Change Your Brain Every Day - 5 Steps to Practical Parenting Pt. 1 with Dr. Charles Fay

Episode Date: July 23, 2018

Life can be hard enough on your own, but when you throw in the challenges of disciplining a problematic child, it can get to be overwhelming. In part one of a series on parenting with Dr. Charles Fay author of Love and Logic, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss a practical parenting approach that works. Fay also goes over his steps for teaching responsibility.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome, everyone. We are so excited today to have Dr. Charles Fay. Both Tana and I have been huge fans of Love & Logic for a long time. Charles is an author, a consultant, a highly skilled, which we can testify to, public speaker. Millions of educators, mental health professionals, and parents worldwide have benefited from his practical and down-to-earth solutions to the most common and frustrating behaviors

displayed by children of all ages. These solutions come directly from years of research and clinical experience serving severely disturbed youth, families in psychiatric hospitals, public and private schools and homes. Dr. Fay's interest in education and psychology were piqued as a child from years of exposure to some of our nation's most dynamic experts,

especially his father, Jim Fay, one of the leading experts on child discipline. They are the founders of Love & Logic, which we've used in our own home. He now jokes. I think that's why I became a psychologist, just to figure out what they were doing to me as a kid. But let me be clear. I absolutely adore my mom and dad as a result.

He earned his PhD with highest honors from the University of South Carolina. We are just so grateful. Yes, so excited. To have you. Now, you said, I have to let you jump in or you're going to kick me under the table. I'm going to kick you under the table and I wore heels today. Well, I'm excited to be here. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. And I just want to say, besides the bio, this is

very personal to me. So I really appreciate you being here and we've had your father on. I had the pleasure of actually attending one of your, very recently, attending one of your workshops. I took my sister and she got so much out of it. But this has been something very near and dear to my heart because I think I mentioned to you before, I had this daughter who at three years old, hands on hips, her entire focus was world domination. I'm the leader, I'm the boss. And every day was just, you know, this intense battle of wills. And I just couldn't figure out what she was doing wrong. What I love about Love & Logic was that it's really not about training kids. It's really about training parents. Oh yeah. And that's the challenge for all of us. And sometimes I'm kind of quiet about that, honestly, because I'm concerned people actually come to my conferences anymore because

it really is about setting limits with ourselves more so. More so than with the kids. And if you think about it, that's pretty logical, right? So we've been raised a certain way and we continue this pattern for generations, even though it's never worked for generations, but we just keep doing what we've always been taught to do. And I look at my daughter, my daughter and I are super close now.

I mean like crazy close, she's an amazing kid. And I look at her friends and some of the trouble that they get into and I'm always amazed. I'm like, where are the parents? They're not close to their parents. And it's just, we continue this cycle that never seems to work. So I was saying before we went on the tape that in my child psychiatry training, the first year they taught us to do play therapy with the kids. And most of the ADHD kids just wanted to blow stuff up. And at the end of

my first year, I just hated these kids. I hated my job. And then the next year, they had us do parent training. So they actually didn't have us work with the next year they had us do parent training. And so they actually didn't have us work with the kids. They had us work with the parents and these severely disturbed children got so much better in like six weeks of teaching parents to be the two words I always think of are firm and kind, that I became a massive fan of parent training. But then when I learned about love and logic, it just took it to a whole new level. It's like a perfect fit for what we do. And it just, it just, tell us a little bit about the foundation of love and logic. Well, Daniel said something that really nails it down, and that is the idea

of firm and kind. A lot of times I'll say powerful and loving at the same time. And when you look at great leaders, and I believe that great parents are great leaders, you see that there are these two dynamics interwoven in their come through or their follow through with people. And that is they're caring. So people get the idea that this person is on my team. They're a fan of me. And the second piece, though, is that they're able to set good boundaries and limits and

also avoid that temptation. And, you know, listeners, I want to admit the temptation I struggle with very deeply is a temptation to, oh, just say they're just going through a phase. They'll get over it. You know, he's a nice kid. This is normal for this age. And the price tag just goes up every day with poor decisions. And so a key part of Love and Logic is that we're really hoping the kids will mess up and make some poor decisions so that they can experience those consequences when it's still relatively small, the consequences are. And all of this came to a head, I think it was out of desperation. We were driving through Nebraska and I was in the backseat of the car with my sisters. I was about five and kicking the back of the seat the whole way and stepping on the seat belt, that old Chrysler. So it would tighten up on my father and water

torture all the way out to this wonderful place called Pioneer Village in Minden, Nebraska, where there's washing machines and tractors. And I was not impressed. And then all the way back to Colorado, we were, you know, it's just that, you know, I think a lot of your listeners, viewers can agree. It's the little stuff that just is, is picking at you all day long, you know, Dan or he, where is my, you know, that kind of stuff. And so my father's about ready to lose it with us. Then he's got this kid who gets naked in timeout at, you know, a first grader at his school. The teacher sends the timeout. The kid takes his clothes off.

So he's having problems at school and problems at home, and then he runs into this guy named Dr. Klein, who's a child psychiatrist, and they become great friends. And they say to each other, well, they were going to have to start figuring something out. And it was all for themselves. And then it just accidentally, the word got out about what they were doing at the school. But it really came down to two things. And if we can remember these two things as parents, we'll probably stay healthy most of the time. And the first thing is that I want to take good care of myself by really having healthy boundaries and limits.

And so as soon as I start feeling just mad at the kids or exhausted, what does that say? It's, I went too far. I'm not setting good limits. Right. The second piece of it is, is that I ought to take myself out of the loop a little bit and quit micromanaging and rescuing so that the kids are ready for the real world when they get there. Huge lesson for me personally. Huge lesson. Oh, it's huge. And my wife and I are still learning that lesson with our 11-year-old. The other day she comes to me and she says, you know, we need to stop nagging him. I said, oh, that's a concept. So that really was the root of it. Just real life with real kids and trying to put together some concepts that would help out. So what examples do you have that people can visualize what you're

saying? So let's take, you know, either the child who takes off his clothes in timeout or you when you were a little kicking the back of the, you know, the front seat of the car. What do parents do besides yell, scream, hit? And I'm not a fan of yelling, screaming or hitting because I actually think some kids get addicted to your anger. And it just doesn't work. So what we do here at Amen Clinics is we look at your brain. So if you're really struggling, we want to see what's going on in your brain. And our ADD kids who have sleepy frontal lobes, they conflict seeking drama driven and if if you don't treat them if you don't stimulate their brain they will get their parents to stimulate their brain

by screaming at them or beating them and so and it's completely unconscious it's's Pavlovian. And so I'm just, I'm not a fan of that at all. So what do you do in a love and logic sense? Well, one of the things, in a very big sense of the word, we want to establish ourselves as loving authority figures. And that happens really through, I would say, the four steps to responsibility. Maybe we can frame it that way. And the first step is we give a kid a task they can handle. And so in other words, we say to a kid, hey, the teacher kid comes in. And this was a little kid who had a lot of problems, obviously, that he would get naked in timeout. And he comes in the next day and she's ready for him because she's learning some new skills. She's going to experiment. And she says, oh, it is so good to see you.

I just can't wait to see how this day goes. Because the great thing about having you is it's exciting every day. And so, and the part about it that is really mind blowing for a lot of us is that she didn't say you're, you better behave. Right. I mean, Daniel, what would happen if you said to a kid like this, you better behave? They're not going to behave. Exactly. They're thinking, wow, this is a great opportunity for me to get a little dose of adrenaline here because this is going to get real exciting. Right. Okay. So she's given this kid a task that he can handle. And then this next step, which is crazy too, it's all crazy, Is that you hope and pray the kid blows it.

Yeah. You know, it's like I give my kid an allowance and what am I hoping they do? Spend it before they have. Spend it. You know, it's like, I hope they blow it so that they can learn that there's a finite amount of that stuff around. Right. And so she's, in her heart, she's kind of hoping the kid will blow it. And parents, you know, this all sounds like kind of silly, but is there any logic in hoping that the kid blows it? Yes.

I mean, what's, is my, I don't know. But I know the answer because I've read the book. I'm not a psychiatrist, but I wonder if the brain stays a little calmer when you're actually hoping. Yes. Your brain stays a little calmer when you're actually hoping. Oh, man, I hope this kid does something nutty today because why is this kid going to learn a lot about life? Right. Oh, I sure hope when we go to the store, this kid just throws a major fit because I got a new skill. I even got another skill I could use with other shoppers.

I'm just going to turn to them and say, hey, this is the last time I'm going to babysit for this family again. Oh, that's so great. So great. But you're looking forward to it. And what we're really trying to do is we're trying to lighten up the home and we're trying to change the emotional weather. Right. It's like great teachers. You know, they say to me, I learned a long time ago, I have to create the weather in my classroom, not let the kids create it. You know, their little mirror neurons need to be taking my lead

rather than the other way around and so uh so she she says to him uh looking forward to seeing what's gonna happen and she's kind of hoping for some action and uh you know he he starts to ramp it up and unlike the day before when she got in a little bit of a power struggle she just walks over to him she says oh this is gonna be so exciting and uh are you gonna be going off to behind the curtain there where the little timeout is are you gonna go with your clothes on or clothes off it's just gonna be so fun to find out and he he, you know, she said he was so mad. It would just ruin his day. That's so funny. There's a central concept and it's all linked in with psychology and neurology and all sorts of different things. But it goes like this. The more angry and frustrated I get about a kid's behavior, the more likely that strong-willed kid is going to repeat that behavior over and over

again. Yep. Well, so then now we have four steps. So give them a task they can handle. Number two, we hope they blow it. Number three, when they blow it, we provide loving empathy and we hold them accountable. And you know, love and logic is really not about introducing pain. You know what love and logic is about? It's about just allowing the results to happen that was so interesting and hard that was the hardest part for me so say that again when they blow it we provide oh loving dose of empathy and we let the results happen and for a controlling person, it's really hard to do this, you know, and, and there's part of me, I vacillate between wanting to remove the results, right. Or intensify them somehow. So the kid will really pay. Right. And so there's another step though. And, and the results with this

situation were that there were some things that were happening that were, you know, like a field trip. And the teacher as well within our rights just say, honey, you know, I mean, it's really exciting when you do those things here. But I'm just not in the mood for chasing naked kids around the Denver Zoo. And so when I don't have to worry about these sorts of things, we'll go and you can join us and we can't wait to have you come. But there's a sense of accountability as well. And that's important for people to hear.

Yeah. It's, again, it's a part of love and accountability at the very same time now another example that maybe i'll share uh do we have time for another example real quick so we're going to actually break this into three okay uh topics so we can have you all week so let's let's make sure we have the four and then we'll take a pause and we'll get to some more examples. So give a task they can handle. Hope the kid blows it to learn the lesson when they blow it, provide a loving dose of empathy, but let the

results happen. Is that four? Let the results happen. The fourth one. The third one is the empathy and let the results happen. Number four is you give that task again. Okay. It's kind of like you blow it and you experience the consequences. And then that person who loves you and is a big fan of yours comes along and says, Hey, I'm going to give you another opportunity to do this. And they don't nag and lecture. They just give you that opportunity, which says you're capable. I believe in you. So before we head off to the next segment, I just want to point out this has worked. Like, like I said, and I'm going to keep saying it magic in my life and with my relationship with my daughter and we literally call her the

45 year old soccer mom now she's like hyper responsible and I really do attribute it to this kind of training for me the hard part for somebody who is who wants to make sure my daughter is well taken care of does everything right was to let go and let her pay those consequences. It took me, she learned really fast. I almost never had to do the same thing more than once before she stopped doing that behavior. For me, it took me about a year of training myself over and over to stop making mistakes.

It worked perfectly when I did it, and then I'd find myself sort of gravitating back toward my old behavior. And I'm like, oh, oh, oops. So I found myself listening to the, at the time, the DVDs, dated a little bit, in my car. Like I had to like for a year,

like grind this into my head because the training was for me. So the CDs in your car. The CDs, yeah. So Charles, how can people learn this? As Tana said, it took her a while. And it was worth it. To do this.

Where should they go? Loveandlogic.com? What would you recommend? Well, of course, that's the best way to learn about Love & Logic is going to loveandlogic.com. And we also have people all over the world who are facilitators that do local classes. But the way you learn it is the way I learned how to study for tests in grad school and all that. You don't crack open the book the night before the exam and try to cram it all into your head. It's lots of spaced repetition, lots of dribbling it into our brains, lots of self-brainwashing when we're in the car and we

listen to things for 20 minutes and that's it. Just constant repetition. So I'm not alone is what you're saying. No, no. Adults have the hardest time learning things. So Tana says this great saying that you don't start training on fight day. We had this discussion. I like to fight. So you can't start training on fight day. You have to practice and train every day so that on fight day you're ready. So this makes a great gift for someone who's pregnant. I'm going to, and I don't endorse a lot of things, but I have to say the seminar that I attended with you was great. It's not an all-day thing.

It's while kids are in school. But I really highly recommend if you're going to do this. I mean, the book is awesome. You know, all the MP3s, whatever. But for me, I'm one of those people who learns by sort of submersion. So I like to be sort of submerged initially and then continue on. I would just strongly recommend people at least look into when there's going to be a seminar. All right. So when we come back, we're going to talk about some more examples of using love and logic in different situations with kids and teenagers. And after that, we actually may begin to talk about young adults.

And relationships. who have been sort of angry and lenient. And now they're dealing with a 20-year-old or even a 25-year-old who, there was an article, did you see the article on a paper? That a 30-year-old, the parents finally kicked him out and it became this huge brouhaha. I think he was trying to sue them or something.

We'll come back. We're here with Charles Fan. Love and love. So fun. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month. Thank you.