#89 - Developing a practical and intentional approach to screen time with Dr. Amy King

Dr. Amy (00:00:00):

If you haven't watched Halo on a video screen or how enticing Ms. Rachel is, my goodness, all the dopamine response your kids are getting, that's what you're competing with. And so I better get out and learn how to change or add free. I don't even know why I'm doing the free on in the truck to be honest, but I better get out and be interested in it because what I'm saying to my kid is I'm interested in you. I'm interested in connection, and that's what I want people to hear over and over again is that there's a time and space for screens. They're not going anywhere, but just be intentional about it and know that every time you're here or here or looking at a screen, it's interfering with an opportunity for connection, a truly embodied connection.

Joey Odom (00:00:48):

Welcome back to the Aro podcast. Hey, it's your good friend, Joey Odom, co-founder of Aro. And if you're here, you have heard of Aro, you have some level of familiarity, but have you experienced Aro? You can for the first time ever, you can experience Aro for free for seven days. All you have to do is go download the Aro app and you can try Aro for seven days and see if this is right for you. If you've struggled with screen time in your family, we believe this is the answer for you, but you get to figure it out for yourself for seven days. So just go as you're listening to this, put it on pause, download the Aro app, go through onboarding and experience this for seven days for yourself today on the Aro podcast. I did not know what I was getting myself into with Dr. Amy King.

(00:01:32):

My goodness, I feel like I have just learned so much as a parent in how I raise my kids who are now 14 and 16. Dr. Amy just wrote a book on behalf of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Dr. Amy trains, doctors and clinicians in how to deal with families and create connected families. So that's a long way to say that she's kind of a big deal that people look to her on how to create connected families. So this book that she wrote, it's for practitioners and clinicians, things like that. So it's not like a self-help book or something like that. It is rich with medical data on how to create connected families and she is just wonderful. But for all of that, for as smart as she is, what she brings us today is extremely practical tips and tools and guidance and principles on how to raise connected family, really raise resilient kids, which comes from connection.

(00:02:26):

And we complicate things so much as parents and we want to try so many things. Dr. Amy will distill this down into here's what you need to do today. Listen to the entire thing. At the end, she gives an answer, here's what you got to do, and it's brilliant. She tells a story about her son changing the Freon in his truck. It's probably three quarters of the way through. It's a great story and it's one of those moments whether your kid is two years old or 17 years old, you're probably going to relate to, so this is for parents of all ages. If you feel like you've gone too far and it's too late, she tells you it's not. She tells you what to do now and if your kids are young, what an opportunity to get this right. We also, of course talk a little bit of technology and the impact that our use of technology as parents, our use of phones that impact on our kids and what we can do about it.

(00:03:16):

I'm so grateful for Dr. Amy for being here. And what I would love for you to do is go subscribe to her newsletter. So go to dr amy llc.com. Doctor is spelled out, Dr. Amy A-M-Y-L-L c.com. One more time, dr amy llc.com. Go subscribe to her newsletter. It is wonderful for parents if you are a parent for now, I want you to sit back, relax, enjoy my great conversation with the brilliant Dr. Amy King gang. Today we welcome a champion of families, a king of a doctor and a queen of acronyms, whether it's A-C-E-P-C-E-E-R-H-R-H-H or SSNR. She sprouted with the corn in Iowa. Took flight as a blue jay in Omaha, bloomed as a doctor in Bloomington and now does her best to keep Portland sane. She likes pizza with chocolate milk and Doritos with a game of phase 10. She's the wife of a farmer and the mom of a cowboy and a corvallis beaver. She's a swifty, but she has no problems with champagne cocktails. She takes on hard topics like trauma that makes it go down smooth. Just like a Willamette Valley pinot, she fills her almond poppy seed cake with raspberry, and she's about to fill your brain with brilliance. So whether your feelings are primary, secondary, or yoki today, we've got together, we've got this with today's guest on the Aro podcast, Dr. Amy King. Dr. Amy, great to see you.

Dr. Amy (00:04:50):

Oh my gosh, I am laughing and crying at that introduction. It is the best by far I've ever had.

Joey Odom (00:04:58):

I did. I got to be honest. I was saying Willamette wrong. I was saying it Willamette. So I had to do a little search and get the pronunciation right. So some gentleman in a vineyard on a video I just watched said, it's Willamette. Did I do that right?

Dr. Amy (00:05:14):

You did it perfectly. We all do the same thing when we move out here, we say Willamette.

Joey Odom (00:05:20):

Well, it is so good to see you. We've known each other for several months. You have written a recent book that we were saying off air. This is like a real book. I want you to tell a little bit of the story, but the American Academy of Pediatrics has asked you to write this book and it's all about and what you do, you train doctors on and clinicians and practitioners on treating families and helping treat trauma and resilience. But I would love just a quick little, tell us how this all came about. What an amazing and what an aid to people who are out there interacting with families directly.

Dr. Amy (00:06:01):

Oh, well, thank you so much. Yeah, it's been an honor to write this book with the American Academy of Pediatrics with my co-author Dr. RJ Gillespie, who's a practicing pediatrician. The origin story really happened about 10 years ago when a group of pediatricians approached me after hearing Nadine Bur Harris's Ted talk around adverse childhood experiences and said, gosh, stress and trauma are happening to kids and as pediatricians, we don't want to know just what trauma is. We want to know what to do about it. And so we began partnering to figure out ways that we could strengthen families at every well-child check at every interaction that they had as clinicians to really be strength-based and build those buffering relationships, those ss andrs that you were referring to in the introduction, safe, stable, nurturing relationships that kids and families need to really thrive. And the beauty and the inspiration behind this book is that we really wanted to create a blueprint. We know clinicians, early childhood educators, home visitors, people who are child and family facing professionals already do so much guidance around caregiving, and we wanted to give them really practical tools that we knew from the research would decrease stress and trauma for them.

Joey Odom (00:07:19):

Well, so for anybody listening, this is a book. It really, it is for clinicians, for people who are dealing with families. So for people, I just want to hit this at the top for people who are dealing with families in a clinical setting, this is a great guide for you to do this and the purpose for the listener, if you're not a clinician, I had love to go into this such an expert on it, is what are we as parents? I think a big question we all have as parents is am I doing this right or what should I be doing? And so we'll go through a couple. I'd like to just maybe set some foundation to begin because you do so much trauma-based care, will you help us with some kind of foundational definitions When we talk about, and this is not all about trauma. We'll get into a bunch more just on parenting, but I love will you set the stage for us? How would you define trauma and to help us have a baseline for this discussion.

Dr. Amy (00:08:11):

Sure, sure. So there's a lot of intersections of trauma. There's individual trauma that a person experiences, and it's really their experience with an event. So something that might feel traumatizing to you, may not to me and vice versa. And so we want to just be sensitive to the fact that if you say, I had a car accident and I'm like, oh, that's not too bad. I've had a car accident before. It's really about your experience with the event, not necessarily just the event itself. Interesting. Yeah, and related to that is complex trauma. So traumas that occur to a child or an individual over the course of their lifetime with little to no access to resources or support. Really it's being alone with the trauma and it happening over the course of a child's lifetime. Think about things like physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, emotional harm that creates complexity. There's a lot of other intersections of trauma that can compound it as your listeners can probably guess, historical traumas and collective traumas and intergenerational traumas. But for the purpose of this discussion, we're talking about traumas that occur to an individual or child that are about their experience and often can be complex because kids are in caregiving spaces.

Joey Odom (00:09:36):

As you contrast that with an adverse childhood experience, what is the difference between trauma and an adverse childhood experience?

Dr. Amy (00:09:45):

Those of us that are experts in trauma are looking at those adverse childhood experiences, which are traumas. Okay,

Joey Odom (00:09:53):

They are okay, that's a subset of trauma

Dr. Amy (00:09:54):

Guide. They're a type of trauma and what we refer to them as is intra familial trauma. So they're traumas that are occurring in those first 18 years of a child's life that importantly interfere with the child's ability to create those attachment connected relationships. So we call those traumas that interfere with critical caregiving years when kids are supposed to be figuring out who do I attach to? Who is my connected person? Where am I safe? And when there are adversities, those early childhood adverse childhood experiences, those are the traumas that interfere with critical caregiving.

Joey Odom (00:10:34):

And so as we think about trauma, and again just to make it basic for the listener or maybe even for your host here, when you think about that, what would be, and again, you think about traumas, you mentioned some physical abuse, sexual abuse, some of those things that would be clearly defined as traumas, but again, you kind of alluded to it, there's maybe a little bit of a sliding scale on what that experience was like to that person. So what would be an example, maybe like an everyday, I don't know if this is even a thing, but an everyday trauma that you may not immediately classify as a trauma for somebody, for a child, for example, I guess we'll just stick with children.

Dr. Amy (00:11:11):

So the National Child Traumatic Stress Network actually looked at those adversities, those adverse child experiences and said, hang on, there are other traumas that kids experience in their daily life, bullying, racism, growing up in a war torn environment. There are also just what we call acute or single event traumas like painful medical procedure or being part of violence at a school, for instance. So it's not so much that we think about gradations of trauma or different types of traumas being worse than others. It's more so traumas that aren't counterbalanced by having those safe, stable, nurturing relationships. There's a famous quote by Gabor Mate that says, trauma becomes trauma when it's experienced alone. So when kids don't have that connected safe adult relationship, that's what creates complexity in the trauma. It's much more tolerable for children to experience any type of adversity when they have a connected relationship with just one other adult in their life.

Joey Odom (00:12:22):

Yeah. Does it become hard for, I want to think how to answer this because I don't want to mitigate adversity or trauma, but it does feel sometimes as we've grown more coddled in a way, and again, I'm not saying that this is going to sound maybe more disparaging than, I mean it is, as we've grown more coddled, it's almost as if our threshold, and this maybe will segue into resilience, but this is that our threshold for adversity is lower where we may consider what would've been just kind of an everyday adversity or maybe a difficulty or a discomfort even that it may all of a sudden be experienced as if it's traumatic. Does

Dr. Amy (00:13:04):

That make

Joey Odom (00:13:04):

Sense?

Dr. Amy (00:13:04):

Yeah. I mean, look at some of the books that are out right now that are really receiving attention, coddling of the American Mind and the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Het. Certainly there's evidence to believe that kids have less threshold for tolerating discomfort, and so we really want to differentiate something that we can't endure alone without those stable nurturing relationships versus just feeling uncomfortable with something. Right?

Joey Odom (00:13:33):

Yes,

Dr. Amy (00:13:33):

We can do hard things. Kids can tolerate quite a bit of distress. Feeling uncomfortable is not something that we should avoid. Being alone with a complex trauma is not something we want to forego by ourselves.

Joey Odom (00:13:49):

I love that distinction. So it's almost as if, and I want to take this into resilience. It's almost so the safe, stable, nurturing relationship that almost seems like that's the vitamin, that's the preventative medicine as you, because, and you say this, and I love this, is that traumas happen. It's almost inevitable traumas are going to happen, but what you say, so you have the safe, stable, nurturing relationship, but then on the other side of it, the resilience is what helps decrease the effects of trauma. So like you said, it's like the trauma being lived over and over again, but when you have resilience, you're able to mitigate those effects. So this to me feels very, very hopeful knowing that trauma is going to happen, there's no way we're going to avoid anything about it, but by mitigating, you can mitigate its effects by having some resilience. So will you take us into resilience and what is resilience? We know the word, but what is that and how can that mitigate those effects of the adversity that we may face and the traumatic events we'll face?

Dr. Amy (00:14:52):

I mean, this is where I love to talk and this sweet spot of hope, right? Resilience is the ability to overcome or face a hardship or challenge and grow from it versus being kind of taken back or defeated by it. We are all born with the capacity to be resilient, all of us. Here's the thing that I think people get mixed up with, and I think the word resilience has gotten a bad rap. So resilience is not just sticktuitiveness or perseverance or grit. Resilience is about relational health. We only learn to be confident and connected and contributing members when we look at the assets of what is resilient to be challenged by those adversities versus defeated by them to overcome things. We learn how to be resilient in relationships.

(00:15:52):

So there was an incredible study that was done, you alluded to it before, the positive childhood experience study. And this has been duplicated in lots of different spaces across lots of different cultures, across lots of different socioeconomic statuses. And what it looks at is, gosh, if we know these adversities happen and we can predict long-term difficulty in health, is it possible that those can be mitigated through positive experiences? And so when these authors looked at the positive experiences, being able to talk to your family about feelings, feeling a sense of belonging in high school, feeling connected to your community and culture, having just one adult outside of your family take genuine interest in you. When we look at those themes that we know mitigate stress and trauma for kids, they all go back to connection. Connected relationships is what create resilient children. So resilience, this ability to overcome and manage challenges, as I mentioned, is taught only through relationships.

Joey Odom (00:17:03):

And I want to, again, I'm being careful, as I told you before, I am clearly intellectually outmatched here, but to take it down to the maybe an everyday example, one question I have is that I've, an argument I feel like recently has been made that it's almost like as someone expresses their feelings and puts words to how they feel, what that can do sometimes is get you stuck in rumination where you're just so, it's almost as if you're feeling your feelings and then telling you that they are the absolute truth versus saying, I feel this way however I need to progress past this. I dunno if that kind of statement makes sense. But I'm curious as people, as a child like you, if they have connected relationships and they can identify, Hey, I'm feeling this way, what's that fine line between sitting in it and ruminating and letting it become true to you or maybe even become your identity versus experiencing that, feeling that and then knowing how to process that and not let it define you?

Dr. Amy (00:18:08):

Yeah, I mean, let's just differentiate feeling and being

(00:18:13):

Right. We can feel lots of ways. That doesn't mean it is how we are. It doesn't have to be our whole way of being. And so when we use that model of resilience, for instance, I want my kids to have a character strength, which is a feature of resilience to have strong character. Well, what does that mean? Well, I want them to be independent, autonomous friendly. I want them to have sticktuitiveness, let's say, or perseverance to know they can go through hard things. So now let's say my kid hits a bump in the road and something comes up that is really hard for them. I have teenagers and young adults. I work with kids of all ages, but my son, for instance, participates in a lot of rodeos, as you alluded to. It is not about always winning, it's about the experience. Well, I want him to learn that character strength of, you know what?

(00:19:05):

It didn't go how you wanted it to. Today. You're feeling pretty bummed about that. You're feeling disappointed. You maybe are even feeling anxious or frustrated or sad. Now, I use my relationship with my teenager because resilience is built in relationship to say, you can do hard things. You're going to compete again tomorrow. You get a second chance. You can either decide, oh, I didn't win today, I didn't place today, and that's going to defeat you and that's going to define you. Or you can decide, you know what? This isn't about winning. It's about me trying. It's about me showing sticktuitiveness and standing up again tomorrow, trying it again, knowing that one incident doesn't define me, but it's through that modeling where my son sees the language. The feeling is temporary feelings are temporary, being who we are. What is long-term? Who do you want to be?

(00:20:06):

How do you want to show up tomorrow? How are you going to show your competitors? You weren't defeated by this. So these are conversations that we're having and what my co-author and I talk about are, these are 100 little conversations that are happening over the course of your child's life, not just one time. Right? Anything worth talking about and resilience is one is worth talking about a hundred times. So we had that conversation in rodeo. We have that conversation about school. We had that conversation about friends about baseball and little league when he was five years old. We're having those conversations all the time because if we think about a feature of resilience being character, while I'm teaching that and modeling that his whole life, I'm also modeling how do I deal with my feelings? How do I deal with defeat? How do I deal with hardship or difficulty? Our kids are watching us all the time. We are their first model for how we will overcome difficulties or challenges.

Joey Odom (00:21:08):

I love that you said the a hundred different conversations because I was playing out in my mind with my kids who are 16 and 14. I was playing out in my mind this, my son played in a tennis tournament last weekend and he had a match that he lost. And I'm always such a difficult conversation to know how to react if it's minimized it so much that it's like, it's okay. Who cares? It's fine. Versus really driving it in and being really tough on him for it. It's just like that middle ground I guess when you think about for yourself, and this goes back to how we talk to ourselves and how we manage it ourselves, but having that conversation and knowing, I guess the comfort in having a hundred different conversations that, yeah, you're not going to get it right on this one and just continue to adapt. I found myself, I've grown over time in how I have those conversations and have figured out kind of the art to it, but it's almost like we as parents need to have a little bit of grace with ourselves and just say like, you're not going to get it perfect. It's okay. You're going to mess it up, and then you can continue to build on and get it right.

Dr. Amy (00:22:12):

Yeah, absolutely. And really what we're focusing on with our kids is who they are and what their process is versus the outcome. I mean, so many parents are focused on winning or accomplishing or achieving, and so if that's the only thing we focus on with our kids, then that's the only thing they're going to bring to us is when they win, when they do it well, when they do it. I actually want to know when you screw up what feels hard, how are you going to just muck through some hardships and then come out on the other side? I want my kids to bring that to me just as much because that's where the learning is happening.

Joey Odom (00:22:47):

Yeah. How did you, as your kids were growing up, how did you transition away into maybe in the teenage years, you think of my kids 14 and 16, how did you transition away? I feel like when they're younger, you're kind of giving 'em that. You're obviously constantly volunteering that guidance and the lessons and all of that. Did you, and then as they get older, you want to, it just becomes white noise in their brain. If you just keep pounding that in, how did you do that transition? How did you manage that transition into being available to give that guidance when they want it, but not just constantly pounding 'em over the head with it?

Dr. Amy (00:23:24):

Yeah, I mean, it starts when they're little a hundred little conversations. And so I wanted my kids to mess up, to have a hardship, to have to work through things when they were little and not rescue them from that. There's so much rescuing that happens. I am sure you've heard helicopter parenting, right? Oh yeah. And there's this new term called lawnmower parenting. We don't even let our kids do it. We just mow over it for them.

(00:23:53):

And when we look at research right now from secondary schools, colleges, the number one complaint some of the admissions directors have and college professors is that parents are still calling their kids professors at college. So what does that look like? What does that look like when your kids are in second grade? Well, you allow them to experience some natural consequences if you don't go to school or if you cheat on a test or if you don't want to go for baseball practice. If my kids didn't want to go to practice, our mantra was you sign up, you show up. And if you're not going to show up, then you're going to call your coach yourself. I don't care if you're five or 12 or 15 and you're going to say, I'm not going to come. Or if you don't want to do your homework at night, I'm okay with that. I already did all the school, and so you don't want to do your homework, that's fine. Talk to your teacher about it tomorrow, but I'm not going to stay up until 10 o'clock at night fretting and battling you on this. So I think sometimes parents are scared to let their kids fail when they're younger. The only way our kids learn how to bounce back and that they have internal strength is by allowing them to kind of struggle a little bit, feel bored, contemplate, and not rescue them from emotional distress. It is normal to have emotional distress.

Joey Odom (00:25:22):

What you just said makes so much sense. And I would have maybe five years ago been like, yeah, it's that simple. I'm telling you, I don't know what's wrong with me, Amy. It is over the last, since my kids have become teenagers, I've become the biggest freaking rescuer,

Joey Odom (00:25:36):

And

Joey Odom (00:25:37):

I don't know why it's so hard for me. What you just said is so difficult for me to put into practice, and I don't really know why, because when my kids were younger, I really was between my wife and me, I was the disciplinarian. I was the one who was very much black and white, and I was very comfortable with it. And I just find myself all the time now wanting to rescue them out of things where my wife is so much better than me just saying, it's okay if this happens to them. So this is what you just described is an extraordinary challenge. It is really hard. None of us want to see, it's probably, honestly, it's probably more with my daughter because she's my sweet girl and I just hate the idea. And in some ways, all the challenges of being a teenager, you know how hard it is to be a teenage girl, and so you're just like, I'm just going to help her out here. I'm going to give her a win here. But a, it's the whole rescuing a or a caterpillar from a cocoon is the worst thing you can do for them, right? That's

Joey Odom (00:26:29):

Right.

Joey Odom (00:26:30):

What you described is so hard. It really, really is so hard, but I know it's valuable.

Dr. Amy (00:26:35):

Well, and for parents that are listening, valuable and hard doesn't mean easy. It means necessary. And so if you practice those muscles when your kids are younger, that when they don't get invited to the birthday party or they don't make the team, or they're struggling at school and you allow them to face some of that hardship and not rescue, not overstep, that's building muscle for you as a parent too. So you're building muscle for your kids, but you're also building muscle for you because then when your kids are bigger kids, bigger worries, bigger problems, then when they're driving cars and smoking weed and getting in trouble, all those things that are going to happen, you've built some muscle too of like, you know what? I've raised some good human beings who are going to make mistakes. And if I've had the conversations and I've trusted in their internal capacity to experience some natural consequences, they've been building these muscles too all along the way.

Joey Odom (00:27:41):

Yeah. Do they have weed in Portland?

Dr. Amy (00:27:43):

A little bit.

Aro Customer (00:27:51):

When we initially decided to do Aro and to take the plunge, I think I had just felt that I had truly been addicted to my phone forever. We were chatting before we started recording, I went to boarding school, and so I had to have a phone I was distant from, I was six hours away from my parents. I had to have a phone, and I have slept with a phone by my bed every single night from when I was 13 years old, because that's how old I was when I went to boarding school. So when we finally got our box, I got extremely nervous, but I told Brian that a goal that I had was to put our phones in the box every single night for Lent. That was our 40 days. We were going to put our phones in the box. And I'll be honest, the first night I cried, it felt really emotional for me to not sleep with it beside my bed.

(00:28:42):

I'm used to scrolling on Twitter, or I am not even ashamed to say I enjoy TikTok as a grownup, and it was really emotional and hard for me to rip that bandaid. But what we found in that 40 days was better quality sleep, better connection with one another. We had conversations before bed that we wouldn't previously have been having because we each would've been on our own singular devices. And for me, that actually was the impetus to realize the conversations I was missing with my kids during the day. If I'm having the ability to have these conversations at nighttime with my husband after bed, what could happen in my relationships with my kids now if I put it away during the day as well.

Joey Odom (00:29:27):

We love hearing stories from the Aro community. The one you just heard actually comes from our voices of Aro episodes where I sit down with Aro members and they share about their stories and their lives with ro. Make sure to check out the voices of Aro episodes, and if you're a member who would like to share your own story with ro, please email us@storiesatgoro.com. So I have a very practical question. This comes from a listener, this comes from Joey O. It's just me. I have a question, and this is when it comes to letting your kids fall in their face and experience bad things. And I'm just going to call out my son, Harrison, who's the greatest kid in the world.

(00:30:03):

Harrison does not wake up very well with his alarm, and Harrison also drives his sister Gianna to school. So Harrison is the driver, and he doesn't wake up to his alarm. So my natural instinct, actually this was a little bit easier before he drove. We would just say, if you sleep in, you're going to miss school. We're not going to wake you up. And so we would take Gianna to school. Now that he's the driver, other people depend on him. And so allowing him to experience the consequence of not waking up is a little bit more difficult dependent on

Joey Odom (00:30:31):

Him.

Joey Odom (00:30:31):

So I know this is a very narrow example that the listener is just like, well, you just air out your stuff off air. But how is it, and maybe the broad question maybe for everybody is when that falling on your face, making a mistake for your child has implications on other people, do you handle that the same? Or as part of that knowing that your decision has consequences to others, how do you manage something like that where there are others who are dependent on your child's decisions?

Dr. Amy (00:30:59):

Yeah, great question. So the first thing I want to do is tell you, I talk with teenagers all the time that I want them to think that they're the prosecutor and the defender at the same time of their case. And every day they're making decisions to let their jury AKA, their parents know what they're capable of and what they're not. They're their own best defense attorney. And so when they get up on time, they turn in their homework, they get good grades, they make healthy decisions, they're saying to adults in their life, I got it back up. And that's what teenagers want, autonomy and freedom. But when they aren't getting up and they aren't doing the things that we know that we want them to do, what they're saying is, help me monitor me more. Which the last thing a teenager wants is more monitoring and less autonomy.

(00:31:54):

But the natural consequence, especially when your behavior is affecting other people, is to say things like, you know what, Harrison? I know you love driving a car. I think you're a really safe driver, but your decisions about not getting up on time and therefore not being able to take your sister to school are now impacting other people. So we're going to take away that autonomy on the backside. You want to take your friends to soccer later on, you want to go get a smoothie later on. I'm not going to allow that to happen because you haven't front loaded the fact that you can be responsible when it matters for our family. You're not making a great case for yourself. So the natural consequences later when you'd like to use that same automobile to do fun things, that's not going to be available to you in our family. That's a bummer when you show us that you can manage things on the front end. Oh my gosh, then we're going to trust you on the back end too.

Joey Odom (00:32:45):

And I assume when you talk about this too, is the opposite side of that is when they are doing a good job, go ahead and mention it, right?

Dr. Amy (00:32:52):

Oh my gosh. And give them the freedom, right? Oh my gosh, Harrison, you've gotten up all week this week, gotten your sister to school. This is amazing. I put 10 bucks on the counter so that you guys could stop and get coffee on the way to school today. I noticed that. Let's point out the strength too.

Joey Odom (00:33:11):

The

Dr. Amy (00:33:12):

Other thing, Joey, that I would say, and I've done this with my kids since they were little, he owes something to Gianna too. He's wasted her time. He's wasted your time and your wife's time. And so the natural consequence might be, I had to get up now and rush out the door to get Gianna to school. That means I didn't get one of my dad jobs done. So I guess you'll be mowing the lawn for me later because you got to make up some of that time. And those are the things that are really hard for parents. Like, ugh, it's just easier to take Gianna to school and forget about it.

Joey Odom (00:33:44):

What's

Dr. Amy (00:33:45):

Your kid going to learn from that? There's no natural consequence in that. It has to feel a little painful. And I think so often, and I know screens is a big deal, so often parents go to like, I'm going to take away your phone. I'm going to take away video games. But we have to make sure that what happened, the punishment, AKA fits the crime in that moment. Taking away Harrison's phone is not a natural consequence. Making him do something to make up that time to Gianna or his parents, that's the natural consequence.

Joey Odom (00:34:15):

I like that. And I like that distinction of calling it a consequence versus a punishment. The punishment probably feels like taking away the phone, but it doesn't really match up where a consequence when you tie it together, this is the natural thing that happens. I want to talk about, you've seen, you got your PhD, I believe in 2002, is that right?

Joey Odom (00:34:35):

From

Joey Odom (00:34:35):

Indiana?

(00:34:36):

So you've been in the game for a little bit and you have seen really the smartphones becoming ubiquitous really a few years into your practice. And so I want to get to that, but maybe just put that on the shelf for now. But today we hear so much about kids. I mean Jonathan Heid, who brilliantly wrote The Anxious Generation, we do hear a bunch about anxiety in kids. Is this a buzzword or are you actually seeing true pronounced levels of anxiety or on the rise with kids today versus call it early two thousands when you got your PhD?

Dr. Amy (00:35:11):

We are definitely seeing increased rates of anxiety and depression in our youth. 100%

Joey Odom (00:35:19):

Is it? Why do you think now, and again, this is not, I promise I wish, almost wish I wouldn't have said the phone things. It's not, I want to bait towards that, but I'd love to hear why is it today that we actually are seeing truly pronounced levels of anxiety with kids across the board?

Dr. Amy (00:35:36):

So I think it's a combination of a few things. And I know Jonathan Het refers to some of these in his book. I'll give you kind of my 2 cents on it. I think we have raised kids. Think about slogans from popular companies. Burger King says, have it your way. Starbucks is like, if it's not 126 degrees 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit plus extra foam whip, blah, blah, blah, I'll make it again for you. I'll redo it.

(00:36:03):

And so what does that tell our kids in terms of distress tolerance? So the way we work through anxiety is to deal with the anxiety. We don't avoid it. We don't. Parents come in and they're like, Dr. Amy, fix my kid. They have anxiety. I'm like, no, no, no. I'm not going to help your kid avoid anxiety. I'm going to help your kid learn how to work through it so that when your cappuccino is not perfect, you're not going to fall apart. And I know that seems silly, but that's what's happening, right? It's like one little domino happens and it's like this triggering event for a kid. I had a client of mine who their car stalled in the middle of a very busy suburban intersection. There are cars and people everywhere. She sat there and called her mom at work who was in a meeting no less than 24 times because she didn't know what to do.

(00:37:03):

So the first part is like, have you let your kids experience distress and not overwhelming, but gosh, that looks pretty hard for you. How are you going to figure it out? I bet you have some innate problem solving skills. So there's this feeling of we should always have it your way. We should always have it fixed the way it should be. This kind of preparing your child for the path versus the path for your child. We've done a lot of preparing the path for the child instead of preparing your kid for the journey and letting them know life isn't going to always be easy. The second thing I think in terms of just distress tolerance is there is just no delayed gratification anymore. Whatever we want, we get, and we can get right away. Right now, Joey, if I love your hat, your headphones, your whatever is around you, I go on Amazon, click, click, click, and it can be at my house tomorrow. So I don't have to wait for anything to help me feel good. That kind of not experiencing some delayed gratification is not kind to our children. So it's going to make them feel like if I don't have what I need right away, I'm going to again be distressed.

(00:38:18):

Phones have contributed to that significantly. Social media has contributed to that significantly. But also just this adage of positive parenting, kind of helicopter parenting, this generation of parents that have just made their children's lives perfectly curated. I mean, what I said in an interview one time is if somebody scrapbook every detail of my life, I would be anxious too. Nobody's that important to have every single detail of their life. I don't even know where my baby book is, Joey. I'm just not that important. And it doesn't mean I'm not that important to my parent. Of course I am. But if every detail of your life is curated, everything has swag, everything has scrapbook, it's like life is perfect and it just can't be that way for kids. And then the last thing I would say, the shift from super, a whole generation of anxious parenting is what created a generation of anxious kids, by the way. And that is just, and Jonathan Het refers this just open play

Joey Odom (00:39:33):

Play

Dr. Amy (00:39:34):

That's kind of dangerous. And in a way, I don't know about you, but when I played, my parents were like, in the summertime, good luck. Go outside. They locked the front door, come home when the lights are on. And it wasn't until the eighties when we had play dates,

(00:39:57):

We curated a time where our kids would play together. Well, if that is what play looks like when it's coordinated, scheduled calendared versus just go outside and figure it out and get along with people and work it out again, that creates a lot of distress. So I see kids going to college now who can't get along with roommates and want to have their own rooms and anyway, we could go on and on, but those are the big things to me. Delayed gratification, no distress tolerance, kind of this anxious parenting that has led to anxious kids and lack of just kind of free play when we're just out and about the world getting messy.

Joey Odom (00:40:42):

I have a lot there that's real heavy, and it may even be worth the listener to go back and listen to that because tough and it forces a mirror in front of us as parents. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. We say a bunch, and again, our paradigm is our role as parents with technology. What can we do? What are we modeling to our kids and how are we in some ways, there's this interesting confluence of almost a dichotomy between what you described, which I would call, let's just call it child worship. In some ways you are worshiping your child, but at the same time, this generation of teenagers who have these high levels of teenage unhappiness, and even to the point of suicidal ideation and anxiety, they've grown up with parents who have been looking at a screen instead of their eyes.

(00:41:33):

And so you have this interesting confluence of parents in some ways who have neglected their kids because they've been on their screens and their kids don't get their full attention even at young ages. And we'll talk about this too, about the bids that young kids are putting out for their parents' attention. So you have parents who are in some ways neglecting, but at the same time worshiping their child. So my question is, do you agree with that kind of fundamental thesis that those two are kind of working, even the same parent is doing both of those? Does that make sense? I mean, does that kind of pass the s smell test for you?

Dr. Amy (00:42:06):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think about that, that paradox between, I'm not really available for you. I'm not available for connection. If we're talking about screens, screens are the number one thing that get in the way of connection right now between caregivers and kids. The only way, by the way, Joey, that kids develop empathy, the ability to relate to how another person feels in this world is through mirror neurons. And the only way mirror neurons are developed is in this kind of eye to eye gaze, engaged, play, engaged conversations. We do not learn empathy on Sesame Street. We might learn some benefits of it. We don't learn empathy on TikTok or Instagram or Ms. Rachel or any of the things that are really fun for kids, but not necessarily teaching those core components with one-on-one play between a caregiver and a child, between a grandma or grandpa and a child.

(00:43:05):

Those things are really, really important. In fact, the only screens that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends before the age of two is FaceTime to see your grandma that lives in another state, but otherwise zero hours of screens before the age of two, and between two and four only with co-viewing. So a parent's watching with a child and kind of explaining what's going on and narrating, oh my gosh, look, Elmo looks really sad. Why is Elmo so sad? And so I think you just mentioned a beautiful dichotomy between I'm not really available for you and yet I'm kind of curating this perfect life for you. And I think it's because parents also are falling into this perfectly curated world of like, this is what parenting should look like, and I should love my kid all the time and create these magical moments and have the perfect birthday parties that are themed and everything. That puts a lot of pressure on parents too. So like I said, anxious parents are going to create anxious kids,

Joey Odom (00:44:08):

And we say this all the time, I don't think we give our kids enough credit either. I think we think that it's going to be the perfect birthday party that's going to make them happy when it really is. It's just what you talk about the special time. It's just being on the floor, looking at 'em in the eyes, engaging in their world. We're just not. I've told the story a bunch when Gianna was probably seven or eight, we went on this little daddy-daughter dance, and they had us fill out cards and it said, each of us filled out one and said, dad, what would you like to do with your daughter? Daughter? What would you like to do with your dad as this big kind of making things too complicated? I wrote, go to Paris with Gianna, and Gianna said, go to the ice skating rink. You know what I mean? It's just like they don't want that much from us. They just want that connection. The other question I'll have is, this was really interesting because what you just described a few minutes ago when you described this helicopter parenting and what we have done in the distress tolerance and delayed gratification. So we have caused this level of anxiety in our kids.

(00:45:14):

So then the question becomes, we caused it by the way we raise them. And again, I hope anybody listening and it's worth saying this, let's remove shame from the conversation. We're speaking very pragmatically here. It may even sound hyperbolic to say we've caused it. I get it. But maybe actually you see the rescuer in me here, Amy. You see what I just did. I'm trying to rescue people from

Dr. Amy (00:45:33):

It, rescue the parents.

Joey Odom (00:45:34):

If you need to feel crappy about this, feel crappy. Okay, so let's just say that if we cause this level of anxiety by the way that we did things, what is our now response to it? I think some of the response is like, Hey, what's wrong with you when we're the ones who kind of created Dr. Frankenstein to begin with, or we created Frankenstein's monster to begin with, so extraordinarily long way to ask, we caused it. So then what do we do about it? What is the appropriate response to an anxious child, even if we're the ones that caused it?

Dr. Amy (00:46:04):

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. This can cause a lot of need for caregivers to reflect on how much have I contributed to this? And now if my kid is five or 10 or 17 or 25 and I want to kind of intervene in some kind of harm that's done. One question that people ask me all the time is, is it ever too late? And I just got done with a four day conference that I was training at, and my response over and over and over is, it's never too late to connect with your child.

Joey Odom (00:46:39):

That's

Dr. Amy (00:46:39):

Good. Whether they're 25 or five, it's going back to that connected relationship. And so for a parent of a teenager and maybe they've kind of coddled them and rescued them the whole time, it might look like saying to your teenager, Hey, we know that things have gotten in the way of you experiencing some distress tolerance or whatever you want to call it, right? I call it just mucking about in the world, getting scraped up a little bit. I want to just have some connected moments with you, some more connected time, and so I'm going to make a commitment to do that to you where I'm going to put away distractions or work or screens or whatever's getting in my way, and I'm going to be completely available to you. And then at first have to kind of prescribe it almost and be really intentional about it so that for you, it's like, okay, yep, I'm saying yes to the ice skating on Saturday

(00:47:37):

And it's going to be the two of us and we're going to fall. We're going to be awkward. We're going to have to use the little granny walkers while we do it and we're going to just be connected in that space. Once a caregiver gets into that space of like, it's just quality time over quantity time, and it doesn't have to be hours. It can be 15 minutes checking in with your teenager every day. I had a early educator approach me at the conference and say to me, Amy, I heard you say this thing about it's never too late for connection. And between then and this conference, all I've been doing is going into my son's room every night and I'm reading a book next to him and I'm available. We're not on screens while he's doing his homework.

(00:48:25):

And she said, at first I would walk in his bedroom and he's like, what are you doing in here? Why are you here? And she's like, I just want to be close to you. They hadn't had that routine established, so she would just sit in and read a book or ask a couple curious questions. She said, I just set a timer for myself 15 minutes every night. And she said, after a couple of months, I missed a night. And my son came downstairs with his homework and he was like, mom, where are you? I'm ready to start my homework. And he was seeking her out for that connection. And they weren't doing anything magical. She was just available for him. I just think that example over and over and over, Joey, how do we undo some of that? We have to start with ourselves. We have to offer ourselves to connect to our kids. And I know life is fast and fast paced. I'm a busy working mom myself, but when I make myself available, oh my gosh, I know your kids, your listeners that are hearing me. Kids are so good about pushing us away. I'm telling you in my 25 years of clinical experience, your kids desperately need you and want you. It's their job. It's developmentally appropriate to push back. It's our job to hang in there and be available for connection. And that means having times when we're just uninterrupted with our presence for them.

Joey Odom (00:49:54):

Gosh, isn't that good? And it's so important. What you said is you have to eliminate the distractions. We all know that this is my paradigm. Of course. Just don't bring the phone in. Then you won't have to resist the urge to check what text messages came in. You won't even be tempted to look up the thing you all were talking about. It's okay to not know that answer immediately. And again, I'm speaking to myself, but get the screen out of the way. And maybe as a summary to what you just said there, to create that connectedness, I would maybe two guiding principles there that you alluded to is just one, embrace the, it's going to be awkward maybe a little bit at first, but commit to the long haul.

Joey Odom (00:50:31):

That's right.

Joey Odom (00:50:31):

You can commit. I'm going to do this over the long haul. I'm going to be consistent and I'm going to embrace the fact that it's going to be a little bit awkward. How powerful is that? And I would just for the listener to just for themselves for a moment after I say this, just press pause for a second. Think of two things. I am sorry. Think of one thing. I have two kids. Think of one thing you can do with your kids. One small thing. I just wrote it down for my daughter. We're going to go to TJ Maxx. She loves TJ Maxx. We're going to do it this weekend. We have a free weekend. We're going to go to TJ Maxx and we're just going to leave my phone in the truck and we're going to go shopping. I'm going to watch a movie with my son. What are the things that they love?

Dr. Amy (00:51:07):

Make

Joey Odom (00:51:07):

It their thing, come into their world. And so I really mean it. People listening. Hit pause real quick and just think of a very small thing. Please don't overcomplicate that

Dr. Amy (00:51:16):

And start with asking your kid.

(00:51:20):

They will tell you if you make yourself available to them and you really commit to it, to showing up for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, they will tell you what they want to do. And at first they'll say things like, I don't know. You don't probably want to shoot hoops with me. Or the other day, my son came into the house and he's like, mom, I figured out how to change the Freon in my truck. Do you want to see this? In my head, I'm like, no. That seems like the most boring thing. I have no idea how trucks operate. But in my relational heart, I was like, of course. Show me how to change Freon in the truck.

(00:52:03):

And out we walked to the truck. He was excited to let me enter his world. Our kids are experts in a lot of different areas that we have no idea about. If we can show interest, excitement, curiosity, in their world, what you're saying to them is, there is so much more to you beyond a perfectly curated life, and I'm here for it, right? I'm here to watch you. And if we just start with, tell me what you're loving right now and can you show me a little part of it? Your child that you wish was an athlete, but they're an artist. If you just entered into their world and said, show me how you're drawing or why you're sketching, or if you allowed yourself to be super humble and were like, can you teach me how to do that? I'm going to be horrible at it. My goodness. Kids really glow when we allow them to be experts in something.

Joey Odom (00:53:01):

Wow. A quick little pro tip gang. This works for spouses also.

Dr. Amy (00:53:06):

Yes.

Joey Odom (00:53:07):

If you just listen, I don't know. And maybe this, again, I'm looking in the mirror here. Well, you just described with your son Amy, who is, how old is he? 21.

Dr. Amy (00:53:14):

He's 17. Oh,

Joey Odom (00:53:16):

Okay. He's the younger. Okay, so he's 17. What you just described, by the way, he's a lot more impressive than I am. He's changing Freon at 17. But what you just described was the 17-year-old version of Mommy Watch me.

Dr. Amy (00:53:30):

That's right, 100%.

Joey Odom (00:53:32):

They're doing this. They're going

Dr. Amy (00:53:33):

To do hundred percent

Joey Odom (00:53:34):

Forever.

Dr. Amy (00:53:34):

That

Joey Odom (00:53:35):

Is the same if you have a toddler, if you have a five-year-old if you, that's mommy, watch me in different terms. That's right. When you come look free on holy

Dr. Amy (00:53:43):

Crap, that's the bid, right? That's what you just talking about before, right? We make bids for each other all the time, and I don't want parents to miss that bid. If we are doing this, I am looking down pretending to be on a phone, or if I'm on a computer, I'm going to miss bids left and right,

Joey Odom (00:54:05):

And you won't even know you missed it.

Dr. Amy (00:54:06):

That's right.

Joey Odom (00:54:08):

We may know some, I know I missed my son's first soccer goal. I was looking at my phone, but we're not going to know that we've missed all these bids, but our kids are going to know. They're going to notice it, and it's just going to become normal to them that we're not available for that.

Dr. Amy (00:54:21):

And I don't want to be doom and gloom, but I do want to say, I always tell parents, this is what's possible. If it happens, this is what you have to know is going to happen if it doesn't happen. So when you're available for bids, when you're available for that connection, those small things become the big things later. So same example, when my son circles back and he tells me about a crush that he has on someone, that's because I was available for the small bids. I don't want to miss these big bids. Now, when they're big kids, the bids are, they're really big. They're really important. When he says things like, I'm not sure if college is my path. It's because when he was five and six and eight and 10, I talked to him about school and learning and curiosity. But here's the other thing is if you miss the bids frequently enough, they will stop bidding for you because kids, despite wanting desperately to attach to you, they will figure out something else. It will be a friend, it will be a friendship group, it will be a screen, it will be a drug, it will be something else that meets that need. And I don't know about your listeners, but I'm sure if they're like me, I don't want that consequence. I want to be the person my kid wants to come to for as long as they want to come to me. So it's so worth our time and investment

Joey Odom (00:55:50):

And how freaking cool that it's that opportunities available to all of us right now. You already said it's not too late. It may take a little bit longer to get back there, but Well, cool. This is an opportunity. I love that you point paint the alternative path, but this is available to all of us. We've touched on it a few times. Can we go a little bit deeper on technology? And I want to take it from what you've seen, but instead of looking at the way that kids are using technology, will you tell me about the effect that parents use of phones is having on their kids? And again, I know we've kind of danced around it some, but I would love from what you've seen, how is it what the parents are modeling and what the parents are doing? What is the effect of that on their kids and their kids and the way that they will maybe interact with phones themselves in the future?

Dr. Amy (00:56:39):

So let's start with little kids. So little kids, zero to three, zero to five. Their number one job is connection. Their number one job is attachment. And the only way attachment happens is through what we call attuned caregiving. That's a fancy word. That basically means I'm kind of catching my baby's vibe or I'm on the same wavelength as my kid, or I notice what makes them happy and I notice what makes them sad. I can kind of anticipate their needs. That's attunement. Well, when we're attuned to our kids AKA, they're making bids and we're receiving them. We notice that they're like rubbing their eyes and we're like, oh, you must be tired. Or they start to pull at their hair or we're noticing some cues. That's what form secure attachment. Well, if I'm distracted on a screen, I'm going to miss those cues.

(00:57:32):

I'm not going to be as in tune with my baby or toddler, and then they're going to be more distressed. And the irony is that then they're more distressed and then we get frustrated because we can't manage their distress versus if we are available and watching for those cues, I call it being a baby observer or being a toddler observer. Just like become a scientist and your child's cues, then actually there'll be less distressed people because you'll be kind of attuned to what they need. Oh, you're rubbing your eyes. It looks like you're ready for nap time. Let's go find your snuggly and get you there and get you all settled in. Well, so that's what that looks like when they're little, right? We're not available for recognizing their attunement needs or their distress needs

Aro Customer (00:58:20):

When

Dr. Amy (00:58:20):

They get a little bit older. And again, I don't want to shame or blame parents. Sometimes we're just busy. And if you need screens to take a shower or get dinner started and you want to put your toddler in front of Ms. Rachel, I totally get that right. There is a time and place for it. But be intentional about it. Be intentional about how you're using screens, because then what happens is that kids need to learn when they're moving into that 3, 4, 5, 6-year-old range. Their social emotional capacity is the number one predictor for kindergarten readiness. Not math, not reading, but their ability to make and maintain relationships is the number one predictor for kindergarten readiness. And the way we do that is through relationships. And the way we do that is through how do we problem solve. When I hit my sibling in the head with a block and my parent scaffolds that and says, oh my gosh, look at your sister. She's really sad. You need to go take care of her and give her a kiss or get her a little ice pack or something like that. Well, we learn all of that through that attuned caregiving when we're available and present for our kids. The other thing that our kids are learning though, when we don't just put a phone in front of them or a phone or a screen in front of us is how to be bored.

(00:59:41):

And being bored is pretty fundamental. So I want parents to think about when was the last time you were in line at a coffee shop and you just stood awkwardly in line and modeled for your child how to have social engagement with the people in front or behind you?

Joey Odom (01:00:00):

Wow,

Dr. Amy (01:00:01):

How are you? How's your day? Oh my gosh. They have pumpkin scones out again in August, right? It's too early for that. Your kid is noticing, how does my parent handle boredom?

(01:00:16):

How did they just stand in line? And if the first thing you do is you scroll through your phone when you're waiting in line or when you're in an elevator or you're in the line at Target, what your kid is doing, they don't have a phone yet at that age, fingers crossed is they're looking around and absorbing the world. Well, when we're curious with them, we get to kind of scaffold how they think and learn about the world. But otherwise what they're thinking and learning is like, oh, when we're bored or just standing in line and waiting, we distract ourselves from that with something else a K screen. So you're modeling, right? It's not a do as I say, not as I do world. It's a monkey see, monkey do world. And so they're watching for us. So littles, we're interfering with attunement, toddlers and young kids. We're interfering with problem solving and being bored and that distress tolerance. And then as kids get older, I think the other thing that they're watching us is our integration into an embodied life.

(01:01:18):

Meaning am I going outside? Am I going on dates? Am I exercising? Am I doing things that bring me joy outside of sitting in front of a screen, being on social media? Those types of things our kids are watching like, well, what does my mom do? Or what does my dad do to be a healthy human being? And we get to model that for them so that they see, oh, we actually go out into the world. And so I tell parents all the time, if you haven't watched Halo on a video screen or how enticing Ms. Rachel is, my goodness, all the dopamine response your kids are getting, that's what you're competing with. And so I better get out and learn how to change or add free, I don't even know why I'm doing the Freon in the truck to be honest, but I better get out and be interested in it because what I'm saying to my kid is, I'm interested in you. I'm interested in connection. And do I love soccer? I'm horrible at soccer, but will I be a soccer goalie for my 8-year-old 100% of the time because I'm awkward and available and just available for the connection. And that's what I want people to hear over and over again is that there's a time and space for screens. They're not going anywhere, but just be intentional about it and know that every time you're here or here or looking at a screen, it's interfering with an opportunity for connection. A truly embodied connection.

Joey Odom (01:02:49):

That's right. What's interesting, it's It's such a multifaceted, I mean either one, the modeling for your kids to see what's normal because they will become, studies are coming out and say, the number one predictor of your child's future phone use is your current phone use. That's right. And which goes for which, duh. That goes for everything. So there's one thing to model it, which is obviously as valuable as you can get. The other one is just like, what an awesome moment. What a cool opportunity we have to just create little memories or create little connections.

Dr. Amy (01:03:22):

That's

Joey Odom (01:03:23):

Great. Again, you find this, and I find the same maybe paradox that we talked about earlier is that here we are teaching our kids Spanish lessons and doing Spanish flashcards at four years old when what they really, because you want them to be successful in the future versus just being with them. That is the greatest foundation you can give them is what you've said very clearly all throughout. And by the way, listen, this is a really smart person saying this is that connection. That's it. It's a lot better than Spanish flashcards, right? It's a lot better than teaching your kid to read at three years old. It's a lot better than trombone lessons at five years old. It's the connection. That's the thing that's going to set them up for success greater than anything else you can do.

Dr. Amy (01:04:03):

You take all those examples, Joey, the trombone lesson, the Spanish cards, watching a movie, the most important thing about all of those is what was the car ride in the car on the way to the trombone lesson?

Joey Odom (01:04:16):

Yeah, that's right.

Dr. Amy (01:04:16):

Did you stop for ice cream on the way home when you were doing the Spanish flashcards? Was your mom trying to pronounce the words awkwardly with you and saying, ah, well we didn't get that perfect. No worries. How were you doing it? What did that connection look like in the moment? Your kids won't remember the movie that you watched. What they'll remember is that you cuddled with them on the couch. Your mom has a certain way to make popcorn, or your dad loves m and ms in the popcorn, but mom doesn't. That's the stuff that they're really, really wired to pay attention to.

Joey Odom (01:04:49):

Yeah, I think back, and I just cringe thinking about moments where my daughter, when she take violin lessons, I would be in the room when she was getting the lessons and I would just inevitably scroll on my phone. And I just think about the moments that you said, the bids where she maybe hit a note just right and that I didn't even notice that she probably looked at me and I cringe. And it's not shame inducing, but I hear it and I'm just like, and it would be easier for me to feel crappy about myself, or I could go to TJ Maxx this weekend and make a new thing. That's right. You said never too late. And then the other thing, this whole concept of boredom, it's funny. There's no way to improve your driving more than your child driving because he is, and kids are all there, little hypocrites sniffers.

(01:05:34):

And so he has seen my hypocrisy when I've told him, don't drive this. Well dad, you just did this. So I did something the other day that I think was heroic. I drove in the same lane on the highway for three miles just to see what it was like to not weave in and out of traffic. And so I'm working so hard right now. How can I be the kind of driver that I want Harrison to be? And when you start thinking through these lenses, or am I being the type of phone screen user that I want my kids to be someday, it's just amazing what happens. And everything you said there, I think goes with that is that again, it's just this amazing opportunity to create the type of people we would like to create. I have a lot more questions that we are going to have to miss, but I will say one of the things you said, you talked about parenting being intentional. It's not for the faint of heart. It's not luck. You talk that story about on vacation with your kids where you said Parenting is not luck. We didn't luck out and have good kids,

Joey Odom (01:06:36):

And

Joey Odom (01:06:37):

You gave five things. I want people to actually go to your blog to find this blog post, but I want you, the very first thing you said, I'm sure you remember this post. Will you tell of the five things that you did right that you know did right after the first one you said, you can stop there, read the other four if you want. Those are important too, but you can stop there. Will you tell people that number one thing that you did to create great kids

Dr. Amy (01:07:02):

Unconditional love, there is nothing that my kid can do that I would ever stop loving them once we as parents can separate kids' relationship from their behavior and their relationship with you. Kids are wired to do dumb stuff. It's developmentally appropriate to push boundaries, to push limits, to talk back, to get in trouble, to make mistakes. It is our job to love them no matter what and whatever that is that you're thinking of right now as a parent, but what about this? But what about this? Your kid needs to know even if that happened, the consequence will never be the relationship that they have with you. That is it. That is the foundation for everything.

Joey Odom (01:07:53):

It's beautiful. We don't have to complicate it any more than that. There it is, is let's connect, let's model. Well, let's be attuned. Let's be practiced in the art of listening. For those of you, I'll say it again. For those of you who are practitioners, if you're interacting with children, please do pick up the book again. I read it so you know that it is digestible, but it's called The Trauma-Informed Pediatric Practice. That's with Dr. Amy King and Dr. RJ Gillespie. Dr. Amy, just love you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for all your wisdom. And just like you fill up, what is it, raspberry? Lemme go back to just like you fill up poppy seed, almond poppy, seeded cake with raspberry. You did fill up our brains with brilliance. So thank you so much.

Dr. Amy (01:08:38):

Thank you so much, Joey. Thank you so much for what you're doing at Arrow. It's beautiful and intentional, and it's exactly what families need right now. I appreciate you.

Joey Odom (01:08:46):

Thank you. I hope this episode hit you like it did for me. I have pages of notes. My mind is spinning. One of my big takeaways from creating a connected relationship, especially with teenage kids, is in those moments, it may feel awkward in the beginning, but I want you to embrace the awkwardness and commit to the long haul. You're in this for the long haul. If you feel like it's too late, it's not. And as your kids are young, seek out those bids. Put away the distraction, put away your phone in the moments that you're with them and just seek out connected time with them and look for those bids from them. And like we said in the episode, this goes for spouses too. This goes in marriages. Can we be scientists and investigators of the people around us who are most important to us?

(01:09:30):

Last thing for a challenge, and I mentioned this in the episode, if you have kids, think of one simple thing you can do this week or this weekend with them. I texted my daughter right after this episode and I said, Hey, can we go on a TJ Max date this weekend? And I'm going to watch a movie with my son this weekend. It's coming up on the weekend for us. So what are those small things? Let's not overcomplicate this in creating connected relationships for our kids because this is what's best for them as they get older to create resilience in them. And that's what we all want, we know for our kids. Thank you so much for joining us this week on the Aro podcast. We can't wait to see you again next week. The Aro podcast is produced and edited by the team at Palm Tree Pod Co. Special thanks to Emily Miles and Caitlyn Kring for media and digital support and to executive producers, Anthony Palmer of Palm Tree Pod Co. And the Prince of the Low Country Tides himself. Rich Donnellan of Aro.

‍