Maggie Dent - ‘Good Enough’ Parenting is Good Enough

Maggie Dent should be queen of Australia. You know, we all mark up. I'm an advocate for imperfect parenting. You only have to be good enough 30 to 40% of the time. We've had these boys in our homes who brought endless amount of mates into my house. They eat the whole fridge out some days accidentally. I go, "Sorry, sorry, Maggie." Erm. LAUGHTER It's on a person, I should say. Of any man. Exactly. The term I keep saying is no matter what. No matter what it is, there's nothing you can do that will stop me loving you. So, any time anything bad happens, no matter what. Every time they walk out the door to a party, they've no matter what. You know, there's a thing I talk about micro-connections, because we'd love quality time. Of course, we would. One on one time would be beautiful, wouldn't it? But who's got it? So, it's the ruffle on the head as you walk past, and it's the tickle on the back, and it's the bump. And then, of course, if they were really being difficult in the kitchen, then I'd drop a world-time fart. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Wow, it's been a long time coming for us to. So over-juice. So over-juice. To have this incredible woman. I'd say it's like when you discover a library book in your house that you actually thought 12 years ago. That's what it feels like. Yeah. It's not over-juice. It's similar to that. But it's like, it's so amazing to have Maggie Dent here. Someone who can finally tell us why boys are better than girls. LAUGHTER So over-juice. That's over-juice. That's a discussion. Let me introduce, probably Maggie for those. I've been to everyone knows Maggie, but here's what I've written anyway. So, Maggie Dent should be queen of Australia. That's it. That's it. Welcome to. LAUGHTER Growing up at a farm in rural WA, she spent a great deal of her time with her dad and younger brother. Maggie was loud, sporty, opinionated and smart. Initially attending university with a goal of journalism or law, Maggie transferred into teaching, realizing that being there for vulnerable teenagers was where her passion low. Maggie spent almost two decades as a secondary teacher, raising four boys of her own, before moving. I can't believe that, but before moving to counseling and working. That's the thing that stands out. Before moving to counseling and working in palliative care and suicide prevention. Maggie realized that working with parents had the biggest impact on children's lives and began writing what she knew and soon became a voice of expertise in the parenting space. Maggie's the author of ten, genuinely, like actually best. Because everyone was like, "Oh, it's the best thing I've ever put." But this is actually the best sewing books. Maggie is a host of podcasts, The Good Enough Dad and Parental, as anything. Maggie is a true national treasure, her wisdom, compassion and fierce advocacy for our kids has helped an entire country feel more connected and more hopeful as I navigate the toughest gig there possibly is parenting. We are so happy you're here. I was just before we came on just asking you how come it took so long that you got someone who's a boy champion in amongst a room of guys who still quite boylike. I'm very much so. I hope I'm always boylike. Yeah, so do I. So let me just do one other thing too around me having the four boys because I kind of got boys, all the reasons that you said. I hung out with them a lot as a kid. But when I had my third son, I had people coming up to me just like crying, same-you-poor thing. I can't believe you've had another boy. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. And when I had the fourth one, it was worse. And one lady went and let candles in the local Catholic church. And my eight-year-old son at the time turned to me and said, "Mummy, why do they speak like that about us as boys?" And that's when I lit the fire that says, "How come this has appeared to be a dud gender?" And that was really where the boy champion came alive. It's like, that's not okay. I did not know that, probably because I am a boy and I think we're the best. But like I did know that that was a common thing. Yeah, mum still come up to me today and say, "If they've only got boys, people apologize to them and wish them all the best." And no, sometimes people run into me and realize I've got four adult sons and they say, "You don't look that bad." Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. So I'm sure that I say that effect, girl. So I'm going, you know, this is that cultural stuff and the conditioning stuff still and that sometimes the things that make boys tricky. We automatically assume they deliberately make poor choices and that they, you know, we just say that's boys being boys. And when you decode some of that of what's under it and the reasons why then we can come along. When they feel understood, then we can coach them into making those better choices. So that's a big passion in my work. That's very exciting to me. That's someone who does, I'm not a parent, but it's still, I'm so fascinated to understand the answers to that why. Why does anyone do anything? But particularly why do boys do what they do? Let's do the disclaimer. We know that gender's not neither box and that we have gender fluid in the middle. But what this stats really shows around 70% are fairly atypical. And so in that's girls and boys. But also then when you factor in the temperament issue, so of that 70%, probably only half of those are what the man box would say is the right boy. You know, it's the go get of the winner, the loud champion. Whereas we negated the lambs, the sensitive boys, there was sort of less than and we need to recognise they're equally valid. You guys are a bit lamed like so even that's a bit of a rooster. He's got some lamb. You reckon he's a rooster? Well, now this board is played off and that's a big drive when they're wanting to be so competitive. Yeah, I got most encouraged. I got an encouragement award in under 14, so. Yeah, so you could be too. We want them in the middle. Right, so your capable of assertiveness and courage, but you're also capable of being caring and thoughtful. And that's the bit that the traditional man box likes to shut down. Yeah, I love the thought of a rooster's body with a lamb's head on it. That's what I'm picturing right now. I think you go the other way round. I don't think you go lamb's body rooster's head for visual appeal. I'm just a balance alone. I feel like there will be a lot of people who will just quickly know what lamb rooster is. Maybe if you could just give a really quick explanation, the difference. Yeah, so you'll know your rooster because you can't get him asleep. I hate missing out on anything that argue before they're verbal. I think they poo more. They will try and think they're so brave and fearless. They'll terrify the hell out of you as a parent. And they will, like I said, you know, before you know it, you just cannot rest. The lamb is gentle. It's often slow to warm, takes a while to step into their power, but they make you look like a great parent. You know, you can play ground and the lamb's quite obvious. I just want to give context to this. I mean, Maggie is like a leading voice on boys and boys education. But just to give further context to why we want to sort of talk about this, they're just some statistics. So as far as mental health is concerned, three out of four suicides in Australia and then suicide is a leading cause of death for boys, age 15 to 24 in Australia. Men are far less likely to seek professional help with only 30% of mental health services using being male. In the education spaces, Maggie would know all too well, boys make up 80% of school suspensions in Australia. Boys are far more likely to struggle with literacy as Maggie just alluded to falling behind girls by year three and often never ever catching up. Boys are 40% less likely to graduate from year 12 than girls. On the topic of violence and risky behaviour, boys and young men are dramatically overrepresented in all forms of risk taking behaviour, road fatalities, substance use, physical fights, 90% of violent offending in Australia is perpetuated by males. And critically, most male violence is the result of untreated trauma, emotional illiteracy and disconnection. And the last statistics, which is kind of what I want to think about Maggie's work, I think a lot of it comes down to this but the social connection. So one in three Australian men report having no close friends, men's friendship network shrink dramatically after their 20s and loneliness increases, men's risk of early death by up to 26%. So Maggie, you've spent decades helping Australians understand that boys aren't broken, they're hurting. And I think just with that context, I think you are just such a wonderful person to talk on this topic. One of the things that comes from traditional patriarchy is that boys are men at tough. That wasn't my dad, my dad was an incredibly beautiful human with an incredible good sense of humour, but a really kind good humanitarian, which is a great model for me. I was just saying you can see all that in you in ten minutes and many of you can see that. You just, you just, you know, in K.W. Kelly's skin was whether you're educated or not, you're a male or female, whatever. So what happens is we are conditioned by those messages from when we were quite little. So when I sometimes saw in early childhood settings, a little girl fall over. So often the response from an educator or it can happen out and not even in that setting is we sweep over and speak gently to her and help her up. And then if a boy falls over, we often say, "Kid, have come on mate." Now, both of those are actually incorrect because they're both feeding incorrect messages because most girls don't actually need her father. And then when I brought that up, there's research that shows we speak more harshly to boys. So when you, when I wound that back and thought, well, obviously, if they are unable to feel safe when they do hurt themselves, they're going to push that down. I've got to look tough. And then, you know, that male fragility stuff that, you know, it took me when I landed on that, I sort of thought. "Oh my God, if we'd known this before." So in the first five years, the more securely attached and loved a little boy feels, the better he goes right through life. It's not just, isn't it? He's mental health, it's his physical, it's everything. The other part to the fragility, of course, is that we took us a while to discover, thanks to Dr. Alan Shaw's work, that when the fetus is being formed in that first 12 weeks, between eight and 12 weeks, when it gets flooded with testosterone, the actual brain development slows down. So at birth, they're cognitively behind little girls. Not only that, it impacts the way the left and right brain working, which is why girls are so much better linguistically. And we keep thinking they're the same. One size fits all. This is another study done by a researcher at the Kid's Institute in Perth, which I've found fascinating. He was researching core blood of the cord, and then linking it to all sorts of things to see if there was, and what he was looking at was the level of testosterone in core blood of the little boys. And what that came up against, and he found an interesting correlation, remember not causation, correlation between high testosterone levels at birth, to difficulty learning to read. Oh, right. And again, it's the left brain that needs to read. So again, so what do we do? We stole the age of five off our boys. They actually need more time to be cognitively ready for the same things that we push down with formalized learning. And then the more we push down, the more we took away their need to move, their need to play, their need to work out how to have friends. Because the fragile boy friendship, that was a blogger wrote once, and it went insane, went right around the world, because no one had really considered it, that when I was doing some of the stories on the TV programs, all of them suggested to how many good friends he got, and they say, "Two." I said, "When you last say them." Oh, 10 years ago. Because you actually have to spend time, because little boys don't do what girls do. They're saying, "I really would like to play with you, because we go and play dolls, so we go, when can I see you again?" And all that stuff, boys just go up and give you a punch. - It sort of feels like, and maybe this is obvious to say this, but it's like boys from the very beginning are expected to be more self-sufficient than girls. - Yes. - And that carries through for the rest of the boy man's life, to the extent where it's like, if they're not able, and maybe that is maybe that's sort of why girls traditionally sort of lean on each other a little bit more and catch up, because-- - East Virginia. - Yeah, all right, that's fine. - And we've got to remember that still Larry's in our epigenetics, those biological drives that boys meant to be, one day grow up and defend, protect, and provide for everyone else. You know, it is really important. That's why sometimes when they play those super superhero games, or they want to make guns out of their toast, they're not going to turn into a murderer. But what they're doing is I want to kill baddies to save goodies. And we need to allow that to be in its, in its, you know, what's okay, but we also need to let some of the girls join in there. - I'm not making this up. Our daughter made a love heart out of her toast this morning. - Yes, actually. - She said, "If you squeeze the bottom of toast, it's a love heart." Keep puts in bedgermate on it. - So she said, "If you might love her." - I love it. - It's probably wouldn't make a gun. - That's the way it makes it. - So that also, you know, when you understand that, you know, estrogen is bonding. It's caring. It's coming together. And that also affects the way we communicate. So those fragile boy friendships, if we take away play, neighborhood plays just, just, just appeared. We don't breed as much, not as much cousin play. And schools, you know, when they get to school, recess is shortened, lunch is shortened. And so all the things that help boys build social and emotional competence have diminished. - So what do we do then? What do we do for our boys who say they're five years old? And they're probably not quite ready for school, but they're gonna have to go because that's the way society is set up. What can we do for them at home to support that, understanding that and supporting those much as possible? - Yeah, well, I'd like them to be as feral and free as possible. If you can possibly arrange, you know, what children have always needed has not changed, but the world has changed, is to try and find where they can play with multi-aged children of all genders in an environment with potential risk within the blood-curdling safety of one adult. Because what happens boys and girls automatically will step up to be the protector. So boys don't get that opportunity anymore to actually step up and be, they're just the wired to do it. If you don't ever have a chance, you don't know how to do it. - Yeah, when I'm thinking the first thing that comes to mind, and this is topical for me because I used to be, I would go to the park, Mum would tell me the park is a little more and I was so scared of. I got, I had a, I've shared the story before, but Mum had an old handbag, and I loved walking around with Mum's handbag, and I used to hold my arm up. So when, just walking around my arm, so it wouldn't fall off my shoulder. And we went to a friend's house once and these other boys took it off me and beat the living daylight out of me with it. And ever since then, I was just so scared of boys that I didn't know. - Yeah. - I see boys at the park with my kids, I go, well, boys are coming, we need to just be careful here. And so I think my kids haven't paid the park anywhere near as much as I should because I'm scared of little boys. - So let's touch on that a bit because the hitting, hurting, and stuff of little boys, that's usually a bid for connection. - Right. - So when we reframe it to a bid for connection, they also need to be coached into what are the signs when that other person's not enjoying that. And lectures don't work, but often doing it with play works, especially if adults role play it. And it's just such a big thing. You know, there's so much wrestling in my house. And they are learning about boundaries. But I keep saying, if your boys are wrestling, they actually like each other. They scored aggression, nurturance in boy world. And that's why sometimes that run up, a little boy might run up to farewell, his best mate accidentally punch him in the head and say, "That are the arm." Now he didn't mean to do that. So there's often this thing that boys really mean to hurt. When no, they accidentally do dumb things in the spontaneous moment of wanting to connect. And they sometimes can kick mum after school. And this is one of the things when I say, "Oh, I had so many women go, "Yes, he's done that." So you can pick your little boy up and you're heading out towards the car and you stop to talk to someone. And your son starts kicking you in the leg and you think, "What, what's he doing now?" And what's possibly going on is he has a poo that's due. And boys don't poo at school. So he's trying to tell you to hurry up so he can drop it off. - And of course we never grow out of that. - We never grow out of that. - And still how we communicate. We need to do a poo. Even at 44, isn't that all we do? - No, there's another side to that we don't understand that took me a while to work and I've now got grandson to run in and tell me, come and have a look at my poo, Nanny. It's a dinosaur, not a lion. So poo's to boys are kind of like achievements. - A gift. - Yeah. - They're a gift and there's something to celebrate if it's good, right? And most women don't get that kind of thing, right? Which is why also when we put pressure on them, we do know statistically that boys are the last to be able to be toilet trained around pooing. 'Cause there's so much more sensitive and it's this vulnerable fragile side of boys. And that's the kind of gift that God I don't want to get emotional here. The number of times mums have said to me, I couldn't stand my little boy, he was just an epsil, he was, and then I realized he wasn't this tough little thing and I started to really lean into nurturing that tender part of him. And he within two or three days is coming up, putting his, linking his fingers with mine saying, I love you, mommy. Because they know when they're safer, you know? And they too mock up, right? The impulsive poor decision making. We keep thinking they deliberately plan it. But when you come in, I'm sure you didn't mean to hurt your brother. Oh dear, look at that, how are we gonna clean that up? So when you come in without the shame, you create such a safer space. And then when they've all come down and there is some really big science that's so handy to understand about this, that when the amygdala fires up for little girls and women, the next center in the brain that fires up is the word said to. Oh, right. Have you ever had one of those vents? (shouting) Okay, so what happens for boys and men? The amygdala fires up, there's a threat and there's something upset me. And then it goes into the body. Right. The shove, the push that we see on TV with lens breaking things. And then a lot of time later, it comes from the body back up into the word center and so often, it still happens in school environments where a boy may have done something and sometimes it's running in accidentally into someone and knocking them in the playground, you get sent to get growled at. And they have no idea what they've done wrong 'cause they didn't plan to knock that kid over. And then they get interrogated and I can't speak. 'Cause it's too soon for them to, and I love the principles. There's some primary principles that take boys for a walk around the oval. So what happens when we're walking is it actually helps to open up the word center so they can communicate. But often they need to process it a bit first and that's what guys do. They often, that's why sometimes they're not so good after a trauma going to talk to a counselor. They can often trigger them to be worse 'cause they haven't worked it out. themselves. There's a really big story that came from a dad. He reached out to tell me that he'd heard, sorry, I'm going to mention another podcast. That's okay. We are okay with other podcasts. Okay, ABC conversations and it was never heard of it. It's rich. And apparently this guy came running into the house and he said, ah, because I mean, lots of problems at the 14 year old son like he's been suspended and they've taken everything off him and it hasn't changed his behaviour and his still, you know, school's ringing again and he's come in the back, drives up just to listen to this lady on the radio. I'm going to try something new with our son and the mum said, yeah, the school's run again. Anyway, so he's called out to he sent, he'd make, let's go for a walk and his son come out looking bit dubious and he either walked all the way up to the macgers, which was about a kilometre away and he said, 'Stay to big smoothie and a bucket of chips.' And they just walk it on home and halfway home, his son starts to cry and then he's sobbing and his dad's arms and said, 'I, it's a year 11 boys, they keep belting me up and they've told me if I dobb on them, they're going to cut my face with a razor.' So he's held his son while he owned into this and you know, by the time he's walked time, this boy is a different boy and the dad walks and says, 'Who would have thought just a walk on a bucket of chips and we sorted it out?' But he did that beautiful thing, that helps to open in the safe space like nothing else. That's, but it's really been something that I think I've always done whenever I've been overwhelmed or stressed is that like, jam, jam, my partner, I've often talked about this for as like when she's really overwhelmed or has anxiety, she really needs to talk about it, you know, instantly and needs to talk it through and but whenever I'm overwhelmed or anxious about something, I need to just be by myself. That's exactly and guess what happens though, sometimes when she's going through her talking, is there part of you thinking, is there something I need to fix? Absolutely, all the time. Right, because that's that wiring in us again and there's nothing more irritating when you're male partners, is what do you try this? You just want to punch them out. Yeah, until they fix it. Yeah. That's a good moment. It's just so tempting. So you know, I reckon when I'm doing the dad's only, I keep saying so. They're doing a big vent, you know, you're not, you're not, listen, don't distract, you can't even remember what she's saying, but let it go right to the end till she takes a breath. And then you say, do you want a couple of a glass of wine? That's it. That's, I've held space. Yeah. I've held the space in the way that you need it. And then we can discuss the soul. I wonder when that comes in though. Sometimes what's happened, it just didn't need solving. It just needed expressing the frustration from that place. But let's celebrate the, you know, greatest social shift that's happening in Australia at the moment. That's our dad's turning up with beautiful big hearts and really team parenting. And you know, everywhere I go, sometimes in a playground on a weekend, there's no mums, dad's babies tied on, toddlers nailing it. We have to celebrate that. That's a massive cultural shift. And I think the other part to that is, they keep saying, you know, it's a wafn, they say, just wish there was a game book, but there isn't one for women either. Yeah. You know, because let's talk about that sense of self worth that boys and men are different to most girls and women. And that is that boys and men give themselves self worth than what they do. They judge as good and worthwhile. So I think a boy who want to hit targets, climb the highest tree, build the biggest duplo tower. They set themselves up for something. And when they do it, they're like, yes, I've done good. Now we can't give them that. And so I love it when I get a story that's influenced and mum particularly. And so this boy came into his mum, he was eight and said, I'm going to dig to China. Fortunately, you know, every mother thinks what an idiot, Miles, I'm telling now, no, she'd heard me and she said, well, let me know how it goes. This boy dug for a week. Lucky had blisters. She used to take drinks. He was determined because he set up a target and a project. And then finally realized it wasn't going to work. So it came in and said, oh, I can't dig to China. She said, never mind. And it's such a shift when I see the women in the room go, oh, because and there's this part, you know, that, that kind of, you know, protected defender brave part, which has the testosterone. They do want to do stuff every now and then that scares the, you know, what out of most women. And I keep urging them just to keep breathing and hold back because, you know, when we keep holding that back, then we make it harder for them to stretch and grow later. And then the natural consequence is the way they learn that it doesn't always work out. I'm not bad. I'm not useless. I'm not dumb. It just wasn't the right time or energy. And so I had my two lads at one point on the farm. We went back to wandering and I guess the minus five is freezing. There's a strain through the farm and the six and four year old, we're out there. And they said, don't get jump in. You know, the first thing is I hear my mum voice. That'd be so stupid. You get a card, which of course you can't get, but it's an old story. And then I really hang on a minute. I used to jump in there. And so I just pause. And then of course most boys want to get naked. The whole anti-close bit. Oh man, I've had naked boys, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, woman, I'm just dead. That's all right. Anyway, off go the close. I've got to close. In that jump, and I think one will be enough right at that. Let's do it again. And I'm thinking it is freezing. But that little warrior that wants to stretch and grow, they do it again. And then I thought, no, definitely by the third time you have to laugh, they're completely blue around the lips. But their whole little package has been sucked inside. It was too cold for the test. And so I can't go, you know, they've just had this wonderful adventure, which doesn't make any sense to women. But it does to boys. They're having fun, but they're stretching and growing. And that's exactly how we grow healthy men. Yeah. Josh has got two boys. You've got a rooster on a lamb. Yeah. I'm so interested in what's going through your head, big sailor, like every single topic of my entire time. Yeah. You've had a thousand questions. So I just want to give you a chance to. I don't know where to start. I think, yes, I've got five and three. One thing I find hard is that I think this goes to me in a critic in my own sort of story that I find very, I'm trying really hard to be one of those men who's really getting as involved in the most present pair. And I can possibly be. But I just evidence to that. I have a video of Josh playing on our trampoline severely hung over, but still there playing with my kids and his kids playing ring and ring aroses. And then crawling over and I remember thinking of all that is a dad who is struggling. Yeah. I was really small. My kids are trying to pull your pants down as well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going on. I don't like to just get themselves naked. They're trying to pull it up to the adults too. I think because of growing up in a family where there wasn't any male roosters or rooster behaviour, I found it really difficult. And I've sort of I find myself making so many mistakes as a dad. But one thing I notice is that my rooster, he's very physical, loves to bite, loves to pull, loves to pinch, loves to do all these things. And I think about a mistake I made yesterday when we were rolling around having a good time and then suddenly it bit me really hard on the leg. And I reacted with a anger. And then why did you do that? And I suddenly expected this three year old to be able to explain a cognitive decision that led up to him biting. And he looked at me, makes me very sad to say because he looked at me with his wobbly bottom lip and had no idea. And was completely and it's happened a few times where I've reacted and he's completely caught in the headlights. And I feel so bad because of the mistake I've made. But also to say that for this rooster, I think has so much emotional depth and complexity going on underneath the surface that is that I miss all the time. And I'm trying to so hard to focus on it and and and and respond to it or or at least be there for it. But I don't know. Sometimes I don't know how without the sacrifice of say he's bitten the older that the lamb. And I'm stuck in this situation of well, I can't I want to protect the lamb, but I also want to acknowledge the rooster and I don't know how to play this situation without letting one of them down. All right, so this is so common. You know, I have a membership group. I think that question gets asked now every month. Now, the important for you is to react with, oh, no, that's too hard. Yeah. So that's where he learns gradually that it's too hard. Yeah. Okay, rather than why did you do it? He has no idea. No cognitive, but he can know that's too hard. And that's the same way stacks on and rough housing and all that sort of stuff is actually really good because they need to know there's a point where it's no. Right? That's the kind of boundary stuff. And we often find that boys have had those sort of moments tend to navigate, you know, the nightclub scene a lot better than others because they read the unspoken cues on the face a bit better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called a play code. So that's what I that's the first thing is they anytime it actually really hurts. We're, oh, that hurts. That hurts. You know, that's too hard because you're still three and you're letting know what hard is. Interestingly, on that topic, when I do do that when I have a better moment where I see say in a calm way, he will put his mouth on my arm and bite down and he'll go like, is this okay? Is this okay? And then he'll test the limit of when perfect. And then he's like, and I'm like, no, that's too much. And he's like, yep, and then he's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, no joke. And I think the other thing that we all muck up, I'm an advocate for imperfect parenting. I need to remind all parents that you only have to be good enough 30 to 40% of the time. But when you do do big bugger ups and you know it in your heart, you can fit it. You feel it, right? Then once you've become calm, you come back and repair that rupture. Even with a three-odd or come back, I said, I didn't need to, shouting is not okay and I'm going to work on that, right? Because that doesn't happen in previous generations. And so that imprint of behaviorism is still deeply embedded into anyone over 40. You know that the only way to stop that behavior is to punish the child. But it doesn't teach. And what it does is threatens the relationship. And remember, that's the core to it and I guarantee just listening to you in item any problems of the connection with your kids. Anyone who's half drunk on a trampoline, anyway. And so the other part to it, especially for roosters, is where is your connection time with your rooster? Because they harder to connect. They genuinely are often more physically active. So I have, you know, there's a thing I talk about microconnections because we'd love quality time. Of course, we would. But who's got it? Now let's be honest, we've got more than one child. So it's the ruffle on the head as you walk past and it's the tickle on the back and it's the bump where the ice of what passed my boys even when they were teenagers deliberately turned on their feet. Oh, sorry, sorry. All right. Or if you're sitting on the couch, I'd sit on them. You know, I'm sorry. And I go, I don't know. Physical connection can often work more than words. And then of course, if they were really being difficult in the kitchen, then I'd drop a wild-time fart. Because that can get a green on a. I mean, I want to ask, what does that look like? And I feel like that's. Pretty sure. Not doing it right now. It's a dangerous territory, yeah. And so other things in that space are, make sure you've got photos of both your siblings in really happy moments and cuddles with you. I really encourage you if you've got boys in the toilet because remember they've got to become calm before they're put. So the more they see, images of joy and connection, triggers and dolphins in the brain of being loved, especially roosters because they're the ones who break more things and damage more things. And we're forever going through the process, you know, what were you trying to do and what are you going to do to make it right and all those sorts of things. So making sure that is. But also sometimes writing, obviously three, or it won't be able to read yet now. But sometimes notes for boys are really powerful. You know, we think the verbal thing and this is another thing that women really take a bit of time and they don't like it when I first say it, but you just wait too many words sometimes for boys. And so it can only take a few and their glaze over and go, "Oh, what you said." So even as a high school teacher, I had to learn that I was, if I was delivering an assessment and I started with now you've got to choose whether you want to write a poem, a short story or a play. And then what you're going to do is choose a character and you're going to have this kind of contest with Mother Nature. So some, and I'm looking around the room and I've lost every boy. And what the boys told me is what they're doing is they're going, "What's the easiest thing to do?" So until I solve that problem, I'm not ready for this. And it's the same around home. We think that I've told you three times, I haven't heard it. Sometimes, you know, a little boy can be just over there and you can yell at him, you know, or say loudly, "Can you go wash your hands?" It's time for dinner and it doesn't move. And you say it again and it's, you know, dads don't tend to do this. It's mainly mums. And then they're saying, "Is there limitately not listening to me?" And they yell at him and he's suddenly going, "Why is my mother suddenly yelling at me?" And this is that single focus that they're so absorbed in what they're doing. They actually don't hear sometimes. And that's a really important one. So you know, encourage mums to go up and rub their back and go time to wash your hands. Or you go up and just. Yeah? That's my biggest making eye contact. Yeah, just quickly. Sometimes some more signs of what you want them to do. Pat on head. They're spatially quite good. Lunchbox in bag. Yeah. Because spatially boys are much stronger and they're also very strong at nonverbal stuff. So they see every time that particularly a mum, but even a dad rolls their eyes going, "Yeah." That's like a knife in little boys' hearts. It's in same-in-teen age boys. They know when they've disappointed their parents and it's a really big burden. I've always sort of. I think I've always known that within myself that I will comprehend something clearer, clearly, if it's shown to me. Yes. And I've always sort of labeled that as like, "I'm a visual learner." I've sort of always said. That's the thing that I've invented and just feels true. And I was like, "Oh, if you need to explain something to me, I need to see it. I'll be shown it." Yeah. And then I'll remember it. But that's so interesting. It can be another layer of the boy being. It's not that. Yeah, wow. So one of the other most powerful ones, and this is something I've probably been saying now for 18 years, and it's a bedtime ritual. Oh boy. So no matter how many times. I ain't saying no, Pat, hang on. No matter how many times you've had to grow and pull them back in and. Remember the new soft hands and all that stuff. And please, we in the toilet, not up the wall and all those things that you've had to say. You're writing this down here? Yes. And not every night. You can't go in and do a warm bedtime ritual when you're pissed off. You just can't. You've just got to make sure. So it's not every night. And that when you can, you lay next to that little precious boy and you tell him how much you love him. And because they're good with numbers and spatially, you say, "Look, I love you. I love you more than every star on the night sky." Every grain of sand on every beach in the whole world and every here on every bear. And they're like, "Man, that's a lot." My parents used to say and still say, "I love you to the sky and back, plus a meter." Yeah. Plus a meter. And then, oh my God, over the years. Oh my God, I've just had so many gorgeous messages come back. Because when they add something else, it personalises it. And all the bumps on all the, you know, fishes in the world and all the poo in the zoo. And you know, because quite often they go to that. And I think when that happens two or three times a week, we deeply embed that sense of loving connection into the ones who are going to be harder to love some days. And it's so profound. And it's something that can play out later. You can write a message to a teenage boy who's, "I have the door in your face and hasn't done the dishwasher and left the milk out." You know, I remember the stars. Remember the sand. Yeah. So exactly. And that's that, you know, when we think we need to be harder on boys, it's coming from a space of behaviourism that does not actually work except on possibly rats. And I share this through about one of my, I've got a feisty rooster who landed on Halloween. Who's a whoopsy? That one out. Whoopsy measles wasn't planned. Oh. And to ladle Halloween. Yeah. Oh my God. Anyway, he was 15 or something. Pretty intense trick or trick. Oh. Every, I imagine he's 21st, every party at uni, everything, Halloween's huge. Anyway. And he was absolutely giving me a serve in the kitchen because I wouldn't let him go to a party because, you know, I didn't let mine go out to parties, you know, with my knowledge until I was 16, year 11. And he was everyone else that's going in and we're smart on earth. And yeah, yeah. Anyway, walked off slam the door. Yeah. I'm actually probably the best moment of earth according to all my books. No, it was just before I wrote the book. And I knew like, can I know, you know, in your head, you're saying he shouldn't speak to me like that just respectfully. And I need to, you know, I need to come down hard on him to stop that. But that's the old thinking again, not recognizing that that is just equally as tender heart as a girl who feels these things. So does he need more harshness? Does he more darkness? Does he need more criticism? Anyway, so about 20 minutes later, I go down and knock at the door and I've said that anyone has got a teenage boy away, a good 20 seconds. You do not open that door for 20 seconds. And then you open it gently and you shove in their favourite drink like Milo or something and some biscuits and you shove in the dog and then you shut the door. And you go back and even though in your mind you'd love him to come out and say, "Gee, Mum, I'm sorry, I used those disrespectful words to you earlier and I really apologise because it's not going to happen." It's not really got that cognitive capacity. Most teenage girls wouldn't either. But I need him to know we're still okay. And so often, you know, when he comes out, you might get a bump. But I need him to know that. That's the vulnerability of teenage boys. And that, you know, that's, you mentioned that suicide rates, montagneous suicides that come out of nowhere. It's the last thing and a few are safe-based and this is what came up in that research from boys to men is who is the most important thing in your life over that bridge to adulthood and over 60% of their mum. So if she's your safe-based and she turns on you, that's a really dark place to go and that's why we have to know it's a really vulnerable time and that we need to be big And not listen to the rubbish that we had from you know don't rats that said punish them when they're badly behaved. The term I keep saying is no matter what, no matter what it is, there's nothing you can do that will stop me loving you. So anytime anything bad happens, your first thought needs to be called mum call dad. No matter what, every time they walk out the door to a party they say no matter what. Because that's exactly what they need to know. There's an anchor that's safe for them. Lots of teens don't have it. They might think, the parents may think that they've got it, but if they're, you know, the boys know they're disappointing their parents because they're great. Or, you know, yes, they've left the milk out in the fridge yet again. Or they haven't done the dishwasher. All these things that we think are important. You don't know what's going on while they're being at school or what they've got it copped online. And there's so much more fragile psychologically than any other previous generation. My, my Worcester child, I have a picture of him on my key ring. He made it at child care. And I was looking at it. I can't remember how this came about. It was just me and him at home. And he was asking me about it. I wrote, I love you on it. And I showed it to him. And he said, what does this say? And it said, and I said, it says, I love you. And he gave me this look on his face like it really hit. Like he hadn't quite realized or something. And I tell him all the time that I love him. And I cuddle him and I thought he would really get it. And then, and I thought it hit a bit different. And it makes me emotional thinking, talking about it. And then later that night, my wife said, you know, after you did that, he came into my office and he held this up and he said, daddy loves me. Oh. I know, yeah. Let me tell you that it's about the written word. You know, the spoken word is flies around. Wow. The number of times, because I've mentioned that in that micro moments, right a note to say, you love your son. And the stories I've had back, particularly from dads who have written the note, that change the whole relationship for the rest of their lives. OK. It's a boy's keep those notes. It was, yeah. So just to, I guess, I think I thought I was doing it. And it obviously wasn't landing like I thought it was. So it was a really, yeah. How good you landed. Oh, it felt good. It's really good. It's felt, I've thought about it so much since. And I do, I honestly think our relationship is a little bit better because of it. And he's only three, but it really, where, where just that little bit better. Sometimes those micro notes that go into lunch boxes can do that too, especially if you've had a rough morning or a rough night, the previous ride and night sound love your mate. Yeah. That's such a good tip. Yeah. Hi, it's Ryan from The Imperfects. And I'm reaching out to you now because we need your help, gosh, darn it. What, where do we need? Sorry. No, I'm just making a plea to the listeners and viewers to ask them to subscribe to the show in whichever way they see fit because it really helps the more subscribers, the better we can make this show, am I right? Yeah, but I don't think we need to-- I think we could just ask them, I like me. Yeah, but if I use the emotional music-- I think the music's a bit much. Is it? Who's playing the music? It doesn't matter who's playing the music. The important thing is we're pulling at the heartstrings and asking them to do us a solid. We don't just ask them straight. It would really help us if you guys subscribed because we would be able to make more of the show and make the show better. Oh, and not use emotional manipulation. Yeah. Yeah, all right. Well, you can give it a go, but I doubt it'll work. Can I ask you about your-- I guess I'm just asking to speak generally about the area you feel most passionate about, but screens and social media for boys, the damage, your advice, what you've seen. Oh, no question, but it's been big. And we know that some of our boys are definitely being influenced by the atmosphere online and the negative algorithms. It's so big tech as the blame, not parents, not schools, not boys. But it's not as many as we thought. And I think that was the thing. We started to have a shift in sexual harassment in schools where boys have always said things like, "My rank goes from super hot to freezing cold." And that's the thing you did on a piece of paper once and through and the bin. But now you do it online and share it, except-- Well, that's literally how Facebook started. Yes. It is literally how it started, except that now with the boys watching so much more pornography, the language has gone to unrapeable. Oh, God. Right? So yeah, that's exactly what the ranking stuff happened. So again, if that wasn't there, that wouldn't be happening. So the pornography is-- Oh, teachers. There are rape threats in classrooms. There are-- the language in some-- it's not all schools and it's not all boys. Some schools don't even know what you're talking about. And other ones have been working on it to come through, which is why, you know, boys still need good guidance and mentors and that bridge to add outward, rails on the bridge. So the pornography is the first thing. The second thing was not as many boys on social media than you think. Where are they? They're gaming. Right. Yeah, OK. And so gaming has a really positive space, especially with the gaming with inmates, you know? We also know the sexual predators are out there as well. So the sexual extortion has increased 1300% over the last three years. Jesus. And we have to just think if a four-den-year-old boy thinks a four-den-year-old girl was really keen and sounds really gorgeous and she'd like to see a photo of his best friend, he's going to obviously share it. And so we understand the maturity of them. But if that wasn't there, that wouldn't be happening. And some of those boys, as you know, are dying by suicide because of the shame. The other thing that's happened as well is that in the boys, it's not just man-osphere stuff. The body stuff in terms of being buff and looking a certain way. So body image stuff is actually impacting boys at the highest level, et cetera, impacted again. So when you part it all together, it makes it even harder that unless they've got good enough parents, so we say at least one. And I know most boys tell me they're hungry for a warm relationship with their dad. But of course, most dads tell me I'm hard on him because I don't want him to be a dickhead like I was, which is-- you can see that. But of course, the more hard you were because that's what happened when you were that age, the more you push your son away when he needs you. So that's why I talk a lot about the lighthouse figures, which was me as an English teacher. It's those-- sometimes it's a teacher and a subject that might be physics or it might be music or it might be-- it might be the coach, right? When they kind of show they care, it's like a lifeline. And I think that's exactly what you do with your work in schools. You are actually setting up teachers and people to know that you can make it different things in kids' lives. And it's how you be, not just what you do. So we've got to find where do we find the safe spaces for our boys. But I'm hoping-- I'm hoping-- when we talk to boys, older boys have gone through this. They often say, yeah, I was a bit more interested when I was 13 and 14. But the prefrontal does a big growth around 16. But once I got to 16, I started working and out myself that wasn't who I wanted to be. That wasn't the man I wanted to be. Quietly in their own world. What do you think of the factors and are there consistent factors that are present in-- is it just what you said or are there consistent factors that are there in boys who are able to get to that point of working there for themselves? So they-- because they're all in the washing machine of 13 or 14-year-old. So a minimum of one good enough parent with some good enough friends engaged in some good enough activities in a good enough school. Those boys will usually come out OK at the other end, regardless of what's thrown at them. I really like that phrase, good enough. Good enough. Yeah. So where we find-- so our family might not be the good enough, but those are good enough school and are good enough-- whatever it is if they're into music or they're into something else. Something that I call is the spark. And it's so interesting-- obviously, I had more sons. They were into sport. But when they took up surfing, oh man, is that what I wanted to do on a Saturday morning after teaching full-time this get up at 6 o'clock and go and look for surfers on the end of the car? Oh man. So I'd had two brothers and three of their mates driving around far to Yenacard being ridiculous. And then when I watched them come out of the surf, I saw something like profound that I didn't see in my classrooms. And that was five boys fully alive. And that meant they could go back and suck up school with whatever it dealt with, because there was this big part of them that were alive. And so I talk about that a lot to parents. Find the spark for your teen. Yeah, course, school's matters. But they can always pick that up later. But it's without a spark, they're more likely to dive into dark places. And that spark sometimes-- can be something you never want them to do like that. God, I couldn't wait for the old to get a license. And that's a mum of a 14-year-old whose dad had died by suicide. So the boy had been really going through a tough time. And she said, so Maggie is an I'm going to your 10. And he loves racing motorbikes. He did it with his dad. And so should I get him off his motorbike? So he focuses on his stuff. He said, "Tell me what is average morning and night as like during the week." She said, "Well, he gets home from school, goes for a quick ride." And then he comes home, does his homework so he can go to bed early and goes for another ride first thing in the morning and I'm looking at her going, "I don't know any for dinner, I'll boy that does his homework." He's connecting to his dad. So what's his face like when he comes in? He's alive, he can't wait to get his chores done so he can go to school seriously. Do not remove that ever. And I meet so many teens today who think that their social media is this spark. But it's not necessarily, you see, and that's why we have a new generation of line-meetings. Have you said, "Have you seen that? There's a documentary about a guy, I think his name is Mark Andre or something. He was a free climber, like, you know, a climber, have you seen this? Whatever it is, it's in the show notes and linked to it. But his, he really struggled at school, was not a happy kid. And then he discovered somehow, forget how, he discovered this climbing, rock climbing. And his mother, this incredible woman, just sort of like, exactly how you describe taking the boy's surfing. She did not enjoy necessarily driving into the woods to find like these rock climbing walls. But that's all he wanted to do. He was engaged with this thing. And he became, not that this matters, but he became like one of the best in the world at rock climbing, at free climbing. Super dangerous. No doubt his mom was terrified. And it, it unfortunately has a bit of a tragic ending of that story. But what is so hopeful about it is to see this mom, like, just recognize what this boy really loves and like, brings him alive and makes him so happy and connects him with other people who are doing it. And her just like, wholeheartedly supporting it. It's really magical. So there's a window of incredible importance that we need to understand in adolescence. And it's the same for girls and boys. But because girls go into puberty earlier, it's earlier. But the boy window is the same window they get so super disengaged to school. What's in it for me? This is so. So, you know, the brain does this pruning, which is why sometimes I got messages from mum saying, "Has an alien stole my son?" Like, he was really great two weeks ago. He's awful now, like. And I keep explaining that when you understand the why that your son suddenly gets more grumpy is, because any change triggers stress in the body. So their body is already physically changing, then hormonal changing, and cognitively changing, and emotionally changing. And then what the hell's going on, right? And so one of the first steps is the pruning. And as I explained before, you know, girls have much better memories and organisation skills. So a bit more of that gets pruned off on boys than it does girls. And they can even, you know, when it happens, forget their mass chest or leave their backpack on the bus and feel really stupid. And so we need to prepare them before it happens, so that they can go, "Oh, this is the brain pruning, it's not just me." Because I could have 500 boys in a seminar and say, "Have any of you noticed your memory?" And if you ask, "Not your heads," and the boys are all nodding, and they're looking at their mates. "Is that happened to you?" Then they talk about it. But when we shine the light on it, then we can set up strategies with them. What does that look like at home for parents, so if they're like going. Floor droves, cannot put the towel. Cannot put the towel on the hook in the bathroom that it used to be able to do. I mean, that means I've never recovered that. Because I have a floor-draved towel floor. Oh, it's the same thing. It's like putting empty containers, like empty yoga containers back in the fridge and they can feel kind of bench. Or saying, "I had this beautiful year-rate boy run all over the school and fire me. I was teaching year 12, and he's found me." And I said, "What do you do?" And he says, "So can you tell me where I'm supposed to be now?" I said, "We should time table." What's that? Oh, it's just week four. Go down to the front office and have give you time. It just got pruned off after we started. What's the front office? Yeah, what's the front? Where is that? Anyway, so the next stage is interesting, because that's where Mother Nature says, "Gee, we better hurry up and make these kids smarter because they're going to be adults." And if they start breeding soon, all the species dies out. So it makes lots and lots and lots and more dendrides, which is so exciting. Because you can learn faster anything you throw your energy into in the window under 16. Anything that they do, they get better amazingly. And yet it's the same window that they're feeling really dumb, stupid and useless and more forgetful. So that's why I keep challenging our best teachers should be in middle school. This is where you can tap into something. Totally agree. Tap into that hope, that place. There were boys in my class that struggle with whatever, you know, and I'm like, "I need to say things like that." "Why do I have to learn to ride an essay?" "I'm going to play football for Australia." Yeah, great. Good one. Yeah, you're going to learn to ride an essay. Because they can't see the point, right? And it's so amazing. If you fire up a kid in that window with it, it doesn't matter what it is that's in that school smorgasbord, whether it's cooking or it's clay fun or mountain bike riding, you can stoke something that helps them get over that kind of place. It's a protective factor through that. That's exactly what it is. And we need to, we need to invest as parents lots of time to nurture that window because that's the window we most likely lose our boys. So just to clarify as you're going, the window we're talking about, what is the age is here? Okay, so now that puberty is moving earlier, it used to be for girls that was, you know, like 11 to 13, and for boys it was 13 to 15. So it varies around that. But we know for our boys, some of them are around 12 when that kicks in now. But the big one is that most of those big shifts have finished. And by 16, that's when there's a big growth in the prefrontal cortex, where they can be much more reasonable because if you've lost your son, because he was in coherent and couldn't speak and all those things, talking in a plucky bag, he comes back sometimes in that window. So what is the brain pruning you're talking about in the dense, dendrites? Yeah. What can you, I mean, I obviously know, but for anyone else who doesn't know, you're so slow. Yeah, I know. I know one thing. So it tells us, yeah. So what happens is, so brain cells and neurons, and then when you're going to join up to another one, which is when learning occurs, there's an axon, and at the end of the axon, the feathery bit's called dendrites. And so when there's a massive growth of dendrites, means more of them are grabbing on to more and more neurons. So when the pruning happens, the prunes have all the, whatever you're not using gets pruned off. And that's why girls who use their memory and are quite organized, don't have these pruned off to the same degree as boys. And that's frustrating as hell for mums. Right. And is that part of sort of because your body's putting so much effort into growing, going through puberty, almost like an efficiency thing it needs to share? Yeah. So it's changing a child brain into an adult brain, and that's part of the journey, which would have been good to know about it when I was teaching them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I never, you know, you never ever had, and there's a whole list in one of my books that says, you know, the number of times I'd a girl forgot when the assessment was, just was very rare. I had a boy, a 10-H boy, just forget his bag once, just turned up, walked in. Yeah. Now, loose boots. I forgot my bag today. Totally. Have you done that? No, I've never done that before. This is what I love. There are accommodations. I saw a boy once carrying this massive bag full of books, and I said, "No, that's huge. What have you got there?" So he put everything out. And I said, "But you don't have chemistry every day on the week or by, "I'll let you say, "No, no, no, I don't. "I can't remember what date is. "I just like I'm around." [laughter] I guess you're solving the problem. It's solved the problem. Yeah. Oh, dude, that's amazing. It's all been something like how I packed a gun out. I kept going out. I packed a gun out too, as I bring seven days worth of clothes. I can't. I don't know what's happening tomorrow. So I'll bring everything. Yeah. I'll bring everything I might need in any condition. [laughter] I'll bring it back. I'll bring it back. [laughter] No, Wendy's don't worry about that. I'll be there. I think I just took it for granted. I think I have just taken it for granted that at the school that I went to, and I guess probably Mum and Dad chose this school for a reason. But at the school I went to, I'm so lucky that we could do media and drama. Yes. Because if I went to a school without media and drama, I reckon I would have come out of school probably being fined socially, but I think I would have felt like a real failure in terms of my intelligence because I just didn't really click with most of the other school subjects. Yeah. I would love to ask you about the narrative around teens, which you've sort of been talking about a little bit. But we were having lunch a couple of days ago with some of the resilience project people because we're in the same office. Just so-so, no, I deliberately didn't tell them Nagy was coming today because she wouldn't have got in here. [laughter] No, everyone's such a big fan would have been just, we wouldn't have got her in here, so yeah. Forget the selfies on the way out. And I was chatting with one of the incredible people there called Blinda. And what struck me was that this is the first time I think I've ever heard this, but she said, "I'm sick of everyone saying how bad teens are." I love my teens. She's got teen kids. And she's like, they're the best. Yeah, they're a bit challenging at times. I get it's hard for some people and it's more extreme, but I love them. And she's like, "I'm going to do whatever I can to break this bullshit about teens being crap." Yeah. How damaging is that teens are crap narrative? Oh, they're so used to it. And that's exactly what that survey said helped me help my teen. I was just over and over again. We're so sick of being marginalised and made to feel we're all useless. And the boy narrative makes me even more annoyed because we keep seeing a small number of boys who are behaving badly and the sum it's all boys. You know, there's a few people in my circle who are also mums of boys, teen boys. And we're on to anything to correct the narrative because we've had these boys in our homes who have been, who have bought an endless amount of mates into my house. I've had so many boys come through my house, look, they eat the whole fridge out some days accidentally. I go, "Sorry, sorry, Maggie." (Laughter) It's on impersonation of any man. I just, yeah, I'm right with Belinda on this one because when a teen can't communicate and can't and looks grumpy and moody, it's a lot to do with all the things happening to them. So we can't expect them to suddenly cheer up and it's one of the things I think we oversell in mental health, isn't it? That we're all supposed to be chirpy, chipper or calm all the time. That's rubbish. We all have moments. And I think that's how do we approach them? And that's probably the reason I wrote, "Help me help my teen" is, I give scripts on how you open the conversations. Because if you don't know how to, you need to learn how to. So when they come in and they failed the test, you don't go give them a lecture on why they needed to study more. You go, "Oh, mate, that sucks." Sucks say, "Oh, that's lazy when you fail something you want to pass." So I get your sandwich. Get the ice cream out. Right? Is this coming alongside? I think in the past it was you were above and you had all the power on the wisdom and the knowledge, which was also rubbish because previous teenagers were probably doing things around the edge, no one knew because they weren't there. And I think that's what I say again, when hard things happen, our jobs are not to rescue or fix our teens. It's to make sure that we first don't just launch into anger, which is a natural reaction very apparent, is to call our jets to get a bit more information before we start the conversation. Because so often, even if you find a vape in a bag and you go in and rip the hell out of the year, teens, whatever, it might not be theirs. They might be having it in their bag because the dad found it in the other one and built it the hell out of the sun. So he's protecting him. He's got to get all the information. And then you go, "Okay, so here's the challenge. Let's find some good information." And then what is your plan? What's your plan A? What's your plan B? And how do I help you? Because if you don't start dealing with the hard things, they're never going to learn how to do it. You can see how this evolves in a person and how there are people who are constantly living day to day on lots of little micro lies. It's nothing that harmful. But I guess it's like if you've grown up in a place where you didn't feel like you could make mistakes or if you get really in trouble or you had to be a really good boy. If you weren't a good boy, then you would get in trouble. I can kind of see how that develops into, "Well, I need to be good for everyone." Yeah. And there's another line that boys tell me is one of the most painful to hear. And you'd think it wouldn't be. But it's when your parent says, "I'm so disappointed in you." That one is like a really big knife, right? Because this is boy's self-worth. You've just validated that I'm worthless and useless and that I'm not enough and I've let you down. So when they mark up, there's a process that we do, right? We don't assume it was delivered. We go, "Oh, what were you trying to do when you broke the window?" Right? But you still damage someone's property. So how are you going to make it right? So how does that accountability? If we start younger and we don't tell them by about eight or nine, they have to start becoming accountable. And then we talk about, "So what are you going to do next time?" Because they don't have any other way of making a different choice until we help them work out. Yeah. I'm going to make sure I wear a bit further away from the window. And then we forgive and forget, "You don't keep bringing it up." If you keep that over and over again, you get a boy who's not only responsible for when he mucks up. He does tend to start thinking a little bit better about it than just how do I get away? How can I get out? How do I blame someone else and how can I tell a line of fear? Whatever. And so that's how we build that layer of character that you work on as well. We want to build a boy who's got character inside him gradually growing as his brain myelonates, which doesn't finish, of course. Well, it used to be at 27, but apparently the more there'd been online, it's slower. So it means about 30 now that they think the full myelination of the average boy is. This is full brain development. Yeah, full brain development. Yeah. Because girls are around 22 to 23. Yeah. Because all those instant things are delaying the thought of thinking capacity. Because there's no deep thought anymore because they're discussed straight on their final straight on to something else. So deep thought, which is part of the way your program's work, why I'm such a believer in rights of passage where you go away and think about things deeply about who you are and what sort of man you want to be. They're so fundamentally important because they've got it in them. But if someone doesn't bring it up to think about, it just stays dormant. This is a, I mean, you think about the brain fully developing there. One of the reasons this is very obvious problem is that by the time you're 30, you're much more likely to be apparent. So you're much more likely to be parenting without a fully formed brain. And I mean, there are so many arguments again to social media, everyone's aware of it. It's just become disgustingly addictive. But that is a huge thing. That's a huge thing. And we've been relationships probably married, a lot of people are married by then and we're doing it without all our brain. There's some good news though because enough out of this out, that when a father becomes a father the first time regardless of his age, mother nature says, holy heck, we better grow a lot more brain cells for this baby to survive. So no matter when you have your first child, there's a massive growth spurt of unbelievable. Oh no, it's such good news. That's what it felt like. To be honest. Yeah. Jenny only want to feel like. The hair got bigger. Yeah. It's like Jason Gorn. No, that's, wow, that's real. That's, yeah. I mean, the births like right here isn't in that way. You want to destroy it in your back to where you were. So do you get smarter, Rich? Kid, you have. No, apparently it's the first that's the urgent one. Yeah, it's urgent. Yeah. It's urgent. Yeah. It sounds like, I mean, doesn't say, it's very clear that when you were parenting your boys when they were children, it was clearly a lot of like humor and play in the house that would probably come from you. And that, like that's, or that would be incredible, but like a lot of people, a lot of parents, I know, like they don't, they're not playful or funny people. What if you don't have that in you? Well, I'm, I can tell you now that any parent who lightens up a bit will notice a definite shift in a home. So what's happened with kind of, you know, too much information is that parents want to be perfect. They don't want to get anything wrong. And you know, when I first started appearing on radio and Perth, you know, I'd get a mummoring out and saying, oh, so Maggie, how do I stop my two and a half year old having milked out? And I said, oh, no, that's actually a sign they're developing beautifully. That's exactly what they're supposed to be doing right now. Gosh, my kids are developing well. Yes. No, seriously, they're supposed to do that because they're not able to get everything they want. And that's because there were autonomy is growing and they haven't got the words and they've got to underdevelop brain. And so we're all done. And of course, what? So they were so serious about everything. And so I think I hope that's something I've brought to that. If you line up at any point, just when everything's getting a bit hot, go on and go on and wants to chase around the house or be a dinosaur or and you will shift because what we know, you can shift from cortisol, which is the stress hormone over into the endorphins of laughter and lightness really quickly by what we do. And what's really beautiful now is if you can keep that lightness, your boys are more likely to feel safe coming to you when they're really mucked up because you don't go into the, oh my God, it's catastrophic and this is serious and how could you think and then that shuts everything down? Yeah, and that's not my episode to give advice, but I also think on the playfulness thing, I think watch the episode of Bluey Octopus. Yes. Oh, okay. Yeah, I think that is unbelievable. Oh, you're like finding your way to play. Yeah. Bluey's added so much lightness to fans and imagine, you know, he's just no wonder he's been a big hit in America. That's all I would say. I think I'm trying my absolute hardest to turn up to parenting with the biggest heart I can and try and meet their little hearts and big growing hearts. And I think I'm doing okay, but one of the problems with that is that I feel the guilt and shame of mistakes. I feel more because I'm opening up to it. And I think I find myself, I mean, I don't think there's a day I can think of where when I'm lying in bed at the end of the day and I mean, how many good things that have happened, I don't fixate on the mistake I made or feel guilty about myself as a parent and the job I'm doing. Yeah. Parental guilt is a massive thing today, isn't it really? in the past we didn't actually have a lot of things to compare it to. We put it. and have the information. - No, that's so that overload, but also the sense that we are actually having less children, so we wanna make sure they all work out well. Parents being super hard on themselves is just really a kind of normal thing nowadays. So the mental load on women has become extremely excessive because they will ruminate on everything they didn't do all day. And last week and last year and five years' time. And so we've actually noticing and it really increasing burnout in women particularly. So the parent guilt bit, the very fact that you acknowledge that we mucked up, but I think you have to come back and land on what the research says. And that means you just have to be good enough 30 to 40% of the time. So the days that we aren't, that is actually normal humans raising little people who can be really annoying, messy, unpredictable, frightening, don't sleep. All of that is completely normal. And so there's no perfect in parenting, never has been and never will be. So we can always go and just pretend we've got guilt on our hands and go and give them a good wash with lots of shower gel and wash it down the drain hole because there's always tomorrow. And that's the thing I think that we can drop the guilt when we know tomorrow I'm gonna see if I can go better. - It's a great point and to think that, if I look at my day, did I do it well at least 30% of the time? I probably did. - Yes. - Yeah, it's such an additional thing. - Definitely did. I'm seeing you be a sex. - Yeah. - Anyone on Trump's ladies, I'll fuck over. Yeah, that's definitely not. - I also parent not on Trump's. - It's my, it's my, 'cause I filmed it. I filmed him on the trampoline, jumping in a circle with five kids singing. And I still, it's my kids favorite video to watch 'cause they can see the pain in his eyes. So those mock up moments and that's what I share a lot of them because people think, oh, she must be amazing. I show this picture, this gorgeous handsome boy is, you know, as man and they go, wow, she did a great job. No, I didn't. I slammed their fingers and car doors and said, what did you do that for? I forgot, I forgot the wrong assembly. I failed the worst thing you can do as a woman nowadays and I forgot book week. I left one at the pool, a pool check, I thought Dad had him, Dad thought I had him. And so no one does it perfect, right? And when we own up to those things, we all realize, hang on a minute, yeah. That's why we kind of need the village to bring me kid home after you've forgotten them. I threw out this entire conversation, I've no doubt the majority of people out there are going, for example, with the Rooster's V-Lams going, yep, that's my son's, this my son's that. And yep, I see my son in that teenage. I do feel like there might be a group of people going, I don't know, and where my son fits. And that's, I certainly put myself in that category, having an autistic child. And I would expand that to say, not just autistic but neurodivergent kids. But for me, that's our situation I'm thinking about our child going, I actually don't know. And because of that, I don't know if a lot of the stuff then applies to them because it's been a, this is something I knew nothing about three and a half years ago. Now I know, I wouldn't say everything about it, but I know a lot more about it. And I'm always, when I'm listening to parenting experts or I'm always thinking, how does this apply to my child? So I'm just wondering, neurodiversity, most particularly for me, autism, but these things you've talked about today. - Oh, there's no question that temperament can play in that space, but in terms of neurodivergence, there is only one autistic child that came in your family that is like yours. So your job is to work out what works for your child. Regardless of what everybody tells us. I think that's the thing, the same with boys as well, is that sometimes I find parents think, oh, I'll give them love how I like to get love, but that's not how they like to get love. So the languages of love can be really helpful at working out, how to connect with any child. So my oldest is an hugger, and I couldn't wait to get a baby, I could hug the hell out of, and that was really hard for me. Even today I'm lucky if we take the piss out of each other about it, can I get a sideways one? (laughing) Just give me half your shoulder. (laughing) So I think that the additional challenge in, the kids who are wired differently, and they're all wired in very special ways, is that our challenge is to see how does the world turn up for them, and how much can we influence the environment, still knowing that neurodivergent kids who feel safe and securely attached are going to do better anyway, and no matter how hard that is, yeah. And it's interesting 'cause I had, I worked with quite a lot of boys with ADHD, and it's interesting 'cause I listened to your episode on that, you and it was interesting 'cause, you know how you weren't picked up, and part of the reason, if I can explain this in a little way, is that we now know from polyvagal theory that there's ways we cope when we regulate or not regulate. So the green zone means we really beautifully regulate, when we play, and we can learn, and we can do everything. And then the red zone's the one when we fire it up, and that's the fight one we know, but the blue zone is the freeze one, the flight one, and the way you describe yourself in classrooms, is just you were in the free end, it looked like you're a really well-behaved little lad. You know, you were in an equally high state of stress as the ones in the red zone, and then, so at one point I had a parent, had a number of them message me saying, "Oh, they think I need to send my kid off "in a tentative ADHD's daydreaming, not trying." And I got all fired up 'cause we still sort of thought there's, you know, they're just cruising in their fine, and so I did a quick video, and that's one of, every now and then, when I do a rant, it goes crazy all over the world. That one did. And I was explaining that that is equally as highly distressful for that particular, and there were all boys, as it is for those who are acting out, and we need to work out how do we, you know, that environment become safer, but also that relationship needs to come safer. So I had this beautiful boy coming to me, he was definitely well-ed up ADHD, and, you know, very impulsive, anyway, the deputy principal had called him up and shamed him in front of a group of his mates, and it's one of the things we keep saying, if you're gonna have to have a chat to a boy about something about their behaviour, do it one-on-one, you know, respectfully and quietly, without anyone hearing it, 'cause that doubles his shame. And he got so fired up about it, he wrote graffiti on the deputy principal's car, with his name. (laughing) - He was portrayed. (laughing) - They'll never find me. (laughing) - I can't see you, can't. And then I had to see you would convince him he was still a decent human, you know, if we could get through that. - I think one thing I find interesting as a parent is sometimes doing the inverted commas wrong thing gets the immediate result. In the moment of what you want, so if it's to stop a behaviour or something like that. And so then I find myself getting, and I know it's wrong, but I find myself repeating that behaviour because it worked. Does that make sense? - It's a specific example, sorry. - Yeah, so, hey, let's go back to the biting thing. So being bitten by a yellow, really loudly, the child stops, looks upset, but their biting has at least stopped. Now I know that was the wrong response, but now I've sort of conditioned myself into thinking that, oh, that worked. Like there's a bit of my brain that goes, that worked, so in desperate times, I'll pull that one out even though I don't want to. I find it really hard to avoid falling into the mistakes that work, but there's such a, I guess there's such a cost, long term, of continuing to make the mistakes. I don't know what my question is. (laughing) How do I. - Am I alone enough? - Yeah, I guess how do you resist the, how do you resist the easy old method that we were taught as kids? - So the imprints from our child, they're massive. And, you know, I think, you know, we all know that you guys are having moments of therapy, but sometimes those voices just appear out of anywhere, and it's usually when we are stressed, and we are already in a semi-disregulated state. So the more calmer and grounded we are as humans, the less likely we go to those places. The first thing is to make sure you forgive yourself later, 'cause this is exactly what's always happened, you know. I share a story about when, 'cause I was hit a lot as a little girl, 'cause I was the noisy loud one who wouldn't do what she was told, and all those sorts of things. Only two in our family were hit a lot. That was me and my older brother. He became an amazing emergency doctor anyway. And it was only mum, 'cause that was her family. That's exactly what happened. She came from a family of 12. And so at one point, my oldest was just pushing all my buttons at one point, no, I swung back to Hittie and I caught myself mid-flight and went, "Whoa!" Now that's not who I'm gonna be. And that started a whole journey of therapy for me exploring the reaction. So I think it's really important that there's a difference between responding and reacting. And my only tip to you is, as you feel yourself getting, you can see what's escalating. It's kind of going up the mountain. It's to really, that's when you take your steps. That's when I'm gonna take a few breaths and I'm gonna step outside for a moment and I'll come back in because you will more likely respond than react. And it is just as simple as taking a few deep breaths. There were times, you know, the boys were like, I don't know that when everything got really fired up sometimes I'd go for a walk. Because it's just what I do and I'm wired up and I don't talk about it. I go for a walk sometimes. And so if I'm going for 10 minutes, they were going, "Few, wasn't she bad?" I'm going for 20, they sweep the floor. If I'm gone for half an hour, they'll pack the dishwasher. They reckon if I go a log and that, they'll pack the house. But I take responsibility for my hot feelings and I deal with them. And I've said to parents, "If you feel yourself getting cooked in the bear bite, you know, you know, you're starting to escalate. Put your hand up and go, "Excuse me, hold on. I'm starting to get really, really stressed. I'm going to take myself in my bedroom and I'm going to calm myself down so I can come out in a moment." You go in, lock the door and you've kept some high quality fruit and nut chocolate in there. It's really good. You have to scomp some of that, take a few breaths, regroup. And then you'll come out to be the parent you really want to be. Now, what is your kid saying? You've seen you recognize that I'm getting dysregulated and so you're actually modeling to them. It's normal for us to lose our schmick, but that I'm taking responsibility. And that's the scariest part of parenting to realise that 92% of what your children will do is because of what you do, not what you say. Damn it. So it's the same thing. It's what are you modeling to your kids? I had a terrible moment yesterday that I just would give anything to go back in time and change. We had told the kids I was going to take the three of them to a cafe, which for me as a kid was just, we didn't do much. We had been so exciting and I just thought that would be so happy to do it. And all of a sudden they had decided it was a terrible thing to do. And they wouldn't stop fighting and then I couldn't add some neurodiversity stuff, make it extra challenging. And then I just said the worst thing. I said, I said, "Sunday, it happened quite loudly, Gelled. What is wrong with you guys?" Yeah. I felt like such an awful thing to say because I really was looking at our neurodiverse child and I said it. And then that child just looked so sad for the next couple of hours, like so sad and said quite a few times because justice is a very big thing for this child. I actually wasn't doing anything. I was sitting on the couch and I was ready to go. Why would you look at me and say, "What's wrong with me?" And just kept asking me over and over and I said, "I didn't actually mean to." And they said, "But you looked at me, you're looking at me. I didn't do anything wrong." It was the other two. And I just, I don't know, but that thing of like, I just wish so much. I had put my hand up and said, "I'm back in a second." And just come back in two minutes because it's like the thing I think of is the guns they used to use back in the olden days where you had to like, stoke the gun pattern and spin out. Just loading it and then by the top time people were like, "No, I'm not that angry anymore." So my top tip to anyone has always is I didn't go to a coffee shop for a very long time. That's why we wanted my first was dunking. And the second thing is that if I needed the boys to be able to really be trustworthy to behave really well for 20 minutes, first thing I did was run the heck out of them, the gun out of the motor, whether it was a park or make them right bikes for 20 more shoot hoops. They had to eat a sandwich in the bus on the way to the event and I would get these immaculately well-behaved boys for 20 minutes. But as soon as one of them starts to wriggle, I'm out of there. Because I know they're not going to handle it beyond then. And they gradually get better at it. But you know, like sometimes we take them to environments they will not be okay in. And sometimes that's where there's China. So don't take them into big department stores. Because I like picking stuff up and it could drop and then you look really bad. Yeah, thank God for clicking collecters all I can say. I just feel like, I mean, there's so much, so many things to say right now as we sort of wrap up the episode. But like one of them is keep talking. Well, I feel I'm feeling the urge to make this 178 part series. And we still wouldn't cover everything. It's just you're just incredible. Like I would really like saying you're a national treasure is almost like if like as an understatement, I just feel like, I don't know, for me personally you've made me want to get home and be my boys. That's what I feel like doing right now, having spent time with you. And I'm sure everyone listening right now feels a similar regardless of where they find themselves at the level of distress and stress for the parenting. I feel like you, you, I don't know, you made me feel like I just want to be my boys at moment. And that's a beautiful, that's impossible at the moment. So well done. Yeah. What's really, you know, because I was just this little girl that came from the farm and then I was in Canada last year and I was at the Vancouver Aquarium because I like otters. And the otters, the ones that hold hands? Yeah, and late babies on them. Oh, I mean, anyway, this lady's reached out with a Canadian accent. She said, Maggie, Dan, I love you. You changed my life. I used to hate these little poops now. I love them. She's got three little boys. And I held her hand and looked at her and we both burst into tears and I thought, that happened. And then I've just come back from a trip to Romania where I spoke with them at a big parenting conference. And with Dr. Dan Segal, who's I've been admiring for years. And I had all this Romanian women doing the exact same thing because that's been translated to Romanian. And to realize that, you know, I could have done that from a little kid on the farm who was a annoying little rat who I'm hanging out with a dad. It's pretty mind-blowing. Yeah, it's a bit unfair though. Your brain developed when you were 22, 23. If you enjoyed this episode and won a little more, you might enjoy our subscriber only apps available on Patreon and Apple Podcasts. If you won a little more but don't want to pay anymore, then you can join our newsletter at theimperfects.com.au. And while you're there, you'll be able to see the names and faces of all the incredible people who helped make this show. A show made on the lands of the Warrondry, Woverong people. And we power respects to elders, past and present. The Imperfects is not a licensed mental health service and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, treatment or assessment. The advice given in this episode is generally nature, but if you're struggling, please see a healthcare professional or call Lifeline. I'm 13-11-14.