When looking at the statement Fearless parenting, it is not about being afraid of your children but that you are fearful for your children. This could be as simple as making sure they are safe when they play on the playground when they are younger. It could also be an internal fear you have that you are not doing what you, or society, thinks is the right way to raise them. We go over those and then ways you can manage those feelings of fear when you start having them.
Tune in the see Fearless Parenting Through a Therapist’s Eyes.
Listen for the following takeaways from the show:
- Fill in the blank: Parenting is _____________________________.
- Love and Logic is one of Chris’ Trifecta that he has included in his practice.
- For more in-depth about Love and Logic, check out Episode 15.
- For Fearless Parenting, we have to start with what fear is.
- Letting Go is scary for you and for them.
- Psychology Today has an article about the different types of Bad Parenting.
- What sets up the fear in ourselves when parenting?
- What are the dangers of parenting out of fear?
- The Goal with this episode is to make sure this is not about Perfect Parenting.
- How do you manage the internal fear we have, that is a natural part of parenting?
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Episode #192 Transcription
Chris Gazdik: [00:00:00] Hello? Hello. I am Chris. Gazdik a mental health and substance abuse therapist, Adam, since 1995 and we have Adam Cloninger with us over there. Welcome back. How you doing? Good man. Hope you are. Did you make it through the rain. Did traffic bad,
Adam Cloninger: not as bad as it was last week. Really? Oh yeah. There was a
Chris Gazdik: wreck last week, which made that, oh, that’s that added, which made things even worse to the complication of the the missed time.
This is through a therapist’s eyes where we like to say you get personal insights directly from a therapist in your own car or personal time in your home. See the world through the lens of a therapist, be aware it’s not delivery of therapy services in any way. We love that you’ve joined us. Thank you for listening.
We we love doing the show and we ask for you to [00:01:00] help us, cuz it really does make a big deal of the difference. When you give us the five stars you pop the subscription buttons, apple iTunes lets us to receive comments. Really, truly understand. If you’ve been listening to the show, I want you to take ownership a little bit and challenge you to, if you haven’t done the, the responses, the the, the, the words actually typing creates some, some.
Patterns in algorithms that help us get found. So please help us join with us and help us grow. So contact@throughatherapistseyes.com Is the way to reach us as well. For feedback insight questions, thoughts, really? You wanna be a guest or you wanna have me come talk to you or your group or company.
Really? Any of those things contact at through a therapist eyes is the way to go. This is the human emotional experience, and we indu do endeavor. Do figure this out together. Boy, I stumbled. I stumbled. Parenting is blank, Adam, what would you say? Holy cow parenting [00:02:00] is blank. That’s easy now. I was kidding.
no, no, it’s not. Parenting is no. Yeah. Fearless parenting, I think is a cool title. That’s gonna grab people. Now usually you like to know the topic and I neglected to, to do that, but I’m curious cuz it’s still pretty fresh since you got it. When you saw fearless parenting as the topic, what what’d you think?
Adam Cloninger: Mm, well, my thought is that you can’t be fearful of what’s gonna happen cuz like anything else, some something bad’s gonna happen. Yeah. And you gotta, you gotta go with it.
Chris Gazdik: I was wondering if it was like fearless parenting. That’s impossible.
Adam Cloninger: I mean you, something like that, you can’t let things, you can’t like overthink it.
I mean, you gotta go with it. It’s like throwing a
Chris Gazdik: dart. Ooh. It’s like throwing a
Adam Cloninger: dart. Yeah. I mean you can plan all you want to, but you don’t know where the Dart’s gonna land until you throw it.
Chris Gazdik: Okay. Yeah. I like Tyson’s quote comes to mind. Everybody has a great plan until you punch in the face and [00:03:00] your plan is like amended.
Yeah, I, I think there’s a lot of fear in parenting and we hadn’t talked about parenting for a little while and I thought that might be a cool topic for you. Like you said, we, we did it before because of you know, you’ve been through parenting and, and as, as a lot of people that aren’t from a clinical mind have been through parenting, and I think we’ve all got lots of opinions about this here, topic mm-hmm, lots of judgements and views and you know, everybody
Adam Cloninger: especially about other people’s kids, not ours.
Chris Gazdik: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And, and all those folks that don’t have kids just love to. , you know,
Adam Cloninger: I wouldn wouldn’t do that or they don’t know what they’re doing. Get
Chris Gazdik: control of your kids. I wouldn’t let that
Adam Cloninger: happen. Never that wouldn’t happen in my house.
Chris Gazdik: These phrases just come so quickly, right? Yeah. Suck. Cause I’ve heard it all.
Yeah. I heard ’em all. It’s so terrible. So I, you know, I didn’t realize, but I I’ve [00:04:00] got a lot of stuff that, you know, we were joking, you know, there’s four pages of stuff that I actually have, and I didn’t realize it was that much. So let’s launch cuz there are a lot of things to kind of cover. And so we’re really gonna get at, you know, the last segment that I, I, I wanna really highlight and focus to get to, you know, how do we manage the internal fear that we have as a natural part of parenting?
I don’t do this often, but I need to, I’m gonna blast through that and then we’ll get down through it. So, but as we go through the show, you can imagine these ideas. So. Don’t think you’re gonna grab all these things. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t, but how do you manage the internal fear that we have as a natural part of parenting?
Okay. Question, answer, develop a different perspective. Wait a minute. Or a few love and logic is all about genuine compassion, love and logic. We’re gonna talk about but both for the kid and for ourselves, right? Calm yourself down. Get curious, get confused, ask questions. That leads the child to a problem solving skills [00:05:00] and then compassion and empathy kind of redundant, but still like that is so huge.
And then know you don’t have to have all the answers. Perfection, all caps is not the goal. Gosh, pause, reveal your own emotion. Why is the, this against the rules? I don’t know. Ask for help and advice. Use silence as well. Don’t jump to the answers, you know, being the, the no at all parents. So that’s, that’s honestly the nuts and bolts mic drop.
Boom. We’re done.
Adam Cloninger: We’ll see you next week.
Chris Gazdik: but we’re gonna take a deeper dive to get to the point where we look at those things. Like, there is a lot of questions I think that parents have about how do I do this? I mean, do you remember being a new parent mm-hmm was that a peaceful transition in your brain?
Because for me, I think that terror started right off the get, go. I don’t think I was ever
terrorized or
I was overwhelmed.
Adam Cloninger: I mean, I think the, [00:06:00] one of the worst things was diaper change, but you know, really? Are you one of those
Chris Gazdik: guys? Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, that was no big deal for me. I was like, dude, I got so good at it.
I could do the diaper change and not miss a play in. Yeah. I was a, I was a football game. Yeah. You one those, yeah, I won. Yeah. Yeah. You’ll have to see the YouTube video of his expression there or the Facebook live. He They may have heard it contorted your entire face and acted in panic and tear of poopy diapers.
No, for me, it was like, some of these questions we’ll go into, but for, for me, I just, I just remember being overwhelmed with this idea. Well, first of all, it was scary too, because I was super juiced about the first child and, you know, she got pregnant. That’s I like to say we’re pregnant and expecting parents and told everybody and ended up being a miscarriage, which was terrible, terrible experience.
I mean, that, that was crushing. So I think that was part of my fear kind of as well, even as like the, the, the medical [00:07:00] part, like how’s this all gonna go, you know, like it was a tough, tough ride into early. So now
Adam Cloninger: second try, you’re
Chris Gazdik: paying the same thing again. Absolutely. And, and then, but then I remember being in the grocery store, just staring at the.
At the bottle formulas and the diapers and calculating like, holy cow, are we gonna be able to handle all this? Do I having, I was, I went through a little bit of like, overwhelmed with it, then it calmed down. But I think there’s naturally a big part of fear that goes, that goes into this. So is so oh yeah.
Well, I guess before we go to fear, yeah, right off the get go, then let’s go with one of the trifecta. Haven’t really given this out for a little while. So what do I mean by the trifecta? There are three areas that I really have just been, wow. I’ve totally in the last 10 years incorporated into my practice very much with people and parenting has one of the trifecta, the.
[00:08:00] Trifecta includes these three very powerful modalities or thoughts. One of them is emotion, focus therapy for close attachments, particularly marriage. We’ve talked about that. I know you and I have the other is Dave Ramsey’s financial peace university, just because it was highly impactful for us personally.
And it totally matches a lot of what we talk about with close attachments. And I still have that burning question, Mr. Ramsey, call in, please. Sometime I wanna ask that, man, if he knows he was talking about the roles that happened in EFT, but the other one is what we’re talking tonight and it has to do with parenting and is the love and logic process, the love and logic parenting strategy.
Have you ever heard of that? Mm-hmm okay. So this is gonna be brand new for you. So episode 15 we did a deep dive Craig and I did on love and logic. Now the backstory is that this came [00:09:00] to me to a, well, it didn’t come to me. It it’s certainly not mine. I came to this at a conference that I went to that usually I’m kind of Dred out on conferences at this point.
I hate to say that if anybody’s on the board, I, I wanna learn, but I just, I don’t. I find that I get nuggets every time I go to a conference, but this particular conference, man, they had me from the get go and I was locked in, dialed into everything they were saying. It was dynamically different perspective in working with even my own children as a parent, but then clinically working with parents, struggling with mental health issues with their kids.
And then even like in the teaching realm and, and how this works, just interacting as an authority figure with kids, it was I’m telling you it was dynamic. So someone recently in the last year or two told me that love and logic went out of business and that’s not true. I, I Google their page looks still active.
So these guys are still [00:10:00] going at it. Dude you there’s we’ll, we’ll be sure to have it on the links tonight because they, they have a lot of several different books, lots of strategies, workbooks, all kinds of things. I mean, they have a whole empire, if I feel like as a matter of fact, Neil, you didn’t get my message.
We probably aren’t prepared kind of wanted to play the two minute excerpt on their website of the love and logic story. Did we not? We don’t have that. Do we? Yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t keep no, but it’ll be in the show notes people, cuz I saw your note, but I’m kind of afraid of copyright and stuff. So if we’re playing the same two minutes, I don’t want to get snagged with anything.
So, but it will be in the show notes so people can go check it out. So just, it was cute. It was this little kid. Okay. Very well. Thank you. Yeah, it, it was this kid that was describing what happened and I, I’m not prepared to say it, but it was a couple things that I learned about it. I mean, basically this is a family generational thing.
I think the generator of this FA something and the grandparent did it, created it, thought about it. [00:11:00] He. Clinical psychologist, I believe. Anyway, he created all these strategies. I’m sure they built on it over the years and this cute little kid was describing his parents having done stuff and grandparents having created it.
And now he’s kind of learning it and operating with it. So this has been around for a little while is kind of the main, the main point there. All right. Have I teased your appetite? You ready to hear this cool thing? Yes. Love and logic. Here’s the way it goes. There’s a, there’s a logic stream that goes with this.
And Craig really had a hard time with the particular component and I’m sure you’re gonna hear it. And it stopped me if you can tell cuz it’s a weird part of the concept. It starts out little Johnny or Sally. Okay. Little guy. Listen, you can do anything that you wanna do. Probably stop there cuz Craig’s head contorted.
When I said that mm-hmm year ago. The whole thing is Johnny. You could do anything you wanna do as long as you don’t cause a problem for somebody [00:12:00] else. And that’s the key oh, I see that you’ve caused a problem. So you better fix that problem. Of course, the kid’s probably not gonna fix the problem. And then you come around and you say, okay, no problem.
Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of that problem. I’ll fix the problem. Then you leave it alone, come around on the back end and you swing around creating a high structure environment with low power struggles. That dynamically changes the way that you interact with the kid in a way that you develop genuine compassion and empathy for what the kid is struggling with, because it’s tough to be a kid.
And we forget that. So that’s the line of logic. If you will, you do anything you wanna do as long as it doesn’t cause a problem to somebody else. Oh, I see that. There’s a problem here. You need to fix the problem. I see that you didn’t fix the problem. No problem. Don’t worry about it. We’ll fix the problem.
What does that sound like to you? Does that [00:13:00] sound crazy? Does that sound difficult? Does that, what, what how’s that strike? You sounds like
Adam Cloninger: you’re taking too much away from the kid. What do you mean? Like they need to learn stuff themself and fix stuff themself. That’s what I’m hearing. Maybe I’m misunderstanding.
Chris Gazdik: Well, yeah, because okay, interesting. Cuz the whole point is putting it back to the kid. Okay. You know, they they’ll have problems that they need to fix and we get out of the way. Yeah. But you just said I’m gonna fix it well, when they don’t fix it because they still need to fix it. Yeah. But they’re not gonna fix it.
And that’s where you get into potential great power struggles. So. I don’t know it’s been long enough now, maybe it’s I didn’t share this directly when we first did it in episode 15. So this will be a nice adjunct. My oldest kid decided he was gonna move all the furniture, convert his bedroom into the bonus room and he moved everything over there.
And this was a great challenge because in my mind, like, yo parents make the decision, which do man, you [00:14:00] can’t be just arbitrarily moving stuff around and, and, and disrupting, you know, the other brother’s game room and all the stuff that we do in the bonus room with guests and, you know, this type of thing.
So is
Adam Cloninger: still still in that room, huh? Is he still in
Chris Gazdik: that room? He is now, but he wasn’t then. And he wasn’t after this and it took me quite a little while to, to deal with this. This was a month, month and a half long process to like, say, look, you cannot do this unless we are in charge of the house and rooms allowing for this to happen, you can’t just.
Run rough shot, which, you know, people like to say, oh my God, the kids run the, you know, the, the, the jailhouse or what is it called? The, the, what I’m losing the expression. Kids are in charge anyway. So we had to go through, alright, you look, you could do anything you wanna do as long as you don’t cause a problem for somebody else.
But this is causing a problem in so many different ways. You know what he literally said to me, mm-hmm [00:15:00] no dad, this doesn’t cause a problem. It’s not a problem. I’m like, buddy. Yeah, it really is. And this went on a little bit and I said, okay, you know, if you’re, you’re not gonna move this back, like this is not gonna, this is not okay.
It’s causing problems in multiple ways. We’ll, we’ll have to take care of the problem and let us sink in. And here’s an interesting thing that happens is the kid begins to think, oh, you’re gonna fix the problem. Wonder what he’s gonna do. How’s this gonna work out? Am I in trouble? Because after you use this for a little while and you say, no problem, then I’ll fix it.
That creates great anxiety and motivation in the kid to fix the problem, but it didn’t in its circumstance. So a lot of times people have the greatest problem with this in not like letting the kid do whatever they wanna do. Like, are you kidding me? You can’t do that. And it, and you do need to [00:16:00] do that.
They do need to, as you just said, make their own decisions, learn their own through their own mistakes. Really. They go through pain sometimes to get right with what it is that they need to learn and how they need this problem solved through things. So I don’t know how much I wanna share, but, but I, I feel like I need to give you a little bit of what we did to, to rectify this because he wasn’t gonna fix the problem.
And I had to come around on the back end and we created different things that created fixes to the problem because without power struggles, Be your enemy. Number one to parenting is power struggle. That’s gonna be on a pillow someday. Neil. He smiles at me
Adam Cloninger: cutting the phone off works really well.
Chris Gazdik: All kinds of things.
See a lot of times people get to privilege loss, right? And yes, my neighbor you’d lose screens, all screens, all of ’em for however long.
Adam Cloninger: Some kids think they’re dying at their phone
Chris Gazdik: as a oh, it’s, it’s horrible. [00:17:00] It’s horrible for them, but there’s so much more than privilege loss in the relationship that we need to develop fearlessly as our topic tonight with kids.
And so some of the problems that are created for us is one, you know, there’s, you just destroyed the game room. So there’s no TV in this room. There’s no entertainment in this room that got gone. Right. It also was a heating problem. We didn’t really heat that room all the time. So guess. The heating either gets taken or you pay for it.
So he started to think, well, how much does that cost? And we had a conversation about that. , Aaron’s gonna listen to this one day. He’s gonna laugh. But before that conversation, it was winter time. It happened to be cold. So the windows got opened up and the little storm doors that are in the thing as as little storage area got opened up, and that room was pretty cold.
right. Mm-hmm to demonstrate to you like, dude, you need to, [00:18:00] you don’t have any heat here. We’re not paying for the heat, the extra heat cost. So that was a few of the things. And there were a few other big ones that we had to go through before he absolutely moved his stuff back to his room. Like I feel like he needed to, because that’s structure, we have high structure environments, low power struggles, where they figure out their own problems, problem solving while we’re really genuinely compassionate and have empathy for what the kid is struggling.
Did I do a good job, cause we’re not gonna go much further than that. Mm-hmm mm-hmm cause we did a whole show episode 15 on this, but I’m telling you this love and logic stuff is absolutely the bomb. What do you think? Sounds good. Did I convince you? Yeah. What are you
thinking?
Adam Cloninger: No, I’m sitting here thinking I, I, I see what you’re saying now, because when you were saying, well, I’ll fix it.
You’re like, I’ll, I’ll fix it, but the way you’re gonna fix it might not be the way they’re going to want being fixed. Oh, they’re not gonna like it. Yeah. So I see, I didn’t think of it that [00:19:00] way. A hundred percent of the time. They’re not
gonna like it. Yeah. So
now yeah. Mm-hmm
Chris Gazdik: yeah. This, this gets to striking fear in the kids’ realms.
Like, oh, so it’s
Adam Cloninger: more, it’s more like, okay, well, if you don’t fix it, I’m gonna fix it. That’s right. Do you
Chris Gazdik: want me to fix it? And you don’t and you don’t want me to fix the problem and they begin to learn that, which is all about life, right? Like, do you want the law to fix your problem? You know, we don’t want the law to be involved in our domestic disputes or, you know, being triangulated.
If I’ve got a problem with my, with my mom growing up, do I want my dad coming in here attacking me? Like, no, I’m talking to mom, leave me. You know, I don’t want out, I wanna be empowered. I wanna be engaged. I wanna be thoughtful. I want to work win-win situations with people. So that that’s all the skills that the kids needing to develop.
And we can’t really teach them. They have to skin their [00:20:00] knee. They have to fail. How about school? Is it okay if they fail? Sure. Whole, right? Yeah. It you know, that’s scary for the parent, which is a good transition, right? So transition, they should
Adam Cloninger: never get to the point where it’s a, a year.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah.
Hopefully not. I mean, you know, yeah. You don’t just, you know, abandon a kid, let them deal with life on their own. And cause then you got a whole nother year that’s that’s bad. Yeah. So fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or a threat.
I, I just checked that out. And I, and I thought about that as I was preparing and thinking about this and I’m like, seriously, is that the way we see kids think about that? Do we see our children as [00:21:00] something that’s dangerous or someone that’s dangerous and really the key either in some way, that’s gonna cause pain to me, the parent, or that there’s a threat of some kind, are we really operating, you know, from that dynamic.
And I just want you to think about that for a second, because I think the answer is yes, but doesn’t this sound a little silly mm-hmm sounds kind of like, why do we have that take over our emotional system when we’re dealing with these types of things, but I’ll tell you how common do you think this is to parent out fear?
I think pretty common. Can, can you think of having gone through that and done that? Cuz I know I have parenting out of fear. Yes.
Adam Cloninger: Like you mean like doing something because I’m scared something’s gonna happen.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I’m kind of terrified right [00:22:00] now and my, how my rising senior’s gonna do post high school graduation.
Like I don’t see it yet. Yeah. And
Adam Cloninger: a example recently, my daughter, you know, she’s driving now, so oh my God. Driving. Yeah. So they even passed the driving part, but. It’s time for her her inspection and their taxes be paid on the car. Yep. So, you know, I’ve had this discussion two or three times with her the other day.
I mentioned it and it was like just kind of a little snappy. I said, why are you getting a little, we’ve had this discussion. I’m like,
Chris Gazdik: okay,
Adam Cloninger: had this discussion. Yes, we did dad. So end of the month, if it’s not done,
Chris Gazdik: of course not.
Adam Cloninger: It’s not done. And then there’s also I’ve been given some ammo now.
Cause why are you mad trash not taken out because we’ve had this discussion is what I’m gonna say.
Chris Gazdik: yeah. So yeah, [00:23:00] that just goes to a lot of different interactions. People that don’t have kids love to say the idea, which is legit, you say that something to the kid once and that’s all you need to say it I’m gonna tell you that is really, really hard to do.
And honestly, that goes to a little bit of a fear in the fear that it’s not gonna get done. There’s a threat here. So when we get fearful, there’s a threat. My house is gonna be a mess. And therefore I’m fearful of that. So crash, crash, crash. I mean, I’m guilty of this, honestly, like all the time, honestly, not in major ways, you know, it was really tough to see the tailpipe on Aaron’s car.
He drove, you know, away the first few he was driving. Yeah. Yes. I’m like, oh my God, he’s driving in the world. Like what could go wrong? Nothing. It’s, it’s a lot of scary things. Look, letting go is scary. My little kiddo is [00:24:00] going to elementary school and I’m not gonna be with them all day long. What’s that gonna be like, right.
Things that are new things that are different things that are changing. Do we like any of those things? like the you’ve been out of it a little bit. Yeah. Your daughter’s a little bit grown. I think that you didn’t say how old she was, doesn’t matter, but she’s definitely, you know, older mm-hmm we forget being in those experiences when things are changing and all this is moving around.
I mean, can you access that? And as far as you know, I mean, do you recall what I’m talking about? Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: All kinds of things. You gotta let, ’em do stuff first. You know, they’re gonna make a mistake
Chris Gazdik: and it constantly triggers fear. When, you know, riding the stupid bike, like they’re gonna fall down, do we let them fall down?
You have to. And if you’re not good at tolerating that, and you’re listening to this show tell you that’s something that you’re gonna have to grow into. Or if you’re a new parent, that’s something that you’re gonna have to grow into [00:25:00] because these kids do. They’re resilient. They’re very, very resilient.
They figure stuff out, but they do go through tough, tough times. Do you ever deal with your kids with heartache? You know, when they came home heartbroken. Yeah. That’s tough to watch. That’s that’s tough to sit back. I mean, you know, oh, come on, let’s go get some ice cream, something, you know? So just the list direction
Adam Cloninger: is all you’re doing.
Yeah.
Chris Gazdik: They have to go through it. They have to learn how to manage those feelings, which is just it’s it’s parenting is not for sissies. you might say how about that for a quote? No, Neil don’t do that one. What else do I wanna mention that? Be a good show title. Yeah. Parenting is not for sissies is a good show title.
yeah. Okay. So this little segment I thought was cool from a, an article on psychology today that I totally credited cuz this is all their stuff. Not mine. I’m gonna blow through it pretty quickly, but The, the, the direct experience that we have with anger, [00:26:00] which just as a reminder, we’ve talked about trauma, talked about the limbic system.
You literally have cortisol adrenaline, you know, when you’re pissed off with your kid, that whole emotion thing is going, and boy can that happen? Intently mm-hmm and yeah, you’re not gonna be very compassionate with them. You’re all into yourself. And that’s all about your own emotions to manage. Yeah.
Rage parenting. Oh man. It’s what’d you say rage, parenting rage parenting it. That’s not on this list of what he said, but should be helicopter. Parenting was one of them. Fear leads to these bad parenting states of mind and helicopter parenting is one. Now I told her I was gonna give her a shout out. You know what helicopter parenting is, right?
Mm-hmm can you, oh, you’ve you don’t know that you’ve even heard that term a little bit news since you’ve been outta the active parenting. Basically, they like a helicopter chopper, right above the kid monitoring, watching, making sure, protecting, like, you know, [00:27:00] watching everything, all enmeshed to use a clinical term into what the kid’s activities are.
Yeah. Okay. Right. And, and this is a phrase that they say, you know, this guy said that he’s heard his clients say it’s it’s, it’s not my child that I don’t trust. It’s the world that I don’t trust phrases like that, that rationalizes being a helicopter parent. Now everybody, except Adam knows what helicopter parenting is, but nobody claims ownership of that.
Do you know, literally today I had a wonderful woman that, that said owned this the second time in my entire career that somebody said, oh yeah, I have some of that. Cuz we, I, we were doing a show and it was. Part of our, it was clinically appropriate. So we, we talked about these and she’s like, oh yeah, yeah.
I, I know I have some of that, dude. I about fell off the floor I was like, wow. And I told her, I was like, you are the second person that’s ever said that to me in ownership. Cuz nobody wants to be a helicopter player parent. Well, you [00:28:00] probably have never heard of any of these then cuz the next one he talked about is a snowplow parent.
I can
Adam Cloninger: imagine what that means, but I haven’t heard that term. Right.
Chris Gazdik: Destroy all the obstacles for them in their mist so that they can have an easy ride moving, moving bad idea. Very bad idea. Bad idea.
Adam Cloninger: Why? Well you’re not always gonna be there if you just remove all the roadblocks, then they want know how to deal with stuff when you’re gone.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I thought there in there, his examples were interesting. Hiring tutors to help their children through courses that’s bad. I don’t know. Exchange with these things are hiring counselors to write their child’s college application essay or shopping doctors willing to give the child some sort of diagnosis that will allow extra help at school, or make large donations to colleges in exchange for improved chances to be admitted calling teachers and even professors and employers to ask for extra privileges.
I mean, they’re speaking for their kid, get in front of their kid, kind of making all these [00:29:00] obstacles of whatever it is that might be in place, greasing the wheels and that’s bad. Mm-hmm I thought that was cool because I see a lot of people doing these things for their kids. If we’re being honest. Yeah. I can say that a lot of that stuff happens nowadays honestly much as we talk about helicopter parenting, this concept that I had never heard of before snow plow, parent.
that’s really happening. A lot. Every kid gets a trophy stuff. Let me get in front of this kid being disappointed by not being an all star and make sure they get a trophy mm-hmm so we have a lot of that going on, but anyway, they went on fuel injector parenting hooked on the idea that life is fundamentally a, a competition, and they wanna inject the competitive skills inside their kids to meet, you know, the best cheerleader, the best dancer.
The, I mean, I, we see this in AAU sports all the time, you know, it’s the parents that are just spending gobs and gobs of money and [00:30:00] putting, you know, cheer and dance. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into these things, the whole family circles around these activities. It’s, it’s a lot,
Adam Cloninger: I can say that being at some cases where the it’s like the child ends up despising the activity because they
do.
Chris Gazdik: I hear that in my office all the time, keyword, they’re not having fun. Mm-hmm now parents will readily say, oh, well I will do this. If my kid wants to do it and whatever. Well, a lot of times they see your glee in your eye and everything that’s going on and they wanna please you so sure they wanna do that and hit the home run for mommy and whatever, you know, so be really careful about that.
If you hear that and see that and dismiss that, that goes on very naturally in your relationship. We’re, we’re talking about the parent child relationship and today’s focus is manage your own fear so that, that doesn’t come into the relationship and I guarantee almost universally. It does. So these things do apply on some [00:31:00] level.
I would argue the follow up to that. Well, let me see, this is still the fuel injector parents. What she found this lady who did some research on this was that the most of the parents were investing all this money. Time and energy, not because their child loved the activity, nor because the parents wanted their child to become a professional at it.
Dr. Hillary Friedman that’s what, who this was for. She did her doctoral surf dissertation on this. She published a book, play a win. So you’ll see that on a, on the, the show notes. I I’d never heard of fuel injector parenting and I haven’t heard of tiger parenting either. we were talking about this earlier today.
The mom’s like, oh, those are the parents at the AAU games getting in fights. tiger parenting. And she was on point because it’s basically injector parenting on steroids. And then lastly, defensive parenting. And that has to do with defending yourself from the world around you and the judgements that we get, social media, [00:32:00] you know, everyone has an opinion on parenting.
And so you defensively operate in the relationship with your kid based on that outside noise. So we don’t wanna do that. Either fear leads directly to every one of these things. What are you thinking?
Adam Cloninger: So that last one you’re talking about operating owned, fear that someone’s gonna think bad of
them, or I’m a bad parent, or family’s gonna have a bad name.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I’ve literally screwed that experienced. Yeah. Well I know, right? Yeah. You don’t buy into that one. No, no. I’m just saying don’t worry about it. Yes, you’re advocating. Yeah. I literally had a family that was ready to move out of town. This can go deep, really move out of town because of the destructive things that was happening in their kid’s life.
Talk about causing problems for other people. Geez, man. That’s a lot. That’s avoidance. [00:33:00] well, there’s also a lot of problems. Don’t get me wrong. Yeah, I
Adam Cloninger: know. I know. But you just, moving’s not the cure. That’s just avoiding the problem and then probably taking the problem with you.
Chris Gazdik: You’re taking the problem right with you.
I mean, good. Gosh. Yes. So this stuff can run deep and, and, and, and has a, I mean, this, this sucks a lot of energy out of parents’ lives. Another thing I love about the love and logic, I’ll sprinkle in love and logic strategies actually take you out of spending all this incredible energy on monitoring your kid and managing their problems for them.
Candy, wrappers, and towels and laundry, and all the crap that’s laying all around. Don’t fold the towels, put them all away and clean all that up. Grab all that. it’s on. You can put your stuff wherever you want, as long as it doesn’t cause a problem. Oh, it’s causing a problem. Place a mess. Well, don’t worry about it.
I see you. Haven’t fixed the problem. We’ll we’ll take care of that problem. And all of those things just damn, where’s my stuff. That’s right. that’s right. All those [00:34:00] things find their way into the storage bin or all the candy rappers go right into the bed. These are your candy rappers. So here’s all your, here’s all your deals.
I have a letter written for my son that he found in the morning with all of his laundry, with laundry directions. And since that day he’s done his own laundry. Not my problem. You want clothes willing to wash them, fold them and put them away. But when they land all over the place, that’s causing a problem with my energy.
I just don’t have enough energy to do all these things, buddy. I’m so sorry. And that’s not sarcasm, but that’s, I’m so sorry. Like this really is a big problem for you. I’m you know, I see that. You’re struggling with school. You know, I might have some suggestions, you know, I know some people do this thing called studying, you know, and it helps, but I know that’s really tough that, you know, that takes away from your time with baseball and dance and you wanna go out and play, kick the can in the road.[00:35:00]
I, I that’s and being on telephone and yeah. Video games and stuff take takes a lot of time, you know? So that, that 30 minutes to study is it’s, that’s a tough decision. Do you wanna do well in school? Do you really? It changes the dynamic instead of, did you do your homework yet? Did you do your homework? I see that you haven’t done your homework yet.
Oh, you have a test tomorrow. I saw on the school line outline there. It it’s it’s tomorrow’s the date. So are you ready? Did you get ready? Let me, let me, I never
check that stuff. Yeah. I never checked
that. Good. Yeah, because you wanna help and support, but they have got to buy into their schools and if they don’t buy into their own academic career, then we’re not gonna do it.
So yeah. You avoided some of those pitfalls. Yeah. People will make flashcards for their kids. Mm-hmm and then quiz them on the flashcards. They do well on the test, but are they really learning life lessons that would pose that [00:36:00] question. So
Adam Cloninger: only time I’ve ever done flashcards is when it was an assignment and like help the kid, you know, you know, those assignments, the parent assignments that you’re, the teacher always said
Chris Gazdik: particularly in elementary.
Oh, I know. Right?
Adam Cloninger: they’re your student. I’m not yours. Don’t give me a, oh, always take that anyway. yes.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. I and elementary school, by the way, you’re more involved. And then the middle school, I remember principal sitting down there in the parents when we were adjusting to having a middle schooler and they.
Let them struggle now is the time for them to struggle and figure out their own directing direction with their schools. And that’s a hard thing for a parent to hear. I mean, I was all gunned up, ready to go like, okay, you know, we’re gonna kill this. We’re gonna do, you know, we’re gonna get ahead of this.
We ain’t doing nothing. And I really paid attention when they said that and, and executed that. I mean, they, [00:37:00] they did struggle and, and there’s some reasons for that. Why, but he really gave didn’t did me personally,
a
Chris Gazdik: solid, I heard him when he was talking about that, because if they learned to do that now, when it comes to college and higher learning, they’re already doing their own learning.
So that’s, that’s huge same thing with like Cub Scouts and boy Scouts, you know, I kind of worry that, you know, who
gets
Chris Gazdik: Eagle scout. that little kiddo. That’s got the dad like, come on, get that project done, get that next assignment done. Let’s move to the next, next page. Let’s get the next thing, you know, like talk about fuel injector parents.
They they’re, they’re the reasons that’s driving this kid. A lot of times I would venture to say those people that are in professional sports, who do you think motivated them
Adam Cloninger: think their parents did. Mm-hmm you thinking that they just enjoy it?
Chris Gazdik: A lot of times I am super anxious. I have been super underprivileged.
I [00:38:00] am going to work super hard and I’m going to work harder than anybody else even thought about working. I saw a quote. We were at the game actually with, with you. We went to the game mm-hmm and magic Johnson had a quote at our stadium here, local. I didn’t say that magic Johnson had a quote he’s like talent is never enough.
The best players are always the hardest workers. And I thought, you know what? That is on point mm-hmm . That is on point. That’s a good quote. Yeah. Okay. So where do we wanna go? Where am I at? Da,
da, da, what really sets up the fear. Boy, there’s a lot that I covered with this. I’m skipping some things, but that’s okay. What sets up the fear? Cause I think that we need to understand the factors that really drive the way that we’re experiencing this as parents. This show is about you mom, [00:39:00] right? This show is about you dad.
And what’s going on with your emotions that are driving these things that we don’t necessarily want in your. Powerful parent child relationship. I’m lemme check in with you. Do you think people are sitting here listening, thinking, oh, I’m not afraid of this stuff. This doesn’t affect me. I’m not engaged with this.
Adam Cloninger: Well, some are, but some are like completely terrified.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah. Hmm. Do you think it’s crazy that I say that I think it’s a universal parental reality. That fear is a part of this. Does that feel like too much? I think
Adam Cloninger: it a little bit. Cause I mean, there, obviously some parents that just don’t they’re like, you know, just a sperm donor, you know, it’s a, well, I’m not talking about those guys or yeah.
I mean, other than that, yeah. I mean, for the most part, yes. What you’re saying. I agree with.
Chris Gazdik: Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah. There are parents that do lose parental rights because they’re neglectful. Exactly. [00:40:00] Yeah. They’re just consumed by another
Adam Cloninger: stuff. In some cases, a egg donor
Chris Gazdik: Good gender switch there, right? Yeah. We always get jammed with that as the dad, you know, the sperm donor, there are egg donors. Yes. There are egg donors. yeah. Yes, there are boy. So what sets this up? Honestly, to me, this builds up due to our very own internal experiences in life that we project onto kids.
Now, what does project is a really big clinical term? I mean, people have their own experiences and we process it in our own head and just like, you know, yellow sunglasses. What we see is all yellow is nothing to do with the kid, nothing to do with anything they’ve done, nothing to do with the world around us.
Yes. We have a dangerous world. I know that we have national issues right now that we’re all debating it. This has very little to do with any of that. This is your own [00:41:00] experiences where you have colored glasses and that’s the projection that you project. Onto the kid that creates the fear. This is not the kid.
This is you, mom. This is you dad listening and thinking about this with us. It’s your own internal experiences. Have you ever heard? I don’t want my do what my kid, what my parents did to me. Yes. That’s a common phrase. Mm-hmm well, I picked that out in my thinking about this topic that demonstrates well, where is that fear coming from again, your own internal experience with your parents and what you experienced with that, that you are fearful will be replicated to your kid.
Now, sometimes that’s obviously we wanna check abuse and things like that, but this is a totally different situation. There’s no reason to be fearful about it. Trauma experiences perpetuates a worldview, right? That the world is dangerous. You can [00:42:00] create and heal and recover from your own traumas. And develop your own different view about the world, and then enjoy that in a safer way with your parent child relationship.
It’s your own view? Like I know there’s scary things out there and I’m not saying don’t be safe. So don’t think I’m going too far with that, but like, just check your own perspective. You know, this occurred to me. How about disconnection from your spouse? How many parents out there feel like they’re single parenting their child directly while they’re married?
You know, that happens. That creates great fear in the way that you’re trying to manage this parent-child relationship feeling like you’re alone. So we wanna really be aware of connection with the spouse. Ultimately a fear of failure sets up a lot of this from my experience in working with people. That expecting parent, you know, do, do, do we go into this [00:43:00] thinking, oh, I’m gonna attack this.
I’m gonna be the best parent in the world. I have no flaws and I have everything together and this is gonna be awesome. No, it’s like, but I
Adam Cloninger: have no flaws thing. I already not
Chris Gazdik: realistic more commonly. I have no idea what I’m doing. I love telling the story of bringing Aaron home from the hospital. And I, I, I, I think I was carrying him cuz she’s just given delivery and everything.
And we, we walked into our house. So first of all, I drove home with the, my hand on the back seat of the car, holding the, like I was gonna do something. We had an accident, the story where you drop him,
Adam Cloninger: I’m joking. I’m joking, not drop him. I’m joking.
Chris Gazdik: So we walk into the house and I walk up and I set him on the couch and we literally took like two or three steps back together.
I remember so clearly I just sat there for like what felt like five minutes probably was like 30 seconds, but it was, we help a human. What do we do now? She just, this is yeah, terribly [00:44:00] overwhelming and perpetually creating fear and terror. The last thing I think that sets this up for us that came to me is pressure, pressure, pressure.
You know, the world sets up so much pressure. We set up so much pressure. Our parents that are ultimately grandparents set up pressure on it. I mean, it, it’s a pressure cooker out there in parenting land and, you know, you have to figure out how to manage the, the pressure. Obviously it’s dangerous to parent out of fear.
Why do you, you know, let me check in with you again. I mean, what, what potentially does this do when you begin to parent out of fear?
Adam Cloninger: Well, I keep thinking about that. Was it snowplow
Chris Gazdik: thing? Yeah. Snow. That happens a lot. Yeah. I, I can see that, but that’s horrible. And I think people do that a lot more than we would think.
I didn’t. I really thought about that. Even as I was talking they’re, they’re,
Adam Cloninger: they’re doing a, they’re doing more
Chris Gazdik: harm than good. It’s a disservice mm-hmm yeah. It’s a disservice. And you know, [00:45:00] whether you’re talking to the coach about your kid, telling him about his experience, trying to make the coach realize your kid’s great.
Like, what are you doing? My, my kid made fun of me taking my younger kid and walking in with him to a place that he was gonna get a job. Hmm. Yeah. Like, no, no, don’t do that, Chris. I did once. Right. And it was, it was a bad idea. Right. But I, but peop parents will do that. They will walk in with their kid and speak to the employer with their kid trying to get a job.
That’s ridiculous. Yeah. That’s mm-hmm. I totally feel like an idiot. Right. Now’s but
Adam Cloninger: I did that’s that’s like asking for your kid to get picked home when they, you working there well, yeah. Did you bring mommy and daddy with you today?
Chris Gazdik: The store wasn’t open and I was curious when they were open. Anyway, I kind of right.
You know, wanted to chat the guy up, but you know, there was an ulterior. Yeah, right. [00:46:00] I’m being called out
Adam Cloninger: now, is he downplaying? It? What’s that I said, is he downplaying it? Mm
Chris Gazdik: mm I’ll own it. I did that. so there’s lots of ways that fear can get us and, and, and create us into bad decisions. But you know, the biggest one that I wanna highlight and we’ve talked about this in way of, of trauma, right?
Like, so when you’re, when you’re fearful, do you remember about the trauma? What happens to your brain and your cognitive process when you, when you experience trauma? Yeah.
Adam Cloninger: Well, I mean, all kinds of things happen.
Chris Gazdik: You can’t think frontal cortex is right up here in the, in the frontal cortex of our brain.
And in the middle is the limbic system. The adrenal glands are big friend, the amygdala that goes into fight or flight and all these chemicals start cosing on [00:47:00] your brain literally goes offline. Like when you are screaming at your kid, generally speaking, I would submit to you that you are not thinking at all cognitively and all that’s in operation are chemicals that are so powerful to protect your life.
Mm-hmm with the ability to even pick up a car. Right? How well do you think you can think rationally. about what it is that you’re doing with your kid, when you are, what did you call it? Rage. Parenting rage parenting. Yep. I think you created a term, just Google that Neil and see if rage parenting see, see what comes up.
I’m really curious if you have now documented on through a therapist, eyes for the societies around the world at large rage parenting. Congratulations, Adam, you might be pain soon. Thank you.
Adam Cloninger: it’s gonna be there. I’m sure it, you
Chris Gazdik: think? Yeah, it’ll be there probably. So I would say I’m curious too quick.
What he got? He’s got something I’m [00:48:00] curious. The definition’s
gonna be,
Neil: they don’t have rage parenting, but they do have mom rage. Is a real thing is what they say, mom re okay, so they don’t have rage parenting, but they do have
Adam Cloninger: the what, what does mom rage say?
Yeah. Same thing
Neil: basically become overwhelmed with anger and struggle to access the calm and patient, you know, part of her, whatever, you know, after click the link, hang on.
But I, I think it’s funny you talk about when you’re mad, cuz I remember, I, I know I’ve been mad at the kids. Like your, your punishment is you’re gonna be grounded for the next 20 years, you know? Absolutely. You started thinking about those irrational things like, and you say them, you’re gonna get a hip present before you bedroom again.
Chris Gazdik: and you say them and then you make the classic parenting mistake of, if you say it, you’ve gotta do it. You know, you’re not gonna do that. what do you got? I’m just trying to get you
Neil: yeah. Yeah. Hang on. There’s a couple articles about basically when the anger becomes uncontrollable is what they’re talking about.
So that’s kind of, the idea is once you get that anger involved and then [00:49:00] you just don’t realize what you’re doing, it just kind of gets worse and worse and worse. Yeah. I’ve had some situation like with my mom, who’s a very complacent person. She’s had a few mom rage moments with my sister. So
that, that was interesting.
Chris Gazdik: You guys got to observe. Yeah. Oh my brother got the mom rage. I’ll tell you. Whew. Some definitely some interesting moments growing up. we like to, no, I won’t say
Adam Cloninger: that. Self-inflicted it sounds like. Huh? Sounds like it’s
Chris Gazdik: self-inflicted oh, probably. I love your brother. I love your brother, but you did bring it yeah.
Neil: So, so one thing that says the anger has overpowered you, you tell yourself you’re not going to slam the door, yell at you kid or tell your spouse to F off. But when it happens, you can’t stop it. Yeah. That’s basically what they basically say as far as a, a mom, a mom rage.
Chris Gazdik: And it really is like, listen, this is intense fear, intense chemicals flowing.
I mean, you know how you feel when this stuff is blowing up. I mean, it, it is, it is making you feel outside of yourself. I mean, I’ve had [00:50:00] more than one out of body experience as a parent.
I have, it is not pretty sometimes. Which leads me to a really important point. This is not citing the goal of being perfect.
I mean, anybody that puts me on a pedestal as a therapist and think I do this perfectly all the time, I’m gonna tell you, I probably do it perfectly rarely if ever like it, this is so hard. And there are so many times I think I came clean with walking him into a job if that’s, if that’s the least that I do, I think I might be okay.
But you know, there’s, there’s so much pressure, pressure, pressure to be the perfect parent that you just, you just can’t be give yourself some grace.
Adam Cloninger: Well, it’s like you say them beginning the show. I’m just gonna figure this thing out together. Absolutely. And that’s, I feel sure that’s how you do when you, when you come in and have somebody for, for therapy.
Yes, you’re gonna help figure it out together.
Chris Gazdik: I have been talking about that a lot more lately and I, and I tell you, [00:51:00] every single kid is different. Every single kid has a different experience, a different process, a different perception, different genetics, different biology, different, different, different, and, and, and what works for one kid doesn’t work for the other.
It’s one of the things I love about love and logic. It is not very specific. Do anything that you wanna do as long as it doesn’t cause a problem for other people. Honestly, I love you, buddy. I, I don’t want you to do things that cause a problem for yourself. Be problem solvers, but that’s not specific. I see that you didn’t fix that problem.
No problem. I’ll figure it out and we’ll fix. The problem is just saying I’ve got high structure, guardrails and protection for you from what you’re doing right now, even though you don’t realize it’s a problem. And I come around on the back end and I make sure that you’re, you’re learning what the, the important life lessons are to learn.
Otherwise you label to RA raise criminals. If [00:52:00] they really get the idea, I could do anything that I wanna do, even if it doesn’t, even if it causes a problem, like you cannot do that. Which incidentally is easier to start out when you’re young with a kid. And, but you could still start this if your kid’s like 15 years old or even 18 years old, and they’re living with you for the next five years, you could still implement a lot of these things.
It’s different age appropriate stuff, but you’re not gonna get a lot
of
Chris Gazdik: specifics. And also you’re not gonna know what to do. So one of the things that’s on my list is get help. Right. Get other people’s ideas. So there’s a problem with your kid right now. And you feel like you need to discipline in the moment you feel like you need to have an answer like right now.
No, you really don’t. In my example, with the room switching dude, that was a month and a half long process. At least it felt like a few months. Maybe it was only three weeks, but this is not necessarily gonna happen. Now [00:53:00] parents come to blows with their kids more often than you’d like to think it literally get physical with each other.
And I’m not gonna say that that doesn’t happen. Mm-hmm in appropriate relationships. I think you and I have talked about that. Mm-hmm , you know, that’s scary stuff. Mm-hmm and intense. We don’t want time, especially when I get bigger. Yes. That’s when it usually happens. and single moms out there, like holy cow, you know, you’ve got a teenage son that’s raging with all kinds of anxiety and anger and you’re trying, and you’re trying to discipline.
Yeah, dude. Yeah. I’ve had clients all kinds of times through my sessions with them trying to literally take the remote control for the gaming system out of their hands. You don’t want to do that. Does that sound crazy? No, you don’t. That is directly inviting a power struggle. Now I have done that. Don’t get me wrong, but we did, we, we had different things set up in the dynamic between me [00:54:00] and the kiddo.
So I got away with it and I knew what I was doing when I did it. And I actually had that thought, cuz I use that example a.
Adam Cloninger: I had a just real quick. I had a guy used to work with and there was a part of his job that I needed him to do. And he was, he was a little bit lackadaisical occasionally. And then one day I figured out his, his mom worked there too.
Oh God. Yeah. I figured out, sounds like a crazy triangle. I figured out what the, I, one day I needed him to do something. He was like, oh yeah, good. You want me to go get your mom?
Oh, I, yeah. Okay. all. I, I mean, it is like, yeah, I was, I know, I know. I know his crytinite now. So anytime you, you go get her
Chris Gazdik: she’s right back in the back. Screaming mommy issues. No, if you know who we’re talking about that, that’s not mommy, I’m not making a judgment there, but it is funny because yeah.
You know, and I, I still would have that. Look, my mama gives me that. Look now I’m, you know, I’m well in, into adulthood and she can still get [00:55:00] me to pause and think like, oh, did I just cross? And I could just.
Adam Cloninger: Act like I’m walking that direction and he ,
Chris Gazdik: that’s an awesome professional management skill for all you managers out there.
oh, well we have nepotism though on the job that doesn’t work for those places, but let’s look at this list that I rattled off in the beginning, as we winding down here, right? How do we manage internal fear? So we need to have an answer. What do we do to manage the internal fear that we have when, when we’re parenting?
Somebody recently said this, I think Casey and I were maybe consulting on a case or something actually. And I don’t know if it was her or somebody, but somebody who told me, he is like, oh yeah, you don’t need to be overwhelmed with this aspect of this case or this relationship. You just need a different perspective.
I’m like, okay. And we talked about that and, and I thought, wow. So a lot of the times when we’re parenting out of fear or we’re parenting out guilt, that’s a whole nother show. [00:56:00] or we’re parenting out a shame, which is a whole nother show. Is it true to say that when we’re struggling, you know, with moments with situations that we need to just back ourselves out, get a different perspective on this situation and you see things a whole lot more clearly.
Does that make sense? Get it different. Yeah, it
Adam Cloninger: helps it don’t it’s not always what the quick the, the fix, but I mean, sometimes it does give you the,
Chris Gazdik: the solution. Listen, don’t try to parent alone. If you’re a single parent, get some besties, get some buddies, get some people that absolutely can have your back and give you some advice.
Some thoughts, even if they don’t have kids and have had parents and I have
Adam Cloninger: had the kids. It, yeah. I, I agree. I
Chris Gazdik: it’s funny. I was even just gonna say, even if they haven’t had kids, they could still process it with you. However, I know go, I mean, I’m gonna back you up a hundred percent on what can’t can, but
Adam Cloninger: go ahead.
They don’t know. They don’t know. They don’t. Yeah, we, they think they it’s like kids, [00:57:00] friends who have not had kids are like kids. They think they know, but they really don’t. Mm-hmm .
Chris Gazdik: or you hear, well, I have a kid as my dog they have to eat. They have to go to the doctors. They have, they they’re frustrated.
It’s the same. It’s the same. No, it’s not. Mm-hmm listen. Anybody that’s listening that doesn’t have kids. I’m not trying to piss you off, but that is a true statement. I said, I’ll back you up and I’m gonna tell you, look, there is no bigger life change. I think it’s the biggest, what I call before and after life event that I think people go through is becoming apparent.
That’s, there’s so much to the emotional, the social financial, all of the, I like to say all of the leaves, right? Like when, when you, and literally it’s the day before you become a parent and a day after you’re a parent, it is, it is. I mean, you have a li obviously nine months of time to adjust to this, or at least eight or seven months, right.
To adjust [00:58:00] to this idea. But dude, it I’m telling you that that day is a big change day. The day after. All a hundred percent different. And if you haven’t gone through that, it’s, it’s so hard to grasp all the ins and outs of that. So I couldn’t agree more, but this different perspective thing is really cool.
Even if you have friends that don’t have kids, you could still process it and talk about it. Wait a minute. I said before we get so caught up in having to do this in the moment, that’s just not, that’s just not the case. Like you can wait, this can happen tomorrow. This doesn’t have to happen right now.
And if you’re not in a place facilitated with the way that you feel, here’s a tip. Let the kid know, Hey, you know what? I am really emotional right now. I am not even thinking straight you. I am so upset. I, you haven’t upset me. I am so dysfunctional right now. I don’t care what word you use. I am not going to address this issue or have this conversation anymore with you.
[00:59:00] I’ll check back with you in a little while. Let me know if there’s any problems. I’m gonna go cool down. I’m gonna go take a walk. I’m gonna go say a prayer. I’m gonna go watch a movie. I’m gonna go talk to your mom. I, whatever, you know, I’m not dealing with this right now, but rest assure we’ll come back.
and then you do you go facilitate yourself, go freaking breathe, man. Like, you know, don’t drink a 12 pack. might not be the best process for cognitive thinking. Mm-hmm but you gotta get outta that moment. You cannot stay in this place and, and think you’re gonna be really effective. Right? Done. Didn’t say you can’t show anger by the way.
You know, there are people, oh man. I was given a talk one. and I said to this, to this audience that was talking like, you know, you do raise your voice, you know, when you’re, I mean, that’s realistic, it’s it’s gonna happen. And there was some professional out the field. I just looked at her and her [01:00:00] face, Cantor it in a completely different way.
Like, like shock. Yeah. Like you can’t tell these people, it’s okay to raise your voice. And I’m like, well, I’m making a point to raise my voice at you. no, I was a little over time. I didn’t do that. But yeah, there’s this myth out there that was supposed to be like, you know, all peaceful and all calm and, you know, calm under pressure and deal with it in the moment like they do, that’s unrealistic.
It it’s gonna happen. And when you’re aware of what you’re doing, showing anger and frustration or fear or compassion and concern and empathy, it’s on my list somewhere. How about be genuine and show your emotional a little bit. Did you know that you could be emotional with your kids? Oh, You know? Yeah, I know.
Well, no, I’m not talking about pissed off Adam.
Adam Cloninger: No, no, there’s other things too, other than just rage, you know, other than,
Chris Gazdik: other than just rage, other, just rage. There’s other things too. Go further.
Adam Cloninger: I mean joy of you know, when their accomplishments [01:01:00] or, you know, glad they did something or, you know, just anything like they do a
Chris Gazdik: chore, here’s a parent tip, catch your kid doing something, right.
Even if it’s the simplest or smallest things, my kid doesn’t do anything. Well, you know what, catch them walking up the stairs quietly to get away from you so that they didn’t know that they were going upstairs and downstairs or whatever and say, Hey Johnny, man, I, I really appreciate you being, you being very you know, quiet at night.
That was, that was awesome. You know, I appreciate you being considerate of everyone else. That’s here catch ’em doing something right. Compliment them and celebrate that. You know, celebrate the, the good moments and be, you know, joyful with them because they really are trying to learn things. And there, there are a lot of hard things to learn.
Calm yourself down, get curious and get confused. I had on my list, if you wanna like, be a know it all and tell everybody what to do all the time and be the, know it all parent, like you’re, [01:02:00] you’re gonna struggle get, get confused. Like, Hey, I’m confused, Adam, you, you say you wanted to do well in school. I didn’t see any studying going on.
And how you plan on doing that? How did, yeah, I don’t really understand how you’re gonna get the information. Is, is there some way that you’ve done that? Cause I know sometimes, you know, people listen to this at night when they’re sleeping and they play tapes of what they’ve said that they’ve read or tape, have you recorded the class and you’re, are you playing it at night?
I mean, is that, what are you doing to get this information?
Adam Cloninger: I didn’t get information. Oh, oh, I should have thought about that.
Chris Gazdik: Oh yeah, because that’s also communicated, but I didn’t say that. Right. So get curious, get confused. That gets a different perspective. Don’t necessarily get directive. Oh, this is right. It directive. Ooh. It just rhymes. I do that sometimes. I don’t know where it comes from.
It just pops out. Cause you’re a poet and didn’t no compassion and empathy. Like I said, with love and logic. [01:03:00] No, you don’t have to have all the answers. You know, I, I, I love it when my kids come to me with a tough question and they have my kids coming to me right now with a lot of business stuff sometimes, and I’ll be telling ’em look, I don’t really know what to think about that.
You know, some political stuff at the office and all, cuz he is a little older now and, but, but you know what, we’ll figure it out, you know? And, and we’ve gotten to have some, some of the most awesome conversations in the last couple of years that, that I’ve ever had with him has happened. You know, recently with questions that I have no idea what the answer is, but I’m committed to working it out and figuring it out with him, you know, the human emotional experience.
Can you figure this out with your children together? Yikes. Like that’s huge. That just occurred to me. Perfection, all caps, not the goal, reveal your own emotion. We mentioned just ask, ask for help advice. I also said use silence. You know, sometimes silence is golden it’s golden and we’re afraid [01:04:00] to. Just watch look.
Sometimes I have communicated to my kids with nonverbal communication, like loudly, and we forget to use, look, parenting is hard. The main message today is realize that the emotions of fear are in you, that you have to manage before you can be effective in a relationship with your kids or with your spouse or in business, right?
Any like, are you really gonna be effective interacting with this other person when you’re in a state of rage or terror or fear, or even discomfort, like get yourself facilitated. You can do the business meeting a whole lot better. You can have the marital discussion better. You can, you can make better financial decisions about the stock market.
Why do we feel this is any different about making better decisions with the relationship with your child? so I hope I’ve convinced you a little bit. We’ll, we’ll get some [01:05:00] ideas and love of logic. Again is awesome way. We’re taxing out here, Adam, what are you thinking? Summary, thoughts, questions lingering doubts.
Just
Adam Cloninger: stuff like, you know, don’t be scared that you’re gonna make mistakes because you’re gonna make mistakes. That’s part of the whole thing. I mean, like you mentioned a while ago, you know, you, you’re gonna, you’re not perfect therapist. I mean, nobody’s perfect. And if you expect to be a perfect parent, that’s just unreal, unrealistic expectations to yourself,
pressure, pressure, pressure.
The kid’s not gonna be a perfect kid. So, I mean, it’s just, perfection’s unrealistic to
Chris Gazdik: expect, but we all want perfect. Kids and perfect families. But when you meet one, let me know same here as well. Listen, take care. Be hopeful, be encouraged, be compassionate with your kids. They do figure this stuff out.
Believe it or not, even though they don’t wanna do it necessarily sometimes together with you, they do grow [01:06:00] up and they do figure things out. If you’re an active parent, you might not realize that, but their brains actually are developing about 24, 25 years old might be a minute off, but there’s all stages.
So have hope be the best parent, do the best job that you can be. That’s all you need to do. And in Casey’s frame of mind, I like to remind you, she loves to say, you know, as a parent, you are enough. So realize that you are enough. And don’t have to be perfect. Listen, take care. Have a great week.
We’ll see soon.