Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Parenting a Struggling Child with Kristina Kuzmic

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

The saying goes, “A parent is only as happy as their least happy child.” While this may be a bit of a codependent edict, it’s true that when your child is struggling with anxiety, depression or in any other way it takes a deep toll on the family system. And as parents we try everything we can think of to help, but often those efforts don’t create any substantive change.  In this episode of the Language of Love, I welcome back my good friend Kristina Kuzmic, a writer, creator, and mother, to discuss her new book, I Can Fix This and Other Lies I Told Myself While Parenting My Struggling Child. If you're a regular listener, you'll likely recall our in-depth chat in 2023 about her book 'Hold On, But Don't Hold Still,' where we explored personalized parenting and supporting our children through mental health challenges. Today, Kristina shares her journey of parenting Luca, her son who battled depression, ADHD, and anxiety. At a certain point he became suicidal and a danger to himself and others. Kristina’s journey and the amazingly authentic way she shares it is inspiring and instructive.  We have a heart-to-heart chat about the importance of empathy and connection over trying to fix or control their struggles. She shares important and effective lessons she learned the hard way about how to best to support our kids through their toughest times.  Kristina and I deep dive into: What it takes to parent children who are struggling Kristina's backstory that led her to write her book Why we should embrace empathy over control with struggling children The ways our Children's struggles require that we address our unhealed parts The importance of self-care for parents to better support struggling children Redefining “good motherhood” Check out Kristina's new book, I Can Fix This and Other Lies I Told Myself While Parenting My Struggling Child, as well as her previous bestseller, Hold On, But Don't Hold Still, for valuable insights. Follow her on LinkedIn, Website, Facebook, or Instagram for updates on her projects. And don’t forget, you can visit my website for helpful courses and resources designed for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. And that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love. Christina Kuzmich is a comedian, inspirational speaker, and best-selling author. Her goal has been to be for others what she needed when she was at her lowest. I first met Christina when I interviewed her a year or two ago for her first book, Hold On, But Don't Hold Still.

The story of her struggle, not only coming to this country from Croatia during the war in Croatia, growing up as an immigrant, all the issues in her family, divorce, poverty, single motherhood, and her honesty and integrity and humor and guidance shines through so beautifully. Now she's got a new book out, which is even more self-revealing, even more powerful, and it's really through her self-revelation and the journey she takes herself on that we can start to see a path out as parents of struggling children. The book is called I Can Fix This and Other Lies I Told Myself While Parenting My Struggling Child. I'm so excited to share this conversation with you. Christina Kuzmich, thank you so much, my friend.

It's so good to be with you in interview, in person, and whatever. I'm so excited to talk to you about this. Thank you for having me on. I love you so much. I love you back. And the book, as I was saying, is called I Can Fix This and Other Lies I Told Myself While Parenting My Struggling Child. You and I have shared a lot about this.

I guess we met a couple of years ago when I first interviewed you and then we became friends and we've shared a lot, even as you were writing this book, because we have similar stories of struggle as moms, me with my oldest son, who ironically was not Sammy, the one that I lost, although there were some struggles with him too, there are struggles with all of them, but you also with your eldest son, Luca, that's what this love story essentially, I mean, it is like a love story, is about his journey and your journey as a family. And most importantly, I feel for the reader, your journey as a mother. Yeah.

So why don't we start with you telling us a little bit about how this all began and the backstory of what led you to write this book. And then we'll get into some of the nitty gritty of the lessons you've learned and the things you share in the book. Because this is a deeper... mean, you're always self-revealing and you're, I mean, that's key to who you are, but this was really pulling the covers back. Yeah. I've never, ever put anything this personal and vulnerable out there. I thought I had been as personal and vulnerable as possible, but then when your kids

start struggling and then your kid gives you permission to share that story, that's a whole nother level of vulnerable. So Luca was my first and I didn't have experience with teenage years. I thought I could handle the teenage years. And so he starts hitting those teenage years and I'm seeing changes. And one of the first mistakes I made as I write in the book is I came from a place of assumption. I know what this is. This is teenage hormones.

He's moody. I get it. We're going to make sure that certain behaviors that are bad are nipped in the butt so they don't grow into something bigger. I got this instead of coming from a place of curiosity. And what was really happening was my child was severely struggling. I was so, and I think a lot of parents fall into this. I was so focused on the behavior. Oh my gosh. How's he suddenly failing classes? He was excelling. And why is he suddenly screaming at

me? And why is he suddenly being violent and running away? And oh my gosh, now he's doing drugs. It was like, I was just so focused on, we got to fix this behavior. He's out of control instead of really thinking what's beneath it. And I knew that people don't act that way unless there's something beneath it, but I wasn't digging deep enough. Eventually started realizing, wait, this is not typical teenage stuff because he's not finding joy in anything he used to find joy in. It's not that he's just isolating from mom and dad because they're not cool anymore. He's isolating from friends. He's isolating from hobbies. Anyway, long story short, he was diagnosed with depression. I flat out asked him when he was 14, have you ever thought

about hurting yourself. And he admitted to me that he was suicidal. And that led to just years of trying to find the right doctor and the right medication and him getting diagnosed additionally with ADHD and anxiety. And we having to call the cops on him at one point and him take being taken on a psychiatric hold and hospitalized and just a roller coaster of, of chaos, but also of me getting my hopes up only to go backwards because everybody's like, oh yeah, you know, life is full of setbacks and mental health is full of setbacks. And when I think of a setback, I think two steps forward, one step back. For our journey, it felt like two steps forward and then speeding in reverse with failed breaks. And it was just an exhausting long road. And then eventually as my

son started to get better, he told me that what helped him the most was hearing from other kids his age and support groups he had been in because kids are hearing from therapists and they're hearing from doctors and parents. And there's something really powerful about hearing from your peer that helps. So no matter what our age, but I think especially for teenagers, because other teens are the only ones that have any credibility. Yeah. And so when, you know, he said that helped me, maybe we can do a video. He's very private, usually doesn't even use social media and talk about it. And we did this video and that sort led to the book. So not only do I have his input throughout every chapter, any time I mentioned

Luca was mad, Luca was this, I ran it by him. I was like, is this genuinely how you felt? I wanted to be authentic to the story, but then he then wrote the last chapter. So you hear from a mom and then you hear directly from the teen, which I just keep thinking how much that would have helped me when I lost and just needed to get inside a teenager's head. Yeah. I was thinking that too. when I read that and how beautifully he put it and all the ways that he shared what did work and what really was helpful and the ways in which your support and continually leaving the door open to talk about things and that you were there and that you loved him, even though it didn't seem like it was landing or even getting through the first layer of fog around him, it was landing

in there, you know, and he kept coming back to that. I thought that was a really beautiful part. And I get it. Like I, you know, as someone I was saying to a girlfriend yesterday, when my kids, before I became a mother, when I was pregnant with my eldest, I was finishing my PhD. I already had two masters and was getting a PhD. I was a practicing therapist. I had taken all the human development, child development, parenting classes. I knew everything you're supposed to do. I was like, this is this parenting thing. I'm ready. Like all I have to do is what I know I need. Oh, and by the way, I've also excavated my childhood and understand all my wounds and all the ways my parents screwed up. And I'm not going to do that. So like, I know what not to do. I know what to do.

I know how to create a safe, loving home where they can thrive. I know all the things they need to thrive. Like my kid is going to be just fine, healthy, happy, well-adjusted because I know exactly what to do. And one of the things you get into and really it's really not only beautiful, but cute the way you structure the book is like, you know, each chapter is a lie. We've been told or we've adopted or we've told ourself about supporting a child who's really struggling. And one of the lies, you just need to know the information. Like parents just need the information. Then their kids will be fine. And you like me had the information. So I'm wondering if We can talk about that for a little bit because that was my big, you know, here I am doing

all of this stuff. And what I wasn't accounting for is how life was going to come in, how we, how the tragedies and traumas that we experienced and he experienced that had nothing to do with me were going to affect him and how we all come in, uh, duh, with our own kind of Achilles heels, but also our strengths and our personalities and our character, you know, a lot of that we just come in with our preconditions. so I wasn't accounting for, I just figured I could control all that shit. So I'm wondering if you can speak to that to start. Yeah. So one of the lies is information leads to clarity,

which seems like the right thing, right? Once you have the information, you'll have the clarity. You'll know how to help your kid. I had so much freaking information. I had spent so much time speaking with doctors and therapists, reading every book possible, sitting in support groups. I mean, so one of my best friends is a pediatrician, been hours with her, you know, I did all this research and it doesn't always lead to clarity. This is why there is no manual for parenting, right? Because each child, each family, each circumstance is completely unique. It is so unique.

And one of the things I had to learn, and I write about this in the book, is to stand in awe of Luca's story. what we do is we come with our assumptions and our things we learned and our facts and our you know solutions and we're not actually taking time to stand in the individual's story in all of his story without going well this worked for the other person so it's going to work for my kid yeah and it's a very very frustrating thing and then on top of all that just like you sort of mentioned, I didn't even realize how many unhealed parts of myself I was to parenting. And I thought, oh, I've been years of therapy. I've been through a lot. I even wrote a book already about my crap.

I got it. I am so healed, as healed as I can be. And then you have a kid who's struggling and it brings out parts of you that you didn't even realize were still unsolved and hurting and you know, triggers. I basically was coming from a place of fear and panic and insecurities and didn't even realize it. And what Luca writes in his chapter, which I didn't even realize until he was writing it, I didn't know this, is that he said, when I could sense my mom was coming from a place of fear, it made things harder for me. And he says, you know, I can't imagine what it's like to be a parent. Like, I'm sure it's really hard to have a kid who's suicidal and you're going to feel this fear, of course, but he needed me to be steady. He was living in chaos in

his head. He needed something to feel steady that he can lean on. And I was a freaking panicked freak, right? Trying to save fun. Yeah. I didn't even realize that once I decided to stop running around trying to control, instead decided to just connect how much steadier I was for him. See, I used to think if I'm not running around trying to control it, if I'm not trying to fix it, that's being passive. That's not parenting, right? That's me not caring enough. But instead, it was really when I backed off from that, you know, I can fix this to just connecting with them and standing in all this story. That's when I became the best strength for him. I can't even tell you how much I love that and how full body chills I get at the truth of that

and how much I still freaking struggle with that because I'm a fixer and I know how to fix shit. and you tell me you have a problem, I will tell you five ways to resolve it. That's what I do for a living, on the emotional front, right? Like I can help you excavate it, figure it out. What's the issue? Where it got now?

How do you resolve it? And how do you heal it? And how do you integrate it? And that is not happening when you have a child who is struggling. And I'm just facing this recently. My oldest, who's 27, has struggled since he was seven with depression and anxiety. And he's had many, many, many good years and he's a great kid,

but he still has periods of struggle. And just recently he's been going through a period of struggle. And I have realized, cause now he's like a grown adult in his late twenties. I have realized that just the other day I had this thought, I was like, crap, I don't even know. Not only do I need to like this idea of standing in awe of his story, when he says, you know, I'm having trouble past couple of days, I've had trouble getting out of bed, the first thing that wants to come out of my mouth is like, well, you know, are you sleeping enough? Have you had any changes in your medication? You know, what's going on? Like excavating for the solution or making suggestions or saying maybe you should call your therapist or

whatever it is. And it has taken everything within my system to just not try to fix it or offer solutions or even excavate it further, but just to be like, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. I'm here. Like when it unfolds, like, wow, does that feel powerless to me? But when I do it, it's all he needs at this point. I mean, obviously if they're in crisis and there are points in the book, in your story where like, you have to step in and you mentioned that you have to hospitalize them. You have to force them sometimes into treatment. Things like this happen. I'm not saying that we're not saying to take a passive approach, but there is such amazing support that happens when you start not only standing in awe of their story, as you say, but also for me,

standing in confidence with the fact that he's got this, like you have all the tools you need, you have all the support you need, even if you can't hold, and I've said this to him so many times, even if you can't hold the awareness of the spectacular being you are and the resources you have and the support that's right at your fingertips, I am holding it for you. Yes. Yeah. And I realized that deciding to connect instead of control, which by the way, I've tried to do both simultaneously. You can't, you have to choose. You want to control, you cannot do both. I realized that connecting is not passive. I did think it was passive. It's not. And there's a story I write in the book where this happened during my journey of learning to

connect more than control, right? I walked by him in the hall and I noticed blood on his arms and I walk over to him and I gently pull his sleeve up. And I noticed that he had been cutting and his blood running down his, and everything inside me wanted to go, Oh my goodness, Luca, why are you, you don't need to do this. Oh my goodness. Well, do we need to get you more help? Just that whole, don't hurt yourself. And instead as hard as it was, I took a deep breath and I said, hey are you okay if I meet you in your room and I'll help you clean that up no judgment no trying to fix it just can I support you and he went to his room and I brought the first aid kit and I'm cleaning the wounds and again everything inside me just wants to tell him please please please

don't do this again and and please let's get you more help and instead I just said hey Luca can you tell me how it made you feel did it take away your depression do you feel like it made things better? And he said, no, it really didn't. I said, okay, so how about next time, you know, if you feel like doing something to numb or whatever, maybe you call me or if you don't want to call me and call your therapist or friend or somebody and maybe figure out something else that might work. And he said, okay, mom. He told me later that having this calm presence in that moment, that was again, coming from a place of curiosity. How did it make you feel? I want to understand instead of I want to lecture. Yes. Made him feel so confident. It was like he was finally kind of

settled and he was okay. And I think that is the power we give our children. And what I realized is that every single time I'm trying to control or lecture, whatever, I am not teaching my kid to trust himself. Yes. Took me a while to get that due. You know what? I am in my forties and I'm just now learning to trust myself. And that's what really inspired me to go, oh, I want this kid to trust himself because the fact that I'm trying to parent someone who's struggling and I don't even trust myself

because I was never taught to trust myself is not okay. And so now what we do pretty much every day, I'll go to him and I'll say, hey, is there anything I can do today to help support you? To me, that question is just a way to love someone free of control and saying to them, I want you to trust yourself. You lead and I support. Yeah, I think that's such a beautiful question. I always tell couples like ask your partner that regularly.

Most of us have no idea how to move through loss. There's no roadmap to follow when you're trying to navigate grief. And I realized this when I lost my son three years ago. As a therapist who understood grief, a whole new level of pain opened up to me when I lost my 16-year-old son. And since then, I have been building resources that have allowed me to navigate through loss, not only in a healthy way, but in a way that has transformed me for the better. We can move through the most terrible loss with grace. And that's why I have created the course, good grief, healing from loss with love. You can find it on my website, drlauraberman.com right there on the homepage, as well as free resources, letting you know how to support

others who are going through loss. None of us has to do this alone. I got to tell you one more thing real fast. Yeah. So I tell my therapist, I'm like, I have a really hard time and I have a little bit of PTSD to be honest, because everything. we're going to talk about that for sure. I have a little bit of a hard time. You know, I'm like, if he's sleeping too much, you're not sleeping enough. Or I see he's not eating well, you know, I'll say something like, Hey, you should have something healthier. Hey, are you getting enough sleep? And my therapist said to me, okay, here's the thing. Every time you want to ask something, picture your parents calling you and saying it to you. Would you like

it? And I was like, Oh God, I don't want my mom calling me going, what are you eating today? Are you getting enough sleep? Yeah. It's really helped me just getting that call. So imagine you on the other side. That is a good tip. I want to add a layer to what you were saying about that beautiful, you know, image, pain, terrible, beautiful image of cleaning his wounds and the way you handled that. And this idea that we're talking about, you know, how not joining them, not only not trying to control them, but not joining them in the chaos, but being the sea of calm. That was really what led me when I was having my kind of crises and reawakening and breast cancer and all shit was breaking loose. And my eldest was really struggling and was starting to talk suicide. One of the things that I talk about this a lot in the beginning of my book of Quantum Love, this eldest son, Ethan, was a huge part, really the beginning of the inspiration for that book, Quantum Love, because what I discovered out of desperation, you know, I've been still looking for a way to fix it. I went to a psychic medium, which I hadn't been to since college. And she says, let me go into

his field. The kid's in ninth grade in school during the day. And she's like, let me go into his field. I'm like, all right. And she comes back and says, oh, he's clairsentient, which is basically an empath, which all of these kids who are depressed and anxious are empaths, which means that they feel what everybody else is feeling. I mean, we're one, you're one, I already know. A lot of us are. But she said, but the thing about him and a lot of kids who are empaths is that he doesn't know the difference between what he's feeling and what other people are feeling. And so when he feels other people's feelings, he thinks they're his and he comes up with a story about it. And he's like an ungrounded electrical cord whipping all over the place. I was like, oh, my God, she's perfectly describing what's going on. and then she said what she said next changed my entire life and this is what led to quantum love is she said you need to be really careful of your emotional state when you go into the room and i was like well i never show him like it's not like i'm crying or freaking out in front of him and i

love all of your descriptions of these moments where he comes into the room and your shoulders tense and you're girding we're preparing for worst case you know or walking into his room after school like what am i gonna find she's like i'm not just talking about what you're doing on the surface. I'm talking about like the energy with which you're coming into the room. And she said, here, let me show you something. And she showed me in that moment, she was the first one who showed me this and I teach it. I feel like every day and it's all over my content in my books, this idea of how to ground your energy, like how to come back into your body, move into energetic coherence where the electromagnetic fields that your heart and your brain are putting out synchronize.

Because when we're in these states of chaos and stress or fear, we aren't emitting that energy. And she's like, you need to understand that he is not just intellectually entraining to you on an unconscious level. Our kids are constantly matching our energy, whether they're aware of it or not. So she showed me how to ground my energy and move into this calm state before I even went into the room with him. And then how to give him what I now call, or he calls, a grounding hug. He still asks for that. In that moment, he was in ninth grade and I was an idiot as far as he was concerned. And he came home from school and I was like, OK, I'm just going to tell you, I went to

this woman. She told me that she thinks you're clairsentient. I explained what it is. I explained how, you know, she thinks he may be taking on the energy of other people and not even knowing it. And it made a lot of sense to me because, you know, neuropsychotic, they were doing the testing on him and the lady would come out and be like, I think he may have trouble with social learning and cues because I was smiling at him and I said, how do I feel? And

he said, sad. And like in that moment, this psychic said this to me, I thought of that neuropsychiatrist. I was like, oh, she probably really was sad. Oh my God. Looking at her smiling face, but telling her sad because he can feel what other people are feeling, whether he knows it or not. So it really resonated with him. And he's like, I don't know why I'm saying this, but I think what you're saying is true. And I said, okay, well, let me try this. Then she said to give you a special hug. And I didn't describe to him what I was doing, that you ground, that you pull love in through the top of your head and you send it out your heart into their heart and you do this whole thing. I didn't describe it to him. I just did it. And he completely melted. And you

know, like when they're in those States, they don't melt. They don't soften. They don't surrender into your arms. They're like all over the place. And he melted. And that was the beginning of the most significant change. So I mentioned that not only as help, but as a reflection of like backing up what you're saying, because it's not just bearing witness and being calm on the surface. It's about like really moving into a state of trust and surrender, which is really freaking hard when you're poopless about their wellbeing and their safety. Yeah. And we trick ourselves. We're like, okay, I'm going to stay calm. But if we're freaking out inside, completely unrattled, like our kids sense it, they sense it.

They do. That's why I think it's so cool that he said that to you, that he knew. Yeah. And that's why I think so much of parenting or, and, or supporting a child or spouse or anybody through mental health struggles really has to do with us. Like this is the one thing I learned. And I don't know why it took me so long. Cause it's common sense is that I have zero control. I have zero control over him. I have zero control over his depression, over his anxiety, over his moods, over his future, which is terrifying when you're a mother. The one thing I can control is working on me, my healing, how I'm going to treat myself throughout the process, you know, those childhood stuff or whatever crap that I'm bringing into it. So whenever I get into

that control mode, I'm like, okay, channel it all towards yourself. Cause that's the only thing that might actually make a difference. Trying to control anything else is a waste of your time. And haven't you noticed it has? I have noticed every step of the way. I was just saying this to the same girlfriend. I was talking about this too with the parenting stuff yesterday. Our children are so entrained energetically to us and emotionally, but just on a non-physical level that even at this age, when he's in his late twenties and living six hour drive away, I absolutely notice that when I am up leveling in my own healing, he freaking does too. without me saying a word. Yeah. It's the craziest thing. Yeah. It's amazing. So I love that, that that's a really important takeaway from all of this, that we are not in control. And I also want to talk about the guilt and the shame that, because, you know, especially, and when Ethan was small there, we didn't have social media. I mean, it multiplied by 10 million now, like everyone, every family is Insta perfect. Like we couldn't go on family vacations. We couldn't even sit down

dinner without things blowing up. And I remember you and I've talked about this. I remember this moment on the playground. He was already, I think in the middle of high school, but I was on the playground with my two youngest who were still in early elementary school. And this mom was like, Oh, it's spring break. You know, where are you going? We're going to Cabo and we're going here and we're going there. And I just like said, fuck it. And instead of saying, oh, we're just sticking around and going to enjoy the city and go to the museums while everyone's out of town, you know, or make up some bullshit story. I just said, you know what? We're not going anywhere because we can't even make it through dinner without the whole world blowing up. And I can't

deal with going on a vacation like that. So we're not going anywhere. And she just kind of looked at me because she still had a little kid who, you know, I always say to people, wait till they get in fourth grade. That's when you start to notice shit happening. She didn't have kids there yet. So she was like, God, but I was like, I felt so free. I skipped away. And I knew that someone else listening and that woman might come back to that one day. And it was really more for me than for them. Yeah. I share a story in the book, how I'm leaving a Trader Joe's parking lot. and this woman starts running towards me and I recognize her. Hadn't seen her in years. Our boys used to go to elementary school together and then lost touch since, and I hadn't seen her since.

So she starts running, Christina, Christina, Christina, and we're catching up. And she goes, oh my gosh, can you believe our boys are graduating this year? Where did the time go? We're trying to figure out whether to do a big party or just a family thing. What are you going to do? And everything inside me wanted to just give a vague, I don't know, we're figuring out. And instead, I just, the way I write in the book, I decided to meet the moment with ease and with truth. And then Luca is not graduating. And she immediately got flustered and like turned around.

She's like, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. She was so embarrassed. And I said, no, no, no, no. And I grabbed her hands. I said, no, nothing. It's not bad. It's good. He's had mental health struggles and he's been working on those.

And I'm so proud of him. And he's proud of himself too. and there was something about the way I handled that conversation so straightforward that made me realize, huh, I'm actually very much okay with our authentic story. Like I'm very much okay with our messy truth. And it felt so freeing and so empowering. And I think sometimes the reason people react so like when we just say it is that they're going, wait, we're allowed to do that? We're allowed to say out loud that our family's not perfect. Yes. Yes, we are. And it is the best thing you can do for yourself and for others. Like you said, because God, how empowering

is for other families who are struggling to go, Oh, I'm not the only one. Right. So he's like that. I love that. He writes in his chapter, how he used to feel shame about his mental health. And now he's like, within the first five minutes of meeting someone be like, yeah, I was in a psychiatric hospital, you know, just talk about it. And I love that because, you know, when he had his appendix taken out years ago, we talked about that and nobody was shocked and nobody was like, I can't believe you're saying that out loud. And by the way, nobody called us brave for saying it, but since the book has come out, the amount of times I've heard people say, wow, you're so brave. Your son is so brave. And I appreciate that. But also I live to see the day when it is not brave to admit

the mental health struggles affect us like that is a human thing yeah it is a human thing and it is a natural thing and i think there are extremely teeny weeny weeny number of us who come through life you know unaffected by that and i was talking to one of my healer friends the other day and she said you know there are a few souls not many who come here just to have a soft, she called, I love this image, a soft life. You know, they've already, they've lived a lot of lives that were really tough. They've been through really hard things. And this life is just a soft life. But most people come to the earth school for shit to go down. Yeah. I can't even, when you say soft life, I'm like the most unrelatable thing I've ever heard

of. I have not had it soft. You signed up like me for multiple graduate degrees on this earth school. We were not fucking around. I like to say that I've always been, you know, the teacher's pet and overachiever. So they were like handing out assignments. Who wants to grow their soul in the area of rejection, abandonment, abuse? How about cancer? Would you like a child who's suicidal? How about one who dies? Yeah, that's crazy. I do. I do want to say one more thing because, you know, parents of kids are struggling. I need to hear this about the, you know, Luca not graduating. So five months later, he finishes his coursework. He, you know, gets his diploma. He's not going to have a ceremony. We ended up throwing him. I surprised him with the graduation

ceremony, ordered a cap and gown on Amazon. He was so touched. And I made a program and we invited people over and made a living room, look at the auditorium. And because he was the only kid graduating on this random day in October, I decided that immediately made him the valedictorian. So I mentioned that. But here's the thing I realized. There's so many things in life that we don't celebrate because we are embarrassed or worried about somebody else's judgment. And we miss out on just celebrating our own story. Again, like I said before, standing in of our genuine story. And my son did not graduate five months late. He graduated on time, his time. So whether you're doing it for yourself or for your child, just get rid of all the preconceived stuff

and the pressures and the timelines stand in awe of their story and celebrate that without preparing or competing or what will people think? I love that. I was just asked, but I get asked all the time because now my eldest is, and you know, he went, he actually made it through college. He white knuckled it all the way through and he went, he's extremely bright. And that was like the one thing that he always found solace in is his intellect and academics. And so he graduated with straight A's from a really intense Northeastern college. And so, and people in my universe know, knew then that he was going to the school and that he graduated, whatever. And so now he's in his late twenties and I get asked all the time, or even when I meet strangers who have

similar age kids, oh, you know, what's he doing now? Where's he's working and thinking that he's running a Fortune 500 company or over in the jungle somewhere leading research teams or something. And I'm like, he's working at a climbing gym and he loves it. And he can't work full time right now because he's taking care of his mental health. I sometimes don't even say more than that. When it's someone who's close to me, I'll talk about the things that he's working on and thinking about. But even in those moments, I'm like, oh, there's this part of me that has to remind myself of exactly what you're saying. Cause we're so, I think that's part, not only for our kids, but for us as parents, which then cycles back to our kids. That is so

important in this mental health journey. If your kids are struggling, what, I mean, I want to just like put on steroids, what you just said of like throwing out the norms, throwing out the timelines. Sammy also helped teach me to like who gives a shit. It wouldn't matter to me now, now that he's gone. Like, I mean, this wasn't an issue for him. But I think about this with other kids or just in general, like when I hear from parents, oh, my kid's struggling. I don't know if he's going to graduate or I don't know if I can keep him in school. I might have to homeschool him. I'm like, do it. Yeah. The frick cares. I none of it matters. Yeah. We're all playing a long game, especially if your child is struggling. And let's face it, this is happening. This whole book, The Anxious Generation, just came out. There's all this talk about how this whole generation of kids is struggling so intensely with mental health issues from the pandemic and everything else, the way the world is. So we have to throw out the norms of the expectations of these milestones and markers of

what, quote unquote, defines success for an adolescent kid or young adult or anyone for that matter. Yeah. And I think that one of the main reasons we want to stick with these timelines is the whole, what will people think, right? Like we don't want to have to explain not as if we owe anybody an explanation. I write in the book, how the night that I had to call the police on my son, we were new to the neighborhood. I didn't really know the neighbors and there is a police car outside my house and they are dragging my kid in handcuffs. He's barefoot and put him in a car. And I look across the street and I see two women and they're staring and they're talking. and I don't, these are neighbors that I had not met yet. And my mind just starts flooding with, oh my God, do I go and explain this? It's like, yeah, what do they think? And I remember actually saying out loud to myself, no, thank you. And that originally actually was supposed to be the name of the book because those words, no, thank you. Got me through so many of those days of no, thank you. I am not picking up anybody else's potential judgment. I'm not

picking up what will people think? By the way, I think that what will people think is one of the most abusive things we can do to ourselves. I really believe that. So just that, and I still use it. I still use it. And, and I, there's been so many times where I just have to say to myself, no, thank you. I'm not picking it up. Yeah. No, thank you. Yeah. And other, yeah. Cause other people's opinions of you are none of your business and it's all about their fears and insecurities and ways they can convince themselves that they aren't going to end up in their story about where you are. And it's so debilitating if you let that in. So I love that idea of no thank you. I mean, you get into so many of the lies that we as parents tell ourselves or have been told or the

culture has taught us about when you have a struggling child to, you know, we talked about some of them, but that the kid can just be fixed or that progress is a straight line or that parents are just supposed to be selfless or that breaking bad habits will just bring, you know, instant relief. You really dig into all of these kind of, many of them, most of them really unconscious or right below the surface stories that we adopted and subscribe to that do not serve us. And I know you, like I, I can tell just from being your friend and the way you speak about your kids and also reading this book, that you understand what I do, that our children don't come from us. They come through us and we are their shepherds and guides as best we can be, but they are ours too.

And besides our partners, they are greatest, maybe even more so our greatest teachers. I know I realized from way earlier on, like the minute that baby popped out of me, parenthood is supposed to be as much, if not more learning me learning than me just teaching. And I'm going to be your leader and you're going to follow my God. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. they are going to break you open and apart. They're going to touch your deepest wounds. They're going to challenge you. Their struggles are going to bring out your struggles. And it's a hot, beautiful, terrible, delicious, loving mess. Yeah. I mean, there's so much we could talk for five hours about it. If you have or have had a child who struggles with any kind of mental health or addiction, or you're struggling with parental guilt, or you love someone who is, the book is called I Can Fix This and Other Lies I Told

Myself While Parenting My Struggling Child. I know you like to say that you're not funny in this book, but you're still freaking funny in this book. I mean, it's heart-wrenching and tender and beautiful, but your humor and your brand of humor comes through so clearly in a beautiful way, in a way that obviously respects the story, but that adds, I think, some really delicious levity to the whole thing. So I want to honor that too and tell you when I told you,

oh, I'm excited to see, you know, where you're humor, you're like, it's not humorous, don't expect it to be funny. But it is. Well, for me, humor has always been, I think I wrote in my first book how going through life without humor for me is like eating soup with a fork.

Like, I need it. I need it to get all the, yes. If there's anyone listening, kids are struggling. And I bet you most people are because most kids are struggling these days in some way or another. Just be really kind to yourself because man, I definitely fell into the trap of once my son is happy, then I can be happy. If my son is fully enjoying his life, then I can fully enjoy mine. And I realized through the process that that's a hell of a lot of pressure to put on someone. And that positive emotions cannot be a reward that I

have to earn, especially when earning that reward is contingent on circumstances completely out of my control, right? So my goodness, just there's one of the lies is good mothers are selfless and that's bull crap because selfless means having more concern for others than self or having no concern for self. And there is no reason that a mother can't be just as passionate about her own needs and loving to herself as she is to her child, that it doesn't have to be competition. And one has to be stronger than the other. Please never feel guilty taking care of the most important person in your child's life. And that is you. That is you. And it's like we were saying, when you can feed your own peace and grace and happiness, you are actually not only

fortifying yourself to be a better support for them, but you are energetically affecting them and lifting their vibration by doing your work in that because they're so entrained to you. I think that's so, so important and so crucial. And it's such a kind of inherently codependent, dysfunctional saying, that saying, which I hear and I've even said to myself in the earlier years of parenting, you're only as happy as your least happy child. You are nobody. And he's including the unhappy child. Any good. I'm not saying you skip around the house singing when he's having a meltdown, but you have to hold your own peace and joy. That's the only way you survive this. That's the only way you can be a support for them. And you are actually harming them, not helping

them by joining them in the hole. And I think what you said about putting that, you know, then they end up responsible for your wellbeing. And that is the last thing any kid needs, especially a struggling kid. Yeah. And I write in that, uh, good mothers, a selfless chapter. If we are completely just living in misery and not living our life or taking care of ourselves. What we're basically doing is we're adding to our child. We're adding something else for them to later feel bad about, feel that they destroyed, look everything up at my mother. She couldn't even be happy. She canceled all her plans with her friend. Yes. Why would I, my son already feels so horrible for some of the ways his depression showed up and how he treated me. Why would I ever

add to that. I don't want to add to that. So I'm going to take really, really great care of myself. And I'm going to let him see me take really good care of myself, not just so that I wouldn't add more stuff for him to feel guilt about, but because I want to model it. His kid is struggling. I want him to take really good care of himself. Yes. And I love the idea. I amen to that a hundred times. And I really love the idea of adding, you know, letting humor lead when you need to. I was at this rally in front of Snapchat the other day with a bunch of other parents who have lost their children to predators or drug dealers or suicide baiting on Snapchat. And we're calling on them to just do the simplest things to allow us to create more safety for kids online,

but they're not doing that. But anyway, there was a whole bunch of us there, mamas and dads, and they were all carrying these posters with pictures of their kids saying gone in a snap was really powerful. And there was all that chill. And there was all of this media there. We're starting to walk from the meeting place. All the media is like walking backwards with the cameras, watching us march towards Snapchat. So this one mama is carrying a sign with her kid's face on it. And the cameraman's right in front of her backing up as we walk forward. And she accidentally like she trips a little and the sign drops on the boy's face. And so she goes to pick it up. She's like, it's okay. He can't feel it now that he fell on

his face. And then we all start cracking up. Oh my God. Cameraman was like appalled. And she's like, and we were like, don't worry. Dark humor is the only diseases through this, but. Oh my gosh. I actually love that. I mean, I think humor can be so healing. It can be so healing. Yeah. Yeah. it's a beautiful beautiful book I love you as a human being as a speaker as a comedian as a writer I loved your last book but and I know it helped millions of people but this is gonna really change the game I'm really really excited and so grateful well thank you so much for having me on I appreciate I appreciate you and I appreciate this conversation I went to the doctor said I'm crazy for your love

wrote me a prescription but there's no