The Hidden Scripts Shaping Your Child's Confidence, Mindset & Success - With Dr. Albert Bramante

Dr. Inyang Takon is joined by Dr. Albert Bramante to explore the powerful connection between neurodiversity, mindset, self-esteem, emotional development, and the invisible "scripts" that shape how children see themselves and the world around them.

Together, they discuss how children begin forming beliefs about themselves before the age of eight and how those beliefs can influence confidence, behaviour, academic achievement, relationships, and even future success. 

The conversation explores the concept of self-sabotage, why some children struggle despite having great potential, and how parents, educators, and caregivers can help build healthier patterns of thinking.

Dr. Bramand explains why neurodiversity should never be mistaken for a lack of intelligence and why understanding individual processing styles is essential for helping children thrive. The discussion highlights the importance of respectful communication, celebrating strengths, and creating environments where children feel valued and understood.

The episode also tackles some of today's most pressing parenting challenges, including overprotective parenting, emotional coaching, social media's impact on self-esteem, and the growing need for meaningful conversations in an increasingly digital world.

🎯 What You'll Learn

•  How personal "scripts" develop during childhood 
•  Why self-sabotage is often rooted in early beliefs 
•  The connection between self-esteem and academic success 
•  Why neurodiversity does not equate to lower intelligence 
•  How parents can foster healthy confidence and resilience 
•  The dangers of overprotective parenting 
•  Why emotional intelligence is critical for lifelong success 
•  How social media can affect children's self-worth 
•  The importance of listening to children and paying attention to behavioural changes 
•  Why early intervention remains one of the most effective tools for positive outcomes 

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Neurodiversity and Support
 02:00 Understanding Mindset and Self-Sabotage
 05:31 The Concept of Personal Scripts
 13:26 Neurodiversity and Individual Processing
 18:19 Self-Esteem and Its Impact
 31:25 Healthy Self-Esteem and Positive Mindset
 36:42 Understanding Self-Imposed Limitations
 37:57 The Dangers of Overprotective Parenting
 40:00 Emotional Intelligence and Coaching Children
 43:07 Consequences of Emotional Neglect
 45:05 Listening to Children: The Key to Understanding
 49:11 The Role of Educators in Child Development
 50:56 Navigating Professional Help for Children
 55:05 The Impact of Social Media on Self-Esteem
 59:58 Engaging in Real Conversations
 01:01:10 Encouraging Children to Seek Help

👤 Guest Bio

Dr. Albert Bramante is an American talent agent, performance psychologist, mindset coach, and author. He is best known for blending psychological concepts with career advice to help creative professionals overcome mental blocks.

Resources

Social: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertbramante/

https://www.instagram.com/dralbramante

Book: 

Rise Above the Script: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rise-Above-Script-Confronting-Performing-ebook/dp/B0CW19F7WZ

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome back to Early Intervention Matters, the podcast that helps parents, teachers and health professionals understand the diagnosis, treatment, care, and support of children with autism, ADHD, threats, and other neurodevelopmental challenges. Your host, Dr. In Yang Tacon, is a consultant and neurodevelopment pediatrician, and she will provide insight through interviews, answering questions, and breaking down complicated topics. By sharing stories from parents and professionals in the field, we hope to make sense of what can be an overwhelming topic. Early intervention is crucial for children with developmental difficulties. Yes, early intervention matters. And now, here's your host, Dr. Inyan Tagon.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Hello everyone, you're welcome. Good evening from wherever you're listening. Um, you're listening to any intervention matters podcast. Would like to welcome you to this podcast that helps parents and professionals and anyone associated with young children who are neurodiverse to make sense of childhood development, neurodiversity, and what really works when a child needs support. So I'm Dr. Yang Takon, I'm consultant neurodevelopmental pediatrician. I'm the host of this podcast. We've been going on for the last five years, and we've really had some excellent guests on this podcast. Today I'm really fortunate to have Dr. Albert Bramand. I met Dr. Bramand on the Podmatch platform, which podcasters uh LinkedIn and Network and the community of podcasters. And I was very impressed by his profile and the great things he's doing. I was pleased to see that. You know, we could have had him join us to share all the great things he's doing. So thank you, Albert, for accepting to join us today and welcome. Thank you for having me on. Thank you. Thank you so much. We're going to have a lovely conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Absolutely. I, as I do have a background in psychology, I have a PhD in psychology. I've been a college professor and a talent agent for over 20 years. I teach psychology classes, style development, lifespan, personality of development. And I've also been working as a talent agent. I represent actors in New York City area for film, TV, theater, commercial print, and voiceover. I've been doing that for 22 years. And through that, both in my experience as a professor and as a talent agent, I've come to realize how important mindset is and how important that all of the mental dynamics of performance kicks in. And so that's been a really strong focus of mine lately in the past like five or six years has been really how how do people maximize their own performance? How do people get in their own way? And so one of the areas that I've become studied immensely was self-sabotage and how that all plays into things. And so I've been really in that space for a while because I noticed when I first started acting as a talent agent, the one thing I noticed was how many actors were self-sabotaging and how many actors were getting in their way. And I've seen it even with the thousands of students I've worked with over the years. You know, some of them were really smart, some of them were really intelligent, but I don't think they believed it. And that that was a big factor, too. Because some of them would drop out, some would stop coming to class and just stop doing the work when they really were capable. They really were talented.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

That really hits home with the young people I see. And I think that's one of the things that interested me in the work you were doing on mindset. When I read through your work and and and the scope of things you do, I felt this resonated with the young people I see because I see lots of young people who give up so easily and they think of themselves as not capable. Whereas if they had a different approach and saw things differently, they would do a lot better. So I I that's one of the things I that really resonated with me. And I felt that families hearing this, people hearing this, there will be people in the audience who will listen and know that actually what could I have done differently to get a different outcome? So I'm looking forward to us delving more into this in our conversation. So you've been working on that. You have written a book as well, which were what I know that the title of the book is Rise Above the Script. So what do you mean by the script? And when does a child start writing one about themselves? When do people start writing a script about themselves?

SPEAKER_01 5:13

It's interesting because we started before the age of eight, actually. We start writing that concept of who we are. And I use the metaphor of a script because I, again, it's for actors. The book really initially was designed for that. And that's one thing that they know very well is scripts. But I'm not talking about the physical script that we're, you know, that an actor would read. I'm talking about the script that we take internalized daily about who that dictates who we are, how we approach problems, how we approach life. And it's about overcoming that, overcoming those limitations and overcoming those self-imposed limitations. You know, we we write a lot of the things that we feel are obstacles, a lot of times are self-imposed. And so if we change the language that we use, we change the our internal script. And we can then start to achieve a whole lot more, you know, when we get rid of those barriers or those limiting beliefs that maybe we we borrowed from our parents or from our previous elders or previous teachers that we just sort of just internalized. And also one of the things that I've learned about when it comes to memory, when it comes to processing and perception, is we can very often hear a message from somebody else. And then it gets filtered in our brain and in our mind in a different way. And what matters for me most, expect over most coaches, is not necessarily, I mean, the message, of course, the actual message you received is important, but what's also important is what filters did we use to get that? You know, what filter did we, you know, interpret that? Because very often, if you look at a lot of people that get into arguments or miscommunications, very often what was said often may not always meant what was, you know, the true meaning of that. It was a misunderstanding. And that's how things could happen. And we can internalize the remarks we hear from teachers, from parents, that may now maybe in reality they probably didn't say it the right way or the correct way. But yet we internalize it a completely different way. You know, for me, and I'll I'll speak a little, uh, get a little bit vulnerable here. When I was six years old, I remember having a conversation with my mom, and I'm the youngest of five, but I'm the only one that was born between my mother and father. My father was married twice before he married my mother. So he had kids, children from other marriages. But I was the only one from the union. I remember when I was six, I asked my mom, you know, why was that the case? Why didn't I have another immediate brother or sister? And she turned nonchalantly and said, I never really wanted to have kids. Now, that to me, if you look at it, you strip it down from a strict linguistic way. There's nothing malignant in that or nothing toxic in that. She was just being honest, I never really wanted to have kids. But my six-year-old mind took that a whole different way. Yeah. It really took, you know, years of of analysis to figure out what I took that as, and what my six-year-old brain took that as, I was I'm not wanted. Yeah. I was an accident. You know, my parents, I come from a very loving family, they never gave me directly that indication, but it was carried with me for most of my young life was I'm not wanted. And so that led me to kind of really begin to understand how powerful the mind is, both for good and for and for the negative, about how things can, you know, innocent, benign remarks can be interpreted into really full-blown limiting beliefs. So it's important that when we talk to the young or we talk to those that are at a certain age, that we be very explicit and monitor the language we use because inadvertently we could be setting up limiting beliefs. And every parent has, you know, good intentions. Every teacher has good intentions. But if they don't work on their own uh lending beliefs and their own trauma or generational traumas, you can transfer it. It's gonna transfer it very easily down to and without them even realizing what they're doing. Yeah. And so, and that's with me too, because on both sides of my family, there's generational trauma on my mom's side and my father's side. And unfortunately, the kids are the ones that inherit that.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Yeah, that's really true. And uh and for our audience listening, I think this is a very important fact that Albert has mentioned. Many times we're not intending to do these things deliberately, but if we haven't dealt with those things that we've experienced along the way, we transfer it to a young child. And you can imagine that your six-year-old self looking at the world in a different way to combo what was said and interpreted it in another way, despite the fact that there was nothing physically to suggest that, that your parents didn't love you. But because of what you heard, it just went through to your brain. So, as families, as parents, the developmental period is very, very important. Children are seeing and learning, the brain is being wired and very readily takes on things, information stores it in the memory. And so we need to be careful about what we are saying and and doing around children. It brings me again to my own work where children with neurodiversity, ADHD, learning differences, they experience the world in a different way. And some of them before they get their um diagnosis, or people know exactly how their brains work, and would have experienced a lot of rejection, negativity, both from peers and adults, and that kind of internalizes with them as well. So, again, what's been your experience when you have looked at things from people who are neurodiverse and that internal script?

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Well, the the important thing is when we're looking at people that are neurodiverse, the important thing to know is that that has nothing to do with their intellectual processing, their capabilities. Some of them are incredibly bright. Some of you could even be like working in Silicon Valley that are top engineers, you know. So it has nothing to do with that. And that's the important thing to know. It's just they process information differently. And again, in my case, that innocent, benign remark I heard from my mom was filtered in a unique way. So when we're working with people that are neurodivergent, the important thing is number one, treat them like people, you know, respect them fully. That's the important thing. And, you know, and anybody who's listening who might feel that they're classified as neurodivergent, understand this. It is not who you are. It's something that you share. And that's the important thing when we look at people that have any type of ability, special ability. I don't even like to sometimes call it a disability. What superpower you have. The important thing is to know that that is only something you have. So a lot of times we talk about people like, you know, we I we attach an identity, like I'm ADHD or I'm autistic. No, you're somebody who has this condition. You're not that condition. Yeah. And that's the one thing we have to watch and sanitize the language we use when we're talking with people that are nor uh that who have neurodivergent capabilities is that one, it's a superpower. Let's work with them. And, you know, not everybody learns the same way, not everybody processes information the same way.

unknown 13:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

You know, someone who is neurodiverse may learn in better environments where there's a lot of other background noise. Like, for example, for me, I learn better when I'm listening to music, or if I have something in the background. Some people may be disturbed by that, some people may not learn that way. And I think the limitations with our educational system today, at least in America, is we have the mentality of a one size fits all. You know, and that is so out to date. What may have worked 50 years ago is not working today.

SPEAKER_04 14:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

And not working. Now I'm a product of the 80s and 90s. You know, I was in elementary school in the 80s and high school in the early 90s, and it's changed a lot now, the landscape. So the important thing is when we're working with people that are different abilities, we have to adapt with the times and tell our approach to an individual. Every person is an individual, they have their own unique way of processing information, sensory information, you know, knowledge, and respect that fully. So the important thing is to just respect that in a sense. And respect the way of doing things. And it's all about really just at the end of the day, looking at each person as an individual.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Absolutely. Thank you so much for that. And I think that's one key message I would like to stress again is that people have differences, and those differences is just the way their brain works and the way they see things. It doesn't take away from the person they are. They're first and foremost a human being like every other person. And I like what you you have stressed that, you know, this is not an identity, it is what they have. And so people should think about that first and not think I can say anything to them without there being any consequences. Let's go back to the self-esteem issue and the self-sabotage issue. So, how do you recognize that? How do you recognize what are the first signs that you see?

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Well, when it comes to self-esteem, you know, there's two extremes, and I talk about this in my book in detail. There's two extremes. There's low self-esteem, which is, again, global self-worth. You don't view yourself as worthy or deserving. And what'll happen then is you won't apply yourself. You won't try. And this is why I think we have a high dropout rate in in at least in America, from high schools and and from college. And a lot of it has to do with self-esteem and self-worth and your self-identity. Now, the other extreme of that is what I sometimes call toxicized self-esteem, or like even a false self-esteem, where arrogance comes in or being pompous and and being a blow, what we call a blowhard. You know, in reality, what's really underneath that is a fragility there. And it's really like, okay, we're we're almost diving into the low self-esteem again. Because when somebody has like really that level of fragility, whenever you try to give them constructive feedback, they get really anxious about that. Really nervous about that. They get really defensive and they'll get angry over time. They'll get angry and they're going to uh sometimes lash out or become very defensive.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

And so you begin to see those kind of behaviors.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

When you're that way, it prevents you from being coachable, it prevents you from evolving your learning, and that will lead to self-sabotage because again, it's going to get you out of rooms and keep you out of opportunities.

SPEAKER_04 17:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

So, you know, and self-esteem is very important. Starts at home. What's really important, and then I'm gonna go on a generational angle too, because if mom or dad has low self-esteem, very often that's going to transfer to the child. Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

That's very important for parents listening. So uh a lot of parents, I uh when they come into the clinic and they're talking about self-esteem. And that's really what you've said now is just making me also think about the fact that we should what what are the parents' self-esteem like? Because that could be a reflection on how the child is perceiving themselves. Do you find that in households where parents have good self-esteem that the outcomes the children present differently?

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Sometimes, because the parents, if if they're not fully engaged, they could have high self-esteem, but it may not be fully present in a child's life. Just because the parents live with the child in the same household, they may not always be fully present or uh attuned to what's going on. And also there's other factors too. You know, one of the things that's really important, especially for your preschool, elementary school, and high school students, is peer acceptance. What is their peer life like? Are they neglected? Are they being bullied? Are they being ostracized, or are they being accepted? Because if you're being ostracized or bullied, that's going to impact on your self-esteem too.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

Yes. And and the parents need to be present actually to be able to know when, because again, it works both ways if the parents are not fully present and engaging and knowing when the child is experiencing that.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Yeah. And that's when you have to calibrate and look at, okay, what are the emotional changes? If you're driving your coat off to school and your kid starts crying and kicking and screaming, I don't want to go. Obviously, they have to go. But what's important to do is okay, what's the source of that? Why are they getting so upset about going? But could uh now, you know, it's just natural they don't may not want to get up and and go every morning. But if they're really protesting, that's something that a parent should be investigating. You know, is a child being bullied? Is a child being picked on by whether their peers or by a teacher? You know, what's what's going on here? Because yes, again, school may be sometimes an inconvenience, but at the same time, it shouldn't be a source of major distress. And that's something that I would encourage a parent to do is okay, now you need to start having some honest conversation with the child and even with the school officials, okay, what's going on here? What's happening here? What's what's really important. And I know it's difficult with parents working, but what's also critically important for child's education is for the parents to be involved in the process. Having regular communication with the teacher, you know, having regular communication with the school administration. You know, that's one of the keys for success in school is when you have involved parents. And again, I know some parents would say, but they work full-time, but then there's email now. We have a lot of online tools now where you can communicate with the teacher, with the administrators. So that should be going on constantly. Like having a good engagement in communication. And when so this is where when problems do begin, they can be handled rather than going into full-fledged problems, you know, yeah later on. If there's any issue that start coming up, they can be dealt with.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

I agree with you completely because we have several children, and what you described about children not wanting to go to school or being distressed when it's time to go to school or school refusal has resulted in some children completely not wanting to go to school and then being taken off the school role and being home educated. Some of the difficulties with that usually is. The reintegration of those children back into school can be difficult because they again that self-esteem has gone down throughout that period, and there's nothing really being done in the interim while they're away to help with building that self-esteem. So the same difficulties do come up when they go back, or their attempts to get them back to school. And I have quite a lot of children on my cohort, in my clinic list, or children I see who have left school. And it's been a gradual thing. It's like not wanting to go in, school refusal. And some of them would say to me, I hate school, I don't want to go to school, I'm happy at home. And I think when we haven't looked at the impact this is having on their self-esteem and what goes on when they get into adulthood, we don't really recognize the impact of self-esteem and why it's so important. And so that's why I'm really pleased that you are bringing this to the forefront to help people recognize on time. We live in societies where lots of families are working and people are working full-time. Some parents are doing more than one job, and so they hardly have the time to spend with the child. They come in and barely see the charms for a bit. They just say hello, how is school by, you know? Yeah. That goes on. I don't know whether that's the same in America, but here in the UK, we do get lots of parents like that.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

Yeah, well, it it becomes like automatic pilot. It's like, well, you know, how how is it fine? How is school fine? Okay, it's gonna go back to cooking dinner or going back to doing whatever. And what we have to do also pay attention when we're, especially with kids is that or teens, they may not have the capability to know what's going on. So we have to do almost become detectives in a sense. Yes. What is their tone of voice? What is their body posture? If they're saying fine and smiling and genuinely fine, okay, that that they they may have a good day. But if they're saying fine and looking away from you, looking down, um, frowning, you know, like changing the subject, that's a time to say something needs to be investigated here. Something needs to be addressed here, something is missing here. And that might mean as a parent, you have to take time out of your schedule and work with the child, figure out what exactly is happening here. And they may not want to talk about it initially in the beginning because they're they're embarrassed, they're ashamed, or they feel it's their fault. You know, because a lot of times, when especially when children are bullied in school, it's very often perceived as this is who I am, this is my fault, nothing can change.

SPEAKER_04 24:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

And so that has to be addressed and has to be talked about immediately. And that's gonna require a little bit of extra engagement as a parent. Okay, what fully is going on here?

unknown 25:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Because again, okay, not everyone, not every child's gonna want to get up every morning and go to school. Granted, but at the same time, if they're protesting, wanting to drop out, you know, wanting to quit school, there's something going on.

SPEAKER_04 25:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Which you have to sometimes read between the lines and investigate and be on top of that. What's the reason for that? What's the source of that?

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Yeah. You can't achieve that when you're I remember the, you know, when my kids were younger and work was extremely busy. My husband was working out of town, and then I would rush home and you have all this work laid out in front of you to do, and you just ask the kids, how is school today? You ask them in a very quick way just to find out how things are. And I did have to take time, sometime, and reflect and think, actually, if I've spent the whole day at work and then I've come back, and I'm not really giving that time because of the pressures of work, and I'm actually robbing them of their own time, you know. And I think as families, we have to take time and spend that time with the children to actually engage. And that happened for one of my daughters because, you know, at the time she had been going through some anxious moments, but until I was able to really be in that headspace to be able to engage and listen, I couldn't unpick that. But when I, you know, I was able to have that time, I was better able to do that. And and then she actually felt better that she could talk to me, you know, she could open up and talk and talk about her worries. And I realized that actually, because she had been seeing you as that very busy parent, she hadn't had the time to really engage and talk to you about it. And that was one thing that struck with me that we need to make time to actually engage the children and catch those signs early.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Yeah, the the earlier you catch those signs or any anything, early intervention is always the best in any context. You know, the earlier you can intervene, the more positive the outcome will be. You know, the more smoother the outcome will be. But the early intervention is key and being fully present in the child's life is extremely important and vital.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

I know we've talked about what what would you call healthy self-esteem?

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Well, healthy self-esteem is just having, you know, global self-worth in a sense, just being fully there and present in a sense. That's what I would talk about with with LC self-esteem. I would just call it, you know, as it is, where you value yourself, but you're still humble. And humility is important. And when I say humbleness, I mean I'm not perfect. You know, I'm not, there's no such thing as perfection. We can always learn, we can always adapt, we can always improve. But at the same time, it's also appreciating what I've done and being able to be proud of myself. And it's important for young people to be proud of what they've done rather than always looking for the limitations because there's plenty of imperfections in everybody. And if we dwell on that, that's all we're going to be focusing on. Now, we have a, I guess you could say propensity because if if we look at evolution, we have what we call negativity bias very often. And that's designed to help us survive 100,000 years ago when we were on hunter-gathering days, when we were pretty much not in the civilized population, there were daily threats to our survival, whether it's large animals, other tribes, weather, disease, you know, we had to fully be engaged and vigilant over anything that didn't go right or anything that didn't look right, anything to look at a place. Our brain was designed to keep us alive and do that. And it does an amazing job of doing that. However, it may not be applicable today because even though we're in 2026, we still have a brain that's still in that 100,000 years ago mindset sometimes, where it's, I need to look for the negative. I need to pay attention to the negative. And that's all I'm going to focus on. And so this is what having healthy self-esteem is sometimes retraining your brain, okay, I will deal with what I need to deal with, but at the same time, I'm also going to be looking at the positive too, in every situation, rather than be focusing on the negative. Because, you know, and I'll use this from a teaching example. Being a college professor, usually at the end of the semester or the end of the academic year, professors get evaluated by the students. They're all anonymous. We get a chance to view them. And I can tell you that's quite humbling because I could be in a class of 25 students, college students. 20 of them can give me a glowing evaluation. I get a couple of neutral and then maybe, you know, two or three that are scathing or really critical. Now, my reptilian brain is going to naturally be focused on looking at those two or three that are negative and dismissing the other 20 that were glowing.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

I'm now focused on those two or three. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't be, but what I'm saying is we need to also celebrate the good. And when we have healthy self-esteem, we have better filters on our mind and operating through our day. When I say filters like the glasses we wear, we see the good and the bad and the negative. Now, if we have low self-esteem, we're going to look for everything that goes wrong in our day, every little thing. And every little thing that goes wrong. I will then, you know, if I have low self-esteem, I'm going to go right to those negative evaluations and be and let that ruin my entire month. And forget about and say, and I'm almost dismissed like, oh, they were just trying to make me feel better. You know, the 20 that wrote me. You know, oh, they were just being nice. And I'm negating that, the good things, because we have that filter. And so a lot of times we tend to, and I always say this in coming from a neuro linguistic standpoint, when we operating in a mindset of limitations, we we tend to delete, distort, and generalize.

SPEAKER_04 31:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

So we delete the good things, we distort the bad, like really, this is like the the end of the world type of thing. And then we generalize. What we're now doing is that all we don't realize that this is all self-imposed.

SPEAKER_04 32:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

And so when we go these deletions, distortion, and generalizations, we're we're filtering the world in a negative way. So we're negating a lot of stuff. And the important thing to I to really grasp is these are issues that we need to be dealing with and working with. And so that's goes about what you were saying with the self-esteem thing. This is why all this is so important.

SPEAKER_04 32:36

Yeah, it's it's true.

SPEAKER_02 32:38

Now, some parents try to overprotect their children. So when children are going through rough patches and or some parents anticipate some difficulties and they step in to over-correct or over-protect the child from failure, or sometimes underexplain things. What do you think about that? And is there a psychological cost of this being?

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Absolutely. I mean, every parent wants to protect their child and be the perfect, omnipotent parent, the one that is knowing and can protect. The important thing though is we're also human beings at the end of the day. And every human being is going to experience disappointment, failure, sadness, rejection. And we can't shield a child from that because if we work too hard to do that, then you become what's known as like a hovering or helicopter parent, which is going to actually do more damage and good. Because then when a child becomes older and becomes an adult and they experience that the disappointment or the rejection or something not going our way, that adult is not going to be capable of having the resources to cope with that. So you're actually doing a disservice.

SPEAKER_04 34:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

And this is why, sort of like, even when it comes to like more teaching child rules, like if we're playing games with children, this is gonna sound counterproductive, but I always feel like as a parent, obviously, if you're playing with a game with a child, I wouldn't be competitive. But at the same time, you may not be helping them if you let them win all the time. Yeah. Because again, when they play with other children, they're not gonna win all the time. Yeah. And they're not gonna be able to cope with that. And that when they're not able to cope with that, that's gonna stunt their emotional growth, which is then going to get them ostracized from their peers. Because one of the biggest reasons why children get ostracized or picked on or bullied is their own emotional state. Their own socio-emotional state and socio-emotional skills. So they're actually, again, sometimes drawing negative attention to themselves by being very emotionally reactive. And all of this comes under what we call like emotional intelligence, and and it's about keeping the child again understanding that there's, you know, co uh there's gonna be consequences to things, and there's gonna be disappointments. And this is why it's important for parents to coach a child's emotions rather than dismiss them. Yeah. When I talk about coaching, and it's you know, as a parent, sometimes we're afraid when children are gonna be disappointed in us. We're afraid to have our children get angry. That's part of life. Yeah. And the important thing is not to be dismissive of it. You know, obviously you want your child to be respectful, but at the same time, okay, you're upset about this, you're mad, you're angry. What are you gonna do about it? How are you gonna work through and work in coaching and childhood? Yeah rather than because we all grew up in the old school parenting. Stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about. Or don't you roll your eyes at me again? You know, it might have worked in you know, an authoritarian time, but it's not working now. And okay, let's talk through it. You're upset, why? So now how are you gonna handle that? So we operate from more of a dismissing their emotions to coaching through their emotions. And again, every child is gonna experience disappointment, every child's gonna experience sadness, every child's gonna experience rejection. That's an inevitable part of life. But what's possible is how they handle that, how they balance themselves up and dust themselves off and move on. And that's why it's important it to come from the environment of emotion coaching rather than dismissing your emotions.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

And it's that's important. So parents should should not always want to prevent the child from experiencing emotions because it's got some consequences. And and what kind of consequences do we see when children haven't learned how to handle those emotions?

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Well, they're gonna be bullied, uh, they're gonna be, you know, ostracized those outcasts, and that's gonna perpetuate the issue that's gonna stunt their emotional and social growth and even their cognitive growth. So they're gonna stop trying, plotting themselves in school, and therefore that you're gonna now have a mental health crisis in your hands. You know, that's why a lot of you know depression rates and amongst children and teenagers is skyrocketing. You know, in the 80s and 90s, we never really looked at children as being depressed. If we heard about that, we would think, well, what in the world could a child be depressed about? It turns out that there's a whole lot that it can be depressed about and valid reasons. So the important thing is that there's, you know, a big cost is later on. And that's why, like, if you look at mental health practitioners, unfortunately, the job market is we're never going to be out of work. I know that sounds a bit cynical, but it's true, you know, because if you think about with all the crises that are happening now and the parenting mistakes and and and errors are fueling the mental health crisis. And I don't think it's just present in America, I think it's present worldwide.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

It's everywhere. It's everywhere. We've got tons of it here. We have lots of children who are refusing to go to school for various reasons. We see lots of children with low self-esteem. And I think this is one of the things that, again, I was very impressed when I was looking at your work. And so if you weren't now talking to me as a pediatrician, talking to an educator, talking to a parent, having to see children with these presentations there. What would your advice be? See?

SPEAKER_01 38:50

The advice mainly, number one, this is going to be very easy but hard to apply. Listen. Listen to the child. You know, listen to what they're going through. Talk to them. And when I mean by listen to them, I also mean paying attention to nonverbals, pay attention to body language, pay attention to eye contact, pay attention to facial expression, posture. All that stuff tells you a lot because the thing about communication is like some estimate that only 10% of what we communicate is verbal. The other 90% is nonverbal. So pay attention to communication. But I would say first and foremost, listen to the child. You know, very often it's natural for sometimes, especially for adults to kind of like, oh, let me just hear what the parents have to say and dismiss what the child is saying. But the important thing is it's there's so much more there that's needed. So we need to pay attention to what the child is saying, truly listen to the child and then fully engage and be humble too. And I think, especially as parents, the one thing we're programmed, at least to think that we know the best and we should, but we don't. You know, we don't wing it. You know, when every child does there's no such thing, like when you buy a product, you get an instruction manual. You don't get that with a child. There's no manual, there's no instructional guy. Yeah. Almost everybody is winging it. Even the parenting experts will tell you. They wing it too based upon what they're seeing. And so I think if we know that we're not perfect, okay to admit that and fix what's going on. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:38

I think that's what you said is so right. And I hope parents are listening in because the tendency, and especially, and this may be cultural as well, where if the child comes and wants to communicate something, some of them are fearful about telling their parents about their emotions and things or explaining. Some of them have this fear that they are, you know, be it's looked at as being weak if they are expressing the way they're feeling. And parents who have come from a different background and a different era would say, no, what's like you said, why are you being anxious? I've told you this is what you need to do and do. So we see a lot of all that, but again, it's recognizing. I think one thing that has come through in this conversation is the importance of, like you stressed, early intervention, picking up those things quite early and recognizing all the communication from that child. So it's not enough just hearing the child say, I'm okay, I'm fine, but does the child's behavior, body language, does it match what they're saying? Because, you know, the child could be trying to protect you from not being worried and not going to work and all that, and they might just say things are fine, whereas things are not fine. And we have to recognize that we have to be engaged with the child, as you've talked about. We need to be present, we need to talk to the child and listen. I think listening is one thing that a lot of parents need to do, do better. And what about the educators, the teachers?

SPEAKER_01 42:26

Again, listening, and and it's hard. I know this is gonna be hard to do, but pay attention to every child as much as you can. Because they're not just a number to you. Pay attention to what's going on. If you notice any changes, look at their baseline behavior, obviously. What are they typically doing? But then if there's changes in their behavior, they become more withdrawn. Are they suddenly acting out in class? Are they grade slipping? These are things that you should be on top of. And then immediately when you see a change happening, instead of like trying to find fault and say, okay, Johnny, I noticed this is going on in your grades. What's going on? Talk to me. You know, what can I do to help? I again uh do being a detective is almost like you just have to look at changes, trying to reach out to the family as early as possible, or even employing the help of a guidance counselor in the school or school social worker, and just trying to figure out how we can engage with this learner. And it may not seem this way, but but students really respond well when they know or perceive that the teacher cares for them. Yeah. So I think noticing when there's issues immediately, any change in behavior in a classroom, notice it right away. And and even with like acting up in the classroom, it's e of course it's disruptive, but it's important not look at that as defiance. That may be a cry for help. That might be an indication that something is wrong at home and they're looking for attention in some way. They're not being necessarily defiant. The act may be defiant, but their intention is to get attention. So what's going on here?

SPEAKER_04 44:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:17

That's really interesting. So with your clients, the people that you work with, what what does your work involve when dealing with?

SPEAKER_01 44:26

Well, as far as an agent, if they're just my acting client, I'm I'm perfectly okay with giving boundaries and I do that. You know, I'm not gonna sit here and say, let's talk about your emotions when I'm just there to represent them on their career. That's something that has to be utmost respected. Secondly, what's also important when it comes to working with someone who has blame beliefs or or they don't believe that they're worthy. A lot of one of the emotional complaints I get a lot from actors or a lot of concerns is they're thinking about quitting the industry or leaving the business. And the important thing is to know, okay, let's talk about why you're doing this.

SPEAKER_04 45:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

Okay, why you're doing that. So, you know, and that's that's the important thing to do there too, is why are they doing that? So I think the important thing is to, especially when someone's dealing with self-doubt, which is one of the things that will come into anybody wanting to to leave a certain field as they have doubts about their success, is to do an audit. What is your success factor? How are you succeeding? You know, what exactly are you going for? So that would be something that I would really focus on in a sense. Okay, what what's your past successes? Because going back to what I said earlier in our conversation about the deletions, distortion, and generalizations, we tend to downplay everything we've accomplished. And when you actually require or ask someone to really look at what they've accomplished, a lot of people are even generally surprised like everything. Wow. So I think that's the first thing is let's take a stock in inventory of what you have accomplished. Now, if there's still like areas where you feel that you're lacking in, okay, well let's develop a plan of action. What can you do today? And what's one thing you can do each day to get yourself closer in that area so that you become knowledgeable in that area, so that you grow in that area instead of worrying about like, well, I'm limiting in this area. So the important thing is when we're having that conversation is let's focus on where you can grow. And let's develop a plan for that, a game plan for that. Because again, with being humble is knowing where you know what we need to improve on, but also at the same time celebrating our past successes and wins.

SPEAKER_02 46:57

Yeah. I think you've you've hit the nail on the head that many times because of how we're so clouded by what is not going well now, we forget about all the successes that we've had.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Absolutely. We forget about that because we're so focused again, maybe that negativity bias, you know, that I mentioned. We tend to be biased on that. Looking for the negative.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

Yeah. And and do you think social media and stuff has contributed to this little civil esteem?

SPEAKER_01 47:34

Absolutely. And I've always said that social media is a double-edged ward. What I mean by that, there's just positive and negatives about it. You know, the one thing, again, it really keeps us engaged worldwide. And I think it was one of the saving graces during the COVID pandemic.

SPEAKER_03 47:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

We were all on lockdown, being able to still engage with people. However, though, excessive use, especially for children and teenagers, can limit and lower their self-esteem. So, Doom scrolling, what I mean by Doom scrolling is like sitting there for minutes and hours, scrolling on your Instagram, scrolling on your TikTok, and scrolling on Facebook and all of that. What you'll start realizing is you'll see these other successes, especially for other actors or seeing all these things that actors are booking. And then you're thinking, well, where's my success? And you start to feel like, well, I'm not really measuring up. And it's been demonstrated in several research studies that there's a there's a correlation or relationship between the amount of hours that one spends on social media and the amount of repression. So if you spend a lot of time on social media, there's a good chance that your stress level is going to be increasing. Because if we want to say the AIs or the programmers are designed to keep you on that platform and engaged. And that means showing you some really strong material that may or may not be in your best interest to be seeing at the moment. Yeah. And then you just become more addicted to the platform, and that's why you see a lot of not just kids and teenagers, but adults that are living on their cell phone. They're constantly, you know, they're not engaging with human beings anymore.

SPEAKER_02 49:24

Yeah. I think that's a very good point you've raised. And I think that this is a good point for families because this day, if you're not careful and you do not check it, you can and that's what a lot of kids are getting onto devices much younger than they used to before. And they are spending a lot of time. That's the mode of communication a lot of them have. They're not really engaging with physical people as much as they used to do in in my younger days. And so people would rather leave on the on the phones and communicate with people.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

I'm dating myself here, um, but being from a Gen X population, I didn't have my cell phone until I was in my early 20s. You know, and I'm kind of thankful for that. One a lot of the things I respect in families is that they'll have a no-device policy for an hour or an hour and a half. That, like, let's say you're gonna go sit at a dinner table, everyone has to put their phones in a box in the other room, you know, for at least for that hour or 90 minutes, because that forces you to be engaged. And now we're seeing a lot of people that are uncomfortable with having conversations with real people. Yes. Fourteen years ago, we had a hurricane in in the uh east coast of the United States, Hurricane Sandy. A lot of people lost power for over a week. Now, of course, if you have no power, you have no Wi-Fi and no signal. They survived. Not only did they survive, but people were like, you know, really freaking out. Like, what do I do? I'm like, I don't know, talk to people, go outside, talk, engage with people, read a book. You know, there's there's plenty of things you can do, but it's just amazing how we think that little device becoming right.

SPEAKER_02 51:13

It's now controlling everyone. It's true. It's true. I thought this is something that parents need to be aware of because it makes it more difficult for children to have those conversations. If the parents are also glued to the screens, they're not going to be able to have the talk with them. The child is also glued to the screen. So you can come to households where everybody's glued to the screen and not really engaging. And so even when they have that free time, they're not using it to engage with each other. And this is something we need to be aware of as families. So, Albert, it's been an interesting and really great conversation. Just as we end, if we come across children who feel that they do not quite fit in, and that child is getting that perspective of ruling themselves out, they can't do anything because they just do not fit in. What do you want parents or people working with them to approach helping that child? Because that's the narrative they've given themselves that they can't do anything, they don't fit in.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

Yeah. Well, the important thing is to listen to your child. Uh and this is where parents have to sometimes put their pride aside. If the child is really having a difficult time, then it may be time to have um a conversation about seeking professional help.

SPEAKER_04 52:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

And it's not about you, you as a failure, as a parent at all. As a matter of fact, that's actually a strength to know that you can't do this alone. So maybe getting that child professional help, but they need it. Counselor, social worker, you know, psychologist. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:47

And that's part of intervening early. Don't wait for it to go on for a long time to the point where the child starts.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

No, and what you're doing there is you're in a sense, you're not focusing on what's going on there. You're focused more on the issue at hand.

SPEAKER_02 53:08

Yeah, great. It's been such a lovely conversation. So for our audience, in the last hour, we've been delving into uh the internal scripts that many of us write for ourselves and how it can start from a very young age, from children, you can have this negative way of looking at things that if it's not picked up early, the way they absorb information and interpret it can stick with them, and that negative script can continue and influence the person that they end up being. So we've been having this conversation. Albert has outlined to us the early signs of this behavioral patterns for parents to be very present, be aware, not just listening to the words, but also taking on the nonverbal aspect, the communication. Because if children are telling you one thing is fine, but they don't look like they're fine, they don't sound like they're fine, um, and they don't act like they're fine, then you should know that there's something wrong and how you tackle that, how you engage with the child, listen to the child, try to find out what's going on, being present. And I liked what Albert was explaining about being present and actually physically being present and listening and being humble. I think he mentioned humility a few times, which is very important because as parents, many times we feel that we know it all. We will tell the child what to do and the child needs to do that. So it's very important that parents are humble enough to recognize when things are not going well and listen to the child's point of view. And he used emotional coaching as well, which I felt is a really good phrase, emotional coaching. Again, it's about helping that child to be able to experience those negative aspects, but not writing their story based on that negative experience and letting the child know that in growth, in in life, you would encounter negative points, but it's how you get through it. And I think this is really important for parents because some of us are overprotective. We want to be there and prevent nasty things or bad things from happening. We preempt that. But what happens is that child hasn't really had the opportunity to experience how to do it themselves when they're alone. And that usually causes a lot of problems. And in the UK, we have a problem with lots of children being out of school, and lots of children being fearful about going back to school. Some may have been after a negative experience, some may truly be because of significant difficulties that haven't been dealt with. And as we know, there's a lot of children with anxiety, depression who are out of school, but how are we helping in addressing this? And Albert has also talked about uh seeking professional help. So, as parents, there are times when we do things and um we get to the point where actually the child needs professional help, and early intervention is always the best. It's better to seek that help for the child because there's so many functional adults now who have had difficulties and blips in their early childhood or when they were younger, but it's the help that they got that saw them through. So it's been a brilliant episode, and you know, I'm just so thankful for the work Albert is doing. And I think when we started, you started by saying there are lots of people who are very capable who end up not doing that. Right. So, Albert, how can our guests find you? Because I'm sure many of them would want to, you know, I saw your book and I said to myself, I'm going to get that book for somebody, because I could think of a couple of people who could move with reading that book. And I've seen that in some adults where the negative scripts that has been written in them has kind of followed them through. I know of people that I'm definitely going to get that book for. So where can people find you?

SPEAKER_01 57:38

So you can find me, you know, on my website, albertbramonti.com. You can also find me on like LinkedIn and under Albert Bramanti uh or on Instagram. And I would really encourage you to reach out and I'd love to have conversations and also get my book on Amazon or audiobook.

SPEAKER_02 57:56

So it's available on is it is it just audio? Is it audio?

SPEAKER_01 57:59

No, there's audiobook, there's ebook, Kindle, as well as tech, a hard copy.

SPEAKER_02 58:04

Okay. Okay. All right. And for our audience, what's the title again?

SPEAKER_01 58:09

It's called Rise Above the Stripped, and it's Confronting Self-Doubt and Mastering Self-Sabotage for Performing Artists.

SPEAKER_02 58:15

Thank you. That's a fantastic book. Thank you so much for the time. We really appreciate it. And uh yeah, looking forward to more of your work as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:24

And thank you so much for having me on here.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. As we always say, early intervention leads to better outcome. And early intervention can only be achieved by early diagnosis. So thank you for listening into the series today. Um, I know some of the things we've talked about today would probably have generated some questions or need to seek clarification. So I'm happy to take questions and I'll invite you to send your questions to EIM at drtakon.com. Thank you for listening.