The Brain Expert: How To Raise Mentally Resilient Children (According To Science) | Dr. Daniel Amen

you do not solve all of your children's problems that's the heart of love and logic it's you want kids to make mistakes and you want them to pay the consequences so they learn before we jump into this episode I'd like to invite you to join this community to hear more interviews that will help you become happier healthier and more healed all I want you to do is click on the Subscribe button I love your support it's incredible to see all your comments and we're just getting started I can't wait to go on this journey with you thank you so much for subscribing it means the world to me the number one Health and Wellness podcast J shett J shett the one the only Jett you talk about mentally strong kids live by clearly defined goals and I was thinking about that I was thinking how do you set a goal for a kid and at what age does a goal become real well the goal starts with parents what kind of Dad or Mom do I want to be and what kind of children do I want to raise so in raising mentally strong kids I mean the first principle is you need to be mentally strong right you have to model the message and Amen Clinics our first core value is authenticity and and what what does that mean to be mentally strong well the first principle is Clarity is you want to know so when I was growing up my mom was great she was present but there were way too many of us there were seven I'm third means irrelevant uh at least that's what I thought uh you know Prince Harry's book spare well in a Lebanese family the oldest son is golden and the second son's irrelevant now there's huge upside to irrelevance which means I could do anything I want but my mom was present and fun and playful and strict uh all good qualities my dad was gone and so when I'm thinking about what kind of parent do I want to be is I want to be present uh because that caused a lot of bitterness in my life and if you read sort of the latest Neuroscience on childbearing attachment is so important to prevent mental illness or mental health problems and so if I want to be present then that leads to the second principle which is bonding which is connection and how do you connect and too many parents get that wrong and like oh well let me solve all of my child's problems which creates entitlement and disaster but the first one is what do you want and I think it's a great question for kids when they're six or seven what do you want in our relationship like I treat a lot of difficult kids and one of my favorite questions to parents how many times out of 10 when you ask this child to do something will they do it the first time without arguing or fighting and seven is the average for healthy kids so very few kids do something every time right but for the kids who see me it's zero or less than three and when I ask the children about this 78 n I'm like is that your goal to make your mother cry I'm like no I'm like why do you do it I don't know and the fact is they don't know because it's not will driven it's braind driven and that one concept all by itself on top of which if a child doesn't do what you ask them to do and you ignore it or you just repeat it what you're doing is teaching them to do that and the brain is is lazy so um this is going to be a fun conversation how about the people that would say that that may make children obedient but it doesn't make them free thinkers or it doesn't make them independently thoughtful I think we sometimes feel like these two things work against each other right like if we feel we're like they listen to everything we say and they do what we say then how do they build up their own sense of identity how how does that work well that's totally in the book on how to do that and that is you do not solve all of your children's problems that's the heart of love and logic it's you want kids to make mistakes and you want them to pay the consequences so they learn agency it's such an important word in lives um so I have six children three of them are adopted and Chloe um who's now 20 she's a bit of a Helen and uh argumentative oppositional and I'm a child psychiatrist and Chloe was two when tan and I met and I'm like Tana you've done second grade but they would like go at it in a bad way for homework for like a couple of hours and I'm like and then Tana got a program uh I co-wrote the book with Charles Fay who's president of the love and logic Institute so she got parenting with love and logic and then took everything they ever created one night when it finally clicked that I've done second grade she told Chloe she'd never again ask her to do her homework she said hey I've done second grade this is on you and if you're okay with the consequences of not doing your homework Mrs M her teacher will be mad at you you won't go out to recess and if you really decide you're not going to do it you'll make new friends when you repeat second grade that was that Epiphany moment Chloe got upset and said I never said I wasn't going to do my homework I'm just not going to do it now she stormed off 20 minutes later she came back no one ever asked her to do her homework again she's going to graduate with a business degree from Chapman University she's bright she's independent she has agency she's a hard worker and a free thinker because she couldn't push against her mother to solve her problems she had to figure it out with of course appropriate support and oh by the way to really push on this idea if Khloe forgot her homework there's no way her mother would bring it to school cuz then she'd only forget it once right if she forgot her homework and we brought it to school we'd always be bringing her homework to school if it was cold out and she forgot to bring a sweater nobody's bringing a sweater she forgot her lunch nobody's bringing her lunch we're teaching her probably the most important skill of mentally strong people I'm responsible for my life and if there are consequences I'm going to pay it and you so you want them to make mistakes when the consequence are affordable and what age is that at is that at a particular age or is there a time when like four five six you know earlier the better and of course you're always putting you know think of bowling alley you're putting bumper guards up uh to protect them but when I was a young parent I think my self-esteem wasn't great and I would get self-esteem by solving my children's problems and what I realized is I was robbing them of their self-esteem because where do we get self-esteem there's this great study out of Harvard where they followed 454 inner city Boston school kids for 70 years I mean think about that I one of the longest longevity studies ever done and they looked at what was going you know with mental illness with addiction with self-esteem and the only thing that correlated with self-esteem was whether or not you worked as a child whether or not you had responsibility at home you had a paper route you had an outside job when I was 10 years old I went to work because my dad owned grocery stores and work is good but for people who are affluent who have help at home and everything is done for the child you're really setting the child up for struggles in their life because they won't develop a sense of agency that's so interesting hearing that I've always felt that I started doing I was a paper boy when I was 14 years old and I remember going around the local streets and delivering the papers and it was raining and it was you know at some time of the year in England it would snow during the Christmas period and it was hardest because I'm pulling this like you know this uh trolley we call it I don't know what you'd call it here but pulling this cart that has all the newspaper stacked in it and then I worked in re and then I worked in a grocery store and then I worked in retail and so I've been working ever since I was 14 years old and I couldn't agree with you more I learned so many interesting skills I developed so many amazing habits because you had to in order to do it and that resonates so strongly with me how do you get comfortable watching your child be uncomfortable because I can imagine that's the biggest challenge right as a parent who loves adors cares for the this child doesn't want it to be cold doesn't want the child to be late for school doesn't want the child to perform poorly your ego is somewhat attached to the child's ego and success level how do you get comfortable watching your child be uncomfortable in a non unemotional way and not in a insensitive way it's hard you have to have the big picture in mind and the long game in mind what do I want what kind of parent do I want to be effective present what kind of child do I want to raise independent competent strong um if I do too much I'm robbing them of their self-esteem of their sense of responsibility and agency and that's a disaster you just don't want and you need to see it ahead of time and that's why you know the first principes is know what you want and all always ask your kids so what's the goal for this year what do you want right it's not you're not telling them they goal I mean an example when I turned 18 it's the first time I could vote and my dad told me if I voted for Senator McGovern the country would go to hell so 1972 Richard Nixon is running for re-election he's a very popular president even though it'll turn out to be a disaster against senator my govern and I'm 18 and I don't have a relationship with my dad I mean we're sort of mostly mad at each other he's trying to have influence on me but because we don't have a relationship I'd just as soon piss him off right now it wasn't my conscious thought but I'd just as soon piss him off and I voted for mover and the country went to hell but it had nothing to do with McGovern it was all Nixon and Watergate and so on but it was that lack of relationship and if people do what I talk about in the book you have more influence with them and that leads to so the first principle is goal setting the second one is bonding it's attachment if you want to have influence with your children if you want them to seriously consider your values you have to be connected with them and what does that take time like actual physical time where you're not on your phone but you put the phone away and you spend 20 minutes a day with a child so there's an exercise I talk about in the book that I love so much that you know all the things I've recommended to my patients over the last 45 years when I decided to be a psychiatrist 45 years ago special time it's mad magic and 20 minutes a day do something with your child child wants to do that's reasonable you can do in 20 minutes so it's like not take me to Nordstroms and during that time no commands no questions no directions it's just time to be together and it's money in the relational bank and I remember when I first figured this out my literary agent uh had a child later in life we were talking on the phone and he's like my daughter Laura doesn't want to have anything to do with me and she's to and he said that's like a girl thing right a mother daughter thing they don't want anything I'm like no Carl you're ignoring her what what do you mean I'm ignor I'm like you're ignoring her do this and he said that won't work I'm like oh great you represent an idiot my own literary age won't do what I say do it in fact I'm going to put you in my schedule for 3 weeks I'm going to call you get the party started and so three weeks go by I call him up Carl Daniel she won't leave me alone as soon as I walk in the door she grabs my leg and wants her time all she wants to do is be with me I'm like that's the problem that's what we won right that's what we're at after so actual physical time and now parents are so busy they're not spending this oneon-one alone time listening so that's the second part of it so time actual physical time and shut up I it's so important so you you love them so much you want to pour all of your knowledge all of your wisdom that you worked your whole life on and down loaded into their head don't do that listen to them and therapists learned this technique called active listening that whenever someone says something you don't interrupt and tell them how to think you repeat it back and you listen for the feelings behind the words so if my son came home and said Dad I want to have blue hair I don't know what your father would have said but I know what mine would have said no when as long as you live in this house you can have blue air but what does that do it just stops the conversation or it starts a fight active listening teaches you repeat back what you hear oh you want to have blue hair and then be quiet long enough for them to like explain what's really going on and he might say all the kids are wearing their hair blue now I've been to a school I know not everybody's blue-headed and if I would have said that to my dad I don't know what your dad would have said I don't care what anybody else is doing as long as you live in this house you're not going to have blue hair if they're going to jump off a bridge are you going with them that one for sure I've heard that plenty of times and what does it do stops the conversation or it starts a fight sounds like you want to be like the other kids completely different conversation but that's and he might say dad you know sometimes I feel like I don't fit in now my mother would have said what do you mean you don't fit in of course you fit in you're a good boy you're a good-looking boy you're nice boy and that's not helpful either what's just helpful is so sometimes you feel like you don't fit him and then give it a breath so they're the ones solving their problem now at the end of a half an hour he says I still want to have blue hair I'm going to tell him no way in hell as long as you live in my house because it's not cool to look weird I mean if you look weird you're going to hang out with weird people right it's okay to have boundaries around Behavior some parents they have like no boundaries and I think some boundaries are appropriate what does No Boundaries lead to like from a neuroscience and from a study perspective of what is what happens if it leads to mental health problems so there's um this great study out of the University of Oregon we looked at 10,000 families and they looked at parenting along two Dimensions parents who were um firm versus permissive and then hostile versus loving and if you take those two Dimensions you end up with four types of parents uh permissive and hostile permissive and firm loving and permissive loving and firm and they looked at what were the consequences or the outcome of each parenting style do you have a sense what would be worse what would be the worst one that creates the most trouble you would think that it's hostile and permissive hostile and permissive the worst what do you think is the second worst loving and permissive loving and permissive shocking wow because children need boundaries and the loving and permissive ones had more mental health challenges than the Hostile and firm now that's not helpful right that creates anxiety but children need boundaries I often say God gave us parents until our frontal loes develop right the front third of the brain the most human part of the brain Focus For Thought judgment impulse control and that's why you need parents to help guide you and the one of the big mistakes we make as a society is we abdicate parenting before their frontal loes are developed so I'm like not a big fan of sending children away to college because you're going to take their undeveloped prefrontal cortex and put them in a dorm with a whole bunch of other undeveloped prefrontal courtesies bad idea and you know I'd learned this as a child psychiatrist send kids away to school the incident anxiety goes up depression goes up suicide goes up addiction goes up and uh it's not a good thing how were you able to go get around that with your kids going to college as well well I mean one of my daughters wanted to go to the University of Virginia always across the other I'm like no you have to go to somewhere I can drive to see you in three hours wow wow so yeah that's it's really interesting this limits and rules building mental fortitude that you talk about because it's it's hard to know I think as a parent and it comes back to the earlier point that you were saying that we're just dealing with so much ourselves like people are busy they're stressed they are on their phone just trying to decompress after a long day and what I liked about what you said was 20 minutes of no questions no commands and no directions that I think is really powerful and a special takeaway for people because it may be really hard to give quality time but I love the definition of quality time becoming no directions no commands and no questions because it seems like that's what our relationship becomes about with children and what do all of those do if your relationship is just giving the kids commands directions questions what ends up happening to the relationship they shut down and if you're just in their space and and you know as a child psychiatrist you know I've seen thousands of children over the years and often parents go he won't talk to you he doesn't want to be here he won't talk to you I go yeah it's really hard to be me and I just sit there and I'll play games with them but while I'm playing a game with them in a game they choose they chat you know they talk about what's going on in their dreams what goes on at home what goes on what game would you play with them I mean we'll play cards we'll play Shoots and Ladders we'll play Monopoly we'll play all sorts of different games um and one of my favorite games is the storytelling game where I'll they'll start a story and I'll they'll have a sentence all of a sentence all of a sentence and you really get to see how their minds work why does that work why is that a great interaction point that allows them to open up because kids if you just say tell me your problem they'll have no idea and they'll freeze if you play a game with them or you go for a walk with them then they begin to open up if they know you'll listen and we just we're in a society that's talking over each other parents are anxious and they want to solve things and they talk too much so if I can get people to use less words and be more present it's gold for them how do you know if a child is becoming more mentally strong or more mentally weak as you're practicing some of these methods what do you notice what are the habits or the core traits of a mentally strong child and a mentally weak child so mentally strong kids don't believe everything they think this is so important before in other episodes we've talked about killing the ants the automatic negative thoughts actually I have a child's book called Captain snout and the superpower questions where I wrote specifically to teach kids to question their automatic thoughts and so a vulnerable child so maybe wouldn't say mentally weak we just say vulnerable is you notice they have stinking thinking that they mind read they fortune tell they focus on what's wrong rather than on what's right a strong child still have those thoughts but they'll question them they just won't attach to um what I call the different kinds of ants and blame is like the worst ant you know it's you blame other people for your life you become a victim and you become powerless what is it I can do today to solve this problem and that's the essence of the book along with love and logic what is it I can do today to solve this problem yeah obviously none of us are perfect and I think every parent is already judging themselves in how they are a parent I think a lot of people carry that weight around and they carry that stress around of I'm not a good parent I wish I could have handled that better I shouldn't have said that I should have said that what's a healthy way to repair a mistake you've made maybe you've said something you wish you didn't say you did something you shouldn't have done and you've done it a few times what's a healthy way to repair that Bond well there's a guilt cycle that people get into they overreact and then they feel bad about it so they don't react and they let bad behavior go and they let it go and they let it go and then they can't stand it and then they explode and then they feel guilty and so they don't react and they don't react and then they don't react and then they overreact and so the trick is when their's Behavior you don't like deal with it as opposed to let it go it's like deal with it in the moment and you're going to make mistakes Lord knows I've made lots of mistakes but every day I win or I learn right I'm working with an Olympic athlete that I just love so much Alicia Newman she's a Canadian uh record holder for pole vating and um she's such a mess when I saw her she did my show scam my brain and now she's so mentally strong because every tournament she wins or she learns and as a parent that's the mindset is you know we had a really great day and when you don't have a great day why didn't we have a great day and you think about it in the book there's all sorts of brain reasons why you didn't have a great day you didn't sleep you went too long without food um there's the time change you know that has more bad days just because you know as a society we become jetlagged all at once so if you can just be curious rather than being Furious it helps you so much so if we have a really great day it's like okay why' that happen and just be thought and the default is always firm and kind and the softer your voice the more they pay attention to it if you're screaming they tune you out and they get mad it's so interesting as I'm listening to you I'm thinking as you gave in the example of the Olympic Athlete we need this for oursel right now at this age because our child self didn't probably get this kind of parenting or wasn't exposed to this and so even that statement you just said that I either win or I learn I think that's a habit that any of us listening to this right now need to develop because I think just as we're harsher on children or harsher on someone else it's comes from a fact that we're harsh on ourselves like there's this inner critic and this inner voice that breathes negativity and as you said the guilt cycle that continues it seems that that then becomes the externalized version is how we treat the kids and then again we feel guilty for doing that because we know it's wrong when you're trying to become mentally strong yourself but you feel like you don't have time your kids need dinner cooked you need to do their homework with them like I feel like there's a massive loss of time balance the ability to cater to this what do people do when they're like Jay I'm just surviving like I'm just putting food on the table we just about even surviving for myself to be able to switch on the TV in the evening after the kids were asleep like I get no time for myself how do we balance that time that's why special time is not two hours with the child it's doable you're playing the long game and too often parents love their children so much it's we're going to do soccer and we're going to do dance and we're going to do music and we're gonna and it's like stop that you need time to spend with each other and you're like well but I have to do my homework with the children it's like please don't that's not what this want you to do they want the children to do the homework and if they don't do it let the kids pay the consequences but then what parents do is they get into this fortune telling thing it's like well then they won't get into the best preschool and they won't get into the best school and they won't go to Harvard and their life will be terrible and like I went to a junior college a community college I'm actually in the Hall of Fame at Orange Co college and I actually think many people Mark cubin actually said that it's like most people should go to a community college because it's such a low cost and it's the same education right but people have this idea of prestige is attached to myself esteem and it's and Prestige is a French word comes from a French word for deceit right that I mean I went to a community college my life is awesome because I work hard right and ultimately another point you never want to tell a child they're smart I mean parents get so proud you're so smart don't ever do that go you work hard because if you tell them they're smart and they can't learn something their self-esteem drops if you go I really like how hard you're working and they come up with something hard they work harder and you also teach kids cuz mentally strong people ask questions and too often it's like no I want to ask questions I don't want to appear dumb it's like mentally strong people to ask questions and so when I was in elementary school I'd never ask a question and then I realized because I was in the Army and I took three years between high school and college and I was able to grow up and I'm like oh you have to ask questions right I learned that in the Army if you ask a question and somebody says no ask somebody else because they're more likely to say yes right so I learned that I don't just accept no but in school it's like oh let me ask questions if I don't understand something odds are people don't understand those well what are some of those other statements that parents say to kids that they think they're saying the right thing but they end up backfiring because they make it harder for the child to live up to that what are some of those other statements it'll be okay like or I'll take care of it for you if they're having problems with another child at school they immediately in the principal's office they're not listening to the child and going so how do you think you can handle that or what did they go and they fix it and that's death to their self-esteem now of course if it's dangerous or bullying or abuse you have to step in and take care of it but for the day-to-day stuff how do you think you can solve this as opposed to well I had that problem when you were when I was your age and this is what I did and this is what you should do don't do that because it steals their self-esteem it steals their agency what is it you can do I'm rooting for you rather than boy that's a dumb decision yeah yeah wow no I'm rooting for I mean that's so huge in our friendships it's so huge in marriage it's it's huge with kids I think it's so easy to just say this is what I did this is what you should do this is the right way to do it this is easy and we think we're basically doing a shortcut because we're not listening we're not actually bonding we're not connecting and we're trying to jump to a conclusion that hopefully we think solves the issue and a lot of this comes back to what we've both mentioned in this conversation is that there's this subconscious ego attachment to the child succeeding is being a reflection of our self-esteem our self-worth our selfesteem gets wrapped up in our child's self-worth and self-esteem and now you know subconsciously we're living our dreams through them that's not as basic as saying I want my kid to be a doctor because I am but there there's other more subtle versions of that how do people disconnect from that ego because it seems to be so subtle and so hidden but it's there and I think everyone notices it with their parents when their parents are acting in that way but almost when we become parents we we're completely oblivious to that ego and it's so important it's often so toxic if someone is living an unrealized life that they pour a lot of it into their child and it makes these kids miserable and it doesn't give them a sense of agency it constrains them um and they often rebel against it as opposed to what do you want to do it'll make you a good living so I don't have to support you and I love my six children but I never want to have to live with them right so I want to create competent people who can care for themselves it's like oh go Live Your Dream whether or not you can take care of yourself and that's going to set them up to be miserable if you're dependent on someone else uh you're miserable entitled people are never happy um another thing is and uh I posted this on Tik Tok and it got like 7 million views um Hallmark of mental strength um I don't do things for people who do not treat me with respect whoa so you know your child misbehaves you love them so much it doesn't matter you you know give them everything they want anyways death I don't do nice things for people who I feel don't treat me with respect it doesn't mean you don't feed them of course you feed them but you're not taking them to the store and you're not doing nice things for them I mean you need to teach them their consequences so the third part so it's goal setting bonding so much there and so many mental illnesses are a attached to attachments that become broken could you walk us through those so uh John bul is sort of the famous attachment uh psychologist and he said that if we're not connected to our moms or dads um it puts us at Great risk for mental health problems and he's absolutely right and often the break in the bond between your mother or your father or it can be any primary caretaker caretaker creates this rage inside of you and then you feel guilt about the rage and so you attack yourself and you know many people who live with this negative chatter in their head and it's often that specific Dynamic that they furious at their mother their father you know perhaps a divorce happened when they were four or five or they had a sibling die when they were for something happen they get really angry but that's not appropriate because these are the people that feed me so rage guilt about the rage and then self attack and they live with that their whole lives I can't tell you the number of people um and when you're four or five or six you think of yourself at the center of the world and so if something good happens you sort of think it's because of you if something bad happens you think it's because of you and you end up with this chronic sense of being bad and uh there's a specific type of therapy I like it's called intensive short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy and it's often getting to the feelings underneath and rage and attachment and guilt about the rage are often the significant piece of it sometimes it's hard because I feel like a lot of people may be feeling like you know I don't understand my child like they're angry they're upset they you know they they kind of want to disconnect what do you do in that situation where do you start well I think you first start with the simple things time and look at what they're eating cuz that matters um I have one patient who would go in a rage whenever he got red dye and people go red dye yeah red dye number 40 um and so like every sweet in candy think of Red Vines yeah and it's even in cough syrup for children or hard candies red dye number 40 and he would go in a rage and when they would take away red die he'd be fine but sometimes he' get it accidentally and he'd rage and so I actually scanned him you know that's what I do I look at people's brains and so we scanned him no red dye for a month and his brain was healthy we gave him Red Vines that have red D number 40 in it and his brain went like it exploded that dramatic hyperactivity in his brain and so if you're really struggling with your child and you use the principles Dr Fay and I talk about in this book and you're still struggling is probably a good idea to get him assessed and on average it's years between the time a child first has a symptom anxiety depression OCD add between they have a symptom and they get assessed and so many bright people go I never give my kids drugs and it's like if he's diabetic you give them drugs if if he had heart disease you give them drugs it's like and I'm not advocating drugs right I mean I own a supplement company um but I'm not opposed if I do the all the things I know how to do then I use medicine to do it people like don't really see the brain as an organ right they have to get the progression your brain physical function of your brain creates your mind and if your brain's not right your mind's not right and so what are all the ways that a mind can be trouble right so if you have a child that's not sleeping that has nightmares that has Tantrums that won't go away they don't socially connect they're obsessive it's like at some point you have to go what's going on in their brain and there's a whole section in the book on brain health for kids of course you got to model it as as a parent but what you feed them matters how much sleep they get matters I have another really fun book called time for bed sleepy head which is a hypnotic bedtime story for children I actually used to do it with my daughter Brienne when she was three I did it from three until eight she loved the story so much um and think of your kids in four big circles they have a biology so we talked about their brain they have a psychology how they think they have a Social Circle what their environment like and there's a spirit ual Circle which most child Christ wouldn't touch but it's sort of like why do you care you know why do you think you're on the planet what's your sense of meaning and purpose because purposeful people are happier purposeful people I mean what am I on on purpose right they they live longer and so nurturing those four circles so important for the kids what does what does loving discipline look like because I think it's it sounds good like we're all like yeah I would I would love to be disciplined but I'd love to be loving and often we don't even figure out what that means in the workplace let alone with kids we're either loving or disciplined but we're not I think it should be both what does it look like well you know we haven't gotten to rules I I think families should have them Society has rules like tell the truth uh do what Mom and Dad say the first time I love that rule uh because do you know your chance of abusing the child if you tell a child to do something five times your chance of abusing that child just went up significantly and so if you have the expectation they'll do things the first time it's like Caitlyn take you know I want you to take out the trash like in the next half hour and if she doesn't it's like sweetheart you have a choice you can take it out now or you can have this consequence and then you can take it out I don't care it's up to you and I love that part of not being attached to it I love her I'm really clear and she's getting that consequence if she doesn't move like um stop threatening them and then not following through uh because you teach them that you have to tell them and get angry and be a bit crazy in order for them to do what you ask them to do and I I I like the rules and rhythms and routines I remember in my home after dinner me and my sister would clean up and we had a little rotor of who washed up that day and who clean the table that day and it was just something that went around every day we take it in turns and my sister was four years younger than me and we' just do it together and it became this thing that we just did and it became natural became a habit and it made us accountable and responsible to each other as well as well as our parents and it was a really neat way of kind of giving us that rules and you know I think sometimes we think of rules as like like strict rules and guidelines but actually it can be just a rhythm and a routine in and it's building confidence and skill and you're part of the family rather than you're entitled to live in that family yeah yeah and the earlier you start the the better it is um for kids I mean it's it's hard if you not spend any time with children by the time they're 14 their friends are more important than you are and that's the heartbreaking thing I've learned is if you're not spending time with them their friends will take your place and they may not have the advice they may not have the right ear for you and it makes them more vulnerable to all the scary stuff that's on social media well I was going to ask you about that I think a lot of challenges that parents have today are my child is addicted Ed to social media they're addicted to their phone forget spending time with them I can't even get them to look up and make I contact what have you seen what have you experienced there's a whole section on technology yes is you can have technology and I recommend you delay it as long as humanly possible because it's not in their best interest but you can have technology as long as it's not creating a problem in the family and if we're not connecting that's a problem in the family if you're at dinner um now you can't be on your phone all dinner and tell your child they can't be on theirs right so probably everybody should put their phones away so you can connect right modeling mentally strong parents ultimately raise mentally strong kids but the problem with social media and you're on social media I'm on social media it creates this toxic level of self-absorption you know who's looking at me who am I looking at who's following me um and self-absorbed people are never never happy but that's become such a challenge now right that it's it's the thing everyone's addicted to it's the thing everyone wants it's like you said parents are on their phones they're not going to stop straight away what do you see being the Silver Lining or the light at the end of a tunnel that's going to have that breakthrough with a child like what what do you think that would be well you know I'd go back to delay it as long as you can even you know if the child's like everybody's doing it CU everybody's not doing it but it's it's like I love you so much I'm going to protect you all the studies all of them say that it makes kids more vulnerable to bad things um and then what's it doing to our brain what's social media doing to our brain well addicting that um there's a a book I love called thrilled to death uh it's continually pressing on your nucleus accumbens that produces dopamine continually pressing on the pleasure centers in your brain but the problem with that is the more you press on them they begin to become numb and you need more and more excitement more and more stimulation in order to feel anything at all and you know I see it with the wonderful famous people I've been blessed to see I see it in kids who are addict I mean they're actually programs sent and I've sent a number of kids away to video game internet addiction program M and when they get away from it they become sweet again I had one kid who parents took away video games he broke up all the furniture in his room and I'm like needs program well we decided to do take away all the gadgets good and I scanned him a month later and then I scanned him while he was playing one of the violin video games he was addicted to and it deactivated his frontal loes and his left temporal lobe which is an area that's often involved in violence like it's not a good thing what what about parents that are you know parents that are going through a divorce going through a difficult time what's the healthiest way to communicate that to to a child I know I know couples that are staying together for the children they don't want to get divorced even though they don't have a healthy relationship I know others who are had the divorce but they're so scared about how that imp imps the child what have you seen through the neuroscience and research around when you're staying together or breaking so it's not good divorce is not good for the child but staying in a chronically unhappy conflicted negative relationship is worse so neither is good I often say to the people I see the best thing you can do for your child is love your spouse the best thing you can do model a healthy relationship but you know there's no education in school on how to have a healthy relationship right so there should be that would be helpful um when you go through a divorce be really careful not to talk bad about the other person because that child is half you and half them if you're talking bad about their mother they feel bad about themselves plus it increases cortisol in their body and makes them much more likely to be sick so bad thing often if you're going to get divorced go to counseling together and figure out how we are going to parent together raising mentally strong kids is great it's like we're going to parent this way you know we have goals we have time together we have rules one thing we didn't talk about yet is notice what you like more than what you don't right there's all my whole penguin story is in there which I think I probably told here before but I'd love that notice what you like every day you're shaping your child by what you notice you're shaping your partner you're shaping your employees you're shaping Everybody by what you pay attention to and so notice what you like more than what you don't and that really solidifies The Kind part of effective parenting I've also been thinking a lot about I was sharing with some families over last week when I was doing some events this idea around how mindfulness and meditation can look very different for children and so I don't think all kids need to be forced to sit in one place and close their eyes I also think that mindfulness can be an activity of hey when you're outside today see if you can find as many red things as possible like when you go out door today come back and give me a list of things that you found that were red or can you find as many leaves that look like stars or any stones that look like stars today when you're out and about and I think mindfulness can actually become alive when we're actually living it and breathing it when they're out and about as opposed to this feeling of kids need to learn it in a certain way what have you seen with well and they don't sit well yes yes exactly that's my it doesn't mean they have ADHD May mean their nervous system isn't fully melinated right it's not fully myelinated for people that don't know what that means when you're born you actually don't have much myin in your brain um as we develop our neurons get wrapped with a white fatty substance called myelin and a myelinated neuron Works 10 to 100 times faster than an unmated one and our when we're 2 months old our occipital opes in the back Vision become melinated and so when you look at a baby and smile they smile back they don't do it as newborns because their visual cortex isn't working fast and then slowly myelination goes from the back and comes to the front when finishes about when we're 25 and so expecting the child to act like an adult bad bad bad but you can teach them self soothing techniques from the age of four I think take a big breath really slow slow as you can breathe it out as slow as you can and that'll Cal when they get anxious so you know yeah what I'm hearing from you today is that it's really helping them develop the tools that they're going to need long term the challenge is we need to know what those tools are ourselves do them for our do them for ourselves believe in them because otherwise we like you said we rush to solve their problems we try and make up for their losses they never get to become independent resilient individuals and talk to us about where love fits into all of this like what does love look like with your child Beyond Time and Beyond certain things you've said today what does love really look like what does love mean because I think when you think about what parents ultimately want they want to be loving parents that's what everyone wants to they want to love their child but love overcomes as overcompensating love often translates as overs solving over fixing overdoing and overwhelming and forcing them to be overachievers and so even though we love them we end up doing all these things that cause them pain so love is when you want to bring their homework to school it's not because you love them and you want the best for them which is becoming mentally strong that's love love is putting away your phone and spending time with them love is when they go and when they're 10 and go all my friends have a phone what if a school shooter comes and I can't get a hold of you children are manipulative quite frankly all of us are manipulative and it's like you know they're just too many risks with that that's love it's setting bound boundaries in a kind consistent way and ultimately Love Is You developing these tools so you can be firm and kind at the same time beautiful Dr Daniel aan everyone the book is called raising mentally strong kids how to combine the power of Neuroscience with love and logic to grow confident kind responsible and resilient children and young adults if you don't have a copy already go and grab yours right now Dr D what a gift to talk to you again about this subject uh like we've said you've had come on many many times first time that we've really Doven into kids and raising them uh and I'm so grateful that you put this book together for everyone else to read and share and I hope that parents will develop book clubs around it communities around it because I think this conversation of raising mentally strong kids needs to be at the center of our schools our homes our families because it's going to set them up and set our society and World up for so much success so thank you so much for doing this honestly thank you my friend thank you if you love this episode you'll love my interview with Dr gabo mate on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the past everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable so a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick does it it goes where it's soft and green and vulnerable

Channel: Jay Shetty Podcast

Views: 649,567

Keywords: Jay Shetty, On Purpose Podcast, Jay Shetty Inspiration, Jay Shetty Motivation, Jay Shetty Video, Self help, Self improvement, Self development, entrepreneur, success habits, purpose podcast, Jay Shetty relationships, daniel amen, dr daniel amen, dr amen, brain expert, diary of a ceo, diary of a ceo daniel amen, jay shetty daniel amen, brain health, self esteem, increase self esteem, how to improve self esteem, re parenting, parenting, parenting styles

Id: avx4Ww9h3Tc

Length: 56min 24sec (3384 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2024