Full PreFrontal

Ep. 119: Dr. Laura Markham - Your Influence is Your Relationship

August 11, 2020 Sucheta Kamath Season 1 Episode 119
Full PreFrontal
Ep. 119: Dr. Laura Markham - Your Influence is Your Relationship
Show Notes Transcript

The parents’ job is to protect their children, offer safety and security, and above all, love them unconditionally. But there are visible and invisible barriers and everyone struggles. In order to raise children with strong executive function, parents need to help cultivate a strong foundation where the brain knows not to go into overdrive or over-react. By activating their own strong executive function, parents can build a nurturing relationship with their children.

On this episode, author, parenting expert, and the founder of AhaParenting.com, Dr. Laura Markham, explains how the most effective discipline strategy parents could choose is to have a close bond with their children. She shares meaningful approaches to raising resilient and joyful children.

About Dr. Laura Markham
Dr. Laura Markham trained as a Clinical Psychologist at Columbia University, but she's also a mom, so she understands kids -- and parents! She uses her Ph.D. to translate proven science and child-development research into the practical solutions you need for the family life you want.

Dr. Laura Markham is the author of three best-selling books: 

The founding editor of AhaParenting.com, Dr. Laura Markham makes frequent TV and radio appearances and has been interviewed for thousands of articles by publications as diverse as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Real Simple, Newsday, Men's Health, Redbook and Parents Magazine. 150,000 parents subscribe to her weekly Parenting Tips, which you can sign up for here.

Dr. Laura Markham's relationship-based parenting model, which she calls Peaceful Parenting, is research-based and parent-tested. She's helped thousands of families across the U.S. and Canada find transformative solutions to everything from separation anxiety and sleep problems to sass talk and cell phones. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and is the proud parent of two happy, kind, responsible and accomplished young adults who were raised with Peaceful Parenting. 


About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

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Sucheta Kamath: Welcome to the podcast Full PreFrontal. Again, going to be a fantastic show, fantastic talk, fantastic guest. How are you, Todd?

Producer: I'm doing great, Sucheta. I too am looking forward to this conversation. As you said in our pre-show conversation with our guest, a prolific writer, so she's put a lot of amazing content out there. I'm looking forward to diving in.

Sucheta: Yes, it's kind of depressing because I'm meeting her after my children are decently holding up, like what was I doing with my life? So hopefully, I will be checking if I did anything okay.

So, before we start talking, if you're a fan of Saturday Night Live, then you can't help but recall the greatest impressions and impressionists. For me, Darrell Hammond stands out as one of the exceptional ones, and you remember his lower lip biting act of Bill Clinton or stiffness of Al Gore, or hand flapping of Donald Trump, self-indulgent Sean Connery, you remember that, right? So, I recently saw that Netflix put out this documentary called Cracked Up. It was based on the real-life story of deeply repressed trauma of Darrell Hammond. I was kind of taken aback and I said, let's watch it anyways. So, the filmmaker, Michelle Esrick, I think, did a fantastic job of humanizing the heartbreaking truth of a funny man who's trying to come to terms with his devastating physical abuse that he experienced at the hands of his own mother and the terror he experienced while growing up with a father who was a victim of PTSD who had returned from World War II, and it's so interesting. You can clearly see that Darrell as a child tries his best to cope, pretend nothing is wrong, continues to suppress those violent memories. He's even like a very exceptional baseball player, he has friends who think he's so cool and his family is so nice. Nobody has a clue that there's such crazy things going on at home. So, the trauma experts that come and speak in this documentary all talk about the role of parents which is to protect the children, offer safety and security, and above all, this concept of unconditional love, and I'm just getting goosebumps thinking about that. And it really is heart-aching to see that some children are not blessed to have that. So, the question that comes to my mind is, is it possible? Does everyone struggle with having a parent who doesn't know how to do this or is it exclusively related to parents who have some sort of mental disorder, maybe? And what's the cost of such parental slipup? And should we all as a community be concerned about the welfare of a child?

And that's why it such a joy and honor to have this amazing prolific writer and author, Dr. Laura Markham, the author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting, Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings: How to Stop Fighting and Raise Friends for Life, and now, her latest book which I haven't read, I'm sorry, The Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids Workbook: Using Mindfulness and Connections to Raise Resilient Joyful Children and Rediscover Your Love for Parenting. I just love that title, 'rediscover the love of parenting.' And a few things about her: she has earned her PhD in clinical psychology at Columbia University and has worked as a parent coach with countless families. And my quick connection to Columbia, both my kids went to college in Columbia. My youngest is graduating this year, so it's kind of exciting times. So, lastly, Dr. Laura is aspiring to change the world one child at a time by supporting parents, and she's the proud mother of two thriving young adults who were raised with her peaceful parenting approach.

So, it's such a delight to have you, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Laura Markham: Thank you. I'm so delighted to be with you.

Sucheta: So, this podcast is about executive function, and executive function, as you know, is one's ability to redirect, guide attention and intention, and achieve goals with future in mind, and I always love to ask my experts to talk a little bit about their own journey as a learner and a thinker, so I have a two-fold question for you. One is, when did you discover your own capacity to guide yourself as you were coming of age to learn to think and reflect, and guide your own goals, and what role did your parents play in your welfare?

Laura: Well, my mother and father were divorced and they were distracted, so I would say my father always was, we had a very strong relationship but I didn't live with him – I saw him every other weekend and we get Christmas and a weekend in the summer, and he always encouraged me, and his guidance was more about service. It was that you're blessed to have a good brain and you need to use it well and make a contribution, and make the world a better place, and I think that's a tremendous gift to have gotten from my father. I would say my mother was struggling to keep her head above water. She had three kids by that marriage and went into a second marriage with a husband who was not in control of himself emotionally or physically, and I think she was just struggling to stay afloat, so I learned from watching that that adults need to learn to manage themselves and regulate themselves before they can have any positive influence with a child. So, that doesn't really answer the executive function questions. That's my upbringing –

Sucheta: Sounds like you were very aware as a child, and to have that perspective that somebody is not keeping control over themselves is impacting you, that's pretty astute, I think, as a child to observe. And I'm encouraging all the listeners to watch Daryl Hammond's story, one particular part there, the mom has a knife in her hand and she tells him to stick his tongue out and come closer, and he says to himself, "I know it's my mom so she can't do anything. I know she should be doing nice things to me," so he blocks this fear that he has that what is she going to do? Because he feels it can't be true. So, what you're referencing there to me is like that awareness as a child, you have the perceptiveness to notice when things were done well and when things were not done well.

So, my question is, I have this quote from you, you say the most effective discipline strategy is having a close bond with your child, so tell us a little bit about how do you conceptualize this peaceful parenting – and by the way, I love that, there was a little slippage you signed in my email, but to me, positive parenting has gotten a little attention but it's such a generic term and you take it even one level deeper, so set us up for understanding your principles and why did you come up with this idea to frame it that way.

Laura: Well, positive parenting is terrific. It simply means that we refocus on our child and try to be positive in our interactions with the child, so we're not just using threats and punishment to get the child to do what we want. Peaceful parenting, which is what I talk about, takes it a step further because we're looking at what's going on inside the parent which is where the real work is. Parenting is not about what your child does. It's about how you respond, right? That's parenting, and we always, we can't control another human, we can't control our children, we can always control ourselves. And here's the thing: we only have influence with another human when they trust us, when they think that we have their best interest at heart, when our child knows, yeah, my parents are on my side. That doesn't mean they give me everything I want, but it does mean they listen and they try to help me to be successful in getting what I want. So, influence comes from a relationship, always.

Sucheta: And I really like that, I think every child, you say is striving to learn so every child is not striving for praise or applause. Every child has that sense, self-respecting process in them already so there's no need to just set it up with the fear that the child will be devastated by failure, devastated by the news of a struggle. You point that out very distinctly which is really, really important. At the brain level, how does this work out? What is the role of forming bonds, the bond that gets formed between parent and a child? What kind of important role does it play in the emotional development of the child?

Laura: Well, the brain is born unfinished, so when I say brain, I don't just mean the part that's up here in the head. I mean the entire nervous system, right? We know now that the heart has a lot of nerves, right? The vagus nerve which is what allows us to be resilient and to calm ourselves down when we are upset, the vagus nerve is all over the whole body. Vague means to wander, right? So, we know that the nervous system is poor and unfinished. Why would that be? Our arms and legs are finished, why is our nervous is that unfinished? Because we are more adaptable as humans if we take shape internally in response to what we find in the environment, and of course, the initial environment is our parents. A newborn baby doesn't know there's an epidemic out there or a war going on; they only know the parent is stressed, right? The newborn baby, the environment is the parents, so if we as a parent can give our newborn baby a sense of safety, security, holding them emotionally as well as physically, that baby's brain thrives, the nervous system thrives, and it develops so that the baby has more self-awareness, has what I call the inner compass – the inner compass is the part that takes in stimuli from the outside world and trusts its own judgment. You would know if someone was trying to hurt you and they came at you with a knife and said, "Stick your tongue out," as long as you develop that inner compass to trust the world around you, right? When you have an abusive parent, you can't develop that, right? So, something gets in the way, but if we want a child to have good executive function, we start with the foundation that I'm talking about where the brain and the nervous system develop so that they can perceive what's going on and they don't overreact, right? There's an alarm system – thanks goodness, humans have an alarm system – the amygdala and the rest of it to go, "Alert! Alert!" when we have a problem and we can then take care of it and get ourselves back to the place of safety.

Sucheta: Can you tell us a little bit about this alarm system? Because I think there's not a lot of conversation about the amygdala and the jazz skills it has. Returning to normal or returning to not alert state is such an important part of having a healthy relationship with your environment, but if you grew up in an environment where nothing is predictable, then that raises the bar and "nothing is predictable" is mainly your parents' reactions of unmanaged selves, right?

Laura: Yes.

Sucheta: So, they may not be as abusive as Darrell Hammond's parents but they could be just unmanaged parents who go unhinged if you spilled milk, you know?

Laura: Exactly.

Sucheta: So, tell us, is this something peculiar to certain types of – when do parents become like this? Is it just having a child that makes you go a little crazy?

Laura: Well, I – 

Sucheta: Sorry, that's a bad question, but you know what I mean. 

Laura: Having a child is life-changing, right, where suddenly, we have responsibility for this helpless little creature and often, we do become a little overprotective, right? That makes sense, but if we are paying attention to our child and we are watching our child and taking our cues from our child, then when the child goes to rollover, we are not saying, "No, no, stop! You're going to get hurt," right? We're there to catch them if they fall as opposed to stop them from developing. That's our job as parents, that's parenting that is optimal for the child's development, right? Some of us, however, had parents who, as you say, they didn't regulate themselves so well, they got upset when we spilled the milk, they yelled at us when they were in a bad mood, and if we go walk with that, it's harder for us to stay calm. It's harder for us to return ourselves to a state of calm when we get upset, and any baggage we have that we have not worked through, you can count on us putting in the laps of our children, unfortunately. 

Sucheta: You know, this reminds me of my favorite experiment in my Psychology 101 class, I read about the Piaget talking about this setup where they separated the mom and a baby, like 2 1/2 year-old children and eventually, slightly older but they created a hole or there were steps going down, but the steps were covered by plexiglass. The mother stood on the other side and the baby was in this side. The baby had to crawl to go to the other side but you can see, like well, I may fall down, but I won't because there is a cover, but the baby doesn't know, so the depth perception has not kicked in yet and what they found is the mother's expression determined the baby's ability to take the steps, right? So, if the mother showed any sign of terror or fear, or neutral, the child would not take a step, and the mother simply having a smile or eyebrows raised, the child was able to take that step. That made such an impression on me that your every act, the child is absorbing as a model, mental model. So, tell us a little bit about some barriers that come in the way other than these daily stressors that parents may be spacing. How about the difficult children, children who are dilysregulated create a greater problem for parents who become dysregulated because of the child who doesn't listen to the niceness of, "Honey, don't do it." The "honey" keeps doing. What do you recommend to those parents about that dysregulation and relationship between parent and child?

Laura: So, obviously, parenting isn't done in a vacuum. There's a real live human being there you are parenting and that person, that child will be themselves, and people who only had easy kids don't understand how difficult the difficult children can be. There are children who were born super difficult, right? But we have to understand why they are difficult. It is because their brain is on a high alert all the time or because they are perceiving things differently. So, get to go from zero to 60 because they can't open the gate or whatever it is they are trying to do, and they are just screaming at mom and dad, well, that child obviously is already in a state of emergency for no good reason – we know it's no good reason and we would respond, most human beings, most adults would respond by saying, "Calm down, there's no problem here. I can do this for you," but the child's like, "No, it's messed up once again! Life is terrible! Everything is out to get me," right? And so, the problem here is that the parent doesn't see it from the child's point of view; they don't understand. If they could, if they realized how easily alarmed the child is, they would start to think about well, okay, how can we reassure this child? The child needs to know they have back up. They need to know there's a parent that goes, "Don't worry, I'm going to help you here," right? And what about a child who just has a different perception? Some children have very high sensory thresholds, right, where they perceive something differently than you and I would, just bright lights, big noises, they feel overwhelmed and again, what do humans do when they feel overwhelmed? They go into fight, flight, or freeze, and they lash out.

Sucheta: Wow, so let's go back to this definition of peace, and I love that as you said, pretending nothing is wrong is not necessary but stating that this is hard for me can still yield peace, so how do you define peace? And is that peace different between peace between two countries versus peace between two people in the house, and peace between people who are in conflict and are in part of the house, which we know, it's so funny, before our call, my son just came in to ask me something and I said, "What did dad say?" and had already asked dad and he had a big grin because dad typically is very generous, and he already had received a lot of generosity from his dad, so I always tell my husband, "Any time the kids come to you, don't answer, say, 'What does mom say?' Always ask because I always ask, 'What did dad say?' " Because the fact that you managed to ask two parents separately, you certainly want some favorable results. So yeah, let's talk about the peace, the idea of peace, which I love, by the way.

Laura: Well, peace does not mean the absence of conflicting needs because every relationship between two human beings, you'll have two perspectives, you'll have two sets of needs. Peace is when you work out a way to listen to each other and to see that there is a way to meet both people's needs. There's always a way to do that. When you have that kind of trust in each other in the universe, it turns out that in fact, there is an abundance of possibility. We are just usually in a state of – not usually, often, when we have conflicting needs, we get into a state of fear and when you're in a state of fear, you don't have access to any kind of abundant solutions.

Sucheta: Yeah, I think this reminds me of a concept that I often talk about, is generosity of spirit. I think to be able to recognize abundance is a very big sign of mental flexibility but also, that spirituality or other person's need is not directly situated to compete with yours.

Laura: Exactly. 

Sucheta: And that can bring a universal sense of together, we can accomplish while you are seeking to advance your agenda, which is not a bad idea to have an agenda. So, what is one thing in your heart and mind that you feel that parents should pursue as their parenting goal in terms of being successful at parenting? What should they keep at the top of the mind?

Laura: Well, parents often make decisions out of fear. They are afraid that the child will never be potty trained, then they're afraid the child will never learn how to read or the child will never stop being mean to his sister. In fact, the child will grow up and be an adult, right? And we can, as parents, offer understanding of that moment the child is in, and when we parent from that place of emotional generosity, we find the child can blossom, can thrive. When we parent from a place of fear, we never end up making the right decisions.

Sucheta: Oh, I love that. And I think going back to this idea of fear, do you feel the fear also is tied up with their sense of control, that letting go of the control because somebody else begins to take a decision, and what if they are wrong? So, your fear is not just that they are taking a wrong decision but they're not going to take my decision into consideration as the best one. Do you see that as an issue? 

Laura: Well, I think control is always a result of fear. 

Sucheta: Oh, I see, yeah, that's a good way to think, yes.

Laura: [crosstalk] when people are controlling, it always comes from their fear. If we want coming from a place of lack and misunderstanding about others, we wouldn't have to try to control them. We wouldn't try to control that which is never, never gives us a positive.

Sucheta: Oh, I love that. So, can you share an example of a peer that you have dealt with or giving advice to where things have not worked out, that's why they sought out your help? What they were doing wrong, so to speak, or what were they not connecting with? 

Laura: Oh, there are so many examples but we will just pull one out of the air, right? So, I am thinking of one mother whose son was very threatened by the birth of his sister, really, really – and it's very common for the older child to not be happy about the next child being born, right? We know that. And so, he started to hit her when she got old enough and to crawl and was getting into his things, he started to hit her, and of course, the parents freaked out and they screamed at him, and that didn't work so they started to smack his hand and when that didn't work, they sought advice and they were told to put him in the laundry room with the light off. 

Sucheta: Ooh. 

Laura: They call it the "naught hole," and seriously, they would turn off their light in the laundry room and they thrust him down the couple of steps, turned the light off and pulled the door shut, and he was three by then, and so this poor three-year-old is screaming and crying and beating on the door and the parents are saying, "You have to stop hurting your sister," and he says, "I'll stop, I'll stop," but of course, we have to look always at what's driving the behavior? What drives human behavior ever? His feelings, emotions, and needs, right? And here's a child whose needs for love, who felt that his parents did not love him more, and needed therefore to vanquish his arrival, and it wasn't that he thought it through as a three-year-old; he didn't have enough prefrontal cortex to say, really say, "Oh, I guess I really don't need to be attacking my sister and I catch more flies with honey." No, he looked at her and he just became overwhelmed with rage and he wanted to push her down, right, or grab the toy in her hand. So, when the parents see this, it made the hitting worse, so when they reached out to me, I said, "Please stop punishing him and work on the relationship with him," and they did, and they also started protecting the little one, the girl, so that the boy wasn't beating her up, but I said, "Don't just hope he won't hit her. Keep her out of his way, and give him words for being angry with her and say things like, 'It must be so hard to have to share your mom and dad,' and 'It must be so hard to have to share that toy,' " and just acknowledge how he's feeling and really work on your relationship with him, and I give them all kinds of ways to do that. And within a month, the hitting completely stopped and the mother called me. She reached out to me via email and she said, "Can we please meet up quickly online because I'm having – something happened," and I said, "What happened?" when we met up and she said, "I was doing the dishes and I looked across the room and my daughter who was by now, I think, two or three, this time was a little older and she was, my daughter was coloring and she was sitting there and I looked up and my son had come up behind her and he was – had his hand, his fist raised over her head ready to come down on her head," and the mother said, "I just froze. I couldn't even open my mouth. I didn't know what to do," and as she looked at her son and met his eye, his hand began to open and he said, "I was just petting her fuzz, mom."

Sucheta: Oh, my goodness! 

Laura: And I said, "What happened?" She said, "My husband thinks I caught him in the act and he was afraid of being punished but I stopped punishing him a long time ago now when you told me to. I had not punished him in a long time so it couldn't have been that." I said, "I think for the first time ever, your son found there was something he wanted more than he wanted to hit his sister. It was that warm relationship that you've been developing." 

Sucheta: Wow. Oh, my God, I'm getting goosebumps. That's such a beautiful story and truly, I think the moment they locked eyes, I think he felt recognized and loved, and I really appreciate your emphasis there as you started the story saying that people are so not taking the minute or time to think about what is the motivation behind that behavior, that behavior is just an exemplifying of what's going on inside, so looking under the hood. And I find that having done this for 20 years, that not every person is psych-wise and this is a little bit of being psych-wise: you're not kind of becoming the judge and jury of that behavior and saying, "Maybe I'll excuse the behavior because there is a greater motivator that's causing the behavior."

So, I think you lead to this question and gave us an example but maybe you can give us your favorite strategies. How does a parent approach the concept of discipline that not just yields a better outcome from the children but also manage to influence the brain in a way that propels the brain to become in charge of itself?

Laura: Yeah. So, let's think about what it means to be in charge of yourself. It's self-discipline, right? Discipline is guidance, we know that, that's what the word means, it means guidance. So, self-guidance, I want to accomplish X goal, so my self-management to get to that goal, how do I do that? Well, we know how you do it. You lay down neural pathways that allow you to reach that goal, right? So, how does self-discipline develop? It develops when we make a decision that we are going to, let's say give up something we want. Here is something I want, I want this piece of cake, but there's something I want more. I want my health, I want my body to be in good shape. It's a higher goal. I'm going to give this one up for this, right? Now, that little boy we just talked about, he developed self-discipline in that story also because there was something he wanted – to bring his fist down on his sister's head, he gave that up for something he wanted more, that relationship with his mother. Every time we ask our children to give up something they want, that cookie, to continue playing with their Legos instead of take their bath, to kick their brother under the table at dinner, whatever it is, when we ask them to give that up for something else, the relationship with us, the family rule, the bedtime story after the bath, whatever it is, when they do that, they're laying down the neural pathways for self-management and self-discipline. That's how children learn to be self-disciplined later in life, and you have to build the neural pathways in childhood, but here's the thing: how do children do that? It's not just discipline. It's self-discipline; they have to choose to do it, so if I'm yelling at my kid, "Jason, time for your bath!" and I come over and grab him by the ear and drag him off to the bath, right, is he developing self-discipline? No, it's coming from outside. He didn't willingly choose to stop playing his Legos and go take his bath, right? Whereas if I go over to him while he's playing Legos , say like, "Set a limit," but I said it with understanding, with empathy, he's more likely to accommodate my limit and make that choice. So, I go over and I say, "Oh, that's so cool with your building. I love it! And you know what, time for the bath." "No, Mom!" "I know, sweetheart. You wish you could keep playing. It's so hard to stop playing and go take your bath, but it's time for bath now," and as you understand the child, they realize, I don't get everything I want but I get something better. I get a parent who understands me and loves me, and cares about me no matter what, and that kid is going to regretfully say goodbye to the Legos and go off to the bath, and then when he's 14 and he has to study for his test instead of going off with his buddies to smoke weed in the woods, he's going to make that choice. He's going to have the self-discipline to make the choice for what he really wants in life.

Sucheta: You know, your wisdom just reminded me of when my kids were young, I learned this beautiful little lesson. I have two boys, so when it came to sharing or deciding who gets what, once, there was a beautiful chocolate cake and both love chocolate and chocolate cake, and so the idea is that one gets to decide how to cut the chocolate cake and the other gets to decide which piece will be given to him versus the other. That simple technique of empowering them with that choice and decision, and fairness, so there was no lecture about "You need to be fair to your brother," or no heavy-duty talking about the philosophy of life but just an experience. "Well, if you cut it out evenly and your brother does get a bigger piece, sorry." That really was very helpful.

That reminds me of another quote that I loved which you said, avoid timeouts, they create more misbehavior. So, tell us a little bit about this – I think you already addressed this idea of misbehaving child, but the misbehavior then again, coming very heavy-handed, why do you discourage parents from using timeouts?

Laura: Well, the research shows it doesn't help children behave better. That's the real reason, right? I would also say, anyone who ever has been in timeout knows that – I mean, let's think about it. That kid who was thrown into the laundry room, was he sitting there in the laundry room thinking, oh, I'll be a nicer big brother? No, right? He was thinking, if I ever get out of this laundry room, and I get my sister alone, right? [inaudible] it's all her fault and if only she hadn't been born, this wouldn't be happening to me," right? And also, he was thinking about his parents: "They never understand, they never understand me. They never care about what happens to me. They always take her side," so you've eroded the parent-child relationship. You've eroded the sibling relationship in this instance because it was a sibling thing, right? And the child has no motivation to do something differently or better in the future. It makes sense. The other thing that we know is that young children, and that's who's in timeout, right? You're not putting your 14-year-old in timeout, young children need a sense of safety and security. That's the foundation on which they thrive, and think about what a timeout is. It's actually telling the child, "I can put you out of my presence, I can put you out of my life." There was one parenting expert who in her book said that when her child wouldn't brush her teeth, she put the child on the back porch in a nightgown with bare feet and pulled the door shut and locked the door until the child was willing to brush her teeth. I couldn't believe this is a parenting expert who was saying this, right? Because we know that when human beings are outcast from the tribe, they could die; there's no protection and for children, of course, you could die. So, the minute you threaten your child with putting them away from you, suddenly, they have lost your protection which is what children – if something kicks in the child, some survival instinct that says, okay, do whatever that adult says because I have to survive here, right? But that doesn't mean that we've actually worked with the child in a constructive way. All we've done is instill fear and erode the relationship.

Sucheta: Yeah, and I think I never had thought of it this way, that it is an exclusion from the tribe that hurts my feelings, like wow, we would never do that as a way to teach a lesson and then you might get some children who will cooperate so that they never want to be abandoned or excluded, but that cooperation is not coming from a place of genuine understanding of why you should socially cooperate. That's a big no.

Laura: There are better ways. You don't have to resort to that. When I just described helping a child develop self-discipline, that's called an empathic limit and you have to set limits all day every day. Kids are not capable of deciding what's best for them all the time. In fact, much of the time, even when they are 14, certainly when they are four. So, there are many better ways to parent children starting from calm yourself down, connect with your child, and then set the appropriate limits but with an understanding, with empathy, so the child will follow the limit, that's all. 

Sucheta: So, what is your advice for parents who the two of them, particularly in a house where there are two parents, they are not on the same page, there is an excessively permissive parent who feels it's alright, you're reading too much into it, and then one parent may be feeling that oh, I have to really get him to stay on track. Where would you begin with such families?

Laura: I would always start with values. I would say, "What are your values?" If your value, your number one value is unconditional love, kindness, compassion, right, you'd start from that in the way you approach your child and also what you expect of your child. So, you might think it really doesn't matter, you don't have to intervene when he leaves his jacket on the floor all the time, but it really does matter if he's mean to his little brother. That matters, and you would intervene there. Again, not coming down like a ton of bricks but you'd intervene looking at what was really going on and being very clear about the standards in your home: we don't tease. You can ask your brother for what you need from him without attacking him. You can always say what you need to ask without attacking the other person, right? And I know your brother is younger than you and sometimes, you find him really annoying. You can always come and tell me about it. I will always understand and I will always try to help you. 

Sucheta: Oh, my goodness, that's really one of the things. My mom lives with us who's amazing and a darling woman and extremely – I think I have gotten the sense of drive and incredible optimism from her. She was a very young mother when she had my brother and I. She was 19 and 21, and then she had my youngest brother who came after a seven-year gap, but with us, she was totally different than she was with my younger brother and one of the things that we kind of teasing spirits say to her, when there was a little bit of pitting each other for affection and/or always using this language, 'who's my favorite?' based on what the person does, that created an incredible angst that there was always a feeling that somehow, you are being measured or compared and you don't want to lose that spot, whatever the spot is, and then she in a very sweet way, maybe 10 years ago said to us, "I didn't know anything. I was so young and inexperienced. I'm so sorry," and I said, "No, mom, please don't apologize," but I recognize that when I was young, that this doesn't feel good but I didn't have a way to tell her that this doesn't feel good that even if she likes me, my brothers are going to be unhappy with me because she just managed to like me. So, is there any internal check that parents can do about what kind of values they are seeking after? Because sometimes, I hear this in my own conversations with parents, they stopped the talk, they just don't apply it. Like, you will ask them, loving is my top priority or making my children fair is my top priority but they themselves are not fair to their children, so how do you catch them in the act without really being punitive about it? Is there any way you recommend that parents can check if they are being a little hypocritical?

Laura: Parents can look at their children. If your child is thriving, if they are actually really thriving, then you're probably doing just fine, right? But if your child is defiant, if your child is moody, if your child is difficult, if they are picking on their sister or their brother, then you know there's something a little off and it doesn't just mean, oh, that child was born that way. It may well have something to do with the way your parenting them, and I'm not blaming parents ever. No shame, no blame. It's like with your mother, she's a wonderful human being who had two children at an early age. She just did whatever came to her, maybe what happened with her when she was growing up. She didn't know better; she did the best she could. I believe that every single parent is doing the best they can with what they have and they'll do better, they'll do better if they know more and they get some loving compassion to make changes, and there are things we can do. One thing we can do is take better care of ourselves as parents and manage ourselves better. We have referred a lot to that but you can't do that kind of parenting I'm suggesting where you focus on the relationship, right, and you calmly [inaudible] with your child to get them then to come and do, to follow your limit. You can't do that if you're not self-regulated, and you can't be self-regulated if you are running on empty your self. There are things that parents can do. When you said what's a check up? I say the check up is look at the child, and if you notice your child is having a hard time, there are some basic tools that always work. One of them is one-on]one time with each child every day, even a short time, even 15 minutes of one-on-one time, nothing momentous will happen the first few times you do it but at some point, your child will start to open up to you.

Sucheta: I love it. I think I have learned so much about how to be effective just as a human being because I don't think these issues limit to becoming a parent. We are in charge of people in so many places where people that you're dealing with may be behaving like children, slightly unmanaged and throwing their temper tantrum. So, as we come to an end, do you have some advice for parents who are raising, I don't know if you can call that, but who are staying connected with their adult children? They have passed these three recommendation steps. What should be the goal of that adult-to-adult parent-child relationship and what should be the best pursuit of a meaningful peaceful loving relationship?

Laura: When you said there 'passed the three steps,' so the three steps of peaceful parenting are one, regulate yourself, two, connect, and the third one is about coaching the person to be their best self, the child rather than manipulating it with bribes or threats, or punishment. So, when you think about it, regulating yourself, that's the foundation of any relationship, right? Your relationship with yourself is always the foundation of any relationship. I had a school principal told me, "You know, since my teachers work with kids every day, I bought them all a copy of your book. I could not believe," she said to me, "how great our staff meetings got. They were so much more self-regulated. They were so much nicer to each other," and so when you think about it, this approach to regulating yourself and connecting rather than trying to force the other person to do what you want, right, with bribes or threats, or punishment, well, of course, it works with every human being. So, for adult children, it works. I have a 24-year-old and a 28-year-old, so I would say, one, if parents have adult children who they want to have a good relationship with, the key is always start by regulating yourself, so your own needs and desires, so when your kid says to you, "I'm going to go off and walk the Camino instead of finishing college," or whatever, my daughter said that to me once, whatever they say to you, you can say, "Hmm, wow, that sounds like a big decision. Tell me about it," instead of, "Over my dead body!" or whatever you might want to say, right? I mean, first of all, if they are over 21, it's their decision, number one, maybe even if they're over 18, and number two, it doesn't matter. Once they hit 18 and really once they are teenagers, there's so much back-and-forth, you can't just lay down the law about a lot of that. You can lay down the law about some things but you can't do it just by your force of will. It's only a matter of the relationship and if you don't have a good relationship, they are not going to be open to your influence. It's that simple. I'm so pleased with my 28-year-old, I mean, he's in law school, he lives his own life, right? But occasionally, he'll say to me, "Hey, mom, what do you think I should do about this?" and I'm like, oh, oh! He asked my advice! It doesn't mean he will take it but he asked it. That's great, and I guess the answer is, you see them as independent human beings who are capable of making good decisions in the world and to the degree that they make bad ones, will be just like us, to learn from them!

Sucheta: Wow. Well, every single word you have said has spoken to me and I think it's going to be extremely empowering to all the listeners. Thank you so much for your time and wisdom. A quote comes to mind, Charles Raison once said that one generation full of deeply loving parents would change the brain of the next generation and with that, the world. Imagine people took, even 30% – I mean, they can take more if they want, but please, 30% is just casual listening in the car of this podcast, that can really transform a child's life, and I thank you for all the work that you do and particularly all the resources you have created, first of all, you're not only generous but you are very thoughtful and it's an anchor for our community, so thank you for your time, Laura, and it was such a pleasure talking with you. 

Laura: It was a pleasure to meet you, Sucheta. 

Producer: All right, that's all the time we have for today. If you know of someone who might benefit from listening to today's show and oh, I know a lot of parents who would really, really benefit from listening to this conversation, we would be most grateful if you would kindly forward it to them, so on behalf of our host, Sucheta Kamath, today's guest, Dr. Laura Markham, and all of us at EXQ, thanks for listening and we look forward to seeing you again right here next week on Full PreFrontal.