In part 2 of the parenting series, Dr. Tim Riley tells us how to help our kids fail... and be really good at it... and he explains why this may be one of the most important indications of future success.
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In part 2 of the parenting series, Dr. Tim Riley tells us how to help our kids fail... and be really good at it... and he explains why this may be one of the most important indications of future success.
Stay up to date by following us on your favorite social networks.
Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
Have questions or comments? Email us at contact@kingofkings.org.
Thanks for listening!
Hello and welcome to another Beyond Sunday podcast. I'm Peter Baye. I'm here with my guest, awesome Dr Tim Riley, who has written a book first of broccoli, then the ice cream. If this is the first time you're hearing about this, stop right now. Go to part one of the broccoli series, because today we're into part two and I don't want you to miss out on the groundwork that's already been laid out for us. Dr Tim, welcome, thank you. And so you've written first of broccoli, then the ice cream. You've also written unstuck, and that came out pretty recently. Yeah, how to live an unstuck life.
Peter Baye:Okay.
Dr. Tim Reily:Subdue stress, unwind anxiety and quiet your busy brain.
Peter Baye:All right, so you can check out that book by anywhere where you can buy books Amazon. Are you going to get on?
Dr. Tim Reily:audible. Yeah, there's a plan to, but I've got some work to do, Yeah that'd be great.
Peter Baye:I'm a I love audible and listening as I go is really helpful, but these books are worth it, whether you're listening or reading in a hard copy, check them out. We are in part two of the broccoli series. This is a book that you wrote a while ago, first of broccoli, then the ice cream, but you're revising it, yep, and it's going. The new edition will come out later this year or maybe around the time you're here in this podcast, god willing.
Peter Baye:And so in the first, in the first part that you need to go back and listen to, if you haven't already. The first part, we talked all about the grown up job description like actually look like, be a grown up, and here's what that means, and we dove into that. Today. We're going to dive into part two And we're going to talk about successful failure. So let's get right into that. Successful failure That sounds like something that isn't real. Give us going, okay.
Dr. Tim Reily:So last time out, we talked a lot about the idea of teaching skills to kids, right? So we talked about the fundamental goal of parenting to be to get rid of your kids.
Peter Baye:Oh, i'm sorry So I'm gonna thunder. Okay To get to get your kids out of the house.
Dr. Tim Reily:Yeah, get rid of your kids. Get rid of your kids, yeah, yeah. And the way that you accomplish that is by preparing them for successful adult life.
Peter Baye:Yes.
Dr. Tim Reily:So there's a whole series of skills that goes along with that. I mean, there's a you know, you have to know how to tie your shoes, you have to know how to do math. Yeah, at some point learn how to drive a car and and use a computer and do your taxes and right what to do with a skin knee, all of those kinds of things.
Dr. Tim Reily:So those are important, but what's also important is that you help your kids develop an attitude of being willing to engage with the world, of being willing to try some things out And, if things don't work out well for them the first time, to be able to get back up and reengage with the world. And that's how people develop confidence not by necessarily succeeding in everything that they're doing, but by engaging the process of continuing to move forward. So that can only happen with experience. You can't talk your kids into having confidence, you can fake it, but when push comes to shove they won't. It won't really be there. They have to have experience and they have to have experience with the things not working out but then being able to and willing to take on a little risk and get back on the horse.
Peter Baye:You paint the picture of using the story of Ray Charles as a kid. Give that picture for us.
Dr. Tim Reily:Okay, so 2004,. I think it's a movie called Ray And it's about Ray Charles, a famous jazz musician who was born with his eyesight but went blind early in his childhood. I think by the time he was seven or eight years old And there was a scene in that movie when it's just Ray and his mother and they're in the cabin together really, you know modest home, and Ray has tripped over a chair and fallen And you know he's just starting to come to terms with his blindness, so he doesn't know how to engage the world as a blind person yet.
Dr. Tim Reily:He's on the floor, he's crying and it's mama, mama, mama, help me, mama, help me.
Dr. Tim Reily:And then the scene is his mom on the other side of the room And she's got her hand over the mouth and her mouth and she's crying because she doesn't want to see her kid in pain, but she doesn't go help him. And she doesn't go help him because she knows that helping him like you, helping your daughter out of the tree doesn't make him stronger. It makes him more dependent. And she knows she's not always going to be there to pick him up every time he falls, in every situation that he learns needs to learn how to navigate the world with the resources that he has. And so he lays there for a while and then he, you know, gets up and dries his eyes on his shirt sleeve and starts to explore the room using his touch and sound, and then, eventually, there's a point where he says I hear you, mama, you're right there, wow. And so he recognizes she's been there, she's been supportive, but she wasn't going to interfere in a way that would make him more dependent. That's a fabulous model for how to think about approaching parenting.
Peter Baye:And so really, in a modern day where helicopter parenting, bulldozing parenting has become kind of the norm, you like, rescue your kid, get in there, stand up for your kid, and some of those things aren't altogether bad. But are we really helping our kids if we're not allowing them to fail?
Dr. Tim Reily:No, I mean, the distinction that you're making is between rescuing them. well, I think this is the distinction you're making. I'll make it. It's the distinction between rescuing your kids from something that is truly dangerous or potentially harmful which of course you should do and just something that's uncomfortable or painful, in a way that's not going to have any lasting effect on them. That's, you know, there's a lot to be learned from pain. There's a lot to be learned from learning what not to do And, more importantly, from the idea of okay, now I'm going to pick up and I'm going to move myself forward from here, So go ahead.
Peter Baye:Yeah, here's a challenge. It's even from my childhood to now. I think there has been a shift, and I'm 37, so for sure there's been a shift. But I read articles about. I just read an article a couple of months ago about a guy who said that he was nutritionally abused as a child And I thought, oh, like his parents didn't give him enough healthy nutrition. No, his accusation was that his parents forced him to try to eat healthy foods And because of that he actually now has a diversion to them And he is blames his parents for his obesity in adulthood. Yeah, and there's a lot of this victimhood that I see that I think can make parents weary of like, ooh, should I allow them to be uncomfortable now, because I don't want to be the reason that they become obese as an adult, or that addicted or whatever, or anxious, whatever that may be down the road.
Dr. Tim Reily:Yeah. So I would contend that if you don't impose limits, if you don't make demands, that you end up with kids who are entitled and who end up blaming other people for whatever their situation is, whether it's obesity or lack of ability to contend with anything that's challenging to them. I suspect if you were able to dive into that person's story a little bit further, you'd find out there were a lot of other things beyond food, but that food became a focus of whatever difficulties there were between him and his parents. But what you're saying just in that statement is well, here's somebody who's blaming other people and saying I'm not responsible for my own condition, i'm not responsible for correcting my own condition, i'm viewing the situation that I'm in as being a failed situation and I have not developed the wherewithal to engage with that, accept that for what it is for myself and move forward. So that's been an unsuccessful failure.
Peter Baye:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So in your book you talk about DW Winnecott, who speaks or writes or teaches. I don't know who this DW is.
Dr. Tim Reily:He's a British, a British pediatrician, and So not like your heart-brand friend. Psychological analyst in Arthur.
Peter Baye:Okay, so he talks about good enough parenting, yeah.
Dr. Tim Reily:What's that? So Winnecott was around back in like the 50s, i think started talking right about being a good enough parent, and the basic idea is that when your children are infants as we talked about during the last podcast human beings develop slowly. We're helpless for a very long time.
Peter Baye:Right.
Dr. Tim Reily:And so, particularly early on, whatever you need to set aside in your own life to care for your infant, you do that. If it means you don't sleep for a couple of days, then you don't sleep for a couple of days If it means you shut down the family activities for a while. You do that, i remember those days.
Dr. Tim Reily:Pretty quickly you start to back away from that idea. Once your child begins to develop physical capabilities, for example, then you don't just hand them everything. You put the rattle a little bit out of their reach So they have to work to be able to get to it And you're helping them stimulate developmental skills. You wait a couple of minutes before you go in to rescue them when they're crying, when they wake up from their nap, so they learn that they can be okay with being upset. Being upset is not a problem. Crying is not a problem. Crying is a healthy activity in infants. So you start to very gradually challenge them to do more than they would have to do otherwise, and that's how they begin to acquire those skills And it's through developing those skills that they develop confidence and a sense of competence.
Peter Baye:So if you're not willing to allow your child to fail, if you jump in every time they cry, you're not helping them to succeed.
Dr. Tim Reily:Right, You're not. you're not preparing them to succeed.
Peter Baye:Now what if I am a parent who the sound of kids crying or whining is so aggravating that I just want it to stop? What should I do? Get over it? Wow, wow, harsh.
Dr. Tim Reily:All right. So you know, if you have children who are inclined to cry and I want to talk about this subject I always think back to this. I actually have a copy of an old video from America's Funniest Videos or something like that Class are we a Bergeron or Sagitt?
Peter Baye:Yeah, I couldn't tell you I probably Sagitt Yeah sure Sagitt. RIP Sagitt, i love you.
Dr. Tim Reily:So, and it's a picture of a maybe a 12, 15 month old kid toddling into the frame and falls down on the floor and he's crying, throwing a tantrum, sticking the floor, kicking his legs and you know whoever's running the camera presumably a parent walks into another room and the kid stops crying And then he comes back into frame where he can see the parent with the camera again, throws himself down on the floor again and starts crying, and they do that two or three more times And in each case the kid stops crying and follows the parent to where they can see him again. Well, the function of that behavior, the reason for that behavior, is not because he's injured or having some, you know, terrible experience. He's wanted to generate some sympathy and some attention from the parent, right? So the parent who gives in in that circumstance is teaching their kid to be dependent, right? They're teaching the kid that the way that you resolve problems is by getting someone else to resolve the problem for you instead of relying on your own resources. We talked last time about your daughter being up in the tree And you had the opportunity there to teach her a really terrible lesson by rescuing her, helping her get down from the tree, instead of saying now you've been up there before, you know how to do this, do it yourself. And so she was, you know, not only reinforced for the idea of being independent, but got some praise from you for being successful at engaging in behavior. Right, so you know.
Dr. Tim Reily:Later on we're going to talk about the distinction between jumping ahead and jumping in. Okay, briefly, successful parents jump ahead. They look forward to seeing what is the likely outcome of this behavior And if it's going to be uncomfortable, painful even, but not damaging to my kid, i'm out. Yeah, i'm going to watch it and make sure they're safe, but I'm going to let them experience the discomfort. The jumping in parent or the kind of helicopter bulldozer parent you've been talking about jumps in to rescue the kid from every circumstance, and essentially, they're giving the message to the kid that I don't trust you to deal with your own problems. I don't trust that you have the skills necessary to do this. So, basically, it's truly disrespectful to do things for kids that they are capable of doing for themselves, and the only way that you know what they're capable of doing is by giving them a chance to do it.
Peter Baye:Yeah, disrespectful to the kid and to like society. Yep, i got to do kids ministry for years And this is something that me and my wife struggled with ourselves. But a lot of parents struggle with is if a kid has separation anxiety and a kid cries when we leave them in their Sunday school room, and for some parents it's just so hard to rip the bandaid and walk away because they know their kid's going to cry. The reality is the average amount of time that kid cries is probably about 30 seconds.
Dr. Tim Reily:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so the I'm sorry go ahead.
Peter Baye:Well then, then they move on to whatever else, but if the parent stays there, then that kid never. They act anxiously entire time. Exactly, and that makes it harder for the other kids in the room, it makes it harder for the teachers, and so it's. It's not just helping the child, but it's making them a better citizen.
Dr. Tim Reily:Yeah, so you think about what's the who's feelings. is the parent actually trying to protect in that situation?
Dr. Tim Reily:Their own their own Right, and so the notion and part of what we talked about last time was that you are willing to let a kid experience discomfort, that you're taking a longer view Understanding this is how they get better at something I mean. The easy example here is you know, are you never going to allow your child to have medical treatment or get a shot at the pediatricians office? Right, why would you do that if you know it hurts them? Because you recognize that there's a longer term benefit here. It's exactly the same thing. Giving your kids a chance to engage with discomfort, work their way through it, acquire skills, sets them up for longer term success, but also the people around them And exactly as you say you know better society, happier families, happier kid if they're competent, if they have some confidence about being able to take on the world.
Peter Baye:Yeah, overcome an obstacle. Did you just admit that you are pro vaccination? Is there going to be a big debate here? Controversy on the parenting podcast, Part two. it might get more clicks.
Dr. Tim Reily:Yeah, I'm fully vaccinated.
Peter Baye:Oh, wow, yeah, fully, fully vaccinated. So yeah, but.
Dr. Tim Reily:I'm kind of in an at risk category, So that's another.
Peter Baye:That's another story, Yeah there you go, we are. It's funny that you say that My kids some of them struggle with different medical things, but that is one thing, that we're glad that they all do. Vaccinations well, yep, but it's hilarious. The one that we saw most recently, because we had a couple of our kids went through pink eye. Oh yeah, giving kids eye drops is ridiculously dramatic. It's just they act like I should have taken a video, but they act like they are going to die, like we're putting acid in their eyeballs Yeah.
Dr. Tim Reily:So I mean the kids will do more of whatever works. Yeah, right. So having these sort of big emotional reactions gets people to respond to them, gets people to stay with them the whole time they're in Sunday school. Don't do it more. Right, it works right, and so the basic message is that you don't get better at doing something by not doing it.
Peter Baye:Yeah.
Dr. Tim Reily:You don't get better at dealing with frustration by never being frustrated.
Peter Baye:Yes.
Dr. Tim Reily:And dealing with frustration is a big part of everybody. Well, my life anyway, I don't know about your frustration free life but this is a skill we want them to have, Right, If we want them to have it, then we want them to get practice with it, Even if it means we're arranging circumstances that we know they're going to find frustrating. If we're going back to the good enough parent idea, right, you picture the kid who's just learning to crawl a little bit Yes, Just starting to scoot something And you know they reach for their rattle and you move it six inches further away. And they reach for it again and you move it six inches further away Sabotage.
Dr. Tim Reily:And they learn how to translate that frustration into action, And then at some point you give it to them, So they're rewarded for that effort.
Peter Baye:They run and then you run faster. So, by the way side note, if you are a parent who's like Mr B, i am that parent. I've been the one struggling with my kid. Maybe you are, but we're all going to learn together And I was that parent too. I can vividly picture when Jada was three years old, dropping her off, not at Sunday school but at daycare, and just her screaming and clutching onto my leg and just feeling helpless. What do I do? And looking back on it now I know I stayed too long, yep, and tried to distract her and then run off or whatever it was, But that wasn't helpful for anyone in that position. So I don't think that you're listening to this, but Jada's teacher is from way back then. I am sorry, i apologize. So if you are feeling guilty, maybe you should, but we're not in this alone, we're in this together. So good enough for now. Parenting Parents can model and encourage, but the child has to do it for themselves And some problems have no solutions. You talk about run like a three-legged dog.
Dr. Tim Reily:That cracked me. Tell us about that As one of my favorite phrases. Clinically, i talk to people about this all the time who expect like some perfect outcome or that every problem will be resolved or whatever. But at some point you just say, yeah, it's not. You know, this is not fixable.
Dr. Tim Reily:And so the idea is to help your kids in those situations learn how to make the best of it, learn how to run like a three-legged dog. And so how does a three-legged dog run as well as it can? Right, it doesn't sit around all day worrying about oh, i've only got the three legs, i'm you know, i might as well just stay in. I mean, if there's a squirrel, the chase is on And maybe it doesn't catch as many squirrels as it's four-legged friends, but it does some. So the idea of having kids accept sometimes it doesn't work out, but that doesn't mean I stop operating or I stop trying to achieve the things that I want to achieve. They're much more likely to persist in those situations if they've had previous experiences with failing at something. Yeah, right, and then getting up and reconsidering what they're doing and trying some different tack.
Dr. Tim Reily:I mean, the two examples I use in the book are if people were quick to succumb to failure. If Thomas Edison were quick to succumb to failure, we'd be having this discussion by candlelight instead of in this nicely lit studio. Beautiful, if the Apollo 13 astronauts were just said well, that's it Right. If they were done, the system failed. They'd still be floating around in space somewhere. The idea is for us to convey that failure is not an endpoint. It's something that occurs on the way to success. Failure is a new starting point. It's a time to adjust what you're doing and to think about it reasonably and rationally, to pull in whatever resources you have and then go forward And say is there a path forward? I'm going to do that. If there's no path forward, then I'm going to accept it for what it is and turn my energy in a different direction.
Peter Baye:That's so good. When I was a teacher back in the day, i tell what this brilliant guy named Marty Sennichal. Marty, what's up? Listen to this podcast. Someone told Marty to listen to this And kids would constantly say when am I going to use this, when am I ever going to use this in my life? And, shocker, it was when they were struggling with something. Yep And Marty, the phrase he gave me, or the helpful nugget was yeah, you may never use this chemistry step again, like you might not when you get a job as a teacher or whatever it is down the road.
Dr. Tim Reily:But the point of school is Children's ministry, for example, yeah, or kid's ministry.
Peter Baye:But the point of school is not that you use every single thing you learned. You're learning how to learn. You're learning that an obstacle can be overcomeable, So that next time you see that obstacle, you know oh, I've done this before. I figured out. And if I didn't figure out, I found a new way to do it.
Dr. Tim Reily:So that's what I'm hearing here Yeah and that's partly what we talked about last time was the idea of what we're hoping to accomplish through this series of podcasts is not up to us to tell parents what to teach. It's how to teach, and so if you understand that process, you learn, help your kids learn how to learn. Then you've really accomplished something. The specifics kind of don't matter in a particular way. Like you know, when I'm talking to parents about assigning chores for their kids, you know I say I don't really care what the chores are exactly. You know most kids will be able to figure out how to operate a vacuum cleaner in their life. You know you flip the switch, you kind of push it back and forth. That works. So the idea is learning bigger skills of how to manage responsibility, how to manage frustration, how to manage you know life in a more general sense, whatever direction you end up being pointed in, I love that you talked about managing frustration.
Peter Baye:This has been a challenge for me and my wife, as we've been parenting is how to help our kids practice and learn self-regulation. Yep, and so let's dive into that. In your book you call it How to Raise a Regular Kid, but managing frustration, more confidence and persistence, and practice with self-regulation.
Dr. Tim Reily:Self-regulation. so when we talk about self-regulation, what we're talking about is the ability for the child to calm themselves down right to, if not control, their emotions, manage their emotions, and how to operate successfully from you know, in a biological way, like the best part of their brain. The best part of your brain, the most advanced part of your brain, is called your prefrontal cortex. It's the stuff right above your eyes, in the front, And if you are over-activated emotionally, that part of your brain shuts down.
Dr. Tim Reily:And so you can think about times when, like you know, you were frightened or emotional or angry or whatever, and you're like you do something stupid And I was like what was I thinking? And the answer is you weren't thinking, because you were operating under a different list, developed more primitive part of your brain, emotionally, And it's a rare occasion when a decision that you make out of emotion is a good one almost never. Which is not to say that emotions aren't useful they are but if you're gonna rely purely on emotions, which, by and large, you can't control, then you might as well base your life on what the weather is, you know, and that I'm gonna live according to that, or where the tides are. Astrology.
Peter Baye:Well, this is all good, but how do I do this? How do I shift from making decisions emotionally to not? How do I self-regulate myself so that I can help my kids do that?
Dr. Tim Reily:So well, i don't know how you you got him.
Dr. Tim Reily:You could probably maybe you wanna make an appointment and we could talk about that. Part of what we were talking about last time and that's gonna be kind of a continuing theme here is the idea of how you present yourself as an adult, and so the part of how you present yourself as an adult is that you demonstrate. Look, we make decisions by thinking about it, talking about it, praying about it, not because it feels good or it feels bad. We don't avoid things that feel bad. We try to decide. You know where do our values lie, what's important to us, and we're gonna react based on that.
Dr. Tim Reily:If your child never has the opportunity to experience frustration, if you aren't willing to allow them to be upset and find ways to regain their own composure, then they're not gonna do that. If your reaction to them being upset is to jump in and try to rescue them, then what you're teaching them to do is be dependent, and you're setting them up for, probably, dependency and future relationships. So, instead of problem solving, i'm gonna look for somebody else who can solve the problem for me, because that's the model I've experienced. That's what I've grown up with.
Peter Baye:So how much discomfort should I allow my child to have? In your book you talk about this like thumb and pointer finger, a very scientific measurement by the way.
Dr. Tim Reily:Thank you for this groundbreaking stuff.
Peter Baye:But any of you at home, unless you're driving, don't stare at your thumb and finger. But you can picture this your thumb and your pointer finger and you wanna put like six inches of space in between it and you kinda talk about like the discomfort level, what's healthy, what's not.
Dr. Tim Reily:Right. So if you're holding your fingers up in that way, like your thumb and your first, finger up.
Peter Baye:You've got way less than six inches.
Dr. Tim Reily:You're like a three and a half. Yeah, think about the space below the thumb as the time when kids are not frustrated at all. Everything's going exactly the way they want it to go, life is good, and they are learning exactly nothing about how to manage frustration.
Peter Baye:More fruit loops and Netflix.
Dr. Tim Reily:Yeah, life's good. Nobody's demanding anything of me, i'm not pushed outside of my comfort zone, and they're learning nothing about how to manage frustration. Think of the space above the finger.
Peter Baye:The thumb or the pointer.
Dr. Tim Reily:Above the finger.
Peter Baye:Okay, the thumb's not a finger. The forefinger right.
Dr. Tim Reily:Geez. So this is like I'm overwhelmed by frustration, got it? I've lost the ability to think clearly, which is a normal biological function. I'm reacting out of emotion, i'm reacting out of impulse, and they are learning exactly nothing, yeah, about how to manage frustration. That's the time when you're yelling at them to calm down, whatever, whatever. They're not and they're not learning anything.
Dr. Tim Reily:So our goal is to keep them in that space between the thumb and forefinger, if you can picture this, but bumping up against the upper limit. So they're always challenged with having to deal with a little bit more than they were before. So it's the emotional equivalent of moving the rattle a little further away from them. I'm gonna challenge you to do this thing that you don't think you can do, or that you're telling me you can't do, because I believe you can, even if I'm not entirely sure. I'm gonna give you a chance to stretch yourself and try to do a little bit more. And that's how they learn how to tolerate more frustration over time, how they are able to have more margin or tolerance in their life for emotionally challenging circumstances.
Peter Baye:Does this change for different kids and different I mean different people have a different. They have tolerance for pain and discomfort. I have one child who they wanted to learn how to blow up a balloon. They disappeared into the room for 30 minutes until they figured out how to blow up a balloon. And then I have another child who doesn't nod at other's shoes yet and will practice for approximately 10 seconds before they give up. So there's different like tolerance levels for discomfort and those kids. Does that change where I want them to be or how do I think about that?
Dr. Tim Reily:You can think of that tolerance for stress as being like other things in life that are what we would call normally distributed, meaning some people have a lot of it, some people have a little, some people have big feet, some people have small feet, some people are tall, some people are short. Those are attributes. Some people have high tolerance for stress and they're able to engage with it successfully and keep moving ahead as if there's no problem. The kid who's back in the bedroom trying for 30 minutes and finally figuring out how to blow up a balloon, not being overwhelmed by the frustration of not getting it right the first time. Other people you can take that space between the forefinger and thumb and shriek it down to a quarter of an inch. They have very little tolerance for stress. They react in big ways. They react emotionally And in some cases people I work with in my clinic have what I refer to as a stress allergy.
Dr. Tim Reily:If I walk into the same situation as they, i'm fine, i'm comfortable. they're freaked out by the unpredictability or the discomfort of the situation. The temptation sometimes for parents is to say well, that's a kid I'm gonna cut a lot more slack for, because it's a struggle for them. they're upset by them, so I'm gonna help them a lot more. In fact, those are kids who need more practice with frustration, but at a lower level, so you're not throwing them. go in your bedroom with a balloon and don't come out until it's blown up. It's okay. this is hard for you. take a break, pause, take a breath and we're gonna get back to it.
Dr. Tim Reily:And then you get them one successful step instead of the whole thing.
Peter Baye:Is the goal to expand what they're able to go through, expand the amount of stress, or is the goal to more so just continue to raise that bar, knowing that they might be a person who just gets stressed out more easily What I mean?
Dr. Tim Reily:No, you want them to learn to tolerate. That's a trainable skill. Learning to tolerate stress is trainable. So what you're trying to teach them is you know, get yourself settled down and then we'll work on the next thing. If they learn how to self-regulate, then they've got a lot better chance of engaging with the world successfully. So it might be, for example, that a kid comes to you whining and complaining about something and your response is okay, tell you what, get yourself settled down, and then we can talk about it. Right now I can't understand you Or I can't deal with you when you're this wound up. Yeah, and most kids are able to learn how to do that, and it's better in general, if you don't interfere with that process, that you let them come to their own conclusions about how to do it, because they're more likely to embrace those approaches if they've come up with it on their own. But if they can't, then you work on helping them learn how to calm down. But calming down always comes before going back to working on the problem.
Peter Baye:Oh, wow, that's a huge takeaway. Calming down comes before moving on fixing the problem. Got it? So you know, what's interesting is this thumb and forefinger thing. This works similarly for adults, sure, i mean, i've seen this with young employees, where it's like they don't want the challenge yet And so they'd rather have tasks that are below the thumb, but then they never grow And they never get better And it never bumps up to that pointer finger. And for me individually, i might get in the season where I'm like I'm done And I just wanna go home and watch Netflix once the kids are asleep.
Dr. Tim Reily:You talk a lot about Netflix.
Peter Baye:Yeah, netflix is great. Guys. If you haven't heard of Netflix, where are you? What's going on? Sorry, sorry, no, but whatever your streaming service is like, if I get myself in one of those grooves where I'm never challenging myself with another hobby, or I'm not exercising, or I'm not challenging myself to eat, well, i'm just living underneath that thumb and I'm getting myself nowhere, right. In fact, i'm probably lowering my whole scale.
Dr. Tim Reily:It's a clinically. When I have people come in who suffer from anxiety or things where they feel often overwhelmed. Yeah, one of the first things that I do is talk to them about I'm gonna help you learn to have the nervous system of a biathlete right. You know what biathlon is.
Peter Baye:Two biathlon.
Dr. Tim Reily:they're doing two things, yes the single dumbest sporting event in the entire history of sports. What is it? Biathlon is a winter Olympics sport.
Peter Baye:Oh, is that where they ski and shoot?
Dr. Tim Reily:Yes, cross country skiing and target shooting. Such a weird what? yeah, what is that? Yeah, i, apparently it comes out of like World War II history and Alpine troops or something.
Peter Baye:It's like why don't we have Olympic events where they like swim and make a pizza? Yeah, Like what just happened with that.
Dr. Tim Reily:So maybe think about what's going on, though.
Dr. Tim Reily:I mean, they're doing this fully aerobic, all out activity of cross country skiing, so their heart's pounding, they're very highly activated, you know, and which is basically what happens to you physically when you're frustrated is the same thing.
Dr. Tim Reily:And then they stop, put down their ski poles, unsling their rifle and focus their attention on a target, and they have to hit it five times before they jump back on the ski. You gotta slow down, calm down, focus. Those people are very good at managing their the emotional state, their reactive state, right, and so what we want is people who can continue to function, whether they're overly wound up or not, whether they're calm or not. But the more we can teach them how to regain their composure, the more likely they are to deal with things successfully in their life, and it's not just individual challenges that they might take on. People who don't regulate themselves well don't sleep well, they don't pay attention as well, they just they don't accomplish as many things because they're too often in that part of their brain where they're being reactive instead of responding to what's going on around them.
Peter Baye:So we are in a current spot, a current season of time, where the statistics are not great for youth with anxiety, yep, and for youth who are struggling to self-regulate. Yeah, so I do want to get into that a bit, but my wonder is this because in part one of the broccoli series we talked about being an adult, you're part of the grown-ups club, you are the one who's going to set the consistency practices and you're the authority over this for your kids, and so the amount of anxiousness is that a result of parenting? Are we creating this Cause? we want to blame social media, we want to blame schools, we want to blame all this, but how much of that should we, as parents, really try to grab onto or endure Like? is it on us?
Dr. Tim Reily:Well, think of it honest. You're willing to at least entertain the possibility that it's partly on you. But all those other influences that you talked about are true. I mean, social media is a major problem. I don't have much good at all to say about social media. Approach to education in a lot of environments is not very good, yeah.
Peter Baye:By the way, you can find this podcast on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I'm kidding, I don't know if you can but keep going.
Dr. Tim Reily:But it's also true that, as I was suggesting, that people that have the kind of stress allergy some people are born more reactive to stress. They are predisposed to be anxious about things. But people who were born without that stress allergy and experienced some kind of traumatic things in their lives will also be reactive in that way And the trauma doesn't have to be like some major, terrible thing that happens to them. If they live in an environment that's unpredictable, inconsistent, then they feel off balance, They wonder about things. I mean, the main thing that drives anxiety is uncertainty about the future. If your parents are behaving in ways that are unpredictable, uncertain, then that's gonna promote anxiety in kids And those kids are more likely to act out because they will use their behavior to try to find some stability or some to try to create some predictability from their environment, from their parents Well, and I believe you once told me that parents are reflection, or kids are reflection of their parents' stress their anxiety as well.
Peter Baye:So if a parent is acting more stress and more anxious than the kids see, that's how I'm supposed to act.
Dr. Tim Reily:Exactly And this goes back to that idea that we talked about last time of how do you present yourself to your kids, right, even if you're feeling a little nervous, anxious about your finances, or I think the way I talk about it in the book is your uncle Eddie's latest legal problems or whatever, that's not information that needs to be shared with your kids, right? There seems to be this idea that kids have to know everything that's going on. They're not equipped to do that. They don't have the cognitive skills, they don't have the emotional skills, and so it's incumbent on parents to keep adult information among adults, deal with it that way and give your kids the impression that nope, i've got this, we're good, we're okay, it's gonna be fine, i'm in charge and I know what to do.
Peter Baye:Well, and we're maybe not able to always do that. So the other part of that is, if there is something stressful for our kids to be able to see us in a stressful situation, take some deep breaths, pause and then approach it in a less stressed, anxious way. that teaches a ton.
Dr. Tim Reily:Yeah, yeah, and to be, you know, so them seeing that, okay, this is frustrating. This is challenging for me. What I don't want to do is just react out of emotion. Let's slow this down a little bit. Let's think about what matters to us here. What are our values? What's important to us in this particular situation? And then, especially for them to see you bounce back from a challenging situation and re-engage, right? So, essentially, this didn't work out the way we wanted it to. This is a failure, right, and? but we're not going to take it as the end of the line We're going to.
Dr. Tim Reily:I mean, it's one of the reasons that I like sports for kids. Not sports where, like, everybody gets a medal all the time, but sports where you know what we lost, yes, but it's okay. There's another game, and so my reaction to losing is I'm going to spend a little more time in the batting cage, i'm going to dribble my soccer ball a little bit more, i'm going to do those things to make myself better. If they're never allowed to experience that, if it's always oh, it's fine, everything is great, it doesn't matter that you lost. That's not reality, that's not the way the world works Well this has been awesome.
Peter Baye:So if we allow our kids to figure out how to self-regulate on their own, then come back and help accomplish, figure out that challenge. They're going to come a long way. Also, they're going to learn how to keep their composure longer, bounce back quicker, act on what they think and less on how they feel. You talking your book about how a child is dependent on a parent for emotional management, then they're never going to learn it on their own, and so we as parents need to help, not be overly dependent on us, not fix their problems for them so that when they get to college and they're away from us, they're able to.
Peter Baye:No, i've done this before. I can figure this out again. I'm not a failure because I failed once, and so, parents, that goes true for you as well, and remember your identity is not in your failures. Your identity is in Christ. You are a claimed child of God and forgiven and redeemed by Christ, and have that grace on yourself, as you also have it on your children. This has been an awesome part two of the broccoli series. I look forward to learning more with you, dr Tim.
Dr. Tim Reily:One last anecdote, if I may. So every fall in my practice for the last 20 years I can count on somewhere between two and five new patients who are college freshmen And they have a very similar story. It is, you know, my practice is in Lincoln, so I went to Southwest High School. I got a 4.3 GPA based on taking all of these AP classes. All of this And because I was such an exceptional student, because I really didn't have to work that hard to be a student my parents were like you don't have to take care of any other responsibilities, just be a student, just do that.
Dr. Tim Reily:Things came easily for me. And then I got to college And the professors are not as accommodating as my teachers were in high school. The subjects are harder for me. I don't get it the first time I look at it. I have to study. I don't know how to do that.
Dr. Tim Reily:And I get these patients every year who have dropped out of college or on the verge of dropping out of college, because they're confronted with a challenge, they're confronted with the potential for failure for the first time in their life And they have no idea how to do it And very often it's a one to two year proposition to get those people back to being in college again in a way where they're able to contend with it. So their lack of experience with failure has kept them from being successful at a higher level. They have confidence going in, but their confidence is false. It's based on a continuous pattern of success with no challenge, and they don't know what to do with it when they have to confront it for the first time. We can always get them back, but it's a process.
Peter Baye:So even a successful looking kid in grade school and high school, if they have not been forced to fail and recover on their own, regardless of how successful they look in their GPA and whatever. that's not always the appropriate measure for someone who's gonna be successful going on, Exactly so.
Dr. Tim Reily:Yeah, and I often will talk with parents about those kids who are wildly successful in a lot of things, find something that they're not good at and give them a chance to do that. So to me it's an opportunity to fail, not being forced to fail. it's being given the opportunity to fail and grow from that and move yourself forward.
Peter Baye:I remember when one of my kids was young, they hated wearing jeans, and so I was talking with someone wiser than me and they said I said so we just pretty much moved on to not jeans. And they said no, on a weekend, like not so that it messes with their school day, make them wear jeans for the morning. Yep, and I was like I don't wanna deal with that. And they're like no, this is gonna be better for your child, make them wear jeans. And that was a small example of something. But that's the same for us as parents and us as adults, is continue to force ourselves to do things that are uncomfortable so that we can grow, that we're not the victim and that we can overcome, and our kids and grandkids seeing us do that. That's gonna be powerful too. Totally agree. All right, y'all. Thank you for tuning in. We look forward to learning more with the Broccoli series. So go forth and let's parent well together. Thank you, dr Tim. My pleasure Qu vid.