S3 E22 Chris Lake Author of HELP YOUR TODDLER MEET THEIR MILESTONES: 101 Behavior Hacks

Oh, this is Season 3, Episode 22 of the 100% Dad podcast with Townsend Russell. We've got Chris Lakes. He's from, uh, Community for a Cause. He's also written the book Help Your Toddler Meet Their Milestones: 101 Behavior Hacks, which, uh, when you reached out to me, the thing that pulled to me is that, you know, how do we help young kids, uh, overcome picky eating, follow rules better, Build Better Social Skills, De-Escalate Aggression, De-Escalate Tantrums and Meltdowns. And so that's, that's your book. And then I guess you also work for this organization that's, it looks like it does a lot with like lead and water supply. Is that, is that accurate? Did I summarize this? Did I summarize this decently?

You sure did. Thanks, Townsend. Yeah, Community for a Cause is my baby. I actually Created it 8 years ago. To This Day was our first event. We had a fashion fundraiser for childhood lead poisoning. And the reason behind that is because my day job is a special educator. I primarily work with kids with autism that are about 2 to 3 years old in early intervention. I have worked with kids up to 15 as well. And what strikes me, continues to strike me today, is that every single classroom I've worked in for the last 16 years, I have come across kids with lead poisoning. And this is before Flint was on the national mindscape. So I kept asking myself, what's, what's going on here? Why am I seeing this? And it led me to eventually say maybe there's something more I can do for these kids because behavior therapy is very effective for kids with autism, but kids with lead poisoning typically are being exposed at the home. So even if they learn, they go back home, they're re-exposed, they're running the risk.

So are we saying here that, um, that the lead in the water supply is a cause of the autism, or is it preventing, uh, I guess, correction of behavior issues in autistic kids? Is that, is that what you're saying, or making the connection there?

So no, I want to be very, very clear. So lead does not cause autism, but what lead does do, it can create autistic-like symptoms because it will delay speech, it will cause aggression, it will cause difficulty learning because it's impairing memory ultimately. Lad is interrupting the entire neural network so that the transmissions of neurotransmitters can't happen, which means that the messages can't reach the parts of the brain it needs to. In other areas, it'll make false messages shoot off where you might see almost bizarre behavior or compulsive behavior, impulsive behavior without obvious reason. So if you were to have a kid in a room who has autism and have another child in the room who has lead poisoning, At first glance, you can't tell the difference. The behaviors seem identical. They both might have speech delays, both might have what we might consider non-functional behavior, and they both would have difficulty learning, to our own esteem. As a teacher, what I've learned though, after about 3 or 4 weeks after getting to know my students, I'd be able to pick out the kids with autism. They'd slip, you know, and I'm speaking from my personal experience, and what I would see is that the kids with autism would slip and they'd say something. For the first time I heard them say a word. You know, maybe they saw fish sticks for lunch for the first time and they say, "Fish sticks." I said, "Wait a second, buddy, you can talk? Okay, you're gonna talk every single day. I'm gonna give you fish sticks every single day to get these words coming and get you more and more normalized to using your words." The kids with lead poisoning though, they would show me that they want to speak but can't. And it would break my heart. I remember this one kid I had who was 3 years old who was hitting his throat with his panicked eyes communicating almost like, "I know I'm supposed to do something with this, but I don't know how." And ultimately the progress that kids with autism would make was more consistent. The kids with lead poisoning, they plateaued and flatlined. And if there was a long break, say like a Christmas, New Year's break, or even a 3-day weekend, when they came back, progress was always almost back to square one.

And it's— So how do you know, how do you know if they have lead poisoning?

Their medical files. So in New York, we have to have kids tested twice before they reach the age of 2 in order to enter an EI program or preschool, et cetera. It doesn't always happen, unfortunately, but most kids are tested. And so, looking at their medical files, you can see, oh, this kid has level 3, so to speak, 3 micrograms per deciliter of lead in their blood. This kid has 5. This kid has X, Y, and Z. So you can tell the difference by literally looking at their blood tests. Do kids with autism also have some lead in their blood? Some, depending on where they live. And does lead affect kids with autism? Yes, it will only exacerbate the symptoms. Right.

Okay. And so lead is always going to be environmental. It's always going to be, I guess, where you're spending your time because you're breathing it in or consuming it.

It's so— it's unfortunate because, um, despite the known risks, we were a bit cavalier in our use of lead, um, globally, right? I mean, lead paint has been used very liberally across America, across other countries as well. We phased out in the '70s, but Most houses were built before the '70s. So if you're doing construction and someone's sawing through a wall or something, that's releasing lead dust. Most pipes in houses built before 1986 have lead in them. Brass is made of lead. If you're drinking from a hose in your backyard and it's got a brass nozzle, there's lead there. People aren't fully aware of that. And before 1995, canned food had lead in the lining, and they phased that out. So there's so many different ways that we can be exposed to this. And it's so ubiquitous, but it's also so insidious at the same time because it's small trace amounts. And people who are producing things that have this can always argue, well, that's not enough to cause damage. And in a one-off, they're right. But if it's every single day, there's a cumulative effect. And that's what is not factored for, and that's what science doesn't have yet a way to really link a causal, uh, framework for. So, you know, you and I just living in cities, we're exposed to lead. Our body can, can do what it can to block the absorption of it, but it really likes to stay in the body, bones and blood, for years to decades depending on—

yeah, I was about to say, so how do you remove lead from your system?

You gotta wait. So if it's in your blood, it takes about 4 weeks to get out of your blood, but that doesn't mean that it's not just leaving your body. It'll still go into some of your organs and tissues. If it goes into your bones, it'll stay there for 20 to 30 years. And literally, it will be— it can be passed down from mother to child, because if you have it in your body and blood, once you're pregnant, there's a lot of blood moving around, and that's going to go into your fetus. If you break a bone, that's going to be released. If a mother is breastfeeding, that's actually one way for a woman to get rid of lead, but it's going directly into the baby's mouth. Right? It's kind of terrifying to a certain extent. Um, there are certain foods we can eat, and this is actually what made me throw the fashion show and make me think of creating a charity. There are certain foods we can eat that have the ability to bind to lead and other toxic heavy metals and remove them. Such foods include cilantro as well as this algae called chlorella, and it's another algae called spirulina. The problem is there's not a lot of research on plants and using plants remedies or medicine because there's not a lot of money in things we can't patent, right?

And well, that's— the whole plant space is definitely changing.

Yeah, thank God, thank God. Um, but there is some research, there's just not hefty enough research for anyone to— in the medical community to really, um, champion the cause of saying, hey, you know, if you have a proper diet, you can counter X, Y, and Z. If you have enough 'Blueberries in your diet, you can have X, Y, and Z, cilantro, chlorella.' Oh yeah, that, that information is definitely out there.

I mean, that is definitely trending in the last few decades. I mean, that's why all the health grocery stores are popping up and why bigger sections of the grocery store are dedicated to organic and healthy. And, uh, you know, all these, all these new brands are popping up that are, you know, clean or, or this-free or that-free. It is, it is, that is definitely a trending discussion now. I've never heard it associated with lead before. Um, luckily we eat a lot of tacos, so we eat a lot of cilantro, so maybe that's good for us.

Keep it going. Keep the tacos and guac, man. Tacos and guac.

But we're also spent— we also spent the last couple years— tell me about that in a second. Uh, we're also in an RV all the time, so we use— every RV uses a hose to connect to water, so all our fittings are, I assume, brass. I've never even checked.

So there's— you can buy lead-free brass, but it'll literally— it'll be explicitly labeled as such. Okay. So that's— yeah, food for thought.

Yeah. What's the other plant?

So oddly enough, a couple years back I changed my Google search algorithm. I'm on Scholar Google all the time and I'm looking for what other foods remove lead from the body, right? I watched this plant-based documentary 7— oh no, 8 years ago, and that made me realize cilantro does this. And I said, I gotta tell the world. And that's how My charity was born. But a few years later, I asked myself, what reverses— can anything reverse the damage lead poison does, particularly to the brain? Because common knowledge is that the brain damage it does is irreversible. And I, for whatever reason, said, let me just change my algorithm. And I found this plant, right? This research that was done by Columbia University team. Dr. Tomás Guiarte tested this tropical daisy. It's called a tridax daisy. Right? There's a little compound inside it, just like vitamin C is a compound inside oranges and lemons. There's a compound inside this daisy that's called 7,8-dehydroxyflavone, and what it does is it goes inside your body, it's absorbed, crosses the blood-brain barrier, and it's able to actually have the brain operate as if there was no lead in it. It doesn't remove lead, right, but it allows the processes that the brain needs in order for us to remember, thus to learn, to to happen anyway. And they gave it to these mice for only 15 days. And after 15 days, the brain was restored in its function, in particular part of the hippocampus called the shaper collaterals, basically the doorway to memory. And I'm working now with two teams in Uganda to replicate these studies with children because again—

Yeah, I was about to say, it seems like if it's a plant, it'd be an easy study to conduct with humans.

I agree, I agree. But again, the issue is in this country in particular, the FDA can't call any plant a medicine. Right? It's against the law right now. Even if we know this plant actually helped, you know, your Aunt Sue or Uncle Jack with their high blood pressure or the diabetes or what have you. That's why in every bottle, every supplement bottle that we have, you'll see a label that says this has not been FDA approved, FDA evaluated. It is not intended to treat, prevent, or cure any ailment. I mean, this is on bottles of vitamin C, B12, even prenatal vitamins will say this, despite the fact we know pregnant people probably should be taking prenatal vitamins. But if it's plant-based, they by law can't say say it's a remedy, treatment, etc. So again, there's little interest in doctors and medical teams to work for this research. So, you know, I have to go all the way to Uganda.

And I assume that all that wording and the reason it's law is because there was a time, the era of snake oil salesmen, when it was just, it was blatantly overdone. And so they had to create some sort of fine line. Yeah, to keep people from being duped as easily.

Well, also, to be fair, and to be fair also, um, they can't factor it for it, right? So if I grow— if I grow Tridactyl Daisies in my backyard and you grow it where you are, right, and someone else grows it in North Canada, they can't factor for the soil, they can't factor for—

oh, sure, sure.

So they can't say like, well, what's the purity? Like, they're like, nope, you know what, forget it. We know if it's made in a factory, it's made the same exact way whether it's made in the Philippines or it's made in Mexico. So that's, that's, and that's a fair concern from my perspective.

Okay, let's get off lead because, because the real interest I had was your, your, your 101 Behavior Hacks book. Um, you know, and we've talked about this before with, you know, um, child psychologists and doctors on the show of, you know, how do we, how do we impact behavior, you know, especially in young kids, you know. And there is like a, there is a shift from, you know younger ages, toddlers, you know, single digits. When you start getting middle school, high school age teenagers, preteen, there's different tactics. You know, some of them are still practical, but you're— it's more adult, I guess, and how you handle those things. A little bit more of an independent person that has established a foundation. So what are some of your tips? You know, you've got these hacks for improving behavior and improving I guess, what are the big things that you call out in this book? What kind of behavior are we fixing?

So the biggest takeaway that any parent can have, they have a new kid, toddlers, they're in the terrible twos, what have you, is that all behavior continues as long as it's effective. This, this goes across the board for all people. This goes across the board for animals, to be honest. Use baby therapy with dog, it'll still be the same thing. Is the behavior effective, right? And what it comes down to is if your kid's crying for a cookie and someone in the house says, "You know what, just give him a cookie," that child has simply learned that crying gets me cookies. Kids learn best from what happens next. So if we make sure we reward what we want to see, we'll see more of that. If we learn how to redirect what we don't want to see, then we'll see less of it. If we allow certain consequences— and I always preface by saying rule number 1 is be kind, so when I say consequences, I don't want people to think of corporal punishment because Simply sometimes let that child know, like, "Now we can't play. Now you can't play with that." Or, "Now this is the consequence because you behaved in a way that's not appropriate." They will learn, "Okay, that wasn't effective. Let me try something else." I talk to parents about tantrums, how to manage tantrums, the way to talk to kids, things that they can specifically do, and things that they can specifically say to a child that's going to help decrease the frequency of these behaviors they don't want to see, as well as increase the frequency of behaviors you want to see. Because it's not so much my way or the highway, and it's also not, I don't want my child to ever cry, so I'm gonna give them whatever they want, right? It's our job to raise our children as to be independent adults. It's our job to make a child aware of the reality of the world outside the home. So you want to give rewards for good behavior. You do want to give consequences for bad behavior. You want to explain things to kids. In my book, I give parents those, those hacks. I call it hacks, but it's really techniques that's evidence-based of things that I use in my field from behavior analysis. I've been doing it across the last two decades with hundreds of kids, and once I had my daughter, I realized, wait a second, what I'm doing at work is, is something I can offer to people all over the world. I can offer this to any parent because it can increase my child's communication, it can increase my child's ability to overcome picky eating, it can increase my child's ability to regulate when they're having tantrums. And it's important for the parents to be self-aware, right? A lot of times we're not, we lose the forest for the trees, and it's easy to look at the child's behavior, look at the situation, get frustrated, but kids are very much mirroring, they're very much mimics, if you will, and mirror our energy. So if we're hot, they're gonna be hot. If we're cool, they're more likely to be cool. If a child's having a full-on tantrum and you're telling them, "Calm down, relax, we don't have time for this, we don't have time for this," that's not going to be helpful. That's not gonna yield the results that somewhere in your brain you imagine they would just, "Oh, okay, sorry, Dad, I didn't realize that." This wasn't the time for that. I'm so glad that you yelled at me to relax, and I'mma just calm down now. But if you take a deep breath and you go down to their eye level and you look at them with a very calm face, they're still gonna tantrum, but they're gonna have a different response to that energy. And it's not a one-off, it's not a quick fix, it's not a diet pill that you take and then you're done. It's a discipline. You maintain the consistency of the discipline and pay attention to your child's trending behavior changes. You'll start to realize this is working. If I just keep doing X, Y, and Z, my child's gonna give me the behaviors that I want to see, and it's easier for both of us. But it's a process. It's not a one-off. It's a process. And I'll give you an example from my daughter and several friends. When my daughter was about 9 months, 10 months old, I decided I'm gonna teach her how to point, right? And that's one of the programs that I run with the 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds with autism in my school because that's one of the first ways to communicate what you want. What do you want? As opposed to the kid taking your hand and pointing to the kitchen, just crying until you figure it out. The point, you're like, okay, you want that, great, here you go. So I taught her how to point. It took me a day. And once I realized that I was able to do what I do at work with my daughter, I reached out to 4 friends of mine that all had kids within a 2-week span when my kid was born. All right, and I said, hey, is your kid pointing yet? And they all said no. I said, great, let me ask you, do me a favor. I said, try doing this for the next 2 to 3 days straight and let me know if they start pointing. 48 hours, I reach out to all of them. 3 out of 4 said, holy, holy cow, Chris, my kids pointed! Like, they got it, they got it! I was like, yep, cool. The one who didn't right now has severe autism, and that's the only reason they didn't, because they did have a severe delay. And you know, I'm working with that parent too, to use different strategies to help alleviate the severity of such. But it is a lot of our behavior. How do we engage our child and how do we respond to their needs is going to make the big difference.

I agree. You know, consistency matters. You know, you called it disciplined, but, you know, the same reactions, the same behaviors is what they are going to learn. You know, I liked what you said about, you know, if you come at— if you're yelling at them so they will have a calm response, counterproductive, you know. If you want your kids to have calm responses, you know, and to be respectful, then you, you have to be calm and respectful when you deal with them. You have to model that behavior consistently, right? Um, and you know, every parent's going to lose it. I mean, that's— yes, you can't— you're not going to be exactly—

there's no such thing as perfect. And I want parents hearing, hearing me to realize, like, let go of that concept. I tell people, if you want perfect, find me a perfect tree. You'll spend the rest of your life searching forests. That doesn't exist, right? But what you can do is A, be better than yesterday, and B, be self-aware. You know, be honest with yourself. Be accountable for your own behavior, in good and bad. Don't avoid looking at the ugly, and don't only look at the ugly at the same time. Be like, you know what, even me, I've been doing this for as long as I have. I'll have moments with my daughter, I'll walk away like, You know, I could have handled that a little better. You know, tomorrow let me make sure, let me make sure I do X, Y, and Z. But, um, be aware of what works and stick with it. Be aware what doesn't work and, and get rid of it. And then also pay attention to the trends because your kid's not going to just shift behavior overnight. You know, I play the guitar for fun, right? For fun. I'm not like someone who performs or anything, but if I want to learn a song that I like and I'm gonna sit down and watch a YouTube video on how to do it, I'm not gonna learn that song in one go. I'm not gonna learn that song in one week. I might learn it in one week depending on the song. But it's the same thing with anything else that someone's learning. Kids' brains are still developing, so you have to give them time. You have to give them time to model and just, you know.

Sure, and if you're starting super early, if we're talking infant stages, you know, and we're working from there, it's gonna be much easier than if we're, you know, at age 6, it's chaos. And now we're trying to completely shift what normal is to that kid, because that kid's normal is what, uh, he or she has seen mom and dad do and behave. So, exactly, you know, I guess the—

to piggyback off that, right, the, the ocean of difference I've seen working with autism, starting when I start with a kid who's age 2 versus starting with them when they're age 3 versus starting with them when they're age 4, and it's the first time they're receiving any services It is a completely different fight, man. I mean, at age 4, I'm like, oh man, this kid's in trouble. At age 3, I'm like, okay, we can make some progress, but you know, there's going to be some limitations. At age 2, I'm like, I can make this kid lose a diagnosis. We can, we can, we can help this kid just get right through, um, the transition, right? Like you said, if you start at age 6 to lay down the law, it's too late.

It's too late. It's not that it's impossible, but man, you gotta fight ahead Yeah, it's definitely, definitely not too late. Like, the time to start is now. Yeah, yeah, it's just, it's going to be a, a more difficult road because we've got to reframe everything. You know, the kid's already reacting in certain ways, already has a, um, a set expectation of learned behaviors, and it's all going to change. And you're probably not going to change immediately 100% overnight either, so it's going to kind of be Sometimes he sees dad act one way and sometimes he sees dad act another way. And so it's, yeah, there will be a long transition.

And there's gonna be, and the child's also gonna, at 6 they have more sophisticated thinking. So the real talk, they're gonna ask themselves why, like why are you asking me to change now? And if you don't have a good enough answer, they're not gonna have buy-in. You know, one thing I do with all the parents I first work with, you know, the kids in OCE2, I ask them the same question. And without exception, they have no answer. And the question I ask them is simply, what rules do you have for your kid? And they all balk. They're like, rules? I'm like, yeah, your 2-year-old. What rules do you have for your 2-year-old? Because you can set rules at 2. Some people like, oh, that's mean, throw that out, throw it out the window. People like, I don't want to do that, that's mean, throw that out the window. What mean equals— and this is coming from a person who's called ACS on parents last week, you know what I mean? I have to because I see kids neglected, I see kids who are abused, I see, I see what I see. I work in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Man. I'm gonna see stuff. I got a bullet hole in my window right across the way. What mean means is when you enjoy the pain of your child, when you enjoy the neglect of your child, when you profit off the pain, or when you prop up neglect. If those four don't apply, you're not being mean by asking your child to grow up. They can cry, and that's fine. That's what kids do. There's a transition between infancy to toddlerhood that's uncomfortable for everyone. Infancy— a kid is supposed to cry to get what they want. I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I'm cold, I'm hot. Help me. It's a help me. That's what we're hardwired to do. And you get 12 months free pass to do that. And then after 12 months, when you start walking, start chatting a little bit, the world shifts and says, okay, the formula is no longer I cry to get what I want. The formula is now you perform to get what you want. And kids don't like that. They're like, no, no, my entire life has been one way. Let's keep it this way. And they fight. And that's the whole terrible twos, which really lasts from 18 months to about 4 years old. But they fight to say, no, I want to just have to cry to get things. I don't want to perform. I don't want to perform. Life's a performance. Life's a performance. We perform for other in different ways, authentically so, but we learn the roles that we have to play in order to get a job, in order to pay our bills, to get on the bus, whatever it may be. There's things that we have to do that are kind of performative. So when you see that your child's crying because they simply want your phone, If you give them the phone, again, they learn from what happens next. I cry to get the phone. Wait it out. I tell parents, I write in the blog, time your kid's tantrum. Because if you don't know how long your kid will actually tantrum safely— disclaimer, safely— then you might cave in 10 seconds when your kid only had a 20-second fight in them. And if they only have a 20-second fight in them and you wait that out, the next time they tantrum, it's going to be shorter. It doesn't end all tantrums, but it does trend it. Into the decreasing zone, you know. That's—

I mean, beware. I've said it a million times, if you start rewarding bad behavior, it's— that's like the worst thing you can do. It's not going to stop it. If your kids— I mean, that comes down to more minor things like interrupting conversations. Um, you know, if you're talking to another adult and then they just start, you know, cutting in and, and yelling and screaming and grabbing your attention, you know, like, if you end that behavior immediately, if you're crystal clear that that's not okay, and they can stand there and wait, you know, hold your hand until you're done talking, then you can interject. And you do that consistently, that, that will work. But stopping your conversation and then giving your attention to child is going to mean that's going to happen all the time. You're always going to be interrupted. Your kid's always going to pitch a fit because that's how they get you to respond. And then, you know, we could just— you got a lot of parents wondering why their kids act the way they act. And they're, frankly, they're brats, they're turds. And, and mom and dad, mom and dad enabled it. You absolutely 100% enabled it because you didn't want to go through the hard work of setting a tone. And yeah, so now, so, so now you have all the hard work because you always have to deal with that bad behavior. Exactly.

Listen, you're just trading time. To me, it doesn't go away.

It's harder.

Yeah, right. You're just trading time. Either deal with it now or deal with it later, but you have to deal with it. I tell people the only way out is through. You cannot raise a child without tears, and that's the perfectionism that people kind of aspire to. And I want people to realize that is so such a fable. It doesn't exist. Like, please let it go. There's no such thing as tear-free parenting. Your kid is going to cry, especially when they're transitioning from infancy to toddlerhood, because that is what they're hardwired to do. It's your job to be able to be the adult and say, all right, I see where you are right now. You're not having a good time. You're having a big feeling, and that's okay. You're allowed to be upset, but that's not the way to do it.

Well, and you know, at a sense, um, you know, this is what— that's the first I've heard that, where people are striving to not have their kid cry. But I mean, that goes into the discussion of failure and pain. And like, to develop a well-rounded person, uh, to protect your kid from failure, to protect them from pain, to protect them from loss, from sorrow, things like that, you're depriving them, you're handicapping them as an adult because you need loss to appreciate what you have. You need pain to sometimes help learn or to appreciate when things are good. You need failure as a learning experience and just to build, you know, resilience and grit and self-confidence.

Grit. Listen, there's no one successful on this planet who doesn't have grit and gratitude.

Oh, sure.

When you spare a child from having to pain, loss, suffering, etc. And I'm not saying in any, in any reckless way, folks, but like, that's what builds character. And it's actually important to have character. It's important to say, you know what, I dealt with this, and I now know that I'm stronger than this because I dealt with this. It doesn't mean you let your kid fall into a lake and they got to figure out how to swim or drown, you know what I mean? But you could be in the lake with them and say, I'm gonna catch you, and we're gonna splash around for a bit. If you struggle a little bit, I got you. There's a way to support your child through a transition. And, you know, maybe not tearless crying, but, but I see so many parents who just— they, they really equate their kid unhappy to them failing as a parent. And, and, and that's not failure. That's not failure. That's— and it's not—

it's winning.

Manipulating— what?

It's winning.

It's winning. They're growing. Listen, you don't go to the— you don't hire a personal trainer to compliment your shoes and give you a hug. You know, growth requires pain. All growing requires some struggle, some pain, and the reward in that growth is knowing I'm bigger than that pain. As difficult as that was, as difficult as it was to, to write that paper, as difficult as it was to run that marathon, as difficult it was to work through my relationship issues, I got through it. I did it. I'm stronger than that. And I like that about myself because I now know I am capable. You know, progress and capability are the other foundations of happiness. You want your child to be happy, teach them they're capable. Not because Mommy supported you and protected you and wrapped you in bubble wrap. They're capable because they, through their own strength and grit, were able to get from point A to point B.

Well, yeah. And as soon as they get to the real world, I mean, if mom and dad have protected them this whole time, have solved all their problems for them, have, have kept them from feeling failure, from feeling pain and loss, when they get to the real world, it's going to hammer them. I mean, that's where you start getting, you know, you have adults with so much anxiety, so much depression, so much lack of self-confidence, you know, the whole snowflake world that we call them, you know, where kids just can't handle any sort of pressure, right, or any sort of resistance, or they haven't built up resilience. Mom and Dad, you know, when you learn that when you screw up and fail, the world keeps moving, it's going to be okay the next day, and you've learned— yeah, you can work. I mean, you just, you just said it a few minutes ago, that's how you build those skills, and it's incredibly important. And I think parents— I've heard a few say this— they're, they're trying to give their kids, uh, you know, the advantages and all the things that they didn't have growing up. And I think what they, what, what they forget is they forget to give their kids the things they did have growing up as well.

Very, very well said. You know, very well said. It's funny you say that. Just this morning I was listening to Eric Thomas and he was Towns. He was reflecting something just like that. He's a huge motivational speaker for anyone listening who doesn't know him, and he made the point, his son called him out. He said, Dad, you're trying to make me have grit that you haven't prepared me for. Like, you were homeless, you're trying to make me have a homeless mentality. I can't. You had me driving a, you know, you had me driving a Cadillac when I was a sophomore in college. Like, that's not going to apply to me. Like, no respect, but how am I supposed to have that level of grit when you have me living in this level of society? Society. That's a good point, kid, you know. And it's, uh, while, while trying to spare a kid from what you, what you suffered, um, to an extent is, is good, um, they can experience everything you suffered because of the fact that you're already as present as you are, the fact that you're already as emotionally caring as you are. If you're not your dad, if you're not your mom, if you feel like, you know, if you're striving to be better than your parents, you're already winning. You're already winning. Your kids are good, you know. But it's not to make your child suffer for nothing. Obviously you want to avoid certain suffering. You don't want them to, you know, come into like drug addiction. You don't want them to suffer from crime. You don't want to suffer.

Well, sure, that's danger, right?

Like physical danger, obviously. But, but let your child— let your child fail. It's okay. Let your child fail. They'll be okay. That's how you learn. Failure is the best fertilizer for success. You're like, all right, that didn't work, but you know what, I'm coming back stronger. That's going to give me tenacity. That's going to give me that desire to have perseverance. If you never play sports, how much of a fighter can you be? You know, if you never compete, how strong is your will and desire to get something if everything's always just given to you? Let them earn it. Let them earn it. And kids can earn it from 2 years old.

Yeah, I'd say there's pathways outside of sports. I was definitely a sports guy, but you know, it's not to say musicians or artists or, you know, kids in the drama club didn't have to compete and fail and things like that.

Well, yeah, that's that competition. Yeah, you know, you want, right. You need to be faced up against the potential to fail. You need to be faced up against, ooh, this might not work. And then you're really going to learn yourself.

And then, yeah. And then, you know, to counteract that argument of, you know, I guess what was it, Eric Thomas, you said? Yeah. You know, so he was homeless growing up, but his kid's not. He's trying to drive that mentality. I mean, I think there is an element of, you know, share those stories of failure. You know, don't try and posture that dad's perfect. But share the stories, how you failed, what you learned from that, what that experience has prepared you for, how it gave you a different perspective. You know, being homeless really makes you appreciate having any roof, you know. You know, a 700-square-foot house is amazing that has indoor plumbing, maybe a window unit AC, you know, in the worst section of town is great because it's so much better than being under a bridge or being in a shelter. So it gave me that. So I think sharing those stories, sharing that perspective, because I don't think necessarily, you know, exactly what he's doing. He doesn't want his kid to have to start exactly where he started. We want to give them a leg up, right? You know, we want to, but you have to share, share those, those experiences and those perspectives and those stories. And I think what some, some dads are out there they, they're changing history, or they're not sharing everything because they want to be this, uh, perfect bravado example of a man that doesn't fail, that, you know, that's never come up short, you know, that everything is just golden that he touches. You know, the— take Trump, for example. Like, has Trump ever admitted to failing at anything?

Not that I know.

No, no, everything he does is perfect, you know. Um, And that kind of mentality, A, it's fraudulent, but B, I don't think it helps raise kids. I think you should share with them your— and we don't know what he does as a father. He might, you know, tell his kids and just in the public eye, you know, puts on that show. Um, but yeah, share the fail so that way when your kid fails, they don't feel like a complete failure, like dad was perfect and I can't even do that, right? You know, and you always feel less than, you know. And to a very real extent, I want my kids to be better than me. I don't want to be the alpha in the family forever. I don't want to be the, the guy that no one can ever reach or touch or surpass. That's just a mentality with it, you know. But then that involves, you know, sharing those failures, sharing those lessons that you learned, and then letting them experience real life. Absolutely. I agree, brother. Now we've moved to an older kids discussion. Certainly at the younger level, I think you said it perfect, and we've had that discussion on this, you know, on our platform before, of, you know, to change behavior, to get the behavior you want, you have to be incredibly clear, you have to be consistent, and everything has to be immediate, especially at these younger ages.

Exactly.

When you're talking 1, 2, 3, 4 years old, you can't wait till the end of the day or tomorrow or the end of the week to say, hey, remember that time? And try and make a connection there. It needs to be immediate, right now.

When you interrupt this weekend, we're not going out. The kid's like, well, that's, that's 4 days away. I'm in right now. I'm in the right now. It's got to be, okay, then we're done playing with this. Okay, then, you know.

And there's a theory, uh, there's a theory out there that I like. So when there's a negative behavior or something you don't like, you know, immediately correct it and say, "That's not okay. Do not do that. Stop it." Don't reward it, certainly. But there's a theory out there, floated by a psychiatrist we had on, of it's actually best to ignore that behavior. Now, you can't do that all the time. I certainly don't do that. But if you don't give the bad behaviors attention while simultaneously, when they're behaving good, give that all your attention, that the root thing kids really want is mom and dad's attention. You know, mom and dad paying attention to them, showing them love, expressing admiration for them. So if you want your kid, you know, when they're doing something bad, they're fighting with their siblings in their room, if you ignore them, if they come to you screaming about how the brothers are fighting and you just say, "You solve it yourself. You know, why are you coming to me?" and let them, you know, be basically alone with their badness, And then when they're, when they're in their room playing or playing a game of chess and you come up and sit there and say, hey, I love it when you guys are, you guys are behaving so well, you're, you're, you're being respectful to each other. And so always giving your attention and your compliments and your encouragement to those behaviors, which I think a lot of parents, especially me, you know, that's just how you're supposed to act. So like, why compliment that? Why reward that? We do. We, we take it for granted. And if we're constantly pointing that out and calling it then, you know, that's just reinforcing the behaviors we want, and we're making that clear connection consistently. Right.

So you said you want to catch them being good. That's really the essence, you know. Two big takeaways for anyone: the behavior continues as long as it's effective, and catch them being good. If they're doing what you want to do, be vocal. Every kid has the same exact favorite word. Is their name. They don't care why they're hearing their name. They want to hear their name. It's attention from mommy and daddy. So if you're saying it mostly when they're misbehaving, you're going to see a lot more misbehaving. And it's not so much ignoring all bad behavior, right, because some behavior obviously is dangerous, but it's letting your response be really boring, right? You want to be very neutral. If they're having a bad behavior, do something you don't like, you can make a comment and say, that's not how we behave. But you don't want to say, Jeremy, what's wrong with you? I can't believe you're doing this again. That's really stimulating. And kids like 3 things. They like volume, they like speed, and they like energy. And when we're angry, the way that we move and gesture and speak is a lot more interesting than if we're speaking in a, I take this for granted, babe. Oh, nice drawing, that's pretty cool. That's boring. That's so boring. That's so unsatisfying to their senses. But if you flip it, and it's going to feel fake at first. I tell parents, listen, I get it. This, like, oh, I want to be authentic. Trust me on this, like, go with me on this. The results are— proof's in the pudding. Fake it for a little bit, it'll become more natural for you, but you're going to get the response from the kid that you actually want. So you see a kid doing something simple as sitting nicely on the couch instead of, instead of jumping up, oh, Jeremy, thank you so much for sitting nice on the couch! Daddy loves it when you sit nicely. Again, that's fake, but the kid doesn't know that, and they receive that, and they're getting credit for doing it.

So to clarify, there's excitement in your voice, there's a timbre of energy versus just, you know, the plain words. No, I like what you're saying, the mundane, the, the common, uh, because I think, like I said, we're just saying that that's where we come up short. We'll compliment the, the great thing. You walk an old lady across the street, great, good job. You bring home an A, great, good job. But then we don't compliment when they're sitting quietly doing their homework, right? We, we don't. I mean, we like it, but we're not pointing that out and excited and praising that. And so, you know, the routine, the boring, the mundane things that they're doing that are good, they're not bad. That's the things we want. If we bring attention to that, we bring excitement and, you know, praise to that, then that's what they're going to want to do. That's what, you know, just the deep down inside of them is going to want to continue those behaviors because they know mom and dad like it. At those ages, they want to make mom and dad happy. They want mom and dad's attention.

Yep, yep, yep. 100%. 100%.

Well, beautiful.

When it comes to rules, right, if they're doing behavior you don't like, there's certain phrases that toddlers really respond well to. It's if-then statements, first-then statements, and when-then statements. These are a great way to establish rules. And if anyone out there's like, well, how do I establish a new rule for my kids now? I don't want to be arbitrary. Start of the week is a good time. If you move, that's a great time. Birthdays are the best time to introduce new rules, because for them it's a new chapter. Like, oh wow, you're 5, that means you have to clean your room because you're a big boy now. And they'll, they'll, they'll be more, there's more buy-in. They're like, oh, that makes sense. Yeah, I'm 5. Yeah, that makes sense. Something new. If it's, if it's Tuesday night and you gotta put your dishes away forever now, like, why? But sure, start of the week, you'll see, start of the week, start of a year, any new chapter that's obvious, it's a great time to introduce new rules. And if you use if-then, when-then, and first-then statements, If you clean up your dishes, then you can pick dessert tomorrow night, depending on how old the kid is. If you clean up your toys, then Mommy will read you a story. First we do this, then we do this. It just, it computes very easily for a kid. It gives them a sense of the sequence of events. It lets them know what's going to happen next, as opposed to don't do this, don't do that, stop doing this, negative rules.

I like that. So I mean, it's almost like guiding them into manhood and womanhood of like, hey, every, you know, every birthday, hey, new responsibilities, new, new, new sets of accountability and rules. So my big thing on rules and also is family values is like you said, you ask your— you ask a parent what the rules are in the house and they kind of go, uh, they don't even know because they're making it up as they go. So my big thing with that is like have a written record, something tangible, something real. Like if you want rules to be followed and they are like the core of your household, Right. Have them written down and post them somewhere. My gosh. That way everyone's on the same page. It's clear, it's transparent, it's obvious. When that's broken, we can just point towards the wall and say, well, we've, we've talked about this before. Right. Right. And that is a lot, a lot better tactic than dad or mom's always winging it. And when something's not exactly the way they want it, they yell at their kid and the kid's trying to piece all these things together. And kids, even as adults, as an employer, You know, you have to tell someone like 20,000 times before they hear it for the first time. And when you write it and it's, and it's tangible and it's there, you know, it's, it's heard a lot sooner and a lot quicker. And there's just more accountability because there's going to be more consistency. And like I said, we talked about clear, immediate and consistent. That's definitely clear. And that's definitely consistent if we're constantly referencing it. And so not only for rules, but for family values too, things that are important to the families, you know, and that's going to vary per family. But hey, this is what our family stands for. This is, this is how we are raising you. You know, when you're an adult, you can choose your own path. We hope it's very similar to our path, but you know, this is what we stand for. And if it's written down, you're not winging it. You're not flying by the seat of your pants.

And it makes new arguments there.

It makes all the great— yeah, it makes all those gray area discussions, um, a lot clearer, you know, because you kind of know where you stand.

Right, right, right. I love it. So I love that.

Yeah, it's— yeah, I'm, I'm big with that one, uh, because you— I mean, you probably have the same thing. You, you ask parents what the rules are, what the family values are, and there is almost never do you get immediate answer where they can just roll off their tongue because they don't know. Turns out adults—

So most rules are fed in a reactionary, and it's not the best strategy to introduce rules as they're being broken. And that's what most parents do.

It's not consistent, and it's not clear.

Right.

Yeah, so that's my big thing. All right, great talk. We're coming up on 45 minutes now, which is about our time gap. So if you want to finish off, let people— leave people with a bit of wisdom or how to find more about you or plug something. This is your time.

All right, let's see. Bit of wisdom, the key is kindness. Things to leave you with, behavior will continue as long as it's effective. Catch them being good. And you can find me at 101behavioracts.com. That's 101behavioracts.com. Both my ebook and my paperback are available on the landing page. And I know it's tricky out there, folks. Take a deep breath, give yourself credit, give yourself a pat on the back. You got this. You got this.

All right, Chris, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for the time, Townsend. It's been a pleasure.

Have a good one.

All right.

This is a 100% Dad production. You must visit our website at 100dad.com, 100dad.com. Find us on TikTok and Instagram at 100 Dad, @100dad. And as always, email Townsend at 100dad.com. Now hit that subscribe button.