But if just as a punishment, you ground the child, they can't go out, they can't play with their friends, you are robbing them of such an important social context. Now they're going to feel excluded and you're going to have a resentful, bitter, sour child stomping around the home. That's not helpful for anybody. Welcome to Awake at the Wheel. In today's episode, we're going to be addressing some parenting strategies and you just come out and say it. There's a lot of really bad parenting advice out there. So I just came across an article in The Washington Post. I had never heard of this person before, but apparently this woman, Ruby Frank, she had millions of followers on YouTube. She had a YouTube channel called eight Passengers. Recently, however, she was arrested. She was charged with child abuse. And this is somebody who is influencing millions of parents out there as far as different tools and strategies. So I think that's just one of many examples. You know, certainly an extreme one. But, you know, this compelled me to select this as a topic as far as, you know, what are the questions that parents have out there? So I scoured the Internet a little bit and found what some of the main questions are that parents are asking. But, Oren, I'm curious, what's what's some bad parenting advice or parenting influencers that you've come across recently? Well, I think the worst one, and I'm blanking on the name for some reason was different names for it basically, I think is egalitarian. Parenting is one where they're they're misunderstanding authoritative parenting. So basically so there's authoritarian, permissive and authoritative. I think we've talked about this before. Right. So just as for people who didn't watch it, authoritarian is it's my way or the highway. Authoritative is there are rules, boundaries, expectations. But the parents explain it to the kids. They explain why these are, you know, in place. They explain consequences and so on. So it's not just do it or else. Right. So so and then there's the overly permissive parenting or neglectful parenting. So in any event, so the egalitarian parenting or there may be other names, but when I read it years. Ago, I think gentle parenting is one of gentle. Parenting. Okay, there's another one's called Oh my gosh, No parenting. Or that's like we can talk about that as well. But this idea that kids had an equal say in everything, even young children. And so some people take it so far that if a parent makes a child eat, not talk to make every single pea off their plate. But if a kid doesn't want to eat, like, okay, well, you'll just eat when you want to eat or you don't want to go to school, that's okay. I'll stay home from work and I will. And people might think I'm exaggerating, but I've seen people do this. It's really happening. Oh, yeah, Yeah. I have seen treating kids like adults. Yeah. So yesterday in preparation for this, I asked some of our staff, you know, what are their parenting questions? Because we work with a lot of parents. Two funny ones came out, so I'll mention those. One person said, why the F did I have kids, can you answer that for me? I said, Well, I don’t think we can. And the second one is how do I get my kids to listen? I'm like, okay, well, that that's a good one. So that's actually one that did come up in my searching online as far as, you know, some of the top questions. But I'm just going to jump in and here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to read off the questions that I came across and I think we'll kind of chime in with our $0.02. And, you know, whether we agree with what some of the common wisdom is out there. So I hadn't heard of this one before. So one of the questions is, what is the seven, seven, seven rule of parenting? So I looked it up. And I guess what it means is you play with your children for the first seven years and then you teach your children for the next seven years and then you advise them for the following seven years. So I'll take this one first. I think that that's a recipe for disaster. Simply playing with your kid for the first seven years, that's not going to cut it. And I think this ties into what you were saying earlier as far as, you know, letting kids rule the roost and run the household. No, those first seven years are fundamental in terms of helping them to understand the world around them, help them understand how to follow rules, help them to develop self-discipline by following discipline. And the list goes on. So right off the bat, I don't think I agree with that one. Yeah. Now the only slack I'm willing to cut is if they're saying, well, we're not being literal and this kind of a guiding thing. But from what I've seen a lot of these times where you think, okay, they can't be being literal. They are. So you're absolutely right. You said that's ridiculous, right? The kids need that guidance, advising everything throughout the entire time. You need to model for the children how to do certain things. There is a hierarchy. And as you're saying about kids understanding, internalizing, structure, internalizing, discipline, understanding hierarchy, and I know we've talked before about this where you kind of figure out where are my strengths and weaknesses, and I have to learn pretty quickly what they are and try to develop certain ones, maybe abandon other ones to fit in the hierarchy, whatever that is. I mean, that's why younger kids usually they end up being, you know, jokesters or whatever like that, because they want it to somehow have to be the class clown or something to get attention within a large family. And if they're able to do that in a way that actually helps them, if it makes them more extroverted, if they learn to, you know, to be humorous, which is a great talent and so on. Wonderful. Right. But if everybody's on a flat playing field, then the kids don't learn that and then they go into the real world and they don't develop certain strengths. So yeah. Or they don't realize that I shouldn't be doing this because it's not working for me. And we're seeing it right? Not too. I feel like I pick on Gen Z a lot, but that's what we're seeing with many individuals who are entering the workforce at this point where they don't understand that hierarchy and, you know, being subordinate. I don't mean that in a negative way, but we live in a world where there is a hierarchy. And interestingly, as we're talking about this, I think these, you know, cutesy terms like the seven, seven, seven rule, while they perhaps weren't intended to be taken literally, they are because they're made in Tiktoks, where it's, you know, however many seconds of information being thrown at parents. And that's their parenting advice for the day. Yeah, I agree. And it's lazy, right. And it's it can also make someone neurotic because you're getting all this, I would say discrepant, contradictory information. So I'm hoping that there's something different from the seven, seven, seven that we're going to talk about. But yeah, this just any I mean, but even even parents who join like, let's say respectable groups or there's a mommy blog or a mommy group or whatever, okay. Like even then, people have to be critical thinkers. Like every every advice doesn't work for every parent or every child is so different. And that's why you and I always take pains to be nuanced and to put these caveats in everything, because we know it's not a one size fits all solution. But so many people do that. And look, I don't blame everybody because before it might pick up a book, you might watch a program or something or a video. Now, with social media everywhere, everyone's got a blog, everyone's got a tick tock. There's just so much so it's hard for people to know, Who do I trust? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So the next question I came across here and I was surprised that it's phrased this way as frequently as it is, but how do you discipline a child without yelling or hitting? So before I give my thoughts on this, I guess I'll say that I will insert my own personal beliefs in this one. So without yelling, or hitting. I guess I will preface with I personally don't believe that spanking is a helpful tool. In some cases it can be. And there are rules where in Canada here. So there are rules surrounding, you know, what is acceptable. My last look at the law, it was no blows to the face, only an open hand, no objects above the age of two and think below the age of 13. So if I'm misquoting that, forgive me, but that's the general guidance. That aside, though, I think that, you know, one of the challenges with hitting or spanking is that it in ways does teach the child that hitting is okay or that hitting is an appropriate response in a bad situation. That being said, sometimes there is a time and a place for physical discipline. If it's done within the parameters of the law and done in a context that is appropriate to your child. Some children are just too sensitive for that type of discipline. It's going to backfire. But if they put themselves in severe danger, for example, sometimes a physical reminder, a gentle physical reminder of what they've done wrong could be appropriate. So that's that's my take on that piece. As far as yelling, how do you discipline without yelling? Well, you should always discipline without yelling, because one of the golden rules is we don't discipline out of anger, whether that's, you know, through raising your voice or through physical discipline or whatever the case may be. So ensuring that you are in a mindspace to be able to have a constructive conversation with your child is incredibly important. Back to modeling and showing your child that you can discuss difficult things without, you know, blowing your lid. Right? And so I always tell people, you know, especially when I'm working with parents, I say I'm a court appoint. I mean, I've said this before, but I said I'm a court appointed parenting expert. I say, if you see that to my kids, will laugh in your face. So I always tell them it's great on paper, I say everything. I'm telling you it's the best way to parent. And I say, I wish I could do this. I try my best. Sometimes I do, you know, work in line with what I'm saying. Other times I don't because of my own history, my own reflexes and so on. So what I tell parents is I say you have to like you try to follow these rules, but you also have to have some self-compassion and recognize you're going to be triggered. And if you do that, if you do lose your cool, if you do yell or snap or something, I'm talking about verbal, not physical. When it's physical, I take it to another level saying, okay, now you've crossed a line because as you say, it's got to be done properly. And I think we talked about this before. It's got to be done in a disciplinary manner normally. But when people spank, usually it’s done out of anger, as you were saying. Right. That's not discipline. That's just lashing out. That's right. So it's not teaching the child the right things. That’s teaching them might makes right. It is in the of the parent. And we'll talk about that fear is there's a valuable component to fear not everyone will agree. We'll talk about that later. But back to the yelling. If somebody loses it, I say, yeah, you have to. You know, you look at what was a trigger. You do your best to try to always try to be mindful of that. You do breathing or other techniques to ground you, like I say. And again, you do that with compassion because if you shame yourself, you're not going to learn. You have to, you know you don't, but you don't call. You don't make excuses. You don't pretend it's something that is not. You own it. And again, not everyone would agree. I don't know how you don't agree, but I know that when I lose my cool with my kids, I don't care how old they were every single time. And I don't care if it was a major escalation on my part or just a little one. It didn't matter if it went beyond and healthy. Just discipline without yelling or without raising the voice. I went to them afterwards and again, I don't care how old they were. I wanted to model for them and for myself. I went, I apologized and I said, Daddy had a temper tantrum. I said, I know I blew up. I said And I said, Here's why I got upset. This is what you did. That was wrong. Here's why it's wrong. I said, But my reaction was not right. I said it was too much and I am so sorry. I'm trying to do better and everything like that. We all make mistakes and stuff like that. So because I don't want them to internalize my own neuroses, my own failures, because that's what they're going to do. They're not going to think, Oh, Daddy lost his cool. If I don't say anything, they're going to think, Oh my God, I'm a horrible person. I mean those words. I feel kids, but I do something horrible that deserves yelling and I never want them to internalize that. So I make darn sure that, you know, that I tell them that. And that's what parents can do. Is it perfect? No, it does mitigate it somewhat, however. No. And I think that's such a great point. And I'll add in here, by no means are either of us perfect parents. I can. I've lost count of how many times my child has told me I'm being too “yelly” So similarly, I know we'll take that moment of reflection and recognize when I've been out of line with my response as far as, you know, raising my voice and having an improper tone and whatever the case may be. And I guess I'll pat myself on the back here, because in having these conversations afterwards, like you've described, my child then feels comfortable to put me in check and not in a disrespectful way, but to remind me that I am being too “yelly”, right? So I think that that's an important thing for people to take away from this is that it goes both ways. If you communicate that you are wrong, they're going to feel comfortable in having that open line of communication with you. Right. And I just want to add one more thing. I don't just say that after the fact. You know, likewise, by even though I do every time, I will sometimes randomly, I when they're a bit older, because if they're two or three years old that I can remember. But when they were like seven or ten or five, I would say days later, sometimes months later, I would say even with my oldest one, who having the other for a long time, you know, I would still say to her sometimes, you know, she's in her mid twenties. I would say to her, I say, just remember, I've said this too so many times, any time from the past that I know, like, you know, I lost my cool or whatever I said that was on me. I said, Don't internalize it. So I say, and again, even when they're younger children, just five, ten years old, were out of the blue. I just say, hey, you know, a few weeks ago I said I said, you know, I just I just really thinking about that. And it's like, that was so silly. That was so dumb. I'm ashamed. I'm embarrassed. I would say that because I want them to know not just in that moment, but, you know, I am thinking about you. I am. And I am taking accountability. I always say that I'm not making excuses like, oh, no, it's it's full accountability because, again, I don't want them to think that they don't deserve that. If I screw up. They are human beings who deserve to be told that I screwed up and they deserve to have me trying to make amends in some way that helps give the child a sense of self esteem or self value because they say, I deserve that. I know that my parent is you're trying to make do to try to do right by me after he screwed up. And I think that accountability is incredibly important, that piece of it, because I imagine that some may interpret this as well. You know, it's weak to tell your parent, your children, that you were wrong. You're the parent. No, not at all. Accountability is incredibly important to model for children again so that they can see, okay, sometimes we lose our cool, sometimes we make mistakes, but that's okay. Own up to it and move on. Right. And it's one thing I said. I say this to my students. I put in my book one thing that my parents told me. I don't know how old I was probably I know I was before my sister came. So I'm probably around maybe six, maybe five or six, maybe seven, like with my brother a couple years older and my parents basically said to us, they said, We don't know what we're doing. All right. My mom was 21 and she had me, my dad and mother both. They were hippies and everything. They had no idea. And they said that to me, I guess five or six years old. But I still remember that because they certainly did not know what they were doing in many cases. And so I still remember as a kid, I don't see this happening. I would do that analysis of, Oh my God, my mom lost her shit again. I mean, I use different words, of course, but I didn't realize it. Know, I and you know, and it's start saying, well, okay, so I could, you know, burn the porch down. And it's not that it was just but I can recognize what I did something wrong or when my parents were overreacting. And I've had other patients where they had horrific upbringings, but one parent or somebody in the family somehow delivered that message when they were young and they kept delivering it that, you know, it's that's not on you. Right. You might just be wrong, but your parents are you know, they're out there, out there or something like that. And that in each case, it's all but a few cases I've heard, like I've seen people who've had that experience. But I'm telling you, I've always said you should be much more messed up than you are. And then they would tell me what the parents said, Oh, that makes perfect sense. That, again, mitigated some of the damage. Well, it helps realign their understanding of reality. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So the next question I came across and I actually saw a TikTk about this the other day and not on TikTok. I watch a compilation of Tiktoks. I feel it necessary to point that out. But anyway, in any event, I wish I could remember the exact wording of it, but it was, it was surrounding timeouts. So the next question that we're going to talk about here is, are timeouts. Okay. And in this video, multiple videos, actually they're saying that they are developmentally inappropriate. They're not. Okay. It's it sends them a terrible message. It makes them feel alone and isolates them. It punish them. And that just goes on. I'm going to go ahead and disagree with that. So timeout timeouts are good for kids and for adults. And we've talked about this in the past when we discussed even relationships and marriages are taking a timeout and verbalizing that we need a timeout is incredibly valuable for adults with regard to the developmental appropriateness of it. Of course you need to be mindful of the amount of time because the attention span and ability for a child to connect. You know what happened with the amount of time that's passed. You know, it's very important to understand that general rule of thumb is the number of minutes can align with the number of years old that they are. I would even shorten that up a little bit again, because you want to make sure that they understand the relationship between the punishment and what happened, but what's also happening with the timeout is it's giving them a moment to collect themselves. And you know, as a side note, if you are and you should be teaching your children, great coping tools, so whether it's deep breathing, whether it's grounding themself, you know, whatever, you know, tools are used in your household that gives them the opportunity to take that moment, clear their head reset, and then actually have a conversation about it. What I'll say about timeouts is when it's timeout time, it's timeout time, You're not going and talking with them. You're not going and poking them. Let them have their few minutes. Okay, So timeouts is tricky. So I used to do I've done, you know, I think 500 assessments for children's societies or Child Protective Services and of course across Ontario. And so I would observe parents with their kids. And it's interesting because I saw so many people try to use timeouts. Now, this was an observation. It could be in a in a home or an observation room. And I know there's a lot of pressure taken. They're being observed by the person who's being assessed, who's assessing the family. I get that. Okay. But other times, like I could just see that they just don't know what they're doing. And it's interesting because within that, you know, the many years I was doing these assessments, at some point the timeout became, you know, they were verboten. So, you know, and so a parent would be doing a timeout because they learned it in a class and then they have a caseworker saying, no, you're not allowed to timeout and it's wrong. It was like it was suddenly changed. It's really tricky. So I understand the notion against timeouts and I understand the reason to do them. If if people do the timeouts the way that you said and explain to the kid, this is why you're doing it, it's giving us a chance to calm down, to breathe, to whatever, take all the power to that. I think it's a good thing. Okay. Some of the the arguments against it is that as a lot of times that for the child, depending on the age, especially the timeout, it kind of excludes them from the family, from the person when they actually want to be there. Maybe they're anxious, maybe they're whatever, and they need that comfort in the contact or whatever. So it depends on the child, depends on the circumstance. And so and also depends on the timeout. Some parents say, you know, say go to your room and for some kids, great. My room better than down here. Yeah that's not a punishment. For other times you know I've heard of where you know they like can close the door and the kid just pounding away screaming and losing their shit. Like, that's not really helpful. Like, you got to know, right? It's got to be said the way you said it other times and you talk about not poking whatever, and I would watch it and you put the kid in the chair, timeout chair, they kid would climb down. They do it. They put a kid in the get him off, put it in again, and eventually they just give up. Right. So you just taught your child, you know, persistence pays off no matter what you say, no matter what you try to do. If the kid just push is hard enough, they get their way. So I see. So again, if someone can master the timeout in the way that you're describing and if they say as well, hey, you know, I sometimes take a timeout as well is not a punishment As long as it's not a punishment, it's you would use the word collaborative with kid, but is a way for us to get along better. That is, if again, if it's sold properly, it can be a good tool. I have rarely seen it used properly. I've seen it probably a couple times, but not often. Yeah. So that actually leads nicely into the next question is “my kids don't listen, so is punishment okay?” This is such a broad, strange question and it ties back to what we spoke about in the beginning of this episode as far as there's rules in a household and they need to be enforced. Punishment’s a tricky one, though, because I think it depends what people mean when they say punishment. Punishment has to be constructive. It has to be age appropriate. It has to be illustrative of logical consequences for actions, because that's what we're trying to teach kids. That being said, there are certain kids that maybe won't respond as well to punishment. What we know from the literature is that children with ADHD, for example, often don't respond well to punishment. They respond better to reward. So with regard to punishment, it's really important to know your child, know what they respond to, know what they value. And I don't say that as far as, you know, using as a threat. But if we're looking at, you know, rewards and punishment, seeing what is important enough to them, that is going to motivate them and encourage them to abide by the rules. Right. And we see what's important to them. It's either to try to get that or because they don't want to lose it, whatever that happens to be. Right. Right. Yeah. And so especially with, let's say, 10 to 12 and older. All right. I've told so many parents. So if you ground a kid, right. So not only are you depriving them of maybe a social engagement, right. They'll see there's a party going on or assuming I want to be clear here, if the child, let's say, came home drunk one time from the last party and they're having another party with his friends, it's totally appropriate to go. You know what? Given last time, I don't you're not going to go there or there has to. We have to make sure that there's going to be parents or something like that. That would be appropriate. But if just as a punishment, you ground the child, they can't go out, they can't play with their friends, you are robbing them of such an important social context. Now they're going to feel excluded and you're going to have a resentful, bitter, you know, sour child stomping around the home. That's not helpful for anybody. So what I tell parents is, instead of doing that, you talk about seeking rewards. Okay, you can do that as well. In this case, the punishment quote unquote. I had my kids do chores and not your regular chores. Wash my car, clean the toilets, do something like that. And they said, But here's the thing, though. There's a few things that that people can do. So and people are like, Oh, wow, that makes so much more sense, right? Like they're actually doing something productive in the home. And I said, it's not about what I tell them. It's like, Yeah, I want to ground you and explain to them, I don't want you to be deprived of your social contacts and everything that's really important. So I say, So you're going to you know, you're going to basically show that you can be a good citizen. And that's the verbiage. People can use different words, but I always talk with my parents. I help or the kids I help or my, you know, my my own family. I see it's about being a good citizen within the home. So if you didn't do something or if you hurt somebody or whatever else like that, you know, you got to make amends. So be a good citizen. Do this or that. If one of my daughters somehow wronged the other daughter, I would have the one was wrong. She would take you know, she could either do her chores for a week or day or depending on the circumstances, or she can ask for something else. And we always had to make sure it was fair if my kids never made the other one do something really horrible and they knew that we were overseeing it. Right. So again, it's about making amends, saying, Hey, I'm sorry I screwed up, here's how I'm going to do better, or I'm going to make it up to you. And here's the part where I did it, and it's going to sound a bit cruel and sadistic. Okay? But I think it's just strategic and clever, right, as a parent. So I would tell the kids, I would say, I'm not going to tell you what your punishment is going to be. Okay. I say, here's what you did wrong. I said, You get to choose your own punishment. Okay. Now there's more catch. I say, I said, I know what punishment I would choose. You got to choose your own. If it's not nearly as much as mine was going to be? Okay, I'll give you a bit of a range. But it was below that. I say I'm going to triple whatever punishment I was going to do. Okay. So my kids would always oversell their punishment. Okay? And but they had the choice to do it. Okay? And it just showed that because that made them think about proportionality. Right. And so I never had to triple or double or whatever else like that. The kids always hit a reasonable mark when it came to again, showing I know I did something wrong. Here's how I make amends. Yeah. And it goes back to the accountability, right? Because I imagine they didn't come up with anything. You know, too crazy, but it probably cause them to reflect on, okay, well, this is what I did Again, these are the logical consequences for such an action. And I'm taking accountability for it 100%. And again, like I said, they always gave something. I was like, That makes sense. I never had to say that's not enough or, you know, or that's a way that's too much. It was always I think people have an intuitive sense that if, you know, we had discussions their entire lives, we always talked about these kinds of things. So they had a good sense of that. And, you know, and put but the idea of accountability, I screwed up. Now I have a choice or I have a chance to again do to make a proportional amends. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, to that point so I'm thinking about you have daughters, I have a son. But I do think that it's important for parents to also understand that there are sex differences. And so the way in which we punish a boy may be different than the way that we punish a girl, depending on the circumstances. I just read a case study just yesterday, actually, about this kid who I think he was a grade nine student, very bright kid, but he was having some social challenges when he entered high school. He was a very skilled football player, but his grades just were not cutting it. So and I'll say this for context, I think that they were either a European or an Asian family. So they they really valued academics and they really valued his performance in school. So this was a really big deal to this family, long story short. And they didn't know what to do about this kid. So I think they saw some guidance from either their family doctor or their psychiatrist. It was from a physician, and they said, well, what do we do? And the doctor basically said, well, you know, if the grades are important, that's fine. But whatever you do, you need to ensure that he is still engaging socially, just as you suggested, on what this family ended up doing, though, as they took him out of football, they thought that if we take him out of football, this is something that he values. He'll smarten up, he'll get his grades up and everything will be fine. But in fact, what happened with this boy was his grades got even worse because his motivation to do anything in school came from his ability to be on the football team. There's a cutoff. If he had a certain GPA below whatever the grade level was, he would be kicked off the team. So he was at least making, you know, reaching that level and this kid ended up getting into all kinds of trouble, got into drugs, behavior got worse, so on and so forth. So my point of of sharing this story and this case study that I write about is being very aware of the fact that, you know, what motivates boys may be different than what motivates girls. And your punishment needs to be in line with that. Right. And what you said was so important about this idea that that's why saying about like the social contract and everything, if it's a sense of belonging, boys or girls, whichever, or it's a sense of identity or worth, if you got some sense of self-worth from be on the football team, he's accomplishing, there's camaraderie, for sure, taking that away. In theory. On paper, it makes sense. Okay, He's going to strive to try to get that back. But no, before he gets to a point, he got hit by the other part. I've just lost part of my identity. It's like if you were working in a job, you get fired, you just lost a part of your identity. So that's really, really poignant. And by the way, when it comes to punishments, and I've actually sadly, I've had to do this with one of my children, which I never wanted to do. I take the phone away, but only temporarily, because I just know that that is distracting them. And everything I'm not doing as a punishment is more. I tell her I say, you just need to be able to focus for a certain period of time or you can have it before you go to bed. The blue light is keeping you awake and everything like that. But I know so many parents at the beginning use that as a form of punishment, taking away the kids phone. Well, a few things about that, for some parents, they take away the phone. The kid has equal access on their laptop or iPad through the messenger or whatever else, or using your Snapchat, whatever. They can do it. So it's not a punishment. Okay. Or is not effective. Number two, if they do take it away and they take away all their devices and this research came out obviously about 15 years ago, even 15 years ago, with adults, but kids, adults, they took away their phones and it's between ten and 15 years ago, like for it was I forget how many days they're supposed to do it for, but I'm not kidding. Within 24 hours, a whole bunch of these adults were going through actual withdrawal symptoms. They were irritable. They were you know, they were some of them were actually literally shaking. They had headaches, their stomachs and everything. And that was for adults. And by the way, they still have regular phones and they had access to a gym or if they had the access to each if you had access to the Internet. But back in those days, the Internet didn't have the capabilities, you know, like all the computers, like the phones. So they felt so disconnected from the world. So I say, now imagine, and especially with FOMO, fear of missing out. Oh my God, if I'm not able to check and see what's going on or something's happening, I know that 90 something percent I'm just making the number of the dynamics of the interaction unhealthy. There was still that sense of belonging. So when you take away their phone, right, if it seems like it's been for a week or day, whatever, you've got to make sure that they they you know, they don't feel lost. And it's such a social so many kids today. Right. If they need anything, the phone they need to get from here to the grocery store. Okay, I've got a Google map or something like that. Right. They just feel so helpless without it. And you say, well, when we were kids, Yeah. Unfortunately, kids today are being raised in an environment that is alien to us. We get to watch the transition, right? But these kids didn't. Yeah, this is all that we know. So you take away a phone, you might as well take away a body part. And I want to stress again that that study was, I'm pretty sure about 15 years ago before the smartphones became that capable. And yeah, and it was with adults. So parents have to really understand that. Take it again, take it away temporarily so the kid has to do their schoolwork or whatever else. And obviously the whole day that the kid have breaks in between just to check and see, because again, adults do that as well. If they can't check their phone there, how can you concentrate on homework or something when you're jonesing for your phone, given that little bit of time? Yeah. So so two things I want to say about that. So first of all, it's, you know, mildly concerning, but I get it. I understand this is their main their main lifeline. And, you know, so is true with with adults as well. So that's that's fine. But I think what is perhaps at hand and what we can talk a little bit about here is how parents can effectively set boundaries when it comes to devices and phones and so on. A rule that we swear by. And our son had a phone maybe earlier than his friends did, but it was also to track where he is. So if he's going to the park by himself, we can track where he is and so on. But all of that aside, the rule from the get go has been your phone is ours at the end of the night, so it's not going in your bedroom. There's no electronic use, electronic usage in bed. And you know, for the pragmatic reasons, like you said, the blue light is not good for their sleep, but also it's distracting. It can disrupt their ability to fall asleep if they're worried about what's going on on their phone. But if the precedent is set from the get go that, you know, at the end of the day, phones are phones put away, I think that that's an important boundary to set It really is. And look, my wife and I, we've not been the greatest of times for something we do. And I know a lot of parents say that they go like it's so hard and they get you know, they throw a tantrum where I had one patient and she was 18 and I told her that I thought, I think we had a good enough relationship where I could mock because her mother told me, I took away your phone and she threw a tantrum in the in the in the front of the house, in front of neighbors and everything. But she came and I joked with her about that. Right. Because I want her to see just how like, ridiculous she was acting like a child and and the whole thing, what she was trying to prove, how much of an adult she was. And what I'm saying is that that even is like an 18 year old throwing a tantrum. The reason I bring that up is the parent. In the old days, she would have been so mortified, embarrassed, would have thought the child's going to have a stroke, so she would have given in, but she didn't even she maintained it, taught her, you know, say that I'm tougher than you. I'm going to hold out and everything like that. And it's like a child, you know, I want ice cream, ice cream, ice cream, ice cream And finally breaks after 350th time. Well, again, as I said at the beginning, you're conditioning the child that as long as they keep pushing hard enough, they will eventually get it. And the longer that you last before you finally break, the more powerful that lesson is. That kid just knows I just got to keep going till the end of time. My parents going to break before I do. And the parents job is to make you think, No, no, I ain't breakin. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So question number five is and it's a really broad one, what is the number one rule of parenting? So I don't know if that's an answerable question. I don't think that there is a number one rule of parenting. I disagree, but I doubt I was going to say. But if I had to if I had to narrow it down to I'll say two words consistency and accountability. I think are the two biggest things that can be taught to a child. Okay, excellent. I'm going to say something else that's going to kind of, I think, subsume everything. So you got consistency for sure. We know research shows that inconsistent parenting just messes up the kids personalities and psychological functioning. So accountability, like that's what we always talk about for sure. I would say that part of that would also be structure. Okay. Yeah, that's sort of along with consistency. But kids, kids hate it, but they need it and they actually love it without knowing it for sure. Structure, predictability. Kids Yeah, exactly. They, they hate it, but they. Need it because that gives the sense of mastery When there's structure. Externally, they learn to internalize the structure, and by doing that, they get to gain a sense of mastery and the consistency, predictability and so on the repetition, they get a bit better sense of what, you know, what the world looks like and how to operate within it. That's where the consistency comes in. So the one thing I'm going to say we talk about with the number one rule, and we've talked before about this, which is basically you want to raise your kids to become independent, adults, prosocial people who can function reasonably well in the world. So that's your guiding light right then make sure that everything sort of falls under that. And again, I tell this to my kids all the time. I tell every parent, I say, the kid at ten years old or 12 years, let me say, you know what? When I'm getting you to wash your dishes, even though you don't want to do it, it's going to help you when you move out and the kid's going to go, it's white noise. They're not going to hear the knock and it's not going to make them feel better. But if you get in the habit of doing it, the kid hears enough. Yeah, it'll be white noise, okay? But it will get internalized. And they may be resistant, they may resent it, but at some point they're going to say, well, thank goodness my parents did that for sure. Yeah, Yeah. And I guess, you know, as you're saying that I'm thinking about my own childhood and many of those lessons and yeah, in my twenties, in my thirties, I'm like, oh, okay, That's why they did that, right? And I got to be frank, you know, my parents, they never gave me that messaging. Like, this is why it was always simply do it or else. Right? So and look, I was I was well known. I went to three different high schools cause I got kicked out of two. So I was a real I was usually the worst kid in the school, had the best grades. But yeah, so I was a problem child. I did everything bad that you could do as well. Almost everything that you can do as a teen, right? So I was a whole handful and I was a nightmare for my parents. But the funny thing is certain things and it was funny because here's this really bad kid who's doing all these things, famous or infamous for being such a terrible kid teen, whatever, a reprobate. But when it came to being home on time for dinner, people see the look of fear and death in my eye like I didn't care what I was doing. I don't care what state I was in. I'm rushing home. Okay? Or if it was a curfew late at night, again, partying, doing this crazy stuff like, oh, I got to get home, I'm running home and stuff like that. And that, you know, I internalize that not because it was going to help you, but I was terrified of the consequences. I spent most of my teen years grounded just because of all the crap that I did. And again, the parenting that I was subject to was not what we're talking about, let's put it that way. Okay, I'm trying to give a PG version, but the point is, again, even without the proper messaging, I internalized certain things. So if you if you deliver the message properly, you might resist it. But really on some level, they are going to develop good, healthy habits that are going to help them function as they get older and as older, We hope, in the teen years and, you know, not just like in their twenties and thirties, but even before that. So that's what they have to think about. How do I make my kid independent? Basically I am, and perhaps this is more of an offline conversation for us, but I'm always so fascinated about the difference between your upbringing and my upbringing, how you were as a kid, and how I was like very vanilla, milquetoast, didn't do anything wrong. But as adults, we are so similar. It's it's really fascinating to me. Yeah, But in any event, as far as our usual question of, you know, what can parents do about this, I think we've kind of been covering that through our our questions here. But I would say in terms of the consumption of the bad parenting advice out there, you know, view it with a critical mind, view with a critical eye and look at how does this fit your family. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the parenting advice out there is not from experts, it's not from people who have you know, the education and expertise to be able to effectively guide parents, as evidenced by the example I started out the episode. With. That being said, there's great value in learning about parenting from other parents. You don't only have to seek, you know, the advice of experts. That's that's how parenting was passed on through generations is through discussion and mentorship from other parents and grandparents and so on. So, you know, there's there's beauty to that as well. But in the end just be mindful and be critical of the the media that you're consuming and I hate to say it but understand that maybe these maybe these content creators don't have your best interests in mind. It could just have to do with their views. Exactly. And like I said earlier about those two things, one is, like I said, have self-compassion. Recognize that no matter what you see or do or what you like, what you try to do, you're not going to be perfect. You're going to fail a number of times. As long as you do everything in your power to make sure that you mitigate the damage. That's one thing. We're not perfect. Sounds great on paper. Okay. And number two, don't get defensive when you see what you're doing wrong. Whether someone tells you directly, if a parent tells you sorry, like another parent tells you, or you see from a blog or something like that, try your best. Not to be defensive was so hard to do because they as a parent, we don't want to think that we failed. Right? That's why I teach my to my patients all the time. That's the first thing I say to them. My whole life I said about, you know, I'm a parenting expert, but that would be that's a joke almost, because I screw up all the time. It's so I'm not afraid to say that, you know, because if I don't see that, I'm not going to learn. You have to accept your flaws. So but don't go too far in saying, Oh my God, I'm a horrible parent. I'll never be able to redeem myself. Right? As always, we need some nuance and balance and extremes are never healthy. So yeah. So listeners, we want to know your parenting questions. I would love to do this same series, this episode again as far as answering real parenting questions. So send us your comments, send us your feedback and we'd be happy to answer any parenting questions you may have. All right. And on that note, until next time, keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel.