Change Your Brain Every Day - Now is the Time to Improve Your Family Life

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has caused illness, stress, and economic disruption, there are silver linings hidden for those willing to look for them. In this last episode of a series on parenting in a pandemic, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss their top strategies for tightening up the family unit for a stronger, happier, and more loving home, and why now is definitely the time to do it.

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. So one of the things that's also been helping us, we actually, our kids have actually been getting less screen time recently. I mean,

the first couple of days, probably everyone was freaked out. They might've been on their phones a lot, but now they actually don't have a lot of screen time. One of the things that's been helping to keep their stress down and keep them involved, we have them exercising. I've got them doing yoga while I work out using YouTube videos. And then we have them working out like every day and doing something. And so by having- People become more cooperative after they work out. Yes. They feel better. Their stress is lower. So like me, I'm not, I mean, I have a gym in the house because I've been collecting that equipment for 20 years because I'm not into purses.

I could care less about purses. I care about survival equipment and exercise equipment. Those are my things. I am, it's critical for me. And we did a whole podcast. Actually, we've done a couple on Love and Logic with Jim Fay. Somebody on my channel mentioned jim fay um and if you go to brain warriors way podcast brain warriors way podcast.com we've done like 600 of them

they have about 7 million down downloads you can listen to all the ones with jim is just awesome and and get love and logic if you're really struggling and what i've been thinking about is during a pandemic this is the time to get healthy it's the time to get physically healthy mentally healthy it's the time to get your relationship right with your children rather than just doing the, you know, stress. Don't do the reaction in your head. OK, so we have know what you want. Bonding. Clear rules.

Notice what you like more than what you don't. Discipline. Clear, quick, unemotional consequences that are logical to the situation. Six is supervision. You need to know where they are, what they're doing, especially during a pandemic, because kids can carry it, may not show a lot of symptoms, but then give it to you and you might give it to your parents. This is not a good thing. So supervision is critical. Yeah. So it's interesting. I have my whole family on Life360. It's the app where you can see where

everybody's at. And so, you know, everyone teases me that the NSA has got nothing on me and that's okay. I don't care. It's probably true. but the bottom line is it actually allows me in a normal circumstance, not right now, but in normal circumstances, it allows me to give them more freedom because when I'm able to see where they're at and I'm able to, and they answer me when I text them, it's like, that gives me that, that peace of mind to know that they're safe, that, you know, that kind of thing. Um, and it's got crash detection now. So for the 16 year old, um, those types of things, then I explained that to them. I'm like, look, of thing um and it's got crash detection now so for the 16 year old um those types of things then i explained that to them i'm like look you might feel like it's invasive but let me tell you something you're gonna have a lot more restrictions if you don't have if i didn't have that so figure it out but that's the way it is so supervision know where

they are who they're with what they're doing and more important and they're gonna, what they're doing. And more important, and they're going to go, oh, but my kids won't like that. Well, let me tell you the truth. They won't like that. And they will hate it if you don't care. And so that is really important, supervision. I want you, we want you to be their frontal lobes until theirs develop. And quite frankly be their frontal lobes until theirs develop.

And quite frankly, the frontal lobe isn't finished developing until they're in their mid-20s. So having a good relationship and supervising them, really important. So one of my nieces said to me the other day, she said something that made me almost cry. She said, she was telling me, she said, you know, we were talking about, I told you guys, I always, you know, I believe mentors. We were just talking about stuff in life and what's good. And we were talking about that kind of thing. And she looked at me and she said, well, you're my mentor. And she goes, you're, you're my role model.

And I, I was like, what? Oh. And she said, you like, I want to model myself after you. And I said, oh, that's interesting. So we started talking about it and here's what it boiled down to. She said, you make me feel safe. She's like, you just always seem to know what to do in a crisis. And you make me feel safe.

And she doesn't mind the rules. She actually said, I don't mind the rules. Wow. But her brain is wired like that, to like them, like yours. Even though she pushed back at first. No, she pushed back at first. And she said, and I still like them. So supervision is critical,

and then grace and forgiveness. We all make mistakes. You make mistakes as a parent. If you're like me, you made lots of mistakes when you were a kid. Grace and forgiveness is just so important. People are doing the best they can. And if you and there's actually a forgiveness method I wrote about in my book, Feel Better Fast. It's called the reach method of forgiveness. So take an incident, recall what happened,

empathize with the person. What was going on in their head? You know, they're freaked out by what's going on with the pandemic. Altruistically, that's the A, give the gift of forgiveness, commit to it, tell someone about it, and then hold on to it. This method has been studied and found to be very effective to help people let things go. Because when you hold on to a hurt, who do you think it's poisoning more than anyone else?

It's you. Yeah. No, when you don't forgive, it's like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Yeah. That's not rational. Right. And I like what you said about grace because right now we're on top of everybody. You know, we're in each other's space.

We're like, we don't have a choice. And so there's going to be moments you hurt each other's feelings. It's going to happen. So we actually talked about it in advance. We're like, look, we know it's we're going to try and limit it, but it's going to be moments you hurt each other's feelings. It's going to happen. So we actually talked about it in advance. We're like, look, we know we're going to try and limit it, but it's going to happen. So just know that it's going to happen. Be kind about it and just understand. It's like we know that the people in our house, it's like if you say something that bugs me

and I certainly say things that bug you, it's like, but I know that your intention is always good. I know your intention is always good. I know your intention is to love us, to protect us, to help us. So even if you say something that bugs me, it's like, all right, but I know that he loves me. I know his intention is good. Right. Because we can't go out and do our normal stuff. And the last step, and you were sort of bringing this up, is mentoring.

It's how do you want them? This is not going to be the end of the world, nor is it going to be the end of a crisis in society. Wars are going to happen. More pandemics are going to happen. You want to mentor them through and how you do that is by modeling being okay during this time is not believe every stupid thing you think we're going to do. Um, actually Amelie and I are going to read, uh, my book, Captain Snout and the superpower questions probably later today.

We're going to read that because it teaches kids to kill the ants, the automatic negative thoughts, ants, automatic negative thoughts that steal their happiness. So you should tune in as well, because it's a skill that is just absolutely essential for you to know about how to kill the ants because they're just crawling everywhere. And part of that is you need to turn off the news. I mean, like listen to it 20 minutes, two or three times a day and then stop.

Right, we listen to what we need to listen to. Because otherwise it's just gonna flood you with ants and negativity and then you're gonna be infested and afraid, and you'll get to the hysteria that you talked about earlier from people fighting at the gas station. And now, so what happened? Gas is cheaper now than it has been in years.

We haven't run out of gas. And it's widely available. We haven't run out of gas. We haven't run out of food. I was at the store this morning. She said everything was stocked. Now, I know it depends on where you are. I mean, there are people from Germany and Italy and all of that.

I know it depends. And I always love what you say compared to what? Compared to what? And focus on what you can do, not what you can't do. So I will admit to this. There's been plenty of food. There hasn't been the convenience to go get what I want to get the things I normally get. So we've had to be really creative, right?

There's been a lot of times I've gone to the grocery store. I'm like, huh, I have no idea what to do with turnips, but there's turnips. So we're eating turnips, right? There's plenty of food. It's just not what I would normally make. So I'm making a lot of weird stuff. And so far, everyone's loved it. I've gotten them involved in the kitchen.

We just have to be sort of creative. We love the process. We love the relationship. And she's actually a really great cook. You never thought you'd say that. I never thought I'd say that. When I first met her, she couldn't cook. I actually prayed she wouldn't cook.

She was such a disaster. And now she's a master. And so we hope this has helped you. Leave a comment, leave a question. Also check out our podcast, brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. We'll be here for you. Thanks so much.

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