Change Your Brain Every Day - End The Brain Scratching Homework Battles - Parenting Series Part 1

Episode Date: December 19, 2016

Parenting can be very challenging if you don't have the right direction as a parent and if you don't have a vision of what you'd like your child to be.  In this episode, we will talk about how you can turn things around if you are struggling with instilling discipline and accountability to your children. 

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to The Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now, in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amon.

Hi, I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Today we're going to talk about raising brain healthy children. What are the things parents can do to really optimize the brain development of their kids so that they can do better in school, have closer relationships, really set the stage for them to have a meaningful life. Well, and I love this because a lot of the tips are so practical when it comes to getting your kids set up for success, not just in your parenting skills as far as discipline or, you know, teaching them structure, but also with getting them to eat healthy and think right and really getting their habits down. So it's very important. So the first step in raising brain healthy children is you

really have to define what kind of parent you want to be and what kind of child you want to raise. You have to tell your frontal lobes what's this all about. They actually found that if parents eat dinner with their children, and we almost always eat together, and they read to them at night, that that were really the seeds of Rhodes Scholars. That was the only common denominator were those two things between all of the Rhodes Scholars. They ate dinner together every night and their parents read to them. So I thought that was so interesting. Now to speak to your point about deciding what kind of parent you want to be. Chloe is a very strong kid. And I remember at about four years old, she was just about five, I broke down one day and started crying and went,

parenting is not supposed to be this hard because I was struggling with her strength. Now I often say now that if I survive her strength, it's going to serve her well because I've learned how to- To either be leader of the free world or leader of the gang. Right, we're trying to figure out which one. But she, I understand her better now, but a big part of it was understanding me better,

deciding what kind of parent I want to be. What I figured out was that my intensity makes me want to be very authoritarian, like very, like this is how it's going to be. And I'm going to rule the house with an iron fist. I really started digging into this, like what makes, you know, for good parenting, what makes, what helps to raise responsible children as opposed to me being a good parent, what is my outcome? What I'm trying to achieve is not to be her friend, it's not to be all of these other

things or to be seen as this great parent. I want to make sure that I do my job and turn out a responsible, loving, successful person. That's my job. Independent. Independent. And so when I got that into my head, I started to step back and go, okay, so now let's reverse engineer. What's that going to take? I want her to think for herself. Me being authoritarian means I'm thinking for her. Right. And so I had to figure that out and it was not easy. I still constantly have to catch myself and like back up and go, okay, let go. Because the hard part is to be a good coach,

to be curious, not furious. Right. Tan actually, she already did the time. We're going to talk about that in a minute. So time was never the issue. The issue was really around the battle. Right. And so here was the key for me.

And this changed everything. I let go. I mean, I literally let go. But what I mean by that is, I mean, a lot of people who see it from the outside will go, whoa, she's not like doing anything. She's not parenting her. And that's not really true. What I did is I stepped back and I decided that I was going to let Chloe pay consequences. She was going to make her own choices. And you weren't going to rescue her. The key is I was not going to rescue her from the consequences.

I would be very clear about what the consequences were going to be. I would teach her. I'd be a good coach. I'd listen. And if she didn't follow through or whatever choice she made, good or bad, those were her consequences to live with. And the hardest part as a parent, hardest part, is that we want to rescue our kids when they mess up.

We don't want them to suffer the pain that we went through as kids. And I had to figure out, and I did it. And it was hell for her for the first couple of months because there was no yelling. There was no discipline. There was no grounding. There was nothing. It was her paying real life consequences. So give them an example. Homework battles are huge, right? So homework battles are just a problem I hear all the time from parents. And I would literally sit down at the table. It would be this huge battle every night.

And I'm telling her, you're doing your homework and you're not moving until it's done. And she'd be screaming. And it was just this giant battle. Finally, when she was in second grade, I walked in one day and I said, are you going to do your homework? Right there, she looked at me a little funny. She's like, what do you mean? She was waiting for me to sit down and make her do her homework.

And I said, well, are you going to do your homework or not? If you don't want to do it, you don't have to do it. And she was very suspicious. And she said, what do you mean I don't have to do it? I said, I'm never going to make you do your homework again. And she looked at me very suspiciously at this point. She goes, that doesn't make sense. I said, no, honey. I said, I've been thinking about it. We fight every night over you doing your homework. And I realize how silly I'm being by fighting with you over your homework. Because it's not my homework. It's your homework. Yeah, you passed second grade. They're not. Right. I already finished second grade. They're not my grades. They're your grades.

And here's the thing. I did my homework and I did it well. And I did well in school. I don't like getting in trouble at school. I don't like my teachers being upset with me. That was my choice. I get to reap the benefits from what I did, but I'm not you. And if you decide you don't wanna do your homework, I'm okay with that. And I love you so much

that if you don't do any homework all year and you decide that you'd rather repeat second grade, I'm okay with that too. You'll make new friends when your friends move on. Oh my gosh, she was so mad. She had steam coming out of her ears. She's like, that's ridiculous, I'm gonna do my homework, I'm just not gonna do it right this second.

And she walked out of the room, she came back 10 minutes later, did her homework by herself. I've never ever asked her about homework again, sat with her to do homework. Now I will help her, all she has to do is ask. But I don't get on her case and ask her, did you do it? So know what kind of parent you want to be. Do you want to be a parent that solves all your children's problems in that way,

basically making them incompetent to solve their own? Or do you want to raise healthy, independent, social creatures that can have a happy life? And let me be clear. People will see me letting Chloe make mistakes. And sometimes they look at me like, why are you letting her do that? She'll order bad food or she'll do something. And I give her a certain amount of freedom because I don't want her listening to my voice when she goes off to college.

That's not going to help her. She needs to be listening to her voice. And whatever consequences happen from that, you know, and there's times where I'm inside cringing. She's, she's trying to order, you know, pasta again for the third night in a row. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. Cause she knows I've been teaching this kid since she was little. When she's at home, she eats what's at home. And there are, there is no junk food. When we're out, she gets to order what she wants. And it makes me cringe sometimes. But I, what I reinforce is the benefits and consequences of what's going to happen when she eats those foods. And I leave it at that. And I am the living example for her.

That's the key. I am the constant example. And that's where your biggest influence is going to be. Because if you are bonded to your children, they pick your values. Your kids don't do. If you're not bonded, they pick the opposite values. Your kids don't do what you say, they do what you do. Ultimately, that's true. And so when this happened just last week, it was just so beautiful. So I went in to go wake Chloe up and she was not in her bed. And I'm like, where is she? She was downstairs. She was already updressed, had set her alarm and she had her little running clothes on. And I'm like, what are you doing up so early? She said, you know, I decided that I'm going to go for a walk

around our neighborhood every morning before school. So I'm getting up extra early. She said, you know, I decided that I'm going to go for a walk around our neighborhood every morning before school. So I'm getting up extra early. She said, I made myself a healthy breakfast. She said, I just feel so much better when I do this. Like it was all her idea. It was just a huge shift. It was great. We're going to do a lot more shows on parenting. Raising brain healthy children is just critical. It's the next generation. It starts by you living a brain healthy life and then really knowing what kind of parents you want to be, what kind of child you want to raise. So write us a comment on what are the things you do that you just feel really effective with your kids? What are the things you could do better? Send us a video.

If you're really struggling with your child, call the call center. See if bringing the child in for an evaluation wouldn't be in their best interest and ultimately in yours and your marriage's best interest because we know how hard that tough kids can be on relationships. Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warrior's Way.

Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen clinics. I'm Donnie Osmond, and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode.