Change Your Brain Every Day - Mom Hacks to Stay More Effective Every Day with Dr. Darria Gillespie

Episode Date: February 21, 2019

In the fourth and final installment of a series on motherhood with Dr. Darria Gillespie, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss helpful mom hacks taken straight from Gillespie’s new book. Learn how you, too, can implement these hacks into your own life in order to make your mommyhood easier and more effective.

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 here with Dr. Daria Long-Gillespie. We are talking about mom week and we're having a lot of fun and brain warriors need to take care of their moms. So I want you all right now to text or email or Facebook your mother. And, you know, she went through actually a fair amount of suffering for you, you know, whether you're a boy or you're a girl. And I just want you to say thank you. Yeah. And I want to thank both of you because you're both awesome moms.

Tana, you know, I think one of the best things Tana did, we have this awesome 15-year-old. She's awesome. But for the first 10 years, every night, she read books with Chloe to get her to sleep. And I want to say, I want to honor you because I always felt like I was incredibly supported. I have an amazing partner. And so he's always helped me through the really hard times, but we also, as a family sat down and ate dinner together, no matter how stressful the day was, it's just like, you know, we went out once in a while, but mostly we stayed home and ate dinner together. And I just think those little things are so important. So they, they absolutely are having, having a wonderful supportive partner makes such a difference, but even hacking family dinners. And we were learning in the science that

children who have more family dinners at home have better performance. They have better health. They have better relationships. They do fewer at-risk behaviors when they're teenagers. So I started digging in because I'm going to have a five-year-old and a two-year-old. I'm not going to be sitting there julienning carrots at night. So I started to do like, what is the minimum I can do and still get that benefit? And there's actually a researcher, Dr. Jerica Berg, and that is her research. Part of it is what's the minimum you can do to get family dinner benefit? So there's a whole hack on that. But, you know, it doesn't have to – it's not Thanksgiving dinner.

No. You need – No, and like pre-diced onions, best thing ever made. I'm so excited about all those little things in the grocery store. Yes. Get everything. Like I get – when I get – if I'm cooking teriyaki something, I will go to the butcher while I'm in the middle of grocery store and I'll say here's the chicken can you chop it

they'll do it I know no one thinks about that yes and then you don't have to chop it and you don't have to clean up raw chicken and the food processor is my best friend throw everything into the food processor just don't over grind it. So that's key. That's key. Okay. So relationship tips. Anybody want to start with them? The one thing I want to say, and I'd love to hear your point of this. I just want to honor those mothers who are single moms. Cause we, I just did this great thing on you, but there are moms who don't have that. And I was a single mom for a while. So it's hard. And my mom was a single mom, 16 year old runaway, um, who's incredibly successful. She's just made of steel. Um, but she didn't have that support. And so I

just want to honor, like you said, my mom who, and moms like that, who had to do it on their own. And it's, that's really hard. That is, and there's 40% of moms are single moms right now. So we have to pay attention to that. I similarly have a super, a very supportive husband. But again, acknowledge that there's, so there are times I think, how would I do this on my own? Because it really does take a village. So a lot of we talk about, so one example is something called, called bids for connection. I actually learned about this from my pastor at church at Peachtree Presbyterian during one of the sermons. So it's called Bids for Connection. John Gottman says, in healthy relationships, 82% of these bids for connections are acknowledged,

but when they're not acknowledged, only 19% of the unhealthy ones. So what is a bid for connection? We all do it. Your spouse can do it. Your child can do it. So when somebody reaches out and maybe say, Hey, can you sit down with me for a second? Maybe they don't even say

that. Maybe they say, mommy, can you come play with me? Try to give you a hug. Or maybe it's your child saying, mommy, I'm mad at you. And which, you know, again, makes me want to bristle, but it's really, it's somebody reaching out, kind of poking at you emotionally to say, Hey, are you going to return some affection for me? My daughter used to come up and shut my computer lid. Like she'd literally walk up when she was three, done, and shut my computer lid. So that must be what you're talking about. Translation is time for me.

Yes. And it's so easy. We're so busy being like, just leave me alone for a second. But what happens is science shows that the more you do that, you get less bids for connection. The relationship falters and it just diminishes out. So point being, one, it's just to start to listen for it, which means sometimes putting down your devices. But two, when you're busy. So when my two-year-old comes up, he pushes back my chair and tries to sit in my lap.

Sit there for a second. Take a minute. Take 30 seconds sometimes and acknowledge to them. Maybe you say, I'd love to do this with you. I love you. I've got to do this right now, but can I come in 20 minutes? That means you acknowledge them and that maintains the relationship. So when your spouse comes to you as well, do that as opposed to an I'm busy, not right now. It makes a big difference for the health of your relationship. I love that. I want to acknowledge something you said, because over time, I do, I think we've all probably noticed this ourselves. When we reach

out to someone, if they, if they, if you feel rejected or you feel like, okay, well, that's just, you might even say to yourself, well, I love that person and that's just how they are. But the bottom line is you stop reaching out as much. I won't do it. Yeah. Now time, actual physical time. So what, what you said, I've taught a lot of parent training classes over the years. And this goes back to how to make your child a Republican, a Democrat, or anything you want, 20 minutes a day. If you spend 20 minutes a day with each of the kids, and obviously if you have seven, you're not going to do that. If you spend five minutes a day with each of the kids,

your bond goes up. And if your bond goes up, they begin to pick your values. And when they say, mommy, I'm mad at you, what the response is active listening, which they should teach in second grade. It's when somebody says something, don't go, well, you shouldn't be mad at me. Why are you mad at me? I do all these really great things for you. You're such an ungrateful, you know, little human being. It's like, oh, you're mad at me. And then be quiet so they can tell you why they're mad at you.

Exactly. It's because I miss you. It's because, I mean, you don't know, or it's a misunderstanding, but it's because people, not just women, but when somebody says something, we have a need to justify ourselves, validate ourselves. And in the process, we end up diminishing that other person. And it is not a bid for connection. It is now a bid for disconnection. So repeat back what you hear. Listen for the feelings behind what you're hearing.

And stay with them. And ultimately, they will talk themselves through their own problem. Right. I know in my house, if we don't do that, which you've really helped me try and learn, and it's still sometimes hard, especially with a teenager. But if you don't do it, it becomes a bid for power. It's a power struggle. Yes. And then you end up talking over each other, not, because what are parents, what's our

biggest job? It's to raise competent humans. And you do that by teaching them to solve their own problems. When you solve all their problems, you are more stressed. And you're actually creating the situation where you're going to have to solve their problems when they're 35, which sort of sucks. Yeah. Which nobody wants. Nobody wants that at all.

That's 100% true. And it's about building that little so that one little thing really made a difference for me so that when my daughter does say something to me like that I don't bristle I can instead turn around

and listen. Bid for connection. I really like that. So when they come up and they say something like that start listening for the bid. Yeah. Listen to it for your first spouse.

So I think Chloe does that actually a lot. You may tend to ignore. Yeah. Chloe will just literally she's's still, she's 15. She'll come up and climb in my lap if she wants attention. Yeah, no, she's clear when she wants something. You don't hug me enough, okay?

I hug her like probably four times a day, five times a day. You don't hug me enough anymore. I love it. I hope my children are saying the same thing. I'll hug them all day. I'll just go with them to high school. Yeah. Like, is that weird?

Like, not weird, right? It's weird. It's weird. No, my daughter still holds my hand. So, yeah. All right. Other things. We have about five minutes left.

This has been such a joy with you. So fun. So, a couple other things. So, I don't know. I'm sure you got this, Tana. People hear, you're writing the baby through the buggy, through the grocery store, the baby's screaming. He probably grabbed a thing of flour, threw it on the ground. You have flour in your eyebrows. And then somebody comes up to

you and says, make sure you enjoy this time. And you want to take the flour and throw it at them. Or they say he'll be in college before you know it. And now you want to cry because you just think of your baby going, you're like, this is awful. But that had always kind of made me a little crazy. And so I started researching and my kids and I had gone on a hike one day and it was kind of in the fall. So in Tennessee, that means there were spiders. So I was walking through, I was looking for snakes. I was looking for poison ivy. I was carrying a stick, swatting spiders. We were three quarters of the way through when I realized I didn't look up. I literally did not see the forest where the trees. And I realized that is more, when people say enjoy this time, they may not realize it. This is what I choose to believe that they mean is just being present. So you still have the poison ivy and the snakes and the dirty blow up diapers and tantrums, but you also have the blue sky and the trees and the beautiful moments.

Yes. And just trying to make sure I remember those. So I, again, I jot them down on my phone, those really precious moments. It's so true. And I have to tell you, it really does go that fast. My daughter's 15 and a half. Oh no. I'm telling you, I'm not handling it well. This is one of the, this is one of the few times that besides when she was five and I was struggling, I'm not handling this well. And she's a good kid. She's becoming independent, ready to drive. And I just suddenly, and she's got a boyfriend and she's starting to think for herself. And I raised a daughter to be strong, independent, think for herself. And now that she's doing it, I'm like, huh. I'm like, no, stop.

Like, I don't like it because she's starting to go away from me. We're going to do teen week next. Goes way too fast. Since we did mom week. What are some final thoughts that you want to share with our Brain Warriors Way group? You know, I think the reason I did this and I wrote this book was I felt that a lot of moms, all of us, including myself, had a lot of angst. We were very stressed out and we're being told these really confusing messages that at times are really judgmental as well.

So I wanted to dig through the science and say, what is it really, what did moms need? How can I package it in a way that's very small, very digestible? Because the way we're being told that we have to feel as moms is not what I think is real. And I think moms can follow these hacks, have that I've got this and really enjoy motherhood a lot more and feel a lot more in control of their own and their children's health. I love that. And you said something earlier that I just want to sort of recap because for me, this was really important. When you feel like you don't got this, you still got this and you need to figure out, like, think about the things that you have, that you are doing

that are right. Cause that's just critical. You know, one thing you always say that I think is so helpful, Tana, is does this moment have eternal value? Yeah. So that you know that this is going to pass. And am I going to act in a way that I'll be proud of and will be helpful or not? All right. We have to stop. We have been with Dr. Daria Long-Gillespie, her new book, Mom Hacks, 100 Plus Science-Back Shortcuts to Reclaim Your Body, Raise Awesome Kids, and Be Unstoppable.

Pick it up now. You've been awesome. That was so much fun. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's a pleasure. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode.

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