Eps 309: Solo Show- Paradox, Parenting, Pot Smoking

Resources:

Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Music. Hi friends. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place where we tease apart what it means to be a conscious parent and a conscious human on the wild ride of parenting teenagers. I'm your host. Casey overti. I'm a positive discipline lead trainer, parent, coach and mom walking the path right next to you as I imperfectly raise my own two teens, we are over 300 episodes in 1 million downloads strong. I am so grateful to each and every one of you who listens in each week and finds value in what I offer you. Have put this show in the top 1% of podcasts worldwide, joyful courage is all about grit growth on the parenting journey, relationships that provide a sense of connection and meaning and influential tools that support everyone in being their best selves. Today is a solo show, and I encourage you to listen to how grit shows up in the content that I share with all of you before we get into it, before we get into it, I'm super excited to remind you this Thursday, January 20, is the launch of a brand new limited series podcast here on the joyful courage feed becoming sproutable. It is a seven part podcast co hosted with my incredible friend Julieta, who is a positive discipline trainer over at sproutable. We have a really exciting announcement to share on Thursday, and we're going to do it, we're going to share some stories, and we're going to really dig into the principles of positive discipline each week. So again, this is a limited series, and it will show up every Thursday in the podcast feed. So if you're listening through iTunes, well, they call it Apple podcast now. So if you're listening through Apple podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you're listening to the show, you're gonna see these episodes pop up on Thursdays. Double the listening pleasure. If you have littles, younger kids, you're gonna get a lot out of these episodes. And if you have teenagers, which most of you do you also will get plenty from these episodes with myself and Julieta. So I'm really excited about that. So jump back in here. Check it out. We will be coming live to you on Thursdays. Now, let's get into this week's show.

All right, okay, so this week, I've been all over the place as I've thought about what I want to bring to you all this week. It's funny when I think about solo shows, like something will happen with one of my kids, and I'm like, Oh, this would be a good this would be good content for the podcast, or something's coming up with a client or in the membership program, and I'm like, Oh, yeah. Or I read something. So you know, my process this week was, I've been reading Brene Brown's new book, Atlas of the heart, mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. It's so good. If you didn't know that I'm a total Brene Brown head, now you do. I love her. I love all of her work. This book, and I'm just going to read from the back the atlas of the heart Brown takes us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human. It goes on, but I'm not going to read it. I'm loving this book. And this morning, I was reading about paradox, and she defines paradox as paradox is the appearance of contradiction between two related components. And she goes on to write, although Light and Darkness seem to be opposite, you can't have one without the other, the opposing elements of a paradox are inextricably linked. And how about that? I still am a little fuzzy on the paradox thing, but what it reminded me of was the therapy. And you all have heard me talk about this that I did with my daughter, DBT, dialectic, behavioral therapy. A dialectic is when two seemingly conflicting things are true at the same time. So the tools and strategies that we learned my daughter and I through moving through DBT together, was how to be with those two seemingly conflicting things that are true at the same time, right? And it's it's freaking tricky, you guys, and it gets us into all sorts of trouble, all sorts of trouble. And it shows up. This whole concept really shows up. It got me thinking about the context of parenting adolescents, right? And the context of parenting adolescents, multiple things feel like they're true at the same time. Our couples counselor, who I love, talks about separate realities. That's not but there's another word, like basically how my reality and Ben's reality are both true, equally valid separate realities. That's what she says, equally valid separate realities. Now for those of us who tend to lean on believing and wanting to prove that we are right? This concept of equally valid, separate realities can be really tricky, right? It can be really tricky. Here's some of the other things that show up that feel like they're very contradictory and hard to hold both of right? So, yes, it's true that the adolescent brain develops in a way that for a period of time, our kids feel big emotions, and they come on strong, and they come on fast and sometimes out of nowhere, and feel as though they're totally out of our teens control, right? That happens. They're wired for that. And it is also true that how they treat us, their parents and siblings and others matter like we can also hold that expectation, right, another place where there's this kind of conflicting messiness, right? Yes, our teens are wired for novelty seeking. They're looking for thrills, and sometimes even thinking about thrills is enough to increase their dopamine, right? And our expectation is that they don't break the law or do things that could hurt them, right? We don't want them to experiment with drugs and alcohol. We don't want them to sneak out in the night. We don't want them to, you know, up here where I live, the first six months of having your license, you can't drive anyone else in your car, right? So we don't want them to do those things. We don't want them to jump off high places. And their brain is wired to look for the novelty, to look for the thrill. Yes, the pandemic absolutely sucks. That is 100% true, and is totally creating havoc in what we're able to do, who we're able to see all those things and and we are still in the creation of our experience. We still have influence over how we experience our world. Both of those things are true. Yes, our kids can be rude, full of attitude towards us, maybe not so nice and and people like me encourage you not to take things personally. People like me encourage myself not to take things personally, right? Those are two really tough like they're coming at us and we are being asked to remember, like this isn't about me. I'm not going to take this personally. That's a big ask, right? And

then this is a really big one, right? We can't control the decisions our teens make, and we are their parent. We're still their parent were still expected and should be holding boundaries and creating guardrails and dialing in expectations and agreements and following through. And at the end of the day, they step out the door and they make their own decisions and choices, and we get to just pray that those choices don't have terrible consequences, right? This is so messy, and I was talking to a client yesterday about this in the context of pot smoking, pot smoking, you know? I know that there are many of us, many of us parents, who are aware that our kids are smoking pot, that they're maybe experimenting with it. Perhaps it looks like social use. Maybe it's starting to look like regular use. None of us want our kids to smoke pot. Okay, we just don't like, I mean, who are you out there that is like, Yeah, I'm cool with it. Everything we know about brain development says it is no bueno smoking pot regularly. The teen brain, it's a problem. It's a problem. Their brain is still growing, and the weed that they're smoking is not the weed that we were smoking, right? It's not the sexy Maxi that I used to buy for $20 bag in Tucson back in the early 90s. No. This is. Hoot, tint grown in like a laboratory, knock you off your ass, kind of weed. So again, it's making an impact, right? And so here we are as parents, right? Here, my client was as a parent, saying to me, but Okay, so I know she's doing this thing, and I know that when she steps out the door. Ultimately, she gets to choose what she's doing, and so where, where do I have control over that, and what should the consequences be? And, you know? And I realized that, well, first of all, I realized that it's a very messy, uncomfortable conversation for me as the parent educator, right? Because I would love to say, you don't allow them to do it, and here's what you do so that your kid can't smoke pot and it won't result in resentment, rebellion, revenge, or them just getting sneaky, like there is no answer to that, other than you get to be in conversation, and this is what we talked about. We talked about having conversations with our kids, and I'm just gonna, I did not realize I was gonna be talking about bot smoking, but apparently I am. But, you know, fill in the blank here. It could be driving fast, it could be drinking, it could be screen use. You know, it's really any of those things that ultimately, I mean, screen use. That's a whole nother conversation, by the way. Side note, Ian, my 16 year old, and I are going to have a conversation here on the podcast where he so we're gonna up level. Well, not up level, but we're gonna do some tweaking around our current screen agreements. He and I, and we're going to do it on the podcast so you can hear what it can sound like. Hopefully, I don't know how it's going to be, but hopefully it'll be useful anyway. So where do we have influence? Well, first of all, anyone that you follow when it comes to risky behavior, one of the biggest pushes that's happening right now is around harm reduction, harm reduction and so when I talk to my kids about substance use, I make it clear that I'm not cool with that. I don't want them to be using any drugs or drinking alcohol, and if they find themselves in a situation where the opportunity is there and they're considering it, I want them to have some critical thinking skills around it. I want them to be able to look around the room and decide if I try this and something goes bad, do the people I'm with have my back? Do the people I'm with have my back, right? I think that's a really valid question. If I try this and it goes sideways, and is the environment that I am in safe? Am I in a safe place, right? If I want to try this and it goes bad, am I okay with potentially feeling embarrassed after the fact, feeling a little vulnerable, right? Or if I want to try this thing. Is there a way to do it that's just dipping my toe in, right? I'm not an expert on this, you guys, but I want my kids to be in a situation and have my voice in their head around assessing the assessing, assessing the situation, assessing the group, assessing the choice. And then the other piece too is like supporting them with if I'm in this situation and everybody's doing this thing and I don't want to do I have a good one liner so that I can save face, but also refrain from doing this thing that I don't feel comfortable doing, right? So I think conversations like that are so important and so powerful for multiple reasons. One, ultimately, it's all well and good to say, Listen, child of mine, you will not it is not okay for you to smoke weed or drink or do these things, so you better not do it, or you'll be in big trouble, right? So what's missing in that statement is any kind of skill building around Okay, but how do I navigate it if it comes up? Right? Because the other thing that happens with brain development is that turn towards peers and that desire for belonging and acceptance from their peers. So we get to really be in the conversation with our kids around how to be in the both and like, how can how to support them in feeling that belonging and acceptance with. Out necessarily getting into the group mind of poor choices, right? So we've got to have those conversations. Now, the pushback here that I've heard from parents is, well, if I'm talking like that, if I'm if I'm giving them these, these thoughts and ideas around like, look around the room and do they have your back and if you choose to do it, aren't I just saying, like, do it, right? Okay, that's this that's right up there with if I give my kids a condom, am I just saying it's fine with me that they have sex? No. It's called harm reduction. It's responsibility. Okay, so these kinds of conversations, I think, are really powerful and and I'm coming back to like this whole both and, right? We can't control the decisions that they make, and we are still the parent. And many of us were raised in this parenting model that is contrary to how we want to parent. But then we get into the teen years, and we're like, holy cow, I want to be a positive parent. I want to use positive discipline. I know that rewards and consequences aren't really that useful, and yet, now I'm scared and I don't know how to keep them from doing the things that I don't want them to do. And so what do I know? I know, and I feel powerful when I say, Listen, buddy, you better not do that, or you're going to be in big trouble. And how well does that work? So I want to break this down a little bit. This these two opposing schools of thought on behavior. I'm kind of all over the place today. You guys. We started off with this dialectic, and now we're moving into two opposing schools of thought. And I think this is really useful, because when we have been raised in a home that's more traditional, more behaviorist, that lives in our bones, right, that really lives in our bones, and so then we decide, well, I'm gonna have kids, and I'm going to do things differently, and we discover positive discipline, and we're like, sweet this is this makes sense to me. I like it. But what happens is, then we bump up against behavior that feels scary. We bump up against that dialectic of can't control their decisions, and where the parent I don't know if that's really a dialectic, but both of those things are true, and we don't know what to do. So we get a little we get a little wonky. So I'm looking right now at a handout that charts the two different thoughts on human behavior. So there's this kind of behaviorist approach. It's really the traditional practice here in America and other places in the world, in schools and in families, and it comes from a variety of places. Skinner Pavlov, some different people really lean into this behaviorist theory. And the idea of behaviorism is that people respond to rewards and punishments in their environment. Okay, people respond to rewards and punishment in their environment. Is that true? Yeah,

sometimes. And what are the unintended consequences of that right? That's the question. In the positive discipline, solution, focused ad, leery in relationship, centered approach. What motivates behavior is that people seek a sense of belonging and significance, connection and meaning in their social context. So on one side, I'm over here because this is what I believe. I'm over here saying, like, Hey, we are continuously humans. Are always looking for that feeling of connection and meaning in our social context. The other way of looking at it is, well, behavior is really about punishment rewards, as far as where we have the most influence when we're talking behaviorist. Behaviorist would say we have the most influence on the behavior of others at the moment of response to specific behavior positive discipline this podcast me, I say you've heard me say it, we have the most influence on the behavior of others when we are in an ongoing relationship founded on mutual respect, relationship, relationship, relationship. And then when we take these two opposing thoughts and we look at what are the most powerful tools for adults around behavior? However, the behaviors say, well, control rewards and punishment, positive discipline minded parents and teachers and facilitators would say the most powerful tools we have are empathy, understanding, the perspective of the other person, collaborative, problem solving and kind and firm follow through right respect. Respect in the context of behaviorism, is seen as obedience and compliance in relationships in which the dignity and respect of the adult is primary through the positive discipline lens, we see respect as mutual in relationships in which each person is equally worthy, equally worthy of dignity and respect Our response to inappropriate behavior, right right. And the traditional practice, behaviorist practice, would say that responses to inappropriate behavior include censorship, isolation and punishment, right in the positive discipline mindset, responses to inappropriate behavior, naming without shaming and blaming. So let me just go back to this whole my client with the pot smoker, which, by the way, I have a few, I have many clients that I've worked with who have kids who are experimenting with a variety of things, but one of the things that I encouraged her to do was to like, if let it be known, like, Hey, I know, I know that you're experimenting with weed, right, name it without shaming or blaming her. Focus on solutions, following through, addressing the belief behind the behavior, which I did a whole series back last, last year about belief behind behavior. Look for what need the behavior is meeting that you might not know about, right? So we're named like, Hey, I know, I know this is happening and I'm not. I'm not comfortable with it. Here are my concerns. Tell me about your experience. How can we create a win? Win? Because I want to know when you go out into the world that you are safe, right, that you have your wits about you, and following through, right? Following through with that, and then response to dangerous and destructive behavior, right? So first, it was inappropriate. Now, what about when it's dangerous and destructive? The behaviorists would say the tools are censorship, isolation, punishment. In positive discipline, we would say clear, follow through, without getting in the way of the child experiencing the result of their action. So again, back to that example. If I had a child who was going out in the world experimenting with substances, and it starts to become what looks like regular use, what is indicated to me is regular use. You know, freedom comes with responsibility. Privilege comes with responsibility and freedom being out in the world, having a later curfew, keeping it in the teenage context right, being able to use the car. All those things comes with responsibility, and responsibility, meaning you got to keep yourself safe. I need to know that you're out there being safe, and when it feels like, if you have and you might be like, well, what if my kid doesn't care, they are just having fun, which I would challenge, that typically, when kids move into regular and problem use, it's not about having fun, it is, it's, it's creating, it's, it's serving some purpose, right? It's serving some purpose, and that's where you get to be curious. That's where you get to be curious. So clear follow through would be, you know, I'm not, I'm not comfortable with you out in the world, and so, you know, your curfew has been midnight, but I think we're gonna tighten that up, and I would love to have some more family time with you. I want to connect one on one. I want to know what's going on in your life, right? And of course, you will get pushback. Of course your child will be like, God, why you got to be like this? So annoying. I'm not going to hang out with you. I hate you. You're the worst, right? Okay, yes, and you get to be that validating, empathetic listener. You get to work on understanding their perspective, coming back to those other powerful tools, do some collaborative problem solving, building relationship. Uh,

right? So it's not just one thing, you know, that's what I love about positive discipline and this whole like paradox. I don't really know if I'm using the word paradox, right or not, but this, this this place. It feels like a paradox. It feels really hard sometimes being with the idea that they get to make their choices and learn from their mistakes. Being with that means that they have to make choices and mistakes to learn from and we get to be a soft landing. We get to be curious. We get to support them in their critical thinking. We get to be non judgmental. We get to also voice our concerns, right? It's okay, voter mission like, I'm really scared about this behavior, and I want to talk more about it with you. Or, Hey, I'm hearing that. You know, there's a lot of kids at the high school that are vaping in the bathrooms. Is that something that you see a lot of, is that something that you are partaking in? And what are your red or this is another question that I appreciate too, like, what are the red flags for you? You know, when do you how do you set a limit for yourself? Are you setting a limit for yourself? Is that something that's important to you? What might the benefits of that be? Right? So this whole positive discipline mindset, it's a totally different paradigm from that old school behaviorist approach. It's not the way our parents parented us. Maybe, I mean, there could be a few of you out there that were like, Yeah, I had these great parents that this is how they were with me, which awesome. Congratulations. We didn't have, I didn't, I didn't have these kinds of conversation that weren't also just, like, laced with judgment, right? Like, I'm going to be curious, but I'm also going to completely judge your answers, if they're not the right answers, right? Like, positive discipline is really this invitation to drop all of our preconceived ideas and notions about our you. Like our control, dropping our attachment, you know, fiercely committing, lovingly detached, right? I had an Instagram post about this, and I've talked about it on the podcast like I am not saying that to no longer be fiercely committed, fiercely committed to the health and well being of your kids. Please don't ever let that go. Hang on tight there, while also, while also working to be lovingly detached. And that's really Ding, ding, ding. That's really what we're talking about here, right, that both and fiercely committed and lovingly detached, because they are going to step out in the world and make their choices, and a lot of them are going to choose to try it out, whatever it is. The hope is they try it out and nobody gets hurt, right, that they try it out and they think, not really for me, I'm glad I gave it a try, but I'm good, right?

That's what I have for you today. I feel like I got a little rambly. I hope that it felt cohesive to you, but really started off talking about the idea of paradox and dialectics, those two seemingly conflicting things that are true at the same time and how to be in it, how to be with it. So I hope that this is useful to you, I hope that those of you that are in that place of worrying about your kids and the things that they're doing remember that your relationship with them, your willingness to have non judgmental conversations about their choices, means everything to them and opens the door to them being willing to talk more and to listen more. So practice that everyone and the rest of you, if it hasn't come up for you, if it's not really something that you've had to talk about with your teen, bring it up. Do not wait. Do not wait. Talk to your younger kids, your younger tweens, about their growing brain and how you know it's wired, and what might come up as they get older. Age appropriate. You know, you know you're the expert on your kids. So you decide you know how you want to divulge but come from a place of asking. Questions. You know, I'm thinking about Amy Lang right now, my friend Amy, who's the birds and bees and kids gal, and when she talks to parents about talking to their kids about sex, she is very adamant about No, don't wait till it comes up from them like they need to have the information. Your kids need to have the information. They need to know that you can handle it if they have questions, if they want to know things right? Because chances are, if they're in middle school, definitely if they're in high school, they're seeing kids experimenting and doing silly things. Maybe some of their friends are engaging in risky behavior, and they might even have had their own experiences, and, you know, have been able to keep it from you. So don't assume that because it hasn't come up. It's not a thing. Talk to your kids, talk to your kids. Fold it into the relationship. And remember, remember those tools, those tools of empathy, right understanding, the perspective of your kids, collaborative, problem solving, kind and firm follow through. I would also add to that list, validation and just deep listening and curiosity. That's what I got for you today. Everyone. I hope that was useful. I'm really excited to be showing up again here on Thursday, so check it out. Real grateful for all of you, and yeah, I'll see you again soon,

before I close out, I want to let you know that I'm hosting a parenting the positive discipline way online certification training for parent educators. If you have thought to yourself that you would like to do what I do and support families and facilitate positive discipline classes, you can and I can help you. You can check it out at joyful courage.com/teach, parents. Joyful courage.com/teach, parents. This training takes place february 14 through the 18th, from nine to 11am Pacific. So go to the link and check it out. Let 2022 be the year that you head over to Apple podcast and leave a review for this show. There is an algorithm in this whole podcast thing, and your review helps the joyful courage podcast to be shown to even more parents. If you listen on Spotify, leave me a review on Spotify, that would be amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Also follow joyful underscore courage on Instagram. I'm on Facebook. I love to connect with you on social media. I also have a free group on Facebook called joyful courage for parents of teens. Check all of those places out, and I will see you so soon. Big, big love. Have a beautiful week. Bye.