Blair Singer argues parents should focus on their own attachments and behavior, not trying to control how kids look or act. He recommends role-modeling, realistic expectations, and building confidence through practice rather than over-managing your child's choices.
Well, here I am in Vietnam and I'm in my hotel room and I was going through the list of a lot of the things that you guys said you wanted to hear about. So I'm really excited to get started on it. You know, one of the things, I'm just going to address a friend of mine, Zach Davis, he goes, he'd like to know a little bit about how to adjust or recondition the little voice of kids. And I had to laugh because my experience having raised two boys or in the process of raising two boys and working with thousands of people, they're pretty malleable. The issue is not the kids, it's the parents. It's the parents. Attachment, I'm going to use that word quite often as we talk to each other. Is attachment your attachment to what it is you want your kids to look, act, feel and be like because you know they're going to be their own kids. And I think that part of the deal here, part of what happens for a lot of parents is they have a picture of what they want their kids to be and they become obsessed with it. So it's not so much about conditioning them to think clearly, it's conditioning them to be the way you want them to be. And I know I'm guilty of all that too. So with kids, it's a little bit different than with adults. Their cognitive thinking isn't completely clear. So asking them lots of questions doesn't always work as well as with adults. We can ask questions and let people self discover. With kids, it's mostly an environment. My experience, what kind of environment they grow up in, what kind of rules do they live in, what's the context like? And from there they learn. They're great role modelers. They pick up on everything. Some of the things you may not want them to pick up on. But in conditioning little kids, you know, building confidence, confidence is less in what you say and more in the environment that you give for them. Is it celebrating every single little thing they do? I don't know. Some people would say yes. I don't say no. I mean, life is tough, life is hard. It always will be, always has been. And your ability to respond to what happens and to get them to take the lesson, how can you do this better or what can we do better or could you try this differently is going to help them. I think setting an expectation for them, and I've made this mistake honestly, is setting the expectation for them that life is not easy. A lot of times we want it to be Good for them. We want it to be better for them than it was for us. So what we're going to do is we're going to make it easy for them and we're going to reward them for every time they do anything close to being good. And you know, sometimes they just got to learn that it's not always a good, it's not always good. I'm not sure that that helps in terms of how to raise kids and condition them. But one of my friends, J.W. wilson, great friend, known for many years since Hawaii, he's done a lot of neuro research and he's had some very big challenges in his life and has worked with thousands of people. And really the issue with kids is not the kid, it's the parent. It's the parents. How you address things. If you project your psychosis onto them, then they'll either become abusive like you were, or they'll be completely withdrawn as a result of the abuse, if that's your personality. So I think part of it is getting your act together as you work on you and you get to be the person you want to be. You lose your attachments the way the world needs to operate. Let go of your control of what things should be like. You'll reduce your suffering, you'll be a lot happier and your kids will be a lot happier because you won't be overbearing on them again. The word is attachment. Look it up, do some research on it. There's a couple great books, you know, Untethered Soul, Thresholds of the Mind. These are some that I read and you know, anything that you know, Hinduism talks about. This is that when you are so attached to, to a specific outcome and it doesn't go your way and the obstacle comes up, it creates suffering for you unless you turn the attachment into a preference. This is what I prefer, but if it doesn't, that's okay. I mean, I'll make the best of it. Maybe there's another lesson to be learned here. But I know that the big suffering in my life with my kids is when I want them to be a certain way and I want them to be able to make the football team or get straight A's or be happy or date this girl or that girl or get a job and what the job should look like. And all I get miserable and when I get miserable, I put pressure on them. Remember, personal development is first about taking care of you. If you're good, your kids are going to be pretty good. I can rest assured. Can you build confidence. Sure. Get them to practice, get them to drill, get them to do things and get them. And pursue any area of interest you can with them that they. That they get off on. But really don't worry so much about conditioning them. Work on working on you, and I think the rest will probably take care of itself. Okay, Zach, that one's for Zach Davis. That's for you up in Utah, in Idaho, I think. You're in Idaho. Yeah, you're in Idaho. Be awesome.
