WHOA That's Good Podcast - It's Not Too Late to Have a Better Brain | Sadie Robertson Huff & Dr. Daniel Amen

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

Sadie dives deep into family psychology with Dr. Daniel Amen, psychiatrist, author, and founder of the renowned Amen Clinics. Dr. Amen shares insights from his new book, “Raising Mentally Strong Kids,” and uses examples from his own family and practice to show how a simple, connected, and focused approach can make a lasting impact for everyone. Sadie notes that raising a mentally strong family begins even before you start a family of your own. Dr. Amen gives some incredibly simple and insightful ways to connect with loved ones, whether they’re parents, children, or a spouse. https://drinkag1.com/whoa — Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs with your first purchase! https://give.cru.org/good or text GOOD to 71326 — Get a free copy of Sadie and Christian's new book "How to Put Love First" with your monthly gift! http://www.dreamlandbabyco.com — Get 20% off sitewide and free shipping when you enter my code WHOA at checkout! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you haven't seen our family's movie, The Blind, then you have to see it. I'm about to give you the opportunity on where you can get to see it, which is so exciting. But The Blind is so impactful. One of the most impactful Christian films I've ever seen, and I know it's my family's story, but truly it just displayed the message of the gospel so beautifully through my grandpa. It's honestly the hardest times of his life, which I think that's pretty rare that you make a movie about the hardest time of your life. But it's through that and out of that hard time that he found hope in Jesus. So this movie

means a lot to my family and I, and I'm so happy to tell y'all that it's actually finally going to be available for streaming starting Friday, March 22nd. You can stream The Blind exclusively on Great American Pure Flicks. Great American Pure Flicks has tons of awesome, wholesome content in addition to The Blind, and their shows and movies celebrate Faith, Family, and our country, which is pretty rare these days. And the best part is, you can try Great American Pure Flix absolutely for free for seven days.

So not only do you get to support a streaming service that upholds your values, you get to also watch The Blind and other face-centered content without ever having to leave the house, which is so awesome. So now is the best time to do this. Visit GreatAmericanPureFlix.com for your seven-day free trial. And if you love it, which I know you will, from March 22nd to March 31st, you can take advantage of their limited time offer at $59 annual subscription.

They have good, clean, wholesome content for the whole family. So go to check out GreatAmericanPureFlix.com to try it for free and let us know what you think about the movie The Blind. What's up, Woe That's Good fam? Happy Wednesday everybody. I hope you're having a great week, but per usual it's about to get so much better. We are about to have a Whoa That's Good podcast because we have Dr. Aiman back on the podcast with a brand new book, Raising Mentally Strong Kids. And I'm just gonna tell you,

I love this book. I need this book in my life with a two and a half year old and a nine month old I'm so grateful for the wisdom in this book So thank you, Dr. Amen for writing this book and coming on the podcast to talk about it I'm so grateful to you for allowing me to share this message of mentally strong kids and the Influence you have, both positive and negative. Oh, I'm so glad that you're gonna be talking about this.

And I just wanna say too, for those who are listening, I know I have a lot of listeners who aren't parents yet, but hang in this podcast because there is gonna be so much wisdom for you. And actually, as I was reading this book, I love how so much of it is obviously about parenting your kids, but a lot of it is that you can't be the parent you want to be or raise the kids you want to have unless you are the person you want to be in the first place. And so I think this starts way before you even become a parent, it's really on who you are. And who you are is

how you're going to lead. And so can you speak to a little bit to those who aren't parents yet who are going to be listening into this podcast? Well, the most important strategy to raising mentally strong kids is to model the message. Is you have to be mentally strong yourself or your messiness will get passed down. And you don't want that.

I'm doing a lot of research on adverse childhood experiences. There's a questionnaire from zero to 10. How many bad things happened to you when you were a child from physical, emotional, sexual abuse, neglect, parents struggling with an addiction, a mental health problem, prison? And I'm a one.

My wife's an eight. And Tana actually wrote a book called The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. And if she hadn't have gotten help to deal with that childhood trauma, she would have gifted it to her children. did it to her children. And Chloe, our daughters, a one. And that's sort of the whole point, eight to one, is you don't have to give away the trauma in your head. But if you don't want to do it, organize it, get help for it. And learning to be mentally strong is the first strategy to raise in mentally strong kids. Wow, that's so good and that's so powerful because I was gonna ask you as well just on the note of you know if someone reading this book who goes oh no you know my kids are 10 and 15, however,

and they think, am I too late? Did I do it wrong? And I love just that note that she went from eight to one. What do you say to the person, just before we even dive into this conversation, to the person who thinks, uh oh, am I too late to get on this train? You know, if your children are 40

and you get yourself more mentally strong, your interactions, because you're always going to be their mother, you're always going to be their father. So I often say, it's never too late to have a better brain and a better life. It's never too late to have a better mind and a better life. It's never too late to have a better mind and a better life. And it's never too late to have better relationships and a better life. That's great. That's great. Well, I can't wait to dive in.

Dr. Raymond, you've written a lot of books. You do a lot of things. You inspire a lot of people. And somehow with all the things you do, you still have capacity to call me and my family and let us call you, if I will, and speak into our lives. So I know you really love what you do and you care about the people you do it for.

Why did you feel like now is the time to write a full book on parenting? Kids are in trouble more than ever before in human history. A brand new study, 54%, 54% of teenage girls report being persistently sad. 32% have thought of killing themselves, 24% have planned to kill themselves, and 13% have tried to kill themselves. There is not one thing about that that is okay.

That there is something going on in our society that is escalating the incidents of brain and mental health problems. The antidote is not more medication. Last year, there were 337 million prescriptions written for antidepressants. That is not the answer. I'm also a child psychiatrist, so I'm a child psychiatrist and an adult psychiatrist. What I learned is if I can get parents to have the most effective strategies and properly attach to their kids, the incidents in brain and mental health problems go way down.

And so in the book, there's a couple of really big ideas. The first one is know what you want. What kind of mom do you want to be and what kind of children do you want to raise? And if you want to raise mentally strong kids who are resilient and independent and responsible, you can't solve all their problems. I mean that becomes a big theme in the book when a child comes to you and says mommy I'm bored, rather than go and buy them a PlayStation, it's, huh, I wonder how you're going to solve that.

And then be quiet long enough for them to come up with the answer. And it's like, no, you solve it. It's like, sweetie, I love you too much. Dissolve all your problems. And I wrote this book with my wonderful friend, Dr. Charles Fay, who's the president of the Love and Logic Institute. Parenting with Love and Logic is my favorite parenting program on the planet.

So if I'm gonna write a book that talks about the neuroscience of parenting, I want Charles with me. And when I met Tana, Chloe was two and she had 12 word sentences. And I fell in love with both of them at the same time. But Chloe was a bit of a hellion, very strong, very independent. And at like six, Tana and Chloe are going after each other in a very not good way. And she would spend two hours getting her homework done. And I would look at her like, you've already done second grade, you know, because it spilled over would look at her like, you've already done second grade, because it spilled over into when she was seven. You've already done second grade. Get out of this

fight. And she didn't so much listen to me, but three of her friends recommended parenting with Love and Logic. And she took the course and then she took every CD, BBB, the Love and Logic Institute created and she got really competent as a parent. And she said one night at dinner, sweetheart, I've done second grade. I'm never going to ask you to do your homework again. This is yours to do. And if you're okay with the consequences of not doing it, Mrs. Mank, her teacher who she loved, will be mad at you or you won't go out for recess. And if you really don't do it, you'll make new friends when you repeat second grade. Oh my goodness.

Chloe said, I never said I wasn't going to do it. I'm just not going to do it now and stormed off. And 20 minutes later, she came back and no one ever asked her to do it, I was not going to do it now, and stormed off. And 20 minutes later, she came back, and no one ever asked her to do her homework again. And she graduated from high school with a 4.2 grade point average. She's a junior at Chapman University, the most sort of independent person

who believes she's responsible for how her life turns out. And the number one hallmark of self-defeating behavior is blaming other people for how your life turns out. And Chloe doesn't do that at all. And yeah, you know, it's hard. Being a parent is hard because you want to solve things for them. You don't want them to be anxious. You don't want them to be sad. Yet, if you don't give them the opportunity to solve their own problems, you steal their self-esteem.

So, for example, if Chloe forgot her homework at school, no way her mom's bringing it to her. If she forgot her sweater on a cold day, way. Her mom's bringing it to her. If she forgot her sweater on a cold day, no way. Her mom's bringing it to her. If she forgot her lunch, no way. And maybe she forgot those things once or twice, but then never again forgot them because she paid the consequences rather than have someone solve her problems. Friends, let's be real. We all go through seasons where life can just feel like a struggle.

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start with AG1, try AG1 and get a free one year supply of vitamin D3 plus K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase exclusively at drinkag1.com slash woe. Again, that's drinkag1.com slash woe to check it out today. There's so many things that you just said in that that you could take out 10 different lessons and that's one of my favorite things about the book is there are these high level things to walk through. But then at the end of the book, there's like literally 100 takeaways that you can take

away 100 plus actually, and then 20 more on top of that that you can learn. And I underlined so many of them. I flipped down some of the pages just as something to come back to time and time again, to like, okay, this is like good advice or there's so many things. I could dive into a million things right now based off of what you just said.

But one thing I wanna go to is just on that kind of tough love mentality. Cause I think a lot of parents nowadays, like they would say, oh, that's so unloving that you wouldn't bring the sweater or that's so harsh or whatever. And I love this quote in the book and it says to be, what is it? Tough as nails, but soft as a lamb.

And so it's like, yes, you gotta be tough, but also be soft and as kind as a lamb. And so when you talk about being tough and having that kind of tough love, you actually say in the book, like authority is essential. How do you just encourage this wave of parenting that is kind of afraid to be tough, is afraid to take that authority

because they view it as more rude or not loving than actually kind and setting your child up for success. Well, you never want to be rude. You just want to be clear. And God gave you parents until your frontal lobes develop and the front third of your brain actually doesn't finish developing until you're 25. I think we send kids away to college way too soon. Their brains not finished developing and we're sending them away to college which a whole bunch of other brains who are not developed. It's a prescription for disaster. I think

we need to take our authority, but the two words to always remember, you'll never go wrong with the kids. If you remember firm, when I say something, I mean it, I back it up, and kind at the same time. And if you really think of it, bringing the sweater to school, for example, what is that teaching her that she's not responsible, that I'll rescue her, that she doesn't have a sense of agency. Because if she learns, and most of our children will, you've just taught her a sense of agency, or I can be in control of my life. There's a huge study out of Harvard

where they looked at 454 inner city Boston school kids and then they followed them for 70 years looking at what goes with health, success, addiction, self-esteem. And the only thing that went with self-esteem was whether or not you worked as a child. Now you obviously worked as a child, right? I worked as a child. Now, you obviously worked as a child, right? I worked as a child. It's you develop this sense of competence. It's like, oh, I can do this, which then boosts your self-esteem.

And I just, I want parents to get, when you overdo for them, you're stealing their self-esteem. You're stealing their ability to solve problems. Now, if it's dangerous, do for them, right? And you have to sort of understand normal development. We talk about that in the book. But you almost pray they make mistakes so they can learn from them what we call is affordable mistakes.

That's so good. You know, it's so interesting the timing of this conversation because I had someone on my podcast right before this interview who's a mom and she, we were talking about all the other things in her life before we started talking about motherhood. And then as soon as started talking about motherhood. And then as soon as I got to motherhood, she got really emotional. And she just started talking about how much pressure she feels because she just wants to do the best job that she can.

And she's so afraid because her kids are so young and they haven't made detrimental mistakes yet. But she knows eventually they're going to go through harder things. And she was talking about wanting their values to be the same as hers and how hard it is to just do it all this well and you're trying not to drop the ball, but I love that you just said, you almost pray they do make some mistakes

because you're gonna make mistakes and it's through those mistakes that you learn how to be a better person because of them. And you know, I'm just thinking about recently, honey, we've been teaching her this funny lesson that you would think is obvious, but to a kid, you have to teach them everything. She didn't know that a fire was hot. And so she loved to touch the candle and every single time guess what the kind of did it burn her and so she would get Oh, I say honey. You cannot touch the fire, baby. It's it's gonna burn you every single time. It's it's hot it's always gonna be hot and it was just so funny the other day cuz she was going by our fireplace and

Before I even had to tell her not to she turned around and looked at me She said mommy, I'm just gonna chill by by the fire. And it was like, so cute. She learned her lesson, like, all right, I know that's hot. I'm not going to touch it. I'm just going to chill. And she just, she was so cute. She was relaxed. She was staying warm. And she could just kind of learn that boundary of like, okay, the consequence of that is it's going to hurt and I'm not going to do that. And it was cool because I'd only told her that, you know, really once or twice, she had to experience the consequence once or twice

and she goes, I'm not gonna do that anymore. And so that's a very small example of, you know, you do learn from life's consequences, you do learn from your mistakes and you move forward. And you have to have some discernment. And if they're running across the street, for sure, okay, you have to protect them from that. So discernment is important. But I want to go to the point your guest made is I want them to pick my values. And

if you have no influence without connection. And so the first strategy is goal setting. What kind of parent do you want to be? What kind of child do you want to raise? The second strategy is attachment. It's bonding. And we have unattached or misaligned attached children more than ever before with two parent working families, cell phones, everybody's working really hard and distracted. So the strategy is two simple things, time, actual physical time, 20 minutes a day, do something with your child that they wanna do,

and during that time, no commands, no questions, no directions. It's just time to be in their space because bonding requires time. And for each of the kids, if you just spent a few minutes a day going, this is your time, and you turn off the phone or you leave it in the other room

and you just be with them. My first literary agent, Carl, he had a child later in life and he called me up one day and he's like, Laura's too. It's like, Laura doesn't ever want to be with me. That's sort of a girl thing, right? And I'm like, no, you're ignoring her. He's like, well, what do you mean? And I said, do this. And the exercise is called special time, 20 minutes a day. Do something with her. she wants to do, she's two,

sit on the floor and play blocks with her if that's what she wants. And during that time, don't boss her around, don't ask her questions, just be with her. And he's like, that won't work. And I'm like, oh great, you represent an idiot. It's like, do it, and I'm gonna to call you in three weeks. So get the party started. Three weeks later, I call him up. Hey, Carl, this is Daniel. Daniel, she won't

leave me alone. As soon as I walk in the door, she grabs my leg, wants her time, and all she wants to do then is be with me. I'm like, of course, this works probably better than anything else. Time. And the second part of attachment is listening. Parents talk way too much, way too much. When your child says something, don't download your 30 years of life experience into their head. Be quiet and then repeat back what you hear and then listen for the feelings behind what

they're saying. If you use less words but really are interested in what they're saying. Dramatic improvement in your connection with them. Yeah, I am not going to lie. I love to give advice. We love to talk about advice in the show. But if you need sleep training advice, I'm not necessarily the one to call, but I have this tip for you that will change everything. Dreamland Baby. Our partners at Dreamland Baby know exactly how it feels because they have been there.

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Enter the code WO to receive 20% off site-wide and free shipping. I love that. Actually, it makes me think of in the book when you talk about, it's the conversation between a mom and a daughter who wants to have dye her hair blue. And that was like such a great picture of what it looks like to just more so listen than speak. And I love how you even said, don't say to her, you know, if she says, well, all my friends have this hair,

don't say, well, if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it? Because that is so like the first place your mind goes, you know? But can you talk through, if you hate to put you on a spot for a very specific part of the book, but kind of what, how you communicate that.

I know this really well. So, one of your child comes home, it's actually happened to me, and said, dad, I wanna have blue hair. Now, I don't know what your dad would have said, but I know what my dad would have said. There's no way in hell, as long as you live in this house, you're gonna have blue hair.

But what does that do? It stops the conversation or it starts a fight. Active listening teaches you, just repeat back what you hear. Sounds like you want to have blue hair. And then shut up. And then she will continue. Yeah, all the kids are wearing it that way. And I've been to her school. There are not a lot of blue headed people there. But you know, kids are manipulative.

Actually, we're all manipulative. We can talk about that. Kids are manipulative. And so it's like, oh, sounds like you want to be like the other kids. All you're doing is repeating back what you're hearing, listening for the feelings. And then she might say, you know, I feel like I don't fit in. And that's the conversation you want to have. Right, right. And if I said that, I'm sure

my mother would have said, what do you mean you don't fit in? Of course you fit in. You're a good looking boy. You're a nice boy. But that's not helpful either. It's like, feel like you don't fit in. Now if at the end of a half an hour, she wants to have blue hair, I'm going to tell her no way as long as she lives in my house, she can have blue hair. But she's much more likely to take it if I've listened to her. And that's the strategy of great parenting. Know what you want, time.

I mean, focused attention without gadgets, that's what's killing us. And be a really good listener, because ultimately you want to teach them, I want to teach Chloe to solve her own problems. Part of me would just love to solve her own problems, all of her problems. Right?

Do this, do that. But that's not how it is in life. You want to teach them to be competent, because if you're competent, your self-esteem goes up and you're mentally stronger. That's great. I love that so much. There is one of my favorite quotes in the book when we were talking about values is it was talking about how if you want your kids to bond with their values and you have

to bond with them. And that was just such a simple, great way to put it. That time with them is it builds the trust that they have. And I was thinking, and this is what I told the girl on the podcast, I said, think back to how we were with our parents. We saw how much they loved us. We saw them live out the values that they instilled

in our lives. And it wasn't so much of them enforcing on us, it was them just living it and us loving them. And now here we are at this point where we wanna live like that because we've seen the fruit that's come from, we've seen the blessing, we see the relationship and how healthy it is

and how it's grown. And so it's just a really cool conversation like coming from that to mom's heart to heart and then reading this book from two incredible doctors who have studied the brain and study love and all of those things and it's just amazing. So thank you for putting all of this in here. On the note of like self-esteem, I love how in one of the hundred and plus pieces of advice

that I can truly go through every one of them and take time on, but one of them was pull out the good in your kid 10 times more than you pull out the bad because it will help with self-esteem and self-image. Those are things that, you know, later in your life, you realize like, oh man, I struggle with self-image. And that can be from a number of different reasons, but that's another one of those things. It's like, okay, go back to this moment.

These are moments for our kids that we can help, you know, help steward their self-esteem a little bit more, build it up. So what does that look like? How does that look like to pull out all the good in them, 10 times more than the bad, without raising puffed up kids who think they're awesome and no one can tell them otherwise?

Where's the balance in it? Well, I want them to think that they're awesome. That's great. But not in a narcissistic way. And if you're letting them solve their own problems, they're going to be less narcissistic, for sure. So let me tell you a story. I'm not sure this whole story is in the book, but I put it in the PBS special on the book.

There's a public television special, Raising Mentally Strong Kids. I was seeing this teenager because she tried to kill herself. And I've been seeing her for two years, and she'd gotten so much better. And I just adored her. But one day she came into my office and told me that she was going to run away from home, that she hated her mother who had untreated ADD.

I'd been trying to get her mother treated, but her mother was very conflict seeking. She would poke at her daughter and her daughter was just done and she's going to run away from home. And while she was ranting about her mother, she looked around my office. And I don't know if you remember when you were in my office, if you saw the penguins. And she's like, and Dr. Amen, why does a grown man collect penguins? So she turned her anger on me. And I'm like, you can come in here in two years. You just now know what is in the penguins. And so I told her the penguin story.

When my oldest was seven, he and I didn't get along. He tended to be argumentative and oppositional. And I was telling my supervisor, I was in my child psychiatry training program at the time, and she said, you need to spend more time with him. So special time actually came out of that discussion. So I took him that weekend to a place called Sea Life Park in Hawaii. I did my child's sky tree training in Hawaii. And it's like Sea World or Marine World, they had sea animal shows, went to the whale show, it was awesome, the dolphin show, the sea lion show.

And at the end of the day, we went to the Fat Freddy show. So Fat Freddy was a humble penguin who was tiny but chubby, and he comes out on the stage and climbs a 20-foot ladder to a diving board, goes to the end of the board, bounces on it, then jumps in the water. And I'm like, whoa. And he got out of the water, bold with his nose, countered with his slipper, jumped through a fire. And at the end of the show, the trainer asked Freddie to go get something, and Freddie just went and got it and brought it right back.

But that's when time stood still for me, because I thought, I asked this kid to get something for me, and he wants to have a discussion for like 20 minutes, and then he doesn't want to do it. And I knew my son was smarter than the penguin. So I got it. I'm doing something wrong. And so I went up to the trainer afterwards and I said, how'd you get Freddie to do all these really cool things? And she looked at my son and then she looked at me and she said,

unlike parents, whenever Freddie does anything like what I want him to do, I give him a hug and I give him a fish. The light went on in my head that when my son did what I wanted him to do, I really didn't pay any attention because like my own dad, I was busy. When he didn't do what I wanted him to do, I gave him a lot of attention because it didn't want to raise bad kids. So I collect penguins, I'm telling this to my patient, I collect penguins to remind me to notice what I like about the people in my life way more than what I don't like. And oh by the way I just got this really crazy idea

I said to her, because she tended to be oppositional, and so I said, I got this really crazy idea, and you probably don't want to hear it. And as soon as I said that, of course she had to hear it. If you're oppositional, it's like, no, you have to tell me. I said, what if we shaped the behavior of your mother? And she's like, I'm listening. What if, when she's appropriate with you and loving with you,

you metaphorically gave her a fish, and you gave her a hug, and you told her you loved her? And when she's inappropriate with you, rather than you exploding, it's just take a breath and try not to react. And she got it. And she goes, I don't know if I can do it, but I can try. And that night she texted me, I'm not gonna run away. A week later, because I saw her two weeks later, she texted me and she goes, our plan is working. And when I saw her two weeks later,

she came in and brought me one of the penguins, another penguin from my collection. Oh my gosh. Notice what you like more than what you don't like. Every day you're shaping how people treat you. I always say that. We teach people how to treat us by what we notice and what we tolerate.

And so I'm teaching her, and she's 16, power. It's you 16, power. It's you can have power. And I know it's so true, it's probably true in your marriage, but I notice if I'm upset with Tana and I notice what I don't like, I'm gonna get more stress in my life. But if I notice what I like, I get way more love. And it's power. Y'all, I love the Word of God. That is no surprise. I am constantly just so not only

inspired, but empowered and changed by the Word of God because it's active and alive and no matter how many times you read it you can always get something new from it. If I didn't have a Bible not only would I not be the person that I am today but my career would be totally different too. The Bible impacts every aspect of my life but there are some Christians in the world today who don't have access to a Bible in their own language at all which is why my partner, Krew, has missionaries in nearly every country on earth. They're seeing people come to know Jesus, which is amazing, but friends, they definitely

need our help because there's a lot more people to be reached. For only $24 a month, you can provide three people with Bibles each and every month. When you sign up to provide three Bibles with a monthly gift of $24, Krew will provide meals to 12 hungry individuals through their aid ministry. Plus you'll also get a copy, a free copy, of Christian and I's new book, How to Put Love First. If you don't know about How to Put Love First,

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We want to say thank you so much. It's amazing, but the world needs a lot more of this hope and the work is not finished yet. So we want you to be a part of it. Simply text GOOD to 71326 to help today. Just imagine how much this monthly gift could change someone's life. So text GOOD to 71326. That's GOOD to 71326, that's GOOD, G-O-O-D to 71326

to help now or visit give.crew, C-R-U, dot org, O-R-G, slash GOOD. Message and data rates may apply, available to US addresses only. That is so powerful. That is such a beautiful story and I love that. I love that our plan is working text. That's just the best. I definitely see that in Honey's life even at almost three

years old. We do try to always have positive reinforcement and affirmation on the strengths that she has and what's really cool is she knows like for instance when she loves on her little sister we always say like, honey, that's so sweet. Like, thank you for being such a good big sister. And now she'll go, mommy, watch this. And then she hugs Haven, just cause she wants that positive, I have to say, cause she knows we're gonna say,

oh, honey, you're so sweet. That's so, you're such a great big sister. And it's so cute and it's so sweet. And I love, you know, back when I asked the question and you said, you know, you want them to know that they're awesome. There was one line that you said in the book that I thought was such a good distinction

and the difference of, I guess, just the words you choose to affirm your kids with. Because you said, instead of saying something like, you're so smart, say something like, man, I love to see how hard you work. And I love the difference of the two because you said if you say you're so smart and then they fail a test,

or they do something where they weren't smart, then they go, oh, I'm not smart anymore, or they lied to me, or whatever they think of in their little mind. But if you affirm their action, you worked so hard towards that, you did such a good job on doing that, then you're really just crediting more of that behavior than what they achieved,

I guess. And I love just the distinction of the two. Can you speak into a little bit about just like the words we choose to affirm our kids with? Because I just thought that whole idea was such a beautiful distinction of the two different sayings. Well, and ultimately you wanna ask yourself, who are the most successful people in the world? It's the people who work hard. It's not the people who were born with a high IQ. And I always like to talk about

multiple forms of intelligence, but it just reminded me of a book Robert Kiyosaki wrote, why A students work for C students and B students work for the government. Wow. It was really fascinating. You know, school was actually designed 120 years ago to create good factory workers and to create good employees. I'm not sure that's really what most parents want for their children. We want them to be strong and independent. And being a good supervisor,

and this is why I'm not a fan of alcohol and parenting, because you want to watch how you interact with your kids. You don't want to be over the top and obsessive and always self-critical. But you want to watch. and the problem with alcohol, especially those two glasses of wine at night that people think is a health food, they drop your frontal lobes. And making it more likely, you're gonna say the first thing that came into your head

rather than filtering it through, I say this, does this fit my goals? Is a parent, the kind of parent I wanna be or the kind of child I wanna raise? So a big part of this book is about how to keep your brain healthy and how to keep your child's brain healthy. We all have bad thoughts.

I mean, let's just be honest with it. Everybody's got weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear, right? And they're just generated by our brain out of the music you listen to or the news you watch or your experiences throughout life. Just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true, whether even you believe it, right? I have all sorts of thoughts. They just sort of pop in my head and I'm like, oh, don't say that. But when you have alcohol and you mix that with parenting and you might

have a child that is struggling, I mean one of my parents, one of my adult patients for like 50 years, she remembers when her mother said, oh, you're really not very pretty, are you? And like she remembered that for 50 years. And it was, I'm certain it was an alcohol induced lapse in judgment. Wow. That's crazy to think about because I love how you kind of

mention people think it's a health food. You don't think about those, you know, little a glass of wine a night, those routines that you make being a big deal, but over time and just the little decision-makings that maybe it can change does matter. Speaking of that though, for kids, you talk a lot about, for kids,

the importance of eating healthy food and all of this. Now, I have to say, Dr. Ava, I'm struggling with that because Honey is such a picky eater. Now, Haven, my youngest, she'll eat anything and everything. She has a great variety of food that she eats, but honey, since she was little, since she was a baby, she just, um, she wouldn't do it. She was so picky. And so I really am struggling to get like the right foods in front of her.

Do you have any advice on how to get picky eaters to start eating the things that are actually good for them? Because I love all the things you put in the book and the tips on like what to eat. It's just, how do I get her to eat that? Well, one, she's not going to starve. So first you have to lower your anxiety. When she's hungry enough, she will eat. Tana has a cookbook called The Brain Warrior's Way Cookbook. There's 120 recipes.

And I'd actually show her, because I don't have pictures. It's like, well, what do you think you'd like? Let's make this together. So give her some control. And there are desserts in there. And she has another cookbook, The Healing ADD Through Food, which a lot of those recipes kids can actually make. You want to empower her and teach her. So when Chloe was two, she and I started a game. We call it Chloe's Game. And is this good for my brain or bad for it? And that's actually the mother habit, the tiny habit.

I like this idea of tiny habits, smallest thing I can do today that'll make the biggest difference. And I turned it into a game for Chloe and I would go avocados. She'd go two thumbs up, God's butter. I'd say blueberries. And then she'd put her hands on her little hips and go, are they organic? Because non-organic blueberries hold more pesticides than almost any fruit. I'm like, of course they're organic. Wow, two thumbs up, God's candy. Ice cream, she goes, I love it, but it doesn't love me back. Well, right?

She felt concerned or wasn't good for her. I think you teach them, you educate them, and you can't control it. Well, if you're buying it, you totally can control it. But when they're out with their friends and all that, don't get too crazy about it. But teach them to notice when I eat this, this is how I feel. But the rule in my house for dinner is we decide what we're going to have and you can eat it or not. If you don't eat it, you don't get dessert and just don't make a big deal out of it so she doesn't

end up with needing dessert. That's good. Man, that's truth. And one of the recipes, so my grandson who just has stolen my heart. He was very picky when he was young and his mother was really anxious about it. Tana was playing with recipes for the cookbook and she makes something called avocado gelato, which is basically avocado ice cream and raw cacao. It tastes amazing. It's totally healthy for you. I have this picture of Eli with avocado gelato all over his face. He just loved it. It's sort of experimenting with it. I have another kid with Tourette's syndrome, which is a tic disorder. They have both motor tics like maybe squinting or blinking, moving their shoulders, and vocal

tics. They make noises. The first thing I did was put him on an elimination diet at 90% reduction in the tics. He came into my office and he looked so sad. I'm like, why are you so sad? You're better. And he's like, I don't like any of the foods. And I'm like, oh.

So the next appointment, I actually met him at the grocery store. Oh, that's cool. And I said, our job is to find 20 foods you love that love you back. And we're now up to like 173 foods. Let's be real friends. Every parent wants the best for their babies. And that's where A2 Platinum Formula comes in.

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This is an amazing deal. Don't wait. Order now at the letter A, the number two platinum.com slash whoa, W H O A. That's A2platinum.com slash whoa. That's so cool. I love that. And actually you made a list of foods that are like good snacks and good foods. And I pin that page because I was like, you know what? I say, honey's such a picky eater and she is, but most of the foods on there, I'm like, she actually loves.

I just need to incorporate more. And I just need to put that in front of her a little bit more because like, believe it or not, as picky as she is, she loves pistachios and she loves eggs. And she loves like just a few healthy things that maybe I just need to incorporate more in different ways or come up with some new ways. Like the avocado gelato is such a good thing because Honey loves ice cream. So if I, she wouldn't know if it was healthy or not. She just, if I tell her it's, you know, avocado ice cream, she hears ice cream,

she'd love it. So this is really good practical advice and I need to get that cookbook. I know we're running out of time, but one of the things I loved in the book, and again, there is no way I can do this book full justice in a 45 minute interview because you just have to read it. There's so many good points and good things to talk about, but there is one section on self-competent builders, not stealers. And I just thought that was so good. And even

just one of people to hear you talk about it on the podcast, because I think that's a great thing for parents to start incorporating in the way they communicate with their kids. So can you speak on that topic a little bit? So a self-confident stealer is telling kids how to think and solving their problems. A builder is when they bring you a problem, give it back to them. And if they go, oh, I don't know, you could go, oh, do you want to hear how some other kids your age might solve this, but completely get out of fixing the problems they have in their life. And if you start with special time and listening and they feel attached, their self-esteem will go up. And if you become really good at giving them their problems back to them. I think when I was a young parent, my self-esteem wasn't great.

I'm a middle child. I'm a second son in a Lebanese family, so a bit irrelevant, sort of like Prince Harry's spare. Although I hate the title of that book because me being the second son meant total freedom. Right? He got to marry a gorgeous Hollywood star, right? Prince William, there's no way he'd have been able to do that. So total freedom. But, you know, I had to work through that. And I would get self esteem by solving stuff for them. And I wasn't crazy. I didn't wouldn't do, you know, their homework for them. Don't do that very bad. You know, you want their homework to be a reflection of their ability, not your ability. Be careful of not doing too much to feed your ego or your low self-esteem. Good parents

give problems back to kids and they coach. right? I've been blessed to see, you know, some of the world's most famous coaches in my practice. And I always talk to them about good coaches and bad coaches. Good coaches notice what you like about your players and teach when they can do better. Good parents notice what you like and teach, right? The word disciple is to teach, and so it's not to be your children, right? Think about Fat Freddy. If Fat Freddy was having a bad day and the trainer

got a big stick and started beating the penguin, how effective do you think that would be to get the penguin to continue to perform? The penguin probably would never perform again again, because he was anxious, full of rage, and didn't trust. So we have to be very careful in how we discipline. I think discipline is important, but it's not about punishment. It should always be about teaching with us rooting for the kids to do well. Now, I think the most important discipline I ever did, three of my kids are adopted, and two of them, actually all three of them,

their parents had addiction problems. And, you know, genetics is important, but we don't think about genetics right. Genes load the gun. It's our behavior that pulls the trigger. And I caught one of my kids vaping. And I'm like, no, this is not OK. You're grounded until I trust you.

And I ended up grounding her for six months. And it was the best thing I did for her. I had her write papers on baking and now she's doing great. But supervision, there's a whole section on supervision is really important. Hmm, it's so good. There are so many topics that you cover in this book that every parent needs to read. So if you're a parent out there struggling in any of these areas, he talks about discipline, we talk about food, we talk about the brain, we talk about love, values, types of parenting. There's

a million things to cover and a million things that cover so well. So if you are a struggling parent or just a parent who wants to be better, which I hope we all do, Raising Mentally Strong Kids, you got to go get this book. They also have it available on audio. And if you don't follow along Dr. Amon,

you need to do that as well because he's constantly putting out so much good advice for our lives to live the best version of ourselves with a healthy brain. So Dr. Amon, thank you for all the help that you've been to our family and also for those who listen to our podcast. We appreciate you so much

and I'm so excited for people to go grab this book. Thank you so much. I adore you and I'm so grateful that you helped me spread this message.