When ‘Good Parenting’ Breaks Your Kid’s Brain: The Hidden Damage of Conscious Parenting

give age appropriate truth for why you failed. Your child can learn a lot more and be a much better human by learning why you failed than being like, mommy tried her best. If you teach the child that they can experience pain at your hands by your mistake or your lack of effort and you can explain away by saying that you tried your best, do you think they're gonna be tempted to go do that for the rest of their life? We need to stop languaging and excuse me, making mistakes. We also need to stop pretending that we didn't make a mistake. Languageing the excuse is going to create a rejection pattern pretending there wasn't even a mistake in the first place is gonna create an abandonment pattern. Your brain is wired for deception, but here's the truth. Patterns can be broken. The code can be written. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. So the only question is, are you ready to listen? What I'm sharing with you today is a laundry list of sorts of every parenting process that you might have tricked yourself into believing was just inherently great that actually is doing more harm than you could ever imagine. Today isn't a talk about trauma, abuse, discipline. These are all the things that you actually believe you're doing in opposition to the way your parents parented you that are doing equal harm or in many cases actually worse harm. I want everyone to go into this being equipped to not take it personally. Every single one of us that the parent is going to have a few of these laundry list items that we're going to have to look in the mirror and be like, I'm totally doing this. For each of us, it's gonna be varying degrees, but I guarantee you every single parent in this room has done at least one of these things if not the majority of the list. Especially if you perceive any sort of trauma in your upbringing, because that's how the pendulum works. If something happens to you that you perceive to be bad or dishonoring or disempowering, it is our natural reflex to then try to go the opposite direction. But when we are talking about the formation of a child's brain, we can select an opposite that actually does the same level of harm. It just manifests with different symptoms. I also want to remind you that the break method perspective is to take responsibility for and start to change rather than sit there, pout, regret, replay, feel ashamed. All of those things are disempowering. We're here to say, okay, I did that. Here's the solution, here's the stuff that I'm going to take to move into this new way of doing it. So that I'm not actually simmering in the regret or the remorse. Regret or remorse doesn't have momentum. In break method, we always want to have momentum because momentum heals, replaying and remorse keeps things exactly the same and often makes things worse. Raise your hand if you actively tried to parent differently than you were parented. Okay, and now just so that I can get a sense of it, how many people are parent? Okay, see how that was almost exactly the same. No, I'm not. I'm just trying to find some. How many of you that just raised your hand, even if you really tried to go the exact opposite, still had moments where like, and I am being my parent right now, all the same people, it's got at least happened every once in a while. For literally, you're doing something on autopilot in your life, become my father, and you're trying to go backwards, I can't believe it is to that. This isn't something that we have control over in a grand scheme of things. A lot of these behaviors are coming from our ACB pathway. Our ACB pathway is firing from our subconscious. If we haven't done the work to figure out all the ways that our subconscious is just going to reflectively respond to our kids or to how our child did in a school testing environment, how a child decides to handle if all of a sudden they don't get the role on the football team that they wanted. All of a sudden, we go into fear or we feel bad for our child, that we feel sadness as soon as we're pushed into those emotions that are typically loving protective loma bear, pop a bear, all of a sudden, all the work that we just did in break can go completely flying out the window. Who's seen Daddy's home? Guys, that's the funniest movie ever. I would love to see that show of hands change next time. That's a great movie. Yeah, Mark Wahlberg and Will Farrell, where the little kid's getting, you know, he's saying the fourth graders push me down on my bike again and they're trying to figure out a deal with it and this is a great example, you guys. I love it to the side of the pendulum. Steph Dad is like, I think you should just roleplay some conflict resolution and do some trust falls. And Mark Wahlberg's like, I think you need to kick him in the nuts. And the moms kind of, they're like, I'm kind of siding on the nut kicking, really, if we're being honest. This sort of pendulum swing is really what we're all dealing with as soon as we're activated into protection. We have to be able to objectively look at all the structures, processes, or habits we've created in our home with our children that might seem like they're the kinder, more supportive, hey, more conscious decision. What is the end result of that? Because I'm here to tell you, I've dealt with the 40, 56 year old version of the way you're parenting your child. Not good, you guys, not good. Anything that made its way onto this list, it's really worth taking note of. I promise, I wouldn't just share it just because I want to make people uncomfortable. Although it is really enjoyable for me. Might be one of my favorite things to do. In break, really, keystone understanding of break is the input equals output. Whatever happened to us in our childhood in terms of what we are perceiving is going to dictate the output of our behavior, our choices, and how we're then going to label our environment. It is going to shape the way our subconscious experiences reality. What often happens is that when the child becomes the parent and the parent tries to oppose, we give ourselves all these passes and internal justifications and rationalizations. At least I'm not abusive. Sure, honey, you can have that 150th snack before dinner. Yeah, totally, go get that snack. Meanwhile, in your mind, you're like, my parents neglected me for hours. I never got to eat. I was a latchkey kid. And now your child's, I don't know, dabbling in obesity because you give them the 150th snack because you felt bad that you were neglected in a latchkey kid. That's how the pendulum swing can work. Sometimes when we get told no over and over and over again, what do we do to our children? Yes, yes, yes, yes. You come at absolute, yes, man. I want to reiterate, as we go through this especially because I'm going to be staring at my husband while delivering this entire lecture. These are the 12 parenting fails you probably thought were the right thing. Number one, and tell me what the rays of hands who has suffered from this one? Being chill, are you the chill parent? I'm the chill parent. Ooh, good, the doozy. Being chill can cause a lot of problems. And we have to keep in mind this is about balance, right? It's fine to have moments of chill, but when you are the chill parent and everything's about spontaneity, go with the flow. This is really about me. It can create massive instability. Those of you that watch Sourcelythiologies, we talked about how it is that you can have a rejection origin pattern, even if you were abused so long as the abuse was consistent. How about that? Your brain can feel safe as long as it knows. I always get abused. What happens to the brain when you sometimes get abused and sometimes you get praised and then sometimes you're at mom's house or sometimes you're at dad's house and it's constantly changing and you don't know what to expect. That's when you turn abandonment. But even somebody who was consistently abused lets even use Christian biblical abuse throughout their childhood, they're almost likely to always have a rejection based origin one because their brain actually still perceived safety in its environment. Safety doesn't mean you're not in fear. Safety means to your brain. It knows what to expect. What we see here, which is typically the opposite of exactly what I just described, actually puts your children into a complete unstable tale sin. Their brain doesn't know who to trust, what is happening, and even if it seems like your child likes it, right? They're not complaining about it. About age 10, 11, 12, you're gonna start to notice a major shift in their personality and probably a massive rift between you, dad and child, because they don't trust you at all. They can love you, they can be affectionate towards you, but deep down, they don't actually trust a word that's coming out of your mouth, any commitment that you make, when, and I've even seen this with my daughter, I'd travel all the time when she was a little kid for work. Even still, if I say, okay, I'm gonna take care of that, she'll remind me, no joke, let it be tense. And she'll be like, hey, man, I'm like, yeah, you can laugh, but it's because I've created an instability wound. You don't actually trust that I'm gonna give the field trip form. And she's like, that's correct. In her silent, her child, in fact, do not trust you at all to deliver the field trip form. She'll sit there and micromanage it the whole way and remind me, thanks a lot. This is what I'm saying. I'm not saying this in the pedestal. I'm saying this from the reality of it doesn't take much to create this. Being chill, we'll give you another example, when I was working all the time, I didn't really have any sort of prioritization in my mind about getting to school on time because one of the only times I got to spend with the kids was in the morning at breakfast. I'd be there, oh, let them sleep in, kids will be kids. I mean, they're like, chef and up crepes and stuff got music blasting. My son loves it because he's a rejection one. He just like wants the attention validation and the hugs and snuggles. My daughter was like, mom, I'll give a shit about the crepes. Like, I wanna be at school on time. My hair looks like crap. My backpack doesn't have my homework and I'm like, oh, chill out. It's gonna be fine. You're only seven. Being chill has a really bad side effect of creating an incredible lack of trust in your child's ability to believe you when you say you're gonna do something, to believe that you will care for them or be there to pick up the pieces if something goes wrong. And what you are creating is a band and hold it all together. Can everyone really say what that one for a second? Do any of you see how you've created an abandoned hold to all together, child? Yes, yes. Raise your hand and own it if you've done it. Okay. Jess is like me back here. I'm sorry. Who's in break right now? Yes, and you're that's correct. He has abandoned hold to all together and he's fantastic. A good upside of abandoned hold to all together. So, usually we'll go gutters, okay? Because they don't trust anybody else except themselves. So usually they've got a great life trajectory with work, intimate relationships where everything really just starts to fall apart. But don't worry, there's a solution for that. It's called break method, break method. Come, good. So this is a perfect example of overly structured. Every single t-cross, I dotted hospital corners, no room for any sort of change in spontaneity. That creates a problem, right? This also creates a problem. Who wants to highlight what some things of balance might be in the middle? Being on time. Okay. Right, caring about time, caring about cleanliness, caring about the way a child is presenting at school. I'll give you an example. My mom had borderline personality disorder. I've shared this, I'm sure on multiple lectures. There were so many times that I look back at pictures and I'm like, were you trying to make me look ugly? You didn't want to brush my hair, you didn't want to like, I don't know, do a legitimate phone detail, like what were you doing? Was it sabotage? I think so. Joe C. Wabos, right? That was happening in my daughter's kindergarten day. Everyone would have these bows, their outfits, match their backpack, and they had little like notes in their lunch boxes. And I was like, I am just trying to get you to school like 10 minutes late. Okay. They've got matching bows to their shoes. You're getting to school, that's good, right? That's good enough. We have to understand our child's needs and what items they need checked off consistently to feel safe. That is going to come from looking at your child's origin source belief pattern. My son doesn't care about any of the stuff that my daughter does. It doesn't make him feel loved, it doesn't make him feel safe. But if my son suddenly stops getting hugs and snuggles and like head rubs and told that he's wonderful and that I love him, he's not going to feel safe. My daughter couldn't care. Not what makes her tick. She wants to be on time, she wants to have her homework done, she wants to have her clothes in order, she wants help doing the things that she can't physically do because she's got CP. She's all about order and wanting to present a certain way. And to be timely and to be, have quality in the things that the she's producing. My son, not a quality person. Probably won't be ever, we're honest. He's a lover, he is assertive, he is a fantastic communicator. But when it comes to all the things that make my daughter feel safe, he has none of those. We have to look at this and say, what is balanced for my child? What are the items that need to be checked off and consistent for my child? And here's the key piece. You need to be able to do the work within yourself to know where your trigger pattern is so that you can find moments of spontaneity. Spontaneity is important. Your children need to understand how to have things actually ghost-elf on them and learn how to still have confidence to move into the spontaneity instead of having to have the structure. But to do that, you have to create a really solid structure. You can't have nothing. You have to have a solid structure and they have to see you as the example when things don't go well. You can't lash out, freak out and be like, F at all, now we're not gonna go at all. They need to see like, okay, well, this is how we pivot. And you walk through the example and they're like, sweet. So that happens to me like, I'm gonna pivot. It's gonna be great. But you have to have the foundation for them to realize when things do go in a way that wasn't expected, they know how to pivot and they know how to pivot with their emotional faculties about them. Does that make sense for everybody? For all of you, chill moms out there realizing that you need to actually create more structure and repetition. I've been in chill for a while now. And it's hard. It's really hard to pivot from chill to not chill because the part of your brain that really wants to oppose how you were parented or if you're holding all together, your brain's gonna make it feel like other things are a priority. Yeah, it's a duty. They usually go hand in hand, but I'll speak to you all as if you're two different groups. The whole little together is gonna trick you into believing that it's better just to go chill right to go easy on them right now because these other fires are more important to put out right now. But I'm here to tell you there's no other important fire than your children's brain development. Otherwise, we'd be having a whole room here of your future children and break. And I would love to avoid that. Anyone else? Okay. I'm trying your best. And I mean this as a parent. How many people that have ever been in break small group heard a excuse come out of somebody's mouth like, well, my parents were really, they were trying their best. Like they just kind of described a horrifying trauma. They're like, you know, but he's the example of one person that at first described her childhood as like basically totally normal, nothing to see there. Totally stable, right? And then she started talking about something else and I was like, wait, you lived in foster care and she was like, yeah. So I mean, like, I guess I lived in foster care from, I don't know, like age two to six. I'm like, so during your most formative brain development years, yeah, I guess, you know, my mom just like snapped one day and dropped me off and I went from foster home to foster home. But like, you know, she was an immigrant and I was like, hold on. Do you want me to stop and replay the tape and she was like, what? You honestly believe that it's okay that you want from foster home to foster home to foster home because your mom was an immigrant. Like that's a story that you've told yourself that that excuses everything. And she's like, did I say that? And I was like, yeah, that's actually the order you just went down that path. And I'm like, so explain to me the thinking behind like, well, she was an immigrant. She's like, well, I don't even know what I'm saying. And I was like, what country is she from? Like did she come here out of some like, you know, major turmoil trauma? Like did she come from some African country where warlord and she's like, do she just immigrated here from Taiwan with her family? I don't even know. She first generation, second generation I was like, hold up. Let's go backwards. You have made an excuse in your mind about why she was doing her best given her background which justifies you pretending that you had a perfect childhood and that you didn't go from foster to foster to foster for the four most pivotal years of your brain development. She's like, I see what you did there. I'm in a bad situation. I'm not like, yeah, you are. But our brains do this all the time. We can do this like, well, they were doing their best. They were doing their best. You know who probably programmed that into you? Your actual parent. So don't be that parent. Like, well, mommy was trying her best. Like, I failed, but I gave it an A for effort, don't you think? You're literally sitting there to your child. Like, this is me not taking any responsibility, but I'm gonna need you to recall 10 years from now that I tried my best and they're like, you did try your best. I think when it comes to parenting, you just have to do or don't do. And I really feel like you know what I just said that. You do and if you don't do, you don't try to like explain away, justify if anything, the break style is to give age appropriate truth for why you failed. Your child can learn a lot more and be a much better human by learning why you failed than being like, mommy tried her best. If you teach the child that they can experience pain at your hands by your mistake or your lack of effort and you can explain away by saying that you tried your best, do you think they're gonna be tempted to go do that for the rest of their life? So we need to stop languaging and excuse when you made a mistake. We also need to stop pretending that we didn't make a mistake. Languaging the excuse is going to create a rejection pattern pretending there wasn't even a mistake in the first place is going to create an abandonment pattern. If you are out there parenting in ways that you know are doing harm, but you don't want to call your child's attention to it because you don't want the eyeballs on, you don't want to have to take responsibility or you don't even know how to take responsibility. That's where we need to stop and do the work. I'll give you an example. My son is a, my daughter's 11. She has special needs. When he was really little, he didn't get to be like the little baby and now I'm actually realizing myself really living it now, watching Harley no longer get to be like the baby because there's River. It really did a number on him. He was able to walk and he'd be like, why are you carrying Sarai? She's older because he couldn't understand like, oh, Sarai can't walk. And everything in his wheelhouse mentally is to compare to what he's not getting. When I look at Zef, his core wound is they're gonna forget about me or I'm not gonna matter enough or as much as that person. So he's constantly inserting himself into things. It's made him assertive because he doesn't want to be forgotten. He doesn't want to be second to fiddle. He wants to be an equal but that comes off sometimes as pretty annoying and boastful. He wants to keep inserting himself. Like don't forget about me, I'm pretty cool too. And it comes from him perceiving that Sarai got more attention than he did even when he was a baby. One day, and this was recently, this was like a week and a half ago, I didn't even notice because I was in the zone of like, I need to get this done and this done, everything was just like, you know, one of those mornings where you're trying to do like 100 tasks at the same time. And I need to be noticed but apparently he had been asking me something over and over and over and I just kept ignoring him but was talking to Sarai because I was trying to read her sign language. I had the baby. When we get to school, I noticed that he's like visibly upset and I was like, buddy, what's wrong? I was like so in the zone, I had no idea something would even happen. And you can see tears rolling up in his eyes and I was like, buddy, we're pulling over the car and tell me what's wrong right now. And he was like, mom, I told you 10 times, like I had a question and I asked something and I even was trying to interject in the conversation and all you were doing was reading Sarai's sign language. You wouldn't even look at me. You ignored me all morning. So instead of being like, I didn't ignore you, your sister needed help because she was signing, right? Like that's the reflex in the head is like, I wasn't ignoring you. I have a special needs child that needed me to read her sign language while balancing, right? You can see how easy it is to be like, I'm not a bad parent. I stopped and I said, I am so sorry. It must feel so unfair that when I have to read Sarai's signs, I can't focus on anything else and I really am going to work on it. And he was like, thank you. And I was like, okay, for the next week, I want you to grade me every single day at the end of the day, scale one to 10. If I really met your needs and you felt like I actually give you attention and no matter what you did to try to get my attention, it felt received and heard and you felt understood. He was like, okay. He stopped crying and he was like, all right, love you. Love you. I'm great day. After school, I became hyper aware of it. I was like, okay, I really get to now watch for all the ways that I might just start kind of autopilotting through the day. And I actually found 10 or more times even just in the afternoon where I would have potentially done something different, but I knew I was getting graded. Whereas this is a great technique for you as a parent. So I was very aware of how my subconscious can just let me go and autopilot and just keep prioritizing like a baby or especially as child of a person. By the end of the day, he was like, you really got a 10. And I was like, thank you. I appreciate that the next day in the morning. He was like, you're gonna beat your score as like, can't beat a 10. But I can keep it consistent. After the third day, is that looked mean he was like, you're a really good mama. I was like, okay, thank you. And he's like, I don't want to greet you anymore. And I was like, okay, thank you. I'm gonna be a touch. Yeah. Let's say by the way, that's a great example of having a mixed and a table that is after where it's done. Yeah. So it's challenges that's the only way to keep growing and creating my view of myself on the front of this. Amen to that. I do the same. So if you ever get a chance, if you're a graduate to go into the unit for content and the parenting break keystone selection that I gave last year is a great one to kind of look at how to structure some of those things and some of the more like parenting, rewiring challenges. But if you really feel like you tend to do this, like have a chit chat with your kids and figure out what they're perceiving and set up a grading system. I guarantee you it'll change the way you are thinking about your behavior. And again, the biggest takeaway here is, of course, we all make mistakes as parents, but don't try to explain it away and don't try to hide it. Take responsibility for it and help them see that they're not crazy and that you're actually gonna work on it. Because then they'll drop it. Kids don't wanna keep looping on something. They just wanna know that you're aware of it and that you're working on it. Okay? Responsibilities definitely the key there. This one's a big one. I know we address it in break parenting keystones and it's not just about making kids clean up or do chores. Right? That would be like its own thing. That's kind of like a dust situation. This is about making them do it by themselves alone. Not with you like cleaning up behind them or telling them they're doing a good job or really are like, I'm just gonna go clean it after. Kids need to actually learn how to look at a floor full of one million tiny Lego pieces and sack up and do it themselves instead of being like, but mom, what if I at least is my son? What if I clean my room and do my laundry and you clean up the Legos, right? I'm like, oh, I taught you already to negotiate. This is great. And then I'll push back million, no you're doing all of it. He's like, okay. Let me come back with a counter offer. No, no, there's no counter offers. What needs to happen when it comes to a child being able to start a task and finish a task, even if it feels daunting, it's got a million tiny Lego pieces. They don't know how to do it. This is a simple repetitive task that that child can actually learn that something can be really challenging. They might not actually know exactly the strategy to do it and they can still cross the finish line. So something as simple as this often gets completely overlooked in parenting, right? We coddle in my childhood, just had a cleaning lady. Like I didn't know the cleaning was a thing. My husband's like, you can say that again. I'm working on, I'm working progress. Did you see I did the dishes on our lunch break at Airbnb? So opposed the pattern everybody, I was eating my lunch outside, really just living it up in my leather pants where I was like, oh, I'm gonna do right now, I'm gonna pose the pattern. I'm not gonna go lay out in the sun, I'm gonna clean this kitchen, because it is a mess and I did it. So when we look at this from a child's perspective, we always wanna, children make messes, they just do. Right, they're not like systematic unless, you know, there are certain children that have certain neurodiversity that do tend to be very systematic. We're not talking about those kids, we're talking about everybody else. When you bust out, craft supplies and legos and paint and like an warehouse blitter, which we're still cleaning up from like five months ago. Things get really messy down of control and there's no order when you're eight to like how things get opened and closed and spread out. So when a child looks at that, their first experience is overwhelmed. They don't see a sequence, so then they look at you and they want help or they wanna try to push at you to break down and help them. So what skill are we actually supporting in them by holding a firm boundary to have them actually do it alone? Independence, self-sufficiency, but also strategy. Right, and there's a really key piece here. If your child actually believes that there will be a consequence on the other side if they don't do this, but that consequence doesn't mean that they're gonna get beat with a belt. They're actually going to be willing to try a few different things and you on the other side have to be willing to give feedback. When they've done it and they've finished and they know that like if they made a few mistakes, they're not again going to get beat with a belt, but there might be a consequence if they just straight up didn't do portions of it. It's important to sit there and actually go through and critique, like I'll actually go to my son's room. Be like, all right, do you think the bed looks the way I would have wanted it to look? And he's like, no, and he'll like go grab a couple things, like fix that. And I'm like, okay. And I'm like, so this laundry bin is like really full. Are there like any clothes in there that really should have been folded? And he's like, oh. And actually if you sit there and you break it down piece by piece and you're like, you understand all the things that we just went through and he's like, yep, I'm like, great. Next time, here's the consequence if you don't do it, right? But you did it in a way where they really got it. You made sure they got it and now you've just raised the bar because you know that they understand. If you keep piecemealing it this way rather than being the parent that's super chill, by the way, talking about myself here in the past, super chill, oh, that's fine. I don't wanna cause a fight. I'm just gonna go clean up all the Legos myself. It's totally fun. Out there like always like, out, out, out, out cleaning the Legos, trying to get everything done. That doesn't help your child in any way shape or form. Doing it this way absolutely does. This can also apply to chores. It can apply to anything. Even in our property, Gordon got him an ATV and he's been learning how to do like kind of more like manly woodsy, I don't know how you describe those things. Man things. Shoot a 22. Put a milk crate on back of the ATV and like pick up wood. I don't want like random wood. I don't know if there's any purpose. But he's all excited that he still like loves stuff in. By the way, Gordon got a chance. That was like the best day of his life. Okay. Came home, you're in your chainsaw, fancy. You're just like, it's great. You saw it too. He was like those chainsaw pants. I'm like, yeah, those are chainsaw pants. They exist. So all this to say, my son started getting access to all these kind of new, like more mountainy woodsy tasks that were definitely a little bit more dangerous. As he started to progress into some of these things, some days he was nailing it and then other days he was doing it. And it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, he was doing things that were just really not smart and actually very dangerous. So in some of these things, right, when you give your child the set up, like I want you to do all these things, you have to also give your child room to make mistakes and make sure that there are consequences on the other side. Like he actually lost access to a lot of the things he was doing, yes. Oh, yeah, that's what you're looking at. So I think in the break parenting lecture from last time, I think the most effective one, sorry, if you know what their real motivation is, you know what makes them tick in terms of like, are they the kind of person where like sports is there everything or like gaming is there everything in which case, like please watch my other lectures, don't let your kids game. But you have to figure out what your child puts the most energy and attention into or gets the most from. I'm not saying like, with whole love, that's gonna be a great one. I mean, whether it's sports or it's having play dates or being able to have certain sorts of snacks, you have to figure out what their vice is. They're like tiny little child vice and go right for removing that for a set period of time. That's my opinion, yes. Let's take a quick pause to welcome a brand new sponsor to the show Manu Kura Honey. This is Manu Kura Honey from New Zealand. They approached me a few weeks ago and I got to try some of their products and I am absolutely in love. But the best part is aside from honey, obviously tasting good. We all love the taste of honey. The health benefits are out of this world. I honestly didn't really know that much about the benefits of honey until I started digging to it and all the literature that they provided to me. And there are different quality ratings of honey. One of the ratings that you can use is called an NGO rating. And as you can imagine, the higher up you go, the better the quality of honey. And the honey that I was sent was over 800 NGO. When we're talking about Manu Kura Honey, we're talking about anti-inflammatory benefits, immune system benefits, GI tract benefits, and just from my past life in traditional Chinese medicine, it also can be used topically for different sorts of rashes and skin conditions. Aside from obviously tasting out of this world, this product is great to add into your daily regimen. I've been having my kids take it every single morning and literally every morning now hardly wakes up and says, mom, where's my honey spoon? So we're having a special offer for you guys today using the code BGHeal. This honey is incredible. I hope that you give it a try. And thank you so much, Manu Kura. We can't wait to keep promoting your products. So I would say reading is what our mom loves the most. So it's counter intuitive to be like, okay, I need you to put down the book. You can't read anymore right now, except that she does for... But no, that's opposing the pattern. And that's absolutely what I would do. It's like a swear gentle situation where the witness of a child, she's like so bummed because what her mom will take her to the bookstore and get through the book because she's on her stursion from something she did. And it definitely teaching her... Alessandra. She remembers being back when she wants. She's not gonna forget how to read and her needs to be saved. Right, but there's that kind of fear and you're like, I'm doing it, it's probably exactly what I was also working with her. Sixth, Dr. Siret, first year in this develop, probably. Oh, totally, because whenever you have a child that many would describe themselves, that was an avid reader. I'm like, we all know what that also means, okay? An avid reader also typically means like certain social skills were probably not from the center. So I would say it's not just about no reading, it's about substituting reading with something that forces her to engage, which is likely what she's really resisting altogether. So we have to be kind of break approach in how we're creating these sorts of consequences. And this is why it's really important for us to break style, learn what motivates our child because if you want to motivate your child, it's really actually quite easy to punish them. And I'm not taking any pride in this punishment. Like punishment actually is one of the hardest things to do as a parent, at least for me. Raise your hand if you have a hard time disciplining. It's not a fun experience. And for many of us, whatever your pattern is, you're either afraid of being too harsh or you're being afraid of your kid walking all over you or you're just afraid that they're not gonna like you anymore. Some parents are people, please, there's even with their kids. When we go to actually act out the discipline, we've got to be very front and centered with what the output is that we're going for because the discipline's the input. And oftentimes we're just thinking of like how we want them to change, but we're not actually giving them the input that's going to get them to that place. So that is where I would suggest starting in a place where you are going to give out some sort of consequence or discipline. Where are you trying to get them to? So for example, given like the room cleaning thing, if I'm trying to get my son to a place for like three months from now, I can be like, Zah, go clean your room and I go upstairs and Gordon and I look at him, we're like, woo, that is perfect. It's going to take a lot of feedback. He's eight. So if I have it in my head, I want to get to that place in three months and I never give any sort of feedback or critique or help them understand how to get there. I'm setting my child up for failure and I'm just setting myself up to constantly feel like the expectations miss and I'm angry. We always have to go back to input output. We need to make sure that the way we are engaging with the child gives them the ability to actually do what we want them to do, but often we're not willing to take the time to reverse engineering. So we're just perpetually setting our kids up for failure. Okay. No slow work pressure or clearly defined expectation. So on the break intake, one of the most important questions that for me truly shapes the way I deal with the client is what was your parents' approach to sports or academic achievement? One of the most common responses is what approach? Literally, like those words almost exactly like that. What approach? Which then begs the next question, which is typically, did your parents treat any of your siblings differently on this topic? Sometimes it's, no, they just didn't care about this for any of us. Fine, there are a lot of different inputs that would have set up that scenario, but a lot of times it's, oh well, my sister, my brother was, you know, this in sports or they were this, you know, like amazing students and my parents just really put everything into them and then the rest of us like no attention whatsoever. Not putting pressure on school performance is a surefire way to breed mediocrity in the adult. It happens, I'm not kidding, every time. Every time I have an adult client that wonders why they're incapable of like reaching these big goals and they're constantly feeling like, I know I want to find my purpose, but I just never feel like I'd get anywhere. They just can't ever truly like motivate past either a job that they don't like or feeling stagnated or repetitive. It's because of this. And by the way, I'm not saying to do it the way my dad did it because it was a little brutal, but one of the things that my parents actually did really well was around school pressure and sports. And you might have heard me speak about this in break as it related to sports and Gordon can attest to this. The joke in our house is like, what didn't you do competitively? It's like funny you should ask. I did everything competitively. Okay, that was how my family was. If I did a sport, I did that like at the top level. In my family, it was like you don't dabble. You don't like kinda do something. In fact, two probably like a too much degree hobbies were like, what is a hobby? Like is there a purpose on a hobby? Like what are you gonna do with a hobby? Is a hobby gonna get you into Ivy League school? Pretty sure my dad said that to me at like nine. I'm like, what's an Ivy League school? My parents approach was I could do any sport or activity that I wanted as long as I showed a hundred percent commitment and effort. And if there was even a moment that I started to complain or waver, it was just one and done. They would pull me from it. I couldn't ever go back. I couldn't get it back. The only time I ever made that mistake was with figure skating. Thank God, that would not have been my sport. But I made the mistake of getting home and I was like, I didn't like my teacher and it was cold and like complained about my outlaw. My parents were like, great. Then you're never going again. I was like, okay, well I guess I have to be like a hundred percent committed or else it's done. And again, I'm highlighting this as like one other side of this bathroom. What it actually did is it made me realize that if I actually want to do something, I can't be half-ass about it. I have to be whole-ass. I have to do everything a hundred percent or there's just like, there's what's the point? Which kind of goes into ending with another one of our parenting points. If you don't create any sort of feedback system or structure around school, you don't actually teach your kid how to know when they're doing a good job. You don't teach your kid how to know if they're really putting in the correct amount of effort to go where they want to go. That is the most important skill as far as I'm concerned as an adult. Our entire culture right now, going back to the other side talk, is a victimhood culture that wants it to be everybody else's fault. Everybody else did this to them. When I'm telling you, one of the things that created this is on the side. If everyone's a winner and there's no negative feedback and no ability for you to look at your child and be like, I'm gonna be honest with you. You didn't actually do a good job on this. Let's talk about how to figure out where we need to dig in. Zeva will be like, wasn't a great story. I'm like, it's a great story. I was like, you're spelling really needs work. We need to dig in on your spelling. It's like, but it's a good story. I'm like, I'm talking about your spelling. Very creative. Why are you having such a hard time with spelling? We can get so tempted to be like, oh, everything's great. You're great. You're wonderful. You're wonderful. B, it's like almost an A. I've literally had adults who's parents did that to them. Like kept kind of waving their hands and convincing them. Like, oh, B plus is like basically an A minus. Do you wanna know what that turns out like as an adult? Not good. That's like every single thing they wanna do is like, really subpar, but they're constantly mad that it's everybody else's fault. Right? They're not taking any responsibility that they put in mediocre effort. They set the ball in motion for them to get fired. Right? It's everybody else's fault. This is what you're gonna do if you keep going down that pathway with your child. It happens every time. Setting a clear expectation, right? And it needs to be reasonable. Right? If you have a child, for example, with cerebral palsy, like I do, there's certain things, certain expectations that I should have for Zav that wouldn't make any sense for her. For example, Sarai's handwriting. She's very committed to learning how to hand, right? It's really hard for her, like mobility-wise. So for me to say, I need you to get straight A's, including handwriting. Would that be setting her up for failure? Yeah. So we need to be able to set realistic expectations for our children, but also do it in a way that allows them to really feel and think big for themselves. We don't wanna be like, well, my perspective of you is that you're really struggling here. So let's just, can we try to go for a C plus this time? That's not what I'm saying here. I'm saying figure out where they're at and give them a runway by which you're actively willing to help them get there and cross the finish line, but they need to know where you want them to go. And I would say in general with parenting, this is like one of our biggest fails, we decide that they see it like we do and we don't communicate what we actually want from them in language that they can understand. So we're out here mad that they're missing expectations and the child quite literally has no idea what the expectations are. So you've got to clearly define the expectation and then you've got to hold some pressure on the edges for them to see accurately what they're doing. Is it enough effort? Are you giving your kid a false sense of confidence that they could get onto like the travel baseball team because you just don't wanna let them down and then they come back crushed and you're like, I actually could have prevented this six months ago by telling you, you know what? If you wanna make that team, we're gonna need to get an extra coach to work with you on XYZ, is it that hard? But that's what we do to our kids over and over again. We don't wanna hurt their feelings so we actually set them up for failure. That has an adult output and I've dealt with it in break and it's not a fun one for the adult. No bedtime routine or overly coddling bedtime boundaries. Raise your hand if you think you struggle with some like bed-related stuff with your kids. You used to. Okay. Do you wanna try to describe what your problem was? She wanted to go to bed. Okay. What about you? Or anyone else that raised their hand? Yes. So if we have a constant struggle, we have a bedtime alarm that goes off and then an hour later you should set. It's like she's trying. Yeah, you've gotta give her a warning so that she can. Yeah, she drags her feet. Like takes her to a stroke, but we're there to move along the way or she'll distract them, but I know if I'm late, I'm having a warrant set. Okay, so you're just constantly redirecting back to the time frame. Okay. So no bedtime routine kind of goes back to the same sort of like, I'm a chill parent. And I've dealt with this before and like my kids early childhood because again, just like with the breakfast, sometimes that would be the only time I'd have. So I'd be like, oh sure, we can stay up late and watch a movie. How many times during the week can you do that before it actually impacts your kids? Like it probably takes one time, honestly. So bedtime routines are critical for kids. I'm not saying like, you know, there's one time to do it. And the magic number is 730. I don't care what that is, but there needs to be some sort of consistency. And if your child is under 15, it really needs to be pretty much before 830 or 9 o'clock, you know, scientifically. You can do what you want, but I would say consistency is the most important thing. Overly coddling bedtime boundaries. This is another tricky one because conscious parenting will have you believe that, you know, having any sort of distance with your kids like bad parenting, like it's just very cruel, I think is the word that typically is used in that sort of area. Kids learn so much independence and resilience by creating bedtime separation. I'm not saying that there's like a secret ingredient to what time this needs to happen, but I've seen in the adults when those boundaries are blurry and your parents constantly letting you into their bed, age five, six, seven, eight, nine, the 40 year old version of you remembers that. I hear about it in my intake. There are times that that, especially as the child is edging toward kind of pre-puberty, can create some pretty weird stuff on the intake, you guys. So allowing the child to have their own space helps them cultivate a sense of independence, their own boundaries, it is incredibly important and it's not cruel. Maybe if you want to look at like the conscious parenting community is it's cruel to do it like four months old. Okay, maybe, although I don't really think they're scientific proof for that. But certainly when your child is like dying to be able to explore independence, it's high time to take a look at why you're doing this. And are you doing it because you're holding it all together? And it's already been this way and now you don't know how to undo it. Undoing something like this, just like trying to undo something like being chill and then all of a sudden having to become more of a structured disciplinarian, it's really hard. I'm not saying it's easy. And if you've created that reflex in your children, they're gonna push back all hard against it and they're going to push every single button to get you to crack. Your little kids are going to red cone the crap out of you in break language. If you try to get them to switch to something else, they're going to give you all the red cones. But I'm telling you, bedtime routine, can't insist and see and having an actual space for them to be independent is critically important for their journey into adulthood, especially in deputery. Going easy on them, I feel like this kind of goes back to some of the stuff that could be related to the school. We need kids to realize that everyone is not the same and that you can't just put in no effort and win anyways. Anyone that's ever been in competitive sports knows that. When you were a competitive athlete, you put an exponentially more time than your peers who they might be like, who's ever dealt with a situation where it's like somebody who plays soccer but then someone else plays travel soccer. Anyone? Okay. So you always have the person that plays travel soccer. They're like, yeah, you play soccer. Like, you don't even know what it's like to play soccer, please. There's so much more time spent in the gym on diet with coaches. For me and skiing, when I was nine for my birthday, my dad built me a weight room so that I could like a Olympic lift because I was so tiny, my dad's like, well, if you want to be competitive, we're going to have to start Olympic lifting now and you're going to have to go heavy. And I'm like, all right. My dad's idea of fun family bonding time after dinner would be like me getting on the treadmill next to him and us having like a chitchat after dinner. That was my household. True story. Sometimes my sister, if she wanted cookies, he'd be like, you can eat them on the recumbent base. Go on. And she'd be like six, it wasn't kind. If you want cookies, get on that recumbent bike. You earn your cookie. That is the parenting fail in and of itself. But going easy on your kids and making them believe that it doesn't require effort to win is putting them in a disadvantage in our world because it does take effort to win. But doesn't mean that you have to win to be worthy, but it means that if you have a desire to go far with something and you want to win, you have to know what it accurately takes to get there. Otherwise, again, your parents are setting out for failure. Does anyone tend to go too easy on their kids and they don't want to actually break it down that really takes a lot of effort? Anyone go too easy on their kids? You can admit it. How many kids do you have again? That's a lot. Good God. Isn't that crazy? Eight kids and she's like tiny and cute and adorable. It's just... They can use off of her. I know and that doesn't, I'm gonna be honest. It doesn't usually happen. I'm a North Side-Hover. There are a lot of people with like eight to 10 babies and they don't look like you. Yeah. Just being real. You're tiny. You look fab. So we want to make sure that we are not... If we look at it in like the macro scale, we don't want to breed a generation like this, but we certainly don't want our old child to be trying to operate in a system where they think they can win and constantly believe the system is stacked up against them when the reality is we didn't tell them how to play the game. So everyone picked that up. We have to tell them how to play the game so that they have a chance to win. This one comes up, I would say like in 70% of intakes where the person is really struggling, this happened in their childhood. If you are allowed to just quit any time it gets hard or any time like all of a sudden a bully just joined your team and now you don't want to have to face it or you had one bad piano lesson and now you just want to effort all and never play piano. My parents obviously did it the opposite direction where again, if I showed any sort of wavering, boom, it was cut for whatever reason when it came to musical instruments, they did not do this. I don't know why. I played like every instrument you could think of for like two weeks. Didn't like talk about dabble ink. I think it's because I had to do with my school and like they didn't really have a lot to do with it. Like they didn't have to drive me anywhere. So they're like whatever, whatever, whatever. Letting your child quit something without a really serious justification teaches them that anytime it gets hard anytime somebody joins the team that they don't like or anytime they actually meet resistance within themselves, they don't have to push through, they can just quit. And I'm telling you this turns into poor relationships, this turns into poor work ethic, poor follow through and of all of the things on this list, this one has a really, really challenging trajectory as an adult. Please don't do it. I know it's hard because you want to feel for your kid and they're really hurting and they really want to stop saying, but mom, I don't like it. I'm cold on whatever. You have to hold the line and set some sort of structure by which it's like, listen, I'm not going to make you do this for the rest of your life, but we're going to finish the season, right? I'm going to support you through it. I'm going to figure out what I can do to help you finish the season strong, but we're not going to quit partway through. So it's not going to be like the way my parents that it were, it's like all or nothing, you got to do this for the rest of your life, but you have to at least give them a big enough container that they can prove to themselves and if they push just a little bit when they get to the other side, they might realize like, you know what, say, got it in quick, because I'm actually really good at this. That's usually what happens right when the child wants to quit. It's actually when they were about to level up. And if you let them quit, you're actually literally robbing them of future success in every single aspect of their life. This one is major and this one has a very physical experience attached to it. There's so many times that as an adult, I get people that are explaining all these different physical ailments and this hormone and balance and that. And I ask them point blank, did your parents treat you any differently when you are sick? And they immediately laugh and they're like, well, I actually got attention. I'm like, okay, think we're getting somewhere here. If your parents were too busy for you, but suddenly if you were sick, oh, okay, well, see them from work and let's watch a movie, right? Or your parents neglect to do it. We're really hard on you, but as soon as you were sick, all of a sudden your parents would stop fighting and they'd be like, okay, well, what can we do? We want to make you feel better. Your brain starts to learn, oh, if I'm sick, my parents stop fighting. If I'm sick, my parents actually give me attention. If I'm sick, my parents are kinder to me or they actually spend more quality time. Your brain learns a reflex with biofeedback to keep getting you sick so that your parents spend more attentive time with you. This turns into a very sickly adult. And as soon as we pinpoint that this is what happened in childhood, it's actually relatively easy to stop them from getting sick using brake method. So this isn't to say that you need to be like hard and tough on your kid when they're sick, but an example would be if I could see, and I've seen this before, I've seen moments where in Gordon, can it tell us there are times where you can actually see Zav setting up that he's gonna get sick because Sarai has been sick and we're already on the lookout for the different things. And even like I hope you're like, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, because Zav, you got a cough there and he's like, yeah, oh, my throat, oh, oh, oh, buddy, you're going to school no matter what. If you're, if your teacher sends you home, like great, I'll pick you up, but there's nothing easy already setting it up, right? He's always like, well, I want attention because you've been giving Sarai attention all week because she's been sick. Kids have that sort of reflex and if you cuddle it and you're like, oh, you got a sore throat, you want me to get you a popsicle? Like, you don't want to test for a second and make sure they're not fiddling. Like, you're just automatically gonna buy what they're selling. Like, I got the black lung pop. Maybe, maybe they're gonna get sick, but maybe they have realized that if they have a headache or a tummy ache or, they get to get out of going to school or get to spend more time with you or suddenly mommy doesn't work anymore. Mommy stays home. You're teaching a child to get sick much more frequently and there is a loving and compassionate way to still be really firm and be like, we're still going to school. I'll let me, I'll give you some oils. I'll give you a little bit of supplements to see if we can make your cough go away, but you're teaching your child, like, you know what, I don't have to be sick and often is soon as they realize I'm not gonna get caught all through being sick, guess what, they're better. So, if your kids running 104 degree fever, by the way, I'm not saying like, are you manipulating me? There's a time and a place to know when your child is like really ill, but feel aware that your kids can manipulate you into this cycle and ultimately is very destructive for them as an adult. So, lovingly push back and test what's really going on. Because sometimes they just see an extra hug or sometimes it's like, do you want to watch a movie tonight? Do you need a little bit of snuggles? Let me give you some snuggles, but you're going to school tomorrow and they'll be like, okay, because then they're getting love and praise for just being them. They're not getting love and praise for being sick. So, if you can kind of dissect something that their brain doesn't understand and be like, okay, this is what's happening for this, but you're not sick and you're going to school tomorrow, then they're like, okay, great. But then they still got what their brain was ultimately seeking. Does that make sense to everybody? This one's really important. I actually think that the vast majority of our perpetually auto means sick adults actually just have this reflex from childhood. This one's a big one for those of you that have gone through a divorce and are in the process of figuring out how to integrate a new partner into your kids' lives. And I feel like what I'm about to say stands at odds with a lot of what's programmed and I'm going to tell you why. If you start dating and I'm not talking about like hook up culture where it's like you're swiping on Tinder every night because that's not what I'm talking about. I want to make sure that is not on the table. That's not what we're talking about. I'm talking about like seriously dating. There's a cultural note that until you really know whatever that means that this is the one, again, whatever that means you can't integrate this person into your life and introduce them to your family. Right? Has everyone kind of heard that or kind of gotten that vibe through the grapevine? What actually happens is that your kids know there's somebody. They know you're doing something, whether it's on the time that maybe they're with their dad or mom or vice versa, they still know. And even if that's kind of this like enigmatic person that kind of has a name, if you don't introduce that person and bring them into a space where that child can actually understand who they are and what they are and actually engage with them, you run the risk of a, them not trusting you, be they're making up a story because kids' heads are going to fill in the gaps. If you're going on a date and you're like, oh, I'll tell you about them later. I just want to make sure everything's like, you know, they're really going to make it before I introduce you. You don't think that kid's brain is going to be curious and try to project all these things that maybe that person is for the next three to four months until he finally introduced them. Do you think that when you finally introduce the partner at that time, the kids are going to have a good relationship with them or a bad relationship? Terrible. I'm telling you this right here is like a key to why so many step parenting relationships completely explode. If you don't integrate the partner right away, they don't get a chance to grow together. Your kids actually grow to resent an enigmatic figure that they've never met before. They make up all these preconceived notions in their head that they're not even actually rationalizing. Then when you introduce them, they actually are the poster person for all the time that that parent has spent away from you as a child and all of your worst fears are going to be embodied in a face because you don't know that person. You didn't grow with them. This right here is a key. If you are divorced and you are dating, I'm not saying again, bring in like every Tinder's wife. I'm saying if you have created a relationship with your kids where you want them to trust you and you hold age appropriate truth that I standard, you need to bring that person into your home. If they don't like your kids, leave them. Like, that should happen right away. You don't want to get six months down the run and be like, it's not really vibing with your kids. Like, what a waste of time. You could have figured that out six months ago. Also, if you bring that partner in, the kids get a chance to equally be awkward. You want the partner to be awkward and the kids to be awkward at the same time. You don't want the boyfriend, girlfriend to grow with you in private so that you have a relationship. Imagine this, right? You've been in secret the whole time. The kids have been making up all these narratives about what you're going to be like and you finally walk in. They're like, you certainly don't measure up to what I do. Right? They're always like, well, you took my mom away from me like three days a week for the last six months. It's all the resentments that built up. Every single interaction that child has around the parents where they're like, oh, love you Internet. Right? Because you spent six months getting close. Every time there's a fiction showed or they feel how close and at that relationship became without them present, they're going to start to hate both of you. Right? That's just real talk. And society doesn't want us to know that I don't know why because it's glaringly obvious. This is where discernment's really key. Introduce them early, but introduce them only after you've really discerned that this is a person that you are actually going to put effort into. If you're going to put an effort, it's worth it. Hiding and compartmentalizing this relationship until you know it's the one, it actually runs you the risk of doing serious damage to your kids' lives. Because if you get to the point where you're like six to nine months down the road and then you're going to introduce them, you're building up a scenario that is going to explode. Has anyone ever dealt with that explosion? And the fact's like, I have this whole talk is hurting me. This episode is brought to you by healing Sana, my absolute favorite Sana on the market, for a variety of reasons. Number one, my busy mom, I own a bunch of companies, and despite my best efforts, I often don't know when I'm going to be able to sneak in 20 minutes of self-care. 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You will not regret this. It'll be the best Sana experience you've ever had. Let me give you a great example. From my own life. My show. Give me a good beat. So I knew generally that my dad was dating somebody. So I kind of like my dad would talk about her from time to time. So it's like, I knew that I had met her, but I didn't really know exactly which one she was. She was a secretary in my dad's office. I mean, classic New York story. So I kind of like generally, I from time to time, I'd be like, I wonder which one it would be. And in my head, I'd like play out these different scenarios. I wonder if it's that one. I wonder if it's this one, right? Months go by. Finally one day. So Rana's going to come over for dinner. And I'm like, oh, great. Deep down, the little girl part of me was actually excited. Like, maybe she's going to be really fun. Maybe we're going to have a great time. Maybe she's going to like me because my mom didn't. You know, so I really just was like, maybe there's going to be another like female in my life that actually will love me and accept me. When she came into the house, I realized that she was incredibly young. Looking back on it, maybe honestly, she was 23. My dad was a very old awkward. But this 23 year old secretary comes into my house and we're having this kind of casual dinner. And mind you, like, I didn't know how long they'd been eating. It was just kind of this, again, like, enigmatic flippant. Like, I've been kind of seeing somebody. We get through dinner. We watch a little bit of a movie. And my dad's like, and by the way, this is totally premeditated when he's about to save me. It's getting really late. You know, maybe you and Emma should invite Rana just to stay the night so she doesn't have to take the train back to New York. And I was like, oh, should I? I was nine. Okay. It's like you want me to invite your girlfriend to stay in our home because it's late. Okay. So I remember kind of looking at my sister and I was like, I got this one. And I was like, so Rana, you know, my dad was wondering if you could stay and she's like, then I noticed, right? Because I was abandoned, hold it all together. This whole thing was pretty strategized. She was like, oh, really? And I was like, bitch, you knew I was going to ask you that question. And I remember looking at my dad and being like, this is a set up, it's all scam. Can I tell you guys the biggest scam of all? She never left my house. She actually was moving into my house. But I'm seriously telling the truth. She never left my house. My dad didn't know how to talk to my sister and I about this. So this was this whole like song and dance. That he really put me in the position of being like, you know, you should stay over. So then as I was like, is she ever going to leave? He's like, well, you asked her to stay here. I was like, oh no. And he's the lawyer, obviously. So I feel like that's a pretty good example. Rana and I still to this day, Gordon can attest this. Have, I mean, about the worst relationship he can possibly have. She never left. She's in fact still marrying to my dad today. They have two new children who she's not allowed me to see. That's how completely insane she is. I saw them at my sister's wedding, which was sweet. But that's like the first time I've ever seen them. How awkward was it, Gordon, from your perspective? We awkward. It is super strange. So this just goes to show, if you do it this way, do we think as a child, I began to resent a woman that like, popped by for dinner one day and then never left? You bet I resented her. In my childhood opinion, it ruined my childhood. So if you don't know how to speak to your children about it, or you're afraid of how to integrate, get over your own fears and put your kids first and do it differently. Do better. Because compartmentalizing and hiding and then integrating when you've already built rapport is going to make your children feel outcast and out of the relationship, and like they can't trust either of you. I mean it. You feel me, Zach? Word. This one's a big one. Disciplining about what they did instead of addressing why they did it. This is one of the biggest parenting fails of all. You're just mad about what they did, but you're not actually helping them understand why they actually did it. Because usually they're completely unrelated. You're sitting there like, the milk is spilled on the ground. It's like, but were they in their mind like were they rushing? Were they trying to like clean up other people's plates? Were they intentionally being bad and leaving the table and knock the milk over? There's a million different reasons that milk could be on the floor. But if you're sitting there like, you spilled the milk, you're punished. You're not actually helping their brain understand what they actually did that spilled the milk. Because if you think a kid is aware of what they're doing for a minute to minute, I don't know that you've spent any time around children. If you actually stop and you pause the kid and you say their name like 10 times, maybe they're taking note of what's actually happening right now. You have to be like, Zev, Zev, Zev. And he's like, yes, can't I'm here? It can take so much time to even get them to like stop and be aware of where their body is in space. So when you're mad at what they just did, they have no idea why they did it. If you don't want that to happen again, you have to discipline them in a way that helps them understand why they did it in the first place. Otherwise, you're going to be disciplining for the same thing over and over and over again. You're going to then feel like, you're disrespecting me? No, you as a parent are missing the opportunity to stop the problem. They're not disrespecting you. They clearly don't get it. You're not disciplining in a way that makes them understand how to stop. This is the same thing in an adult relationship. Brazian, have you ever been in a relationship where you looked back retroactively? And you're like, I can't believe I was in that relationship. Right? That is like, that's so crazy that I actually thought that was okay. It's because while you were doing it, you were acting out of pattern, right? You're not aware. It's not like the whole time you're like, I'm in a terrible relationship. Let me go deeper. This is super bad. I'm going to go two more steps. When you're out of it and you look back in a different perspective, you're like, wow, that was a super toxic, terrible relationship. But you don't actually know you're doing it while you're getting in. That's because we often weren't trained how to actually pause and assess our motorbaths we're doing something. You actually have the opportunity to teach that to your kids. Via discipline. So instead of it being like, you spilled the milk, go to your room, really help reverse engineer what they were doing that made them spill the milk. Because then they will likely stop spilling the milk or at least think twice about it. Not creating a container to help your child push against an expressor individuality. This one is super important. This is what goes wrong when you have parents that are overly disciplinarian to the point of abuse. A kid starts to kind of go turn in on themselves and become such a people pleaser that they don't even know who they are anymore. They don't know how to assert their opinion. They don't really know how to be independent. They have no self-trust. The key is creating a system where it's like they can get in trouble and they will get in trouble. They understand there's a structure there. There's stuff to bump into. But the things that they know they're going to bump into don't make them fear for their life or their safety. That's why you go for what motivates them. Because there are certain things in a child's experience where you want them to be like, you know what? Mom doesn't want me to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. If you don't teach them how to actually do that and think their way through and be like, I'm going to take my licking for what I just did knowingly with my full mental awareness, you're actually creating a people pleaser. So that's kind of a tough one for people because you don't ever want your kids to push back. The reality is you actually do want your kids to push back, but you want them to do it in a way that's respectful and well thought through where you're like, you're grounded, but also good job. It's an important skill I'm telling you for kids to grow into adults and realize that they can see what I even got to show me a little bit here. Let's go back to what we're talking about this morning. You can see, okay, this is the system that you've set up, but I really believe this is something different that you're not considering. I'm going to buck the system anyways. And even if I get grounded, I'm going to do this because I really believe in what I'm doing. That's actually what you're creating for a child becoming an adult. Their ability to be like, okay, well, I'm probably going to lose my Game Boy for two weeks. That just really dated me. I don't know what the version is now. I'm going to lose my Game Boy for two weeks, but I really believe that I have to do this. Like I have to, you know, I have to stay at school an extra hour and go to like the varsity baseball practice to watch the pitching, right? Maybe your parents wouldn't let you do it and you're not okay with that. And you're like, I'm going to do it anyways, but I'm just going to take my grounding because it's going to make me a better athlete. If you create a container where they can't actually go through a process like that, you're creating a people pleaser that's going to turn out very vanilla and just always comply. Do you want to create that in a child? Absolutely not. Oh, back. Yes. That's specifically having noticed the pattern of what the range is. It depends on that layer. Like seven to seven to 11. It depends on the kid, but like, so for example, Zev who he'd be pleased that he's getting a lot of air time in this lecture. I'm sure he could convey that to him. Zev is very intelligent and extremely articulate. And does that edge on manipulative or sure? He pushes some of these boundaries at an age that's probably more like a 10 or 11-year-old because his brain just understands. So what that will do sometimes, I think Gordon can attest to this, is sometimes he seems more mature than he is because of that skill. So it's like, we'll also expect him to be meeting those levels in all areas and then we have to be like, you're also eight. But typically seven would be like the earliest possible onset, but it would have to be a kid like Zev that's like extremely articulate and already like early on showing signs that they can manipulate adults pretty easy. Otherwise, I think it's probably more average 10 to 11. Yes. So when that happens in there and you can see, oh, they're manipulating. What do you do with that service? Get clear on their motivation. What are they trying to manipulate the outcome to be and what's motivating them to try to manipulate the outcome that way? Because then you see what you have to solve. Because by the way, there might be opportunities where you go through that process and they're like, oh, see what you did there. Okay. And you actually let them do it. If we're so quick to just be like, no, because I said no. And we don't actually factor in that like maybe actually our child found a way to solve something that we actually wouldn't have considered. And we're just like, no, because I said so. If we go through the process that I just described, you might actually find that sometimes their negotiating technique was accurate. And you're like, Tusha, you can. Right. Good example would be the other days as kept being like, he just got in this thing where he really wanted to take baths. Like great. And to me, my whole thing all together would be like, all right, I'll go around the bathroom. I'll go around the bathroom. And then one day he came up to me and was like, can I take a bath? And I was in the middle doing like a million things. Gordon was like, dude, do you want to just go turn on the tub and like just go, I don't know, like run the water and take a tub. And he was like, oh, that's okay if I do that. And we both were like, yeah, yeah, you can do that. And he's like, great, cool. And like now he just doesn't ask anymore. He just like runs the tub. If I had been doing it my patterned way, I would have been like, okay, drop everything, go run the boy tub, like not thinking like he's eight. He can barely figure this out. My brain's like, I don't want him to burn his flesh. Like, you know, you've got to do a little of the left, when I lower the right. Like underestimating my manipulative son's ability to like toggle hot and cold. Meanwhile, Gordon's like, I can't be bothered. Go do it yourself. Meanwhile, he's actually like learning in this capacity like, okay, there's probably a different way that I could have phrased this to actually get what I wanted sooner. I think I saw the moment where he was like, oh, I could have asked to just do this myself, like weeks ago, because he doesn't like getting pushed back from me. It's like, I roll like, oh, you really have to bathe again. How many times do you have to bathe a week? So in that moment, he actually saw like, there's a different way for me to set up this negotiation. I'd be like, you know, I don't have time to give you a tub tonight. He could have actually felt like he could have pushed this boundary a little bit. Like, but what if I run the tub myself drain the water and you don't have to know anything about it? I would have been like, all right, you can in fact take a bath. So we want kids to be able to kind of think their way around a current system and come up with a new solution that we actually said, like, blink at no two, that might actually be yes, if they pitch it correctly without just an automatic, like if you say no to me, you're going to a room. Which segway is nicely into this? Yes. I just thought discipline in the asking the why, because that changed my life as a parent three years ago. Because if anybody had asked me the why, they're right now, but what I said, like, because you were so strict, so I had to sneak out, do the thing. And so I, I have teenagers, some of you know, teenagers, I just came up with this sort of challenge as they got into this neighborhood. Like why didn't you tell me that there was drinking at this party for my daughter? And she was like, well, is it great you were going to get mad? And I was like, did have I ever given you that? And she was like, no, but my friends thought maybe you would. So I just went with that. And I was like, well, I'm actually mad that you didn't tell me the truth. But there is no discipline. The discipline is the conversation of you, now, ways to help me. It was not what I would have been earlier on three years ago. I can attest to that. Well, right. And also a teenager myself, if someone had asked me, why did you do that behavior? So nobody's home. No one's really paying attention. Why wouldn't I go sneak out and do the party? Like just because you told me on a piece of paper being home by stuff, didn't mean I was going to do it. I didn't know you were going to actually be holding that seven. If I thought I was going to get busted, I wouldn't have done it. Obviously. Like, there was a lot of reason why I was doing that behavior. It was about controlling the family that my mom needed and it wasn't helping me. So you're again, important. What she's describing, you have to get to the motivation. And really in that one, it kind of dials back to you, I would say, addressing the fact that her friends can actually get her to not pay attention to who you actually are. Like, you do know me, right? The problem here is that you're letting your friends influence your opinion instead of our relationship. So if you went to some other thing to discipline, like focus on the drinking, for example, you would miss that whole thing where she's learning not to fall victim to peer pressure. Do you see how that works? Like, if you're focusing on the wrong point and the problem, you miss an opportunity to stop it all together. So using the Bible or other intangible concepts to punish your discipline without taking the time to teach them and make them applicable. So kids need to understand why. Kids are inherently curious. Right? Our brain is constantly trying to understand our world, put it through different scenarios, test it, see if it holds true. If we're just giving them like high level concepts and never actually making them practical or meaningful in our world, they're going to actually turn against God and resent the Bible or resent whatever other spiritual practice you try to relate to them. And as somebody that really loves teaching about spirituality, this breaks my heart. How many students I've dealt with that have turned completely away from God because their parents used this against them. So if you're going to be teaching high level intangible spiritual concepts to your kids, try to do it in a way that offers some sort of meaning to their life. Because if you don't, they're going to fill in the gaps come up with their own reasons why for something. And most likely, you will be the one that creates the fracture with their relationship with God. And I don't think that's something you want under conscience personally. I know I've told the story before about how in the bedtime book that my parents used to, well, parents, let's be honest, it was my mom. My mom used to read to me at night before bed. There'd be a page that she would always skip. It would be like, you know, I brushed my teeth, I did this, I did that. And it was a page that said I would do the Lord's Prayer. And she would just always skip it. And one day I was like, mommy, why do you always skip that page? And she looks at me and she's like, because God doesn't exist. And then literally goes to the next page. Where was I? It's like, I feel like you just kind of dropped a pretty intense bomb for me there. We want to be mindful of this impact. If you're going to introduce it, introduce it with intention. If you are going to introduce it in certain ways, in like a Bible school or CCD or Hebrew school, but never back it up at home, you're setting your kids up for a trust issue. So my suggestion is if you are going to integrate it, teach your kids all the way, integrate it all the way, don't dabble. Dabbling is just like the being chill. It actually creates far more problems. So either be all in or all out, dabbling creates a lot of problems. And please, please, please make sure that you inquire how they are defining it. You can't decide based on something that intangible that they're going to naturally define at the way you are. You could teach them something that you think is really positive that isn't very tangible and three-dimensional. And it could become the biggest fear all the way through to their adulthood. I've dealt with it and break. So approach this very wisely and with discernment. Yes, Jim? So when did the important part of parent attention? What they would be? Absolutely. Yes. The parent needs to have intention. And the parent needs to, again, be, I would say, really holistic in the approach. You either have to be all or nothing. The dabbling, like, that my parent's dabbled in this and this and this and this. It's basically what that culminates to is I have abandonment issues with God now because my parent's dabbled in like 150 different things. So now I kind of think all of it's bullshit. So don't do your kids the disservice of doing the dabble or again, like, we only go to church on high holidays and then the rest of the time. I've literally had adult students that are like, well, this is how we were raised and like, deep down. It's like, I would hear all these things at Bible school and then my parents wouldn't back it up and I literally something whole child would be like, my parents are going to hell. Learned at a Bible school. They're not backing up any of these things. My parents are fraud. They're sending me to a place that is telling me my parents are going to hell and they don't even realize it. I'm telling you, I've had that student multiple times over in SMasters. These that's what's happening. If you're not doing anything like that at home and you're not really taking it seriously, but you're also sending your kid to a place where they're learning those things, then they're watching all of your behavior silently and they're like, that's not very biblical. Is it? And then the parents are like, I just think I'm doing the right things. My parents did it and it gives me free childcare on a Sunday and on a Wednesday. You're actually creating a big problem potentially. Not always. And I'm not saying it in general is bad, but it can create that incongruent sort of experience for a child. Make sense? Okay. Be just tread wisely. I'm not saying don't tread. I'm saying tread intentionally tread wisely. Let's remember the break parenting keystones because this is really the important thing and you can definitely screenshot this that we always want to strive for. And it's in my opinion in incredibly accurate order. So number one, age appropriate truth. Above and beyond anything else, you have to be honest with your kids. Right? If we look at all the parenting fails, like the honesty piece is really one of the common threads. This doesn't mean telling like the whole inappropriate truth in a way that scars your child forever, but you have to figure out where they are in terms of their intellectual capacity and be as honest as you can in that moment. It will make your kids trust you more even if the answer that you have to give them is not what they wanted to hear. It will help them have a better skill set to move forward in their life and be confident, have friendships believe in themselves when it feels like the chips are down. Age appropriate truth is everything. Don't hide. Don't try to explain away. Don't try to justify just tell the truth because you set that standard for them as a growing adult. Two, input equals output. Every single thing that you do has an output in your child. So if every single thing you do, you have a little moment where you're just like, is the one about to do? Gonna spit something out that I don't want. It has an opportunity to give you a pause of personal responsibility to double question yourself. Is this something I really want to do right now? This is absolutely necessary. What I'm about to do. Because if it creates an output that is not in their best interest or your best interest, you probably want to question your own motives about why are tempted to do it? Are you in your pattern? Are you in your ACBs? Probably. Three, consistency. Link consistency is another thread through all of them. It's just incredibly important. Four, teaching a child the why so they don't mistakenly insert their own reason. If you don't teach a children how to really firmly land on the why, they're going to put something else in its place because they're not just gonna let it go. That's not what the brain does. If there's a problem, the brain is not going to stop until it's decided there's a solution even if that is inaccurate. So you have to help fill it with the correct useful information. Five, allowing for temporary non-agreement. Your kids don't have to agree with you. Your kids are not disrespectful if they don't agree with you. This kind of goes with the container that allows them to push against. If your kid doesn't agree with you, that's fine. They can go disagree with you kindly in their room with no TV. Maybe they'll agree with you two hours later. Or maybe not, and that's okay. You can't block a child from self-expression. The end result isn't adult. This is very, very bad. Often when you have temporary non-agreement, that child on their own accord will come back to you and be like, I'm sorry, I actually see what I did. And I did this and this and you're like, yes, you really understand. It's okay. I'm sorry to you. And they're like, okay, and that's the end. But if you sit there and you do the beat of dead horse scenario where you won't let it go until you feel like it's solved, that child's going to resent you. It's going to make them feel unstable. And then they never really learn why they just kind of give in to you because they're afraid of you. Temporary non-agreement is crucial. Six, supporting their ability to assert independence safely and respectfully that I feel goes in line with the temporary non-agreement and the boundaries that seven help them see who they are accurately. If you don't accurately reflect how that child is showing up in the world, this could go one of two ways. They could make up the scenario in their head that they're this dark, terrible monster because their internal negative self-talk kind of gets masked all over their body. Or they can go the opposite and they can think that they're like a super cool badass, super successful. By the way, this is what actually breeds a real narcissist, but they're not actually putting any effort to do any of these things. So then everything that bunts up against them, they go immediately aggression, aggression, aggression. So helping a child reflect back who they actually are helps them decide if that's what they want. If you're reflecting inaccurately back to your kid, you're giving them a false sense of reality, and you're making them believe they're something they're not. And having the choice to decide who you want to be is born out of showing them who they actually are. If you're not reflecting that accurately, you basically disabled them for the rest of their lives. So that one's a really important one. And number eight goes in tandem with that super, super important. Learn how to accurately self-measure, right? If I were to look at the difference between seven and eight, seven is like, I'm reflecting back to you with accuracy, which is important to get to number eight. The child has to actually learn to look in the mirror and be like, did I actually put a hundred percent effort there? And you're like, I didn't really much I harder next time. The reason these are in order, all of these have to happen for the child to be able to be like, you know what? I didn't really do my best there. I'm going to go try harder. If any of these doesn't happen, neither does number eight. And I'll tell you right now, the most successful adults that I know that I call my friends that I love in a door who have built huge businesses, have great relationships with God, have great relationships with their kids. Guess what they all have in common. Number eight, they actually know when they're doing something shitty. They know when they're like, I didn't actually try that hard. And on the flip, they know how to push themselves harder than anybody I've ever met. They don't need somebody else to like blow smoke up their ass. They don't need somebody else to be like, oh, they did such a good job. From within, they actually have a good measuring stick of like, am I doing enough? Where am I doing too little? This is a key for success in our world. And it cannot be created without everything above it. So I encourage you take a picture of this, live it, apply it in your day-to-day life with your kids. Remember that doesn't matter how old your kids are. You can start doing these things right away. It's not going to be perfect, but holding yourself in like constantly replaying what you did wrong and living in regret and remorse is not productive. Change what you're doing right now. And keep peace if you ever go back and watch any of the other break-parenting lectures. I figure out if you have older kids, what areas you didn't stick the landing here, and ask them how they defined it in their mind and have a moment to be like, you know what, take responsibility for that. Now I did that. I'm really sorry. Often they're going to be like, wow, I can't believe you just actually acknowledge that you did that. Often that child's trajectory into adulthood can be healed in that one moment that you actually say, yeah, I actually did that. Because you've had other ways of 999, which feel like gaslighting to them. So as soon as you actually acknowledge, yes, I did that. And here's why I did it. And they actually get that you get the mechanism so that they know you won't do it again. They actually can build trust with you back. So it's never too late to take responsibility and show them that you understand the mechanism, so they can trust you understand how not to do it again. The same thing with a child that we're parenting them to understand why they landed themselves in a painful situation. We're parenting the child to not end up like us, where we're doing a bunch of harm and then we're trying to clean it up at 35. So I really hope I drove home. How important some of these things are that are like, oh, they're so sweet and kind and soft and snuggly and I'm so conscious. These things have their own problems attached to them. So I encourage you to sit with these. Be honest, not hold yourself in a situation of guilt or shame, but really just feel like, yep, I did those things. Here's how I'm going to clean it up and move forward. Your brain isn't broken. It's running an old code. Brake method is a system that maps your neurological patterns, decodes your emotional distortions and rewires your behavior fast. No talk therapy spiral, no getting stuck in your feelings, just logic based rewiring in 20 weeks or less. Head to brakemethod.com and see what your brain is really up to. Your brain is wired for deception, but here's the truth. Patterns can be broken. The code can be written. Once you hear the truth, you can't go back. So the only question is, are you ready to listen?