Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #75 What Every Parent Should Know with Philippa Perry

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

How do we improve our relationship with our children? Why do our children make us feel so irritated at times? And what do we do if we’ve acted in a way that we shouldn’t have? I’m joined this week by psychotherapist and author, Philippa Perry, to talk about all these issues and more. We discuss why culture gets in the way of our natural instincts and why she believes that allowing your child to “cry it out” can be harmful. We delve into the effect that technology is having on our relationships and discuss screen-time for kids. Philippa explains that although we all get it wrong at times, it is how we repair our mistakes that is key. We also discuss why being authentic with our children is important for a close connection. Finally, Philippa shares her tops tips, which I have started putting into practice already! At the heart of Philippa’s advice is connection and the advice she gives is applicable to all our human relationships – not just those with our children! I hope this conversation helps you deepen the human connections in your life. Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/75 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When we're pregnant or expecting a child, you think you'll be able to do that and you sort of think about it and that's what you want to do. And yet, there you are with a baby, a toddler, a child, a teenager, and you feel this irritation coming up that gets in the way of you making that connection. Or you feel split in lots of different directions at once, or life gets in the way. But what gets in the way really is we get in the way of ourselves. More than external things like work and busyness and being pulled in directions at once, we get in the way of ourselves because whatever age your child is at is liable to remind you on a sort of bodily level what you went through at that age. And if you don't want to be reminded,

your child will be like a trigger and you'll want to push that trigger away. Hi, my name is Rangan Chastji, GP, television presenter and author of the best-selling books, The Stress Solution and The Four Pillar Plan. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier we are happier because when we feel better we live more.

We live more. Hello and welcome back to episode 75 of my Feel Better, Live More podcast. My name is Rangan Chatterjee and I am your host. Today's episode is all about one of the most important things in life, our relationships. Now, although it's centered around children, the advice that my guest today shares is relevant for each and every single one of us, whether we have children or not. So how do we improve our relationship with our children? Why do our children make us feel so irritated at times? And what do we do if we've acted in a way that we shouldn't have? Well, I'm joined this week by psychotherapist and author,

Philippa Perry, to talk about all these issues and much more. We discuss why culture gets in the way of our natural instincts and why she believes that allowing your child to cry it out can be harmful. We delve into the effect that technology is having on our relationships and discuss the issue of screen time for kids. Philippa explains that although we all get it wrong at times, it's how we repair our mistakes that is really key. We also discuss why being authentic with our children is important for a close connection.

Finally, Philippa shares her top tips, which I have already started putting into practice. At the heart of Philippa's advice is connection, and the advice she gives is applicable to all of our human relationships, not just those with our children. I hope this conversation helps you deepen the human connections in your life. I think you're really going to enjoy it. Now, before we get started, as always, I do need to give a quick shout out to some of the sponsors of today's show who are absolutely essential in order for me to continue putting out weekly episodes like this one. I'm absolutely delighted that Vivo Barefoot are supporting this episode. As you all know, if you're a long-time

listener, I am a huge fan of minimalist shoes and have been exclusively wearing Vivo Barefoot shoes now for many, many years, as have my wife and my children. I strongly believe that our feet are one of the most important parts of our body for our movement and our musculoskeletal health. Their function influences how we walk, run, and so much more. Not only have I used them myself for years and found them extremely beneficial for my back and general mobility, I've also recommended minimalist shoes to many of my patients who have reported back improvements in a variety of different complaints such as hip pain, knee pain and back pain. I think there is also a really powerful case to be made for minimalist shoes in the elderly in terms of

balance and I actually moved my own mother over to them a few years ago and saw big improvements in her balance and stability. These minimalist shoes are thin, wide and flexible and Vivo Barefoot makes shoes for every occasion for both adults and for children. For listeners of my show, they have come up with a great deal. They are offering 20% off to all new customers in the UK, USA, Australia and selected EU countries. If you have thought about giving them a go, this is a great incentive to start. It's really important to say that they offer a 100-day free trial for new customers. So if you're not happy, you can simply send them back for a full refund.

I think this is an amazing offer. If you have been sitting on the fence about trying minimalist shoes, do consider taking advantage. You can get your 20% off for new customers by going to vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. That's vivobarefoot.com forward slash live more. Now, on to today's conversation. Philippa, welcome to the Feel Better Live More podcast. Thank you, Rangan. We have been trying to get this set up for quite some time. Really excited we managed to get a spot on our diaries now to do this.

You have written not only a brilliant book, but one that has done incredibly well this year. You know, as a parent myself, I've got two children. Well, one is now nine and my daughter's six it is amazing I'm sure you get this a lot when if you're a parent reading this book you can't help but start to apply the principles you're learning or at least self-reflect on your own parenting style and I think I've already started to think differently even on the train down to London this morning I'm thinking oh you know what maybe I'll start doing that a bit differently when I get home. So I want to thank you for that. But I think the place I really want to start is, we're mammals. If we look at the animal kingdom,

no other mammal to my knowledge has parenting books. So what is unique about humans that we actually might benefit from learning how to parent? I think if we were mammals without language, we probably wouldn't need a parenting book or tips. I think the culture, our various cultures, gets in the way of our parenting. So we have great instincts that will make us, for instance, answer a coercive cry. And a coercive cry is one where you feel compelled to run towards or sort something out. All mammals have coercive cries. And when a baby is crying for his parent, you'll feel compelled to go, you feel coerced to go. And we sometimes, our culture sometimes say, no, you mustn't do that because they're trying to do this or that on the other. They're not.

They're just simple mammals whose brains develop in relationship with other brains. So, it is a coercive cry. They really do need another human at that point. But our culture, various cultures have said no. And so we distort the pattern of parenting. So that gets passed down to another generation. So the way we talk about parenting has been interfering with our instincts. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually. And I feel that there's something in modern culture now where we, not just with parenting, but just across the board, that we've lost touch with ourselves, we've lost touch with who we are and the basic physical and psychological needs that we all have. And we're overly relying on what we're

told sometimes. And I guess it's not hypocritical for me to say that on all have. And we're overly relying on what we're told sometimes. And I guess it's not hypocritical for me to say that on one level, because we're talking about books, which are trying to educate people. But in many ways, I certainly know that I do it with my own books, is trying to just remind people of what they sort of intuitively know, and what culture used to intuitively have within it. yeah is there something unique about living in the 21st century now that means a book like yours is even more necessary than it might have been 20 30 years ago um i think um it was more necessary 20 or 30 years ago i think actually we have got a bit better at parenting and seeing baby humans as humans and less as its. So I think in some respects,

it has got better. But a habit is passed down through generation, through generation, through generation. And I think sometimes it even takes more than one or two generations to reboot the instincts, the mammalian instincts that would get us parenting as we should be parenting yeah the thing that was striking to me as i was reading the book and i've not completed it all yeah um but i've read you know a significant amount of it although it's a book for parents what seemed to be at the heart of this book was connection, connecting with our children, how we can do that in a much more meaningful and deeper way. But I actually thought, well, this has real practical take home in terms of how I connect with other people who are not children. I was reading this book this morning on the train thinking, oh, you know what? I could probably change the way I interact with my wife on this

element. And that's from reading a parenting book. So are some of the core concepts actually applicable to all of us? They are all applicable to all of us. Babies and children are humans. And this is a book about how to connect with humans. And the most important relationship in your life is the one you have with your very earliest caregivers, usually your parents, because you form in relationship to them. So it's important that you have a relationship when you're growing up where you feel safe, that feels like a home, rather than a relationship where you feel unsafe or have to hide things from or can't be completely yourself or open in. So this is about having better relationships in general. And it's just really important for babies and children to have a great relationship where they can confide in their lives. You've had a long career as a psychotherapist.

And I'm interested in two things. A, I think it would be useful at the start to explain to people what a psychotherapist is and what a psychotherapist does. But then my follow-up question to that is, how much of this book is informed by your job as a psychotherapist and how much of it is informed by your own experience as a parent a psychotherapist is someone who facilitates their client to be who they're supposed to be the best they can be um so that they can live a full life that's not restricted by out of date um responses to the world i mean what tends to happen is that we we grow up in an environment and then we adapt to that environment. And then when we leave that environment, we still have the adaptations that we needed to survive in the first environment. And they don't work for us.

And so psychotherapy kind of looks at all these and gets people to respond more to what's happening in the present rather than responding in the past and not being fully present with themselves. I mean, there's so many ways of describing psychotherapy, but that is just like one of them. To be a psychotherapist, you need a relationship with your client. Now, obviously, not all your clients are going to be people like you. So in order to get on board with your client, you have to look at the world through their eyes. You have to walk in their shoes. You have to see the world how they see it and understand why they see it like that and make them know that you have understood why they see it like that. And then they feel got and they feel understood. And then from then, from there, you can really work well together. But you must allow the client to impact upon you in that way and possibly change you because you're looking at

the world from a different viewpoint. And from doing that, I had such great, deep connections with people. And I thought, wouldn't it be great if we applied that to parenting? So that if parents allow the impact of their children, their children will be more able to allow the impact of the parent because they've had that modelled. Yeah, it's just so incredible hearing that because, again, what you're talking about is connecting with that client of yours, really connection, empathy, really is coming up strongly for me as I hear that. And that's actually no different from what I think is the most important skill for me as a doctor is not how much knowledge I have not how many books I've read not how many exams I've passed but am I able to connect with the patient

in front of me because once you've connected with them once they believe that you've heard them and you really are taking them for who they are as an individual human being i actually find that they want to make changes yeah i don't find it's as hard as sometimes you hear to help your patients make changes many doctors say patients don't do what we tell them to do but i think that language in itself is problematic because i personally find that a lot of patients actually do want to you know improve themselves and feel better than they feel. And I think the starting point is time and listening and connection. It's very difficult to listen to someone who doesn't listen to you. Because it's like you're on two different planets. And so those planets don't overlap enough. So there isn't a relationship there to work with so i can thoroughly understand

a patient who's told to say walk more and eat less grain or something won't do that if they don't feel seen because they're they think no they were talking to someone else they weren't talking to me because i didn't feel got so that is at the heart of your approach with parenting, isn't it? It is, yeah. You know, so let's expand that out, you know, because we're talking about you as a psychotherapist with a client or me as a GP with my patients. But feeling hurt, feeling as though you've got some shared ground is a necessary ingredient for good parenting. is a necessary ingredient for good parenting.

Okay, I'll give you an example of how this can pan out. Say a kid, say you take your kid to a theme park, right? And you have a great day out. And the next day you're catching up on a bit of work. And the kid comes to you, bored, fed up and says, we never go out. It is a saint of a parent who doesn't reply to the content of what the child is saying. Says, what do you mean? We went to Legoland yesterday. What do you mean? And what we need to do instead of that is just hear where the child is at and respond to that.

So instead of saying, yes, we did and getting into an argument, what you need to say is something like, you sound bored and fed up. What would you like to do? And the kid will invariably say, I want to go back to Legoland again. And then you go, oh yeah, that was fun. And then you've got the moment of connection the kid was seeking. Children don't often want to be fixed. They just want to be seen and heard. And so when they say, I want a pink one. No, I want the blue one. No, I want the pink one. And you as a parent is going mad trying to get them the pink one or the blue one. You just need to hear what's going underneath and say, oh, everything's so hard and frustrating for you today. And that will be such a relief to have their feelings processed into words like that and they'll feel got and they'll be able to internalize that and do it

for themselves yeah it's it's a great example to use actually and what's interesting for me as i was hearing that it reminded me of something that often comes up with my wife and I so for example I don't know this is a male female thing but um and this is actually with our relationship as opposed to uh the way we parent yeah but sometimes if my wife wants to talk to me about something or there's a problem I'll try and fix the problem and give a solution yeah and I've realized with hindsight now and a lot, and a lot of conversations about this, that actually, and she said this, I don't want to be fixed. I don't want a problem. I just want you to listen. And I know this is a theme that came up for me a lot in this book is this whole, yes, it's a parenting book. But for me, it's more than that. It's a how do you connect with other people, whether it's your work colleague whether it's your child yeah because human connection is human connection yeah

and when i've tried to apply that actually i find oh i've just heard and listened and acknowledged her feelings and there's no flare-up of anything it just sort of and i can see that with a child and and i can see that many times now i'm already thinking that when you know one of my children was, let's say, at the dinner table and I try to use my rational mind to say, no, this did happen. Like, you know, you don't get anywhere. No. Because. It's a bit like arguing with somebody about what they feel. Yeah.

They know what they feel. And even if they're putting it in a sort of way of like, it was pink, it was blue, when you know it was green or whatever it is. You just need to respond to their agitation and not try and flatten them with facts. Yeah, facts don't work. Facts don't change people's minds, do they? I think we've learned that the hard way. Yeah, facts don't lead to action. Philippa, right at the start, I think it's in fact, it's at page one, it was certainly in part one of your book. I've highlighted this paragraph. A child needs warmth and acceptance,

physical touch, your physical presence, love plus boundaries, understanding, play with people of all ages, soothing experiences, and a lot of your attention and your time. If only it were that simple, right? Well, it sounds simple, doesn't it? And I always think that when we're pregnant or expecting a child, you think you'd be able to do that and you sort of think about it and that's what you want to do. And yet, there you are with a baby, a toddler, a child, a teenager, and you feel this irritation coming up that gets in the way of you making that connection. Or you feel split in lots of different directions at once or life gets in the way. But what gets in the way really is we get in the way of ourselves more than external things like work and busyness and

being pulled in directions at once. We get in the way of ourselves because whatever age your child is at is liable to remind you on a sort of bodily level what you went through at that age. And if you don't want to be reminded, your child will be like a trigger and you'll want to push that trigger away. You love your child, but then you also are experiencing them like a trigger. So you'll push them away and you won't consciously know this is what you're doing. For example, if your child is crying because they can't do up their shoelaces, and perhaps you might remember this or you might not, but perhaps your parents told you off for not being more manually dexterous than you were. And you hated that feeling of feeling vulnerable,

incompetent, clumsy, and not good enough. When your child is displaying the same things, you don't want to be reminded of that vulnerability. So you kind of push them away rather than going, you take your time with that shoelace. You're going to get the hang of it. I know you are. You're more likely to go, let me do it. Because you just want to push away that feeling that's coming up in you. And sometimes you might even be jealous of your kid because you've got an inner four-year-old, say, who never got that many presents on their birthday. And there's your kid with all the presents. And then you might snap at him going, oh, you've got so much. I mean, it's hardly their fault that they've got so many presents, you know, but we can sort of find ourselves getting irritated with them for having more than we had even if we

don't realize that's what's happening yeah i mean it's happening for me i'm sure for many people either watching this or listening to our conversation i'm sure they'll you know be be sort of tensing up and thinking about certain situations that have happened. And often we think we're turning into our parents as we get older. But I often wonder if we just almost a mirror of the behavior we have been exposed to. And then we just absorb that and then we apply it onto our kids. I think. And we can't help it.

We can't help it. We can't help it. And we will do that. And I snapped. nobody gets this right nobody gets this perfect i might have felt you know oh leave me alone at times with my kid when i feel completely overwhelmed by them and what you can do is something i call in the book rupture and repair which is when you notice you've misunderstood or misattuned your kid or shouted at them when it wasn't their fault. And then you can say to them

when you've realized, I shouldn't have done that. It was my fault. It's not you, it's me. You can repair the rupture. And then they'll go, oh, it's all right. Because they're really more resilient than we might think but it's important to repair the rupture yeah i think that's a really great point that's something i certainly think i have improved in my own parenting over the last two or three years is if i have been really stressed and i have snapped yeah um i've now and it's come from you know a lot of personal growth work that i've been doing on myself but also chats to friends who are also going through similar things I've learned actually you know it's okay to say hey you know what daddy's really sorry you know I um you know I was juggling two

or three things I was quite stressed out on my work and I shouted at you and I took it out on you yeah I'm sorry and yeah and and for me it was quite hard for me to do that at first because I think and again it's not about having a personal psychotherapy session with you now but you probably you didn't have the example so you were doing new behavior yeah yeah yeah because I think I was parented I'm thinking now in a way that it was done in a way whereby the parents are always right and you don't question that and the you know even if you've been told what you think is a sack of lies or not quite right you just you're taught not to question i'm not trying to be harsh to my parents my parents were very well-meaning yeah and i think they've i hope they've done a great

job i think they've done a great job of bringing me up yeah as you say nobody's perfect but it makes me think um how important is it to tell the truth to your children? I think if you want a good, close connection with your kid, and who doesn't really? Why have them otherwise? Authenticity is key. Obviously, you don't want to use your child as a therapist. Yeah. as a therapist. But somebody once asked me, but isn't it important that our kids think we're always right? Otherwise they won't feel secure. I said, no, it's important that they think we're

always authentic so we can have a connection. Because if we say something is blue and they can see it's green, we are going to be interfering with their instincts. So if we say something is blue and they can see it's green, we are going to be interfering with their instincts. So if we say to a kid, it was your fault when actually it was our fault, we are interfering with their instincts. And if we interfere with their instincts, we will dull their intelligence. And obviously we don't want to do that. So it's really important for parents to be authentic, but obviously not overburden the kid with what's going on. You don't want the kid to calculate whether you can make the mortgage or not. We don't want to give too much to the kid, but you can say, I'm sorry, I'm distracted right

now. I've just got to do these sums and then I'll not be distracted. You know, you can say what's going on rather than say, stop being such a pain. Yeah. I like that line about your kid's not your therapist, you know, but you can be authentic. I think that's a really good way. You don't want to dump on your kid, but you want to be authentic with them. And I think the way we were brought up might interfere with us doing this. For instance, we were brought up might interfere with us doing this. For instance, when I went to a playground with my mum, she would never say, I'm bored and cold and tired. So we're going to leave in five minutes. She'd never tell me the truth like that. She'd say, we've got to go in five minutes because

it's time for me to cook daddy's supper. And something didn't quite fit with me because I just think it's only two o'clock in the afternoon. I don't really understand what that's about. Or why don't we have supper later? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sort of like, she never made a nice statement because probably she thought it sounded selfish. But actually, honestly, we are selfish. So when I wanted to leave the playground, I told my kid the truth. I said,

I'm cold, I'm bored, so we're going in five minutes. She accepted it really readily. And what I didn't realise at the time was that I was actually teaching her good emotional intelligence because to get on in life, we have to know what we feel and from that work out what we want and for that go for it or ask for it we might not get it but at least we know what we want sometimes knowing what we want is the hardest lesson to learn in life and if we do these really basic lessons of being authentic with our child and um when we put down boundaries with them use i statements and not you statements so it's what does that mean okay for instance suppose your 13 year old wants to catch the night bus across manchester or something and uh even the thought of that they're not 13 yet but even

that thought you know starts to shudder through me okay but let's go through it okay and um you know your kid is actually pretty good at getting on the right bus and um knows the timetable and and has got a good spatial awareness is pretty cool at this sort of thing and if you say to the kid you are not old enough you are not mature enough to get on the night bus by yourself you are defining the child and nobody likes to be defined how do you like it if i tell you you're not old enough to go on the night bus wrong and i mean it's ridiculous what do they think i can't get rounds you know it just makes you a bit annoyed so what you say instead is you make an i statement so you go i am not ready to let you on the bus

yet. Even though you're probably competent, you're going to have to wait for me to catch up with how mature you are. Because that's the truth. So you make an I statement and they'll say something to you like, all right, but you've got to get over this because I'm going to be going out a lot when I'm 16 or something like that. And you go, yeah, you're right. I have got to get over this because I'm going to be going out a lot when I'm 16 or something like that. And you go, yeah, you're right. I have got to get over this. But you're having that dialogue, aren't you? And they're involved. And as you said, right at the start, there's a common grounds of acceptance and agreement. You have to own a bit of your vulnerability to your child and sort of say, I'm not ready to let you do this. And you have to know, your child has to know that you have limits and you need to put those boundaries down before you get to those limits. So for instance, if you are really tired and you know that eight o'clock has got to be glass of wine time and looking at news night or whatever it is you do at eight o'clock, you want your kid in bed by half past seven. You know that.

So they might need you to lie down with them until they're asleep or something. So just go earlier, go at seven, lie down with them, and then you'll be ready for the glass of wine at eight. Put the boundary down before the limit. And you say, we're going to bed early tonight because I'm tired and I can't start relaxing until I've got you down. Yeah, this is great.

So you can say, you've got to go to bed now because I can't go to bed before you go to bed and I'm desperate to go to bed. A kid can hear that better than you're tired, you need your sleep. Yeah. I've done that you're tired you need to go to sleep line many a time and I've been I've had this feeling for the last few months that it's probably not the most productive line and often if you really explore it and I often do this I think well what was going on there is that actually it was getting late a bit past bedtime I had a ton of emails to do or working on my book deadline or whatever and so it was actually nothing to do with them wanting me to hang around and read and stay for

longer yeah it was my issues I wanted to I wanted to you know I wanted to close off bedtime so I could get on with stuff and in the short term on that moment you probably don't think much of it but I think day in day out what kind of I've been thinking what sort of message does that send to the kids I mean what kids are really good at teaching us is to be in the present and what we tend to be is like with one foot in the future thinking I've got to do those emails I've got I've got to go through the edits on my book I need to do that before midnight and then we're not with them because we're away in the present. So what we can do, we're not going to stop planning for the future. Otherwise it's

going to be chaotic, but we can still be in the present with them more. So I would say, go to bed a bit earlier so you don't rush it. You know, sort of like we're going to go to bed at seven so we can have a nice slow long bedtime with lots of stories and lying down and cuddles um so i can get on with stuff at eight and i don't want you i don't want to go at five to eight and then rush off and and and leave you when you still need my company how does that sound you know yeah i love it it's just these open dialogues with your children. An open dialogue is such a good thing for when you have a problem as well. So rather than saying, tidy your room, or leave the room completely untidied, what you can say is, I have a problem with your floor being more of a floor drobe than a floor. So what are we going to do about that? And then we can brainstorm

solutions and collaborate. If we collaborate together, you might think, oh, this takes so much more time collaborating rather than just telling. But you have to put in the time anyway. So you might as well put it in positively rather than in telling offs. I've heard you say before when talking about the book that if you don't put the time in early forming those relationships, you'll just be putting in the time and a lot more time later on. Can you sort of expand that a little bit? Well, a good way of thinking about it is when your kid wants to play with you. Let's say the kid in question is three years old and they've got a

new toy of Sylvanian families, which you probably bought for them because you were hoping that they'd play on their own a bit. But no, they want you to talk three of the characters and they're going to talk the other three of the characters. The easiest way to do this is to go along with it. the easiest way to do this is to go along with it. You might have a ton of email to do. You're going to get into that email so much more easily if you do the playing first. You invest the time playing first. So you talk Mrs. Hedgehog, whoever it is. And then after a while, you won't, but they will get very involved in the game and it will all be in their imagination. And actually, you're not talking Mrs. Hedgehog, right? So they might relieve you of Mrs. Hedgehog and talk Mrs. Hedgehog themselves. And then what tends to happen is they're sure of you,

so they're not chasing after you because you're there. And then they can get involved in their own game and they go on something I call autopilot, which is when they're playing happily by themselves because they know they can come to you. And then you can just back off slowly, lift the lid of the laptop and start to do your email. And you probably have a good 45 minutes before they go, I'm thirsty or whatever it is. But if you say, no, I've got to do this email, you have to play by themselves every five minutes. Be, mum, mum. And then you snap and you get agitated.

Yeah, and then it just doesn't really work. It doesn't work for the child. It doesn't work for the parent. It just causes, it creates disharmony in the family dynamic yeah and i'm i bet any parent listens to this will know those two scenarios where you when you when you put in the time but it's i think what you've done in an abutable way is that you've articulated really non-judgmentally um what people intuitively often do or don't do but you're sort of helping provide a bit of structure, go, oh yeah, I get it.

When I put in that time, I actually get more time later. Yeah, you will. It does. It sounds like on so many levels, what you're talking about is a feeling of security, a feeling of secure attachment. Yeah, if we respond to most of the bids they make for attention, and we make bids for attention because we need attention, then they can take it for granted that

their bids for attention can be met. And then, paradoxically, they don't make as many. It's nice that. But then you might go, don't you want to play? And they go, no, you're right. but then you might go don't you want to play and they go no you're right yeah so it's it is interesting um one thing that comes up a lot on this podcast is social media positives negatives you know what is the long-term consequences and just to expand this out a bit further i want to talk about technology so technology is here it is part of our lives now. In fact, many people will be listening to this podcast on a smartphone, on a modern device, which often we denigrate so much in terms of its impacts on society. And I think there are pluses and there are negatives, like with most things. But when it comes to parenting, and again, this applies to relationships per se. You know, many of the times that we are

with the people that mean the most to us, we're distracted. Okay, so whether it's with our partner, we are distracted. And you know, we're sort of with them, we see them after work, let's say, but we're not quite there. We're still thinking about that email, we're still sort of half checking our inbox or Instagram whilst interacting with them. But this is also happening with our children. We're often, you know, we're with them, but we're also sort of checking our phone at the same time. So I want to know in your professional experience, what does that do to a child? What sort of messages does that give to a child potentially you know i recognize that we're all trying to do our best i'm not having to go to people i'm not having to go to myself

my view is that you're much better having 10 or 15 minutes of really quality present time with your child when the phone's not there when you're really attentive to them than two hours when you're sort of half there but you're not really there yeah and i'd love to know your views on that i have quite strict for me views on um phone use and the phone use i'm talking about is the phone use by parents i don't like to see a parent continually prioritizing their phone over the child's bids for attention. And what the child gets from that is that the phone is more important, the phone is preferred, and that they'll need a phone too to get that level of connection their parent apparently is getting from the phone. Why we love our phones so much is that we do get little drips of connection and contact from them. It's not like

the contact you have from a heartfelt conversation or a hug or anything like that. But it's little tips of contact that keeps us feeling like we're not on our own. We're not disconnected. And if you're a young parent on your own with a kid, you will feel lonely at times. So you'll search for these moments of connection off your phone. for these moments of connection off your phone. Your child has a yearning for contact and connection that is a hundred times greater than yours because they need it to wear up their brains because they wear up their brains in connection with you. And so I say to parents, well, while you're with your child, keep your phone in your pocket. I mean, sure, take it out for an emergency, but not checking email, please. Because then the child will seek connection through screens.

And rather than develop in relation to a person, they'll develop in relationship to angry birds. Yeah. to a person they'll develop in relationship to angry birds yeah um which it's not really how you want to wire up your kid's brain so parents put your phones in your pockets now later on it's like how much screen time do i allow my kid well hopefully they have a more satisfactory experience of getting a sense of contact and connection through playing with other people and through talking to you. So they won't have an urgent, almost like an addictive need for a screen. But if it's too late and they have, then it needs talking about and it needs your worries need to be talked about with the child. And then you can say, I'm not comfortable with you using the screen more than an hour a day. So I'm going to take it away after that. You don't say you've had too much screen time.

You say, I'm not comfortable. Always define yourself and not the child. Yeah, I really like that tip. And it's something, you know, I'm probably talking quite slowly on this podcast relative to most ones because I'm absorbing everything you're saying. And I guess instead of being attentive to what I should be talking about next with you, I'm starting to process my own parenting. I think, oh yeah, I can probably do that a little bit better. Yeah, I think to deprive a kid of screens is another sort of deprivation and it will make them like not like everybody else at school which would

be awkward but i think there is you know everything in moderation and this is the struggle this is a struggle i always have you know with whether it's nutrition or lifestyle choices or screen time you know with children I can make a decision for myself but I always worry about how far I go with my own children in my own views because I also don't want them to be social outcasts and socially fitting in with your friends is also a key part of health and well-being and it surely is you know and I guess what you're saying with the screens is have you heard of gabble mate he's probably one of the world's leading experts in addiction oh right and um drug use i had a interview with him on this podcast about six months ago which people absolutely loved

and he really talks about how all addiction is the same in the sense that you know again i'm paraphrasing him so but but essentially that if you have some sort of unmet need on some level you will then go and fill it with something else yeah and he he puts a lot of it down to childhood trauma on some level whether and he defines it as either um if not enough good things have happened to you or harmful things have happened to you and i guess i'm hearing a sense from you yeah and i think being left alone to cry and being left alone to cry out is developing an unmet need in someone he's very vocal about that he does not like crying ourselves to sleep no no no please no let's not do that but yeah so let's explore that actually

because that is something that is a common parenting tip these days and actually there was a an article in i think it was in the times about four or five weeks ago so on twitter and it was literally saying oh finally debunked it is okay to do that it's so not so let's talk about that because many people may have either done it already or are planning on doing it with their kids. So why is it so harmful in your opinion? They're quite robust and maybe sleep training, if it isn't done extremely, won't harm them. But there's one in five of us who are all kids and we need a more attuned environment. Otherwise, we're more likely to suffer health difficulties and mental health difficulties. And you really don't know what sort of kid you've got. You don't know whether you've got a super sensitive child or a robust child, you know, when they're tiny babies.

So I wouldn't risk trouble further on down the line just because I can't be bothered to lie down with my child until they're asleep. So it's really important that your child doesn't get into the habit of feeling lonely or feeling empty or feeling unmet, which they can do if we leave them alone to sleep. Now there's lots of research on sleep training. But what the latest research does show that when a child stops crying, they haven't necessarily soothed themselves and their cortisol levels are still as high as they were when they were crying. The mother's cortisol levels are also being tested. And when the child stops crying, hers drop right down again. So she thinks everything's fine because the child and her are out of sync because they're in different rooms. But actually that child has just given up

and is just getting the message that you can't rely on other people or that they are unlovable or that there's no point. There's no point in asking for help because it's not going to come. But they are just as stressed as they were when they were crying. Those cortisol levels are just as high. That's why I'm so dead against sleep training. And I'm really sorry because I know that parents are desperate and really tired and feel like they can't actually function unless they stop these waking nights. But there are other ways of doing it. There's something called sleep nudging. It's when you gently encourage your child to separate at their pace within their comfort zone and not outside it. So you don't put the child into toxic stress, which you do if you go outside their comfort zone.

And for those people listening who have not heard the term cortisol before, cortisol is one of the body's primary stress response hormones so if the baby's crying and the cortisol levels are going up that is you know it's a good sign that actually the baby's getting very stressed um you know i don't know if this is within your expertise or not um philippa i'm just thinking you know for a parent who has done that to their child and that's how they got them to sleep and they're now hearing this and feeling bad and feeling guilty and thinking oh man what have I done what would you say to them I'd say it's not your fault because um the culture is encouraging you to get your kid to be quiet in the night and you're seen as a good or a bad parent. If you can't get your child to sleep through the night, oh, can't you do that then?

So there's a societal pressure there to get your kid to sleep through the night as though it's this urgent thing. So if you succumb to that, don't blame yourself. So if you succumb to that, don't blame yourself. Secondly, perhaps no harm has come for it because perhaps your kid is a dandelion. Thirdly, if your child seems very insecure now and you think, oh my God, they're eight, they shouldn't be clinging to me like this and what's going on. You can explain, when you were little, I left you to go to sleep by yourself and I don't think I should have done. And I'm sorry. You could attempt to repair the rupture and that might help put some of their feelings into words. Because they won't know what that desperate longing, that need is that they've got in them because it's an old one that sort of feels empty and hasn't been filled and we can compensate by spending when they want our attention now giving it to them yeah there's always hope there's always hope and no relationship ever ran smooth and that goes for the one with you and your kid, because, you know, you might have made a mistake and misunderstood what their needs were. Who doesn't do that? We've all done it. But just because you don't walk somewhere in a straight line doesn't mean to say you don't get to the end. We're always going down one direction thinking this isn't working, changing direction, doing another direction.

thinking this isn't working, changing direction, doing another direction. And that's the same with this. So beating yourself up, feeling guilty, being angry with me for telling it like it is, mistake. Maybe it wasn't. Who knows? And you can say to your kid, I think you need me so much because I shouldn't have left you to sleep by yourself or something. You know, you can try and put it right. Yeah, absolutely. Just taking a quick break in today's conversation to give a shout out to the sponsors of today's show. Athletic Greens continue their support of my podcast. To be really clear, I absolutely prefer that people get all of their nutrition from foods, but for some of us, this is not always possible. Athletic Greens is one of the most nutrient-dense whole food supplements that I've come across and contains vitamins, minerals, prebiotics

and digestive enzymes. So if you are looking to take something each morning as an insurance policy to make sure that you are meeting your nutritional needs, I can highly recommend it. For listeners of this podcast, if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash live more, you will be able to access a special offer where you get a free travel pack box containing 20 servings of Athletic Greens, which is worth around £70 with your first order. You can check it out at athleticgreens.com forward slash live more. Philip, with all your wealth of experience

in your profession, but also in your experiences writing this book and going around talking about it and answering questions, I'm interested, are there things in your own parenting style? Because you have a daughter, I believe. Yeah. How old is she now?

She's nearly 26. Nearly 26. Right. So a lot of this expertise, I'm guessing, has been built up in the last few years, you know, or certainly some of the elements of the book, I'm sure you've learned relatively recently. So probably didn't have the benefit of when you were parenting your own daughter. So, you know, are there things now that you look back upon and go, you know, I wish I'd done that a bit differently? I suppose one of the ones is I wish I hadn't propped her up quite so much and sat her up quite so much. Because physically, a baby needs to sort of learn to crawl. So they need to be sort of, you know, near other people, obviously, you know, put on a nice

clean carpet to experiment with pushing themselves up, pushing themselves over. And I just propped my daughter up the whole time in high chairs or sort of fixed chairs or funny little seats and things. And she didn't actually learn to crawl. She sort of shuffled about on her bottom and was a bit one sided. And then when she was about nine or ten, she began to get postural problems and leg ache and back ache. She began to get postural problems and leg ache and back ache. And when she was a teenager, she started doing Pilates. And now she's fine.

She sort of repaired that rupture herself. But yes, I wish I'd known it. And I think it was because I didn't know it. I mean, things like I talk about in the book, how much babies can do and how we must be in dialogue with our baby i knew a lot of that as when when she was a little child but um i didn't know things like the breast crawl which is in the book where um when you've given birth and you put the baby on your tummy like any mammal they can find the nipple they sort of push themselves up the body they can find the nipple by themselves you know we do we do too much for our children and in other

aspects we don't do enough they need to struggle you know with the shoelaces with trying to find the nipple with um solving their own problems. They need to struggle a bit with that. And we're too quick to go in with the fix. And what they do need is someone to bounce their ideas off, someone to listen to them, someone to keep them company. And we tend to back off on that way. Like we said before about someone may not like some of the things you're saying and get defensive about it. But you said very clearly that just because you

don't like what I'm saying doesn't mean I shouldn't tell you how it actually is. And I think that just made me think about this podcast in general and why I keep doing it. I spend so much time traveling around to meet people like you and talk because I think it's a great medium to empower people and educate people with knowledge and it's only with knowledge that you can make a change right and that goes to parenting right if you are going about your parenting style and not realizing that actually the way you were parented is now playing out and you're sort of doing the things that you didn't like were done to you and you're doing with your children you know and i know this from when i was a young dad well i was

young you know when i was a dad of young children i hadn't done much personal growth work so i was reacting certain ways or i was getting angry to certain things i didn't realize that i was being triggered but once you open that door and you start to see where your behaviours are coming from, I think that's a necessary ingredient in that recipe of change. I'm guessing you must have seen that lots as a psychotherapist, right? Yeah. And I hate it when people sort of tell themselves off for not knowing stuff earlier, or they get guilty about it, because that doesn't help them or anyone else. It's sort of like giving yourself 30 lashes, beating yourself up because that doesn't help them or anyone else it's sort of like giving

yourself 30 lashes beating yourself up really doesn't hey I have done this for years a lot of people on this podcast know the story about my son who was very unwell when he was six months old and I you know I beat myself up for years over what happened to him and carried a lot of guilt what happened to him and carried a lot of guilt and that guilt would play into how I parented and I realized over the last few years that that guilt is not helping him it's not helping me and I work really hard to let go of it and as I let go of it he responds positively we have you know we've all I like to think we've always had a great relationship but I think it's getting better and better and stronger and stronger because of me letting go of that guilt i'm not beating myself up yeah it's a good lesson yeah it's a really good story uh yeah please don't be guilty anyone or try your best not

to be you've given me your perspective on what you would have done differently as a parent i'm interested has your daughter read this book yes she, she has. She's been so encouraging from the very beginning. And what she said is that you and me, mum, have a great relationship, but my friends all have terrible relationships with their parents. And why don't you say what you did so that other people can do it so she was sort of like quite instrumental at the beginning of the book and you're writing the book yeah and because i wrote about 10 000 words of notes they were all jumbled and i didn't know what to put first it was all all messed up at once you know how it is horrendous and i gave it to her i said look i can't do it i can't do it and she said she just made me go on with it. Wow. So she was, I wouldn't have written the book if it weren't for her. She sort of made me write the book.

Has she said on reading the book that, hey, mum, I wish she'd done that a bit differently? No, she hasn't actually. But that's lovely, right? She hasn't, even though obviously I cock up as much as most parents cock up. Even though, obviously, I cock up as much as most parents cock up. But I think the thing is, is to go my bad when we do. And it makes all the difference. There's a story about my bad I want to tell you, actually.

Please do. Which was when she was about four years old. I can remember exactly where she was standing in the kitchen now. And she suddenly said, apropos of nothing to me, sorry, I was grumpy in the car, mum. I was hungry. I'm all right now, she said as she was eating something. And I just thought, wow, in a non-humiliated way, she's saying sorry. And I can remember how I felt as a child saying sorry, totally forced into it, remember how I felt as a child saying sorry, totally forced into it, felt humiliated. And here was she doing it really naturally, just saying, my bad, I'm sorry. So she copied me. When I was saying, oh, I shouldn't have done that, sorry. When she perceived something that

she shouldn't have behaved or done, she said sorry. I know. I love that. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's just so great. I know. I love that. I love it. Yeah, it's just so great. And I guess that makes me think about cultural differences. So in your practice as a psychotherapist, I'm guessing you saw people from different backgrounds, different cultures.

Oh yeah, yeah, not this tendency, this practice of saying sorry, for me, it appears to be quite a British thing. Oh, yeah. Every time we walk down the street, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. So I'm born and brought up in this country. My parents were Indian immigrants here, but I'm born and brought up here. And it's something that I've tried to instill in my kids. And it's something that I've tried to instill in my kids. And I realized that actually in my, you know, in Bengali, which is the language that my parents would speak at home, there really isn't a word for sorry. And they can express it in a different way, show that you're sorry without actually saying it. And your story is almost illustrating that, that sorry is just, you know, anybody can say sorry without meaning it yeah without understanding it so you know i guess what i was trying to get at is have you seen cultural

differences in parenting styles in your practice have you seen yes yeah and i wonder if you could share some of some of them well i know you've got to be cautious how you say these things. It's just that in some cultures, how girls are treated like second class citizens just breaks my heart. Like girls are taught that they're to serve and they're inferior to their brothers. I just find it breaks my heart. Like I had one client tell me that when she told her mother that her periods had started, her mother just slapped her across the face. She doesn't know why. It was like, was that for mentioning it? Was that for being a woman? Okay, so let's explore that. What does that do? Or what can that do to that girl or just make her feel ashamed ashamed to bleed ashamed to be a woman

um makes her feel like a non-person like an it and what if we if we fast forward that 5 10 15 20 years what sort of impact can that have on her life? And then if she does become a mother in the way that she parents? Well, she had a lot of therapy and she parents very, she parents, she does parent very differently to her mother. What I think is a tragic shame is that she can't really talk to her mother and her mother really wants her to talk to her and have the companion of a daughter but however much she tries it's almost like her body won't go there so when we treat our children as it's those children are in thrall maybe enthralled to their parents because they're dying to be seen as humans but yet they can't be close to them so it just messes everything up you mentioned therapy there and something that

that really comes across to me when i not only from from reading the book actually philip if i'm honest it's something that um since my dad died nearly seven years ago now i've been on my whole career's changed what I do everything it was such I used to care for my dad for 15 years I moved back to the northwest to help my mum and my brother care for him so when dad died it was a huge big hole in my life my whole adult life revolved around my dad's illness and I spent a lot of time just thinking reflecting and you know with this all this new time I had I've I've gone and found my passion what I'm here to do you know which is what I now do in my career

whether it's you know empowering people through telly the podcast books helping patients you know I really feel as though I found my mission um but but what's interesting for me is I've also gone on a journey of personal growth and that is you know my my my kids were I think my daughter was about two and a half when dad died my son was about well no sorry she was two two months when my dad died my son was about three and I feel that my parenting style has changed in direct proportion to how much I start to understand myself better. Is that making sense? Yeah, it does. So I guess what I'm, you know, it's a slightly long-winded way of getting here,

but I'm sort of thinking this through on the fly, that is, on some level, is not the best Parrington tip of all to sort yourself out first. Well, that's the first chapter in my book, is to look at your patterns, look at why we do what we do, examine something I call the critical voice, because that tends to merge with our parenting a little bit too much. So the first chapter, the first part of my book is all about sort yourself out. How can someone do that someone's listening to that and they go okay wrong and okay philip i get it but they don't know where

to start or they're in this kind of you know the treadmill of modern life they're busy they're just trying to get home feed the kids get them to bed get to bed do their emails get back they think where do i start you start with charged emotion so we can all get in the practice being a little bit more noticing our moods, noticing when a mood feels particularly charged. So if we have a charged emotion reaction to our child, because this is a parenting book, but it can be to anything, reaction to our child, because this is a parenting book, but it can be to anything. Maybe we feel particularly self-righteous or something. I'm just really charged up. What I ask people to do is to stop. Don't just assume that charged emotion has got something to do with the scenario that's right in front of you right now. Stop. Look at the pattern of that

charged emotion. Trace it back. Where does it come from? When did you first feel it? I mean, my particular charged emotion is when somebody accused me of lying when I hadn't lied. I just go mental. And I can remember once as a family, we were watching University Challenge. And I said the answer and nobody heard me. Then I said, I said that. And they went, no, you didn't. I just flashed. I just noticed it.

I was like, yes, I did. And then I said, oh, sorry, overreacted a bit there. And then tracing that back, I realized my parents never believed me. Whatever I said, they never believed me. So I sort of like didn't know whether I was true or not. You know, I didn't know whether my experience was really my experience or whether I was kidding myself the whole time. So it was a very powerful thing. And that would trigger me. So that's the sort of thing you can do is notice when you feel particularly self-righteous or just really irritated. What's

that charge about? Why are you so irritated because your kids put a sock on inside out? Why does that really matter? Trace that back. Trace that back to your childhood. I was doing this with somebody. They'd adopted a little girl of two years old. Everything was going fine, except for she was two, so she's a bit of a messy eater. You know, hand-to-mouth coordination doesn't happen overnight, you know. um he noticed himself actually having to leave the room when globs of yogurt splashed on the kitchen floor he just he just couldn't bear it and uh he said i'm gonna have to discipline i think discipline a child for dropping yogurt when she's missed a mouth come on what's going on here so um i got him to trace it back

trace it back his uh grandfather was french and was very very strict about meal times and if he even held his fork wrong it was slapped out of his hand so bad table manners just fills him with fear. And rather feel the fear and vulnerability that he felt then, he'd rather just be angry. I mean, he's not making that decision consciously, but that's why the anger's coming up. So notice a charged emotion is a really good way of beginning to see how your past is affecting your present. But in the book, there's other things and other exercises to try too. You need time for this stuff. And what I mean by that is I'm a big proponent with all of my patients and anyone I try and help with their health, say, you need a bit of downtime every day. You can't just go, go, go all day. You can't just literally be on tech and emails I try and help with their health say you need a bit of downtime every day you can't just go go go all day you can't just literally be on tech and emails and work and spend all evening

on it consuming consuming consuming you need downtime because it's in that downtime that you reflect you know without that downtime how are you going to reflect on a charged emotion if you're just jumping from one thing to another and I think now we've got this phone thing to fill in blank moments of time, like we've got the bus journey. We're not just going to sit out, look out the window and think, because that's a bit under stimulating. No, we'll get the phone out and look at Instagram. Don't get the phone out. Just sit there and see what comes up for you. 100%. And I think this is the thing I'm sort of banging on all the time about at the moment in talks or in the podcast is downtime is important we've eroded downtime out of society

and has an impact even just for this reflection i i found as i said well after dad died i had time i had time to reflect and think i wouldn't fill it up with things and things would just start to come up and i start to be able to process them because I had time and so I think I get it we've all got different pressures not everyone has got time to do that but even just five ten minutes we'd have we'd have a lot more time if we played with our phones less and children need that downtime too children need actually I would say boredom is quite good for kids because out of boredom comes creativity yeah like i don't know what to do oh i think you'll think of something

can i have my phone no yeah and um why can't i have my phone because i don't want to give it to you i've got this thing about boredom being good for people i'm sorry you don't like it you know we can be very sympathetic with the boundary but the boundary still has to be there yeah it's it's and then and then out of the boredom you know would you like some paper see what you can do with that you know it's amazing how you know we're i've said it before i'm probably overly militant with my kids on technology and it's something maybe i'm gonna have to address as they get older we don't tend to have much tech in the house it's nice it is nice again my son's getting to that age where i think this is going it's going to start to become some an issue and

i'm going to have to really my wife and i'm gonna have to reflect on what we're going to do about it but i do i feel that like in the mornings at home because we don't have ipads and and the phones aren't on you know i'll often come down or, or I'm, I'm, I'm usually the first one up, but I'll sometimes come up, my daughter's got up and she's just drawn for half an hour in a room with a crayons. And, you know, and the same with my son, he's either reading or he's built a block of something. And I really, again, I'm not proclaiming in any shape or form to be the perfect parents. knows i'm not um but i think oh cool i think we're doing something right there i think we're we're helping them you know boost and foster their

creativity because because they haven't they've got no option they know they actually know that there's no point going to mommy and daddy now and asking can i go on your phone because they just know that's not an option yeah so they find other ways to amuse themselves and they you know my my daughter's peaceful at painting and drawing. And I think, wow, would this have been encouraged in the same way if she had been on her iPad every morning? Look, I don't know the answer, but I suspect not. The thing is with screens, it's not that they're particularly dangerous,

even of themselves, especially especially the internet's turned off and there's just games on there it's what you're not doing when you're on there you're not drawing you're not painting you're not reading you're not thinking you're not daydreaming and you need to do all those things and they're and the screens are wiping those things out of our lives and we need them you're not connecting with other people conversing or even with your own thoughts yeah yeah yeah so we need to get kids into the habit of downtime and we need to rein reinstate it in our own lives if we've got out of the habit i think it's a great take-home set for people um as you were talking about you know learning where where your own triggers come

from or something i became aware of recently is that is that you know if we were out in a restaurant or out with the kids and you know and and some one of my kids was playing up or something i'd really want them to behave because there's other people around and then in some of this downtime i was thinking why does this trigger you so much and i remember that actually my dad was always very proper with how you are when you're out yeah not necessarily in the home but when you're out in front of other people how do you behave and I just had this the penny drops and I thought oh my god that's why I've got that and I thought and then I started to reflect what is this doing to my to my child I'm thinking well hold on a minute I'm behaving one way at home and

then suddenly I'm being really particular on manners around the table outside when I don't give a hoot at home I think what am I teaching them that actually that I value what other people think more than them or so many other things went into my head and for me that awareness has instantaneously changed my behavior because before I was unconsciously doing that I didn't know what triggered me but now I've gone through the process of understanding it I'm like oh I'm not going to do that anymore because I don't want to pass on that lesson to my own child and is this something you see a lot when you provide your therapy to your clients? Do you find that once you help them get awareness, that actually they can start to do a lot more themselves without the need for your expertise?

Yeah, definitely. Because you can apply the principles across the board. You don't need a specific answer for this, that and the other. Sometimes people say, what shall I say to him when he says that? And I think, don't ask me for specific phrases, because that's not relating. Just keep it to a relational level. So you keep relating back to yourself, like, why am I so antsy about him drawing on a paper tablecloth or whatever he's doing when he's allowed to do that at home yeah you know so you so talking to yourself and then you can even say you know i know it's mad of me but i just really rather you didn't um put your peas in a great long line whatever it is and stop playing soldiers with them yeah even though i let you do

it at home and it's not it's my self-consciousness you're just gonna have to put up with me you know are you a bad parent, we get overly defensive about the bad behavior that we've done. That's one reason. Another reason is being a parent is being in a relationship with a child. You don't often say, I'm good or I'm bad in our other relationships. We are what we are, sometimes attuned, sometimes misattuned, sometimes getting it, sometimes not getting it, sometimes self-obsessed, sometimes open. We're not good and bad. We're human in that respect. I mean, good and bad are concepts that aren't particularly helpful when applied to parenting.

What about when we apply them to our children? So you are, oh, you're really good for doing that. Oh, well done. Good boy. Good girl. Oh, you shouldn't have done that. You bad girl. What's, I mean, as I'm saying, I suspect I know your answer. I could see for those who are watching the video, if you zoom in now on Philippa's face, I think you don't need to hear what she says next. Okay. What we've got is convenient behaviour and inconvenient behaviour. What we've got is convenient behaviour and inconvenient behaviour. And all behaviour is communication.

Now, when we're little, we are not the most articulate of creatures. But luckily, children have other ways of letting us know something's going on, usually in the form of inconvenient behaviour. Find the meaning of that behaviour behavior put it into words and i think you'll find that they'll find a an easier way of articulating what they say that's more convenient to you when we get bad at that is when we don't want to hear what they're saying yeah or or what they're feeling so um that's when we're not so good at putting it into words for them. So it's, it's easy to say, Oh, you really liked that. Didn't you? You know, when they're happy and we can put that into words for them, we don't have a problem with that. But when we have to put something into words, like it seems by the way, you're pinching your little sister that you really wish you'd go back to the hospital. And it's really tough on you having to share us. We don't want to say that because we don't want it to be true.

But it is true. And if the only way your son can tell you that he doesn't like his sister is by pinching her, you better put that into words as soon as possible so that the pinching can stop yeah and he can say i really don't like sharing you yeah and have that accepted yeah no absolutely it's um i think i think this i certainly hope so this conversation is gonna be so helpful for people they're gonna really see themselves and so many examples you've used and then people have got the choice you know do they make a change or not and ultimately it's up to people what they want to do how they want to parents but i do think this awareness that you're able to give people yeah i mean you really i think your writing style is fantastic and i think it's

i think it already is helping a lot of people well that is from is that i is that I don't want to tell parents off. And if I've come over as telling people off, I really don't want that. Because I think what parents need is to be seen, understood, helped, loved and contained. Sounds like what children need. Because that's what they have to give to their kids. So that's what I wanted the book to do. I wanted it to encourage, to forgive, not that there's anything to forgive, but be sort of like, look what we do to our kids and yet they still grow up despite it. It's sort of like, yeah, I just wanted to give to parents what I want them to give to their kids, which is being got got being understood and what's the easiest way of doing this philip i've really enjoyed our chats um this podcast is called feel better live more i genuinely have seen it time and time again in my practice that when people feel better in

themselves they live more they get more out of their lives and whatever they want to do and i think parenting is no different from that if we feel feel as though we are, I'm trying not to use the words good or bad here, if we can improve our parenting skills and we feel we're really connecting with our children, we've got a really good relationship with them, I think that is going to actually, not only impact that relationship, it's going to impact other relationships

and it's going to bleed into other components of their life. I hope so. I know so, for sure. And so what I always like to do right at the end is to leave people with simple, actionable tips that they can think about putting into their own life immediately. So I wonder, I'm putting you on the spot a little bit here, but do you have, you know, three or four top tips that you would like people to take away from our conversation? three or four top tips that you would like people to take away from our conversation?

You have to put the time in any way. So put it in positively early rather than have to do it negatively later on. Another one where children need boundaries, put your boundaries down in making I statements and not you statements. Be authentic. Describe your own feelings and your own wants. Don't describe another person. Allow your children to influence and impact upon you so that they know how to accept your influence and impact they'll resist it unless they feel that they can change you too yeah brilliant brilliant tips and i could tell you that all four of those will be things that i will be trying to apply in my own life um so thank you very much for that philip thanks for your today. Thanks for taking the time to write such a helpful book.

Thank you. And I hope we get the chance to do this again at some point. Okay, it's been great. Thanks very much. That concludes today's episode of the Feel Better Live More podcast. So what did you think? I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do you agree with all the Philippa's advice? I know for me that this conversation caused me to reflect on some of my own behaviors. And if I'm honest, I've already started making some positive changes on the back of it. Philippa and I would love to know if there was anything in particular that resonated with you

that you are thinking about applying into your own life. As always, do get in touch on social media and let us know what you thought. If you can remember, please do use the hashtag FBLM so that I can easily find your comments. As always, if you want to continue your learning experience now that the podcast is over, do head over to the show notes page for this episode, which is drchatterjee.com forward slash 75 to learn more about Philippa, read some of her press articles and find links to her books. Now, much of today's conversation revolves around relationships. And this is a topic I wrote about in detail in my latest book, The Stress Solution. Having close, loving relationships is really

important to help us manage the stresses in our lives but at the same time having too much stress makes it hard for us to have those close nourishing relationships in the first place. I think there are some simple things that we can all do to improve the quality of our relationships which can be constantly under attack in these busy times in which we live and many of you have fed back to me that the relationship section in the book was one of the most helpful sections. And I covered the importance of human touch, friendships and how to increase intimacy. I would highly recommend that you pick up a copy of The Stress Solution if you have not done so yet. It is available to buy in all the usual places as a paperback ebook or as an audiobook which i

am narrating for those of you new to the podcast my very first book the four pillar plan outlines my philosophy on health with plenty of practical tools around sleep relaxation food and movement if you are listening in the usa and canada that first book is available with a different title, How to Make Disease Disappear. Again, you can buy the book as a paperback, ebook, or as an audio book. Now, as I've already mentioned on the last couple of podcasts, I'm making a really big effort to make this information as accessible as possible. Many of you are more visually inclined, and so I'm trying to film as many of these episodes as I can and putting them up on my YouTube page so please guys do head over to my YouTube page please do press subscribe the best way to find it is to go to dotchatterjee.com forward slash YouTube

I'm also going to be pulling out short clips from each and every podcast on particular topics so that you may find them useful if you've got friends or family who are not quite ready to listen to the full conversation yet, you can direct them to some of those shorter clips. So please do head over to my YouTube page. And if you can, please do subscribe as it helps to give the channel more visibility. And it means I can reach more people with this information. If you enjoy my weekly shows, please do consider supporting them by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or whichever platform you listen to

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