- Do you know where the phone is?
I need to practice my piano.
- Miles had it for music.
- Miles!
(upbeat music)
Welcome to "True Parenting."
If you watch true crime documentaries,
they're always doing reenactments of real-life scenarios.
So we're doing much more benign reenactments
of real-life scenarios of Alicia parenting our children.
We are doing this so that you can get a look
at what parenting based on unconditional love
and agency looks like.
I am playing the roles of our children.
I do so with their consent and their enthusiasm.
The point is not to mock them,
even though I have fun in the roles.
The point is for you to see what this looks like.
Hope you enjoy.
- Bryson, we need to talk about
what your life is going to look like
in light of recent choices you've made,
but more importantly than that,
I want you to have an understanding
of why you're making these choices
because I want to support you in making choices
that are actually going to help you
have a happy, fulfilled life.
- Okay.
- Here's the thing, Bryson,
I don't even think you realize
why you're making the choices that you're making.
And once you realize why you're making those choices,
then you can decide if those choices are really serving you.
- What does that mean?
- When I say you can decide
if those choices are really serving you,
do you know what that means? - No.
- Okay.
What does the word serve mean?
- To do what they say?
No.
- So another word for serve
in this instance would be support.
Are the choices you're making really supporting you?
- No, they're not.
- Okay.
So we can evaluate and we can start asking the question,
what kind of choices would support me?
But we need to dig a little bit further down into the root
and say, why am I making choices that aren't supporting me?
So in life, we always have a choice, correct?
- Yes.
- So what do we have a choice over?
- Me.
- You and what?
- My actions.
- Okay, so I have a question for you.
So you get to choose your actions.
Do you get to choose the outcome of your actions?
- Yeah.
- No.
No, you don't.
The outcome of your actions are just natural.
Natural consequences aren't necessarily a bad thing.
What is a consequence?
- Explain it.
- It's just what comes after our choices, right?
So you get to choose your choice,
but do you get to choose the outcome of your choice?
Do you get to choose the consequence?
- No.
- Okay.
If I'm an honest, trustworthy individual,
what's the outcome of that?
- Other people trust you.
- Yeah.
Do I like to be trusted?
- Yes.
- Do you like to be trusted? - Yes.
- Is having trust part of your value system?
Is trust important to you?
- Yeah.
- Okay, here's the question.
Is it more important to you
than what you want in the short term?
I mean, those are the choices
you've been making recently, right?
- Yes.
- You've been lying and stealing
and doing whatever you need to do
to get what you want in the short term.
- Yes, yeah.
- And so it's important to slow down
and to ask yourself these questions,
even if it's painful, even if it's uncomfortable.
Because if we never slow down
and ask ourself these questions, what happens?
- Then we'll stay the same.
- Yeah, you will stay the same.
Not a whole lot will change.
So once again, that comes back to our values and saying,
do I want to stay the same or do I want to learn and grow?
And what does growth take?
- Responsibility.
- It takes responsibility.
What else does it take?
- I can't explain all these things.
- Well, if you'd like, we can take a break
and we can come back to this conversation later.
Would you like to take a break?
- Yes.
- For how long?
- I don't know.
- How long do you wanna take a break for?
I've got meetings a little later,
but as long as I'm not in a meeting,
I'm available to talk to you.
At what point, I don't know exactly.
I have a couple hours of meetings this afternoon.
How about we just keep having this conversation
for five more minutes?
- Okay.
- Okay, can you sit down?
- Yeah, okay.
- You can get that blanket right there if you want.
Okay, so tell me a little bit more
about what growth and change looks like.
What does that require?
- It requires responsibility and trustworthiness.
- So let me ask you a question.
In the moment, when you're trying to grow
or change a behavior,
does it take more effort to stay the same
or does it take more effort to change?
- It takes more effort to change.
- Right.
So in the short term,
is it easier to stay the same or is it easier to change?
- Easier to stay the same.
- So let's talk about what you're struggling with right now.
What are you struggling with right now?
- Not being trustworthy.
- Not being trustworthy, with being dishonest
and lying and stealing.
What if you don't change that?
What if you go throughout the rest of your life
choosing to take what you want when you want it
and to lie and to steal whenever you feel is necessary?
- I'll go to jail.
- There's a good chance of it, right?
You steal something big enough and it's serious enough,
you'll probably go to jail.
So in the long run, is it easier to change
or is it easier to stay the same?
- Mm, change?
- Yeah, it's easier to change.
So in the short term, it's easier to stay the same, right?
Because it takes effort and it takes self-discipline
and it takes accountability to change.
But in the long term,
staying the same makes life harder in the future.
So the real question for you, Bryson,
is what kind of person do you want to be?
At what point are your choices
going to get so uncomfortable
and so unpleasant that you say,
"This is worth the effort to be self-disciplined?
"This is worth the effort to be accountable.
"This is worth the effort to be different."
Because up until now, it hasn't been worth the effort.
It appears like the stakes haven't been high enough.
Do you know what I mean when I say the stakes?
- Yes.
- Okay, so as you get older,
what happens to the stakes or the consequences?
- They get higher.
- Do you know where the phone is?
I need to practice my piano.
- Miles had it for music.
- Miles!
- So Bryson, why do you feel
like you're struggling with this?
Because last night when we were talking,
I gave you a lot of opportunities to be honest with me,
and you didn't know that I knew you were lying to me,
and I gave you multiple opportunities for you to be honest,
and you insisted on your path of dishonesty
until you couldn't hide it anymore.
Do you know why that was?
- No.
- Like when you're lying to me, you believe it.
And then even after you had been caught,
you insisted that you didn't lie to me.
And that's the most concerning part.
- I'm sorry.
- From my perspective, you seem to feel justified,
and it seems that you're getting more
and more insistent in being dishonest with your behavior.
So I think one of the biggest challenges, Bryson,
is you're not actually thinking
about what you're doing when you're doing it.
Like you do something small
or you're a little bit dishonest, or you take something,
and then does the lie end there,
or to keep the first lie,
are you going to have to do more and more to cover it up?
- I looked through your whole room, dude.
- Miles had the phone.
- I asked him and he said, you guys had it together.
Remember, Miles came in here to get free music?
- No, I never allowed him to do that.
- Yeah, he did.
Do you know where the old phone is?
- No.
I know Miles had it.
- Why is Miles saying
that you guys used it for a story last night?
And you're saying that you used it for music?
- He did.
- Bryson, let's take a break for right now.
You can go back to your room.
- No.
I need to eat.
- Yeah, you do need to eat,
but we're not doing that until a few things get resolved.
- No!
- You also need to sleep instead of being up
and playing on the phone.
- I didn't.
In the morning, I took it, okay?
- Bryson, we're having a conversation about the fact
that you repeatedly lied to me last night,
and then this morning while we're having this conversation,
you repeatedly lied to me again.
So you need to learn the hard consequences
of choosing to be dishonest.
You can make different choices,
and I'm trying to help you understand
the seriousness of the consequences
because it's not a little bit of lying, Bryson.
It's constant.
- Okay.
- And frankly, there's multiple factors here.
You've now created a behavior pattern of being dishonest.
Do you know that when you do the same thing
over and over again, it creates pathways in your brain
and those pathways get deeper and deeper?
So every single time you lie,
it gets easier and easier to lie.
And you've chosen a path where you are constantly,
repeatedly lying and it's getting easier and easier for you.
And it's going to get harder
and harder for you to change that.
And the consequences are going to get more and more serious.
And so I'm going to hold you accountable as your parent,
but the best person to hold you accountable is yourself.
And you need to decide what you want
and be the kind of person you want to be.
- Yes ma'am.
- So that's one factor is you've created
a pretty consistent behavior pattern
of an unhealthy behavior
that's not really serving or supporting you.
Would you agree with that?
- Yeah.
- Number two, what you eat really affects you.
Sugar, food coloring, and preservatives really affect you.
They affect how your brain works.
They cause inflammation in your brain and body.
And when you have inflammation in your brain,
you don't think clearly
and it affects your impulse control.
And I do my best to support you in eating foods
that are going to help and support your brain.
And you consistently try to go out of your way
to eat food that's hurting you.
So there's another layer to the issue.
So we're gonna take a break for right now.
- For how long?
- I don't know, Bryson,
when are you going to be ready to come back
and finish this conversation?
- An hour?
- Sounds good.
I'll talk to you then.
- Okay.
That was awesome.
- So fun.
So you witnessed the first half of this conversation.
There is gonna be a part two that's coming out
in a couple weeks.
It's called "When Your Child Is a Klepto"
or something like that.
- When your kid is a klepto. - Yeah.
It's really affirming as parents.
We are dealing with a closer personality.
And we're not gonna go very deeply right here
into what a closer is.
If you wanna know more about our personality types,
you can take the course on our membership site,
or there's a video that does a pretty good job
of an overview of it.
It's-- - Marrying your opposite.
We are too different
- We are too different.
And we talk about the different personality types there,
but here are the needs of a closer, right?
Because we all have needs,
we all have innately different needs.
And when you're parenting a child
that's drastically different from you,
that's really challenging.
This particular personality type
can be just really challenging in general.
It is very similar to my personality type,
so I relate to it.
It is the complete opposite of your personality type.
So it is very challenging for Jonathan.
But here's the needs of a closer.
You need to hold them very, very, very accountable.
They are tenacious.
They will stop at nothing to get what they want.
And at a young age,
if they are not taught morality, character, and ethics,
that can look bad as an adult.
- Well, and as an adult,
they can be an incredible force for good
because they will go after what they want
and they will move mountains to get it.
The issue is when they're still developing their morality,
doing whatever it takes to get it
could involve lying, cheating, and stealing.
- Yeah.
And so you help them see that
by holding them very, very, very accountable.
And I had a friend say once to me years ago, she was like,
you are the most consistent parent
I've ever seen in my life.
And still sometimes it doesn't make a difference.
And so, she was like, I'm basically defeated.
Like, I'm not even gonna try.
Like, who cares, right?
We all feel that way sometimes, right?
And we're just showing up
as the best possible version of ourselves.
And how that child chooses to behave
is not necessarily a reflection on what we're teaching them.
If we're being abusive or manipulative,
like, that's a different story, right?
But my focus as a parent
is to show up with love and to teach them.
And with closers,
you're gonna have to hold them really, really accountable.
- Well, and you were talking about
how your friend feels defeated, right?
And how we all feel defeated sometimes.
The fact is, if you're doing it right,
you're going to feel defeated sometimes
because this is about agency-based parenting.
It's not about forcing your kids to behave a certain way.
It's about teaching them that choices have consequences
and helping them to see
what the consequences of their choices are.
And that means because you're honoring their agency,
sometimes they're gonna make choices
that you disagree with and it's going to feel defeating
because you want your kids to make better choices.
- Right. - But the fact is,
if they always did exactly what you said,
that's probably a fear and intimidation scenario
that when they grow older,
they're gonna rebel against you.
Far better that they're young and they're making choices.
And like you say, fail early, fail hard,
but they make choices that you disagree with
because those are teaching moments,
and because it shows that they feel comfortable
at least making choices.
- Because the goal in parenting
isn't to get my child to do whatever I say
whenever I say it.
- What?
- Oh, you're crazy. - Am I?
Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
- There are times where children need to listen
for valid reasons, right?
It's not a free for all.
It's finding that balance.
But when it comes down to it,
what I want for my children
is I want them to have the morals,
the values, the ethics to be of good character
and have the self-discipline
to carry that out in their own life.
'Cause I'm not going to college or anywhere else with them.
They're gonna grow up, they're gonna be adults,
they're gonna be their own person,
and they need to know how to make
age-appropriate choices for themselves.
Here's a couple other things that closers need.
You'll notice that I asked Bryson a lot of questions.
- Bryson.
We change the names for these videos.
- Which is very helpful for every personality type.
The reality is nobody likes to be told what to do.
Even when we know the right answer,
it's particularly insulting to be told what to do.
So I'm not telling anyone what to do.
I'm helping them see their choices,
see the other possibility of choices,
and see who they actually want to become.
So hopefully, hopefully someday they do that all
within their own brain.
- Think, think, think.
- Closers need a high level of autonomy.
And so when he gets restless and nervous
and I can tell we're not making a lot of improvement,
we're not really getting there in the conversation,
you know, I say, "Do you need a break?"
And he's like, "Yeah, I need a break."
Right?
But he also tries to skirt responsibility
and accountability all the time.
And so I say, "Okay, let's take a break,
"but let's talk for five more minutes, right?
"Let's get to a pausing place in the conversation."
And so balancing that with a closer
for them to make their own choices,
for them to feel like they have autonomy
is really, really important.
And it's really easy to get into a power struggle
with a closer because they will create a power struggle
out of literally nothing, right?
You're just like, I was not.
- They need something to push against.
They need something to assert themselves against or about.
- Helping them achieve that in other areas of your life
when there are points of conflict,
it will help ease through
the power struggle that might come up.
And so in parenting,
it's not even just about this one instance.
It's looking at it as a whole
and what are those child's needs?
- So are any of you parenting a strong-willed child?
What have been your struggles?
What have been your successes?
Let us know in the comments below,
and read each other's comments
because we're trying to create a community here
where we all learn from one another.
If you need extra support
in your parent-child relationships, go to mendedlight.com
and schedule a complimentary 15-minute consultation
with a member of our clinical team
and/or check out our low-cost membership site.
- And until next time, remember to keep shining.
We need your light.
(upbeat music)