Change Your Brain Every Day - How Children Are Made or Broken By Family Issues or Trauma

Episode Date: April 20, 2021

Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen talk about the Fine balance between love and logic. They give tips on how to be a good listener and elevate confidence in children.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your 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 nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are in the week of letting go. If you've got children who are about to fly the nest or even something else in your life where you know it's time to let go of something and you're struggling a little bit. And in this episode, we're going to talk about the consequences of not letting go. So if you're struggling with letting go, we want you to start thinking about, well, what's the flip side of that? What are the consequences if you don't let go? And before we do, we have a review to read from angel.jo. So glad. I'm so thankful I found this podcast. I really wish I had the ability to go to one of the clinics.

I've suffered so much with mental illness, quote, for as long as I can remember, medication after medication after medication, provider after provider, suicidal ideation, different diagnosis. I feel like I have no emotion being on medication. I look forward to listening to the entire series and reading your books and hopefully finding a way out for me. Not sure if it will be possible to come off these medications or if I can find a good psychiatrist in my area. But now I have hope.

Hope is a big thing. I love that. Yeah. Because hope is so important. And, you know, in my book, The End of Mental Illness, it's like these are mental, they're brain. If they can unlock why your brain is struggling, then you're just more likely

to feel better. And people don't understand that about medication. Medication can decrease depression, but it tends to decrease more feelings. So Angel Joe, thank you so much. Awesome. So I want to talk about the consequences of not letting go. I think this was one of the things that helped me to start to realize it's time to let go. Because the consequences of not letting go is really enabling your kids. It's handicapping them. And it's also sort of you have to, now you have to take care of them, right? So you sort of enable them. And when I realized that, I read something when I was studying love and logic is that entitled people can never be happy. And that's what happens is you unwittingly, unintentionally sort of make them entitled and enabled. And so the college scandal was a perfect example of this. These are parents who became so wrapped up in, first of all, their kids became their identity. Their success became their identity.

But it's like. And it wasn't really about the kids. No. And so but it's like, it's like, thinking that their kids can't do this on their own, or their success isn't their own. Like you want your kids to be able to whatever success they achieve is their own. And so if you don't do that, then you get so wrapped up in it. And now you, you know, there's, there's, that's an extreme example, but it happens and it happens a lot. You know, you're constantly rescuing them. And by helping them take responsibility by not rescuing them, you're actually elevating their sense of confidence of confidence and self esteem. So we watched, their sense of confidence, of competence and self-esteem.

So we watched, I guess it was on Netflix about the college admission scandal. It's just horrifying. But what you saw is the parents didn't have confidence in their children and it really became about them. What are my friends going to think? And they have to go to this school or that school. And the thing I took away from it, that the word prestige, right?

If you didn't go to one of these prestigious universities, the word prestige actually comes from a french word that means deceit isn't that interesting and and i'm sensitive to this you know when i turned 18 i went into the military i got a year of college done uh while i was in europe serving in the military at the university of maryland they had an extension campus and then i came back into the military at the University of Maryland. They had an extension campus. And then I came back into the year at a community college, Orange Coast College. So did I. Two years.

Went to a small Christian college. So did I. Vanguard University. And I don't think that impaired me at all. It's not where you go to school that matters. It's who you are and what you do with the education that you get. So at this point, children are being rejected from Duke and Harvard and Princeton. But to find out that your parents did that, and I heard some of the conversations, if you listen to some of the phone conversations of the parents talking about their children, that is so devastating if you're the child to hear that you think your kid's not smart enough to get into some of these schools. It's like, well, first of all, so what if they get into another school and it's not Harvard?

Like, so what? Why would you not be proud? I was just mind blown. Why would you mind blown for them for the reality of them right and when when you cheat to get them ahead you teach them to cheat so so what really helped me was when Chloe was in second grade and I was really struggling I mean she was just such a strong-willed child and I learned love and logic and mean, she was just such a strong willed child and I learned love and logic. And, and the one line that really helped me was you've already done school. This is not about you. This is about them learning, not about you learning, let it be theirs. And so it

just, for some reason that just really struck me. And it starts early from there in second grade and they have a project to do. You're doing it for them. And the mother or father steps in and does it for them. What you're teaching them is they are not competent. Right. And so. I backed out completely. Getting back to the theme of letting go.

But if you start letting go young, it's not easy to watch your kids fall and scrape their knees and make mistakes. But trust me, it's much easier to watch them do that when they're in second grade, when they're 10, 12, 15, than when they're 25, 30, 40. So much better to let them learn those mistakes when they're young. And I remember it. So I adopted the practice of I don't take sweaters to school. If you forget them, you'll be cold. Maybe you have to stay inside for recess. I don't take lunches to school.

I don't take school projects. I don't take homework. I don't do your homework. If you have a question, you can help me. If you don't turn your homework in, you'll make friends next. If you have a question, I will help you. Oh, yeah, I will help you. If you have a question, I will help you. But these are I will help you. If you have a question, I will help you.

But, but these are things that I adopted and I had to learn them. They were not easy to learn and they made a huge difference in the type of kid that I have now versus the type of kid I was going to have. So before we close, letting go, I think it's critical to really ask yourself, am I doing this for me or am I doing that for them? And from a be on them unless they're doing dangerous. The one thing I want to ask you is because you see a lot of these kids. What have you seen with parents who sort of like put the responsibility and the onus on the kids versus parents who try to fix everything for their kids when they, when they run into even a mental health issue, who tends to do better when it's the child's idea to get help. It's much better when it becomes a requirement to

the parents. Kids often are not cooperative. They don't get as as as much out of it um so i think being a good listener yeah i can't say this more i was working with one of my patients yesterday and they were an adult couple and the man said something and rather than the wife just repeating it so he could hear what he was saying and talk himself through it she finished it as she would finish it well how can you do that and that's not going to work. And I mean, completely, it's just filled with direction, judgment, and caused him to get angry. And I'm like, if you just would have stopped, you think your life depends on it. And then don't say anything else. He would have talked himself through it. So the most important thing you can do, your kids, your spouse,

is be a good listener. But we're not taught this. Too often the anxiety that you have, somebody says something, you don't let them finish what they're going to say. And then you just have verbal diarrhea all over them. And it doesn't keep the conversation going. And we want our teenagers, especially to have the mindset where they're solving their own problems,

because soon you're not going to be there. And trust me, when they're 30, you don't want to be solving their problems. And I often say, well, does it fit? You know, when a child brings a problem to me, it's like, does it fit with what you want? Right. And so letting go, it's hard because we're attached, right? But I love Ariana Grande's song, Thank You, Next. When I first heard it, I'm like, oh, this is just about all of her relationships. But then as I thought about it, I'm like, it's mental health. It's being grateful for what happened and then looking forward. So it's thank you. And for her, it's her relationships. And if you listen to the song,

it's about, she wants to find that person, get married, have family and life. So it's thank you next. And so not hanging on to what's not working and not hanging on to what's not going to happen, right? If you hung on to Chloe when she was seven or maybe better when she was nine and, and this amazing attachment. And you are an amazing mother. I mean, for 15 years, every night you read to her, right? I mean, you guys- Well, I was about 15. She sort of stopped that when she was 12, but- Well, it seemed to me for a long time.

I mean, every night you'd spend an hour or so reading to her. So she already has you in her head. I know if I gave her a multiple choice question, mom would like this decision. She'd be neutral on it. She would be sad. She would be furious. That 98 times out of 100, she knows what you think, right?

Your voice is already in her head. Yeah, and it's important for her to learn to listen to her voice, not just mine. And so when someone, when your kids come to you with a problem, odds are they know your voice. You want to help them find their voice. So what did you learn today? Helping people find their voice. So what did you learn today? Helping people find their voice. That'd be awesome.

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