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Speaker 1: This Happy Families podcast with doctor Justin Coilson, where Luke

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Speaker 1: and Susie parents of three little boys, and this is

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Speaker 1: the podcast for those of us who are time poor

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Speaker 1: parents but just want answers.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 3: Thank goodness for our parenting expert because we've had a doozy.

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Speaker 3: You have a question come to the show that we're

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Speaker 3: going to get into answer because I can't.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got a seven year old who's been egged

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Speaker 1: on to do something wrong and a parent who seems

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Speaker 1: that it's end on how to actually deal with the scenario.

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Speaker 1: It's going to be hard for you to answer this one,

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Speaker 1: but as the parenting expert, you'll give it a go.

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Speaker 1: I've got a feeling we're going to be talking about

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Speaker 1: the definition of discipline in just to start us off.

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Speaker 2: Just have I done that many conversations for you in

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Speaker 2: a while?

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Speaker 1: It has been, but it's a wonderful foundation of everything

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Speaker 1: that you've brought into our world is to really work

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Speaker 1: through what this is. Because this is the opening line

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Speaker 1: of a question that's come to the show, let's look

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Speaker 1: at it.

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Speaker 3: I'm really struggling with discipline my seven year old seven

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Speaker 3: year old seven years old egged on by a friend

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Speaker 3: image some private property. Recently was a sign outside of

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Speaker 3: a gym, and I was so shocked that he would

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Speaker 3: do that. Our usual discipline tactics are withholding his favorite

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Speaker 3: things like weekend, I've had time or similar. But I

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Speaker 3: feel like nothing's working.

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Speaker 4: That's because that kind of discipline doesn't really all it does. Okay,

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Speaker 4: so let's go over the very brief summary of this.

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Speaker 4: I've certainly shared this on the show many many times.

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Speaker 4: Discipline and punishment are different things. If you look up

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Speaker 4: in the dictionary today, disciplone means punish, But historically discipline

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Speaker 4: has always meant to teach, or to guide, or to instruct.

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Speaker 4: It's about showing somebody the way to be a disciple.

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Speaker 4: To be disciplined is to follow a path. Punishment means

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Speaker 4: that you hurt somebody, You make them pay a price

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Speaker 4: for something they've done that you don't like.

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Speaker 2: In other words, punishment is all.

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Speaker 4: About using your power to inflict pain and to hurt.

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Speaker 4: Discipline is all about using your relationship to influence, guide,

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Speaker 4: and help. If I was to summarize, do you want

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Speaker 4: to hurt your child or do you want to help

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Speaker 4: your child when they start to struggle with peer pressure

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Speaker 4: or making poor choices.

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Speaker 1: Okay, this is the logic that I think has really

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Speaker 1: helped us many times over countless examples of really trying

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Speaker 1: to work with frustrating children who just continuously do the

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Speaker 1: opposite to what you ask them to do, despite how

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Speaker 1: many times you've sort of had that conversation.

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Speaker 3: Let's look at this specific scenario well in concept, because

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Speaker 3: I'm sure many parents have been through this where their

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Speaker 3: child has behaved in a way that they just weren't

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Speaker 3: raised to be. They've done something they you know, oh

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Speaker 3: my gosh, I can't believe my child did this. So

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Speaker 3: how then if it feels like what you're doing isn't working,

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Speaker 3: then what do you do about a behavior that has

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Speaker 3: already been done? So there's been a removal of time here.

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Speaker 4: Sure we need to talk about what's happened in this

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Speaker 4: specific scenario. Okay, So often when our children with other kids,

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Speaker 4: especially as they start to get older normally seven's a

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Speaker 4: little bit young. Normally for about eight or nine, they

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Speaker 4: start to be aware of what's going on around and

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Speaker 4: they want to have popularity. They want what's like just

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Speaker 4: call social capital, and so they'll do well, there's no

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Speaker 4: other way to say it. They'll do dumb things because

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Speaker 4: they think that they're going to get kudos. They think

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Speaker 4: they're going to develop some level of capital within the group,

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Speaker 4: so they'll become popular. Because everyone wants to be popular, right,

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Speaker 4: Our kids just want to not all of them, but

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Speaker 4: many of them want to be in the in crowd.

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Speaker 4: So what we've got here as a child who is

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Speaker 4: behaving in a way that is not consistent with the

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Speaker 4: values that he's been taught because he wants something from

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Speaker 4: his friends. Embarrassing story. When I was about fourteen fifteen

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Speaker 4: years old, my friends came over one night. I used

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Speaker 4: to be like a really competitive swimmer. I was swimming

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Speaker 4: ten sessions a week, two hours per session. I was

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Speaker 4: swimming the dozens of killer meters a week. It was

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Speaker 4: ridiculous how much I was in the pool, which meant

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Speaker 4: that I could consume a whole lot of food, and

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Speaker 4: I had a really healthy appetite, was strong and fit

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Speaker 4: and whatever. My friends came over this night. I just

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Speaker 4: finished a two hour swimming session. I think I've swum

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Speaker 4: six or seven k's in that two hours. I did

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Speaker 4: my big bowl of spaghetti bolon A's and one of

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Speaker 4: the guys says, to me, Hey, justin have you ever

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Speaker 4: done the milk challenge? I said, what's the milk challenge? Said,

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Speaker 4: You've got to drink two liters of milk in I

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Speaker 4: can't remember. It was five or ten minutes, whatever it was.

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Speaker 4: It was pretty quick for two litters of milk. I

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Speaker 4: looked at him my laughs. I'm like, that's so easy.

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Speaker 4: Bear in mind, I've just eaten spaghetti bolo aize and

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Speaker 4: it was a lot because I used to really pack

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Speaker 4: it away. I've opened up the fridge. There's two liters

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Speaker 4: of strawberry milk.

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Speaker 2: I've said, watch this.

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Speaker 4: He's pressed go on the stop Watch and I had

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Speaker 4: to gone in about three and a half minutes.

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Speaker 2: I mean, it just gone.

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Speaker 4: A few years later, I'm about eighteen or nineteen. Some

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Speaker 4: friends are getting together on the weekend.

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Speaker 2: We catch up.

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Speaker 4: One of them says, hey, I thought we should do

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Speaker 4: the milk challenge today. I'm like, what's the milk I know,

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Speaker 4: I said that the milk Challenge, that's lame. I did

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Speaker 4: it when I was fourteen. He looked at me incredulous.

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Speaker 4: You've done the milk challenge. Uh huh, You've drunk four

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Speaker 4: liters of milk in an hour. I said, oh no,

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Speaker 4: I did two in a few minutes, and he said,

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Speaker 4: anyone can do two.

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Speaker 2: The four leaders is where it's at.

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Speaker 4: And so that morning we all went down to the

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Speaker 4: shops and we bought four liters of milk each.

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Speaker 2: We set the stop watch.

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Speaker 4: And you know, when that quantity of milk leaves your

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Speaker 4: system via your mouth, after your body simply rejects it

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Speaker 4: and says, I can't hold it anymore, it is extraord

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Speaker 4: What we saw was I can't believe I'm sharing this.

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Speaker 2: I'm so sorry it is. I'll stop there.

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Speaker 4: The point that I want to make is this though,

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Speaker 4: what teenage boy I mean, teenage boys are sensation seeking,

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Speaker 4: their risk taking.

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Speaker 2: They're the ones that are more likely to do this.

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Speaker 4: What teenage boy has ever been home alone, open the

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Speaker 4: fridge on Saturday morning, gone four leaders of milk?

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Speaker 2: I wonder, I wonder, that's not what happens.

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Speaker 4: We only do this stuff when our friends are around.

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Speaker 4: So we've got a little boy who's doing something that

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Speaker 4: he knows is not right, and he's in conflict with

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Speaker 4: his values.

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Speaker 2: Because his friends are there.

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Speaker 4: That's the context, and we need to take that into

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Speaker 4: consideration when we work out how we can discipline. That

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Speaker 4: is how we can help him to make better decisions

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Speaker 4: next time. So when we rely on punishment, what we're

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Speaker 4: essentially doing is we're being the police. And you know

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Speaker 4: what happens when you drive down the road and you

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Speaker 4: see the police, You get the brakes, you slow down,

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Speaker 4: the front of the car goes.

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Speaker 2: About good emotion, no, not at all, and then once.

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Speaker 4: The police are out of your rearview mirror, chances are,

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Speaker 4: if you're like most motorists, you're speed up. I'm not

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Speaker 4: suggesting everyone's out there speeding like crazy, but most people

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Speaker 4: are less vigilant of their speed. They know that they

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Speaker 4: can get away with a bit, and so many of

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Speaker 4: them will. It's the same with behavior when we're using punishment.

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Speaker 4: Our kids hit the brakes when we're around, but once

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Speaker 4: we're not there, they know that they can. The police

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Speaker 4: aren't watching. In other words, the being externally regulated. I

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Speaker 4: want my children, and I know you want your children

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Speaker 4: to be internally regulated. That is, they want to do

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Speaker 4: the right thing because it's the right thing, and they're

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Speaker 4: deciding they're not doing it just because they're being watched.

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Speaker 4: The way we get there is that we use my

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Speaker 4: three ease of effective discipline. So we've got the seven

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Speaker 4: year old who's destroyed the sign because he's been egged.

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Speaker 2: On by some friends.

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Speaker 3: So that's really the behavior we're concerned about. It's how

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Speaker 3: easily influenced you?

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Speaker 4: So how do we help him? Because that's actually the question.

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Speaker 4: The question isn't how do I hurt him, how do

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Speaker 4: I punish him, how do I teach him a lesson?

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Speaker 4: The question is how do I help him to learn

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Speaker 4: to be the kind of human doesn't believe that it's

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Speaker 4: okay to destroy signs? And the way we do that

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Speaker 4: is we do a couple of things. First of all,

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Speaker 4: we explore. We explore how it was feeling. How did

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Speaker 4: it feel when you were with all your friends and

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Speaker 4: they were saying to do it? Did you feel like

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Speaker 4: it was the right thing or the wrong thing? What

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Speaker 4: was going on for you? Now, the questions will vary

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Speaker 4: depending on the age of the child. A seven year old,

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Speaker 4: we're kind of going to make it a bit easy

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Speaker 4: for them, but we want to say, how did it

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Speaker 4: feel after.

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Speaker 2: You did it? What were you thinking? Did you feel

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Speaker 2: good afterwards? Did you feel nervous afterwards?

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Speaker 4: Were you're scared later because you knew you might get

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Speaker 4: in trouble for this. We want to explore deeply, not

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Speaker 4: just superficially. We explore, you've heard me say a few times.

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Speaker 4: We explore, We don't explode. We get curious, not furious.

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Speaker 4: We understand, not reprimand the idea here is that we

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Speaker 4: want our child to know that we're just trying to

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Speaker 4: understand how they're feeling, what's going on, and what really

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Speaker 4: sat behind that behavior. Then we explain, We say, you

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Speaker 4: know what, there were there a few things going on

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Speaker 4: here that we're wrong. I can tell you what they are,

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Speaker 4: and so you might or you might instead say why

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Speaker 4: don't you tell me what you think went wrong here?

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Speaker 4: Why don't you explain it to me. The more they're explaining,

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Speaker 4: by the way, the more their mouth is moving, the

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Speaker 4: more their brain has to move, which means that they're

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Speaker 4: going to learn and internalize the most important part of this.

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Speaker 4: Once we've explored and explained, though, is that we empower

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Speaker 4: our child. So we say to the seven year old, Okay,

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Speaker 4: well what do you think we need to do now

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Speaker 4: to fix this and to make it right now? Our

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Speaker 4: child is unlikely to say, well, Mum, well dad, I

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Speaker 4: think we should go down and apologize, and I should

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Speaker 4: do some work to make sure that we can fix

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Speaker 4: things up at the gym where I destroyed the sign.

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Speaker 4: Seven year old boys are not really inclined to go

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Speaker 4: and make restitution whatever they recommend. Ideally, we're going to

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Speaker 4: be able to say that's a great idea. If they

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Speaker 4: make a dumb decision, if they shrug their shoulders say munlu,

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Speaker 4: you say, well, something needs to be done. We need

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Speaker 4: to work out how we can do, how we can

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Speaker 4: fix things, and how we can make sure this doesn't

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Speaker 4: happen in the future. So what you're looking for ultimately

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Speaker 4: is the opportunity to guide them towards some sort of restoration,

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Speaker 4: to fix up what they've done. But there's a second

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Speaker 4: part of the conversation, and that is, next time you're

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Speaker 4: in this situation, what do you think would be a

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Speaker 4: better response?

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Speaker 2: How can I help you? How can I guide you?

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Speaker 4: How can I teach you to respond better when all

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Speaker 4: of your friends are pressuring you?

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Speaker 2: As parents, is our.

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Speaker 4: Job to socialize our kids, and the best way we

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Speaker 4: can do that is to help them finances within themselves.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, great, wonderful. It's lots to explore, explain, empower. Doctor

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Speaker 1: Justin Wilson, Thank you so much for hell.

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Speaker 2: Thanks guys.

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Speaker 3: You can find more information on all of Justin's books, programs,

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Speaker 3: and podcasts at Happy Families dot com dot au. But

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Speaker 3: if you'd like to find out how to have Justin

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Speaker 3: come and speak at your school, organization, or event, go

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Speaker 3: to Justinkilson dot com