  just misbehavior in the let's talk about these younger kids.
• 14:15
  Still, it's a lot of the audience has these younger kids,
• 14:18
  you know, the four 5-6 year olds.
• 14:20
  What's the response? How does one handle a kid and
• 14:23
  what does it mean too about their attachment?
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  Potentially who is not acting up every minute of every day, but
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  regularly having the meltdowns, regularly having you know, spats
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  with the sibling or spats with, you know, in school or whatever
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  it is? And the maybe the parents
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  wondering, is this normal? Do I need to be more of an
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  authoritarian here or authoritative?
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  Or maybe I'm not giving them enough love and attention?
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  How should parents discern that? Well, first, I just wanted to
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  find that temper tantrums are not a discipline issue.
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  Temper tantrums are what I call an emotional blown fuse.
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  So it's when a child children aren't born with the ability to
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  regulate their emotions. They learn that through watching
• 15:07
  us regulate our own emotions and through the soothing of your
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  child from moment to moment in those early years and the
• 15:14
  understanding of all of their emotions, including anger and
• 15:17
  fear and distress and and sadness, even excitement, we
• 15:23
  help to regulate those emotions and they learn how to regulate
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  them. So first and foremost, it's a
• 15:29
  moment where the child has lost control of their emotions.
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  Think of an epileptic seizure. You wouldn't say that someone
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  who's having an epileptic seizure, it's a discipline
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  issue. You would sit by their side.
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  You would help them through it. So we say tantrums are not a
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  discipline issue, right? That's that's the first thing.
• 15:47
  And I think that helps parents to sort of get a sense that it's
• 15:50
  it's not something you need to punish.
• 15:52
  The other thing is that between the ages of two and six, you're
• 15:58
  really doing something that you weren't asked to do before 2.
• 16:02
  Before two. You pooped where you wanted to
• 16:05
  poop, you ate when you were hungry.
• 16:07
  When you cried, someone picked you up.
• 16:09
  There were no boundaries, really.
• 16:11
  There were no limits. At about two, everybody starts
• 16:15
  saying no to you and create structure of what's and not
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  appropriate and what you can do and can do.
• 16:23
  And that's very hard to internalize.
• 16:26
  And so the the metaphor I always use is it's like an elephant
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  crawling through a mouse hole. That's how it feels to a child
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  to take in a structure for a child who's had no structure.
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  So what a tantrum is, is it's sort of the conflict in a child
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  between taking in the structure and doing what they want to do.
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  And so there's a period where they really are out of control.
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  It's not a discipline issue. It's an emotional regulation
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  issue. And so if you look at it from
• 16:55
  that angle, then you're more patient, you're calmer with
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  them, you help them through it as opposed to think of it either
• 17:03
  as a failure on your part or a failure on their part.
• 17:06
  It changes the whole paradigm of how you think about it.
• 17:11
  One of the questions that we received and what you're
• 17:13
  describing, Erica, sounds a lot like gentle parenting is the
• 17:17
  term that's used. And there's a lot of, you know,
• 17:20
  social media accounts and different folks and talking
• 17:23
  about how to be a gentle parent. And there's, you know, concern
• 17:27
  that well, is gentle. Are gentle parents too
• 17:29
  permissive? Are they not training the child
• 17:33
  enough? Are they just always
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  understanding the child to the point where there's no
• 17:36
  boundaries or limits? What's your take on gentle
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  parenting? Well, it's one's not mutually
• 17:42
  exclusive of another. You can be a sensitive empathic
• 17:45
  parent and still have limits and still set limits.
• 17:49
  And one would say that sometimes when you set limits, your
• 17:53
  children don't like them. They get angry.
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  That could cause a tantrum. And you're not always there to
• 18:00
  make your children happy sometimes.
• 18:02
  What you do to keep them safe and make them emotionally
• 18:06
  healthy isn't necessarily going to make them in the moment
• 18:08
  happy. But it is your job as a parent
• 18:11
  to help them to cope with the feelings that come up for them
• 18:15
  when they're said no to. So you know you can't say no to
• 18:20
  them and then blame them for their reaction to you saying no
• 18:24
  to them if you say no to them, which we need to say no to our
• 18:27
  children. It's your responsibility as a
• 18:30
  parent to help them to learn appropriately, to cope with the
• 18:33
  feelings that come out of being said no to.
• 18:36
  So you know, a lot of parents think that it's parenting ends
• 18:40
  of the word no. For me, parenting just starts at
• 18:43
  the word no. So if you have a, let's say a
• 18:48
  four or five year old who is regularly having back to kind of
• 18:52
  the topic of misbehavior, regularly having temper
• 18:55
  tantrums, is that a sign of there's not good structure for
• 18:59
  the child where they know what's going on and so they're just
• 19:02
  maybe not prepared to deal with life as it comes at them or is
• 19:06
  that an attachment issue that they're displaying?
• 19:09
  So generally when you have a child who has all children have
• 19:13
  tantrums, first of all, it's very unusual to not have a child
• 19:16
  have tantrums because I as I said, it's a conflict.
• 19:18
  It's an internal conflict expressed through this blown
• 19:21
  fuse of a structure and and will, but so every child has
• 19:28
  tantrums. But the the concept is that if a
• 19:30
  child has many tantrums, we say that they're probably a
• 19:34
  neurologically sensitive child. That should also give your
• 19:38
  listeners a different perspective, that the more
• 19:40
  sensitive emotionally and neurologically sensitive a child
• 19:44
  is, the more tantrums they have. Harder it is to cope with
• 19:48
  frustration. So no, it's not a sign that you
• 19:52
  didn't discipline them. Sometimes if they have many
• 19:55
  tantrums, it can be a sign that you did the opposite, that you
• 19:58
  were rigidly discipline. I would say either very
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  permissive parenting or very strict parenting can contribute
• 20:06
  to more tantrums, but tantrums themselves are usually a sign of
• 20:12
  a sensitive child. And what are other signs of a
• 20:14
  sensitive child? A neurologically sensitive
• 20:17
  child. They might be harder to soothe.
• 20:20
  They might be more sensitive to noise, to smells, to touch, to
• 20:24
  wearing clothes. So you know, they may have a
• 20:28
  harder time. There's the kids who may have a
• 20:30
  harder time going to a loud birthday party with 20 kids
• 20:33
  screaming and yelling and and that may trigger it.
• 20:36
  So you would say that there are children who are more sensitive
• 20:39
  to things in the environment that are felt distressful to
• 20:42
  them? So one of the questions I got a
• 20:46
  lot of and I, you know, and what you're saying begs it too that
• 20:50
  this question is how do you know then that your child may have an
• 20:54
  attachment issue that needs repair?
• 20:57
  And let's go back to tantrums for a minute.
• 20:59
  It sounds like you're describing tantrum as sort of
• 21:01
  neurologically age appropriate, not necessarily having to do
• 21:04
  with attachment disorder. Can they be from attachment
• 21:07
  disorder? What are what are the red flags
• 21:09
  of attachment disorder in an older child, and then what would
• 21:13
  be the recommendation for dealing with those?
• 21:15
  Well, I suppose the way that I would connect tantrums to
• 21:18
  attachment disorders is a disorganized attachment disorder
• 21:23
  is a child without any strategy to deal with the loss of their
• 21:28
  mother. And so they cycle through all
• 21:31
  the strategies, not being able to sort of settle on one
• 21:35
  strategy. And one of the strategies is, is
• 21:40
  turning away avoidance, one is cringing and then one is just
• 21:44
  being enraged at your mother. And so you could say that if a
• 21:49
  mother has been away a lot or a primary attachment figure has
• 21:54
  been away a lot and then shows up on the weekends for the kids,
• 21:58
  you know, she's away all week. And then on the weekend she
• 22:01
  takes them to the birthday party, that child might be
• 22:04
  expressing through very intense tantrums that they've missed the
• 22:09
  mother during the week, that they're having a really hard
• 22:12
  time, that they are both feeling clingy but also angry at her.
• 22:17
  So that's a possibility. You know, the other possibility
• 22:21
  is a child who is having an ambivalent attachment disorder,
• 22:25
  which is clinging to the mother, right.
• 22:27
  You're going to leave again. I'm never going to let you go.
• 22:30
  Let's say again, let's use the idea of being out in the park or
• 22:34
  outside and you know the mother is with the child but then turns
• 22:39
  away for a moment and goes to talk to a friend.
• 22:42
  And that momentary, that moment of the mother pulling away could
• 22:46
  trigger that child of a tantrum. So there's there are ways in
• 22:49
  which attachment disorders can be, can be triggering of of
• 22:53
  tantrums, but I would say I wouldn't necessarily make a
• 22:57
  correlation between all tantrums and attachment disorders.
• 23:00
  How we identify an attachment disorder is there's three
• 23:04
  attachment disorders that we know of.
• 23:06
  One is the child is not interested in the attachment
• 23:10
  figure, the mother turns away, doesn't form a close bond, seems
• 23:15
  more interested in other people and it has something called
• 23:17
  indiscriminate attachment. So you don't want your children
• 23:20
  to wander off and hug strangers or people they don't know very
• 23:23
  well or take strangers hands. So people think that's cute and
• 23:27
  charming, but actually it's it's the sign of an attachment
• 23:30
  disorder. Children are not meant to go up
• 23:32
  to strangers and want connection to them, so that's one sign.
• 23:36
  Another sign is if a child is incredibly cringy when you are
• 23:42
  with them and they don't let go of you and they're terrified of
• 23:45
  you leaving the room or terrified of you looking away or
• 23:48
  sensitive when you need to look at your phone or that would be
• 23:52
  another attachment disorder sign.
• 23:54
  And last but not least, the, the one that is the least good is
• 23:57
  disorganized. And and what we see there is
• 23:59
  that cycling through, you know, I don't care about you, Mommy,
• 24:04
  oh, mommy, don't leave me and mommy.
• 24:06
  I hate, you know, sort of cycling through and feeling
• 24:11
  having a child who feels very emotionally, almost emotionally
• 24:14
  unstable, you know, emotionally volatile.
• 24:18
  And are the strategies to heal the different kinds of perceived
• 24:22
  attachment disorders that you're maybe concerned your child is
• 24:25
  demonstrating to varying degrees, depending on what
• 24:28
  they're demonstrating, Are the strategies different for how to
• 24:32
  heal? No, they're not different.
• 24:35
  Presence is presence. Meaning what is?
• 24:37
  What does presence mean exactly? I mean, I wrote a whole book
• 24:40
  about there's a whole chapter on what is the definition of
• 24:42
  presence, Because it's the word. What it means is that you're not
• 24:47
  just physically there most of the time.
• 24:50
  You can't be there every minute, but you're not just physically
• 24:53
  present, but that you are helping your child to process
• 24:59
  their feelings, their experiences, their thoughts.
• 25:05
  So you're you're really think of think of yourself as the the
• 25:10
  kidneys or the the the liver or the pancreas or the stomach, You
• 25:15
  know, something that has to digest very strong feelings and
• 25:18
  experiences and help to make sense of the world.
• 25:22
  That's what mothers do from moment to moment.
• 25:24
  They're helping that child soothing that child, but also
• 25:28
  helping that child to make sense of the world.
• 25:31
  And that's very comforting. And that actually then is
• 25:34
  internalized by that child. And so they go out into the
• 25:37
  world being able to make sense of their feelings, of the
• 25:40
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• 25:44
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• 27:00
  There was a another question I wanted to be sure to bring to
• 27:04
  you, which was it is a very heavy one.
• 27:07
  How does a mom heal her adolescent son's attachment
• 27:11
  attachment issues if she was sick with cancer most of his
• 27:15
  childhood and he seems to be angry at her often?
• 27:21
  Well, first and foremost, you take responsibility.
• 27:24
  She's not responsible for getting cancer, but she can take
• 27:29
  responsibility for not being there in in the way that he
• 27:33
  needed her to be there. And you know, just saying I'm
• 27:38
  sorry, I'm sorry. And I mourn with you and I'm so
• 27:42
  sorry that I wasn't there for you when you needed me.
• 27:47
  Because in the end, when we feel lost, when we feel pain, the
• 27:52
  first thing we want is we want to know that the person that's
• 27:55
  caused the pain is making amends, can really, with
• 28:01
  integrity, take responsibility for their actions or inactions.
• 28:07
  And so that's the first step. A first step is really just
• 28:11
  holding him with her, with her, with her remorse, with her
• 28:17
  sadness with her taking responsibility for what happened
• 28:22
  and and and apologizing to him. What to do if the child rejects
• 28:29
  that kind of vulnerability or doesn't want to go there with
• 28:32
  the mother or the parent? You say I understand, but it may
• 28:36
  be too painful for you to forgive me and too painful right
• 28:40
  now. And you know, and I'm here for
• 28:42
  you. I'm here for you in any way that
• 28:45
  you need me. I love you and and you know I it
• 28:49
  was not an intention to hurt you and it it it but it was hurtful
• 28:53
  to you and so you know and and I'm here for you in any way that
• 28:59
  I can that I can be with you and.
• 29:02
  What does the parent do if at the same time, and I know this
• 29:05
  is the case for a lot of parents who are maybe kicking themselves
• 29:08
  or mistakes they made earlier or wondering and worrying that the
• 29:11
  attachment's not strong enough in adolescence, but now they
• 29:15
  have to also have boundaries because adolescence, you know, I
• 29:18
  know you mentioned different stages of adolescence, but
• 29:21
  there's a, there's an exploration that happens and so
• 29:23
  that saves, you know, back to this mother.
• 29:25
  She didn't ask this as a follow up question, but, you know,
• 29:27
  putting myself in where she was trying to, she has to set
• 29:31
  boundaries for her teenage son. You know, she can't.
• 29:33
  There needs to be a curfew or there needs to be rules for the
• 29:36
  household or rules for for homework or for school or
• 29:39
  friends. And at the same time, he's angry
• 29:43
  with her and he's not engaging her in this emotional way
• 29:46
  because he may be as as an attachment issue.
• 29:50
  How does a parent deal with that situation?
• 29:54
  Well, I always say gentle but firm boundaries with adolescence
• 29:58
  and even with young children that first you have to show
• 30:01
  empathy before you set a boundary.
• 30:04
  You know, you never want to say no to someone before you try to
• 30:08
  understand their feelings about things.
• 30:11
  So the first thing you would say is this must be really hard for
• 30:14
  you. You know, you're 12 and I know
• 30:16
  you really want to go to that concert with your friends with
• 30:20
  no, no adult supervision, and that's something you really want
• 30:23
  to do and they're all doing. That must be really hard for
• 30:25
  you, for us to say no to you, but we don't feel it's safe and
• 30:29
  we're going to have to say no. But it must be really hard.
• 30:33
  So before discipline, you always show empathy, whether or not a
• 30:37
  child has an attachment issue. But even more important, if they
• 30:42
  have suffered and they're young, if you've not been there or
• 30:44
  they've had losses, the sensitivity that goes into
• 30:49
  empathy before discipline. So I always say to parents, if
• 30:52
  you get one thing from sitting in my consultation room, it's
• 30:55
  that you never discipline a child without first showing
• 30:57
  empathy. So there's many more questions,
• 31:03
  but I want to go to Chicken Little.
• 31:04
  This guy's not falling, Falling because you provide a framework
• 31:08
  there that is really powerful. First, even helping understand
• 31:11
  what is adolescence. So you mentioned this a little
• 31:13
  earlier. Adolescence is the ages of 9 to
• 31:16
  25. Like people listening, 16 years
• 31:18
  of adolescence, you know, the parents listening like, Oh my
• 31:21
  gosh, that's a lot. And, you know, I, I hadn't heard
• 31:24
  it described that way. I know, like you said, that's
• 31:26
  newer science coming out about how the brain develops.
• 31:30
  OK, what are the different stages of adolescence?
• 31:33
  Well, there's three stages of adolescence.
• 31:35
  There's early adolescence, there's mid adolescence, and
• 31:40
  then there's late adolescence. So early adolescence is about 9
• 31:45
  to 13 and mid adolescence is about 14 to 18, and then late
• 31:53
  adolescence is about 18 to 25. And just so you know boys it it
• 31:59
  really ends closer to 28. So I want to make sure to say
• 32:02
  that that with boys it's it's a little later than girls.
• 32:05
  So even boys go to 28 in terms of the end of adolescence and
• 32:11
  you know these three stages they're they're different in
• 32:14
  character. The first stage is sort of
• 32:17
  marked by what I call exploration because you know,
• 32:22
  you're exploring your body. It's the beginning of puberty.
• 32:24
  Your body is changing. The first stage is really marked
• 32:27
  by a lot of bodily things. Puberty brings all kinds of
• 32:32
  changes that also, you know, change in rules as related to
• 32:35
  hormones. So a lot of the first part of
• 32:39
  adolescence is a lot of self consciousness about bodily
• 32:43
  changes. The second, the second stage is
• 32:48
  really figuring out your identity, who you are both
• 32:52
  sexually, gender wise, what your strengths are, what your
• 32:57
  limitations are. You know, between 14 and 18.
• 33:01
  You realize, gosh, I'm not really great at math, so I'm
• 33:05
  probably not going to be an astrophysicist.
• 33:07
  Maybe I'm good at writing, maybe I'm going to do something in the
• 33:10
  humanities. It's the beginning of sort of
• 33:12
  identity formation, right, 14 to 18.
• 33:16
  And it's when you figure out, am I heterosexual and you know, and
• 33:20
  and and who am I. Basically, in so many ways the
• 33:25
  last stage of development for adolescence, late adolescence is
• 33:29
  sort of, you'd say it's the synthesis stage.
• 33:33
  It's when everything comes together and they really are
• 33:37
  their, their personality settles, right?
• 33:39
  So they settle into themselves. So about by 25 they've sort of
• 33:43
  settled into who they are and what they're good at, what
• 33:48
  they're not good at, where they're going.
• 33:50
  So those are the three distinct stages.
• 33:53
  There's there's a lot of other things that distinguish them.
• 33:55
  One thing that I think is really important for people to
• 33:58
  understand of adolescence is the middle phase of adolescents is
• 34:03
  actually one of the most vulnerable, and they're the most
• 34:08
  vulnerable to mental health issues.
• 34:10
  And I can tell you why that is. So in the middle phase, they're
• 34:16
  very focused on the present. So you'd say the first stage
• 34:22
  you'll you're you have one foot. In the past, childhood, it's
• 34:26
  early childhood, it's a childhood and one foot in being
• 34:31
  a teenager, right. So if you know any like 12 year
• 34:34
  olds, you'll know tween. It'll be like, you know, I'm a
• 34:37
  big, I'm a big boy, I'm a big girl, I'm a teenager.
• 34:40
  But then other moments there's still like a baby and they want
• 34:42
  to curl up on the right on the couch with you between 14 and
• 34:45
  18. They're kind of very much stuck
• 34:48
  in the middle. They're not.
• 34:50
  No foot in the in the past yet, No foot in the future yet.
• 34:55
  And so, and that's both a good thing and a bad thing, it's a
• 34:57
  laboratory for them to develop themselves being in the present.
• 35:01
  The problem with it is that if you're unhappy, if your social
• 35:04
  life isn't going well, if you're not doing well with your grades,
• 35:08
  you get into a kind of tunnel vision between 14 and 18 because
• 35:13
  you can't see the future yet. You get in, you can get into
• 35:17
  very depressed and even suicidal states, right.
• 35:20
  So what helps us when we're feeling down is that we can see
• 35:23
  that there'll be another, there'll be light at the end of
• 35:26
  the day, tomorrow's another day. 14 to 18 year old cannot see the
• 35:31
  future. They get stuck in their misery
• 35:33
  in the present, whereas an 18 to 25 year old now has a foot in
• 35:37
  the present but has a foot in the future, right.
• 35:39
  So they they have a way out. They see, right.
• 35:42
  I'm getting out of here. I'm going to college or I'm
• 35:44
  going to go work. I'm going to get away.
• 35:46
  I'm going to be somebody different.
• 35:48
  But that 14 to 18 period, that's the highest suicide rate for
• 35:53
  kids and that's that's the period that I think is so
• 35:57
  critical that parents are around a lot during that phase.
• 36:01
  You had some really startling statistics in your book,
• 36:06
  especially the first part laying out basically the new age of
• 36:09
  anxiety that we're in today. And one of them was the suicide
• 36:13
  rate in young people having tripled from 2007 to 2017.
• 36:21
  Also, the increase in young adults and adolescents being
• 36:24
  prescribed medication for rental health disorders, 400% increase
• 36:30
  in just a three-year period, If I understood this, 2005 to 2008.
• 36:35
  You're saying there's a state of instability that happens, you
• 36:39
  know, age 14 roughly to 18. That's sort of just based on
• 36:43
  biologically how we develop. And yet today's kids and in the
• 36:48
  recent years more than ever are having serious mental health
• 36:53
  issues and consequences. What's going on here?
• 36:57
  Think of it like a puzzle, a big puzzle.
• 37:00
  It's not one thing. So I know people want to be
• 37:03
  reductionistic about it and say, oh, it's social media that did
• 37:06
  it to our kids, you know, so social media is a piece of the
• 37:10
  puzzle. It's not the whole puzzle.
• 37:13
  I I like to think of the puzzle as having a foundation.
• 37:17
  The foundation is did you raise your children with the emotional
• 37:20
  security in the first critical window?
• 37:24
  Did you give them shock absorbers for the future, 'cause
• 37:27
  that's what attachment security is.
• 37:29
  All it is really are just like having shock absorbers in your
• 37:32
  car. And so if your kid experiences
• 37:37
  adversity loss, I mean you'd say our journey growing up is a
• 37:41
  painful one. We don't talk about it, 'cause
• 37:43
  everybody idealizes childhood and says childhood's wonderful,
• 37:47
  actually, it's really painful growing up.
• 37:50
  So the whole experience of growing up is painful.
• 37:53
  So to be able to cope with why? Because.
• 37:56
  Why do you say that to? Be able to cope with the
• 37:59
  rejection and, you know, the losses.
• 38:02
  We start out as children believing that we are
• 38:06
  everything, can be everything and the world is our oyster,
• 38:10
  right? We all start out in a
• 38:12
  narcissistic state. That's normal.
• 38:14
  It's developmental. But then over time, we learn
• 38:19
  we're not the center of the universe.
• 38:21
  We learn that we have strengths, but we also have weaknesses,
• 38:26
  right? Like, I may never be a ballerina
• 38:28
  because I can't dance, but I say when I'm three, I want to be a
• 38:31
  ballerina, you know, so we start to understand who we are and
• 38:37
  that we're not everything to everyone in every situation.
• 38:42
  And that's a painful experience, just that experience of having
• 38:46
  to deal with rejection and loss and as they say, taking things
• 38:51
  off the table, like everything's on the table when you're born.
• 38:53
  And then things come off the table, right?
• 38:56
  Maybe I'm not athletic, maybe I'm more musical.
• 39:00
  So that experience is painful. But then childhood is painful
• 39:04
  socially, it's painful. And then you get to puberty and
• 39:08
  adolescence, and that's an adversity for me.
• 39:11
  Adolescence developmentally and a normal adolescence is is an
• 39:16
  adversity and people don't talk about it that way, so.
• 39:19
  I I interrupted you with that. Yeah.
• 39:22
  Yeah, they they don't. It's true.
• 39:23
  And I think it make it resonates what you're saying.
• 39:26
  And you know, I, from the perspective of, you know, we're
• 39:29
  born with an innocence but with a wounded nature.
• 39:32
  And you know, increasingly we get wounded because the world's
• 39:35
  imperfect and it's a tough place.
• 39:37
  It can be a very you know beautiful but tough place so you
• 39:41
  know you were you were about to share though about the the
• 39:44
  reasons for this rise and or this decline I should say in
• 39:47
  mental health today and the rise in the use of drugs and all of
• 39:51
  this. I know you mentioned social
• 39:52
  media I know you talk about a lot more many more factors in
• 39:56
  your book. What other factors and and by
• 39:59
  the way, this is a conversation people have all the time like
• 40:01
  why are you know is it the is it social media?
• 40:04
  You know you could say is it parenting?
• 40:06
  Parents are just totally out to lunch now.
• 40:09
  You know, is it the soy in our food or is estrogen in our
• 40:13
  water? You know what, what are, what
• 40:16
  are the factors in your view? And then of course, we want to
• 40:19
  get to, OK, what does this mean for parents and and how to
• 40:21
  maximize the best outcomes for their kids?
• 40:24
  Well, I mean, the first piece is, do you have attachment
• 40:28
  security? The second piece that I think is
• 40:30
  really important is, you know, do you have a supportive
• 40:34
  community? I mean, we've lost community.
• 40:37
  We don't live in extended family community.
• 40:39
  So if our mother comes to work, we don't have our grandmother
• 40:42
  and our aunts. We don't have lots of people
• 40:44
  around us that love us. We may have people that care
• 40:47
  about us, but we don't have people that love us.
• 40:50
  So the loss of community, the loss of faith, faith, If you
• 40:54
  look at the Harvard study, the idea that kids who whose parents
• 40:58
  take them to faith-based communities or services every
• 41:03
  week do better in terms of their mental health than the kids who
• 41:06
  don't grow up with faith, There's social media, there's
• 41:11
  the fact that we have taken our childhood away from our
• 41:13
  children, we have reversed things.
• 41:16
  So we we project onto very young children that they're
• 41:20
  independent and self-sufficient and can handle a lot of stress.
• 41:24
  And then when they get older, we treat them, we infantilize them,
• 41:27
  we treat them like they're babies and we baby them.
• 41:31
  We have to reverse that back. So we treat infants like infants
• 41:34
  and children. We start to give more freedom so
• 41:36
  they can develop resilience, right?
• 41:39
  And when they're very young, we also take their childhood away
• 41:41
  from them because we take play away.
• 41:43
  So somewhere along the way we got confused that the way to
• 41:46
  create successful children was to force cognitive learning into
• 41:52
  them at a young age. Reading, writing and arithmetic
• 41:55
  at a young age before their brains are are capable of
• 41:58
  handling it. So the way I I would put it is
• 42:00
  that your right brain, your social emotional brain is
• 42:04
  responsible, is like your socks. You always want to put on the
• 42:07
  socks before you put on your shoes.
• 42:08
  You don't want to put on your shoes and then try to put your
• 42:10
  socks over your shoes. So what we've done is we've
• 42:13
  reversed it. We teach kids at a very young
• 42:16
  age to sit in circle time to learn their letters, to learn
• 42:19
  their numbers, and the kids accommodate, but then they
• 42:22
  breakdown because in truth, what they need to be doing is what we
• 42:25
  call free play, an imaginary play.
• 42:28
  Because what that does is it helps to develop the right
• 42:30
  brain, which then helps them to deal with the frustration
• 42:34
  tolerance necessary to learn. To learn cognitive learning, you
• 42:38
  have to be able to tolerate a lot of frustration.
• 42:41
  Frustration tolerance and emotional regulation comes from
• 42:44
  the right brain. So right brain first, left brain
• 42:47
  next. We've reversed that, so we've
• 42:49
  taken play at education. Most education is cognitive
• 42:52
  based in the early years, not play based later on.
• 42:55
  We've also taken play away from kids.
• 42:58
  We force them into structured activities.
• 43:00
  We don't give them time. Even sports are wonderful.
• 43:03
  That's a structured activity. We don't give them time to hang
• 43:08
  out, to draw, to read, to sit in the backyard and dream to, you
• 43:14
  know, we don't give them space to play when they're when
• 43:18
  they're older. So we've taken playtime away
• 43:22
  because what we've done is we've projected onto them that they're
• 43:24
  adults and they don't need to play, but they do need to play
• 43:27
  and they're not like adults. Social media, as I said, is a
• 43:31
  terrible thing for a number of reasons.
• 43:33
  One is that it stimulates the the dopamine producing parts of
• 43:40
  the brain. And what we know is that
• 43:42
  adolescents produce much more dopamine in response to
• 43:45
  stimulation than adults. You sit an adult video game,
• 43:49
  that adult is going to produce 110th of the dopamine of the
• 43:52
  adolescents sitting next to them.
• 43:55
  So that means that adolescent is ripe for addiction, right?
• 44:00
  So we overwhelm our kids with stimulation, right?
• 44:04
  We have drugs and alcohol too readily available.
• 44:08
  You know if you look at the world, it's become an over
• 44:11
  stimulating, loud, noisy place, right?
• 44:15
  And what we know is that social media can lead to addiction.
• 44:19
  But the other thing that people don't know is that it stimulates
• 44:23
  the threat sensing part of the brain.
• 44:26
  The amygdala is the regulator of stress in your brain, tiny
• 44:30
  little almond shaped part of of your limbic system.
• 44:34
  And what social media does is it turns on the threat sensing part
• 44:39
  of your brain to believe that you that there's a threat that
• 44:43
  isn't there so which is why particularly girls with boys to
• 44:48
  in social media will go into states of heightened self
• 44:53
  consciousness fear of social retribution.
• 44:57
  So it there's so many bad things with social media, but it's not,
• 45:02
  I want to say it very carefully, it is not the cause of this
• 45:05
  crisis. It is a contributing
• 45:07
  exacerbating factor in this crisis.
• 45:11
  So and there's many more, but that's just a handful.
• 45:14
  I guess the one I mentioned didn't mention is we also have
• 45:18
  created highly pressurized environment for kids, sort of
• 45:22
  like growing hothouse tomatoes, you know that expression,
• 45:26
  growing a hothouse tomato. We've basically created an
• 45:30
  environment where success is defined by grades, by getting
• 45:35
  into schools, by getting the best job, by making the most
• 45:40
  money from a very young age when kids are not supposed to be even
• 45:44
  thinking about the future. At 1213 fourteen years old
• 45:48
  member, they're supposed to be here playing in the present.
• 45:52
  They're now thinking about what am I going to get into college?
• 45:55
  Am I going to get a job? And it overwhelms and it puts
• 45:58
  them into a threat mode. As I've shared on the show
• 46:02
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• 46:55
  OK. There's so much to unpack with
• 46:56
  what you just said. I actually took notes as I got
• 46:59
  to ask more about this, about that one thing that you didn't
• 47:02
  include and just what you shared.
• 47:03
  And you said there are many other factors that you didn't
• 47:05
  say. But I'm curious your thoughts on
• 47:07
  it. I know we have questions on this
• 47:08
  too. Is the impact of divorce and
• 47:11
  separation on children, adolescents, of course, but also
• 47:15
  any age child? And how to.
• 47:17
  I want to hear kind of your thoughts on the impact of it and
• 47:19
  then also the strategies for the parents who are separated for
• 47:22
  how to maximize success for their kids.
• 47:26
  Most kids today, my understanding is are being
• 47:29
  raised in a household where it's not intact.
• 47:32
  So they have separated parents or divorced parents or parents
• 47:36
  who were never together to begin with.
• 47:38
  And so this is the commonplace, you know, several decades ago
• 47:41
  this was not the case in this country.
• 47:43
  This is a commonplace experience for your average kid.
• 47:46
  So interestingly, I'm writing a book about divorce right now.
• 47:51
  Wonderful. Can't wait to have you on again
• 47:53
  to talk about it. Why do?
• 47:54
  I write books. I write books because I see a
• 47:57
  problem that no one is really addressed.
• 47:59
  And for me, divorce is not ideal and we should be able to talk
• 48:05
  about the ideal. What's ideal is 2 parents who
• 48:09
  love each other, respect each other, admire each other, and
• 48:13
  love raising children together. That's the ideal.
• 48:17
  Unfortunately, there's a lot of people in this in this world who
• 48:22
  are not the ideal and so we don't want to condemn them.
• 48:25
  But we want to say there are ways to divorce where you
• 48:29
  minimize the harm to your children and maximize the
• 48:32
  resilience, right. And I think right now most
• 48:36
  people don't do it well. Divorce causes so much pain in
• 48:41
  parents that they translate their pain.
• 48:45
  They pass their pain along to their children rather than
• 48:49
  protecting their children from their pain.
• 48:52
  And so, yeah, what I would say is divorce is not ideal.
• 48:56
  We don't want to ever say that it's good for children.
• 48:59
  But I will say to you that living in a state of intense
• 49:04
  conflict with two parents who hate each other or can't get
• 49:08
  along or are abusive to one another is far worse for
• 49:13
  children. So what I say is a good divorce
• 49:16
  is better than a really bad marriage.
• 49:18
  Having said that, divorce is not ideal.
• 49:22
  So if we can, we try to make our marriages better.
• 49:25
  We try to raise our children in an environment that's loving and
• 49:28
  healthy. But if we can't, then it's it's
• 49:33
  it's better to get divorced, but in such a way that you don't
• 49:38
  pass that pain on to your children.
• 49:41
  Are you concerned? And I see this, you know, pop
• 49:43
  culture is easy to criticize, but I see, you know, we are
• 49:45
  lovingly separating after five years of marriage or 20 years of
• 49:49
  marriage. And, you know, we love each
• 49:51
  other so much, but we are separating lovingly.
• 49:53
  You know, you see these sort of statements put out by
• 49:55
  celebrities, right? And, you know, do you?
• 49:58
  I have the concern that, like you just said, you know, a
• 50:00
  terrible marriage where there's constant conflict in fighting,
• 50:03
  is you arguably worse than a good divorce for whatever that
• 50:08
  means, a good divorce, which I want to hear you unpack that.
• 50:10
  But my question is this, If you are a couple who is divorcing
• 50:14
  and because you just couldn't, there's not serious abuse in the
• 50:17
  picture, You know, it's not like you're fleeing an abusive
• 50:19
  situation. There's just like you're not
• 50:21
  working it out right. You have a lot of competing
• 50:23
  interests. You're not working it out.
• 50:24
  You fell out of love, right? Does that attitude and the lack
• 50:28
  of sort of commitment and intentionality you brought to
• 50:31
  the marriage, is it possible leaving a marriage for those
• 50:34
  reasons? So then go and have the good
• 50:35
  divorce and go and raise those kids well when you're bringing
• 50:39
  with you yourself as a parent who struggle with the
• 50:42
  intentionality, the commitment and the maybe the self
• 50:44
  sacrifice. I mean, I think every parent who
• 50:49
  I'm going to use this word, I want to be careful and
• 50:51
  sensitive, but every parent who feels they failed at marriage
• 50:57
  has to live with that feeling. And you know what I say is you
• 51:01
  need to go into therapy so it it doesn't feel as much of A
• 51:06
  failure as it does a mistake. And and we can get over
• 51:11
  mistakes. It's harder to get over failures
• 51:14
  if we feel they're failures. And I think the parents who you
• 51:18
  know with great intentionality deal with their own pain can can
• 51:26
  move on to really prioritize their children.
• 51:30
  So here I am again. So that seems to be my tagline
• 51:33
  with all of my books. Prioritize your children.
• 51:36
  So if you can work out your marriage, then work out your
• 51:40
  marriage because that would be if it can be a good enough
• 51:44
  marriage, it doesn't have to be a perfect marriage.
• 51:46
  Then you know, then then that prioritizes your children.
• 51:51
  But if there is no way to to do that, meaning you're in an
• 51:55
  abusive relationship, you're within a mentally ill person or
• 51:59
  you know you're you're seriously unhappy and depressed in that
• 52:03
  relationship, then that is not a good model for children.
• 52:07
  So what I say is the best model for children is that loving
• 52:11
  relationship. So we want children to
• 52:13
  experience what relationships are supposed to be at some point
• 52:18
  in their lives. And if you stay in a very
• 52:20
  unhappy relationship, let's say you have tried to work it out
• 52:24
  and you stay just for the children, the experience of
• 52:28
  those children may in fact be that that's what an intimate
• 52:31
  relationship looks like. And then we get generational
• 52:33
  expression of unhappiness and and disconnect in relationships.
• 52:41
  So there's no black and white answer.
• 52:42
  I'm gonna go back to what I said originally.
• 52:45
  The ideal is a happy marriage between two people who tried to
• 52:49
  work things out, who can deal with conflict, who don't run
• 52:53
  from conflict, who stay and fight for their marriage when
• 52:56
  they can. And if they have done all the
• 52:59
  fighting they can, not not fighting each other, but
• 53:02
  fighting together for their marriage and they can't work it
• 53:06
  out, then the best is to have a divorce where you prioritize
• 53:10
  your children. It's a controversial opinion
• 53:13
  because, you know, I I was talking to Doctor John Deloney
• 53:16
  on the show a few weeks back and I know I my position is, you
• 53:20
  know, if you're going into it and again if there's not severe
• 53:23
  abuse or something that is dangerous, you know, for those
• 53:27
  living in the household, then you you work it out like you,
• 53:30
  you, you set your mind on passionately.
• 53:33
  I'm going to work this out because I think in the end love
• 53:36
  is a choice. Are you describing something?
• 53:39
  Where in these cases are you referring to?
• 53:42
  Maybe some incompatibility you perceive or something where it's
• 53:46
  even though they're both trying really hard to work it out, they
• 53:48
  can't. I mean what what are those?
• 53:50
  Cases look like to you. And then obviously that impact
• 53:53
  on the kid, what that impact is on the kid?
• 53:55
  The best way I can describe it is people get married for a
• 53:59
  variety of reasons at a variety of different times in life, and
• 54:04
  often people who you know, not always.
• 54:06
  People get married before they know themselves very well,
• 54:09
  meaning they'll marry when they're not fully developed
• 54:12
  themselves. And in the best case scenario,
• 54:15
  couples will then develop together.
• 54:19
  You know, they'll track each other and they'll develop, you
• 54:22
  know, side by side together. But in the worst case scenario,
• 54:28
  they develop in very different directions.
• 54:30
  So they're no longer compatible. Maybe because they chose each
• 54:33
  other and and chose to commit to one another before they actually
• 54:36
  knew who they would be as a grown up and and so that that
• 54:41
  happens quite often. I do agree with you that I think
• 54:46
  marriage is worth fighting for. Marriage is the best environment
• 54:51
  for children and it's worth fighting for.
• 54:53
  And so I always encourage couples who come to see me for
• 54:56
  couples therapy not to give up easily.
• 54:59
  You know, often they'll come to me thinking they're coming to
• 55:02
  separate. You know, you go to couples
• 55:04
  therapy not just to stay together.
• 55:06
  Sometimes you go to to separate and usually what happens is I at
• 55:11
  least get them in a dialogue about their relationship and how
• 55:15
  they really tried in every way to to try to work it out.
• 55:18
  So the ideal is to come back together to with greater
• 55:23
  understanding and greater compassion for one another,
• 55:26
  greater acceptance of one another.
• 55:28
  But it doesn't always happen. So a book like mine
• 55:31
  unfortunately has to exist because divorce exists.
• 55:35
  So you know, but the ideal is marriage.
• 55:39
  So a couple questions coming from the perspective of people
• 55:43
  who are navigating separation. And we can have a longer
• 55:47
  conversation maybe on this in the future because there's so
• 55:49
  much here. And I do want to get back to
• 55:50
  kind of the what you laid out as the kind of big picture of
• 55:54
  mental health crises for kids and how to solve that.
• 55:58
  But you're, let's say, you're in a separated relationship and
• 56:02
  there was, if not straight up abuse, there was certainly other
• 56:06
  factors that were very unhealthy.
• 56:09
  And so whether you chose the divorce or the separation or
• 56:11
  not, you are in a separation and dealing with the children in
• 56:15
  that. In that area, maybe there's a
• 56:17
  custody dispute. In addition to that, there's
• 56:19
  financial issues. You're just wanting to limit the
• 56:22
  damage. You're just wanting to limit the
• 56:24
  damage to your child or your children.
• 56:27
  What's your advice to that spouse who's helpless?
• 56:29
  Maybe in a court battle against a court battle or a spouse they
• 56:33
  feel as being very unreasonable? An ex-spouse to minimize the
• 56:38
  damage for the children that they they love so much?
• 56:41
  Well, I mean the the way I would describe it is, you know,
• 56:46
  sometimes you have to fight for your children if your spouse is
• 56:49
  mentally ill or you know there's serious issues there or or you
• 56:53
  you feel that there your children are unsafe, you have to
• 56:56
  go to battle. But the best divorce is 1 where
• 57:01
  it it limits the conflict it it, it sort of keeps the conflict to
• 57:06
  a minimum, you know. So I always say things like
• 57:08
  mediation and before you go into a hot and heavy court battle,
• 57:14
  but that parents keep their perspective that divorces harm
• 57:19
  children when they are contentious divorces, they
• 57:23
  really do harm children in so many ways.
• 57:28
  Loyalties are split. Children feel tremendous losses,
• 57:33
  Not only the loss of the nuclear family, but they often feel the
• 57:37
  loss of one or both of their parents as a result.
• 57:39
  So, you know, it's devastating. It's traumatic divorce.
• 57:43
  There's no doubt that divorce in and of itself can be traumatic
• 57:47
  to children. How you minimize that is you
• 57:49
  reduce the amount of conflict when possible and you process
• 57:54
  every adversity, every conflict. So you know, there's different
• 57:59
  views, I guess there's different views of God.
• 58:02
  And I always say this because you know, you can either view
• 58:05
  God as someone who's there just always protecting you and
• 58:08
  pulling the strings like the puppet master who's just, you
• 58:11
  know, gonna control everything, or you have a different view,
• 58:15
  which is that God created you and you have self determination.
• 58:20
  But believing in God helps you to get through the adversity.
• 58:23
  So I think of that with kids, because parents can't always
• 58:27
  protect their children from all pain.
• 58:29
  You know, what they can do is help them to get through the
• 58:33
  pain. And so one way that you do that
• 58:36
  is to not impose your pain on them.
• 58:38
  If you're angry at your spouse, you don't talk about being angry
• 58:41
  at your spouse. If you are feeling hateful
• 58:43
  feelings, you bring that to your therapist.
• 58:45
  You don't bring that to your children.
• 58:47
  You don't disparage the other partner because they need a
• 58:50
  mother and a father, right? And so, in so many ways, there
• 58:54
  are things that you can do to mitigate the pain to your
• 58:57
  children, identifying their feelings and helping them to
• 59:00
  process those feelings. You know, letting them be sad
• 59:03
  and angry. And you know, you can't
• 59:06
  necessarily stop their pain or stop it from happening, but you
• 59:11
  can be empathic and sensitive and help them to process those
• 59:15
  feelings. I hear a lot of cases of people
• 59:19
  who feel that they're beyond the point of being able to trust
• 59:24
  this ex partner spouse. And so the the idea of sort of
• 59:29
  speaking well of the ex partner spouse to the child or
• 59:33
  pretending like that they aren't extremely anxious when this
• 59:36
  child is going to go stay with the ex partner spouse.
• 59:39
  What would you, what advice would you give to that person
• 59:43
  who's worried about their child being injured, Maybe not
• 59:46
  physically damaged, but to be otherwise emotionally,
• 59:49
  psychologically harmed by this spouse, But it's not something
• 59:52
  that they've proven or can prove in court.
• 59:54
  It's just their experience of the spouse of the Expos.
• 59:57
  I mean, I I believe in something called forensics, which is, you
• 1:00:03
  know, it's the psychologists intervening on behalf of the
• 1:00:07
  children and really analyzing the situation.
• 1:00:10
  So what what is best for the child is chosen.
• 1:00:13
  But I think if you really believe that your your your
• 1:00:16
  spouse is mentally ill or is going to do harm to your
• 1:00:19
  children, you fight like hell. You fight like hell, and you you
• 1:00:24
  you cannot be passive in that situation.
• 1:00:27
  So that's the exception, right? We're not talking about two
• 1:00:29
  reasonable, amicable people divorcing who both love their
• 1:00:33
  children and both are healthy enough.
• 1:00:34
  We're talking now about a spouse who may be mentally ill or
• 1:00:39
  abusive and maybe an alcoholic, maybe a drug addict, and in that
• 1:00:44
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  All right, so much more to go to here and what we were talking
• 1:01:38
  about first. The laying out the big picture
• 1:01:40
  that you did and you know, we we can maybe do divorce more in the
• 1:01:43
  future because there's obviously more to explore there too.
• 1:01:46
  But with the time we've got, I wanted to pick up a few threads
• 1:01:49
  from earlier which I thought were really important.
• 1:01:51
  You're talking about play and the importance of play for a
• 1:01:54
  child. And then you're referring to
• 1:01:56
  kind of the school systems or the expectations we have for
• 1:01:58
  kids where, you know, the hothouse tomato effect of
• 1:02:01
  forcing them to grow in a certain way when they're not
• 1:02:03
  ready. Is there an age that you
• 1:02:06
  recommend that a child should be introduced to?
• 1:02:09
  What we consider maybe more formal learning like this is now
• 1:02:11
  you need to learn to read, to write.
• 1:02:14
  Let's start with that and then I'll I have a lot of follow up
• 1:02:17
  on that. So until you're six years old,
• 1:02:21
  you need to just play. And that's a radical thing to
• 1:02:24
  say, but that is really the way it was for decades, that you
• 1:02:29
  went to nursery school for only one year and it was a few hours
• 1:02:35
  a day, a few days a week. That's it.
• 1:02:38
  It was just so you get used to being in a group environment and
• 1:02:42
  you didn't do it till you were four and then you went to
• 1:02:44
  kindergarten and then you only went half days.
• 1:02:47
  You either got the morning slot or you got the afternoon slot.
• 1:02:51
  And I always, I remember my mother fought for the morning
• 1:02:54
  slot because of my naps. So you know, but some kids got
• 1:02:57
  the afternoon slot and that way you went five days a week to
• 1:03:00
  kindergarten, a few hours a day, that's it.
• 1:03:03
  And all you did was play. That's all you so.
• 1:03:07
  Do you think the kindergarten experience today versus, you
• 1:03:11
  know, decades ago is much more aggressive in the expectation?
• 1:03:16
  Oh. My God, it's You have homework
• 1:03:19
  and you're sitting in circle time.
• 1:03:21
  So little boys are not meant to sit in circle time with all that
• 1:03:27
  testosterone rolling around in their bodies.
• 1:03:30
  They are not meant to sit quietly and learn in a group
• 1:03:34
  environment sitting in circle time.
• 1:03:36
  And So what it does is it causes them to feel inadequate.
• 1:03:40
  It stresses them out. They go into fight or flight.
• 1:03:43
  They either become aggressive or they become distractible, and
• 1:03:47
  then they're identified as being a problem child.
• 1:03:50
  And on and on it goes. When little boys are meant to
• 1:03:54
  learn through playful, tactile, exploratory play, so are little
• 1:03:59
  girls. But little girls have a little
• 1:04:01
  more of a capacity to sit in circle time.
• 1:04:03
  But they too are meant to do a lot of imaginary play.
• 1:04:07
  Little boys and little girls are meant to play.
• 1:04:10
  You learn through play. You learn about conflict
• 1:04:12
  resolution through play. You work through certain
• 1:04:15
  troubling emotions through play. And you know, so play is a very
• 1:04:19
  important thing. We lost play.
• 1:04:22
  We lost childhood. We basically turned our very
• 1:04:26
  young children. We we we projected onto them
• 1:04:29
  that they were older than they actually are, that they were
• 1:04:33
  just like us. They're not just like us.
• 1:04:36
  They're children. And so kindergarten was play.
• 1:04:40
  In fact, kindergarten means the garden of children.
• 1:04:44
  A garden, right. And then by the time you were
• 1:04:48
  six or first grade, you started to learn your letters, new
• 1:04:52
  numbers. And you know, that's when for
• 1:04:56
  decades, that's the way it was done.
• 1:04:58
  And then it changed when society became almost frenetic.
• 1:05:04
  Frenetic about competition and children had to, you know, get
• 1:05:09
  into the best and be the best and sort of kind of the almost
• 1:05:16
  hunger for exceptionalism, like I call it the democratization of
• 1:05:22
  exceptionalism, where every child had to be exceptional, so
• 1:05:26
  childhood went to the wayside and children are suffering
• 1:05:30
  because of this, right? Because remember, to learn
• 1:05:34
  cognitively you need to be able to tolerate a lot of frustration
• 1:05:39
  and frustration. Tolerance comes from play.
• 1:05:43
  This makes me think about the Instagram accounts of parents
• 1:05:46
  who are bragging about their kid learning to read at age 3 or two
• 1:05:50
  even. And you know how they've.
• 1:05:52
  And I and I remember looking at it's kind of, it's kind of
• 1:05:54
  interesting. Seems a little bit cool, maybe,
• 1:05:56
  But my impression is they're building a strong bond with
• 1:05:59
  their child because they're they're they're finding ways to
• 1:06:02
  play, have their child play and they're bonding with their child
• 1:06:05
  through it. So they're kind of doing this
• 1:06:07
  trick and the end result is they have this child who can read.
• 1:06:09
  But really, it's about bonding and playing with their child in
• 1:06:13
  this particular format that they've developed that maybe
• 1:06:15
  work for some kids, but maybe definitely wouldn't work for
• 1:06:17
  other kids. Yeah, again, What happens is
• 1:06:20
  children will learn. Just just to be clear, you can
• 1:06:24
  teach children cognitive skills at a very young age.
• 1:06:28
  What happens is they collapse and so there are studies to show
• 1:06:36
  that children who are given a very good base of social
• 1:06:40
  emotional play in the beginning are long term, sustainable, more
• 1:06:47
  successful learners then the children.
• 1:06:51
  Make. Who are forced to learn so early
• 1:06:54
  because what happens is they have breakdowns.
• 1:06:58
  This makes me more than ever grateful for being homeschooled
• 1:07:01
  Erica, because a lot of my childhood was play.
• 1:07:05
  I mean, I have. We have our own issues in our
• 1:07:06
  family, but there was a lot of unstructured time to play and to
• 1:07:11
  explore and to read and to just to be.
• 1:07:14
  And I think that there's such a value to that.
• 1:07:17
  I think you're right, we forget this often.
• 1:07:20
  What's then? What would be some tools you'd
• 1:07:22
  recommend that parents use when they're trying to select for a
• 1:07:25
  preschool or a kindergarten? Or even, you know, for, you
• 1:07:28
  know, elementary school grade school for how they can identify
• 1:07:32
  schools that are going to be more play based or more
• 1:07:35
  conducive to the child's development?
• 1:07:37
  Ask them. Ask how they feel about play and
• 1:07:42
  ask them if they allow for imaginary play in the classroom
• 1:07:46
  and ask them how long they have to sit in circle time.
• 1:07:49
  It's fine to have a circle time as long as it's a quick a
• 1:07:53
  quickie. You know where you sit down and
• 1:07:55
  you have a short time in circle time, but the majority of it is
• 1:07:59
  free play or manipulative play or imaginary play.
• 1:08:03
  Ask them. The other thing you want to ask
• 1:08:07
  is how do they handle separation, particularly with
• 1:08:11
  preschool, right? Many, many preschools are very
• 1:08:15
  insensitive about separation and the separation process, and they
• 1:08:18
  don't even see it as process. They say leave the kid, they're
• 1:08:22
  crying, they'll be just fine. You leave and we'll take care of
• 1:08:25
  them. You know they're fine once you
• 1:08:27
  go. And that's an insensitive
• 1:08:30
  approach. So separation, a child who's
• 1:08:32
  been home with their mother is a process.
• 1:08:36
  It's a leaning process, and it takes at least two weeks of the
• 1:08:40
  mother being present in the classroom so the child can do
• 1:08:45
  what we call emotional refueling, right?
• 1:08:47
  We know the ability to go toddle off and explore and come back
• 1:08:50
  and get a hug and toddle off and explore and come back and look
• 1:08:53
  back at the mother. That process is really important
• 1:08:56
  to create a secure base in that classroom, right?
• 1:08:58
  There's a. Lot of classrooms, they don't
• 1:09:00
  even allow the parent in physically.
• 1:09:01
  They don't want the parent there because it's too complex or hard
• 1:09:05
  for them to deal with that. But this should be the first two
• 1:09:08
  weeks of a child's school experience.
• 1:09:10
  And if you want them to love school, then you don't want to
• 1:09:12
  make school into a traumatic experience.
• 1:09:14
  You want it to be easing them into weaning them away from you
• 1:09:19
  and easing them into separating from you for short periods of
• 1:09:22
  time. So sensitive schools treat
• 1:09:27
  separation sensitively. So you start in the classroom.
• 1:09:30
  You start to move closer to the door.
• 1:09:32
  Eventually you're outside the door, but they know you're
• 1:09:35
  outside the door. If they're in distress, they can
• 1:09:37
  come to you. You go down, you go down into
• 1:09:39
  the cafeteria, and you wait down there.
• 1:09:42
  If they need you, they call you. You do this for two weeks.
• 1:09:45
  You take two weeks off of work, or if you're home with other
• 1:09:47
  kids, stay at school for two weeks.
• 1:09:50
  Ask them how they handle separation.
• 1:09:53
  So have you. Seen that successfully done,
• 1:09:55
  Erica, I think a lot of parents will say like, that sounds
• 1:09:57
  impossible. The school won't let me do that.
• 1:09:59
  I can't take the two weeks off. I mean, have you seen that done?
• 1:10:02
  Yes, it is done. It's done in in, as I said,
• 1:10:05
  sensitive empathic environments. The other thing that you can ask
• 1:10:09
  is how many hours are required of a child.
• 1:10:14
  The idea that children in preschool should never start
• 1:10:18
  preschool before three years of age.
• 1:10:20
  I'm going to repeat that again. Children should never start
• 1:10:23
  preschool until three years of age.
• 1:10:26
  Anything under three years of age is daycare.
• 1:10:29
  And I think for our last time of talking, you know how I feel
• 1:10:32
  about daycare. So three years is a good time
• 1:10:35
  because now they're starting to play with other children before
• 1:10:39
  three years of age. First of all, they need their
• 1:10:41
  mothers for security, but they also are doing parallel play.
• 1:10:45
  So at about 3:00, they can play with each other, which is the
• 1:10:48
  whole point. And then you want to wean them
• 1:10:50
  into short hours. So the idea of three days a week
• 1:10:55
  for 2 1/2 hours each day is enough.
• 1:10:59
  For a three-year old, that's plenty.
• 1:11:02
  At most maybe 2 1/2 hours five days a week, but no more than
• 1:11:07
  that. And then by the time they're
• 1:11:08
  four, most preschools ramp it up so they're getting ready for the
• 1:11:12
  way school is structured and they do, you know, 9 to 19 to
• 1:11:17
  2:00. But at three years of age, all
• 1:11:20
  they need is 1/2 day either in the morning or the afternoon,
• 1:11:24
  not even every day. So look for schools that are
• 1:11:28
  like that sweet, nurturing, sensitive, empathic, play based
• 1:11:33
  schools that handle separation well and are not forcing you to
• 1:11:37
  leave your child in in school for hours and hours.
• 1:11:41
  What's the role we I don't want to leave the adolescents out of
• 1:11:44
  this since we promised to talk about them throughout this
• 1:11:46
  episode. What's the role of play?
• 1:11:50
  You mentioned exploration is one of the stages of adolescence,
• 1:11:52
  the first stage, but what is the role of play for an adolescent?
• 1:11:57
  Because you know the school system.
• 1:11:59
  For middle school and high school, you know, you're talking
• 1:12:03
  heavy duty days, you're talking late night homework.
• 1:12:06
  Typically you're talking, you know, SA TS and you're preparing
• 1:12:10
  to try to get into the college and you have your
• 1:12:11
  extracurriculars. And I do think it can be very
• 1:12:15
  overwhelming. I know I'm from the Bay Area San
• 1:12:17
  Jose and there's regularly regular occurrence of these
• 1:12:20
  kids. You know, they say they have
• 1:12:21
  tiger moms or whatever the, you know, pejorative phrases, but
• 1:12:27
  our term is, but they are killing themselves.
• 1:12:29
  You know they're at the the wealthiest, you know, most high,
• 1:12:33
  highly accomplished high school, one of them in the Bay Area.
• 1:12:36
  Highest rates of exceptions to Ivy Leagues.
• 1:12:38
  And regularly the kids walk themselves over the train tracks
• 1:12:41
  and and they they're they die because they cannot handle the
• 1:12:45
  stress. OK, so I'm going to say
• 1:12:47
  something that's very controversial, but you are not a
• 1:12:49
  stranger to it, and I'm not a stranger to it.
• 1:12:51
  So any high school that demands that your child has more than
• 1:12:56
  two to three hours of homework a day, and that could also be the
• 1:13:01
  homework that they do while they're in school.
• 1:13:02
  A lot of kids do it during study hall and on the bus.
• 1:13:06
  Any school that demands more than two to three hours a day,
• 1:13:09
  you should pull your child out of period.
• 1:13:15
  So does that mean that other kids around them have different
• 1:13:22
  numbers of hours that they work? That may be, but for your child.
• 1:13:26
  If your child is not able to do their homework in two to three
• 1:13:30
  hours a day, pull them out of that school.
• 1:13:36
  What about extracurriculars? What if they they're not?
• 1:13:38
  Maybe they're kind of managing to mostly get it done, but
• 1:13:41
  they've got these other things, the marching band or I don't
• 1:13:44
  know, you know, I again, I was homeschooled.
• 1:13:46
  I had a very unorthodox, I guess upbringing in my education.
• 1:13:51
  But you know, the the many sports, music, whatever.
• 1:13:55
  And all of a sudden, every single hour of the day, they're
• 1:13:58
  rushing to something. So I think, you know, it's an
• 1:14:02
  exercise in executive functioning.
• 1:14:05
  It's the beginning of executive functioning.
• 1:14:07
  Remember, executive functioning is a right brain function.
• 1:14:10
  So remember I said your right brain isn't fully developed till
• 1:14:14
  you're 25. Part of that is is, is executive
• 1:14:19
  functioning. It doesn't fully develop till
• 1:14:21
  you're about 25. But that executive functioning
• 1:14:25
  dictates how you manage your time, how much you can handle,
• 1:14:29
  knowing how much you can handle. I mean, you know, I know you're
• 1:14:32
  a busy woman. I'm a busy woman.
• 1:14:33
  And the idea that we can't do everything, but we know what our
• 1:14:37
  limits are. Kids don't know their limits.
• 1:14:40
  So what I would say is just be on the lookout for bingeing on
• 1:14:45
  activities or not doing any activities.
• 1:14:49
  Meaning they don't always know how to regulate.
• 1:14:51
  So some activity is important for them, but kids often don't
• 1:14:56
  know how to regulate how much activity outside of school.
• 1:14:59
  So you know, for instance, if your kid comes to you and says,
• 1:15:03
  I want to do volleyball, tennis and baseball, I want to do, I
• 1:15:07
  want to play the violin, I want to play the flute, I want to
• 1:15:11
  March with the band, You know, this kind of.
• 1:15:13
  And you say, you know what? Isn't it better to do one or two
• 1:15:17
  things well, where you have space and time and to do 6
• 1:15:21
  things right? And you know, part of the issue
• 1:15:25
  has been that it's part of this success formula that we've
• 1:15:29
  created for adolescents, that they have a resume by the time
• 1:15:33
  they're like 13 years old. I didn't even know what the word
• 1:15:37
  resume meant till I got out of college, you know, So to have to
• 1:15:41
  have a resume means you have to do 6 activities all at once.
• 1:15:45
  This is why our kids are breaking down.
• 1:15:46
  The idea is that you have to help your children.
• 1:15:50
  They can pick their own activities first and foremost.
• 1:15:53
  They should be picking their activities, not you.
• 1:15:55
  But you also teach them about time management and about
• 1:16:00
  executive functioning. It's not something that comes
• 1:16:02
  naturally to them. If you're dealing with an
• 1:16:06
  adolescent who is, you know, type AI was going to provide
• 1:16:09
  these two hypotheticals because I know they're common.
• 1:16:11
  And then there's stuff to get to more beyond this that some other
• 1:16:17
  questions that came in about adolescence that I want to make
• 1:16:19
  sure we get to, but they were really good.
• 1:16:21
  But let's say there's you have the high performing kid, right,
• 1:16:24
  who is like just on steroids, getting stuff done, trying to be
• 1:16:27
  the best, trying to get the best grades.
• 1:16:29
  And they're kind of the good kid, you know, they're kind of
• 1:16:31
  the good kid. So you as a parent are thinking,
• 1:16:33
  you know, yeah, you don't want them to work too hard, but
• 1:16:35
  you're kind of proud of them And they're also pretty well
• 1:16:37
  behaved. So you don't think there's
• 1:16:39
  attachment issues or they don't seem to be rearing their their
• 1:16:42
  ugly head. What would be some things to be
• 1:16:45
  cautious about maybe as a parent with a kid like that?
• 1:16:49
  Because, you know, obviously you don't want to see a crash and a
• 1:16:51
  burn or you don't want to see some.
• 1:16:52
  Suddenly that bit that kid, you didn't see the signs and there
• 1:16:56
  is some dramatic event that is damaging in their behavior or
• 1:17:00
  self harm. You find out something really
• 1:17:02
  terrible that the child's been involved in.
• 1:17:04
  What would be advice for the parent dealing with a kid like
• 1:17:07
  that? And also in the context of this
• 1:17:09
  attachment stuff too, because maybe this parent is like, am I
• 1:17:13
  good, Are we good? You know, they seem to be
• 1:17:15
  interacting with me and fairly harmoniously.
• 1:17:18
  What would be just your advice for the parents?
• 1:17:20
  You want to look for balance. It's very important that in
• 1:17:25
  your, just like in an adult, you want to look for balance.
• 1:17:27
  But particularly in an adolescent, you want to look for
• 1:17:29
  balance. That they have friends is the
• 1:17:31
  most important thing, more important than grades, but that
• 1:17:35
  they have good enough grades that they feel good about it.
• 1:17:39
  So the problem is that we've created a system where kids can
• 1:17:43
  only feel good about their grades if they're straight AS.
• 1:17:47
  So when I was growing up, there were three straight A students
• 1:17:51
  in a class of 304 hundred and the rest were you know As and BS
• 1:17:58
  and B pluses, maybe AC and right.
• 1:18:01
  So today 45% of kids in high school are A students.
• 1:18:07
  Doesn't make sense does it, If you think about what's happened.
• 1:18:11
  So what you want to look for is balance.
• 1:18:13
  They have friends, they have a socialite, they have interests
• 1:18:16
  and other activities outside of school.
• 1:18:20
  And that there the pressure on themselves to get grades is
• 1:18:25
  modest and moderate. That they're not hoping that
• 1:18:28
  they're going to be a straight A student, but that they do the
• 1:18:31
  best that they can do. And so sometimes that's an A,
• 1:18:34
  sometimes that's AB. And you, you look for that kind
• 1:18:38
  of perfectionism, the obsessiveness over school or
• 1:18:42
  activity, and that's something to watch.
• 1:18:46
  And you also want to look for things if you want to know
• 1:18:48
  symptom wise what you look for, to know that your child may be
• 1:18:52
  having a difficult time. You look for any shifts or
• 1:18:55
  changes in mood, any shifts or changes in socializing, any
• 1:19:01
  shifts or changes in grades. If they went from being an A -,
• 1:19:07
  B plus or B student to being AC or D student, that's A.
• 1:19:10
  That's a marker of something. If there's sleep, where they're
• 1:19:14
  eating dramatically changes. So you're looking for any real
• 1:19:18
  shifts in either behavior or mood?
• 1:19:23
  What would be your practical advice for the parent of the
• 1:19:25
  adolescent who is trying to do what you're describing?
• 1:19:30
  And, you know, maybe they're dealing with the hyperachiever,
• 1:19:32
  or maybe they're dealing with the kid in the doldrums, or any
• 1:19:35
  number of, you know, they're dealing with rebellion issues,
• 1:19:38
  whatever it might be, and they want to connect.
• 1:19:41
  They really want to connect with their kid and they're struggling
• 1:19:44
  to find a way to do that. I was at a restaurant recently
• 1:19:48
  with my husband and our kid kiddos, and we were having, it
• 1:19:51
  was like a Sunday, you know, afternoon, early evening dinner
• 1:19:55
  and a little pizza joint. And, you know, I couldn't help
• 1:19:59
  but notice a mother there with her daughter.
• 1:20:01
  And the daughter was, you know, she had her piercings and her
• 1:20:04
  cool kind of outfit and her kind of crazy hair.
• 1:20:06
  And you know, she's like a 1415 year old.
• 1:20:09
  Just looking at her phone and the mother was very kind of
• 1:20:12
  proving proper. She had her salad, the girl had
• 1:20:14
  her pizza, they were drinking their drinks.
• 1:20:16
  And I could see that mother desperately trying to connect
• 1:20:20
  with her daughter. I don't mean to laugh at it.
• 1:20:22
  It was it was a beautiful expression.
• 1:20:23
  I again, I'm reading into what I what I perceived, but I I I
• 1:20:27
  sensed that the mother really wanted to connect.
• 1:20:30
  And this was, you know, getting going out to pizza dinner was
• 1:20:32
  this attempt. And the daughter was not
• 1:20:35
  connected back. So there have to be rules.
• 1:20:40
  One rule of engagement is no phones at the table.
• 1:20:43
  I think that's a good rule to have.
• 1:20:45
  And that's not even a rigid thing to ask.
• 1:20:48
  It's just no. I'm going to guess it was a
• 1:20:49
  source of controversy between these two, just based on what I
• 1:20:52
  saw, but. You have to start that early.
• 1:20:55
  The rules have to be started from the beginning.
• 1:20:57
  You can't just impose them when your child is 15.
• 1:21:00
  You have to do it from the time you give them a flip phone.
• 1:21:03
  You shouldn't give them a smartphone until they're 14 or
• 1:21:05
  15. And they should only have if
• 1:21:07
  they have any phone, a kind of flip phone or a Google phone
• 1:21:10
  which has no social media on it. But even then, you want to say
• 1:21:13
  no phones at the table. But here's the way I put it in
• 1:21:16
  my book, and I will so. One, one question, just to
• 1:21:18
  clarify. You're saying they can have a
• 1:21:20
  smartphone at 14 or you're saying they can have a flip
• 1:21:23
  phone at 14? No.
• 1:21:24
  Meaning, until they're 14 or 15, children should not have any
• 1:21:27
  smartphones. If you choose to give them a
• 1:21:30
  phone, you wouldn't do it until a smartphone.
• 1:21:33
  You wouldn't do it until they're about 15 years old.
• 1:21:35
  In my opinion, that's the earliest that you'd want to give
• 1:21:38
  them a smartphone in terms of, you know, so.
• 1:21:43
  So that doesn't mean that you have to give them a smartphone.
• 1:21:46
  It just means that if you're going to give them a smartphone,
• 1:21:48
  that would be, that would be the soonest you'd want to give it to
• 1:21:51
  them. In my book, I talk about when
• 1:21:53
  the door opens, your children are open to communicate with
• 1:21:58
  you. And I think what most parents
• 1:22:00
  think is I'm going to be there when I want to be there and my
• 1:22:04
  child has to be there on my terms.
• 1:22:07
  So the first thing I'll say to parents is it has to be on their
• 1:22:10
  terms. And so the more you're around,
• 1:22:13
  you know that that you know double Dutch, you know that that
• 1:22:17
  jump rope game, the kids pray double Dutch.
• 1:22:19
  I think it's called where you have to kind of catch the way
• 1:22:21
  you have to jump in at the right moment.
• 1:22:24
  If parents are around physically and emotionally enough, then
• 1:22:29
  when their child's door opens, when their teenager's door
• 1:22:33
  opens, physically their door, their real door, but also when
• 1:22:37
  they're open to communicating. Maybe it's a transitional point.
• 1:22:40
  Maybe they're done with their homework and they're ready to
• 1:22:43
  eat dinner. Or maybe they just come home
• 1:22:45
  from school and they want to snack before they go down and
• 1:22:49
  study. If you are there, make them a
• 1:22:52
  snack or just sit at the table with them.
• 1:22:55
  Or, you know, if you're there when the door opens.
• 1:22:58
  So they take a bathroom break and you say, hey, how you doing,
• 1:23:01
  then they're going to be more open.
• 1:23:03
  But if you come home from work or wherever you did and you walk
• 1:23:07
  into their room and you say, hey, how you doing?
• 1:23:11
  They're going to shut the door in your face.
• 1:23:13
  Because the way that adolescence defenses work is that they open
• 1:23:19
  and close, open and close, and it's how they keep the balance
• 1:23:24
  of separation and closeness for you, right?
• 1:23:27
  So it can't be open all the time because then they can't leave,
• 1:23:31
  They can't separate, They can't individually.
• 1:23:33
  So they open and close. If you're there when they open,
• 1:23:37
  great. You catch the wave and then they
• 1:23:40
  close again. But if you come in on your terms
• 1:23:43
  and on your time and say I'm home, I'm ready to communicate,
• 1:23:48
  be here for you, you're going to shut the door in your face.
• 1:23:52
  So the way that you get close to your children is by being around
• 1:23:56
  enough. You catch the wave.
• 1:23:59
  So I'm again reading into the scenario earlier.
• 1:24:02
  Again, I don't know to judge them personally because I don't
• 1:24:05
  know. But let's say theoretically
• 1:24:07
  you're saying, oh, I'm going to take my kid out and write my son
• 1:24:09
  or daughter out for pizza once a week.
• 1:24:11
  And I'm going to walk into the room after work and say, how are
• 1:24:13
  you doing that? Slap him on the back.
• 1:24:15
  That's not a recipe for a success.
• 1:24:17
  Because you're saying I've got the door open on my terms, on my
• 1:24:20
  timeline. Otherwise I'm unavailable and
• 1:24:22
  you better be responsive to me when I want you to respond to
• 1:24:25
  me. And that sends the wrong message
• 1:24:27
  to the child, and the child can't can't won't be able to
• 1:24:29
  reciprocate that. That's right.
• 1:24:31
  That's right. So it's got to be on their terms
• 1:24:35
  and then they're so. And in their time, it's so good.
• 1:24:38
  All right, this is where I want to land us here.
• 1:24:41
  This has been such a another fantastic conversation.
• 1:24:43
  There's so much food for thought here.
• 1:24:45
  I got a lot of questions from children of parents, of course,
• 1:24:51
  who are adult children, you know, young adult children about
• 1:24:54
  how to talk to their parents now, whom they love about the
• 1:24:59
  attachment issues they feel. And you know, there's one here.
• 1:25:03
  I'll just read it as an example. It says as an adult and I I
• 1:25:08
  almost tear up saying this because you know, it just shows
• 1:25:10
  the audience that listen to this podcast are really intentional.
• 1:25:14
  People that want to repair relationships and build healthy
• 1:25:18
  families and you know, be loving and be forgiving.
• 1:25:21
  But it just shows there's a lot of woundedness and young adult
• 1:25:24
  children who become more self aware about their own journeys
• 1:25:26
  and realize, hey, there's stuff in my childhood that was really
• 1:25:30
  tough, but they love their parents, They want to be in good
• 1:25:33
  terms with their parents. So as an example, I got this
• 1:25:36
  question as an adult, how do you approach a parent about your
• 1:25:39
  past with your parent without making them feel bad or like
• 1:25:44
  they made mistakes so you can heal and not repeat the
• 1:25:49
  unhealthy cycles from your childhood.
• 1:25:52
  So I think they're delicately asking this.
• 1:25:53
  It sounds like there were issues in their childhood.
• 1:25:55
  They're not even wanting to throw the parent under the bus
• 1:25:57
  and say there were issues, but how do you approach your parents
• 1:26:01
  because you want repair with them but there were there were
• 1:26:04
  issues in your childhood? Well, it sort of puts the child
• 1:26:09
  in the position of having to think about the parent.
• 1:26:12
  And I don't know how old these children are.
• 1:26:15
  These are these are adult children, so.
• 1:26:17
  These are, let's say, adult children.
• 1:26:18
  I didn't get ages on all the questions, of course, but let's
• 1:26:21
  say like late 20s, early 30s. So I mean, listen, the truth
• 1:26:28
  will set you free is the expression.
• 1:26:31
  And so you have to be honest and you can say, you know, I have
• 1:26:36
  feelings that I haven't shared with you and I'm afraid that if
• 1:26:39
  I don't share those feelings with you, we'll never be as
• 1:26:42
  close as we could be. And they by not expressing those
• 1:26:48
  feelings, it's getting in the way of me having a closer
• 1:26:51
  relationship. And I know that you want to have
• 1:26:53
  a close relationship to me. So this is what's getting in the
• 1:26:56
  way, and I feel that you need to hear how I feel about things in
• 1:27:00
  my childhood that I never expressed to you.
• 1:27:05
  And if the child is met with perhaps an especially for a
• 1:27:10
  parent who has their own damage, you know, a defensiveness of,
• 1:27:13
  oh, I'm a horrible parent. I, I, I, you know, like, oh,
• 1:27:16
  what was me? You know, the parent kind of
• 1:27:18
  makes it about them. What was me, What was me?
• 1:27:20
  And the child feels like now they're just literally punishing
• 1:27:23
  the parent, even bring these things up.
• 1:27:24
  What would you recommend? Well, I guess you can say, you
• 1:27:27
  know, it sounds like you're really having a hard time
• 1:27:30
  hearing my pain. I'm sure you have your own pain
• 1:27:34
  too. It sounds like you're really
• 1:27:37
  just having a hard time listening to my pain.
• 1:27:42
  And if it devolves from there, we always then the advice This
• 1:27:46
  is not the time for this deeper relationship that you hope to
• 1:27:49
  have. At least they're not ready yet.
• 1:27:50
  Yeah, you can say it sounds like we can't have this conversation
• 1:27:54
  now because it's very it's it's too painful for you to hear
• 1:27:59
  about my pain. And when you're ready to hear
• 1:28:02
  about my pain, it could make us closer.
• 1:28:05
  And remember, the carrot at the end of the stick for your
• 1:28:07
  parents is the closeness of the relationship.
• 1:28:11
  It's there's there's a manipulation to it, yes.
• 1:28:14
  Then it's it's a good way to go about it.
• 1:28:18
  Is there work that adult children can do to deal with
• 1:28:21
  this pain that we're, you know, they use the term my pain so
• 1:28:25
  that they're not expecting too much of a parent who has their
• 1:28:28
  own frailties, but that they can still discover a deeper
• 1:28:30
  relationship with the parent. Well, therapy, individual
• 1:28:34
  therapy that is psychodynamic. I'm a psychoanalyst.
• 1:28:37
  So the kind of therapy that I do with patient individual therapy
• 1:28:40
  is really focused on healing the inside of that patient.
• 1:28:45
  It it's not that I don't focus on the real relationships but if
• 1:28:48
  you have an adult, you know you sometimes their parents are
• 1:28:51
  passed away, sometimes their parents, they're they're
• 1:28:54
  alienated from their parents. Sometimes they can't repair in a
• 1:28:57
  real way, but they can repair internally.
• 1:29:00
  So we have two sets of parents, we have our real parents and
• 1:29:04
  then we have the parents that we carry around inside of us every
• 1:29:08
  day who talk to us in our head, right.
• 1:29:11
  You'd say the the voices in our head, our mother, our father.
• 1:29:15
  And they're usually exaggerations of our real
• 1:29:18
  parents. But say that when you go to
• 1:29:21
  therapy, although, yes, some therapy is about healing the
• 1:29:25
  dynamics in relationships, you know, getting you to be able to
• 1:29:29
  talk to your mother, your real mother, your father.
• 1:29:31
  Most of the time, therapy is about healing the myth of your
• 1:29:35
  parents inside of you, healing the internal and the mother and
• 1:29:40
  the internal father. And that that is probably the
• 1:29:43
  most powerful thing, because those are the parents that you
• 1:29:46
  will carry around with you till the day you die.
• 1:29:50
  Do you think it's possible to experience a deep closeness with
• 1:29:53
  a parent without going over the gory details of some of the
• 1:29:58
  difficult things that happened? What would you recommend?
• 1:30:00
  You know someone's listening, they're like and by gory you
• 1:30:03
  know that could mean different many different things.
• 1:30:05
  I'm more speaking to just like you know issues of the parents
• 1:30:09
  being imperfect and you know you're kind of list of you know,
• 1:30:12
  maybe at times emotional neglect or overreactions or anxieties or
• 1:30:16
  stresses or conflict that was just hard to navigate as a kid.
• 1:30:22
  What was kind of the general advice that you have for that
• 1:30:25
  child seeking harmony and love with their parents, but they
• 1:30:30
  don't necessarily know that the best tack is to take try to take
• 1:30:33
  the parent on this super deep dive of of the past.
• 1:30:38
  Yeah, I mean, again, I think that we always try to heal our
• 1:30:42
  real relationships. So I think it's always you want
• 1:30:45
  to try to heal real relationships.
• 1:30:47
  But I think that's in the end, you try, but that's not the
• 1:30:51
  goal. The goal is to heal yourself.
• 1:30:53
  If you can heal the real relationships, that's wonderful.
• 1:30:56
  But in the end, the most important thing is to heal
• 1:30:59
  yourself so you can live the best life that you can live and
• 1:31:03
  make maybe better choices in terms of relationships in the
• 1:31:06
  future than you were given in the past.
• 1:31:09
  So if you had an attachment disorder because your mother was
• 1:31:12
  negligent or wasn't interested or was depressed or then the
• 1:31:16
  idea is to heal internally so you can go forward into life and
• 1:31:20
  make better choices with the partner that you choose and the
• 1:31:23
  friends that you choose. And so yeah, I I, it's not that
• 1:31:28
  I don't emphasize the real relationship with one's mother
• 1:31:31
  and father. I do think that if you can talk
• 1:31:35
  to your parents about the history and the pain, it can
• 1:31:39
  really help tremendously. It can also harm if parents are
• 1:31:44
  defensive and aggressive and dismissive, and so it's
• 1:31:49
  individual. But I would say the bangle of
• 1:31:51
  therapy is to heal what's inside so you can go forward and live
• 1:31:55
  the best life you can live and be the best person you can be.
• 1:31:59
  Thank you Erica. So much wisdom, so many gems in
• 1:32:02
  this conversation. As usual any final words
• 1:32:06
  especially on the from the chicken Little the sky is Not
• 1:32:10
  falling Second Chances perspective that you you want to
• 1:32:14
  share for folks listening. Just that all is that lost.
• 1:32:17
  I know people hear me speak about the first three years in
• 1:32:21
  in different contexts. And you know, I never talk about
• 1:32:24
  the first three years without saying where there's life,
• 1:32:27
  there's hope. And at any point that you can
• 1:32:30
  get to repair the relationship with your child is a good point.
• 1:32:37
  And so at whatever point you enter, it makes a difference.
• 1:32:42
  So don't give up hope. Thank you, Erica.
• 1:32:46
  Where can people find your work? Www.komisarkomisar.com and you
• 1:32:53
  can see my books there and other things that I've written and
• 1:32:58
  it's all on my website. Wonderful.
• 1:33:01
  Well, thanks so much again for joining.
• 1:33:02
  It's been great to talk. Thank you, Erica.
• 1:33:05
  Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to
• 1:33:08
  this episode with Erica Kamasar. I hope you enjoyed it.
• 1:33:11
  Erica always gives me so much food for thought and inspires me
• 1:33:14
  to be a better parent. I hope that that was the effect
• 1:33:17
  for you. As always, I love to hear from
• 1:33:19
  you. Don't forget you can always
• 1:33:20
  e-mail me at lila@gtvmedia.com. I love hearing from you guys and
• 1:33:25
  you can check out our Patreon and our locals communities.
• 1:33:28
  Become a monthly subscriber and supporter of the show.
• 1:33:30
  It helps the show reach more people and you can communicate
• 1:33:33
  with us over there. Thanks so much and we'll see you
• 1:33:35
  next time.