Have a New Kid by Friday with Dr. Kevin Leman

It’s time for another Ask Dr. Leman: “Will I hurt my child if I let them cry without immediate comfort?” Listen in to find out Dr. Leman’s response on today’s episode of Have a New Kid by Friday Podcast.   **Special Offer– Sep 1 – 30: Have a New Sex Life by Friday ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**   **Special Offer– Oct 1 – 31: The Birth Order Book ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**     Show Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Produced by Unmutable Transcript Andrea: My little baby girl is crying and crying, and I’ve been told I should comfort her right away, and I’ve been told it’s okay to let her cry it out. Which one should I do? Let’s ask Dr. Leman today. Doug: Hi, I’m Doug Terpening. Andrea: And I’m Andrea. Doug: And we are so glad that you were with us today. Welcome, if this happens to be your first time, love to let you know that this is for your education and entertainment purposes, only. If the subject matter raises any concerns for you or your child, please go seek a local professional for help. Well, I am so appreciative of this question today. It’s an audio question that you can leave at birthorderguy.com/ and put just about any number. This episode is 333 if you want to. And at the bottom, those little microphone and you can leave your audio questions. So let’s jump into it today and hear what we are asking Dr. Leman. Speaker 3: Hi, Dr. Leman. I’m a first time mom of a two-year-old son. So the other day I came across a book and it was speaking on the brain wiring of newborns, how depending on how quickly a mother responds to her baby’s cries and needs, will wire their brain to let the baby know if they are worthy of love and valuable, and if they have a secure foundation. And of course, meaning if the mom doesn’t respond, then that kid is not valuable and it can affect their relationships early in life. So of course, after reading that, I bawled my eyes out because I was raised on the cry it out method. And I think also being a first-time mom, you kind of think, “Is this newborn manipulating me?” Which I know it sounds funny now, but anyways. I just wanted to see what you thought about that, because I’m sure there’s a healthy balance, but also want to know if you believe that, and if you do, how do you also take today and make sure that kid does feel secure? Again, I don’t see any signs of my son feeling insecure. I have changed a lot of my ways since becoming a new mom, but at the same time, I don’t want his brain to be wired this way. So what is your advice and take on all of this? I appreciate it. Dr. Leman: Well, let’s start with a disclosure. I never enjoyed physiology, so not claiming to be an expert on how your baby’s brain is wired, et cetera. But when you talk about responding right away to a child’s cries, to me, it’s situational. If it’s bedtime, for example, or nap time, and you have fed your baby, nursed your baby, changed their pamper, tucked them in, and laid them down and they cry, I would let them cry. Okay. So I’m sort of where you were. You said your growing up, that was sort of your attitude into motherhood, and that would be mine. So in situations where you’re laying a kid down for a nap or night-night if the child cries, I wouldn’t go in there. Now, all you mommies that have little infants have monitors, where you can see what’s going on. A child can roll over and get their arm stuck, or you name it, that’s why you have monitors. So obviously, the safety and wellbeing of your child is always a number one. But crying with a child, can be very purposeful behavior on an infant’s part. They learn that they cry this nice warm body comes and picks them me up and pats my back and rocks me. And if you want kids to go to bed at night and stay asleep, you don’t go in every time a kid whimpers and try to comfort them. What gives kids security is routine. And since you’re a first-time mom and your child’s two already, you’ve developed a sense of rhythm with that child. It’s the infant-mommy dance, so to speak. And you get to know your kid and you get to know the signs of when it’s time to lay your child down for a nap. And you get to find out quickly, does your child like a little music? Does that help them go to sleep? Do they have one of those little windup things that go above their head that plays a very soft little melody as they fall off to sleep? So my basic response to you is with all deference to a professional who’s written a book about how the brain is wired, so be it. Take that person’s information and do whatever you want with it. I’m not here to sit in judgment of that. But I can tell you that behaviorally, if you respond to every cry a child makes, you’ll end up with a cry baby. You’ll end up with a baby who’s crying all the time. So again, in general, I’m of the school of thought, let them cry it out. You’ve heard me on this podcast, many times, when kids are beside themselves and you put them in a room, you’ve heard me say, well, a kid will kick a door, scream, yell, they’ll do everything. What do you go in there and try to calm them down? No, you let them meltdown, and 15 minutes, 20 minutes, sometimes a half hour later, the kid will fall asleep on the floor. Not the end of the world. Hopefully, you have a fairly clean floor. But in general, that’s my take on crying. If the baby is in their playpen and the baby’s a year old or 13 months old and the baby all of a sudden cries, would I go in and check in the next room? Yes, I would. I’d check, see what’s wrong. Maybe they got caught in the net or twisted or something happened. So again, use your judgment. I don’t think this is rocket science, this kind of thing. I think my message to parents is, have a routine, get to know your child’s routine, and that child really sort of dictates the routine. If they start crying at every moment you rush in, all of a sudden, there’s no routine, it’s helter skelter. And the kid just becomes conditioned that, “If I scream, that nice warm body will come pick me up and rock me.” So be careful on it, that’s what I’m saying. Andrea: So you’re saying that if we give them a routine and we kind of follow what their routine is, but we let them cry a little bit, then eventually, they’re going to kind of fall into that and they’ll cry less. Dr. Leman: Right. And they’ll create their own routine. What I’m saying is, you sort of dovetail yours to theirs. Every child has a little different rhythm. Some kids will show signs. Some kids will rub their eyes. You’ve seen an infant rub their eyes, a toddler rub their eyes. And that sometimes is a clue that, “Okay, it’s nap time.” Where we get in trouble as parents, is when we break out of that routine. “I’m just going to run down to Starbucks and meet my girlfriend. Yeah, I know it’s nap time, but she just called and ooh, a Starbucks sounds real good right now.” And so you go, and from the time you leave your house till you get down to Starbucks, to the time you get back, it’s an hour and a half. Now you got the kid an hour and a half off schedule. Are you going to pay for that? In all probability, you will. So schedules are not to be militaristic to the second, to the minute, but keep in mind that your kid does have a very natural cycle that you want to plug yourself into. Andrea: So what about bonding in other ways? Dr. Leman: Oh yeah. Andrea: Nursing or you’re reading a book and you’re playing with the blocks. Are those the times that that child feels cared for? If I’m not going and picking them up when they’re crying, where does this sense that they’re worthy of my affection come from? Dr. Leman: I hope I’m not misinterpreted in this, but I don’t think your responding to a kid’s cry has anything to do with bonding. The bonding is, when you’re holding that child, when you’re reading this story to them, when you’re playing with them, when dad is throwing your infant three feet in the air, and you’re hoping he catches them, that’s all part of bonding. The snuggle time together, tucking them in, reading them a story, all the little tactual stimulation that you give kids during the day, is all part of bonding; the verbalization, the eye to eye contact. I mean, there’s all kinds of classic studies where if you deprive kids of tactual stimulation, you’re going to create all kinds of problems in that kid’s personality. Kids need softness, they need touch, they need words, they need vitamin E. All that’s a part of bonding. Just reacting to the cry is not bonding, per se. Andrea: Yeah. I hope this is encouraging to that mama, that cried after she read this book, because she’s used the cry it out method with her two-year-old that she has not done anything wrong. And it sounds like she loves this kid and she’s probably doing all those things you just described. Dr. Leman: Yeah. She’s being probably, a little reactive to reading that book. I can think of a few books you could read to be more helpful than that one when it comes to being a good parent, but she sounds like she’s a good mommy. And first time parents, I mean, if you look at how you reared your firstborn child, parents, okay. Everybody just think of how you felt when you brought that baby home from the hospital and all that, and compare it with how you were with a third born. You’ll see, there’s a remarkable difference in how you responded to things. You learn from being a mommy. You learn from being a dad. So it’s natural to wonder, you see these things. If I’m a parent and I read that, I think I’d be getting way ahead of myself by reading too much into that. Doug: So when we come back, I want to ask about the concept that we’re doing damage, psychological damage to our kids. But I am super excited about our friends at Revell-Baker and what they are offering you guys. Between October 1st to October 31st of 2020, you can get this book called The Birth Order Book for a mere $2.99. Andrea: An eBook Dr. Leman: That should never happen. You should not be able to get The Birth Order Book for $2.99 under any circumstance. And I can protest to the publisher and they say, “Leman, we’re in charge of these. So we love you. We love your books, but it’s available for 2.99.” So all I can tell you is, take advantage of that sucker. Strike while the iron’s hot. Andrea: Here’s an Amazon review: An easy and insightful read. Helpful in family life, as well as business. This was an impulse purchase at a big box store. And I had to buy a couple more for a friends. It’s an easy read yet, really accurate. I laughed all the way through it at the positive and negative attributes. I’m an oldest child and this book was pretty spot on. I have found this helpful in family life, as well as business.” Doug: So go get The Birth Order Book between October 1st of 2020 to the end of October of 2020, for a mere $2.99, wherever your eBooks are sold. And now, a no nonsense parenting moment with Dr. Kevin Leman. Dr. Leman: Okay, parents, I’m going to give you a little guilt today. Your kid’s homework comes home. After dinner, the whining starts. “Mommy, I need your help.” “Honey, you can do this.” “No I can’t. I need your help.” And before long, these kids who have criminal type thoughts, are able to take you into their little spider web and chew you up. And before long, you will have finished 19 of the math problems. And I know the punchline here, you’re mad because you only got 14 of them right, you found out. Hey, listen, it’s his homework, it’s her homework. Give them a place to do their homework. Give them a time. Every kid’s different, some right after school, some after dinner, whatever. But stay out of your child’s homework. If you really need help, hire a tutor, and good luck. Doug: So Dr. Leman, one of the things that I think people would say, which is probably bad to use the word, I think, is this concept that we are doing psychological damage to our children if we let them cry. Where does that come from? Dr. Leman: I don’t know. Those are probably the same kind of parents that think that your infant ought to sleep with you, that your toddler ought to sleep with you. We read things like that into devastation of a child’s personality, you’re neglecting their basic needs. I mean, if you want to bring up a child, give them a sense of independence. Give them a room or a space, I know some kids have to share rooms. Give them that place that’s their own. Let them develop their own identity. That’s why we are always urging parents to treat kids differently. Why? Because they’re different personalities. What works for one, doesn’t always work for the other. So when I hear things about, you’re going to do psychological damage to a child, I mean, yeah, if you’re abusing a child, you sure will. Being neglectful as a parent, you sure will. Being demeaning, yelling, screaming, letting kids see things that are very inappropriate at a young age on a screen, yeah, those things will do damage to a kid. But letting a kid cry because they had a meltdown or when you tuck them in a bed, they cry, let him cry. And to read into that, that somehow you’re doing psychological damage, is bull crumble, in my opinion. Doug: Well, we let our kids cry out a fair amount, and you did a great job also, Andrea, of nurturing them and loving them, and especially when you’re breastfeeding them, and we would play on the floor with them. And I’m just telling you, last night, our 20-year-old, our 18-year-old, our 16-year-old and our 15-year-old, we were like, “Hey guys, do you want to watch a movie? Do you want to play around?” And literally, our 15-year-old said, “No, why don’t we just sit here and visit as a family?” Dr. Leman: Oh, gee. Doug: I was like, “Oh wow.” And our daughter whipped out a computer and started reading us all these jokes that were just hilarious. Well, clearly, our kids, they feel bonded. I mean, it’s antidotal that it’s just one family, but I’m just saying the other thing is, I think it’s what you said is our kids feel independent enough that they know who they are and they have enough self control to do what they want to do, which is a huge blessing at this age as well. Andrea: It’s really what we do when they’re awake and we’re active together, not during bedtime, that they know where we’re going to play a game. We’re going to laugh at the meal. We’re going to listen to funny music in the car or a story in the car, whatever fit where we are a family, and we go on walks or whatever it is. Not whether or not I run to them every time they whimper. Dr. Leman: Yeah. So I think predictability, the mundane and a schedule, and not a militaristic schedule, is a good way of creating a sense of security in your kids’ minds and hearts. Having parents that are on the same page, who really manifest the fact that their yes is a yes and their no is a no, I think builds character with kids and gives them a sense of security as well. Doug: Well, and this is why we do this podcast, because there’s lots of questions out there that all brand new parents have. And I really appreciate you leaving this question. It’s a great question that you’re asking and it took guts to do that. Kudos to you. But this is why I say, go grab one of the Leman books, Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours, Have a New Kid by Friday and this Birth Order Book. It just gives you confidence that you can do this. And I think the thing that Dr.Leman keeps saying is, the consistency, you being the parent, not authoritarian, not permissive. You do those things and all the rest of these other things that make you bawl your eyes out and think you’re the worst person in the world, it just gives you confidence that you are a great parent. And I would say, Andrea, then I’ll ask you, it gave us the confidence that we could just love our kids more, actually. Dr. Leman: Yeah. Well, kids, again, keep in mind parents, you give kids an opportunity to give back to the family. That gives them a sense of wellbeing as well. Even the three or four-year-old can help on load a dishwasher and dump garbage from a small container into the larger one. And there’s things that your children can do at an early age to give them the feeling that they’re giving back to the family, that they’re part of it. And we tend to write off the little ones and dump all the responsibilities on the older ones. And as kids get older, especially into high school, you got to lift some of those chores and let the littler ones pick up the slack. Doug: Well, again, thank you for this question. And if you would like to leave your own, you can go to birthorderguy.com/ and put just about any number, 333 on down. And there’ll be a microphone at the bottom, hit that microphone and leave an audio question and we would love the answer it. If there’s one that you’re like, “Hey, they haven’t answered this one,” feel free to leave it. And a quick reminder, you can get The Birth Order Book October 1 to the end of October of 2020, wherever eBooks are sold, for a mere $2.99 cents and it is a great, fun book to read. And we love being with you and adding to your parenting toolbox. And we look forward to the next time we get to hang out with you. Andrea: Have a great week. Doug: Take care. Bye-bye.

There will be times when your kids pull away from you, but maintaining those relationships is key. Listen in as Dr. Leman breaks down the four components of a relationship: trust, honesty, communication, and transparency.     Show Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Produced by Unmutable Transcript Doug Terpening: Do you know, Andrea, without this, we have nothing. And actually, if with our kids, we don’t have this, we ain’t got nothing. What is this thing that without it, we got nothing in our parenting that we need to hear from Dr. Leman? Hi, I’m Doug Terpening. Andrea Terpening: And I’m Andrea. Doug Terpening: And we are really, really glad that you’re with us today. It is such a delight to be with you. I want to let everybody know that if this is your first time, this is for your education and entertainment purposes only. If the subject matter raises any concerns for you or your child, seek a local professional for help. Well, Dr. Leman, here we are, the end of September. School is back in session and some of us are in quarantine, some of us are back in normal. What is it that you say, “Without this, you have nothing”? And what does it mean? Dr. Leman: Well, without a relationship with your mate, for example, you don’t have anything. You’re a paper tiger. You’re going nowhere. It’s going to incinerate before long and a lot of people are going to be hurt. If you don’t have a relationship with your son or your daughter, it’s going to blow up. Anger, explosions, tantrums, a feeling of betrayal and a separation, if you will, between parent and child. So, what’s in a relationship? Why don’t the three of us come up with some words that would describe a relationship? I think a relationship needs to have at least three components, and you guys can be thinking of others as I talk about this. Number one is trust. Number two, honesty. Number three, there has to be communication. And number four, there has to be a sense of transparency. Now when I say transparency, I’m not saying to parents that you have to share with your kids everything that’s going on. You just don’t. I always say, if God wanted us to know what the other person was thinking, he would have given us glass foreheads. So there’s the ability, hopefully, of a parent or a mate to use discretion when we talk about honesty and trust and communication and transparency. So there has to be some division there, and that takes us to the A word, which is authority. And as parents, you have to remember that you are in authority over your children. Does that mean you run their lives? No, it doesn’t. But it means you’re in healthy authority over your kids. For those of you believe in almighty God and his son, Jesus Christ, who are the same, by the way. If you’re a heathen, that’s a curve ball for you. You’ve got to ask yourself, does almighty God just pull strings and run our lives for us? No, he gives us that right. He loves us so much that we get to make choices. So in relationships, Andrea, you and Doug made choices every day and you made choices with your children. And it’s an art form, I’ve said many times, parenting, but what words? I’m just curious what words you would add to describe what a healthy relationship looks like. Doug Terpening: Bacon, steak, physical closeness. Are those them? Andrea Terpening: He stole one of mine. I was going to say communication. And now he’s got all the good ones and I can’t think of anything. Dr. Leman: I love affection. I think that’s part of a good relationship. Can you be overly affectionate? We haven’t used the word love, but can you love a kid too much? How do parents interpret love? I sat in a restaurant last night, and a young lady who had to be 18 or 19 years of age, I about fell over. Her mother came over to the other side of the table. There were just two of them eating. And she cut up her meal for her. And so nosy me, I kept my eye on this kid for the rest of the meal. And I thought, “I wonder if this kid is physically challenged or something’s going on, or in some way has some physical or mental disabilities.” Well, I watched and she was talking and laughing, having a conversation. Seemed very normal to me. So I’m wondering what that parent’s perception was of her role. I mean, I can understand cutting up a kid’s meal at age three or four. I just don’t get it at 18 or 19. Somebody help me out with that. So all these things that we’re talking about, take a parent to use good judgment in discretion and learning how far to go with trust and communication and transparency and honesty and affection. If you came out of a dysfunctional family where you never felt like you were loved and you never measured up, then this conversation’s already got you a little baffled because you grew up in a foreign land and we’re speaking a different language. Doug Terpening: Yeah. So in the area of parenting, this is one of your pocket phrases and it’s one that you taught Andrea and I. What I really liked about it as I was researching that I don’t think we’ve ever done a podcast on this, that you use the analogy that parents, this is how you can use it to help you out. That when your kid says, I hate you, or I don’t want to be with you, or they’re just uber disrespectful to them, you say, “Later,” when they ask you to go do something, the classic later. You tell them, “Without a relationship, we have nothing. And you can’t treat people this way and expect them to want to be with you or help you. Once we have a relationship again, then I’ll gladly help you.” And I thought, “Wow, that is such a good phrase to help us get the concept that we need to care about others.” Is that- Dr. Leman: Yeah. So if the Terpenings are coming to me behind closed doors and they say, “We’ve got a kid who was all of a sudden, terribly disrespectful to us and we just don’t know where to turn,” I might suggest, “Hey, Doug and Andrea, you didn’t give your son or your daughter bread and water treatment.” And the bread and water treatment basically is all of a sudden as parents, you do nothing for your child. You don’t give them lunch money. You don’t drive them down to the corner to catch the bus. You do nothing for them. They get, “No, I don’t feel like helping. No, I don’t want to get you a glass of milk. No, you can’t go to your friend’s house. No, you can’t have a goldfish or a puppy.” Whatever it is, it’s no. And that will rock a kid’s world. They don’t know what hit them. But it gets down to the fact that once the teenager or the young kid settles down, you have an honest communication with them and said, “Hey, I’m done. I ask you to do simple things. Your dad and I work our tails off to put food on the table, clothes on your back. We don’t feel like you’re appreciative of anything. So from now on, I’m just putting you on notice. We are out of relationship.” It’s like you’re out of sync. People’s hearts sometimes go into what they call atrial fibrillation. And it’s the heart’s out of sync and it doesn’t beat right and the heart races. And sooner or later, you’ve got to deal with that because it can cause disaster for that person, for example, a stroke or a blood clot, or you name it. So when things are out of sync, you can only let that go so long. Now here’s another Lehman pocket phrase. Do you want to slow leak it to death or would you rather force a blowout? I’d rather force a blowout because if you slow leak some of these things together, the damage is too much to recover from. So parents, you have to step up to the plate. Be the parent you need to be. Call a spade, a spade. Don’t be afraid to give your kid vitamin N. Now if you’re fearful, my kid’s not going to like me, you need to go read a Leman book and start there before we even have a conversation. Doug Terpening: Here’s the connect the dot moment for dense Doug. So we know that I’m the slow one on here, is that I know about the bread and water treatment and all those things. But what was helpful for me with this phrase, relationship, we have nothing, and add, if you can’t treat me well, what makes you think that you’re going to treat others well. And to tie this whole concept of helping, because we’re training up an adult, not a child, to say that the world is not about you and you need to have real relationships with real people and this is not how you treat people. Because someday when you get married, this is probably how you’re going to treat your mate. I don’t know if you’d say that to a kid or not. So I’m using a lot of words and I apologize. But for me it was really helpful to go, “Okay. Part of my parenting process is not just that they treat me well, it’s that they treat others well.” Dr. Leman: Right. Well, if you grew up in a home that was toxic and you saw your dad, for example, treat your mother like dirt and you marry, what’s the best guess of how you’re going to treat that bride of yours? Monkey see, monkey do. And it gets repeated over and over and over again. But we are so far off base with where we are today in America with rearing children. I always like to throw you Canadians in as well, because you’re not much better. We drive ourselves silly trying to make your kid happy at every turn. Again, I love these little one liners, but an unhappy child is a healthy child. Your job is not to create a happy child. Your job is to raise an adult so that when they leave their home, your home, you’ve equipped them to take on the tigers and lions of life because they’re going to be out there. Everybody’s not going to be like mom and dad. Doug Terpening: Right. Well, I think for me, it really helped me in thinking through like, I’m not just trying to get these kids to obey and treat me right. Absolutely, that’s part of it, but if they can learn to do it to me, they’ll learn to do it to others. And I’m trying to set them up for success because I think all of us that are in the workforce these days are like, I tell my kids all the time, I think 80% of most jobs today are just getting along with people because it is crazy out there that people just can’t even get along. And I thought, “Wow, we’re not teaching our kids this concept.” Like treat others with respect and you’ll probably do pretty well in life. So bread and water treatment’s not to be mean, it’s actually to set our kids up for success someday. Dr. Leman: Right. So talk to any employer, you parents. Y’all know employers. Just ask them a simple question. What’s it like when you hire people today? What are you seeing? What are the trends you see when you bring someone new into your business or company? And you’ll get an earful, because I talk with those business people all the time and they say it’s really hard to get good help. I know I’m in the education business. We have seven schools that are functioning beautifully, by the way, but we have teachers who flat out just quit because there’s not enough me time. Why would you take a job as a teacher and expect a lot of me time? I mean, we haven’t trained up a core of young people in our countries to have any type of a healthy work ethic. People bail out so easy. When challenges come, they don’t say, “Wow, I’m going to solve this puppy. I’m going to dig in.” They walk away. Whatever. Well if you’ve got a business, you don’t need anybody in your company with a whatever attitude. But that is the attitude that most people carry out throughout life today. Now, you get your kids involved in 4H or in other activities that really challenge kids, make them think and work, hey, you’re on the right path, parents. But again, I’m not a huge guy on activities. So I’m not saying enroll your kid in every activity. I’m saying, try to find an activity for your son or your daughter that will help challenge them and set them up for the real world. Doug Terpening: So Dr. Leman, I want to make sure I get in the ebook offer and then I’m going to ask Andrea a question for all the moms out there about connecting the dots, because they are, like my wife is 100 miles ahead of me. But I better do the ebook before I forget. Right now you can get, Have a New Sex Life by Friday, between now and the end of September of 2020 for only a $1.99, wherever ebooks are sold. And as Dr. Lehman has said, this is not about sex, but this is about communication and about your relationship. I didn’t even think about, it is talking about what we’re talking about right now, that it does help you make sure that you have a relationship with your own spouse. And if you can get it with your spouse, it’s way easier with your kids, isn’t it? So now go wherever you buy your ebooks between now and the end of September, Have a New Sex Life, a buck 99. And now a no nonsense parenting moment with Dr. Kevin Leman. Dr. Leman: I get asked all kinds of questions about, at what age do you do this? At what age do you do that? Hey parents, it’s not a matter of [Spanish 00:15:27], for our Spanish speakers. You know what that means. That means yours. It’s really about maturity. Now my question is, do you give your son or daughter opportunity to grow, to make decisions, to learn? Is failure acceptable in your home? If that’s true, I got news for you, your kids are going to mature. They’re going to realize that life is not built around them and that other people count in life. So parents, take it easy. Take a big breath. Life isn’t going to be perfect. In our seven Leman schools, I have a sign, Leman Academy of Excellence, where learning is fun. Keep a fun, positive environment in your home, and everybody’s going to feel better about themselves and other people. Doug Terpening: Okay. Andrea, you’re the resident mom here, right? Andrea Terpening: So you want me to connect the dots between bread and water and without a relationship, we have nothing. Is that right? Doug Terpening: Or do you go, oh, I see how holding my kid accountable, saying no, helps them understand how to have a relationship and treat people well down the road? Like how they treat you. Andrea Terpening: Yes, absolutely. Doug Terpening: But what would you need to be able to go, “I am going to give them the bread and water treatment, because I know longterm, even though it might feel bad to the relationship for a couple of days, I can see longterm it will help them”? Andrea Terpening: Right. Well, if I feel like they’re taking advantage of me or they’re pushing me around or they’re making it impossible for me to do my role as a mom, then of course, I’m going to see that they need this bread and water, this accountability in their lives, because it’s affecting our relationship if they’re trying to push me around or take advantage of me as their mom. Dr. Leman: Andrea, you’re the better person of the three of us, but here’s my question for you. How long would you let a child push you around before you pulled up the bread and water treatment? Andrea Terpening: Well, you’re asking a empathetic. So I don’t know how long. It probably depends on how forceful they’re being and what kind of mood I’m in. Dr. Leman: That’s an honest answer. But I think for people like you, you’re what I call a positive pleaser. You would like the oceans of life smoother. When the rough seas come with your kids, your tendency is probably to, well, maybe he just had a bad day or whatever. And my admonition to parents is don’t let the cancer grow. Nip it in the bud, as Barney Fife once said. All the young people are saying, “Who’s Barney Fife?” Look it up. I’m not telling you. But I think the idea is to have kids really pay attention to the words you use as a parent. So you’re not calling them three times to dinner. You’re not telling them six times to pick up their room. You see what I’m saying? So if we can get a parent to be so efficient, that when they say something, a kid automatically says, “Uh oh, I got to get on it.” You see what I’m saying? So the quicker that response can come from a parent where, “Hey, I’m not taking guff from you, six-year-old,” the sooner you’re going to have a change in that child’s behavior. That’s a guarantee. Doug Terpening: And to your point, what I’ve seen, and I think you have at times too, Andrea, is when we don’t react but we actually think about it and we take our kids aside and tell them, “We are noticing this behavior. Is this correct,” oftentimes they are contrite to us. Or we’ll say, “Great. We think we see it this way. You think you see it that way. We’re going to,” we do … It is amazing though, but if we just brush it aside, you and I, Andrea, if we just like, “Ah, it’s not that big a,” it does grow. Doesn’t it? It doesn’t matter. It just grows, doesn’t it? Dr. Leman: Well, and think about a marital relationship for a minute, and your feelings are really hurt by your mate. Something is said, something is done. And you go to bed with anger in your heart. And we know that biblical admission. So if you fester, if it just doesn’t get dealt with, what do you do with it? Do you sweep it under the rug three days later and pretend it didn’t happen? Well, I think it’s a little bit like eating a pizza on a Saturday night. You ate the pizza at 10 o’clock, but 11 o’clock you still taste it. It backs up on you. It causes you to be irritable. And at even a subconscious level, you’re going to start taking cheap shots at your mate because you didn’t resolve what was obviously a problem in the relationship. It’s sort of like you have to clean filters. Filters are in washing machines and dryers and cars. Those filters are there for a reason. But there’s times you have to pull out the hose and clean up the filter and clean it out because you’re going to function better and all that garbage that you got out on the table, so to speak, and a got chance to vent and discuss and come to a solution, now you’re in a healthy mode again. And I think every couple, every parent has to realize there is a filter within you that has to be maintained and cleaned properly. Doug Terpening: Well, I hope all of your parents can add this pocket phrase to your thinking about parenting that without a relationship, we have nothing. And when your kids or your spouse or mate is in the same situation, then you can go back to this. But I think for us as parents, my encouragement just is like, oh, that’s right. We are raising up kids to be adults and how they treat others. And it really does matter. It starts in the home and it starts with how they treat mom and it’s how they treat dad. And that we can do this. And this is why I do this podcast, is to say, guys, if you need, and gals, if you need help and clarity, go read, Have a New Kid by Friday, how to help … I can never, what’s the children mind? Andrea? Andrea Terpening: Making your children mind without losing yours. Doug Terpening: Yes. Yes. Sorry. I don’t know I can’t get that book in my mind. And read those, read the birth order book, so you have the confidence to do this because there’s so many messages out there that tell us the opposite and so many messages that are telling us to live a different way. I’m just telling you, Andrea and I, we are having so much fun with our 20, 19, 17 and 15-year-old right now that it pays off in unbelievable spades for you. Andrea Terpening: Can I just say, I feel like I’m listening to this from the other side. I like to hear just this without a relationship, we have nothing. It just sounds to me like a foundation. And when I hear that, I’m not thinking about the bread and water coming down the road. I’m just thinking about building that foundation. And I don’t know, to me, that just seems crystal clear in my mind. If I can work on that trust and honesty and communication and transparency, then I think the bread and water will be few and far between. Dr. Leman: Yeah, that’s a good thought, Andrea. If you’re going to build a cement wall, that wall is only going to be great if the foundation is laid right. You put rebar in cement and within blocks, why? Why do you put that metal rebar in there? To strengthen what you’ve already built. So it’s pretty basic stuff, but relationships are so important. In the business world today, I’ll remind people that Herb Kelleher was one of my heroes. He is now deceased. He was Chairman of the Board at Southwest Airlines for years. And he had such great insight into people. He told me one day, he said, “Kevin,” he said, “at Southwest, we hire a personality. I can teach people the rest of the stuff, but I can’t teach personality.” So some of you have the gift of a very engaging personality and that’s going to help you throughout life. Each year kids are different. Some kids have very outgoing, they could be a snake charmer. They could talk their way through anything. Other kids are going to need some more self-confidence to even open their mouth. So again, remember, you’re the captain of the good ship family. And the question I always like to ask is, do you have a port of call? Do you know where you’re going on the ocean of life? When the storms come, and they’re going to come, do you have a game plan? How are you going to handle it? And are you committed as parents to each other? And those of you who are living in separate homes, you’re divorced and you’re remarried and all that, boy, that’s tough to do. But if you don’t pick up the phone and talk to each other and don’t let things slide, then you’re going to be in trouble, big trouble, and your kids are going to pay for it. Doug Terpening: So again, Andrea, I thought your points were great. And for lots of us, we don’t know how to do those things, to be honest. And this is where Have a New You by Friday can come in and help you really ask yourself the hard questions of life so that your life is just better. Spend the energy now. Okay, I’ve gone through enough. I’ve listed off like all of Leman’s books. Andrea Terpening: All right, honey. Time to wrap it up. Doug Terpening: I get no royalties. I get nothing from the books. I just know what they’ve done in our lives. I know how they’ve changed us. I could have my kids come out here and they would say, “It’s been great.” But you need to do it for yourself, and that’s why we do this, so that you can have a better and better relationship with those kids. So, a reminder between now and the end of September, you get to have, Have a New Sex Life by Friday for $1.99, wherever ebooks are sold. And I just can’t encourage you, if you heard this and something’s pricked in your mind, go read a different book, whether it’s about you or about how you’re parenting, and Dr. Leman [inaudible] will. We look forward to the next time that we get to add your parenting toolbox, that you can just love those kids more and more. Andrea Terpening: Have a great day. Doug Terpening: Take care. Bye, bye.

It’s time for another Ask Dr. Leman: “We even took away hockey and our kids still disobey.” Listen in as Dr. Leman discusses the solutions to unrelenting disobedience on today’s episode of Have a New Kid by Friday Podcast.   **Special Offer– Sep 1 – 30: Have a New Sex Life by Friday ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**       Show Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Produced by Unmutable Transcript Doug: You started to try some of these principles, B doesn’t happen until A, and you’re thinking, well, it’s not totally working yet. And still you wrap it up and you keep doing more and more and eventually you take away even the beloved hockey. That’s what Marcie, asked Dr. Leman, that we get to ask you today. Hi, I’m Doug Terpening. Andrea: And I’m Andrea. Doug: If this is your first time with us, welcome. But if it is your first time, I want to let you know this is for your education and entertainment purposes only. If the subject matter raises any concerns for you or your child, please seek a local professional for help. Well, Marcie’s question comes and I don’t think I know where she’s from, but if she took away hockey, it was a pretty good guess she’s from Canada, don’t you think? Andrea: Yep. Or up in Minnesota or something. Doug: Minnesota. Probably not from New Mexico. But here we go, Dr. Leman, here is the question for you. Marcie: I have a seven year old boy, five and a half year old girl, a four year old girl and a two year old girl and we are having trouble with them cleaning up and listening. There is a deliberate defiance we’re seeing in them not doing what we’ve asked them to do. This has been going on for over a year now. We have used the consequence part of it, where if you didn’t clean up, then you’re going to miss an activity. Done it without warning, so they miss their hockey or they miss their dance class or their swimming lesson and it doesn’t seem to affect them. They might be a little bit frustrated for a few minutes, but the cleaning up part doesn’t change. We’ve taken all their toys away, locked them in a room and so that you can’t have them until you guys start listening. We’ve tried allowance, that wasn’t a motivational part to do their part of cleaning their room. We also have homeschooled the older three and so our seven year old has taken to not doing his school. We’ve taken away the things that were in his room like Lego or books that he would be distracted with instead of doing his schoolwork. Again, that’s not working. Both my husband and I are firstborn traits and so we’re doing our very best and being mindful of the fact that we could have more of a critical eye. However with them, we don’t really know what to do. Dr. Leman: Wow. First of all, let me tell you, you’re trying way too hard. Family life should not be militaristic. It shouldn’t be so over dominated with activities. I heard swimming lessons, hockey, the list went on. On top of that, you’re homeschooling kids. You do get an A for nailing a couple things just right. Your word defiance, when a kid is defiant, defiant, you know the parent is not in authority over the child. Think about that. Defiance has an attitude, an edge, a get back at. You’ve hurt me, therefore I have a right to strike back at you kind of thing. Tripe A stars for nailing the word defiance. We’ll get to that in a second. And then when you use the term deliberate, again, here’s another clue. When kids are deliberate, it’s a plan. It’s not something, it’s not a response. It’s not simply a reaction, although it is a reaction, that deliberate action on their part, but it’s purposeful. It’s planned to get back at and the kids for whatever reasons, we’ll get to them, don’t see yourself, a firstborn, critical eyed, as you might be, as anything other than the enemy. If we take a vote, a functional vote right now, it’s three to one or three to two. Now why isn’t it four to two? Because your little guy’s only two so I’m going to eliminate him for just a second. And by the way, you have two families, you have a firstborn, a middle child and a baby son and then you have the first born daughter who also happens to be the youngest in the family. The real problem here and you have to understand this. And when I hear you say, “Well, we tried this and we tried that.” That’s what parents who are not centered on the word authority do, they run from pillar to post. The word picture I have is the four little ponies are out of the barn and now we’re going to try to round them up and get them back in the barn. And like I say, we’re trying way too hard. Before we start talking about how do we get these kids to cooperate, to help, to listen and all those things, you guys have to work on fixing yourselves here. You are way too deep in authoritarian means with these kids. Your idea of consequence is that you’re the authoritarian, you tell the kids what to do and they’re supposed to fall in line and do it. That’s not how it works. They have to see you relationally in a way that they feel like you really care about them. Now I know this is a tough one, Marcie, because I don’t think the kids feel it from you. I think they see you as the big people who run things and there’s a big difference. What I’m going to suggest to you is that you and your husband get two copies of the book, Have a New You by Friday, two copies, and I want you to read them. And I want you to get two different colored highlighters and just highlight them and then exchange books. It could be the same color, but I’d like you to have your own books you can write notes in it to yourself because what has to happen here, we need to change. Basically change some things that you’ve thought about yourselves for years. You might also enjoy The Birth Order book, which gets into family systems a little bit. What did you learn about life from your parents? What is the perception that you took into child rearing that needs to be explored and looked at? I’m just telling you, this is what we’re talking about here is not an oil change and a filter. We’re talking about tearing down the engine and putting things back together again. And this is going to be tough for you guys because a knee jerk fashion, in fact, you’re not going to like what I’m saying. That’s a given. Who wants to hear this? I wouldn’t want to hear it and I’m saying it. I’m trying to be helpful by being confrontive with you to say, “This isn’t on the kids. This is on you guys.” You’ve created an atmosphere in that home that is not conducive to listening. You tell me, do you tell the kids just once to do things? No, you are on their case. You remind them, you coax them, you get angry, you say things that you don’t mean which creates guilt in you and then you go from pillar to post and start loving on him because you know you just made a fool of yourself. You really need to sort of stop and take a look at what’s happening here because at age is 7, 5 and a half and four and two, let’s add 10 years to that. Now you have a 17 year old, a 15 and a half year old, a 14 year old and a 12 year old. You’re going to have many an Armageddon evening, I promise you, if you continue on this way. You need to do some reading, some self discovery, some looking inward. If you’re a person of faith, I’d make this an item of prayer in your life every day. That Lord, help me to do things differently. And again, that little book, Have a New You by Friday, will give you some specific ways of trying to tame some of those ingrained tendencies that are very much a part of your personality. Again, you guys have bitten off an awful lot. You got four kids within five years of each other, you’re homeschooling, you’ve tried way too many things. It’s sort of like whack-a-mole, you make some headway over here and a whack-a-mole pulls up, whack them over the head. When does it stop? I hear the frustration in your voice. And again, if we looked at you and your husband, I think if we had a panel of people just look at you guys, people would say, “Wow, these are great people. These are people who care about their kids. These are people who want their best for their kids. These are people who want the best for their home. They want their best for their marriage. They’re good at helping other people. They’re givers. They’re not takers.” But the authoritarian just jumps off your question. It just yells, “Hey, we’re authoritarians and we’re thinking we’re moving toward being an authority.” And apparently it’s not working because you haven’t sat down and had a basic game plan. And I’ve said for years, that beautiful cathedrals are built one brick at a time. And I think you’d admit we live in an Instant Jello society where we want everything to happen overnight. And here I’m talking, I write a book called, Have a New Husband by Friday and Have a New You by Friday, Have a New Kid by Friday, Have a new Teenager by Friday. If it sounds like I’m a hypocrite, trying not to be. I’m all for behavioral change. And I really believe in most situations, behavioral change can literally take place in 48 hours, but we have so much here on the plate. I think you need a little time out yourselves to really talk about how we put things together. There’s resources there for you. I would start at the most primary level of your relationship and develop some kind of a system where if a parent is becoming too authoritarian, you have a code word, that backs that person off. But for example, when kids don’t pick up, leave it there. Leave it there. Don’t go in and pick it up for them or take away their toys because they didn’t pick it up. I know that’s a consequence. In some situations that works. In this, I think you have to start showing the kids that you are very unhappy, but not in an authoritarian way, in a position of authority because these kids that are running on a destructive mode right now will not like it when they understand that you are unhappy with them. Again, I know that was a long litany of things I just went through and we will now defer to our in residence, parents of floor, Doug and Andrea Terpening for their response. Doug: I, As a recovering authoritarian parent, it’s really hard to see that in yourself. On this side, it’s much easier to see it, but for these two, the book would be a huge help. But how do you really internalize this? How do you get the reality? Because everything they said, they sound like the model parent that everybody wants to be. Dr. Leman: Yeah. Doug, well take us into your journey. You just said it, you’re a reformed authoritarian parent. What were the things that you had to do to look at yourself? Maybe that would help, why don’t you share that? Doug: The honest truth is I think Andrea did, I think between you and Andrea, but Andrea every now and then would graciously be strong enough to stand up and tell me, “You are out of control here.” And she just said it enough times that eventually I realized that. And then listening to you helped me realize that my kids were setting up to rebel. And then, the other thing that really helped, we had some families that were a little bit farther ahead of us and the ones that stayed the authoritarian path, their kids uber rebelled and the ones that were on the authoritarian path and then calm down, their kids turned out great. And we just watched it in live, but I had to have Andrea and you helped me understand it. Yeah. Dr. Leman: Now friends, this is why I love Doug Terpening so much. This is not easy for a man to say what he just said. I always tell ladies with tongue in cheek, I think of your husband as a four year old that shaves. We’re pretty basic people. And with that basic maleness, lots of times it’s difficult for us to admit that we’re going down the wrong road. The self awareness thing and the coming together as a couple where you help each other to gain insight into what’s really happening here, keep in mind that perfectionism is slow suicide. The critical eye just destroys your child’s spirit. It makes them angry people who want to strike back. It just sets up a reaction rather than response. It sets up defiance rather than a listening heart or so these kids need ways of helping the family. They need to give back to the family because they’re going to become very selfish kids if this continues and they’re going to be bitter and angry. These aren’t kids that are going to look forward to time with mom and dad, when they have families. They’re going to be distant. They’re going to be well, we have to go see my mom and dad type of kids. That’s not what you want. I’m telling you as a dad who talks to his kids all the time, they call us. They initiate things with us. They want to travel with us. There’s nothing better than having that kind of relationship. Doug and Andrea are at the stage where their two older ones are really starting to spread their wings and they’re seeing that. They’re seeing the result of the kind of parenting that they did and their kids have profited from it. And so we want, Marcie, I know this is a tough one for you. If you’re not crying right now, or during this thing, then I’ve misjudged you. This is tough to take But I think you need to pull the rug out and start doing some things differently. (silence) Oh my goodness. There’s a lot of things that influence a young child’s personality, namely mom and dad and other siblings. I get it. I’ve written a few books on the subject, but you know the one that I discovered in private practice almost by accident, then I saw this tremendous trend, was the critical eyed parent. When you should it on your kid, I got to be careful how I say that, don’t I? You should do this. You should do that. What you’re really conveying to your kids is they didn’t measure up. Watch out for that critical eye. Yes, if you’re an engineer or a math teacher or a physicist, I know perfection pays off, but again, we do not need perfection in rearing our children. We need to pursue excellence. You can do this, parent. Lots of books out there that address this, including The Birth Order book. Sold well over a million copies for a reason. (silence) Well, it ain’t going to be easy, to put it bluntly. It really isn’t. I don’t want to be a forecaster of doom, but I’m just telling you, that’s why I’m saying, “Stop what you’re doing. Take a look at yourself. Do some reading. Let’s come together with a game plan.” Because they are who they are. It’s going to take steadfast commitment on the part of the parents to change the environment in that home. I’ve said many times, “You parents have all the gold.” Andrea: Can you paint a picture of what, okay, she drew a picture for us of what their house home is like, what would you say in a month, can you paint a picture of what it could look like if they were on the right trajectory? Dr. Leman: Well, I’m going to say some things she’s not going to like. The first thing I would suggest is you stop homeschooling. Oh boy, I can see the emails coming right now. Dr. Leman, you have no idea what our schools are like in this area. Hey, I happen to have seven schools. I know something about educating kids and there are charter schools around who quite frankly, biased opinion, do a pretty good job. Are there charter schools do a lousy job? Yes, there are. But I would find an environment for your kids to learn outside of your home. Andrea: And why is that? Dr. Leman: It takes the 24/7 being around the kids. Mom needs some relief here. She needs some time for herself. She needs to take care of herself. And right now, assuming husband goes out the door to work and maybe he doesn’t, maybe he works through home but if he goes to work and she’s with the kids 24/7 and we’re trying to reinvent the wheel, that’s an awful big assignment. If the ship is sinking, you don’t talk about repainting the ship. You get rid of excess stuff that’s on the ship so it doesn’t sink. That’s number one right there. That will eliminate a lot of problems. See, the perfectionism, I have to do at all, I have to control everything, everything’s got to come together. If you’re a betting man or woman, you’d bet against this one. Without some drastic action on their part, this one won’t turn around. Those kids will grow bitter and angry. Parents will suffer crisis after crisis as these kids get older. Like I said, this isn’t an oil change. This is a total overhaul of the family engine. That’s number one. If you can do that, that’d be a huge thing because see she’s letting go. And that letting go is going to be very difficult because the high need to control. If you’re a perfectionist, you want to control everything. Andrea: Okay. What’s number two? Doug: Activities. Dr. Leman: Very good. Very good. Dr. Doug. Yeah, limit activities. If you have four kids and they each had an activity, oh my goodness. That’s a lot on your plate. We got to get back to some basics here. I heard swimming lessons. Okay so the kids are seven, five and a half, four, two. Yeah, I can see the swimming lessons. That’s a good, healthy activity. It takes energy to do that. Mom gets to sit by the edge of the pool and watch or whatever. She gets a time to read a book, where the kids are under someone’s instruction for an hour or she gets to sunbathe, depending upon where you live, what time of year it is. Cut down the schedule, cut down all the shoulding in your home. We should do this. We should do that. Let’s let’s get out of the pie in the sky. Again, keep in mind the ship is sinking so we’re not going to rearrange the deck chairs, so to speak. She doesn’t need number three, number four, number five, number six. Number one and number two are huge. And it gives instant relief and she’s going to feel a lessening of stress in her life. She never mentioned the stress in her life, but I guarantee it’s there. And that stress, Marcie, will take its toll. Stomach disorders, back disorders, migraine headaches, you name it. It’ll pop out. Stress has a way of working itself out of the body into the extremities. Andrea: But what I’m hearing is giving up some control and need to do all these things, especially as the kids are so young. The other thing that I’m feeling because we’ve been here and actually those ages are pretty close to where our kids were in age span and I’m hearing and she didn’t describe this, whether or not she does, just getting on the floor and playing a game with them and enjoying them. And I’m still learning and have to tell myself sometimes, “Just stop and put your arm around the kid, tell them how much you love them. Go for a walk with them, play a game with them.” Because it’s easy to be busy getting stuff done. And it’s hard sometimes to look past a mess or an unfinished project and just get on the floor and hang out with them. Dr. Leman: And keep in mind that Marcie is probably 29 to 32 years of age, would be a good guess. She’s young, she’s active. Doug: Well, I’m going to wrap this up. I think we have given lots of good advice to our caller today. Andrea: And just in case she didn’t hear it earlier, I think just to remind her, Dr. Leman invited you, Marcie, to call back in in about a month and tell us how things are going, because we really want to hear how you guys are doing, answer your questions. Doug: And this is a great question. This is such a good question. Kudos to you for calling in and asking it. And as I hear in your voice, you can do this. If you’ve done all this already, you can do this. It’s hard work, but you can do it. Andrea: And you obviously really care about your kiddos. Doug: Oh you love them. Yep. If you have a question that you would love us to ask Dr. Leman for you, go to birthorderguy.com/podcastquestion or you go to birthorderguy.com/, this episode is 331, and there’ll be a little microphone there and you can click on it and you can leave us a question, which we would love to answer for you. And don’t forget, you can get the eBook, Have a New Sex Life by Friday, for a buck 99, between now and the end of October 2020, wherever eBooks are sold and we love being with you. Thank you for joining with us today. As you add to that parenting toolbox, you’re going to love them kiddos more and more. Andrea: Have a great one. Thanks, Marcie. Doug: Take care.

Does caring for your spouse really affect the way your kids respond to parenting? Listen in to learn just how crucial partner care is on this episode of Have a New Kid by Friday Podcast.   **Special Offer– Sep 1 – 30: Have a New Sex Life by Friday ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**     Show Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Produced by Unmutable Transcript Doug: I got to spend all my time taking care of my children, that’s all the time I have for sweetie. While I’d love to give you more, I can’t. The question we get to ask Dr. Leman today is, is it smart to invest energy into that partner? And does that equal smart parenting or is it better to give that energy to the kids? Hi, I’m Dr. Penny. Andrea: And I am Andrea. Doug: And we are so happy that you are here with us today. It is so good to be with you. Welcome. If this happens to be your first time, glad you’re here, I want to let you know this is for your education and entertainment purposes only. If the subject matter raises any concerns for you or your child, please go seek a local professional for help. Well, Dr. Leman, the question today is, do I have to really care about Andrea at all or can I just pour all my energy into my kids and that smart parenting? Dr. Leman: Well, before we get into that let me just remind people, you mentioned people who are new to us, do yourself and your friends a favor and yeah, us too I guess, by tweeting it out or putting it on your Facebook page that you found this podcast that you like. Hope you enjoy it, we try to be practical. We do admit we entertain you a little bit as we go along, but that seems to make the medicine go down a little easier. Dr. Leman: The question is, do I put all my effort into my children? If you do your kids will really turn against you someday because they’ll be angry that you didn’t put enough energy, time, love, and attention into your mate. We literally love each other and have each other’s backs in marriage, a lot of good blessings so to speak, fall off the parental mountain and onto the children. A reminder parents, your kids are always looking up. They’re watching how you talk to each other, how you treat each other, how you treat strangers. They’re watching how you handle curve balls. Do you hit it out of the park or do you strike out whimper and put your tail between your legs and walk away? Dr. Leman: You’ll never go wrong in investing in your marriage. I always say that marriage is like a delicate plant and if you don’t enrich it, you don’t water it, you don’t put good fertilizer around it and good soil around it, that’s going to die. And there’s nothing worse than getting into your marriage just 20, 25 years and realizing you don’t have much to talk about anymore because you put too much effort into the children. Again, you want a model openness, forgiveness, communication, closeness. Dr. Leman: I love it when I hear my kids say, “Oh, I think that is so cute. You did what? You got a what? You did what?” It’s not rocket science. What you put into it you’re going to receive back, so prioritize. Marriage partners are number one, kids are number two, other things are number three. If you just have that simple paradigm in your life, your relationship with your family is going to be better I guarantee you that. Doug: Dr. Leman, in full honesty that’s easy to say but really, really hard to do. Andrea, she’s a full-grown adult, she can take care of herself, but we got to get to piano lessons and we got to take care of their emotional needs. How do I balance that? Dr. Leman: Well, again a reminder, the kids self-esteem comes from kids helping themselves, let’s start with that. But to make this more interesting. I talked with a man just this week who worked on one of the Kennedy campaigns. He is a well-respected man nationally and internationally. He has an office in Washington and an office in New York to give you an idea. He has hundreds of people that work for him. And he shared a story with me about the fact that he was given an opportunity to have another political appointment. And he told his wife, he was really excited about it. And she said, “Well, I’ll tell you what? If you take that assignment, we’ll come together again after that assignment’s over.” Dr. Leman: Now, what did she do? She drew the line in the proverbial sand. And he told me, he said, “She looked at me and she said, ‘I know how you are in a political campaign. I will never see you so I’m not going to set myself up for disappointment. You just call me when you’re done.'” He had taken the job, he went ahead and took the job. And three days later he told this person that every one of my listening audience right now would know I’m talking about. He told him, “No, there are more important things in life than political campaigns.” And he went back and he became the husband he needs to be, and he still is her husband by the way. Dr. Leman: Again, I think we need to really put our money where our mouth is. I know some of these things are difficult. Sometimes you get in temporary situations, I know a lot of football coaches in the NFL. You’ve got to be a special woman to be married to one of those NFL coaches, because those guys literally are not home very much. But when you marry a football coach hopefully you know what you’re getting yourself into. Well, enough of that, what do you think? Doug: What are some tangible… You said that if the marriage is good there’s these things that follow them that are blessings, parenting blessings. What are some of those lessons that come from a healthy marriage and relationship to the kids, or to help us in parenting? Dr. Leman: Well, I think if you have honest communication between a husband and a wife, honest communication, then you’re going to have transparency. Transparency is a good thing. Now again, should kids know everything that’s going on in a marriage? Obviously not. Okay? But if there’s good communication your kids learn to be good communicators because they had parents who were good what? Listeners. You see, this all intermingles together. This thing of being a parent, being a marital partner, it’s hard to separate. It’s like many strands of twine just come together and build a strong bond for your family. Dr. Leman: And that’s very hard to unravel because it’s so tightly knit and there’s so many different strands. Every time you invest, every time you give vitamin E to a son or a daughter, for you newbies, vitamin E is encouragement. And the other thing your kid needs is vitamin N, which is no. And we think that creates a situation where you’re unhealthy authority over your children, which means you’re not going to take any gaff from your son or your daughter at any point. And there’s no doubt in the children’s minds who the heads, notice that’s plural of the family are. Doug: What about for that partner out there that is, they don’t have a good marriage, it’s struggling right now and they have teenage kids right there in the throes of all that craziness or busy-ness or they’re toddlers, either way. And now they’re sitting here going, “I love you Dr. Leman, but I can’t imagine spending the energy to fix my marriage and take care of my kids, that just that’s too much. Honestly, I just I’ve weighed the consequences and in my mind I can’t do all that.” What would you say to them? Dr. Leman: I would say you’re probably going to be divorced. And that oughta put some chills up some people’s spines because they’re saying that’s where we are today. But that’s why we do this podcast. I’m telling you, it’s the stuff you do from day one in the marriage that makes a difference. You don’t go 15 years into a marriage and then decide you need to fix things, that’s very difficult to do. If you’re in trouble, I don’t suggest this often to people, but go get some outside help. And I’ve written books like Have a New You by Friday. It’s a great book, I wrote a book for someone who wants to take a look at their life and be their own shrink. Dr. Leman: You are a product of your family. The stuff that you learned in your family is causing you dissonance today in your marriage. And your mate is the same one so if you both came out of dysfunctional families, should it be a surprise to anybody that you’re dysfunctional after eight or 15 years of marriage? No, but quite frankly the road back I think has to include God. I don’t know how people do it without faith. Being married to a woman is difficult or weird. They go party in groups of seven and eight, they hug anything that moves, they’re in love with her hair. Dr. Leman: By the way I have to tell you this. We had a bat in our home last night and Mrs. Up in Tin, isn’t real big on bats and she knew that that bat was going to end up in her hair. And so she went and she got a hat I use for fishing when I’m out in the boat to keep the sun off my face, a wide-brim hat. And she sat there watching America loves talent or whatever, that thing, America’s Got Talent. While they had her I took a picture of her and I sent it to all of our kids. And one of our kids said, “The bat whisperer.” Well, I don’t know why I told you that funny little story but to me it was sort of cute and funny. But you know if you can laugh at yourself that helps? Don’t take things so seriously. Dr. Leman: But you know what? If you’re at rock bottom, seek some help from someone who wants to get rid of you, some of them will sit down and hear you out. Your marriage is competitive, you’re trying to win things that’s why you fight. Fight that leads to that cooperation. And I wrote a book called Sheet Music. If you’ve never read Sheet Music you are missing something. That is one of the best marriage sex books ever written and it’s numbers prove that. Get a copy of Sheet Music, sit down and read it together, highlight it. Just commit, don’t be pointing a finger saying, “Hey, we both aired here and we both want it to be better so let’s just make it a priority in our home and start one brick at a time. And as I’ve said many times, beautiful cathedrals are built one brick at a time. Doug: Dr. Leman I’ve heard you say this more often than I can remember. It’s like, you start with you not with your spouse. If I was supposed to start with me, it’s really hard for me to do it by myself. What books have you written that would help someone who is trying to get out of this? Not so great spot with their spouse or would they want to stay in a great spot with their spouse? Dr. Leman: Well, I think the Have a New You by Friday and The Birth Order Book are the first two that come to mind. But so couples I’ve found there’s sexual problems in the marriage, and if there’s sexual problems in the marriage there’s communication problems in the marriage. Reading that book, Sheet Music and Have a New Sex Life by Friday are probably a couple I would certainly read. Books are basically cheap, therapists are very expensive. Dr. Leman: And the question is, do you really need a therapist or is it something you can work on? You have the power within you to change your behavior. If the relationship is going to change your behavior, Doug, has to change. Andrea, your behavior has to change. The relationship doesn’t change by one person changing, both people have to change. Make it an assignment and you’ll eventually receive the blessing of that but so will the people around you, namely your children. Doug: Well, this is a perfect segue into the ebook that we get the offer to you this month of September, which is what you just said, Have a New Sex Life by Friday. You can get it now wherever your eBooks, starting now to the end of September for only a buck 99. And Andrea, do you want to read what Timothy said about this? Andrea: Yeah. He says, “Every couple should get this book. If you love your wife or your husband get this book and learn how to treat and respect one another. You will learn things you did not know then practice it.” Doug: Dr. Leman, is this book only about having a sex life or is it something more than that? Dr. Leman: No, it’s a marriage book. But like I say so many parents just struggle in this area. Like Andrea just read it’s very well received by people, they like it. It’s practical. I share a lot of personal things in there as well and there’s a lot of laughs in the book. And when laughter is there it helps, I think. Doug: Well, my recommendation to everybody, you can get it now for a buck 99. Read it, you’ll be blessed beyond. Also, I want to mention that a couple of little while ago we talked about who could call in and describe Doug and Andrea Terpening. And Mrs. Terpening and the Terpening kids listened to all of your voicemails that you left for us and I’m super happy to announce that Bethany Evans, you are the winner of trying to describe what Doug and Andrea look like. And so you’ll be getting an email from us about which Leman book you’d love to get. Now, a no-nonsense parenting moment with Dr. Kevin Leman. Dr. Leman: Hey parents, I’m going to ask you to do something really simple. Just stand up and be the parent you need to be. I’m walking through a grocery store. There’s a four-year-old in a car with a young mommy. And every time the cart stopped, the child began to point, “I want that, I want that.” “No, honey, this is what…” “No, I want that.” A little fussing and before long what mom didn’t want, she said she didn’t want is in the cart. For the life of me, parent, every kid needs vitamin N which has no. If you don’t assume your authority your child is going to steal it from you and you’re going to create a little brat to put it bluntly, okay? There’s a reason people look at you sometimes in the store, believe me. They’re shaking their heads saying, “I cannot believe that mother. Who is an authority over who?” Don’t ever forget it, you are an authority over your children, not as authoritarian, but you are an healthy authority. Utilize it, its free. Doug: Here’s a question that sometimes I wonder, how much affection should I show around my kids? Dr. Leman: Oh, absolutely. Sometimes the kids will pretend they don’t want to see it, they’re a little embarrassed or whatever, but affection is always great for kids to witness. Andrea: Why is it good for them to see that? Dr. Leman: Affection shows closeness, it shows vulnerability, it shows caring. Make yourself a list parents, of the virtues you’d like to see your kids have and see how that simple expression of affection encompasses many of those values you say you want in your kids’ lives. The old song, people who need people are what? The luckiest people in the world. It’s not a sign of weakness that you need someone in your life. And some of us have lost friends, we lost a dear friend recently. They’re married forever and everybody describes this woman as wonderful, caring, helpful, compassionate, affectionate. And what a nice thing to say about somebody as opposed to hard-nose, critical, mean, knows everything, never says they’re wrong or sorry. Those teachable moments in the home, just those little simple caresses and little pats, they communicate that we care for each other in this family. And kids are very quick to catch onto that. Doug: I think here might be my final question. You said that we are a product of the family we grew up in. If our marriage is dysfunctional, how much are we setting up our kids to have a dysfunctional marriage versus if we can try and get as healthy as we can or good to marriage? How much is our marriage going to equal our kids’ marriage? Dr. Leman: Well, I think if you look at it like this, if you and Andrea have a good, healthy marriage, okay? You’re setting your kids up for success with the opposite sex. Will that always happen? No, because your kids have free will. And some kids even in a loving, transparent, warmth family, for whatever reason they felt like they had to be the dominant one, the winner. It just went on and on and on. Dr. Leman: And so again life isn’t prescriptive, Almighty God made us all different and gave us all different gifts but what we do with those gifts and how we utilize those skills makes all the difference in the world. You’re still safe. The best thing to do for your kids is to love them, let them stay on their own two feet, hold them accountable, listen to them, love them, communicate with them, it’s pretty simple. Again, none of this is rocket science. Doug: Well, thank you, Dr. Leman. And if you’re one of those individuals that’s in a marriage that’s struggling, I can’t recommend enough these great books for you to gain and grow for your own sake. Right now you can get Have a New Sex Life by Friday, which is about more than just sex for a dollar 99 between now and the end of September of 2020. Wherever you get eBooks go and get that one. Have a New You by Friday and The Birth Order Book are absolutely excellent books for you to get as well to really understand you more and understand your spouse more, which really does help when you begin to understand them. Well, it was great to be with you. We love hanging out with you and helping you add to this toolbox so you can love those kids more and more and we look forward to the next time we get to be with you. Andrea: Have a great date with your spouse this week, and bye-bye. Doug: Yeah, I like that nice throw in there. Alrighty, take care. Bye.

It’s time for another Ask Dr. Leman: “My 4-year-old is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” What do you do when your kid frequently switches between good and bad behavior? Listen in as Dr. Leman pinpoints the causes of this erratic behavior on today’s episode of Have a New Kid by Friday Podcast.   **Special Offer– Sep 1 – 30: Have a New Sex Life by Friday ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**     Show Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Produced by Unmutable Transcript Doug: Do you have that young child that one moment just cuddles up next to you and melts your heart and you think you could sit there forever? And the next thing you think, “Oh my goodness, this isn’t even the same child I had a half an hour ago.” Well, that’s the question that Sharon asked about her Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde four-year-old, that we get to ask Dr. Leman for you. And what is she to do with him? Hi, I’m Doug Turpening. Andrea: And I’m Andrea. Doug: And we are really, really glad that you are here today. If this happens to be your first time with us, we’d just like to let you know two things. One, this is for your education and entertainment purposes only. If the subject matter raises any concerns for you or your child, please go seek a local professional for help. And two, I mean, we’ve been doing this for years and we just learned something for the first time. Andrea: Today is Dr. Leman’s birthday! Doug: [inaudible 00:00:59]. Andrea: Happy birthday, Dr. Leman. Dr. Leman: Oh, well, thank you. Doug: How does it feel to be 49? Dr. Leman: It’s actually 47. I’ll tell you a funny little story. My father’s family all came from Ireland and they were all … Well, they tipped a few too many beers In life. Let’s just say that. But when I was born, my dad looked at me and said, “He looks like a little cub,” meaning a little bear cub and I had a little round head. I think I was a fairly cute little baby, but that Cub stayed. To this day.I have people who call me Cub, which is my nickname or Cubby. In fact, I was in Cleveland, Ohio doing a talk show and one of the guests on the show was Uncle Milty. Now, you have to be old to know who Uncle Milty was. They called him Mr. Television. His name was Milton Berle. But when my segment came, we got a call from someone who wanted to ask Dr. Cubby a question. And I told the host of the show. I said, “Well, I don’t know who’s on the line, but I know it’s an old friend from my childhood.” So it’s interesting that little things that people sometimes say about you as a kid, sort of stays with you, including a name. So lots of times when I’m online talking to friends on classmates.com, no one ever refers to me as Kevin. They never give me the honor of Dr. Leman ever. And these are people I grew up with. It’s, “Hey you,” and Leman or Cub. So anyway, thanks for the birthday wishes. It’s great to be 47. I’m looking forward to being 78 next year. Andrea: Well, happy birthday, Dr. Cub. Doug: That’s a great story. I’m so happy know that now. Now it’s going to be hard not to call him Dr. Cub. Andrea: Dr. Cub. Dr. Leman: Dr. Cub. I had a license once on my plate that said Dr. Cub and I was driving down to New York state through and you can’t make up stories like this, and there’s somebody honking their horn crazily next to me. Okay. I’m thinking, “What’d I do? I do something wrong?” And finally, he rolls down a window and I recognize him. He’s a classmate. I hadn’t seen him at that point. Probably 30 years. They recognized the Dr. Cub. So. Doug: Fun, fun, fun. Well, just for context, some of you are listening to this, this is September 1. So if you’re wondering about that and so it’s really fun to be with you, Dr. Leman. And now let’s hear what Sharon has to say and how we can help her out. Sharon: Hi, I am the stay at home mom of three children, a six year old boy, a four year old boy and a almost two year old daughter. I am questioning how to handle my four year old son. He is a little Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. He can be the sweetest thing. He loves to snuggle and he loves to say sweet things. He loves to be loved on, but the minute he hears something he doesn’t like, or hears the word, no, or can’t do something he wants to, he screams and he hits and he fusses and says mean things like “poopy mommy,” or just thinks is going to get under my skin. I’ve been trying to educate myself. I love your books. I don’t even know off the top of my head, how many I’ve read. I’ve definitely read Powerful Child and Making Children Mind. So I try to ignore those things. I try not to give him the power back. I try not to let him know that it affects me, but there are certain situations where I don’t know what to do when he wrecks his brother’s drawing or Lego creation. And it breaks my perfectionist firstborn’s heart. And he lashes out back at him. How do I handle that? When he’s in the parking lot and wants to run away from me, or starting to run away. Won’t get in the car. What do I do then? It’s situations like that where I don’t know what to do. I am at my wit’s end. When he calls me names, what do I do? So I would appreciate any advice you might have for me. I am a big fan of yours. And thank you so much for your time. Dr. Leman: He is a powerful child, for sure. Okay. That we know. So four year old boys can be a handful. Now, some people who have rather sensitive ears to things like when dr. Leman says four year boys, their ire goes up. Well, I’m telling you, those of you who ears go back and you get a little angry. When you hear me say that, let me spell this out as clearly as I can. Boys and girls are different. They’re inherently different. They play different. They display basic different tendencies in their play and behavior. So if you have a problem with that, I can’t help you. I can just tell you to do some research. And you’ll find out that the male brain and the female brain are very, very different. They respond to the exact same stimuli differently. And I’m just telling you a four year old boy, it’s the best age there is to have a kid. Four. They are precious. They are communicative. They are little snuggle bunnies, but they can be H-E double hockey sticks on wheels as well. Many of them have much more energy than they deserve, and they will play you like a violin. Now, let me tell you my very first thought, when I heard this play through. Not only was the child, a powerful child, but I’m suspect that Sharon and her husband are not on the same page when it comes to discipline. That’s my first guess. And it is a guess. But what I’m thinking is that this kid is conflicted between two different messages he’s getting in the home. And I’m just wondering out loud, if that isn’t part of the problem. So when you say help me, I don’t know what to do. My first suggestion is make sure that that’s not the case. Make sure that you are on the same page, because that gives a kid what? Confidence. It gives them a comfort, psychological comfort. I’m always reminding parents. You’re the psychological blankie for your son or your daughter. So that’s my first suspicion that mom and dad, I mean, she sounds like a great mom. I would just say I’m not sure mom and dad are on the same page with that. I would treat this as a powerful child. I would memorize the book Parenting Your Powerful Child. These kids can flip flop. Keep in mind that the powerful child has all the same behavioral repertoire of the attention-getting child who is very good at getting positive attention by cuddling up and being sweet and saying kind things. But he can also create negative attention. And as he gets discouraged in your family from maybe mom and dad not being on the same page, he develops more maladaptive behavior by moving from simply an attention getting child to a powerful child. We have a brand new book out there just came out here in late spring, I guess it’s early summer, actually. It was released May 5th called Why Your Kids Misbehave, And What To Do About It. So if there’s two books, you may want to really focus in on, it’s Parenting Your Powerful Child, and Why Your Kids Misbehave In What To Do About It. Doug: What does she do when her four year old goes and destroys firstborn perfectionist’s Legos? It sounded there like she could overreact a little bit too when he violates the six year olds stuff. Dr. Leman: Again, for all perfectionists, let me just remind you it’s not a great attribute. It’s not one that you’re just going to get rid of. It’s one that you’re going to try to control as best you can. Again, I go back to the energy factor. A six year old has built this wonderful little edifice with her Legos. And four year old sees that as a challenge. What a wonderful thing to knock down, what a wonderful thing to pull apart. And in doing so he gets attention. So he feels the pressure, even at four, that he has to measure up to little firstborn daughter who’s probably pretty perfectionistic themself. And mom is at admitted perfectionist. So you can get behind this kid’s eyes and say, “How do I get to the top of the mountain in this family?” And remember when I talk about getting to the top of the mountain, I’m talking about a striving for superiority and that’s sibling rivalry. That’s competition among peers. Competition in the workplace, competition at home. So I don’t think this kid is a kid that you send off to some shrink who specializes in pediatrics or anything. I’d be the last thing I do with this kid. I would try to be more mindful of what’s going on in his eyes. And at four, you can talk with them. You can make up a story, for example. Tell this little guy a bedtime story that’s very similar to the life that this kid lives, where the punchline of the story is his kid misbehaved as a way of making sure that people around him love him. And there’s a conversation that goes, “Honey, mommy will always have plenty of love for you. I’ll never run out of love for you. My little love tank will never run on empty for you. I love you no matter what.” But at four you can actually talk to a kid. At two, sit down and reason with a kid, you might just spit in the wind. Four, you can talk with them. Doug: So for Sharon, you’re saying that four year olds, this is … he’s doing this to get attention. What does she need to be paying attention to that says, oops, this is maladapted behavior. I got to not pay this part off. Dr. Leman: This ought to be simple for her because as a perfectionist, she’ll be good at seeing flaws. So when she sees the behavior going awry, it’s important that she doesn’t tell herself he’ll stop. It’s important that she’ll tell herself that this is temporary. It’s important that she acts right away, gives him a look, tells him, “I’m very disappointed. Mommy’s very unhappy,” isolate him. Okay? And for that guy, he’s smart enough to … He’ll isolate for few minutes and then he’ll want to come out. And when he comes out, then appropriate things get said by the four year old and like what? Like he apologizes to his sister for tearing down her little tower, her little house, she was building whatever. So it’s just, it’s logical. It’s relational. And you repeat as is needed because this little guy, again, we talked about this the other day, we’re doing a podcast about the fact that kids’ personalities are formed in the first five years of life or so. So this guy is turning four if I remember, right. So about 80% of his personality is already formed. So that cement, we talked about children are like wet cement and they, they harden up and that cement’s getting pretty hard at age four. So there’s a need to do some work here. If that guy, if safety is a concern, I’d get one of those little wrist things and put on them when I take them out to a mall or I take them out to a store and there’s a street nearby, obviously. I’d put them on one of those little things that look like a curly telephone wire of years ago. Doug: Well, let me do the ebook promotion. And then I have another question for you, Dr. Leman. So this from our friends at Baker Revelle, they want to let us know that this September of 2020, for all of September 2020, you can get for $1.99, Have A New Sex Life By Friday. So wherever eBooks are sold, you can get that. And off of Amazon, I pulled this. This is from Martin. Martin says, “Yesterday, I read this book my wife ordered. You’d think that after decades of marriage, I would know all this kind of stuff, but I found that to my surprise that I did not. It’s never too late to learn. The book is about the basic differences between men and women. It’s about a total view of sex outside the bedroom, as well as inside. The right way for both spouses to satisfy these needs of the other is thoroughly discussed. Given the basic differences between men and women. It’s not automatic for them to get on the same page, but as the well known author describes it’s reasonably easy. And the rewards for great sex within marriage can be stupendous.” So since it was a guy, Andrea said, you read this one, Doug. So I’m reading this one today. Martin, thank you. And again, if you’re there and you’re like, “Oh, our sex life is not what we want.” This is a great book to help you out. Get it now, wherever eBooks are sold between now and the end of September. And now a no nonsense moment with Dr. Kevin Leman. Dr. Leman: Well, hi, everybody. For most of you, school bells are ringing. They’re about to ring for they have rung, but with COVID, it makes a difference, doesn’t it? You know what? Schools are so smart to offer parents an option. Yes. Online can work for a while, but I think the smartest schools are the ones who would invite students or scholars into the campuses. And by the way, schools provide all kinds of great stuff for kids like food, for special needs students. You can’t put special needs students, many of them on computers, and there’s economic factors as well. So parents, I know it’s upsetting. I know it can even be frightening. We don’t live in fear. Get your scholars back at school. Communicate, talk to your people. Every situation is different. I know to do your best. Doug: So Dr. Leman, you said something interesting. You said that you can actually talk to a four year old about this, right? Did I hear that right, Andrea? Andrea: Yeah. He said that at that age you could reason. Doug: So could we role play? Like you be the parent and I’d be the four year old? Like what would that reasoning look like to a four year old? Dr. Leman: Okay. Number one, you have to understand that the four year old is going to be very concerned when mom or dad expresses disappointment. Now, what are you disappointed in? You go ahead and you role play, and I’m going to show you the disappointment. Doug: So I’m the four year old and I walk in and I’m like, I’m walking over to my older sister Andrea’s sweet little perfect tower. And I just happened to walk by and I trip and I fall and I knocked them all over. All her Legos are now shattered. And as I lay on my back, I have a slice smile on me. Andrea: Okay. Douglas, Douglas, come here. Doug: Yeah, yeah. Andrea: Now, Douglas walks over. And I give Douglas the look and notice I’m calling him Douglas and not Douggie As most people call him. It’s Douglas. It’s formal.I might even say Douglas Arthur. Oh, “Dad is very unhappy. I’m very disappointed what you just did. I saw it with my own two eyes and please don’t tell me it was an accident because it wasn’t. I just want you to think about something. And I want you to think about it in your room. Was that a kind thing to do? And what should have you done and what should you do now? Come with me.” And I grab four-year-old’s arm or hand. I take him to his bedroom. I place him in his room and I pulled the door shut. Now, if the kid melts down, he might cry at that point. So be it, let him cry his little eyes out. I could care less at that point. That’s good for the washing out of the eyeballs. But he could also throw a temper tantrum where he’s angry. He’s hitting the floor. He kicks the door. Don’t say a word. I’m not going to say a word. I’m just going to let him melt down. He’s going to … he’ll stop. No kid continues to go on forever. Once he stops, you can wait a few minutes. You can go to the door, just tap on it gently and say, “Douggie.” Notice we’ve gone from Douglas to Douggie. “Douggie. Are you ready to come out?” If he says something, I’d open the door and take a look. You might open the door, he might be asleep on the rug. Who knows, but that’s how I would handle it. So it’s not a big long conversation where we’re going to go into depth and have this big, long conversation with a four year old. But you can reason with the four year old, you can tell the four year old exactly how you feel, what you observed. Notice we didn’t sugar coat anything. And then the followup to that is “Honey, you know sometimes kids will do something that’s not nice to other people to make themselves look better, to feel better. Do you think that’s a possibility? I’d love your opinion on that.” With a four year old, you can have a conversation like that. And they’ll usually say at that point, “I don’t know.” Well, you have to be smart here. They know when they say, I don’t know. They’re just really saying, I don’t want to tell you. They know, give them an opportunity, give them some time to think about it. I wouldn’t let that pass. In other words, I wouldn’t let the kids squirm of that. I’d follow that up later that afternoon, or maybe that evening when you’re tucking him in bed so that the display of inconsiderate behavior becomes a teachable moment as a child. So he realizes that mom and dad take this stuff seriously. And again, it’s important that it’s not just mom or just dad, that both mom and dad, if they’re available, assuming it’s not a single parent home, that they both have input on this. So the kids see mom and dad united and on the same page. The things that Sharon described was that he also would be really sweet and cuddly at times. So now say, he’s come out of that room and he’s ready to cuddle on the couch and read a book together or something. Is that a time that she should continue to display some disapproval or is it now time to … do you respond to that in a snuggly way? Dr. Leman: Yeah. He comes out in a cuddly mood. There’s nothing wrong with you loving on him and all that. That’s fine. But when we’re done and maybe you’ve read them a story. Say, “Honey, there’s something that I need to talk to you about. I know Dad said some things to you as he put you in the bedroom, but I want you to know that I feel exactly like Dad does. I was very disappointed to see that in you and we all make mistakes. We’ve all done things that are wrong.” So we’re entering into this is, is Kylie as we can, but we have a firmness about us. So we have a resolve about us, that the kid reads is this is important, pay attention, because again, he does not want an unhappy mommy or daddy. I guarantee you that’s 100%. Doug: So could you help clarify for some of our listeners and me that sometimes you say no words, just actions, but in this case we use some words. So what is the difference and what is the difference when we use words? Dr. Leman: Well, it’s a judgment call on the part of a parent. Sometimes you remain quiet. You take action. Other times words are very appropriate. And again, the age of the child, if it’s a two year old, it’s pick them up, isolate them, no words at all. Four year old, you can say some things and you’ll want to give that four year old, in a situation like this, think time. Where they can think about what they did again, we said, what was the right thing to do? And what could have you done better or whatever. In our schools, in Leman Academy of Excellence schools. We have seven of them in the country now. I always suggest to teachers, they have a thinking chair because sometimes a kid is doing something inappropriate where it’s taking away from the learning of most of the kids in the classroom and let them go sit in the thinking chair for awhile and just think it through. And when that child has a better way of dealing with that, they get to put their hand up. Teacher comes over to the desk and the kid gets an opportunity to say what he should have done differently. So it’s some kind of a learning experience. Then he joins the class once again. Doug: Well, I think as an outside observer, you can correct me, please correct me. It seems to be that the difference is that often we are berating the kid or yelling, “Stop. Don’t do that ever again.” Where you’re saying no, we talk about we’re disappointed. We don’t ask any questions. We display that we’re not content with it. And then the action follows. Where I think most like me, I would have been like, “What? You crazy child. Why are you doing this? Can’t you see what you done and apologize to your brother right now and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” You’re saying no, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t do that. You say you’re disappointed. Put them in the room. So there’s a few words about your disappointment. And I put them in the room. Is that right? Is that the difference? Dr. Leman: Yeah. And again, I think an admonition to all of our mommys and dads listening, don’t make this bigger than it is. Just deal with that situation. Okay. Don’t read into it. Oh my goodness. This kid’s going to be in jail by the time he’s 18. I mean that little lovable four year old, he can be a terror. I can see it as she describes him. I mean, this is a guy that’s, he’s ready to go. There’s a kid that’s going to have, he’s got a lot of energy. And so he needs a way of dealing with that energy in a positive, healthy way. So there’s a young kid that’s probably, she’s a ball. It just to him, it says kick me. He’s going to be probably athletic. And he’s probably going to be very physical oriented and about everything he does in life. Doug: Well, Sharon, I love your question and appreciate you being such a conscientious, great mom. Like honestly, you can just hear it in your voice that you’re loving that kid and trying to, trying to do the right thing. So kudos to you for investing. And I think Dr. Leman’s encouragement to you is this four year old is going to be okay and you’re doing well. Dr. Leman: Yeah. Doug, these parents that call in these are good parents. These aren’t flaky, far out, weird … I’m telling you, trust me, I’m an expert on parents. And some of them are dumb as mud. They don’t know some of the basics. They really don’t. But I’m trying to think of an exception. I can’t think of one that we had the call in with a question that wasn’t a good mom or a good dad. Who’s trying their best to rear their kids in such a way as they become productive citizens someday. So we’re just happy always to hear your concerns. And if we give you something to think about, or we give you a resource, use those resources. I have people say, “I’ve read that book four times, four times, and I still get a little bit more out of it.” It’s like my favorite all time movie, The Three Amigos. I’ve watched it so many times, but I continue to find little innuendos, the little things that I find funny that sort of alluded me the first time. So be conscientious. You got a job to do. It’s going to pay off. And those early ages, those formative years are important, parents. So I’m glad to know you take that job seriously. God bless you for everything you do. Doug: Well. And so for the reason I wanted to also add that is that I don’t want anyone that leaves a message to not because they’re like, “Oh, I’m going to sound like an idiot.” No, you sound fabulous. So if you have that question that you just like, “Man, he’s never addressed this,” or “I wish he would do this.” Go to birthorderguide.com/ … like this episode is 329. You can go to 329 at the bottom there’s a microphone. You can click there and leave an audio question for us. And we would love, love, love to answer it for you. And you sound fabulous. So please think about doing that. And also between now and the end of September of 2020, you can get Have A New Sex Life By Friday for a buck 99, wherever eBooks are sold. Well, it was great to be with you today and on Dr. Leman’s birthday when this is released and we look forward to the next time that we get to be with you and add to that parenting toolbox that you can love those kids more and more. Andrea: Have a good week. Doug: Take care. Bye-bye. Andrea: Bye-bye.

When it comes to discipline and encouragement, are you focussing on your kid or the outcome of their actions? Listen in to learn more about how to focus on the act instead of the actor on this episode of Have a New Kid by Friday Podcast.   **Special Offer– Aug 1 – 31: Under the Sheets ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**     Show Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Produced by Unmutable Transcript Doug: You are so lazy. Look at this room. This is a pig stye. Is that the way we’re supposed to talk to our kids? Is there something wrong in what I said? Sounds good to me, but I fear what Dr. Leman’s going to say as we ask him the question, “What do you mean when we say focus on the act, not the actor.” Hi, I’m Doug Terpening. Andrea: And I’m Andrea. Doug: And we are so glad that you are with us today and adding to your parenting abilities. If this happens to be your first time, I want to let you know this is for your education and entertainment purposes only. If the subject matter raises any concerns for you or your child, please go seek a local professional for help. Well, Dr. Leman, I am excited to ask this question because recently I have been struggling with this concept on how to focus on the act and not the actor because I can feel my ire growing towards some of my children’s behaviors. So what do you mean when you say focus on the act and not the actor? Dr. Leman: Well, it’s almost a knee jerk reaction for many of us as parents who grew up in authoritarian homes because our parents really didn’t realize it, that they were being demeaning to us when they said things like, “How could you be so stupid? I mean, didn’t you see it sitting there? Why didn’t you have smarts to pick it up? What am I, your maid? Am I your slave?” Dr. Leman: We’ve talked down to kids for centuries. So, what we try to teach parents by a way of our podcasts is there’s a difference in making it personal. When you say you’re so dumb or you’re so stupid or you’re so… Rather than focus on the action itself, just saying, “Wow, that room needs some attention. That is so much better.” Okay, so you’re focusing on the act. When the kid cleans the room and it’s spic and span perfect clean, and you say, “Wow, that room looks great.” There’s a difference in saying, “Wow, that that room looks great,” and, ” You are the best boy in the entire world, I have never seen a cleaner room than that.” We personalize it. And that says to a kid, okay, mom and dad likes me. They internalize that. They take it personally because I cleaned my room. Dr. Leman: So it becomes a qualified I love you. I appreciate you. Rather than just flat out commenting about how nice the room looks. Well, I bet that feels good to have that job done. Congratulations. That’s encouragement. So what we’re really talking about here, we talk about the act that we tell people, focus on the act, not the actor that helps you separate that. What we’re really talking about is the difference between praise and encouragement. And I’ve said many times, God is worthy of your praise. I want to praise God. I have no problem with that. I do that in my daily life, but your son, your daughter, your husband, your wife, is not worthy of praise. What they need is vitamin E, which is encouragement. So that focus on the act versus the actor is just one of those little thumbnail things you keep. It’s one of those little pocket notes, so to speak, for reference as you go through life and you ask yourself what I just said, did that focus on the act or the actor? And it’s hard to do that because we all grew up in a praising reward, punishment society. And now we’re asking people to look at things differently. So it’s not easy to do, Doug or Andrea. Andrea: So here’s a real-life opportunity too, for me to see if I did this right the other day. We recently had to remind one of our kids the chores weren’t getting done. And they knew what the chores were, they had decided whose chores were what, and this one child wasn’t following through. And so we had a little talk about, okay, who’s chores, blah, blah, blah. We notice this isn’t getting done. And then I noticed that they really picked up, and they’ve been doing their chores regularly, and no reminders. And so I thought, I should go and thank them. And I went to them and I said, “Hey, I just wanted to say, thank you. I’ve noticed that you’ve been brushing the dog. You’ve been taking the trash out. And I just realized I haven’t said anything to you. And I really wanted to thank you for stepping up and taking care of these things.” Did I do that wrong? Dr. Leman: Five-star. Andrea: Okay. How is that not focusing on the actor? Dr. Leman: You’re focusing on the job that got done. You noticed that the chores are done. You’ve noticed you’ve been brushing the dog. So it’s the act. The chores are the acts. They’re getting done and all you’re commenting on you. By the way, I never really respond. I’ve seen a difference. That’s encouragement. The kids saying mom and dad recognize that I’m pulling my fair share. Now, just for the sake of our listeners, what kind of chores does that child do? We know they brush the dog, they take the garbage out. What else? Andrea: Well, they have dishes on a rotation and they have to clean the floors and the bathroom on a rotation with the other kids. Plus he has some pigs to take care of. Doug: We’ve actually applied your chore thing, so we’re not even fully sure of what the kids’ chores are supposed to do because they make them themselves. So if there’s a problem, we bring it up, but I want to follow up on something. Andrea, you would say, being vulnerable for you, isn’t this nice of me to do this for you? Andrea: Oh, thanks, Honey. Doug: You betcha. Andrea: Yeah. Doug: Giving encouragement or affirmation is not… Andrea: It’s not my highest gift. Yeah. Doug: It can be difficult. Andrea: Yeah. Doug: So what did you notice after you did this for him? Andrea: Well, first of all, I saw him just kind of melt. Doug: In a bad way or a good way? Andrea: No, in a really good way, like the smile and the sense that wow, mom recognized that I’m doing this. So, I could tell that he was very happy. And then secondly, for me, it just reaffirmed that I can go and say something to them and that it means a lot if I just take 30 seconds and go and say, “Hey, I’ve noticed, and thank you.” And that it actually means something. It’s powerful. Dr. Leman: Yeah. Well, I’ll give you an example. We’ve all been affected by the Corona virus, and we have seven schools, and by order of the governor and the state Board of Education, Arizona, like many other States, just close their schools for the school year. And so we had remote learning going on, but one of the things I’m so proud of is that our teachers really rose to the occasion. They made special effort to connect to the scholars on an individual basis. Calls to the home, picking up the old honker, and calling. And of course, with our remote learning, the kids were able to see their friends or schoolmates, which was encouraging to the kids. But as one of our brightest people on our staff said, “During this tough time for all of us, what families are going to remember about Leman Academy of Excellence is that there was a personal connection.” Dr. Leman: They’re going to remember that kid who had a birthday, he went to the door and he found his birthday pencil. We give a kid a pencil on his birthday and a little crown. The teacher delivers it to the door. It’s going the extra mile. And that’s what kids and families are going to remember about these tough times is how people within schools did what? They use the power of the spoken word and the written note. Dr. Leman: I’m a nut on handwritten notes. I think that’s a wonderful way to do business today is to get yourself good at giving that personal note. And it just says, hey, we care about you. And so back to our conversation, your kids, parents, need to give back to the family. So just like the interpreting, they have chores that have to be done, and everybody helps. Everybody pulls the rope in the right direction. There are too many parents who do everything. Your kids live in fantasy world because they do nothing. They don’t even pick up their room. There’s parents who pick their rooms up for their kids every day, make their bed, put the toys away. They do everything. These are the kids that are going to enter the job market someday and the boss is going to say why don’t we keep this guy around? Doug: So, Dr. Leman, how about when it comes to discipline or when you have displeasure to your kids? Does focus on the act, not the actor apply? Dr. Leman: Sure. It’s easy to demean a kid for behavior, or forgetting things, or whatever, but no, it’s a consequence. And just an honest statement that we function as a family. When you don’t do simple things that we ask you to do, that makes it tougher on somebody else in the family. The discipline might be later that evening, the kid wants to go out or do something, and you give him a little vitamin N. No, we’re not going anywhere. You’ve thrown them a curve ball, there’s no warnings, but it goes back to the fact, hey, you know what? You really need to be a little better at listening to what we ask you to do. We don’t ask you to do a lot, quite frankly, probably don’t ask you to do enough, but when you don’t do simple things we ask, it affects the whole family. So you’re not going anywhere tonight. And I was suggesting you just think about the next time you get asked to do something by your mom, that you might respond differently. So you’re not freaking out. You’re not named calling, but you’re being an authority. Doug: Yeah. I want to come back in how this has helped me even at work in just a moment, but I want to make sure I get to the parenting advice moment, and the Reveille book moment that they are given away, Have a New Sex Life by Friday, between now and the end of the month of September of 2020 for a $1.99. So those of you that want to see your sex life improve, as well as your relationship, it’s not just about sex, it’s about more than that. Between now and the end of September for a $1.99. And now, a no-nonsense parenting moment with Dr. Kevin Leman. Dr. Leman: An unhappy child is a healthy child. Think about it. Is the goal of being a parent to create a happy child? Every time I speak to an audience, I’m greeted with parents who say, “Oh, Dr. Leman, I’m so glad you’re here because we to want happy, happy, happy children.” Hey folks, there’s times your kid needs to be unhappy. Why? Because they just obeyed you, they talked back, they were dragged on their sister or their brother, they stole something. So the goal, as a parent, is not to create a happy child, but a child that grows, matures. Toward what? Toward adulthood. Remember, raising an adult, not a child. I’m Dr. Kevin Leman. Doug: So Dr. Leman, I know this is just a parenting podcast. The focus of it is, yet this is one of the concepts that’s really helped me out quite a bit is because I used to always give false praise to people. You’re a great person. It’s great to be around you. And Andrea, and you both, have said those are empty words. But to say, “Hey, this meal was really great, Honey, I appreciate that,” Is much deeper. And at work I’ve learned, both positively and negatively, to focus on the positive, specific acts people do. And when I get frustrated with people to focus on the specific negative things that they do. How can we help parents begin to look for those? How do you help a parent think about, look for the positive acts that kids have been doing so you can give them encouragement? How do we change that mindset? Dr. Leman: You get good at catching yourself. You learn by your mistakes and you learn to correct those mistakes. I go back to St. Paul who says to us, he says, “I tell myself not to do these things. And yet I do them.” St. Paul, he had a problem with it. So if Doug Terpening or Kevin Leman has a problem with it, I can see that. It’s difficult. It is a mindset, but it is a retraining of how we think. The false praise thing is ridiculous. People see through false praise. The kid in a basketball game misses the rim. It doesn’t even hit the rim on a shot, and the parents are yelling, “Great job.” Really? Great effort. Sometimes it’s best not to say anything. Failures are part of life. I think, getting people to be emotionally, sort of matter of fact, when failure or things go wrong, probably helps. Something like, “I see your room still need some work.” And you’ll walk away. Dr. Leman: Is that helpful? I think so. But notice there’s sort of a flat tone in there. You’re just making a statement. The statements help. It describes a situation that needs work, but you’re not adding how many times do I have to tell you, blah, blah, blah. Because as soon as you go down that rabbit hole, the kids are going to just shut you off. In fact, they know about everything you’re going to say before you say it, to be quite frank about it. Dr. Leman: So I think it is a mindset. And I think as husband or wife worked together as a team to help each other, you both have strengths and weaknesses in a marriage. Try to help each other to create an environment that’s more conducive to good wholesome family living. That ought to be a goal, I would think, for most of us. Doug: And for all of you out there, I think what Andrea and I have experienced is we used to be more critical-like towards our kids. And as we’ve switched to more Vitamin E and pointing out the good, it’s amazing the change. Huh, Andrea? Andrea: Well, I think it pulls out the positive too. Like in my little scenario, I can’t help but believe that it’s going to encourage him to keep brushing the dog because he’s like, “Oh, somebody noticed. They care.” Doug: Yep. Yep. Well, for all of you out there, I would encourage you to focus on the act and not the actor and be aware of false praise versus real encouragement out there. And it does bless your kids. We all love it, right? We all love a real encouragement, even as adults. Why would our kids not love to hear it from us too? So, thank you, Dr. Leman. And a quick reminder, again, you can get the book, Have a New Sex Life by Friday for a $1.99 between now and the end of the month. Well, we love being with you and adding to your toolbox. It was great being with you and adding to your parenting toolbox so you can love those kids more and more. Andrea: Have a good one. Doug: Take care. Andrea: Bye-bye. Doug: Bye-bye.

It’s time for another Ask Dr. Leman: “How do I get my 10-year-old to stop lying?” Listen in for Dr. Leman’s advice on how to deal with your kid’s compulsive lying on this episode of Have a New Kid by Friday Podcast.   **Special Offer– Aug 1 – 31: Under the Sheets ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**     Show Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Produced by Unmutable Transcript Doug: No, I didn’t eat that cookie. Nope. I didn’t take that piece of pie. I don’t know where your five bucks that was in your wallet, Mom. No idea. Do you have a liar on your hands and you don’t know what to do about it? Well, that’s the question that Britta asked Dr. Leman that we get to ask for you today. How do I deal with a liar? Hi, I’m Doug Trepaning. Andrea: And I’m Andrea. Doug: And we are really glad we’re here, and I’m not lying about that. I am telling the truth. I am really glad that you’re here. And welcome. If this happens to be your first time, I want to let you know, this is for your education and entertainment purposes only, and the subject matter raise any concerns for you or your child. So Dr. Leman, Andrea is always angry. She’s always breaking things. She’s always spending money frivolously. She just doesn’t care about anybody’s heart. So I’m just telling you, that’s the way she is. Dr. Leman: You just want me to reaffirm that you married way up and you have a lovely wife. Doug: No, I’m just giving you an example of a liar. Andrea: Oh. Dr. Leman: Well, I’m quoting myself from my own marriage seminars, where I’m talking about the wonderful Mrs. Uppington, who I’ve been married to forever, and I’ll tell people straight out, she lies. Doug: What? Dr. Leman: She lies all the time. Well, I’ll just be a few minutes. That’s a lie. She’s never been just a few minutes. She’s running into a store, “Oh I’ll just be a second.” Oh yeah. Right. An hour later, she comes out. That’s not the kind of lie we’re talking about today, are we? Doug: No, we’re not. I will hit this button and you will all hear Britta’s question about her 10 year old and lie. Here we go, Dr. Leman. Britta: Hello. I’m new to the podcast and new to the parenting method. I’ve just read the How to Have a New Child by Friday book. And I have a question about this podcast, which was about lying and stealing. I have a 10 year old son who tells little lies and it’s really easy to tell when he’s lying, because he looks terrified while he’s doing it, [inaudible] . So he has an easy tell. In the past I’ve said calmly, “I can tell that you’re lying to me right now. Would you like to tell me the truth?” And he will always tell me the truth and it’s usually about something silly. I’m just not sure how to help him stop the behavior, because this is not setting him up for a good life. A little bit about [inaudible] he was adopted at five years old from China. So he was definitely in a situation where he needed to lie to survive. He is no longer in that situation. It’s been five years at home with us and I’m just not sure how to help him be successful without telling lies. Dr. Leman: Wow. Well, let me say two things. I want to go back to your introduction, Doug, where you say, “We really are glad to be here.” People should know that we started our podcast today at 6:00 AM. So we’re getting Doug and Andrea out of bed at 6:00 AM. We’re now on the same time zone. So we get up early in the morning to deliver these to you. So when he says we’re really happy to be here, he ain’t lying is what I’m telling you. He’s telling the truth. We’re trying to make sense out of life in a way that sometimes puts a smile on your face and it does make the medicine go down a little easier. So thank you, Britta, for your good question. And let me start by saying, I believe this was the first time on all of our podcasts, where I’ve heard the mom give the golden answer in her question. Dr. Leman: I say the golden answer. Here’s a guy, 10 years old, that lies like a trooper. Okay. And it’s obviously learned behavior, but mom is so smart because she comes around and says, do you want to tell me the truth? And then of course, you’ll see some drama and [inaudible] will owe to it. I mean, in many ways, that is the golden answer. That’s the best thing that she can do when he lies. She understands, and let me just reinforce it that he learned in China, all kinds of adaptive behavior that got him through life as miserable as it was there. Dr. Leman: Now here’s the part that I need to underscore. And I want everybody to understand this. By age five or six, a child’s personality is formed. I’ve said for years, that children are like wet cement. What do I mean by that? Well, you ever see anybody work on a sidewalk or lay cement? It moves, it’s thick, but it moves, it’s fluid, but it doesn’t take that long for that cement to what? Harden up. And so it is with personality development. You’ve got a two year old, about 40% of their personality is already formed. A three year old, 60%. A four year old, 80%. Here we are at five. So basically this guy’s personality was formed before he ever laid eyes on his mom who loves him. That’s what we’re dealing with here. It’s sort of like growing up right handed and someone says, “All right, now you’re left handed. You’re going to eat left-handed, you’re going to do everything left-handed.” Now, can you imagine how difficult that would be? This is even more difficult than that. Dr. Leman: All his behavior is automatic. It’s automatic. He’s not thinking I’m going to lie. He just lies. And again, lying is one of the toughest things to deal with behaviorally, with a kid who comes from normal circumstances. Now, again, I certainly don’t want to step on Britta’s toes here at all, because people who adopt children are marvelous, heart-filled, caring people. My daughter, Hannah Eloge, E-L-O-G-E. It looks like elog pronounced elo. Hannah has a company in Chicago, Illinois called Kindred and Company. K-I-N-D-R-E-D. And she helps adoptive parents. And she’s got an organization that’s awesome. By the way, if ever thinking of adopting, she is somebody to be in contact with. She can help you. But this is what I have to say this, because there’s people who are thinking of adopting, Britta, right now. And my advice to you is to adopt infants. Dr. Leman: That’s number one, priority. Number two, adopt a child as young as possible. And the reason for that is right back to what I said about that wet cement and how it hardens and personality forms. So when you guys opened your heart and your home to this little five-year-old in all honesty, you probably didn’t know exactly what you were getting yourself into. That’d be my guess. Maybe you did, maybe you were well-informed and realize that when you reach out to love this little guy, he’s going to bite you. That is the best prediction that I can give you about a kid in this situation. You reach out to love him and he bites you. Why would that be? Because he doesn’t see himself as loving. So he creates situations in his life where people will not like him. Does that make sense? And then when you follow through in an inappropriate way and call him names or degrade him or anything else, he just tells himself, “See, I was right. They don’t really love me”. Dr. Leman: So when we talk about the effort that you and your husband have to give toward this kid, I mean, we’re talking Herculean type of effort on your part because your flesh, your carnal self there’s part of you that will respond in a negative way is naturally is he will respond in his natural learned behavior ways, behavioral ways. You see what I’m saying? It’s really a tough … I told Doug just before I said, what’s our next question. He told me. And I said, “Wow, this is a tough one. This is extremely tough.” But it seems to me though, like I say, you came up with a golden answer right off the bat. You know he’s going to lie. You’re learning about his personality. He needs to lie. That’s a need he has, he lies. And then he starts feeling bad about it because of the environment. And this is what you have to hear in spades, that you created for him, because he’s beginning to feel loved and accepted. It’s just that it runs against his foundation. Doug: How do you help somebody who says it’s against my foundation? My identity of myself, that I’m not a bad person, but I can be loved. How does Britta do that? How does she break that? Dr. Leman: Well, she’s not going to completely break that. This is something this kid’s going to struggle with for a long time. Like I said, the best thing she can do behaviorally is she recognized it’s a lie. Okay. She realizes why he lies. And she says, very pragmatically, very matter of factly, “Honey, you want to tell me the truth about that?” It’s a choice. I think you’d tell a kid straight out, “Hey, you have my permission to lie. I understand it. It’s just not good for you. It’s not healthy for you. It’s not good for us. But if you want to continue lying, we can do that. But honey, I think you’re going to be a lot better off by telling the truth. So when you lie, just realize that mama bear knows you’re lying. And there’s always an open invitation for you to tell me the truth. Because if you tell me the truth, I’m always going to be warm. I’m always going to be receptive. I’m going to be understanding and together we’ll get through this.” So now you’re sort of forming a team. The team is against lying, but we understand the lying. We have the diagnosis, we know the problem. So I think Britta is really handling this very well, much better than most parents would. Doug: So this is surprising to me that you are, you are actually saying the problem is that this kid doesn’t feel loved and you’re not using reality discipline for them. You’re actually saying, “No, the best thing we can do is get this kid to feel loved.” Is that what you’re saying? Dr. Leman: Yeah. It’s inconsistent. That’s why a kid who was adopted at a later age will almost always strike out. There was a kid, I’ll never forget the kid as long as I live, she was 10 years old. Okay. Adopted at age 10 from China who came with cigarette burns on her forearms. Okay. I mean, she drove … This is a couple that was extremely, I’m going to say religious. Okay. Religious doesn’t mean in a Christian faith, a Christian but they were very religious. Let’s just let it go at that. They were your stereotypical go to Sunday services, go to midweek service, very devoted people to their faith. Well, that 10 year old was the key to them separating and then getting a divorce that 10 year old destroyed that marriage. Dr. Leman: It created so much stress on everybody in the family. But do you understand what a child’s view of life could be if they grew up abused for the first 10 years of their life? I mean, let’s use this example. Here’s a kid that’s brought up in a, we’ll just call it Evil Land, and everything around them is evil and everything around them is destructive and they’re abused. And then you send them to the happiest place on earth and they get to live in Disneyland. They get to watch the Disney parade every day. They have unlimited first priority seating on any ride. Dr. Leman: My question to you is, does the kid’s negative behavior that he learned in Evil Land change when he goes to Disneyland? No, it doesn’t. When someone’s nice to him, he’s going to think, “I wonder what they’re up to. This is a setup. What are they after?” He or she is not going to be able to grasp the reality of loving hands around them because they’ve never had loving hands around them. So to quote a book I did on early childhood memories years ago, the little boy or little girl you once were, guess what? You still are. You’re curious about somebody in just conversation over coffee, say to your girlfriend or whoever you’re having lunch with. “Hey, I’m just curious. What kind of a little kid were you?” “What do you mean?” “Well, like between the ages of five and 12, what words would you use to describe your personality?” Sit back and listen. Because whatever those words are, you’re hearing a description, a fairly accurate description of who they are as an adult. Doug: So we got to take a turn here. I think in the lying section, I want to come back to the line, but for all of us that are listening to this, that grew up under those circumstances that were terrible. What hope do we have to change? Right? If we grew up in those abusive settings and whatnot, give me how do I not, how do I not reproduce it? Andrea: Is there any hope? Dr. Leman: If you really believe that God is who he said he is and you can have a relationship with your maker in a personal way where you learn to trust in God in all things, you have a chance of turning that around. Now there’s a caution there, there’s a footnote there. That carnal self will always be a part of your life. There’ll always be that tendency to go back to that earlier learned behavior. But if you want change for you, there it is. Now let’s say you’re married to one of these people. You married this woman, Doug. She is delightful. She’s this she’s that. But she came from H-E double hockey sticks. Her family was as bad as they come. Well, you’ve married that family, right? Doug: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Dr. Leman: So you’re starry eyed. You’re in love. She had kisses sweeter than wine to name an old song. You’re in love. Well, I got news for you. You’re going to be tested because as you reach out to love that woman, she’s going to reject your love in many ways. It might be a failure of her to be intimate with you in the bedroom. She might do things that are counterproductive to a good, healthy person. She might, for example, gain excessive weight as a way of keeping people away from her. I mean, there’s all kinds of ways that people can go here, but I’m just telling you that when you marry someone that comes out of a really tough environment, you’re going to pay for that to a certain degree. How much you pay for it depends upon what kind of honest communication that you and your mate are able to do. I wrote that book, The Intimate Connection, any of you who have suffered through bad families, that’s a good book for you to read The Intimate Connection, puts a great challenge to all of us. So again, there’s a lot of appendages to this topic we’re talking about today. Doug: Yeah. And it’s not usually lighthearted. This one’s pretty heavy and serious about the realities of looking at what we came from. Yeah. Dr. Leman: Yeah. Well, I love the word indelible, Doug, indelible. And you’ve heard me say the indelible imprint, a parent puts on a kid. Well, I choose the word indelible because it doesn’t go away. Doug: Wouldn’t you also agree though, that part of the reason we do these podcasts and these books is even though that indelible print is there, the more that you get, new ways of thinking and actually beginning to live those out, you begin to start to change that story a little bit about who you are as a little kid that you begin to say, “Oh wait, I loved. And I got love back. Okay. It’s a little safe. Oops. I got hurt. I got to go back.” But the more that you can get those positive things, you begin to step out or not? Or is that just me hopefully hoping. Dr. Leman: Yeah. And I’d agree with you. And the reason I agree with you is because that self concept that you had from that terrible environment you grew up in was based not upon truth, but upon lies. So you’ve learned to be the person you are. So the question is, can you learn your way into a new behavior? In one of my books, I talked about thinking your way to behavioral change. And you can think your way to behavioral change. Is it easy? No, because your first inclination is to do what you’ve mastered in your early years and that is develop maladaptive behavior for yourself. Doug: Wow. Well, this is a nice light topic today for all of you out there. So yeah, I have one more question about lying when we come back. The thing I want to make sure I get to is that again, our friends over at Baker Ravel have offered us a great ebook Under The Sheets for a $1.99, between now and the end of August of 2020. So Under The Sheets for $1.99, I know last time you talked about what’s in the book, but the question I had for you on this one was is this just for healthy relationships? Or is this for people who are in struggling relationships? Dr. Leman: No, it’s for everybody really. I mean, most people are ill informed when it comes to sex. More people have sexual hang ups than any other type of hang-ups in my biased opinion. So this is a fun book to read. You can’t read a few pages without getting frisky. I mean, since it’s August, we’re talking about those hot nights, where you just have a sheet on, let me suggest it’s going to get hotter if you read this book, this book tells it like it is. You’ll like it. A buck 99, download it today. Doug: Alrighty. So there you go. That’s who this book is for. So Dr. Leman, we should go back to lying, huh, Andrea, is that where we should go back to? Andrea: I was just thinking, so what is Britta’s approach now? Is there anything she needs to do differently or is her asking? All right, can you tell me the truth? Do you want to tell me the truth? Is that doing that, or is there something more? Dr. Leman: No, basically that’s what she needs to do, but I would suggest to her there’s times where he says something and she might just say, “Well, I’m disappointed to hear that, but you know what the rules are. I’m always willing and able to hear the real truth if you’re interested,” and walk away. So you opened the door, you said you’re disappointed. And you are. You’re just telling them the truth because that battle gets won not by mom. That battle gets won by a 10 year old beginning to realize that his life has been built upon lies and untruth. He was, he learned that he wasn’t worth anything in China. He was valueless. And now he’s come to a home where he’s loved and it’s foreign. It’s going to take a while. These aren’t things that you read Dr. Leman’s book and you got a new kid by Friday. That’s not the case with these kids. This is a long term investment. And hopefully that relationship will continue to get better. And if that relationship continues to get better every year, you need to be real happy. Andrea: I thought that was interesting that you advised her to even say, “You have permission to lie, but I know you’re lying.” And it reminds me of your pocket phrase about taking your wind out of their sales or whatever, your sail out of their wind. Because now there’s no point, but he also realizes that she’s on his side. Dr. Leman: Yeah. Removing your sails from a child’s wind. So you’re not going to get sucked into it. Okay. Parent, you know it’s a lie. I always tell parents, if you see a kid do something, you see him steal something, you see him hit his sister. You don’t go in there and act like you’re dumb. You said, you say, “I saw you steal that candy bar. I saw you hit your sister. We need to talk about that.” You don’t walk in there and say, “Did you hit your sister?” “No, I didn’t hit my sister.” Well, what did you just do? You set the kid up a lie. You saw him hit him. So I asked the question, did you? Doug: And then to wrap things up, Dr. Leman, what hope can we give those who went down the path of from zero to five, the wet cement got set and they were in a traumatic, terrible upbringing situations. What would you say to someone like that to say, “Oh yeah, I do see how I’ve reproduced what I was from my childhood.” What would you give them as action steps and hope for them to be able to change. Dr. Leman: Well, I think the best tip I could give that person is just to be mindful of self-talk, talk to yourself. The movie, one of my all time favorite movies, What About Bob, baby steps. The great bestselling book by the fictional Dr. Leo, Marvin Baby Steps. I laugh every time I say that. This isn’t funny. I shouldn’t be laughing, but to try to get people to see that they’re going to progress in not lightning-like manner, they’re going to progress three steps forward two back. They are going to be baby steps, but with a strong faith in God and supportive people around you, you can make it. Dr. Leman: But for that person that’s struggling, this is the person that’s been hurt. You come to a situation. You’re asked a question. Your first response is what? To tell a lie. That’s the old self. Now there has to be a commitment and a goal that’s driven internally by you. You who’ve been hurt by life. Okay. Do I really want to just keep playing that game or do I want to do something brave? Do I want to do something different? So, okay. Here’s a situation I’m asked something and this time I say well to the person that’s asking the question, “Just give me a few. I just want to think about this for a minute.” If it does that find, do that, think it through and then come back and tell the truth. Dr. Leman: And it becomes self-motivating behavior when you show yourself you’re capable of telling the truth. You’re capable of exhibiting adaptive, positive behavior, as opposed to negative behavior. It’s yours. It’s on you. It’s not magic dust that gets sprinkled over your head. It’s a tough decision. Dr. Leman: For the woman who grew up, not feeling good about herself for a lot of different reasons, I wrote a book once called Smart Women Know When to Say No, and it encourages women to stand up and start telling the people that are in their life the truth about how they really feel, because some of them are what I call negative pleasers. So they go through life, just trying to please everybody else. And after a while, that gets really old. And so I talk in that book about developing no power where a woman says, “No, I don’t feel like doing that. I don’t want to do that.” And bit by bit, it builds a woman’s self-esteem to where she can start feeling healthy about who she is. But it always gets back to baby steps, little bit at a time. Huge gigantic 180 degree turnarounds are very, very rare when it comes to people who have learned to be one person. And then someone’s asking them to be a different type of personality. Doug: Thank you, Dr. Leman, we well, and I would just say, I grew up in a great home. Sure we had our issues here and there. But when you talk about being able to connect to your creator, I would say the most transformative parts of my life is realizing that my creator loves me, has done more for me than I ever would have dreamed it did for me. So, and that’s a really cool thing. Doug: For the rest, for Britta, thank you for your honest question about your 10 year old and our hearts ache with you. And we say kudos to you for adopting that beautiful kid and loving on him and giving him a chance. So thank you a ton. And thank you for your question. Those that are also hearing all this, I hope you hear Dr. Leman’s encouragement that you can change. It’s going to be slow, so don’t beat yourself up, but you can, you can do it. Get that group around you that will help and support you as well. So thank you for that. Again, if you want to get Under the Sheets, you can get it now between now and the end of August of 2020 for a buck 99. And as always, we love your questions. We love trying to help add to that parenting toolbox that you can love those kids more and more and more. Andrea: Thanks Dr. Leman for tackling this question and have a good week, everyone. Doug: Take care. Bye-bye.

Are you reacting or responding to your kid’s bad behavior? Learn how to take some of the emotion out of parenting on this episode of Have a New Kid by Friday Podcast.   **Special Offer– Aug 1 – 31: Under the Sheets ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**     Show Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Produced by Unmutable Transcript Doug: Johnny, I can’t believe that you had the audacity to walk through this house in muddy boots. Sally, I cannot believe that the dishes are not done again. How many times do I have to tell you put the dishes away? Well, are you responding? Are you reacting as a parent? What does that mean when Dr. Leman tells us, “Respond, don’t react.” That’s the question we get to ask Dr. Leman. Hi, I’m Doug Terpening. Andrea: And I’m Andrea. Doug: And we are so glad that you are here. And I’m so glad that you guys are responding by listening and downloading and passing this on to others. And I just want to let you know if this is your first time here, welcome. This is for your education and entertainment purposes only. If this subject matter raises any concerns for you or your child, please go seek a local professional for help. Well, Dr. Leman, Andrea has a terrible problem of reacting. She just is always blowing up around here. I mean, just the simplest little thing and she’s yelling- Andrea: What are you talking about? Doug: Throwing dishes. It’s really embarrassing. That’s why we buy the cheap dishes around here now. Dr. Leman: It’s hard to sell that [inaudible] to people who listen to our podcast know that’s a lie. You’re a lying dog is what you are. You married Ms. Sweetness herself. Doug: Yes. Andrea: Well, I have to say that this is probably one of the most memorable teachings that Dr. Leman has given us over the years is the idea of responding and not reacting. Now, I can’t say that I always put it into practice when the moment arises, but this is really valuable, so I’m excited to go back over it with him. Doug: I agree with you, because it’s probably given me more freedom in the moment, especially to be calm and all of that. So Dr. Leman, we’re getting new people listening to this podcast all the time and some people have listened, but this is one of the best ones. Andrea: Gold. Doug: Yeah. Help explain, what does respond, don’t react mean? Dr. Leman: Well, let me start with saying, we all grew up in a reacting world. We all grew up for the most part in an environment that was steeped in authoritarianism, which basically, and I’m going to go back to the basics, it means I’m better than you are. When you sit in judgment of other people, you’re really putting yourself way above that person. You’re talking down to that person and that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in business relationships, in educational environments, in any type of personal relationship you have with your friends. When you assume a higher position, you’re going to incur the wrath of the person who feels talked down to. So again, we’re all authoritarian. We’re all reactors. Now, over the course of time, a lot of us have come to an understanding that I’m not better than anybody else. In a spiritual sense, the book of Romans, Roman something, I can’t remember what it is off hand, but it basically says that God loves us all. He doesn’t see us differently. In traditional society, we have seen people differently for centuries. In North America, white people were better than people of color. Adults were better than children. Protestants were better than Catholics. I mean, you could go on and on, men better than women. I mean, there was a hierarchy, an authoritarian hierarchy that spurned this kind of thinking that I’m better than you are, so I can sit in judgment, which got us to a point where we were all reacting. Well, we grew up as kids, your parents weren’t insightful and weren’t great responders. They were yellers. They were screamers. They were reminders. They were great at putting people down. In fact, children were to be seen and not what? Heard. So we have a history and that history began to change probably back in the 60s would be my guess, where children began to view themselves as social equals to adults. So if you’re talking down to kids, I mean, everybody take your left hand and put it above your right hand by about a 14, 15 inch difference. Okay, there you are. In your left hand, you’re talking down to your child, okay? Here’s the problem. Now raise your right hand to be, even with your left hand, your kid is not listening at a lower level, is he? He or she is listening at the same level you are because they view themselves as social equals. In fact, legally in our society today, I would suggest to you that kids have more rights than parents do. Parental rights have been chipped away for years. And I think that’s because we have grossly misinterpreted what authority is. Authority isn’t authoritarian. Authority is authority. It’s being in that midpoint between the permissive parent and the authoritarian parent. So that being said, we’ve tried to teach people here on our podcast to learn to respond to children rather than react to children. Because when we react, we react emotionally and our emotions … Can you trust your emotions? I don’t think so. Emotions are not a great key for living. You have to settle back and you have to look at things from behind that person’s eyes. We’ve tried to tell people to encourage people, use vitamin E. As Andrea so eloquently said, “There’s times when I blow it. There’s times when I don’t respond, because it’s an emotional situation.” You’re having company over and you ask the kids to do something and it’s not done. And in frustration you say things that are reactionary, which does nobody any good. Now, if you can teach people to take a deep breath, sit back and learn to respond, then we take the air out of the balloon that’s about to break. The balloon becomes much more malleable. We don’t have a big scene and we can talk things through in a reasonable manner so that we get the job done before aunt Harriet and uncle Harry show up at the door. So I gave you that little historical thing because I think it’s important to understand that’s where we all came from. We all came from an authoritarian background where we just react. When I was in high school, it wasn’t unusual to see a gym teacher, a PE teacher, grab a guy by the scruff of the collar and throw him up against the locker, or during football practice, or basketball practice for a coach to physically grab a kid and yank them this way or yank them that way. I remember one coach grabbed me by the ear and taken me from one side of the basketball court to the other. So I’m just saying that we’re still battling this because across North America, in particular, we are still pretty authoritarian based, but we still have tons of parents who have swung from the authoritarian based parent all the way over to the permissive parent. But the midway that being in authority is what allows us to think things through and to offer a response rather than a reaction to a kid. So a kid is really upset, comes in the door, slams the door. A very appropriate response is to do nothing. Another response is to say, “Honey, you seem upset.” Now the authoritarian parent is, “Hey, what’s wrong with you?” I mean, there’s a tone. There’s a question. It just precipitates a boil over of some kind. So what we try to do in our podcast is to get people to think rationally, to calm down, to learn to remove your sails from your child’s wind in hopes of bringing peace and harmony to the North American family. Doug: So Andrea, you said this is one of the best things that happened to you in parenting, one of the best concept from Dr. Leman. Why is this one of the best ones for you? Andrea: I think it goes beyond just parenting too. I think it’s in our relationship, in relationships in general, but the idea of realizing that there is a difference between reacting and responding. And I go back to Dr. Leman’s illustration of, if you go to the doctor and he looks at you and you says, “Wow, it looks like you reacted to the medication.” That’s not what you want to hear. You want to hear, “Oh, your body responded to that medication really well.” And so for me, I think of, okay, a reaction is an outburst, a negative thing, where a response is, “Oh, I can think about this. I can think it through and I can give a well thought out answer in this situation.” And it sounds calmer to me. Doug: Yeah. This helped me the most because I am a authoritarian reactive parent. And what it told me was I’m wrong when I react, even though I’ve been told that that’s how you’re supposed to parent. And it gave me the freedom to shut up and calm down and wait and respond at the right time. So yeah. Dr. Leman any comments about that? Dr. Leman: Yeah. Just simple statements for some of you who are having a hard time wrapping your arms around what we’re talking about. Just a simple statement, like, “Wow, you could be right.” “Wow. I never thought of that.” “That’s an interesting way of looking at things.” “Really? My goodness.” “I’m going to have to check that out.” Those are all statements where you’re just responding. You’re not saying, “Where’d you get that from?” “If a bird had your brain, he’d fly sideways.” “What is wrong with you, really?” “Where do you think of such stupid things? “”Who told you that nonsense?” “That’s not true.” All those things are reactions. So in other words, give your kids the freedom to say some things. They’re going to say some things that are just downright stupid, that are inaccurate. Well, are you going to go through life correcting them like an English teacher that loves her red pencil more than she should? Yeah, you can live that way. I’ll give you permission to live that way, but I can tell you, you’re going to be miserable and you’re not going to have a good relationship with your kid. Doug: So let’s role play this for people out there. And Andrea, you can think of your own. I’ll start off. This might be a terrible one, but let’s do the negative way and the positive way. Alrighty? So I have a five-year-old, we’re at the dinner table and you’re mom, and you have spent four hours making grandma’s famous lasagna. You did the noodles the night before, you’ve done it all beautifully. You’ve put this in front of your kids and you’re so excited because you love this brings back all sorts of great memories. And as you sit down to eat, you take one bite and your five-year-old looks at you, picks up the plate and dumps it right on the carpet. Is that a good one to respond or react to? Andrea: Sure. Are you asking me? Doug: Well, I’m asking Dr. Leman and and you. So Dr. Leman, what is it negative? What does reacting look like in that situation? Dr. Leman: Well, the reaction is, “Well, you idiot. What did you … I can’t believe you … Oh my good … That’s on my brand new rug.” I mean, all those things, all those are reactions. I always say, when the milk spills at the breakfast table or the dinner table, you don’t need to berating. You don’t need a lecture. You need a rag. Doug: So what would a response look … Yeah. What would a response [crosstalk 00:13:55]? Dr. Leman: A response would be, “Quick, I’ll get a rag. Honey, get the towels.” In other words, we’re going to be focused on the lasagna that’s on the carpet. Okay. We’re going to be just driven toward undoing the damage that was done. We’re not blaming. We’re not named calling. Of course the kid who’s by this time is sort of shellshocked. I don’t care how old he is, he knew he did something wrong. So you going to berate the kid? It was sort of a dramatic example of lasagna on the carpet. Appreciate that good example Doug. Doug: Okay. Andrea: So then would it be appropriate at some point to say to the kid, “I’m curious why you dumped the lasagna on the ground.” Dr. Leman: You take time for training. So young kids need to learn that that was inappropriate. Now, I don’t want to confuse people here, but you have to understand you don’t put loving arms around a kid who just dumped lasagna in a quick and violent way on the floor, okay? That kid needs to understand that that was wrong. That was a bad decision. Okay. Giving that child a talking to after everything is picked up, I think is appropriate. Now, if the kid’s two-years-old or three-years-old, save your breath. You’re going to learn something as a parent here, don’t serve the kid lasagna. Okay. Number one, if you’re going to serve him, lasagna do so in an appropriate place, not at the dining room table with carpet, but maybe the kitchen table with a hard floor. Andrea: What about a situation where you’ve got a teenager and it really is an honest mistake? So say I’m at the store with my kid and Oh dear, I forgot something in the car. Give him the keys, say, “Hey, can you run out to the car and get the thing?” And when they’re there, they lock the keys in the car. All right. They come in. In my mind. I’m like, okay, I have a right to be angry. Oh no. Now we’re stuck and dad’s at work and he can’t come and rescue us. I could blow up or I could respond. Dr. Leman: Okay. Showing your natural frustration. “You did what? Oh no. Oh my goodness. Now what do we do? Oh, I’ll tell you what we have AAA. I’m going to call AAA right now. Okay, honey, do me a favor, would you? Take this ice cream and put it back in the ice cream section, take this frozen whatever and take it to the frozen veggie section.” So what I’m going to do in that situation, I’m going to very pragmatically get my 16 year old, who feels bad that he locked the keys in the car, okay, he didn’t intentionally do it. I mean, how many of you have locked keys in a car? Put your hand up. Okay. You’re forgiven. We’ve all done that. Okay. But what I’m doing, then I’m taking the focus off the mistake the kid made and I’m giving him an opportunity to help right now because, “We had got a basket full of groceries here and AAA, even if they’re quick, it’s going to be a half an hour. So we’re not going to sit here with frozen goods. We’re going to put those back and yeah we’re going to be late for our appointment or our ball game or whatever, but you know what? We’ll deal with it. Honey, why don’t you call your coach and tell them you’re going to be late. I’m going to call the dentist and tell them I’m running behind and what happened.” It’s all very matter of fact, you’re describing a situation in life that threw us a curve ball. But the good news is we’re not resorting to name calling. We’re not saying, “How can you be so stupid?” and all that. So we’re just being efficient as a family. But I want people to really hear that what I did was I gave the kid an opportunity to be helpful at that point. Andrea: You’re not berating them and blaming them. They already know, okay, that was stupid. I put the keys on the seat and then I shut the door Dr. Leman: And the kid will berate themselves in all probability. I know. I mean, I’ve done that. I love just to use the term idiot, which I shouldn’t do, but I call myself an idiot lots of times. Andrea: So what is that going to do for that kid in the long run i in their thinking, if you respond like that rather than react? Dr. Leman: Well, we all make mistakes is the message. It’s not the end of the world. It’s a temporary little blip. It’s a setback, but not a huge setback. And I think what you’re conveying is I’m loved no matter what happens. What’s better than that. Doug: So I feel like we’re choosing bad examples for this. So I’ll try another one, Dr. Leman. Your 16-year-old, you asked them to put the phone down when you come to the dinner table and they yell at you like you are just the dumbest parent in the world, like, “You’re on your phone all the time, Mom and dad.” And you just want to fire back at them like, “What the heck? I’m just asking you to put your stupid thing down so I can have a conversation with you at the dinner table.” How do you not do that? Dr. Leman: So the kid is at the dinner table talking? Doug: Yeah. you finally made a meal. You’ve all been going crazy and you are looking forward to finally connecting as a family. I’m there, my spouse is there, my two kids are there and my 16-year-old. They know the rule is not supposed to have a phone at the tables, but there they are. And I say, “Would you please put your phone down so we have a conversation?” And they yell at us like, “Mom, it doesn’t matter. It’s terrible anyways at the dinner table.” or whatever. Normally my reaction is like, “I bought that thinking thing for you, put it away.” How do I respond and not react in that moment? Andrea: Yeah. I think my first inclination having you painted that picture for me would be to get out of my chair, walk over to my 15-year-old or 16-year-old and sort of escort them to the backyard, open the door, give a hand sign. I’m not saying a word. I haven’t said one word to this kid, a hand sign to go outside. I’d close that door. I’d go back and I’d eat my dinner. Okay. Now, sooner or later that kid’s going to come back. If he’s talking to his girlfriend, it could be a half an hour. Quite frankly, he doesn’t care if he eats or not. We say, well, let hunger be the teacher to the child. Well, it might be eventually. He’s going to eat some time. But right now there’s not a lot in it for him. You’ve separated him so you can sit down and enjoy your meal, that’s step number one. Step number two on that, I would not be opposed that evening to take his phone and I’d put it in the trunk of my car or someplace and he would have no phone for a few days. And I would do that as a teachable moment to please honor our rules of not talking at the dinner table on your cell phone. “Dad, where’s my phone.” “Your phone is an isolation.” “What? What’s that about?” “Hey, last night you insisted on talking to the table. You know the rules. You violated it. I just need you to have a few days without your phone to appreciate the fact that that phone that you were talking on at our dinner table, which is shared by all of us, that’s a privilege that you have in this home. And your privileges of using that phone are suspended for three days, pending acceptable behavior on your part. And you not overreacting to this, you can count on getting your phone back by Friday morning when you take off for school.” That’d be exactly the tone that I would use. It’d be matter of fact. It’d be factual. I would remind them of the rule. I wouldn’t be calling them names. But notice I took action at the time. I didn’t use words. One of the things I want to try to teach parents is use action, not words. Word usually gets us in big trouble. Just choose action. So I take them to the door. “You want to talk, go ahead and talk. We’re going to have dinner.” And then I followed up with discipline. And discipline is essential. If you love your child, you will discipline them. So I disciplined him by taking his phone that I pay for, it’s on my account, and I put it away for three days. He won’t be happy. My goal is not to make him happy. My goal was to create a responsible kid someday. That make sense? Doug: Oh, totally makes sense. And I think that respond doesn’t react goes to the heart of reality discipline that you are letting reality be the discipline and not your words, which I cannot say has been a huge change in my life to let reality discipline our kids instead of us, huh Andrea? And the simple taking away of things is great. Okay. Andrea reminded me. I’m just yammering away because I love this concept and I’m going to miss what [inaudible] are offering you guys. And that is for just a few days now, until it goes away, actually six days, you get to get under the sheets between now and the end of August of 2020. Andrea, do you want to read an Amazon review? Andrea: Yes. By K. “Great way to start the communication to help your marriage. This book opens up communication and helps both sides to start talking about the issues that need to help heal a marriage when it comes to the sex talk. It makes both sides talk about what they expect sexually in the marriage and helps give great suggestions to deepen your marriage by addressing major issues. It’s really helped us in opening up to our own needs and in how to fulfill those for each other. A MUST, yet for every marriage.” Doug: So if you want help in your marriage and in the bedroom, Under the Sheets. Dr. Leman: I just thought of something sort of funny. No matter what your age, think of the song that you grew up with musically. If you’re an old rock and roller like me, I grew up in their early rock and roll. I think of the song title, and then put after it, under the sheets. Doug: Yeah. I’ll save you Dr. Leman. I’ll save you. Dr. Leman: You’re going to save me from my own destructive nature? Doug: Yeah, because I love you. Dr. Leman: Okay. Thank you, Doug. Doug: You bet. Under the Sheets emails at Kevin, no I’m kidding. Between now and the end of August of 2020. Alrighty Dr. Leman. So the last question I have is I just remember when we had little guys, zero to six or seven, man, there were some times when you’re tired, the house is a mess, you’ve asked them three or four times to put stuff away and you’re emotionally not at your peak. Maybe this is just my issue, but how do we not just below up in those moments? How are we able to stop that volcano that’s slowly growing? Dr. Leman: Well, first of all, if you paid attention to our rules of parenting, number one rule is tell them once. Okay. Where we get frustrated is when we violate our own rule and we tell them several times. So by the fourth time we’re going bonkers. And then all of a sudden, I mean, we’re trying to suppress our anger. Things are not going our way. Like you say, it’s been a bad day at the office. Things are not well. Dinner wasn’t exactly great. And those will blow up. What or help preclude those situations from happening is learn to say it once, walk away, take action if you need to on the first one on a first round. When you let things build, that’s when you increase the probability of a blow up and a reaction. Now again, are we all going to do a blow up once in a while? I’m here to tell you, you are. It’s the nature of mankind. We’re going to do that. When you do blow up, I think the big question is what do you do after you’ve blown up? I think you have to go back to your kids or your wife, your husband, and say, “Honey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said. That was inappropriate. Would you forgive me?” And life goes on that I think is the more important thing. You’re going to blow it from time to time. Parents, keep in mind, say at once. Don’t remind him. Reminders or disrespectful acts that we give to our children. Doug: I really appreciate that because I have an older child who I’m actually really frustrated with right now because I’ve asked them to do something two or three times and I keep getting the same answer. And I guess it’s time for me to use reality discipline with them. The reason I’m saying that is I’m upset, but I’m the one reminding them. I’m the fool here. Not the fool. Maybe I am, but yeah. Reminders do not make life better. Do they Andrea? Andrea: Nope. I guess not because I’m with you. Doug: Thank you for that reminder. Andrea: Reminders are disrespectful. Doug: Oh yeah. Dr. Leman: Just remember parents, were asking you to do a good job. We’re not asking you to do perfect job. Just be a good parent. God will bless you. And trust God and all things if you’re a person of faith and that’s the way you got to live your life. Doug: Amen. Well, thank you Dr Leman for answering respond, don’t react. And for all of you out there, I want to remind you, if you haven’t read one of Dr. Leman’s foundational books, Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours, helps you tremendously with this concept as does, Have a New Kid by Friday.” Both those books will help you really understand this concept deeper. Can not recommend those two enough to you to get those, as actually me often says, “To get behind the eyeballs of your kids and for you to have the confidence to what to do.” And Under the Sheets is available between now and the end of August, of 2020. Well, thanks for being with us. We really do love being with you and any of your parenting toolbox. And we look forward to the next time we get to be with you. Andrea: Have fun practicing responding this week. Doug: Take care. Andrea: Bye bye. Doug: Bye bye.

It’s time for another Ask Dr. Leman: “My 4-year-old is hitting Grandma!” Listen in for Dr. Leman’s advice on how to deal with your in-laws on this episode of Have a New Kid by Friday Podcast.   **Special Offer– Aug 1 – 18: Under the Sheets ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**     Show Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Produced by Unmutable Transcript Doug: All righty. Can you imagine this? Grandma comes over, you put your little sweet four year old son to see grandma and he rears back and hits her. And he hits at school and he’s hitting his sister. What do you do? You’ve tried everything, but you won’t know how to get your four year old to stop hitting. That’s the question that Whitney asked that we get to ask Dr. Leman today. Hi, I’m Doug Terpening. Andrea: And [00:00:30] I’m Andrea. Doug: And we are so glad that you are with us today. Welcome. If this happens to be your first time with us, want to let you know this is for your education and entertainment purposes only. If the subject matter raises any concerns for you or your child, please go seek a local professional for help. Well, it is a joy to be with you guys today. And I just want to remind everybody that we get Whitney’s audio question today and you can go to birthorderguy.com and put slash any number from 325 on down and [00:01:00] go to the bottom and you’ll see a little microphone right there. You can click and leave your audio question right there. birthorderguy.com/ just about any number under 300, and you can see some of our old episodes. Well, let’s jump in and hear Whitney’s question for Dr. Leman. Whitney: Hi Dr. Leman. My name is Whitney and I am I’m from Arizona, from Prescott, Arizona and I have two kids. A daughter who’s almost seven and a son who’s turning four here at the end of the week. And my question is [00:01:30] regarding my four year old son. We are having quite a problem with him with negative behavior, particularly hitting. He’s hitting kids at school, he’s hitting kids at church, he’s hitting my daughter, he’s hitting his grandma and we’re just kind of at a loss on how to deal with it. Especially in the school setting. At home, I can evoke immediate consequences, but at school I can’t really do anything to deal with it in the moment, [00:02:00] apart from dealing with it when he gets home. I’ve definitely read your books and I listen to your podcast so I’m aware of your methods and we’re trying our best to respond instead of react and deal with the hitting in the moment. But it doesn’t seem to be getting any better and I just wondered if you had any other suggestions, possible things that we could try to help [00:02:30] him understand that it’s not okay to strike other kids. Can’t wait to hear from you. Thanks. Dr. Leman: Well, Whitney from Prescott, Arizona, if you’d never been to Prescott, Arizona people, it’s a wonderful little western town nestled up about an hour and a half above Phoenix, Arizona. High elevation, nice place to be from. Whitney, I’ll tell you if that were my four year old, I’d consider two things, [00:03:00] Amazon Prime or eBay. You could probably get a good price for him. I don’t know. That kind of kid, four year old. Can you imagine he’s hitting everything in sight? At Sunday school, school, grandma, anybody in sight. Okay. Lehman, what do you do with this kid? Well, is hitting an inborn trait? [00:03:30] No, it’s not. It’s learned behavior. The question becomes, he’s just turning four at the end of this week, when did he start hitting? Was he hitting at 13 months when he was just beginning to walk? I’ve seen kids 13 months, 16 months, 18 months, hit their parents and the parent thinking it was sort of cute. [00:04:00] And again, this is a learned behavior. The first thing I would do, if I’m a parent, I’d do a little thinking and say, “Now, wait a minute. How long has this really been going on? And what were any of the circumstances that could have taught him to hit other people?” It’s very unusual for a four year old. This is an unusual question in many ways. There are kids who strike out at other people, but it’s usually in anger [00:04:30] when they don’t get their way. But the striking of other people on a continuing basis is odd. And doesn’t happen that often. With that in mind, just got to sort of trace back to see if you can put that puzzle together in your mind so at least you have some understanding that, wait a minute, this was learned behavior. He’s learned it somehow. And kids learn through trial and error. [00:05:00] You don’t have to teach a kid to say that, “No, I didn’t take the cookie from the cookie jar.” That’s the carnal self that’s in all of us, but this kind of behavior, like I say is unusual. In the moment, let’s start with that. In the moment he strikes grandma, who’s over to the house or your husband. Now, my guess is you’re doing this, [00:05:30] but we can probably talk about how to do it best. You pick him up, physically pick him up. You put him in his room. You have a lock on that door. One of those little slider locks you can put on the outside of the door to make sure he stays in there. Now, again, as I said, many times you could hold the door, but that gets old for you. Might as well make [00:06:00] it convenient for yourself. Just isolate him, put them in that room. And you do not let him out of that room until he quiets down. And I’m saying quiet down, because chances are with this kid, when you pick him up and put them in the room, he’s going to display some kind of a power tantrum and you’ll wait until he’s completely quiet. And until he initiates something. In other words, he initiates, ” [00:06:30] Mommy, Daddy, I’m sorry.” Or something along that line. Then he comes out. You can imagine a powerful kid. He could be in there for well over an hour. That’s what you do in the here and now. Without words. You don’t have to repeat, “It’s not nice to hit people. Mommy doesn’t like that,” at this point, because this guy is [00:07:00] he’s Rocky Marciano in miniature. He’s hit and everything in sight. Anyway, that’s in the here and now. Now when you talk about school, Sunday school, you have to give people permission on that end to do what they need to do. And that would be some kind of social [00:07:30] isolation. If that means that he has to be in a thinking chair in the classroom, far removed from the other kids, so be it. If it means he has to go to an office down where the administrators hang out at school, so be it. But he doesn’t get to be in the group per se. Again, it’s really important that you understand that there’s nothing you can [00:08:00] do, that you can physically do yourself when he’s in school. When he’s in church, they can bring that child to you. Now that’s an embarrassment. I’ll give you that. But in a church setting, I don’t think you’re going to find that place to put him other than with a parent. Which means then one of the parents [00:08:30] has to obviously be with four year old, whether that’s in a car, maybe you’re out there for 45 minutes waiting for church services to close so your husband can join you. That’s a huge inconvenience. What I don’t like about that is he sort of gets paid off so to speak for his antisocial behavior, by having mommy or daddy auto himself in a car. Anyway, those are [00:09:00] openers. This is the kind of a question that I would hate to take on national TV. Doug: Why is that? Dr. Leman: Because it’s like biting. What do you do with a biter? Those are the tough questions because they’re so difficult to deal with for so many different reasons. And it all gets back to isolation. When you go on national TV and you say, “Listen, pick up this [00:09:30] kid and put them in a room and lock the door.” Hello. Here’s 1.2 million emails coming your way because parents today, again, I’ve said it to so many times, they’re just clueless. They think that this is going to damage the kid’s psyche for life and they’ll read everything into that. The point is you cannot continue. This kid cannot continue to just bite people or hit people. Because if he does, before long, somebody’s going to clean his clock. Doug: Right. You came out [00:10:00] saying that he learned this behavior from somewhere. Are you implying that he saw someone hit somebody? He saw it on television? What does that mean? Dr. Leman: Well, that’s a good point, Doug. Sometimes as parents, we let kids see things that are inappropriate. Somebody did a study once. This goes way back that the average cartoon that kids saw had a 109 acts [00:10:30] of violence in it. If you can believe that. And that goes back, the study that was probably 30 years old. Violence on screen. And again, kids should not have screen time. Kids, young kids have way too much screen time today. It’s not good for kids. But he has learned. Maybe he just struck out like kids will do. It’s not uncommon for a little kid to strike out and hit somebody. But it was reinforced [00:11:00] in such a way that somehow the kid said, “Oh, I get it. I get it. This is a game we can play real good.” And it grows into a habit and he gets great response from it. He gets attention from it. It’s not positive attention, just negative attention, but nevertheless it’s attention. That’s why I say, it’s the kind of question you wouldn’t want to answer on Oprah Winfrey. There’s no real clear cut bing, bing, bing, here’s what you [00:11:30] do. But the one thing I can guarantee you is the sooner you isolate the kid without words and you do it consistently, you ought to see a change in behavior because this kid is a social animal. He wants to be around other people. Doug: The reason this question caught my eye is this is not the first time we’ve heard about a kid hitting somebody. But hitting grandma seems extreme to me. [00:12:00] Hitting sister, okay. Hitting schoolmates, fine. But really? Unless grandma’s horrible, but usually grandma’s, is that uber unusual? Or is it nah, hitting grandma’s just like hitting sister and everybody else. It’s just to get attention. Dr. Leman: No, no. It’s unusual because he hits every place. He hits in Sunday school. He hits in school. He hits at home. He hits grandma. That’s why I said at the very beginning, it’s a very unusual question. I’m not suggesting [00:12:30] that this kid needs to be evaluated by some shrink. You didn’t hear that. You didn’t hear me say, “Take him to the local hospital, to the psych unit and find out if there’s someone there who specializes in pediatric psychiatry and somebody evaluate the kid.” I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about based upon her question. And by the way, I want to say, I think Whitney, she sounds like she’s a great parent. She doesn’t sound like she’s flaky [00:13:00] or weird, or she sounds like she’s on top of her game. She’s trying to be responsible parent. She mentioned in her questions, she’s trying to respond and not react. The only thing I would tell you there, Whitney, is just be sure that your response isn’t so soft that it gets misread by little Rocky Marciano. I’m not trying to make light of a tough situation, but it sounds to me like mama bear [00:13:30] is doing the best. Now, we haven’t heard about dad. I’m trusting that you’re both on the same page, but again, the permission thing don’t overlook what I said about permission. The school has to know that you give their permission to act with him swiftly and in a plan that you and your husband and are in accord with. Doug: Yeah, well, let’s do this now because I have another question to ask about this. Before [00:14:00] I forget, our friends at Bigger Books are offering you a brand new ebook, which is a great one called, Under the Sheets, for a buck 99 between now and the end of August of 2020. Under the Sheets and Andrea, do you have a review? Andrea: I do, by Adrian. I highly recommend this book for any couple that is looking to improve their intimacy. My husband and I have been married 10 years. After having three kids I just don’t view sex the same way I did before [00:14:30] kids. This book has completely changed my thinking. Dr. Lehman shifts the focus from how to be a good lover to how to communicate so everybody’s needs are met. It’s very funny and upfront. I look forward to having my husband read it as well. He also tuned me into understanding what my husband is thinking. I can’t say enough good about this book. Doug: If you are in a marriage or in a relationship and you’re thinking, man, I want to prove our intimacy, Under the Sheets [00:15:00] is a great book for it. Get it now. Between now and the end of August of 2020, wherever eBooks are sold. Dr. Leman: That book. I’m going to say this as plainly as I can. If you have any voyeuristic tendencies and you want to look into real life drama of people’s sex lives, this is the book for you. It is, [00:15:30] I wouldn’t say it’s in your face because that’s not my style, but it’s very blunt. You’re going to hear the real words of real people and how they feel about sex. You’re going to hear from people who are disgusted with sex, people who think sex is filthy dirty. You’re going to hear stories of women who are the aggressors, who love [00:16:00] sex. You’re going to hear of men who are very timid and avoid sex. You’re going to hear stories of victory and you’re going to hear stories where the best thing we can say is to be continued. But if you’re interested in this area and you need some help, for a $1.99, the entertainment value in this book is very high. It’s very good. Try to make you laugh [00:16:30] as we tackle the tough subject to sex. I don’t know a better endorsement that I can give for you to read Under the Sheets. You will like Under the Sheets, trust me. Doug: There you go. Get it now until the end of August of 2020, wherever eBooks are sold. And now a no nonsense parenting moment with Dr. Kevin Leman, Dr. Leman: Who doesn’t want to be a winner? Well, let me guarantee you a way [00:17:00] of being a winner. Be the first born in your family. I wrote a book called Born to Win and if you look at any empirical data, you will see that firstborns rule. Higher IQs, they’re the movers and shakers in life. They’re most likely to be the physician, the attorney, the accountant, the architect, the engineer. Okay, you win. This is a book for you. If you want to feel good about yourself, pick up a copy of Born to Win and forget the rest of us. [00:17:30] Seriously, Born to Win is a great little book for any firstborn and it points out the fact that yes, you have so many things going for you, but there’s a theme throughout that book that says too much perfection will nail you. It will stop you in your tracks. It’s an easy read. It’s offered to you at ridiculously low price to download it. Why wouldn’t you do that today? Doug: [00:18:00] Dr. Leman, your advice to Whitney is isolation to help him get this. The question I have is, this kid is getting tons. I would imagine this kid is getting tons of attention over this and that’s what the payoff is for him. Should Whitney be thinking, I should be paying off this kind of attention instead to try and redirect him? Or just totally focus on isolation? Dr. Leman: Well, I think isolation is your key. But I think [00:18:30] vitamin E is always good for kids. And so a statement where you had a great day, for example. And let’s say Rocky VIII hasn’t taken a swipe at anybody and you’re tucking him in, that’s where you slip him the commercial announcement. You don’t overdo it, but it’s sort of like, “I was thinking about something. You didn’t hit anybody today. [00:19:00] Honey, that’s got to make you feel good inside.” Just a simple thing like that. Again, don’t overdo the vitamin E. Vitamin E is a glib statement that just says it like it is. It’s putting water on the delicate plant. And those words you choose are really important. That being said, you always add vitamin E, but I think [00:19:30] isolation is your best bet and that has to happen immediately. There’s no excuses. There’s no, “Mommy, I didn’t mean that.” Don’t ever fall for that. You deal with the behavior. Doug: You briefly touched on something that we’ve heard from parents too though, is that if I isolate my kid, if I keep the door closed, which sounds like, oh my gosh, my kid’s going to [00:20:00] grow up to hate me or be more violent because of this. Why would this not create A, them not loving me and B, them being more violent by doing the isolation? Dr. Leman: Well no. Parents don’t look for ways of bringing guilt into your life. Guilt again is the propellant for the lousy decisions you’ll make as a parent. You’re doing the right thing. You’re holding him accountable for his actions. What could [00:20:30] be healthier than that? Tell yourself, talk to yourself, hey, I’m doing this for him. I’m doing this for his future. If he just continues to be the tyrant he’s becoming at age four, you don’t need a PhD to figure out by age 14 wow, nobody’s going to want to be near this kid. And again, if he’s like that at 14, somebody 16 or 18 is going to clean his clock big time. That kid’s going to get hurt. Doug: [00:21:00] It’s an interesting phrase you make that we’re going to hold a four year old accountable for their actions. That is a great phrase. At an inappropriate level, that is fabulous gold. Well, Whitney, a great question. You’re not alone in this hitting incident. I just want to let you know, you are not the only one that is dealing with this. This is one of the more common questions so I appreciate you a lot for asking this question. And a reminder to everybody out there, if you want to leave your audio question, go to birthorderguy. [00:21:30] com/ just about any number and you can leave it right there. And we would love to answer it. And again, Under the Sheets, if you want to revive and understand each other, now you can get it between now and the end of August of 2020 for only a buck 99. Well, it was great to be with you guys. We look forward to the next time that we get to hang out with you and add to that parenting toolbox so you can love those kiddos more and more and more. Andrea: Have a great week. Doug: Take care. Bye bye.

If your kid is cutting, it’s because they are hurting. Learn how you can take action to help your kid on this episode of Have a New Kid by Friday Podcast.   **Special Offer– July 1 – 31: When Your Kid Is Hurting ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**   **Special Offer– Aug 1 – 18: Under the Sheets ebook for $1.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your ebooks**     Show Sponsored by Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Produced by Unmutable Transcript Doug: Cutting, I wish I could be joking about it but it seems to be a serious thing that sometimes is becoming more prevalent in our lives. What do I do if I find out that my kid is cutting? And how do I react? How do I respond? What does it all mean? That’s the question we get to ask Dr. Leman and hear his answer from him. Hi, I’m Doug Terpening. Andrea: And I’m Andrea. Doug: We are really, really glad that you are investing in your kids and that you are just saying, “I want to be a better parent.” Kudos to you. And we want to let you know that if this is your first time, this is for your education and entertainment purposes only. If the subject matter raises any concerns for you or your child, please go seek a local professional for help. Well, Dr. Leman, this question comes via a pretty good friend of ours who said, “Hey, cutting has become a reality far too close to our home. What do we do about it?” And we didn’t know what to say, so help us. Why does it happen? What should we do about it? Can you enlighten us? Dr. Leman: Okay. Before we do that, and this is a good topic, it’s a tough topic, I want to start on a little lighter note. How many years you guys been married? Andrea: 22. Dr. Leman: Okay, Doug, with that in mind, I want to know what is Andrea’s shoe size? Doug: Oh, crud. I think she’s a six in a women’s. No, a seven. An eight. Andrea: Do you think I have big feet? Are you saying I have big feet? Doug: A five. Andrea: I wear seven and a half. Dr. Leman: Give up and give me one answer. Doug: And like a seven’s not close enough. I got to go seven and a half. Andrea: Well, you went to eight. Dr. Leman: Well, you sort of went… You covered the waterfront is what you did. I’m going to pin you down on this one. What’s is Andrea’s favorite veggie? Andrea: You got me thinking. Doug: I’m going to guess that her favorite veggie might be… Oh, this is super easy. It’s the one you dip in butter and you put through our teeth. Oh, what’s that one that I hate so much? Not eggplant. Artichoke hearts. Andrea: Artichokes. Doug: Artichokes, yeah, artichokes. Andrea: You put through your teeth. Dr. Leman: How he’d do on it? Did he do good on that one? Andrea: He was very creative. Yes, because I was thinking carrots, broccoli. What’s my favorite? I love vegetables, but yeah, that was good. That was good. Dr. Leman: Is there a favorite meat that she likes? Doug: Maybe bacon, believe it or not. Or, I would say pork chops. Dr. Leman: Okay. How’d he do? Andrea: Well, honestly, I have a soft spot for hamburgers. Doug: True. I did know that. Andrea: Yeah, you should have just said it. It’s not really a meat. I mean, but it is the way the meat is prepared, so yeah, beef. Doug: Ground beef. Dr. Leman: Okay. All right. Well, let’s flip things around. What’s Doug’s shoe size? Andrea: Doug is a nine, possible a wide. Doug: Yeah. Correct. Dr. Leman: Okay. You got that right. All right. What’s his favorite veggie? Andrea: Well, he says he likes cauliflower now, if it’s steamed well. I’m going to go with broccoli dipped in hummus. Dr. Leman: Hummus. How’d you do? Doug: Perfect. Except for the cauliflower. That was a stab at me, but that’s all right. Dr. Leman: All right. How about his favorite meat? Andrea: Steak, a good tender steak. Doug: Yep. Dr. Leman: How does he like his steak done? Andrea: Rare. Dr. Leman: He likes it fighting back? Andrea: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Dr. Leman: One of my favorite lines from the old Buddy Gibson… Not Buddy Gibson, Buddy Epsen, Beverly Hillbillies, was granny asked somebody how they liked their possum, hanging at the bone or fighting back? Andrea: That’s disgusting. Dr. Leman: But anyway, I’ll admit one thing to you and then we’ll get to the serious topic of cutting. We were on one of our cruises where I speak on a cruise and bring lots of people. And by the way, if you have access to a group of people, lots of people, 30 people or over, we can always put together a cruise where I’ll come and speak on the cruise and all that. But we’ll talk about that another day. But those kinds of things are possible. But my wife and I were doing The Newlywed Game on the cruise, and we scored zero points. Zero. We didn’t get one right. Now, we’ve done this several times where we did pretty good. But I remember that one cruise ship, we got zero points on The Newlywed Game. And we claim to know each other pretty good. So you guys pass the test with flying colors. Now, we’re going to move on to the wonderful topic of children who are cutting. This has grown to be a huge problem in our country and others, where kids self-mutilate themselves. And some people might not be aware of this, but kids will cut, they’ll literally cut and make themselves bleed, especially on parts of their body where they can cover that up. So if you have a kid that you live in a warm climate, for example, and you got a kid who all of a sudden no longer wears short-sleeve shirts. All of a sudden it’s always long sleeve, and maybe the color that that kid used to wear is no longer obvious. Now, it’s dark color, black color, or friends have disappeared, grades have dropped. I’m mentioning these other things because many times they go hand in hand with a kid who’s feeling sullen and withdrawn and is cutting. It’s something that parents just have to be aware of. If your kid is cutting, I mean, we can end the podcast in one minute by saying, “This is something serious.” You rarely hear me say, “You need to go and find someone who’s really good with kids, who understands the psychological dynamics of cutting, whether it be a psychologist, a trained counselor, a psychiatrist,” if you can find a good one, they’re worth their weight in gold, “to help your kid see what the motivation for cutting is.” Many of you will be surprised to learn that the number one reason why kids will cut is that they feel it’s the only area that they have some control over in their life. So if you’re a highly structured parent, you know exactly how life ought to be, you’re opinionated, you just know how other people should behave, especially your children, you’re probably creating a situation where a kid might very well reach into the area of cutting. But it’s a symptom of a lot of unresolved issues of anger and control in your son or daughter’s life, and they should be seeing someone. So there, you don’t hear that from me very often. But the key thing I want parents to hear me say is this is a direct result of them feeling like you’re micromanaging their life. You’re not giving them freedom of choice. You’re one of those parents who say, “This is how it is.” And many times just because of your personality, you’re that type A, firstborn, controlling person, you don’t see yourself very accurately. You don’t see yourself as controlling, but yet you are. So a question to ask, any kid who is cutting is, do you feel like life is laid out for you? I think you’ll be surprised to find out that most kids who are cutting say exactly that. It’s a tough one, it’s a tough subject to talk about. It can deteriorate emotionally. Many times you’ll see the psychological diseases that come our way, the psychopathology that develops into mental illness is going to spring up in the late teens and early twenties. So lots of times these symptoms manifest themselves when kids are in high school. I don’t know what you think of that, Dr. Doug and Dr. Andrea, but that’s a take on cutting to share with your friends. Doug: Wow. So if I heard you right, I just want to repeat it that I heard it right. If I find my kid is cutting, I should go get professional help right away. That’s what you’re saying. Dr. Leman: Right. Yeah. And you can be a part of that. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a professional say, “Well, I’ll be glad to see your 17-year-old, but I want to schedule an appointment with you and your bride as well. Doug: How likely is that kid to want to go to counseling do you think? Dr. Leman: Not very. Doug: Really? Dr. Leman: How anxious is any man that wants to go to counseling? Doug: So how do I help get my kid there or not? Dr. Leman: You make the appointment, you take him. This is serious. This is life-threatening behavior. There’s no choice here. Andrea: So when you say it’s life-threatening, is this like a sign of deep depression and their next step is suicidal? Dr. Leman: Bingo. I mean, every negative you can think of Andrea, anything negative you can think of comes right out of the cutting-like behavior because it’s an act against their own body. It’s saying, “I’m not worth it. I’m giving up. I’m dropping out.” Anyway, you go, it’s negative. And that’s why you’ll rarely hear me say, “Hey, this is something you need to get somebody else involved in, real quickly.” And the smart physician or psychologist will get you involved in that therapy. We’re getting into some basics about forgiveness, and didn’t realize that we weren’t giving you the kind of choices that we should be giving a youngster growing up in our home, and there’s got to be a real melting of the hearts and an asking for forgiveness and extending of grace to people. And hopefully, that kid’s not that far dug in that he or she’s going to be able to make the turnaround. For example, what about anorexic kids? Those of you who are old enough to remember The Carpenters. Karen Carpenter died of anorexia. Well, one of the things you’ll almost always see with anorexia or bulimia is perfection, and perfection is what? Slow suicide. There’s certain disorders that we see in young people that just need immediate attention, and should never be taken lightly. Cutting, anorexia, bulimia are things that I see in sort of one big, huge self-destructive behaviors, and you have to get some outside professional help. Ask around, talk to your physician, find out who’s good in town. I get asked that all the time, and quite frankly, I shouldn’t say this publicly, but I will. I refer to one person in Tucson who I have tremendous confidence in, and she’s not a doctor. She’s a counselor, for lack of a better term. But she is so good with families. She is so good with kids. And so find someone out there who’s practical, who’s on-hands, who has a heart for your family, and can help you walk through these dark days, because those are dark days for your family. Doug: When we come back, I want to find out when we say the parent is the one creating this, wow, I think a lot of parents also just stood up and listened and said, “Okay, am I that parent?” So I want to ask that question when we come back. But this is super apropos now, to the book that is available from our friends at Revell, which is When Your Kid is Hurting. For $1.99, between now and the end of July of 2020, you can get it for $2. Andrea: That’s only two more days. Doug: Yeah. So you got to get it soon. When Your Kid is Hurting, for a buck-99. So Dr. Leman, how would that book help somebody if they stumble on this situation with their kids? Dr. Leman: Well, this is the book for our topic today. I mean, these are the kinds of things. When Your Kid is Hurting, this is the book of all the Leman books to read if you’re in that kind of a situation. And again, I’ve said before, for most of us, you don’t have to run out and get that book today, but you’ll be so smart to take advantage of it, download it, keep it in your library, so when those tough days come your way, and they’re coming, whether it’s breakup with a boyfriend, end engagement, I mean, you name it, your kid can find themselves in all kinds of hurtful situations. You will profit quickly from reading this book. This is one, like I say, it’s not a regular read for everybody, but the day is coming, so you might as well get it now. It’s a buck 99, is that what you said? Doug: Correct. A buck 99. Dr. Leman: Yeah. Perfect. Download that puppy. You’ll need it. It’s a good book. Doug: Good. Dr. Leman: People who’ve read it, love it. Doug: So get it now, between now and the end of July of 2020, on ebook. All right, Dr. Leman, so if I’m a thoughtful parent and I’m like, “Oh, I need to change,” what is the parent doing to create this? Is that the right question I’m asking, Andrea? I’m asking, I want to know if I’m doing these things to my kids, that’s going to lead to this? Dr. Leman: You know who you are. Okay? Everything’s got to be just so. We look at your home, for example, what is your home look like? Is it neat as a pin? I remember going into a guy’s house once, and it was just so strikingly perfect. I said, “Well, don’t you have a junk room in this house or something?” He says, “Oh, yes, yes.” He took me to a closet, and I’m not kidding you, there was a little chest in the bottom of it that must have been, I’d say 14 to 16 inches deep and probably 18 inches tall. And he opened it up and he had a few things in there. That was his definition of a junk room. Everything’s in place. Everything’s perfect. You know those kinds of people. Let me ask you something, as an adult, do you feel comfortable in those homes? You use a Kleenex and you throw it in a wastebasket and you notice that the mom, the wife, walks over and takes it to the main garbage container and puts it away. There’s a place for everything. It’s like everything is sanitized, everything is perfect. And the kids get the message that they’re like the laboratory rat, and this is the maze you go down. And when you’re in seventh grade, you’ll take this maze to the left, when you’re in high school, this one to the right. And of course, you’ll go to college and this kind of college. I mean, life’s mapped out for them. Those people who have all their little ducks in a row, who functioned on making sure everything in life is perfect, you’ve imprinted your children with a message that you only count in life when you measure up. My question is, what happens when you don’t measure up? What happens when the C’s come home on the report card and not the straight A’s? What kind of reaction is there from the parents? Not a response, a reaction. I guarantee it’ll always be a reaction. It’s the end of the world, you got C’s. Or the end of the world, you got one C, or you got a C plus or a B. So if you paint a picture of perfection in life, you’re setting your kids up for failure. Andrea: So what if the house isn’t a perfect showpiece, but you paint perfection in other ways, whether it’s grades? And then I have another element to this question. Dr. Leman: Well, let’s just stop at that question because this shows everyone the genius of Andrea. Because here I painted perfection, perfection, perfection. She says, “Hey, Dr. Leman, what about this person whose house is rather slovenly? Well, one of the things that I’ve written about, I’ve written a lot about perfection. And the worst kind of perfection, quite frankly, can be found in that home where there’s piles. But I’ve often said, ask someone who’s got a house full of piles and asked them to find something, they know exactly which pile to look in. That makes them the critical-eyed parent. Who’s the flaw picker? It’s not just the first picture that we’ve painted of perfection in the home. It’s that little rudder, the tongue is always quick to point out what could be different. And so, again, the same message comes across to the kids that you didn’t measure up. And it’s very discouraging. So instead of getting vitamin E, which is encouragement, they’re getting vitamin D, which is discouragement, on a continuing basis, where the kid will give up, they’ll stop trying. And the anger that they have toward their parent, now we’re getting a little clinical here, is pointed in toward themselves. And they go off into self-destructive behavior, whether it’s drugs or cutting, or you name it. Do you see what I’m saying? So I’m so glad you asked that question. That is a great followup question to what we just talked about. Doug: Well, ending right here, just thinking through our own upbringing. And I just wonder how many of those parents came from really crummy backgrounds themselves, and didn’t know how to deal with it and just pass it on to their kids. It’s probably the situation that we’re doing, huh? Dr. Leman: Oh yeah, it’s generational. I’ve told the story, but I came home 19-years-old as a janitor and announced at the dinner table, “I’m engaged.” I can’t even say it without laughing now. “I’m engaged to be married.” I’m making $195 a month, not a week, a month, full-time. I’m a janitor in a hospital and I’m going to get married. What does my mother say? “Oh, that’s nice, honey. Pass the green beans.” I mean, she did what I’ve verbalized for millions of parents. Kid has a power tantrum, step over the child, walk away. She just gave it a ho-hum. She gave it a, “Wow. Interesting, you idiot.” I’m so glad she didn’t go into some spiel about, “What do you mean you’re engaged. You couldn’t be engaged. You don’t make two nickles. You’re not old enough. You’re not mature.” None of that. She stepped over it. It didn’t take me long to figure out, this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I went and got my $20 back on the down payment for the diamond ring at Montgomery Wards. You can only imagine what a great ring that was. Andrea: What about the family where they find the child is cutting, and this family has just gone through a divorce, dad has been unfaithful to mom? There’s obviously turmoil going on in the home. I mean, maybe there was perfectionism before that, but… Dr. Leman: Yeah, so it’s not perfectionism, the enemy here. It’s the poison that you poured into the child’s soul. Well, what poison is that, Leman? How about the divorce? This is not late-breaking news, but more the nuclear destruction, teenagers fear that their parents will get a divorce. It’s a kick in the emotional gut that lasts a lifetime. I’ve had kids look me in the eyes and say, “Oh no, I’m glad my parents got a divorce.” Well, okay, “I’ll take that for what it’s worth, but I’ll guarantee you in a period of a few years, you’ll figure out that you’re not so happy that they got a divorce, and that you’re probably paying for it right now in your life.” Situational things that are happening in a kid’s life can be so burdensome that they turn that anger inward. That’s why kids kill themselves. I mean, I recently was aware of a situation where mom, who’s a great mom, really a great mom from everybody’s appraisal, understanding, grace-filled, not a control freak, but her kid hung himself. And on top of that, he wrote a very nasty, angry suicide letter. Where’s that come from? It comes from a buildup of anger, maybe at himself, maybe through ridicule of classmates in school, or self-perception that were just so inaccurate. But those things happen. Suicide happens. There’s things in life that parents, no matter how good a parent you are, and again, we’re trying to help parents become better parents, but I’m just saying you have to understand there are circumstances in life, where people just do something out of self-will. If you’re a person of faith, God gave us free will to do what we want to do. A lot of people engage in self-destructive behavior every day of their life. Some of them don’t exercise that in the forms of taking their own life or something, but nevertheless, self-destructive behavior has been with us for a long time. We’re just trying to help families create creative ways of sharing our imperfection with each other, growing together, learning from our mistakes, moving toward a common goal and providing kids with a happy childhood, which in all probability, will lead to a very happy adulthood. So is life perfect? No. Do we have all the answers for everything? No, we don’t. So you do the best you can every day. Andrea: If there was one word of encouragement. We can give parents here at the end of this heavy podcast, what would you say Dr. Leman? Dr. Leman: I would say, I would not be reticent to share your imperfect self with those you love, because the reality is that we’re all imperfect. We all fall short, every day of our life. And when you understand how imperfect you are, then and only then, in my biased opinion, are you able to live the life that your maker would have you live; to think better of other people than yourself, to be a servant leader any way you can, to bless other people, to encourage other people, and to treat people the way you’d like to be treated. That’s a pretty good mantra for life, isn’t it? Doug: I don’t know how many times I’ve heard you say that. That’s so helpful. Recently, I’ve been trying to start my time in the morning with God and saying, “Lord have mercy on this sinner, your beloved son.” And it felt weird at first, but now it’s like, wow, you know what? It really is great to admit my imperfections and know I’m still loved. It’s powerful. You’re right, to not try and be perfect to get love, but be imperfect and still be loved is amazing. Wow. And I took it back serious. Andrew, you’re trying to get us all light. That was great, Dr. Leman. I want to encourage all of you parents out there, that if you are wondering if you are this, I would encourage you to go get the book, Have a New You By Friday, so that you can start changing yourself and watch your whole family change. I’m just telling you, the secret to this parenting is you change, and your whole family changes. That’s a phenomenal book. Also, get any of them, Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours, to give yourself some perspective of some of the things you’re doing that you don’t want to do, so that you don’t end up here. Can’t encourage it enough. Please, for your sake, go and do this. Well, this one was super, super heavy. But I appreciate you being honest with us, Dr. Leman. Thank you. Andrea: Yeah, I hope this helps somebody out there. Doug: As a reminder, take this serious. And also, this is why we’re doing this podcast, so that you don’t get here, Lord willing, and that you are investing in this. Get the books, read them for yourself, gain the skills you need, so that you can love those kids more and more. As always, we look forward to the next time that we get to be with you and add to your parenting toolbox. Andrea: Have a great week. Doug: Okay. Bye-bye. Andrea: Bye-bye.