E272: When Your Kids Won’t Listen: Dr. Ray's Must-Know Tools | Lila Rose Show

You love them with all your might. But you cannot raise kids if you don't have discipline confidence. If you don't have the ability to mean what you say and say what you mean, gentle parenting is a way to be a nasty parent. What do you mean? Kids from big families, by and large, grow up to be better adjusted, more giving, less selfish. The matter you get to more you lose credibility. Because the child looks at you and thinks, "Hey, you're a lunatic." You know? You can discipline me, but discipline itself is not mean. As you guys know, I grew up in a big family. I'm one of eight kids, and my parents were always interested in how to parent better. Here at the show, we're really passionate about how to build healthy families and what does good parenting look like, and I'm grateful to my parents for setting that example. I'm really excited about today's guest, because he's been giving parenting advice for over four decades, and he specializes in big families. Welcome back to The Lileros Show. Today I'm sitting down with psychologist and author Dr. Ray Garendi, father of 10 children, all adopted, and we discuss principles and philosophies of parenting, as well as the beauty and struggles of large families, and what he calls the "blackout" technique in parenting. He's also hilarious. We discuss how much consistency is actually needed in parenting, hint it's actually less than you may think, and how to be both gentle and confident as parents. This episode isn't just for parents as for aspiring parents, or for people who want to help other parents in your life do their job better. At The Lileros Show, our community is keenly aware of the importance of strong families. No strong nation is possible without strong families. And if you want to join us in this battle, the quickest and easiest way to do that is to ensure that you've already hit that little subscribe button. Please double-check. Also, leave this video a like in a comment, and join us over at patreon.com/lilerosshow, where we have behind-the-scenes conversations, add free episodes, and more. Dr. Ray also answers some of the questions from this community for a special bonus segment over at patreon.com/lilerosshow. Also, you guys might be noticing at some of you have mentioned it in the comments. This is one of our new sweaters, our merch. Here we've got Onward and Upward. We've got Seek Heaven First and so many other beautiful designs. You can go check that out at shop.lylerosshow.com. Dr. Ray Garendi, welcome to the show. Thanks, Lala. I'm so happy you're here. You are. And at yes, that was nice. That's nice. An Italian. 100%. 100%. All four grandparents through Ellis Island. Wow, wow. My name was not Garendi. It was Guadante. But my 17-year-old grandfather, who couldn't speak English, mispronounced it to the-- No. That's how they did it. That's good. That's so sad. They just wrote it down. That was it. So I got a new name. They lost the original. So we had to think-- How was the original Grundy spelled? I think it was Q-A-R-A-N-T-E. With a Q. I think so. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so your first generation. That's the second. Second. Your second. And we had to go to your grandparents. We had to go to Mammoth's house. And every day until I was 23, that's where it was. And I couldn't move more than maybe three blocks away from my mom because that's a law in Italian. You can't move far away from your mom. That is a law. Yeah, one of my brothers, the youngest brother. Of course, it's the youngest son. He's like 20 minutes is the max. He was in Boston. My parents in Northern California and his team moved back. My parish was St. Anthony's in Canton. And you know who went to that parish? A woman named Rita Rizzo. The saint to be? Mother Angelica. My dad was a freshman when she was a senior at McKinley High School. So did they meet her? I don't know if they did. He may have not known that that was going to be mother Angelica. But I knew of her when I was 14 years old because there's a woman in Canton that's right now. Her cause is being offered. Her name is Rhoda Wise. Yes, I've heard of her. And I was taken there when I was a freshman at that house. And my mom told me about this little nun that had a miracle cure at Rhoda Wise's house and became a nun in Canton, Ohio, for the longest time before then she moved down to UWTN. So when did you decide that you wanted to first introduce yourself? Give us your background and you have a you have a fascinating personal story. What I love about you is you're hilarious. So we're going to tell jokes. You promise me we'd do some knock knock jokes. So we'll do that. Your work your body of work is amazing. 20 books on parenting, marriage, all the things relating well with other people. You have a beautiful show that's helped decades of people. One of the gals here in the office today saying her mother helped raise her off of you. Off of your stuff. Yeah, but if she goes bad, she's not crazy. She's she's going pretty well so far, right? I mean, she's pretty pretty amazing people. She's doing great, pretty amazing people around here. But then you're also got this, you know, your personal life is just really special. How you raised your own family. So give us the background on Dr. Reagan deep. I'm a shrink. Psychologist, clinical psychologist started out in engineering. I always wanted to live in the caboose, you know, but I got blown out of engineering when I was a freshman because I got an awful score in my physics test. So I called home. I said, Hey, mom, transfer and transfer into psychology. And I thought, well, what do I do now? So I just kept going. Got a PhD in psychology. For 20 years, I did practice school districts. I had star programs, all those places. I have a private practice now. And then ultimately drifted towards media because I was an entertainer in night clubs and restaurants before before all this. Singing? Singing, playing the organ and entertaining. And that's kind of how I got into all this. I used to do all the secular shows, Oprah, Jenny Jones, CBS this morning. I did all those and singing. No, I was a shrink. I was going to say, I don't remember that. No, as you were singing in the nightclub, but then you were doing the shrink work, including on Oprah. And then I was on Oprah multiple times before she went to fill. Fill was kind of her therapist. And so she kind of moved him into the show. And he was there about every week until he went out on his own. What a mistake. Prior to that, I used to go there a lot. What a mistake. Yeah, but I got to be with you now and that's better. All right, I'll take it. I'll take it. You know, and I have a soft spot in my heart for Dr. Phil, but there's no one like Dr. Ray. So we've got, we've got the real thing here. You've got to get out more woman. I, well, I feel like I'm out a lot about too much in it in one sense. So, so you, so tell me about your family. We're going to talk about your work and you're going to give some, the best advice that people listening may have ever heard. We're going to get to that. But it's coming from your faith and your family. Tell me about your family. Came home from Cleveland Clinic one day. Told my wife. They said if we conceive children, it'll be a miracle and go on the talk shows. So we said, what do we do now? Can we adopt? Yeah, but the weight could be five, six, seven years. My wife always wanted to have five or six kids. And I guess we'll try to adopt. Well, back then, Lila, if you didn't care about the race, you could adopt very quickly. I asked an adoption worker one time. He said, how long would I have to wait? If I wanted to adopt a little black baby boy, she said, what do you do in tomorrow? So I have three white, two Hispanic, two by racial, three black. Now the picture when my wife used to take them through the store, because at one point they were all under two. You have 10 total. 10 total. All different ethnicities. All different boys and girls. I suspect my wife on the black kids, but I can't catch her. So given that, she'd take them through the store. And people would look at her and they'd see these kids of multicolors. And I could hear them thinking. I wonder if that guy knows those aren't all he is. And then some of them would come up and say, is this some kind of club or something? Daycare. Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, it's a pre-school daycare. So yeah, the kids, they're all grown now. And I got to tell you, if you let me brag, let me brag. Please brag. It's a brag. The whole officer says some of the nicest kids he has. So when you hear that, you feel warm inside, you know? Any grandkids? 10. 10 grandkids. 10 grandkids. And they're all grown and launched. All your kids. Why, I'm not sure I'd use the word launch. I mean, they know where we live. Okay. So my wife and I are getting into a parent protection program where they're going to alter our identities and relocate us in Montana. So some of them are around the country. Some of them are close to home. Be careful, doctor. People listen to me like, what is real? What is this right now? But that is hilarious. So 10 adopted children, all different backgrounds. And were there all babies when you adopted these beautiful kids? We got four older and we can talk about that because they had some pretty rough upbringings. I bet very, very dangerous room. I had three of the children where birth mom was considering abortion. And they didn't. And we let the kids know real clear how much their birth mom loved them to basically go against her whole world to give birth to this child that was at risk. I have a son who initial testing in the womb said that he had corpus colosum agenesis. Now, that's a serious neurological birth defect. Worst case scenario, that's institution for life. Birth mom was 35. I got to believe everybody told her, you can't give birth to this kid. She did. And that young man just mustered out of Ford Hood as Sergeant G after 10 and a half years. It was a shadow on the ultrasound. The test was wrong. Wow. That's amazing. I've got to ask you and we're going to get into discipline parenting relationships. But I think this, the act of love of adopting these beautiful children. I needed the tax deductions. All right, all right. But beyond the tax deductions, the act of love and your wife's love to adopt all these kids, I want to talk about the risk. And you knew, in part, I think what you were getting into as a shrink, as you say. You know, you have a clinical background. You've counseled all kinds of families kids. So you've seen the whole gamut of things, right? Did you, do you feel like you knew what you were getting into when you chose to adopt 10 children, some of them older children who had all the trauma that they came into the family with? Did you go into it with you and your wife saying, listen, these are the challenges we're going to face and the beautiful blessings. This is how what we're going to do as a family was there sort of like a whole plan behind it. It all depends upon the context. For example, one of the worst things that can happen is drugs and alcohol in the womb. What that does is it alters the brain structure. It alters the thinking. It makes the individual harder to socialize slower to form a conscience. Now, I'm not saying it can't happen, but I'm saying it's much riskier. And what's happening now, Lila, is the days are gone where the young Catholic girl gets pregnant and goes and lives with the nuns until she places the baby. Nowadays, a lot of adopted kids are at risk. They come from foreign countries. They've been taken from birth mom because of neglect and abuse. They're older. They've been in foster care. So as a result, and I always tell this to folks who come to me who want to adopt. Yes, it's a beautiful thing. Our Lord says, take care of the little ones. Real clear. But know that this could be a bouncy upbringing. As long as you know that you're prepared, I knew that we were going to have some turbulence. I knew that. I didn't realize how much the brain can be altered. The research says it can by the drugs in the alcohol in the womb. But most adopted parents think love, stability, religious upbringing, and we'll shape this kid into a beautiful human being. And that does happen often. However, I deal with a lot of adopted parents who are struggling because this kid's tough to raise. Doesn't mean he's not valuable in God's eyes. It just means he's tougher to raise. And as a parent, you got to be even better at this. You got to be more supervisory, better discipline, more stable, watching over the input from the culture that is mischaping their souls, those kinds of things. That's part of it. I think a lot of parents are afraid of adopting or fostering. And certainly with older children where there's maybe trauma and a background that is more complex so the needs are greater when they have other young children in the home. One of the rules we had. We didn't adopt anybody older than our younger kids. Now at one point we adopted two four year olds and we had a three and a one year old in house. At that point, the four year olds we knew somewhat the history. So we felt really secure about their worldliness. But if you adopt an eight year old, worldly child who's seen all kinds of stuff. And then you bring them into your home with a two year old in your home. Yeah, you're taking some risks and you got to know that. But by and large, the children adapt well. One of the things I hear from parents who say we have three bio kids and now we want to adopt. Okay, how will the kids accept this? Well, most of them they do. Initially they may say, why did you do this to our family? We didn't want somebody else in here. We had a nice family. Why are you doing this mom? But over time, the kids adapt well. However, the key thing you got to watch is the worldliness of the child that you adopt. Especially if you have younger ones, you got younger ones. So for you to go out and adopt a 10 year old who's seen 50 times what all three of your kids have seen from a worldly perspective, yeah, you got to be real reluctant. And what are some examples of that that you think people should be aware of. But when you when you say the word, rolliness and how that might negatively impact your younger children or any younger children in the home. Sexualized. The kids have seen much. Perhaps they themselves have been sexually abused. I think one of my sons was sexually abused. And when we adopted him, we didn't know that. I sensed it. I didn't know it. Now as I look back on it, all the puzzle pieces fit together. So you got to watch the sexualization. You got to watch how much they've been exposed to sewage and junk. They spent hours in front of a TV or video games or on the internet. What they've seen so that this little six year old has the worldly mind of a 16 year old. And that's where the risk comes in. What was been the best thing about adopting 10 children for you and your wife? Chaos. It is. It was a good chaos, though. I look back on it. My wife homeschooled. Wow. Well, that's really amazing because her educational level only goes to the fourth grade. Oh my God. So I told her. I said, stay one week ahead in the answer book. That's all you got to do. It was when you graduated the fifth grade, right? I was fifth. Yeah. I was at the top of my class. I was 16. I was up here in Heights and the other kids were here. It's got a little printout of your degree. And that's not the long. You can get it. Yes. Open covered before, before striking school of graduation. So the thing was, I look back on it now. And for, well, I don't know, maybe seven years, all of them were in the house. So because of that, it was just chaos. But yet, if here's the key, Riley, here's one of the biggest things. My wife had discipline control. A woman from our church one time asked her, what would you do? If you gave one of your kids discipline, you know, go to the corner, go to your room, put your head down to dining room table, write an essay, whatever. What would you do if they refused? And my wife said, I don't know. And the woman said, what do you mean? You don't know. And my wife said, they never have. And she said, how could that be? And here's why. Early on, she showed the kids. You can't refuse discipline. Because if you do, there's going to be all kinds of other consequences are going to happen to you. And we'll talk about how to get parents one time compliance. And because of that, the kids, even with all of their background, even their tough temperaments knew that their mother meant business. And if she says, go to the corner, you better go to the corner, because if not, all kinds of things are going to happen. She Italian. She's, I don't know what she is. And I'm surprised my grandmother. Let me marry her. She's, I'm surprised too. Oh, easy, easy. But she's an amazing lady. She's a tough lady. As we enter into one of the most beautiful and holy times of the year, Advent. Hallow's Pre-25 Challenge, Be Still, is an invitation to set aside the endless to-do lists and to build a daily habit of quiet prayer. You'll be guided through the story of the Nativity. And for families, Hallow is offering a kid's Advent prayer challenge as well. 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I hear it everywhere. I hear it when I'm out with my kids, and I only have three. We hope to have more, but when we're out and people say, "Oh, you've got your hands full." "Oh, it's so great." And you're done, right? You're done, you're done, you're done, you're done. I'm like, "How do we get here?" You live in a culture that says, "You can have physical relations with anybody, anytime, any way, any how you want." The only people we will attack is you, a mom who has more than 1.86 children, then we will comment on your motherhood. You know what you say? If they say to you, "Are these all your children?" "Lyla, you look at them and you say, "Of course not. The oldest is at home with the triplets." Too funny. Okay, what's the secret though? To walk us through, because I've got three. I think about some of my closest friends who have many more than that, and discipline, and it's not just about like, "Don't do bad stuff," right? It's about forming a child to become who God created them to be. And this is the dream of every parent. And yes, they do think some people don't have more children than one or two, because they're afraid of their ability or lack of ability to do it well. And there's other selfish, more selfish reasons than that too. But give us the foundations, the Dr. Ray foundations, for how to raise a strong set of children. And I really want to hear it from this lens of a big family, because I know we've got some listeners of the show who have really big families. You know, I know the principles can be the same for some small families, but how did you and your wife do it and what do you recommend to get the, to discipline 10 children? The people who listen to you, Lyla, by and large are faith-filled people. They want to raise kids who are going to go to heaven. As a consequence, they are out of sync with the culture. The culture around them is much more permissive, much more amoral, much more quick to allow kids to grow up too fast. So the kids of the people who watch and listen to you are likely as they get older to say, "Hey mom, how can all those people be wrong and you be right?" So the first thing I say to parents is you've got to have the confidence to know that what you're doing in your best judgment, not according to some expert who doesn't believe in God. In your best judgment, this is what is good for your family. And if you say, "Well, we don't have television during the week." Well, Lyla, you're about in 1%. If you say, "My daughter is 15 and does not yet have a smartphone," now you're way less than 1%. If you don't have the confidence to make those kinds of judgments, you're going to be buffeted by the winds of the culture. So that's the first thing. Second thing, and I send this straight to dads. Be affectionate. Be very affectionate. Those kids know that your standards are different from the cultures and you can't expect them to understand why all the time. They're kids. They don't understand this. I remember the first time I told my mom, "I don't like you." She looked at me. She said, "Ramen, you're a little behind. Stop liking you last year." That was before you could psychologically smack parents around. So you can't be afraid of being misunderstood by your kids. You cannot. Third, when my son was 17, he played basketball for school. Before the games, I would go down on the floor and I'd grab him and I'd hug him and I'd kiss him. 17 years old. 17 years old. Now I look at him. Kiss him. Kiss him. Add his practice in front. Add his game in front of his front. Give him a kiss. And I'd look up on the stands and you could see the collective gasp of parents of teenagers. They're gone. This guy's breaking every teen rule in the world. I hugged him and I kissed him and I had to affirm him. I had to say something very positive. So I said, "Beety, try not to stink the joint out." And he laughed. Later on, I asked him, "Hey Pete, that bother you when I do that?" He said, "Would it make any difference, Dad?" I said, "No, it wouldn't because no son of mine. I don't care how old you get. It's ever going to tell me, I can't be affectionate with you anytime, anywhere, anyhow." You know what he told me later, Laila? He said a couple of his teammates came up to him and said, "I wish my dad would do that." So you see that affection is, the older I get and the more I see it, especially those families, raising their kids counter to the flow of the culture, you got to be affectionate because otherwise the kids, they don't understand, "Why are you doing this? You're so weird." Okay, that's huge. Another big one. You got to have discipline control because if you don't, you get ugly. I'm fond of saying gentle parenting is a way to be a nasty parent. What do you mean? Because you're going to get frustrated. Gentle parenting. Presentment builds. Gentle parenting doesn't work because it assumes something that's flawed. How do you define really quick? Because this is a hot debate. Yes, it is. How do you define gentle parenting? Gentle parenting is reasoning, understanding, being very slow to discipline, but in fact giving choices. Now, all that's good. All that is good. The problem is, it implies that if you do it that way, then your kid is going to cooperate. And when he doesn't, you get frustrated. And when you get frustrated, you get ugly. You go to confession. Bless me, Father. I'm impatient again. I made that confession before. I was pretty nice before children. Now I'm not pretty. Like me, Dr. Ray. And then you say, "Father, would I be wrong thinking about shooting my kid with a bazooka?" Haven't done that one, but you get frustrated. And for you, you got three little ones, right? You need the ability. Now, I think the youngest is how old? One. Okay, so this is really not ending. 18 months. She acts like she's too. Yeah, you're inching your way towards some kind of discipline, which parents say, "What is discipline?" I said, "Well, discipline very simply put as this, an expectation backed by a consequence." In other words, you're not allowed to mistreat your brother. You can't mistreat your brother. Now, sometimes a parent will say, "But wait, I want to teach him to treat his brother right." I go, "True, but you have to first stop mistreatment because we as Christians know that the bent is toward mistreatment. We have a fallen human nature. We're going to do what's in our interest, and our interest collides with his interest." So you can't mistreat your brother. It is truly original, just quick side bow. I don't bow on this, and I'm curious your thoughts, because I see with this kind of a fallen nature, you know, at the very young age, there's like angels, but then they can be like, "Of course!" But not because they're intending the sin. It's not like, "Oh, I'm it." Because before the age of reason, there's no moral culpability, but it's just like, you know, I want that toy. I want this. I want that. And, you know, it's a human nature thing, and it's, again, not an act of sin for a child like that young, because they don't have reason, right? They can't will a consent to the sin. You know, what I believe is the most overused and sad adjective to describe children? Strong willed. I hate that. The implication is that because he wants to do what he wants to do, because he self-centered, all of which our Christian teaching would say is innate to the human before we are socialized and moralized, we look at this and say, "Why is he so strong willed?" And I want to say, "Mom, he's not going to cooperate with you." If you've got one that's more cooperative, count your blessings. Say, "Thank you, dear Lord, but if you get one like that first lila, it'll ruin the rest of your parenting, because you'll think your God's gift to parent." And then Kujo comes along. Conan over here. And all of a sudden, you've got a normal child, but you then describe that child as "strong willed." So strong willed. Mind of her own. Six gone on, sixteen. See, we use these kind of adjectives when, in fact, I want to say you just got a kid. And we've forgotten what kids are, and part of the reason for that is that the experts have convinced parents that your kids, if you parent properly, are going to say, "Oh, mother, I've been so blind." Of course. Let's hold hands and come by y'all around the campfire. Okay, and I took you on a sidebar, so thank you for the patience with me on that. But you were laying the foundations for what discipline is. And you just said, "Oh, well, they're not going to do the Kumbaya, but it sounds like your wife had a locked in." They weren't Kumbaya, maybe, but they were obeying, yes. And it sounds like there was harmony. I had a client come to my office. And her husband said one of the more humble things I've gotten from clients. He said, "I disagreed with my wife the whole time we were raising our oldest son. I thought she was too strict. I thought her standards were too high. I was much, much, much more permissive. I thought he would outgrow all of this. He's 21 now and his life's a mess." So we have a 14-year-old, and I don't want to make the same mistakes. So we're here, Dr. Ray. Give us some guidance, and I'm going to agree with what you say and my wife. So I ask them, "If you told this 14-year-old, that's disrespectful. You need to please sit down and write a nice essay on why you're great for the live here, and why you should not be disrespectful." And that's some minimum 300 words handwritten. "Would he do it?" And the mother said, "Oh, of course not. Oh, no. Be an automatic fight. Be an automatic brawl and argument awful." I said, "Well, here's what I think you need to do." At that point, until you get the essay, all perks and privileges cease every single thing. That means there is no outside. There's no computer. There's no friends. If you go to Pizza Hut, he doesn't eat. He eats at home because he's eating out the privilege. A favorite sweatshirt's gone. Anything technical is gone. If you have to drive him to school, well, that's a privilege. So we'll pay you some mileage. In other words, you don't understand how many things as a parent are in your leverage, and she said, "You mean that's kind of like a blackout?" And I said, "What a great word." And I talk about that in my books, and I also talk about that from our own perspective as parents. That's the reason why the kids didn't refuse going to the corner. If they did, my wife said, "Okay, blackout." "Mom, mom, I'm going to go outside." "No, I didn't get my cornea." "Mom, what am I talking about?" "Oh, it's on a refrigerator, I didn't get my cornea." "I don't get an okay." "Oh no, you don't get any desert at all. You didn't go to the cornea." In other words, until you do what we asked you to do, you're going to realize all these things are gone. Not me, not nasty, not jack booted, kicked the door down. No, it's just a very calm, I told you, you need to go to the corner or this is going to happen. And it didn't take too many of those before filing. She just said, "Put your head down at the dining room table, please. I'll set the timer." And they did. Because a few times they said, "No, they saw what happened." And they didn't like that. So she did that enough, early on enough, consistently enough. Yes. And also it sounds like calmly enough. Oh, yeah, she wasn't the only thing by. She wasn't screaming, she wasn't threatening them. You little brat, get over there! No, nothing like that. Always tell parents, the matter you get, the more you lose credibility. Because the child looks at you and thinks, "Hey, you're a lunatic." You know, "I'm living with a lunatic." Okay, I'll go to the corner. Look what I did to you. I ruined the next two hours for you. I can stand in a corner for four minutes. That's a nice trade-off. That's what happens. Sure. Now, if you have, I'm not going to ask you personally. You can go, but I could use a little evaluation of older ones. You're two older ones. Oh, they are, they're thickest thieves and they also can fight like cats and dogs. Okay. So you have, you have a house rule. Boys, Rocky, Bruno, you're great names. Right, good names. Conan, Kucho, you're not allowed to mistreat each other. There is no pushing, there's no shoving, there's no name calling, there's no jumping off the ropes, there's no soap in the eyes, nothing. If you do, guys, it's automatic. I'm not going to try to figure out who started it because I wasn't in there. You both go to the corner. Even when the four-year-old, he just turned four, had it in for the five-year-old. Okay, even when. Now, if you know Laila, they reciprocate. Yeah. I'm not saying it's all the three, you know, the younger kids fall, but and you know, I'll digress for a second. Experts give really dumb advice on this. They say, let them solve their own conflicts. Let them work it out on their own. Let them have conflict resolution skills. Now, the problem is your older kid is going to dominate because he's bigger, smarter, faster, stronger. Even though the four-year-old provokes, your older son is like, no, nah, I'm not putting up with this. Or he loses his mind because he tries conflict revolution in the three-year-old is not fair. Exactly. Exactly what I mean. Many of these theories don't work. So you have a rule. Can't do this. So you tell both boys, you sit on the couch over there, you sit over there. And they don't. They get off the couch or they do this. Am I still on the couch? Am I on the couch now, mom? Or they sit there and it's got. Yes, they scream. That's right. They will do what I call escalation. It's very common. That's why parents will say, I don't, I don't really like the discipline because it gets ugly. And so what happens is it builds in inconsistency. I'll try to get you to take your discipline, but if you don't, I'm going to try to work my way through this or negotiate or do something or ignore you or whatever because I don't want to have six minutes, eight minutes, twenty minutes of a brawl here. Okay, boys, you don't have to sit on the couch. Everything's gone. No Legos. No, no, those are gone. Oh my gosh, those are gone. Favorite shirt is gone. Favorite cup is gone. Favorite hat is gone. Outside is gone. How do you kick that consistently though? Do you have like a list premeditated of the 10 things that go when the discipline is not taken? It's really easy. Anything that remotely is a perk or a privilege. Anything. That means if you're getting juice, his favorite juice, his favorite orange juice for dinner, and you put milk or water in front of him, and he said, "One my juice." You haven't sat on the couch yet. It's kind of like Colombo. You're gone. Well, wait a minute. Don't you understand? You didn't sit on the couch yet. A good night of sleep makes all the difference in the world. And cozy earth wants to make sure that that's not only possible, but probable for you. Cozy earth sheets are what my husband and I have on our bed, and they are favorite sheets hands down. Crafted from this coast from bamboo for an incredibly soft feel that keeps you cozy without overheating. The bubble cuddle blanket is the perfect gift for cozy winter moments, and it combines comfort and style with a distinctively textured bubble design and an ultra soft faux fur feel. Cozy earth also confidently offers a 100-night sleep trial, as well as a 10-year warranty. 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Plus exclusively for my listeners of this show, use the code Lila for an extra 10% off your first order. That's a 25% total savings on your first order. Plus up to four free gifts. Just use code Lila at 7weekscoffee.com. Just to play this out, right? We're practically speaking. Yes. Hypothetically of a mother of three who has two boys that are older. Possibly before a hypothetical mother of three or a mother of seven. I'm thinking about my sister-in-law right now or could be any number of people, right? But let's say you do this. They're not following the discipline. They're not enforcing. They're not listening. They're showing some weakness, but it's going to be the brawl. You don't have the 20 minutes. You have other kids. You've got a baby that's crying in the other room that you need to take care of. So you're going to do this blackout thing because this is the new standard here. That's how we'd handle things around here. How do you enforce the blackout? Because for example, let's say they're like, okay, they wander off like, oh, we got out of that one. And then you're like, well, no juice, no dessert, you know, no going to the park right now. You're just, you sit here. Well, they get their books, they're like reading books in the couch. You take the book away. If you want your mom, you make the rules. Okay. You see the difference. Okay. You don't go to the, you don't go to the expert manual. Flip it in. But at some point it's something that hurts. Like the Lego said is a big one. So yet no Lego's until you mind mom and do you sit on the couch and do your time out. It's not something that hurts. Parents always say that. I got to find something that makes a difference to him. He doesn't seem to care about anything. I try nothing works. No, no, no, no. It works. The instant you do it, you total lesson, if a, then B. Now, will that change the behavior? Well, that comes in time. So he may have to find out if I try to sabotage blackout. In other words, he's going to go get his stuffed animal. He's going to go like this. He's going to hold it and stare at you like, I got my stuffed animal. But you can do. You can just look at him and say, well, I'm not going to try to yank it off. But I will tell you this, it's going to be gone for a long time now. And then as soon as he goes to sleep or he forgets about his stuffed animal, you put it up on the refrigerator and hide the ladder so we can't get up there and get it. I want to do the s because the other thing with the younger kids, they forget things after hours, right? But you're reminding them. Okay. If he says, I'm all side. Oh, no, you, you didn't put, you put your head down yet. So basically, the removal of the privilege is until they fulfill the discipline for the original, yes, the original misbehavior. Okay. Now, let's add something to it. You said they'll go sit on the couch and scream. If you go over and say, you know, the longer you scream, the longer you're going to sit, son. And let's say that he screams and finally has had enough and he gets off. So what he did was scream for 12 minutes and then get off before you told him he could. Okay. Now, I'm not concerned about that. I'm not looking at that kid and going, what an obnoxious little brat. No, no, no, no, kids are kids. They do this kind of stuff. What I'm concerned about is what the parent does. In other words, hmm, well, look what he did. And you could look at him and say, you know, before you're off blackout, you got to sit twice as long and not scream and not scream. Yeah. Or at least do 12 minutes again, but no screen, but quite a time. Yeah. No, you got to hold the line. Here's the question. I can imagine myself, you know, trying to employ this approach and we've done some similar things and then getting distracted or busy with mother kids or other responsibilities and then not remembering, oh, we got to stick to this thing from a transgression that was, you know, at this point, 1964, you know, you know, hours ago, which is 1964 to the child. You don't have to be 100% consistent. Wow. That's the challenge for it. Okay. That's absolutely. The average parent is anywhere between 10 and 20% consistent. And that's usually good enough. For example, you tell your son to pick up his Legos and you check and he hasn't picked up Leo. Legos, please. Okay. So he puts his around. He throws a few in there and then he wanders off. Leo, how many times are we going to tell you now, you've already told him three times. So you're down to 25% consistency already. Yeah. And at this point, there's escalation because there's like a raised. Yes. You don't say the voice, which is not a good thing. You don't say Leo, if I tell you 12 more times, I'm afraid I'm going to raise my voice. I'm feeling anger pangs. Leo, no, you want to kill him. Okay. And you feel so terrible. I'm supposed to be a loving mom. I feel so awful. That's what will happen if you allow that to go on. These are ideals. Lila, this isn't, this isn't something that any parent can reach. So in that case, you would just say, listen, you didn't pick up your Legos. I am picking them up and they're going in and they're gone. Legos are gone. Legos are gone. Okay. Very, very quietly, very calmly. Just that's it. Let me let me show you something that happened in our home once and I'll just give you some idea of my wife's strength of will. Now, obviously, children vary and strength of will. I wouldn't consider any of my children's strong will. Now that, yeah, I know that that's the look I get because you're thinking, oh, come on, wait a minute. 10 of them under certain circumstances. And here's why. The strongest willed of my 10 kids is not stronger willed in his mother. I'll show you. That's a, that's a good one. That's the goal, huh? One time they were fighting over cereal. They're battling over the box and you know how it is, they bring out the caliper and the metric scale and they weigh out and you got two more flakes than I did. And boxed on all over the floor, just every which way. So my wife had them clean it up. Next time she went to the grocery store, she only put corn flakes in the cart for one month instead of the the nice stuff or whatever they were having. I begged her. I said, honey, please, I'll give you a 50 bucks for one box of golden grams, one box. That's what you wait. Fruity pebbles. Come on. Yeah. That's bad for you, doctor. I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know because I'm only 16 years old too and look what they've done. But given that, she made a point. She said, you see what I just see what she did when they just fought like that over the cereal. One month in the cart, nothing but corn flakes. And they took it and was there. So you're saying that approach. It sounds like it worked really well for you for you both. Well, they realize you do that. It's a kitchen table again. You're going to do it again. You know, that's the key. It's going to do it again. You go to confession and I got to believe you say, bless me father. Here's the list. It's the same stuff I've been telling you for years. So we do that, but we get frustrated at the kids when they don't learn as quick as we think they should. You know, I have sent him to the corner 27 times this month. And he's still doing it. I go, what do you expect? You're teaching him. Eventually, he's going to get tired of the corner. Eventually, he's going to say, you know what? The first 16 times I went here, it wasn't so bad. It's starting to be a drag now. You know, what would be the, I don't know, the gut test or something for knowing where you're at and you're parenting that because I think people listening to you are thinking, maybe, okay, well, the wife at the beginning, she's like, they're all really well behaved. But then he's being realistic. They're going to still make mistakes. They're human beings, right? They're not like, you know, they're not machines. And so you can't just like train the robot. They're human beings with free will. My wife always said we're raising people. Yes. Like, how would you assess a child or a group of children and family? For yeah, they're, they're on the right track in terms of discipline and behavior. This stuff is normal. And then how would you be able to assess? And be like, no, you've got to really work on your consistency, mom. You've got to really work on holding the line, mom. You draw a parallel to adult diagnoses. Typically, one of the conditions of getting a diagnosis is how much it interferes with your life. So if you as a parent are saying, I am not enjoying this at all. This is frustrating. I'm not liking my own kid. This is, this is just every day is a potential battle, a struggle. Then you reassess you say, what is going on here? Now, here's the catch, Lila. And again, I put this back at the foot of experts. We tend to look at the child. Something's wrong with that kid. Why is he likes that? You know, he doesn't listen. He's not cooperative. He's stubborn. He's strong willed. He's got ODD. ODD. Yeah. So we start, we start blaming the child. I would say roughly 90% of the time with alterations. They medicate them then too. Oh, yeah. Oh gosh, yes. Oh, of course, because something's wrong with the child. 90% of the time you can improve the dynamics of the parent. Whether it's more affection, whether it's better discipline, whether it's learning to act before you get mad, all of these things will affect the child. I get parents coming into my office and they will say, this kid's tough, this kid is just tough. And I'll ask, what does a, what does a school say? I don't understand that. The teacher doesn't see any of this. The teacher says he's a sweetheart. What did you do? Well, I got out my phone and I said, is this the boy? A little brown-haired kid with a gap in his teeth. I got the right school here. And I said, you see, it's in the dynamic. He goes to school. Now, that teacher doesn't have a fraction of a parent's authority, but he doesn't know that. His perception is she has authority. So therefore, I will be cooperating and I'll be pleasant. That's the other thing. Well, discipline kids are happier and more pleasant. They're not suffocated. So the parent alters things and the child gets better. One of the more common things I hear from clients after a couple of sessions. I'll say, it's like I'm living with a different child. You already did the other day. He came up and he sat in my lap and he hugged me and he said, I love you, mommy. He hasn't said that to me in three weeks. And he's so much more pleasant. I go, yeah, because you're not fighting with him. You're disciplining him, which is true. And you're doing better discipline than you did, but you're not fighting with him. But I feel mean when I discipline, I just feel mean. You can discipline mean, but discipline itself is not mean. Discipline is a loving gift. I always tell parents this, if you don't do it, because you feel guilty or you're afraid, you won't like you or you're afraid of doing something psychologically and correct, you'll be turning that child over to those people out there. A judge, a landlord, an army sergeant, a police officer, an employer, somebody will discipline that child. And he said, the world doesn't love him like you do. So please, you got to go against your instinct. Lila, I hate the discipline. I hate it. I don't like it. I want to get along with my kids, but I knew I had to. I knew I had to go against my feelings to do what was right. We had we had a zero tolerance for disrespect. You owe my that gives you the heaviest consequences. If you mistreat a sibling or your parents heavy consequences, I mean, we're talking maybe five days straight of blackout or we're talking a 500 word essay. You don't roll your eyes at your mom. I came home one day and my wife, I picked up that she was unhappy. Now, Lila, I am a trained therapist. I am able to read the subtle cues of a spouse. And I don't want any of the women listening to this program to think, well, my husband can't do that because I'm a professional. So I came home and I picked up that my wife was unhappy. She was coming down the driveway, holding two children by the neck going, I do not like them, Ray. I am. I do not like them here or there. I do not like them anywhere. I do not like them. I don't care. I picked up on that. I thought, hmm, I'll bet she's upset. So Sarah, the 13-year-old came out of the house. What do you want me to do now, mom? Well, Sarah, I need you to sweep out the garage. After you're done doing that, you're going to empty the dishwasher, put it all away, and then you come back to me and I'll tell you what. Is she one of the ones with the neck or she was misbehaving? She was an extra one. No, the neck one. She was doing good things. She was obeying or no, she was no way. Okay, I'll let you keep going. So what did you do, honey? She said, I gave Sarah an hour's worth of labor. Now, that was a consequence in our house for the older kids. You're going to misbehave. You're going to get labor hours worth half an hour or whatever. I said, what did Sarah do to get an hour's worth of labor? My wife said, she rolled her eyes at me. Now, many parents accept rolling of the eyes because the experts tell them children are expressing themselves. They're not throwing a brick. They're not cussing at you. They're just rolling their eyes. Lila, you're delightful. But if you ask me a question that I don't like, and I do this, you'll never ask me back. I mean, ever because you'll think, what a jerk. That's what rolling eyes is. It's just how good the other advice is. Well, yeah, you might use it, but you won't ask me back. Might cut out the roll. My rolling eyes is distainful. It is. It's very complex. So she got an hour's worth of labor for rolling her eyes. Is that because it's so bad? No. It's because your mother's so valuable. You don't do that to your mom. And I think that's where that kind of understanding was for my wife, which is there certain things we expect. We love you desperately and we don't want to fight with you. We don't want to argue. Parents will say to me, I talk worse to my kids than I talk to any other human being. I say, you want to do that? Do you? Well, no. Well, probably because you're getting frustrated because of discipline or because of stuff they do. Sounds like it's a mix of high expectations. Yes. Very high. Yes. According to the culture, anyways, very high. Oh, you're off the charts. Intense affection. Yes. Intense affection. And then a willingness to calmly have consequences and follow up as best you can. It's not going to be perfect. The consistency, but to take control with the consequences, not violent angry consequences, but consequences that I have a lot to do with removing, as you say, lack of privileges or opportunities or things that the kids like. Very well summarized. This is not rocket science. See, the experts, my first book was a book titled, You're Better Parenting You Think. I love that one. It was because I saw so many parents when I worked at the Mental House Center who were insecure, unsure of themselves, second guessing, lost authority. And I'm wondering, what is going on here? Well, that was pretty much at the very beginning of the onslaught of the experts and all their theories and all their notions. And they were confusing parents. Parents were trying to be psychologically correct. And in so doing, they were losing authority. They were losing resolve. They were second guessing themselves. And I thought, this is bad. This is hurting a lot of good people. People will say to me, well, yeah, you're an expert, though. So why should we listen to you? And my answer is, you don't have to listen to me. Take what I'm saying and judge it. How well does it work for your family and your house? See if it works. See if it squares with your instincts and reality. If it doesn't, dump it. But I'm not going to say, if you don't do it my way, let me tell you what's going to happen to your kid, which is all too often the message. I think a lot of parents are very deep down on a primordial level afraid of messing up their kids. Yes, absolutely. Especially if they had were messed up at all in their childhood. It's like extra extra intense that fear. Yes. What do you recommend to parents? Because I mean, even except from the expert stuff, they're just like really worried about making a mistake. In the beginning, I used to say parents are dominated by the fear of not being psychologically correct. After doing this for 40 plus years, Lila, I am now convinced that parents are dominated by the fear of their child's reaction. Will he hate me? If I don't give her a smartphone when she's 14, is she going to be resentful? Is she going to be sneaky and defiant? Is she going to be socially stunted? Am I going to have all kinds of trouble with the relatives and everybody else who thinks I'm a throwback neanderthal? So now their parenting scared is what they're doing. And there's a couple of brief answers to that. One, God knew that kids were going to be raised by us with all of our frailties, all of our humanists, all of our emotions, all of our uncertainties that we have. He knew that. So he built them to withstand us. They're not spun glass. They're steel belted radios. I see so many kids who come from vicious environments. Some of them have become priests. Some of them are among the most delightful, well-adjusted folks I know. Now how did that happen? Well, the durability of the human spirit. There's a lot of research coming out now, Lila, that says that we can survive and thrive really bad environments. So if, in fact, we can do that, just think how much more so we'll do it in a loving home with parents who are trying to be good parents. Here's what I always tell parents. If my children go astray, I want to be able to say it's because they had to go through me. Not because I stepped aside. That's beautiful. And you're praying for them. Even if that's step aside, it's part of a long path to eventually come back home. Because even if they go astray, that's not the end. Let's jump ahead. Let's jump ahead to something. I'm sure you see a lot of and now I see this in so many of my clients. These are parents who have raised their children and the children have left the church. A lot of people. It's an epidemic. It's really heartbreaking for so many families. Unprecedented in human history. So what I have had now starting to do with the end of a lot of my talks is I offer this. I say, I'm going to take your guilt away. I want to prove to you logically that your days of beating yourself up over this, that your children have left the faith they were raised with, that you tried your best to impart the faith to them. And now they're either drifting, rejecting. Maybe they've cut off ties with you because they don't like your religious beliefs or your political affiliation. Will you help me with this slide? I'm going to ask you a set of questions. Would you answer them? Let's do it. Is there a God? Yes. Is Christ God? Yes. Was he sinless? Yes. Could he perform miracles? Yes. Did he have a perfect understanding of human nature? Yes. Could he get most people to follow him? And I always tell these parents, so maybe most, but not all. I don't think most. I've been killed him. Oh, I see. I see you're saying, yeah, you're right. So I want to say to these parents, you think you're better at this than the God man? Can you do a miracle? Can you even do a crummy card trick? That's a good one. Our Lord himself couldn't get most people to follow him. We think there's some kind of spiritual formula that we must have missed it. You know, I wanted to pray the rosary in Aramaic, kneeling on broken glass while I levitated. You know, my husband let him sit on the couch, spiritual sloppiness. And we think we just failed. My 10 children are grown. I got some, probably going to serve a church. I got some, probably going to serve time. You know, they're all so different in the way they absorb the faith. How would you encourage parents to be self-aware, where they both accept their limitations and imperfections and the reality that their child has free will. And we live in the world that we live in. But then they are also, there's a balance of them acknowledging, oh, I've really got to work on my patients. I got to not lose it. Or oh, I need to be. I'm at 25% consistency. I got to bump up to 50 at a minimum here. Or oh, I'm spending too much time or our family is spending too much time on sports or work or whatever other thing that's not distracting from consistent family time or time with the children. How do you give us some tools for how parents can run this analysis? And you said something earlier. So I'm kind of asking it kind of double, I guess, because you said, well, if something looks like it's broken, then you really start evaluating then. Let's take a couple of those that you said. Let's take patients. When parents say, I need to develop more patients. I'm not patient. I can't believe this. There are several key things that parents are doing to themselves that make them feel like they're not patient. Okay. First is they forget that they're raising a child, a self-centered, the universe revolves around me, impulsive, human being, who has to grow out of that over years and years and years. And I dare say, I haven't grown it and neither have you. So you remember that you're raising a person, a soul who's capable of pretty much anything. And as a parent, you're going to have to try to anticipate or deal with. That's first thing. You realize what you're dealing with. Parents get frustrated when their kid acts like a kid and they have to discipline him. Why are you then so frustrated? You know he's going to do stuff like that. So deal with it. But I've been dealing with it. It's okay. God's been dealing with you for how many years now? So try. Okay. So that's first thing. Second thing, they wait too long. Your two boys are bickering. And you've worn them. Boys, settle please. They settle for 12 seconds. No fighting. Yeah. They start up again. Did you hear me? Did you hear me? Are the totally meaningless? Our family doesn't fight. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can tell your family we don't treat each other. Tell me off the boxing gloves. Third time, you go, I'm coming in there. Now, by the fourth time, you're feeling pretty frustrated and pretty impatient. Why? You went on too long at the first sign of mistreating each other. If you act, you act before you're frustrated. If you just let this continue to badger until you find it, I can take this anymore. Then you go, why do I get so impatient? Well, I would too if I let it go on that long. That's another factor. Three, you take it personal. I am trying to raise these children and I love them and I do all kinds of things for them. And this is how they act. This is what they do. That they want to just make my life miserable or what? No, they don't want to make your life miserable. They want to do it. They want to do you just happen to be in a way. That's all. So you don't take it personal. You know, if you're going to screw up, you screwed up. I'm here to try to deal with it. So those are some of the elements of losing patience. That's a factor, the big factor. Another factor in terms of standards. This is what the experts have done to parents and this makes them insecure. Lila, you know, if you put your standards too high, your children are going to rebel. They're going to just spit out those standards. You know, if you make them go to church, by time they're 19, they're going to puke up religion. They're just going to decide you forced me to go to church. And now I don't have to because I'm an adult. So the first thing is that's nonsense. You put your standards where they belong, knowing, you're not going to reach them. But that's by definition what a standard is. If I don't want you mistreating your sister ever, that's a standard. That's a perfect standard. Now, I know you're not going to reach it, but that's the standard. I'm not going to go, well, that is kind of high, isn't it? All right, let's tell you what, you're allowed to push your down twice a week and you can stream that or once and no kicking. Okay, below the knee, below the knee, you can kick below the knee. I don't want to have too high a standard. Well, what is this? If you're not allowed to be disrespectful to mom, well, oh boy, this seems kind of high, doesn't it? All right, I'll tell you what, you're allowed three, yeah, right mom, or whatever, or get a clue, mom, you can have three of those a week, okay? But that makes no sense. A standard by its definition is something you reach for. Either that or our Lord didn't know what he was talking about when he said you must be perfect, even as your heavenly father is perfect. Then I want to go, Jesus, have you been listening to the experts? That's a standard. Now we Christians are going to rebel. Oh, and we do. Of course we do. But it's not because of the standard. It's because we want to do what we want to do. Wow. Yeah, it's so true. Do you think it's important to communicate the standard? Like what would be a recommendation for the communication of the standard to the kids? Most of the stuff the kids do that's normal misbehavior. And most of the stuff that frustrates parents is repetitive stuff. Bedtime, bad times, meal or deals, chore, shirking, sibling, quibbling, homework, hassles, curfew, it's repetitive stuff. So they know the standard. I mean, you've already talked to them about it. You've already disciplined it six times. It's not rocket science. It's no, they know the standard. You know when you don't fight. Yeah, when you're brother, when you fight with your brother, you don't have to keep telling him, now, do you know the rule? You're not allowed to fight? Well, I think that's the experts. It's like every single time. That's not so. We don't hit. We want to take good care of our little sister. You know, when you say we don't hit, I could just picture the average kid gone. Maybe you don't. I do. Okay. It's just like, what are you talking about? I mean, you can still say don't hit. It's not good to hit. But your point is you don't like make it a whole coaching session. You don't make it a challenge. You don't want to explain it. That's why you don't have to keep reminding him. You've told him two hundred and twelve times. They think they understand the idea, even if they're not living it out and their behavior yet. Do you have a dog? No, we don't have a dog. I told him I get one. A big one. I can't. I can't. We kind of want. I don't know. Those are those. Oh, they're sweet hearts of dogs. No way. They are. I don't trust them. They're wonderful. They love. They love my grandkids. Are you a pit bull guy too? No. All right. No. I mean, okay, you're saying. Here's what I say about a dog. I'll say to the parent. Do you have a dog? Yes. Did you wait until your dog understood, not to pee in your house, or did you train him, not to pee in your house? I trained him. Is your three-year-old smarter than your dog? Yes. I said, well, not less as classy than he's not. I said, well, you're teaching your three-year -year-old. You, you, you've sat him on the steps 12 times now for kicking his brother. He knows you don't kick his brother. You don't have to keep telling him every time. Do we kick people in this house? Is that your brother? That is not a soccer ball. That is your brother. I mean, we do these kinds of things. It's exhausting. It really is exhausting, especially if you have seven kids. It's exhausting. I said, I just feel like if you kick your brother, blackout, you did it. Okay. No more legos. There you go. No emotion. No excitement. I don't want to fight over this. I just want to get past it. Yeah. So that's, that's it. Can they earn the legos back? Sure. Of course you can. So you can get out of blackout by doing positive tours. You can, you can build any system in their economics. You want deals. Okay. You, you, you, if he says you, okay, mommy, I, I said on the steps, now can I have my legos? You know what, son? I was going to give you your legos, but you screamed for a long time. So no, I may, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, I don't know, but don't scream when you're on the steps like that. You're 19 years old. Okay. So yeah, you, that's the thing I want to get to parents. Most of people who listen to you, who even listen to me, they're loving people. Yeah. And we want to have a perfect rubric and make sure we do it right. Well, you want to be hallmarked family card. You're, you're forgotten. You're not dealing with something easy, like a rabbit timber wolf. You're dealing with a child who is unpredictable. They could do all kinds of stuff. And it doesn't mean that age 22, they're going to be sitting in springer talking about you and the time you left him on the pot for four minutes too long. Okay. Well, I got to ask when they're a good negotiator. This is where I see this going sideways. Okay. I've got one child. He is a phenomenal negotiator. His anchoring, like he anchors way beyond what you could ever dream of, like, and then he, he's willing to walk away at any point. I mean, this guy, he will not budge, right? Very, very, but he's all kind of wins him about it too, right? Very excellent at it. I'm imagining with what you're describing with the black eye. Okay. Well, if you do the Legos, that it, uh, you know, I'm going to take away the Legos. Okay. Well, can I get them back? Okay. Well, Mommy, I'll go sit right now and then I'll tell my brother. I'm really, really sorry. And then I'll make your leg go and I'll build something that you really like. Mom, okay? Yes, of course. Well, maybe, maybe that's fine. Maybe that dancer is sure. Then he's going to go above and beyond. Decide. Okay. But here's a couple of things you could do. I personally think one of the finest techniques that a parent can develop is a dumb look. So when your son starts to negotiate and you go, like, I don't understand. You just give him a dumb look. And when we say they're negotiators, what we're really saying is we have to negotiate back. You can't be negotiator. Somebody's not negotiating with you. You don't play. Here's what my wife did. My wife used to do this. She'd say, are you arguing? Like she was confused. Are you arguing? That meant if you say another word, something's going to happen. Well, like the, like the, like the cookies before dinner, as an example, right? I want a cookie. No, we're in it. It's not for dinner. Please just one little piece. Please, please, no, no, we're not doing cookies before dinner. Please, please, please, please, you keep repeating that. Why don't you just say to him, you know what, honey, please don't ask me again, or you won't get a cookie after dinner. Okay. That's why I don't care. I mean, I just own it. Sorry, Sonia blew the cookie. Maybe tomorrow. See, it's just kind of easy. That's kind of a kind of a, kind of a go with the float kind of thing. I love it. So off. You know what it is. So much of it comes down to and this is what general parenting has a problem. I want my kid to understand. I want him to see that I don't want to. I know he's going to argue with you if you let him. And you're not a jack booted ought to crack that says, hey, my way or the highway punk. That's one of the biggest misunderstandings people have that if you're a constant, I'm not constant. If you're a consistent firm discipline, then that's mean. No. The meanest parents I've seen are the ones who don't discipline well because they get frustrated. Then they say and do things that they just can't believe they're doing. That's the part that traps them. All right. What do you recommend, Dr. Ray, for developing a healthy family culture where you enjoy, you enjoy your kids. You enjoy your family dynamic. I do hear from a lot of moms and dads, but especially the moms that they're just like it is a, it's hard. It's hard. It's hard. You know, the discipline's one big part of it. But it's like they endless to do less. The endless responsibilities. And so they're not feeling like they're enjoying motherhood. To the degree that you can eliminate or reduce discipline time, which is what you will do if you're consistent and you mean it. Now you have more time just for the normal interaction. Because they're not going to be bad if they know what the rules are. They're not going to challenge them. Now you got more time for the good stuff. Secondly, you're going to have to prioritize all these activities. I have called in one of my books chasing the good at the cost of the best. Yeah, it's not bad to be in these sports five nights a week. That's not bad in and of itself, but something was robbed. Maybe some dinner was robbed. Maybe the fact that well, she's over there playing soccer and he's over there with little league and one of you has to be over there and one of you has to be over there. And we can't even be together to watch the game. You got to sit back one of my earlier books. I interviewed strong families and one mother said she felt trapped into that. Oh boy, we don't have any family time. She told her boys. All right, guys, get yourself a nice hot shower because when you come out, I want you to pick two activities. All the rest go. It's interfering with our family too much. When we had 10 kids at home and at one point, they were between 16 and four. Well, there's a lot of activities there. So what we did is, first of all, only certain kids were allowed one activity. And we made sure we picked activities that allowed a lot of free time in our family. I'm not going to put you on a little league team. The practice is six nights a week and has tournaments every other week. That's not going to happen. Okay, you're not some superstar. That's you being a pro or one and one point two six million. The odds of us losing family time are pretty close to one. So a parent has to make those decisions. And I think the culture has convinced them. Children have to experience these things. You want to run around a child. Yes. And it's nice to pick and choose. But you ask yourself, is this robbing our family? Because that's where that's where the morals and the values are given. This is where the culture makes the case that you shouldn't have more than a small handful of kids. One, two, maybe three. You can give enough attention. Yeah, you can't give them enough opportunities, attention. And so better to have less and more into them more than to have more and more into those more less. I said to my wife, after we adopted our four-year-olds, at that point, we had six, five, four, four, three, one. We adopted the four-year-olds. And they had some rough history. And I said to my wife, I said, you know, they're taking up a lot of our time. And I'm feeling like I can't, I can't individually interact with the kids as much as I would want. And my wife said, Raymond, you big dummy. Okay, no, she didn't say that, but I read the look on her face. She said, Ray, that's why they have brothers and sisters. That's a lot of the interaction is with their brothers and sisters. You know, yeah, it's nice to get on the floor and play with them. But their brothers and sisters are going to get on the floor and play with them a lot more. And besides that, Ray, you can't get up half the time. You get on the floor. You have to press your life alert button. So given that, she was right. You know, the bigger families, and there's research, it says this, Lila, that says kids from big families, buy in large, grow up to be better adjusted, more giving, less selfish. When my daughter went to college, she went to an all-girl school. And the president of the college said, we have trouble with some of the freshmen girls because they can't get used to having a roommate. Now, my daughter grew up with four of them in one room. And she said, just just one roommate. Wow. She entered Nirvana. I love that view and the way you articulated that, Dr. Ray, because it's so encouraging. And it's so countercultural. Oh my gosh, it's so countercultural. But you're giving your kids the gift of their sibling. That's what's like not in the equation, right? Like, I'll work on only one or two or three because we want to be able to do the soccer practice and the dance practice and the music practice and the this and the trevils to European justinations and the right and get the car in the house. But you didn't give them another best friend. You didn't give them that other two, three, four siblings to play with and to be, I mean, I am our family. I've got seven siblings and my husband and his seven siblings. These are, this is our family. That would be a wild Christmas Eve. Oh, yeah. It's always a wild. And sometimes like this, you know, this holiday, some holidays, different people do different homes because it's getting so big and crazy and different. But yeah, when we get together, it's, it's amazing. But would I trade one of them for what an extra music lesson? Like, what? No, I did more square feeding your house. Right. I mean, for what? For what? I mean, and my parents, like, things be to God, and my husband's parents, like, they poured into us. We were given so much, right? But there's always going to be something that is a trade-off, right? And there are real trade-offs and there are real challenges. But what are you going to do? Trade another soul? Get rid of one of those souls, boot them out because they were like, tip the scale a little too much. I've been doing this a long time, long enough to talk to parents whose children are 30, 40, 50 years old. I've heard this so many times. I wish I would have had more kids. I have never yet heard a single parent say to me, I had too many kids. Yeah. It's an eternal soul. How can you imagine that soul that you love? Culture doesn't value kids. It doesn't. No. And you know as well as I do, somewhat over a hundred countries right now have negative birth rates. And they suspect that in a few more decades, it's going to be pretty much the whole world's going to have a negative birth rate. Wow, what's going to happen then? Because all of the predictions that said, we're going to drown ourselves in people. We're not going to have enough food. We're going to turn on each other. Well, the predictions were wrong. And what has happened is that we've stopped having children. The modal number of children right now in the US is one. Model meeting the most common number. Now that's probably in part because they haven't had a second yet. But that is the most common number of children. One. So the question becomes the birth rates 1.7, I think. Yes, it is. We've fallen below the 2.1 for the first time we have. For a while there, we sustained ourselves right around 2.1. Not anymore. And there are several countries below one. You can't recover from one after a couple generations of one. You're in big trouble. So as a result, we've we've lost sight of the value of kids. Just have. And there's many, many reasons for this. Unfortunately, you now got to go against the culture. If you're going to have more than 1.8 kids, 6 kids. And I can't tell you how many mothers have told me, my own parents are getting on me. My own parents are saying, when are you going to stop? I had one dad tell me, we don't tell our family anymore that we're pregnant. We don't want to hear it. That's so sad. That's so tough. Now, how do you balance? And we're talking about this from the Christian perspective now, of course, and all of this is. But how do you balance being open to life and generous, right? With, okay, we've got these real, you know, situations of dealing with the needs of our kids, economic realities, maybe one of the spouses really ill, whatever is going on. And potentially spacing children or having more of a gap between children. And I'm going to add one other piece to this. I've had this controversial discussion lately with some, you know, friends and people that some good people are having. Okay, well, if I get to seven kids, is it okay to practice NFP and avoid and if God still gives us a baby, great, but to avoid having children, we're not contracepting because contraceptions immoral, but we're going to generally speaking avoid and not try to have a baby. And we had seven. So we're generous. We did, we did the generous thing. It's okay to practice NFP before seven. That's the church's teaching. You can practice NFP for a legitimate reason for your family. If you, if you have, for example, a mom who every, every pregnancy, she's got terribly sick. She's been bed bound. She hasn't been able to move. And now she's got three little ones. And you're going to expect her to be pregnant. That's a legit reason. Or if you absolutely cannot pay your bills, you're struggling bad. The church would never say you have to take any kid at all times, no matter what. No, NFP is very successful. It's more successful than the pill. You know that. And so as a consequence, the church would say this with judicious guidance, you can make this decision. Now those who say, well, we've had seven, so we've done our duty. I think maybe they were operating out of a false idea, which is that there's some kind of minimum number that removes you from being sinful, that removes you from not welcoming life. No, no, there, there isn't. There is a situation for example, a small example with the adoption. I mean, you had 10. I was on a plane and I saw a movie that broke my heart. And when a home and I told my wife, honey, can we adopt again? She said, okay, all right, Ray, see what you think. So we went to all the process. She took a little heart ball, a little little inner city boy we shot by a random random gun. And I thought that kid didn't have a chance. Okay. I was crying. I was crying on the plane. Yeah, I just like this. The lady next to me looking at me like, what a weirdo. And I said, I got something in my eye. She took me to a restaurant and said, Ray, if you want to adopt again, I will. But I have to tell you, I think I'm at my load limit. And I'm a very sensitive guy. I said, you sissy. I work for a living. No, I didn't. I said, honey, your call. You're lifting the heavy load here in this family. Your call. You raise kids. All I do is write parenting books. You got to tell for your job. And so we didn't adopt again. We made a decision. All right. So that would have been 11. That would have been 11. Was there a conversation about, I don't know if this is too personal, but oh, let's get a cleaner to come twice a week or let's let's get a nanny in the house. We're going to live in a pair. I can afford to change my life. I said, honey, we're going to get to bring somebody to come in here and clean. When you got, when you got 10 kids under 12, it smells in there. It's like a, it's like a landfill. It's a swamp. You know, it's like, oh man, get somebody in here. Honey, put out the candles. Get the candles out here. Yeah. So yeah, we did there for a while. We had that. But it's still, I mean, even with all kinds of help, 10 and with the potential extra challenges with behavior stuff or whatever, if there was some woundedness and some of the kids' backgrounds, it's a, it's, you were very generous. You can't worry about, what's the, what's the word I'm looking for here, Lila? You can't worry about something gone wrong. You got to go, okay, this is, this is the way it is. And yes, I've, I've had some kids getting some trouble. Yes, I have some serious trouble. All right. So we're there to love them. We're there to, to always be open to them. But at the same time, okay, I'll share with you something very, very personal. Two of my sons, I had to ask to leave the house. How old were they? 18 and 19. And I always wondered if I could do that because many parents can't do that. Many parents live with kids who are disrespectful, uncooperative, unpleasant, even violent, but they will not set a rule that you have to cooperate or you can't live here because they're afraid. What will happen? Where will he go? Will he crash and burn? I couldn't live with myself. If he does anything to harm himself or somebody else. I knew that for those boys at that time, given what they did, I would be hurting them. If I said, well, you can continue to live here under those circumstances because they weren't respecting the rules of the home or the, the, there were younger siblings. Yeah. Yeah. No, fortunately, those boys now are grown and we have a very tight, close relationship. But at the time, and my wife agreed, we had to do that. What did they do to get jobs and just go rent a room? My one son was 19. He said, where am I going to go? I said, son, you got a car. Wow. Tough love. And was it bad? I mean, was he being really disrespectful or just not? He had done something wrong. And we had to, we had to stand our ground. And he ended up living with a friend. And right now he's in his thirties and he's a fine young man. The other one, I put in a homeless shelter. Wow. He called me that night. He said, dad, dad, you got to get me out of here. I said, James, I said, try to tell you, son. Now, obviously, we helped him. We set him up in an apartment and we, we got him help. We didn't abandon him. I'm not going to go, you're on your own kid. You're on the street. You're in the gutter. No, we're not going to do that. But yet at the same time, given what he did repeatedly, now we're not talking, okay, he screwed up once. Sure. No, it was something made of clear. He's like, you know, he thinks he's 18. He can do whatever he wants. He wasn't learning his lesson and he was, he was free-loathing. Yeah. So at that point, now he's a very, not again, a very nice young man. Now, I'm curious, not that it matters in one sense. But if I were to ask him, and then this is personal, we're getting all personal here, but I'll tell you what he's going to say. Yeah. What would he say? Both of them understand it now. They've said it. They said, "Dad, I didn't get it then. I get it now." And my one son is very loving toward us, very, both of them actually are very, very loving toward us. Now, I'm not saying they're running their lives as was I would like them to run their lives because I think their attachment to religion is kind of just like a thread. But at the same time, you know, they got their mother praying for him and I try not to pray for him because I don't want to counteract her prayers. You know? So at the same time, you watch him and you see the things start to sink in. My son said to me recently, he said, "Dad, when we were growing up, I didn't get all the stuff that my friends had." And I thought it was because you couldn't afford it because there were so many of us. He said, "I realize now that's not why is it, Dad?" And I said, "No, P.D., it's not." He said, "You could afford it. You just didn't want to spoil us that way." I said, "Yeah, I hope it worked. We had three bikes for 10 kids." Sorry. And they share the bike. Well, looking back on your own parenting, is there anything that you would change? As I get older, my greatest gratitude is that I was born where I was at the time where I was to the people I was. I had no choice in that, Lila. I could have been born anywhere else in this world at any other time. And had I not had I not been born where I was, I wouldn't have known the faith. I wouldn't have been told. If you think about the odds, I mean, they're less than, they're minuscule. So I'm going to grow up in a family who taught me the faith. Now, if I look at my mom and dad and I say, "Well, you know, Dad did this or mom did that or I didn't like when they did this." So what? That's my mom and dad. They gave me life and they tried their best. I get so many adult kids now who write their parents off because they look at the way their parents raise them and say, "Well, I don't like that. Well, you could have done that different. I don't really need to be around you anymore." And you know one of the great tragedies? Oftentimes, some therapist told them to do it. Can't tell you how often I hear that where the therapist says, "Your parents sound like they're toxic. You need to set boundaries. You need to sever the relationship until you feel confident enough to be able to deal with their pathology." And the parents don't have any pathology. They were people like you and me trying to raise great kids. And the kids look back on them and say, "Yeah, well, I don't like the way I was raised." You know, Lila, even if I didn't like the way I was raised, I was given enough that allowed me to have the life I have. And I got to say, my parents had a big part in that. And when you look at your upbringing of your kid, so you wouldn't change your childhood because you're grateful, which is a beautiful posture. Oh my gosh. That's the, honestly, that's, if you want to have a successful future, be grateful for the road that brought you here and, you know, instead of fighting it. For your parenting, now that you are where you are looking back, you've written your 20 books, you've been in practice for now. You know, dozens of years at this point. How many years total? I'm sorry. I know off the top of my head here, 40 plus years. Is there anything you and your wife would change in the parenting of your 10 kids? Boy, I got asked that once by a guy named Matt Fred. He said, "Oh, really? Matt, you beat me to it." And he said in that accent. I always tell him, he said, "Matt, you sound smart because you got that accent. That accent makes you sound smart." Yeah, IQ point time. He sounds and is smart. Hello. Matt said, "You're having your regrets." And I said something that made him mad. I said, "I don't think so. How could you not have regrets?" And I said, "Well, you know, Matt, if you're saying that I deliberately did something that I knew was going to be bad for my kids, that would be a regret." But if you're saying in my humaneness, I did things that looking back on it and I go, "Yeah, I wish I had more information. I think I would have done different than no." But here's a regret I do have. Two things, actually. Two things. Did you tell Matt this or is this exclusive for the "Lyla Rose Show"? He came to me later and he said, "I love Matt Fred here." I'm going to work on the accent then if you think it makes you smart. Now I'm interviewing Matt Fred. Let's go now. He came to me later and he said, "I now understand what you were saying because his kids got older." Was this an interview you did with him? He was talking to you privately. We were at a conference together and he privately said to me, "I'm interested." Do you have any regrets I want to know? Matt, we're here in the Philippines. He's got upset. He said, "How could you not have any regrets?" I was implying, you know, that I was perfect. He said, "No, no, no. It depends how you define regret." But I do have a couple that I look back on. One, I would have explained the faith better to my kids. We live in a culture that says, "Why? I'm not going to believe this just because the church says it, just because dad says it. Dad, why does the church have these moral perspectives? I want to know." Now I explained a lot, but I would have done more. That's one. This is simple. When I said my prayers at night, I always got in bed and I had the covers over me and my kids couldn't tell if I was sleeping or praying. If I had to do over again, I would kneel by my bedside so that my kids could see their old man saying his prayers, that that indolible image of this guy kneeling by the bed saying his prayers. I would change that. Did you pray together as a family? Yes, and that's why we had 10. Because the Rosary, the decade is 10. Perfect. So that's right. Now, the girls would get on me because I'd lose track. I just I drift off during the Rosary, you know, I'd lose track and I go, they go, "Dad, I go, "Oh, okay. Hail Mary. "Dad, it's a glory bee. Oh, okay. I knew that. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. I screwed up to Rosary. I can count how many times." I'd always care when I'm praying the Rosary with someone else, you know, especially if it's not so personal, like more professional. I'm like, I'm going to forget my own words. It's like you get self-conscious, you know, but mother Mary is so patient with us. Just pray at nearer, Mac. There you go. Just do the original tongue. Yeah, that's really easier to do. Yeah. I got to ask you, you were talking just a few minutes ago about this trend of adult children rejecting their parents and I have a Noel mirroring on the show and she's actually working on a book about this trend where because of political or ideological differences and sometimes accusations of childhood neglect or abuse, which those can be really significant in legitimate, of course, parents are increasingly getting iced out by their children. And sometimes vice versa, but it's mostly the children icing up the parents. But I want to ask you, in some cases, it's legit. In some cases, you could, like I'm thinking of a case right now, semi-personal, somebody that I know, parent, single dad involved in really bad stuff, very abusive behaviors. They are doing a bit of a nice. They're saying we got to take a pause on this one because it's not good for the grandkids but it's somebody might hear of that story. I don't know. I'm be like, oh, it's the toxic trend of, you know, getting rid of your, you know, your sweet old parents who are not perfect, but, you know, let's just be more nice to them. So how do you draw those lines? I had a lady email me once and she said, I don't appreciate you talking about how we're writing off our parents. If you do some of the things my father did, you'd realize we should have written him off. And I clarified, I said, I'm not talking about pathology in these homes. Like what's an example about abuse, neglect, alcoholism, just serious stuff. Well, what is serious stuff? Well, for the most part, you can make the gauge. I'm talking about, I believe, the much more common situation of people who did their best or, or they weren't easy to live with them. You could have parents who weren't easy to live with. You could have a nagging mom. You could have a mom who's put you down. You could have a lot of these things. But that is that enough reason to say, especially if you're a Christian. I want no more. She's a narcissist. Yeah. All that never has anything to say. She's hypercritical. That goes up there with strong willed. Narcissist is horribly overused. It basically means self-centered. Everyone's a narcissist. Everybody's a narcissist. That's right. And there are maybe a lot of narcissists today too. But if you read the clinical definition of narcissist, it's a very serious personality disorder. A narcissist is not someone who is difficult for me to get along with. A narcissist is someone who just can't sustain a relationship with anybody. But that said, these are parents who they either tried or they weren't perfect or even in fact, they were difficult. Does that justify saying, get out of my life? That's the point I'm making. And here's something I said once on the radio. I said that parents were worried about being psychologically incorrect with their children. And that affected their parenting. They were insecure. They were not sure. I said, what has happened now is that that generation that was raised, the young adults, now are turning on their parents and saying, you weren't psychologically correct. So I want you out of my life. I said, boy, that come back to bite you. That is, yeah, the modern era where we have psychological, psychologized everything. And there's no space for I think grace and mistake and everything else. But back to something you just said, they weren't perfect or they were really hard to deal with. At what point do you make the analysis of, okay, this is borderline. This is like, like, there's a ten list of the narcissists. Like they, you know, everything comes back to them. They can't ever admit responsibility. Whatever the list of it, they don't show empathy. They can be hypercharming and then all of a sudden turn on you on a dime. Well, maybe that's more BPD or whatever the list is. And you're like, well, check, check, check, check. Sometimes to the internet, middle tell you. Well, yeah. But they're really, you know, they're, they're, how do you, would you just say at that point, you got to pray about it, talk to a good, you know, Christian advisor who's not some woke therapist who's going to just tell you to go burn bridges and, you know, divorce yourself from your family, et cetera. And then if it's a real serious issue, yeah, treated like a serious issue. But generally speaking, we are too much in the direction as a culture of just pathologizing everything. It's more common for adults, young adults or even middle-aged adults who've written off their parents to do so because of words. My mom's critical. My dad's opinionated. She taught politics. I don't like their political politics, or they oppose my LGBT stuff. It's words. It is words. And because of that, therefore, I don't want to be around my mother. I mean, she's so difficult. She says things and she critiques my parenting. You know, I've had it. Is she punching you in the face? Well, no. Well, she's setting fire to your house. No, what is it then? Stuff she says. Okay. Now, I've written books on this on how to get along with people. I was going to ask you about that book, actually. That's coming right up. Because what we do in relationships is that I don't like the way you talk. I don't like the things you say. Lila, you know the most common question I now get as a psychologist. What? Would you please tell me how to make somebody else be different? Classic. It is a classic. And then if my mother or my mother won't fix my child, I think not be like that. Yeah. Wow. And I say, I have a hard enough time making you not be like that. Now you're removing it a person. And that's, that's part of the big reason why these, these adults turn on their kids. I don't like what you say. I don't like how you say it. I don't like that you put me down. I don't like your manipulative. I don't like that you're critical. I don't like that you brag. I don't like that you disagree with me. And it's like, you know, what? I shouldn't have to put up with that. And I always say, well, if you're a Christian, you do have to put up with it. And secondly, this is not the lady who lives down the street six doors. You can drop by her house and just go like this. This is your mom. Only got one. This is your brother. This is your father-in-law. This is, this is your wife's dad. It behooves you to figure out how to let some of this stuff go in one ear and out the other because they're not going to change. This book is very special and we have I have all these notes of we got to get into this book at least a little bit if that's okay. How to deal with difficult people. Yeah. How to get along with all most everybody. Notice the key almost because you can't get along with everybody. If they don't want to get along with you, no matter what you do, forget it. It's not going to happen. If your mother says, I don't want to have any part of you, then no matter what you do, no matter how kind you are, no matter how much you pray for her, no matter what you do, if she remains rigid, you can't do anything about it. However, we can go a long way in getting along better with people. Now, there's a couple things that are premises in the book. One, look at yourself. I always say, well, that's easier to look at other people. That's a difficult person. Well, she's difficult. I've never had anybody say, you know, I think I'm difficult. I think I need to work on me because I can be difficult. I can be opinionated. I can be crusty. I can be obnoxious. No. So we need to start looking at our patient. Exactly. That's first thing. Second thing is let's say that you decide you want to raise your kids a certain way. And your mother-in-law, and by the way, the number one point of friction in generations is mother-in-law daughter-in-law. That's the most common one. Okay. And your mother-in-law just really doesn't agree with what you're doing here, Lila. And she's going to give you some digs. And you've been married how long? Seven years. Okay. Well, this is not your mother-in-law, but this is hypothetical. I kind of looked down at me. She has her own personality or something, but she's lovely. And you know, let's say she's not. We've got to use this. We've got to use this for the show. So in this seven years, if you were to count it, she's made 264 snarky remarks about your motherhood and your parenting. And if I say to you, Lila, does 264 bother you as much as number 12? You'd probably say, yes, why is that? Because the accumulative effect, I'm getting tired of it. It's building up. Here's one technique on getting along better with other people. Drop your expectations. You know she's like this. You've got 264 pieces of evidence that she can do this. Chances are she's probably going to do another 264 the next seven years. So if you keep upsetting yourself over these snarky remarks, instead of saying to yourself, that's what she does. Not very nice about it. And she's got to be unhappy in her own skin, but okay, I'm not going to be as upset because this is nothing new. This is the same old same old. Why am I distressing myself at 264, like I did at seven? Seven may still have been, well, I hope she changes. 264, not likely. That sounds like such a obvious good principle. If something's annoying you, but this is a person that you're not going to like ice out, you just accept it and you put your attention and focus elsewhere and you just learn, you get to think your skin basically. However, I think about in a marriage as an example, maybe this is a little different, you want to be able to share vulnerable. Oh, this is affecting me this way. You want to create as much harmony as possible. You want to be authentic and not pretend like something's not a big deal when it is feel like a big deal to you, right? So how do you weigh all that? Well, we're not saying you don't bring it up. We're not saying you don't talk about it. And it may have been through snark remark number one through 12. You did try to say something to your mother-in-law and you got nowhere because rarely are people going to go, "Wala, you're right. I do do that, don't I? Well, I need to control myself better for the sake of our relationship. A difficult person doesn't know they're difficult. If they knew they were difficult, they wouldn't be as difficult." So that's first thing. Second thing in a marriage. The closer you are to somebody, the more time you spend around them, the more likely things are going to happen that irritate you, that bothers you. Wives will say to me, "My husband's so critical. He's just critical." And I've told him how I feel how it hurts and how it bothers me, but he doesn't seem to care. He just kind of does it. I'll say, well, we've got a couple things here. One, if he's not going to stop and obviously you don't want to leave the relationship because there's a lot there that's a value, then you're going to have to let his critical words start to bounce off of you. And you're going to have to interpret them as he's insecure. He's not superior. Anybody that felt self-confident wouldn't have to put me down like that. Obviously, because he doesn't apologize ever, that's insecurity. That's not superiority. He doesn't think he's better than me. He's afraid to apologize. You've got to start to reinterpret what they're doing. I think in that case, playing with that one for a minute, because I've heard these cases, it's like, okay, no, that's emotional abuse. That's emotional abuse. And maybe I should leave this marriage. Maybe I won't remarry because of my faith, but this is at what point is it this is a difficult person. And this is, by the way, this is the modern crisis, right? You know, you've sat in the chair and you've heard all the stories. What people thought was normal behavior 30 years ago, even. Oh, they're just a difficult person. That's the way they are. Ha ha, that's something. All right, we love them anyway. Now they're like, oh, they are, yeah, the narcissist, they are the gas later, whatever, they're abusive. And some people are blown up their lives over that. They're leaving their marriages. You know, they're icing out their parents in some cases. One of the early chapters of that book said, watch your language. And I picked out three words that can make you leave a relationship prematurely. Narcissist, if somebody's a narcissist, you're basically saying they're unreachable. That this is it. They are just so flawed that I can't get along with them. Toxic. That's a terrible word. It's poisonous. I mean, I could see that he's obnoxious or difficult. I'm pleasant. Toxic. Oh my gosh. That the implication there once again is he is hurting me terribly. But here's where I got in trouble on the radio once. They called in and said, I'm tired of being emotionally abused by my husband. What does he do? She told me. I say, yeah, it sounds pretty nasty. I said, but you understand that you have great control over whether it's emotional abuse or not. Because it has to get to you, you have to interpret it a certain way. He shouldn't do this. I don't do that to him. He's putting me down. I didn't ask for this in a husband. I deserve a better marriage. Now, all of those things may be true. But if you absorb them, you're going to feel abused. I said, the word abuse used to be pretty serious. It's physically sexual. Once we moved it into emotional territory, now it's fuzzy. Now it's fuzzy. For you to emotionally abuse me, Lila, in some respects, I have to let you. You can say whatever you want about me anytime, anywhere. You can go public with it. But my only concern is, is what she said true. If it's not, if I use my best judgment, say, it's not true what she accused me of, then I don't have to be emotionally abused. I can be hurt. I can wish you didn't say it. I can feel bad. But to take it into emotional abuse, gives me a rationale. I don't want to be married to her. I don't want to be around my brother anymore. I don't want to be part of this relationship. I don't want to go to that church because I think that priest is emotionally abusive when he says stuff from the pulpit. That's what happens. Is there ever such a thing in your view, then, as emotional abuse and marriage? That would mean that there should be a separation. There can certainly be viciousness. I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I mean, I see all kinds of nonsense and marriages. But here's an interesting statistic. The majority of marriages break up. Not because there's pathology or actual abuse. It's because I don't like you anymore. Right. That is true. I don't want to be around you anymore. You're unpleasant. You felt we fell out of love. We fell out of love. That's the number one reason. So I suppose you could make a case that somebody can be so nasty, so vicious in their remarks that you're saying to yourself, I can't, I can't, I can't live with this. I suppose. But my point is what is now covered under the umbrella of emotional abuse is oftentimes just nasty stuff that we absorb and it gets to us. People say, you know what? My mother said, really hurt me. And I'll say, how did it do that? Well, mothers are not supposed to say those kinds of things to their daughter. I go, well, your mother did. Yeah, but she's not supposed to. Yeah, I agree. She's not supposed to, but she did. So how much are you going to be hurt by it? Now, we don't control our own reaction. You're in the public sphere somewhat. I'm in the public sphere. Have you gotten nasty emails? Oh, we get so much. Yes. Exactly. Oh, so much hate. Right. A lot, a lot more love. A lot more love. But there's a lot of nasty stuff. Yes. Now, do you go home and cry yourself to sleep? No. Right. Because you don't allow it to be absorbed. Now, one could say, yeah, but those are strangers. It's not my brother. It's not my brother. That's true. But there's still a parallel there. Because you're still controlling how upset you're going to be. I've seen people get out of this. I've seen people get out of this business because they can't take those. They can't take them. And to be clear, there's sometimes, if it's especially personal nasty and it's coming from more from friendly fire because that sometimes happens, right? That can hurt a little bit, especially if it's someone that you know that you think would be your friend. And so that's where it's closer to your expectation. I expect they would do this. Right. Right. Yeah. I expect this from my mother because she's made 264 snarky remarks. So my expectations should be down here. It shouldn't be up here. Or I expect you'll be as kind as I am. There it is. I don't do that to you. I call it the law of social reciprocity. If I teach you a certain way, you should treat me a certain way. It's kind of a, it's kind of a perversion of the golden rule. If I do to you well, then you do to me well, right? That's not a Christian rule. I'm obliged to do to you well, no matter how you do to me. And it's like our Lord says, even the Gentiles are kind of their children, right? But if you are Christian, how much more are you supposed to be kind to not just your brother, but the stranger in your enemy? I'll share with you an objection I get to something that you said. You said, okay, you got to get better at letting some of this stuff go past you. You do. But then the objection is this. Isn't that making you a doormat? Don't you just, aren't you just kind of like sitting there taking the punches against the, against the ropes? I said, no, no, no, it's different. You're a doormat if it gets to you because they control your emotions. You're not a doormat if it doesn't get to you. I'm not talking about swallowing it and being bitter and resentful. I'm talking about not swallowing it. If you don't swallow it, they don't have any power over you. Laila, we leave this interview and I find out later you say, "Grendy's a jerk." "Grendy's, that's the last time I'm ever going to talk to that dude." Now, okay, I can say, well, I suppose maybe I wasn't the best interview, but all right. I thought it was pretty funny. I'm going to go drive to McDonald's. Give me a double cheeseburger. I just said, no, I'm going to move on with my life because I can't absorb it. I have to say, well, is it true? And even if it is, even if it is, even if I blew the interview. Okay, I didn't mean to blow the interview. It just kind of came from clumsiness and that kind of interpretation of these human relations can really temper this kind of, I can't get along with you. All right, I got to ask, though, because I'm just hearing the voices in my head of the people in the comments section right now. Oh, almost psychologists don't tell me you're hearing voices in your head. Sometimes, you know, but these are my comment section voices and I care about my comment section very much. You know you guys. I care about that comment section, so thank you for the comments that people leave, but I'm thinking about, and I know these cases. I know. I have people that I know in my life that I love very much and they've been in some of these cases. I'm talking about emotional abuse, not marriage is what I want to get granular to. And what I've observed is often if there is emotional abuse in terms of just like viciousness, right? And to your point, well, you can choose to allow abuse, you or not, but there's often something in addition, chronic infidelity. Now you're talking pathology now. Now you're drifting into pathology. Right. Exactly. So the viciousness is then connected to something more serious and then it's different, but you're saying if there's just viciousness, and let's say it's a bad habit of viciousness, like it is regular bad habit. That's a strong word, you know, a lot of people listening to this go viciousness is enough. Maybe we could say critical or put down issues. Let's say they're actually vicious. They're not cheating to their knowledge. There's no other pathology that they can see. They're not physically or sexually. They're a waste of a wife. And I think every one of our kids is going to grow up polluted because of you and what you did to them. That's pretty rough. Yeah. And so would you say in a case like that, and again, often that's kind of being fueled by alcoholism sometimes or other things. So it's like there's always going to be a comorbidity, I think, but let's just say theoretically there's no comorbidity because if they're an alcoholic, then maybe you need to separate if they're getting dangerous, right? But if they're just vicious regularly and it's like a thing and I'm thinking about one case in particular right now and there's just there's no infidelity, there's no alcoholism, there's no addiction, there's no neglect of the children or something like this. But there's just chronic viciousness. You got several factors to play. One is the person a Catholic. So the Catholic would say that that marriage is indesoluble until they take a look at it back at the beginning. So that's one. All right. So that at this point, that kind of verbal cruelty might not be a reason to separate this marriage. Okay, that's one. Big one, the children. Okay. If you separate and I can't tell you how much I see this in the office, I've lost control on how my kids are being raised. Yeah, the other part of the time over there and that person doesn't take them to church, that person lets them watch anything. That person is now with a girlfriend who has two other kids and those two other kids are obnoxious and I worry about my kids safety, not to mention their sexual safety. There's a factor there. So you weigh that. You say, okay, this is this is rough on me, but the alternative may be even rougher. There was a survey done years ago. What they did is they asked people, are you discontent in your marriage? Are you unhappy in your marriage? Yes, yes, very much so. And they followed up those who stayed in the marriage anyway and those who divorced. And they asked them five years later. Are you more content now or less? The ones who stayed in the marriage generally said things got better. The ones who didn't said it's as bad or worse because of the complications of the divorce. There is no part of psychology that has more research support that says divorce is bad for kids. None. Thousands of studies. Now, again, I know there are people listening to this go, but you don't understand my spouse left me. I didn't want the divorce. My spouse left me. That's true. That's tragic. And there are some very heroic single parents out there. No question about that. No question. Absolutely. There are victims. Men and women. One of the saddest things I see in my office, a guy will be sitting there. And he converted to Catholicism for his wife's sake. Now they have five kids. He's leaving. He met somebody at work. He's leaving. And he says, I never bought into this Catholic thing anyway. I just kind of did it and went along and went through the motions. She's broken-hearted. And I say to him, I can't stop him because he has no moral compunction about this. But I say, you kind of understand what you're opening up. Your daughter, how old is she? 15. She talking to you? No. No, she thinks I ruined my family. Okay. How about your 12 year old son? He doesn't like my girlfriend at all. I mean, he didn't even want to come here. He finds her re-excuse to come here. Okay. So in other words, I point out to him, now you see what you're doing jumping into this. This isn't just, I'm unhappy with my wife. This is, there's all kinds of complications. I can't foresee. It happens a lot. Yeah. Divorce also, I think, is a social contagion. That's my observation. When people are close to other people that get divorced, it normalizes it more. And then they start to nitpick. And it's more like that. Yes. Exactly. I had six pairs of Italian aunts and uncles. Amazing. All of them, their marriage ended when one of them died. As I looked at the marriages, they weren't necessarily the best. Some of them, one particular would be looked at like, whoa, if that was nowadays, that marriage would have been long over. But every single one of them endured the death. Wow. And every single one of them was sad when their partner died. Oh, man. Wow. You know what the divorce rate was in 1960? Tell me. 5%. Wow. 5%. Have people changed that much? Have you basically said, no, when 1960 people were just a lot nicer? Maybe the culture was a little more moral, but, but the human nature doesn't change. And I think it's, as you say, it's just been this whole cultural shift of you don't have to put up with that. And I think people then share the stories like on social media or they write books or they just tell their friends that you don't have to put up with that. And then they say, and then there's a glamourization process. I've seen this about how happy I am now that I'm free and unencumbered. And I think a lot of the divorce rate for second marriages. Lara, do you know the divorce rate? Tell me. The divorce rate refers to about 40%. And that's because it's, people usually say 50. It's not 50. It's because there's second marriages that were the divorce rate for second marriages is 66%. Why? Well, in some cases, it's because I was so difficult to live with. I thought you were the difficult one. I'm taking me into the next marriage. Make it work. Do you find yourself surprised by the kinds of calls that you get now letters that you get now the kinds of patients effectively that you get now versus 20, 30 years ago? What has changed? Change radically. First of all, I get a lot more questions of my kids gender identity confusion. 30 years ago, I didn't get any. Oh gosh. Now I get it all the time. So sick. Grandparent will call me and say my daughter, my granddaughter. She's 13 and she knows she's a boy. Oh my goodness. And they don't explore it. They just assume that that's the way it is. So there is some sign that the transgender movement is dropped. Yes. You've seen those statistics, but they, it's all the D transitioners. We have them on the show all the time. They're amazing, but they're like, what the hell? Nobody stopped me. Like, what the hell? I mean, I was messed up to me. I mean, you cut my breasts off. You jacked me up. You ruined my life. And it was a social contagion, or I was sexually abused as a kid, or I just was bullied. Or I just had it. I was a little more feminine or the fact that I was confused about a whole lot of things. Right. Exactly. So that's big one. The one we talked about, which is I've separated from my adult kids. I don't see my grandkids. They will not let me see my grandkids. That's a big one. That's happened a lot. ADHD is exploded. And I think that in part, that's been because we tend to look at the child and say something's wrong with that kid. The medication is exploded for kids. Those are the three things. Is anything gotten better? I think as anything else, as what we try doesn't work, reality always wins. The problem is, are we going to let reality win? We have the ability to challenge reality as humans. And no matter how many facts, or no matter how much reality smacks us in the face, we can still say, no, no, no, I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to do it that way. And I think what has gotten better, there's been a number of parents percentage wise who have said, you know what? This smartphone is a bad idea. Research is coming out all over the place. This is a bad idea to give it to a 12 year old. That's one. Two, more parents are saying, I realize now I'm countercultural because I'm Christian or because I'm Catholic. I realize that now. I realize I can't have one foot in the world and one foot in my house. Yes, I live in the world, that's true. I'm not going to be a separatist. But at the same time, I got to realize the world doesn't think like me. That's been a big factor. I've got more of them. And basically not being culturally bullied. That's it. Yeah. We are living in a culture of ideological bullying. And it's very, very tragic. But there's an opportunity now to be countercultural and change that. We can change that. I do think it is changing. I do see a lot of that. I've got to just ask you one more thing about there's so many things to talk and I thank you. This has been, this is so amazing. You seem smarter already. I'm a little bit smarter. I could test it right now. It's going to be about 10 points. I hope so. Yes. I mean, I may have dropped down tomorrow. But that's because you're by the kids. They always do the face suck off IQ points like crazy. That's legitimate. I think that's objectively true, actually, between the sleeplessness and whatever else is going on. Just sheltering children. And I'm, you guys know, listening to the show, a lot of these times, I'm the one benefiting from the conversation directly. So I'm asking this question for our audience listening and masking him for myself, too. But you talked a lot about, I think you use the word children that are worldly children that are exposed. And you know, you just mentioned the 12 year old. And yeah, your 12 year old does not need an iPhone. Do not let her have social media. That's an easy one in my view. But how much do you recommend sheltering kids? That is an accusation thrown at religious parents and homeschoolers. You can't protect them forever. That's a real world out there. They're going to be exposed to it. And when they're finally exposed to it, they're going to run like wild dogs. Now you know that. That's the accusation. The socialization question for homeschoolers. What about their socialization? All right, let me answer this. You're not protecting them forever. You're slowing the pace. You're letting them be children longer. When my dad grew up or even his father grew up, they were more innocent. My mom was innocent until her 15, 16 years of age. She was just innocent. All right. As you said, that's bad. Okay. So maybe she didn't get some dirty jokes. But in fact, the average 10 year old nowadays is much more worldly than a 14 year old to generations ago. So sad. You're protecting them longer. I want to give them a longer childhood. I'm going to do what I can to keep away these influences through the media, through the phone, through the internet, all of it. Okay. That's not hyper protection. But parents hear that. You're going to screw your kid up. You know that, don't you? Because one day they're going to realize you did that to them. Okay. So that's one. Another one is Bill Bennett was asked at a homeschool in conference. And Bennett said, socialization to what? What kind of socialization you're talking about? For example, my kids were homeschooled. Now, my wife and I are the primary educators. We're the ones to teach them socialization. Not a group of 24 year old other third or 24 other third graders. And they're 30 year old teacher. Yes. That isn't necessary. In most of human history, that's not how socialization took place. Okay. Public education is a relatively new phenomenon. So what are we going to say that for all of human history, nobody got socialized because they weren't in a third grade class with 20 other kids. What is this? And there's research that says, and this is, this is a surprise to a lot of people. Homeschoolers generally are better socialized. They get along with a wider range of peers. That's one. Two, they're comfortable around adults. All right. They don't, they don't follow the peer rules. Two of my kids went to private school before we homeschooled them. And my son in the second grade already started to not want his mother to hold his hand on the way to school already because that was a peer rule. That's so sad. Once we homeschooled him, all of a sudden his mom became his best buddy and he didn't know the rules. Well, you hold your mother's hand. That's cool. That's sad. That's cool. Your dad kisses you. Oh, yeah. My dad kisses me. He's my dad. But already he was being socialized differently to that. And that was one of the reasons why I said, OK, that's enough. That's why if you're going to do school, which there's some schools that can be phenomenal, you got to do it really intentionally. And that's hard for some parents because they don't have access to, you know, the little classical Catholic school. They're, they're looking around and they're saying there's the public school. And then I want to maybe homeschool, but we're a two, we can't afford to live without both of us working and they're in a bind. It's not like the old days of homeschooling when mom had to do it all herself or dad had to do it. Now there's coops. Now there are online learning that sort of mom can be home a couple days a week and she can make other arrangements that can happen. There's all kinds of options for homeschooling. But that said, if your child is in a public school setting that you're wary about, you got to be vigilant. Yes. You got to know what the sex ed is. You got to know who he's hanging with. You've got to be more vigilant than you otherwise would have had to be if this was a farm in 1880 in Illinois. Yes. Yeah. I mean, I think the good, a good rule of thumb is to avoid public school. I know that's not possible for everybody. And some public schools are better than others. So of course, there's going to be nuance in there. Do you have a rule of thumb for school? I rule a thumb for college. If your kid wants to just have the college experience, in other words, he doesn't need a technical degree. This is not something that he definitely has to be trained in, but he's going just to get a bachelor's in something. Couple of things. One, good chance to come out with big loans. 50 to 85% chance he'll lose his faith. Wow. Three, 50% of kids, after they graduate in a bachelor of arts degree of some type, do not work in the field, that field. And 10 years later, the majority are not working in that field. That English degree didn't really do much. So as a result, what happened was it was a lose, lose, lose. I advise parents, college close to home, maybe at least the first year or two, it can live at home. Community college. So great. Trade schools. Oh my gosh. I got a couple of kids. I got a couple of kids who really struggled through high school. Both of them are making upwards of a hundred K a year because they got into trades that they learned. Oh yeah. A lot of kids aren't going to college and they're getting into either trades or they're getting into their own businesses. I tease my engineer son is a degree in engineering. I said, Andrew, did you big dummy? You went to all those years education. You're not making as much as your brother. Little sibling rivalry in there. All right. This has been so amazing. Can you give us to help close us out and then I want to ask you how people can find all your amazing work? What's a, is there a success story you can share maybe one of your favorite recent success stories of where you saw transformation or positive growth in a family because they started to deploy some of these, some of this advice and some of this worldview because it's not just tactics you're giving. It's really worldview. I can only tell you what people tell me and it's one of the benefits of being at this business a long time. I'm surprised when I do a conference or something like that. Parents will come up to me and say, you know, I started listening to you 20 years ago and I got to thank you because what you said, I applied and it turned my family around. Wow. And I was shocked. I just said, wow. I said, I don't appreciate that. Did you buy a book? No. Well, then the heck with you. So I hear a lot of that and I'm grateful for that and I get emails. I get a lot of emails. Matter of fact, that's one of the reasons why I stayed in Catholic media. Initially, I didn't want to be in Catholic media because I didn't want to be tied to a microphone. I tried it for six months at my wife's behest and I saw the emails. I'm coming back to the church. Wow. I feel more confident as a parent. My marriage has turned a corner and then I realized, wow. Well, I better stick with what I'm doing because I can't just tell God, well, you know, you showed me that some of these people benefit from this, but I'm busy. I got, oh, yeah, Oprah. Yeah. Oprah's calling. Oprah's calling. Are you hopeful for the future? I am hopeful for families and kids. People ask me that all the time. Do I think there's going to be a reversal blunt? No, but I do think that there are going to be increasing numbers of people who say the way we've been told to do it, the way we've been doing it for our families and our marriages and religion isn't working. And increasing numbers of people are going to say, we got to have other options here that square more with reality. And if you look at the numbers there's brush fires, brush fires everywhere. For example, the young men who are coming into the church, you know that. Lila, you've seen those statistics. Young men are doubling their numbers coming into the church. How does happen in Britain? The Catholic Church is now the number one religion in Britain. It has surpassed Anglicanism. So how's this happening? People are realizing that way doesn't work real well. I see kids who go back to their parents and say, "Mom, I've been so wrong. I should have never done that. You and dad, you and dad did so much more for me." And I was a 28-year-old brat. I do see that. See a lot of that. So that's the encouraging part of this. But I will say this, like the key is doing this. The key is prayer for your best judgment to make the decision knowing it might not work out. That's just the way it is. People will say, "Well, we'll find out if it was the right decision by how it worked out." No, no, no, no, no, no. The right decision is the right decision. It may blow up in your face, but it was still the right decision. That's what a tell parents. And we're children of God and he loves us unconditionally. So there's the root identity that all the storms are life. That's real self-identity, isn't it? That's real, the true self-identity. Dr. Ray Garande, this has been amazing. How can people find you? My website is Dr. Ray.com, D-R-R-A-Y. Easy peasy. And all the books are there. Signed, autographed. What books should people start with? Do you have a recommendation? If you're a parent, the one I'm going to give you, discipline that lasts a lifetime. Love it. That is the most common discipline questions I get asked and I deal with all the things we talked about. Perennial confidence. Blackouts. Blackouts in air. Blackouts in air. All of that. So that one. I have a section of books that I think for adults. One is called Thinking Like Jesus, the psychology of a faithful disciple. The other one is Jesus, the master psychologist. And I talk about our Lord's prescriptions for good living from a psychological perspective and why they work. Amazing. And then the most recent one is how to get along with almost everybody. Good one. We got to have you back and we'll do the Jesus books. Sure. This has been amazing. Thank you so much. You make it easy. Well, talk and do the professional here. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the LiLaRose show. I hope you enjoyed it. I always do. Make sure that you're subscribed. If you haven't hit that subscribe button already and go over to our Patreon to support the mission of this show. 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