Ep 155: How can child discipline lead to connection? with Dr Tina Payne Bryson, co-author of "No-Drama Disclipline"

Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is a licensed mental health professional and she has co-written several books on parenting, including 'The Whole-Brain Child,' 'No-Drama Discipline,' 'The Yes Brain,' and 'The Power of Showing Up.'  In this conversation, Tina Bryson emphasizes the importance of teaching and building skills rather than focusing on punishment. She encourages parents to connect with their children and regulate their emotions before addressing discipline issues. Bryson shares examples of how to handle discipline moments, such as using reflective dialogue to help children understand the impact of their actions and find alternative solutions.  Bryson highlights the value of involving children in the discipline process and seeking their input on parenting approaches. Overall, the conversation emphasizes the importance of secure attachment and building a strong parent-child relationship.

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Transcript

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Hi everybody. I'm Dr Jessica Hochman, pediatrician and mom of three. On this podcast, I like to talk about various pediatric health topics, sharing my knowledge, not only as a doctor, but also as a parent. Ultimately, my hope is that when it comes to your children's health, you feel more confident, worry less, and enjoy your parenting experience as much as possible. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Dr Tina Payne Bryson. She's the co author of many, many books, including the book we'll talk about today, no drama discipline. In this episode, we'll explore how to handle discipline in a way that builds connection and teaches important life lessons without all the drama and conflict. Tina explains why traditional methods of punishment often don't work, and how parents can shift their approach to guide children more effectively. We'll talk about real life strategies that you can use to transform difficult parenting moments into opportunities for growth and connection. This episode is a must listen for every parent, and I'm so thankful to Dr Tina for coming on Ask Dr Jessica, Dr Tina. Payton Bryce, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I'm so honored to have you here. Thank you for having me so tell everybody about yourself. Tell us, what do you do for work? Who are you? Tell us about the books plural that you've written. Well, the number one most important thing is, I'm a mom to three boys, but I am a licensed mental health professional with some experience seeing kids, teens, young adults, and a lot of parenting support. And I am the founder and executive director of the Center for connection in Pasadena and Santa Barbara, California, which is an interdisciplinary clinical practice, so like mental health, speech and language, occupational therapy, stuff like that. And then I've written some books. I wrote the whole brain child, no drama, discipline, the yes brain and the power of showing up with Dr Dan Siegel, which has been a blast my own book. The bottom line for baby is 65 topics that we get the most competing advice about when we have babies. And it's alphabetical, so you can turn to pacifier use, or sleep training, or whatever's in there, and you get just a quick breakdown of what the science says and what the bottom line is. And the bottom line of that whole book is, trust your baby, trust yourself, and do what works for your family. There are many, many, many ways to be a great parent, and it doesn't rest on what decision you make pretty much about any of the things we worry the most about. And then I have one called The Way of play, written with Georgie Wiz and Vincent that is teaching us how to play with our kids in ways that build their skills and build relationships. This is going to sound like a loaded question, but did you ever picture yourself like your younger self, that looking forward this would be your the outcome of your career? No, I never planned on being clinician. I never planned on writing books or giving talks on them, which is actually another huge job. I go around and talk about the books a lot. My background is a high school English teacher. I did that was my plan, and then I got a master's degree in social work and had planned to stay home. That was my husband. And I waited six years because I wanted to be a stay at home mom more than anything. But then he's an English professor, and we moved to California, where I was from, and I was thrilled about that, but we couldn't afford to live in Southern California on an English professor salary, so I had to go to work. And before, I was like, Well, before I do that, let me just get a PhD really fast so that I can teach and be home with our boys. And in the process of that, I was really a frustrated grad student learning about mental health and wondering the why behind a lot of the things I was learning, and a lot of people couldn't explain to me the mechanism of why some people got better and why people didn't and why one therapy works for someone but not another. And so in the process of being a really curious but frustrated learner. I started wanting to study the brain, and Bruce Perry's work had really lit me up, and then I discovered Dan Siegel's work, and I heard Dan speak, and it was over for me. I was like, I have to go study with that guy. And so I spent a long time studying the field of interpersonal neurobiology, and as I was learning about the brain, and particularly the roles that relationships played in how our brains fired and wired. And I was parenting tiny little kids, I was obsessed with, oh my gosh, if you understand this about the brain, you understand how kids actually learn, and the things that we do in the name of discipline makes zero sense most of the time. And so I started just sharing with other parents and teachers what I was learning, and that led to the whole brain child. And as I was speaking, most people wanted to know about, what do you do about discipline? So I was like, Well, I guess we need to write another book. And on and on. And that's sort of how it's come. Is all of this has come out of me being lit up by something that I knew was really making an impact in how I was raising my kids, and I had to share it. It's amazing that you're able to combine your passions, you know, your passions, being a mom, being clinician, enjoying studying the brain, neurology, psychology, I love that you've put it all together. Thank. You, it's super fun. I'm just at heart. I'm a nerd who just wants to learn everything. But I, I'll admit, because, you know, we can't really have it all without a cost. I love the domestic life. I really, really love, like making I don't love making dinner, but I love that I'm making dinner for my my boys a lot of nights, and I love having organized drawers, and I like the domestic stuff really does fulfill me a lot, but something has to give. So sometimes I'm really focused more on that, and I'm not working as much, and then other times I'm working and saying, You know what? We're having Chipotle tonight, and it's all about like in the course of a week, what makes sense and trying to prioritize some sleep in there too. I love it. I'm taking notes. You should not follow me. I definitely am too stressed most of the time. No, but I love that you have grown kids, that you are proud of, that you smile and light up when you talk about them. You have work that likewise makes you smile, light up, that's a really beautiful achievement. Thank you. I feel really grateful, and I just I love people, and I especially love my kids, and I love this work because it just gives me so much fulfillment to really join with parents, teachers, clinicians, physicians around how do we improve the lives of families and make an impact generationally? So on that note, I want to ask you about your book, no drama discipline. I'm obsessed with this concept because I'm sure that everybody listening feels that feeling when our kids act up, which they all do. It's our instinct to raise our voice, to punish them, to want to take something away from them, and your book turned that idea totally upside down on its head and told me that even the way that we think about discipline needs to change. You know, it's funny. I had parents come into my office a lot who I would ask them, what's your philosophy about discipline? How do you handle you know, how you think about what your role as a disciplinarian is? And they all would just sort of look at me like, What do you mean? Either, usually their answer was, Well, I knew I didn't want to do it like my parents did it, or I wanted to do it like my parents did it. Or they were like, We're for sure not going to spank, but we don't really know what what to do, you know? So it was interesting, just the idea that a lot of parents have never even thought about, why am I disciplining and what is my intentional approach to do it? Now, here's here's the kind of like big thesis of this book, which is our why even discipline in the first place? The reason we do it is because we want our children to become self disciplined people who handle themselves make decisions Well, without any input or without us watching. That's what we want them to do, is to become good people who are self disciplined. The way we get them there is through many, many opportunities to teach and build skills, and the best opportunities to do that are the discipline moments where they're either doing something they're not supposed to be doing or not doing something they are supposed to be doing. Behavior is communication about what skills they don't yet have. So when my five year old hits his seven year old brother because he's so angry, he doesn't handle his anger Well, his behavior is telling me I don't yet have the maturity or the strategies or skills to regulate myself when I'm this angry, or if your kid tells you I hate you, you're so stupid and they're really disrespectful or unkind to you, they're telling you I don't have the skills to handle communication in a respectful way when my nervous system is this jacked up, right? So anytime our kids have behaviors, they're basically are giving us the list of the things they don't yet know how to do. And some of that is development unfolding, and some of it is us teaching them. So if we can think about discipline moments as opportunities to teach, it can change everything. And my favorite question when you're thinking about, how do I respond to this misbehavior that just happened, is to ask yourself, is what I'm going to do here? Going to make it more likely that my child has a better chance of handling this well in the future or not, because so many of the things we do in the name of discipline, yelling, threatening, taking things away, punishing, reactive time outs, spanking, humiliating, all the things that are part of the whole drop down menu of what we might do. Very few of them actually do anything to build skills, to make it more likely our child can do better the next time. All right, so let me give you a maybe hypothetically personal example, sure, sure. Let's just say, for example, a friend of yours, a friend of mine, one of my kids hit another kid, and the other kid retaliated by pinching them back. And as a parent, we took away dessert for the week. Now, after reading your book, I know that's not the ideal response. What? Should we have done differently? Hypothetically speaking, first of all, you have not damaged your child by taking away dessert for the week. They are 100% gonna have all the same wonderful opportunities in their future than they would have had had you not done that. And that's one thing I want to say before we go in, is one of the things that happens sometimes when people read my books or hear me on Instagram or whatever is they think they have to be so precious about every moment and have a teaching based reflective dialog every time. And I am not suggesting that you will drive yourself crazy. So yes, I love the reminder. We are, we are human. We all make mistakes. We are all flawed beings, right? It's okay to make Yeah, and you don't have to have a reflective conversation with your child for 30 minutes about their feelings, about how they feel, about how they feel about putting their shoes on. Sometimes you have to pick your kid up and pick up the shoes and say, I can see you're so upset about having to leave the house, I'm right here with you while you're upset, and we are leaving right now. So we want to bring in, we want to bring in high limits, boundaries, structure, along with high nurture and connection. Those should go together. We need high on both. And in fact, what a lot of people are calling gentle parenting is high on the nurture and emotional responsiveness, but not high enough on structure and boundaries and limits. So I'm big on both. Okay, so let's talk about it this way. Let's just imagine your child. It's day four. Everyone else is having dessert, and the child is sitting there not having dessert. Is your child looking around the room and thinking, You know what? I'm really I feel like I've really learned my lesson here and now that I'm looking at everyone else eating dessert and I'm not having dessert, I'm really reflecting on what I did wrong. And for sure, the next time I'm emotionally dysregulated when I can't even access my problem solving brain, I'm gonna remember this moment and I'm gonna put my brakes on and make a better choice. Okay, that's not really how it works. And and in all in full disclosure, we don't follow through either. By the time It's day four, we forgot what the fight was about. We forgot why we took away dessert. Okay, well, say, say it's even day one, your child is not sitting reflecting on their behavior. They're sitting there thinking how mean and unkind this is, and how left out they feel, and and your kids might be mad at you, and sometimes it's not going to feel like you're building relationship when we discipline, and that's okay, you're the grown up in charge, and we build relationship and connection lots of other times. But it's not really pro regulation. It's not really pro relationship. And here's another huge, huge way to think about this, we operate lots of times in discipline moments like I'm taking dessert away as if your child has paused and made a volitional, thoughtful choice about their behavior in the moment. And sometimes they are but most of the time, the big behaviors that we end up responding to from a discipline perspective is because our child has become dysregulated. They have lost the ability to pause and make calm, kind choices and be good problem solvers, right? Their prefrontal cortex are like in the whole brain child we talk about, they flip their lid, right? That part of the brain has gone offline. So what we need to do is, instead of doing something to them, like that's just a punishment, right? And it doesn't do a whole lot to build skills, we need to think about, what can I do for my child to help them build that skill, right? So depending on what the behavior was, you were saying, hitting your child doesn't typically hit. They don't walk around, just hitting people, right? So that happened in a moment where they lost the ability to regulate their body and regulate their emotions, and depending on their age, that's really typical, that that's gonna, I mean, it happens to us as grown ups, right? We certainly do that to our children, to not hit them, hopefully, but we lose our ability to regulate ourselves, and we act insane sometimes, or we're unkind, or we're really reactive ourselves. So what I would be thinking about is, how can I use this as a teaching opportunity? So I'll just tell a personal story. So five year old slaps the eight year old so hard that he leaves a handprint on my eight year old's back. So Luke comes running into the bathroom. JP, five starred me. Now I didn't know what that meant, but apparently it's a slang term that kids come up with, where you hit someone so hard and it leaves a handprint that the fingers are like the five points of a star. So I lift Luke's shirt, I see J P's juicy little hand on his back, and the first thing I do is comfort Luke. Luke, it looks like it hurts so much. I'm so sorry that that happened. What do you need to feel better? And he literally looks at me and says, Just go handle that demon. And so I say, Luke, you know, you go do what you're going to do now, I'm going to talk to JP. So, so I come around the corner and JP is furious. His face is red, His muscles are tight, his eyes are wide, and so that tells me he's in a really reactive state. The brain is either in a reactive state where it can't think or process information really well or learn, or it's in a receptive state, where it's regulated, ready to learn, ready to listen. So he's in this totally reactive state, and if my job so here he is. He's violated a rule. He's hurt his brother. I could say, go to your room. I'm taking away your playdate for for the day you clearly can't be with people. Or I could throw, you know, some other consequence or punishment. Or I could say, Go tell your brother you're sorry. We're. Now, or I could yell at him like I can't believe you hit your brother. You know, whatever the responses are, here's what I did instead. And I make mistakes all the time, including at the end of no drama, I tell a story about how I threatened to remove one of my children's body parts. I said, If you stick your tongue out one more time, I will rip it out of your mouth. So I definitely have made lots of mistakes, but this was a moment I feel proud of because I think it illustrates the points of the book, which is this, so I come around the corner. JP is in a super reactive state. The first thing I do is try to move him from reactivity to receptivity, because if I'm going to be an effective disciplinarian, by that, I mean teacher and Skill Builder, he has to be ready to learn. So I have to ask myself, Is my child ready to learn, and am I regulated enough where I'm ready to teach? If the answer to either of those is no, it's not the right time. It's not true that we have to discipline right then and there or they won't learn. That's true of animals. It's not true of even tiny, tiny two year olds or older. That's a fascinating distinction, because I think, I think, you know, I have a puppy, and it's true if you don't discipline or in that moment, she forgets but that's a great reminder that that's not the case for little kids. It's not the true case for kids, although we've been taught that, right? That's kind of common thinking for people, but that's outdated research. So the first thing I have to do in the name of discipline is to get him receptive he has. If he's not gonna, if he's not in a state in which he can learn, then I might as well do nothing. So the first thing I do is connect before I redirect. So I pull him to me and I just say, JP, you're so mad. What happened? Now I also know that the part of the brain that gets really activated when we're in physical pain is also the same part of the brain that looks very similar when people are in emotional pain. So if my kid had hurt his hurt himself, I would have been like, oh. JP, come here. What happened? Like, I would have been really nurturing, but because it came out as bad behavior, sometimes we respond with reactivity. So anyway, I say, what happened? Come here? And he starts to tell me his brother actually did something really crappy to him, really mean. And he's like, and I tried to use my words, but he made fun of me, so I five starred him, so he's really mad. Now one other point I'll put in here. If I had forced an apology, go tell Luke you're sorry right now, it would have been so disingenuous, because the part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, that allows us to regulate ourselves, that part of the brain, is also the part of the brain that gives rise to empathy. So if we're in a really reactive state where we're not engaged with problem solving and thoughtful thinking. We probably have a harder time accessing empathy, too. So he doesn't care. He wished, at that moment, he wished he attend stardom. You know, he didn't even care about how his brother felt. So I say, what happened? He tells me what happens, and I validate his feelings. I am co regulating, so he's borrowing my regulation, and what I'm trying to do is help modify his state back into a receptive state. So I say that would have made me really mad too. I can see why you got so upset. And then I would say it's okay to be angry, but it is not okay to ever hurt somebody. So then I just come in strong right there, but I'm waiting for, as I say, that hurt. You know, I can see why you would be upset. I'm right here with you. So within just a couple of minutes, he gets receptive again. He's calm. His muscles aren't aren't as tense. You can see when people are in reactive states versus receptive states. So we get them there first. I think anybody listening can relate to this feeling when you're upset and somebody validates those feelings, you immediately feel better. To feel seen, you feel heard. It calms you down. But at the same time, you're drawing a very clear boundary that that behavior was not acceptable in your family. So I think that's a wonderful response. I hope I remember it in the moment next time. Well, the idea is that we want to say yes to our child and their experience and their relationship with us and us being the kind of person they want to keep coming to, even while saying no to the behavior. And Dr Eliza Pressman has a beautiful way of saying that idea. She says, All behaviors are not welcome, but all feelings are welcome. So anyway, he moves back into this more receptive state. And that's when I say, it's not okay to do that's when I first say that. And then I say, I want you to know something you really hurt Luke. And I pause. Now, the reason I'm doing this is because that is actually a consequence of what his behavior was, right? And he wasn't really in his whole mind. He didn't really make a thoughtful like now I'm going to hit my brother like it happened out of a reactivity that he developmentally doesn't fully have control over yet. So I hold that moment and I like how you said it, because you're not trying to sound disappointed, per se, as you're pointing out a truth, I'm pointing out a truth. So I say you really hurt Luke, and I pause, and I allow him to feel what that feeling inside of him is, and this is actually tuning into his conscience. So there's a huge difference between shame, which is like you're a terrible person and you make terrible choices. That's a horrible, horrible thing to do to children is to shame them. It's actually a huge predictor of mental health problems later. But there's something there's a huge difference between that and what I'm doing here, which is allowing his natural sense of healthy guilt to get activated. What I mean by that is, you know, we used to have to live in tribes and in groups in order to survive the world, and so the feeling of guilt is a really uncomfortable feeling, and when we feel it, it's one of the biggest things that changes our behavior. It's the most natural disciplinarian teacher of all times, because we then are like, Oh, I don't want to feel that way again. That felt terrible. I'm going to not do that next time. So what I'm allowing him to do is feel it. So I say, JP, you really hurt, Luke. And I wait, and his head tips down, he's five, his head tips down. And I say, what you're feeling right now is actually a superpower. JP, that feeling you have right now is this really, really wise voice inside of you that says that was not okay, and that is such an important voice that you have. How amazing you have that superpower, because it will help you make good choices. You listen to that voice. And then I said, You know what? The other thing is really cool is we have another superpower in our family, and that is, we can never lose each other's love. And so even though you did something that hurt Luke, you can totally go make things right with him whenever you're ready, and I will help you. And how, how do you think you could make things right with Luke? And then I finished the conversation, and I know this sounds like a long conversation, it was literally, like three minutes. I say to him, okay, so I know you know it's okay. I use this phrase all the time. I know you know it's okay. It's not okay to hurt somebody. So the next time you get mad, what could you do instead of hurting somebody? And sometimes they might need help coming up with ideas. But I said, you know, you can jump up and down to let that energy out, or you can run and yell in your pillow, or you can come ask for help. And so at the end of that reflective dialog, did I teach Yes? Did I build skills? Yes? Is it more likely he will think of those things in the future? Probably as development unfolds and his prefrontal cortex gets longer, but he also got practice tuning into how he felt. He got practice going and making things right with his brother. So that is like one example of how we might take a moment that isn't just throwing out, you know, a consequence that doesn't do much to teach, but instead is thinking about, how do I make this moment an opportunity to teach and build skills? And in addition to that, it definitely sounds like through that moment and the way that you handled it, he probably feels more connected to you, you know, as opposed to feeling scared of you, like that authoritative, commanding parenting style you talk about in your book, you're providing him an opportunity to see that you're a trusted adult figure. That is so crucial. I'm glad you gave some attention to that, Jessica, because, again, the brain's an association machine. So if my child says, you know, acts in a certain way, or says something to me, or we have an experience where he feels like, wow, when I lose control, where, which I can't totally help. Sometimes I end up getting in trouble. And when I, when I, when I did that, that felt so bad from my mom that I'm gonna have to I don't know that I can come to her with as many things versus when I fall apart and I get overwhelmed and I don't handle myself well, someone's going to help me, you know, like I'm going to get in trouble, versus someone's going to help me. And I think, you know, let me give an older kid really quick example. You know, my eighth grader came to me one night on a Sunday night, at 6pm in fact, when the manuscript for no drama was due. So I was really under stress, and I was taking care of my twin, niece and nephew, four year old. So I had, like, you know, five kids who were, like, 12 and under that I was taking care of my husband was at the hospital with his dad, who had had emergency surgery. Like, it was just like a pressure cooker moment. So that was a Chipotle night, exactly, I think we ordered pizza. But my my 13 year 12 year old, comes to me Sunday night at 6pm and I've got all these kids, and he's like, Hey, can you take me to the craft store? Now it's because he has a project he had to make a 3d model of a cell that was due the next morning. And of course, he had known about this for weeks, but he'd been goofing around playing football with his buddies all weekend, so at first I was super mad, and I yelled at him, and I was like, You're so just respectful of my time, and you wasted time all weekend, and you know, You're so irresponsible, like, I just got mad, mad, mad, mad. And I will say the one thing I'm the most militant about, and I stand by it, is that I was really militant about my child's sleep. So he's an eighth grader, and I'm like, you still are turning the light off at nine o'clock. So I will take you to Michael's craft store. I don't have time to help you. This is your project, and lights will be going off. So he ended up getting a D. And this is what we call a natural consequence. I didn't call the teacher and say, make sure you give him like that just happened without me doing anything. And I'm a huge fan of natural consequences. That's how the world works. And he already learned the lesson. When he got like, he was like, that's a bummer. So I didn't have to say, Well, now, you know, I didn't have to give the lecture. The lecture happened just in his natural consequence experience. But then I'm reading the grant manuscript about behaviors communication, a few days later, as I'm editing, and I went, Okay, Tina, practice what you preach. He. Behavior told me something. His behavior was like, Hey, Mom, you know all those executive function skills I need, around planning ahead and considering how much time I need and what materials I might need. I don't have those down yet, because I'm a 12 year old boy, and social skills, or social time, is the most important thing to me for my identity at this phase of my development. So spending time with my buddies was way more important to me than homework. Okay, so those were his behavior. So instead of me saying, like, next weekend, you're grounded because you didn't spend your time well last weekend, that doesn't do anything to help him build a skill. So here's what I did. Instead of doing something to him, I did something for him, and I said, Ben, on Fridays, when you come home, we're going to look at your planner and we're going to talk through what's coming at the first few weeks when he came home, the planner was blank. So then I would say, go fill out your planner. Go on all the teacher websites, fill all that out, and then come back to me. After doing that three weeks in a row, he started filling it out. He came to me, and we said, Okay, how much time will this take you? When is it due? When are you going to work on it? And we started walking through mental planning like that so that he could start building those skills. Now, if you feel like you're listening to me and you're like, This is exhausting, I'd rather just send them to the room. Know that any time you put in in these conversations and again, please don't do it for every infraction your child, you'll go crazy because your kids give you a million opportunities a day. But just think about what are the behaviors that keep coming up, or the things you worry about the most? Are the things that drive you the most crazy that you have to get onto them about all the time. Think about those. Write them down on a list, the three discipline problems that I'm really focused on right now, and then cross out the title of your list. Don't label it a discipline problem list. It's a skills my child needs to build list. And when we go that route, we really can start then realizing that the time we put in when we're investing in these kinds of conversations and thinking about coaching our kids through making it right, or, you know, you ruined this thing. And so we're gonna we're gonna figure out, how are we gonna fix it? Let's do that, you know, and making things right as we do that, we are saving ourselves so much heartache and time and drama down the road. It really does make things easier for us, because our children are becoming self disciplined. Such a great example. I I was actually listening with my son. We were in the car, and I was listening to you on some podcast, preparing for this preparing for this conversation, and my son was listening, and he said, I really like what she's saying. I really like it. And I said, Well, I'm just curious, when you're a parent and there's no wrong answers here, what would you do differently than how daddy and I raise you? And he said to me, well, because we're and we're kind of, I think because my I think it's because we both work and we don't want to spend a lot of time disciplining our kids all the time, a lot of times. Our approach with the kids is we have them work it out themselves. I love that they're age 11 and 13 and they're getting older, so we when they fight, we say, you guys, just work it out anyhow. He said to me, I like what she's saying, because she is pointing out that parents need to have more rules. And he said, I think when I'm a parent, I'm gonna have more rules than you guys do. Interesting. That was interesting to me because I thought he would like parents. I thought kids would like parents that are a little more hands off. Let you work it out. But I do also, what I appreciate about your stories is that you give kids more boundaries you give you're there during the argument, you're present, you're a participant, and so that's something that, you know, I thought that was interesting, hearing from my own kids that they they want me to give them more boundaries. They crave more boundaries. That's really interesting and not at all surprising when we have parameters and rules and limits boundaries. It actually is a cue of safety, because they know what to expect. It's predictable, and the brain loves what's predictable, right? But I also want to say too, Jessica, I love that you're giving them opportunities to work things out. When you really look at the two ways that kids learn best, which is, remember our goal of discipline, it's one practicing doing something themselves, and the other is what is modeled for them. So like my husband was great about this, the kids would come to him fighting about something, and he would say, either I can stop what I'm doing and I can help you work it out, or if you guys can work it out, then I'll have time to finish what I'm doing, and we can go outside and play kickball. That motivated them to work together, right? So here's the thing, when do you let them work it out when everyone involved is in a regulated state? That's when you give them an opportunity to work it out. If someone starts escalating and moves into a reactive state, they probably do need us to step in. That's a really good tip. Actually, I really appreciate that, because my son was saying how it's hard for him because he's the middle kid and the older sibling can can dominate, or he can feel like she's dominating, and so, and I understand that. So, you know, in my mind, I think if we intervened at every fight they have, they fight a lot, you know, the little kids, and they have a lot of they have a lot of skirmishes, so it'd be a full time job. Yeah. So I think if there's, you know, if there's one thing that kind of keeps happening, you could, you could sit down with one or all of them and say, you know, I'm noticing that there's a lot of conflict, particularly when XYZ, have you noticed that? And do you have any thoughts about how we could prevent that? And I think it's great to give them opportunities to work it out, and then they may need you to step in. The one other thing I'll say too, is that we often, as parents, we already have such huge mental loads, such huge mental loads, and when we have to discipline, we often then are trying to figure out, what do we do, what do we say, how do we respond? And I love particularly like five and up to have kids play a big role in figuring that out. So I again go back to that phrase, like, I know you know it wasn't okay too. So what are your thoughts about how we can make this right, and what are your thoughts about how we can prevent this from from happening in the future and let them participate in the conversation? Sometimes, and particularly as my kids got into, like middle school in high school, they would sometimes ask me to go do something, like, if they could go do something, and I wasn't too sure about it, or they were trying to, like, get me to say yes to something, or they've done something they weren't supposed to do. And I often would say, let's reverse roles. You be the parent. What would you say? If you know you give me the lecture, I'll be you. And what's so amazing about that moment is they start saying to you pretty much exactly what you would have said. And it's really assuring, you know, because you're like, oh my gosh, they have been listening to me, they have internalized this. But also they're internalizing it more if they're saying it, as opposed to like, Oh, here she goes again, and tuning us out. So I really like them to take an active role, usually like what they come up with around the new boundary or the new rule, even when it comes to tech or things that they're really drawn to, they usually are stricter than I would be. So I love getting them involved in the discipline process, as long as it's still clear that you're the one in charge, they need us to be the leaders in charge, as your son pointed out, yes, no, this is so great. I think the points that you make are so helpful. I mean focusing on teaching, building skills, thinking about how to feel empathy, how to have deeper connections. So I really enjoyed your book. I really appreciate all the teaching and discipline that I glean from your book. So thank you so much, and I highly recommend everybody get yourself a copy. Read it. You won't regret it. Thank you so much, Jessica. And I think what I love too, is to remember, if it's about teaching, they have to be in a receptive state in which to learn. So sometimes the first thing we need to do in the name of discipline is to connect and regulate them and get them back to that state, and that gives us a minute to kind of catch up and think about it as we end. I'll say one other thing that I loved that you said a minute ago, and that was to ask your son what he thought about how he might do things differently. First of all, that's a parent who's really secure, you know, that communicates to your child like I'm secure in how I've done it, and I trust that you may do things differently, and that's okay. You're a different human. Like, that's such a beautiful thing. But I also love that, you know, probably every year or two, I would say to my kids, and I would try to remember, like, on their birthday or around a specific holiday or something, to remind myself, I would say to them, is there anything I'm doing as a parent that you think would be helpful if I change? Like, what do you need that I'm not doing? Or is there something I'm doing that bothers you? And almost always they would be like, no things are good, like they couldn't come up with anything. But I think just the act of asking communicates, like, you matter to me, and your input matters to me, and doing this parenting thing matters to me. So I love that you asked your son that question. I appreciate that. Thank you for being so kind about my about your response. You know what? I could tell you're an amazing parent. I really can't, I will say I don't know that I'm an amazing parent, but I do know that I love my kids more than anything, and I feel very grateful that I have them, and they know it. Kids know they can feel it from us, and it really is the most important thing. It really is. And I think, you know, we're going to mess up all the time as parents, but the research shows that when we mess up as parents, as long as we make the repair with our kids, we go back into connection with them, we apologize, we say, like, I didn't handle that as the way I would have liked to. Can I have a do over it's actually beneficial for our kids when we mess up. And so I think one of the best predictors for how well our kids turn out is that they feel that they are securely attached to us. And what that means is that not perfectly, but most of the time, they feel safe and seen like known and soothed. We show up when they need us, and then secure and knowing that if they have a need, we're going to we're going to show up for them. And so to me, the safe scene, soothed and secure is like my North Star for how I handle any moment that I don't know how to handle, and how I get back. You relationship with them if I messed up, what a what a powerful message. And thank you so much for being here. Thank you for everything that you've taught me and taught my audience here today. And I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of Ask Dr Jessica also, if you could take a moment and leave a five star review, wherever it is you listen to podcasts, I would greatly appreciate it. It really makes a difference to help this podcast grow. You can also follow me on Instagram at ask Dr Jessica. See you next Monday. Bye.