In this episode of the Parent Whisperer Podcast, host Richard R. Ramos illustrates the transformative power of parental choice through the story of Marisol, a mother of three who breaks a generational cycle of fear‑based discipline. After a heated confrontation with her teenage son, Marisol pauses in the "space between stimulus and response"—a concept drawn from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning—and chooses to respond with calm honesty instead of reacting with anger. Ramos weaves this anecdote with teachings from Frankl, Stephen Covey, and the E+R=O formula (Events + Response = Outcome), reframing it as E+C=O (Events + Choice = Outcome) to emphasize parental agency. He contrasts a victim mindset (events happen to us) with a victor mindset (events happen for us), urging parents to own their thought life and choices to foster emotional maturity and healthier parent‑child relationships. The episode offers practical guidance, promotes a free guide titled “The 10 Top Mistakes Parents Make and How to Fix Them,” and announces a contest for a $10,000 private VIP day with Ramos. Listeners are encouraged to subscribe, share, and view the next episode on forgiveness.
If you're a parent looking for practical, sound, solid advice in an ever-increasing dangerous world, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Richard Ramos.
There's a moment in every parent's life when you realize. You're standing at a fork in the road. Not a dramatic movie scene moment. No, it's quieter than that. It might come while you're doing dishes, while the house is tense, while the silence after another argument feels heavier than the yelling ever did. This is the story of Marisol, but really it's the story of so many of us parents. Marisol is a mom of 3, blended family, faith-driven, but at this moment she's feeling a little worn out. She was raised in a home where fear wore the mask of discipline, where yelling was normal and hitting wasn't abuse, it was quote-unquote parenting. She swore she'd never be like that, but Then came adolescence— door slams, eye rolls, and disrespect that hit her like a slap in the face. One night, after yet another blow-up with her 13-year-old son, she stood at the sink shaking, and she heard the voice of her own mother echo in her mind. Sometimes You gotta hit them to make them listen. And right beneath that, her own whisper, it stops with me. That was the moment, the fork in the road. She had every reason to react the way she was taught, but instead, she made a choice. She dried her hands, walked into the living room, sat down across from her son, and said, I was wrong to yell. You were wrong to curse. But I'm not here to punish you. I'm here to understand you. He didn't leap into her arms. He didn't suddenly open up. He just mumbled, You always said you wanted me to talk, and I'm trying. That was it. Not a resolution, but a beginning. That night, Marisol didn't feel like she had won, but she didn't feel like she had lost either. She felt something more powerful— peace. Because she had planted something new. A seed of trust, a whisper of safety, a break in the cycle. Not with noise, but with a choice. If you've ever stood at that fork in the road, you know how hard it is to choose love over fear. But that is the power of parenting with emotional maturity. That is the power of choosing a new path. And sometimes the most radical thing you can do is simply whisper, it stops with me. Hello everybody and welcome back to the Parent Whisperer podcast. I'm Richard Ramos. Today we continue on in our series of parent personal growth with the 3rd step in the process, the power of choice. In his powerful book, Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl says, between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space there is the power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. And another quote by Stephen Covey speaks to this same principle of understanding the power of our choices. He said, we are not the victims of our circumstances. We are the victims of our choices in our circumstances. In our last episode, I shared with you the formula E+ R= O, which is meant to show us that we are 100% responsible For our quality of life. In that formula, E stands for events that happen in our life, and the R stands for either our reaction or response to those events. But in this case, we could substitute the letter R with the letter C, meaning choice, and say events plus my choices equals my outcomes. So you can see how these principles run together because my choices are the result of my thought life. As we go through life, things happen— events, as Jack Canfield calls them. And there are 2 perspectives we can choose about the events that happen. We can choose to see these things either as Things that happen to me, or things that happen for me. The to me perspective is a choice and mindset about a victim mentality. You know, the blame game where we blame everybody else and everything else for the condition of our life. The for me perspective is a choice and mindset about a victor's mentality. In other words, I'm in control of my responses. I'm in control of my choices. I'm responsible for my life. Because the truth is, my state of mind or being is not due to what happens to me as much as what I choose to do about what happens to me. I can choose how to feel about what happens to me. I can choose how to think about what happens to me. I can choose to respond positively and not react negatively. No matter how you choose to look at it, what happened happened. And our reality is determined by the stories we choose to tell ourselves about what happened. In Parents on a Mission, we empower parents to know and practice the power of their choice by saying, "I am not a victim of my past life, but I can choose to overcome and create a better life for me and my family." Earlier, I mentioned Viktor Frankl. Now, if you don't who he was, he was a Jewish psychologist and prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps where his family was murdered. He survived the camps and credited his survival because of the following mindset. He wrote, We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And I'm going to repeat again what Stephen Covey said, because I think it's really powerful when you think about it. We are not the victims of our circumstances. We are the victims of the choices we make in our circumstances. You see, this is why growth in our emotional maturity, where we are taking control of our thought life that lead to our choices, is important for our quality of life. We saw this in the story of Marisol. The event was that her son had disrespected her by talking back. In that moment, her first reaction was to hear the voice in her head of her mother telling her to hit her son. But through exercising self-awareness, pausing in that space between stimulus and response, And in that fork in the road, she took control of her thoughts and then chose to respond differently, better from the way she was raised. She whispered to herself, "It stops with me," and she chose a better quality of life. Now let me be clear. Nobody gets it right all the time, which is why we're always working on ourselves for personal growth and having compassion for ourselves, even when we don't always respond correctly to the parenting events that happen on a daily basis. But here's the point of the lesson. The fact is, we can either choose to live in the past Or choose to break free from our past to live a better future. So if you are standing at that same fork in the road, wondering how to lead your family without repeating the past, listen, Mom and Dad, you don't have to figure it out alone. And what I've given you here is a roadmap Guiding principles to help you focus your attention not on your kids' behavior but on your own behavior and working on yourself as the key, as the solution to a better parent-child relationship, a better quality of life at home. Now, in addition to this podcast, you can access a free guide that I've provided for you on the Parent Whisperer Podcast website. It's called The 10 Top Mistakes Parents Make and How to Fix Them. It's short, powerful, and practical, and you can use it to start leading with more calm and clarity today. Just go to the website and download it instantly, theparentwhispererpodcast.com. Now, in our next episode, we will talk about the fourth step in this parent personal growth process: the power of forgiveness. I'm Richard Ramos, and you've been listening to the Parent Whisperer Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe, share these episodes with your parent friends and family. And always remember, Parents on a Mission is not for bad parents, but for good parents who want to get better. See you next time.
So that's it for today's episode of the Parent Whisperer podcast. Head on over to Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week. That posts a review on Apple Podcasts win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $10,000 private VIP day with Richard himself. Be sure to head on over to parentwhispererpodcast.com and pick up a free copy of Richard's gift and join us on the next episode.
