The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Sigh, See, Start: How to Be the Parent Your Child Needs in a World That Won’t Stop Pushing―A Science-Based Method in Three Simple Steps by Alison Escalante

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Sigh, See, Start: How to Be the Parent Your Child Needs in a World That Won’t Stop Pushing―A Science-Based Method in Three Simple Steps by Alison Escalante https://amzn.to/49vJ7EP In a perfectionistic parenting culture that tells you that you are never enough no matter how much you do for your kids, this unique approach empowers you with a simple parenting technique to gain confidence, remain grounded, and connect positively with your children. Dr. Alison Escalante is a board-certified pediatrician with more than two decades of experience who has spent the last ten years exploring ways to equip parents to meet their children's needs. She has experienced first-hand the culture of criticism and anxiety that drains parental joy and leaves parents feeling bad about what they should or should not be doing with and for their children. She calls this the parenting “ShouldStorm,” and this book is her invitation to escape that cycle and be the parent your child needs. In this game-changing parenting book, Dr. Escalante outlines her 3-step science-based approach to escaping the ShouldStorm and embracing should-free mindful parenting. Going into detail about each step, she clearly explains how to implement this approach in everyday situations where parents may feel overwhelmed and shares real results from parents and children who use the technique: SIGH: In moments of parental overwhelm, take a breath all the way into your belly. Imagine it's a sigh of relief. Sighs help you stop and center yourself instead of reacting to the "should" in your head. ​ SEE: Notice what’s going on. See your child. Are they happy? Are they close to tears? Are their fists balled in anger? START: Then, and only then, start listening, and start thinking about what an appropriate reaction would be. Do they need a hug? Some space? Something else? In the vein of Good Inside, this book offers a simple approach and practical, proven strategies any parent can use. It also explores parenting culture and why it has become more and more intense over recent decades. For anyone who wants a proven toolkit for resisting a parenting culture that shames them when they can’t meet unrealistic expectations, Sigh, See, Start is your new go-to tool for joyful parenting.About the author Dr. Alison Escalante is a board-certified pediatrician with more than two decades of experience who has spent the last ten years exploring ways to equip parents to meet their children's needs. She is an Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics at Rush University. She is a Forbes Contributor, a writer at Psychology Today, a TEDx speaker, and author of Sigh, See, Start: How to Be The Parent Your Child Needs in a World That Won't Stop Pushing. Her undergraduate degree was in History from Princeton University, where she studied Ideological and Cultural History. She obtained her M.D. from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University. Her pediatric residency training was at Duke University and the University of Chicago. She is a former Clinical Instructor in Pediatrics at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen. The hour lady sings it. That's when you know it's official. Welcome to the show, as always. We appreciate you guys being here. Please refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives. We're having a stupendous growth on the Chris Voss Show. 1,405% increase in our audience base in four years.

So, does it get better than that? It probably does, but, you know, we're working on it. Anyway, folks, refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives relatives go to goodreads.com fortress chris voss linkedin.com fortress chris voss chris voss one of the tickety-tockety and chris voss facebook.com then scrub that darn linkedin newsletter gross like a weed we have an amazing board certified pediatrician on the show we're going to talk about her newest book that just came out february 20th and what she's going to be doing today is she's going to teach you how to raise your children to not be like chris voss how to not raise your kids so they end up like me i'm the poster child on most

pediatricians wall with a big circle and an x through it and i'm like i'm like the what not to do as parents to raise a child like me, because, and if you ever have a child that says that you want to go into podcasting, there's a sign that you should probably get help. She's the author of the latest book, Psy, See, Start, How to Be the Parent Your Child Needs in a World That Won't Stop Pushing, a science-based method in three simple steps. Dr. Allison Escalante joins us on the show today, and she'll be teaching you how to raise a kid that isn't Chris Voss. So that's always good to have. That's what I hear. At least if only my parents had gotten a warning sooner, they could have

avoided me. But I don't know. That's what birth control is for. Allison Escalante is a pediatrician, author of the Annihilates book we just mentioned. And she's also a TEDx speaker, writer, and woman on a mission to ease the epidemic of anxiety that has convinced us that we're all failing and it's stealing our joy. She's developed a three-step method to help parents raise their children mindfully, skillfully, and enjoy doing it. Is it a three-step method? Don't have kids, don't have kids, don't have kids? No, I'm just kidding. Kids are nice. She has also presented this method at conferences, corporate events for professionals looking for greater effectiveness and wellness under pressure. She's a contributor to Forbes and Psychology Today, TEDx Speaker, and all that good stuff.

Welcome to the show, Allison. How are you? Oh, thanks so much for having me on. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate it. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to look you up on the interwebs and learn more about you? The easiest way to find me is the title of the book, sci-c-start.com. And I'm on all the socials. You can find my links to that there, as well as links to my columns for Forbes and Psychology Today. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of your new book.

If you have ever contemplated even having a child, you will be immediately inducted into a culture of criticism and anxiety that pushes perfectionistic parenting. That tells parents that every little thing they do matters and they're likely to mess their kid up for life. I thought that was the whole point of having kids is so that you could, you could break your kids and, and put them in therapy. I thought that was the whole point. I mean, while that makes a great Steve Martin comedy film, I think most parents are aspiring to a slightly different outcome. Yeah. Oh, that's good. If they are, they're not doing it very well, which is why they need your book. So, Psy C Start. What does that mean? Basically, when we are feeling overwhelmed

by parenting, because I heard you there. I heard you blame the parents, Chris. They're just jokes here. I know. But that's what the culture is doing, right? It's telling us, you're messing it up. You're messing it up. You're messing it up. It's all your fault.

Do it this way. And if you don't do it this way, you're going to mess it up. And that's a horrible position to be in as a parent. So I call that a should storm. You should do this. You should do that. You should never do that other thing. And I think as parents, we all need to lose our should. A should storm.

That sounds pretty interesting. And that's what Sci-C Start is for, is to help us lose our should. Help us lose our should. I had a should storm after going to should-o-bell. I don't know. This took me somewhere. I don't know what it means. So tell us more about this should storm like how does that

work how do we is that is it a thing where you're like i shoulda woulda coulda sort of thingy or how does it work yeah and it's also this culture that's constantly sending these shoulds at parents it's an avalanche of parental insecurity and confusion and people internalize that, right? So there's always somebody telling you, you should do this, you should do that, you should never do that other thing. And then you end up with that running inside your head as well. So it's very difficult then to connect with your kid because you're distracted by all of these anxiety producing shoulds, right? Yeah. You got the mother-in-laws on both sides going, you should do this.

And you've got the, I don't know who else. I've never had kids, so I don't know where this comes from. But I imagine it comes from everywhere, I guess. There are articles and newspapers. And social media groups. Social media groups, there you go. Which can be both supportive and confusing and a should storm of their own.

Everyone's got an opinion and not all of them can be right. That's right. And I think even with really good expert advice, the experts tend to disagree with each other. So it can be really hard for parents to navigate. And that's why we need a way to tune out those shoulds, tune out that distraction, and really do what our kids need most, which is

connect with them and then parent them based on what they actually need, not what we're being told they should need. Ah, so a focused application approach to the child in and of itself, other than just listening to 50 million crazy people on Facebook. Yeah, pretty much. Who knew? Who knew? You know, I have shit storms too as a single person that doesn't have kids. It's mostly people that write me and go, yeah, you should never have had kids. Good call, dude.

Good call. You're not the sort of person we need in the pool. So give us a little bit of history and background. People like to know who our folks are that come on the show and invest in them. Tell us a little about your upbringing. Why did you get into the business of pediatrician and counseling and the stuff that you do? How did you grow up and what shaped you? I grew up in the area of New Jersey that no one believes exists, which is the foothills of the Appalachians right near Pennsylvania. So we had black bears in the backyard and all sorts of deer environments,

and it was a good place to grow up. I would say what really started me on the journey toward this work would be college. Because when I was at Princeton, I majored in ideological, ideological, pardon me, and cultural history. And that's where you look at how ideas change history and how they move through culture. And I really started to understand how culture is this group of, part of culture is this group of assumptions that we all take for granted. We don't realize they're assumptions. We think they're just true. And so that shaped you to go, hey, I want to get into this field and see if I can help families. Yeah. I mean, I went to medical school and the place where I felt the most energized and motivated and passionate was caring for kids.

And so I ended up a pediatrician and then I saw all these parents just totally overwhelmed by this pressure and this anxiety and you know it's interesting because the parenting culture both makes you anxious and blames you for it right so it's your problem that you're such an anxious parent right but and so I said this is crazy because if every parent is anxious then it's not an individual problem. It's a cultural problem. So what is going on in this culture? Yeah.

And, you know, I think parents want to do the best for their kids. They love their kids. You know, the moment they see you come out, there's a connection that they have with them. It's a dopamine or, you know, it's a chemical in the brain. And they're like, hey, I really like this kid until they turn teenagers. And then, but, you know, it's a chemical in the brain. And they're like, hey, I really like this kid. Until they turn into teenagers. And then, but, you know, you're right. They are overwhelmed by the should storm of, you know, everyone's got advice. It's kind of like opinions and assholes.

Everyone's got one. So how do you deal with this three-step method, the sigh? Break these down for me, if you will. Let's start with the sigh. How do you start? How do you recognize when it's a sigh moment oh that's simple do you remember in kindergarten our teachers taught us that if your clothes catch on fire you should stop drop and roll yeah so if your brain's on fire from the should storm sigh see and start and you start with sighing because it's a built-in breathing method that we do when we're under pressure, right?

And it actually helps calm the nervous system. Ah, so take a breath and just go. Okay, let's calm the situation down a little bit. But what you did there, Chris, was you breathed in. And a sigh is special because a sigh is a long, slow out-breath. And it's the out-breath that tells our nervous system that we're okay. Okay. You see, if you're being chased by a predatory lion, you can't sigh.

You're going to be huffing and puffing and breathing fast and shallow as you run away. Or maybe you're hiding from that lion and you're feeling fight or fright and you're going to be breathing again, very shallow or holding your breath. But it's only when we get safely away from the lion that we can breathe a sigh of relief and say, okay, I'm good now. And that message to our nervous system takes us out of that fight or flight, takes us out of that anxiety and says, okay, brain, it's safe to connect. It's safe to start thinking again and using our higher thought centers. Let's turn on calm and connected and let's see where we are. And that's what the Psy does for us.

Okay. And then the next step, C. How do we utilize the C? So C is your moment of mindfulness. We're constantly told about doing mindfulness interventions like an hour of yoga or meditation, and that's great. But if you have kids, you can be really busy and have no time for that kind of thing. Science has shown us that even momentary mindfulness is highly effective. So you just see, take a moment, notice your child, see what's going on with them, see the situation. I don't want to leave anybody with visual impairment out. So when

I chose C, it was because it goes psi C star, so it's three S's. It's not to mean vision per se. It's about noticing what's going on before we jump in and react. Because if we are just reacting, we're just reacting to those shoulds in our head and not the kid in front of us. And so it's really important to address the applicable situation at hand and the applicable child. Like, there you go. So then you have START. So that's, I guess you've done your diagnosis through C, and so you're starting to do something? Is that correct?

Precisely. And START is fun because it's different from most parenting methods out there. There's a lot of parenting methods that recommend pausing, breathing, doing a little mindfulness, right? And I agree with all of that. But then what? Start is where we get to be scientists of our own. And I hope that's not a polarizing word. I know science isn't everybody's favorite thing lately.

But what I love about science is it gives you a way to test things out and see what works. So you've calmed yourself down, you've gotten connected, you're noticing what's going on. And then you start and maybe you start thinking, thinking about what's appropriate here, thinking about taking a different approach. Maybe you think about that article you read and say, Oh, this does apply here, I'm going to try that. Or maybe your kids are, you kids are punching each other. So you start by jumping in and physically separating them. Or maybe you start by doing nothing. That's a really

good one for me because I'm naturally reactive. So for me, pausing and letting my kids figure it out for themselves for a minute has been very helpful and effective for them. Yeah. Plus, if you got money on one of them winning, you know, that helps. You know, you can figure out, you can get the bet on the video. Absolutely. Yeah. And who's going to the ER and everything. No.

Yeah. No, no, no violence, everyone. But, you know, and what I love about this too is then you're gathering information. So instead of focusing on whether you're a perfect parent or not, or whether you're good enough or not, you're focusing on what am I learning right now? What's working? What's not working? If it works, great. You file it away for later. You've learned something that way. If it doesn't work, you have learned something and you've learned something useful. Now you might trigger a should.

You might say, oh, I should have done it differently. I messed up, right? But we know what to do if we have a should in our head. We sigh, see, and start again. There you go. Because you're not always going to get it right. Everybody fails. We fail a lot.

I imagine there's a lot of failure in parenting because everything's different. You're juggling so many different things, too. So, usually when I see there's problems with the child, I just, my start is, I just go start looking for the duct tape. Don't do that, people. That's a joke. Do they need a hug? Do they need some space? I mean, maybe kids just need a hug sometimes, right?

Absolutely. You know, and I think that when we're under pressure as parents we're more likely to overdo our parenting and that's what psychologists have been noting in recent generations of parenting it's called they call it a parenting crisis because we're we're doing what's called over parenting we're in our kids space too much we're fixing them for them or we get frustrated and say angry, shaming, unhelpful things. And, you know, either way, in order to give our kids space to try things out and learn so that they gain skills, we need to give ourself that space first. And it's not enough to say, oh, you shouldn't be so stressed.

Relax. You need a method method you need a tool that's true otherwise you just feel like you have a gun to your head and they're just like just relax and everything will be fine you're like i have a gun point on my head so there's that from society i guess you know i heard a great thing from my from one of my employees one year he goes you know with kids chris you need to give them like a hallway and you need to give them room to bounce around and learn and move you can't you can't like you know i would see this in religious communities where they'd be very restrictive and these kids couldn't think

a thought without you know without you know being reprimanded for how dare you think a thought on your own or something you know it's this really constrained environment usually those are the kids you see pop out and go completely the other way of what their parents intention was like me telling my story on the show but and he says you got to give them the hallway so they could bounce around and so it sounds like what you're saying is parents need to kind of give themselves that sort of hallway space too i think it's nearly impossible to give that space to someone else if you don't have it yourself there you go right and do you think you know i see the mention here about millennial parents, you know, we've heard of all sorts of over, overreactive parenting, maybe with the millennials and the Gen Z's

having kids. I don't know. The millennials, we'll just blame them for everything. So the millennials, you know, their helicopter parenting, the participation trophy parenting, you know, it seems like a lot of that is a little bit overreactive, maybe. I mean, I'm a Gen Xer and most of us were raised old school and old school had some good things to it, which was generally the expectation that you can handle it. Right. I'm going to tell you to stop climbing on the roof of that broken down shack in the neighborhood and jumping off it. And I'm going to expect you not to. And of course, it didn't work because I still climbed up on that roof and jumped off it. So your beatings were pretty good too.

And there was a lot of corporal punishment and everyone I knew received it. But the corporal punishment and the verbal shaming in the families who didn't use corporal punishment, all it really taught us was to repress our emotions. It didn't teach us effective problem-solving skills. It taught us compliance, right? And for kids who had any kind of developmental difference or ADHD or learning difference, they just couldn't do it. And so those kids just got left a lot yeah they got called bad and they they were you know pushed to the side and it wasn't good for anybody and once again people this is why you know reading her book makes this young girl like me because we just described my child i hear you i know and so all that started to shift for the millennials, right? And that's where we're

getting to the millennial parents. So like some of them were raised old school, some of them were raised by helicopter parents, and some of them were raised by a confusing mixture of both. But helicopter parenting was a meaningful attempt to correct for old school parenting, right? They were trying to do it different. They were trying to support their kids and not beat the crap out of them and teach them that their feelings mattered. And that was a really good goal. It's always the application that's the problem of any good intention. That's right. There were some important misunderstandings of science that were used to create bestselling books that I talk about in, in my own book about how we got

here, you know, and where, where these ideas came from in the eighties. And it wasn't the scientific research itself. It was some popular authors who twisted it. And then you had people believing that if they didn't instantly make their child feel good at all times, that their child would end up in therapy because they'd be damaged for life. And that was not a healthy approach either. That was kids in therapy. Cause he can't function.

Cause he, right. He was carried through life in the helicopter parent. He didn't ever fall down and it's not just that it's the child was taught they couldn't handle it the child was taught like you're fragile you're gonna break mommy can't handle it daddy can't handle it if you skin a knee we're gonna freak out and so you can't handle it obviously right yeah meanwhile us gen xers we're doing triage on ourselves we're like we knew how

to you know we went to boy scouts so we knew how to do a tourniquet to cut off the blood flow and stuff and we're just like it's a flesh wound just walk it off it'll be fine and yeah and you see these kids down there on tiktok screaming about how life isn't fair and i can't function and life is so hard you You're just like, seriously? I hear you, Chris. But you know what? If you had kids right now as a Gen X parent, I guarantee that you would be doing what all the rest of us are doing,

which is overdoing it with the parenting. And that's where, you know. No, there'd be severe beatings happening at all times. There would be regular beatings whether they needed it or not. I would have defaulted to the way I was raised for the most part. That's unfortunate. But, you know, I think that the size C start method gives us a place where we can, you know, instead of rooting ourselves in the past and repeating that, right? And saying like, oh, it was good for me, so it's good for you, right? Or overcompensating and going too far the other direction, really calming ourselves down where we know it's okay. And then noticing the strengths and ability of the kid we have, you know, allows us to do a type of parenting that, you know, grasps these newer goals, which is, hey,

we want our kids to develop self-confidence. We want them to value their own emotions. We want them to learn how to solve problems for themselves and think that, but we don't want them to do it unsupported or in danger either, right? And so we're going to try to find that messy but happy medium, and we're going to individualize it to each of our kids because they're different. Yeah, there you go. So you also talk about caregivers in your book. I know my mom's the caregiver to my sister in the care center. So you give some advice to them as well. I think it's a similar situation, you know, because we all have loved ones with different specific needs and specific ways that they react to their needs, right? So for instance, I have one kid who loves it when I say warm, caring things,

right? And the other one is like, oh, mom. And they've been that way forever, right? So knowing the person you're working with and trying to recognize what kind of responses meet their needs, you know, can be helpful. And I think also when we're dealing, because I don't know your sister's specific needs or issues, but like, say you're a caregiver for someone who's nonverbal. They don't know, i don't know your sister's specific needs or issues but like say you're a

caregiver for someone who's non-verbal they don't know they don't make words and they can't express clearly the more that you can trust yourself that you're going to do the best you can and it's going to be okay and the more that you can calm down and notice this person, you know, you can get pretty good at reading their body language, right? And figuring out what works and what doesn't. But it can be hard to do that if you're too riled up and distracted by trying to get it just right. There you go. Trying to get it right. You give some counsel to LGBTQIA and gender non-confirming families in your book as well. What help do they usually need? is the first one that includes stories from, you know, non-heterosexual couples raising kids,

from kids who are in the LGBTQIA plus community. And that's, I think, you know, as a non-member of the community, I don't want to speak for anyone, but that's the sense of the real needs there is that their voices are just as important and need to be included. And then the Psy-See-Start method, I've heard from the folks that were included in that book that it was really helpful for them too, and that they feel their own version of the should storm and very much the same as other parents and other kids. I was just going to say society should storm. There you go. You talk about achievement, self-improvement, and career-oriented readers. What about those tiger mom types, the ones that, man, they're trying to overachieve in life and they're just driving everyone insane with it, and they try and push it on their kids. They want their kids to, I don't know, be these perfect models of children- and and do you counsel those folks i think i think first of all to know that while it's easy from the outside to look at achievement oriented parents

and say oh this is all about them most of them when you get to know them they're motivated by the same love and care as everybody else they're right, people are constantly getting messages that the economy is harder to live with. People get this idea that you have to go to Harvard and graduate summa cum laude, or you're not going to survive in life. And that's not reality. And some of my favorite articles are the ones with statistics about how many paths there are to having what we would consider a travel competitive sports team and get a scholarship to a top college and all this stuff, like that's what you're going to do out of love. There you go. I try and get all of you TikTok stars. I don't want to go to college. No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that, people, please, for the love of God, make it stop.

There you go. What have we teased out on your book yet that we should tease people out to encourage them to pick it up? You know, it's interesting. You mentioned the different groups that are included. I think the other group I just want to give a shout out to is the parents who are probably the most uniformly left out of most parenting books, because most parenting books come across like we all have amazing amounts of energy and patience. And basically, so many parents are dealing with illness. They're, you know, they're, they're dealing with their own cancers or chronic issues. I myself have long COVID and I've been disabled for two years with that and had to learn how to parent my teenagers while bedridden. And that was really something. And then there's parents out there who are working two, three jobs to make ends meet,

and they barely have enough energy to stay on their feet at the end of the day, let alone connect with their kids, you know? And just to say like, hey, we see you and we know how hard you're trying. And maybe this method can take a little of the pressure off and give you some of those moments that you need with your kids, you know? There you go. Connecting with your kids. You know, we see so many of these kids when I go out, they're all head down in the electronic devices.

And it's disturbing to me. I mean, I'm not a parent. I don't know how to parent. And most people write me and say, please never have kids. But, you know, when I see a whole family out to dinner and they're all just zombified into their phones, I kind of wonder. You know, my parents made us sit down and we had to look at each other and try and put up with each other for an hour over dinner and not murder each

other and we accomplished that evidently we got this far and i think looking back it would seem hard to do but god we i don't know i think it made us i mean i'm not a representative saying i'm a better person but maybe it helped their siblings but no i no, I just see people not taking those moments that you talked about where they're connecting with their kids. They're just, everyone's zoned down into a phone. I think this is a great, this would be a great test case for a SISI start. So let's say I'm with my family at dinner, right? Generally speaking, we do have a no phones at the table rule, right? Or if, you know,

if we're eating together, and we generally have an expectation that we're going to try to talk to each other, and we're going to try to be polite. And we go from there. And most of the time, that's a great thing for us. And I think it builds the practice in the kids for that social engagement and those things that kids get out of a family dinner. But on the other hand, sometimes we are just all totally exhausted. Maybe we've had a really long week, you know, and nobody is up to talking and everybody's so wiped out and irritable. If we do try to talk to each other, we're just snarky. It's okay sometimes in that moment to say, hey, you know what?

Fine. Text your friends. Once the dinner comes, let's put down our phones and try to talk to each other for a minute while we eat. But we're really exhausted tonight. And we'll pick it up again the next time we eat together maybe that's a maybe that's the the way is to schedule stuff like my parents they they used to do i mean they were lds mormon and they used to do was a monday family night monday night was family night i think that's what it was and so we would get together and play games and i don't know do i don't have any jokes for this, but you know, we play like Monopoly and stuff. And, but we all kind of knew that's when we had to come together as a family. We didn't have electronic devices back then, but you know, we were doing our own,

whatever stupid stuff. And so maybe that's scheduling where you say, Hey, you know, we're going to have a connecting talk to each other time. I don't know. I think there's a, there's a real place for that. And it's something, I also, not only something like that, but I also encourage families to have regular family meetings where everybody gets together and say, hey, how are we doing? And what's working and what's not. And you'd be surprised how young the kids can have useful contributions to those meetings. I remember by age four, the kids giving useful suggestions about how we did things. And there's even actually, I think we have in the book, a place of how to structure a family meeting using SISD Start.

You know, we did the family meetings. My family did the family. I think it was part of the Monday night family thing. There used to be this whole thing the Mormons would do where they'd be like Monday night's family night and they'd have like, I don't know, some structure they would give to people. But so we'd have that. And I think that I think I don't have to go ask my mom, but I think the family meetings were the same. But, you know, usually the problem was we were always trying to unionize as kids and renegotiate our allowances. And the management was never happy with any of that. And we were trying to reorganize the chores.

We were really against doing any chores. And that was always shot down. So our meetings were pretty contentious, I think, most times. But we tried picketing in front of the house. That didn't work either. So, you know. But we tried picketing in front of the house. That didn't work either. So, you know, but we had them. If your family was anything like my old school family, you guys probably didn't do a lot of collaborative problem solving.

Yeah, you're right. It was mostly just command and control. Command and demand. Right. And so a lot of parents now, if we grew up with command and demand, then we, again, we struggle to figure out how to do this with our kids where we provide leadership, but we're also making them feel like what they're saying matters. And so we tend to go too far the other way to the sort of, I'm forgetting the word, but the parenting where you give kids everything, right? And you let them run the show. Permissive.

Permissive parenting. And what I'm arguing for is what we call authoritative parenting, which is where you provide leadership, but your kids have a voice. They receive that respect that everyone as a human deserves. And that's where the section on collaborative problem solving in the book can be so helpful. Because you, you know, what's interesting is your kids don't have to unionize if they know they're going to be heard. Right? That's true. And if they're used to being heard, or even if they haven't been heard, if your family wants to make a change, you know, you can, you can make a change at any time. But once they trust that my concerns are going to be heard and

my parents are going to at least attempt you know to be somewhat reasonable to everybody then they don't have to hold a protest there you go yeah our picket line always held up until that damn four-year-old would always cross the picket line scab i just just want to diaper change idiot kid anyway but the joke's a sign i have this vision of my whole family getting in front of her house in california's kids maybe that'd be a great movie bit but yeah the you know i learned that leadership with people in running companies is you have to be able to command and control and be authoritative without without and but making it seem like it's their idea and it's a motivating thing like i used to ask my employees to do stuff i'd be like hey i'd really like you to go do this and every now and then somebody'd be

like or you know i think this will be good for what you're trying to do and you know every now and then an employee would be like yeah i don't want to do that and i'm like i don't think you understand i'm asking you a question to get your buy-in because that's just the voluntary aspect of it but really it's a command so go do it or i'm gonna fucking fire you so i gotta tease you a little bit there chris because what you're describing is not collaborative problem solving it's it's manipulation it's tricking someone into thinking something's their idea. Note to self, do more manipulation. But as a pediatrician, that's one of the things I love about kids is that they actually have

valuable insights and useful problem solving suggestions from a very young age. And families can be much happier when they take those into account. There you go. This is, once again, proof why I should never have kids. So there you go. So this has been very insightful, Allison, and a great book so parents can do better and they want to do better. They love their kids.

They want the best for their kids. I've seen some of their kids and I'm not sure why they're trying, but that's another story. Anyway, tease my parents. So what's the best way people can... give us your final thoughts as we go out. And what's the best way people can order up your book and find out more about you? So, I mean, the main thing to remember is whenever you feel a should or you feel unsure, sigh, see, and start. There you go.

And you can find me and my book at sigh, see, start.com. There you go. And you can find me and my book at Psy C start.com. There you go. And it's probably also reasons why I'm not a pediatrician as well, as we've witnessed here, but all the jokes aside, folks, raise your kids, right?

Please. Seriously. I'm having to deal with them as adults and it's not great. So order of the book, folks are reverse. So fine books are sold. Psy C start. How to be the parent your child needs in a world that won't stop pushing a So order of the book, folks, or find books are sold. Sci-C Start.

How to be the parent your child needs in a world that won't stop pushing. A science-based method in three simple steps. Available February 20th, 2024 by Dr. Allison Escalante. Thank you, Allison, for being on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you. And thanks for tuning in.

Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, linkedin.com, 4chesschristmas, chrisfast1, all those crazy places on the interwe thanks for audience for tuning in go to goodreads.com for chest christmas linkedin.com for chest christmas christmas one all those crazy places on the interwebs thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time