Change Your Brain Every Day - 10 Things Parents Should Never Do (& What To Do To Build Confidence)

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

In this week's episode, Dr. Amen and Tana share 10 bad parenting habits that hold kids back from being their best. Plus, they reveal the best parenting strategies to help kids become more resilient, respectful, and mentally strong.   00:00 Intro 00:48 10 Things Parents Should Never Do 1:21 Ignore Their Brain 07:55 No Bonding 12:51 Don’t Listen 16:08 Sponsor 17:17 Rescue Your Kids 23:08 Do Too Much for Them 27:39 Fail to Supervise 31:25 Model Unhealthy Behavior 32:57 Forget What You Were Like at That Age 35:31 Tell Kids They’re Smart 39:41 Focus on What They’re Doing Wrong 41:37 Wrap Up

Bonding is so important with children. In fact, research has found that when parents are always distracted on their devices or they're just busy doing other things, it causes children to act out poorly and they're doing negative behavior in order to get attention. The most effective parenting strategy I've ever given parents is spend 20 minutes a day with your child. Do something with them they want to do.

Because if you think about what you wanted most when you were a child, it was time. Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. 10 things parents should never do. This is so important. A lot of parenting books will tell you,

do these things. Well, let's talk today about the things not to do. And I know parenting is near and dear to your heart. It is to mine. Do you know why? Because I did all of the things that you shouldn't do. And it was rough. You and me both. The first one I want to talk about is if you want your children to be their best, you cannot ignore their brain, right? This is a brain health podcast. Change your brain every day. If you don't teach them to love and care for their brain in large part by modeling it. They won't learn.

Where do they learn, right? There's nowhere in school where schools teach you to love and care for your brain. Most families have no clue. Churches, no clue. Where do they learn it? And when you and I first got together, Chloe was two and she's now 21. So that means we've been together 19 years, best 19 years of my life. Thank you so much. And I remember when she was two, I started playing a game with her and we called it Chloe's game. Is this good for your brain or bad for it? And so if I said avocado, she would say two thumbs up, God's butter. And if I said blueberries, she'd put

her little hands on her hips and go, are they organic? Right? This is how she is. Because non-organic blueberries hold more pesticides than almost any fruit. And I'm like, no, of course they're organic. She goes, two thumbs up. God's candy. I said, hitting a soccer ball with your head. She goes, very bad. Brain is soft. Skull is hard.

Skull has sharp bony ridges. I go, how about talking back to your redheaded mother? She'd go, oh, no. Too much stress. And so throughout her childhood, I would just plant the seeds of brain health. And you really got that message too. Absolutely. But I think that this is really important because there's no manual that really tells you what to do. And I think most of us think that we intuitively are going to know what to do when our kids are born and we don't. And when they don't do what we tell them to do, we don't understand why when they're pushing back. And if you have a strong-willed kid, this is going to end up being an issue for you. Would you say Chloe is strong-willed? Dear Lord. I was like, I, in my mind, I was going to have this baby. I was going to tell her what to do.

We were going to have this great relationship. She's going to do everything I told her. And it was all going to be good. I used to cry every single day. It was so hard. It was just so hard that kid, no matter what I told her, wasn't going to do what I said and so I had to learn how to parent the hard way and I really went on sort of a crusade if you will to figure out what parenting like how do I parent a strong little kid and it was really important so a lot of these 10 things parents will never do you and me learn the hard way right But one of the things you did is you learned how to cook. I did. Like when I first met you, you didn't cook. I didn't cook. I would actually pray you wouldn't cook because when you tried, the kitchen would be just as disaster. And then because of your own health

journey, you actually got really serious about it. Well, I grew up basically eating Captain Crunch, Lucky Charms, you know, and Frosted Flakes. I was a latchkey kid, so we were poor. And I, I used to lock myself in the house when I got home from school and just ate whatever was there, wasn't allowed to turn on the stove. So I was really sick from the time I was really young and then had cancer when I was in my 20s. And so I, you know, I began to realize I don't want my daughter having the same health issues I had or having the same experience with food that I had. So I realized I had to learn how to cook. And there wasn't back then, there wasn't like a Whole Foods to run to and just buy stuff.

You had to like actually learn all the ingredients and what to do with all of them. And so I tried to do with all of them. And so, so we, I tried to make it fun for her. We would do scavenger hunts at the store and figure out, you know, like, you know, I would, I'm not above bribery. So I would give her, you know, like a quarter for every 10 things she could find that were healthy for her. And, um, we just made it fun. She started like really looking forward to it. That's still her favorite place to go is the grocery store. Like she loves it. So teach them. And it's just simple. Is this good for your brain or bad for it? Right. I worked with BJ Fogg for six months. So he runs the persuasive tech lab at Stanford, uh, on how people change. And he said they change in the smallest ways. He calls them

tiny habits. And as we worked for six months, we came up with 50 tiny habits for the brain. But the mother tiny habit is just you ask yourself this question, whatever I'm doing right now, good for my brain or bad for it, which is basically Chloe's game, right? Is hitting a soccer ball with your head bad for the brain? Is drinking soda good for your brain or bad for your brain? Generally bad for your brain, right? If you can teach them and yourself by answering that. And I remember when Chloe was seven, I went to her second grade class and I wrote 20 things on the board.

And I'm like, you guys separate these for me. So seven, eight year olds, good for your brain or bad for it. They got 19 out of 20 right. The only thing they got wrong was orange juice, which they put in a good category. Most people think orange juice is good for your brain when it is really bad for your brain because whenever you unwrap fructose, fruit sugar from its fiber source, it actually turns toxic. Well, now it's funny because people, we always get backlash when we say orange juice, but we're wearing these glucose monitors and boy, does it keep you honest. You see really quickly the health foods that you thought, even the ones that I thought were actually pretty good,

that spike your blood sugar and then it drops too low. So really interesting. And orange juice is terrible for that. And relapse happens for substance abusers. When they have too much sugar. Or when you want to get your diet healthy, when your blood sugar drops, then you become more impulsive. The next thing that parents should never do is not bond. So bonding is so important with children. In fact, research has found that when parents are always distracted on their devices or they're just busy doing other things or they're very involved in their own lives and not paying attention enough, you know, I mean, let's parents are busy with work.

They're busy with divorces. They're busy with relationships. But not bonding causes children to act out poorly and they, um, get in trouble at school and they're doing negative behavior in order to get attention. So this is a really important point. And I know, um, you've talked about special time before in some of our other podcasts. Well, you know, I often think relationships require two things, time, actual physical time, and a willingness to listen. Parents often use way too many words and are not good listeners. We'll talk about listening in a second, but let's start with time. And probably the most effective parenting strategy I've ever given parents is spend 20 minutes a day with your child,

do something with them they want to do. And during that time, no commands, no questions, no directions. It's just time. Because if you think about what you wanted most when you were a child was time with your mother. And what I wanted most with my mom or my dad was time. And when you're an only child, but your mother's working three jobs, that was a bit of a deficit for you, right? And when you're one of seven and your dad worked all the time and your mom was just busy, that was a deficit for me. And you did something with Chloe, I thought, that was so smart. Talk about it. It was an investment. So I just, I had read a study that there was one thing that all Rhodes scholars hadn't common and that it was that their parents read to them when they

were young. And when I read that, I was like, Oh, that's really interesting. So I figured reading to your child was really important. So every single night I would read to her and, um, she still says that I'm responsible for her needing therapy when she saw her library, when she got older, because her books, the books she had were, you know, things like loving what is for children or who moved my cheese, or they were all the children's habits of kids. Yeah. So all of these books and she's like, no, no wonder I'm so weird. But I read to her until she kicked me out of her room. Basically until she kicked me out,

it was like, okay, this is weird. She started reading to me eventually. And then she was like, all right, we're done. But she still gets pretty salty if I don't spend time with her. Now it's that she wants to go for drives and go get coffee or tea. But it's that we are so bonded

that just created that incredibly tight bond. So important. And when you ask kids to talk to you, they often don't because they feel pressure. But when you're just with them, which is why special time is so important and doing something else, whether it's playing cards, like my family would be playing cards, then kids open up and talk, which is actually a strategy child psychiatrists use

and child play therapists use because so many parents go, I am giving you this much money to play with my child. And I'm like, that's not really what's happening. I mean, yes, we're playing, but when you play with them, they open up. Whether you're drawing pictures together or playing a silly game is they begin to then unveil their internal lives. go for a drive every morning before school, we would stop and get tea and we would drive on the coast and go up to school and whatever. And the stuff she would tell me, I'm like, okay, do I want to know this? And then I would often drive her and her friends as they got older, I'd be driving them. And because you're not looking at them, it's just a very safe space because you're not making this direct eye contact. I'm not even asking them direct questions. Her friends would tell me things that I'm like, we should be talking to your parents about this. You guys should not be talking to me about this. But it just created this safe space for them to open up. And it's so important. So number three, and that also goes with the

lack of bonding, is not listening. And I see this in my office way too much that parents are trying to pour all of their knowledge into their children without a relationship and without listening. And the first thing they teach you in therapist school is to not solve everybody's problem and to listen. And active listening, it's a skill that very few people have. It's when someone says something, don't respond with what you think. Respond with what you heard. Don't respond with what you think. Respond with what you heard. Don't respond with what you think. Respond with what you heard. Because when people feel heard, it increases the bond. When people feel lectured, it decreases the bond. And so we just came through a presidential election, which was incredibly stressful for so many of my patients.

I'm like, politics in America is increasing psychiatric illness for sure. And I just remembered when I was 18. So I figured out I have voted in 13 elections. And when I was 18, Richard Nixon was running against George McGovern. And young people often are, I don't know, who's liberals the right word, but, and I had thought about voting for McGovern. And my dad told me, if I did, the country would go to hell. Now, the country went to hell. I voted for McGovern, and the country went to hell. But it had nothing to do with McGovern. It had to do with Watergate,

Nixon, and all of that craziness. Why did I vote for McGovern? Because I had to do with Watergate, Nixon, and all of that craziness. Why did I vote for McGovern? Because I had no relationship with my father. He had no influence, which is dramatically different than our house because of the bond you have, I have with Chloe. If you want your children to pick your values, you have to be connected with them. If you're not connected with them, they actually pick the opposite values. And what's interesting is we give her the respect of telling her that we want her to pick her own values. And we don't put that pressure on her. She ended up picking our values.

But- Because she's bonded. Right. So that's the point that, you know, whether they're moral values or religious values or work values, they tend to pick yours if you spend time with them and you don't talk over them. And we didn't try and force it on her.

No. Right. Are you struggling with anxiety, depression, obsessive thinking, past emotional trauma, ADHD, or brain fog and don't know where to turn? Are your relationships a mess and you don't know why? Have you had a brain injury, concussion, or just don't feel the same after COVID? Is your memory worse than it was 10 years ago? Or do you have a parent or grandparent with dementia and want to work on prevention? Yes, prevention is possible,

but the sooner you start, the better. For 35 years, we've been changing people's brains and their lives using brain-spec imaging and a personalized natural approach to brain and mental health care, and we have some of the best published outcomes anywhere. Go to amenclinics.com to learn more. And when you call us, mention Podcast 10 for a 10% discount. The fourth thing parents should never do is constantly rescue their kids. So this one is

near and dear to my heart. I learned this one. I did not think I was a drill sergeant parent, but apparently I was. So I couldn't figure out why I was struggling as a parent when Chloe was really little. And I finally, I used to cry every day and I finally realized, okay, kids have parents for a reason, right? This is my job to figure out. And I went on this crusade to figure it out. But what I realized is I found the program Love & Logic, Parenting with Love & Logic, and it literally changed my life. So I love-

In fact, I wrote my new book, Raising Mentally Strong Kids with Charles Fay, who's the president of the Love & Logic Institute. So yes, we're huge fans. Yeah. It was just so important to me. It literally changed my life. So what I realized is you do your kids such a disservice every time you try to rescue them because it does many things. You basically not only decrease their self-esteem, you're basically sending the message that they're not competent. And you don't allow them to make mistakes

while mistakes are cheap. You want your kids to make mistakes while mistakes are cheap, while they're little. When they're not 18, when it's not about losing your car, going to jail, losing your job, you want them making mistakes while they're young so that they figure out what not to do and they learn to listen to their own internal voice. You don't want them always listening to your internal voice when

they go to college, when they're with their friends, you know, when they're teenagers, you want them to learn to listen to the moral compass that's within themselves. And if you're always rescuing them, they can't do that. So this is so important. And I think it's a, I think it's a parental ego issue that parents feel the need to constantly rescue their kids. I know it was for me, for sure. And the first time someone said that to me, I got a little bit miffed, but it's true.

We rescue our kids because we don't want to look bad to other parents. And when I let that go and realized, I already did second grade. I don't need to do, I don't need to make sure she does her homework. It's her job to do her homework. I don't need to do, you know, all of her, like if she doesn't do it, she needs to pay the consequences for it. And I need to not rescue her. And I need to be okay

with the fact that other parents might be like, why is she allowing, why is she doing that? Like, why isn't she making sure that her kid does X, Y, and Z? It's a parental ego issue. It's super important. So talk about the moment at the kitchen table when she's in second grade. We used to fight over homework every, it was a battle. I don't know if any of you have this. Homework was a battle. If you've got a strong-willed child, oh my goodness, every single day, it was just like, she just needed to say no. Just for whatever reason, she wasn't going to do it. We would fight every single day. And when I learned love and logic, I took this straight out of their book. It was just, it was textbook. It was beautiful. I walked downstairs one day and I

looked at her and I said, sweetheart, I'm never going to ask you if you've done your homework ever again. I'm never going to tell you to do your homework and I'm not going to ask you if it's done ever again. If you need my help, I will be here, but I'm not going to ask you if it's done and I'm not going to tell you to do it. She looked at me super suspiciously. She goes, that doesn't make sense. And I go, no, I'm actually not. I don't like fighting with you. I love you. I don't want to fight with you. I've already done second grade. This is your job. It's not my job. So if you're okay with the consequences of not doing your homework, then that's up to you. If you're okay with Mrs. Mink being upset with you, she loved her teacher. If you're okay with sitting inside at lunch because you didn't

do your homework, that's okay. It's fine. If that's what you want to do, you can't. And then I let her, I paused and I said, and if you really don't want to do your homework, I said, you're really cute. You're really likable. You'll make new friends next year when you repeat second grade and your friends move on to third grade. She got so angry. Like she turned all red. She jumped up out of her seat, fists, you know, like, like, and, you know, put her hands and fists. I never said I wasn't doing my homework. I just said, I'm not doing it right this minute. Had to be on her terms. So she marches off. She comes back about 20 minutes later, did her homework without asking me and has never, never again asked me. She's going to graduate from college and she's competent. She was a 4.2 out of high school, super responsible. But that was a big lesson for me, was letting go and being her coach and not being a drill sergeant.

And that was painful. It was painful. Many times it was painful. Short-term pain. I talk to my patients all the time. Short-term pain or long-term pain. If you would have continued to fight with-term pain or long-term pain. If you would have continued to fight with her, that's long-term pain. Short-term pain is like, okay, it's on you.

Let's see how you do. But the real long-term pain would have been watching her not be competent as an adult. So that was, so, and there were many painful moments for me, you know, when the teacher would call me and go, could you please bring her project to school? Because it's a group project. And there are four of them that are going to get marked down because she forgot her thumb drive, but she never does it again. Really hard for me to do. She never did it again. So it's, it's hard. I'm not telling you it's not going to be hard or letting them go to school and be cold because they forgot their sweater. They're not going to die. They're going to sit in the room. They're going to sit in the classroom and stay warm.

Or they forgot their lunch. It takes 30 days for kids to starve to death. They're going to be okay. But they learn to not do it again. I know people hate when I say that. They get so angry. I'm a nurse. I promise you they're not going to die from forgetting their lunch one time.

But they will learn to not forget things. And that's really our job as parents is to teach them to be competent. So number five of 10 things parents should never do is do too much for them. When you do too much for them, you increase your self-esteem by stealing theirs. I find myself actually saying that a lot. You increase their self-esteem by stealing theirs. Entitled people can never be happy. And if you're scurrying around to make them happy. That's creating the special and spoiled dragon I wrote about in your brain.

Well, you're the one that told me that one of the best ways to increase self-esteem is when kids have to work. And so Chloe's been working since she was very young, an actual job since she was 14. But giving kids chores. By her choice. By her choice. She didn't like the chores that she was very young, an actual job since she was 14. But giving kids chores. By her choice. By her choice.

She didn't like the chores that she had at home, so she decided to get a job. But the point is, when you give kids chores, they become competent. They have skills, right? And so when they have skill, it builds their self-esteem. And I learned that from you. And that combined with parenting with love and logic just really taught me that when you grow up in a house like mine, where we were so poor and I didn't have anything, so many parents have this idea like I did that I'm going to do for my kid, everything

that I wasn't able to do. I'm going to give my kid everything that I didn't have. And it is the biggest disservice you can do for your child because you steal. And so people who become very successful, who came from poverty, often overdue just for that mindset, which then can ruin the kids. I was doing it and I was creating a monster. And when I stopped doing it, it took a little while and it began to radically turn around. So the practical application of this is when a child says, I'm bored, rather than you scurrying around to help them be on board to just go, oh, I wonder how you're going to solve that. It's my favorite line. I wonder what you're going to solve that. It's my favorite line. I wonder what you're going to do about that. So give them back the problem.

Of course, always with your supervision. Right. Right? But give them back the problem rather than you, and it just decreases your stress. So there's another- If you're always trying to entertain them or fix them and don't use devices, right? One of the 10 things parents should never do, supervise the devices. So important, but you create competent people by allowing children to solve many of their problems. There's one other really important thing that happens when you start allowing them to take on their own problems, to be responsible for their own mistakes, and to fix, you know, to really fix, like you said, like when they're bored, you give the problem back to them. Another thing happens.

You begin to not be so angry at them. When I let Chloe do her own homework and I wasn't fighting with her every night, I wasn't mad at her anymore. If she didn't do her homework, it was, she had to pay the consequences. I wasn't mad at her anymore. She had to pay the consequences. And it allowed me to have genuine empathy for her when she got in trouble. So now I was a good coach because I wasn't mad. I wasn't angry with her for fighting. So that is so critical. Underline that or emphasize that it's empathy, rooting for them to make the right decisions, but coaching them when they don't.

Right. Not rescuing them. I didn't have to be angry. And I'm like, oh, honey, I'm so sorry. Like, what are you going to do?. I didn't have to be angry. And I'm like, oh, honey, I'm so sorry. Like, what are you going to do? But I didn't have to own it. And if she didn't do her homework, it's, oh, I'm so sorry. And it's not punishing them further.

It's allow the school to give them consequences. You're always rooting for them to do the right thing. And it's like, you know, maybe I would have made a different decision. And then I would wait. And sometimes she's like, well, you're not helping me. And then my next line would be, well, do you want to know what I did when I was your age? But I waited for her to say something. So number six of the 10 things parents should never do is failing to supervise them. Now, this may feel like it's a little bit in conflict with that. You need to be their frontal lobes until theirs develop. The brain is actually not fully developed until kids are in their mid to late 20s. And so knowing where they are, who they're with,

what they're doing, kids hate that. But let me tell you from a child psychiatrist perspective for 40 years, they hate it more if you don't, because they think you don't care. Well, and you just, you just pointed out, like even when I first started doing parenting this way, I'm like, well, wait, I can't just let her do whatever she wants and let her pay the consequences. That doesn't make sense. No, no. Let me be very clear. You're behind the scenes orchestrating a whole bunch of stuff. Okay. So, so I was very sneaky about all of this. So for example, um, when there was a time where she needed to learn a lesson and she was, she was not behaving well at all. So I called someone on, on the side

and said, you know, I need you to come over. And we were going somewhere very special. Um, but I had to orchestrate the whole thing. So I had someone come to the house, be there when we were leaving. She didn't know that I was going to leave her with someone and not take her with us to this very special place. She didn't know in advance. They showed up. And so I created something that allowed her to pay a consequence, but I let her pay that consequence. She behaved very badly. So the consequence of that is you don't get to go with us. You drained my energy. You don't get to go. Right. I'm not going to take you. I don't do nice things for people who treat me badly. Oh, repeat that. Repeat that. I don't do nice things for people who don't treat me with respect. And neither should you. And neither should you. So I called someone to come babysit while we were gone. First time ever in my life, I had a babysitter actually. But what I did is she got very angry when she saw this person show up.

She knew she wasn't going with us. And when she walked in, I said, here's a list of her chores and her chores and her homework. And she can't do anything else until these are done. After this, you guys can watch a movie if she has time. And then I looked at Chloe and I said, and if you need an advance on next week's allowance in order to pay her, I will give you an advance. And if you still don't have enough, you can pay her with toys. And I walked out, she started screaming.

I walked out of the house. But my point is, is I wasn't doing nothing. Like I have to make sure that I'm still supervising her. I have to make sure that I'm, you know, if there's no, like I will create something there if I have to. And my big line, if there was, if, if I wasn't like, if I needed to control a situation, I don't control her. I control what I do. And my line

to her would always say that again, I don't control her, but I get to control where my car goes. I get to control what groceries I buy. I get to control whether the laundry is done. I get to control a whole, a whole bunch of stuff. What food is served. I get to control a whole bunch of stuff. What food is served, I get to control a lot. Because so many parents feel hostage to their children. And that's just because they've allowed themselves to be, I thought that too, you're not. So while I'm not controlling what she does, I'm controlling a whole bunch of things I do. And when she made the comment to me, you can't do that. It's mine. She came home and everything that I had bought her ever was out of her room, except for her bed and her books and her school uniforms.

And I let her earn it back. And I think that only happened once. Once. And I was very kind and gentle, but we gave her a way to earn it back. And it was a very painful but very valuable lesson. So number seven is very important. And that's modeling unhealthy behavior. Kids do what you do, not what you tell them to do. And I'm horrified. Parents today are drinking with their kids.

They're smoking pot with their kids. They're like, oh, marijuana is nothing. It's innocuous. parents today are drinking with their kids they're smoking pot with their kids they're like oh marijuana is nothing it's innocuous oh they drink in Europe with their kids and I'm like children do what you do not what you tell them to do and so every day you are modeling hell or you're modeling illness. And here in the United States, we're the sickest we have ever been. For a developed country, we are on the bottom as far as how healthy we are because we've been assaulted as a society. And if you really want your kids to be healthy, you have to be healthy. And we learned it when we did the Daniel plan at Saddleback Church. And I remember you got to get this information and then you have to give it away

because it's in the act of giving that you create your own support group, making it more likely you're going to stay on this program forever. But if you don't live it, you can't give it. The eighth thing parents should never do is forget what it was like to be your kid's age. And I think so many parents do this. I have one friend that would literally like, she just, I would hear her talking to her kids and she's was like the Virgin Mary and just like the perfect child when she was that age. And I would look at her. I'm like, I was there. I remember a whole bunch of stuff we did that was really like, no, that's not how it was. Um, I think forgetting what you were like or what it was like when you were

their age, it's really not helpful to your kids because you can be their best coach. You want them coming to you for advice, not their friends for advice, right? And I know you mentioned one thing to me that was so important and so helpful to me. And it's that parents often get unconsciously triggered at a certain age when their kids are a certain age because of what was going on in their lives. And I never understood that. And I couldn't figure out why certain ages either triggered me or actually were made me really happy, you know, and it's, it's because of what was going on. And when I thought about that, I'm like, you're right. What was going on in my life mattered then. So, um, and being a teenager is hard. It is especially now, especially now,

but it was hard for us. Do you remember when you had to move between was between ninth and 10th grade? No, it was in the middle of 10th grade and it was really hard. And it was so hard. Yeah. And so not moving kids in high school, if you can help it is important, but if you can't help it, your job changes or whatever, having empathy for them is just critical. So one of the things that I often would tell Chloe is there's nothing you can say, think, do, or hear that I haven't either said, thought, done, or heard. Like nothing is new except social media. It really hasn't changed that much, right? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I mean, that's what being a teenager is like, right? Except now it's sex, drugs, and rap, I guess. But it's really not that different. So human

behavior is the same. It's really sad that social media has advanced it so quickly at such a young age. And that's the only really difference. But if we can really tap into how hard it was for us, we can really help our kids so much more and not pretend like we don't remember what it was like, those embarrassing moments or what it's like to not fit in or eating disorders or drugs or, I mean, all of those things are still relevant. Number nine is tell kids they're smart. So what's the problem with that? I mean, as parents, our egos are so involved and, you know, I want to think of myself as smart. I want to think of you

as smart. But the problem is, is when you tell them they're smart and they come up against something that's hard, they go, oh, I'm not smart. And they don't believe you. If, on the other hand, you tell them you work hard and praise them for working hard when they come up against something that's hard well they work harder there's another problem i read a book called nurture shock that was really good and it talked about this very thing and kids that were always told they were smart that they they were told like you were just basically born smart. The message is you were just born intelligent. They got lazy. They were lazy. They didn't study. And so they didn't think they needed to study as hard because they were smart. Whereas the kids who weren't as

actually naturally intelligent, but were always praised for working hard, what they found is even if their GPA wasn't as high through elementary and high school, ultimately did better in life because they had developed the work ethic of having to work harder. And that was more important ultimately. So I had sort of a B minus C plus average in high school. And yet I figured it out in large part, I think for me, I needed more time to grow up. And I went in the army when I was 18 and went to Europe, had just a little bit more time for my brain to develop. And when I Kiyosaki. Parents, I think they put way too much emphasis on grades and performance.

Well, and on what And there's some insanity. I have a clinic in Manhattan and I know there's some insanity about getting your preschooler into the right preschool because they're thinking about Harvard. And I'm like, that's insane because you want kids to be kids and you want to teach them to love learning, not performing for approval. And we just released our episode with Olympian Alicia Newman, and she and I talked so much. You don't want to ever have to be the best. That's a prescription for separation and misery. It's a prescription. You're dominating over other people and separating from them.

She's an Olympian. You always want to be your best. If you're your best, you can help other people be great as you are great. That's a prescription for happiness. Right. And there's one, one other thing that we always worked on with the kids that I thought was really helpful that I wish I had known when I was young. Um, you know, so many people, which is why they're so focused on that perfect preschool and that perfect, you know, that perfect road to perfection. This is the way you're going to have a great life. It's like one way. One of the things that we've always told the kids is there's about a thousand ways to do

something. The smartest people on the planet know that there are a thousand ways to do something, right? They don't think of one way and they think of a thousand ways. And when something doesn't work, you try a different way. And so I think that that really increases your ability and your flexibility when something doesn't work out the way you think it should work out. So I think that that's a really important point is it doesn't have to be one way. So the 10th thing parents should never do is constantly focus on what your kids are doing wrong. So criticism. It's just constant criticism and minimal praise is a recipe for disaster. little thing that they do wrong and you constantly point it out, it just breaks them down. You want to make sure that they know you're watching and noticing what they're doing right, not just what they're doing wrong. So build them up when you see them doing something right.

And people who follow me for a while know that I collect penguins and actually right outside this room is a poster of Fat Freddy who, when my son Anthony was young, he was hard for me and ended up taking him to Sea Life Park and watched how they trained Fat Freddy. And they trained him by noticing what he did right over and over and over again. And too often, parents notice what the child does wrong, and it just ruins their self-esteem. So catch them doing the things you like. Where you pay attention always determines how you feel. And are you shaping their behavior in a good way? Are you shaping it in a toxic way?

And constant criticism, if you're doing that with your partner, well, it's one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, according to John Gottman's work. It's one of the things that predicts divorce. And if you like your children, you don't want them divorcing you. And part of that is noticing what you like more than what you don't like. So we hope this episode has been helpful. We're going to talk a lot about parenting. It's one of our favorite things to talk about as between the

two of us, we have six and five grandchildren. And the one thing we didn't talk about is not knowing what kind of parent you want to be or what kind of children you want to raise. So in our last episode on ways to ruin a relationship, it's being unfocused, right? Not knowing what you want. I think not knowing what you want as a parent or for your children will allow your behavior to sort of constantly drift. Yeah. And that's not what you want.

You want to be focused. For me, I want to be a kind, present, firm parent, because I know the research. Firm and kind, right? If you take anything away from this, those two words, firm and kind. And I want to raise competent people. That's actually a really good point. One of the things that helped me a lot is I was really anxious about my child not liking me or not wanting to be with me if I did too much discipline initially. I was really worried about that. And we didn't talk about divorced parents.

That can be a real worry for parents who are divorced. Like, oh, they're going to want to go live with the other parent. But when I really grasped this point, my job is not to be their best friend. I hope that that happens at the end, but my job is to turn out a responsible, competent, loving human being, one who's able to manage life and handle this life. When I really grasped that, it changed how I parented and it took away my anxiety. And it's like, that's not my job. And Oh, by the way, we ended up being best friends. So it was, but that really helped me knowing what my, knowing what I wanted and knowing what that, what my ultimate goal was.

Yeah. Thank you so much for listening. We hope you subscribe, Leave us a review. If you have a story you want to share with Tanner or you have questions you want us to address on the podcast, you can DM me on Instagram at doc underscore Amen, like the last word in a prayer, or you can DM Tana at TanaAmen.