Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 142 | Parenting Coach and Pediatrician Dr. Mona

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

Today’s interview is with Dr. Mona, a Board Certified General Pediatrician, parenting coach, and mother! We had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Mona at this year’s “I Am Mom Summit” and we had so many additional questions for her we knew we had to have her on our show to continue the conversation. Dr. Mona is such a good resource and has a passion for sharing educational information on parents' most common concerns. Find out more about Dr. Mona below! Follow Dr. Mona on Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/pedsdoctalk/?hl=en Follow her Podcast ▶ https://open.spotify.com/show/3F6DSTFKix5oHu0ZT0j1eC Subscribe to Dr. Mona on Youtube ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx2hGbeaOvy8P5m357V3gBw/about Find out more about Dr. Mona here ▶ https://pedsdoctalk.com/ Today’s podcast sponsor is AG1 ▶ Athletic Greens Is going to give you a FREE 1-year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit https://athleticgreens.com/eastfam Today’s podcast is also sponsored by Everlywell ▶ Everlywell is offering a discount of 20% off an at-home lab test at https://everlywell.com/eastfam Make sure you’re following along with us as well!! Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok! ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Where's your playlist taking you? Down the highway, to the mountains, or just into daydream mode while you're stuck in traffic. With over 4,000 hotels worldwide, Best Western is there to help you make the most of your getaway. Wherever that is. Because the only thing better than a great playlist is a great trip. Life's the trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Book direct and save at bestwestern.com. What's up everybody? Welcome back to a couple things with Sean and Andrew a podcast all about couples and the things they go through. Well, this is well timed. Um, today's interview is with pediatrician Dr. Mona. Um, if only we could have done this like in real time and asked her all about the flu because our kids are so sick. But she is very, very knowledgeable. We talk through so many incredible things about kids, the digital era. They're like psychology, how to raise kids, all of it.

Don't miss this one. She's got some good info, and I got some influenza. So we're just going to roll into this one with Dr. Mona. Dr. Mona, we are so excited to have you. I'm excited to kind of pick your brain on basically all the things that you talk to parents about on a daily basis in your office as a pediatric. No, not as a pediatrician. A pediatrician. There we go.

I just. This word. This word is a wild word. Pediatric. How are you, Dr. Mona? I am doing good. thank you so much for having me. I'm doing great today. Do you mind if I just flex your resume real quick? So Dr. Mona is gracious enough to give us some of her time today. She's a board

certified general pediatrician, parenting coach, mother. She's been featured on parents.com going morning America, ABC Nightly News. Sorry, I'm tripping because it's such a long list of media that she's been on. She's a host of the Peds Doc Talk podcast. That's right. And we actually just got to interview her for the I.M. Mom Summit, which is huge. So many different things. So how'd you get into this, first of all? Oh, well, first of all, thank you so much for having me because I do everything that I'm going to probably talk about here and more on my podcast and my platform. So Pete's Doc Talk was created a few years ago because I would be in visits with my families and I would feel like a broken record talking about the same thing over and over. And one of

my families was like, Dr. Mona, I love this. Where can I find what you just said online? And I said, you can't because it's not anything I've written. So I went home that day and I told my husband, I'm like, I need to start something because I have so many different tips on health, parenting, development, and I wanted to create a platform where I could do that. So I created Peeds Doctaw, which is not only the podcast, but it's an Instagram account, YouTube channel, a course for parents, toddler workshops, and so much more to provide that, you know, relatable, easy to digest information for parents on the health development and, you know, parenting of their children. Okay, this is a big, big question. So we, when we interviewed you for the I and Mom Summit,

we talked about setting boundaries with screen time for your kids. As a pediatrician, what other areas do you feel like boundaries are necessary for children? Ooh, this is so good. So screen time is one of the most important ones, I think. And then besides that I think with sleep in terms of making sure that we do try to allow our children to go to bed at a relatively similar time, you know, sleep is one of the most important things for me because it actually is regenerative. It's good for our immune system. It's good for learning. So when we talk about sleep boundaries, this means every day are we allowing our child to sleep till midnight, you know, like being up till midnight or is this just a one-off because of a social

activity or a party. So this is something really important to me. So sleep boundaries, screen time boundaries would be really important. And then when you talk about boundaries in general, this would be just rules that you have as a family. So boundaries at meal times, like we're not going to throw food. We're not going to hit our siblings. We're not going to, you know, forcefully do anything that we're not supposed to do. So it's boundaries on physical aggression, which is very common in toddlers for them to want to throw, kick, hit things just to learn about their world, throwing a food at meal times, you know, saying certain things at meals. Like, I don't like that. I don't want that okay you don't have to like it but if you don't like you just put it aside so these to me

would be some of the big things that we should be looking at and how would you advise a parent on like setting boundaries and dealing with the tantrums that come with it at the beginning in order to get kind of that routine of it i think she's asking because i i'm i came from a family with i have four siblings and it was kind of chaos like boundaries were very loose i kind of have that same mentality as a parent. And so at this point, our kids have established habits. What happens when we try to introduce a new boundary? I don't feel like it's going to go smoothly. This is a great thing. And the thing about boundaries is you said it perfectly. It has to be consistent and it has to be something that you're going to be expected of from your child. So when I say consistent,

this means like 80% of the time you're holding the boundary. So as a parent, we have to respect the fact that you're not going to be able to hold a boundary every single time. Like sometimes, let's use screen time as an example. Sometimes you may have a boundary of, okay, no screen time today, but you as a parent are going to be like, you know what, let's just watch another hour. I did this the other day. I was so tired and my son wanted to watch Mira Royal Detective. And I was the one who's like, hey, do you want to watch more? And he was like, no, mom, I'm good. I'm like, wait, come here. Like, let's watch more. So sometimes as a parent, you're going to make decisions or want to extend a boundary or do something different. But the idea here is 80% of the time you are

making a choice and a boundary. So to answer Sean's question initially, like how do you go about with boundary setting? So there's certain steps that you have to do. First, you got to think as a parent, is this boundary important to me? And is it something that I'm going to follow through with? So for example, boundary is using screens as an example that we are going to watch two episodes of a show. Okay? So now that is the boundary you've committed to as a parent. You want to commit to your boundary as a caregiver before you go into that situation. So two episodes. You're going to watch the two episodes. When the two episodes are done, you want to show your child that you've committed to the boundary, right? So before those episodes came on, hey, sweetie, we're going to watch

two episodes of this show. After it's done, we watch two episodes. So it's time to turn off the TV. So now the next step after you've committed to your boundary is the calm follow through. You have to follow through with the boundary that you've created because if you don't, it shows your child that you don't mean business, that you don't mean the boundary. And children are learning with repetition. And sometimes parents can be a little comfortable doing this because they're trying to, you know, be fun, but you can absolutely be fun. We are a fun family, but we have boundaries with certain things, right?

So when this happens, you're saying, okay, it's time to turn it off, time to go play outside. and you're going to calmly follow through. You or your child will turn off the TV. They may get upset. Mommy, I want TV. I see that you really want the TV, but it's time to go play outside now. And this was so much fun.

I love watching the show with you, but it's time to move on to our next activity. And then you'll move on. You want to avoid the rise. What that means is you don't want to join their anger or frustration. Okay, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry getting upset with them because then that builds with chaos with them. And then you want to be okay if they're not,

happy with the boundary, right? I see that you're really upset. It's okay that you're upset. Why don't we move on? And then I always say physical connection can be really helpful. So if they're so upset and they've now gone into a tantrum mode, right, because they didn't like the boundary and now they're throwing and kicking or they're just on the ground crying. We do not want to turn back on the TV or give them back the thing that we held the boundary because then that teaches them that you're going to cry and we'll go back to, I don't, you know, it doesn't matter. My boundaries don't mean anything. You want to be very firm and saying, I know you really want this.

It's not time for TV anymore. We can watch again later. Give them a hug, caress their back. You know, whatever it is that you all show affection as a family is so vital so that they know that boundaries are important, but I love you. I still think this is so, you're so important to me. And I respect that you don't like the boundary, but the boundary's there, right? I think one of the pitfalls, like I said, is that parents often get so scared of their

children being upset that they turn back on the TV or they give them back the thing that the kid that we were trying to hold the boundary. for, but then the child will never learn with the repetition that this was an important boundary for my parent. And so when you start to do this over time, you'll start to realize that they won't have tantrums because they know that you are going to hold that boundary. You're not going to join their chaos and get upset with them. And you're not going to join that rise as well of just being upset with them.

And then they're going to move on to the next activity. I mean, this is something that with repetition is very fascinating. And it has a lot to do with our children recognizing that repetition and consent. which is so vital for them. And the toddler brain, you know, that one-year-old to five-year-old brain really loves this consistency, even though we may feel like they don't like it in the moment, they'll start to recognize this as a pattern and be like, oh, okay, well, TV's done, time to move on, but it can take some time to get there with repetition. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days, delivered

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and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Let's get back to it. It feels like good, just like relationship advice. Yeah. super good you should teach this for each other yeah um i would say one of the most like one of the topics that i obsess over the most as a parent of two littles is the whole milestone thing i get really really wrapped around this concept of i need to be helping them develop and then also like hitting all of these milestones that you read in books or you read online they got to be on schedule

they got to be they got to be saying 12 words by 12 months or you know it's like Yeah, yeah. So my question is, one, how can you best encourage as a parent, kind of that natural development that a kid is supposed to have? And then how do you, as a doctor and pediatrician, advise parents to not overly obsess about milestones, but still show the importance of them? Oh, I love this question because development is my jam. It's my bread and butter. It's something that's, I think, so important. And you're right.

You asked me at the beginning, like, what do parents come in, like, you know, concerned about or, you know, we're talking about boundaries. But milestones, there is a huge milestone anxiety that exists in modern parenting. And I think a lot of it comes from the fact that we do want to do things perfectly as parents. And so we expect that to happen for our children as well. That in order for me to be this perfect parent, my child also has to be the perfect sleeper, the perfect eater, checking all the boxes. But I want to first remind everyone listening, especially if you're a parent, and this is also human advice, like adult advice too.

none of us are perfect and there's no schedule that any of us are trying to meet. Now, milestones, just so that parents understand, when we talk about milestones in general, this is for the developmental community, pediatricians, to know generally, you know, what 80% of children should be doing. So if a child's not meeting a certain quote-unquote milestone, we know that we need to possibly get that child some intervention, which could mean speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, or otherwise. And, you know, my son actually had a medical issue that I was, like, watching his development

like a hawk. You know, he was born and he had a stroke and seizures. And we were watching this. You know, like, development already was important to me, but because of his history, I was also developing a little bit of milestone anxiety. And I want to say that sometimes your anxiety can come so bad that you're starting to not enjoy playtime because you're so obsessed with them meeting certain milestones, like rolling and crawling, that you're not just being present with them. and just enjoying their presence and so much a child development is innate so much of it is evolutionary so much of it is allowing them time on the floor right so time out of devices right so letting them just once they start you know putting their head up in tummy time and starting to show signs of

rolling we want to really maximize floor time floor play right this is what's going to really help them develop those big and small muscles and this is when i go back to the basics right we think so much about I have to do all this stuff. But when you go back to the 1990s or even generations before us, when we did not have any baby books like the way we do now or all these social media accounts, everyone was meeting milestones, but we have so much pressure now that I feel like we end up doing things inadvertently to destruct their milestones because we're like, oh, my God, I got to do this.

And I got to fidget with them. Let them be. Let them play on the floor in a safe environment. Obviously, they can't be getting into anything unsafe. In terms of playing with activities, you know, we talk. about screen time also. We want to really try to minimize screen time under the age of one. And between one and above, screen time is a part of our life, but it's not the only thing, right? We want to have as much face-to-face contact with a caregiver as is humanely possible with your

schedule. I am a working mom as well. I know how busy life is. So we want to really look at our resources and say, are we really trying to get one-on-one face time with my child? Are we really trying to maximize outdoor play with my child? Because all of those things are also going to be places that we can really get language opportunities, right? When they are with the caregiver and their caregiver and them are focused on an item, whether that be watching a TV show together, whether that is looking outside at the trees or looking at the clouds or looking at a toy that's rolling across the floor,

when a child is having joint attention with their caregiver and their caregiver is describing that item, language is blossoming this way. This is such a huge basic sort of developmental tip. But when you look at all of these things, these are basic developmental tips, and I have so much more that I have in one, like all my resources. But when you look at all this, I want to remind families that even doing

all of this, there is a small percentage. And I'm going to say about three to five percent of children that may not meet certain milestones. And it sounds like a little. But when you look at how many children there are, it could seem like, you know, you know a lot of people that may not meet certain milestones. And this is not a negative if they're meeting milestones. This does not mean that you did not do enough. This means that your child's brain needs a little bit different assistance in helping them guiding them to meet that milestone or meet the best of their potential in that developmental domain. So I look at language as an example. Some children, some parents feel so bad when their child's not meeting a language milestone. Like they feel like they failed their kid. And that has a lot to do with

societal judgment. And I can throw that all out there. I've heard it. Oh, your child's not talking because you gave them too much screen time. Your child's not talking because you don't spend enough time with them. Your child's not talking because you did this. Like the people have so much judgment, but also we don't understand that every could be learning different. You could have two twins in the same household, one picked up language much quicker than the other. You guys have two children. Your older or younger could meet a certain motor milestone before the other,

or one of the other children meant a language milestone before the other. This doesn't make them better or worse. It makes them different, just like me and you all are, right? We all have just different ways that we learn certain skills. So it's important to recognize that every child in front of us is unique, that they are all meeting a milestone on their own. trajectory. But if they're not meeting a certain quote unquote language milestone or motor milestone, the thing that that's going to help us realize as pediatricians and medical

professionals is, okay, you're not meeting this certain skill that we would love your child to have. Are they going to meet it because, you know, they're on the cusp and it's coming? Or do they need that extra assistance? You know, someone trained in that area, speech therapist or a physical therapist to help boost their potential so that they can reach the best outcome. Because when it comes to children, I always like to remind families, the goal here is for them to meet their own trajectory in terms of weight, in terms of height, in terms of development, in terms of skills. Every human being is unique. And as parents, you know, my dream is that we can help foster a children's developmental, a child's developmental trajectory without trying to compare so much. But milestones builds that right in, right?

already you're already comparing yourself to your friends or your other sibling when in reality we want to really try to focus on okay my child may not be saying 50 words like her friend who is the same age but she's meeting the milestone you know so this is okay we'll still work with her she's my brilliant child it's okay um and i was there too my son didn't speak as fast as other children but now he won't stop talking you know so this is great but um it's it's there is anxiety there And I hope parents really understand that every child is so unique. And our journey with them as parents, whether they're twins, siblings, whatever it is, is also unique as well. And we have to look at every child as their own individual personality and brain, you know, that we have to foster.

This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin turbo V8 engine, the Defender, Octa, is taking on the Dakar Rally, the ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at land rover.ca. Can I, how do you view your role as a parent? Is it closer to maybe like the role of the president of the United States where it's like people say like they don't actually do anything. They don't have no influence over the direction of the country or is it like can do parents like drastically change the outcome of their kids? Like if you were going to A, B, test with different parents, how do you view yours or do you have any insight on that?

I love this question. And I would say we have a huge role in being this sort of, I would love, I'm trying to find the right analogy of a person. I would say that we are like a small business owner that is, let's talk about like a CEO of a small company, okay? You guys are business owners too. So I would hope. So as a CEO of a company, you see the potential in all.

all of your people in your, you know, your children, you see the potential in each of them. Your role as a CEO is to set some boundaries. Your role is to set some common sense rules, but you don't have to be stuffy all the time. You don't have to be boring all the time. You can be relatable, right? Like I'm talking about like a tech company CEO, the ones that like it's casual, you know, because what you're doing here is boundaries are really important for children, but they also need to be seen for their strengths, right? So as a CEO, I would hope that you're doing that, right? You're seeing that, hey, this child is doing really well. at this and really loves to play soccer. Am I going to force them to go do like football? No. Am I going

to force them to do ballet? No, they really like soccer. So let me foster this soccer. Now, if they don't like it, we'll have a conversation about why they don't like soccer, this and that. But I would say our role is to really set the rules at the house, bring some fun and levity into parenting. I think parenting is such a, such an honor. Like, I look at it as a privilege. I know a lot of people are parents, but it is a hard role. We are responsible for raising these humans that are going to make decisions in this world and hopefully be kind to other human beings. So I look at it as a huge privilege. And then we also have to really look at each individual child that we're raising as someone that has this amazing potential for themselves, you know? And that is really hard to do as parents

sometimes because we get into that comparison game, you know, with either a sibling or another friend's child, but really looking at the strengths and weaknesses of our children. And this is kind of like I said, advice for how we look at adults as well, right? Like, everyone thrives in certain areas. You can't be great at everything as a human being. So you have to really look and say, here's what is working for my family. Here's what's working for my child. And just be that loving, you know, that loving presence in your child's life to guide them. They feel comfortable coming to you with concerns. You know, that is kind of how I view my role as a parent. I want my son to feel completely secure with who he is. I want him to feel comfortable.

exploring the world, but I also want him to know that if he's not safe, if he's upset, if he's scared, if something's not going right, he always has my husband, myself, home base to come back to. Right? I'm talking about even as a teenager or an adult, I want him to always know that there is open communication here, that there's love here, that there's always going to be someone on his team, someone that is looking out for his best interests. And even if he fails, even if he, when he succeed, I will love him just the same. You know, there's so much about parenting that can be conditional a lot of times. I think a lot of us can look back at childhood and say, you know, there was this or that, but it's so important to love your children for who they

are and what they bring to the table and try to foster that in their entire life. That was really good. Thank you. I like the analogy. Founcing around. I'm like, it's hard to come by. Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Lois philosophical debate, so he'll throw those questions in whenever he can. I also love analogies. So I'm not good at them, but I like them. Yeah. Bouncing around a couple other topics. You are an expert, or an expert, one of your other, I can't find words today. You good today, dude. One of your other places of expertise is in helping children kind of foster those good coping skills at such a young age. Where did this come from? Why is this so important to you? And what would your advice in that area be? So I would love to

answer the why is this important to me and where it came from so you know a lot of my platform is talking about the health the health of children the development of children and also parenting tips for for parents but a lot of what we do in our life has been set in stone from the first seven years of our childhood we don't even realize that but how we that's terrifying I know it's terrifying so when Andrew you asked me like hey how important is the role of a parent I'm like it's really important I don't want to put pressure on pressure on parents but when I say it's really important it doesn't have to, it's not going to be hard, okay? I know it sounds like an incredibly daunting task. Of course it is because we're responsible for children. But when you get into these certain

principles of parenting that I love talking about, you're going to really realize, I got this. Like, I'm going to raise this child who loves themselves and, you know, loves the world and looks at themselves as a positive member of society, like I mentioned already. But when I look at this, you know, a lot of what I look at is my husband's an ER physician. I'm a pediatrician. And so much of our health and so much of the reasons people end up in the ER as adult. despite trauma, I'm talking to like besides, you know, emergencies or freak accidents, a lot of it has to do with lifestyle choices. So having a healthy relationship with sleep,

meaning prioritizing sleep. And I mentioned how important that is. Like sleep is something that I always go back to because it is the fundamental of so much of our health. So sleep, how we view sleep, relationship with food. So how we view food, how we view our body image, how we view ourselves in the mirror, how we talk to ourselves, in the mirror. This is so important for our mental health. And then also our relationship with

stress, which is bringing me to your question about, you know, why coping skills are so important. So those are your three things, right? Sleep, food, and stress. Because if you can manage your stress, if you can get enough sleep, and if you eat a variety of nutrients, you're going to avoid a lot of health problems in your life. You're not going to avoid every health problem, let's be honest, but you're going to really avoid a lot of that stress-related, you know, food-related illnesses that we see, diabetes, heart hypertension, all of that. So we look at the big picture. Do I have a healthy relationship with food? Am I trying to prioritize sleep whenever I can? I know it's really hard. And then the third thing is coping skills. Now, healthy relationship with emotions

comes down to how I view my emotions. And again, this is so important for adults as well. And it's actually what I talk a lot about on my podcast for parents. But we need to look at emotions as equal. We tend to want to push down negative emotions. Like if someone's crying, will say, don't cry. Why are you crying? But we would never tell anyone who's happy to stop being happy. We have been programmed to say that crying is a negative thing. So we say, okay, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry. But now if your child was happy and joyful, you're not going to say stop being happy, right? So we need to understand where that's coming from. It comes from our childhood saying that crying is bad, crying is weak. We shouldn't cry. Only babies cry. When in

In reactionality, we know that tears is a healthy human emotion. Tears can mean tears of joy. Tears can mean, you know, tears of sadness, but it's a healthy physical manifestation of emotion. So we don't want to shut that down in children and try to hush them out of that feeling. So when we're talking about coping skills, one of the biggest things I talk about is when my child is feeling sad or when your child is feeling upset, saying that first thing you want to do when you're teaching healthy coping skills is labeling and saying, hey, I see that you're really upset right now. I see that you're crying. And this is something that can be done the moment the child is like nine months old because by then they're already doing reciprocity, right? If you make a face like this, they'll make a face back. And so when you start to notice that they're showing signs of reciprocity around the eight month and nine month mark, you can start doing this when they start to get scrunchy and make a sad face.

Oh, you're really sad. I know. I see that you're very, very sad. And then when they get older, like toddler years, you're going to show them books that have faces of different human emotion. Babies who are crying, children who are happy. So they can see all the different emotions and then you're going to start labeling. Or if you are sad, like I've been there where I've cried in front of my son, I'm crying.

And I say, mommy was crying because mommy was a little sad, but mommy's okay now. So that is your way of teaching them about emotions. And then when they are feeling frustrated, what we can do is what can we do when we're feeling sad? And this is something that you can teach like a child who's, I would say, 18 months plus, because now you've taught them about what the emotions are, then you can actually teach them what to do with it, right? So now just say your child's feeling sad. You can't really teach them in the middle of a crying episode,

but just say you're talking about feeling sad. Like you see a child on the TV looking sad. Oh, that child is sad. What makes you feel better when you're sad? A hug, sitting and, you know, cuddling with a teddy bear, taking some deep breaths, right? That is what I mean by coping skills, right? So healthy coping skills are things that we as adults should also do.

So examples, I'm going to rattle some off. Taking some deep breaths, I think, is one of the biggest coping skill that even adults should do when we're feeling stressed or overwhelmed. So we taught this art to our son from a young age. So we taught him when he was calm. But then now when he's upset, we say, Ryan, you're feeling a little upset. I want you to really take some deep breaths with me right now. And he will take deep breaths with me.

But the idea here is that you also have to model it, right? Because kids learn by what they see. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets, can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.com.com. So you're going to take some deep breaths with the child and they're going to start to realize that when they're upset, what coping skill strategies can they go back to? Okay, we have breathing exercises. So taking deep breaths. We also have

just say they want a hug. I think hugs are an amazing coping skill, right? physical contact with a loved one is so beneficial. It releases feel good hormones that can calm you down after you've been upset. So when your child is feeling sad or you see a sad face, right? You're teaching them when you're sad, what can you do? You can give someone a hug, right? Like if you see someone sad on the playground, you can go and ask if they want a hug or if they need some help. And so then when they finally have those emotions, you're going to coach them through that again. And you can't teach them when they're disregulated and like they're so upset you can't like be like okay well no i need you i'm to teach you how to breathe you're teaching them all the coping skills when they're calm so that when they do

have these big feelings they are now going to try to grab it through their you know their tool belt and say okay and you're going to say okay breathing okay do you need a hug and so then they'll get primed but like oh yeah i'm feeling sad oh yeah and when i felt sad my mommy last time told me that i should i should breathe or get a hug and this is going to feel really good to them so these are so important to me And it's such a beautiful thing when you start to see that because what it teaches children also is that it teaches them emotional connection with other humans, right? So when they see a child hurt or if they see a child crying, they also begin to normalize these feelings, too, rather than saying only babies cry, babies don't, you know, big boys don't cry. We say, oh, that kid, you know, who fell in the park, why do you think they're crying? And then my son will go, oh, he fell.

Oh, yeah, he fell. But what happens when we fall? We get back up. and then we feel better, right? Like, you can use these opportunities that happen in all of our lives to teach our children, too, so that then when they find themselves in those emotional moments, they don't feel shame. They don't feel like, oh, my gosh, like, I can't cry when I fall. You know, sometimes it hurts when you cry, and that's okay.

Do you need to make a big production about it? No, but we move on, right? We say, oh, it hurt. It's going to feel better. Do you need a hug? Do you need something to help you feel better right now? And then we move on and move forward. But I feel like it can so greatly help our children and also just make the world, and this sounds like my beauty pageant speech, but I think you can just make the world a better place, you know, when we start to really foster this sort of emotional connection and this emotional insight into these toddlers and children so that when they go on in the world, they're, you know, they're more accepting of human emotions and can recognize it in other children and adults as well.

And that's so good. I have a follow-up question to my earlier one. Yeah. Which is the more common scenario? A parent helping a kid who otherwise wouldn't have excelled, excelled in different areas of life, or parents doing something traumatic that ultimately long term does damage to the kid and their potential in whatever area. So you're asking which one, yeah, you're asking, okay, so the second one is doing something. For the second one, does the parent know, they don't think.

that they're doing anything wrong, right? Correct. And then for the first one. It's like a perpetuation of like a habit that like, hey, my parent yelled at me all the time and I'm doing that to my kid. Is it easier to mess a kid up or push a kid forward? But the first one, I want to clarify that one, because are you pushing, pushing them in something that they otherwise would not want to do?

No. Or just pushing them in general. No. In general. Okay. Helping them in life. So I think, I think both of these things are happening in parenting. I will say that the second one, to me, is obviously more detrimental,

meaning it can be concerning when we are putting our, you know, putting our insecurities or trying to, you know, like the yelling cycle, all of these things. So I want to kind of touch upon that second one, the one about the doing things for our children that could potentially be harmful, right? I think, and we can talk about both, but for that one, what we have to recognize is we, I feel like a lot of times we become parents, And we read all the parenting books or we read all the resources online and we know, okay, this is how I deal with the tantrum.

This is how I deal when my child's fighting sleep or not wanting to eat their food. But we don't realize and read about or do the work on is why is it that when my kid gets angry that I also get very stressed and why does my heart rate start to go up? Why am I very uncomfortable going back to the conversation we had about emotions? why am I very uncomfortable when my child has very big feelings, like starts to cry? Is it because I'm tired, stress, whatever, or is it because when I was a child, my parents told me that I should not cry, that I would be, like, and I'm being very honest as someone who deals a lot of parenting issues, that they were told you shouldn't cry, that if you keep crying, I'm going to smack you.

If you keep crying, I'm going to give you something to cry about. Now, if you grew up in a childhood like that, you're going to grow up, never feeling like crying is okay when like i said crying is actually one of the most healthy human emotions we can have it's when we try to stop crying and like say stop crying stop crying that the person just learns as they get older to bottle it up that you need to bottle it up but bottling doesn't allow that energy to go anywhere right it doesn't allow the feelings to be felt so that you can process those feelings and cope and learn to move on so that you can deal with those issues when it comes again right if you keep bottling it up you're never learning coping skills because you never were

taught that these emotions are okay. So to me, that is the biggest thing that we that a lot of parents don't do. They don't look at their childhood. They don't look at, it's all the things that I'm bringing to my table right now. Is it stuff that just day to day or am I like this because of how I was parented? I, you know, I look back at my childhood and there's so many amazing things for my childhood. But there were things that I would love to do that I would love to do differently with my own son and my husband agrees, right? Like we grew up in very, um, Indian American households that, you know, you got to be a doctor. You got to do this, which we both are, by the way. But you know, you got to do X, Y, and Z and, you know, answering your first question about, like, the pressure to do things and guiding them, you know, there was a lot of expectation of you got to check the checkboxes, right? Because we're in America now. You got to meet the American dream. You got to do all of these things. And in some ways, it put a fire under our ass to succeed. But it also created stress with failure, right? We didn't know how to cope with failure. We felt very uncomfortable when it was time to fail. And I look at parenting as this.

huge microcosm of what are we teaching our children? The goal here is that we teach children that, like I said earlier, that they're capable of handling different situations, right? That if they do fail, that we are going to be there in terms of guiding them. Are we going to fix their problem every day? No, that's not what guiding means. That means working with them to a solution dependent on their age. Let's use a toddler versus a teenager. A toddler can't do a puzzle, right? Of course you're not going to make your toddler sit there and figure out the puzzle all on their own, right? They're a toddler. They need help. So you're going to sit there. They're getting frustrated, right? This is a sign of them failing, just use this as an example. So you're letting them sit there and they're

struggling. You're going to talk to them and walk them through it. I see that you're really frustrated right now. I see that this is really difficult. Do you want to try again? How about we we turn this piece this way? And then you're going to turn it for them. And then they're going to get it. And then you're going to go, yes, you got it. And you're going to build that. eventually they're going to be old enough because of their cognitive development that they're going to be able to do the puzzle, right? But you just guided them through failure. You didn't leave their side. You didn't say, well, you just figure it out.

I'm not going to help you. You're smart enough. No, you're, you recognize that they're only a toddler. Now you have a teenager who just failed their first exam, right? Like they were getting A's and now they got their first C, okay? Or first F, if you want to talk about failing. And now the parent goal here, using that same principle in the toddler years, is are you going to just leave, them high and dry and say, well, you need to figure it out. It's not my problem. No. The parent choice here

is guiding them, like you said, like kind of forcing or kind of guiding them to a goal is you got a C or you got an F. Let's use C as an example. What could you do differently next time? I know, I saw you working hard. Do you feel like it would be better if you worked with someone else? Do you feel like there's any other strategies that you could have done better so that you could have worked harder? Do you think that you're overdoing things? Like, do you feel like it's too hard? Or do you feel like it's too hard? maybe you're doing too many extracurricular activities, right? The goal for a teenager now is for them to help guide them figure out on their own also. Well, what troubleshooting do I need to do so that I don't keep failing?

Or do I just need extra help, right? Like, do I need tutoring? Or do I need to maybe change the classes I'm in or, you know, pivot here? Because we know that, again, the goal in life is not to meet every checkbox, get the A's and get all of that. The goal is when we don't succeed, whether that's on. a societal created expectation of grades or whatever it is. How am I going to teach my child to pick themselves up, pivot, and work again? And I know, Andrew, you're an athlete. Well, both of you are athletes for football and gymnastics. I know I'm preaching to the choir here that, I mean,

I was an athlete too, but not nearly as good as you all, but you learn so much through being an athlete also about picking yourself up and figuring out, well, what do I need to do better next time? And I love that. And I think, I hope you're taking that into parenting, right? because that to me is one of the biggest things that I learned from being an athlete is how, you know, there's so many things that people can say about, like, you know, the, how time-consuming being an athlete is, but the benefits, my gosh, is the work ethic, right? You learn, if things don't work, what can I do? What can I do to change?

Do I need to put more time? Am I putting too much time into this? Am I beating my body to the ground? Like, what do I need to do here listening to my own voice here to really make these changes? And I think we should do so much of that with our children as well so they can meet their own potential, too. Tim's new scrambled egg loaded croissant, or is it croissant? No matter how you say it. Start your day with freshly cracked scrambled eggs loaded on a buttery, flaky croissant.

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I love your perspective. I appreciate you entertaining my questions here. It's so interesting. I love me. These are so good. You see, you see thousands of parents and like you kind of have classifications now. By the way, I'm so curious, all these different frameworks that you mentioned like the yelling cycle.

I want to know like all of that stuff because for me personally it helps to like classify things is like when I'm going through the yelling cycle right now like whatever with my kid who's frustrating me it's like oh hold on I know this is the yelling cycle and let me let me interject and cut it off here so I'd be curious maybe in a part two conversation about all those different kind of frameworks but I I am to your point about being an athlete like I think right now where I'm in with parenting is viewing it as standing in like a hallway that has doors that represent all the possibilities and opportunities of life with your kid right and it's like okay how can i push them to uh get to the doors that are worth getting to and like opening um worth like the problem solving the getting back up not and not closing doors that otherwise wouldn't have been closed so like you know our one year old got hurt last night. It's like, man, how can I, you know, not in a bubble wrap parenting type of way, but like, how can I encourage them most without like, you know, having them have a super negative connotation to sports because I'm like fixated on them being athletes, right? And then they just

automatically shut off when they grow up in that realm. But it's like, that's kind of where I'm at where it's like, all right, let me just encourage them where it needs to be and then just try not to ruin the rest kind of. But I love that. And that could be a whole conversation, but I want to say one thing because you both are athletes and my husband and I are both physicians. We are the opposite that we don't want our child to become a doctor. It's so funny. But the reason I'm bringing that up is we don't want our son to become a doctor, but he already

is showing signs that he wants to become a doctor. And a lot of the reason I'm bringing that up, Andrew, is you can't force your child to do a lot of things. We know that, right? You don't know if they're truly going to have. And I have to be very frank here, if they're going to have the same athletic prowess that you and your wife have. We don't know that.

I can't say that. I don't want to, you know, they could because they have your genetics, but they may not. And we don't want to set that expectation up for them because then they're failing in our eyes. They're not failing in their own trajectory, right? We created that expectation for them. And they're just doing their own life. And, but we create a standard.

So what I'm saying, though, is that if they see that you all, because I, you know, I know you're not professional athletes at this moment, but if that's something that's important to your family, I know you all work out, like I know that's something that they see probably growing up, they may start to realize, wow, like, this is really cool. Like my, like, show the watch videos of your guys is in your, in your prime, you know, doing all the things that you did. And they may just by modeling want to become those things, right? Like, hey, dad, I would really love to try out football or I really would love to do gymnastics or even another new sport. And just by modeling without pressure, right? They can start to get

those seeds. Like, you just living your life of loving sports is going to show them. It's kind of like why I say that I brought that story up. of my son. Like my son, I love, even though I don't want him to become a doctor because of all the logistics, I love being a doctor. Like, he sees me do all the things that I do. I do, I work from home. I get to be on these, like, I do these kind of things. I do all these summits or videos. And he gets to see it. And he now thinks, and he goes around singing, my mommy is a doctor. My mommy is a doctor. And I ask him, like, you know, like he'll just put on his set this scope. And I'm like, you like, you like being a doctor? He's like, I love it. And I'm like, that's so weird

to me because I'm not like forcing him I just he's seeing how much I love it like he's just seeing how much I love it and whether he becomes a doctor or not I have no idea but I want him to feel like wow like I can do whatever it is that I want to do in this world and my parents will be on my will have my back like it's such a cool thing when he realizes that and they're only you know we both have toddlers so much to go and so much of a life of like figuring out their likes and dislikes and what they're actually going to want to do but the modeling without pressure just like living the life that you love and you know if you're if you love football or whatever sport that you guys are watching in your house right now and just showing them that and they may go

play with their toys or want to watch but with that repetition of the things that you love they may get that seat of this is really cool like maybe i want to try that and then you did it without pressure because i know that when a kid does something without pressure like from a parent they're going to have a lot more joy with it they're going to find a lot more happiness from it and they're going to have even more success because it's innately driven too it's not just externally motivated that they're they found this goal yeah that's so good um well i appreciate your time dr mona this is yeah the boundaries it was it's so it's such a good way and perspective that you have it's it reminds me of an abraham lincoln quote where he says discipline or in this case

boundaries is sacrificing what you want now for what you want most and i think that's like it's always this fine line of like all right we got to we got to put this boundary here in place because this is ultimately what we want our family or or ourselves to look like so anyway thank you again if you listening want to learn more about dr mona or listen to her podcast we will link the information down below but her podcast is called ped's sorry i'm sorry peeds dot talk i was just about to close it out yeah you can find her podcast which is the peed stock talk or on Instagram peed stock talk as well I'm sure I mean we're going to be stalking every inch of your social media platform because we have so many questions about

pediatrics and our children and just like raising them to be good kind loving kids and yeah it's it's terrifying but it's also amazing at the same time it is it's a terrifying but amazing thing and to raise kind kids that are not pushovers that's my I think I should do a thing because I feel like sometimes kindness is like synonymous with push but no, we're raising kids that know their worth, love themselves, but also know, you know, that kindness goes a long way to other human beings as well. I love this. Yeah, it's good stuff. All right, Doc, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Bye. Thank you.