Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Stop Enabling Your Child’s Bad Behavior Pt. 3 with Dr. Charles Fay

Episode Date: July 25, 2018

One of the most difficult tasks as a parent is to make decisions that cause them not to like you, even if it is in their own best interest. In the final installment of a series on parenting with Dr. Charles Fay from Love and Logic, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen go over these tough choices, and how to make it easier for them to be strong rather than weak.

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 back. We are having so much fun with Dr. Charles Faye. This is so important. I love this topic. In an age with so much anger and so much noise and distracted parents, really, that the easiest thing you can do in the moment is give in to bad behavior, but you are going to pay for that

long term. And more importantly, your child is going to pay for that. That love and logic can really help develop internal responsibility and happiness long-term. So Charles, this has just been so much fun. So helpful. But let's go to some really hard things. What if you have a teenager that is starting to use drugs? I want to just throw in there, one of the things that I've heard personally, because I'm a parent with a teenager, is I can't discipline them now. They're too big.

What am I supposed to do? They outsize me. Right? Let's just preface it with that. Although, we sort of never recommend beating them up. No, no, no. Or taking a physical approach. But especially when there's drugs involved, I know some moms who feel really uncomfortable, right?

And they say there's nothing I can do. Well, it does feel so out of control for parents. And I want to preface this by saying that, uh, I'm always humbled by kids. I, I, there are so many times where I say to people, I used to be a parenting expert until I had kids. Exactly. Right. It is very complex. There are many, many variables that are all interacting with each other that, uh, human beings haven't even gotten a grip on scientifically. So it's not a blame game, but it's a game about how can I allow this kid to truly experience brunt of their life decisions right now because so many people will not get motivated. Most people will not get motivated to really make some very difficult changes in their life until they have

lost pretty much everything. Right. Until it's gotten really hard, until they realize that, you know, this ain't working. Rock bottom. Yep. This just, the way I'm living my life is not working. And what happens, because we love them so much, is we tend to put a safety net under those rock bottoms every time they happen. And then the rock bottoms get deeper. We're actually conditioning the kid to need more severe consequences. We're habituating them to the consequences of their poor decisions. In other words, we're getting them used to pain so they need more

to be able to learn yeah i really like one of the things you mentioned in the book about counting to three because i used to do that when my daughter was little and it made so much sense to me it's like when in life do you know do police officers count to three before they give you a ticket do they give you three chances before no so i stopped counting to three i just let her starting i just started letting her. That was actually a huge popular parenting book. Right. One, two, three magic. But I stopped. We don't believe in repeated warnings. We believe in helping kids understand that cause and effect can kick in after the first poor decision. So, but let's talk to the parent right now who has

this kid who's doing drugs. And here's some advice. And I'm going to come more so as a friend, as a dad to another dad or to a mom. And first of all, my advice is I'd say, boy, this is hard. And the less time you spend blaming yourself, even if you made some mistakes, the more time you're going to have, the more energy you're going to have to regroup and really do the hard work it's going to take to help this kid eventually pull themselves out. That's the first recognition. The second recognition is to ask oneself, in what way am I rewarding this kid for their drug abuse? In what way am I allowing it to be really comfortable for them to continue making these really poor decisions? Or in what way am I allowing this kid to be addicted to video games? And that's a hard one for parents to answer. A lot of different things.

And that's a tough question. But we often see a lot of parents who are running around making sure the kid's clothes are washed all the time. They're making sure the kid has plenty of money. They're making sure the kid gets where they need to go all the time. And they're making sure that the kid is shielded from the legal consequences of their behavior. Yep. The best thing that can happen for a kid is for them to realize that you are going to love them even though they

are in a cell with some pretty unsavory characters and you're going to be their biggest fan while you are not rescuing them from the consequences. Can I ask, can I add to that or ask, would it be okay to add to that but it's not okay for you to engage in this behavior in my home and absolutely you put me at risk right and I won't want in any way here's how I talk to the kid I love you and in no way do i ever want to feel like i am contributing to your poor decisions and in no way do i ever want to feel like i am making it easier for you to be weak than to be strong i like that and i feel like I've been stealing from you.

I like that. I've stolen your opportunity to realize that you can make good decisions and that you can live this life with honor. And that's going to stop. Well, you don't even care. You're just going to kick me out on the street. I'm sorry you feel that way. And what did I say?

I love that. Now, here's the next piece because we have a whole family system, don't we? We have all these other people that are involved. So who calls next? Your own mother how come you're just kicking him out of the house you know then maybe you know your your ex-husband or your ex-wife is calling what happened he just talked to me so you're getting pushback from the whole system see the whole system often is involved in creating the problem and the whole system. See the whole system often is involved in creating the problem and the whole system

will be out of whack and upset when you start putting ripples into it that are eventually going to heal that entire family. They're not, thank you for it. And so getting with a really good professional, and I'm talking about finding somebody you can visit with who can talk you through the process before you really have to do it. So good therapist, good doctor who can sit down with you and get you strengthened up and prepared so that you can be the really strong person that this kid or this young adult really needs. And I don't want to – I want to be clear that I do believe that the kid, these people need help.

I mean, they need psychiatric help. They need mental health services. And as a parent, I'm excited about the opportunity to provide or help with those types of services as long as the kid is working harder on their life than I am. Yes, I agree. I love something you said about the system pushing back. And that was something that I actually experienced. So my daughter was two when I met Daniel. And so her biological father and I are now very good friends, but it wasn't always that way. And I think that's not an uncommon thing we hear in this day and age. It can be really challenging. So we had very different ideas about parenting when I first started this program and, and it was hard. And what I had to deal with, maybe this will help

some of the listeners because I don't think it's uncommon. I had to be willing to go through this phase when, now she wasn't, I'm not dealing with this situation now that we're talking about with drugs. She was younger. I had to be willing to experience the part where she didn't like me very much. And it was all about, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to like go to my daddy's or whatever. And I, that was painful. And I had to be willing to sort of go through that. And the interesting thing is, is that she and I now are like beyond close. Like it's just an incredible bond, but it was not, it was painful. It was hard to do that and have trust and faith that it was going to heal and go the other direction. So just throwing that out there.

We have seen that in so many families. It's painful. And that's why we need to have support from a good professional, lots of good friends who can help us through the reality that we're going to have to be the bad guy for a while. Maybe for a long time. And we're going to be the one that the kid doesn't want to spend time with for a while. And, or maybe the kid says, oh, I'm out of here.

I'm going to go live with dad or mom. And we experienced that tremendous pain and loss. The question friends really is, and let's get, let's get concise about this. Let's love. Yep. I mean, do I love this kid enough to sacrifice my own needs and desires so that they can go off and have a healthy and productive life. Yeah.

It's about love. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, it's about love. And the part that I really like a lot is this is about authentic empathy. Right. There's no sarcasm. Authentic coaching, that there's no sarcasm. There's no belittling. there's none of the stuff that

really damages relationships and this allows you to build that energy because you're not drained all the time seriously i'm just in sincerity you have that and there was one one line that i learned from the program that helped me weather that storm early on when it was painful entitled people can never be happy and that helped me stick that storm early on when it was painful, entitled people can never be happy. And that helped me stick to it because I'm like, I, no matter what, even if it makes her mad at me, I don't want to raise an entitled child because she can't be happy. And something about that helped me so much. Right. Because you shifted your focus to long term you realize that as long as somebody believes that the world is there to bail them out of all their problems and make life comfortable for them

all the time regardless of how nasty they're being they can never be happy it's a golden cage i call it entitlement is a golden cage oh you got you got all this stuff, but you're trapped. Yeah. Yeah. My daughter used to always say it's not, it's not fair. And I said, honey, fair and life have nothing to do with each other. Fair is a place in Pomona with bad food and farm animals. And she used to look at me. That's where the California state fair is. Yeah. And she would look at me like, what? She had no idea what I was talking about, but she was like, it's not fair. Fair is a place with bad food and farm animals. It has nothing to do with life. You know, honestly, sometimes I even say that to myself, you know, in the quiet times, oh, life isn't fair. We all

struggle with that. It's a hard lesson to learn. It's a lifelong lesson to learn. But the more kids can learn it before they get older, then the happier they're going to be and the more resilient. You know, love and logic is really all about raising kids who when times get tough. Yep. And even as adults, they can get through it. Yeah. They have that emotional resilience. One of the lines that I tell her a lot whenever she's like, it's not fair. This is going wrong. It's like, and we together have sort of planted this in our family. What are you doing to make it better?

Life isn't fair. The world isn't fair and it doesn't owe you anything. What are you doing to make it better? What are you doing to make the world a better place? Because it puts her in a place of empowerment. And it just, you know, this whole concept sort of shifted everything in our family, and it's just been so empowering. Right, right.

Well, I have to say, I first learned about you from a good friend of mine that I went to high school with, and he calls me up and he says, hey, you know, let's go hang out. So I went and hung out with him and his wife, and he told me all about this little girl they'd adopted that had all these problems and uh they had learned about love and logic because he actually went to the elementary school that the naked kid went to knew my dad so but he said we were struggling and then we put love and lunch together with what the Amen Clinic does,

and it was just, it was really the turning point. They came out and saw you and got tons of help. Oh, I love that. It was just a life-changing thing, and this was many years ago that this, I was told about it, and I know you guys are making some, you know, life changing. You're helping people change their own lives. It's such a perfect fit. So yeah. So loveandlogic.com, right, is where we can learn about you.

Yeah. Yeah. Best way people can begin this journey. Well, I think the best way now is we have a brand new subscription program that people can get signed up for. And there's new videos every week and audios with me and hundreds of articles. And it's a really good way of being able to learn in little chunks because we find. Which is what I needed. I absolutely needed that. And look, I'm not, I don't

endorse very many things. I'm either passionately for things or passionately against them. There's not a lot of middle ground with me. This is something that honestly and sincerely changed my life. And so it's why I've had your dad on this program. It's why I really wanted you on this program. I've attended the workshop that you have done. Because of what we do and what we see, I just think it's so invaluable. Parent training is just something that is a must if you've got a strong-willed child. And it's a must to stay married too. You got to have some skills so you can enjoy your marriage too. Yeah, absolutely. And you do it. You even have programs on relationships, which is just awesome. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We have programs for adults who act like kids. Well, that's why I'm a child psychiatrist, because I'm still a child. I'm a psychiatrist and I'm also a child. It's really better than being a psychotherapist. Yes, that's true. Well, they also, for the therapists, because we have a lot of therapists who listen to us, you can actually become a Love & Logic

trainer. We had one in our clinic and she was amazing. So, so many ways. Charles, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to spend this time with you. And we are grateful for you and your dad and your work. Please tell him I said hello. I will. He's one of my heroes. Thank you so much. Yes. We are thankful for what you do. All right.

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