Interview with Nadim Saad – Part 1

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible, financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it, so your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

Pancetta mushroom tortellini. You can eat smart, still fit in your bikini. I ordered Blue Apron. I've been happy ever since. They sent pre-portioned meals. I don't make no measurements. Sauté the pancetta, then I add the mushrooms. Large skillet 'cause you can't have too mushroom. Garlic pesto, tomato paste, Calabrian chili. Season to taste. Order Blue Apron today.

Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today.

Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat, and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 80, and today's episode I get to interview Nadim Saad, and you may or may not be familiar with him. He is a parent coach and the founder of the Happy Confident Company. So you may well have even bought some of the resources, whether that's the journals or whether that's the card decks. Nadeem is a parenting and relationship coach and the author of 7 books, including the highly acclaimed Kids Don't Come With a Manual, Happy Confident Me journal series, and Raising Happy Confident Kids. He just has an absolute incredible way of taking some of the real complexities around how we raise confident and happy children and using the knowledge that he's acquired through neuroscience and across a whole host of different modalities to give us some really clear specific things that we can be doing as parents. And we talked for so much, we've had to put the episode actually into two sections, so there'll be an episode 80 and an episode 81. And that was— there's a whole load of stuff that we didn't even record, but you will find some incredible nuggets there. What Nadine will talk about are the 10 life skills that we should be teaching our children, which we will share as a free resource as usual at the end of the podcast. So we have split the episode across two. So the gift for this week's particular podcast episode is going to be the top 5 of Nadine's 10 life skills that we should teach our children, and then the other 5 will be across next week's episode. So all you need to do is head over to my free resource library drmaryhand.com/library where you'll find the link to download this week's resource as well as the resources across all the other episodes. And there will also be a link to help connect you to the Happy Confident Company if you want to purchase any of their journals or their card decks, which Nadine talks about. As ever, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could follow and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can spread the love. So until next time, here's Nadim, part 1.

So welcome. I'm so excited to welcome today, I have Nadim Saad, and you won't have realized obviously because we've only just pressed record that we have been chatting probably for a good 20 minutes before we even started. So you're in for a huge, huge treat. Nadeem, welcome.

Thank you, Marianne. No pressure here. It's a pleasure to finally be meeting you, speaking to you, because we've got so much in common, we're already realizing. So I hope that this conversation will build on each other's knowledge and we can hopefully share a few useful things with the audience.

Yeah, that's brilliant. So the podcast is all about how we don't screw up our kids, but as parents, I believe that we're very much a product of how we were parented. Whether we do this consciously or we do it sort of unconsciously, there may be elements of, you know, the way that we parented and we think, oh, I'm definitely not doing that, or I like the way that my parents did that, I'm going to do that myself. So what did you take into your parenting from your parents?

Well, you could have sent me the questions beforehand. Oh my God. That's a 3-hour conversation. Well, because I've done some deep therapy and I can tell you I come from— so before saying where I even come from, it's in terms of parenting. I come from, hey, I turned out okay, so why would I read a parenting book? And then I got married and I had my wife who was a Montessori teacher and who was giving lots of advice to parents and just thought she had it all sorted. Obviously she knew exactly how to parent. And then we were opposing parenting style. She was more permissive, I was more authoritarian. And a lot of things she'd do with our children would be actually different from what she'd say to the parents in her class. As is because obviously, as we all know, there's the emotional aspect of things that takes over. And therefore we actually often want to do something and we end up doing something different. So we actually had a lot of fights around parenting. And I discovered so with time that 75% of parents disagree on things and more than 50% of disagreements are on how to discipline children. So that's a big survey that was done. And it makes so much sense when I actually interviewed the hundreds of people, you know, my audiences, it always comes, you know, 75% of people raise their hands, you know, I am having parenting challenge. Because often what happens is we'll either take the way we were parented, and that was my case. Oh, my parents were pretty authoritarian and I turned out okay, so I'm just going to do the same. Actually, subconsciously, I didn't even think, oh, I'm going to do the same as my parents. But when my wife would tell me, oh, but that's not okay, you're doing— and I would say, well, my parents did the same and it was— I was okay. And in her case, she was doing the opposite because she also had authoritarian parents. But she subconsciously— she didn't initially— I mean, because training as a Montessori teacher, obviously she realized a lot of things her parents had done, etc. But it's very much an automatic mode. You don't— a lot of people don't think about it. I certainly hadn't, and I wasn't willing to because I thought I didn't need to. But oh my God, with hindsight, how much I screwed up my kids. I mean, wow. You know, I've come from years of saying, oh, come on, we're all like— it's normal to shout at our children, you know, to lose it from time to time. We're human beings, as we— you know, it's totally fine. And obviously I still think that because otherwise you have so much guilt. But when you look at the research and realize that just raising voice or changing tone, and obviously even more if you really start shouting, that children suddenly release cortisol. They go into shame, and they literally actually can't do what we ask from them because their body is flooded with cortisol, the anxiety hormone, and it takes some time to get out of the body. And therefore, you've got all this time where you're probably still raising your voice even more and even more, so you're making it harder for the children to do what we're asking of them. I was like, wow, it's incredible how much— how can I make it more difficult for my children to do what I'm asking of them? It's just completely, you know, completely logical. But it still happens. But what's really important is I use two essential tools. I use rewind and just try and do it differently because I catch myself. I'm now aware of it. So I catch myself and I do it differently. And kids automatically reconnect because they didn't get the time to, you know, go in to release the cortisol and be in shame. And so immediately they change their tone and they realize. Or I actually, if it has happened, still happens, I apologize. I tell them, look, it happens. I don't want you to do this, you know, obviously, because I realize I would model the best thing possible. But it happens and I apologize. Sorry, I didn't answer all this. So now let's go. You see how I could go on a tangent. But now we're going to ask, I'm going to answer basically what I got from my parents. So two pretty authoritarian parents. I thought I was pretty independent because my sister would get the bulk of the anger from my parents. I was pretty independent and doing my own thing, wouldn't be punished a lot while my sister was punished a lot. But oh my God, with time and with a lot of therapy— and I'm a trained hypnotherapist, so I've done regressions to my childhood and things like that in my trainings, and, and with other, other forms of therapy too— and I realized how much I did not feel safe I, because I would see my parents shout at my sister and I was, you know, in so much fear and screaming internally like, oh my God, why so much hate? And so it obviously, so I didn't feel safe as a child. And what's really incredible is that with all the therapy, obviously now I'm much better, not just through the therapy, I started being better by just rewiring my brain, by just deciding I'm going to shout less, I'm going to find solutions. So my whole parenting journey was As a parenting coach, I really focused on these quick fixes, all the tools like the rewind, you know, and it worked quite well. But there was still this thing that I couldn't change. My children would still see me as the angry dad. I was like, oh, come on, stop boxing me in the past. I'm not, you know, I so didn't want to be that because I was making, I was changing, you know. So when I did a family meeting with my children, my middle one was 4, When we asked her to express her needs, she said, "Oh, Dad, I'd like you to shout less." And I was like going to go, "But one second, don't you see that I'm shouting less? I mean, how can you—" And I did say, I said, "Look, I hear you. I hear you." No, at first I start with, "I hear you." No, it's like, you know, acknowledging her thought and her emotion. You know, "I hear you. It clearly still affects you, but you realize that I'm really doing so much better." The whole family agreed, "Oh yeah, you're doing so much better, but hey, you could still do better." And I had to wait until she was 7, 3 years, until she said, "Dad, you know, you're actually doing much better. You haven't shouted recently, so it's really, really great." I was so proud, but it took a long time. So that's where I realized that it's not just about the parenting techniques. Now my coaching focuses a lot more on changing the mindset, my mindset essentially, And also giving the tools to children, and that's what the whole Happy Confident Company that I created and founded and the whole 10 Minutes Matter campaign is built on, is if we can give the children the tools so they can deal with their feelings and they can express themselves in different ways, etc., and realize where it's coming from and how they can do better, then the whole dynamic changes. So it's not like the children have to make the effort. You know, it's still the parents who have to do the bulk of the work. But children will understand better. They'll understand where they're flipping their lid, or their parents are flipping their lids. They'll even— I had a child, an 8-year-old child, who was taking my workshop when I started several years ago, and he went to see his mom and she was getting angry. And he said, "Oh, Mommy, you're getting angry. Maybe you need a bit of PBS." And she said, "What's that, PBS?" He said, "Pause, breathe, and smile." I love that. So you can imagine what the mom did. Obviously, automatically, started laughing and go, okay, you know, yeah, I could. So, so it becomes this really beautiful connection, and, and everyone wants to do better. Everyone understanding where they're coming from and that everyone has strong feelings, big feelings, that they can lose it sometimes. But so they've got the same knowledge, and therefore they can have a completely different conversation about it and just grow together and, and, and help each other out, grow. Because ultimately, our children are our best teachers. So yeah, that's, that's the look. So now I'm going to finalize because you asked the question about what do I get from my parents. So first, a lot of— so what was really interesting in my friend, I really— I'm— so my parents are mostly Lebanese, but my mom was born in Mexico and raised in Mexico. So I'm Mexican-Lebanese. I'm also Greek from my granddad, and I'm now British because I've been here for 20 years. And what I've noticed is parenting is pretty, pretty different across the board. It's— I mean, there are a lot of similarities, but there's also a lot of differences. And particularly in the Middle East where I come from. But what I've seen across the world, and I've lived in 7 countries and traveled a lot, is that children still all have the same needs. We all have, as human beings, we have the same needs. And what's really incredible is that we're treating children differently in different parts of the world. And instead of adapting to the child themselves, which is the most important bit, we're actually just doing the same thing, what we think culturally, you know, we reproduce a lot of cultural things. And sometimes, thankfully, obviously some parents just try to really adapt their children, but we don't get the basic knowledge of psychology, of children's needs, of basic human psychology. And that's what we're trying to bring to the system. We're trying to teach this to children. And as we do this and they understand the basics of psychology, actually they bring it to their parents too, because their parents want to know. And like, oh, Well, I didn't know that. I don't know interoception. I don't know introspect. I didn't know mirror neurons. I didn't know neuroplasticity. All of these big terms that are so important actually to learn to teach children and parents. So that's what we're bringing through schools and to families to really help everyone have this important conversation. And the last bit, so from all of this different cultures I got, despite that my parents were really super authoritarian and I reproduced that until I really realized that it wasn't acceptable. And I can share a quick example, and a lot of people connect to that example. The more authoritarian parents out there may connect to that. So my eldest was 4 and a half, and we were having a nice Saturday lunch as a family, and she dropped a salad leaf. So she was thankful she was eating salad at 4 and a half. You know, I didn't even realize that was pretty good because Then my third came in and that was, whoa, we forgot salad. But so I'm just mentioning this because obviously salad is great, but then she drops a salad leaf on the table and I go, oh, Nur. So her name's Nur. It's like, please, the salad leaf. And she ignores me. I'm like, Nur, did you hear me? I told you, please pick up the salad leaf. She ignores me again. I'm raising, I'm already kind of in a, hey, can you listen to me? So there's already the tone, and that's important for what's coming. Because then I go, "Okay, Nour, I'm going to count to 3, and you better pick up your salad leaf." Okay, if that's a 1, doesn't do anything. "Nour, it's a 2, you'd better pick up your salad leaf." Still doesn't react. "2.5." "Nour, you'd better pick up your salad leaf." "2.75." And then she's not reacting. I reach 3.. And the reaction was so strong. And it was coming from such a place of feeling powerless. Because often what I learned from my anger management courses is that anger often comes from feeling powerless or ashamed. And I was literally feeling powerless and ashamed that my daughter wasn't doing what I was asking her to do. And the reaction was also due to the fact that I had no clue what I was going to do what I would do when I would reach 3. So it had worked until then that she would, out of fear, she would then, you know, do what she was asked. And I hadn't really thought about what do I do when I get to 3. So the reaction was, oh my God, she has— because my whole parenting is out of fear. Yeah, she— I have, I have to make it so big that she'll never want to get to 3 again. So I shouted, I picked her up, I said, you're going to your room, literally brought her up the stairs. It was a terrible moment of parenting. And obviously pretty traumatic for her and for the whole family. My wife didn't speak to me for a whole day. So it was such disconnection. And out of what? With hindsight, a salad leaf on the table. And obviously the event, the incident could have been a lot worse. She could have like screamed at me, insulted me, whatever. But whatever, nothing justifies this kind of reaction because I put her in such— basically what I realized after, you know, when I Finally, that's where I decided to do something about my parenting. But I would have much rather not have these traumatic examples and others that happened even later despite me knowing. Because I realized that this, if I had worked on myself before and realized that this could come up because that's what I got from my parents, well, I would have, you know, I would have at this crucial time when they're really innocent and we don't, not actually expecting them to be, to do this because that's the problem. And I heard your podcast and why that's, and with, with Zoe Blaskey, where you say, you know, we have this expectation for children when they turn like 4, oh, they should be listening, right? Or 6 or 9. So we start having these expectations. And the problem is, well, no, I was actually putting my daughter in a situation just because she heard that. It could have been opposition, but the most likely— but at 4 and a half, that's more opposition comes a bit later in life. The most likely was that she was just shutting down. She wasn't in what we call fight or flight and freeze. She was actually in freeze mode. And so she wasn't listening to the 1, 2, 3, and she was already in a situation where she wasn't really even thinking about the fear and the consequence of what was going to happen. So that's why, you know, all of that preamble to say, so important to realize that we do get things from our parents, and it's really important that ideally we do the work before they grow up. But anytime, even when they're teens, actually it's the most important because that's where they really push your buttons. And even later, if they left home, and actually you could always reconnect with your children. And that's what I'm doing with my— I've got a 15-year-old, 13-year-old, and a 10-year-old, and I'm still reconnecting on some. So removing that past experience they had of me, and they're gradually— it takes, you know, a long time for them to finally see me in a completely different light and to acknowledge. And wow, when they acknowledge the change, you know, when we're not in a— it's so beautiful, and you just think it's it's all worthwhile because the connection is so much deeper.

Yeah, it is incredible.

And that's, you know, a lot.

Oh no, and I just, I really value your honesty because I think so, certainly what I found, and I don't know if this is a cultural, you know, I too, um, I'm from the Middle East and culturally certainly there's, there's not this sort of talking about parenting. So I don't ever remember my parents even having a, a reflective moment to reflect on how they parented at all. And I think it's just so important to be really honest about it. And you've, in that, in your response, you came up with so many things I just want to touch on. And one of the things that I think is really crucial to touch on is this idea that quite often as parents we feel that we're making changes, which we are, but our children have yet to recognize and to feel that the, that the weight has tipped enough so that they feel secure enough that that change in us, whether it's reducing shouting expectations or whatever it might be, that it's been tipped enough that that then becomes their new norm. And so often we have to ask that question of our children and not get into that, but can you not see I've changed? Why can you not see I've changed?

So true that what you just picked on is so important because I get frustrated sometimes because I made major changes and that lag, it's just like, hang on, you know, because it's so worth it. And so a lot of, for example, one of the things that, one example I take and parents really connect to it is my child was 6. I was learning all about the growth mindset, realizing that I was praising her, I was over-praising her and there are better ways to do it. So I started focusing on effort and personally, I would tell her regularly, "Oh, hey, you put a lot of effort into this. You must be proud of it." And she just didn't react. She was 5 and a half. She didn't react. And I was like, "Okay, hang on. The research really shows it. Hang in there." 6 months later, she comes. I was working from home. She knocks on the door and says, "Hi, Dad. Do you have a minute?" I said, "I'm finishing something, but yeah, yeah, get on. Tell me." And she says, well, I wanted to share that I've been made ballerina of the month. And I'm super happy with that. And I go, oh, wow, you must, you know, you must be proud of this. And she says, yes, I'm proud of it. And I practiced a lot to get to this. So suddenly it was the switch. She associated the practice, the effort, you know, and the pride and the whole thing. And I was just like, wow, bingo, 6 months, but it's so, it's so worth it. And the same for the shouting, as I mentioned, you know, it took, a while for the kids to acknowledge that, but it's still so worth it. You know, it's not because they're ungrateful, because that's the rhetoric I had. It was like, oh, they're so ungrateful. I'm making all these efforts. No, it's just because they did feel unsafe for many years. And for, as you just said, for them to really feel this point where they feel, whoo, actually, you know what? There's enough. I'm not walking on eggshells anymore. I've seen enough to see, oh yeah, my dad really changed.

But, but I also think, Nadine, that that's a really crucial part of, from a parenting perspective, just generally, in that whenever we as parents reflect on what might be working or not working and what we might need to make as changes within our family, is that I think quite often we start with a particular technique that we've read about. Maybe we've read a parenting book and we think, oh, this is this is what I should be doing. And when we don't see results instantaneously, we give up. We assume that the technique is rubbish and then we move on to the next one. Whereas actually the key message here is have the conviction to know that what you're putting in place, the technique and the strategy, is the right strategy for your family and for your child. And B, it's being aware that it's not— things don't turn around overnight. It takes time. And just knowing that if you keep applying the same—

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.

Few things are as uplifting as the greatest moments in sports. And nothing brings us together quite like Team USA at the Olympic Winter Games. From NBCUniversal's iconic storytelling to the innovative technology across Xfinity and Peacock, Comcast brings the Olympic Games home to America, sharing every moment with millions. When Team USA steps onto the world stage, we're not just watching, we're cheering together. This winter, we're all on the same team. Comcast, proud partner of Team USA.

Philosophy, the same language, that you will then see the shift.

You're so right. And that's what one of the difficulties in parenting is, that there are, you know, when I, when my wife would tell me, oh, here, read this parenting book, I go, but once I get— there are so many parenting science, you know, there's not a science, there's so many theories out there, just give me an exact summary and show me it works. So it took me years to actually realize that there is a science of parenting. It's still, it's— I love saying it's It's both a science and an art. And the science is very similar to the science of leadership because that's where my background is in leadership. And I realized that it's exactly what— and thankfully they've done a lot of science on leadership and you can actually apply it to kids. It's just obviously adapting to young kids and that's a bit different. But that's why I wrote a book about this. But so the art is more on the art of listening and the art of adapting a psychology to your unique child. But all this science, it's about time that it's known. You know, it's about time that we do things consistently. And often it's about listening techniques, about problem-solving techniques that involve the child. I mean, not often, always, because that's where the art comes. It's in the art of understanding your child because you've actually practiced. And art is also something you can practice. That's what we teach children too. Creativity is something you— it's both something you learn is innate. Everyone is the gift we get when we're born, but it's also a skill that we can develop, even creativity and art. And that's what a lot of kids don't know and don't realize. But coming back to one point that you're making as well, is I don't— I want to make sure that, because I spoke about my authoritarian side, to realize that actually my wife was also more permissive, and she also realized that she hadn't done things Very well. And the kids, it took years for the kids to actually see a change as well. Well, they actually, interestingly, sorry, you see a shift from a more permissive parent into a more balanced parent, and we call them balanced parents, much, much quicker. And actually, it's hard for kids to adapt because like, oh my God, where did this come from? Suddenly, you know, my mom or my dad have become firm, firmer. And it was like, oh no, no, I prefer the old you. So they have more problems, of course, because they could get away with murder. So it's harder for them to adapt to more permissive parents becoming more balanced. But with that, and that also takes time, because then they'll resist, resist, resist, and then the parent will often go, oh my God, this is too difficult. It was so much easier before, because they don't see the long-term effect. And actually, it's when they stay in this consistency that it's so important. But then they're They're, you know, my children still say, look, you know what, despite you being very authoritarian, these rules were so important to us. So they acknowledge that the rules are important and that some, and that other children who get away with murder, or that, I don't like this expression actually, sorry, who are really, whose parents are much more permissive and they get away with a lot, actually that they're not learning. They're not learning to develop their frustration muscle, their disappointment muscle, Things that are so important because when you grow up, you are going to be, you're bound to be disappointed and frustrated. You know, we're called the Happy Confident Company, but it's not about being happy 100% of the time. It's actually about acknowledging when you're going into these really big feelings that we all have, developing the resilience to, first, the interoception, so which is the sensation of feelings in our body and the sensations, and therefore acknowledging what's happening. Name it to tame it, so reducing the intensity of the feeling, and then learning how to work with this disappointment and this frustration to make it better. And then you get yourself back to happiness. But it's not about being happy all the time, which is my biggest issue in life, is I thought I had to be happy all the time. And the problem is then it comes and bites you from other places, because if you're trying to be happy all the time, unfortunately with your loved one, sometimes you're just like, actually, you know what, I can't, I'm not feeling very good. Well, you don't even acknowledge because I had shut off my feeling. But then suddenly it comes out as a, you know, hey, enough of all this. I feel it's unfair. I'm trying, I'm doing my best for everyone and I don't get, you know, what my needs met. And boom, you get a bout of anger and then everyone's like, oh, where'd this lovely person, happy, confident person go? And you feel misunderstood. They don't know. It's just this whole cycle. Yeah.

And it's, and I think it's really crucial, Nadine, because you touch on, I think, something that I think quite often as as parents believe— maybe you'll disagree— that there's this idea that we should make our children's lives happy and, and comfortable and easy, and we want to cocoon them, we want to protect them. But that actually is not helpful because these little people become big people. And my, my children are at the other end. I've got a 22-year-old and a 19-year-old, and they are You know, I often get that, you know, I'm so grateful, Mum, that you didn't allow us to do X and Y, and I know we really resisted at the time, but that's been really helpful. And I think it's that it's helped. Do you feel that that's the same? I feel that as parents, we often feel that we need our children's lives need to be easy and lovely and happy all the time, and otherwise we failed.

Yes, I mean, not all parents, and I was coming from the fact that, you know, they had to just be put up with some things. But, but I do see that a lot, and it is— that's the more difficult thing to identify, to realize that actually what, what's the consequence of this, what's the negative consequence of overprotecting them. So yeah, absolutely, I see this a lot, and I see this particularly with parents, for example, who have little time with their children, and then they think, oh my God, so this time has to be the best possible, and therefore I'm gonna be— I'm gonna shower them with gifts shower them with my, you know, it's not because we're not so present. And that creates a big issue because you can't buy your children's, you know, and you can't, you have to, it takes time to get the right values in place to get them, you know, to experience, yeah, that frustration, disappointment that we talked about. So, and not to protect them. So I, because that's what life is about. And it doesn't mean we're going to impose frustration and disappointment on them. It just means that when we, when suddenly they have experienced this, instead of telling them, oh, don't worry, you broke something, I'm going to buy you another one. Because we can't deal with that, you know, we don't want to see them frustrated. We just go, oh, that's sad, but you know, well, you know, what are you going to do next time to make sure it doesn't break? You know, they have to learn to be also careful and not careless and all of that, all of that, all the basics, you know, basically becoming human beings. And that's why it's really important to also teach them the life skills because it's about— do you want me to mention briefly the 10 key life skills that we teach? Yes, please.

Yeah.

I think that would be brilliant. Okay, I'll do it briefly because I, as you can see, I can speak, I can talk a lot. So what we realized, so I came from parenting and the story is that the same middle child who actually told me, oh Daddy, you're screaming a lot less and you know, you're shouting less, it was a very bubbly, very positive child. But she turned 8 and she went through a few challenges including actually our divorce. So I divorced my wife, and at this moment in time, she's— it was after, but clearly, certainly affected by that. She started being quite mean to her sisters and also quite harsh with me. So I would try really nicely to bring her back to her own self, which is the bubbly, positive self, and trying to reconnect her to what I say. You know, you don't remember how kind you are. You are a very kind person. And guess what? It did not work. It backfired completely because I was just— it's what she was hearing. Well, after then coaching her through this, initially I kind of— it was— I wasn't very reactive, always in the best possible way, because I, I didn't recognize my daughter and I was— I wasn't patient enough because I was like, oh, that's not you. So finally sat down with her and really did deep coaching, and it took a good half an hour to an hour to finally get her to say, I hate myself. And obviously that's a pretty horrible thing to hear from your daughter, and even more when you're a parenting coach who theoretically is doing, you know, most things right. Theoretically, because obviously I know with hindsight that there was still a lot. And one of the things I was doing wrong was that— reconnecting her with her true self. Because I was— it was as if I was telling her, you're not— that's not you. I was— I didn't realize that obviously we all have different parts of ourselves, and that's what I learned with deep therapy. And you have to accept this harsh part of yourself, this, you know, angry part. It's totally— it's okay to be angry sometimes. It's just more about how you express it. And that's what I was not teaching her. I was just telling her this is not okay to be this way. And so what she did, she was basically associating her behavior to who she is as a person. And that's what most kids do, by the way, as we know. And therefore she felt she was a bad person, and therefore she hated herself. So thank God I got to the bottom of this, and I managed to completely change this and do things completely differently. I said, oh wow, So thanks for sharing. Let's do something about it. And that's what we completely— we work as a team to change this. But I realized then that, hey, most parents don't have the chance of having these tools that I— even if we teach as parenting coaches, we teach, you know, a lot of things to parents. It takes a lot of patience, a lot of knowledge and training to get to that. And that helped me realize that all these parents who told me, oh, can you train our kids? And I'd go, come on, no, no. You've got to do the work. Stop wanting to outsource your kids to someone else like you do at school, etc. But I realized, actually, you know what? Why aren't schools teaching our kids to deal with these big emotions, to actually feel safe to express themselves and to share their feelings? Because as parents, it's harder for us to actually teach this because often it'll come that, oh my God, you've already repeated this several times. If they had a program at school that would teach them how to manage the feelings, how to actually first acknowledge their feeling, to teach them emotional literacy already. Because as parents, often when we teach parents to, oh, try and listen to your children, name their feelings, often we'll go, oh, you look sad, or you look angry, or you seem pretty frustrated. We always use the same because our emotional literacy is not so developed. Therefore, the same feelings come over and over, and we're not really helping them become a lot more grounded in feeling. And Brené Brown, that you probably know, has done some amazing research looking at 3,000 research papers, and she realized that parents on average— it's mostly US data— but they use 3 different feelings only, which is: you're angry, sad— sorry, it's mad because it's US, so it's mad, sad, and happy. And the problem, and what these research papers also show, is that when you do this and you just bring all of these feelings into one, it's not helpful. You need emotional granularity to get to the bottom of it and really realize, you know, oh, okay, that's what's happening to me, to be able to do something about it, to really feel more in control of the feeling. So that's what we're trying to do with the HappyComp company and bringing this to schools and to families. So it's first emotional literacy, really help Families and schools share that— sorry, I'm actually, as I'm speaking, I'm realizing that I was going through the 10 powers. So let me go back to the 10 powers because the whole basis is emotional literacy, but the whole, the 10 powers build on this. So from an early age, it's really from nursery, learn about your feelings, learn how to, what the different feelings are through activities, through sharing in class and make it a safe container make schools and the family a safe container to share these feelings and not feel ashamed to be in what we call the red, to be angry, to be furious, to be overwhelmed, all of these things. And so coming back to the 10 powers, the first is actually the power of introspection. And it's a big word, but we use it because it is about when we show kids, and we've got a whole video program where Emma Willis is a presenter of the program, And she shows intro, you know, basically spec-tion. And you know, you understand, you would— people can't see me, but it's about the specs and understanding that introspection is about looking inside of ourselves. Because self-awareness and introspection is the key to everything ultimately, because when we know our needs, we understand what's happening to us, what makes us happy, what makes us sad, and what— and how we can actually switch from one to another. It's really helpful. So it's always the basis of everything for us, is introspection. The second one we call the power of optimism. It's about identifying this little voice in our heads that's often going to tell us, oh, you're not good at this, you're not good enough. And I did this exercise with my children and oh my God, when you see what they can write, it's really horrendous. And that's where you get my child saying, I hate myself. But teaching them that actually we all have negative feelings and it's okay because we can deal with that, because we can actually then ask what we call the inner bully. It's our inner bully, we call it. And so we teach them about bullying in the same way because actually instead of— we're often— the bullies are often the children who have the biggest inner bully. So we teach them to not have an inner bully so they never want to bully others. So identifying this this little voice and realizing that. So the 3 questions we tell kids to ask themselves is, is this voice kind? Is this voice helpful? And is this true? Because often they'll ask if it's true first and they'll go, well, yeah, it's true, because they've convinced themselves that this is true. But actually, that's not enough. They first have to think of whether it's kind and helpful, because if it's not helpful thought, for example, oh, I'm not good at this, well, hey, you can do something about it, and then you can learn to actually reframe your thoughts in a more helpful way. So we teach them that because it's so important, because often kids don't realize this little voice, and they think it's their mind, they think it's themselves. And it takes years. You know, after a lot of meditation teachers, hermits who spend like 15, 20 years in a cave, you ask them, so what did you learn? Really tell us, what's the nugget? And many of them actually came out and said, look, You have to do it to understand because it seems so simple. But it's what I learned is I'm not my mind. So this realization that what we tell ourselves is actually often not the reality and not the truth is learning this from an early age is so important.

But as you say, Nadim, I think that's such a crucial thing because, you know, I talk a lot about this idea of this internal chatter and that, you know, You've got the voice of that sort of inner critic, but you also have the voice of your best self. There's an alternative side. And I think, you know, of all of the things that I personally feel that we can teach children that help them in terms of adulthood is around that chatter. And the fact, just because they thought it doesn't necessarily make it true, and to question it, because that's what creates your reality. You act upon those those thoughts and those belief systems. And that's what sends you down this spiral, whether you're a parent, you know, what, why is my child being so ungrateful, responding to me in this, in this way? They don't, how do they not care what I'm doing? To the child that doesn't try something because they think they're going to fail.

It's so crucial. Absolutely. We're still on the same page on that. And that's where, so it's really crucial to the simple fact, often it's like with parenting when you do parenting courses and you're, you're many, sharing, and you're just like, oh my God, I'm not the only one. Well, it's the same for kids. How could they know that their friends actually have the same inner chatter, or even their parents? Because their parents are supposed to be strong. And so teaching them that that's not abnormal and they can do something about it— oh my God, they feel so much more in control and, and so much more understood. And they don't feel bad. They're not like a bad person. They're just like, oh, they've got this voice sometimes It's pretty negative. So that's the power of optimism. And what we teach them as well, what's so important, is the cycle of the typical cognitive behavioral therapy cycle, which is your thoughts lead to your feeling and lead to your behavior. And teaching them, for example, if they have a negative thought about a friend who didn't say hi or didn't invite them to a playdate, and they start having strong feelings about it, and then their behavior is likely to be affected by this, and they're likely to basically ignore their friend or be aggressive or be angry at them or things like that. And that realize that then obviously their friend is also going to react from that space, and therefore they're going to reinforce this cycle. And how to get away from these negative cycles is so important because a lot of our, for example, patterns with our partners, with our— at work, a lot of these things are initially come from this initial negative thought, and, and we're reinforcing the cycle because we obviously— oh, guess what? Our reticular activating system, which basically the part of our brain that filters information, will just confirm this negative bias we got on something. And for example, I'm not good at math. Boom, you just said— say this once to yourself because you had a difficult math problem you didn't understand, and that's for the rest of your life. You've convinced yourself you're not good at math. Well, everything, every research proves that, okay, some minds are more analytical, but in general, if you practice, everyone can do math. Everyone can do anything, basically, because we rewire our brain. We're we have neuroplasticity, which is so episode 4. So let me— I'm jumping up. So episode 2, optimism. And it's not about, you know, ultra positivity. We're not— we don't believe in ultra positivity. And always, I just— I made it clear, it's not about always being happy and ultra positive. It's just about identifying when we're being negative and just help ourselves out of this to make it to treat the disappointment or the frustration, whatever is happening. Then the third is the power of interoception. And it's not introspection, it's interoception. And I mentioned it earlier. And it's actually our sixth sense. It's the sense of feeling sensation in our body. So it could be hot or cold, or also our feelings. And developing this is so important. And we show that, for example, autistic children have more difficulty feeling these feelings in their body, and therefore that's why sometimes they're not in tune. And that helps autistic children, but we also obviously— so we help children realize that we're not all the same. But the most important thing is we teach them to practice feeling those sensations, identifying them, because it is so helpful to then do something about it, to feel more in control. Because as Dan Siegel, you know, a great neuroscientist, has shown, when you name a feeling, you reduce its intensity in the brain, and therefore it makes it more controllable. And we are talking about more granular. It's not just, "Oh, I'm angry," because actually in this case, if you were powerless about something, that's what brought the anger. You need to ideally name the powerlessness, the frustration or powerlessness, rather than just the anger. And that's when suddenly it reduces the intensity in the brain and makes it more Manageable. That's why Dan Siegel coined the sentence, "Name it to tame it." And it's always really helpful to remember this. So that we teach kids that, you know, we all have big feelings and how to manage them, to become detectives of their feelings and their thoughts. So in power optimism, they become detectives of their thoughts. So we're developing their metacognition. In power of interoception, we're helping develop this you know, the feeling bit and become the deputy of their feelings. Then comes the fourth power, which is the power of mindset. And that's where we teach them about growth mindset, fixed mindset, the fact that intelligence is not innate, that actually you can develop the different part of your brain because the brain is plastic, and that we're not good at something— if we're not good at something, it's because we're not good at it yet. And that's quite developed in schools, but we go the extra mile of really teaching them about the whole science of neuroplasticity so the fact that our brain is malleable and that we can create these new neural pathways that make it easier to do things just by practicing them. And children really get it, and so it helps them identify a lot of things that they think they're not good at and how they can actually, with more practice, can become better at them. Then the fifth power is the power of failure, and that's a biggie because the same way we got them with the power of 3, power of interception, we taught them permission to feel. In this, in The Fifth Power, Power of Failure, we teach them permission to fail. And that's a huge thing in our culture. We get to see more and more children becoming perfectionists, really annoyed, not wanting to make mistakes. And it's so important. So when they see that people like Disney was fired at 29 from a newspaper because he wasn't creative enough, it's like, what? Disney wasn't creative enough? You know, he's built the most incredible empire in the world, so creative. So it really helps them to realize that even the most successful people have failed and that the ones who've actually failed the most are the most successful often because they needed to fail a lot to learn. So this is really understanding the importance of mistakes and finding a gift in every mistake is the power of failure.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Shifting a little money here, a little there, and hoping it all works out? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll help you find options within your budget. Try it today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

At VRBO, we understand that even the best of plans sometimes need a little support. So we plan for the plot twists. Every booking is automatically backed by our VRBO Care Guarantee, giving you confidence from the very start. Whenever you need help, it's ready. Before your stay, through the moments in between, and after your trip. Because a great trip starts with peace of mind and maybe a good playlist. But we've got the peace of mind part covered.

The new LinkedIn Hiring Pro can't clone you, but it can streamline your hiring workflow. From posting jobs to shortlisting candidates to interviewing, LinkedIn Hiring Pro is the hiring partner you need so you can focus on connecting with the right talent. In fact, small businesses report saving over 6 hours per week. So hire right the first time with LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Post your first job today and get $100 off at LinkedIn.com/PandoraOffer. Terms and conditions apply.