When I look at these things,
the bubble over my head is this.
Anytime I look at a family,
you have to look at it as a whole.
And there'll maybe be what's called a target individual,
the one that's making all the noise, the squeaky wheel.
And clearly,
sometimes there'll be someone in the family
that's really broken.
And clearly this kid is damaged
by a broken, dysfunctional family.
And sometimes when that's happened,
a parent will then parent from guilt and be indulgent.
But I wrote a book several years ago called "Family First".
And in that book
the second chapter talks about what needs to happen
when there's been a broken family.
That's not the time to be more indulgent.
That's the time when the kids need to see
that there's somebody there
to still run the business of the family,
that, hey, everything's the same.
It's like the family seems to have fallen apart,
but it's business as usual.
I'm still expected to get up in the morning
and get dressed and go to school
and the rules are the same
and there's some order and some pattern to my life.
So when things get disrupted in a family,
kids look for sameness,
they look for something they can rely on
where they go, okay, listen,
the whole world hasn't fallen apart.
I'm still here to expect you to do the things I need to do
and I find comfort in that.
And you know, this mother claims a great bond,
but he's obviously feeling a void
or he wouldn't be seeking validation by strangers.
And that's the problem
with this social platform world we live in now.
You see people getting depressed
if they don't get enough likes,
or if people stop following them.
And it really has created
a whole new syndrome in our society.
Don't you think?
I mean, people are, they'll put up a video
and it doesn't get as many likes as the one before
and they actually get depressed.
They lose self worth.
And I've told Robin many times since I came out here,
thank God I am not afflicted
by the need to be loved by strangers
because I tell people
what they don't want to hear sometimes.
And I say things that are unpopular sometimes,
but I just, I have to be true to who I am
and call things the way I see them.
And sometimes that gets people all in a flap
and you just have to be true to yourself.
And if you look at some of these people on social media
that are trying to be such rebels, they're actually clones.
They're all alike.
That's why I said, you know, tell me who you are,
'cause he's like every other one,
hey yo, yo, yo, hey Dr. Phil, yo, hey, yo, come on.
Do you have like a five word vocabulary?
This is a smart young man,
but he's mimicking everybody else that he wants to be like,
and that's not what gets you successful in life.
Be unique.
Find something about yourself that distinguishes you.
And I don't know,
parent's both a noun and a verb
and can have a baby, so now you're a parent,
that's a noun, but then the verb kicks in,
you've got to do parenting,
and you don't do that by indulging kids all the time.
You got to prepare the child for the next level of life
and that's not happening if you're indulging a child.
And you do not reward bad behavior.
Making all F's and sleep until noon,
how in the hell is that okay?
That is never okay.
So you say, well, here's a big camera for TikTok
and here's the phone and here's all,
are you kidding me?
That just doesn't work.
And people do what works
and obviously this is working for him
or he wouldn't be doing it.
So you gotta stop that.
(upbeat music)