How To Raise An Emotionally Mature Child - Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson

Dr. Gibson, for people raised by emotionally immature parents who are now parents themselves, what are some things that they should watch out for as parents? Whether you've had emotionally immature parents or not, having your own child will end up triggering memories of your childhood. So, what we want to do is understand that we're going to be reminded of our own emotional experiences as children, and use that as a sort of a reminder in that little nanosecond before we respond to something our child has done, that we have a choice going forward about whether or not to respond as our parents did, or to respond as we would wish someone had responded to us.

So, one of the great things about having children after you have had a childhood with an emotionally immature parent, is that you kind of get to do a do-over uh through your child. And in the process of that, you are actually integrating and uh developing yourself from this place of using the information that you now have about your experiences, and applying them to how you want your child to uh experience life and experience intimate deep relationships. So, while some parts of parenting, when you've had emotionally immature parents, can be kind of triggering, um can remind you of some unhappy uh aspects of your own childhood, it's a wonderful opportunity to have this new experience of giving your child experiences that maybe you didn't have when you were growing up.

So, it it's both good for your child, and it's good for your own growth. One of the really interesting research studies that that I was looking into showed that parents that had integrated and thought about and you know, reflected on their own childhood experiences, they actually ended up having children who uh were evaluated as being more securely attached than parents that just didn't think about what had happened to them and hadn't processed their relationship with their parents. And that's a very interesting finding because it means that when you have dealt with the things that happened to you in your own past, you are able to be more present and more available for connection with your own child. So, in that way, having processed your experiences and and even your pain, you have put yourself in the position of being

a much more reliable and present, available parent to your child. And that's going to pay off in the quality of their attachment. Are there common ways that uh adult children of emotionally mature parents uh kind of parent poorly or however you want to call it? Kind of what are these problem areas that we should be really aware of kind of going into these relationships? Such a good question because naturally, we model ourselves on our parents unconsciously. Uh we certainly don't intend to be like them, but we learn this at a at a completely physical, non-conscious level growing up about what it means to be a parent. So, you can bet that you're going to be doing things at times that are are cringeworthy when you look back on them because so much of our response to the you know, the kind of um

rough and ready atmosphere of child raising has to be on the on on the spur of the moment. It has to be you know, quite impulsive. And sometimes we will find ourselves reacting on the basis of this old learning. Like one of the very common things that that we can tend to do if we had these kind of parents is that when our child shows true vulnerability, when they really are suffering, we can have the same response to them that we have been trained to have toward our own suffering and vulnerability. Which is to say that we can be a little distant from it. We can be a little dissociated from it.

And that's because we have learned that there was nobody there for us. And so the thing that hurts less is to pretend that it's not that painful. And unfortunately, sometimes we can translate that into telling our children in one way or another that what they're feeling is not as bad as it is. So we can have these invalidating responses simply because we have learned to invalidate ourselves. So the answer to that is to practice some of the ideas that are you know, in a lot of parenting books. They're in my book, but I just want to you know, say that this is almost universal in parenting books these days.

Thank goodness. And that is that you take everything that your child is feeling and telling you very seriously. And you validate it with respect and with listening. And you listen to it like you've never heard this kind of uh feeling before and you're very curious about it. You're very receptive to it. And you can practice doing that whether you feel that way or not and even when your insides are screaming at no, this is not a big deal. Why are you making such a fuss over this? If you have kind of that guiding principle that you want to provide validation and respect to your child, that that's going to be good for your child even if you're not really feeling it all the way, then you can give your child a healthy um supportive response that's going to teach them that they they can trust

their feelings and they can trust how things make make them feel. And then they can begin to rely on their own inner uh reactions as a way of telling them about the world, which is, you know, of course what we want for more emotional maturity. So, that's that's my way of saying that we're going to do things that will, you know, on the surface seem to uh be about to replay what we went through as children, but if we know that that wasn't good for us and we know that it's not good for children in general, then we have an opportunity to respond differently and it's okay if we don't really feel it deep down. It's okay if, you know, maybe some big part of us is recoiling or not taking does not wanting to take it seriously. That's okay. We still can do the behavior that teaches our child that what they're saying is important and then it can teach them to trust their own emotional

responses. In adult children of emotionally immature parents, you talk about the internalizer, which is a person who reacted to being raised by emotionally immature parents by going into themselves, taking on the blame for things, taking on the responsibility for fixing everything. What does the internalizer look like as a parent when it goes poorly versus when it goes well? Well, when it goes well, the internalizer is a great parent uh because that internalizing parent is a self-reflective parent and it's a parent who can imagine the inner world of other people. And that's a parent that has good empathy, that can mentalize, uh kind of put themselves in the shoes of their child, and they are willing to self-examine in the sense that if something goes poorly in the relationship or they have a bad day or they don't like the way they responded to their child, they have the opportunity

to turn within and ask themselves, "Gee, you know, what was going on with me that I responded in that way? I'm not I'm not happy with that. I'm not pleased with how I acted." And because they have empathy, they probably are going to feel impelled to go back to their child and explain what happened. You know, like, "Honey, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to raise my voice at you. Uh but, you know, I I had a really long day at work and I I think I just took it out on you and I'm so sorry." And you can you can fix it. You can repair it in that way.

So, those are some of the great qualities that internalizers have that they bring to parenting. And, you know, if I had a uh a choice about who I was going to be parented by, it would definitely be an internalizer because I would know that I would have a chance to be truly seen and truly understood because that's what internalizers want to do. They want to learn. They're curious. They They enjoy intimate communications. They like being close to people in this very particular psychological way. The downside of being an internalizer parent is that you're going to feel guilty all the time. You are going to be self-reflecting.

Uh that's a great thing for the child. It can lead to feelings of regret, guilt, low self-esteem, uh perfectionism because they're able to evaluate their behavior and that means that they may not be able to stop evaluating their behavior. What we want is some balance between the two where you have the the assets of the internalizer by being able to enter into these deep and self-reflective relationships. And yet you don't let that go so far that you're reflecting to the degree that you cause unnecessary feelings of guilt or low self-esteem because you didn't do it perfectly because nobody does it perfectly. And yes, we can learn from what we've done by reflection and and you know, going within.

But we don't want that to turn into uh kind of self-criticism that makes us feel bad about ourselves. We are all just human beings. We're all doing the best that we can. And internalizers are people who really need to remember that more than anybody else. Yeah, this seems like a good time to ask you about the concept of the good enough parent that you discuss in the new book. How did this idea of a good enough parent play into your own parenting experience and how can people use it to be better parents themselves? The good enough parent is a concept um from Donald Winnicott who was an English psychoanalyst and pediatrician. And I always loved that he was a pediatrician because I figured, you know, he had seen families at their worst. It wasn't just that he sat in his consulting office and and did uh you know, psychotherapy with people. He He really understood families and babies. Um what he wanted to communicate to parents

and I think he he did this in a series of lectures that were for the public. He wanted to give them the idea that you did not have to be perfect. That you did not have to be a super parent in order for your child to turn out well. All you had to do was be good enough. And basically what that means is that you are sensitive, attentive, and responsive enough to make a good connection with your child so that your child knows that you see them, that you love them, that you're trying to understand them, and you're trying to give them what they need. That's good enough.

Interestingly, uh another infancy researcher, Ed Tronick, came along and thought, "Gosh, well, I wonder exactly what the numbers are on that good enough uh measure. Like how how good do you have to be to be good enough?" And what he found in his experiment was he had parents and babies uh you know, kind of observed for the day and he would clock how many minutes uh and and you know, it's really seconds that that parent would be directly attending to the child, giving them their full attention. And then at the end of the days, um they compute the results and they find out that things seem to go well. Babies seem to be happy. Um they seem to be well attached, securely attached. When the parent was attentive and responsive at least about 30% of the time.

And that blew me away because I thought, "Whoa, that means that 70% of the time we might be engaged in other things, like you might be uh doing a report that you're working on for work. You might be cleaning the house. You might be uh driving somewhere. You You know, your mind is not all on your child." And I thought, "How could You know, how could that be?" But what he found was it was actually good enough because it didn't mean that 70% of the time you just ignored your child. These are interspersed measurements. So, the 30% is an aggregate of little um you know, little moments of connection.

But he found that the good part about it was that children were able to uh get the experience of having some time to themselves, you know, not constantly interacting. But when they wanted their parent back, they could call, they could fuss, they could start crying, they could start squirming. In one way or another, they could show that they needed attention. And if 30% of the time spent, you know, in proximity to each other, that parent responded to the child, the child learned, "Oh, you know, hey, I can make mom or dad come back to me when I need them." So, it gives the child a sense of efficacy, a sense of being able to affect their environment and and have an impact on other people.

And it also increases the trust in that in that baby or young child because the child learns that, you know, mom or dad may not always be right there or right beside me, but I can summon them back. I can I can get them to come back to me, and they always do when I really need them. And so, gaining that sense of trust and that sense of social efficacy is a tremendous benefit to the child's development. Now, this happened after Winnicott's um using that term good enough, but I I think that he would have been delighted to see that someone had caught the spirit of his observation, which was, you know, as as mothers or as fathers, we we don't have to be hovering anxiously over our children every second. But we do have to retain, you know, an ear out,

uh listening, being uh aware that they're there, and being willing and able to respond or make sure that someone is there to be willing and able to respond to them when they need it. That is what we mean by good enough. Uh one of the big takeaways for me from uh the book is that we often expect too much out of our kids because they can seem much more mature at times than they actually are developmentally. So, what are the common ways you see this manifest, and what should we keep in mind as parents in those moments? Great question. Uh well, let's take the example of a 4-year-old. And let's say that uh we are our pleased with how our 4-year-old is, you know, so much uh better at language. They're so much better at self-control.

They play now in a kind of a directed way. They're not just running around knocking things over. They They just seem more present. They seem to be uh kind of more of a uh an an involved other person now. And so, we can think that they're ready for more kinds of self-control than they really are. As an example, we might think we can take them to a restaurant. Okay? So, we take them to a restaurant, and we very quickly find out that in that kind of situation where the attention is not all on them, uh there's a lot of stimulation going on, there are all kinds of strange rules that they've never even heard of before, like you don't stand up in your chair, or you don't jump around, or you don't scream.

They've never They've never done this before. They don't understand what is uh needed or or expected in in a restaurant, maybe. And so, we make it very annoyed because we think we have seen their ability to be a little more self-controlled and a little more reasonable. But, you know, it's like It's like this cracker crust. I mean, it it is so ready to to you know, be shattered so easily by the right kind of stress, which, you know, is not very much stress to us. But, to the 4-year-old, you know, they're just recently out of toddlerhood. They're not even in school yet. So, we have to keep in mind that we can be expecting all kinds of um more adult-like behaviors from our kids, especially when they're very verbal, and especially when they're very uh connected, and they're easy to talk to, and they seem to have a good sense

of understanding. It can trick us into thinking that they're capable of more self-control and sort of self-management than they really are. Same thing with teenagers. We might expect that they're able to have better judgment than a teenager can have. Or we're shocked when they engage in some kind of risky behavior, which, you know, teenagers are famous for, because we somehow feel like well, our teenager is not going to be like other teenagers, or they're they're going to have better sense than that. But, you know, there's no getting around the developmental um paths that our children have to go down, and the fact that even though they may look more mature, and we may have great faith in them, you know, they're still a 13-year-old, they're still a 4-year-old.

And that's why in the book I wanted to be sure to give those developmental characteristics and the and the uh kind of the maturational goals they were working on at each age from newborn to young adult, so that you recognize that yes, your child is definitely their own individual, but in terms of what they need to accomplish and where they're growing into something more mature, you know, in some ways they're just like every other kid. And so, if we understand that along with respecting their special individuality, we're giving our child the benefit of not only um you know, knowing them as a person, but not putting expectations on them that, you know, they just can't meet.

>> You say in the book, "Don't give your child lessons in catastrophic thinking." What do you mean by that? And how do parents who themselves struggle with anxiety and catastrophizing, especially around their children's well-being, avoid doing [snorts] that? Well, this is kind of a fine point, but it's an important one. Because sometimes uh parents want to instill a healthy sense of fear in their child so that they won't do dangerous things. So, one of the things that parents can get creative on, uh and I'm I'm saying that in quotes, um they can come up with uh some scenarios where they explain to the child what can happen, uh so that the child will have a sense of anxiety about that and will control themselves so that that bad thing doesn't happen.

And sometimes parents get a little too uh explicit about how bad consequences can be or how deeply somebody would be hurt by that, or, you know, they In other words, they paint a picture uh of catastrophic thinking. That this is the worst that could happen, you know, you could get hit by a car. You could end up in the hospital for weeks. You might not be able to ride your bicycle. I mean, it's enough to tell the child why you don't want them to do something, to let them know that this is dangerous and why. Okay, so you're giving them an explanation. That's important. But, sometimes anxious parents can communicate it's a dangerous world out there, and you have to be very careful and watch your step and control yourself so that something really bad doesn't happen to you.

For really young children, you know, children before maybe the fourth or fifth grade, they really uh stuff like this doesn't really sink in. Um all they do is they get anxious and scared because they know you're telling them something awful's going to happen. It's better to in a sense explain to them why it's not safe to do something, but then you still have to keep your eye on them. It It's not good to have the philosophy that I'm going to scare my kid into thinking twice before they do things or um you know, not trying things out because I will have taught them to think of all the awful things that can happen.

That's what I mean about don't train them in catastrophic thinking cuz when they're small, you really have to be doing the protecting. They're not capable of doing that on their own. When they get a little older, you know, you can um tell them more about why something is not a good idea, but not to the point where you're trying to give them that scared, give them that horror of what could happen because really that is not their job to be so scared of things that they think of what awful thing could happen next. It's your job to be protective of them and watch over them, keep your eye on them, give them the basics, but you know, not the horror story.

>> Yeah, maybe this is uh connected to that in some way or it probably is in some situations, but another uh huge struggle for parents that you deal with in the book is how to handle a child who's scared at night or having bad dreams. What's the right way to approach that and is there such a thing as offering too much comfort and not forcing them to work through it? Well, the way that children work through things like that is with their parent. They do not have the capacity to work through these things by themselves. And unfortunately, I mean, we we have such an individualistic culture. Uh you know, you're supposed to be so self-reliant.

You're supposed to be so resilient that we fear that we're making our children weak or dependent when we really come in and give them full comforting. For instance, after a nightmare or when they're scared in their room at night. That's something that uh it's too easy for people in our culture to think that we're doing them a disservice by taking these things seriously and by giving them all kinds of comfort. Now, it's true that, you know, any self-respecting child may exploit that to keep mom or dad in the bedroom longer at night, you know, or to, you know, get into bed with mom and dad after a nightmare.

But, you know, I would rather err on the side of I'm giving too much attention to my child around these fears than I'm not taking them seriously. Because the early ages, especially, you know, anywhere from like two and a half to six. That's what uh Selma Fraiberg called the magic years, meaning that their imaginations are coming online. They can now think of all kinds of things that aren't real. I mean, they just do. They imagine monsters and we're not even getting into what they may have been exposed to in movies or TV, okay? Because that's plenty scary. But they can imagine these really terrifying things now.

And yet they don't have the uh uh uh sense of self and the sense of self-reliance that an adult has. So, they're just stuck with these terrifying feelings. And what do they need? They need their parent. They need their parent to respond. So, when you take it seriously as as a um a legitimate fear and you explain to them that, "Oh, you know, this this is I I understand. I remember when I was a little girl. I was a little boy. I used to be afraid of the very same things. Did you know that all children are afraid of monsters under the bed? It's pretty reliable. Um or they think that things are, you know, uh you know, whatever it is that the the child was afraid of. They they think that, too.

It's something that goes on for people your age. It doesn't mean that they're real. There are no such things as monsters, okay? But I know it feels that way. And I know that you have such a good imagination that you can actually feel it like it's true, but it's not true. It just scared you. So, I'm I'm here with you now. We're okay. Let's take a a nice slow breath. Um I will come back to your room with you. I'll sit by your bed until you go back to sleep, but you are perfectly safe. But I I know what you mean cuz I used to do and feel that way when I was your age. That way you validate the child's experience as being completely real. You normalize it by explaining to them that this is something that happens to all children. Okay, so there's no shame in that. And then you let them know, I remember. I remember what this was like and I remember that I wanted someone with me, so I'm going to be with you.

Now, it's reminding me of when when our son was was little and he would have a nightmare and he would come crawl in bed. And I would be so sleepy and so tired and I would think, okay, I'm just going to I'm just going to go back to sleep and let him let him stay in bed. And then it was like, okay, this is going to start happening every night because [laughter] and I said something to him once and he said, he said, but I like it here. So, I know you do, but your bed is for sleeping in your room. Come on, let's go back to your bed. And I would make myself get up, go back to the bedroom with him, sit by his bed or lay down in his bed with him until he felt woken up enough. He was back in the real world with me. He was safe again. Until he had that feeling and could go back to sleep, I would stay with him. And it was worth the investment to me because I didn't want to be reinforcing or encouraging the behavior of, yeah, if

you wait long enough and have a nightmare in the middle of the night, you can come get in bed with us. I didn't want that to be the lesson. But I was not going to let him go through this alone, either. So, you have to think about, um, will children, you know, exploit uh, your comfort? Absolutely. We all do that. Grown-ups do that with each other. But you as the parent have the choice where you can actually give what the child needs and yet maintain boundaries that are going to be good for you, too. You have such a beautiful line in the book where you write, "This is your child's first adventure into being in love." Talk about that and how it should impact our parenting.

>> So, there are there two times in a child's life where they practice the experience of being in love. The first one is around the age of four-ish. Um this is what Freud called the Oedipus complex, and I think he gave it its its particular um name and its particular importance because he noticed that children were went through this phase where they tended to be in love with one parent, so to speak, and then want to kind of get rid of the other parent. Now, children have no idea what it means to get rid of another parent. It just means that they want that one person all to themselves.

Just like any self-respecting human being, we all want that one special person that we are in love with, and we want to have them all to ourselves. Uh I write about this in the in the book, but one one uh little boy said to his mommy, he said, "Um Mom, when I grow up, I'm going to marry you." And then there there was a a wait, and he said, "And And on Sundays, we'll go see Dad, too." [laughter] So, it it it's a it's a very reliable stage where they're crazy about they have like a little romance about that parent, you know, whichever parent they're in love with, so to speak, and they want that parent all to themselves.

But, it's part of their identity formation, or there's maybe we should better say their self-formation at that age, where they're really tuning into who they are as an individual, and what it is that they really want, and then they're really tuned into their relationships now. It's not just about racing around, you know, that doing stuff. It's about other people, and how much they love them, and how important they are to them. So, that's their experience for the first time that there's a special person that I want all to myself. So, that's the first one. And we have to take that very seriously, and yet we have to not encourage that, of course. Um because, you know, the parent who uh wittingly or unwittingly sort of encourages the idea that uh this child is favored over the other parent, or that there's a special special relationship with them. I mean, oh my goodness, that that sets the child

up for a whole lot of guilt, and a lot of conflict internally, cuz they don't really want to get rid of the other parent, okay? They don't really want to take Mom or Dad's place. They just want to pretend, and it's kind of exercise this part of their psyche that's going to be in love one day. When they get to be teenagers, though, wow, they are really in love. I mean, this is like our uh adult romance version of being in love. And, you know, their their emotional centers in their brain are coming online in such a powerful way that they are feeling this more strongly than they were will ever feel it in their lives again, okay?

Teenagers feel everything more intensely, more pleasure, more pain, more suffering, more joy than they will ever feel again because these emotional centers in the brain are just hopping with energy and with development, okay? Long before good judgment comes in. And so they are impelled to have these powerful emotional experiences. Later on, that gets a little bit muted because we start using our judgment and our thinking ability and combining that with our emotion and things kind of get a little more settled. But we hopefully will have deep empathy for our teenager who has fallen in love and take that very seriously, especially if there's been a breakup of some sort.

Because for a teenager who's working on their identity, losing a boyfriend or girlfriend uh or a best friend, you know, who whatever the intense relationship is, is tantamount to losing a big piece of their identity. So it's not just like, oh I'm sad, it's like, oh I'm devastated. I feel annihilated because I've been rejected by this person or I've lost this person. That is nothing to take lightly. They are in a state of grief and suffering. They're in real pain. And if we are there for them, just like we would want someone to be there for us. Just I mean, use yourself as your guide. What would you want someone to do if your beloved uh had walked out on you or something had happened to them, or maybe their relationship just, you know, petered out before they were ready.

How would you like someone to treat you? And I would, you know, bet that you want them to treat you as going through something monumental, uh that you would expect that they would not want you to get over it quickly. You would certainly hope that they wouldn't minimize it or say, "Oh, there'll be other people." Or just wait until you're 25, you'll find Mr. Right or Ms. Right, or, you know, um I mean, those are such invalidating experiences and will teach your child, "I can't go to my parents with the big things." So, when you take their relationships completely seriously, it is allowing them to fully experience this important part of life, being in love, being uh you know, feeling commitment toward another person, you're giving them a safe way to experience that within the support of your love and your empathy, okay? And that is

tremendously um growth promoting to your child because it gives them the experience, but it also gives them the safe relationship and environment to have that first experience in. You also talk in the book about sort of the opposite side of that in a way when you wrote, "Unless the child's destructive impulses are discouraged and they are taught to think about other people, emotional maturity doesn't grow." That's a pretty eye-opening idea that I have to sit with for a little while, and the way I read it, and correct me if this is wrong, is that a child's default state is destructive, and they won't move out of that state unless they're taught empathy. Is that accurate for how you meant it?

>> No. Um I don't mean that the child's basic state is is one of destructiveness. I mean that it seems to be a thing about humans that we can direct our energy uh in many different ways. And when we allow ourselves to indulge the energies of of anger and destructiveness, and uh doing whatever we want to whomever we want, we can actually get caught up in that. It can It can become a kind of a a cycle um if if we don't know any better or we're not guided away from that. Because when you feel anger and destructiveness, you are actually feeling a kind of power.

And that's intoxicating. I mean, the feeling of power is supposed to be there because the anger gears us up to meet a threat and potentially, you know, save our lives or protect ourselves or others. Um so it's a good thing, but if you allow your child to just overdevelop and overindulge this very human um temptation toward destructiveness, you're not teaching them how to get along in the world with other people. So, they need that Well, they need both the limits and the guidance on that one. That this is absolutely human. It's a temptation. We all feel it. We all want to, you know, say that mean thing or or, you know, do something that's kind of destructive or doesn't take other people into account because that's you know, that's just the way we can be at times,

but we don't do it because it hurts other people and it makes us feel bad about ourselves. And our job, you know, as people who care about other people is that we look at our feelings, we understand our feelings, and we find ways of working with them and working with other people that aren't destructive, but can actually lead toward solving the problem or making things a little bit better. So, young humans just don't have the cognitive and emotional complexity yet to take an angry feeling or destructive impulse and say, "Wait a minute. Um what's going to happen as a result of me indulging this? Maybe I better not do it." They can't do that yet. We have to do that for them. We have to say, "You know, if you keep bonking Billy over the head with your toy truck, he may not want to come over and play with you

anymore. Have you thought about that?" Um or I guess we'll have to put the toy truck away because, you know, toys are not for hitting. So, you you are teaching the child that we don't accept destructive mean behavior, but you're explaining to them why that is so that they can have a lifetime of relationships with other people and not just do whatever the heck they want because they had, you know, one of these angry passing impulses that we all have. But emotional maturity is learning to recognize those feelings, feel them, not repress them, not deny them or pretend that they're not there. Feel them. Get that knowledge that oh, this person really made me mad or I didn't like what they did.

But then to be able to bring in the thinking part of the brain. And this is what the parent does for the child for a long time. They bring in the thinking part of the brain that says, "Hmm, if I react in this way, I'm going to cause this kind of result. Is that what I want? Or if I react the this other way, then this person is going to feel this way. Is that what I want to cause right now?" Because children do not have that kind of self-observing ability. They don't have a sense of cause and effect. They haven't been on the planet long enough to develop that.

We are the ones who have to explain to them that of course we all feel like, you know, expressing our anger or doing destructive things at times. But here's why we don't do it and here's why I can't let you do it. That makes sense. Thank you for clarifying. I love this story in the new book about the time you were so exhausted as a parent that you sat on the floor crying and your 2-year-old son came up to you and dabbed your tears with toilet paper. What did you need to hear that day that somebody out there probably needs to hear today? Oh my goodness.

Uh the first thing that occurred to me is there'll be days like this. [laughter] That That was That was a day where I was, you know, running on fumes. Um could not get him to go down for his nap and I had been looking forward to this, you know, little tiny window of time to myself. And he kept popping out of his bed and and wanting to play and uh yeah, and finally I just slumped down on the floor and said, "I'm so tired." And he said, "I know what to do." And he ran and he got the toilet paper and he was dabbing my tears. Um so I think what I would want to have to have heard from someone at that point is of course you felt that way. Who doesn't feel that way? Parenting is exhausting.

And especially if you had been looking forward uh you know, like a like a good soldier waiting for furlough to a moment to yourself, to have him, you know, continue to want to interact and worse thought, maybe he's giving up his daily nap that would have been overwhelming to you. Of course, I would want someone to have had empathy for me because parenting can be so hard and it can take so much energy and so much patience and empathy. So, I would definitely have wanted that. I would also have wanted someone to say, "Wow, you are raising a really good kid. How old is he? 2 and 1/2? And he's comforting you? And he's doing it in a cheerful, competent-sounding way where he is proud of himself for knowing that we comfort people who are crying and he knows that you need, you know, a tissue. Um

good job." [laughter] You know, you may be you may be missing your time to yourself today or your own nap that you were looking forward to. But wow, you've done something right because he is concerned about you and he's trying to help. So, you know, parents just don't get enough feedback on how hard they're trying and how big the job is. I I once um I had a friend over. I she was actually an acquaintance. I didn't see her very often, but it was when my son was little and he he was a toddler at that point. And she talked about something. I I don't even remember what the topic was, but I was so hungry for validation and for someone to have empathy for me. I thought she was talking about me and I went for like a minute or two listening to her thinking, "This is so sweet that she understands what I'm going through." And then I realized she was talking about somebody else and but

I laughed at that because I thought, "Wow, you are so starved for, you know, more validation and more recognition of how hard this is. That's why you misunderstood her cuz you really needed to hear that." Yeah, on a related note, how do we make sure we stay a good enough parent in those moments where it feels like there's literally nothing left in the tank? Yes, and sometimes you have to do what's necessary to make sure that you don't lose control or you you um don't act in ways that are occurring because you're so tired and because you don't have enough energy to kind of inhibit your next action or your next um thing you're going to say to your child.

So, sometimes, you know, when it's really really difficult and really bad, the parent may have to take a time out themselves. In other words, if it's if it's a choice between you're going to lose control with your child or you're going to start screaming at them or you know, something worse, if you get yourself away from the situation, go go the bathroom quickly, step out into the garage, what whatever it takes to take a few deep breaths, to get yourself back in the saddle of your adult mind, because children, you know, they they can drag us down into our own basic emotional centers, our survival centers.

And when that happens, we may not be very good parents, because we start getting highly reactive. So, we may need to do whatever's necessary to give ourselves a break from the interaction, to kind of calm ourselves down for a moment with with some deep breaths, and be able to uh be calm enough to go back in and interact in a way that's not going to be damaging to the relationship with our child. I want to ask you about my most hated videos on the internet, which I was really happy to see you discuss more broadly in the book. And that's when parents {quote} {unquote} tease their children, for example, by giving them awful fake Christmas presents and filming their reactions.

In the comments, there's always people saying that those who have a problem with it are too soft, and it's just a joke. What would your response to them be? That they do not understand the mechanisms of psychological development. Um anyone who says that is saying that essentially they think children are as equipped as adults to tell reality from fantasy, and to protect themselves from emotional trauma. And that is simply not true. Children are extremely open. They have to be if they're going to learn all the stuff that they have to learn. They can't parse what's important and what isn't. They take everything in with a complete open heart, okay? They believe everything. They trust everything. And again, they have to because they don't they don't need to be suspicious of things or cynical about things. My goodness, if we had a child who opened every Christmas

present with you know, kind of self-control like I'm not going to you know, this might not be something great. I'm not going to get all excited about it. Wow, what have what have we done to teach the child that they have to be suspicious of joyful occasions like that? But all you have to do is imagine how you might feel as a child if on something important like Christmas or I've I've seen parents do this for like, you know, an outing or a birthday party or you know, something that the child is so excited about and they say, "No, you can't do that because you know, whatever." And then they watch the child fall apart.

For that child, that was trauma. They had an interruption in their sense of safety, trust, um really their sense of being, their sense of self just got walloped. And when the parent comes back in and laughs and says, "Oh, that is not true." They do not erase that. That went into the child's psyche. Okay? It just like um I guess, you know, there's some things that could happen to adults which would be similar. But with children they don't have the mental ability to kind of go back into that traumatic memory and take it apart and you know, sort of reassemble it into, oh, that was a joke or that wasn't they can't do that yet.

So, when a parent says, oh, you're making them too soft if we don't kind of kid them and fool them and trick them and you know, toughen them up that way, you know, all I have to say is you're making your child become uh potentially cynical or suspicious or mistrusting or unsure of their ability to read other people. Like, I don't know, maybe, you know, I thought mom or dad was sincere about this thing, but then it was all a big joke and what is that do to the child's sense of competence and certainty that they are doing a good job of reading other people. It has multiple impacts um on that child's experience of other people and their relationships. So, I know that parents think that, you know, kids get over stuff. That's because they look like they get over stuff. They're not like adults who, you know, walk around and talk about what's happened in the past

and process it verbally and, you know, want to um revisit things and talk Kids don't do that. They look like they're over it because they just sort of unhooked from it and filed it away somewhere. But everything affects them. And so, we have to be really careful about anything that involves big emotions for children because the big emotion really um sort of makes that experience sink in and sometimes in traumatic ways when there are intense feelings involved. It's just not It's not a a thing and it's not something that children are equipped to handle. As adult children of emotionally immature parents, many of us struggle with people-pleasing or fawning tendencies and experience deep discomfort when someone is mad at us.

How do we deal with those feelings when that person is our child? For example, when we tell them no more screens or that they can't have a motorized scooter, and they start throwing around the I hate yous or all my friends' parents let them or you're ruining my life. How do we deal with the guilt and anxiety that comes with wanting to make everyone happy? Yes, and for that person who had that experience with their parent, that is going to be an especially difficult situation. I mean, there's just no way around it. Um but, you know, like I said about the parents who had processed their childhood pain, if you know that about yourself, and your child comes back with a I hate you or you're the worst parent ever or I can't tell you anything or, you know, I'm just going to next time I won't I won't let you know and whatever whatever the threat is or the complaint is, if you um if you are

willing to examine how those kinds of things really make you feel and what they remind you of, you will still feel bad. Okay, nobody likes to have a loved one say things like that to them. But again, that's where knowing child development, knowing the limitations of a child's self-control, knowing how emotions take them over in ways that, you know, we kind of develop out of as we get older, if we know those things, we can take those responses with a grain of salt, you know, that they're angry that it's spoken in anger, and we can deal with it that way within ourselves. I love the line in the new book, "Just enjoy what you're good at and shoot for a passing grade on the things you're not.

Not everything that needs to be done needs to be done well." As we come to the end of this conversation, do you have anything to say about that in particular or anything else that you want parents to know? I think because parenting is such a deeply heartfelt and, you know, incredibly important part of our lives, we want to do the best that we possibly can in every area. Um, we don't want just a passing grade in some things. We we want to be uh getting A's in raising our children because, you know, it's it's crucial to our sense of well-being and you know, because we love our children and we want the very best for them.

However, we are human beings and I say earlier in the book, "I want to help you find a way of parenting that doesn't exhaust you." Because we all have limits and we all get exhausted at times uh by, you know, taking care of the emotional and psychological needs of these little people. And then there's just the, you know, the the plain physical work that's involved, the attention that is demanded of us all day long. Um, so we can't be our best all the time. And I think it's very important that we recognize that when we put additional pressures on ourselves to try to be perfect or to, you know, improve uh all the time, you know, the the last little bit of parenting that we're not very good at. We put that kind of pressure on ourselves, we are exhausting ourselves.

And when you're exhausted, you can't have the extra energy that's needed for some of these higher order functions like empathy, um, goodwill, uh, playfulness, curiosity, relaxation. I mean, all these things with your child that are so good for them and make you all so close to each other. Those go out the window because you're too tired. So, I just think it's good advice to reassure parents they don't have to do everything really well. Um, they can shoot for the passing grade, do things well enough, but not be a master of every aspect of parenting because, frankly, I think that's pretty close to impossible, given that we all have our strengths and weaknesses. In the book, I give the example of with my child, I I don't particularly enjoy setting limits and making rules and enforcing them. That's

not something that, uh, comes naturally to me. I'd much rather, [laughter] uh, talk and, uh, you know, work things out and be collaborative. But, you know, at times it was necessary to set limits and, uh, give strong guidance about things. So, I did it. I never felt like I did it really well, but I did it because I felt like that was the function of being a parent. So, we don't have to be great at it. We just have to recognize what is important for children. Like, they need they need protection. Um, they need nurturing. They need guidance and they need limits. And so, if you're trying to supply that to them, even if you're not doing the best job in the world, you're probably doing just fine.

And you get so many chances for do-overs with kids that I just wanted parents to focus on what it is that uh really needs to be done, even if it's not done well. And to really appreciate and and feel good about the things that they are really good at, because there's going to be some other parent out there with some other child that can't do what you do, okay? We don't have to be the only ones who are giving all the benefit to our child. They're going to be out in the world getting that from other people, too. So, our job is to try to give them everything that we can up to the point where it starts to deplete us. And when that happens, we have to really step back and look at what it is that we need to get ourselves into a state where we have energy to have a good relationship with our child, not just do the parenting thing, you know, in a perfect way, because

nobody's going to be able to do that.