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Speaker 4Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 80 and today's episode I get to interview Nadeem Saad. And you may or may not be. You may or may not be familiar with him. He is a parent coach and the founder of the Happy Confident Company. So, you may well have even bought some of the resources, whether that's the journals or whether that's the card decks. Nadeem is a parenting and relationship coach and the author of seven books, including the highly acclaimed Kids Don't Come With a Manual, Happy Confident Me journal series and Raising Happy Confident Kids. He just has an absolute, incredible, incredible way of taking some of the real complexities around how we raise confident and happy children and using the knowledge that he's acquired through neuroscience and across a whole host of different modalities to give us some really clear, specific things that we can be doing as parents. And we talked for so much. We've had to put the episode actually into two sections. So, there'll be an episode 80 and an episode 81. And that was. There's a whole load of stuff that we didn't even record. But you will. You will find some incredible nuggets there. What Nadeem will talk about are the 10 life skills that we should be teaching our children, which we will share as a free resource, as usual, at the end of the podcast. So, we have split the episode across two. So, the give for this week's particular podcast episode is going to be the top five of Nadeem's 10 life skills that we should teach our children. And then the other five will be across next week's episode. So, all you need to do is head over to my free resource library drmaryhand.com forward slash library where you'll find the link to download this week's resource as well as the resources across all the other episodes. And there will also be a link to help connect you to the Happy Confident Company if you want to purchase any of their journals or their card decks, which Nadeem talks about. As ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So, until next time, here's Nadeem. Part one. So, welcome. I'm so excited to welcome today. I have Nadeem Saad. And you won't have realised, obviously, because we've only just pressed record, that we have been chatting probably for a good 20 minutes before we even started. So, you're in for a huge, huge treat.
Speaker 5Nadeem, welcome. Thank you, Marianne. No pressure here. It's a pleasure to finally be meeting you, speaking to you, because we've got so much in common we're already realising. So, I hope that this conversation will build on each other's knowledge and we can hopefully share a few useful things for the audience.
Speaker 4Yeah, that's brilliant. So, the podcast is all about how we don't screw up our kids. But as parents, I believe that we're very much a product of how we were parented. Whether we do this consciously or we do it sort of unconsciously, there may be elements of, you know, the way that we parented and we think, oh, I'm definitely not doing that. Or I like the way that my parents did that. I'm going to do that myself. So, what did you take into your parenting from your parents?
Speaker 5Well, you could have sent me the questions beforehand. Oh, my God. That's a three-hour conversation. Well, because I've done some deep therapy. And I can tell you, I come from. So, before saying where I even come from, in terms of parenting, I come from, hey, I turned out okay. So, why would I read a parenting book? And then I got married and I had my wife, who was a Montessori teacher, and who was giving lots of advice to parents and just thought she had it all sorted, obviously. She knew exactly how to parent. And then we were opposing parenting style. She was more permissive. I was more authoritarian. And a lot of the things she'd do with our children would be actually different from what she'd say to the parents in her class. Because obviously, as we all know, there's the emotional aspect of things that takes over. And therefore, we actually often want to do something and we end up doing something different. So, we actually had a lot of fights around parenting. And I discovered so with time that 75% of parents disagree on things. And more than 50% of disagreements are on how to discipline children. So, that's a big survey that was done. And it makes so much sense. When I actually interviewed the hundreds of people, you know, my audiences, it always comes, you know, 75% of people raise their hands. You know, I am having a parenting challenge. Because often, what happens is we'll either take the way we were parented, and that was my case. Oh, my parents were pretty authoritarian. And I turned out okay. So, I'm just going to do the same. Actually, subconsciously, I didn't even think. Oh, I'm going to do the same as my parents. But when my wife would tell me, oh, but that's not okay, you're doing it. And I would say, well, my parents are the same. And it was, I was okay. And in her case, she was doing the opposite. Because she also had authoritarian parents. But she subconsciously, she didn't initially, I mean, because training is a monster. So, a teacher, obviously, she realized a lot of things her parents had done, et cetera. But it's very much an automatic mode. You don't, a lot of people don't think about it. I certainly hadn't, and I wasn't willing to because I thought I didn't need to, but, oh, my God, with hindsight, how much I screwed up my kids. I mean, wow. You know, I've come from years of saying, oh, come on. We're all like, it's normal to shout at our children. You know, it's, to lose it from time to time. We're human beings as we, you know, it's totally fine. And, and obviously I still think that because otherwise you have so much guilt, but when you look at the research and realize that just raising voice or changing tone, and obviously even more, if you really start shouting that children develop, suddenly release cortisol, they're in, they're going to shame and they literally actually can't do what we asked from them because their body's flooded with cortisol, the anxiety hormone, and it takes some time to get out of the body. And therefore you've got all this time where you're probably still raising your voice even more and even more. So you're making it harder for the children to do what we're asking of them. And it was like, wow. It's, it's incredible how much, how can I make it more difficult for my children to do what I'm asking of them? It's, it's just completely, you know, completely logical, but it still happens. But what's really important is I use two essential tools is I use rewind and just try and do it differently because I catch myself, I'm now aware of it. So I catch myself and I do it differently and kids automatically reconnect because they didn't get the time to, you know, go to release the cortisol and be in shame. And so immediately they change their tone. they realize, or I actually, if it has happened, still happens. I obviously, I apologize. tell them look it happens i don't want you to do this you know obviously because i realized i'm i would model the best thing possible it happens and i apologize sorry i didn't answer all this so now let's go you see how i could go on the title but now we're going to ask i'm going to answer basically what i got from my parents so two pretty authoritarian parents i thought i was pretty independent because my sister would get the bulk of the anger from my parents i was pretty independent and doing my own thing wouldn't be punished a lot while my sister was punished a lot but oh my god with time and with a lot of therapy and i'm a trainer of the therapist so i've done regressions to my childhood and things like that in my trainings and and with other other forms of therapy too and i realized how much i did not feel safe i because i would see my parents shouted my sister and i was you know in so much fear and screaming internally like oh my god why so much hate and so it obviously so i didn't feel safe as a child and what's really incredible is that with all the therapy obviously now i'm much better not just through the therapy i started being better by just rewiring my brain by just deciding i'm going to shout less i'm going to find solutions so my whole parenting journey was for as a parenting coach i really focused on these quick fixes all the tools like the rewind you know and it worked quite well but there was still this thing that i couldn't change my children would still see me as the angry dad i was like oh come on stop boxing me in the past i'm not you know i still didn't want to be that because i was i was making i was changing you know so when i did a family anything with my children my middle one was four when we asked her to express her needs she said oh dad i'd like you to shout less and i was like going to go but one second don't you see that i'm shouting glass i mean how could you and i did say i said look i i hear you i hear you no at first i start with i hear you know it's like you know admit you know acknowledging her thoughts and her emotion you know i hear you and it clearly affects still the fact you but you realize that i'm really doing so much better the whole family agreed oh yeah you're doing so much better but hey you could still do better and i had to wait until she was seven three years until she said dad you know you're actually doing much better you haven't shouted recently so it's really really great i was so proud but but it took it took a long time so that's where i realized that it's not just about the parenting techniques now my coaching focuses a lot more on changing the mindset my mindset essentially and also giving the tools to children and that's what the the whole happy confident company that i created and founded and the whole 10 managers 10 minutes matter campaign is built on is if we can give the children the tools so they can deal with their feelings and they can deal with and they can express themselves in different ways etc and realize that where where it's coming from and how they can do better then the whole dynamic changes so it's the effort it's not like the children have to make the effort you know it's still the at the parents who have to do the bulk of the work but children will understand better they'll understand where they're flipping their lid or their parents are flipping their lids they'll even i had a child an eight-year-old child who was taking my workshop when i started several years ago and he went to see his mom and she was getting angry and he said oh mommy you're getting angry maybe you need a bit of pbs and she said what's that pbs she said pause breathe and smile you can imagine what the mom did of obviously automatically started laughing go okay you know yeah i could so so it becomes this really beautiful connection and and everyone wants to do better everyone understanding where they're coming from and that everyone has strong feelings big feelings that they can lose it sometimes but so they've got the same knowledge and therefore they can have a completely different conversation about it and just grow together and and and help each other out grow because ultimately our children are our best teachers so yeah that's that's the log so it's a now i'm going to finalize because you asked the question about what do i get from my parents so first a lot of so what was really interesting in my friend i really i'm so my parents are mostly lebanese but my mom was born in mexico and raised in mexico so i'm mexican lebanese i'm also greek from my granddad and i'm now british because i've been here for 20 years and what i've noticed is parenting is really pretty different across the board it's i mean there are a lot of similarities but there's also a lot of differences and particularly at least where i come from but what i've seen across the world and i've lived in seven countries and and and traveled a lot is that children still all have the same needs yeah we all have as human beings we have the same needs and what's really incredible is that we're treating children differently in different parts of the world and instead of adapting to child themselves which is the most important bit we're actually just you know doing the same thing what we think for culturally you know we reproduce a lot of cultural things and sometimes thankfully obviously some parents just try to you know really adapt their children but we don't get the basic knowledge of psychology of basic of children's needs of basic human psychology and that's what we're trying to bring to the system we're trying to teach this to children and as we do this and they understand the basics of psychology actually they bring it to their parents too because their parents want to know and they're like oh well i didn't know that i don't know interoception i don't know introspect i didn't know mirror neurons i didn't know neuroplasticity all of these big terms that are so important actually to learn to teach children and parents so that's what we're bringing fruit schools and to families to really help everyone have this important conversation and the last bit so from all of this different cultures i got despite that my parents were really super authoritarian and i reproduced that until i really realized that it wasn't acceptable and i can share a quick example and a lot of people connect to that example the more authoritarian parents in out there may connect to that so my first child was four and a half and we were having a nice saturday lunch as a family and she dropped a salad leaf so she was thankful she was eating salad at four and a half you know i didn't even realize that it was that was pretty good because then my third came in and that that was whoa you forget salad but so i'm just mentioning this because then obviously salad is great but then she drops a salad leaf on the table and i go uh well newer so her name is newer is like please uh the salad leaf and she ignores me i'm like nor did you hear me i told you please pick up the salad leaf she ignores me again i'm raising i'm already kind of in a hey can you listen to me so there's already the tone and that's important for what's coming because then i go okay nor i'm going to count to three and you better pick up your salad leaf okay if that's a one it doesn't do anything newer it's a two you'd better pick up your salad leaf still doesn't react two and a half nor you better pick up two three quarters and then she's not reacting i reached three and the reaction was so strong and it was coming from such a place of feeling powerless because often what i learned from my anger management courses is that anger often comes from feeling powerless or ashamed and i was literally feeling powerless and ashamed that my daughter wasn't doing what i was asking her to do and the reaction was also due to the fact that i had no clue what i was going to do when i would reach three so it had worked until then that she would out of fear she would then you know do what she was asked and i hadn't really thought about what do i do when i get to three so the reaction was oh my god she has because my whole parenting is out of fear yeah she i have i have to make it so big that she'll never want to get to three again so i shouted i picked her up i said you're going to your room literally brought her up the stairs it was a terrible moment of parenting and obviously pretty traumatic for her and for the whole family my wife didn't speak to me for a whole day so it was such this connection and out of what with hindsight a salad leaf on the table and obviously it the event the incident could have been a lot worse she could have like screamed at me insulted me whatever but whatever nothing justifies this kind of reaction because i put her in such but basically what i realized that after you know when i finally that's where i decided to do something about my parenting but i would have much rather not have these traumatic examples and others that happened even later despite me knowing because i realized that this if i had worked on myself before and realized that this could come up because that's what i got from my parents well i would have you know i would have at this crucial time when they're really innocent and we don't not actually expecting them to be to do this because that's the problem and i heard your podcast and why that's uh and with with zoe blackgate where you say you know we have this expectation for children when they turn like four oh they should be listening right or six or nine or so we we start having these expectations and the problem is well no i was actually putting my daughter in a situation just because she heard that it could have been opposition but the most likely but that's four and a half that's more opposition comes a bit later the most likely was that she was just shutting down she wasn't in what we call five and a half years but she was shutting down she was in in what we call fight or flight and freeze she was actually in freeze mode and so she wasn't this wasn't listening to the one two three and she was already in a situation where she wasn't really even thinking about the fear and the consequence of what was going to happen so that's why you know all of that preamble to say so important to realize that we we do get things from our parents and it's really important that ideally we do the work before they grow up but hey any time even when they're teens actually it's the most important because that's where the really push your buttons and even later if they left home and actually you can always reconnect with your children and that's what i'm doing with my i've got a 15 year old 13 year old and a 10 year old and i'm still reconnecting so removing that past experience they had of me and they're it takes you know a long time for them to finally see me in a completely different light and to acknowledge and wow when they acknowledge the change you know when we're not in a it's so beautiful and you just think it's all worthwhile because the connection is so much deeper yeah it
Speaker 4is incredible and i speak a lot oh no and i just i really value your honesty because i think so certainly what i found and i don't know if this is a cultural you know i too um i'm from the middle east and culturally certainly there's there's not this sort of talking about parenting so i don't ever remember my parents even having a a reflective moment to reflect on how they parented at all and i think it's just so important to be really honest about it and you've in that in your response you rate you came up with so many things i just want to touch on and one of the things that i think is really crucial to touch on is this idea that quite often as parents we feel that we're making changes which we're not making changes which we're not making changes which we're not making changes we are but our children have yet to recognize and to feel that the that the weight has tipped enough so that they feel secure enough that that change in us whether it's reducing shouting expectations or whatever it might be that it's been tipped enough that that then becomes their new norm and so often we have to ask that question of our children and not get into that but can you not see i've changed why can you not see i've changed
Speaker 5so true that what you just picked on is so important because it i get frustrated sometimes because i made i mean i made major changes and that lag it's just like hang on you know because it's so worth it and and and so a lot of for example one of the things that one example i take um and parents really connect to it is that my child was six i was learning all about the growth mindset realizing that i was praising her i would you know i was over praising her and there are things that i would say to her and personally i just i would tell her regularly oh you hey you must you put a lot of effort into this you must be proud of it and she just didn't react she was five and a half she didn't react and i was like okay hang on the the you know the research really shows it hang in there six months later she comes i was working from home she knocks on the door and says hi dad do you have a minute i said i'm finishing something but yeah yeah get on tell me and she says well i wanted to share that i've been made ballerina of the month uh and i'm i'm super happy with that and i go oh wow you must you know you must be proud of this and she says yes i'm proud of it and i've practiced a lot to get to this so suddenly it was a switch she associated the practice the effort you know and the pride and the whole thing and i was just like wow bingo six months but it's so it's so worth it and the same for the shouting as i mentioned you know it took a while for the kids to acknowledge that but it's still so worth it you know it's not because they're ungrateful because that's the rhetoric i had was like oh they're so ungrateful i'm making all these efforts no it's just because they did feel unsafe for many years and for as you just said for them to really feel the the this point where they feel who actually know what there's enough i'm not walking on eggshells anymore i've seen enough to see oh yeah my my dad really changed but but i
Speaker 4also think nadine that that's a really crucial part of from a parenting perspective just generally is in that whenever we as parents reflect on what might be working or not working and what we might need to make as changes within our family is that i think quite often we start with a particular technique that we've read about maybe we've read a parenting book and we think oh this is this is what i should be doing and when we don't see results instantaneously we give up we assume that the technique is rubbish and then we move on to the next one whereas actually the key message here is have the conviction to know that you're not doing the right thing and that you're not doing what you're putting in place the technique and the strategy is the right strategy for your family and for your child and b it's being aware that it's not things don't turn around overnight it takes time and just knowing that if you keep applying the same
Speaker 2blood donation is now more inclusive more lgbtq plus individuals are able to donate blood with the american red cross due to guidelines that eliminate eligibility questions based on sexual orientation the red cross celebrates this historic change and welcomes those who may be newly eligible to donate blood there's a place for everyone in the mission of the red cross including you the red cross is committed to achieving a blood donation process that treats all potential donors with equality and respect while maintaining the safety of the blood supply join us and help save lives to learn more and make your appointment to donate blood visit red cross blood.org lgbtq that's red cross blood dot org slash lgbtq therapy's biggest
Speaker 1impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's exactly what grow therapy is here for grow is therapy that works covered by insurance sessions average twenty one dollars with insurance and some pay as little as zero dollars depending on their plan there are no subscriptions no long-term commitments you just pay per session grow connects you with thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the u.s offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends you can search by what matters like insurance specialty identity or availability and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days not the national forty eight day average see if you could pay as little as zero dollars for therapy in seconds at grow therapy dot com slash a cast that's grow therapy dot com slash a cast grow therapy dot com slash a cast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan
Speaker 4philosophy the same language that you will then see the shift you're so
Speaker 5right and that's what one of the difficulties in parenting is that there are you know when i when my um wife would tell me oh here read this parenting book i go but it was like there are so many parenting science you know there's not a science there's so many theories out there just give me an exact summary and show me it works so it took me years to actually realize that there is a science of parenting it's still it's i love saying it's both a science and an art and the science is very similar to science of leadership because that's where i my background is in leadership and i realized that it's exactly what and thankfully they've done a lot of science on leadership and you can actually apply it to kids it's just obviously adapting to young kids and that's that's a bit different but that's why i wrote a book about this but so the art is more on the art of listening and the art of adapting a psychology to your of your unique child but on but but all this science is it's about time that it's it's known you know it's about time that we do things consistently and and often it's about listening techniques about problem solving techniques that involve the child i mean not often or always because that's where the art comes it's in the art of understanding your child because you've actually practiced and art is also something you can practice that's what we teach children too creativity is something you it's both something you learn you it is innate everyone is the gift we get it uh when we're born but it's also a skill that we can develop even creativity and art and that's what a lot of kids don't know and don't realize but coming back to one point that you're making as well is i don't i want to make sure that because i spoke about my authoritarian side to realize that actually my wife was also more permissive and she also realized that she hadn't done things very well and the kids it took years for the kids to actually see a change as well well they actually interestingly sorry you see a shift of a from a more permissive parent into a more balanced parent and we call them balanced parents much much quicker and actually it's hard for kids to adapt because like oh my god where did this come from and i'm like oh my god i'm not going to come from suddenly you know my mom or my dad have become firm firmer and and he's like oh no no i prefer the old you so they they have more problem of course because they could get away with murder so so it's harder for them to to adapt to though to more permissive parents get becoming more balanced but with that and that also takes time because then they'll resist resist resist and then the parent will often go oh my god this is too difficult it was so much easier before because they don't see the long-term effect and actually it's when they stay in this consistency that it's so important but then they're they're you know my children still say look you know what despite you being very totalitarian these rules were so important to us so they acknowledge that the rules are important and that some and and that other children who get away with murder or that i don't like this expression actually sorry who are really whose parents are are much more permissive and they get away with a lot actually that they're not learning they're not learning to develop their emotion muscle their disappointment muscle things that are so so important because when you grow up you are going to be you're bound to be disappointed and and frustrated you know we're called a happy confident company but it's not about being happy 100 of the time it's actually about acknowledging when you're going into these really big feelings that we all have developing the resilience to under first the interoception so which is the sensation of feelings that the feelings in our body and the sensations and therefore acknowledging what's happening that we're feeling name it to tame it so reducing the intensity of the feeling and then learning how you know work with this disappointment and this frustration to make it better and then you get yourself back to happiness but it's not about being happy all the time which is my biggest issue in life is i thought i had to be happy all the time and the problem is then it comes and bites you from other places because if you're trying to be happy all the time unfortunately with your loved one sometimes you're just like actually you know what i can't i'm not feeling very good well you don't even acknowledge because i had shut off my feeling but then suddenly it comes out as a but you know hey enough of all this i feel it's unfair i'm trying i'm doing my best for everyone and i don't get you know what my knees met and boom you get a bout of anger and then everyone's like oh where'd this lovely person happy confident person go and you're you feel misunderstood they don't know this whole cycle
Speaker 4yeah and it's and i think it's it's really crucial nadine because you touch on i think something that i i think quite often as as parents believe maybe you'll disagree that there's this idea that we should make our children's lives happy and and comfortable and easy and we want to cocoon them we want to protect them but that actually is not helpful because these little people become big people and my my children are at the other end i've got a 22 year old and a 19 year old and they are you know i often get that you know i'm so grateful mum that you didn't allow us to do x and y and i know we really resisted at the time but i think it's been really helpful and i think it's that it's helped do you feel that that's the same i feel that as parents we often feel that we need our children's lives need to be easy and lovely and happy all the time and otherwise we failed
Speaker 5yes i mean not all parents and i was coming from the fact that you know they had to just put up with some things um but but i do see that a lot and it is that's the more difficult thing to identify to realize that actually what what's the consequence of this what's the negative consequence of overprotecting them so yeah absolutely i see this a lot and i see this particularly with parents for example who have little time with their children and then they think oh my god so this time has to be the best possible and therefore i'm going to be i'm going to shower them with gifts shower them with my you know it's not because we're not so present and that creates a big issue because the you can't buy your children's you know and you can't you have to it takes time to get their the right values in place to get them you know to experience yeah that frustration disappointment that we talked about so and not to protect them so i because that's the what life is about and and it doesn't mean we're going to impose frustration and disappointment on them it just means that when we when suddenly they have experienced this instead of telling them oh don't worry you broke something i'm going to buy you another one because we can't deal with that you know we don't want to see them frustrated we just go oh that's sad but you know well you know what are you going to do next time to make sure it doesn't break you know they have to learn to be also careful and care not careless and all of that all of that all the basics you know basically becoming human beings and that's why it's really important to also teach them the life skills because it's about i do you want me to mention briefly the 10 key life skills that we teach yes please
Speaker 4yeah i think that'll be brilliant
Speaker 5okay i'll do it briefly because i as you as you see i can speak i can talk a lot so what we realized so so i came from from parenting and um the story is that the same middle child who actually told me oh daddy you're you're screaming a lot less and you know you're shouting less it was a very bubbly very positive child but she turned eight and she went through a few challenges including actually um the my our divorce so i divorced my wife and at this moment in time she's it was um after but clearly certainly affected by that she started being quite mean to her sisters and also quite harsh with me so i i would try really nicely to bring her back to her own self which is the bubbly positive self and trying to reconnect her to what i say you know you're true you don't remember how kind you are you are a very kind person and guess what it did not work it backfired completely because i was just what she was hearing well after then coaching her through this initially i kind of it was i wasn't very reactive always in the best possible way because i i didn't recognize my daughter and i was i wasn't patient enough because i was like oh that's not you so finally sat down with her and really did deep coaching and it took a good half an hour to an hour to finally get her to say i hate myself and obviously that's a pretty horrible thing to hear from your daughter and even more when you're a parenting coach who theoretically is doing you know most things right theoretically because obviously i know with hindsight that i was still a lot and one of the things i was doing wrong was that reconnecting her with her true self because i was it was as if i was telling her you're not that's not you i was i didn't realize that obviously we all have different parts of ourselves and that's what i learned with deep therapy and you have to accept this harsh part of yourself this you know angry part it's totally it's okay to be angry sometimes it's just more about how you express it and that's what i was not teaching her i was just telling her this is not okay to be this way and so what she did she was basically associated her behavior to who she is as a person and that's what most kids do by the way as we know and therefore she felt she was a bad person and therefore she hated herself so thank god i got to the bottom of this and i managed to completely change this and do things completely differently i said oh wow thanks for sharing let's do something about it and that's what we completely we work as a team to change this but i realized then that hey most parents don't have the chance of having these tools that i even if we teach us as parenting coaches we teach you know a lot of things to parents it takes a lot of patience a lot of knowledge and training to get to that and that helped me realize that all these parents have told me oh can you train our kids and i go come on no no you've got to do their work stop wanting to outsource your kids to do their work to someone else like you do at school etc but i realized actually you know what why aren't kids sorry why are schools teaching our kids to deal with these big emotions to actually be to feel safe to express themselves and to share their feelings because as parents it's harder for us to actually teach this because because often it'll come that oh my god you've already repeated this several times if they had a program at school that would teach them how to manage the feelings how to actually first acknowledge their feeling to teach them you know emotional literacy or already because as parents often when we teach parents to oh try and listen to your children name their feelings often we'll go oh you you look sad or you look angry or you you seem pretty frustrated we always use the same because our emotional literacy is not so developed therefore the same feelings come over and over and we're not really helping them become a lot more grounded on feeling and bernie brown that you probably know has done some amazing research looking at 3 000 research papers and she realized that parents on average it's mostly u.s data but they they use three different feelings only which is you're angry sad oh sorry it's mad because it's u.s so it's mad sad and happy and the problem and what these research papers also show is that when you do this and you just bring all of these feelings into what it's not helpful you need emotional granularity to have to get to the bottom of it and really realize you know oh okay that's what's happening to me to be able to do something about to really feel more in control of the feeling so that's what we're trying to do with the happy company and bringing this to schools and to families so it's first emotional literacy really helped families and schools share that the the sorry i'm actually as i'm speaking i'm realizing that i was going through the 10 powers so let me go back to the powers because the whole base is emotional literacy but the whole the 10 powers build on this so from an early age it's really from nursery learn about your feelings learn how to what the different feelings are through activities through sharing in class and make it a safe container make schools and for the family a safe container to share these feelings and not feel ashamed to be in what we in the red to be angry to be furious to be overwhelmed all of these things and so coming back to the 10 powers the first is actually the power of introspection and it's a big word because a lot but but we use it because it is about when we we show kids and and we've got a whole video program um where emma willis uh is a presenter of the program and she shows intro you know basically spec shun and you know you understand you people people can't see me but it's about the specs and understanding that introspection is about looking inside of ourselves because self-awareness and introspection is the key to everything ultimately because when we know our needs we understand what's happening to us what makes us happy what makes us sad and what and how we can actually switch from one to another it's it's really helpful so it's always the basis of everything for us is introspection the second one we call the power of optimism it's about identifying this little voice in our head that's often going to tell us oh you're not good at this you're not good enough and and i did this exercise my children and oh my god when you see what they can write it's really interesting and it's you know that's where you get my child saying i hate myself but teaching them that is actually we all have negative feelings and it's okay because we can deal with that because we can actually then ask what we call the inner bully it's our inner bully we call it and so we teach them about bullying in the same way because actually instead of we're often the bullies are often the children who have the biggest inner bully so we teach them to not have an inner bully so they never want to believe others so identifying this uh this little voice and realizing that so the three questions we we tell kids to ask themselves is is this voice kind is this voice helpful and is this true because often they'll ask if it's true first and they'll go well yeah it's it's true because they've convinced themselves that this is true but actually that's not enough they first have to say think of whether it's kind or unhelpful because if it's not helpful thought for example oh i'm not good at this well hey you can do think something about it then you can learn to actually reframe your thoughts in a more helpful way so we teach them that because it's so important because often kids don't realize this little voice that and they think it's their mind they think it's themselves and it's it takes years you know after a lot of meditation teachers the hermits who spend like 15 20 years in a cave you ask them so what did you learn really tell us what's the nugget and many of them actually came out and said look you have to to do it to understand because it seems so simple but it's what i learned is i'm not my mind so this realization that what we tell ourselves is actually often not the reality and not the truth is learning this from an early age is so important
Speaker 4but as you say nadeem i think that's such a crucial thing because you know i talk a lot about this idea of this internal chatter and that you know you've got the voice of that sort of inner critic but you also have the voice of your best self there's an alternative side and i think you know of all of the things that i personally feel that we can teach children that help them in terms of adulthood is around that chatter and the fact just because they thought it doesn't necessarily make it true and to question it because that's what creates your reality and that's why i think it's so important and that's why i think it's so important and that's why i think that's what creates your reality you act upon those thoughts and those belief systems and that's what sends you down this spiral whether you're a parent you know why is my child being so ungrateful responding to me in this in this way they don't how do they not care what i'm doing to the child that doesn't try something because they think they're going to fail it's so crucial absolutely
Speaker 5we're still on the same page on that and that's where so it's really crucial to the simple fact often it's like with parenting when you do parenting courses and you're you're many sharing and you're just like oh my god i'm not the only one well it's the same for kids how could they know that their friends actually have the same uh inner chatter or even their parents because their parents are supposed to be strong and so teaching them that that's not abnormal and they just can do something about it oh my god they feel so much more in control and and so much more understood and they don't feel bad they're not like a bad person they're just like oh they've got this voice sometimes it's pretty negative so that's what i'm the power of optimism and what we teach them as well was so important is the cycle of the typical cognitive behavioral therapy cycle which is your thoughts lead to your feeling and lead to your behavior and teaching them for example if they have a negative thought about a friend who didn't say hi or didn't invite them to a play date and they start having strong feelings about it and then their behavior is likely to be affected by this and they're likely to basically ignore their friend or be aggressive or be angry with them or things like that and that realize that then obviously their friend is also going to react and they're going to reinforce this cycle and how to get away from that space and therefore they're going to re reinforce this cycle and how to get away from these negative cycles is so important because a lot of our for example patterns with our partners with our at work a lot of these things are initially come from this initial negative thought and and we're reinforcing the cycle because we obviously oh guess what our reticular activating system which is basically the power of our brain that filters information will just confirm this negative bias we got on on something and for example when you're not good at math boom you just said say this once to yourself because you had a difficult math problem you didn't understand and that's for the rest of your life you've convinced yourself you're not good at math well everything every research proves that okay some minds are more analytical but in general if you practice everyone can do math everyone can do anything basically because we rewire our brain where we have neuroplasticity um which is so episode four so let me i'm jumping up so episode two optimism and and it's not about uh you know ult ultra positivity we're not we don't believe in ultra positivity and always i just i made it clear it's not about always being happy and ultra positive it's just about identifying when we're being negative and and just help ourselves out of this to to make it to to to treat the disappointment or the frustration whatever's happening then the third is the power of interoception and it's not introspection is interoception and i mentioned it earlier and it's actually our sixth sense it's this it's the sense of feeling sensation in our body so it could be hot or cold or also our feelings and developing this is so important and we we show that for example autistic children have more difficulty feeling these feelings their body and therefore that's why sometimes they're not in tune and that helps autistic children but we also obviously so we help children realize that we're not all the same but the most important thing is we teach them to practice feeling these sensations identifying them because it is so helpful to then do something about to feel more in control because as dan siegel you know a great neuroscientist has shown you can when you name a feeling you're reducing its its intensity in the brain and therefore it makes it more controllable and it we are talking about more granular it's not just oh i'm angry you know because actually in this case if you were powerless about something that's what brought the anger you need to to ideally name the powerlessness the oh the frustration or powerlessness rather than just the anger and that's when suddenly it reduces the intensity in the in the brain and makes it more manageable that's why we um dan siegel coined the sentence name it to tame it and it's always really helpful to really to remember this so that we teach kids that you know we all have big feelings and how to manage them to become detectives of their feelings and their thoughts so so intro in in power optimism they become detectives of their thoughts so we're developing their metacognition in in power of interoception we're helping them develop this you know the feeling a bit and becoming the deputy of their feelings then comes the fourth power which is the power of mindset and that's where we teach them about growth mindset fixed mindset the fact that intelligence is not in innate that actually you can develop the different part of your brain because the brain is plastic and that we're not good at something if we're not doing something it's because we're not good at it yet and that's quite developed in schools but we go the extra mile of really teaching them about the whole science of neuroplasticity so the fact that they're not good at something and that we can uh create these new uh new neural pathways that make it easier to do things just by practicing them and children really get it and so it helps them identify a lot of things that they think they're not good at and how they can actually with with more practice can become better at them then we the fifth power is the power of failure and that's a biggie because the same way we got them with in the power three power of interception we taught them permission to feel in this in the fifth power power failure we teach them permission to fail and that's a huge thing in our culture we get seeing more and more children becoming perfectionists really annoyed not wanting to to make mistakes and it's so important so when they see that people like disney was fired at 29 from a newspaper because he wasn't creative enough it's like what disney wasn't creative enough so you know it's and they he's built the most incredible empire and and you know the world of so creative so it really helps them to realize that even the most successful people have failed and that the ones who've actually failed the most are the most successful often because they needed to fail a lot to learn so this is a really under understanding the importance of mistakes and finding a gift in every mistake is the power of failure
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